Saturday, September 26, 2009

The facts: Kegs, Teachers, and Sarcasm

I work at a comic book store. There are a million things I could say about this, but the fact that I work at a comic book store is only the preface for the previous night. My boss, Steve, turned fifty-one and his wife, Carla, turned fifty, which leads to one logical conclusion: a keg party.

A keg party composed of 4/5 teachers (Carla is a teacher) and 1/5 sarcastic, middle-aged men who are occasional prone to working at a comic store. The evening, while relatively uneventful, taught me quite a number of facts.

Fact one: Teachers like to drink. I mean, sure, almost everyone likes to drink, but for some reason I never really pictured my teachers getting smashed on the weekends (except for those occasional teachers that come in hung over on Mondays).

Fact two: Some ladies are pretentious ass-holes. My boss was showing the sarcastic middle-aged men some original art-work in a room upstairs (I’m lumped into this group because while I may not be middle-aged, I am sarcastic and do work at a comic store). It was awesome, but then two ladies searching for a bathroom stumbled in and said, “What is this, a nerd convention?” They snickered and walked away. Luckily, the wittiest of our bunch called out, “Screw you…Bitch.” He dragged out the pronunciation of bitch. Unfortunately, she didn’t hear it. We still snickered.

Fact three: My boss is kind of awesome. He had bandit statue on a piano (the dog from Johnny Quest) and a set of every single ‘monster’ from Where the Wild Things Are. There are other factors that contribute to his awesomeness, like the fact that he was in David Bowie cover band, but I’ll save those for some other time…

Fact four: Don’t ever talk to the vegan guy that brings a cooler of bud select to a party where bud select is on tap.

Fact five: When you’re the only the only minor at a keg party, everyone suspects that you are constantly trying to steal alcohol. Seriously, I went to the porch to get a coke and the ten people immediately stopped talking and stared at me like I had committed a murder.

And I’ll leave it at that.

Joel Samson Berntsen (Nick Lowe-The Club)

Wednesday, September 2, 2009

Red on Red


In June, on my way to Washington State, they played Confessions of a Shopaholic starring Isla Fisher. Isla Fisher reminds me of Amy Adams though, so much so that I thought Isla was Amy. So, I decided to watch the movie, but instead of plugging my headphones into the headphone jack in the armrest, I chose to plug them into my Ipod.

Unfortunately, the movie was uncomprehendible without audio. One scene made perfect sense though, Isla Fisher started to fight a woman over a pair of boots. And as I was sitting there, I realized I really, really want to see a movie where Amy Adams fights someone. Now, I realize it was Fisher fighting, but I want to see Amy fight someone. And not like the tug-of-war battle in Confessions, but a full-on fist fight. I started picturing Adams getting her hair cut short, dyeing it black, and putting on a leather jacket. She would then walk into a random, dark bar looking for someone -oh, let's just say Ali Larter- tap Ali in the shoulder, and then strait sucker-punch her in the face. Brawling would ensue.

Yeah, that'd be pretty sweet. So, uh, get started on it Adams and crew.

Joel Samson Berntsen (Aspidistra-The Scotland Yard Gospel Choir)