Chart It!

For no particularly compelling reason, outside of the simple pleasures of writing up a crude pie chart in PowerPoint, I felt like charting the punctuation of all the recent birthday messages that were posted on my facebook wall. Seeing as how birthday facebook messages in recent years have become this sort of crazy personal social barometer, there are countless ways one could measure and interpret all the data from this random yearly poll of your online "friends". I didn't really look that deeply at things, just counted up the punctuations.

As the ugly colored chart clearly shows, of 30 posted messages, an overwhelming 13 birthday wishes ended with a simple (!). It's not really all that surprising, since it's both stylistically accurate and the usual shorthand for showing enthusiasm. I found the double (!!), tied for the second most with 5, to be interesting. I find there to be a real deliberateness to the double. I imagine a hastily written message with a quick lean on the exclamation point key would often yield three or more exclamation points (there were 4 greetings with a trio of exclamation points, unfortunately none with more), a two pointer seems less random. Tied with the two pointers was the no punctuation greeting, which I find to have a classier, restrained quality. It's likely the popular choice for those who eschew the exclamation point, which I have to agree has become far too ubiquitous in modern writing. Rounding out the list is the period, which two subdued well wishers ended their well wishes with. Also there was one emoticon, which would technically fall into the non-punctuation category but I figured deserved individual recognition. I do recall getting more emoticons in past years, maybe it's due to the recession.

I hope this demonstrates that I do pay attention to and appreciate every birthday post (probably more so than you if you're one of those sad people that just rotely send out greetings based on whomever's birthday facebook tells you it is), even the ones by you weirdos I never see.

May The Brackets Be Ever In Your Favor

It looks like the two biggest media events of the weekend will be the Regional Finals of NCAA Mens Basketball Tournament and the release of the movie adaptation of "The Hunger Games". It's oddly fitting that both are going on at the same time. March Madness and the Hunger Games themselves have many striking similarities. They're both nationally televised, single elimination tournaments, featuring mostly teenagers selected from set regions across the country that captivate the country once a year with their drama and surprises (cynically one may argue that they are also both slightly rigged by powerful, malevolent institutions).

Given the interesting parallels I always wondered while reading the books (well, technically listening to them on audio book while commuting, props to Carolyn McCormick for a boss narrating job) whether the Hunger Games (it's not like the Olympic Games, it's just one big event, shouldn't it be just the Hunger Game?) were treated anything like March Madness in Panem.

First off, I would assume that only the folks in the Capitol (and maybe some of those loyalist lapdogs in District 1 and 2) would actually watch it as a form of entertainment rather than a horrifying reminder of the government's absolute power over them. Given that, would there be many of the fun trappings of the Big Dance? I would imagine productivity amid the offices of the Capitol go down due to the organizing of pools and filling of brackets, but considering that the Capitol is just a grotesquely decadent Sodom of the privileged maintained by slave labor, I can't imagine too much office work, or really work of any kind, being done (maybe a a decline in lurid orgies and vomitorium assisted bacchanals).

I guess that would just leave even more time for focusing on the Games, constant armchair analysis of the favorites, looking over the field for possible sleepers. It's funny to think that in the case of the Games, when someone considers who this year's George Mason would be they may literally be referring to an actual former tribute named George Mason. Personally I think Katniss has all the makings of a dangerous sleeper pick poised to make a deep run: coming from an unheralded mid-major district (with only one champion in the past 73 Games for crying out loud), fundamentally sound, undersized, but with impressive range. Though, I guess it's not a true tournament, there are still a myriad of ways to gamble on the outcome: selecting the winner, over/unders, elimination order, etc. Aside from the official presentations and pageantry would there be plenty of additional analysis and insights from sports journalists and discissions on morning sports talk radio about participants and scenarios? Would there be a Capitol version of Joe Lunardi with a weird mustache and blue skin, breaking things down with his science of Hungertology? Does that make Caesar Flickerman their Dick Vitale?

Also it would be pretty awesome and apropos if they played "One Shining Moment" as the sole remaining tribute is airlifted out of the arena.

Random Wikipedia Fact of the Day!

According to Wikipedia, the famous red leather pants clad butt on the cover of Loverboy's 1981 hit album "Get Lucky" (arguably the second most iconic 80s album cover derriere behind Bruce Springsteen's "Born In The USA") did not belong to the band's frontman Mike Reno, despite the obviously male hand and all indications from the video for "Working For The Weekend". The photo is actually of the photographer's then 14 year old daughter.

So for all you die-hard, particularly homophobic, Loverboy fans out there who caught yourselves at one time or another uncomfortably questioning your own sexuality because you were inexplicably attracted to what you assumed was Mike Reno's tight, sexy, ass you can rest easy; you're just a pedophile.

Bonus Loverboy Fact!: "Working For The Weekend", by far their most memorable song, was nowhere near their highest charting single on the Billboard Hot 100 (topping out at just #29). The fairly mediocre rocker "Lovin' Every Minute of It" (which, if you listen to the lyrics may possibly be about a vibrator or some sort of sex robot) went all the way up to #9.

Sweetness Is My Weakness

While it has been a couple of years since they debuted and though they are seldom really seen today, I still feel I have to belatedly profess my strange affection for the series of TV spots for the sugar substitute Truvia. While there was nothing particularly worthwhile about the commercials visually, I was utterly drawn in by the idiosyncratic charm of the individual jingles performed in each ad. I have always been a fan and supporter of the well written commercial jingle, which has become a critically endangered species as of late, so I was already halfway on board. However, what really made these songs stand out for me was their uniqueness. Each ode to the wonders of Truvia is sung in this odd, quirky acoustic-folk style in a non-traditional, slightly unpolished sounding voice (for those of you who wish to know it's some random actress-singer named Therese Hegler). As for the lyrics, they are these odd little first person love ballads to Truvia's natural, calorie free delights, with accompanying dramatization, about being in a miserable relationship with a psedo-personification of "sweetness" (who sort of comes off as a terrible boyfriend in each song) and then finding a a new love (a zero calorie true love!) with Truvia; strange rhyme schemes and weird metaphors abound.

The jingles walk an extremely fine line between shaggy charm and irritating quirkiness. If their youtube clips are any indication (the clips tend to skew about 1/3 to 1/2 dislike rate along with comments that range from "So fucking adorable. i love this commercial" to "i wanna punch that voice") they are fairly polarizing. While I normally hate this sort of overly precious (dare I say "adorkable") work, there's something weirdly genuine about these ads. I think it's because the product is so mundane (it's just another kind of Sweet'N Low) and the melodrama of the jingles are so needlessly high (seriously who has that kind of wonderous life change just from switching to sugar substitutes?) that there is a legitimacy to its cute lack of coolness, I can really believe that they are not trying hard to cool at all. It's a hell of a lot more real than that insufferable old Zooey Deschannel cotton ad.

I recall seeing at least two different adverts on TV, but from what I've gathered there are at least four different commercials. If I had to rank them by some subjective personal metric from least favorite to favorite:

Sweetness comes off as manipulator, a toxic emotional vampire that sort of delights in playing head games with the protagonist. The "guilty crumbs in my bed" line creepily infers a weird sexual relationship. In regards to the video, I don't frequent guilt laden stare downs with chocolate bunnies are all that common a complaint among modern women.

Sweetness is now a serial philanderer to which the protagonist finally resolves herself to escape his chocolate covered charms. Also, four women sharing one tiny desert? They have some serious issues with food that even Truvia won't cure.

Sweetness is just a straight up jerk here, plain and simple. I like the line about Truvia not landing on "my hips or my thighs" followed later with "it's better than flirting or french fries" (although I have to disagree, few things in this world are better than french fries).

This is the most literal representation of sweetness, it has made the protagonist's butt fat; a valid cause as any to leave a relationship (perhaps this is some sort of sick feederism based relationship?). I consider this the best because it's the most straightforward and relatable with the target audience. As an ad it works the best.

For those seeking a fuller effect, check out the medley with the lyrics.

Four references that could be used by one character to mock another character wearing a ridiculous muumuu dress in a scene from a fictional sitcom

I suppose the title speaks for itself.

Mama Harper
"On tonight's episode of 'Mama's Family..."

Mrs. Roper
"Could you tell Mr. Roper that the rent will be ready tomorrow?"

Mama Bear
"So what trouble did the other Berenstain Bears get into this time Mama? Too much junk food? Too much TV?" (Too soon? Also, I never realized how frequently the covers involved a shot of the mom glaring disapprovingly at her family).

King-Size Homer
"Didn't want to look like a weirdo, huh?" But really, any reference to the episode would be fine: "Gas break honk. Honk honk punch. Gas gas gas"; "Where's your cape?"; "Off to see 'Honk If You're Horny'?"; "Now you're a big fat dynamo!" (all these references would also work best if the muumuu wearing character was a male, preferably fat).

I also considered a reference to Lady Aberlin from Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, but I figured it was a shade too esoteric; that and I always found it perplexing and disconcerting as a child that her uncle King Friday was a hand sized puppet while she was a full grown human woman.

Moves Like Urkel

One thing I do not understand about the reality competition series "Dancing With The Stars" is how the more popular the show gets the more it seems to lower the bar for what constitutes a "star". Looking over the lists of contestants from it's inception in 2005 to the recently released list of dancers for the 2012 season, there really isn't a marked increase in the prestige level of the participants; one can argue that the quality has actually declined in recent years. Interestingly enough, in the specific category of contestants that were NFL wide receivers, it's an unambiguously straight decline from the undisputed greatest wide receiver of all time, Jerry Rice; to borderline/potential Hall of Famers Chad Ochocinco and Hines Ward; to the solid, but unspectacular, Donald Driver.

The selection that seems to be generating the most buzz from this year's staple of has-beens, C-listers, and sports personalities is the surprising return of pioneering TV blerd Jaleel White, aka Steven Q. Urkel; providing further proof that he is indeed still alive.

While I am always in favor of former "Family Matters" cast members finding work outside of the adult film industry, I do have a slight beef with the Urk-man getting cast. The premise of "Dancing With The Stars" is to pair a professional dancer with a celebrity with little to no dancing experience and have the couples compete among themselves. One would agree that it would be downright unfair and against the spirit of the show to have a celebrity participate who was already an accomplished dancer, someone who was no stranger to the dance floor, someone talented enough to inspire say their own 90's dance craze.

With a dancing pedigree like that, the man is clearly a ringer. Frankly, is there any other participant that can stand a chance? A Pips-less Gladys Knight? The aging Jack Wagner? Some guy named William Levy? Maybe Martina Navratilova's steely competitive spirit may give her an outside shot. However, we haven't even ruled out the possibility that White will utilize his "boss sauce" fueled transformation machine and turn into the super smooth Stefan Urquelle (that New Jack Swing themed episode is as good as won), or use the machine to channel the dancing talents of Fred Astaire or Gene Kelly like that time he became Bruce Lee to beat up some gangbangers. If that's the case, all bets are off.

I don't even want to get into the utter destruction that'll occur if the show's producers neglect to prohibit the use of any Urkelbot surrogates.

Staying Alive

I find the vintage board game "Stay Alive: The Survival Game" to be a bit of a letdown. With a name like that, I expected some kind of fun murder mystery with a deep story line and an interesting cast of suspicious characters; something along the lines classic "Clue" or even "13 Dead End Drive" (was I the only one who had this game growing up?). There should at least have been some sort of fictional murder element to a game predicated on eliminating your rivals and winning by being the last player standing. Unfortunately, as the commercial demonstrates, "Stay Alive" turned out to be just an abstract strategy game that involved careful marble placement and turned based elimination of said marbles. Fun in a "Connect Four" sort of way, but where was the compelling narrative? The theatrics? The element of escapism? At least "Battleship" had pieces that looked like actual naval ships.

As contextually sterile as the game may be, the old 70s commercial for the game implies a rich, yet disturbingly dark back story in its brief 30 seconds.

• My initial, overarching question would be: what exactly are these kids doing here? It seems to me that the children are in a "Lord of the Flies"-like situation where they are stranded on a desert island with no adult guidance, free of the social structures and moralities of modern society. They also don't seem to be in any noticeable want of food or water, as they don't appear to be disappointed by the discovery of a washed up board game rather than sustenance. Boredom seems to be the greatest danger on the island. However, I am not willing to rule out the possibility that the kids are delirious with hunger or thirst and are just playing the newly found game for the hell of it, or they just may be idiot kids with stupid priorities.
• As for the board game, I have to note that it is in extremely good condition for a cardboard box that had been indefinitely floating around the ocean. It's totally free of any water damage, loose sand, or accumulated seaweed. All the mechanisms seem to be in perfect working order and none of the marbles are missing. It probably still has its instructions unlike half the board games in my attic.
• The conclusion of this commercial is downright haunting. After a tension filled match, or series of matches, between the four, the winning kid in the hat comes to the shocking realization that he has indeed won by remaining "the sole survivor", at which point he gives a blank, 1000 yard stare and the sound abruptly cuts out as the commercial transitions to a shot of the game box. Has there ever been a more ambiguous reaction given by a winning kid in a board game commercial? Given what I have seen, I can only conclude that the kids were using the newly found board game to make the grizzly determination as to who was to be selected to be sacrificed and cannibalized by the remaining players. Eventually the game comes down to the final two kids and the winning kid earns himself another week or so of desperately staving off hunger, but must also now grasp the disturbing realities of his gruesome acts and the realization that he will now be utterly alone, having truly become "the sole survivor".

The whole premise might come off as a tad dark for a game suited for ages 8 and up, but I think they should have applied some of those elements to color the game. For next week I am calling out the makers of "Crossfire" for failing to deliver on its promise of game play that's as exciting as a one on one death match on flying platforms over the flaming pits of a riotous dystopian fighting arena during a thunderstorm (sounds like an even more badass version of "The Hunger Games").

Addendum!

This is an extremely belated addendum, but I figured it was better late than never (also I can't really pass up an opportunity to pad my overall numbers with a quick and easy blog post; I have a quota to to maintain, you know). Back in late August of last year I posted my harrowing tale of surviving my first earthquake experience and the eerie coincidence that at the time of the quake I had the lost 80's New Wave gem "The Earthquake Song" by the Little Girls utterly trapped in my head since hearing it for the first time the previous week. Of all the silly, at times weirdly morbid, lyrics cheerily belted out by the Little Girls my favorite line is when they state that (in reference to the earthquake): "It's gonna kill my mom and dad/They were the only folks I've had/But they better not blame me/'Cause it's not my fault".

It's a wonderfully ridiculous line that sets the tone of the entire song; a devastating disaster seen through the surreal perspective of a carefree Southern California teen with wildly divergent priorities. Now, maybe I'm just thick and this is totally obvious to everyone else but I just realized today that the "it's not my fault" verse is a subtle play on the earthquake theme of the song (you know, like fault lines?). I can't tell if it's intentional or not but if it is I have to say it's an exceedingly clever line (and if it's not, it's a happy accident). Either way it makes me like the song all that much more.

P.S.: I also sincerely apologize for getting "The Earthquake Song" in your head (or back in your head again for previous readers). If you're anything like me, this insidiously fun tune will be firmly entrenched in your consciousness for at least the next few days.

Judging from your song, you're infatuated with a woman named Mindy...or a man named Andy

Before I begin any mention of the song "I Kissed A Girl" by Jill Sobule, I want to go on record as stating that, in case there was ever even a moment of doubt among anyone out there, I vastly prefer this "I Kissed A Girl" over the other "I Kissed A Girl". I'm not going to go as far as to say that one song is objectively "better" than another. Aside from both being pop songs with a shared title and broad story of a straight girl reflecting on kissing another girl, they are two very different songs from completely different genres and eras with divergent themes. Sobule's song is an understated, sort of folk rock story of a woman's complicated feelings for her female friend that despite the quirkiness comes off with a surprising amount of honesty. Perry's song is a slick, Dr. Luke produced, electropop monster of a track, that's built around the titillating shock value of the female protagonist kissing another girl. Sobule's protagonist was motivated to kiss her friend out of emotion and felt some guilt about her actions which she eventually plays off and accepts a non-judgmental attitude about; Perry's is motivated to kiss a random female for the attention and is really torn by the guilt over her enjoyment of it. For a song about same sex kissing, it is aggressively heterosexual. While, often times I'll go for lust, flash, and trash over the subtle and honest, I just find myself just plain liking Sobule's protagonist a lot more than Perry's (also I've always been down with alternative rock chicks with guitars).

With that being said (I think that extended preface will be almost be as long as my actual main post, which is fairly simple) I just wanted to mention two random thoughts I had about Jill Sobule's "I Kissed A Girl".

First, after watching the video again, it's amazing how little Fabio has changed in over 15 years.

Secondly, as one of those gender specific songs that really requires the singer to be a certain gender (or to utilize the use of lame lyrical gender reassignment) to maintain the original theme, I always thought that if a man was singing "I Kissed A Girl", the song would then be about this guy seriously overreacting about kissing a girl for the first time and having conflicting feelings about it. Additionally some of those feelings of guilt might have been related to the fact that the girl he kissed ("Jenny") is his close friend and is with somebody else ("Brad"); understandably a bizarre source for getting your first kiss.

I never really considered until now that the switched male singer could have been gay, which would have made his conflicted feelings far more rational. Perhaps I'm just not that progressive minded but I always imagined the male singer to be straight, cripplingly love-shy weirdo. With a gay male protagonist the general theme of the song is preserved but instead it's a gay individual questioning their homosexuality and realizing it's okay to be a little straight sometimes; a theme that you really won't find all that often in pop songs (or any songs for that matter). This also would make a lot more sense of the fact that protagonist of the song reveals to the other girl that he/she is in a relationship as well with a guy ("Larry") whose recent marriage proposal he/she is considering.

Either love-shy straight or gay male scenario would explain Brad's relief and lack of concern that Jenny is staying over late at their house, but he still comes off as a massive homophobe when he states that "I'm glad your with your girlfriend, tell her hi for me". I suppose his attitude is consistent with Jenny's assessment of him as a "hairy behemoth" that was as "dumb as a box of hammers".

It was...fun. Oh, my...

To paraphrase General Douglas MacArthur: "Old advertising mascots never die; they just fade away". The life of an advertising icon is an unpredictable one; some continue to live on as the indelible (somewhat racist) face of a national brand for well over a century, others are over used and worn out into total irreverence, while others flop right out of the gate into obscurity. Occasionally a mascot may get discontinued, only to find unexpected new life decades later. One thing mascots hardly ever do, however, is actually get killed.

It is an exceedingly rare and bold move on the part of a brand when they decide to go for the nuclear option of putting in the effort to deliberately and publicly eliminate their mascot in an advertisement. The only other example I can think of is the heroic death of Segata Sanshiro, the star of a series of brilliantly insane Sega Saturn ads in Japan from the late 90s that I would need to devote an entire entry to properly cover; he had by far the most epic death for an advertising mascot. I do recall the Budweiser frogs were the victims of an assassination attempt in 1997 by some vindictive Italian-American lizards and their hired ferret associate, which did leave one of them traumatized.

The public executing of a mascot is the ultimate expression on the company's part that they are going in a totally new direction and leaving the past completely behind. If a company takes the time and spends the money on a proper end for their character, I suppose it either means that they: (a) have grown to absolutely despise the character and want to be as public with their disapproval as possible or (b) have so much respect for the character that they want to give them the dignity of a big finale rather than just quietly phasing them out.

In the case of Priceline.com's decision this week to kill their longtime spokesman, the legendary William "The Negotiator" Shatner, it is definitely more the latter reason. Priceline, which somehow managed to survive the dot.com bubble and (to my continuing surprise) manages to thrive today as a travel website, has finally decided to drop its silly "name your price" feature, which never really worked that well, and has finally become a straight travel discount site like all the others. This end of the need for price negotiation obviously means the end of the "The Negotiator". It appears that the war had ended and apparently fixed prices have won.

So after 14 years of loyal, price slashing service from the quirky concert sets of the late 90s, to his epic showdown with Leonard Nemoy, to his latter day role as "The Negotiator " (with occasional help from the Big Deal), the people at Priceline decided give Shatner a final act on par with the passing of his other famous character. Looking at the two deaths there is an odd similarity between them. Both instances involved a large explosion on a vast cliff, a fearless act of heroism that saved many lives (and in the case of the commercial, also money), and a sort of symbolic passing of the torch to a new generation. As commercial mascot deaths go, I think it was a fine way to close the chapter and turn the page.

Farewell Negotiator, I hope you're in a better, more affordably priced place.

Wikineedia

As you may have noticed from your friends facebook statuses and from visiting many of your favorite websites, yesterday was official SOPA/PIPA protest day on the Internet or, as I will remember it as, the day Wikipedia didn't work. Now I'm all for an unfettered, free Internet (you may have noticed my blog has been preemptively protesting SOPA/PIPA by not contributing an entry since last Wednesday). From what information I've skimmed both proposed pieces of legislation appear unduly restrictive and would cause more harm than the proposed good (although I do feel all I've been getting is the anti-legislation viewpoint; where can I get some pro-SOPA information? The RIAA website? A brief chat with Chris Dodd?). I for one though am not too worried that these laws might pass, there appears to be such a negative majority reaction to it and (although no one is really publicly stating it) there is no way modern American society will allow anything that would hinder or burden the free flow of easy access, streaming, pornography. With that said, the real lesson I learned on Jan. 18th was how important wikipedia was to my everyday life.

Not to get all former communications major on everyone but Wikipedia has to be one of the few completely beneficial things to have come out of the Internet. It's one of those innovations that the Internet was created for (along with of course the free flow of easy access, streaming, pornography): a constantly updating collaborative compendium of human knowledge that's standardized and summarized and freely available for the masses; an amazing achievement that could not be done in any other medium. Aside from the participation and scale of the project, the really great thing about wikipedia has been its democratization of information. Without the burdens of physical media along with the accessibility for anyone to contribute an entry, all information, regardless of importance or cultural significance is included and treated the same way. An article detailing the WWE/WCW Monday Night Wars is covered and treated with the same standards as World War II; you won't get that from Encarta 98.

Being suddenly denied daily access to this diverse, dynamic source of information made me realize how much it had become my daily fact checker and reference guide for the mindless minutiae in my life from petty disputes in conversations, random connections, forgotten facts, to fleeting obsessions. It was downright frustrating how I found myself being denied quick and easy facts about all the random topics that flew into the scattered brain. Ten things off the top of my head I couldn't look up or had to consult inferior sources yesterday:

• Microsoft Encarta
• Rod Hull and Emu
• "You Have Been Watching" Episode Guide
  
• Patrick Leahy
• SOPA (a bit ironic I suppose)
  
• Boris Johnson
  
• Almond Milk
• The Bob Newhart Show
  
• Dierks Bentley
• Dikembe Mutombo

I think I'll go click on one of those ubiquitous banners and donate a fiver.

Inanimated Or: Why I Am Crazy

We had to throw out our old home toaster recently. Something went wrong with the internal coils and it just started burning one side of the bread to a crisp while leaving the other side untouched. Looking back over its life, I would conclude it had a pretty impressive run. Seven plus years of flawless service is quite an achievement for a low end, no frills, white plastic outer shell, Hamilton Beech toaster. Had it held out for a little while longer it might have even outlasted the Kmart where I think it was originally bought. I'm sure whatever toaster we get to replace it will be just as unremarkably reliable at it's singular, specialized task of warming up slices of bread, with the occasional bagel thrown in. I really shouldn't pay this mundane domestic non-story any mind and give it about as much remembrance as a replaced light bulb or a tossed dull shaving razor. Unfortunately, as you can see I cannot, since I am part of the generation cursed to have grown up with "The Brave Little Toaster"

For myself (and I suspect more than a few other of my peers), that exciting animated adventure tale featuring a plucky little toaster and his misfit cadre of animate home appliances (Radio, Lampy, Blanky, and Kirby the vacuum) faithfully seeking to reunite with their beloved owner who was forced to abandon them years ago has instilled a sort of irrational attachment and nostalgia for the inanimate objects, particularly of my childhood. The film and its sequels (including one where they somehow end up on Mars!) combined with the movie's obvious progeny, the even more sentimental, emotionally loaded, "Toy Story" films (interestingly enough many original Pixar members worked on "Toaster") is likely responsible for cultivating more than a fair share of hoarders within my generation.

Of course we all have our mementos, heirlooms, and souvenirs that we all hang onto and which keep us connected to the past and fond memories; and there are times when a vintage item is actually better than a modern day version, but there are clearly limits. If an object has outlived its usefulness and a replacement is available, you should replace it without affording it the empathy reserved for a human being. I shouldn't feel a twinge of sadness as I see my broken toaster looking solitary and out of place in the outside trash bin. I shouldn't think it lies awake at night, shivering in the cold, staring at the empty sky, grimly pondering why it has been suddenly abandoned. I shouldn't imagine all the other kitchen appliances having melancholy conversations about their lost comrade and morbidly considering their own mortality. The new replacement toaster should not be characterized as an arrogant villain just because it happens to be newer and more advanced than the old toaster.

Whenever I start to get irrationally sentimental like this, I think back to one of my all time favorite TV adverts: the series of Ikea commercials from the 90s where the viewer is manipulated into feeling bad about the unfortunate fate of a household object and it then abruptly told by stern looking Swede that we are crazy for thinking that and you are better off replacing old, tacky items with new ones. It is true, I am crazy and Disney and Pixar are highly irresponsible for peddling such entertaining and memorable messages of consumer goods animism to kids at such impressionable ages. I should enjoy my new toaster, guilt free and perhaps buy a new floor lamp from Ikea.

For next week, in my continuing series examining the influence of animated films of my childhood in my adult life, I'll tackle the deep theological issues of mortality, the afterlife, and the existence of the soul raised by "All Dogs Go To Heaven".

Odds - Future

Counting this article (and I guess barring any sudden uncontrollable compulsions to update in the next four or so hours) my final year end tally for entries on "Victor Sells Out" will top out at 52. It averages out to about a post a week, a pretty modest number for a supposedly active personal blog; additionally I'm not even factoring in the actual quality of these 52 posts. Of the five years (feeling so, so old) since I started the blog proper, it'll rank right in the middle as my third most productive year (if I remember my middle school math that will make it the "median"). It's nowhere near my prolific 130 from 2008 (I really should have been studying a lot more that first year of law school) and almost double my pathetic 27 from 2010 (I really should have written more since I was unemployed for most of that year).

My ideal target since I started this blog has been to average 10 posts a month for 120 on the year. The only year I actually matched (and surprisingly surpassed) it was my magical 2008. Since it is the end of 2011 and the promise of a fresh new 2012 with seemingly limitless possibilities looms ahead (and seeing as I needed one more entry to make things an even 52) I figured I would publicly set an official post goal to keep me accountable for the upcoming year; although truth be told there are no real consequences for me if I miss this number aside from mild disappointment. It'll also give something for you compulsive types to wager on. After some consideration I will officially set my target goal for the coming year at: 100 Posts.

Now having told you that my ideal number of posts every year is 120, it may seem a bit defeatist to set it well below my defined standard for success. However, aside from being a nice looking round number to set a milestone towards, I like to think 100 posts is a tempered, realistic goal and a admirable step towards gradually achieving an output of 120. Also, I'm a massive pessimist. Do you know anything about me? Have you ever read anything here?

Of course, this target number will be null and void if the world comes to an end as supposedly the Mayans and "The X-Files" predicted. Happy New Year Everybody.

Keep The Change

It may not be all that apparent from the look of the posts but this new Blogger interface that has finally been forced upon me...SUUUUUCKS!!

Now I'm sure like every other form of initially jarring interface change I've ever encountered on my favorite internet sites and applications (new blogger, new gmail, new facebook, etc.), I will eventually get used to it and, who knows, may even find it superior to the way things used to be. For now though, all I know is it took me about 15 frustrating minutes to get the proper formatting done to make my latest Lockhorn vs. Lockhorn update conform with the rest of the site. Normally it takes me about a minute to put up a post. This is the complete opposite of progress.

Are people really calling for all these websites to overhaul their setups? Or is this superfluous change for the sake of change? I for one had absolutely no problem with gmail and the old blogger and was particularly miffed at the shuffle. I know I'll probably hate timeline, but I'm actually getting a little ignored that the folks at facebook haven't even pushed it upon me yet. There are clearly websites that are asking for an overhaul (my yahoo mail account for one kinda blows), but why change a site that the overwhelming majority agree is fine the way it is?

In the end I suppose there's just no use fighting progress. I just wish my blog margins and line spacing stayed consistent.

Two Tragic, Yet Fascinatingly Freakish Stories I Read On Yahoo! News That Tangentially Reminded Me Of Scenes From Famous 80s Action Movies

No doubt the first in a series...

Couple Badly Injured After Bodybuilder Attack

Your clothes. Give them to me. Now.

Model Loses Hand In Plane Propeller Accident

Unfortunately I couldn't find a good copy of the original scene so I had to go with the crude Lego reenactment; but you all know how it goes.

Now if only there was an article about a distinguished Detroit cop who was left in critical condition after a gang shooting or a group of terrorists taking over a Los Angeles office building and holding its residents hostage.

Ain't No Cure For The Sunday Night Blues

For me the one downside of having an extended weekend is the extended cases of the blues I get at the end of it on Sunday night when the prospect of the work week ahead looms overhead. It's really not the work itself that I dislike, it's that it's just so damn time consuming. Those daylight hours that I'm squandering at work are my prime, most promising hours of my waking life; the high ceiling hours with the highest potential chance (as objectively remote as they may be) that I do something life changingly awesome. There's got to be a better use for them (I mean look at the proliferation of posts over just these four days!). The idea that this wonderful string of leisure filled, responsibility-less free days may actually come to an end starts to drip into my awareness as early as Saturday night, but once Sunday afternoon rolls around and everything starts to take on a dim golden light I'm already dreading that moment Monday morning when I sit at my desk and realize I have a whole day of this nonsense ahead. As the last thing I usually see before going to sleep, NBC's Sunday Night Football, has now perversely become this depressing funeral for the weekend; with Tony Dungy, Dan Patrick, and the rest of the studio team serving as awkwardly bantering pallbearers.

While I thought that this Sunday melancholy was just a label for the personal complaints of slackers and people who don't like their jobs, according to Wikipedia (which we all know is the universal arbiter of ultimate legitimacy) it is a real medical condition known as "Sunday night blues". Who knows how many untold millions are quietly suffering from this terrible affliction? Forget restless less syndrome meds and boner drugs, if someone could crack the Sunday night blues, and invent a pill that will make you think you'll be going on a beach vacation on Monday, they'll be bigger than penicillin (currently the closest thing to an available cure is having an extended boozy Sunday brunch). I will admit that the actual page for Sunday night blues (or SNB as I will now call it on my workers comp forms) is quite sparse and lightly researched and is probably headed towards deletion without any further intervention; but until that happens I have a new semi-legitimate medical excuse in my pocket for missing work on Mondays.

I Said No, No, No

As a Netflix subscriber, I am quite diligent and thoughtful when it comes to rating the movies or TV shows I've viewed. Like many, Netflix has sort of turned the once leisurely activity of watching entertainment into a task bordering on a chore and I often find myself putting in extra effort to consume enough media to get the best of my monthly subscriber fee (this is especially the case with unwatched mail-in DVDs which just sit on the counter as a conspicuous red faced reminder of my laziness). So when I get through a title, I find it to be a triumphant ritual to give my immediate one to five star impression of it. Additionally, constant feedback is what allows the cutting edge Netflix personal recommendation algorithm to continue to give me astoundingly accurate and spot on suggestions.

As far as my grading tendencies go, I'm a relatively soft grader. The way I see it, the fact that I had enough interest in the TV series or movie to select it to watch should give it at least a presumptive 3 star rating. In the end it all sort of works out to a curve with the great majority of titles residing in the 3 to 4 star, ok to good, territory. It takes an exceptional film to get a 5 and it takes a pretty lousy piece of cinema to get a 2 (1 star is exclusively reserved for my all time, truly terrible, eighth circle of hell, films of which there are only currently eight; I may cover these in another post but to give you an idea one of them is "Nothing But Trouble"). Since an exceptional 5 film or a poor 2 film are both equally rare, it's always a notable occasion when I run across one.

Unfortunately, this time around the latest outlier was a 2 rating for the 2000 Sandra Bullock dramedy (although it really fails on both levels) "28 Days". I had the absolute lowest of expectations going into this movie since I just needed something to watching while trying to get to sleep, yet it somehow failed to even live up to these low stakes. Actually, if the film was even duller and it instantly put me to sleep, I may have given it the gentleman's 3 for getting some beneficial reaction out of me. In the end though, the film turned out to be so muddled in its content and middling its delivery that it failed to entertain even as a failure (which is truly the worst kind of failure).

The brief as possible summary is as follows: Sandra Bullock is an alcoholic along with her jerky enabler boyfriend (Dominic West in actual English accent mode); she gets drunk at her sister's wedding and ruins the whole affair (although the ridiculousness of her actions and the damage she causes makes it look like alcohol causes her to go temporarily insane); which gets her sentenced to a rehab retreat populated by a bunch of "quirky" addicts including Mike O'Malley (playing the same cap wearing laid back dude roll he has played in everything), Viggio Mortenson (as the possible love interest), the guy who played Poppy from "Seinfeld", and some vulnerable looking teenage girl who I immediately (and correctly) predicted would die later on to lend the story some tragedy; after some initial friction Sandra comes to grips with her problem, makes friends, makes amends with her sister, leaves rehab and her boyfriend, and looks ahead to a clean and sober future.

The main problem with the film is that it is indecisive on whether it's going to be a black comedy or gritty drama about addiction and fails at being both. You know the old joke about "28 Days" being the prequel to the zombie horror film "28 Days Later"? That is funnier than any of this film's attempts at humor. O'Malley is supposed to be the sarcastic comic relief but he's had better material in his cable commercials. There's another resident, Gerhardt, whose fey eurotrash German-ness is apparently supposed to be inherently funny. Once again the indecisiveness of the filmmakers when assembling the supporting cast of residents sinks the film. They apparently didn't want everyone to be one joke caricatures but they also didn't want everyone to be complex, grimly realistic depictions of addicts so they found this bland medium of lame partially formed characters that the audience isn't really compelled to care about. As for the drama, every time things start to get serious or we start to learn about the sad history of a resident, the film tries to be light and immediately reels back. As for Sandra's character there are all these flashbacks and implications of a traumatic childhood for her and her sister involving their alcoholic mother and her untimely death, but it gets resolved so quickly after one quick heart to heart chat between the sisters towards the end that you wonder why they never got around to this prior.

In addition, the film also doesn't seem to know what to do with Viggio Mortenson's character. Even though he's probably the most fully realized supporting character and has one of the more interesting back stories in the film, he's a famous baseball pitcher currently in rehab, they never really go into it all that deeply nor do they show him making progress with his addictions at the clinic. From the outset you think she's going to fall for him when he makes his first appearance in the film by heroically carrying her into the rehab center after she nearly kills herself trying to escape through her window. There is obvious tension between them throughout and they do have an awkward kiss and he has a confrontation with the boyfriend but then he sort of disappears for a while down the final stretch. Even all the way at the end when she's leaving the facility and he chases her car down to have a big final confrontation with her, they make their peace but it doesn't end with them falling in love. She just goes back to her life, decides to leave her boyfriend, and that's how it ends. I guess it's commendable that the filmmakers were trying not to go with the cliche ending but the alternative seemed incomplete.

Oh, and I also forgot Steve Buscemi is also in the film as Sandra Bullock's counselor. As you can tell, his character was just as forgettable as most of the others.

Put it all together and you have the makings of a ultimately forgettable 100 minutes and a textbook example of how to become a 2 star film in my account; neither memorably awesome or memorably awful. There's a reason you probably haven't thought about the film since around 2001 and that this review is probably the detailed discussion of the film since then.

I Hate Mondays

For the past two weeks I have been weirdly fascinated, bordering on obsessed, with the above screen cap. I find it hilarious yet utterly terrifying. It's from a Onion Avclub review of the Halloween episode of the new Tim Allen sitcom "Last Man Standing" (aptly or uncreatively titled "Last Halloween Standing") that randomly caught my eye. From what I've gathered the Garfield costume was imposed upon the one daughter as a sort of anti-sexy Halloween guise (which she apparently later alters to turn sexy). I have not seen a single second of the show nor do I want to make any real effort to see an episode, though it sort of looks like "Home Improvement" with girls and Hector Elizondo, but I have to say this image should live on far beyond the show's run (which despite some pretty low reviews was still popular enough to recently warrant a full season order from ABC).

If You Say So Mr. Loggia...

A few days ago I suffered a completely random pop culture acid flashback about the above Minute Maid Orange Juice Commercial featuring veteran actor Robert Loggia from circa 1998. I was not at the breakfast table at the time nor was I drinking any orange juice or watching "Necessary Roughness". It was just one of those inexplicable overflows from the thick simmering stew that is my subconscious (also maybe my body's telling me I should get more vitamin C in my diet?).

Regardless, after looking up the commercial again I came upon a few new observations and conclusions that escaped me when I initially saw it in the late 90s:

• Before I even get into the content of the commercial, I was surprised at how much more popular this commercial was than I originally thought. I thought the ad was so obscure that there would be a good chance that it might not even be available on the internet. Additionally, despite a having a career that spans television and movies all the way back to the 1950s, Loggia's performance in this commercial takes up on entire paragraph of his wikipedia entry. It may either be a testament to the popularity of the commercial or the shoddiness of his wikipedia page (I'd say a combination of both; it's definitely not the best written of pages).
• The commercial predates "Family Guy" by nearly a decade in discovering the previously unknown inherent humor of just mentioning the name Robert Loggia. I don't know if the "Family Guy" cutaway was supposed to be a loose parody of the commercial, or an inspired pastiche of the ad, or just a weird random coincidence. I still find it pretty funny; although like all "Family Guy" cutaways I have absolutely no idea what the actual episode was about.
• The joke of the commercial is ostensibly supposed to come from a young boy randomly suggesting an unexpected actor like Robert Loggia to be a source of integrity about the deliciousness of the new orange juice and the sudden appearance of said Mr. Loggia into the kitchen to convince the boy. It's all a pretty surreal scene. However, the commercial becomes far more interesting and oddly more logical if you suspect that the mother is having an affair with Robert Loggia. Check out the knowing, beaming smile of the mom when he invades the kitchen. The dad reacts the way any normal person would in that situation, with surprise and suspicion, but the mom just keeps that gigantic devilish smile going through the whole scene. Add that to the knowing wink Loggia gives to the mom right before he leaves and you have to suspect something's going on. I can't rule out the possibility that Billy is the secret love child of Robert Loggia and the mom and our poor bald dad is a pathetic cuckold whose "son" doesn't even respect him enough to believe when he says he'll like the taste of the juice.
• As to the implausibility of a pre-adolescent boy knowing who Robert Loggia is, while it's highly unlikely that he knows him from is tough guy roles in mature movies like "Scarface", "Prizzi's Honor", or "Lost Highway"; but he might have just saw him the night before in "Big" or maybe "Independence Day" (ID4 was still sort of fresh in all our minds around 1998). What's really inexplicable is why the kid is so ardently anti-calcium; does it even have a taste?
• That extra Robert Loggia "yeah!" at the very end of the spot really is the cherry on top, the whole spot would be nothing without that final exclamation point. The bite special effect that comes right before the "yeah!" however makes it sound like he's the one who took a bite out of the carton.

Next week, I'll be covering that old Little Caesars commercial where the little girl goes to meet the head of Little Caesars only to have it be George Burns instead (although she doesn't seem disappointed in the least by it).

I Should Know, I'm Bocephus

Chris Farley as Bocephus

C Dogg | Myspace Video

During all the recent controversy involving country music star (although it has been a pretty dry two decades career wise) and amateur political pundit Hank Williams Jr.'s Hitler accusations against the President leading to his subsequent firing from his longstanding tenure as Monday Night Football's official football readiness ambassador; I found it surprising that in all the internet coverage, I have yet to find a single reference to the above 1997 SNL sketch with the late Chris Farley playing Bocephus.

For SNL and Chris Farley fans the October 1997 episode with Farley as the host will always be a little bittersweet since it would turn out to be his last major television appearance before his unfortunate death from an overdose a mere two months later. I remember finding the whole episode to be pretty damn awesome at the time. Watching it again recently, in an abridged form on Netflix Instant, some parts still hold up well, I will always find Farley's turn as "El Niño" to be stupidly hilarious (note: the full sketch, which was unavailable on youtube has Jim Brewer, doing the worst Ric Flair impersonation in history, coming in at the end to fight El Niño), but it has definitely lost its luster in other parts. Through the prism of hindsight it becomes pretty obvious that Farley was sort of a wreck at that point: he's gigantic, perpetually sweaty, and his voice is unusually horse (even the opening sketch is Tim Meadows trying to "convince" Loren Micheals into letting Farley host, despite his reservations about his ability to keep it together which leads to an opening monologue involving him initially flaking out before being talked into going on stage at the last minute).

As for the above sketch featuring Hank Williams Jr., it stayed about the same in my eyes in terms of humorousness. Although that isn't really saying much since I only found it mildly funny the first time. The sketch really doesn't go anywhere and is almost totally held together by Farley's ridiculous portrayal of Williams Jr. as a fat talentless drunken clown. The interesting thing about the sketch compared to recent events is that Farley's Bocephus turns out to be a sympathetic victim, having been unfairly mocked and generalized by the seemingly cultured, urban, studio engineers. Bocephus gives a softhearted monologue about empathy, not making snap judgment about others, and his ultimate goal of bringing people in his own awkward way together through his music. This comes off as a bit of a contrast to the the real Bocephus who responded to his critics and firing by releasing a hastily put together, county fried, reactionary diss track about guns and freedoms and decrying the "United Socialist States of America" that makes Ray Stevens sound as liberal as Bruce Springsteen by comparison.

In these polarizing times, I think we can all learn a little something from Farley's Bocephus.