Hey, she could have said "schlong"

We’ve been getting Allison ready for what it’s going to be like when her baby brother, Jesse, arrives sometime in the next month. We, of course, are having a homebirth, so we’ve been telling her how mommy is going to be yelling and crying and making grunting noises, but that she’ll be okay because she’s just pushing Jesse out of her belly. Beyond that, we’re preparing her for what it’s going to be like with a new baby in the house, mainly the idea that he’s going to cry a lot and mommy is going to be giving him milk (which Allison calls “mooky”) to make him feel better. For the longest time Allison, who has been weaned for months now, kept telling us that she was going to share mooky with Jesse; “Jesse get ‘dis side and I get ‘dis side.” But we’ve finally gotten her to realize that, no, Jesse gets both sides and Allison gets chocolate milk and macaroni and smoothies and granola bars and yogurt raisins and stuff like that.

The one last thing we’ve been preparing her for is how Jesse is going to look different than she does, because Jesse is a boy and Allison is a girl. So we tell her, “You have a tushy, but Jesse is going to have a penis.” (I don’t know why we euphemized the girl parts and not the boy parts. “Penis” is just a cuter word than “vagina” I guess.) So she’s gotten really good at understanding the differences between boys and girls – since mommy is a girl, she has a tushy, but daddy and Jesse have a penis.

Well it was bound to happen eventually. I was at the playground with Allison a few days ago. She was on the swings when this older girl (four or five I guess) came over and wanted to give her a push. Pretty soon they were playing and talking and Allison told her she had a baby brother named Jesse. The girl brought Allison over to see her own baby sister who was sitting in her detachable car seat on one of the benches. Her mom was there and the little girl told her all about how Allison has a baby brother. I clarified and said, “Well, almost. He’s going to come out sometime around Christmas.” The mom… I’m sorry, let me clarify… the very hot mom and I started talking about all the stupid random things parents talk about, laughing and joking and whatnot while Allison and her daughter ran around playing together.

Well at one point they came back to look at the baby again and Allison said, “That’s your brother.” I corrected her, telling her that that was the girl’s sister because she was a girl. I then made the mistake of adding on, “But Jesse is going to be your brother because he is a boy.”

Do you already know where I’m going with this? Allison, well coached at this point, looked up at the mom (don’t forget, she was quite hot) and told her, “Jesse has a penis and daddy has a penis.”

The hot mom nodded her head and said the only thing a hot mom can say after receiving that type of information, “Um… oh… well… good…”

I think I handled myself well though. Rather than get embarrassed, or scold Allison for something that, let’s face it, we’ve been putting into her head and praising her for when she says it back to us, I looked the hot mom dead in the eye, and with no sense of irony whatsoever, said, “Yeah, you know, important information to have.”

Important information to have??? I’ve had several days to think over that response, and as dumb as it sounded at the time I have not been able to think of a better one that wouldn’t make it seem like I was trying to cover up some kind of illicit incestual pedophilia going on at home. Deadpan acknowledgement (of the fact that we were passing along important information to our daughter, not of illicit incestual pedophilia) was the best I could come up with. But you want to know what I’ve really been thinking about? Had I been a single dad (or a scumbag husband for that matter) and she had been a single mom (or again, I had just been a scumbag who didn’t care), I think I could have used that embarrassing little exchange as an icebreaker to try and… what’s the phrase they’re using these days… oh yeah – hit that. I really think it would have worked. I think if I was ever in that position where I was actually using my kid to pick up chicks, I would make sure to coach them so they’d just bring up penises in conversation. Mind you, I always have been a total dork when it comes to picking up women, so I’m not sure what my follow up line would have been to the whole tour de force “important information” opener. But hey, at least I’d have had a foothold.

Am I right ladies? Yeah you know it.

After three years of Guess-ing

It looks like this website is finally starting to earn its keep. I’ve just landed a gig with Campus Talk Magazine, the first one to come as a direct result of Hey-Guess-What.com. I got an e-mail the other night from the editor in chief of the mag who had seen my stuff on Hey Guess What and wanted to know if I’d be interested in writing for them. Apparently she had read, specifically, my column Placenta Cordon Bleu and wanted me to write a funny piece about how to make placenta stew. So I spent a couple hours cranking something out yesterday afternoon. She liked it, and asked me to become a regular contributor! Who’d’a thought this silly ole website and a very disgusting practice would lead to something?

The magazine is currently distributed across college campuses in Florida but it’s about to go nationwide in February and will be reaching over a millions readers a month! Which is quite a lot more than I ever reached in the past I’m sure. So if you’re a college student or if you work on a college campus, watch out for it at your student union.

Impressionable songs

It's funny how powerful first impressions of certain songs can be, and how long they can stick with you. There are certain songs that, whenever I hear them, I remember exactly where I was and what my general state of mind was the first time I heard them. "When I Come Around" by Green Day will always make me think of Winter Carnival my junior year of high school, outside at night with twenty other friends building a big Winnie the Pooh snow sculpture. "You Spin Me Like a Record" by Dead or Alive will always remind me of the bar I worked at when I first moved to Los Angeles, and the cheesy 80's cover band that always sang it as their finale.

But what's really funny about first impressions is how they sometimes just can't allow you to think of a particular song any other way - like when hear a song that is actually a cover of an older song. You get so used to hearing the new version that when you actually hear the original, the one most of the rest of the world recognizes as the "true" version, you can't help but think that the original sounds, well... weird. For the longest time, I only knew the Sheryl Crow version of Led Zeppelin's "D'yer Ma'ker." When I finally heard the original version, I at least knew enough to keep my mouth shut about the fact that I liked the Sheryl Crow version better. That rightly would have been considered sacrilege by the classic rock loving people I grew up with. Fortunately, I managed to get past that first impression. Others stick with me to this day.

At the beginning of Offspring's song, "Pretty Fly for a White Guy" some weird German guy says the nonsensical phrase, "Gunter glieben glauchen globen." This clip was actually taken from an earlier song, "Rock of Ages" by Def Leopard. I'm sure when most hair metal fans heard that clip in the Offspring song, they were like, "Hey those bastards ripped off Def Leopard." But never having heard that particular song previous to "Pretty Fly for a White Guy", I will always associate the phrase with Offspring. On those occasions when "Rock of Ages" comes on the radio, it always seems strange to hear that funny German voice and to not have it followed immediately by, "Give it to me baby! UH HUH, UH HUH!" But I almost have an excuse for that one. It's not just first impressions. I legitimately hear the Offspring song on the radio way more than I hear "Rock of Ages."

One song that I don't have the luxury of that kind of excuse is "Under Pressure" by Queen and David Bowie. Some of you already know where I'm going with this. There is a guitar riff at the beginning of that song that was picked up and sampled in the early-90's by white rapper Vanilla Ice in his one hit wonder "Ice Ice Baby". Once again, my first impression of that particular guitar lick was from "Ice Ice Baby." And like every other white pubescent male of that time, I loved that song, knew all the lyrics, and was too dumb to recognize the irony. So when I first heard "Under Pressure" two or more years later it struck me as immediately weird. "Whoa, that's the same tune from 'Ice Ice Baby'." But here's the really weird thing. I don't think I've actually heard the song "Ice Ice Baby" in... I'd say a good five years or more. And I haven't heard it with anything resembling frequency for a good fifteen years. "Under Pressure", on the other hand, I hear on a fairly regular basis. They play it quite often on the classic rock stations. But here's the thing, every single time the song starts, every single time I hear that opening guitar riff, my mind immediately thinks that I'm about to hear "Ice Ice Baby." It literally takes a fraction of a second to realize what a stupid conclusion that was to draw, and remember what song I'm actually listening to. But it never fails; every time "Under Pressure" comes on the radio, for a split second I think "Ice Ice Baby."

But even that isn't the most ridiculous first impression of a song to stick with me. By far, the most idiotic lasting impression I have is for "Für Elise" by Beethoven. Every time I hear this most famous of piano pieces, every... single... time... I insert lyrics into the tune. That's right, lyrics. And not just any lyrics. The lyrics to a McDonald's commercial. It's all because of The Wizard of Oz. Remember when they used to air The Wizard of Oz like once a year on TV and how it was always, for some reason, a big deal? Well one year, when I was still in elementary school, my family taped the movie off the TV, commercials and all. And one of the commercials that repeated several times over the course of the movie was this McDonald's commercial. Back then, McDonald's put titles on all their commercials and this one was entitled, Recital. The thirty-second plotline involved a little girl who was scared to play the piano at her recital. Her dad gives her a boost of confidence by telling her that when it's all over, they'll all head over to McDonald's. The girl, still scared, walks up in front of the big crowd and begins to play "Für Elise". As she plays, she sings along in her head:

How I wish I were already there,
Instead of here,
Playing this song.
Oh I would have a big choc-o-late shake,
And cheeseburger,
And also (woops) and also fries.

And I would eat
My fries myself,
And not give any
To my dumb brother.
Hands off, they're mine, all mine, all MINE.

Oh boy my recital is almost done.
It wasn't bad.
I'm still alive.
And now I can have my choc-o-late shake,
And cheeseburger,
And also (woops) and also fries.

She finishes off the ditty with a piano version of the McDonald's theme song of the time: "What a good time... for the great taste... of McDonald's."

I swear to you, every damn time I hear that song, to this day, I hear those lyrics. Fortunately, I know it's not just me being lame. And the reason I know this is because a couple weeks ago I was hanging out with my sister and said, "What do you think of when you hear this song?" When I started humming "Für Elise" it took her all of two seconds to say, "That McDonald's commercial from The Wizard of Oz." God love my sister, the first impression got her too. They really are that strong.

(((And my gosh, isn't modern stupid technology wonderful. Here's the Recital Commercial from YouTube.)))

Oh liberals, why are you this naive?

I GOT THIS LETTER ON MY MYSPACE BULLETIN BOARD TODAY AND READ IT WITH A FAIR AMOUNT OF INCREDULITY, SHAKING MY HEAD AT HOW SOME WELL-MEANING LIBERAL COULD BE SO NAÏVE AND CONDESCENING… AND THEN I GOT TO THE BOTTOM AND REALIZED IT WAS A LETTER FROM MICHAEL MOORE AND IT ALL MADE SENSE. SO I FELT THE NEED TO PUT IN MY OWN TWO-CENTS. MY COMMENTS IN BOLD.

November 14th, 2006

To My Conservative Brothers and Sisters,

I know you are dismayed and disheartened at the results of last week's election. You're worried that the country is heading toward a very bad place you don't want it to go. Your 12-year Republican Revolution has ended with so much yet to do, so many promises left unfulfilled. You are in a funk, and I understand.

Yes, but unlike YOU after the 2004 election, WE have not turned into whining little children stomping our feet and threatening to move to Canada just because things didn’t go our way.

Well, cheer up, my friends! Do not despair. I have good news for you. I, and the millions of others who are now in charge with our Democratic Congress, have a pledge we would like to make to you, a list of promises that we offer you because we value you as our fellow Americans. You deserve to know what
we plan to do with our newfound power -- and, to be specific, what we will do to you and for you.

Thus, here is our Liberal's Pledge to Disheartened Conservatives:

Dear Conservatives and Republicans,

I, and my fellow signatories, hereby make these promises to you:

1. We will always respect you for your conservative beliefs. We will never, ever, call you "unpatriotic" simply because you disagree with us. In fact, we encourage you to dissent and disagree with us.

Really? Because it seems like every time I actually get into a conversation with one of you people the look on your face ranges from disgust that anybody could possibly have such primitive ideas, to a look that I can only describe as pure childlike wonder or disbelief that there are even still such things as Red States and Red State voters.

2. We will let you marry whomever you want, even when some of us consider your behavior to be "different" or "immoral." Who you marry is none of our business. Love and be in love -- it's a wonderful gift.

Fine, no problem here.

3. We will not spend your grandchildren's money on our personal whims or to enrich our friends. It's your checkbook, too, and we will balance it for you.

If you say so, but then you might want to talk to such notable guys as Nancy Pelosi’s second-in-command John Murtha who has a rather pork filled history of his own. Or how about Harry Reid the Senate Minority leader who approved a bill for a bridge that allow the property value of his own house and neighborhood skyrocket. What about California Dem Diane Feinstein who threw 200 million dollars at Northrop Grauman for Katrina related efforts… just so happens that company is one of her biggest campaign supporters. Don’t tease us libs. I found these three easily after a mere five minutes on Google. I’m sure if I dug deeper I’d find more. You guys are just as guilty of wheeling and dealing for your friends as the Reps.

4. When we soon bring our sons and daughters home from Iraq, we will bring your sons and daughters home, too. They deserve to live. We promise never to send your kids off to war based on either a mistake or a lie.

Okay, first of all, have you actually talked to the men and women who are over there fighting. If you did you’d realize a good portion of them - depending on whose polls you read of course - AGREE with the war. And so your solution is to bring them home poste haste. Great, let’s just leave a power vacuum over there for the insane president of Iran to step in and fill. That will make all our problems go away.

And really, the “war based on a lie” thing? Are we really still beating that dead fictitious horse? Okay then:

"In the four years since the inspectors left, intelligence reports show that Saddam Hussein has worked to rebuild his chemical and biological weapons stock, his missile delivery capability, and his nuclear program. He has also given aid, comfort, and sanctuary to terrorists, including al Qaeda members ... It is clear, however, that if left unchecked, Saddam Hussein will continue to increase his capacity to wage biological and chemical warfare, and will keep trying to develop nuclear weapons."

That’s a quote from October of 2002 and made not by a Republican, but by a DEMOCRAT. And not just any democrat… Hillary Rodham Clinton herself said it.

Or what about:

"If Saddam rejects peace and we have to use force, our purpose is clear. We want to seriously diminish the threat posed by Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program."

That one was made by Bill Clinton himself in 1998 while he was STILL PRESIDENT, so if there was a lie, it was more than just the right side of the room perpetuating it.

5. When we make America the last Western democracy to have universal health coverage, and all Americans are able to get help when they fall ill, we promise that you, too, will be able to see a doctor, regardless of your ability to pay. And when stem cell research delivers treatments and cures for diseases that affect you and your loved ones, we'll make sure those advances are available to you and your family, too.

That’s great. Government regulated health care. I’m sure that will run just as smoothly and efficiently as those other departments you run. Considering how long it takes and how many different forms I have to fill out and how many lines I have to stand in and how many rude and incompetent government employees I have to deal with just to get a DRIVERS LICENSE, I’m looking forward to the day when I need to go through you people to get chemo or a heart transplant.

6. Even though you have opposed environmental regulation, when we clean up our air and water, we, the Democratic majority, will let you, too, breathe the cleaner air and drink the purer water.

See now you all CLAIM to be pro-environment and I encourage that and I agree that the Bush administration has not been the environment’s best friend. But in multiple Google searches of appropriate keywords, I really don’t see you offering any actual SOLUTIONS to how you’re actually going to FIX things. The Kyoto Treaty and “alternative energy” are the only buzzwords I really hear you talking about, which strike me as rather vague “hooks” to lure voters and make it SEEM like you’re devoting your time to the problem without producing any actual results. But hey, I hope I’m misreading. Go to it.

7. Should a mass murderer ever kill 3,000 people on our soil, we will devote every single resource to tracking him down and bringing him to justice. Immediately. We will protect you.

Right, because all the terrorism in this world is being perpetuated by ONE GUY. And taking him out is going to solve all our problems. Fantastic. I look forward to seeing you apprehend the mass murderer and immediate extinction of radical Islam that is sure to follow.

8. We will never stick our nose in your bedroom or your womb. What you do there as consenting adults is your business. We will continue to count your age from the moment you were born, not the moment you were conceived.

But will you start counting the seconds of my age from the instant my head pops out of the birth canal until the second the doctor punctures my skull or severs the spinal cord in my neck? I know I was only “partially born” before I was killed but still, will you be counting then?

9. We will not take away your hunting guns. If you need an automatic weapon or a handgun to kill a bird or a deer, then you really aren't much of a hunter and you should, perhaps, pick up another sport. We will make our streets and schools as free as we can from these weapons and we will protect your children just as we would protect ours.

Machine guns, I’m right on board with you. But you know some of us actually use handguns to defend our homes from criminals who managed to find guns in spite of the laws you want to make.

10. When we raise the minimum wage, we will pay you -- and your employees -- that new wage, too. When women are finally paid what men make, we will pay conservative women that wage, too.

That’s wonderful. What a great cure-all for the poor of this country. I’m sure once that single mom starts making a full SEVEN dollars an hour, all her financial woes will be over. Maybe she’ll even be able to buy her little girl that pony she’s always wanted. And she’ll have you to thank.

11. We will respect your religious beliefs, even when you don't put those beliefs into practice. In fact, we will actively seek to promote your most radical religious beliefs ("Blessed are the poor," "Blessed are the
peacemakers," "Love your enemies," "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God," and "Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me."). We will let people in other countries know that God doesn't just bless America, he blesses everyone. We will discourage religious intolerance and fanaticism -- starting with the fanaticism here at home, thus setting a good example for the rest of the world.

Sure, you’ll respect our beliefs right up until the moment when one of use dares to intimate that there is bona fide evil in this world, or when we suggest that somebody’s decisions might be immoral, or when our child decides to say a personal prayer before lunch where others can hear in a public school. After that, respect stops and we become “intolerant” or “brain-washed” people who are “unable to think for themselves.”

12. We will not tolerate politicians who are corrupt and who are bought and paid for by the rich. We will go after any elected leader who puts him or herself ahead of the people. And we promise you we will go after the corrupt politicians on our side FIRST. If we fail to do this, we need you to call us on it. Simply because we are in power does not give us the right to turn our heads the other way when our party goes astray. Please perform this important duty as the loyal opposition.

Okay, seriously, ANY politician that gets as high as the U.S. Senate or House of Representatives has been bought and paid for by the rich at some point or other. Those campaign finances don’t pop out of thin air. And if you examine any politician, a good chunk of those donations are in large sums from rich people and corporations. But irrespective of money coming from outside, both the Republican AND the Democratic Parties are big money-making organizations FULL of corruption. Ever wonder why another party has yet to rise up and challenge the two standing parties? Because the Blues and the Reds have corrupted together and even though they are on opposite sides, they need each other to prop themselves up. So they force Green party candidates and independents off ballots. They make sure that no matter who wins or loses, at least one of THEM will still retain control.

You’re going to weed our your own corrupt politicians first? Seriously? Then why have you waited until now? If you were really serious about that, you would have done it already.

I promise all of the above to you because this is your country, too. You are every bit as American as we are. We are all in this together. We sink or swim as one. Thank you for your years of service to this country and for giving us the opportunity to see if we can make things a bit better for our 300 million fellow Americans -- and for the rest of the world.

We’re every bit as American as you are? That’s funny, the day after John Kerry conceded the 2004 election we found a graphic on your site indicating that we weren’t part of America all, but a condescending little place known as “Jesusland”.

Signed,

Michael Moore
mmflint@aol.com
(Click here to sign the pledge:
http://www.petitiononline.com/mmflint/petition.html )
http://www.michaelmoore.com/

P.S. Please feel free to pass this on.

Hey believe me, I'm not shedding any tears over the Republicans losing both houses last week. Personally I voted Green down the line. But my god liberals, I know you’re pissed off at George Bush, but why do you keep looking to THIS GUY for guidance?

Labels-n-stuff

Hey readers, if you look closely at the bottom of each post, you'll find something new. Labels. My blog provider just upgraded their technology I guess so I have access to this new widget. Basically, I've lumped each blog into one or several categories. If you want to read more blogs from one of those categories, just click on it and it will bring up every other blog with that label attached to it. G'head, give it a try.

Must-Fix TV

I wrote an earlier blog that talked about how I don’t really watch movies anymore. Well this one is about how I don’t watch TV anymore either. Like the movie thing, it’s not a complete and intentional fast that I’m on. It just kind of happened that there are very few TV shows out there that can jazz me up enough to actually take the time to sit down and commit myself to them every week. I don’t own and have never desired to own a TiVo, the first and most obvious reason being that I don’t watch enough TV to really warrant one. If there’s something I’m not going to be able to watch when it’s on, I’ve got a VCR that I still know how to program. People say that if you own a TiVo you end up watching more TV because you can watch it on your own schedule. Thing is, it really doesn’t bother me that I don’t watch TV. Like with movies, I have a hard time committing myself to sit down and watch for an hour or two at a time… much less several times per week. There’s not much on that I want to see that badly anyway. I wrote off Reality TV and game shows WAY back when they first started picking up steam around the millennium, so I’ve never felt any urge whatsoever to see who got voted off the island, what Simon said to somebody when they sang their song, or what some fat person wept about on the treadmill this week. I could give a damn about any sports, so that’s not keeping me glued to my set. And as far as Primetime TV, there are just very few shows that attract and then keep my interest.

I’m not saying it’s because TV has gotten worse in the last few years. If you don’t factor in reality TV, I’m sure most of the programming is just as good, if not better than it was several years ago when I was watching a lot of TV. And it’s not like I was ever committed to the highest quality programming anyway. During the 1999-2000 TV season, the only show I didn’t miss a single episode of was Dawson’s Creek… But you can just shut up because it was the Pacey/Joey season and the sexual tension was just freakin cool. The only show I watch these days with anything approaching that kind of loyalty is LOST. I’ve been with this one since the beginning and have been very dedicated to it. But I know this one is a ticking time bomb. It has until maybe the end of this season before J.J. Abrams, the creator, gets bored with it and moves onto other projects, letting it languish and suck, the way he did with Alias. But right now, none of that matters. LOST is on hiatus until mid-February. So I don’t know what I’m going to watch between now and then.

I’m sure there are plenty of great shows on, but none of them make me want to commit myself to an hour or more every week. All the commercials just seem the same to me. Besides the various cookie-cutter Law & Order and CSI incarnations, even the shows that I hear everybody raving about appear to be nothing more than business as usual. They come up with some kind of catchy idea that will hook people and then they try to build an entire series around that idea. Unfortunately most show runners aren’t creative enough to look beyond the first season or two so once you get into the third, fourth and beyond, it becomes obvious they’re pulling ideas out of their ass, just reaching for new and different twists that will keep people watching. The most obvious example of this was last year’s Prison Break. From what I heard the original idea for this story was for it to run as a mini-series, but they went and turned it into a full-blown series. Even someone who doesn’t watch a lot of TV such as myself was able to see the inherent flaw in that formula. Eventually there was going to have to be the actual prison break that you’ve been building up. And then what? Either the idea goes and goes until the audience gets sick of it, or else you deliver on the build up and then the whole original premise of your show changes.

I have been burned by so many TV shows that do that in one form or another, jumping the shark as they call it, that I have finally gotten to the point where I don’t feel like investing myself in something until I know they’ve made it to at least their second season and the consensus is that they are still awesome. With the advent of TV shows on DVD that’s pretty easy to do these days. It means I’m coming up two years later than everyone else, but that doesn’t bother me. Until a show comes along that really makes me go, “Now that is something I just HAVE to see,” I don’t see myself changing those TV habits anytime soon.

With that being said, this isn’t just a complaint blog. I actually have a solution, or at least a suggestion to the network executives. I’m sure this is an idea that has been thrown around before. I vaguely remember reading something somewhat similar to it in Entertainment Weekly several years ago when I still subscribed… which was probably sometime during that Pacey/Joey season to give you an idea. In the article they suggested shortening TV shows to only two or three seasons. Basically get a solid three seasons rather than a mediocre seven to ten. At the time I couldn’t imagine that working. I knew enough about TV to know that production companies don’t really make their money back on a show until they have enough episodes to go into syndication. It’s in syndication that the residuals really start to roll in. But you need at least three seasons and really at least four to have a shot at syndication. So under that way of business, the two to three season arc just wouldn’t work. But these days, with TV shows making so much money on DVD, I’m sure there’s just as much money to be made there as there is in syndication – the evidence of that being how Season One of a show will come out on DVD before Season Two even starts up on TV. So now I’m thinking that that two or three season thing might not be such a bad idea. In fact, it could allow us to do some new and cool things with TV that we haven’t before.

Here’s what I would like to see. Here’s what would get me excited about TV again. As I said before, the problem with most TV is the creators only plan for the first season or two and have no idea for what’s going to happen if the show succeeds longer than that. So to fix that problem, what I would like to see is a few new series that have been planned out, episode for episode from beginning to end. Basically, the creators have a story in mind that they want to tell, one giant arc that will be told over the course of 48 to 72 episodes. Even if the scripts themselves aren’t written, I’d like to know that the creators at least know what’s going to happen in each episode. Or at the very least, I’d like to know that they know how the show is going to at least end.

That’s one of my worries with LOST. If only based on the fact that I saw him do it with Alias, I don’t really think J.J. Abrams knows where he’s going with this show. I worry that all these little mysteries and all these little plot twists that have the TiVo and web geeks working overtime trying to keep their sites updated simply aren’t going to manifest themselves by the end of the series. I’m worried that Abrams is going to end up being another Chris Carter. I wasn’t a devoted X-Files fan, but I heard from several of them about how disappointed they were that Carter, the creator, never delivered on any of his promises to answer questions. These people had dedicated themselves to however many seasons X-Files ran for, trying their damnedest to keep up on all the conspiracies and the phenomena and trying to piece it all together, knowing the ultimate storyline was in the hands of somebody they trusted and thought capable and equally loyal as a storyteller. And in the end, Carter simply left those people hanging with nothing to show for ten years worth of loyalty. And it’s exactly that kind of bad storytelling that makes me hesitant to devote myself to any one show.

But how cool would it be to know a show has been constructed and orchestrated from beginning to end ahead of time? To know that plot points have been meticulously planned out so as not to fall flat or lead nowhere? To know that every episode is contributing to a larger more complex story arc, and isn’t merely being thrown in as “filler”? To know that main characters can and will be killed off because there is no need to worry about keeping them employed for eight or more years? With a show like that you would truly believe that anything can happen. And what’s more, you would know that it’s not happening simply because it was something the creators pulled out of their asses for sweeps.

Now that would be a show I would watch. Of course, a show like that would take a really special and gifted storyteller to pull it off, simply because that kind of storytelling has never been done before. Who even knows how to plot out and plan a continuous story arc that would unfold over the course of 72-hours-worth of programming? Well I have some ideas on that to help get the ball rolling. For the first series that follows this storytelling format, don’t rely on a bunch of TV writers to come up with the overall idea. Go to the people who are used to telling stories in long formats: novelists.

You know how they’re always saying the movie ruined the book. Well in most cases it’s not entirely the filmmakers’ faults. If you have a four-hundred-page book, it ain’t all gonna fit inside a two-hour movie. Judicious cuts have to be made simply for the sake of time. Well what if you didn’t have to worry about time? What if you could take all the time you wanted to tell the entire story contained in a book without leaving anything out? What if you could adapt the book to unfold over the course of an entire TV series? There’d be no set number of episodes. You simply tell the story until it was finished. And when the story was complete, the show would be done.

The idea came to me this summer while I was reading the Stephen King book, IT for the third time and I realized this story would be so kickass on the screen. Unfortunately it’s a thousand-page book that even a lame four-hour 1990 mini-series couldn’t do justice to. But if somebody had the time and patience to tell this story over the course of say 72 episodes… that would be absolutely amazing. And actually that book, you probably could get four or five seasons out of. I’m not quite sure how that would work since half of the story is told over the course of a summer while these kids are eleven-years-old and the actors would end up aging a little too much, but hey, these are just preliminary thoughts.

I really think an idea like this could revitalize the TV industry. It could actually get people genuinely excited about TV again, and not just the low-level excitement they get every new season. No doubt it would cause some major revamping of the studio and network system as we know it which is why I think the first move would have to be made by one of the cable movie networks: HBO, Showtime, FX. In the last few years, these have been the places with the real cutting edge programming anyway, so they’d be the perfect jumping off point. And really, if we’re going to start the experiment with IT, they would need a network like that where language, gory violence and sex aren’t an issue. I guarantee you cable companies, if you did this, I would pay the extra money for HBO again.

I don’t expect that any TV executives are going to read this. But maybe a young whippersnapper who is just breaking into the business will read it and sit on it until he gets to the top. I know change doesn’t happen overnight, but maybe by the time I’m a bit older and more worn out by life and actually look forward to my hours spent in front of the TV, things will have changed and I’ll actually be sitting down to programming that makes me excited to just keep sitting there.

WTF Wiki-guys?

I had no idea that Wikipedians were such freaks. To be honest, until about a week ago, I had no idea there was such a thing as Wikipedians. I'm currently researching an article about Wikipedia, specifically the people who spend hours upon hours every week writing, editing, correcting and fixing the articles that appear on it... for no pay mind you. There's apparently a whole subculture of these people who do this simply for the sheer joy of contributing to a collective mass of knowledge. And a lot of them apparently use the site the way the rest of us use MySpace. They have profiles with long About Me sections, they incorporate sometimes dozens of internet memes, they have running dialogues with other users similar to the comments section of MySpace.

Honestly, rather than horrifying me, the whole idea intrigued the hell out of me which is why I decided to write about it. But I swear to you, with exactly one exception, every single Wikipedia user who has contacted me about this article has been A FREAK! Either they want me to expose some kind of conspiracy theory they've formulated (which incidentally has nothing to do with the site itself) or else they're just all around suspicious of why I'm asking them these weird questions, like they think I'm going to expose them to... whoever. One particular teenager who I just got an email from two days ago has already emailed me back asking essentially why the article isn't published yet!

I really don't get it guys. I really want to be on your side here, but it seems as though the worst among you is representing the whole body here. If anybody is interested in being a part of this article, e-mail me through this site and tell me about your experiences with Wikipedia and we'll go from there. But please, for the love of god, don't make me hate the whole lot of you.

Christmas in Hawaii?

Back on our honeymoon, Lauren and I were young, idealistic and in love and decided to buy a timeshare on the beautiful island of Kauai where we spent two weeks. We're still young, idealistic and in love, but we've realized it is just a big old pain in the ass for us to get all the way out to Hawaii from Pennsylvania every other year. And especially now with kids and more on the way, we're realizing owning a timeshare all the way out in the Pacific Ocean isn't really for us anymore.

So we're selling our timeshare at the Hanalei Bay Resort in Princeville, HI. If anybody is interested, click on either of the links below. The timeshare is an every odd year floating week and we've already booked our 2007 week for the week of CHRISTMAS. So spend Christmas in paradise. Mele Kalikimaka is the thing to say after all.

http://www.buyatimeshare.com/Hanalei-Bay-Resort/Kauai-HI/Ads/22222.htm

http://www.buyatimeshare.com/Hanalei-Bay-Resort/Kauai-HI/Ads/22224.htm

Great Scot, now THAT would have been heavy

A few nights before Halloween, Lauren and I were painting pumpkins with Allison and listening to the Sirius oldies station. Well, technically Lauren was painting pumpkins with Allison. I was bundled up on the couch trying to sweat out a cold. As usually ends up happening during this process, one of the side effects is that my mind starts drifting in and out of the most random thoughts; some trivial, some intriguing, some downright surreal. It’s kind of like being stoned, though without that pleasant feeling of transcendence. Anyway, as this was still early in the night, my thoughts hadn’t crossed over into the truly weird category. They were merely goofy, “Huh, d’y’ever think about that?” kinds of thoughts. Well as I sat there listening to the oldies, my thoughts turned to the movie Back to the Future, which takes place mostly in the year 1955. And as my brain cells cooked inside my fever-induced oven of a head, it occurred to me that Marty McFly was really damn lucky he didn’t poof out of existence in that movie.

Now before I continue, I should acknowledge that I understand watching a movie like Back to the Future requires huge suspension of disbelief on the part of the viewer. I mean, time travel aside, there are various plot points that you just have to kind of go, “Okay, whatever.” I get that, so this isn’t an antagonizing appraisal of the plot itself. I’m accepting the rules the screenwriters put into place as is, as essential rules of the universe. So operating from within that paradigm, Marty McFly was still really lucky that he didn’t poof out of existence.



A little backstory for the uninitiated. In the movie, Marty travels 30 years back in time to the year 1955. Within the first few hours of being there he meets his parents, George and Loraine, as teenagers and interferes with their first meeting. When Marty later meets Doc Brown and shows him a picture of himself and his family, Doc Brown notices that Marty’s brother is disappearing from the picture. If Marty doesn’t fix it so that his parents meet and fall in love again, then they will never get married and never have kids and eventually all the kids including Marty himself will disappear from the picture – and from existence. It takes the better part of the movie, but finally George saves Loraine from a bully and they start slow dancing at the high school dance. But Marty is still fading from the picture. It’s not enough that they’ve met and are dancing. The two of them need to kiss because that is the moment Loraine realizes she wants to spend the rest of her life with George. They kiss just as Marty is about to fade from existence completely. The instant they do, Marty and his brother and sister reappear in the photograph and all has been restored.

As I sat there thinking about this flow of events, something jumped out at me. After Marty interfered with that first meeting, he didn’t poof from existence immediately. There was still time for him to put things back the way they were, because as far as the spacetime continuum was concerned, it was the kiss, not the first meeting that was the crisis moment – the nexus of events if you will. And evidenced by the fact that Marty was about to fade from existence completely, had George and Loraine not kissed at that exact moment, the event horizon would have been irreversibly crossed and Marty and his brother and sister would have ceased to exist. Stay with me here now…

Well, since it was the kiss and not the meeting that was the point of irreversibility, it’s conceivable that nobody would have disappeared from the photograph until that point had been crossed. After all, as far as the spacetime continuum was concerned there was still time to put things right. What if vanishing from existence didn’t happen in stages, but was an all or nothing thing? What if Marty’s brother hadn’t been fading from the picture when Marty showed it to Doc Brown? Would Doc or Marty have realized something was awry and known to put it right? Or would Marty have gone about his business not knowing that at some point a few days later he would just suddenly cease to exist? Without the picture giving them the red flag, would either of them have realized that Marty had put his own future existence in danger and thought to do something about it?



I don’t know. So I guess it’s a good thing for Marty the nature of the universe works the way it does.

That’s all. What you thought there was more? Sorry, this wasn’t coherent thought. At this point I’d moved on to something equally ridiculous. Be happy I thought it through this far.

Keep on sneezing if you want... or try this

Cold season is upon us once again. We tend not to acknowledge the common cold as something even worth worrying about until we actually catch it and realize two things:

1) Man, I forgot how much having a cold SUCKS.

and

2) Since everybody who doesn’t have a cold still isn’t acknowledging the it as anything worth worrying about, you generally don’t get much sympathy from well people.

The goal, as with any sickness, becomes all about getting over it as fast as possible. So we seek out remedies from the drug store aisles, the natural food aisles, the hippie herbal tea store aisles, and in this modern day and age, from the internet… my “aisle” motif kind of dies in “this modern day and age.” So with that in mind, allow me to share with you what I’ve found to be a nearly foolproof cure to the common cold. I stumbled upon this remedy gradually over the last few years and have found it to be – let’s not mince words – one hundred percent effective. No joke. If I feel a cold coming on and I do exactly what I am about to describe, the cold is gone by the next morning. Gone. Occasionally there are minor remnants like a minor bit of residual phlegm, but certainly nothing debilitating that makes it laborious to go about your day. That’s more than I can say for any other remedy I’ve personally ever tried.

Now I will give a disclaimer. I don’t make any promises that this remedy will work for you. I know for a fact that it works consistently for me, but I’ve never actually seen anybody else ever try it and get back to me with their results. Even my own wife, Lauren, who has seen the effectiveness of this process, has yet to actually try it out for herself… though in her defense, she still has placenta pills leftover, which seem to work just as well as a remedy. So if this doesn’t work for you, I apologize, but honestly I’d be very surprised if it didn’t work for a good percentage of people who do it and follow the directions precisely. As always, you should consult with your doctor before trying any kind of remedy… though he’s just going to tell you not to do it, so screw him. Just use your head, be a grownup and don’t come whining to me with lawyers if something bad happens to you – because unless you’re very stupid, nothing should.

Okay here we go.

My foolproof cold remedy consists of three steps:

1. CLEAN OUT THOSE EARS
2. ZINC IT UP
3. EMBRACE YOUR FEVER

I’ve found that the process works best the sooner in the cold you do it. Personally I take action as soon as I start to feel the telltale symptoms of a cold – chills, fatigue, general achiness – coming on. As soon as I get home, I mount my three-pronged attack. If I wait until I’m a day or two into the cold, I find the remedy doesn’t work as well. Oh, it still works, but I tend to have those minor residual symptoms for several days longer than if I had just knocked it out at the start.

1. CLEAN OUT THOSE EARS

Even though this is the first step in my process, it was actually the last one I learned about. I read an article on Mercola.com a couple years back about a theory suggesting that cold and flu germs don’t enter the body through the nose and mouth like most people think, but through the ears. They get inside your ear canal where they germinate, breed, get bigger, and from there they start attacking the rest of your body. So the idea is to neutralize those germs at their source before they spread. To that end, clean out your ears with Hydrogen Peroxide. Lay on your side and put 6-10 drops into your ear – basically enough to fill your ear canal – and lay there for about ten minutes, letting the bubbling peroxide do its work. Drain into a paper towel and admire all the wax that you just cleaned out of there along with any germs, then repeat on the other side.

I don’t imagine it’s a good idea to do this multiple times in a short time period. Peroxide is some serious stuff and it seems like repeated use would have some negative effects on the tissue integrity of your ears, so irrespective of whether my cold goes away, I only perform this step once.


2. ZINC IT UP

Forget NyQuil or Sudafed or Echinacea. The only supplement I have ever needed to fight off a cold is zinc. Zinc lozenges. The kind you suck on, not the kind you swallow. I honestly don’t know the science behind how they work. I don’t know why they only work by sucking on them. I just know they work. In my anecdotal experience, I have found that my fever tends to accelerate within the hour after taking my first zinc lozenge, so my own personal theory is that they somehow stimulate your body to heat up which in turn allows it to fight off the cold – which we will address in the next step. You can find zinc lozenges in the medicine section of any supermarket. Make sure you get ones that have some kind of flavoring to them because the tablets tend to have a weird gritty taste that leave your mouth feeling dry and tacky. I usually take a tablet every hour or two depending on how I feel, and always on a full stomach. Make sure you’ve got something else in your belly or you’ll be adding nausea to your list of symptoms.


3. EMBRACE YOUR FEVER

This is by far the most important step of the entire process. As far as I’m concerned the previous two steps are merely aides to this step. The real work of fighting a cold is done right here because what you’re essentially doing is allowing the body to just do its work fighting the cold its own way, which is probably how nature always intended it.

We have such a fear of fevers in this society. Fevers are always the most notable symptom of something being wrong and worried sick people start pumping themselves full of Tylenol or Ibuprofen and covering themselves with cold wet cloths in an effort fight that dreaded fever. They think the fever is the culprit when really the fever is merely a response to the culprit. A fever is what the body is actually using to fight off the infection. By taking a fever reducer, you’re actually impeding the body’s ability to do its job. So whenever I feel a cold coming on, far from doing anything to hold my fever back, I go in the opposite direction and encourage it.

First thing I do, since I usually have the chills by this point, is bring my temperature up by taking a nice hot shower. Then after drying off, I pile on the layers: thermal underwear, sweatpants, t-shirt, hooded sweatshirt, a zip-up fleece, heavy wool socks. I cover myself with blankets, put on my hood and, if I really want to go hardcore, I’ll put on a winter hat. Basically, I do everything I can do to drive my temperature up. No matter how uncomfortable I get, I never kick off the covers or peel off any layers. And then I sleep like this all night. Of course, “sleep” is a rather generous word. To be honest, it always ends up being an all around miserable night and I usually end up going out to the couch so as not to disturb Lauren with my thrashing discomfort.

The first hour or two is usually a dry heat as my body uses the fever to fight off whatever is inside me. But after awhile, the intended result begins to happen: I start to sweat. I mean really sweat. Once this starts happening I make extra certain not to move, knowing that any movement will aerate the sweat and cool me down. In this way, I allow my body to evacuate… to purge… to cleanse itself. A lot of people don’t realize this but sweat glands are actually part of the excretory system. That’s why you often feel gritty after sweating a lot – impurities have been purged from your body via the sweat glands. So in much the same way that vomiting gets rid of impurities from your stomach during a flu, sweating gets rid of impurities from your body at large. Again, I’m not sure if there is an actual science to back this up, but it just makes logical sense to me. Why would we have evolved the ability to develop a fever if it wasn’t meant to drive our body temperature up for some specific purpose? And what happens when our temperature goes up? We sweat. In my mind, when it comes to battling infection, the two seem like they must be connected.

So all throughout the night, I just let my body sweat and, as much as I can, try not to do anything else to cool it down. Not that I don’t get any respite from the heat. Whenever I get up to pee or to get some more water (because you do end up needing to drink a lot during this whole process) the sweat that has been saturating my multiple layers ventilates and I get a little bit of relief. But then it’s back to the pseudo-sauna I go. Now, for those of you following this process, let’s not be stupid. If you legitimately feel yourself asphyxiating or are otherwise having some kind of respiratory problem, by all means cool yourself down. No sense dying battling a cold. But for the rest of us, fight the discomfort for as long as you can.

At some point in the middle of the night after several hours worth of heat and sweat, I will usually notice a tangible change in my general well being. It’s hard to explain, but all I know is that it indicates that whatever my body was fighting has been effectively conquered and I just feel “better.” This is how I know it’s okay to cool down. I take off the sweatshirts and the hoods and the hats and just leave my base layers on. I usually will take an Ibruprofen at this point as well just to relax muscles that have been kind of tense from fever all night and help me fall asleep. It took me a few times attempting this process before I was able to recognize this “critical turning point.” Before that I kept the layers on all night just to be certain. But now that I am able to pinpoint the threshold between “sick” and “well” I can save myself those extra hours of discomfort.

When I wake up the next morning, I’m cured. I mean completely cured. My cold’s ass is effectively kicked and despite the crappy night of sleep I just got I practically spring out of bed from the noticeable change I can feel from the night before. I’m dehydrated as hell from all the sweating, so I make sure to guzzle water for the rest of the day. I also make sure to wash all the clothes (and sometimes the blankets too) that I have been so heavily sweating my cold out into all night long. But for all the lingering vestiges of the cold, a few hours of discomfort and one crappy night’s sleep are worth it to avoid putting up with several days worth of alternating cold symptoms and medicine-head fogginess.

So I encourage you to try it out this winter. Forget all those miracle medicines that often have the reverse effect of actually prolonging your cold. Your body knows how to fight off sickness. It’s been doing it for the last hundred thousand years or so. So all you really need to do is give it the extra tools and extra help to do its job. And that, really, is what this three-step process is all about.

Happy winter everybody!