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| "The success of the band was irrelevant - you raised their expectations of life, you lifted their horizons. Sure we could have been famous and made albums and stuff, but that would have been predictable. This way it's poetry." -Joey "The Lips" Fagin
Once upon a time, Christopher Columbus believed he had a shorter route to India. His route worked just like he thought it would, and he revolutionized the trade industry to India. The end.
Isn't that story awful? As Wayne Campbell would say, "it sucks eggs".
I think about today's quote, or rather the idea of this quote often. When you really think about it, how many times have you seen something not go according to plan, yet it turned out well? You go on a trip to somewhere, you get lost, you decide to try that restaurant over there and boom, you find the best ham and cheese omelet you've ever had. You and your companion decide in the parking lot that you will have to "get lost in this area again some time".
Those are some of the great moments of life, getting pulled away from the norm, out of your comfort zone, and into a new experience can be awesome times.
But of course if it were that simple, we'd all get uncomfortable as often as possible. It's something I admire about friends who love to travel to new places. I like hearing about their adventures. "Adventure" is a word that's not usually in my vocabulary. I don't like being anywhere that I don't have a bailout plan for. I don't mind going somewhere in, say, Wisconsin, where I know I could get home somehow. Flying to a faraway country? Mmm...not quite there yet. Would it be great for me? Sure it would. Once I have an actual reason to do so, I'll have to think about this point I'm making again.
Yet, there's something about "uncomfortable" that we like. We can learn to like it, as I think I have to an extent, because we know we grow most in those times. People who don't like growing and only want the status quo for the rest of eternity like sticking to the same routine and nothing more.
It's understandable that little kids wouldn't be thrilled with growing sometimes because they don't know what to expect half the time. Being a kid is a series of uncomfortable moments and uncertainty. Why else would kids want to watch the same Barbie Princess movie or Care Bears Save the World videos over and over...and over...and over...and over...and you get my point.
Seems like every Disney sports movie is the same basic thing, the misfit kids who never win a game get united with the unlikeliest of coaches and somehow the dweeby kid, the fat kid, the leader-in-hiding kid, the quiet kid, and the girl always come together with an explosion of talent and trick plays to win the big game. It's the same story, and that's why kids like it so much every stinkin' time. So even though we've seen "The Mighty Ducks" 15 hundred times, why do we STILL like the underdog story? It's different. It's a new experience to learn through or learn about. Unlike Disney's world, life is unpredictable.
When the 1st round pick becomes a superstar, it's predictable. When the 7th round pick fought the odds to even play the game much less make it to the big leagues, it's poetry.
The quote of the day (okay, month, so sue me  ) is from a movie called "The Commitments". It's based off one of the few books in college I actually liked, and somewhat surprisingly it's not a bad film. If you don't mind Irish people and British cursing, it's worth a watch. It actually personifies this quote pretty well. Just don't raise your expectations too much, k? 
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| I have been working on these...it's finishing them that is proving to be difficult. I think I ramble in this post a bit, but it's this or nothing for the immediate future. I do love this quote though.
"The problem with saying the wrong words all the time is gibbon fish bucket hat." - Monty Python
I don't think a truer statement has ever been uttered.
I mean seriously, this sentence works on so many levels.
I'm a big fan of saying something that you don't mean to grab a person's attention. Great example...there's an episode of "The Golden Girls" where Dorothy is supposed to have surgery on her foot. After a series of incidents with a doctor and a priest, Dorothy can't get past her intense phobia of hospitals. She bolts home where her mother, Sophia, wants to know why she's avoiding the necessary surgery.
If you'd like to watch the clip, here it is (minus the doctor incident):
The gist of the conversation goes like this:
Sophia: Blanche, get the keys to your car. We're taking Dorothy back to the hospital
Dorothy: I'm not going.
Sophia: Okay, fine.So you don't wanna go back to the hospital?
Dorothy: No.
Sophia: You don't want the doctor to operate?
Dorothy: No.
Sophia: Then it's settled. We'll do it here. Blanche, go boil some water and get me a pillow. Rose, sharpen my Ginsu knife. Dorothy, pick out a shoe you'd like to bite on.
Dorothy: You're not serious?
Sophia: No. I'm just acting as stupid as you are.
I guess my friend Dameon was right; you can reference anything back to "Seinfeld" or "The Golden Girls"...
Anywho, that clip is a good example of using silliness to get a point across. It's still in plain English, but it is a great case of how a crazy statement can get the point across. Sophia had to pull Dorothy into a crazy world of Ginsu knives and tasting rubber to get the idea into her head that she HAD to have that surgery.
I was in a legendary English class taught by Zeke "Awesome" Jarvis where he actually diagrammed a sentence uttered by Steve Martin and looked at it like some folks would look at the Mona Lisa. The sentence in question dealt with Martin talking about how to mess up a 5 year old by teaching them all the wrong words. I mean ALL the wrong words. On their first day of kindergarten they would look up to their teacher and when asking to go to the bathroom, would say "May I mambo dogface to the banana patch?"
That of course is very funny, but that aside, that is also a beautiful sentence. We discussed the sentence in class and determined that one of the reasons the line is so funny is because it follows the basic structure that a child would ask that question in.
"Mambo" for "please"
"dogface" for "go"
"banana patch" for "bathroom"
"Mambo doesn't sound anything like "please", but the other words aren't that far from the words they're replacing, yano?
So now that I've killed the joke for you, I'll go back in the general direction of my main point. The sentence is beautiful even though it's nonsense. The earlier quote from Python may be even better though. It's loose, it doesn't require the structure that Martin's does, but it maintains enough of one that the line holds up. The nonsense in it isn't long, but just long enough. Once you process that you did indeed hear him say "gibbon", you recognize he's speaking, as they call it in England, "Bollocks". "Fish" is a funny word. "Bucket" is just silly (although "fish bucket" is a strangely amusing concept). "Hat" is a good closer...familiar, but not over-the-top. And I have learned in my research that there are such things as a "gibbon fish" and a "bucket hat". Personally, I think that makes things even sillier. A silly phrase, and yet, I've learned something.
Now that I've ruined the humor of both of these for you, here's my point. St. Francis of Assisi once said "Preach the gospel, and if necessary, use words." With "gibbon fish bucket hat", the words are necessary, but they're perfectly executed. There is no better way to get the idea across. I look at this quote as practicing what you preach in a way. You preach that saying the wrong words is confusing, and the sentence proves its point in the process.
As Python would say at this juncture, "Get on with it!"
Okay, final point, it's not always the "words" that matter. It's how they are used. It's what vein they are used in. So next time you don't understand a question, just say "gibbon fish bucket hat". The next time you want to yell something across the parking lot at a friend, ask them where Bozo is. When all else fails, "pop-a-wheelie."
Those last two lines were stolen from Steve Oedekerk...why? Because someone has to remember him, darn it.
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| Brett Favre can't decide whether he's going to play or not. So he gets a commercial for Sears where he can't decide if he wants to buy a TV or not.
So if next Monday night, when he faces Green Bay...if he has a bad game due to performance anxiety...he's not gonna get a Viagra commercial, is he?
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| I've had this idea for...probably well over 6 months by now...but I'm finally gonna make a serious effort to follow through on this...
I've wanted to post on here more regularly, but when there's no school...just doesn't seem like I have as much to post about. So...I will post 20 of my favorite quotes here over the next month...if I stick to it...and will share my thoughts about each in some hopefully amusing and semi-entertaining way.
I will warn you ahead of time, some of my favorite quotes are silly, most of them are very true, but all of them are quotes. I will promise you that. And if they're not real quotes, I promise to pretend they are.
On that note...let's start with
“People do not seem to realize that their opinion of the world is also a confession of character.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson
This quote really speaks to me. There are a few things that come to mind here, three ideas really...
1) You can tell a lot about a person by what they say AND how they say it.
2) There are always (at least) 2 sides to each story.
3) People are idiots.
Now allow me to explain those one at a time. As much as I'd love to talk about point three, I will hold off on it.
A month or two ago, I was up at the Tracks, a local bar/restaurant. I overheard a guy at the bar talking about adamantly about what a jerk this "other guy" was. There were at least a couple choice words of profanity being used to describe said individual. He went on to mention that he doesn't talk to this individual at all anymore.
I think it would've been bad enough if I had to listen to someone rant and rave and tear down another person as if this "other guy" were a mindless automaton with no opinions or beliefs of their own...but this "other guy" was the man's son.
After going on and on about how bad his son is and how much he gave him and how his son treated him like crap through his teenage years, the guy told the bartender that for his son's 18th birthday he put his son's possessions out on the front lawn and told his kid that he was being kicked out of his house.
I bit my lip and minded my own business, but I really wanted to find out the guy's answer to this question:
If you son really is a jerk (and all those other words you used to describe him), where do you suppose he learned it from?
Seriously...I don't understand how parents can raise a kid to be so uncaring and unkind...and then turn around and blame the kid for it.
<sarcasm>
It's not like they had any influence over the kid for all those years, showing him the ways to live through their own actions, and showing him that he would have to be accountable for his actions instead of blaming others for their own failures.
</sarcasm>
I had the same wondering about a fellow I played softball with, ripping his ex-wife, calling her a name that even I cringe at (yes, it's THAT word, and if you don't know which one I mean, don't worry about it; it really is better you don't know). He had me curious as to why he dated her, married her, and had a kid with her in the first place. What does that say about him?
I still feel a little bad when I hear someone talk about their ex-significant other because the relationship didn't work out. I shouldn't always though. Some relationships end in a very friendly way and everything is peaches and cream. Still...I tend to focus on the negative aspects of break-ups. Maybe it has something to do with all the negative comments I've heard people make. I can't say I've ever been in a dating/courting relationship before, but I have had friendships that just went bad for one reason or another. I realized that if I dwell on the negatives, that does not speak well of me. Blame doesn't usually (if ever) completely land on one person in a conflict.
The guy at the bar kept going on and on about his son "treating me like crap all those years when I'm giving you everything you have? I kick you out of my house and keep everything I payed for. I win. I win."
I know this almost defeats the point I'm trying to make here, but..."I win?" Seriously, he said "I win" several times like it was a game. "I win." Seriously. He sounded like a 5 year old to me. That idea brings me to my second thought..."I win?" What about when this guy is old and can't take care of himself. His son shows up to court or wherever, tells the court that he'll take care of him better than anyone else would be able to, courts believe him, and the son mistreats his dad in his final days and years. He wins. He wins. Is there any forethought in the world anymore? I'm about ready to beg people to think things through before they bring a child into the world. Be ready to bring them up right. Be sure you know what you want them to learn. Find out what you can improve about yourself before they're on the way.
If only genitalia could be handed out upon completing a maturity class. *sigh*
Well...I suppose that's enough about point one. Point two is pretty self-explanatory I think, and point three is...another story. Let's just say, I gave up on humanity a long time ago (he said with a smirk), at least for the most part.
And yet...I press on. So many things that I view negatively and so many things I view as deteriorating rather than getting better...yet, I find a way to be consistently happy. There must be something right in the world.
So getting back to what Emerson said, what do my statements here say about my view of the world?
To be fair, I added the "And yet..." paragraph after rereading the quote. I guess ending with "I gave up on humanity long ago" wasn't the thought I wanted to end with. :P
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| Hollywood missed a golden opportunity. Before national treasure Jim Varney passed away, he became popular for his character of Ernest P. Worrell. There was one movie we all wanted to see from Ernest...and that movie was "Ernest Goes To Hell".
So here's the idea...we start off with Ernest doing something stupid, which is pretty much like every other Ernest movie ever. The difference with this stupid thing though...is that Ernest kills himself. By some fluke (or not so fluke, knowing Ernest) accident, our hero perishes and leaves this mortal coil. Through an amazingly cheap visual light show of yellows and reds, Ernest descends, screaming and flailing his arms, into the fiery bowels of hell. I imagine some horrible sounding music mixed in with Ernest's silly one-liners as he plummets.
After landing, Ernest soon learns that he is indeed in Hell. He becomes scared as only Ernest can, and he meets Satan himself, who tortures our buddy Ernest in some semi-amusing way that isn't at all practical for the king of evil, nor does it strike viewers as being that funny either. Satan decides to leave and declares that he'll be back to torture Ernest properly later. Ernest then meets a sweet young girl (the kind of girl that he always hangs out with in these movies) who is in hell because she was a horrible, rotten girl on Earth, but has since learned that Satan is a real expletive and a not-very-nice person. When she encounters Ernest of course, we learn what a mean girl she can be, but we quickly learn, of course, that she is a really nice person deep down. She was even a nice person for a while back on Earth...
Our two heroes now walk around hell and discover one of Satan's primary minions/gatekeepers...played by Rob Schneider (who else?) He casually mentions that there is one heating grate that can be removed and someone could theoretically escape through there...to get out of Hell, yes, but where would it lead to?
Okay, so we know how these movies go, Ernest creates some insane concoction with bits and pieces from earlier in the movie, somehow or another he dresses up as the old woman in the neck brace, and they escape. They come to some gray, misty area and they find a small opening beaming with light. They decide that that must be the place to be, but....only one of them can get through it. Ernest is such a gentleman, he insists that she go through. So they have a big boo-hoo moment and she goes on through. The small opening closes up and Ernest is stuck in the gray, misty place. We learn that he is in, yes that's right, Purgatory, and he spends his first few hours in Purgatory with James Coco.
Now I know what you're thinking...why James Coco? Why not? He's the first guy that came to mind.
So just when the movie seems over, we see the light beam down, and there is Ernest's friend! She tells Ernest that he's being called up to heaven. They have a problem with a toilet that apparently only he can fix...excuse me..."fix". Ernest quips to the camera, and he ascends to the heavens. We see him floating up toward the light as the credits and music comes up and the film ends.
Now tell me that wouldn't be an awesome movie!
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