Update on my doppelganger, my (lack of) dating life, my status as a victim, and my concerns about local media

So you may recall my recent(ish... I know I haven't written in a bit) posts regarding my asserted resemblance to Katy Kiser of channel 3 news, as discovered when her (ex?)husband hit on me.

Well now for the rest of the story. So her purportedly ex-husband, a federal agent, hit on me one night at a bar, which seemed fine, aside from the slightly creepy "You look like my ex-wife" vibe, but you know, in Corpus you can't be too choosy.

So the next night, I'm out in d-town, and whom do I bump into, but the same guy, which is again fine, because he smelled very nice and lavished me with compliments. So anyway, my friends and I join him for a drink and then when we decide it's time to go he gives us a ride to my car, because we're parked several blocks away. On the short walk from his car to mine, I cross paths on the sidewalk with a small group of youths, one of whom grabs my purse and they all take off running.

Things were seeming dire, except that my agent friend immediately begins pursuit and manages to arrest them within minutes. Awesome. SO awesome. So we're making statements to the police, at which point the news shows up. (No, not channel 3.) I attempt to avoid being filmed, and thought I had succeeded, but on Monday I was informed by a coworker that she had seen me and though I wasn't facing the camera, she could tell it was me from my hair and "the way I stand like a charlie's angel." (To this day, I have no idea what that means.)

Yes. I was on the news. Though I have never seen the footage, I'm told the voiceover said "Robbed at gunpoint! Luckily, they were with a federal agent." If only my coworker were the only one to discuss said story with me.

But no. That Thursday, I go out for happy hour, and whom do I see there, but Katy Kiser, with aforementioned agent. I attempt to be inconspicuous and avoid, but eventually she comes up to me. And goes on a LONG, drunken, passive-aggressive rambling speech about how when she heard that her husband had saved a couple of law clerks, she just assumed they'd be "dumpy and badly dressed." Then, she informed me, she saw me on the news "with high heels and a halter top" and was totally shocked. This ramble went on for at least five shockingly awkward minutes until I cut her off by thanking her for calling me less ugly than expected. This, I think, was actually the most awkward moment of my life.

More awkward than that Saturday, even, when I bumped into a friend of hers at a party (small world, much?) and was informed (threatened?) about how very married the couple in question continues to be. I think I actually uttered the sentence "I'm the victim here!" but I'm not sure.

So there now seems to be some segment of the CC population that knows and hates me as That Slut Seen Canoodling with Katy Kiser's husband. And I feel that local newscasters are bad enemies to have. (One can imagine, for instance the story lead-in "Theft victim? Hardly. This local law clerk wants to steal your man!" etc.)

YES.

My almost greatness

Rock, Paper, Scissors Finals at the House of Rock. I have not yet been able to find footage of my other recent exploits, captured on the local news, but I'm working on it. (Update forthcoming.) Until then:

One down....

There have always been many unanswered questions. There, I suspect, always will be many unanswered questions about Corpus Christi. Recently, I have faced a rash of people telling me I look like a local newscaster. I scanned the channels, comparing my resemblance to the various blonds. Well, the mystery was solved through a strange series of coincidences last night. Long story short, I met this dude last night and every time he'd step away, his friends would go on and on and on about how I'm so "his type" etc. etc. Well, apparently he's the ex-ish (don't ask) husband of Katy Kiser of Channel 3 News. So I think it's safe to assume that she's my alleged newscaster doppelganger.

Also safe to assume there's no love to be found in corpus.

Dog-napping mayor gets slap on the wrist,

or, The Shih Tzu Hits the Fan, Part 3.

Well, the Puppygate saga seems to be at an end, now that the former mayor of Alice has pled no contest to a Class B misdemeanor of filing a false police report. She's not getting any jailtime, just deferred adjudication.

This comment on the Caller Times site is almost Joycean in its confusing wordplay: "Let the axe mayor keep panchitos fleas to remember him by. She has done enough to in bare 's' Alice."

Overheard in Corpus

1. 

Girl #1 in mall: I really want to go to Express. 

Girl #2: If you don't mind, I'll wait here. My arch-nemesis works there. 

2. At buffalo wild wings (why was I there? Watching the Eurocup final), a long, long tirade about how the third season premiere of Quantum Leap was one of the best season premieres of any show ever. I didn't know it before, but I know now that this is apparently the episode on which the quantum leaper jumps back to his own past and has the chance to save his brother (or something?) in Vietnam. Who knew that anyone, anyone knew so much about Quantum Leap. 

3. Tonight at the grocery store, the greeter came up to me to say, "Wow, you look just like--"

Now, at this point I was fully expecting him to say that I look like one of the local newscasters. Three people in the last two weeks have told me this. Seriously. Unclear if they mean her, her, or her. They're all blond, which seems to be all it takes. ¹  As long as it's not her, I guess it's ok with me.²  Anyway, he did not conclude with any reference to local news. No, the end of his sentence was--wait for it--Aphrodite. Yes, a man in the grocery store told me I look like a goddess. I'm starting to like this place.

¹I know this because the security officers at the courthouse still confuse me and Anne ("the other blond one"). For the record, I'm fairly sure that to her, I'm "the other blond one." I'm not trying to suggest any secondary status for her.

²Now that I look at her, she's not unattractive. She just looks older than me, and I'm getting touchy about that, especially after Sunday when the pedi-cabbers who were all flirty became very un-flirty upon finding out that I'm 29.

Woo. Hoo.

Brief update to state that I won my bracket in the final Rock, Paper, Scissors qualifying round last night, so I'll be competing in the finals. 

In prior rounds, at least a few people attempted decent names: The Handyman, The Handgun, etc. Last night however, perhaps due to the later hour and increased drunkenness, it was just sad. In order to achieve victory, I beat people playing as Ballz and Chimpy. 

Oh Corpus, you disappoint me so regularly. The winner of the first bracket, incidentally, against whom Anne and I will both compete Tuesday, was Titties. She had many male admirers. 

Really, I had only the posse with whom I came rooting for me. And the amazing hostess, Heidi, who is a big fan of mine now that I've volunteered to help her plan a pub night in downtown. Yes, that's right people, I am actually on a Dtown committee. But that's a tale for another day.

Something else gross (in a different way)

I've been competing in the local Rock, Paper, Scissors tournament. There are 3 qualifying rounds for the Finals at the end of June. In the first qualifying round, I was eliminated in the semi-finals by Anne. (Especially given that her RPS game was Lady MacDeath. Hot.) Fine. There's nothing undignified about that particularly. Last week, however, I was defeated in the first bout by a dude playing as Edward Sassorpanties.

Edward Sassorpanties. 

Panties. I know I'm not alone in my dislike of that word. 

Sassor. Sassor? Um... sassor. "Sassor" is not a word. It does not even sound like a word. At all really. 

Again, panties. Can I reiterate that this was a man?

Now, I had considered playing as Emily Scissorhands. Because "scissors" and "hands" both relate to Rock, Paper, Scissors. However, Sassorpanties has nothing to do with RPS, because, again, "sassor" isn't even a word and panties weren't involved, because it wasn't Strip Rock, Paper, Scissors. (If you'd seen Edward Sassorpanties, you'd understand how happy I was that no stripping or panties were involved.) So yeah, Sassorpanties removed everything that was great about referencing Edward Scissorhands and kept only Edward. Poor choice, Sassor.

Sigh. Sassor.

You may be wondering about my Roshambo name. The first time I played as The Striking Viking and this time I played as Courtney Glove. So I'm still pondering my best name. I mean, I could reuse one of those, but they haven't panned out that well I guess... Other considerations: Em.C.Hammer, Lindsay No-hands, The Paper Doll. I'm accepting suggestions.

Things that are gross

I bet you were thinking that I'd totally love anything that involved bacon. Or alcohol. Well, two items to prove you wrong:

1. Canned bacon. 50 slices, pre-cooked in a can. This probably doesn't make sense, but it turns my stomach just looking at it. In a way that seeing globs of fat floating in vodka apparently does not.

2. Sourtoe cocktail. Which is, apparently, champagne with a preserved human toe in it. A Canadian tradition? Oh, Canada.

Further adventures in bacon

Wednesday I made bacon fudge. And it's pretty good.

That's all I have to say about that.

Say what?

Old people say weird things. Fine. But my boss has a way of coming up with stuff that totally overwhelms the giggling 6th-grade boy within me. 

"Figured I better get high behind and do it." 

Huh?

And then he always registers my confusion and wants to talk about it, forcing me to (1) try not to speak to him like I think he's a crazy old person; and (2) not giggle while repeatedly saying and hearing phrases like "high behind." 

I correctly used context clues to understand the phrase as "hurry up." And then got his invented etymology on it about how when a jockey rides faster his ass is in the air. (And again making me want to joke about him looking at jockeys' asses...)

Fine. We have exchanges like this all the time.

But this week, he really went too far. Referencing a defendant, he said, "They're gonna jerk his pen/pin." They're gonna what?!? 

No context clues this time, so I have no idea what he's talking about. He registers this fact and offers the following explanation: 

"It's what fraternity brothers do to one another. "

Seriously.

In what way would that conceivably clarify? And can I take a moment to congratulate myself on not DYING laughing at that point?

(The entire meaning of this one remains unclear. Apparently at some point in time when you wanted to kick a frat brother out you took (jerked?) his pin. What connection this has to a medicare fraud defendant... that's anyone's guess.)

The ShiTzu hits the fan, part 3

Well Alice's trial of the decade is over. Puddles' original owners get to keep him.

If you're new to Corpus Juris, you can get the back story and my self-aggrandizing follow-up, here and here. Basically, the mayor of Alice tried to dognap a ShiTzu named Puddles by renaming him Panchito and hiding him at the farm of her identical twin sister.

You can read the Corpus Christi Caller Times' coverage of the story, if you like, but the punchline is just that the original owners get to keep him, which is good, and that his name will revert to Puddles from Panchito, which to my mind is bad. But what can you do. The highlights of the story are the following puns:

• "In her dogged custody fight over a fluffy black and white pooch, former Alice Mayor Grace Saenz-Lopez sacrificed her political career and thousands of dollars in legal bills."
• "The custody dogfight has no visitation clause." That doesn't even make sense.

The Caller Times, typically, included no relevant information on the most fascinating line of the story: "Saenz-Lopez [former mayor of Alice] and Garcia [her identical twin] will be in court Tuesday to answer to felony charges that they tampered with and concealed evidence while attempting to keep the dog."

New (to me) foods, #6 in a list

Hot beef sundae.

Hot. Beef. Sundae.

Yes, that's right.

"What is a hot beef sundae?" you may wonder. Well, wonder no longer: it is "a generously filled bowl of hand-mashed buttery potatoes surrounded by slow-roasted fork-tender roast beef" topped with "savory beef gravy," sprinkled with Cheddar cheese with a cherry tomato on top.

Because a chopped beef sandwich doesn't include potato. And a plate just isn't mobile enough.

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[Left: Life-size photo of Hot Beef Sundae. Visitors provide scale.]

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Surprise your family by making Hot Beef Sundaes for dinner! Recipe here.

I am not claiming, by the way, that this taste sensation is originally a Texan thing. It appears to have originated in the midwest.

Hammer Time = Time Well Spent

About a week ago, I was flipping through my DVR's TV Guide and saw Hammerhead: Shark Frenzy. Thinking it was a documentary on hammerhead sharks, I hit record.



I came home from work a few days later, ready to unwind with some good documentary shark footage. (I know, I know...That's embarrassing. But that's what a blog is for.)

Within the first 30 seconds, it was clear this was no documentary. Megan points out that the name should've tipped me off. True. But it didn't. What did tip me off was the anonymous couple in love yachting and getting eaten alive. I would've stopped there, but what followed was just too good.


First, another foreboding establishing scene in which a white-coated scientist exclaims to his assistant that his experiment is almost complete at which point the lab shark bites off the assistant's fingers. Next, cut to some high-tech government DNA lab where an impossibly hot DNA scientist (played by Hunter Tylo. Hunter. Tylo. What kind of name is that?) says some incomprehensible stuff about DNA and then puts on a bikini and starts swimming laps at the high-tech government DNA lab lap-pool. Awesome.


Anyway, I will try to avoid spoilers in case anyone wants to find and watch this gem, because really, you should. But basically the idea is that when a mad scientist tries to cure cancer by combining human DNA with hammerhead shark DNA the results are not pretty. You get the chance to admire said un-pretty results in many jars in the lab Kunstkammer-style, but chief among them (I'll call him Hammerhead) is unfortunately not relegated to such a jar or formaldehyde.


The special effects were completely terrible. The severed limbs that get flung about are SO clearly rubber it's not even funny. (Few characters escape the carnivorous maw of Hammerhead, but several limbs remain. Not clear to me why such a blood-thirsty creature would leave random limbs uneaten, but I guess plausibility was not the aim.) But that's not the worst/best of it. The worst/best is Hammerhead himself. Things go best when you see only his dorsal fins--that's scary in a traditional shark movie way. And it's even kindof creepy when you get a zoom-in of a single eye, which is large and sortof humanish, but of course on the side of a head, so again creepy. But when you see him in his entirety--well, see for yourself:






For another view, check the movie poster:




And really, how awesome a tag line is "Half human. Half shark. Total terror"?


I must also say that it is one badass IT guy who can throw knives with deadly accuracy at a distance of like 40 ft. He also seems to be the only one on the island with any ability to aim a firearm. Cuz the professional guards hired by the mad scientist guy to keep victims on the island... well they just keep firing and missing. I guess that's why said IT guy gets to sleep with Hunter Tylo.




Choice Dialogue:
Dr. Preston King: Can someone tell me why these people aren't dead yet?



***

Amelia Lockhart: You're going to impregnate me?

Dr. Preston King: No. [looks at the hammerhead shark in the tank] He is.





Some online review I read noted the failure to utilize lots of shark puns. While I cannot concur in this reviewer's general negative feelings about the film, I suppose it would have been a better movie if the lines "Shark the herald angels sing" or "I guess his shark was bigger than his bite" had been included. Or my favorite, though it's non-sensical, "Time for a little dancin' in the SHARK." Said online reviewer does not offer any of the many available M.C.Hammer puns that would have been absolutely revelatory. ("Hammertime" being the most obvious.)



Now, you're all probably wondering about the scientific accuracy of this movie. Well, I did some research on this point.

• First, it is true that hammerhead sharks do have internal gestation complete with placenta like mammals do. I confirmed via Wikipedia, which offered the choice observation that "Hammerhead shark mating courtship is a violent affair." It also offered the fascinating fact that hammerheads can also reproduce via parthenogenesis, a word I have always loved since it was in the lyrics of that 80s song "Dead Man's Party." (But only the females. If males could do this... well, the movie would've really fallen apart.)


• It is, however, not true that sharks do not get cancer. Although widely believed until somewhat recently, a quick Google shows that shark immunity to cancer has been debunked by such esteemed organizations as the American Cancer Society, National Geographic, the American Association for Cancer Research.


• This was not discussed in the movie, but apparently hammerheads get suntans and burns, just like pigs and people. Just thought I'd share.

I will also note that I was fascinated to find that if you simply enter "hammerhead" into Wikipedia, the disambiguation page has 23 entries, including the Corpus Christi arena football team and a character from the cartoon Darkwing Duck.

More info on Hunter Tylo:
You know you're interested. Wikipedia offers a few interesting tidbits on this soap opera actress:

• She's Texan. Woot.


• She won $5 million from Aaron Spelling in a discrimination lawsuit after he fired her because she was pregnant. (She was cast to play the Taylor McBride, whose name rivals Hunter Tylo's for awesomeness, on Melrose Place but Lisa Rinna ultimately played the part.)


• Her daughter apparently had like a semi-miraculous spontaneous cure from retinal cancer. I wonder if shark DNA was involved... because Tylo's son was found mysteriously dead in the swimming pool...

Editorial addition: Yesterday some sharks at the Moody Gardens Aquarium (in Galveston) died when ozone levels in their tanks got too high. Full article from chron.com here. I mention this because apparently efforts to revive the sharks involved giving them lots of steroids... which, I guess because I've been thinking too much about this movie, seemed like a dangerous idea to me. (~Tex, 4.16.08, 1:34p.m.)

If you want the spoiler:

~You've been warned.~

There's this bit at the beginning about how Hunter Tylo knows the mad scientist, because she used to be engaged to his son. But his son died of cancer. So that's why the scientist is obsessed with curing cancer. Fine, nice motivation.


Well it turns out that the experimental subject is his son. So every time I talk about Hammerhead, imagine I'm saying "Paul" and it gets even more ridic.


After the whole impregnation bit fails because they spray some chemical on Paul (which is conveniently located in a cabinet labeled "Shark control") Hunter Tylo should've made some sort of "U Can't Touch This" remark. That would've made my life. Or at least the 92 minutes of my life spent watching Hammerhead: Shark Frenzy.

Bacon-infused vodka, parts 4-5

Part 4: Labelling

Stephen won the naming contest and my creation now goes by "Crisp."

Part 5: Enjoying

So we each tried a sip of Crisp straight-up. I must say, everyone was pleased. Or maybe "pleasantly surprised" is more accurate. But pleasant, nonetheless.

It smells very strongly of bacon. But I think we were all afraid the similarities would end there and the taste would be all vodka. But no, it definitely tastes like bacon, start to finish. I used a peppercorn bacon, not a maple, so the effect is smoky.

We then went for the bloody marys (I have decided that's the correct spelling of the plural, not "ies" but I haven't researched this point.), which were also quite good, though you have to make them pretty strong to get the baconness all the way through.

Anyway, it was actually good, so now that I have the mason jar and funnel, I might make another batch. We did a little brain-storming on how else to use bacon-infused vodka and came up pretty short on cocktails. I mean, it doesn't seem like you want anything fizzy... or fruity... Could make an alright shot, maybe with a little Tabasco thrown in. Could also make for a badass vodka sauce for pasta. But that's about all I've got on that. The bloody mary seems to be the proper venue for this gem.

In related news, Neena informed me that a New York establishment is using bacon-infused bourbon to make maple old fashioneds. So that may be a project for another day.

For anyone's interest, a round-up of a few other bacon-related products I've noticed:

• Bacon maple lollipops. ("A perfect gift for the sweet-toothed pork aficianado in your life.")
• Vosges Chocolate Flying Pig with bacon.
• Bacon Salt. "A zero calorie, vegetarian, kosher certified seasoning salt that makes everything taste like real bacon." The mind reels. The pictures of proposed vessels for this seasoning include french fries, corn on the cob, chicken and hamburger. Awesome. I'm also thinking it would be excellent for rimming the glass on my bloody marys. I also note Operation Bacon Salt on the website--an effort to provide bacon salt to the brave men and women serving our country in the armed services. Hmm.

Bacon-infused vodka, Part... 3?

Stage 3 involved the straining and filtering of the blissful substance. I have to say, running bacon vodka through a coffee filter is a surprisingly slow

process. It seems that the fat clogs the filter, requiring frequent changes. Who knew?

That said, the filtering was more effective than I'd even hoped. As you can see from the pre-filter jar (See photo, left), pre-filter vodka was... shall we say, gross. Cloudy, globs of fat and bits of pepper floating about. After (below, right)--lovely, clear, etc.

No, I still haven't tasted it yet. I feel that it needs an event.

I will note that the problem with keeping a wine bottle of bacon vodka in my fridge is that sometimes when I want a glass of wine I end up pouring a glass of vodka. That aroma does come as a shock, I must say.

Salty Characters I've met in the Great State, #10 in a list

I didn't think I'd encounter anything better than kazanovasex. Truly, I never hoped. But humanity continues to awe and inspire me.

And so I offer you the guy with the screen name [I won't say on what] superpiercedwang.

To address the obvious, no, his last name is not Wang.

So riddle me this: "super-pierced wang"? Or "super, pierced wang"?

That is, does he have like 35 piercings, or is the wang itself just super (and, incidentally, pierced). I know punctuation may not be prized in certain online circles, but it does highlight the importance of the hyphenated or phrasal adjective. [As Stephen offered the other day, it's the difference between "Mother fucking dog" and "Mother-fucking dog."]

And another thing--"Wang?" Heehee. Wang. Is that a euphemism much in use these days? It rather makes me wonder if "superpiercedcock" and "superpiercedschlong" were already taken. And even having to wonder that makes me a little bit sad.

PS--apparently "wang" (superpierced or otherwise) is not in the blogger dictionary.

Another note on parasites (No mom jokes in this one, I swear).

You know those little ads and notices and links you get at the top of your gmail, tailored to you by gmail's creepy content searches? Well, I'm getting an ad for parasitecleanse.com with great regularity these days and I can only assume it's from that one gchat the other day.

Too bad gmail isn't just a touch more sophisticated, realizing that I love parasites. I am not looking for an herbal way to rid them from my body.

At last.

Hot Chicks with Douchebags is an amusing blog for timekill purposes.

It is also, incidentally, my long-time assessment of the New York dating scene.

Thanks, but no thanks

Saturday, I got a haircut. (Not that much, don't panic.) So my interaction with my new hairdresser, Irma, was going along pretty normally. She inquired whether I was married and offered (unsolicited) consolation that there's still plenty of time, though she had not at that point inquired about my age. Fine.

Well, I guess she was assuming I was much younger than I am...perhaps because I was wearing a very silly horse-print shirt that I originally purchased for my high-school-aged goddaughter, but decided to keep formyself. Because when it came out that I'm 29, she got all shocked and said how I look so much younger. Again, this wasn't a problem and I was still taking it as a compliment.

But what I didn't put together was what the real cause of her shock was. Apparently, while whatever age I appeared to be (24? That seems to be a popular guess) is plenty young enough to be single, 29 is not.

I'm reminded of a friend who lived in Japan at age 26 and was told she was "Christmas cake--nobody wants it after the 25th."

Anyway, I discovered this thought process of hers because when she finished with my hair and I told her I liked it, she exclaimed, "See! We'll get you a husband."

This sort of consolation is strangely often on offer around here. I did not express concern about getting a husband. Very strange. And while I'm sure she meant well, I felt obliged to respond, "Please don't get me one here. I'll be stuck."

After that exchange, of course, I was unable to inquire about what I'd now really like to know: "Just for future reference, what haircut would get me a husband?" Cuz if it's the one I've got now, I'll be sporting a ponytail or hat at least until I move.