Here's a whatzup to all my homies at work that I walked away from for the last time today. Thanks for keeping it interesting, fellas.
Here's me striking out at the plate:
1. (I had just gotten out of bed and was looking particularly shaggy.)
Coworker: Gee, Pete, couldn't do anything with that hair today for us, could ya?
Me: I had a gig conducting the symphony before work.
Blank stare. Strike One.

2.
Coworker: Yeah, I originally come from Oklahoma City.
Me: Oh. Ever meet a Timothy McVeigh?
Coworker: Who?
Strike Two.

3. (At this point I'm taking off my goofy work hat and my hair's really out to grab somebody and pull them into my brain.)
Coworker: Gee, Pete, really spent some time on that hairdo today.
Me: I'm preparing for my new career in particle physics.
Tabula Freakin Rasa. Mighty Casey Strikes Out.

Alright, for this week's celebrity twin, I decided to put myself on the butcher's block. But I need some sincere feedback. First of all, here I am, sporting my long hair.



Now I've been told in the past that I look a lot like this guy:


You wanna hear a sad story? Someone once told me that I'm reminiscent of old Mr. Costanza not because of his or my looks, but because of my charming personality. They fell off a cliff and died, though, so...

I'll put it to you. Do I look like the guy above, or the guy below?



Don't you just love the sweet fade-in, circular border on this pic? Colm Meany, you can beam me up any time.

Sheri and I are learning the true gestalt of our apartment: an over-large collection of stuff. By Friday afternoon we had collected as many boxes that could fit 1. between our wall and our dining room table, twice over, 2. between our wall and the couch, and 3. in the rest of our storage space.
Just as we were getting on the phone to the IRS to see if box donations could be tax-deductible, Sheri shouted out to me to wait a tic. "We've just used half our boxes," she said, "and I'm not even done in the kitchen yet."
Needless to say we've taken several loads down to the D.I. since then, as well as to other places we could find after the D.I. told us to go away on account of they were full with our crap.

Here's some other reasons that I love my band: when nationally touring bands can't believe that you're just five chumps from up the street; when a fan, upon arriving at your show, shouts out that he's just had the best sex of his life to your latest album; when a bandmate looks to you in the middle of a song and says, "man, you look extremely satisfied"; when you can play word games with the collection of the four smartest people you know all the way from vegas to provo; when you can tour with this man who loves you as much as you love him; and when stuff like this are written about you: Read here.

So I decided that the caricature of my coworker was pretty weak as a celebrity twin, because i don't have an actual pic of him yet, so in the meantime...



In the center of this mighty triumverate is Connor, drummer extraordinaire in my very first (and second) band, the Spacedogs (and Me and My Llama). Connor is pretty much responsible for my musical career and my avoidance of outcast-ism in highschool for it was he who talked me into borrowing a stolen bass guitar and joining a rock and/or roll band.
Thanks again, Gary.

I've just been the subject of a very strange interaction. So I've always known that my coworker of 40% of my workweek was slightly askew in the brainpan, but I've always tried to give him the benefit of the doubt. He's a good guy, just a little...off, you know? Here's the perfect example: He's a total DVD enthusiast. Every week he makes his list to me of new releases that he's added to his collection. So he's a movie collector. No biggie, right? So tonight he came in with two sacks of movies, one sack full of selections for viewing that evening, the other of duplicates he had that he just handed me and said, "Well, I know you like some of these, and I really needed to clear some space, so, there you go." So I told him that I really don't have any money and he said, "Aw, no, don't worry about it. It's just something that I do from time to time." Well, cool! Free movies. Apparently he's bringing me another sack tomorrow night.
I was about to say, "Shucks, man, no letterbox editions?" when I stopped myself, remembering that sarcasm is not this man's forte, and he starts in with "Yeah, I've got four other copies of that one, and three other of these, and I might have two other special editions of yonder," and he goes on for like five minutes, not to joking. After which he tells me of all the other copies that he's sent to his brother, other coworkers, old army buddies, etc. I should add that all the movies in my sack-o-goodies right now is still shrinkwrapped with the price tags attached.
So you see what I mean? Not a bad fellow, just a little bent upstairs. I'm gonna miss that crazy guy.

PS-Here's a cruel yet incredibly accurate caricature.

Just tooting my own horn here a bit. Thanks, Ryan, for the ego boost. It made me never ever want to leave Salt Lake.

This week's celebrity double features a startling transition, an unlikely hollywood couple, and the upshot of myopia.



Here's my lifelong friend Josh and his lovely and charming wife, Melissa. Now Josh used to be this young fellow right here:


Yes, this Brat-packer was all the rage with the ladies in middle school. Now?

No way, and thank goodness. I mean c'mon, look at this guy.

Marriage and a pair of glasses have gotten him far. Unlike many of his Breakfast Club conspirators, he has avoided oblivion by trading in his acting career for a guitar and a long standing history with one of the hippest bands to come out of the nineties. Besides that, he's gone and married an ER physician, whose career has taken her everywhere: from law aide to divorcee and single mom, she even did a brief stint as a radio personality/producer. Who is this unbelievable duo?



Beat musician Mike Doughty and actress Maura Tierney. How 'bout it?

PS- I won a hundred bucks on the radio today.

I must have this thing about zombies. Since I was a child I've always been obsessed with the idea. I remember catching a few mere seconds of a zombie film when I was about nine and thinking about it literally every day for about a year afterwards. Maybe it's really a fear about losing my own mind or control of my own actions, or soul or whatever, but the idea of a mindless undead corpse that will stop at literally nothing to eat my brain gives me the absolute howling fantods.

And I have nightmares about them. At the age of 27, I still have cold-sweat nightmares that make me want to call my mother. Here are two examples:

A few years ago I had a dream that I went to visit my friend Eric who at the time was going to USU. Some unspecific events happen, and all of a sudden us and a crew of ten or fifteen attractive young teens are exploring the famous "haunted horticultural greenhouse." The manager is with us and spends several minutes explaining to us the rules of the haunting. Always in my zombie dreams there is a baroque system of rules that one must follow to survive an attack. Under no conditions must we disturb the newly tilled soil in the northeast corner. We can do anything else we like, but we can't touch the garden in that corner. So we're screwing around, throwing things, trying to scare each other and whatnot when, you guessed it, a couple of dopes decide to test the limits of the undead, and they bend down to pick up a handful of the sacred earth. As soon as they touch it, it breaks like the crust on a créme broulée and zombies pour forth by the thousands. They eat us all. Or just possess us, I'm not sure, but the point is that we all die horribly, and like not even our souls survive. We're erased from all sentient existence.

So now the other night I have this dream where I'm not even in it, but it's a movie starring Mark Wahlberg in the crappiest-casted role of Johnny Cash ever. He's dressed like Prince and has this weird Willy Wonka hairdo and keeps talking like Slingblade (in an attempt to sound remotely like Cash, I'd assume). So anyway he's darting from place to place, and this time the zombies have attacked full-force, but disguise themselves as regular humans. Mark/Johnny can see them, and they're your classic decomposing corpses, complete with doll-like dead eyes and pieces of flesh hanging from their face, but to everyone else they look, sound, and act like whoever it is that the zombie infected. Until, and again here come the rules, the zombie comes in contact with a real dead body. If that happens they're exposed and break out into a screaming rage. Their physical form dissolves in this really grotesque and awful way but they get like super enraged and the zombie ghost is released to wreak unbelievable havoc upon the living. So the key is to let the zombies live, but to keep them hidden. That way at least they're not free to, you know, do their zombie ghost thing. Dreams always sound so dumb when you explain them to others.

After this latest dream I woke up staring into the dark void of my closet and could have sworn to you that I saw a bunch of shadows moving around inside. The hairs on my neck stand up just thinking about it. My wife found me a few minutes later standing in the middle of the closet with the light on, just staring at the ground. I couldn't really give her any rational explanation for why I was there, so I just came back to bed. Nothing remotely scary has happened since.

You know what the worst part is, though? I can't get enough of zombie movies. I love 'em. I want to see them all. Even the crap ones that everyone laughs at and throws popcorn at the screen and stuff. I think that I would benefit from professional help.

Interpretations, advice, anyone?

ps- 14 more shifts to go before I'm done with my hellish job. Hooray!

Here's a new feature. Once a week I plan to feature one of my friends and their celebrity double. This week comes as a complete surprise. I had never, ever thought to find a double for this man. Check it out.



This is Ryan. One of my dearest friends and the frontman/bassist/manager for Theta Naught. Quite a fellow. Take of the sideburns and glasses, though, and add a long, curly wig and you get none other than....



That's right, the master of parody, Alfred Yankovic. How's that for awesome. Next week, the former Anthony Michael Hall gets a music career by putting on a new pair of frames.

So here's a couple of random thoughts:

First things first. A mysterious stain has appeared on my dog Ash's bed. He drools a lot when he sleeps, so at first sighting I thought little about it. But this particular stain looks as though he'd been salivating constantly for about 36 hours or so. Pretty big. It doesn't smell that funny, it's not particularly dark and it hasn't touched anything else. Besides that, he doesn't seem to mind lying in it himself. So- what to do? Do I leave it?

Second- I'm suddenly having a panic attack about spending $100 G's to go to school to do something I pretty much know how to do anyway. Thanks a lot, Eric.

Lastly- here's a sign that you're moving into a bad neighborhood: Salinas, California, birthplace of none other than the late great John Steinbeck, one of my personal favs, has just faced a crushing disaster. It's public funds have dried up to the point that they're at the verge of closing all their public libraries. I guess the only thing that has saved them is the public outrage over closing a library in the home town of the greatest novelist in the universe. Beyond that, the quaint little townhouses my wife and I were fond of due to, among other things, proximity to a local mall, were the site of multiple gang shootings last year, including many at said mall. We're now looking for housing in Marina.