Everything You Wanted to Know About Me But Didn't Really Want to Know

🖐 The Friday High Five #122

Welcome to this week’s Mullet edition of the Friday High 5.

• Business in the front: The 5 things I loved this week, free for all to enjoy.

• Party in the back: A deeper exploration of something on my mind, for supporters. Bringing the party to the people this week, for everyone to enjoy.

Substack flagged this week’s edition as too mighty to be contained by something as feeble as email (technically they said it’s “too long for email;” interpret that as you will) so you probably need to read this in your browser.

Business in the front

The Other Guys

Sony Pictures

Vibe: Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg as dysfunctional buddy cops.

Deets: Writer-director Adam McKay collaborated with Ferrell on 4 of the funniest movies of the 2000s:

• 2004: Anchorman

• 2006: Talladega Nights

• 2008: Step Brothers

• 2010: The Other Guys

That’s an incredible run. Here’s how good they are: I can’t name my favorite. Of the 4, as of this writing, I probably prefer Step Brothers, but Talladega Nights is equally incredible. The Other Guys is probably the one I think about the least.¹ Even if it’s their 4th-best movie, it’s still hilarious.

Best line: “Captain, you really want to disarm this guy? Take out the batteries in the calculator.” Or anytime Will Ferrell refers to himself as Gator.

The Last of Us: S2

HBO Max

Vibe: The apocalypse is grim AF.

Deets: There’s cliffhangers, and then there’s the way Season 2 ends. Fade to black? Seriously?

Ugh.

I’m emotionally invested, but at this point it’s less based on what’s happening and more on what I want to happen.

How do you enter a situation where you are clearly in over your head and keep pushing deeper? How do you look not at what you’ve lost, but what you still could lose, and decide to quit while you’re objectively still ahead? Especially since people in Seattle are either being tortured or ritually sacrificed?²

I’ve been waiting for Ellie to come to this realization. And praying no harm comes to Dina, who’s obviously the show’s best character and therefore in the greatest jeopardy.

There’s no drama if characters are not endangered, and no show without drama. I just prefer when characters act like real people and not plot avatars. Upside, the penultimate episode was incredibly affecting. Reminded me a bit of S1’s Nick Offerman storyline.

‘Danzig - Mother 93 Live’ Music Video

Vibe: Rock as performance art, with thrown bodies.

Deets: I’ve been a fan of this crazy music video since I first saw it over 30 years ago.³ To the point that whenever I hear “Mother,” I see the music video. The two are forever intertwined.

Currently working on a piece titled, “We Need to Talk About the Insanity of the 'Danzig - Mother 93 Live' Music Video.” Will probably publish it this weekend. Here’s a teaser:

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0:45: The song has been slowly building this whole time. It’s the sensation at the beginning of a roller coaster, when the steady clink-clink of the lift chain becomes both background noise and a countdown to the ride’s true beginning.

We are here now, ratcheting ever higher.

0:48: Still building.

You can just tell this crescendo is gonna kill. I hope the album came with cautionary warnings for the elderly, pregnant, and people with heart conditions.

This song is a force of nature. Not even Glenn Danzig, the song’s creator and the artist through which we experience the storm, is immune. He violently double fist pumps as the intro nears its apex.

Clearly the legion of guards are there to protect the crowd from Glenn’s contortions.

So much going on in this pic. Glenn wearing one boxing glove. The stage guards looking like they're wearing raincoats. The fact that the Black dude right behind Glenn is clearly thinking, “Man, these White people are fucking crazy.”

The Dungeons and also the Dragons

Vibe: World ending stakes and utter shenanigans.

Deets: I was invited to join an in-progress D&D game a few years back. At the time, I thought I was just coming in for one session, sort of like how in the days of peak sitcoms, celebs would randomly pop up on an episode of Friends.⁴ Which is why I created a joke character: An eight-foot tall bipedal bird who evangelizes his homemade religion. Picture Big Bird as a Mormon, complete with the distribution of literature.⁵

The half-life on that joke is maybe 2 sessions. At this point, it’s been 4 or 5. It was time to rethink the character before we played again last weekend. I could’ve grafted on some existential angst, or given him a legit purpose or goal (beyond making my friends laugh, which is honestly my first and only objective). But because I’m incredibly juvenile, I just recreated Big Bird as a quasi-Jedi.

He wields a lightsaber-ish weapon but more importantly enjoys Jedi mind tricking people. Even better: It gives me license to tell other characters, “I sense much fear in you,” a statement that very clearly establishes superiority. Try it next time you’re with your friends.

We played for 7 hours Saturday. We didn’t accomplish a ton, plot-wise, but at one point I couldn’t breathe or see because I was laughing so hard. That’s a successful game in my book.

Ocean’s Twelve

Warner Bros.

Vibe: The worst Ocean’s movie is still pretty watchable.

Deets: Ocean’s Eleven is far and away the best movie of the trilogy. I think it’s safe to say it’s the only reason there is a trilogy.

I rewatch Eleven every few years and the other two basically never. Firing up Ocean’s Twelve this week was interesting because I remembered nothing of the plot, and the few things I thought I knew—wait, is this the one where Danny and the boys partner up with Terry Benedict?—was actually from Ocean’s Thirteen. I also falsely ascribed the part where Julia Roberts plays a woman playing Julia Roberts to Thirteen, when in fact it’s in Twelve.

So, yeah, I completely memory holed this movie. But that left me open to being pleasantly surprised, which I was. This movie knows what side its toast is buttered on⁶, and that’s letting George Clooney and Brad Pitt play fictionalized versions of themselves. That mostly balances out the inane heist.

Party in the back

Thanks to some Notes that have done numbers⁷ for reasons that elude me, we’ve had a ton of new people join the newsletter. Welcome!

I thought it might be fun to share a bit about myself to help orient new readers, and also fill in blanks for those that have been here awhile. That way, like Ellie, you can extricate yourself before the true horrors begin.

I’m now going to do the most cliched thing possible and begin with my birth.

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I was born 9 months after Star Wars premiered in 1977, which naturally suggests my mom’s womb quickened on its own after she saw the film. I get it — these movies make me feel things too. I learned about all the gender parts in health class but they neglected to teach us how babies are really made.

I’m not saying I’m a Chosen One, only that I wasn’t ready to be born into a world without Star Wars.

It’s hard to articulate just how big Star Wars was in the early 80s. Star Wars has always been big — it’s friggin Star Wars. But if you were young at the time, and of a certain persuasion, it was somehow more than it is now. It looms monolithic in my earliest memories and is a part of my origin story. I’ve spent my entire life chasing those early feelings of wonder.

I wanted to be Han Solo. Still do. But every ‘Which Star Wars Character Are You?’ quiz tells me I’m Luke Skywalker or Chewbacca. So I guess depending on the day, I’m either a bit whiny and hopelessly naive or growling unintelligibly and occasionally howling.

I guess that’s probably accurate.

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Some of my favorite things

• Tootsie Rolls, Hostess Orange Cupcakes, Chocolate Chip Cookies

• I am a huge fan of the TV show Firefly and am very slowly writing a steampunk fantasy series inspired by it; it’s shiny

• Cormac McCarthy, Patrick Rothfuss, George R.R. Martin

• Nickelback — kidding! Just checking to see if you’re still reading

• Red Dead Redemption, Skyrim, KOTOR

• Basketball shorts. I don’t play as much as I used to but I still dress the part

• The Office, Parks & Rec, Schitt’s Creek

• Sleeping in

• Led Zeppelin, Oasis, Red Hot Chili Peppers

• Laughing

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I moved around a lot growing up. It sucked. One good thing that came out of it is that I got really good at making new friends. One bad thing that came out of it is that I got really bad at keeping old friends.

I don’t have great charisma. I’m not charming. I’m a Gen X introvert — not only do I not want to talk, I can’t be bothered to want to talk.

So how did I make friends?

I laughed. All the time. At everything. It wasn’t forced — I generally find humor in pretty much anything. People like when you laugh with them. Not at them, that’s different.

But I had a secret weapon: I have a funny laugh. At least that’s what people tell me when they’re laughing at me. It’s the sort that makes other people laugh.

I understand this is not repeatable. If you don’t have a funny laugh, I guess you could try being nice to people. Or give them money? People seem to like money.

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Ways I’ve made money

• Retrieving luggage carts from the Detroit Metropolitan Airport parking lot for a quarter each. I was 12. It was surprisingly lucrative, but the adults doing the same thing got pissed at how much quicker I was.

• Bagging groceries in a small town. I won the city’s bagging tournament—yes, that was really a thing—and was invited to Lansing for the state competition but declined because there was no prize money and Lansing was 2.5 hours away. And also because I’m super lazy.

• Selling high-end knives and cutlery. Not a good fit for an introvert who hates conflict, talking to strangers, or talking in general.

• Packaging computer circuit boards at a semiconductor plant. My manager got fired for coming into work drunk; he was one of the more well-adjusted employees.

• Working at a Family Video during the waning heyday of video rentals. Probably my favorite job, though I got hit on a fair amount — older ladies are surprisingly randy, especially in groups.

• Evenings working the front desk of a seedy motel near a casino. Wish I had some good stories, but mostly I ate stale donuts and read sci-fi novels.

• Over 20 years in IT — what you might call a “career.” A degree in IT is pretty future-proof but what it means in practice is that you become your extended family’s go-to for anything remotely technical.

• Writing. Crazy but true!

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I met my wife in high school. I guess that makes us high school sweethearts, though we didn’t start dating until halfway through our senior year. We married before our fourth year of college. I was 21. If that seems crazy, consider this: I have been married over half my life. Still in love. With each other, even!

I probably could write something about marital lessons after so many years, but I’ll just leave you with the biggest thing I’ve learned: Sometimes laughter is not the best medicine. Read the room and pick your spots, yo.

We have a couple of adult children who oscillate between Luke and Chewie in temperament. And a cat named Luna, who we never actually call Luna.

Obligatory cat pic. Image: author

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I’m a big ol’ nerd

Even with all the talk of Star Wars, I feel like I somehow undersold my nerdiness.

Image: Interscope

I read fantasy and sci-fi books. I play videogames. Not only do I play Dungeons & Dragons, I have an entire room in my basement dedicated to it (and other games). Behold:

Pictures taken during the height of the pandemic, when my friends couldn’t come over. I really do have friends. Images: Author

I also created a D&D supplement with a buddy. I wrote the words, he drew the pictures. We raised over $1000 on Kickstarter. It was a fun experience, and totally different than writing prose or blog posts. We’ll probably do it again someday.

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This is the end

As a parting gift, here’s a handful of popular posts:

What Star Wars Means to Me

I'm Having a Bizarrely Existential Midlife Crisis

'Deadwood' Primer, Part 1: Why Deadwood's Prologue Is Such an Effective Introduction

Are We Sure Indiana Jones Was Actually a Hero?

With that, I take my leave. Or as we say in my country — goodbye.

Image: The Late Late Show

1. This is probably sacrilege and may be worth exploring in a separate piece, but I think Anchorman is the least funny of the group. It’s so quotable, but the least funny.

2. The Last of Us has strayed into cliched horror territory. You know those movies where people enter a creepy house and just ignore all the ominous warning signs until people start dying? That’s what Ellie has been doing.

3. I gotta stop saying things like “over 30 years ago” in reference to things I’ve seen or done. Each time, my eyesight grows more dim. It’s the opposite of an angel getting its wings.

4. Just to be clear: I’m not claiming to be a celeb. You know how in the NFL, people talk about coaching trees as a way of measuring the influence of coaches upon the game? It’s more like that. I introduced the DM to the hobby, and he introduced his friend group, from which we now have a third DM.

My influence is best represented by the number of dick jokes per session. It’s high. It’s very high.

5. My character’s full name is Holy Shit That’s a Big Bird, because that’s what everyone says upon seeing him. He’s just Big Bird to his friends, or at least the people willing to put up with him.

6. What a weird colloquialism. Has anyone ever forgotten what side of the toast they buttered? It’s usually pretty obvious. And even if you forgot—what then? This is the lowest of stakes, right?

“Damnit, Gertrude, I’ve gone and forgotten which end of the toast is up. I shall retire to the study and meditate upon the ruin of this day.”

See what I mean?

7. Whenever you post something on social that goes viral, you are obligated to talk about it doing numbers.