I'm not sure exactly when I realized that my father wasn't like everyone else's. After all, when you're 5 years old you hardly realize that it isn't normal for your dad to have a basement computer lab (in the early 1980's when computers cost about $200k apiece) and hand-assemble CPUs with a soldering iron and chunks of lead wire.
My dad is somewhat of an anomaly in that unlike most mad geniuses, he was high school class president, a bit of a "ladies' man" and can generally interact with people as well as anyone. It's just that instead of the normal high school mischief, his idea of fun was to set off a thermite reaction that melted through a concrete sink and several inches into the concrete floor.
Add into that the fact that he managed to accomplish all of this while missing the first and last 6 weeks of school every year and living for 5-6 months per year on Isle Royale on Lake Superior as part of a commercial fishing family, and you can get a pretty good idea of exactly how smart my father is. He went on to finish double-majors in physics and industrial engineering from MIT while continuing his habitual mischief as a frat boy.
Sometime during my parents' temporary separation period, I called him while on vacation in Hilton Head, SC to visit my sister. According to her, my side of the conversation went something like this: "Hi Dad, what are you up to?..... Really. You're building a cold fusion cell..... Huh. Where?....The kitchen counter? Mom's going to love that. Well... Does it work?" to which he replied in a thoughtful tone, "Rather inconsistently, I'm afraid."
He went on to explain in painful detail what he had assembled and how, and what his latest results had been. I didn't listen too closely, as this is par for the course with my dad- he has a different world-altering project every week, most of which (shockingly) actually work but get shelved when he gets bored of fiddling with them.... a reason for a slight amount of bitterness on my part every time I have to make my student loan payment.
I later found out that the reason he shelved the cold fusion cell is that he left it unattended one afternoon and returned to find that it had started reacting in his absence, boiled off most of the water and wouldn't stop reacting. After several water refills he dumped it on the lawn in a fit of desperation and hosed it until it was completely destroyed. He kept that little incident a secret for several years until some time ago my sister asked him, "Say, whatever DID happen with that cold fusion cell?" and he apparently felt enough time had passed that he was no longer embarrassed he almost burned down his house with a glass of water, an easily-obtained innocuous chemical and a few pieces of wire. Speaking of which, I need to throw away that bag of chemicals in the basement.... Note to self.
Skip forward 10 years, and my father has settled down to more tame pursuits. He's been working on-and-off for the last 20 years on a stock-picking program that has made millions of dollars on paper. However, true to his Norwegian commercial fishing roots, he has a strong aversion to making money and avoids it at all costs, while insisting that he "just needs to tweak it a little bit more." He's also designed computer models to predict fish populations on the Great Lakes (which he presented last year in Boston at the International Systems' Dynamics Conference), models to predict the profitability of storage units in a large residential market, and has recently started teaching grad-level seminar courses on systems' dynamics at UMD (after which he goes to Sir Ben's with the students and drinks with them).
Oddly, however, he is completely unable to hook up anything related to a tv set that isn't actually part of the tv. He can disassemble a television and fix it, but he can't hook up a DVD player to save his life. Nor can he switch the tv source from "cable" to "av1." Additionally, he can text message but is completely unable to access or navigate his own voice mail. These are just some of life's little mysteries that shall forever go unanswered.
My dad's other favorite past-time has now become getting his youngest daughter re-hitched in time to produce some diabolically intelligent grandkids. It becomes frightening when your dad starts telling you "tongue in cheek" that he wouldn't entirely protest if you weren't even married yet when the grandkids started appearing. Needless to say, I no longer bring my dates home to meet mom and dad for fear of what he might blurt out in a fit of fatherly enthusiasm. When I was engaged the first time around my then-fiance finally had to shut my father up by saying, "Stuart, are you aware of exactly what we'd need to be doing in order to produce grandchildren?" Even in his scotch-induced state my father was horrified enough to drop the subject, but not so horrified that he didn't bring it up about 5 minutes after my divorce was final and he had a friend's son he wanted me to meet.
Of course, there is one other reason I usually don't bring my dates home to meet mom and dad. Believe it or not, the mad scientist seems to heartily intimidate most men. I have to admit from my end that after growing up with my dad it seems hard to find "just the right guy." After all, there aren't too many guys floating around who have qualities on par with "class president/mad scientist." There also seems to be some kind of information gap on the guy side of things- apparently they haven't gotten my father's memo- he thinks every guy should want to date me.
All in all, I have to love my dad. It kind of rocks having someone in your family who is constantly surprising you with his weird ideas and simultaneously putting your dates to sleep with in-depth explanations of the predator-prey relationships of fish in Lake Superior. And you just never know what you're going to get when he says, "Hey, I just did the NEATEST thing down in the basement. Come take a look!"
Erica.
Monday, December 22, 2008
Friday, November 14, 2008
Not Just Another Bad Sitcom!
A note to new readers: Now that I've written this gargantuan blog posting, I'm a bit hesitant to post it. I guess I'll just leave judgement for the readers. Please recognize that I've taken considerable liberties with the content for the sake of sensationalism. If you find yourself mentioned (no names were used) and are uncomfortable with the content, please let me know and I'll be sure to delete any mention of you from the blog.
Warning: This is a long one!
******************************************************************************
My good friend Dan said to me some time ago that if my life was a reality tv show, millions of people would tune in to watch it. He said this in the context of one of his weekly Sunday night dinner parties, and the usual crowd of wine-drinking, appetizer-munching young adults huddled around his granite countertops unanimously nodded in enthusiastic agreement. A few people since have made similar comments about how completely random my life events tend to be, and when I pass on Dan's comment to them they inevitably get wide-eyed and say, "YES!!!!" while pointing at me as if they've just come up with a major idea breakthrough.
I've since amended Dan's comment to include the fact that not only would they tune in to watch, but they'd laugh uproarously at my expense. Fortunately I'm a very good sport, so I'm happy to provide the entertainment. If I'm going to be miserable, at least I can brighten someone else's day in the process. And even I have to admit that I would tune in to watch if someone else was going through even half of the ridiculous situations I have found myself in over the past 5 years.
The primary focus (and admitted source of most of my humorous moments) would be my dating life. I guess my open-minded attitude about dating gets me into more trouble than most people. This would be closely followed up by strange experiences involving horses, burglars, my job and the random crap I manage to come up with between my friends and my sisters, who are more than happy to add their own dry commentaries to the mix.
As I sit here on a Friday afternoon reviewing my first-season episode guide, I'm pondering the reactions of various people I know who would be included in these episodes, perhaps at their expense as much as mine. And I'm trying to figure out exactly how much it would detract from last week's episode if I changed the occupation of the guy who blew me off in the martini bar, or the quality of language spoken by the much-younger man who completely made a fool out of me last month. Decidedly these were key elements in the story, but for the sake of the innocent these details shall be spared.
Somehow it seems safer to stick with the older episodes that have distanced themselves enough to be funny even to me by this point (although let's face it, even though I was sometimes crying at the time, I was usually laughing even when these things originally happened- that's just the kind of person I am).
As I go down this creative road, forgive me if I take a few liberties and pull different periods of my life into a single episode. It just feels like you have to have multiple sub-plots or people might get bored. Permit me some creative license.
The main premise of the tv show is that Erica, an enterprising 25-year-old accountant, has recently discovered that her husband is having a long-term affair and her life is in complete turmoil.
Episode 1 (and this has to be a good one, since it's the 2-hour pilot episode and introduces the audience to the main character): Erica discovers that her husband is going on a snowmobiling trip with his girlfriend, and decides it's time to take action. The morning of his trip she kisses him goodbye, goes to her lawyer's office and gets the paperwork going. Tuesday she loads up exactly 50% of the stuff from their house (including all of the guns in the house, the financial records, the German Shepherd and all the small valuable items her husband won't realize are missing) and locks them up at her parents' home. Wednesday morning she calls at 7am to wake up the bastard on his "vacation" to inform him he's busted and he has 4 hours to get to her lawyer's office and pick up his paperwork or he'll be served by the Cook County Sheriff. Having made this extreme life decision, she decides to follow up by quitting her job and either A) moving to the Virgin Islands to become a waitress or, B) taking a position as an equestrian working student with an Olympic-level trainer. Meanwhile, the divorce papers are signed by the judge on her exact 4th anniversary. The episode concludes when (to the extreme relief of Erica's parents that she is not moving to the Caribbean) she packs her Cadillac to the hilt with her belongings, ships her horse to the Twin Cities to get bred, and packs up Dante (riding shotgun) for her 1500-mile trek to Vermont, where she has signed on for a year-long working student position.
Now, at this point I could write a small novella describing seasons one and two (in which Erica lives for 8 months in Vermont, then moves to Houston for another 8 months) but instead I'll just give you the season highlights:
1) Under orders from her riding instructor, "M," Erica confronts a burglar who has hidden in the spooky farmhouse basement. Police are called, and after standing around for a half hour in near-freezing weather, said burglar is hauled off to jail wearing a pair of M's husband's socks, Erica's windbreaker, and not a whole lot else.
2) After moving to Houston, Erica almost immediately realizes things are on the rocks with her boyfriend, and suddenly finds herself facing a life on her own in the big city. Life adjustments include discovering that she's known in her apartment complex as, "That cute white chick down on the end with the Cadillac and the big f*cking dog." Her drug-dealing neighbors are friendly enough, and her German Shepherd keeps the hop-heads at bay. Meanwhile Erica is forced to turn to waitressing as a means of making the rent, even as Hurricane Rita descends and she's forced to evacuate her dog and her two horses to safer ground. Dating highlights are limited, but one fun off-topic episode includes a date at "The Improv" comedy club to see D.L. Hughley up close and personal!
Season 3 is where the real dating action kicks in, and according to some, most of the real humor as well. A few random dating highlights:
1. Erica goes on a date with an older man, only to discover that she's not his only date for the evening, which is a group dinner party at "his" house. Laughter ensues as the two women quickly discover the situation and make the two-timer the butt of a few jokes. All is well that ends well, however, as the man becomes a good friend.
2. Erica goes on a few dates with a guy she meets online. On the third date, the guy decides to over-share and inform her that he is also seeing someone else he met at the same time. Spin forward 6 months: Erica gets a laugh at Match Guy's expense as she and a friend realize they were the respective, "Other women."
3. Flashback to Season 1 prequel: Erica goes on a date with a former semi-pro baseball player with a knee injury, only to discover he works as a night stock-boy at a local grocery store. She is confronted with an utterly disgusting house he lives in with his mom and sister, complete with furniture placed in front of furniture, a dirty fish tank, and no single horizontal surface that isn't covered in dirty dishes. When she is told that the closest thing in the house to a napkin is toilet paper, Erica sucks it up and uses the pickle-juice-soaked napkins that came with their greasy Anchor Burgers and elects to get the heck out of dodge.
4. Drama ensues as Erica and her recent semi-serious boyfriend part ways. Suddenly Erica notices that life isn't always easy as the only single woman in a neighborhood- being watched suspiciously by neighborhood wives is no joke, and Erica makes her best effort to be a friendly and utterly well-behaved neighbor. As if life isn't difficult enough, her ex's best female friend from high school moves into the house two doors down. Life gets tricky as they attempt to keep their post-breakup reunions a secret from her nosy neighbors.
5. Erica's care-free childhood friend moves back to Duluth for one exciting winter, which reminds her what life as a single person is all about. Season highlights include a Valentine's Day dinner to which her date shows up with only $14, and a reckless work-night evening spent partying and sitting in the sauna, culminating in Erica and her friend running around the block in -20 degree weather wearing nothing but bras and towels around their waists... along one of the busiest thoroughfares in eastern Duluth. Additional highlights include pleasant scenery provided by a bunch of mid-20's male athletes who spend most of the scenes running around in their boxer briefs.
Now, come on... are you going to tell me that a comedy writer wouldn't have a field day with this kind of material?
Erica.
Warning: This is a long one!
******************************************************************************
My good friend Dan said to me some time ago that if my life was a reality tv show, millions of people would tune in to watch it. He said this in the context of one of his weekly Sunday night dinner parties, and the usual crowd of wine-drinking, appetizer-munching young adults huddled around his granite countertops unanimously nodded in enthusiastic agreement. A few people since have made similar comments about how completely random my life events tend to be, and when I pass on Dan's comment to them they inevitably get wide-eyed and say, "YES!!!!" while pointing at me as if they've just come up with a major idea breakthrough.
I've since amended Dan's comment to include the fact that not only would they tune in to watch, but they'd laugh uproarously at my expense. Fortunately I'm a very good sport, so I'm happy to provide the entertainment. If I'm going to be miserable, at least I can brighten someone else's day in the process. And even I have to admit that I would tune in to watch if someone else was going through even half of the ridiculous situations I have found myself in over the past 5 years.
The primary focus (and admitted source of most of my humorous moments) would be my dating life. I guess my open-minded attitude about dating gets me into more trouble than most people. This would be closely followed up by strange experiences involving horses, burglars, my job and the random crap I manage to come up with between my friends and my sisters, who are more than happy to add their own dry commentaries to the mix.
As I sit here on a Friday afternoon reviewing my first-season episode guide, I'm pondering the reactions of various people I know who would be included in these episodes, perhaps at their expense as much as mine. And I'm trying to figure out exactly how much it would detract from last week's episode if I changed the occupation of the guy who blew me off in the martini bar, or the quality of language spoken by the much-younger man who completely made a fool out of me last month. Decidedly these were key elements in the story, but for the sake of the innocent these details shall be spared.
Somehow it seems safer to stick with the older episodes that have distanced themselves enough to be funny even to me by this point (although let's face it, even though I was sometimes crying at the time, I was usually laughing even when these things originally happened- that's just the kind of person I am).
As I go down this creative road, forgive me if I take a few liberties and pull different periods of my life into a single episode. It just feels like you have to have multiple sub-plots or people might get bored. Permit me some creative license.
The main premise of the tv show is that Erica, an enterprising 25-year-old accountant, has recently discovered that her husband is having a long-term affair and her life is in complete turmoil.
Episode 1 (and this has to be a good one, since it's the 2-hour pilot episode and introduces the audience to the main character): Erica discovers that her husband is going on a snowmobiling trip with his girlfriend, and decides it's time to take action. The morning of his trip she kisses him goodbye, goes to her lawyer's office and gets the paperwork going. Tuesday she loads up exactly 50% of the stuff from their house (including all of the guns in the house, the financial records, the German Shepherd and all the small valuable items her husband won't realize are missing) and locks them up at her parents' home. Wednesday morning she calls at 7am to wake up the bastard on his "vacation" to inform him he's busted and he has 4 hours to get to her lawyer's office and pick up his paperwork or he'll be served by the Cook County Sheriff. Having made this extreme life decision, she decides to follow up by quitting her job and either A) moving to the Virgin Islands to become a waitress or, B) taking a position as an equestrian working student with an Olympic-level trainer. Meanwhile, the divorce papers are signed by the judge on her exact 4th anniversary. The episode concludes when (to the extreme relief of Erica's parents that she is not moving to the Caribbean) she packs her Cadillac to the hilt with her belongings, ships her horse to the Twin Cities to get bred, and packs up Dante (riding shotgun) for her 1500-mile trek to Vermont, where she has signed on for a year-long working student position.
Now, at this point I could write a small novella describing seasons one and two (in which Erica lives for 8 months in Vermont, then moves to Houston for another 8 months) but instead I'll just give you the season highlights:
1) Under orders from her riding instructor, "M," Erica confronts a burglar who has hidden in the spooky farmhouse basement. Police are called, and after standing around for a half hour in near-freezing weather, said burglar is hauled off to jail wearing a pair of M's husband's socks, Erica's windbreaker, and not a whole lot else.
2) After moving to Houston, Erica almost immediately realizes things are on the rocks with her boyfriend, and suddenly finds herself facing a life on her own in the big city. Life adjustments include discovering that she's known in her apartment complex as, "That cute white chick down on the end with the Cadillac and the big f*cking dog." Her drug-dealing neighbors are friendly enough, and her German Shepherd keeps the hop-heads at bay. Meanwhile Erica is forced to turn to waitressing as a means of making the rent, even as Hurricane Rita descends and she's forced to evacuate her dog and her two horses to safer ground. Dating highlights are limited, but one fun off-topic episode includes a date at "The Improv" comedy club to see D.L. Hughley up close and personal!
Season 3 is where the real dating action kicks in, and according to some, most of the real humor as well. A few random dating highlights:
1. Erica goes on a date with an older man, only to discover that she's not his only date for the evening, which is a group dinner party at "his" house. Laughter ensues as the two women quickly discover the situation and make the two-timer the butt of a few jokes. All is well that ends well, however, as the man becomes a good friend.
2. Erica goes on a few dates with a guy she meets online. On the third date, the guy decides to over-share and inform her that he is also seeing someone else he met at the same time. Spin forward 6 months: Erica gets a laugh at Match Guy's expense as she and a friend realize they were the respective, "Other women."
3. Flashback to Season 1 prequel: Erica goes on a date with a former semi-pro baseball player with a knee injury, only to discover he works as a night stock-boy at a local grocery store. She is confronted with an utterly disgusting house he lives in with his mom and sister, complete with furniture placed in front of furniture, a dirty fish tank, and no single horizontal surface that isn't covered in dirty dishes. When she is told that the closest thing in the house to a napkin is toilet paper, Erica sucks it up and uses the pickle-juice-soaked napkins that came with their greasy Anchor Burgers and elects to get the heck out of dodge.
4. Drama ensues as Erica and her recent semi-serious boyfriend part ways. Suddenly Erica notices that life isn't always easy as the only single woman in a neighborhood- being watched suspiciously by neighborhood wives is no joke, and Erica makes her best effort to be a friendly and utterly well-behaved neighbor. As if life isn't difficult enough, her ex's best female friend from high school moves into the house two doors down. Life gets tricky as they attempt to keep their post-breakup reunions a secret from her nosy neighbors.
5. Erica's care-free childhood friend moves back to Duluth for one exciting winter, which reminds her what life as a single person is all about. Season highlights include a Valentine's Day dinner to which her date shows up with only $14, and a reckless work-night evening spent partying and sitting in the sauna, culminating in Erica and her friend running around the block in -20 degree weather wearing nothing but bras and towels around their waists... along one of the busiest thoroughfares in eastern Duluth. Additional highlights include pleasant scenery provided by a bunch of mid-20's male athletes who spend most of the scenes running around in their boxer briefs.
Now, come on... are you going to tell me that a comedy writer wouldn't have a field day with this kind of material?
Erica.
Welcome, and thanks for following me to my new blog location!
I hope I'm not flattering myself too much by saying that my previous MySpace blog attracted a certain following when I was keeping it up regularly. People I knew very little about would sometimes appear and comment on it, which I found a great source of amusement.
Past blogs ranged in content from comedy to music lyrics to heartbreak, but usually generated some form of entertainment for somebody (or so I'm told). For those of you who are curious, my old blog was under my MySpace username of SpectrumDiva.
Lots of my posts are just boring "catching-up"-type posts, but if you care to look them up, a few of my favorites (which I am debating copying to this page) are (in order of most recent to least recent):
"Amish Friendship Bread and Other Miscellaneous Crap"
"The Weekend Update"
"Channeling Araminty Brown" (after which I decided to name this blog page)
"Random Thoughts..."
"Life's Little Messages"
"True Quotes from Dinner at Dan's"
and, "Naughty Dog!"
Keep an eye out for my first original post that will be coming up this afternoon, entitled, "Not Just Another Bad Sitcom."
-Erica.
Past blogs ranged in content from comedy to music lyrics to heartbreak, but usually generated some form of entertainment for somebody (or so I'm told). For those of you who are curious, my old blog was under my MySpace username of SpectrumDiva.
Lots of my posts are just boring "catching-up"-type posts, but if you care to look them up, a few of my favorites (which I am debating copying to this page) are (in order of most recent to least recent):
"Amish Friendship Bread and Other Miscellaneous Crap"
"The Weekend Update"
"Channeling Araminty Brown" (after which I decided to name this blog page)
"Random Thoughts..."
"Life's Little Messages"
"True Quotes from Dinner at Dan's"
and, "Naughty Dog!"
Keep an eye out for my first original post that will be coming up this afternoon, entitled, "Not Just Another Bad Sitcom."
-Erica.
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