Blondie #2: Mom, it really stinks bad upstairs.
M: OK. What does it smell like?
Blondie #2: Lady scent.
Yes. My 12-year-old said “lady scent”.
I couldn’t make this up if I tried. I can come up with some crazy shit – as evidenced in the stupidity you’ve read in this blog – but I guaranfuckingtee you the phrase “lady scent” has never, ever, ever crossed my mind. Like, ever.
Listen, I get it. As the only dude in a house full of women (not counting the two dog boys) I know I should expect this kind of shit for the next 10-15 years. But “lady scent”? Are you fucking KIDDING ME?
Luckily for me the conversation quickly ended or switched topics or perhaps it continued. I can’t quite remember because I was busy going to the laundry room to pour bleach in my ear with the hope that it would seep in and find that part of my brain that’s soaked up the phrase “lady scent” and destroy it.
And then – BOOM! – the lady scent conversation rears it’s ugly head. Again. Only this time in vibrant techicolor detail, such as:
– Where used feminine products should be properly disposed of, with Blondie #1 instructing Blondie #2 to take care of it if it bothered her that much.
– Who’s responsible for cleaning the upstairs bathroom trash can.
– How Blondie #2 is going to be way cleaner when she “joins the period club.”
– How to tend to said “lady scent”, at which point I may or may not have blacked out.
This is my life. Starting to think there’s not enough gin on the planet to get me through raising the 3 Blondies if these are the types of conversations I need to be involved in.
It’s the truth. I defy you to find a sequel – book, TV show, movie, anything – where the second version (or third, or – God forbid – fourth and beyond) holds up to the original. Perhaps that’s a tad harsh, seeing as I’m of the opinion Pearl Jam’s “Vs”, their sophomore effort, is not only one of my Top 3 Albums of All Time but was head and shoulders above their debut “Ten”. Yes. I’m aware that’s blasphemy among The PJ Faithfull but quite honestly, I give zero fucks and stand by my statement in the title of this post.
While I’ve felt this way about movie sequels for quite some time, I was reminded of this disdain during a recent conversation with The J Team (aka: my HS homies Jeanne + Jennifer) about the recently announced and highly anticipated new Harper Lee novel Go Set A Watchman. Apparently it was written prior to the timeless and classic To Kill A Mockingbird and has sat on a shelf for the past 60+ years. The more I read about Go Set A Watchman the more nervous I get because I don’t know what to expect. To Kill A Mockingbird is my absolute favorite read of all time – I’m guessing I’ve read it no less than a dozen times – and I hold it in such high regard I’m worried I’ll be let down by the follow up. By no means is that a knock on Harper Lee, it’s just that I’ve set the bar sooooooooo high in my own mind that I’m really going to have to focus on not comparing the two and letting Go Set A Watchman be it’s own thing, it’s own story. Perhaps part of that is due to a recent re-read of TKAM with my 15-year-old as she read it for her freshman English class…she’s the same age I was when I first read it in Ms. DeWerff’s freshman English class (when I wasn’t busy ogling my 24-year-old English teacher who also happened to be a former Chicago Bears Honeybear cheerleader).
So my daughter was struggling with it after a few chapters and asked me to read her 2-3 chapters a night to help her comprehend the story and retention of key points to improve her quiz scores. I couldn’t say yes fast enough. It was awesome. Not only was I getting to re-read my favorite, but I was able to help her get it and lead her with additional thoughts/ideas she hadn’t picked up on. I loved connecting her with the story, quizzing her after each chapter to make sure she was getting it and it totally worked. Next thing you know she was acing quizzes. Not gonna lie…total proud dad moment.
But back to the topic at hand. It’s…still…a…sequel. I know this is an incredibly stupid correlation seeing as comparing the two of these things is quite possibly blasphemous, but I feel the same way about Go Set A Watchman as I felt about all the hoopla a few years ago about a sequel to Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. Now before you decide to set me on fire for comparing a literary masterpiece that explores race, class and the loss of innocence through the eyes of a 6-year-old with an 80’s teen classic centered around a well off North Shore suburban Chicago teen and his anxiety ridden sidekick – I fully admit that comparing To Kill A Mockingbird and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off is ludicrous. But I get physically angry when I read about the idea of an FBDO sequel, when bloggers and dolts and troglodytes are all “there totes needs to be a Ferris sequel”. The people who say these things are the people I want to hit in the mouth with my 7-iron nine times. Nine times? Nine. Times.
No, fuckos – there should NOT be a sequel to Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. Not now. Not later. Not ever. And by ever I mean like never fucking ever, ever. Times infinity. In fact, John Hughes is rolling in his grave as we speak at the mere THOUGHT of this nonsense. Ferris Bueller’s Day Off should live on as is – with a pre-Xanax Cameron Frye melting down in a Chicago parking garage; with a 1985 Pontiac Fiero driving/wrestling shoe wearing Jeanie/Shawna Bueller telling an intruder she’s got her father’s gun and a scorching case of the herp; with Simone Adamley babbling in all her “My best friend’s sister’s boyfriend’s brother’s girlfriend heard from this guy who knows this kid who’s going with the girl who saw Ferris pass out at 31 Flavors last night. I guess it’s pretty serious” glory; and with King Ferris himself, the righteous dude held in the highest regard by sportos, motorheads, geeks, sluts, bloods, wastoids, dweebies, dickheads alike.
So while the rumored FBDO “sequel” never saw the light of day, what did see the light of day was an abomination of epic proportions. Who remembers the Honda Super Bowl commercial a few years ago with Matthew Broderick reprising his role as Ferris? OMG. It was a hot garbage fire. Hot. Fucking. Garbage. I was pissed just hearing this was going to happen and then I saw it…and how I’m not in jail as a result is beyond me. I refuse to link to the fuckery here, but if you don’t remember it, it went a little something like this: Matthew Broderick reprises his role as Ferris, who has grown up and wants to skip a day of work so they recreate the whole call-in-sick scene to Ferris’ boss. Of course, the boss doesn’t buy it but Ferris ditches work anyway to go crazy in a Honda Pilot.
No, you’re not having a stroke. You read that correctly.
A.
Honda.
Pilot.
I saw this and immediately wanted to set fire to the Honda dealership by my house…or at the very least, the building of the ad agency that created this hot garbage fire of a commercial.
(Sidebar: for legal purposes, let the record show neither Dave Mungenast St. Louis Honda nor Rubin Postaer & Associates were harmed during the writing of this post.)
Seriously, Honda?
WHO THE FUCK BELIEVES FERRIS BUELLER WOULD EVER DRIVE A HONDA FUCKING PILOT??? I would rather have carnal relations with a beehive – a flaming beehive filled with broken glass, mind you – than believe Ferris Bueller would ever resign himself to driving a Honda Fucking Pilot.
Seriously. Like Ferris would ever settle for that shit after getting a taste of the 1961 Ferrari 250GT California. There is no way in HELL Sloane Peterson would continue to bang Ferris if he downgraded from Mr. Frye’s Ferrari to a boxy piece of shit like the Honda Pilot. And if she does, her next step in life is to start giving Principal Rooney hand jobs in his fucking K-Car because that’s where she’s headed.
The day a hero like Ferris Bueller settles for a half-assed, mid-level soccer mom SUV with a respectable city/highway MPG is the day it’s time for a mercy killing. I can guaranfuckingtee you with three-hundred-and-forty-twelve percent certainty that if Cameron Frye saw Ferris at the grocery store getting into one of those things, he’d silently sneak up behind him and snap his neck Chong Li style and put him out of his misery. On. The. Spot.
And you know what? There’s not a judge on this continent that would convict him because he’d be represented by a stellar defense lawyer from Maycomb, AL that goes by the name of Jean Louise Finch.
Me: I don’t know if I’m more disappointed that you have a felony on your record now or that you were dumb enough to get caught in the first place. Stanford doesn’t typically accept criminals, dumbass.
C Todd: Hahahaha…one of Caroline’s stupid neighbors called the cops on us when we were TP’ing and then we were stupid and didn’t wait until the cop left to drive away.
Me: Newsflash – you got caught because you are rookies and suck at pranks. There is so much I need to teach you and your clown ass friends…
C Todd: Come with us next time when we use the rest of our supplies!
Me: Sorry, chump…I don’t work with amateurs.
As someone who attends more internal meetings per week than should be allowed by law, I find it imperative to keep copious notes…especially when 12 times out of 10, everyone in the room spends more time dicking around on their iPhone than paying attention and actually contributing. Hence, we end up having to schedule ANOTHER fucking meeting three days later to review what was SUPPOSED to be resolved and completed in the previous meeting. This generally makes me stabby.
However, since taking notes with pen and paper has gone the way of the DoDo, I have recently taken a blood oath to use Evernote until the day I stroke out at my desk…most likely due to one of the aforementioned dolts showing up for a 4th meeting on the same topic and STILL not having anything remotely interesting to tell me.
Not only can I type approximately 7,943 words per minute faster with Evernote, it has a “tag” feature to help you search for notes related to a specific topic. You know, like “digital bundle pricing options” or “agency summit” or “if this client doesn’t sign this SOW in the next 7 minutes I’m going to light his fucking dog on fire.” I’m fairly confident the tag feature was established with proper business rules of engagement in mind, but as the self-proclaimed King of Pointless and Inane Hashtags, I’ve decided to keep my Evernote tags – at least some of them – brutally honest, thereby making them the complete opposite of “proper business rules of engagement”.
That said, below is the list of my favorite note tags…all of which, swear to Jeebus, are actually tagged on meeting and/or conference call notes. And before you get all, “Wow, JD…some of the language doesn’t seem very professional,” I’ll have you know that you’d be a little salty too if you dealt with some of the same people I do on a day in/day out basis. True story.
So I logged on to Twitter the other day and noticed an alert in my Notifications. Hooray for new followers, right?
Not exactly.
Apparently some character with the handle @SamBehnam has decided to follow me on the Twitters:
Did he even LOOK at my feed before thinking, “Yeah, I’ve got to follow this cat”? I am immediately suspicious of this @SamBehnam character. What possible motive does this Sam Behnam have for following me? I am baffled, which drives me to investigate further. I find the following:
My bio: Digs soccer, cheeseburgers, Pearl Jam, advertising, gin + Ferris Bueller. Hates the Packers, Drew Barrymore, in-game interviews, auto-play videos + assholes.
His bio: Software Engineer, Ph.D. Interested in science, technology, entrepreneurship & being curious and creative. Working@IBM opinions=mine, no DM, #TeamFollowBack. ca.linkedin.com/in/sbehnam
My header photo: An image from the Art Museum scene in “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off”.
His header photo: An image of some far off galaxy, no doubt something the academics have defined as the “Portal to the Heavens” or some star cluster no one on Earth has ever witnessed.
My profile pic: Wearing a baseball cap, taken after a U11 girls soccer game at St. Louis Soccer Park…and most likely after something like 3-5 beers.
His profile pic: A bad-angle selfie, apparently taken from someone lying on the floor, of Sam looking off into the distance (most likely at the “Portal to the Heavens”) . Possibly taken in a shitty LaQuinta Inn Conference Room…in Hoboken.
My Twitter stats: 1,168 tweets – following 445 – 310 followers – 51 favorites – 1 list (and I don’t even know what a Twitter list is)
His Twitter stats: 1,873 tweets – following 22,300 – 21,500 followers – 394 favorites – 2 lists (and I’m assuming he doesn’t know what a Twitter list is either)
Sidebar: Seriously, Sam? You are ACTUALLY FOLLOWING 22,300 people on Twitter? Sorry, brother…but I call bullshit. It is a task of considerable effort to follow 445 people, much less the 22,300 you are claiming.
My last 4 tweet topics: Disproving the use of “Serenity Now” as an adequate calming mantra (true story); something about voting and if you don’t vote, you don’t get to bitch about who gets elected (apparently I was feeling all patriotic and shit); props to my beloved Quincy University Men’s + Women’s soccer teams; and bitching about some company named Kaufmann Mercantile from Brooklyn (of course they’re from Brooklyn) that sells a $349 cocktail shaker.
His last 4 tweet topics: How a web browser works; a quote about dreams coming true by someone named Paulo Coelho; an image of Carl Sagan’s reading list; and this picture:
I mean, I can’t TOTALLY blame this guy – or whatever automated social media lead generation fuckery he’s employed and/or been suckered into to increase his followers/followees – because there are times, lots of times in my opinion, that my tweets are hilarious, side-splitting and witty as fuck. Plus, I’m the King of Inane and Pointless but Hilarious hashtags, as evidenced by 13 of my daughters friends telling me, “Mr. D, your hashtags are so cray” on the regular. Then again…there are times when my tweets are are completely moronic, an inside joke directed at one specific person (who probably isn’t even on Twitter in the first place) or so dumb it elicits a response like this:
Or, perhaps, he was just looking for some more Twitter swag and thought, “This JD kid seems like he’s 13 different kinds of awesome…FOLLOW!”
Text: Is your house number 4153?
Me: That depends on who this is? Sorry – don’t have your number in my phone.
Jess: It’s Jess. What, don’t you give your address to random strangers?
Me: I used to, but then there was that lawsuit. And the fire. And the penicillin. And the hedge trimmer. And the midget with the nachos.
Jess: Wow.
Me: Needless to say, I don’t give my address out to strangers anymore.
Jess: Please save my number in case you have any more incidents including midgets with nachos.
Anyone who’s met me and had a conversation for longer than 10 minutes will know I’m a giant music dork.
My love of song began early with lazy days lying on the living room floor, the sounds of Mom’s Chicago records and Dad’s Johnny Cash, Harry Chapin and Gordon Lightfoot echoing through the house. In 3rd grade I bought Devo’s “Whip It” 45 from Tom Lorello and spent all afternoon making a sleeve for it, sneaking trips to Mrs. Lehman’s desk to sneak a staple or two into the edges and hastily retreating back to my desk to decorate said sleeve with whips and flower pots.
As I got a little older I progressed to Jerry Heywood’s room next door, rocking AC/DC’s “Back In Black” and J. Geils Band “Freeze Frame” with the volume on 10 in a pair of ginormous Koss headphones. The aforementioned Tom Lorello was our playground DJ during recess kickball games, standing next to first base with his cassette player blaring a mix of Black Sabbath, the B-52’s and ZZ Top.
And then it happened…an innocent trip to Blue Skies Records & Tapes downtown Naperthrill resulted in my purchase of Van Halen’s “Diver Down” and it was all over. My room became a shrine to music. How my brother didn’t end up with a rifle at the top of a bell tower after growing up with posters of Motley Crue, W.A.S.P and the rest of the Sunset Strip degenerates staring down at his bed…I’ll never know. Like all good kids of the early 80’s I spent hours on end waiting for my favorite songs to play on WLS and 98 The Loop, my finger deftly poised on the un-pause button so I could record Rush’s “Tom Sawyer” or the new Quiet Riot on cassette. I bought a drum set with dreams of becoming the next Alex Van Halen, despite the fact that his kit was approximately six times the size of mine. I made montly trips to the drug store to buy issues of Circus and Metal Edge magazines. Multiple trips to Blue Skies and Crow’s Nest and Musicland at the mall followed, spending as much times as possible flipping through the records looking for the next great band to listen to.
There is no doubt in my mind that I’d have more money today than Bill Gates if I’d had iTunes technology back then to help me spend my hard earned paper route & Dairy Queen money on bands that didn’t suck balls. I can’t even begin to total up how much I threw away on bands that “looked” cool or had a “kick ass” album cover. Who remembers the 80’s hair metal group Foreplay?
You don’t?
Exactly. Nobody remembers Foreplay. OK – perhaps that’s a bit harsh. Maybe, like, 26 people on the planet actually DO remember them – including me, the four guys actually IN Foreplay, their parents and 13 of their cousins. Why am I included in that embarrassingly exclusive group? Because there was a pretty blonde girl on the cover in a soaking wet t-shirt that had barely enough fabric to cover her giant boobs. Giant boobs that were possibly NOT covered by said t-shirt on the inside sleeve, right? I mean, come on – what 14 year old WOULDN’T BUY THAT RECORD? If I ever come across the A&R guy who green-lighted that album cover I’m going to hit him with a sock full of nickels. Why? Because Foreplay sucked. Horrible. Terrible. An embarrassment to the genre. Possibly the worst music I’d heard up to that point in my life. I would’ve been better off taking my $18.99 and setting it on fire.
Sidebar: No, said giant boobs were nowhere to be found on the inside record sleeve. To this day…I still feel used.
Despite my throwing fistfuls of cash toward multiple tone deaf Ratt wannabes from Omaha or Tacoma or Little Rock, one thing I always anxiously anticipated was when my favorite bands would get to the point in their career where they could put out a “Greatest Hits” album – one place for all their best songs to live in harmony. And more importantly, allow me to listen to them without having to fast forward, rewind, fast forward, change cassettes, rewind again to hear my favorites. I was reminded of my love for Greatest Hits albums when I got an email reminder from one of my favorite bands, Snow Patrol, alerting me of their newest Greatest Hits offering…despite their putting out a similar one only 2 years ago.
And then it hit me. Greatest Hits have become a throwaway album. A way for bands like, let’s say Kiss, to write one new song every 3-4 years and package shit like “KISS: GREATEST HITS VOLUME 43 – INCLUDING NEW MUSIC!” I wish I was making that up. Seriously, how many Greatest Hits albums has Kiss put out? Two? Four? Nine?
Newsflash: Kiss isn’t that good of a band.
Doublefuckingnewsflash: No band on Earth is good enough to put out TWO Greatest Hits albums, much less the 37 that Kiss has issued. I’m pretty certain the same 14 songs are on every single one of them, along with a poorly polished turd that Gene & Paul sleepwalked through in an effort to make more money.
Then again, the more I think about it, Greatest Hits albums are now obsolete…right? With iTunes, Spotify and the like I can pick & choose which songs I want to make a mix of and buy them as one offs, saving me from buying entire shitty albums and better yet, picking the ACTUAL songs I think are a bands greatest.
R.I.P, Greatest Hits albums. You’ll be misse-wait, no you won’t.
So I was killing some time the other evening on Pinterest and stumbled across a pin of a quote by Oscar Wilde. As I’m a bit of a sucker for witty and inspirational quotes, this one struck me not necessarily as inspirational but as depressing:
“Nowadays, people know the the price of everything and the value of nothing.”
The more I looked at it, the more I found it – sadly – to be pretty accurate. Whether it’s an actual quote of his or not, I have no clue. But what I most certainly DO know is I blame this reality on the drama-soaked shit-show known as the Kardashians. And bad Hip Hop. And SallyAnn Salsano. But mostly the Kardashians. And typically, anything and everything Kardashian makes me want to go on a 13-state killing spree with my 6-iron.
Wait.
You know what?
Check that.
I don’t blame the Kardashinas. They may be strong enough to turn formerly beloved American icon Bruce Jenner into a melty-faced eunuch, but they’re clearly not bright enough to pull something of this magnitude. Right? Not on their own, at least.
No, I blame jackhole Ryan Seacrest for unleashing this Armenian unholiness upon us, blanketing us all with a napalm-esque media barrage of these whoremongering tramps against our will. Why Ryan Seacrest, you ask? Last week I was checking out at Target and while waiting, I perused the magazine rack to see if there was anything worth impulse buying. I counted some form of Kardashian-ness on five of the eight magazines next to the register. That’s a full 62.5% of the last second reading material section devoting ink to this family of…of…guh. You know what? I don’t even want to know.
Wait.
Crap.
Maybe they ARE smart enough to take over. If that’s the case, God help us all.
The Full Sweep 
