Judging by the ol' counter in the upper left corner of this blog, readership has slowed a bit lately. Perhaps I've alienated the childless demographic with the recent Ryan saturation. Or maybe the increasing fart-jokes-per-post ratio has turned off the cultural elite. Or maybe your you're all realizing I just don't write very good well, and as a result I'm loosing losing readers.
Regardless of the reason, I'd like to see it fixed.
In theory, this bit of bad news should provide the motivation I need to improve my writing. Seek out some formal training. Maybe diversify my topics.
But I'm a lazy, lazy man.
So rather than work harder to improve my craft, I'll just look to my old friend television for inspiration. Teacher. Mother. Secret lover.
Historically, sitcoms have attempted to boost sagging ratings by adding an unnecessary character in hopes of injecting new life into their stale programming. Happy Days brought in the Fonz. Saved By the Bell added that hard-ass chick, Tory. And yes, even the critically acclaimed Itchy and Scratchy needed a shot of Poochie the dog to reinvigorate their dwindling fan base.
Typically, these characters are nothing more than caricatures, cluttering up the scene and spouting contrived catch phrases at every turn. For example, when they were creating Poochie, the following directives were issued to the illustrator:
Creator: He needs attitude, attitude! Uh... sunglasses!
Consultant: Could we put him in more of a "hip-hop" context?
Krusty the Klown: Forget context, he's gotta' be a surfer. Give me a nice shmear of surfer.
Consultant: I feel we should Rasta-fy him by... 10 percent or so.
All Three: Oh, yeah, bingo. Yeah, that's it! There it is, right there! I love it!
The result was the rather "in your face" canine you see above. But let me tell you, Poochie created quite a stir amongst the Itchy and Scratchy faithful. It worked.
Taking a page from my favorite show-within-a-show, Lauren, Ryan, Maci and I are adding a little spice to our lives this winter and bringing in some new blood. My good friend Brett "the Jet" Friel -- lifeguard, budding photog, and collector of hilarious bumper stickers -- will be spending the winter in Aspen, and we're hopeful his experiences as a 25-year old single guy in a world class party town will spice up the blog.
What's refreshing about Brett, is unlike Poochie, he's no ridiculous caricature, born from some out-of-touch corporate desire to capitalize on ill-conceived requirements for "cool" like surfing and sunglasses and bad-ass attitude. He's a real-life, grounded, guy who...oh shit....
Perhaps you should ignore that last paragraph. Yes, that is Mr. Friel, apparently doing his best Poochie impression during a recent trip to Mexico.
In all seriousness, I'm extremely jealous of Brett. And not because he's younger, better looking, and judging from that picture, significantly more Rasta-fied than me.
I'm jealous because he's got the balls that I didn't at that stage of my life. To pick up and move to a ski town at his age on a whim, out of nothing more than a desire to experience a life he's always wondered about, is an act of courage I admire.
Look, I'm smart enough to know that I've got it pretty good. At 34, I'm living exactly as I've always dreamed, aside from the fact that Lauren and I don't spend our free time driving around in a van, solving mysteries.
But by no means was this a linear process for me. It has taken many steps -- some forward, many back, a few sideways -- for me to get from a twenty-three year old CPA at Arthur Andersen in Roseland, NJ to where I am today. And I'm pretty certain that if I had only possesed the cayones Brett has, I might have gotten here sooner.
Life is fleeting. This should come as a surprise to absolutely no one. As you're sitting in your cubicle or manning the assembly line down at the cracker factory, daydreaming of a different reality, the hourglass is emptying.
I don't mean to come off as preachy. Nor am I suggesting that people should spend every waking moment of every day pursuing their wildest fantasies. It's that type of uncompromising thinking that made the poor kid from Dead Poets Society shoot himself. We don't want that.
No, real life doesn't work like that. Shit gets in the way. We have obligations and responsibilities and families and pressures that sometimes make it impossible to create seismic changes. I understand and respect that.
With that said, if there is somewhere or someone you'd rather be, and no compelling reason you can't make it happen, I'd implore you to at least have a plan. I may not have had any balls in my mid-twenties, but one thing I did have was a idea. An image burned into my head of exactly what was important to me, and what I thought I needed in order to provide the best life for myself and the family I hoped to have some day. I kept that idea, that image, with me throughout the past decade, anxiously awaiting the one thing that would spur me into action.
For me, it was all about the girl.
Once I met Lauren, everything fell into place. With her, I no longer harbored any fear of the unknown. Suddenly, picking up and moving to the mountains didn't seem impossible. If the town went bad, if my job went bad, I knew I'd still have her. She gave me courage. Unlike Brett, I didn't have the strength to go it alone.
I shamelessly admit my intent to live vicariously through Poochie Brett for the next six months. He's about to experience a winter he'll never forget, and I'm happy to be a part of it. When his life story is penned, the winter he spends as a young, single guy in Aspen won't make the first few paragraphs, but you likely won't have to flip too many pages to find it. This was his daydream, just as it was mine. And he'll soon be living it.
But our daydream likely isn't yours, and that's just fine. That's the coolest thing about daydreams: they're personalized. What's heaven to me -- living in a quiet mountain town two hundred miles from the nearest shopping mall -- would be hell to many. Maybe you dream of attending art school, or running your own business, or purchasing a really kick-ass watch. I've got no argument for that. I think it was Plato who said "The world don't move to the beat of just one drum. What might be right for you, might not be right for some." Smart guy.
Of course, these things don't come without risks. I 've taken them. Brett's certainly taking one. In all likelihood, you'll have to take one or two as well. If happiness were easy to come by, everyone would have it.
But you owe it to yourself to at least try. What's the worst that can happen?
Except for the whole Dead Poets Society thing, of course.
/As an aside, I think I've outdone myself with the Simpsons references in this post. I'm not sure there is an original thought in here. A shiny nickel to anyone who can count them all.*
* no nickel will be awarded
Your best work to date...
ReplyDeleteYour best work to date...
ReplyDeleteI want to solve mysteries. Let's make it happen.
ReplyDeleteI want to solve mysteries. Let's make it happen.
ReplyDeleteFirst of all, you're killing me with this whole "have some cojones, the gauntlet's been thrown" bit. I'm working on it, OKAY? Hope you guys have an awesome winter... wish I could come out for another visit at least!
ReplyDeleteP.S. Your new housemate is hot. ;)
First of all, you're killing me with this whole "have some cojones, the gauntlet's been thrown" bit. I'm working on it, OKAY? Hope you guys have an awesome winter... wish I could come out for another visit at least!
ReplyDeleteP.S. Your new housemate is hot. ;)
Furthermore, your ineptitude is proven by your inaccuracies. The Fonz was always a key part of the show, from the pilot to the finale. Granted the character grew in popularity, and changed quite a bit from his early days as a troubled drop-out (Ok, it got ridiculous when he became a mystic space alien-supporter, but we won’t go there), but to say he was added to the show to boost its popularity is flat-out ludicrous. It’s akin to saying Kramer was added to Seinfeld. Both characters evolved with the development of the show, but both were always mainstays.
ReplyDeleteAlmost as ridiculous is your Tori claim. I would expect much more from a child of the 90s, but perhaps your mind was addled by too much Sega Genesis. Tori was not added to the show to increase the popularity of the Saturday morning sitcom, but came on after a contract dispute with Kelly and Jessie. However, since the first half of the season was already filmed with Kelly and Jessie, NBC aired back to back episodes, first with Kelly and Jessie, followed by a Tori episode. This made for completely screwed up continuity, and is known in low-brow culture as “the Tori Paradox.”
Interesting, I know, but the main point is your analogy to your stoned friend is completely misguided.
Some final points about Saved by the Bell. Tiffany Amber whatever was really hot in the college years spin-off, Showgirls is underrated, and Bob Golic was far better on TV than Mike Golic will ever be.
Now, if you wanted to make an accurate connection, you should have cited the addition of the bespectacled ragamuffin Oliver on the Brady Bunch. Again, a series before your time, but since its ageless in reruns, completely acceptable to reference. Indeed, Oliver is the textbook case for this Poochie the Dog series saving desperation, as the practice is known as “pulling an Oliver”
Another acceptable analogy would have been the addition of an unknown kid Leonardo Di Caprio to Growing Pains, designed to increase ratings, and offset the fact that Tracey Gold was anorexic and Kirk Cameron went all sorts of “What if God Was One of Us” Opus Dei, Jimmy Swaggart, Dave Nitti, completely self-righteous, skewed moral compass on everyone.
In closing, please do better in the future. Your loyal readers deserve it.
Furthermore, your ineptitude is proven by your inaccuracies. The Fonz was always a key part of the show, from the pilot to the finale. Granted the character grew in popularity, and changed quite a bit from his early days as a troubled drop-out (Ok, it got ridiculous when he became a mystic space alien-supporter, but we won’t go there), but to say he was added to the show to boost its popularity is flat-out ludicrous. It’s akin to saying Kramer was added to Seinfeld. Both characters evolved with the development of the show, but both were always mainstays.
ReplyDeleteAlmost as ridiculous is your Tori claim. I would expect much more from a child of the 90s, but perhaps your mind was addled by too much Sega Genesis. Tori was not added to the show to increase the popularity of the Saturday morning sitcom, but came on after a contract dispute with Kelly and Jessie. However, since the first half of the season was already filmed with Kelly and Jessie, NBC aired back to back episodes, first with Kelly and Jessie, followed by a Tori episode. This made for completely screwed up continuity, and is known in low-brow culture as “the Tori Paradox.”
Interesting, I know, but the main point is your analogy to your stoned friend is completely misguided.
Some final points about Saved by the Bell. Tiffany Amber whatever was really hot in the college years spin-off, Showgirls is underrated, and Bob Golic was far better on TV than Mike Golic will ever be.
Now, if you wanted to make an accurate connection, you should have cited the addition of the bespectacled ragamuffin Oliver on the Brady Bunch. Again, a series before your time, but since its ageless in reruns, completely acceptable to reference. Indeed, Oliver is the textbook case for this Poochie the Dog series saving desperation, as the practice is known as “pulling an Oliver”
Another acceptable analogy would have been the addition of an unknown kid Leonardo Di Caprio to Growing Pains, designed to increase ratings, and offset the fact that Tracey Gold was anorexic and Kirk Cameron went all sorts of “What if God Was One of Us” Opus Dei, Jimmy Swaggart, Dave Nitti, completely self-righteous, skewed moral compass on everyone.
In closing, please do better in the future. Your loyal readers deserve it.
If you want to know why the readership of this blog is precipitously declining, you only have to look at this posting.
ReplyDeleteWhile most of your readers have a high degree of tolerance for your self-indulgent musings, as your wit is fairly redemptive, and your consistent focus first on that overly rambunctious dog, and now that low maintenance child of yours, can be annoying, this entry is wrought with not only the usual hackneyed observations, but misinformed analogies that are not only egregiously wrong, but point out the laziness and lack of research of the “blogger,” (Note that I don’t refer to Mr. Nitti as a “writer,” as that would insult anyone who passed freshman Expository Writing with a grade of C or better)
Yea, I get it, your deadbeat friend from the Surf City Beach Patrol (Oh, I know, I should be more specific, as identifying a deadbeat from SCBP is akin to pointing out a slutty drunk from a sorority-Lord knows how many prosperous lives were ruined by one summer with that bunch of pot smoking Bodhi-wannabees. Probably lost a cure for cancer by some future scientist who made the mistake of working there instead of Aunt Ollies, but is now wasting away in Costa Rica searching for the perfect wave, but I digress) is hanging out at your house, and you are comparing his addition to your life and blog to the “adding a new character to save a show” phenomena.
But to make this connection to “the Fonz” on Happy Days or the addition of Tori on “Saved by the Bell” shows your lack of cultural literacy, your poor research skills, your laziness, or your intellectual hubris. Or perhaps all of the above.
First of all, stay the f*ck away from Happy Days. You don’t know what you are talking about. By the time you were in your prime television watching years, we already had cable TV, and early ESPN, so you don’t know what it was like to have only five channels, coming home from Korvettes and gathering around the old console with the family to watch ABC’s powerful prime-time lineup. It’s like me writing about current MTV, you have no clue, so back the f*ck off.
If you want to know why the readership of this blog is precipitously declining, you only have to look at this posting.
ReplyDeleteWhile most of your readers have a high degree of tolerance for your self-indulgent musings, as your wit is fairly redemptive, and your consistent focus first on that overly rambunctious dog, and now that low maintenance child of yours, can be annoying, this entry is wrought with not only the usual hackneyed observations, but misinformed analogies that are not only egregiously wrong, but point out the laziness and lack of research of the “blogger,” (Note that I don’t refer to Mr. Nitti as a “writer,” as that would insult anyone who passed freshman Expository Writing with a grade of C or better)
Yea, I get it, your deadbeat friend from the Surf City Beach Patrol (Oh, I know, I should be more specific, as identifying a deadbeat from SCBP is akin to pointing out a slutty drunk from a sorority-Lord knows how many prosperous lives were ruined by one summer with that bunch of pot smoking Bodhi-wannabees. Probably lost a cure for cancer by some future scientist who made the mistake of working there instead of Aunt Ollies, but is now wasting away in Costa Rica searching for the perfect wave, but I digress) is hanging out at your house, and you are comparing his addition to your life and blog to the “adding a new character to save a show” phenomena.
But to make this connection to “the Fonz” on Happy Days or the addition of Tori on “Saved by the Bell” shows your lack of cultural literacy, your poor research skills, your laziness, or your intellectual hubris. Or perhaps all of the above.
First of all, stay the f*ck away from Happy Days. You don’t know what you are talking about. By the time you were in your prime television watching years, we already had cable TV, and early ESPN, so you don’t know what it was like to have only five channels, coming home from Korvettes and gathering around the old console with the family to watch ABC’s powerful prime-time lineup. It’s like me writing about current MTV, you have no clue, so back the f*ck off.
My brothers have way too much freaking time on their hands.
ReplyDeleteMy brothers have way too much freaking time on their hands.
ReplyDeleteDays like today I would happily take the plunge and spend 6 months in Aspen with Brett!
ReplyDeleteDays like today I would happily take the plunge and spend 6 months in Aspen with Brett!
ReplyDeleteIn other words, I ordered a colossal doughnut, and I'm going to get a colossal doughnut.
ReplyDeleteIn other words, I ordered a colossal doughnut, and I'm going to get a colossal doughnut.
ReplyDeleteHe came to life. Good for him.
ReplyDeleteHe came to life. Good for him.
ReplyDeleteOh, and another thing. I’m sick and tired of all these dudes turning lifeguarding into their own warped perception of a mystical mission, or some sort of spiritual sojourn where they become one with the ocean and brothers with the whale and the albatross. You are not on some spiritual mission to unite with nature and find the meaning of life and become a surf guru, you have simply taken a summer job.
ReplyDeleteLet me make it clear for you. You make ten dollars an hour to sit on a wooden bench and not let people drown. That is it.
You are not f*cking Neptune.
I’m also not crazy about this new breed of guard who is coming down there to get in great shape and win races. That’s bullshit. The primary motivation behind guarding should be to get drunk and get laid, and not being distracted enough by both pursuits to the point where you let people drown. Please make a note of it.
Oh, and another thing. I’m sick and tired of all these dudes turning lifeguarding into their own warped perception of a mystical mission, or some sort of spiritual sojourn where they become one with the ocean and brothers with the whale and the albatross. You are not on some spiritual mission to unite with nature and find the meaning of life and become a surf guru, you have simply taken a summer job.
ReplyDeleteLet me make it clear for you. You make ten dollars an hour to sit on a wooden bench and not let people drown. That is it.
You are not f*cking Neptune.
I’m also not crazy about this new breed of guard who is coming down there to get in great shape and win races. That’s bullshit. The primary motivation behind guarding should be to get drunk and get laid, and not being distracted enough by both pursuits to the point where you let people drown. Please make a note of it.
Stupid bug...you go squish now!
ReplyDeleteStupid bug...you go squish now!
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