It's Not Tundra

CHEAPJACK SHAKESPEARE: THE NON-MUSICAL Breaks Records Opening Weekend 2010/09/11

http://www.youtube.com/user/CheapjackShakespeare

Well, for starters... http://www.youtube.com/user/CheapjackShakespeare

I have to tell you that it's not paradise here. We have morons here, too. It's just that there aren't as many of them but those that we have are trying harder to be more annoying. There's also, I suppose, a certain freedom in knowing that you are blazing a new trail of douchebaggery, going where no asshat has gone before. I'm riding my bike home from the gym and I turn down a quiet street so that I can ride though the park. The school on the street, a church school, is letting out for the end of the year. If you look back at the stuff I've written, I should have learned by now that people can be especially dopey around schools. It should be no surprise. But every time I've gone by there and it was any kind of school event, it's a madhouse. 1/4 the madhouse as in Tarzana, but there are fewer folks around. So I'm tooling down the road on my bike. And here comes a woman holding hands with her son. Awwwww. Walking down the middle of the street. And by &q

Some thoughts after flying across the country to move. You try to teach your kids good manners,but sadly, the rest of the world doesn't want to help... The behavior on commercial flights has changed since my father insisted on a coat and tie to fly coach. It is not well known that Lindbergh flew his legendary trans Atlantic flight togged up in white tie and tails. Memoirs of barnstorming pilots would include passages about flying biplanes in top hat with his platinum tipped walking stick doubling as an especially dashing aileron control. Sad to say, these standards no longer apply even to first class cabins, let alone steerage. Please allow me to offer a few humble suggestions to make air travel a more pleasant experience. Do not berate TSA employees for their lack of speed. Most of them are honest, caring, hardworking people dedicated to ensuring our safety. The rest are mildly retarded and may cry if confronted. Such behavior will result in a cavity search and proper standards of

Here's the kind of story you just don't see on the news around here... http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2010/06/porn-actor-goes-on-rampage-at-video-production-office-1-dead-2-wounded.html Of course, most stories here do begin with "The Buffalo Bills today..."

People are surprised at the woman who greeted President Obama with "You're a hottie with a tight little body," when he went to lunch at Duff's in Buffalo last week. Me, I'm just happy she didn't greet him with "Gee, you're a good-looking colored guy."

Free Venison This is apparently the guy that goes with my "My Deer" post.

I've turned into one of those neighbors my mother would hate. I don't play loud music or get into fights with my family (well, I do, but I try to hiss my anger between my teeth instead of yell). I don't have a barking dog or a big 8 bore hobby car that I rev late at night and drive people crazy because I am insecure of my penis size and need to compensate by making lots of noise. But I do clean. I cut my lawn. I trim. I edge. I use a leaf blower. These were things that, in California, we'd hire people to do but here I/we do 'em (I get the kids out there). Part of it was that in CA they were cheaper and we didn't have that much to do. Here we got screwed by the first company we hired (they just stopped showing up after cashing the cheque) and the other companies --- well, let's just say that there's one called "White Collar Landscaping" and I think they're more white collar criminals. Perhaps the people who did the lawn in CA were illegals

A little on what I've been writing about here and a lot on what I'm doing in the next few months. http://wnymedia.net/weck12 30/2010/04/god-morning-buf falo-thursday-april-22/

Holy Christ! See my March 19th post but I just saw ANOTHER Chistmas tree out at the curb. It's almost April. But, truth to tell, the real thing is that I'm just jealous because it was still so green! Maybe it was one of those "Lost" time shift things? Maybe it was really a Dharma Christmas Tree from 1974? In California, that sucker would have been burning by now.

I worked out at World Gym in Woodland Hills, CA for years until the Spinning Class -- which seemed like it was run by Moonies -- drove me away. It wasn't the spinning, it was that the class' music was so loud and they shouted so much that it seemed more like some kind of indoctrination than cardiovascular exercise. There were a lot of people who trained with partners, but at World Gym in Williamsville, I've noticed the partner phenom has become more of a pack mentality. It's not just 2 people working out together to egg each other on, there are groups of 3, 4 and 5 working out together and egging each other on. At what point does it stop being a training partnership and become a training cult? I'm not too worried. I've also noticed that the bigger the group, the bigger the waistlines. Perhaps they're not egging each other on. Maybe it more of a support group. "Yeah, we can be fat and workout, too! We can have our cake and eat it, too! And eat it. And ea

seen at the grocery store: Three fat guys, each buying a six pack of hard lemonaide/sweet vodka drink, a bag of chips and a pack of cookies. All laughing. Could only guess they were talking about why they were still single.

I just found out another way this area differs from L.A. Coming home from the gym this AM I saw two Christmas trees by the curb, waiting to be taken away. One was a lovely crisp brown and the other was a fresh, lush green. So Christmas lasts longer in WNY.

If you like what I've been doing here, you can check out my new work of fiction: http://www.amazon.com/Cheapjack-Shakespeare-Chapter-1-ebook/dp/B003AZY5ZS/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=digital-text&qid=1268320497&sr=8-2-spell

While most Targets are SORT OF laid out the same, Targets in California don’t sell a LOT of snow shovels, so I had to go looking. When I saw what I thought were them down an aisle, I walked down there and went past a woman with a baby in a shopping basket. As I walked by I thought: “Hm. That looks like Stephanie and Fiona. But they live in Amherst so it can’t be…” And then I stopped. Oh. Yeah. Reality check. This was going to take awhile. Right. We had moved. Check. Luckily, Stephanie, who we had seen just a few weeks before when we were looking for a rental, was just as surprised to see us. We chatted for a bit and then chose our snow weapons. They had a snow shovel with a cooked handle that they called “ergonomic”. Now I’ve looked it up since and I guess it means that it’s easier to shovel because it has a crooked handle. It’s also designed as a “pusher” [1] , but I’d been taken in by that before. Still, it looked like the best bargain and we got two of those and one sm

Saturday morning I got up, put on my snappy all-cotton genuine Japanese kimono and walked downstairs. I turned at the bottom of the stairs, heading for the kitchen and then stopped, thought for a second and walked back to the front door. Did I really see what I thought I saw? Why, yes. I did see what I thought I saw. There was a dead deer on my front lawn. Now that was something I never saw in L.A. Dead cats once in awhile, yes, usually with their innards chewed out by a coyote who went only for the tasty parts. Perhaps by a raccoon. I'm not Daniel frikkin ' Boone. But not a deer. You'd see them sometimes in the Hollywood Hills, very occasionally. A few times I'd seen them at the corner of Coldwater and Mulhullond and they WERE near Dead Man's Curve, but the deer were alive. Once during a heavy rain I'd seen a family of deer on the 405. Well, actually I'd seen them on the side of the 405. Traffic moves slow but still not slow enough for deer. But even thos

IN HONOR OF THE FIRST BIG SNOW IN THE 367 DAYS WE'VE LIVED HERE... THE DRIVEWAY!!!!!! [1] “Oh, how can you handle shoveling all that snow!” people would say. The cold was the first thing people commented on, the snow was the second. And it’s true. You did have to move it out of the driveway and the sidewalk. God knows that I was yelled at often enough to get off my ass and go shovel the driveway. My father would get pissed off occasionally at my lack of concern for snow removal and would bestir himself to do it. My mother would then go into something resembling a religious fervor [2] and scream: “Your father’s going to have a heart attack! Your father’s going to have a heart attack!” And the implication certainly was “Because of you”. And I would drag myself outside. Begrudgingly. [3] We had a large collection of snow-removing implements in my childhood. My father, far from a handy man and who I don’t think I ever saw swing a hammer, seemed incapable of parting with