I'm guessing I'm one of the few people in the city not on the riverfront, where allegedly one of the largest fireworks displays IN THE NATION is happening right now.
Why ain't I down there? I'm a little under the weather, you see. I also just got off work and don't feel like rubbing up against 200,000 sweaty assholes. I will say this, as I was driving across the Murry-Baker Bridge, I did slow down in hopes of catching the first part of the show while crossing. Unfortunately, they started late and I only caught fleeting glimpses in my rearview mirror as I drove north toward my apartment. My American spirit, unbounded.
This year's show is supposedly among the top 3% nationwide. I assume that means top 3% in dollars spent, which for this show is $77,000. I can't help but think about other, arguably better uses for $77,000 in Peoria, Illinois. I don't know, but it seems like every time I go to city council meetings, they're in some desperate need for money. The library needs a large sum (probably somewhere in the area of $77,000) to complete a much-needed renovation. I can think of no better way to spend $77,000 than to donate it to a library, but leave it to John Quincy Public to blow it all on Black Cats and sparklers. Wooooo-yeeeee! Bright and shiny make loud boom, boom!!!!
I've never been a huge fireworks fan, obviously. Sure, they're pleasant enough to stare at, but no cacophonious blasting of gun powder ever moved me beyond thinking about how cloudy the sky is getting or how obnoxiously loud those one fireworks are that are just a flash of light. In fact, I hate those particular fireworks, almost as much as I hate dicks who ride motorcycles with no mufflers, and for the same reason. Just because it's loud as fuck doesn't make it cool or interesting. In fact, to everyone around you having to deal with the noise, it puts you smack in the middle of a yeasty pile of douchebag. So it's perhaps a good thing I'm not down there to see a top 3% fireworks display, which is certain to have plenty of those annoying fuckers, on the ground and in the air.
Speaking of which, top 3% seems a little ambiguous. What exactly does that mean, really? How rigorously catalogued are fireworks displays in this country? It just seems to me that tonight's show sounds better than it actually is. All this "top 3%" business reminds me of that heavy handed playground talk about "Hitler's list" of bombing targets during WWII. I have no way of proving this, but it seems to me that kids around the nation like to conjecture about where the nearest structure of national interest (in central Illinois' case, the nuclear power plant in Clinton) ranked on Adolf Hitler's List Of Shit To Bomb In America.
The White House, World Trade Center, Sears Tower, these were all at the top, undisputed targets of Das Fuhrer, but after those stone cold locks, there's room for interpretation. Once or twice a year, usually during those long, late summer recesses, Ronnie Miller would bring up Hitler's List next to the kickball field. The set up would go something like this:
Ronnie, to gathering group of peers all too willing to believe anything: Yeah, so did you guys know that Hitler had a list of places to bomb in America? And the Clinton power plant was, like, number ten.
Some other kid who didn't know shit, either: Actually, I heard it was, like, eight, or something.
The other kids, dumbasses all around: Whoa, eight?? Really??
Ronnie and the other prepubescent CIA agent: (somberly nodding heads)
So you'll excuse me if I ain't so quick to shit my drawers over this "3%" garbage. Hell, put a top 1% fireworks show down on that river, and you'll still find me here, at my apartment complex, with all the Indians who don't seem to do anything but congregate in small groups and have clandestine conversations that stop when you walk by them. Always very polite, though, the Indians at these apartments. Just a little on the secretive side.
Figuratively patched together with string and bits of old scotch tape, my ragtag laptop computer receives the Internet once again, through a patchwork system of tubes and pipes, directly from the Internet pit, itself. In fact, some of the greasy interweb muck leaks from open seams in the piping, dripping murky pools into strategically placed waste paper baskets and over-sized, plastic cups.
Internet use at this apartment has, indeed, reached levels of humor often reserved for America's Funniest Home Videos' crotch-shot montages. But, never looking a gift horse in the mouth, I humbly accept the current state of affairs as the gods rewarding my due diligence. I've been stumbling again, Arthur.
Forgive my delirium. You find me in an awkward stage of convalescence. I've been sleeping most of the day to stave off a sore throat and whatever other maladies into which sore throats often evolve. What's more, this psychoanalytical online assessment from Hello Kitty with its endearingly precarious use of English:
I did not work today. Along with feeling slightly ill, I consciously sought to release some stress before letting it get worst. I've been "burning the candle at both ends", as they say. Enough of that, is what I say.
Today I've taken advantage of my gorged iPod (nearly 8,000 songs!!!) listening to albums I got from Nick's (you know, Nick's) iPod. I also youtubed Warren Zevon's last performance on Letterman before he died. Zevon, not Letterman. He described never seeing a doctor for most of his life as a "tactical error".
Speaking of Nick, there was Internet speculation (concentrated to and disseminating from Nick's log cabin) that Warren and Nick would collab on a MySpace blog while Warren was visiting a couple weekends ago. Alas, this never happened. I know, first Syd Barrett, now this. You just cannot force these things, people. We're humble, frail artists that crumble like moth wings under the slightest pressure. But, please, continue to laud our creative vagrancies and pine after even the remotest possibility of a future collaboration.
Why did it not happen? Well, there was the Madlibs. And, of course, THE GAME. What's THE GAME? Oh, it's only THE GAME. This-is-your-life meets twenty-questions. The PBR probably didn't help matters, either.
What stirs old Big Bear from hibernation? To what ends do we find our hero lifting his self-mandated blog moratorium? Friends, it is one of MySpace's latest "improvements" that subtly makes creepy, online stalking just a little more convenient.
You can now find the following below any MySpace profile set to private:
"Finding your cock blocked by all these private profiles? Here are a few public profiles you might enjoy masturbating to," is what this should say. How did I happen to stumble upon this new feature? Looking for something to masturbate to, of course.
No, no. Simply browsing former classmates' profiles, is all. Please, believe me. I don't masturbate, anyway. How could I since I never learned to read?
In other MySpace layout news, I don't like the new menu bar. Can anyone tell me how to get to my blog subscriptions page? I can only get there when someone posts a new blog and I'm alerted as such when I log in, which is fine now, but what happens when I want to select from a list of new blog entries I haven't read yet if no one has updated since my last log in? Not having the option is driving me crazy. Please, help me.
This blog is now utilitarian, which is (if anything at all) probably how it's going to be going further. Don't be expecting no blog renaissance. You know what would really help my blogging consistency? Another terrorist attack. But I doubt I'm that lucky. Blogging, along with punk music and George Carlin, is dead.
Currently
reading
:
Players
By
Don DeLillo
Release date: 1989-07-17
I've been posting a lot of videos lately, which has got me thinking. What are my top nine most favorite viral videos of all-time and space, the universe and everything? After a little research, I figured it out, although I understand that I'm probably forgetting a few that are near and dear to my heart. Nonetheless, these are the first nine that popped into my head, and the lack of a 10th video should show you that I'm not too interested in spending any more time on this than I already have. So here they are, in no particular order.
Cursing Preacher
The line between hilarious and frightening is sometimes paper thin, as in this example known as "the cursing preacher", featuring a wild-eyed televangelist with a Drew Gooden hairdo. Note that in many of these excerpts, his Bible is open to about where you'd find the book of Revelations, a favorite among the bat-shit insane. Whether he's condemning your doomed ass or simply calling you a nincom-fuckin-poop, I'm glad he makes his preaching ass very available, all to a soundtrack by Usher. I just hope I never meet him.
Nintendo 64
A classic. This is a shining example of the inherent comedy within slow motion. Take nearly any bit of video and apply a little strategically placed slo-mo, and you have yourself the makings of a great viral video. This clip will only get better with age, as the Nintendo 64, a gaming system nobody should ever have been excited about, becomes more arcane.
Charlie Bit Me
No way this clip is even remotely funny if these kids are born and raised in Gary, Indiana. But life has a funny way of aligning the stars to create comedic beauty, and Charlie's British-accented brother wailing and scolding over a bit finger is exactly that. That really huuuuht is the new Boom goes the dynamite. (foreshadowing???)
Evil Eye Baby
I don't know which baby-themed viral video I like more, Charlie Bit Me or this one. What Evil Eye Baby lacks in substance it more than makes up for in laffs-per-funny face. The mug this baby makes is spot on. How does this baby know? It's like a dog making breakfast. It is unexplainable. I don't usually go for these America's Funniest Home Videos type clips, but this one is a cut above the rest. Bonus points for the fact that the kid is holding a Drumstick the entire time.
Crispy New Freestyle
This is the George Washington of viral videos for me. At one time, Andy Milonakis was just a no-name kid (literally, a child) who belted out one of the crispiest freestyles that could destroy any cypher punk bitch on the street. Sadly, we've come to know Andy as the 57-year-old irreverent goof he is today, who probably scripted all that crispy goodness beforehand. Still, like an abusive husband, I'll always love it.
Chocolate Rain
This one barely made the list. Don't get me wrong, it's hilarious, but the fact that it's been parodied ad nauseam and the guy who made it has used it as a springboard for other, considerably less-funny virals knocks it down a few pegs. If only he'd fallen into a deep depression and killed himself after the backlash of this initial train wreck. *Sigh*
Kubrick Audition Tape
There are certain people in this world who are so deluted, so completely out of touch with reality, that it takes one's breath away to bear witness. Brian Atene's stiffly exuberant pitch to one of film's greatest directors is testimony to such delusion. In it, Atene "humbly" paints himself as Julliard's most gifted actor. His proof? A portrayal of The Outsiders Johnny Cade, recently paralyzed and contemplative. For some unknown reason, Atene chooses to interpret the part of a quadriplegic young boy as a writhing, African-American migrant worker. It may be too late for Johnny, Ponyboy and Dallas Winston, but this viral video will always stay golden.
Average Homeboy
Somebody needs to put Brian Atene and Denny "Blazin'" Hazen in the same room to see what would happen. My guess? They meld to form a Captain Planet-esque superhero known for its incredibly vapid, self-aggrandizing autobiographical musings. Hazen is cut from the Chocolate Rain cloth. He's used his infamously leaked demo (please understand that this is just a demo) to further his entertainment "career". He has his own website that places today's Denny Hazen smack dab in the middle of a comeback. Unfortunately, nobody has told him you first need something to come back from. You get the sense that Hazen understands that his circa 1983 rap video is laughable, but something tells me Blazin' just doesn't get the joke. Which is namely himself, who today remains the most blazed.
Boom Goes The Dynamite
Oh, Brian. Oh, poor, poor Brian. I know how it is. Your first time on live television is never anything but horrendous. Fortunately, most of our "first times" are lost to posterity, but Ball State's poor Brian Collins' is the Pearl Harbor of first time news anchoring flub jobs. It will live in infamy forever, and where the Chocolate Rain guy and Denny Hazen fail to propel their legacies with follow-up virals, Brian cemented his with an equally cringe-worthy visit to the Today Show, in what begins as an attempt to explain why he is so terrible at anchoring sports and turns into a failed, slightly depressing plea for exoneration.
There you have it, the top nine viral videos that I love and have sex with without a condom.
I understand you're having a hard time figuring out who you are in this life. I offer the help of Kuato. Open your mind to him. Open your miiiiiiiiind.
Hot off the press: Sharing an article with you from 2004
I assume half my readership, roughly six people, are familiar with the movie above, Run, Ronnie, Run! It's a spin-off culled from a popular Mr. Show character, Ronnie Dobbs, from the '90s sketch comedy program of which the same six people are aware.
I love Mr. Show. I think it's amazing, ground-breaking stuff. It's both wonderfully crass...
Look, lady, I don't come down to where you work and slap the dick out of your mouth.
... and ingenious...
... but I've never seen Run, Ronnie, Run! It's one of those movies in that long list of movies we all have that we intend to see some day but for various reasons--Ooo, Licensed To Wed, lets rent that--you never do.
But today, perhaps some light shed on why Run Ronnie Run! remains on that list of mine. In 2004, Bob Odenkirk, one half of the force behind Mr. Show and Run Ronnie Run!, wrote an article explaining why this movie is a total piece of crap that took years just to be released straight to video.
In a nutshell, the movie was commandeered by the director who banished Odenkirk and David Cross (the other half) from sitting in on the film editing. The absence of the duo's comedic sensibilities, to Odenkirk, is the reason why Run Ronnie Run! sucks, and there's a section in this article that gets into the disconnect between guys like Odenkirk and Cross, who mastermind these terrific, if subversive, concepts like Mr. Show, and high-ranking movie executives.
[M]ovie executives have never heard of "Mr. Show". Ever. None of them. Except for the lower-level execs at pretty much all of the studios, they've heard of it and are fans. But all the top guys, these 50-year-old German billionaires, they don't know "Mr. Show". And they do pay attention to what goes on their networks, and they do pay attention to what movies they put out, and they've just now started to hear about, you know, they're barely gonna become familiar with Jack Black in the next year. He's a new face to them that just has never done anything before until this new movie comes out.
They live in Aspen, they live in Europe, they go to Japan and Australia, they just aren't living anywhere near the level that you and I live, and when these younger executives who are so excited about us and want to work with us go to them, the guy who writes the check, and say, "I want to do a movie with this guy," they say, "No fucking way, I've never heard of him." "Well, he's got this TV show, and he's done this, and college kids like it..." "Well, I'm not a college kid, and I've never heard of it, so you can't have $8 million. No."
...
People in the movie business don't watch TV. They barely know the top movie stars. They're very busy going to parties and flying around on private jets. They really have a lot to do.
I understand many of you could care less about Bob Odenkirk's rueful lambaste of the movie industry, but I found it to be an interesting microcosm of what's wrong with big time entertainment, or really big time anything. It gets to be so big, it's increasingly difficult to interpret and adjust to the sensibilities of groups of people you'd like to please, which leads not only to turds like Run Ronnie Run! but this...
... and this...
... and, dear lord, this...
It's not a cruel joke being played on us that movies like these happen, and it's not a lack of effort. It's honestly that the people behind these movies have no idea what they're doing is very bad. To them, The Man is a funny comedy, and it confuses them when it bombs. And that is frightening.
Hopefully, if you’re somebody who suffers from collegiate basketball’s March-and-also-the-first-week-of-April Madness, you’ve been sated by last night’s thrilling national championship game between the University of Kansas Jayhawks and the University of Memphis Tigers.
I didn’t watch much of the game (work, but doesn’t it always), but it occurred to some of us at the station that nobody really knows what the hell Rock Chalk, Jayhawk means, which is the KU chant.
The logos behind many sporting traditions is often maniacal and irreverent...
But the story behind Rock Chalk, Jayhawk is placid at best, utterly spiritless at worst. From Wikipedia:
The chant was first adopted by the university’s science club in 1886.¹ Chemistry professor E.H.S. Bailey and his colleagues were returning by train to Lawrence after a conference. During their travel, they discussed a need of a rousing yell. They came up with "Rah, Rah, Jayhawk, KU", repeated three times. "Rock Chalk"—a transposition of chalk rock, a mineral that exists in western Kansas and similar to the coccolith found in the white cliffs of Dover—later replaced the two "rahs", after an English professor’s suggestion.
So... it’s about a rock. Literally.
___________________________ ¹ My note: This is the first sign that the history of Rock Chalk, Jayhawk isn’t as intriguing as one might think.
Hello, friends. There’s a young lady I know who’s having some issues with a little thing I like to call "math". Maybe you know someone like this young lady. Maybe you, yourself, are like this young lady. Heck, maybe you’re the young lady in question. Well, for all you out there thinking that math can just catch the next train out of Dodge for all you care, I’ve got a little story to tell you that... might just change your mind. It’s about a beautiful, stick-figured girl named Elizabeth...
