I'm Your Huckleberry

I really wish I came up with the following text because it’s brilliant. Unfortunately I pulled it directly from the Tennessean, the local newspaper. I’ve simply added some commentary:

A House subcommittee passed a series of gun-related bills Wednesday that would allow handgun carry permit holders to carry their guns in restaurants, wildlife areas and state, but not local, parks.

Jigga what? Guns? In restaurants? W-wh-why? Why? Why? Who the hell was pushing for this bill? Why? Why?

“Yes, I’ll have the 24 ounce porter house with the side of asparagus and the garlic mashed potatoes along with a round of .38 slugs… and a sweet tea.”

The session was a victory for House Republicans. House Speaker Rep. Kent Williams, an Elizabethton Republican, attended in a show of support for a bill that would allow handguns in wildlife areas.

Jigga what? Wildlife areas? Why? Who or what the fuck will you be shooting in a wildlife area? Isn’t this already a law? It’s called HUNTING and you do it with a permit. You know, you sit out in the woods for several days, wait for a defenseless deer to wander by, shoot it just for shits and giggles, then put its head on your wall.”

During the meeting Williams sided with Democratic Rep. Janis Sontany to encourage lawmakers to remove local parks from a bill that would allow handguns in parks throughout the state.

Thank god! A voice of reason!

"I've seen too many fits of anger at these local parks," Williams said. "Where there's going to be and will be a fit of anger, we don't need somebody carrying a gun in that area."

Wait – what? What local park are you hanging out at where you see fits of anger? If that’s such a problem, why aren’t we banning “fits of anger” from local parks instead of allowing handguns everywhere else? And if you’re so concerned about fits of anger, have you never seen an angry restaurant patron? “I ordered the goddamn porter house! This is a t-bone!” BANG-BANG-BANG-BANG-BANG!

Williams and members of the committee were most concerned with fights during sporting events. Roy Wilson, Metro Parks director, said he was glad to hear his parks might not be included in the legislation.

"You have all of these teams, and you know how these folks get crazy because they think the referee cheated. Those referees are my employees," Wilson said.

Thank god. Protect the referees. Fuck the wildlife, but thank god for the referees.

This is the dumbest thing I have ever heard.

Union County Republican Rep. Chad Faulkner argued to keep local parks in the bill, and the committee delayed the bill for a week to remove local parks from the stipulation.

If I ever, in my life, run into this Chad Faulkner, I hope on all that is holy that it happens at a local park because I am going to kick him in the nuts and say, “Bet you wish you had your gun right now, dontcha?”

A separate bill, introduced by Strawberry Plains Republican Rep. Frank Niceley, that would allow handguns to be carried only in state parks passed to the full committee. The subcommittee also passed a bill that would allow handguns in restaurants until 11 p.m.

“Last call! Last call! Last call for handguns! They don’t have to go home but they can’t stay here!”

This all begs the question: WHEN THE FUCK WOULD YOU EVER POSSIBLY NEED TO HAVE A HANDGUN ON YOUR PERSON??????? I have never, in my life, been in a situation where I thought, “Shit! If only I had my glock right now…” Even if I were to be walking down the street and some thug jumps out of the shadows with a gun and says, “Give me all your money… and your pants!” What the fuck am I going to do? Am I going to suddenly outdraw him like I’m Doc-fucking-Holiday? His gun is already drawn!!!

Granted, it would give me the opportunity to live out the best scene in cinematic history:

Johnny Ringo: “Well, I didn’t think you had it in you.”

Doc Holiday: “I’m your huckleberry… Why, Johnny Ringo… you look like somebody just walked over your grave.”

JR: “Fights not with you, Holiday.”

DH: “I beg to differ. We started a game we never got to finish. Play for blood, remember?”

JR: “I… I was just fooling about.”

DH: “I wasn’t… And this time, it’s legal.”

JR: “Alright, let’s do it.”

DH: “Say when.”

*BANG*

DH: “Come on. Come on! Johnny, come on! You’re no daisy. You’re no daisy at all… Poor soul, you were just too high-strung.” 

My Left Foot

When you have a pet – cat, dog, bird, whatever – you quickly learn to listen to and interpret their telltale signs to know when things are normal and when they’re not.

Our cat has some very natural, distinct sounds. He purrs like a motorboat when he’s happy; meows vociferously when he’s hungry; barks like a dog when there’s a squirrel in the yard. Even his non-verbal sounds, so to speak, are very distinct. He wears a bell on his collar, so even when he’s prowling the house we can hear the ting-ting-ting of the bell; he has a metal nametag as well (that reads “Fast Eddie: Badass Cat.” I’m not making that up) that can be heard throughout the house banging against his metal food dish, ding-ding-ding-ding-ding; the pitter-pat of his clawless front paws as he walks about, pit-pat-pit-pat-pit-pat; the click of the claws on his back paws, click-click-click-click-click.


When you understand your pet’s natural sounds, you become keen to the unnatural ones.

For instance, the cat drinking out of the toilet bowl, slurp-slurp-slurp-slurp; the sound of a stream of liquid at 45 psi, striking anything but a plastic litter box as he pisses on the comforter, or in my shoes, sssssssssssssss; the howl that precedes the hack that precedes a hairball, YEEEOW-YEEEOW-khack… khack… khack…. Blurph; the casual, curious, almost whiny meow preceding a huge deuce, wha-whaaaa-wha… hmmmm… schlop-schlop…… schlop…

So Sara and I were both awake instantly this morning when the cat was out of the bed like a bolt of lightning, an hour before the alarm was set to go off. That in itself isn’t uncommon, but the sound he was making was. Instead of the tell-tale pitter-patter to the litter box, generally his first activity of the day, it was a more labored and deliberate pu-puh-pu-puh-pu-puh, almost like he was limping, which could mean only one of two things: 1. He was limping; 2. He was simultaneously chasing and beating down some sort of insect.

 The second is a very common scenario. Whenever he finds a spider, or a moth, or (yikes) a cockroach, he tracks it down and beats it mercilessly into submission with his paw. Lacking an opposable thumb to pick up the prey, he’s forced to pin it to the floor. Lacking the strength to crush it on the ground, he keeps it trapped while he decides whether he wants to eat it – a decision that always takes about 2 seconds and always results in him eating it.

When I heard him stop this morning, I jumped out of bed and turned the light on to see what he’d captured. I found him belly-down on the floor, his right paw firmly pressed to the ground. I didn’t see an insect but that didn’t mean there wasn’t one. I waited patiently to see if he would go for the kill, but he didn’t. He just laid there.

Then he shifted his paw, and I realized he didn’t have the insect trapped at all, and that’s when I got scared. No insect under the paw means it’s still roaming about, and as I’ve said before, the only thing freakier than an insect is a missing insect.

I started to look around the room myself to no avail, and that’s when I realized there was no insect at all. The cat tried to stand but couldn’t and fell back to the floor. I thought, dear god, it's option 1 - he's broken his leg. I quickly scooped him up to see what the problem was…

To my relief, he wasn’t injured at all – somehow, inexplicably the sonofabitch got his foot stuck in his collar. His entire goddamn leg was wedged in there, pinned against his face. Despite his obvious discomfort, it was the funniest thing I’d seen in awhile. Cradling him there like a baby I just started laughing while he was looking up at me like, “Ha, ha, ha. I get it; I look like a jackass. Now help me out here or I’m going to be pissing in your shoes this morning!”

I can only assume this whole scenario is why collars have never really caught on as a fashion for humans. Can you imagine waking up with your arm pinned against your face, unable to move or do anything. That’s like when you sleep with your arm under your body and it falls asleep. You wake up with that phantom limb feeling except it isn’t a phantom limb; it’s just a useless piece of meat hanging from your shoulder. Somehow both my arms fall asleep once. I woke up like, “Ahhhh! Ohmygod! Ohmygod! My arms! I can’t feel my arms!” It was the worst 2 minutes, flailing about like a fish out of water, knocking shit off the nightstand until the feeling was finally restored.

The wife and I laughed for quite awhile about the cat. Then she said, “I thought he had a stroke!” Dear god, woman, that’s the most macabre thing I’ve ever heard. I was worried about a fucking cockroach and you’re worried about a stroke!?! I didn’t even know cats could have strokes.

Suffice it to say, everything is back to normal and I haven’t found that pair of shoes yet. 

The Engineer Strikes Back

I’m mad as a hornet. This whole stupid Engineer-Day-at-the-Adventure-Science-Center thing was completely fucked up from Jump Street.

The whole deal took place in a big, open conference room where 10 or 12 companies and organizations had set up tables with displays and hands-on activities for the kids to participate in, learn something about engineering, and burn off the tons of excess sugar and caffeine their spineless parents were powerless to prevent them from consuming.

As I mentioned, our whole shtick was “lift and drag,” which was just retarded for us to begin with because we design buildings, not airplanes. There isn’t a sonofabitch in the company that knows a thing about aeronautical engineering, yet there we were standing in front of a giant poster touting the principles of flight, looking like a bunch of douche wads.

To make matters worse, about 10 minutes before I left the house I got on the internet to Google “how do planes fly,” only to find out that everything I learned in school and everything we were supposed to tell the kids about lift and drag was completely wrong. Without boring the shit out of you, the basic accepted explanation of lift is based on Bernoulli’s principle, which essentially defines the characteristics of fluid dynamics. While the principle itself is accurate, it’s far too trite to explain the theories behind lift. Instead you need to go back to Newton’s laws, which really muddy the waters and… all right, whatever. My life is a miserable, boring joke and I don’t’ even find this stuff interesting. The point is, 10 minutes before I was going to stand in front of a bunch of impressionable kids I found out everything I was supposed to tell them was nothing but a convenient lie because the truth was too hard to explain. I felt like a Republican. I was better off getting in there and being like, “Listen kids, I know you came here to learn about engineering but instead I’m going to tell you about how Santa Claus doesn’t really exist…”

Fortunately children have the attention span of children and they couldn’t give two shits about how a plane flies.

I can’t say the same for the parents though. At one point I was sitting there and some ass-rocket of a father comes moseying on by and says to me, “Isn’t it Bernoulli, not Bernoull?”

I looked back at him with equal parts contempt and confusion, “Yeah?”

“Your poster says Bernoull. It’s supposed to be Bernoulli.”

I turned around and fuck me if there wasn’t a typo right there under a picture of Daniel Bernoulli. “Hey kids! Today we’re going to learn about Greg Washington, the first President of the United States of Americuh!”

Whatever, so there’s a fucking misspelling on our poster, so what. Well the guy wouldn’t let it go so I decided to drop some knowledge on his cranium. “You know,” I said, “Bernoulli’s equation doesn’t accurately describe the principles behind lift; we actually need to go back to Newton for that…”

“Yes it does,” he interrupted, “It’s also how a carburetor works.”

Holy shit, I almost turned that guy inside out. I was furious. Whenever his kid gets beat up on the playground he deserves it because his dad is a raging turd.

Anyway, like I said, our activity involved making gliders out of paper and straws, which was in fact as retarded as it sounds. Even the best made paper and straw glider was only capable of flying in a straight line for 15, 20 feet, tops. Most kids’ gliders took a nosedive directly into the ground. After the first 5 minutes I got so tired of seeing the kids’ faces as they came up to the table all precocious and full of wonderment and then after 30 seconds of making their glider they were like, “Really? This is it? We paid 12 bucks to get in here and we just made a shitty glider out of supplies you picked up at McDonalds? This is a joke right?”

Plus, I was working the third of three shifts so when I go there things were in full swing. We were running low on tape so I went to the extra supply box to get some more and what did I find? The entire stack of paper I had cut and the entire stack of straws I unwrapped, sitting in the box, completely unused. Holy shit, I almost had an aneurism. I spent 40 minutes of my life working on that stuff, cutting enough paper to make a glider for every child in Somalia, and apparently so did everyone else participating in engineering day. We had enough materials for thousands of children. Again, I was furious.

To make matters worse, the fucking Aeronautical Engineering Department at Vanderbilt was there as well and while we were making the ridiculously amateurish gliders, they were having the kids make paper airplanes, but not the stupid paper airplanes that you and I learned how to make as a kid; these were badass origami flying machines that could do loops, and barrel rolls and all kinds of fancy bullshit. I looked over to their table to see a pile of our stupid fucking gliders discarded beneath it as the kids quickly realized how awesome the paper planes were in comparison to the gliders.

At one point I was sitting at our table, minding my own business, contemplating my career choice, when a goddamn paper airplane landed right on our table in front of me. I looked over to see the whole group of pimply-faced aeronautical engineering students giggling and mocking me, challenging me to throw one of our gliders back at them. Instead I just threw their airplane back… after I wrote on the wing, “Good luck getting laid… ever.”

Worse than the aeronautical engineers, our table was located right next to a table that was attended by Miss Tennessee. That’s right – Miss-fucking-Tennessee. Does anybody want to tell me what in the hell she was doing there because I couldn’t figure it out? And do you know how I knew it was Miss Tennessee? She was wearing her goddamn sash! I am not making this up. I don’t even know what activity was taking place at her table; all she needed to do was smile and wave and the whole goddamn room got sucked into her pearly white teeth like Sirens luring us to our death.

Now at this point I know you’re all saying, this couldn’t possibly get any worse. Oh, you’re more wrong than the carburetor guy. It got worse. Much, much worse. Just as I was showing some kid how to make a stupid fucking glider, who should come rolling in like he was the king of the universe but R2-fucking-D2! No shit. A real life, fully functional, rolling, head spinning, robot-talking R2D2! You don’t believe me???

The guy operating the remote controls just stood off to the side so the kids had no idea. They thought it was really R2D2, flocking to it like doctors to a tapeworm at a gastroenterological conference. Shit, even I ran over to it, knocking three kids out of the way. It was phenomenal. Not even Miss Tennessee’s free-form dance routine could draw anyone’s attention away from R2.

By the time the whole thing was over I couldn’t get out of there fast enough.

On the bright side, the kids seemed to have a legitimately fun time. I don’t know that any of them were persuaded to become engineers, especially when they’d walk by and I’d whisper, “Hey; hey kid. Look at me. Look at my face. You don’t want to end up like this. Go into pharmaceuticals…” but at least they were able to get away from their video games for a short while and actually do something constructive.

Speaking of which, one kid was wearing a shirt that said, “My perfect day: 1. Get up, eat breakfast; 2. Play video game; 3. Eat lunch; 4. Play video games; 5. Eat dinner; 6. Play video games; 7. Go to sleep,” and I could tell he didn’t just wear the shirt because he liked the color. He was all pale and gaunt like a Gitmo prisoner and I could tell that Johnny Klebitz of Grand Theft Auto IV was his only friend.

At least that was better than the kid in the sleeveless t-shirt that said, “My dad is the man.” I hate to break it to you kid, but your dad isn’t the man; he’s a redneck.

 

Building the Future

This weekend I'm participating in Engineering Day at the Adventure Science Center here in Nashville through work. A bunch of different companies and organizations will be there and the idea is to provide fun activities for the kids to learn something about science and engineering.

Now I know what you're saying: "Dude, you hate/are terrified of children. Why the hell are you doing this?"

You're absolutely right and I wouldn't be doing this if the court order wasn't forcing me. Actually that's not true. There isn't a judge on the planet that would force me to spend time with kids in a teaching environment.

"In other news, several dozen local parents got a rather rude surprise today when their children returned from the Engineering Day at the Adventure Science center. When asked what they learned, all the children produced an apparently empty plastic bottle and instructed their parents to open it. What the got, it turns out, was a very smelly surprise. Apparently in addition to learning about such engineering principles as lift, drag, buoyancy, and propulsion, the children also learned how to capture their own flatulence in a plastic bottle..."

Anyway, our activity is to teach the kids about lift and drag by having them make gliders out of construction paper and straws to see how far they can make them fly. When I originally volunteered for this I thought I'd just have to show up to make sure none of the kids ate any of the glue. Come to find out I actually have to put some work into this shit. When I returned to my desk at one point today I found a huge stack of construction paper and a massive pile of straws sitting on my chair with instructions to cut the paper into thin strips and unwrap all of the straws. I just stood there looking at the hundreds of straws thinking, why did we purchase a bunch of straws with paper wrappers on them? Don't the straws typically come through the manufacturing process without paper wrappers? Then they go through another manufacturing process to put the wrappers on? So now I have to take them off again? Couldn't we have interrupted that manufacturing process early on to get some naked straws? Aren't we engineers? Shouldn't this be efficient? Is it me? Am I the stupid one here?

It took me 20 minutes each to cut the paper and unwrap the straws. What a colossal waste of my time. Once I had 500 unwrapped straws in front of me the only thing I could think was, "I wonder how many of these I can fit in my mouth at once?"

134

The whole time I was doing that shit I was thinking, why am I cutting this paper and unwrapping the straws myself. Why not, in addition to teaching the kids about engineering, teach them a little something about work ethic? "Alright you bastards, gather round, grab some paper, and start cutting it up into little strips... What? You don't have scissors? Use your teeth. There, I just taught you something about ingenuity too... Oh, what now? Your glider won't fly? Good, you just learned about failure. Stick with me and you'll learn a lot of life's lessons your parents would like to pretend don't exist... Bobby! Stop pulling that girl's pigtails; you don’t want to mess with her, she's going to be pregnant before you get your driver's license..."

In reality I am kind of looking forward to this but holy shit, I need to learn something about lift and drag before I get there this weekend. The last thing I want to do is tell some kid he's retarded for using 9 straws instead of 2 to make his glider then watch him launch it for a couple hundred yards. 

I'd hate for that kid to also learn what a perfectly executed roundhouse to the face feels like.

It's the Roc, Baby!

If you haven’t seen it, A&E has a great television program called Intervention. For those not familiar with the premise, the producers of the show find some fine, upstanding American citizens who also happen to have debilitating addictions to heroin, crack or crystal meth. As the viewer, you get to go along as they follow the addict around for a few weeks to watch them destroy their jobs, personal relationships, and financial nest eggs as they sneak around to score a fix then smoke or light up in broad daylight. With the help of the show the family confronts the addict with an overwhelming show of support in an effort to get them to agree to an all expense paid trip to Malibu for rehab. Think of it as Extreme Makeover: Liver Edition.

It’s actually a really fun show to watch because you can turn it into a drinking game as you bet on whether or not the addict will go to rehab.

In last night’s episode the addict, Chad, was a professional cyclist until he walked up to Lance Armstrong of all people, called him fat, and punched him in the stomach. I’m not sure if that was the catalyst that led to the Livestrong campaign or not, but I’m sure it contributed. Chad then went a step further to prove he was leaner and meaner than Lance by picking up crack as a hobby, losing his professional cycling contract, and moving out of his apartment in favor of living on the street. Chad fed his addiction by panhandling, which he was remarkably good at. By his estimation he could make $2,000 – 3,000 a month just by begging on the street. $2-3K a month! That’s $24-36k a year! Tax free! Why the hell did I go to college and get a job? All I need to do is stop showering and shaving and I’m on my way to easy street, flying high under Uncle Sam’s radar. Do you have any idea how much I despise showering and shaving as it is?

Anyway, Chad agreed to go to rehab after the intervention, got cleaned up, and was ultimately able to land another cycling contract. It was actually extremely touching. I also won the drinking game.

The only reason I’m bringing this up is, if you recall from several months ago I had a mild “cocaine addiction” of my own that lasted about 24 hours and resulted in several very public bloody nose incidents, including one at work. Well fuck me - it happened again today! For the record I have not been using cocaine nor have I been remotely sick; that’s why it was so surprising. I had just arrived at work and was still getting settled in, doing what I normally do for the first 30 or so minutes of the day – nothing. I felt a little tickle in my nose but before I could even grab a Kleenex a spurt of blood just jumped right out of my nostril. I immediately ran to the bathroom and the damndest thing, it was already over practically before it even started. When I got to the bathroom thankfully there wasn’t any more blood. I just washed my hands and face to make sure we were golden and that was it. It was like my body just made a little too much blood and my heart didn’t know what to do with it so it decided to spit the excess out my goddamn nose. So much for recycling.

I was just about to leave the bathroom when I noticed something out of the corner of my eye, “What the fuck is that!?!” I looked down in horror to find blood splattered across the front of my pants. The front of my pants, I tell you! “What the hell is this!” I panicked, “It looks like I just had my goddamn period!” 

I immediately wetted a paper towel to dab at the blood but I might as well have been using a bb gun to kill a vampire. It was futile. Do you know what you can use to get a bloodstain out of your clothing? Fire. Fire is the only thing that will work with some very obvious downsides. All other home remedies are crap and besides, it’s not like I had a little dop kit of hydrogen peroxide, salt, and club soda to mix up a little blood removal experiment¹. Plus, what the hell was I going to do? Take my pants off and wash them in the sink? Or worse, the toilet bowl???

Oh man, I’m telling you, it was horrible. I did my best to stay in my cubicle the entire rest of the day. The two times I did get up - to get lunch and go to the bathroom -  I had to carry a folder around with me to hide the front of my pants. Do you know how goddamn weird it looks to walk into the bathroom carrying a folder in front of your crotch??? It looks fucking weird!

There’s an urban clothing store around the corner from my office and I was so damn close to walking down there to buy a new pair of pants.

“John, are you wearing different pants than when you came to work this morning?”

“Huh? Different pants? No, wha- what are you talking about?”

“I don’t know. It’s not that I’m taking note of what you’re wearing, I just thought you had on some khakis or something this morning and now you’re wearing 42” waist Rocawear jeans. I mean, I could be wrong…”

“Yeah. Yeah, you must be wrong. I mean, these are my favorite pants. I’m wearing these all the time. I can’t believe you haven’t noticed before. I mean, it’s just like the slogan says, ‘It’s Rocawear or it ain’t nuffin’ else...’”

On a similar note a friend of mine was at work one day finishing up his business in the bathroom when his zipper broke. It’s not like it just stopped zipping, the little zipper mechanism actually broke off of the zipper. He didn’t have a moment’s hesitation; he walked right out of the bathroom, out the side door, got in his car, and drove home to change his pants.

I wish I had that luxury today.

 

1. Since I’ve been home this evening, I’ve done an extensive Google search to find recommendations for removing blood from fabric. Fire will indeed work, but apparently so will saliva and urine. That’s right – urine. I’m kind of glad I didn’t know that a few hours ago. However saliva seems to be a fairly accessible, reliable alternative so if this ever happens to you, you can thank me later.

 

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http://www.adcmt.org/index.php

http://project-linden.org/

Irish R&B

Everyone loves a party. It’s like McLovin says in Superbad when Officers Slater and Michaels ask him how old he is at the liquor store:

“Old enough…”

“Old enough for what?”

“Old enough to party.”

Don’t we all just want to be old enough to party? That’s why we were excited to get invited to a birthday party for a one-year old last weekend. I’ve never been to a first birthday party but I’ve been to a lot of 21^st birthdays and I imagine they’re very similar – lots of drool, vomit and tears.

In order to make it to the party I had to trick Sara into leaving early by taking her shopping at Target beforehand, which was just a few minutes from our friend’s house, because the only thing she likes more than a party is being late to a party. We were the first ones to roll up to the house about 5 minutes early, which really pissed her off. If she hates being early she absolutely detests arriving first. She wanted to sit in the car until someone else showed up but I steadfastly refused.

When our friend opened the door for us the first thing out of Sara’s mouth was, “I’m so sorry we’re early!”

Being early was the least of our concerns though as our friend looked back at us kind of funny, “Uh… the party was yesterday…”

I can tell you definitively that it’s damn near impossible to recover from the embarrassment of that situation.

It’s at that point that I wish I had a super power; any super power. Invisibility; X-ray vision to see into the house to realize there was no party; Spidey sense; Batman’s utility belt to drop a smoke bomb then use he grappling gun to get the hell out of there. Shit, even if I was Jason Bourne I would have realized something was amiss as I was climbing up the downspout to break into the upstairs window and could have avoided the situation all together.

Worse than showing up a day late for the party was finding out that a large package of diapers is not an appropriate birthday gift for a one-year old and bringing along a six pack of beer for the parents is in poor taste. Actually that’s not true at all; we didn’t bring either. Thankfully I wasn’t able to convince Sara the diapers were a good idea though I really wish I had convinced her the six pack was. I would have chugged the beer right then and there and puked on their carpet. After that showing up on the wrong day for the party wouldn’t have seemed as awkward. 

Trilogies – Part III: Ultimatum

We left off last time having established that The Godfather and The Matrix are the best trilogies of all time, so good in fact that we don’t even discuss them among other trilogies. The original three Star Wars are up there as well but Lucas and company screwed the pooch when they tried to make the next three (Hayden Christianson as Darth Vader? Really? Vader was the symbol of evil for the better part of my youth then he was turned into the symbol of douche baggery for the rest of my life).

That brings us to the original three Indian Jones movies. I haven’t seen the recently released fourth movie to even know if it ruins the franchise like a lot of people think but obviously the release of the fourth movie disqualifies it as a trilogy though if it remained a trilogy it would be at the top of the list right next to Star Wars.

Which brings us, finally, to the best trilogy of all time not starring Al Pacino or featuring a leather-clad Carrie Anne Moss:

The Bourne Trilogy

Jason Bourne, quite simply, is the most badass motherfucker in the universe. He’s so badass he doesn’t even know how badass he is. Literally. There isn’t a trilogy of movies out there that kicks more ass from start to finish than Bourne. Even the theme song is badass and gives me chills every time I hear it (Duh-dun duh-dun-duh-dun duh-dun-duh-dun-dun-dun…) I mean,I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been somewhere and wished I had amnesia like Jason Bourne and could just pick up a newspaper and turn it into a deadly weapon or something. I’ll be at the pub listening to some turd go on about how awesome the Chelsea futbol team is and I’ll be staring at him with such contempt then he’ll look at me and be like, “What the hell are you looking at?” And I want so badly to be like, “A dead man…” then compound fracture his elbow and slam the bridge of his nose into his skull, killing him instantly (Duh-dun duh-dun-duh-dun duh-dun-duh-dun-dun-dun…). That would be so badass.

My favorite parts of the movies, aside from the unbridled ass-kicking of course, is like in the Supremacy when he’s on the phone with Pamela Landy and she’s like, “Jason, why don’t you just come in so we can talk about this?”

Bourne agrees but he’ll only turn himself in to someone familiar to him. So he says, “Okay, there was a girl in Paris; she was part of Treadstone; send her alone.”

Then Pamela is like, “That’s Nicky Parsons (played by Julia Stiles); I have no idea where to find her.”

Then Bourne’s like, “It’s easy; she’s standing right next to you…” as he’s watching them from the adjacent rooftop.

He does it again in the Ultimatum when he calls up Noah Vose, the director of the Blackbriar program and Noah is like, “Why don’t you just come in so we can talk about this?”

And Bourne is like, “Where are you now?”

Noah says, “In my office.”

Bourne: “That’s not possible.”

Noah: “Why not?”

Bourne: “Because we’d be having this conversation face to face…” as he’s standing in the guy’s fucking office!

All the time I want to call my buddies up and be like, “Hey man, we should get together sometime.”

Buddy: “Sure. When?”

Me: “Right this second.”

Buddy: “Uhh… that will be kind of impossible; you live all the way across town.”

Me: “No it won’t; I’m in your coat closet…” Duh-dun duh-dun-duh-dun duh-dun-duh-dun-dun-dun…

Years ago before Bourne even came out I had the exact same idea – some sort of special ops dude wakes up one day not remembering who he is then slowly figures out he’s the biggest badass he’s ever know. I even wrote it down. By no means am I suggesting that someone stole my idea; I’m simply drawing the parallel that I had an idea similar to the Bourne movies, the Bourne movies are badass, ergo I am badass.

A lot of people take issue with the way the Bourne movies were filmed, largely using handheld cameras giving it a very unsteady, shaky feel. Some people even claim they get motion sickness from watching the movies. What are you? 6 years old on a road trip with your parents? Take some fucking dramamine and grow up.

After Bourne I’d list the following trilogies in no particular order:

Mad Max: A movie about the barren, lawless land of the post-apocalypse where fossil fuels are the only remaining currency isn’t something you just pop in the DVD player on a lazy Sunday afternoon but if you do, prepare to walk away feeling shitty about the future.

Ocean’s: Brad Pitt? Check. George Clooney? Check. Matt Damon? Check… the list goes on. Eventually they’ll make an Ocean’s 34 with every hot actor and actress in Hollywood and I’ll love every second of it.

Blade: See “Blade Runner, Starring Wesley Snipes” posted January 30^th.

Back to the Future: These movies were great in the 80’s but how wrong could they have been? Where is my fucking hovercraft skateboard? I would go to bed at night dreaming of the day when that would be true. We still can’t make a vehicle in America that gets better than 20 mpg; it’ll be decades before we get hover boards.

The Mexico Series: This includes The Mariachi, Desperado, and Once Upon a Time In Mexico. I can’t seriously put this on my list because I haven’t seen the first movie but the other two combine two of my favorite things: guns and burritos.

Pirates of the Caribbean: These movies were pretty good but would have been more awesome if they hadn’t been done by Disney, which pretty much means more blood and nudity.

Obviously one notable omission from my list is the Lord of the Rings. I can’t say they were terrible movies, I actually quite enjoyed the first one and parts of the other two but I just think the movies got bogged down by the sheer volume of Tolkien’s book. I don’t know this for a fact because I haven’t actually read the book. Even as a kid I remember looking at how big it was and thinking, I’ll just wait; they’ll make this into a movie someday. Plus, they could have made this into a single movie if they’d cut out all the scenes where the camera is just focused on Elijah Wood’s face with his big baby blues looking like he’s about to cry. I get it; you’re conflicted, you have the weight of the world on your shoulders, this is a larger burden than you can bear… grow up. Jason Bourne didn’t ask to be the world’s single best one-man killing machine but he accepts his fate and carries it out with unmatched efficiency. The least you can do is lug around a stupid ring for a few days.

Duh-dun duh-dun-duh-dun duh-dun-duh-dun-dun-dun…