Yay! Sports!

I’m not a sports guy.

I think I finally want to be, it seems fun.

I like the fact that you get to use the terms “we”, “our”, and “us” when referring to “your” team without actually being a paid member of the team.

That’s really cool.

“How did your team do this weekend?”

“We did great. You know we are really looking  good this year. Our running/kicking/goalie/batter leads the league in runs/kicks/bleeding so far!”

“I know! We really wish we had him on our team!”

You don’t do that with anything else on the planet.

“Our Coke-a-Cola tastes so good! How’s your brand?”

“We are also refreshing! Go Pepsi!”

I want to be part of the comradery that happens every Sunday in American homes. I want to wear someone else’s name on my back with some random number underneath of it. Except I would probably pick the worst member of the team just to be difficult.

“Hey, De Voss…who’s that on your back? Sticklockski? Number 109? Whaaaaaaat?”

“Really?! You have never heard of Sticklockski? C’mon! Sticklockski! 420 career bench warms! 16 stubbed toes in a single season? And you call yourself a sports fan!”

I think really, really, really fat guys in NFL jerseys are hilarious:

Are you ready for some football?! Or chicken wings?!

I think women in NFL jerseys are hilarious too:

Ha ha ha…so….funny…Man, is it suddenly warm in here?

I’m just glad dressing like your favorite sumo wrestler isn’t big here:

FYI: He has a Big Mac tramp stamp over his ass.

Starting a new trend

The Robots And The Writer

The Robots just suddenly arrived.

They landed on Earth in droves, tall…about 8 or 9 feet in height, dirty metallic bodies, 3 wheeled tank like contraptions on their legs for movement, 3 tentacle-like arms with 6 tentacle-like appendages and on each one, claw like hands and fingers.

They came and they conquered. They conquered in a mere 72 hours.

The entire world in only 72 hours.

After they conquered and killed all the leaders of the world, they kind of left everyone else alone.

Sort of.

The robots made everyone stay inside their dwellings whether it be a fancy million dollar home, an apartment complex, or  a hobo’s cardboard box. It had been about two weeks of the house arrest.

Twice  food rations were left on the doorstep. Apparently the Robots thought our diet consisted of nothing but Spaghetti-o’s. TV was cut down to one channel that just played the same five movies over and over; A Christmas Story, Groundhog Day, Porky’s 3, Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure, and Casino. No one could make heads or tails of the selections or whether their was a theme or message to them. Some thought it might be a some secret symbol of the robots intent. Radio was down to one frequency, 104.1 FM. This station only played Frank Sinatra, but luckily it was his whole catalog and not just five select songs like the TV.

The internet, shut down.

After pretty much everyone in the world could quote Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure from start to finish, an announcement came over the TV and Radio:

“Greetings, people of Planet 279. You will be hearing this broadcast in your native language since you choose to complicate your race with such nonsense as separate languages. Tomorrow will begin your sorting. I will assume, you 279ings do not know what a sorting is, so I will explain. Each one of you will be individually interviewed on your worth to this planet and to us, your new masters. If your skills are deemed worthy, you will live to serve us. If your skills are deemed inadequate, you will be killed on the spot. We have already eradicated Rappers, Weather Men, Fruit Snack Packers, Walmart Customer Service Employees, Mark Zuckerburg, and Network TV Executives.   One of our kind will be knocking on your door sometime between 8 am and 5 pm to begin your evaluation. That reminds me, we need to add all cable installers to the inadequate list. Do not try to run. Do not try to resist. Do not try to fight. Do try to cooperate. Do try to answer the questions truthfully. And if you are deemed unworthy, do try to die quickly and without crying. That is all.”

And then Casino started playing on the TV again.

I was a novelist. I don’t know what Robots would want a novelist for…especially based on their taste of movies, but I couldn’t give up hope. There had to be a place for someone with my skill set for them. I didn’t have to write novels, I could write about anything…be a reporter, keep records, or something. My youngest daughter, who was 6, pulled on my pants.

“Daddy, I’m scared!” she said with big teary eyes.

“Oh,” I said as I brushed her long blonde bangs out of her eyes and kissed her on the forehead. “Don’t be. Daddy will be okay.”

“But Daddy,” she responded, tears running down her cheeks. “Who will pack the Fruit Snacks now?”

I gave her a hug and said, “I don’t know, honey. I don’t know.”

—–

Eight AM came quickly the next day, and you could see the robots lining up along the suburban street. The had enough robots for one to stand outside each and every door, and at precisely 8, a unison single knock hit the aluminum doors, followed by a metallic warning;

“You have 30 seconds to answer your doors. 30, 29, 28, 27, 26….”

I opened the door. The faceless machine looked at me, and it pushed me aside as it bent it’s large frame down to fit through the opening. Once inside it said,

“Are you Planet 279 inhabitant also known as Frank Baum?”

“I am, and it’s called Earth, not Planet 279,” I responded weakly.

“What you know of as ‘Earth’ is no more. You are now an inhabitant of Planet 279. If you are deemed worthy of service you will be given a new name. Your new name will be 279.0943783749894590834590349.”

“Wow, I don’t know if I could remember all of that,” I said a little worried.

The robot responded, “It will be branded to your forehead. No worries.”

“Oh, great.”

The robot pulled out a clipboard. “Please answer these questions, briefly and completely or you will be eradicated. Please answer the questions truthfully or you will be eradicated. I will be monitoring your heart rate and your brain wave patterns. You will be recorded. Let us begin. For the official record, what is your Planet 279 name?”

“My Earth name or the bar code you just gave me?” I asked.

“You have not earned your worthiness, therefor you currently do not have your official citizenship of our planet. Your ‘Earth’ name please.”

“My name is Frank Baum.”

The Robot checked something off on it’s clipboard. “This is just for show by the way, it seems to make you Planet 279-ers feel more at ease. What is your current occupation?”

“I’m a novelist. I write books.”

The Robot put down the clipboard and raised what looked like a big scary laser gun.

“What is that for?!” I screamed.

“Eradication,” the robot replied.

“Why?! For being a novelist?! What the hell? Do you Robots not read? Or think that the people who will survive this won’t want to read?”

“You will be eradicated because all of the books have all ready been written,” the robot replied coldly.

“What?!” I laughed. “How can that be?!”

“Our writers have written all the books there ever will be, every subject has been written about. There is not a story that hasn’t been written that we already don’t have a book for.” The Robot raised it’s gun to my head.

“Wait!” I yelled. “How can you be so sure? What if I come up with a story that hasn’t been written yet. Then you have to keep me to write it for you.”

The Robot said and did nothing for a moment. “I will download all the books into my database. If you think you can come up with a story that I don’t have a book for, then you may live.”

The Robot raised one of it’s arms and shook for 30 seconds and then said, “Ready.”

“Ok,” I thought a moment. I had to come up with something incredibly wild and out there. “Do you have a book about an octopus with 6 dog’s heads that falls in love with a squirrel after terrorizing the citizens of Alabama?”

The Robot holds up a Kindle and says, ‘Yes.” On the Kindle is story entitled, ‘Bang The Squirrel Slowly.’

“I’ll be damned!” I said as the Robot raised his gun again. “Wait! Do you have a story about an octopus with 7 dog’s heads that falls in love with a squirrel after terrorizing the citizens of Japan?”

The Robot once again holds up the Kindle and displays: ‘Bang The Squirrel Slowly II: A 7 dog headed octopus falls for the orginal squirrels Japanese half sister.’

The robot raises it’s gun again. “It is futile. All books have been written except for 5. You will be eradicated.”

“Wait? What?” I stammer. “All but five? Originally you said all books have been written. Now your saying five haven’t. What five?”

The Robot lowers it’s gun. “The sacred five. They have been turned into movies. We show only the scared five on television.”

A dumb look has to cross my face. “Are you saying Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure is one of the sacred five?”

“Yes.”

“And there is no novel form of the movie?”

“Yes, only a screenplay. ”

I scratched my head, “Well then I’m your man to do that!”

The Robot raises his gun and fires. The laser hits me square in the chest knocking me back. I fall as I feel the burning of my heart and lungs inside my chest. I see the Robot standing over me. It bends over to my face. I can barely see it’s head as my eyes darken with death. I hear the robot say,

“We have already spared Steven King for that.”

~Fin~

—–

Editor’s Note:

I awoke from a horrible dream drenched in sweat and drool the other night. Of the dream I don’t remember, I only remember the echoing of these words as I arose from REM state, “We have already spared Steven King for that.”

Thus was the inspiration for that stupid story.

🙂

High School Musical Reunion (minus the Musical) Pt One

I’m about to date myself.

I don’t mean I was going to take myself out on a date, I haven’t had to do that since High School.

Speaking of  High School, my 25th Renioun is coming up.

I’m thinking about going since I didn’t go to the 5th year renioun…or the 10th, 15th, 17 1/2, or 20th High School Reunions.

I don’t know why I’m thinking about going to be honest. I can’t say High School was all that fun, or enjoyable, or even defined me as a person.

The first year and an half down right sucked.

I’m not sure I want to rub elbows 25 years later with people who used to stick gum in my hair and knock the books out of my hands while I was walking to class.

Ha, ha, guy who did that to me, scatering my books and notebook papers all over the hallway….

Good one.

Everyday…

…good one.

My High School was a big wrestling High School, and if you didn’t wrestle….well, you were not cool.

I didn’t have the competive spirit, nor the body, nor the stomach for sticking my face in some other kid’s junk, to really want to wrestle.

My talents lied elsewhere, like being rejected by girls.

I was really talented at that.

At least this was justly deserved, as I was a big old nerd…with a nerd’s haircut, nerd braces, nerd’s slouch, freckles, and my only impressive skill: folding notecards into frogs.

Which to preteen/teenage girls…not that impressive.

So for that, my books and notebook paper would be scattered on a daily basis in the hallways of my Alma Mater.

As well as they should.

Right?

If the wrestlers thought about it though, not really a good recuitment campaign to get me on the blue wrestling tights band wagon. I’m glad that  recuitment companies in the real world don’t use that same technique.

That would be really weird.

I pretty sure if I had joined the wrestling team, I would have had my ass handed to me, plus I’m a little nervous about heights, and I wouldn’t ever be able to do a flip off the top rope.

Which, I’m being told there is no ropes in High School Wrestling, so I guess that was not a valid excuse.

I did sit on the bench of the Freshman Basketball team to try to up my High School sports cred.

It didn’t work.

To be honest…everyone made the Freshman Basketball team.

I sucked so bad at Basketball. I really deserved to ride the bench. I was a pro at riding the bench though. I knew where to sit so as to not get any splinters in my bum, I could take a big swig of water from the sports bottle like I had just played hard…even though I didn’t, and I could cheer and get into a big game hudle with the rest of the team like I was important to the chances of winnig or losing.

I wasn’t.

If and this was a big if….I made it onto the basketball court during game time…like usually the last 30 seconds of the game, and you passed the ball to me, I would probably either:

A) Dribble it until it was stolen from me

B) Pass it right back quickly like we were playing hot potato

C) Shoot it towards the basket, having it fall three feet short of the net.

 

I ran up and down the court like a boss though. And my basketball sneakers were always clean and my socks were always knee high.

So, I turned to theater. Which I also failed miserably. In the fall we had a drama and in the spring we had a musical.

I can’t sing, so in the spring I would end up in the chorus. Sometimes there would be speaking parts in the musicals that didn’t require you to sing, but those always went to the same guy. As a matter of fact, most of the parts in any production we did went to the same people. I would get little tiny parts with one or two lines, which I would rewrite to be funnier or ad lib something during a performance. My enhancements would go over pretty well and the drama teacher would let me keep my new versions, but I’m pretty sure she would have rather me stick to the script.

I’m a more off the cuff type of actor, which eventually lead to me joining an improv troop much later in life, but that’s a whole different set of stories.

The only good thing that I got out of the drama department was I got to snuggle with some of the girls while I was waiting to deliver my one line.

I felt sorry for my parents. They sat through an entire season of basketball watching me and the bench become one. Then they had to sit through 2 hour High School plays of really bad acting so that could hear me say my one ad libbed line.

At the very end they were more than supportive,

“You were great as Soldier No. 4. You really nailed it! So much better than last year when you were Village Peasant No. 2!”

I didn’t have the heart to tell them that I basically injected my lines myself, otherwise they would have been watching me just stand on stage for two hours doing nothing like the wooden trees built by the stage crew.

So scoring big zeros in sports and drama, I tried Art. One of the guys I went to school with could draw cars really, really well. Come to think of it, he could only draw one kind of car really, really well. Which he drew over. And over. And over.

And I don’t think it was an actual in production car. I think it was a bunch of different styles of cars mashed into his ultimate “cool” car creation.

My hand at drawing was simplistic at best. Stick figures having sex mostly. I learned to draw eyes pretty good though…not whole faces mind you…just eyes.

Art was out.

For my music venture, I tried Guitar. I was in the church guitar group for awhile and thank God there was four other guitars to cover up the horrible sounds coming from my instrument. I couldn’t read music nor play any cool rock songs. I was able to successfully get my pick stuck in the guitar hole quite a bit, thus turning the guitar into maraca. If I was smart, I should have invented the Guitaca.

Maybe I still will. I just copyrighted Guitaca(tm) before any of you guys get any ideas.

I left High School with no intentions to look back. College was a much, much better experience.

So what really brought on these ponderings?

A guy from my High School wants to friend me on Facebook. He was neither mean nor nice to me, but he hung out with the book slappers. I remember once he snapped the bra of a big boobed girl in class one day.

I thought that was cool. I wanted to do that so bad, but…you know…not a cool kid.

It wasn’t all bad. Things started turning around towards the end of Freshman year.

I’ll tell why in part two.