On writing.

I've been thinking about writing a lot lately. That is to say I've been thinking a lot about writing. Aside from the daily posts here, I haven't been doing much writing at all, which kind of bums me out.

Sometimes I like to dig up something I wrote a while back and see how it looks, which, since I'm a little tired today, is what the bulk of this post will be.

It's just the first little bit of a story I started writing for NaNoWriMo back in 2006. I never finished it, so I never came up with a title.

Solomon Cauldar looked at his target and sighed.

Another bank job, he thought, looking skyward at the moon, which, he noticed, was waxing. I live for the day I don't have to waste my time with this crap.

The first couple of times, he used a couple of guys he found to help him, but as time went on, they seemed to be more trouble than they were worth. Besides, he tried to keep in shape; he could manage most of the heavy lifting he needed to do.

He checked his watch: 11:37 p.m. Amazingly, this place didn't have much in the way of security, relying instead on surveillance cameras.

Morons.

He cracked the knuckles of his long, thin fingers and headed inside. The cameras wouldn't see him, and no one would know that he had been there until the morning.

He headed down the hall, staying in the shadows. Solomon wore black, as he usually did, right down to his black Chuck Taylors. He could stand right behind someone and they'd never even see him there.

Finally, he arrived at the vault. He pulled a piece of Wrigley's Doublemint out of his pocket and started chewing. Then he went to work.

How many times? he wondered. Solomon tried to keep his mind busy to fight off the pangs of guilt that plagued him during lulls in his heists. He liked to tell himself that the crimes he committed were relatively victimless, but he knew there were people out there who needed his treasure as much as he did.

He was just a little more proactive in terms of getting what he needed, that's all.
Back at his car, a green 1971 Plymouth Duster with deeply tinted windows, he loaded his haul into the trunk. He always knew exactly how much to get; no sense letting greed trip him up. That's one of the reasons he'd never been caught.

His take secured, he closed the trunk gently and slid into the driver's seat. Solomon took one last look at his target in the rear-view mirror and released the parking brake, letting the car coast down the hill a bit before starting the engine.

As the engine turned over, the radio crackled to life. Neil Diamond's "Thank the Lord for the Night Time" was playing. Solomon smiled.

"Amen," he said.

The Franklin County Blood Bank, the only two-story building in the small town of Baileyville, grew smaller in Solomon's mirror until it, like him, was out of sight.

There's a lot more, but I'm just curious if this beginning is enough to make people want to continue reading.

Pop culture freakout crossword puzzle

Okay, crossword fiends, this one might be a little tougher than the old-school TV Guide crossword puzzles I've featured before.

Well, tougher for you; I know all the answers already because I wrote the puzzle. These are all things I could answer without consulting reference material or the Internet.

If you can finish the puzzle without any help, then you are as big of a freak as I am. But don't feel bad if you have to look something up. That just means you have a life and are probably well-adjusted socially.

Special thanks to pal Jessica, who made me aware of the program I used to make this puzzle, which you can get here.



Across
1. You went to this store? Tell a friend (two words).
3. Score over 50,000 points on this Activision game to get a Sub Club patch.
6. What to say if you want to get slimed on You Can't Do That on Television (three words).
7. His real name means "star child" in his native language.
9. Proprietor of the Pizza Time Theater (three words).
13. In this craptacular 1980 musical, the sun rises in the west in the first 10 minutes of the movie.
16. Creature that attacks Luke Skywalker in the garbage masher aboard the Death Star.
17. The first Christian antidrug, turkey vampire biker movie (two words).
19. 5th-dimensional imp who pesters Superman every 90 days.
20. Host of Battle of the Network Stars.
21. Last name of The Greatest American Hero: Ralph _______.
22. If I were a Popsicle, I'd be this flavor.
23. Hulk's secret identity in the comics: _____ Banner.
26. Location of the Hall of Doom.
28. Preferred biscuit of Bill Maxwell.
29. Dragon faced by Dig Dug.
30. Bear on B.J. and the Bear was this kind of animal.
32. Last episode of Star Trek: _________ Intruder.
35. Super ____ Osborne
36. Funny no matter what everyone else says.
38. Protagonist of The Phantom Tollbooth
39. Tom Fitzgerald had a great one.
40. First host of Creature Features.
42. Rosco P. Coltrane's epithet of choice.
44. Director who also wrote under the name of Akdov Telmig.
46. Only Super Powers Collection action figure I never got.
47. Jack and Janet's first roommate after Chrissy on Three's Company.
48. Occupation of Charlie Brown's father.
49. He's a cereal killer (two words).


Down

2. Typical answer on Match Game.
3. Last name of the original Ronald McDonald.
4. Dukes of Hazzard spinoff
5. Home planet of Sinestro.
8. He set fire to the Bradfords' home while playing with a soldering iron.
10. Video-game-themed game show.
11. The best place to be marooned with wisecracking robots.
12. What color underwear Lois Lane wears in Superman.
14. First name of the killer in the original Friday the 13th.
15. Zan and Jayna's home planet.
16. Builders of tasty crystalline construction on Fraggle Rock.
18. Ronald Raymond and Prof. Martin Stein originally joined together as this hero.
20. The hottest place north of Havana.
24. My favorite Brady girl.
25. Lolly, Lolly, Lolly, get your ______ here.
27. Tastes good like a cigarette should.
31. 1983 Bill Bixby/Mariette Hartley comedy: Goodnight ________.
33. Wrote the music for the 1980 movie Popeye.
34. Pebbles' and Bamm-Bamm's pal with bad luck.
37. This Teen Titans villain was also Raven's father.
41. No. 12 on the 70s-era Oakland Raiders.
43. The Saving Place.
45. Hulk's secret identity in the 70s TV show: ______ Banner.

The only people I allow to talk during movies.

Just watched Cinematic Titanic: Doomsday Machine the other day. Cinematic Titanic is the latest venture from MST3K alumnae Joel Hodgson, Trace Beaulieu, J. Elvis Weinstein, Frank Conniff and Mary Jo Pehl.

Now, being a fan of MST3K, I might be a little biased, but I watched this by myself and still ended up laughing out loud, which almost never happens.

I highly recommend you pick these up, so go to their site and order now. You won't be disappointed. You can see trailers for the first two releases here.

I can't wait till the next one. Hopefully it will be out in time for my birthday.

I also recommend Rifftrax, alternate audio tracks featuring more MST3K folks. I have yet to subject myself to their riffing of Batman and Robin, but having them with me is sure to make the experience less painful.

Get your motor runnin'

It's Friday night, and that means YouTube video fun. Tonight, we've got an hour of classic car commercials. Just try not to think of how little gas was per gallon back then...

OM NOM NOM NOM

Every now and then I get struck by inspiration. While talking to a friend at work yesterday about the natural splendor of Count Chocula, I had an idea.

Make Rice Krispies Treats, but instead of Rice Krispies, use Count Chocula. So I took the standard recipe, swapped in the best cereal ever, and voila, the greatest snack ever conceived.

The recipe calls for 6 cups of Rice Krispies, but since Count Chocula is bigger, I didn't use as much. I just kept pouring the cereal into the melted marshmallow mixture until it looked about right.

I brought some to work, and the unanimous opinion was that they are damned tasty.

I foresee some more cereal experiments: Fruity Pebbles, Crunch Berries, and Cinnamon Mini-Swirlz are a few of the candidates. I'll keep you posted.

Ch-ch-ch-changes...

As of today, if you don't feel like typing in http://siftin.blogspot.com, you can get her by just typing www.jeffsparkman.com.

Yep, I finally went and got a domain. That's just the first part of things I'd like to do with the blog this year.

Special mad props to pal Dorf for helping me set it all up. W00t!

Why I'm not employed by Topps

When I was in junior high, I spent a great portion of my lunch money on the old third-series Garbage Pail Kids, and I've picked up some of the new ones every now and then.

On the official Web site, you can make your own Garbage Pail Kid. I decided to get in touch with the 11-year-old me and come up with the grossest kids while still capturing the spirit of the series.

This was the first one I thought of.



The two that didn't make the cut: Uri Nate and

...Jack Ulate.

So ashamed...

Crossword revisited

Well, this one went a lot quicker than the first one, even staying with my no-Internet rule. There was one brief moment of horror when it appeared that the answer to "An adjective for Cher" was "erotic," but it turned out that I was a letter off. Whew.

How did you fare?

Three years and counting...

I somehow missed this last month, but this blog has been going strong for three years now.

Thanks to everyone who comes by to read my pointless babbling and reminiscing.

Back to the usual crap tomorrow.

Indiana Jones and the TV Guide Puzzle

OK, I got Lego Indiana Jones today, so I'm going to go play that while you guys try another TV Guide crossword puzzle. This time, it's from December 1978. I had just turned 4 the month before and was just now trying these puzzles out.

You can click on the picture for a bigger version. Good luck!

NOTE: Blogger is being uncooperative right now, so I'm using Photobucket. If you click the picture, you should get a big, complete version. When Blogger gets its act together, I'll fix this entry.

I would buy this album in a heartbeat

I love They Might Be Giants. My son, Brody, is also quite a fan, thanks to Here Come the ABCs and Here Come the 123s.

I had an idea for another themed record, that while targeted at an older audience, would nevertheless be filled with catchy educational songs.

Here Come the STDs!

A whole album about how to avoid getting venereal diseases. I know that sounds weird, but I know the two Johns would be able to craft a host of tunes on the subject because they have the super power to write songs about anything.

Besides, how many other chances do songwriters get to try to come up with a rhyme for "chancre"? Off the top of my head, I can think of "anchor," "wanker," "spank her" and "thank her."

This song practically writes itself.

And as they've covered old-school public service announcements ("Don't Cross the Street in the Middle"), here's one that would fit in great with the concept for this album.

It's more of a pubic service announcement, but still...

This one's for you, English majors...

How not to talk to a woman

OK, I spent most of my evening dicking around with my wireless network settings, so there will be no magnificent insights this time around.

But I do feel obligated to share something, so here's a commercial for the now-unfortunately named Ayds diet-suppressant candy.

Yes, I've seen the commercials on a number of Web sites, pointing out how different "The Ayds Diet Plan" sounds 25 years later, but that's not really why I'm posting this commercial.

Watch it real quick.



"Gotta get a shot of this--you're eating less!"

That guy was just aiming for a Falcon Punch in the junk with that comment, wasn't he? I mean, how insensitive can you sound?

What if their places were reversed and this was a Viagra commercial? "Gotta get a shot of this--no more Limpo the Clown!" Somehow, I doubt it.

And while I'm thinking about it, why is he using a Polaroid at the beginning, but an old-school camera later?

He probably knows his comment is going to piss her off, so he doesn't want to risk the Polaroid, that's why.

Choad.

Give that man a hand...

Something that always interested me when I was in school was how at the end of the year, a lot of people relaxed their personae. Like a guy who might have been a complete douche all year long suddenly start being nice to you for the last few weeks of school.

I could never figure out exactly why, whether it was because school was almost over, or so you didn't plot revenge on them all summer long, or in the case of grades after which you may never see the person again, it was so you didn't plot revenge on them for the rest of existence.

At any rate, I did find this fascinating. At the end of seventh grade, I noticed that a classmate of mine (the guy who, um, disposed of the periodical during the infamous San Francisco trip) was teaching one of the girls how to play chess. This was notable for a number of reasons, not the least of which was that he didn't know how to play.

Even in high school, every time the end of May/beginning of June rolled around, people were a little friendlier. Case in point:

During the Grad Night trip to Disneyland, what started as a giant group eventually broke up into smaller and smaller groups. While we were still at least a dozen or so strong, we decided to hit Splash Mountain. Keep in mind that as per the rules, we were all wearing semiformal wear.

I was decked out in my mad-pimp/Bob Barker black pinstripe suit I got for five bucks at Salvation Army, so I wasn't worried about the possibility of getting wet.

We were in line, chatting with our friends, when one friend of ours--let's call him Jeremy, since that was his name--started schmoozing with a few female classmates. Talking to the ladies was one thing, but he was laying it on awful thick--at least, that's how it seemed to my friend Jeff and I.

We both looked at Jeremy, and then looked at each other. Wordlessly, we agreed that letting this behavior go unchecked would just be detrimental to our friend in the long run, so we had to do something about it.

"Yeah," Jeremy said, "I draw a little bit. In fact, I was--"

He stopped in mid-sentence, because Jeff had stepped forward and held up Jeremy's hand as if it were a trophy. The girls waited for an explanation with a puzzled look on their faces.

"This," Jeff said in the most serious voice he could muster, "is the hand of a man who masturbates."

And then as if nothing had happened, he got back in line with me. The girls laughed while Jeremy sputtered, trying to think of something to say after that.

I admired Jeff for his ability to cut through the crap like that.

Unless he did it to me. That was a sock in the arm.

Quandary

Now that I've written about a bad movie that starts with P, I'm stuck with trying to come up with the next movie. I thought O was bad, but there really are not a lot of movies that start with Q.

I have a few prospects, but I figured I'd solicit some suggestions. If you know of a good bad movie that starts with Q, let me know in the comments.

If I don't use your suggestion, don't be offended.

Bad Movies From A to Z: You blew it

I was on the horns of a dilemma as to which movie to feature for the P installment of Bad Movies From A to Z. The easy choice would've been Plan 9 From Outer Space. My second choice was Pieces, but my brain exploded when I tried to write down the plot.

So instead, I thought I'd go for a movie that I bet not many people have in their libraries. Kermit Schafer's feature-length documentary based on his book and record series, Pardon My Blooper.

The movie in a nutshell: Various TV and radio bloopers are replayed and in many cases, re-enacted. Poorly.

The story: Okay, this really doesn't have much of a story. Schafer, essentially the father of the blooper as we know it, had been amusing millions with his books and records that relayed the bits from radio and TV shows that otherwise would have hit the cutting room floor.

It seems an odd choice for a full-length movie now. There are a few yoks here and there, but your attention really flags near the end. This R-rated feature was released to theaters (!) in May 1974, and to be fair, we hadn't yet suffered the barrage of blooper shows of the early 80s when you not only had TV Bloopers and Practical Jokes with Dick Clark and Ed McMahon (practically the direct descendant of this movie) but Foul-Ups, Bleeps and Blunders with Steve Lawrence and Don Rickles, as well as the occasional Life's Most Embarrassing Moments special with Steve Allen.

Back in the day, this was the one of the first video exposures many had to bloopers (the blooper reels shown at early Star Trek conventions also come to mind). But a few years after this movie was released, you could see movie bloopers during the end credits of many a Burt Reynolds movie.

Now while Schafer had much to do with the proliferation of hearing and seeing outtakes, he also re-enacted many gaffes based on reports from broadcasters. And in a bit of overreaching to share a funny story, he also re-created bloopers that were actually urban legends.

Probably the most infamous fake recording was the "Uncle Don blooper." You can read about it in more detail at Snopes.com.

The Uncle Don clip is played during the opening credits, and it is one of two different versions I've got on the old blooper records. Matters of truth aside, were closing songs to kids' shows really that bad?

"Good night, little kids, good niiiiiiight. We're off? Good. Well, that oughtta hold the little bastards."

After that gem, we find that what we're watching is clips from the records dubbed over stock footage, people recreating (badly in many cases) bloopers over stock footage and on special occasions, dreadfully re-enacted clips in which people don't even try very hard to lip-sync to the audio.

I'd love to post a clip to show just how bad some of the clips are re-enacted, but I don't have the resources. Go on Amazon or eBay and pick up a copy of the tape for a few bucks. Trust me.

And let's talk about that title song. "The Blooper Song (You Blew It)" is sung by Danny Street, who should not be confused with Danny the Street from Grant Morrison's run on Doom Patrol.

I think.

It's a Sinatra-esque number that consists primarily of repeating "You blew it...you blew it, you blew it, you blew it." There are a few other words, but not as many as you'd hope to break up the monotony.

I should warn you now. The damn thing will be stuck in your head forever.

The key novelty of this movie is hearing dirty words and seeing a boob or two. These days, it's all pretty tame, but if you, like me, are permanently 12 years old (no offense to real 12-year-olds, who are undoubtedly more mature), you may find yourself giggling when you hear the phrase "pubic service announcement."

For shame. Honestly...

Here are some other gems from the movie:

From a commercial for a butcher: "Remember ladies, nobody can beat Charlie MacFarlane's meat...oh, no..."


"Stay tuned now for a dramatization of Dickens' immortal classic, A Sale of Two Titties...er, A Tale of Two Cities."

"...the Canadian Broadcorping Castration."

It's actually kind of neat to see vintage stock footage from the 60s and 70s.

My biggest pet peeve is the poor audio re-enacting. You've got a few lines to say. How hard is it not to stumble over or otherwise kill the joke?

"With the 7 on the side--and--uh, U-P after, huh-huh-huh..."

Having watched this movie so many times growing up, my brother and I quote from it constantly, and I have yet to meet anyone who picks up on the references. Hell, we may be the only ones.

"Where'd the son-of-a-bitchin' dog come from?"

"Who goosed the soprano?"

"...the largest producer of magnoosium, aleeminum and stool."

"Clear up to my ass--ankles!"

The big event (and probably the reason for this movie's R rating) comes when they relate the story of how a TV station accidentally broadcast a stag movie late one night. I have no idea if the clips they show were from the actual incident (why would they start now, right?), but you can see a brief bit of nudity, over which we hear what supposedly are early-morning calls to the station.

Uh, yeah.

And then it's back to tame slips of the tongue. Well, aside from a mispronunciation of Kentucky Fried Chicken (you figure it out), anyway.

The other big segment is about Orson Welles' "War of the Worlds" broadcast, which they inexplicably refer to as a blooper.

Again, the big build-up, and then more regular clips.

There's a re-enacted clip from "The Newlywed Game," but it's not the infamous clip you may have heard of.

At the end, a little bit of the "You Blew It" song plays, and then fade to black.

Afterthoughts:

I managed to snag this movie at Kmart for $9.99. We swung by Subway on the way home and got a pastrami sandwich with black olives, a sandwich I think of every time I watch this.

Now I'm hungry.

Damn.

I would be willing to bet that I've seen this movie more times than anyone else on the planet, which is sad for a number of reasons, the least of which is--it's really not that damned funny.

I think if I had seen it for the first time now, I'd probably have ejected and burned it about 15 minutes in. But since I was a teenager when I got it, this flick has a bit of nostalgic appeal. Still, even when I was 15, I remember feeling screwed when I found that there were no "real" bloopers in it.

However, there is still some kind of appeal to Schafer's collections of bloopers. The books are actually the most giggle-worthy, as they have all kinds of swears in them, many of which I presume didn't make the cut on the records.

I have a few of the record collections (billed as "A Treasury of Radio and TV's Most Hilarious Boners"), and interestingly enough, on two separate volumes, the Uncle Don blooper is featured.

But here's the funny part: the "authentic" clips are completely different recordings. If you're going to BS the masses, at least keep it straight. I mean, seriously...

If you want a sample of what I'm talking about, a cursory Google search will yield a bounty of fun. Just to get you started, there's a best-of compilation at Shoddity.com.

I'm actually surprised this hasn't gotten the dollar-store DVD treatment yet; if and when it does, my stupid ass will buy it, I'm sure.

How can you pass up a movie with lines like "...Mayor Friedman has just ordered all families near or adjacent to the Mill River to ejaculate immediately."?

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?"