Why Dex Has Me Kicking and Screaming

I’m very happily aware and fully engaged with the national do not call list but the list I’m really pining to get on is the ‘national please don’t send me any more freaking analog yellow/white pages list’. In the short time that the misses and I have lived at our present abode we have received no less than four shipments totaling at least a dozen volumes of these old model information dinosaurs. I can’t even remember the last time I had or wanted to use the Yellow Pages. Actually, come to think of it I had trouble finding a door prop for my back door Sunday, the wind kept slamming it shut. A heavy stack of Yellow Pages would have worked nicely for that. But for quick and easy access to information? Not a chance. This weekends delivery was a four volumes set. It included a Minneapolis White Pages, A Minneapolis Yellow Pages, a Twin Cities wide directory, and a local Edina compendium. Various large refrigerator magnets adorn each cover for products I would never ever want to buy; does the world really need more refrigerator magnet spam? Oh, and just for the record, we do not live in Edina! Luckily the volumes are bundled together in a sturdy plastic bag with a handle, making it easy for me to carry them from my door stoop out to the back alley for recycling. What a waste.

This weekend was busy with large life events. Saturday there was the possibility and potential for the big trifecta: a funeral, a baby shower, and a wedding – like watching a whole life time in a a brief 24 hour period. Driving up to the wedding reception, which was being held at some swank private golf club, my left front tire blew out. It didn’t go flat, it literally disintegrated and flew apart like something you’d see coming off an 18 wheeler cruising down the Interstate. Now I’m no stranger to changing a tire, but there was the added challenge of swapping tires while keeping my silk tie, shirt and suit from being sullied by dirt, oil and axle grease. I was hoping that if I pulled the change off without getting so much as a spot of dirt on me that I might catch the eye of someone high up in the ranks of the golf club and that maybe I might earn a free year membership for my display of utilitarian classiness (see: MacGyver meets James Bond).

Sunday, I had to go get two new front tires for the car. The service guy said it would take two hours. Hmmm…how can a guy kill two hours easily? Ah ha! How about that movie theater over there? I need something that starts right now and isn’t too long. Let’s see here…Star Wars? Nope, doesn’t start for half hour. Hitchhikers Guide to The Galaxy? Nope started 40 minutes ago. How about Kicking and Screaming? What, it started ten minutes ago and the previews are just ending? Sold! One please.

Movies are a funny thing. Had I actually ventured out on a Friday or Saturday night and made a date of seeing Kicking and Screaming, well then I would have been woefully disappointed. But when the price is matinee and all you ask of a movie is that it kills almost two hours before you have to go pick up your car, then Kicking and Screaming becomes quite pleasant and enjoyable. Funny even. I think I was the only one in the theater who was not a parent or a ten year old kid wearing a soccer jersey.

Also, a sweet stunt commercial, an Illustrated history of anti-tobacco campaigns, a video of John Deere Ballet and on a sad note, the voice of Tony the Tiger passes away.