Firstly, I want you to realize that my hair is not a tootsie roll.
There are times in life, when an idea hits you. Not one of those earth shattering epiphany type ideas, nor even a niggling back-brain story idea that whispers at you about this one feeling that you can maybe create on paper if you just sift through the words you have long enough. No, these ideas are simply brilliant, though somewhat shakey in terms of execution or analysis, and you believe in them with your whole soul, because honestly, you think, there is simply nothing more true or awesome.
I'd like to share some of these ideas with you.
1. ARG! AVAST YE, UNHAND THAT MINIVAN!
I'd like to state for the records that pirates are unmitigatedly cool. Minivans, on the other hand, are not so cool. BUT! They do have those doors that slide open on either side, leaving the middle section of the minivan as a breeze-through or staging area, which allows the supple mind (yes, I called my mind supple - what are you gonna do about it, huh? Punk?) to think of a way to combine the cool of pirates with the functionality of the minivan.
I want you to imagine that part of the minivan as a staging area for a highway pirate attack. Stay with me, stay with me, all shall be revealed in time.
Here's the scenario: you pull up on along side a car that seems to have particularly interesting loot (read: good road snacks or rocking cds!), and with the launcher that you will have attached to your minivan, you launch not one, but two grappling hooks onto the other vessel. Then with monkey-like agility you and your crew of miscreants board the other car and procure the booty.
A sample conversation would go like this:
Minivan Pirate: Avast ye! Hand over the gummy worms and frappucinos!
Driver: ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR FUCKING MIND?
Minivan Pirate: You have been boarded! We are purloining your sugary goodness!
Driver: WHAT THE FUCKING FUCK?
Then, after confiscating the goods, the pirates return to the staging area of the minivan, and the minivan flotilla makes its way toward safe haven, which I imagine as a strip mall. Perhaps with a gym that's advertising a pilates class, and a moderately priced food chain restuarant.
This parking lot will be filled with minivans that are proudly bearing a full-rear window sticker of the Jolly Roger, and a scurvy lot of pirates who lounge in the half opened vehicles, tearing viciously into the coolers worth of road snacks they will have...liberated. There could be rival minivan pirate gangs, and vendettas within them.
It would be like drama on the high seas...but on the highways. Tell me it's not cool. Go on. I won't believe you.
2. The Hangover as Essential, or Chaser Plus is the Enemy
I have talked about this before, and some lucky members of the world have seen me hung over, and friends, I will be brief on this point, but I believe that eliminating the hang over is a drastic error in judgment as the hangover is a neccesary part of human survival, if that human happens to have been over-served the previous evening.
The hangover gives you a fuzzy blanket wrapped over all the stupid shit you may, or may not, have done the night before. The hangover makes survival your first priority, and suddenly it doesn't matter that at five in the morning you drunk dialed high school friends to tell them that you've always thought they wore colors that spoke to you of a certain ennui, and that you wish that they could, like you, partake in the joy of life. The hangover makes you taste the sweet, sweet water in a way you've never tasted it before -- delicious, cool deliverence. The hangover, though not to be enjoyed, does give you a certain perspective on the world that cannot be duplicated.
The hangover is a punishment, and you know this well, but it makes you feel a little bit like you're a trooper. It makes you feel like you've earned the face-down bed-flop in the afternoon. It makes you wear your sunglasses inside sometimes, and that kind of makes you look like a rockstar.
The hangover is painful, but then every birth is. The hangover, my friends, is the buffer between you and the actual world you inhabit until you can mentally cope with it. In conclusion: Chaser Plus, you are the devil.
3. Nicholas Sparks' Machiavellian Plot
I freely admit that I love mawkishly maudlin movies. I will stare at the screan with weepy eyes, clutching at my kleenex with a trembling lip as the consumptive heroine collapses gracefully into the strong arms of her stalwart hero. I do not deny this.
I enjoy A Walk to Remember. I enjoy The Notebook. I'm not proud.
But I am convinced that Nicholas Sparks is slowly, secretely poisoning our minds. He draws you in, he gets you involved. You think abstractly at first about how you may or may not be comfortable with the Christian propaganda, or the gender politics, or the inherent social commentary or the jingoism that floats every so closely above the head of the nostalgia upon which he relies. For the first few moments, you may roll your eyes. You may snort. You may comment on ridiculous dialogue or perceived mediocrity.
But then, your eyes glaze over and you fall deep, deep into the earnest love story he's showing you. You're hypnotized - it's like the man is fucking Rasputin. There is nothing you can do.
Lifetime movies do not even do this as intensely. Those you still carry a sense of irony with you while you watch. Nicholas Sparks annihilates your irony. He leaves you no choice. He makes a zombie of you, and you (and I) love it. He is clearly in league with the forces of darkness.
I'd like to share some of these ideas with you.
1. ARG! AVAST YE, UNHAND THAT MINIVAN!
I'd like to state for the records that pirates are unmitigatedly cool. Minivans, on the other hand, are not so cool. BUT! They do have those doors that slide open on either side, leaving the middle section of the minivan as a breeze-through or staging area, which allows the supple mind (yes, I called my mind supple - what are you gonna do about it, huh? Punk?) to think of a way to combine the cool of pirates with the functionality of the minivan.
I want you to imagine that part of the minivan as a staging area for a highway pirate attack. Stay with me, stay with me, all shall be revealed in time.
Here's the scenario: you pull up on along side a car that seems to have particularly interesting loot (read: good road snacks or rocking cds!), and with the launcher that you will have attached to your minivan, you launch not one, but two grappling hooks onto the other vessel. Then with monkey-like agility you and your crew of miscreants board the other car and procure the booty.
A sample conversation would go like this:
Minivan Pirate: Avast ye! Hand over the gummy worms and frappucinos!
Driver: ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR FUCKING MIND?
Minivan Pirate: You have been boarded! We are purloining your sugary goodness!
Driver: WHAT THE FUCKING FUCK?
Then, after confiscating the goods, the pirates return to the staging area of the minivan, and the minivan flotilla makes its way toward safe haven, which I imagine as a strip mall. Perhaps with a gym that's advertising a pilates class, and a moderately priced food chain restuarant.
This parking lot will be filled with minivans that are proudly bearing a full-rear window sticker of the Jolly Roger, and a scurvy lot of pirates who lounge in the half opened vehicles, tearing viciously into the coolers worth of road snacks they will have...liberated. There could be rival minivan pirate gangs, and vendettas within them.
It would be like drama on the high seas...but on the highways. Tell me it's not cool. Go on. I won't believe you.
2. The Hangover as Essential, or Chaser Plus is the Enemy
I have talked about this before, and some lucky members of the world have seen me hung over, and friends, I will be brief on this point, but I believe that eliminating the hang over is a drastic error in judgment as the hangover is a neccesary part of human survival, if that human happens to have been over-served the previous evening.
The hangover gives you a fuzzy blanket wrapped over all the stupid shit you may, or may not, have done the night before. The hangover makes survival your first priority, and suddenly it doesn't matter that at five in the morning you drunk dialed high school friends to tell them that you've always thought they wore colors that spoke to you of a certain ennui, and that you wish that they could, like you, partake in the joy of life. The hangover makes you taste the sweet, sweet water in a way you've never tasted it before -- delicious, cool deliverence. The hangover, though not to be enjoyed, does give you a certain perspective on the world that cannot be duplicated.
The hangover is a punishment, and you know this well, but it makes you feel a little bit like you're a trooper. It makes you feel like you've earned the face-down bed-flop in the afternoon. It makes you wear your sunglasses inside sometimes, and that kind of makes you look like a rockstar.
The hangover is painful, but then every birth is. The hangover, my friends, is the buffer between you and the actual world you inhabit until you can mentally cope with it. In conclusion: Chaser Plus, you are the devil.
3. Nicholas Sparks' Machiavellian Plot
I freely admit that I love mawkishly maudlin movies. I will stare at the screan with weepy eyes, clutching at my kleenex with a trembling lip as the consumptive heroine collapses gracefully into the strong arms of her stalwart hero. I do not deny this.
I enjoy A Walk to Remember. I enjoy The Notebook. I'm not proud.
But I am convinced that Nicholas Sparks is slowly, secretely poisoning our minds. He draws you in, he gets you involved. You think abstractly at first about how you may or may not be comfortable with the Christian propaganda, or the gender politics, or the inherent social commentary or the jingoism that floats every so closely above the head of the nostalgia upon which he relies. For the first few moments, you may roll your eyes. You may snort. You may comment on ridiculous dialogue or perceived mediocrity.
But then, your eyes glaze over and you fall deep, deep into the earnest love story he's showing you. You're hypnotized - it's like the man is fucking Rasputin. There is nothing you can do.
Lifetime movies do not even do this as intensely. Those you still carry a sense of irony with you while you watch. Nicholas Sparks annihilates your irony. He leaves you no choice. He makes a zombie of you, and you (and I) love it. He is clearly in league with the forces of darkness.