Claymates

What's up with Clay Aiken and his new look? Decidedly creepy. I saw him the other night on Entertainment Tonight getting powder-puffed and hairstlyed before a photo shoot for his new record. He was getting worked over with a flat iron. No lie. That 'do requires styling? I figure a ride in a convertible with the top down would be all that's necessary.

After much too much contemplation, I realized who Clay reminded me of. He's obviously been possessed by Chris Gaines. It's the only explanation. Garth "retires" and then Clay arrives on scene? Think about it....have you ever seen them both in the same room at the same time?

I rest my case.

Endless

My sister and I took the kids for a walk last night, like we have most evenings in the last couple of years, weather permitting. We usually make a big lap around town, sometimes stopping to do a quick errand along the way.

So last night we stopped at the library and horsed around there for a while. By the time we rounded everyone up and moved on down the street to Dairy Mart, I was pretty sure we’d been walking for about five hours.

We ran into a very nice older gentleman we know at DM; I was in line behind him for about three hours while some tattoo-neck bought $800 worth of Pick Three tickets…I’m pretty sure he played every possible combination of numbers in the universe.

I started telling Sis a story when we were still about fifty miles from home that got interrupted probably forty thousand times by picking flowers and answering questions and soothing the baby and talking to neighbors and retrieving fallen flip-flops.

As we trudged uphill toward home I realized that I hadn’t finished my story. But I couldn’t remember what in the heck I’d been talking about. “I know I was in the middle of a story, but what was it about?” I asked her.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I can’t seem to remember.” We thought about it for a while. “Was it something about work?” she asked.

“No, I’m pretty sure it wasn’t about work.” We thought about it some more. Still nothing.

“Jesus Christ,” I said, “How painfully boring must a story be when neither the person telling it nor the person listening to it can even frickin' remember it?”

Then we thought about that for a while.

“What time is it, anyway?” I asked.

“Midnight?” she guessed.

CNN

I neglected to mention that one of the bonuses on my comprehensive cable package is a preview channel that spotlights some (usually) amazingly boring network that I have no interest in for a week at a time. Like SpeedTV or ESPN Classics or FitTV.

I discovered yesterday that this week's preview has been CNN and I'm totally sucking it up. I've had it blaring all night and all day in the living room, where the only TV is. That would be the room that I'm rarely in of course; but dammit, just having it on in the building I'm occupying makes me so much more globally aware.

So on the one hand it's making me feel like back in the day when I was at a party on any given Saturday night and MTV's Alternative Nation was on and I'd glue myself to the host's TV and OD on videos I'd never seen before.

On the other hand, if I have to look at that creepy pencil necked guy that didn't kill JonBenet Ramsey one more time, I think I might barf.