Ado(obso)lescence

You know who I feel sorry for right now?  Those other kids in Rebecca Black’s Friday video.  Who are they? No one knows their names.  You can bet they’re all just friends or kids from her school or youth soccer league or soemthing.  One day she turns to them in the gymcafenasium and says, “Hey, gang, I’m, like, totally gonna shoot a music video and, like, you all, like, totally need to be in it.”  And the entourage is all: “Totally!” “Awesome!” “Can we do it the week after next, ‘cuz I’m all getting my braces off and stuff then.”  And so they get up early one morning and shoot this thing.  I can’t say for sure, but they probably shot it on the weekend (which I mention just in case there’s the chance of a class action suit for false representation in the offing).  And so they lip sync to the video and do a few takes in the car, quite possibly rock-paper-scissors for who gets in the front and who gets in the back, and then move on to the party scenes at night.  And after all is done and the video gets put on YouTube it becomes one of the most mocked and reviled vids to ever exist.  Rebecca Black becomes a teen cause célèbre, eliciting some of the most spiteful and vitriolic dislikes the www has to offer.  But those other guys?  The hangers on?  The nameless car poolers and party crashers who only sought to help out a friend?  Yeah, in the end, they get squat.  They don’t even get their slice of the 15-minute famewreck that Rebecca has been privy to.  They get the jeers and derision, they get the shame and humiliation, they even get the sad, pathetic egotrip of saying, “I was seen by 61 million people, 1.3 million of which think I suck!”  But no one knows them.  Even long after the pop culture zeitgeist has relegated Rebecca Black to the refuse pile with Mahir and William Hung and David After Dentist, she will still have that memory of being that brief candle outed by the changing flavors of public perception.  The rest of Rebecca’s gang?  They don’t even get that. 

And, sadly, they probably don’t realize how lucky they are for it.

It’s All About the Webitude

Man, this worldwide web thingie is pretty damn awesome!  You click that little rat device and – bang! – you’re somewhere else entirely, someplace with LOLcats or singing Biebers or naughty, naughty stuff.  Let’s check out a few, eh?

IGN (UK Edition) will kick us off with the TOP 50 SCI-FI TV SHOWS.  Seeing that it’s British, be thankful that the bulk of the list isn’t esoteria like Bangers & Mash in the Year 2525 and Her Majesty’s Cyborg.

Speaking of telly, TV Squad lists the 100 MOST MEMORABLE FEMALE TV CHARACTERS.  All lists are subjective but this one gives you some fine food for thought.

I won’t blow too many spoilers by saying that one of the women on the list above is Buffy the Vampire Slayer (a personal favorite).  Well, Neatorama gives us 18 FACTS YOU MIGHT NOT KNOW ABOUT BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER.  You might not know them.  I bloody well did. 

Moving on to cinema and film, MovieFone shares the BEST MUSIC SCENES IN MOVIES: 50 CLIPS THAT TOTALLY ROCKED OUR WORLD.   Thankfully, the list is more cinephile-driven than Billboard so Celine Dion is nowhere to be seen (a blessing by any sane margin).

AdFreak lets loose 50 ADS STARRING OSCAR WINNERS. And, boy, is this one fun!

Meanwhile, Buzzfeed ranks the THE 20 BEST CAT TOWERS.  Hey, wait!  I didn’t type that!  Hmmm.  Pickles … you clever kitty!

Finally, we’ll leave it at io9’s take on the 10 ROBOTS WHO ARE SLUMMING IT IN THE UNCANNY VALLEY.  And, hey, you know that thing you do at night where you close your eyes and dream?  Sleep!  Yeah, sleep it’s called.  Well, you won’t do that much after you look at this one.  I mean it.  Seriously creepy.  Freakin’ robots.

Bronx Fear

There’s a snake loose in the Bronx.  Not just any snake – a cobra.  An Egyptian cobra. A twenty-inch-long freakin’ escaped Egyptian cobra!  Someone at the Bronx zoo left the cage open or looked the other way while death on no legs slithered out the back.  Granted, I’m relatively safe, 500 miles away, but what if the snake catches a train?  Or high-jacks a party bus?  Yes, it sounds implausible but who the hell thought we’d start the week off talking about a deadly viper on the lam? See, this is why we can’t have nice things.  And why we shouldn’t have venomous things.  You see a serpent in the desert that could kill you with a sideways glance then you leave it alone!  Don’t grab it, shove it in a box and ship it FedEx half way across the planet and put it in a display case for Noo Yawkas to gape open-mouthed at!  Leave it where you bloody well found it!  Otherwise, fast forward a few years and you’ve got an empty cage and everyone in the five boroughs and most of the Eastern seaboard standing on chairs and screaming like schoolgirls if they spy an errant jump rope or twig or garden hose.  And did I mention it’s a cobra?  There’s no such thing as a good cobra!  Whether it’s the Stallone film or the GI Joe enemy or the malt liquor or the Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act, it’s all bad.  So, please, Bronx zookeepers, herpetologists, animal control experts, whoever has a spare moment and a net in the Empire State, do us all a favor and catch that damn snake! 

FIVE RANDOM FIVE

Five Days I Wouldn’t Mind Reliving

Wedding

Earth Day, 1990

They Might Be Giants concert

Fourth of July picnic at Mookie’s 

Discovering MTV at Mr. Gatti’s

 

Five Comic Book Sound Effects I Recently Read

SPOKK

SKRUD

WROK

TUK TUK TUK

CWOOOOOOMMM

 

Five Months of the Year that Deserve More Days

September

October

April

December

May 

 

Five Sci Fi Heroes I Secretly Think Are Kinda Dickish

Han Solo

Gandalf

Klaatu

E.T.

Marty McFly

 

Five Muppet Sex Phrases

Raggle Frocking

Yipping

Putting down the Duckie

Emmett Otter’s Jug-band Friction

Heavy Felting

                  Sparky MacMillan was working as a waitress in a cocktail bar. That much is true.

On the Game

I will never ever go to a birthday party where there aren’t games. Pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey, piñata, musical chairs, what have you. Even a round of charades or hangman will suffice. It’s just gotta be something. Just because I like to see the look on the birthday boy’s face when I whip his ass! Boy howdy! Yeah! It’s your special day but only special ‘cuz you’re a LOSER!! Wooo hooooo!

.hack//URSINE

So … heh heh … funny story. This computer parts company buys an ad in a local coupon book and someone in the art department decides to spice up the ad with a cute little graphic.  So, they grab some bear illustration off the web and insert it into the coupon for the Lakeland, Florida business.  But … funny thing here … turns out it’s an illustration for something called Pedobear, an internet meme for child molesters and the like and … now here’s where it gets really funny … one of the main guys at the company who bought the ad is a convicted sex offender!  Of course, the coupon company claims it’s all just coincidence and an accident and the poorly named CP Distributer (apparently CP is short for Child Pron) isn’t saying much.

And, oddly, throughout all of this mess I’m left with the singular thought: Pedobear? Worst. Care Bear name. Ever.

Sight Unclean

“There is nothing like the sight of an old enemy down on his luck.” – Euripides 

Yeah. Woo hoo! Take that, Krzyzewski!

A la peanut butter sandwiches!

Found a peanut butter & jelly sandwich the other day. It was just sitting there … alone, abandoned, neglected. I took it home and fed it and looked after it and tended to it for awhile. When it finally began to trust me, I clubbed it to death and ate it.

Hey, chill out – it was only a peanut butter & jelly sandwich!

Yummy Goodness .. On A Stick!

This may be the coolest thing I have ever seen: cupcake push-pops.

So, is it the coolest thing ever? Hmmm. Well, definitely top five.

A Tough Act To Swallow

As I was leaving Rodney Parrish’s 11th birthday party, his mom held out a bowl full of candy. She said, “Take one” and I did, quickly popping the confection in my mouth. She stared at me like I was insane and I thought she was freaking out because I didn’t say “thank you” or something. So, I smiled like I was grateful and swallowed the gobstopper. Only it wasn’t a gobstopper, it was one of the party favors she had been offering us kids. Stupid me. I had to be rushed to the emergency room because I had a bleedin’ Wham-O Super Ball stuck in my throat.