Wednesday, January 2, 2013

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.

Tuesday, October 2, 2012

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.


Friday, July 27, 2012

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. 


Monday, June 11, 2012

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.

Sunday, May 6, 2012

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.


Monday, April 30, 2012

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?




Monday, March 12, 2012

It's Been a Long Time....

"It's not a dog, it's a (sweater wearing couple of) ferrets you idiot," Governator Schwarzznegggis!?xyegger.
Welcome back!  Not to whoever is reading this why would I welcome you.  But welcome back me, to the internet.  It has been awhile since you last held me in your sweet embrace of endless cute animal pictures like the top of this page and new videos of Jimmy Fallon as Neil Young.


Now that I've reacclimated myself to the web, I'll break down where I have been.  I recently started a new job fighting crime in St. Louis, while still finding the time to work at an advertising company.  It's a full-time gig with my days and nights split between being the moral protector of a city that turned it's back on me years ago and the software of Adobe.  As you can tell that hellish mix scared away one or two AT&T internet repairmen, who also apparent lack in the superpower of MapQuesting my secret hideout.

Unfortunately, these new-found jobs have kept me from what my parents were starting to believe was my vocation...sleeping all day.  I mean delivering pizzas.

There truly was nothing like my life on the road, which is what I had at the hut and Nancy's.  The people you meet out on the old dusty trail taught me many a thing about - life, love, acceptable clothing when expecting someone at the door and the isolationist behavior of the obese.  For more lessons, just read On the Road by Jack Kerouac because I was once told by a homeless man (who exists in my dreams) that the book centers around a pizza delivery man and his trials and tribulations with his addiction to Rocky Road Ice Cream.  Back to my purpose of this entry.

Here are my thoughts on all the cliched, yet well-intentioned advice I was given/experienced in my first month on the job:

-Dress for the job you want, not the job you have.   Makes sense.  Kind of a yuppi-fied version of Johnny Tsunami's fortune cookie that read "Go big or go home."  While most people mean this as a way to trick you into dressing like a 1930's British banker,  I take it seriously.  Considering that the job I want is a professional NBA basketball player, I end up looking like this guy at work everyday.
Scouts call my mullet less athletic, but still maintain that I'm less of a dirty player than Rambis.
-Be the first one there in the morning, and the last one to leave at night.  Fair enough, I can appear to be a hard worker and a team player.  But we can't all follow this rule, otherwise the times get earlier at one end and later at the other until your 9-5 workday becomes a round-the-clock job without the Costanzian under-desk bed.  Plus, I'm afraid of the mornings.  I don't trust the sun until I have seen it at it's highest point.

Ben Savage: post Boy Meets World.
-Network/meet people/be friendly.  I enjoy meeting people as long as they are not this guy to the right.  But some folk take this to the extreme.  I recently met a nice enough person, or so I thought.  After walking half a hallway with said new friend I detoured for the bathroom.  He deked right, noted my direction change, spun left and followed me into the linoleum plaza.  I thought no biggie, he must just have urinate as well.  But what he did was far worse.  He stood within urine-splashing distance behind me continuing his Rolodex of getting to know you questions while I fought to hide my extreme unease.  "Where are you from?" "Wow, your name is Patrick, I know someone named Patrick." "Why have you not started peeing yet?"  Well the last one was a lie, but I half-expected it so I made fake peeing sounds just in case, and also as inspiration to get started.

There are plenty more examples I could and should come up with about work advice, but this has already gone to long and you probably stopped reading anyway, plus I should probably get back to clearing the streets of the bank robbin', old ladies' purse stealin', garbage pickin' field goal kick' Philadelphia phenomenon.  Damn, I've done it again, confused my life with a Tony Danza classic.  Now that I'm in a Danza-state of mind, I'll leave you with this.