Judgment Day

Well Super Bowl XLII is in the can and while most people would have considered it an exciting and memorable game; I for one was disappointed in nearly every single way. As I mentioned in previous posts, I have nothing but personal animosity for both teams so whatever result would have been loss loss anyway. After the game, however as I sat there watching the confetti falling, the fans in blue exploding in ecstasy, Michael Strahan flashing his large gap toothed grin, and the perpetually smug and evil Bill Belichick being deservingly humbled, I realized...I would have preferred the Patriots win.

There's something unsettling and unfair about the Giants being declared the superior team over the Patriots. On one side you have a team that has demonstrated week in and week out a historically superior level of play. They broke records by the handful, they embarrassingly blew out opponents, and in the close ones, always came in the clutch. Then you have the Giants, a team full of question marks, unproven players, whose uneven play all season and general weakness of the NFC backed them into the playoffs as a wild card team. From an objective perspective (I guess hating both teams is objective) does it seem fair that the previously undefeated, record breaking squad be considered inferior to a 10-6 wild card team? I'm all for upsets, but I'm also for history. If this was a seven game series I would be fairly confident that the inherent talent of the Patriots would overwhelm the Giants, but alas these are the breaks, everyone only gets one shot, for better or for worse. Aside from the universal unfairness of the situation, now I have to deal with all the blow hard Giants fans proclaiming their champion status like they caught that final touchdown for a whole year; as oppose to if the Pats won, all the arrogance and championship apparel would be far away from me up north.

As disappointing as the game was for me, it paled in comparison with the disappointment I felt with the slate of Super Bowl ads presented. In the ever competitive task of trying to get the consumer's attention towards their product or service, advertisers seem to have eschewed trying to be creative or clever for just crudely trying to catch your eye with shock or straight up confusion. One of my all time favorite Super Bowl commercials was by FedEx from a few years ago. It is so accurate in its breaking down of the unique beast that is the Super Bowl ad that I have used it to judge all other ads that came since. After watching all the commercials I can't recall a single commercial that amused with a clever joke or attempted to convey a genuine emotion. There were just so many CGI filled ads with things crashing (FedEx pigeons, Dell computer demolition); people getting beat up (Justin Timberlake, that Doritos commercial with the rat); cameos that served no purpose (James Carvelle and Bill Frist? Oh look it's Shaq on a horse, hilarious!); and of course animals, animal, animals (those Sobe people sure must have spent a lot of money to turn me off to their product). While I do enjoy all these things and feel no piece of media is perfect unless it contains at least one of these elements, after you get my attention with your gimmick there should be something behind it.

Of course, the only thing worst than a Super Bowl ad are the endless promos for whatever show the host network is trying to push or show after the game. This time around you had a whole bunch of standard issue ads for the new "House MD" episode afterwards, but they were dwarfed by the landslide of "Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles" promos that took up every other unoccupied piece of advertising real estate all night long. However, while the regular promos were uniformly generic and awful, the most satisfying and genuinely surprising moment for the whole night was when the trademark Terminator robot suddenly came out of nowhere to beat the crap out of that Fox NFL robot.

For anyone who has seen their share of NFL games on Fox, I know you are more than familiar with that annoying, bulky metal monstrosity. Every game while the network is rattling off logos and lists of sponsors there it is (apparently Cletus is his actual name) doing it's never ending assortment calisthenics and stretching exercises. If you can somehow manage to go beyond the question of why a ROBOT would need to do stretching exercises, the real annoying thing about it is that it never DOES ANYTHING ELSE! For probably the last five years it has done precisely nothing but that, get ready to play, sometimes even do a point out, but never actually play football. The thing obviously looks like was created to play football, I refuse to entertain the profoundly idiotic notion that someone would have made this gigantic robot just to demonstrate warm ups. For years we had to put up with its no talk and no walk while some voice mentioned that the game was brought to you by Bud Light, but then somewhere around the second quarter it finally happened.

From out of the wall itself a random Terminator robot burst through and immediately began to apply the beat down that all of us watching at home have only dreamed about for years. It just threw that robot around like a little bitch. A completely unexpected scene, that alone I would gladly watched the next episode of the "Chronicles" in gratitude for. But it didn't end there. A short while later another promo showed that Terminator continuing his beating of Cletus. Cletus did mange a dirty move here and there, but clearly the Terminator has the upper hand throughout. If this wasn't enough, towards the end of the game, a third spot ran where the Terminator clearly showed the true cowardly nature of Cletus. After throwing him around yet again, you see that Cletus is pitifully clawing at the ground as he is dragged away by the Terminator. This would have been the end of him if it weren't for the two other identical goons that show up to rescue him. Although the commercial ends there, I'd like to believe that the Terminator robot welcomes the challenge and ends up beating up all three robots into a large pile of scrap.

You can see all these showdowns here under promos; however this will involve going to a myspace page, something that's always better to avoid. They should find a reason to do this every year the Super Bowl's on Fox. With the demise of the Bud Bowl, there is definitely a gaping hole in America's need for violent sports with inanimate objects. It's the least the network could offer the fans for putting up with that robot's crap for 17 weeks plus playoffs. This piece of sweet commercial vindication almost put right the no win situation of the game and the lackluster plate of advertisements...almost.

I'm not here to start no trouble...2008

Well another Super Bowl is upon us. However, in contrast to last year's big game where my attitude towards the competitors was general ambivalence; it is now outright hatred. A perfect storm of circumstances led to the two teams that I wanted least to get to the Super Bowl squaring off against each other. After all the hype, dramatics and pageantry of the playoffs we find ourselves right back to week 17.

There really isn't much about the two teams and my feeling concerning them I haven't already covered back in December. The Patriots are still an amalgam of every evil team from every sports movie ever made while I still bear my idiosyncratic vendetta against the Giants for past and present personal transgressions. In terms of outcome, barring an unexpected ruling by the commissioner that both teams and their fans suck and that both teams must shamefully forfeit, there really in no positive one for me. I've been actively avoiding the media blitz about both teams and may not even give that much of an effort to watch the game tomorrow. However, in the grand spirit of Groundhog's Day and for all you compulsive types out there I'll at least throw out my predictions.

Now every sports commentator, sports expert, gambler, celebrity, co-worker, man on the street, dog, and cat are giving their predictions on the big game. They, for the most part, probably take in the strengths and weaknesses of the teams, past performance, seasoned with some personal biases to come out with a prediction. These people are wrong. As the time tested ritual of Groundhog's Day has taught us, straight logic, reasoning, and informed hypothesis can only get us so far. True prognostication comes from one looking beyond rational sources to find meaning in the random and seemingly irrelevant. Sure, the people of Punxsutawney could look to sophisticated equipment and trained meteorologists for answers but no, they come out in the cold to worship a giant rat and get their forecasting from him. So instead of looking at past match ups or commentaries or game match ups, I'm going to look at some alternate sources.

A real Giant versus a real Patriot

This is a no-brainer. While I will no doubt concede that an 18th century American patriot will have more motivation and would want it more; come on it's a Giant. And if the official team depiction of a Giant is to an accurate scale, he will tower over the dedicated by ultimately undersized Patriot. The Patriot may possibly be packing a musket, but in the end that would hardly give him much of an advantage, maybe take out one of the Giant's eyes in the best case scenario. There might be an argument that the Patriot's size and swiftness may give him an outside shot, but again look at that freakin' picture! Imagine Cloverfield taking place in colonial Williamsburg, that's how I see it'll turn out. Advantage: Giants

Tecmo Super Bowl: Giants vs. Patriots

There's no better way to determine the results of this modern day Super Bowl than to crudely simulate it on a NES game with rosters from 1990. The chips are quite unfairly stacked in the Giants' favor yet again since their roster is based off the team that won the Super Bowl that year while the Patriots (who went 1-15 that year) fight a constant battle with the Indianapolis Colts for worst team in the game. If I had simmed this game 100 times 99 of them would have ended with blow out victories for the Giants. Phil Simms would have about 400 yards of passing, Otis Anderson or Dave Meggett would have like 150 on the ground, and both would have a mess of touchdowns. While they don't show the defensive stats, I'm pretty sure Lawrence Taylor would have broken Steve Grogan (by far the worst QB in the game) in half, while WR Irving Fryer (their only good player) watched helplessly down field wishing he was on a better team. However, perhaps in a telling omen of things to come the Pats actually came out on top 35-30! Anyone familiar with Tecmo Super Bowl will know that this is roughly the equivalent of the miracle on ice or Appalachian State over Michigan. Perhaps the stars really are aligning for those cheaters from up north. Advantage : Patriots

Film Factor

When looking at the portrayals of both teams on film, this is a total Giants run away. This is mainly due to the fact that I can't think of a single movie about the Patriots. There's a movie about the Celtics (Celtic Pride), a movie about the Red Sox (Fever Pitch), but alas winning three Super Bowls doesn't seem to account for much in New England film these days. I guess aside from the first Super Bowl against the Rams, the Pats don't have much of a feel good story ("here's the pitch...favored team, wins big game"). The Giants on the other hand have the benefit of one of my favorite movies of my youth, "Little Giants". Now there's a textbook inspiring underdog story for ya. Forget studying game footage Coughlin, just show a dvd of this to the team before the game and they'll be plenty fired up. How sweet would it be if they broke out "The Annexation of Puerto Rico" on the big stage? Advantage: Giants

Super Bowl Shuffle Factor

Since the Chicago Bears breakthrough song and video in 1985, developing a sweet Super Bowl based, poorly performed, team song has always been a factor to consider on the road to the big game. Although wikipedia mentions it, I have yet to hear the 1990 Super Bowl champion Giants parody "Walk Like A Giant" which I guess counts as a song. I should technically award the Giants this category since the Patriots don't have a song (No movie? No song? It's like all you guys do is play football?). However, I have to throw a flag out for the truly horrific Jim Jones NY Giants Remix of "We Fly High", which takes an already awful song and adds a bunch of ham fisted Giants references in there. That's a 15 yard penalty. Advantage: Patriots

Coin Toss

As with all things in life, in the even of a tie or bout of indecision, one has to look towards the perfect arbitration of the coin toss. Hey, if it's good enough for Two-Face then it's good enough for me. Using a random quarter from my change jar, I assigned Patriots heads, Giants tails. In the end the toss that rendered all my previous analysis irrelevant was heads. Advantage: Patriots

So in conclusion it appears the Patriots are due for their perfect season and every member of the team will be able to get free drinks for life in every sports bar in Boston. However, it'll probably be very close, decided perhaps by a field goal; like every other Patriots Super Bowl victory. If I had to throw a score on it: Patriots 27 Giants 24 with the MVP going to Wes Welker for getting about a dozen annoying 10 yard, first down receptions.

Farewell, $1 Double Cheeseburger

I don't say it's a great hamburger. Double Cheeseburger never cost a lot of money. Its name was never in the paper. It's not the finest McDonald's item that ever existed. But it's a hamburger, and a kinda terrible thing is happening to it. So attention must be paid. It's not to be allowed to fall in its grave like an old bun. Attention, attention must finally be paid to such a burger!

That somewhat clumsy and awkward parody of the famous quote from "Death of a Salesman" pretty much sums up my feelings of the McDonald's Double Cheeseburger, which after today will depart its longtime home on the Dollar Menu. Oh sure there were better value burgers out there: Wendy's Jr. Bacon and Cheeseburger Deluxe used better ingredients, as was the Whopper Jr., and you could get two classic White Castle sliders for the comparable price; but none of these gave you the pure gross, quantity over quality, burgerness of the DC.

I can put away three Whooper Jrs. or Cheeseburger Deluxes at almost any given moment. I can put away four if I tried. If I'm feeling particularly hungry or grossly hedonistic I may be able to stuff down five. Anything over five and I've probably wondered into a burger eating competition. In stark contrast I can't recall eating more than 2 Double Cheeseburgers at any one sitting. Maybe it was the two rubbery patties that tasted like somebody sprayed on the burger taste; maybe it was the fact that a pinch of tiny, cut up onions bits and ketchup were all that counted as fixings; or the hideous half melted, taxi yellow cheese; but I doubt if anyone can eat more than three in one sitting without getting violently ill.

While all this sounds like harsh criticism, it's actually some of the highest praise I can give to a value fast food hamburger. A truly great value fast food hamburger has to have all those qualities: it has to be cheap (check), it has to be filling (check), and it has to be a little bit gross (double check).

If I want a fancy burger I'd go to a Fuddrucker's or order from the regular menu. When I go to a fast food joint I want something I can pay for with the contents of my dashboard change holder. Over the past few years, especially since going to school and living in NY, I have actually become almost exclusively a value menu customer. In a chaotic world of shifting burger inflation, the value menu remains my one solid rock of stability. The price of a Whopper or Big Mac may fluctuate two dollar from the New Jersey suburbs to downtown Manhattan, but the DC remains the same. It defies all economic logic for existing, there is no way they can be making a profit on these things. Even if I made my own burgers at home I probably wouldn't be able to meet these price points. In a way the value burger is one of the only true deals left in this bankrupt world.

Of course the value of the burger is highly dependent on how filling the whole thing is. The White Castle slider may cost a relative pittance, but I can down one in a single hungry bite. In the end, after a half dozen, the deal is revealed to become an illusion. Wendy's and Burger King will fill me up for less than the price of a gallon of gas, but like I said nobody could beat the DC. It was a noxious burgery mess that punched in the stomach...with flavor. This is in relation to its unparalleled grossness factor. You don't finish a DC, you just say no more and submit to it. Also economically, if you break it down, it is probably the cheapest cent per calorie food in the world. Roughly 440 calories of pure value for a dollar comes to roughly 4 and a half calories per cent! If that ain't America I don't know what is!

All of these above benefits would be for not if it didn't have a significant gross factor. But Victor, why do you want to eat food that's of sub standard quality when there are so many better tasting, possibly healthier options? In the words of Dennis Leary from one of cinema's great soliloquies, "because I suddenly may feel the need to". Fast food burgers, by virtue of their existence need to be kind of gross. At three in the morning after a night of drinking you're not going to have a craving for a an elaborate plate of sushi or foie grass, you want something greasy, something fatty, something down right antagonistic to your body. And in that respect, the DC was like Betty Davis in the "The Little Foxes".

So now after years of holding this steady position as a bargain basement priced, gutbusting, killer, the economics of the burger world and the powers have pushed it out of the special dollar menu and onto desert of the regular menu. McDonald's better think of a comparable replacement quick since the standard cheeseburger that has now moved up on the depth charts is literally half the burger that the DC was. As for the future of the DC, with its value roots diminished, it'll no doubt fade into obscurity right next to the fillet o' fish or the Angus something or other, a freakish refugee torn between too worlds; too cheap to be regular, too expensive to be value.

Godspeed, you cut rate, filthy son of a bitch.

Anal Bum Cover

In my continuing efforts to provide fluffy filler content for this blog and procrastinate from doing any actual law school studying I decided to take a crack at an interesting little "meme" I caught a few weeks back. Now normally I really don't go for such things considering that I still refuse to put any of those new fangled "applications" on my relatively spartan Facebook profile, I haven't done an internet quiz since I was a freshman in high school, and I heard so many analyses of memes during my Communications undergrad days that it makes me sick just to think too long about them; but hey I do enjoy dicking around on Photoshop.

The way it goes is:

1. You click on the Wikipedia Random Article page. Whatever result you get is your band/artist name.
2. Click on the Random Quotes page at the Quotations Page. The last four words of the very last quote on the page will be your album title.
3. Now head on over to Flickr and click on the "interesting photos from the last seven days" section. The first picture is your album cover.
4. Take all those elements and slap them together in Photoshop (or I guess MS Paint if you're keeping it old school) and you've got yourself an album cover that William Burroughs would have been proud of!

The results were actually at times eerily genuine. Frankly I don't know why bands even bother with graphic designers and artists when a few clicks, crops, and prudent font selection will give them just as good a cover. Here are the four I came up with:

I can totally see "Union Bay" as a modern day, post-grunge hard rock band, which in short means they probably suck. At best they might be like Live, at worst Nickelback. "Temper" would probably contain a baker's dozen of straight ahead crunching guitars and Eddie Vedder-like vocals form a bunch of indistinguishable long haired white guys (possibly from Florida). The songs would cover all the staples: screeching anthems about broken relationships, problems with the bottle, and finding the the strength to do something. All in all, they'd be derided by critics, however sell at least a million copies (which no one will admit to owning), top the modern and mainstream rock charts for about 40 weeks, and further contribute to the death of rock.

"Concreatism" seems like a fairly established electronica music group. They'd be one of those big beat bands that came out of the Ecstasy-fuel British rave culture of 90s, except they're Australian. They had their heydays about a decade before this release and even a fluke mainstream hit which makes people in this country who are not into the electronica scene classify them as one hit wonders. "Morning" looks like the long awaited release after a tumultuous period of change in the group (although about 90% of the work is done by one guy). It'll be hailed as a return to form and sell just enough albums for them to make another album.

This is definitely my favorite image of the four. "Atwood, Colorado" which happens to be where the group hails from seems like one of those irreverent, somewhat subversive, indie folk rock bands. It may possibly be all girl or at least half girls. I'd probably find them annoying and untalented a la Moldy Peaches. That being said I'm sure any of the songs from "...Is That" would fit like a glove within the Juno soundtrack. A fine collection of sparse, acoustic, lo-fi songs about young love, kissing, living in New York, candy wrappers, or whatever they're looking at as they hastily write a song. I'm sure you can preview all of them on their well maintained MySpace page.

Aside from the somewhat out of place artist name, this was probably the best combination that randomly came up. Alekseev seems to be to a Russian version of Mike Skinner. You could possibly assume that his name is a pseudonyms. He probably came originally from the rough streets of Moscow, then settled in England and established himself with a string of highly regarded singles. Amid a mountain of hype and buzz his debut "Impossible" becomes a critical smash and gets nominated for the Mercury Prize. Although nobody knows what the hell he's saying on the album, it all sounds fresh and interesting nevertheless. Elitist, above mainstream rap/hip hop fans in America find pretentious joy in introducing their friends to it.

King of the Road?

The gentleman pictured above, for those of you who didn't have a brief serial killer obsession period in high school after watching a rerun of the classic made-for-tv film "To Catch a Killer" with Brian Dennehy, is Mr. Henry Lee Lucas. One America's most prolific serial killers (and the inspiration for the cult classic Michael Rooker vehicle "Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer") Lucas had at one time confessed to about 3,000 murders committed in a roughly ten year span until his arrest in 1983. Although he later recanted most of them, and was officially convicted of 11, the number may reasonably be believed to be as high as 350. As was the case with many of the most prolific serial killers throughout modern times, Lucas was able to kill so frequently and for so long because he lived the nomadic life of a drifter. He lived on the fringes of society and on the fringes of the awareness of probably most of the people he came across. He was a vagrant, a tramp, a vagabond, and possibly according to Roger Miller, a man of mean by no means, king of the road.

I personally find Roger Miller's hit "King of the Road" one of the most insidiously catchy songs ever created. Every time it comes around on my iPod or on some oldies station, or used in some commercial; the smooth vocals, that sparse jazzy bass, those snaps, linger around in my head for days. So as it was cycling through my head after hearing it earlier the other day, I began to think about the lyrics and found some disturbing elements to it I never bothered to notice before. Maybe it was because I had just gotten out of Criminal Law class where we go back and forth about rape and homicide for entire classes, but suddenly I began to view the lyrics in a more suspicious shade. Could it be that behind the general country goodness, the laid back accompaniment, the old time sound that seems way before it's 1965 origin, the lyrics reveal a protagonist with more than a hint of evil, David Lynch-like, perversity?

Let's look at the verses:

Trailers for sale or rent
Rooms to let...fifty cents.
No phone, no pool, no pets
I ain't got no cigarettes
Ah, but..two hours of pushin' broom
Buys an eight by twelve four-bit room

The first part of the song establishes that the protagonist is living the life of a perpetual traveler. However his traveling doesn't seem to be that of leisure. He's obviously living low rent motel to motel, trailer to trailer. He's probably homeless, a drifter who doesn't even seem to have enough to buy his own cigarettes. He also doesn't seem to have a steady income as he resorts to doing menial labor and odd jobs like "pushin' broom" to even get lodging for the night. This already paints an unfortunate picture of the singer.

Third boxcar, midnight train
Destination...Bangor, Maine.
Old worn out clothes and shoes,
I don't pay no union dues,
I smoke old stogies I have found
Short, but not too big around

More details of the protagonist are revealed. He travels illegally by the classic hobo method of hitching on boxcars from city to city. He further elaborates on his overall shoddiness by mentioning his worn out clothes and shoes. His statement of not paying union dues seems to be a way of implying that he is essentially unemployed and that this appears to be a permanent or long term status for him. More vagrant like behavior is revealed as he smokes left over butts that he's gained from rummaging. At this point we have ourselves a pretty clear picture of a drifter. Possibly a criminal? Possibly a drunk? Possibly mentally ill? Possibly dangerous? The last verse implies some unsavory answers.

I know every engineer on every train
All of their children, and all of their names
And every handout in every town
And every lock that ain't locked
When no one's around.

The song suddenly takes quite a dark turn here. What are we supposed to assume from this last round of revelations? The first part says that he has a long history of living this boxcar hopping vagrant lifestyle, then he disturbingly adds "yeah I also know their children's names too". Maybe these were simpler times, but if I were an engineer, one of the last people I'd talk about my children with would be this creepy drifter I found riding in my boxcar. Or maybe he just found out about them on their own and it's now too late! Then comes the most incriminating part about his knowledge of every locked lock when no one's around which is about as close as saying "yes I am a criminal, I rob people" without actually admitting it. Is it the unlocked, unattended doors of the children that he's so familiar with? Disturbing!

I don't know, it may be a delusional stretch on my part, but taken as a whole everything about the singer just seems so off. I can totally imagine this guy with the vacant one eyed stare of a Henry Lee Lucas, the tragic, twisted upbringing of an Aileen Wournos, the perverse appetites of a Jeffery Dahmer, the cold manipulative abilities of a Ted Bundy, just looking for someone to contribute to his crudely made suit of human flesh. One thing's for sure, it'd make one hell of a psychological thriller/horror film though. "King of the Road" starring Peter Sarsgaard. Although I can't decide who'll play the obsessed detective with the personal life that's falling apart yet...maybe Ed Norton or Sean Penn.

Or I guess it could all just be about some bum on a train.

877-393-4448

I cannot emphasize enough that my following entry does not in any part endorses, promotes, or even condones Cablevision. I view the American cable industry as the most crooked, greedy, unscrupulous, and downright evil branch of business still allowed to function with relative freedom by the US government. The shameful reality that the government allows them to split up the country into their own personal cable fiefdoms and thus depriving us the consumer of any alternative or bargaining power is one of the biggest (among many) examples of the irrelevance of the FCC. Furthermore, among this terminally corrupt industry, Cablevision, the providers of the Optimum Triple Play package, as I've learned from years living in their service area, somehow manages to be the paradigm of corruption, greed, and customer indifference; not only with providing cable services, but with running Madison Square Garden and the once proud New York Rangers and New York Knicks completely into the ground. With all that being said however I can't deny, "The savings are for real, the Triple Play is the deal!"

For some of you living outside of the tri-state region and thus out of the reach of the dark tendrils of Cablevision's service area, this commercial won't be as affecting. For anyone living in Cablevision's sphere of influence and watching a moderate amount of TV, you most likely have seen this commercial during every commercial break for the past month or so. It's tasteless, annoying, extremely redundant, and advertising a product that I am openly hostile towards, but I somehow can't get enough of it!

The cheesy visuals, the forced reggaeton, the confusing demographic targetting, the vapid eye candy ladies, the nonsensical plot, all of this and more somehow combine to form a commercial that I can't look away from every time it comes on. So how can this annoying little advert which seems to fly in the face of the conventional view of creative, memorable, advertising somehow cut through the clutter of thousands of better produced ads and into my prized consciousness?

I think deep down it all just comes down to genuine fun. This commercial is just plain fun. It's outrageous, it's wacky, and I have a feeling everybody even had fun making it from the Daddy Yankee-esque protagonist to the 877 girls, to the pirates, to the guy in the monster suit that looks like Tony Reali. It's silly without the overwhelming stink of irony. The modern commercials created by their detached merchants of cool have mostly been about being painfully ironic, or postmodern, or just too plain clever. Antagonizing Burger King customers by giving them the wrong food and calling it a freakout, Old Spice commercials with Bruce Campbell just for the sake of Bruce Campbell, cavemen selling car insurance (or rather trying not to sell car insurance), ambiguously associating Cheetos with some sort of guerrilla movement, commercials not for Esurance but merely the character that used to promote Esurance. Somewhere along the attempt to provide "killer" copy, to enhance positioning, to try to be as distinctive as possible, to think outside the box, people may have strayed away from the primary goal of advertising which is to get awareness out so the product will sell.

Now I'm not calling for the overhaul of modern advertising back into some sort of utilitarian, no frills, Head-On Apply Directly to the Forehead, approach; but I think sometimes copywriters and art directors have to stop being so damn cool that they think they're not making a ad for a product. It's okay to make a goofy commercial that's not completely in an ironic manner. Sometimes you need pirates running around in fast motion, a lame rap, extra repetition of the phone number ( with sexy women doing pelvic thrusts on the last 8). Don't be afraid to, gasp, show the product in a straight forward manner. As chaotic as it seems, the three specific acts of the Io commercial each deal clearly with the three separate services. Show me a burger and I may want to buy it, don't show me a just guy in a creepy king suit and tell me there's a burger in the restaurant also. Creativity is great, but one has to walk a fine line between getting my attention and then transferring that intention to the product. If you can't reconcile the two, direct music videos or branch out into feature films.

I couldn't tell you what that latest viral, guerrilla marketing campaign is about but I will probably remember the phone number 877-393-4448 till my deathbed. And for that I hate them even more.

Where Were You In '99?

Roughly over ten years from now you'll be in your mid thirties. You may have settled down, married, and maybe have a young kid keeping you awake at night. You may be living in an actual house to facilitate this, with an actual mortgage. You could have risen to some status within whatever you do for a living or have come to the realization that it's probably too late to uproot and change you're current path. Your body won't be as resilient or as low maintenance or as skinny, tight, muscular, energetic as it used to be. Drinking until you're drunk won't be as appealing, along with sex without commitment, staying up late, eating convenience store food, and using facebook. There'll be nobody back at college to remember you except for the alumni board that sends you monthly letter for donation. Overall, you'll be fully engaged in the early stages of that transition into becoming your parents from whence you'll maintain a steady decline for the next few decades. You may also find that if you're not living like this, the people around you will think you've screwed up somewhere along the way.

It's a disturbing scene for sure; one that has yet to even mention the possible ills of climate change, rising fuel costs, the solvency of social security, murderous replicants, and the ethical ramifications of robot baseball.

One thing I will, however, actually be looking forward to will be the ability to see how the collective nostalgia of my generation (or as I personally refer to it, the "Pepsi Generation") and the retro-fetishism of the younger generation finally give credit to the teen movies of my high school years. As we stand now in the early 21st century, the teen movies of the 80s, the Pretty in Pinks, the Breakfast Clubs, Ferris Buellers, the Fast Times at Ridgemont Highs, the Revenge of the Nerds, Heathers, Wargames, even the Some Kind of Wonderful Wonderfuls, have the spotlight in the pop culture collective nostalgia. There's no reason why it wouldn't be this way, the torch is kept alive by all the plentiful aging Gen Xers who are now currently in their 30s and 40s and many of whom are well established in society to keep it on top (hell, that's what most of the World Series of Pop Culture was all about).

But as they say, all things must pass, and I'm predicting some serious passing around the corner. For all the attention and pop cultural cache 80s teen movies have, in the next ten to twenty years they will be a mere afterthought, buried under the sheer quantity and (sometimes) quality of teen movies of the late 90s to the early 00s. Teen movies may have blown up prominently in the 80s, but in comparison the late 90s were an atomic bomb. By comparison the year 1999 alone stacks up well against the output of the entire decade of the 80s. As this generation gets older and begin to become to new merchants of nostalgia cool, the aging films of the 80s will just be relegated to "movies grandpa watches".

If I were to ask you to name a 90s teen movie off the top of your head, there's a good chance it came out in 1999. I was pretty surprised too as I started look up my list.
The most prominent of these films that stick the most faithfully to the traditional formula include:

• American Pie
• Varsity Blues
• Cruel Intentions
• She's All That
• Election
  
• 10 Things I Hate About You
• Never Been Kissed
• Drive Me Crazy.
  

Some films that I don't automatically fit into the mold of a typical teen movie but never the less should be considered:

• Go
  
• Dick
• But I'm A Cheerleader
  
• Idle Hands
• Drop Dead Gorgeous
  
• Simply Irresistible
  
• The Rage: Carrie 2
• Detriot Rock City
• The Blair Witch Project
• Virgin Suicides

Also if you think about it, the Oscar winner for Best Picture American Beauty is half about the quiet, desperation of suburban parents and half about the quiet, desperation of suburban teens. It's by far the closest the academy has ever come and will probably ever will come to giving a teen movie a best picture (I guess "Oliver!" had a bunch of young people in it?).

Considering that these were just movies I thought about off the top of my head and limited to just one year there are probably more. Overall though it's a pretty impressive array that spans various genres, periods, and quality (I'm looking at you Drive me Crazy). It's not all great, but in assessing pop culture that matters the least. Keep in mind that outside of this year is a full decade of films as well. You only need to look a year to the left or right and you'll see others like Bring It On, Disturbing Behavior, Can't Hardly Wait, and Final Destination.

So I figure based on the prolific amount of material of this generation , people should be prepared in the next decade and beyond for Mena Suvari retrospectives, midnight showing of Crazy/Beautiful, contemporary movies with terribly shallow interpretations of life during the period, and an even more irrelevant Chris Klein talking about things on I Love the "00"s. Of course this is all until the 80s becomes so old it becomes cool again.

Opportunties (Let's Make Lots of Money)

Game show money, similar to game show fame, is a fleeting thing. Between Uncle Sam's crippling rabbit punch of a tax on all my winnings, the mountain of student loans courtesy of NYU, and the debt that I'm accumulating right this very moment as I fail my way through St. John's Law; there's little to nothing left over for offensively ostentatious displays of wealth. On top of that, to maintain this oh so fabulous lifestyle of prudent loan repayment and educational investing I, along with my fellow "Twisted Mister' compatriots, will have to win another World Series of Pop Culture. It's not that I'm lacking any confidence that we will repeat, but considering the economics and pay scales of game shows as a whole, for the work we put in we're going to have to work hard for the money. If you consider the three way split of $250,000 a year for beating the toughest competition the US has to offer, it would take us years of continuous Patriots-esque perfection to equal the amount some overly excited rube would get for a night of randomly picking suitcases. Of course I'm far from complaining, a third of $250,000 was an amazing win fall that I'll be forever gracious about; but sadly you can't live your whole life on it.

That leads me to to the million dollar (neigh multi-million dollar) opportunity I hinted above. Why am I sharing this idea with you the public at large? Well, for all my inspiration, I lack the requisite 99 parts of perspiration. While I have the goal in mind, I need someone with the wherewithal, gumption, along with other old timey synonyms to cut the Gordian knot (I just learned what that meant and have been trying my best to use it in my daily conversations, properly and improperly) and solve the difficult problem of achieving it. In sharing my idea I would hope to appeal to everyone's sense of right and fairness and that someone wouldn't just take all the credit themselves and leave me stuck in miserable, law school less one world changing idea. I'm not asking for too much, just a reasonable cut of the action, maybe like 30% as essentially a finder's fee.

So like Mr. McGuire said to a young Benjamin Braddock, I want to say one word to you. Just one word. Ketchup.

I guess regionally some folk may substitute that with catsup, but the idea remains the same. Everybody has ketchup (well almost everybody since last I heard salsa was the top condiment in this country). Millions upon millions of bottles are consumed every year, it complements hot dogs all across the land, it's considered by some a last resort substitute for vegetables, and it partially funds the opulent lifestyles of the Kerrys. Despite the apparent universal success of ketchup, you would be able to see its greatest failing if you go to your fridge, open a bottle and hold it upside down. Before you got to that good stuff, you know exactly what you'd get. You'd get pre-ketchup.

That's my patented official term for it, and frankly there's no better way of putting it. It's that thin, watery discharge you get from a bottle that's been sitting around for a while. Unless you get rid of that beforehand, you're finding yourself with a soggy hot dog, or a dripping burger, or wet fries. Half the time you don't even think about it until it's too late. No type of bottle or brand is immune to this phenomenon, even plastic packets if left around long enough will give you a trickle of pre-ketchup. With the advent of the plastic squeeze bottle the problem seems to have gotten even worse in recent years. It's a baffling commentary on modern times. We have fiber optic cables, cars that park themselves, a complete map of the human genome, foot prints on the moon; and yet no one has definitely solved this simple problem.

So as the old maxim goes "build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door." If anyone can find a viable way to eliminate the nuisance of pre-ketchup from America's kitchens, ballgames, diners, picnics, and backyard barbecues, you can write your own check. Can you imagine the bidding war that would erupt among America's premier ketchup barons for the exclusive patent rights to the perfect bottle of ketchup? It'd be the greatest innovation in the industry since green ketchup. You could play the Heinz people against the Hunt's people and then throw in all the supermarket brands as well for maximum returns. And you know what's the best part of all this? You can double your already enormous profit by repeating it again with the mustard industry; just replace the top guys with French's and Gulden's.

That's basically the gist of the plan. Now there's the slight formality of coming up with a solution. Anyone can try, I'm not sure if there's any background or discipline that is best suited for solving this conundrum (mechanical engineering? physics? graphic design? ketchup fluid mechanics? tomato theory? modern condiment relations?) If you feel like never wanting to have to work again and living the rest of your days in grand leisure, you owe it to yourself to take a crack at it. After you've given it said thought and you've perhaps come across a possible solution send it over to the official email hotline at PreKetchupSolution@gmail.com and hopefully we may be able to turn that red into some green. Opportunity's knocking and this time he's not telling you to buy a Honda.

Political science a la Mr. Lee

Your eyes are not deceiving you! Yes, this is another political entry! While this is quite an unexpected turn of events, a much more unexpected one would be the recent comeback in New Hampshire by Hillary Clinton that prompted it. As it turned out, I called it wrong, the events following Hillary's Muskie moment went exactly the opposite of what I thought might happen. Perhaps this will lead to a rash of weepiness all across the primary field with candidates bearing their fragile vulnerabilities and once sheltered sensitivities all over the campaign trail and C-Span appearing more like Lifetime (although I'm sure Chuck Norris will refuse to let Mike Huckabee cry). So since I did call it wrong, I felt people coming across the previous most recent entry might have wanted to know what my response to the results were. I would have done the same thing if I had written an entry last week that miserably handicapped the NFL playoffs. The days after I would have given at least a brief word on why I might have gotten it so wrong, maybe explain myself a little if possible.

Well, if it was a well reasoned, throughly researched, nuanced explanation you were expecting prepare to be inconsolably disappointed. You're probably just as qualified as me (perhaps even more) to have an opinion on what went wrong. It might have been an error in polling, a late surge of sympathy, a bunch of random people who suddenly had an urge to vote Hillary, or an evil President Hillary Clinton from the future committing electoral fraud on behalf of her younger self to assure her future success. Who knows? It's the chaotic, opera of uncertainty that we call American politics.

But, if you really want to know what happened, you ask my dad, Mr. Lee. Now Mr. Lee wasn't born in this country or grew up here, and has only been a US citizen since 2004. His English may be a little broken and he watches more Korean period dramas than CNN. However, Mr. Lee pays his taxes, works hard, votes, and has opinions which makes him as valid a pundit as Lou Dobbs or John McLaughlin. So when he heard about the results of the primary he gave me his expert analysis (roughly translated): "Although white people say they're going to vote for Obama; they're not because they don't want a black president. They would rather have a white woman president than a black one."

Now some may view this as overly simplified, too generalized, perhaps overly cynical, maybe uninformed, maybe even racist. I myself wrote it off as just standard Mr. Lee talk. However, earlier today I was idly roaming around wikipedia at school, hopping from link to link, and somehow I came across this interesting article on the Bradley Effect. I'm sure this is something most political science majors and political junkies probably know all about. In short it's basically a phenomenon where opinion polls in elections between white and non-white candidates have the non-white candidate leading but then differing drastically with the actual results. It's named after black, former Los Angeles mayor Tom Bradley who narrowly lost the California governor's election to white (St. John's Law alumni) George Deukmejian despite consistently leading in the polls. At the core of all the analysis and case studies in other such elections, what the Bradley Effect is kind of suggesting is:"Although white people say they're going to vote for [the black candidate]; they're not because they don't want a [black candidate]." It's something to consider in a state with a 96% white population.

While Mr. Lee's word is far from completely validated, it does make you think a little bit. I guess if there's a message in all this is, "everybody's views should be considered and you shouldn't write off people's opinions". Well, at least that's better than, "New Hampshire voters may be secretly racist."

There's no crying in electoral politics!

"Victor Sells Out" is a pretty apolitical blog. My take on showcasing my political views is that it's about the equivalent of posting lurid pictures of myself in a thong. In the end some might be supportive of me, some might be disappointed with me, some would have preferred I didn't share it, and basically in the end, despite all the awkwardness, probably nothing will have really changed. It's only when the politics absurdly spill over into the realm of the pop culture (i.e. Larry Craig's mens room hijinks or the guy from Orleans being elected to congress) that I may throw in my two cents on the issue. Aside from that, it's the usual, rambling post about some esoteric minutiae in my life.

So, don't consider this an endorsement or a condemnation of any particular issue or candidate (lest I unfairly give that all important "Victor Sells Out" endorsement boost to certain candidates) but merely an observation when I say, "Hillary, what's with the near crying?" Someone running for president can make numerous gaffes, but aside from engaging in extra-marital monkey business, or being associated with people with mental health issues, crying has got to be one of the worst things you can do.

When people are looking for the next President of the country, they're generally looking for someone who can keep it together. If some horrific national disaster strikes, or we're plunged into war (again), or if terrorists have hijacked Air Force One, or we have to send a team of rag tag astronauts to blow up a doomsday meteorite, the one thing the President has got to do is keep it together; if not behind closed doors but at least when addressing the press and the American people. Say what you will about Bush, but at the very least he kept it together (perhaps even a bit suspiciously too together) from when he first heard the news to when he addressed the nation on that frantic Tuesday in September. So yeah, when you're starting to well up because the polls may be indicating your campaign isn't going so well, it's not sending a good message. She's also not going to get a lot of sympathy from a state that prides itself on being a bit of a bad ass with the whole "live free or DIE" state motto (in contrast New Jersey has the incredibly trite and lame "liberty and prosperity").

Did I also forget to mention that she's carrying the historic burden of becoming the first woman president and she just played into a major anti-feminist stereotype? It'd be like if she showed up to the next debate with an apron on and asked that before the debates started she'd distribute fresh baked brownies for all the other democratic candidates. You're Hillary freaking Clinton, you were probably the first first lady since Eleanor Roosevelt to have done stuff outside of picking the curtains for the White House, you gotta be tougher than that.

In conclusion, I think Hillary done fucked up. Whether this'll be a minor blip that'll fade into obscurity or it's the kind of minor issue that snowballs and derails entire campaigns a la Howard Dean, only the coming weeks will tell. My suggestion, Hillary should immediately schedule a press conference and then punch the first reporter that makes eye contact with her, that's how you do it in prison when you want to show everyone right off the bat you're hard. I think voters in a state known as "the Granite State" who until recently worshiped some sort of pagan mountain god will appreciate that kind of hardness.

Now to go back to writing about which Darren was better on Bewitched.

You don't know what it's like...

"The Simpsons" debuted right around the time I was 5 or 6. I think I started really getting into it when I was around 8 and watched it fairly religiously through the greatest run in network history until I set off for college around season 14. By this point it was well past it's Golden Era and was entering the depths of its current period of comfortable mediocrity and infrequent genius. I'm well aware that fans of the show still debate when the show was in its prime or whether it has rebounded as of late, or whether it's still just as good now. For me personally the show lost a step when I stopped regretting missing an episode, but if it's on I'll still watch it.

One of the great lasting legacies of the show that still effects me to this day were the brilliantly placed layers of esoteric references that you finally understood and appreciated years down the line. Before the Simpsons I didn't know who Rory Calhoun was; or could recite selected parts of Gilbert and Sullivan's "H.M.S. Pinafore"; and to this day can't imagine "A Streetcar Named Desire" as anything but a musical. When you're little you don't think these as sly references by a bunch of smart-ass Harvard writers, you just think its something that they made up. That is until you see the Twilight Zone and realize about half the early Tree House of Horror episodes were straight parodies, or you see "Vertigo" and it's the same tower Principal Skinner climbs up in that one episode, or you realize Mr. Burns is essentially Charles Foster Kane whenever the plot called for it.

One of my favorite such scenes was from the classic 5th Season episode "Secrets of a Successful Marriage." I don't need to go too deep into the plot since I'm sure most people have seen and remember this episode. It's the one where Homer tries to teach an adult education class about marriage to prove he isn't slow but tells private stuff about his married life and Marge kicks him out. Correction Marge, two perfectly good jackets? A marriage is a lot like an orange? Give your new mother a kiss? Etc. etc?

The scene begins when Marge confronts Homer about not sharing anymore details about their personal lives with his class. Homer begins to give a rationed response in hopes of getting some understanding and compassion from Marge. When Marge gives an alternate option, Homer's response to that is merely an unexpected, insane, now classic rant. There it is in all it's glory; a brief 20 second absurdist departure from the rest of the story; a departure from which Homer is quickly brought back via Marge. On the surface this is a completely useless throwaway scene that probably shouldn't have even been included, however for me it's actually completely necessary and is definately one of the highlights of the episode. There's something about that exchange that goes to the complex stupidity that is Homer, which is really the main focal point of the episode.

But really, how many people (especially of my generation) knew exactly where all those quotes came from when they first saw it? How long did it take to finally get all the movies?

Let's see I was around ten and I think I only got the Few Good Men quote since the early to mid 90s were the hey days of "You can't handle the truth" quoting (only to be followed by the mid to late 90s hey days of "Show me the money"). About 6 years later in high school, our sophomore year US history teacher for our study on World War II showed us the famous opening clip to Patten. During my senior year I worked at my local Blockbuster video store and one day decided to use one of my weekly free rentals on a interesting looking Al Pachino movie. Finally during my sophomore year at NYU, I lived in the Lafayette dorms in Chinatown so I figured I'd see what the movie was all about. All in all it would be a good ten years later before I was able to finally look back on that scene and understand all the movies noted to fully appreciate it. It was just as funny as when I knew hardly anything at all. That's why "The Simpsons" is so great.

Over-Cooked

I haven't studied international law yet, but I'm pretty sure there's something in the Geneva Convention against this.

To put that into perspective it'd be like watching "Good Luck Chuck" four straight times in a row and then listening to half of one of his comedy CDs. It's basically a filibuster against humor.

Everybody Sweats Raymond

OMG, three posts in a row? Given my usual output this recent jag has now reached the historic and unbreakable equivalent level of Cal Ripkin's consecutive games streak or Joe Diaggio's 56 game hitting streak. Soak it in because I'm pretty sure I won't be able to sustain this degree of prolificness for too long. Besides, it isn't my style to be consistent. Infrequent posting makes my sparse entries all the more riveting, and why would I want to water down a good deal like that?

So earlier today I realized I had finally hit that point in my vacation where I had forgotten everything I had learned the previous semester (and then some). I had officially "decompressed" from the previous semester (unfortunately school starts up again next week and it'll take me a good month or so to "recompress"). I felt compelled to do what I did last summer when I had hit my lazy stride which was start running on my basement treadmill.

Now to all those people who say running is so great and find it some sort of activity to relax, clear the mind, and relieve depression: you're fucked in the head! Running, and by extension any sort of physical exercise, is a terrible experience that I find to be the equivalent of assigning yourself the chore of torturing yourself. Those people that use exercise as a recreational activity to me are deeply disturbed sadomasochists. The only pleasures I find from it are when the period of exercise is finally over and the vague notion that I get that I've done something productive for myself thus excusing from any further obligations of productivity. In that capacity it gives me pleasure, much like the unbelievable pleasure one receives when they move their hand from a burning iron or after passing a kidney stone.

Since I've established that running is a generally unpleasant experience for me I try not to associate it with things that I like. I wouldn't listen to songs that I enjoyed while running since I would run the risk of tainting them forever with unhappy memories. To this day I still can't hear Nirvana's In Utero without some part of my brain going back to all the SAT prep courses I drove to with it in my car CD player or hear Radiohead's OK Computer and not remember the many times I played it while driving home at midnight from a long shift at Blockbuster. It's basically like aversion therapy (or the Ludovico technique to give it a pop culture anchor). Since I don't really have a collection of music that I am ambivalent towards or hate, music is usually out of the question, lest I ruin my fond associations with "Crank That (Soulja Boy)".

I still need to keep my mind occupied so I usaually turn to the tiny TV that's set up across from the treadmill. The timing of television works out pretty well to, two back to back sitcoms or a hour long drama and you've gotten yourself some decent time on the machine and caught a whole show. Alas, television shows also run to risk negative association so I steer clear of shows that I would watch, but the beauty of television is that 95% is mediocre to unwatchable giving me plenty of options. Now, the perfect program to watch is something that is not particularly good but not bad enough so as to make running in silence a far better option. "Just Shoot Me"? Too much of a guilty pleasure. "Yes, Dear"? Too unbearable. "George Lopez Show"? Too much George Lopez! The perfect show is what took a title, a picture, and four and a half rambling paragraphs to get to: "Everybody Loves Raymond".

For me personally "Raymond" is the best show for running. I've tried numerous times over the years to appreciate this show, to see what millions of viewers and Emmy voters saw that I couldn't. Unfortunately I have yet to find it. On the surface I should like the show, I've always been a fan of the dying art of the old school three camera, laugh track, standard sitcom, in spite of modern television and the chagrin of most of my TV watching friends. I can see the merit in the fact that "Raymond" doesn't need fancy single camera shots or a bunch of outrageous actions; you can have half an episode of them just cracking punchlines in a living room. I can see the merit in how they essentially ignore the children and never flip to them for a cheap laugh. I appreciate the fact that it's in Queens and Ray writes for Newsday. However when it comes to the laughs, it's just not there for me.

For me I think it goes to the main characters, they're for the most part irritating and sort of boring. Every character seems to be a robot with their set of fixed responses, the only thing that changes is the situation. Raymond will always be sort of an inconsiderate jerk to everyone, Debra will complain about Raymond and have tensions with Marie who'll be equally tense to Debra and love Raymond. Meanwhile Frank's a jerk/slob and Ray's brother Robert gets no respect from anyone. This remains but newer events arise leading them to tackle it with their set character actions. Frankly the show should be about Robert (Brad Garrett has a valid stake on all those Supporting Actor Emmys) and portray Ray (who is by far the least interesting character on the show) as more of a golden child villain who gets all the attention, I think it'd be somewhat more interesting this way.

All these flaws add up to me feeling a little disappointed every time I flip to TBS expecting a Seinfeld rerun. However, it's not so bad as to the point I would change the channel (especially if I had nothing to do and knew that an actual Seinfeld was just over this sand dune). All in all though, it's the so comfortably middle of the road that it'll do the job; kind of like the worn out clothes you put on to do some really dirty work that you don't mind getting ruined. And with TBS and the WB playing it about a dozen times a day between them my running routine is pretty flexible.

Imgaine if you will.

In keeping with my New Year's Resolution (well more like a notion; definitely no expectation of a long term commitment) to post more entries, I'm providing you, the lucky readers of the internet, with part two of my 2008 Twilight Zone Marathon Choice Picks. I must note that I spent basically the whole day at my cableless uncle's house so alas I missed a rather large chunk of the New Year's Day episodes, however there are still roughly nine hours of groundbreaking Sci-Fi television left, with many prime episodes still to be shown.

To make sure you take these early steps into the New Year right, here's another 5 Victor-approved classics (once again Eastern Standard Time):

• 7:30pm "Number 12 Looks Just Like You" - This is a standout among the many, many "dystopian future" episodes of the series. A young rebellious girl causes great confusion among her friends and family when she doesn't want to enter into "The Transformation", a body modification process that everyone undergoes at age 19 which makes them beautiful, immune to disease, and look exactly the same. While an excellent commentary on 50's/early 60's conformity, I was more impressed by the main actress who walks a difficult, fine line between unattractive and beautiful.
  
  
• 11:00pm "Nightmare at 20,000 ft." - What more can I say about this episode that most already don't know. If you somehow have no idea what this episode is about, by all means watch it before someone ruins the entire story for you. A sharp looking William Shatner plays the mentally fragile airplane passenger desperately trying to stop a mysterious monster from downing the plane while struggling to find someone who believes him. This episode might be better known to you many as that Simpson's Treehouse of Horror segment "Terror at 5 1/2 Feet". While it has lost some of its power, the tense, claustrophobic directing of a young Richard Donner and Shatner's going mental performance still make it a keeper.

• 12:00am "The Masks" - For some reason I almost always end up catching this at the end of every yearly marathon. It's actually a pretty good one to top off the viewing since it has one of the most satisfying conclusions of any Twilight Zone episode. The set up is pure Twilight Zone, an dying old millionaire invites his ungrateful, horrible family to Mardi Gras to will over his possessions with (get this!) a catch! The excellent performances all around by the family and the old man along with the twist make this more of a standout than the general description would have you believe.

• 1:00am "The Howling Man" - Definitely one of the most high concept of Twilight Zone episodes. A man explains in flashback how while traveling through Europe he sought shelter in the monastery of a bizarre order of monks. He soon discovers they are holding a tortured sounding man captive in their castle who the monks claim to be the devil himself. The man is torn between releasing the individual or believing their crazy story. The whole thing sounds fairly ridiculous but on a deeper level its themes deal with man's inherent curiosity and temptation.
  

• 2:00am "The Obsolete Man" - It's another Burgess Meredith classic to round out my list. We venture back to the dystopian future, except this time it's a totalitarian society where Meredith's character is deemed obsolete by the state and ordered to die. He is given his choice of assassin and undisclosed method of death. After he decides this he invites the fascist Chancellor who sentenced him for a final meeting; any other details would ruin the rest of the episode. While there's the climatic conclusion at the end, the confrontation between Meredith and the Chancellor is really the heart of the story that sets it up for the big inevitable ending.

Well, that's it for now. Officially the marathon goes up until 5:00am if the SciFi website schedule is as accurate as it should be. If I remember I'll try to do another more prepared list like this next year; there were definitely some major ones I regret missing, but perhaps I might be able to catch them again during the fairly frequent regularly scheduled airings of...The Twilight Zone.

Submitted for your approval.

I figured there was still one more hastily written entry left in this crazy year so here's another post coming at you right under the deadline (and you thought Christmas ended last week!).

As everyone who knows me will attest to, for me there's only one meaningful New Year's Eve tradition in my book. It's not making empty, overly optimistic resolutions, watching some ball drop, binge drinking, or even the welcoming sight of the ageless Dick Clark. New Year's Eve and New Year's Day has always been about the Twilight Zone Marathon. From when it used to air on the old WPIX when I was little to its flashier, current SciFi channel home, I've always managed to ring in the new year with the classics. Some episodes are sad, some are hilarious, some are thought provoking, some are fairly awful, and some have premises so thin that they should just cut to the chase and make it ten minutes. For the most part however, the Twilight Zone really is some of the best writing that has ever been broadcast on TV. The imagination, the plotting, the dialog, is of such high quality compared to most of the hack writing you see on TV today that if writers of this caliber went on strike, you better believe people would have taken notice.

Unfortunately I'm coming to the party a little late so unless you've already been watching since this morning you and I have already missed a few classic episodes (Including my all time favorite "Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up" at 7:30pm). However, there are still a good twenty plus hours of episodes on deck. So if after you're done with all the confetti and awkward kissing and find yourself in a post countdown state, rudderless on what to do in the New Year here are 5 choice cut episodes to ring in the New Year (note:these are all eastern standard time on SciFi channel):

• 12:00am - "The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street": One of the all time greatest Twilight Zone episodes, and one especially relevant in this post 9/11 world. A picturesque evening on a block in Anytown, USA is suddenly disrupted by a series of mysterious power outages and other bizarre events. Fear and paranoia begin to take hold and the shocking revelation at the end is one I envy anyone who hasn't seen it.
  

• 12:30am - "The Invaders": A lonely old woman finds herself visited by a group of hostile aliens. This episode is basically a 22 minute set up for the big twist at the end, but it's a pretty good twist. You also have to give Agnes Moorehead credit for carrying the whole episode by herself.

• 1:30am - "Valley of the Shadow": A young man accidentally stumbles across a town where its inhabitants possess scientific knowledge that is light years headed of our own time. This is one of the few hour long Twilight Zone episodes I like. This is not a real famous episode or anything and the main plot itself is fairly flat, but I just dug the soliloquies the town leaders give about how screwed up modern civilization is. The Twilight Zone was always good at waving its finger at modern times, in an entertaining way.

• 3:30am - "Five Characters in Search of An Exit" This is literally what the title says, five random strangers a hobo, a ballerina, a major, a bagpipe player, and a clown find themselves in an empty room with no memory and no escape. One of the most bizarre and imaginative Twilight Zone episodes ever, it also has one of the most surprising endings as well.

• 4:30am - "Printer's Devil" A struggling newspaper publisher makes a deal with the devil to make his newspaper more popular, of course these sort of agreements usually don't end very well. It's a pretty straightforward Faustian bargain message episode but basically any episode with Burgess Meredith is a treat to watch. Hitchcock had Jimmy Stewart or Cary Grant; Rod Serling's leading man was Burgess Meredith.

Hey Man That's Not A Prediction It's a Fact of Life

As many of have already known by now, those unstoppable New England Patriots completed stage one of their mission to cement themselves as the greatest team in NFL history by beating the New York Giants and completing the first perfect season since the 1972 Dolphins. It was an event that was pretty hard to avoid considering all the significance of the game, the hype, the media attention, and not to mention the three network simulcast. All in all it was I believe the most watched televised regular season game in NFL history.

As a testament to the inherent injustice of the universe I myself actually found myself with a free ticket to this historic game, courtesy of a friend with a season ticket holding father who just happened to away this weekend. In light of reports of Patriots fans paying ridiculous Super Bowl scalper prices and the Giants faithful coming out to support a Patriots beat down in the very same stadium that in Week 1 they were found to be disgraced, video taping cheaters, I was pretty low on the depth chart in terms of people who actually wanted to see this game. I would have been more content with just playing Madden at home and catching the scores afterward.

These were two teams that I really disliked. As a Buffalo Bills fan I could never forgive the Giants for their dumb luck Super Bowl XXV victory off of Scott Norwood's infamous wide right kick. Also living in North Jersey you get more than your fair share of jerk ass Giants fans all who also seem to synonymously love the Yankees (the most evil organization in all of professional sports). Of course my hatred of the Patriots is much in the vein of rest of the country outside of the New England area: their suspected cheating, their evil genius head coach, their arrogance, their relentless perfection, etc., etc. It'd be like rooting for Cobra Kai in Karate Kid, or the Hawks in the Mighty Ducks, or Ivan Drago in Rocky IV. Adding to that default disdain was also the fact that they, being our division rivals, had beaten us twice this year to a combined score of 94-17.

So you could see I was torn as to who to root for. It was a decision I wrestled with all through the 6 plus hour tailgating festivities in the parking lot. No matter how many Miller High Life cans I knocked back or how many hamburgers, hot dogs, nachos, I consumed it was a tough call. As we all finally finished up and made that long march across the parking lots into the stadium amidst the sea of jerseys and hooded sweatshirts I realized there was only one cutting the Goridan knot solution that would satisfy me: a tie. I know it's a fairly rare occurrence and something both teams would probably no everything to avoid, but it was the only logical way that both my goals of disappointing both teams and their obnoxious fan bases would be accomplished. A tie would technically be a blemish on the perfect season of the Pats while at the same time leaving a bad taste in the mouth of the Giants fans. As everyone knows by now, the Giants fell a field goal and a futile overtime short of achieving my ultimate goal, so here were some other personal observations from the game...in easy to swallow bullet form!

• Actually this was one the way to the game, but my friend and I saw on the exit to the stadium a large billboard for Citizen Watches featuring an especially intense looking Eli Manning and the words "Unstoppable" (it was basically this ad except without a picture of a watch). The notion of anyone calling Eli Manning "unstoppable" had us laughing until we got to the gate.
  
• At the beginning of the game the video screens showed clips of the famous Dec 13, 1998 game between the Giants and the Denver Broncos where the Giants, led by career jobber QB Kent Graham, ruined the Broncos perfect season in week 15. This instance of past precedent in standing in the way of perfection gave me undue optimism that the Giants might pull off the upset. It also reminded me how old WR Amani Toomer was.
• I counted at least three fights alone in the general area where I was sitting. The smattering of Drunken Masshole Pat fans and drunken Jersey Giants fans made for more tension than the Smiths.
• During a lull in the game the video screens showed a top 5 countdown of Giants Season Finales. Former Giants star RB Tiki Barber (who abruptly retired in his prime at the end of last season and became a host on the Today Show) was featured on two of them. A healthy chorus of boos erupted every time. That's NY sports for ya.
• I predicted before hand that if Patriots WR Wes Welker had at least 10 receptions in the game the Patriots were going to win (He had 11 for 122 yards). Of all the superstars on the Pats, I firmly believe he is the absolute key to beating them. I mean how many drives has he kept alive this season with his hella cheap first down catches?
  
• When the Giants went up 28-16 in the 3rd quarter you could tell by the reaction what kind of fans were who. Most young Giants fans were overflowing with optimism, most Patriots fans were still fairly confident but starting to get a little nervous, and true long time Giants fans were glad to have the lead but were already expecting the worse.
• The Dane Cook doppelganger with the backwards Giants hat that sat next to me kept expecting high fives and fist bumps from me every time the Giants scored, forced a punt, got a first down, drank Gatorade. At first it was just an annoying hassle but as the Giants started to flail towards the end of the game, I kinda missed it.
• In an ocean of current stars (Manning, Brady, Burress, Moss, etc.) and former stars (Simms, Taylor, Carson, etc.) it was quite a sight to see the guy three rows ahead of me sporting a 18 Jeff Feagles jersey honoring the 41 year old Giants punter (and all time NFL punts leader).
• If the Giants were going to lose, it really should have been in some sort of massive blow out loss so we could have beaten the traffic home. The worst possible scenario is a close loss which gives us the fans the lovely consolation prize of bumper to bumper immobile parking lot traffic.
  

For the G-Men I predict a standard fare first round exit by the hands of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. This will most likely preserve coach Coughlin's job for another year and insure a future of perpetual adequateness with no actual breakout success. For that team of destiny from New England, I can only hope that somebody in the AFC (I'm thinking the Colts, or the dangerous Chargers) can must up enough perfection on their own to stop these magnificent bastards. Ayn Rand might be all for the objective success of this extraordinary team, but somebody needs to bring them down that notch and make them just another good team, before it's too late.

My heart healthy meaning of Christmas.

Well another Christmas is in the can. The trash is full of opened boxes and torn wrapping paper; you may be enjoying some of the gifts you've received (my copy of Billy Joel's 52nd Street is playing in the background right now); perhaps you're finishing the last tin of Christmas tree shaped sugar cookies. Now that I've gotten all that Christmas nonsense that's been going on since the end of Thanksgiving out of the way, I'm in my favorite holidays of the year, the oft overlooked five day period between Christmas and New Years Eve. I like to call it "the neutral period".

It's a great little stretched sandwiched between two monster holidays where there's no expectations or preparations for anything. You just sit there, bask in the past shadow of that leviathan known as "the holiday season" and wait for the New Year to show up. It's the shortest span of time between major holidays so you can't really get yourself out of that lazy, no responsibility mindset before the next one shows up. Also for me personally, as a life long academic (i.e. person who never held a real world job) "the neutral period" has always been the heart of my winter break so its even sweeter. I dread the day when I'll most likely be forced to cram in some work time in between, thus obliterating most of the peace and wonderfulness of "the neutral period."

Well, I could always just never get a real job.

As you may have inferred from the tone of my writing so far, I'm not the biggest fan of Christmas or the holiday season in general. I wouldn't say I'm anti-holidays but I think it's all just too much effort. As is the case with all holidays, I personally don't like holidays telling me what to do. Whether it be buying cards on Mother's Day or eating turkey on Thanksgiving. I'll do it if I feel like it, but I shouldn't get flak for not doing it. I can mail my mother an appreciative card all the while preparing a turkey dinner that I'd be thankful for on a Tuesday in March. I think fetishizing these things for certain days kinda lowers the bar on other days of the year. Shouldn't you appreciate your mother and be thankful as often as possible? So when the holidays (and "the holiday spirit") comes along and basically becomes the be all end all day for caring, generosity, and good will, it gets to me a little. I also don't like the fact that it hijacks most of pop culture, i.e. holiday movies, songs, commercials, TV specials, etc. You don't see the 4th of July doing that (unless you count Lee Greenwood).

That being said of all baggage that the holiday season brings there's one tradition that for some reason rises above all others as what this time means to me. Some people have their "It's a Wonderful Life" or "A Christmas Story" moments or the "A Charlie Brown Christmas" or (the extremely underrated) "Garfield Christmas". For some the lasting image of the holidays is less secular like Midnight mass or nativity scenes. Some people might just find the lasting image and meaning of the holidays in the time spent with their families and giving, and good works, etc. etc. Those are all well and good but for me it just isn't Christmas until I see the bee.

I'm pretty sure anyone who has watched any significant amount of television around the holidays during the last decade and a half has seen that commercial. In fact, its yearly airing even today must mean that people other than me find this ad to be more than just a 30 second spot for cereal. Aside from being one of my oldest Christmas memories, there's just something special about this commercial. For me there's a hopefulness and message of good will that doesn't seem forced upon you. When Scrooge is given the bowl of cereal it's not like he's magically transformed into the living embodiment of the Christmas spirit., which I've always found unsettling about the ending to all the versions of a "Christmas Carol" whether it be stage, screen, or Muppet. On Christmas morning after the ghosts Scrooge becomes downright psychotic in his sudden love of Christmas running around like a fanatic, goose waiving, philanthropy machine. If I was Bob Cratchit I'd be happy for the promotion and family dinner but I'd drop a serious "WTF?" on the whole situation.

In contrast the cereal merely manages to bring up his eyebrows with a spark of optimism and it quickly ends there with him looking out the window, the possibility of hope. For all we know that after that delicious bowl of Cheerios he's back to being the miserable gruel eating tightwad he was in the beginning. At least however for that moment there might have been a slight change, an ever so slight victory. In this hard, difficult world with all its problems and inherent wrongs and the tiny, all too short lives we lead within them, it's these small personal victories, however fleeting they may be, that we find any reason to solider on. That's what I get from that brief advert and it's the lasting image that for me personally affirms every holiday season.

That and it's a pretty good cereal...way better than Apple Jacks!