Happy Friday #56: Fun in the Recession Edition
Welcome to Friday, CJS regulars. You’ve either worked hard for four days and earned a nice Friday of slacking off with a bunch of goofy Internet links, or you’ve phoned it in Monday through Thursday, so what’s another day of wasting your company’s time and money?
And speaking of money, while the country sits in the grips of its worst recession in decades, that doesn’t mean we can’t have a good time. We’ve even got a link outlining why the world is better because of our monetary woes. Also look out for enjoy links about Michael Ian Black, George Jones, Alex Trebek, dead/not dead MMA star Kimo Leopoldo, Mark McGrath, and a ton more. You’re but a click away.
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First things first, there’s a Confessional on Monday. We asked you this week to tell us: If you could be a famous historical tyrant, who would it be? Kind of a weird question we realize, but something fun to ponder nevertheless. Maybe you’d like to ravage China and Oshman’s Sporting Goods like Genghis Khan. Perhaps trying to conquer Europe, failing grandly in Russia, and getting exiled to an obscure island like Napoleon is more your speed. Or perhaps unleashing your shitty ripped-off music on the world, annoying everyone with a series of dumb reality shows, and riding the coattails of your more famous dead friend like Diddy suits you. Whatever the case, send your responses to staff@crujonessociety.com and we’ll compare villains on Monday.
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Link of the week comes courtesy of former Adam Carolla co-host, frequent podcast guest, and pregnant as fuck Teresa Strasser. In doing neurotic research about the various obscure afflictions that could befall her unborn child, she came across something called preemclaspia which “is a condition of pregnancy marked by high blood pressure and excess protein in your urine after 20 weeks of pregnancy” leading to various immunological disorders in your baby.
The best way to combat this? If you guessed swallowing load after load of the father’s ejaculate up to a year before pregnancy even starts and then through pregnancy, award yourself a shiny gold star.
That’s right, ladies. Taking a shot in mouth, absorbing it into the blood via your gastrointestinal system thereby passing it along to your baby is the best way to introduce more of the father’s DNA to the child and make his or her immune system stronger. There’s a doctor in that article and everything. She doesn’t debunk it either. I know! I double-checked too!
So, for all you dads-to-be, guys merely thinking about having children, and dudes who have no problem lying to your women about how “we might want to start by thinking about having children, suck on this,” the weekend’s here, so get crackin’.
Oh, and you’re welcome.
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If promises of fetal health don’t grease the wheels enough to excite your lady to chow down on your love rocket, maybe some booze will help. And soon enough, that will require no more than a trip down to the local Starbucks.
Starbucks has done a fine job of gaying up coffee, so it remains to be seen if they can somehow make buying a Coors Original something you feel vaguely emasculated and shamed doing too. Because when we think getting our drink on, we think oversized chairs, almond biscotti, and Josh Groban CDs near the counter.
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And as long as we’re on something of a prurient (and vaguely chauvinistic) track, here’s one we picked up from @TopCheddar’s Twitter feed. We’re all familiar with the term “butter face” by now, but how many butter faces would you probably still bag? That’s what this article from Mark Ecko’s website tackles.
We can get onboard with most of these, but we can’t fathom sleeping with Brooke Hogan, Scary Spice, or especially Tiffany “New York” Pollard. The thought of sleeping with shrill, obnoxious, plastic-looking Flavor Flav-throwaway New York is just gross.
But that reminds us, there’s a ton of good shit on Twitter and we’ve begun Tweeting fairly regularly, so hop and follow us @CruJonesSociety.
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Shifting gears slightly, as I type this at work there’s some shitty cover band across the street playing awful covers of the worst suck rock on the planet. I just suffered through a brain-splitting rendition of 3 Doors Down’s “Here Without You” – a song even at its best I really fucking hate. Whoever booked a second-rate bar band to cover crappy alt-rock in the middle of the workday with no less than three giant office buildings around needs to be severely beaten. Repeatedly. Because now I’m going to have goddamn 3 Doors Down, Creed and a bunch of other stupid, generic, rock radio shit stuck in my head the rest of the goddamn day. Thanks.
But it reminded me of this classic from The Onion that Hart passed along to me this week: “Sugar Ray Thrilled To Be Playing in Man’s Head.”
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Moving on to music that doesn’t suck, The AV Club recently reviewed George Jones’ autobiography I Lived To Tell It All. Jones wrote this in 1996, and there’s a whole circuitous explanation from this article’s author about why we’re covering it now, but regardless, this is a definite must-read for those of you who like fucked up, drug-fueled, borderline insane tales from the road. The best sequence in this review happens when Nathan Rabin prints an exchange Jones has with his two alter egos “Dedoodle the Duck” and “Old Man.” Whether you find the exchange agonizingly sad or kinda hilarious, either way it’s not to be missed. Never knew George Jones had such a colorful story.
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If you’re going to appropriate Queen, you might as well go fucking epic with it. College Humor does just that with “Brohemian Rhapsody” one of the most lovingly constructed song tributes we’ve ever seen and despite the lead singer’s chubby and generally unappealing aesthetic, we can’t stop watching this. We encourage you to do the same.
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CJS Regular Jitterrawks sent along this link of funny test answers from people’s exams. This is definitely good for a few dozen laughs and reminds me of not recognizing the proton structure of methane in my high school chemistry class and just writing “Telemundo” as my answer on the test. Needless to say, I got it wrong but it made my goofball teacher laugh, so – win? Thanks Jitter! This one has probably been our favorite so far.
If you have a link you’d like to share with the world, send it to Hart or myself and we’ll stick it in the next Happy Friday for you. Or you could just keep it for yourself like the miserly jerk your sister told us you were.
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Speaking of quizzes, Alex Trebek turned 69 (Yeeeaaahhh! 69! Hahahaha! Ugh…) last Wednesday, so Mental Floss gave us 10 quick facts about Jeopardy! a show we can’t seem to learn enough about. Happy birthday, Alex. Thanks for all the backhanded comments during the contestants’ lame interview portion and giving us the most trivia bang for our buck.
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In 2005, I attended Punk Rock Bowling in Las Vegas with my good buddy Braden. Outside of the cost of driving there (through scenic Utah!), we partied on the nickel of Pirate Promotions who was one of the event’s sponsors whom Braden knew pretty well. Being a broke ass graduate student at the time, I definitely appreciated the free room and the absolute shitstorm of free meals and booze they bought. I also threw up at the House of Blues after one Jager shot too many, but managed not to get kicked out even though I tried to wash my shoes in the sink with them still on my feet.
Anyway, Doug is the co-owner of Pirate and recently appeared on the Cash Cab, a highly underrated game show on Discovery. He’s the guy on the right behind the driver/host. He and his comrades slay the questions right out of the gate, but I’ll leave it to you to see if they go for the video bonus, and whether or not they’re successful.
While watching this I kept shouting “Rugrass!” at the screen because that’s what we drunkenly shouted at him while he bowled in ’05 for reasons that now escape me. I know it had something to do with mocking Asian people, but how the “D” in Doug becomes an “R” sound I’m sure can only be explained after about a dozen beers and two cans of the truly reprehensible Sparks alcoholic energy drink.
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Lady E was worried I’d die while attending Punk Rock Bowling, and considering I may or may not have fallen asleep in the handicap stall at the House of Blues restaurant, her concerns were not unwarranted. But at least she never reported me dead on an MMA forum while I was still alive.
MMA fighter Kimo Leopoldo was reported dead despite being very much alive, and had to walk in to the Orange County Sheriff’s Office just to prove his vitality on Tuesday night. You see kids, these are the dangers of the Internet. Someone just haphazardly blabs some bullshit, someone else takes it as truth, and then all of a sudden you’re proving you’re alive when you shouldn’t have to. I’d rank this as the Internet’s 2nd greatest danger behind accidentally stumbling upon “Tubgirl” again. God…
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Most of you probably think our current recession sucks, and by and large you’re right. Watching your 401k turn into a big ol’ shitburger has been about as fun as watching your grandmother give herself a Brazilian wax, but keep your chin up. According to Cezary Strusiewicz (your on your own for pronunciation) of Cracked.com, there are “6 Ways the Recession Has Made the World Suck Less.” So check out the article, and don’t come crying to us as your home value continues to go down like a Thai hooker trying to make rent.
We’d be remiss if we didn’t also mention Cezary’s home site of “Drown Yourself” filled with funny, well-researched, and fuck-me-I-thought-we-wrote-a-lot long form articles. If you’re looking to kill your Friday, Drown Yourself will probably allow you to do so single-handedly.
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We’re of two minds about Michael Ian Black. 1) “The State” is awful, stupid, mean-spirited overrated crap, and Michael Ian Black consistently had the most gratingly unfunny comments on VH-1′s “Hey, Remember the 80s?” shows. 2) “Stella” was a pretty damn creative show, and we’re always hopeful about shows that Comedy Central greenlights. Sure, “Mind of Mencia” was about 25 different flavors of awful, but they can’t all be winners, can they?
Anyway, we watched the premiere of “Michael and Michael Have Issues” and give it a solid thumbs up. The farting butterfly sketch was particularly funny, and there’s a lot of promise in the seemingly endless arguments between Michael Ian Black and Michael Showalter. Here’s an interview with Michael Ian Black that not only gives you a good idea of the impetus behind this show, but postulates a new theory involving Jack Benny. We’re onboard with anything involving Jack Benny, so we enjoyed this piece.
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We wrote a few weeks back about the return of Futurama which made us squeal so hard with nerd glee, we magically started sprouting acne again and farted out a pocket protector. Our excitement was tempered somewhat by this latest piece of news indicating that Comedy Central is trying to bargain down the voice actors by sending out a casting call for new ones.
We’d like to offer up a hearty “fuck you” to Comedy Central and encourage them to bite the bullet and bring everyone back. Futurama ain’t Futurama without Billy West, Katey Sagal, and Maurice LaMarche hitting all the right notes as Fry, Bender, and Leela (in addition to about 6 others done by West). We’re always astonished by the short-sightedness of television executives, so this news really shouldn’t come as a surprise, but like that stinky kid who sat behind you in the 3rd grade with the paste, we just can’t help ourselves.
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I’ve mentioned this before, but as a trained communications professional, I have yet to not be offered a job I’ve interviewed for. I’d certainly hope not as I spent 6 years in college doing nothing but studying communication theory, the last two years in public relations, and the last year writing at least three times per week for this goofy website (which recently passed 2,000 unique readers a week again – thanks!).
So I was particularly amused by these 43 weird things said in job interviews. I particularly liked this crazy non-sequitir: “Can I get a tour of the breast pumping room? I heard you have a great one here and while I don’t plan on having children for at least 10 or 12 years, I will definitely breast feed and would want to use that room.”
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We’ll close up this week with another article from the ubiquitous Rick Reilly. Every sports fan has (or should have) a bucket list of events to see before he or she dies. I’ve been to one of mine (MLB All-Star Game), but most of the rest still wait to be achieved. Reilly lists his 10 events in his latest column, and while we can’t say we agree with several of the choices (Ryder Cup? Really?), our list certainly does have the Kentucky Derby, Wimbledon, and the Tour de France on it. One thing that never gets discussed is just how fucking expensive a bucket list is. Think about the cost of just those three events we listed. What do you think the Bucket List of a lower class person looks like? Go to Applebee’s and get appetizer AND entrée for once. We are privileged.
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And hey, something to remember as you sit stuck in your office looking at the warm weather outside and reminisce about being a kid:
Happy Friday, bitches. See you Monday for the Confessional.

24 Jul 2009 E Dagger




