Cru Jones Society

Welcome to yet another Friday. Your work week is over. You’re ready to get away from your computer, leave the shackles of your desk behind for two days, and celebrate the man who knocked up your mother all those years ago. Yep, Sunday is Father’s Day and what better way to bid adieu to the work-a-week drudgery and unsheathe that nifty tie you picked out for your pops than with the nuttiest collection of links ever featured on the Cru Jones Society.

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We’ll start with this week’s CJS Required Reading. When we were in middle school, ABC took a gamble on Saturday Night Live’s biggest star by giving him his own half hour weekly show. “The Dana Carvey Show” immediately resonated with us, but was definitely not a favorite of the families tuning in after watching the gentle comedy of “Home Improvement.”  To put it concisely, in its time “The Dana Carvey Show” was one weird fucking program.

The very first sketch ever aired on the program featured Carvey as Bill Clinton opening his shirt to reveal 10 teats where a litter of puppies eagerly suckled away at him. One of our favorite sketches, that is sadly not mentioned in the article linked below, parodied that awful Beatles Anthology program that aired at the time. Carvey played Paul McCartney (and probably a couple of the other guys too now that we think of it) who spent the entire interview dopily droning on and on about his first Snickers bar and how it was “packed with peanuts” just like the advertisements promised. Scene after scene featured him repeating the “packed with peanuts” line and beautifully illustrated how McCartney can come off like a goofy simpleton in interviews.

The show finally released on DVD, and Carvey and Robert Smigel give a lengthy interview with The AV Club that’s simply fascinating. They detail their vision for the show, how they dealt with the network, and Carvey’s subsequent step back from show business among a slew of other topics. If you were a fan of the show, are a fan of comedy in general, or simply want to a read a compelling interview with a couple of interesting guys, do yourself a favor and click the link.

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Earlier this week “Joe Buck Live” debuted on HBO and featured a train wreck of a segment with noted heroin user/fat guy Artie Lange. We’ve personally never been a fan of Joe Buck, Artie Lange, or Howard Stern (where apparently Lange became super famous after being merely famous for Mad TV and Dirty Work) so initially we didn’t give a shit about any of this news. But after seeing it all over Deadspin, hearing about it on the Sports Guy’s podcast with Dan LeBatard, and hearing Lange on Adam Carolla’s podcast, we feel compelled to comment. Here’s our thoughts:

1) What did Joe Buck think would happen when he invited an ex-heroin user on his show who became famous for working with Howard Stern? If he thought things would turn out hunky dory and the two would have a nice chat about sports, that’s just poor planning and Buck’s a moron.

2) If he was banking on stirring up controversy, then he’s succeeded admirably. Although, if you’ve watched the segment, he looks like a humorless stuffed suit (which I perceive him to be anyway) who has no business hosting a show in this format.

3) Artie Lange strikes me as New York’s answer to Larry the Cable Guy. He’s a fat, loathsome blowhard who says ignorant, stupid, hateful shit that people laugh at because they’re likely fat, stupid, and hateful themselves. I softened a bit on him after hearing him chat with Carolla, but not much. His popularity confounds me, but then, so does Stern’s, so whatever I guess.

4) And this is our biggest question: Who wanted more Joe Buck in their lives and who thought it a good idea to give him his own talk show? Joe Buck is an atrocious announcer who displays all the wit, humor, and warmth of your average State Farm actuary. This show of his alleges to contain “comedy” – and we use that term loosely – but can you recall anything funny Joe Buck has ever said? Granted, it’s not usually a play-by-play guy’s job to crack jokes, but Jesus, I can think of at least 10 play-by-play guys off the top of my head who have shown remarkably more personality than Joe Buck. But if people enjoy his feigned outrage routine (as highlighted in the Deadspin article), there’s almost certainly more of that on the horizon, so the show will likely be a rousing success.

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Two more sports links, and then no more for the week:

As everyone’s certainly aware, The Los Angeles Lakers finished off the Orlando Magic last Sunday to win the NBA Title, and Mark Kiszla puckers up to them. He says in his column, “For better or worse, when the Lakers win it all, it all feels grander.” Oh fuck off, Kiszla. This is the same horseshit you hear from Yankee fans year after year. We have no connection to the Lakers so watching them win the title feels about the same as that year the Miami Heat won. Sure the Lakers have history, and Magic Johnson, and Kobe without Shaq and blah blah blah. My team didn’t win the title, so I’m not ready to erupt with ebullitions of praise for the team that did, no matter who it is. Every year someone has to win, and it just so happens to the Lakers this year. They had the best team, they played the best basketball, they deserved to win. End of story. This nonsense about it “all feeling grander” is journalistic laziness and an unnecessary attempt to make us all feel something we undeniably don’t.

On a lighter note, the following link is not likely one you want to access from work. Not that any of the content is scandalous, but we accessed it from Penthouse.com. We recently started following the magazine on Twitter and were shocked at how decent a lot of their content is. So if you end up bored this weekend, check out this article that attempts to settle a lot of the ridiculous bar bets you and your friends have had and will almost certainly have again soon. Could you beat a WNBA player at hoops or win a foot race with a 300 lb. lineman? This article argues both sides. In CJS’s particular case: Um, no. We likely wouldn’t win any of these, but if a pro athlete wanted to take us on in hula hoop on the Wii Fit, we’d fucking own them.

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Ownza. Ownza.

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Two weeks ago, we wrote about The AV Club tearing into the premiere episode of “I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out of Here!” where Heidi and Spencer annoyed everyone. Well, all the players are back this week, with big fat clown Al Roker added. He eviscerated them on the Today Show after a segment where he cooked a French Fry salad. Thankfully, Amelie Gillette is here to help you channel your anger at this segment. After looking at the options for what the worst part of this segment is, aside from the obvious answer of h) All of the above, I have to go with b) That it forces you to side with either noted French Fry salad maker Al Roker or professional assholes Heidi & Spencer. We’ll leave it up to you to decide for yourself.

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Can’t even remember how we came upon this, but we want to eat pizza out of a vending machine, dammit! One commenter on this article shared their experience:

“Ooh. I had experienced this vending machine a few times 3 years ago before our campus removed it -.- After you feed the machine your 3-5$ (forgot exactly how much), you wait a little more over a minute for your pizza to cook. The pizza is in this slide-container and its quite small…I would say about a little less than half the size a regular sheet of writing paper. The pizza was okay but what can you say its frozen and cooked in a vending machine =]

Though, I do miss the other vending machine which did bbq chicken strips, french fries, and other fast food.”

No need to reiterate how much we love Tombstone Pizza, but the prospect of getting it while you’re out and about is just about the best thing we’ve heard in a month. If anyone’s come across one of these, please drop us a note, and we’ll be there in two shakes of a lamb’s tail.

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In other food news, Burger King will open its first Whopper Bar in Orlando. The Whopper Bar is a place where “customers can customize their Whopper, Double Whopper or Steakhouse XT burger with up to 22 different toppings, including steak sauce, smoked bacon and guacamole. Burger King workers will add the toppings in front of customers for a sushi bar-like atmosphere.” If we’re at a Burger King, we’re not looking for custom burgers and a circular open kitchen area like it’s Mongolian barbecue or something. We’re likely drunk and just want some food, but I’m guessing we’re not the target audience for such an endeavor. We enjoyed reading this though because it’s highly irregular to see the word “vanguard” in the same article as the words “Burger King.”

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Hey, speaking of bars, we want you to send us your response to the Monday Confessional. The question this week is: What is your guilty pleasure drink? Everyone loves having a beer or a good glass of red wine, but very few will cop to enjoying a fru-fru dreamsicle martini as one of our respondents has. Send your responses to staff@crujonessociety.com for inclusion on Monday. Regulars are welcome, first-timers too, and just like in a championship parade or an orgy, the more the merrier. The more responses we get, the more fun we all have, so please don’t be shy. Send in your responses today and we’ll compare drinks on Monday.

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CJS Regular Keithage passed along this article about impending tobacco regulations. We think we can all agree as a society that we don’t want teenagers to take up smoking, but we’d argue that this scorched earth approach to legislation is overkill. Without getting too involved in people’s personal politics, we’ll just say that the government’s increasing desire to encroach on our personal lives is alarming, and while we support the sentiment behind this legislation, we suspect in the long term it will do far more harm than good. Obviously we’ll see how it turns out, but we’re not hopeful.

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Shifting gears completely, the funniest thing we saw this week comes courtesy of Cleveland. Whenever we travel, we like to check out the local news. In most places (e.g. Tucson, Las Vegas, Miami) it’s fucking terrible and borderline unwatchable. Some places are aggressively milquetoast (San Diego), and others are actually quite good (Minneapolis and New York). And then there’s the just plain fucking unexplainable like this story. We don’t want to spoil this for you because it’s the most unintentionally hilarious thing we’ve possibly ever seen, so we’ll just urge you to click this link and pay special attention to “the re-creation of the bear escaping into the woods.” We’ve already said too much. Just click the link. You won’t be sorry.

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On his Twitter feed, Kevin Smith wondered about whether or not he should purchase a Comfort Wipe, or if he was just giving up as a fat guy. The answer is yes, but when it comes to butt cleanliness, I suppose you can’t be too zealous. But what happens if you want to return your Comfort Wipe? Chris Bucholz finds out as he antagonizes some hapless call center employees trying to return his. Another good read from the always high-quality Cracked.com.

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Christopher Lloyd has always been a CJS favorite. He was great on “Taxi,” rocked the proverbial casbah in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and gave us our childhood as Doc Brown in Back to the Future. Amazingly, he’ll still pause on his most notable film role when he’s surfing channels which not only makes him like every other guy on earth, but super fucking cool to boot. It’s a testament to how great the Back to the Future movies are when, nearly 25 years later, one of its stars will still stop and check it out when it’s on. Amazing.

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Wrapping things up, with summer fully upon us, for all the punk rockers in the audience, that means Warped Tour is coming back to town. As Warped Tour veterans, Dagger and Hart are officially retired from going as the crowds are too great, the heat too excruciating, and the day too long for a couple of old fuckers like us. But like the Jack LaLanne juicer, we may not want it anymore, but we’re glad it’s around. Warped founder Kevin Lyman gives a terrific interview here about the ever-shifting lineup and focus of Warped Tour making us appreciate the festival even more than we did when we went. Here’s hoping Warped keeps truckin’ on where one day we can take our kids.

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That brings us to our Demotivator. Please forgive the fact that we used boobs again this week. Please forgive that this is a cute picture of a kitty. And please forgive that it’s captioned in LOL-speak. Actually, you know what… forgive my pecker because we’re not sorry for any of that. Tits – good, kitties – good, LOL-speak -well, 2 outta 3 ain’t bad. Enjoy!

Happy Friday, bitches. Hope your weekend’s packed with peanuts.

See you Monday.

edagger@crujonessociety.com