This week on the Friday PopCast, I share my story of sleep deprivation, exhaustion, maddening crowds, and great financial loss. That's right, this year for the first time ever I tried to do my Christmas shopping early. I was up and going bright and early Thursday morning, spending my groggy morning hours searching for bargains amongst the maddened throng.
More discussion and sarcasm available on the PopCast, as always.
7. "How I Met Your Mother," "The Office," and "30 Rock."
8. My new gig as a national NFL writer at Examiner.com.
9. That I got to see George Carlin before he passed away. 10. That my beloved Fantasy Football team, the Boneville Knights, is once again playoff-bound. 11. The brief but tasty return of Taco flavored Doritos.
12. Tuna sandwiches on toast, with the chips crunched up on the sandwich.
13. Gregory McDonald's "Fletch" series of books. And yes, the movies too. Chevy Chase was funny once.
14. Reruns of "Frasier."
15. Woot.
16. "Life," "Life on Mars," and "Burn Notice."
17. The new James Bond movies.
18. Cable networks that show "Clerks" and "Clerks 2" back-to-back.
19. The Moog synth, drum solos, and other musical things it seems like only I get into.
20. That working in TV seems to be actually enjoyable this time.
21. The new wave of comic book movies that do not suck. I figured I should get this one in before that "Punisher: War Zone" movie comes out, because my hopes ain't too good for that one.
22. The Onion.
23. The NFL, the Big 12, and East Texas High School Football.
24. Chick-Fil-A, which I ate every football Friday night for twelve weeks straight and never got tired of.
25. That I'm so happy these days I don't even need a number twenty-five.
26. People who watch me on TV and get my jokes.
27. The people who read this blog, especially those who leave comments.
To begin with, I think a large part of our problem in society is that we're raised to not be able to tell the difference in the good guys and the bad guys. This cocaine felon is a fine illustration of that. With a name like he got, his career was pretty much assured.
Also, my NFL picks are up for the week, which you can find here at my Examiner.com page. Over there, I also explore Beyonce becoming Sasha Fierce, and wonder what my life would be like if I suddenly became Blain Thunderwood. Even if you're not a sports fan, check it out for the gratuitous pop culture references.
Anyway, my question of the day is a simple one. Is there someone from your youth, an actor or musician perhaps, that you still follow?
As background, The Fixx's "Saved By Zero" is being used ad nauseum on a commercial for something. It's not really good marketing because a) I don't know what the product is, and b) it sounds like a cover by some awful barbershop quartet. In any case, it reminds me of a friend of mine I used to work with who was just absolutely crazy for the Fixx. Bear in mind I worked with this guy around 2000, by the way. He had pretty much everything they had ever done, either solo or as a group.
It's strange the way certain things we pick up in our youth continues to be important to us. I don't have to have the new album from Prince, I appreciate the music but I'm not in a rush to hear the new stuff. I'm more entertained by the reality shows of some bands like Poison than I am in their music. I haven't needed to pick up an album by Night Ranger or Mr. Mister in a couple of decades.
But I'm still a big fan of Michael Penn. I remember picking up his first album and being blown away, and as long as he keeps putting them out, I'll keeping buying them no matter where I have to look. I've still got a soft spot in my heart for Tony Carey, and Colin Hay from Men At Work. I've got a friend who's still a huge fan of Def Leppard, and has probably seen them perform more than their mothers. A weatherman friend of mine has almost uncanny knowledge of Duran Duran from "Girls on Film" right up to whatever they recorded this morning.
It's almost quaint what we choose to hang on to, sometimes. Is there an entertainer you still have that soft spot for?
This week on the Friday PopCast, the horror story that is the modern mall. There's no better way to discern the passage of time than by checking out how time has twisted that most honored of 80's locations.
More discussion and sarcasm available on the PopCast, as always.
A large part of my job as a television schmuck is doing nothing.
That sounds bad. And lazy. And not at all high-paying. Luckily, it's only one of those things.
In my duties as half of the World's Best Sports Department(tm), we cover about six thousand square miles of East Texas on a daily basis. On any given day, I could be driving for over an hour in any direction, then turning around and heading back the other way to get my stories turned for the news. Simply put, I spend a large amount of time just trying to get somewhere and then getting back.
To make matters even less productive, a lot of the time when I get to my destination I have to wait for some kind of practice to be over, or for some game to start. Since I'm travelling constantly, it seems like I'm always either late to arrive or ridiculously early. My days seem to be filled with large periods of either panic or idle daydreaming.
I went to Longview, Texas yesterday as one of my stops. It was in the middle of a 150 mile three-story day for me. Longview was my middle stop. We wanted to feature them since their football team is in the playoffs and loaded like a nice baked potato. I made my first stop in the morning a half hour south of town, then turned and went north almost 60 miles to get to Longview for their noon practice.
So I am, in the colloquial sense, hauling ass to get there so I don't miss the practice. This duty is made more difficult by my vehicle, the venerable sports Van of Death(tm). The VoD is decked out with NASCAR-style logos which make it painfully obvious to anyone and everyone when you're speeding, and which TV station to call and complain when you pass Ethel's 1986 Oldsmobehemoth because she's driving ten miles an hour under the speed limit and kickoff is in ten minutes.
Of course, the VoD also is possessed by an angry poltergeist and has tried to murder me on more than one occasion, so I'm not really cool with speeding anyway. The VoD and I have a working agreement now (I wash it once a month, it doesn't make the brakes go out in traffic again), but I don't want to push it.
Anyway, I arrive in Longview late for the practice, so I know I need to get down there in a hurry. They're practicing on their main field at the stadium, which is a magnificent cathedral of football. It seats more than 9000, has a half-million dollar video replay board, and artificial turf.
It's also locked.
Apparently if you don't keep those stadiums locked up, people will sneak in and steal them and put them up in their back yards. Who knew?
I can hear the team working down below as I check the gates. This thing is sealed tighter than a correctional facility, and I'm just about to miss my story because I can't get in. The back gate into the stadium is on the other side of the school and I'm sure by the time I get the gear back to the van and get around to the back side of the campus practice will be over and the players will have scattered.
Time is starting to get tight, and still I'm walking around the top bowl of the stadium looking for a weak point like Clint Eastwood in "Escape From Alcatraz." Back up near the seating area, I find a spot where the wall is shoulder height. I knew then I only had one choice.
I took my camera and tripod and gently dropped them over the top of the wall, just to make sure the decision was out of my hands. There's no going back once you've lobbed twenty grand worth of equipment out of your grasp.
So here I am, a 38 year-old professional, scaling a wall and breaking into a high school stadium in broad daylight. Mild scrapes and bruises aside, I got my interviews, limped back off to the VoD and headed on up the road to my next stop.
Remember kids, television isn't always glamorous. Sometimes, there's a bit of breaking and entering involved. Be prepared.
I know a lot of people who read my musings at ReidAboutIt.com are also writers, musicians, office comedians, and other folks who create. Today, I'd like to know where it all comes from.
November is National Novel Writing Month. The goal is to write a Novel in one month, and to produce fifty thousand words in the thirty days of November.
As a writer, I have participated in NaNoWriMo a couple of times before. My annual committment to NaNoWriMo is somewhere around my annual commitment to giving up Cokes. My iron resolve to pour out fifty thousand words usually lasts somewhere between a few weeks and a few hours. In my two years trying to follow NaNoWriMo, I've produced about 1200 words, two limericks, and a haiku.
Novel writing time! Why can't I pay attention? I mean...ooh! Shiny!
For some reason it just doesn't work for me. I have written a lot of words in a short time before, but that's usually after inspiration hits. When I try and schedule some creative time, I usually sit down and come up as empty as Clint Howard's trophy case.
Inspiration is a cruel mistress. In fact, quite often when I am searching for inspiration I wind up on the internet searching for cruel mistresses instead, but that's a whole other story.
Sometimes I wonder what happens the day you go to create, and there's nothing there. Am I just going to run out of ideas, like the guys who write "Heroes"?
I fear I've fallen prey to the lure of internet identity. I am now signing up for pretty much anything I see. I'm a perfect drone for advertising and social networking, so I'm offering myself up to you.
At this point I'm on MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, Digg...I estimate right now about 60% of my human interaction comes through the internet. Another 12% comes in the drive-through lanes at fast food joints.
If you use Twitter, the short-attention span friend stalker ("Reid is blogging," "Reid is sleeping," "Reid is scratching himself"), feel free to add me at reidaboutit, which you can find here. With Twitter, you can follow all sorts of quasi-interesting information about people you sort of know.
There's Facebook, which began as a way for people in college to contact each other. Apparently just spending most of their time either in class with each other or in a drunken stupor with each other wasn't enough. When I worked for colleges, we would check in on our athletes by looking at their Facebook accounts. If you've gone somewhere and done something publicly stupid in the last three years, chances are there's pictures of it somewhere on Facebook.
So you won't have to search for mine, here's a picture of me from my younger, more ridiculously-haired days.
There's also MySpace, which seems to be skewing older these days as the kids move to Facebook. MySpace gives you more room to customize your profile. You can add songs, backgrounds, applications, and all sorts of things that make your profile unreadable and annoying. You want your site to reflect your love of the New Kids on the Block? Done. You like dark red writing on a black background? Have at it, you little Goth freak. You want a page that looks like Wild Kingdom exploded? Here you go. Don't stare at it too hard, or you'll go blind.
I have a MySpace account, available here. Feel free to add me there, to.
Eventually, I'll attain a totally social nature while never leaving my house.
After many moons, the Friday PopCast finally returns.
This week it's the campaign's-end edition of the PopCast, with the final look at campaigns, acceptance speeches, virtual reporters, and the biggest tragedy of Thursday.
More discussion and sarcasm available on the PopCast, as always.
2) Miss Fox is quite a thespian, as I've pointed out before.
3) This movie could really lead to more attention paid to the plight of Amazons.
4) It's a public service for teenage boys who don't have Cinemax.
5) I could use the hits, and "Megan Fox As Wonder Woman" seems to be a catchphrase that pull more webhits than "Sarah Palin Naked" and "Low Carb Recipes For Penis Enlargement" put together.
So I guess I should assume that at no point in this man's life, both personal and professional, none of his friends or colleagues has ever come up to him and said "Hey Dave...you know, you kind of look like Hitler."
(By the way, this is as close as I am ever going to come to political humor. You want political humor, go check out Will Durst.)
The basic dark hair and mustache look is pretty much universally equated with Hitler. Think about that for a minute. Hitler may be the most infamous person in history, but even so, he may have the most famous look in history.
There's not too many people that have that instant recognition. You can't say somebody looks like Benito Mussolini, or Abraham Lincoln, or David Hasselhoff, and instantly have everyone know what you're talking about.
You say "That guy looked like Hitler," and someone that looks like this pops into your mind.
With the Presidential election coming up today, I was a bit confused as to who to vote for. Luckily, last week on Saturday Night Live, Coldplay's Chris Whozits yelled "Barack Obama" into his mike at the end of their song.
I was torn between the candidates, but that pushed me over the edge. The mere mention of his name in a unexpected, blurted rush was enough to make my decision. So what if the guy is British, and named his kid "Apple," or "Papaya," or "Fruitcup" or something like that? He obviously knows what he's doing, even if he doesn't get to vote.
Anyway, I certainly have no problem with people who support one candidate or the other. It always amuses me when people complain because entertainers express their views.
This assumption that people who entertain us for a living shouldn't express their opinions is a bit goofy. We're all supposed to be politically active, right? People love to put up yard signs, and bumper stickers, and send me political "flair" on Facebook.
By the way, to those of you sending me a campaign button on Facebook, there's no better way to remind me that although we may have gone to school together, we do not and have never had much in common.
Why shouldn't entertainers have the same ability to publicly address the issues as everyone else? Should we solely rely on political commentators? Please. Here's a newsflash, Limbaugh, Hannity, and Olbermann are not political commentators, folks. They're just entertainers who only work one side of the room. No matter how right you may think their opinions are, if they didn't draw ratings and sponsors, they'd be off the air faster than "The Ex List."
Besides, if they're such great Americans, why are they spending all of their time complaining about what's wrong with the country and not running for office to actually change it?
Anyway, it doesn't bother me. People speaking out for change even though it might be unpopular is a long tradition that stretches back to Muhammad Ali, Bob Dylan, and Jesus Christ. If Bruce Springsteen or Hank Williams Jr. wants to put up a yard sign, more power to them. If I disagree, I'll just listen to the songs and not the conversation.
I enjoy being entertained. I don't look at entertainers and automatically assume they think like I do, and agree with me on everything.
Matthew McConaughey looks like he doesn't do anything but smoke weed and do ab crunches. I doubt we have anything in common if we were to sit down, take off our shirts, and discuss the issues.
As for my beliefs, I don't talk politics here because this is primarily a humor site. If you need me to tell you what to do, you're already too seriously fucked up for me to help.
My futile hope is that after the election, things will calm down. I beg of you, whatever your political affiliation, whoever the winner is, throw your support behind that person come Wednesday morning. If your candidate lost and you can't help being bitter, shut the Hell up. Don't deny candy to kids who support Obama . Don't mail dogcrap to McCain supporters.
Remember, it's not American to be an asshole, no matter what the politics are.
This week on the Friday PopCast, I share my story of sleep deprivation, exhaustion, maddening crowds, and great financial loss. That's right, this year for the first time ever I tried to do my Christmas shopping early. I was up and going bright and early Thursday morning, spending my groggy morning hours searching for bargains amongst the maddened throng.
