Fanboy's New Year Predictions

Wow! 2007 sure flew by quicker than I expected, but time tends to dilate when traveling at or near the speed of light.

Anyway, here are my predictions for 3008:

1. In January, the crab people of Beta Antares break off relations with the Krool Concordium, signaling the beginning of an intergalactic battle of wits that will last over two thousand years and result in untold millions of injured feelings and devastated esteem on both sides. Though historians will disagree on who exactly hurled the first insult, it will be generally agreed that fault lies with "those poopy-headed lobster dummies"

2. On Earth, in the area that was once Manhattan, the long-term effects of the spaceborne illness that originally killed most of the canine and feline population continue to alter the larger primates. The great apes grow taller and more limber, their cranial capacity increases (most notably in orangatans), and their vocal cords thicken. Gorillas, once the most gentle of the great apes, become more aggresive, while chimps become more reserved. Nobody's heard from the gibbons in a long time, which is never a good sign.

Surface-dwelling humans retain the power of speech, but continue to lose the capacity for abstract thought. At the same time, those humans that have moved underground begin to develop telepathy and telekenesis. In mid-April, Mendez the 125th astounds both his wife and himself by "getting his own damn beer" from across the room without getting up.

- A similar bifurcation process is affecting humans in the area that was once London, as some of the docile surface-dwelling "Eloi" decide to abandon fruit-picking and begin a migration undergound to live in the old mines by the moors and lochs in the country (as a result, within time they would come to call themselves the "Morlocks").

- Shielded from the effects of the outside world, the people of the domed city around what was once Washington DC, prepare to celebrate their "Renewal Jubilee", marking the numerically significant 345,678th consecutive Carousel Ritual. Says participant Logan 951 (age 29), "Yay! that thing on my hand is blinking! I can't believe I get to be part of history! Lucky me! Renew!"

-In late September, in what was once the North Pacific ocean, a sea mammal, in particular a dolphin named Nscreee*, is born with opposable thumbs on her fins, triggering a chain of events that will eventually lead to earth creatures exploring space and uniting all of the intelligent beings in the galaxy together in peaceful, non-insulting harmony.
*translation mine

3. A dark matter butterfly flapping its wings in the gamma hydra quadrant of galaxy M98 causes a...


Oh wait.

That's *3008's* predictions. You guys probably wanted my predictions for 2008.

Hang on. I wrote those down too. I know I've got them around here somewhere - just gotta find where I put them.

Well, Happy New Year anyway

Lame Halloween Costume #2

"Princess Leia as Jabba's Slave" Costume for Dogs

Wow! This costume sure brings back memories.

Like, remember that scene in "Return of the Jedi" when Jabba had Princess Leia on a chain, and as soon as he turned his back on her she took her leash and wrapped it around his neck and strangled him with it? And she just yanked and yanked until his tongue stuck out and his eyes rolled back in his head, and she killed that big jerk who made her dress like that for his own amusement?

Great scene. I bet your dog even remembers that scene too. Your dog is probably thinking about it at this very moment, in fact.

Weekly Fanboy Update #4: The (legal) Battle for the Planet of the Apes

And so it begins...

http://www.usatoday.com/news/offbeat/2007-09-27-chimpanzee_N.htm

"VIENNA (AP) — He's now got a human name — Matthew Hiasl Pan — but he's having trouble getting his day in court.

Animal rights activists campaigning to get Pan, a 26-year-old chimpanzee, legally declared a person vowed Thursday to take their challenge to Austria's Supreme Court after a lower court threw out their latest appeal."

Some of us knew this day would come. The Austrian Supreme Court needs to consider its next steps very carefully, since their decision could very likely trigger a chain of events that may eventually end with gorillas on horseback hunting humans for sport, I tell you!

Needless to say, I've been following this case very closely. Pan the chimp actually argued his case very persuasively in court, and at one point even brought the bailiff near tears when he paraphrased Shakespeare's "Merchant of Venice" with the question "Hat nicht ein Schimpanse Augen, Ihre Ehre?" ["Hath not a chimp eyes, your Honor?"], and it looked like he was going to win his personhood right up until the point when he tossed some poo at the judge.

After that it was pretty much downhill for him.

IT'S A MAD HOUSE!!

Lame Halloween Costume #1

Yay! October! It's that magical time of year to go looking for Halloween costumes for the kids, often with vague and complex marching orders like "I wanna go as a Ron Weasley-Jawa-Ninja-Zombie-Cat!!"

Uhhh... I'll see if they have that costume, honey. But don't be disappointed if you're ahead of the costume industry curve again this year. We may need to make this one ourselves.

So anyway, I've been cruising the online costume shops, and, judging by some of the costumes out there, I have come to the conclusion that American consumers are driving this society into a deep decline.

No. I don't blame the retailers. If there was no demand for an "Isaac the Bartender from the Love Boat" costume, then there would be no supply. Isaac? That's only two steps above Horshack on the "Obscure-Cultural-Reference-o-Meter". Yeah, the model at the costume site pretty much nailed the patented "Isaac-two-handed-double-point", but that only gets you so far. Plan to spend the whole night saying, "No, I'm not that ghost waiter from The Shining who killed his kids! I'm Isaac! From The Love Boat! It was a TV show in the early 80's! Remember? Gopher? Doc? Charo? Koochie-koo? *Sigh* Fine then. You must kill your family Mr.Torrance".

So now, it was either Leo Buscaglia or Spock's brother from StarTrek V that once told me to "share the pain", so I thought I'd spend some time this month sharing with you some of the most inexplicably lame costumes out there. None of this is made-up, sadly.

Car Air Freshener Baby Costume

Okay, just off the top of my head, I have a few questions for the people who would dress their child up like a car air freshener:

1. Why do you hate your child?

2. When did you first realize you hated your child?

3. Have you considered the fact that dressing your child like a car air freshener might be a sign that maybe you aren't ready for parenthood?

4. What terrible and traumatic thing happened to *you* when you were young that makes you lash out by dressing your child as something that is hung from a rearview mirror.

and finally...

5. Your child clearly has no choice in the matter and so can't be blamed for going as a car air freshener for Halloween. But what's *your* excuse?:

Weekly Fanboy Update #3

Remember that AT-AT I was building in my backyard? Well, I'm afraid I have some bad news. I had to take it down. I know a lot of you kept coming back here to check in on my progress, so I know this is difficult. But believe me, I'm just as disappointed about this as you are.

I guess one of my neighbors must be a Bothan spy, because someone ratted me out to the Homeowners Association.

Now before I started all of this, as you'll recall, I checked the CC&Rs and it said *nothing* about having an Imperial Walker in my yard. But I guess I missed the fine print about "trailers", "freestanding structures", and "attractive nuisances" on the property. Hey - at least they admitted that it was attractive.

Oh, plus they said it might kill someone. Well duh. That's what the laser cannons were for!

Plight of the Generic Adventurer*

*or "How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Just Grew a Beard"

I've had the opportunity to blow some dust off some of my old toys, and in doing so have come to terms with profound sociological truths and pivotal moments not only in American culture but also in my own personal developme... Wait. I can tell already that your eyes are glazing over. Let me back up.

As the 1960s turned into the 1970s, and the culture changed and the war in Vietnam became increasingly unpopular, GI Joe adjusted to the times in the same ways many men his age did at the time. He let his hair grow out, he took early retirement from the military, he turned his attention to trapping pygmy animals, and he started wearing big round metal medallions. Okay, actually the medallion thing wouldn't be popular for another six years or so when disco hit it big, and I could probably go on and on about how ahead-of-his time he was there, but I'll let some Cultural Studies grad student write their thesis on that medallion thing instead. But we all know I got there first.


Of course, Joe couldn't just turn his back on the regimented life he'd come to know in 'Nam, and he needed some discipline and meaning to his existence. Oh sure, he'd tried going it alone there for a while, but he was an action figure adrift without purpose, often showing up at Barbie's Malibu Dream House in the middle of the night ranting drunkenly about how he never got a parade and how America had turned its back on him and stuff. Not pretty. Joe cried out for structure.


And so the Adventure Team was born. Their missions often had nebulous and questionable goals, like raiding mummys' tombs and tranquilizing albino tigers, but that scarcely mattered. The point was that Joe had something to do now (there's still some debate on whether or not the Adventure Team was a front for the CIA, but again, that's beside the point. Also, that lady at the Freedom of Information Act office thinks I'm unhinged and told me to stop pestering her about "those stupid dolls again". But I'll let you know if I learn anything more on that front).

So then, the Adventure Team consisted of the Land Adventurer, the Sea Adventurer (with his groovy bellbottom jeans - once again setting the trend), the Air Adventurer, and the... um... just plain old Adventurer.

Wait. What's with that fourth guy? That generic Adventurer there?

Okay, now admittedly, after land, sea and air, there really weren't any good areas of specialization left for the guy. I suppose he could have been the "Magma Adventurer" or the "Glacier Adventurer", but both positions sound like hours and hours of tedium punctuated by short bursts of life-threatening horror. So instead, he was just the generic Adventurer, with nothing to do I suppose but to sit around waiting for one of the other three guys to die in a hideous cave-in or mid-air explosion or tsunami or whatever so he could move into their position. I shouldn't even think such things, and I'm sure he was too good a toy to even consider it himself. The guilt would have eaten him up inside if he had. But still, what's a guy gotta do to fit in?

He obviously had gone through the same initiation ritual the others had, seeing as how he had that telltale scar on his face, and yet somehow he was different, left out, and set apart from the others. Why do you suppose that was? Let's take another look at this "odd Adventurer out" of ours:

Yeah. You noticed that too huh? I get it now. Yeah. Don't need to tell me twice how things are going to be. I think we all see what's going on here. For all their talk of bravery and honor, the rest of the Adventure Team was clearly a bunch of small-minded bigots discriminating against the Adventurer simply because his skin was shaved!

You know what though? I gotta hand it to the Adventurer. In the end, he chose his battles wisely. Sure, he could have confronted the rest of the group, but in doing so he would have hurt the morale of the Team. And for what? Heck, the others probably weren't even aware of their own ignorant prejudices against the unbearded. That's how subtle and internalized these things can be you know.

So, for the good of the group, he decided that if you can't beat them, join them. He grew his beard out, and soon after that he got promoted to Talking Team Commander!

And what had been his burden before - his lack of specialization - had actually become his strength. He had an ability to view the "Big Picture" beyond what the others were capable of seeing since they were bogged down in their own little worlds, and the other members of the Team admired him for his grand vision.

The point of all of this? None really. I suppose you could say that he totally sold out and that he just went along and assimilated by letting his beard grow, and that, in the end, no minds were changed and no wrongs were righted and nobody's fundamental assumptions were challenged and so nothing really was accomplished. But you know what? Screw that! He's just one action figure! One action figure isn't going to change the world and besides, he had his brothers to think about. They needed each other. They all remembered their crazy, out-of-control days in Malibu back in '69, and none of them wanted to go back to that life ever again. It was teamwork that had saved them from that, and so the Team came first.

The Talking Team Commander would eventually settle down with a nice fashion doll and together they would raise several adorable Cabbage Patch Kids. He's not completely out of action though. Today he's still commanding - commanding about $400 a pop on E-Bay, that is.

Oh yeah... I nearly forgot:

And that's the story of why I have a beard.

COMING SOON!

"The Assasination of Johnny West by the Coward Sam Cobra"

Weekly Fanboy Update #2

I'll spare you my rant about how much garbage the schools make kids carry around in their backpacks these days. But I picked up my son's backpack the other day and I swear I nearly ripped my arm out of the socket - now I know how a droid that beats a Wookie at holographic chess feels!

It's cool that they are teaching fifth-graders brick-laying, judging by the weight of it, but give the kids a locker! We're raising a nation of hunchbacked Ugnaughts!

Why, in my day we had our Mead Trapper Keeper, a couple of pencils, our Manimal lunchbox (which some of us wisely never threw away and have proudly displayed and preserved in C9+ condition, thankyouverymuch) and that was pretty much it.

Sorry - I said I'd spare you my rant. I have failed you.

Anyhow, as long as we're on the subject of backpacks and Wookies, the surprise gift I ordered my son finally arrived!

Well, my excitement was short-lived. I'd been building up the suspense for weeks now, telling him that I had ordered him the "coolest thing ever made" and that it was something he could use every day! But he took one look at it and said it would get him beat up at school.

Perhaps he's too young to understand that nothing says "lay off!" to the bullies better than a Chewbacca on your back. But he was disappointed in the backpack, and I was disappointed in him being disappointed, and it was just a big ugly Cantina scene all around. I must admit that it's partially my fault for not realizing that not every kid will get as excited about school supplies as I used to.

Anyhow. I will put this away for now, and keep it well-preserved in plastic until he's ready for it and has the maturity to appreciate it. Who knows? In four years he'll be in high school!

Guilty Vice Review: "Most Haunted" vs. "Ghost Hunters"

It's been said before, but needs repeating, that we are living in the Golden Age of shows about people who like to look for ghosts and stuff using night-vision cameras. Well, okay, maybe it hasn't been said before, but it should be, because we have not one, but two such shows, "Ghost Hunters" and "Most Haunted", and man if I'm not addicted. Not only that, but I make my kids watch them with me, because if I learned anything from that Disney parade, it's that nightmares are important to a child, and they must never let go of them. Or maybe that was "dreams" that are important. Well whatev.

I honestly don't think one show is copying the other, though there are some similarities. They're both about crews of renegade "paranormal investigators" who visit a location where they're shown around by the owner/tour guide/scary night watchman with a hook for a hand, and are briefed on the various stories and creepy experiences people there have had. Then they set up their command centers, wire their cables, turn out the lights, and power on the night-vision cameras. Actually the turning-out-the-lights thing I don't understand. I would think that if you actually wanted to *see* a ghost, you would have better luck with the lights on, but the night-vision cameras add a freaky green glow to everything and give everyone spooky-looking eyes, and who am I to mess with the look of the genre? Oh, and they usually break into small groups and go off on their own to begin investigating. Have these people ever even seen a slasher movie?

"Most Haunted" is a product of British Television, so that alone gives it the legitimacy of a"Masterpiece Theatre" or "Mr. Bean". It's shown here in the U.S. on the Travel Channel, home of such shows as "Hot Babe Bikini Beaches of the Bahamas That You Should Book Tickets For Now!".

So that of course made me think that it was just a cheesy attempt to get people to go to Britain to visit quaint English inns with colorful histories. But it turns out the places they go are often ruins, so you couldn't stay there anyway. Or if they are places you *could* stay, you wouldn't want to. In fact, if you're considering a stay at some nine hundred-year-old B&B at Liverbury on Gimley or whatever, this show would probably change your mind. Because it always begins with the current owner or some one-eyed local historian telling our goth hostess Yvette Fielding something like "and people who have spent the night in the Blue Room often report seeing the screaming severed head of the first Lady Liverbury landing on their laps, then bouncing off the wall and rolling out the door." Ummm. No thanks. I'm actually one of those people that likes to get some rest when I'm on vacation.

So the show usually continues with Yvette and one of their psychics walking around the building (they give us handy on-screen blueprints of the place so you don't get disoriented, which I wish every show did - I'm looking at you, "Full House") while it's still daylight out and the psychic picks up whatever it is they pick up on. So the psychic walks around with Yvette saying stuff like, "I'm getting now an impression that people have seen a severed head bounce of this wall sometimes" and so you're thinking, "That's amazing! How'd he know that?" Think maybe the one-eyed local historian happened to mention something along those lines to him during a smoke break before the cameras started rolling? Or maybe he just looked it up on the interweb before he got there.

They give *some* token time to their resident skeptic guy. But his title is"parapsychologist", so I'm wondering just how truly skeptical someone who went to parapsychology college can be, and his job is to just set up a tape recorder and take the temperature anyway. Anyhow, the rest of the show consists of the rest of the crew walking around in the dark, filming insects and screaming "I see an orb!" The thing about night vision cameras? They make insects and dust glow in the dark. And the thing about old castles? They tend to have a lot of dust and insects. And so the cast is really really freaking themselves out the whole time, which is not too hard to imagine since they're walking around in the dark waiting for the"figure of a monk who has often been seen roaming the halls with a meat cleaver" or whatever to show at any time while the whole time they're dodging bats. As a result of being in this highly-agitated state, they swear *a lot*, so half the show's dialog is bleeped out. They'll bump into a wall or hear a door slam and it'll be like "Oh my[bleep]ing [bleep]son-of-a[bleep]!!" Now it's always hard to tell with the English when it's bleeped if this is full-on "The Osbournes" Level-One obscenity or if it's just innocent stuff like "Bloomin' 'ell! Ruddy bollocks!", but either way the bleeps at least add an element of realism. On a side note, I like the cast of "Most Haunted", and they're the kind of people I wouldn't mind hanging out with it they weren't such potty-mouths.

So the show usually ends with them looking at their footage and saying stuff like "well, it's hard to tell if that's an orb or a moth. And it's hard to tell if that door closed on its own or if that was the fact that there was a strong wind blowing all night, but this place is definitely haunted." And to their credit they'll usually have the psychic tell the severed head to go to the light before they pack up and go. Seems only right. Plus that way, if anyone tries to reproduce their results and they strike out, well, that's because the ghosts have all moved on.

Anyhow, my take on the show is that they're probably not going to win over any skeptics any time soon with their methods and conclusions, and they're probably setting British tourism back to plague years levels, but what I actually like about the show is that it *is* good history. Because amid all this bleeping and screaming and stuff they slip in little factoids like "this barn was used as a garrison for royalist troops during the civil war until parliamentarian forces cut off their arms and legs and impaled their bodies on stakes in that lovely rose garden behind the groundskeeper's cottage. Nasty business old chap."

Holy crap! If that place *isn't* haunted, it sure as [bleep] should be!

Grades:

• Realism: A
• Parapsychological Worthiness: D+
• Entertainment value: B+
• Outright spookiness: A
• Blatant Roto Rooter Product Placement: incomplete

It would be unfair to say that "Ghost Hunters" is sort of a techy American soap opera version of "Most Haunted", but if that helps you keep them straight, then go for it. Jason and Grant are these two Roto Rooter plumbers who started TAPS (which stands for The Atlantic Paranormal Society, and not that song the Army plays for people when they die, but that's a pretty spooky coincidence now that I think about it). It's produced by the Sci -Fi Channel. Yes, yes, I know what you're thinking, but for every fifteen movies they make about oversized mutant animals terrorizing backcountry people, they can still occasionally come up with gem like "Battlestar Galactica", so I'll cut them some slack.

Anyhow, Jason is the gruff sort of no-nonsense father figure of the group and Grant is a little more touchy-feely. And so they have this sort of good plumber/bad plumber dynamic going. Not that Jason is a bad plumber. I'm sure he's just fine or else Roto Rooter would have fired his butt long ago instead of letting him take off work any time he wants and borrow their equipment to hunt for spooks.

Why is it important to even mention this? "Ghost Hunters" concentrates a lot more on the dramatics and character development of the people on the show than"Most Haunted" does. I mean yeah, "Most Haunted" has "Kat the makeup lady who is easily freaked-out and sort of reminds me of Lulu from her 'To Sir With Love' days", but it doesn't go much beyond that. "Ghost Hunters" on the other hand will spend a couple of seasons fleshing out Jason and Grant's problems with Brian the slacker tech guy. So you get stuff like Jason saying, "we're all committed to this Brian! When we started TAPS, we were all in! That was the agreement Brian! Maybe you'd rather spend time with your wife and kid than spend time making extra sure you didn't forget to bring a mousepad along in the TAPS van?"

I'm probably missing the point, but Brian actually seems to be the only one with a life, or at least with his priorities straight, but I digress. The point is just that a lot of "Ghost Hunters" is staged, or at least put together to create drama where none would otherwise exist. As a result of all the editing there's a lot less swearing in "Ghost Hunters". Oh occasionally Grant will say, "what the frigg was that?" which may actually be the way he talks, though it tends to detract from the immediacy of the show, unlike"Most Haunted". I can't believe I'm saying this, but the show needs more bleeps.

So the episode usually starts out with Jason and Grant (and presumably their 24-hour on-duty camera man) on the job installing a sink and just sort of talking matter-of-factly about what a big clusterfrigg of a disappointment Brian has turned out to be when they just so happen to get a call from Donna their case manager back at TAPS headquarters saying they need to go check out a haunted house. So they pack up the TAPS vans, talk to the owner who describes the banging noise in the basement and the bouncing severed head or somesuch.

You know in the "A-Team" there would always be that scene where Mr. T would weld stuff to a vehicle? And the scene could be lengthened or shortened depending on how much time they had to kill? Well, with "Ghost Hunters" their welding scene involves lots of laying cable and taping cameras to walls and stuff. Then they turn out the lights. Again, not to harp on this, but I figure seeing ghosts is like washing dishes - yeah, you can do it in the dark, but you're probably going to miss some spots. Seems they'd have more luck, you know, *actually seeing things* with the lights on.

Now "GhostHunters" leaves"Most Haunted"in the dust when it comes to gadgetry. They've got the heat-vision cameras and the EMF detectors and all kinds of listening and recording devices and computers. Well okay, they have only got *one* heat vision camera, and only Jason and Grant get to use it. You'd think for all the free advertisement Roto Rooter is getting they'd spring for another couple of those bad boys for the rest of the team.

Occasionally the investigation will cut to Jason saying something like "in this investigation we were really curious about what Brian would do to frigg everything up again", you know, just to build the interpersonal drama.

Now here's another place where "Ghost Hunters" is better. Despite all the staging and editing, they actually do more than just make a token effort at skepticism. That banging in the cellar? Who better to find out that what you got here lady is a sump pump runoff pipe valve flange that isn't properly secured to your joists than Jason and Grant? Can't explain the strange EMF readings in the attic, but hey, at least the cellar noise has been debunked.

At some point Jason will say "let's wrap it up" and then you get the welding-in-reverse scene as they roll up the cables and take down the cameras. Jason tells the homeowner that they'll review their evidence and get back to them in a couple of days. Grant tells the homeowner to "get some sleep". Man, Grant's a helluva guy and I wouldn't mind hanging out with him if only he'd swear more.

Anyhow, then they review all their tapes and stuff. Usually this is a scene where Brian and some other tech guy listen to all their tapes and review their footage. Oh, here's another thing. If they see a moth on the night-vision camera, Brian is usually the first one to say "that ain't no orb. That''s a friggin' moth." The dude should move to England where at least he'd be appreciated.

Then Jason and Grant go back to the homeowner and say "well we figured out the noises in your basement were a plumbing problem, but we also recorded a voice (or an "EVP" as they call it) in the attic saying what sounds to us like 'GET OUT! I will kill you all! Suffer puny mortals!' and we're not sure what to make of that". Of course, when they play this sound on TV, all it sounds like to me is "blurgy blurgy gurgle blurgy gurgle mortals", but then that's why I'm not a professional paranormal investigator.

Then Grant says something comforting like "well, it hasn't killed you, so I think your house is safe. But just tell the entity to leave your house and it probably will." Then Jason and Grant drive off saying stuff to each other in the van like "Y'know, I think that went really well." Meanwhile the homeowner they just left is probably looking up realtors in the Yellow Pages as fast as she can before nightfall.

One the thing about "Ghost Hunters" that I should mention is that often they come up totally empty. I suppose this lends legitimacy to their investigations, but by the time you get to the end of one of the episodes only to hear them tell the homeowner "we got bubkis in our investigation of your house " it's too late to do anything about the fact that you've just totally wasted an hour of your time watching the show.

Grades

• Realism:C-
• Parapsychological Worthiness: A-
• Entertainment value: B+
• Outright spookiness: B-
• Blatant Roto Rooter Product Placement: A++
  

Lyrics to the "Hogans Heroes" theme song

Well okay, after I wrote these lyrics (when I was like twelve) I found out there actually are lyrics to the Hogan's Heroes theme song, but they're kind of lame. They're all about "husky men of war" and throwing punches and stuff. The hell? Are we even watching the same show?

Anyway, I had way too much free time as a child (or, as they would say today, I was underscheduled) and as a result I've ended up with a lot of theme songs stuck in my head. Which is fine. But if you're going to have a song stuck in your head, it should at least have words. So after a while, without even thinking about it, my brain started popping lyrics into the songs - it has something to do with the human's mind to see and create patterns where none exist or somesuch. One of my neurobiologist friends tried explaining it to me once, but I got distracted by a cloud that looked just like Washington crossing the Delaware on a Viking ship! Umm... oh yeah. So before I forget, here are the words to the Hogan's Heroes theme song:

Gonna watch that Hogan's Heroes show (Hogan's Heroes show)

Hogan's Heroes show, yeah Hogan's Heroes show.

Hogan's plane got shot down in France

Now

He's in a camp

It's

run by the Luftwaff-oh

Gonna watch that Hogan's Heroes show (Hogan's Heroes show)
Hogan's Heroes show, yeah Hogan's Heroes show.

Carter makes bombs

And

Newkirk's a crook

And

LeBeau's a cook

And

Kinch has a radio

Gonna watch that Hogan's Heroes show (Hogan's Heroes show)

Hogan's Heroes show, yeah Hogan's Heroes show.

Schultz is fat

But

Klink makes him work

That

Nazi's a jerk

Just

wait until Nur'mburg-oh

Weekly Fanboy Update

Today I got back to work on my life-sized Millenium Falcon in the back yard, because before you know it, rainy season will be here. Gotta admit, I'm a little behind schedule, and I probably should have waited before I test-fired the hyperdrive. As you can see, that set me back a bit.

I'll take blame where it's my fault, but that eBay guy is going to get some seriously neutral feedback if the armor shielding I ordered doesn't get here tomorrow!

Breaking Late News: My Kids Sweep Grammies...again

I hate to toot my own horn, and you'd think this would get old after three years in a row, but I gotta say I'm pretty proud.

Once again, my children picked up a couple of Grammies. This time for Best Rap or R&B performance for their work on the album "Kid's Bop 62". That's them performing the song "It's Hard Out Here for a Chimp".

You'll note that they sorta kinda had to change the words of the song a little just because a "Parental Advisory" sticker on a "Kid's Bop" album is the kiss of death. But I told them that even the Rolling Stones sold out their artistic integrity occasionally, like when Ed Sullivan made them sing "Let's Spend Some Time Together" instead of "Let's Spend the Night Together", and even Keith Richards sometimes had to choose between paying his parents' electric bill and "keeping it real", and so they took to it like true champs.

Cool Business Idea #1: Pets in Uniform

I love this site: http://www.petsinuniform.com/

They say that American craftsmanship and ingenuity is dead, but don't believe it, Mr. Defeatocrat! What better way to honor our men and women of the armed services than to dress up animals like them?

Of course by "armed services" I also mean our astronauts too, though I don't think they're usually actually armed per se, even though they really should be because hokey religions and ancient weapons are no match for a good blaster by your side, kid.

Where was I going with this?

Oh yeah. These people do seriously good work. Check this out:

Honestly, I don't know how they do it. They must have some pretty powerful animal tranquilizers on hand, because I tried to dress my battlecat Christie up like a World War Two Imperial Japanese paratrooper recently (just because), and I had barely started wrapping the puttees around her first leg when she totally freaked and scratched me up something fierce.

That was like three days ago and I haven't seen her since.


Lesson learned. Next time, let the professionals handle it.

Generic Detective Story#1: Aloha Can Also Mean Goodbye

Chapter One

Destination: Splash Island

I looked at the photograph.

I recognized the man immediately. I hadn't seen him since VE Day when we got our orders to ship out. He was brave SOB. He had once thrown himself on a grenade to save a platoon. Unfortunately it wasn't one of our platoons. I said he was brave. I didn't say he was too bright. And he was lucky too. The grenade was dud.

His name was Tex, and he came from Louisiana. We called him Tex because we already had a guy in the squad named Louise, which was confusing enough for a bunch of backwoods nineteen-year old kids from the middle of BF Nowhere America thrown into the middle of an old man's game up to our olive drabs in shell-shocked insanity in crazy far away places with exotic sounding names like "England".

Yeah, it was Tex alright. The years had been kind.

The stink from the street was rising up the four stories and into my window. I could tell my visitor was getting edgy. "Do you mind if I close your window?"

"Leave it open. The sound of the scum below drowns out the voice in my head demanding another drink. Just one drink. But one's too many and a million's not enough. When you wake up in a Greyhound station somewhere between where you last remember being and wherever the feverish ranting lizard part of your brain wanted to take you then you'll welcome whatever stench and racket you can get in your life. It's the filth that keeps me clean, and you better pray to God that you never find out yourself what I mean by that. You so much touch that window and I'll plug you so full of lead you'll be able to crap your own pencils."

"Mind if I smoke then?"

"What do I look like, an oncologist? Knock yourself out kid."

I didn't recognize the dame, but I could tell she had great gams, which I believe are legs, and I could tell she had Tex wrapped around her little finger just like that French girl twenty miles south or Normandy and a million lifetimes away. It's all fun and games until you find a Luger and a shortwave radio in the underwear drawer. Yeah, Tex hadn't changed at all. He had always been a sucker for a broad in a pretty hat.

She was no good. I could see her plan - a whirlwind romance, a quicky marriage, her name on the will, then it's "Bon Voyage Tex" and nothing but rich widowhood forever off into the horizon. I knew that if I didn't take this case Tex would end up as nothing more than a splashing sound someone playing shuffleboard on the deck of a cruiseship may think he might have heard in the middle of the night somewhere between Frisco and Pearl.

Me and Tex, we promised we'd keep in touch, but we never did. Well it looks like we were back in touch now. And Tex needed my help. I just hoped I wasn't too late.

I picked up the phone."Trixie, call my travel agent and pack your bag. It looks like you and me are going on a boat ride."

The Story of the Legend of the Exciting Lunchroom Adventures of Sammy Dishdog and Pancake Motherf&#$*r

As long as we're on the subject of pancakes, this is a true story:

Back in college there was this guy who worked every morning in the cafeteria as a cook. He made pancakes.

He made them well.

Not only that but he called himself, and in turn everyone else called him, "Pancake". He hung out with "Sammy Dishdog".

Anyhow, as the legend goes, Pancake had actually gone through the trouble of having his real name (which itself has faded into history) legally changed to "Pancake Motherf&#$*r". I'm not sure if they would actually let you do that, *but* that was indeed the name he went by, and legends usually have some basis in fact.

I graduated. Years passed. I moved on and met a nice girl, got married. And during a lull in one of our conversations I shared with her the "Story of the Legend of the Exciting Lunchroom Adventures of Sammy Dishdog and Pancake Motherf&#$*r". It was just one of my wacky college stories, which, I'm sure, my wife did not completely believe, as I have a tendency to blur reality with fantasy sometimes (shocking, I know).

More years passed. Leaves budded and dropped, snow fell, melted, ran down the sides of mountains, and fell again the next winter as clouds passed quickly overhead in time lapse and wall calendar pages quickly flew off into oblivion. You get the drill. Insert whatever visual you'd like for time passing quickly here.

Then one Monday in November, my wife went into work and asked her coworker how he'd spent his recently-ended Thanksgiving holiday. He replied, "I went to Santa Cruz for dinner with some friends. I sat next to this guy named Pancake. Can you believe that? Pancake. Nice guy though. Great chef too."

My wife replied, "Wait! Pancake Motherf&#$*r?!"

To which he replied, "That's the guy!"

We pretty much figured it had to be him.