Cashiers Are Idiots

One of the greatest things about being such a good looking man is that other people do things for me. Things that I don’t want to do.

Things like going grocery shopping.

Seriously, I can’t stand that shit. I hate every part of it: The slow shamble down the aisles, one after the other like a Lemming. The creaky shopping carts with one busted wheel defiantly rolling the wrong way. The old lady in front of me at the checkout who decides at the last minute she wants to pay by check, or Japanese Yen, or Moon rocks or some similar shit. The whole ordeal just grates on me.

So, like I said, I don’t shop for myself. I sit home and people shop for me. I highly recommend this.

In fact, if it wasn’t for my cat, I would never set one foot in a supermarket, ever.

You see, unfortunately for me, Friz has drawn the line on buying cat food. She is more than happy to take care of all the grocery-buying for House Slyde, but, as she puts it, “That damn cat is your responsibility. You found him, so you can feed him.”

So, what is a stud like myself, who hates supermarkets, to do?

I’ll tell ya what. Every two months, I go to the supermarket late at night (when its less crowded), and I buy a huge bag of kitty litter, and SIXTY cans of Fancy Feast cat food. Yeah, I said sixty. Then I haul ass to the checkout aisle, pay (in cash!), and high-tail it home, where I don’t have to think about making another supermarket trip for another 2 months.

I’ve been doing this for about 15 years now. EVERY 2 months like clockwork, I make ONE lightning-quick kamikaze run to the supermarket.

For such a quick trip, you might think that I couldn’t POSSIBLY get TOO annoyed by the experience, but you’d be dead fucking wrong.

How could such a seemingly innocuous trip still get my goat?

Well, there’s TWO reasons.

1) Without fail, the ancient old mummy behind the checkout will look at my mountain of cat food on the conveyor belt and inevitably warble out:

“Wow, that’s A LOT of cat food! How many cats do you have?”

Then I feel obligated to explain that no, I only have ONE cat, but I just don’t get to the supermarket too often, yadda yadda yadda. Then two minutes of aimless small talk ensues.

It was cute, oh, the first FOUR HUNDRED FUCKING TIMES it happened, but call me fickle, after that it started to get a tad old. As soon as I hear the old bat say “Wow..”, I just want to reach over the conveyer belt and punch her right in the bifocals before she can continue. One day, I will snap over it. Really.

2) Like I said, I buy 60 identical cans of the same food. That’s a lot of cans. So, to make things easier for the Good-Will-Hunting-Level intellect behind the counter, I stack the cans up into 12 identical stacks of 5 cans each.

12 stacks. 5 cans each stack. The same kind of can.

My third grade Math teacher taught me that I can figure out that the total number of cans is 12 times 5.

Maybe ONCE a year, I’m lucky enough to find an Einstein smart enough to swipe just ONE can, and then press a button on the register to multiply it by 60.

The REST of the year, I am forced to endure old crusty Mildred look at the stacks of cans, then at me, and frown at me like I just made her job harder. Then, she proceeds to take ONE CAN AT A TIME and swipe each one thru that fucking little laser scanner.

Each. Fucking. Can.

Seriously, it’s enough to make me just pop open a can right there and cram that mini-helping of beef giblets and gravy right down her dusty old throat.

A transaction that SHOULD take about 1 minute ends up taking closer to 10. I don’t think I’m asking a lot when I say that I prefer someone who can do elementary school math be my liason between myself and the establishment.

Sometimes it’s enough to make me weep on my short car ride home.




Am I just a hot tempered crazy Sicilian, or does shit like this drive anyone else to murder?

Are You Kidding Me?

So, apparently my wife thinks I’m a pedophile.

Let’s back up.

I’ve mentioned a few times how I am hooked on the reality show “High School Reunion”. They take a dozen people from a high school senior class from 20 years ago, throw them in a house in Hawaii for 3 weeks, and watch the drama ensue. Its true train-wreck TV, and I love it. I never miss an episode.

So 2 weeks ago, Friz and I were watching something on television when my DVR put up a pop-up message on the screen to announce that it was going to begin taping High School Reunion in 1 minute.

Friz looked at me, and said with a perplexed face:

“Why is THAT recording?”

“Why? Because I like it, that’s why.”

“You enjoy watching that?”

“Yes, I do. What’s the big deal?”

“Nothing, I guess. Watch whatever you want.”

I thought that the conversation was passing strange, but quickly forgot about it.

Cut to last week, when I’m laying on the couch watching the latest episode of HSR, when Friz came home from work.

“What are you watching?”

“High School Reunion”

“Again? Really?”

“Yeah, again, really. What’s your problem with this show?”

“ ‘I’ don’t have a problem.”

“Well, ‘I’ don’t either.”

“Whatever.”

Now, that conversation of course made me remember the previous week’s conversation. I sat there trying to figure out just that the Hell kind of problem Friz had with this damn show. It’s not like the show is all about setting homeless people on fire or anything (Note to self: pitch show to NBC called ‘Homeless BBQ’).

So, this past weekend, I was sitting down and enjoying the latest episode of High School Reunion, when Friz came home from wherever the Hell she goes to spend all my money.

“What are you watching?”

“High School Reunion”

“Again! What’s your problem?”

“My problem? What’s YOUR problem with this show?”

“My problem is that I don’t understand why you keep watching this show over and over again.”

“Over and over? What are you talking about? There’s a new episode every week.”

“New episode? No there’s not. It’s the same thing over and over again”.

“Over and over….?”

And that’s when it hit me.

She was confusing ‘High School Reunion’ with ‘High School Musical’.

My wife, who I’ve known for 15 years and is supposed to know me better than anyone else, ACTUALLY FUCKING BELIEVED that for the past month, I have been sitting home alone in the dark, watching a bunch of 13 year-old kids prance around singing the same stupid songs about high school, week after week. That I was just recording the same kiddie show, over and over again.

If true, that would make ME more than a little creepy. And quite frankly, NOW I’m more than a little creeped out thinking that SHE thought I’d be actually into watching that shit over and over.

It’s almost enough to make me want to throw out my Vanessa Hudgens lunchbox.

Almost.

On Being Prolific

Someone told me the other day that I should post here more often.

Sorry folks, I’d love to oblige, but that just ain’t gonna happen.

I long ago came to the conclusion that I was only ever going to post somthing on here only if it was something that I myself wouldn’t mind re-reading.

That pretty much means lots of stories about wee-wee’s and boobies, but hey, if you visit here more than once, then you already know what you’re getting yourself into.

Seriously, I can’t tell you guys how many posts I’ve written, and before I hit “Publish”, I took a look at what I’ve created and said to myself, “Sexy self, this is some boring shit. Who could possibly care enough to read through this drivel?”

When I write something about MYSELF, and re-reading it bores even ME to tears, then I like to think that in the past I have done the responsible thing and just scrapped the whole post.

Being a world-class cyber-celebrity like I am, I often just randomly jaunt through the blogosphere checking out new blogs that I stumble across.

You cannot freaking IMAGINE how many of them suck donkey bits.

Seriously… it’s pretty sad. Just because you OWN a blog, doesn’t mean you have to tell me every mundane part of your life. Too many people out there don’t understand the purpose of having a blog. They end up using it as their personal Twitter account, and it bores the rest of us to tears.

Here’s a good rule of thumb: If you just wrote a post about what you had for dinner, or how you discovered you were low on gas after taking little Cindy to daycare today, just save the world from reading your spam and hit “Delete”.

Let me say right now that I’m not speaking about any of the blogs on my blogroll to the right. I wouldn’t put them up there if I thought they sucked. On the contrary, each one of those puppies has gotten the “Slydesblog Seal of Approval”.

As for Slydesblog, through trial and error, I have discovered that I can usually spit out two articles a week. Three if I push it.

More than that and you’ll be forced to read about me re-arranging my underwear drawer. Who on Earth could possibly care about something like that?

(Thongs on the right, crotchless on the left, by the way).

What Every Father Wants To Hear

If you live anywhere near me right now, you are surrounded by snow.

A LOT of snow.

So much snow that most schools and offices got to shut down or have a delayed opening, at least ONE of the past two days.

My company apparently didn’t get the fucking memo.

Anyway, through my frustration with having to schlep my ass to work in this weather, I still managed to have some fun Wednesday night with Mini-Me, out in the snow.

He wanted to build a snowman. We built a kick-ass one. We even bought a snowman kit, complete with the buttons and eyeballs and fake carrot stick and all. He had a ball. I was going to take a picture of it, but as luck would have it, my digital camera died last night, so no pics for you until I get it charged.

After we build the best snowman ever, he wanted to have a snowball fight.

So there we were, throwing snowballs at each other, as the rest of my neighbors were out and about trying to shovel themselves out.

Everything was going swimmingly, until a badly lobbed throw by ME hit Mini-Me squarely in the Family Jewels.

My son, looked at his crotch, then looked at me. Then he did it again.

Crotch. Me. Crotch. Me.

Then, with tears in his eyes, he looked at me accusingly and SCREAMED…..

“YOU HURT MY PENIS!”

Before I could tell him to kindly lower his damn voice, he started running all over the lawn screaming his new mantra:

“YOU HURT MY PENIS! YOU HURT MY PENIS!”

I looked around to notice my entire neighborhood taking a break from their shoveling to watch the free entertainment unfolding on my lawn.

There really isn’t much else you can do at such a point, except to sit my ass down in the snow and wait for Child Protective Services to come along.

Thankfully, they haven’t showed up yet. Maybe they’re stuck in the blizzard.

Or maybe in their haste to get to my house, they drove too fast over a snowbank and hurt THEIR penises.

10 Things I’m Thinking About Right Now

I’ve come to realize that when I’m sick as a dog, the LAST thing I feel like doing is writing something for this blog.

At least, I don’t feel like writing ANYTHING that takes any real kind of effort.

So, I thought to myself, “Sexy Self, what kind of post should I write when I don’t want to put that much work into it?”

And my Sexy Self Replied, “Why don’t you just do another lame Bullet-Post?”

“ A Bullet-Post, eh? Egads, it just might be crazy enough to work!”

So, without much fanfare, here are literally the top 10 things that just popped into my head while I was writing this.

1) I am still giddy with excitement over winning the office Superbowl Pool. I just got the money this morning, and I’ve already spend about 2 times what I just won on shit that I didn’t really need. Hey, I’m not impulsive…. I’m just trying to stimulate the economy!

2) Lately I’ve been obsessed with Wikapedia. In the middle of the day, I’ll stop whatever I’m working on and go there, and just look up some random celebrity or event that just happened to flash across my mind. “Hey, what the fuck is Tootie from the Facts of Life up to these days? I NEED TO KNOW RIGHT NOW!” (p.s. She’s doing well, by the way)

3) I noticed this morning that I am up to 99 followers. All morning I keep refreshing the page, hoping to see ONE OF YOU jump in and make it 100. I’m not sure why I’m obsessing on that, but it’s been driving me batty all morning. Please help put me out of my OCD misery and give me an even 100 followers. Of course, now that I’m looking at it, if TWO of you start following me, thereby pushing me to 101, I’m not going to be able to relax until it gets to 200! So, call your friends!

4) In that same vein, you might not have gleaned this from my posts, but I’m SLIGHTLY vain. I demand a lot of attention. This morning, after I looked at my number of followers, I scrolled down and noticed that no one has left me a phone message in almost 8 months. That just isn’t good for my self-esteem one bit. I’m fragile like that.

5) I can’t figure out people who USED to come here and comment on my blog all the time, but don’t come around anymore, even though I see them still commenting on other blogs. What the Hell is up with that shit? Did I suddenly start sucking more than I used to? No way, Jose! I’m pretty sure I’m at the same level of ‘Suck’ as I’ve always been. Maybe I need to stop saying ‘Suck’ so much?

6) I just got Valkyrie from Netflix. I’m about half-way through it. I like the movie well enough, but it’s REALLY pissing me off that Tom Cruise isn’t even TRYING to put on a German accent. He’s just talking in his normal voice. I half expect him to put on some shades and say “Hitler, you can be my wingman anytime!” or start sliding across the floor in his socks and underwear.

7) Sometimes I think about doing video blogs. Back in the day, I did I few of them, and it was kinda fun. And Lord knows the internet needs to see more of me. It makes everyone happy. I guess the main reason I don’t do them more often is that I’m just too damn lazy. It takes much more work to record myself and upload the video than it does to just type something and hit “post”.

8) “24” is starting to bore the shit out of me this season. It’s not “bad”, really….. It’s just “not exciting”. Maybe I’m just getting too used to seeing Keifer Sutherland have a cliff-hanger-inducing emergency every 55 minutes for it to phase me much anymore.

9) Speaking of Boring, me and Mini-Me sat down and watched Dr. Doolittle this weekend. I hadn’t seen it since I was a kid, and all I remembered was that I loved the Hell out of that movie when I was young. Holy Shit did that movie suck! I was bored to tears. What the Hell was I thinking when I was 7? Did I have no standards? No sense of quality? I guess it must be a ‘kid’ thing, because Mini-Me loved it.

10) Making this list was harder than I thought it would be. Yes, making this my #10 is kinda cheating. Bite me.

Adventureland

One of the great things about being sick is getting your temperature taken analy.

Wait, that’s not right. Let me try that again.

One of the great things about being sick is that you get to stay home from work and watch a lot of movies from Netflix.

Out of everything I watched yesterday in my fever-induced haze, the one that impressed me the most was Adventureland.

The problem is, I’m not sure if it was REALLY a good movie, or if I’m just extremely bias towards it.

A bit of explanation.

Adventureland is the story of a young man, just finishing high school in the Summer of 1987, who is forced to take a shitty Summer job at a local amusement park in order to make enough cash to follow his dream of living in Manhattan. It is basically a coming-of-age story that follows this young man as he finds everything from his first love, to his place in the world, and his future.

In the movie, Adventureland is a fictional park located in the suburbs outside of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

But the ACTUAL park that writer Greg Matola REALLY worked at in the summer of 87 is right here on Long Island (edit: fixed the link!). It’s actually about 3 miles from where I’m sitting right now. You may even remember hearing me talking about it a few times before.

It’s the place where I got to first base with Long Island Lolita Amy Fisher, for starters.

Anyway, Adventureland has been a Long Island attraction for decades. As a misguided teen, I spent MANY wayward nights hanging out at that park.

A few of those wayward nights just happened to have taken place in the Summer of 1987.

It’s no surprise that this movie really struck a chord with me. From the sets, to the way everyone dressed, to the aimless, trying-to-find-themselves attitudes of the kids all stuck working there that Summer, the film just really resonated with me, and paralleled how I felt about life and my future during that lazy Summer.

You may remember hearing about the movie when it premiered last Summer, but more than likely, you didn’t. The movie pretty much tanked financially. I think it was mostly because it was billed as “From the Writer of Superbad”, and it wasn’t that type of movie AT ALL. It wasn’t an outrageous comedy. It was a subtle one. One that has stayed with me since yesterday, refusing to let me stop thinking about it.

Everyone in this movie was spectacular. From Jesse Eisenberg, who has impressed me since his star turn in Zombieland, to Ryan Reynolds, to some very funny supporting roles by SNL alums Kristen Wiig and Bill Hader as the park owners, everything about this film worked for me.

And no one surprised me more than Kristen Stewart, of Twilight fame. She was absolutely REAL in this movie, and I loved her in it. I may just have to finally watch those Twilight movies after all, now.

Ok, that’s enough rambling about a movie that most of you haven’t seen, and probably never will.

I just wanted you all to know that this film grabbed me and threw me into a time machine and sent me back to a part of my life that I really wasn’t prepared to visit again. And it did it very well. While watching it, I felt that if I looked VERY hard, I might be able to spot an 18 year-old Slyde, in the background, playing one of the carnival games trying to win a prize for my girlfriend, while wondering just what the Hell I was going to do with my life.

I can’t ask much more than that from something that took up 90 minutes of my day.

Lost For The Last Time

No, this ISN’T a post about me buying a new GPS…..

This post should serve as a friendly warning to all you fine people out there….

A warning to not call me tonight, or stop by my house, or write me an email, or even THINK about me too hard, or basically not to do ANYTHING that could in any way interfere with me watching tonight’s season premiere of the final season of Lost.

Since this show hit the air a few years ago, from the first episode really, I have been completely enamored with it. I desperately feed on each tiny 1-hour morsel of goodness they produce each week much like a junkie with a bad habit.

Quite simply, as the show has continued, and the characters have progressed, I have fallen in love with these guys. I will truly be bummed when this show ends its run.

And, as much as I’m looking forward to the new season that starts tonight, I’m also dreading it with feelings of trepidation. I just don’t see any way that they can resolve the story in a way that will amount to anything less than a letdown for me.

I guess I’ve just set the bar way too damn high, and I know it.

And even though I may ultimately be disappointed with the outcome, I still cannot WAIT to get there. All of these characters, each written so well, deserve a resolution.

So do we.

So, how did we leave off last year, and what questions should this season finally answer for us?

-When last we left the island, Jack, Kate, Hurley, and Sawyer were able to detonate the bomb, finally stopping the island from jumping through time in the past. Or did they?

-In a final act of selflessness, we lost one of the Island’s hotties, Juliette. Never again will I see that sexy, crooked smile of hers and think to myself how living on that island might not be so bad after all.



-The coffin was finally opened to reveal Locke’s body, seemingly proving that he has been dead for the past season, and NOT resurrected by the island as we were led to believe. If this is true, then WHO is the “Imposter Locke” that has been barking out orders lately?

-Imposter Locke ended the season by killing Jacob. Why did he need to take out the Island’s head honcho, and what does it mean for the rest of the island?

-Where has Claire been all this time?

-Where the hell have the other 30 or so losties been during all the time the main dudes have been jaunting through time all of last season? Did they all get killed by the flaming arrow attack at the start of last season, or have they too been hiding out in the jungle with Bernard and Rose?

-And of course, what the Hell is this island, really? The number one theory that has been bandied about from the first season is that everyone from Oceanic Flight 815 died in the original crash, and that the island is some form of Purgatory, but from the beginning, the producers have swore that this is not the case.

I could not be more excited about seeing how this all wraps up.

So, anyone out there have any theories? Speak up!