Do You Want To See Something Really Scary?

My twelve-year old nephew has been asking me a lot about scary movies.  I think there is a little man peeking out and since at that age only sex and violence are really forbidden, it’s easy to venture into a horror films which at twelve you understand… sex, maybe not.  He looked at the cover of my Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) and commented, “That guy’s wearing a tie… and he’s fat,” at which point my brother told him, “You want to know why he’s so fat?”

I explained to him that he’s a lot more sophisticated than I was at twelve.  The previews for movies are scarier than a lot of movies I grew up with.  Gene Siskel used to say comedy is like love in that you either get it or you don’t.  You can explain a joke to me the same way you can explain why you love your wife and that won’t make the joke any funnier or make me love your wife.  Horror isn’t much different.  Everybody is scared of something different and some people close their eyes and go to sleep.  Other people close there eyes and see things.

With Halloween nearing, I decided I’d pick out ten horror movie suggestions for anyone interested.  If you’re a movie nerd or a gore hound, today you’re on the wrong blog.  I’m not telling you anything you don’t know.  These aren’t my favorite horror films.  These aren’t the best horror movies ever made or even the important ones.  These are the ones I like that you probably haven’t seen because people don’t talk about them as much as they should.  Anybody can slap The Shining (1980) and A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) on a list and I guarantee on Halloween weekend neither will be at the Blockbuster.  Also keep in mind I am assuming you’re all adults.  Don’t email me with your, “that movies wasn’t scary” bullshit.  You’re grown people.  You shouldn’t be scared of movies in the first place.

If you’re counting, the list includes one remake, one sequel, three adaptations and six good old fashioned original ideas (one of which has been remade but you can’t win them all).

That being said, here we go.

In The Mouth of Madness (1994)
Sam Neill is an insurance investigator hired to locate a missing horror novelist whose latest novel is so scary people who actually complete it are driven insane.  I consider it the best Stephen King movie never made (with a little HP Lovecraft for flavor).  It’s directed by John Carpenter who also has his name all over Assault on Precinct 13 (1976), Halloween (1978), The Fog (1980), Escape From New York (1981), The Thing (1982), Starman (1984) and Big Trouble in Little China (1986) and it would do you no harm to watch all of them.  This was the last movie he made that I liked and he hasn’t made a movie since 2001.

Best Tagline:  “Lived any good books lately?”

The Others (2001)
Nicole Kidman is the mother of two children who suffer from light sensitivity and must always be kept in the dark.  Strange things start happening and she questions whether they are being tormented by ghosts or if she’s gone insane.  I’m a big fan of well done haunted house movies and before The Others, I’d say the last good ones would have been The Shining (1980) and Poltergeist (1982).

Best Scene:  The reveal.  You’re going to think you know where it’s going… you’ll be wrong.

Black Christmas (1974)
Christmas Eve and a sorority is tormented by a prank caller.  It’s weird to see the word “Christmas” in a Halloween list. Halloween (1978) gets a lot of credit for creating the slasher genre with the masked killer and the completely shocking first person POV kill.  Whatever.  All that stuff appears in Halloween four years earlier.  Truth be told, Halloween was originally intended as a sequel to Black Christmas with their idea to have rotating killers at holidays.  This movie has the absolute creepiest phone calls ever and I’ll watch anything with Olivia Hussey in it.  Make sure you don’t get the 2006 remake which eschews all the tension and makes it into a slasher movie.  Ironically, director Bob Clark was also responsible for A Christmas Story (1984)… so much for pigeon-holing.

Best Shot:  The shot of the eyeball from the door… you’ll know it when you see it.

The Mist (2008)
Giant monsters attack a supermarket.  Trust me on this one.  Very reminiscent of my favorite book, William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, where the situation isn’t as much of the problem as the people it happens to.  That and Frank Darabont (The Shawshank Redemption (1994) and The Green Mile (1999)) should be the only person allowed to direct Stephen King adaptations.

Best Scene:  The finale.  Nerve-wrenching, horrible and we’d all wish we had the guts to do the same thing.  It’s not in the novella and (which has no definitive ending) because King said the movie ending never crossed his mind and he wished he though of it.

Land of the Dead (2005)
Zombies… enough said.  Let me get some things clear.  Love zombies, hate a lot of zombie movies.  George A Romero pretty much wrote the bible on the whole affair with the original Night of the Living Dead (1968) which is a work of genius.  He’s been riding that gravy train ever since.  I think Dawn of the Dead (1978) is one of the most overrated horror films in history.  Day of the Dead (1985) is a ridiculous joke.  Land of the Dead redeems itself understanding zombie films have to be about more than zombies.  They have to be about society (and before someone emails me, a shopping mall is not a metaphor for commercialism, it’s just a location).  With a budget three times larger than that of the previous three films combined, he actually hires actors instead of his drinking buddies and people he found in front of the Home Depot.  It should be noted that Romero doesn’t consider his films sequels as much as movies with the same premise.  No need to feel you have to watch the three previous movies.

Best Cameo:  Actor Simon Pegg and director Edgar Wright (Shaun of the Dead) as zombies in a photo booth.

Frailty (2001)
A father hears the voice of God and is given a mission to carry out his will and uses his two boys to help him.  There is a thing in movies that people with religion are quickly revealed to be either hypocrites or kooks (see The Mist).  Let’s just say Frailty doesn’t do that.  And again, small kids never hurt a horror film.  It’s Bill Paxton’s directorial debut and stars Matthew McConaughey when he used to act before he realized he could make a fortune making shitty romantic comedies like Failure To Lose A Ghost Of Girlfriend’s Past… Fool’s Gold.

Best Scene:  The reveal.

Stir of Echoes (1999)
Man, do I hate The Sixth Sense (1999).  All tension.  No plot, no character development and the whole thing hinges on a two minutes twist ending.  It’s like eating a plate full of maggot casserole followed by bananas foster and somehow the dessert makes the rest of the meal better.  It doesn’t.  Kevin Bacon’s son communicates to his imaginary friend and then Bacon begins to have visions of murdered girl in his home.  This is movie The Sixth Sense should have been and being released six weeks later didn’t help it.  Points for being based on a book by Richard Matheson.

Best Scene:  Kevin Bacon getting his shoes.

Near Dark (1987)
This is what happens when you make a very clever vampire movie and then have it released three months after The Lost Boys (1987) with virtually identical premises.  Young girl seduces a boy only to turn him into a vampire where he never quite gets the hang of it.  Where Lost Boys had California hooligans, Near Dark one-ups them with quasi-biker vampires.  Note to readers: Kiefer Sutherland has nothing on Lance Henricksen.  Directed by Kathryn Bigelow who’s also responsible for Point Break (1991), the often forgotten Strange Days (1995) and recent Hurt Locker (2008).  It stars pretty much everybody from Aliens (1986).  I guess Sigourney Weaver doesn’t do horror.  It was on the remake bus until Twilight became a success because the premises were too similar… except Near Dark is good.  No twinkle here.

But don’t think the Near Dark people are above riding someone’s coat tails.

Best Scene:  Bikers picking fights with Vampire Bikers.  Bad move.

The Blob (1988)
In the wake of David Cronenberg’s masterwork The Fly (1986) comes this little gem riding on it’s coattails.  Directed by Chuck Russell and co-written by Frank Darabont before he went the Stephen King route with The Shawkshank Redemption (1994), The Green Mile (1999) and The Mist (2008), The Blob is a clever remake and take on a classic and considering there isn’t one computer effect in the film only makes it more impressive.  Nothing more disturbing than a translucent blob that starts clear and becomes more and more pink with chunks of bones after it’s devoured people.  Kevin Dillon is no Steve McQueen… for that matter he’s no Matt Dillon but Shawnee Smith is always adorable so it’s a wash.

Best Scene: Guy getting sucked through a kitchen sink.

The Exorcist III (1990)
The only true sequel on the list.  William Peter Blatty wrote novel and screenplay The Exorcist (1973) was adapted from although it isn’t required to watch this film.  Seventeen years later he wrote and directed the sequel based on his novel, Legion.  George C Scott is a detective tracking The Gemini Killer who is believed to be a man possessed with the demon that once possessed 12 year old Regan MacNeill.  Statues cry blood.  Catatonic old ladies crawl on ceilings.  Fabio appears as an angel and Patrick Ewing as Death.  Seriously, I’m not making this up.

Best Scene:  Nurse in a hallway.  That’s all I’m telling you.

And as a bonus, if you’ve familiar with The Exorcist mythology, you’ll appreciate where I’m standing.  Have a safe and Happy Halloween.

Treats for Tricks

I’m a lazy Trick or Treater.  I always have been.  This is partially because I don’t like candy and partially because when I was a child, Halloween was a fairly kitschy affair.  This involved my mom buying costumes from the K-Mart made from plastic and horrible masks with very little visibility and even less breathing room.  These masks were held in place by what I am fairly confident were defective rubber bands deemed unsuitable for sale and the cheapest staples ever created.

It didn’t help that in my head, I dreamed I would actually look like Batman.  Instead I looked like this.

Of course that isn’t me because as crafty as my mom is she isn’t good enough to make me into a 1976 white kid in shitty Batman suit but you get the idea.  I had that exact same plastic bullshit suit

I can deal with not having boots and instead my own white Keds sneakers or a utility belt that doesn’t hold anything.  What I couldn’t deal with was the Bat-emblem on my forehead and the words BATMAN written across my chest.

All that being said, I still passed on the Superman costume because it had a mask.

Hey dipshit, Superman doesn’t wear a mask.  Clark Kent is the real persona.  Superman is the mask.  Sheesh, I’m six and surrounded by morons.

This all ends in marching house-to-house only to have the costume tear a block away while periodically going back home and dumping my candy on the living room carpet and picking out the stuff we liked and tossing the rest into a container so my mom could give that cheap crap to other unsuspecting kids.

Enjoy your black licorice… suckers.

I’m not very elaborate with my costume choices (and by that I mean downright lazy).  I once went to a Halloween party as Charlie Brown in khaki shorts and yellow shirt with the zig-zag pattern.  I have a South Park Chef costume which is literally a red shirt, an apron and a chef hat.  I supposed to paint on a beard but that is a little too close to blackface for my liking.  When Natalee had a Halloween party I dressed as a surgeon because hospital scrubs are amazingly comfortable.

I don’t like cute baby costumes.  I think I should be able to dress them as insane asylum escapees, crack whores and other tasteless things.

Babies are cute all year round.

This is the one day I should be allowed to do completely inappropriate (but legal) things to babies and nobody can say shit.

That costume is six different kinds of awesome and the look on that baby’s face says, “Sigourney Weaver can suck it… Gorillas In The Mist my ass, this is my house!”  Babies aren’t little people to me as much as they are very cool props.

Which brings me to costumes.  Look at this kid…

This kid can’t act for shit.  You’re the Beezlebub… Prince of Darkness… Lord Satan.  You have to sell it like this kid.

He just looks diabolical like he’d offer someone a million dollars to push a button knowing someone, somewhere will die.  Then there is this kid who is just in it for the paycheck.  Like he’s just saying, “Moo… what the hell do you want from me?”

I think of how great the costumes are today with the cloth capes and padded muscles and it makes me sick I walked around in a Hefty bag.  You know you can be Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow from GI Joe?  And still there is some kid who will end up like this…

You know, you’ll have the rest of your life to deliver packages wearing shorts… you can’t indulge the Optimus Prime fantasy forever.  Even if your dad was a UPS delivery guy he should want his kids to want more than he did.

I always felt that Halloween was an excuse for men to dress in drag (every party has one) and women to dress as whores.  I don’t know when exactly being a Hooters waitress was a prerequisite for Halloween but it’s pretty much a standard now.

You want to know why we have a problem with people sneaking across the borders… here you go.  I’d be sneaking across the border, too.  America… where ladies drink free.

This next one is one of my favorites.  I picture Barack Obama flanked by Victoria’s Secret Service… how cool would that be.  I’m curious where she keeps her gun.

I think the homophobes that fight to keep “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” are afraid this is going to be the Marine uniform… only worn by a dude with a faux hawk names Kian.  Heels and all.

Here is something I find interesting.  Taking established properties and forcing them to be something they shouldn’t.  I’ve read a lot of comics.  Ironically, the store we went to didn’t have a male Flash costume (all three Flashes have been men) but they did have this.  I would think heels and a skirt wouldn’t be wise running at one hundred and fifty miles an hour.

True story… when Christini Ricci did Addams Family Values when she was thirteen, they taped her over-developed breasts back to make her look younger. I guess that would be to prevent this from happening.

Then there is this Britney Spears Ghostbuster uniform.  I like that she doesn’t have a Proton Accelerator.  I am assuming she catches ghosts with her “Come Hither” smoky eyes.

And another one that leaves me puzzled… Mrs Krueger… because nothing says Happy Halloween like dressing up like a sexy demonic child molester.  I like the detail of the slashes across the belly.  Not sure who would be slashing her since she has the claws.  Maybe she has trouble getting dressed.

And then there is this Alice In Wonderland.  Adorable.  Get used to that skirt..

… it ain’t gonna get any longer.

We Interrupt This Program

I was watching Everybody Loves Raymond in the evening when in the middle of a scene the image froze.  I looked up from my leftovers and immediately thought this is going to be thirty minute conversation with the Cox Cable monkeys about this shitty DVR people keep telling me is as good as Tivo and if by that they mean Dane Cook is as good as George Carlin, they’d be right… but they aren’t.

Right as I am about to go for my phone, comedian Bill Engvall walks out across the screen and says, “Hey, sorry to interrupt your show but I wanted to let you know my sitcom starts this Wednesday at 9:00p.”

Then that hillbilly pulls a remote and unpauses my show and exits stage left.

What the hell was that?  Are they fucking kidding me?  Superstation my ass.  What are those TBS assholes trying to pull?

I had grown accustomed to the in-show advertising which never bothered me.  You know, the ones where a little tag pops up and tells you:

You’re watching Friends.  Next up… King Of Queens.

Fine.  Maybe I didn’t know what I was watching or I am one of those insane people who don’t know how to use the Info button on their remote.  Maybe you’re my mom and you just have cable with no magic box to give you lots of information and what else will be on tonight and you rely on that insipid TV Guide channel with the talking heads that are always yattering on about Survivor and American Idol.

This small text graphic gave way to full motion people, Kyra Sedgwick glowering at me to confess things that aren’t her business or Tony Shaloub bumbling around the forty six inches of my Sony avoiding the edges like it’s a gas station bathroom in Caracas.

Hey Jim, what’s the difference between that reminder and that dude from Damages telling you when their show is on?

I’ll tell you.  The first bit of information is relevant because King Of Queens is coming on next.  It’s a heads up.  The TV equivalent of a sticky note.  It’s like the sign on the interstate that says your exit is in two miles so you might want to stop signing Tom Petty’s American Girl and pay attention.

The other is a gaudy billboard.  A shitty LED billboard that is just painful to look at taking up a third of my screen reminding me I can get fireworks in one hundred and fifty miles from Pedro at South of the Border, or in this case, Tyler Perry’s House of Payne.

More and more I notice I’m being sold stuff.  I think it’s become worse in the last ten years or so.  Natalee and I were at Universal and about a half dozen people stopped us to fill out credit card applications.  This is worse than telemarketers because I can hang up on telemarketers (I don’t, but I can and that’s another blog).  I expect them to try and get me to by Spiderman drink cups or King King messenger bags because that’s their gig.  It’s a theme park… but credit card apps?

I paid seventy bucks to be here.  The last thing I am going to do is get another credit card so I can lose more money to stupid interest rates at ShitiBank.  Why don’t you just have some dude with an open suitcase on a stand luring me into a Three Card Monty game?

And here is another thing that ought to be a law.  I am sure there is some kind of requirement that credits have to be shown or disclaimers read.  You should have to do them where a normal human being can understand them otherwise, what’s the point?  Reading car disclaimers like an ADHD auctioneer on crack makes no sense.  And the genius who figured out they can take the end credits of a show and crush them down to the bottom fifth of the screen and run them ten times faster while they show the opening to the next show on the top four fifths of the screen should be dragged out into the street and throttled.

A few years ago I was watching TV and saw this:

Now I am going to explain to you what you just saw.  I am watching a commercial in a commercial.  Sure, that happens every time someone sells a Disney Hannah Montana Happy Meal but pay close attention.  It’s a D-List superhero getting his taxes done.

Jackson Hewett Rep: So what have you got for us?

Marketing Ass-Snack: There is a new comic book movie coming out with Nicolas Cage called Ghost Rider.  We make a commercial with Ghost Rider getting his taxes done by Jackson Hewett.

Jackson Hewett Rep:  What’s Ghost Rider?

Marketing Ass-Snack:  It’s a comic where a guy sells his soul to Satan and becomes a leather-clad biker with a flaming skull for a head.  And what do kids like more than demonic superheroes and doing their taxes?

Jackson Hewett Rep:  You’re right.  We’re in!

It was probably when Jim Carrey had that abortion they released as Dr Seuss’ How The Grinch Stole Christmas and Universal marketed the ass out of it lunch boxes and action figures and video games for a movie that’s about the non-merchandising of Christmas that I realized people just don’t get it.  These are the same people that went out and bought their kids clown fish after Finding Nemo because their kids are too dumb to understand in a film that climaxes with fish trying to escape and aquarium that, “All drains lead to the ocean,” means maybe you should have fish.  Then again, these are the same people make sales in Saint Bernards spike after Beethoven because having a fur covered Buick designed for the tundra in my house seems like a great idea.

Then again, maybe we ask for this.  People will buy anything.  It’s what keeps this douche in whores that he bangs on a large pile of cash and cocaine.

It’s the same logic that think a six inch logo on a Nascar moving at two hundred miles an hour is a good idea.  It’s the reason Snuggies exist, people buy stairs for their dogs and anybody knows who Billy Mays is.  I knew a guy years ago who’s mother was a QVC addict.  One day he turned the television off and as we were leaving I noticed the 1-800 number had burned itself into the screen.

That’s a lot of cosmetic abs for men.

Gross Encounters Of The Third Kind

I am thirty-seven and at this point I don’t “discover” things about myself anymore.  I pretty much figured out who I am and what I am capable of about twenty years ago.

I know who I am because I often create “what if” scenarios for myself.

What would you do if you saw a bag of money fall off an armored truck?

What would you do if your brother called you in the middle of the night to help hide a body?

What would you do if your loved ones are infected by zombies… do you kill them immediately or do you wait for them to turn?

Having watched a few movies in my day, I would like to think in the event of an alien encounter, I would be a mature spokesperson for humankind.  I wouldn’t make any sudden movements or noises and instead try to communicate like I would to anyone who doesn’t speak my language with simple hand gestures and pleasant faces.

Then I saw this and realized I would be wrong.  Completely fucking wrong.

I have seriously overestimated my abilities.

The story goes like this.  These kids were playing in the forest and this creature crawled out from a cave and moved toward them at which point they took rocks and stoned it until it stopped advancing, then beat it to death with sticks and ran home crying to their mothers.

As would I.

Seriously, look at that thing with its slick amphibian skin, beady eyes and thick tongue hanging from what I guess is a snout?  What the fuck?  Be glad I didn’t have a gun and gallon of gasoline because I probably would have shot it until my clip was empty, loaded a new clip, emptied it, and then set it on fire.

Why can’t more aliens look like this?

You know, hot alien chicks that just want to get laid?  Is that so bad?

What I have never understood the movie stereotype of human women cross-breeding with aliens.  In the TV mini-series V: The Final Battle where the girl gets pregnant with a human lizard hybrid.

You banged a lizard dude?  Did you know he was a lizard dude and if not, how the hell did you not know?  And seriously, what kind of back alley Guadalajaran Obstetrician do you have that he didn’t see this in a sonogram? And you thought your dad was angry when he found out you kissed Quantrell Jackson.

I have always found it ironic that all bi-species characters in Star Trek have human mothers and alien fathers which must be some kind of nerd fantasy that women will have sex with anything.  Men, yes, I would totally believe that.

So she’s Vulcan with dark hair, pointed ears and no sense of humor, empathy or emotion of any kind?  But she does have tits and a rockin’ ass?  I’m in.

Why a man would sex a Vulcan is understandable.  We’ll hump a sofa if the cushions are soft enough.  But what a woman, a gender overflowing with emotion, would find appealing about a man devoid of it?  Sell that horseshit to the tourists, I’m not buying.

But human males and Klingon females?  No explanation necessary.  We like it like that.  Pon Farr for the win!

I was watching ET The Extra-Terrestrial a few years ago and remember thinking Elliot is maybe ten.  Gertie is about four.  I expect them to be morons but Michael is the older brother and he’s like sixteen.  He should have enough sense to 1) not know what the hell ET is and 2) it might be diseased.  The same goes for that kid in Gremlins who’s like twenty and when he’s given some animal nobody’s ever seen before and reproduces with water, his solution is let me take it to my middle-school science teacher?  Really?  It reproduces with water!  It’s not a Sea Monkey!  What reproduces with water?  For that matter, what does it drink and how does it keep hydrated?  Cells are made of water, moron!  Even if you kept it out of water what happens when it cries or pees?  None of this makes any sense so you take it your teacher (and I’m going to ignore that you have a relationship with a teacher by all accounts you should stopped communicating with almost a decade ago).  Are there no zoos near Kingston Falls?  At least call a Pet Smart, dumbass.  Hell, I’d have that crated bastard at Animal Kingdom in Orlando in about twenty minutes and if the cops pulled me for speeding I’d tell them I have some weird shit in my trunk and they can ticket me in the Disney World parking lot.

Sorry about all the bruises but I didn’t know what it was so I hit it a few times with a bat… and a shovel.  Yeah, I can see Gizmo is cute but I don’t know him.  There are lots of things that are pleasant to look at that are baseball bat crazy.

Long story short.  Those kids in Panama lied.  That thing was dead when they found it.  They didn’t see it crawl out of a cave mostly because it would have taken the better half of the afternoon to witness.  It’s a sloth.

Obviously it has something wrong with it since it has no hair but I have seen monkeys with skin diseases that leave them bald and slightly odd to look at.

The point is I learned a little something new about me last week.  That I am just as scared of things I don’t know as anyone else and I have to work on that.  Unless I see something crawl out of a cave that has watched too much Star Trek and don’t see nothing wrong, with a little bump and grind.

Of course if the flip side is this is I am rational and civilized and spend the better part of my afternoon trying to make alien contact with a hairless sloth.

De Evolution Of Man

Natalee left me.  She made her yearly pilgrimage to Berkeley, California to see her sister, Adrienne.  She would be gone for six days and the time leading up to it became unbearable for her.  It wasn’t just vacation… it was vacation in California… with her sister… and a long list of planned activities like touring vineyards and shopping in San Francisco.

I find when Natalee is gone for one or two days I hold it together fairly well.  Three days is pushing it.  Anything over four days and much like Kevin McAllister, I am not responsible for my own actions.

Natalee was gone for six days this time.

I don’t lie to Natalee but there are things I neglect to tell her.  These usually occur in a category I call “Things I Eat When My Wife Isn’t Looking.”  This would be things like a the deep fried bacon-wrapped hot dogs they serve at the Mojo Grill or meals with two starches as a side which inevitably starts an argument where Natalee insists potatoes are not vegetables and retort, “They’re not animal and they’re not mineral.”

I usually lose this fight.

Having taken Friday off, it wasn’t until mid-Saturday morning that I realized I hadn’t been upstairs in my house since sometime Thursday evening.  I’ve slept on the couch two nights in a row probably never getting more than three hours sleep, walking up and watching a movie and then falling asleep again.  I spent an entire day in what I loosely refer to as pajamas.  I didn’t shower.  I didn’t brush my teeth.  I watched movies and played Xbox.

Later that weekend I found myself in the drive-thru at Arby’s ordering four for five dollar Arby-Q sandwiches with the intention I’ll eat two for dinner (at nine o’clock) and two for breakfast in the morning.  I didn’t wake up and scrounge for food like some people… I actually planned that.  When I was in the Publix I looked down at the belt and saw an Italian sub, a box of golden Oreos, a carrot cake, oatmeal chocolate chip ice cream and cookies n cream (in case I didn’t like the oatmeal ice cream).  In my defense, the carrot cake I was taking with me to a dinner I’d been invited to and it was Natalee who taught me even when they insist you bring nothing, you always bring a gift when invited to dinner.

I made a list of things I intended to do but kept pushing it back and like a kid who’d been given a reading list for summer and instead tried to inhale The Crucible the weekend before school starts, I found myself scurrying to get things done.  Not that Natalee would have really cared.  She didn’t have a list of things for me to do.  It was my list.  It was just overestimating my potential and didn’t want her to know I’d spent days doing nothing.

1. Remove wallpaper border from the bathroom.
2. Paint downstairs bathroom.
3. Clean bedroom & office.
4. Organize closet and find DVD cases.
5. Hack your Xbox.
6. Burn DVD backups of wedding photos.
7. Clean bathroom.
8. Make the bed.

By the time my four day weekend ended, at my lowest, I had slept on the couch four nights in a row, eaten a bowl of peanut butter and jelly for lunch (I ran out of bread), showered twice and watched seventeen movies.

Sometime Sunday my sister-in-law Brittany called to make sure I was still alive and she was right to do so.

I forgot how quickly I regress and wonder if I didn’t have the structure of a wife or job, how fast it would be before I was homeless and worse, would I even know when it happened?

In the end I settled on more realistic goals before Natalee came home.

1. Make the bed.

That I can handle.

The Importance Of Being Adrienne

Saturday morning starts with a phone call from my sister-in-law Adrienne.

Apparently her Friday night had been very eventful and since, on occasion, her parents read this blog, I will leave it at that with the assurance no laws were broken and their daughter returned home under her own power in the same condition she left.

Mostly.

Let me digress for a moment and attempt to explain Adrienne.  I’ve spent very little time with Adrienne… three thousand miles between zip codes will do that to people.  I consider myself of average intelligence and near-genius levels of smart-assery (case in point: a person of high intelligence would never use the word “assery” and only a person of near-genius levels of smart-assery would have thought of it).  Natalie’s parents are intelligent people.  Natalie was Salutatorian of her high school class.  Not to be outdone, Adrienne was Valedictorian.  Me… I had to spell check both those words.  A straight-A product of the government-run public education system, Natalie will be quick to tell you with a pride that should only be reserved for mothers.  Now here is the rub:

I have no idea what Adrienne does for a living.

No one does.  I’ve asked and no one can explain it to me.  It’s involves science and the genetic splicing of fish or something.  I often joke that she’s cracking the fish genome so they can create naturally boneless lemon-peppered salmon.  Maybe some kind of circulatory system that works on a light butter sauce instead of blood would be nice.  When you ask her about her work she dismisses you with a slight annoyance like I suspect Tom Hanks would if you asked him what a box of chocolates is like.

It should be noted, Adrienne is often annoyed.

An example, if I may.  Adrienne currently lives in the city by the bay (okay, technically she lives in Berkeley which is the city by the city by the bay).  California changes people and this is never made so obvious as when Adrienne comes to visit.

It’s so humid here… it’s never like this in California.

Olive Garden?  How come there are no decent restaurants like in California?

In California our vegetable sides come with a blend of cauliflower.  Who serves a vegetable side of just broccoli and carrots?  Savages.

No one faults her because 1) She’s Adrienne, 2) I would think California does have a lot more to offer than Florida and 3) Once they see the lights or Paris, it’s hard to get them back to the farm.  In this scenario, Florida is the farm.

There is a certain whimsy Adrienne possesses that is usually reserved characters in Doris Day movies.  People who you wouldn’t think exist in real life.  What’s the word I am looking for?… eccentrics.

One of the eccentricities is Adrienne has a secret identity.  I read enough comic books to know all scientists eventually develop one of these.

This is Jennifer Walters AKA She-Hulk and technically she’s an attorney but you get my drift.

There is part of me that finds this very intriguing although I don’t wish her to be bitten by a radioactive spider or caught in the blast of a gamma bomb because I am pretty sure she would be imbued with cancer, not a super power.  Because I was I am not Alfred Gough in Batman (1989) outing vigilantes to just anyone, we’ll call her alter ego Rhiannon.  Rhiannon’s super power is she allows Adrienne to traverse the internet, and possibly reality, with complete anonymity.  I know she has used this alias in postings on my blog.  I suspect she uses it in forums, commenting on websites and probably more frequently in the heyday of chat rooms.  I pretend this is the name she gives to hairy-chested, multiple gold-chain wearing men who ask for her number only to find she’s given them the number to a Papa John’s Pizza.

The night of our engagement during the Bride Early Warning System which is immediately activated after the ring is placed on the newly-engaged finger, Adrienne was notified.  Her immediate response to me was, “Congratulations.  Jim, you seem like a nice guy… are you sure you want to do this?”

Generally such concern is given to the bride by her sister, not to the groom.  At our wedding receptions it was Adrienne who was quick to inform me that, “All sales were final.  No refunds.  No exchanges.  No exceptions.”

Thank you for shopping with us at Bed, Brides and Beyond.  Have a nice day.

As if I would have came back and said, “This one isn’t performing that way I hoped.  Do you have anything newer?  Maybe something in a Brittany?”

When we were engaged, I was told by Natalie’s mother, “You do know Adrienne is going to be the problem.  It’s nothing personal, Jim.  Adrienne isn’t very good with sharing.”

This became apparent in the phone calls she was used to getting on an uninterrupted schedule until I showed up.  Most of Adrienne conversations with Natalie come while she’s looking for company to help pass the time while she waits for the bus.  These conversations usually go something like this.

ADRIENNE:  Natalie.  What are you doing?

NATALIE:  Eating dinner. We’re watching Real Estate Interventions.  Can I call you back?

ADRIENNE:  No.  You have to talk to me now.

NATALIE:  Well, I’m eating.

ADRIENNE:  There is a homeless man who just asked me for money and I didn’t have any change and he called me a racist.  I’m not racist to black people.

NATALIE:  No, you’re not.  Can he not tell you’re black?  You’re a dark girl with an afro.

ADRIENNE: I think he knows.  He doesn’t seem drunk.  I don’t want him to think I’m racist.

NATALIE:  Okay.  Real Estate Interventions is back.  You’re going to have to deal with this.  Are you alone?

ADRIENNE: No.

NATALIE:  Then I am going to go.

ADRIENNE:  No!  Stay on the phone with me.

NATALIE:  You’re fine.  He’s not dangerous and you’re not alone.  The bus is coming soon.  I’ll call you later.

ADRIENNE:  WHY DO YOU HATE ME SO MUCH!

Click.  ADRIENNE disconnects abruptly.

Adrienne also has this penchant for losing things.  I joke the cure to cancer will come to Adrienne while dodging sketchy Berkeley potheads and hippies at the bus stop.  She’ll quickly type it in her cell phone which she will them promptly loose along with her house keys when she sits them on a shelf at Whole Foods to examine a box of organic coffee roasted exclusively by Venezuelan women for American women.

She also has a cadence in her speech that belongs on a woman fifty years her senior.  It isn’t unusual to have a ten minute conversation peppered with “Isn’t that lovely,” “delightful” and a couple off the cuff “Oh my dears.”  And although she is quick to call her twenty-nine year old sister who is four years her senior, old, I wouldn’t be surprised if Adrienne has a crystal dish of hard candy that had merged into one amalgamous hunk.

Natalie refers to this as Adrienne’s “old soul.”  I credit it to good old fashioned genius wackery and the trauma of being the middle child.  On the latter, she would probably agree.

It isn’t like she’s without her fanbase.  All my friends who’ve met her, adore her.  My co-worker Jon once commented, in front of his wife Amy, “I’m telling you now.  God forbid anything happens to Amy, because I love her, but if anything does I’m making a move on Adrienne.  She’s adorable.”  Amy nodded her head in futile acceptance of these facts and added, “She is adorable.”

Back to my story (see, you thought I forgot).  On our way to Gainesville, Adrienne called and in relating the events of the previous evening she explains how she lost her wallet, retraced her steps through the various restaurants and bars they’d been to without luck.  In a moment of distress she tripped in the street median only to be helped up by a stranger who had been looking for her because he’d found her wallet.

Now, if you’re an expert on Doris Day as I am, and secure enough in my manhood to admit it, you know this is called the “Meet Cute” and would probably end with Adrienne falling in love with this man not knowing he’s the womanizing Lothario who lives across the hall who she’s never met but can’t stand and expresses this to her best friend, Tony Randall.

Instead, Adrienne would get her wallet back with all of its contents intact, no note, no phone number, no interesting story to tell people at parties.  Not that it would have mattered because from what I have been told, Adrienne is fairly oblivious to flirting and straight men.

The real point of the story was Adrienne woke up the next morning with blurry vision and she was concerned this may be a side effect of drinking.  Natalie and I, with only two years of Grey’s Anatomy and nine years of Scrubs between us, assured her it wasn’t.  She instructed her that if it persists, she shouldn’t wait until Monday to go to the doctor, she should go to the Emergency Room today.  After she got off the telephone I asked Natalie had she rubbed anything on her hands before she went to bed.  I had an incident in 2000 where I woke up with my eye unexplainably swollen shut and had to be taken to the ER by my brother.  Hours later I recalled before I went to get I rubbed Icy Hot on a finger I jammed into a door and somewhere in my sleep managed to rub my eyes.  I would later be told by the doctor this is the equivalent of macing myself in the face.

A few hours later Natalie would get a call from her youngest sister, Brittany.  When asked about Adrienne, Brittany quickly responded, “I talked to her.  She fine.  She told me her glasses felt different.  I told her the glasses she was wearing probably weren’t hers.  They weren’t.”

Genius wackery.  Make your own Fred MacMurray jokes here.

The Ego Has Landed

On Sunday September 13, Taylor Swift was receiving her MTV Music Video Award for Best Female Performance when Kanye West appears, takes the microphone and in the middle of her acceptance speech, states how happy he is for her and then out of the other side of his mouth that Beyonce Knowles’ video for “Single Ladies” is one of the greatest videos ever made.

Now let’s start with the obvious.  MTV is still giving out awards for music videos?  Does anybody still make music videos and if they do, where do they air them?  It sure as shit isn’t on MTV.  That precious airtime is being used for 16 And Pregnant and a Shot Of Penicillin With Tila Tequila.  MTV giving out Video Music Awards is like Steve Jobs from iTunes waxing nostalgic about how much he misses compact discs.

Weren’t you the dude that killed that format?

Secondly… “Single Ladies?”  One of the best videos ever?  Really?  I know sixty year old men who’ve seen Beyonce in a DirecTV commercial and had to find out who she is.  She works it like that.  But seriously, it’s a really catchy song.  I walk around the house like a twelve year old singing my own lyrics…

If you like it then you betta put ya thing in it.  Uh oh, uh oh, uh oh, uh oh.

…but the video is Beyonce and two other girls in heels and leotards shaking their ass and wagging their fingers.  I am pretty sure we’re not going to see fifteen hundred prisoners mimic the “Single Ladies” video anytime soon.

Back to the issue at hand.  West felt the need to stop an event, take the microphone from a nineteen year old girl on international television accepting her first award on a network that barely acknowledges her genre exists, to tell us that he didn’t think she deserved the award.

Why does Kanye West think we all give a shit about what he thinks?  This is like the person you stand behind at Blockbuster that doesn’t know it isn’t necessary to scream into a cell phone, or worse, doesn’t know how to operate their Nextel so I have to listen to both sides a conversation that doesn’t involve me.

I’m not surprised she did that… you know she’s a straight up bitch.  Beep beep.

As much as I hate Twitter, this is the perfect medium for it.  For people who “follow” him to subscribe to his thoughts and when Taylor Swift got her award, he could have tweeted, “I am happy for Taylor but Beyonce made one of the greatest videos of all time.  I’m just sayin’,” and we wouldn’t be having this conversation.  It wasn’t like someone put a camera in his face during or after the event and asked him his thoughts.  Even then it would have been acceptable.  Someone asked.  Instead, West thought whatever was going through his dumb little Shining-hedge maze head should be heard by everyone… on the planet… regardless of it you wanted to or not.  Regardless of how rude it was.  Like a small child tugging on his parents’ clothing, God forbid he isn’t given attention at all times.

Kanye, be quiet… let the grown-ups talk.

Nothing Kanye West does surprise me.  I saw this coming.  I find people who wear sunglasses indoors are generally assholes trying too hard to be cool.

If those douchebag window slat sunglasses made you cool, we’d all be wearing them… but they don’t.  They just make you look like an asshat who stole sunglasses from a gay dude at a Kajagoogoo concert in 1986.  MTV must have violated all city fire codes which clearly state the auditorium has a maximum capacity of two thousand people unless Kanye West attends in which case maximum capacity is fifteen hundred people and his ego.  It’s a little thing called humility and West needs to understand that people hate winners.  Nobody hates the UCF Knights because nobody gives a shit.  They’re too busy hating the Florida Gators.  They’re too busy hating the Yankees and the Lakers.  The lesson to be learned here is you may always have your fanbase but if you don’t shut up about how great you are, you’ll polarize everyone else against you.

America, I’m talking to you, too.

And to an extent, hip-hop fosters this self-congratulatory culture.  Seriously, when ninety percent of the songs are about 1) How awesome you are, 2) Bitches or 3) Shooting people, and the remaining ten percent are about how great you are at shooting bitches, you’re bound to produce a few people who feel they don’t have to subscribe to social norms.

What I would have given to see Eminem rush the stage and punch the shit out of that dude.

It’s not that I care one way or the other about Kanye West.  I just hate assholes in general.  Since I don’t buy his records, I’m not his fanbase and I’m sure he won’t lose any sleep over what I think as he goes home and bangs a supermodel on a giant mattress filled with Benjamins and Chaka Khan samples.

It’s obvious the only opinion Kanye West values is his own.

I will tell you what’s more pathetic that witnessing celebrities behaving badly is the fact that five minutes later when Beyonce won Best Video of the Year, she acknowledged how great it felt when she won her first award and invited Taylor Swift onstage to finish her acceptance speech.

Stay classy, Houston.

Avatards

Monday I was invited to dinner at my friend Heidi’s house and asked her stepson Gaige to show me his Playstation 3.  What I really wanted to see was their avatar system and Playstation Home, a virtual environment for your avatar to interact in.  I’ve heard about it but it doesn’t make much sense to me.

I can create a virtual me and walk around a virtual house or virtual mall?  And then what?

For those who came in late, an avatar is a computer representation of you.  These started as a picture, sometimes an actual photo or some symbol.  I rotate the avatar on my Microsoft Instant Messenger to whatever strikes my fancy at the time.  Right now it’s Janet Leigh from Psycho.

Sometimes it’s Frobama.

Sometimes it’s some random movie image.

My Xbox has avatars but they look cartoony and there is a certain charm to that.  It’s not by accident that my avatar has Little Orphan Annie Eye Syndrome.  Barney Rubble also suffers from this (Government Health Care now!)

So Gaige downloads all the things we need which is a ridiculously lengthy process and then it has to install.  It probably wouldn’t be so bad but they constantly tell you what’s happening.

NOW LOADING.  17% COMPLETE.  DO NOT RESTART YOUR SYSTEM.

I already know what’s happening.  Let me tell you what’s not happening.

I am not playing Playstation.  That’s what’s not happening.  I don’t care about your load times… just make it work already.

So it gets around to finishing and I start making my avatar.  Part of the appeal is the Playstation avatar is it looks real and by that it looks like this:

Instead of the Saturday Morning Cartoon version Xbox gives me.  So I start making my avatar and I start running into some of the same problems I have with Xbox’s avatar system.

How come I can’t be fatter?

Granted, most people want to have some idealistic version of them but I’m striving for cartoon accuracy here and at my most obese, I look like I just ate at a Brazilian Steakhouse.  I look four months pregnant in the game instead of the eleven months I normally look like.  I have made avatars on the Wii and it does the same thing.  What do these game systems have against fat people?  I should be as fat as I want.  What do those people in the Walmart’s avatars look like?  I can buy a lightsaber but can I buy a scooter with a basket in the front?

I also can’t make myself short.  I am starting to think these people are heightists which is ironic since all these systems are made in Asia, you would think I could make myself five feet tall or at least my correct five foot six.  I always look five ten or six feet in these games.  Case in point, my brother who is five ten and his son is five three and they look almost the same height.

And what if you are a little person?  I bet if there was a show called Big World, Little Gamer you’d be able to do it.

I find the avatars in Playstation, while trying to strive for a realistic feel, don’t look like me at all.  They look like a digital version of a Glamour Shot.

So I finish my avatar and I appear in, from what I learned from House Hunters International, a three million dollar one bedroom condo overlooking a marina in what looks like the Caribbean.  My living room is decorated in early twenty-first century Ikea and I can sit on the furniture and turn the lamps on.  Outside of the living room set, the house is empty like I just moved in.

JIM: Hey Gaige, so if someone else I know has this can they come to my virtual house?

GAIGE: Yes.

JIM:  And what do we do?

HEIDI:  You can have Yuri over and you both can turn lamps on.

JIM:  This is super lame.  How do I get more stuff?

GAIGE:  You have to buy it.

Of course this is where they get you.  Someone thought this was a good idea because boys love dollhouses and video games so much this is a no brainer.  Buy furniture.  Buy art.  There is a good chance if Virtual Jim went to Virtual Yuri’s house it would look pretty much the same as mine.  They give you a limited amount of free items to wear but if you want the cool stuff, you have to pay for it.  I don’t know if five dollars for a blue lightsaber that Xbox Jim waves around is worth the money but I smile every time I see it so in that respect, I guess it is.  My happiness comes cheap.  I am a man of simple pleasures.

Gaige instructs me how to leave my condo and I go to the street which actually reminds me of a theme park without rides.  It’s a lot like Downtown Disney or Universal Citywalk.  It’s very clean and sterile and there are lots of signs trying to sell me stuff.  The sidewalks are fake.  The aged concrete is fake.  The lake is a sham.  There is a clothes store, a movie theatre and some benches and jumbotrons for the fifty or so avatars walking the area and 70% of the cheap bastards are wearing the same green polo I have on.

I start walking the area and find a crowd of people.  On closer examination there is one woman sitting on a bench and five dudes all trying to talk to her at the same time.

DUDE #1:  What’s your name?

DUDE #2:  What games do you play?

DUDE #3:  My name isn’t Fred Flintstone but I’ll make your bed rock.

Okay, that last one I made up but you get my drift.  The only thing sadder than a half-dozen guys making pathetic advances on a woman at one time is  a half-dozen guys making pathetic advances on a woman at one time in virtual reality.

And getting rejected.

The girl actually said, and I am completely not making this up, “No means no.”

HEIDI:  Jim, do something!  I think they’re going to virtual rape that girl!

JIM:  Gaige, can I punch people?

GAIGE:  No.

JIM:  Do I have any weapons?  A gun or a chainsaw or something.

GAIGE:  No.

JIM:  Can I buy one?

GAIGE:  I’m pretty sure you can’t.

JIM:  Yeah, this completely sucks.

So I walk away from Kitty Genovese and find this area where eight dudes are dancing.  Only one of them is dancing with a girl.  At least it looked like a girl.  For all I know Lola could have been some sixty year old pedophile trying to lure unsuspecting boys into his virtual house with virtual candy.

It’s here I realized what a sausage party Playstation Home is.  This is where I also discovered I could do something here I can’t do very well in reality.

I can dance.

You click a button and it lists ten different dance styles.  I get behind some unsuspecting dude and hoping I can grind on him but, alas, that is not an option.  Damn you, politically correct virtual world.  Some sexy Salsa Dancing is all he gets.  This isn’t interesting unless he can see me.  I move to his front and stand in plain view and start Disco Dancing, complete with spins and finger pointing.  I supply the gun noises myself.

Pew pew pew!

We’re all laughing hysterically when his homophobia kicks in and he leaves me.

Discovering my new found skills, I find girl dancing and several guys trying to get her attention.  I force my way through the crowd and when I get to the front I launch into a series of moves that would Tony Manero proud.

I start with The Robot.  Blend it into some Disco and follow it up with the Running Man, a spin, gun-finger pointing and then I bring it home with the Cabbage Patch.

The girl walks away.  Her loss.

So you think you can dance?

No, son… I know I can dance.

Fun With Cell Phones – Summer Edition

Here I am with another blog proving nobody uses cell phone cameras for anything important and this is an easy way out of writing a blog when I would rather be playing Batman Arkham Asylum on Xbox.

First off, how stupid have we gotten that they’re actually spelling Mountain Dew as Mtn Dew?

When you figure out how to text me a cold and tasty Mtn Dew on my cell phone I’ll find this acceptable, otherwise, stop being a forty year old advertising executives trying to sound cool to fifteen year old kids.  You’re the same douches that think the Pillsbury Doughboy should rap in commercials or gangsta Mickey Mouse is a good idea.

Nothing ruins something cool like letting your mom do it.  The time I saw Katie Couric say “dissed” on the Today Show I thought my brain would explode.  You’re not fooling anybody.  You’re old.  Just accept it.  I have.

A few months ago Circuit City went out of business and we’re all better for it.  I hated those red-shirted lazy bastards.  Not being above picking over the carcass of the dead for a bargain I went into the store which had mostly been cleaned out but I did find this.

I took a double take because I wasn’t sure I saw that right but yes, that is a big box of feminine hygiene products.  How desperate did that place get?  That’s one step away from selling the doorknobs and the carpet.  Now that I think about it, it would have been worth it to by this ginormous box just to see the look on Natalie’s face.

Had they been made by Apple, Circuit City may still be in business today.  iPons… that’s funny.

Speaking of underwear…

I keep hearing about women’s bad body image created by society but is this really necessary?

This would be like buying Lil Peenie jock straps for your son and wonder why he hates women when he gets older.  What impact could there be on an A-cup fourteen year old by buying her Sweet Nothing bras?  What could possibly go wrong there?  It seems harmless and maybe a little cute and then ten years later she gets a job and a paycheck and this happens.  Thanks, mom.

And if you’re wondering that is Sheyla Hershey and those 38KKKs are all hers… and if you don’t believe me I’m sure she can show you the reciept.  I’m not staring… I just want to know what the bottom of that shirt says.  It seems important.

While we’re talking about underwear, has anyone ever felt the need to reseal a package of underwear?

I didn’t flip them over see if they had a freshness date.  When I was younger my mom used to say my underwear was ripe but I don’t think this is what she meant.

This I just found funny.  I bet they don’t sell a lot of these in Los Angeles.

I can see the Target commercial now.

It’s Back To School time for girls, boys, Crips and Bloods…

And then there is this:

Apparently this is a problem I’m not familiar with but it prevalent enough to justify two companies trying to fill this need.  Has anyone ever had an “iPod Emergency?”  You know, you’re walking down a dark alley and suddenly a street dancing gang like in a Michael Jackson video appears and you whip out the iPod only to find the battery is dead and then BAM… you just got served.

If you have had anything involving an iPod that you consider an emergency and doesn’t involve a car accident and a Nano being embedded in your forehead, come visit me so I can promptly smack you in your face.  You’re the same idiots that call 911 when someone sells you bad weed or you’re this douche wasting my taxpayer money.

I get mixed up with Spanish since there is a male and female version of words but I found this interesting.

Not Latin Food.  Latino Food.  Just for Latin men.  You ladies, get your salsa and Goya products elsewhere.  I wonder in Latin Groceries is there a White People Food section where they keep the Starbucks Coffee and organic tofu.

Okay.  This is just disgusting.

This is the Spit-Can-Vertor.  It is a funnel that fits onto the top of a soda, oh hell who are we kidding, can of Milwaukee’s Best so you can spit your chewing tobacco juice without the inconvenience or social awkwardness of spitting large amounts of viscous liquid past people when you’re talking.

Who the fuck still does this?  It’s illegal to smoke on Earth but people still chew this bullshit and spit it out?  I will gladly inhale someone’s second hand smoke than have to watch anyone spit while I talk to them.  At least smoking can be made to look cool.  Somehow Casablanca would probably loose it’s classic status if the Café Americain was filled with Humphrey Bogart et al spitting chaw.

This is just a picture of a moron.

First let’s start with the obvious; your car is an old piece of shit.  Just accept it.  Don’t try to cool it up with some ridiculous phrase on the window.  Your car doesn’t need character.  It just needs to get you from Point A to Point B.  And is there anybody with an IQ higher than 90 or over the age of seven that thinks truck nuts are a good idea.  Find the intelligence of the average person and fifty percent of people are dumber than that guy.

Heh heh, my car has balls.  Balls.

Settle down, Beavis.  At lunch Jon said he’d seen a guy with super thick chain holding the largest pair of steel bolt nuts he’d ever seen and he had to respect that.  We knew what it meant but it required a little thought and wasn’t passing off vulgarity as wit, unlike this guy.  Bravo, redneck… bravo.  I bet your mom is proud.

And then there is this genius little bit of sign placement.

These are instructions on how to open a flip phone and use it which I guess would be useful if you were Alexander Graham Bell and found yourself leaping from life to life, striving to put right what once went wrong, and hoping each time that his next leap, will be the leap home… otherwise, you’re a moron.  First, a flip cell phone has one moving part and that’s a hinge.  Explaining how to open a cell phone is like explaining how to open a door… if you’re over the age of two you probably can figure this out and now that I think about it, I am pretty sure I have seen babies under the age of two open a cell phone.  Secondly, it’s not telling you how to operate the phone.  Sure, that a little different from phone to phone.  This is just telling you how to open it.  Again, right up there with food instructions that have to tell you to take the macaroni out of the box.  I also like how the picture has the man talking on a closed cell phone which is impossible since you can’t answer the call.  And lastly, the instructions are on the inside of the fucking phone. You can’t read them until you figure out how to open the phone which is something like Dorothy after she was terrorized by flying bellhop-uniformed blue monkeys, watched her companions torn to shreds and set fire to, drugged in a field of poppies and captured, forced to kill an evil witch then being told by Glenda  that she could have gone home any time she wanted to by clicking her shoes together.

Thanks for nothing, you dizzy bitch.

Here is an idea: why doesn’t someone make some art showing people how to not answer their phone in a theatre or how obnoxious it is to play with your phone instead of enjoying the company of the people you’re with.  These same people also get points for putting the battery removal instructions inside the battery panel.

This sign I found in a restroom.

Now  Jim, There is nothing funny about that.  Cleanliness is important.  Nobody wants disease or swine flu.

Normally I would agree with you but this sign was in a Barnes & Nobles.  I don’t have much contact with the people in a Barnes & Nobles unless you’re the checkout cashier in which case your handling money which is laced with God know what and cocaine.  Her hands are tainted ten seconds after she gets back to her register.  The other thing could be they handle lots of books which leads me to my next point.

Where do they think these books go when they leave their store?

I’ll be reading this in my study and by study I mean toilet.

I know this because most of my comic book reading is done in the john since it takes me exactly fifteen minutes to read a comic which is exactly the same amount of time it takes me to relax and do my business.  Natalie read an entire Harry Potter book during toilet breaks.

Oh yeah, to Natalie’s sister Brittany… sorry about your Harry Potter book.

Death Becomes You

Barack Obama, President of the United States of America
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue
Washington DC

Dear Mr. President,

I am applying for a long term position with advancement potential with your administration, specifically in the Department of Health and Human Services.  I am aware of the current attempt to bring universal health care to the all Americans and I’d like to offer my special skill set to your cause.  After reading Sarah Palin’s Facebook page, I think I have found my calling.

I am applying for a position as a member of one of your Death Panels.

What qualifies me for this position?  I live in Florida, Death’s waiting room.  I am consistently surrounded by the elderly and find them slow and confused.  Now don’t get me wrong, I am completely against killing honest, effective, disease-free Americans but these low-income, worthless Nancy Grace watching bitches have got to go.  You want a more productive economy?  Let’s get as many of these cottonheads off the road as possible so I can get to work on time.  Seriously?  Where do they have to be at 7:30a… the Denny’s is open twenty-four-seven.  Isn’t there a mall they can power walk through?  Have you ever seen them try and use a cell phone?  It’s like watching a monkey ride a bicycle… I’ve seen it done but it never looks natural.  And all their talk about “The Good Ole Days” and “The America They Grew Up With.”  Where things were better and people were better and I am tired of hearing about it.  We’re better off with our twenty-four hour news cycles, social apathy and it’s only a matter of time before the next Thomas Payne publishes Common Sense for the twenty-first century on Twitter

In short, they are bumming me out.

I find the liberal Hollywood media has made the mentally and physically disabled into heroes.  Forrest Gump and Rain Man are portrayed as geniuses instead of the drain on our society they actually are.  Mowing lawns for free is worse than immigrant labor and counting cards is outright illegal.  In A Beautiful Mind, Russell Crowe is handsome, a basket case, a genius and gets Jennifer Connolly?  Ridiculous.  There are children in America watching the mentally retarded hoping they can get their own reality show where they can be surrounded by sixteen more retarded people vying to reproduce with them and this cannot be permitted to happen.  Something must be done.

I envision a Death Panel made of myself, Donald Trump, and Olivia Newton-John.  People in need of health care will be stand before us and present their case, what they have accomplished in their lives, what they hope to accomplish and how they benefit the new America we are carving in your image.  This will be followed by a short talent segment.  Technology permitting, I picture they may be standing in two rotating hula hoops while we will appear as blue-tinted disembodied floating holograms above them and delivery our judgment in baritone voices like in the movie Superman.

Of course, to benefit the economy, this will be broadcast on Fox and hosted by Melissa Rivers.

I would enjoy an opportunity to talk with you or someone in your organization (preferably Michelle or Kumar) to see where my skill set would be of the greatest benefit to your company.

Sincerely,

James Ford