Potpourri III

The Simpsons—Finally!

In case you gave up on “The Simpsons” after their last two mostly abysmal seasons, you should check back into the Greatest Series of All Time. This season’s first four or five episodes have been absolutely hilarious. As I was laughing my way through the last two episodes—when Marge had breast implant surgery and as the Simpsons were forced to be the stars of a reality television show—I remembered an interview I read with one of the show’s producers three years ago that my dad sent to me from the New Yorker. In that interview, the producer described a stack of scripts that were some of the funniest ideas that they came up with in script meetings since the show began to air in the early 90s. They were saving that stack for their last season on the air.

If it’s true, and this season’s scripts are the ones from that pile, then it is good that the show is trying to go out with a bang. Hilarious ideas like the one at the end of this week’s episode—where the show parodies a fake “Law and Order” spin-off called “Law and Order: Elevator Inspection Unit”—could have been hatched five years ago, so the “Secret Stack” of these scripts could be a reality. We all knew it couldn’t last forever!

You’re Never Too...Young?

Here’s how the age groups for games works for me, with some bleed-over for games like Uno.

Young—Chutes & Ladders, Candyland, Hungry Hungry Hippo, War
College—Uno, Spades, Hearts, Life, Drinking Games (Asshole, etc.)
Adult—Scrabble, Poker, Rummikub, Taboo, Scattergories, Cranium, etc.
Old People—Bridge, Mah-jongg, Dominoes, Canasta

Now, with that in mind, try and guess the age of the two people being described here. Jane (name changed because, well, she’s on the Bellview list) and her boyfriend Joe play canasta pretty regularly. They also take golf lessons together, drink at home periodically and rarely sample their city’s nightlife. When asked what their plans were for a recent Friday night, Joe’s response was “We’ll probably be in bed by 10.” When I asked Jane if she likes to hit the clubs every so often, she responded “You mean the driving range?” “No, I mean DANCE clubs.”

Stumped? I thought they were 72 and 70 years old, respectively, but in fact, they are 27 and 24 years old. Oh yeah! In my mind, if you are 20-something and playing canasta, then there is something dangerously wrong with your life. Not to judge, mind you, it’s just that the only folks I know that play canasta are my grandparents!! It’s like you have to have a walker in order to sit at the table!

The Art of the Kiss

I was reminded recently that good kissers are hard to come by these days. Much like good on-screen kisses in American films, the good kisser is hard to come by but a real treat if you can dig one up. Why is it that we as a people are not good at the smooch? I see ads in my copy of FHM all the time for Better Sex “Advanced Techniques” and drugs like Extendor, which has a pretty clear goal for its subjects. And, as almost all of us can attest, there is nothing more heartwarming than getting that bulk e-mail to “Enlarge Your Penis Naturally!!”

However, there is never anything to tell people that are not great kissers how to become one, and I have found (as, ahem, a good kisser) that women really appreciate the few of us because they say so with such vigor. It’s kind of like the art of conversation. I love talking to people that have mastered the give-and-take of casual conversation. My friends Schmoove, Felicia, Kelty, Laura, Toby and others are just great folks to talk to—always got something to say, creative people, great listeners and can get right to the point or lounge around that point all day.

Until recently, I hadn’t realized how similar conversation and hooking up—the creativity, the give-and-take, the varying degrees of happiness—really are. Random, but genius!

The Best Ending of the Season?

On a day when the Virginia Tech college football team lost a triple-overtime game to Syracuse and had a quarterback throw for over 500 yards, and on the same day that a number-one team lost on the road to a team called “the Aggies”, the best game of the day featured the LSU Tigers and a fat guy playing quarterback for the Kentucky Wildcats.

Kentucky went up 30-27 on a field goal with 11 seconds left. For some reason, just before this play, this fat guy—named Jared Lorenzen—called time out with the clock winding down; if he had waited to call the time out, the field goal attempt would have been the last play of the game. Man, was that a mistake. LSU got the ball back and ran two plays. The first one was a 20-yard pass play up the middle of the field to get the Tigers to their 25-yard line. The receiver caught the pass, took a knee and called time out with two seconds left.

On the sidelines and in the stands, the Kentucky crowd was all lined up, ready to storm the field. The team had lost 12 straight games to SEC (division) opponents and this was going to be their biggest win of the season. Thousands of people clad in Kentucky blue were just waiting for LSU to lose so they could take down the goal posts. Then, LSU ran their play, which ended up being a Hail Mary pass that was tipped by three people before ending up in an LSU receiver’s hands and in the end zone. LSU 33, Kentucky 30. The Tigers players went ballistic...and, so did some of Kentucky’s fans on the field, who didn’t realize what had happened downfield. The looks of some of those fan’s faces when they figured out what had happened really had to be seen to be understood. Heck, the players had even doused Kentucky’s coach with a jug of water prior to the Hail Mary play, they were so sure it was over.

I was in a sports bar when this play happened, and the 30 or so LSU fans in attendance were literally going ape-shit. In all of my visits to sports bars, even to celebrate UVA victories, I have never seen anything that insane. Women were literally jumping movie-style into other men’s arms. Screaming took place for a solid two minutes. Men were hugging other men like they had just won the lottery. It was great. Then I turned back to my game—UVA/Penn State—and watched as my team got obliterated. For one day, I wished that I was an LSU fan.

Really Surreal

I was talking to my friend Robyn “Teambuilding” Johnson the other day; we used to work together at “The Mac”, or Freddie Mac for you outsiders. We were talking about the Beltway Sniper (Robyn lives in the area) and how it affected people’s habits in and around Washington.

She was telling me about how people were when they visited a gas station. It is strange to watch people pumping their gas while making themselves a smaller target by leaning or ducking down behind their cars as the gas pumps away, for fear that some guy in a white van might be sizing them up for the kill.

Robyn described this situation the best by calling it “funny, but not so funny.” I can’t imagine a world where I become so scared of random killings that I am literally ducking down by my rear wheel well hoping that a sniper doesn’t make me his next victim. Easy for me to say, since I’m not in DC any more...but, it really made me think about how crazy this sniper thing really is.

Emoticons

You will know that someone else has taken over Bellview when you start seeing those little emoticons in all of my essays. You know, things like

:) or

:D or

;) and on and on. My friend Jen McCleavy sent me this webpage detailing all of the many things you can do with two or three simple characters, and she did so because we share a hatred for these things. Why can’t people just write the e-mail and tell me they feel good or they’re smiling or they are :| (indifferent). It kind of reminds me of when friends would send me things and then say

See you soon! xoxo

or back in high school when hot girls would tell you to

KIT

because they never did. They would say to KIT and leave a phone number; I’d call and not see them until the first day of the next school year. Triks! Say what you mean, don’t mean what you think is a cool-looking character. (I have considered writing a full essay on those damned smiley faces in AIM, but every time I write it the thing looks like a laundry list of profanity.)

Shit-talking Females

I will say this—out here in San Francisco, the sports fans here mostly blow, but the women here have their sports down a bit better than the girls I met back east. And, I haven’t been sent a shit-talking e-mail by a female in quite some time...but it happened recently with my friend Evelyne, who sent me the following e-mail after the San Francisco Giants made it to the World Series:

“I wanted to give my condolences regarding your Yankees. If you recall, when you came to the game with Eric [Tracy] & I and you RAGGED on my Giants—I told you that we'd see you at the World Series. Well Commish [my college nickname], we'll have a beer & a phat juicy hot dog for you.”

Much like how it seems like everyone starts using the word “bitch” a lot more when they are around me—my former roommate Laura said that she never used the word bitch more than the last 12 months—people seem to find something special in smack-talking me at every turn. But now that women are doing it to me over e-mail, I am finding it not so special any more...

Giants Fans

My friend Matt “I Wanted the Bacon of the Month Club, But My Fiancée Said No” Muller dropped me a line near the end of the World Series to tell me what he thought about the fans of the San Francisco Giants. On TV, he could barely hear them cheering during the games, whether they were winning or losing; as you may remember, the fans in Anaheim were going ape-shit all game long. I told him that he had no idea how it was at those games; save for the previously-mentioned Evelyne, the fans that I have sat near during games have been mostly concerned with two things:

a) lattes;
b) garlic fries.

Much like going to Cubs games at Wrigley Field, the games at Pac Bell Park are secondary to looking good and hangin’ out. Part of the problem is that it’s just not a sports town here in San Francisco; computer programmers don’t give a shit about baseball. Neither do hippies, mountain bikers or guys named Marge (to broadly stereotype the town), so it is no surprise that prior to the World Series—i.e., 172 games had already been played, including the first two rounds of the playoffs—before I saw a single “Go Giants!” sign in storefronts, on buses or in the subway. It was like the cool thing to do to suddenly be a big Giants fan. This is only slightly worse than the 1991 NFL season in Washington, where some dormant fans came out of the woodwork to board the Bandwagon and cheer on the Redskins after Doug Williams led them to a Super Bowl title. But, they were winning a lot back in DC in the 80s and 90s, so that isn’t a big surprise; winning championships around these parts has gotten rare in the major sports, since the Niners’ run in the 1980s.

Great

Sometimes, the best jokes write themselves. I give the content providers for Yahoo! credit for finding a way to sum up major headlines in seven words or less, and there was one on there recently that begged to be clicked.

“US Army Working on Three-Year Sandwich”

So, I bit and took a look. Apparently, Army scientists are still trying to come up with a perfect sandwich—a sandwich that retains taste quality and freshness in a container for three years. My thing is this: if we are trying to figure this kind of shit out, what kind of money does the government have lying around for useless research? If a soldier is out in the field for three years carrying this sandwich around and it goes bad (say, after 37 months), isn’t that soldier’s bigger problem the fact that he hasn’t been able to resupply for three years, making him a likely candidate for “totally friggin’ dead”?

Wisdom from the Elders

My workmate Bob was talking to me recently about the difference between trips and vacations.

"There are trips and there are vacations. Trips are with kids...vacations are without."

Random Bellviews, courtesy of Bell and Longer Community Trust:

Thanksgiving: Opening Weekend
Thanksgiving in Southern California, temperature—72 degrees: $9.00 Show
Thanksgiving meal, cooked and served for you...with no mashed potatoes and gravy: Matinee
Thanksgiving football games this year, with a shitty Pats-Lions/Skins-Cowboys twin bill: Rental
Thanksgiving Day, 4 PM, finished with dinner...and no couch space left to take the traditional Thanksgiving Day Nap: Hard Vice

bellview--i love to nibble

Potpourri III