Reminds me of another wisecrack earnestly delivered but dead on arrival: "You give the aspirin a head-ache." Steve's 2004 telling of that tale is priceless. My addendum is here.

Interestingly, I had the boys at the local barbershop yesterday. Conversation ranged from the giant shoelace factory in southwest Ohio (don't ask) to Grandpa's Cheese Barn in Ashland (definitely worth a post of its own).

Every comedian must be aware of his audience. Cookie was correct, it was indeed a clever exhibition of wordplay. I have those unsure moments quite frequently. Normally, I will call my cousin Kristie and ask her opinion. She is the ultimate barometer because I can always count on her to laugh. Which reminds me. Not too long ago, I entered in to an ongoing conversation between Jennie's friends about a local Mexican restaurant called "Rocco's Tacos". As they were debating the different appetizers and margaritas, I quietly interjected into their discussion "I would like to open a competing restaurant right next door and name it "Rocky's Cockies" " Now, there are countless euphemisms for excrement, almost all of which funny, but "cocky and doody" have just never been as popular with the general public as they are inside the Fatone and Mastandrea households. I was of course beaming inside, but her friends were not only unimpressed, I'm pretty sure they were disgusted. For the record, Kristie laughed....and she laughed because she is an excellent judge of comedy....and because cocky is always funny. Just like farts are always  funny.

I'm not sure how it came up, but I told an old story at the dinner table the other night. Like most of my tales, it is oft-told. About 20 years ago now, while I worked at BNY, our secretary had spent much of the day telling us the details of the truck she and her husband were purchasing and how they were arguing over the color. Or something. As she regaled a small group of coworkers I made the "oh will you shut up already" face and her response to me was a friendly "tell it to my husband." To which I said: "Why? I have no truck with him."

And I thought it was funny! But everyone else thought it was not! "Of course you don't, she's the one who's buying the truck."

Anyway, I retold the story the other night and Cookie started to laugh. I was skeptical. "You're just being polite," I challenged. And he said, "No, truck, as in quarrel."

At which point I pounded the surface of the dining room table (yeah, that table) and proclaimed him a chip off the old block. Then I remembered the opening scenes of Revenge of the Nerds where the nerdy dad drives the nerdy son to school and now I'm wondering if I've erred.

Indeed, the time has come to unearth this buried treasure and display its majestic beauty for all those understand its precious value. Yes, the macaroni dish is overflowing with tales and legends which need to be shared...so lets jump right into it.

Has anyone noticed that my father really likes to call me Promo? No one seems to know if it is short for a longer name. I recently approached him on it, asked him "What the hell is promo?" He laughed and said "you". 
Recently, my parents received a tur-duck-en in the mail from Berea. In honor of my brother-in-laws 29th birthday, we prepared it. It produced exactly the sort of commentary one would expect. I offered an alternative hybrid meat idea for Passover...gefilte fish stuffed with duck and chicken..."a Gerfucken". However, Joe Fatone Sr. always steals the show...he suggested we send John and Alane a "Cat-bat-rat". 

Finally, I've decided I need to invest in more Luche Libre masks....I have no idea why.

Along with 2011, our Christmas vacation is also drawing to its end. Was a good time -- meat puppies being the new tradition, along with old favorites like loud music and incessant bickering (da chimpz take care of that end of things).

I did work down some of my reading list, but not much. Back-issues of magazines mostly. Forget the books; my attention span cannot handle the strain of... whatever.

But we did make time for some creative exploits. A colleague snagged me a groovy Taj Mahal on his recent trip to India, so my home crew had to have at it. I think the resulting image captures perfectly just how things would turn out if the Mastandreas ever trekked to a major tourist site.

Why do I look so triumphant? Because it's Halloween: that night of mirth and mischief when my young sons pound the pavement to accumulate candies that I will shamelessly steal from them until they are all gone.

I'm like the government that way!


I should-a pulled down the gorilla mask for this shot. I'm gonna go grab another chocolate bar right about now.

Y'know, this blog needs an update. Perhaps some photos:

Yeah, we've changed.

Gotta get back to blogging now that the holidays are closing in. Facebook is so blowjhinski.

Meat Puppies. Sort of a cross between meatloaf and hush puppies. Not sure why we had to do this but as I drove with Da Chimpz to the mall yesterday we decided we needed to cook something different for dinner. Corndogs were too hackneyed a concept, but the idea of them made me want to deep fry something. We considered batter-frying a whole meatloaf but that seemed, er, impractical. And we weren't going to make a meat-block gingerbread house like that guy on Youtube ("Is this heaven? It's snowing bacon.")

So, a compromise: many miniature meatloaf sticks dipped into a cornmeal batter and browned in a peanut-oil jacuzzi.

Yeah, looked very alarming in the batter bowl; but once plucked from the hot oil we knew it was going to be tasty. Rammed each one with a wood skewer (everything tastes better when you put it on a stick) and even had some veggies on sticks roasting down below.

Dinner on sticks. Yum.

After that we did some Monster Truck racing on the Wii -- the new version is very difficult. So we put that aside pretty quickly and got back to the work of viewing every video available in the Netflix database.

The stockings are indeed hung. What a busy week, and today no different. After a last-minute trawl through the Kmarts I headed around the corner so we could properly deck the halls of our neighborhood. Take paper bags, sand, votive candles, and a whole lot of Christmas cheer, then mix it all together; the result is a West Bridge neighborhood standing tall as the star rises in the east.

Sweet.

But that's not all! We just dined on the almost-traditional fish feast of Christmas eve. "Almost" because we only did three varieties (not the seven that proper compliance with protocol would require). Would have been four but the salmon stayed in the fridge. And Da Chimpz liked the octopus -- bonus. And lemme tell ya: you put garlic, fresh parsley, and some sweet onion in a food mill then dump it out into a pan that is searing scallops in hot butter and you will come close to performing a feat of magic. I totally have to make that more often.

The third fish was tilapia -- just a couple of filets I got as a fall-back in case Mojo decided he didn't like anything else. But that little maniac is full of surprises. To say the least.

As is Cookie. He was singing along to a carol yesterday, inserting his own words (I hate when people do that):

"Happy Holiday in Cambodia..."

Santa better get here soon. I'm just sayin'.

We're getting into vacation mode here at Berea Rose. Christmas vacation. Got the tree lit, the boys home, and the inflatables down from the attic. Right now the Grinch is standing tall out front and the creche is dominating the living room. Alane can't stand the thing.

What a busy week. New job for Alane, holiday prep, lots of life maintenance projects to tend to (some vacation -- I'm busier than ever). But all is good. Well, unless you count the food at Golden Corral which the boys seem to love but which I found to be... wow.

Anyway, more later on our Christmas marathoning.