Bye bye wordy

It's Tuesday, or as our British friends call it, Tuesday. I wrote about some problems that people have with words yesterday, and I'd like to continue to with trend. I already wrote a bit about typos and words not looking right after staring at them for too long, so I'm branching out into two new categories today: Forgotten Word Syndrome and The Almost Typo.

Nearly 3 out of every 4 Americans suffer from occasional Forgotten Word Syndrome. FWS is most often found in men and women over 40, who call it by its street name, the "Senior Moment." People planning on playing board games should avoid FWS at all cost. Should a word remain forgotten for over four hours, consult your dictionary immediately.

Before I give you an account of my personal struggle with FWS, I want to differentiate it from the classic mental block. For example, my mom can't remember a certain singer's name. She knows he was in the band Genesis and that he had an album called "No Jacket Required," but she has the hardest time remembering his name. (When you finally get it, Mom, post it in the comments section. Until then, we'll all be pointing and laughing at you.) This is different from FWS, because FWS strikes quickly and without any warning at all. Allow me to explain.

My junior year of high school, I was on the phone with my old friend Missy. I had just stated something very obvious, and she sarcastically responded, "Oh gee, you picked up on that, eh?" Playing along, I said, "Yeah, I'm really ob..." I stopped. "Hold on," I continued, "I can't think of the word. Observ...sive? Observatory?" She found this lapse hilarious, until she suddenly couldn't remember the word either. "Oh shit," she said, mainly because she couldn't make fun of me if she was in the same boat. We sat there on the phone for another ten minutes, desperately trying to think of every suffix imaginable. Well, she did at least. I kept saying "observsive" and "observatory" over and over. Eventually (she swore she didn't cheat), she yelled out, "Observant!" I don't know how it happened, but that word temporarily left my vocabulary. I'm now a FWS surviver, and while I take strength in that, I don't want anyone else to have to experience that feeling of helplessness.

The Almost Typo is a different ailment with almost more serious consequences. The Almost Typo happens when there's a slip of a finger in an important email or letter, but the error isn't caught by spellchecker because it's also a word in English. Therefore, it's only caught by proofreading, which may or may not happen depending on time constraints. I've had two experiences with The Almost Typo in my life, and each would have caused some problems. The first occurred when I was writing to a very high ranking university administrator to ask a favor of her. I wrote it carefully, did the spellcheck thing, and was about to hit "send" when something in the first line caught my eye at the very last second. I had typed, "I've noticed how busty you are this time of year." Needless to say, I took out the offending extra letter and then super-carefully re-read every single word to make sure it was the only error of its kind. That would've been bad, but since I caught it, it remains in The Almost Typo category.

The other experience with The Almost Typo wouldn't have affected me as much as the good friend I was trying to help with something. My friend Sara had just completed her required hours to be a licensed massage therapist. The people who certify such things needed some reference letters before the process was officially over. She asked me if I could write her a letter. I had never received a massage from her, so I said that maybe I wasn't the right person. "No, it's not about that, they just want to know that I'm a moral person who wouldn't do inappropriate sexual things as a masseuse." That made sense, and since I'd known her for a few years and supervised her in a position, I felt comfortable writing that. I opened with how I knew Sara and for how long. Then I wrote, "Through the years, I've known Sara to be a fine and oral citizen." Yikes. I had already printed it out, signed it, and was in the process of folding it to mail away when I gave it one last glance. The word "oral" caught my eye, and fortunately, I re-read that sentence instead of just continuing on. At the very least, I may have received an awkward follow-up phone call on that.

Hey, you know what that brings us too, boys and girls? Guess the Fakey time! I'm pretty sure that the majority of you won't know the actor Jon Gries by name. However, he's been in some pretty big things. Recently, he was Uncle Rico in "Napoleon Dynamite." He was also in "Get Shorty," if you're familiar with that movie. More might know him as Rusty, the homeless man who stole the rickshaw in a "Seinfeld" episode. To me though, he was always be Lazlo Hollyfeld who lived in the closet in "Real Genius." To me, that's probably the most underrated movie of the entire 80s, and I should devote much more time to it in a future post. In any case, below are 11 movies. Jon Gries appears in 10 of them, and I made up one of them. Your mission is to Guess the Fakey and post a comment with your guess. I will reveal the answer in this week's Follow Up Friday. Here goes:

Hippy-Go-Lucky
Four Eyes and Six-Guns
Bicentennial Curious
Number One with a Bullet
Pucker Up and Bark Like a Dog
More American Graffiti
Kill Me Again
Ed and His Dead Mother
The Sasquatch Dumpling Gang
Joysticks
Sledge: The Untold Story

Have a great day, everyone. Remember to write to ptklein@gmail.com with anything you think I might find interesting. Questions, comments, bumper stickers, moronic actions of our fellow man - anything at all. They can each become posts or segments for FUFs. I'm not quite observatory enough on my own, so I appreciate the help. Observsive?

On principal alone

Wise men and women throughout existence have lamented the lack of "sure things" in this world. There are the standard exceptions of death and taxes, but even those are questionable (see Presley, Elvis and Capone, Al, respectively). However, since I can remember, there has been an absolute and constant force in my life: On the same day of every year, my mother will say the following words: "Mrs. Bailey called." That day is April 1.

Mrs. Bailey was the principal of the elementary school my brother and I attended. I'm pretty sure that this happened the same way every year. My mom probably was going about her day, then saw the date and realized that it was April Fools' Day. Not having planned any kind of a prank, so went for the easy but scary premise of trouble in school.

I imagine it must have gotten us the first time, but I have no recollection of that. The only thing I remember is that my brother and I would be playing something and my mom would walk in with a solemn look on her face. "Boys, Mrs. Bailey called today," she'd say. "Ha ha ha," we'd sarcastically laugh. "Very funny, Mom." The thing is, she kept going.

I'd drive myself home from high school and walk in to see my mom looking upset. "What's wrong?" "Mrs. Bailey just called," she'd say. Or I'd be away at college and have a message from my mom saying she just got off the phone with Mrs. Bailey and I was in big trouble. I think it's safe to say that she "got me" more often when Mrs. Bailey wasn't my principal than when she was.

I was a really good kid in elementary school. If Mrs. Bailey really had really called, it might've been to relay good news, like I won some award or something. (I actually did win an award there once, and it was named after the school's founder, Edna Mae Dye. Turns out, Edna Did Dye, so her name was much more non-committal than it needed to be.)

So a couple of years ago, April 1 was coming up, and I wanted to have the perfect comeback for my mom's announcement that Mrs. Bailey called. I kept coming up with variations of, "Look, it was a one-time lapse of judgment that didn't mean anything to me. Tell her to get off my back already!" They were good, but I wanted something better. Here's what I ended up doing:

First, I created a new email address with something like "mrsbailey2000" as my i.d. Then, on the morning of April 1, I sent my mom and email that read something like this:

"Dear Mrs. Klein,
I know this is well overdue, but my sponsor is encouraging me to make amends with those whom I have wronged in the past. Please hear me out, even though you would have every right to ignore my attempt at reconciliation. Mrs. Klein, I apologize for not giving your son Peter first prize for his Valley Forge diorama. It was clearly the best project there, but I had put my own interests ahead of those of the students. Mandy Sommers' mom offered me cash in exchange for her daughter's victory, and I took it. To be frank, I was a whore for money. I was living from fix to fix at the time, and that cash enabled me to score a gnarly amount of prime angel dust. In my own mixed-up logic, I thought I was helping to keep myself sane, when (as I've recently learned in the program) the exact opposite was true.

Please know that Peter did everything right to win that first prize. He just had the unfortunate luck of running into a judge with a hard-core jonesing for some quality shit. Peter was the funniest, most intelligent, and downright sexiest student to ever step foot on our campus, and I will never fully forgive myself for betraying him. Please let him know how sorry I am, and if you think it would be wise, you can forward this along. Once again, I'm sorry that the drug-induced hell that was my life spilled into yours. I humbly ask for your forgiveness.

Peace out homey,
Mrs. Bailey"

My mom called me a couple of hours later. "You'll never guess who wrote me," she began. She only got about 3 or 4 more words out before she broke character and started laughing. Mission accomplished.

I still get a call every April Fools' Day saying that Mrs. Bailey called, including this past weekend. Now, my responses are usually something like, "Will you tell her to please leave me alone? She's caused our family enough pain already. Oh, unless she's dealing again - I'm totally running low on my stash." Ah, drug jokes: the gifts that keep on giving.

Before I go, I thought I'd throw a little Guess the Fakey out there. Just one actor, and just one made-up title. The rest are all actual movies he was in. Post your guesses in the comments section, and I'll post the answer in this week's FUF.

George Clooney:

Combat High
Knights of the Kitchen Table
Journey to Hanali
Red Surf
Rewrite for Murder
Predator: The Concert
Without Warning: Terror in the Towers
Return to Horror High
Curdled
Leatherheads
White Jazz

Have a good Monday, everyone, and write to ptklein@gmail.com with anything that might help me stretch my thoughts into an appropriate length for a post.

FUF #7

Good morning, everyone. It's Friday, and here's some FU for thought:

First off, let's get to the Monday's Guess the Fakey answers. We succeeded in getting to double-digit comments, but it was actually a little bittersweet. Sacky Christi accused me of making up most of the names, including "Doctor Franken" for Teri Garr. Well, Christi, I'm ashamed of you for jumping to such a heinous conclusion. Ms. Garr was in fact in "Young Frankenstein" in 1974 as well as "Doctor Franken" in 1980. I didn't change any of the names, with one minor exception. Dom DeLuise's "The Silence of the Hams" was an alternate title for a film primarily called "Il Silenzio dei Prosciutti." Without further ado, here are the fakeys:

Teri Garr: The Heaviest Feather
Dom DeLuise: To Eat His Own
Robert Loggia: Gun! Shoot! Run! Die!

So "Charlie Horse Music Pizza," "The Ninth Configuration," and "Won Ton Ton, The Dog Who Saved Hollywood" are all real titles. No one guessed more than one correctly, so I consider that a victory for me. I'll get you back for your attempted libel, Sacky Christi, just you wait.

Car Watch!
Before I get to stickers, plates, and frames, I have a little story. I was driving to work yesterday, and some dude totally cut me off out of nowhere. I started to get angry at him, then saw the Lakers license plate frame and let it go. It all happened without any thought, so I must be a true fan to let egregious driving errors slide like that.

Saw a license plate frame the other day that made me laugh: Don't Hate Me...Because I'm LUSCIOUS! Yep, with the all-caps and everything. When I passed her, I was obligated to look at the driver, but that just confused me. I had thought "LUSCIOUS" and "even mildly attractive" would go together, but not in this case. I don't hate her, but I don't not hate her because of her lusciousness. (Go ahead and diagram that sentence, Mrs. Dunlop.)

I saw a nice twist on a bumper sticker that is worthy of mentioning. A pickup truck with "Will Fish for Food" on it. I believe he will. It's not often I smile from a play on a homeless person's sign, but this did it.

Rockabye wrote in after seeing a plate that said "1FRKY(heart symbol)R." More power to you man, but is that really the only thing you want other drivers to know about you? The answer has to be "Yes!" right?

Next, I saw this sign at the Coffee Bean near my work and had to take a picture of it:

I take back my earlier challenge and re-issue it: Diagram that sentence, Mrs. Dunlop!

I thought of something while I was writing about working at the pizza place, but couldn't find where to slip it in, so it goes in my FUF piece: I said for a few years that I wanted to some day open a pizza place just so I could call it, "Pete's-a-Pizza" with the slogan, "We Toss 'Em, They're Awesome." I never really intended on doing it, but it was sitting there, ready to be used should a road take me there. Then one day years ago, in the middle of nowhere on some road trip, I see a pizza place using that slogan in big letters on their neon sign. I really thought that one would be mine until I did something with it, but I should've listened to Darwin and used it or suffer the consequences. That's not quite as catchy, is it?

Two last things: One, my co-worker's parents' dog is at a kennel while they're on vacation, and it's called "Barkingham Palace." I love it. Totally warrants a mention in my book. Or my blog. Yeah, probably my blog. I don't have a book. Maybe I can turn these posts into a book though, and then I'll be a liar. A retroactive liar, but a liar nonetheless.

Sacky Christi sent my lonely inbox an email with some anagrams of her name. She listed some with her full name and some with just her nickname and no middle name. With the middle name, I think the best one was "Unethical heresy in hatred." Without her middle name, I think "Chesty Hitler Hair" was the best, although I'd probably change it to "Hitler-y Chest Hair."

Then she said something very interesting: "Never gonna give up the middle name." She hadn't written it in the email, but I take that as a challenge. Excuse me for a moment as I systematically cross off the letters from her first and last name...Well, I'm not sure if "Christi" is short for "Christine" or "Christina." I chose the former, leaving me with just a few lettes. To me, the answer is clear, but I won't post it here because no one wants to incur the wrath of Sacky Christi.

Still, let that be a lesson to all of you - if you call me a liar, I may try to find out your middle name. I know that's harsh, but hopefully it acts as a deterrent.

Have a fantabulous weekend, gentle readers. If you enjoyed the Guess the Fakey game, please either email ptklein@gmail.com or comment somewhere so I know if I should do more of those. Thanks as always for reading.

It's game time!

Bold Prediction Time! Gentle readers, together we are going to make UOPTA history here today. This is hands-down the most interactive post yet, and we're going to break the comment barrier. In 81 previous posts, I've never received more than 7 comments on one. In fact, the two times that there were 7, only 5 were from people not named Peter Klein. Today though, that all changes. Buckle up, and then get ready to type.

By now, you've most likely come to realize that I do strange things with my group of friends. Often they are born from the unpleasant marriage of overactive imaginations and complete boredom. Sometimes that marriage doesn't produce the best offspring. For example, my fifth period class in 9th grade was a very boring algebra class in which the teacher repeated everything several times. Dusty had a different boring class at the same time, so we would write each other notes and then hand them to each other in the hall on the way to sixth period. I got in the habit of drawing a comic for him every day. Being a young teen boy, I made a superhero named Sphincter Man, the Contracting Muscle of Justice. He battled different venereal diseases and occasionally people we knew. With his body completely covered by sphincters, he could "swallow" bullets and then "spit" them back out at bad guys. What made it all worse (or better) was the fact that I'm horribly inept at drawing. So as you can see, boredom isn't always a good thing for my mind.

A few years back though, Dusty and I were again in that situation frequently, so we invented a game via email. This time, I think we actually did quite well. It's name: Guess the Fakey. It's very simple. One of us picks an actor or actress, then emails the other a list of movies that the person has been in. However, one of the titles is made up. It's the other person's job to guess which one without cheating. We had a great time with this, and I must say we got pretty good at coming up with the fake names after a while. It's been years since either of us has sent a challenge to the other (it's his turn, by the way), so I thought I'd introduce the game to my gentle readers.

For each of the three actors below, there are 10 real movie titles and one fake one. I limited it to ten, but there were plenty more that could've been included as well. Here is your mission: read through the list, then post a comment with your three guesses. As far as breaking records goes, that's not too bad at all, right? Here we go!

Teri Garr

A Taste of Jupiter
Life Without Dick
Save the Rabbits
Won Ton Ton, The Dog Who Saved Hollywood
The Whole Shebang
Honky Tonk Freeway
Doctor Franken
The Heaviest Feather
Kabluey
Half a Dozen Babies
Aliens for Breakfast


Dom DeLuise

Bongee Bear and the Kingdom of Rhythm
To Eat His Own
The Charlie Horse Music Pizza
The Brainiacs.com
An All Dogs Christmas Carol
Shari’s Passover Surprise
Wholly Moses!
The Silence of the Hams
Who is Harry Kellerman and Why is He Saying Those Terrible Things About Me?
Only with Married Men
Almost Pregnant


Robert Loggia

White Mile
Cop Hater
Elfego Baca: Six Gun Law
The Ninth Configuration
Flatfoot in Egypt
S.O.B.
The Ferret
Gaby: A True Story
Lifepod
Joe Torre: Curveballs Along the Way
Gun! Shoot! Run! Die!

Now comment away, gentle readers. Let's see if we can get this bad boy up to double digits. It gets tough to find people who have been in a lot of obscure movies, but it's a fun challenge to have. Who knows, if you like this feature, maybe it can become a regular thing. (I almost wrote "thang" there for some reason, and I couldn't tell you why.) I'll never know unless you post a comment though, and I hate being uninformed.

Have a good day, and as always, please send any thoughts, suggestions, questions, irritations, or observations to ptklein@gmail.com. Oh, and I must warn you ahead of time: My lovely wife left on Saturday to go out of town for work and a mini vacation. She's a wonderful filter for my ideas and has a good sense of what is and isn't appropriate for me to share. I don't know what I'm writing about for the next week plus, but if I cross the line at all, it's totally her fault. I'm glad you see it that way too.

**I will post a comment with the correct answers tomorrow morning, so be sure to check back**

EDIT: On second thought, I'm going to wait until the end of the week to post the answers. I want to allow enough time to get the guesses up before the grand reveal.