Matthew Perry Stole My Childhood

Remember those formative years of our youth?  They were times of great discovery, confusion, elation and crushing defeats, and also acne in places where acne should not occur.  My teenage years, however, were primarily dominated not by numerous failed attempts to talk to girls or excel in some athletic competition or whatever.  No, my teenage years were overshadowed by one haunting and constant reminder.

I am Chandler Bing.

You remember Chandler Bing, right?  He was that character played by Matthew Perry on Friends, the last of the juggernauts of prime time sitcoms of the 90s and early 2000s.  He was the sarcastic one that always had some lame wisecrack and everyone thought was gay.  Now before you object, I have no problem being compared to people who may or may not be gay.  A lot of people think I look like Rupert Everett.  And I didn’t object to the fact that people thought I was funny.  That’s a good thing, right?  Being funny is a good thing? 

No, it is a horrible, evil, dirty thing, because no one ever told me that I was “funny.”  No one ever heard one of my jokes or witticisms or puns and thought, “What a humorous and interesting person Bob is.  I would like to get to know him on a more personal level and establish a meaningful and long lasting friendship with him.”  No one ever said that, which I guess is ok because if someone did say that to me I would wonder why they had no inner monologue. 

Instead, whenever I made a wisecrack, this is what I heard: “Oh my GOD that is SOOOOOOOOO Chandler!”

Now multiply that by every sentence I ever said for about ten years, and just to drive the insanity of this point home, you want to know who was the first person to ever say that to me?  DO YOU?!?!  My freaking physics teacher.  That’s right, it wasn’t some hot popular girl that I wanted to make out with or the captain of our football team (1996-1999 Kingwood High School football record: 1-59), it was the teacher of the most boring class I ever took.  I was walking down the hall of KHS, passing the biology and chemistry rooms.  My teacher, who shall remain nameless because she is the devil, was standing in the hallways talking to some other dork science teacher, when I walked toward them both.  I tried to avoid eye contact as to be spotted by this teacher would doom you to a conversation of inertia or yaws or whatever the hell you talk about in physics, but she stepped out into the middle of the hallway to block my path. 

She grabbed me by the arm, looked me in the eye and said, “You know who you remind me of?  Chandler Bing.” 

She stared at me for a moment, released me, and rode off on her broomstick to kill Christians.  I am not making that last part up. 

At that point, the freaking floodgates opened and I could not get away from this constant comparison for the life of me.  It was like some rampant virus, and I hadn’t even seen the show!  I had no idea who this incredible doppelganger was who happened to be making a million bucks an episode by capitalizing on my life. 

Everything I said, everything I did, even the way I looked was directly compared to Matthew Perry at all times.  Here check this out:

          

See any resemblance?  No, of course you don’t and you wanna know why?  Cause I grew a freaking beard.  I grew a beard so no one would ever say I look like that bastard again.  Do you know how hard it is to even GROW a beard?!  Not hard. 

Eventually, I started watching the show and in the end, yeah, it turns out everyone was right.  I’m just like him, but you know what?  I never did this:  

Rot in hell, Chanandler Bong.

There were no elves at Helm's Deep!

That's what my father yelled out when he, my sister and I went to see The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers many years ago.  My dad was such a Tolkien purist that the entire battle at Helm's Deep was completely ruined for him due to the presence of the elves.  Sure, it was a nice little dramatic flair that Peter Jackson added to the movie, uniting elves and men once again, but come on, this doesn't happen in the book at all.

I never told my dad that footage was actually taken where Arwen was at Helm's Deep as well to aid in the battle, but I figured that news might kill him.  I don't need that on my hands.

Anyway, I perused the official website of the two Hobbit films that start shooting in a few days, and suffice to say, my dad is going to blow his lid.  Those of us who have read the book before know that Frodo, Galadriel, Saruman, or Legolas never appear or are even MENTIONED in the book.  Yet, Elijah Wood, Cate Blanchett, Christopher Lee and Orlando Bloom are all on board to shoot the film.

Now please excuse me, as I have to give artificial respiration to my father.

Weddings Are Hard

I just checked my blog and realized that I haven't made a post since December 7th.  That's Pearl Harbor Day, in case you were wondering.  Maybe put that in your diary tonight.

I was really busy the last two months getting married.  While everything at the wedding and everything since then has been amazing, I have to say that weddings are hard.  It's seriously a lot of work and stuff.  I knew this lady who had been married 6 times.  6 freaking times!  How do you do that?! 

I mean, just after 1 wedding I'm totally convinced that I am set for life.  I am not going to do this again.  How in the high holy hell do you get in the mindset that you think, "Wow, that first wedding was so fun!  Let me dump this dude and crank out 5 more!"

That type of commitment I just cannot fathom.

Things on my Desk - Part 5

Sometimes I get nice things.  This is one of them.  Yesterday, my fiance and I went to get our marriage license, and when I returned to work in the afternoon I discovered that my cubicle had been strewn with streamers, wedding decorations, little plastic swans, and these Cindi Lauper-hairstyle table decorations that you see above.  I was really touched, because I hadn't even gotten MARRIED yet.  I just got my license, but someone at my work was thoughtful enough to do such a kind gesture.
It's times like these that working in the corporate world, isn't so bad after all.

I Know the Deputy Mayor

So I just found out that the First Deputy Mayor of Los Angeles is my former employer before I began working at Warner Bros.  Right now, he's trying to scale back Los Angeles' endeavor to have renewable energy levels running at 40% of total capacity by 2022.  Nice work, boss.  Keep lowering those expectations.

Things on My Desk - Part 4

See this thing?  Pretty cool, right?  No idea what it is.  My co-worker got it for me and the other people in our department from Hong Kong, which was nice of her.  I think it's a dragon and you're supposed to put it on your keychain or charm bracelet, but I'm not sure so I'm just leaving it on my desk.  That way, my co-worker understands that I appreciate the gift.  Maybe I'll hang it on my bulletin board, or maybe I'll just leave it alone, cause it could be cursed or something, like that idol that Greg Brady messed with when the Brady Bunch went to Hawaii.  Remember that?

Now I'm starting to worry.  I don't want binders to start falling on my head or the elevator to plummet to the earth because I didn't treat this thing with the proper respect.  You know what, I'm gonna go ask her what this is so I make sure I don't offend it.

[Walking away from desk to ask co-worker]

She doesn't know.

Things on My Desk - Part 3

 

So this is a raccoon.  It's not real, so don't worry that I have an unlicensed raccoon on my desk.  Nope, it's just you're run-of-the-mill plastic raccoon.  I'm not exactly sure why it's here, but I think it's one of those prank things where you're supposed to pass the raccoon along to other people and then they come in the next morning and say, "There's a raccoon on my desk."  Then they move it to someone else's desk and the cycle continues until we are all dead.

I'm not a big fan of this prank, but mostly because it reminds me of when I was in Indian Guides.  Anyone remember that?  You probably don't, and that's OK.  Indian Guides was the lazy dude's incarnation of Boy Scouts.  Instead of getting merit badges and working to do good for the general public, you sat around a bonfire and played the fart game.  That was fun, but there was also this tradition at camp outs that we called "Injun Joe."  OK, so already that's pretty racist, right?  I don't want to write that word again so I'm gonna call him, "Native American/Algonquin/Non-Offensive Term Joe." 

Joe was this little statue of a Native American/Algonquin/Non-Offensive Term that would be passed secretly from cabin to cabin, where one tribe would cleverly hide the statue so the other tribe couldn't find it.  He was bad luck, and you were supposed to search your cabins relentlessly at every available opportunity to ensure that your tribe hadn't been given "Native American/Algonquin/Non-Offensive Term Joe."  If your tribe wound up with the statue by the time the unnecessarily big bonfire happened, your tribe had to perform a skit the next day that would inevitably be not funny because no one put any effort into it.  This happened to my tribe (The Fox Tribe, slogan: When in doubt, fart.) during one camp out and all the dads had to perform the skit.  It was pretty traumatic.

Anyway, that's why I don't like this raccoon.