My Band Name For Today

• Service Dog Epiphany
• Joyless Orgasm
• Mystery Shoes
• Peanut Butter Recall
• Snoring Mask

"Service Dog Epiphany" is from a Wikipedia section on U.S. dog trainer Bonnie Bergin.

"Mystery Shoes" was on a memo on the wall of a McDonalds (inside the drive-thru). I think it was supposed to say "Mystery Shops", which are undercover quality officials who pose as customers.

Real News Headline: "Peanut Butter Recall Affecting Orange County Jail."

• Spiral Graphic
• Zack Norman is Sammy in Chief Zabu
• Monster Moonshine
• Bounce Castle
• Hypodermic Sandwich

Monster Moonshine is probably not what you think it is. Memorize the formal versions. You will be required to integrate them in future blog posts.

"Zack Norman is Sammy in Chief Zabu" is kind of a weird story:

Variety (the entertainment trade newspaper) ran an advertisement on page two every day for almost four years.

It was a small box with a black-and-white headshot of character actor Zack Norman with the caption "Zack Norman is Sammy in Chief Zabu".

To the best of my Google abilities, the film "Chief Zabu" never picked up a distributor, and no one but the makers has ever really seen it. Zack Norman has continued working steadily in Hollywood.

But to my satisfaction, no one has yet explained to anyone;

1. What was the purpose of this ad?
2. Why did it run for so long?
3. Who could afford to continuously place it so prominently in this major magazine?
4. Why did it feature that particular combination of obscure film and obscure actor?

Zack Norman, I know you're out there! Please write when you get time off from playing Kaz in "Queen of the Lot"!

• Chimes of Death
• Serious Dentist
  
• The Brain That Wouldn’t Do Anything
• Joe Wonder Loaf
  

This isn't the kind of blog that usually embeds other people's videos, but I've got a personal connection with this one.

My mom is friends with Joe Cocker's wife. She says she's very nice.

Anyway, if you think you have trouble understanding the 60's, here is some help:

Captioning Joe Cocker

Click the link and enjoy it while its still around.

• Particle Horizon
  
• The Pants Puppies
  
• Sloppy Cannon
  
• Per Hop Behavior
• Bratz Foot Syndrome
  

Can someone explain Per Hop Behavior to me? The professional definition is useless:

"a description of the externally observable forwarding treatment applied at a differentiated services-compliant node to a behavior aggregate."

Oh, really?

The observation in my previous post about the band Kix and the cereal Kix got me thinking...



Some bands love to get out there and just really shred guitar.

But some cereals out there are really just shredded wheat.

With apologies to Barbara Walters, if your favorite musicians were cereals, what cereals would they be? And by "favorite", I mean "Ones I made up jokes for".

I think it would go something...like...this:
That's what passes for comedy around here. Goodnight, folks.

• Talent Vacuum
• Dead Ringer
• Boxing Helena
• The Ham Bunglers
• Slowcoach (from yesterday. I imagine they are an 80's hair band, a'la KIX--the band, not the cereal.)
  

It's my birthday folks. Me and Elvis. Both born today.

I always try to celebrate for both of us by shooting out a television set.

Not my own set, of course. Lucky for me, I'm usually at a friend's house when I do this.

UNlucky for me, I'm running out of friends. Let's just say that it's very hard to get someone to throw me a party after the second or third indecent.

Oh well. Viva Las Vegas--or is that Viva Viagra? At my age, the two are much less distinct than you might surmise.

Happy Birthday, everybody.

Here are your fake band names for the first week of January:

• Instant Railroad
• Reindeer Sausage
• Chemical Butter
  
• Show Couch*
• The Specter of Power

* A "show couch" is furniture that your mom doesn't allow anyone to actually use. Not to be confused with a "slow coach", which I'd be surprised if it wasn't already a band name somewhere.

"Hello Cleveland! We are Slowcoach! Are you ready to rock?"

I've been everywhere in the past month. Much of it with sporadic Internet access. Busy, busy. In fact, its one of the reasons I blog instead of keeping a diary (aside form the fact that diaries are for sissies).

The two real reasons I don't keep a diary:

1. Half of the time, my life is too boring/uneventful to chronicle.
2. The other half of the time, I'm too dang busy to chronicle my fascinating, eventful life.

The last 6 months have been, uh, eventful.

Like a body accelerated to light speed, I have touched all parts of the universe. Or at least several hundred sticky airline tray tables.

[standup comedian mode]

And what's the deal with tray tables anyway? They're not tables. They're barely trays. Maybe they should call them "stomach guillotines" or "sky scissors"...

--After all, they must be deadly. You're only allowed to use the darn things for about 20 minutes a flight. Maybe they're radioactive or something. It would explain a lot. I can see it now:

Flight Attendant:
"For goodness sake people, get those tray tables to their upright, locked position-STAT! We've got a major containment breech here! One more minute of exposure and you'll all be as sterile as a band-aid!

[/standup comedian mode]

Thanks for reading, folks. I wish you every happiness in the upcoming year.
--Mark