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I’ve got Next

Green DayI enjoy many small pleasures in life, and I’d like to share one of them with you.  I’ll call it “Next Knowledge,” because it’s cool to have an alliterative name that doesn’t look alliterative.  Don’t you agree, Tony the Pterodactyl?  Next Knowledge is the term I’m using to define the mental leap one’s mind takes to the next item in a logical sequence.  What the hell am I talking about?  I’ll try to illustrate via examples from two forms of media:
 
First, when an episode of The Simpsons ends, I know I’m going to see a couple-second thing for the production company called Gracie Films.  It starts with the silhouette of a kid going, “Shh,” then it zooms into the screen and says the company name.  With Next Knowledge, my mind is ready for the music from Fox that immediately follows.  It knows it’s going to be there right after the black screen that says, “In Association With.”  I haven’t watched The Simpsons for years and yet I can quite clearly hear both ditties in my head, spaced out correctly.  You may have found yourself saying, “You stinka!” along with David E. Kelley shows or, “That’s some bad hat, Harry” after the show “House.”  My earliest memory of this is from right after episodes of “Family Ties.”  Some of you may already be nodding in agreement.  “Sit Ubu sit, good dog.  Woof!” always immediately followed.  It was a nice capper to the show, and my mind automatically went there every time.
 
Second, and the way this is most common in my life, has to do with music.  One song ends, and I’m ready with the word, guitar riff, or drumbeat that starts the next one on that cd.  For the rest of my life, I will never hear the end of “Why Don’t We Do It in the Road” by the Beatles without the beginning of “I Will” immediately starting in my head.  The same can be said for countless songs – hundreds probably – which always makes it a little awkward when I hear the song on the radio or some other stand-alone situation.  If I’m singing along to Green Day’s “American Idiot” and not paying much attention, you better believe I’m gonna start nodding my head to the opening pounding notes of “Jesus of Suburbia,” whether it’s actually playing there or not.
 
I thought of this and decided to write about it because I found a small problem with how strong my Next Knowledge is in the music field.  I was listening to a playlist on iTunes at work, and I paused it right after a song ended so that I could go to the bathroom and not miss the next song that I really like.  About two minutes later, I walked back into the office and said hi to a co-worker before heading back to my desk.  During that time, my head had continued the playlist and I’d just “heard” that entire next song.  So when I sat down and hit the spacebar to restart playing the music, I didn’t feel like listening to that song anymore since it would essentially be like hitting repeat on something that just played.  My Next Knowledge made the real experience superfluous and therefore unnecessary.  
 
I can’t be alone in this, right?  How strong are your senses of Next Knowledge?  Do you feel a second of unsettledness when the song that should follow the one you just heard doesn’t come on next?  Let me know if this is fairly common or just another one of my Silly Psychoses.

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Surprise Box

 

Surprise Box

My parents have lived in the same house for almost 25 years.  Recently, a couple who has been in the neighborhood even longer, decided to move back east to be closer to family.  I wouldn’t say that my parents were ever particularly close with this couple, but they were always very pleasant with one another.  Good Neighbors. 

A few days ago my parents had gone out to run some errands while a moving crew was loading up the neighbors’ belongings.   When they returned home an hour later, the departing couple was standing in the middle of the street, apparently waiting for my parents to say good-bye.  During the conversation, the husband produced a beaten up shoe box.  He explained that he had been going through the attic and found this box which had probably been sitting up there for 20 plus years.   He said he had no use for its contents and my parents were welcome to it they were interested.

The person who comes closest to guessing the actual contents of the box will win a prize.  Well, there won’t really be a prize, but I’ll think you’re pretty cool(Please don’t guess if you know the answer because you’ve already heard the story).  Answers must be submitted by December 7, 2009.  I’ll post the winner soon thereafter.  Enjoy.

Mike Honcho

Best Website Ever

No, not us.  Humans, welcome to our blog. Why not start it off by recommending you visit a different site?  Don’t fret, this one is defunct.  Choosing my favorite site on the interwebs is an impossible task, there’s such range. But TheSpark.com was definitely a top contender. The comic geniuses who wrote for that site were among today’s best. Unfortunately, they sold out, and now all that remains is a shell of their witty style which pitches psuedo Cliff’s Notes for Barnes and Noble’s.

Before they were acquired by iturf, and then later B&N, they were famous for their irreverent online tests (some of which still exist in their original form here, although most were emasculated after the buy-out.  Try the gender test which is amazingly accurate at guessing your gender) and their “Science Projects” which included the Stinky Feet Diaries, the Date My Sister Project, Stinky Meat, etc. Thank God for the Wayback Machine (another best of the web contender) for keeping these classics alive after they were shoved aside for commerce.  Be patient, sometimes it takes a moment to load pages.

Lest I forget, they were also famous for their online cards, whose humor sums up that of the site http://web.archive.org/web/20030210133618/www.thespark.com/cards/

So crappy that things this good always get shafted. I’d think there’d be a market for a site as well written as TheSpark. I’d have paid for a membership. I miss you, thespark.com.

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Seeking attention

Happy BirthdayFacebook told me to “poke” my dad.  I’m pretty sure that’s illegal in California.

I have a larger problem with the terminology than the actual suggestion.  Who decided that “poke” was an acceptable way to get someone’s attention online?  In real life, poking someone is either rude or sexual, and yet Facebook wants it simply to mean, “Say hello to.”  That’s too big a leap for me.  And yet, it’s not as disturbing as when a gentleman with whom I work occasionally told me that he was going to tickle somebody.  I don’t know if you’ve heard this too, but I was certainly taken aback by it.  He used it essentially in the Facebook “poke” sense, saying that he needed to get back in touch with someone after a brief period of silence.  “I’ll make a note to tickle him later,” he said.  “As punishment for not returning an email?” I thought to myself.  Over the course of the next year, I heard this same person say that he’d tickle three or four other people.  Additionally, a completely different person said the he’d put something in his “tickle file.”  I don’t know if this term is generally accepted by millions of people and I just somehow didn’t get the memo, but I neither like it nor plan on ever hearing it without immediately judging the speaker.

Getting back to the word “poke,” I’m reminded of an article I saw online earlier this year: “What’s the Most Heartbreaking Song of All Time?” asked Entertainment Weekly’s site.  It’s not really an article as much as posing the question to the site’s readers, but the author says that a friend of his finds “Poke” by Frightened Rabbit at the top of her list of sad songs.  I know this song and agree that it’s particularly painful, but I doubt it would’ve come to mind.  In any case, there are 60 pages of comments by readers who list their own responses to the titular question.  Not 60 comments, but 60 pages full of them.

After reading through three or four of them and seeing the same types of comments over and over again (Song X is the saddest!  It always makes me cry – just look at these lyrics!), I saw an opportunity to add a little humor to the discussion.  “What’s the least heartbreaking song of all time?” I asked myself.  I thought about “Don’t Worry Be Happy,” but it was a little too on the nose for what I was trying to achieve.  “Happy Birthday” came to mind next, but I have a feeling some people actually find that song sad because it means that they’re aging.  So instead, I wrote the following:

“I’m Too Sexy” by Right Said Fred makes me tear up every time. Can you imagine the inner torment of being too sexy for your shirt? How about Japan? Doing turns on the catwalk of life in front of way less sexy people…it must be hell on Earth. Great, now I’m crying again.

I meant to go back later to the site later to see if anyone either called me “funny,” “a jerk,”  or anything in between but I forgot.  I guess I’ll have to put that in my fondle file.

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