Okay, are you ready? Here’s my secret. Start a company called Facebook and sell ad space to any loser willing to shell out the bucks. I mean, what is this crap? Is this really the best advertising that a $3.7B valued company can run? You know, they were valued at $15B last summer… until they started running these ads.

Here’s the deal. I hit refresh about 10 times and got a different “make money” ad almost each time. I clicked through every ad and got this earnest dickweed dude telling me how lazy you can be and still make money. Helloooo, I already know that secret. It’s call “dealing dope.”

No really, these are down-to-earth guys (except for Paul Steinbach, you slimebag a-hole) who really seem to be making it in today’s tough economy. I love the adorable twins, Dave Williams and Kevin Hoeffer (Hoeffer is his married name) who really seem to be a successful sibling team. How inspiring! And even the poor mentally challenged, helmet wearing Jason Miller. Your momma must be so proud!

Facebook Ads

Here’s something scary talented that these Photoshop geniuses did. They took Seth Meyer’s hands (from SNL’s Weekend Update) and made them look just like Katie Couric’s, which look just like the mannequin’s at the 99 cent store. That’s a money maker talent right there.

Genius Photoshop Work

I’m really torn when I surf Facebook. It feels like a sick day in grade school. You were psyched you had the day off, but you had to sit through commercials for bartending school and DeVry Technical College. Seeing those commercials made you feel like your life had no other option. You know, maybe my life doesn’t. You might see a picture of me up there soon with a sweet Testarossa. Hats off to the internet entrepreneurs!

I know you all want to learn how to become expert locksmiths. Well, you might not know that I’ve been studying this trade for many years. I’m proud to say that I’m the first person EVER to be able to unlock a Kryptonite lock with a Bic pen. Okay, I’m totally lying, but you already knew that. I just watched a few videos on YouTube and that made me the expert.

I advocate stealing as many bikes as you can with these type of locks on them. If bike owners don’t know that their outdated locks can be picked with a Bic pen, then you deserve to have their bikes. Let me know when you’ve accumulated at least 10 bikes and we’ll have a ghost riding party from the top of Marin Ave. all the way down.

Nothing quite compares to the pain of broken toes. And the thought of how my toes were broken makes it even more painful. I was hauling 150 lb. concrete pavers in my minivan for a landscaping project. Before I left the house I looked at my Red Wing boots and said, “Eh, I don’t need those. I’ll keep my skate shoes on since I’m hitting the skate park later.” I hired these dudes to help me load the pavers in the minivan and one of the guys stacked a paver upright against the rear hatch door. Before we took off, I eyed that paver and even checked to see if it was going to bang around. My helper dude gave me the look like “¿Qué onda ese? Relax bro.” I was like, okay, cool, but the whole ride home it was banging back and forth every time I stopped and took off. The last position it was in must have been leaning against the hatch because when I opened the door that 150 lb. paver came tumbling down on top of my tender little toes.

The weirdest thing when you get hurt is how everything happens in slow motion. When I opened the door I felt something heavy against it. Then I heard this weird scraping sound and out came the paver floating down like a cartoon. I watched it fall on my foot. I was thinking what the f*%k was that? What the f*%k is that? Oh my God. A paver just fell on my foot. Holy crap, that hurts. In reality it happened like this: open door, scrape, splat, aaaaaiiiiieeeee!!!!! I was hopping around screaming like a little girl and the two Mexican dudes were just frozen. That’s the last I saw of them too.

I hobbled upstairs, Dana grabbed some ice and painkillers and I retreated to the couch. I was kind of freaking out and then I remembered this pain management technique that Dana and I learned in a birthing class. “Slip the silver glove of anesthesia on, feel it run down your arm, through your body.” I thought and thought about that damn glove and then the Percoset started to kick in. I never needed the drugs when I had a meniscus repair, but now they came in handy. After a couple of hours, the pain subsided a little and I realized I was actually having a nice Saturday afternoon. Percoset, couch, movie, can’t do anything except stay put. I thought I could play that up for eight or nine days, but I was up and about with a borrowed medical boot the next day.

So how do you treat broken toes? There’s nothing you can really do. Just elevate and ice. I actually went to the hospital, but thought I’d save a few grand in x-rays and stuff by heading home.

The moral of this story is don’t be a moron and second guess yourself, especially not twice like I did. I should’ve worn the Red Wings, and I should have moved the paver away from the rear hatch. Ah whatever, now you can watch the result of my stupidity.

Remember when your parents first started using email? You would get those wonderful forwarded emails with good luck totem poles, the chance to redeem money from Microsoft, and those oh so great jokes. That was nothing compared to what’s happening today. The YouTube generation is expanding it’s age demographic and the over 65 parental frenzy of viewing and forwarding videos is at an all-time high. I got this gem of “Peace and Love” from my mom the other day, and of course I had to watch it about eighteen times with my kids. She sent the video to me on February 11 and it had 3.8 million hits. As of today (only five days later) it had 6.7 million hits. Parents are the ultimate new cute influencers making “the cute” the biggest viral element on the web. Just think if Disney had bought the rights to this video when it was released less than a month ago. Forget the Jonas Brothers. Bambi Redux and Orangecicle Puss would be their new cash cow.

99 cent party

It’s like some white trash god came out of the sky and took a huge crap on us. That’s how I felt as we pulled into the parking lot and descended on the 99 cent store. Nico, my WT princess, has a homemade pink tiara on, day old princess face paint, and about eight temporary tattoos, including a tribal choker. Anton, my WT superhero, has homemade blue tiara on, day old Spiderman face paint with only the eyes left, a similar barrage of tattoos, and the dirtiest ass sweatpants that I think I found in the gutter in a crack induced haze and said “oh, these will look great on you.” We pile out of our dirt caked, busted windshield, dented fender minivan and I can feel the Hollywood slow motion shot of the three of us emerging onto the scene. Nico and Anton are clutching their allowance dollar bills raised high above their heads, me closing the sliding door like I’m pumping a shotgun as we all embark on our 50 yard journey from the car to the store. Somehow I get this feeling that the world at the 99 cent store had stood still before we arrived.

The excitement is palpable, I mean majorly palpable (dude, it’s palpable, okay?). A purple and green 99 cent store shopping cart catches our eye as we pass and Nico says “ooh, we can get that for 99 cents!” (honey, we can just take that for free). The front doors whoosh open and there we are at the threshold of the biggest damn 99 cent store I have ever seen. Yes, I have been in a few 99 cent stores, okay? And this was like a supermarket 99 cent story, produce and all (yes, they had produce!). Anton looks up at the ceiling and says “coowal!” And it was pretty cool; a super high domed ceiling with fancy bas-relief and stuff like that. I wondered aloud what the place used to be and my question was immediately answered by the 99 cent store docent. “Oh, this was an old fashioned movie theater. Up there is the screen. And there were the speakers. And up there is the balcony. And there’s another row. They couldn’t mess with none of  this ‘cause it’s a historical landmark. And if you come back over this way you can really see…” Nico and Anton were looking at me like “hey asshole, the toys are this way.”

Anton immediately gloms onto a Spiderman flashlight the size of his pinky (batteries not included) while Nico slips into this “hmm, okay I like this, hmm” phase of shopping. We wander down the beauty/clothing/crazy miscellaneous isle and I catch a glimpse of a home pregnancy test out of the corner of my eye. Okay, here’s the real dichotomy of the 99 cent store. Some items probably cost half a cent to manufacture like the Spiderman flashlight, while others must cost close to a dollar like the pregnancy test. Their margins are all over the map, but they’re stuck to the 99 cent rule. There must be a really smart MBA with one helluva calculator and a slick psychology book sitting in the 99 cent HQ. On the other hand, maybe the generic brand pregnancy test is driving some poor woman crazy because it’s really just a recycled Dora the Explorer invisible ink activity book.

At the checkout, each of the kid’s items ring up to $1.08. They hand the cashier their $1 and I say “Ha ha, you forgot about tax! No toys for you!” No, I didn’t say that, but I was thinking it. Actually, they slipped an extra item each past me. By then it was too late. I wasn’t about to sit there waiting for the manager with “the key” to come and back out a $2.16 transaction. Plus my kids would’ve kicked me in the shins and yelled that they were being kidnapped.

Nico: Stop copying me!
Anton: Stop copying me.
Nico: Stop, I mean it.
Anton: I mean it!
Nico: Okay, try to copy this – Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious
Anton: Shoobie, boobie, doobie, roobie
Nico: Ha ha, tricked you. You know what the longest word in the English language is?
Anton: Flakmakdaktrakpaklakhakapakadookieyaya
Nico: Nuh uh, you don’t even know.
Anton: Butt frack… poop!
Nico: [laughs hysterically]

Nico and Anton

If you were to give your three year old kid a baseball bat and said “hit me in the butt” you might expect him to be confused like “me no wanna hurt daddy.” I said you might expect him to be confused. The real outcome is that your kid would delight in nothing more than whooping your ass with a Fred Flintstone sized plastic bat. And if you think the three year old is going to have some fun, wait until you put the bat in the hands of a six year old. “Hayeeahh!! Let’s do it baby!!” were that last words I heard before I got a major league home run smack to my rear. I mean, who doesn’t like to watch their kids having fun? It’s just a little disconcerting watching them have so much fun at your expense. Okay, it wasn’t that bad because I had these wussy shorts on that were padded. The one beer I was drinking, however, did nothing for the pain. Watch this… but you know, don’t try it at home, mainly because I already did it and you’d be copying me.

The gardeners are tearing up our backyard right now. What? Why not me? Because I’m stimulating the economy, that’s why. Anyway, great guys, but their English is a little shaky. I was talking to Pablo:

Pablo: You know, the beef (showing me his head)
Me: Huh, what’s that?
Pablo: The beef, it’s very bad (pointing to a corner of the yard)
Me: Yeah (pretending I know)
Pablo: Yeah, the beef (now showing me the back of his neck and his elbow)
Me: Wow, huh. It can be bad, yeah totally.
Pablo: Yeah, too many beef.
Me: Wait, what?
Pablo: You know, like not honey, but beef.
Me: Bees! Oh man, you got stung up bad.
Pablo: Yeah, I dig over there and the beef they all come up.

I’m lucky on three counts: 1. Pablo is a tough S.O.B., 2. the yellow jacket nest was just on the other side of our property line, and 3. I was stimulating the economy instead of digging in my backyard.

Pablo and Marta tearin' it up yo.

Oh. My. God. The durian. What a freak of nature. And the Ramos Gin Fizz. What a blessing of nature. So let’s put ‘em together, it only seems logical. It’s like when I got paired up with the smart kid in chemistry class. One helps the other out, only I didn’t stink like someone farted on moldy cheese, then swirled it in a urinal, shoved it in an unnaturally spiky coat and sold it for $4.98/lb. at the local produce market. The Ramos Gin Fizz is the smart kid, a drink that instinctively knows what crazy ingredients will make the whole greater than the sum of its parts. The Ramos is like, “Durian, dude, seriously. You might be cool where you come from, but look around you. Innocent people are convulsing on the kitchen floor with fits of gagging. Shut up and follow my lead.” So, watch the two together in action. You might learn a little something yourself.

You can take about any liquid with sugar, mix it with vodka and charge $10 for it. I’m positive that the new hit will be the Voli, vodka and Ligonberry Drink from IKEA. It’ll outsell their meatballs two to one. Can’t you picture it? Aftter 9pm, the IKEA kitchen turns into a bar serving up only Volis and let’s people chill out in their little pre-fabricated rooms. Go ahead IKEA, use my business model and make millions, just send me a Tylosand sofa in exchange. We’re all good.

What is up. Welcome to dowzit.com. This is my inaugural post. The inspiration for Reviews, News, & Booze actually originated after I shot this video. Embarking on the task of tuning a piano eventually drove me to the bottle, which I guess is better than shooting dope, but either would have been an acceptable activity after a job like that. Just like my mom used to say, “step the hell back and call a professional.”