OK, so I'm a choosy mother.

Being a Superman nut as a kid meant that I was automatically interested in anything remotely to do with the character, whether it was Underoos, toys, or peanut butter.

Yes, Superman Peanut Butter graced shelves for a few years in the 1980s, and after pestering my mom, we got some. Being a choosy mother, she usually chose Jif.

I don't remember what it tasted like other than I liked Jif better despite the Superman connection. But every now and then I kept asking for it, in the vain hope that it had improved since the last time.

It was sorta like begging for Smuckers Goober Grape, the peanut butter that had jelly stripes already in it. It was good for one sandwich before reality set in and you realize it tasted like ass.

Anyway, it wouldn't be a Friday night without a video, so here's a commercial or two for Superman Peanut Butter:

All in all, it's just another checker at the wall

As I get older, I realize that when you are a kid, you're half-crazy. Things that wouldn't make sense to someone with two brain cells to rub together are everyday occurances for kids.

Eighth grade:

Very early on in English that day, one of my friends earned 15 minutes of detention; I don't remember what for. Now, my other friend was getting a ride home with him, so he figured he may as well do something to earn detention, too.

Talking was almost always good to get your name on the board as a warning, but he needed a check by his name to earn full-fledged 15 minutes of infamy.

I know, I know. You're asking, "Why didn't he just stay without doing anything to earn detention?" But as I said, that's what sane adults wonder. Kids figure, "Hey, I have to stay anyway, I may as well do something fun."

I have a tendency to be in the wrong place at the wrong time; my first day of school when I moved to Livermore, I got brought into class with a few other kids for making noise in the bathroom. I was innocent, of course, but dumb enough to hang around. This will come into play shortly.

Now my pal needed a check. In a moment of inspiration, he spied a checker on the table of games on the wall nearest our desks. His plan was to throw the checker at the chalkboard.

Yeah. That made perfect sense.

Now by the wizened age of 13, I knew better than to be in the general vicinity of anyone even thinking of doing something detention-worthy. To that end, I made my way to the back of the classroom to get a drink of water from the fountain at the sink.

Unfortunately, my friend had already launched his projectile. The checker hit me square in the chest, bounced off the wall, off a table, hit a desk, and finally came to rest on the floor, but not after making more noise than a dinosaur passing a kidney stone.

My teacher looked to see the source of the ruckus, noticed my friend looking guilty and noticed me at the sink. She added a check by my friend's name on the board. He had achieved his goal.

But then she wrote my name on the board. I wasn't worried; I knew that sometimes you had to take one for the team.

She added a check by my name.

Yes, through no fault of my own--aside from being naturally stupid--I managed to get detention for something I didn't even do. I charley-horsed my friend in the arm--the same one that got stabbed with a pencil in another classroom incident--and expressed my dissatisfaction.

You can probably just fill in your favorite swear word here.

It look a lot of convincing on my friend's part after school when we all remained for our punishment, but my teacher relented and gave me a full pardon. I thanked her, gathered my stuff and hit the road.

As I cleared the school ground, I checked my watch and did a little math. Factoring in my explanation plus my friend's, and then some cross-examination, I was still only--

16 minutes late.

I am not a coffee achiever

In the grown-up world where I spend part of my existence, I feel I start the day at a disadvantage because I don't drink coffee.

So generally speaking, you'll never hear me say, "God, I'm beat. I need coffee." More often than not, it will be something like, "Oh God, I think I got beaten up by little men while I slept. Is today over yet?"

See, coffee drinkers have hope that there is a cure to their listlessness. Me, I have to rely on Pez.

Which, judging from some of the looks I've gotten from co-workers, is not a breakfast food.

An ass full of pipe wrench

My friend Karyne sent this to me today, and I had to share it. This is the best version of "Take on Me" you're likely ever to hear and see.

Don't you know about the word?

I'm addicted. It plays into an already extant failing of mine, and now it's getting worse.

I got sucked in to playing Word Challenge on Facebook. I was fine just playing to kill time, but once friends started challenging me, I felt obligated to maintain my word nerd cred, you know?

I'm not normally a competitive person, but now that I'm getting better at it, it's hard to stop. My friend Jean is probably going to kill me soon, since I complained that I sucked and then a half-hour later beat my all-time best score (and hers).

That said, if you're on Facebook, challenge me. Half the time I get crappy letters and consequently, a crappy score.

The Price is Retired

As a game show nerd, I found this interesting. It's a video showing pictures of every retired pricing game from The Price is Right. Plus, it uses the classic TPIR background cue music, which is pretty pimptacular.

Nobody will ever know

I didn't submit this picture, but I could have:

Seriously, Mr. UPS Dude, why even make this half-assed--nay, quarter-assed gesture? Is that really going to keep someone from swiping my package?

I wish I'd have taken a picture of it, but one time we got a package delivered, and it was a pretty sizable box, like about the size of a medium U-Haul box, and I shit you not, it was on my doorstep, UNDER THE MAT.

Thanks for nothing, douche.

(via FAIL Blog)

Friday night video fun

It's that time again. This week, I'm feeling like checking out some old TV commercials, so here you go.

Movies that made you cry

Okay, now because we're such close pals, I'm going to share something with you: the first movie that made me cry.

Summer of 1980. I'm 5 years old, at the drive-in with my parents. Generally, when we went to the drive-in, I was already dressed in my pajamas, because I'd be fast asleep by the time the previews ended.

But this particular trip, I wasn't the least bit sleepy. I wasn't really interested in the movie my parents went to see; it wasn't a comedy or a cartoon, so I didn't give two craps. But as they kept trying to discourage me from watching it, I figured that it might be worth checking out.

Plus, while I could make out the Cheech and Chong movie on the nearest screen, I couldn't hear any of it, so it was pointless.

As it turns out, we were watching the first Friday the 13th movie, which explains why my parents wanted me to be asleep. Once it became apparent that I was going to sneak looks every now and then, I got a quick briefing on how while this may look scary, it's all pretend; like a cartoon, so if I get scared, I should just laugh it off.

And amazingly, it worked. And I'm sure I didn't see a whole lot of gore. I kept being offered popcorn and distracted by other questions at key point in the movie. I guess they gave up near the end, because the big battle is the only part I vividly remember seeing.

I remember the sense of relief I felt when the heroine defeated the killer. I could finally relax now, as was the character, floating on the placid lake in a boat. Here, check it out:



Yeah, right until mangled seaweed-infested Jason popped out of the water and grabbed her out of the boat. That scared the living crap out of me, and for a minute or so, I cried.

I had a grand total of one nightmare (Jason was trying to get me, but instead of looking like a drowning victim, he looked like a mummy wrapped in multicolored gauze), and after that point, horror movies never scared me much. I'd get startled from time to time, but not actually scared. Even now, alas.

What was the first movie that made you cry?

Not a complete loss of a day

Woke up late. Felt like crap. Got bored.

So I packed some stuff and decided to fix my desktop computer, which has been ailing for quite some time. After various attempts proved fruitless, I backed up my important data, reformatted the drive and reinstalled Windows.

Now I have a lot of space free on this computer, and it's working just fine. I haven't had to do a spring cleaning like this in a while, but it's almost always cathartic.

Oh, and I played a little more Lego Batman. But work calls, so it's back to the rat race tomorrow.

It's like distilling poo

My friends often ask me after long drunken-sounding tirades, "Sparkman, why do you have such a hate-on for Batman and Robin?" The movie, not the characters.

Really, it's hard to point to just one thing. I spent much of Batman Forever defending its cheesiness to my friend Meredith. And let's face it; there was some asstacular content in that flick.

But the point at which I had to physically restrain myself from leaving the theater was when George Clooney whipped out the Bat Credit Card and said "Don't leave the cave without it."

If you want to experience the pain without sitting through the whole movie, check out this video, which I saw over at Topless Robot.

Why was I envious?

When I was in elementary school, I envied my friend Adam because he was an only child. Not so much because he didn't have a little brother to deal with, although there were some days...

No, I envied him because, as an only child, he tended to get the cooler toys. Like all three colors of Magic Sand, which we combined and somehow thought we could use coffee filters to return each color back to their rightful bottles. Or like the castle Lego set, or the Ewok Village playset, etc.

One of the games he had was a handheld Pac-Man clone called Epoch Man, which, not surprisingly, was made by Epoch. I remember being a little jealous because while I as playing Mattel's Electronic Football, he had this gem.

In retrospect, I had the better game, but I was young and didn't know any better.

Leggo my Lego Batman!

At the request of my son, we exchanged some old games we never play for the new Lego Batman, which he's been jonesing for since he saw the preview on Lego Indiana Jones.

I haven't finished it just yet, but it's pretty fun, just like the other Lego games. Okay, enough writing. Gotham City needs me.

"I'm good for about twice a year."

My friend Karyne shared this with me the other day, and I just had to share with you. It has some NSFW language, so use your headphones.

And I'd hold off on watching this if you're planning on eating chocolate pudding any time soon. Watch it before it disappears.

Hug a copy editor today

Most of the time, you don't notice copy editors. A lot of people don't know what they even do. But I assure you, they're important. Not only do they try to keep all the L's in reference to Public Storage, but they also are responsible for finessing the copy; making it the best it can be.

And they have to do it in such a way that it doesn't look obvious to the reader (or to the writer). It's not a glorious job; that is to say, there's not a lot of attention paid to what they do.

So, given that I am both a copy editor and an incredible affection whore, I created a group on Facebook for copy editors and fans of copy editors. It's called Hug a Copy Editor. Like many Facebook groups, it's fairly pointless but fun to participate in anyway, so check it out.

As of this post, we've already got more than 30 members, and there's a burningly important question on the poll, as well as some copy-editing-related pictures.

Author, author

I've now been to two book signings. The last one was quite a while ago, when I saw Beverly Cleary. Today on my lunch break, I saw Brad Meltzer, whose latest book is Book of Lies. I held off buying it till today, just for the signing.

He talked about the book for a little bit and answered a few questions from the audience before getting to the actual signing. He seems like a cool cat; very mellow and self-deprecating. We talked for a little bit while he was signing my book, and I mentioned that it was nice to meet him in person, as we'd traded e-mails a few times.

"Oh, what's your e-mail address?"

I told him.

"Oh, you're Sparkman! Yeah, we e-mailed each other just a week or so ago."

So that was pretty cool. Plus, he's a Superman nerd like me, so we have that in common.

I haven't finished the book yet--I only got through 125 pages on the train ride home--but I'm digging it so far. Again, here's a little bit about the book. Check it out.

More reasons why Natalie Dee rawks

I mean, really, how can you not love Natalie Dee?


nataliedee.com

Seriously. Love.

Wharrgarbl.

 

This never fails to cheer me up. I offer it to you on the off chance you need a little cheer.

Head over heels for the Monkees

OK, so now Brody and I are working our way through various episodes of The Monkees. I'm working up to my favorite episode as a kid, "Monkees Get Out More Dirt," which guest-starred Julie Newmar.

I don't know how many of my fellow 5-year-olds back then developed a crush on her because of the one-two punch of this episode and various turns as Catwoman on Batman, but it sure worked on me.

And in other Monkees items, I found this while poking around on the Intarwebs. It's the Monkees' feature film Head. While it has gained a cult following, I can only imagine the puzzled looks from the young girls who loved the group when they saw this for the first time. It's odd, but it's got some cool tunes in it.

As for the movie's title, I heard a story (apocryphal, I assume)that it was named Head with thoughts of a possible sequel in mind so they could use the immortal tagline, "From the producers who gave you..."

You know, I think you can just do the math on this one for yourself. Enjoy.

If only it were always this easy...

"Hey Dad," my son said.

"What?"

"I wanna play the Indiana Jones game."

"This one?" I pointed to the PlayStation 2.

"Yeah."

I don't know why he wanted to, but I wasn't about to say no. Keep in mind that when he plays Lego Indiana Jones, that actually means I play it while he watches and provides a running commentary.

"That's Indiannie Jones!"

"You found a treasure chest!"

"You broked the man!"

And even more amazingly, he fell asleep watching. I think he just wanted to unwind, but it was fun for us to share the time. Even though he didn't have a controller in hand, he was telling me the story, so in a way, he was playing, too.

And he already told me that we have to get Lego Batman.

Soon. Very soon.