Sarah and Josh's Reception: The Photo Booth

Sarah and Josh had their wedding reception this past Saturday. We all had a lot of fun and people we amazed to meet my wife.

Sarah and Josh decided to rent a photo booth for the evening so that guests could take photos of themselves and then put them into a scrapbook. To help advertise the booth, Sarah had our friend Meshell designed a poster:



As I am completely unobservant, it took me about an hour to figure out that the characters on the poster were actually caricatures.

Now, can you find me?



Yes, that's me. Passed out in the booth, probably forty-five minutes into the event.

Just for reference, here's Miss Sally and I:


I won't show you the Acton photos.

How to cut a sandwich

There are many ways to cut a sandwich. Here's several styles by different kinds of parents:

In Half


In Half Triangles


The Bitchy Kid Cut


Stock Broker's Kid


Bear Market Stock Broker's Kid


NRA Member


Lazy Parent


Really Lazy Parent


Emo Kid


My Kid's

Like Father, Like Son

Greg is in first grade and one of the activities for his first day of school was to draw his teacher:


Not bad. I often dreamed of my teacher with a snazzy skirt and no top on, but I never took the time to draw it.

That's my boy!

Editorial Fail

I'm pissed.

Some intern from Texas wrote an editorial in our local paper about how Ohio sucks and how great Texas is. I know Ohio sucks, but you can't come marching into my town and shit in my coffee. So I decided to write a letter to this jerk and let him know how I feel. I made the letter really nice!

Nice, right? Almost makes you feel warm inside.

That would be all well and good, except the secret to Ohio pride is that I inserted a secret message as to how I really feel about this guy. The problem is that the editorial staff decided to edit my letter, just slightly to make it fit their format, which ruined my message. Check out the first letter of each sentence. Here's a cheat:


It spells out: TOUCHEBAI

They changed my first letter D (from Dear into To) and they changed the last sentence from a G (I started it out "Good Luck").

DOUCHBAG

That's the secret to Ohio pride, asshole. Don't come up here to go to my school and then dump on my state, douchebag. I mean, touchebai.

The Baconizer

HolyJuan Eats: Dirty Franks

I ran into Freckled Jenn at work and mentioned how I wanted to test out Dirty Franks. She had some errands to run and was itchin' for some wiener, so we hopped in her Jeep and drove over to 3rd Ave in Downtown Columbus.

Here's Jenn!


Dirty Franks looks like what would have happened if Mel's Diner were run by Hipsters in the late 1980's. The place was pretty full when we sat down. We had our drinks within a minute and we perused the menu with glee. Dirty Franks specializes in unique hot dog toppings. You might think the combinations of toppings were drawn out of a hat in a Whole Foods store. Actually, they are quite tasty!

I ordered:
Chicago (with a beef brat for .75 extra) = Fresh tomatoes, diced onions, Vienna Sport Peppers, pickle relish, dill pickle, yellow mustard, & a dash of celery salt

True Love Always = Cream cheese & green olives

Fresh cut fries (which I doused with vinegar)


Freckled Jenn ordered:
True Love Always = Cream cheese & green olives

Ohioana = Spicy corn relish (sweet corn, pickle relish & jalapeño blend) and a dash of celery salt



Wow! It was fabulous. I ordered the True Love Always because I am a big fan of cream cheese and olive. It tasted great with a hot dog. I would have liked for my olives to have pimentos, but otherwise, good stuff! The Chicago was very good, but the toppings are thick sliced and even I had trouble fitting it all in my mouth (but I did).

The fries were great and even better with the malt vinegar. I was able to chug three glasses of diet Coke while I was there.

CLEAN PLATE CLUB!


My meal with drink was around $10.

Jenn said their adult beverages are great. She suggests the 2 Tickets to Paradise = Lime Slush, Cherry Slush, pineapple, Malibu Rum & citrus rum. I saw no less than 143 Pabst Blue Ribbon advertisements in the place. They also have funnel cakes.

I highly suggest you check them out!

Does this mean the internet will be down?

Top Ten Worst Diets Ever

They say dieting is good, but not if you are on one of the following diets. I'm no doctor, but I can tell you that this list is most definitely the top ten worst diets ever.

The Cardboard and Butter Diet

This is an extremely high fiber, high saturated fat diet. The butter helps the cardboard to go down. Helpful hint: buy an extra plunger.

Tapeworm Diet
With this diet, you ingest one pill which contains a tapeworm. Over time, you lose weight. And energy. When you are at the desired weight, take a second pill which, hopefully, kills the tapeworm.

Deserted Island Diet
With this diet, you only eat foods you would find on a deserted diet: sand, shell fish, seaweed and driftwood. It works for the people on Survivor... why not you?

Salt Diet
Eat anything and everything you want, as long as it is salt. Try Salt Pancakes or Salt Soup or Crunchy Sea Salt Nuggets with Salt Sauce. In a few days, if you can still see the scale, you'll notice significant weight loss.

U-Z Diet
In this diet, you only eat foods that begin with the letters U and Z. Watch the weight disappear after eating Ziti glazed with Ugli Fruit and unleavened bread with sliced zucchini every day for a week.

Sprinting Diet
With this diet, you can only eat while doing wind sprints. As soon as you stop running, you must stop eating. NOTE: Thanksgiving stinks on this diet and gravy can cause 2nd degree burns.

Boxing Glove Diet

This diet is easy: you can eat anything you want as long as you are wearing boxing gloves. Just try and open the fridge or drive to the fast food restaurant. Corn on the cob is really tough. Pudding is not so bad if you have a big vat of it.

Burnt Diet
This is another of the "eat anything you want" diets. All you have to do is burn the food item until it is charred black, though and through. I do this already with most my cooking.

Backyard Diet
Sticks and stones may break my bones, but they also make for a great diet. Eat only what you find in your yard. Gardens do not count, but weeds do. If you live in an apartment, go out to eat at the park. No digging through the trash cans.

Overeat Diet
This diet is akin to catching your child smoking a cigar and locking them in a closet until they smoke a whole box. With the Overeat Diet, you attempt to stuff yourself with fatty and high calorie foods to make yourself sick of eating. Do this for eight or nine weeks straight and weight loss will be inevitable when you can't move to feed yourself.

We miss Meshell

Meshell was in town a few weeks ago. We miss her a bunch, but a girl has to do what a girl has to do.


Check her out at: http://subwayseatfor3.blogspot.com/

Top Ten Worst Diets Ever

I did a writing assignment for a site called Associated Content. Read it and I get a penny!

Click here to read!.

Stick People Sex

WOW! really likes its customers (even the ones that are jerks)

On Monday, I wrote an article called “I played chicken with WOW! and something amazing happened” detailing how I tried to trick WOW! to lower my cable bill by threatening to cancel. Low and behold, my game of chicken failed and I ended up going through with the whole phone conversation and canceling my service. As I was too much of a chicken to go crawling back, I signed up for AT&T cable/internet and thought that was that.

The next day I got an e-mail via my holyjuan@gmail.com address from someone at WOW!, a guy named William Wright, who had read my article and wanted to see if there was anything WOW! could do to retain me as a customer. There was an 800 number for me to call. I assumed that this was a run of the mill follow up to any post on the internet and didn’t pay it much attention. I was more curious to talk to him about how they harvest information from the internet and learned about my post in the first place. I replied to his e-mail and said I would forward the AT&T information and see if they could match it.

Later that night, my wife checked the voice mail and handed me the phone, saying it was WOW! trying to get us back. We had predicted that a sales person would call and I rewound the message. It was a guy named Bill Wright looking to get us back with WOW!. Bill Wright? That seemed familiar… I went back to my e-mail. Same guy. Except this time I looked closer and saw that he was the CEO Customer Advocate! I called the 800 number, expecting to get the switchboard, but it was his personal number. He had taken the effort to track down my real name and number. I left a message, explaining that I was just one of those jerks from the internet. I left my cell phone number and hung up.

The next day William sent me an e-mail saying that Larry from the Saves Department would be giving me a call. Larry called when I was in a meeting and I called him back once I was finished. I shared my story with Larry about the canceling and the post on the internet. We talked about WOW!’s competitors and what AT&T was offering. In the end he made me a very nice offer and I took him up on it. We said our goodbyes and I e-mailed William to say Larry was awesome and thanks for the special attention.

So what have I learned? I was completely surprised by the customer service I got from WOW! I’ve always liked my service from WOW!, but was amazed at the level of attention I received. I was astonished that they took the time to track down the real me (it’s not that hard, but still). And I felt like a douche for trying to get my bill lowered, not having the balls to fess up to my real intentions and then having a bunch of attention dumped on me when I was trying to be sneaky in the first place.

I’m not really sure I learned my lesson, because in the end, for all my douchery, I did get my bill lowered. But at least, for once, I was shown that there is a company that really, really wants to keep their customers happy.

And I am happy.

Why, Thank You and Why Thank You

I hate people. Not you, of course. I like you. Just everyone else.

On the local talk radio, the topic of the day was rude people. A fired-up caller (oddly not a “long time listener/first time caller” which I thought everybody had to say on talk radio) had two stories to share. One was a general observation that people don’t say thank you anymore when you open the door for them. The second was a long winded story about how he found a wallet at a hotel, took it to the front desk, got the wallet owner’s room number, went to the room to return it and the man grabbed the wallet and shut the door without saying anything.

This is why I hate people. People should never do anything nice in life expecting to be rewarded for it. I think hard work should be rewarded. I think innovation should be rewarded. But don’t expect to get your ego massaged just because you think you are doing something nice.

Do the right thing because it is the right thing.

The caller on the radio was obviously a turd. Opening doors and expecting thanks is one thing. Going out of your way to try and weasel thanks/ a reward is ever turdier. I’m not sure why the hotel would have given the caller the wallet owner’s room number. That has got to be against some policy. What I didn’t mention was that the caller had gone through the wallet (I would have too), and was bitching because there was a lot of money in it and he wasn’t offered a reward.

You know this caller is a douche. A good person (you or me) would have dropped the wallet off at the front desk and went on their way. This guy was fishing for a thanks or a couple bucks as a reward. He should have cut out the middle man and taken the money, which I’m sure is what actually happened and the guy made the rest of the story up. No hotel would give out a room number to a total stranger.

I see these types at the four-way stop. The ones that smile and try to wave you through, when they should have gone first. I just sit there and stare right at them. They wave, franticly trying to be nicer. And I stare. Then they throw up their arms in disgust and tear through the intersection, pissed off. I love it.

Now, before you start sounding off the hypocrite alarm, I have in the past stressed that people MUST say thanks and send thank you notes. This is still true. If someone opens the door for you, say “Thanks!” If someone finds your wallet, explain that that is all the money you have in the world and that you cannot give a reward, but if there is anything you can do, you will. It is customary and polite.

But don’t ever give into these “Thank You” whores who force you into a Thank You situation. The nice guy that opens the door when you are 50 feet away. The nice guy at the four way stop. The nice guy that explains to everyone that he is doing something nice. Just use this secret code as you pass by them, “Why thank you”. No comma. You can add the question mark in your inflection when you get really good at it.

I played chicken with WOW! and something amazing happened

Miss Sally and I decided to get rid of our WOW! Internet Provider land line. The phone had not been working for about a week and neither of us noticed. When I figured out what was wrong and plugged it in correctly, we only had one message from seven days previous. The only thing I use it for is to call my cell phone when I’ve lost it.

Since we were giving up the land line, we started checking prices with other companies. AT&T and RoadRunner have been flooding our mailbox with offers. What we decided was that I would play hardball with WOW! and get our monthly fee lowered. Everyone knows that the service providers bend over to keep you on board, so I thought it would be a simple game of chicken where I would say, “I want out” and they would say, “Are you sure” and I would say, “Yes” and they would weep and the supervisor would come one the phone and BEG for me to get cable, internet and phone for $99/month. Suckers!

I called WOW! and spoke with a very polite dude. We exchanged my account information. Then I told him I wanted to cancel my service. He said, are you canceling or switching? I said we were switching to AT&T. Polite Dude was very concerned because he did not want us to lose our phone number. He entered in his system that AT&T would be our next service provider and they would handle handing it off. I passed the first test. He was checking to see if I was serious and I was.

Next Polite Dude went to the next part of his script and asked me when I would like to cancel. Right now? Tomorrow? I did not hesitate! I thought this was the point where he would start begging and he threw me a curve ball. I lied and said that our new service was starting at the end of the month so I would want to cancel then. Polite Dude suggested a few dates and times for our equipment to be collected and I picked one.

I had passed the second test! Now was about the time when Polite Dude would get to the part of the script where he talks me into staying with WOW!. Questions about pricing and service. How WOW! could do one better. How I was a Valued Customer.

Instead he thanks me for the call and that the service dude would be at my house to pick up the modem and cable box and that I should call back if there were any issues. WOW! would transfer the number to AT&T when the time came.

I said thanks and good-bye and paused. I waited for the, "Just one second, valued customer!", but Polite Dude said bye and hung up.

There was no groveling. No bending over. No supervisor. Amazing.

So, I went to the AT&T U-verse website and signed up for Cable and Internet in about ten minutes.

U-Verse is about $50 a month cheaper without the phone with a $250 cash back bonus and 2nd receiver. Now I need to go around and change all my WOW! contact e-mails to my Gmail account. A pain in the ass, but worth the savings.

So in the end, we both won and we both lost. But neither of us flinched, and that’s what really matters. Nice job WOW!. I’m ticked you didn’t roll over, but I commend you for that!

Jerks.

{Author's note: You must check out the follow up story: http://www.holyjuan.com/2009/08/wow-really-likes-its-customers.html}

A good three person card game

The Whistler at Work

Flotation Device

Greg Interviews Ann

Douchebag

I was in Lancaster this weekend to catch up with some friends. We went to a bar that a high school friend owns. While we were hanging out at the bar, a group of kids came in. I assumed that they were of age, because I can't tell anymore.

One of the dudes was a complete douchbag. How do I know this? For one, he looked like a douchebag... askew hat, stupid necklace, ironic shirt, fucking rich kid. Secondly, he acted like a douchbag... mistreating the bartender, running into people, aloof to the point of nausea.

Sadly, I wanted to punch the guy in the mouth.

Well, I must not have been the only one, because about twenty minutes later, there was a ruckus in the back of the bar and an employee yelled, "Call the cops!"

Word worked its way to the front of the bar that someone had got punched in the mouth. I said, "It was probably the douchebag." And it was. His friends started walking him out of the bar, but he went back to the back.

Cops showed up and went to the back of the bar. We assume they interviewed some people and low and behold, they came walking to the front of the bar with the douchebag. They weren't forcing him to move, but were telling him to get a move on outside. He was stalling and saying that he didn't want to leave. The cops had enough and dragged his ass out. The cuffed him and placed him in the cop car.

Cop came back in to show the bartender his fake ID. She said the front was a very good forgery, but that the bartender should look at the back of the license for some other telltale marks.

In the end, I felt bad for the kid... just kidding. We laughed our asses off.

Jackson Pollock Venn Diagram

Guest writer Chris: What Joe Did

{Author's note: In a first for HolyJuan.com, I'd like to present, guest writer, Chris.}

In early June, Joe vacationed for a week near Clearwater Florida, which is 45 minutes from where Karen and I live. We scheduled an evening for him to stop by our place for dinner while he was here. A few days before his vacation I received a call from Joe “warning” me that he was traveling with a “female friend” and they were purely friends and he did not want to hear any crap from me or Karen.

I agreed and followed my commitment to Joe during his visit. But now his vacation is over. The following are the top observations of Joe and Suzanne that prove they are more than just friends.

11) Joe pulled me aside and asked to borrow my mix tape; “that really good one from college with ‘Lady in Red’ and ‘Tender Love’”, he said.

10) When I asked Joe if he listened to Fugazi anymore, he had this incredulous look and then stated, “Fugazi?”, as if it was so absurd to suggest he ever listened to them.

9) He and Suzanne kept talking about how the Broadway version of “Mama Mia” was so much better than the movie version.

8) When I saw him drinking Corona, I expressed surprise at that, and he said “You know, I always drank Corona in high school and college.”

7) He kept doing ring-around-the-rosie with my kids, and always was looking at Suzanne out of the corners of his eye to see if she was watching. My kids finally pushed him aside and ran to get away.

6) He and Suzanne began to show my kids how to do “patty cake” with their hands. 5 minutes later, my kids walked away as Joe and Suzanne kept doing patty caking without giving my kids 1 second of their attention.

5) When we started talking about how great “Seinfeld” was, he kept telling us how Elaine was his favorite character.

4) When I asked if his mom did anything dumb lately, he said sternly to me, “No! I love my mother.”

3) When we all went for a walk by the woods by my house, he and Suzanne kept stopping simultaneously to do the Macarena for 10 seconds, and then laughed out loud for 10 more seconds after do it. It wasn’t cute or funny the first time.

2) Joe and Suzanne had a 15 minute conversation regarding how they love oyster crackers in their soup.

1) He kept asking us if we wanted to play board games.

{If you would like to guest write for HolyJuan.com.... forget it.}

{Author's Note: After cutting and pasting this, I went to iTunes and downloaded Chris de Burgh's ‘Lady in Red’ and Force MD's ‘Tender Love’. Really.}

Stinkin' Redhead

I was cleaning off my desktop when I ran across this. Some redhead blogger ran a contest to make up a 300 words or less story about how she broke her ankle. The winner would get a blahblahblah gig iTouch. I entered. I didn't even make it into the top seven that she picked to be voted on. Here is my story:

Redhead knew that handing over her car keys was a mistake, but the guy in the bar with the crappy goatee wouldn’t shut up and he said it was a magic trick that she would never forget. She dug the keyring out of her black purse; the streamlined sexy one that barely held her keys, cash and lipstick.

He stood up on his stool, held the keys up, said, “Ladies and Ladies!” and in a drunken lurch, spun around and bent over. He mostly stood, half bent over for an uncomfortable minute and then stood and spun with a “Ta-Da!”

The keys dangled from his nobody’s business that, half heartedly, poked out from his open zipper. Not just dangled… that son of a bitch had the keyring shoved down his dick.

“Take it off!”

“Come get it!” he shook his feeble groin at her.

In one very coordinated move, Redhead swung her purse forward, up and cockward. Her aim was true. Goatee fell backwards, clutching his keyrung goods, and landed on the bar floor.

“Give them to me!”

“Here…” he croaked.

“Give them.”

“They are stuck! Oh my God… It’s swelling up!”

Everything was… an awful blue.

An hour later, against doctor’s orders, Redhead stood by goatee dude, insisting that she would not leave that scumbag’s side without her keys. Lubricants had failed to release the keys and in the end, pliers were called for and sterilized.

The doctor leveraged and applied force. He snipped. Simultaneously, Goatee let out a desperate howl and a gob of man goo shot out from his pent up loins.

Redhead reached forward and grabbed the lubed up keys with a pre-gloved hand.

“Fuck you.”

She turned to walk out and promptly slipped in his load on the floor, breaking her ankle in three places.

Yeah, it sucks. But it beats out the other drivel. I'd give you her website to compare, but I don't want to give her any traffic. Yeah, I'm a sore loser. Fuck you.

Ask HolyJuan: What Shall I Take in My Suitcase?

Dear HolyJuan,

What shall i take in my suitcase? I have been thinking about this for a while and was hoping you might be able to shed some light on the subject.

Please help.

Thanks.

Warmest Regards,

Larry

Dear Larry,

Who uses a suitcase these days? Are you 100 years old? Is it a steamer or a trunk?

I suggest you throw that suitcase out and use a trash bag. Trash bags are better than suitcases for several reasons.

1. Price = free
They already have trash bags at the airport in the bottoms of the trash cans. This allows you to pack at the airport while waiting for your flight instead of doing it at home. I suggest a double bagging so that people will think that you have money to blow on trash bags.

2. Flexibility
When asked if your bag fits into the bag size detector at the airport, you can cram your trashbag into the device, with clothes and toiletries oozing into ever crack and crevice, ensuring that your beanbag sized bag will make it as carry-on.

3. Speed
When you have a trashbag thrown over your shoulder, the TSA attendants at security assumes you work at the airport and will let you right through to the front of the line. When the metal detector goes off, just say, “Dustpan.”

4. Odor Protection
Stinky clothes or cheese from the Duty Free shop? Buy odor protection bags for your trip back. I suggest the twitsty-tie so that you can get into and out of your bag multiple times when you need a snack or to smell again if your clothes really stink. Man, I love my own stink.

5. Security
If you leave your bag on the floor, no one will pick it up. No one will report it as a bomb. No one will look inside to steal your shit. Even the cleaning people won't touch it because the union forbids them from EVER touching anything outside the trash bins. The only people you need to concern yourself with are the people, like me, who are looking to throw their stuff in a trash bag. When I see you at the airport, I’ll give you a thumbs-up.

So, Larry, toss that suitcase. When you look at a trash bag from now on, I want you to say, “This is My Suitcase.”

Love and respectfully,

HolyJuan