Someone asked me last week, “Why in the heck would you choose to take a road trip to Des Moines for your 30th birthday? For what you’re paying for the King Suite, you could go to any number of better, warmer places.”
See, but I don’t need all that. People are more important to me than venue. And if I had my birthday road trip in Des Moines, my brother could join us — something he couldn’t do if we went elsewhere. So while there are certainly better places, at least on the surface, there is no better place in the entire world to be than at the bar with Cliff Glypha, Continental Frutiger, Dick Herculaneum and my Brother. Name your “better” cosmopolitan city, or your “warmer” climate, but unless its got that group together at a table, I’ll pass.
You bet.
Archive for » April, 2008 «
Editor’s Note: From time to time, Max Univers’ friend Tomas stops by to share his thoughts. These are some of those thoughts.
I recently read a fun article by Al Batt, (No relation to Baseball Batt, I assume?). A friend of mine wrote that he was a good writer and that he liked him. He is and I do too. Except my friend can never end a sentence with a preposition so I’ll rephrase that. Also do I and he is. There, that reads soooo much better.
I’m cooking sirloin roast even as we speak. I bought a really heavy cast iron pot at costco and am using it for the first time. I have it filled with good stuff and lots of seasonings and gravies and onion soup mix. I just close my eyes and dump. I even rubbed the roast with my own special concoction. Which included cinnamon. I’ve never tried that before. There’s so much other stuff in with it that you won’t even be able to taste it.
Its a tradition at the company I work for to decorate offices on milestone birthdays. 30, 40, 50, 60 etc. Some of the better ones (and I know these are hard to believe, but trust me, they’re all real):
When the CFO turned 40, we filled his office with packaging air bags. If you’ve ever bought something from Amazon, you know the bags — those clear plastic bags that cushion your purchase. We procured a machine that produces those bags, and proceeded to fill the office with hundreds of bags. So many, in fact, that it was impossible to navigate through the office on foot when we finished. We also wrapped everything we could in newsprint — every framed picture on his walls, his computer monitor, his keyboard, even individual pens and pencils. It was like Christmas in there, if air bags were snow and things he already owned were gifts.
Another time, someone in HR turned 50 and we took the Rolling Stones advice and Paint(ed) it Black. Using disposable plastic black tablecloths, we covered his walls to make them appear to have black wallpaper on them. Ditto for his desk. Add in dozens of black balloons, confetti and streamers that had various “Old Man” insults on them, and you get the picture. The office blow-up doll, Bob, also made an appearance in this scene — wearing an “Over the Hill” T-shirt.
On Tuesday, the last day of my 20s, I walked into the office just before 8 o’clock. Groggy-eyed as I walked into the mailroom, I saw a photo of a toothy three-year old in cowboy boots and a sweet sequin vest. I thought it was someone’s grandson, and I kept on walking. A few feet later, I saw another photo and did a double-take.
“Hey, wait a minute…that’s me!”
As I kept walking, it got better. Or worse, depending on your point of view. There were ten, twenty, fifty, maybe a hundred photos of me, EVERYWHERE. In every cubicle, every office, on the pop machine, on the cabinets, even in the men’s bathroom (don’t ask). A cornucopia of me. The Museum of Max, as it were.
Hilarious.
When last we joined our hero, Max Univers, he had surrendered to the Tyrannical Eyeglass Regime. On Day Four, he had taken off the glasses in protest, but then put them back on, and headed out to the Pizza Shoppe. “Eyeglasses can take away all of my natural eyesight abilities,” he said. “It cannot touch my PBR, it cannot touch my pizza, and it cannot touch my after dinner mints. Those three things are going to carry on forever. I thank you and God bless you all. You bet.”