The Best Things #1

This is something positive.

There is so much negativity in the world today, what with the war and the murder and the fact that I don’t get home early enough to catch Fresh Prince reruns anymore. The world is in a rough state. Nobody’s listening to Billy Joel songs anymore and when people do that do-DO-da-do-DO thing with their carhorns, it’’s rare that they get anything better than a half-hearted do-do in response. You know what I mean? It’s sad. People used to love doing that.

This column is devoted to the good things in life. The things that matter! The things that inspire smiles and laughter and mild sexual arousal. This column is about dancing and light. It’’s about naming constellations in July night skies. It’s about teeter-totters, and see saws, and the differences therein. It’s about kisses on the cheek, which should be more common, even between friends. It’’s about Eddie Winslow filming a music video with Waldo Geralhdo Faldo because, man, that was a good episode of Family Matters. It’s about everything good that we see every day.

It’’s about the things in life that inspire us. The things in life that dazzle us. The things in life that make us sigh — the good kind of sigh — and the things that make us smile so goofy-like that your face starts to tingle. It’s about the best things. The best things EVER, in fact. The things that make us great.

These are the best things ever for July 29, 2004.

NUMBER 5

The realization that it could be worse

Take me, for example. Man, I had a great summer planned. There was going to be games and laughter and swimming and carousels and further conjunctions, but instead there was– sickness and pain. You see, as part of what I can only imagine was a cosmic hidden-camera show, my body was filled with angry little robots who chomp on things — important things! — and thus cause me discomfort. It has been tormenting me all summer and refuses to go away but, still, I have to realize that it could be worse.

Do you remember when Peter Parker grew four extra arms? That would be MUCH worse than what I’’m going through. And, yeah, sure, he’’s FICTIONAL, but still! It’’s worth keeping these things in perspective. And remember You Can’t Do that on Television? How they lived in that terrible prison-world where any attempt to ask for water was answered by Chinese Water Torture? That would suck! And also, the guy who ran the cafeteria kitchen DID not look like one who abided by the health codes.

So, yeah, it could be worse.

NUMBER 4

Books with pictures

I like to read! Except I find university has — perhaps ironically — turned me into a person with the literary attention span of a goldfish. All that journalism training has me wanting to know the whole damn point of the story in the first paragraph. Yet another reason to never take Journalism, kids! You’’ll become a jaded, cynical mess, and then you’’ll make typos in your headlines that no one will ever notice because nobody reads newspapers to begin with.

Anyway, I have done some reading recently. In the non-picture front, I read Ray Bradbury’’s Something Wicked This Way Comes. I liked it — so much so that I finished it in one sitting — but his writing style is pretty fucking infuriating. It’’s so syrupy and overdone — and his dialogue? Sucks! — that I really shouldn’’t enjoy it so much. But I do. I love it. I hope one day I have the figurative balls to spend four pages waxing poetic about times of night and playground equipment; I bet he has a lot of fun writing like he does.

I also read the complete run of Terry Moore’’s Strangers in Paradise. It’’s phenomenal in its ability to cycle the exact same plot three times over in one sixty-issue-run, but I can’’t say I disliked it. Moore’’s prose may be awful, but his characters are tremendously well-defined. These two pages are some of the most inspiring I’’ve seen as far as graphic novel work goes in the last little while. The way they convey so much character in just a few panels while still embodying a sort of bouncing rhythm is awesome. It makes me want to try and draw again!

• Page 1
• Page 2

(From Strangers in Paradise Vol. 3 #13)

NUMBER THREE

Different kinds of love

It was my grandparents’’ fiftieth anniversary two weekends ago. That whole side of the family came up to my family’’s cottage, and we all had a special dinner which featured both a boatride and surprising amount of drinking. My grandparents are about 70-years-old, and they’’re a really great British couple who are always giving me money whenever I see them. They’’re both quietly religious, absurdly polite in that British sort of way, and — for whatever reason — watch like 8 hours of TSN a day.

So, anyway, we’’re at this dinner — the whole family, adults and kids — and my granddad gets up to give his little speech, and the first two sentences out of his mouth are “”When Shirley and I were growing up, things like pre-marital sex weren’t accepted. So we had to get married young.”…”

I nearly spit out my drink.

I’’m sure he was joking, but it got me to thinking. Wouldn’’t that be a great love story? Two people who are so powerfully enamoured with one another that they throw caution into the wind and get hitched just so they can fuck with a priest’’s blessing. And, you know, there they are 50 years later sitting at a table with nearly 20 people that love you — family — and it’’s all because it wasn’’t acceptable back then to play sex games without a priest’’s okay.

It would be absurdly romantic if it weren’’t my goddamned grandparents.

NUMBER TWO

There are worse things than being alone

We had a discussion at work recently about being anti-social. One of my co-workers doesn’t understand how anyone could be happy being anti-social. My argument was that being anti-social — REALLY anti-social, to the point where you often WANT to be alone and don’t NEED anyone — is really an example of strength. Because, hell, people who need people — aside from being the luckiest people in the world — are really just needy.

I don’’t dislike people. In fact, I quite like being with certain people in this world and would certainly like to be with them more often. But I don’’t need constant human contact. In fact, I think I’’d downright loathe constant human contact. How do people do it? All that constant togetherness? It must be hell!

I don’’t think I could be completely happy being alone my whole life. But I know that I’’ll never be one of those people who is just go-go-go with the socializing. I need a girl who understands that. I want an anti-social girl more than anything. We’’ll do things when we feel like it, and be by ourselves when we feel like it. But, mostly, we’’ll just stay quiet and hold each other on the couch because, man, that’s the best kind of socializing there is.

If you are an anti-social girl, please give me a call.

NUMBER ONE

William Shatner covering Pulp’s “Common People”.

MAN, this is GREAT! Download it you stooge! It is so great that no amount of ‘verys’ preceeding the word ‘great’ could describe its true greatness. They would have to invent a sort of scientific notation for the word ‘very’ to convey the number of ‘verys’ needed to convey this song’’s staggering greatness!

Click here to get it!

(The best part is when he goes “”Are you SURE?”” I have been saying that all day. Are you SURE? Haha, god, give that man the ten thousand dollars.)

These have been your best things ever for July 29, 2004. Please return next week for further updates as The Best Things Ever continues. Remember the positive in the world — the crispy chicken, movies about summer camp, combs with no broken teeth, live concerts and the continuing survival of the 3-for-$5 meal at Arby’s.

Matt