Be a bad role model!

After spending a long weekend with our good friends Julie and Dan up in Crivitz last month, we had plenty to reminisce about. Some things you plan for. Dinner at their favorite supper club. Taking a pontoon boat out on the lake. Going fishing in the morning.
The best memories are the ones you don't plan. For example, that Saturday night we had a scrappy game of Pictionary. Teams were guys versus girls, which included our friends' 9 year-old son and 12 year-old daughter.
Now, by 9 pm on a Saturday, we were pretty much like anyone else in Northern Wisconsin...half in the bag and feeling no pain. The difference though was that we were playing a game with children and adults, not sitting on a bar stool like we are used to.
Now, I'm as competitive as anyone, but Robyn really started taking offense to the guys' dominating ability at Pictionary, and soon most of her sentences started with "I'm sorry kids, but...." or "Excuse me kids, but..." and ended with something like "That fucking sucks!" or "Screw you guys! You're cheating!"
The night wound down and eventually we went to bed, and after we were home, we had forgotten about our expletive-laden behavior.
That was, until our friends were discussing with their kids whether or not they would like Uncle Pat and Aunt Robyn to watch them overnight while they went out of town.
"Yeah!" yells their son Danny. "We love them! They drink beer and swear!"
So there you go. We don't have any children of our own. But we can definitely be a bad influence on our friends'. Let us know if you need us to watch your kids as well. Just make sure there is beer in the fridge.

Attack of the 10,000-pound baby

You never know how shopping is going to go awry. Sometimes it happens in ways that take days to discover.

Robyn had gone shopping earlier in the week for some essentials goods, and all was fine until we had a conversation Saturday morning before she went to work. I was making a shopping list of my own, and I put down a gallon of milk.

"We went through a gallon of milk since Tuesday?" she inquired.

"No, we never had any milk in the fridge this week." I'm typically the only one that drinks milk. A combination of growing up in Wisconsin and my recently fractured femur has made me overly calcium-aware.

"I definitely remember buying a gallon of milk this week," Robyn stated. "That means," Robyn stares into space as the realization hits her. "That the gallon of milk is still in the trunk!"

Now Robyn had mentioned casually the previous night that on her drive home from work it smelled like an animal had died in her car. We both dismissed it until now, as the mind-boggling, disgusting pieces fell into place.

As Robyn got ready for work, I steeled my resolve and went downstairs to the garage to inspect the trunk.

I opened the trunk to indeed find the MIA gallon of milk, in all of its putrid glory. Now in ancient times, Mongols used to fill leather skins with goat milk, and the churning action of their galloping across the steppe would render the milk into a yogurt-like substance. Now, a Toyota Corolla is no Mongolian mount, and the random rolling of the milk gallon on Robyn's daily commute wasn't bouncy enough to generate anything close to an edible milk by-product.

Instead, the plastic gallon of milk had ballooned outward, and while the top remained intact, it had seeped roughly half of its contents out, into the trunk-liner carpeting, and down into the well that holds the spare tire. I gingerly picked up the jug and brought it over to the grassy area next to the garage. The remaining milk had separated into a think clear liquid, and a slowly moldering solid. As I opened the top to drain off the liquid and throw the rest into the trash, the escaping gases gave off a hiss like a 2-liter bottle of soda.

I went back upstairs to update Robyn on my findings.

"So, how bad is it?" she asked.

"Well, it smells like a 10,000-pound baby spit up in our trunk."

"Sell the car," she said. "Now."

I left the car there and drove Robyn into work. On the way home I stopped and bought a bottle of Odo-Ban, which promised to eliminate odors. After 2 hours of stripping the liners out and scrubbing the trunk with a series of Pine Sol, Odo-Ban and heavy-duty carpet cleaner, I felt confident I had exorcised the funk from the trunk. I was very pleased that the engineers at Toyota had included 2 rubber drain plugs in the bottom of the trunk. The Japanese car makers had obviously anticipated the need for hosing out a trunk out periodically.

Or they had had an encounter with a 10,000-pound baby of their own.

XeroCal! It's really work!

Robyn was kind enough to bring this wonderful diet aid to my attention. XeroCal Plus was advertising in a womens magazine for its product, which is a coffee-flavored diet supplement drink and pill.
Several subtle things tipped me off that this might be a foreign company. But why listen to me? The testimonials speak for themselves:

Hansathorn Hoampawanwong says: "I have recommends many friends to try this product. It's like...I have changed to the new person!"

Jinsiri Morkta says: "I tried every ways to reduce weight. My children had to bring me to hospitals frequently. I want you to try this product...it's really work!"

Chalisa Supasirirat: "I saw this product in the ads and interested."

I didn't feel a need to buy a diet aid before, but after these glowing reviews, how could I resist!

Hog Wrestling - More than a Crivitz tradition

One can learn a lot of things from a trip to another part of the country. One thing we were not expecting to find on our trip to Crivitz, Wisconsin, was that one day a year, a local bar sponsors a hog wrestling event. At first I conjured up images of pigs wrestling each other in jaunty costumes. Lacking arms and opposable thumbs, I would have been intrigued to learn how these pigs wrestle each other.

But the reality is much more simple, and horrifyingly real. Bartenders at other establishments talk of how the ATM companies make thousands of dollars from service charges alone on that one day of competition. Wrestling a pig, you say? Care to make it interesting?

We inadvertently drove past the bar on our way out for dinner, and cars were lined on both sides of the one-lane road for miles. Most of the people trekking their way to the event looked like a curious mix of biker, college drop-out and ex-felon. Or did I just describe the general cross-section of the area?

The wrestling match goes something like this: teams of four people square off against a hog in a muddy ring. In a timed match, they have to catch the hog and place it on top of a padded barrel. Needless to say, only the pig is in its element. And I don't doubt most pigs are used to being chased by someone up here as well!

Need more hog wrestling to satisfy your curiosity? Try www.caldronfallsbarandgrill.com

What chu talkin' bout, Willis Tower?

Starting tomorrow, the iconic Sear tower gets a face-lift, literally in name only. The Willis Holding Group, out of London, paid for the naming rights to the Chicago landmark skyscraper. Henceforth it will be known, at least on paper, as the Willis Tower. Granted, they are moving their offices and 500 employees there as well.

Chicagoans are already irate after naming rights changed the name of Comiskey Park to US Cellular Field, and the wildly modernistic renovation of Soldier Field stripped it of its historical landmark status. Macy's bought out Marshall Field's, changing the ownership and name of that building as well.

I think that it is fitting for a city that was built on a back-filled swamp that it's venerated structures' names be as equally unstable. Personally, I think Chicago is just catching up to the rest of the country. Naming rights have evolved as big business, and they are not going away any time soon. At the end of the day, they are still business entities, not civic shrines. The next generation won't think twice about Willis Tower, or the "former Sears Tower".

Now that the Cubs are being sold to new owners, anyone care to catch a game at "Ricketts Field"? Come that day, the city would really burn!

Escape to Wisconsin

Sometimes an economic downturn isn't such a bad thing. Robyn and I wanted to take some time off this year, as she loses her vacation time if she doesn't use it. We didn't want to pay for a full-blown vacation get-away, so we were looking for something local to do. As much as the term annoys me, we needed a "stay-cation".

Our good friends, Julie and Dan, have a cabin up in Crivitz, WI, and were gracious enough to invite us up there. In one brief conversation, not only did we get a nice weekend getaway on the cheap, but we get to spend time with two of the craziest people we know and love. And we get the distinction of being the first non-family members to visit their place.

For a little background, if you don't know Julie and Dan, they have been the willing participants in many boisterous evenings out. Whether we are at a local bar or at upscale restaurant like Morton's Steakhouse, we don't hold back. Typically, by the end of the night, there is a buffer zone of empty tables around us. On one occassion, as we were leaving, a table next to us asked if we were there celebrating something specific.

"Is it a birthday or an anniversary you are out celebrating?" inquired the elderly woman at the table next to ours, hoping to put our antics into some sort of socially acceptable framework.

"Nope. Our friends just got a baby-sitter, so here we are! Whooo!"

The woman was incredulous personified.

You can't wait for a specific time to enjoy your life. Don't wait for that birthday or anniversary. Call that friend. Make that opportunity happen. Don't feel like you are imposing. Odds are the people you are afraid to impose upon would be more than willing to do something, and glad that you asked.

To paraphrase the ideology of the "war on terrorism" - if you don't go out and do something, the recession wins!

For myself, the car is loaded with beer and suntan lotion, and we are off to the land of supper clubs, Friday fish frys, and deer ticks. Just another Illinois couple invading Wisconsin for the weekend. And if you see us out, don't move away and contribute to the buffer zone. Pull up a chair and join us!

I'm Irked Again

Zirk's Irks is back!

After a lengthy hiatus I am ready to give the world a piece of my mind again. Just a few things have transpired in the world since I last logged in:

-My mother passed away

- The economy went to shit

- Real estate went to shit

Fortunately I invested in a very upscale refrigerator box under the off ramp to Route 83 and the Stevenson, so I get to pay no taxes and yet still have a Burr Ridge address. As they say - location, location, location.

No, I still own my home, although I'm afraid to think of what it is worth. I'm thrilled that we are in the midst of the worst economic downturn since the Depression, and that our standard of living will definitely be lower than that of our parents'. And if you knew what my parents' standard of living was, you'd realize that was not a very high hurdle to clear.

You can pretty much throw out all of your economic reference books, because this is all uncharted territory now! And like explorers sailing off to the horizon, we have no idea if we are heading towards a future of wealth and streets lined with gold, or right off the edge of this flat planet. Exciting!

But at least there is the internet. The vast, soul-draining siren-song vacuum of the internet. That's where you'll find me!

Stay tuned for more irks. Like a runner training for a marathon, I'm just getting warmed up.

(Did I mention I broke my hip, training for a marathon last year?)