And Cut!

Today's post title is a relatively obscure reference to one of my favorite stand-up comedians, Jim Gaffigan. He has a bit where he talks about how he likes to walk around and act like he's a movie director during his everyday life. Basically when something happens that he doesn't like, he just likes to say "And Cut" and then everyone has to stop doing what they are doing, like it's the end of a take. 

I bring this up because I've had a few "and cut" moments in the past couple of weeks. Basically just stuff that has dragged on way longer than it should. I thought I'd share some of these experiences/my thoughts with you guys. 

Scenario 1 - Oklahoma!

A couple of weeks ago, somebody thought it would be a good idea to spend a perfectly good Saturday night going to a high school musical. Not an awesome movie starring the dreamy Zac Effron, but an actual, high school musical at a real high school. Come to think of it, it wasn't just a perfectly good Saturday night...it was a better than average Saturday night. There were NCAA basketball games on and I was still alive in my brackets at this point. But I was peer pressured to go to the local high school and watch Oklahoma! instead. During the next THREE HOURS, here's what I learned:

1. High school kids don't shower everyday and sort of smell like b.o.  (Kate's observation)

2. This high school really needs a wealthy alum to park his/her ass in one of those wooden chairs for three hours. Then s/he would donate some seat cushions or money for padded seats. 

3. The exclamation point at the end of Oklahoma is a complete tease. This isn't exciting at all. They just added that so people would think it's an exciting play. 

4. The entire first act of Oklahoma! can be removed. Seriously, they spend the entire first hour and a half talking/singing about who is going to take whom to the box social. Don't they realize that the Box Social is actually being held in Aunt Eller's backyard. It's like 10 feet away from where they are doing the dancing and singing...does it really matter who goes with whom?

5. I can download a whole lot of iPhone apps in three hours.

Editor's Note: I'm not really a fan of the arts. The arts really haven't done anything for me. Actually, the arts were the only blemishes on an otherwise stellar report card for years. Unless Movies and Television and Blogs can be considered 'the arts.' If that's the case, then I love the arts. 

Scenario 2 - Beerfest

So this one was actually pretty fun. We went to a brewery on Saturday and took the brewery tour. Exactly the kind of thing that I would like, right? Here's the deal...

1. With the tour comes 5 complimentary tastes - each about 6 ounces

2. I crunched some numbers in the back, and the only way that 5, six ounce tastes would have the desired effect is if I do the drinking of all five in quick succession

3. There is a tour in the middle, so I pretty much need the tour to happen fast so I can finish up my tastes and have beer do what it is supposed to do

4. The tour took a long time because somebody kept asking a bunch of questions. I understand that it's sort of research for his blog, but some of us really don't care what temperature the water is when they add the yeast, as long as the beer tastes good, right? Nerd.

Oh, and the brewery was like an hour drive from our house. I know that doesn't sound like it's very far away, but since I started working from home, I really don't drive at all. Like I'll go a week where the only driving I do is to and from the airport. Now my ass starts to hurt on an hour drive because of the whole sitting on the wallet thing. That didn't used to happen until after a few hours. Hmm, both scenarios 1 and 2 have included something about my butt hurting...I'll try to work on that for scenario 3.

Scenario 3 - Dessert Bar

This one is a good idea gone bad. Charlotte added a dessert bar downtown a couple of weeks ago. What's that saying about arranging the deckchairs on the titanic? Don't these people know that we're in a recession? Anyway, whatever. Dessert is good, so I'm cool with it. Somebody thought we should go, and it didn't take much arm twisting. Now I'm usually a pretty patient person at restaurants. I'm used to big fancy client dinners where I have to sit in the same place for three hours. Also, my dad is the least patient person in the world (like he has to walk around if it takes more than five minutes for his food to be brought out, or he'll take his empty glass up back to the kitchen to find the server for a refill) and I try not to do that. But this is a dessert only place. So it's just one course. Or you could say two courses, if you want to count a cocktail as it's own course. 

Somehow this process takes 2.5 hours. This is .83 Oklahomas. The Oklahoma is my new unit of measurement of time. 1 Oklahoma = 3 hours. The Oklahoma has replaced Braveheart as my unit of measurement for time.  During that 2.5 hours, we had one drink. We ordered three desserts, and received zero desserts. Orders 1 and 2 were out of stock. Order #3 was prepared incorrectly. So we went to a dessert bar for 2.5 hours and didn't get any dessert. During this 2.5 hours, I thought about how many Steak'n'Shake Milkshakes I could drink in that amount of time, or if I could walk to a McDonalds, order an apple pie, then run a 10k, write a blog post, walk the dog, and still be done in less than 2.5 hours. At least the booth was comfortable. 

Now I didn't start out to write a bitter rant of a blog post, but that seems to be what this has become. All of the scenarios above were fun (especially beerfest) because we were with friends. I think I started 1,000 words ago with a Jim Gaffigan reference. Maybe I should take my own advice.....And Cut!