Blog headers...harder than it looks

Like any sane person whose adolescence occurred in the '90s, I watched an awful lot of The Simpsons growing up.  Because of this, I am not-so-uniquely qualified to definitively say that the "Clown College" episode was their finest moment. 

Also known as "The University of Michigan"

Of course, even the casual fan can pick out the two running jokes during the intro: Bart forever writing on the blackboard:

And the "Couch Gag":

I've seen most of these gags--at least from the first 8 or so seasons--thanks to the magic of the VHS tape that allowed a poor college kid to record the 14 daily showing of the Simpsons on Fox to be rewatched later, over many, many beers.

In the 2000's, Fox and Matt Groening--the creator of the Simpson clan--upped the ante by annually releasing The Simpson's DVDs.  I only bought the 1st season before realizing that I could never afford each season as it came out so I just borrowed each season as it was released from my buddy Brad.  It is because of these DVDs that I was introduced to the magic of the "director's commentary".  I LOVE the directors commentary (DC).  For those not in the know, the DC is an alternate audio track that plays along with the movie that features--duh--the director as well as the producer, some of the principle actors, maybe the cinematographer or the writer and they all sort of talk over the movie with interesting trivia facts and such.   I've watched most of my favorite movies with the DC turned on (Braveheart was weird because instead of the commentary being provided by any of the folks above, it was provided by Mel Gibson and Mel Gibson alone.  177 minutes of Mel Gibson rambling on and on by himself in what I imagine to be a candle-lit room full of Nazi propaganda posters.  Probably naked.) as well as the entirety of the 1st 8 seasons of The Simpsons.

Remember, I was unemployed for 6 months in 2006.

Of course, each Simpsons episode kicks off with the above two jokes.  The goal was to have two unique jokes for each episode and, for the most part, that has been the case.  You do tend to see repeats of the couch gags more often than repeats of Bart at the blackboard but they do happen.  What Groening discovered, according to the commentary, is that it is damn hard to write these two jokes week after week and keep them fresh and funny.  Even with a team of writers.  In fact, he joked--I think he was joking--that he often pushed the blackboard gag off on The Simpsons unpaid interns.

For the 5 of you that have followed my blog from the beginning, you may recall that I used to have a little witticism that appeared beneath the title of my blog that changed all the time.  The line was--for the most part--about Bonzer T and it at first changed daily, then every couple of days, then weekly, then my Mom died, then, after the last one sat there for a couple of weeks, I just pulled the joke altogether.  That's not to say that the gag will not come back...it's just really, really hard to do.

At first I thought "How difficult can it be?  Just pick a historical figure, make the person say something that he or she would never say and always make it about how awesome/offensive/manly you are.  You're super awesome and offensive and manly!  Piece of cake!"

Let me tell you, that shit is hard.  What I've found is that some days I'm not at all creative, or pissed at a masturbator that just called into work, or super hungry, or sometimes I'm sad, or disproportionally horny, or just plain tired.  Those are the days that you have to force yourself to stay clever.  It's one thing to be paid to do so and it's another thing to keep clever on a totally rad PG-13 blog in my spare time.

That said, what follows are each and every blog header that I kept for the 1st couple of months of the Home Skillet.  I think we can all agree, the work suffered as time went on:

“A safe place to bash Julia Roberts”  --Winston Churchill

“The window dressing of the Gods.”  --Jesus Christ

"Super cute!" --Madeleine Albright

"Thrusting towards mediocrity." --Millard Fillmore

“Jettisoning the philanthropic and crusty.”  --Brian of Nazareth

"Seriously, Julia Roberts sucks." --Marie Curie

"Sucking the shrimp out of life, one tail at a time." --Col. Sanders

"Eternally rolling with the homies."  --Peter Tork

“Arrrg!  ‘Tis only one rum better than mine!”  --Captain Morgan

“How'd the play end?” --Abraham Lincoln

“DAMN!  You lookin' gooooooood, sugar!”  --Bill Donohue

“On the 3rd day, Bonzer did rise again”  --God

“Oh shit”  Osama Bin Laden

“Dead on balls accurate” --LL Cool J

“Christ, this guy rambles”  --Jesus Christ

“Well, he's no Shatner”  --Bender Rodriguez

“Sniff, sniff”  --Barrack Obama

“Tougher than a pommel horse on fire.”  --Curt Thomas

“Sad Panda.” --Norman Schwarzkopf

“I dunno, dude. You're the shit.” --Yahweh

Honestly, I don't know how that "Red Meat" guy does it.  

Bono, Krishni and Me

(Editors note:  Today's post was written whilst pondering why a village full of bad guys with axes and pitchforks would prominently display in the center of town a pommel horse from which our protagonist could show off his mad Gymkata skills)

It hasn't all been cancer and depression, kids.  I do have light in my life.  For instance, take my wife.  Not only is she crazy smart and dead sexy, she also knows how to elicit giggles of joy from her husband.  The easiest way to make me violently giggle with anticipation and glee?  Disney World.  We all know that.  The second easiest?  That just might have been Tuesday evening at Soldier Field witnessing perhaps the best U2 show I've ever seen:

Bono, pictured here not saving the world, on the giant LCD screen hung just above us.

I've been a U2 fan since they released Achtung Baby way back in 1991.  I was a little young for Rattle and Hum and The Joshua Tree but I still remember the 1st time I heard "Mysterious Ways"; quite simply it blew me away.  My Godfather took me to the see Zoo TV tour shortly thereafter and I was hooked.  Since that day, I think I've seen U2 6 times and they continue to be the best live band I've ever seen...as long as I can ignore the whole "Bono" thing.

Bono, pictured here saving the world.

The concert was amazing.  The tickets were actually for last July in support of their new, shitty album, No Line on the Horizon.  However, Bono hurt his back feeding Africa (I assume) and they had to put the remainder of the tour off until this year.  Because of that, they were no longer supporting their shitty album and they were free to play whatever they damn well pleased.  And did they ever. 

If you asked me before the show to name a song or two that I would love for them to play but never in a million years could I picture them playing, I would say "Zooropa" and "One Tree Hill".  Damned if they didn't play them both.  Their set list:

1 Even Better Than the Real Thing
2 The Fly
3 Mysterious Ways/Tryin' to Throw Your Arms Around the World (snippet)
4 Until the End of the World
Opening with 4 cuts off Achtung Baby?  Hell yes!
5 Out of Control
Deep cut here.  Their 1st single off their Mike Jacklich-ignored debut Boy.  Meh. 
6 Get on Your Boots
Really, really shitty song off their new shitty album.  Within, Bono constantly implores people to put on their boots. 
7 I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For/The Promised Land (Bruce Springsteen snippet)
8 Stay (Faraway, So Close!)
Really nice acoustic version featuring only The Edge and Bono.  Lovely. 
9 Beautiful Day/Space Oddity (David Bowie snippet)
Prefaced by video of Gabby Giffords' Husband up in the space station introducing the song.  Even brought a tear to my eye.  And the song kicks ass. 
10 Elevation
11 Pride (In The Name of Love)
12 Miss Sarajevo
Meh.  Critics love this song.  I find it boring.
13 Zooropa
Now we're talkin'.  "Zooropa" is a criminally underrated album and the eponymously named 1st cut slowly builds up to an awesome climax.  Love, love, LOVE this song. 
14 City of Blinding Lights
Best song off the album preceding their shitty album.  Also, this one and the next one were the only songs played off of How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb.  Just noticed that. 
15 Vertigo/Miss You (Rolling Stones snippet)
I like this song and I feel if it wasn't featured in that iPod commercial, you would like it too.  So there.
16 I'll Go Crazy If I Don't Go Crazy Tonight/Discothèque (snippet)/Psycho Killer (Talking Heads snippet)
Another shitty song off their new shitty album.  However, they sampled their own song "Discothèque", within and that 20 second sampling was they only time they even acknowledged their album Pop which is another criminally underrated effort.  Man, people hated that album.  These people are wrong. 
17 Sunday Bloody Sunday
18 Scarlet
19 Walk On
Love this tune.  Excellent closer before they pretend to quit for the night but the crowd always knows...they're coming back.  Why do bands do this?  We're not fooled. 

(Editors Note:  at this point in the show, U2 attempts to save the world along with that released Burmese leader who recorded a video message about how it takes just one person to change the world; not a million, just one.  One person.  Can you guess what's coming next?)

Encore:
20 One/Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow (Shirelles snippet)
Gotta tell you...I'm just about done with this song.  The crescendo is cool but man was this one overplayed.  Not quite ready to embrace it again.  Always fun though when anyone throws a Shirelles sample into a song. 
21 Where the Streets Have No Name
In high school I dated a rather, uh, intense girl.  I say intense because "psychotic" just isn't polite.  And that's unfair looking back on the relationship; it was her first high school relationship and she was just a bit obsessive when it came to me and music.  She was a big, big Led Zeppelin fan.  So big, that later on, she had "Zoso" friggin' tattooed on her arm.  

Like this

We also enjoyed the fact that she owned 3 copies of every Zep album:  vinyl, cassette and CD.  Point here is that she jumped in with both feet when she became a fan of just about anything; a point I later found terrifying when she attacked me in my own home after I broke up with her.  

Anyhow, where was I?  Ah, yes.  Obsession.  I was the person that brought U2 into her life.  Her Achtung Baby was The Joshua Tree: when she listened to that album for the 1st time, it sucked her in.  In fact, she played it so much that I quickly grew tired of the damn thing.  Decades from now, people will likely look back on the Joshua Tree as U2's finest moment.  But from the years 1995-2008, I couldn't listen to it because of this girl.  Relatively recently, I revisited the album and I love it again.  

This version of "Streets Have No Name" was perfect.  Powerful, epic, supersonic.  It started raining right at the end of the tune which was ever so perfectly timed.  It would have been an excellent song on which to end the show.  But there was more to come...

Encore 2

22 Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me/My Kind of Town (Frank Sinatra snippet)
WHAT?  The song from Batman Forever!?  Holy shit!  I love this tune and I've never heard it live.  I thought they were trying to forget it ever existed, like most people involved with the end of the 1st Batman franchise. 
23 With or Without You
Wouldn't be a U2 show without this one, I suppose.  But it couldn't hurt to skip it every once in a while.  Just a thought.
24 Moment of Surrender
25 One Tree Hill
This is the one.  Right here.  "One Tree Hill":  the best U2 song that for whatever reason, people have ignored.  Maybe because it's buried deep within The Joshua Tree?  Maybe because it was overshadowed by three #1 hits?  Well, whatever...this song is incredible.  I have never heard them play it live nor have I even heard of them playing it live.  And they freakin' closed with it.  This was better than that time that Green Day blindsided Marc and me by playing F.O.D.   The perfect ending to a damn amazing show.  Just incredible.  Thanks wife!
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U2 gets a bad rap these days simply because Bono is obnoxious (although this led to one of the best Onion headlines ever:  "Rest of U2 Perfectly Fine with Africans Starving").  However, they are still the best band I have ever seen live and one of those rare bands that are actually better on stage than in the studio.  And every time I see them live, I get very much into their music again. It's going to be a good summer in that respect.  It's just important to not take that Bono fellow too seriously.

Bono, pictured here saving the worlds.

"The skill of gymnastics, the kill of karate"

How have I never heard about this movie?

And to think of all that time I wasted with Waterworld.