Night of the Living Pretentious Guy

Once a year in Kansas City--always during the coldest week in January, it seems--the annual tradition of "Restaurant Week" occurs. A great deal of hoity-toity restaurants conspire to offer fancy-schmancy dinners for $30 and lunches for $15. It's a great way to try joints we've only read about, always mean to try, and then forget about them. And if you like bisque, you're in luck. (But you've gotta really like bisque; lots and lots and lots of bisque).

At one of these upper-scale joints (so upper-scale, I had to actually iron khakis!), we found ourselves enjoying some excellent food. However, the place was dark and murky, full of interior bubble windows, adorned with odd, swooping walls, and splashed with dour and shimmering aquas and teals: the ambiance of an aquarium. Worse, the tables were so close to one another, I became extremely familiar with the waiter's butt.

And then THEY sat down next to us. 

At first, they seemed harmless enough: an older couple and a younger couple (I envied the guy because HE got to wear jeans). That's where my envy stopped. Desperate to impress the older couple (I kinda assumed they were the younger gal's parents), the young guy wouldn't--couldn't--shut up. When he wasn't bragging about himself, he let the world know about his seemingly endless array of impressive best friends who'd done everything from curing cancer to revolutionizing the world of cuisine.

"My best friend's the head chef at The Drunken Antler," he bragged. "I guarantee it'll change the way you see beef."

An actual quote! (The only way I ever see beef is on a plate; definitely NOT the cute barnyard animals. But now that this has been imprinted on my brain, I just might have to go vegetarian.)

"When you go," Mr. Hotcha continued, "I need to be the one to take you. I want to study the look of satisfaction on your face."

Noooooooo! Trapped, nowhere to go, uncomfortable in my khakis, I was held captive to the relentless pontificating.

"My other best friend is a world-class mixologist in Portland. He's created some top-of-the-line tastes and drinks, the best anywhere."

Make it stop! Please!

But the younger guy didn't. I don't think he could. Like a Hyde persona, the driving force of pretentiousness swept him away. He monopolized our waiter (although to be fair, I got a lotta butt-face time with him), and soon Mr. Too-Cool-For-School somehow roped the bartender into his growing cult. 

This time the older guy (run, potential father-in-law, run fast and hard!) reiterated all of Mr. Young Pretentious Guy's brags to the bartender.


The bartender, squirmy and ill-at-ease, jut out a stand-up comic's hand, and said, "You know, I just mix drinks, and sometimes, you know, I add stuff to 'em. You know." With a perpetual grimace on his face and a finger working loose his collar, the bartender couldn't wait to escape back to the safety of his bar. We felt his pain.

Having run out of best friends to yak about, Mr. Pompous decided the time had come for him to wax on about himself. And wax on he did. "The other day, I gave a presentation (snootily pronounced "PREE-san-tation"), and made sure to run long, carrying over into our lunch break. I've found that's the most efficient way to present my case and keep the nay-sayers' questions at bay. Quite an effective tool."

Only tool I saw was sporting trendy and perfectly manicured 5:00 shadow.

We gobbled and got out before the pretentiousness rubbed off on us.

Beware the pretentious, ladies and gents. They're out there. Waiting. Lurking. Pontificating.

There's not an ounce of pretentiousness in Nightmare of Nannies. Just good ol' fashioned mystery and stoopid comedy.

One click away keeps the pretension at bay!

Missing: Hipster Refrigerator Fix-It Guy

Oh, Daniel, I hardly knew ye...

Have you seen me?

Last Tuesday, Daniel the hipster fix-it guy, ambled into my home and heart. Backpack slung over his shoulder, he carried with him a sense of confidence rarely found in the appliance trade. I admired his carefully nurtured facial fuzz. I envied his clunky, yet trendy dark-framed glasses (the kind that people used to make fun of you for wearing), while he rambled on about frig gizmos and sensor what's-its and electrical doo-dads. All very technical, all very boring.

But Daniel was far from boring! Bromance was in the air! (Or maybe that was the musty smell coming from the refrigerator.)

After Daniel'd finished his examination, he casually leaned over our kitchen counter and explained how messed up our refrigerator was.

"But...but, Daniel," I said, "the refrigerator shouldn't be freezing food, right? I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, but freezing food is the freezer's job."

With a sigh, Daniel explained more technical bla, bla, bla and other excruciating nonsense. I nodded as if I understood him, because I didn't want to appear dumb in Danny's eyes. (By this time, I'd advanced to calling him "Danny," such is the power of male bonding over appliances). 

Bottom line was our refrigerator had been hit by a faulty sensor. Or something close to that.

"Huh," I said. "Does that explain why the light goes off when we open the doors, then turns on again when we shut them? Like in Bizarro World?"

Through narrowed eyes, he glowered at me. Extremely unamused. Somewhere our burgeoning bromance had taken a wrong turn. Finally, he pitched up bony hipster shoulders and broke the agonizing silence. "Can't really tell you what's causing the light thing, man."

His answer didn't exactly instill confidence. But his coolness certainly did.

"I guess we need to put that sensor in," I said.

Danny typed in some numbers on his phone, handed it to me, and said, "$180 bucks. I don't have the part on me so I'll need to order it. But you gotta pay first, dude."

"Okay." I paid. "Um, can I get a receipt?"

"Sorry, dude, everything's electronic now. See you next Tuesday."

"Ah... But--"

Too late. Danny rushed out of the house and out of my life.

For good as it later turned out.

Tuesday rolled around again. No sign of Danny. I called the fix-it, what's-it company.

"Where's Danny?" I asked.

"I wish I knew," said the woman. Hardly an encouraging sign.

"What?"

"Daniel's gone missing. We haven't seen or heard from him in several days."

Stunned, I opened the refrigerator and stared wistfully at all of the frozen food. "Um...is he missing or, you know, missing-missing? Like vanished?"

"Missing-missing. Sorry for the inconvenience."

Immediately the smell of skullduggery stunk up the place. A mystery of epic, Encyclopedia Brown proportions! Clearly, Danny was either dead or had absconded to Mexico with our 180 bucks.

If you'd like to read about an entire bread and breakfast's worth of skullduggery, check into the Dandy Drop Inn! An acclaimed horror thriller to warm up your cold, winter nights: Click here for Dread and Breakfast!

THIS JUST IN! REFRIGERATOR-GUY POST-SCRIPT:

Guess who comes knocking at the door the next day? Yep, Daniel (He's back to being regular "Daniel" now as he never calls, never texts, never shows up...). He mutters some lame excuses about how his phone stopped working, then he got sick. Hmph. He called it a "communication malfunction (kinda like a "wardrobe malfunction," I assume, only with words instead of bared flesh)." I didn't buy it. Too little, too late. I officially declared the bromance OVER!

(I realize this was hardly an exciting endto my tale of suspense and bromance, but sometimes truth is, um, more boring than fiction. Don't judge Dread and Breakfast by the pedestrian conclusion here!)

Mandatory Sex Practice!

Recently, my awesome mother-in-law sent us a post-holiday card. Within it was a personalized message to me.

"Stuart," it read, "you better start practicing your Sex--will expect entertainment in the nursing home."

Huh.

After I rolled my tongue up off the floor and tucked it back into my mouth, I reread the card. Yep. Same thing.

What the...

The ramifications of her note were mind-boggling. And not even a bit cryptic. Kinda an order from her.

Which begs the question: what in the world have my wife and her mom been talking about? Furthermore, what does my mother-in-law mean by "practice?" Surely, she can't be advocating more masturbation, right? I mean, I don't want to go blind or grow lycanthropically hairy palms.

I suppose I could use a little boning up on my sex technique. But honestly, I'd rather not hear it from my mother-in-law.

And what kind of nursing home are we talking about here where sex is used to entertain the crowd? I imagine the facility has quite a long waiting list. (I'd better get signed up now.)

After the fireworks in my head died out, I took a closer look at the note. "Stuart," it read a bit differently this time, "you better start practicing your Sax..."

Ooooooohhhhhhh...... Okay. That's a bit better.

Speaking of things better not thought about for the sake of humanity, have you heard the one about the male stripper and his detective sister? No? Well, you're late to the party! Click here already! 

So long to the funniest show on TV...The Inhumans

I grew up as a comic-book geek kid (oh, NOW they're cool). So when I first heard there was an upcoming TV series based on the "Inhumans," a strange Marvel comics superhero group, I frothed. Fairly foamed at the mouth, I tell you. It takes a lot to make me froth. Frothing is hard-earned in the Stuart household.

Eight painful episodes in (I'm a television masochist!) and I'm stabbing a stake in the show's bone-headed heart. (Pretty sure ABC agrees; after the eighth episode--and 13 were contracted--that sultry, smoky-voiced, ABC promo guy called it the "season finale.")

Where did the show go wrong? Let me count the ways...

The best actor on the show was a 2,000 pound, teleporting, CGI bulldog. I loved that guy. The rest of the cast? Not so much. The hero, the mute king Black Bolt, comes off as a drunken, constipated mime, prone to bouts of horrific mugging that would kick Jerry Lewis out of France.

Look, the show had a really cool built-in concept of a bunch of neato mutants living on the moon. Boom! Instant awesome! But the TV Gods chose to do the dumbest thing possible: the Inhuman gang is separated and tossed onto earth. Instead of political intrigue, we get Karnak wedged into a love triangle on a secret weed farm. Medusa? The strong first lady married to Black Bolt with the wiggly tendrils of hair? In the first episode, her hair's chopped off. Triton, the green-skinned amphibious guy, my long-time fave of the Inhumans? They "kill" him off in the first three minutes of the first episode. I knew he wasn't dead, not really, just comic-book dead. So I suffered through seven awful episodes to see him come back. He did. And, lo, he was as boring as my dad's socks.

There were many problems with the show. For some odd reason, earth car traffic befuddles the Inhumans. Yet, they take to skinny jeans like a second skin.

Maybe the problem was the bad guy, Maximus. Stolen from Game of Thrones, the actor pretty much reprises his "Ramsay Snow" role with a trendier haircut. Call it method acting. 

Here's the deal, though: Once the Inhumans go through a complex, mandatory process of metamorphosing ("terragenesis"), they're expected to gain special powers. If they don't, they become "human" and are sent straight to the working mines. (President Trump fully endorses this show). Maximus is supposed to be villainous because he wants to free the "normal humans" from the hellish working conditions of the mines on the moon. Black Bolt and his royal family want to keep things status quo. And they're the heroes? I'm already endorsing a Maximus-Dwayne Johnson presidential run in 2020.

There's another villain, Mordis, who is described as "death itself." Guess what? Death is like an irritating child on a long car trip. "Are we there yet?" "I'm tired." "My feet hurt." "How much longer do we have to walk through this jungle?" Yep, a truly terrifying villain.

I could go on about the wise, talking wall and other fun stuff, but let's not.

ABC had huge hopes for the show. So much so that they put the first couple episodes out in theaters to launch it. No one went. No one cared. Except for hell-raising critics which is probably why it ended up on Friday nights, the dead zone for loser TV shows.

It's been said we're living in a golden age of television. Maybe we are if you watch FX, AMC, Hulu, Netflix, Amazon, and all the other outliers.  It's just no one's bothered to tell the networks. The network heads still insist on serving up the same horrible crap they've been shoving at us for years. If they keep it up, they're bound to become as extinct as the Inhumans.

I don't like to celebrate failure. As a contributor of entertainment content, I mourn creative failure. So here's to the late, great "Inhumans!" I hoist a terragenesis cocktail toward you, ladies and inhumans!

Not quite as funny as The Inhumans, but I tried:

One click away from pants-wetting ha-ha's.