Cru Jones Society

Been a busy week here at the Cru Jones Society. New ads, new comments system, guest posts… what the hell, right? But thankfully the week’s over, and we’ve collected tons of good stuff for you here once again.

In this week’s edition: The final word on Valentine’s Day, post-mortem on the Super Bowl, how to annoy people at the office, and the ultimate neo-maxi zoom dweebie. Toss a grenade in your schedule and cozy up to Happy Friday.

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First things first: Valentine’s Day. As you’re all painfully aware, the red and pink menace lurks this Sunday. In case you’ve somehow been reading us all week and still haven’t made plans, let’s review:

• Here is what not to do. The chimps at AskMen.com have given you incredible insight into gifts which include the brilliant “chocolates,” the incredible “flowers,” and the outstanding “heart-shaped pendant.” If you like AskMen.com, CJS sincerely encourages you to suck on the business end of a Colt .45.
• Here is how you have a kickass Valentine’s Day. The incomparable Redhead has you covered and demonstrates to us all that with a modicum of planning, and a minimum of critical thought, even you, Joe Emptywallet, can treat your precious right. Thanks again to The Redhead for joining the CJS Carnival of Fun.
• Here is how to spend your day if you’re single. Enjoy your drunkenness, movies, geekery, and light social terrorism, ya’ heathens. Actually, that sounds awesome.

If none of that grabs you, take it from true romantic experts: The Certified Public Accountants of Illinois.

Wait, what?

Yep, if getting down with the one you love (or that dude you somehow tricked into getting his pants off at the bar last weekend) doesn’t ring your bell, just start having an open and honest dialogue about your respective financial situations. That’s sure to get both your motors running. Because when the moon hits your eye like a big building full of accountants, that’s amore!

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On to some CJS news. You’ve certainly noticed our new comments system. As we explained in the comments under The Redhead’s post, this new system is part of a broader platform that allows you to have one username to post across multiple blogs and websites. We think it’s pretty darn nifty (if we can talk like our grandfather for a moment), and once all the old comments are loaded into the new system, everything will be back to cool. So please bear with us while we forge ahead into the deep embrace of all that Web 2.0 has to offer. We may be stodgy old bastards at heart, but we know good things when we see them. Thanks for sticking with us.

On that same note, the Monday Confessional continues and we get down on the next big thing. We want to know: What Winter Olympic event are you most looking forward to and why? This doesn’t have to be any big long explanation or anything, but since the Olympics is bound to dominate your conversations for the next two weeks, might as well prepare now. So send your answer to staff@crujonessociety.com and let’s prepare for the Olympics in style. You’ll help us kick off 2 weeks of Olympics coverage from your favorite Local Humor Conglomerate.

And to help you formulate your answer, we suggest you consult this article from Mental Floss detailing where many of the events came from. We especially enjoyed the vague Scottish origins of curling, which basically amounts to: Hey, we were (probably) drunk and slid some rocks across the frozen pond. Got a problem with that?

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Before we can look ahead, it’s important to take a look back. And last weekend we saw the most widely viewed event in television history which certainly warrants at least a passing mention. Good game that saw the right team win. We’ve never even been to New Orleans, but since we’ve got nothing against them and since they’ve been through an unfathomable amount of pain and heartache since at least 2005, we’re happy to see something so good come their way.

As a living, breathing manifestation of that, take a gander at this video, and tell us you’re not smiling. You can’t not smile when you see a battered, beaten down population rejoice on high. Bully for the Saints, and the best to New Orleans. You’re all due for the goodwill! Enjoy it!

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Two other post-Super Bowl items of interest:

Here is an entertaining rundown of how CBS executed that surreal Leno/Letterman/Oprah spot without anyone finding out. We especially liked the image of Jay Leno wearing a fake mustache to sneak into the Ed Sullivan Theater to tape the spot. Couldn’t he have just not worn that ridiculous denim shirt he always seems to wear instead? For the record, we have yet to see a denim shirt that does not look abjectly retarded. Interesting post-script to this story as it turns out Letterman actually wanted Conan for the spot too. Leno , Letterman, Conan, and Oprah in the same room together. Isn’t that actually the four horsemen of the apocalypse? Which one’s pestilence? Oprah is not famine.

The second item concerns “Undercover Boss” which premiered in the coveted “immediately after the Super Bowl” timeslot. Lady E and I watched it and found the Waste Management CEO basically ingratiating, but the show itself is manipulative to the highest degree. All the people he visited have some sort of heartbreaking health ailment that they don’t allow to get in the way of their job, which would be incredible were this not television – the ultimate manipulation machine. These people were chosen to play up the blatant tugging on the heartstrings and remarkably avoided all the slackasses that likely work at Waste Management alongside these noble proletariat. Todd VanDerWurff thoroughly dissects the show here.

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Lots of people make fun of Sarah Palin, and while much of that is deserved, we’re not ones to pile on. Although we can’t help but laugh when we see the crib notes she had written on her hand for her speech earlier this week.  What pertinent details did she want to make sure not to forget:

Energy
Budget cuts
Tax
Lift Americans
Spirits

You know who probably wrote those shattering points of pristine insight on her hand? AskMen.com. That’s the only answer here. Thanks for sending this link our way, Deuce.

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Does your co-worker write idiotic crib notes on their hands for uninspired presentations? Do they pretend to give advice and instead offer banal, general knowledge facts? Do they spout off irritating business clichés like they’re executing a bodily function? If you answered yes to these questions, did you write this article?

We always like seeing what pushes people’s buttons at the office since Hart and I often sit back to back while writing and surreptitiously sabotage each other with silent chemical warfare or a well-placed elbow to the kidneys. Thankfully neither of us discusses “blue sky thinking” because if we did, we’d likely both be dead due to a tire iron to the skull.

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One place they likely don’t have workplace problems is NASA. You watched with great interest the way they guided three wayward astronauts home on a busted ass ship in 1970, and then again in 1995 (at least if the $173 million box office haul is any indicator of interest, and we think it is). So they definitely got that teamwork thing happening, and now they’re finally pissed off about that crappy Armageddon movie, and they’re using their teamwork for ill purposes.

Yep, we’re all doomed as NASA has teamed up with General Motors to create a new human-like robot. It was really only a matter of time before some of the most brilliant scientists in the world got fed up with our indifference and insistence on airing shows like “Jersey Shore” and “Celebrity Rehab” before they turned on us and replaced us with robots of higher intelligence to accomplish the stuff we’re far too lazy to do. Good luck NASA.

I, for one, welcome our new robot overlords!

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We wrote recently that we watched The Breakfast Club recently and aside from the obvious differences in fashion and slang, the movie felt like it took place just last year. It’s really that timeless. Hughes understood the teenage mind in the 1980s, and if you understand it once – really understand it – you’ll be a legend forever. We love John Hughes, and that’s why this week’s Required Reading is this lengthy piece from Vanity Fair about the “Sweet Bard of Youth.” It’s a lengthy read, but if you have any affection for John Hughes whatsoever, or a vain of film geek running through that goofy body of yours, you’ll enjoy the hell out of this. We sure did.

Some movies, however, don’t hold up over time quite as well. David Sirota wrote this piece that appeared in the Denver Post last Sunday that we found funny, but made us feel old. We never really considered how modern technology is screwing up the plots of many of our favorite films, but we suppose it’s important to consider if you have (or plan to have) kids. When you sit down to show Jr. that cinematic classic Die Hard and he asks you why John McClane can’t just pull out his iPhone to dial police and has to go to the roof to use a freaking walkie-talkie, try not to be surprised. This piece will help. And it’ll make you check your pubes for gray hairs. And really, who wasn’t doing that anyway?

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To close up your week, here’s a present for you:

Open it with care.

We’ll see you Monday for the Olympics.

edagger@crujonessociety.com