Au revoir, les enfants...

I think that’s French for either “Goodbye Children” or “The reservoir is no place for elephants”. In any case, the point is that I’m going to be taking an extended break from blogging, to try and knock off some of the things on my ever growing to do list. Here are just the top five items:

1. Try to convince QVC that my “Origumi” sculptures (small animal figurines that I make from used chewing gum) could be the next big thing. Failing that, auctioning them off on eBay.

2. Finish writing my three volume, unauthorized biography of Orville Redenbacher, tentatively titled “Popcorn Merchant…Sex Machine”.

3. Find out why my coffee machine is making noises that sound like a cross between the wailing of damned souls and a Humpback whale passing a kidney stone and whether or not it just needs to be repaired or taken to an exorcist.

4. Paint a large mural honoring great tambourine players like Davy Jones and…uh…um…

5. Find someone who can name at least two other famous tambourine players.

As you might imagine, I’m anxious to get started, but before I go I’d like to thank HollyGL, Diesel, Jenna, Neva, Jaesoreal, Lord Likely, Paul "FooDaddy" Brand and BrentD for being regular readers of this here blog. If I may paraphrase an old Fleetwood Mac song…You make blogging fun.

TDB

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AntisocialCommentary Release Party

I simply can’t tell you how many people have come up to me and asked if I knew where they could buy a funny book. Ok... it was just one person…one really old guy at a bus stop. At least, I think that’s what he said…he might have actually mumbled something about me standing on his foot, but my bus had arrived and I was off.

What was I talking about now? Oh right, books! It turns out I do know where to buy a funny book and it was written by our good friend and fellow blogger Diesel, over at Mattress Police.

It’s a collection of the best of his blog and bonus material you can only get with the book. According to Diesel, “AntisocialCommentary: From the Secret Files of the Mattress Police” will be published on August 15, but for a limited time you can pre-order a signed copy at a significantly discounted price.

So, hurry on down to Mattress Police and order yourself a copy. Then if some old geezer asks you where he can find a funny book, you can let him have it. The information, not the book…let him buy his own damn copy.

"He's a page right out of history"...

By now you’ve all probably seen those Geico commercials featuring those often offended cavemen and you’ve probably also heard the rumors that they will be getting their own TV show.

Well, while the world waits with baited breath for that epic television event, I’ve been lucky enough to snag an interview with the original Stone Age star, the one and only, Fred Flintstone…

TDB: Welcome Fred, and thanks for stopping by.

FF: Yabba Dabba…

TDB: Let me stop you right there Fred. I talked to some people at Hanna-Barbera, and it turns out you can’t use that phrase in any public forum.

FF: But that was my catch phrase…I came up with that!

TDB: Yeah, but your contract at the time gave them all rights to anything connected to the show, you know “intellectual property” and all that. It’s kind of technical, so don’t worry your little Stone Age head about it.

FF: Look, can we just get this over with? I’ve got to call my lawyer!

TDB: Ha ha, there’s the old hotheaded Fred we all remember. So Fred, as the first “caveman” to make it big on television, are you pleased by the success of your prehistoric brethren?

FF: Not really…let me set you straight on a couple of things blog-boy. First of all, I’m pretty sure those guys are Neanderthals, while I’m Cro-Magnon all the way baby! I didn’t even know there were any of those mouth breathers still around.

TDB: Well, we were all a little surprised by that. Some scientists say that there was a lot of interbreeding between the two groups…any truth to that?

FF: Yeah, there was some, but not me. Personally, I find excessive body hair and large ridge brows a real turn off, but Barney Rubble didn’t seem to mind it. Of course, you could say that old Barney never met a species he didn’t “like”…if you know what I mean.

TDB: I think I do…and thanks for burning that image into my brain.

FF: Anyway, another thing that’s different about these guys is that they all seem to be college educated, white-collar types and they’re always having some kind of hissy fit. On our show we were blue-collar guys who wanted nothing more out of life than to come home after a hard days work, bang the wife and then go bowling…it was beautiful.

TDB: Well, especially when you’ve got a wife that looks like Wilma, eh? Now that I think about it, you’re one in a long series of TV husbands who benefited from what I call the “Ralph Kramden” factor. You know, loud, obnoxious fat guys with inexplicably hot wives. First there was Jackie Gleason, then you and now there are guys like Jim Belushi and Kevin James…it’s really kind of bizarre.

FF: (awkward pause) How would you like a knuckle sandwich, pal?!

TDB: Easy there big guy, watch your blood pressure. Why don’t you fill us in on the rest of the cast. How are they?

FF: Dead, mostly. Barney was the fist to go, but at least they named an entire wing after him at the Bedrock VD Clinic and Research Facility. Betty died next after years of working as a conservationist. With her it was always, save the Mastodon, save the Saber Toothed tiger or save the Dodo. Crazy broad…never could pick a winner.

Wilma is a widow living in Florida, where she puts on a weekly burlesque show at the Old Soldiers Home.

TDB: And the kids on the show?

FF: Well, Pebbles grew up and married the head of some cult and was never heard from again. Bamm-Bamm fell into a life of crime, killed someone and was sent to the gas chamber.

TDB: You had the gas chamber way back then?

FF: Yeah, he was put into a windowless room with a Wooly Mammoth that had been fed nothing but beans and cabbages for a week…

TDB: I should have seen that coming. Fred…it’s been great talking to you, any final thoughts?

FF: Yeah…Yabba Dabba...

TDB: FRED!!


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I beg your pardon...

As far as this blog goes, I tend to avoid politics like the plague. However, occasionally a bit of political news filters through my defenses…I’m never happy about it, but it happens.

Take for example the recent news item about President Bush and whether he would or wouldn’t pardon some dude named “Scooter” Libby (turns out he didn’t, but he did commute his prison sentence).

Now, I have no idea why the president has that power or what induced him to use it in this particular case…other than he figured that a grown man going through life with a name like “Scooter" had been punished enough.

Anyway, according to my good friend the eminent scholar Monty Dingham Smythington, it turns out that the constitution gives the president other, rarely heard of powers as well. Here are just a few…


He can compel all citizens to bathe once a year, whether they need it or not. (Hey, they had different ideas about hygiene back then)

In case of a nation wide famine the president reserves the right to resort to cannibalism, but the victims, thereafter to be known as “sacrificial patriots”, must be chosen from his own political party.

In the event of an invasion by a foreign power, the president can commandeer any and all horses, carriages and women’s clothing necessary to get him to safely to Canada. Unless of course that foreign power is Canada…stop laughing, it could happen.

The president can preside over any trial in which the defendant or plaintiff is a “saucy tavern wench”. (It’ seems that Ben Franklin insisted on that one)

He can force all members of congress to take part in a rousing game of “Simon says”, the loser of which has to mow the White House lawn.

And finally, the president is the one and only, “official bikini inspector” of these United States. (Most scholars think that this one wasn’t originally part of the constitution, but was written in by someone during the Kennedy administration)


You know, sometimes you just have to wonder if the “founding fathers” might have been wearing their wigs a little too tight.


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What's really going on here

As a doting uncle, I’ve probably been exposed to more children’s television than is healthy for a normal adult brain. Of course, in my case it is also probably true that I have less to lose in that regard than most people do.

Be that as it may, some of these TV shows, innocuous though they may seem, raise some perplexing and even disturbing questions…


SpongeBob SquarePants: Ok, I get it, he lives in a pineapple under the sea…but does he own or rent? Also, despite being surrounded by fish, the main characters on this show are a sponge, a starfish and a squid…so, is this program being used to push the invertebrate agenda? Just what do they have against backbones?




Dora the Explorer: Exactly who is funding all this “exploring” anyway? Is it the oil companies? Is she part of some kind of covert CIA operation? Or is this show some kind of allegory about the evils of colonialism and if so, what the hell does the blue monkey symbolize?






Teletubbies: The most obvious question here is…what the hell are these things? Are they mentally challenged aliens? Or are they someone’s idea of what human beings will be like after another million years or so of sitting on the couch watching television? In either case, why does the sun have a laughing baby’s head in the middle of it? And did anyone remember to put sunscreen on the baby?



I posed these questions to my youngest niece, a sharp-witted little lass of five, who I think knows more than she lets on. Her only response was to smile at me and turn back to her program. Oh, she’s crafty all right.


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Play that funky music...

The kind and charming HollyGL over at Remedial Rumination recently posted a meme about songs that have made an impact on her life. I don’t do the meme thing myself, but I was inspired enough by her post to take a look back at some of the songs that have made me (and I use the term loosely) the man I am today…


“The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze” as performed by The International Silver String Submarine Band: Or as they were better known, the Little Rascals. Although I’m not sure when during that long malaise that was my childhood I first heard this song, I never forgot it.

This performance had it all: shabbily dressed urchins playing homemade instruments and singing off-key, a catchy tune and lyrics about some lecherous aerial acrobat who’s out to steal your girl. What more could a music loving kid ask for?


“Kung Fu Fighting” by Carl Douglas: I think I was just starting junior high school when this song came out. Whenever it played on the radio my pals and I, suffering no doubt from some sort of hormonally induced brain damage, would start to flail spastically about, performing what we were convinced were genuine kung fu moves. What a time it was…the joy…the laughter…the broken bones.


"Muskrat Love" by Captain & Tennille: Unfortunately, not every song had a positive impact. After all, in life you have to take the bad with the good and for me this song was as bad as it gets. The cloying melody filled my ears as the saccharine lyrics burned an image of horny aquatic rodents into my brain that would take years of therapy to remove.


"Funky Cold Medina" by Tone Lōc: Probably the greatest song about a transsexual since the Kinks recorded “Lola” way back when…ok, it’s probably the only song about a transsexual since “Lola”. No wait…I forgot about Aerosmith’s “Dude Looks Like A Lady”, although to be honest, when I first heard that song I thought Steven Tyler was actually singing about himself.

Anyway, in "Funky Cold Medina" there’s a line that goes ‘I don't fool around with no Oscar Meyer wiener’ and why no rival hot dog company ever used that in a commercial is something I’ll never understand.


"Baby Got Back" by Sir Mix-a-Lot: This could be the most personally meaningful song on the list for me. When I heard Sir Mix-a-Lot utter that immortal line ‘I like big butts and I can not lie’…it was like he was reading from my diary.


Whew! I think I need to go lie down… these trips down memory lane are exhausting.


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Curious seekers...

It’s time once again to take a look at what people were searching for when they wound up here in the land of the drive-by blogger. To be honest, I think I get more enjoyment out of this than anyone else, but here goes…

Jack the necrophiliac: The part of the nursery rhyme you hadn’t heard. I guess climbing up a hill to fetch a pail of water wasn’t’ Jack’s only passion.

Olympic boinking icon: Who knew that this was an Olympic event, let alone what the icon for it is. Gold medal, bronze medal, who the hell cares…just tell me where the tryouts are being held.

Cyanide pie: I’d bet my last dollar that it was Martha Stewart who typed those words. The judge who sentenced her to prison might want to avoid baked goods for a while…I’m telling you this woman never forgets.

Average life span of sumo wrestler: Well, lets’ put it this way, I’m pretty sure that unlike baseball, there’s no “Old Timer’s Day” in sumo wrestling.

World record largest bowel movement: I don’t have any exact numbers on this, but I wouldn’t be at all surprised if it involved one of the aforementioned sumo wrestlers.

Alternate uses for a motorcycle helmet: Lets see…a hot tub for hamsters, an ashtray, a some what leaky Jell-O mold…oh, the possibilities are endless.

Naked druid priestess: Probably someone from the “Dungeons & Dragons” crowd surfing for porn.

Cat Stevens half eaten sandwich: I couldn't figure out if this was a search for a Cat Stevens song called “Half eaten sandwich” or if someone was looking to buy an actual sandwich that Cat Stevens didn’t get to finish. This may haunt me forever.

The howler monkey’s enemy: Anyone who has ever heard the song “Daydream Believer”, no wait…wrong group of monkey’s.

Strudel sayings: When you start to believe baked goods have the ability to speak, you’ve probably “over medicated” yourself.


By the way, a while back I wrote a post a TV show called ““Man Vs Wild” starring survivalist Bear Grylls and ever since there has been a barrage of people searching for nude photos of the man. So, if you’re reading this Mr. Grylls (hey, it could happen) I just wanted you to know that if the TV thing doesn’t work out, you’ve probably got a good future as a male stripper.

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