Winging it in... Boston

I'll just die if we get caught over a speeding ticket. Are you sure we should be driving like this, I mean in broad daylight and everything?

So, Saturday dawned bright and clear, the weather was gorgeous, it was a perfect spring morning. I removed the mayonnaise from the shoe closet; attached the leash the to family elephant and headed out into the crisp, fresh air for a morning stroll. I love days like this in New England. No, my mistake, I don’t have an elephant. I have however, changed the “Question of the Day” on my whiteboard at work into the “Law of the Day”, hence some new random and mildly amusing discoveries. I really cannot work out how some of these came about. Yesterday’s intriguing offering- donated by DC (fame at last, a rare blog mention) was: You cannot walk your pet elephant down the street in Medway MA. (Although I believe there is a city in Florida where you can leave it (yes, I refer to your pet elephant) at a parking meter if as long as you have prepaid.) I was never aware that elephants were such a public menace on the east coast of the USA.

Jobs for the day commenced with apartment hunting, not for me, but I am a little on the curious side, some might say nosy or far too interested in the business of other’s, but I prefer intelligently curious. All the apartments had some great features, but all I really leaned was that I have expensive tastes and REALLY need to win the lottery.

Despite my better judgment I managed to drag myself out for the evening, in a semblance of social nicety not usually evident- I don’t hate everyone all of the time. The event was a comedy show recommended by the apocryphal friend of a friend- if it weren’t such a good friend who told me I would be doubtful as to whether this person actually existed. I should really have started to garner some clues as to how the evening would go right from the start… it was called “Grandma’s Basement” cost $5.00 to get in and was held in the basement bar of the Howard Johnson Motel. $5.00 comedy is probably never going to blow you away, but the Howard Johnson was probably the biggest clue. For those of you who haven’t been there- it started as a soda fountain and ice cream restaurant in 1925, (local celebrity for Wollaston MA) and then expanded over the following few years. In 1932, having been hit by the stock market crash a few years before it Howard Johnson started franchising ownerships. It later went from ice cream and soda (my personal favorite type of eatery) to a restaurant serving low cost dinners and finally became a hotel chain. The fact I know this information off the top of my head probably means I should stop writing now, and accept that I have no opinions worth sharing and I certainly have no right to be criticizing what anyone else in the entire known world might find amusing as I am clearly not normal.

I know comedy is completely subjective, but there really are some things that are just not funny, based entirely on the fact that they have been done to death and have so many other angles that you can view them from. One of my personal bugbears is changing language and the “you’re so gay” routine. 11-year-old children have a version on this that they try and do in the classroom. Yes, children (and adults- but I don’t teach them) use it as an insult; the second you pull them up on it they come straight back with the “but gay means happy” line. It isn’t funny or clever when a child does it; it still isn’t funny when an adult builds a whole sequence around it. Language changes, we all know this, in this case, you might as well build a routine around the phrase “to know you dead” or “to jack off” (actually that could be quite funny, and I might like that one) in this case, and my opinion, “you suck” take it in a modern context please.

That isn’t to say the entire evening was a write off. There were some very funny sketches. The Bar Tender was spot on with his sports commentary- not only have I heard many of these conversations taking place at baseball games, but also I am a little shame faced to admit to having participated in them myself. Of course I know more about these things than people who have lived and breathed the sport for decades.

As far as bridal showers go… never have I seen anyone get so excite about a set of matching his and hers pillow slips, but I have possibly has the misfortune of attending girls nights out where there has been way too much screaming, yelling and general raucousness than was totally necessary. In retrospect there are a lot of things in life that seem remarkably exciting when you are 19 (yes, strippers are included) that maybe you should grow out of….

After all the excitement of Saturday you’d think that Sunday would be a bit calmer and more relaxed, the highlight of it being a trip to Incinerator Road (knew I could do it!), which is rather shoptastic. I think it is home to one of the biggest (and I lived in Texas) branches of DSW I have ever seen. I now have two new pairs of shoes, fairly tame by my shoe shopping standards, neither of which I even knew I needed, discovered a new drive thru Starbucks and got a $10 discount coupon for Dick’s. Sporting Goods. I also discovered I am friends with Louise Sawyer!

I may be partly to blame for the following incident- and I do have previous form for and rather distinct optical difficulties when it comes to spotting well positioned members of the local protection community. Or to put it more plainly- I am crap at spotting traffic cops. Don’t say you weren’t warned. I did honestly think, that when I said the coast was clear and no one was going to see the illegal U-turn I was telling the truth. What I didn’t expect was “Dedham’s Finest” to be sitting the other side of the barrier waiting to pull people over. Even less expected was a certain person’s response! Usually- in my experience, if a law enforcement officer blows a whistle at you, and makes large and repeated gestures for you to stop one obeys. In this case, the only thing to do was to ignore the waving, after all he might just be being friendly, and hit the gas, careen around the corner and hide in a parking lot. I may have been slightly responsible for encouraging this course of action… but I was less keen when heading down a “tucks only” lane took us back around and out onto the main road right next to the ticket writing cop.

Time for Chilli’s and a proper hideout!