Crazy (noun) 1 Doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results 2 Internet dating

Crazy (noun) 1 Doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results 2 Internet dating

Friday, June 24, 2011

The Tony Danza: Dropping Loads all Over America's Face!

Ron Jeremy OR me in 10 years
I can still remember the first time I saw a porno movie. I was 12 and going through my mother’s dresser drawers looking for money with which to buy a pizza when I came across (no pun intended) a large VHS box with, what I now know to be, Ron Jeremy on the cover in a civil war uniform. I don’t remember the name of the movie, but I liked war films so I figured I’d watch it while I ate the pizza, which I found 14 bucks to buy with.


I’d never seen a porn film before, much less had I ever even heard of one. I’d seen magazines, but only playboy which was just nekkid women. At that age, that’s all I thought sex was…naked women, I didn’t know you were supposed to DO anything with them. My whole sexual goal at that point was just to SEE a naked lady in person and sometimes…sometimes I wish I could go back to that innocence.

But that innocence was shattered as soon as I put the tape into the VCR. As we all know, found porn is NEVER rewound, so the tape started RIGHT where my mother had left off (GROSS!)At first I was disgusted by all the fucking hair in the film. Ron Jeremy’s back, arm, and crotch hair made him look like Chewbacca on Rogaine, the southern belles he was fucking looked like they had buckwheat in a leg lock, and the black slaves that got to fuck their mistresses had afro’s that were the size of hedges in an English garden maze. Every sex scene was just a grainy close up of hairy balls slapping against an even hairier va-j-j. I was sickened by the images that my young mind was being hammered with and at the same time I became aware of my dick as something other than a piss stick.

Growing up in military school, I’d showered with black guys AND white guys. There was a communal shower which was a tiled room with a large mechanical looking device that had 3 shower heads protruding from it. Three of us would shower at a time, and none of us ever even thought about each other’s dick size. But seeing these massive King Kong cocks in that Ron Jeremy movie made me think that maybe mine was too small…which in turn made me ashamed of it. It was like Adam eating the apple for the first time and wanting to put some fucking clothes on. (Yes, I just compared porn to a bible passage. Eat it religion.)

But as I found more of these TYPES of film hidden around my mother’s bedroom like a pornographic Easter egg hunt, that disgusted feeling I had at first turned into a warm feeling in my pants. From watching the guys in these films jerk off their massive wads onto a woman’s accepting face, I learned how to jerk mine off. However when I did it…the warm feeling that took over my body and made my knees buckle when I stood up was the greatest feeling I’d ever had…only nothing came out. I didn’t know it at the time, but you CAN jerk off at that age, but you don’t produce semen yet. So I was LITERALLY shooting blanks. I thought there was something seriously wrong with me. But that fright was not enough to make me stop. As much as I wanted to ask an adult questions, I felt as though I’d discovered a secret in jerking off that ONLY I knew, and I didn’t want to share it with anybody. Then it happened.

I went to bed one wintery night when I was 13 and had my first wet dream. I still remember EVERY fucking detail of that dream to this day. There were 2 rows of about 5 houses in the middle of a cornfield. There was a street in between them which ended at corn on either end. There was nothing but a sea of corn in every direction outside of this tiny Hamlet. A full moon hung low overhead casting its silvery glow on this tiny island of an American Suburb. The weather was hot, and inside one of the houses I sat at a dining room table watching my babysitter looking through kitchen cabinets in a sweaty dago t-shirt and tiny gym shorts.

The lighting in the room was cast by a low hanging ceiling lamp with a small watt light bulb. I don’t know how to explain it…but mixed with the heat and the time of night it made the whole scene sultrier. Seduction and temptation hung in the air with the small glow of that lamp and I could feel sexuality dancing in the air around me like the copper taste of electricity just before a thunderstorm.

I could see this woman’s ample breasts and tiny nipples through the sweat covered shirt in the light of the moon, as she reached up high on her tip toes in front of the kitchen window, and I knew that I shouldn’t be looking at them…but I couldn’t look away. When I asked her what she was looking for, she told me that she couldn’t find her weed. I knew that was wrong, but at that age once a woman makes you complicit in her illegalities; it opens a door in your mind to the possibility of being complicit in OTHER eventualities with her.

She found what she was looking for in a tin coffee can and sat next to me at the round table in the dining room. In the light I could see the sweat glistening on her skin and her silky auburn hair made her look like she’d just gotten out of the shower. She lit her joint and passed it to me. I was in! We talked about things that a 13 year old and a 22 year old shouldn’t talk about, and as the conversation mounted into desire…she kissed me. I could feel her wet hair on my face and the warmth I felt was almost unbearable when mixed with the heat. She threw me down on the cold linoleum floor and climbed on top of me, kissing me the whole time. As our bodies pressed together, the sweat poured off of us and I could feel her reach behind her and grab my dick…

And then I woke up to the screaming of one of my house parents telling us that it was time to get up. SHIT, SO CLOSE! I thought as I stumbled out of bed. When I got up I realized that the front of my pajamas were soaking wet, and my first thought was that I’d pissed myself. I quickly ran to my closet and shoved them deep into my laundry basket along with my underwear. I didn’t realize it…but I’d just had my first wet dream. My penis was becoming a cock.

The thought of that dream stuck with me all day. Not so much the act…as the feeling AROUND the act. The passion brought on by secrets and heat were enough to make me desire that in real life like nothing I ever wanted before. After school I ran back to my cottage to masturbate in a bathroom stall before anybody else got there and I was SHOCKED to find that something finally came out. I came all over the toilet seat and floor and it felt 10 times better than when I’d done it before. A whole new world of desire had opened up to me, and in my young mind...love became my goal. At that age you mistake sexual desire for love because you don’t know any better, and because I was stuck in an all boys military school, my deep desire for that love seemed like an impossible goal to reach.

A man’s first wet dream shapes him into the lover that he will become. For me sex is all about the passion, not the conquest. I’ve found that fucking is 10 times more enjoyable to me when it’s done on a late summer night, where the sweat rolling off of us isn’t an inconvenience but a product of that desire.

I didn’t have my first sexual encounter until I was sixteen, a few years after I was kicked out of military school, but the scenario did NOT play out like I thought it would. The actual fulfillment of our desires rarely meets our expectations

The first time a woman copped my joint happened in the shower at my mother’s condo while she was at work. I was sixteen and one of my three best friends, Grey Jim, sat in the dining room while I was escorted into the bathroom by a heavy set female classmate who proceeded to undress me and guide me into the shower. I don’t think it was because I smelled or anything, I think that because we were young, that’s what we thought we were supposed to do. That or she’d seen ‘Shower Me with Cum 37’.

Because she was so rotund, I was forced into the corner of the shower with my back up against the cold tile wall. As a guy, I can tell you that cold tile on your back is where hard ons go to die. But because I was sixteen it didn’t so much kill my hard on, as my ability to splooge a goopy load in a goodly amount of time. With cold tile on my back and warm water on my chest, we made out while she worked my dork like the gearshift of a 67 Volkswagen bus that she was trying to rock out of a fucking mud hole.

I immediately felt a problem. She wasn’t using any soap, and I couldn’t reach around her to grab the shampoo bottle because she was wedged into the shower like an elephant in a photo booth. It’s like we were in some John Hughes movie version of a Gary Larson ‘Far Side’ cartoon. Because I was so horny and because a woman had never been so kind as to grope my scrote, I was too shy and probably too nervous to force the ‘shampoo’ issue. I don’t know about women, but when a guy feels like he’s getting a good deal, he shuts the fuck up. Fat girl giving’ me a handy in the shower at sixteen? I thought I was getting a better deal than Chumly from ‘Pawn Stars’ buying William Shatners first hairpiece for twenty bucks.

Water does NOT make for a good lubricant and as she was strokin’ my poker, I couldn’t tell if the smoke I was seeing was steam from the shower, or if a garbage fire had broken out on my nut sack because the friction she was causing was like two dry sticks being quickly rubbed together by The Hulk. The worst part was that because of the fucking cold ass tile on my back, I couldn’t cum which just caused her to yank even MORE furiously.

I’ll be honest with you, this was a long time ago, and I don’t even know if I came or not. All I remember of that experience was that my dick felt like it had been polished down with a fucking belt sander for a week afterwards. It was my dick’s version of ‘Vietnam’, and believe me; if it could have skipped town and went to Canada instead, it would have…he was never the same dick I knew after that.

After I turned seventeen, I finally joined the coitus alumni. There was a girl in my neighborhood that’d been fucked by more guys than a ‘Real Doll’ dressed as a Klingon at a comic book convention. .And after my friend Dennis introduced us… it became obvious that it was my turn. I was hanging out at Dennis’ house when she came over to borrow cigarettes and quarters for laundry. (Dear Trailer Park Penthouse Letters, right?) She had blond hair and a body made for sex. At sixteen she was thin and walked with a slow purpose that made her even more desirable. Her eyes were green and when they fixed on you? You almost had to fuck her. There was no mistaking her intention, and passing up that opportunity at that age would have made me regret it my entire life.

After talking while she did her laundry, we went back to my mother’s condo. Mom’s condo was on the second floor and my bedroom window was at the corner of the building. My mother’s parking space was directly below my window. This was good for me because I could hear her come home and know to hurry the fuck up when masturbating. This particular time? Not so good.

I’m sure that all of you are aware that you’re first time? You kinda sucked at it. It’s like trying to be a firefighter without any training. You’re fidgeting with the hose like a midget wrestling an anaconda, you don’t quite know which part of the fire to point it at, and eventually you’re gonna open the wrong door and catch a back draft (Yes, that was an ‘accidental’ anal sex innuendo).

Also, at that age, I had SEEN porn, but I had not yet indoctrinated porn things into any kind of cohesive sexual quilt pattern. So without any kind of fore play, the dick’s among us and she lay on my bed, naked on her back. No leg spreading or anything, she just laid down prone like a corpse on an autopsy table. I don’t know what kind of guys she was fuckin that could slip their dick in with her legs closed, but from the porn I’ve seen later in life, one has to be hung like a fucking table leg to pull this move off. You have to have one of those dicks that’s SO big…you can twist it into various balloon animal shapes. Over the years I’ve come to appreciate the ‘legs pinned behind her head like Bugs fucking Bunny’ move.

I awkwardly climbed on top of her like I was inching up to the edge of a hill before going down the water slide, and started flopping around like a seal with turrets syndrome trying to find that tricky vagina. Finally she helped me out by slightly opening her legs enough to allow me to feel something moist. She reached down and kissing me, guided me into her.

There are no words to describe how incredible this felt. It was like a world of pleasure opening up to me for the first time. I pushed myself into her all the way. She gave out a shaky gasp and…

I heard a car door slam outside of my window. The words ‘oh fuck’ didn’t so much cross my lips as they formed on my face. INSTANT dick death. I jumped off of her and peered over the top of my window sill like a sniper examining the situation. Sure enough…ma Hempen was home.

I knew we had about 40 seconds before she got upstairs and this girl would need at least a minute and a half to get dressed. I grabbed up all of her clothes from the floor and told her “get dressed in the bathroom! Then come out and we’ll act like you just took a pee break while we were studying!” Good plan right?

My mom came upstairs and I frantically tried to cover up my bed because it looked like ‘sex bed’. I heard her hand on the bedroom door and I quickly slammed myself down into my desk chair. The door opened and my mother looked at me quizzically for a moment and then asked: ‘Why are you out of breath?’, ‘why are you sweating?’, ‘why does your bedroom smell like cat food and ass?’

I told her I was trying to quickly clean the house before she came upstairs and that a friend of mine was in the bathroom. As we talked, I found it difficult to look her in the eye. While looking down at the ground, there, out of place like a turd in a swimming pool…lay the fucking condom. All wrinkled and wet like a shed snake skin sitting RIGHT by my foot. Just then the bathroom door opened and my mother turned her head allowing me to quickly place my bare foot on the condom. It was like stepping on, well…like stepping on a used condom. Nothing quite feels the same, so I have no reference for that one. At least it was MY used condom…this time.

I walked her back to her house and never heard from her again. Rightly so. I have to say that recalling these stories makes me really miss that bed. Over the years, I had a lot of sex in it and if it could talk, it would probably have a herpe on its lip.

At eighteen I had my first sexual ‘relationship’, AND my first real heartbreak. I think the first one is the worst. That one came with betrayal as well. It wasn’t love, not that time, but it felt like it. Inexperience sometimes makes us THINK we’re in love and hindsight later tells us the truth.

There was about a two week period of time in my life when I was actually attractive. I was eighteen and I had stumbled onto the perfect balance of good hair, visibly lean triceps, clothes that I ‘worked’, and a relatively healthy body weight. I had gotten a job at the ‘Red Lobster’, or as Action Jim calls it ‘catnip for black people’.

The first thing I ever bought on a credit card was a pair of kick ass boots which I still have to this fucking day. I’ve had them re-soled three times and I’ve worn them on every vacation I’ve ever been on. They have sand on them from the Mohave Desert, water stains from the snows of South Dakota, and puke on them from Mardi gras. But when I first got them I always felt like a fucking Viking with them on.

Apparently some of the waitresses at the Red Lobster had noticed my budding, if fleeting, hotness and the boots helped a lot. On Valentine’s Day, one of the waitresses had dressed up in a very sexy pink ‘heart’ outfit. As I passed her coming into work, I stopped in my tracks and asked her ‘what’s with the outfit? You got a date with a Senator tonight?’ That was all it took.

Diane was a 36 year old red head, and VERY attractive. Like Juliet from ‘Lost’, a hot ‘older’ chick. If I could find a chick my age NOW that looks that good, I’d stop fuckin around with you 22 year olds. I was half her age and she loved those fucking boots.

It was a perfect storm of knee trembling fuck-dom. She was at her sexual peek, I was at MY sexual peek, she wasn’t shy and I was a willing student. I got my first ‘road head’ from her, first ‘back seat of a Buick Regal’ sex, first ‘work’ sex, and first ‘neighbor called the cops’ sex. She taught me a lot.

Diane lived in a trailer and would take in junk yard dogs that the pound was going to put down because they were too mean. She’d leave her bedroom door open and these red eyed, hellish, gnarling, drooling, beasts would froth and growl at me as I was fucking her. I’d ask her to close her door, but in the heat of passion she’d tell me to ignore them. Looking back on it, I think she got off on that somehow. To each her own I guess. My point being that to this day…I can fuck through any distraction.

This incredible and liberating sexcapade lasted almost a year, but like all good things I suppose it burned out. I took Diane to Grey Jim’s apartment for a party one evening, which he was throwing because he was the first of us to get an apartment of his own. Apparently, while I was outside smoking with some other friends, Diane approached Jim and told him that she wanted to fuck him. Jim being the good friend that he is, told her ‘no fucking way’. He explained to her that he wouldn’t touch her because she was dating his best friend. Taking this as a hint, Diane promptly went outside and told me that we were through.

Just like that. It was over. I did EVERY thing you’re NOT supposed to do. I cried. I begged. I pleaded. Nothing. She went back inside and fucked Grey Jim. Grey Jim is a GREAT friend, seriously he’s like a brother to me, but we were young and he was only a man. The worst part of this story was that since I’d already done everything you’re not supposed to do, I went a step further.

Since Grey Jim had JUST moved into his apartment that very day. He had yet to buy curtains. While other friends were outside telling me what was happening, I went to the bedroom window and SAW them fucking. (I don’t even think Jim knows I did that). It felt like my fucking heart Wile E. Coyote’d off a cliff.

One of the unfortunate side effects of a great break up is IMAGINING your ex with another person. This feeling can hit you anytime, anywhere, and when it does it seems like the sun is falling on top of you all over again. Actually SEEING it is about a million times worse. I wish that feeling on nobody.

Interesting post script to this story, Jim eventually moved in with Diane and she got the cancer. He had to spend all of his time taking care of her through her sickness. So in a way…I dodged a bullet there. Gotta find the good in the bad right? (See you all in hell!)

But before, in between, and sometimes DURING these first sexual encounters I could always count on porn. I wasn’t obsessed with it and I certainly didn’t know any of the actor’s names, but when I needed a release? I always turned to porn. As my friends and I became more comfortable talking about it, we learned that we all had different movies…so we began swapping. Before we did though, we came up with 3 simple rules. 1.) You always rewind the tape to the very beginning because I don’t want to know at what point in the movie you exploded and stopped the tape. 2.) You always wash your hands BEFORE the exchange. And 3.) The codeword is ALWAYS…Prono. Yes, prono and believe it or not? Nobody EVER knew what the fuck we were talking about. “Did you see that Prono?” “Yeah, it was great!” and soon people were looking everywhere for ‘prono’. Some thought it was a candy bar they could get at the convenience store, from overhearing our conversations MY mother thought prono was somebody’s cat.

Over the years porn has CERTAINLY grown. However I can’t decide if porn has adapted to OUR desires, or if our desires have grown through porn? Now I’m not a scholar of porn like I am with regular movies and Television, it seems to me that porn USED to just be dudes getting blown and fucking, at least mainstream porn. NOW there’s a WHOLE fucking library of SPECIFIC porn categories from asslicking to midgets pissing on a girls LEFT arm. There are fetishes I have now that I never even considered before and I’M 30 fucking years old. Just when I thought I’d seen it all? I find a WHOLE website ONLY dedicated to older women seducing babysitters. That’s a fetish of mine now…I don’t WANT that as a fetish because that is a fantasy that can NEVER be fulfilled within my lifetime. The whole POINT of a fetish to strive to see that fetish goal reached.

Another fetish that’s been cultivated within me over the past few years is lesbian ass licking porn. WHY DO I LIKE THIS SO MUCH? A hot chick gets herself into the doggy position and another puts her face all up in that shit and licks her bleached asshole. And if an older woman has to talk her babysitter into doing that? Well fuck it; I’m not leaving the house for like a week. But again, this is an unfulfillable fantasy. Even if I COULD get a chick drunk enough to let me lick her asshole, I just KNOW it’s not gonna be all pink, pretty, and smooth like in these movies. It’s gonna SMELL like an asshole and I’m gonna get hair in my teeth and maybe a dingleberry.

But besides the different categories of porn that I’ve been introduced to over the years, the other thing I love about this sub culture is the language. Terms used in porn have brought me hours of laughter over the years including the latest one that I heard on The Howard Stern Show the other day...’The Spider-Man’. Apparently, this is when a man shoots his load into his HAND…and then throws it on the girls face. (It was actually a female porn star explaining the term, so don’t get all uppity and irate at me ladies). I will be adding THAT little gem into the ‘Things I will do to belittle my most recent ex girlfriend when she comes crawling back to me’ rolodex.

Much like the fantasies we see in porn, the terms that it’s brought about are things we are not likely to ever do in real life; The Donkey Punch, The Mexican Avalanche, The Cleveland Steamer, The Boston Steamer, Cumstache, autocunnilingus, mechaphilia, the Woody Woodpecker, and my PERSONAL favorite…The Tony Danza (or ‘The Danza Slap’). What happens is the woman is giving the man oral sex and the man will ask "Who's The Boss?" If the woman says "You Are" the man will forcefully slap her across the face with his dingus and say "Wrong, Bitch! Tony Danza's the boss!" Who the fuck came up with that one? Fucking lunatics out there.

Don’t act like you haven’t heard these terms. Hell, don’t act like you haven’t USED them in a joke or to explain a dream you had to the other ladies at the hair salon. It’s amazing that as a society we will come up with ACTUAL terms for shit we would NEVER do in real life. Oh, sure, we’ll watch it, but DO it. No sir.

We’re ALL guilty of watching this stuff in some form or another. The porn industry is a multi BILLION dollar beast that’s eating up romance and patience like a fat Mexican kid in a chalupa factory. And if you think about it, they wouldn’t MAKE ‘Donkey Punch’ movies if people weren’t BUYING ‘Donkey Punch’ movies. I guarantee you that ONE person you know owns a fucking midget blowing a horse video. In fact, that’s ANOTHER porn term called ‘Rule 34’ which states that ‘if it exists, there IS a porn of it’.

Now I not only know the terms, but I know the names as well. Faye Raegan, Bree Olson, Sasha Grey, and Lexi Belle have made me shoot off more than a firing range in a Michigan Militia compound. Any two of them have even done films together and when I FIND one? I make a whole evening of it. I’ll light some candles, take a bath, make a nice meal, and then watch 30 seconds of Sasha Grey licking Bree Olsons asshole before shooting out the candles and having a better night’s sleep than Obama after he gave the the final order to kill Bin Laden.

And guys…it’s not GAY to know the guys in porn. Peter North not only fucks some to the hottest chicks on the planet but when I see him ‘shoot ropes’, I ‘oooh’ and ‘ahhhh’ more than a fireworks display at a retard home. I saw an interview with Peter North where he said that he eats NOTHING but celery in order to cum the way he does. It LITERALLY looks like fucking ropes. When he comes on a girls face it looks like the deck of a sail boat afterwords. I don’t know whether to hand her a tissue or tie off the main plank.

My other favorite is Nick Manning. Now, if you listen to Howard Stern on Sirius, you know who Nick is because he is the first porn star with a catch phrase. AND he took Robin on a date to the GREAT delight of the listeners. Nicks catch phrase is simple: When he’s cumming on girls face he exclaims “OOOOOOH YEAHHH, dropping FUCKING loads all over your FACE!” I don’t think I’ve ever laughed so fucking hard in my LIFE as I did the first time I saw this. And there’s variations! “dropping loads all over your glasses”, “Dropping fucking loads on your hat”, and “dropping fucking loads on Robin”.

Over the years masturbation has been that friend that Jesus always claimed to be to alcoholics anonymous, with its dickprints in the sand next to me as I walk along the pornographic beach. Sure masturbation isn’t the same as BEING with a woman, but to be honest with you, the end result is the same. In my case there’s not even any environmental damage caused by spillage because I use the ‘squeeze’ technique. This is where RIGHT before I cum, I squeeze my dork at the base. I have an orgasm, but nothing comes out. I might have to stop this though, because recently my nose has started running when I do it. Apparently that shit has to come out SOMEwhere.

And guys? As far as a woman masturbating is concerned, take my advice and DON’T help. I’m not so much intimidated by the ebony Kong vibrator that she has to hook up to seven car batteries, as I am the ‘Bullet’. This little mother fucker will kill a relationship. It’s a vibrator that’s about the size of a pinky, but when she cums, just point her at a burning building and she’ll hose that shit out.

I bought one of these for my recent ex thinking it would be a fun toy for us to play with in the sack. Next thing I know, she’s going out to dinner with the thing, she’s calling it ‘Gary’, and her clit is calloused over like a dermal polar ice cap.

I LIKE eating a woman out, and in fact I have an Olympic gold medal in cunnilingus. As far as ACCEPTABLE fetishes go, this is probably my favorite because I don’t HAVE a huge schlong, however I can ALWAYS make a woman cum through eatal sex. But after my ex started using the bullet while I wasn’t around, she lost all sensation down there and I’d have to put a pillow under my chin, a night stand with a glass of water and a monster energy drink on it next to the end of the bed, call work and tell them I was taking the week off, and put the dog in a fucking kennel.

I don’t know about other guys out there, but when I’m IN a relationship, I rarely if ever, masturbate. This makes sex better because there’s that cool down period between takes. When I’m NOT in a relationship? I beat it every day. This is why I can’t do ‘one night stands’. There have been TWO times in my life when I couldn’t get my twig and berries to work because I jerked off SO much, that when the surprise of pussy was sprung upon me, my dick just yawned and said ‘yeah…whatever’. Besides whiskey and pepper spray, TOO much masturbation makes me softer than ice cream on a sidewalk in June at 3PM in Arizona.

That having been said, porn is the new fast food. It’s easier than cooking dinner, it’s cheap, and it’s open 24 hours. People don’t like to work at things, the less work they have to do for the same result is preferred…so we have porn. What’s easier than that? No hassles, no headaches, nobody bitching about that ‘call me Captain Kirk’ fetish you have. Even PORN itself has gotten easier. Now they have ‘point of view’ porn. You can watch it and imagine that that’s YOUR 14 incher spitting Faye Reagan in two.

In the beginning, porn was considered to be something of a respectable, if not mainstream forum for furry beavers, and grainy close-ups of hairy balls. Hell, in 77 the ONLY movie at the box office to come CLOSE to ‘Star Wars’ moneywise, was ‘Deep Throat’. Yeah, ‘Deep Throat’ was a porn that was released into mainstream theaters and made almost as much money as ‘Star Wars’. It was the beginning of the end of romance.

The problem with porn though is that it RAISES women’s expectations and forces men to try TOO hard because MANY of them don’t realize that porn, like ANY film…is just a fucking movie. It’s edited. Do you really think that guy is fucking those two chicks for 43 minutes without cumming? Most of these porn guys will tell you that they stop between takes like any other movie. THEN they have a ‘fluffer’, which is a cute chick who keeps their dick hard while they wait for the NEXT scene. And to all you women who have dreams of going to Hollywood and becoming the next Angelina Jolie? About 98 percent of chicks who do that end up becoming fluffers in San Jose. Not to mention all the drugs and hormones these guys take. They even use ‘stunt cum’ now. Some guy behind the scenes with a super soaker filled with egg whites hoses these women down for the ‘money shot’. Here’s my favorite fun porn fact though, a lot of the guys in porn are gay! They just do straight porn because it pays more. The dollar wins again!

My friend Mike called me a few weeks ago and told me that he was going out with a girl he’d met and she was bringing a friend. He asked if I’d like to join them at a bar not too far from my place. 10 years ago this would have been a no brainer. I’d throw on some dungarees and Nikes and go charm my way into a night of vaginatopia, but now? I told Mike no. Because in MY mind it’s just easier to stay home and rattle my snake to porn because it’s a SURE thing. No WONDERING if I’m gonna get laid all night, I don’t have to be ON all night, I don’t’ have to drop more money than Trump pays his wig maker, AND I won’t have to deal with her crying in the morning if I DO get laid. The point is that it’s become TOO easy for losers like ME to say no to pussy because I have access to it at home anytime I want.

And that’s NOT the way things should be. Men SHOULD endeavor to get laid because it keeps us on our toes, it keeps us grounded, and when we get shot down? It gives us that sense of humility that we ALL need to get through life. I said earlier that I wanted ‘love’ when I was a kid because I didn’t know any better. Well now I do and I know that love and sex go hand in hand. You can’t have one without the other and THIS is one of the reasons why religion pisses me off so much. SOME women out there think that it’s HEALTHY to not expect a sexual relationship until after a long courtship and marriage. This may have been an acceptable practice in the middle ages because men would marry women for their dowry. If they wanted to get laid? They’d find a nasty who-er. That archaic church law was MADE to screw women over, NOT because God wants you to be chased you fucking dumb assees! You HAVE to know if you are sexually compatible with your mate early in a relationship because if you’re not, you’ve just wasted your time.

But, What has all this porn done to us? It’s taken the mystery out of sex. What happened to the passion? People used to fall in REAL love, not this REALITY SHOW love bullshit. When I was in high school, unless a girl was morbidly obese, you couldn’t TELL what was doing under those clothes until you got them off. So you would romance and woo her until you GOT them off. The standard was 3 dates. The chick kept her respect, and you maybe got some stank on your hang low OR, best case scenario, you ACTUALLY got to know her as a person before you slept with her. And BELIEVE me, this makes the sexual experience that much more enjoyable, when you’re having sex TOGETHER and not just having sex ON her. Call me crazy, but I like to look into a woman’s eyes, NOT that ‘O’ face on a fuck doll.

I know I sound like an old fogey, but this actually wasn’t that long ago. NOW you go to these high schools and invariably you can find two chicks that are hotter than anything you’ll see on TV or in a movie, making out in the hallway while wearing jeans so low that their clits are popping out of the top, they have a camel toe, and thong undies over their hips and riding their ass crack out the back of their pants. Most of them already have implants, and their tits are pushed together like Japanese subway riders at 7AM. Then I get called a PERVERT for watching the seniors play volley ball from across the street with binoculars and a trench coat on.

I say have some fucking dignity for christsake. Make us work for it. How cheap is sex now when all you gotta do is have the same brow line as that kid from ‘Twilight’, throw a couple of burgers down her throat and put a toilet cover on the seat while you bang her in the bathroom stall at Wendy’s? Then women wonder why the guy cheated on them, or left them, and they cry like it’s the end of the fucking world. I’ll tell you why he cheated on you and left you…because he never got to KNOW you. What kind of connection or bond could there have been when you blew him after he said: ‘so…uh…you got any gum?’ You gotta make us WANT that shit. You gotta make us feel like THAT is the best and ONLY pussy in the free world!

‘If we’re all that easy…why aren’t YOU getting laid?’ You might ask. Simple, I’m not trying. Honestly? I’ve been with a lot of women who were goodly enough to have slept with me. The ones that I probably should have stayed with, I didn’t. The ones that I shouldn’t have stayed with, I did. I’ve made some crap decisions concerning women and I’m trying to turn a new leaf. Does that mean that I’ll tone down my sense of humor? Absolutely not. Will I compromise my integrity and go see ‘Twilight’ in the theatre? Nope. Sorry, not gonna happen . But will I give a more concerted effort to get to know a woman before I fuck her? God damned right I will.

I had a beautiful woman in my bed not two months ago. Down to her wonderful thong. Candles going, the whole deal. But I’d only went out with her once, and she wasn’t looking for the same thing I was. I respect that. And I didn’t fuck her. Sure I felt like an ass afterwards, and you better believe that the ‘homo’ jokes flew from my friends. But fuck it. They weren’t there. I actually liked her and would have loved to take her out again, and if it worked out? Great. If not? That’s cool too.

But I wanted the promise of more to come. The hope of something down the line. I wanted to wake up with that sunshine feeling in the morning like I just met someone REALLY fucking awesome and where might it go? That energy shot that only a woman can give you, when all your friends at work notice that you’re smiling JUST a little too much, or your neighbor see’s you do that thing where you jump up in the air and tap your heels together and thinks to himself ‘what the fuck is HE in such a good mood for?’

The bottom line is that I WANT to have a connection with a woman. I WANT a friendship. I want someone who will lie around with me and make up ‘top 10’ lists about people we know, such as ‘Top 10 pet names for Action Jim’s unibrow’. I want someone to GO out to dinner with me, NOT someone to just TAKE to dinner. And I want a woman who will laugh her ass off with me at the ridiculousness of the ‘Donkey Punch’ subcategory of my massive Washington National Archive sized porn collection.

I’d also like to see the younger generation of girls have a little more respect for themselves and realize that their body is NOT the only thing they have to offer a guy. Because believe me, the fucking guys won’t respect you if you don’t. And remember, you’re not always going to HAVE that body. So Tattoo’s? NOT a good idea, cause when you’re older? There’s nothing sadder than a butterfly on a saggy tit, or a tribal tattoo on your lower back that’s melted down into your ass crack.

I’ll leave you ladies with this last bit of wisdom, a quote: “Gravity…she is a harsh mistress” – The Tick

END

Sunday, June 19, 2011

The Life and Times of a Jaded Loser Part the 4th

24: The Predator


Not THAT Predator
Even as I met other people after military school, Aaron and I shared a bond that I could never have with the others because of our time spent together at Glenwood. We shared a common ‘thousand yard stare’ that the others could never know. His home was like a bastion of sanity for me and I spent more time with him than I did anyone else. Aaron never really met Grey Jim or Pete but he, Steve, and I would still hang out together every chance we got.

I would learn that first year out of military school that a teenager’s life revolved around bikes. Everyone had one except me. I was a walking mother fucker and I hated it. My mother could be quite intrusive. I never had a sense of privacy, so I spent all the time I could with my friends. Betcha THAT sounds familiar to a lot of people out there.

After moving back home, one of my constant bothers was the train which ran directly behind my bedroom window. This loud intrusive mother fucker would keep me up until all hours of the night. A freight train would come barreling through about every 15 minutes, and between that and the sound of my mother’s snoring in the next room, I rarely got any sleep that first year.

Even now that SAME fucking train still haunts me. I have to cross tracks on my way to work that, when followed south, end up right behind my mother’s condo. They are a constant reminder of my childhood, and a constant pain in my ass as I can’t remember ONE fucking time in my driving life that I haven’t been stuck waiting for a train on those same tracks.

I can remember putting pennies on the tracks as a kid, and even some of my star wars action figures. I poked my first dead animal with a stick on them, and I would aimlessly wander them up and down in fascination of the places they must lead.

Eventually I learned that I could hop on a freight train and take it to nearly anyone’s house that I knew. Literally. The train tracks behind my mother’s condo ran RIGHT past the mall, they ran about a block away from Steve and Aaron’s places, and also ran about 50 feet from where Grey Jim and Pete lived by our high school. It was dangerous as hell, and sometimes I’d wait for an hour or more for a train to come by, but they ALWAYS stopped for some reason right by my place. Usually for about 15-20 minutes, long enough for me to hop up on the ladder on the side of a freight car and just hang there a few feet off the ground as the train jerked into motion again. It was scary as hell the first couple of times I did it, but it was either that, or walk for hours to my friends homes. For some reason there was always hay in small piles along the tracks, and eventually I started to gather up those smaller piles in order to make big ones at the points where I needed to jump off the train.

Luckily, when the summer of 87 came, I finally got a bike. Not because my mother bought me one, and I didn’t steal it…sorta, but it did come to me under nefarious means. One Saturday at around dusk, I was sitting with Steve and Aaron on Aaron’s porch in front of his house. We had just gotten back from the mall, and Steve was bitching because I had to ride with him on the pegs of his bike. As we sat there in the growing dark, we could hear sirens blaring in the neighborhood, police sirens, and they were getting closer.

Just then, from out of nowhere, an older kid came flying down the street on a sweet ass predator dirt bike. It had front and back pegs, breaks, and it was all black except for the Predator logo on the side. As he came pedaling at TOP speed in our direction, he kept looking behind him and we could see this kid was being chased. He saw us looking at him, and turned in our direction coming to a screeching halt as he squeezed the handlebar breaks, right in front of Aaron’s porch.

Out of breath he said “Can I run through your back yard?” We all looked at each other dumbfounded. And then I piped up “You give me the bike; you can run through the back. You’ll have to hop a fence and then there’s train tracks and another fence, you’ll never get away carrying that bike” The guy, who must have been in his 20’s looked at me in amazement, as did Aaron and Steve.

Without saying a word, he stood up and let the bike fall to the ground and then took off behind Aaron’s house. We stood there for a heartbeat and then Aaron grabbed the bike. We all ran to the garage with it just as the lights from the cop cars started throwing blue and red down the street.

The next morning Aaron let me spray paint over the decal on the bike in his garage, then we filed the serial numbers off of it. I FINALLY had a ride and it was sweet ass ride at that.

Believe it or not, this did NOT curb my railway transgressions in the least. I would STILL hop on the train, only now I would do it while holding my bike out with one arm by the bar that ran from the seat to the handlebars.

However, armed with this ‘Kitt’ from Knight Rider of dirt bikes, I finally felt a sense of freedom. Instead of taking the bus to school, I would ride over to Grey Jim’s and have breakfast with him and his family. My friends and I could go farther and faster while testing the limits of our neighborhoods. We would get lost in the street lights of faraway places and then back track our way home. When you get that first bike, the world is your oyster and we were all too happy to shuck that mother fucker.



25: Heroland Comics



During my years in military school, I would often come home on the weekends with Aaron and his brothers. His mother was nice enough to take me in on these weekends, and during my last year at Glenwood, I learned that there was a comic book store not too far from Aaron’s house. I became a regular customer at Heroland Comics, and although the owner made me uncomfortable, it was his employee Joe Soltas that always had me coming back.

Joe was in his thirties and had a great dead-pan sense of humor. When I would be perusing the store he would often approach me and make back handed comments about his boss, Lee. I was always an outcast in military school. I got no respect from my fellow students OR the adults on campus who would often turn a blind eye to my being picked on. Because of them, and my mother’s bat shit alcoholism, I always had a problem with authority, and adults WERE authority. But Joe was different. Joe talked to me like I was an equal, and when he made fun of other people under his breath so only I could hear him…I felt like one of the guys.

Joe’s boss, and the owner of Heroland comics Lee Tennant, was a different story though. Lee tried selling me everything in that fucking store when I first started going in there. If I wanted a Spider-Man comic? He would make me buy a Spider-Man poster with it, if I wanted an X-Men Comic, I had to buy the X-Men t-shirt as well. He sold things in a way so as to make you feel compelled to buy it. Like you were an asshole if you didn’t. I learned later that Lee was like this with everyone. He was that intimidating pitch man that could sell ice to Eskimos. We weren’t customers; we were ‘marks’. Looking back on it, I almost have to respect Lee in that he WAS the consummate salesman, the guy that every car dealership wishes they had. That being said, you will never come across a bigger dick head in your life…as I did in Lee Tenant.

Lee was in his forties and he was the biggest man I’d ever seen. You’ve seen those TLC specials about the ‘fat hospitals’? That’s Lee. He was a towering man of about 6 foot, and he was just as tall across. He couldn’t have weighed less than 4 hundred pounds, and he always smelled of sweaty meat, body odor, and pop. He was a Jewish man, and he lived up to all the negative stereotypes I would later hear rednecks say about Jews. Lee had coke bottle thick glasses and a constant five o’clock shadow that looked like play dough being squeezed out of that ‘play dough spaghetti maker’ toy. His skin was the color of an old beige leather sofa from the 60’s that had been left out in the sun somewhere. After eating an enormous meal of hamburgers, gyro’s, and hotdogs, while downing an entire 2 liter of soda, Lee would often burp so loud that the ceiling tiles would lift out of their grating and drop white Styrofoam dander on all of us as they settled back into place with a ‘thud’. This was a man who could destabilize the pressure of any room he was in, using only his various bodily functions.

The back room of his store was ALWAYS closed, and this was the tree where his Keebler family worked bagging and boarding comic books, taking phone orders, and putting shipments together. I later learned that Lee’s wife and mother in law worked back there along with a few straggling employees, and the door was kept closed so as to not make customers uncomfortable at viewing Lee’s management style.

Lee’s wife Louisa was literally a midget. Standing at about 3 foot tall, Louisa was an intimidating presence at Heroland. When Lee wasn’t around Louisa liked to make it VERY clear that she was in charge. I think it was her way of dealing with the beatings that Lee would dish out to her in the back room. I Remember always feeling a bit sad for Louisa, not because of her height, but because Lee didn’t treat her all that differently than he treated his customers and other employees. There was a step stool behind the register for her to stand on when she rang people up, and she was always complicit with Lee in ripping people off.

Joe and I would often ponder for hours on end Lee and Louisa’s means of fornication. We came to the conclusion that Lee ONLY married Louisa so that someone could finally clean in between the folds of his ginormous body, like a zoo employee washing a hippo with a giant wet push broom. That theory was soon put to rest though when we remembered that Lee NEVER smelled as though he was washed.

After I was kicked out of military school, I got my first job at a banquet hall called The Glendora House. I was 15 and only worked there on the weekends, but every time I got a check I would take the Pace bus up to Heroland and sign it right over to Lee in exchange for all the comics I could carry home. He was almost certainly overcharging me, and I can even recall him charging me ‘tax’. There have never been taxes on magazines of ANY kind in Illinois. Eventually, as the comic book boom hit in ’88, Lee moved his store to a bigger location and I took this opportunity to offer my services as an employee. I was eager, I was a hard worker, and for Lee the best part was that I would work ONLY for comic books. He didn’t have to pay me a dime.

On Sundays, I would load up Lee’s giant bread truck with all the comics from the store. This disgusting monstrosity spat out black smoke from every orifice and there was no passenger door, so sitting up high on the seat, you could look down and see the pavement zooming past you at breakneck speeds. Joe would drive the truck while Lee followed in his car. I always feared that Joe would take a corner just a little too hard and I’d go flying out the open door.

These comic book conventions were where I learned the bulk of my comic book knowledge. I learned everything from value, to specific events in silver age, golden age, and modern comic books simply because it was my job to cherry pick what would sell at the convention. After unloading Lee’s truck at whatever convention center he had a table at, I would help other comic shop owners unload THEIR product in exchange for more comic books. I never wanted anything overtly expensive, but if I did, they would give me a great discount in trade for my help. Most comic book store owners were fat, smelly, unhygienic loads like Lee. I didn’t mind, because it was their laziness that kept my collection growing. At the bigger comic book shows, I would help various artists and writers with their luggage, get their lunch for them, and do generally menial tasks for them throughout the day in exchange for their autograph on comic books that they worked on. Doing this every weekend for years made me well known in the comic book world. At times Lee would even get phone calls from famous artists before the convention, who were checking to make sure I would be there.

The ONE thing I hated about going to comic cons with Lee was that HE was that annoying salesman who always gives the HARD sell. He would stand in front of his table SCREAMING at the top of his lungs: “My brother just got arrested for stealing all these comics, so now I have to sell them to afford his bail! HELP ME OUT HERE”. It wasn’t funny, it wasn’t fun, and it embarrassed the shit out me. He would scream that SAME line at least 20 times EVERY weekend. I just kept telling myself that it was all worth it to feed the beast that my collection was becoming.

It was also Lee’s cheapness that made some of those weekends a nightmare. Not only was his comic book bread truck a fucking death trap on wheels because he wouldn’t pay to get it fixed, but sometimes we had to stay at a convention center for the entire weekend…which meant Lee springing for a hotel room. Yes, ONE fucking hotel room. Lee would take the bed, Louisa would sleep on the floor, and Joe would put two chairs together and sleep on those. If I was lucky there was enough room left over for me to stand behind a curtain and sleep standing up. Cheap fat fuck.

Why did I spend every dime I earned those years on comic books? Well, I lived at home so I didn’t have rent or bills, I didn’t smoke or drink yet, and it wasn’t like I was dating anyone. I had no overhead so Lee got everything I earned in return for the one thing that made me happy. Comics were my heroin, and Lee was content to be my dealer.

Working at Hero comics was probably the best job I ever had. Since Lee rarely came out of the back room, I mostly worked with Joe. Even though Joe was way older than me, we quickly became friends and I discovered that we had a mutual distaste for authority. Joe was funny and patient. He taught me a lot about sales, but it was his friend Paul who would eventually teach me a lot about management. Joe also introduced me to the Patty Melt sandwich at the Worth Diner which was directly across the street from our store, and I STILL go there once or twice a month for that sandwich.

Unfortunately for the staff at Heroland Comics, Joe seemed to be the only one immune to Lee’s outbursts and tantrums. He would often scream at me and berate me in front of customers for not knowing the Silver Surfers real name or some such nonsense, and Joe and I could hear him literally beating the shit out of Louisa and her mother in the back room. Once I even tried to go back there to stop him, but Joe threw an arm around me and told me to stay out of it because Lee had a gun in back and had once pulled it on him for interfering.

Lee mostly left Joe alone, and sometimes it was made obvious as he would go around everyone in the room and yell at us, passing over Joe and not saying shit to him. I asked Joe once why Lee didn’t bother him and he told me that it was because he didn’t give a shit. Joe had told Lee once that if he yelled at him or talked to him like he did everyone else; he’d simply walk out and go work for a competitor. Joe was given many offers over the years to work at other comic book stores because of his extensive knowledge, his loyal customer base, and his friendship with many people in the industry. Joe would often convince writers and artists that he knew in the comic book world to come to Lee’s shop and do signings. This was a huge influx of cash for Lee, so LEE needed Joe a lot more than JOE needed Lee.

During the next 2 years that I busted my ass for Lee, I added another 20 boxes to my collection. I had nearly a complete run of everything from the Amazing Spider Man 1, 15, and 23 up, to the Uncanny X-Men 10 up. I didn’t really read D.C. Comics, but after I collected just about all of the Marvel Comics, I started in on those. D.C. had been around longer, so I knew that collection would take some time. I didn’t mind that at all.

One time Lee told me to come out to his house because he wanted to put all of his personal comic book collection in alphabetical order. I remember imagining that Lee’s house would be this extravagant mansion set high up on hill, and I romanticized his collection being a million times the collection that I had. I was looking forward to seeing the old comics that I didn’t yet have, and seeing the neat rows of boxes lined up on the floor of his basement. That fat stack of cash Lee was so fond of flashing made my imagination flow with the personal wealth I would be introduced to.

However, much like the man himself, Lee’s house was a fucking train wreck. Surrounded by a brown, almost burnt looking and unkempt lawn, it smelled like a desert slaughterhouse before you even walked in. There were no pictures on any of the walls and almost every square inch of floor space was covered in comic books. There were paths, dug out like trenches in World War 1 leading to different areas of the house, and most of the lights were burnt out. It was darker than a vampire’s asshole in that place and the smell almost made being in there unbearable. At one point I had to use the bathroom, and Lee told me it was upstairs on the second floor of the house. The stair case was bowing and nearly caved in from the weight of Lee waddling up and down it. For some reason I imagined the sound of Louisa’s tiny footsteps rumbling quickly down the stairs to greet Lee when he got home, like a circus version of Leave it to Beaver. When I pushed open the bathroom door through the bundles of towels and filthy clothes on the floor, I stepped in and saw that the side of the bathtub had caved in revealing the hollow emptiness of the porcelain. There wasn’t a hint of moisture on the floor, so I immediately assumed that Lee hadn’t showered in at least a week. On the sink, next to the toilet was a Daffy Duck comic book from long ago, with what I hoped were chocolate fingerprints all over the cover, however when I lifted the lid on the toilet to piss…I knew that they weren’t. The shit stains in the toilet climbed up high on the inside of the bowl, and as I lifted the lid to piss, I almost vomited all over myself. The toilet seat was covered in dry crusty poop from front to back. I ran back downstairs and held in my stream until Lee drove me back to the shop.

What kind of person lives like that? The ONLY possessions he had, the only possessions he CARED about were those fucking comic books. It was almost like his house was just a storage unit for that collection. I couldn’t fathom what would drive ANY woman into living there, much less being a cuckold to Lee’s collection. It was nearly enough to put me off comic books all together.

In 1989 when I was only 16, I asked a professional comic book assessor, who was a customer at the store to appraise my books for me. He visited me at my mother’s condo on a Thursday night and after spending about 3 hours going through my collection, grading key issues, and accounting for autographs, he appraised them at 17 THOUSAND dollars. Even I had no idea they were worth THAT much. Today that number would be multiplied by a factor of nearly 10. However, one of the things I learned from Lee is that comic books are ONLY worth what people are willing to pay for them, and in that sense my collection wasn’t worth much at all.

Lee opened up a warehouse in another city that year, and in it he started a mail order business, and his own brand of bags and boards. He spent most of his time there with his employee’s Jim and Liz, who I would come to meet later. Liz was a heavy woman in her mid twenties with long dark curly hair. I could never quite tell if she was attractive or not, but her ass was the size of a giant bean bag. She would sometimes come into the store to drop things off from the warehouse and flirt with Joe, and I’m certain he banged her at some point.



26: The Courtship of Michael’s Father



Sometimes it REALLY pisses me off that my dad was
so good looking and I ended up looking like my mom
By the end of the school year of 1988 I’d met the 3 people who would become my lifelong friends. My brothers. Although Brian was a great friend at first, we’d have a falling out in a few years, and even when I thought his brother Scott would be the best guy I could ever be lucky enough to meet, we had a similar falling out when I turned 20. But Steve, Grey Jim, Pete and I would remain friends up to now. I love those guys, and I realize every day how lucky I am to have such an eclectic and fantastic group of friends to call my family.

My home life was always something of a mess. Although I loved my mother in that way that all boys love their mother’s, I still didn’t feel like her condo was my ‘home’. I felt out of place there because Glenwood was all I knew for so long. I kind of got used to the ‘routine’ of the place, and at home I was finding that there was no routine and little discipline. Sure when I came home late my mother would bitch, but she mostly worked overnight’s and didn’t know what time I got home.

A lot of the things I say about my mother here paint her in a bad light, and I want to be honest. I loved this woman right up until the day she died. She had an alcohol problem, fine, but she owned that and after she got help, she was a different lady. During those first few years out of Glenwood, we argued and yelled at one another because without the consequences that military school had brought upon me for my actions, I frankly became something of an asshole.

As I got older and bigger, my mother’s beatings didn’t hurt so much anymore so I would take one from time to time in the furtherance of my rebellious nature. Eventually her way of dealing with me was to lock me out of the house all together. Making me ‘fend for myself’, as she put it, would make a man out of me.

The few times that we DID have civil conversations, I would ask her questions about my dad, and she would be honest and tell me things about him…about what he did. And then when she would get mad at me, she’d tell me I was JUST like my father. I don’t know why, but this put me into a rage every time she said it. Based on her stories of him, I hated that man and wanted to be nothing like him.

I would see the way my friends interacted with THEIR families, and I hated my mother because we didn’t have the same thing. I know now that it wasn’t her fault and you get back what you put into a relationship with your mother. I spent so much time trying to be a part of my friend’s families that I hardly spent any time trying to foster a relationship with my own.

In a way, I was still mad at her for sending me to military school. Because I was young I never accepted her reasons and I blamed her for every beating I took while I was there. I hated her and I loved her at the same time…so rather than have that constant feeling of being torn apart by those emotions, I spent all the time I could elsewhere. Sometimes my experiences were innocuous, and sometimes I was just up to no damned good. But I always figured if my FATHER was an asshole, maybe I was one too. Even to THIS day, I try not to be like my father…but it’s a hard road not to follow.



27: The Great Myslinski Migration



How 'bout that vest, huh?
As my first high school year ended, I was looking forward to spending the summer with my new friends. However, my jubilation was cut short one night when Aaron’s mother invited Steve and I over to their house for dinner.

Aaron’s Grandmother lived with the Myslinski’s in their house and she was something of a matriarch of the family. She was a spit fire of a woman who had more sense in her old age than most women do in their youth. Whenever you walked into Aaron’s house, you were immediately met by his Grandmother sitting on a couch next to the door in the living room. She always reminded me of Granny from ‘The Beverly Hillbillies’, only not quite as mobile.

Steve took the brunt of her gregarious greetings because she had a crush on him. Every time we came into the house, Granny would beckon Steve over to her under the guise of needing some kind of help…and then grab for his crotch and cackle uncontrollably. You don’t think of a woman of that age as having a crush on high school kids, but this lady had a fucking mouth on her. She would TELL Steve how she was going to ‘make him hers’ one day, and we would all bellow laughter as Steve’s face would light up in embarrassment.

The night Aaron’s mother invited us over just before the summer of 88 however…Granny wasn’t waiting for us in the living room, and as we walked into the house…we could feel that something wasn’t right.

We walked through the living room, and as we passed the basement, we noticed that all the lights were off. It was only 6PM and ever since I’d known Aaron, Mike, and Frank, ONE of them was always down there playing video games, working out, or watching TV. We went on to the kitchen and noticed boxes on the floor with various kitchen equipment in them, and we could hear noises coming from behind the house.

We opened up the patio door and found the entire family sitting in lawn chairs around a blazing fire. The Myslinski’s always had a fire pit in their back yard, but they rarely used it. Everyone was there: Aaron, Frank, Mike, their mother: Tess, Granny, and even their little sister Missy. Missy lived with her father, and as much as I knew Tess loved her, I rarely saw her at the house. They all noticed Steve and I enter the back yard from the porch and a somber silence fell over the group.

As we came closer to the fire, we could see that Tess and Mike had tears in their eyes, and Frank wouldn’t look at me or Steve. We didn’t quite understand what was going on, and then Aaron got up from his chair and silently approached us. He put his arms around us and gave us both a hug. Aaron started weeping, and Steve and I embraced him back and asked him what was wrong with the true concern that youth affords.

Aaron took a step back, and with one hand on each of our shoulders he said “you guys are my best friends…we all love you like family.” Then he hung his head and sniffled. When he raised his eyes to us again, we could see they were red and puffy from crying and before he even said it…Steve and I started crying too. “We’re moving to Florida…this Friday”.

A ton of bricks just landed on my heart. These people were my family. They looked out for me in military school; they took me home with them every time they could. During my eight years at Glenwood, I spent more time in THEIR house than I did at my own mother’s condo. This house, hell this neighborhood was my own, what the hell was I going to do without my family? Without my REAL family?

As I looked around at the people surrounding the campfire through tear filled eyes, I saw them all in a different light. I looked at everyone long and hard and realized that in a few short days…I would never see any of them again. Frank, the older brother that made me proud to know him. A strong and hard future military man who made Aaron and I want to follow in his footsteps. Mike: the responsible smart ass who always had a plan. Because Mike was older than me, at Glenwood he was the NCO of my platoon. In that position he often looked out for me and stopped the other kids from bullying me. Tess: My surrogate mother. Always there to comfort me when I felt the low throbbing heart ache of a mother who didn’t care. Tess knew that my mother was an alcoholic and did her best to make me feel a mother’s love when mine wasn’t there to give it. Granny: the colorful old lady who brought laughter into that house every time we entered it. And finally…Aaron: The brother I never had. My best friend. We shared that friendship that says ‘fuck you’ to uncomfortable silences. We could sit for hours doing nothing and not say a word to each other. We were around each other so much that it was almost like we could feel what the other person was thinking. A kind of ‘twin telepathy’ that best friends share when every corner of their lives is not only compatible…but is also a drug that needs to be taken daily. As Aaron told us the news…I started going through withdrawal immediately.

I’m sure that Steve felt much the same way, and because this was a sad occasion for all of us, neither Steve nor I asked the obvious question: “why”. We simply sat around the fire and talked about the good times we all shared, and I like to think that doing that made the Myslinski’s feel better and more hopeful about their move…and made Steve and I feel closer to them, before they were to travel so far away.



28: The End of an Era



Aaron, Mike, and Frank now
The Myslinski’s rented a U-haul. The plan was that they would move everything into the truck on Friday, and then they would leave first thing on Saturday morning. That Friday night was some of the most fun I’ve ever had with my clothes on…kinda.

After Steve and I helped them move everything into the truck, Tess lit up the bonfire in the back yard and we all began drinking. Now, I’d had alcohol before, but never in the copious amounts that I consumed it that night. We were having a grand send off for my family, and before I knew it I would be drunk for the first time in my life.

We all decided that the fire should be the biggest one any of us had ever seen. We built it up to a grand scale, tee-peeing logs almost as tall as we were. We stuffed the middle with all the kindling and brush we could, and when we lit that son of a bitch, it burned the asses of the gods in heaven. As the night progressed we danced around it, jumped over it, ran through it, and even tossed everything that the Myslinski’s weren’t taking with them into it. The fire jumped high, and coughed out smoke. It hissed it’s embers at us and cracked with defiant laughter. It was like a tough kidnap victim trying to escape, but that fucking fire was OURS, and it wasn’t going anywhere. We stuck our middle fingers up at the elements and dared them to make this anything less than a joyous occasion.

When you’re drunk at a party, people tend to spread out and disappear. You get so engrossed in the conversation you’re having with someone that you don’t even notice when everyone else has gone off to different corners. At some point in the evening, the festivities continued inside while Aaron, Steve and I stayed with the fire.

At around midnight, while we were tossing things into the fire, Frank ran up to us from inside the house, as giddy as I’d ever seen him. He told us Mike had passed out in the basement and we should go fuck with him. We were only too happy to comply. As we tiptoed down the stair trying our hardest to hold in our laughter, we could see mike lying on his side near the couch. His mouth was wide open, and there was a puddle of drool underneath it.

All of us at this point had our hands over our mouths trying unsuccessfully to hold in our snorts and reflexive need to laugh hysterically at what we were about to do. Franks idea was to pull Mike’s pants down enough to reveal his ass. Then we were all to draw on it with Markers that Aaron had in his school bag. Every time Frank would tug on Mike’s pants, he would shift and say something in his sleep. The rest of us were doubling over with internal laughter, we were ready to explode. For the next half hour we Picasso’d Mike from head to toe. Drawing dicks with cum shooting out of their tips on his ass, writing ‘insert dick here’ on his face with an arrow pointing to his mouth, and ‘I like boys’ on his arms.

When the four of us got outside we fucking exploded with laughter, we couldn’t believe how drunk Mike must have been to pass out in THAT deep of a state. Frank was a senior in high school and although he was around Aaron’s house a lot when I was there, he was usually on the phone with a girl, or generally doing things that shouldn’t concern the young such as Steve and me. But that night, we had a moment with Frank that closed any distance there had been before, and he wasn’t done yet.

Because I was young and not well versed in ‘handling my liquor’, eventually I drank myself into a state of depression. It was around 3 AM when the terror of losing my best friend and his family hit me…hard. I don’t recall a lot of what happened because I was so drunk; all I know for sure is that Frank saved my life that night.

I got it into my head that I just didn’t want to live anymore without these people in my life. That’s how strongly I felt about their leaving, and because my mother had told me SO many stories of death in trying to warn me to stay away from the railroad track, I figured that was a good enough place to end my sorrow.

While everyone was in the house ignoring the fire, I hopped the waist high fence of the back yard and mounted the railroad tracks just beyond it. I stood there for a long time with a bottle in my hand waiting to see the single bright eye of death loom at me from the distance. I don’t know how long I stood there, and I truly don’t know if I would have done what I intended to do, but eventually I sat down on one of the wooden cross beams of the track and I guess I passed out.

I was awoken to a furious noise, and I could feel myself falling. I didn’t know what was happening because the deafening sound of fury and rage filled every sense in my body. After that initial jolt of uncompromising loudness, I heard the familiar ‘clickity, clack, clickity, clack’ of the metal wheels of a train. It immediately hit me where I was, and I jumped up wide eyed and scared to death. I was in deep pain all over my body, and my hands were red with blood. I FREAKED the fuck out thinking that a train had just hit me and I somehow survived.

Then I felt a sharp pain in my head and turned around. It was Frank and he just slapped the shit out me from behind. “WHAT THE FUCK?” he shouted incredulously over the noise of the train. I just stared at him. Normally this type of thing would sober you up pretty quick, but I was still buzzing pretty fucking hard and didn’t know what to say.

Apparently, everyone in the house had been looking for me. They even called my mother to see if I’d walked home. Frank came out back to check around the garage and heard a ‘clink’ sound coming from the railroad tracks. I had dropped my bottle on the metal track as I slumped over. Frank looked and saw my silhouette in the light being cast from a back yard on the other side of the tracks and then heard a train coming. Slow at first, but as it grew louder, he knew he had to hurry. He hopped the fence and ran up to the tracks. The light from the train was getting bigger and bigger as the train approached and Frank slapped me and kicked me trying to wake me up. I was as passed out as Mike had been earlier in the basement.

There was no more time to try to wake me up because the train was travelling so fast it would be upon us soon, so he put his hands under my arms and tried to pull me up. Frank always worked out, but even so he had a hard time because I was so fucking fat. With seconds to spare, he put his body into it, and threw us both off the track just as the train came barreling through. We both landed hard on the rocky slope leading up to the tracks and tumbled down to the fence line behind his house.

I actually didn’t find all of that out until AFTER they were in Florida, but fuck did that blow my mind. Frank saved my life like a fucking hero, and I never ever gave him the ‘thank you’ he deserved because I was SO wasted right up until the time they pulled out of their driveway.

As everyone in the house passed out, I sat by the dying embers of the fire until the sun started poking its head out of the east. As the sky went from pitch black to a dark blue, I realized that I was smarter than this. How could I want to kill myself when the answer was so simple? I would just go with them.

Sure it was the delusional thought of a drunken teenager, but my mind worked furiously trying to piece together an argument that I would give to Tess. I had to have a full proof reason if I was going to convince her to take me with them, but every idea I came up with, I easily debunked just as I knew Tess would. Time was fading fast, and it was now less than 2 hours before they would all be awake and getting in that truck to leave forever. Then it hit me: I wouldn’t present an argument at all…I’d simply go with them, without them knowing until we got to Florida.

In the U Haul truck, there was a small metal door that led from the cab of the truck to the back. It slid open, and if there was room, I could probably slip into the back with all their belongings and they’d never know I was there. I climbed into the cab of the truck to see if I could fit through this metal door, and it WAS big enough. However, there was so much furniture and general belongings crammed into the back that it looked like there wouldn’t be enough room. Tess had the key to the padlock that held the back door of the truck secure, so I couldn’t get in that way, so what to do?

I reached into the opening and found that there was JUST enough ‘give’ to move things around a bit. After I adjusted things as best I could, I squeezed into the tiny space I had made. A chair leg lodged itself firmly into my kidney, a lamp bar rested securely under my chin, and my knees were crammed up to my chest, but I had gotten in enough to pull the metal door down and secure myself in uncomfortable darkness. Florida, here I come!

I must have passed out again, because the next thing I knew I awoke with a terrible cramp in my side and bright daylight filling my vision. As my eyes adjusted to the light, the words ‘Insert dick here’ filled my vision. It was Mike, and he was tapping my leg and telling me to wake up. I sleepily said “are we there?”

Mike laughed and helped me out of the hole. Everyone was standing around the truck in amazement that I had squeezed into such a tiny place. Mike told me that when they went to get into the truck, they heard me snoring so loud that they thought a bear was in back.

Tess gave me a teary eyed hug and told me how much she appreciated my dedication to their family that I was willing to journey all the way to Florida in that uncomfortable place. Frank and Mike shook my hand and wished me luck, and then Aaron and I said our goodbyes followed by a hug. They all climbed into the u-haul and drove off, leaving me to fend for myself in a cruel world of family uncertainty, and leaving Steve passed out on the concrete floor of their basement with the words ‘I heart cock’ written on his forehead.



To Be Continued…







Thursday, June 16, 2011

The Television Whisperer

Is television inside ME? Or am I inside television?
One of the criteria I look for in a woman is her Television viewing habits. I don’t ask a lot, and I certainly don’t expect a girl to be into the same things as me, but I DO ask that she OWN a TV. I can’t tell you how many profiles I’ve read in which a woman states ‘I don’t own a TV’. Well fuck you, go buy a TV. If a woman doesn’t own a TV because she’s poor, that I understand. In fact I don’t mind that at all because if she’s poor and doesn’t own a TV, that means she’s more likely to spend her time at my apartment, and I LIKE having a woman around my apartment because it takes the guess work out of when I’ll get my next hand job. Her hand is there, my dork is there, I can get a hand job whenever I want.


But if her TV absentia is some sort of stand like NOT wanting to blow guys because chocking on a cock keeps her from producing carbon dioxide and in turn kills plants? Well that woman is an asshole and she can go ONLY ‘fuck’ the Birkenstock/cargo shorts wearing douchebag who hangs out in trendy coffee bars and sais profound things like ‘I don’t have a kickstand on my bike because it hurts sidewalks’ or ‘I never masturbate’ (SURE you never masturbate).

Watching TV has become not only a hobby for me over the years, but a full blown obsession. I mean really, what the fuck else am I gonna do with my time, go outside and listen to dickheaded birds chirping at one another? I go to work in the morning then come home and watch my stories. It may be a bluray movie on my PS3, it may be teen lesbian asslicking porn on tubesgalore.com, or it may be a program on cable. But anyway you look at it, I’m using my TV. My TV not only acts as a 55 inch computer screen but as a gateway to escapism so I don’t have to think about how much pussy I’m NOT getting.

When I’m trying to meet women online? I’m using my TV to do it. When I’m remodeling my apartment? I’m using my TV to order things off of various websites. And When I throw a party? My TV acts as the DJ. Television has been a prevalent part of my life since I was a little kid and many of the high points IN that life have happened around it. But TV has been around a lot longer than I’ve been watching it.

Believe it or not, Television has actually been around since 1878. The first practical use of Television came from Germany in 1929 when they began the first broadcast Television programming. And if all that isn’t enough to blow your mind, it was actually a Mexican inventor who came up with color TV AND the remote control in 1940. So why do most Americans think that TV was invented in 1948, and color TV was invented in 1966? Simple, because Americans aren’t supposed to know that we didn’t do everything first…that and because most Americans are dumb mother fuckers who watch too much T.V.

The U.K. was selling TV’s from 1928-1934, Germany and France improved on the technology and came up with a TV that showed a slightly better image and sold those from 1933-1938. All though these models were available in the U.S., TV didn’t become a feather in the American cap until the 1939 World’s Fair. Unfortunately, JUST when our imaginations began to take us to the brink of Television insanity, WWII broke out and the war commission forced a halt on ALL TV manufacturing, opting to use those plants for the war effort.

Before the war a 3-8 inch TV set cost anywhere between 125-445 bucks. In today’s market that’s an equivalent to 2000-6500 bucks. Imagine that shit…6 THOUSAND dollars for an 8 inch black and white TV with little to no programming to watch. And these weren’t the cute little 3 inch TV’s you can buy at RadioShack to watch the football on while you’re at work. These were monstrously huge boxes, like your stereo on steroids with a tiny little screen on the front that produced images so convoluted that you couldn’t tell if you were watching a football game or a close up of a man sticking his fist up a pig’s ass.

After the war however, when the manufacturing freeze ended and America had come up with some pretty cool war related technological advances of its own, TV’s came out to the American public with a bang. With increased leisure time, the expansion of Television networks in the west, and lowered prices caused by mass production, Television sets went from being in .05 percent of American homes in 1946 to 55.7 percent in 1954, and NINTY percent in 1962. Between being available at gas pumps, in bars, and in homes, American Television usage is up to 300 percent today.

Initially, television programming was only concerned with filling a few hours each evening. You’d gather around the set with your nuclear family and watch a sporting event for an hour or two and that was it. The rest of your day was spent mowing the lawn or listening to the radio. From the beginning of 1946 Television began to be seen during the day time as well as weekend hours. As air time increased so did the demand for new material. With the exception of sports, variety programs became much more important to primetime viewing.

Televisions began to bring America closer together. People had things to discuss around the water cooler at work, families found that laughing brightened thier days, and news stories from around the globe could be heard days, sometimes hours after they happened instead of weeks or even months. As television made our world seem like a smaller place, it also broadened our veiws of it.

At some point during this time I’m sure that programmers started to become aware of JUST how much influence TV would have on the public and the amount of money they could make by exerting that influence. A whole dictionary of terms came about that YOU’VE never been aware of, but in essence were used to brainwash the public into being more receptive to advertising. These terms included such gems as: Dayparting, theming, stripping, stacking, counterprogramming, bridging, tentpoling, hammocking, crossprogramming and hotswitching.

Since inception in the U.S. in 1940, TV commercials have become one of the most effective, persuasive, and popular method of selling products of many sorts. During the 1940s and into the 1950s, programs were hosted by single advertisers. This, in turn, gave great creative license to the advertisers over the content of the show. Due to the quiz show scandals in the 1950s, networks shifted to the magazine concept introducing commercial breaks with multiple advertisers.

For those of you who don’t know how TV works today, I’ll give you a brief run down. Commercials pay for the programming you watch. Depending on the time and the program, a 30 second block of commercial time will cost an advertiser anywhere from 750 grand to several million dollars. That money is used by producers to fund the shows you watch. It pays for the production of these shows including everything from the writers to the actors. Pay stations such as HBO and Showtime get their money from subscriptions which is why they can show titties and curse. On network TV, since the advertisers are basically paying for the show, they get to determine if you see titties and hear the word ‘fuck’. Apparently most advertisers are afraid that by seeing a tit during a show, it will make you less likely to buy a Gillette razor.

Even though they only have 3 stations in the UK, advertisers are ONLY allowed a total of 9-12 minutes of commercial time per hour. In the US, it’s up to 28 minutes per hour. Another little fact that many people don’t know is that almost every country on the planet EXCEPT the US is not only allowed to curse, show tits, ass, and SOMETIMES even bush in its programs, but in its commercials as well. Part of that reason is because in most other countries viewers’ pay Television tax and programming isn’t so much paid for by advertisers. I like this idea because it takes them the fuck out of the editing room. However this also limits programming. Most series in the UK only run 6 episodes per season, and usually only last 1 or 2 seasons, no matter HOW popular they are. Case in point; the original UK version of The Office. There ARE exceptions to that rule of course like Doctor Who which is the longest running science fiction show ever produced and has been on air in some form or another since 1963.

Watching TV used to be something we did for free to relax after a hard day of installing asbestos or harvesting nuclear power, while we smoked cigarettes on the couch and waited for our wives to finish cooking a roast beast. Commercials were either limited or interwoven into programs that were original, witty, and made us laugh.

Today, Comcast charges me 150 bucks a month for 13 versions of the fucking Style Channel. I try to flip through the limited channel list that I DO have and ANY channel I land on is in the middle of a commercial break about a workout machine shaped like an old man’s walker that can make my abs look like Roman body armor. And if a show IS any good, it gets hamstringed like Achilles because you’ve been thought controlled into thinking that being smart is for losers.

To give you a glimpse of the hypocrisy now devoted to Television, recently the FCC approved a merger between Comcast, universal, and NBC (NBC-U as it's now called). The FCC’s job, besides treating you like an infantile asshole through its mundane and archaic decisions to not allow you to see a tit, is to ensure that mergers like this DON’T happen.

This merger means that cable prices will get higher than Woody Harrelson. Besides COMCAST prices getting higher, satellite prices will spike as well because Comcast now OWNS channels like USA, Bravo, CNBC, MSNBC, Oxygen (who gives a fuck about that one?), syfy, E, Versus, A&E, Biography, The History Channel, The Weather Channel, Lifetime, and 10 sports channels. You either won’t be able to get these on satellite soon OR Comcast will charge Dish and Direct TV an arm and a leg to show them, and in turn Dish and Direct TV will charge YOU an arm and a leg for them. This makes Comcast/NBC/Universal a monopoly, and monopolies are fucking illegal. The FCC has been around since 1934 and their mission statement is as follows: "to make available so far as possible, to all the people of the United States, without discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, or sex, rapid, efficient, Nation-wide, and world-wide wire and radio communication services with adequate facilities at reasonable charges." Well fuck you FCC, because you just took a big dump on your mission statement.

Because Television has been around SO long, its influence is taken for granted. We don’t realize or take into consideration the affect TV has on the country, especially now that it’s so prevalent in American homes. This merger will not only harm competition, but diversity of the media marketplace AND even our democracy. The new company will be able to limit the voices you here which will affect your decisions to elect representatives, and it will prioritized NBC shows making it even harder to find alternatives on TV.

Now, that’s all well and good and you’re probably thinking to yourself “Who gives a fuck; I’m watching “The Biggest Loser”. Well, here’s the kicker; Even though the FCC is supposed to safeguard YOUR interests by not letting this happen, a woman named Meredith Attwell Baker decided in March of 2011 that the merger between Comcast/Universal/NBC was taking too long and pushed it through. On June third she quit the FCC and took a job at Comcast as the senior vice president of governmental affairs. Let’s take a moment to pull the dick out of our asses and wipe the poop off of it….

WHAT THE FUCK DID SHE JUST DO?

She pushed through a merger that wouldn’t have happened, BECAUSE IT'S ILLEGAL, less than 30 days before quitting and taking a job with the very company she approved the creation of! Not only did she just FUCK you, but she got paid well to do it! PLUS, this bitch was so excited to be fucking you that she didn’t even wait until AFTER her commission with the FCC was over on June 30th to announce her new job. She just up and fucking quit 27 days before she was done. That’s some bullshit right there. I’m not a politician, but I have to imagine that’s something to be frowned upon, especially since Obama HIMSELF gave her that job. Not only did she make YOU look like an asshole, she made the President look like an asshole, and when you make the President look like an asshole? You make America look like an asshole…which is DOUBLE asshole on you. Why isn’t this bitch being put in front of a firing squad?

Entertainment is a big part of our lives and without TV we wouldn’t have ACCESS to that entertainment. You wouldn’t know what movies are out because there’d be no trailers. Without TV most of us would just say fuck it and commit suicide. Imagine how much life would suck if there was no entertainment in it. You wouldn’t come home from a hard 13 hour day at your shit job and say “I think I’ll go for a spry walk to liven up my day!” No, you’d put a fucking shotgun in your mouth and say “Let’s get this over with”.

The cost of your entertainment has steadily risen over the years making it harder and harder to achieve a good old fashioned escapism boner. So when I see a bitch like Meredith Attwell Baker storm trooping her way to the top by marching her blitzkrieg Nazi ass political and American backstabbing troops up my ass…I get a little miffed. Let me be perfectly clear here: WHAT MEREDITH ATTWELL BAKER DID WAS ILLEAGAL! If she’s not in jail by the end of this fucking year, I’m annexing my apartment from America and going Michigan Militia on this country.

Let me pull out my soapbox for a moment here…when people in Government, not only DO things like this, but get away with it? It takes away from the power of authority of the WHOLE government and makes it a joke. The next time I get pulled over for going 65 in a 20 and the cop wants to give me a ticket? I’m just gonna say ‘Meredith Attwell Baker’ and screech off. The next time I get a letter in the mail saying that I’m under audit by the Department of Internal Revenue? I’m just gonna send them a letter back that says ‘Meredith Attwell Baker’ and continue not paying my taxes. And the next time I ‘accidentally’ put my penis in a girl’s asshole while fucking her doggy style vigorously and she turns around and Sais ‘what the fuck?’…Meredith Attwell Baker.

But as pissed off as I AM, and as YOU should be about Meredith Attwell Baker…when I jump in the ‘way back’ machine with my buddy Mr. Peabody, I can remember a simpler time of Television.

Back in the late 70’s, before I was shipped off to military school and when my mother was at the height of her alcoholism, Television was the only friend I had. Like many parents even today, my mother used our TV set as a babysitter to shut me up and keep me quiet. It didn’t matter how much I screamed, kicked, or acted out…once she dropped me in front of that 22 inch Zenith color TV? My eyes would go saucer wide and my jaw would drop down and rest on my chest.

At first I would ONLY watch cartoons. I couldn’t sit through the one hour dramas like she could, and when she was watching Dallas, I would play with my Star Wars Action Figures. For a time that was fine with her as her main goal was to keep me quiet in the morning so she could sleep in. But as I got older and wouldn’t go to bed at 6 anymore, she tried to spark my interest in shows other than Tom and Jerry and The Flintstones. Much like advertisers, she baited me with brainwashing techniques.

I remember coming home from school one day and finding gifts on the dining room table with my name on them. It wasn’t Christmas, and it wasn’t my birthday so I was a bit confused. My mother came over and told me that she thought I would like them. In the boxes were a Dukes of Hazard lunch box and a General Lee toy car. I introduced the General Lee into my Star Wars playing habits, and the next night I sat in the living room and watched The Dukes of Hazard. She had me. I was hooked, not so much by Daisy Duke but by the fat hammy Boss Hog, the silly and always angry Roscoe P. Coltrane, and the bumbling yet always helpful Ennis, who eventually got a spinoff show of his own, although it was short lived.

After that I started watching The Incredible Hulk, The Fall Guy, and The Greatest American Hero (which I’m currently writing a remake of that I hope to sell to a studio.) The funny thing is that as enthralled as I was in these shows back then, when I try to watch them now? I can barely sit through them. Not because I don’t like them, but because we are guided by the relevance of the time we live in. What was acceptable to the palette in ’77 may leave a bitter taste in our mouths in 2011 because we grow accustomed to the way stories are told within our time. Stories were slower back then and relied on acting OVER special effects and although that was enough for us THEN, now it just makes the old shows seem boring.

As I got older and the 80’s landed on America, my mother got our first PAY cable service which was called ON-TV. ON-TV consisted of TWO channels; a movie channel and Sports vision. Launched in 1977, ON-TV was what they called a ‘scrambled UHF’ service because they broadcasted over normal airwaves. This was what we had before cable. ON-TV introduced me to a whole fucking world of movies that I was A.) Too young to watch and probably fucked me up for life, and B.) I wouldn’t have access to otherwise. On-TV was the first to strike up a deal with George Lucas to show Star Wars on Television and THAT was a big get for me.

When my mother began working the midnight shift at cook county jail, I began staying up as late as I wanted. One night as I was flipping through the TV guide, I noticed that ON-TV was airing an animated program at 11 called Heavy Metal. Since I still liked cartoons, I decided I’d stay up and watch it. I was 10 years old. Everything that YOU hate about me, and everything that you like about me can be traced back to that fateful night in 1983 when my young mind saw things that even as an ADULT…still fuck with my head. Robots fucking flesh and blood hookers, Hero’s made to look like assholes and a burnt and destroyed Starship Enterprise made me have nightmares that STILL haven’t diminished some 30 years later. I would suggest to you that if you’ve never SEEN Heavy Metal? Go get it and imagine being 10 years old and watching it with no adult supervision. After that though? Everything was fair game.

I began watching soft core porn at 2AM (Young Lady Chatterley being my first), Dawn of the Dead, the Scarecrow, and Twilight Zone the Movie. I couldn’t get enough of Television.

But Saturday morning was still my favorite. I would sit in front of the set watching cartoons like The Snorks, Mr. T , and Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends while playing with my legos and He-Man action figures. I had a tall kitchen garbage container FILLED to the top with legos and on Saturday morning? I’d dump that shit out on the carpet waking the sleeping giant that was my mother to the loud crash of thousands of pieces of molded plastic spilling across her floor. She would throw open the door to her cave and come pounding through the apartment at me. ‘WHY DON’T YOU GO OUTSIDE?’ she would ask in a deafeningly loud tone, to which I would answer ‘my leg hurts’, or ‘my tummies upset’, or ‘I just dumped out my legos and it’ll take me 4 hours to clean them up’. She’d yell at me to shut the fuck up then and storm back off to her cancer den to finish sleeping off her drunk from the night before.

The truth was that I had a terrible secret which kept me from going outside…Jennifer Lurch. A monstrous ogre who would kick my ass as soon as I stepped out of my front door. Sometimes I could actually see her breath fogging up the first floor window of our apartment building like some Jurassic Fat Chick in a Spielberg flick. Jennifer Lurch is one of the MANY reasons for my not wanting to date fat chicks now, keeping me ‘free and single’ as hot chicks don’t want to date ME.

Lurch was an oafish woman whose size and stature were not unlike the Kraken in Clash of the Titans mixed with a Jabba the Hutt thyroid problem, add some ‘attitude of Marge Shot’, and a pinch of ‘the smell of dog shit and mayonnaise spread all over a 5 day old corpse in the desert in Arizona in June of a man who dropped dead after running a marathon’ and you’ve got a pretty clear picture of the woman I’m talking about.

Walking to the bus stop when I was 11 was a race to avoid Jennifer Lurch. So I spent most of my non-school activities indoors in front of the TV. Television had become, NOT just a way for my mother to control me, but a way for me to avoid human beings…because even at 11 I didn’t like you that much. Because my mother wasn’t around, the Television had raised me for that past 5 years and I found myself with a NEW family. As I moved from cartoons and the 1 hour drama and then into sitcoms, my TV mom became Meredith Baxter from Family Ties (Turns out mom just came out of the closet), my TV dad became Max Write from Alf, my TV brother became Todd Bridges from Diff’rent Strokes (The show that taught me how to use an apostrophe in a word allowing me to create such gems a ‘cous’n Hemp’n’ and ‘Act’on J’m’) and my TV Butler became Christopher Hewitt of Mr. Belvedere.

Streaks on the China, my ass!
Mr. Belvedere always had a lesson for me. I can remember in one episode Mr. Belvedere taught little Kevin the importance of standing up to the bully (I think EVERY 80’s sitcom dealt with this theme, my fave being Andrew Dice Clay as ‘The Gooch’ on Diff’rent Strokes), and in the end Kevin took Mr. Belvedere’s advice and he and the bully became friends. The episode ended with Mr. Belvedere and the Owen’s family all huddled around Kevin and his bully all smiling that Jag-off 80’s sitcom smile that said ‘See? Everything is always going to be alright.’

The Monday after I saw the ‘bully’ episode of Mr. Belvedere I cautiously stepped outside of my mother’s apartment for school and slowly walked to the bus stop looking from side to side expecting a Jennifer Lurch ambush. Sometimes she’d just drop out of the sky and land on me like a piano. It was winter time and it had snowed the night before, so there was that ‘fresh snow’ quiet going on. Couple that with my fear and I could hear a dog shit from 3 miles away. Up ahead of me to the right, I could see great steam engine puffs of smoke coming from the corner of a brick building from six feet up. As I inched closer I could hear the thunderous breathing of a monster that had a throat full of m&m’s, Hawaiian punch, and the engine of a ’72 Challenger with no muffler.



I stopped and called out to her. ‘JENNY’. The breathing stopped for a moment, and she came out from behind the building. She slowly walked out to the side walk with that ‘bully’ smile and stood in front of me like a typhoon of fat and nasty. I walked up to her, confident in my lesson from the night before, and stood a foot away. I looked up at her and through the fog coming out of her mouth and huge nostrils, stared into those beady dead eyes. “If you want to beat me up every day, I understand. You need to do that in order to feel important. But I can be your friend and make you feel important THAT way too” I said paraphrasing Kevin Owens speech from Mr. Belvedere.

I’ve gotten my ass handed to me often in life, but I can’t remember a pummeling like I received on this particular day. Jennifer, first, punched me in the nose. This not only immediately made me cry (a punch to the nose will do that to anybody), but as white stars filled my vision, I fell backwards on the ground and cracked my skull on the sidewalk. The next thing I remember was feeling my ribs being crushed as she mounted me and started repeatedly punching me in the face. Luckily the bus came along and the driver came running out and pulled her off of me. But after that? I can tell you that I know more about TV and pop culture than most people will FORGET in a lifetime as I didn’t leave the house for 2 fucking years. Fuck you Jenny Lurch. And fuck you Mr. Belvedere for getting my ass kicked with bad advice.

At 13, my mother finally got fed up with me being in her house all the time and shipped me off to military school. As you’ve read in some of my other stories, this was not a pleasant time for me. I was forced into interacting with other human beings, which in most cases just led to me getting my ass kicked by men instead of Jenny Lurch. The only solace I found at Glenwood Military School for Boys was on Sunday mornings. On Saturday morning the bullies had control of the Television so I was forced into watching what THEY wanted to watch, and on weeknights I was made to study while the house parents watched TV. But Sunday morning? I would get up at 5 AM before anyone else in the cottage was up and watch the old black and white Superman show, Underdog, Tennessee Tuxedo, and The Jackson Five. Sure these were the ‘Aldi’ of cartoon blocks and didn’t compare to Saturday morning cartoons, but they were what was on and nobody could tell me not to watch them.

It was during this time that my fascination with movies came into play simply because they were more available to me. Saturdays I was allowed to go off campus to the movie theatre and Friday nights our dean would show movies in the library of the school. But on the rare occasion that I DID go home for the weekend, I would stay up all night on Friday watching British programming on channel 11. This was another huge influence which inspired my love of comedy. Channel 11 would run 2 hour blocks of Monty Python’s Flying Circus, followed by Benny Hill, and finally The Dave Allen Show. John Cleese taught me how to be a smart ass, Benny Hill taught me slapstick, and Dave Allen was just a cool Irish mother fucker who always had a drink in his hand.

It was because of Monty Python that I began getting my ass kicked less and less. I found that by being a smart ass I could confuse bullies. And a confused bully can be manipulated into not beating your ass…or at least his confusion can give you a good head start when running away from him. Some kids would rely on slap stick to entertain themselves, but when it’s not done in front of an audience? Slap stick makes you look like a retard.

TV has been on in the background in every event of my life. The first time I saw someone get arrested, they had spray painted ‘Who shot J.R.’ in huge red letters in the hallway of my mother’s condo. The first time I made out with a girl? Madonna’s Like a Virgin video was playing on MTV (back when MTV played video’s). The first time I went to county jail? These hard ass prisoners, including a guy with a fresh bullet wound watched Smallville like it was a religion. The night before I started my first job, my friend Steve and I watched the pilot episodes of The Simpsons and Married with Children. The first time I cried at a TV show? Monroe had just gotten raped by 2 fat chicks in the back of a van on Too Close for Comfort. That’s not a joke by the way; they did that as a serious episode. The first time I got laid? The fifth season of House had just started. And the first time a TV show TRULY disappointed me? Fucking Sledge Hammer.

Sledge Hammer was a parody of the Dirty Harry movies. A cop with a big gun and a bigger ego who was always on the verge of being suspended. He fucked everything up and his female partner ended up solving all the crime while he got all the glory. The show was so popular that Sledge Hammer even had a guest appearance in a Spider Man comic. Well the second season ended with Sledge blowing up the whole city. Just him standing amid the rubble with a bazooka and tattered clothes and an ‘I can’t believe you caught me fucking a pumpkin’ look on his face. Across the bottom of the screen: To Be Continued. I’m STILL fucking waiting for the third season, and that was 1986.

This wasn't the ONLY show that wholly disappointed me. The last episode of Magnum P.I. did it too. They ended the show with Magnum dying. I thought, even as a kid, that this was truly an inspired ending. It was bold, well written, and it made me cry like Ryan Seacrest getting a bikini wax. Well several months later, pandering to pussified audiences everywhere, they made ANOTHER fucking 'last' episode of Magnum, which started with him waking up from his 'death' and solving his own murder. Fuck you Magnum.

This patronizing to the lowest common denominator forced me to learn some truths about television AND life. People don’t want to watch things that make them think. The droves of masses out there want to be entertained with stupid Americas funniest Home Movies humor which consists of an hour of babies being kicked in the nuts. They want to see reality shows which teach them that not ONLY is it OK to act like an asshole, but there are NO consequences for that assholery. If there were ANY justice on this planet, everyone from The Jersey Shore would get 2 in the back of the head, and every Kardasian would be ordered by a judge to have their uteri removed.

Now with insipid ‘talent’ shows pumping the American audience full of has-been’s trying to make a comeback, never-was’s trying to become famous, and viewers trying to forget how stupid they are, the television landscape looks like a close up photo of my ball sack; a vast and awe inspiring desert landscape with the occasional lilting redwood tree and a giant chocolate covered clear gumdrop, which upon closer inspection is actually a skin tag with a bit of poop on it.

The entertainment value of this programming is NOT in its content but in the lunchboxes, karaoke machines, t-shirts, and albums it sells to you. I don’t mean to sound like an old fogey, but I remember when you ACTUALLY had to be talented to be famous.

When a talented entertainer was admired, that admiration would INSPIRE you to become more than what you were. John Cleese made me want to be funny, Magnum P.I. made me want to be cool and grow a mustache, and Jesse from Full House made me want to get laid. But one thing these shows DIDN’T make me do was sit around and think “Hmmmm, instead of going to college and making something of myself I think I’ll start a comedy troupe, find a black friend who flies a helicopter, and live off of my brother while playing guitar and fucking more women than Olestra while my twin nieces sleep in the room next to me.” As much TV as I watched, I never took it that seriously.

Now some dickhead, who you can barely hear over the ‘house band’ which is LESS talented than the dickhead, screeches out a song from a record that nobody bought in the 70’s and this inspires children to think that THEY have talent. I hate to tell you this…but your children DON’T have talent. In fact they’re just little asshole versions of you that will grow up and work at the Wal-Mart because while THEY were chasing the dream of having a fat Mexican woman, a 75 year old rock star, and a bloated black guy who looks like he lost all of his weight after having a kidney infection tell them that they don’t suck, the kids whose parents actually CARED about them, made them go to college or at LEAST made them watch the History Channel instead of American Idol.

Then there’s the reality shows. A puffy fat midget chick with a voice that sounds like she smokes 17 packs of cigarettes a day with a mouthful of pop rocks while getting arrested for drunkenly stumbling about a beach at 10AM and telling cops to go fuck themselves, and makes more money than religion because of it, gets the admiration of your children and then I have to put up with your over confident 12 year old telling ME to fuck off while YOU sit back and think that’s ‘cute’. Well fuck you AND fuck your 12 year old too. The Jersey Shore is to television what The Challenger was to Space Shuttle launches.

Why do I care about your children? Because YOUR children are the future of this country AND the future of the entertainment industry that I care so much about. It doesn’t MATTER what kind of asshole you are, your children are a canvas and only YOU have control over what gets painted on that canvas. When you don’t teach them that failure is a part of growing up, that fame is something that happens NOT something that is chased, and that there are consequences for acting like an asshole? One of two things will happen; they’ll end up getting cement bruises on their knees from blowing guys in Cook County Jail after trying to rob a liquor store to get enough money to go to the American Idol tryouts in Light My Fart Arkansas because YOU didn’t tell them that they have less talent than a one armed man in a clapping contest OR, they’ll direct the ‘Jersey Shore: The Movie’ film that will inevitably get made. Either eventuality should be UN-fucking-acceptable to you as a parent. So yeah, why the fuck DO I care more than you? Teach your children some fucking humility.

Another reason I care is because while people are watching this stupid, stupid, shit, shows that I watch, which are ACTUALLY intelligent and well written get the axe. ‘Arrested Development’, ‘Deadwood’, ‘Rome’, hell, even ‘The Family Guy’ got cancelled 3 fuckin’ times before ‘The Bachelor’ mentioned in an episode that HE liked it, and suddenly it became acceptable.

Over the years I’ve become something of a Television Whisperer. Not because I talk to my T.V…that would be crazy, but because I listen to it. I can hear the faint chirping of crickets when a show that TRIES to be funny by pouring canned laughter all over your pajama bottoms simply isn’t and will get the axe. I can hear the low moans and deep inhales when a show has captured an audience through intrigue. And I can hear my own heart beat faster as I realize a show that SHOULD be cancelled, won’t be cancelled and vice versa.

I get a lot of shit on my facebook page from people who say that I watch too much TV. The truth is that I don’t really watch all that much TV. There are certain shows that I never miss, but when you consider the AMOUNT of programming available, my viewing habits occupy just a small percentage. This past year however, I have found myself overcompensating for the loss of a particular favorite.

There are times in all of our lives when we tend to overcompensate; especially when we lose someone or something we love. When my mother passed away, I drank myself into a fucking stupor for 2 years and spent every penny she left me. When the love of my life Jackie cheated on me, I fucked everything that moved (and some that didn’t) thinking that I was somehow getting her back. In that case I even LITERALLY fucked a melon. Not a WATER melon, even I wouldn’t give my dick that much credit, but a regular old melon. I cut a hole in it, warmed it in the microwave for 40 seconds, and as I drunkenly throttled it between my crotchel area and the kitchen counter, I sobbed “I’m cheating on YOU Jackie with a melon, I’m cheating on YOU Jackie with a melon” at it while emphasizing the YOU with every thrust. Got a clear picture of that in your head? Good, let’s move on. The point is that the reality of overcompensating didn’t hurt anyone but me, the women I used…and that slut melon.

Now that I’m a bit older, I’ve found myself overcompensating again, at a loss that was at LEAST equal to that of losing my mother or Jackie. Before I tell you what that loss is, let me first preface it by saying that mom and I didn’t get along all that well…and fuck Jackie. Humorless cunt.

Last year the TV show Lost came to an abrupt and somewhat unsatisfying end. In a world of ever shitty, lazy, implausible, and hammy entertainment, Lost stood out as a show that not only knew how to spin a fucking yarn, but it knew how to keep asses in the seats.

There were a lot of ‘theory’ based web sites concerning the show Lost out there, and there were a lot of douche bag back seat drivers and Monday morning quarterbacks pitching in their two cents as to what was going on in the show. Most of these ass clowns had TiVo’s filled with ‘High School Reunion’ and ‘Biggest Loser Couples’ episodes. Frankly, MOST if not all of the retarded ass theories and half assed criticism’s of the show were so far off that they make me want to hook my testicles up to Dale Earnhardt Jr’s car battery while he’s revving up his engine before a race. So to all of you who talked about Lost with the same enthusiasm that a Domino’s delivery driver has when he delivers a ten dollar buy one get one free shit pizza deal to a an apartment in the projects, fuck you.

I’ve watched and studied every episode of Lost on bluray like I’m watching the Zapruder film. Sometimes I wake up at night going ‘back…and to Hurley’s left…back…and to Hurley’s left…back…and to Hurley’s left’. I’ve not only recorded every episode, but I’m such a fucking whack job that I RE-edited them so as to be linear. If you didn’t watch the show, you should know that the story didn’t follow a specific time-line. Every episode was laced with flash backs, flash forwards, and the final season introduced us to what I called ‘the flash fuck-ways’.

If you didn’t watch Lost, I completely understand. It was a huge investment of time and thought. You may have kids, wives, sowing circles, scrapbooking clubs, and ‘How to Hide a Hooker’s Corpse’ learning annex classes and just didn’t have the energy to add one more thing to your day-to-day struggles. But I would suggest to you that the energy you put into the show will be significantly rewarded through it’s thought provoking and well crafted story, it’s excellent cinematography, and it’s well acted/déjà-vu/conspiracy-laced/coincidental/holy-shit-I-can’t-believe-they-killed-Charlie/what-the-hell-is-going-on/fucked-upded-ness. You got a big screen and a bluray player? Get that shit on bluray.

For those of you who didn’t watch the show because you thought it was going to be stupid and you asked sarcastic questions like ‘why is that fat guy so fat after being on an island for 6 years’, and ‘How come nobody rescues them?’. Fuck you, we didn’t want you to watch anyway because you’re stupid…and ugly…and your mother dresses you funny.

Now that Lost has ended, I find myself with a humongous hole in my television viewing catalogue. Other than one or 2 shows, I can’t remember the last time I changed my entire fucking schedule around to make time for a program every week. Fuck TiVo, and fuck DVR, there’s just something about watching a show when it actually AIRS that I like. Maybe it’s the comradery of knowing millions of other fans like me are glued to their sets. Or maybe it’s that feeling I used to get when waiting for Aerosmith concert tickets. I’d always get to Carson Pirie Scott at 3 in the morning, assuring my first place stature in the line and KNOWING that because o f my hard work and diligence I’d be the first to get those tickets. Watching something live gives me a similar feeling because I know that while other people are waiting to read the paper the next day for the reviews…I got that knowledge first.

Whatever the case may be, I loved Lost, I loved the writing, the acting, the production value, the directing, the editing, and the soundtrack. And now that it’s gone I feel like I’ve lost a good friend. (SUCH a fucking loser)

Were all the questions that I’d come to ask over the years answered? No, but enough explanations were given to satisfy me. During the last episode my apartment was filled with about 20 likeminded Lost fans, and I can tell you that when Jack died at the end? We were all crying like Tammy Fay Baker at an Oz fest. Is it just me? Or was Jack and Locke running towards each other on the cliff in the rain enough to satisfy your Lost thirst for closure from ALL 6 seasons? That was the most intense good vs. evil shit I’ve seen since Indiana Jones took on the tank in The Last Crusade.

God knows TV has tried to fill the void that Lost left behind with shit like Fast Forward and The Event, both of which are the failed abortions of a network reaching for past glory. I watched every shitty episode of BOTH of those shows along with a myriad of others in an attempt to gap the empty timeslot that Lost has left in my heart.

However, much like trying to kick a crack addiction, these methadone suppositories might get rid of the fever and night terrors for a little bit, but at the end of the day I still turn off my TV feeling like Jeff Conaway. So, with Lost gone from the schedule, I’ve tried to compensate for my loss by attempting to find SOMETHING new that could inspire me with that same feeling of satisfaction. But most of them just sucked.

The Defenders: James Belushi and the fat kid from Stand By Me played defense attorneys whose clients were ALWAYS innocent, and who fought pharmaceutical companies to win lots and lots of money for retarded kids. Not bad, had some hot chicks in it, but I could FEEL them reaching through my TV, grabbing me by the shoulders, and screaming in my face “WHY WON’T YOU CRY YOU MORON, THIS IS SAPPY, SAPPY STUFF”. The show felt like Matlock 2011. (Cancelled)

The Event: I have a ritual that I’ve been doing since I was in my early 20’s. It started as something that Action Jim and I would do together, but since he doesn’t live in the state anymore, I’ve been doing it myself for a few years. And no, it’s not fucking Action Jim in the butt. Whenever I hear or read that a celebrity has passed away, I stop at a bar on my way home from work, order one drink and toast to his or her career. (I have a reserved ‘floating’ day off scheduled for when Joe Don Baker passes). John Ritter was no exception to this ritual. I genuinely liked that guy. One of the criteria I look for in an actor before I become a fan is whether or not that person seems like someone I’d like to have a drink with at a bar. Not in a gay way, I judge women on this as well, and there were TWO actors that, it always seemed to me, would be fun to have a drink with; Jeff Goldblum (Transylvania 6-5000 Goldblum, NOT Jurassic Park Goldblum) and John Ritter. I’ve probably seen everything Ritter has done at one point or another in my life and although there’s WAY too much filmography to mention here, Three’s Company was always a favorite of mine. His movies No Ordinary Hero, about an actor who plays a super hero and decides to BECOME that super hero in real life (TV movie), Real Men with Jim Belushi, Skin Deep with that awesome glow in the dark condom scene, and Problem Child were some of my favorites as a kid. As my love of movies grew in the 90’s, Ritter starred in some of my favorites of that decade including Stay Tuned which was a shit film, but I still liked it, and Sling Blade. His last movie was Bad Santa which was the best holiday movie released since Planes, Trains, and Automobiles. Although I laughed along with his friend Howard Stern at Jimmy Kimmel when he cried while announcing Ritter’s death on his show, I felt his sorrow. So when Lost left the air and NBC announced that there was a NEW show called The Event starring John Ritter’s kid? I decided to give it a shot, and although Jason Ritter WAS good on the show? He picked the wrong show to start out with because this was a monstrous piece of horse shit that tried to be as convoluted as Lost, but without any heart. Thankfully The Event has been cancelled, but I DO hope to see Jason Ritter in something more deserving of his lineage AND personal talent. (Cancelled)

Detroit 1-8-7: First of all, this was NYPD Blue…but in Detroit. Hello, can SOMEONE in Hollywood at least attempt to have an original thought? This was SO much NYPD Blue that the Lieutenant from NYPD Blue, James McDaniel, was even in it. Only he played a detective. I don’t know if a rule like this exists, but it should; if you have played a character that had the rank of Lieutenant for 8 years…you should NOT be allowed to be demoted to detective when you take another role. It’s just fucking off putting. The only good thing about that show was Christopher from the Sopranos. Michael Imperioli was my absolute favorite on the Sopranos, and I predicted great things from him as a director, an actor, AND a writer. He wrote a bunch of YOUR favorite episodes of the Sopranos, and you probably don’t even know it. Hell, he made his bones playing Spider in Goodfellas. You remember Spider; He’s the kid Pesci shot in the foot because he didn’t get his drinks fast enough. Imperioli got his revenge though. He wrote an amazing scene in the Sopranos where he goes into a bakery to get pastries and the kid behind the counter takes too long to wait on him, AND disrespects him…so he shoots him in the foot. Brilliant inside Hollywood writing. Anyway, BIG fan of Imperioli…NOT a big fan of his current career path. (Cancelled)

The Cape: Oofa. This show reminded me of my Cousin Tom. Tom was always the bright one in the family. His parents would always talk about his unlimited potential and the bright future that lay ahead of him. Whenever I fucked up in school or got arrested for fucking Melons (what? I didn’t say that the after Jackie Melon was my first. Sheesh) my mother would throw Tom in my face like a moist jizz towel. “You’re cousin TOM doesn’t get into trouble. You’re cousin TOM doesn’t fuck Melons, You’re cousin TOM doesn’t smoke weed naked while wearing a hockey mask in the teachers’ lounge.” Always with the fucking Tom. Then, one bright morning Tom decided to rob a liquor store. No one to this day has figured out why, he just walked in wearing a blazer and an Izod shirt, pulled a gun on the owner, took the money from the register, and as he walked out…the owner shot him in the spine and now he’s a quadriplegic who spends all of his free time shitting himself every half hour like clockwork and wearing a bib when he eats in a prison hospital. That was The Cape. Full of potential but going nowhere fast. (Cancelled)

Human Target: I’ve never read the comic book, but I don’t see how that show could have BEEN a fucking comic book. There was nothing super heroee about it. Watching Mark Valley smirk for an hour every week was enough to make me shove a 2 liter of Dr. Pepper up my ass. This guy is the Larry Storch of the 2010’s. His acting was stiffer than the blanket I had during the first week that I learned to jerk off. Then there was Chi McBride as Winston, the over angered 80’s cop movie boss who was given the daunting task of being the shows 300 pound black comic relief. His first acting job was in Revenge of the Nerds III…and I don’t think he’s learned a thing about comedy since he did that movie. Finally we round out the cast with the ONLY reason there was to watch this show: Jackie Earl Haley. Haley started off playing bit parts on various TV shows in the early 70’s, including The Partridge Family, before he graduated to films as the tough ass, dirt bike riding, smoking star player in The Bad News Bears. He did a shitload of stuff after that, but I never heard of him until he played Rorschach in The Watchmen…and he was fucking great. Then he played Freddy in the shitty Nightmare on Elmstreet remake, before going on to play Guerero on Human Target. I have to imagine that Haley had something to do with the evolution of his character on that show because none of the other characters ever grew or evolved. Like a 2nd grader in a play, they just rhythmically recited the diatribe that they memorized from the script. But Haley came alive as his character. He continued to grow, he constantly surprised you and you can’t help but love that his character was a KNOWN torturer who was feared by every criminal in the city, you can’t help but relate to the care and attention he put into his Cadillac which he affectionately called ‘The Aldo’, and one of the biggest ‘FUCK YEAH’ moments I’ve seen since Superman II came when Guerrero overheard a CIA agent say that he was going to use Guerro’s kid as leverage. Not only were you surprised to find out that Guerrero HAD a kid, but he then snuck into the building, killed EVERY CIA agent IN it, before torturing the guy he overheard and blowing him up in a car saying “sorry dude…but that’s my kid, you understand” as he walked away. They should have just gotten rid of Valley and McBride and called the show Guererro.

I guess I should also talk about some shows that didn’t suck from the past year:

The Ricky Gervais Show: This is an HBO show which has taken conversations from Ricky Gervais’s British pod cast, and put them to animation. It started off as just 3 animated characters sitting in a room bullshitting for a half hour, and THAT was fucking great. But now, the show has morphed into Gervais and Merchant, who created The Office together, just ridiculing and harassing the 3rd guy…Karl Pilkington. It’s seriously some of the biggest guffaws I’ve ever given over to a TV show. Apparently Pilkington was the producer ON the podcast, much like Bobabooey on Howard Stern. One day Gervais asked him into the studio to get his input on something, and his response was so mortifyingly stupid…he’s been on the air with the other 2 ever since. Gervais even paid for, what he refers to as ‘The most expensive practical joke ever pulled’, when he sent Karl Pilkington on a round the world adventure to the seven wonders. This became a series on the British network Skyy 1 called An Idiot Abroad. It recently aired on an America travel channel, and is seriously one of the most shit yourself funniest things I’ve ever seen. Imagine the person in your life who LEAST deserves a trip to the Seven Wonders of the World. Just a depressive asshole who you KNOW won’t appreciate the beauty, the wonder, and the awe of these amazing places…and then send them on that trip and film the fuck out of it. It is HYSTERICAL. (Ricky Gervais: Renewed, An Idiot Abroad: Renewed)

Californication: I know this one isn’t new, but since Lost AND Deadwood have left the air, this is the most well written show on TV. Dochoveney plays a complete asshole who is in a constant struggle to find a relationship with his ex wife and his daughter, while at the same time living the life of a drunken, high, constantly fucking the hottest girls on the planet teenager. There’s no way for me to properly sum up the show for you, or to paint it in a light that will do the writing justice…but I can’t recommend it enough. (Even though the last season had a completely satisfying SERIES finale, the show has once again been picked up and will continue with a 6th season)

Justified: There are a few actors whose movie careers I’ve followed simply because they stood out to me in the television series they starred in. First was Will Arnett. I fucking loved this guy as the ‘always seeking approval’ magician brother on Arrested Development. After Fox cancelled that show (idiots), I can remember making my cousin go see Arnett’s first feature film with me; Let’s Go To Prison. Jesus, what a shit movie. Nothing pisses me off more than when a GREAT actor does a shit role. Arnett continued that trend with The Brothers Solomon and his latest television flop; Running Wilde (cancelled). However, he HAS redeemed himself in an IFC original show with fellow Arrested Development cast member David Cross, called The Increasingly Poor Decisions of Todd Margaret. I think Arnett does best when he can curse. The OTHER actor whose career I’ve followed closely since he starred in my all time favorite Television show Deadwood is Timothy Olyphant. Much like Arnett, Tim’s first film out of the gate was a huge piece of shit; Hitman. His next one though is one of my favorites of the 2000’s as the bad guy in Die Hard 4. Now Olyphant headlines a new show on FX called Justified. I wasn’t so sure about this one at first, but the second season got me. A United States Marshal with too many kills is sent to work in the small Kentucky town he grew up in where old feuds between his family and others still pepper the landscape. Also starring two actors from old favorites of mine, including Walton Goggins (Shane from The Shield) and Jeremy Davies (Faraday from Lost) I highly recommend this one.

Breaking Bad: And finally there’s my current favorite, the one that grabs me by the throat every week it’s on and doesn’t let go. Breaking Bad. I’m not going to tell you how wholly gripping this show is. I’m not going to tell you about the superior acting and the cliffhangers that leave you wanting to time travel into the fucking future for their resolutions. I’m not even going to tell you why EVERY episode is an instant classic…instead, I’m going to bitch for a moment about cable television channels...again. AMC has some great shows, and HBO has NEVER made an original program that wasn’t an INSTANT favorite of mine (excluding Sex and the City, but I DO understand its relevance to the television landscape) but what I DON’T understand about these networks, is why the fuck they can ONLY make 8-12 episodes of a show, which is about 2 to three months of airtime, and then make me wait a fucking year before I get new episodes? If you want to do that? FINE! But don’t have season finale cliffhangers so fucking big that Wile E. Coyote would actually DIE when he hit the bottom of the ravine after falling off of them! AMC REALLY fucked us with The Walking Dead. Everyone LOVED that show, yet they only made SIX fucking episodes and they tell me that I have to wait a FULL year before the new ones come out on October 31st 2011. Breaking Bad ended last June with a cliffhanger that makes me feel like I just caught the love of my life fucking a basketball team, and then they pushed back the premiere of the NEW season to July of THIS year! What the fuck? I know these actors are genius, I know the shows are ALL critically acclaimed, they all win awards, they all make money from the commercials, so wouldn’t it behoove the production company to, I don’t know…get off their asses? I mean, really…how fucking hard is it to film these shows? A week, maybe two per episode? Network television does it, Why can’t you? 24 was one of the most action packed and story driven shows ever made, but Fox managed to get that shit started after a 4 month summer hiatus…and that was 24 fucking episodes, sometimes with a MOVIE in between. They should change the name of the show to Waiting Bad.

These cable channels get away with this because YOU let them. If your girlfriend said that she wanted to NOT see you for a year…would you stand for that shit? No, you’d tell her to fuck off. So I have a proposal. Mad Men has announced that instead of coming back this July (which would be about a year since the last episode) they will be coming back MAYBE in March of 2012. Assholes. I know this show is a cult favorite, and it has a following, but I suggest to you that we, the American public, don’t watch a single fucking episode when it comes back on the air. I want Mad Men to have lower ratings than Cop Rock, I want the new season to be the Ishtar of television shows, and I want us to wipe that fucking smirk off of John Hamm’s face and ruin that two year vacation tan his lazy ass got while making YOU wait. If we ruin just ONE program and show these fuckers we’ll get some television ass elsewhere? The rest of our favorite cable channel shows will fall into line.

Anyway, there’re a million shows I didn’t mention here because I know I’m rambling. Suffice it to say that only TWO of my top 5 are still on the air; Deadwood, Californication, Lost, Arrested Development, and Breaking Bad. This list is more of a list of number one’s than a top 5, but still.

Much like The Movie Snob, you may have read this and thought to yourself “what a loser, this guy will never get laid”, and you may be right. But my relationship with entertainment has never hindered my ability to meet women, if anything it’s only helped it. I don’t NOT get laid because of entertainment simply because I dictate the entertainment I watch, not the other way around. I rarely, if ever watch LIVE TV. I download all of the shows you’ve read about here and watch them at my leisure, with NO commercials, because I fucking HATE commercials. If I want a pickle, I’ll go BUY a fucking jar of pickles. I don’t need some cartoon stork interrupting a show right when a major plot point is about to be revealed, to TELL me to go buy a jar of pickles. Much like voting, you may be asking yourself “well then don’t you contribute to the cancellation of your favorite shows by not watching them on TV?” No, because I don’t have a Nielson Box, which is how networks determine what is being watched.

I contribute a great deal of the man I am today to Television. And although many of you are loathe to admit it, the same can be said of you. Television has not only contributed to our culture as human beings, but it has helped cultivate and shape our society since WWII. Sure that cultivation has turned to shit in the last decade, but YOU ultimately have the choice to change that. STOP watching shitty reality shows that have less value than a Tiffany Lamp in an Amish community. Send a letter to your congressman demanding the imprisonment of Meredith Attwell Baker. And KNOW that Dr. fucking Drew cannot cure Drug use and Alcoholism in 11 weeks while forcing his patients to pander to a camera. Television belongs to YOU, not the advertisers, not the cable companies, not the FCC, and NOT the production companies. Demand a tit for Christ’s sake.



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