Monthly Archives: August 2012

Hey it’s summertime! Let’s go to the beach! Let’s go to the beach and have some summertime fun!

It’s summertime and I’m always thinking every time I have a day off that I’m supposed to go to the beach. Like I really should, like I have to or something. But, I don’t know, I just don’t get the whole beach thing. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve had some great times at the beach, but only if I’m staying at a hotel that’s like directly on the beach. I’ll go straight from my room, right out to the beach, maybe do some swimming, some laying around, sandcastles, obviously. And then when I’m done I just go right up to my room and take a shower and it’s like I was never at the beach in the first place.

Because while it’s fun being at the beach, everything else about the whole process is really annoying. I live like an hour away from the beach. I’d have to get up super early and pack all of my stuff. And here’s where I’m already totally lost. Because am I supposed to go to the beach in my bathing suit? I guess, right? Because, what am I supposed to do, change at the beach? Where? I can just see it already happening where I get there and there’s nowhere to change, so I have to do this really weird move where I wrap a towel around my waist and take off my pants or my shorts and then put my bathing suit on. I’m just squirming and it’s really hard to maneuver, and the towel keeps slipping. And everyone’s looking at me like, what has this guy never been to the beach before?

But if you go to the beach in your bathing suit, are you supposed to go home in your bathing suit also? I’m probably going to go swimming. And it’s going to be all sandy and itchy. So for an hour I have to sit there and pretend like I’m comfortable, while I’m really itchy and sticky and sweaty and just feeling grosser by the second?And there’s so much stuff to bring. It’s like going on a mini vacation. So much unpacking and packing and repacking and carrying. It’s not an easy thing to do. And there’s a ton of preparation involved that the eventual time actually spent on the beach hardly seems worth it. I’d be happy at the beach for like maybe like two hours. That sounds cool. I could do a little reading, go for a swim, lay out for a second, and that’s it. It’s like going to the park. I don’t feel like spending all day at the park. But if you spend two hours packing, an hour travelling, another hour unpacking and repacking and setting up and disassembling, you’re really at this point invested in the beach, required to spend at least five hours at the beach, just to make it seem like you spent your time at least somewhat wisely. So then you have to think about what you’re going to do for those extra three hours. Aren’t you going to get hungry? Thirsty? OK, so now you have to bring a cooler, and that’s heavy. Don’t forget the ice. And cups. You know what? I think we have to bring a trash bag for all of the trash. Aren’t we going to get really sunburned after five hours? Maybe we should bring an umbrella. Isn’t it tax season already? All right, we have to go to accountant’s house and pick him up. Don’t forget extra copies of those W-2s.

No, I hate complaining. I’m not trying to be a complainer. Like I said, the beach can be a lot of fun. It’s just really inaccessible and so much work. Plus, if it’s a really great beach day, do you think you’re the only person who has the bright idea to go to the beach? No, it’s you and every other person with nothing to do. And so you’re stepping on cigarette butts that always retain their heat whe they’re buried in the sand. You’re getting sand kicked in your face by little kids. That big Italian guy next to you is blasting club music really loud and looking at you, almost begging you to say something. You want to start something? Huh brah? Huh punk?

I’m just kidding. I love Italians. I love Super Mario. I love spaghetti. I don’t care if Marco Polo brought it over from China, it’ll always be Italian food to me. At least the Italians aren’t a bunch of communists like the Chinese. I do love Chinese dumplings better than gnocchi, though. Sorry, Italians. You make the better pasta, but they make the better dumplings. I wonder: if China and Italy joined forces to make one country, would they call it Chitaly? Yeah, definitely. The Chitalians would be a great people, masters of both pasta and dumplings. Don’t you think a General Tso’s inspired pizza would be delicious? You’ve had buffalo chicken pizza, right? Well this would be just like that, but Chinese. Or Chitalian. I forgot already. This is all probably never going to happen though.

Alfred!

I’ve always wanted to read a comic book that’s just about Alfred, Batman’s butler. It could be called Alfred. And it wouldn’t have to have anything to do with crime fighting or mysteries. I’m not trying to make Alfred something he’s not. No, it would just be stories about him, taking care of Batman’s mansion, following the exploits of his managerial duties around the house. He’d have to get dinner ready. He’d have to make sure that Batman’s Batman costume was dry-cleaned. You might think that this would be a pretty boring comic book. Right? But it wouldn’t be.

Take Batman’s dry-cleaning for example. It sounds super lame, right? Wrong. Where do you think Alfred might take the bat suit to get dry-cleaned? Maybe if I brought a Batman costume to my local dry-cleaner one time, they might think, OK, he went to a costume party, he spent a lot of money getting a really professionally made Batman costume. Great. But what if I started bringing like two or three of them in to get cleaned every week? What if I started bringing them in and they’re all covered in blood and sewer water and poison gas? Don’t you think the dry-cleaning guy would figure it out after a week or two? He’d say to himself, this guy is totally Batman. But wait a second, he’d think, that doesn’t make any sense, because this guy’s all old and British and he has a pencil-thin mustache. So he must be Batman’s dry-cleaner. Let’s call up the Riddler and see how much this information is worth.

Alfred wouldn’t have any choice but to buy, install, and figure out how to operate his own personal dry-cleaning machine. That’s really not as easy as it sounds. You’re dealing with some serious chemicals. Did you know that they use like formaldehyde and stuff? That’s a carcinogen. Alfred is literally putting his life on the life for the sake of keeping Batman somewhat clean. I think I’ve just written the first three issues right there.

You might think that, seeing as how Alfred has to go above and beyond the call of duty of a regular butler, Batman might cut him some slack here and there. “Hey Alfred,” Batman might say, and Alfred would respond, “Yes, Master Bruce?” “You know what Alfred? Forget about wearing that tux all the time. You work really, really hard. Just wear whatever you feel like wearing, whatever’s comfortable.” And Alfred would be caught off guard, surprised. “Th-thank you Master Bruce. As you wish Master Bruce.” “And another thing,” Batman would continue, “Enough with the whole ‘Master Bruce’ business. How long have we known each other? You practically raised me. You’ve been the closest thing I’ve ever had to a real dad. Just call me Bruce. Or Batman. But not when company’s around. Then just stick to Bruce.” And Alfred would be practically choking up at this point, totally unable to hold back the tears of pure joy welling up in his eyes. This would all be covered in issues four through six.

“Thank you sir! I mean … Bruce. You don’t know how long I’ve waited to have a genuine moment like this with you.” Alfred would start pouring his soul out to Batman. But just then a portal through space-time would rip open right besides Alfred and Batman. And it would be a cyborg robot Alfred from a parallel universe. He would come in, guns a-blazing, making this big dramatic speech about how on his world, Batman was a total dick, never giving Alfred any respect, and so this Alfred became a complete villain. On his world, he killed his Batman for treating him no better than a doormat. But it wasn’t enough. Now he travels across the multiverse killing every Batman he can find. And it’s up to our Alfred to figure out a way to stop him.

That would be issues seven through twelve. I know, I told you that the whole series wouldn’t be about anything heroic, just Alfred and his household duties. But by issue three, I’m sure the fans would have said to themselves, what the hell? Seriously? A comic book about just a butler? That’s so, so lame. I’m never even going to think about buying this piece of trash ever again.

And the publishers will get the message. Sales will be at an all time low. By the time issue five hits the stands, they’ll have ordered me to switch up the stories, make them more about superheroes and supervillains. But I’ll protest. “Don’t you remember our plan? Only butler stories!” And the publisher will say, “If you can’t write these stories, we’ll find someone who can!” And I won’t have a choice.

But by the time I reboot the series, it will be too late. The fans will never give it a second chance. They’ll print up to issue twelve and call it a wrap. After a year or so, they’ll package all twelve issues together in a hardcover and call it a graphic novel. Maybe somebody in the TV biz will buy the rights, and they’ll come up with a TV show, also called Alfred. And the theme song will be almost identical to the 1960s Batman TV show:

Na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na Alfred! Alfred! Alfred! Alfred! Alfred! Alfred! Alfred! Na na na na na na na na na na na na na Alfred!

I’m still upset that I had to grow up without the Internet

I can’t begin to imagine what my life would be like without the Internet. I know, it wasn’t even that long ago that there wasn’t any Internet at all. Like when I was a little kid I can remember there not being an Internet. Every once in a while someone will put some post on Facebook talking about how much better kids had it when they could run around outside and drink out of a garden hose and play with their imaginations. I don’t know. I loved my childhood, but I remember being insanely bored about ninety percent of the time.

Like when I came home from school everyday. I would turn on the TV and hope that something interesting or entertaining would be on. Usually there was nothing, just reruns of Bugs Bunny cartoons or the same five episodes of Power Rangers playing on repeat. Then I would go bug my mom, who was usually busy cooking for me and my five brothers and sisters. By this point in the afternoon I would be really, really bored, so I’d start annoying her, asking her if I could have some Fruit Roll-Ups or some Gushers.

“No you can’t have any fruit snacks!” my mom would tell me. She must have been so tired of having this same conversation over and over and over again. “Please?” I’d ask. “No! Can’t you see that I’m cooking dinner?” It was obvious that she was cooking dinner. But this argument was the most interesting thing going on for me all day. “But I’m hungry!” I’d protest. “Have an apple,” she’d say. Of course I didn’t want an apple. It was even worse if she suggested carrot sticks. What am I a squirrel?

If I played my cards right, this back and forth would have used up a solid twenty to thirty minutes of the afternoon. Then I could go back to the TV room and watch two episodes of Saved by the Bell. This show was aired on regular TV, without pause, throughout my entire childhood. Seriously, I’ve seen every single episode of Saved by the Bell, at least twenty-five times. One time I was messing around on the Internet and I started reading this essay that this guy wrote about Saved by the Bell. He started listing specific episodes. And I knew exactly what he was talking about. Anybody else remember what the A.C. in A.C. Slater stood for? One time a girl asked him and he responded, “Absolutely Charming.” Clever. But it really stood for Albert Clifford. I remember this because there was one episode where his mom visited Bayside and started calling him Albert Clifford. At the time, I thought it was this huge deal. I couldn’t believe the mystery was over. But nobody ever mentioned it in any subsequent episodes, and so I think a lot of the shock value dissipated over time. It was kind of like when we all found out that Kramer’s first name was Cosmo. Big deal, right?

Bonus question: What was Principal Belding’s stage name when he was a DJ at the KKTY Bayside radio station as a teenager? Answer: Big Bopper Belding. I swear to all of you on my mother’s life that I didn’t have to look up either of those two factoids on the Internet. I’m carrying around basically the entire series of Saved by the Bell right here in my higher consciousness. This is all your fault, mom and dad, for not getting us cable when we were little kids.

Then right towards the end of the second Saved by the Bell episode, my mom would call us in for dinner. And I’d protest. “I’m not done with my show!” I’d scream and cry. “But you’ve seen that show five times already! And I thought you said you were hungry before!” I’m just kidding. My mom would never try to argue sense with us. Because growing up, we were all completely senseless, a group of wild animals, sapping my parents of their strength, draining the energy they needed to constantly spend just to keeping us all from killing each other.

And this was all way before any Internet, any first family PC, any free ninety-day AOL trial CDs. What the hell would I be doing now if I didn’t have any Internet? I definitely wouldn’t be writing. What would be the point of writing if I didn’t have an Internet to show it off on Facebook to all of my Facebook friends? I don’t get how all of those real writers back in the classical age of writing did it. They would write something and then, what, go over their friend’s house and make him or her read it? No, they would have to write a whole book and send it to a publishing house and wait months or years for a response. Maybe that’s why none of the classics are funny. The whole point of writing jokes is trying to make people laugh. The whole point of trying to make people laugh is so you can watch them laugh immediately, and then you can feel validated, that what you’ve written is funny, and then you’re free to laugh at your own jokes as loud and for as long as you want. Hey, I didn’t say it was funny, you did, and what, I’m not allowed to laugh also? Sitting around and laughing alone all by yourself is probably what crazy people did back in the day. I’m getting an image of a padded room and a lunatic sitting in a straightjacket just laughing hysterically behind locked doors. But put a computer screen in front of that maniac and you have basically everyone in the world. The Internet is the best. I really love it.

I’m the most helpful person ever

I’m always looking to help people out. I’ve heard others talking about me, saying how I’m one of the most helpful people around. I used to just think that maybe I had dreamt that up, because a part of me knew that it sounded way too cocky if I actually acknowledged that I overheard somebody saying that. But then I definitely heard someone else saying the same thing, again. I’m pretty sure it was somebody different. So even if the first time was a dream, which I’m not even positive that it was, the second time had to have been real. Who dreams about the same thing two times? I’ve never done that. I don’t even think it’s possible.

Always willing to lend a helping hand, that’s me. It’s like my unofficial motto. My official motto is, “Try to always be on the lookout for an opportunity to help out.” But it’s a little too official, if you know what I’m getting at. Sometimes you might have a great concept for a motto or a cool idea and it’s taking shape in your head and your playing around with it as the words roll off of your tongue. But as soon as you make it official, as soon as you lay that stamp down upon it, saying, OK, this is it, my official motto, something happens to it, something immediate. All of the sudden it’s set in stone, it’s too formal, it’s too institutionalized, and you wish it weren’t your official motto anymore. But it’s too late, way too late, it’s already official. You’ve already punctuated the whole motto with official quotation marks. It just doesn’t have that same energy anymore. It’s stale, stuck. So that’s why I only stick with unofficial mottos.

My helpful nature is just that, natural. A lot of the time I feel like I have to protect it from outside influences. Like, a lot of the time, because I’m so helpful, people will offer my services to other people, just by knowing me, just by knowing my helpful nature naturally wants to help out. But that’s not really me being helpful. It’s like someone else being helpful. And so I feel like I’m not actually helping out, but the other person, the person who referred me to help out is actually being the helpful one. They’re providing the help. It’s like if you asked that person to borrow a screwdriver, and they said yes, that person wouldn’t sit back and think to themselves, wow, what a great screwdriver. No, they’d think, wow, what a great friend. I’m nobody’s tool.

That’s why I never use screwdrivers. I always just hold the screw into the wall and push as hard as I can until it makes a tiny indentation in the drywall. After the indentation gets as deep as it gets just by my pressing it in there, I’ll try my best to, while still applying pressure, turn it ever so steadily with my bare hands as it carves its way slowly into the wall. It takes forever. And you have to use really long screws to get a good grip. And it’s much easier if you get screws with really big heads, because it’s much easier for your fingers. People always come over my house and look at my oversized and often poorly placed screws sticking out of the walls, doing a terrible job of holding up my pictures and paintings, sticking out in certain spots where I had once screwed something in, only to realize a little later that that’s not where I should have put the screw, but now the screw is in there, and it took me forever to get it in there, and how am I supposed to get it out? And they’re like, Rob, what did you screw these in with your hands? You know you could have just borrowed my screwdriver. I have a bunch.

But listen, I’m the helpful one, the most helpful. What kind of a helpful person would I be if I were always going around to my friends and family asking for help? Then part of me would feel obliged the next time I was in a conversation talking about who is the most helpful to bring up that time that I was helped out by this person or that person or so and so. No, I’d rather just stand back and listen to people feel obliged to talk about how helpful I am. He’s so helpful, that Rob, but so independent, and so resourceful. He never asks anything of anybody. That’s what they’ll have to say. Because it will be true. Or it is true. Or it will have still been true.

Wrong number

I’m so lonely. Nobody ever calls me anymore. I used to get telephone calls all the time. But then text messaging came around. I used to just ignore all incoming text messages, but eventually they became so ubiquitous that it wasn’t enough to simply ignore them. I had to at least acknowledge them, or my phone kept beeping, it was such an annoying feature, and there would be this number on the home screen representing all of my unread texts. But I refused to text back. Any time somebody sent me a text message, I would immediately call that person and start a real-life conversation. This only lasted for a little bit, because people got annoyed and stopped answering my phone calls all together. Group text messages were the worst. I’d see that I’m one of like eight or nine people receiving a message, and there’s just not enough time in the day to call each one of them back, wait for each one of them to ignore my call, listen to each person’s wildly out of date voicemail message, and then leave a voicemail message on each person’s inbox. I’m just kidding. I don’t really know eight or nine people.

So I’ll hear my ringtone and get really excited. Unfortunately it’s usually this spam robot from Washington State telling me I’ve just won a cruise. I hate it so much. I see the area code and my brain is screaming, “Rob! Don’t pick it up! Rob! Listen to me Rob! Do not answer that phone call! You will be so pissed when you answer it, say hello, and then there’s going to be that delay, and then you’ll think maybe nobody’s there, but then you’ll hear that terrible recording of the cruise horn, and you’ll try to turn off the phone before you have to hear that other recording, the guy who sounds like the moviefone guy saying, ‘This is your cruise captain! You’ve just won a cruise!’ So don’t pick it up!” But I always pick it up. What if it’s one of my long-lost friends who has since moved to Washington State? Why would I take a chance on missing out on such a great conversation? Catching up on old times, reminiscing about all the trouble we used to get into back in the day. I’m just kidding. I’ve never been in any trouble.

If the call isn’t from Washington State, nine times out of ten it’s going to be a wrong number. I used to hate wrong numbers. I’d be like, “No this isn’t Hank! Get your numbers together buddy!” But now I love wrong numbers. Whenever I get a call from a wrong number, I always try to keep the caller on the line for as long as possible. Like I said, super lonely. Now I’m always like, “Hello?” and the other person will say, “Hank?” and I’ll say, “Hank here! How can I help you?” and the other person will continue, “Hank? Is that you? You sound different.” So maybe I’ll try to alter my voice just a little bit. I used to alter it dramatically, which would immediately send an alert to the caller that I’m not who I say I am, so I now I just alter it slightly. Maybe I’ll make it a little more nasally or maybe like half an octave higher or lower. Most of this time they still catch on, but maybe I’ll have extended the conversation by a minute or two. “Hank? Do you have a cold?” And I’ll say, “Yeah, that’s it. A cold. Right. I have a cold.” But they’ll be thinking, “Who says, ‘Yeah, that’s it,’ in real life? It’s so obvious that this person is jerking me around.”

What started out as a desperate longing for any sort of human conversation has now turned into more of a personal challenge. How long can I keep a complete stranger on the phone that has called me by mistake? So when I get one of these calls, someone will be like, “Is Laura there?” I’ll always immediately say, “Yeah, hold on, one second, I’ll go get Laura,” and then I put down the phone for a while. All this really does is inflate the time, but that’s all I’m after now, to break my previous record. I’ve found the sweet spot of this waiting period to be about four minutes. Anything more than that and the caller is going to look at their watch, and then look at the phone, and they’ll probably realize that they typed in the wrong number and they’ll hang up, that’s it. But once you’ve made somebody wait for four minutes, it’s unlikely that you’ll get them to stay on any longer, even if you pick up the phone and start talking again.

What you have to do is make them wait like three minutes, and then you pick up the phone again and start talking in a different voice, maybe like a little kid’s voice. And you say something like, “Hello? Who is this?” and the person will go “Laura?” and then you say, “Hold on, she’s right here.” Then you put down the phone and you take a few steps away and you scream out, “Laura!” and then you run up the stairs, making sure you’re still in earshot of the phone and you scream out, in your best girl’s voice, “What?” Then you run back downstairs, “Phone call!” Upstairs. “Who is it?” Then you run back to the phone and get a different little kid’s voice ready. “Who’s calling please?” And they might say, “It’s Trish.” And you do this back and forth until you’re back at the top of the stairs and you say, “Tell Trish I’ll be there in a second!”

I once got someone to wait for twenty-one minutes and twelve seconds. But that’s been by far my longest call. My second longest is only around thirteen minutes. I never get higher than thirteen or fourteen. Actually, the twenty-one minute call, I think, was a mistake, because the other person must have been equally as lonely as I am, because he has my number now, this guy from Wisconsin, this real wacko, and he’s calling me like three or four times a day. Whenever I’m out with my friends, I’ll get these calls from this guy, and I always have to answer and pretend like it’s a wrong number, and we always wind up playing tricks on each other. Sometimes I think that he has his own little challenge with himself, like how long can he keep me on the line. I’m just kidding. I don’t have any friends.