When you are young you want to do things to your body that are permanent – like having tattoos or piercings or babies. When you get older you inadvertently do things to your body like get wrinkles or stretch marks. Wrinkles are tattoos that you earned. Stretch marks are penalties. You can also just eat a cupcake. Good luck getting rid of that. It’s on your hips long after the wrapper is decomposed.

Have you ever seen a couple in their 50s and the wife is still fit? It’s hard to not ask the husband how he kept that body so tight. You can’t actually tell your woman she is getting heavy. Somehow these guys have found a loophole. I think married people get fat, because you don’t have sex after you get married. Maybe these guys politely explained this to their women and then jumped in the sack. Or maybe they just keep their house at 95° - who knows.

There are two types of guys; those who like MILF porn and those who like the 18 year old porn. The later seems kinda creepy to me at this point. I am in porngatory. I am equally aged from both ends of the spectrum. I can say as I get older a mature woman with some imperfections is appealing – it shows character. I have not fully embraced the MILF camp, but I get it. If I were to start there might be no better place than with Mary Steenburgen. She has held up insanely well. Do you know she is almost 60! She keeps playing a mother in movies and tv shows and it seems impossible, but from an age perspective it’s plausible. She was on 30 Rock last night as Elizabeth Banks mother and somehow outhotted her. Alas she is married - Cheers to Ted Danson. The best I can hope for is her daughter, Lilly McDowell, who is my age (see image – also notice the person behind them to calibrate their hotness). Age is just a number. A number that everyone judges you by.

As mentioned in Comedic Intent #50 - I own several Dr Dre 40 oz. Koozies. First there was the 12 oz. Koozie - now the 40 oz. When will it stop? When will there be a Kegzie? It would basically just be a keg in a sleeping bag. Adorable. And Patent Pending.

A lot of movies nowadays start with a title and work backwards (see Gnomeo and Juliet, Maid of Honor, etc.) Stand By Me could have very well been called Cry With Me, considering there’s a lot of youthful tears shed for a camp out. Or Stand By Me While We Look At The Decaying Body Of Some Kid. Stand By Me is actually based on “The Body” which was one of Steven King’s short stories in the book “Different Seasons.” Most of the short stories in the book have been made into great full length movies. Yet most of Steven King’s full length books have been made into short pieces of crap. He should accidentally lose most pages of his books – it might make for better adaptations.

The story is told from the memory of a writer about the time he and three other childhood friends travelled through the woods, racing against a local gang to see their first dead body. Apparently none of them have ever been to a funeral – including the main character whose brother died. Wouldn’t that have been the first dead body they had seen? The movie stars Wil “Wesley Crusher” Wheaton, River “Only Reason For Joaquin” Phoenix, Jerry “Romijn-Stamos” O’Connell and Corey “Drugs” Feldman as the tight-panted, barbershop quartet, mismatched group of friends. This was the time where you would be friends with anyone who lived close to you – or had a trampoline. I don’t remember any of my friends from 6^th grade, let alone their names. Who has this great of a memory? The details are very specific. I can barely tell you what happened last week let alone what happened 20 years ago.

The dead body they travelled to see was that of a missing kid named Ray Brower. He really should have been a white girl. They would have found him way quicker. He got hit by a train (sadly not the Coors Light Train) while picking blue berries and was tossed neatly under a pill of leaves. I don’t remember seeing any blue berries near those tracks. Maybe that’s what was smeared all over his gross face. What would have been way cooler is if they rolled the kid over and it was Jon Cusack, the dead brother! What a plot twist that would have been. And after finding the body they don’t even take it or get credit for it. That’s like being crowned homecoming king and not sleeping with the homecoming queen while three friends look on.

The reason they didn’t take the body is because there was an altercation between the kids and a local gang, The Cobras, led by Keifer Sutherland. To get The Cobras to not take the body, Wheaton pulls a gun on Sutherland. Okay. There really needs to be more of an epilogue than what’s given, because as soon as they got back into town he would have taken the beating of a lifetime. Sutherland was the quintessential badass in the 80s – he was the prototype Billy Zabka. At least Corey got to see Sutherland die in Lost Boys. Actually come to think of it – it wasn’t that train that killed Ray Brower it was Corey’s derailed career. Luckily it didn’t take Wheaton down with him.

No one wants to be in the friend zone. I have friends. I don’t need more. The friend zone is like a waiting room that you sit in expecting to eventually get called up, but it never happens (the friend zone also has no good magazines to read.)  I have spent plenty of time in the friend zone. To make the experience worse is when people continue to remind you that you are in the friend zone. It’s bad enough I am here, but it’s just cruel to use sentences like, “because you’re such a good friend…” or “if you weren’t my buddy…” If I am standing at line at McDonald’s you don’t have to keep reminding me I am at McDonalds. I get it. I was hungry and I took a wrong turn somewhere and ended up here. Sure the friend zone offers some substance, but it’s not what you want. “You want a Big Mac? How does a Saltine sound?”

The substance the friend zone could offer is - a sliver of proof that you aren’t as creepy as you appear. If you hang around attractive people of the opposite sex – a potential mate sees this and assumes if you were a serial killer you would be drinking alone plotting on the back of a napkin. You are at least acceptable enough for a night on the town. New research confirms that, “men receive higher desirability ratings from female raters when presented with attractive (compared to unattractive) model females.” Having a hot female friend that you can’t sleep with has finally proved to have some value. The next time you are sitting in the friend zone and an attractive female accidentally walks in and finds you there at least she knows you were granted an appointment. She might even share your Saltine.

The internet is heroin. The first time you hear about it and try it it’s the best thing ever, and then the diminishing returns set in. You will never reach that first high again. Every once in a while a new site will come along or a new feature that makes you think it’s great again, but it will never be the same. It’s like the crappy boyfriend who lulls you into submission, treats you like shit, then brings you chocolate once a year just to keep you attached. But we’re addicted what are we going to do - go back to the Dewey Decimal system? Don’t make me slap you.

The byproducts of the internet fall into the same trap. I keep getting exposed to new artists and get really excited, but with every additional track I lose interest (or lost interest by single #2 - I won’t names names but I will link links .) Whenever an artist I like drops a new single or record I brace myself for the worst and usually end up disappointed. Then the latest release bottlenecks the original and I end up just disposing of my any excitement for the artist. Oh no. I might be a hipster. NO! Hipster is to internet as Addict is to heroin. I feel like I am shooting up with a cat5 cable while pulling a computer ribbon around my bicep with my teeth.

Azealia Banks is one of the newer artists I was introduced to over the last year and I bump “212” all the time. She seems like the evolution of a lot of the female rappers out there now-a-days. She isn’t glamour or ghetto fabulous. She just seems real. The girl next door. She’s the rapper next door. That’s not to say she’s run of the mill, she’s not. There are plenty of girls who live next door, but not all of them can do that pouty lip lick thing like Azealia. I was very concerned about her future output. Today she released Jumanji and although it isn’t as infectious as “212” it’s still decent. Maybe that’s the best we can hope for. A diminishing return curve that is gradual rather than a cliff. I can deal with that. I can also watch her groove all night even without the sound on.

BTW - last week was our 1 year anniversary.

They grow up so fast don't they?

Thanks everyone for listening, contributing & supporting.

Okay. Back to the dick jokes.

We are throwing around the term “artist” pretty loosely these days. I make jokes, but I don’t call myself a laugh artist. Just because someone makes you a sandwich, it does not make them a sandwich artist. That’s just Tony in a visor. I didn’t walk in there with my bread and a rough idea of a post modern club sandwich in a palette of warm pastrami. There’s a reason there aren’t sandwich artists set-up on the boardwalk hoping to score some money creating the perfect piece of art for your vacation. This sandwich is not going on the wall – unless I throw it against the wall in anger.

Celebrities have make-up artists, which seems like the most fleeting form of art. It is art that only lasts one day (or sometimes just one good cry.). Celebrities are the blank canvas – beautiful, beautiful canvases. Which is why I hate those “celebrities without make-up” magazine covers. You know men don’t wear make-up, right? That’s what we look like all the time. Leave these women alone. Of course that actress is going to look different walking her kid in the morning than she would in a $100M movie. I also don’t like the “geeky childhood” photos of celebrities. Of course they looked like a nerd at 10 years old in a school photo. I would be creeped out if they published good looking kids at age 10 saying how sexy they look.  

If celebrities are the best we got and we act like their natural appearance is monstrous, no wonder the average women is self-conscious and sometimes feels inferior. I adore a women who chooses not to wear make-up or conform to what society think is beauty. Do you know breast enhancement is the most popular cosmetic surgery? Awful. Large breasts are seen as an indicator of sexual maturity, but women are maturing earlier and breasts are getting bigger over time . Can we all agree to stop the breast overdosing? Let things work naturally. If we continue adding bigger breast implants to bigger breasts at some point women will just be one giant breast. One giant breast ravaging the countryside, destroying small villages and local wildlife (see Woody Allen’s “Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Sex*”). The story is turning out to be less fantasy comedy and more a warning for future generations.

Well. It happened. As predicted in Designing Women Part V – the era of lazy fashion continues growing at the same rate of people’s actual laziness. Now people are actually wearing bedding. In this case it’s just a sleeping bag, but its one step towards mattress-wear. One day you will see people doing their summer clothes shopping at Sleepys.

This must really confuse our evolutionary genes. If we are wearing our bedding at some point in the future, we will have shells, like turtles, and we will just lie on our shell and grab a quick nap. Just think another place for women to store their make-up and junk.

This week I watched the beloved Ghostbusters. It’s one of the few movies whose title literally describes the whole movie (also see How Stella Got Her Groove Back.) Ghostbusters is the number 1 ranked horror comedy of all time. I get the comedy moniker, but horror? Not really. Even as kid watching this it was far from frightening. Part of the reason was the ghosts are about as scary as Casper. Take a look at Slimmer. What animal or creature was Slimmer before he died? The body and mouth certainly aren’t the shape of a human – okay maybe the shape of Minnie Driver. He was so unthreatening that in the cartoon he was even their buddy. Hell, I remember drinking Ecto Cooler Hi-C with Slimmer right on the box (because who doesn’t quench their thirst with thoughts of slime?)

Then there’s the Sumerian God/Villian named Gozer the Gozerian. In the movie Gozer was at one point a woman (not scary) and the Stay Puft Marshmallow man (slightly more scary than a woman, but only in height not in sassiness.) Gozer was killed not by a direct hit, but only after his door was destroyed. He must have really loved that door. Then there are Gozer’s helpers; Rick Moranis as the Key Master and Sigourney Weaver as the Gate Keeper - who get turned into devil dogs that looked like claymation turds. Question: If Weaver was able to kill aliens – why was so afraid of ghosts? And why if they were turned into evil - why was Weaver so bad (really it was just her with additional make-up), but Moranis was still a nerd? Come on – the Key Master was a nerd? Just like a typical nerd – he has all the equipment, but doesn’t know how to use it. I will say in his defense though – it was a pretty good way to pick up the girl on your floor you have the hots for by getting possessed. Well played. Now I just have to find a haunted apartment building. It will probably be the one with devil dogs and/or gargoyle statues on the upper levels since those tend to be the indicators.

My major concern with Ghostbusters is this: You know how you hear people say, “I would give it all back for just one more day with my father/mother/whatever”? Let’s say they were walking down the street and the reanimated version of that person was back to life and their wish was finally granted, and they are so excited, and they are going to spend a day together, and they run at each other with open arms and then a Ghostbuster shoots them in the face. Now they’ve had to see that person die twice. What assholes. That’s traumatizing. What if the ghost was a helper ghost like Ghost Dad or Patrick Swayze and someone trapped them in a little box before they could complete their quest. These ghosts are in purgatory. They clearly need to complete some act of redemption before passing on into the next life – stop intruding with the netherworld Ghostbusters.

The movie is set in NYC. There is something majorly wrong with NYC. Why is it whenever ooze seeps through the cracks terrible things happen? Turtles become mutants, the dead are reanimated, CHUD babies are born…did I write CHUD I meant Snookis. That is the plot to Ghostbusters 2 (not Snookis revenge, but ooze being the primordial soup for the undead.) I’ve heard Dan Aykroyd spouting that there will be a third Ghostbusters at some point in time. Somehow I doubt that. After 9/11 NYC is pretty secure against villainy – but it would be pretty cool to see them shoot Bin Laden in the face.

So these exist apparently. Why would you want to look like a pizza? Camouflage against a pizza billboard? Sure. Pizza The Hut costume contest? Maybe. Fashion? Let’s pump the brakes on that one.

I can imagine the only time anyone would buy one would be the same reason most people buy pizza in general – it’s midnight on a weekend and they are hammered and think it would be a great idea. I think the best part about the shirt is if you drop your slice of pizza on your shirt it wouldn’t make a difference. It should be marketed as a stain proof shirt. It should also be labeled as the only pizza you can buy that won’t make you fat, but will resist women all the same.

The shirt comes in pepperoni or vegetable. I would totally buy one if I could get a vegetable without mushrooms. Does it could with a side of a breadstick tote bag? And does it get delivered by the UPS guy or a pizza shirt guy? I hope the later, because I would like to see their pizza car pull up.

The online company I work for sells apparel goods, so I come across a fair share of new products in the industry. I also shop exclusively online for clothing (unless if comes from a thrift store), so I have my finger on the pulse of the fashion industry – it’s just too bad its flatlining. So I will use this new series to discuss and comment on current trends.

I thought the whole distressed jean thing went away. Before the financial crisis of late 2008 rich people were paying a fortune to look poor. Now some of those people are poor and they can do the work for free. Has this always been the case? I don’t remember seeing paintings of Kings dressed as serfs or Michael Jackson dressed like Jermaine. The only thing I can think of is the philosophy that in order to destroy something you have to do it from the inside. Maybe the rich are trying to look like the poor to destroy them (it would certainly increase their property value.) Maybe instead of walking by a homeless person begging for change they should offer them $900 bucks for their pants. Or they could simply buy these $900 destroyed jeans. Here’s what I don’t get – you have to be dressed up to get into clubs that the rich frequent, so when would these even come into play? I would say to mow the lawn, but they have people that they pay to eat their grass for their amusement. My only hope is that the co-opting of poor people doesn’t stop at fashion. Why not pay $20K for a shopping cart purse? Or $2M for a cardboard box pool house? If the trend continues then the rich will become poor, literally, and we can use their misfortune to forecast new fashion trends.

I was reminded this week to watch Honey I Shrunk The Kids, after I watched Who Framed Roger Rabbit , and remembered the beginning showed a Roger Rabbit short. This cross movie promotion was largely dormant after the eighties until the whole Avengers thing happened. I mean you never saw Free Willy hot-dogging it alongside the boat in The Perfect Storm. Though this movie could have used more cross promotion. The son could have been played by Data from the Goonies, Rick Moranis could have revived his role of Louis from Ghostbusters (think about it they were both nerdy guys with odd techno-hats) and the next door neighbor kid could have reprised his role from Big. Isn’t it odd that he appeared in a movie about kids becoming big and kids becoming small? It’s too bad he didn’t appear in a movie about kids growing to become adult movie stars.

Honey I Shrunk The Kids was made right in the golden age of nerd cinema - where a geeky engineer could land a hot wife, nice house and spawn children nerds (See also Revenge of the Nerds or Short Circuit). You know – the era when only boys/men were nerds, because women can’t be smart, right? Right? Men make a lot of mistakes – its nature’s law, like Murphy’s Law but updated for the 80s to be Moranis’ Law. The plot is that struggling engineer Rick Moranis builds a shrinking device in his attic (because where better to have atomic shifting prototypes?) and the machine accidentally shrinks his two children and the two neighbor children. From there the children go on an undersized adventure to regain their size while avoiding oversized vegetation and insects – it’s like Jurassic Park for kids. Just like a typical weak husband Moranis takes blame for shrinking the kids when clearly it was the asshole neighbor kid who did it by hitting his baseball through the window. It took us nerds years to outlive this emasculation, don’t knock us back 20 years, Rick. Stand up for yourself.

Honey I Shrunk The Kids is less a movie about how to survive if you were shrunk to a thousandth of your size and more about why you should not to do certain things. Things I learned you should not do based on Honey I Shrunk The Kids; don’t have an experimental lab in your house (solved – I live in an apartment with no attic), don’t have a lawn, because it will be difficult and dangerous to navigate through (solved – see aforementioned apartment note), be careful what insects to trust (some you can ride like an ant or a bee – some will attack you like the all-common North American scorpion - - really a scorpion - - no one fell for that one Disney) and finally it teaches kids not to go outside, because nature is fucking frightening. No wonder kids are so obese these days. This movie scared them. The morale stay inside and be a nerd, because nature is awful and you could drown in a rain drop.

Has anyone actually seen a new box van? I didn’t know they were ever brand new. I just assumed they appeared in an alley like the Terminator. Or came off the assembly line and were beaten with bats on their way to the dealership. This is the kind of nice looking van a kid could really get comfortable in.

Adult babies are a very real, creepy thing. Besides adult diapers, they even make adult sized cribs now. These people dress and act like babies for attention and/or boobs. But there aren’t enough baby adults. And I don’t mean the Etrade Baby. I mean a newborn – lying down on a tiny couch in a tiny suit, worrying about day care debt and debating why women aren’t more mature at this age. That would be adorable to me. The adult baby is just creepy. Which means there is a definitive age where cute turns to creepy. I think it’s the point where chocolate around the mouth is intentional not accidental.

I should preface – there are plenty of people who wish they were children again. There is no other explanation for dodgeball and kickball leagues springing up all over the place. Twentysomethings these days are living out the opposite dream of the movie "Big". The new movie is called “Little” and it stars every adult under thirty in Northern Virginia. It’s just too bad there isn’t a trade program like having a twelve year old come sit in my office and do my taxes while I swing on the swing set.

This record by Barry Polisar is technically children’s music. It’s odd that there’s children’s music, adult contemporary, tween pop, but no music for the elderly. I guess that would just be phones that ring like their children calling or the sound of a new box of Kleenex being opened. If you think children are easy to please you should meet an old person. You don’t even have to jingle keys in front of them. Just the fact that you made the effort to show up is good enough.

Found this at the Drafthouse on Saturday. It was later identified to be by local comic, philosopher and listmaker Courtney Fearrington.

Most people quote “introduced by a friend or family member” as the most common and best way to meet someone of the opposite sex. That is if you choose to leave your house, which sounds awful. I have lots of friends and coworkers who are female. At one point or another I have probably asked each of them if they have any single female friends. One after another they have all said they don’t have a lot of friends who are girls and prefer to hang out with guys, because girls are catty and manipulative and a bunch of other true statements. How is it mathematically possible that every girl I know does not hang out with other women? Is there just an island of single women somewhere? Or is there a pen of unfriendable, undatable women in some basement? I hate guys, but I am friends with a lot of them. Apparently women hate women and they cannot be friends with them – unless they are lesbians, but there’s no point for them to have single straight friends.

Not only can they not be friends, but according to new research, women won’t hire attractive women at their jobs. According to the study, “Unlike men, women tend to be jealous of members of the same sex because of their physical appearance. ‘Females in charge of hiring at the companies themselves may well be jealous of prospective female employees who are attractive and thus may compete with them for mates, or at least the attention of male co-workers.’” Women – you are making it very difficult for us to like you. It’s like you are defying us to like you. Dating shouldn’t need to be so competitive. Stop trying to rig the system. If there was a third sex, you would be extinct. Since there isn’t - we have to find a way to work together. Let’s start by making out.

WIAILWTW is back! I took a couple weeks off to actually love a real person, but I am back to where it is much safer - loving people I will never actually meet. Lesson: Love from a safe distance, my friends. Like behind a nice bush or crouching behind a car. Anyways. I collect rare and unique vinyl records. That’s my taste. In turn, I tend to attract unique and rare women. The thing is – most of the records I have are rare and unique because no one wanted them in the first place and the majority of those who did buy in kicked them to the curb almost immediately. That’s where I come in. I am the trashman. But I love them nonetheless.

I like individuals. Someone who does their own thing. Someone with character. Someone who is not afraid to let their freak flag flap uncontrollably in the wind. All of those things exactly describe my love of the week, Eleanor Friedberger. I can’t say I was the biggest Fiery Furnaces fan, but once she got out there doing her own thing I became immediately smitten. She has a song writing and lyrically ability uncommon in today’s polished robotic music industry. She also has an uncommon beauty for a music star. Casual. Playful. Unforced. Not everyone would be into her, but I am the type of person who prefers variety over stability. I plan to go see her April 19^th at the Black Cat in DC, but I have no intention of meeting her, but I will be doing my rounds at 9am in case there’s anything she wants to put out there.

“Forrest Gump” the movie has just as hard a time figuring out what it wants to be as Forrest Gump the character does. On the surface the movie is about a dimwitted man who inadvertently finds success at every task he transitions into. But it’s got more going on than a box of chocolates (get it?)

On one hand Forrest Gump is the quintessential Friend Zone movie. Forrest falls in love with a girl and proceeds to structure his life and actions for the approval and desire of this succubus. She, it turn, treats him like shit and takes advantage of his kindness at every turn. Boy this hits close to home. Forrest first meets Jenny (short for Genital Disease) on the bus in elementary school, because everyone knows the prettiest girl at school is open minded enough to befriend the village idiot. They grow up together and she gives him the advice to “just run”, which is what she does from her feelings and responsibilities. She whores it up all over the country and then returns when no one else would love her. She gives him a pity bang and later gives birth to their son. She finally decides to marry him when she is diagnosed with HIV, so that he and his shrimp money can support her. Then she dies so she doesn’t have to raise their child. Typical.

On the other hand Forrest Gump can be viewed as a historical adventure through the later part of the 20th century. He is basically the Where’s Waldo of any 20^th century history text book. The problem is – he didn’t help improve anything. He met JFK, but he didn’t save him from being assassinated. He met the Black Panthers, but didn’t save MLK. He was even in China and didn’t lift a finger to help poor Tibet. So what good did he do? He taught Elvis to dance and invented the smiley face shirt. For a time traveler Forrest was kind of a dick. Also – he wasn’t that great of a dude to begin with. He had no trouble shooting at people in Vietnam, he took advantage of a local boating disaster, he ruins Black Panther parties, he beats anyone who messes with his lady and conceives a child who sees dead people (at least he could talk to his mom again. ED: that was a Sixth Sense reference - look it up)

I am out of hands, but there is at least a third angle – which is the perils of the mentally challenged and the handicapped. When he was younger he had leg braces – because apparently medicine at the time was just to strap metal bars to the problem. At one point he willed away the braces…he must have read “The Secret”. He had subpar intelligence, but somehow was able to graduate not just high school, but also college. Those classes must have been pretty easy. I wonder what he got his degree in. Probably communications (aka the default degree) since he had no trouble talking to everyone he met and boring them into submission. You know what’s nice? Starting the story from the beginning when you meet someone and not assuming they can catch up on the back story while casually waiting for their bus. No way could this movie have happened in DC. We don’t humor the mentally challenged person rambling incoherently about his life for hours.

There are some important life lessons in the movie though. For women – don’t worry - you can do drugs, fuck dudes and become a complete screw-up and still be okay because there will always be someone to love you. For dudes – always change your socks.

“Get in my mouth microphone

Should’ve eaten before I left home

Chucho is so hungry it hurts

Appetite bigger than collars on shirts

Whole pizza I could finish

Mouth so open could put the whole thing in it

Tears of hunger on my face

If only a sandwich I could taste

Tell me where’s the drive through lane

I am not singing - I am ordering

I will let you all backstage

If you bring along a homemade buffet

I’m beginning to pass out

Please crumble some crackers into my mouth

Please let this song be over

So I can leave and finish my dinner”

People seem to be pretty critical of Miss America. Her knowledge of foreign policy, her stance on famine, her thoughts on democracy…poor Miss America. That Hilary Clinton has it pretty tough, huh? What? You mean the Secretary of State isn’t Miss America. Who Is? Some 17 year old blonde chick from Nebraska? So this Miss America represents all of America? Who voted for her? I don’t remember there being a line at the polling station for this. Oh - a bunch of narcissistic old rich people? No wonder the other countries hate us.

I am like a zombie – I am more interested in women’s brains than their bodies. As Sage Francis said, “I like women who have more to get off their chests than wet t-shirts.” I think it’s sad that women can have beauty marks and not intelligence marks. I guess intelligence marks would just be; glasses, a library card and a mountain of student loan debt. Beauty only last so long, but intelligence lasts forever (unless you have Alzheimer’s.) You don’t see women who are getting older having to use creams on their heads to keep their brains fresh. They don’t have to pay for plastic surgery to inject knowledge of the civil war. And women don’t starve themselves if they forget the capital of Idaho.

According to a recent survey of two thousand women, a staggering 25 percent would rather win America’s Next Top Model than a Nobel Prize. This is so sad to me. I am way more attracted to intelligence than looks. Books smarts is sexy. Street smarts is slutty. Although, a perfect balance of the two never hurt anyone. Why not combine the two competitions? Have a written portion of the ANTM or a swimsuit portion of the Nobel Prize.

Is there a photo day for home schooled kids? I guess the home schooled yearbook would just be the family portrait. It would also be the shortest yearbook swap ever (and the saddest if no one wants to sign your yearbook.) No wonder home school kids are socially inept. They miss out on all the social activities. No school photos, no prom, no passing love letters… (well maybe that does happens – I wouldn’t put it passed some of the home school kids I have met.) Getting detention is just being grounded. Field trips are just errands. Homework is remodeling. Wait - can you have homework when you’re home schooled or is that just redundant?

If there is home schooling - is there home colleging? Girls these days like a guy with a higher education who is also tight with his family. Could be a perfect match. Can you fail home school? Is that just getting kicked out? What about a homeschooled GED – does that exist? You will be living at home with any form of GED, so I guess it wouldn’t be that different. Are there special needs classes in home schooling? I mean they already take the “short-bus” - it’s a mini-van. I think all home schooled kids are kids with special needs. They need to get the fuck out.

I have no proof Steve Green was home schooled, but there is no way that face would have survived public school. A shirt like that couldn’t have breached the entrance of a public school - it would have been pulled over his head with his arms still in the sleeves and pulled up through his butt and attached to a clothes hook on the wall for the first ever “Nuclear Wedgie.” I haven’t listened to this album, but I assume “He Holds The Key” is a tribute to his dad unlocking the front door for him. I imagine it was followed shortly by “He Is The Light” which is a song in commemoration of his dad paying the electricity bill. 

I recently read they are planning to make a sequel to Twins called Triplets starring Eddie Murphy. In order to wrap my brain around this I decided to go back and watch the original 80s classic comedy movie. The plot of the movie is that the US Government, in order to create the perfect human, took samples of 6 men and implanted the traits in one woman. She gave birth to a healthy boy (Arnold Schwarzenegger) and a healthy placenta (Danny DeVito.)  Schwarzenegger was told his mother died in birth (although not from having 6 dudes inside her.) I think it was from shame for birthing DeVito. The twins were separated at birth and years later Schwarzenegger was informed he has a brother and he goes to LA. Upon finding him he realizes his brother is a scumbag loser who owes money to a loan shark and steals a car with a $5 million item in the trunk which he needs to deliver to TX to claim the money. Sadly this is not a “road trip” movie – though it would have been much better if it was. In one week Schwarzenegger meets his brother, meets his mom, drinks his first beer and gets laid for the first time - sounds like a good week. And then they return the stolen item in the trunk and get a big reward. Time to sign up for ancestry.com and see if I have a twin.

The obvious joke is that they’re twins that look nothing alike, get it? One is street smarts and the other is books smarts (and muscle smarts and looks smarts and hair smarts…) One is Mr America and the other is Mr American Scum. HA. Ha. ha. The other obvious joke is the “stupid foreigner surviving in LA” gag. He has never heard rock and roll or driven a car (though he picks up both very quickly) and he doesn’t know about crime. Because if you don’t know in LA criminals pick the strongest dudes they can find to try and rob. Stupid foreigners (by the way the same foreigners Governor Schwarzenegger wants out of LA.)

What’s crazy about the movie is – like the sperm cocktail they gave to that lady to make the twins the movie “Twins” is a melting pot of other movies. First off, Arnold. He is a muscular foreigner who tries to find his way through the streets of California. Sounds a lot like Terminator. Plus he is the government’s creation of a perfect human figure. Like Terminator. And at one point he actually says the line, “I’ll be back.” Like Terminator. Why am I watching this and not Terminator? This movie came out in 1988 years before Pulp Fiction, but the characters names are Jules (Samuel L Jackson/ Schwarzenegger) and Vincent (John Travolta/Danny Devito) - like the characters in Pulp Fiction. They drive around together, they get in gun fights, they wear suits... Why am I watching this and not Pulp Fiction? To get even crazier “Twins” co-stars Kelly Preston who later married John Travolta. Why am I watching this and not their sex tape?

Why did I watch this again? Oh right – to understand why anyone would want to make a sequel. I guess it’s an okay movie with a mildly entertaining premise and just enough action to keep you from dozing off. But you know what my favorite part of the movie is? No Eddie Murphy.

The whole KONY2012 thing is fascinating to me. Not the atrocities that occurred, which are awful - but the instant celebrity and fame gained by the video. First off there’s Jason Russell the co-founder of Invisible Children who helped make the KONY2012 video a viral hit. He whipped his non-invisible little man out in public and got arrested. Couldn’t this dude have just laid low and did interviews for at least ONE WEEK a bit before public tarnishing his image? Come on man. That’s how famous I would like to be. If I commit some minor public offense I would like to be front page news. “Brandon Fisher was arrested this week for running an illegal Pokémon fighting tournament in his basement? He called it the Pikachumaté”.

Then there’s Joseph Kony. After the video was watched by millions of people you can no longer name your kid Kony. His name will forever live in infamy like Hitler or Yoko. That’s how famous I would like to be. It would be amazing to be so famous that my name could not be removed from the immediate public mind and no future child could ever be my namesake. “You named your child Brandon? Even after the Pokémon atrocities?”

According to new research by the Pew Research Center, 51 percent of women say being famous is their number one or number two goal in life. “Famous” is a very ambiguous term these days. You can be famous for having eight kids inside you at once or you can be famous for having eight dudes inside you at once. What I am saying is make your own opportunities. You think the first guy to wear a beard of bees in the Guinnes World Book sat back and dreamed of being on Fear Factor? No! He got out there every day and let these bees fuck his face until he was able to attract some attention. Now I am not saying you should get swarmed by bees, but it would require fewer trips to the hospital than fucking one of the Jersey Shore cast.

After the success of the scissor handshake - I have decided to introduce the next hand gesture to sweep the nation. Instead of giving people the middle finger like normal to express anger - flip your hand around and raise your middle finger to the sky. This shows them that all these fingers are down, except one. That finger is you. And fuck you.

Alternatively this gesture could be used for good and not evil. If you encounter a moment where a proper "fuck yeah" is needed you can use this gesture in a high-one to express "fuck" and "yeah" at the same time. Touching middle fingers isn't essential, but it does add a nice muffled clapping noise.

The check out lady at my grocery store always calls me “Home Alone”, so I figured I would rewatch the movie Home Alone to see if I could make any correlations. Oddly enough there is a scene when Macaulay Culkin goes to the grocery store and the items he checks out with aren’t that dissimilar to what I buy in rotation (including the army men.) Maybe she was right. Home Alone made it acceptable for blonde kids with bowl haircuts to acclimate into society and for this I thank it. Home Alone, starring Macaulay Culkin, is a movie about the risk of overpopulation, disenfranchised youth, the dangers of stereotyping and the maternal bond between mother and child. Just kidding – it’s just about some kid that gets left alone when his family flys to France. It’s also another platform for John Hughes to rally against the Airline Industry.

So Macaulay gets left behind in this big house to fend for himself and hilarity* ensues (*only applies to those under the age of 12.) I live alone and let me tell you – being home alone isn’t this much fun. There is just about as much talking to yourself though – that’s accurate. Apparently an eight year old's version of fun alone is bouncing on beds, eating ice cream and watching black and white films. Good thing the lead actor wasn’t eighteen or there would have been a lot of scenes involving him spanking it. At one point he showers and applies aftershave in order to give the memorable scream. Two things. One – he didn’t shave. Aftershave would have had no real affect. Two - it’s odd to me that the scream got on in society so much. It’s the most famous movie scream since Deliverance. The house itself doesn’t seem so inhabitable. The family left behind tons of food (even though they were planning to be gone for weeks), all the house lights turned on at a certain time (their power bill must be obscene) and there appears to be no need to lock the door behind you – which he only does ONCE the whole movie.

That leads to the crisis of the story, which is that two local robbers, Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern, are looking to rob the neighborhood. They call themselves the “Wet Bandits” and drive a white van – sounds more rapey and less stealy if you ask me. They attempt to break into the house only to be thwarted by eight year old Macaulay through a series of systematic booby traps. For someone who was scared of the basement heater and old people, he certainly grew a pair pretty quick didn’t he? I couldn’t have stood my ground I was scared of the dark until last year. Macaulay is assisted at one point by a local old person who the kids treated like shit and called the “Shovel Slayer.” The man was just trying to shovel his snow and salt the ground, so people wouldn’t slip. Proving once again kids are assholes.

Macaulay originally wished for his family to disappear and then later asks to have his family back. The morale of the movie, like Big, is not to wish for things, because you will regret it. Set low, attainable goals. The other take-away is that being left alone at a young age will ruin your acting career. Lastly, if you are a civilian and plan to thwart locale criminals make sure they are actually thieves and not just an innocent black youth with a hoodie and skittles.