5-4-Fri: Horrifying Things

Tomorrow is Halloween, so this week you get a list of five woefully ghoulish, terrible, horrifying things:

1. Blue Jeans Shorts. There is never, repeat after me, never any excuse for wearing blue jeans shorts. Hemming them only adds several centuries in purgatory. One exception: short cutoffs on hot girls in the 1980s; if this does not apply to you gender-wise or temporally then don't even think about it.

2. Tramp Stamp. As Chris Rock noted, any girl working the pole is a living symbol of parental failure. Don't extend the discussion to include shaming your parents with a lower back billboard. What one might refer to as the buttal philtrum should be bare--not covered with a butterfly that will just metamorphose into a bat as you age.

3. Barbed Wire Tattoo. For guys with no sense of shame, there is the barbed wire tattoo around the biceps. Dudes, see supra. Don't do it. You don't look like a super hero. You don't look like a football player. You don't look cool. You look like a dork. You look like someone who doesn't realize that your tattoo will be an ironic Abu Ghraib-like fence around your arm waddle when you're 70. Also, ladies, if Pam can't pull this one off, neither can you.

4. Mullet. This hairstyle has been much ridiculed elsewhere, so I'll leave it at simply shivering with repulsion and warning you off it; but beware its modern iterations. WHAT are the producers of the otherwise charming "Castle" thinking by giving the easy-on-the-eyes Stana Katic a girl mullet this season?!

5. The White Hemp Choker with Sea Shell Accents. Ever meet some tool who has been to a surfing lesson once on Spring Break and now obsessively wears brown leather flip flops and board shorts topped by a white rope surf choker? Me, too. Sporting these brotastic necklaces is a fashion nightmare for the turtle-shell-ribbed belly-baring boy toys of Abercrombie & Fitch catalogs and it ain't gonna work any better for you. Please--and I am begging America here--please stop it.

PS - I am not a close follower of Billy Ray Cyrus' career, but I think it is possible that he has been a combo-platter offender on all fronts here. And he's busy plowing new ground. I stumbled across the Disney juggernaut "Hannah Montana" on cable television the other day and daymn if Billy didn't show up playing Miley's fake-life dad and sporting blond highlights, a soul patch, a spin art Bonnaroo tee, some kind of dominatrix-like leather watch band the width of a WWE trophy belt. Maybe I'll go as him for Halloween this year. Spooky! (Sorry, Bill, but you put it out there.) Oh, and "Misirlou" by Dick Dale and the Del Tones is scary good; now playing on iTunes.

Crisis of Credit

Annnnnnd, we're back. Thank you caller. We were talking about the messed up US economy and how such a thing happens and who is to blame. Well, as Pogo said, "We have met the enemy and he is us." Oh, and also the enemy is the sickening and woefully insatiable gluttony of Wall Street...Pogo forgot to mention that part.

To date, the best explanation of what the heck is going on with the Great Recession that I have seen is "Crisis of Credit Visualized"--an animated primer on how the American economy went belly up based on credit default swaps, collateralized debt obligations, sub-prime mortgages, credit crunches, and other highly jargonable phrases uttered on NPR that you might not have fully grasped when they first smooched your ear with their authoritative yet somehow incomprehensible syllabic combinations.

Enjoy. (For a while I had this thing parked on my Bookmarks toolbar; that's how good it is.)

PS - I am loving the idea that Greenspan seems to be saying, "Uh, about that whole self-regulation thing, I might, uh, have been wrong." Well, maybe the economy can rise like a phoenix from the ashes of boneheaded, unregulated greed. Oh, and "1901" by Phoenix is on fire; now playing on iTunes.

Funny Thing: Kids Today

Time for another "funny thing happened" anecdote. This one highlights the truly sublime nature of intergenerational change.

I have a colleague who was recently in an elevator with a 13-year-old girl and a few 7-8-year-olds. No, no, not like Michael Jackson; he was just in the elevator with them.

The younger kids were discussing their distressing lack of phone signal in the elevator and the 13-year-old turns to my colleague and says without irony "Wow, what's happening these days? When I was 7, I didn't even have a cell phone! Today's kids are just ridiculous. Right?"

PS - I am flabbergasted by the woeful lack of perspective that some kids have these days, although I am quite sure that I came off this way a bit when I was a kid -- "You had to have big ICE BLOCKS delivered to cool the refrigerator?!" Still, I didn't have a cell phone until I was 37, much less seven years old. Oh, and "Amsterdam" by Guster is download-worthy, kids; now playing on iTunes.

5-4-Fri: Five Guys

Do you have a Five Guys burger joint near you? Never fear; you soon will. This Alexandria, VA franchise began with simple stand-up service featuring just hamburgers, but has grown to provide stunning fries along with hot dogs and other scrumptious offerings. Still, even in the face of limited expansion of the menu and massive expansion of the brand, it is a back-to-basics kind of place that emphasizes the essentials. With 400 franchises in 25 states and growing from coast to coast, that attention to taste and fresh ingredients is making the Murrell family into millionaires despite a rising tide of public consciousness about healthy eating.

More power to them. As one of the massive, endlessly energetic fellows in the moving company said with reverential awe once he had helped to unload all of my stuff into my new apartment: "You live near a FIVE GUYS." Here are five reasons this Friday to love your fun local franchise:

1. The Burger. Hard to say enough about the burger. Made from a mix of lean and not-so-lean beef. Half a pound per patty. Think carefully before ordering a full burger -- it features two patties. I order the "little cheeseburger" and still stand proud.

2. The Fries. Okay, the french fries are so good that sometimes I just get them by themselves. They are made fresh from potatoes cut on site -- what our more pretentious restauranteurs would call "housemade" -- and cooked in fresh peanut oil. The potatoes sit in their bags in stacks out in the waiting area with you. A whiteboard sign announces where today's potatoes come from. No map (bad form) but still....

3. The Peanuts. While you wait at McDonald's (watch that possessive, people) you enjoy nothing except perhaps a sensory preview of how much fat is in your food; an olfactory heads-up that, while the timing of your first heart attack will perhaps come as a surprise, its eventual arrival is somewhat predictable. While you wait at Five Guys, you get to eat peanuts out of a massive box. As many as you like. As quickly as you like. You used to be able to shell them wantonly onto the floor; that is discouraged these days. If you have peanut allergies stay faaaar away. If not, rush to Five Guys right now.

4. The Yelling. Woefully loud. Screeching, really. Once your order is ready, the designated screamer hollers your order number (handily printed sequentially at the bottom of your receipt) into the general airspace of the restaurant. They do this even if they can clearly see you standing and waiting. They do this so rapidly and repetitively that your ears face a penetrating, deafening roar several times no matter how quickly you sprint to retrieve your food. They seem to enjoy this part best.

5. The Condiments. Hot sauce. Jalapenos. Bar-b-que sauce. Fried onions. Along with the traditional pickles, onions, mustard, and their brethren. You want it, they have it. I still have not yet settled on the perfect combo. Think about it. There a many, many variations you can try and -- when you have it right -- you get to savor the perfection.

Eat 'em while they're hot, people.

PS - The base player in my band tells a stunningly cute story about his five-year-old grandson who orders his burgers with childlike precision: "I want a hamburger patty. A bun. Catsup. No salad. And no rice." The boy considers lettuce to be salad and thinks chopped onions look like rice. That is the cuteness. Oh, and "Smooth Operator" by Sade is also coast-to-coast hepness; now playing on iTunes.

Funny Thing: Metro Pain

I am starting a new category for blog postings of humorous stories. These entries will feature a sort of "funny thing happened to me" set of anecdotes. Since Valentine's Day is coming, I am reminded of something woefully and hideously horrible--yet hilarious--that happened not to me but to a friend of mine on the Metro.

I have this pal who was once a bit of a predator. He roared through college and his 30s with a harem of accomplished lookers. Even as a grey-haired middle-aged man he used his looks and atheleticism to hunt a few demos below himself on the age pyramid. He has settled down these days, but he was quite the ladykiller when I met him. In fact, he did not actually date anyone over 30 until, in his 50s, his then-girlfriend turned 30 on him. Eventually they broke up around Valentine's Day and, truth be told, he was devastated. For months he was blue. Poor fellow couldn't even summon the simple enthusiasm to hit on production assistants. Then, one day after time had applied its healing balm, he found himself, in a new suit and fresh off a flattering haircut, standing in a Metro car hanging from the center pole and feeling, for the first time in recent memory, pretty fit and perhaps ready to get back in the saddle. Scoping absently on his fellow passengers he spied a young beauty who caught his eye and gave him a big smile. Not to appear too eager, he averted his gaze, made a pretense of checking his watch, and counted to 10 before looking over again. She once more deliberately caught his eye and smiled broadly. "May/December be damned," he thought. "Quickly, man, say something smashingly clever." Too late. She took the initiative, scooting forward on her chair and giving him a beckoning finger. She smiled again. He leaned closer. Tension built. She spoke: "Sir, would you like to have my seat?"

PS - Hey, man, I've been living in a glass condo so I am throwing no stones. But, daymn, when he told me the story I fell out of my chair laughing. Plus, points for self-deprecation. Oh, and Johnny Clegg's "Scatterlings of Africa" is one of my favorite songs; now playing on iTunes.