Thanksgiving for the Restivus

Since both of the blog's authors' Thanksgiving breaks start in the middle of the week, we figured we'd split this post. The first will half will be by Tapan Jones, and the second by Mike Bogart.

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I don't think I've ever seen a black person go shopping on Black Friday. This coming from a self-proclaimed seasoned vet, having made the transition from the Canadian Boxing Day (December 26th) to Black Friday seamlessly.

Regardless of the city I'm in, I almost always never see my brothas or sistas getting their shop on. (Don't worry, I asked the black community's permission before typing like this - plus, everyone knows I <3>

Here are the numbers that I've compiled from Toronto, Chicago, and New York, all jumbled together in the same data set -- so you know it's super scientific:

33% Latino

27% Indian

14% Asian

11% White (eastern Europe)

8% White (western Europe)

7% Hill people

Given all of our ingrained stereotypes about the aforementioned groups of people, and our love for bouncy words, I hereby propose that Black Friday be changed to Frugal as Fuck Friday.

Happy Thanksgiving,

Tapan Jones

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Ever since I was a little tamale, I've wondered to myself: "What do they eat for Thanksgiving in Mexico?" I figured maybe they had a little chalupa action going on, maybe a Mexican pizza with cranberry sauce stuffed in the crust. But then, as I matured from tamale to enchilada to gordita, I realized just how stupid I had been. They have turkeys in Mexico!

You see, turkeys, as birds of prey, are indigenous to areas throughout North America and Mexico. Birds of prey are the ones that we prey on as omnivores, so we call them birds of prey. And they eat that kind of stuff in Mexico like in chicken tacos, except they call them pollo tacos. So anyways, by my logic, if they have chickens there, they must have turkeys, because birds of prey travel in packs. And who doesn't love a nice buttered up turkey on Thanksgiving! Yes, even Mexicans love them.

In conclusion, if you see a Mexican-looking guy tomorrow, just give him a little gobble noise and nod. You know what's up.

Love,

Mike

Wild Wild Midwest

The concept of Cowboys and Indians really confused the hell out of me as a kid. As many of you know, I’m an Indian man. While it is true that my people also got shot at by whitey, our whitey had an accent, sang songs about a bridge falling down, falling down, falling down, and consistently used sarcasm as a defense mechanism. So you can see why I didn’t realize that in America, people were also hating.

Once things got cleared up, and I started reading at a 3rd grade level at the very early age of 10, I found out the Cowboys were shooting up and jailing Indians of a different variety. Relieved, this news started a causal chain of thought. Here’s how it went (I’ll use the infinity sign for chain links):

Indians (heavily scented) ∞∞∞ Indians (depressive alcoholics) ∞∞∞ Cowboys ∞∞∞ Wild West ∞∞∞ Prostitutes ∞∞∞ Reasonable Prices ∞∞∞ The South ∞∞∞ Country Music Awards

Now don’t worry, I’m not here to make any claim that Indian people invented country music, but I mean, the proof is right up there. It’s math.

With this in mind, and a nonexistent acoustic guitar in hand, I realized something. If it’s in my lineage, doggone it, I am positive that I can write a country song. So without further ado, let’s make the magic happen.

Years of that 3rd grade observational skill, and the innate formula deriving ability of Indian people, have made picking out the ingredients in a country song very easy. Here’s what you need references to:
- A truck (the real American vehicle, I tell you what)
- Beer or whiskey (none of that “liberal pussy” shit)
- Freedom (these colors don’t run! (mostly because they’re colors, without feet))
- Being Cheated On (how could you Rose McCoy?! You were my sister!)
- The old days (when I was a high school football god)
- Your dog (preferably one named after an old love who cheated on you)

I realize that by posting these six criteria, I stand to lose the country industry a lot of money, because now everyone can make a song – right? Of course not! This is still music, and it requires a lot of heart, soul, dedication, and time. Speaking of doing things without any of those, this is an actual conversation I had with my fellow blog co-writer, posted verbatim.



mike: your dog
me: named betsy
mike: yeah
me: "ole betsy lou, she treats me right. never drinks, or steals, or fights. she's more of a buddy than a pup - hey bartender, fill this cup!"
mike: hahahah
me: "ole betsy lou. down by the riiiiiver. ole betsy lou, hangin out in my truck"
mike: absolutely
me: thats the whole song
i just wrote a country song
the first thing was verse 1, the second thing was the chorus
it's like mad libs with a very limited word bank

So there you have it folks, go forth on this Veteran’s Day (by the way, to any active or former people of duty, you have more balls than I have sarcasm – thank you guys very much), and make your country proud by putting on your favorite cowboy hat and shooting up some Indian lyrics.

Go ahead, make my day,
Tapan Jones

Jingle All the Way... To Hell

So I was riding this one train the other day. While I'm walking out of the station, humming to myself nonchalantly, I notice this middle-aged guy with a crew cut and a Hitler 'stache trailing me from a distance. I sneak a glance over my shoulder and just before he takes cover behind a pillar, I see that he's wearing these ridiculous horn-rimmed John Lennon sunglasses and I'm like, oh gosh, the Jackal is after me. As I intiated evasive manuevers, I realized that if I didn't have an unnatural love for Sidney Poitier movies, the Jackal would have undoubtedly offed me and I would have died while humming "The Bedding Experts, where--" BAM. Bullet in the brain.


Think: how many minutes of your free time are spent singing commercial jingles to yourself? Really think about it hard. I'm afraid that many (read: all) of you will find that this surreptitious singing goes on in the brain in much that same way that the process of determining that you'll never be friends with someone based solely on looking at them for two seconds does. You don't even realize your brain is working at the time, but its actually doing very important things back there without your permission. Think about this next time you're craving some baby back ribs. There's a reason.

Now think: how sad would it be to die singing a commercial jingle? If they showed the killcams of regular human deaths at funerals, like I clearly believe they should, how embarrassed would your family be? "Jimmy died doing what he loved... whispering 'at the Red House.'"

This isn't the only problem with dying in the middle of singing a commercial jingle. You would NEVER know the end to that song. You think they have commercials in Heaven!? TV there is like On Demand for every show ever made. They don't have commercials. First of all, you would never need a magical chammois or a colon cleanser or one of those blenders that can chop up cell phones. You're in Heaven with a capital H. And even if you did want one, just for sentimental value, you could just say "I want 46 Snuggies" and you'd have forty six Snuggies in your lap, stat. Fuck commercials, that's why you repented. IT WAS WORTH IT.

And don't think that you can just wish to know the end to the jingle and it'll be granted. God has standards, people. He must protect his house! Dying without finishing a jingle is akin to being waterboarded for all eternity. How long can you exist with the ending to that commerical on the tip of your tongue? Don't think there's an easy button, either. You can't commit suicide once you're dead. You're stuck with that shit for the rest of existence.

BTW, it's "where dreams come truuuuuuuue!"

Yours in Christ,
Mike

Cool Academy: 2006 Edition

7:45 a.m. used to be a very significant time. It was the reason that I set my alarm clock to 6:45 every morning, you know, because you have to account for the three snooze rule. It was the time from which I would always count back 9 hours and try to figure out the precise second I was supposed to fall asleep.

So Mr. Jones, you may ask me, why was this time so important? Well you see, polite question asker, this was the time that the high school day started, 5 days a week, most weeks August through December – January through May. (Just as an aside, how’s that for interesting hyphen use?) Anyway, thinking back on this magical time, I started discussing something interesting with my fellow Sometimes cohort.

We decided that we could only make generalizations about the time we were actually in high school, so for that reason, I give you: What it took to be cool in high school from 2002 to 2006.

Alright let’s get to the heart of the matter. Before going in to specifics, let me just say that in retrospect, a lot of kids met the following criteria, so give yourselves a nice pat on the back. No really. I’ll wait for a second while you do it. I wonder if right handed people and left handed people pat themselves on opposite sides of the back, or if I’m just thinking of British people. Anyway, that’s more than enough time, let’s get to the action:

1) Chewing Gum

This is the very first thing on the list, and it immediately falls into the whole square-rectangle debate. Sure, not all kids who chewed gum were cool, but you better believe that all cool kids chewed gum. To be cool, this was absolutely a non-issue. You bust out a piece of then-still-new Orbit and flash your status to the crowd. Interestingly, studies that I invented show this as right around the time when everybody realized that Juicy Fruit was 5 for 25 cents for a reason, which showed that just as with any status symbol, the more you spent on your gum, the fresher you and your breath were.

2) Texting
Text messaging has pretty much entered the everyday lives of the vast majority of the American high school public. You have to remember though, this is the early 2000s we’re talking about. This was like having AIM in 4th grade and actually choosing to have your friends call you prairiebabie88 – only the cool kids did it. Girls hid it by laying their purses open on their desk, guys used the hoodie technique. The bottom line was, if you texted in high school, you were a somebody, you coulda been a contender.

3) Not giving a hell about passing period
Even with the allotted 6 minute time frame to get from point A to point B, if you lingered by the lockers and talked to a girl – especially about another girl – you had arrived. Hell, if you did anything that caused you to walk into your next class even a minute late, notebook in hand pressed against your forearm, to your punctual classmates, for that brief moment in time, you were a cool kid.


4) Drinking
This is the absolut end all criterion. Literally, it is the single most important key to being popular in high school. If at any point during your high school career you consumed alcohol in any vain, fuggedaboutit, you’re golden. If I teach my kid anything, it’ll be the lesson that drinking in high school makes you a cool kid. Even if you weren’t part of the Zack Morris-esque group of kids, if you drank in high school, you shared a common, cross-clique bond with your fellow cool kid brethren. So hold your head high in that regard.

Again, I think it’s best to restate that these particular set of traits can only be vouched for in the era when Michael Vick was the best thing to happen to Madden, and girls thought jeans without pockets in the back were fashionable. So let this post be a bit of nostalgia for you fine folk, and let you carry you over till the end of your week. Oh and if you didn’t meet any of the requirements, you can always try out for the math team. Seriously, those kids were champions at Naperville North.

Hope you dugg it kiddies,

Tapan Jones

The Seventh Sense: Neo Without a Cause

Sometimes I think to myself, "Why, God?" But then a kitten walks by and I have to go pet it because they're just so cute when they're little! And other times, mostly when I'm petting the kittens, I think, "Why, God, did you make these kittens so irresistible?" But this is such a stupid question. I think it's pretty obvious that God made kittens cute because if they weren't cute, no one would house and feed them and they would all die, because if there's one thing a kitten is bad at, it's bloodsport. Can you imagine a kitten in Running Man? Maybe it could hide for a while in one of the dumpsters or something because it's real little, but there's no way it would ever successfully run to its freedom without being stomped by Buzzsaw. He's great.

This inevitably gets me thinking about a lot of things, because let's face it, I'm a thinker. Like the statue, I'm always curled up in this position, just thinking and thinking until my head darn near explodes. In addition to being a thinker, I also watch lots of movies. I like The Matrix, and I like M. Night Shylamalam's work, and Jimmy Dean is pretty much my favorite actor (and sausage). Those guys make me think.

Anyways, during one of those thinking sessions, I got to thinking about my favorite movie, The Matrix. If you've never seen it, it's about this man named Neo who is actually a robot, but he doesn't know it yet. Neo's just living his life, riding motorcycles and knife-fighting, when all of a sudden he meets a little boy. The boy claims that he can see robots, and I guess no one else can see them or something. So Neo and the boy become fast friends (it's kinda creepy in a molestation sort of way) , except there's one catch: the boy and this black dude are competing for Neo's attention, and the black dude wants him to take some pills. Neo's kinda standoffish about the whole thing, like "Why should I do what you tell me?" and he storms out of the house with the boy and they ride his motorcycle into the sunset.

So at that point you're thinking, wow, that Neo is pretty rebellious. But then, once Neo and the boy run out of gas, the boy drops a bomb and he goes "Neo, you're a robot." So Neo drops to his knees and he's all "NOOOOOO!" and the camera zooms out real dramatic to show that Neo's in a desert by himself. Then he runs away back to the black dude and leaves the boy who betrayed him in the dust, like a total conformist. Then Neo goes, "I understand now," and he takes the blue pill, I think, or maybe the red. I don't think it matters because it's obvious that the black dude just wants to get Neo hooked, either way. Then out of nowhere Neo goes on this big-ass trip with dojos and all these green numbers all over the place and he thinks he can fly. It's obvious that he's really high. And then I fell asleep but at the end of the movie he flies away wearing this big cape, which must mean that he's like a super-upgraded robot now or something.

Anyways, I think it's pretty obvious that the moral of The Matrix is that really, in your life, who can you trust? If you can't trust innocent young boys, and you can't trust drug dealers, then really, what's the point?

Yours in Christ,
Mike

Mirror, Mirror on the Facebook Wall

As autumn’s leaves prepare to blanket our roads, and the days begin to cool, the authors of the blog are reminded of something Mark Twain once said: “fuckin’ summer’s gone.”

That’s right folks. Fuckin’ summer’s gone.

But let us not dwell on the passing of this season, because it has been the first to expose a certain phenomenon previously unknown to billions. With the Facebook Empire being used to stay in touch with old friends, shamelessly promote blog posts, and to create mini-farms of meaningless 32 bit carrots, our love affair with the website has revealed a new concern of catastrophic proportions. The following is truth:

Girls are a lot better looking on Facebook than we remember them being in real life.

I mean, really. She did not used to be hot. You mean to tell me in the three years that we’ve been going to different schools that all the women I knew suddenly decided it was time to put on really fashionable clothes and take 45 degree angle pictures of themselves from 3 feet away? This appears to be the case.

This initial jolt of surprise sure to come to any male, ages little bro to mid-life crisis, is not pure. You see, it is a trick. These women have not in fact become supermodels – they have learned to use technology to their advantage.

Allow me to explain.

There are three factors that have led to this “computahotness,” (term patent pending). The first is directly caused by Facebook. The option to de-tag pictures has created a process we’re calling “technological selection.” By only allowing friends and cohorts to view pictures that show one in a favorable light, one creates a mental image totally built on a partial truth. It’s like going to Dunkin’ Donuts and seeing a chocolate sprinkled donut from the side, making the purchase, and then realizing the other side is actually coconut. Ew.

The second such issue has been previously mentioned. A wise man – that’s you K Kwon – once told an author of this blog, “Hmm… I don’t know. Seems like she knows what angles she looks good at.” Taking this observation under consideration, the authors found that many girls do in fact take many, many pictures from THE EXACT same angle. Like the sweet spot on a baseball bat, they’ve figured out the exact trigonometric requirements that present them in the hottest lies. Outrageous!

Finally, women are appearing more attractive on the internets for a reason that has nothing to do with us fellas. Did you know that all women hate each other? That shit is the truth. They may have friends with whom they get along famously, but there’s a deep, underlying Melrose Place thing going on (I’m assuming--who the hell remembers what happened on Melrose Place? But damnit all if there’s going to be a Gossip Girl reference on the Sometimes). As it turns out, women are engaged in a civil gender war in which they don’t want to leak any compromising information to the enemy. They stay protected by presenting themselves favorably in pictures on the internet and in person at box socials. Again, this shit is the truth. This is the first reporting The Chicago Sometimes has ever done, so we’re not going to risk it on a lie.

So there you have it. The next time you see the picture of a 6 looking like a solid 8.3, just remember, there’s a good chance of hijinx taking place – And that 7 8 9.

Poke you later kiddies,
Tapan Jones

Our Children are Doomed

So I was watching KEWLopolis on CBS last weekend, when it occurred to me that KEWLopolis really sucks. First, there's this show "Dinosquad," in which a bunch of high school stereotypes can morph into dinosaurs in order to save the world from this other guy who's actually a 65 million-year-old anthropomorphic velociraptor and the CEO of a Fortune 500 company called Raptor Dyne. Then there's something all too literally called "Sushi Pack": "Four pieces of sushi and a wad of wasabi jolted to life--doing what's right to protect the citizens of Wharf City!"

But here's the catch: these pieces of salmon egg sushi, crab sushi, tuna sushi, octopus sushi, and wasabi operate out of a donut shop that their best friend, Ben, owns. If ever there was a delicious combo, it was sushi and donuts. Why don't any of the characters actually look like sushi? Why is the octopus wearing an eye patch?

If I cut random pages out of a dictionary, threw them in a hat, let my dog shit in the hat, pulled out the five shittiest pages, blindfolded myself, and pointed to 22 random words, those 22 words combined into a sentence couldn't possibly make a worse concept for a show than "Four pieces of sushi and a wad of wasabi jolted to life--doing what's right to protect the citizens of Wharf City!"

Childrens' shows today are an insult to children. Back in what I believe to be the Golden Age of childrens' programming, shows like: Ren and Stimpy, the Rugrats, Recess, Hey Arnold, and Doug presided over our hearts and minds with a now-legendary style and grace. In an effort to show just how horrible kids' shows are these days, I'm pitting what I believe to be the worst of the worst from my day against their analogous (and actually popular) shows of today. Guess who wins.

Gullah Gullah Island vs. The Backyardigans

Gullah Gullah Island starred some inexplicably Jamaican folk living on an island off the coast of South Carolina. It indoctrinated me and, presumably, the tens of twenties of other kids who watched it, into the stereotype that all people living on islands are Jamaican. Don't remember it? There was also a giant, talking, yellow frog named Binyah Binyah that they kept locked out in the backyard because seriously, IT'S A GIANT, TALKING FROG. If I wasn't seven years old in 1995, I would've been scared out of my fucking mind of that show.


However, this thing called "The Backyardigans" might be worse. My premilinary research indicates that the show is about some kids who may or may not be dinosaurs having pseudo-adventures fueled by "imagination power" in their shared backyard. Aside from the fact that it stars communist dinosaurs who are clearly huffing glue, this show sucks because the names of the kids are Pablo, Tyrone, Uniqua, Tasha, and Austin. Uniqua? That name insults me both as a black man and as an individual. I hold this show singularly responsible for the recent rash of horrible baby names like Skylar and Taryn and Jaden.


ADVANTAGE: Gullah Gullah Island

My Little Pony vs. Horseland

Now I wasn't the type of kid that ever watched My Little Pony, but I know that several of my female colleagues enjoyed the show. That's what they tell me. I've never seen it. However, I do know that there were like a million of those little toy ponies with the hair that you could comb into almost any style you could dream up in your horribly confused five-year-old mind. Actually, I'm not sure those were My Little Ponies.

In any case, that pony in the background is surfing on a fucking rainbow. It's gonna be hard to top that, Horseland. Plus, this pony in the foreground is clearly willing to do almost anything for money. Awesome.

Horseland, on the other hand, is a show geared toward your serious business 7-year-old pony enthusiast. It's on KEWLopolis, and it sucks. Normal kids' shows feature crazy adventures and outlandish situations and characters, but Horseland stars a bunch of waspy bitches going to a ranch, riding horses, and enterting them into competitions. If I'm gonna waste my valuable Saturday morning watching cartoons, I'd watch crime-fighting sushi over Country Club 101 one hundred times out of one hundred and one.

Advantage: My Little Pony

As you can see, the shows from my era won 2-0. This proves, without a doubt, that every kids' show made after 2000 is terrible. I rest my case.

Love,
Mike