Day 381: The Big Box Of Juke – 80s Edition

originally published January 15, 2013 Last night I fell asleep with a song in my head. This morning, the bridge of that song – essentially the same lyric and countermelody, repeated over and over again at a gradually increasing tempo – haunted the crusty innards of my brain. It’s a great song, but any tune […]

Day 380: The Balance Of Morality, And The Putz Who Lives Next Door

originally published January 14, 2013 So it seems I have a moral dilemma. I live next door to a man – we’ll call him Mr. Crotchrot. Late last summer, Mr. Crotchrot decided he didn’t care for the modest thicket of weeds growing between my garage and his fence. It hadn’t quite evolved to Degobah proportions, […]

Day 379: Spun-Off & Spun-Out (Part 1)

originally published January 13, 2013 Everyone loves a spinoff. It’s a bankable bet for a TV network: guide viewers of a successful franchise into a new world, either featuring a character from the original or some people who are – they swear – friends of someone from the original (usually aired in what they call […]

Day 378: I Have A Headache THIS BIG And It Has Murder Written All Over It!

originally published January 12, 2013 The year was 1982. Ozzy Osbourne was getting arrested for peeing on the Alamo, Tootsie was making us all fall in love with the idea of cross-dressing, and Bo and Luke Duke were written out of The Dukes of Hazzard and replaced by their cousins, Coy and Vance. It was […]

Day 377: My Story Pitches For The Upcoming Hungry Hungry Hippos Movie

originally published January 11, 2013 Back in October, a news item plopped onto my desk like a sack of wet rubber thimbles. Perhaps you remember it. Hasbro, the toy company behind Nerf, Play-Doh and Catchphrase, announced that their film division, which runs out of a tiny yet surprisingly whimsical windowless office on the Universal Pictures […]

Day 376: Quince-Brogels’s Lost Operas

originally published January 10, 2013 We are extremely fortunate to have acquired the private journals of Elias Quince-Brogels, the noted early 20th-century composer of such memorable operas as Tessitura di Spinach and Luogo’s Serenade To His Coffee Table. And while some of the journals allow us a tremendous insight into the man himself (it seems […]

Day 375: Circus Of The (Xerox) Stars

originally published January 9, 2013 The Apple Macintosh gets a lot of credit for breaking computer users out of their DOS-command prisons and allowing them to unleash their freedom within the first true point-and-click world. Surely the great Apple, pioneer of the way we listen to music, Facetime our nieces and ignore one another around […]

Day 374: Today’s Bizarrely Specific Horoscope – January 8

originally published January 8, 2013 Good morning, children of the star-spooged cosmos. How are you? It’s okay, it’s okay. Madame Chakra-Lubowitz knows how you are. It’s her job to know how you are. It’s also her job to tell you how you shall be. And you shall be well. Most of you, anyway. Some of […]

Day 373: Advanced Sex Ed, Taught By A Last-Minute Alternate Teacher The Day Before He Got Fired

originally published January 7, 2013 Alright everyone, settle down in your desks. You’re probably wondering why I’m here teaching you today. Well, Mr. Villanova booked the rest of the morning off for the Estonian Amputee Pride parade. No, those are all his own limbs; he’s just driving one of the floats, I think. Anyway, as […]

Day 372: The Beasts Hit The Toolshed

originally published January 6, 2013 That is a photo of my senior-ranking bulldog, Rufus. Rufus has a multitude of delightful quirks, like the unrestrained stomping of his front paws when he’s happy to see someone, or the way he conveniently eats his own vomit, saving me the need to clean up. But while I’ll proudly […]