10) Movie Quote Game

The station held a sales retreat Friday lasting all day. On Thursday at 4:45 my boss asked that I come up with a game using movie quotes (I have a dry erase board in my office where I post movie quotes for people to guess. As a result I have developed the reputation for being a movie quote guy... aka loser).

The format of the game is easy. I have three quotes per film ranging from obscure to obvious. I reveal the quotes one at a time. I got the GM of the station (the big dog) to do his best impressions of each quote as I revealed them and people could guess the movie at any time. Here are some funny tidbits.

* The GM of the station/Quote Reader had not seen Dumb and Dumber. The quote was, "Big Gulps, huh? All right. Well, see you later." Jim Carrey says this outside a quicky mart in a dorky sounding voice. Our GM read the thing in a brooklyn tough guy accent, thinking it was a gangster movie. No one could guess the movie.

* The sweetest woman working for the station remarked after the third movie, "I don't understand this game." I explained it to her again. She said, "well, I don't watch any movies, so I guess I can't win, can I?" I shrugged and said I included a movie she would definitely get (The movie was the Wizard of Oz). She smiled and said, "Okay." The next movie quote to be revealed was, "Well, actually a pretty nice little Saturday. We're gonna go to Home Depot. Buy some wallpaper, maybe get some flooring stuff..." The sweetest woman jumped from her chair and screamed, "Old School!" She was very excited.

* Another woman announced that she did not like this game. She said, "Who remembers the crappy lines from crappy movies, anyway?" Everyone looked at me and I raised my hand. She said, "I'm not trying to be rude, but this game is dumb." Three quotes later she got Wizard of Oz and announced that she liked the game, she just needed to understand the point better.

9) A Nice Hug From A Stranger

Our station partnered with The Boys and Girls Club of Tyler to host an event this past weekend called A Day For Kids. I worked our Kid's Cast booth where we allowed kids to act out 30 seconds of a news cast and we recorded it onto a DVD for them to take home. Craig called during the day to ask me which good books I'd recently read because he was at a bookstore and wanted something good to read. I suggested Chuck Palahniuk's Haunted and Anthony Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential, both of which are interesting and different, and worth reading. He settled on a book called Apathy and Other Small Victories because it was shorter than the others and he wanted to increase his chances of finishing the thing. That is what I call realistic expectations.

While on the phone with Craig a familiar looking woman passed within my view with a young child. She seemed to recognize me and I could not place how I knew her. She approached the booth and began talking to Cory, a young man and a friend of mine, working the booth with the rest of us. As Cory took the child into his arms I realized the woman was his new fiancee, who I know fairly well, and that I had not congratulated her on her recent engagement.

I hung up with Craig and put my arm around Cory's Fiancee and said, "Meredith, I haven't seen you in awhile. Congratulations."
The young girl turned around and said, "I'm not Meredith." When she turned I could see that she was not Meredith, but she looked a lot like Meredith and she had with her Meredith's child, who she brought for Cory. I was confused. I froze.

Before I could think of anything to say or do Adam approached the group with a big smile on his face. Adam is our Operations Manager and close friend to Cory. He pulled the girl into a hug and said, "Man, it's great to see you. How have things been?"

The girl let herself be hugged. She said, "Things have been good. But I'm not Meredith." Adam stepped away and laughed, thinking this was some kind of joke. He took a good look at her and realized it was not Meredith, that it was in fact someone different. However, the girl looked so much like Meredith he did not know what to say. He froze.

The young girl understood the problem and said, "My name is Allison. I am Meredith's twin sister." Adam and I nodded our heads calmly as if that were the obvious answer. Adam said, "I'm sorry I hugged you." She said it was okay, that it was a nice hug from a stranger.

8) Little Boy and Fat Man

I watched a documentary on the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The film focused on the testimony of survivors, all of which were children at the time of the blast. The film depressed me in many ways, but two things remained with me almost a week later. The bombs deformed the children so badly that they were discriminated by the rest of the country. Not only did they lose their families, were permanently deformed and stricken with medical problems the rest of their lives, but they were labeled freaks by their own countrymen.

The second thing that stayed with me is how the survivors blamed themselves for what happened. They did not feel vengeful. They felt shame and regret. Breaks my heart to think about it.

7) Girl On The Corner

I pulled up to an obscure 4-way stop intersection behind my office building this morning. A young girl stood on the corner talking on her cell phone. When I came to a complete stop and looked to the right I noticed she was about 10 feet away from my car and she was visibly upset. I needed to turn left so I was watching as a line of cars came from that direction, waiting for my chance to pull into traffic. The girl thought I was staring at her, which I was not. She took the phone from her ear and started yelling at me. I could not exactly hear her, but she said something like, "What the hell are you looking at! Get out of here!"

At first I was not certain she was talking to me. I kept my attention focused past her at the traffic so I could make my turn. Then it became obvious she was talking to me. She approached my window crying and cussing.

I was not sure what to do. I could not pull out into traffic and I was not going to back up. I did not want her to start hitting my car, but I was also not going to get out and explain to her that I was monitoring traffic for a safe entrance into the street, not staring at her emotionally distressed phone conversation.

I pointed to the traffic and yelled, "I'm just trying to drive here! Chill the f--- out!" She did not hear me. She yelled at me for a few moments until I had an opening and I drove off. I looked into my rearview mirror and she had the phone back up to her ear, no doubt explaining to the person on the other end what a piece of sh-t I was.

6) Basketball Memory

In junior high Craig, Chris and I tried out for the basketball team. I cannot remember if Dugat did or not. Anyway, during one of the drill's Craig shot the ball and it went clean over the backboard. Everyone laughed. Later we shot free throws and Craig shot an airball. Everyone laughed. After the first day of tryouts Craig decided not to come back, even though we told him he should. He recognized his lack of basketball talent and cut his losses early. Chris and I stayed through the rest of tryouts and had to learn the hard way that we were not going to make the team.

After the teams were posted on the coaches door Chris and I discovered that Bill Going made the team. This is ridiculous because Bill Going was not a good basketball player and only made the team because of his twin brother. The unfairness was difficult to endure.

Speaking of Bill, he contacted Chris through facebook. He requested to be his friend. I think this is funny. It is our junior high dances all over again. He always seems to find us. So, fair warning for all who read this. Be careful of Facebook. You may reveal yourself to the likes of Bill Going.

5) Bathroom Trouble

At a work party a couple of weeks ago an employee joked about how she shares a wall with the men's bathroom, and how much of a problem that is. She basically determined that men are gross and she hates that throughout her day she is forced to hear the worst possible noises. We laughed at her and I said something gross about how I was going to yeehaw next time I went to the bathroom so that she would know it was me.

I was in the bathroom today (#1, not #2) and I sneezed. I heard her say through the wall, "Bless you."

Here is the dilemma: There is a phenomenon that occurs for men in public bathrooms. When someone else is within earshot of a man's exrecmentation, that man's ass makes a lot of noise. If a man is alone at home, there is silence. I am not sure why this is the case, but it is truth. I was fine using the bathroom before because my ass did not know there was someone within earshot. Now I know and I worry that I will be forced to yeehaw next time I go to the bathroom.