I've Lived in Madison for Too Long

Joey Laurence Jokes

2009-04-03T15:33:00.004-05:00

What is Joey Laurence's favorite song from the 2008 film Slumdog Millionaire?
"Jai Whoa!"

If Joey Laurence starred in a post-apocalypic movie, what would the title be?
The Whoa!-ed Warrior

If Joey Laurence was shopping for bicycles in Madison, Wisconsin, where would he go to buy a bicycle?
Machinery Whoa! Bicycles

It is well known that Joey Laurence is a staunch Republican, but who was his favorite advisor to the Bush Administration?
Karl Whoa!ve

In his book, China's Economy: The Tiger Awakes, what does author Joey Laurence credit as a key event in China's development?
The Sino - Whoa!viet Split.

When Joey Laurence was a reporter for the Chicago Sun Times, what did he think were the 5 'W' Questions?
Who, What, Where, When, Whoa! ... and How

If Joey Laurence were cast in a Star Wars film, what role would he play?
He would play the dual roles of Han SoWhoa! and Luke SkyWhoa!ker

What is Joey Laurence's favorite newspaper that covers the Ho-Chunk Nation?
The HocakWhoa!rak

When Joey Laurence is trying to bed an unwilling female, what does he use to convince her to go back to his place?
Whoa!hypnol

If you are getting an autograph from Joey Laurence, what will he give you if you slip him an extra 20 bucks?
A Whoa!job

When Joey Laurence's wife gave birth to a baby girl on May 10th, 2006, what did Mr. Joey Laurence say?
"Oh my, I wish I had some sort of word to describe my surprise at this very moment... Something to express my delight at seeing my daughter come out of her mother's Whoa!mb."

The Dan Potacke Show

2009-02-04T18:16:00.004-06:00

Here's a quick promotional video for The Dan Potacke Show: the most electrifying live talk show ever seen on a Monday afternoon in Madison. Every other Monday at the Frequency, host Dan Potacke performs onstage comedy and interviews people from all around Madison. If the show goes well, you'll laugh. If the show goes poorly, you'll get to watch Dan Potacke cry on stage, which will probably also make you laugh. And the show is free, what do you have to lose? The Dan Potacke Show, it's an excuse to drink on a Monday.

And even better than my own video, here's a super sweet news report from Colorado.

25 Random Facts About Meat

2009-02-03T14:31:00.001-06:00

These lists of 25 random facts seem popular on Facebook. Am I doing this right?

1. Meat, in the common modern definition, refers to the muscle tissue and selected edible organs of animals. Fish are sometimes not considered to be meat. Eggs and milk are usually not considered to be meat. Paper is almost never considered to be meat.

2. Meat is not eaten by everyone. Those who do not eat meat are known as poor people.

3. Meat of all types is eaten by Muslims, with the exception of pork. This is because the Koran states that Muhammad was transported to the Temple of Solomon where Allah showed Muhammad the movie Babe.

4. Meat is not a semi-forgotten sci-fi franchise that will be relaunched as a huge summer movie directed by JJ Abrams. You are thinking of Star Trek.

5. Meat is often molded into sculptures of Family Guy characters as a form of pop-art. Most popular is the Meat-er Griffin.

6. Meat is what some people call the inside of fruit. Like when someone says, “I’m scooping out the meat of the grapefruit.” That just sounds gross.

7. Meat has almost no carbs. I thought this was obvious but I saw this fact on some billboard as I driving into Milwaukee so maybe some stupid people out there don’t know this.

8. Meat production is viewed by a U.N. study as having drastically increase the following: air and water pollution, land degradation, climate change, loss of biodiversity, and your inability to enjoy a burger right after reading this.

9. Meat is divided into red meat and white meat. White meat is supposed to be healthier than red meat which seems a little racist to me.

10. Meat and milk are not allowed to be mixed under the Jewish dietary law of kashrut, but kashrut says nothing about mixing milk and fish so feel free to enjoy that halibut milkshake.

11. Meat, in the future, may be grown from meat samples as in-vitro muscle tissue in laboratories, eliminating the need to kill animals. Hunting will still take place, as guys in orange will get drunk and head out into the woods to slay wild petri-dishes.

12. Meat often comes from animals that never have a chance to leave a small pen their entire lives where they have to eat food off of a floor covered in their own poop. So, really, the lives of these animals are not unlike the lives of people who live in efficiency apartments.

13. Meat is one of the only forms of food that comes in T form.

14. Meat from lions has been dismissed as a farmable food source, according to studies by industrial farm groups that said it wouldn’t be profitable. Seriously, they were looking to raise lions for meat?

15. Meat is a term that Aboriginal Australians use that refers to their clans. I.E. “What meat are you from?” If I was from Australia, I hope I would be from the Buffalo Wing clan.

16. Meat market is often a term used for bars where people are trying to hook up and meat is often used at a slang term for male genitalia. I found both of these facts out when I went to a place that I thought was a deli, as a friend described it as a “meat market,” and asked for a good, think cut of meat.

17. Meat can be purchased from Whole Foods. The meat will usually be free-range and organic, the trade-offs are higher prices and dealing with nasty stares from the hippie customers.

18. Meat is considered to be unhealthy by many nutritionists. For example, the T-Rex ate a diet consisting entirely of meat and you don’t see them around anymore.

19. Meat and Oprah once got into a protracted legal battle. Oprah won but meat shouldn’t take it too badly, no one can beat Oprah.

20. Meat, according to the Bible, has been edible ever since God allowed Noah to eat meat after the great flood. Boy, it had to suck for that cow who just sat through that boat trip only to get to dry land and find out that I’m dinner.

21. Meat and potatoes are often viewed as perfect partners in making a good meal. This is just an illusion as relations between meat and potatoes have been strained for the last several years.

22. Meat you buy at the grocery store is often from another country and has travelled thousands of miles. While you have probably never left the United States, except for maybe one time studying abroad. What are you doing with your life when ground chuck has traveled more than you?

23. Meat, as a topic, can only generate 22 interesting facts.

24. Meat is often held to the face when someone receives a black eye. The meat doesn’t actually do anything to decrease the swelling but it won’t judge you when you cry from the pain of getting hit in the face.

25. Meat is. It just is, man.

Sweet Article on this Dan Potacke Fellow

2009-02-01T20:29:00.003-06:00

Normally, I don't post links to other blogs but I was taken aback by a fantastic article in The Decider, the online version of The Onion A.V. Club - Madison. The article in question is about a fellow named Dan Potacke and for some reason, I loved everything this Potacke character had to say.

Check it out at :
The Dan Potacke Show drives forward without thinking

Wisconsin News Roundup - January 28th, 2009

2009-01-28T20:42:00.003-06:00

This wasn't funny so I deleted it. I'll make another one.

Wisconsin News Roundup - January 21, 2009

2009-01-21T14:55:00.004-06:00

In this first edition of Wisconsin News Roundup, a program dedicated to mocking news from all over Wisconsin, I cover the impact of the Obama inauguration on Wisconsin, a new report on deer collisions, and the scandal over the Mayor of Racine's attempts to pick up teenage girls on the internet.

Couple notes: In the future, I will turn down the volume on the microphone so I don't spike it as often. I will also move my script notes to the side, as opposed to right under the camera, so I don't look as crosseyed.

A list of things that I just don't understand.

2009-01-19T11:36:00.008-06:00

Why people like the movie Marley and Me... I saw it 20 years ago when it was called Turner and Hooch. Only difference is that Turner and Hooch had Tom Hanks and sweet buddy cop sequences, which make it the far superior work.
People who think parrots are good pets.
How I never knew plow trains existed until a few weeks ago.
How people other than me don't think plow trains are the most awesome thing ever.
The Society for Creative Anachronism.
Tim and Eric.
Why FedEx still delivers on MLK Day when the Post Office doesn't. Does FedEx hate black people?
Gin in forms other than "and tonic"/"and juice."
How Kelly Clarkson can do a song like "Since You've Been Gone" that talks about how much better her life is now that she is out of a bad relationship but then go and do a song like her new single "My Life Would Suck Without You." With lyrics like "Being with you is so dysfunctional, I really shouldn’t miss you, but I can’t let go," and "I know that I’ve got issues, But you’re pretty messed up too, Anyway, I found out I’m nothing without you," Ms. Clarkson is clearly in a destructive, co-dependent relationship. That's backsliding, Kelly, for shame.

You used to be so strong, Kelly.

Twitter.
The fact that people in Madison aren't scared of the end of the Bush administration. The drop off in sales of Anti-Bush buttons and bumper stickers is going to kill off 10% of the stores in town.
How Jesus jokes can still be considered edgy.
People who still use Hotmail accounts.
Why Michael Cera won't sign on for the Arrested Development movie.
What makes pomegranates so amazing.
How the economy works.
How Battlestar Galactica can get so much press coverage when, like, 5 people watch it.
Why it's so damn difficult for me to come up with a name for my one-person "production company."
That I didn't realize that we could have ended racism years ago, all we needed to do was have Wisconsin State Journal editoral cartoonist Phil Hands do a strip about it.

Phil Hands: 1, Racism: 0.

Wait, I haven’t had my scandal yet!

2009-01-13T15:40:00.002-06:00

Guest Blog by: Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Steve Preston

Hi, everybody, call me Steve, I’m the HUD Secretary for the United States and I can’t wait to get started on my scandal. Sure, almost everyone in the cabinet has had some sort of scandal but 2009 is Secretary Preston’s time to shine. And by shine, I mean 'disgrace the country.'

Hold up, you are saying the Bush Administration is over? But I haven’t had my scandal yet, it’s why I went into politics. When I was a kid, I grew up watching all the scandals of the Nixon years with Agnew and the rest getting involved in all sorts of shady deals. All of America knew who those men were and what crimes they had committed… and that’s just the point, all of America knew who these scandal artists were. That’s when I, a little boy growing up in Janesville, Wisconsin, figured out that real fame isn’t just getting power, it’s abusing it. Nothing gets your name in the papers like a scandal!

I spent my time waiting to get into a position where I could have a scandal, working as an investment banker at Lehman Brothers (if only I had stayed there, what a fame-making scandal I could have been involved in there) up to Executive Vice President of cleaning conglomerate ServiceMaster. I thought of cooking the books at ServiceMaster but I figured that wouldn’t make news past page 5 of the Chicago Tribune so I continued to hold out for that brass ring: the Bush Administration.

In 2006, I did get a job working as for Bush as the head of Small Business Association but I have to admit I was a little intimidated to make my scandal right then. With Brownie at FEMA bungling Katrina as the flavor of the month and continual superstar Rumsfield continuing to piss off the troops in Iraq, I didn’t know how to compete with those heavy hitters. I mean Margaret Spellings was using the Department of Education to wage a culture war and that wasn't even being picked up on NPR, what chance did I have to make a scandal as a rookie? But since this June, I’ve finally had my chance. HUD, baby! That’s cabinet level shit!

And what have I done with this position? Nothing. Due to the housing crisis, I was so busy fulfilling the duties of my job that I never got around to completely ignoring those duties for my own personal gain. Oh, don’t give me the excuse that I haven’t been in office long enough, Schafer in Agriculture managed to get a scandal going in less than 100 hours as Secretary of Agriculture as he defended the practice of feeding America cows that might be carrying disease. But now I’ve wasted my time in the cabinet and haven’t even been involved with as much as a travel scandal.

I should have used housing funds to help build Homeland Security Chief Chertoff's illegal border fence idea. Ugh, you always think of the best ideas after the face.

Now when history looks back at the Bush administration, they will list this entire cabinet as horrible failures, there will be remembered for generations as some of the worst people to serve in any of these positions. But what about old Stevie Preston, I’ll just be noted as doing a serviceable job with a difficult situation that I inherited. Sigh, no one remembers those who are just serviceable. Maybe I can still go get a car out of the HUD motor pool, as long as security will still let me in, and knock over a 7/11. Oh what’s the use, the media’s already onto the Obama cabinet’s corruption. Sigh, I’ll never be famous.

Wait, I’ve got it, maybe I’ll run for governor in my adopted home state of Illinois! I’m sure to do something morally corrupt in that job!

Comedy Writing: The Misses

2009-01-05T11:07:00.007-06:00

I have spent a lot of time writing comedy over the years, mostly in a series of spiral notebooks that I frequently lose. During the holidays, I looked around and found a lot of these old notebooks and it was fun to see the origins of a lot of the funnier ideas I’ve had. But along with seeing the good stuff, I also had to read some of my other ideas, the terrible ones. You see out of twenty ideas I write down, maybe 1 or 2 are actually funny and have potential. Here are some examples of those 18 to 19 not-so-funny ideas that I had completely forgotten about.

Here are some ideas that were forgotten almost as quickly as they were written down:

Ghostbusters, the musical.
Where are they now: The Noid (rejected only because of the difficulty in creating/finding a proper Noid costume)
Going to the DMV and Having an Absolutely Wonderful Time (I had a similar idea witb Who’s On First where both people clearly understand that the names of the players on base are “Who” “What” and “I Don’t Know” without any confusion whatsoever)
The Rotten Urban Core of the North Pole (Ha ha! Thug Elves!)
The world’s first bar (What would the tip be? Whooaaah! I bet it would be something wacky!)
Dan Po-wacky, in-home clownery (I might still use this one)
Dildo Warehouse, factory-direct dildos.
Nudist Colony Secedes From Nudist Empire
Blackwater Home Security, the Brand America Trusts! (Basically a Brinks ad but anytime there was a break-in, they would come and cause huge amounts of collateral damage. Not a terrible skit idea but would cost way too much to do on my budget of $6.12)
People who reenact Civil War Battles reenacting Battle of the Network Stars.
Allergic to Dinosaurs (What does that even mean?)

Somehow this idea sounded funny to me for at least 5 seconds.

Beyond the one-sentence concepts , there were several ideas that I spent more time working on and actually fleshed out into scripts.

Tailgating for a play.

Casey and I came up with the ideas of decidated fans tailgate outside of Death of a Salesman like they are tailgating outside of a major sporting event. In line, they mock the ‘opposing fans’ i.e. people going to see Our Town. I actually still really like this skit idea.
Selected Excerpt: “Thorton Wilder, more like Thorton MILD-er!”

311 was an inside job.

You know 9/11 Conspiracies, that same thing, except for the band 311.
Selected Excerpt: “Come Original skyrocketed up the charts through the path of most resistence. No guitar rock becomes a hit like that naturally.”

Increased Risk Assassin

The premise of this skit is that the assassin would do his dirty work by raising different health risks for the people he was hired to kill. I.E. changing the target’s milk from 1% to 2%, inserting cigarette ads into the target’s copy of People magazine, lobbying Congress to raise the speed limit in the target’s neighborhood. I think this skit eventually become Freelance Assassin, one of the worst Public Drunkards videos. In retrospect, this original idea was a lot funnier than the finished video skit.

Cellie the Cell Phone gets PTSD after being the cell phone that recorded Saddam Hussein’s assassination.

Jon, Casey and I came very close to making this one, where our giant cardboard cellphone would have gone all Deer Hunter and almost killed himself. The only reason we didn’t make it is that the costume got thrown away and the Saddam-hanging reference would have been way too dated by the time we made it (and by ‘we,’ I mean, by the time Jon made it while Casey and I sat around and played Wii).

Wii Bulemia

After Wii Fit, a Wii game that would give you an eating disorder. I was going to make little graphics of a stickfigure putting a Wii Remote down a throat.
Selected Excerpt:Mario: (on tv screen) Oh, look at you, you flabby sack of fat. What’s that Pikachu? (holds up Pikachu doll to his ear) Pikachu says he’s disgusted by all of your rolls of lard.

Ron Paul 2014

When the ‘Ron Paul Revolution’ was tearing up the internet, I wrote a script about what American would be like if Ron Paul got elected. It was mostly a long rant about how I hate libertarians.
Selected Excerpt:Future Guy and Ron Paul Fan appear in 2014.
Future Guy: Welcome to 2014, buddy.
Ron Paul Fan: I’m so cold.
Future Guy: Yeah, here in the future, Americans have learned to be energy independent.
Ron Paul Fan: Finally, free from foreign oil. But why is it so cold?
Future Guy: You don’t understand me. Now that oil, natural gas and other stuff is all controlled solely by the free market with some fairly rampant deregulated price gouging, average Americans have learned to be independent of needing energy.
Ron Paul Fan: Wait, you’ve still got my clothes. Give me those back, I’m cold.
Future Guy: Sorry, man, you fell for the clothes-not-surviving-the-time-stream scam. That’s the oldest time travel grift in the book. These are my clothes now.
Ron Paul Fan: You stole them from me, give them back or else I’m calling the cops.
Future Guy: Okay, police department has been privatized so you better be prepared to pay up.
Ron Paul Fan: Of course, limited government. Without high federal taxes, we should be able to afford private alternatives, yes, I’ll pay to have the cops come. (whips out some cash)
Future Guy: Heh, that money’s not really going to help you. When Ron Paul banned the IRS, that kinda took out the treasury and federal bank that backed the dollar making your old currency worthless. Do you want some crack though? (lifts up some crack) No war on drugs, so we’ve got plenty of crack. No government interference to stop you there.
Ron Paul Fan: We’ve got to get out there, make some change. We’ve got to get a leader elected who will fix these problems.
Future Guy: Dude, it’s 2014, we already had another election in 2012 and Paul was reelected.
Ron Paul Fan: Why the Hell did people reelect Ron Paul?
Future Guy: Well, any candidate who wanted to restore the government needed at least some form of tax in order to pay for bringing back basic order and who is going to vote for a candidate who wants to raise taxes?

Dan Potacke's Party Planning Tips

2008-12-22T17:00:00.002-06:00

Guest Blog by: Dan Potacke

Hi, I’m Dan Potacke. You might remember me as Dan Potacke of Dan Potacke Travel. Or perhaps you know me as Dan Potacke of Dan Potacke-bay. Or maybe you’ve never heard of me until right now, which is great, it’s always nice to make new friends. Hi, new blog buddy.

But today I’m here as Dan Potacke, guest blogger, and I’m going to give you some tips to throw a holiday party. Now, I was going to put this up a couple weeks ago, back before most people had their X-Mas shindigs, but I wasn’t able to get on the internet on account of my 56k being on the fritz. Anywho, this guide should still be helpful for those who are still going to throw a holiday party in the next two days and the rest of you can just save this in your bookmarks until next December. There this blog entry will sit, safe and dependable, just like me.

Anywho, here are some helpful tips so you can have a successful holiday party, Dan Potacke-style!

1. Invite People
He he, of course, silly, you need to invite people to share your party with. Otherwise you’ll just end up setting at home by yourself with an empty table with placemats set out for 12. And trust me, that gets less fun after you do that every day for a few months.

I’d suggest inviting at least 4 to 5 times as many people than you can hold in your apartment, even if they all say they are coming, you should still invite more. The reason you should invite so many is that some people are sure to get sick as December is the heart of sniffles season. Last year, a lot of my guests had to drop out on the night of the party due to a variety of illnesses: cold, flu, even smallpox! I thought that disease had been eradicated so I was surprised it didn’t make the news when my brother, his wife and 4 children all came down with smallpox in the same afternoon. But what can you expect from the mainstream media?

2. Plan a menu
Yum yum yum! This is one of the funnest and most stressful parts of throwing the party, getting the grub. You don’t want to get anything too complicated, like the one year my ex-wife planned a really elaborate menu and I spent the entire party in the kitchen and never even saw my guests. Though Tom, my former employee from the short-lived Dan Potacke Dry Cleaning, said that the year where I was away the whole time was the best holiday party I ever had, he must have really appreciated the extra work I put into the food.

You also need to plan for any kind of guest, as you could have someone from any culture or walk of life thanks to the great melting pot that is America. Don’t get caught off-guard and plan something for any vegetarian guests. One time when my cousin brought her boyfriend over who was something called a vegan and I tried to wrap a leaf of romaine lettuce around a hot dog, that didn’t turn out so well. But I did get compliments for my nice plating.

3. Have a leisure activity
After the meal, you don’t want people getting up and leaving. That’s why you need a fun activity to keep everyone happy. Some people love to gather around the piano and sing. Though, for me this has a few drawbacks because I’m still getting over my divorce. I tear up when I hear any song from our wedding, or any song from our honeymoon to beautiful Peoria, Illinois, or any song sung by a female singer as it reminds me of my ex-wife’s voice. So I usually don’t go for the piano.

Instead, I bust out the old game of Life. At my parties, I used to say, “I don’t know why they call them ‘bored’ games, they are always fun for me. I think they should call them ‘excitement’ games.” At least until the time when one of my guests told me that they are called board games because they are played on a game board but I think my statement is still valid… and funny to boot!

4. Cocktail hour
At this point, your guests might be getting a little wiped out from the fun of the ‘excitement’ games so you need something to perk them up, so I serve up some cocktails. I usually serve up non-alcoholic drinks, you can serve up some ‘spirits’ if you want but I’d advise against it if you are still married. If your wife is anything like mine, she will get a little loopy and start berating you for all of your faults. As your family and friends sit there, she will go into incredible detail about your inadequacies in bed, you know, the usual drunk talk.

If you still have wives, you should try to prevent this from happening.

God, I still miss her so.

5. Clean up
Finally, once the guests leave, it’s time to clean up. I don’t have many tips for this one. One of my relatives keeps on stealing all of my forks and spoons which makes clean-up a breeze for me!

But once clean up is done, sit back and reflect on another successful holiday party. Those recollections will be invaluable if you are like me and spend Christmas alone. But you are never alone if you can hang out with your friends… in your memories!

Happy Holidays,
Dan Potacke

Helping people out on WikiAnswers

2008-12-21T14:32:00.008-06:00

In the spirit of the holiday season, my good friend Jon and I wanted to show goodwill towards those who are less fortunate. But instead of ringing some bell like suckers, we decided to help out our fellow man by answering questions on WikiAnswers. WikiAnswers, in case you haven't stumbled upon it, is a wiki where people can ask any question and have the collective wisdom of the online community provide them with an answer. That's right, when you are too lazy to read through an entire Wikipedia article in order to solve your middle school homework, ask the internet to do it for you.

It started off pretty innocent.

It got worse.

Mr. Smith wouldn't get elected today without support from the religious right.

Oh Jon.

I think they could have figured this one out themselves.
Happy Hanukkah, everyone!

This is why I miss having Jon around.

My feelings on carp are well known.

Good grammar.

*Insert funny caption 10*

I hope this display of holiday giving has inspired you. Hopefully, you can continue where we left off and show your own kindness on WikiAnswers during this most special of seasons.

Have you heard about my novel?

2008-12-16T09:36:00.001-06:00

Guest Blog by: That Guy You Know Who Always Talks About His Novel

Hi!

How have you been?

Happy holidays, of course.

As for me, I’ve been working the 9-5 but it’s been more like the 8-7 lately. Am I right? Of course, it just pays the bills so I can keep up on my writing. Yeah, I don’t know if anyone has told you, have you run into Sally yet, but I’ve been writing a novel. I showed Sally a little of what I’ve been working on, she didn’t really ‘get’ it, but you know Sally.

So I’ve been working on the novel, more like the novel’s been working on me. Am I right? By that, I mean that writing has made me a bit more introspective, that I’ve had to reevaluate myself in order to be able to evaluate characters. It’s not like the novel is literally working on me, some anthropomorphized book rebuilding me from the bottom up. Though that would be a good literary device. Maybe I can use that in the dream sequence in chapter 5, that would really help my protagonist deal with his ennui, you see, he’s a writer too.

The novel’s been coming along, chapter 3 is just about finished, at least I hope so! You know artists like myself, we always want to put on one more brush stroke. In chapter 3, I was really struggling to find a proper metaphor to match my protagonist’s dissatisfaction with his day job. I mean, I could have just played it literally and had him say, “I don’t like my job,” but I don’t do literally, I do literature-ally. If I just went literal, my novel wouldn’t be much better than a mere screenplay, like the people in my writer's circle are working on! We meet every Thursday at Barriques, usually their critiques are terrible but it's nice to have someone to bounce ideas off of.

But getting back to my novel, I found my perfect metaphor when I decided to have my protagonist look into a fish tank. See, he looks into the eye of one of the fish and, for a brief moment, they identify with each other. They are both trapped but should be free, one in a glass tank filled with water, the other in a glass tank filled with cubicles. I even wrote that in the margins so publishers will understand, you know how dumb suits are.

So what are your plans for the holidays? Going to visit the family?

Ooh, sorry to hear about your sister. I know what you are going through, I’m writing about how one of my secondary characters has to deal with her mother going to Alzheimer’s. No, I know that it’s a different terminal illness than what your family is dealing with but I just wanted to tell you, I’m there for you. And the topic of terminal illness just made me think of the old novel.

Speaking of the novel, I hope to spend my vacation week hammering down on chapter 1. It’s my first impression to the reader and I only get one shot at it! Originally, I was going to open with a flashback to ’96 when my protagonist briefly meets his romantic interest at a college kegger but he’s too shy to make a move, then we’d come to the present where they would meet again for the first time in 12 years. But my writer’s circle felt that I was a bit cliched so instead I’m going to flashback even further and have them run into each other on the subway at the age of 8, when my protagonist’s family is on a vacation to New York City. The hustle and bustle of Gotham through the eyes of a young Midwestern boy should give me some strong prose.

But I’m so glad I ran into you. Most of the conversations I have during the day are just with my co-workers. All they can talk about is their babies. God, you can’t believe how annoying it is to deal with people who keep bringing up the same inane topic, shoehorning it into every conversation so they can talk about their little creation. Though, it does make for a humorous interlude in chapter 4, when my protagonist is trapped on an elevator with his boss and he has to hear his boss talk about his kids.

Satan Testifies Before Congress, Seeks Emergency Bailout For Hell

2008-12-10T13:02:00.004-06:00

WASHINGTON – Satan, the Prince of Darkness and CEO of Hell, came before the Senate today to again ask for a 43 billion-dollar bridge loan for his struggling underworld domain. For his second attempt to get a bailout for Hell, Satan arrived on Capitol Hill in a humble Prius after his previous mode of transport, bursting forth in a cloud of sulfur from the belly of a stillborn pig, was criticized as being too flashy.

Satan immediately spoke with an uncharacteristically dire tone, “Without sufficient liquid capital to keep the Inferno running, all Hell operations may be forced to shut down by the beginning of 2009.”

The Prince of Darkness blames a variety of factors for Hell’s current cash crunch. The deceiver blamed the economic recession for turning people away from decadence and greed, two of Hell’s financial pillars. Satan also blamed the staggering legacy costs of eternally tormenting the billions of souls that make up Hell’s ever increasing population, stating that it costs millions “just to bulk buy all of the maggots needed to feed on the sinners’ flesh.” Satan himself admitted that he did not think about the ongoing costs of torturing all of these souls when he signed the contracts to buy millons of baby boomers' souls during the 1980’s.

Several Senators quickly spoke up for the troubled netherworld, saying that as one of the big 3 afterlives, along with Limbo and privately owned Heaven, Hell was “too big to fail.” Other Senators brought up the hundreds of thousands of jobs in Hell-related industries that would be threatened by the Hell’s closure.

“If the Dark Lord’s temptations to gamble, drink, and commit adultery go away,” said Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nevada), “The job losses to my constituents in Las Vegas and Reno will be staggering.”

Other Senators were quick to pounce on the devil, saying that Hell’s crisis was it’s own fault and that it was undeserving of a federal bailout. Sen. Mel Martinez (R-Florida) brought up Satan’s well-known reputation as “a man of wealth and taste," as Martinez blamed Satan’s extravagant excesses for Hell’s financial troubles. Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-California) then listed off a number of Satan’s business failures including his loss of a 3.7 million-dollar gold fiddle in a fiddling contest that turned into a PR-damaging fiasco.

“It says here that the boy you challenged was carrying a fiddle at the time, shouldn’t you have figured out that he probably practiced fiddling and might be a challenge?” asked Boxer, “He was from the great state of Georgia, why didn’t you challenge him to something he was going to suck at, like reading?”

Boxer went on to add, “What does Hell get out of owning any of these souls anyway?”

Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Michigan) shows several examples of Hell's multi-million dollar campaigns to promote evil that she critiques as, "wasteful and needless spending."

Satan meanwhile tried to point out bright spots in Hell’s investment portfolio, such as Hell’s rights to 15 percent of the syndication revenue of popular television sitcom Two and a Half Men. The CEO uncomfortably shifted on his cloven hooves as he proposed drastic steps he was willing to take to keep his dark domain afloat with the help of a Federal loan. Satan presented plans to sell off one of the outer-levels for Hell for condo development and pending sponsorship deals on the seven deadly sins such as “Wrath: Powered By Google” or “KFC’s Gluttony.”

The Prince of Darkness began to win over a few skeptical Democratic leaders in the Senate as he argued that the continued existence of Hell as vital for getting American consumers to make eco-friendly choices.

“Have you seen how proud people are when they carry around their reusable green grocery tote bags? Let us not forget that Pride is one of the seven deadly sins,” said Satan, “Hell will play a crucial role in restructuring the American economy for green-collar jobs.”

Even with his environmental plea, the bailout for Hades still looked like it was set to fail until Satan reminded Evangelical Senators that without Hell there would be no Anti-Christ, a prerequisite for the End Times.

“As you can see here, in our long-term financial forecast, I will impregnate an unclean jackal and my brood, the anti-Christ, shall be born. It shall bring about the End of Days,” said Lucifer. Satan went on to apologize for forgetting to mention that earlier. He said he was used to his previous Congressional testimonies, where former-Senator Bill Frist would bring up the need for the coming Apocalypse before Satan even had a chance to get to it.

With Democrats convinced that Satan had a feasible green business plan and Republicans eager to bring about the glorious return of Jesus Christ, the bailout of Hell overwhelmingly passed the Senate.

“It is now clear that the taxpayers need to help out Satan,” said Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kansas), “After all, it’s not like he is as bad as Citigroup.”

The cards show me you've got a bright future and by cards, I mean greeting cards!

2008-12-05T07:04:00.005-06:00

Guest Blog by: Scott DeLillo

Alright, I know things have been tough recently in America but let’s get the energy back up.

I know the economy is terrible…
banks and the big 3 auto collapsin’…
your 401k is so far into the crapper it’s cloging the drain…
but I’ve got the solution for your problems… say it with me…

Greeting Cards!

That’s right, I’m Scott DeLillo and 3 years ago, I was just like you. I was living on the streets, getting by on nothing but ramen noodles and a little hope. But that's when I found my calling and became a freelance greeting card writer. Now I’m renting a house that my landlord tells me is valued at 120 thousand dollars. That’s thousand with a t. And now I’m going help some of you get a slice of the delicious pie that’s writing greeting cards. Like you. And you, sir. Yes, ma'am, you too. Not you. But you.

For thousands of years, greeting cards have served an important purpose for every holiday and occasion that we kinda care about. Cards express the feelings we don’t feel enough to express ourselves but are willing to pay to have someone else express them for us. And that someone else is you.

Now, starting off the biz, you are going to be a freelance writer, if you want a staff writing gig at one of the big card companies you better be prepared to do a lot of sexual favors. I know a guy who orally pleasured the entire board of directors at American Greetings and all he got was Flag Day cards, that’s the Detroit Lions of greeting card accounts. You don’t want to know what you’ve got to do to make it into the ornament racket.

I won’t lie, this ain’t an easy business. In the last 8 years, there’s been in a bit of a downturn in the G.C.B. (Greeting Card Business, that’s industry speak) as young people have moved to sending out their greetings over the Facebook.. Are you happy when somebody writess you a happy birthday message on your Facebook wall that cost them nothing at all to send? Well, you shouldn’t be. In the G.C.B. we have a saying, “If they aren’t willing to spend, they aren’t really your friend.”

Let me throw some stats at ya. Since Facebook came to the UW in 2004, armed robberies in the downtown Madison area have gone up 7%. Coincidence? Of course not.

But thanks to the now-officialp recession, greeting cards are poised to make the biggest comeback since Jesus Christ (fyi, inspirational cards are huge this year. Throw in a Bible Verse and you are moving mondo card stock. I call it, Paul amongst the Cashrithians).

Cha-ching!

But because of the economy, the average person can’t afford to go home so they are sending cards instead. Sure, you’d like to spend some quality time with dear old Dad but it’s just as good to mail him a card that says, “Dads are like a large pizza. They are the big cheese.”. In fact, it’s even better because that great pizza-dad copy(mine) is better than anything Sally Q. Envelope Licker is going to say around the table and she won’t have to deal with the awkward situation when her brother gets too drunk off of the egg nog and has a PTSD episode from his time in Iraq. WHAT ARE THEY DOING TO OUR BOYS?

In fact, this Christmas, I’m still sending my Grandma a present along with her card. But that present, just a big empty box with another card inside. That’s right, two cards, that’s double the commission.

Nobody buys this artsy crap anymore.

Now what kind of cards should you write, well, pretty much any kind imaginable: weddings, divorces, got a job, got laid off, cards that look like they are going to be erotic but then you open them up and it’s really a picture of a really fat women, and retirements. But what you have to remember is that most cards are bought by women. It makes sense, cards are emotional and they are the ones who feel emotions. So for us guys, we’ve got to put ourselves into the mind of a woman.

Women love pugs.

Now to write for the female audience your card has to include one of the two following fields that are universal for all women, at least according to the best data the G.C.B. has to offer. First of all, all women love shopping. They live for the accumulation of expensive flashy material goods, they are like rappers with vaginas. When you are backed into a hard card topic like cancer, pet dying or pet dying of cancer, you can always throw in a punch line about buying more shoes. It’s not rocket science here folks. Secondly, all women are constantly trying to lose weight. They are fighting an ever-present battle with their mortal nemesis and secret lover, chocolate. I swear the only reason Eve ate that apple is because the serpent musta coated it in chocolate. Hot crap, that’s a good greeting card. None of you can use that, it’s mine. I see that on an Shoebox card and I will sue your ass.

Alright, so those are some basic tips to get you started. I’ll be seeing you all later… on the greeting card racks!

My Top 10 Worst Video Game-Related X-mas Presents

2008-12-01T17:09:00.010-06:00

Video games have been a mainstay on my Christmas lists for most of my life. As a kid, they were on my list because they were something too expensive for me to buy on my own. As a kinda-adult, I put games on my list because I still can't afford them as I normally spend my own money on bare necessities like gas for my car and Milwaukee's Best. So over the years, I've gotten a lot of video-games and accessories as Christmas presents and most of been very awesome. But then there are the other ones. Things bought by well-meaning relatives or things young Alan wanted because he had been suckered in by a slick marketing campaigns. Here are the 10 worst video-game related presents I have ever received.

10. Super Scope (Super Nintendo)
“Whoa! It’s a bazooka, that’s way cooler than a Zapper.” – 10 year old Alan Talaga, idiot.

I really thought this successor to the NES Zapper (The Duck Hunt Gun) was going to be the coolest thing ever because I was 10 and believed that bigger = badass. Upon taking it out of the box, I soon learned that bigger also equaled heavier. The thing was too heavy to use and burned through 6 AA batteries in less than a few hours. Worst of all, it didn’t have any sort of feature that turned the Super Scope off if left idle for X number of minutes. That meant that whenever a family or friend came over to play it, they would leave the behemoth on and, by the morning when I would check on it, another 6 AA batteries would have been eaten up.

AA Batteries view this thing the same way we view Hitler.

9. Back to the Future II and III (NES)

Remember that part of Back to the Future II where Marty has to fight a jumping hamburger? Back to the Future II and III is just one of many bad NES platforming games to be based on movies. In the game, Biff has stolen a bunch of ‘historical artifacts’ and hidden them around 1955, 1985, and 2015 and you have to find all of them to fix the timeline. At least that’s what the game intro said, the gameplay itself consists of just wondering around randomly trying to find these artifacts only to die before you can collect more than 2 or 3 of them. So while it’s just another crappy licensed game that’s way too hard, this one annoyed me more than any other because of two things: 1) I loved the Back to the Future trilogy and bad games based on those sacred movies were offensive to everything kid-me stood for. 2) There is a whole second half of the game based on Back to the Future III which I could never reach because I could never get past the II part.

It irks me that this is STILL hiding somewhere in that game, unreachable to me.

8. Konami Laserscope (NES)

This guy looks bad but I looked even lamer.

Were you worried that you didn’t look enough like an idiot while playing Duck Hunt? I didn’t because someone got me the Konami Laserscope for Christmas. This helmet fit (un)comfortably over my head and fired in the direction my head was pointing whenever I said “Fire” into the microphone. To add in some challenge, the aiming reticule on the side is horribly inaccurate so you just guess where you think the target is! The only fun my friends and I had with this was when we realized the helmet-gun will fire when you say anything into the microphone, not just “Fire.” So we had tons of fun yelling “Booby” and “Poop” in order to kill ducks.

7. Street Fighter II – Street Fighter II Turbo – Super Street Fighter II (Super Nintendo)
None of these is a bad game but together they were a huge waste of money. Every year, I convinced family members to buy me the new version of Street Fighter II for 60-70 dollars a pop when the only differences were usually a few new characters. In the end, this one game ended up costing about 200 bucks, X-Mas list money that could have been put to far better use. Sadly, millions fall prey to phenomena every year when they pick up this year’s version of Madden.

6. Action Max VHS Video Game
This “system” played VHS cassettes while you shot targets on the screen. For the first five minutes, it was awesome, I was actually interacting with a real movie. But then I realized that nothing changed in the game, you couldn’t actually win or lose. All you could do is shoot at the screen and the gun would count how many targets you hit. The only VHS we had for it was a horrible ghost shooter called The Rescue of Pops Ghostly and I doubt I played through it more than twice.

But I will admit, Pops Ghostly is a sweet name as far as ghost names go. Should I die and end up haunting some place, I’m seriously considering using Pops Ghostly as my supernatural pseudonym.

5. Wayne’s World (Super Nintendo)

So terrible.
I always excited when I would receive a wrapped box of a certain size. I had figured out the dimensions of Super Nintendo boxes and could immediately tell when someone had gotten me a SNES game. But as I opened one present, my hope turned to horror. My aunt had given me Wayne’s World. The Game. She knew I liked Wayne’s World the movie and that I had a Super Nintendo so she thought this was a perfect fit. But I had read the review in Nintendo Power (Nintendo’s own magazine that told you to buy more Nintendo games) and they said it was horrible. Nintendo’s own propaganda rag said you shouldn’t buy this thing, that’s like Soviet-era Pravda endorsing the free-market. I knew this game was going to be bad. But I wanted to be nice and even played the game in front of her to make her happy. But, God, did that game suck.

4. Acclaim Wireless NES Controller

This one seemed like a no-brainer. Back when my mom owned the fabulous Falls Motel, we had a massive living room where the couches were set back from the TV several feet further than the miserly NES controller cord would allow. I was tired of sitting on the carpet and it seemed that a wireless controller would finally allow me to intermingle my love of Zelda and cushioned seating. Unfortunately, as opposed to today’s now-standard wireless controllers that work on a combination of bluetooth and magic, in the 80’s, wireless controllers worked on a combination of TV remote-style infrared beams and hatred for all that is good in the world.

Upon testing out the controller, I quickly figured out that the controller only responded to my button pressing about half the time and, even when it did respond, that there was such a horrible lag that I ended up getting killed by the first Goomba in Mario 1-1. Within 15 minutes, the thing was boxed up and I convinced my mom to take me to Wal-Mart where I tried to return it. On that day, little Alan learned a dark lesson about the futility of retail returns on open items. So thanks, Acclaim Wireless NES Controller for killing a little bit of my soul!

3. South Park (Nintendo 64)

Never forget.

I swore I’d never forget… But just like hippies who protested Vietnam turned into the Baby Boomers who supported the build-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, I put another crappy licensed game on my Christmas list. Somehow I felt that a first-person shooter based on South Park could actually be good due to voiceover work by Trey Parker and Matt Stone but, oh, was I was so wrong. While it’s not as horrible as other licensed games on this list, it has a higher ranking because I was older at this point and I should have known better. But I had to live with my mistakes, just like Baby Boomers have to live with the fact that the war helped build up an economy-crushing deficit that decimated their 401k retirement accounts, South Park for the N64 decimated any good times I would have for the rest of Christmas vacation.

2. Tricks of the DOOM Gurus
By the early-to-mid 90’s, I thought I was an elite little hacker, with my sweet hacks of Duke Nukem 3D that made his foot attack super powerful (i.e. I changed one number in the files that made of the game, it’s about on the same technical level as changing a value in an Excel Spreadsheet). After those awesome mods, I was ready to move up to the next level with the book Tricks of the DOOM Gurus. This book was going to give me the tools to make my own DOOM levels and they were going to be awesome. In actually, level creation was much harder than the back cover of the book made it look and I struggled to make levels consisting of anything more than square rooms before giving up and going back to playing games as opposed to trying to make them. This one makes it so high on the list because it's the first time I had a Christmas Present make me feel like an idiot. Though I think my levels were still better than those in the South Park game.

1. U-Force (NES)

What the Hell do I do with This?

What if you could play Mike Tyson’s Punch Out by actually punching at the boxers on the screen? Long before Wii Boxing, this controller used infrared beams to judge where your hands were. Moving your hand would cross one of the beams and make your character punch on the screen. Or it made your character dodge. Or it made your character stand there and do absolutely nothing. The actions of this controller were so random and annoying it makes Dane Cook jealous.

Still, I look back in fondness on the U-Force. My dad had spent a lot of money on the U-Force and valiantly worked for days trying to get it to work. After one last attempt of getting it to work with Mario 2, he started making jokes about how horrible it was and I joined him, as he and the U-Force started off my life-long love of making fun of things that annoy me. When I think about my dad during Christmas-time, I remember the joy we had in hating the U-Force. My worst present ever ended up giving me some of my most treasured memories.

Thanks for the memories, you terrible piece of technology.

Scholars Embrace Idea of Unintelligent Design

2008-11-26T13:09:00.002-06:00

WASHINGTON – A panel of collegiate professors, with specialties ranging from anthropology to religious studies, today released a 450-page report arguing for the viability of the theory of Unintelligent Design.

“We now believe that it’s highly unlikely that our magnificent planet and all of it’s wondrous life could have been created by random evolution,” said panel head Dr. Walter Potemkin, “But what kind of creator would allow a species like man to rise up and pollute that beautiful environment? Well, that proves that He or She is obviously an idiot.”

Scientists are now using Unintelligent Design to solve life’s great mysteries ranging from: why bad things happen to good people, why humans were not born with roller-skate like devices to aid in walking, and questions over the mass extinctions of species.

“Evidence for the stupidity of the universe was right here in the fossil record all along. Take a look at the dinosaurs, the most awesome thing that God ever created in It’s dumb luck, but then God destroyed them all with a meteor,” said archeologist Thomas Bertram, “It’s like when you were a stupid kid and you put your sweet G.I. Joe in the microwave. Sure, it was cool for a second in the end, you only had your lame toys left to play with, like those Captain Planet action figures. Or in God’s case, the muskrat.”

Bertram also saw evidence of the new theory in more recent examples of evolution such as the dolphin, which evolved from a water creature to a land mammal only to go back into the ocean. Bertram stated that if that’s not evidence an unintelligent creator, it’s “at least evidence of a creator that’s not very forward thinking.”

Other scholars, such as Biblical expert Dr. Laura Wright, look to scripture for evidence of Unintelligent Design.

“There is a lot of wisdom in the Bible about God’s lack of wisdom,” said Dr. Wright, “After leaving Egypt, Moses and his followers had to wander the desert for 40 years. This was clearly a sign that Yahweh had no idea what to do next. He was just making the chosen people walk around in endless circles so He could buy Himself sometime to figure out what he wanted to do by .”

Wright went on to add that, while she has had writer’s block in the past, it’s never taken her “40 years to come up with a frickin’ 10 item list.”

Dr. Potemkin closed by saying, “It’s clear now that if we view God as a great clockmaker tickering on the endless gears of the cosmos... the clock that is our universe is endlessly flashing 12 o’clock.”

Your Trueview Forecast / My Eternal Struggle: 10 Minutes in the Life of NBC 15 Morning Weatherman Charlie Shortino

2008-11-21T12:18:00.004-06:00

Guest Blog by: NBC 15 Morning Weatherman Charlie Shortino.

“Clear skies for Southern Wisconsin and clear skies back into the plains, we’ll go with sunshine today starting off in the teens with a 26 degree high, both 15 degrees below our seasonal average. Becoming partly cloudy tonight, low 12. Aaaaannnnddd partly cloudy tomorrow, high of 38. Seven day outlook: high of 46 on for the high temperature on Sunday, partial sunshine. That’ll be the warmest day for the next week or so but still not bad highs in the mid and upper 30s Monday through Wednesday of next week.”

For the next two hours, this graphic and I are closer than brothers.

We're partners.

It’s 5:40, this is the 5th time I’ve repeated that forecast and I’ll say it 7 more times before I’ve done. Every 10 minutes, I repeat the same message for 2 grueling hours during the NBC 15 Morning Show.

Even though the viewers hears this forecast 3 times during 30 minutes of programming, I still know most are tuning me out within a few seconds, right after they hear today’s forecast. The viewership doesn’t really pay attention to the 3-day outlook, they only care about today. Humanity, as a species, is perhaps unique in its ability to judge the passage of time, yesterday and tomorrow are concepts we can comprehend but most choose to squander that gift and focus on the animalistic gratification of the now. As a meteorologist, I am a modern-day oracle, offering the masses a glimpse at their own future, on a climatological scale at least, which they choose to reject in their own short-sighted way. If more people paid attention to the 3 to 5 day-forecast people would start looking to the long-term forecast of global warming. Maybe if people listened to the weather forecast they would have paid attention to the all of the economic warning forecasts that were right in front of us for the last several years.

Who am I kidding? Anchor/Reporter Christine Bellport sits next to me every morning and she still doesn’t believe in global warming. I’m a degreed meteorologist, I own a weather consulting company… I know what I’m talking about when I say climate change is real. But Christine Bellport thinks she is just as much an expert as I because she can spout off pseudo-science nonsense about ‘long term natural climate shifts’ or whatever else she repeats ad-nauseum from Michael Savage or whatever other talk radio she blares in the News Room. Her ignorance knows no bounds, during the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression, she thinks the most pressing issues are young girls wearing skimpy clothing and Oliver Stone’s liberal Hollywood bias.

There is no soul behind those eyes.

People ask me why I act so goofy during the newscast banter, it’s the only way I can put up with talking to Bellport. If I tried to talk to a dullard such as her with a straight face I would probably break down and cry. So I crack a joke to stifle the tears and I like making weather-based puns. They are fun.

But there are something that even I, Gold Medal winner in Madison Magazine’s Best of Madison 2008: Best TV Personality, cannot laugh about. Bellport’s fellow sycophant, Anchor/Reporter Sarah Carlson, can’t see the disgusting irony that she just delivered a report that area food pantries are dreadfully low that was immediately followed by a story on how to avoid holiday weight gain from overconsumption. People can be so cruel to ignore the suffering inherit to the gross inequality of wealth but the weather isn’t like that. The weather isn’t kind or evil, it just is. Sometimes I prefer the weather to people but there are still two reasons why I keep sitting through all of this everyday.

The first reason I stay is that I appreciate the kindness and respect the public sphere gives me for my job. I look with pride upon the NBC 15 Morning Show’s dominance in the local ratings. I know I spend much of my time disparaging the intellect of the viewing public but I still feel a need for their praise. I think about this strange dichotomy a lot, particularly during commercial breaks. Maybe I need my local fame, it may be my drug of choice, I know I get a buzz off of my top ranking in the Isthmus Madison’s Favorites for TV personalities. I love to shove in the face of WKOW meteorologist and cocky jerk Bob Lindmeyer. I’m number 1 in this town, Bob!

Suck on it, Lindmeyer.

The other reason I stay onboard through the two hours of misery is the half-hour of heaven I get every day at 11am. It’s still the same forecast but I get to sit in the presence of the angelic Afternoon Anchor/Reporter Carleen Wild. She is an almost unearthly beauty whose grace is only matched by her intelligence and kind soul. At the end of every show at 11:30, as we cut away to Family Feud, I hope I’ll be able to talk to hear about a topic of depth like poetry or music but then I get intimidated by her gorgeous chestnut hair. In my cold sweat, I only manage to stammer something about the only topic I feel truly comfortable about… the weather. Someday, Carleen, I will take you out of this studio and we shall travel the world. But for now, I will be content with the 30 minutes a day I get to share a studio with you.

You are the wind beneath my wings.

But 11am is still so far from the now. I try to get back to the morning weather by looking down at the Doppler reading on my computer monitor, looking for any shifts that would cause he to alter my next 10 minute forecast, even by the smallest amount. I look at the lines representing barometric pressure and the green blob of far-off precipitation and wonder if my forecast of the weather changes the actual weather. After all, science such as the double-slit experiment has shown that observation does change the outcome of events, at least on the quantum level, but maybe it has a similar impact on larger systems, like the weather. While this is a fascinating idea, sometimes I believe that existentialist views of perception defining reality are simply a response to their philosophy rejecting religion, their need for something beyond pure science causes them to transfer that divine spark from their cast-off God to the human brain. That’s an interesting thought, maybe I should bring that up to Carleen today at 11:30.

Bellport and Carlson have finally shut up. It must be 5:50, once more unto the breach, dear friends.

“Clear skies for Southern Wisconsin and clear skies back into the plains, we’ll go with sunshine today starting off in the teens with a 26 degree high, both 15 degrees below our seasonal average. Becoming partly cloudy tonight, low 12. Aaaaannnnddd partly cloudy tomorrow, high of 38. Seven day outlook: high of 46 on for the high temperature on Sunday, partial sunshine. That’ll be the warmest day for the next week or so but still not bad highs in the mid and upper 30s Monday through Wednesday of next week.”

6 Saddest Fanbases for Old TV Shows

2008-11-19T13:38:00.010-06:00

This week, a trailer for the new Star Trek movie came out and it is awesome.

Awesome.

But a bunch of the really nerdy Star Trek fans disagreed saying that it "looked too much like Star Wars" because of the fact this movie actually has a decent budget. Or they complained about even stupider things like how this Kirk has blue eyes while Shatner has brown eyes. While all of this is bad, I found that there are far worse fanbases out there than even hardcore Trekkies. With that, I present: The 6 Saddest Fanbases for Old TV Shows.

6. Gargoyles
You might remember Gargoyles, it was that cartoon that you could watch it for like 4 episodes and still have no idea what was going on with the plot. It was that show that all the creepy kids seemed to like a little too much. Well, those creepy kids have grown up into creepy adults and they have never stopped liking this show. Gargoyles has been off the air since 1996 but the fan community has still been active, holding a convention every year where people show up dressed as their favorite Gargoyles characters.

Gargoyle costume (or cosplay) from their convention.
This is one of the most tasteful costumes.

Gargoyles fans still keep a website active, The Gargoyles Fans Website (clever name), where they somewhat frequently post new erotic Gargoyles fan-fiction and update ‘humorous’ lists, such as You Know You’ve Been Watching Too Much Gargoyles When. I’ve decided to take some of my favorite selections from the afforemented list and add in my own witty (i.e. dickish) commentary. Gargoyles fans' items are italicized, my comments are in bold.

Gargoyles Fan:You walk by a store and your immediate thought is: "I wonder if they have Gargoyles stuff?"
Me: I bet they don’t.
Gargoyles Fan: You're talking to a friend about time zone differences and he says: "I guess your gargoyles would be awake for two more hours, huh?"
Me: If my ‘friend’ said that, I would drive through the two time zones just to punch him in the mouth.
Gargoyles Fan: You find yourself going to gothic architecture webpages rather than gothic music pages...
Me: If this is true, then Gargoyles actually has some redeeming value.
Gargoyles Fan: When you are stretching in class you growl and snarl.
Me: Don’t blame your Tourette’s on Gargoyles.
Gargoyles Fan: You are constantly FLYING down stairs, and wear your coat unzipped so it looks that way too.
Me: Yes, unzipping your coat creates the perfect illusion of flight.
Gargoyles Fan: When someone asks you if you want to get stoned and you say "YES!" But then you realize he's not thinking the same thing you are.
Me: Bet this guy doesn’t have to worry about talking to friends in different time zones or any friends at all, for that matter.
Gargoyles Fan:You come home on a Friday afternoon and realize you have absolutely nothing to do.
Me: You would have this same problem even if Gargoyles never existed.

Ultra Sad Fact:
This is the description of a story in the Gargoyles Fan Fiction database just posted in October:
"Thanks to Cecile Vene's manipulations, Eris and Broyze are revealed to the Manhattan Clan who also see Thailia for the first time bond against her will by Fang enraging all of them especially Goliath. The X-Men and Marauders arrive on the scene upsetting Cecile Vene and forcing her to alter her plans to keep Thaila�s/Thailog�s real identity secret. Meanwhile, Eris�s prisoners deal with their newest imprisonment and other things they are currently learning about thanks to information provided by Titania and Demona. Timothy is faced with an unexpected situation the half human, half gargoyle didn�t count on and Chaos Lord Broyze decides to personally deal with those who dare to confront him and Eris with a display of power the likes which none of them have seen. WARNING: This round robin story contains scenes of GRAPHIC RAPE, VIOLENCE, TORTURE, MURDER, and other possible extreme subject matter that some may not find suitable to read."
There is someone out there who understands what this means and, worse, is turned on by it.

5. Dharma and Greg
Dharma and Greg was probably the least interesting show of all time. It didn’t really suck like a lot of shows but it wasn’t exactly good either. My feelings for Dharma and Greg are about the same as I feel for a rock at the side of the road. I have nothing for or against a rock, it’s just something that’s there. So I was surprised to find that there was actually a MySpace page for that nondescript rock of a show but that it happens to be one of the worst MySpace pages I have ever seen. The page is filled with so many bad graphics and YouTube links that it might crash your browser, you should just trust this screenshot.

When the creator of this page is before St. Peter, she will have to answer for this.

I can say without a doubt, this is the single worst combination of colors and words that have ever been put on a page together. Right away, the page’s creator puts at the top: “The show was cancelled because Jenna Elfman left to work on a Broadway show!!!!!!!!!!!!” It makes me wonder how many times she was written by someone saying, “That show was cancelled because it sucked,” before she decided on that aggressive defense. But she also has a strong offense with her great banner that says the following:

She could have just made that banner the link to the petition (I’m sorry: petion”) and not had to bother with the “small text” link but that would have involved learning the slightest bit of HTML and that would take away from precious time watching Dharma and Greg reruns. I also took a look at her petion and I’m not exactly sure what she is trying to get people to sign a petion for... I assumed it was to try and bring back Dharma and Greg but I think it might just be a petition to prove to the world that there are people out there who actually enjoy Dharma and Greg.

Ultra Sad Fact:
The horrible Dharma and Greg MySpace page still isn’t as bad as Jenna “Dharma” Elfman’s own MySpace page where she lets her Scientology hang right out there and posts paranoid rants against modern psychology.

4. Firefly
God created Firefly fans so Star Trek fans could have someone to make fun of. Firefly was a show that lasted less time than a bad case of the flu and featured cowboys-in-space going on traditional Western adventures… but in space. Fox quickly cancelled the show which Firefly fans blamed on the evilness of Fox executives as opposed to the fact that a statistically small percentage of the population wants to watch cowboys-in-space.

Screenshot from Firefly.

The fans took on the moniker of “Browncoats” after the rebel group that had lost the show’s space-equivalent to the Civil War and started a whiny campaign to try and bring back the show. Soon, Firefly fans were everywhere on the internet and always talking about Firefly, they became the most single-mindedly annoying group online until the emergence of Ron Paul fans.

Firefly fans hold a grudge against the Fox network to this day. It doesn’t matter that most of the Fox programming executives that were there in 2001 when Firefly got cancelled aren’t working there anymore. “Browncoats” believe that the Fox network is somehow a living, evil being that seeks to destroy their joy and happiness as opposed to a large corporation that wants to make more ad revenue.

The saddest story about Firefly fans comes from a guy I went to college with who had to work at Point Theatre on Madison’s West Side during the opening day midnight showing of the Firefly movie, Serenity. You see, the Firefly story should be a happy one, after heavy DVD sales and lots of online Firefly traffic, Universal decided to bring the show back as a movie. But still, even on the opening night of the movie, Firefly fans had to make it annoying. A number of ‘Browncoats’ got up before the movie started and gave a speech about how they had kept fighting and never gave up. You guys bought some DVDs, you didn’t fight in some great war against FOX. You nerds got what you wanted so now try acting like normal people, so sit down and just watch the freaking movie.

Ultra Sad Fact:
Firefly fans try to keep awareness of their favorite show alive by putting references to Firefly into almost every Wikipedia article possible. Getting the show mentioned in 50,000 Wikipedia articles isn’t going to bring the show back. Guys, you managed to get a major Hollywood movie out of your 16-episode series. Now move on.

3. Empty Nest
Do you remember that show that came on after Golden Girls? I remembered the title Empty Nest but beyond that, nothing. As I liked to watch a good Golden Girls now and again, I had watched several episodes of Empty Nest when I was too lazy to change the channel but have no memory of them whatsoever. Perhaps I drank away any memories of the show. Well, after taking a look at the Empty Nest fansite, I don’t really mind that I’m glad my drinking destroyed those memories as opposed to my memories of parasailing, thanks brain damage.

Brain, you made the right choice on which of these to remember.

The saddest thing about the Empty Nest fansite is how it’s different from all the other fansites I’ve seen. Most of the others sites seem to be a community effort about a range of people who all share some odd devotion to a bad tv show. But his site seems to be the work on one solitary genderless individual who decided one day to a fansite about Empty Nest his/her primary hobby. The site features every magazine article and interview about Empty Nest retyped for the webpage so that the author of the site can preserve them for the ages. It’s not unlike the Medieval monks who meticulously made copies of important documents, only the monks saved the knowledge of Western Civilization as opposed to quotes by the Empty Nest cast-members about how Richard Mulligan was hilarious on AND off the set.

Ultra Sad Fact:
Author is trying to finish “Where Are They Now?” section of website and is desperately looking for information on what happened to ‘Dreyfuss,’ the dog on the show. Dude, show’s been off the air for 14 years, pretty sure the dog is dead.

2. X-Files
It seems a little odd to me that there are devoted X-Files fans in 2008. Sure, it was a show that myself, along with many of my friends, were into in the 90’s but now… it’s like someone telling me they just got a movie on VHS or really excited to drink some Zima, it just sounds so… outdated. Even X-Files fansites look like they are stuck in the mid-90s.

I blame Bush for destroying the credibility of the X-Files. I mean, in the 90’s, we believed the government could pull off a massive secret evil conspiracy but the Bush Administration, with it’s handling of Iraq, Katrina, Gitmo and many more, showed us how the government sucks at pulling off it’s own evil conspiracies much less keeping them secret. For God’s sakes, in the first X-Files movie they had us believe that FEMA could manage to genetically engineer smart bees with an alien virus when in real life, FEMA couldn’t even handle delivering bottles of water after Katrina.

No, that's just a reflection.

Though maybe the show itself deserves some of the blame for losing most of it’s fanbase. After several seasons of bad episodes where it became ever more obvious that they were just making it all up as they went along, a few people still got excited about a 2nd movie. X-Files fans are hardcore Charlie Brown-ing it, going for that football yet again even though they know what’s going to happen. Anybody who still went to see that second movie after years of crappy X-Files is a sad, sad person.

Ultra Sad Fact:
I went to the 2nd X-Files movie on opening weekend.

1. Full House
Full House was a legend, it gave us such classic idioms as “Have Mercy,” “Cut It Out,” and “You’ve Got It Dude,” as well as the song “You Oughta Know” by Alanis Morissette. And because of Full House’s far reaching fame, there are still a ton of sad people who are still heavily invested in the sitcom with far more websites than I want to go into.. But I want to focus on one particularly sad branch of the fanbase, people who are fans of the young adult novels based on the show. Fans who so obsessed about these books that they CREATED A SEPARATE IMAGINARY UNIVERSE for them.

There are fans of this book over the age of 12.
And they are scary.

Due to the fact that the writers of the books were different than those on the Full House TV show, characters act somewhat differently. There are also inconsistencies with how things happen in the book compared to the show which sad, sad fans obsess over (OMG! Joey never moves up to the 2nd floor and continues to live in the basement in the books. Different Universe!). Now, most reasonable people would just blame this on lazy novel writers who didn’t obsess over every detail on a crappy sitcom, who would blame them? They are writing the literary equivalent of a Happy Meal. People bought these books because they had pre-meth Jodie Sweetin on the cover, not because they are great prose.

But the Tanner fans that couldn’t deal with the idea of inconsistencies in their Full House got together and used the differences in characterization and plot minutia to create a parallel ‘book universe’ that diverges from the tv-show universe. To quote these fans, in the book universe, “Jesse (is) possibly always (living) in the attic. This may have occurred because the writers felt it more likely that only actual family members would normally room on the floor with the dad and the girls. However, many fans also feel that this room placement logically explains the different personalities. The girls' uncle is the mother figure to Michelle in the TV series… With an office in the fourth bedroom, it is presumed that the girls' oldest sister D.J. filled that role early in their lives, and was able to mold them into being more mature than the sometimes rebellious Jesse.”

If that wasn’t clear enough, a guy by the name of Doug Fowler decided to explain how the timelines diverged in a 492-page epic Word file (That’s crazy! Who would post it as a .doc file? You think he would post it as a .pdf) to explain the chronology of how the Full House ‘book universe’ diverges from the Full House tv series. Let me repeat this, someone wrote 492 pages worth to explain away the simple fact that the writers of the books were even crappier writers than the writers of the show.

492. Pages. On. This.

Ultra Sad Fact:
Skimming over about 10 pages of the epic 492 page Full House chronology includes at least a dozen mentions of Christ. Fowler decided that Full House wasn’t wholesome enough yet and wrote in his timeline that the Tanners were testifying for the Lord when Good Morning San Francisco went off the air. Though his religious experience gave him experience in trying to over-explain inconsistencies in badly written texts.

I might be Chairman of the Dane County Republican Party

2008-11-14T12:31:00.004-06:00

This week’s Isthmus has an article by Bill Lueders, discussing how the Chairman of the Dane County Republican Party(RPDC) refuses to reveal his identity to the press. He fears that public knowledge of his identity would impact his business because Liberals would discriminate against him. This didn’t seem like a good reason to me as: 1) hippies have no money and 2) as Lueders points out, conservatives like T. Wall get a ton of money from the liberal government and Democrats still buy houses from him. If the Chair of RPDC wants to stay hidden, it’s got to be something way bigger. Like it will tear everything apart if this secret identity is revealed, perhaps no one knows who the real Chairman’s identity is. Maybe even the Chairman himself.

I was thinking back to the last several months of my life and noting that there have been several times when I’ve blacked out and couldn’t remember what happened. Sure, most of those might be a result of binge drinking but what if I wasn’t either passed out or drunk dialing… what if I was secretly living a double life? What if this personality was the Chairman of the Dane County Republican Party?

Have I secretly been Tyler Durden-ing it around town? The Republican Party is a lot like Fight Club, pissed-off men meeting in darkened rooms but instead of becoming domestic terrorists, they accuse everyone else of being domestic terrorists. When I think I go to sleep, do I really just get back up and say things like, “Obama’s rise to power reminds me a lot of Hitler. Both came to power during times of economic crisis.”

Secret Republican-Party Chair Me’s plan is absolutely brilliant, hiding in plain sight. not unlike NBC’s series (and People's Choice Award nominee!!) My Own Worst Enemy where a super-secret spy has another identity during his off-hours where he is a mild-mannered guy, and get this… he doesn’t even know he’s also a spy. What better place for a rich conservative real-estate broker to hide than as a 25-year old guy who struggles with ties and whose property holdings consist of an impressive collection of Star Trek DVDs and a lamp made from an old Grand Marnier bottle.

My nestegg.

I was hoping future episodes My Own Worst Enemy would show me how to deal with my problem as Christian Slater comes to term with his multiple identities but the show has already been canceled, so I’m getting nothing from Slater. That guy hasn’t been able to give me a useful plan for anything, not since that time I started a pirate radio station. Well, maybe when I had to figure out how to take my autistic brother to video game competition but I really think Fred Savage had more to do with that so I’m giving Savage the assist on that one.

Perhaps they have to work even harder on the secrecy as parts of my daytime personality are starting to leek out while I’m serving as RPDC chair. (I know Alternate Republican me is definitely leaking into regular me, I’ve been recycling a lot less). Just look at this Letter from the Chairman from the RPDC October Newsletter. (Note: I’ve blocked out the alias I use while serving as chair)

Just read the sentence where I say that, “It’s been 24 years since Wisconsin went to the Republicans. We can do it again in 2008!” The phrase, “We can do it again,” sounds like it’s saying the Republicans can lose again, which must mean I’m sabotaging them from the inside. It’s either that or the Chairman of the Dane County Republicans is a horrible writer. And the part about celebrating Republicans ‘victories’ must be my idea of a joke. I’m a funny guy.

Am I really the Chair of the Dane County Republican Party? I don’t know, the double personality sounds ridiculous but it still sounds less silly than the really crazy theory I heard that it’s just some Real Estate guy named Mike Herl who is too scared to publicly admit his party affiliation. That just sounds wacky.

Comparative Election Analysis: Crazy UFO People vs. Other Crazy UFO People

2008-11-11T13:59:00.014-06:00

On election day, (which feels like it was a lot longer than a week ago both politically and temperature-wise) I was out canvassing for Obama when a guy threatened to shoot me if I stepped onto his property. Threatened with violence for supporting a Democrat in hippie Madison? This event made me ponder the glorious political diversity all around us. In my second installment of Comparative Election Analysis, I'd like to take this opportunity to point out that no group is homogeneous in it's political leanings. To showcase how omnipresent the red-blue divide, I've picked examples from a group I like to call: "Internet People Who Think They Telepathically Receive Messages From Space Aliens."

Depending on what Crazy UFO Person you ask Obama is either a Messenger signifying Earth's true dawning into new Frequencies of Light or simply another agent of the Repiloid Illuminati working to enslave us all. Which is it? Well, both sides present convincing arguments.

For: Obama as Messenger of Light

The above video is by a woman with a British accent named Magenta Pixie, who I believed was only supporting Obama because of their common membership in the Organization For People With Funny-Sounding Names (OFPWFSN Local 241). Ms. Pixie, has communed with a "powerful" group ofnine other psychics (whom, with all of their collective psychic brain power decided on the creative name of: The Nine) and decided that Obama is a "Lightworker" who will "raise our consciousness to new frequencies." Apparently, Magenta P. is from the school that believes that you can say anything and appear credible as long as you have a English accent. For further examples of instant British-intelligence look at the busty women trying to get me to invest in gold on late-afternoon television.

Many other Crazy UFO people agree with Magenta Pixie.

Merman believes that 1/4 of Earth's Population is here to assist Obama, I guess that's a bigger win than North Carolina.

Meanwhile, TheRealVerbz thinks there are more connections between Obama and Lincoln than just the fact that both of them started their campaigns at the old Illnois Statehouse.

And for those of you worried that Obama is just working for the Illuminati, wavemakerx is here to inform you that he's just going along with the master plan of Lightworking. Though I'm still not sure what the master plan of Lightworking is...

Against: Obama as Puppet-Tool of the Reptiloid Illuminati

While Magenta Pixie and others have done a fine job giving their evidence of Barack's Lightworking. The more conservative psychic UFO channelers believe he is just another tool of the group known as the Iluminati. I though this might be a good thing for a 'Lightworker', as Illuminati is Latin for 'enlightened' but apparently the Illuminati are evil and control the entire planet somehow.

xxxXhaggardXxxx has his concerns about Magenta's channeling.

Theslothmonkey starts things off by pointing out all the powers of the Illuminati/New World Order who have conspired to put Barack Obama into power. In his haste to post, he must have accidentally forgotten to add on the bibliography of his years of "analytical research."

Will points out that this may be even worse than the Illuminati...
The Reptilians are a group of aliens whose existence has been revealed to the world by British author David Icke. The Repilians (or Reptiloids, the scholarship debates the correct name) use their shape-shifting abilities to blend in with the human population and assume positions of power to slowly enslave humanity, much like the plot of the film They Live, which had coincidentally been released shortly before Icke released his theories. Many prominant world figures are actually Repilian aliens including: George H.W. Bush, Queen Elizabeth II, George W. Bush (makes sense, why would George H.W. have a non-Reptiloid baby?) and Kris Kristofferson. While I'm a fan of "Me and Bobby McGee" and the entire Blade trilogy, Kris Kristofferson really seems to be slacking compared to the other Reptilians when it comes to taking offices of power.

Still, Obama is merely controlled by the Reptilians, which still makes for an upgrade over W. who is a Reptilian. On second thought, maybe I should put Will's comment in the Pro-Obama section.

Meanwhile, crazvy provides more actual physical evidence to back of his/her opinion than any other commentator yet.

And of course, no matter the argument, some jackass Ron Paul supporter always shows up.

Just like those of us in the real world, Crazy UFO People are convinced Obama is either the key to our salvation or the harbinger of death for us all. Then those are those few in the fringes of the Crazy UFO People movement who decide to take an approach known as "wait and see."

It's really sad when a Crazy UFO Person realizes it's insane for anyone to vote for a ticket with Sarah Palin on it.

Comparative Election Analysis: Ralph Nader vs. The Guy From That Show Wings

2008-11-06T23:34:00.005-06:00

So Ralph Nader has lost it. I admire the man's advocacy work in the 70's. I don't even mind his Presidential races every 4 years, even if they split the progressive 3rd Party vote during a year when the Green Party actually had a good candidate in McKinney. Although you would think being so environmentally conscious, he wouldn't make his supporters buy new campaign swag every 4 years, I'm imagining a reusable bumper sticker that would say "Nader - Interchangeable Ethnic Name Vice Presidential Candidate" and Nader would ship out new year stickers like the DMV mails me license plate stickers. Just imagine the joy in Nader-fans when they would get the new stickers, "The '12s have arrived. Crunchy."

But Nader really showed me how crazy he is with what he had to say about Obama on Fox News:
"To put it very simply, he [Barack Obama] is our first African American president, or he will be. And we wish him well. But his choice, basically, is whether he is going to be Uncle Sam for the people of this country or Uncle Tom for the giant corporations."

Yeah, Nader called Obama a potential Uncle Tom. Really, The Dallas Morning News has the transcript and the video. After this, Shepard Smith was taken aback (Note: when you are too racist for Fox News you might have a problem) and gave Nader an opportunity to clarify which he declined to do and Nader has also refused to apologize in the two days after this. By the way, between his reaction to Joe the Plumber's "Obama=Death To Israel" comment and his shock at Ralph Nader's hate speech, I'm kinda starting to like Shepard Smith.

Nader has gone so far off the deep end that 70's safety advocate Nader would close down the pool that current Nader is in for allowing such ridiculous depths.

Shortly after realizing that Nader is quickly becoming the national equivalent of Madison's Will Sandstrom, I went over to Huffington Post where I came upon some of the most poetic and clear descriptions of what this election means in the greater context of America.

"Obama's speech echoed the rhythms of Lincoln, Kennedy and King, summoning the essences of their greatest speeches while adding the ebullient urgency of his own amazing ascension to this place, in this time. While to his detractors his intellect and grace was derided as elitist arrogance, as seen and heard tonight it is rather inescapably clear that he has emerged in order to carry out a mission: to lead us back to the path upon which America must tread in order to fulfill its destiny, not as a massive, seething, commercial venture but as a progressive land of freedom.

"Even in this day of consumerist overkill there is more to life than making money. There is a need for inspiration, for belonging, for hope, for everyone of us to feel connected and secure to a spirit that supersedes the pervasive and omnipresent materialism that has come to embody America. Eight years of spiritual drift has made us thirst for real leadership. The Bush straw man is banished for the moment (who knows for how long?); the oligarchs in their mincing approximations of folksiness having successfully assured the working classes that they should be trusted are now unmasked."

This post-consumerist rant, that goes into the need for both individual freedom and collective belonging in America was written by none other than Steven Weber, the guy from that 90's sitcom, Wings. (Quick aside: YouTube has far more Wings fanmade music videos than you would expect.)

In summation, comparing talks about the impact of massive corporations on this election and what an Obama Presidency means for working Americans, Ralph Nader has had his ass handed to him by a guy from Wings. The only way this could be more embarrassing is if it was a guy from Paul McCartney's Wings. Nader has done his time, now his fans need to pick some other figurehead to rally around before Nader fans become the next Lyndon LaRouche-ies. Nader fans, may I suggest Steven Weber? If he could last 8 years on Wings, he could handle 8 in the White House.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go spend the next few days reading the thesaurus as I'm still humbled by Steven Weber's command of the English language.

Your Vote Matters. For Frank Caliendo.

2008-11-03T15:51:00.006-06:00

If you are an American, before you go to the polls tomorrow, think about how your vote will effect people all over the world. It's not overstating the importance of this election to say that it will have a major impact on the lives and livelihoods of countless millions, including Frank Caliendo. For years, he has been doing impressions of celebrities on Mad TV (At least according to the internet, I wasn't willing to turn on Comedy Central and sit through Mad TV in order to fact check this) and his own show on TBS (which I can confirm exists as they advertise it during TBS's Saved By The Bell reruns). Caliendo has played George W. Bush and John Madden, not the most unique impressions, but Frank adds in the clever twists of playing fat versions of them.
Fat Madden. Fat Bush.
I really hope I'll get more hits to this blog with an image entitled "Fat Bush." But Fat Bush success is a fleeting one, both for my blog and Frank Caliendo. After January, his Fat Bush will be nearly useless, Caliendo knows this and is having a one-hour election special playing Fat Bush tomorrow night. While the rest of the world is watching election results, Caliendo will be trying to milk Fat Bush for one last hour.

But there's hope, with a new administration comes new political figures that could use a fat characture. A McCain Administration, though increasingly unlikely in the polls, would be very easy for Frank Caliendo. All he needs to do is take his Fat Madden costume, throw a band-aid on the side of his face, carry around a model of a house (Cause McCain owns a lot of houses!), and say "My friends" a lot. Then Frank can say hello to Fat McCain and 4 more years of TBS success.
Fat McCain.
Now Obama presents a much bigger problem. Not that Caliendo wouldn't be willing, or even eager, to wear Fat Blackface but I'm just worried that his Fat Obama would get confused for the High Life Guy or possibly a mushtache-less version of NFL on CBS's J.B.
Possible Fat Obama confusion.
But if Obama wins, I suggest that Frank try to break new ground and go for a Fat V.P. That's right Fat Joe Biden. It's simple, once again take his Fat Madden costume (which now that I look at it, I think it's the same suit that Fat Bush wears) and throw on some of that creepy fake-orange tan that skinny Joe Biden always seems to be wearing. He can even carry around Fat Madden's football because Biden is a working man and working men like football.
Fat Biden.
Maybe Caliendo can get even more creative (or as I call it: Calieative) and go into a potential Obama cabinet. If Al Gore does something for the Obama administration on global warming, Frank could do a Fat Gore... on second thought, he could do a Gore. Or Obama's people have talked about keeping around current Bush defense secretary Robert Gates. Gates is already a chubby, pasty guy. Why hasn't Frank been keying up those hot DefSec jokes for the last two years?
Holy poop, this is a Frank Caliendo impression that wouldn't suck.

5 Deleted Scenes That Would Have Ruined Classic Movies

2008-10-31T13:55:00.006-05:00

The movies that make me angriest are mediocre movies that would have been great if they had just been edited a little bit better. For example, Chronicles of Riddick has a great beginning and one of the best endings of all time but the middle part is a long, boring trip to a prison planet that ruins the whole movie. Looking over my DVDs, I noticed that some of the movies I love the most could have easily been damaged by subplots and non-sequitur scenes that were thankfully (and miraculously) removed before release. These lame scenes would not have just been lame on their own but could have potentially ruined the whole movie. To prove my point, here are 5 classic movies (note: My definition of 'classic' means movies I loved as a child and action films) and the deleted scenes that threatened to destroy them.

Ghostbusters: Bill Murray and Dan Ackroyd As Hobos

Ghostbusters is probably the movie that most describes my childhood but I might have a completely different view of the movie if they had left this scene in. In this deleted scene, Bill Murray and Dan Ackroyd play two homeless guys who have a 45-second conversation about boxers vs. martial artists in the middle of the film for no apparent reason. Their conversation serves no purpose to the overall plot and would have derailed the film during the bottom of Act 2, right when the conflict is supposed to be at it’s highest.

Particularly as kids, I have to imagine many of us wouldn’t have figured out that Murrary and Ackroyd were playing different characters and would have wondered, did the Ghostbusters just become homeless right now? Not to mention, Bill Murray seems to be playing his Caddyshack character as a bum in this scene, even down to the wardrobe. In some alternate universe, this scene would have weirded out an entire generation of kids. In that parallel world, we would use this scene as our ultimate barometer of mind-fucks. Instead of saying, “that came out of left-field,” we would say, “Did it just get homeless in here?” In fact, I bet it’s probably a very popular Lol cat in that familiar but alien reality.

Demolition Man: Needless Emotional Subplot

Demolition Man is one of the stupidest but most fun action movies I know but it could have all fallen apart if they had keep in a serious side plot when Stallone grieves over his daughter who died while he was frozen. I’m not knocking Stallone’s acting abilities but how is any actor supposed to go from the trauma of losing their whole family in one scene and then react to how comically weird the future is. If I just found out my daughter had died, I wouldn’t really spend a couple minutes commenting on how wacky it is that every restaurant is now a Taco Bell, I’d be more focused on my dead daughter.

Besides, we had already seen this exact plot in a movie, it was called Aliens when Ripley’s daughter had died while she was frozen. Except that plot actually made thematic sense as it would give her motivation to protect Newt as a surrogate daughter. As opposed to Demolition Man, when the dead-daughter plot sets up John Spartan’s thematic struggle to understand that wackiness of radio stations that only play old commercial jingles.

Die Hard With a Vengeance: Psychologically Warped John McClane

The ending of Die Hard 3 that audiences came to know involves Bruce Willis taking out a helicopter by shooting power-lines with a revolver. It’s silly, but it makes sense for a Die Hard movie and leaves people walking out of the theatre happy and ready to tell their friends to go watch that Die Hard 3 for themselves. Contrast this with the original ending of Die Hard 3 where Jeremy Irons would get away with the robbery and framing Willis’s Jobn McClane for the crime (I keep on wanting to type John McCain) leaving McClane disgraced and psychologically twisted. McClane would track Irons all over the world and eventually force Irons at gunpoint to submit to a Saw-like puzzle. Irons would have to fire a rocket launcher with one end pointed at himself and the other pointed at McClane, insuring that one would die in the process. Boy, that’s going to leave the audience with a smile!

Yes, after two previous hit movies where Bruce Willis killed a lot of people and said awesome things, yeah, let’s assume that people don’t want that and put in some intense psychological trauma. I can understand how he thought this would be a good way to end the movie as Die Hard is most well-known as an intense psychological thriller. In fact, I often get Die Hard confused with Silence of the Lambs, I have to remember that Die Hard is the one with Carl Winslow. This ending would have done more damage to the Die Hard franchise than casting Justin Long as a sidekick.

Looks the same to me.

The Blues Brothers: Magic Bluesmobile

Not to keep ripping on Dan Ackroyd’s scripts but for a funny guy, he has some really bad ideas. Like his Ghostbusters 3 script that would involve the Ghostbusters going to Hell or this deleted scene in Blues Brothers. Originally, Ackroyd wanted the Blues Brothers’ car, the Bluesmobile, to be struck with lightning right by a transformer (an electrical transformer, not car/robot). And he wanted to imply that it means the car is “charged up” for it’s impossible stunts.

What works about Blues Brothers is that it’s a movie that slowly gets more and more ridiculous. The movie does such a good job getting you into it that most people don’t even realize how weird the movie really gets. At the opening of the movie, we see the Bluesmobile do a quick jump over a bridge but 2 hours later we are willing to see it do backflips in the air because the movie has slowly ramped up the ridiculousness. Having something so silly so early in the film would have taken the audience out of the movie instead of gradually immersing you into that world.

Besides, director John Landis has the correct opinion on this matter, we don’t need to know how the Bluesmobile can do what it does, it’s just a magic car and we accept it.

Not needed.
Back to the Future II: Biff Disappears for No Good Reason

In this scene deleted from Back to the Future II, Old Biff returns from stealing the DeLorean time machine only to promptly fade away and disappear. Why? Well, according to director Robert Zemeckis, Marty’s mom had shot and killed Biff sometime after 1985. Wow, it’s so obvious. While movies often spoonfeed people too much plot (like having the Bluesmobile get struck by lightning), this example shows that doing the opposite and giving people too little information can be even worse. This plot point makes about as much sense as going from a scene in 1985 and abruptly cutting to a shot of Marty McFly on the moon. Would you expect that the audience would have inferred that Marty must have travelled back to 1969 and hopped on Apollo 11? No, instead audience members would have just said, “Did it just get homeless in here?”

Two weeks from today: Go see Role Models

2008-10-24T15:28:00.002-05:00

Yesterday, I was able to go see a free preview screening of of the new Paul Rudd movie Role Models, directed by Stella's David Wain, and it was awesome. It’s what you should go see on Friday Nov. 7th before you head to either an Obama-victory party or Obama-loss funeral for America.

The movie stars Paul Rudd and Sean William Scott. Paul Rudd finally gets the chance to have his own film after being the number 2 guy in everyone else’s star making vehicles (Will Ferrell in Anchorman, Steve Carell in 40 Year Old Virgin, Seth Rogen in Knocked Up and Alicia Silverstone in Clueless. Yeah, I went there for the Clueless reference.). Rudd, who co-wrote the script with director David Wain and Ken Marino, does an excellent job of playing a total sarcastic dick. He helped write this role for himself and has way too much fun playing it. Sean William Scott plays a guy who is obsessed with sex and loves to party, which is a HUGE stretch for the actor. Okay, so he’s basically playing Stifler but Scott knows how to play this type of comedy well and wrings laughs out of his frequent non-sequiturs and makes even his most horribly offensive lines sound charming.

The main plot of the film is that guys are energy-drink marketers who get arrested and are forced to go into a Big Brothers/ Big Sisters-type program. In the program, Rudd’s character is paired with Superbad’s Mc Lovin’, yeah, the actor has a name other than McLovin’ but I bet you don’t know it plus he is basically just playing McLovin’ again so I’ll just keep calling him McLovin’. So McLovin’ takes Rudd LARPing (Live Action Role Playing) and here the movie does an awfully smooth mix of making fun of LARPing while also respecting it. The movie makes fun of the people who take it too seriously while still validating the activity as something that’s valuable for McLovin’, if director Wain hadn’t been able to keep that balance, Rudd’s and McLovin’s plot would have fallen apart.

Sean William Scott is meanwhile paired with Bobbe’ J. Thompson, the greatest child actor ever. The only thing I’ve seen Bobbe’ J. Thompson in before this was some Human Giant sketches but Bobbe’ J. Thompson owns Role Models. Bobbe’ J. Thompson does an awesome job as a kid who likes to swear and be perverted and nothing is funnier than a little kid swearing and being perverted. At the age of 12, Bobbe’ J. Thompson is awesomer than you or I ever will be. The movie’s most clever idea is to have Scott bond with young Bobbe’ by teaching him how to better at checking out cleavage. Bobbe’ J. Thompson also has a couple chances to show off his inner vulnerability, under Wain’s direction, it’s Thompson that’s allowed to have the most-layered and vulnerable performance in the movie. Damn, Bobbe’ J. Thompson is awesome.

For those who are familiar with director David Wain’s other work (Dan and Jon, 2 out of the 4 people who might read this), this is probably Wain’s most mainstream work to date. It’s certainly nowhere as nihilistic as the films Wet Hot American Summer or The Ten or his work in the comedy groups’ The State and Stella. While the movie takes place in a much more grounded world than anything else Wain has worked in, there is still as much crude sexual humor as there was in any Stella short. Moving all of Wain’s trademark dick jokes to a realistic world where there are a lot of kids around only makes them seem more wrong. The plot is also far less subversive than Wet Hot American Summer’s or his webseries Wainy Days but it doesn’t feel like a sell-out film intended for mass market popularity, ala Linklater’s School of Rock, instead it feels like it fits on the DVD shelf next to other State-alumnus projects. Supporting roles by many actors who have worked with Wain in the past also help keep it going.

I only have two small complaints for the movie as a whole. The bottom of the second act drags a bit as we wait for Rudd and Scott’s characters to redeem themselves after screwing up (that’s not a spoiler, that’s just 3-act structure. I can forgive the bit of slowness in act 2 as it’s the first time Wain and Marino are writing a comedy that follows a 3-act structure as opposed to making fun of it… plus act 3 is so great, it makes you forget the end of act 2. The Act 3 of Role Models is so awesome, it’s the Bobbe’ J. Thompson of 3rd acts. Note, I will now rate the awesomeness of things in relation to Bobbe’ J. Thompson. The other issue is that Elizabeth Banks is wasted as Paul Rudd’s ex-girlfriend, she really isn’t given anything funny to do and it’s a tremendous waste of her talent. Maybe she was doing it as a favor to Wain for her early role in Wet Hot American Summer or maybe just because she wanted to be in 3 major release films in 1 month.

Overall, taking Wain’s perverted comedy and moving it to a more mainstream-accessible form makes it a hilarious comedy if you love stuff like Stella or Wet Hot American Summer but it’s also a hilarious comedy if you hate Stella or Wet Hot American Summer.

5 Bad Wisconsin Political Figures and Why J.B. Van Hollen is worse than all of them.

2008-10-22T19:03:00.002-05:00

In honor of the impending decision on Wisconsin Attorney General and Wisconsin McCain Campaign Co-Chair J.B. Van Hollen's lawsuit seeking to toss hundreds of thousands of (overwhelmingly Democratic-leaning) voters off of the rolls just in time for the Presidential election, I've decided that Van Hollen is the worst political figure in Wisconsin history. So to prove my point, here's a list 5 Wisconsin politicians I don't like and why J.B. Van Hollen is worse than each of them.

Kathleen Falk:

Why she’s bad:

Her near decade of service as Dane County Executive often reads less like a record of solid achievements for the county and more like the build-up of her own resume. With her work on her 2002 gubernatorial race, 2007-08 campaigning for Hillary Clinton, and her 2006 race for Attorney General where she saw an opening after sitting A.G. Peg Lautenschlager got a DWI. Her primary race against Peg split the Democratic Party but narrowly allowed for a Falk win. Her general election campaign for Attorney General, basically trying to elect a Dane County Liberal in very purple Wisconsin, allowed Mr. J. B. Van Hollen to win the race in a year when Republicans across the board lost. This victory allowed J.B. Van Hollen to become the biggest rising star in the Republican Party.

Falk is also trying change the “drinking culture” in Madison and her War on Drinking sounds like it will be just about as effective as the War on Drugs or the War on Terror. Though, if I’m wrong for only the third time in my life (The first two times are when I thought that ordering Domino’s Pizza was a good idea one night and when I thought that the 2nd and 3rd Pirates of the Caribbean movies wouldn’t totally suck) and the War on Drinking does actually work, it will prevent other Wisconsin elected officials from getting DWIs; thus preventing future Kathleen Falk statewide-races, so that would be nice.

Why she isn’t as bad as J.B. Van Hollen:

Sure, Falk has spent a lot of her elected time running for other offices, but at least she doesn’t break the law while on state time. Though J.B. Van Hollen thinks it’s fine if you do break the law, as long as you are his political ally. J.B. Van Hollen refused to investigate charges about now-Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman abusing state resources. As Ashland County District Attorney, Gableman used a state phone to make calls to the Wisconsin Republican Party, McCallum for Governor Campaign and numerous Republican fundraisers. All calls that are highly illegal using state resources, whoopsies. But who really expects a county DA to know about the law? And who expects a state DA to prosecute crimes when someone of a similar political view is involved?

During the approximately 19 months where Falk hasn’t been running for another, there are times when she has helped get through really good legislation. Recently, she worked with the Dane County Board to decree that the county won’t do business with businesses that don’t offer partner benefits. See, there’s some good reform that only adds a tiny amount to health care costs and getting good stuff done in a tough budget year. Meanwhile, J.B. Van Hollen has spent the off hours from his primary job of being a political hack by fighting Wisconsin’s biggest legal concern: the merger of XM and Sirius Satellite Radio. I feel safer already.

Jim Sensenbrenner:

Why he’s bad:

Saying that Sensenbrenner, the Representative from Wisconsin’s 5th Congressional District, occasionally abused his power as Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee is like saying that Yakov Smirnoff occasionally observed differences between daily life in the Soviet Union and the US. Sensenbrenner had his hands on nearly every infamous piece of Republican party-line legislation, serving as one of House managers of Bill Clinton’s impeachment trial and being the House member to introduce the PATRIOT Act. Thanks Jimmy for having the wisdom as Judicary Chairman to introduce a sweeping bill that was handed to you by the State Department, with wide-reaching effects on Civil Liberties, and making sure that it got passed before anyone had a chance to read it. Sensenbrenner must have been proud of that PATRIOT Act because when the Act was up for renewal, the Democrats in the House started asking too many questions he ordered cameras and lights turned off in the committee room.

Also, Sensenbrenner used his authority to block a bill that would increase penalties for making animals fight (H.R. 817) so apparently he hates puppies. Or at least puppies that don’t win fights.

Why he isn’t as bad as J.B. Van Hollen:

Even as a ridiculously partisan guy, Sensenbrenner has very occasionally worked across party lines. He was the only Republican in Nancy Pelosi. Somehow ultraconservative Jim managed to spend hours in the same plane and then the same room as Nancy Pelosi, a woman whom Republicans consider to be a greater sign of liberalism than a black lesbian illegal immigrant performing a 2nd trimester abortion. Sensenbrenner even said: "In the US Congress, there is no division between Democrats and Republicans on the issue of protecting Tibetan culture and eliminating repression against Tibetans around the world.” Wow, that’s um… awfully grown up, seeing Sensenbrenner work with Democrats is like watching that old Coca-Cola ad where Mean Joe throws his jersey to the kid who gives him a Coke, it restores your faith in humanity.

Meanwhile, J.B. has demoted qualified people if they sent joking e-mails about him around or pushed them into retirement if they disagreed with his politics. When Jim Sensenbrenner has a longer history of bipartisan achievements than you, it’s clear that you are a horrible elected official.

Chuck Chvala:

Why he’s bad:

For those of you who are newer to Wisconsin, Chuck Chvala was the former Democratic leader in the State Senate who used his staffers and campaign offices to run political campaigns. As you would remember from the Gableman example, that’s highly illegal. Chvala’s abuses of power helped to tarnish the long-held reputation of Wisconsin as a state with clean politics dating back to the days of Fighting Bob LaFollette. Also, beyond the illegal stuff, Chvala really helped establish an acrid tone for partisan politics that helped establish the nasty tones politicians in Wisconsin, including Van Hollen, take today.

Why he isn’t as bad as J.B. Van Hollen:

While Chvala may have damaged the reputation of LaFollette’s progressive legacy, Van Hollen is working to destroy it completely. It’s shameful that in a state that pioneered the Open Primary, giving citizens greater access to democracy, Van Hollen is working tirelessly with his current lawsuit to deprive Wisconsin citizens of their right to vote.

Plus, Chvala lost his political prestige and went to jail for mixing campaigning with serving in office while J.B is still serving as McCain’s Wisconsin co-chair while advancing a McCain-boosting political agenda using his official office. Van Hollen is still the state’s top cop with a lot of political power while Chuck is now serving a sentence worse than jail time: hosting a web-only show for WISC-TV in Madison. At least in prison, you get to see other inmates in the yard, this web-only political show is hidden so deep on Channel3000.com that it’s almost impossible to find. Seriously, try going to channel3000.com and finding Chvala’s show on there and tell me if you can find it in less than 5 minutes, I dare ya.

James S. Haney

Why he’s bad:

Less famous than the others on this list and not actually an elected official, James Haney has had a larger impact on Wisconsin politics in the last few years serving as President of business lobbying group Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce. Haney and WMC have funneled tons of cash towards making sure that pro-business candidates get elected by any means necessary. They are even willing to say that their candidate’s opponents are best buddies with rapists if it means less government regulation on businesses.

Why he isn’t as bad as J.B. Van Hollen:

As I said, he isn’t an elected offical. He’s a lobbyist, a lobbyist for big business. By that very definition I expect him to lack morals and ethics and be a sneaky jerk. But when somebody holds the office of Attorney General, I think they have an important duty to uphold the law, even if their interpretation of the law is drastically different than mine. J.B. Van Hollen should be held to a high standard and seeing his office file politically-motivated potentially-disenfranchising lawsuit makes me lose faith in the offices of government… Wow, that got too serious, so um… poopy pants. There, that lightened it back up.

Joe McCarthy:

Why he’s bad:

He’s freaking Joe McCarthy. He held witch hunts using the power of the U.S. Senate to try and root out fictitious Communists.

Why he isn’t as bad as J.B. Van Hollen:

Sure, Joe McCarthy held witch hunts using the power of the U.S. Senate to try and root out fictitious Communists but looking back on it, it almost looks quaint these days. McCarthy actually managed to find some Communists, even if their threat was completely and ridiculously overblown, there was an actual (minor) threat to begin with. J.B. has done McCarthy one better and made up threats, considering Van Hollen made the case in 2006 that he needed to be elected in order to fight against terrorist training camps in Wisconsin. As somebody who likes to make jokes about the news, I almost get mad when something like “Wisconsin Terrorist Camps?” is a headline because the idea itself is so rediculous, there is really nowhere to go to make it funnier. It’s like making Sarah Palin jokes, sure you can come up with some zingers but nothing will be funnier than just repeating her actual quotes, you can’t top her mindlessness.

At least Senator McCarthy was honest and open about his persecutions, he admitted he was trying to root out Commies. Meanwhile, J.B. Van Hollen carries out his political crusades and has the gall to lie about the underlying partisan motivations. When refering to his now-infamous get rid of voters lawsuit, he actually said, “I think people will realize if there's one thing we haven't done since I've been attorney general is do things for partisan or political reasons.”

Man, I strongly dislike J.B. Van Hollen.

The real reason for our economic collapse...

2008-09-30T01:49:00.004-05:00

From the Wisconsin State Journal online comments section...

Once again, I guess the root cause of the problem are humans and our primitive illogical ways.

The Importance of Being Sconnie

2008-09-17T21:59:00.002-05:00

I was recently sent this article on a bar in Allouez, WI opening soon called Sconnie’s Pub and Eatery. At first, I was excited to hear about this. After all, my friends Casey, Jon, and I often dreamed about opening a bar called the Sconnie that would feature all Wisconsin beers, Fleishmann’s would be top-shelf liquor, there would be a shrine facing Lambeau Field for daily prayers and all food would be deep-fried. The idea of our dream Sconnie bar stuck in our minds so long that we made a skit about it when we founded a comedy group in Madison, the now dearly departed Public Drunkards. The production values are terrible but the Sconnie pride shows through so that it is still a favorite even if the audio sounds like it was recorded on Thomas Edison’s original record player.

Here's the skit. Note: Video is in no way work safe.

Sure, there have been Wisconsin themed restaurants out there, like The Old Fashioned in Madison that I love it dearly but it’s a little fancy to be true Sconnie. Real Sconnie is the rough, partying too hard until you pass out parts of Wisconsin. Real Sconnie is inventing new types of fried food and then, upon creation, promptly finding a way to inject molten cheese into it. I had hoped that this bar was going to be the real Sconnie bar that I had long dreamed of… still I had reservations right away.

First of all, they call it Sconnie’s Pub and Eatery. I’ve never had a Sconnie guy ask me if I want to go to the Pub. Unless of course they are asking me to go to The Pub, the dirty pool hall with an occasionally-working air hockey table and free popcorn that has Cheetos mixed in (a very Sconnie bar, btw). No, in Wisconsin, you go to the BAR.

Secondly, the teaser line below the headline stated: “Allouez pub and eatery will cater to business lunches, fine diners.” When it should have really read: “Allouez BAR and GRILL will cater to HUNTING PARTIES, BAR CRAWLS.” But at this point, I gave them the benefit of the doubt and assumed that fine diners is just code for people who get at least 3 plates of the Friday Fish Fry.

But what really got me angry enough to start a blog specifically to complain about how I don’t like a bar that I’ve never been to was this statement:

"We want to do a Wisconsin theme, but not overboard," Hanson said.

What? But not overboard, you say? The whole point of being Sconnie is going overboard. Overboard in drinking, eating, tailgating, everything. Saying you want to be Wisconsin-themed but not go overboard is like if the RNC had said for their convention, "Let's not have too many shows of blind patriotism in St. Paul." Sconnie's is located in Allouez, the place where THE VINCE LOMBARDI once lived, if they can't overdo Wisconsin, no place can. From that point on, I knew that this bar was a mere pretender to the throne and in this blog, I will spend way too long explaining how un-Sconnie this bar truly is while celebrating the greatness of real Sconnie.

Sconnie is a word of pride in Wisconsin and should not be taken lightly nor used for cheap marketing purposes. There are two main groups of people who call themselves Sconnie: Native Born Sconnie and Immigrant Sconnie. Native Born Sconnie folk grew up in Wisconsin, have a pride in their homeland and it’s overconsumption hertitage of beer, Packers, and cheese. You can find Native Born Sconnies all over the state, from the Northwoods to Milwaukee to strange foreign lands like Minneapolis where many have been forced to move for work or for partner insurance benefits.

Immigrant Sconnies are folks who have moved to Wisconsin from elsewhere and have chosen to embrace their new home. Many Native Born Sconnies in Madison choose to deride Immigrant Sconnies, viewing them as no different as any other of the hated “Coasties.” But I say, once you have partied with me at a Badger tailgate, drank with me at Mifflin, and vomited with me on the morning after… you are my brother or sister no matter where you were born. In fact, one night I saw a UW-Madison student from India drink an entire group of Native Borns under the table, proving that he was the most Sconnie one there. I view Wisconsin as a melting pot, except we take everything from that melting pot and we flash fry it.

When it comes to marketing Sconnie, the most prominent users of the Sconnie name is the website Sconnie Nation founded by the guys who trademarked the name and made the now famous Sconnie t-shirts. Sure, Sconnie Nation seems to be aimed primarily at those who I call Immigrant Sconnies and there is a little tongue-in-cheek irony there but I’ll allow it as most people in Madison don’t know how to enjoy anything if it isn’t filtered through an ironic prism. But, overall, I think they do a fine job of spreading the image of Sconnie life and give the site a great community feel. Everything on the site is filled to the brine with pure Wisconsin, much like the La Crosse Oktoberfest patron filled to the brim with bratwurst and beer.

And this takes us back to Sconnie’s Pub and Eatery, where they don’t want to go “overboard” with being Sconnie even though that’s the exact thing that made the Sconnie t-shirt line such a success. There are several quotes in the rest of the article that showed how they are failing to embrace true Wisconsin heritage.

“Wireless computer connection will be available and TVs will be tuned to business news channels during lunch, Hanson said.”

Business news channels are not Sconnie. Sure a lot of Sconnie folk work during the day but it’s only so they can make money to afford true Sconnie things like going to a Packer game or buying copious amount of cheddar. While you are in a true Sconnie bar, you shouldn’t feel like you are wearing a white collar, instead you should feel like you are wearing flannel. TVs at a Sconnie bar should be tuned to fishing shows and maybe FSN North, but the channel needs to be changed if they are showing any games featuring the Cubs or Vikings unless the Cubs or Vikings are losing badly.

“Music will be provided by an online system.
"If someone wants a request song; done," Hanson said.”

Internet jukeboxes suck. The joy of a record or CD based jukebox is that familiar songs that regularly come up on the jukebox become part of the atmosphere of the bar. Sure, internet jukeboxes can play almost any song you want but part of the fun in physical media jukeboxes is hunting around for something good, finding a great song on a real jukebox is like finding musical treasure. Like many other bars that have switched to internet jukeboxes, The Plaza Tavern lost a little bit of it’s Sconnieocity (definition: the degree to which a place is Sconnie) when it switched from an awesome sweet CD jukebox to an internet jukebox, it was if a part of the bar itself was gone. Also, a Sconnie bar with a CD jukebox should have Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald and Johnny Horton somewhere on there, it’s mandatory.

“They'll also have Guinness and other imported beers and 20 martinis.
"We want to have one of the best Guinnesses," Hanson said.”

Guinness? THIS IS THE WORST OFFENSE! You are called Sconnie’s and you are serving beer imported from another country? I like some imported beers but not in a bar that supposed to be celebrating Wisco state. Couldn’t you just get a good stout brewed in Wisconsin, like Futhermore’s Three-Feet Deep stout or Gray’s Oatmeal Stout. If you are looking how to do a good beer menu, look at the aforementioned Old Fashioned, a great Wisconsin themed restaurant where all the beers they serve are brewed in Wisconsin with the exception of their ‘imported’ beers: Bud and Bud Light. If you want to serve Guinness and do a bar theme that’s mere window dressing, just do what everyone did and open up an Irish Pub.

In conclusion, Sconnie’s Pub and Eatery should have as it’s motto: half-assed. True Sconnie spirit is what makes a Sconnie bar not what’s on the sign outside the bar and we should celebrate true Sconnie bars like:

The Joynt in Eau Claire, where they refuse to serve any light beer, that is a true Sconnie bar.

The Frequency in Madison, where they don’t have an Internet jukebox, even though they just opened this summer, and instead have a CD jukebox with local Wisconsin musicians, that is a true Sconnie bar.

Wolski’s Tavern in Milwaukee, where they are just about to celebrate the 100th anniversary of opening a tavern in the SAME BUILDING they are still in today, that is a true Sconnie bar.

But… Sconnie’s Pub and Eatery, you sir, are no Sconnie bar.