Don't Drop The Chaloogie

As a one-time Taco Bell employee, I often find myself defending the store and its workers from ludicrous accusations.  Did you ever take a DUMP in the BEANS???  No, and nobody jacked off in the sour cream or put boogers in the guacamole either.  Is it just me, or is Taco Bell an easy target for this kind of thing?  Somehow they're the exclusive distributor of non-sterile cuisine, all because refried beans has a particular consistency and color.  What could prevent someone at Burger King from wiping his ass with your Whopper bun?  Nothing!  And yet people have attitudes about Taco Bell.

From my end, I witnessed just one incident of food tampering in two years.  A fellow employee questioned the order I took for a Mexican Pizza with no tomatoes.  I explained that the customer said he was allergic to tomatoes.  So my friend rolled his eyes, and motioned for me to watch as he embedded a single tomato chunk within a gigantic hunk of shredded cheese, and steamed the pizza.  What mischief!  My point is that the more grandiose tales of food tampering are apocryphal.

Of course, when something actually does happen, it ruins my argument.  A Stafford, Virginia teenager and Taco Bell employee is currently facing ten years in prison for spitting in a customer's iced tea.  While I'm excited to learn that "adulteration of food" is a felony offense, I'm less excited when I consider how bad this makes Taco Bell look.  I should point out that many fast food restaurants have been known to serve beverages, and any or all of them could pop a loogie in your Hawaiian Punch.  But still, this could end up validating all those turd-in-the-beans stories.  Let's hope not.

Primitive Screwheads Need Not Apply

Guess what just arrived in the mail... the out-of-print Bruce Campbell vs. Army of Darkness: Boomstick Edition DVD, featuring both the S-Mart version and the extended/"apocalypse" version.  Well hellooooooooo, Mr. FANCY PANTS!!!!  As non-sequitur as it is, I'm kinda partial to the "notorious" S-Mart ending.  You can't beat "hail to the king, baby."  But on the other hand, more Army of Darkness means more of something good.  Basically, I can't lose.  I could blindly select one disc or the other, and remain entertained for an entire evening.  That moment will have to wait until next week, but when it happens, ohhhhhhh boy.

Microsoft Is Disgusting

As if you needed more reasons to hate Microsoft, here comes a great one.  Rumor has it that nearly 25 years ago, when co-founder Paul Allen was working his ass off on MS-DOS 2.0 despite suffering from Hodgkin's Disease, Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer were discussing how to grab back Allen's Microsoft stock in the event of his death.  Real nice.

The one I'm disappointed in is Ballmer.  Here's a guy who is best known for maniacally screaming the virtues of developers, yet it appears he not only nearly worked a developer to his death, but was scheming to screw his family in the event of that death.  Sure, Steve... developers.

Population Tesh

For your entertainment, I present this picture of John Tesh, courtesy of The Mighty MJD's recent post praising Tesh's classic NBA theme song, "Roundball Rock"...



Look closely at this picture. Sure, it's a guy best known for appealing to Republican music tastes wearing an outfit I'd have worn in high school. But check out the t-shirt. It's Strong Bad... the one and only.

I'm not an out-and-out Tesh-hater. He deserves a reprieve from the bowels of hell for "Roundball Rock," which is the greatest TV sports theme ever composed. But beyond his work for NBC Sports, he composes symphonies in Douche major. Further, he is best known for being on Entertainment Tonight, a show that brings new meaning to the phrase "absolutely fucking vapid." John Tesh would be hard to redeem. This photo, however, just might do it.

West Wing Crackwhores?!?

Fans of The West Wing may recall that one of the first season's running storylines is how staffer Sam Seaborn handled his friendship with a hooker.  Her role on the show was to point out that hookers are people too.  Well, now we know why.  Looks like Aaron Sorkin wrote that particular character arc based on a true story... his own.  Except in the real-life version, there was a shitload of crack.

I knew about Sorkin's drug history, and how he was caught on the way to Vegas after Season 2 had wrapped with a suitcase full of drugs for his own use.  But I didn't know about the crack.  I mean, good lord... crack?!?  Drugs, sure, but crack?!?  I don't understand how someone who is otherwise functional could ever get sucked into crack.  Maybe it's good that I don't, but still.

Anyway, given that he's spent the last few years sobering up and prepping for Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, hopefully we won't have another meltdown.  It'd be nice if we could get more than a couple years' worth of bulletproof Sorkin on a particular series.  But his frenetic process doesn't really lend itself to not being on drugs.  We'll see.

Snakes On A Flame

McSweeney's just posted a list of possible surprise endings for upcoming Oscar shoo-in Snakes on a Plane.  I kinda like the third one... if the bus goes slower than 55 mph, snakes drop from the ceiling... but the others were pretty underwhelming to me.  What's with the obsession with a nitroglycerin-explosion?  How does "they all BLOW UP AND DIE!" end up on a reputable site like McSweeney's?  That's how my Play-Doh action figure games used to end.  When I was six.  We can do better than that... and I'll prove it.

1) Samuel L. Jackson captures all the snakes.  Plane lands, he screams "Get these mothafuckin' snakes OFF the mothafuckin' PLANE!" as we all expect.  But while the TSA folks are dealing with the snakes, one of them escapes into a freight-shipping area.  It meanders over to an international shipment, from Indonesia on its way to the San Diego Zoo, and slithers upwards, towards the cage's latch.  The shipment's contents?  Two dozen Bengal fucking tigers.  The snake inadvertently undoes the latch, and the tigers run inside the nearest building in search of food, although not before eating the snake.  This sets up the sequel: Tigers At The Airport: Snakes On A Plane II, in which the consumption of said snake represents both the conclusion of the first film and the launching of a franchise not dependent on the cinematic allure of snakes.

2) Samuel L. Jackson gets bitten by the snakes several times while attempting to land at LAX.  He eventually chokes them shits, lands successfully, and passes out.  He wakes up in the hospital, having been shuttled over hastily once the plan had landed.  Of course, his fellow FBI agents are there when he comes to, glad to see he survived.  They do some wisecracking and such, but as they're leaving, Samuel L. asks whether they got all the snakes... let's assume he counted 103.  So he says "did you get all 103 of them summabitches?"  And one of the agents says... "103?  We thought there were only 102."  Then the power goes out, and we hear a loud rattling noise, which sets us up for Snakes On A Plane II: Hospital Snakes, which combines the high-octane world of emergency-room medicine with the high-octane campiness of CG snakes.  Get me 30 ccs of snakes, STAT!

3) Samuel L. Jackson has been bitten on the hands several times while trying to kill a large white snake.  He eventually does, biting it in half and yelling, "Take a BITE outta CRIME, mothafucka!  RUFF!"  He then lands the plane, etc. and so forth.  His wife is waiting for him at the airport.  She embraces him, then looks down to examine the bites on his hands.  She notices that his wedding ring is gone, and pulls a nuclear nutter on him.  He realizes he left the ring in Hawaii.  She rips him a new one and makes him get on another plane right back to Hawaii.  This sets up Snakes On A Plane Again, which gladly relishes the exact-sameness of its premise as compared to its predecessor.

It does make me wonder how they'll prepare us for a sequel.  There's gotta be some kind of "The End... or is it?????" conclusion.  I'd love to see them go the Clue/Wayne's World route for the Holy Grail of ridiculous movie gimmicks: multiple endings.  Even though everyone knows what to expect from Snakes at this point, that would be a guaranteed crowd-pleaser.  It takes a special kind of movie to pull off the "but wait... here's what actually happened!" construct; I think Snakes could be that kind of movie.  Let's keep our fingers crossed.

Vats Of Urine II: The Imperial Pilsner

Dogfish Head is my microbrew of choice here in Maryland.  Their standard beers (Indian Brown, 60- and 90-Minute IPA, Chicory Stout) are excellent, and with gun firmly pressed against head I would name Shelter Pale Ale as my favorite beer.  They also have seasonal/limited-edition brews like Aprihop and Punkin Ale that are worthy of attention.  The only major beer of theirs that I don't like is Raison D'Etre, which tastes like a bag of assholes to me.  I'd rather drink pee.

Well, now the folks at Dogfish have me covered there as well.  They've just released a new specialty brew called... this is true... Golden Shower Imperial Pilsner.  And believe me, they know exactly what you're thinking.  How could they not when they add statements like this to their press release: "We wouldn't waste our Golden Shower on the kind of beer drinker who decides what to drink based on which brewery spends the most on advertising and the least on ingredients."  I'm honestly at a loss for words.  In a good way, but still.

Now, here's the thing.  I do like me some pilsner.  I don't know how I feel about consuming a 750 by myself, though it does circumvent my "never more than one when I'm alone" rule.  I'm considering driving home from work right now, a half-hour early, just to see if the local liquor stores have this in stock.  But can I keep a straight face while giving the checkout guy a Golden Shower?  (Of course, once I've paid he'll have to give it right back to me.)

Bang, Bang... Keg Stand?

Do I like Art Brut?  Sure, why not.  I have to respect any band who can end a song called "18,000 Lira" with the line "sounds like a lot of money!"  But I just found two new reasons to like them:

1) They just played at my alma mater, Haverford College, and apparently kicked ass.  That's quite a task... this is, after all, a student body that could barely follow Black Thought's call-and-response instructions when The Roots played there, so getting the kids excited is no small feat.  (More on this later, in the appendices.)

2) They reenacted the best part of Almost Famous by sticking around after the show and doing keg stands.  No word on whether Eddie Argos screamed "I AM A GOLDEN GOD!!!"  Either way... priceless.  And you gotta love the "let's just get drunk" variety of invincible-rock-star behavior, as opposed to the "bang me in this toilet stall, I'm the bassist" variety.  Boy, do I hate getting propositioned like that.

Anyway, well done Haverford, and well done Art Brut.

Appendix A: The Roots
So, here's the deal.  They were just incredible... best show I've ever seen.  Nobody can match their instrumental skills and live charisma.  I just wish the crowd had appreciated what they'd seen.  That audience was... bold, italicized, caps-locked and underlined... AWFUL.  If The Roots felt at all ridiculous for taking a gig at the whitest school in Philly, those feelings were confirmed by their customers' utter lameness.  Thought was basically like "OK, when I stamp my foot, scream 'Hey' three times, and point at you, you say 'Ho!'  Okay?"  And the fuckers still couldn't do it!  You could see BT was embarrassed.  Imagine the "Mr. Thompson" exchange from The Simpsons, except with Black Thought as the FBI guy and the crowd as Homer.  Psst... I think he's talking to you!  No, asshole!  It's called rhythm!  He wants YOU... to say HO!!!  Can't you speaky the English?!?  God.

I will go to my grave carrying shame for having disappointed Black Thought that night.  If anyone from The Roots is out there reading this, I'd like to apologize, on behalf of the Haverford community, for being lame.  But it was still one of the coolest things that ever happened at school.

Taint Misbehavin'...

I have an idea for a kids' cartoon.  Not a well-rounded idea exactly, but I do have the title: "Blumpkin, the Grundle Taint."  His sidekick is named Skeet S. Skeet, and they travel in an electric vehicle called The Shocker.  They are the sworn enemies of a villainous and hypocritical ostrich, Censor Shipp, and his Standards & Practices henchmen.  They defend themselves against Censor Shipp by inventing harmless euphemisms for disgusting bodily functions.  This show will teach kids an important lesson: in modern America, you can get away with anything you want as long as you can say it in a way that nobody can criticize.  It's like a free MBA degree, but with more jokes.

So would you watch this?  Anyone?  Hey, is this thing on?  I know you're out there, I can hear you clicking the "back" button!

Two Hypothetical Questions

1) It's 2046, and Ben Affleck gets a sympathy Best Supporting Actor nomination for playing someone's alcoholic, unsupportive dad ("Ben Affleck was just utterly heartbreaking in I Was An Accident") or a terminal Alzheimer's case ("Affleck will bring you to tears in Unforgettable") or something similar.  He has not yet won an acting Oscar, though he still has his share of the Good Will Hunting screenplay Oscar.

Question: if his publicist trots out the "well, he never got an Oscar for acting" argument as ammunition against younger, more-deserving actors, do I get to stand up from my wheelchair, yank out my old-man catheter, and hit Affleck in the face with it?

2) The bird flu epidemic pandemic reaches America, and according to the new curfew laws you are not allowed to leave your home.  I have been stuck in my home for three weeks, and my food has almost run out, save for a single pound of pasta.  The government, for health reasons, has shut down my running water temporarily, and I've used the last of my bottled water.  My taps won't work for another few days, and the only remaining water in the house is in the toilet bowl.

Question: do I make pasta?