I. THE FUNNIEST SHOW NOBODY IS WATCHING
Like many people, when I'm exhausted after a long day of work followed by a few hours of pseudo meat-headism at the gym, sometimes there's nothing I want to do more than sit my tired ass on the couch and laugh at stupid shit on television. This time of year, however, when all the quality weekly sitcoms and such are still on hiatus and the major networks are just content to churn out regurgitated reality shows (There were TWO reality shows this summer featuring Terrell Owens! In one of them he was the ripped obnoxious guy. In the other he was the ripped obnoxious guy), the pickins' are slim for a guy without any premium channels. I mean, there's only so much "Baseball Tonight" you can watch before you start hearing Tim Kurkjian's nasally wine and seeing Peter Gammons' teeth - it looks like a small bomb went off underneath someone's yellow, wooden deck inside his mouth, I swear - in your sleep. So, naturally, I quite often turn to the OnDemand menu. And recently, I uncovered an absolute gem.
The show is called "Tosh.O," and it can be found by selecting TV Entert
ainment - Comedy Central - Tosh.O. Basically, it's kinda like that show on "E!" called "The Soup" (formerly "Talk Soup" for those of us who still remember Greg Kinnear's humble beginnings), except that it deals exclusively with internet videos, typically popular YouTube videos and such. Also, the host of the show, Daniel Tosh (hence the show's goofy name), is a hell of a lot funnier than anyone I've ever seen on the "E!" channel. He's quick, sarcastic, clever, etc. - all the things you would typically want and expect from a stand-up comedian, which is exactly what Mr. Tosh is when he's not hosting the show. But more than anything else, he makes the show great because he's fearless when it comes to pushing the envelope. He's not scared or hesitant to go after anyone or anything at all, which endears him to me in much the same fashion as Trey Parker and Matt Stone (creators of "South Park"). Everything and everyone is fair game for parody/mocking, just like in South Park, and I like that. For example, he just recently showed a clip of a girl skate-boarding down a hill, only to eventually lose her footing and suffer a wicked face-plant on the asphalt below. After the clip finished and the audience went "Ooohhhhh!," he stood there with a big old smile on his face and said, "Awww, don't worry. You can still make a name for yourself
and have a busted face. Just ask Julia Stiles." As the crowd reacted to that, he just smiled in a way that suggested "That's right, I did just say that." And again, I'm grateful for this.
Some other examples quickly before I move on:
- "You career is in worse shape than Kelly Clarkson's ass."
- (While showing picture of man passed out drunk, apparently spooning with a horse) "Well, looks like Sarah Jessica Parker is cheating on Matthew Broderick again." (Crowd roars)... "What, its because she looks like a HORSE!"
- (following video of dolphin coming up out of a pool and trying to hump its trainer) "Afterwards, the dolphin tossed the man's seafood salad....More like hepatitis C-world (get it?)."
- "If I hear that Jamie Foxx song, 'Blame it on the a-a-a-a-a-a-a-alcohol' one more time, I'm going to intentionally drive my car into an elementary school."
This is all tip-of-the-iceberg stuff though, folks. I won't give more examples because the humor really does come more from his snappy delivery than anything else, and unfortuantely, I cannot duplicate that here. Still, the show just keeps getting better and better. But, if you want to check it out, I suggest doing it now as there are only a few limited-time episodes available, and it'll be a little while before the show returns to air (it just finished its first run of 10 episodes). And if I haven't sold you yet, let me share with you some other bits to be seen on the show: Asians doing Christopher Walken impressions, white girls doing Bill Cosby impressions, rating videos/pictures to determine if they're gay, viewers sending in both "clip of the week" and "prank of the week" videos (which are particularly hilarious), short comedy videos sent in by celebrities like David Koechner, Tommy Chong, Jack McBrayer (Kenneth the page from 30 Rock), Harland Williams, and others, and much, much more. Here's a link to the website. Waste no more time, people! It's worth it:
http://www.comedycentral.com/tosh.0/II. THE POOR, POOR NEXT TO LAST TOE
During a fantastically lazy day this past weekend that involved little more than waking, peeing, eating, laying down, reading a book, and drinking sangria - a phenomenal agenda in my opinion - I found myself at one point - while laying on a couch reading - noticing a dull, repetitive, swishing noise. I didn't even realize I was the cause of it at the time. So, curious, I stopped reading for a second, brought the book down just under my nose so I could peer over top of it with the sneaky, squinting, and furtive eyes of a detective and still catch the pleasant scent of the freshly printed pages in my nostrils, and I saw that my feet were rubbing against each other. "Oh, how 'bout that! My feet are making that noise!," I thought to myself with a smile and a quick snort.
Now, rapt in the newfound wonder that were my own two feet, I bega
n to think about your typical foot/toe conversations. ('
Okay, this is ridiculous. But since you were drinking sangria, I'll let it slide.' Thank you). For example, whenever on the subject of feet, everyone always seems to ask, "Is your second toe longer than your big toe?" It's a fair and somewhat interesting questions I guess, and one to which I'm always happy to answer "same exact size..." But, whenever someone admits that yes, the second toe is longer, that's always followed by two things: 1) that person removing his or her footwear to show you, and 2) someone asking "Isn't there a name for that?" First, it's called Morton's Toe, and yes, it bothers me that I don't know who Morton is or was, nor do I know just how freakishly gigantic his second toe must have been to warrant such entitlement. Honestly, I don't think it's fair that just because he had such a big...('
You're about to digress. Focus.' Right, sorry)... Then, when this person's bare foot is exposed, if the conversation continues, it will do so via the following remarks, which again, are two-fold: 1) "Can you move your middle toe by itself?," and 2) "Oh my God, look how small your pinky toe is!"...
Never - EVER - does anyone make any kind of mention whatsoever of the second smallest toe. It never happens. And I guess it's understandable. I mean, if you had to lose a toe, that would probably be the one you'd pick by process of elimination. Consider this: You'd want the little guy to remain if not for the cuteness factor than at least to serve as a balancing bookend, albeit a small one, to your foot. You're not hackin' off the big guy for similar reasons and because I'm guessing it would hurt the most. The second toe isn't coming off either because, if it's longer than the big toe, then it's an excellent conversation piece, and even if it isn't the longest, it still feels like second in command of the metatarsal army, or the metatarmy ('Just checking. You just made up the word metatarmy, right?' Right), and you never want to sacrifice such a high ranking officer when there are clearly less important, grunt toes to be had (aka "foot" soldiers! Ha! Puns are fun!). So you're down to two remaining toes - the middle toe and the next to smallest toe. I say you're always going to keep the middle toe in tact because of the remaining two toes, it's the bigger one, and for some reason I bet people would instinctively equate that to being more important. Also, if you chop off the middle toe, your foot suddenly looks a lot like a pair of tongs, whereas if you chop off the next to smallest toe, you just look like you lost a toe, no big deal. See? You know I'm right, you're always going with the next to smallest toe if you have to lose one, despite what you've seen in "The Big Lebowski."
A few more points here to emphasize our unfortunate but inevitable ignorance of the next to smallest toe. To me, it sucks that it's the only one without a fuckin' name. You got the big toe, morton's toe, middle toe, and pinky toe. What the hell do you call the fourth one - fourth toe? That's lame. There's nothing! I've had to write "next to smallest toe" or "second smallest toe" quite a few times in this blog already, and it has seriously saddened me each time. It deserves a fuckin name just like the rest of them, and I suggest "ring toe." It makes sense because if you were to equate your toes and fingers, the big toe would go with the thumb, pointer finger to the morton, middle to middle, pinky to pinky, and ring to ring. So there you have it, "ring toe." I like it.
Moving on to my final, tragic point on the subject, remember that little game your mom used to play with your feet when you were a small child? You know, the one that starts with "This little piggy went to market, this little piggy stayed home..." etc? Yeah, continue that in your head and see what happens to the poor little old ring toe. I'll wait.....................Right?!? "This little piggy got none!" That's what happens to it! The other toes either go to market, stay home and chill, eat some fuckin roast beef, or at least cry so about it so it's doing something. But the ring toe? Nope. Nothing. Just hangs out, doesn't get any food, and doesn't do anything about it. That's bullshit. And I'm about to fix it with my own version of the song, keeping the same order starting with big toe and working our way down. It goes like this:
"The big toe piggy went to market. The morton toe piggy stayed home. The middle toe piggy went to the fridge where he was planning to eat all the roast beef without sharing, but the ring toe piggy was on to the middle toe piggy's game, so he stabbed and murdered the middle toe piggy, ate all the roast beef, and then had sex with all the other piggies' mothers, and he forced the pinky toe piggy to watch."
There, much better I think. I feel better, anyway. Thanks for sitting through that. Moving on.
III. LONELINESS: THE DISNEY APPROACH VS. THE GRUESOME APPROACH
The range of shows/movies to which I'm drawn is almost boundless. As long as it's not a gawwwwd-awful teeny-bopper movie like "Hanna Montana" or an infidelity-laced psychological torture flick that makes me despise all women for months like "Unfaithful," chances are at some point or another I'll sit through it. Hell, I once watched "Starship Troopers," "The First Wives Club," and "Lilo and Stitch" all within a 36 hour period, with probably an episode or two of "Everybody Loves Raymond" in between ('You sure you like girls?...' Yes. Maybe. I think...). And so, it should really come as no surprise that I recently pondered the common themes present in some classic, animated children's movies as well as in some gruesome, cover-your-eyes adult thrillers. And the resulting thoughts I found interesting enough to share...
Actually, there's really only one theme I'm going to be dealing with: loss of a mother (I would have specified this idea in the title of this little section of the blog, but I thought it sounded too creepy...). While it's not quite as prevalent anymore I don't think, I always found it curious how some of Walt Disney's classics like "Dumbo" and "Bambi" wasted no time in presenting the protagonist with the most trying of circumstances: finding happiness/purpose/direction at a very young age without the benefit of a mother. They even go so far as to shoot Bambi's mother in the first, what, two fuckin' minutes of that movie? ('Before you go any further - you're a mama's boy, aren't you...' Absolutely). Well, however long it takes, I say that's pretty fucked up. And actually, that's not the example that resonates most with me at all. No no, the one that made me want to kill myself as a small child was "The Land Before Time," when the innocent little brontosaurus Littlefoot loses his mama - which is bad enough! - then thinks he found her again when he sees a large shadow on the side of a rock, but ultimately realizes as he runs over to the rock as the shadow gets smaller and smaller that it's only his own... Ya know, I don't remember a whole lot from 1988, but I remember that scene, and I remember thinking to myself, "Ok, well, clearly mom's gonna die soon. Time to game plan. I hate my life." Worse, after Littlefoot's mom dies, he's left with nothing, save for the companionship of a bitchy little female triceratops named Ducky and a hapless pteradactyl who can't fly named Petrie. So then I thought to myself, "Alright, so after mom dies I'll have two friends. One will have cooties, and the other will be retarded. Time to game plan..."
But I'm getting way off point already. I mean, I do see the idea here. It's good to let kids see their favorite characters learning on their own, making friends, becoming independent, growing up happy, etc. and realizing that they could never cling to their mothers all the time. I'm not sure they had to have the mothers die, but still, I get it, I think.....(MINI SPOILERS COMING) but then I started watching the show "Dexter," and I saw Rob Zombie's sort-of re-creation of "Halloween 2." And the resulting irony I found morbidly hilarious. As you may have guessed, in both of these examples, the main character loses his mother as a small child, and consequently loses. his. fucking. mind. So much so that they both - Dexter Morgan and Michael Myers - become serial killers who, in one way or another, mask their identities. Michael Myers does so by sporting the classic white face mask, and Dexter spends most of his days admittedly pretending to be a normal, law-abiding citizen - not to mention employee of the Miami police force.
Of course, in both of these cases, it's not quite as cut and dry as mom's death = lifelong rampage. There are more involved backstories and such. As it turns out, Dexter is just helplessly obsessed with blood, and his mom's death via chainsaw - which took place right in front of him, and is an awesome way to kill someone - while significant, certanly isn't the only factor in determining who he grew up to be. Also, Dexter abides by a code whereby he only kills those who deserve to die, so for all his homicidal proclivities, he does still have a sense of civility/chivalry about him. And in Michael Myers' case, he was a fuckin' nutcase even before his mom died, as evidenced by the fact that he absolutely butchered all his family members (plus, he fuckin' de-STROYS his one sister's boyfriend with an aluminum bat - awesome) as a kid except for his mother and his baby sister. Still, in this latest installment of the slasher franchise, we come to discover that all this time, it's been delusional visions of Michael's mother that compels him to return home and murder his remaining sister...
Still, I think the dichotomy between what we're shown as children and what we see as adults regarding what happens to people/characters when their mothers are taken from them is still pretty valid/thick, and as I mentioned before, hilarious. It almost makes the kids' movies, though well-intentioned, seem naive, doesn't it? Like the filmmakers, in their respectable effort to teach kids a valuable lesson about life, think that the prospect of killing off the mama is a tame enough medium for kids to handle? I mean, didn't they realize that this idea could seriously psychologically crush a kid? I don't know, it just seems weird to me; as if they're saying, "Hey kids, if mom dies, don't worry! You can just forget about/let it go when you make friends with a rabbit or a skunk or a tricertatops or other elephants!" Because to me, the more ac
curate thought here is also the more terrifying one that you see in Dexter and Michael Myers; as if the filmmakes are saying, "You wanna know how fucked up you can get if you have to deal with mom dying? Take a look at this shit." Just seems funny to me. Seriously funny. And clearly the folks over at Disney should get on the ball and make amends for these egregious errors of the past, and they should do so by presenting children with the consequences that are only as truthful and brutal as the idea of losing your mother in the first place, and make an animated movie featuring the classic characters involving someone losing a parent, then dealing with it by slaughtering all the others. I suggest Donald Duck play the bloodthirsty psychopath, stalking his victims in the dark while quietly whistling the melody to the famous "M-I-C....K-E-Y M- O U - S E" song. Tell me that wouldn't be creepy and awesome.... Just a thought.
Alrighty then. Nuffsynuff for now. Thanks for droppin' in. Until next time, go hug your mother.
DJ
ainment - Comedy Central - Tosh.O. Basically, it's kinda like that show on "E!" called "The Soup" (formerly "Talk Soup" for those of us who still remember Greg Kinnear's humble beginnings), except that it deals exclusively with internet videos, typically popular YouTube videos and such. Also, the host of the show, Daniel Tosh (hence the show's goofy name), is a hell of a lot funnier than anyone I've ever seen on the "E!" channel. He's quick, sarcastic, clever, etc. - all the things you would typically want and expect from a stand-up comedian, which is exactly what Mr. Tosh is when he's not hosting the show. But more than anything else, he makes the show great because he's fearless when it comes to pushing the envelope. He's not scared or hesitant to go after anyone or anything at all, which endears him to me in much the same fashion as Trey Parker and Matt Stone (creators of "South Park"). Everything and everyone is fair game for parody/mocking, just like in South Park, and I like that. For example, he just recently showed a clip of a girl skate-boarding down a hill, only to eventually lose her footing and suffer a wicked face-plant on the asphalt below. After the clip finished and the audience went "Ooohhhhh!," he stood there with a big old smile on his face and said, "Awww, don't worry. You can still make a name for yourself and have a busted face. Just ask Julia Stiles." As the crowd reacted to that, he just smiled in a way that suggested "That's right, I did just say that." And again, I'm grateful for this. 
n to think about your typical foot/toe conversations. ('Okay, this is ridiculous. But since you were drinking sangria, I'll let it slide.' Thank you). For example, whenever on the subject of feet, everyone always seems to ask, "Is your second toe longer than your big toe?" It's a fair and somewhat interesting questions I guess, and one to which I'm always happy to answer "same exact size..." But, whenever someone admits that yes, the second toe is longer, that's always followed by two things: 1) that person removing his or her footwear to show you, and 2) someone asking "Isn't there a name for that?" First, it's called Morton's Toe, and yes, it bothers me that I don't know who Morton is or was, nor do I know just how freakishly gigantic his second toe must have been to warrant such entitlement. Honestly, I don't think it's fair that just because he had such a big...('You're about to digress. Focus.' Right, sorry)... Then, when this person's bare foot is exposed, if the conversation continues, it will do so via the following remarks, which again, are two-fold: 1) "Can you move your middle toe by itself?," and 2) "Oh my God, look how small your pinky toe is!"...
curate thought here is also the more terrifying one that you see in Dexter and Michael Myers; as if the filmmakes are saying, "You wanna know how fucked up you can get if you have to deal with mom dying? Take a look at this shit." Just seems funny to me. Seriously funny. And clearly the folks over at Disney should get on the ball and make amends for these egregious errors of the past, and they should do so by presenting children with the consequences that are only as truthful and brutal as the idea of losing your mother in the first place, and make an animated movie featuring the classic characters involving someone losing a parent, then dealing with it by slaughtering all the others. I suggest Donald Duck play the bloodthirsty psychopath, stalking his victims in the dark while quietly whistling the melody to the famous "M-I-C....K-E-Y M- O U - S E" song. Tell me that wouldn't be creepy and awesome.... Just a thought.
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