10th Anniversary Blog Post

It was 10 years ago that the first post on this blog was made. It was about how Late Night with Jimmy Fallon was going to have a Yacht Rock Party. And hence, the blog's theme.

This is where I'm supposed to say how quickly 10 years flew by and it feels like yesterday but it definitely doesn't - it feels like a really long time ago. This might also be where I explain why I first created this blog and how things have changed. But I didn't create this blog, it blog was created by my friend Chuck and then given to me. I think the reason he created it was to cut down on the emails I was sending. And that was pretty much a sign because he doesn't really talk to me anymore.

But the email thing makes sense, looking at the early posts. This blog was about anything and everything that would've warranted an email. The main thing was always late night talk show stuff but there was also Philly sports news, Thom Yorke has a new band, Mr. Perfect playing Ping Pong, the best tv show no one is watching, the Imdb 250, and on, and on. Looking now, I found a forgotten post of note: when the mayor of Newark banned Conan from the city. That mayor is now running for President of the United States - Cory Booker. The second ever post was entitled "Who Cares Wins", it contains no context and only  embeds a now broken video from hulu. Very enigmatic. I think I know what that was, I think that was Jimmy Fallon doing a 80s training VHS sketch. The title is a reference to this video.

The blog would eventually focus almost exclusively on late night videos but the theme of broken links makes most of it irrelevant. Oh for access to the old clips. VHS is greater than Hulu, apparently. My blog might have been more useful as a document of the death of late night talk shows but, bucking the internet trend, I always tried to keep things relatively positive. So the only evidence of the break down is ever-larger gaps between late night-related posts.

Another thing that I didn't do on this blog is talk very much about myself. I didn't document the last decade of my life - the highs, the lows, the struggle, the everyday events. Going back and looking at the early posts, it seems like a missed opportunity but I'm not going to change now. On second thought, I remember a time I posted a personal observation and it had real life consequences so remaining mostly impersonal was probably a good thing.

This blog gets about 10 views per day and even though it was started as a way to talk to friends, I only know 1 person who bothers anymore. I assume the rest are from google searches gone awry. But if you're an actual human reader of this blog, I thank you and hope that you're actually benefiting in some way from this nonsense.

Late Night - Conan Gives a Tour of the Office

The original interstitial music in this piece was The Animals - We Gotta Get Out of This Place.

The Grinch

Recently on reddit the story broke that there's actually a "prequel" to "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" called "Halloween is Grinch Night". The reaction was shock: "how have I never heard of this 'til now?" There's actually a good reason no one's heard of it, it's terrible. If you can imagine taking the Grinch character and throwing him in a pointless, nonsense plot with many musical numbers and setting it at Halloween (sort of), you have "Halloween is Grinch Night". IMDB notes that it's the only Grinch special where he never becomes good in the end. Exactly. Why have characters with arcs?



But for all the "I can't believe there's another Grinch special" crowd, there's another surprise. There is actually a Grinch trilogy. Yes, there is a third Grinch special called "The Grinch Grinches the Cat in the Hat" from 1982.

Now this is where you want to be - The Dr. Seuss Cinematic Universe equivalent of the first "Avengers" movie. Although, I kind of remember the Cat in the Hat also being a villain, so this is like Godzilla fighting King Kong?

In this edition, the Grinch actually wakes up feeling good one day and decides to do good for the world. But he looks in the mirror and his image convinces him that he needs to stay bad. The special has just started and already we're in very interesting psychological and philosophical waters. Since the image in the mirror is also the Grinch, the Grinch is both good and bad but the bad side convinces the good side to be bad. The psychology motif will be repeated.

Following his re-dedication to evil, he has a road rage incident with the Cat in the Hat (the Cat in the Hat is on a picnic) and the Grinch decides he needs to make the rest of the Cat's life a living Hell.... using technology.

The Grinch makes a machine that causes any creature to naturally make any sound he wishes them to make, he makes a machine that projects darkness and then switches it up and projects pinkness. Then there are other things that I don't even comprehend. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

This is an interesting twist on the Grinch mythos. He's an inventor? In the first special, he's a caveman who works hard to sew and create a wooden sled. Now suddenly he's created a supercomputer that defies the very laws of physics.

What is the point of any of this? It's unclear other than he just wants to ruin the Cat's day. The Cat wonders about the psychology of the Grinch and what has caused his Grinchiness. Possibilities explored: it's genetic, he was abused by his mom, a bad word from his teacher, brain damage, he was bullied, excess sauerkraut. The Grinch is even seen on a psychiatrist's chair.

In the end, psycho-analysis IS how the Cat in the Hat defeats him - the Grinch's love for his mother is the key to unlocking the Grinch psychology and he turns good.

Don't get me wrong, I generally like this special, it's obviously miles better than the Halloween special. Having two major stars pitted against each other is interesting and I like the imaginative machines. But when you compare the moral of the story here (which is that Freud is the answer), with "The Grinch Who Stole Christmas" (in which the answer is "the spirit of Christmas" or whatever) and it's suddenly so clear that science will never be able to satisfy the deeper human need.

Game Grumps - Heave Ho (Part 1)

"Will people love this episode or absolutely hate it?"

Continue? - Bill Laimbeer's Combat Basketball

I'm not going to leave anything to chance or worry about spoilers. The guys are in the middle of the Future Sports Tournament and the first question before us is whether "Bill Laimbeer's Combat Basketball" is the worst video game ever on Continue?.

The kicker is that it's somehow a Super Nintendo game even though it looks like it's for the NES.


The second question is: is the music from "Bill Laimbeer's Combat Basketball" the main theme from "Overdrawn at the Memory Bank"? Let Lexicorp deal with that!

Amazon UnMystery UnBoxing

Previously on Lost, we learned that a box of mysterious contents was headed my way. Today that box arrived. As I opened it, the Schrödinger's cat particles in superposition collapsed to...

A 12 Pack of Sunkist Cherry Limeade. Amazing.

This is in contrast with what my original order was, which was....

A 12 Pack of Sunkist Cherry Limeade. 

You know, I made a big deal about the randomness of what a wrong order meant but just when you think you have a handle on randomness, you have no concept of what true randomness means. In trying to guess what the wrong order might be, I would never have guessed the random selection would be the same as the very thing I had ordered. What are the chances?!

According to the email, they're still sending my original order to make up for the mixup so I better  like this stuff.

Adventures with Amazon Shipping 2... And the Legend Continues...

In a previous installment, I experienced an Amazon shipping oddity and joked that I wanted to order more things just to see what would happen. Since then, I have had deliveries with completely mundane delivery photos. But now there is a new adventure, not with Amazon but rather a company that is on Amazon.

Having ordered a product, and after it shipped, I got an update saying:

"IMPORTANT

On Friday 9/6/2019 our shipping software ______ had a glitch. This glitch caused the shipping labels to be put on the wrong packing slip. In turn you received something other that what you were expecting or the incorrect quantity. Over the weekend we saw this error. Even though this is going to be an expensive error on our part we are making it right and sending the correct items out on Monday 9/9/2019. 

Thanks for letting us make it right and keep the item you received on us."

Slowly it dawned on me... there is a product headed to me that's mine for free and it could be anything. Literally, anything. It's J.J. Abrams' "mystery box" incarnate. It could be anything from a box of eggs to an 18th century violin. Someone I talked to suggested it may be a boat - that's not me speculating, "sources" are saying a free boat may be headed my way!

Now, it should be considered that the product that I ordered may be a clue to the product that I didn't order - and the thing I ordered was soda - but still, I find that our current age is defined by its endless possibilities and there is the feeling that anything is possible.

Alan Kalter's Celebrity Interview

Alan Kalter's Celebrity Interview is the greatest talk show that never happened.

If at any point you get bored with the format, skip to 36:20 for the "turn". I love it all though.

"That's not exactly how things went."
"That is EXACTLY how things went!"

Amazon Delivery Guy Gets Artsy with the Delivery Photo

Recently my neighbors recently decided to cut down all the trees that lined the boundary of our yards. Were they damaged, were they ugly? No, they were quite lovely. And then one day a crew is outside taking them out. Was I consulted for my opinion? No, the point is we need stumps. Stumps are the key, stumps are life. Our yards are now separated by stumps and lifeless dirt.

But this is all backstory to what took place next.

I ordered new bed sheets on Amazon. As you're probably aware, Amazon's new thing is to confirm that the package was delivered by taking a photo of the box on your doorstep. If someone in the neighborhood steals your package and you say it never arrived, hey, look at this photo, it is visual proof that we delivered it - it arrived.

So the delivery guy who delivered my sheets decided to "pose" (I can't think of a better word) the package next to one of my new stumps. Like so:

If the stump had been anywhere approximating a good delivery spot, this would be fine, as far as it goes, I'd still question why it's positioned that way but it would be fine. But this is not the case. The stump photo is far, far away from the door - yet the door IS where I found my package eventually. Here's a map of the difference:

So here is the reality as I understand it. And I apologize for how ridiculous this sounds. A delivery guy, instead of taking the package to the porch and leaving it, takes it over to a tree stump and sets the package down next to the stump and takes a photo of it.... with the stump. Then he carries it back to the porch and leaves it by the door.

Why? Why any of this? Are the delivery people getting bored? Is he taking up photography as a hobby and he wanted to make it more artsy? Is so, I have to say the result is not very good (rule of thirds and all that). I don't get it, I can't fathom what kind of plot this is. I'm so confused and at this point I'm motivated to order more things from Amazon just to see what happens.

The Nerd Crew - D23, Star Wars, D23, Disney+ and Streaming Services