28 days for Zombies, 30 Days for being Poor

I watched 30 Days on FX last night. Morgan Spurlock, creator of the entertaining but ideologically flawed Super Size Me has a new series. He's applied the concept he used in SSM to other vaguely lefty ideas.

While I don't necessarily agree with his points, I find him very refreshing for a couple reasons. For one, he's funny. Unlike Micael Moore, he's actually an entertaining guy. Secondly (and more importantly) he argues in good faith. His documentary was a straightforward experiment and commentary on what fatasses we are. While he did lay much of the blame at McDonald's feet, (which is ultimately pretty juvenile) it was clear that he was also commenting on our excesses in general.

The first topic from his show dealt with living on minimum wage for thirty days. He and his wife locked up all their credit cards and cash and moved to Columbus, OH with $300 and got minimum wage jobs.
He did do an excellent job of showing how terribly difficult (and nearly impossible) it is to live on minimum wage. He also had a couple bouts of good (in this context) luck in that he was injured at work and his fiance fell ill during the thirty days. That gave them the opportunity to show what a hassle having no health insurance is as well.
And minimum wage does indeed suck. Thank Goodness it's really for kids.

Morgan got a job with a headhunter agency doing manual labor and his fiance washed dishes. They both made like 5.15 or so an hour. The problem here is that it doesn't take much ambition, intelligence, or anything at all to even accidentally develop skills.
Hanging drywall can be learned in a day. You can become proficient at it in about two weeks, and very skilled in only 6-8 months. It pays 10-15 dollars an hour to hang drywall depending on where you live.
Additionally, I did a tiny amount of research. It turns out that McDonald's, Taco Bell, Subway, Wendy's and several other top fast food joints offer health insurance for their full-time employees.

People supporting families aren't supposed to have minimum wage jobs.

While the show was an interesting exercise, I couldn't help but wonder why they were working so, well...stupid.

They took the bus because they said they couldn't afford a car. Neither can I, so that's why I had one financed. There are dealers out there (I made commercials for them) that will give ANYONE a car. You will get raped on the interest rate. But then you have a car.

Delivering pizzas? 10-20 dollars an hour.

Morgan is likeable enough fellow, and I hope his show does well. I do wonder why he would assume everyone else is too stupid to professionally duplicate what he's done in his own life. If you look at his IMDB, he was a production assistant on THE PROFESSIONAL in 1994. In 2004, he made his own movie, and now he's doing quite well.

Future episodes deal with being Muslim in America. Really? Who cares? Muslims over here are "Muslim light" at best. I assume he's going to show how people look at them funny, and there's some undercurrent of prejudice against them.
Fucking wah.
I'm fat, and there's an undercurrent of prejudice against me and a bunch of fat people didn't even have to wage a holy war on our entire way of life for that to happen.

The Shotgun Approach

After a failed invasion of a country with nothing but a flabby ticket-taker as the sole inhabitant (what was I thinking? It would be like conquering this guy), I figured I'd do a regular check-up post, just to have an entry.

So I have a couple things I thought I'd put to the keyboard.

First off, it storms down here more than...a place...that...storms a lot.
The nearly constant torrential downpour certainly hasn't had any effect on my mood. It's quite cheery. Makes me wish I'd have done more face-punchin' in my past.

SPEAKING of face-punchin' (although, not really...as you'll soon read) I went to see my neighbor's band perform. They weren't bad, considering it was their first show. And while the music wasn't exactly my thing, the second to last band was quite good.
Since it was a hardcore show, there was all manner of prancing around and slamming into each other and whatnot in the pit. During the fifth and final band, a ruckus broke out from the pit. There were two different fights erupting at the same time. About 14-million people were all working to break it up, so it didn't last long at all.
Since I was so close to one of the would-be-combatants (they never got past the pushing, or as I call it "fratboy foreplay" stage) I slipped one of my arms under his and around his chest, picking him up with one arm and facing him the opposite direction of the guy he was facing off with.
This was not a difficult feat, as the guy probably weighed 150 soaking wet. When I looked over my shoulder to make sure that the crowd of had indeed grabbed the other guy and I wasn't about to eat a fist trying to find it's way past me and into the little guy, the little guy grabbed my fingers resting on his chest and cranked on them like a slot machine.
Honestly in the confusion and with some adrenaline pumping, I didn't notice at first. I let him go and everything calmed down almost as quickly as it started.
About two minutes later, my finger hurt like it had been crushed by a rock.
Three matches in the ring, a few years of grappling, years of getting kicked in the face by Oscar Kallet, and a year as a bouncer at a Chicago venue and THIS is the time I get hurt?
I thought my finger was broken for two days, but it's feeling a good bit better today. I don't think a break would feel better in just five days. I have a pic, but it's not that gruesome.

ALSO...Entourage has started it's second season. While my girlfriend thinks the show is disgusting, I find it very, very funny. If you have HBO, check out a couple episodes. Jeremy Pivin steals the show whenever he's on screen.

I may have also found some under-the-table side work. As always, I don't want to jinx it, so only more on that if it comes to be.

That's all for now bitches....

It couldn't be avoided... 

McBloggerson Invades Bigtobest!!!!

JUNE 13th, 2005 is a day that will live in infamy.
Ships carrying thousands of Mcbloggerson troops landed on the beaches of Bigtobest this morning, with artillery support from battleships further out at sea and paratroopers dropping in behind enemy lines.

The Bigtobest troops were caught largely off-guard, many of them lazily laying about, being red-headed and slovenly. That isn't to say the Reds didn't offer some stiff resistance. The scullywog troops employed several clever tactics such as the Luchiesse Defense, The Florentine Maneuver, and playing possum.

It took our boys abou 14 hours of fighting to establish a beach head and push the Reds back to thier lines of retreat.

"They're big, wiley bastards" said Private First Class Daniel Stapleton of the McBloggerson 101rst airborne. "But we kicked thier butts right off this beach, and gave them what for!"

We wait with baited breathe to see how our boys do with the land war as they push thier way towards Girth, the capital of Bigtobest.

Tough Old Bastards

I was watching the IFC special on Reservoir Dogs.
While it was not news to me that Eddie Bunker , who played Mr. Blue, was a real-life hardened criminal that served over 20 years in prison, it WAS news to me that Lawrence Tierney was such a trouble-maker in his youth.
I knew he always played toughs (even in the 50's) but I didn't know he was like that in real life.

So during the documentary, Eddie Bunker is talking about his role. He says that he was a little nervous the first day Lawrence and he were on the set the same day, because they had a brawl in a parking lot over 40 years ago!

For some reason, that struck me like "huh?"

I couldn't wrap my head around the idea of a breaking and entering, bank-robbing, real-life crook getting into a fistfight with a tough-guy Hollywood actor somewhere in LA in the 1950's...THEN both this criminal-turned actor and that Hollywood tough are in a movie together over forty years later.

Front now on, coincidences have a higher bar.

I don't want to hear about somebody saying "wow, I was just starting to call you when my phone rang, what are the odds?" Well, let's see; we've known each other for years, we get off work at the same time, and we call each other four or five times a week. Assuming one of us isn't going to call the other at 4AM, I'd say the odds are really good.

I haven't posted in a while, but I really haven't found anything that interesting for the past week.

I saw the trailer for LAND OF THE DEAD...looks good. I'm hopeful.

I guess there has been some weird shit in the news lately...But I don't really have any witty observations or scathing remarks about any of it...So who gives a rat's ass?

I mean, a bunch of Cubans crammed into a car that's been turned into a makeshift boat is always funny (especially since Cuba is such a fuckin' wonderland...we HAVE to preserve it's culture) but there's no need for further analysis...Cubans in tiny things that aren't really boats crossing the ocean is comedy gold.

So, I leave now to buy my comic books.

Yes, my comic books you cooler-than-thou fuckfaces! I'll knock your fucking jaw off your skull if you keep looking at me like that!

condescending motherfuckers.


I'm...I'm sorry babies. I didn't mean it. I promise I won't get angry with you again...just come back. I lost my temper, but it will never happen again, I promise babies.

That's right...come back to Mikey, I won't hit you again.


PS- This blog entry was written over the course of an hour, while I looked at other crap on the net...I won't be held responsible for it's disjointedness.