Dear Kentucky Jim

You have been reticent since you left for parts unknown for your new job.  I don't remember if it was with the government, the carnival, or an all male burlesque show, but I remember you said there was a grueling training period and that you anticipated being very sore.  None of this means that you can't return a text message or an email to the greatest friend you've ever known, but somehow you still manage to ignore all communications.  Then, like the teasing trollop I am sure you are at The Stripmaginarium of Dr. Peenasus, you told me you would call me last Saturday.  Even though I was on vacation in Atlantic City, I carried my bluetooth around all day, taking up valuable cigar space in my pocket, just so I could talk to you and see how the accommodations were for you at Wiggling Willyzs Weinerz Warehouz.  Alas, you never called, so I am forced to send this letter to update you on the goings on back home.

I've been well, thanks for not bothering to ask, jackass.  Since you've left, I save money not having to travel over the bridge to visit you, and I can eat at any Indian, Mexican or Asian restaurant I want because I don't have to have dinner with someone who is racist against any culture that has rice as a staple food.  My workouts have been goings well, but I'm sure they are nothing compared to the exercise they put you through to keep you in shape at your new job at Urethra Franklin's Rhythm and Boobs Revue.  Everything else is fine too, so enough about me.

As you surmised, when you left town, The Angry Scholar lost his only support system.  Adrift in a sea of angst and academia, he can be found nowadays wandering the halls of his campus library, muttering facts about long gone cultures and stats of Pokemon characters.  He's also taken a fancy to performing interpretive dances to Fine Young Cannibals songs at coffeehouses.  Not during open mic nights, just at any point he feels like it, during regular business hours.  He has been deemed not quite the entertainment spectacle I am sure you are at Kim Dong Il's Imperial Penis Palace and Neverending Omelet Buffet, so he's been banned from every coffee house in town except for the one called "Cofee Beens" run by a guy whose legal name is Ketchup.  I'm not really clear on if that's a first or last name, or if this is some sort of Cher or Sting situation, and frankly, I don't care to find out.

Your former roommate, Mr. Estevez, has been doing a valiant job trying to clean your old apartment since your departure.  You left an alarming amount of scratch paper lying around crumpled in various rooms.  Most seem to be failed poems from your goth phase, as well as several sheets of paper with variations of the signature "Master Lucien Oblivion".  They are dotted with stains of eyeliner, your unmistakable shade of Midnight Misery, dripped from tears of unfathomable sorrow.  He did find something in the heating vents of your room that you may not have meant to leave though.  I'm not sure what any grown man would need with hidden stashes of over three hundred My Little Pony dolls living painted with personalized names on their chests, but sure enough The Angry Scholar has taken possession of all of them, except for the blue one with green hair you named "Rambling Roger".  The Scholar says he doesn't trust Roger, and gets very defensive when the name is brought up.

Your mother and father are doing well.  Very well in fact.  One gets the feeling that you might have been dragging them down this whole time, and that since you have left, they've finally come into their own.  It's nice to see them smiling again mostly.

Anyway, I'm sure you are busy with your next shift at Barbara Ehrenriech's Nipple and Dimed, so I guess I probably shouldn't wait for you to call this weekend either, even though you said you would since you missed last weekend.  It's cool.  It's only Sunday night.  There's still plenty of weekend left.  You'll be calling any minute. 

Dear Superbowl Commercials

This might as well just be an obituary for the golden age of Superbowl commercials as much as it is a condemnation of the current classless class of dreck that was trotted out last Sunday.  Superbowl Sunday used to be a night of championship level football interspersed with the best that advertising agencies had to give us.  Now, the commercials seem indistinguishable from one that you would catch premiering during a rerun of Shark Tank.

There were only two commercials all night that I heard any positive reviews about.  The first was the Budweiser Clydesdales with the puppy.  Yeah, sure.  No one is going to hate a commercial with a cute little puppy, so that was a gimme.  More surprising was the second, the Brady Bunch commerical with Steve Buscemi and Danny Trejo, mainly because it was a rehash of an idea they stopped doing two or three years ago.  So, those were the best ideas that the supposed best minds in advertising could come up with, and that companies felt were worth shelling out millions of dollars for a prime slot.  Yet, the two most non football related topics discussed from the broadcast were the weird and uncomfortable Dead Kid commercial, and that freaking shark at halftime.  Let me tell you, I definitely want to hire a life insurance company that feels like bumming out millions of people that are busy shoveling guacamole down their gullets at a friend's house.  Maybe for my birthday, the company will come out and psychologically torture my housepets while I'm forced to watch.

There are still good commercials out there.  I still laugh every time I see the Value City coffee table commercial, and Blake Bennett playing straight man to the children in the cell commercials got some great mileage.  Somehow, though, on the biggest night for commercials all year, we get nothing of substance. 

There may never be another Terry Tate, Office Linebacker ever again, and I weep for the future.

Dear Television Theme Songs

There is a set way things tend to be done regarding theme songs.  In the sixties, theme songs were instrumental.  Seventies, rock songs.  Eighties spawned gleeful jangles most likened to radio jingles for the show, and the nineties were a strange amalgam of clips, whistles, and children screaming.  Then, when it got to the Aughts, you were allowed to experiment.  You had the laid back cool of The Sopranos, the vague unease of the Lost noise, the awesome of Tom Waits and Tom Waits covers on The Wire, and the brilliant instrumentals of The Office and Parks and Rec that convey the joy of the shows.  Somehow, in this renaissance, the worst theme song of television history was born and unleashed on the world. 

I'll take a moment, and assure the ladies in the audience that I am in NO WAY making fun of the show.  I know better than to do that, lest I be besieged in a fast talking flurry of hatred and obscure pop culture references.  Also, please remember, if you strike me down, I will become more powerful than you ever imagined.  Ok?  We good?

Alright....so, that song is the Gilmore Girls theme.  I've been subjected to this treacly monstrosity many times lately, and it never gets better.  It sounds like a nice old lady that just baked cookies for everyone, and she's singing while getting beaten with a sock full of kindness, gentility, and 1922 Liberty Head quarters.  Latin America can't produce as much sickly sweetness in a year as this song does in a minute.  It doesn't even qualify as a throwback to 80's shmaltz.  It's just ungodly, unjustifiably awful.  It is so bad it couldn't even be Steven Segal's theme song.

I haven't seen much of the show.  I assume it is some strange prequel to Supernatural, otherwise Jared Padalecki would have had nothing to do with it.  The more I thought about it, I became convinced this was a very elaborate, extremely lengthy Meta episode of Supernatural where Sam is posing as a teenager named Dean, and Dean is a hot thirty something single mom with an odd daughter that dates Sam/Dean.  For some reason they live in a town where it is perfectly acceptable for a grown man to wear a backwards baseball cap at all time (maybe this is Cass?), and no one is yet sick of Melissa McCarthy. If it isn't, I want the royalties when it gets made. 

Dear Kali

There isn't much to do when you are stuck in the dentist's chair, waiting for the hygienist to come in and clean your teeth.  You can't have your phone on, and you'll do just about anything to not listen to the soft jazz playing over the sound system.  So, I looked around the office, trying to amuse myself.  There is only so much in the 180 degree view I have from the chair, so it wasn't hard to bypass the framed pictures of sailboats, schooners, and other things I can't afford because I'm not a dentist.  My eyes settled on a hand drawn picture from a child. This picture: 

It took me a couple a seconds to process what I was seeing.  Kali, a small red child, was obviously attacked by the dentist, who likes wearing human hearts on his smock to terrorize his victims.  Immediately, too many questions came to mind.  I have never seen a child in the office.  This is not a pediatric dentist office.  How did you get in here, and who are you working for?  How did you smuggle in crayons, because they don't have them here.  I know, I've asked. 

Once those were posed, my brain went further.  What have your parents done to you?  What kind of name is Kali?  Short for "Kali Ma You Have Sinned Against Shiva"?  Is Brittany not a good name anymore?  Susan, Betty, Jennifer, Flo?  Why Kali? 

Horrified, I saw what my mind had blocked out the first eighty times I read it.  It was too much to see that the picture was "Form Kali".  That one last thing would have broken me, so my mind made me see it say "From".  I also read it as Dentist, because the only thing I know that is called a Demtist is a lesser demon from hell that feeds on the fears of baby koalas. 

My mind wouldn't stop as the hygienist and dentist worked on my teeth.  It was exactly like sex: me lying motionless and confused while a woman pokes around in my mouth, a man watches, and Peabo Bryson plays softly in the background. 

Dear Latin Food Aficionado

Punctual as always, I had arrived earlier than the two friends that I was meeting for dinner at a Latin food restaurant.  The ladies from the Cult of Too Much Perfume, Puffy Vests, and Fluffy Boots at the hostess station in front of me decided the best option would be to form a  barricade and not let anyone near the hostess.  I am infinitely patient, so I stood back and diligently waited for the hostess to return with her too short skirt and pale pale winter legs to guide them to their table and take my reservation. 

You straggled in, comb-over plastered to your scalp, and assessed the situation.  Clearly, these ladies were the only real customers.  I was simply standing behind them, hoping to grope them, or maybe kidnap them all if all of the other 100 or so other diners should look away and provide me a chance.  You eyed me up and down, I looked at you and nodded, and you stepped through a newly opened gap in the Puffy Blockade and told the hostess you wanted a table for three.

Normally, I might let this go, but for three things.  This restaurant was very crowded, and that table of three, exactly what I wanted, might be the only thing available.  Secondly, one of my dining companions was pregnant, so I wasn't going to have her wait.  Lastly, you looked me right in the eye and then tried to dick me over, and that doesn't play.

"Hey, thanks pal.  I wasn't waiting", I told you.  You turned and stared at me, nervously.  Maybe you thought I would have left it alone, that I don't like confrontation.  Terrorists live on fear, after all, so you didn't know how to function in its absence.  You stammered out, "I...I..uh..didn't see you there."

"You mean when you looked right at me?  You didn't see me then?"

Logic befuddled you more and you simply stammered.  The hostess didn't care.  She started to take you back to a table. At this point, you finally decided to do something honorable.

"He can have the table" you muttered.

"No, please" I said, "You wanted it bad enough to push in.  Take it."

And you did.  You walked right after her and sat down without waiting for the other two in your party.  The two in my party had showed up just in time for my last words to you, and wanted to know what I had done now. 

It wasn't me though, because once you were seated, you wandered back to where we stood, and feebly tried to tell us all, "I didn't see him there."  That's like missing a wall, jackass.  Luckily she sat us, and I walked away from you.  Muttering to those around you and looking confused might be how you usually get what you want, but when someone calls you on it, just gracefully bow out.  You know you were being a prick, so just own up to it. 

Dear Pants

Why can't you ever fit right?  I want to blame the Big Belt Consortium for furthering their propaganda, but it goes much higher than that.

Pants from one company in one size fit differently than pants from a different company in the same size.  If I find a pair of pants that fit my waist, they never have a long enough inseam.   If you want to buy a pair of Levis, not only are there thirty some odd different styles, but there are just as many shades of blue.  Good luck finding the combination you want between size, length, style, and color, especially when you are size 36/34.  Apparently everyone that needs a 34 inseam has a size 46 or higher waist, according to the Pants Barons. 

I thought I was past this.  I bought ten pairs of cargo shorts on sale in 1998, thinking I was done buying pants forever, and now everyone laughs at me and asks why I need so many pockets.  I just can't escape it. 

I think Brainiac says it best in the clip below. 

Dear New Years Resolutionists

People are innately programmed to feel something towards an ending, be it happiness, sadness, nostalgia, or bitterness.  It's why everyone but me cries at the end of My Girl and why everyone loves to celebrate New Years.  It gives us a finite unit to measure our lives, and unfortunately, most of us use this to make a half assed attempt at trying to better ourselves.  In a day, week, or month, that resolution will have been broken, and mostly likely you'll be the same person you were 365 days previously. 

I was talking with my friend Cindyloo recently about how nice people have seemed around the holidays this year.  In long lines at stores and the post office, no one was bickering, or getting mad about wait times.  People are looking each other in the eyes, smiling, and being pleasant to one another.  I even found myself doing this, which is against every fiber in my being in a crowded setting.  The only explanation that makes sense is that for some reason, people have decided to have more compassion and more camaraderie overall around Christmas this year.  It's not everyone, of course.  I still had a customer threaten me to use all of his high powered Senator and political friends to get my hotel shut down if I didn't give him a free upgrade on Christmas Eve, but some dogs don't learn new tricks.  They stick to the old ones, no matter the time, place, or idiocy of the tactic.  As a society, we just don't seem to have it in us to try this for a full year, and only seem to be able to kick it into gear when we are reminded that it is a time of giving, or that time is running out, in some respect.  It seems like we'd forget to eat if we weren't a bunch of gluttons with fast food on every block and dozens of restaurants that will deliver directly to our doors. 

Why waste your time making a half assed oath to better yourself just because it is late December?  Yes, next year could be the best year of your life, but unless you are half the assholes I went to high school with, good luck doesn't just fall in your lap.  Life is going to throw giant piles of feces at you, and you have to work hard to duck and weave.  Changing your life for the better isn't going to happen just because December became January, or because you buy a gym membership.  You've actually got to go to the gym, five days a week, every week, and literally work your ass off.  You want to be a nicer person?  Be nice to people.  Want to quit smoking?  Do it, and stop making excuses.  Want to learn to jazzercise?  Be at my place, Friday at 5. 

The point is, you can do this at any time.  January 1, June 22, or October 16, it doesn't matter.  If you are miserable, do something about it.  And if it gets tough, don't quit.  That's how you got miserable in the first place, because you took the path of east resistance.  That's why stupid people have more kids than everyone else, and that's why hardly anyone ever follows through with their resolutions. 

Me, I'm not changing anything, because I am magnificent.  You're a goddamned mess though, so get started now, and don't wait for Thursday.