Underfunding Education Reaches an All-Time High (Or Something)

We've all heard the stories of schools being faced with decisions like which right-brain activity can be cut or which type of pad can the football team afford to go without next season. In my line of work, we get to see even more closely how lack of funding is hurting teachers and students: strict limits on copiers, lack of computer access, no budget for classroom materials, classrooms that are either too hot or too cold. The list goes on and on. Luckily for us, not everyone has to be a big sourpuss to shed some light on the issue. This article from the most recent issue of The Onion, shakes the spear of truth at the ridiculous nature of underfunding in our nation's schools.

Here's a short quote:

"This was by no means an easy decision, but teaching our students how to conjugate verbs in a way that would allow them to describe events that have already occurred is a luxury that we can no longer afford," Phoenix-area high-school principal Sam Pennock said. "With our current budget, the past tense must unfortunately become a thing of the past."

Conan the Samaritan

Apparently, Conan O'Brien's staff at Late Night is well-known for being fiercely loyal, and now Conan is showing his loyalty as well.

from WashingtonPost.com:
TV talk-show host Conan O'Brien is digging into his own pocket to pay the salaries of about 75 production staffers idled by the Hollywood writers strike, an official at NBC said Thursday.

David Letterman is doing the same thing, but he's using his production company, Worldwide Pants to foot the bill. Conan is using his own personal funds. I've always been a big fan of O'Brien's style of humor, and he has always struck me as the kind of guy I'd really like to know in real life.

Your Daily Voltaire

If you're looking for your daily Voltaire quick fix, then you've come to the right place. I urge you to take a few minutes and read this totally sweet story by one of the 18th Century's heaviest hitting satirical polemicists. I'm not kidding. It's really good. And you get the added benefit of going home and bragging to your spouse and children that you read Voltaire. You'll learn something and you'll earn the respect of your loved ones.

I've always thought of the Age of Enlightenment as being a lot like the Dukes of Hazzard. You have the enlightened Bo and Luke Dukes of the day (Voltaire and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, for example) hauling ass through the Hazzard County of the day (France, mostly) in their General Lee of Enlightenment, doing their damnedest to stay out of the clutches of the greedy, fat, miserable Boss Hogg (the Church). Anyone else see this?

I've always been a big Voltaire fan, especially of his impressive fashion sense and hairstyle. I like this story because it is to-the-point, sharp, and volatile, a lot like the man writing it. Also, it was written in 1756 and skirted about as close to blasphemy as one could get in those days and not wind up murdered by the church or imprisoned (see Dukes reference above). He uses the literary device of a dream in order to protect his hide, but the church was still not happy when this story was published. Mainly, though, I like this story because it still feels awfully relevant to the human experience today. Even strangely so.

I also think it's interesting that Voltaire has Earth being formed by a character named Demogorgon, which is a name commonly associated with a primordial underworld demon in Greek mythology.

Plato's Dream

In ancient times, dreams were much revered, and Plato was one of the greatest dreamers. His dream The Republic is deservedly famous, but the following little-known tale is perhaps his most amazing dream--or nightmare:

The great Demiurgos, the eternal geometer, having scattered throughout the immensity of space innumerable worlds, decided to test the knowledge of those lesser superbeings who were also his creations, and who had witnessed his works. He gave them each a small portion of matter to arrange, just as our own art teachers give their students a statue to carve, or a picture to paint, if we may compare small things to great.

Demogorgon received the lump of mold we call Earth, and having formed it as it now appears, thought he had created a masterpiece. He imagined he had silenced Envy herself, and expected to receive the highest praise, even from his brethren. How great was his surprise, when, at the presentation of his work, they hissed in disappoval!

One among them, more sarcastic than the rest, spoke:

"Truly you have performed mighty feats! You have divided your world into two parts; and, to prevent them from communicating with each other, placed a vast collection of waters between the two hemispheres. The inhabitants must perish with cold under both your poles, and be scorched to death under the equator. You have, in your great prudence, formed immense deserts of sand, so all who travel over them may die with hunger and thirst. I have no fault to find with your cows, sheep, cocks, and hens; but can never be reconciled to your serpents and spiders. Your onions and artichokes are very good things, but I cannot conceive what induced you to scatter such a heap of poisonous plants over the face of the planet, unless it was to poison its inhabitants. Moreover, if I am not mistaken, you have created about 30 different kinds of monkeys, a still greater number of dogs, yet only four or five races of humans. It is true, indeed, you have bestowed on the latter of these animals a faculty you call Reason, but it is so poorly executed that you might better call it Folly. Besides, you do not seem to have shown any very great regard for this two-legged creature, seeing you have left him with so few means of defense; subjected him to so many disorders, and provided him with so few remedies; and formed him with such a multitude of passions, and so little wisdom and prudence to resist them. You certainly were not willing that there should remain any great number of these animals on Earth at once; for, over the course of a given year, smallpox will regularly carry off a tenth of the species, and sister maladies will taint the springs of life in the remainder; and then, as if this was not enough, you have so disposed things that half of those who survive are occupied in lawsuits, or cutting each other's throats. Yes, they must be infinitely grateful to you, and I must admit that you have executed a masterpiece."

Demogorgon blushed. He now realized there was much moral and physical evil in his work, but still believed it contained more good than ill.

"It is easy to find fault," he said; "but do you imagine it is so easy to form an animal, who, having the gift of reason and free will, shall not sometimes abuse his liberty? Do you think that, in rearing 10,000 plants, it is so easy to prevent some few from having noxious qualities? Do you suppose that, with a certain quantity of water, sand, and mud, you could make a globe without sea or desert?

"As for you, my sneering friend, I think you have just finished the planet Jupiter. Let us see now what figure you make with your great belts, and your long nights, with four moons to enlighten them. Let us examine your worlds, and see whether the inhabitants you have made are exempt from folly and disease."

Accordingly, his fellow entities examined the planet Jupiter, and were soon laughing at the laugher. He who had made Saturn did not escape without his share of censure, and his fellows, the makers of Mars, Mercury, and Venus, was each in his turn reproached.

They were in the midst of railing against and ridiculing each other, when the eternal Demiurgos thus imposed silence on them all:

"In your performances there is both good and bad, because you have a great share of understanding, but at the same time fall short of perfection. Your works will endure for only a few billion years, after which you will acquire more knowledge and perform much better. It belongs to me alone to create things perfect and immortal."

"Us, for example?" asked Demogorgon.

Demiurgos scowled, and with that Plato awoke.

Or did he?

The Corndog Man

Last night's vote was unanimous. Our January Movie Geeks Club selection will be The Corndog Man.

Here's a synopsis from Rotten Tomatoes:

Ace Barker is a successful boat salesman in a South Carolina fishing town; he is also a foul-mouthed racist with a past peppered with betrayal and sexual indiscretion. When he receives a phone call from a customer ostensibly in the market for a boat, it's not long before his past returns to haunt him.

I came across The Corndog Man a few years ago, when a friend of mine recommended it. He'd seen it at a film festival in Atlanta and promptly bought a copy of the film. Upon my first viewing, I was anxious to see the movie again. It has so many great lines, such a mysterious and compelling storyline. It's a simple movie, but in complex ways. It moves forward deliberately, with each scene turning the screw just a little bit more until the tension is nearly unbearable. The journey toward insanity has never been more fun (or more satisfying) to watch. I'm excited to see what other people think of this gem of a movie.

Movie Geeks Club -- Voting for the January Screening

Movie Geeks Club will not meet in December. We'll pick back up in the new year with a renewed vigor for watching movies and sipping beer.

Here are the movie selections for the January screening. Be sure to vote tonight. If you're not going to make it tonight, feel free to send me an e-mail and vote electronically. Or leave a comment here on the blog. At Just Two Guys, we make a solemn promise: "Your vote might be counted."

Donnie Darko (The Director's Cut): Donnie Darko (Jake Gyllenhaal) is a disturbed adolescent from a semi-functional upper-middle-class family. After nearly escaping from death because he hears the voice of a 6-foot-tall bunny, Donnie is led by the bunny to create havoc that is both destructive and creative.

Memento: Memento is a neo-noir–psychological thriller film written and directed by Christopher Nolan, adapted from his brother Jonathan's short story "Memento Mori." It stars Guy Pearce as Leonard Shelby, a former insurance fraud investigator searching for the man he believes raped and killed his wife during a burglary. Leonard suffers from anterograde amnesia, which he contracted from severe head trauma during the attack on his wife. This renders his brain unable to store new memories. To cope with his condition, he maintains a system of notes, photographs, and tattoos to record information about himself and others, including his wife's killer. He is aided in his investigation by "Teddy" (Joe Pantoliano) and Natalie (Carrie-Anne Moss), neither of whom he can trust.

The film's events unfold in two separate, alternating narratives—one in color, and the other in black and white. Leonard's investigation is depicted in five-minute color sequences that are in reverse chronological order. As each scene begins, Leonard has just lost his recent memories, leaving him unaware of where he is or what he was doing. The scene ends just after its events fade from his memory. The black and white sections are told in chronological order, showing Leonard conversing with an anonymous phone caller in a motel room. By the film's end, the two narratives converge into a single color sequence.

Corndog Man: A foul-mouthed (one of his favorite sales pitches is, "I'll sell you a boat quicker 'n a cat can lick his ass!") and bigoted boat salesman (Noble Willingham) in rural South Carolina is targeted for ruthless and never-ending telephone terrorism by a mysterious man claiming to be his son. A powerful story of vindication.

Be sure to vote.

A Quickie Post -- A Slightly Off-Kilter Observation

This past weekend, I was at a Craft Show in Rock Island. While there, I saw an elderly woman shake and wobble softly up to a display of paintings and photography. She stood there a minute, musing quietly over the images in front of her. She seemed peaceful, serene. She stepped back, looked at the young man who was with her and shouted, "I ain't afraid to spend money on no art!" in the same tone one might take if defending a loved one to the judge on a television court show or declaring their rights as the father of little 2-year-old Harlequin on an episode of Maury. Very defensive. Very abrasive. The young man just nodded.

Then the old woman turned and hobbled away just as peacefully as she'd come. The young man followed.

Stupid Harmonicas

I saw this story about 400 harmonicas being donated to the troops in Iraq, and after my initial heartwarming wore off, it made me wonder, Are people actually going to be uplifted by this gesture? I mean, come on, they're HARMONICAS! Did I miss something? Is it suddenly 1930 again? Are our soldiers planning to hobo it around Iraq on their pass weekends? What the hell is going on here?
If I were a soldier in Iraq, and I opened a care package to find a harmonica, I have to be honest and tell you I'd be pretty disappointed. Maybe I'd be expecting a pack of Starburst or a pair of new socks. Instead, I tear open the package to see that I'm stuck with a freaking harmonica. Then I'm either going to toss it into the nearest garbage can or into the hands of an Iraqi child who, after the initial awe of receiving a strange gift from an American soldier, will inevitably be swept over with the same sense of disappointment that I was.

I've never been a fan of harmonicas. When I see a musician pull a harmonica out of his/her pocket, I generally turn and head for the nearest exit. I just think they sound horrible. Even the most proficient harmonica player playing the most expensive harmonica in the world sounds only slightly better than a wet-mouthed 3-year-old salivating away on a dimestore harmonica. I've heard noise musicians play sheet metal with a pair of garden shears that made nicer sounds than a harmonica.

Back to the story of the donated harmonicas. The only way one should ever take possession of a harmonica is if it is given to you by a stranger (like these poor GIs) or an old senile relative, and you just don't feel right saying, "No thanks." And most importantly, you should never pay good, hard-earned money for a harmonica.

Movie Geeks Club - Bottle Rocket

Capital City Bar and Grill

Tuesday, November 27
7:30 pm - Bottle Rocket

The November MGC film is Bottle Rocket starring Owen and Luke Wilson. It is directed by contemporary filmaker Wes Anderson. It is the first major film work for Anderson and also the first of many films starring multiple Wilson brothers (Andrew).

This film went to video at a time when "indie" and "word-of-mouth" films were all the rage. Quentin Tarantino was becoming huge on the scene and Edward Burns had recently released The Brothers McMullen. I decided to take a look at it when it was released and it was one of the best films I saw that year. Great dialogue and the story was very unconventional. As we now know, Anderson does not do conventional. It is basically a story about friends wanting to commit a series of heists. The story is very character oriented and Owen Wilson is great as the "mastermind" of it all. He also co-wrote the film.

Please join us on Tuesday. We hope to see you there. Unfortunately, this will probably be the last MGC film for 2007 because the last Tuesday in December falls on Christmas Day. That obvioiusly won't work. We will be back on schedule in January and we believe 2008 will be a great year for the Movie Geeks Club.

Medicinal Whiskey

When I was a little boy, I would see my grandpa, when he was feeling under the weather, reach for the top of cabinet he kept in the kitchen and pull down an old bottle of whiskey. He'd pour a glass and drink it down, not for the enjoyment of old whiskey, but for the curative properties he believed it had. He told me once that whiskey was the best medicine for a cold he'd ever tried.

Now that I'm an adult, I've developed a bit of my own whiskey tincture. I don't know if whiskey really has any medicinal benefit or not. I've never found a modern scientific source that touts whiskey as a wonder drug. What I've used for evidence is stories from the frontier. Stories of pioneer life, where every first aid kit contained a bottle of whiskey. Pioneers used whiskey for everything from stopping coughs to cleaning wounds. They used it to help numb the pain when a leg needed sawing off.

During Prohibition, the only way you could legally get your hands on a bottle of whiskey was if it was prescribed to you, and then only if it was a certain designated variety of medicinal whiskey. I've always thought, "If it was good enough for them, it's good enough for me."

Maybe it's a placebo effect, but I really feel that my whiskey tincture helps me fight off a cold, especially if I hit it early on. Placebo effect or not, I don't care. It seems to work, and although everyone around me seems to think I'm a fool, I additionally do not care and will continue to use my tincture.

So, you may be wondering what my tincture is. Well, it's really simple. I pour about two fingers of whiskey into a cup and then I add approximately 5-10 drops of Oreganol oregano oil*. I have been known to add a little lemon and even to heat the drink. But generally, it's just whiskey and oregano oil.

Those of you out there who think I derive any sort of enjoyment from this drink have obviously never had oregano oil. This is purely a restorative endeavor.


*I've also had a lot of success with oregano oil in keep mosquitoes away in the summer. 2-3 drops of oregano oil in my morning V-8 every morning, and the mosquitoes don't like the taste of your blood any more. At least that's my guess. I've been using this trick for a few years, and I can't remember the last time I was bitten by a mosquito.

If You Don't Have Something Nice to Say

It is easy to be down on Springfield. Really easy. It's easy to complain about a lack of things to do, a lack of things to taste and see.

Springfield lacks a lot of things. It's a smaller city, with a smaller urban sweep. It's naturally not going to have as many things as a city with a larger metropolitan area. I understand that, and I've decided that I need to focus on the things I like about Springfield instead of forever dwelling on the things I don't like.

1. ALPLM- The Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum is awesome. It's nice, and it brings events and activities that Springfield didn't have before. When people come to Springfield to visit, it's always a place to take them for an enjoyable afternoon.
2. Improving Downtown- Little by little the downtown in Springfield is improving. There are some nice places to eat downtown and some cool shops have been established there over the last five years. The downtown events are getting better every year.
3. Hoogland Center- Hoogland Center offers some musical and theater acts that Springfield might otherwise lack. Saw the Avett Brothers there earlier this year, and I was really impressed. It's a nice facility in a good location.
4. History- I kind of like Springfield's history. There are some interesting things lurking back there that are non-Lincoln related.
5. Route 66 Drive In Theater- It's cool that we have a drive in theater here. Although I don't use it very often, I like knowing that I can.
6. The Horseshoe- I rarely eat horseshoes because I'd like to live for a few more years, but they are awesome. Definitely one of Springfield's treasures.
7. Magic Kitchen- Okay, I'm a Magic Kitchen junkie. I literally find myself fiending for Thai food. I can't help myself. It's an addiction. But yeah, I'm grateful for Magic Kitchen. Mostly the one on Lewis where the Romanesque used to be. The food is killer, the restaurant is cleaner, and they always know my order when I walk through the door.

This is all I can think of for right now. Want to list some of your favorite things about Springfield? Feel free to add a comment.

Readability

The Just Two Guys blog is proud to announce that the readability of our site is:



We are also proud of our junior high sense of humor. Unfortunately, no junior high kids read this blog, as we are too "square" for them, or whatever the kids are calling it these days.


Hat tip to Dave.

Evil Mrs. Magnuson

A while back, I had to stop at the County Market on Monroe for some Naked Juice or something. It was going to be a quick in and out job. Those of you who watch the show or who know me know that I am not good at seeing people in the store. I mean unless it's a good friend or a close acquaintance, I usually crawl behind the cereal boxes and hang out until the coast is clear. I don't know why. I can't explain it. It's not the point.

On this particular night, as I was making my way through the parking lot, pondering the chilly November air, I spied a former English teacher of mine making her way toward the door. I never got a good look at her face, but it was her: Mrs. Magnuson. Same copper hair. Same slight limp. Same gentle aura.

Mrs. Magnuson was a sweet, high-strung woman who darted all around her classroom delivering lessons on sentence diagramming and "A Rose for Emily." She loved antiquing and teaching Shakespeare. She was an honest-to-goodness lady who blushed at any of our teenage indiscretions. Once when she was showing us a videotape of the 1968 version of Romeo and Juliet, she forgot to cover the screen during Juliet's topless scene, which she'd told us in advance she would do. We, of course, all broke out in hee-haws and guffaws at the mere sight of boobies, something much more tame than most of us were watching every time we rented a movie at home. Mrs. Magnuson almost broke her leg trying to get around the desk in time to get her sheet of cardboard over the screen. Her face was atomic red; so red it looked really hot, like it might start to melt at any moment. She stood before us, shaking her head and apologizing as earnestly as she could. We all sat there yawning and picking our noses and mostly thinking about what we had done to deserve Shakespeare.

I did the calculations in my head and figured that Mrs. Magnuson and I would reach the entrance to County Market at roughly the same time. That could be bad. Under the glare of the sterile entryway lights she might recognize me and try to make small talk. I tried to alter my pace, to slow down, but I didn't want to make it seem weird. As we neared the entrance, I heard a cell phone ring.

It was Mrs. Magnuson's. Whoo, I thought, if she's distracted by her phone, then I can slide right past her no worries.

She flipped her phone open. "I'm at the mother#$%*(&% store," she said. "What the hell do you want?"

My jaw slammed open. This couldn't be Mrs. Magnuson. She would never in a million years talk like that. I'd seen her at Patricia Doyle no more than a year ago, and she had sat there bidding on antique furniture with a goofy smile on her face that revealed she didn't even know words like that, wouldn't even understand them if you read them to her slowly.

"Don't %&$*@#$ dick me around," she said, "I ain't got time for your %^&$."

A doppelganger, I realized. I slipped around the woman quickly, glancing at her face as I did. This woman was Mrs. Magnuson to a T: same hair, same complexion, same facial lines. But now that I had seen her face it was clear that the aura of kindness and sweetness I'd sensed earlier had been from my sheer recollection of Mrs. Magnuson and not something surrounding this woman in the here and now. In fact, now that I had seen her, I could sense something seriously evil dwelling inside this doppelganger.

I often see people in public who look like other people, and I refer to them as Evil (insert name here).* For example, I see a woman coming out of Theater 3 at Showplace West who looks like Ellen Degeneres, and I will pinch Aubrey and exclaim, "Look it's Evil Ellen Degeneres," as though we live in a world with a mirror image population comprised of the good half and the evil half. In this case, there was no doubt. This woman was Evil Mrs. Magnuson.


*Just for the record, on occasion I will label someone as Good (insert name here). For example, if I see an old man who looks like Pat Robertson, I will most likely say, "Holy crap, look it's Good Pat Robertson." You know it's a total judgment call.

For a great doppelganger video, check this. From the SNL guys who brought you the Chronicles of Narnia rap.

Self-Tuning Guitar?

I'm not sure how I feel about this.

Help is at hand from what is described as the world's first robot guitar — an electric guitar that not only keeps itself in tune even after string changes but also allows players to access six nonstandard tunings at the push of a button.

After 15 years of research, Gibson Guitar is launching a limited edition Les Paul Robot Guitar next month that has set players abuzz with both enthusiasm and skepticism.

The amateur in me thinks it's pretty cool to never have to tune. Even after a string change, you just pick it up and play, which is, after all what we want to do most with a guitar. The purist in me, however, thinks that learning to tune a guitar is a big part of being a "guitarist." I don't play the guitar, but I've actually kind of enjoyed learning to restring and retune my mandolin as I've practiced and developed over the years. There's something kind of cool about restringing and then getting your tuning set up exactly the way you want it.

Hey Dudes, What Do You Do on Holidays?

Yesterday, Aubrey and I were watching Healthy Appetite with Ellie Krieger, one of our favorite Food Network programs, and something caught my attention. At one point in the show, Ellie mentions being the best hostess you can be during the holidays. The best hostess. I couldn't help feeling a little slighted because I try really hard to help out with hosting duties during family events we hold at our house. I'll be the first to admit that I'm not running the show, but I work my buns off. But Ellie's comment made me think. She addressed this comment at her female audience because the role of hosting holidays always falls to the females in the family. In fact, I know no family where a male is in charge of any aspect of the holiday planning and preparing. Official Booze Purveyor does not count, guys.

A brainstorm started. I got to thinking. Women have always been, I guess, expected by society to hold these holiday functions that we all love so much. So, would these holiday traditions have fallen by the wayside if they had been left to the men in our families to uphold? I think that's an interesting question, but it's not my main point. My question will unravel in the next paragraph. (I'm still trying to figure it out.)

I was thinking about how over the last 50 years, society has changed a lot. Women have entered the workforce and are today doing more than ever before. They are societally expected to be breadwinners, mothers, housekeepers, and any other number of things. So, when the holidays roll around, it doesn't seem quite fair to place all the burden of the holiday events on them. My question is this, fellas: What role do you play in the holiday festivities? Do you help with the hosting duties or do you slob around all day watching sports? Do you help clean and cook, or do you find ways to shirk these responsibilities? I know what I do on holidays to help out. I want to know what you do. Please post comments.

Anonymous comments are welcomed.

D'you like drinking?

Who the hell don't?



This is one of those numerous moments from Saturday Night Live that I find myself thinking about from time to time. These years of SNL, with Tracy Morgan, Will Ferrell, Chris Kattan, Cheri Oteri, Molly Shannon, Tim Meadows, et al. were really great.

This period of the late 1990s/early 2000s was one of the golden periods of SNL's history, in my opinion.

You'll Never Amount to Anything

As many of you know, Micah and I were once Hollywood types. I was once a shaggy-haired waiter pitching scripts and trying out for any role that I could find. Micah was a bike messenger, delivering important parcels to some of the big Hollywood lots. Through a combination of fate and luck, we found each other when we met in our first big-time television gig, as a pair of buddy cops in the short-lived television series Miss Demeanor, about an etiquette teacher turned detective. You probably don't remember the show. Most people have tried desperately to forget it. It was on ABC Wednesday nights five years ago. You know, back when ABC was really stink-o.

So anyway, for awhile our collective star was rising. Tiger Beat and People were all about us. Then that whole thing fell through. It was a big mistake. We became a laughing stock of Hollywood and have been essentially blacklisted from the industry. We've spent the last several years trying to piece our lives back together and get back into the limelight. One of the problems working against us is that our agent, Jorge DeJesus, worked out a clause in our contract that we call the Two Coreys Clause. Essentially, we have to star together. It was stupid, but at the time we signed, we thought we were really going places. Instead, we've just been a ball-and-chain holding the other one down.

Recently Micah and I were on the verge of a breakthrough. We got a call from Jorge. He had a screen test he wanted us to attend. It was for a job hosting a new reality hidden-camera show called "You'll Never Amount to Anything." The basic premise is that parents or friends of absolute losers--mooches, slobs, couch potatoes--set these lovable losers up in a practical joke involving a hidden camera. As hosts we would be setting up the show, introducing the scenarios, providing a little background, and at the end of the joke, come racing out from behind some thing at the end of the joke to exclaim, "You'll never amount to anything!"

The screen test went well, and a few weeks later the studio called. They were ready to greenlight a pilot episode. In the pilot, a pair of angry parents, Jeannie and Russell, who have grown tired of their deadbeat son who stays up all night drinking Monster Energy drinks and playing video games, want to prank their son. They set up their son, Jason, with a job at a local fast food franchise. He is reluctant at first, but he is desperate to please his parents, who consider him a total waste of space. Eventually, he puts down the controllers to his X-Box 360 and actually shows up for day one of work.

The manager puts him through a quick training on the grill, and Jason is all set to start flipping burgers. What he doesn't know, however, is that we have the grill rigged. It won't heat up enough to actually cook hamburgers. As a crowd rapidly begins to build out front, Jason is desperate to figure out why the grill won't work. Then the manager shows up. Earlier, the manager was a nice easy-going fellow, but now he is a total bastard. He gets in Jason's face, and tells him to get the burgers online or he's not going to have a job much longer. Jason is unable to produce results, and he is fired in front of a restaurant full of angry customers.

As he exits the building, Micah and I are there to greet him with Jeannie and Russell. In unison, we all scream, "You'll never amount to anything." As Jason begins to break down, we reveal to him that the whole thing has been a setup. Then we point out all the hidden cameras to him. He appears relieved as we fade to black.

The pilot wrapped filming a while back, and Micah and I were awaiting word on the future of the show. Then the writer's strike happened. Jorge called us this week to tell us that without writers we wouldn't be moving forward with the project. Additionally, he said the studio isn't sure they're going to be willing to finance the show once the strike is resolved. So, once again, we are left to wait. Who knows what the future will hold for us?

Strawberry Pancakes

This spaced out dude riding a girl's bike in search of a stack of Strawberry Pancakes is exactly in the vein of things that really make me love the internet. Most people I show this to, just send me back an instant message with a frowny face in it or an e-mail that says something like, "Dude, that's weird." But I love it.

Yes, it's bizarre, but there's some part of my brain that just lives for this kind of stuff. I like a lot of the Weebls stuff, Mr. Stabby, On the Moon, and Scampi, but I could watch Strawberry Pancakes all day long. These are the kinds of things that we can experience because the Internet gives us the means to share them freely. No television network or Hollywood studio would ever have a use for this type of thing, mainly because a lot of people are not going to pay to see it. The collective artistic genius of the layperson can emerge in a way it never has before. And I'm all for it.

Dave Bakke's Column Today

A few days ago, I wrote a post about some experiences I've had recently at work that are truly stranger than fiction. Dave Bakke, columnist at the SJ-R, contacted me shortly thereafter and asked if he could use my post as a source for an upcoming column. He said, "It's bizarre and the sort of bureaucratic junk people can't stand but love to read about." I agreed. He called me a couple of times to discuss details. His column appears in today's SJ-R, and it is titled "Department of Corrections."

My Bloody Problem

Last night as we were going to bed, a commercial came on the television for one of the local bloodletting laboratories that handles plasma donations. Aubrey made the off-hand joke that she should make a little money, which immediately sent me into shock. I went pale, and I felt like my body temperature rose at least 5 degrees. I kicked off the covers and curled up, shaking and begging her to please take it back, reconsider. "They take your blood out," I said, "then they take the plasma out and then they put the blood back in. They PUT IT BACK IN," I said. Even now writing about it I feel faint. It just doesn't feel right that they would take blood out, run it through a filter, and then put it back. You see, I am terrified of blood.

Those who know me well know of my irrational fear of blood. I know it's irrational, but I can't help it. As with most irrational fears, there are some precursory rules you should understand. My primary fear is of blood that comes from an unknown source. A bloody nose, for example, freaks me the hell out. From whence is that blood coming? And for what reason? Cuts I can sort of deal with. I understand the simple formula "knife punctures skin equals wound bleeds." I've got it, and although I get queasy, I can still stay upright. I can watch Ultimate Fighters be beaten to a pulp because I understand that punch-punch-punch on an eyelid causes bruising and bursting. I may have to look away, and I might not feel well, but I won't die. But if you come to me with blood running from your ear, I will faint immediately on the spot, and it wouldn't matter if we were standing together in a razor blade factory. I couldn't stop myself. I would just faint cold.

Another issue I have is that I can no longer have blood drawn without first putting together a will. I used to be able to have my blood drawn by medical professionals with not much trouble. I've never been a big fan of needles, but I could tolerate the experience well enough. In fact, I used to donate blood, and I did so at volunteer blood drives when they presented themselves. Today, I stand a man terrified of the needle. I quake in its evil gleam. I require a nurse who is compassionate and willing to let me sit in the chair until I can breathe again and who will get me a cup of juice to regain my spirit. "But why?" you may ask. "What happened to change all that generous blood-giving? And what the hell is wrong with you?"

It all started my sophomore year of college. I came home for winter break. One morning I awoke for work to find that I had a bloody nose. "What's this?" I pondered. I'd never had a bloody nose before in my life. And this one was a gusher, let me tell you. I didn't know what to do, so I called my friend whose mom is a nurse.

"Ask your mom what to do for a bloody nose," I begged of him.

"She says put some pressure on it, and tilt your head back," he answered.

"When I do that I feel like I'm choking on it. It's going down my throat."

"That's fucked up," he moaned.

I wasn't thrilled about it either. After 45 minutes, I couldn't get it to stop, and I had to call and let work know I'd be in late. There was no end in sight. It didn't let up at all. I started to worry that I'd eventually nosebleed all of my blood out and die. My parents would come home to find my wasted, bloodless corpse withered up on their bathroom floor.

Eventually, I went to the doctor. I drove myself, rag stuffed to my face, all the way to the doctor's office in Petersburg. They thought I might be anemic, so they decided to draw some blood. Three vials. I sat there for a couple hours and kept bleeding. Eventually it stopped, and they let me leave. Those three vials came back fine. No anemia. They had no idea what the problem had been, but they sent me away with a promising diagnosis. "Well, let's just hope it doesn't come back," the doctor said.

That night I got another serious nosebleed and had to go to the emergency room at Memorial Medical Center. The doctors poked and prodded around in my nose. They gave me cocaine to constrict the blood vessels and stop the bleeding. It worked, and for the next hour, a clumsy nurse and the doctor rooted around and tried to cauterize as much of my nasal cavity as they could. I went home that night, my head smelling like roast pork, hopeful that this would bring an end to my terrible nosebleeds. Due to lack of blood and iron, I found myself craving meat. I even considered raw meat as a temptation. What is happening to me? I wondered.

The next day was like a replay of the day before, and I wound up in the emergency room again, being cauterized and blasted with cocaine. No one seemed to know what the problem was. I asked the doctor, jokingly, "Is my brain bleeding or something?" and he looked at me solemnly and said, "I was just wondering that myself." Yikes. I was waiting at any moment for a man to show up with a plate of leeches. It seemed they had no clue why my nosebleeds kept coming back and were trying everything.

I went home that night, slept through the night, and got up the next morning. Everything was cool. I went through the next two days with no nosebleeds. It really was almost Christmas! There was one problem, however: this feeling of pressure that was building in my head. It was almost as though my head was being pumped with air. That can't be good, I thought, but it was better than then Niagara Nose Falls of the previous days.

After two days of bedrest, watching WKRP in Cincinnati reruns on satellite, and waiting for another gusher, I got up, got dressed and decided to go hang out with Aubrey. I couldn't spend the rest of my life in bed.

I had dinner with her family, and it was nice. I told her parents about my harrowing trips to the ER, and about how terrible the nosebleeds had been. "I am convinced," I exclaimed proudly, "that this is all behind me now. If you'll just excuse me, I need to blow my nose." That pressure was still building, and it hurt. I could feel it in my ears and behind my eyes.

In the bathroom, I blew lightly and felt something give. What can only be described as a big clot popped out, and I suddenly realized that all that pressure that had been building in my head was blood being backed up by that very dam-like clump of blood that was now sitting in their bathroom sink. The sink filled with blood. It was like someone had poured a bucket of blood into the thing. I grabbed a wad of paper towels and shoved it to my face. I asked Aubrey to take me to the ER. She grabbed my keys and away we went.

As we were leaving her parents' house, I noticed I couldn't see very well. My contacts had gone gummy, like they do sometimes. I couldn't get to my contact drops so I tried to rub my eyelids. My finger came away bloody. Wow, I thought. I must have accidentally smeared blood across my eyes.

I turned to Aubrey. "Did I get blood on my eyes?" I asked her.

"Oh my God, John," she said, absolutely horrified.

Blood was seeping from my tear ducts, dripping down my face like satanic tears. "I have to get you to the ambulance center," she said. When we arrived at the ambulance center, we walked through the door. The paramedics were all sitting around a table playing cards. They looked up and saw me. "Holy shit!" One of them said, and in a flash we were in the ambulance headed for Springfield.

It was more of the same at the ER that night. I think they cauterized every millimeter of sinus tissue and even part of my brain that night. I went home with smoke rolling from my ears and nose, tired and defeated. I was ready for death. I got to the point that I didn't even care. I just didn't want to deal with the blood any more. The last few days had been filled with blood. Blood that seemed to pour from a never-ending source. I'd ruined so many good shirts and pants. I'd ruined furniture at the doctor's office and at my parents' house. The bedsheets and pillowcovers I'd gone through. My hands were deeply stained with blood. It was a mess.

I continued to get nosebleeds a week or so into the next semester at school, but they were all minor. Eventually they just stopped, and I haven't had a nosebleed since. No one has ever been able to tell me why I had them or what caused them. As mysteriously as they began, they ended.

What I have had is a slowly developing case of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder that has left me with an irrational fear of nosebleeds and blood. When my friends all bound off to donate blood and help save lives, I selfishly sit at home and worry at their courage. When a discussion involving blood comes up among friends, I have to politely excuse myself. Just writing this post took about all the courage I could muster, and right now I feel nauseated and sick. I think I need to lie down.

Ann Curry Puts the "Ann" in Annoying

A few years ago, my wife and I watched The Today Show in the morning while we got ready for work. The Today Show was something that had always been on in the house when I was growing up, and it just seemed normal to me to have The Today Show on while I was getting dressed or eating breakfast.

Over time, though, I came to despise the show. I couldn't stand Matt and Katie's playful banter or the way the anchors fawned over celebrity bigwigs like Richard Branson or Jimmy Buffett. I mean, what was their deal with Jimmy Buffett? For awhile it was like the guy was another anchor on the show. It was ridiculous. Just for the record, I can't stand Jimmy Buffett. Only in America could a person become a celebrity as a result of his love of margaritas and cheeseburgers.

Somehow, even through all the aggravation with NBC's brand of infotainment--all the "How to Be the Best Bride You Can Be" segments, all the frustrating via satellite interviews with slack-jawed yokels who made the news by discovering that Cousin Conrad wasn't missing after all, but that he had simply fallen into the outhouse . . . again--even through all of that, we kept The Today Show on because the weather helped us plan our day. We were fooling ourselves.


Then, along came Ann Curry like a firestorm of stupidity, and we could hold out no longer. In all honesty, we were already teetering on the precipice, but the presence of this new talking bumblehead gave us the shove we needed to pursue other morning television options. The day finally came that we switched over and watched reruns of The Waltons each morning instead of The Today Show. I couldn't believe that this person was on television, and that she seemed to be sticking around. If I were an exec at NBC, I would fire her immediately. I just don't understand. Do people like her? Do you, reader, like Ann Curry? If so, please help me understand.

What was it about Ann Curry, you might ask? Well, first she just seems stupid. She can't read the news as well as most local newspeople, and I always wonder how she managed to get to one of NBC's flagship news programs. Additionally, she can't figure out when to speak and when not to speak during an interview. She is forever interrupting her guests or leaving long, awkward pauses between their answers and her questions. Sometimes it gives the impression that she's thinking on her feet, but if it takes her that long to think of a snappy follow-up, she is beyond hope. Recently, she's caught some flak for interviewing miscues like constantly mentioning the deceased father of Bindi Irwin, until the poor little girl looked like she just wanted to cry. And for laughing at some of the gay slurs made by ex-NBAer Tim Hardaway. She even tried to defend Miss Teen South Carolina after she rambled on about the such as children needing maps such as the Iraq and etc.

To boil it all down: Ann Curry is the devil. I don't have some greater message. Just that she is the physical representation of Lucifer. If you don't believe me, just look at that picture of her with pair of devil horns drawn on. (I don't know why I think devils always have those swirly Rollie Fingers mustaches.)

Here are some fricking annoying clips of Ann doing her worst.

What Would You Do With Four Arms?

I am currently working on a project with a client who is involved with educating children who are incarcerated within the Department of Corrections. We're writing a series of tests for them so they can gauge student progress within the grade levels between 6 and 12.

One of the project coordinators for the Department of Corrections is a woman named Martha. She is a woman obsessed with her cats, who loves to spend her free time practicing with her church choir. She is afraid of everything, especially gun violence (although she believes in the right to bear arms) and coordinating conjunctions that start sentences. But more than anything, Martha is terrified of sending the wrong message to these incarcerated youths through the tests we develop. Everything must be completely sanitized and sterilized before it can be accepted. Any sort of literature that invokes passion is swiftly thrown out the window. For example, we were recently supposed to develop a test for an American literature class. One of our passages was from "An Occurence at Owl Creek Bridge" by Ambrose Bierce. Martha would not let the passage through. "Numerous times," she pointed out, "this text references the hanging of Peyton Farquhar."

"Well, what should we do about it?" we asked her.

"Can you just take those lines out of the story?"

"It's a well-known literary work. We don't generally take to revising great literary works," we informed her. She'd once wanted us to rewrite an entire passage from Anna Karenina because she didn't like Tolstoy's style. She's asked us once, after exclaiming how much she hated Mark Twain, to try to update some of his humor so it was more relevant to today's children.

"Then we'll just have to throw the whole thing out and start over," she exclaimed from on high.

"Wait just a minute," I said. "'An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge' is widely taught in the 11th grade."

"Well I don't want any kids getting ideas from this passage. I don't want any kids hanging themselves because of a test that has my name on it."

"Okay," I said, "But this isn't about suicide. It's about a punishment administered during a time of war. Don't you think they're smart enough to see that?"

"It's a hanging. These students read words like hanging and they get ideas. I don't want them getting ideas from my tests." I worried what other words they might be getting ideas from, as though single words shot off the page extremely and perversely and no amount of context could contain them or anesthetize their meaning.

I finally consented. "Whatever you want," I said. "We'll remove that passage and use something else. One question though, 'Do you censor everything you present to these students?'"

"Well, yes," she said. "We don't let them read anything with references to violence, drugs, money, suicide, storm clouds, people who talk too loud, really anything negative."

"Wow," I said. I am a big advocate for leaving drugs, murder, and suicide out of our passages. But she assumes that every student is just dying to read between the lines and pull some murderous intent from our words.

"Or political upheaval. We don't want them trying to overthrow the Department of Corrections."

"Right," I said. "Is there a list somewhere? A list of banned books or something?"

"Yeah, there is. Would you like a copy? I'll see what I can do."

"Well, if I could get my hands on a copy of that list, it would make our job a lot easier. We certainly wouldn't use passages from books on that list."

This is how things have been since day one with Martha. Once we gave them a writing prompt that asked, "If you could go anywhere in the world, where would you go?" She came back that the question was inappropriate because kids would write about how they'd like to go to their crack dealer's house to buy drugs or to the streetcorner to solicit a prostitute or to their old neighborhood to shoot a rival gang member.

"Really?" I had to ask, totally perplexed. Maybe I underestimated how these kids think. I generally think of the violence in their lives being something that is forced upon them by their environment, not something they would choose to do if they had options. If given a choice between, say, pulling a drive-by or visiting Disneyworld, I assumed that even the most hardened of these child criminals would choose Disneyworld. "They wouldn't think of the Grand Canyon or New York City?"

"Nope," she answered definitively. "You don't know how these kids think."

I guess I didn't. Once I had written a writing prompt asking students to describe what life would be like if you had four arms instead of two. She nixed that one immediately, huffing over the telephone. "Well, just imagine it," she said. "They could have one arm around a hooker, one arm on their crack pipe, one arm shooting a police officer, and another arm counting the money they'd just gotten from an armed robbery."

I could sort of believe that this might be the case for a few hopeless causes. But to think that the whole mass of mixed-up kids in a correctional facility thought this way totally threw me for a loop. I tended to think there were kids on the inside who could appreciate the finer things in life. That there were kids who could identify the intrinsic value of a good song or a good book over a between-the-lines message to rape and kill and freebase cocaine. Couldn't some of these kids be saved?

"No," seems to be Martha's answer to the question. I wonder how she reconciles her love of religion, which is generally based upon the hope that people can be saved, with her notion that these kids are unsalvageable parts in the junkyard of American society. Once I wrote a writing prompt asking kids to describe why littering is a bad thing. Martha pounced. "Littering isn't a bad thing," she said matter-of-factly. "It creates jobs and gives these kids something to do."

It's Bottle Rocket!

The November Movie Geeks screening will feature the Wes Anderson film Bottle Rocket.

November 27
Doors open at 7:00 PM
Movie will start at 7:30 PM