After work yesterday, I had to make a quick run to the supermarket.  Actually, to call it a supermarket is far too complimentary.  This is strictly a grocery store.  A ghetto one, at that.  Nothing super about it, except for the fact that it is home to Quincy’s first Starbucks.  Sure, there is a newer, nicer, bigger second Starbucks a mile away, but the one at the ghetto Star Market will always be the first.  The Starbucks in the Star Market is like a too-good-to-be-true oasis.  You forget where you are until you turn around and instantly feel like you’ve been cast in Good Times.  Dy-no-mite?  Not exactly.

I keep it real and shop at this ghetto grocery store most of the time, but only because it’s right down my street and I’m often too lazy to drive the extra 2.5 miles to the glorious Super (and yes, it is super) Stop & Shop.  Also, the Star Market is adjacent to the Brooks Pharmacy, complete with full beer, wine, and liquor selection and home of the overly tanned, but friendly older cashier I have mentioned before.

Well I thought I was keeping it real by shopping at this blue collar, ghetto grocery store until I met Mr. Mouthwash last night.  As I exited the store and was walking to my car, I saw a middle-aged man in front of me rear back and take a vicious swig of something.  I mean, he nearly gave himself whiplash.  I glanced over at his left hand to see his spirit of choice.  At first, I thought my eyes were deceiving me, but I looked again and sure enough it was Listerine.  Citrus flavored Listerine in that unmistakable bottle.  But, hey, who am I to judge the difference between $5.00 Listerine and $15.00 Schnapps?  Mr. Mouthwash was just keeping it real.

So, I was poking through some of the search terms that people use to get to the site. So many Arrested Development references, I love it!

Top Search Terms that people used to get to The Diatribe:
August: “Buster Boys Linuses” – My Personal Favorite. Go Ahead, type it into Google.

July: “Digital Casserole”
June: “Bonnaroo Backroads”
May: “dsm-iv never-nudes”

And 1 person came to diatribe searching for Dougie’s Going Deep. And in honor of that one person, I give you this fantastic link: A day in the life of Doug Mirabelli.

A couple of weeks ago, I was desperate for an afternoon snack and my desk supply had run out, so I hit up the office vending machine.  Considering the mark-up on those things, I thought $0.60 for some Goldfish wasn’t so bad.  I love Goldfish.  Love them.  My tastebuds are experiencing a whole renaissance with them that I usually enjoy every ten years or so.  As soon as I begin to get sick of them, I drop them like a bad habit and wait for the urge to strike again in ten years.  I got back to my desk, opened the bag, and popped a couple in my mouth, only to think, ‘wait a second, these don’t taste right.’  Sure enough, the freshness date had been one year prior.  Yummy.  Machine: 1;  Cool Jesus: 0.

The next week, I was thirsty for a cold, refreshing caffeinated beverage, so I offered up my $0.60 (everything in that godforsaken vending machine is $0.60) for a Coca-Cola.  The can had some soda residue on it, didn’t fizz when I opened it, was kind of on the warm side, and kind of on the flat side.  Not very cold and not very refreshing.  Somehow, the machine had been unplugged and some cans exploded both inside the machine, as well as on a co-worker or two.  I was told by some that I should consider myself lucky that I at least got a can I could drink.  I wasn’t buying it.  Machine: 2;  Cool Jesus: 0.

Today, I dropped in my $0.60 to get a ginger ale to go with lunch.  This time, the machine decided to merely eat my money and not distribute a tasty, cold, refreshing beverage.  Seeing as how this antique vending machine doesn’t have a coin dispensing slot, I had to enact drastic measures.  I could see the next ginger ale can inside guarded by a flimsy piece of plastic.  I used a pair of scissors to try to push it down, but ended up puncturing the can instead.  Hey, at least the amount of ginger ale that sprayed in my face was cold and refreshing.  I tried convincing myself that I wanted water all along.  I wasn’t buying it.  Machine: 3;  Cool Jesus: 0. 

Sunday night (going into Monday morning), I had one of those dreams. You know, the kind that stick with you for a few days, and it comes back to the forefront of your mind every day or so. Well, this time, though, it has me kind of spooked.

I had a hard time sleeping on Sunday for some strange reason, but sometime in the early morning this started. I don’t remember much in the way of details, but what I do remember was this. I died. I died, and I went to some strange place.. I can’t recall what it was, but I remember there was a voice telling me to relax, everything was under control and there was no reason to panic. It was extremely comforting, almost too comforting — as even now I think about how warm and fuzzy I felt when I was at this point in my dream. I was told by the voice that I needed to go back to my life because there was something I didn’t do (and this is where it starts to get a little weird, I guess). I can’t remember exactly what it was that I needed to do, but it had something to do with iPods. This might have something to do with the fact that my iPod has been “in the shop” for the past few weeks. Moments later my alarm woke up, and there I was.

So, like I said, the past few days I’ve been thinking back on how comfortable it was when I was deceased. But, this is where things start to get really weird, and it’s this point in my post that I get serious for a while.

Monday I learned some tragic news. I learned that the husband of my old boss at Best Cellars (Sarah), had passed away. It happened sometime last week, and they’re still unsure of what exactly happened – the preliminary autopsy was inconclusive. When I worked on Saturday’s we’d all go out to a restaurant or bar, and order bottles of wine and have a night out on the town. Often John, Sarah’s husband, would join us as he was a chef at a high-end Boston restaurant.

Today, I get an IM from a friend I haven’t talked to in a while — and asks me if I knew the last name of a girl we were friends with in College. Unfortunately I didn’t have it off the top of my head, but after some researching we found out her name was Trisha Tremblay. She was a recent victim of a tragic fire in Brooklyn. There’s a vigil for her tonight in Allston. We were in Freshman orientation together at Northeastern, and we were also friends throughout our college years. I remember the last time I saw her was ont he Red Line a year or so ago, when she was heading to UMass Boston to finish her college degree. She apparently moved to Brooklyn sometime later.

It’s so bizarre to have a dream like this, and then learn of two deaths of people I knew from my past. So, this post is for them — and if death is nearly as comforting as it was in my dream — they’re in a good place.

While waiting for Swedish Girl at Park Street yesterday evening, I saw an old friend, Super Comb-Over Man.  He must still work at Exchange Place, because that is where I used to run into him at least once a week.  So as I was standing there, wondering why Tony Danza was going to appear on NESN, my eyeballs were assaulted by a most hideous sight.  This man looks to be in his 40s, he is about 5’9", and has a thin build.  He’s always in a suit and tie and always carrying a courier bag of some sort.  What makes the blood gush from my retinas is his massive comb-over.  You have to see it to believe it, but he must be at least as bald as Jason Alexander/George Costanza was toward the end of Seinfeld.  His comb-over begins above the nape of his neck, about where the soft part at the base of the skull meets the skull at the cerebellum.  He parts it almost horizontally and whisks it due north northwest, up, and over his entire head in a sweeping left to right direction.  Only a Nobel physicists could determine what keeps the hair in place once it’s precariously hovering atop his pate.  He makes Donald Trump look like Johnny Damon.  I was, am, and always will be in awe.  That is why he is Super Comb-Over Man.

Friday night—nearly 10 months after the October magic of 2004—I watched NESN’s Faith Rewarded dvd for the first time.  Three reasons led to my decision to pop the dvd in the ol’ player:  1) The Sox (fronted by Charles Bronson Arroyo) were getting their arses handed to them by the Twins, 2) The Yankees (led by a no name called Aaron Small) were walking all over the Blue Jays, and 3) Friday night is my favorite night to watch baseball.  Needless to say, things were not going my way that night.  So, rather than start the weekend off on a sour note I decided to BIRG.

BIRG is an acronym for Bask in the Reflected Glory.  It is a term I learned in a social psychology class I took during freshman year.  Dr. Harkins planted this little gem on me one day and I’ve never forgotten it.  The premise is simple:  We feel better about ourselves when we share in the success of others.  The best example is being a fan of a sports team.  It’s not a bad thing.  It’s just a term social psychologists use to explain away our behavior.  For some reason, I really like this term.  It has a great ring to it, kind of like the Italian word schifozo.  But I digress.

All in all the dvd captures the great moments and hands them to the viewer on a silver platter.  The fact of the matter is, you can’t go wrong with this material.  But, for me, it lacks the real drama of the situation.  In fact, I think HBO did a better job tacking on a (happy) ending to their Curse of the Bambino special.  Maybe it’s because Joe Buck’s is the voice that is engrained in my head for each and every play, and the NESN dvd doesn’t use the FOX commentary too often.  Bill Simmons recently praised the special edition dvd that MLB put out of the entire ALCS and World Series.  That is a must own.  I will most definitely shell out the cash for that collector’s piece.  But for now, the Faith Rewarded will have to suffice.  It satisfied my need to BIRG, and Friday night, that’s all I really needed.

I love how David McCarty demanded to be released by the Red Sox because he thought he could get more playing time with another big league club.  Where are you now, bitch!

Speaking of Old Mustache Leatherface, Tony Graffanino keeps giving me heart attacks by wearing #10.  I’m still not used to which numbers the new guys (El Graffanino, Cora, Petagine, and Kapler) are wearing and El Graffanino kind of looks like Old Mustachio from behind.

There are few things worse than the feeling of flipping around the radio dial and landing on the final seconds of a song you love.  This seems to happen to me a lot.  Is it just me?

My receipt at Home Depot yesterday evening totalled $6.66.  This is about the third or fourth receipt I can recall totalling that devlish amount.  Is it just me?

Today at Company X is "salad bar office lunch day."  Yeah, I think I’ll pass.  It’s bad enough I have to work with these rejects, but my lunch hour is sacred.  I need to go practice my line, "Oh, that was today?!?  Damn, I forgot to bring in my vegetables!"

A former employee of Company X brought in his dorm room sized refrigerator and left it here when he quit.  My floor happily used it until about a month ago, when some Mensa member left something in there so long that it exploded.  The entire interior of the fridge was covered with a brown substance.  But, since our cleaning service won’t clean our refrigerators (or carpets, or windows, or desk surfaces, or rest rooms, it seems), the brass decided to throw it away and buy a bigger one!  Way to stick to the budget, team!

If you haven’t yet tried karaoke, you must try it.  It is a rush.  Quite a rush.  I recently confessed to my brother-in-law that I think I need professional help because I think of every song I hear in terms of how good a karaoke song it would be.  I have a mental list of future karaoke songs I’d like to sing and I’m searching high and low for duets that Swedish Girl and I could perform.

I don’t like to think of myself as a pessimist, but maybe I am.  Case in point, after the summer solstice each year, I cannot shake the thought that it’s all downhill now.  The hours of daylight will begin to dwindle and it will soon be back to school time.  I still dread back to school time.  I guess you can’t shake 20 years worth of anxiety hard-wired into your brain.

Tonight, I will introduce Swedish Girl to Brian Wilson at the BoA Pavilion in Boston.  I’ve seen BW every year since 2000 and for the last couple of years I told myself I would not see him again (too much like Frank Sinatra holding on too long).  But he rebounded last year and put on a fantastic show, so I am pumped for tonight.  Swedish Girl is a real trouper for joining me in this tradition.

Why is Tony Danza going to be interviewed by NESN at Fenway tonight?