2 Holiday Confessions

Sorry I missed a post yesterday. The heat went out on a freezing Chicago night with a baby and my mother-in-law in the house, so I was a busy man last night.

But I'm back with a couple of Christmas television confessions.

1. I love watching The Great Light Fight where people compete to see who can have tackiest, gaudiest, most expensive, elaborate Christmas decorations on their house and yard. I got questions. Where do they store all that crap the rest of the year?
How high is their electric bill in the winter months?
Are their neighbors pissed off from the ultrasonic lights blasting into their windows and anamatronic Santas singing songs all night long?

2. I also like to make sure that every holiday season I flip on at least a few minutes of a Christmas episode of a daytime soap opera. This one is harder to explain. I can't really say why I like it. It's just so corny and the people are so pretty and acting sometimes sucks so hard. I just like it, okay? Not everything needs a reason.

Happy Holidays, Seven Readers.

My wife and I quit on shows at an unbelievable rate. Sometimes we are midway through the pilot episode when we have decided we don't need that particular show taking up time in our lives. Do you know what the best quality in a series is for all ages, all over the world, based on my research of a handful of people I have talked to? Running time. If a show is only 30 minutes compared to 60 it instantly moves up the top of the Netflix queue. There is only so much time in the day when you're a working parent, so why waste it on a show you don't like that much. And oh, what a relief when you and your partner agree to shit can a show! Goodbye, Billy Bob Thornton. You're my boy and I'll watch you in just about anything, but this third season of Goliath with all the dream sequences and where I'm unable to tell what's real and what's drug induced . . . I don't have the energy at the end of the day to figure all that crap out!

But I will tell you one show that I stuck it out with even though some of the time I was thinking, why in the Sam Hill am I still watching this . . . Dark Crystal Age of Resistance! The puppet movie in the 1980's scared the hell out of me, and maybe that is why I got excited when I heard about a full series prequel. Yes, there are those times where it honest to God felt like work to get through it. But then I reminded myself of all the hard work that went into moving all those puppets around and creating entire worlds with very little help from computers in an age of lazy filmmaking. And plus I'm a big fan of Jim Henson and thoroughly enjoyed his biography a couple years back. It kind of felt like getting through War and Peace. How many people have quit on that book? And the ones that did stick it out probably can't shut up about it, and that's how I feel about my deep understanding of the planet Thrash's and the origin of the races of Gelfling, Skeksis, and Mystics.

But that's the only one I will gut out like that. All other shows get shit canned on a whim so that I can get back to raising children, being a decent husband, working out, and getting back to posting a blog every day. Got 3 in a row going so far . . .

Two Random Weird-Ass Topics After a Month Off of Blogging? The Balls On This Guy!

1. Too Much Empathy Ruins Childhood Programming for Young Boy in Chicagoland Area

Some of you may know this, but I work with kids for a living. This may come as a surprise if you have read older blog posts from my crazier days, but you'll just have to take my word for it. I got thinking the other day how I have always had a pretty strong empathy even as a very young boy. I remember liking "The Munsters" because the mom was hotter than the "Adam's Family," they had a dragon living under their stairs, and Grandpa Munster had that bitchin' car, The Dragula. But what I just couldn't get past was how sad I felt for Herman Munster who so desperately wanted to live a normal life in the suburbs and interact with his neighbors, but he frightened the living daylights out of anyone he came into contact with. Had Herman just said "the hell with it" and holed himself up in his castle in the cul-de-sac, I may have been fine, but he just kept putting his best giant boot forward, experiencing that screaming in fear and rejection over-and-over. I just couldn't take it.

Then when I would try to watch "Tom and Jerry" it wasn't the violence specifically that bothered me - violence I'm okay with - it's that I felt so bad for Tom getting his ass beat, chopped up, and exploded time and time again by a little mouse that was just too smart for him. I yelled at my TV (not unlike I now yell at my Chicago sports teams as an adult) for Tom to just find a dumber and slower mouse or even eat out of the garbage cans in the alleys like Top Cat. Ol' Top Cat lived a pretty luxurious and awesome life when you think about it. Believe it or not, I was excited when they would air those rare episodes where Tom and Jerry got along and didn't fight. Those ones are likely unwatchable like when "The Three Stooges" didn't poke each other's eyes out, but I just wanted there to be peace in the valley on Saturday mornings.

2. Birdy Num-Num

When I first fed my son, Baby Erik, with a bottle, I was amazed. I was thinking, "He's drinking it! He loves it! I am helping this baby LIVE!" Then at 6 months (he's now 7 months) we started with solid foods, and that is even cooler to me. Mrs. Noisewater and I mix up crazy concoctions like spinach, banana, and cherries, and he knocks it down and cannot get enough of it. The little guy starts banging on his high chair tray demanding more. So the other day as I'm spooning it in, I say, "Do you want some num-nums?" Then I started saying "birdy num-num." Then I said it with an Asian Indian accent, and I'm trying to think why in the hell I'm saying that. Finally I remembered that it is from "The Party" starring Peter Sellers. It's not that great of a movie, but it does have that awesome phrase that has been so fun to say during solid food feedings with my boy. In "The Party," Peter Sellers plays an Asian Indian actor who gets invited to an exclusive Hollywood party on accident and screws everything up. At one point he sees the bird food labeled "Birdy num-nums" and starts saying it over-and-over. Then he says it into the intercom system for all the confused guests to hear. I watched the movie around 20 years ago, and that is just about the only scene I remember. And I barely remember it at all. It's something that may have never came to the surface of my brain to be lost forever had I not blurted it out while feeding Baby Erik the other day. Try saying it a few times, readers, and don't forget the accent. Ready? Birdy num-nums. Fun, right?

Recognize this stinky bastard?

If you said Stinkor from "He-Man: Masters of the Universe," you would be correct!  In case you can't recall, he looked like a skunk and his power was that he smelled really, really bad.  One of my closest friends just directed an episode of "Law and Order SVU."  They liked how it came out and asked him to do another.  It hasn't all gone to his head yet because he is still sending me pictures like this.  So he sends me this pic of what appears to be Stinkor sunbathing, and I laughed my ass off.  Why would he care about tanning if his odor offends anyone he comes near?  Actually, the toy itself smells, and if you leave him in a contained small space, the smell intensifies.  And it still works despite the fact that it's from like 1985!  Director friend was going to donate him to somewhere, but I jumped at the chance to take him off his hands.  Stinkor is being shipped from L.A. to Chicago as we speak.  I told Mrs. Noisewater that when he arrives he will go right into his new home: a mason jar sealed up with a lid.  Mrs. Noisewater is not liking the idea of intentionally brining an item in our house that smells and displaying it on our bookshelf, but she will learn to love our stinky new friend soon enough.  

One reason I haven't been posting in a while is that my ankle looks like this:

I'm no doctor, but that doesn't look good.

It is a real drag when I'm injured because I like to be active, I was just getting in the habit of going to the gym every day, and my job involves a lot of walking around and going up and down stairs.  I just have to do a lot of rehab on it.  Jesus, just look at it.  Does it look like the foot of a zombie?  You can be honest.  

Also, what do you think is going on in this pic:

I would be surprised if anyone guesses, but this would be 30 men with sleeveless basketball jerseys competing on three Super Nintendo versions of "NBA Jam"in an all day tournament complete with press conferences and awards.  Yours truly one the trophy for the best team name for "The Fundamentally Sound Behind the Back Inbounds Pass."

That trophy is prominently displayed on my shelf.

Which will soon be right next to Stinkor.

Good day.

Roofie Huxtable

I was looking through the memos on my phone to see if there were any good blog topics that I had jotted down, and there was an entry from New Years Eve to myself that read only the following:

Roofie Huxtable.

I did a google search, and it looks as if no one else had thought of it, but the question is, is it funny?  No.  It isn't all that funny, but can I make it into a worthwhile blog topic?

Would if there was an episode of The Cosby Show where Rooty slips her whole family roofies so that she could do all kinds of stuff that little kids like to do when unsupervised: Play her pop albums on the good stereo, try on all Mrs Huxtables jewelry and clothes, eat cookies a mere hours before dinner, maybe cut off all of Denise's hair, take Heathcliff's BMW for a spin, make a pipe bomb to blow up Peter's house for no particular reason . . .

No, that wouldn't be a good episode, and it's a downright shitty blog post.  I apologize.  And grown up Rooty is sorry too.

I was watching the Chicago Bulls game the other night and having a few IPA's, and longtime play-by-play man, Marv Albert, was saying how someone was trying to live down some bad decisions he made.  This prompted me to yell at the television, "Oh, shut up, Marv!  You were wearing crotchless panties, bit a woman's ass, reportedly forced anal upon a woman, and your toupee fell off.  We haven't forgotten that."

"Panties!  Yes!"

And it's true.  That's what is tough about being a celebrity.  If I paraded around in some crotchless panties, which no man looks good in (even me), I could still pack up and leave town and no one would know I dangled my junk out of a black lacy thong (not that I have a pair picked out).  We all have things we like to do in the sack, but we will never forget what Marv is into because we see him on TV every few nights describing slam dunks to us, and as hard as we try not to, we imagine that under the table he is still wearing those unsightly undergarments.

How about you, readers?  Who are some celebrities who have done something you'll never be able to forget when you see them?

Lies the 80's Taught Us About Adoption

Anyone ever notice that the 1980's had a lot of television shows built around rich white men swooping down from their high rises to rescue lowly orphans and whisk them away to a lap of luxury?  Maybe it was the importance placed on wealth and amassing material possessions that bled into pop culture from the Regan era.  Certainly it was a time where the gap between the haves and the have nots grew wider than ever, and it was definitely cooler to be one of the haves and be on "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous" than it was to be on "COPS," for instance.  But the sit coms of the day gave kids a glimmer of hope that we could be saved from our shitty, broke-ass lives by those good-doing rich, white business men.  Truth be told, aristocrats of that era wanted all kinds of things, be it yachts, the finest champaign, sports cars, and much younger women - but rarely did they seek out their very own poor, orphan Black children.  If you knew guys like that at the time or even today, that's not something they coveted, but the 1980's TV shows would have you convinced otherwise . . .

Phillip Drummond was one such saintly tycoon who took in inner city siblings, Arnold and Willis, into his condo, and that seemed to work out great on TV's Diff'rent Strokes.  Arnold was a wise-cracking kid with adorable big cheeks and a growth defect so he stayed cute for a lot of seasons.  In real life, there are families that want to adopt inner city kids, but usually only babies, and very rarely are bachelor males doing that deed.  Phillip was a special guy.  In reality, if he undertook this endeavor without the proper care, his kids may have turned out like their actor counterparts did in real life: Willis would have a drug problem, Phillip's birth daughter would have had an even bigger drug problem and rob a video store, and Arnold would take a job as a mall cop and punch a woman in the face, or whatever.  It seems to me that Phil just got bored easily and made rash decisions that would greatly impact his family, the least of which would be exemplified by how rapidly he went through maids.

"Watchu' mean I can't stay in the penthouse?"

Punky Brewster's father abandoned her, and then her mother snuck away from her at a Chicago shopping center, which left Punky to fend for herself in an abandoned apartment where she would be found by Henry, a photographer.  Now, that story would likely have a more grim ending with some really awful photographic evidence, but in this case Henry is a very kind old man who takes Punky in to give her a better life.  My question is why didn't Punky ask anyone at the shopping center for help?  Nope, instead she immediately just fended for herself and hunkered down in an abandoned apartment.  The actress who portrayed Punky, Solei Moon Frye developed gigantic boobs and eventually opted for a breast reduction.  This has nothing to do with anything at all, or does it?  She abandoned those giant hooters like her mom abandoned her at that Chicago shopping center?  No, it is not on topic at all, and I just found a way to talk about boobs.  Let's just move on to . . .

I bet you can guess which one is Punky (pre reduction)

. . . Webster.  This plucky youngster was the son of a professional football player who pawned his son off on his teammate, offensive lineman George Papadapolis.  Webster suddenly lived with a couple of well-to-do socialites with a cool secret passageway where you could sneak out of your bedroom and out of the grandfather clock downstairs if you needed to make a super sneaky escape of some kind.  Webster also had a growth deficiency and was even smaller than Arnold.  It seems to me that if you're bouncing around foster homes as a child, your chances of getting a foster home were greatly improved if you had a rare condition to never look older than 10-years-old.  That affliction certainly helped Emmanuel Lewis remain friends with Michael Jackson all those years when you think about it . . .

Awwww.  He's perched up there like a little parrot!  

The absolute biggest fairy tale if you were child of the 1980's was the life of Ricky Stratton on Silver Spoons, the boy who meets his father for the first time only to find that he is a super rich toy designer with a house full of video games and a toy train that takes you all over the house.  There was no one on television I was more jealous of than that damn Ricky Stratton.  I wanted everything he had, even the obnoxious duck phone that would quack incessantly instead of ring.  But even as a kid I didn't like the idea of the remote control door that they would pop open without checking to see if it was a murderous rapist who would tie them up, torture them, and play all their video games.  Other than the poorly conceived remote door, I wanted it all.  That lucky bastard.  And all the girls in my class swooned over Rick, and that only further fueled my jealousy.

"Yee haw!  All aboard to Awesome Town!  We got it all, Ricky!  Screw those broke losers!"

The 1980's made it look like taking in orphan children was no harder than rescuing a dog from the local shelter.  The harsh reality is that almost never have broke orphans been saved by random acts of kindness from rich people, but the 1980's sit coms tried to keep that glimmer of hope in the back of our minds.  Hell, I wanted to be "rescued" into that awesome house in "Silver Spoons," and I didn't even need saving because I had a middle class family that loved and cared for me.  The 80's made kids want stuff they didn't need just as it convinced the adults of this.  The poor inner city kids and orphans had just as tough of life as they do now, but being plucked out of the ghettos and orphanages and directly into mansions was never a realistic option.  The truth is the real life Arnolds and Websters of the world grew up poor, hungry, and really, really short.      

Top 10 Most Annoying TV Characters of all Time

I just published an article online by that name.  Give it a look when you have a moment.  Do you agree or disagree?  Anyone I missed?  Thanks, readers . . .

LINK TO ARTICLE HERE

What are you guys going to watch during Beyonce's crappy halftime performance of the Super Bowl? Me, I'm going to watch what I always watch: the Doobie Brothers episode of "What's Happening."

I was watching an episode of "Parenthood" online, and the commercial they chose was one for "Plan B" emergency contraception.  Is that for viewers who notice by watching the show how hard it looks to be a parent?

I know this wasn't a very good blog post and more suited to be a Facebook update, but I wasn't sure if I was ready to tell everyone I started watching "Parenthood" quite yet.

Terrible Blog Topics Jotted Down at the Bar the Other Night . . .

. . . in no particular order

1. My buddy Night Train was wondering why we have v-necks for better boob viewing when there are clearly two boobs to be seen.  Hence, why not w-neck shirts?  Be looking for that at Banana Republic very soon.

2. My other buddy Southie was talking about the plain-Jane-looking girl on 90210 that worked at the school paper with Brandon, the one that was really like 35-years-old when they started filming, and I thought for sure I heard Southie say "rape through it."  He didn't, but then we said rape through it 19 times through out the evening.  No, rape isn't funny, but the phrase was cracking us up because, well, we know each other well enough to know none of us are rapists.

"Ooh!  I know the phrase for that!"

 3. Well, if you're still reading and not crafting your angry comment lambasting me for the last topic, let me know what you think about the next one: Why is it that Matt or Matthew is such a common name, yet so few Black people are named it?  The Chicago Bears have Matt Forte, but then we were stumped.  Little help?

"You were expecting maybe LaShawn?"

4. We were all agreed that Beyonce is a super crappy choice for the Super Bowl Halftime Show, and there should be more rock bands doing it.  My prediction right here at the Gancer is that it will be the reunited 3/4 of Led Zeppelin playing it next year.  Them or Huey Lewis and the News (fingers crossed).

"Let me know when it is, once again, hip to be square."

 5. How come no one at the bar is skilled in the art of reading lips, but when we see Tom Belichick, coach of the New England Patriots, say "fucking bullshit," we all know exactly what he said?  Everyone knows how to read potty mouth lips!  I guess the lesson here is that if you're worried about someone far away reading your lips but you want to let someone know what you think of them who is in earshot, do so with unconventional disgusting phrases like "purple headed yogurt slinger" or "hatchet wound."