Counselation

After the events of today, I feel I need to weigh the pros and cons of being a camp counselor.

Here's a list of things I do not like about being a counselor:
-Smart asses
-The stench of dirty children
-Trying to get 23 seven-year-olds in a line
-Accidentally memorizing Miley Cyrus songs
-Having to consciously avoid law suits all day every day
-Pretending I give a shit if kids swear
-Trying to understand and resolve the social drama between little girls who sound like chipmunks on crack
-Having to scream like James Hetfield when children are awful


Now here are some things I like about being a counselor:
-Kids who inexplicably think I am the greatest thing to ever exist
-Money
-Free freezie pops
-Sentences like "The cow barfed the DS out of unicorn" and others formed during one word at a time games
-The girl who needed nothing more than to fill her shoes with dirt to be amused
-Little kids' inability to correctly pronounce the letter 'R'
-Being yelled at by lifeguards for causing more trouble than the kids
-Confusing children with big words and pop culture references that predate them

It looks like it's even. But that's just all I could think of for now. Either way, I think I've decided this is a job worth keeping.

-Joe

[Guest Column: Max is Funny] Jim and the Robots

Here is a play that I wrote last summer, when a friend suggested that we were required to read a play of our choice over said season.

Jim and the Robots
A 1/8 Act Play in Two Parts

By: Maximilian C. Barth
CHARACTERS:
Jim – Immensely complex person, with an immensely long backstory fraught with danger, love and despair.
The Robots – they hate Jim.


Part 1
(scene, a barbershop. JIM is getting a haircut.)

JIM: Perfect. Perfect. I sure do love haircuts…
[camera zooms to JIM’s face as he grows deathly serious]
But I hate robots.

(at this moment, ROBOTS enter the barbershop, which is odd, because these robots [and every robot I’ve ever heard of] have [has] no hair.)

ROBOTS: We love haircuts too.
[camera zooms to a ROBOT face as he grows deathly robot serious]
But we hate Jim with all of our robot…ness…

INTERMISSION

Part 2
(scene, outside the barbershop. JIM’s hair is cut, and he is thinking about his long and interesting past. The ROBOTS stand inside, glaring at Jim with their robot eyes through the glass.)
ROBOTS (in unison): We hate you Jim.
JIM: Take it to the court, you bastards!

[a montage sequence occurs in which the ROBOTS learn to play basketball with the help of JIM. They form a team and enter into a tournament. Funny things happen and they all hug.]

END

Thanks.

Internets,
Max

Dr. Horrible's Sing-along Blog

You should absolutely see this.

Stars Neil Patrick Harris, Felicia Day, and Nathan Fillion, and co-created, co-written, and directed by the incomparable Joss Whedon.

Click the picture to link to the site.

Stone Cold Offer

Not too long ago an earthquake in China killed 10,000 people and trapped many more.

Sharon Stone, because she is both crazy and an awful person blamed the earthquake on the Chinese government's treatment of Tibet and said "all this earthquake and all this stuff happened, and I thought, is that karma? When you’re not nice, that the bad things happen to you?"

Now, again, Sharon Stone is crazy and awful, so the fact that she's saying crazy and awful things is not in-and-of-itself very unexpected. The really interesting part is the reaction.

PETA responded to her comments with an open letter. I have bolded the most interesting section

"Given that millions of people… were killed, injured, and left homeless by the recent earthquake in China, everyone was shocked to hear you dismiss the devastating effects of this disaster.However, your cavalier attitude did not come as a surprise to us. We are used to the indifference that you flaunt and the callous remarks that you make about the suffering and death of the animals whose fur you wear so often. Scientific studies suggest that the prefrontal regions of the brains of people who lack empathy might be underdeveloped. Here’s our offer: Would you allow PETA to pay for a scan of the prefrontal region of your brain to determine if comments and actions that seem to demonstrate a lack of empathy are the result of a physical defect? "


PETA asked to scan her head to see if her craziness and awfulness were, in fact, a mental defect.

Now one would have to assume that Sharon Stone would absolutely not take them up on their offer. Because, read that again. Would you? And we can also pretty much assume that PETA knows this too.

That means that an organization of over TWO MILLION people have opted to put snarky comments on the internet over having a private and civil conversation. Now, I know they've tried to talk to her before but is this really a step forward? I mean, isn't this the same approach that 12-year-olds use when someone makes fun of their favorite awful movie on IMDB? Like someone says Warriors of Virtue sucked and they write back "NO! UR RETARDED!!1!" Isn't this just a professionally written version of the same argument? In the IMDB scenario, does the first person ever write back "Oh. I guess I must be retarded"? Because I've never seen it go down that way.

That means that the world is becoming more like the internet.

That means that the world is doomed.


Oh. That was a downer. Um...in better news I just say Wall·e. That was really good.


Love and doom,
Ryan

Leggo My Decade

There is an epidemic.

An epidemic of kids trying to claim the 90s. For instance, the CIT at the camp I work at who recently tried to explain to us older counselors how she is a "90s kid." So I said "hold up now," and inquired as to what year she was born, to which she answered 1995. That's nonsense. If you turned 4 in 1999, you're not a 90s kid. I remember 1995 - specifically, watching Jumanji on a VHS tape. By the time this girl was old enough to enjoy movies, VHS was on the way out.

We then conducted the interview necessary to completely destroying her spirits. We found out that she never watched Captain Planet, didn't even remember the original Power Rangers series, and never bought a Backstreet Boys CD. She claimed to have watched Bill Nye the Science Guy, but as I told her, watching it ten years later in youtube clips doesn't count. To the music question she answered that she never bought CDs, but she got the 90s music on itunes. I rest my case.

Having been born in 1989, I experienced every single year of the 90s. I don't necessarily remember the first few, but I was there. I saw The Lion King and Aladdin when they first came out in theaters. I watched the original Power Rangers, from the very beginning. I was the red ranger for at least 2 Halloweens. I had "Backstreet Boys" and "Millenium" on CDs and listened to them tirelessly. I played Pokemon red and blue, collected the cards, and watched the original version of the show. I had pogs. I still have pogs. I'm willing to bet half of these kids trying to claim the 90s don't even know what a pog is. And I had dial-up internet.

My point is, stick to your own decade. There's no shame in it; Hannah Montana and the Jonas Brothers are no more atrocious than the shit we loved in the 90s. You guys have Spongebob Squarepants and Finding Nemo. We can't take it from you, it's yours. Own it. You can still like our stuff, but don't steal our identity. There are plenty of 80s things I love, but I would never claim to be an "80s kid." Sure I love Back to the Future, but I first saw it 10 or 12 years after it came out. I love Bon Jovi and Motley Crue and all the disgustingly bad music from the 80s, but it's not mine. Stick to your own decade, kids of the 2000s, you may not have the 90s.

-Joe

P.S. If you do not know what commercial I got the title from, or you first saw said commercial post 1990s, you are not a 90s kid.

Look at these guys!

This is the guy who plays Draco Malfoy in the Harry Potter movies next to the guy who played bad guy Johnny Lawrence in the Karate Kid movies.

Eerily similar, no?

This means one of two things.

Either they're the same guy and he has a magically extended life, or the world just knows exactly what a douche bag looks like.

It's probably the second one. So, parents, if your kid looks like this, he's probably an asshole. Deal with him.

Yours in pop culture,
Ryan

Some Kind of Pun on the Word Diner

Faithful readers, do I have a tale to tell.

Not too long ago, I was hanging out with (Special Guest Blogger) Max Barth. For lunch, we decided to walk downtown to the High St. Dinner.

I'm not sure I've ever had such a strange dining experience.

I swear to God this is all true.

We arrived at the diner. There was no one there. We could see someone scrubbing the counter at the far end, but no one was at the register in front. Another older man was standing at the front with us too, looking into the glass dessert display case. He was dressed in an outfit that appeared to be somewhere between trucker and old sea captain. I won't even comment on the pointlessness of a rotating dessert display.
Anyway, Max and I stand there for 5 minutes or so, while no one even addresses us. Then the guy next to us turns to us and mumbles something.
"What?"
"You smoke?"
"Wha, uh, huh?"
"Smoke?"
"No?"
The man then leads us to a table, sits us down, and gives us menus. We're still unsure as to whether or not he works there. He wanders away and then we never ever see him again. Ever. He's gone. Not even continuing to stare at the desserts. He's gone.
Well, whatever. That was weird, but weirder things have happened.
So we sit there for about 30 seconds looking at the menu. Then a large frightening looking woman appears out of nowhere. She's got some kind of dirty oversized pink t-shirt on, and her makeup looks like it was applied by one of her seventeen cats. I don't necessary know she has seventeen cats, but she looks the type. She takes out a pad and asks us what we'll have. We tell her our drinks orders.
"And to eat?"
We had been there a solid 30 seconds. We didn't know.
"Oh."
She leaves. Then we don't see her for another 20 minutes or so. The diner is empty and painfully quiet. The man we saw scrubbing tables earlier walks up to our table while Max and I talk quietly. He picks up my knife, wipes it off, and leaves. All in silence. We acknowledge this, and then I desperately search for change for the tiny stereo system that runs to each table. I have no change. Despair.

Now it has been twenty minutes. It's a diner. The food isn't that complicated. We figured out our orders about 15 minutes ago. But fine. We're in no hurry. The waitress (we think) come out of the kitchen and calls out across the diner.
"I'll be right there! I have to go to the potty!"
What? Really? The potty? What?
I don't know how old you have to be before you're supposed to outgrow this behavior, but I'm absolutely sure she was past it by at least a couple decades.
The woman comes back and takes our orders.
I order a pizza burger and Max orders an omelet.
We wait. The silence if deafening. It's the kind of silence that one is afraid to break. As if the silence will attack if it's disturbed. I have to put some music on. The between the wait staff and the silence, my head is about to explode. Fine, I say to Max, I'll see if I can get a dollar changed to put on some music. I take a dollar out and stand up. I walk towards the register, now manned by the cat-lady. Almost as if arranged just for me, a man walks into the diner. He walks to the register and the maybe waitress.
"Can I get change for this dollar?" he says.
"I don't have any change to spare."
"Oh."
They look at each other uncomfortably, and the man leaves.
I'm now standing in the middle of the diner. I pretend to look at some things around the room and then I sit down.

This meal is almost perfectly uncomfortable. Almost too perfect for reality.

About 15 uncomfortable minutes later, my burger comes out. It looks fine. It's basically a cheeseburger with sauce on it, but that's pretty much what one might expect. I decide to wait for Max's order.
Silence continues to hold sway. Then, inexplicably, all of the tiny speakers around the diner begin playing a Carly Simon song. I have no idea why. Maybe the table-scrubber/knife-wiper put it on? I have no idea. The song plays and then ends. Silence resumes. I don't even have a joke explanation for this.

We wait more. My burger sits while we wait for Max's omelet.

We wait 25 minutes. 25 minutes. There is a 25 minute disparity between when our two orders arrive. I could have eaten, left, gotten hungry, and come back for another in that time.

There are certain dining rules. One of the standard rules, maybe rule #1, is that the food comes out at at least similar times. Right? I mean, withing 10 minutes at least. Right? Am I crazy?

Max eats his omelet, I eat my cold burger. Could I have eaten it earlier? Certainly. But I reached that point where I was thinking "well I've waited this long. How much longer can it be?"
Answer: much longer. The answer is always much longer.

We eat. The food is fine. It's the first part of lunch that isn't the strangest thing I've seen all day. If anything, the food is shocking in it's adequacy.

When we finish eating, the dirty oversized pink shirt and its owner bring the check. The food items and their prices are all listed...and that's it. No tax, no subtotal, no total. At this point, we're just hoping to get out alive.

I'm not sure how the diner stays in one piece if this is their staff. Max hypothesizes that maybe the real staff is tied up in the kitchen and these people are holding them hostage. We've wandered into a hostage situation and this "Texas Chainsaw Massacre," "The Hill Have Eyes" family had no choice but to serve us to cover up the situation.

We take the bill to the counter, where they add in tax, and pay it.

Then we leave a tip.

We left a tip. I'm not entirely sure why.

Probably partly because I couldn't actually call the meal bad. It was bizarre and awkward, but the food was fine. No one was actually rude. In fact, they were almost pleasant, in a deranged sort of way. They even made sure my knife was clean.

The other reason was probably that I had no idea how they might have reacted if we hadn't tipped.

Then we left. It was an incredible feeling to finally get outside the diner. I imagine that's how old time sailors must have felt when they reached land after weeks at sea.

But it was a hell of a story at least.


xoxo,
Ryan