Say A Prayer For An Eye Infection

In A Cave – Tokyo Police Club

As I mentioned on the tagboard, I like to have a reason to post rather than just throw up a bunch of links. I mean, even William usually accompanies his links with some unique, albeit disturbing, insight into his life. How can I do any less? Even though my life has been on hold these days, there are still lots of positives to discuss.

The other day, Shirley was back in town. I hesitate to say “back home”, because as she’d quickly point out, Markham isn’t exactly her home anymore. I guess her home would be in Waterloo with Niki, but that may not even be the case. She’s one of those gals who’s just “of the world”, for lack of a better term. Shirley and I usually find some time to hang out whenever she’s back, but this time it didn’t look like we’d get the chance. She had other things to do during the day and I had plans with Annia in the evening so it looked like I’d just be stopping by her house sometime later that night to get my battery charger that I let her borrow and that would be that.

When I last saw Shirley a couple of weeks ago, she had been nursing a cold. Unfortunately for her, she hasn’t been able to get string together a few solid days of rest because she’s out and about New York and Boston giving tours to high school bands. So this cold has apparently persisted and worse, it reaggravated an eye infection that she picked up somewhere along the way. I became privy to all this information on Tuesday, when she called me to take her to the doctor. I hadn’t been planning to…let me rephrase that. I’d been planning to leave the house to go for a walk or something but I probably wasn’t going to, so I was more than happy to have an excuse to get out.

It was a beautiful sunny day and we listened to the Juno soundtrack on the way to the doctor. For the mostpart, I can associate every song with the appropriate scene in the film, which is a credit to the strength of the soundtrack and the film itself. Bravo, Jason Reitman. The perfect soundtrack to a spring day.

We were told it could be about an hour before the doctor would see us, so we went to the mall and I picked up Grand Theft Auto IV. When we came back, about thirty minutes had passed and I was thinking, “We should be done here soon.” An hour and a half after that, the doctor saw us. Three minutes after that, the diagnosis was done and we were out of there. To clarify: Two hour wait…three minute diagnosis. I still support free health care.

Shirley got the unwise idea to eat at the Popeye’s next door. Her reasoning was that she hadn’t eaten Popeye’s in a long time. There’s a reason for that! I love Popeye’s chicken as much as the next guy, but it’s not exactly the most healthy/nutritious/non-artery clogging meal that you can find. After we packed up the leftovers, Shirley looked like all the life had been drained from her and decided that she needed to go home and take a serious nap. I noticed the early signs of “the meat sweats” developing on her forehead and concurred.

It’s funny. A few weeks ago, Annia took Shirley out to a nice dinner and the Toronto Symphony Orchestra to celebrate her birthday. I treated her to Popeye’s and we toasted over bottled ice teas. She keeps diverse company, eh? Still, I personally can’t think of anyone I’d rather spend two hours in a doctor’s office with. And I wouldn’t even need the magazines.

A good time like that usually carries over for me and even though I was still sore from a weekend contest of driveway basketball and an intense session of softball practice, I played really well at pickup basketball last night with Max. I wasn’t a star or anything (that’s not my thing), but I definitely had a little extra hop in my step after Tuesday. I just felt refreshed. Also, Derek and Max really kicked my ass on Saturday night and even though I didn’t have much fun, it helped me with my game a ton.

Whoops, I’ve gone way overboard on the rambling-to-links ratio. Let’s get to it.

It seems like I’m always talking about how Fred Armisen is one of the most underrated SNL performers of the last decade and if I’m not then I should be. He’s got this new character, Nicholas Fehn, who is supposed to be a parody of all those cool social commenters who think they’re so hip with their complicated shoes. It’s not brilliantly written, but it shows how far a good performer like Armisen can go with such a simple concept.

You know your basketball lacks chemistry when noone is giving you love at the free throw line.

William is always talking about burning the Marvel vs. Capcom 2 soundtrack onto a CD. Well, here it is. Gonna take you for a ride!

And since William already posted that “Iron Man Trailer Movie” gag that I’d been saving for weeks(!), I’ll just have to settle for posting this trailer for a movie called Blood And Bone. It’s an indie release featuring some MMA legends and newjacks like legalized murderer Kimbo Slice and *swoon* my girl, Gina Carano (aka “Crush” on American Gladiators.

Speaking of Gina, here she is on Inside MMA (1, 2). There’s nothing funny here, I just love her.

How did she die?
I guess you could say she died of…blunt force trauma and blood loss. She got into a car accident and plowed into the side of an airplane hangar.
God.
Yeah.
She was so innocent.
She was stoned, apparently.