Oh, The Horror!

I think scary movies are pretty lame. Either that or I’m a huge wuss. But seriously, I have a couple of guidelines that would apply to different types of scary movies, but it would also make them a lot shorter and quite a bit more realistic, which clearly isn’t their aim. Rule number one is what I like to call the Celebrity Marriage Approach. This is when a group of ridiculously stupid teenagers agree that splitting up five minutes into the movie at the first sign of trouble is the best course of action. What’s the plan there? Ok, I’ll run in circles in this direction, you go that way and zigzag all over the place in a haphazard manner. And you, hot blond chick that was plastered all over the commercials to pull male viewers in, but you’re only going to be alive for 10 more minutes or so, you run that way in an exaggerated fashion that calls attention to your beautifully shaped figure. No really guys, I think we can tire the dude in the goalie mask out before he can reach us. Alright, on one, on one, break! The victims always just die in some quick gruesome way. Why can’t there be like an emotional last conversation like in the Lord of the Rings when Aragon was kneeling beside Boromir and Aragon is like “You fought bravely and will live on in our hearts in honor.” And Boromir’s like “I’ve never served under such a fine warrior, but since I have you here….ummm you got in the way of like twelve of my kills, screw honor! I told you I had those guys, but no! You just had to keep dancing around just hacking away!

But since in these horror movies it’s just a group of teenagers getting stalked I don’t know what kind of emotional last conversation they would have, but for the sake of this show I have written a climactic death scene of a blockbuster horror film as imagined by Mark Woonton. It gets pretty emotional, so any spots where there is supposed to be crying will be denoted by a [c] so here we go. So it’s just some guy standing over his buddy in a pool of blood like “Dude, in case I die, you’ve got to tell me one thing, remember that time you drove my sister home and you guys were gone for two hours and you said it was because your car broke down? I remember you told me that you had your car inspected that morning, what really happened?”

“Dude, I really think you should…” 

“TELL ME WHAT HAPPENED!”

 (Crying) Ok….(c) on that fateful night, I didn’t take your sister to the mechanic {c} I took her to the Olive Garden. I held both her car door and the door to the restaurant open for her and after pulling out her chair so that she could sit down, I got her the fettuccine alfraedo. After paying for the meal, we stopped at Friendly’s and split a Mint Cookie Crunch sundae {c} and when I went to drop her off {c} she opened the car door, turned to me and said {c} if you ever tell my brother about this I’ll kill you. (uncontrollable sobbing. Sniffle) Well, I think I hear someone coming and since no one in this quiet little neighborhood has come out to complain about the first 87 gunshots, I’m going to assume it’s that guy that wants us dead. Peace! 

And the victims are always the dumbest people too. You’ll never see a horror moving set to take place in a Harvard University dorm room. A kid bursts into his room and goes “Dude, creepy guy in a paintball mask and winter jacket in the hall with a machete, we gotta go!” And his Asian roommate is like…..Ok, so I don’t know what would be more disrespectful here, me trying and butchering the Vietnamese accent or me not even giving it a shot? I’m pretty sure me just trying to rationalize my way out of that was worse than either of those. Anyway, while he’s freaking’ out his roommate would just be like “Nah dude, it’s cool, I fashioned a bazooka out of coat hangers and fire crackers, we’re good.” And my rule on  the movie with the lost travelers coming up to the creepy house is spend the night sleeping outside the Wal-Mart in town with all of the other homeless people and if the house looks less creepy in the morning once its finally stopped raining, which it never will! It’s always raining every night in those movies. Like what, do those people live in a rural area of the desert? But if the house looks good in the morning, then go ask for directions.

Planning For My Funeral

The following was originally meant to be based on a true story……… but when you consider the fact that I am trying to recall events that happened six years ago, couple that with my major ADD when it comes to writing and staying on topic and the fact that my parents, my ex-girlfriends and my neurologist can all verify that memory is an area where I tend to struggle (although the syllable count and amount of profanity in their exact word selection varies greatly)  you can probably guess that, much like a teenager trying to throw a story together to tell his parents why he’s arrived home three hours passed curfew, sure there is a dash of truth to this story, but those moments are far outweighed by the over exaggeration of the unimportant and the haziness of vital details that would give this story any hope of being presented in a linear fashion. So, what you have here is failure to communicate. Some memories I just can’t reach. I can’t even remember what I wrote on here last week and that’s not the way I want it. Well, you get it. I don’t like it any more than you do.  Once all of that is factored in, you are left with something that goes a little like this……

My dad hung up the phone and declared “We’re all signed up!” So the training begins. I sat down on the couch after the exhausting five mile run. The morning sun sliced through the trees and into the house, enveloping the family room in a pinkish glow. My dad was quick to yell at me for sitting on the couch while I was still sweaty. Ugh! Some supernatural force lifted my body from its momentary leathery lavish vacation and allowed me to stand upright. Well, I was about as upright as a toddler on a rocking ship. I wouldn’t even be halfway done at five miles I thought with slightly more than a hint of depression.

After peeling me off the floor with the pitch fork that my father kept handy for when personal willpower just wasn’t cutting it, we sat down to plan out our death….I mean, our training schedule for the half marathon. All of the running experts (or as I like to call them, Kenyans) say that the best way to train is to run five or six days a week and take one or two days off, no more than two though. We also read that we would benefit greatly from planning a designated Long Run Day. In preparation for these days, you check the weather to see when it is expected to rain the hardest, and pencil your long run in for that day. This way, you get the personal satisfaction of saying you are going to do something admirable, but when it comes time to actually follow through with it, your health is at risk and you wouldn’t want to chance catching a cold.

So that was how it went. We would run Monday through Friday, do our long run of the week on Saturday and go to church on Sunday praying for some divine intervention and miraculous healing on our aching bodies so we could begin the process all over again twenty-four hours later.

We wrote down our mileage for the next three months in a daily calendar in order to give our relatives some advance warning to plan the time and place of our burial. I am the kind of person who works better with lists. I like the feeling of crossing items off as I complete them.  This gives me a feeling of accomplishment. Writing the mileage down in an organized schedule also made the task less daunting.  The fact that we still had three months before the race in October allowed us to slowly increase our mileage each week in order to reach our goal of thirteen miles. This also gave me ample time to do some private internet research on which serious, but non-deadly diseases that might get one out of running for an unnecessary amount of time were the easiest to fake.

Another aspect of our training that we had to monitor was our fluid intake, specifically water (I say that because there were several buddies of mine in college who certainly would have had a more memorable college experience, or any memory of college at all, had they monitored their fluid intake, but this is neither the time nor the place for discussions about poor beverage selection and my personal choice to hang out with these people simply to feel better about myself and will be left alone following the end of the parenthesis). Staying hydrated had several benefits including keeping my miniscule, half marathon runner muscles loose which would decrease the likelihood of incurring an episode of intense cramps. An experience which my father describes as “Oh geez. Yeah, that’s bad. Yup, we’re going to be here for a while.” Secondly, drinking a lot of water prevents the mouth from drying out while running which can cause the lips to crack and girlfriends to become unhappy about the rough, skeletal smooching they are forced to endure if the odorous anti- aphrodisiac permeating from ones clothing after a long run is not enough to keep bae at bay. Lastly, increasing the amount of fluids going into my body would give me the one excuse that had historically been successful in allowing me to procrastinate on homework, outdoor chores and would surely allow me to cut some of these agonizingly long runs down to a sane distance, the need to go to the bathroom more frequently. Not even the strictest, most hard-nosed and excessively English nanny would deny a child of the basic urinary right to go to the bathroom.

Aside from fluids, my food intake changed as well. I had to decrease the amount of fat in my diet and increase the amount of carbohydrates I was eating. This made the whole family unhappy. I was forced to forfeit ice cream and my mom was sentenced to several months of hard labor without the possibility of parole, because preparing spaghetti was an all-day operation. A writer who does little to no research for his writing once told me that carbohydrates are a main source of energy for our bodies. And lord knows I would need lots of energy if my non-stop nagging and agonizing war of attrition to complain until we were scratched from the race was to work.

Fortunately for me, the half marathon in Detroit came at the end of my school’s cross country season which meant that an already in place running schedule and nonexistent social life due to my choice in extracurricular activities and resulting place at the bottom of the schools’ social scale, left me lots of open time to run.

On Saturdays, my dad and I would head outside and stretch before we began our runs. We chose to run outside because running on treadmills for a long period of time can lead to insanity and a deadly dependence on daytime television.

I hated these runs for three reasons.  First off, my dad and I began each run promptly at eight in the morning. Now, I don’t know how familiar the majority of the earth’s population is with the 12,000 step program of the weekend waking of a teenager at eight in the morning, but if you would like to experience an emotional equivalent, go deep into the woods in the middle of January and find the nearest cave occupied by a mama bear and her cub. Repeatedly poke the furry, friendly-looking bundles of cuddliness with a stick or if you’re feeling idiotically adventurous, just poke them with your finger. However, I would personally advise you to do the poking with as long a branch as possible as cordial greetings will be completely bypassed and your first encounter with Not So Gentle Ben will largely involve you running for your life. See, the running is already starting to pay off!

Secondly, my dad and I did most of our running in the trails at Muldoon Park. Aside from runners, there are three other occupants that utilize these rugged runways. Horses, with diarrhea, whom by the odor, seem to feed on nothing but outdated taco meat. These horses have the impeccable timing of choosing only to relieve themselves on the crest of the most difficult hills that the trails have to offer. This is a time when my attention is focused on getting to the top of the hill whilst maintaining the breathing pattern equivalent to that of a teenage girl that just got backstage passes to a meet and greet with Adam Levine and my attention is not focused on the month old hay with mosquito seasoning scattered throughout the path.

The second beast which calls Muldoon Park home are dogs with Samson-like strength who specialize in breaking free of leashes. On the inattentive other end of these leashes are handlers who seem to have, at best, a 99% grasp on the English language up to their understanding of words such as “friendly” and phrases like “He won’t bite.” These statements seem to provide the false comfort of a high school parent that allows children to drink, but insists on taking the inebriated adolescents keys. My discomfort with the demonic Dalmatians stems from the fact that as the owner is speaking, saliva begins to ooze from the cuddly K-9’s mouth and the dogs malicious, mirage creating mind transforms me into a juicy piece of steak.

The third and without a doubt most annoying creature inhabiting  the deep, dark woods of Muldoon are mosquitoes who, much like Christian Grey, have a singular taste for human flesh. This annoying attribute is accompanied by a buzz which can reach a volume of about 999,999,999,999 decibels as they enter the ear, causing me to flail my arms around like idiotic air marshal.

As the weeks went on, my confidence rose as our mileage increased. I became determined to pour all of my energy and effort into this race. I will never forget the feeling of preparedness I had after my last long run with my dad one week before the race; I can do this. I will never forget the confidence I had as I stretched at the starting line; hey ladies, you doing anything after the race? I knew that enduring through all of the training, changes in my diet and aching in my muscles would pay off. Like any mother telling a lie to her child the pain was worth it. I knew that the sound of the starting gun meant that it was time to execute. This is it. What the thirty-seven other gunshots I heard at seemingly random points throughout the race as I ran through the city streets of Detroit were meant to be symbolic of, I have no idea. I will never forget that feeling of satisfaction as I made the final stride across the finish line, I always knew I could do this.

If Holidays Were Realistic

As of lately, our country seems to be in search of using everyday language which is deemed politically correct. I’ve always found that terminology to be a bit ironic, because if there’s a group of people I’d consider looking to as an absolute last resort as a moral compass, it’s politicians.

This attitude of being politically correct seems to particularly show itself during the holidays. We are constantly being told what we can and cannot say, because we don’t want to offend anyone. The line of thought here seems to be “Well, I don’t celebrate this day and it’s not about me. Therefore, I am offended by it.” If that’s the case, then why aren’t we offended when we get invited to someone’s birthday party? Why is it that on that day, we can choose to just be happy for someone else? Although, if we really looked at birthdays, I think we’d realize that we’ve been going about those all wrong too. If anything, on that day we should be celebrating the mother.

“Tommy, take off that stupid hat! Today’s not about you. Now, go hug your mother and tell her that you’re sorry.”

But we can’t do that. If you take toys, candy and attention away from a little kid he would just lay there crying and babbling incoherently and there is not a more realistic depiction of the role that that little snot nosed kid played on his day of birth than that.

The root of the problem is a self-centered attitude. Again, it’s this thinking that “I don’t celebrate this day and I couldn’t just be openly happy for someone else so “bah humbug!” Although, this statement in itself is reference to a holiday novel.

If someone came up to me on April 23^rd and enthusiastically greeted me by saying “Hey man, Happy Avocado Day!” I wouldn’t think “Ummmm, the purchasing and consumption of avocados does not line up with my personal set of beliefs.” No. I’d run a hand through my hair and go “Geez! That’s today??!! We need to get me an avocado now!” I’ve taken it upon myself to come up with descriptions of various holidays throughout the year that will allow us all to participate in that day’s festivities in friendly, unified way.

First up, we have Valentine’s Day. Just as a reminder for all of the men out there, this holiday falls on February 14^th every year. This holiday was created by the greeting card, flower and candy industries because they haven’t gotten inside the consumer’s pocket since Christmas. On February 14^th, couples are blissful and happy while singles are bitter and anger. But take heart bachelors and bachelorettes, because for pretty much every other day of the year, that mood ring shines in their favor. Being single on Valentine’s Day is a lot like being British on the Fourth of July. Somewhere in the world, there’s a party going on that you’re not invited to, but deep down everyone knows that you have the classiest, sexiest voice that they’ve ever heard.

Slightly west of jolly old England, we move to Ireland for the March 17^th celebration of St. Patrick’s Day. Simply put, this is a day that we’ve set aside to recognize and honor short, clever men who are constantly forgetting where they put things. This day has also given many people an excuse to get unmercifully inebriated. It’s truly a poor reflection on the people of Ireland and is a similar assumption to thinking that everyone in New Jersey is a buff, tattooed meathead with a two syllable word vocabulary limit and that their license plates would be more accurate if they read The Guido State.

A little over a week later. On March 27^th is Easter Sunday. This was the one day each year that I became more and more convinced that, at some point in his life, my father was on body dismemberment and disposal duty for the Irish mob, because he hid Easter baskets as if he thought that there’d be legal ramifications if someone were to find them.. This day took the man who is partially responsible for bringing the handsome hunk of hotness that is myself, in to this world and made him an unenthusiastic Katy Perry karaoke participant as after an hour of unsuccessfully searching for our Easter baskets, my brother and I would walk around the hose pointing at stuff and my dad would say “You’re hot. Now you’re cold. Over there…..Yes!......No!” So, my advice don’t even hide anything. Tell your kids that there’s candy under the dirty dishes in the sink or beneath the pile of laundry in the bathroom. You’ll keep your children busy and get a lot of work done in the process.

Next on the calendar, we head in to April and stop on the very first day. April 1^st, or April Fool’s Day is the one day each year where little white lies and emotionally, if not physically harmful pranks are supposed to be tolerated provided that at the conclusion of whatever the person says or does comes the enthusiastic punchline “April Fools!” A documentary was made showing what April Fool’s Day would look like in the dystopian societies of a Donald Trump led America. To see what this holiday might look like in the future, go rent The Purge.

Shortly after we’ve all eaten our fill of tacos and reluctantly put our lips around a bottle of Corona, we come to May 8^th and Mother’s Day. For me, this day was the culmination of having spent the other 364 days practicing walking around and saying “wow, how interesting!” in a tone that conveyed some sense of believability, because I was sure to spend the entire day trudging around an art museum repetitiously  answering the question “How does this one make you feel?” Angry! It makes me absolutely furious. Not because I feel as though looking at art is a waste of time. No, the rise of abstract art has driven me bananas due to the fact that these artistic acid trip art pieces sell for hundreds if not thousands of dollars and they look very similar to the work I did in my elementary school art class and received nothing more than a C+ and a twenty minute lecture about effort.

In the United States, the next big holiday is the Fourth of July celebration marking the nations’ birth. We Americans celebrate this day by partaking in the two activities that the rest of the world knows us best for, eating lots of food and blowing stuff up.

The unofficial end of summer and return to school for many students is marked by Labor Day weekend. The mindset of this holiday seems to be that the working class got together and said “we’ve been doing a lot of work, we deserve some time off.” Not So Fun Fact for you, the average American currently carries $8,000 in credit card debt, $10,000 in auto loan debt and $25,000 in student loan debt and owes $100,000 on their mortgage, but yeah, let’s totally shut down the economy for the day. With the economic deficit where it’s at in this country I believe that the most honest way to celebrate this day is to head down to your nearest college or university, find the student in the library writing the 10-page paper on Abraham Lincoln who has mustered up the will to type the words “Abraham Lincoln was the….” And tell him “You’ve been working really hard, why don’t you spend the rest of the day playing Ultimate Frisbee on the quad.”

On October 10, we celebrate Columbus Day and remember events that lead to the most intense “ask for directions” argument in recorded history. Christopher Columbus was looking for a route to China, but unfortunately due to some construction going on in the Indian Ocean was rerouted to the Bahamas. Here’s how I recommend you celebrate this day:

1.      Make plans with a friend that leaves to the east of you

2.      Drive to the house of a friend who lives to the west of you

3.      Despite their understandable confusion upon your arrival, insist that this was your plan all along

4.      Go all throughout the home of the horrified hostess stealing a bunch of their things

5.      It is preferable to do this on a day that you are not feeling too well so that everyone living in the house becomes sick

6.      Prior to leaving the house, turn and say “This is mine now.”  

As the leaves begin to die, so do my hopes for the future generation of children turning this country around. Next on our list is Halloween on October 31^st. This is a night where kids dress really weird and pretend to be someone they’re not. For most people, this practice stops once they enter high school because they claim to have “outgrown” such a childish activity. Or as one teen puts it “Doing the same thing every second of every day is lame and exhausting.”

October shifts to November and we soon arrive at Thanksgiving Day on November 24^th. This is a day when large families get together and engage in a handful of cumbersome cross-table conversations, because whoever was left in charge of the seating arrangements is apparently an absolute moron. The sounds of the kitchen soon resemble a food-fueled opening of the New York Stock Exchange. Everyone at the table earns valuable job experience as an assembly line worker, because the ratio of time spent passing something to someone versus time spent actually eating is about as even as the score of the end of the season hockey game back when I was a Squirt and the kids didn’t know how to lose with grace and the dads didn’t know how to dial it down a notch.

Hanukkah is a celebration that lasts eight days and really confuses Jewish boys between the ages of one and eight with a birthday that falls between December 24^th and January 1^st. During this time, families willingly increase their chances of having a house fire by roughly 12.5% each night.

As we continue to expect more from our children, we continue to confuse the crap out of them. This is made very apparent by the way in which we celebrate Christmas on December 25^th. 364 days out of the year if an old bearded guy tells me that he has presents for me in his magically powered transportation vehicle, I’m supposed to run like hell. However, during this special time of year, I am specifically instructed to leave dairy products and baked goods out all night for some guy who has apparently been given the code to the garage and is only interested in having me sit on his lap and tell him what I want.

Lastly on our list, I have chosen to couple together New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day wherein a day that people promise themselves they are going to get in shape and change their life around is ironically preceded by a night most people spend their time getting way less sleep than they should and absolutely destroying their liver.     

So, I look forward to our first unified holiday celebration and I’d like to close with the reminder that the beer companies halfheartedly give you at the end of their commercials to please celebrate responsibly.  

Save The Date

While I was in school, I was always more interested in English and Social Studies classes. Mostly because the application of what I was being taught in math class always seemed to reference Dust Bowl farmers or trapeze artists and the necessity for them to have a great knowledge of angles. I believe we should be taught multiplication, division, addition and subtraction, that’s it. I will admit to a little bias because my dad got me interested in American history at a young age. But you know what? That interest has enabled me to walk Pickett’s Charge (well, run because ¾ of a mile seems like a 10K when you need to pee and your bladder is weighing you down like a military pack) I got a week excused absence from school to go to Williamsburg, Virginia as long as I promised to dress in Colonial boy garb and create a video documentary explaining the everyday life of someone who lived in 17^th century Williamsburg. At one point in time, there was video of me playing Hoop and Stick (based on how the game is played, I imagine that this activity lead to familial arguments very similar to those resulting from today’s text-immersed teens bumping into their parents in the hallway.) There was also footage of me learning how to load a colonial musket. I was told that a well-trained soldier could load and fire a musket three or four times per minute. The five minute video lasts longer than my life as a member of the Colonial Regulars would have. However, in a very sad and completely accidental fire, this footage of me and all of my brother’s action figures were destroyed.

The question that seemed to be asked most often on test day in social studies class was “Are we going to need to remember dates?” Asking this question is like asking if you will need to remember numbers for your math test, yes. At least this should be the case. While yes, remembering dates is tedious and seemingly unimportant and I will readily admit that the content of the Magna Carta has not yet played a vital role in my life as an adult, it is a skill that will serve you well later in life, especially for those men who want to become a successful boyfriend and eventually, husband. I don’t want to freak anyone out, but I’d like to disclose the practical application of what I am talking about in the form of a pop quiz:

Question One: When did you and your wife go on your first date?

Question Two: When is your wife’s birthday?

Question Three: When is your anniversary?

Question Four: When is Mother’s Day? (If you didn’t answer questions 2 and 3 correctly, odds are you can skip this one)

Question Five: What day of the year do you and your wife have your biggest fight? (Here’s your freebie, it’s April 18^th)

Question Six: When is Valentine’s Day? (Yes, it’s one of those holidays that’s on the same date each year)

Question Seven: When is your mother-in-law’s birthday? (In most cases, June 6, 1944 is not an acceptable answer)

Still don't think dates are important? If you wish to be a successful husband, I suggest you make a concerted effort to change how you view the importance of date recall. For those of you who couldn’t answer all of these questions correctly, please give Michael Vick my best and prepare yourself for a night with the couch and a date which will live in infamy. 

Pick Your Pocket

Throughout my life, I have endured an extensive neurological history which has resulted in over a dozen surgeries. As anyone who has had an operation or broken limbs will tell you, I was constantly being asked “how did that happen?” It’s gotten to the point where I decided that I either needed to carry around a tape-recording of me explaining the stories behind the scars, or I could just start making up these outlandish stories to account for the anatomical abrasions. Given the constant headache that comes with using all of the medical mumbo jumbo, I have chosen the latter option more often than not.  When asked about the scars on my head, chest and abdomen, I now go off in one of three directions:

1. I gave birth to Wolverine from the X-Men

2.  I was Edward Scissorhands first customer while he was in barber school

3. I got in a knife fight in Detroit (this story is reluctantly verified by family I have that live in the area)

Toward the end of the summer in 2006, I had to undergo surgery to have my appendix removed. The surgery went smoothly and I would be cleared to go home in a few days. As I lay in the hospital bed looking at the newest addition to my collection of cuts, I tried to think up a story that would allow me to avoid the truth and having to use words such as “pus-laden bacteria” and “ooze.” (Such terminology was what I believed caused everyone to eventually be bothered by the word moist)

With the help of my dad, we constructed a tale explaining how we had taken part in the Running of the Bulls in Pamplona, Spain and my father had used both his speed and a threat of not having a roof over my head when I returned to the United States to persuade me to pick up the rear as we ran through the narrow Spanish streets. Unfortunately, my cross country and track experience were no match for the powerful and determined bulls and I was trampled and stuck by several horns. The nurses thought this story was hysterical and as a parting gift I received a framed picture of a torero and a bull. This picture hung above my bed for many years and served a great purpose. You see, dream catchers simply net the bad dreams and allow them to collect and eventually seep into your subconscious while you sleep. The bull and torero teamed up to demolish any nightmarish thoughts that crept into my room and prevent me from having a sweet and sound slumber.

It’s been years since then and I recently bought a plane ticket to take a trip to Spain this fall. I couldn’t help but be reminded of that funny story. Both the fond memories of that picture and the fact that the Running of the Bulls takes place in July have alleviated my worries that what was once just a fictional story may come to fruition. However, my concerns associated with international travel have not been altogether eliminated, but rather, shifted.   

Pickpockets are a group of people who have allowed their sense of greed and desire for wealth to cloud their judgement of both right and wrong and acceptable personal zones. These people use crowded quarters and swift movements to steal merchandise and money from unsuspecting victims who take a few seconds to even realize when a traffic light directly in front of them goes from red to green (sorry, I got a little too personal there). They will be my biggest concern while vacationing in Europe.

As a precautionary measure, I have decided to keep my money and any valuables tucked into my socks. The items a potential pickpocket will discover if he decides to go rummaging through my Wranglers are as follows: some old gum, a half ripped ketchup packet, an open paper clip, a Chinese finger trap, a loaded mousetrap, the buzzer from the game Taboo and a laminated index card with Exodus 20:15 printed on it, which clearly reads “thou shalt not steal.”

It’s really such a shame that the skills and abilities that these people have are being used for evil too. Just imagine all of the good they could do. You know those flyers we get in the mail from local restaurants? Imagine if pickpockets went around stuffing those into the pockets of tourists who have no idea where they want to eat. A pickpocket could probably give someone a back-rub without them even realizing it!

“Man, my back is killing me after that long train ride, how about you?”

“I don’t know why, but I feel great.”

Pickpockets could turn from taking to giving and write people little notes of encouragement that they would find later on in the day:

Hi, I hope you don’t mind but I took the liberty of neatly folding your bills and organizing them in ascending monetary value. I noticed that you smiled in the picture on your driver’s license. Most Americans don’t do that and I commend you and I think your teeth are beautiful. Although in all fairness, I do most of my pick-pocketing in England and everyone’s mouth over there looks like Cujo so I’m not the greatest judge of what is considered acceptable dental hygiene, but keep it up and enjoy the rest of your stay!

Sincerely,

Sergio  

If I were to take the words of both the 26^th president of the United States, Theodore Roosevelt and Uncle Ben Parker from Spider-man, mash them together and add a subtract a few words of my own, the quote would look something like this: “With soft and swift hands comes great responsibility.” So a final question to all of the pocket plundering penny pirates out there: Are you going to choose treat your special ability and the rest of humanity like some snobby kids beaten up, Doritos fingerprint stained Gameboy Pocket or will you choose to be a Pocketful of Sunshine? 

Societal Punch List

Lists are important to us from an early age. It oftentimes starts with a young child’s list to Santa Claus, stating their case as to the ways in which they’ve been good this year and are deserving of the fifty things they are asking to play with for twenty-five minutes and then never use again. A bit later in life, the list is used as a kindergarten courtship version of an OKCupid questionnaire featuring the single most important compatibility question: Do You Like Me? Along with the four possible responses: Yes, No, Maybe and Not Right Now Because We Just Ran Out Of Fruit Rollups At The House And I’m Really Upset, But I Think My Mom Is Going Shopping Today So Please Come Back Tomorrow Before That Kid Whose Diet Seems To Consist Mainly Of Boogers, Insects And Paste Tries To Talk To Me Again, Please Don’t Let Him Talk To Me Again!

As any good parent should subject their child to, I started receiving little chores and duties around the house as well. Saturday mornings started with a pancake breakfast and then my brother and I were given our chores for the afternoon which needed to be finished before making any plans outside of the house. If you are a parent of a young child looking for age appropriate chores and allowance amounts to start assigning, check out the list completely made by parents who have reached their wits end and are absolutely irate with where each subsequent generation’s children seems to be headed. The list of chores has been made available online at GoFundYourself.com

I remember a time back when I was a child that we had a gentleman come to paint our house. After several days of work in the blazing sun, he had completed the job…..or so he thought. For confidentiality’s sake we will just call the painter Picasso. The next morning, I noticed a piece of paper on the dining room table entitled “Picasso’s Punch List.” The document appeared to have several areas in which the work he had done turned out to be less than satisfactory. I grew fearful for Picasso’s safety, as the only “punch” I understood at that point in my life was a physical and harmful one. Later on in college, a punch list became a list of alcohol needed for a party, but that’s a story for another time. I was nervous that my dad planned to harm Picasso. I figured it was one punch for every bullet point, much like when I sat down for a meal, I had to eat one grape or one carrot for every year I was old (a rule that my parents enforced but did not seem to follow themselves). When Picasso arrived at the house the next morning, he appeared to be very angry with my dad as he exited his truck and my theory grew stronger. He also began speaking in an altogether different language than the plain English I had heard him using just the day before, because most of the words he said on this day I had never heard before.

A punch list is defined as a document prepared near the end of a construction project listing work not conforming to contract specifications that the contractor must complete prior to final payment. The work may include incomplete or incorrect installations or incidental damage to existing finishes, material, and structures.

Most of my work as a comedic writer is based off of observation. My “ultimate formula” for comedy can be summed up as follows: Real Life Situation or Real Life Observation + Slight to Major Exaggeration = Funny. Things make us laugh because we either think “that is so true” or “I’m picturing what they are saying and it’s funny.” With some of these observations I’ve come up with what I think we can call a Societal Punch List. These are just things that we say or do that I believe need to be reexamined or done away with completely. One of the many memorable quotes from legendary UCLA Men’s basketball coach, John Wooden is “A coach is someone who can give correction without causing resentment.” So, as I go through the following list please keep in mind that we are all on the same “team” as we go through this game of life together and the first step to solving a problem is being made aware of its existence.

There are three “L” words that I feel our use of needs to be completely done away with or at least reexamined: Like, Literally and Legit. You can like pizza, you can like the song “Flex” by Rich Homie Quan. I wouldn’t recommend that one if you want people to take you seriously, but you can if you so choose. You can’t however, spend like twenty hours in like a mile long line to buy like a fifteen bajillion dollar Michael Kors bag. My Public Speaking professor refers to words such as “like” and “ummm” as vocalized pauses. In simpler terms, this is when the speed of the information processing in your brain-dome is not keeping up with the information output of your mouth-hole. Since we have grown uncomfortable with even a second of silence in this day and age, we feel the need to close the gap of our journey from verbal point A to verbal point B with something. But guess what? Silence, peace and quiet and reflection time is OK. As any parent will tell you, there will be times in your life when silence simply becomes an unattainable dream. So take your time, think through what is prudent to say and convey your message in a clear concise manner. Because for me, having a conversation is very similar to being at a concert, I’ll remember the beginning and the end, but I will spend most of the time in between wondering where I can get my hands on some fried dough.

The next word in this atrocious trio is literally. I don’t know whether it was the implementation of freedom of speech or the creation of Wikipedia that made us feel as though in order to prove a point we had to drive it home with this all important “L” word. Does this mean that everything we’ve said up to this point is open to personal interpretation? Allow me to pose a question, when you tell someone to show up at your house at 11 and they show up at 11:30, is there a difference between these two apologies “I’m sorry, I got here as soon as I could” and “I’m sorry, I literally got here as fast as I could?” Yes, there is a difference. The person who literally got to your house as quickly as they could had the gas pedal to the carpeting the entire drive over, showing complete disregard for unimportant distractions such as traffic signs, other vehicles and pedestrians. The person standing on your front porch is most likely being pursued by authorities for dozens of traffic violations and quite possibly murder and should not be welcome in your home. The person who chooses to omit the word “literally” in the explanation for their tardiness has a story that goes something like this: They got in their car, picked up a few items from the grocery store, went to the dry cleaner, dropped off some clothes at good will, grabbed a bite to eat with an old college buddy, got their haircut, signed up for a gym membership with absolutely no intention of going, sat in on a DIY class at the hardware store, boarded a plane and went on an all-expenses paid week-long vacation to the Bahamas with their family and then headed over to your house, time permitting. Which one of these people you choose to hang out with is completely up to you.

Last on the list of outlawed “L” words is the word legit. This is a derivative of words such as legitimate and legitimately that sounds absolutely moronic and should not be used in any setting, professional or casual. In fact, if you catch someone using the word legit, you now have my expressed written permission to smack that person over the head with whatever type of sports transportation board they have tucked under their arm. Do this until the four brain cells they have fall out of their ear, bag these brain cells up and have them given to someone who can put them to good use.

Another word that needs to disappear into the olden times of our vernacular is this recent referencing to one’s boyfriend, girlfriend, husband, wife or otherwise significant other as bae. I was fine with baby, although the sentimental value of referring to a love interest in the same likeness as an infant was a bit lost on me, it was fine. This was then shortened to babe, referencing an early 20^th cigar smoking, beer swigging baseball player, or according to my early childhood filmography, this nickname is a roundabout way of referring to your main squeeze as an obnoxious talking pig. Here’s the deal, there’s a bay in San Francisco, there’s a bay in New York. There is not one nervously sitting across from you at the Outback Steakhouse, who has doused himself in cologne and is attempting a Jedi mind trick on you from across the table to convince you that you need to get the cheapest thing on the menu, but do not need to split a dessert. Fear not those of you who loved the flirtatious farm animal pet name, because we are now just one letter drop and probably only a few shorts years away from simply referring to that special someone as “ba.”

A group of stupidity-laced specimens that need to be called out for the damage that they are doing to society are those people who order water at restaurants by saying “I’ll just have a water” in this snobby, snooty tone of voice as if they are above everyone else at the table or shortchanging themselves in some way. Do they have any idea the minimal percentage of the population on this planet that has access to clean, drinkable water or has it readily available at a location close to them? No, they don’t, but I think they are totally deserving of that Miss Universe crown that Steve Harvey has accidentally adorned them with because they displayed the superhuman willpower to shoot right passed the wine list and the sody pop, way to go!

Next up on the list of our community criminals are the people who take all of the pennies from the “leave a penny” pile that other people have so kindly left behind for those times when a person is short on change when they go to pay at the cash register. They pay, get their receipt and proceed to shamelessly scoop up all six pennies into their greedy little pockets, walking off as if they’d just “stuck it to the man” because they don’t have to pay taxes on those six pennies and they are now six sinful cents closer to retirement.

As a child, I hated going to the grocery store because what was promised to me as a five item, ten minute stop quickly turned our shopping cart into a lunch meat, lime beans, Land O Lakes landfill. This suffocating experience was not at all hastened by the fact that my mother seemed to know everyone in the entire store and felt the need to connect with them each individually in a deep, meaningful and very time-consuming way. I hate grocery shopping as an adult, aside from the knowledge that I have to get, pay for and cook everything myself, because every time I pull into the lot, 90% of the parking spaces are occupied by shopping carts that people are too lazy to put away. This gives the parking lot the appearance of a poorly constructed paintball course and while it does keep young boys busy at their first job, it is a pain in the butt. Please make the already stressful search for a parking space a little easier for everyone by returning the cart to one of the corrals, thank you.

This next one is really quick and very simple, it’s the use of the phrase "the other day" There are seven options, which one is it? Where exactly on the timeline of my life between “yesterday” and “one time at band camp” does this other day fall?  

A coalition of motor vehicle morons who have earned their way into the spotlight are those people who get into a left turn lane and then decide they need to go straight so they just go ahead and do it anyway. If someone needs to fly from Tampa to Detroit and several hours and a layover in Amsterdam into their flight, they realize that they’ve gotten on the wrong plane, is it then on the pilot to compensate for the fact that the passenger wasn’t paying attention? I was always told if I get in the left turn lane, follow through with my turn. When people get in the left turn lane and go straight, everyone around them is forced to pull these moves out of The Fast, The Flipping Off and the Furious. If you just take a left at the light and find somewhere to turn around, everyone is safe. Heck, it may even look like you did it on purpose and knew exactly what you were doing the whole time.

An almost daily occurrence that I feel needs to vanish into extinction is guys like Johnny Manziel being front-page news and top story on shows that claim to discuss "athletes" i.e. people who actually play. When I was in the hospital my freshman year of high school, Adalius Thomas, a linebacker for the New England Patriots at the time, paid me a visit and do know where we were in the newspaper? Page four! Why do we have to highlight the negative and brush off the positive? I’m sick of being made to feel depressed all the time and I’m tired of people that children are supposed to be able to look up to behaving like children themselves. All I’m saying is that when you have to apologize for the same type of behavior time and time again, it starts sound a little less sincere. We all know how “The Boy Who Cried Wolf” ends. I’m sure Johnny doesn’t, because he could throw a ball and couldn’t be bothered with something as trivial as reading. To the next generation of athletes, it’s time that we put the word professional back into the job description of professional athlete.

There’s a hotheaded group of people out there who need to cool their jets. I’m addressing those who get mad at people who “sneak” snacks and drinks into a movie theater. I’m paying for it somewhere, I’m not stealing money from them, why should the location where it was purchased be a concern to them? I found the same product for a better deal. In practically any other scenario this is called being a smart consumer. Every time in my life I’ve pulled out a five dollar bill in order to pay for a 20oz soda, I can feel Honest Abe’s gaze shift up to me as he grumbles “I think we’re being cheated.” Although, in all fairness, that theory can only go so far, because I can’t get a burger from McDonald’s and then walk across the street and get a table at Chili’s and have the waitress come over and say

“What can I get you?”

“No thank you, ma’am we are just here for the table.”

Lastly, I wish to bandage up some personal childhood trauma. If you’re against capital punishment that is absolutely fine, but a mass of miscreants that I think need to be strapped to a time out chair and never heard from again are the kids on Halloween who would take all the candy from the bowl on the porch with the sign that clearly said “Please Take One.” They’re not a capitalist, they’re a dorktator and they’re taking complete advantage of a situation and being unfair to those arriving at that house after them. However, there is a silver lining to this that will allow us all to sleep soundly at night. That is the knowledge that this child will go through life slipping on a lot of wet floors, accumulating a massive amount of speeding tickets and ultimately having a lot of failed relationships, simply because they taught themselves at a young age that it was OK to ignore the signs. 

I’d like to end with two quotes. The first is from a man whose magnificent manly beard make his words an ultimate authority, our sixteenth president, Abraham Lincoln. He said “If the people decide to turn their back on the fire and burn their behinds, then they will just have to sit on their blisters.”

In conclusion, some words of wisdom from a big friggin' cartoon talking bear who I'm sure scared the crap out of all of us as child......."Only you can prevent forest fires!"

The Buffer App

Business venture idea:

I have always had troubles getting up in the morning and coffee is just getting too darn expensive. Luckily, I believe that there's a solution to this problem

An alarm clock that features the voice of UFC announcer, Bruce Buffer.

5:30 comes around.......

"IT'S TIME!!!! The main part of your day! The three people judging you today will be your manager, your coworkers and anybody driving behind you. Live from your crappy little apartment, this is the moment you've been waiting for! A sixteen hour shift to determine what side effects little no exposure to sunlight and massive exposure to nicotine filled, vulgarity spewing coworkers has on the human psyche!"

"Introducing first, fighting to stay awake out of the sad and blue corner, this man is a hit once and run like hell style fighter, well-versed in Cross Country and Track and Field. Weighing in at an amount which recently caused a lady to say "Wow, you're really skinny." The inflection in her voice hinted that it was more out of concern than a compliment. Given the fact that the youngest sibling on both his mother and fathers' side are both over 6'2, he stands at a very resentful 5'8". That height is when he stands up straight, which let's face it, is basically never. He's had three highly educated neurosurgeons refer to him as "bright and articulate".........Mark Woonton!"

"Introducing next, fighting out of whichever Japanese city he was assembled in. He specializes in timely striking and intimidation tactics through volume capabilities of 80,000 decibels.Weighing in on every time I've made the decision to get out of bed in the morning. He stands at a height a little bit taller than that dresser that was a total pain in the ass to carry up the stairs when I moved in. He gets hit and thrown around a lot in the United States, but I hear he's a big deal in London.........The Alarm Clock!"

How stoked would you be getting out of bed every morning?

And no, there is no snooze button