Awe-Style

We are not going to lie, the Winter Olympics register a high 8 on our excitement meter here at the blogspot. We get in on the whole international scuttlebutt, the debate over whether the Italians are correct in the pronunciation of their own city. Is it in fact “Turino”, as the natives call it? Or do we go with the more American-sounding “Turin”? My father sides more with the American pronunciation. “It’s the ‘Shroud of Turin’, he tells me, “not Turino”. Whatever. We love these fiery debates. All of it. The insane opening ceremony, with its pyrotechnic display. The Italian gymnast who pounds an anvil-looking device which creates fiery blasts to fly up and into the air while throngs of insane-looking Italians in costume do acrobatic exercises. It elicits in us here at the blogspot a reaction that is best personified by red haired American snowboarder Shaun White, who stands with his mouth agape for a full 40 seconds while the camera does not move from his stony visage. What is still undetermined, however, is if he was looking at the crazy Italian artist on a motorcycle doing donuts or if he was just in awe of the choice song selections that each country marched out to. Albania arrives to “We are family”, while meanwhile the Ethiopian delegation marches out to “Hot Stuff” by Donna Summer. You wonder how the Ethiopian athletes interpreted the lyrics to that song, I need some hot stuff baby tonight. And just what all that was about. The all time greatest moment occurs when the Slovakian delegation marches out to “YMCA”, which confounds just about everybody in attendance. We here at the blogspot are still trying to figure that out, all the while maintaining our poise, Shaun White-style.

We are digging deeper, though, too, trying to further understand our own love for these crazy games. It was something imbued on us circa 1987, no doubt, when we broke our kneecap falling from a sleigh. We were insanely standing up on the sleigh, parodying our best Shaun White move, before very anticlimactically falling and shattering our kneecap. We lied in the snow for a full ten minutes looking up at the gray sky, the various tendons and ligaments in the knee pulling at different places in our leg. The white-hot feeling of heat at various points along the leg where the knee was cracked. Wondering at how we were going to get home, just how we were going to explain to our parents our precarious predicament. And hoping they would not spazz out on us. Our Olympic dreams shattered. It could be, too, just the Norwegian heritage talking. Growing up, there were always the stories about my Norwegian grandfather doing ski jumping back in his native country. The romantic notions of crazy sweaters and skiing down big slopes. Something like this. More predictably, we conjecture that it’s probably just the whole insanity of the sporting event. The flying down hills at 60 mph on two fiberglass boards, the bobsledding, the skeletoning. The cross country skiing while brandishing a rifle. We love that up here in the B-rist. And we will be watching the proceedings in Turino, holding our knee, and thinking about how if only we maintained on the sled that one day. Because we are pretty much sure that we could rival Shaun White in our awe-style.

Very 10th Grade

jumping jack
n.
1. A toy figure with jointed limbs that can be made to dance by pulling an attached string.

2. Sports. A physical exercise performed by jumping to a position with the legs spread wide and the hands touching overhead and then returning to a position with the feet together and the arms at the sides.


“This is going to be the coldest ten seconds of my life,” someone has told us today, before running out of doors with no jacket. We thought of that statement, the hyperbole implicit in the passing sentiment. We’ve known colder days, we thought. But it is late now, the night air permeates the room, and we here at the blogspot feel that now. The heat here at the B-rist is turned to low, and we are cold. We think, even, about doing some jumping jacks and appreciate the peculiar name of that exercise. Jumping jacks, we say out loud, wondering where that comes from. It is, I imagine, some derivative of something else which is totally divorced from its original meaning now. The guy who came up with that exercise was named Jack, maybe. He had a strange proclivity for this behavior. Hey, what the hell are you doing, his friends would ask. What is that? Who could say where that comes from. We google jumping jacks and inexplicably get a porno site for women doing this exercise, pointing out that the name is now synonomous with naked women jumping up and down.




We are bored here tonight at the B-rist. And we are thinking things through to their logical conclusions. When the bass lines have left from our head, and the crunchy guitar parts, we are left with little to block out the passing thoughts. And we do gravitate towards the larger implications, let us tell you. Very 10th grade, we know. Thinking of things. That is the level we operate on here at the B-rist. 10th grade-style. And do we ever need some distraction from all this. We are so cold now that we are actually doing the archaic exercise. Just like gym class: arms akimbo, legs apart, and hands touching overhead again. You can almost feel the cold leaving, and the blood flow. It feels alright.

A Total Square: I Am

I’ve recently considered having a square tattooed onto my arm. I’m into right angles, I would tell people. Really, though, it wouldn’t mean anything in particular. Because meaning something in this late day context, with its inherent bus stop straggler reverently giving you the back-story on his vapid armband tattoo, is just really passé. Secretly, though, it would mean exactly what it purports to meaning: I am a total square. As evidence of this total square-ness, I would probably have to site being into the TW3 local access show MasterMinds as example number one. It is qualitatively the greatest piece of programming ever to have come from public access, and if you do not believe all it takes is five minutes of MasterMinds’ host David Guistina to realize: this guy is fucking insane. Let’s play MasterMinds! he tells you, garishly winking into the camera, starting the game. It’s like his sole aspiration in life really was to be the mascot for that southern no interest car loan place, but since all that didn’t work out, he knew that MasterMinds' game show host would look comparitively spiffy on his resume as runner up. An air of such painful professionalism does David Guistina exude. The whole premise of the show, basically, is to see if some high school from Berne-Knox-Westerloo can beat out a school from Berne, New York in the battle for superior periodic table knowledge. “What happens when you mix h2 with O2 ?” he asks them. The elected leader of the team slaps the buzzer. Wrong answer, spontaneous combustion. David Guistina’s head inexplicably does not come detached, although it does come dangerously close to resembling a bobble head in certain situations. Or at least some crystal meth.-laden monkey who has definitely not been without for some time now.


The best part of the show precedes the actual playing, when David Guistina asks the players of each team what they’re into. Which, if you know anything about game shows, is invariably the best part of any show like that. Typically, on something like Jeopardy, you get to hear the grating story of some Louisiana housewife and how a rodent snuck into the house one day and they called pest control. “That was a memorable one,” they nervously chortle into the microphone, the studio audience audibly quiet, the contestant wishing— praying—that the cameras would move on to the next person, wondering ignobly at the gall of the person who devised this ridiculous part of the show. An old pro like Alex Trebec, though, so graceful in his recovery of these stories, spinning like a CNN news analyst, always knowing just what to say. Cradling in his palm almost this televised moment of pure social akwardness and watching it fly from his hand like a now uninjured bird.

The dynamics of a show like MasterMinds is all changed around, though, because basically, the kids are not yet versed in social graces, and even if they were they make no attempts at disguising their collective disdain for the host. “I like playing Mortal Combat and never go outside,” some kid says. “Haha,” the answer is greeted, the characteristic gregarity in full effect. “I like Dungeons & Dragons,” some other kid offers, “and my monster name is Dash.” It’s sad, though, too, because in this host you see all of the same characteristics of the substitute teacher, ignobly trying to laugh off the wisecracks. Except, because this particular host seems to be residing within the confines of some entirely other solar system, he has no idea he’s being dissed on. And the condescension does abound. “Well, I study Greek,” some girl tells him. “And I want to teach,” she adds. “Kind of a dead language,” he laughs, “Don’t you think?” The girl just stares back at him deadpan, not too cracked up by all the shenanigans. That’s OK, though, because there happens to be a balm for all of these awkward moments: “Are you ready to play MasterMinds?” he screams in perfect synchronicity with the audience. The insanity continues.

I find consolation in getting a few of the answers right. The easy ones, which have nothing to do with anything. And it kind of boosts your ego a little bit. I like to think, anyway. And I’ve even conspired a way to get more answers right. Just don’t be asking me about the freaky periodic table tatoo on my arm next time you see me at the bus stop, because that might command a longer answer than you’re willing to hear.

Unemployment

Is the temp agency ever hip to us now. They are hot on our tracks and we here at the B-rist intend to kick it to them wholeheartedly. We intend to take our late day version of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off all the way to the top.

In a strange twist of fate, the temp agency is now calling us every hour, with some spectacular new job scenario, because they have realized that we have filed for unemployment, are frittering away the days here at the B-rist, veritably getting paid to blog, while they are footing the bill for us to do so. Spectacular. Now, instead of us having to call them every hour and get turned down, in some spectacular turn of the tables, we are now doing the turning down. Oh, can’t get to the phone right now, we are preening over our blog at the moment. Sorry. –Yeah, well we actually don’t do warehouse work, so what do you know?

A big moment transpires this afternoon, when they threaten me by saying that if I don’t get over there to take some mandatory typing exam, it could well in fact jeopardize my unemployment situation. “Just letting you know,” Sarah ominously intones into my voicemail. We will not lie: that kind of threat does send a wave of panic over us here at the blogspot, and we do in fact phone her back immediately. But only for correspondences’ sake. Because even though we can type—are typing like a motherfucker right this very moment—we tell her it’s no use, because we haven’t used a computer in years. Have been living on some hippie commune, actually, and don’t even know how to turn one on. Oh, is it ever a banner day here at the B-rist. We are sticking it to the man and we are proud. For another ten minutes, we presume, until they send the truancy officer to arrest me and send me back to class.

They Don't Make Lies Like They Used To

The temp. agency would like to see me this morning. Despite working for them on and off again for numerous years, they have forgotten who I am, have lost my resume in the gigantic refuse pile which constitutes their filing system, and would like it if I checked in. They want to make sure that I’m not fashioning a beard or have developed some nervous tic which might prevent me from using a copying machine. This is how they do it around here.

You can pretty much determine their estimation of you by the kinds of jobs they end up offering. Sometimes they send you to a higher paying position for a few weeks, and you pretty much know that they liked your shirt that day. You have convinced them that you are a civilized human, and that you will not be putting the supervisor in a headlock when she gives you some papers to collate. I’ve worked at jobs, too, where they didn’t like my shirt that day, and I can pretty much assure you that there are specific destinations for the uncivilized: "Check this out," a fellow temp. tells me one day. "As an act of revenge for giving him shit, John jerked off all over that chair over there." I cannot believe this story, but on further inspection there actually really does appear to be some strange-looking substance all over the chair in question. I tell them I will be standing for the rest of the day.

There is just no end to the strangeness of the temp. world, with its inherent miscreant faction and weirdo populace. And no specific workplace is absolved, no matter how good it seems to be. I try and figure out just what camp they’re putting me into. "Have you ever worked on an assembly line?" they want to know. I'm a little amazed to realize that they are actually serious. I swear I thought I saw the hint of bemusement on their faces. Oh, well. The results are in. You can pretty much rest assured I won’t be adding this to resume any time soon. Not this one. "We’ll call you if something comes up," they let me know. OK. I just don’t know how comforting all that is.

Super Bowl Sunday

We are just hanging out today. The Super Bowl is on, and although this may excite many of our constituents it hardly registers a passing notice from us here at the blogspot. We know, we are not like others. We honestly do not even know who is in the big game. Are prone to facilitating mass hysteria and ass-beatings by pointing out the jingoistic nature of this sport. We are, in a point of fact kind of way, prone to being called a real homo. No matter. Let it be known that we here at the B-rist do not give a fuck.

Things we do give a fuck about are increasingly limited but are likely to include any combination of the following: pretty girls, alcohol consumption, and feeling you up. Also added to that list might be any variety of worldly cuisines. But then, I guess that last bit is the cloying attempt at getting invited to your Super Bowl party. We know, though: you were already convinced.