The fourth most popular beer at our house is none other than Pabst Blue Ribbon, named best beer at the 1878 Paris World's Fair. That's not why we buy it, though - we get it because occasionally it's the cheapest thing at Von's around the corner from our house.This brings up an interesting question: whatever happened to the Pabst that didn't win the Blue Ribbon? I have, on occasion, seen Pabst Regular at Vons, sitting lonely next to PBR in the fridge, selling for a somewhat reduced price to compliment its somewhat reduced taste.
But it's nowhere near as common. And probably for good reason, for if one can purchase the Blue Ribbon winner, why settle for Pabst Runner-Up? That's assuming it even placed; maybe the copper-can-with-red-writing wonder can only be referred to as Pabst Also-Ran. Or Pabst Consolation Prize. Or Pabst Participant, which is really the most insulting of all self-esteem building ribbons, that green one you get just for showing up, even if you fall down on the first hundred yards of the 2K race and your mommy has to carry you back to the car. I guess the only thing more demeaning would be Pabst Short Bus.
Apparently Pabst Blue Ribbon used to be a pretty quality beer… at least according to my dad and other people who lived in the 1800's. Still, PSB must suffer from the worst case of interior-brother envy since Milwaukee's Middle-of-the-Pack.
11/18/05
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10 Great Pranks - 3/17/10
Alright, it's that time of year again, when some vague Pagan psuedo-holiday inspires people around the world to take to the internet with the question: how can I F my friends up terribly this April 1st? Well, if you haven't already thought of them, and if you're not still in jail after last year's misguided attempt, here are 10 Great Pranks You Can Try This April Fool's Day.
#10 - The Garbage Can Full of Dirty Water Leaning Against the Door
It's pretty much what it sounds like - you fill a garbage bin (the bigger the better) full of filthy water (and/or urine) and lean it up against the outside of someone's dorm room or bedroom door. When they open their door (it only works for doors opening into the room), they get 30 gallons of sludgy liquid all over their feet/carpet. Some freshmen attempted to do this to me in my old fraternity days, but fortunately for them their balance was off, and the can tipped back up and righted itself in the middle of the night.Clean-up Factor: 4; Hilarity Factor: 3
#9 - The Identical Computer Desktop Background
We stuck this in the April Fool's Day video we made for Break a couple years ago. The video quickly spiraled out control, of course.Step 1) Get onto someone's computer when they're not around and screen-capture their desktop.
Step 2) Save this image onto their computer somewhere they won't find it, then set this image as their desktop background.
Step 3) They won't notice the difference at first, because everything will look like it did before. That is, until they start trying to move icons around on their desktop and find that there's a non-movable duplicate-image stuck beneath it (part of the background), that can't be altered or deleted no matter how much they try. Watch their head explode as they try to figure out what the hell's wrong with their computer. My friend Sean did this to his friend Kristian, who spent an hour on the phone with tech support until Sean finally told him what the problem with his computer was. Clean-up Factor: 5; Hilarity Factor: 2
#8 - The Upper Decker, or the Dry Dock
Greg claims this to be the perfect revenge when you're at someone's party and they're mean to you. Simply use their bathroom and let one loose, not in the regular toilet bowl, but in the toilet tank up back (the Upper Deck). Just remove the lid, make your deposit, replace the lid, and bolt... your housewarming present will never get flushed down, and will continue to stink and not be found until a plumber discovers it in 4-6 weeks. See, I told you still think poop-jokes are funny.A variation is this is the Dry Dock, which is achieved by disconnecting the water supply to the toilet bowl, then pinching a loaf directly onto the porcelain of the now-empty bowl. My brothers and I almost did this on the last day of a cruise to avenge ourselves on the unfriendly house staff, but eventually decided the turd we left was unconstitutional. That is, it was so horrendously and unfairly foul that it actually violated the Constitution, on the basis of being cruel and unusual punishment. Too cruel to even inflict on someone who'd confiscated a quarter of our smuggled Vodka supply.
Clean-up Factor: 6/1; Hilarity Factor: 6
#7 - The Chicken Shower
I've never heard of anyone actually doing this, but apparently if you unscrew a showerhead and cram in a couple of chicken bouillon cubes, the next person in there will get a nice shower of chicken broth. Yummy. A variation involves cramming the showerhead with red Kool-Aid powder, which tends to stain.Clean-up Factor: 3; Hilarity Factor: 6
#6 - The Tire Removal From a Parked Car
Self-explanatory. One of Greg's friends says they did this to some guy in college, then sent him on a treasure hunt to find his tires. Special note: Adding a treasure hunt to the end of any prank to make the person find whatever it is that's missing automatically adds two Hilarity Points.Clean-up Factor: 6; Hilarity Factor: 7
#5 - The "Tons-of-Messy-Shit-in-Somebody's-Room"
My roommate Gabe did this to fellow roommate Sam with packing peanuts when he left for winter break a couple years ago, and another friend Pat had his room coated with flower when he went away for a weekend once in college. Really anything messy can work - other suggestions might include sand, cereal, or sugar (more expensive, but well worth it for the ensuing ant-problem).Clean-up Factor: 9; Hilarity Factor: 4
#4 - The Fish Hunt
If someone hadn't squealed this one and ruined it, we would have pulled this off for our freshman prank on the fraternity in college. You hide a raw fish (or something else that will rot) in every guy's room in the house, preferably over spring break. So when they return, there's a rotting fish somewhere in their room… if they can find it. A friend Jim said he once carried out a variation of this involving shellfish, at least one of which was screwed into a computer tower, never to be found, even to this day.Clean-up Factor: 7; Hilarity Factor: 8
#3 - The Christmas Tree Sale
A variation on the "tons-of-messy-shit-in-somebody's-room" is the "cram-somebody's-room-full-of-shit". Jim and a few buddies once crammed a guy's room full of eighteen dead Christmas trees, which not only filled the room but also dropped roughly 6,000,000,000 dead pine needles all over the place. A legendary version of this I heard about took place at MIT where a couple guys disassembled a car over spring break and reassembled it in a guys' 5th floor fraternity room. The car even ran - it just couldn't get out the door.Clean-up Factor: 9; Hilarity Factor: 8
#2 - The Ass-on-Stuff Photo Montage
An older guy in college did this as his freshman prank a couple year before I got there. Basically, he took pictures of himself putting his ass on different pieces of other guys' property, such as keyboards, hats, and tooth brushes, then mailed them the pictures... after a couple weeks of them using the stuff had gone by. Imagine using your toothbrush for two weeks and then receiving a back-dated photo of some dude putting his ass on it.Clean-up Factor: NA; Hilarity Factor: 9
#1 - The Pig Race
In what I think is the greatest prank I've ever heard, Greg's Dad once brought two 200-lb pigs into his high school, coated them in Vaseline, painted a big racing number "1" on the side of one pig, and a big number "3" on the other. Then he let the panicked pigs loose during lunch. You can image in the chaos that ensued. When the janitors finally caught the pigs (not an easy task, considering the Vaseline), then they spent the next two days scouring the school... looking for Pig #2.Clean-up Factor: 10; Hilarity Factor: 10
Any coincidence that half of these are frat-related?
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5 Saints Who Had Absolutely Nothing To Do With What They're Known For - 3/15/10
St. Patrick
Once upon a time, there was a Irish Christian missionary named Patrick. Actually, he wasn't even originally from Ireland - St. Patrick was born in Britain and got kidnapped over to Ireland by a bunch of raiders. But St. Peter grew to like it there in Ireland, and later did a lot of dedicated work spreading the Christian faith there, baptizing and converting people like crazy until his death in 440 A.D.
So where do the green beer and pinching come in?
Revered highly in Irish Catholicism, St. Patrick eventually became the patron saint of the Ireland, and so of course an annual feast began to be held on the day of his death, reportedly March 17th. And as any good Catholic knows, on a feast day one should "attend Mass, and abstain from those works and affairs which hinder the worship to be rendered to God, the joy proper to the Lord's day, or the suitable relaxation of mind and body."
Still not seeing where the Jamison and body shots off of green-clad midgets got introduced.
The de-evolution of Catholic holy day to a secular "Pretend You're Irish Day" took quite a long time, with afternoon family time eventually turning into celebrations turning into parades turning into partying turning into dyeing rivers green. Considering that pubs in Ireland couldn't even be open on Green Day until the 1970's, St. Paddy's Day also may have fallen victim to a bit of "Holiday telephone", in which people in other countries wisely reasoned: "Hey, what should we do on Saint Patrick's Day? Beats me, who's Saint Patrick? Some Irish guy. Oh, OK, so what do they do in Ireland? They drink. Hey, I like to drink! Let's drink!"
The only think I can even remotely connect is that it's rumored St. Patrick once used the three-leafed shamrock to describe the Christian Trinity, but even that is just a rumor, and I'm not sure "Father, Son, Holy Spirit" quite fits the translation into "three-leafed pasty on a drunken stripper's boobs".
Undoubtedly, there are places where people actually celebrate St. Patrick's Day piously, by heading to church and thanking God for the spread of Irish Catholicism. But there are probably more places where people just flood into the streets, get shit-hammered, and make out in public.
St. Patrick would be so proud.
St. Peter
St. Peter is a pretty important dude in the Bible. He was there for the walking on water, the Last Supper, and even for the sad part where he denies Jesus three times before going on to be a key figure in building the early church. But it's one little line in Matthew 16:9, in which Peter is mentioned as the "keeper of the keys of the kingdom of heaven" which sets St. Pete up for the random role for which he is known by so many today: the Doorman of the Pearly Gates.
Is there a verse in the Bible anywhere that says "at at the Entrance to the Ever-After, St. Peter will stand with a clip-board and a "naughty or nice" list"? Did Peter, before he was a fisherman, used to work the door at the Jerusalam Saloon, and Jesus wanted to make use of his abilities? OK, he's got the keys to heaven, but does that make him the bouncer? According to about a zillion cartoonists, the answer is yes.
St. Peter is one of the most revered saints in Christian tradition. I supposed we should be thankful that what he's remembered for today has at least something to do with God.
St. Valentine...
...may not even have been a real guy. That is to say, there WAS a Saint Valentine, but absolutely nothing is known about him except that he was one of a bunch of dudes that Pope Gelasius I decided to honor in 496 A.D. as those "... whose names are justly reverenced among men, but whose acts are known only to God." Why this guy Valentine got picked to have his name represent the holy bunch and not Saint "Some Other Dude Who Was Martyred Around 496", nobody knows.
But what about the story in the movie "Valentine's Day" about a priest named Valentine who married young men to their lovers in secret when it was forbidden by the emperor? Or the priest named Valentine who sent a letter reading "From Your Valentine" to his lover from prison? Well, there were lots of priests named Valentine - it wasn't all that uncommon a name back in the day. As far as for the historic confirmation or for any of these legends... well, isn't much. Just some evidence that shows that the first mentions of a holiday about love being associated with any holy guys named Valentine actually popped up around 1600, in the writings of Chauser.
And so, it's possible there once was a love-loving holy guy named Valentine, who started this holiday before all historical facts about him were lost forever.. But it's more likely that Chauser (and another 600 years later, Hallmark) just made it all up, after deciding one day that there needed to be a holiday about love.
St. Elmo
Alright, see if you can make sense of this one.
Saint Erasmus of Formiae was a guy who lived in Europe around 250 A.D., wandered around preaching the gospel, was captured and tortured numberous times for doing this, and was finally killed for refusing to stop preaching. Legend has it he once was giving a sermon when lightning struck the ground nearby, whereupon St. Erasmus (or St. Ermo for short) just kept right on preaching, which apparently incipiated his becoming the patron saint of sailors, who I guess also have to keep doing their jobs when lightening strikes shit right around them.
Sailors liked St. Ermo so much (though they mispronounced his name St. Elmo) that they named the sailing-phenomenon of electrical charges causing the tops of ship masts to glow after him, ere go, "St. Elmo's fire". 1500 years later, this phenomenon was mentioned in a line in an Emilio Estevez movie, became the title and chart-topping music number of said movie, and now nobody can hear the phrase "St. Elmo" without thinking of the lyrics
"I can see a new horizon
Underneath the blazin' sky!"
I'll be where the eagle's
Flyin' higher and higher
in John Parr's awesome, synthed '80's voice.
And we're supposed to be thinking of Christian martyrom. Not even Saint Cusack, patron saint of predicting the plots of cheesy '80's movies, could have seen that one coming.
St. Nicholas
St. Nicholas of Myra was a Christian bishop born around 270 A.D. in what is now Turkey. The patron saint of merchants, archers, thieves, prostitutes, and children, and students, St. Nick did a lot of noble, typical Christian stuff before his death in 346, at which point it was decided he would be a saint.
Along with just being a generally pious guy, St. Nicholas also had the reputation as a "secret gift-giver", leaving coins (according to legend) in the shoes of random people who left them out. It shouldn't be any wonder, then, that St. Nicholas would go onto the inspiration of the widely celebrated holiday of, you guessed it...
December 6th, St. Nick's Day.
Wait, what?
That's right. St. Nicholas had nothing to do with Christmas, except that the original guy was a Christian. Nothing to do, that is, until people decided they needed a bigger, more commercial way to celebrate Christmas (which wasn't even an American Federal Holiday until 1870), went looking for unrelated traditions they could poach, made St. Nicholas fatter and put him in a flying sleigh, changed his name to Santa Claus and his shoes into stockings, and stuck him on December 25th.
So when you think of St. Nick and immediately picture a fat guy in a red suit crawling around on your roof, remember that what you're actually picturing is an obese, snow-dwelling adaptation of an entirely different, shoe-raiding holiday character loosely based on some munificent Turkish bishop.
Honorable mentions...
...go to St. Louis, St. Paul, and St. Bernard, who are now known as two cities and a dog, respectively.|
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Monster-Epic Ballads - 3/13/10
I'm obsessed with Monster Ballads right now. As I write this I'm listening to Every Rose Has Its Thorn, a classic Monster Ballad. I'm even obsessed with the term Monster Ballad - I just want to say it a bunch of times in a row. But I’ll refrain, because I’m running a classy show here.
Now, there are some different interpretations of what exactly constitutes a “Monster Ballad,” and I’m sure I’ll get a few angry comments from people who disagree (this IS the internet after all), but what follows is my personally accepted definition. The Monster Ballad, also known as the Power Ballad, was a genre of rock song spawned in the age of hard-rocking Hair Bands (a term I like almost much as Monster Ballad) like Poison, Def Leopard and Journey. Every once in a while, because their record company forced them to, or because they were attempting to make a Top-40 hit, bands like these would mix things up a bit and do a slower song about more sentimental subjects than their usual topics of hedonism and drug-use. Monster Ballads usually contain several of the following characteristics:
The best part about Monster Ballads is that occasionally, the Hair Band involves becomes convinced that it's actually doing something meaningful. And that's when things turn awesome. Carried away by its own histrionic momentum, the song gets longer and longer, the shift between soft-beginning and hard-rocking chorus becomes more pronounced, and the lyrics start to stray into subjects utterly inappropriate for Hair Bands like true love, the meaning of life, and the nature of man. The greatest part is that the Hair Bands have no idea that they've gone too far; they're just so caught up in the epic-ness of their Monster Ballad.
Hair Bands are not the only ones guilty of songs like this. Other bands can go overboard as well, with the same result. And it's these songs I'm especially obsessed with right now. So much so, that I'm declaring a new genre: The Monster-Epic.
Monster-Epics are much like Monster Ballads, except they go a little further:
Based on these characteristics, I've gone ahead and compiled a list of the top ten Monster Epics I know of, all of which have been playing on my computer while I write this. If possible, I highly recommend you download these songs yourself and listen to them as you read about each one. You will be weeping and laughing simultaneously.
#10 - REO Speedwagon - Keep On Loving You
Good song, a little short, and never rocks quite as hard as some of the others... And of course, REO Speedwagon isn't really a heavy-metal band. But c'mon. Just look at that hair.
#9 - The Heights - How Do You Talk To An Angel?
This songs gains a lot of points for having a saxophone in it. Gotta love the choir at the end.
#8 - Poison - Every Rose Has Its Thorn
The first thing you hear in this song is Bret Michaels sighing. Great start. And through the entire thing, you kind of feel like he might break into tears at any moment. If only Every Rose could get past its slow, swaggering pace and rock out in a couple places, it could really be a contender.
#7 - Firehouse - Love of a Lifetime
Only Firehouse could sing the clichéd lyrics "I've Finally Found the Love... of a Lifetime" and really mean it.
#6 - Poison - Something to Believe In
Now we're really starting to rock, yet Poison still remembered to put the slow piano opening at the beginning. Ridiculously slow. Something to Believe In also does the great Monster Epic thing where it dies out to piano again at the end, as if to suggest that a band like Poison were capable of doing something poetic like "coming full-circle."
#5 - Guns 'N Roses - November Rain
November Rain makes it halfway up this list for sheer length, clocking in at a marathon eight minutes, fifty-seven seconds. I heard they had to wrestle Slash's guitar away from him just to keep it in single digits. Also gotta love the thunder sound effects.
#4 - The Scorpions - The Winds of Change
The Scorpions and The Winds of Change will always have a special place in my heart ever since Sam and I put them in a movie we wrote. A ballad that will have you whistling all the way down to Gorky Park, Winds of Change is a perfect example of the 90-second drums kick-in after the slow start. The second guy scream-echoeing the lyrics during the later refrains is also something we couldn't help but put in the movie.
#3 - Night Ranger - Sister Christian
Sister Christian has such a slow, soothing piano opening, you almost think you're listening to Billy Joel or something. But is Night Ranger worried about being perceived as weak? Fuck no. Because they know how hard they're about to rock. This song has a perfect build-up that starts at 49 seconds and kicks in exactly at one minute, and the song is exactly 5 minutes long, dying back down to just piano at the end... If there was a book how to write a Monster Epic (there should be), Night Ranger should author it.
#2 - Whitesnake - Here I Go Again On My Own
No Monster Epic band rocks as hard as Whitesnake. And there is no more audacious, meaty guitar solo than the one in this song. I'm not sure if the eventual fade-out takes something away, or if it just means that Whitesnake doesn't know how to stop rocking once they've started.
#1 - Meatloaf - I Would Do Anything For Love
OK, I'm sure I'll take some flack for this one, since Meatloaf is far from a Hair Band. But as I said, Monster Epics can be crafted by anyone as long as they’re delusional enough, and no song out there is more crammed full of "I'm the greatest musician who has ever lived and this is the greatest song that has ever been written" than this one. I Would Do Anything For Love has a full orchestra in it. There are wind sound effects. The song absolutely explodes at 1 minute. There are about thirty tempo changes, and a full choir serving no other purpose than to go "Oooooooo", and then "Aaaaaaaa" behind Meatloaf during certain parts. And I'm not sure if you've listened, but the lyrics basically don't make any sense, and yet Meatloaf is almost crying during every line of the song. Seriously, just listen to this song and try tell me that Meatloaf doesn't think it's the greatest musical accomplishment the world has ever seen. He might be the only one.10/25/05
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Century Map - Final! - 3/11/10
It is finished!
Now, onto Century part 2... I won't be mapping this one, but will report about after my hangover subsides. If not, check your local obituaries.
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