Learn How To Fucking Drive

I have three "hopes" today:

I hope the title of this entry caught your attention. I'm guessing that it did, because you are reading it. How is it so far? How are you? Can I get you something? Water? There's San Pellegrino in the fridge over there. Yeah, help yourself. No, it's behind the pot of spaghetti sauce that my wife insists on placing right in the refrigerator instead of transferring it to a smaller Pyrex dish. There you go. I'm out of limes. Sorry.

The second thing I have "hope" for today is that you actually do what I tell you to do. Because I am sick to death of the shit you have been pulling on the streets lately, and it seems to be happening more and more. So shut up, quit looking for new photos of your nephew's Bar Mitzvah, and pay attention.

There have ALWAYS been lousy drivers. There always will be. Apparently that wacky stick that you can flip up and down to let people know where you are turning still eludes some of you, and that whole "this isn't my lane but I am gonna stay here for seventeen years and make you miss your turn" thing is as old as the highway itself. But for CHRIST'S SAKE, people...

YOU ARE NOT THE ONLY PERSON ON THE GOD DAMNED ROAD

This means that there are people behind you. They are next to you. They are in their cars, which means that THEY HAVE PLACES TO GO AS WELL.

Because they have places to go, they are completely and totally inconvenienced when YOU DECIDE TO DRIVE 15 MILES AN HOUR IN A 40, LOOKING FOR YOUR MOTHER FUCKING TURN.

We have turn lanes. We have Only lanes. We even have LOTS MORE ROAD. I mention that last part because if, for some terrifying reason, you miss your precious left turn... YOU CAN PROBABLY GO A FEW BLOCKS FURTHER AND FIND A PLACE TO TURN AROUND AND GO BACK.

If you think you are going to turn left soon, GET YOUR FUCKING ASS into the turn lane. When you hang half of your car in the turn lane and keep the other half in the lane that you were traveling at 30 miles BELOW the speed limit in just a moment ago, you have literally FUCKED EVERYONE ELSE WHO IS BEHIND YOU UP.

YOU ARE NOT THE ONLY PERSON ON THE GOD DAMNED ROAD

I can't stress this enough. There is nothing in this world, NOTHING, that you can say that justifies you acting like you are the only person in a car who is driving somewhere. The only thing you can say in your defense would be the following:

1. I am an ignorant, selfish, inconsiderate piece of shit who only cares about MYSELF. Or:
2. I am deliberately doing this to be a fucking prick.
   

Either way, you need to have your pants yanked down and someone needs to whack you on the back of the legs with a bamboo cane about fifty times.

This is happening with alarming frequency lately. And it is yet another example of how inconsiderate people have become lately. I mean don't get me wrong: Since we crawled out of the swamp and became capable of breathing air we have been selfish pricks. We don't like to think so, but we are. But in the last few years it's becoming more and more acceptable to flaunt it.

Well I am sick of it. At least, I am sick of it when I am trying to get to work. Or home. Or anywhere in public.

It's very simple:

1. Drive within 10 miles above or below the posted speed limit.
2. Be AWARE of the cars around you.
3. Get the LIVING FUCK OVER when you are making a turn.

Jesus. Christ.

Oh, my final "hope" for the day?

I hope that whoever reads this and decides to comment by saying "AMEN, BROTHER! THEY DRIVE ME CRAZY TOO" (or some variation on that theme) gets hit by a bolt of lightning and fries you in the goddamn skull.

OF COURSE YOU AGREE WITH ME! THAT'S BECAUSE THERE IS NO FUCKING EXCUSE FOR DRIVING YOUR CAR LIKE A GODDAMN DOUCHEBAG.

Now DON'T make me come in here and tell you this again. Go to bed. Go on. You have work in the morning.

I hope I have helped.

That's 4 "hopes". Shit.

THREE MOVIES I WANT TO SEE ON DVD. BUT CAN'T.

Here are three movies that haven't made it to DVD yet, let alone Blu Ray. And that sucks.

It sucks because movies like THE CANNONBALL RUN, POPEYE, ZORRO: THE GAY BLADE, and THE PIRATE MOVIE are all readily available on DVD, and they are crappy movies that I grew up watching on Home Box. Hell, even GREASE 2 gets a goddamn DVD special edition. And the following movies do not. And that sucks.

1. UNDER THE RAINBOW (1981)

Let me start this off with the following statement: I think Chevy Chase is a fucking douche bag. The guy was funny on SNL in 1975. He left in '76 because everyone told him he was a magic bullet and he believed them, because heck... cocaine makes you think you are totally awesome. If you don't believe me, I humbly submit to you the work of a little ol' band called Eagles. Not The Eagles, mind you. Eagles. Look it up, it's how they want it. Ahem... ... ... ... cocaine.

Okey dokie. Back to Chevy "It only works when I am with Goldie Hawn" Chase. In '81 the big galoot starred in a movie that has effectively slipped off the face of the planet, titled UNDER THE RAINBOW. The story was actually pretty damn compelling; It is 1938. A hotel manager in LA goes on vacation and leaves his nephew (or was it his son? I can't remember and I can't re watch it because the fucking thing isn't available on DVD!) in charge of the place. The nephew swindles a bunch of little people to stay there while they are filming the Munchkin scenes on The Wizard Of Oz. The little fuckers are everywhere: hanging from the damn ceiling. Among the crowd is a dwarf Nazi who is passing on secret info to a Japanese spy. But there are also Japanese tourists all over the place, and one case of mistaken identity happens after another.

Oh, and Carrie Fisher minces around quite a bit wearing a lace see-through bra. Oh my yes indeed.

The plot is convoluted and silly, and horribly degrading to little people. The events in the movie match the politics and history of the time (pre-Nazi spies, the depression) and it even echoes the Wizard Of Oz all the way through (a fish-out-of-water fantasy... good and evil, etc.) It's madcap crap. I have no idea why Chase's MODERN PROBLEMS is on DVD for less than $10 and this one isn't. Dammit.

2. IF YOU COULD SEE WHAT I HEAR (1982)

Tom Sullivan is a real guy. He was born premature and the incubators that they used at the time had a flaw where they sometimes fed too much oxygen into the chamber. It would create a film over the baby's eyes, or some such. Congratulations, son, you are now blind. Enjoy your life!

Sullivan didn't let that stop him or slow him down, and his autobiography became a bestseller in the late 70's. The guy wrote songs, was an athlete (running, swimming, even golf!) and he even took up skydiving for the hell of it. He appeared on tons of sitcoms and TV dramas in the same time period that his book was big; and they made it into a movie starring Marc Singer. Yes... the guy who played THE BEASTMASTER. Christ... I just realized that THE BEASTMASTER is available on DVD. And IF YOU COULD SEE WHAT I HEAR isn't.

The movie is the story of Tom Sullivan's college years, pretty much. His romances with a young black student, his trips into hooliganism with his best friend Sly, his summer as a piano player in a tavern of a harbor town, and how he met and fell in love with his future wife (played by the cute blond gal who was in MEATBALLS... a movie that is available on DVD. Sigh...).

This would easily be a CBS movie-of-the-week if it weren't for the PG-rated language. But something about it the story of "a guy who doesn't know he's blind" is irresistible and awesome all rolled up into one. The performances are charming, the movie flies along at a good pace, and there would probably be more puppies on the planet if more folks watched it. I don't know how it correlates, but trust me: Puppies and IF YOU COULD SEE WHAT I HEAR go hand-in-hand.

3. ELECTRIC DREAMS (1984)

Have I ranted and raved about how wonderful this movie is to you yet? Have we talked at length about how Lenny von Dohlen turns in an absolutely wonderful performance as Miles, a milquetoast architect living in San Francisco who meets and falls in love with Virginia Madsen, a cellist who just moved in upstairs? Have you heard about the movie where a guy dumps champagne all over his new computer and somehow or another it ends up bringing the computer to LIFE!? You read that correctly. He brings the computer to life. Through booze.

The computer's name is Edgar. And he agrees to help Miles write a love song for Virginia upstairs, because he is in love with the gal as well. Yeah... it's pretty much Cyrano de Bergerac. But with a computer. And Virginia Madsen. Yes oh yes.

There is a very good chance that you own a copy of the incredibly stupid and mediocre 1985 Hughs-o-rama WEIRD SCIENCE. And you think it is awesome because it has a scene where Bill Paxton gets turned into a giant pile of shit.

You own a movie where a guy gets turned into a huge pile of shit, and you can't own a copy of a movie where Virginia Madsen and a pre-Windows PC have a breath-taking 4-minute cello/synthesizer duet. Everything about ELECTRIC DREAMS is awesome: the clothes, the colors, the terrible underlying fear that the appliances were secretly out to get you... Every time I talk about ELECTRIC DREAMS in front of a group of "movie people" I get at least one other person who flips out, who has been thinking that the movie in question was never an actual movie at all but maybe something that they just made up once when they were young. Nope. It exists. It's a great piece of 80's fluff, and it hasn't been put on a DVD. And from the way things are going, it probably never will.

I just don't get it. I really don't.

Pad Thai

Pad Thai.

Pad Thai fucking sucks.

"Hey we have some delicious noodles here! Let's put a sauce on it! Hmm... this sauce is a wee bit too sweet and sticky. maybe we can temper the taste of it with some shrimp!

Fuck! The shrimp made it all sweet AND mellow... quick! Put some chicken on there!

Oh no! The chicken counters the taste of the noodles and the sticky-sweet shrimp! Quick! QUICK! WE NEED ONIONS!

Man... I fucked this one up bad. What the hell can I put on this thing to go with the taste of sticky-sweet noodles, shrimp, chicken and onions?

GROUND-UP PEANUTS!"

Fuck you, Pad Thai. You suck.