Things that bug me...
(Editor's Note: This will probably be a continuing series; things that bug me just keep popping up like zits on my college roommate's back)
1. People who still write personal checks at checkouts. This practice seems to be limited to the elderly and Mormons. No joke, when I lived in Utah (blog about that experience to follow), I can't count how many times I would get stuck in line behind someone writing a check. Multiple wives are a central and accepted covenant of their religion, but the convenience of the debit card is looked upon with disdainful scorn. At IKEA a few month's ago in Woodbridge I actually guessed the young lady checking out in front of us was a Mormon. Not only was this obvious by the check she was writing for the Norden dining room table (color: Birch), but also the bank name on the check, Wells Fargo. Banking at Wells Fargo is a Mormonry rule the same way abstinence before marriage is.
The elderly's penchant for check writing is almost (almost) acceptable if only b/c of the amusement it brings to others stuck behind them in line. Not only does it take them 10 hours to endorse the check, but then you have to wait for them to defy arthritis and rip the check from the bonds of the checkbook. It's as challenging for them as coming up with enough saliva to seal an envelope, which takes the entire hour of "The Price is Right." It only get's better when they balance their checkbook after cutting the check, sometimes having to rifle through their massive elderly purse to find a calculator which is hopelessly impossible to use because of the small buttons.

2. Vigilant Enforcers of Authority with no Authority to enforce Authority, case in point: Following the Redskin's playoff victory, I walked up to 7-11 to procure more beer. After three attempts at swiping my debit card, which had a defective magnetic strip (I guess in this case a check would've worked better-maybe the Mormons have a good point), the clerk behind the counter took the beer off the counter and said "No more for you. You've had too much." Since when did 7-11 clerks earn the right to make judgements on one's cut off point?

3. Bono. Don't get me wrong, U2 has passed the deserted island test, (if trapped on a deserted island with my choice of only 5 CD's to bring with me, "The Joshua Tree" would be one of them) I just don't need Bono making me feel like an asshole at a concert because of the state of the world. I don't pay $100 for crappy seats to a U2 show so Bono can tell me to text my name to some petition about Third World debt relief. If Bono is so concerned about third world debt, don't charge me $100 for a ticket; charge me $50, and I'll give the other $50 to the Red Cross. U2 grossed $160 million touring in 2005, second only to the Rolling Stones. If Bono is so concerned, why not donate his stake of that ($40 million) to debt relief. I'm just a squirrel trying to get a nut. $100 is a lot of money to spend on a concert ticket; don't make me feel like pond scum when all I'm trying to do is hear a good live version of "Where the Streets Have No Name." Sir Mick Jagger doesn't make me feel like an asshole about the world; he just rocks while looking like a 65 year-old head on a 10 year old girl's body.

4. Peter Angelos. He's the elderly owner of the Baltimore Orioles. All I've ever known about baseball is the Baltimore Orioles. This asshole has run my team into the ground. His solution to everything is to bring in a big bat with degenerative knees 5 years past his prime and sign him to a crippling 9 year contract. Just die, asshole.

5. Jamie Foxx. Ok, we get it. You are multi-talented. You can act. You can sing. You can be a single parent. You owe it all to your grandmother. Guess what? We all have multiple talents. I can write with my right hand and throw with my left. My older brother can shift a manual transmission car, turn right, ash a cigarette out the window, and lecture me about the ten best Southern rock songs ever...all at once.

6. Rice rockets. You've seen them. These are 15 year old Honda Civic CRXs that someone purchases for $300 and then proceeds to drop $5500 on. The only problem is, all that money goes into hideous cosmetic work, like massive Jetson's spoilers and five star rims, and not the operating machinery of the car. You always see them pull slowly away from a stoplight in a plume of smoke because the clutch is fried and both axle's are bent. It's not Fast or Furious to drive a car that won't pass emissions.

7. Dry Cleaners-1st and foremost, why don't they take credit cards? But more importantly, why don't they admit when they've ripped your shirt or lost your pants? I've had two of my favorite shirts handed backed to me while being told "the elbows were ripped. It was like that when you brought it in." Seriously, it wasn't. When they lose something, they just say "okay, 7 shirts and 4 pants, now we did lose your slate gray trousers," and then they start to ring you up like they didn't just tell you they lost your pants. Standing there, you feel like the guy from the Monster.com commerical who works with a bunch of monkeys and just can't believe that this is really happening, that this is his life.

8. Stuart Scott-those of you who have even a passing interest in sports knows this is one of ESPN's anchors, the one inflicted with the lazy eye and the woeful catch phrase "Booyeah!" First, how the hell did a guy with a lazy eye get on TV? It's not one of those on again/off again afflictions (much like Randy Moss' motivation) that comes and goes or is only evident when he looks left; his left eye is always sagging like Aretha Franklin's hammock. Second, his euphamisms are always so out of date and looooooooooooooong. I swear I heard him describe a hockey save during a highlight the other night with "Homey don't play that." His descriptions of homeruns take longer than someone trying to pass a kidney stone; by the time he's finished, we're already into the next hour of Sportscenter. And did I mention the lazy eye? God, I hate him.

...I think that is it for now. Goodbye.

I’m trying to wean myself off of AIM at work. It’s proving to be as hard to kick as nicotine. AIM gets me through a workday in the same way a bump of coke gets a stripper through a bachelor party. However, I think this is a necessary measure, given that most companies have found correlations between employees with access to AIM and a general lack of productivity and blocked AIM from their computers (I’ve also heard AIM makes you impotent, but I try to take every warning like this with a grain of salt). Why should this make any difference to me? Well, in the near future I think I may be working for one of these companies; actually, I know I will considering I started looking for jobs with these companies recently. Unfortunately, I made the mistake of conducting my search at home on the couch while watching the Rose Bowl with the roommates. I quickly realized that this would be about as productive an exercise as a guy with no arms trying to win a sword fight. Not that I didn’t appreciate their suggestions though, a smattering of which I’ve included below.

Matt: You like shirts, don’t you? You could go work at the GAP. Employee discount. I call Fives on all the flannels.
Terry: What about Starbucks? They’re hiring, aren’t they? You could be a barista… (He pronounced it like baahreestah. He just wanted to say barista is all)
Matt: Is this what you and your girlfriend were arguing about this morning? (Matt overheard a spat between Mizz Chaatch and I this morning, which actually was because of Matt’s rather loud morning rituals, the most annoying of which is his tendency to tap the side of his cereal bowl with his spoon before each spoonful of Rice Krispies.) She thinks you should work at Baskin Robbins, doesn’t she? She probably said “Lord knows you’ve had plenty of practice with your right hand in your life. You could scoop your way through the management training program in no time.”

This of course leaves Terry and Matt in stitches, as any reference to jerking off, veiled or overt, does. It’s like an unspoken rule in our house that, even at age 26, masturbation jokes are not only expected, but still as funny as the first time you heard your Family Life teacher utter the word vagina when you were in the 4th grade.

Matt: You like cars, don’t you? You could go work at Sunoco. I think they are hiring. Employee discount. I call Fives on the regular unleaded. I bet Georgia Ben would hire you. (Georgia Ben, for those who don’t know, is an Alexandria institution. A purveyor of petroleum and all things car maintenance). Georgia Ben is great. He plugged my tire for free the other day. Of course, he did charge me to plug my ass. (At this point, Matt begins talking in his “Will and Grace” voice whilel mockingly describing Ben reading off the bill, with no charge for the tire patch but a rather substantial charge for the other “plugging.”)

Terry: Is your resume in a Word or PDF format? (Me staring at him blankly as if he’s just asked me if I wanted to go see “The Vagina Monologues” with him and his mom.) ‘Cause if it’s a Word document, people can fuck with it. (I hadn’t realized that resume sabotage had become so rampant; has Bush assigned anyone from FEMA to look into this?) Like, someone can get your resume over email, and change it to say that your career objective is to be a Chief Poop Grabber.

Matt: Aw, that would be great. You could go work at the zoo. Since you were the new guy, you would have to do all the shitty jobs at the zoo, like scrub the giraffe’s penis (At this point, Matt and Terry begin talking in “Mork and Mindy,” nasally voices as though they were my superiors at the zoo, barking out orders: “Clean up the elephant’s poop!” “Watch out for the giraffe’s big tongue!)

Terry: (Still in Zoo Supervisor/Mork nasal voice) Now scratch the monkeys’ asses and look out for their syphilis…

Abrupt end to our laughter. Silence in the room. Terry, whose ability to take a joke one punch line too far and thereby kill it, who is rivaled only by me in this capacity, had struck again. The zoo jokes, which seconds ago were so funny, are now not. Taking a joke about zoo animals’ genitalia to the venereal disease level will do that, I guess. Luckily (not just for Terry but for all of us, I think), Reggie Bush, after ripping off a beautiful 35 yard catch and run, tried to lateral the ball to one of his unsuspecting blockers, which turned all eyes back to the game.

So, the job search went nowhere, but I’m not even sure it can, for the simple reason that I have no idea what I want to do. I envy people I know who can get out of bed everyday and at least be okay about going to work. Yet, when people ask me what it is that I could be okay getting out bed to do, I have some sarcastic answer like Will Hunting’s “shepard, herd sheep” answer. I really don’t think that a person’s career trajectory should be a series of trial and errors, though. But if we extrapolate my first years out of college until retirement age, I will have had 70 jobs at the rate I’m going. At that rate, one of my jobs really could wind up being “Chief Giraffe Penis Cleaner.” Oh God, help me! Therefore, this blog entry has become a cry for help. Someone, anyone, help me find a job. Decent pay, good benefits, no giraffe cock. I don’t think that’s asking for too much out of a career.
Send suggestions to stevenpglass@hotmail.com.

I shouldn’t have been surprised when my Dad called three days after Christmas to ask me how the Stairclimber at their gym works. My parents’ mastery of electronic gadgetry peaked, with some intense practice, with the keyless entry system of their previous car.
The phone call, the first of three that day, came as we were still surfing the breakdown of the buffer zone that parents far removed from their children experience in the immediate days after a Christmas visit. You know how it is; they grow so used to having you around for a few days that anytime after your visit, thanks to the advent of the cell phone, they call with any question or general comment they may have about the world. On this occasion, my dad couldn’t figure out how to increase the resistance on the steps of the Stairclimber.
Fairly involved with work catch-up (read: Solitaire), I scanned my mental parental trouble shooting list and started from step one:
“Have you pressed the On button?”
Pause…huff…pause…
“Yes, and I’ve started climbing the steps, and the lights are on. I hate this machine, but every other one was already tak…”
“Have you tried to adjust the level? Dad, the arrows on the panel. Push the Up arrow button.”
“Aha. Thatta time! Thank you!”
“Have a good day, Dad.”

By way of explaining, the seeds of the buffer zone were planted in February 2005, when my parents drove to Florida under the guise of a respite from another Washington DC winter. It was only on the drive back from Florida, when my parents faxed a contract on a house in Sarasota from a bank in Alabama, that it became evident that their little sojourn was actually a house hunting expedition. My immediate reaction, and those of my brothers I suspect, was to remind Mom and Dad that Florida, in particular Sarasota and neighboring Bradenton, was where old people go to die in relative comfort. The crushing blow, however, was the realization, some moments later, that the leverage for this new retirement retreat would be their beach house in Bethany Beach, a mere two hours from my front door in Alexandria. My parents’ consolation for the injustice of stripping us of future summers at the beach? “Come on down to Florida for Christmas. We’ll fly you and your brother down!”

And so it was on Thursday, December 22, that my younger brother Bob and I arrived some 3 hours early to Reagan National Airport for our flight to Sarasota. It should be noted that Bob and I had both drank considerably the night before. It should also be noted that Bob, who wears contacts that he often doesn’t take out after a night of drinking, looks like a heroin addict in search of his next fix the following morning, i.e. poofy, blood shot eyes, shakes, etc. Our next fix this morning happened to be at the Sam Adams Brewhouse located exactly 30 paces from our gate in the old terminal of the airport. I have a B.A. Baracus-like aversion to flying the same way Michael Jackson has an aversion to sexual contact with adults, so any day of flying always starts with several or 12 beers to take the edge off.
At 25, Bob is still straddling the line between adult and adolescent, so conversations about work and finances are often interrupted by Bob barking “Come eer!” at a girl just loud enough not to be heard, or in one case after seeing a girl drop a quarter at the terminal Starbucks, picking it up, handing it to her and saying “Here’s your quarter, now you can call me.”

A layover in Atlanta took us to the Sam Adams Brewhouse in Terminal C to refuel, followed by a brief pit stop at the Rusty Wallace Bar. As we waited at our gate to board our plane, passengers started grumbling about problems with the aircraft. Drunk on Winter Lagers and diplomacy, I stumbled up to the nice young lady at the gate, who informed me that something was broke in the nose of the plane. This more-than-honest-assessment brought her older supervisor scurrying over, who reminded her less experienced colleague to always tell passengers that they’re “just putting fuel in the plane.” As she said this, the pilot emerged from the jetway, which is always a sure sign that the pilot might still be flying, but it ain’t gonna be that plane. This recent yellow flag (are you enjoying the NASCAR theme to our Atlanta layover?) took us back to Rusty’s joint for one more beer before boarding another plane at the opposite end of the terminal, and on to Florida.

Some Notes About the Visit…

Sarasota is on the Western part of Florida. If you have pulled out a map, this is the side that the Gulf of Mexico is on. I got the feeling when I was down there that people from the East part of Florida came to Sarasota twenty years ago, set up the infrastructure, and now they’re waiting for the settlers to come. Sarasota feels like Jamestown after the first few winters following the Pilgrims’ arrival or a town in Eastern Europe two weeks before the Olympics arrives, with all the townspeople having spent the last 3 years readying the town since being awarded The Games by the IOC. The houses are nestled in various golf communities and all look identical. All of the houses have lanais, which are little patios with small wading pools, shaded by massive bug nets. The effect is that all of these houses look like they are having their backs swallowed by two-story batting cages.
Watching my dad or any man in his mid 60s swing a golf club is a lot like watching young Forrest Gump walk with his leg braces for the first time; jerky and awkward.
Despite their technological deficiencies, we rewarded my mom with one of those Bose Wave music players, and she in turn rewarded my dad with one of those roaming vacuum cleaners that you see at the bottom of swimming pools. This one runs around the house all day, terrorizes the dog, bounces into things, and keeps cleaning-in that order. When we plugged in my mom’s Wave and put on a CD, she got excited like Mrs. Seinfeld when Jerry gave Morty a Pocket Wizard for Christmas. “Yay! Jerry got it open!”
My parents have wireless Internet all over the house for their laptop. This is great, except that they also have an irrational fear that removing the laptop from the study will somehow destroy their computer. Oh, and the Internet wasn’t working by the time we left.

By the time we did leave, I was strangely ready to be back in DC, where the weather matches the holiday season we were celebrating; it’s just hard to get fired up about Christmas and the novelties of the celebration of Christ’s birth when it’s 75 degrees out. It felt decidedly unholy. Bob and I discussed this and other topics as we sat in the Sarasota airport waiting for our flight home. We decided then that given a four hour (!) layover in Atlanta, a Terminal C Bar Crawl was certainly in order. I decided that traveling with Bob was like moving through time and space with a Giant Hormone. In fact, I’m having a matching hat and T-Shirt made for him with a patch embroidered on both that looks like a giant H with sperm tail entrails on the edges.

Back in Atlanta, we went back to Rusty Wallace’s place, visited Sam Adams again, and hit two other spots. Feeling rubbery from all the beer, a visit to the smoker’s lounge seemed only logical. While there, I happened to see a guy with the same book in his lap that I was reading (Doris Goodwin Kearns’ new book about Lincoln, in case you were wondering). I could see he was much further along than me and I pointed at his copy and asked how it was. Yeah, he was deaf but had read my lips. So then we had this disjointed conversation in which I asked if the book gets better b/c I was only on page 78 and he happily affirmed that it did. Seriously, this is the type of shit that happens to me all the time. I was stuck in that awkward situation where I didn’t want to just walk away, but didn’t know what else to talk about with this guy, cause I didn’t know if he was understanding anything I was saying. Bob wasn’t helping, of course, standing there, mouth wide open in amazement, as if I had just knelt down and asked this deaf guy to marry me. So finally I asked him where he is going, and then did the slanted hand moving skyward as if this was sign language for “airline flight,” and saying “have a safe flight” before scurrying away. Why is it people always try to sign with deaf people, even though they don’t have the first clue how to sign? It’s like when you encounter someone who doesn’t speak English, you think they will finally understand if you yell the words at them. Of course, I don’t have to tell you that later in the bar Bob and I debated whether a deaf person should be smoking. I guess I just couldn’t understand how a person could be deaf and a smoker.

You always know you’ve traveled to see your family for the holidays when the only receipts in your wallet for the whole weekend are airport bar receipts…