All the news that’s fit to… ah, screw it.
I always kind of realized I wanted to be a writer. By “kind of,” I mean that I always enjoyed writing even when I couldn’t figure out how to make a buck at it, and by “writer,” I mean someone who makes his living by sitting on the couch most of the day eating Doritos and watching C.H.I.P.s reruns. It’s all gone through fits and starts. Today, I sometimes write articles for magazines (though they ALMOST NEVER contain farting or zombies, or farting zombies if that’s at all possible, and actually, I kind of figure it is not only possible but LIKELY, given the amount of decomposition that occurs in the zombie digestive tract as well as on his face, hands, credit score, etc.), and before that I sometimes wrote copy, and before that, I sometimes wrote on napkins. (The trick is to not press too hard. That fucks up the napkins. Upcoming kids, learn from my mistakes.)
A word here and a word there, and sometimes they’d come together in a wonderful ejaculation of synergy and you’d end up with a funny new phrase, like “doucherocket.” But it kind of all began when I was on the staff of my high school newspaper.
For some reason, high schools think that creating a newspaper will teach kids about journalism. What journalism has to do with reporting current events, I’ll never understand, but we had it nonetheless and were tasked with encapsulating the entire goings-on of the school into a weekly 8-page document that had to be released at least once every two months or whenever it was convenient. At our school, the newspaper staff had a dedicated period (the last of the day) to research stories, write them, and submit them to one person to do all of the work. So each day, we’d have 45 minutes to work on our stories, and of those 45 minutes, most staff members used between zero and a half to work, and that tended to be accidental, like knocking over the photo morgue while Indian wrestling.
Like any great journalistic endeavor, our periodical’s staff was divided into beats. Someone covered the sports beat (taking sporadic and inaccurate notes on a football game while making out in the bleachers), someone covered politics (who will win class president? Probably Gretchen, who I think was the only person sucker enough to run), someone covered current events outside the school (we broke news of the first gulf war fully six weeks after it was over), someone took photos (of girls’ asses) and someone (usually Mark) was in charge of gathering our advisor’s hair into wads and stapling it together.
I petitioned to be a columnist.
“What would you write about?” asked our advisor, Miss Chamberlain.
“I don’t know. Stuff,” I answered.
“And why do you want to be a columnist?”
“I have many opinions. And I’m very interested in the fact that I wouldn’t actually have to do any work.”
The cool thing about American freedom of the press plus the fact that your advisor clearly doesn’t give a shit is that high school Dave Barrys like me have virtually zero oversight. Occasionally, I’d have a fight on my hands come press time, but I had a mullet haircut and hence won all such confrontations.
“You can’t talk about decapitating Barney the Dinosaur,” Miss C. would say.
I’d turn on my indignant face. “Why not? The people have a right to know.”
“It’s gruesome.”
“More gruesome than the September 11 attacks? More gruesome than the swine flu or SARS, or the Marines scandal at Guantanamo Bay?”
“Those things all happened well after you graduated high school,” she’d say. “Are you maybe getting confused while writing about this fifteen years from now?”
“Perhaps you haven’t noticed that I have a mullet,” I’d reply.
And the story would run, because of the importance of the third estate. Or first estate. I can never remember the estates. Which one is alcoholic clowns?
Mine was an embattled existence. I was constantly having to fight for my rights. Miss C. protested the fact that none of the scholarships that I wrote about (”Fund for people whose ambition it is to strap a roll of toilet paper to their heads, burrow into the center of a Toledo Mud Hens baseball game, and pop up yelling, ‘Mabel, did you feed the cat?’”) actually existed. She bristled when I wrote about Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer telling Santa, “Up yours, fatso.” She had second thoughts about the relevance of Elvis being alive in Michigan. There were problems with the piece on my friend Gary using his Ford Escort to plow fields, on the bizarre hairstyle of a student teacher (it looked like a badger), on a supposed mule lottery, on Winnie the Pooh being mildly retarded. But I won them all.
Unfortunately, most of these great relics have vanished. My friend and rival Melissa, who has finally admitted that I’m funny, found some old newspapers in her basement or walls or something, so you can go ask her if you’re interested.
All I have is my interview with Matt Kern. It wasn’t a column, but it does reflect the hard-nosed journalistic integrity and grit that our student body relied on the Advocate to provide approximately every once in a while, whenever we got around to it.
No Barney, but there are nighties and toasters involved. Enjoy.
(Oh, I should mention that this Toaster Lovers’ Association was in fact formed and that I attended its meetings regularly at Uncle John’s Pancake House. I even won the door prize, a toaster named Eugene, on the basis of my extreme merit and the fact that everyone else left. Have I written about the TLA yet? If not, I should do a piece. The Toaster Lovers’ Association and its sister organization, The Flame Squad, were the very types of monuments to idiocy that deserve more press.)
Sometimes I tell a story over and over and over again until you just want to hang yourself with some kind of nylon rope or like a bathrobe belt, or maybe something silkier, and hey, where's that ham I lost?
A lot of you out there think I’m funny. I mean, if you don’t, why the hell are you reading this blog? Why have you read it in the past, and why will you read it in the future? And if you aren’t planning on reading it in the future, why are you being an asshole? I’d read your blog, so why won’t you read mine? Except that actually, I probably wouldn’t read your blog. I’d pretend to, but then I’d end up tracking down bizarre memes online instead, like OVER NINE THOUSAND!!!!! and GIRUGAMESH!!! But I mean, I’d pretend. Although I probably wouldn’t pretend, and would instead end up searching for this image I found once of a sailor on the deck of a ship with a horse’s head. Holding a cat. You know the image I’m talking about.
You may think I’m funny, and at least 75% of you have decided it must be a laff riot to live with me like it must be a laff riot (or highly disturbing, or both) to live with The Bloggess, and probably you fantasize about it constantly or at least use a calculator from time to time, which, let’s face it, is pretty much the same thing.
My wife is always telling me how hilarious I am. Just the other day, after I wrote a particularly funny piece, she came upstairs from her basement office and told me, honestly, with zero false praise and zero thought to pumping me up and making me feel good, straight from her heart, she goes, “Did you remember to buy shrimp when you went to the store this weekend?”
And I was like, “Did you read my blog?”
“Um, yeah.”
“And?”
She shrugged in a noncommittal manner. “It was good.” Then, to make sure I knew how much she truly enjoyed it, she added, “But seriously, did you buy shrimp?”
Look, it’s not her fault. And it’s not my fault, either. You’re around something enough and you stop noticing it, kind of like how America has stopped noticing that Ryan Seacrest has no talent. It’s why ambulances vary their sirens every so often, so that people who have gotten used to an approaching WEE-OOO-WEE-OOO are startled back into paying attention when it changes to WEEOW-WEEOW-WEEOW. If I really wanted to keep my family on their toes, I’d adopt similar tactics. I’d start talking about something interesting that happened today (clown caught in escalator, man hit by pie, floating baby) and then start making siren noises.
But really the bigger problem is that I have a fixed repository of stories. They seem interesting to you, but that’s because you’re a fresh audience. Wait until I start repeating myself, like I do in front of my family.
For instance. You spend enough time around me and you start to realize that that story about my friend who tried to go through the Canadian border with large electronic equipment, gore-clotted hooks, a bloody hatchet, and a giant bag of unmarked pills in a car whose owner was apparently missing is one I tell to everyone. It’s funny when I tell it to you, and it’s kind of amusing the first time you’re near me when I tell it to someone else. By the second time, you’re correcting inconsistent parts of the story and by the third time, you’re sticking your tongue into the toaster.
And then what happens is I try to tell you the story again. You’re faced with a decision between being polite and mocking me. If you’re creative, you can do both.
This is pretty typical:
Me: “I understand why it’s supposedly illegal to yell ‘FIRE’ in a crowded place. But do you think you could yell ‘INSTANCE OF COMBUSTION!’ and get away with it? I mean, it’s technically the same thing, but most people wouldn’t understand what you were talking about. Of course, that would defeat the purpose, but just for the sake of argument, I’m wondering if it would fly.”
Robin: “What?”
Me: “Did I ever tell you about the Penis Game?”
Robin: [Ignoring me]
Me: “This guy in high school used to want to play this game in the lunchroom where he’d say ‘penis’ quietly, so that nobody could really hear it, and then the next person would have to say it a little louder. The game went on until someone chickened out and would back off from yelling ‘penis’ to the lunchroom.”
Robin: “I think the TiVo is broken again.”
Me: “But the problem was that when the game got to my friend Travis, he’d stand up on the table and yell ‘PEEEEEENIS!” at the top of his voice. Then he’d ad-lib for a while, like ”MONUMENTAL PENIS! SUPER-PENIS ERECTION MAN!’ Hey, are you listening to me?”
Robin: [Starting at the TV]
Me: “I’m turning gay and running off with the dog.”
Robin: “What?”
Me: “Did you hear my penis story?”
Robin: “Yes. You’ve told it like ten times.”
Me: “No I haven’t.”
Robin: “Did Travis eventually start yelling, ‘Big clit!’ ”
Me: “Yeah, but…”
Robin: “Ten times. Seriously, what the hell is wrong with the TiVo?”
So I’m going to have to start keeping records. Walk around with a little notebook. Create an Excel chart of everyone I know and how many times I’ve told them a certain story. Create an algorithm to determine when I should tell a story to a new party if a second, overexposed party is within earshot. Develop a way of shuttling said overexposed people out of the room, possibly by tossing snacks in one direction and running in another, or else yelling “PENIS!” and disappearing in the ensuing melee.
And when I start running low on new ideas, I’ll just suggest that you go get Rob “Diesel” Kroese’s new book Mercury Falls because it’s sure to be hilarious. And I doubt there’s any penis in it at all because I don’t think angels have them. That would explain the rapture, maybe, when you think about it.
All's Fair in love and rectal explosives
It’s county fair time here, and that means three things:
1. Yes, I actually go to the fair.
2. Yes, seriously.
3. No, I’m not kidding.
I have a love/hate relationship with the county fair. I love that it’s here because it showcases everything that’s wrong with humanity (and who doesn’t like that?), but I hate that it sort of heralds the beginning of the end of summertime. This summer in particular seemed to go really, really fast, and that’s not cool at all.
But the people-watching I get to do on the fairgrounds kind of makes up for it.
See, you forget that these people exist if you stay at home, avoiding the fair like some sort of black plague that ushers with it human mutants wearing matching mall-photo-booth t-shirts stretched out over gigantic, distended Orca bellies, fried foods running in congealed little balls down their protruding and exposed torsos, long rat tails of hair hanging down their sweaty backs, teeth akimbo and fighting to be free from the confines of their gums, glottal hyuh sounds coming from their throats while they smoke through yellow teeth, having abomination sex with their three-thumbed sisters. You forget that there is still a literacy problem in this country, and a racism problem, and an oral hygiene problem, and a bestiality problem. Without the fair, you wouldn’t realize that sometimes people injure themselves with a hatchet while removing a corn on their toe, receive third-degree burns about the buttocks while launching bottle rockets creatively, or are accidentally shot by their fathers while hunting delicious squirrel.
Not everyone is like me: cool as hell sitting in front of a computer all day, laughing at math jokes and knowing a shitload of Star Trek trivia. I go to the fair to see that which is unlike myself, and unlike this blogosphere we’re all so comfortable in. To people-watch. And to feel better about my teeth.
Our local fair is actually exceedingly dangerous, so I kind of feel like a thrill-seeker when I go. One year, a steam-powered vehicle on display exploded and killed a few people. Another year we made headlines for an e-coli outbreak thanks to a leaky water supply used by all of the concession vendors. One year, it’s sure to be an escaped monkey rampage. There aren’t actually any monkeys on display, so this scenario requires a hidden cache of monkeys somewhere on the premises, or possibly a monkey-stocked train derailment in the vicinity. Fingers crossed.
My wife Robin always looks forward to the fair because it’s a chance to forget that the rest of us exist. After eating a gyro made of what looks suspiciously like grocery store Steak-Ums, she typically falls into some sort of trance or fugue while watching horses parade around a ring at a painfully slow and uninteresting pace. This leaves me not only totally alone conversation-wise (”Robin, do you want any of this funnel cake? Robin? Robin?” or “Robin, I’ve been shot. Robin? Robin?”), but also leaves me in charge of the kids, both of whom eventually begin to roll down a steep slope toward the ring and become hazards to everyone involved.
This is a nostalgic coma for her, I believe. Back in her high school days, she used to bring horses to the fair for the entire fair week and ride slowly and uninterestingly around that ring herself, avoiding children and fat adults rolling haplessly down the slope, as part of the local 4-H club. I’m sure our children will have to join this boonies club which gets you beaten up if you ever move around city folk. I do think you can be part of 4-H (a farm organization whose 4 H’s refer to Hands, Hedberg, Hadron Colliders, and Hermione) without learning to change the oil on sheep or cows, though. I think you can just do activities with horses. Like backgammon and tax planning.
So this is how it goes: Gyro, horse show. Children rolling haplessly downhill. Mullets, dangerous ferris wheel. Inappropriate midriff shirts. Realization that there are a ton of 12-year-old sluts in the world. Funnel cake. Fin.
That starts tonight. I’m trying to blend in, if possible. I’m wearing a Skynard shirt and a confederate flag doo-rag. Now wish me luck shooting these bottle rockets out of my ass.
Zombierama
So the other day, I find myself alone in the house and I decide to watch the remake of Dawn of the Dead. I’ve watched it like a dozen times and keep rewatching it because I’m all about seeing the dead come back to life. It’s like, inspirational or something. It’s comforting to know that death is not the end. Beyond death is rebirth as an ambling corpse with a neverending bloodlust and hunger for human brains. Just like it says in the Bible.
For some reason, I really dig movies where the world ends, which is strange because if the world actually did end, I’d be totally bummed out. Still, in movie form, it’s total win. And a movie gets bonus points if the end of the world is populated by zombies.
Like the 28 Days Later movies. British zombies, with regrettable extensive shots of Cillian Murphy’s unit.
And just when you think the Brits got rid of all of the zombies? BOOM, some dumbshit Typhoid Mary lets that monkey loose again in the sequel and Britain is once again overrun with zombies. I told this British guy
I know, FUCK THAT, I’m NEVER coming to Britain because you’ve had two large rage zombie outbreaks and CLEARLY don’t have the resources needed to contain them, and he responded that that was cool, that he’s never coming to America because he’s seen Dawn of the Dead. Which is kind of where this whole thing started, anyway.
Why do I like zombie movies? Because they give you perspective.
Dawn of the Dead totally trumps Slumdog Millionnaire as a “be thankful for what you have” movie. Sure, you’ll appreciate your life more if you see how shitty conditions are in India, but it’s far more sobering when you realize how lucky you are that you live in a country that is not overrun with the living dead. Imagine a “my life is hard” showdown with someone in the middle of a walking dead plague. You’d say, “I
can’t pay my bills,” and he’d be all, “Oh, I feel so sorry for you; zombies are eating my face.” I’ll bet even the kids in Slumdog could watch that movie and feel better about their lives. And can you imagine if the two were combined and Indian slums were overrun with zombies? Oh God, imagine the diarrhea.
So I laid down on the couch, set my laptop on my stomach, and started
kind of live blogging on Twitter while watching the movie. Because there were things I needed to know, and had thoughts I needed to share. We all come closer together when the dead roam the earth.
JohnnyBTruant: On the set of this movie, what were the zombies like in person? I’ll bet they were assholes.
JohnnyBTruant: …but on the upside, I’ll also bet they didn’t eat up all of the stuff on the Craft Services table.
See, I’ll bet zombies make shitty actors. Sure, nobody portrays a zombie like a zombie (”you do what you know,” and all that), but I’ll bet they keep trying to eat the live actors. And you know they don’t make good conversation.
And there were a LOT of zombie extras in this movie, too. I think extras usually get this tiny little fee for appearing in a movie. But you know how zombie extras are — they probably spent all of their pittance on
brains, and then came back so that the bigger stars could take advantage and have sex with them. Except that you should never let a zombie perform oral sex on you. Seriously.
JohnnyBTruant: On set, how could you tell the zombies apart from the regular actors who were just real douchebags?
But by this point in the movie, I was caught up in the illusion and was starting to forget about actors and sets. The characters are all bunkered in the mall (ironic that unlike in real life, the zombies are outside of the mall) and there has been much limb-tearing and bone-shattering and a few head shots and at least one broken pool cue through the head. Everyone has blood all over themselves and everyone is carelessly getting it on the walls, on the floor, on Ving Rhames. Nobody is bothering to Swiffer anything.
JohnnyBTruant: There’s so much blood all over walls and everything in this movie. If you hired a zombie as a janitor, you’d have to fire him like right away.
But what about the more pressing concern? All of this co-mingling of gore: Your gore in my cuts; my gore in your cuts; zombie brains on everyone’s sleeves following a saw incident.
JohnnyBTruant: Hey, do you think zombies can get AIDS? Because that’s some high-risk shit right there.
And really, I thought — why couldn’t they get AIDS? They can get pregnant. Or rather, they can become zombies once they’re already pregnant, and then inevitably the baby becomes a zombie, too. A zombie woman would squeeze out her baby and if you could keep her from eating it, you could totally get her a copy of Social Distortion’s Mommy’s Little Monster album as a shower present, except that you’d have to throw it at her from a high place because otherwise she’d devour you.
And so I just kept coming up with questions that nobody can answer. Do zombies have dinner parties? Because they’d surely be ironic if so. And what do the animals think during a zombie attack? A lot of zombie movies suggest that zombie people like to eat people, but not so much animals. Animals would rule the world and even during the chaos, they’d basically just think, “Oh, everyone’s acting like Ashton Kutcher now.” Until everyone died (again) and the animals then learned how to use DVD players so they could watch Resident Evil, which is the only movie I can think of where zombie dogs get any play, and even then, those dogs aren’t so much zombies as they are inside-out.
Fundamentally, a zombie plague changes the culture of any country it touches. In fact, it homogenizes us. That’s strange to think about, because you’d figure that Iraqi zombies would be different from American zombies. You’d think Iraqi zombies would be more fundamentalist and maybe wear turbans, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. All zombies are the same. We’d be so much better off as a world if we could just learn from the zombies. Except for the implications it has on the whole “staying alive” thing, and on popular culture.
JohnnyBTruant: Zombie humor is bad. You’re like, “What has four wheels and flies?” and they’re all “AAARGAGEGHG.” And their timing sucks.
Of course, it doesn’t stop there.
JohnnyBTruant: You know, I’ll bet zombie karaoke is TERRIBLE.
They all seem so totally zoned out and high, but I have to wonder if it’s the living humans driving them wild. Would they settle when all of the humans were dead and zombified?
In fact, if you could get all of the zombies in one place and keep them from going anywhere (maybe maroon them on Iceland and just keep telling them their passports are expired if they try to leave), it’d be an interesting social experiment to see if they ever developed a government. Or a theater district. Both relate; I’ll be zombies are excellent at both long rants and at filibustering. I’ll bet diversity would suffer, though, and all art would be like watching Dane Cook movies.
Eventually, the movie ended and I had to stop thinking about zombies. Except that you can never really stop thinking about them, because that’s when they get you — when you feel safe. And modern zombies? They’re so fast that you can’t look away for even a second. Used to be, in the Night of the Living Dead days, you’d see zombies coming for like ten minutes before they got anywhere near you. And then you could probably just put up some red velvet valet ropes and a set of dress code rules to keep them at bay. Not so much with these modern zombies. Zombies 2.0.
Your perspective is skewed when you return to reality after something like this. I have to use a hedge trimmer. Will I have to disembowel anyone with it? And what about that chainsaw? Because in the movie, the hot chick gets accidentally chainsawed, and even though it’s gross, it does cut her bra strap and I got all conflicted. What is acceptable behavior in this zombie-heavy world? If I’m going to be trimming limbs, am I allowed to remove clothing with my power tools if I manage to polish off a few zombies in the doing? These are the things that keep great thinkers awake at night.
It’s hard to say in this crazy, modern world we live in.
What? This post is totally innocent.
The Max & Erma’s restaurant near us has this stupid game that’s like a cross between pinball and skeeball. There’s a set of ringed holes (this is the skeeball part) on the far end of the game, and you try to shoot a small metal ball into them by pulling back a plunger and letting it go (the pinball part).
Each of the ringed holes has a point value assigned to it. You get seven balls, and your goal is to score as highly as possible using those seven. The game promises that you’ll “Win a prize every time!” but the joke is on the sucker who plays it because it costs 50 cents and the prizes are various-sized superballs. So even when you win, you lose.
Of course, every time we go, that sucker is me. We played on Friday, Austin and I taking turns shooting the balls into the holes, and walked away with two brightly colored superballs that I’m sure will eventually end up lodged in someone’s throat.
On the ride home, Austin stuck the superballs into his pockets and decided to try to outsmart us.
Austin: “Daddy? Mommy? Do you know where my balls are?”
Me: “Your balls are missing?”
Austin: “I can’t find them. My balls are gone.”
Robin: “Austin, your balls are your responsibility.”
Austin: “Daddy, do you know where my balls are?”
We were at a stoplight, so I looked back. He was all smiley, like he was hiding something. Or two things.
Me: “Are they in your pants?”
Austin: [searching] “Haha! Yes! My balls are in my pants! Did you know that my balls were in my pants?”
Robin: “Well, it’s where they should be.”
Austin: “I’m going to play with them.”
Me: “Hey! Don’t play with your balls in the car. Keep them in your pants.”
Robin: “Always a good policy. In fact, I want you to keep your balls in your pants until you turn 18.”
Austin, of course, proceeded to defy us by taking his balls out and playing with them on the drive home. Eventually he started showing them to Sydney, age 15 months. This was a problem since she tends to eat everything, including the 7, 9, and plus sign off of a calculator.
Me: “Austin! Keep your balls away from your sister.”
Austin: “She likes them.”
Robin: “She could choke on them. Keep them to yourself.”
Austin: “I’m just putting them on her.”
Me: “Don’t put your balls on your sister. I’ll bet your uncle never put his balls on Mommy when they were growing up.”
Robin: “Damn right.”
Austin: “Did he even have balls?”
Me: “That’s what I hear. Big ones. And yet he managed to keep them to himself.”
Austin: [seeking a happy medium] “I’ll just put them next to her.”
Me: “Keep them to yourself or you’re going to lose them. I’ll… separate you from your balls.”
Austin put them away, back in his pants, and proceeded to stare out the window. He’d normally suck his thumb in the car and fall into a sort of coma, but he can only do that when he has Brown Bear, and Brown Bear was in Robin’s car. We like having Brown Bear around because it keeps him quiet. It’s like doping him up, so that car rides with him are kind of like to transporting cargo.
Austin: “Mommy? Can I take my balls to school on Monday?”
Robin: “No.”
Austin: “But I really want to.”
Robin: “Why?”
Austin: “I want to show them to Veronica and play with them.”
Robin: [turning around] “All right, give me those things.”