Context is King


Watch this video.









Enjoy the holidays, everyone.

Fake Stats.

Life has gotten crazy. With the interwebs and all the fake news and whatnot, it’s hard to know WHAT to believe anymore. So I assembled these little-known Fun Facts for your enjoyment They are, without a doubt, 100% made-up and fake, straight outta my twisted little noggin’. But feel free to share them as if they were bona-fide, completely accurate, vetted pieces of knowledge.  You’re welcome.


Popeye the Sailor Man was loosely based on Norman Keith Collins, aka “Sailor Jerry.” Hence the anchor tattoo on his forearm and the ever-present pipe.


“Ughugugugug…can ye cover up that portrait of me ex? Olive cants stands that whore, and it’s erfectin me loves life!”



Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones is dangerously close to bankruptcy and is undergoing a serious financial restructuring of his business enterprises and holdings, including the Cowboys. The alleged reason for these financial troubles is rather recent: Jones was convinced that the “fidget spinner” craze was here to stay, and spent billions acquiring not only eight fidget-spinner manufacturing sites in Southeast Asia, but several inline skate/skateboard bearing manufacturers stateside, hoping to not only corner the spinner market but to be prepared “when rollerblading comes back big-time.”



Like, any second now.



The flavor we humans taste when eating coconut is completely imaginary. The human tongue lacks the receptors required to correctly process the tropical fruit-nut-seed’s taste. Scientists believe this is because coconuts are actually terribly toxic, unless they are mixed with rum or lime/other citrus flavors. (BONUS fun fact: this lime/coconut elixir is the basis for the popular song. Europeans first traveling to Papua/New Guinea became violently ill from eating raw coconut, until the local shaman or “witch doctor” mixed lime juice with coconut milk to create a cure. Then everyone got drunk.)



There are actually only seven planets in our solar system. The rest are simply light reflecting off of asteroids and cosmic dust.



One out of every ten Spree candies is actually a button that fell off someone’s shirt on the assembly line.



If you were to place the cast of Big Bang Theory underwater, without any supply of oxygen, and left them indefinitely, nobody would really have a problem with it.


Well, hi there, Sheldon!



Men over 40 years of age spend up to fifteen minutes out of each day running a finger over the outside of their ear and muttering “…the hell is that? A hair?”



Ancient Greek mathematician and inventor Archimedes would often blurt out “I love cheese!” for seemingly no reason (although many modern scholars believe he suffered from a form of Tourette’s Syndrome). This phrase was incorrectly translated over the years, so that it eventually became widely accepted that his exclamation was actually “Eureka!”


“Goddammit, can’t calculate right now…thinkin’ ’bout dat stanky CHEESE!”

Funball Sportacular!




















Barry Sanders deserves so much better than a ’99 Mustang.

Gatorade is actually less than .5% alligator.















The Whisky Mystery

I arrived home on a snowy, blustery Northern Indiana evening to discover a parcel on my front porch. I love a mystery, and absolutely adore a puzzle. Knowing what was probably inside the large box, I whisked it inside, threw some crap off my dining room table, cut open the cardboard, and dug out what appeared to be a huge, fairly weighty tome. The thing was 14” by 14” and about 4.5” thick. Woof! And emblazoned upon the ‘cover’ was the seal of ‘The Aultmore Distilling Co.’ I took that to be a really good sign.


Like a Guggenheim Bible…dedicated to BOOZE!

Upon closer inspection, of course, it was obvious that this object was not a real book. I opened the apparently magnetic flap on the cover and saw the mysterious (downright spooky) interior artwork and cover page. And behind that…the real good stuff.


See, usually I prefer to pee myself AFTER I drink, thank you very much.

There was a neat little mini-book, really not much more than a pamphlet. The cover was sharp, and the paper thick, with that sort of rough, pulpy feel. Good stock. ‘The Mystery of the Buckie Road’ was the title, printed in gold leaf.


That door either leads to whisky or grandpa’s old killin’ cellar.

Along with that was a fun-looking little cylinder with numbers etched into revolving tumblers. It was sturdy, made out of some sort of brass alloy. I’d read enough Dan Brown to recognize it as a cryptex.


Or the oldest bike lock ever discovered.

I also found what at first glance seemed like a simple laser pointer. And it was, in part. There were two little buttons. The first activated a standard red laser. Okay. The second one…a single click produced a clear LED mini-flashlight beam. But when I pressed that one a second time, it switched to a dimmer blue glow. Curioser and curioser. I had a hunch why, but that would have to wait, because by now I figured I knew for sure what the real goodies were going to look like. And I wasn’t wrong.


My cats were substantially less excited about the ghastly blue setting.

Behind the faux-wooden door flap, I discovered a bottle of 12-Year-Old single-malt scotch the color of honey and wheat: The Aultmore. NOW we were getting somewhere. And behind the booklet, a wee snifter-shaped glass (technically, a Glencairn Glass). How convenient!


Hello, gorgeous…

Full disclosure time. Those that know me well enough are aware that I love a good Scotch Whisky. I get bottles of the stuff for Christmas, and it’s always fun to try a new label. Usually, I prefer the single-malts, but they can be a crapshoot, quite frankly. I know I’m pissing off some scotch purists, but there it is. With bottles as expensive as they tend to be, most folks don’t have the luxury of trying everything on the shelf. That being the case, we all have our favorites. And I have no problem admitting that I’ve always fancied a glass of Dewar’s White Label over some of the fancy, higher-end single-malts.


Pictured: a ‘glass’ of Dewar’s.

“WAIT!” you cry. “DEWAR’S IS A BLEND!” It certainly is, and a wonderful one. There are other bottles in the same price range, and I’ve tried many…The Famous Grouse and Grant’s standing out alongside dark-horse favorites like Old Smuggler (seriously, not too shabby. You almost forget it can be had from a plastic bottle.) But Dewar’s is on my go-to list every time.

Sorry. Getting distracted thinking about all this booze. I’ll get back to that in the next blog entry. I’ll simply say that I was expecting a sample from the Dewar’s folks…but nothing quite as elaborate as this.

So, this mystery tome. It seemed obvious what my next steps were. The booklet held the key to the cryptex…and the cryptex itself held some additional mystery. It was really fairly exciting, a lot more adventurous than I’d anticipated for a simple whisky tasting.

I read the booklet in its entirety. Didn’t take long. It’s a tale about a mysterious old fisherman/smuggler/bootlegger leading the unnamed protagonist to discover the secrets of the distillery and whatnot. Nicely written, but not really groundbreaking.


A story I’ll read to my grandchildren one day.

I returned to the front page, and shone my laser-pointer at the page, nearly tearing a hole in space-time. Crap. Forgot. Wrong button. Crimson light blazed through the dining room, boring cleanly through a cat (one down, one to go!) and nearly blinding me as it shone off the white paper. I clicked the other button until the faint blue light bled forth onto the page. And there I saw it.


‘Saw what? Just looks like a regular ol’ page to me…’

Like some Scooby-Doo cartoon, or even better, some deleted scene from a Harry Potter film, faint, glowing numbers materialized. It was awesome. I figured I’d find something like that, but it was so cool to have my suspicions confirmed.


‘So what am I looking for, some sort–OH! Oh, that’s pretty bad-ass!’

I swept carefully through the booklet, making sure not to miss any clues. I finished with the necessary digits (all numbers, no letters or symbols.) Nervously, I picked up the heavier-than-expected cryptex, spinning the tumblers into place until I felt (rather than heard) a ‘click’. Carefully I pulled the end cap, extracting a central cylinder which…was actually a USB stick!!


Crap. Should’ve said ‘SPOILER ALERT!’

Haha! Of course! The whole thing was basically an electronic press kit. I found a video that ran a nice two-and-a-half minutes, descriptions of the varieties of whisky available, the different ages and such, and some information on the distillery and its history. It was all so wonderful.

So, quickly, I’ll tell you this. Dewar’s, knowing of my love for their blended scotch, reached out to me on Twitter. They informed me that they were about to launch a few varieties of single-malt scotch. The neat part? These featured single-malts are essentially the whiskies that get blended to make Dewar’s White Label. And now, for the first time, the greater public would be able to enjoy them one at a time. I was asked if I’d be interested in trying some. “Abso-freakin’-LUTELY” was my paraphrased response.

But the fun manner in which this was all presented, the mystery, the charm, the enigma…that’s good stuff. It’s great marketing, quite frankly, and excellent showmanship. Not sure who handles their promotions and advertising, but they’re a top-notch firm, make no mistake. And reaching out to select Twitter followers? Brilliant use of social media. Much more effective than some stupid YouTube video or “repost this for a chance to win” Facebook contest.

Ah, and as for the scotch itself?


To be continued…




Trying New Things








Thanks for reading.

How Not to Lose Your Leg

What follows is a sort of journal, a record of the strange little adventure I’ve been going through of late.  See, I had a wee procedure to fix an old problem, and it’s become…well, it’s been a bit of an odyssey.  Please enjoy (although I’d warn those with weaker constitutions to maybe skip this one.  Y’been told.)  Without further ado, here are the five things I’ve learned about knee surgery.

  1. The sooner you see the doctor, the better

My knee troubles began when I was a young 20-something. I was hit from behind playing ice hockey. My right knee went out sideways, rather than back along the hinge as nature intended. It hurt quite a bit, but I just wrapped it in an ACE bandage, iced it, etc. I was young and probably under-insured. Mostly, though, I didn’t want to bother. “Probably nothing” I told myself. That is, until I started having discomfort. It felt at times like I needed the joint to ‘pop.’ You know how sometimes it feels good to crack your knuckles or your back? Like that. Sort of a dull ache and stiffness. I would sometimes lie on the floor and have a friend pull my leg out from my body until I felt (and sometimes heard) a gentle crack. Then I felt better for a while. As I aged, it started turning into an ‘old man knee’ which would react negatively to the weather changes and such. I discovered that the older I got, the more pain I’d experience after playing hockey, paintball, or soccer. Sometimes I could barely make it up the stairs. Two procedures, and a scary infection later, I wish I’d gone to the doctor right away. Might’ve been expensive, but would’ve saved time and money in the long run.

And a lot of waiting.  And selfie-taking, natch.


  1. Your body is a crazy, autonomous, self-protection machine

The main problem was that a bit of scar tissue from my initial injury (or perhaps a bit of bone or tendon) had broken free inside the flesh within my knee. My body decided to encapsulate it in a cyst. The cyst grew over time, until it became the size of a peach pit. This, more than anything, was the cause of most of my discomfort. Imagine having a Lemonhead candy in your knee, only it’s wrapped in layers of raw bacon and wet tissue paper. Gross, yes. But that’s what your body does to protect itself. It’s akin to an oyster creating a pearl around a grain of sand, if the oyster was a fan of David Lynch films. This bodily reaction is all well and good, until it gets in the way of flexing your knee or pushes down on your patellar tendon or expands and contracts in response to barometric pressure. Then it becomes troublesome. And, jumping ahead a bit, it turns out that for years I harbored a sub-dermal infection in the knee after my first procedure. (SURPRISE! It’s MRSA! Seriously, this could’ve ended up with me doing a great Long John Silver cosplay.) This infection stayed trapped in the knee cavity for years. In other words, my body basically threw up a force field around the nastiness, keeping it from spreading throughout my body…until we inadvertently released the monster.

"Heeeeeeere, monster!  C'mon out, buddy!" (And yes, that's me on the table.  I spared you the rest of the pics.)

“Heeeeeeere, monster! C’mon out, buddy!” (And yes, that’s me on the table. I spared you the rest of the pics.)

  1. Even nurses get grossed out

My first outpatient procedure was almost ten years ago. They went in and, unable to remove the entire cyst, sort of cut it down a bit. Trimmed the proverbial hedge. The problem was that the sutured wound became infected. They took out the stitches and gave me topical antibiotic cream and antibiotic pills. Should’ve cleared it right up. It didn’t. WARNING: we’re now getting to the part where you weak-stomached types might want to skip ahead. When the wound finally healed, it left a little ‘vent’ of sorts. This was disgusting, as now and then enough fluid would build up inside the joint that it would express itself. On one hand, it meant that the juice in my knee never reached critical, painful levels…but it also meant that it never truly healed, and had the added annoyance of being irritating and embarrassing. I’d stand up from kneeling to tie my kids’ shoes and there’s be a wet spot on my knee. Yuck. And the cyst was still in there, so when I did get down on my knees, at just the right angle, it was like having a marble sewn inside your pants leg right at the knee. Awkward and unpleasant. Finally, I’d had enough and went to my current doctor, who also specializes in sport medicine. He went in and basically performed the same procedure that I’d had before. Sewed me back up. And, you guessed it: more infection. The knee had been swollen and sort of red for a few days, and I was getting concerned. Then my shin got sort of pink. Finally, the Monday after my procedure (I’d gone in the previous Thursday) I awoke to find my knee a bloody mess. Literally, I’d ruptured, and spilled blood out of my dressing and down my leg. When I went to clean it up and re-dress, with every small bit of pressure I put on the wound, fresh blood poured out. It was like my knee was a water balloon full of blood, water, and pus. I called the doc, and he got me in fairly quickly. Opened me up, flushed out all the nastiness with saline, swabbed it, and packed the wound with medicated gauze. Here’s how that works: he opens a jar containing the gauze. The strip is about 1/4 to ½ of an inch wide and a foot or so long. He takes the forceps and slowly crams it all into the wound. Then he covers it with dry gauze padding, wraps it with more gauze, and puts an ACE bandage over all of it. One of the two nurses that have assisted every time I’ve been to the doctor has told me how hard it is to keep her breakfast down during my visits, first the cutting-out of the mass and cyst (the stuff looked like chewed-up watermelon bubble gum as he pulled more and more out) and then the stuffing of the raw, open hole in my knee with gauze. I, on the other hand, found it fascinating to watch. I had my phone in my hand at one point, and he asked “taking a video?” I told him that I was Tweeting, but damn if that wasn’t a good idea. But it was too late by that point. The good stuff was over.

Afterwards, I thought "Huh.  Hope I didn't interfere with some guy's heart monitor or something..."

Afterwards, I thought “Huh. Hope I didn’t interfere with some guy’s heart monitor or something…”

  1. The pain actually isn’t the worst part…

The most difficult hurdle of this whole situation has been my feeling of helplessness and immobility. The healing process mandates that I keep my leg as straight as possible at all times…even during sleep. You know how difficult that is? Do you realize how many times a night you instinctively pull your knees up, fetal-style? I also have the tendency to cross my legs under one another, like a figure-four. Every time I’d start to move too much, I’d wake myself up in alarm. It makes for restless nights. And maybe it’s the stress or it’s the antibiotics, but I’ve had some interesting dreams. Stress dreams about my knee exploding or blood soaking through the sheets, enough so that I wake up and have to feel the wrapping to make sure all is well. The doctor also told me to keep weight off the knee, and recommended a cane. “Not only does it help keep the weight off, it forces you to keep your leg straight.” Great. But fucking cumbersome. Have you ever tried to get a laptop bag, cane, and cup of coffee out of your car while keeping your leg as straight as possible? It’s like a hilarious one-man game of Twister. And stairs? Fuck stairs, man. But then there’s the whole ‘propping my leg on a chair at work.’ My job primarily involves sitting at a desk, looking at a monitor. No problem. But when you have to torque your upper body almost 90 degrees to accommodate your gimp leg, it gets old really fast. And showering? Good luck. You’re told to keep your dressings dry. Holding a leg out of the shower doesn’t help that much, as water tends to run all the way down your body no matter whether it hits your head or your torso, following gravity and the surface tension of your skin; water doesn’t give a shit if there’s some gauze and tape in the way, it just wants to flow down. I’ve taken to encasing the knee in Saran Wrap, holding it out (basically standing on one leg) and hoping for the best. And your muscles do strange things. Because I am working so hard to keep my right leg straight while walking and sitting, it’s like I’m constantly flexing it. (Try this: stick your leg out in front of you, keeping it as straight as possible. Good. Now, hold it like that all day.) The downside is that when you do get a chance to relax, you sometimes have cramps. Like, bad ones in the arch of your foot. Or maybe just twitchy spasms in your thigh. And the other (left, in my case) leg sometimes feels like it’s carrying around most of your (in my case) 197 pounds all by itself. So when you ask it to go up the stairs once more, it sometimes says “No. No more. Let’s stay right here.” Hard to argue, Mr. Leg. I didn’t really need to go to the bathroom anyway.

Got my my Depends on...I'm good to go!

Got my Netflix…got my Depends on…I’m good to go!

  1. …but there is quite a bit of pain, too

Ain’t gonna lie. There were some really excruciating moments in this little adventure. The initial procedure a few weeks ago was no fun; yes, I received a shot to numb the knee to begin with. But even that part sucks. They stick a needle waaaaaay deep into the place where he’s gonna do the cuttin’. And then he adjusts locations and sticks you again. Doesn’t take long, but damn, it’ll take your breath away that first time he jabs you. And here’s a fun little tidbit about me: I apparently have a very high tolerance for painkillers, especially lidocaine and novocaine. This means that after the doctor numbed me and started cutting, he had to administer more shots. Every time he’d go to expand the incision, starting at about an inch and then going wider to get at more of the pulp, I’d feel it. He’d stop and dose me again. Tedious. But the really bad part came when, after my first infection-solving gauze-pack, I went in to have the gauze replaced. Watching him pull a foot of bloody bandage out of my knee like a flesh-and-blood tape dispenser was surreal, but more uncomfortable than painful. Replacing the gauze with new, fresh stuff, however…ouch. He started shoving some in and saw me flinch. “Want me to numb it?” he asked. “Nah, just do it. Go.” So we’re clear: this means that I was able to feel everything as he grabbed my skin with a pair of pincers and then slowly, inch by inch, fed a strip of medicine-infused cloth through the red maw below my kneecap and into the cavity within.

You’re gritting your teeth right now, aren’t you? Yeah. That’s pretty much all you can do. Stare at the ceiling, grip the edges of the table tightly, and clench that jaw. But there’s good news. The pain afterwards is minimal. No ongoing sharp pains. And the times when I do feel a twinge or ache, I simply pop a couple of Advil. So no super-powered painkillers or narcotics. No danger of becoming Greg House.

Now it’s just a waiting game. Waiting for this thing to heal. Every time the doc or I change dressings, we remove a bit more of the stuffing. And day-by-day, the wound starts to close and heal. The antibiotics seem to have cleared up the infection. No more MRSA. (I’ll keep taking the pills, though, until the damn thing is fully healed.) Yet, I know that there’s still work to be done. My right leg is going to have to learn how to bend at the knee, slowly and gently stretching the new skin and scar tissue. Plus, there’s sure to be a bit of muscle atrophy (although my left leg should be able to do single-leg squats by now, as much work as it’s doing.) But after all is said and done, I should be right as rain by the end of the summer.

Just in time for hockey season.

When Bad Guys Were P*ssies.

Maybe it was 9/11, you know? Like, maybe the horror and shock of that day forced us to ‘grow up’ for better or worse. We got tougher, a bit more wary and jaded. I don’t know. Maybe it was something else; Western Culture catching up a tiny bit with our European brethren, psychologically speaking. Whatever the case, the fact remains that back in the 80’s and early-90’s, we were soft, pink, mewling little kittens. 2015 us could wipe the floor with 1988 us.  Fact.

Here’s what led me down this particular path of discovery.  Recently I was doing an image search for actor Lee Tergesen.  I’d considered putting together another “That One Guy” blog, with a slight difference in focus:  I’d concentrate on one particular actor. Perhaps make a series of such posts, one for each iconic character actor. Lee is one of those guys who’s been in a lot of films and TV shows, usually sort of disappearing into his role, which is what makes him such a great actor.  The same guy who played Tobias Beecher on HBO’s prison drama ‘Oz’ also played one of Wayne and Garth’s metalhead buddies, thrashing along to ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ before appearing as Evan ‘Scribe’ Wright in ‘Generation: Kill’ and so on and so forth.  Anyway, one of his earliest roles was that of Rosie in ‘Point Break.’

Rosie was the archetypical scary biker tough guy.  Bodhi’s muscle, in a very real sense. (Note to self: consider a blog entry that examines how Bodhi, Utah, and Rosie were all manifestations of the Super-Ego, Ego, and Id.) Rosie was frightening, and supposedly capable of gutting someone with nary a concern other than trying to avoid getting any ‘on his shoes.’  I remember seeing the film when I was not quite twenty years old and thinking he was fairly intimidating. Rosie wasn’t a surfer, he was ostensibly some sort of biker.  An outsider, even among the outsiders. He was a savage, and hey, remember that scene at the bonfire?  Remember?  The others are out surfing at night, but Rosie is back on the beach, drinking, and spitting booze onto the fire, making it flare up.  Remember?  I wonder what sort of wickedly potent, liver-pounding rot-gut booze he was slugging?

Wait…seriously?  He’s drinking…



CORONA?!  Are you fucking kidding me? A beer?! I mean, don’t get me wrong: beer is great. And Corona is easily one of the top-fifty beers from Mexico. But, c’mon. Rosie is a terrifying monster in bike leathers. He should be drinking moonshine or whiskey…maybe 151…ANYTHING approaching 100 proof. Beer? BEER THAT ONLY TASTES GOOD WITH A STINKIN’ LIME IN IT?! Might as well have been a Zima. (Actually, Zima was a malt liquor beverage with a higher alcohol content than most beers, so it would have been MORE manly.)  A kid that had never actually (up to that point) been to an illegal beach bonfire or nearly incinerated a friend while spitting and igniting grain alcohol and other things that maybe I should stop talking about right now might have been impressed with Rosie.  Shit, I was.  Now I realize he’d get his ass kicked in any place outside of Malibu.  Perhaps his ending was the most realistic part of the film.  It happens off-screen, but Utah tells Bodhi that Rosie apparently got knifed to death in Mexico.  What if that was Rosie’s first trip outside of his home county?  He thinks he’s a tough guy, orders a Corona ‘straight up’ and the Mexicans beat the living shit out of him with bottles of Pacifico and Modelo.

So, R.I.P Rosie and his tough-guy image. I sat there thinking about him, and my mind flashed on another badass that maybe wasn’t. Bennett.  The bad guy from ‘Commando.’ the actor’s name is Vernon Wells, and yes, I could do an entire ‘That One Guy’ on him.  The dude’s appeared in everything from ‘The Power Rangers’ to ‘Innerspace’ and has no fewer than twenty-one projects due to be released this year alone. But the role you will probably remember him from was from the iconic Mad Max sequel, ‘The Road Warrior.’  He played a character named Wez and holy shitballs, was he scary.

Even the Kurgan would turn tail and run from all that crazy.


Wells would go on to almost exactly replicate that performance as a party-crashing biker/euphemism in ‘Weird Science.’  Again, an impressively crazy, wild-eyed psychopath on a motorcycle.  Jesus, I almost crapped my pants just thinking about him.

When the guy from 'The Hills Have Eyes' is your sidekick, you are officially a bad-ass.

When the guy from ‘The Hills Have Eyes’ is your sidekick, you are officially a bad-ass.

So when you learn that Vernon Wells is playing the nemesis in an Arnold Schwarzenegger action-adventure flick, you think “AW, YISSS!!  MOTHER FUCKING BAD-ASSERY!” and then you get to the theater and see…

Hey, nice tactical sweater-vest!

Hey, nice tactical sweater-vest!

Freddie Mercury?!  What the actual fuck, man?  What happened?  Is that vest made of old pop-tops or just nasty grey yarn that his grandma didn’t want, because seriously, who wants an olive-grey tea cozy?  Nobody, that’s who. Good call, grandma. While I’m talking about relatives, Bennett looks more like your weird uncle Gary that collects Thomas the Tank Engine stuff even though he doesn’t have any kids.  Maybe that’s more unsettling.  Could the makers of Commando been deliberately trying to give off that pedophile subtext?  After all, the main point of the ‘plot’ is that Arnold’s daughter has been kidnapped…were the studio types making a statement?  A subtle, veiled threat to the virtue and physical well-being of the girl in order to make moviegoers even more uneasy?

"Hey, kids...wanna see my Percy?"

“Hey, kids…wanna see my Percy?”

Or had Wells simply let himself go between roles?  Like, the casting director didn’t request an up-to-date headshot, and when Wells rolled up to his trailer on the first day of shooting, the director was all “Well…huh.  Fuck it, we’re on a schedule people.  Keep the mustache.  We’re rolling in five.”  Occam’s Razor makes that seem like the more likely scenario.  Either way, though, you’re never truly convinced that this doughy, sweater-vested, Bob’s Burgers cosplay guy is going to be able to physically match up with Arnold’s character.  They may as well have cast Kevin Spacey as the bad guy, although holy shit: Kevin Spacey in a mustache would be a GREAT Bob’s Burgers cosplay.

A really smug Bob 'Keyser' Belcher.

A really smug Bob ‘Keyser’ Belcher.

The point is, we were seemingly much more easily intimidated back in the day.  I won’t even get into how the Friday the 13th movies look so dated compared to modern horror films and television.  Seriously, the Jason Vorhees flicks remind me of old 50’s Martian invasion movies.  But initially, they were terrifying enough to spawn a generation’s worth of sequels.  I guess that’s sort of comforting.  The things that scare us often turn out to be not so bad after all.  Laughable, even.  (Gene Simmons used to terrify people.  Let that sink in for a second.) There’s a lesson there somewhere.  Sleep tight, America.


Okay, you know the drill (unless you’re just now discovering this blog, in which case, welcome!  Have some dip!  It’s delish!) Now and then the random crazy thoughts and notions in my head must be purged, so here we go again.  A little housekeeping.

I used to smoke a pipe.  A tobacco pipe, no less.  It was the 90’s.  I would probably still smoke one to this day, but smoking a pipe is much like eating Buffalo wings:  it’s too much work for the amount of gratification.  You hafta pack the tobacco in strata of compaction and texture, then light it and possibly re-light it and sure, the amaretto vanilla smell is extraordinary, but Jesus…it’s just easier to grab some Black & Milds and go to town. That thought led to me to this one:  why the hell haven’t the hipsters taken up pipe smoking?  They already have the old-school glasses, neckties, Smith Corona typewriters and Schiltz beer (I am trying to get hipsters to drink that stuff so they leave the decent beers like PBR and Hamms alone) so it would make total sense that they would all take up the ludicrously time-consuming and attention-grabbing act of tobacco pipe smoking.  They should be all over this shit.

I left the Shire before it was cool.

I left the Shire before it was cool.

I think I may have covered this in a different post, but here’s one hard fact of life, my friends: The green and pink hippos in Hungry, Hungry Hippos always rule. They are good and fast, with smooth action.  You always get tons of marbles with those two.  However, the other side of that coin is that the yellow and orange ones (at least one, usually both) suck.  Terrible.  The jaw sticks open, the neck doesn’t go all the way out…something.  Avoid at all costs. BTW, did you know all those hippos have names?  I don’t know what they are.  Probably something like Geoff or Brad.  Brittany, maybe.

Pictured: utter, dismal failure

Pictured: utter, dismal failure

There was a series on Showtime way back in the day (back when we’d watch the cable movie network late, late, way after we should’ve been in bed, in order to glimpse the nightly showing of Porky’s, Zapped, or some Shannon Tweed flick; anything with some skin) called “Steambath.”  Here was the entire premise of the show: heaven (Nirvana, Elysium, whatever you prefer to call your afterlife) was a steam bath.  That’s it.  Guys died, they went there, they sat around talking about life or whatever (I honestly don’t remember much of the show, as I was about twelve and it didn’t have laser guns or tits or laser-tits, so I couldn’t be bothered.)  I think this is a show ripe for a Netflix revival.

I think this is from the actual show, and I'm pretty sure that's Bill Bixby.

I think this is from the actual show, and I’m pretty sure that’s Bill Bixby.

There are two phrases that have been completely ruined by musical numbers from animated films within the last year or so.  They are expressions that you can’t possibly utter now without hearing someone belt out their own rendition of the song that incorporates the phrase in question.  They are “Let it Go” and “Everything is Awesome.”  The sad thing is that I never realized how often I use both phrases until the goddam singalong thing started.  It’s a living hell.  It’s like living in my own private ongoing production of “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” done as a Disney/PIXAR monstrosity.  Fuck.

So close.  Maybe Frank would work better in a Ren & Stimpy revival...

So close. Maybe Frank would work better in a Ren & Stimpy revival…

I think hats fell out of favor because of Hollywood.  See, men in particular (but everyone, really) used to wear hats.  Fedoras, Derbys, Homburgs, etc.  But then they started making movies.  And in the movies, you want to see the faces of the big, bold stars up there on the silver screen.  So they’d contrive to have the hero go without a hat.  Seriously, think of Humphrey Bogart.  Sure, he had his lid on for a few minutes in Maltese Falcon and at the very end (the tarmac scene) of Casablanca…but otherwise, it was his slick pompadour and a cigarette hanging out of the corner of his mouth.  And guess what everyone in the United States of America has always done?  Imitated the people they see in the movies.  Slowly but surely, as fewer hats appeared onscreen, fewer were seen on the heads of the fine young men and women of the USA and freedom-loving peoples all over the world.  That’s why even today you’ll find everyone in North Korea wearing hats.  Because those godless commies don’t allow easy access to American cinema.  (Okay, I really don’t know what the hat situation in North Korea is, but fuck ’em.)

And no, Bogey.  Liking margaritas does not make you gay.


Television science guy and ambassador for rationality Bill Nye is NOT the same guy as crusty English actor/sea monster Bill Nighy. They’re two completely different people.  In fact, one is English and the other is not.  Plus, according to some internet sources, one of these two pronounces their last name “Nigh-hee.”  Just wanted to clear up any confusion.  Also, Gordon Lightfoot might look sort of like one of these two, but he is not.  Not either of those two guys.  The science one and the English dude.  Okay, I wanna go home now.  Seeya.

See, now I don't remember which is which.

See, now I don’t remember which is which.

Before and After

So, Motia (Mo-TEE-ya) says that I should blog more, and I should. Lately, though, she’s been very specific, suggesting blog subjects and the like. The nerve of some people. Telling me what to do. Directing my behavior. Punching me in the arm. Expecting me to get drunk at the company Christmas party.

I think she might be a prophet.

Anyway, we had a discussion the other day regarding certain moments when you realize that nothing will ever be the same. Events or moments in one’s life or in society, the arts, that forever change the medium. Rock ‘n’ Roll music is one of those. For example, in 1957 Elvis finished the year with the number one single on the pop charts with “All Shook Up.” The number two song overall? Pat Boone with “Love Letters in the Sand.” Yes, Pat Boone. By 1958, Pat dropped to #24 overall, and in 1959 he didn’t have a song in the top-100. Obviously, this was a more gradual change, but the point was made: rock ‘n’ roll is here to stay.

But let’s narrow our focus a bit. How about we look only at three different things that happened within the last thirty years or so. And we’ll keep it to one medium: cinema. There have been all sorts of innovators in film, and you could go back to Citizen Kane and Casablanca and discuss how groundbreaking those films were (and let’s be honest, I probably will one day) but I’ve narrowed it down to three events/watershed moments. We’ll start with perhaps the most obvious.


The original TRON was the first major Hollywood film to utilize the ground-breaking technology of “Computer Generated Imagery.” However, not only were the effects crude and clunky, but they only accounted for a small portion of the overall special effects.

Eerily lifelike.

Eerily lifelike.

The rest were old-school makeup, prosthetics, matte paintings, and colorizing/color replacing most of the footage. That same year, moviegoers had the piss scared out of them by John Carpenter’s The Thing. Carpenter’s film relied almost entirely on Bob Bottin’s stop-motion and puppetry (with a slight assist from the legendary Stan Winston) to create horrific and terrifying creature effects. However, within a couple of years after TRON’s theatrical release came 1984’s The Last Starfighter. In just two years (or less, since the movie was in production well before its release date) the ability of CG artists had leapt light-years ahead, rendering 3-D Gunstars that, while terribly crude by today’s standards, were still pretty cool.

Yeah, try and TELL me that ain't what a spaceship looks like, son.

Yeah, try and TELL me that ain’t what a spaceship looks like, son.

And in less than ten years’ time, we had Doctor Grant marveling at a herd of brachiosaurs. (Even though the famous velociraptor kitchen scene was done mostly by guys in dinosaur costumes.) Now we enjoy everything from Shrek to the Transformers series and everything Marvel Studios has produced. Think back to the “crawling spider-head monster” from The Thing. If filmed today, it would be completely rendered in CG. Would a CG version be better? Creepier? More realistic? Possibly. In the right hands, maybe. But the fact is that no studio would do it old-school today. Old-school SFX are still out there, but there isn’t a studio head in the business that would risk a shot like that without doing it CG.

Not to be confused with the Headcrabs from the Half Life series.


Batman Begins

The argument could be made that 2000’s M. Night Shyamalan film Unbreakable was the first “realistic” super hero movie. But it wasn’t until Christopher Nolan helmed Batman Begins in 2005 that things got, well…serious. We’ve all grown jaded by the words “gritty reboot” but that’s exactly what Batman Begins was. After Joel Shumacher pretty much undid all the good work begun by Tim Burton’s time with the Caped Crusader in the late-80’s, ol’ Bats needed a new start. And when you spend the first part of the film showing millionaire playboy Bruce Wayne studying with ninjas in order to become a lethal assassin, people sort of forget about nipples on the Batsuit.

Until now.

Until now.

The phenomenon took off. Maybe it was perfect timing. In a post- 9/11 world, maybe glib one-liners and a vibrant color palette didn’t belong anymore. And yet, people still needed heroes. Enter The Dark Knight. Through three brilliant films, Nolan made us re-think exactly what we wanted from a comic-book movie. The ripples were felt as far away as M.I.6, as the following year a new, lean, hard, and violent-as-hell 007 debuted in a (all together now!) gritty reboot of the James Bond franchise. Casino Royale was also a dizzying success, and now even fluff movies like Guardians of the Galaxy contain enough gravitas (um, Peter Quill’s mom dying of cancer to start the goddam movie?) to make them feel “real.” Real enough, anyway.

Judd Apatow

Okay, this is actually the thing that got Motia and I talking about this concept of game-changers. I’d mentioned re-watching the original Dumb and Dumber recently, and here’s the thing: it’s really not that funny. Sure, it has its moments, and everyone can recite a handful of lines. But it just falls flat. What happened to cause such a diminishing return? Judd Apatow.

Apatow had been working for a while, writing, directing, producing, and often re-writing scripts for other people. Not many people watched Freaks and Geeks when it originally aired on FOX, probably about as many people as enjoyed The Ben Stiller Show (another example of Apatow’s handiwork.) But in 2004, Apatow produced a little film called Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy. Then he wrote and directed The 40 Year Old Virgin. And then Knocked Up and Talladega Nights. He produced films like Superbad and Pineapple Express, Step Brothers, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Get Him to the Greek, and Bridesmaids.

God damn.

In fairness, ol’ Judd had some turkeys in there, too. Year One, for example. And he co-wrote Don’t Mess With the Zohan. But when you look at the scope of comedic films he’s had a hand in over the last two decades, it’s hard to argue that he’s the King of Comedy in Hollywood. There’s a reason for that. Remember how we just discussed the gritty nature of superhero movies since Batman Begins? Comedy works the same way. Judd’s movies generally (not always) have an element of reality in the midst of all the ludicrous shenanigans. I mean, you can watch his films and know those characters. Yes, there are absurd people like Brick Tamland, but there are also kids drawing dicks and foul-mouthed best-friends. Jilted lovers and chronic pot-smokers (pun intended, if redundant.) You know those people. The plots for 40 Year Old Virgin and Bridesmaids could absolutely happen in real life. And as much as it was panned, I even found the Anchorman sequel to be a biting satire of modern cable news media. That’s reality, folks.

The plot of Me, Myself, and Irene could not ever happen. Ever.

Like anyone would seriously believe that these two, would...uh...oh.

Like anyone would seriously believe that these two would…uh…oh.

Speaking of which, I’m not saying the films of the Farrely Brothers or Adam Sandler or Mike Myers aren’t good, or even funny. Kingpin has some of the best sight gags ever, and even though it doesn’t hold up very well, Austin Powers was a fun little movie (and the sequels weren’t terrible, really.) It’s just that after Judd Apatow, when I watch those other flicks I feel like an adult listening to 8th-graders tell jokes. 8th-graders can be hilarious, but most of their humor is sort of one-note: farts, gays, lady parts, etc. And all of those subjects can also be hilarious in the right context. But if that’s all you’re going to give me, I grow tired of it all very quickly. Thanks, Judd Apatow. You’ve ruined me for stupid comedies.

The Story So Far.


Most episodic television programs begin with a “previously on…” montage of scenes that lead right up into that evening’s episode.  Tigh and Starbuck have an argument, Baltar has a conversation with Six, and so on. Maybe it’s Rick and Daryl running through the woods, Carl doing something stupid, and then a closeup of Maggie screaming “RUN!” Whatever. Sons of Anarchy, Burn Notice, The Blacklist. Lots of programs use that storytelling technique.

Wanna hit Starbucks?  Nah, she's out playing pyramid. ZING!!

Wanna hit Starbucks?
Nah, she’s out playing pyramid.


Other shows just go right into the latest episode, basically telling the viewer “If you don’t know what’s up, we’re not going to slow down and fill you in. Keep up, already.” Breaking Bad was great at that. Before the titles, you’d see Walt up to some sort of nonsense in the desert, or Mike doing something shady, or some seemingly unrelated shot: a pink stuffed toy, charred and water-logged, floating in a swimming pool. The writers and directors on those sort of programs usually do a masterful job of weaving it all together by the end of the episode. (Or by the end of the season, at least.)

Does this look a little pink, man? ZING!!

Does this look a little pink, man?


The point is, I’m not sure what sort of show this is. (I know it’s not a show. It’s a blog. I get it.   I’m not stupid. WHY YOU ALWAYS GOTTA CALL ME STUPID?!) But I do feel like filling you in before I begin the next episode. Because the next episode is a must-see, can’t-miss rollercoaster ride of thrills and excitement! The San Francisco Chronicle raves “Totally engrossing form start to finish” and the Indianapolis Star writes “It’ll have you guessing right up until the very end!” My mom adds “IT’S A BLOG!! SHUT UP AND GET ON WITH IT, ALREADY!”





We OPEN on a dusty western street at dusk. Smoke or some other haze almost totally obscures the sinking, orange blob of sun, distorted and watery through the ripples of heat from the desert below.


IN THE DISTANCE, a vehicle approaches towards us down a twisting dirt track (editor’s note: in the first draft, this was a DURST track, and Limp Bizkit played underneath for the whole scene. You can see it in the DVD bonus features, although you won’t really want to.)


A MAN (We’ll come to know him as TURNER) stands in the street, facing the approaching vehicle. TURNER wears Wayfarer sunglasses and holds a smoldering, half-smoked MARLBORO CIGARETTE with about an inch of ash on the end.

TURNER doesn’t seem to notice, his vision fixed on the approaching car…or beyond it. It’s hard to tell, because, you know…sunglasses.


TURNER takes a drag of cigarette, and exhales slowly.


TURNER: Mo-teeeeeee-ya…


He tosses the butt to the ground.

CLOSE on the heel of his cowboy boot as he grinds the cigarette into the dusty street.


In the BG we see the car more clearly: it is a tan-and-cream colored late-model sedan, like a Lincoln Mark V. The hood ornament is a mounted longhorn steer’s horns.  (editor’s note: in the original shot, the car actually seems to hover about a foot off the ground, while the theme from Twin Peaks plays underneath the scene.  Also, for some reason, the bull’s horns are replaced with twirling chains of chocolate-covered cream-filled long johns, but since no one could remember why it was written that way, this portion of the script was written off as simply “drugs” and forgotten.)


CLOSE on TURNER as he smiles.


We PAN DOWN the length of his torso, coming to HOLD on the ridiculously large, chrome revolver on his hip as he UNCLASPS the leather strap holding it in place. (editor’s note:  originally, producers wanted the revolver to be two silver-dollar pancakes stapled together.  No one knows why.  Everyone involved in the creation of this episode was terribly hungry.  And tripping balls.)





Well, no. Not really. But damn it, now I have to wrap it up. Guess I’ll have to fill you in next time. It’s a really good story. No, it is!


See you next time on “TURNERWATSON.COM!!”


(That doesn’t make any goddam sense.)