Can You Handle My Random?

*** Two days ago I had a dream that I woke up early in the morning to find my brother chowing down on a taco pizza that somebody had delivered to our house by mistake. Then last night I dreamt that I was in my room and my father yelled from the front of the house “WHO ORDERED A FUCKING TACO PIZZA!!!” I’ve never had a recurring dream in my life, and yet I now have a recurring cameo by Taco Pizza. My subconscious is lame.

*** I got a ten dollar check from Superman for helping capture Lex Luthor (in a Pepsi promotion). No need to thank me citizens. I’m just doing my part.

*** Can we please stop talking about Pluto like we blew it up? All the news programs talk about our solar system shrinking like its apocalyptic, when it’s really just a battle of semantics.

*** Note to photographers. Winks are not meant to be photographed. This struck me when I came across the poster for Lindsay Lohan’s Just My Luck. Lindsay Lohan is a pretty girl, but there’s something very down syndrome about a wink frozen in time. Ironically, with only one eye open she looks just a bit cross-eyed. Not to mention winks in photos recall those unpleasant mornings when your eyes get crusted shut, and who wants to…. yuck. Beauty is based on symmetry, and winks are inherently unsymmetrical. So stop making pretty girls wink for photos.

Speaking of beautiful girls…

*** I relinquished a Man Card last week when I received the latest Maxim magazine in the mail. On the cover was desperate housewife and Maxim Top 100 champ (for two years running) Eva Longoria. And as I examined the scantily clad, delicately air brushed frame of this latest It Girl I realized… there’s just nothing there for me. Now, I realize, empirically, Eva Longoria is a very attractive woman, but there is zero attraction for me. I think it’s cause there’s something very Beauty Queen about her look, very processed and glossy, that is antithetical to my particular tastes. I like beauty without the effort, and it’s clear that Longoria has to work very hard to look like she does on the cover of Maxim.

*** Though I often have little interest in what they’re talking about, I find myself watching a great deal of G4 lately, especially Attack of the Show and X-Play. For those who like wry, cynical, sarcastic humor, these shows have just about the highest concentration you’re going to find -- think House for the First-Person Shooter set. Sure they’re shows about video games, but watching somebody glibly eviscerate a bad video game is just as entertaining as watching somebody else glibly eviscerate a bad movie. Plus, the channel had the good taste to land the syndication rights to Arrested Development; clearly they’re a lot more intelligent than we might give them credit for.

*** This is really for only three or four people, but hopefully they’ll appreciate it. We have a young man on our studio crew who we’re all very fond of, and he has a tendency to do things when he thinks people aren’t looking -- like dance, for example. It’s a source of great amusement for us from time to time. However, never more so than last week when his dancing mixed with the song that was currently occupying my subconscious: Justin Timberlake’s "SexyBack" Suddenly, I was seeing our young Alex transplanted into Timberlake’s uber-sweaty, black and white music video, strutting down the hallways of a swank hotel to Timbaland’s finely crafted beats. I then proceeded to laugh nearly to the point of incontinence. For those who know Alex -- or A.Brown, as his peeps refer to him -- go check out Timberlake’s video, then picture Alex as the star, especially during the dancing and pimp-walkin' cuts. If that doesn’t make you laugh -- well, you should probably let me know so I can double my therapy sessions.

*** My favorite talk show personality, Ed Schultz, recently played a highly comical ditty by comic Ed Schwartz called "Clinton Got a Blowjob". The song itself is hilarious and worth checking out, but my interest in it had little to do with the tune and more with the censors. Clearly, blowjob can’t go out on the airwaves in the middle of the afternoon, but what I found amazing wasn’t the fact that it was bleeped, but how it was bleeped. Blowjob is a unique bit of profanity in that it is constructed from two innocuous words that are only offensive when slammed together. Usually compound vulgarities have one word definitively more offensive than the other: cocksucker, motherfucker, God damnit. Not so with blowjob. For the most part you can get away with saying either in casual conversation without anybody passing out in their chairs, but mashed up together… whole other story. So, which of these harmless words do we bleep? The case could be made for either. Do the censors change it up? Throw a little of their own artistic flair into things? Perhaps we bleep "blow" in the first verse, "job" in the second? Maybe throw in a full word bleep now and again? If you think this whole thing is a bit silly, consider that somewhere, in some board room at the FCC, this exact conversation took place. Ha. Prudes are funny, especially when it comes to language.

Speaking of language…

*** On the same drive where I was introduced to “Clinton Got a Blowjob” I also came across an advertising slogan that I had heard many a time, but had never actually listened to. “With a name like Smuckers, it must be good.” Really? "Smuckers?" That’s a name that -- by the mere sound of it -- fills one with a confidence of quality? I can think of many names that would instill more confidence in quality than "Smuckers." I mean, "Smuckers" is no Jessica-Alba-Naked-On-My-Futon. With a name like that, I could say with nearly 100% confidence that it must be good. But Smuckers? If we break that down to its meaning, Smuckers are people who Smuck. That doesn’t necessarily sound like something I’d want to be a part of. In fact, it sounds like something I’d warn strangers of if I saw it on the street. “Hey, watch your step, man. Somebody smucked over there.” And nothing ruins your day like stepping in a big puddle of smuck.