Archive for category Funny
Men and stuff
Posted by Jose Mallabo in Funny on February 13, 2010
Not too long ago I could get out of the house with just a wallet and my keys. As I was getting out of my car at work trying to balance my coffee and almond croissant on my notebook while reaching into my car to grab all the other must haves it hit me — why the fuck do I have all this shit?
Wallet. Keys. Notebook. Laptop bag jammed with pens and other computer stuff. Beverage and an over priced, over sugared piece of dough. Oh, and clunk that’s my BlackBerry hitting the asphalt. It’s ok if that breaks, I have another. My sister at 18 brought less stuff with her to a party than the booty I was lugging.
Is this what we’ve come to? Murse-toting men with rolled up pant legs?
While driving, our directions are automated by a computer whose lovely voice is second only to Sarah McLachlan’s. To hear that soothing ooh la la voice, my sedan is sound dampened to make sure I can hear every enunciation of her digital voice.
My pretty voice soothes your manly aches
The navigation came with the car. It was used. I didn’t really ask for it. And all this crap — it’s for work. I’m still the wallet and keys minimalist tough guy from the 80s. And tomorrow I’ll prove it by changing the oil in my motorcycle and maybe digging a hole in the ground with a pick axe.
Finally at my desk. Now where the hell did I leave my hand moisturizer? I’m all chaffed from the typing.
- Jose Mallabo
How to lick H1N1
Posted by Jose Mallabo in Friends and family, Funny, Work on November 19, 2009
I can quip about it now. But when it was happening a smile and a blog post was the last thing on my mind.
It was Friday morning and the night before I had eaten an overstuffed, fatty carnitas burrito (for those east of the Mississippi and north of Maryland, that’s pork) late at night and fell asleep at my computer. I know. It’s a very healthy approach to heart disease — which is just shy of smoking a couple of Marlboro reds while eating pork rinds in bed. So the grumbling and fever I woke up with were easily attributed to that burrito.
Off to work I go. First meeting: CEO, CFO and my boss are in there along with a consultant that I hired. That’s a big ticket meeting to be in when you’re starting to feel the symptoms of H1N1. (For more info: check out the CDC site.)
Fast forward to the part where I’m in the doctor’s office after a two hour drive: The receptionist and nurses are insanely friendly, smiling and seemingly glad to take my co-pay and give them something better to do than complain about the shitty grub they got from Taco Bell. Everybody, show some spirit, here comes a sick guy!
Sprawled out on the examination table trying to get comfortable, all I could think of was having those stirrups might actually relieve the pressure in my back caused by my legs hanging off the edge. But that would risk the wrong examination. Me likey the sore back!
15 minutes into the examination my doctor confirms it’s 99.8% likely it’s H1N1. But he’ll swab my nose and send the tests to the lab. Those tests look real easy on the TV news. But imagine taking a very thin pen and pushing it through your nose up into your sinuses then making a figure 8 with it. Twice. The deepest nose pick outside of an Our Gang episode.
He leaves the room. Comes back. Says he’s going to write me a prescription for Tamiflu. He says, “you’re all set, come on out.” Two beats. Then “on second thought, just hang in there for a minute.” That seals it. No lab tests needed. They all know it’s 100% that I have H1N1.
As I leave the office it’s like I’ve become Moses. People are parting in front of me like had a loaded shotgun and a frothing Pit Bull sitting on my shoulder. It’s both weird and kind of nice not to have to go through all the fake good byes. So I grabbed the prescription, pushed the door into the lobby open with my elbow (ensuring they all saw that) then stroll to the main exit/entrance, lick the door knob and leave.
Take that you over friendly co-pay takers.
- Jose Mallabo
Socks off a plane
Posted by Jose Mallabo in Funny on October 7, 2009
I put them in a plastic bag and walked off the plane with my swollen bare feet inside my shoes. I made the terrible mistake of getting on a 20+ hour flight home from India with dress shoes and kind of burly pair of socks on.
For those of you who have never sat upright for a day at 40,000 feet – your body, particularly your feet expand like accordions. Somewhere over Jakarta, I slipped my shoes off compounding the first mistake – which allowed my dogs to swell at their leisure outside of my shoes. Believe it or not, not only did I go to graduate school, I did pretty well.
Fast forward three beers later when I have to go number 1. Mind you, I am on a full flight of about 400 people who have not only ingested as many fluids as I have but have flat out ransacked the lavatories. Ten hours into it, they still look like a room used by civilized bipeds. Fifteen hours into the flight, it reminds me of a fraternity party and what happens when a bull pisses on a flat rock in the wind.
Pay attention. In the next paragraph is the lesson of ages that will prevent ever having to carry your socks off a plane.
I really have to go. But my feet are so swollen that I can’t get them in my shoes – with or without socks. I realize it’s now a choice of soiling my groin or my feet. I rip open my back pack and see I have plenty of Purell hand sanitizer left – enough to wipe out 99.9% of the germs that would get on my feet.
The lavatory door opens. A bittersweet moment. Because I know what is about to happen. It’s instantaneous. The moment I step into the water closet it’s a wet sock in what I can only hope is a diluted puddle of urine. I stand on one leg and as far away from the toilet as possible – which is about a 36 inches away – and pray for no turbulence. As soon as I get back to my seat, off with the socks. Out with the Purell.
I’m just happy I didn’t have the second package of walnuts.
- Jose Mallabo
Positivity. Here’s proof.
Posted by Jose Mallabo in Friends and family, Funny on August 29, 2009
Positivity is a strength. Here’s proof.
Last week, we did a StrengthsFinder exercise at work. Most of the strengths I found out I had were consistent and completely expected. Context and Command are top two strengths. I guess that means I can bark out orders with some conviction because I’ve read a lot about how Atila the Hun did it centuries ago.
But, Positivity was the lone wolf strength that threw me a bit. All you have to do is read this blog to know that I find folly in what many might call negative situations. I don’t care what anyone says, an adult falling down is always funny and an adult sprinting down the street (think of Tom Cruise’s character in The Firm) in a suit is even funnier (both because it’s a sight unto itself and also promises a high probably of said adult sprinter tripping and eating pavement).
Next time you see that 42 year old metro sexual tearing up 3rd avenue, just stop and ask yourself where the fuck is he going that he has to pull a Renaldo Nehemiah in a $1,000 outfit? You know it’s because of something trivial like he was walking his dog earlier that morning and stepped in a pile of poo causing him to have to go home and change shoes. Only when he changed shoes he realize that the tasseled mahogany loafers he has on now didn’t go with the dark navy suit he had on. So he had to change suits or pick up an English accent on the way to his first meeting. It’s always something as mundane and vain as that that causes people to be late. Otherwise, wake the fuck up on time and you’ll never have to sprint unless you’re being chased.
This flight to India is easily the longest trip I’ve taken in at least 20 years. I’m in coach. Middle seat. Every seat on the first leg of the flight has a bum in it. Yet, I must say that there was more to be glad about than to bitch about. Positivity:
- Flight attendants were seemingly from every culture in the world and had some pretty hip yet traditional Arab uniforms – extra credit points for having historical context and a command for the now to be current. Plus all of them were far more polite than the most polite US Airways attendant – I think those folks aren’t so much working as they are seeking prey.
- The audio visual ensemble on the seat back staring at my mug is better than any coach class entertainment system I’ve seen. A quantum leap better than JetBlue. A notch above Virgin America. United Airlines just plain sucks by comparison.
- Every meal had rice in it.
- As the lone Filipino on a flight of about 400 people – I enjoyed being unique even if it was for a mere 15 leg cramped hours. Having lived in the Bay Area for the past few years being a Filipino male is about as differentiated as that 3 millionth penny in a park fountain.
I get off the plane for a layover in Dubai and am thinking about all this positivity – hashing out a blog post in my head. It only took about 15 minutes for some of the shine to wear off. As I’m trying to orient myself and figure out where to go I hear a language that immediately nixes that last bullet. It’s not English. It’s not even Spanish. It’s Tagalog. Apparently my Filipino brethren haven’t just taken every US airport job, we’ve expanded the franchise to the beautiful airport in the UAE. I give the guy at duty free the universal Pinoy “you know that I know that you know that I’m a Pinoy” look. Next time I see you, I’ll show you what that look is and also teach you how to point with your lips.
Then I break into a light run for my gate and he’s probably thinking “I hope he falls.”
Jose Mallabo
Monkey butt to keep shorts over sweats buried
Posted by Jose Mallabo in Friends and family, Funny on June 11, 2009
Led Zeppelin released its first album forty years ago in January of 1969.
I’m not sure the 15 year old wearing the Zeppelin tee-shirt in the taco shop quite appreciates the possibility that he was conceived because of the track “Dazed and Confused.”
Probably not.
He probably just thought it was a cool retro shirt — which then forced him to download Led Zeppelin IV (home of “Stairway to Heaven”) to substantiate the $40 price tag for that shirt at Urban Outfitters.
I think it’s kind of cool, actually. Cool to see bands that comprised the soundtrack of my teenage years influencing today’s acne demographic. 15 years from now when that kid is my boss, I’ll be trying to convince him how In Through the Out Door was Zeppelin’s best all around album.
I was no boogie woogie bugle boy
The parallel would have been me wearing an Andrews Sisters tee-shirt when I was 15 in 1984. Instead, I was wearing a Led Zeppelin tee-shirt in 1984 trying to look cool against all the Van Halen fans wearing 1984 tee-shirts.
A couple days after spotting the taco eating Robert Plant fan, I saw another kid walking down the street in what can only be described as what you’d get if you threw a teen aged Asian into a blender with Joey Ramone and Howard Jones. By Howard Jones I mean this Howard Jones:
Everyone is to blame for this look
Not the guy that kind of looks like Sting now and plays your local amphitheater in the summer.
Under the shaved side faux hawk / mullet were the Square Pegs spectacles, denim jacket with hoody under it — all on top of a nasty pair of skinny black jeans that the Ramones helped make cool because Judy was in fact a Punk.
As I drove through trendy Walnut Creek past the Apple store, past Tiffany’s then of course past Urban Outfitters, I couldn’t help wonder if there is anything from my youth that hasn’t or won’t come back into vogue?
Two days of contemplation later, I give you the gym shorts over the sweat pants ensemble. Heidi Klum can’t make this look cool without going NC-17. I scoured my memory for all the things I saw in the 70s and 80s that haven’t resurfaced as a cool or fashionable thing to do or wear.
- Baggy jeans. Check and double check.
- Skinny jeans. Check. See above.
- 70s rock. My 15 year old niece likes AC/DC. Check.
- Bobby Brady haircut. See any playground in America. Check.
- My all time favorite tube sock has even made a renaissance. Thanks Nick Van Exel.
- Acid wash denim is thriving in certain parts of Americana. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Check.
It seems like everything has come back — except the gym shorts over sweat pants look. One would argue that the shift towards the show me your curves while you exercise movement would be the biggest nail in the coffin for shorts over sweats. While Dwight Howard is yoked and looks bad ass in a tank and women’s volleyball is made all the more interesting because of the attire, I rest my argument on a more practical matter called Monkey Butt.
Better than the skinny jeans. And no Monkey Butt.
It’s an uncomfortable condition caused by the sublime combination of friction, heat and sweat during exercise that is exacerbated by wearing layers and layers of clothing over ones nether region. The shorts over sweats wrap is simply too much cloth because it doesn’t preclude having to wear some kind of underwear or jock strap. So, until the Anti Monkey Butt product becomes the iPod for your bum, I’m willing to bet that we never see this Rocky Balboa meets Urkel at a track meet look again.
- Jose Mallabo
Two things I learned in the last 24 hours
Posted by Jose Mallabo in Friends and family, Funny on June 3, 2009
1. There are people who actively manage the weight of their dogs, not for health reasons, but so that they’d be able to carry them on board an airplane without having to check them. Apparently the cutoff weight for some airlines is 25 lbs. Having looked into putting my dog in the underbelly of a jet years ago, I can see why doing that is less than savory for a pet owner. But there are dozens of breeds that are naturally under 25 lbs. So to you South Beach shoving dog owners get the Mini Bulldog Terrier instead of putting that cute West Highland Terrier on fen-phen.
We're big, but we can see the movie screen.
And…
2. The median household income for Manhattan couples with toddlers is $289,000 a year. That’s 89% higher than couples with toddlers in San Francisco — and a shit ton more than the median household income in the U.S. of about $50,000 a year. I read that in a New York Magazine story about how these parents are now facing challenges of getting their 5 year olds into overcrowded public schools in New York. From the sound of the article, Bloomberg’s team missed the boat on the mini-baby boom post 9/11. But, with that kind of cha-ching can’t a dozen of these couples pool their loose change and hire a private teacher on their own? Perhaps someone out of Stephen Hawking’s bloodline? Hell, I got nothing but time – hire me and I’ll teach them how to potty train a 24 lb. dog and what exactly shit ton means.
- Jose Mallabo
Don’t throw poo at Franco Columbo
Posted by Jose Mallabo in Funny, Sports, Uncategorized on May 28, 2009
If the top of his skull were to lift open like the hood of a car and his brain could jump out onto the table, it’d look like Franco Columbo. The guy was that smart. Not that overly-geeky-look-at-my-five-degrees book smart. But real world, real business smart that was both impressive and intimidating for a marketing type like me. And you know he had those five college degrees somewhere.
Franco Columbo. Never throw anything at this man.
For some reason, when I’m in a conversation with someone like that I start to reach. I reach for the big, big words I learned in graduate school. It’s kind of like when you’re at a high-brow party and you want to reach for that Louis Vuitton wallet to pay the valet to prove you didn’t just rent that nice sedan. Just like that.
So he’s asking me all these questions about my approach to PR. He’s intuitive. Calm. Urbane. And, unbelievably eloquent. I can only hope he’ll say something I can build off of so I can ride the coattails of his James Bondness.
I’m listening. Still listening.
But all I can feel myself doing is pining to use my go-to $20 word: fecund. I have no idea why of all the words I jotted down in those two painful years of reading absurdly scholarly dissertations fecund is the one that is always at my hip. It’s my Colt .45 at the ready to show that I too can flex like Franco.
Maybe it’s because it’s a short, yet esoteric word that most people think they know the meaning of, but don’t. It’s probably more that it kind of sounds like fecal or fecal matter. As I type this I realize that that’s it. It’s now clear to me that when cornered in a test of wits and vocabulary my instinct is to go primal like a chimp.
I reach back and want to throw poo. Excellent.
Thankfully, instead of trotting out fecund, he says something about customer behavior as it relates to communications and I am suddenly distracted from my base need to be Curious George. The conversation stays focused on PR strategies and his business model.
As the interview wrapped up, I kept thinking how of all the meetings I had with this company this was the test. If I could get through this one and make him somewhat believe I had a brain stem, I might have a shot at this job. Still, I kept looking for some kind of flaw in this guy. He stood up and I realized that at 5’ 7” I could post him up on the low post if I absolutely needed to.
Now, only if a pick up game of hoops would break out. I’d prove my fecundity.
- Jose Mallabo
Enjoy. Costanza.
Posted by Jose Mallabo in Funny, Work on May 20, 2009
As I am flipping my eggs this morning, I couldn’t help but think what a world-class prick George Costanza was. But yet we loved him. And, I miss him. Costanza could double dip his chip and walk out of the potty into a dinner party shirtless – but who didn’t love that D battery shaped prick of a man?
His approach was to leave every room with a limerick. Something warm and fuzzy for people to remember him by that would somehow eradicate all the wrongs he’d committed in the previous 22 minute episode.
“Cosssstannzaaa…”
Brilliance, I say.
I used to drive 60 miles one way to work each day. People would ask me how I managed getting through the various traffic pockets that lay in wait for me each day up and down the Bay Area.
That was like playing checkers against an 8-year old. All you have to do is show up. The real battle was me vs. my digestive system. I couldn’t have more than 2 cups of coffee in the morning or I’d feel like a water balloon by the time I got to the outskirts of lovely Fremont. Often, I didn’t have time to make breakfast so getting to the cafeteria grill first was the extra special Olympic game I played.
After I won that skirmish, the game within the game started. At that hour, the Egg Nazi was usually still chopping onions or cleaning the grill. She didn’t appreciate how I had just outwitted my own bladder to get there for her breakfast special. She typically stared me down and marinated me in my own hunger while she finished whatever chore she was ensconced in.
This was a true prick. I loved her.
A pushover compared to the Egg Nazi
As she handed me my bacon and eggs, that silent scowl always said to me “Take your eggs and your stupid BlackBerry and go Tweet about your soon-to-be-scathing case of salmonella you stereotypical Asian at a dot com,” but those big, pouty lips that looked like two slugs making out in a Petri dish of ketchup sang happily “enjoy…”
Poof.
Just like that she went from being the scary Egg Nazi to the come hither Egg Ingenue.
That little verbal pat on the bum somehow made all the silent abuse worth it. Alas, these interludes over eggs have ended. But I say, it’s better to have enjoyed and lost than never to have enjoyed at all.
- Jose Mallabo
3 things that don’t matter to the unemployed
Posted by Jose Mallabo in Friends and family, Funny on May 18, 2009
3. Dry cleaning. Outside of damp, chilly days in November there’s no reason to wear wool. Except for at work. With the U.S. unemployment rate still clawing at double digits, sheep everywhere are fist bumping and hoping mutton never becomes a universal delicacy.
Take the unemployment check and leave us be, please
2. The latte. Don’t agree? Just look at Starbucks’ performance over the past year. They brought back Howard Schultz to right the ship, but the company that made coffee both mainstream and exclusive still reported a net earnings drop of more than $83 million.
1. Saturdays. To the guy sorting through Monster.com hourly, Saturdays are what Mondays are to people with jobs. Stores are crowded as everyone is off from work trying to get shopping done. I once heard that Wednesday is the most heavily trafficked day of the week. Makes sense, only the dense or truly sick call in sick mid-week. So while the workforce is busy trying to stimulate the economy, the 9 percent not working are home cheering you on so they can some day soon stop blogging in boxer shorts and queue up behind you for a $4 coffee and wonder if that wool suit you’re wearing was off the rack or tailor-made. Until then, Wednesdays are my new Saturdays.
- Jose Mallabo
Tweets and tee shirts in America
Posted by Jose Mallabo in Funny, Work on May 11, 2009
I may have been the only one in the coffee shop today that appreciated the humor and gravitas of it. The kid wearing it was probably more concerned about how to ride his skate board out of the store while drinking his fuzzy little latte and still maintain his street cred.
As one who has been Tweeting (yes, that’s the current parlance for using Twitter to update your followers on your every breath) for a few months now, it was only just then that it occurred to me to ask where the heck this is all going?
Ten years ago, I was sitting on a cross town bus in Manhattan thinking I was Internet cool with my messenger bag and Motorola StarTac phone rigged to the shoulder strap. Mind you, most of the world at that point wasn’t slinging around a $400 phone let alone text messaging or Tweeting. When I answered my clamshell phone as we were pulling away from 72nd and 1st, a woman that I swear looked like an actress from M*A*S*H (not Loretta Swit, the other woman) leaned back and flamed me with the look of death. Her scowl made it clear that in her world view the cell phone and all it represented – always on contact with the free world – was the spawn of Satan itself.
I remember thinking to myself “Hey, what if you needed me to call 911 and save your ass with this phone? You wouldn’t hate it then. Now, weren’t you in M*A*S*H?”
None of that escaped my lips because she kind of frightened me. I just kept talking to my business partner about some JavaScripting and XML mumbo jumbo that probably pissed her off even more. This little Asian dude not only is talking on my bus, he’s plotting world domination with XML!
The StarTac has since been replaced as the bad ass mobile accessory by the BlackBerry and iPhone. And as annoying as the ubiquity of cell phones can be, it’s hard to argue against the safety and social benefits they’ve come to provide. It’s been well chronicled how mobiles played a role in helping passengers commandeer the flight headed to the Pentagon on 9/11. And personally, I’ve more than once called emergency services for stranded motorists. I’m an extreme commuter and have the utmost empathy for that guy walking down the shoulder with a gas can in hand. No one wants to be there so that guy gets my help every day of the week and 9 times on Sunday.
So what about Twitter?
This dude’s tee shirt hinted to more than just the joke that is AIG today. But it flirted with the idea of what role Tweeting might play as part of the Fourth Estate. Unlike news papers, Tweeting is hyper-real time. Unlike text messaging, Tweeting is one to many – many of whom can be the news media, government regulators and other influencers. Unlike online media, devices to Tweet from are now in every employee’s pockets in every corporate meeting in America. Someone, dozes off or says something untoward in a meeting, he’s free game in today’s Tweet happy world.
Greed, as it turns out, is not good.
What if iPhone Tweeters were inside AIG? Inside Enron? Could those meltdowns have been averted by whistle Tweeting insiders?
I’m not sure where this is all going. But those are the questions that ran through my head as I was watching this guy skate out of the Peet’s. They’re interesting questions.
I ask because in the past month or so, I’ve seen a shift in the Tweets of the 80 people I follow. Unlike 3-4 months ago when everyone was just pushing out cool articles or links to fun web sites, now I’m starting to see people Tweet what’s going on right in front of them wherever they might be. I’m guilty as charged.
I Tweeted the cigarette smoke-filled Dodge Ram 2500 that cut me off with the “Yes on 8” bumper sticker it. I wasn’t angry so much as in awe of his magnificently un-PC persona in what is easily the most PC place in the world.
Not exactly a social benefit or crisis aversion tack my Tweet, but it happened and the 95 people on my Twitter feed experienced it with me in real time. The best part about Twitter is I can quietly Tweet the ill-matched socks of any has been actor on any bus in America. Because, just like that Dodge driver has the right to smoke cigarettes and vote as he sees fit, I have the right to Tweet his bad driving.
- Jose Mallabo