Guy in a Bear Suit

american royalty

(for someone who doesn't believe in all that stuff, i certainly write about the afterlife a lot.  it's cause it's funny)

FADE IN:

INT.  THE AFTERLIFE.  NIGHT.

 

TEDDY - it sure is nice to be out of that cancer-ridden body.  i hope everyone is here to greet me. 

 

JFK - teddy, you fat fuck, get over here!  (puts teddy in a headlock gives him a noogie, then holds his first two left fingers under teddy's nose)  smell that, boy-o?

TEDDY - what the christ is that?

JFK - jayne mansfield. 

TEDDY - (struggles free) c'mon now.  (pause while he gets himself together) jack, it's so good to see you again. 

JFK - you too ted, you too.  so cancer huh?  i always assumed cirrhosis.  bobby and i had a bet.

TEDDY - bobby!  where is he?  i missed him too.

 

RFK - teddy!  come here!  (tosses teddy a football and then tackles him)

TEDDY - hey bobby!  nice tackle, but could you get off?  i'm dignified now.

RFK - you hear that jack?  teddy's dignified.  is that what you tell the coeds that you bang on spring break after you talk about hanging out in the white house with jack and me?

JFK - yeah, i'm sure they're really impressed that you made it all the way up to "also-ran" for president.  (jfk and rfk laugh uproariously)

TEDDY - hey jack, how's your fucking head?  you too bobby; wanna grab some lunch at the ambassador hotel? 

JFK - whoa there, water wings, that's outta line.

TEDDY - you're right.  man, i've missed you fellas.  where is everyone else?

RFK - i'm surprised eunice isn't here.  she won the death date pool.  of course she couldn't enter the cause of death pool cause that would have been cheating since she was just there.

TEDDY - really?  what did you guess, bobby?

RFK - drowning.

TEDDY - fuck off, i'm a good swimmer.

MICHAEL KENNEDY, JFK JR. and JOE KENNEDY JR. all enter the room.

TEDDY - guys! 

hugs all around as they meet and greet.

TEDDY - so tell me how you had me checking out.

 

JOE JR. & JFK JR. (together) - plane crash.

 

MICHAEL KENNEDY - careless skiing accident.

TEDDY - funny guys.  where's rosemary?

JFK - uh, well, they don't let lobotomized retards in the VIP wing, kennedy or no.

TEDDY - so you still take the piss right outta her, huh?

JFK - it's all in good fun.  she doesn't know what the fuck i'm saying anyway.

JUDITH CAMPBELL EXNER enters.

 

JUDITH - jack, darling, come along.  we have, ahem, business to attend to.

TEDDY - you're still fucking her?

JFK - (to ted) yeah, joe dimaggio won't let me near marilyn.  (to judith) coming judy.  my brother just got here. 

JUDITH - oh hello ted.  now come on jack, momo doesn't like to wait.

SAM GIANCANNA enters.

SAM - jack, get your pretty fucking irish catholic ass over here before i wack you again.

JFK - (to the family) gotta run boys.  (to judith & sam) ask not what my pecker can do for you, ask what your tits and ass can do for my pecker!

JOE KENNEDY SR. enters.

 

JOE SR. - teddy, my boy!  go get a switch!

TEDDY - hey daddy.  what for?

JOE SR. - you did far too much work for the dahhhhkies.  i didn't steal and murder my way through prohibition, sell my soul to the devil and then bribe and cheat my boys' way to prominence to see you do all that helping of the coloreds!  you're from massachusetts, for christfuck, act like it! 

TEDDY - (aside, to rfk and the rest) oh fuck.  that racist old bastard hasn't changed after all this time. (to joe sr.) coming daddy.

MARY JO KOPECHNE enters.  she is pissed and soaking wet.

 

MARY - fuck all that!  i got dibs you fat old drunk fucker!  get over here and we're going down to the river!  my time is now, you pickled-liver, sorority-girl-fucking family failure!

MARY grabs teddy by the crotch, shoves him in a car and proceeds to drive it off a bridge into a body of water.

TEDDY - help!  help!  bobby!  joe!  daddy!

ALL THE KENNEDYS - (laughing) ha, you had that one coming for 40 years teddy!

FADE OUT.

perfect

my absolute favorite part is the start of the women's chart where they don't even consider that they might be wrong.

 

buy me some peanuts and crackerjacks

our oldest son has recently started playing baseball for the 1st time.  he didn't play t-ball, but instead jumped right into coach pitch.  i had been pitching wiffle balls to him in the backyard for some time, but this is the first time he's playing with real baseballs (albeit those slightly softer ones for kids) and with the pitching coming overhand from 30 feet away as opposed to 10 or 15 feet underhand.

we've had four practices so far and he's probably about in the middle of the pack relative to the other boys in terms of hitting.  he has a nice swing that is one of the better ones, but he's just not making much contact yet.  since his swing is aggressive, i'm not too worried.

for the last 20 minutes of each practice, the coach has them "scrimmage", which is where they bat until they hit the ball and then they run to first.  once they've batted, they rotate around the infield until all the boys have hit.  in the interest of time, if they don't make contact after five pitches or so, they hit off the tee.

last night, keaton didn't hit the ball, although he did foul one or two, and subsequently had to hit off the tee.  about half of the boys did this as well.  i didn't think much of it, although i was really pulling for him to hit the pitched ball.

anyway, as has been covered ad nauseum, our youngest boy is a handful.  as such, he becomes too much to contain about halfway through each practice and my wife takes him home while i stay until the end of practice (we go in separate cars since we're both coming from work).  therefore, my wife doesn't always see how keaton hits.  last night she was putting him to bed and asked him if he had fun at practice and if he hit the ball well.  he said he had fun, but that he didn't hit the ball and had to use the tee.  not knowing that the tee was standard practice, she asked him why he had to use the tee and he said, "because i'm not very good".

oh god.  that just tears me up inside.  i don't know if i'm cut out to be a "sports parent", because things like that really get to me.  i know he's five and it's really nothing, but i hate to think of him getting bummed out because he doesn't think he's good enough.  the thing is, he's not bad.  it's only been four practices and getting one's timing down is a hard thing to do.  i'm confident that this particular thing will work itself out because he really does have a pretty good swing, but i also know that it's probably the first of many times that sports will make him feel bad. 

i played baseball from 2nd grade up until just before my senior year of high school.  it took me until about 4th grade before i was worth a shit at it, and even then i went through stretches where i sucked.  i was a starter and usually on all-star teams and all that, but i was mostly mediocre.  good enough to have fun, but i wasn't going to get a college scholarship or anything.  if he could achieve that level of success, that's plenty for me.  i'll never be the kind of dad that pushes and pushes, although in hindsight, i think i could have been much better if someone had pushed me.

i guess this is just one of the MANY trials and tribulations of having kids.  you want so badly to protect them, but you have to let them find their own way and hope that you don't damage them in the process. 

here's my little soon-to-be slugger:

 

rickrolled into the grunge era

funny little mashup that actually plays well together.

i know it's only a joke, but i like to see the juxtaposition of the cheesy-ass, carlton banks-esque dance moves of the ever sunny rick astley and the straightforward grunge rock of nirvana.  it actually tells you everything you need to know about the changing of the musical guard from the late 80s to the early 90s. 

amazing

this is a video of the winner of "ukraine's got talent".  she tells a story using drawings made with her hands and sand.  this story is about germany conquering ukraine during WWII.  the words she writes at the end are "you are always near".

it's long, but if you have nine minutes, it's definitely worth it.

more offensive stuff

too perfect

a friend of mine just emailed me this story.  the headline was so utterly fantastic that i thought for a minute that it was straight out of the onion, but instead it appears to be real.

i have been in many arguments over my belief that fat people are fat because they are lazy and weak-willed when it comes to food.  on top of all that, they're now stupid.

blessed is molly for reading an article about hogbeasts and naturally thinking of me.  

under the big top

the circus kinda sucks.  we took the boys last saturday and i was underwhelmed, to say the least.  it was the 2nd time our oldest has been, but the 1st for our youngest, and more difficult, boy.

first off, cotton candy was $12.  yes, $12.  for the equivalent of three spoonfuls of sugar.  oh, but it came with a souvenir hat.  i'd estimate the hat was worth $3 and the cotton candy $2.  still well below the sticker price.  but hey, we're the suckers who bought it.

the show itself was not great either.  waaaaay too much time with the fucking clowns.  and not even good clowns like bello nock.  the main clown was boring and there were way too many lulls where he was the only thing going.  he did this bit where he went up into the crowd and was, well, clowning around.  then some planted girl was talking on her cell phone in the aisle next to him.  he took the phone and made her come down to the performance area for other fooling around.  it took approximately four days to finish that segment. 

the ringmaster looked a little and sounded a lot like david puddy.  check it out here if you don't believe me.  i thought he would have looked better with a man fur or an eight ball jacket. 

i liked some of the animal stuff, but the maximum time that should be spent watching little white ponies run in a circle is 22 seconds, not the twelve minutes they gave us.  and that's all the ponies did; run in circles.  they didn't have a monkey on their back or fuck a mexican girl for drunk frat boys, they just went in circles.

now, i thought the motorcycle dudes in the "cage sphere of death" were awesome.  they got seven of those guys in there, all going around at the same time.  it was pretty cool.  

of course, the attractions weren't able to hold the attention of our youngest boy.  he decided he wanted to get up and dance in the aisle, which i was able to capture the end of here:

his favorite parts were (1) the escalators in the parking garage before and after the show, and (2) the leftover silver confetti from the previous show. 

our older boy seemed to like most of it, but his favorite part, according to him, was "the pretty girls".  there was a motorcyle on a tightwire, flipping acrobats, elephants doing headstands, and scary tigers, but the lasting impression he had was of pretty girls.  i like that. 

during the elephant portion, while the youngest boy was jacking around in the aisle, the older boy tells me, "they're showing some of their skin".  i'm trying to watch the elephants and keep one eye on the little guy since he tends to run off from time to time, so i just sort of say, "yeah, the elephants have lots of wrinkly gray skin, don't they?"  we keep watching and i finally look over at the older boy and he's not looking at the elephants at all; he's looking at the chicks that sort of ring the arena. 

he's studying them, with the intensity of someone who's sizing up the enemy and trying to find the one flaw that will bring them down.

then he tells me, very matter-of-factly, "it's not their skin.  they're wearing a suit that looks like skin".  right on, little man.  women like to tease with flesh colored hose. 

so all that  money spent on tickets, parking, cotton candy, a sword that lights up, some drinks, etc. and what they got out of it we could have achieved by going to a  mall with an escalator and then hitting hooters.

weeping willow

one of the many perks of being on zoloft is having a very even keel when it comes to emotion.  i think a misconception held by people not on any anti depression drugs is that it robs you of any emotion and turns you into a zombie, devoid of passion for anything. 

well that part isn't true, but it certainly does keep you at an emotional level similar to everyone else.  depression is NOT the point of this entry, as i don't have any desire to go down that path in any great detail, but my point is that  i very rarely cry anymore.

however, there are three songs (at least that's all i can think of right now) that i cannot make it through without tearing up at a minimum or sobbing at the max.  they are:

1.  the last song - elton john - it doesn't get any sadder than this song.  i don't get more than 10 seconds into it before i get that heavy/full feeling around my eyes.  by the chorus, i'm a little girl who has lost her puppy.  i mean, come on dude, the guy has AIDS, is scared and dying, and his father, whom he thought didn't love him anymore, is taking care of him.  i have a severe emotional weakness for anything father/son related and this is the tear-jerking mount everest of that topic.

if this song doesn't move you, your heart is three sizes too small and most likely made of stone.  sadness scale - 10 out of 10 tears

2.  the promise - tracy chapman - such a sweet little song, from the opening guitar and violin (i think?) intro.  she's singing about a love where the relationship has ended for one reason or another.  it's not necessarily a romantic relationship though and the tone is one of longing without any desperation or anger, which is what keeps it above most love songs. 

in essence, she's saying, i still think about everything about you and if you still want me and want to return to me, i promise to be there for you.  i always think of this song in terms of familial loved ones and it gets me every time, even though i first heard it probably 14 years ago.  sadness scale - 8 out of 10 tears

3.  i can only imagine - mercy me - this is a religious song, which is obviously at odds with my personal beliefs.  however, if you put that aside, the music is very moving.  i don't really want to get into why it's on my list and where i was exposed to it the first time, but suffice it to say that when i hear the first piano notes, it still makes my heart sink.  when the larger orchestra and drums come in about a minute and a half in, it turns and becomes uplifting rather than sad. 

but that first verse still leaves me with a physical reaction and lump in my throat.  sadness scale - (first 90 seconds) 10 out of 10 tears (after that) 2 out of 10 tears

a few other honorable mentions:

- everybody hurts - REM

- that i would be good - alanis morissette

- weekend in new england - barry manilow - yes, barry manilow.  fuck you.

if you're ever needing to stiffle a laugh in a meeting or at some other Serious Business time, think of any of these songs.  but just in moderation.  prolonged exposure will lead to waterworks for sure.

heh, fat people

anyone who knows me knows i harbor a seething disgust of the obese.  i can't really get into it here because (a) i don't have the time to get all of my poisonous thoughts typed out, and (b) i would no doubt offend any number of people that i know and like in real life.

but i'll just leave this video here.  listen to that poor animal scream his displeasure at that walrus placed on his normally sturdy back.  i like to think he's saying, "ok, fuck all this shit.  this is no longer funny; show's over" as he takes it down to the ground.

lady, you are so fucking fat that you made a camel scream like regan in the exorcist when the devil hisself had taken over her body.