It's a Festivus Miracle

2 straight days of the FYB in action. It's truly a Festivus Miracle.


So what has brought me back from retirement? Perhaps it's the love and passion I have for the written word and my desire to spread it to the three people who have ever read this site. Or maybe it's that deep down I'm a dreamer and I think that perhaps if I write on here I will be discovered for my true talent and offered millions, hell thousands to do this for a living. No? I'm not buying that either, it's just pure boredom. Sure I love to write, and I'd love to do this for a living, but currently I am writing out of boredom and an attempt to avoid doing anything constructive with my time off.

So with that, I have decided to go with a little holiday theme today. Here are my top 5 Kick Ass Things about X-mas. Damn, I'm lazy, I won't even spell out the holiday. Oh well.

TOP 5 KICK ASS THINGS ABOUT X-MAS
5.
Christmas movies and TV episodes on occasion Kick Ass. Even the crappiest TV show can be saved by the inevitable christmas episode where the character has to go out and buy presents on christmas eve and runs in to all sorts of hilarious predicaments. But most of all, every year at this time we get to enjoy the Grinch, Ralphie shooting his eye out and Clark Griswold and his madcap misadventures with the family. Gotta love it.

4.
Food. No other time of year encourages gluttony quite like the holidays. It's not just one gigantic meal like Thanksgiving, even if you add on the leftovers. Christmas is a turkey dinner, plus candy and chocolate and dinners out at restaurants. Christmas kicks ass because you can eat and eat and eat and no one says a thing. It's expected. Hell if someone doesn't know what to get you they always fall back on See's Candy or a gift card to a restaurant. Hell I don't even like See's Candy, but I eat it at this time of year. I won't even start on Candy Canes, they suck and yet if I'm bored I'll spend ten minutes peeling off the plastic cover and biting into one of 'em.

3.
Yup, school is out and that is always a good thing. There are times when I have a lot of fun at school and really just relish that I'm there and not in some stuffy office environment, but none of those times ever make me forget about how much I enjoy my lazy days of vacation. I live for vacations. My dream in life has nothing to do with a future occupation or a big family. My dream in life is to be retired. I can't frickin' wait.

2.
I don't really need to go in-depth with this one. The Jack Balls kick ass. I feel slightly homosexual saying this, but hell they're cute. And they are the gift that keeps on giving. What's better than seeing someone's car in March and they still have the Reindeer Jack ball on their antenna. It's pure understated comedy. I should know, I took mine off last April.

1.
Fat Santa. Yes, this is the one time of year when fat people are actually celebrated. Or at least one fat guy is. Santa rules because he has prepetuated the myth that fat people are jolly and that really helps a guy like me this time of year. I don't know if you've been out lately, but fat people are assholes just like everyone else. We're a little happier this time of year because we can hide ourselves in giant sweatshirts or huge red jackets with white fur on the fringes, but we're still fat and mean. Thank you Santa, for making fatties acceptable for a couple weeks.

OK, I really should have thought this out before I got started. Someone I didn't even get presents on my list and there's no way in hell I'm going back to put it in. Plus I'd have to delete something else, uggh. So, ummm....hey the holidays aren't about presents. It's about love and jack balls and all that other stuff. Oh and Jesus...no wait that's Easter.

OMG! It's the FYB!!

It pains me that I don't put more energy into this site. It should be my creative outlet to the world. A way to let everyone who reads the English language know what's going on in my life and my mind. Instead it is a rarely updated website that is only frequented by some sort of spamming program which keeps leaving comments to let me know that it stumbled upon my fascinating blog by accident and if I want information about an ionic breeze...here's the link. By the way I have taken a huge liking to the dot dot dot...lately. It has begun to replace the comma in all of my correspondence. I'm not sure how I feel about that, but oh well.

So I'm finally off for break and loving the freedom of my day. There has been no bigger adjustment in my life than the jump from college to professional. I am about the laziest MFer on this planet and that's why college was amazing. Even with a class schedule there was still enough time for me to screw around and be lazy at home. That has become less and less possible over the last couple years. I used to finish a season of Madden on my Playstation in about a week and a half while in college. Now I'm just finishing my regular season that I started over a months ago. LAME!!

Just to reinforce how easily amused I am, let me tell you what has changed my life as of late. Google maps!! Switching between the map and satellite images of places is for some reason amazing to me. Nothing beats looking at your home from space, or your shildhood home, or Dodger Stadium. It's so easy to use, plus I typed in "Hollywood sign" and sure enough it allowed me to focus in on the hollywood sign from the satellite images. Pretty f'n spectacular.

OK, last thing. This video is hilarious. The Chronic "what?" les of Narnia!

Come and knock on our door, we've been waiting for you!

What happened to the classic TV theme song? They've all but disappeared. Outside of the occasional cartoon with a catchy song, TV is basically devoid of any tunes that are so identifiable with the show. (For that matter, cartoons are one of the only TV mediums that seem to still be coming up with creative content.)

There was once a time when a TV show was so identifiable by nothing other than its theme song. I love the campy and silly Three's Company tune because it captures me. First, there's the opening riff that automatically puts you in a time warp and then they soulful lyrics inviting you into the lives of Jack, Chrissy, Janet and that rascal Larry. I automatically want to head down to the Regal Beagle and pick up chicks.

The theme song that I currently can't get out of my head is the one for "Charles in Charge". We can debate at a later time the merits of this show, but nothing, I repeat NOTHING that beats the first lines of this song. "The new boy in the neighborhood, lives downstairs and it's...understood. He's there just to take good care of me, like he's one of the family." The greatest part of that sterling song is the brief pause before the word "Understood". There's this implication that we might be witnessing a sexual molester preying on young kids in the guise of a babysitter, but NO, everyone understands this situation...it's cool.

The theme songs of today just don't capture my interest anymore. Unless a show is on the air for a decade you just don't identify shows with songs anymore. You can't hear "Fish don't fry in the kitchen, beans don't burn on the grill" without picturing George and Weezy. If you hear, "Here we come, walkin' down the street, we get the funniest looks froooom, everyone we meet..." damn it if isn't those crazy irreverent Monkees. Or perhaps the best ever, Joe Cocker bellowing, "What would you do if I sang out of tune? Would you stand up and walk out on me?" Instantly you're transported to the 60s and there's Kevin Arnold, Winnie Cooper, Paul Pfeiffer, Butthead brother Wayne, Becky Slater and so much more. Amazing show, even better theme song.

And if wordless tunes are more your bag...we've got Miami Vice, Night Court, Knight Rider, Magnum P.I.,CHiPs, and so many others. Hear the song, picture the show, and instant happiness.

So what's my point? Nothing really, but damn do I miss those songs. Today everything is so monotonous and lame. Hell today you rarely even get a song unless it's an old tune trying to capitalize on the Wonder Years market. Give me corny, I yearn for cheesy, I'd kill for lame and absurd. Instead all we can get is a rhythmic little ditty that does nothing to engender a feeling of love between viewer and televison event.

I miss you Larry Dallas!!

The Dream Sequence and Zack Morris

The dream sequence, truly an artform in any sitcom. This is the moment when our character looks off into the distance with a glazed over look in their eyes and the fun begins. No TV show has done the dream sequence as well as Saved by the Bell. Truthfully I haven't exactly studied the history of the dream sequence so I'm sure many other shows have done it better, but on SBTB it just feels right.

One of the best elements of the dream sequence is the glowing pink border around the edge that clues us into what is going on.


I have fallen in love with the dream sequence because it is so absurd. In real life when I have some thought or dream pop into my head it is so quick and fleeting that I barely know what has taken place. This is not true at Bayside High. Dreams take at least a minute and they are so detailed. There are characters in the background and everything takes on a surreal feel. The ludicrous actions in these dreams are absurd, but also the fabric of the show. Zack Morris is an a-hole. He's self-centered, he only cares about his own best interests and yet none of his friends ever hold it against him. (By the way, Zack Morris is my hero and I only wish I was more like him, so don't take this as any type of negativity toward the master.) But back to Zack's assholic tendencies, his friends continue to put up with it and never ever have a cross word to say about him. High school is filled with gossip and shit talking, but this is non-existant at Bayside. We are only clued into the thoughts of those around him through dream sequences. They are never overtly negative, but we always see Zack as schemer, Zack as freeloader, and Zack as jackass.

Thus the dream sequence becomes the only voice of the secondary character. If Jessie Spano came out and said she was tired of Zack always using her for her intelligence or Screech spouting off about how Zack is a sneaky bastard who uses him to get ahead, we would be pissed. Not just pissed, but violent, white people angry. The kinda angry you see when white people discuss welfare and the people who are stealing their hard earned dollars. I love my white brethren, but we are some angry muthafuckas. And we get angry in ways that no one else can.

For me and so many others, Zack is the idol. We know he's shady, we know he wouldn't make that great of a friend unless it was the last two minutes of the show...uhh I mean our situation. But Zack is who we all want to be. He's so popular, chicks dig him and guys just want to be around him. He does whatever he wants and only gains popularity. Isn't this what all of us want? We just want to get ahead in life without having any reprecussions to our actions. Keep in mind, this is a young man who constantly received low grades, did little work and always had an angle, but at the end of his senior year he aced the S.A.T.s and received an acceptance to Yale.
I only wish that everytime I screwed over a friend they simply spent thrity seconds staring into space, conjuring up an image of my head on a stick, and then simply snapping out of it and allowing me to copy their geometry test. It is the dream sequence that makes this show move, because it let's us know the other characters think he's a prick, but they'll let it go because his smile is so magnetic.

Next up: The Zack Morris timeout
OK, I'll make this considerably quicker. The coolest move in the history of life is the Zack Morris timeout. Whenever he found himself in a sticky situation or the lightbulb suddenly lit up, he would call the timeout. If just once in my life I could pull off this maneuver I would die a happy man. Imagine this power. The things you could do are limitless. My obsession with the Zack Attack will certainly be back soon, I just had to get this off my chest.

Motivation aka My Thirteen Hundred Word Opus about Nothing

You may want to turn back now. It's been a while since I've written anything other than an e-mail so this is going to get complicated and I will probably be taking a lot of sidetrips.

There are a number of mysteries that surround my life. What is it that makes me so irresistible to midgets of the opposite sex? Why do I find pleasure in the minor misfortunes of others? We'll never know the answers to these questions, but the biggest mystery to me is Why the hell do I lack any motivation?

I have a number of theories and of course the easiest cop out is that I'm lazy. Well, no shit I'm lazy, but why am I so lazy. I love to write, I spend an inordinate number of hours during the day thinking about things I would enjoy writing about, but then never properly following them up with actually putting words on paper or screen. Rather than boring you (I'm assuming someone will read this, when I'm quite certain no one still checks this site) with a number of my theories that aren't fully fleshed out, I'll cut right to the heart of the issue for me.

I think that like a retard, I'm just easily entertained by everything. This is not meant as a disrespectful rant against the mentally impaired. I just think that I have solved one of the mysteries of my life and it makes me feel like a retard. This summer I had in mind a few things that I really wanted to do much more of during my time off. 1. I wanted to write. 2. I wanted to watch many more of my DVDs that I either haven't watched or that I haven't seen recently. 3. I wanted to organize my life.

OK obviously number three was simply one of those ideas that you come up with because you want to believe that you're a person that cares about that kind of bullshit. I'll never be organized and I'm ok with that. I have shit all over the place on my desk and you know what...it doesn't really effect me. (Sidenote, whoever came up with the idea of effect and affect can go straight to the most insidious part of hell. And I'm assuming the most insidious part of hell would include sodomy in some form. No one knows how to use these words properly for more than a 24 hour period. You look it up in a dictionary or some grammar book and you think you have it mastered and then when it comes time to use the word again you just use the one that begins with the "e" and hope no one else knows. Guess what...no one else knows.) OK, back to organization. It just doesn't work for me. I'm very much a "general area" person. I know the general area where everything I own is, but I couldn't pinpoint it exactly. Of course living in an apartment with roughly 700 square feet means that everything I own is in the same general area, but still you know where I'm going with this. I can find pretty much anything in a matter of minutes and most things quicker than that, and because of this there is nothing compelling me to spend hours putting everything in a special designed spot. I also am aware of my limitations and I realize I will completely fuck up the whole thing in a matter of minutes.

Ok back to my summer of "gonna do some useless stuff that others would look at as lame, but I actually aspired to." Movies/DVDs, I love them. I have way too many, but I keep buying them because I hate going to the movie theatre (my next rant, by the way I feel like a tool saying rant over and over. I'm not Dennis Miller and I don't find myself that self-important, but it just seems like the right word.) Well I have so many movies and I love watching them, but at the same time watching a movie is a commitment. To do so I have to tell myself that I am giving over the next 2 hours of my life to sit and stare at the TV. It's odd, I have no problem doing this for hours everyday, but with DVDs I'm actually making a conscious decision to do so. When I'm watching a laughably atrocious TV show or infomercial I can keep telling myself that I'm going to turn off the program and do something else and it will have no effect on my day. But you can't turn away from movies. If you watch an hour of a movie and then head out to exercise, you are a butthole. You have wasted an hour and for what? So almost on a daily basis I find myself debating the watching of a movie. In the end I get caught up in an episode of Springer or any number of other random shows. (This makes me realize that I need to write about more of the shows that make my life a happy one. I love TV no matter how bad.)

SO this gets back to my original point, which I am quickly losing sight of...I'm easily entertained by so many other things. I'm not lying about the following, not that you're accusing me of doing so, but I just want to make this clear. I have watched all or at least a majority of a certain infomercial at least 45 times. This infomercial is for the Magic Bullet. It's fantastically ridiculous and deserves it's own spotlight, but in short we have a fake couple, Roger and Mimi who are having a "party" of sorts where their rag tag group of skeptical friends sits around and they make them food items using this chopping contraption. I'm such a picky eater (a way of saying I'm fat and eat only things that contribute to this)and so I would eat maybe 15% of what they make, but yet it still fascinates me. I will go on about this at another time, but the thing is when I run across this infomercial, no matter the time or what I'm doing I stop and stare. I know some of the dialogue and I'm not ashamed because it interests me on some odd level.

I really need to limit this so I'll try to get back on track. I can't motivate myself towards action because I enjoy the minutia of life way more than any other person alive. I'm drawn to interviews with Bob Saget, I love watching 90s comedies that just aren't that funny. I like writing e-mails, because they allow me to display my wit in small bursts without having to commit to putting myself out there. And I love to read. I read books, magazines, websites, and everything else. I always play the games on the back of cereal boxes. I like to lay on the couch and come up with my favorite baseball players of my youth by position. Kirby Puckett is starting in the outfield for me and incidentally this guy has gotten so fat. I know fat and this guy is definitely a member of the obesity club. Fat people are on the list of future topics.

So in the end what does this all mean? Nothing I guess. I have come to a realization about myself that would probably not make my mom proud, but I think I've gotten over that stage of life. I just love the minutia. Hopefully this love for the minutia will lead me to share more of it with the world by the means of this little ol' website.

Life is good.

New Stuff

Today was just one of those weird impulsive days that crops up every once in a while. The wife and I have briefly discussed the need for a new digital camera for some time now, but today on a quick trip to Best Buy for some wires, we ended up buying a new camera and a photo printer. Sweeeeeet. The oddest part was that we had only once even mentioned the possibility of the photo printer, but once inside Best Buy we both acted as if it was a foregone conclusion. A decision as simple as whether we wanted fries with our order. The camera also has become my Valentine's present, which I have no complaints about. The camera kicks ass and I'm happy to finally be able to print my pics. Soon I will post a picture of the wife and her new necklace that was purchased for Valentine's.
OK, here's the stuff.

Giggidy, Giggidy, Giggidy!!!

Nothing beats a day off when it is raining. I should be working hard, grading and preparing, but that just isn't going to happen on a day as nice and dreary as this one. I have so many movies I need to catch up on, so I'll probably spend most of the day watching a few of them and just enjoying the freedom of the day. For the mnost part the days and weeks seem to be going by pretty quickly and other than the eventual pink slip, I'm really looking forward to June.

American Dad premiered on Sunday after the Super Bowl and a decent Simpsons episode. I thought it was fairly funny, but I couldn't help but feel I was watching a bizarre version of Family Guy. It's different, but at the same time it just has that feel to it. The humor is odd and over the top, but I just worry that it will always feel like a knock off to me. Something tells me it won't last long on Fox either, once they bring it back this summer. I just can't wait for the return of FG on May 1st. It's sad that the biggest event for me over the next 5 months is most likely the return of a cartoon, but that is what makes me THE SHIZNITE!!!! <---Master Shake reference.

I need to go write something worthwhile now.