Thursday, April 20, 2006

The Big Picture

I was on my way to have delicious sushi with a friend. We were debating between going to Kanda or this other place, Katsura. We settled on Katsura which was delicious. Good times! Among things that were said that night were

1) Sea Urchin??? Who would eat that??
2) I used to take classes with Karine. The girl who's dating Simon? Yeah, I used to call her Julie all the time.
3) Well, I'm glad we didn't go to Kanda for all you can eat Sushi. I wouldn't have been able to finish and that would have been humiliating.

That wasn't the odd part. The odd part was the next day my coworker says, "I went to Kanda last night. A word to the wise, don't try Sea Urchin! Incidentally I bumped into Simon and Karine. AWKWARD!"

Everyone decided to have Sushi that night? It's almost as if someone were directing a movie. While I was trying to figure out what kind of freak would eat sea urchin, my fool coworker was scarfing it down in a restaurant not more than 4 minutes away.

Me, looking at a menu with pompous self-satisfaction: "Sea Urchin??? What happened? Did the restaurant run out of donkey rectum??"

Cut to my coworker at the restaurant with his mouth full: "MMMMMMMMMMM!!!!!!! Scrumptious Sea Urchin!!! Just like mom used to make!!!"

Just another page in the script of life. I was shocked the other day helping Jbo and Marie-Eve move into their new crib (BTW congrats you two!) And Justin got a phone call. I asked him, "Who was that?"

Jbo: "That was Rez and Vrej."
Me: "Where are they?"
Jbo: "They're trying out for a senior baseball team on the West Island."

SENIOR Baseball team? It's like that episode of Seinfeld where Kramer joins the Karate class to beat up little kids. That just struck me as one of the most random answer I could have gotten. Tell me it doesn't sound like a team of writers sat down for hours going through a list of the funniest possible answers to my mundane question. What zany scheme are Rez and Vrej up to this week?

Me: "Where are they?"
Jbo: "Rez and Vrej are talking to their financial adviser about opening a business that sells Emus as a mode of transportation for little people."

or

Me: "Where are they?"
Jbo: "They're buying a pig... Next week they're going truffle hunting and they need a pig to sniff out the delicious truffles!"

or

Me: "Where are they?"
Jbo: "They're in court. Last week they were riding an emu and they hit Bill Haugland."

I had another funny talk with a friend the other day. She was on MSN and was listening to informer by Snow.

Me: "Your MSN name says you were listening to Informer by Snow."
My Friend: "Yeah... It's a good song... I used to date Snow's cousin."

Snow has a cousin? She then went on to explain how she used to see him hanging around with super ghetto people. Anyway, seemed like the setup for a TV show. And then later on everything would all come together.

Jbo hangs up his cell phone
Me: "Who was that?"
Jbo: "That was Vrej and Rez. Their Emu attacked Snow and now they're involved in some kind of gang war. The Emu got shot, but not before giving Snow's bling handler a solid kick to the chest."
Me: "Could they just pay them off with their truffle money?"
Jbo: "No... Bill Haugland ate their pig to get back at them... And all of their truffles."
Me: "Well ain't that some s**t!"

Isolated I suppose these little random events don't seem particularly funny or striking, but I can imagine some omnipotent being, a "God" if you will, looking at all these things at once and marveling at his own brilliance. "Tomorrow I'll give Marie-Eve a larger role. Can anyone say, long lost twin???"

Geek History 101

For some reason Pearl Harbour came up today. Not the actual battle, but the God awful movie starring Ben Affleck and the cheesenormous star of "Lucky Number Slevin!" There are lots of things that are terrible about that movie, least of which is the fact that it was just a very generic and crappy romance story that could have been set against the backdrop of any historical battle and to call the movie Pearl Harbour is an insult to... pretty much anyone who knows what Pearl Harbour is.

I told the guy who hadn't seen the movie, "Yeah, that movie could have been called D-Day or Bastille Day... or World War I... Or... Ummmm... The Clone Wars." The Clone Wars of course never REALLY hapenned, depending on how you choose to define real. If by real you mean it wasn't a war that took place in a bad movie (Star Wars II) then I guess the Clone Wars never hapenned. I struggled hard to think of more real battles than fictional ones. But I soon realized I can name far more fictional wars than real ones.

The battle on Pelennor fields (Lord of the Rings), the battle for Zion (the Matrix), the battle at Wolf 359 (Where the Federation made their stand against the Borg). Does anyone know how Captain Sisko retook Terok Nor? War of the Lance? Trolloc Wars? Battle of Endor? I could probably name many, many more but this has become embarassing enough.

I guess it's not so bad. I mean so called "real" history just repeats itself anyway, right? It's all about the same thing... Some guys want stuff from the other guys and come up with elaborate and irrational reasons to kill said guys. At least in fictional wars there are monsters, clones, wanton slaughter of Gungans/Ewoks... robots if you're lucky. At the end of the day it's a lot more fun and less emotionally demanding to know about fake wars and you learn just as much. Wars are bad but all nations engage in them. Oh, and the good guys always win, whereby good guys refers to whoever is writing the history books.

Tuesday, April 11, 2006

Two of a kind

After asking for an extension on a paper that was due today, I decided it was best to watch some television BEFORE I finished it up. Tuesday is Scrubs night after all. For the last few months I've been spoiled with two episodes of Scrubs per Tuesday night. But this Tuesday NBC decided to slip in their new mid season replacement ironically titled, "Teachers".

Teachers as you might gather is a show about teachers. Teachers doing stuff, like teaching students and competing with other teachers. And every teacher is of course a character. There's a skanky teacher... A bitter teacher... A gay... wierd guy? I don't know. The star of the show is a young optimistic white guy. The only thing the show is lacking is interesting actors with charisma. And jokes, jokes would be good.

I sometimes wonder how these contrived sitcoms get made. Who gets paid to go to a network exec and say, "Let's make a show about Teachers! And we'll call it Teachers!" ??? That's not an idea! That's nothing. How can you just walk down the street, see a certain job and decide to make a show about it.

Coming this Fall on NBC, Accountants!

The Star: "Hello, I'm crazy optimistic accountant! I expected to do something really exciting when I was a kid, like be an astronaught. But now I'm a weary accountant, and though I make a lot of money I feel unsatisfied. Perhaps at some point in the season, my latent optimism will shine through and I'll do something that establishes me as a maverick in my field! Hopefully one day I'll realize being an accountant isn't so bad and I'll find my true love! (see below)"
Co-Star: "I'm crazy Armenian accountant! I'm the wild card on the show, here to tell the precious few funny jokes that the writers may come up with... Or not. Hopefully being an obscure minority is sufficiently funny in and of itself to justify my presence on this show."
Some woman: "I'm crazy skank accountant! I wear short skirts to work, making me a skank by television standards... I'm mostly here to be marginalized."
Some other woman: "I may or may not be the love interest of the Star at some point. I have no personality though sometimes I seem to be jealous of skank accountant."

Then they'll make lame jokes about accounting.

Skanky woman: "I can't find my spreadsheet."
Co-Star: "I think you did enough spreading last night, don't you?!"
Live studio audience: "WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOH!!!!"
Co-Star: "Back in Armenia, we had a name for women like you."
Skanky woman: "What was that?"
Co-Star: "We called them whores!!!!"
Live studio audience: "HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!"

Me: "This show is NOT funny..." :-(

And of course there would be a black guy. Just like in Teachers. I'm pretty sure the only reason I watched the entire show was because there was 1-3 black guys in it. I like seeing black people on TV and in movies and other things. I appreciate that the media doesn't put us as stereotypes as much. The black guy in Teachers is fairly innocuous. That's good, no? Palmer in 24?? Black president??? REPRESENT!!! Blade is kind of a stereotype, as far as half black guy half vampire guys can be stereotypes.

You know what had a lot of black people in it? The Matrix! I can scarcely remember seeing a trilogy of movies with so many black people that were there for reasons other than just being black. I don't even think they even made any allusions to the fact that the majority of people in Zion were black. You would expect Neo to be unplugged from the Matrix and be all like, "Hey... What's with all the black people?"

I think the most effective integration of black people into a show is as the best friend. Which brings me back to Scrubs. Ah, JD and Turk. Looking at these two who would believe there's racism in the world? There hasn't been such a succesful pairing of a black guy and a white guy since Lenny and Carl. Lando and Han are pretty good super friends too.

You know what I love about black people and white people featured together in shows as best friends? The realism. Jbo and I... Vrej and Levar Burton. Soon, everyone man in the world will be paired up with a man of a different race. By this I mean, a black guy will be paired with a white guy to pose for hilarious pics. It will be like Noah's ark without the pressure of having to repopulate the species. Good times.

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Monday, April 03, 2006

Crypto-post

On one of my usual saunters through blogdom, the type that takes place when I have far more productive things to do, I came across a very interesting post. A friend of mine has a blog and it so happens this person is into something called Yaoi. What's Yaoi you might ask? Well, if you're like me you don't want to know, but I'll tell you anyway! Yaoi is essentially a japanese word for gay anime porn. Some would argue that it's not "porn" per se but that's neither here nor there.

What's interesting is that this media has a fan base. A cult if you will. And like every cult, they have their own language and more often than not, if I go to her site, I don't even know what they're talking about. Generally speaking I can get to the point where I understand they're talking about a book or a movie. Then everything is just a blur.

The point of this story is I came across a very peculiar word. The post said something like, such and such a book is good and there's "crypto-gay" in it. I laughed my ass off. For some reason I find that word very funny. Now from what I can gather, when "yaoi" fangirls read something with "crypto-gay" they're pleased. Cuz it's gay and that's what it's really all about.

The kicker is, when I wrote a message asking what cryto-gay was, not only did I not receive an answer, but my friend deleted my message, as if saying crypto-gay in vain was some kind of sin. So, to my yaoi loving friends (My friend who used the word on her site or Droopy now's your chance to come out) if you do know what crypto-gay is, please tell me. I won't judge. I will not however type in a google search to find out what it is for fear that I will get Amish levels of vile pornography on my screen. Now I can only speculate as to what it refers to exactly. It must be pretty harsh if it was improper for me to even ask!

Crypto-gay - The act of having carnal relations with ostriches.

or

Crypto-gay - The act of pleasuring yourself while your dizz is cryogenically frozen.

or

Crypto-gay - Pornography featuring conjoint twins with three breasts in various lewd acts with all kinds of marsupials that are still lactating then they #@%@#$@ right up the @#@#**^%$^$ until it falls off and the resulting secretions create an adhesive that has a taste reminiscent of maple syrup.

My grandmother used to say every folly is a fashion. She was referring to clothing but I think the same thing applies to hobbies. Almost any random association of words has a cult following these days. Mo's site has those guys who come together to make love to little boys. Necrophilliacs have a group. Where does it end? MWLR (Men Who Love Robots). TSA (Turtle sodomizers anonymous). In that light I suppose Yaoi seems tame. But who am I to judge right? Everyone should like what they gotta like! Gay things, people having sex with squids while basting themselves in yoghurt! Whatever.... It's 2006, baby! If I can't keep an open mind in this day and age...

Meanwhilst, I will add the word cryto in front of everything cuz that's how I roll. Today I called Simon a crypto-sexual, several times. Perhaps at some point I'll say Jon's a crypto-maniac. Crypto-gay! Can you believe it?