I only put in an hour of work today because I became really bored and didn’t feel like wasting my time not knowing what the hell I’m supposed to be doing. If I’m going to waste my time doing anything, it’s going to be writing another dumb list for this page. Speaking of which…
TOP TEN “WHATEVER HAPPENED TO….”
10) Bobby Hurley – New Jersey’s own All-American point guard for the Duke Blue Devils, who was hit by a drunk driver during his rookie season with the Sacramento Kings. He was also in Blue Chips, but he didn’t play on Nick Nolte’s team, he played on Bobby Knight’s Indiana team with Calbert Cheaney. I remember right before his rookie season season started I bought his basketball jersey on QVC. No joke. I think I still have it. Didn’t he recover from near-death and try a comeback later in the nineties? I wonder what he’s doing now…
09) Andy – Andy was the chef at the club where I used to play tennis. By the way, I was a pretty good tennis player for a while. I had a coach and personal trainers. I keep that part of my past hidden because it’s decidedly less cool than talking about my writing or my music. Andy used to cook for me and talk to me about all sorts of things. He made great pasta dishes, and he never charged me for soda. For some reason, he was always reading the MetroWest Jewish News, which confused me, because he was black. I wonder if he’s still working in a kitchen somewhere…
08) North Korea – It’s like, they sign some agreement to stop being nuclear which doesn’t get a lot of press, and now they’re not a threat? How do we know they can be trusted? They’re very good at math, those Koreans. I bet they can figure out that strained relations with the West equals more bargaining leverage. On the other hand, it’s kind of cool that they’re trying to mend their relationship with us, because I’d like to visit the Ryugyong Hotel before I die. I wonder if they’d tested a few more missiles, could they have gotten more than the 50,000 metric tons of fuel they’re getting for shutting down a reactor site…
07) Serena Altchul – From MTV News, in the days when they had that reversed guitar lick from “Lounge Fly” as their intro music. She made Tabitha Soren (real name: Tabitha Sornberger! HAHA! What a Jew!) look like a total square. Serena was the unfortunate face of MTV News during the mid-to-late ’90s, when the mainstream was shifting from a focus on Alternative music to…um…Alternative music that really sucked? I guess that’s the best way to describe it. Hey, remember when people used to watch MTV? I wonder if she ever fucked that loser Kurt Loder…
06) Ben Stein – No, not the one you’re thinking of, I mean the one I went to overnight camp with for a few weeks when I was in middle school. Ben showed up for his first (and only) summer at camp only to be placed in a cabin with a group of assholes who’d known each other for years, and didn’t take kindly to newbies. I didn’t mind the guy, I used to play his Sega GameGear during rest-hour. Still, we’d pick on him relentlessly, and he used to make cry a lot. If I’m not mistaken, someone (I assure you it wasn’t me) shoved a broom handle up his ass while he was sleeping one night. Thankfully this was before that sort of behavior became grounds for a lawsuit. I wonder if he turned queer because of that…
05) The girl from Grumpier Old Men – When I was twelve I went to see that movie with my friends Dan, Dan, and Aaron. We sat up front and made stupid jokes throughout the film. At one point, we noticed that a girl sitting five or six rows behind us was throwing pretzel knots at our heads. Dan went and spoke to her, and returning saying she was “weird.” So then I went back to talk to her. I was much more sociable then. I had no inhibitions, and the sex-drive of a boy twice my age. I don’t remember how the conversation shifted, but before I knew it, I was feeling up her breasts. Grumpier Old Men had a gag reel that played during the credits, during which I fondled her and touched her vagina. I never got her name. I think it started with a V. I wonder if she’s since contracted AIDS…
04) Anna Chlumsky – You know, from the My Girl movies? She was the cute girl-next-door with the golden smile. Then she made an awful sequel. Then puberty hit her like an all-you-can-eat buffet at Red Lobster. She got really fat and dropped off the face of the earth, much like the girl who played the role of Kelly Roark in Volcano. A quick IMDB search shows Anna Chlumsky was in a bunch of made for TV movies, a couple TV shows (including “Law & Order”), and has a new movie in post-production. I wonder if she’s slimmed down…
03) Post-Modernism – Is the art and literature world into Neo-modernism now? It’s so hard keeping track of these trends. It seems like the notion of post-modernism has gotten tied in with irony and sarcasm in the past few years to the point where nothing is taken seriously anymore. Everything is a big joke parading as truth and earnestness. It’s like Moe says on the Simpsons, things are “weird for the sake of weird.” And it’s even more annoying now than it was when people were kicking around PoMo to describe Don DeLillo or Godspeed You! Black Emperor. I wonder what they’ll call the next big undefinable social trend…
02) Hi-C Ecto Cooler – I took it for lunch almost every day during elementary school. It was absolutely gross, but it had a picture of Slimer from the Ghostbusters cartoon on the box, so I had to drink it. According to Wikipedia, it was renamed “Shoutin’ Orange Tangergreen” in 1997, which might be the dumbest name for a beverage ever. In a shocking turn of events, 2005 saw the end of the “Shoutin’ Orange Tangergreen,” craze, as the product was renamed “Crazy Citrus Cooler.” What the hell is wrong with the world?
01) Integrity – You knew it was coming to this. Seriously though, do you remember when entertainment didn’t totally suck? Now you have assholes like Will Ferrell turning down twenty-million dollars to star in Elf 2, because that would be selling out. Meanwhile, making the same exact movie for the Nth time (dumb idiot guy with an obvious, stupid profession) is somehow upholding his artistic integrity? I could pitch you five future Will Ferrell movies right now (Will Ferrell as a cattle herder, Will Ferrell as a parapsychologist, Will Ferrell as a fast-food worker, Will Ferrell as shark hunter, Will Ferrell as a kick ball player), and two of those will probably be green-lighted in the next year. It’s not just in movies, it’s a purveying theme in the arts. Instead of bands creating challenging albums, or making “departures” from their sound, they make homogeneous, safe crap with little variation, or they write the same shitty songs they’ve always written, but drown-out everything with a church organ. Instead of actors taking challenging roles and trying to expand their repertoires, you get seven movies a year starring Ben Stiller and Owen “crookt face” Wilson. INTEGRITY, PEOPLE!
