Pogo sticks are lame

When I was a little kid, I wanted a pogo stick so bad, bad enough that one year I got one for Christmas. I can’t describe to you my disappointment when I finally stepped on to jump up and down. In my little kid head, I imagined it to be like this magic bouncing stick, that all I would have to do was hold on as this tool took me on a wild up and down bouncy bounce ride.

But pogo sticks aren’t really bouncy. They’re springy. It takes a lot of muscle and weight to slam that thing down hard enough on the ground so that it’ll launch you even an inch or two upward. I think if I had to blame someone for my misconception, yes, I’ll take part of the blame, but there was also this popular toy when I was in first or second grade, the Pogo Ball, that I feel deserves most of the credit for leading me to put any hope of fun into a boring pogo stick.

The Pogo Ball was essentially a volleyball sized thick rubber ball with a little circular platform wrapped around the middle. Imagine what the planet Saturn looks like, and that’s basically the shape of the Pogo Ball. I had one of those as a little kid, and while I didn’t really have the motor skills necessary to actually bounce around, that was the idea behind this toy. All of the commercials showcased kids my age flying around town, dramatic leap after ridiculous bounce.

I couldn’t get it right, and so I assumed that it was because the Pogo Ball was a poor man’s pogo stick. All I needed were handles, and I’d be able pogo with the best of them. But that Christmas morning, one look at the pogo stick had me realizing that I’d been fooling myself all along. The dead giveaway was the solid bottom, the fist shaped piece of hard black rubber on which ground would meet stick.

How was this thing supposed to bounce? I’d been picturing some sort of an ultra bouncy inflatable ball, or maybe something like flubber. And again, those springs, it’s so hard to get that thing to want to go.

A couple of years ago I was at my parents’ house and, for some reason or another, I wound up snooping around the garage. Hanging on the wall was the old pogo stick. I figured, I’ve got the weight now that my ten-year-old self lacked, let’s see if I can’t get this going. And while I did manage to successfully pogo, it wasn’t all that fun. I mean, maybe it would have been fun if I could have made this thing work twenty years ago, but now, I don’t know.

I guess bouncing up and down isn’t as fun as it used to be. I always used to love jumping on trampolines. One of my friends had one when I was high school, and we’d spend hours catapulting ourselves as high as we could, catching each other’s bounces, trying not to break our arms on the sides. But ten years later I remember being at someone’s house, also with a trampoline, and the up and down motion made me instantly uncomfortable. It wasn’t nausea, and it wasn’t a headache, not really. I don’t know how to describe it other than I felt like I was losing control of my eyes, like they were slowly drifting out of orbit, that if I didn’t stop bouncing, they’d roll up to the inside of my head or cross permanently. It was just really disorienting I guess.

And it was the same with my adult pogo stick experience. Sure, I was going up and down, but I couldn’t really stay focused, I kept pogoing in a circle that I couldn’t control. The springs were really, really loud, and the nails-on-a-chalkboard screech only added to that vertigo effect.

I’m still blaming the Pogo Ball. If it wasn’t for that cheap piece of crap, I would have never got it in my head that pogo sticking was something worth wanting to do. Man, I think about a lot of the popular toys from my childhood, all of them stupid pieces of plastic that never really delivered on the advertised experience. Skip-it was basically a wheel attached to your leg by a piece of nylon string. What a piece of junk. It never even stayed on the ground, so the counter never counted anything. Skip-it. They should have called it Don’t-buy-it.

Movie Review: The World’s End

Ah yes, a British movie. I went to see The World’s End, and I couldn’t help but thinking about all of the movies I’ve seen that were made across the Atlantic: not too many. I’m sure they make lots of films over there, but the ones that make it to me, to a pretty average American moviegoer, I don’t know, it’s like The King’s Speech, Monty Python … do Hugh Grant movies count? They totally don’t count. Even in his most British pictures, he’s really just something on loan from the UK to Hollywood, like even though Love Actually took place across the pond, there were all sorts of American actors and tropes and …

And what am I talking about, Love Actually? I never saw Love Actually, I just remember overhearing someone else talk about it once. Someone really stupid. And I could just tell how inauthentic the whole thing was, you know, from this non-Englishman’s point of view.

The World’s End is billed as the third part in a trilogy of sorts, although besides the principle cast and writing team, there’s not really a coherent story linking all three parts. Shaun of the Dead imagined how Simon Pegg would confront the zombie apocalypse, Hot Fuzz had something to do with police officers (I never actually saw Hot Fuzz,) and The World’s End follows five high school friends who reunite twenty years later to finish a twelve-stop pub crawl they almost completed back when they were eighteen.

I realized pretty soon into the movie that I was laughing a lot more than I would be at this point during an American movie, during parts in any movie that I wouldn’t normally find laugh-out-loud funny. I attributed a lot of the giggles to the fact that everybody’s talking really fast, jokes weaved tightly into every sentence, with absolutely no stopping for even the briefest of pauses between syllables or breaths. It’s just non-stop dialogue and everybody’s speaking in an accent and, yeah, I guess that is pretty funny.

The humor is very dark. Simon Pegg’s main character Gary King hasn’t developed at all since the early 1990s montage that opens the film. By the time we meet our protagonist in the present day, twenty years of partying have taken their toll. The whole intro, the extended speech explaining the almost-made-it night of twenty years ago, it winds up being told by King in the middle of a twelve-step meeting, and even the other participants seem disturbed by the enthusiasm in which he recounts the best day of his life.

King rallies his old friends and convinces them to have a proper night. Twelve bars, twelve beers, all culminating at The World’s End, a fitting name for the final tavern. As the Five Musketeers head out to their old home town, in King’s high school car, with the same exact cassette mix tape never having been removed from the tape deck, the gang starts to question the psychic hold their friend seems to manage over everyone else.

Just as the adults step in to make some belated adult decisions, it turns out that the town has been taken over by robots. And even though that’s pretty much the whole plot of the movie, once things get rolling, a lot of the genuine character-driven plot evaporates. I get it, I guess, that this kind of a spoof on a disaster movie is a way to confront existential problems, addiction, middle-age, conformity, feelings of isolation, but I just couldn’t help but feel that the group dynamic was building toward something. And then the robot thing happens and that’s basically the rest of the movie.

All the way until the really bizarre ending, something that, after having seen Monty Python, I’m just going to go ahead and make the sweeping generalization that all British movies have to have crazy endings. Except for The King’s Speech. Did I mention that I saw The King’s Speech already? Well, I saw it. Although, I guess it’s not all that normal of a movie, right? A king? With a stutter? And the doctor is some crazy guy from Australia? That didn’t really happen, did it?

I like it ice cold

I want my ice cream cold, so cold that my tongue shouldn’t even be able to touch it, not safely. I want you to have to take it out of the deep-freeze freezer, you’ll actually have to put it in the microwave just to take it down a bit, just a couple of degrees, to where it’s still way too cold to touch, I still can’t lick it, I’d still get a major ice-burn on my tongue if I attempted premature contact.

And then I want the spoon to be warmed up, not in a microwave, obviously, you can’t put metal in the microwave. Maybe I could find some sort of a composite spoon? All right, give me a spoon made out of the same material they make hockey sticks and golf clubs. I want it to be light, like ultra lightweight, so now OK, you can go ahead and throw it in the microwave for a minute or two.

If you haven’t already, you should go ahead and buy two microwaves, because I don’t want to wait around while you’re messing with different power level settings for the ice cream and for the spoon. I want them both to be warming up at the same exact time.

All of my soda has to be ice cold too. Also, the carbonation has to be really powerful. But more importantly, really, really cold. But only slightly less important, the carbonation. Don’t talk to me about freezing points, I want a colder-than-ice Coca-Cola that somehow hasn’t turned into a block of ice. I’ve seen it done before, it was science class in high school, or a science TV show that the science teacher showed us on one of those days where she didn’t feel like teaching, it was something about not disturbing the liquid, or putting something inside of it, and it’ll stay liquid.

You know that sensation you get when you first take a sip of a really ice cold drink? Like you can feel it working its way down your esophagus? I want that with every sip, not just the first. And I don’t want to feel it just in my esophagus, I want to feel it all the way down, snaking its way through my intestines, that refreshing feeling chilling a path throughout my whole digestive system.

My soup also has to be really cold. I don’t care what time of year you’re supposed to traditionally eat gazpacho, I’d like it in January, February, if there’s an unseasonably cold stretch through March or April, I’m going to order gazpacho then also, along with other summertime soups, watermelon bisque … I can’t think of any other cold soups, but I know they’re out there, and again, ice cold, I want you to serve me a whole tube of Sensodyne as an appetizer, something to really numb up my gums, I want to hold a big mouthful and really let my whole head cool off.

Iced coffee, iced tea, ice, ice cold. And don’t bother with the regular ice cubes. I want ice cubes made out of iced coffee and iced tea. It has to be cold brewed, by the way. I don’t want anything that’s ever been heated up. I mean, yes, to some extent, I’m always going to have to acknowledge the fact that the earth was formed out of a ball of cooling molten rock, but that’s just it, it’s cooling, it’s getting there.

My favorite planet is Pluto. My favorite sport is ice hockey. If I got to choose a superpower, it would definitely be ice powers. Then I wouldn’t have to worry about talking about any of this nonsense. Give me a hot soup, go ahead, I’ll ice you dead in your tracks, that hot soup’s never going to make it over to my table. And then next idiot server who even thinks about sending over another bowl, he’s going to think again. He’s going to bring me the coldest one they’ve got. And then – zap! – ice powers to make it even colder, and I’ll be able to take it, no frost-burn, no Sensodyne, just straight up cold, colder than all of the Coors Light in the Rockies.

Because seriously, I can’t emphasize enough, I really like my stuff cold. Make sure you tell the chef, because I’ve got a thermometer right here. I’m going to use it, and I’m going to send it back. It’s all just a matter of how many times I’m going to send it back. Got it?

Guest posts and obscure advertisements

Every once in a while I’ll get an email from some random Internet person asking if they might be able to write up a guest post on this blog. The first time it happened, I was pretty excited. All of these thoughts flew through my head, like, it’s happening, I’m starting to attract attention here, I can’t believe it.

That first email was from some lady in Australia. She had read this nonsense piece I had written about setting up a series of trampolines, spaced out along a route, that I could use as a bouncy form of alternative transportation. “Great post!” she complimented me. “Great compliment!” I said out loud to my computer.

A few friendly words were all it took to capture my attention. I read on. She worked for a company called Bounce Inc. From what very limited research I’ve done, mostly looking at the video from the web site, I gathered that it’s some sort of gym/amusement park hybrid. My solicitor described it as a, “massive indoor trampoline universe,” a whole giant area of interconnected trampolines.

And then I sat back in my chair and thought, huh, that’s kind of … well, it’s some bizarre trampoline business in Australia that I’ll probably never get to visit, let alone bounce around in, and some employee is asking me if they’d like to collaborate via my blog.

Huh. My sense of, “This is happening!” deflated somewhat, but I replied back, “What were you thinking? Did you want me to write something up?” Our correspondence dissolved when she informed me that she’d be writing up whatever it was that she’d be writing up, an advertisement basically, and she’d like to use my very obscure corner of the Internet to use as a wall on which to post up a cheesy flyer.

How dare she? I got all indignant and wrote some crazy email back explaining the total lack of connection between my blog and her bouncy castle business, and that was the last that I heard from her. But seriously, what kind reach did she think she’d get by having something written up here? It would be like me going into my local corner deli and asking if they might help pass out literature about Elon Musk’s Hyperlooop.

That was the first, and while my inbox isn’t inundated with random business proposals – it isn’t inundated with any email at all, really – I do get from time to time marketing companies from India hoping to use my blog as an SEO platform, whatever that is. I’ve done a little bit of research on what it would mean exactly, but basically it’s just about turning any Internet space into a garbage link generator. And then I’d have to write up blog posts like, “43 best 80s movies characters,” with number one being it’s own page, it’s own bullshit advertisements and garbage links. And then you’d read a sentence and look at some picture that I hijacked from Google images and you’d be told to click “next” to see number two, with another page of random Internet stuff you’ll never really click on, not on purpose, not really.

Just yesterday I got an email from a Mike Thomas. His message was something like, “Wow! Check out this video on man-caves in storage sheds! You should let me write up an original post about man caves for your web site. Or you can just post the video. Due to Google’s rules, we can’t pay you anything. But don’t worry, we’ll only send you original, creative material! Send me an email and I’ll get in touch with you to see where we can go from here!”

Wow, thanks Mike! You’d do that for me, provide me with all of that great content? Hooray! I can’t believe he’d insult me by assuming that I’d want money. For all of that original, creative content, I should be paying him. Man-caves in storage sheds, I have no idea what that’s all about, but I’m sure it’s going to be just the thing to ratchet my writing up to the next level.

What ever happened to good old-fashioned online scammers? I’m really missing the days when I’d get letters from long lost royal relatives that relocated to Cameroon generations ago, trying to get in touch with me because they need my help in taking back the billion dollar family inheritance. I got some email a while ago from a Chinese company telling me that another Chinese company had recently tried to set up a business named Strictly Autobiographical. What a coincidence! But I needn’t worry, all I had to do was pay them a fee, and they’d register my domain name in China, preventing other Strictly Autobiographicals from popping up overseas.

I’m telling you, it’s happening for me. My brand name is becoming international. Everybody wants a piece of this, even the Chinese. It’s just really nice to know I have random Internet people looking out for me, trying to help me out here, giving me free content and offering cheap protection. Keep those emails coming!

I’ll take it!

When I moved into my new place, one of my cousins offered me one of his old TVs. I was like, “I’ll take it!” because it’s a really nice TV, much nicer than my old TV, that big boxy set. I remember when I bought it probably like fifteen years ago, I thought it was so cool, it was bigger than anything that I had owned before, it had a built-in VCR. But nobody uses VCRs anymore, and you walk into a house with an old boxy TV, well, it makes everything look a little dated.

“I’ll take it!” I said that again when one of my friends offered me another old TV. I say old, again, I really mean older. Older than his brand new TV which, Jesus, it’s so thin that, from a distance, from like across the room, you can’t even tell where the wallpaper ends and where the TV begins. Well, you can tell when it’s on, you can see the line around the TV. But I mean, think three dimensionally, it’s like this thing is a part of the wall.

Don’t get me wrong, his old TV is nice, the one he gave me, it’s really nice. It’s a flat screen, it’s big. Like I said, it’s much better than anything I was watching before. Did I mention my old TV? How the red, yellow, and white cables were on the front of the set? Who designed it that way? It’s like, if I wanted to hook up my XBOX, first, I had to buy a converter, because this thing didn’t support HDTV, and then I had to run the cables all the way to the front, they were just dangling there, totally in the way.

This new TV, my friend’s old TV, it was pretty thin, I mean, you could totally see it from the other side of the room, maybe it was even a little heavy, like, when I told you about my friend’s new TV being indistinguishable from the surface of the wall, this one, it was like people would say, “How is that thing hanging on the wall? It looks way too heavy to be held up by … by what? What’s supporting that thing? Did you use a stud finder? Because I’d be worried about that thing crashing down, taking a chunk out of the drywall.”

It’s not brand new, no, but it’s still a nice TV. People can have TVs that look five years old. But I couldn’t help myself, that’s why I said, “Yes, I’ll take it!” when I saw this ad on craigslist, under the “free” section, for a “moderately used” fifty-six inch plasma. Now that’s what I’m talking about. Again, a clear border, definitely some heft to it, but fifty-six inches? That’s much bigger than anything that I was watching before. I figure, any issues that I might run into with it looking old, slightly used, whatever, it’s all overshadowed by how big this thing is.

But three TVs? I’ll admit, it’s a little much. I don’t have three bedrooms, I don’t even have three rooms period. Only one cable box. And that free TV from the Internet, I guess I should have plugged it in and hooked it up to something before I went out and bought that stud finder, that huge metal brace that I nailed to the wall to support those fifty-six inches. It works, yes, but everything’s just green and red. I can’t figure it out. What happens to a TV where it can only show things in green and red?

And I was all worried about my place looking old with one old big TV, well, nothing makes a place look more cluttered than having three TVs sort of hanging haphazardly at random spots throughout the house. I look like I’m running some side-of-the-road electronics shop. I took one down, but the hardware made such a mess of the drywall, like you could clearly tell that a TV had been hanging there. And I’m supposed to paint the wall now? Patch up those holes? I could have just bought a new TV, a brand new flat screen TV. They’re not that expensive. Or the first one, the one my cousin gave me. That should have been fine. I couldn’t resist though, someone says to me, “Hey man, you want a free …” and I’m just like, “I’ll take it! Send it over! I’ll take it!”