Thursday, February 24, 2011

THIS JUST IN...

February 24,2011: Charlie Sheen tries to steal some of Mel Gibson's thunder by calling his boss 'Hymie' on The Alex Jones Show...

Wow; I've Sold Out Already!

        Is anyone else doing this AdSense thing? I heard that it lets you put ads on your blog, but it uses the content of the blog so that it can advertise products pertaining to your...uh, blog. I'm not entirely sure how this works, but I'll give it a shot:
        I'm a big fan of horror movies, but I don't really care for the newer stuff. That's why I like BLUE UNDERGROUND. BLUE UNDERGROUND is a company that specializes in obscure, cultish movies. Some of these movies were directed by the owner of thew company, William Lustig (who directed some of the greatest movies EVER like MANIAC COP and MANIAC COP II, both of which have been issued by BLUE UNDERGROUND). BLUE UNDERGROUND is way better than his old company Anchor Bay, which sucks ass!
          It must be noted that I'm also a big fan of the art house movies issued by CRITERION, and if CRITERIONwould pay me for advertising their product, then I could afford to buy the ridiculously overpriced CRITERIONeditions of such important films as Luis Bunuel's Simon of the Desert and....uh, Armageddon (wait, I didn't type that, did I).

The F@#$%&g Dishwasher Story Again

Here's the dishwasher story...again. This is going to be my 'Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer'...


My wife Susan and I have been very lucky in that we've been married for almost six years and we still actually like each other. We're very open in our marriage. I should probably stress that I don't mean this in the Gene Simmons 'I Love You, But I'm Still Gonna Have Sex With Other People' sense of the word; rather, we feel that we can discuss differences of opinion with each other in a rational, mature manner. Take this loving exchange from last week:


Sue: You stink!

Gary: No, you stink!

The matter in question was our dishwasher. Ever since we started dating, this matter has aroused more passionate debate than, for example, the war in Iraq. I realize that most of my female readers (if not both of them) may jump to the conclusion that I, representing the stereotypical male, was probably asked to load the dishwasher and declined because I was busy watching football or crushing beer cans on my forehead or whatever. But the catalyst for this argument was my strict policy of rinsing the dishes before I load the dishwasher. I learned this on (since we're talking about male stereotypes) Home Improvement.

Sue's argument is that A). It takes too long, and B). it's like washing the same dishes twice. My argument basically amounts to the fact that 1). She's forgetting that I'm actually washing the dishes, and 2). I should be recognized as a pioneer because I may be the first male in history to voluntarily do a domestic chore.

Perhaps I am in the wrong here (as I often am; she is quite a bit more intelligent than I am), but I actually have another theory about this. I'll bet that at some point in her life she had access to a dishwasher that actually worked. It probably wasn't in college; there isn't a dorm in this country that has enough area for even a decent sized sink, and most colleges don't like to just hand out luxury items like dishwashers (or post Eisenhower era heating systems, but I digress). It was probably at home. Perhaps her memories of Mom Karen's trusty Hotpoint blasting the paisley prints off the coffee cups gives her a vague sense of hope, like a heroin addict during their umpteenth fix, hoping to reexperience that first cherry rush.

Or perhaps not; it's a dishwasher, for god's sake.

I have had access to maybe six dishwashers in my entire life, none of which I would trust to launder old baseball caps. Hell, I didn't even know dishwashers were suppoused to work. I thought people just bought them because they matched other appliances, like they were really expensive window treatments. Sue claims that some of them do work. For some reason, she has unrelenting faith in ours, despite the fact that the dishes seem to come out dirtier than they went in.

And so, I reluctantly believe her. After all, her unrelenting faith in me has done a lot of good.

I was hoping to write a lengthy discourse on the differences between men and women (leaving the toilet seat up, how Porky's will outlast Steel Magnolias, etc.), but Sue loaded the dishwasher last and I have to get back to scraping the plates.

Thanks For Listening-G.P.

What The Hell Am I Going To Write About?!

Well, after countless hours of meditating on the subject, writing down little notes in various notebooks, and having my wife Susan roll her eyes every time I talk about my ideas without actually writing anything, I've decided to start a blog. The only problem is that my mind usually runs a mile a minute when I'm away from the computer, but as soon as I sit down it all goes blank. I've got a really good story idea that I've been sitting on for about nine years....well, I've actually written a few chapters; the rest is scattered amongst the 187,264 spiral notebooks I've accumulated.
      I don't really do any political stuff, since I have friends on both sides and any mention either way seems to spark a debate that I really don't want to participate in. My own politics are a strange mix of both sides, so I worry that I really don't agree with anybody. I also don't like sappy stuff. What I do have is an innate knowledge of popular culture...
      ...of course, since the early Nineties everyone has. The only difference between me and the slackers of old is that the references that I make go to a deeper and more irritating level; that, and the fact that I've always had a job over the past twenty years. Whenever the Eighties revival came around, it's almost as if the powers that be had earmarked certain songs for immortality (Tainted Love comes to mind). But one of my favorite 80's songs was Sweetheart by Franke and the Knockouts. It took me EIGHT YEARS to find a copy of this song that didn't require that little round spacer that goes on the record player spindle.
      Something else about those days that I hate was that stupid yellow book that they had in all the record stores (this was pre-Internet, of course). How it worked was you would walk up to the clerk and tell him you wanted to order a copy of  'Tommy Tutone 2'. Then the guy would repeat your order: "Did you say 'Tommy Tune?". Then you would correct him: "Tommy Tune?! Look, If I listened to show tunes, do you think I'd be dressed like this?". Then he would find your album in the yellow book and mail off your order and you would receive your album before the music formats changed again, if you were lucky.
     That's another problem: I tend to go off on tangents.
     Anyway, the point is that I know about pretty much everything that doesn't matter. Knowing that director Lucio Fulci's first wife committed suicide isn't going to benefit me in the job that I do. The fact that I know that Thora Birch's mother was in Deep Throat isn't going to help me if I put it on my resume. So I guess I'll just write about all of that stuff so that everyone else can learn it, if they're still reading.