This time I thought I’d make it easy on everyone and actually post the first chapter, so you have some sense of what the hell this is all about…

His name was Disco Freeman, and he had a knack for making wonderful things out of other things that didn’t seem so wonderful at the time but definitely had some potential. Some clowns make kids smile with balloon animals. Disco used vegetables. He worked quickly, but precisely, turning dark, shiny aubergines into bouncing elephants and simple carrots into towering giraffes craning their necks to the sky as if gazing into a brilliant mirror. Tomatoes and radishes bloomed like flowers. Celery stalks formed fluffy-topped forests. And half a scalloped apple became a curious ladybug with dots carved into its waxy flesh.

The dioramas he created kept the children excited and he knew an excited child always brought a captive audience of parents and other adults waiting, and quietly hoping, to be impressed.

“Looks good and tastes even better,” Disco announced to the meandering crowd. “Sometimes the simplest ingredients can yield amazing results.”

As his knives flashed and sweat began to dampen his brow, Disco looked out over the assembled audience and knew, right there in the parking lot of that abandoned miniature golf course, that he had some work to do. When Disco rolled into the scavenger hamlet ofMyrtle Beach, he knew it had potential. Only a few of the East Coast’s former tourist traps were still viable landscapes for his kind of commerce. Most of the locals had moved further inland when the oceans began to bleed oil and other toxic chemicals.Myrtle Beach, however, was far enough north to avoid fallout from the Cuban disaster and far enough south to avoid runoff from the collapse of theChesapeakeecosystem. The fish caught along the Grand Strand still looked back at you with only two eyes and never scolded you for interrupting their hypnotism practice.

“What does it taste like?” one little girl asked, as she waved her hand through the wispy fronds of a fennel octopus Disco had just finished carving.

“Licorice” Disco replied.

“What’s that?” the girl giggled.

Disco flicked his knife across the fennel bulb, carefully nicking a tiny smile from the octopus’s face and presenting it to the girl. She tentatively crunched down on the pale white flesh and instantly lit up with excitement as the vegetable snapped under her teeth.

“Yummy!” she decided. “What else can you do, mister?”

“I’m glad you asked,” said Disco.

Though space was limited in his food truck, Disco had always managed to create a big show of his abilities. The Plumpies delivery truck still wore the faded face of Dewey, the company’s chubby young spokesman spoutingAmerica’s once favorite slogan “Need to Feed!” in giant red letters. A picture of the actual Plumpies, the sugar-glazed dough balls oozing with enough chocolate and cake frosting to make a diabetic sweat on sight, had long been removed in favor of a sliding glass window that allowed Disco’s customers to watch as he concocted glorious recipes from the few wild crops he was able to find and forage.

Every landscape offered different treasures and tested his cooking abilities. He dried his own herbs and chili peppers. He made cheese and wine and coffee and flavored oils from ancient methods lost to time (but mostly effort and apathy). And he had retrofitted his truck with rooftop solar panels, charcoal water filters and a wood-fired brick oven that could make the simplest corn meal cakes taste like gourmet biscuits with a generous slather of pumpkin butter and a side of sticky, wild blackberry syrup.

“Why don’t you folks take a few steps forward and I’ll show you how to make a healthy and delicious meal out of just a few things I picked up on my way into town?”

The adults in the crowd were decidedly apprehensive, giving slight apologetic shrugs to the children trying to tug them up closer. Disco could tell there was something keeping them at arm’s length. That’s when he decided to fight dirty.

Disco grabbed a nearby saucepan and, after adding a healthy glug of sunflower oil, placed it on one of his preheated hotplates. To this, he added a handful of wild chives snipped into toothpick lengths, some crushed wild garlic, and a few smoked chili peppers he had canned in the summer. The entire parking lot filled with a mouth-watering aroma. Whatever their concerns, Disco was quickly massaging them away with the power of hunger. A handful of morels, a sprig of mint, a pinch of fresh sea salt, each ingredient slashed larger and larger openings in the adults’ armor of denial. The finishing blow was the delicate sea bass fillet that he held out at eye level for just a second before plunging it into the well-seasoned bath of flavor. Disco was pretty sure he saw one woman actually crying before the entire crowd rushed up to his inviting kitchen on wheels.

In reality, the food was still out there, but in the years since “The Great Undoing,” the people had either forgotten where it was, forgotten what to do with it once they found it, or just couldn’t be bothered to care. It all depended on geography and politics. Those who still lived in the bigger cities (or what was left of them) were more than happy to live off the subsidized food provided by the SHINE Corporation. As the de facto government and military for the devastated country, the SHINE Corporation had the power and the profit margins in place to make the general population believe it needed them for daily sustenance. Those who lived in smaller towns or traveled in nomadic tribes were more likely to be outside the sphere of SHINE’s influence, but the company was constantly working to expand its reach, sending out armed squads to “market” their special brand of cuisine. The SHINE Corporation produced one thing: SHINE, the Super Healthy International Nutrition Extract. This unctuous concoction had made them the third largest corporation on the planet, bigger than the GDPs of all but six countries. They even had their own Olympics team.

The problem with SHINE was that it was disgusting. Made from a concentrated slurry of chemicals, garbage and whatever “natural” sources were unfortunate enough to tumble into the collection tanks, the paste had no taste, no odor and next to no nutritional value outside what had been deemed necessary by the latest government regulations, regulations which were set forth by the very conglomerate that produced it. In addition to all that nonsense, it was also highly addictive. It was pale gray ooze with the texture of a damp sponge. And it effectively bankrupted every single community it touched. Unfortunately, it was also the only option available to a vast majority of a population that was struggling just to survive.

Disco pulled the sauté pan from the burner and slid the vegetable scraps off his cutting board into the adjacent compost bin with a practiced flourish. This signaled that the seminar was about to begin. The children in front looked up wide-eyed as Disco twirled the handle of a chef’s knife between the second and third fingers of his right hand.

“Cooking,” he began, “is fun. There’s a certain feeling of accomplishment you get when you’re able to make something that keeps you healthy, that keeps you alive”

He snatched a small round of bread from a wire basket hanging just to the left of his open truck window and quickly turned it into a half dozen even slices with his knife. As he finished, he sheathed the knife back in its place on the dark leather bandolier criss-crossing his chest and selected a flat-edged knife nestled a few positions below it. With this, he dug into a beat-up plastic tub of pungent goat cheese and swiped a scant dollop across each slice of bread.

“Pass me that ladybug,” he said to the little blonde girl who was now fond of fennel. As she picked it up, Disco made a high-pitched buzzing sound that made her bobble the apple and giggle.

Disco took the apple and, after another stealthy knife exchange, swiftly sliced it into paper-thin wedges that he fanned out on the bread rounds. Wiping his long, dark hair from his eyes with the back of his left hand, he reached down into a small satchel on his belt and brought up fingers full of a glittery powder that he dusted across the bread like stars falling from the sky.

“But more importantly, cooking is easy.” he declared. Disco pushed his cutting board towards the waiting children and motioned them to grab a snack.

As the children happily, and greedily, munched away at their sudden bounty, Disco raised his head and eyed the back of the crowd.

“I can juggle these knives, make my griddle erupt like a volcano and carve the most intricate fruit sculptures you’ll ever see, but wouldn’t it be better if you could do it all yourself?” he asked.

“Who’s got time for all that?” questioned a man leaning against the half-collapsed windmill still haunting the eighth green.

“Am I cutting into your spa time, sir?”

The crowd chuckled in approval.

“I think we can all agree that time is the one thing we all have plenty of in this day and age.” replied Disco.

And he was right. Most of the American industries so relied upon just a few years ago had since been destroyed or abandoned. The earthquakes and floods not only carved all new transportation routes across the country, but their cumulative effects all but crippled the communication systems as well. Government interference stripped any sense of checks and balances from the energy and agricultural industries, which left them ripe for failure once the fossil fuels dried up and the international suppliers suddenly became selfish. Mix in a few domestic environmental accidents, some political terrorism, a couple well-timed conspiracy theories and an awkward insult directed at a foreign dignitary’s homely girlfriend and there was the recipe for a societal breakdown that rivaled the days ofEurope’s feudal system.

It wasn’t so much that people didn’t want to build cars and design computers and discover new species. They just couldn’t anymore. The resources were gone. Brain surgeons became barbers, truck drivers turned to salvage work and anyone who hadn’t learned a trade or developed a talent soon became a thief. Or worse.

Being resourceful was what had built the country in the beginning, but somewhere along the timeline, the people lost the pride of self-reliance and turned instead to the temptation of convenience. Other countries made their clothes. Other people did their yard and housework. And machines, oh, the machines. They made it so a person barely had to wake up to seem like a human being.

Machines were programmed to make the coffee, cook the meals, wash the clothes, the cars and the kids. Machines answered mail, played music and built homes. No one could be troubled enough to even consider caring.

So, the situation came full circle for a nation founded on brotherhood to a society focused on self-satisfaction and back to a culture of necessity where individuals were favored for their ability to contribute to the greater cause of survival rather than their ability to be famous for getting drunk on live television.

Or something like that.

Disco didn’t put much energy into diagramming the past. He was a realist. He had his truck and his talent and he did what he could for the people he encountered. For the inhabitants of Myrtle Beach, that meant creating wonderful dishes like buckwheat noodles with a peppery chickweed pesto, braised rabbit loin over sweet potato hash and something he liked to call the “supersalad,” a combination of purslane, lamb’s quarters and dandelion greens topped with a tangy dressing made from steeped juniper berries, mint and pickled prickly pear cactus mixed with fresh grated ginger root.

The greens from this particular salad were, in another life, the type of things folks paid professional landscapers to destroy. Even though they were three of the most hardy, most nutritious wild plants in the world, an entire toxic trade had been constructed around the premise of eradicating them in favor of boring, useless lawn grass.

To accompany his meals, Disco served steaming pots of chicory root coffee and sage tea. He offered refreshing cups of water from fresh-melt streams infused with pineapple weed and wintergreen. For dessert, there were lemon verbena cookies with vanilla bean dipping sauce and a goat’s milk ice cream studded with ripe bearberries.

By the time he was done cooking and presenting this lavish spread, he barely had the energy to hawk his wares to the waiting crowd. Disco put on his game face, cracked his knuckles and raised his arms in victory.

“Who has the need to feed?” he bellowed.

The residents, having already been tantalized and entertained, were more than ready to partake of the fresh-cooked food. They wanted to take home even a touch of the magic they had just witnessed and quickly formed a line under the watchful eye of the faded visage of Dewey adorning Disco’s truck.

Disco had no need for money, having gathered, grown or been otherwise gifted the ingredients for the evening’s feast, so he traded his goods for information, stories and memorable trinkets. The dashboard of his Plumpies truck was littered with loving drawings and tiny toys given to him by satisfied and grateful children.

“What would you want for that fish plate you made earlier?” asked a skinny man in his early twenties, wearing a pair of cut-off khakis and a Batman t-shirt. His thick drawl made the last word seem like a dying fire siren, just one long consonant er-er-er.

“Tell me something I don’t know,” answered Disco.

“Alright. Did you know there used to be upwards of seven billion people on this here planet? But now, on account of the Undoing and whatnot, best guess puts us at something south of three billion.”

“I did not know that.” Disco stated, even though he did. “Here’s your dinner,” he continued, sliding the plate beneath the faded yellow logo on the man’s shirt.

Next up was a large woman who had waited impatiently through the last exchange for her turn. Her curly auburn hair jutted out from her head in every possible direction, looking like it was desperately trying to escape. The striped green blouse she wore was stretched thin and struggling to do its job and her hands were swollen from the humidity rising off the asphalt.

“You got any tacos?” she blurted.

“And what exactly is a taco?” Disco inquired with an impish grin.

“Heck if I know,” the woman responded, “I just heard the word once. Sounded fancy so I figured it’d probably taste good. My pappy always talked about that kind of junk.”

“How about some fried pheasant instead?”

The woman’s mouth hung open like a broken screen door. “Is that food?”

Disco smiled. “This one’s on me” he said as he handed the woman a grease-spotted bag from under the counter.

To appease the others in line while they waited, Disco grabbed a handful of carefully folded paper packets in a range of colors and tossed them into the crowd. The blue ones contained crushed, dried herbs and flowers. The white ones were pre-mixed salt and pepper with a bit of chili powder. And the red ones were actually tiny meltaway candies made from arrowroot starch and sassafras.

By the time everyone was fed, night had fallen onMyrtle Beach. The parking lot was lit by a few well-placed candles and the brief illuminations of scattered fireflies. Disco had taken in quite the haul. He was now the proud owner of, among other trinkets: a broken yellow yo-yo, three empty cigar boxes, a small wax-sealed jar of bathtub whiskey and countless stories about the people and past of the sleepy beach town and all its nearby neighbors.

The man in the Batman shirt approached Disco as he was wiping off his counter space in preparation of shutting down. “If you like, my dad and I could put you up for the night. We run the local saloon and have more than enough room for you.”

“Well, I appreciate the offer…” Disco’s voice trailed off, waiting for a name to finish his thought.

“Oh, I’m Parker. Parker Hewitt.”

“Nice to meet you, Parker Hewitt. My name’s Disco Freeman and I’d love to partake in your luxurious accommodations and general hospitality. However, I prefer to sleep out under the stars and I don’t like to be too far from my livelihood here.”

“Well, you could always park the truck behind the saloon.” Parker replied.

“If it’s all the same to you, I’ll just sleep here.”

“Suit yourself,” Parker answered, clearly confused by Disco’s preference for outdoor living. “If it goes too cold for you, there’s probably a backseat in one of them abandoned cars that the raccoons haven’t torn into yet.” Parker added, poking a thumb toward the back of the lot.

“I’ll take that into consideration.”

Parker started to say something else, then thought better of it. He stood there awkwardly for a moment or two before offering a lazy wave as he shrugged off into the night.

About two hours later, after shivering uncontrollably on the ground outside his truck, with only a woven blanket made from extruded strips of recycled water bottles given to him by a little old lady outside Syracuse in exchange for two fried turkey eggs and a small sorrel-seasoned lamb shank, Disco commandeered the floor of a 1999 Pontiac Montana, the only minivan in the lot that still had all its windows intact.

Yes. I’m back, up and running on the blog. I have been miraculously injected with inspiration to not die a horrible, unfufilled death in a government-sponsored cubicle. Therefore, I am working somewhat diligently on my first novel. I’m also considering publishing a book of all my hilarious Twitter posts, tentatively called “I’m Sorry Almost All of These Pages Are Blank.”

Until then, since at least 2 or 3 people have shown limited interest in my endeavor, I’m going to subject all of you to a brief sample of the ongoing book. Here is Chapter 17, in which our hero and his new friend have gotten drunk and are now being confronted by the hero’s sorta sidekick and the daughter of the friend, who is sorta the sorta sidekick’s girlfriend, about the fact that the bad guys are in town for some nefarious reason.

Trust me, it makes even less sense in context. Enjoy…

“Shut up,” growled Parker. He was slightly out of breath after spending the last half hour searching every drinking hole in the vicinity of the trade center for his inebriated friend. It wasn’t until he heard Disco and Ferris warbling a murderous rendition of “Go Tell It On the Mountain” that he knew where to find them.

“Did you make kissy face? Did you?” Disco asked, his voice shrill and somewhat slurred. “I’ll bet you made kissy face. You did. My little boy is all grown up.”

Ferris had his forehead resting on the plain wooden table that was riddled with empty glass jars. He giggled uncontrollably each time Disco said the word ‘kissy.’

The two of them were slumped in the corner booth of a tiny bar off an alley in downtown Turbine City. In fact, to call it a bar would be insulting to other bars. This structure was more like a walk-in closet with bottle service. The entire place was about the size of a typical family’s dining room.

Sure, there was technically a bar. It took up one whole wall and was comprised of a diving board, salvaged from someone’s backyard pool, bolted onto two sets of bookshelves. The man tending bar was an old Asian fellow with long, stringy grey hair and deep-set eyes. There were four barstools and two tables and if you stood between the tables and stretched your arms out, you could touch the opposing walls at the same time.

Parker hunched over the table, his palms resting between some of the glass jars and his cheeks getting redder and redder, as he waited for Disco to shut up.

“Parker and Betty, sitting near the sky,” Disco sang too loudly, “K-I-S-S-uhhm-S-S-Y!”

Ferris’s body trembled as he giggled again into the tabletop.

“Are you done yet?” Parker demanded.

“Ooh. Somebody’s embarrassed. It’s okay, buddy. I was embarrassed my first time too.” Disco continued, “Are you sad? Do you want a hug? Ferris, do you want to give Parker a hug?”

Ferris lifted his head slightly and stared at Parker’s hands. He blinked twice, smiled broadly, and dropped his forehead back onto the table with a muffled thud.

“Disco, I know you have to bust his chops, and that’s fine.” Betty said. “But can you listen for a second?”

“Betty, Betty, Betty.” Disco replied, then he paused and just stared at her for seven or eight seconds. Finally, he turned his head slowly back to Parker and said, “Kissy face?”

Ferris pounded the table with his right fist and just kept giggling.

“Rix is here.” Parker blurted.

Disco went quiet and a look of sudden recognition spread across his face. He looked down at an empty glass jar as if searching for the right word to use to identify it to a foreigner. “Okay. Wait a second, okay?” he began. “Just a second, okay? Just wait a second. Then wait. Okay. What?”

Parker sighed and looked around the bar to see if anyone else was witnessing this strange scene. The bartender quietly cleaned an empty jar and stared at their booth. Everyone else had cleared out once Betty and Parker arrived.

“Rix is here.” Parker repeated. “In town. He was meeting with the mayor at some sort of waste treatment plant a few blocks from here.”

“Don’t make no sense.” Ferris said to the floor under the booth.

“Yeah,” Disco agreed, “why or how would SHINE be in Turbine City?”

“We need to find out.” Parker hissed, leaning in closer. “This could be big. Could be a very big thing.”

Disco stood up, sort of. He rose to his feet and drifted back against the wall of the bar, but didn’t slide back down. He just stuck there like a napkin to the bottom of a damp glass. “Okay. Fine. Let’s go.”

“You can’t be serious.” Betty said. “How many drinks have you had?”

“Enough.”

“You’re drunk.”

“And you’re very pretty.” Disco replied, confidently. Then he turned to Parker. “Don’t you think she’s very pretty, Parker? Don’t you? Don’t you just want to go kissy-kissy on her face?”

Ferris laughed quietly.

“Dad?” Betty pleaded.

Ferris raised his head, completely this time, and looked into his daughter’s eyes. He slowly nodded his head and appeared to clear his mind and acknowledge what had to be done. Then, of course, he just burst out laughing again.

“This is ridiculous.” Parker grunted.

“I’m fine,” announced Disco. “Come on.”

“Yeah,” Ferris added, “we’ll take care of it. You kids go back to doing whatever it was you were doing.”

He and Disco looked at each other and struggled to stifle a laugh.

“No, no ,no.” Ferris said. “We’re just kidding. We’re fine. Really. You kids don’t need to be getting in any kind of trouble. I’m the dad here. I’ll take the lead. Give Disco some muscle.”

“Disco?” Parker spat. “He can barely stand up.”

“Shush now.” Ferris cooed. “Boy, you’ve got a skull full of fire for these SHINE folk. They know your face too well.”

“Yeah,” added Disco, poking himself in the nose with his own index finger, “shush now.”

Parker’s face went blank and his eyes darted to Betty who just smiled weakly and shrugged.

“It’s the treatment facility by that parking garage on west side.” Betty said.

“Okay, okay.” Ferris replied, waving his arms up and down as if attempting to quiet a nonexistent crowd. “Come here, boy,” he said, as he pawed Parker’s neck. He pulled Parker in and gave him a big hug.

“I knew you wanted to hug him.” Disco said, steadying himself and reaching into his bag to pull out the lion helmet.

“I did,” said Ferris, suddenly choked up. “I just wanted to let you know that I’m happy.”

“Okay.” Parker said, trying to pull away.

“You’re a good kid, Parker. You’re good for my little girl. And I feel real bad that I wanted Ronnie to kill you.” Ferris blubbered. “Sorry about that.”

“We’re good, sir.”

“Let him go, daddy,” said Betty.

Disco put the lion helmet on his head and suddenly slammed his fist into the wall. The volume of the echo surprised even him. “Sorry, Kim!” he yelled to the bartender, who silently shook his head and kept working.

“Don’t do anything stupid.” Parker said, pointing at Disco.

“Stupid?” asked Disco. “Stupid? Okay, hold on just a second. Okay? Just hold on there. Mr. Revenge. Mr. Shotgun. Mr. Shoeless. Okay? Just hold on a second.” Disco paused and scratched his head. “What was I talking about?”

“Finding out what Rix is up to,” answered Betty.

“Yes!” screamed Ferris, as he released his grip on Parker, “We will do that.”

“Great,” said Parker, who then looked at Betty and shrugged.

“We’ll stay here until you get back,” said Betty.

“Yes. You will do that.” Ferris replied.

Disco growled loudly for no apparent reason.

“Okay then,” said Parker.

The four of them stood and stared at each other as the yellow lights of the bar flickered ever so slightly and the distant hum of generators flowed through the otherwise stale air.

“You should probably go.” Parker finally said, impatiently.

“Kissy face,” replied Disco, smirking. 

And, scene. It doesn’t get much better than that.

Seriously. It doesn’t.

I’ve always been fairly competent at Jeopardy. The questions seem to be written at a high school level (especially during the High School Tournament) and worded so that anyone with a slight knowledge of the topic should be able to figure out the answers. Hell, if I can get most of the Bible questions correct, then you know something is wrong with the show.

That said, after watching today’s show, I started to think about my ultimate Jeopardy category lineup. Here’s how it stands:

Jeopardy Round:

1. Old School Hip Hop Acts
2. Marvel Comics Secret Identities
3. Kurt Vonnegut Novels
4. College Football
5. Buddy Cop Films
6. Dungeons & Dragons Classes
   

Double Jeopardy Round:

1. Star Wars characters
2. 80′s Arcade Games
3. Pro Wrestling
4. Tacos
5. Top Gun
6. Nine Inch Nails lyrics

And a Final Jeopardy question about Obscure Porn Actresses.

Tell me that wouldn’t kick ass! Come to think of it, my life experience seems to lend itself more to an episode of MTV’s long-cancelled (and greatly missed) Remote Control.

I am a simple man.

This may have already been obvious to some of you, based on the fact that I really don’t like people. Although there’s an easy argument to be made that most politicians only care about themselves anyway.

No, aside from all the uncontrolled drinking episodes, blatant womanizing, exotic animal smuggling and general need to swear constantly, the one true thing holding me back is my inability to shave more than once a week.

I watch these smooth-faced gentlemen prattle on about insurance exchanges and pre-existing conditions. Their cheeks glimmer as they engage in lengthy conversations on Medicare coverage and tax burdens. Never once do you see a mangy chin or sparsely tufted sideburn. These men partake in immaculate shaving regimens.

Me? If I shave more than once a week, I inevitably end up either carving my face to shreds or waking up the next morning with painful ingrown hairs all around my mouth and neck.

No one is going to take a politican seriously if he looks like a homeless guy dressed up for a job interview. I’m doomed to low-key jobs that involve spending great deals of time by myself.

Damn you, whiskers. I could’ve made a difference.

You know those horribly written and painfully detailed letters that certain family members feel compelled to torture you with around this time every year? Well, I just received one that outshines all the rest. Or, if you don’t believe that, then let’s just say I whipped it up in the past hour while watching football. All the stories contained within are false…except one. You figure it out.

Dear Friends and Family,

Well, another year has certainly flown by as quickly as Richard Grieco’s career, and 2009 was quite the humdinger. Allow me to fill you in on all the ups and downs, ins and outs, and comings and goings of our tight little clan. Of course, if you’ve been around Little Dicky or Uncle Trout at all in the past few months, I’m sure you’ve been regaled with all the drunken details already. However, you can be sure I’ll give you the real scoop without moaning about my three failed marriages and trying to mate with your upper thigh. That Little Dicky is quite the character.

Anyhoo, 2009 started off with a real bang as Edgar and I drove up to Rochester, New York to enjoy another lovely anniversary. In case you weren’t aware, Rochester is known as the “Branson of the North” and, let me tell you, it sure lived up to that glorious billing. We caught an evening show at the North Shore Dinner Theatre featuring the one and only Billy Ocean. Or was it Billy Dee Williams? I always get those two confused. Regardless, the chopped sirloin was magnificent. I highly recommend it.

In March, as many of you know, our year hit a low point with the unexpected suicide of cousin Wayne. After failing to get his franchised souvenir postcard route off the ground (we’ll always blame the Post Office for raising the rates yet again), Wayne plugged the exhaust pipe of his ’73 Buick Skyhawk and peacefully passed away from carbon monoxide poisoning. He was a lovely man who left behind two talented cats and an extensive collection of vintage pornography. I’d like to think the mixtape found in the car’s cassette deck, with its carefully crafted segue from Wham’s “Careless Whisper” to the Elton John classic “I’m Still Standing,” was less a cry for help and more of a message to the living that Wayne knows we’ll persevere without him.

And that, of course, brings us to the twins. What can I say about those two? Another year, another surprise pregnancy, as Summer prepares for boy #4. They’re all growing up so fast. Her oldest, the one they call Lucky, is now working as a bouncer at The Booby Trap and is nice enough to carpool with his mother when she pulls weekday shifts. Her youngest boy, Sherlock, finally made it to the third grade and has only peed his pants at school twice this year.

Summer’s twin sister, Autumn, is still trying to fulfill her dream as a professional eater. Despite being beaten rather severely by a hobo wielding a can of soup, she managed to place third in the county semifinals for the Mayo Sandwich Championship. Next year is already looking promising, as long as those infected lip grafts clear up and take hold.

Edgar’s son (and my talented stepson) Roy recorded his second hip-hoppy album as MC Thursday. The CD is called “Nothing Rhymes With Me” and is now available for download on his MySpace page or, if you can ever get a hold of him, he probably has a box of them in his trunk. I tell you, that boy gets more phone calls than Tiger Woods’ lawyer!

Then there’s my handsome Edgar. Most of you are aware that Edgar is now on disability following that tragic accident at that horrible child’s birthday party. While he’s sad that his professional party clown career is over, he’s looking forward to bigger and better things. Charges are still pending, but we’re thrilled that all those bee stings are clearing up nicely and he should be able to sit down for extended periods very soon.

As for me, my career as a victim re-enactor on reality crime shows still gets me recognized at the local market. I like to say that I have a face people would kill for! Oh, and I’ve gone back to taking online Portuguese classes again, just in case.

Well, that about wraps up my year-end wrap-up! Here’s wishing you and yours a lovely holiday season and looking forward to better and brighter things in 2010. See you all on Tuesday for Lingerie and Wings Night at the karaoke bar!

Dating Captain Kirk?

I think geeks might call that a

Conflict of interest.

]]> http://deadbeatjones.wordpress.com/2009/11/13/olivia-munn-to-boldly-go-haiku/feed/ 0 deadbeatjones Trekkie Olivia http://deadbeatjones.wordpress.com/2009/09/23/five-pseudo-ocd-quirks-that-control-my-life/ http://deadbeatjones.wordpress.com/2009/09/23/five-pseudo-ocd-quirks-that-control-my-life/#comments Wed, 23 Sep 2009 18:55:32 +0000 deadbeatjones http://deadbeatjones.wordpress.com/?p=338 ]]> Oh hey! Are you still here? Man, you have some dedication in you, don’t you? Or are you just too drunk to find your way home? I mean, really, it’s been nearly two months since my last blog post. Most folks have taken the hint that I’m an undisciplined, unmotivated, uninteresting writer who would rather spend his lazy summer days watching entire seasons of The Wire on DVD and snacking on EZ Cheeze and Ding Dongs than to even bother to put together a couple humorous, cohesive sentences.

That said, I thought I’d throw you a bone since you keep coming back to peer through the cobwebs and see if anyone is home in this haunted house I call a blog.

Honestly, I meant to write more. I just never did. I’m not going to make any excuses or promises, but I will say that I’m offering this quick update and that I have three other drafts sitting in the queue for whenever I get around to them.  By that time, I’m hoping that people are still actually reading things on computers and not just telepathically absorbing information. I mean, I’m not the most reliable person when it comes to timeliness. You never know what could happen between my blog posts. Heck, just last year a black man was elected President of the United States while I was too busy betting on college football games to pay any notice.

Americans are a crazy bunch, huh?

And speaking of crazy, how about those people with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder? What’s with all that hand washing, chief? Do you spend your days inside an elephant’s rectum? Or what about the folks who have to touch things a certain number of times in order to feel better about themselves? I don’t think that’s going to improve your standing at your fast food gig, Dorothy. Is alcoholism a version of OCD? Wouldn’t it have to be? If you can’t help yourself, that’s the textbook definition of compulsion.

Now, don’t start firing off nasty comments about me making fun of OCD sufferers (Unless, of course, that’s your OCD thing. And if it is, you should really stay off the internet before your hands fall off or your keyboard explodes.).  I’m merely setting things up to reveal my very own versions of the obsessive-compulsive lifestyle, albeit to a much lesser degree. I never noticed it before, but there are a lot of things I do covertly that could garner me some funny looks if I were a bit more flamboyant in my behaviors.

Just off the top of my head, here are five things that make me quirky:

1. Eating Things According to Size. This mostly applies to potato chips, but I’ve also caught myself doing it with pieces of fruit, popcorn and even slices of pizza. If you dump a bag of Cheetos out on my plate, the first ones I will reach for are the tiny broken bits. Gotta clean them up first. Then I move on accordingly until only the biggest pieces remain. Same with any kind of chip or snack food. Hell, just last night I sliced up a nectarine. I had eight segments lined up on my plate from thinnest to fattest. And it wasn’t a casual judgment call either. I studied each piece until I could determine exactly which one was next in line. That’s weird. But you want to know the strangest part? With popcorn, I do the opposite, eating the biggest kernels first and saving the runts for last.

2. Star Searching While Watching Film Credits. This one is a bit harder to explain and probably didn’t crop up until I started enjoying film as an art form…okay, that’s pure bullshit. I just like to watch movies, but never appreciated the actors until I was old enough to determine who I liked and/or didn’t like. Anyway, I watch the cast credits of movies and look for the most recognizable name I can find the furthest down the list. I may not be explaining that well, so I’ll give you an example: Larry Drake (Dr. Giggles) was in The Karate Kid as “Yahoo #1 at Beach,” a role for which I’m sure he’s quite proud. But when I say “Karate Kid,” you think of Ralph Macchio and Arnold from Happy Days, because Larry Drake was near the end of the cast list and also because no one knows who Larry Drake is. It’s a stupid game I play in my own head that probably arose from watching a bunch of 70′s and 80′s movies in college. But it’s also a fun way to find out that some of your favorite actors started off in really shitty roles. Hey, did anyone know that Tony Todd (Candyman) was in Platoon?

3. Goosebumps From Opening Star Wars Theme. This one isn’t so much a quirk as it is a weird Pavlovian reaction. I don’t care how shitty the prequels were and I don’t care how many times I’ve seen the original trilogy, I still get goosebumps every single time I hear the opening theme music to Star Wars. It is a warm and vivid childhood memory that will never leave me. And I have no shame about it. I will shed blood to defend my nostalgia.

4. Television Volume Settings. We have a fancy new flat panel LCD television that I take great pride in. We have one of the top tier cable packages that supplies hundreds of channels for me to watch, many of them in high definition. And we have hundreds of DVDs that I could pop in at a moment’s notice to view groundbreaking cinematic works. However, we will never watch that television with the volume set at 11. I just can’t do it. In the morning, I usually have CNN on, set at a reasonable level of 8. During the day, the volume increases to 10 or 12 depending on the channel and the environment. Occasionally, if the kids are being rowdy or if college football is on, I push it up to 15. And, for some reason, my Blu-Ray player is very quiet and needs to be set at 20, 25, or sometimes as high as 32 for optimum enjoyment. However, I can’t bring myself to set the volume at 23 or 14 or 17 or 9. Those numbers just seem off to me. They’re not even enough, or incremental enough or something. My television time must have structure…or else! Or else WHAT, I don’t know, but or else nonetheless. This one is definitely a psychological thing.

5. Tissue After Shower. This last one is something that I can’t remember starting, but for some reason I can remember a time when I didn’t do it. As soon as I get out of the shower, I grab a tissue or some toilet paper and clean out my ears and my nostrils. It’s a bizarre pattern that I got into at some point in my life and I feel completely weird if I don’t do it. There’s no explanation really. I just don’t like having water in those places after a shower. I could go swimming all day long and it would never bother me, but once I’m fresh out of the shower, I need to be dry inside and out.

So there. Enjoy your brief insight into my real life. In the near future (or some vague time that isn’t right now), I’ll be talking about things that have nothing to do with me and you’ll dream about the days that you thought you knew me better.

I’m such an enigma.

However, there’s a new phenomenon that has arisen from the incestual orgy of reality television. And that mostly unnecessary invention is: the commentary clip show. You know the ones I’m talking about, the “host stands in front of green screen and gets snarky over clips of other shows” shows.

Modern scholars of television will tell you that the “look at how stupid people can be” shows have been around for a long time. Classics include Candid Camera with Alan Funt, TV’s Bloopers and Practical Jokes with Dick Clark and Ed McMahon, and anything on Fox News that involved Geraldo Rivera’s mustache. And here’s where I make the crucial distinctions between those shows and the plague that is consuming my cable provider’s on-screen guide.

See, Candid Camera took ordinary innocent people off the street and made fools of them for the twisted pleasure of the home audience. This wonderfully unique television breakthrough was, of course, all douched up by Ashton Kutcher when he appropriated it for his celebutard retelling in Punk’d. The pretense with Punk’d was that it relied on celebrities to act as normal people, which they invariably never do. It was like one big televised inside joke amongst the LA elite, but instead of surprising a run-of-the-mill civilian who was just trying to put a quarter in a parking meter, Punk’d displayed such classics as Zach Braff vulgarly berating and threatening bodily violence on a 10 year-old for spray painting his $100,000 Porsche. What a dick.

You may say: But Mr. DeadbeatJONES, didn’t Dick Clark and Ed McMahon pull similar stunts on unwitting celebrities during their TV’s Bloopers run? Yes,dear reader. Yes, they did. However, that was in the 80′s when celebrities weren’t such fame-obsessed asshats. Pulling a practical joke on the chick from Remington Steele never ended in a fistfight. And the majority of that program was dedicated to revealing bloopers from television shows. It was fun to watch your favorite actors screw up their lines or act up on set. Plus, Misters Clark and McMahon were always cordial in their commentary. And the Sergio Aragones cartoons were cute.

Geraldo Rivera’s mustache has no excuses.

But let’s get back to the current crop of green screen marvels. The granddaddy of them all is E!’s The Soup. First appearing as Talk Soup back in 1991, The Soup is best known for making fun of the weird things that happen on television from the most obvious sources. They delve into daytime talk shows, game shows, home shopping, public access, entertainment news shows and all kinds of reality programming. The show is also known for its very funny hosts, including the Oscar-nominated Greg Kinnear and the current comic genius Joel McHale.

I don’t begrudge The Soup its success. I watch it every week. It’s consistently one of the funniest things on television. And, with the horribly misguided things that get airtime these days, The Soup has a very large pool from which to fish for funny.

No, my problem (and finally the reason for this rambling post) is with all the Soup spin-offs and clones that continue to pop up. First we had Sports Soup, hosted by the relatively unfunny Matt Iseman.

You may be surprised to learn that the basis of this show is greed. Let me explain. See, cable giant Comcast owns E! and they also own Versus (network home of Sports Soup). I imagine a big staff meeting full of suit-clad older gentlemen took place in a giant glass-lined conference room on the top floor of a large building in downtown Philadelphia where one gentleman said “The Soup is quite popular” and another gentleman replied “We should put a version of that show on every other channel we own.” And thus, Sports Soup was born. Sports Soup, as the title suggests, shows sports-related bloopers. Yawn.

By extension, The Dish is the female version of The Soup. It is also pinned to a Comcast-owned channel, in this case the Style network. The show is hosted by Topanga from Boy Meets World. She’s cute and all, but the writers on the show must drink a lot of decaf coffee because I was yawning through most of the segments I forced myself to watch. They seemed to focus more on shopping and dating, topics that make me cringe. They also shake up the accepted norms by being the only green screen show that positions the host on the left side of the screen. Crazy women!

Web Soup is the newest stepchild of the Comcast empire, making its home on G4. The host, Chris Hardwick, is best remembered as the guy who no one remembers as the cohost of Singled Out, the seminal MTV dating show. I say he isn’t remembered not because he’s unfunny (I find him humorous but geekily awkward) but rather because anyone who watched that program only did so to either gawk at Jenny McCarthy’s rack or watch in horror as she finally decided to sate her hunger for human flesh and tear into the cheek muscles of a hapless contestant with her animalistic fury (and oddly alluring burping and farting). Web Soup covers the snarky commentary of online videos and poorly planned internet stunts.

Oddly enough, Web Soup debuted a few weeks after Comedy Central’s version of the green screen phenomenon, Tosh.0…which also exists to skewer online tropes, but is hosted by the much funnier Daniel Tosh. Sadly, the show isn’t all that original in the first place and seems to be scheduled whenever Comedy Central has a hole to fill in their lineup.

So what’s my complaint? Just laziness really. I will not criticize The Soup, like I said previously. Its home is subtitled “Entertainment Television,” so it makes sense for the show to exist. The other ones? Not so much.

And, honestly, I don’t begrudge Comcast their short-sighted programming solutions. You work with what you have, right? No, the one that really irks me is the Comedy Central thing. Aside from The Daily Show, the last relevant thing Comedy Central actually contributed to comedy was the endless reruns of Office Space back in 2002.

At first I thought that Viacom (Comedy Central’s owner) was going to launch a plan similar to Comcast…a green screen on every channel! I mean, VH1 used to have their own version of Web Soup with the clip show Web Junk 20 and the green screen snark has invaded a good portion of their lineup, from I Love the 80s to Best Week Ever.

But could Viacom stretch the green screen magic to all of their channels? Would a clip show work on Nickelodeon? I don’t think the kids would get it. We already know that MTV hasn’t produced anything watchable since Remote Control (for the young’uns, that was a hilarious game show that helped launch the careers of Denis Leary and Adam Sandler). Hell, half of The Soup‘s humor comes from poking fun at The Hills and The Real World. Although, I have to admit that a green screen show on BET could be hilarious.

But with sports clip shows and female-oriented clip shows and web-based clip shows, why not exploit other niche channels? Let’s throw a green screen and a host in front of Food Network and make hilarious jokes about recipes and beating eggs. Slap someone in front of a screen on Travel Channel and make fun of foreigners. Build a green screen on HGTV and have a host make fun of people’s horrible design sense. Better yet, give Bravo a green screen show to accommodate all those Housewives, pretentious fashion designers and reruns of Will & Grace.

You know what, I just had an epiphany! I’m off to scribble down my idea for a green screen show that exclusively shows clips of other green screen shows. Yes, my program will make fun of the shows making fun of the shows. How meta is that?

See you in Hollywood, suckers!

No matter how old

You still look better than me

When I was your age.

But this isn’t about that. I’ve outgrown wrestling. Seriously. I haven’t had a friend put me in a figure-four leglock in at least 24 years.

See, back in the day, USA Network used to have Sunday programming that featured a show called All American Wrestling at 11am Eastern time. And that was triumphantly followed by the totally awesome Kung Fu Theatre at noon.

Kung Fu Theatre was usually on in the background as I acted out the wrestling moves I had just seen on my dad. I do remember one or two of the movies though. There was that one with the brothers with the really long ponytails that they used as weapons. And there was one with a girl and a fan (or was that just from the videogame Yie Ar Kung Fu?).

Anyway, the movie I want to focus on featured a crazy old man who was teaching some sort of orphaned dude the secrets of Kung Fu so that he could exact revenge on the evil warlord who murdered his family. Pretty typical plot for those movies.

The cool part was the old man detailing the “Seven Deadly Spots” on the human body and showing the kid how you could immobilize someone by utilizing these body locations. I’m not sure if I remember them all correctly, but I know at least four of them are from the film. My dad and I still laugh about this list…

1. Temple
2. Philtrum
3. Armpit
4. Liver
5. Solarplexus
6. Groin
7. Big Toe

Look, I can understand the temple. The skull is thinnest at that point, right? And punching someone in the philtrum can jam their nose cartilage up into their brain (urban legend?). The armpit has lymphnodes that I guess can cause a lot of pain. Maybe? A liver shot actually can lead to internal bleeding. A fist to the solarplexus is gonna knock the wind out of you. And the groin shot is a much-loved tradition of Home Video Submission Shows. Plus, it makes a man cry.

But the Big Toe? Really? What’s a punch to the toe gonna do? Make you bend over, grab your foot, and do that “heavy breathing through clenched teeth” move that you orchestrate when you get up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night and accidentally stub your toe on the cat?

We all know that hurting the knee will just make your opponent go into that hilarious Crane pose from Karate Kid. I guess the guys from Cobra Kai should’ve aimed a bit lower to take out Daniel-san.

The Big Toe. Protect it or die.

…

As a brief aside, if anyone knows the name of the movie I’m talking about, PLEASE let me know. I’ve been looking online but can’t find anything.