Things I have learned this week so far

  1. Jack LaLanne was addicted to sugar as a child and may have set fire to his house and chased his brother with an axe as a result
  2. I think I visited the infamous secret army propaganda film studio at Lookout Mountain without realizing it back in the ’90s
  3. Squirrel monkeys are either vegans or they haven’t learned the fine art of sifting Jell-o through one’s teeth

A new baby

When I first clicked on this link to a middle-aged lady singing a song called “I Want A New Baby For Christmas,” I was scared about what I might see. But that was stupid for at least four reasons:

  1. The new baby she’s singing about is a sweetheart, not an infant.
  2. This is a George Jones song, and I am ashamed that I didn’t know that.
  3. This is a great Christmas song that I should have heard before.
  4. This woman is a wonderful singer and she is also adorable.

Find more reasons why my initial fears were stupid:

Published in: on December 17, 2010 at 10:20 am  Leave a Comment  
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Mort Kunstler

The website for the radio show Shut Up, Weirdo recently drew my attention to the 20th century American artist Mort Kunstler. I had never heard of Mort Kunstler before, which is kind of odd because his art is right up my alley.  He contributed artwork to various men’s magazine stories with titles such as:

  • Pou-Pou and Her Balloon-Girl Ring
  • The Strangler Came Out of the Sea
  • I Need “Freak-Out” Love
  • The Sergeant Who Decoyed the Nazis’ Fraulein Werewolves
  • The Hell-Surfers
  • Nude Pushover on Sinners’ Beach
  • Those High-Handed, Money-Gouging Plumbers

Oh, wait; I guess he didn’t illustrate that last article. But still. I would want to read all of these stories even without the fantastic artwork. I can’t find the accompanying story for my favorite illustration by him, however.


Maybe if you have a moment or two today, you can write the accompanying story in the comments section.

Monsters of rock

Benny’s daughter went to Rock Camp recently, and this weekend they had a big concert. The band names were pretty good; not as good as the soccer team names, but pretty good. Here are some of them:

  • The Black and White Lollipops
  • The Frightning Lightning Girls
  • Angry East Bay
  • The Last Grapefruits
  • Lava Daisies
  • The Lemon Seeds
  • The Five Musketeers

Here are The Last Grapefruits:

Published in: on March 23, 2010 at 6:55 pm  Comments (2)  
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Words of the day for Tuesday, March 16th

How embarrassing. You come across a pile of canine excrement and exclaim, “Yucko – dogshit.” Everyone laughs at you, because they know the correct term for dogshit is scumber. Don’t find yourself in this position again. Review this list of animal waste terms every night and never be embarrassed by your lack of knowledge again:

  • sheep: buttons
  • otter: spraints
  • deer: fewmets
  • fox: billitting
  • hare: crotiles
  • hawk: mutes
  • cow: bowdewash or tath
  • general vermin: fuants
Information found via Cecil Adams’ always excellent website; keep this up, Cecil, and you’re going to have to rename it The Straight Poop.
Published in: on March 16, 2010 at 9:09 am  Comments (2)  
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You’ve got the touch

Benny’s kids have been in town the past couple of weeks, and I think we’ve all had a very good time together. Even more than that, though, I have really learned a great deal from the kids in this short amount of time. Here are just some of the things I’ve learned:

One thing they haven’t been able to help me out with, however, is something that has puzzled me since I was a kid: what is supposed to be so funny about Mickey Mouse’s underwear? I don’t think I’ll ever understand that.

Soft and sweet

I’ve got it – the answer to my and Benny’s job woes. We are going to quit our jobs and make a zillion dollars by marketing a doll that is both slutty and scary. It’s a sure bet. Little girls are only interested in dolls that are slutty or scary, but try as I might, I can’t come up with one example of a doll currently on the market that is both slutty and scary. To wit:

  • Bradley dolls: My mom was so vocal in her disgust of these big-eyed dolls that I found myself saying I hated them too, even though I secretly coveted them. A sympathetic friend finally got me one in high school, and that’s when I realized that Bradley dolls weren’t just ladies with fancy oldentimes dresses, they were 19th century prostitutes.
  • Baby Alive: I see that Baby Alive is still alive and more gross than ever. Not only does she need to have her diaper changed (when I was a kid, if you fed her the prepackaged “banana” mush, she’d shit yellow mucus), but now you also need to give her medicine and administer a neti pot to remove snot. Next year maybe she can get hives.
  • Bratz: The Bratz never cease to amaze me. They actually have a slutty infant line of dolls. I think the name “Sticky Face Fun Fair Cloe” speaks for itself.
  • Tuesday Taylor: Okay, actually Tuesday Taylor is kind of both slutty and scary. When I was a kid, however, the Suntan Tuesday Taylor doll always struck me as low class and unclean. I think today I would classify her look as “has crabs.” Slutty wins.
  • Charmin Chatty:  She says proverbs. Also encourages her owner to say, “I’m a pig.”
  • Growing Up Skipper: I had one of these when I was a kid, so I was going to say she fell into the slutty category, but now that I see those mosquito bites I’m not so sure (not that big boobs necessarily = slutty). She might be the crossover in the Venn diagram of slutty and scary.

Okay. I think if we combine Growing Up Skipper with some sort of maniacal laughing homunculus, we’ll have a bona fide hit on our hands. Hmm. I’ve got to sleep on that idea a little. Sweet dreams.

Happy Mother’s Day

1. My mom was a very glamorous movie star.
2. She let me cultivate my own sense of fashion from a very early age.

momatbeach

3. I’m obviously leaving out a lot of things about my Mom here in this list.
4. Anyway – thanks, Mom. I love you.

Published in: on May 10, 2009 at 11:34 am  Leave a Comment  
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Pop star, is this fruit right for you?

  • Cherries: yes
  • Pineapples: no
  • Bananas: yes
  • Strawberries: no
  • Pinkberry: yes
  • Kiwi (and apricot): no
  • Apples: yes and no
  • Melons: no
  • Papaya: a resounding YES

Words of the day for Thursday, March 5th

I feel inadequate. My attention has just been brought to the concept of family words – jargon specific to a household or group of friends – and no matter how much I think about it, I can’t recall a single example from my family. Linguistic experts and famous authors say that every family has them, but I’m still coming up blank. We didn’t even have a word for the cardboard tube inside a roll of toilet paper.

Benny has family words with his kids: sparkeners, stuffy dogs. I’m going to have to check with my brother on this. I can’t believe my family could be so lame.

In a couple of online discussions of family words, a lot of excellent examples were offered up by commenters:

  • whomper-stomper: a tree pruning tool
  • jesii: a herd or flock of Jesus pictures or statuettes
  • gurk bottle: plastic water bottle
  • abbider: candy stash
  • bebops (also pretties): hair ties
  • valeelee: the indentation left in the skin by waistband elastic
  • winterpepper: backwards flip
  • boombossidy: butt
  • ten, eleven, twelve: no
  • murff: the sound a cat makes when it’s not quite meowing (when Joaquin made this noise, I thought he was looking for a guy named Burt; now I know he was murffing)
  • hobbler: watch out,warning cry of imminent danger (contraction/disintegration of hotburnkilldie)

Those are all pretty grand. For my money, however, the trophy has to go to:

mojamatize2

Mojamatize! It means “hurry up,” and it comes from the mis-hearing of a Boston cabdriver saying, “I’ve got too much air in my tires,” as “I’ve got to mojamatize!” I might have to adopt it.

Published in: on March 5, 2009 at 12:28 pm  Comments (1)  
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