Category Archives: Personal stories

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Fun with insomnia

The Crasher Squirrel with me when I kissed the Blarney Stone (and if you know me, you know I kissed it.)

So, it’s 3:00 am and you can’t sleep.  No intellectual capacity for that weighty book you’ve been meaning to read?  Nothing but informercials on TV?  DVR filled with nothing but Vinney-less Jersey Shore episodes?  How ever will you pass the time?

The Crasher Squirrel!  Remember him?

A few years ago a couple was vacationing and took a photo.  They set up their camera to get them in front of a lake but the camera focused on a squirrel that ran out and got into the shot.  You can read about them and see their photo here.  You’d think they were actively trying to get a photo of him.  Little guy just wanted their friends back home to see how awesome he was.

Crasher Squirrel at an Inaugural Ball

Soon the world over got to see him as the story made headlines and people began inserting him into their photos, like I have here.  The above photo is from when I kissed the Blarney Stone in Ireland.  The one on the right is from an Inaugural Ball I attended with my friend, Arun Seraphin.

The possibilities are endless, really only limited by your imagination and the patience your friends and family might have in looking at photos they have already seen a thousand times before, only now with a delightful little squirrel inserted into them.

That's me with some kind of large weapon! Can you believe it? Me, either but it's true.

Watch out Crasher Squirrel! Don't fall off Kilimanjaro using the rest room!

On one of the many nights where I found my self tossing and turning, I remembered how much fun I had when I first heard the story and learned of the incredible invention, known only as the squrrielizer.

So, when you can’t sleep, consider the Crasher Squirrel.  Hours of fun for you and your family.

PS.  New shows were added to my comedy schedule.  Check it out!

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Best Morning Ever. And if you know where I can acquire the life that I so desperately need, please let me know.

If you know me, you know I LOVE Morning Joe.  (Side note:  after I met Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski I called my mom because I was excited about it.  After I told her the news, without missing a beat she said Yeah, but Willie Geist is the best part of the show.  Uh, he wasn’t there, but thanks for pointing out the negative.)

This morning, Willie Geist retweeted my tweet about why I was awake at 5:30 AND made it a favorite.  You can tell from the screen shot I took, he doesn’t have a lot of favorites, he has one.  Mine.  I nearly fell off the treadmill.  That might be because he favorites tweets and then deletes it later but for the moment, my tweet about Vinny is the only one.  I should point out that I was truly heartbroken when he left Jersey Shore and pretty excited when he came back.  More than I should have been.  Celebrate everything, I say. (No, I did not actually stay up celebrating this awesome development but I was happy.)

Willie Geist's Twitter Page -- @HobbesDurden rocks!

Willie Geist retweets a @HobbesDurden tweetAnd for good measure here’s a screen shot of the retweet.

So far, @HobbesDurden has been mentioned on Way Too Early.  You can check out  that video here.  I was mentioned by Mike Barnicle — I had emailed in that I couldn’t sleep because my 20 lb cat was trying to kill me by jumping on my head.  He responded that  should learn about cat nutrition.  He then mentioned my cat on Morning Joe.

No matter what else happens today, this day is awesome.  Willie Geist, you are my hero,

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You gotta believe!

Being a Met fan means summer is the most painful time of the year.

Warning: This is a TMI post.

Anyone familiar with the Mets, is familiar with this phrase.  I often think it was cruel to raise me a Met fan when New York has a winning team but I am convinced the designated hitter rule is a crime against everything I hold holy.

Digression:  Baseball is special for a number of reasons.  There is no clock.  The season is like a pressure cooker — starts slow and leisurely and ends in a race that can be a nail biter.  One of my favorite things about the sport is that every player plays both offense and defense.  When you allow such a pivotal player — as the pitcher is — to not hit you change the batter/pitcher dynamic.  This produces pricks like Roger Clemens, whom I will love to hate until I die.  It’s just not how the game should be played and once again, love you Crash Davis, I believe there ought to be a Constitutional amendment outlawing astroturf and the designated hitter.

Anyway, back to my point.  Every year I practically live and die by the Mets. I even believed after what is regarded as one of the most historic collapses in sports.  You can read about that here.  I feel the need to elaborate on how seriously I take this.  I only wear Met blue nail polish.  When I watch a game I alternate between really watching and only having it on in the background.  Depending on how they are doing when I do either.  My Met clothing — Jose Reyes jersey, 1986 t-shirt, old school, blue satin jacket, hat, necklace — gets switched up  — are they doing better when I have the hat on?  Should I take the jacket off?  Now, I know I sound crazy — and I am — but any Met fan will tell you, we are a superstitious lot.  I know intellectually that nothing I do will impact the game — and I also know they can’r hear me when I yell at the TV.  My sports related Tourettes kicks in big time when I watch the Mets (and 4ers, tennis, etc.).

But despite all the loss and all the heartbreak, I believe in the Mets.  So why can’t I have the same belief in myself?  Because I have way more successes than the Mets (at least since 1986).  My successes & failures are not as public as a major baseball franchise will ever be but every day I succeed at my job, my writing and my other endeavors.  On occasion I succeed at doing stand-up comedy.  That rocks my world.

Yet, I still don’t give myself the faith I give the Mets.  Something is wrong with this picture.  You might be wondering why I am telling you this.  One goal I have for this year is to change that.  Because: I’m good enough, I am smart enough and doggone it, people like me. (Thank you Stewart Smalley.)  I have read that telling people about a goal makes it easier to achieve — or maybe you are more likely to succeed — and I want to make this happen.

It may be late for New Year’s resolutions but mine now are:

  1. Focus on doing ONE thing at a time.
  2. Remember that lesson I learned when trekking to Everest.  We would come to a hill that was super steep (going down was harder than up) and I would think there is no way I can make it all the way down that.  Then I would tell myself ok, maybe you cannot make it all the way but you can take the next step.  I made it base camp.
  3. Make at least five people I don’t know smile every day.  Work up to 10.
  4. Start to believe that I am more than my weight. And no, I am not the fattest person on earth like I like to think.  Plus this body got me up Kilimanjaro (19,341 ft) and made it to Everest Base Camp (18,192 ft) and that’s pretty awesome.
  5. Celebrate accomplishments and learn from setbacks.
  6. Be better to myself and the people I care about. (I have been a total asshat lately, to the people who have had to deal with me, and you know who you are, I am sorry.)

So there you have it.  My belated resolutions.  Back to your regular scheduled programming… political thoughts will be back tomorrow. Or later today.

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Things that make me rowdy enough to be pepper sprayed

It seems like every day I read about someone doing something that gets ’em pepper sprayed.  Maybe they’re peacefully protesting proposed tuition hikes and the police overdose them on the stuff.  Maybe they’re just trying to get a little Black Friday action when a fellow shopper douces them with the stuff.  This morning I saw some shoppers looking to get new Air Jordans were the most recent pepper spray victime. (Read story here.)  I can’t speak for you, but nothing gets me quite as rowdy as sneaker shopping.

This whole thing got me thinking about my behavior. Do I do anything that might warrant a pepper spray?  What gets me upset?

  1. The Mets.  If you say you are a Met fan and they don’t get your ire up, you are lying about being a fan.  It is impossible to watch them — on the field, off the field, having breakfast somewhere — and not want to punch someone.
  2. Fresca — nothing gets my knickers in a twit like when Safeway is out of the stuff.
  3. Glee:  Man, if I forget to set my DVR and miss an episode the fur does start a flyin’.
  4. DC Metro.  It sucks.  Every year the tourists descend like locusts on the city and try to hold the metro doors open during rush hour.  They force the doors open and everyone has to get off the train.  I would not be the pepper sprayee in this scenario.
  5. People who think I do things for sympathy.  I don’t need your sympathy.
  6. Inappropriate apostrophe usage.  On a business trip my colleagues wanted to go to a restaurant with a great happy hour.  I refused to go because of the sign they had out front.  Unless there was a woman there named Margarita and she was having a personal special, I was not going.  Seriously, plural words do not need an apostrophe.  There won’t be enough pepper spray on earth for how irate this gets me.

More to come…

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For me, silence is not golden

Is this the universe's way to tell me to STFU?

Anyone who knows me knows that I LOVE to talk.  I talk all the time.  I talk to my cats.  I talk to inanimate objects such as the TV (news & sports mostly), the newspaper (same topics), my computer, my iPad.  I have even been known to talk to myself if I have to (it’s worse when I am writing but that is often because I read my stuff out loud when checking for typos).  So not being able to talk feels like a fate worse than death.  Well, not quite that.  But I HATE it!

I was whining about my quandary on Twitter last night — I have just recently begun to feel comfortable on stage when this happens, not fair! — and someone suggested  I use my iPad.  There’s an app — Speak It! — that converts text to speech.  You can save phrases and play them back or convert them to sound files and email them.  To make it more fun, I chose a British woman’s voice.

These are the first phrases I saved, you know the ones I use the most often:

1. How the fuck would I know?
2. What are you, on crack?
3. Let’s go, Mets! (seriously, I am an idiot)
4. Fuck you, Fred Wilpon.
5. What-EVER!
6. Motherfucker!
7. That is soooo random!
8. Hello
9. Thank you. (See I can be polite — we all need to say this and the next entry more often.)
10. Please.
11. Did you watch the debate?
12. Herman Cain is awesome.
13. Michele Bachmann should run for president every four years.
14. Have a nice day.
15. Do you have any Fresca?

But then I got to thinking about some other things I like to say (remember: imagine these coming from a British woman):

1. Wake up in the morning feeling like P. Diddy. Grab my glasses, I am out the door, gonna hit this city. Before I leave, brush my teeth with a bottle of Jack. ‘Cause when I leave for the night I ain’t comin’ back.
2. You just come around here to eat our food and fuck our mother. You motherfucker, you food eater. (Best movie line EVER. Delivered by Keanu Reeves in his first movie, River’s Edge.)

The last one I did was: I have completely lost my voice so I am using this to communicate.  In my new, and hopefully temporary, reality, I have decided to be British.

Part of me thinks this is the universe’s way of preventing me from screeching along to Glee or belching out random Katy Perry songs at all hours of the day and night.  I am sure my neighbors love this development and hope it lasts a good long time.

I know I am being incredibly self-centered and whiny.  I just had a great trip to NYC and want to tell people about it so I keep going to pick up the phone but it’s just not an option today.  Dang!  I want my voice back and I want it now!