Rock out with your adult male domestic chicken out

I looked out at the crowd in Yamasaki Plaza. A sea of familiar faces looked back at me expectantly. Very shortly, I'd find out if I was going to fail miserably. I looked at my keyboard, its black and white teeth smiling vacantly back at me and wondered how I got into this situation.

I blame Ajax Laundry Detergent.

Well, I guess I need to explain that a little further. One day I was hanging out at my friend Eric's house. Eric had a drum set, and we'd just kind of goof around and try to play along with whatever we were listening to. I was goofing around intermittently with the keyboard he had lying around.

"Brother and Sister" by Erasure came on, and I picked out the intro on the keyboard. Here's the song for reference:



Eric was impressed with how quickly I picked it out, hearing the song for the very first time, and asked how long I'd been playing. I told him I got my first keyboard for my 10th birthday, but I didn't really play very well. This was true; I could pick out melodies by ear, but I had a hell of a time trying to play anything with both hands at the same time.

I tried to tell him it was luck more than anything that I played it, but he didn't buy it. I felt like I was deceiving him somehow. While it was the first time I'd heard the song, the intro was similar to something else I'd listened to a kajillion times: the jingle for Ajax Laundry Detergent.

One of the CDs I listened to constantly was the TeeVee Tunes compilation of classic commercial jingles, and the "stronger than dirt" part of the jingle was similar to the intro of the Erasure song.

Yes, I realize there's an entirely good chance that I was the only 15-year-old in the world who would've made that connection, but let's just ignore that for right now.



Well, this one little thing got blown out of proportion by Eric, who told our friends that I could play anything after listening to it once, and in all honesty, I was not as diligent as I could've been in dispelling this notion.

So when it came time for the Spring Cultural Faire my senior year in high school, a few of my friends decided they'd band together and play some songs. They had a drummer and guitarists, but they needed a keyboardist for a few songs.

"Hey, Sparkman," one of them asked me, "do you think you could learn the intro to 'In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida' in time for the Cultural Faire?" I had put the song on a mixtape I'd made for this particular friend, so I was already familiar with the song.

They just needed me to play the introduction; I didn't need to learn the solo crap in the middle. That wouldn't be a problem, I thought.

"Sure."

"Awesome. You'll be our guest keyboardist," he told me. Another friend of ours, Nick, was going to play on The Doors' "The End."

Being the attention/affection whore that I am, I couldn't pass up a possibility to perform in front of fellow students, so I was looking forward to it.

Not so forward to it that I started to learn it as soon as I got home that day, but I was pretty jazzed about it. We went over to Eric's to practice, and everyone else was hashing out their parts. Someone would ask me how my part was coming along.

"Oh, I'll be ready," I said, which sounded positive, but was also true, considering that I had yet to try figuring it out. This was pre-Interwebs days, so it's not like I could just Google the song and get the music.

Here's part of the song. The part I was in charge of is at the very beginning.



So the weekend before I was to make my guest performance in front of my peers, I decided that I'd stalled long enough. I pulled the album out of the cabinet and put it on the turntable. After a few abortive attempts that had me seriously worried that I wasn't going to figure it out in time, I turned the record player off and tried to play it from what I had stored in my brain.

And all of a sudden, it clicked. I kicked myself after seeing how simple it was. So I spent another few minutes just trying to play it all at once without screwing up.

Within a half-hour of starting, I had it. Now I was able to go over to Eric's to practice. We ran through the song a few times, and we had it down about as good as we were going to. We were prepared.

So on the day of the actual performance, it occurred to me that I didn't know what I was supposed to do once I finished my part. It was only a few seconds long, and this was a long song. Was I supposed to sit there like a tool?

The band, Toast House (I didn't come up with the name, but I wasn't surprised at the story behind it), was introduced, and I realized that this was my moment to not screw up.

I started playing.

Aside from a minor screwup, I did okay. After playing the last note of the intro, I turned off the keyboard and went to sit in the front with the rest of the audience. The rest of the show went just fine, with one of the high points being my friends and I wondering if Richard, our guitarist/singer, was going to drop the F-bomb during his rendition of "The End."

After the performance, people I didn't talk to much would say hi or make a comment about the performance, even though I played only for a few seconds. Considering I was used to getting attention as a target of ridicule--which admittedly was seldom by the time I was a senior in high school, but old habits die hard--it was nice to be noticed for something else.

Thus I ended my rock star career while I was still on the top.

Independence Day

Happy Fourth of July, everyone! Taking the day off to spend time with the family.

To get in the 4th of July mood

Smokey Bear does not approve.

Crazy-ass pizzas

Notice the hyphen in the post title; these aren't ass pizzas that are crazy (although the very notion of an ass pizza certainly is crazy; I can't deny that).

Apparently, in 1970, since there was no Internet, no home VCRs and only a handful of channels on TV, people had lots of spare time on their hands.

At least, that's the only reason I can think of to explain these treats:



With Chef Boy-ar-dee Complete Pizza Mix and copious amounts of alcohol, you too could create such edible masterpieces. You get all the basics: sauce, flour mix and cheese.

Now, looking at these pictures, it appears that Chef Boy-ar-dee is being slightly disingenuous. I'm thinking you get a dime bag of Parmesan cheese. Any other dairy products are purely from your own supply.

These look like the pizzas (or pizza pies, if you will) I've seen in old drive-in intermission commercials for the concession stand; pizzas that appear to have been sponsored by Clearasil.

And I'm sorry, if you put sliced hard-boiled eggs and pasta on my pizza, you're getting deadlegged as soon as I catch you.

Funny-shaped cakes = good

Funny-shaped pizzas = lynching

This nightmare-inducing ad came from the Dec. 1970 issue of 'Teen magazine. Yes, the Siftin' archives truly know no bounds.

Thundercats, LOL!

I can't believe this isn't a shirt already:



And while we're talking about Thundercats, why haven't I seen ThunderLOLcats?



Oh. Right. Well. Moving along...

A writing quandry

I actually prefer writing fiction to nonfiction, not that you'd ever know it by my writing output. Aside from a brief productive period during my junior year in high school in which I managed 125 pages (not coincidentally, in the mostly pre-Internet, pre-insanely addictive guitar-based video games era), I don't get very far in my fiction writing.

Part of it is guilt, I suppose; feeling guilty that I'm taking time from my family by being hunched over the computer. Another part is the feeling that I'm wasting my time--I have nothing "important" to say.

This usually manifests itself in wondering "how the hell would I market this to someone?" The stuff I find myself writing isn't all that easy to explain succinctly. I guess you could say it's funny. I mean, I try for it to be, anyway.

But I don't see many books marketed as comedies; do you? And the humor section is generally essays and other nonfiction.

I started a story for National Novel Writing Month last year, and much like every other story I've started, I haven't finished it yet. At least with this one, I'm still interested in seeing where the story ends up.

But I find myself balancing the notion of justifying spending time and effort on something that will likely only be seen by me and a few friends with the simple fact that when it comes down to it, I have to write. I can't go long without it, lest I get headaches.

Writing: My brain's way of taking a dump.

This is not a thinly veiled plea for compliments, though I admit I have no shame and will take them. It's mostly me just wondering out loud if the stuff I want to write has an audience that makes it worth writing.

Here are a few stories I've worked on in the past few years, boiled down:

Fraternal twins celebrate the end of their 20s by going on a road trip.

Dracula's son and the Frankenstein Monster team up with other monsters to halt a zombie invasion.

A coming-of-age story about a smartass high school student.

I stop once I get to the point that I ask myself why I'm writing it. I mean, those are all interesting to me, but I'm not sure that I'm the average book buyer.

My ultimate goal is to sell a book, but first, I have to finish one, right?

When I was in junior college, the teacher offered a chance for extra credit if we a) made a list of 10 potential markets for our writing and b) submitted a piece to one of those markets.

I'd never submitted anything before, and if I didn't want the extra credit, I probably wouldn't have bothered, because damn near every book on writing tells you not to be discouraged because no one gets accepted on their first submission.

When August rolled around and I got a manila envelope in the mail with a check for $10 and a copy of the magazine my article appeared in, I was ecstatic. Yeah, it was only 10 bucks in a tiny magazine, but I got published on my first try.

A normal person would be inspired by such an event and start churning out reams of stuff, submitting it to every market that seemed to fit.

But since I'd met my goal of being published by the time I turned 21 (I actually beat it by a little over a year), the pressure was off. I set a new goal to publish a book by the time I turned 25.

This turned into 29, 30, and is now resting perilously at 35, which gives me a shade less than two years to get off my ass.

If I were smart, I'd write a story about some wiseass who keeps procrastinating when it comes to a life goal he set when he was in elementary school.

I'll write that when I get around to it. I've still got until November 2009.

Walk this way...

Taking the night off and playing Guitar Hero: Aerosmith. W00t!

My band name is FVB, which stands for Future Villain Band. Before you tell me what a craptacular name for a band that is, watch this:



Badass.

Happiness is a warm Guitar Hero controller

Guitar Hero: Aerosmith comes out soon, and I just read that there's a small chance that there may be a Beatles-themed game in the future. I'll believe it when I see it, but they're looking into it.

Now this intrigues me as a lifelong Beatles fan, but it got me wondering which songs they'd want to use.

"Love Me Do" is catchy, but it's not really Guitar Hero fodder, you know? So I decided to tax my poor little brain and come up with some suggestions.

While My Guitar Gently Weeps

Helter Skelter

And Your Bird Can Sing

Taxman

I Feel Fine

Day Tripper

Birthday

Don't Let Me Down

For You Blue

Something

Free As a Bird

Happiness is a Warm Gun

Here Comes the Sun

I Saw Her Standing There

I Want You (She's So Heavy)

I've Got a Feeling

Norwegian Wood

Paperback Writer

Rain

She's a Woman

Think For Yourself

Michelle

I Call Your Name

Getting Better

The End

That's about 25 Beatles songs, but to fill it out, you could include either bands that inspired them, like Buddy Holly and the Crickets, or bands that covered Beatles tunes (damn near everyone).

I'm sure I'm missing one or two songs that would fit in this kind of game better, but this is a good start. Feel free to add anything I missed in the comments.

I'd almost certainly buy this, though I can't imagine they'd actually be able to use the actual Beatles recordings, so it would be a bunch of cover versions like in the early days of Guitar Hero, but I think I would kick some serious ass at this game, having listened to Beatles songs my entire life.

The song lineup might change a little if this used the full band peripherals that this fall's installment is supposed to use, but I wouldn't imagine drastic changes unless they introduced a piano peripheral, which I tend to doubt.

But I'd be willing to bet that no matter what, "Revolution No. 9" won't make the cut.

Now cut that out!

Here for a fun Friday night are two of my comedy heroes together: Jack Benny and Ernie Kovacs. Enjoy!

Press F5 to construct an adventure

As a pale youth, I spent many an hour perfecting my DC Universe-themed game on Adventure Construction Set, one of my favorite programs for my trusty Commodore 64.

This program allowed you to essentially design your own top-down RPG. It had a metric crapton of tile art that you could repurpose for your gaming needs, and with time and effort, you could even share your completed game with friends.

I was hoping to replicate the then-relatively recent Crisis on Infinite Earths maxiseries. Trying to rename characters and choosing semiappropriate tile graphics took so long that by the time I'd get to renaming locations, I was getting punchy.

I never quite got to the finished stage, alas; too many details kept cropping up. I'd polish up a bunch of stuff, get impatient and let the program finish designing the adventure for me, and then when I played it, I'd get things like Green Lantern entering the Fertile Crescent and being attacked by a snake or something goofy like that.

I also had the pinball and music construction sets, but this one was by far the most played.

Here's an example of the intro and a demo that highlights some of the features. This version is for the Apple II, but it's close enough for our purposes here.



Just thinking about this program makes me remember all the sounds the computer made. Closing the disc drive, listening to it whir, and thinking that you could gauge the progress of the loading by the sounds it made.

It's over 20 years later, and I still have yet to play a kickass Crisis on Infinite Earths game. Maybe I should bust the ACS out again...

Working hard at hardly working

Brody came to work with me today for Take Your Kids to Work Day. We had quite a time. His favorite part aside from hugging all the girls was riding on the train to get there.

And he probably enjoyed our excursion to the nearby toy store. He told me, "The City is my favorite and my best," phrased that way because he's on a Charlie and Lola kick.

He met my coworkers, hung out with other kids and looked deathly bored any time I tried to show him my desk--aside from all the toys on it.

He even got his own badge to wear while in the building, which I think he liked quite a bit.

The part that surprised me the most was when my work pal Jessica asked if he wanted her to tie his balloon to his hand when we left so it wouldn't fly away.

Keep in mind that Brody doesn't like things to touch his hands unless they're other hands. At Trader Joe's, God help us all if someone offers him a sticker.

But he just said, "Okay," and held his hand out as she secured a slipknotted ribbon to his hand. I don't know if she was using the Jedi mind trick on him or what, but I was surprised.

We had pizza for lunch and got to watch a movie later in the afternoon. Good times.

At the end of the day on the ride home, I don't know who was more tired--him or me. I'm just going to go ahead and guess me.

I'm surprised I even managed to stay up late enough to post thizzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Catharsis

The fine folks at CNET have crowned their biggest nerd. Wait till a minute or two into this video. It will pay off, I promise.

I think I'm in love with the sundown

I really wish I had the time and skill to create mashups sometimes. Especially in this case, because I can't imagine too many other people making this admittedly tenuous connection.

When I first heard this catchy tune by Beck, there was a little phrase in the verse that sounded familiar, and I couldn't place it until I was listening to it on my way to work one morning. It was early in the morning, and for some ungodly reason, once it hit the chorus, I started to sing "Sundown" by Gordon Lightfoot.

See what you think:






Not a lot the same, but I'd really like to hear these two mashed up...

Bye, George

Just read about George Carlin's passing, so I thought as a tribute to one of my favorite linguists (no kidding), I'd offer up a version of his famous "Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television" routine.

You might want to put in the headphones unless you work in a coprolalia clinic.



Not only do I have albums and concert videos, but about half of my son's Thomas the Tank Engine videos are narrated by Carlin. There's a mashup waiting to happen...

Nyuk nyuk nyuk!

Have I mentioned that there are some Three Stooges shorts on Hulu now? Here's one of my favorites. Watch for Lucille Ball in this one.

Today's inspirational thought

A giraffe walks into a bar.

"High balls are on me!"

I have a bad feeling about this...

This will overlap some stuff, but that's OK.

UPDATED: StarWarsCrawl.com has been shut down by the Lucasfilm Buzzkill Brigade, alas. Well, it made me laugh while it was up.

(That's what she said.)

Best cookie ever?

The DoubleStuf Oreo is for wussies.

Behold:



The OctupleStuf. Snack of champions.

And guys who have to much spare time at lunch.

Because it's always funny

We've all killed time playing cute platform puzzle games by now. But now here's a question: how do you make one that I will play for more than 2 minutes?

If you answered "boobs," you get half credit for knowing me that well.

However, if you answered "Puzzle Farter," give yourself a prize.

No, really.

Crossword results: Fountains of win

How did you do on the crossword challenge?

I actually had to consult two reference books--which meant I had to go all the way down into the garage--but I managed to finish it all without the use of the Internet, just like the pioneers did all those years ago.

It's somehow fitting that one of the answers in the puzzle was "ass." At least, my wife thinks so.

Here's my work, screw-ups and all:

Jeff's No-Internet Challenge!

Okay, technically, it's mostly a challenge for me, but if you want to join in the fun, have at it. Here's the deal:

Below, I have scanned in a TV Guide crossword from the week of Nov. 2, 1974. Yes, I'm that much of a nerd that I have a copy of the TV Guide that was current the day I was born, right down to the right regional edition. But that's not important right now.

TV Guide puzzles, by and large, are not known for their difficulty. However, how would I fare at one that demanded pop culture knowledge from 33 and a half years ago? And just to make it interesting, I can't use any Internet resources; only whatever would've been at my disposal back in 1974.

Like I said, you can give it a shot yourself. I'll be back tomorrow to see how we all did. Let me know how you did in the comments if you'd like.

How young is too young to be manipulative?

Kids will get into stuff no matter how much you have kidproofed your house. I stayed home with the kids today, and my daughter was trying to get into everything.

To try to express the importance of not doing such things, I raised my voice--not in an evil-sounding way.

Now keep in mind that she's 10 months old, so she's not much of a conversationalist.

After I picked her up and moved her into the living room, I told her that I didn't want her to get into that stuff because she could get hurt.

She looked at me, smiled widely and gave me a big kiss.

And then went right back where I told her not to go.

Kids.

Happy Father's Day

No pithy comments today. Just sincere Happy Father's Day wishes.

E.T. the extra-functional

Of all the store catalogs I used to comb through to plan birthday and Christmas wish lists, the Best Products catalog was one of my favorites.

I loved going to that store. Whether it was testing out the keyboards by playing "Axel F" or drooling over the G.I. Joe aircraft carrier, I almost always saw something to covet.

The pneumatic tube system they used always fascinated me. You'd write down the number of the items you wanted, handed it to the person behind the counter, and they'd put it in a tube, and SHOOOP--it would get sucked up into the ceiling.

Anyway, I was looking at an old catalog--from 1983--and came across this gem.



This is the Hasbro E.T. Roommate--Product 358010HF if you're writing this down. For the low, low price of $49.97, you too could have this creepy-as-hell hamper/toy chest/cat prison.

Imagine waking up in the middle of the night and bumping into that thing, especially if you were as little as the kid in the picture. I liked E.T. as much as the next kid, but come on. And what's with the Amy Winehouse eye makeup he's got going on?

"They tried to make me go to fed lab, I said phone, phone home..."

No, really. This was a movie.

I think I've mentioned before that after reading The Golden Turkey Awards, my introduction to the world of crap movies, I made it a goal to see all the movies listed in the book.

The 1970s, as I'm finding out by watching old crappy movies, was a time of high-concept cinema. Literally, no matter how brain-crackingly stupid the premise was, it didn't keep a movie from being made.

This was the era, after all, of the Bee Gees' musical wonder, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. I always wondered if the Beatles actually saw the movie, and if so, what they thought of it.

But I digress.

1972 gave us the antidrug, pro-Christian turkey vampire biker horror movie Blood Freak. 1976 unleashed Chatterbox upon the world. I'm a little at a loss as to explaining the premise of this comedy in a mildly tasteful fashion.

Really struggling here.

Okay, any impressionable or easily offended types, you may want to stop right here. I won't blame you.

Here it goes:

A lady discovers that her hoohah (to use the clinical term) can talk and sing.

I excrete you not; this was a real movie. In The Golden Turkey Awards, it was a nominee for "Most Unerotic Concept in Pornography," but alas, was beaten (so to speak) by Him, a movie about, well, you look it up. I have my limits.

Now technically, I haven't watched Chatterbox yet. I don't know exactly when I'll get around to it. I mean, seriously, what kind of a mood do you have to be in to watch a talking hoohah movie?

When you're a Jet, you're a Jet all the way

Long before Fight Club, I was one of a number of kids who participated in fighting activities that were expressly forbidden at my school.

Even a nerd like me threw caution to the win and engaged in the fights. There was no elaborate setup; often you and your opponent would just throw down.

But first you needed to prepare, and that meant a trip to the school library at lunchtime. That was where you got your gear.

All the professional pencil fighters swore by the NFL team pencils from the library vending machine. Occasionally, some joker would try to play with one of those Husky pencils that you get in kindergarten--you know, the ones that are as big around as an elephant's leg. But those weren't considered regulation gear.

Many a quarter vanished into that machine, and in addition to dispensing pencils, it also dispensed fate.

In mid-80s Northern California, two team pencils were coveted over all others: the 49ers and the Raiders. If you managed to get one of the red-and-gold or silver-and-black marvels, you had a better chance of winning your pencil fight. The Steelers and the Jets were acceptable second-tier teams.

If, however, you were unlucky, your the machine would puke out teams such as the Browns or Colts. You might as well have snapped those in half yourself rather than risk embarrassment.

Every pencil fighter had his style, but the general approach was the same: while securing one end of the pencil in one hand, you used the other to flick the metal end, at which point the middle of your pencil--the meat, if you will--clashed with your opponent's.

You weren't supposed to try to hit with the metal end; in fact, that was the dangerous part. Every flick had the potential to smash the living crap out of someone's finger by "accident."

But assuming you made the regulation pencil-to-pencil contact, you and your opponent took turns, hoping each hit would be the one that splintered a pencil into oblivion.

The audience took pains to obscure the view of the fight from any teacher, lest the fight get canceled. But once they heard the telltale crack, they got louder and more sure of who was going to win.

We nerds had a bit of an advantage, as it was not uncommon for the badass kids to make such a show of delivering the famed one-hit fatality that they snapped their own pencils.

And suggesting that said badass was only pencil fighting to compensate for anatomic deficiencies usually didn't go over very well.

In any event, even if the nerd won, he'd lose; the badass would just grab the winning pencil and snap it in his face.

Douche.

Custard's Last Stand

I just read that Strawberry Shortcake is getting a redesign. This puzzled me, as I thought this had already happened, but I guess it's a reredesign.

According to this article, the line of dolls will be more "fruit forward."

Which means, I presume, that in addition to spending "her time chatting on a cellphone instead of brushing her calico cat, Custard," The Peculiar Purple Pie Man will also be absent.

If you're already wondering "Um, dude, why do you care about dolls? Like girl dolls, anyway," I might remind you that I have a daughter.

Also, I was the only XY at all-XX birthday parties in elementary school, so I'm quite familiar with Strawberry Shortcake and Hello Kitty and all that kind of stuff.

When we got our cat, my first suggestion for a name was Custard because it was the first thing that came to mind. That was nixed pretty quickly, and I came up with Muffin, because you know, Strawberry's friend was Blueberry Muffin...

Honestly, I don't know why I was pushing for a Strawberry Shortcake-related name. The only thing I can think of was that I was trying to impress a girl in my class. I had this unfortunate tendency to do things just because girls asked me to.

Remind me to tell you about the Jeff the Cuddly Kitten Incident sometime.

Um. Right.

Anyhow, why does she have to have a cell phone and not a cat? You can identify with a fictional character without them being exactly like you (not that my daughter is getting a cell phone any time soon).

How much like Superman am I (aside from the cape)? For that matter, how much like Strawberry Shortcake were girls of the 1980s?

Their hair didn't smell fruity; it was either Johnson's Baby Shampoo or at the most, Jean Nate. They didn't dress like Holly Hobbie rejects, though in fairness, I do remember one classmate wearing a bonnet on a field trip.

Instead, the design is veering a little too near Bratz territory for my tastes, so I'm hoping I won't be begged by my daughter to buy these fruit tarts for her.

She's only 10 months old, but you never know...

And while researching this, I found the Web site for Holly Hobbie. This is not Holly Hobbie.

Hang on a sec.

(reading)

Oh, okay. This Holly Hobbie toy is apparently the great-granddaughter of the one we old people grew up with.

Like having kids doesn't make you feel old enough. Sheesh. Next thing you know, they'll be making a Smurfs movie or something.

What?

Seriously?

Smurf me.

Behold the Shat

Off to play some Guitar Hero with the missus, but here's something profound to think about until tomorrow.

The Best of Twitter Collection

If you didn't know, I post teeny things to Twitter, whether they are glorified status changes ("Me am sleepy. Zzzzz.) or gags I couldn't work into a whole blog post.

I also have an autopost to pull whatever blathering I've posted here recently and make a Twitter post of that as well.

I've been using Twitter since February, so I thought I'd look back and see if there was anything worth posting here, partially because this cold is still kicking my ass and I'm really too tired to think of anything clever, and partially to give you a sampling of what you're missing by not following me on Twitter.

Now keep in mind, "follow" is Twitter's verb, not mine. I would go more for "deliberately put up with pointless meanderings for the hope of a nugget of laughter," but that might be a little too long, and we don't want to give Twitter more reasons to be down, do we?

Idea of the minute: A Tetris game with oranges, lemons, limes, etc.: Citris. 10:49 AM March 10, 2008

You know, it says something when you switch to a Barry Manilow song to avoid hearing a Michael Bolton song. 03:12 PM March 25, 2008

Viagra turns 10! Hard to believe. So to speak... 08:40 AM March 28, 2008

Would a zombie vampire be easier or harder to defeat? 03:13 PM April 04, 2008

My Tweetcloud lists words that should never be seen together: manilow, marshmallow, marshmallows, masturbating, mcdonaldses 01:24 PM April 07, 2008

Thought for the day: Ra was apparently *not* the god of cheerleading. 10:00 AM April 10, 2008

How have they not used ELO's "Turn to Stone" for a Viagra ad? 01:54 PM April 11, 2008

CleverUserName I sometimes wonder about inappropriate things, like are there "adult" Jell-O molds? I don't really want to know, but still... 02:21 PM April 24, 2008

Pubic Zirconium would be a great name for a band. 12:20 PM May 02, 2008

A movie I can't believe hasn't been made yet: Ax-wielding killer targets defrocked priests---Axcommunication. Rated R. 04:18 PM May 08, 2008

And the most recent:

Waiting for a pro-pornsite story so I can use the headline "Naughty URLs need love, too."

So if this is the kind of thing you want interrupting your busy day, join the club.

For shame!

I laughed way too hard at this.

What's in a name?

The ever-enterprising Michelle Collins at Best Week Ever has compiled a list of The 50 Best Pun Stores.

I love these things, because unlike most people, I admit to liking puns. Puns, of course, are like the flatulence of the joke world; everyone can make them, and most of them stink.

That said, if I ever become a restaurateur, I have a few restaurants in mind:

My Tony Roma's competitor, Ribs For Your Pleasure; Donut Make My Brown Eyes Blue; my bakery, Pie R Squared (no round pies here; that's part of the gimmick); and of course, my sushi restaurant, Eat Me Raw.

However, I had nothing to do with the naming of the following restaurant, no matter how much I wish I had:



Awe. Some.

Separated at birth?

Who would notice this if I didn't?

Ambassador Dictator Phantom, the bad guy from Prince of Space,



and arch-nemesis of Rainbow Brite, Murky Dismal:

In sickness and in hell

I'm still working on getting over this damned cold. My brain feels just fine, but my body feels like it was beaten by little men.

Through the miracle of science, we're able to see what my body says to my brain when it tries to make me move. We truly spare no expense here. There aren't any words, but I think you'll get the idea.

Like a rickroll with poo

There are very few things I haven't seen on the Internet--whether I actually wanted to or not.

That said, I've still managed to steer clear of watching "Two Girls, One Cup," though I've seen videos of people seeing it for the first time. Now that's entertainment. Likewise, I've also avoided the even more repulsive "Four Girls Fingerpainting."

Now if you have no idea just what in the hell I'm blathering on about, consider yourself lucky. And for the love of God, don't look it up. Same goes for Goatse and Tubgirl. You can get a (mercifully) picture-free explanation at Wikipedia, but trust me, you don't want to know.

The lure of the forbidden is hard to resist. Half of you are more tempted to look this stuff up every time I say not to, so don't blame me. That's how I learned about most of the big Internet shock sites.

You think, "Well, come on...how bad can it be?"

*CLICK*

"MY EYES!OMGWTFBBQ!!11!"

I don't know what the next gross-out video meme is going to be. I mean, how do you top what is essentially a rickroll with poo?

Of course, by the time you read this post, e-mails will be crossing the globe, daring friend worldwide to check out "Three Girls, a Yeti, a Frozen Turkey, Two Grapefruits, Half a Tub of Cool Whip and the Collected Poetry of Rod McKuen."

Don't say I didn't warn you.

Cruel summer

Some songs will always remind me of summer, no matter how many times I hear them. I used to listen to my radio while I waited to fall asleep every night. If I was lucky, a relatively cool breeze would blow in just over the head of my bed, a respite from the day's oppressive heat.

And when I say summer, I lived in a part of California where we had two seasons: hot and cold. Summer to me could very well have been in April, but when you're wearing shorts and still sweating your ass off, it seems summery.

Interestingly, the three songs that remind me the most of summer despite having heard them a bajillion times in the years since they were new all came from the same summer. So now I'll make a little like Casey Kasem and do a mini countdown.

3. "All I Need is a Miracle," by Mike + The Mechanics

Released in March 1986, this had been a radio staple for a while by the time it seared itself into my memory. At the end of sixth grade, we had a pool party. The radio was tuned to the local Top 40 station, and for one of the few times that school year, I didn't feel like a total outsider.

Sure, I wore a T-shirt in the pool because I was self-conscious and I wore my glasses so I could, you know, see, but I didn't get much crap about it that day. Everyone was busy having fun.

You know how when you're a kid, everything compresses to a single point sometimes? For a moment in that pool, with this song playing in the background, everything just kind of came together and I actually felt happy. I thought that maybe seventh grade wouldn't be so bad. For that brief pinprick in time, there was hope.

Happy moments come fairly rarely in middle school, so it's not surprising that they stay with you.



2. "Human," by The Human League

Released in August 1986, I don't think this hit the charts till at least September, by which time seventh grade had started, but it was still pretty hot. Plus, since that feeling of hope hadn't quite panned out thus far, it suited my melancholy attitude. I know it's not really about feeling alienated, but since I felt that way in junior high school, anything the slightest bit sad was an anthem for not fitting in.

"What Am I Doing Hanging 'Round" by The Monkees served a similar purpose, so you see how little I paid attention to the lyrics. What can I say? I was emo before emo was emo.



1. "We Don't Have to Take Our Clothes Off," by Jermaine Stewart

Now it's not so much that I particularly liked this song, though I kinda did. But it hit the charts in May 1986 and was in heavy rotation--one of those songs they played every hour.

It didn't occur to me at the time that the song referred to AIDS; I just thought it was a song about abstinence in general. And honestly, selling abstinence to a hopeless nerd is like selling Crayolas to the blind. Though I have to admit that I was puzzled even then. The message I got: Sex = bad; drinking cherry wine = A-OK.

Seemed to me that if you drank enough cherry wine, you had a better chance of taking your clothes off. But I was a miserable, cynical 11-year-old, so I could've been wrong.

Still, this morning, more than 20 years later, I heard this song on my way to work, and for a second I was back in my bed, waiting to fall asleep and hoping for a cool breeze.

Fortunately, I wasn't driving.

This, ladies and gentlemen, in lieu of actual entertainment

I'm trying to stave off the latest cold to bless our household, so to conserve brainpower, here is yet another example of how almost everything is funnier set to the music from The Benny Hill Show.

And yes, I know it's called "Yakety Sax," but if I say that, then I have to explain for the benefit of those who don't know that it was used as the theme for the show, and I don't really want to go to the trouble of typing all that.

Answers to yesterday's quiz

1. Pieces

2. Robot Monster

3. Microwave Massacre

4. Jack Frost

5. Night of the Lepus

Because all you of Earth are idiots...

Amazingly, next year marks the 50th anniversary of Ed Wood's epic Plan 9 From Outer Space. Director John Johnson and Darkstone Entertainment plan to mark this occasion by releasing a remake called simply Plan 9.

Why is this exciting?

Well, the plan (so to speak) is for this remake to be a serious attempt at a horror film. No lovingly campy reproduction here. They're out to make this a scary movie.

Now this interested me because obviously, I'm a fan of B-movies, but also because I've often thought of rewriting cheesy sci-fi and horror movies as writing exercises.

When you distill Plan 9's plot into its most basic form, it has potential: Aliens reanimate the dead.

Of course, they wanted to do so to prevent Earth's scientists from creating a doomsday weapon, and you wonder why plans 1 through 8 were unsuccessful, but that's overthinking things.

So you know I'm going to be all over this when it comes out, just to see if they can make an Ed Wood movie scary.

This made me think of other movie distillations that didn't really work when they were originally released but still have hope as a remake. Even bad movies can have good ideas.

I'll list them, and you try to guess them. Then I'll post the answers tomorrow.

Killer targets women and uses parts from each of his victims to create a composite body.

Eight people are the only survivors of an alien attack on Earth.

Ordinary man discovers he likes the taste of human flesh.

A murderer is reincarnated.

Mutated animals terrorize the world.

Well, that'll do for a start. To get you in the right frame of mind, here's Ed Wood's original classic.

Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle!

Oh dear God.

OK, now I love playing Guitar Hero, and I have a Nintendo DS, but sweet monkey danish, this makes baby Jesus cry.

Here, for your viewing pleasure, is a video promoting Guitar Hero for the DS. I keep telling myself that this is intentionally asstastic, but I'm really not sure.

I feel like kicking myself in the ass just for sharing it with you, but you really have to see it.

Make sure you watch it all the way to the end. If you don't actually feel measurably dumber after watching it, you are a better person than I.

More DIY videos at 5min.com

This was passed along to me by my pal Karyne, who saw it at Neatorama. I'm still talking to her nonetheless. I'm magnanimous like that.

Or dumb. I haven't decided yet.

Asking the immortal question, "Waar is de pisjongen?"

Harvey Korman died today. Dick Martin died Saturday. I spent a lot of time watching both of them on TV growing up, so I thought I'd give them a shout-out.

In addition to providing the voice of The Great Gazoo on The Flintstones, I knew Harvey Korman as one of the players on The Carol Burnett Show, where he showed superhuman ability in keeping a straight face when paired with Tim Conway.

One of my favorite bits was where Conway's character is lamenting the loss of a cousin (or something) to a shark attack. The story goes on until he gets to this line:

"She would have made it if she hadn't been wearing her lucky ham..."

I wish I could find a clip of that because I'm not doing it justice; granted, I was very young at the time. I might be missing a few details.

In high school, I rediscovered him in such epics as History of the World, Part I, where he gets one of the best lines in any movie ever:

"Your Majesty, you look like the piss boy!"

Here's a bit of Harvey Korman in action. The first clip is mildly not safe for work because of language, and the second one, a little more not safe for work (brief boobage); you've been warned.






In addition to co-hosting Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In, Dick Martin seemed to be on nearly every game show in the 70s and early 80s, as well as an appearance on The Carol Burnett Show.

I loved hearing him laugh. If you heard it, you know what I mean. You can pick it out of a crowd easily.

While I recommend watching anything these two were in, you can get a taste by cruising YouTube and other places. Here's an episode of Laugh-In, followed by some bloopers. Listen for the laugh. You'll know it when you hear it.

Enjoy.

At first I was like ???, but then I LOL'd

Saw this on a pole at Second and Mission today on our way to the BART station:



Pardon my crap photography skills; I took it with my phone while trying not to look stupid. It says "LOLCAT | Responds to CHEEZBURGER | Please to call | 515-862-1000."

OK, so what does that mean? I enlisted the help of the crack Siftin' Research Squad (I looked it up on Google).

It's a promotion for Drown Radio's album, Me Geek Pretty One Day.

Well played, sir.

I think I might just check it out. For 8 bucks, you get "nerdcore hip hop songs with 8-bit instrumentals, electro-pop, and sexy r & b." How can I resist?

As clever as the sign was, that's the second most interesting animal-related sign I've seen. It's going to take a hell of a lot to top No. 1:

Hidden memory nuggets

With so many shows being released on DVD, you'd think that for someone like me, I could watch all the old shows like I watched when I was little.

For example, the Looney Tunes Golden Collections have tons of awesome cartoons and extras. But so far, I haven't seen any of the later Warner Bros. cartoons that were a staple of Saturday mornings of my youth, watching the Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour on CBS.

So when I found this clip on YouTube, hearing the first few seconds of the music from a late Road Runner/Wile E. Coyote cartoon really brought back memories.

For a second or two, I was 6 years old, clad in my Superman pajamas, nursing a bowl of Apple Jacks on my trusty TV tray.

(the clip is a bit loud, so turn down the volume)



It's these little things that I enjoy almost more than the prospect of getting to see one of my favorite shows in its entirety; the stuff that most of us forget.

Just the little bit of music they played to introduce the cartoon is something that I forgot until I saw this video. But as soon as I heard it, it was like, "How could I have forgotten it?"

See if you can last through this whole compilation. My thanks to WREYNetwork for uploading these gems.

Taking the day off

So until tomorrow, why not watch something educational?

The name of the game

Everyone, I think, went to school with someone who had a funny name. I had a lab partner in high school named Rob Graves. Jen went to school with a girl named Anna Banana.

Jen and I had long discussions about baby names. It seems to me that some parents just don't think very far ahead when they come up with names for their kids. Ours are tested; I tried to come up with everything I could think of that a kid might twist the names into.

The name I was born with was innocuous enough, but I've told friends about a young man who was not so lucky. I went to school with a kid named Harold. Harold Balz.

Yup.

Harry Balz.

As you might imagine, he got a lot of ribbing for his name, and he tended to be something of a troublemaker. Causing trouble was the only way he could distract people from making fun of his name, and he developed quite the reputation.

So much so that when our teacher was out sick, she left a note that explicity mentioned Harold and his propensity for causing shenanigans.

One day when we found ourselves with a substitute teacher (in an astounding display of poor judgment, our teacher actually alerted us ahead of time) for the day, Harry decided to start the day off by hiding most of the class in the coat closet. Big closet, small kids, and not everyone participated; he needed witnesses to document the sub's reaction.

Our hapless sub came in and noticed that our numbers were a little thin. Before she could call roll, Margaret Ballanger, the class tattletale, made like Benedict Arnold and ratted out Harry and the others. The substitute teacher, Miss Binney, said that our teacher had left a note about Harry and thanked her for being honest.

I rolled my eyes at Margaret.

To be fair, I think the sub would've figured it out before too long. With all those kids in the closet, they weren't all that quiet. Miss Binney walked over the the closet, the clacking of her high heels sounding like gunshots in the relative silence.

As she got closer, the whispering from the closet grew more audible. She leaned her head in and knocked on the closet door. More whispering and even more shushing from inside.

"All right," Miss Binney said sternly. "Anyone in there with Harry Balz had better come out right now." As she realized what she said, I was busy trying not to explode with laughter. The classroom was dead silent.

And then, from inside the closet: "...does fuzz count?"

Today's moment of fail

Taken at the corner of Howard and 2nd, in San Francisco. Oops.

Start the weekend off right

Here's Weezer's latest video for their single "Pork and Beans." If you spend as much time online as I do (and God help you if this is the case), then a lot of this will look familiar to you.

I love it, but couldn't help but notice that there's no Rick Astley. Oh well.

Just sayin'...

Dear Yahoo,

If you have a spaceship prototype picture that looks, well, a bit phallic, you might not want to put "Buzzing now" right under it. People might take it the wrong way. (That's what she said).

There's always room for the jibba-jabba

My son has something in common with Mr. T. Well, two, if you count the fact that they both pity fools. They share a birthday. We celebrated Brody's birthday over the weekend with his cousin, so I figured today I'd give a birthday shout-out to good ol' Mr. T.

In honor of T's 56th birthday, here is a nugget of wisdom and joy called Be Somebody or Be Somebody's Fool. Enjoy!

Post 500, m'kay?

On weekday afternoons, my brother and I would often catch the old Marvel Super Heroes cartoons from the '60s. We always thought it was funny that it looked as if they cut the pictures out of the old comics books and shuffled them across the screen.

And this, in comparison to Hanna-Barbera's own "limited" animation, which was not as fluid as the classic theatrical cartoon shorts.



Catchy tune, though, innit?

And then I heard about Clutch Cargo, which apparently had an animation budget of 37 cents. I thought that it was a joke; surely the animation couldn't be that bad. Instead of animating the characters talking, they superimposed actors' mouths over the faces. That was a gag, right?

Well, after years of managing to avoid seeing it, I finally have experienced a Clutch Cargo cartoon.

Oh my.



And while I'm thinking about it, the first time I saw South Park: Bigger, Longer, Uncut, I thought of the old Marvel cartoons when the song "It's Easy, M'kay" came on.





The melody of "You can do it, it's all up to you, m'kay" reminded me so much of "When Captain America throws his mighty shield" that I still sing the latter in place of the former. At least on those occasions that find me singing that song, which, admittedly, aren't all that common, but still...

Hottie alert

I usually don't blog about such things, but in this case, I had to. See, this new hot girl started at my work today. Brunette, glasses, hawt. I'd totally marry her.

If I wasn't married to her already.

Yep, my wife is now my co-worker. We've worked together before, and we'll be on opposite sides of the floor, so we won't be right next to each other.

But it will be nice to see her more often. And I'd say that even if she wasn't driving in the mornings.

And in other news, do you know who is on the nickel? You may be surprised.

This made me happier than I think it should

Apparently, The Gong Show will once again return to the airwaves. I loved the original show as a kid, even though it seemed that there was always a lot more going on than I was getting.

Here's what they have to live up to:



No matter what happens with the new incarnation, I'd be willing to bet that something they won't try is to make a feature-length movie out of it. Once was more than enough. I have it on video, and I haven't quite made it all the way through it just yet. Why ever might that be?

Field Trip, the conclusion

Before you read this, start with parts one, two, and three.


My stomach fell down to around my shins when it seemed that we had managed to miss the whole rest of our class and were now stuck in San Francisco. I knew we shouldn't have stopped at the deli.

Before we started to really panic, I saw someone familiar--one of the parents--and went over to him.

"Oh, are you guys late, too?" I asked. If nothing else, we could hitch a ride with them or something. He looked puzzled.

"No, we're the first ones here. We've still got an hour or so before everyone else gets here."

I went back to my group and broken the news to them. There was much swearing and much relief. In fact, no we could go grab something substantial to eat without worrying about anything.

Being in San Francisco gives you a wide array of dining options, so I thought long and hard about where I was going to get my official field trip lunch.

"Hi, I'd like a cheeseburger Happy Meal with a Coke." While the food was good, the toy in my Happy Meal was a disappointment--a tie-in with An American Tail. Lame.

After we all ate, we hung out in front of the Opera House, waiting for every one else to get there. We were tempted to look at our, um, reading material, but decided against it, since we didn't know when our teacher would be arriving.

So we spent our time watching all the different people walking by, including one courageous cat who was decked out in candy-cane-striped cowboy boots. It's always nice to see people dress up for the holidays.

Eventually, everyone was there, and it was time for us to file in to see The Nutcracker, or as we all called it, The Ballbuster. I thought The Gonad Grinder was catchier myself, but I was outvoted.

We had pretty good seats. I mean, we weren't up in the front, but we could make out the dancers' features well enough. The show was fairly uneventful until one of the ballerinas went for a pirouette and fell flat on her ass.

Even in the dimmed lights, you could tell where our class was sitting, because where everyone else was making whispering sounds of concern for her welfare, we were chortling hysterically despite admonishment from others.

After the giggles quieted down, Mike, who was sitting next to me, leaned over and said "I'll be right back."

Now I am not the swiftest person by any stretch of the imagination, but even I realized that he wanted the chance to check out the paper by himself. Jim was on my other side and asked where Mike was going. He concurred with my theory about the reason for Mike's departure.

A while later he came back, his jacket unzipped. As if that weren't enough of a sign that something was up, he looked like he'd pushed a wheelchair-bound nun down a starwell full of three-legged kittens and baby seals. I'm talking GUILTY.

"Dude, where did you go?" I whispered to him once he sat down. He didn't say anything for a second.

"I, uh, had to go to the bathroom, so I figured while I was there, I'd look at the, you know...," he whispered back finally.

"I figured as much. So?"

"Well, I looked through it, and all it had was a bunch of phones numbers and stuff like that."

"So?"

"So I," he paused, "I flushed it down the toilet."

"YOU WHAT?" I said, not bothering to whisper. That got the attention of the rest of my row. I whispered to Jim, who whispered to Dwight. Ryan had sat with other kids in his grade. We all leaned forward and glared sidelong at him. He smiled sheepishly with a "what else could I do?" look.

Well, I was pissed. Not so much because I didn't even get to look at the damn thing (though, admittedly, I was a bit curious), but he was the only one who didn't contribute any money.

On the BART trip home, he didn't want to talk much about it, which meant that we had to come up with explanations on our own. We came up with a few:

1. He panicked, didn't want to get caught, and threw it away. There was no way that thing was fitting down the toilet

2. He looked at it, saw that it had boobies galore and didn't throw it away so he could keep it for himself

3. He was telling the truth

or, our personal favorite,

4. Something...happened to the paper while he was inspecting it. I'm not going into any more detail, but I think you know what we meant.

He denied it, of course, but for the rest of the year, it was a sore point that we never failed to bring up. It could come out of the blue; if he had a scar on the palm of his hand, we'd say that's from where he cut himself shaving. Repeat as unnecessary.

Well, we all managed to get back home safe and sound, if out a little change with nothing to show for it. I don't think we ever quite found out how we were separated from our chaperons; nothing was ever said to us about it, anyway.

Mike moved away after the end of seventh grade, and I would not be surprised if at least one of us made reference to the field trip when we signed his yearbook. Something subtle.

"Mike, have a great summer, and don't be a jerk-off."

Field Trip, part three

Start with parts one and two before reading this:

Even though we now had our bearings (and I put myself in charge of keeping the map right-side up), we still had to hustle to the Opera House; it was a bit over a mile away.

Now I don't remember whose idea it was; I know it wasn't mine. If it was, I'd cop to it. At any rate, somehow we decided that, having passed the skrillionth vending machine with the aforementioned scantily clad women, maybe we should, you know, get a souvenir.

We hadn't planned far enough ahead to figure out what we'd do with it after the field trip, but we were living in the moment. It felt like we were on an A-Team mission or something.

So when we passed the net bank of machines, we slowed down to see how much this anatomy lesson would cost. It wasn't cheap, that's for sure. It was at least $3, possibly more. While Mike balked at spending so much money on something we weren't supposed to be in possession of, everyone else, me included, ponied up.

Once we had enough money, the question then became, who was going to actually buy the thing? After much hemming and hawing on our part, claiming old war injuries and other excuses, we voted Dwight to be our designated consumer. This was mostly because he chastised us for being wusses.

"Oh for God's sake, just give me the money. It'll take like one whole minute," Dwight said, feeding the coins into the machine. However, we missed anything he said after that because we saw a cop car approaching. The rest of us crossed the street, leaving Dwight holding onto the handle of the vending machine. He already had half the money in, and since he put in the most money, he wasn't about to say goodbye to it.

He fed the rest of the money in as fast as he could, ignoring the honking from people driving by him, grabbed the paper, folded it under his arm and joined us on the other side of the street. If the police officer had seen him, he didn't think it was worth stopping for.

"Thanks a lot, assholes," Dwight said, his cheeks flushed either from running or from embarrassment.

"There was a cop," I explained.

"Like he cares. I could have been buying the Chronicle for all he knows."

"Well, I didn't want to get caught," Mike said.

Dwight was already not paying attention. He was trying to get a peek at the inside of the paper to see if the girls were unobscured by stars and bars. Possibly unpatriotic, I suppose, but you can't argue with puberty.

Alas, every time he almost got it folded open, some old lady would approach, and he'd close it back up again.

"This is no good," Dwight said. "We'll have to look at it later."

"Mike, why don't you put it in your jacket?" Jim suggested. A good plan; Mike was the tallest, so he had the most room to stash something in his jacket.

"What if someone finds it?"

"I don't think they frisk kids going into the ballet," Jim said.

"Come on, Mike," Ryan said a little forcefully for a sixth-grader. We all looked at him for a second and then looked back at Mike.

"You didn't even put in any money," I said. "You could at least hold it. Who's going to think you're holding anything in your jacket?"

He reluctantly agreed, rolled it up as tight as he could and tucked it in his jacket, which he then zipped up. We resumed our formation: Dwight, Mike and Jim up front, me in the Chewbacca position, and Chad bringing up the rear.

Going the right way had an amazing effect on our travel time; in fact, we got to the Opera House in practically no time. However, we didn't celebrate just yet because we noticed one minor detail.

No one was there to meet us. No teachers, no parents, no kids, no one at all. This was not a good sign.


How much longer can I stretch this out? Would you believe one more day?

Will we get home from San Francisco? Will our contraband get discovered? What is the event that causes controversy among our group?

Come back for the thrilling conclusion!

Intermission

Today was a crazy day at work; crazy hot, crazy fun, and crazy in general. Spent part of the afternoon at a Giants game and got a bit sunburned, so I just want to take it easy.

We will return to our regularly scheduled program tomorrow.

Field Trip, part two

If you missed the first part of this, go here and read it first. I'll wait.

Everyone ready? OK.

We thought we were in big trouble. Our teacher went over the importance of staying with our chaperons at all times, and barely an hour into our trip, we'd already lost them.

Even more pressing was the fact that they knew where we were going; us, not so much. We had the hand-drawn map, and that was about it. None of us had a working watch, which was part of the reason we hustled to meet back at our rendezvous point.

Maybe we misunderstood where we were supposed to meet. We didn't think so, but we didn't have any other explanation. While I had visions of calling my parents to pick me up in San Francisco, we decided to do our best to get to our final destination.

We appointed Ryan, the lone sixth-grader in our group, to be the map holder. Dwight had been to the city a few times, which gave him seniority in the group. He led our excursion.

Technically, we'd both been to the city last year on another field trip, but the highlight of that trip was eating dim sum and sampling new cuisine. I got a tiny cup of tea that almost immediately made me sleepy, and a bowl of what was supposed to be tapioca pudding but had a skin on it about as thick as the bowl itself and the consistency of paste.

The highlight of that highlight was when Dwight, like many of our other classmates, ordered chicken feet and then proclaimed that his had athlete's foot.

Oh, and a few of the older kids in the class somehow managed to get locked in a church basement.

None of this really helped with navigating, though. On one hand, we were nervous, but on the other, we were free to do whatever we wanted. Nerds on the town. Party time.

Well, except for the fact that we didn't know what time it was. Worrywart that I am, I didn't want to check anything out until after we got to the Opera House. I figured that with our luck, we'd stop somewhere and end up missing everything by 10 minutes or something.

"We have plenty of time before we have to be there," Dwight explained. I knew he was right, but I still worried. Dwight suggested that I would worry less once I developed balls.

"That's not what your mom said."

We all were so conditioned to the insult-ridden jungle that was middle school, that it was second nature to just cap on someone if the opportunity was there. I learned 90 percent of all the filth I know now back in sixth and seventh grade. And this, before the Internet. I shudder now to realize the phrases that were bandied about by 11- and 12-year-olds.

Heck, when I moved to Tracy at the end of fifth grade, it was de rigueur to call everyone "scrotum."

It was nuts, I know.

Moving right along...

After a few blocks, we noticed one recurring feature on the streets of San Francisco. Newspaper vending machines. Or to be more precise, newspaper vending machines that featured publications with women clad in nothing but black bars and strategically placed stars. They didn't have papers like that back home. The closest we got to seeing boobies was watching scrambled Cinemax, squinting furiously in the hope of seeing something recognizable.

Don't act like you didn't do it, too, you perv.

With each sighting, there was more giggling and more salacious comments. But as the morning dragged on, the giggles eventually died down because it seemed that we had walked roughly 93 million miles and still saw nothing on our map.

We were aiming for Union Square, because we figured it was the biggest landmark on our map, and it was the one place where we figured we had the best chance of meeting up with another group from our class.

"Ryan, which way do we go?" I asked. Ryan unfolded the map and scrutinized the photocopied lines.

"Looks like a few more blocks up, and then we turn left, and then a few blocks more. I think."

"Screw that," Dwight said. "I'm starving. Let's get something to eat."

"But if we stop to get something to eat, we might miss everyone and then we'll be stuck here."

"Yeah, well if I die of starvation, it won't really matter anyway, will it?"

"I'm hungry, too," Mike said in his quiet, Oklahoma drawl. He was the tallest of our group, decked out in his leather bomber jacket and aviator shades. Having a tall guy in our group made us feel a little safer.

"All right," Dwight said. "Who wants to eat?" Everyone but me raised his hand.

So we popped in to the nearest deli and grabbed some grub. I didn't want to blow all my money, especially if I needed to make a long-distance call later (yes, in case I haven't made it clear, I was a compulsive worrier), so I made do with a root beer. Dwight offered to go splitsies on his sandwich to whoever wanted the other half, which I thought was decent of him.

In reality, it probably took longer to get our orders than it did to eat and drink everything. We were back on the street shortly. We'd go down a few blocks, and when the scenery changed noticeably--like more places with bars on the windows and doors and fewer tourists, we backtracked and tried another avenue.

Somehow we managed to get to Union Square, which was a tremendous relief.

"Ryan, the map," I said. He handed it to me. And immediately, I realized what the problem was.

"What?" Jim asked, noting the look on my face.

"According to this, Macy's should be over there," I said, pointing to the far end of the square. "But here it is on the opposite side."

"Are you looking at that thing right?" Dwight asked.

"Ryan, is this how you've had the map all day?" Jim asked.

"Well, yeah. See, this part is the top, right?"

"No."

Somehow we'd managed to make it to Union Square because we were so piss-poor at following directions from a map that had been held upside-down the whole time. We didn't give Ryan too much crap for it; he was a sixth-grader, after all. Plus, now that we had a solid point of reference, we figured we'd have no problem making it to the Opera House in time.

Still, we didn't know what time it was, and apparently it didn't occur to us to ask someone (I know I was too shy), so we pressed on. But not before making one brief detour on the way there. This detour would set into motion a series of events that would likely still be disputed today if all the parties got together.

To be continued...

Field Trip, part one

I always assumed that the purpose of field trips was to provide education students wouldn't otherwise get being cooped up in a classroom.

We lived in a relatively small town; once you learned which gum machine at Kmart would give you unlimited chiclets if you turned it just the right way, a seventh-grader had pretty much done it all.

The reasons we kids loved field trips was not becuse we could screw around. It was because we could screw around in scenic locales.

This was back when parents still were allowed to caravan to our destinations. Each parent (or pair of parents) was assigned a handful of kids they'd drive, usually their kid and the kid's friends.

My group's chaperons were the school psychologist, and--if memory serves--the director of the gifted education program. There's a reason I'm a little fuzzy on this point; I'll get to that shortly.

After a quick jaunt on the freeway, we were then to take BART from the Bay Fair Mall (which was then the closest station to us).

Again, being somewhat sheltered, getting to ride BART was a minor thrill. Alas, after riding it every day to and from work, the thrill has now diminished somewhat. But at the time, it was great sport to spot abandoned factories and claim that they were classmates' houses.

It was the mid-80s. What you wore and how rich you were perceived to be could make or break you like few other eras (he said, not having been in school for ages to even know if it's true).

After a few rousing sessions of "Hey, there's your mom," pointing to anyone who looked remotely disheveled, we arrived at Embarcadero Station. We deboarded and filed back into our groups.

Four seventh-graders and one sixth-grader comprised our group. As I can't swear to every detail, I'm not going to use their real names. There's another reason this is useful, too, but I'm getting ahead of myself.

No doubt realizing the chore that lay ahead of them (mischievous "smart" kids can be insufferable pains in the ass), our chaperons made a beeline for the nearest coffee dealer. They also generously treated the five of us to very rich, very hot cocoa.

The beauty of this trip was that, aside from getting to the War Memorial Opera House by the early afternoon to catch The Nutcracker, our groups were free to take in the winter wonderland that was San Francisco at Christmastime.

Each group was armed with a hand-drawn map that highlighted various must-see attractions. The chaperons also had at least a passing familiarity with the area.

I was hoping to talk the group into checking out a comic book store, but being the class dork, I knew that wasn't entirely likely.

Yes, I was the dork in a class of nerds. There's always someone at the bottom.

After scalding my tongue, I waited for my hot chocolate to cool a bit. Anywhere under 1,000 degrees Kelvin would be fine. While I gingerly took another sip, a deal was being made.

Our keepers wanted to look at boring grown-up stuff (my recollection is antique furniture, but I could be wrong), and we wanted to check out the toy store one floor up.

The deal: They'd check out their crap, we'd check out ours, and we'd meet back down there in 10 minutes.

Up we went. I knew exactly which Super Powers figures I needed to complete my collection, so that's what I was looking for. My best friend Jim and I looked together. Not only did they not have the figures on my list, they didn't even carry any of them. Bah.

After looking at the rest of the store's meager offerings, we regrouped and headed back downstairs. We were proud of ourselves; not only were we back in time, but we were there ahead of our chaperons.

Not only that, but they were late. After waiting, another group member, Dwight, went into the boring grown-up store. He returned, looking mildly worried.

They were nowhere to be found. Once the gravity of our situation sank in and we realized that an 11-year-old and four 12-year-olds were now left to navigate through a large metropolitan area they had no familiarity with, we were unanimous in our sentiment.

Dwight gave voice to that sentiment.

"Well, shit. Now what?"

To be continued...

Coming soon to this theatre...

One of the few shows I have no recollection of

One of these days, I'll see an entire episode of this. Until then, I'll have to make do with just the opening credits.