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