Wednesday, September 29, 2010

The Tale of Adolph C. Hunt

Let me first start off by saying that I'm quickly approaching 2,000 unique views on my blog. Who on earth is reading this?! I have no idea, but thanks whoever you are. And please keep reading.



So for those who have no clue who I am, other than this person who writes ridiculous stories, you may be wondering who all these people are that I'm talking about. Initially I thought about not using names, but then I figured it would get kind of obnoxious if I just kept using "my friend" instead of their actual name. So I've mentioned Shanda, Lainey, Elaine, Lisa, and Omar....and of course my husband Kevin....and etc. I will never give any more background on these folks other than what's relevant to the story. So since you don't know them, feel free to use the creative process to invent whatever details about them you'd like. A few new people will be introduced in this story, so enjoy. That is all.

Adolph C. Hunt. The name sounds fabricated, I know. But it's not. Adolph, well, the problem with that name is definitely self-explanatory. But the letter C being so close to the word Hunt just begs to be made fun of. The whole name is rather unnerving, if you ask me, and that's precisely where the story begins.

I was hanging out with Shanda one day, and she excused herself from the room to make a phone call. She came back, and I asked who she was speaking with. Her words: "Adolph C. Hunt, he's this guy I prank call." I starred at her blankly. "Excuse me, what?" I said. "Yes," she said, "a guy I just decided to prank call. I had to, his name is Adolph C. Hunt."




She informed me that she had been looking up a number in the phone book (remember when we used to use those?) and had run across the name, and found it irresistible. She then began the odyssey of oh-so-fabulous prank calls, that had been going on for a considerable amount of time.

I was beyond intrigued by this. And naturally, I felt like I had to do it too. I asked "what do you say when you call him?"

Shanda, oh Shanda. God love Shanda.

Shanda said, "I just sing 'I like to move it move it' over and over in a man voice." It took me quite some time to collect myself after hearing this, but I managed. Then I spent a moment trying to provoke a sense of calm before calling Adolph myself.



Adreneline pumping (yes, I excite easily) I picked up the phone and dialed. When he picked up the phone, in the background I heard the loud sounds of a football game and a bunch of rustling that suggested that Adolph had dropped the phone. A second later, a voice at the other end says "FUHBALL" as a form of a greeting. FUHBALL??? Do you seriously answer your phone during football season by saying FUHBALL? This completely caught me off guard, and immediately sent me into a fit of the giggles. I had to hang up. Clearly this Adolph fellow was a curious fig, and definitely an out-of-control football fan.



Moments later, I call again.

Adolph: "FUHHHHBALL!!"
Me: I like to move-it-move-it I like to move-it-move-it I like to move-it-move-it I like to move-it-move-it.....(pause)
Adolph: WHO THE HELL IS THIS, DAMN IT
Me: (pause)
Adolph: WHO THE HELL ARE YOU PEOPLE, I'LL CALL THE COPS
Me: I like to move-it-move-it I like to move-it-move-it I like to move-it-move-it I like to move-it-move-it.....MOVE IT!
Adolph: AH GAAD DAMMIT!!!! (click)



Shanda and I, who of course did this on speaker phone, then proceeded to roll on the floor convulsing with laughter. That was it. I was addicted.

News of the Adolph C. Hunt prank call spread throughout our group like wildfire. Everyone wanted in on this, it was just too entertaining to not love. We would have what were just short of Adolph prank calling parties....and the amount of people calling grew and grew.

I remember on nights we were bored, Betsy and I would drive around in her sister Sally's land rover and use one of those old school car cellulars to call Adolph on speaker phone. Over, and over and over. Adolph hated us. It was awesome.

Finally, by the time next football season rolled around, Adolph had decided it was enough. He answered the phone with his usual salutation, and when he heard "I LIKE TO MOVE-IT-MOVE-IT!!!" start up again, a spring sprung. He was finished. He held a number button on the phone down so it beeped loudly enough that we stopped to see what was going on. Betsy, Greg and I were the culprits in this situation, and had three-way dialed Adolph. We were always careful to block our number. This time, however, we had failed. He threatened his usual threat - but this time with a renewed fervor, saying "I HAVE YOUR NUMBER NOW YOU LITTLE BASTARDS! I'M GOING TO CALL THE POLICE!!!!"



Sweet precious mother of God.

He called Greg back, and a police officer was on the line. He wanted to file charges on us for harassment, and we were all going down in flames.

Luckily, and much to our surprise, the police officer seemed more amused than upset. He made us all apologize to dear old Adolph, and swear that we wouldn't do it again upon pains of imprisonment. We did all of the above without complaint, for we had been sure we were going to jail. I look back at it now and laugh, like, yeah right! Who would put teenagers in jail for prank calling a guy named Adolph?!

I'm sure Adolph C. Hunt has long since left this life, but he will not soon be forgotten. And that being said, I will be sending out evites to host a Skype prank calling party. God knows there surely is somebody named Adolph C. Hunt somewhere in the world that is just dying to be harassed. Let the legend live on.

Tuesday, September 21, 2010

Mental Majesty

A certain series of events has been told to me that created the best, and most hilarous, mental image I've ever had.

Now, I've only heard it told once. Perhaps the details are a bit fuzzy, but I've put together what I can remember and am attempting to write it down in the form of a story.

I'm a very visual person. Not that I necessarily am a visual learner, I just instantly picture what people say when they tell stories... even when I'd rather not. Very vividly, I might add. Which makes disgusting stories disgustingier, and beautiful stories beautifullier, sad stories saddier, and whatever else involves me seeing a clear mental picture of what's going on as if it were right in front of my face. Ps, I heart purposefully bad spelling. I do not, however, enjoy accidentally bad spelling - and I hate it more than anything when I realize I've sent an email out with exceptionally poor spelling after-the-fact. It eats at my very soul.

I also hate it when people ramble, yet astonishingly (and quite apparently) I do not mind if I do. On that note, we shall finally begin.

Every now and again, a funny story comes along that tickles my fancy because of the mental image aspect. When I think of these stories, one stands out among the rest.

Let's say there's a man, and this man has a wife. The wife happens to be pregnant, and is so pregnant that it makes it very difficult for her to sleep. She naps in the day when she can, and when she can't she's exhausted. In fact, either way she's exhausted.

I tried to pull up a picture of an exhausted lady on google, but all it came up with was Lady Gaga pictures. Go figure.

So one night the wife is trying to sleep, but all the husband and wife can hear is the loud chirping of frogs coming from a pond in their back yard. They try everything they can to distract themselves from the sound, but it's so overwhelmingly loud that no sound can be created to cover it that doesn't cause sleep-interuption in of itself.

After strong deliberation on how to solve this quandary, the man promptly gets up, goes outside, collects the frogs and throws them down a storm drain.



Quite proud of his brilliant solution, he crawls into bed - sure that this will no longer be a problem for him, or his wife.

Geez, google is in rare form today. I looked up "couple peacefully sleeping" and got this:



The next night the couple lays down to sleep. Suddenly - a bombardment of frog noises begins to rise like thunder. THEY HAD COME BACK! AND IN GREATER NUMBERS! Much like the sand people in Star Wars: A New Hope. Yes, I totally just went there.



The man, seething with anger, grabs the big bunch of frogs and once again makes a trek to the storm drain.



The next day comes and goes, and once again night befalls them. Silence. Then a cacophony of deafening frog chirps begins.







The man is completely filled with rage. Blind by the sudden rush of hate-fueled adrenaline, he starts grabbing frogs in a crazed fury. He comes out to the street with hands and robe pockets full of frogs. He doesn't know what to do. The storm drain idea is clearly a bad one, because apparently all they do down there is recruit friends to come back.

Then an idea begins to form. The man thinks "I SHALL END THEM!" But how? A car drives by, and light bulb in his head is ignited.



Like a crazed madman, his eyes wide with fury, he begins pelting the frogs under the wheels of passing cars like a gory bloodbath version of frogger.



This is the part of the story where I laugh to the point of tears. Because in my mind, there is a robed man pelting frogs at under passing cars at the speed of a major league pitcher...and laughing like the wild man of Borneo....




At this point he is experiencing the ecstasy of relief in his frog murder spree. Blinded by such elation, he manages to not see an approaching police car. Once again, he unleashes the Wrath of God on a frog by pitching it as he would a fastball under the police car.




The police officer promptly slams on his breaks, turns around, and rolls down the window. Realizing what he's done, the man snaps out of his frog murder high and comes back to his impending animal cruelty misdemeanor. Panicked, he begins to explain his actions.

OFFICER! My wife, she's pregnant. And the frogs...the DAMN FROGS....THE NOISE! She couldn't sleep! And I DIDN'T know what to DO!!!

In a storm of wild gesturing, the story tries to come out in a series of sentence fragments. The police officer, having heard enough even prior to the story being finished, simply rolls up his window and drives away.

The man, in awe of the events which had just transpired, empties his robe pockets of frogs. He trudges back to the house to his wife. He lays down, in a silence that is devoid of frog noises, and relishes the thought of the mass murder as he drifts to sleep.

Saturday, September 11, 2010

The Prank

In high school Lisa and I did a whole lot of driving around on a daily basis. Since Lisa was birthed, she has had a planner - and in order to fulfill all of the obligations Lisa's planner details (of which there are many), one is required to do quite a bit of errand running. In fact, I'm not sure how we ever got anything accomplished prior to Lisa getting her driver's license.

During the high school years everyone was extremely bored until they discovered parties. I remember Rachel and I would just call each other on the phone and watch tv. We wouldn't even say anything until the commercial breaks, and sometimes not even then. Class was boring, life was boring, so naturally when all other options had been exhausted - you just started calling people.

So Lisa and I filled our time with errand running and general running around waiting for phone calls which could potentially lead to doing something other than being bored. However, sometimes there were planner action items that needed to get done which occasionally prevented us from taking calls. During these times when we were unable to answer - once a person had tried one of us, they would try the other if the first one didn't answer. We found this annoying or funny depending on the day, and we would jointly make decisions to answer or not answer our phones.



One day on a no calls afternoon, Lisa received several calls from Omar - which of course went unanswered. We ran our errands for the day, back and forth from Kinkos to Lisa's. I can't even tell you how many countless hours I've put in at Kinkos just watching Lisa finish various projects. When she decided to laminate her projects, I went ahead and did mine too. Lisa is definitely a large contributor to several As I received on my stupid high school projects.

At any rate, at some point Omar decided that he was displeased by the lack of returned phone calls. As a result he decided to exact the best prank ever played with Elaine, a friend whose phone calls had also gone unanswered by Lisa that afternoon.

Later, when evening had rolled around, and Lisa and I decided to leave her house again. I'm sure we'd probably munched on cheez its and had enough diet coke for it to be considered dinner, and decided to go to Roasters for coffee. We got into her Isuzu Rodeo, and pulled out of the driveway. We were mostly out and almost pulling onto the street, when we saw something like this in the driveway where her car, only seconds earlier, had been parked:




The animal was completely indecipherable, but one thing was certain - it was most definitely dead. "What IS that?!?!" was probably said close to a million times along with "I DON'T KNOWWW!!" Still undecided on what this creature could be, we resigned ourselves to the fact that nothing could be done any longer. Perhaps it had been a cat that got caught in the engine? Cats are known to nap in or under cars in cold weather. All we knew was that it made us sad, and we didn't want to touch it. Shaken and disturbed, we decided to go on with our plan to get coffee.

At Roasters we began to tell people of this horrid incident, and when news of it reached two certain people - it was met with only smirks of blatant satisfaction. Why were Omar and Elaine so pleased at our misfortune?? I'll tell you why. They'd carried out the most innovative and disgusting form of revenge ever. They had actally created this mystery dead animal, and had been watching us discover its "remains" from the alley.

In their planning phase, they had decided the objective was to get our attention. But how? What could they do to ensure returned phone calls and simultaneously gross us out? A solution emerged out of the darkness, and took form as a dead animal. Logistics then began to be formulated.

For lack of wanting to actually kill an animal or touch roadkill, they had come up with a brilliant alternative. They de-stuffed one of Elaine's plush stuffed animals and filled it with ground beef, egg shells and various other things that would create a crunch noise. They also removed the plastic eyes or anything else that would trigger us to think it was fake. Then they placed it on the driveway, and covered it with red syrup to create the blood. All that was left to be done was to watch us pull out of the driveway from a safe distance so they could hysterically laugh.

At that point, all I could think was "bastards."

It was disturbing, disgusting and horrible - but I had to give them credit. At least it was innovative and original.

The evening came and went, and the next day Lisa told her parents and began to start a clean-up effort. Lisa and her dad went outside, and discovered something very odd. The creature was missing. They looked low and high, and could find it nowhere. It had vanished.

Later that afternoon, Lisa's mom was approached by their elderly neighbor; one of two twin sisters living next door. She quietly said "I found a poor little creature that died on your driveway. I think he had fallen from a tree. I nestled him in a shoebox, and said a little prayer before putting him in our dumpster."



Lisa's mom, who was now well informed of the prank, did everything she could to not laugh. This poor elderly woman of deteriorating mental capacity thought that it was real, and had even given it a burial. Rather than trying to explain a genuinely bizarre teenage prank, Lisa's mom just said "Thank you. Thank you so much, how sweet of you." and called it a day.

When she reported this back to Lisa and I, we laughed until we cried...but not before we returned a lot of phone calls.