Over the last few weeks, I've found myself staring at the computer every night, struggling to come up with something funny for this blog. After all, since the very beginning of this site, humor has been my stock-in-trade. But for some reason, this month I just can't bring the funny.
It could be because I've been doing a lot of writing every day -- rewriting our screenplay about the 1926 Rose Bowl. Maybe 6-10 hours of writing and research every day is my limit. However, the script is not really a comedy. It does contain comedic moments, but not enough to sap my funny glands.
It could be all of the time I've been spending in pre-pro on the Body-for-Life documentary. It is essentially a comedic documentary, or com-umentary, if you will. Somehow, brainstorming a few goofy ways to humiliate myself while I try to get in shape doesn't seem like real comedy writing.
So, that leads me to one conclusion: I'm not funny because we're broke. For some reason, whenever we have a child in the Franklin household, we stop working for months. We had plenty of work lined up for this winter and spring, but it was pulled back by a notorious tightwad who works as CFO for one of our clients. We're still waiting to see if that will come back. In the meantime, we're working on some new clients. It looks promising so far, but nothing happens quickly in this business.
So, for a while it seems, I will be struggling far beneath my comedic zenith. A few salient examples of how unfunny I currently am:
Set-up: Dick Cheney accidentally shoots a 78-year-old lawyer while hunting under the influence.
My reaction: Who cares? I can't even afford to get shot!
What my reaction(s) should be: Finally, a politician who's willing to take a stand on the overpopulated elderly lawyer population! OR: If it only took one beer to shoot a man, imagine the kegger the night before they declared an unjust war on Iraq! OR: Today, Veep Cheney declared he'll shoot one old man a day until the media get off his back about this Valerie Plame thing!
Set up: The Americans are in position for their first medal in 30 years in the Olympic sport of ice dancing .
My reaction: Who cares? I can't even afford to buy ice!
What my reaction(s) should have been: Ice dancing a sport? What's next? Ice magic? Ice poker? Or one I'll go to bat for: Ice mime!
Set-up: Bryant Gumbel says he won't watch the Winter Olympics, because of the "paucity of black athletes" and says that they shouldn't even be associated with the Summer Olympic Games.
My reaction: Who cares? I can't even afford to pay attention to the Olympics!
What my reaction(s) should have been: Bryant Gumbel? Wait, is that Greg Gumbel's brother? OR: It's about time a rich white man stood up for the rights of poor, black athletes. OR: Yes, I can see where such so-called sports as ice dancing and curling just don't have the athletic credentials of summer sports like badminton, synchronized swimming or speed walking.
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Posted by Wayne to Stone Bridge: Fustian at 2/20/2006 03:33:00 PM
Monday, February 20, 2006
Friday, February 17, 2006
[Stone Bridge: Spam Title Haiku] All from one little e-mail...
The following haiku was taken from a single subject line:
it captivate be corduroy
it blurb try emblematic
be pushout
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Posted by Wayne to Stone Bridge: Spam Title Haiku at 2/17/2006 03:46:00 PM
it captivate be corduroy
it blurb try emblematic
be pushout
--
Posted by Wayne to Stone Bridge: Spam Title Haiku at 2/17/2006 03:46:00 PM
[Stone Bridge: Spam Title Haiku] Huh?
Forget nonsensical phrases and clauses. Forget misspellings. Full-on nonsense is the Spam Title Haiku trend of the day!
howz going
br0ke 0ut 0f its base
eat be asleep
Re: ve nder news
sfind por gdays
Re: tr apes news
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Posted by Wayne to Stone Bridge: Spam Title Haiku at 2/17/2006 07:48:00 AM
howz going
br0ke 0ut 0f its base
eat be asleep
Re: ve nder news
sfind por gdays
Re: tr apes news
--
Posted by Wayne to Stone Bridge: Spam Title Haiku at 2/17/2006 07:48:00 AM
Saturday, February 11, 2006
[Stone Bridge: Family] Coop Rolls Over -- Film at 11!
Cooper rolled over for the first time yesterday, just one week short of being four months old. I thought he was behind the curve, but Kelli checked Savvi's baby book, and she rolled over only two days earlier. (Not two days earlier this week, but two days earlier in age.) If you go with that whole gestational age equation, then he technically rolled over 17 days sooner. But that's just a pain to calculate. (Besides, if we go with gestational ages, then I'm already 36, and I'm in no hurry to get there.)
I barely got the camcorder rolling in time to capture it. I'll post video of that and of him laughing later this weekend.
Also, I'm trying to catch some video of him doing a few pretty amazing things. Kelli was in his face talking to him and he grabbed her nose. She told him what the nose was a few times. Then she asked him if he could grab her nose. He did, several times in fact. Our child is a genius! Take that, all you parents of average children! Not that I am prone to pride...
But I have a policy of setting the bar low for my children, so I won't be disappointed. In keeping with that policy, I thought that maybe he was grabbing her nose because it's the most prominent facial feature. Then he grabbed her chin one of the times when she said "nose." Ah ha! I was right! It was just a fluke! He's no genius. He's just an average idiot like all of your children. Then, to my amazement, he slowly slid his hand up to get to her nose. Okay that was a little freaky.
I decided to test it further the next day. I sat with him and pointed three or four times to my chin, touching his hand to it repeating the word "chin." I then touched his chin about four times, again repeating the word. Next, I asked him to grab my chin. He did. Not too much of a surprise. Now the real test: I told him to grab my nose. He did it! Several times over, he correctly grabbed whichever of the two facial features I said. He NEVER grabbed the wrong one.
I've since repeated the test on a couple of different days. One day, he was simply not interested and just stared at me with indifference. The other times, he repeated the results of my first test. I think this kid is freaky smart. Don't worry, we'll find a way to screw him up.
Something else I need to get on video is him "talking." For more than a month now, he has been making a sound whenever he's hungry that varies between "uhng-gee" and "hun-gee." Sometimes, there's even an "r" sound in there. At first, we thought it was just a coincidence. Then we noticed that if we said the word "hungry" to him, but didn't immediately feed him, he would get really angry.
Now, he doesn't say it every day, but probably five days out of the week he says it 10-12 times per day. And ONLY when he is actually hungry. Also, whenever he whines for a while, but doesn't get our attention, he'll resort to yelling, at the top of his lungs, "HEY!" He sometimes makes a sound that is like "da" or "da-dee." We don't really think he associates this with me or me and Kel collectively. We think it's just a sound he makes, but who knows? The most amazing thing about that is that he can make the "d" sound so early. (He started doing it at about 12 weeks.)
Now, I know some of you think we're completely out of our minds. I've always thought that my mom was crazy for saying that I spoke at 3 months. She was very sick at the time, taking lost of medication. You could see where she might get confused. We hesitated for weeks to tell anyone this, but we are so certain that he is actually speaking, that we had to share it. Judge us if you must. We'll just exploit our freakishly smart baby, use our ill-gotten fortune to buy your employer and fire your ass!
--
Posted by Wayne to Stone Bridge: Family at 2/11/2006 09:56:00 AM
I barely got the camcorder rolling in time to capture it. I'll post video of that and of him laughing later this weekend.
Also, I'm trying to catch some video of him doing a few pretty amazing things. Kelli was in his face talking to him and he grabbed her nose. She told him what the nose was a few times. Then she asked him if he could grab her nose. He did, several times in fact. Our child is a genius! Take that, all you parents of average children! Not that I am prone to pride...
But I have a policy of setting the bar low for my children, so I won't be disappointed. In keeping with that policy, I thought that maybe he was grabbing her nose because it's the most prominent facial feature. Then he grabbed her chin one of the times when she said "nose." Ah ha! I was right! It was just a fluke! He's no genius. He's just an average idiot like all of your children. Then, to my amazement, he slowly slid his hand up to get to her nose. Okay that was a little freaky.
I decided to test it further the next day. I sat with him and pointed three or four times to my chin, touching his hand to it repeating the word "chin." I then touched his chin about four times, again repeating the word. Next, I asked him to grab my chin. He did. Not too much of a surprise. Now the real test: I told him to grab my nose. He did it! Several times over, he correctly grabbed whichever of the two facial features I said. He NEVER grabbed the wrong one.
I've since repeated the test on a couple of different days. One day, he was simply not interested and just stared at me with indifference. The other times, he repeated the results of my first test. I think this kid is freaky smart. Don't worry, we'll find a way to screw him up.
Something else I need to get on video is him "talking." For more than a month now, he has been making a sound whenever he's hungry that varies between "uhng-gee" and "hun-gee." Sometimes, there's even an "r" sound in there. At first, we thought it was just a coincidence. Then we noticed that if we said the word "hungry" to him, but didn't immediately feed him, he would get really angry.
Now, he doesn't say it every day, but probably five days out of the week he says it 10-12 times per day. And ONLY when he is actually hungry. Also, whenever he whines for a while, but doesn't get our attention, he'll resort to yelling, at the top of his lungs, "HEY!" He sometimes makes a sound that is like "da" or "da-dee." We don't really think he associates this with me or me and Kel collectively. We think it's just a sound he makes, but who knows? The most amazing thing about that is that he can make the "d" sound so early. (He started doing it at about 12 weeks.)
Now, I know some of you think we're completely out of our minds. I've always thought that my mom was crazy for saying that I spoke at 3 months. She was very sick at the time, taking lost of medication. You could see where she might get confused. We hesitated for weeks to tell anyone this, but we are so certain that he is actually speaking, that we had to share it. Judge us if you must. We'll just exploit our freakishly smart baby, use our ill-gotten fortune to buy your employer and fire your ass!
--
Posted by Wayne to Stone Bridge: Family at 2/11/2006 09:56:00 AM
[Stone Bridge: Family] Sorry for the Distinct Lack of Bloggage
We've been busy prepping the documentary shoot and doing major rewrites on a script, so time to blog has been hard to come by. Kelli has been in fairly severe pain for more than two weeks now in her hip. I've been spending my evening trying to massage her or playing with her hair to distract her from the pain. (Don't ask me why it works, but it's our cure-all for Kel's ailments.)
A couple of years ago, one orthopedic diagnosed it as degenerative disc disease. He ordered her a cortisone injection to relieve the inflammation. The doc performing the procedure told Kelli it wasn't DDD, but arthritis. Osteoarthritis requires wear and tear to the hip joint, which was not indicated by X-ray or MRI. She went to a rheumatologist to see about medication to manage the inflammation, but he told her that her blood work revealed no rheumatoid arthritis. So the moral is, you can totally screw up at your job and still make a quarter million bucks a year.
We're trying to get Kelli in at a different practice, Alabama Sports Medicine. If you're from the 'Ham or have ever followed sports at all, you know that these guys have a client roster that reads like a Who's Who of college and professional athletes. We figure if the pros are trusting Doc Andrews and company with their multi-million dollar salaries, then they must be pretty good.
Of course, in the era of the internet, everyone's a quack. We did some searches on Kelli's symptoms, and we found a few conditions that at least partially matched. Trochanteric bursitis has many similar pain symptoms, but is exacerbated by movement. Kelli's pain, on the other hand, is relieved by moderate walking and worse when she sits or lies down for too long. While spinal stenosis could result from Kelli's scoliosis, its symptoms tend to be more in the legs and include weakness and numbness, neither of which she is experiencing. The somewhat controversial condition known as piriformis syndrome doesn't fit the bill because it doesn't include lower back pain, which always accompanies the pain in Kelli's hip.
We then stumbled upon a condition called sacroilitis, which can be caused by child bearing. (Kelli's pain onset following her pregnancy with Savannah.)Here's a brief description of the symptoms:
This condition was widely popular as a diagnosis early in the 20th century. When herniated, slipped and degenerated discs became popularized in the mid-20th century, sacroilitis fell out of favor and is rarely given as a diagnosis today. Who knew the fickle winds of fashion blew through modern medicine? Hopefully, Kelli will get in to see a new orthopedic soon, tell him/her the sacroilitis theory and get some treatment.
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Posted by Wayne to Stone Bridge: Family at 2/11/2006 07:56:00 AM
A couple of years ago, one orthopedic diagnosed it as degenerative disc disease. He ordered her a cortisone injection to relieve the inflammation. The doc performing the procedure told Kelli it wasn't DDD, but arthritis. Osteoarthritis requires wear and tear to the hip joint, which was not indicated by X-ray or MRI. She went to a rheumatologist to see about medication to manage the inflammation, but he told her that her blood work revealed no rheumatoid arthritis. So the moral is, you can totally screw up at your job and still make a quarter million bucks a year.
We're trying to get Kelli in at a different practice, Alabama Sports Medicine. If you're from the 'Ham or have ever followed sports at all, you know that these guys have a client roster that reads like a Who's Who of college and professional athletes. We figure if the pros are trusting Doc Andrews and company with their multi-million dollar salaries, then they must be pretty good.
Of course, in the era of the internet, everyone's a quack. We did some searches on Kelli's symptoms, and we found a few conditions that at least partially matched. Trochanteric bursitis has many similar pain symptoms, but is exacerbated by movement. Kelli's pain, on the other hand, is relieved by moderate walking and worse when she sits or lies down for too long. While spinal stenosis could result from Kelli's scoliosis, its symptoms tend to be more in the legs and include weakness and numbness, neither of which she is experiencing. The somewhat controversial condition known as piriformis syndrome doesn't fit the bill because it doesn't include lower back pain, which always accompanies the pain in Kelli's hip.
We then stumbled upon a condition called sacroilitis, which can be caused by child bearing. (Kelli's pain onset following her pregnancy with Savannah.)Here's a brief description of the symptoms:
Patients with SI inflammation will generally complain of low back, buttock, and thigh pain. This pain typically becomes worse when sitting for any prolonged period of time. Sacroiliitis is commonly confused with sciatica.
This condition was widely popular as a diagnosis early in the 20th century. When herniated, slipped and degenerated discs became popularized in the mid-20th century, sacroilitis fell out of favor and is rarely given as a diagnosis today. Who knew the fickle winds of fashion blew through modern medicine? Hopefully, Kelli will get in to see a new orthopedic soon, tell him/her the sacroilitis theory and get some treatment.
--
Posted by Wayne to Stone Bridge: Family at 2/11/2006 07:56:00 AM
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