The Kicks Aren't Alright

There I am!

As the operator of a seldom read and completely obscure personal blog, I was incredibly surprised at winning the exclusive rights to publish the first excerpt of the highly-anticipated autobiography  The Kicks Aren't Alright - the story of Keith Moon's heavily abused drum set.  The press release on the book hints at the stories behind the explosions, the generation-defining hits, and the backstage travails of a drum kit stuck in the savagery of an early rock and roll band.  Enjoy!

The Kicks Aren't Alright

I’ve been beaten, bled, and broken all in the name of rock and roll.  Despite its barbaric history, rock music became the most popular music genre and prospered on the backbeats of my percussive ancestors.  And I’m here to tell you, the life of a rock star isn’t all separated bowls with the brown M&M’s taken out and shark-fucking groupies, it’s an exploitive industry interested only in the flash and awe of the final product without a second thought about the torment hidden within that sound.  We all start out alone, be you a snare, or a crash cymbal, or even a lowly cowbell, but once we coagulate together our combination keeps the heart of rock and roll beating.

Everyone looks to Van Gogh as the archetype of the tortured artist, and I’m sure cutting off your own ear is painful, but give me a break.  Did he ever endure a 10-plus minute drumstick beating of a solo culminating in a pyrotechnic display?  Painting the French countryside while losing an ear and your mind seems like a fucking Sandals resort to me.

I can’t lie; my life hasn’t been all bad (private plane compartments and being serenaded by the smooth in-time groove of John Entwistle’s bass lines).  When I wasn’t busy getting beaten on the most famous stages the world has to offer, I had some wild times.  Times that percussion instruments from here to a commune-led drum circle could only dream of.  But more on those adventures later.

Coming from a struggling working class family, my folks were ecstatic when I landed my gig with Keith Moon back in the summer of 1964.  Times were definitely changing - from the schizophrenic meters of my father’s jazz generation back into a hard 4/4 backbeat that the kids called rock and roll. Jobs in this new trade were high-paying and easy to come by (the same can’t be said for my fathers jazz world or even my mothers backup singers tambourine gig), but I would have greatly enjoyed finding a freelance job with a gentle nylon drum brush in a slow jazz quartet.  However, I’ve come to notice that the universe doesn’t take much stock in the thoughts of a humble drum kit.

Things with The Who moved quickly.  Within a year, “I Can’t Explain” was a hit single.  And boy let me tell you did the hits (on the chart and on my hide) keep on coming.

Quickly our hyper-energetic reputation grew around London and was furthered by an otherwise unassuming show at the Railway Tavern.  With the show winding down, Pete slowed down halfway through the show.  Looking over it was clear that his guitar’s neck split in half after slamming into one of the amplifiers.  Pete came to a complete stop and upon inspection realized his instrument was done for.  To keep up with the show’s high energy, he slammed the broken guitar against the ground - unknowingly setting a signature precedent of destruction and euthanasia that continues to this day with the band’s current geriatric lineup. 

Up until this point Keith and I had always gotten along as well as possible.  Sure, we had our differences namely that he was going to pound me during the show, but afterwards I could always count on a gentle feather dusting or at the very least a few kind words of encouragement.  Those were the tolerable days.  Keith’s kinder side was a rare sight, the hotel room toilets done in by his cherry bomb and dynamite cocktails can attest to that. 

With the crowd calling for more after watching Pete violently destroy his guitar, Keith gave me three swift kicks and pushed my whole set over.  That first time happened so quickly I don’t remember much other than a shot to my cymbals and 2 and a half measures later I was strewn across the floor of the stage struggling to breathe. 

I honestly can say I believe that the first time Keith just wanted what most of was long for - a collective cheer from a large group of young drunk people.  But then he realized how much he enjoyed this “auto-destructive art.”

And so began of my 14-year rock 'n' roll nightmare….

We're Going To Need a Bigger Television

July 2, 1928 – Regularly scheduled television service begins in the United States.

September 26, 1960 – John F. Kennedy and Richard M. Nixon face off in an historic televised debate that altered the spotlight of presidential campaigns ever since.

February 15, 1993 – Carlton Banks tries speed for the first time and “dances” (spasms) his way to the hospital.

July 24, 2013 – The Chicago City Council approves upgrades to Wrigley Field, that includes a Jumbotron.

The history of television seems to have come full circle with the invasion of massive moving images being displayed at the nation’s second oldest ballpark.  Wrigley Field is currently the only Major League stadium without a flat screen monstrosity within its confines.  Generations of depressed Cubs  fans have ventured into the sacred grounds to watch the manual scoreboard hang a multitude of losses.

Jumbotron impostors like this are a real issue.

LCD displays of runs, errors, and thrilling between-inning games like a Dunkin Donuts sponsored “which hat is the ball hidden under” have been missing from the friendly confines amidst years of outrage from Cubs fans.  Protestors in the outfield have been picketing on their bleacher seats for decades with chants of …

“What do we want?”

            “Miller Lite Sponsored Kiss Cams!”

“When do we want it?”

            “Preferably before we put together a winning team!”

These protestors, referred to as “bleacher bums,” often found other ways to disrupt ballgames to get their point across.  Whether it was tossing hand-written pro-Jumbotron manifestos written on baseballs onto the field, or interrupting games with their impressive drinking records and shirtless dancing, they stopped at nothing to let management know the plight of a television-deprived sporting audience.  

"A revolution without dancing is not a revolution worth having."

Fans had been confined to the passing down of entertainment by spending the game-time with hot dogs, Bartmans, errors, Rod Beckmans, watching the ivy grow, Old Style, and talk of curses, but finally we are free at last - to watch in-game ads offering free Taco Bell Cinnastix to anyone seated in row 267.

11 ways to defeat/kill/dismember/behead/burn/laugh-off/curb-stomp Chucky, so easy that it’s child’s play

With the return of the beloved(?) Child’s Play franchise and groan-worthy puns like the one in my title, I wanted to celebrate by answering the obvious question to anyone familiar with the bloodthirsty doll known as Chucky.  Even though the child’s toy has been possessed with the spirit of renowned serial killer, the “Lakeshore Strangler,” Charles Ray (that is honestly his name! The writer must have had some serious disdain for “Hit the Road Jack” and “Georgia on My Mind” to reverse the famous singers name for his fictional murderer), how can any adult, child, or family pet not easily kill this 2 ft. tall felt menace?  A lack of common sense or creativity on the part of the principal humans in the Child’s Play universe has resulted in enough deaths to fill 6 movies.  Here are some ideas for the main characters in the newest feature to wrap this thing up once and for all.

1.) Tie his tiny, soft doll-hands to a helium balloon.

2.) Bake him into a 7-cheese homemade mac and cheese in your easy bake oven – if the heated

The Chucky du jour sure looks good.

lightbulb doesn’t kill him there should be enough cheese to even clog up a plastic dolls arteries.

3.) Find some of that gooey substance you have left over from when you performed “surgery” on your Stretch Armstrong toy to see what he was made of.  Take said gooey substance and sneak parts of this material into Chucky’s food.  Whatever this goo is made of it has to be poisonous,  and in lieu of Chucky having dietary needs because he is a child’s plaything, be safe and sneak this poisonous Stretch Armstrong muscular matter into his drink of choice - which I assume is a mixture of Everclear, Hawaiian punch, and speed.

4.) Eliminate all scissors and knives from the house and replace them with those squiggly line scissors.  Chances are after Chucky offs his first victim the remaining asymmetrical and silly looking dismembered cuts will embarrass the hardened killer and leave him with no choice but to kill himself.

He's definitely got something...

5.) Set your Mr. Potato Head up with the Bride of Chucky.  One amorous tryst between these two should result in some sort of sexually transmitted potato disease the likes of which the toy box has never seen before.  As of yet, Chucky has survived being wed to a doll obnoxiously voiced by Jennifer Tilly, but throw in a serious case of potato dick and his immune system will be forced to throw in the towel.

6.) Leave Chucky in a room with the television set to a Skip Bayless monologue from First Take on loop.  Two and a half to three minutes of that egotistical, preschool logic should cause enough anger to cause an efficient heart attack in your homicidal doll.

7.) Kick him, he’s a 2 foot tall doll who uses tools as sharp as a mechanical pencil.  He doesn’t have the technical know-how or David Cross connections that the Small Soldiers did, so don’t worry about him building army-grade killing vehicles.

8.) Drown him in your morning bowl of Kix.

9.) Stab him with a protractor.

10.) Leave him on the tray you threw away at school, just like the retainer you promised you wouldn’t lose.

11.) Take out the stitching on his neck and feed his head to your sea monkeys.

Moral of this entry - you can overpower a doll and end it’s life in any way possible.

Idea-logy

Stretching arms. Stretching legs.  Stretching your imagination.

Penicilin.  The automobile.  Stretch Armstrong – these examples altered the course of humanity toward a more perfect society, but what is the next big idea that will change everything.  Teleportation?  The cure for cancer?  A truly delicious and nutritious chocolate bar?  Those are all fine ideas currently in different stages of development, but the ideas that I’m interested in are the ones that most likely won’t change everyone’s life but could somewhat make a single person’s day a little more interesting.  I made my foray into the arena of big ideas with pizza fries (the merger of pizza sauce and cheese with French fries), and while I wait for the Foodmaster General to give his counter offer to my request of lifetime cinnabons for the rights to pizza fries, I thought I would share my next big ideas here because it has to be cheaper than a patent.

Music Festival in Space….ok I’m settling for the sky

Sure there are as many music festivals these days as there are M. Night Shyamalan critics, but we are stuck in the Paul Revere model of thinking; land and sea.  With the new push of cruise-based festivals (Bruise Cruise, Weezer’s cruise festival, whatever it is Jimmy Buffett is probably doing to ruin the open sea), I want to look past this burgeoning trend to where the sky is quite literally the limit.  The idea: for a modest price (that is really extremely expensive – to keep with the festival model) you and a group of friends or random strangers can rent a hot air balloon for the festival weekend.  Everything else is boilerplate music festival, the expensive food and beer prices, the up-and-coming bands slotted to side stages with scheduling conflicts, the big name headliners, even the porta-potties, except everything is taking place in the heavens.  The bands will set sail in their own balloon to their pre-determined locations in the skyway for all festival-goers to make their way to.  Concession areas will be floating around and even available for delivery services.  I can already envision the headlines and Guinness World Records for highest concert ever put on, and if we’re being honest aren’t we all just chasing after one world record…

No Park Zone 

If green space in the city were an animal it would be as endangered as a baby dinosaur being clubbed to death by a strip mall designer.  Clearly, parks are notoriously slow learners and still haven’t figured out how to evade an oncoming predator (i.e. a bulldozer).  So my idea is to take the decision making process out of the unreliable learning capacity of the parks out of said park’s hands, and into the capable hands, minds, and tires of the increasingly popular food trucks.  Throw some turf on the bed of some open air truck/trailers, put up a few trees, maybe add a swing, and drive that baby around town.  Once we find out way into a feature in a couple hip magazines, and maybe write a few humorous tweets and voila people will be hopping on to picnic, swing, and socialize at any opportunity. Phase 2 would clearly be to put a roller coaster on the back of the truck to trick the people into visiting the truck park by tempting death by hurtling hundreds of feet into the air at toupee-losing speeds.

This was the first google image for the search "sad park."

Hologram-mys

Music spectacles have been at the forefront of using holograms to zombiefy deceased artists to great acclaim.  But why stop with one-time concert appearances or messages in the Star Wars franchise? Celebrities should be hocking their holograms like peanuts at a ballgame.  The idea here is to sell customers an allotment of time with one’s life-like hologram to spend time however the purchaser sees fit.  Shooting the breeze with Bill Murray’s hologram at happy hour in your local watering hole: $125 (ed note – for this I would pay a minimum of $100,000).  Taking Scarlett Johanssen out for   paella and salsa dancing: $315 (ed note – I’m not sure how to dance with air, but you’ll figure it out). Putting off loneliness for a few hours by pretending to be friends with refracted light beams – priceless (ed note – this is a sad business model, but depression is big money in this country just ask a pharmaceutical representative).

Date Night

Dating websites are big money and have been stratifying their membership to result in more homogenous matches than ever.  This hyper-specific data trend has hit the big-time with sites like farmersonly.com, blackpeoplemeet.com, and tocatchapredator.com.  These sites are great at finding matches for people in search of very one dimensional mates, “I only  want to date farmers,” “I only want to date Christians,” and “How often should I be updating my itunes version” are typical conversation points seen on dating site message boards.  The problem is most people build their dream girl or guy to include more than one main attribute. I believe we can make these sites even more specific to the point where there are no surprises or anything to learn from getting to know a person. Brunette-dancers-who-love-MikeMyers-movies-but-didn’t-care-for-Wayne’sWorld-and-are-small-enough-to-fit-in-the-trunk-of-a-HondaCivic-without-any-complaints.com would be an example of a site that a serial killer would most likely pay a premium monthly fee to browse.  And as the old business saying goes, once you have one customer, some more might possibly maybe follow.

Hipsters, and Bingo, and Agassi, Oh My!

According to this yahoo.com story, the new hipster craze sweeping the nation is BINGO.  You read that right, B-I-N-G-O!  Apparently vinyl record collecting and letter writing on fine stationery (actual hobbies listed in story) doesn't fully slake that hipster thirst like it used to, so an underground shift has been made toward the past time of marking letters and numbers on printed tickets.  Be it civil war era-esque beards or supporting Billy Corgan (Smashing Pumpkins is still around?), finding that "old-timey feeling" seems to be the summation of hipsterism from the above article.  Following in that spirit, below are 5 retro staples that I hope the hipster community will embrace next.

1.) Snap Fighting 

Gang violence would be reduced to self-inflicted carpal tunnel if disputes were settled on today's streets with a song and a snap.

 

2.) Mullets

Taking a social style taboo of the past in the name of irony is nothing new.  But why limit ironic follicle statements to a small area above the lip when there's a whole party of hair in the back (business in front) that can make that statement in a louder, more socially opposed way.  We need this generations Andre Agassi, I nominate you Tim Tebow - first step: an Agassi-inspired methamphetamine habit.


3.) Doing you laundry in the river with a washboard...

Who am I kidding, if you look like Agassi, you don't wash your clothes, or yourself.

4.) Being a Geocentrist (belief that Earth is the center of the universe)

Galileo proposed the Sun to be the center of the universe, around which, all other planets revolved.  This plan was given a response of "suuuuure it is, nerd," by the religious leaders of the day leading to Galileo being labeled a heretic, a future "Bohemian Rhapsody" reference, and his placement under house arrest.  Once it was agreed that this Galileo guy was kinda smart (after he had died), society basically agreed he was right and that all other ideas were insane.  What better way is there to slap all these sun-revolving lemmings ("the establisment") in the face, than to come full-circle and re-believe in the Earth being the center of the universe.  It's retro, crazy, and an expression of your individualism - it's essentially the new Zubaz.

A style unlike any other.

5.) Traveling down the Mississippi by personal raft

Huck Finn did it.  Jonathan Taylor Thomas played Huck Finn's buddy in a movie.  You are more resourceful than JTT right?  I thought so.  You can totally do it, and if not, well then at least you will die trying.  And at the very least this list of activities will keep you busy enough to distract yahoo into searching for more newsworthy stories than the social comings-and-goings of hipsters.

The real shame in this article is the lack of Jonathan Taylor Thomas films in this nation's Redbox dispensaries

Harriet the Why?

Nickelodeon should do better.

I remember that Harriet the Spy was a movie at one point, but that is about all I remember about the Nickelodeon production.  Being a Nickelodeon product, I only had two hopes for this movie upon my recent re-watching a.) Somebody got “slimed” for doing the secret action and b.) Danny Tamborelli had a guest role.  To my dismay, Harriet had neither.  Instead this 100 minute “spy” movie made me want to fucking choke on the rain coat the title character wore everyday on her “spy” missions. 

Not many moments of this film were able to redeem its rampant terrible-ness, I’ll try to hit them all in this one paragraph (shouldn’t take too much space).  If there was one shining moment it had to be the pre-opening credits gag featuring the old Nick-nick-nick-nick-nick-nickelodeon theme song, from there it was one awful scene followed by another.  Still in the opening credits the one part I caught was that the music supervisor of this movie was named Jamshied Sharifi and for that, I thank his parents for making up the awesome name Jamshied (it may be a real name of a Norse God for all I know but I don’t care to research it).   And this sentence concludes the list of redeemable qualities of this movie.  They peaked with the name of their music supervisor.

The 6th grade Walter White on the right.

Anyways, I’ll trudge through.  The movie is about a 6^th grade girl who jots down every useless thought and rude observation she has into her notebook.  She has only two friends in the world; one of these friends is a black wannabe scientist named Janie, with an unhealthy obsession for replicating mold in her easy-bake oven.  Who the hell wants to replicate mold??? Her parents should definitely be locked up for letting her keep the mold laboratory that she has created in her room.  Her other friend is a kid named Sport, played by the actor who starred in the toy murdering flick Small Soldiers.  Every half-wit in Harriet’s hometown knows Sport’s dad as a struggling author and renowned fuck-up.  His dad does little in the movie other than taking frequent cat naps and leaving all the basic homecare of cooking, cleaning and balancing the families budget to Sport while he is also trying to learn long division.

What to say about the main character, the child named Harriet. Seriously, what were her parents plans with that name.  It is more fit for a spinster or children’s piano teacher than a girl trying to burst into the 6^th grade spy scene. So Harriet is a detached outcast who wryly asserts her superiority complex by writing shitty things about all her classmates in her private “spy” notebook. 

I’m unsure why she is referred to as a spy because this movie doesn’t once hit any of the spy film tropes: no eastern European villains, no golden guns, no girls in skimpy bikinis.  Instead, she just writes stupid observations in her diary – she’s more Chelsea Handler than handing out surreptitious ass-kickings. Here’s an example of her Woodward and Bernstein-esque musings on her classmates: “Pinky Whitehead’s DNA was combined with a pint of vanilla yogurt at birth.  Kerry Andrews thinks she’s cool because she spent her summer vacation growing boobs.  And Beth Allen Hanson – I wish someone would just kick her and get it over with.” 

While Harriet is doing her best to win “most likely to grow up to be the bitchiest Real Housewife of the CIA,” the real terror of the sixth grade, Marion Hawthorne, rides her abrasive personality and popularity to win the class presidency, which includes the envious position of editor-in-chief of the class paper. 

A far way from Small Soldiers.

Clearly their teacher Ms. Elson’s executive branch of class politics is drunk with power.  It completely disregards any freedom of press claims by placing the leader of the free classroom in charge of its only journalistic enterprise’s content.  Honestly though this president Marion totally blows.  Not only is she your stereotypical stuck-up movie bitch, but she somehow has the love and attention of everyone in the class from the weirdo’s (a kid who wears the same purple socks everyday) to the theater kids (Pinky Whitehurst totally kills the soliloquy from Hamlet).  She’s such a bitch that she makes Harriet, the girl who writes that if it were up to her, one of her classmates would just hang themselves, seem empathetic. Harriet and her outcast buds break down Marion’s first edition of the paper the only way they know how... by saying it is “the crap that crap wants to be when it grows up. "(I’m saving that biting critical nugget for later use)

Outside of the classroom Harriet is secretly watching all the strange townies like some old dude with a ponytail who owns 30 cats all named after jazz singers, and a Chinese dude getting acupuncture in his grocery store, which clearly cannot pass health codes.  Eventually she decides it’s a good idea to break into a house where a Pomeranian is getting dropped off because that seems suspicious I guess???  And some Latoya Jackson look-alike finds Harrriet  hiding in the dumwaiter and is all “Who the fuck are you?  Why are you wearing a raincoat when it’s 78 and sunny out?”  Or something like that.  Then Harriet runs out and finally realizes that she’s a shitty spy, because spies never get caught. 

This is what a real spy looks like Harriet, take your silly notes on how Smash Adams operates.

Her reasoning here isn’t exactly true, because spies whether it’s James Bond, or Jack Ryan, or Smash Adams get caught and detained like all the time.  Otherwise there wouldn’t be much action or suspense to their adventures.  But I don’t want to argue with Harriet because she is just about the worst fucking spy that ever decided they were going to start a career in spying.  At this point I was hoping she would give up on the spy game and I could wrap this movie up in 30 minutes. 

Instead she goes back to school and their teacher Ms. Elson is taking suggestions for their 6^th grade holiday pageant production.  These suggestions include:

            Yogurt -  Is this a theme or just a snack you like?  Either way go drown yourself in some Chobani.

            Vlad the Impaler – Now there’s a suggestion I’d get behind, nothing says the holidays like raiding and impaling the Ottomans.

            Jazz -  ????

            The Manhattan Project – There might be something seriously wrong with Harriet’s friend Janie.  I understand she’s into science but this would cast a very dark mushroom cloud shadow on this holiday pageant.

With all those great and confounding ideas somehow fucking Marion Hawthorne’s idea of “a giant holiday feast, low in fat” wins.  How creative of you Marion!  And I don’t think it is possible, something about the words “giant” “feast” and “holiday” makes me think this meal doesn’t have a chance at being low in fat.

Marion Hawthorne, I believe, is the face of evil for the 90's move over Monstars.

Anyways the kids start playing in the park like kids do, except Marion proffers a suggestion that they play “Buy the Volvo” in which she would play the car dealer and she would try to upcharge her classmates who would be playing couples in the market for, and I quote, “a sassy yet affordable family vehicle.”  By this point I was really hoping that this film ended in tragedy where Marion got kidnapped by the weird jazz cat guy who tortured and strangled her with his old man ponytail.  But alas, instead the kids all just find Harriets burn book (“spy notebook”) and all totally hate her because she;s a bitchy writer.  So they kids decide to team up and build secret clubhouses, eat cake and make Harriet’s life a living hell (children have warped ideas of revenge).  Understandably Harriet’s pissed off and gets back at these kids in a multitude of awful ways like telling a kid that their dad left the family for Amsterdam because he doesn’t love her.

And then essentially one day Harriet offers the most unapologetic apology to her close friends Sport and Janie – she literally whispers “I’m sorry” from the other side of the door after her parents yell at her some.  And then the kid with purple socks says that Harriet’s a writing rockstar and should be editor of the class paper, she’s like the Matt Christopher of writing insulting things about classmates for a 6^th grade audience.  This leads to a coup of Marion’s editor-in-chief of the paper because this teacher has zero control of her mongrel students.  Anyways Harriet apparently learns some stupid lesson about being nice and even prints something about Marion’s dad not hating her just because he ran away to inhabit the coffeehouses of Amsterdam instead of you know being a dad.  Sounds like love to me.  Overall this movie was pretty terrible and I kept checking to see how much longer I had to endure.  I considered changing the point of this blog to just reviewing episodes of the new Disney show “Dog with a Blog.”  No, really, this is a show and it sounded more enjoyable than the movie I was watching.  However there were a couple quotes I found surprisingly insightful for a movie with such a terribly cynical theme about writing mean observations about classmates leading to you being a spy/editor-in-chief.  The quotes I especially liked follow:

“Holy cats!  A veggie thief!  This needs to be investigated.” – Sure it does.

“Frankie’s cool – American style.  His parents are cool – Chinese style.”  This apparently involves yelling and running a local grocery – thanks for the stereotyping Nickelodeon.

Harriet (rich girl): I hate money.

Sport (the resident poor kid): You’d like it a lot more if you didn’t have any.

(Written on a note ) “Harriet smells.”  I can’t say I’m surprised by hearing this.

 

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“You’re an individual and that makes people nervous, and it will your whole life.”  Run-on sentence aside, this was a true statement by Harriet’s nanny, Golly.

Apparently Hey Arnold’s pilot premiered with this movie – this makes the entire movie worthwhile.

Congress Members Begin Purchasing Their Souvenir Photographs and “I Survived the Fiscal Cliff” T-shirts

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A reenactment of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (Dem.) mid-Fiscal Cliff.

 In a rare moment of slight and nearsighted activity, Congress lined up to buy their commemorative action photographs and t-shirts to memorialize the near nation-wide plunge at the fiscal cliff.   Majority Leader Eric Cantor (Rep.) told Capitol Building souvenir cashier Miranda Wilson, “It was a hell of a ride.  Lots of twists and turns, I never thought it was going to end.”  To which Steny Hoyer (Dem.) countered, “I was worried that I might not be big enough for the cliff this year, but once Nancy [Pelosi] told me I could vote, I was so excited I nearly jumped for joy.”  Multiple representatives from both sides of the aisle admitted to not understanding the term and voted on the nation’s pressing financial issue simply based on its intimidating moniker.  “A photo opportunity a couple years back in line for Splash Mountain was enough excitement for me in this lifetime,” said Senator Marco Rubio.  He continued, “I can’t wait to try and avoid the cliff again in a couple months.”  The nation's commemorative “I Survived the Fiscal Cliff with my $300 haircut intact” T-shirts and action photographs of your favorite representative mid-fiscal cliff are available for sale wherever inefficiency is celebrated.

Cliff avoidance and actual work can be pretty scary stuff.

Method Acting and The Tony Romo Audition

Afters years of watching the Bears put quarterbacks on the field to have performances like this. (6/16, 32 yds, 0 td, 4 int.)

Or drafting this guy 12th overall..

Watching Tony Romo's five interception game against Chicago last night left me thinking that his performance was a clear audition for the future role of starting Bears interception machine, I mean quarterback.  The Bears history of competitve play and winning records is astounding when their ghosts of quarterbacks past include Rick Mirer, Craig Krenzel and Henry Buriss.

And after Romo completed as many touchdowns to Bears players as current Chicago quarterback Jay Cutler did, he is looking like a prime candidate to be losing turnover battles in a Bears uniform in 4-5 years.

This play-doh like face still gives me nightmares.

To grade his audition as the future disappointment of Chicago quarterbacks, I called in Don Mccarthy - self-published movie critic and former casting director responsible for casting the roles of Sinbad as the postal employee in Jingle All The Way, 80's singer Tiffany in the Syfy film Mega Python vs. Gatoroid, and Robert Helpmann as the "Kid Catcher" in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. 

Seeing as I just created this casting director in my head, he was extremely eager to join me for a review of Romo's Monday night audition tape.  Are you ready for some callbacks?



Don: So what kind of role are we casting here?

Me:  Well, the future Bears quarterback should be someone who can give fans a false sense of control and arrogance, only so he can continually toss that unjustified belief into the wide open hands of a defender.

Don:  Ok, and has this role ever been played before, in a prequel of some sort?

Me:  This role has been filled just about every year since the kids were bopping in the dance halls (or since that phrase was last used).

Don: Alright, roll the tape.

After rolling clips from pre-game warm-ups and the coin toss, Mccarthy quickly cut into the soul of Romo and the motivation evident behind his performance.

Don:  He appears to be reaching a bit.  I don't want to throw the word over-acting about this soon, but all this hyper-anxious smiling looks a little forced to me.  Clearly he cannot be that happy at the prospect of being chased around by these behemoths attempting to dislodge his head from the rest of his body.

Me:  He likes to pretend he is.

After Romo throws his first interception...

Don:  I definitely admire his dedication to the character.  He is verging on a Day-Lewis like method acting by continuing to gain the crowds adoration and optimism only to accept their ire mere seconds later.  His commitment to placing the ball directly in the opponents hands is really quite transcendent.  See how he has made the character his own?

Me:  I think the joke has gone long enough and you should be goi-.....

Don:  He's transformed the charcter into the anti-hero the public obviously would love to focus their collective hate toward.

After throwing another interception that is returned for a Bears touchdown.

Don:  Just as you start to believe in him again, he expertly brings you back down again and completely breaks your will.  The allusions to a typical Shakespearean tragedy abound!

Me:  Are you still here?

Don:  The ineptitude of someone in a position of control and power strikes as an apt metaphor to the incompetent talking heads, politicians and beer league softball coaches we encounter everyday.

After Romo's 5th interception of the night and benching for the remainder of the game.

Don (wiping back what may be tears):  Welp, he nailed it.   Exactly what you are looking for in a Bears quarterback that will crush your soul.  I haven't been this sure in casting a role since I pegged Alf as the lead in Alf.

Me:  Please leave my house.

I wish he had taken over the Tonight Show from Carson.

How to Shake It in America

More difficult accomplishment: winning gold in the decathlon or surviving a Kardashian Thanksgiving dinner?

With the Olympic's kicking off tonight, I am writing this post as a call to arms for our American athletes to stand for something again.  Iconic images like Tommie Smith and John Carlos giving a black power salute at the 1968 Olympics and Bruce Jenner celebrating a successful squeezing into of his gym shorts used to dominate Olympics coverage.  Now it seems to be a focus on British accents and US basketball games against Angola.  Those iconic images are moving, inspirational and lasting, but I am making a plea to our athletes to hijack the limelight for ulterior reasons.

O say can we reinforce to the world, that we are still as over-the-top, loud and obnoxious as ever.  Let's dominate these games in the category of tasteless and disrespectful xenophobia - that could be our new rallying cry.  Listen, it's not that we are the best, it is just that the rest of you countries are so comically far behind us in the overt self-confidence medal race that we stay up at night laughing into our personal homemade cotton candy machines.

Take Apollo Creed for example - he had spirit (until Dolph beat it out of him).  He hired James Brown to sing a song specifically for his entrance to the Dolph fight.  And this scene totally nails what it is like "Livin' in America" for any foreign viewers. Yes, we all have finely groomed mustaches, dress like Uncle Sam (during his stripping to put himself through college days) and force our friends to wear "boss" sweatshirts.  Following in Apollo's footsteps, I would love to see top Olympic Archery hopeful Brady Ellison work up a similar routine.  Possibly he could update the act and walk out to a Jeezy beat about "Hustlin' in America," while he fires off a couple roman candles from his bow.  In the interest of full disclosure, I would hope that Brady doesn't end up being pummeled to death by a steroid-built Russian while his coach and best friend stand idly by.  But even if it does end for Brady in that ironically similar way, I would be proud to call him a fellow American for once again putting our arrogance and over-production capabilities back on top. 

3 Dead in Crowdsurfing Incident at Rock Fest: a Dubuque Geology Conference

 WHATWWhat

Ironically, this person misspelled Einstein, might as well have gone with Ein-stone?

The horror that played out at this year's geology conference, "Rock Fest," seemed all too similar to every geology-themed horror movie ever made, a la Dante's Peak or Probably one episode of Bill Nye.  Death, booze and plate tectonics all played a part in the annual boulder brouhaha.

Investigators point to a simple misunderstanding of homonyms as the root cause of the tragedy.  The deceased, Alistair Honey, Moonbeam Zappa and Greg, all were self-identified "star-children of rock n' roll," according to leaked Facebook records.  Friends explained that the three were always in search of the next big rock n' roll festival, which led them to attending festivals in the past year which included Forecastle, Bonnaroo, and their final adventure: Rock Fest.

However, as fate would have it, Rock Fest has little to do with music and sound, aside from 3-hour symposiums on the vibrations and sounds recorded during the 1906 San Francisco earthquake.

Above is the complimentary 3-day pass bracelet of rare igneous rock, that is sure to be worn by all attendees at least until next year's conference.

Following in typical music festival rituals the three misplaced attendees imbibed heavily on liquor they snuck past the non-existent guards in various receptacles (evidence of these receptacles shows the culprits to be ziploc bags, watermelons, and water balloons).  Once heavily inebriated, and confused by the complete lack of music, the outdoors, stages, shirtless people, and tie-dye, they had a noticeable change of heart.

"We were neckties deep in a debate between leading collectors of igneous and sedimentary rocks, when a strange happening began taking place in the front of the auditorium," said 9-time conference-goer Rick Little.  Video shows an angry Greg angrily tossing down the frisbee he and his cohorts had been flinging.  "FREEEEEE-BIRRRRRRRD!" Greg spit out, much to the enjoyment of his friends.

The three music-starved men began chanting the most cliched concert-call they could imagine in the hopes that music would be the professors only response.

What the geologists hope they look like.

"They continued chanting until it became apparent to even their booze-soaked brains that Richter Scale, wasn't an up-and-coming art-rock band, and that they in fact were at a conference for higher learning," reported Little, "and that's when they really got into the hard stuff....and I'm not talking about the Earth's crust."  Little faced this reporters silence to his joke with an quick redaction, "I'm sorry, geology humor, I meant drugs, by hard stuff."  

Once the music-fiends were dancing to the music in their chemically-induced minds, they followed the crowd to the conference's keynote speech on Pangea, which they misread as a set by heavy metal band Pantera.  "The crowd was really buzzing before Dr. Sanjay Andreas speech on continental drift, it might have been misinterpreted as music, if the music you listen to is mostly just the sounds of large crowds making small talk erratically and uncomfortably," said Little.

It was minutes before Dr. Andreas was to take the stage when Honey, Zappa and Greg hopped onto the stage clearly looking to be tossed off by security as a cool story to tell their buddies back home, a rebuttal to friend Shirley Greengrass being tossed from the stage at a recent Iggy & the Stooges show.

"We really never needed a single security guard at one of these conferences before," said head of the conference hall security Robert Zimmer, "if I had hired a guard, I would have literally felt no danger if he was blatantly napping on the job for this conference."

After running circles around the stage to literally no applause or notice of their hijinx, the three music-heads leapt from the 35-foot high stage to what they assuredly hoped would be the strong arms of a waiting crowd.  The men fell far short of even reaching the first row and died on impact, destroying the few brain cells they had remaining.

Howlin' for Boof: A Coaches Guide to Motivating Werewolves

That shirt was to Stiles what leather jackets and VD were to the Fonz.

Following the same layout as my previous post, this one will attempt to give you some insight to one of the most complex characters ever to plaster themselves across the silver screen.  Unfortunately, that character (Stiles from Teen Wolf) had only one legit youtube clip and it was one of his weaker scenes.  It appears that youtube was hijacked on the Teen Wolf movie clips in exchange for some lame reboot MTV version. FACT: The actor who played Stiles went on to direct half of the great episodes from It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia's stellar third season. 

So I instead turned to the third-greatest film character in that movie, as well as third-greatest in the history of cinema, (behind Stiles and the fat guy, Boof which went on to be the 4th most popular boy's name in Thailand in 1986, the year after Teen Wolf hit theatres) that character's name is "Coach Bobby Finstock."  For your consideration as the Nebraska school system's anti-role model, Coach Finstock's unconventional style of inappropriate advice, complete lack of basketball fundamentals, and questionable hygiene ethics leads his high school basketball team to new heights.

Attention: here is a comment on Teen Wolf's imdb page that needed to be mentioned about a story set in Nebraska.

-There are no palm trees in Nebraska.


00:04 - I am hazarding a guess that the actor playing Coach Finstock was Steve Guttenberg's stunt double during the food fight scene in It Takes Two.

00:10 - Master motivational tool - offer fried chicken in return for excellent basketball play.  That is probably an excerpt from Pat Riley's The Winner Within talking about how he used to motivate the Showtime Lakers in the 80's.  Finstock is clearly well-versed in the study of motivation.

00:22 - Good to see there's a coach out there taking up his mantle as role model seriously, he let's his player know that he is here to help.

00:29 - So much for that.  Solving problems is hard and requires effort that clueless high school coaches like Finstock don't have time for.  I see his point.

00:49 - I've been covering the IRS vendetta against the Finstock brood since my first year on my grade school newspaper.

1:05 - "I'm sorry I didn't notice, but I haven't been hanging around the locker room all that much."  A major implication that he usually keeps an eye out for his athletes going through puberty and reacting with a congratulations or at least a Hallmark card for growing hair down there.  I'd be upset If I were Michael J. Fox as well.  He had to sit through and watch everyone else get the coaches attention upon reaching their manhood, but Fox reaches werewolf-hood and all he gets is a belated offer of stale fried chicken.  Maybe if Finstock had the same attentive eyes on his financial statements he wouldn't be running into repeated IRS trouble.

1:44 - Tougher adolescence: being the fatherless kid in that story, who dropped out of high school to help out his crippled mom or being a fat kid named Boof?

1:49 - Notice the "No Students Allowed" sticker on Finstock's office window.

1:55 - He didn't need a third-stringer, but he does need a less annoying habit that doesn't involve him chomping down gum like Violet Beauregarde.

Shoop-da-Boof was Salt-N-Peppa's ode to this stud.

 2:20 - BOOOOOOOOF!!!!! Don't cry.

2:29 - He really doesn't have much pride in his job, and I can't help wondering if he is just in that locker room staking out who is going through ch-ch-ch-changes.

2:50 - I didn't think he had it in him.  But Coach Bobby Finstock just gave the best three pieces of advice I've ever heard.  Not only that, but he was able to stick a, "and everything else is cream cheese," in there.  BREAKING NEWS: not ironically "cream cheese" was in Finstock's word-of-the-day for toddlers calendar that day.

Fear and How I Came to Stop Worrying and Loathe Mark Wahlberg

An artists rendering of Vonn Mexico, my pet gnome/best friend/ editor/future secretary of the interior

After weeks of brainstorming (choosing on the first thing that came to my mind) and a heated debate between myself and the editor-in-chief of this blog (Vonn Mexico), I decided to start a new segment in which I will pick an acclaimed and influential film, post the first (or funniest) clip I find on youtube, then break it down for you on this blog with the wit, insight and depth that only a person like myself, who considers Fievel Goes West the major turning point of my life, can. I considered making the inaugural post in this vein Citizen Kane.  But fuck that.  Why critique the film considered the pinnacle of American cinema when you can instead critique the movie that Orson Welles famously referred to as, "The one thing I wish I had lived to see, with Arvydas Sabonis winning the gold medal a close second." (said to Maxim magazine in Marky-Mark's dream).

The year, was 1996, with the world still wrapped up in mourning the dissolution of the Funky Bunch, three years prior, Marky Mark Wahlberg proved to the world, he wouldn't disappear into the frosted-tips pages of boy band history.  But instead he would bring honor to the Wahlberg house with a powerhouse performance as bad-boy David Mccall in the motion picture Fear.  The following clip is one of the top hits on youtube.

00:01 - Unfortunately, I've never had the opportunity to initiate a shady meeting place on a random street corner/back alley/underneath a bridge.  People are always picking strange meeting places in the movies.  In real life it usually turns into, one person is to lazy to leave their house, so you meet there.  Or you take it as an excuse to get a corn dog so you meet at the fair.

00:08 - "Beat around the bush," cheeky foreshadowing, just exchange the word bush for, beat yourself in the chest with nobody watching and you can skip the rest of this conversation.

00:20 - Is Gil Grissom trying to out tough a tough guy?  He better start talking very quietly and furrowing his brow more if he thinks he can out Marky Mark the master.

00:26 - Gil sounded generally surprised by that.  What?  You insult me after I tried to put an end to your evenings of joy rides on joy rides with my daughter?  But you were such a polite, clean-cut and respectful boy the rest of the movie....

00:35 - It's go time once someone stands up straight out of their Fonzi lean against their overtly and economically unbelievable classic car.

00:42 - You better wait a minute, Mark is waxing poetic here.  "I'm hip to your problems."  I think he borrowed that psychology line from Freud like he used to borrow song titles from the Beach Boys and beats from C + C Music Factory.

00:50 - Licking sweet tears doesn't really sound like something you should brag about Mark. 

1:00 - He sure studied up on old Gil, if he only he showed that kind of commitment to not sounding so douchey all the time, he would be a likeable guy.

1:24 - I'm not entirely sure that's how friends are supposed to talk to one another.  Seems unhealthy.  Not once did you ever hear Bert telling Ernie he was going to rip his striped sweater or rubber duckie off and shove so far up his ass it would come out his enormous mouth.  Well, maybe that was off camera, I missed Vh1's Behind (literally) the Puppet special: The Henson Confessions.

1:32 - 357 Red is not a very imaginative vanity plate Gil.  The basic description of your 357 Chevy just makes it easier to fill out the police reports later.

1:37 - Are you intimidating Gil, or your left pectoral muscle?  Because there is nobody there to ogle your triceps.  If I was a neighbor on that street and walked out to that I would think he was having a heart attack vis-a-vis the SNL Chicago Sports Guys.  It's less intimidation, more infarction.  Was he ever considered cool?