The one where I’m oblivious

Apparently I’m oblivious.

Let’s set the scene. It’s a slow Wednesday night at the museum. About an hour into the night a woman came over needing some directions. I helped her in my usual charming way. Her friend looked bored as we chatted about my awesome Captain Kirk tie. They went on their merry way and I tried to keep myself from falling into a coma. On their way out of the galleries they stopped again to ask if I knew where a certain piece was.

No it wasn’t Patty Picasso’s masterpiece.

I told them where and how to go and they once again went on their merry way. I went back to stopping German Art Thieves with my buddy John McClane. Later I tried to finish the elusive man in the marble column poem and (let’s be honest here) probably thought about the wife’s boobs.

Flash forward (finally) to about an hour to go. Here come our intrepid museum explores. They’re on their way to exit the South Door. She stops to compliment me on my tie again and we start talking about nerd stuff. After a few minutes her friend walks back over and arrives just as this happens:

Her:  It must suck being on your feet this whole time.
Me: Sometimes it really does.
Her: You poor thing. They don’t let you sit down?
Me: Nope.
Her: Jerks. You’ve been here all day?
Me: Just since 5.
Her:  Good.

(More comic book talk that I don’t remember) Then:

Her: When are you off?

That’s a weird way to ask when the museum closes.

Me: The museum closes at 9.
Her: And when do YOU get off?
Me: ….
Her: 9?
Me: Uhm 9:30—

Her friend: He has a ring you whore.
Her: OH.
Her friend: Whore.
Me: …..
Her: See you around.

They then made like Snagglepuss.

 

Cupids, Cigars, and Meat or a weekend recap

THIS IS A WEEKEND RECAP
THIS IS A WEEKEND RECAP
YEAH!
THIS IS A WEEKEND RECAP
THIS IS A WEEKEND RECAP
YEAH!
I BET YOU’VE ALWAYS WONDERED WHAT A WEEKEND RECAP WOULD LOOK LIKE
WELL THIS IS WHAT A WEEKEND RECAP LOOKS LIKE
YEAH!
I FORGOT TO TAKE ANY PICTURES
WELL THERE ARE TWO PICTURES!
YEAH
THIS IS A WEEKEND RECAP!
MY WEEKENDS ARE VERY BORING!
YEAH

Hopefully you’ve stopped reading after that painful intro. There really isn’t all that much to read. Saturday we spent most of the day at home. There was one executive decision made: Dandelion wine will be made this year. I looked up recipes and everything. Hell, I pinned something on Pinterest. The goal is to start now and let it sit for a year. This time next year I’ll be sipping Dandelion wine while reading Dandelion wine.

Ray Bradbury is so thug life.

At some point the wife’s mom stopped over to help us with our garden. There are lots of things popping up. Hyacinths, Grape Hyacinths, Roses, Tulips and more! We are very excited but also have no clue what we are doing. But we’re trying Ringo.

Yeah vague Pulp Fiction reference!

Eventually we headed off. First stop was Pelvic Joann’s. Then we headed to Ohio City Burrito because we were all starving. There Kat did the weird thing of ordering chips but no salsa or even Guacamole.

Weird.

Next was the ever awesome West Side Market. It’s always such a fun, colorful time there. I’ve managed to resist the urge to mess with them as they carnival bark out to you. There’s a vendor there named Jim’s Meats. Which lead to this:

Wifey: Heh. Jim’s meats.
Me: Don’t worry you’ll load up on Jimi’s meat later.
Wifey: Really?

Next up was the Thrift Store. I was good (Read: boring) and only looked for work stuff.

Okay I looked for a tweed jacket. I always do.  No luck but there was this:

Then we went to Cigar Cigars in Ohio City. I needed to pick up a reward cigar. Why? Well, because my play was picked to be in a play festival. I found out about a line of cigars named Hemingway. Those seemed like the clear choice.  They’re made by Arturo Fuente Cigar Company. Luckily they had some. So I picked up The AF Hemingway Short Story and their Flor Fina 8-5-8 Maduro.

Can you guess which one is the short story?

Sunday was filled with work and steak. I really do love my job but there is one gallery that makes me think twice about it. That is the early European: French/Dutch galleries. I dig the stuff in them. It has to do with the sensors around the art and MOSTLY the dummies that set them off. OVER and OVER and OVER and OVER and OVER—Sorry. I of course was in those galleries Sunday. It was getting bad when this happened.

A kid about 7 years old came into the gallery with his parents. As he looked at the art he slowly started giving them all the stink eye. Then he saw “Cupids in Conspiracy.”

Stopped.

And said:  “This place is disgusting, look at those butts.”

Needless to say it helped me get through the day. I had hoped to see The Rizza that night but fate intervened. There was plenty of delicious food made by the wifey.

Balsamic steak wraps and mashed potatoes. YUM! How was your weekend?

TMI Thursday or the one with a pee cookie

 In the TMI blog post system, cookie-based TMI’s are considered especially heinous. In The Cheap Seats, the dedicated detectives who investigate these vicious felonies are members of an elite squad called the Special TMI Unit. These are their stories. 

It’s a sad day when I must relay a TMI that involves a cookie. It was a Tuesday—of course it was Tuesdays are the new Mondays—and I was starving when I arrived to work. If it’s Tuesday you can be sure I’m running late. This one really was no different. I skipped breakfast. I missed the first bus. I was ready to go home. It was 9:20AM.

I have to be in roll call at 9:30.

There was nothing quick to eat at home, so I decided to brave the break room vending machine. When I got there the choices didn’t exactly overwhelm me. There was some gum, a pack of Doritos, beef jerky and a chocolate chip cookie.

Spoiler alert: I went with the cookie.

I ripped open the cookie and ate half of it in one big ole bite. It probably looked like a snuff film watching me try to eat that cookie. As I went cookie monster on it I remembered I still needed to get ready.

Ready = tuck my shirt on and put my tie on.

I relocated to the locker room so I could put my bag and coat away. Half eaten cookie in hand I fixed everything. Okay wrap cookie and put it away, then bathroom. Look at watch.

9:25. Shit.

Time to pee and get to roll call. I put my bag away and go into the stall. Hurriedly pull Ensign Jimi out and prepare to fire on the Borg. The bay doors begin to close and I make sure they open all the way. Pee is ricocheting everywhere!

What the hell?

Then I realize the cookie is still in my hand—or you know wetly crumbling into toilet. You know in Ghostbusters when they have to cross the streams? It was just like that—if it took place in a bathroom stall and one of the streams was a cookie and the other urine.

Just like that.

Conversations with Jimi: Volume 18

 

And now for your reading pleasure I present to you another edition of Conversations with Jimi.

 

 

visitor: what is the quickest way to Pompeii?
me: Plane.
visitor: ….

***********************************************************************************

visitor (looks into the Rothko room): I’m sorry is this still part of the Pompeii exhibit? I think I’m lost.
me: That’s okay we’re all a little lost in some way.
visitor: ….

*************************************************************************************

(visitor sets off the sensors and stands there as it beeps.)
me: can you please step back.
visitor: oh was that me? I thought that was part of the art.
me: you thought a table from the 1700′s was making a loud beeping sound?
visitor: I’m not…I don’t know much about art.

*************************************************************************************

Student: How does one go about getting this job?
me: First you get an English degree with a concentration in Creative writing. Then you realize that is worthless. Next you get laid off and desperately apply at the museum.
Student: Oh.

*************************************************************************************

(Visitor asks a question about something.)
Me: well the legend goes–
visitor: you’re nothing but trouble. I can tell.

*************************************************************************************

And then this exchanged happened:

Me (to wifebot): says the woman who lives in crabbyville.
Her: Yeah well you vacation there all the time.
Me: You know that being that you are the mayor of neighboring crabtopia
Her: You should run for President of the United States of Poopy Face.

Be Jealous.

 

 

The one with fingers

So I’ve been busy. I mean REAL busy. Okay, check that…just regular busy in case some of you are paying attention. God, you all are some Checky McCheckersons, aren’t you?

There has been:

More hours at work.
Finishing a 10 minute script for a play festival.
Working on my poetry manuscript.
Trying to find a publishing home for said script.
Reading script submissions.
Working on things around the house.
Being a man about town.

I know…excuses, excuses. You all are some Judgy McJudgersons, too. You don’t wanna read about why I’ve been too busy. You want to hear about the time I peed on my cookie? Too bad you’ll have to wait till TMI Thursday for that.

Instead I’ll give you another glimpse into the weirdness that is Jimi. At work (and everywhere really), I tend to have little games to keep me from going crazy.

Fine, crazier. Jerks.

Games  like the Force Field one.

This game usually takes place in the long hallways in the bowels of the museum. Throughout these halls are all manner of things. There are various tables waiting to go to or from storage, cases from the galleries and containers to ship the art. As I walk down these halls, I tend to pretend my fingers are a man—pointer and middle fingers are the legs. The upper body is all imagined—just go with it—and I make this finger-legged person walk across these various surfaces.

Then as these people get closer to the edge, they begin to run. Yes, they RUN toward the edge and certain doom. These finger-legged people are always suicidal. They willingly jump to their death—only mid leap, they regret it.

No, I don’t do their voices…that would be weird.

Okay fine, I do their voices.

 “I’m going to end it all!” (jump) “Oh, nooooo! What have I done? I want to live.”

They don’t live. On occasion they make it to the next table or container. Once more they run and jump. Again they wish they hadn’t but to no avail.

What could make this worse? The answer is a coworker catching me.

What could make that worse? Surely not me explaining what it is I was doing.

Yep. I explained it to them. They listened in what could only be described as a paralysis based on fear. 

the one with hope (sort of)

Today we celebrate the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. I’ll be honoring him by doing what he was fighting for all those years ago: telling more than a few of thousands of people who will be at the museum where the bathroom is.

Wait.

The museums around Cleveland are open and this is greatly taken advantage of. There were a ton of people last year. Unless the potential snow chases people off it’ll be more of the same this year.

Some highlights (or maybe lowlights) from last year:

Someone tried to smell one of the pieces.
A twenty something tried to grope Aphrodite’s boobs.
About 20 bajillion kids tried to sit on/climb the griffins.
This:
(I walk into gallery where the griffins are. A mother is with her kid and doesn’t see me. She motions for them to get on it.)
mom: get on it. Quick for a picture. (She sees me.) No I said not to touch it just get next to it.
Visitor said: “what kind of museum don’t let you touch things”

 We’ll see what this year brings.

To close things out here is a piece from Maya Angelou’s poem “Abundant Hope”

 

Reverend Martin Luther King

The great soul


Flew from the Creator


Bearing manna of hope


For his country


Starving severely from an absence of compassion.

 

Martin Luther King

The Great Spirit

Came from the Creator


Proffering a sparkling fountain of fair play


To his country


Parched and deformed by hate.

The whole man came forth


With a brain of gentle wisdom


To persuade quiet


Upon the loud misery of the mob.

A whole man stood out


With a mellifluous voice


To bind the joints of cruelty.

A whole man came


In the midst of a murderous nightmare


Surrounded by demons of war


He dared to dream peace and serenity.

With a heart of faith


He hoped


To resurrect his nation.

 

I open my mouth to the Lord,


And I won’t turn back.

Martin Luther King

Faced the racial


Mountain of segregation and


And bade it move.

The giant mound of human ignorance


Centuries old


And rigid in its determination


Did move, however slightly, however infinitesimally,


It did move.

I will go, I shall go


I’ll see what the end will be.

Enjoy your day and be kind to one another!

the one with resolutions

This is the time of year when we are legally obligated to write a resolution post. Right? Here is mine sort of.

 

2013′s Mother Clucking  goals!

Convince more people I have a twin at work.
So far it’s been 4 (2 in ’11 and 2 in ’12.) I thought I had posted about this at least once but I can’t find any posts. Visitors have seen me in one gallery and then another. When they bring it up I attempt to convince them I have a twin that also works there.

Get drunk and watch She-Ra: Princess of Power or He-Man on mute, adding commentary and voices.
This happened on New Year’s Eve with some friends. The term “exclusively anal” was used a lot.

Attend/read at more readings.
What the hell, how did this serious one get in here?

More naked yoga.
I really just wanted to force that visual on you. You are welcome.

Smoke cigars and say “I love it when a plan comes together” EVERY time.
A-Team bitches!

Get drunk on absinthe and make YouTube videos of me reading Poe.
Sounds like fun, no?

Compile list of poo named after movies list.
http://ftcs.wordpress.com/tag/naming-my-poop/

Write a play with a bear in it!
Really would be a guy in a bears’ jersey or a cubs’ hat. Etc.

Get 100 rejections.
Lol the more rejections means the more I’m submitting. So, really: SUBMIT more.

Finish the wrestling themed/inspired book of poetry.
Follow at Love is a Donkey

Finish a chapbook of Lego men coming alive and overthrowing humans poetry.
Lego men coming for us all!

Watch more bad movies.
Follow that shiz at http://www.bmoviebrigade.wordpress.com

Buy a Dex-Starr action figure.
Dex-Starr is a Red Lantern and a cat!

 

Happy Fricking New Year everyone!