More Meetings

I work in a business where there a lot of meetings; I think most grown-ups do (I don’t remember having a lot of meetings when I worked at Burger King or when I sorted mail). But I work in a business – not comics yet – where we have a meeting concerning the building, a meeting concerning my particular department, a meeting concerning the immediate staff, another two because of contract language, another three because of various committees that I’m on, and a few more by law. Considering I have this many meetings in any given month and/or any given week, it always amazes me how these meetings come up.

• The scheduled meeting leaves me dumbfounded. There are very few instances where a meeting must be held at a specific time at a specific interval. A weekly check-up on the status of a multi-layered project might be an exception; a series of shots to cure an STD might be another. But most weekly and/or monthly meetings that I attend fall under the umbrella of “unnecessary”.
• The unprepared meeting scheduler amazes me too. He calls the meeting to discuss how things are progressing, yet doesn’t have anything to say. Often, he’ll start the meeting with, “I have nothing to say” or “nothing new on my end.” This is the only type of meeting that’s a complete waste of time for everyone involved.
• Meetings formed to simply aggregate information are useless too. We live in an age where email is rampant, texts are woven into everyday language, and Facebook has become a conventional means of acquiring news. There is never a reason to form a meeting, have everyone schedule their day around it, and then have it be comprised of, “Here’s a copy of all the info I got from HR last week. Look it over and let me know what you think.”
• The homework meeting is the best of all of these worlds. At the last meeting you were given a homework assignment – usually in the form of “think about it and come back next week with some fresh ideas”; it’s often followed by “don’t be afraid to think outside the box, people!” This meeting has been scheduled to continue the progress made in the last meeting (i.e. none). No one did their homework because these meeting are not our jobs, so we think about the assignment on the way to the conference room. Once there, the person who scheduled the meeting has no plan in place for the meeting other than to discuss what everyone came up with.

At what point do we, either as a society or as a company, simply say, “Enough with the meetings.” There’s ever only three reasons to have meetings and they’re all pretty uncommon:

1. To discuss a project with a lot of different people all at once. “Discuss” means a lot of people talking with some give and take; it doesn’t mean the leader talks for an hour while everyone nods and texts under the table.
2. To fulfill some sort of law. Some companies/states/countries mandate that you have a meeting if something goes down – maybe a sexual harassment suit, maybe a reprimand, maybe some sort of stipend because you invented an iPhone that makes phone calls.
3. To talk about something the shouldn’t be written down. Maybe you’re having a revolt or an intervention or some sort of company party that you don’t want the boss’ boss’ boss to know about. Email would be a bad place for that.

And that’s it. Those are the only meetings ever.

Guess the Christmas Gift, Win a Prize!

I hope everyone had a nice holiday.  I know I did.  Except that I had to deal with the family again.

Most of you know I have a pretty fucked up family.  I don’t just mean that there’s one crazy uncle who makes us call him “Doris” or that we all fight a lot at the dinner table – that would be acceptable, a lot of fun, and easier to make jokes about.  Instead, I have cousins stealing videos from the library and selling them at the pawnshop for crack and quaaludes, I have a brother who lives in an hourly motel with a checkbook he stole from one of said cousins, and I have The In-Laws.

The In-Laws came over for Christmas this year.  It started out just like the movie Christmas Vacation: old people came, some even older people came, someone wrapped a cat as a gift, and my father-in-law’s brother brought his RV because “there just ain’t enough terlets in that house.”  I have three bathrooms; I’m not exactly sure why he would need more than one (although, to be fair, sometimes I eat the Big Boy buffet and try to see in how many I can shit in one day).  It also ended up a lot like the movie Christmas Vacation: the cat died, at one point the police were here, and I said, “Halleluiah … holy shit.  Where’s the Tylenol?” 

The best story, though, is the one about Aunt Polly, who stayed with us for four days.

The Wife’s Aunt Polly is constantly in everyone’s business.  You know the type: she has an answer for everything, she’s “been there, done that”, and she has an annoying habit of sticking her finger a little too far ‘neath your rear when she pats your butt for a “job well done.”

If having a baby actually involved this guy, The Wife would want sex constantly.

Well, Aunt Polly caught word that The Wife and I were trying to get pregnant.  She had a long talk with Wifey about what it means to be “satisfied in the bedroom” and she even gave advice about not taking The Pill and poking holes in condoms.

Apparently, Aunt Polly believes men think that babies happen by some sort of incantation that involves swearing, football, and not pleasing their womens.

So, in her haste to help us with our marriage, she gave us this:

Because of the family nature of this site, I'm not sure I can show you what was in it.

If you can guess exactly what was in this box, you get an Official Couch Party Inflatable Couch signed by all the members of the Couch Party.

We’ll let you know the winner soon.

The Spirit Review

I knew this was coming ever since I first saw the commercial for it WAY back in like March (or somewhere around there). The Spirit has shown us that Frank Miller writes damn fine comics and little else.

	This is the original Spirit by Will Eisner.
	This is the Miller version.
	This is the movie version.
Which version do you think most closely resembles the movie?

It was originally titled Will Eisner’s The Spirit, but has been abbreviated to just The Spirit for obvious reasons: this version has very little to do with Will Eisner. Much like Miller’s Daredevil run in the 80s, this is just a sounding board for Miller’s idea that everything should be a crime novel (sometimes it works. It worked for Daredevil, it worked for Batman, it worked – to a lesser extent – with Ronin and Wolverine. It did not work with Spawn or Robocop or most of the Sin City trades). It looks almost exactly like Miller’s Sin City comics – one color (sometimes two), stark contrasts, all the women look exactly the same, etc.; it has same silhouettes, the same odd on-again, off-again super-powers, and the hero even wears the same shoes as his Sin City counterparts. It looks nothing like Eisner’s original (in every sense of the word) four-color creation: an everyman who somehow saves that day time and again.

To be honest, I really enjoy both Eisner and Miller comics. I think, for their respective times, each had a unique outlook that ushered in the next wave of creativity that would eventually dwindle – like all things do in the comic business – into mediocrity: Eisner with The Spirit, Miller with Daredevil; Eisner with A Contract with God, Miller with The Dark Knight. It’s for this reason that I picked up the two-day conversation Eisner/Miller from Dark Horse Books. In it, Eisner talks about how he would never want any of his creations brought to a movie format because he believed people would screw it up. Most of his conversation with Miller circles around the fact that Eisner enjoys the intimacy of a comic page, where a movie has to be completed with hundreds of people making individual sacrifices and compromises about the core idea. As a matter of fact, he seems to abhor Hollywood, “Comics artists do what comes first… Movies adapt, they’re not creative. They [Hollywood] take a comic book and adapt it to film.” He even asks Miller at one point if he would like to see Sin City made into a movie: “You just said it. Too precious. I like that. It’s precious to you. You don’t want to see [Sin City] warped into a movie.” Miller then goes on to talk about the technology currently being developed that might make a comic book better looking on screen. It’s obvious from reading this that Miller intended to go ahead with the Sin City movie. After seeing The Spirit, it’s also obvious that he believes any comic can be adapted to a movie, given the right director and/or crime-based drama. Or maybe he really did misread his friend’s wishes and thought Eisner would love a Sin City comic called The Spirit.

One big mistake that Miller makes is the number of “subtle homages” he makes to other comics. It’s what killed the latest Hulk movie. The Spirit is filled with these comic book “winks.” A character says “the hard goodbye” (a Sin City reference) for no apparent reason. Another character says “ten minutes of a man’s life” (a Spirit reference) with the same motivation. At one point we see an EC comic, in another part we see “Ditko’s Speedy Delivery.” There’s a character named Donenfeld and another named Liebowitz, both of whom are DC Comics founders. It wouldn’t be so bad if they were simply inserted naturally (I remember the phrase “the east side of Lairdman Island” from the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie) but they weren’t. They were horribly forced. Much like my wife was when I told her what we were going to the movies to see.

I could go on. I could talk about how I wasn’t sure if certain parts were supposed to be funny or if I was just laughing because they were bad; I could talk about how Miller seemed to want to try and capture the fun of Burton’s Batman; I could even talk about how The Spirit somehow takes the worst aspects of Batman & Robin, Dick Tracy, The Rocketeer, and The Shadow, but I won’t. I think the movie can best be summed up in one scene (after which, I asked The Wife if she wanted to sneak out and go see The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. The way I figure it, I paid for two hours of seat time, but – bless her heart – she said she thought she’d be cheating the theater if she were to attend a movie that she didn’t pay for): Frank Miller plays a cop buddy of the Spirit. He gets beheaded by the Octopus and the Octopus proceeds to beat the Spirit with the head of Frank Miller.

I think that one scene says everything that I cannot.

Nerd Movie Update

If you read this site, you’re probably a nerd or a nerd-in-denial (Do you like video games?  Do you use the internet for anything other than porn and email?  Do you use the word “trailer” to describe movie commercials?  If you answered yes to any of these questions, you’re a nerd).  Either way, the following comic book tidbits are for you:

 

Christina Ricci and Uma Thurman are also on this list.

Sam Raimi and Tobey Maguire have both signed on to do Spider-Man 4 and 5.  Snaggletooth (Kirsten Dunst) has not.  She is currently using her status as one of the top 10 “Girls with Hot Bodies and Weird Faces” to negotiate either more money or a bigger part.  The rumor is that Lizard will be the main villain in both movies – they will be filmed simultaneously like Back to the Future 2 and 3, Lord of the Rings 2 and 3, The Matrix 2 and 3, and Saw 2, 3, 5, and 6 (Saw IV was reshot due to a brilliant premise being shit on).  Frankly, I’m hoping for a more likable villain like The Arachnid, Spider-Clone, or HAB’s Ass.

 

Mo' Money, Mo' Problems

Terrence Howard will be replaced by Don Cheadle, in the next installment of Iron Man.  In a recent “take me seriously” interview for his new rap album, Howard said that he was surprised someone with better acting skills replaced him.  It was rumored that he would have a bit part in Iron Man 2 playing War Machine, a superhero based on the silver “Mark II” suit highlighted in the first movie.

 

Actual image from the "Alternate Opening" of the Hulk

As stated in a previous article, the main intent of Iron Man, Hulk, Thor, and Captain America, is to have them all come together to make an Avengers movie.  Anyone who’s seen Iron Man knows that after the credits, Nick Fury (played by Samuel L. Jackson, the hardest-working man in Hollywood.  He has eight movies coming out before Christmas including Can a Brother Fuck a Mother, Bros before Hoes, and the animated Mangilla, the Tiniest Unicorn which is based on the life of Nelson Mandella) approaches Tony Stark about joining the “Avengers Initiative”; a similar scene is in the Hulk.  There are, however, more ominous, more secretive signs as well.  For instance, in Iron Man, we see the making of Captain America’s famous shield behind Tony as he’s removing his armor.  There is also a similar scene in The Hulk where Bruce Banner is in the artic trying to rid himself of the gamma-radiated disease (this scene was later cut). 

 

As they say at the Gay Pride Parades: "Taste the Rainbow."

Finally, in the Marvel tradition of over-exploiting everything that even remotely makes money, there are now plans (in 2012) for a Power Pack movie.  If you didn’t know, the Power Pack consists of a green kid who can drain energy, a super-smart kid, and a kid who can fly – and wherever he flies he leaves a rainbow.  The working title is Power Pack: Coping with Homosexuality.  Or Everybody Poops, but Only Special People Like It in the Pooper.

Religulous

I’ve been interested in religion for as long as I can remember; not any individual religion, any religion.  I’ve always wondered what drives a person to get with a group of people and exclaim that they believe the same thing everyone else in the room believes in.  It’d be like going to a buffet and screaming, “I’m here to eat!” or going to a Jennifer Garner movie and screaming, “I’m here to watch a bad movie and be oddly turned on by a woman who resembles a man!” 

Seriously, what's the difference?

Being in the middle-of-nowhere, Michigan, I’m constantly bombarded by Christianity.  Driving to work, I see homemade signs loudly professing, “Abortion is an Affront to God!” even though there hasn’t been an abortion in this county in almost 10 years.  I see people angrily supporting McCain, thinking that Obama is some sort of radical Muslim.  Walking around the “downtown area” (which, in Rural Michigan terms is the same thing as saying “That part with the flush turlets”) I see people sitting by an overturned barrel, playing checkers, and honestly discussing why the endtimes are nigh.  My question to them is the same question Bill Maher has in Religulous: “How do you know?”

How do you know abortion is an affront to god?  How do you know Muslims are evil?  How do you know Armageddon is near?  They all quote the Bible (or the Koran or any other “holy” book), but, as Bill points out, you can’t be sure that they’re true when contradicting religions seem to overlap each other in several places and religions that we think of as “laughable” share many of the same tenants that we hold true about our faith (Egyptian gods share many of the same traits as Jesus, including a virgin birth, rising from the dead three days after dying, and having December 25^th as a birthday). 

So what are we to believe?  What happens when we die?  Why are we here?  What is the point of life?  My answer – and Maher’s answer – is simple: I don’t know.  And what’s the harm in not knowing?

Maybe skateboarding and listening to Huey Lewis is what happens when you die.

Does anyone really know what happens when we die?  Your faith might tell you that you go to heaven or hell or paradise or are reincarnated or rot in the ground or become one with the universe or any number of wild things.  But you don’t know.  You might fall through the earth like Ghost Dad.  Maybe you have to somehow reach 88 mph before you die to generate one point twenty-one jigawatts of electricity. Maybe you have to sit in the corner and think about what you’ve done.  Maybe you have to fuck a dude.  But you don’t know.

So, basically, Religulous is about Bill Maher traveling to and from various places of worship trying to get a straight answer out of people: “What’s so bad about not knowing?”  Christians can’t answer him, Jews can’t answer him, Muslims can’t answer him, Mormons can’t answer him, Scientologists can’t answer him.  Most of us don’t know Algebra well enough to pass an 8^th grade exam (see HAB for proof of this statement), most of us don’t know who the leader of Canada is (or even if it’s a queen, prime minister, or president), most of us don’t even know what McDonald’s Big Mac Sauce consists of (warm mayonnaise and AnalEase), but we deal with those uncertainties everyday.  However, when it comes to “What is the meaning of life?” we all think we have the answer.

Personally, I think we’re all dead already and this life is just flashing before our eyes right before we stop breathing; it explains why all the shitty parts take so long while the fun parts seem to fly right by.  It also explains why I always have a feeling that everything will always work out (even this shit about being the only contributing member of CouchParty.com), and why I’m pretty accurate at telling the future.

But I don’t know.

Bureaucratic Nonsense

I originally got into teaching to help people.  Being the kind of guy I am, I didn’t want to have a job where I didn’t feel like I was contributing to the world.  It was either teaching, or doctoring.  It turns out that doctoring is hard.

This is from a student's MySpace page. I know you think she's super-hot. To me, she's like 5 years old.

Another reason I chose this profession (other than, as HAB says, “Those fuckin hotties”) is because of the lack of professional mind games.  You know the ones; every profession has them and they’re pretty much all the same.  That one guy who is incompetent at his job gets a promotion over you because the promotion means that there are fewer opportunities for fucking up.  Or maybe that one receptionist you’ve been hitting on doesn’t appreciate your “little gifts” in her bushes so she “forgets” to give you messages.  Or – who knows – you might be one of the people taking advantage of this bureaucratic business system where “doing a good job” means staying in your current position forever.  Teaching, I thought, was devoid of this bureaucratic process.

When I was in high school, I thought the most annoying part of a teacher’s day was dealing with me and the other members of the Couch Party.  I now know that the most annoying part of a teacher’s day is everything but teaching. There are IEPs (where a student has a serious problem or the parent wants their child to have a serious problem), 504s (where a student has a mild problem or the parent wants their child to have a mild problem) the staff meeting (where administration reminds everyone to teach well), the department meeting (where the department chair reminds everyone to teach well), the BIT metering (where the administration reminds the department chairs to remind everyone to teach well), the PNG, the PR, the AR and even – and I’m not making this up – the SOL meeting all take place on a regular basis.

I swear to God, this is what "S.O.L." means.

This past week I was give the honor of attending an all-day meeting where the goal of the day was trying to find a new way to tell the staff to teach well (we came up with “Power Standards: Jumping on the Bandwagon of Instruction” and “Critical Thinking: Keeping Your Students Immobile and Confused”).  In it, I found a new level of bureaucracy.  I heard an amazing amount of go-nowhere phrases and vague slogan designed to make us feel good about our jobs without actually getting anything done or making any more money.  The following phrases actually appeared at the all-day meeting:

Teaching is beautiful.

Professional accountability, instructional strategies, battling failure, learning targets, vision, trusting community, hard conversations, establish questions, begin understanding, learning community, commit to a goal, model of operation, action steps, action items, what it looks like, promote the goal, variety of strategies, specific targeting. 

I know it doesn’t sound all that bad.  “Professional accountability” makes sense, right?  But, doesn’t being a professional imply accountability for your job?  I can’t be a professional dentist and just fuckin hit people in the teeth with a hammer.  Isn’t a “variety of strategies” in itself a strategy?  Just by asking questions, aren’t we “establishing” them? 

Just like with any other job, they’re trying to make themselves feel better by making us feel better by using positive words to explain negative things.

Or to put it a better way, they’re trying to make us do more work without actually paying us for it.

Maybe one day I’ll work for administration.  I’ll come up with cool new phrases like “technologically/proficiently ecstatic” to describe what happens to students when we use technology to “enhance learning targets of professional power standards.”  Or maybe “running through fields of poon” to describe that look in a child’s eye when they finally learn that life is a series of disappointments.  

Choke: The Movie

 

 

Although not as thought-provoking as the book, Balls Deep 11 really gets to the heart of middle-America's attitude towards health reform and ass-to-ballsack slapping.

Jurassic Park, Silence of the Lambs, and Balls Deep 11.  What do these movies have in common?  They were better than the books.

The only reason to make a movie from source material is so that your story can be better than the original.  That’s why Spider-Man was such a good movie – the story it was based on was less believable than Jonah and the Whale (although, to be fair, I have seen some large individuals swallow some very large things only to come out whole in their very large stool).  It’s also the reason any of the Lord of the Rings movies are good – they had good source material and were able to make it even better.  The problem starts when the movie tries to “stay true” to the book.

This is what happened in Choke.

Choke: The Book

The book Choke (in case you don’t know), is the best book ever written.  At least for guys.  With personality disorders.  Who are easily addicted to things.  And think that the world is too regulated.  And are more prone to act out sexually than to act out aggressively.  Like Fight Club, Choke is about the definition of “man,” except in Choke, the focus is more on “sex” than on “violence” (which, as a guy who weighs about as much as your average bowl of soup, is more accessible).  The main character, Victor Mancini, is a med-school dropout.  His mother is in an expensive nursing home and the only way he is able to pay for it is to con people into giving him money.  He does this by choking on food, people give him the Heimlich maneuver, and then he asks for some change.  He is also a sex addict and he prides himself on being a dick.  Eventually, he discovers that he may be a descendent of Jesus and he starts doing good things. 

After reading the book several times, I found that the stand-out theme of the book is that we “all have to stand for something”; if we simply commit ourselves to “not doing bad things”, we’re just masturbating, hence the heavy sex theme.  The author goes around and around this point: The mom spends her life rallying against the establishment, and on her death bad delivers wisdom of her follies.  Denny, the best friend, spends days and days collecting rocks instead of submitting to his sex addiction and finally realizes that he can build something when he’s not whacking off.  Dr. Paige Marshall, the girlfriend, is released from the hospital the second she figures out that taking care of herself instead of prolonging the lives of already-dead people is more important.  And then, Victor, our hero, must overcome his stagnant sex addiction, his stagnant love of his mother, his go-nowhere job, and his go-nowhere education.  In classic Palahniuk fashion, everything, of course, gets worse before it gets better (Victor has a fake rape with some crazy lady, some prison woman gets an anal bead stuck in his ass, he accidentally kills his mom, etc.).

Sounds pretty interesting, right?  If not interesting, than at least identifiable.  Which one of us hasn’t either fake-raped a woman, got an anal bead stuck in our ass, or accidentally killed our mom?  I see no hands.

The movie isn’t like that.

Choke: The Movie

The movie is about Victor, a sex addict who can’t grow up.  In flashbacks we see him as a child, wanting to run away from his mom, wanting to play on the swings with the other kids.  When he’s older, he does what he can so that he can play on the metaphorical swings: he has sex with strangers (“swinging,” get it?  Hilarious).  He does what he can so he can run away from his mom: he puts her in a nursing home and keeps her there.  When it’s revealed that he might be Jesus’ descendent, he grows up.  He no longer wants to swing, he no longer wants to run away.  Everything just sort of falls into place. 

The book ends with Denny making a wall out of his rocks while Victor describes that it doesn’t matter what you build, as long as you build something.  As deep and profound as anything else I’ve ever known.

"That's right, Ty. And if you make one more line, the 'P' turns into an 'R'!"

The movie ends with Victor making out with Paige in a bathroom.  As deep and profound as Ty on Extreme Makeover.

The main problem with this movie is that it stuck too close to the source material.  It wanted a movie version of the book.  It read the book so closely that it missed all the fun stuff.  Choke the movie missed the themes and motifs and ideas that make Choke the book so interesting.  What could have been an awesome version of the same premise (like Fight Club), ended up being a random composition of mini-events from the manuscript.  Basically, the movie followed the book so closely, that what we’re left with is a 90-minute version of Choke the book.

Coming soon to Universal Studios' Islands of Adventure!

Which, I guess is better than Choke: The Ride.

 

 

Editor’s Note: We would like to thank Nick for not once using the obvious “Choke: the chicken” joke.

You Glutton

We appreciate the support, but watch the road.

 

Yes.  I am talking to you.  The one who is reading this right now.  The one who is supposed to be working and/or is not supposed to have drinks this close to the computer (or for the four of you currently looking at this while on your iPhone while you’re driving); I am talking to you.  Quit being so damned greedy.

I’m not referring to your shock at the current financial situation (seriously, who the hell was surprised when the shit hit the fan after people who were previously living under a picnic table somehow got home loans for a quarter million dollars) and I’m not talking about how you refer to your man-boobs as your “reason for not needing a woman.”  I am referring to your greed of CouchParty bandwidth.

This is how most of the internet works: we make good things and put them on our website.  This is free (or close to it, depending on how many advertisers one has).  However, in order for anyone to look at the good things, the files have to be transferred to your computer.  The transfer takes up power and virtual space; this is called bandwidth.  This is not free.

To put it in terms most CPers can understand: it’s like having a hooker for a best friend.  You can talk to her, you can date her, you can even do some “heavy petting.”  But the minute fluid is exchanged, it’ll cost you.  In this case, the hooker is CouchParty.com.  Or, to be a little more blunt, it’s the files I keep at CouchParty.com. 

I‘ve talked about this before, but I have a little side-project called Tiny Life.  It’s a comic book that I’ve done just about everything on all by myself.  In order to promote it, I’m doing podcasts on iTunes.  Apparently, I lot of you bastards are downloading it.  How do I know?  Because cp.com has been shut down twice this month for bandwidth overages.

We’ve never been even close to shutting down since CPv3 hit the net.  Now, because you people can’t wait to get your hands on everything CouchParty and CouchParty-related, I have to shell out a bunch of money every three days because we keep getting shut down from your over-downloading.

This is you. When you take out your teeth, you know how to show a guy a good time.

So, using my previous analogy, since I’m the one paying, you’re the hooker and I’m your best friend.  Anytime I touch you, I gotta pay. 

You dirty slut.

 

 

Check out my iTunes page here:  

 

“Nick’s Ears”

Editor’s Note: This article was submitted by The Wife on Nick’s behalf.  Although Nick truly has some weird ear issues, we cannot be sure if this article is genuinely Nick’s or if it is a euphemism for one of The Wife’s various parts.

 

There is something wrong with my ears.  Always has been.

This is how I was born. Without the sideburns and acne scars.

When I was born, my ears were folded inside themselves and my mom, whenever I would sleep, would run her fingers along my ears so that they would straighten out.  Eventually, they looked like a normal little boy’s ears.  There were just a little big and just a little flappy.

Because my ears were oddly developed on the outside, they were also oddly developed on the inside.  And I could feel it.  I would constantly play with my ears; I would rub the outside of them to calm myself, I would stick my pinky in it to signify that I was nervous, and I would fold the outside into the hole (repeating the state I was born in) when I needed to feel sheltered. 

This is how my ears look now. A little big and a little flappy with an unusually large hole. That's what the boys really like.

Eventually, my ears started to be a point of amusement.  I would play with them when I had nothing to, I would find new ways to use them, and after a while, I started entertaining my friends with them (I used to fold them inside and then shoot Skittles off the top).

Lately, though, my ears have been a burden.  I’ve been getting infections, I’ve had to take medication because of them (both in pill form and in ovule form), and, frankly, they’ve been starting to stink.  Lately, I haven’t had any opportunities to play with them, and my spouse no longer finds it amusing that I can turn them inside out.  After all these years, my pinky in my ear just doesn’t do it for me – I need a lot more firepower.  But still…

I just wish my ears were as important as they used to be.

 

My Summer Life

As most of you know, I have the greatest job in the world (next to a female fluffer in an all-girl porn): teacher.  Not only do I get to feel like I’m making a difference (even when I’m not.  Seriously, how many of you still know the quadratic formula or that one song that names all fifty states?), but I also work less than half of the year, and of those days that I do work, I put in no more than six hours.  So to fill my time, I have a few hobbies.

There is, of course, couchparty.com (where I am closely gaining on HAB as the number one author), but I also have a comic that is coming out in December, I work out daily, I’m constantly adding on to my house (the Hungry Hungry Hippos Room – devoted entirely to the best board game ever – is well under way and the Mandy Nacho Devotional Monument Closet and Bidet was completed last month), I have a fairly healthy internet porn habit (which isn’t easy on dial-up) and in between all of these things, I’ve been watching TV on DVD.

	If it wasn’t for Twin Peaks, we wouldn’t have:
Lost on ABC	A bunch of weird people try to find an invisible cabin
Rescue Me on USA	A guy who’s life is so screwed up he’s suicidal.
My Name is Earl on NBC	A guy trying to make up for past deeds in a town populated by people who seem to want to stop him
Slow, Ugly People on HBO	Ahorse-faced character who is the only one not fucking absolutley everyone.

Why, you ask, would I watch TV on DVD when television already offers so many delights?  There’s the Food Network when you’re hungry, the Nature Channel when you’re bored, and BET when you just want to laugh.  Well, friends, that’s for those of you who have cable.  I still have a coat hanger stuck to my TV because even satellite companies are afraid to venture way the fuck out here.  So, instead of laughing along with Jon Stewart on the days events or getting really upset of what’s been happening on The Hills, I spent a lot of my summer watching entire runs of various series that have long been canceled.

Some were worse than I remembered (Welcome Back, Kotter), some were much better (Andy Richter Controls the Universe), but there’s one that stood out, mostly because I never got to see it while it was out: Twin Peaks.

If you don’t remember, Twin Peaks is about the investigation into the death of local prom queen Laura Palmer.  Throughout the series we meet a number of eccentric characters – including a semi-retarded deputy, a Chinese immigrant who speaks perfect English and whose soul is imprisoned in the knob of a night stand, a possessed father who dances and cries whenever he hears any song, a lady who has a pet log, and a denim-wearing ghost who feeds off the misery of others.  We also see a number of storylines – including a horse that suddenly appears in peoples’ living rooms, a burning mill, a backwards-speaking midget, a number of torrid love affairs, and an invisible cabin that holds all the evil in the world.  The best of both, however, is Special Agent Dale Cooper’s investigation into the death of Laura Palmer. 

I never saw it because it came out when I was like 12 and it was on after my bedtime.  Now, though, that I have no bedtime (I have no real responsibilities because I have the best job in the world.  Right now, you should probably be working or consoling your lover after a fight or building that deck or getting groceries or working off that gut (that, by the way, was your New Year’s Resolution) or waiting for a video to load on YouPorn but instead you’re reading this) I can watch a half dozen of these in a row.  So I did, and here’s what I discovered:

Would Facebook really exist without us?

Twin Peaks is the precursor to every good show on TV.

If it wasn’t for Twin Peaks – a down-to-earth show with an eerie/funny twist to it – there wouldn’t have been an X-Files.  If it wasn’t for X-Files, there wouldn’t have been a dozen imitators, and if it wasn’t for those imitations, we wouldn’t have Lost, Rescue Me, My Name is Earl, or Sex in the City. 

Truly, Twin Peaks was ahead of its time.

Much like CouchParty.