To Catch an Asshole

NBC loves child predators! LOVES them. Wants to marry them and have all of their little pervy babies and then will watch patiently as those nasty Internet predators seduce them. I have been in Internet blogging for twenty-four years and I have very seldom been at a loss for words.

Okay. Word-loss over. Rant continued.

So how do I know that NBC loves Internet predators? Simple, they are pulling back on, or maybe eventually cancelling the "To Catch a Predator" series of Dateline specials. If reading that made you spout a torrent of four-letter words and racial epithets like a drunken Archie Bunker with Tourrette's, welcome to the motherfucking club.

The cover story is a simple one: they're laying the blame on advertisers who don't want their products associated with legally and ethically vague sting operations orchestrated to boost the ratings of an otherwise lifeless news magazine show on America's number three or four network. But that's bullshit and we all know it. NBC and all of the advertisers who have pulled their support for this groundbreaking series have become enamored with Internet predators, and in fact, may be Internet predators themselves. As Nietzsche prophetically warned, they have become the very monster they sought to fight. The abyss has stared back at them, and it is apparently the warm, cozy genitalia of an underage girl!


Shame on you, NBC. Shame on you!

And we all know that the current "To Catch a Predator" series is rife with product placement. For example:

Mike's Hard Lemonade - Sexed up, underage teens love drinkin' it and Internet predators love supplyin' it.
Trojan condoms - Um, DUH!
Astroglide - I doubt any of the Internet predators will actually need it, but whatever.
Yahoo Messenger, AIM, Windows Live Messenger - Kids and Predators have to meet somewhere, right?

And let's not forget the real victim here. No, I'm not talking about the underage teens who are about to be deflowered now that NBC and its advertisers have turned on them. I'm talking about the stalwart defender of underage genitals himself, Chris Hansen. He was just getting to the point where the predators knew who he was. He was on the cusp of one of them even knowing his name before he said "I'm Chris Hansen with Dateline NBC and we're doing a story on people who try to meet teenagers for sex on the Internet." That man deserves better. Even Oprah gave him the seal of approval.

President of NBC (I don't know his/her name. I could Google it, but now the Internet is full of predators and I don't want to be molested), I hope you come back to your office to find Mr. Hansen and his trusty crew waiting for you, his accusatory stare a proxy for the one the rest of us non-Internet predators are wearing. I hope that, confronted with the shame of your new, perverse desires, your mind scrambles for an answer that will most likely begin and end with "oops." Then I hope you get tazered. Congratulations, Internet predators. You're entering a new, Chris-Hansen-free renaissance--and probably an underage vagina--very soon.

Cock-a-doodle-doo

Jason and I were inspired by seeing Superbad this weekend, so we whipped up a couple of penis drawings to pay tribute to one of the funniest scenes in the movie.



Steve, by the way, still can't see how I can say that Darth Vader's design was based on a penis. The man is blind.

Sorry to anyone who is offended by, you know, dick pictures.

Tho I dunno how you could be because they're totally awesome.

There should just be more penis in this world.

R.I.P. Merv

The creator of two of TV history's most popular game shows died yesterday. With Wheel of Fortune, TV pioneer Merv Griffin revealed that R, S, T, L, N and E were the most important letters of the alphabet. And in the early days of the series back when people had to spend their jackpots choosing prizes from the Wheel of Fortune showroom, Merv made us realize that there were two types of people in this world: those who would put the remainder of their winnings on a gift certicate or account and those who'd prefer to blow the rest of their Wheel wad on a porcelain dalmatian.

Merv also created Jeopardy!, the influential game show that redefined trivia. At the same time, Merv redefined the meaning of "jackass" with the casting of host Alex Trebek. Let's just say that Merv was a gift certificate man and Alex was a ceramic dog kinda guy.

Merv Griffin
TV host/TV icon/Real estate mogul/hot tubber
July 6, 1925 - August 12, 2007

Answer: The tikka-tikka-tikka sound of the Wheel of Fortune wheel.
Question: What does Merv Griffin spinning in his grave sound like right now?

Say Hello to My Little Friend

Exactly two weeks ago we were at Comic-Con competing in Diamond Select Toys' first-ever Minimate scavenger hunt. The game required us to take photos of a special-issue Minimate in various situations while geeking out at the convention and whoring it up around San Diego. We could also get extra points through creative challenges like drawing a Minimate movie poster for a film that started with the letter "S" (Maybe Shanghai Surprise? Howzabout Speed 2: Cruise Control? Perhaps, Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot?). I ended up making a Scarface poster for our team, and you can see the crude original here. I spent, like, five minutes drawing it, but I figured I should remake it all proper-like. For you, I've spent about 20 minutes...

A Minimate version of Scarface.
He's almost as tall as the actual Al Pacino!

Needless to say, we lost the scavenger hunt big-time. It was probably because we made a point not to spend any money on the challenges. And it was also probably because we were holed up in a hotel far from home, so we had to MacGyver it and use whatever free materials we could scrounge up (the original Scarface poster I drew for the competition was on the back of some hotel postcard). In the end, it just confirmed for us that we'd be the worst-ever team on The Amazing Race since we'd do the bare minimum to get by. But for you, I'll spend 20 minutes.

Where are our balls?

Jason and I have been victimized--which is harder for us than for normal people, because usually, we're the victimizers, not the victimeez.

Our balls have been stolen.

Well, our antenna balls. We still have them other balls. At least I do.

Now, Jason had a relatively cute Jack Skellington antenna ball, not too dirty or streetworn. So I guess I can see why the criminal element might want it.

But um, my antenna ball was f'ed up. It was a cowgirl antenna ball Jason bought me to replace a cowboy antenna ball that was, in an unrelated crime, stolen back in the day when I lived in Seattle but I was visiting Canada...anyhoo, it was to'e up big time, its braids completely undone, hair turned almost gray with road dust--actually the entire thing was dirty as all hell and just really busted in every imaginable way, tho all that weathering made the hat look kind of sweet and accurately cowboyish. In fact, I actually have a clean, unweathered, still-in-the-plastic cowgirl antenna ball Jason bought me as a backup but I had resisted replacing the weathered one because, ironically, I thought the clean one would be too much of a temptation to antenna ball kleptos.

Anyway, here's my question: Who the fuck steals an antenna ball, let alone two? We suspect an inside job, as it appears the balls disappeared in or around the same time frame. I guess it's possible our neighbors hate us, as we've lived in the same place for, oh, five years and still don't actually know the names of any of the people we share a building with. Well, I don't, tho Jason helped the next-door lady "fix her VCR" if you know what I mean*.

So. If you live in the area, or even if you don't, since our antenna balls may be victims of antenna ball trafficking, please be on the lookout for our precious balls. And if you have ball(s) of your own, hold them close--or you might find that the next time you go to adjust them, they may be gone.



*What I mean is, help her figure out why the bootleg DVDs of Borat and something or another else wouldn't work on her DVD player, which she called a VCR. It's because her shitty DVD player couldn't read DVD-Rs and the like, in case you're curious. Worked fine in our bootleg-friendly DVD player. We don't know this woman's name, but we do know she favors walking around in her silky, spaghetti-strap, deep-plunge nighties ALL THE TIME. And she's like, our moms' age. So, yeah. Hot. Jason's always trying to fix the ol' VCR. Don't worry. He's kind and rewinds.

R.I.P. News Reporter Guy

For those of you who don't live in Los Angeles, the city has just lost a local celebrity and television fixture. Today, KTLA's Hal Fishman died, and he was apparently TV's longest-running news anchor. He also had this weird lazy eye, so when he delivered the news, he could look at you squarely with only half as much journalistic integrity as his co-anchor. Meanwhile, his googly eye would be simultaneously leering at you like a lecherous fogey. This just in: his newscasts were both informative and creepy.

Hal Fishman
News anchor
August 25, 1931 - August 7, 2007

Great. So the last news story I ever reported on is about Lindsay Lohan.

Most of you have probably seen Hal Fishman play a news anchor in various movies, including such gems as Joe Dirt, National Security and Malibu's Most Wanted. He was also the news guy in Spider-Man 3 who asked, "Could this be the end of Spider-Man?" which I think happened to be the legendary sign-off of newsman Edward R. Murrow.

Fishman was also known for his nightly editorial rants that he always tried to tie up at the end with some sort of clever turn of phrase, like "and so the world turns" or "don't miss the bus" or "please touch me there." In the spirit of Hal Fishman, I had to report the breaking news of his death as soon as I heard, and here are the actual e-mail responses I received this morning from fellow Fishmaniacs Jenni and Steve.

Steve: "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!"

Jenni: "I guess Hal's giving his insightful commentary to God, now."

See, that's what I call a turn of a phrase.