The Killing Joke

With Batman Begins erasing any scary image of a Batman suit with nipples the healing process... began. Now where does Christopher Nolan take us with the future of the Batman franchise? No joke, to a clown! That's right with The Dark Knight next year, we'll see the Clown prince himself coming to the big screen in what is not your Tim Burton's Jack Nicholson Joker. Heath Ledger is putting on the clown make up and fitting those big feet in with a darker Joker. Post Production just started up for the film and this week EMPIRE magazine got the first shots of the Joker to get the hype going with more than six months to go till release. It's nothing new, this film has been generating a lot of buzz since we got the hint that the Joker would be the main focus at the end of Batman Begins. Last Comic Con, there was a very big focus on the joker with a very wide interactive hunt around San Diego. The way WB is hyping this film up is just more reason to get excited for it.

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Taking a beating with a smile on his face!

He Who Laughts Last, Laughs Best

The role of the joker was a toss up. Who knew what, with this new franchise, what Nolan had in store for us. We knew Harvey Dent would play a bigger role from all talk after the first one. It's also nice to have the idea that they took some stuff out of a couple of the more popular Batman story arcs. Long Halloween was one books that they took some source from on the website lately, but the book itself dealt with the transition from Mobsters to crazies as threats to Gotham City. It was an amazing read and does have connections to other Super Hero stuff. The writer is also a producer for Heroes and the artist, if you're a fan of Heroes, is Tim Sale, the same artist that comes up with all those future paintings. But not everyone was pleased with how the movie was going.

Honey, I'm Home!

Jack Nicholson took the time off from watching Laker games to be "furious" that Nolan didn't ask him to either play the role or at the very least come to him for help on the character... Yeah, jacky boy. I don't think that's really an important issue at hand. Don't get me wrong. I loved the first Batman film. Tim Burton did a great job on it for its day. Nicholson is one of the great actors of our time and a cult Hollywood icon, but he's not the only source to go to for anything Joker related. Not to mention the film didn't age very well. You can watch it and enjoy it, but just slightly more seriously than the 60's Movie where Batman simply can't get rid of a Bomb. On that note, did Jack Nicholson ever get any help from the Cesar Romero on how exactly he should play the Joker? Now that was an amazing Joker. He took a BAM! and a ZAP! and a BOOF! like no one's business.

To The Bat Computer!
So filming has been going on the Chicago area for this film for some time. They are not in post production and it's only a matter of time before we get word on the final cut out there in test screenings and what not. But for the time being, what's there to keep the interest of all those internet nerds on the hunt for the latest in gossip? Well, there's always the rumors and leaked footage from other comic book conventions. But in this day and age, the PR departments crank out huge machines that offer clues and hints and provide hours and hours of entertainment to their fans. Look at Cloverfield, for example. They have had a online game since filming started to hype up that J.J. Abrams film with mystery and suspense! Good thing I've read the Batman Training Guide or else I wouldn't have any idea on what to do.

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It's like Disney Dollars. Only, you could actually spend it somewhere.

You Ever Dance With The Devil By The Pale Moonlight?

Who has time for that, right? If you haven't been keeping up with the Joker's latest clues in some Alternate Reality Game that WB is running, I have and let my hours wasted benefit you! The madness it brings comes at a cost and it shouldn't be something you need to afford. How does Batman do it? What madness does that dark defender carry if this is what it takes to track down this clown? Just to update where we are and what sites we have:

www.ibelieveinharveydent.com
This is the official campaign site for Harvey Dent. Don't be surprised by this two faced candidate. It simply had a campaign poster up of Dent. Nothing serious. It really just got the ball rolling in terms of creating buzz.

www.ibelieveinharveydenttoo.com
This is what got a lot of folks talking. The Joker's perversion of Dent's website really starts to show that Mister J has a sense of humor after all.

www.whysoserious.com
This one was found from the comic con joker dollar. It lead those who choose to follow the wild scavenger hunt all over sunny San Diego. The only thing I can say about the whole experience is Stay Classy, San Diego. It later proved to be the place to get the hints as to what to do. The day before Halloween had a couple of clues to how to join up with his gangs and cause another scavenger hunt around a handful of cities in the U.S. to find letters and create the phrase "The only sensible way to live in this world is without rules." which lead to another website.

www.Rorysdeathkiss.com

The Dark Knight's production secret project title was named this to keep filming under wraps. After the Halloween message was revealed, this website was were all the photos would be put up. Including the first new picture of Ledger as the Joker in the back of a car. This is also where the task came up to paint your face like jokers and take pictures around local city land marks. Those who took part in it got mailed a copy of the Gotham Times.

www.thegothamtimes.com
This showed up and those who took part of the painting got a hard copy in the mail. In the Gotham newspaper there was a lot of articles that gave us updates to what's going on in Gotham since Batman Begins. It was a rather detailed paper and the articles were worth reading. Again, that prankster jumped in and defaced it in....

www.thehahahatimes.com
This is an important one. This is the Joker's perversion of the Gotham Times website. It contained a code in all the circled phrases. You then had to decipher it by breaking down the number of letters in the circled phrases and decode " whysoseriouspersonalityprofile which lead you to exactly that, a personality profile to join the Joker's army.

www.whysoserious.com/personalityprofile
Achieving the highest score of "A Scream" doesn't do anything for now other than lets you know that you are just sick enough to be wanted by the Joker. Good job!

All the while, Gotham's company websites have been popping up left and right.

www.gothamcityrail.com
The official website of Gotham City rail, including Flash maps of the city. The interesting thing... and I say that in a very geeky nerd stand point, is that Nolan is using the exact same map for Gotham as was shown in the comics. Very nice attention to detail. The fact that I recognized that goes to show that I read way too many f'n funny books.

www.gothamnationalbank.com
Another official website of Gotham City business. This time the bank. I bet the joker has some plans for that! One of the rat races that was part of comic con was to go by the bank there and you got a little Gotham National Bank savings card.

www.gothampolice.com
The website of Gotham Police, known to be corrupt with only few exceptions. Commish Loeb is also a nod to comic writer Jeph Loeb. He did a very popular Batman story arc called Hush and is also a Producer on a little show called Heroes. You may have heard of it.

www.wearetheanswer.com
Harvey Dent's website, where you can report cops who you think are corrupt. Putting in a couple of known Batman cops brings up pretty generic e-mail responses. I punched in Gordon and it came back with a response that he was never a suspect. On the flip side there was an e-mail sent that had two cops that were corrupt.

Thank you for providing information on Detective Sergeant Jason McCree, Badge 4217 and/or Lt. Karl Breitup, Badge 6773. An Internal Affairs investigation has been opened on these officers and your information has been forwarded to the officer leading that investigation.

Thank you for stepping forward. It is regrettable when those invested with the public trust betray the people who look to them for protection and aid. But by exposing corruption, you are part of making Gotham better, safer, stronger.

Remember those, they'll come up later.

www.rememberinggina.org
A remembrance website for a girl murdered recently that was an article in the Gotham Times. See, that news paper did have a lot of clues to branch out to. She was killed in a mob fight, two policemen were present but left the scene shortly before her death - paid off by the mob. An email to the website receives a reply from Gina’s Aunt, mentioning a local store being burnt down.

www.gvafoundation.org
A new website, just up yesterday for victims.
Contains an email address and a phone number. It's unknown what contacting does.

www.acmesecuritysystems.com
Gotham Security company. Offering different kinds of security including protection from the Scarecrow's Fear toxin. Contacting via e-mail just leads to a generic response saying that they are in demand and taking a lot of orders right now, but just check their website for more info.

www.gothamcab.com
A Gotham City cab company, actually a front for the mob. Headed by one of the policemen who left before Gina was killed. If you phone the number and input the officer's badge number 6773 as a code by pressing during the message, you get a voice mail message from the mob, indicating the current city DA has mob connections. It's really really neat.

www.whysoserious.com/mausoleum
This site was a really nice mind blower. It's going back to the whole Joker's thug job application. You need to crack the safe, but how do you do it? Oh the mystery. I refer you back to the Batman Training Guide as it comes in handy. You can see at the top there's the note when you click on the safe. Take the blood soaked letters in each paragraph and they're an anagram that spells out TIME FOR TAFFY. Oh that jokester. We're not at a fair! Well, there is a Taffy being reported in that news paper. What time did it say he bit the big one? 7:38am? The only question then was how to plug that into the safe. If you set your computer clock to 7:38am while viewing the safe website, you'll see that it just comes off as if someone sprayed acid on it. Opening that lead to some more clues. going off those lead us to

www.gothamusd.net
Where the lunch menu in itself looks like a clue. Notice the 21st has "Bat" bites. Hmmmm. There's also mention of something that happened in the narrows and the bus stops have changed. The only thing I can gather so far from this one is that I AM LEGEND comes out on the 14th and there's going to be a 7 minute trailer attached to the IMAX versions of the film. So I would expect another task on the 21st on the website. Well, the night is almost here and so I must go back into the shadows of trying to figure this out.

Perhaps you've learned something from all this. For one, how utterly insane this online world can cause us with simple clues and hints. Damn you WB for making it so addicting! Hell, we still have months before the movie comes out. I'm not sure how far down this goes. We're through the looking glass, people!

I’m So Enlightened, I Just Can’t Hide It

Most people think that humorists are worthless and loathesome individuals who write ass jokes because they can't cut it in a "real" profession. These people are, of course, right. There is an exception to this rule, however, and I am that exception. While my cohorts spend their free time in the same opium dens that have recently overrun China and brought that country's economy to its knees, I pursue more intellectual goals. You see, I'm something of a dignified scholar. After writing a 1,700 word article about Cheese and the Cows they come from, I typically unwind by having my servants carry me to the top of the nearest hill, where I drink a martini and gaze upon the endless beauty of the night sky while I solve the mysteries of the universe. I'm like the Greek philosophers, really, only I don't wear a funny robe or have modern plumbing.

After each evening on the hill, I painstakingly record my musings in a journal which has become frail and battered over time (sometimes I drink a little bit too much and get out of control). These journal entries range in topic from religious matters to lessons I've learned in life to simple observations about the world around me. By sharing a few selections from this journal with you, hopefully I can inspire a few readers to think a little bit more about life instead of simply drifting through it.

They say it takes a village to raise a child. Apparently they've never been to the Smurf village. That thing's way too fucking tiny.

With the entire classroom staring and giggling at my naked body, I learned the true meaning of shame. It was right there, the third word in the weekly vocabulary list our teacher had just handed out.

Everyone's so impressed by the gigantic pyramids in Egypt. I don't think they'd be as impressed if they knew what I know: the Egyptians were actually trying to build very small rectangle-shaped houses.

Anarchists are full of shit. Don't get me wrong, I like the Clash as much as the next guy. But if they got their way and civilization as we know it crumbled, there would be total chaos with people running around and screaming in panic. You know what happens when people just run haphazardly like that? Scraped knees. No thanks, guys.

That day at the zoo changed the way I thought of animals forever. What really seperates us from these beautiful creatures, I wondered? As it turned out nothing, aside from a reinforced steel fence and the protective suit that I made out of delicious meat and honey.

Here's a hint for the sport of basketball: tie the bottom of the net closed and you won't have to keep putting the ball back in there. You guys have been playing for how long, and you still haven't figured that out? I just came up with that in like five minutes.

The homeless have got the wrong idea. Living on the street, sleeping on benches and urine-stained sidewalks, begging for money to keep from starving? Yeah, nice plan there. Good luck with all that.

Sometimes I think my dog can really understand what I say when I talk to him. This in turn makes me think that maybe he's not even a dog at all, but a human being that I bought in some crazy mixup. I calm myself and look over to him to see that he's licking his balls and it's anyones guess really.

If I could only pass one thing on to my children, I guess it would have to be the weird disease I picked up in Tijuana. I mean, according to the doctors I don't really have a choice.

I feel bad for amputees. Losing your legs in a car accident, getting shot, or mistakenly lopping off an arm with a chainsaw... these are all so cliched. When you're invariably asked to explain how you lost your limbs, I bet it really hurts when the other guy gets so bored that he rolls his eyes or gestures like he's jerking off.

Some people claim that the history our children are learning in school has been revised to benefit the interests of certain groups, but this is just a conspiracy theory for right-wing loonies. As Abraham Lincoln once said, "Four score and seven years ago, I had a dream. That dream told me that Bill 'Poppa Bear' O'Reilly is always right and we should support our troops and buy some Mikey D's Freedom Fries. Git-r-done!"

Music soothes the savage beast, but no matter how loud I sang that horse would not stop brutally kicking me.

Some scientists are confident that they can disprove the existence of God, yet with all their fancy beakers and microscopes they haven't even been able to partially explain Alec Baldwin's career.

If I had to pinpoint exactly when things began going wrong in that football game, I guess I would have to say it was when I sold my entire family to gypsies.

Our galaxy is tens of trillions of miles across, and surrounding it are countless galaxies of comparable size. All the cosmos that we have mapped out are only a grain of sand on a neverending beach. The universe extends infinitely beyond what your brain can even begin to comprehend. So don't even worry, just throw your garbage wherever you want.

The power of hypnotic suggestion is highly underestimated. It may sound silly, but if you keep repeating a message to someone, in time they'll actually begin to believe you. Especially if the message you're repeating is "I'm incredibly annoying", and you scream it every three seconds.

A surprising number of people are afraid of clowns, but I think that's a baseless fear and that they're crazy. It's the microscopic clowns you have to look out for, the ones that climb in your ears when you sleep.

Forget The Bird, Where's The Booze?

Ah Thanksgiving. That time when you come together with the family you seldom see. The typical awkward conversations about what you're doing with your life, why you don't visit and when will you finally settle down come up. If you're lucky enough, you'll have the chance to stuff your face full of turkey and stuffing in an attempt to avoid these questions. With any family setting the chances are good that there's some tension in the air between members of your family. So you're going to need something to help make those insanely boring stories told by family members you seldom see interesting. There's only a certain number of times you can hear about how your cousin timmy sure beat those parasites or awkwardly laugh at the uneasy jokes the hobo your hippie sister invited to dinner makes before wanting to slam your plate on your head.




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That's when the drinks come along. From helping you swallow your extremely dry turkey to getting your buzz on to loosen the mood. It's all the little things you do to help you pass the time before you fall asleep from an overdose of food. On Thanksgiving, the booze is already going to be flowing like Niagara Falls thanks to the deep-seated resentment and hostility in your family that's never given a proper outlet. Alcohol also serves a very practical purpose besides making incoming passive-aggressive comments about your lifestyle palatable; it removes all doubt from the mind. Sure, you may be asking yourself "Do I really want to do this to my body?" in front of all of those heaps of steaming food-mounds, but after a few glasses of spiced rum, you'll be on the sixth plate and racing your shirtless uncle to the bathtub so that one of you (the winner) can vomit. As long as everyone is toasted, everyone is happy; and you may just be drunk enough to forget about the poor parenting skills that made you intot he insecure, human train wreck that you are. If not, nothing makes a better chaser than tears! So read on, reader! This is your guide to what to chug down to get through those couple of hours tonight when you'll have to socialize with your family!

Wine

This is the basic on what you would think would be a perfect thing to serve with your fancy spread, right? WRONG! Think again. It's going to be a task to figure out what wine will go best with your meal. Should you go with a nice red or white? The rule of thumb is to stick to the color of your food, but if you're having a spread like your typical thanksgiving meal, what color would win out of all of them? The white of the turkey? Not to mention the different taste all around. Some like a nice oak after taste while others care for more of a fruity and sweet taste? Oh the choices! Then you'll have to figure out what years vintage was good and what year was crap. You'll then look foolish if you pick up a wine that isn't from America. I mean, it is Thanksgiving, what are you? Some terrorist? There's too many factors. Perhaps I'll write up a good wine post sometime, but for right now it may be out of your field my friend.

Guinness

While this may be the best drink in the world, not many people know how to pour one properly. And if the way your Aunt poured the gravey over your mashed potatoes is any indication, no one in your extended family, unless Irish, will know how to pour a proper Guinness. Not to mention that you're already going to be eating a lot of stuffing. Drinking one of these bad boys sometimes feels like you just ate a loaf of bread. Very often when I do drink enough of these I find myself waking up in a pile of wonder bread wrappers. I don't know why, man. I just do! In any event. Drinking this stuff will more than likely fill you up before you even get to the third helping of food. Which would be a bad thing considering the little known fact that you'll never have any leftovers to enjoy unless you hurry up and eat as much as you can now!



Jack Daniels

Well, if you're going to be saying grace down the neck of a bottle of Jack, you're more than likely not spending your time with a family. Which in itself is a plus. Congrats! Hopefully you'll be able to get some custody for your child after the courts stop raping you for child support. Either way, I'm sure that you're enjoying your thanksgiving meal in the form of a freshly carved up open face turkey sandwich from the local deli down the street.



Rum

Aye, a little Rum will do the trick of healing what causes your grief. The best part of this drink is that you can easily hide it in the coke that you have with your meal and no one will be the wiser. It helps avoid all those interventions. I mean, there's only so many times your loved ones can tell you they'll stop talking to you if you don't stop drinking before you just tell them to beat it anyway and leave you be with your drink of choice.



Hobo Wine

Forget the stuff that comes from Napa. A little known fact is that these hobo wines are made by the Gallo family winery. They just consider them the redheaded step children, much the same as you're family treats you if you hate being around them for thanksgiving. Let's get down to brass tacks . Your goal is to get as ripped up as possible in any means to not have to deal with your family. The 17.5% per volume alcohol level in these will leave you as toasted as the turkey. On top of that, it's a whole lot cheaper! These bad boys run you about a buck or two. Sure, you have to deal with paying for it through a four inch thick bullet proof window at the liquor store. But much like the pilgrims had to suffer a little, so do we. I'm sure anything from Modesto, California is nothing but top quality!

Jager

Jager and the thanksgiving meal actually have a lot in common. Everyone has had one night of drinking way too much of this stuff and then found themselves puking their brains out all night long just like everyone has had one night (usually the fourth Thursday of November) where they ate too god damn much and found themselves puking all night long. Ah, then you wipe your hands of ever touching it again, only to end up in the same position a year later. It's a vicious cycle, I know. But it's one that will always happen. I would be careful to choose this as your drink with the meal. Yes, it will get you to the point of forgetting all about your problems quickly, but you already have a high puke terror threat on Thanksgiving anyway. No need to make it a certainty.

All this could have been avoided with a couple of Irish Car bombs. Either that or it would have been even more entertaining.

Coors

Unless you're going to be deep frying your turkey, perhaps it's best that you put that silver bullet down. Don't tap into the rockies for this one. Besides that, do you really want a drink that came from the same place where the losers of the world series are? Thanksgiving is all about being American and while baseball is as American as you can get, getting swept in the world series is as anti-American as it comes! Hey Rockies,what happened to Rocktober? Oh yeah, it turned into Chokevember! Oh yes, back to the point. If you are going to be deep frying your turkey this year, please be warned that you should not under and circumstance deep fry indoors. You will burn the turkey and your home. While it will be funny for me to laugh about it while I sit outside and drink a cold Coors, watching your house go up in flames, it may not be funny to you.

Pabst blue ribbon

Again, do not go to beer while eating your turkey. I did one for Pabst simply because it's going to be fair warning. If you're going to be drinking Pabst blue ribbon on Thanksgiving, you're more than likely not talking to your family and enjoying your Tofurkey with your hipster friends. In which case all I have to say is this, Get a job, you leaches of society! Oh, I kid, I kid. I know the world needs hipsters. Who else is going to ask me if I want paper or plastic. And the jokes don't stop, do they? (Or did they ever start?) You should leave the Pabst for another night. Class it up some and go pick yourself up a six'er of Old Milwaukee.

Tsingtao

If you've never eaten at a Chinese establishment during Thanksgiving then you've never truly lived. Or should I say never fucked up a thanksgiving dinner. There's something about when your thanksgiving host invites you over to eat and tells you all about how they've been slaving away with the turkey and how they are especially proud of how good it smells and how golden brown it looks. So when they ask you to do the honors of cutting the turkey, you stick your carving knife into that breast bone only to feel a cold and wet turkey center. I don't think they put instructions on a turkey to defrost it before tossing it in the oven at 350 degrees, but if they assume folks have common sense, they have another thing coming. Any number of things gone so wrong with your meal that you end up in a Chinese dive enjoying General Mao's tasty duck instead of turkey will lead you to also drink your problems away with this great Chinese beer.

A couple of shots and you wont even notice how crappy that food taste!

Jones cola Thanksgiving pac

Yeah, it may seem a bit redundant to drink sodafied versions of the meal you are eating but stay with me for a second here. You have to think of it like a turducken! You know, that duck stuffed in a chicken stuffed in a turkey. Yup, exactly like that. Only the wonders of Jones Cola Thanksgiving pack has everything you're going to be enjoying in liquid form. Especially helpful for Aunt Gladis who's nick name is Gummy Bear on account of her dental status. With flavors like Turkey and Gravy soda, Sweet Potato soda, Dinner Roll soda, Pea soup soda and of course, Antacid soda how could you go wrong? I'm sure you're wondering why anyone would even buy this pack? I'm sure there is really no "good" answer to that. I have to admit that I have a couple of these soda packs. Why? I guess I really like pain. The irony of it all is that the Antacid soda has a warning label that says "NOT TO BE USED AS AN ANTACID!" All of these sodas should have a tag of "DO NOT DRINK." Unless you want your family tension to be cut with everyone puking, this is not the drink(s) to serve at the table.

I'm sure this helpful guide has laid out the methods that will best serve you to get drunk, sick or dead in time for your holiday gathering. Just remember. The less time you are in control of your own body, the more you'll have fun. You should take comfort that while you can't control what family you are born into, you can at least control which drink goes down your throat in pure levels of enjoyment and numbness.

Have a Happy Thanksgiving!

What Would I Do for a Klondike Bar?

I would cut out my own heart as sacrifice to Teztlotl, the Aztec God of cutting out your own heart in sacrifice to Teztlotl.

I would dig up and sodomize the remains of General Patton and I would videotape the whole thing in that creepy night vision filter made popular by Ms. Hilton

I would install a Linux operating system on my gaming PC.

I would write a blog that is roughly as formulaic as a Jeff Foxworthy "Best Of" DVD…whoops!

I would strangle the Pope with piano wire and then write a sonnet about it.

I would pass other people's kidney stones.

I would descend into a bestial state and prowl the shadowed streets of nightmare America preying on the weak who stray too far from the herd. As I fall upon the elderly, the sick, and the young my talons will sink into their soft flesh and their arterial blood will spray hot across my face and loins like war paint and I will exult in their demise. I will collect the skulls of my victims and hang them from my belt as trophies of my victories and cry out from the rooftops as an impotent world quakes in fear of my reign. Doors will be bolted, windows will be shuttered, and families will cower in their basements as I prowl the streets in search of my next innocent victim. They will send hunters to trap me or bring me down, but all will fall to my clever traps and animal cunning. Loops of their entrails will decorate the doorsteps of those who would send hired thugs out to rid this world of my cruelty.

I would sing "I'm a Little Teapot".

I would wear a Yankee's shirt.... in boston.

I would inject syringes of air into the veins of my loved ones and family members.

I would take what's behind door number two.

I would write, score, produce, and direct an off-off-Broadway musical based on Vikram Seth's 1500 page novel "A Suitable Boy" using only hand puppets made from Trader Joe's bags as my cast. An inauspicious debut will lead to rave reviews in trendy free broadsheets that see the production as a crazed novelty act akin to Tiny Tim or Wesley Willis. By week three I'll be playing sold out shows and entertaining offers from various Broadway producers to shorten my script down from 27 hours to two hours and franchise out into touring productions. Andrew Lloyd Webber will offer to re-score my production but I'll turn him down in favor of Sondheim and then storm out of our first meeting cursing the entire industry as nothing but "ill-tempered fagots bent on destroying the performing arts with aggressive frippery". Sondheim will run me down with his H2 leaving me a paraplegic but the court settlement will grant me millions to raise my family of imaginary children that I sired with a stuffed turkey buzzard that played Rupa Mehra.

I would pummel a killer bee hive into the ground with my bare hands and then try to scoop the still-living bees down my throat.

I would give my banking information to someone from Nigeria. They would promise me big returns, but I wouldn't care, just the idea of helping someone would make me happy and of course I would have that Klondike bar waiting for me when I get home from donating plasma to pay my rent. Assuming you live up to your end of the agreement.

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I would kill that god damn polar bear that's wasting my precious precious Klondike Bars in building a Klondike house. I bet it's the Polar Bear from Lost!

I would cut off one foot with my bare teeth.

I would hop on one foot.

I would conduct a variety of occult rituals in an effort to open the secret tomb of Noggya-Shasuth or "That Which Shall Be Forever Forgotten". Upon breaking the 99th seal containing Noggya-Shasuth within his circle of binding I will run up to the maddening deathless God of mankind's forgotten past using a human screen of sherpas and gullible college students convinced that I was taking an ecology trip to one of the lost islands of the Pacific and intone solemnly to "That Which Shall Be Forever Forgotten" that I have rent asunder reality and torn away the thin veil of reason to tell him that he just got Punk'd. Then I will point to Ashton Kutcher and the imaginary camera crews as his tentacles pull me into twitching pieces that are shoved into Noggya-Shasuth's ever- hungry beak.

I would chew off my own hands and feet, then cauterize the stumps with a lit stick of dynamite.

I would give Ann Coulter a long, wet, and sloppy rim job.

I would eat at Arby's.

I would eat a lesser quality ice cream sandwich.

I would forge the sword Excalibur and quench its white hot steel in my gut in the vain hope that part of me might live on through this, my greatest creation.

I would…you know what, actually I think I would rather have a Drumstick. Oh man, what I would do for one of those!

Things My TV Taught Me

Millions of years ago humans learned the hard lessons of life from dinosaurs. Thousands of years ago we learned our lessons from Egyptians with whips and various wandering tribes of kobold brigands. In the early 20th century our children learned their life lessons from radio serials like "The Shadow," "The Phantom" and "The Insubstantial Hero." Radio fell by the wayside in the latter half of the 20th century and by the dawn of the 21st century our offspring were lucky to learn anything that didn't come out of either a TV set or a bare electrical outlet.

To celebrate the age of the TV teacher I would like to share a few of the lessons my TV has taught me.

If only they made a flat-billed dunce cap.

"Monster" Means "Stupid"

For many years I was under the naive impression that monsters were creatures that populated fairy tales and random encounter tables. Then I learned that "Monster" was an adjective that gear head Jesse James uses to describe things that are stupid. I love classic cars. I've done my part in restoring a MG. There's a difference between restoring a classic car and making it MONSTER. Just ask yourself this. Do you want a car that looks like a giant pie and has lasers shooting out of the top and the whole thing is on hydraulics so you can tilt it vertically? That's a "monster" car and you can get it at a "monster" garage. Do you want a house that has a model train that drives through its vents and a refrigerator that sounds an air horn whenever you open it? Then you want a "monster" house, courtesy of Jesse James!

Similar to this new definition, I have learned that an "American Chopper" is when you take a motorcycle and make it look like Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer or a POW memorial. A Monster American Chopper would be so stupid that it could literally threaten the laws of science.

Hey, ya'll, my two ingrate sons are here to help me eat all these deep fried pies!

The Louder a TV Chef, the Less Healthy Their Food

Paula Deen screams "Hey, ya'll!" and serves butter fried in lard and topped with ice cream. Rachael Ray declares triple cheese macaroni and sour cream to be "Yum-o!" Emeril, don't even get me started, the knob will fly right off his oven and into a vat of pork fat with a whole bottle of whiskey and he will "BAM!" it with a side of cream while the audience hoots like they're on Arsenio. Meanwhile, the whispering and cooing avuncular chefs of Food TV with their soft lighting and Vaseline-smeared cameras will offer up grilled tofu and shaved fruit ice.

The only exception to this rule is if the TV Chef is hosting a show about low-carb cooking. For some reason low-carb cooking requires the same degree of shouting as high-fat cooking. A side lesson to all this: if the TV chef has a chalk board you can expect the number of steps in a recipe to be tripled or quadrupled. I'm looking at you Alton Brown, mister you-can-capture-your-own-water-with-these-dew-traps-to-boil-spaghetti.

After screwing up your most liked items We'll quiz you on trivial info after!

Never Leave Your House for More Than 48 Hours

If a friend or coworker suddenly asks you to go on a weekend retreat with them you have to turn the offer down. If you don't there is a good chance you will come home to find all of your chairs painted bright orange, a bunch of framed finger paintings on your wall and a heap of pillows covered with hot glue and leaves. Then you will see that and have to act really happy in front of a camera that your wife or girlfriend spent all weekend turning your office into some sort of horrible arts and crafts abortion. Go ahead; open that big ugly MDF cabinet that looks like a skateboard. That's where we put your TV! The ceiling fan you relied on to cool the room? Oh, that made the ceiling too busy. If you don't gush with excitement over the changes then you will look like the biggest asshole ever. America just watched an hour of your significant other busting their hump to do something retarded.

Fluids by one of the hundreds of serial killers I've never heard of before.

It's Surprising Anyone is Alive Still to Create Court TV Programming

Court TV is probably the worst introduction to the United States any foreign visitor could hope to experience. Every show is a detailed study of how Americans brutally murder each other. Our houses and hotels are filled with mysterious stains that reveal themselves as blood with a spray of luminal. Phalanxes of serial killers march through our streets, raping and eating the hearts of anyone who stands in their way. Our computer hard drives contain hundreds of gigs of chatlogs that prove we lured those teenage girls out to the woods. The insane volume of unique murder case files covered by Court TV transform even the most infamous crimes and criminals into mundane by-the-numbers reality TV. The programming is so overwhelmingly bloodthirsty that at times I am amazed that I am both alive and not in prison for murder. Yet.

COOOOOoooooooppppps!

If You Put a Camera On Pretty Much Anything, It's More Interesting Than a Sitcom

Many lament the explosion of reality TV as the death throes of the situation comedy. These reality shows are much cheaper and faster to produce than even a low budget first-season sitcom. The reality that most people refuse to acknowledge: as bad as most reality TV can get, it's still better than most sitcoms. I think the best evidence of this comes from the longest-running Reality TV show: Cops. "Cops" has so many episodes that virtually every channel with a little bit of late night free time airs "Cops." When I'm changing channels and I come across a rerun of almost any TV show I'll just switch past it, but if I see Cops there is some sort of primal need to sit there and watch people yelling and getting wrestled into a police car. No amount of snappy writing or hilarious one-liners can ever top some cracked-out hooker declaring herself to be a vampire and trying to bite police officers.

This should serve as a slightly different lesson to other reality shows. The more produced the reality show gets, the worse its shelf life. I can watch ancient episodes of "Cops" where Sheriff John Bunnell was actually still a sheriff and not narrating police chases, but I can't sit through 30 seconds of the original "Desperate Housewives" To be fair, I can't sit through any episodes of "Desperate Housewives," but those old ones are downright horrifying. They're so garish it's like watching a clown climbing the Aggro Crag set to opera music.

Valuable lessons, all of them, but the most important lesson to learn is to never get attached. All of the really good shows will be canceled before their time. Your favorite show is doomed. That's because the audience for shows like "Arrested Development", "Firefly", "Drive" and "Deadwood" were mostly killed off by the dinosaurs and Egyptians with whips. A few stray strands of DNA managed to sneak past the talons of pterodactyls and spread to the present day. Unfortunately, they barely add up to a one share.

The Book Burning Depot: I Rewrite The Classics

It's alright. I'm paid to think like this.

I am, you will not be surprised to discover, the best writer that has ever lived. Unlike my colleagues, who write to advance knowledge, I am able to write outside the box, that is to say, without concern that anyone really reads this blog, I am not afraid to put my money where my mouth is, for instance creating sentences that are almost a paragraph long and have a tremendous amount of commas.

Writing about faults in a book is like singing about a bad song or painting a picture called "Mona Lisa Sucks." You simply have no choice but be judged by the standards of the very medium you are critiquing, and yet I relish every chance to show that I am equal to the task.

Here's the rub: (This is a phrase I borrowed from another writer of similar skills.) Every single book ever written would have been better had I written it. This might seem like a sudden change of subject but that is simply because you can't follow my higher level of reasoning. Besides, I'm not just going to say something like that. Oh no, I'm going to prove it to you. I'm going to make the classics of literature better before your very eyes. It's like a magic trick, only with less magic and more words.

Let's get started.

• Title:

The famous saying goes "Don't judge a book by its cover" but let's be honest here. Are you more likely to buy a book called "Walden" or "She Softly Moans and Bites Her Bottom Lip"?

A new paradigm in literature...

Take these improvements, for example:

• Original Title: Steal This Book

  Problem With This Title: There is a chance someone might take it seriously and you would lose out on a valuable sale!

  Better Title: Please Do Not Steal This Book Instead You Should Purchase It Legally

• Original Title: For Whom The Bell Tolls

  Problem With This Title: Possible confusion as this is a book and not a famous metal song.

  Better Title: For Whom The Bell Tolls (This Is Not A Metallica Song But Rather A Book)

• Original Title: Walden

  Problem With This Title: It's Walden

  Better Title: She Softly Moans and Bites Her Bottom Lip

• The Opening

Good, we've hooked them with a killer title, but here's where a lot of classics drop the ball. Yeah, there may be something very profound in chapter 5, but I'm never going to get there if I have to slog through fifty pages of someone's family history that never gets referenced again.

Boom. Examples:

• Crime and Punishment

  Old Opening: "At the beginning of July, during an extremely hot spell, towards evening, a young man left the closet he rented from tenants in S_____Y Lane, walked out to the street, and slowly, as if indecisively, headed for K______n Bridge."

  Problems With This Opening: Uhhh, for one thing, Russia is not hot, it is cold. Everyone knows that. It's always snowing in Russia, which is why they got so desperate and made communism and then got jealous of the rest of the world's not cold weather so they threatened us with communism like an ideological gun pressed against our forehead (This simile would be another example of why I am the best writer ever.)

  Also, I don't see any characters I can immediately connect with. Who is this young man and why should I care about him? It would be better if there was someone I could immediately recognize and have a bond with.

  New Improved Opening: "Jack Bauer stood over the desk, which was as cold and barren as a Russian tundra. There was a glacier outside.

  

  KERBLAM
  'Where's the body?' he shouted pensively, and turned to the window, sighing. 'Goddamnit, we don't have much time here,' he added, musing on the responsibility of men to live out their destiny and then ordering the opening of an unauthorized sat feed."

• A Tale of Two Cities

  Old Opening: "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way."

  Problems With This Opening: 2 MANY WORDS

  New Improved Opening: "It was a time of iconicly opposing concepts arranged in a list."

• The Bible

  Old Opening: "In the beginning, God created the Heavens and the Earth."

  Problems With This Opening: Boring narrative, not enough action.

  New Improved Opening: "God explodes."

• Lolita:

  Old opening: "Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta."

  Problems With This Opening: Too literary and poetic. Gives the impression that this book is anything but filthy pornography about little girls.

  New Improved Opening: "They have sex on pages 114, 149, 204, 253, and 267."

• Plots:

We've gotten past the hard part now, and we only have the other 347 pages to worry about. This is the part in a book where the author has to come up with something called the plot. Unfortunately, many writers simply choose the wrong plot. Allow me to correct them:

I am extremely serious about this.

• East of Eden

  Old Plot: Several generations of two families in the Salinas Valley helplessly reenact the story of Cain and Abel against a backdrop of change, war, and love.

  Better Plot: Several generations of two families in the Salinas Valley helplessly reenact the story of Die Hard against a backdrop of change, buildings, and terrorists in buildings.

• Lord of the Rings

  Old Plot: A group of heroes works seperately to unmake a ring of ultimate power and defeat its evil maker.

  Better Plot: A samurai sword wielding pizza delivery man teams up with a young stakeboarding chick to stop a madman from using the internet to spread an ancient Babylonian spell that turns everyone into Pentecostals.

• Finnegans wake

  Old Plot: ?????

  Better Plot: Having a plot.

As for endings, keep them short and to the point. Like so.

Pass It Fwrd

How many times do you get this sort of shit in your mail.

"Your true love will surprise you by midnight tonight....."
"Hot chicks will rock your cock....."
"You will have good luck for the rest of the day...."
"Your enemies will bow before your glorious might...."

Wow, those are amazing events that I would like to live out. Who doesn't want to smite their enemies in public? Well, much like any good beer, the buzz fades quickly and you wake up in a tub full of ice and a missing organ. In this case, it goes away when you realize that the end of those phrases usually say ".....If you pass this on to ten people"

Oh man, what a thrill kill. I'm going to have to do something in order to get this? At times like this I would love to live my life more towards the motto of If I wasn't so Lethargic, I would be more apathetic. It doesn't sound like such a task. I simply have to send this e-mail to ten people and then all my dreams and fantasies will come true? On paper it does sound like a fair trade. Though you then realize what that means.

What if those ten people I send it to already received it? Would my initial one person I was getting credit for still count? What if I'm socially inept that I don't even have ten people to send it to? Should I not be entitled to such promises then? How do I know they even got it? This shit is sounding harder and harder as I think about it. Do I really want to bother someone else? What if they send it back to me. This can lead to a never ending cycle of either great luck or total frustration.

Fuck that shit. I don't need the stress. Do I look like I need ulcers? I'd rather let my enemies not bow down to me if it means I get to relax and not have to take on all this worthless stress. What good is spiting them if in turn, they are spiting you by making you do all this work?

Then how long is the turn around for this sort of service? Should I expect my enemies to bow down before me the next day? Or will it be like one of those mail in rebates where I'm sitting by the mail box for 6-8 weeks. Don't even get me started on how long I waited for cereal mail in toys. I really can't afford to spend that amount of time sitting next to the mail box in the rain and this cold anymore. What if it's not as advertised? Do they know my enemies? Is it a one size fits all sort of thing? So many questions and so little answered.

The moral of the story is don't send me stupid fwd's that offer false promises. They shatter my heart in places I haven't felt because it has been cold and black for so many years.

The Following Takes Place Between Writer Strike And A New Season

It would normally take a couple of nukes, some CTU mole, the Chinese Government and a whole lot of kidnapped family members and loved ones to even slow Jack Bauer down. There seems to be one thing that can put the fear of God into Jack and that is the Fox network and with their track record on pressing the cancellation button, I would say it’s for good reason. I doubt you will find anyone who can defend Season 6. Besides making Six Flags a radioactive fun land, It was a terrible season. The writers admitted it, the general audience tuned out. It was just terrible. No matter how bad the last season was, it doesn’t deserve what fate had in store for this season of the show. Keep in mind that filming a single episode of this show feels like its own episode of 24. It is very long hours and very tough work. It’s a lot like the show, only those of us who worked on the show actually get to go to the bathroom. So by no means is this an easy task. So the problems that this season has faced already is something amazingly unlucky. Let’s take a look at the couple of problems that have struck the set of 24 this season so far.

The only bomb he’s finding is of the Irish car variety.

C.T.U.ing on a D.U.I

The first speed bump in our nonstop action packed Bauer hour roller coaster ride was one that Kiefer took after pounding them tall boys down. After a (typical) night of drinking heavy, Mr. Sutherland got pulled over and had a D.U.I tossed at him. The end result is that he’ll have to spend 48 days in Jail. This was some sort of higher power telling the writers that they will have more time to come up with a good season this time. It was worked it out so his jail sentence wouldn’t effect production by sending Bauer back to the Chinese prison during the winter production break for 18 days and then the remaining 30 sometime before July. Crisis averted and all is well, right? Wrong

WHERE’S THE FIRE?!?!?!

Production on the new season was rolling along better with the prison deal figured out when, much like the show, all hell broke loose and wild fires started popping up all over the place. The Santiago fire caused so much smoke to be blown over the marine corps base in Irivine where they were filming that the entire location shoot had to be canceled and moved to a different location. This burned a lot of time on an already rushed production. But you would be foolish to think that some fire would stop Jack Bauer. Hell, if you really must know what caused those fires to be put out at a quicker pace, it was Jack on a Helicopter pouring water out of his Jack Sack. He found out fire’s weakness by torturing a lighter for a good half hour. Jack sure enjoyed that!

Ok Kiefer, I think we’re done with your Rembrandt light... DEAR GOD!

VAMPIRES!

Nothing stops production on any set more so than vampires. When I worked on Garfield a vampire Odie nearly killed half the lighting crew and delayed the production a whole day. I don’t know how many times I’ve been adjusting the key lighting for an actor and all of a sudden they burst into flames. 24 is no different. Vampire Corey Feldman and Corey Haim kept coming on the hot set and screwing up the shots bumming smokes off the crew and bugging Kiefer about a Lost Boys sequel. The last straw was broken when they raided craft services. You mess with a mans food and you mess with their emotion! I say Vampires because the only thing that would stop them was a stake through the heart and I sleep easier at night thinking that the shallow grave outside Tucson city is filled with the bodies of undead blood suckers and not just 80’s teen idols.

DAYLIGHT SAVING TIME!

Let’s see you try to change the countdown clock timer. It’s like trying to adjust the one on your microwave. Even with the instructions it’s a tough son of a bitch. You can’t very well run down the clock and count 24 hours without the use of the countdown clock and it wouldn’t be 24 without that Beep Beep Beep at the end. All this because of daylight saving time. And it’s not like they can leave the clock unchanged. It would be an hour off. What would really be a trip is if they had day Eight started on daylight saving time. That would be one extra hour of Bauer. Well, if it was a Halloween terrorist. If it was a Jack saving the world from an Easter threat it’ll be an hour less. And yet again I go back to the well for daylight saving time jokes. Eventually someone figured out how to change to clock and this crisis was bypassed. But all this was for nothing as the one thing that could stop Jack happened...

THE WRITERS STRIKE!

What is there for Jack Bauer to say when he has no one to write it? Because of contract talks going sour between producers and writers over residuals, it caused a writers strike to happen. In the last few seasons of 24 the network wanted to have no breaks between episodes. With only 8 episodes in the can and the unknown amount of time that the strike will go on for, it’s hard to tell when production can continue on the show. And so the one thing terrorist, amnesia, chemical agents and a whole lot of government paperwork couldn’t do, the networks did. That is, silence Jack Bauer. You wont see Jack saving the world. Hell, you can’t even call Jack in to stop the strike

With Jack Bauer being put into the Chinese government prison known as the Fox executive’s shelf, it’s unknown as to how long this will last or when we will see Day 7 of 24. Fox wants the entire season done with before it will start showing these. I would wager that it’ll be April or May before we get to see any of this season if we are lucky. Till then Fox announced their line up and in replace of 24 we’ll be getting more reality shows and more American Idol. If that doesn’t show that the terrorist won, I’m not sure what does.

n the end it is all because of the dispute between the WGA and AMPTP. I’m standing by the WGA on this issue. Not because I’m against the studio, nor arguably a writer. When you illegally download something and the network doesn’t get any cash for it, they call it piracy. But when you download something or watch streaming video with commercials and the writers don’t get any money for it, the networks call it a promotion? This should not be considered kosher. I’m bummed that 24 is going to be postponed but if it creates more incentive for the writers to get properly compensated, I can take the delay. In the meantime, create your own Day 7