TBT #41: Voice Inside Mister Ed

Okay, what the hell.

Here’s the story on this update, and why it is so late: On Friday I sit down to start my famed and much-anticipated TOP 10 DEGRASSI JUNIOR HIGH CHARACTERS update. It is titled “Ruminations on Degrassi Junior High.” After carefully using OS X’s built-in screen capture abilities to grab images of the ten characters on the (TOP SECRET) list, I sit down to start writing. Then, true to form, I write an introduction that spanned over fifteen hundred words. Fifteen hundred words about DEGRASSI JUNIOR HIGH! In the introduction! Then, thinking that this update would be very very long indeed and realizing that the night was rapidly approaching the morning, I retitled the article to “Ruminations on Degrassi Junior High, Part I” figuring I’d do, oh, the first five characters of the top 10 this week and then the next five at a later date. This was all well and good until I started writing about my #10 choice. Then I spent a hour writing FIFTEEN HUNDRED WORDS about him! And this is a minor character! The dude only had like four lines over the course of the show! I put him on the list because I LIKED HIS SWEATSHIRT. Jesus Christ, I am trying to figure out what is wrong with me and it’s not that I can’t — because I can, in fact, name several things that are wrong with me — but rather that I don’t know where to even begin. And if all of this wasn’t bad enough, I have now written another hundred or so words about my difficulties in being concise when it comes to writing about Degrassi Freaking Junior Goddamned High.

That show is definitely NOT The Best Thing ever for, oh Jesus, Tuesday, May 10, 2005.

Timeshifting

I have decided to pretend I am on the West Coast for the writing of this article. I am doing this for one reason, and one reason alone: It allows me to pretend I actually updated on Tuesday, which would only be one day later than what has regrettably become the standard day for new TBTs, as opposed to TWO days, which would be crazy and silly and perhaps even debilitating somehow. In order to create the illusion of being on the West Coast, I will sporadically introduce West Coast idioms into the course of my writing. You will know it when you see it, dude. It might be a bit disconcerting but I am sure that, given time, you will find it to be quite tubular.

I am, in fact, writing this from the Cambridge Suites Hotel in the heart of Toronto. Why am I at the Cambridge Suites Hotel in Toronto? That will have to remain a mystery. A mystery that maybe you can solve, amigo. Here are some clues to help you towards this goal:

• The mystery involves a graphicmatt reader with a shadowy past!
• I wore a wristband for the past couple of days!
• Remember Chief Quimby on Inspector Gadget? Do you think that was an elected position, or something he was appointed to? Because, honestly, he was not great at dodging exploding letters.
• That last point may or MAY NOT BE a clue. A bitchin clue.

I would give you more clues but, honestly, I don’t want to turn this whole operation into a easily solved farce. I want the detective work on this to be on par with the Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? CD-ROM game, and not, say, the Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? cartoon. I guess it could be like the Where in the world is Carmen Sandiego? game show because, seriously, I remember that being pretty fun to watch.

More Like a Disaster

Do you remember that game show where teams made up of two kids (siblings, maybe?) wore coloured shirts and played a kind of fake Newly-Wed game? Like, they had to answer questions about each other. And, also, they sat in racecars? And clapped their hands above their head instead of doing it like a normal person? Do you remember that, compadre? Because I do. I remember it really well. Because I kept watching in hopes that the racecars would, you know, drive off somewhere and it would be really really really cool.

That never happened, though. And quickly I became cynical. Quickly I became me.

I worry that my memory will one day generate into a shoddy patchwork pattern of old TV shows, so-bad-they’re-good movies and cheesy songs. And then all I’ll have is that and my mental list of people who love Bruce Springsteen’s Thunder Road because that is a list so precious I will never let it leave me. Are you on the list? Because you should be. It would be radical.

That’s the thing that I say

Sometimes when I am sleeping in a room without a clock I start to keep time by tracking how many times I have flipped the pillow to the cool side. Which, I know, is ridiculous. But I flip my pillow a lot and, I would bet, fairly consistently. If somehow all the clocks in the world just stopped working one day, I would attempt to tell time using this method. The only downside would be that I would not be able to go to sleep, and I would have to stay in bed all the time. All the time, and if I am facing north then the ocean is to my left!

Hey, check out this observational humour: You know how sometimes when you are home alone and you maybe get a little scared of your basement so you make sure to make a lot of noise before you go down there because you figure then the guy who secretly lives in your basement will have time to hide before you go down there and then he won’t have to kill you to keep himself a secret? How crazy is that! It’s like, really, the odds of a guy secretly hiding out in your basement are pretty slim to begin with and, man, if he’s there, he’s not going to need you making a lot of loud noise to know to hide when you come downstairs. The guy’s obviously a very good hider!

I had a dream the other night that there was a girl secretly living in my attic. And I am not sure that I actually have an attic but for the purposes of the dream, I did. This girl was a very good hider but I found her out because she was secretly using my laptop at night and not always leaving it EXACTLY as I had left it. I am very particular about my computer so you better believe I got suspicious! So I did what any manly man who is all man and also quite the man would do: I called my dad. And he came over and literally TORE DOWN MY BEDROOM WALL for some reason. I don’t know why! This part of the dream was absurd!

But eventually we found out that the girl was living in the attic and though I was disturbed after talking to this girl I decided not to press charges. She was very gracious but still a little sad as she felt that she would never be able to find a job. She had been looking for a job for a long time, you see, but had been very unlucky! So unlucky that she had to vacate her apartment and move into my attic. I did not ask her how she found my attic but I should have.

I realized that the reason the girl had not found a job before was because she did not have nice shoes. So she and I went to the mall and looked for shoes. And she was really excited and happy and ready to take on the world! But then she tried to convince me to buy her a pair of these shoes that were REALLY expensive. And I could not believe that the girl who was living illegally in my fucking attic was expecting me to pay an absolutely obscene amount for SHOES. So I just laughed at her and said, “Hey, maybe you should just be a prostitute!”

I am not sure what that dream meant but later that week I ate a substantial amount of pizza and got heartburn.

This is the Greatest and Best Song in the World

Hey are you gangstas watching Jeopardy! these days? It is almost the end of the Ultimate Tournament of Champions! It is really gnarly. And it is my sincere hope and wish that you all tune in to watch that really cute girl named Pam whip Ken Jennings’ phone-shilling ass. I do not know when it will be exactly but you could just check your local listings! Or, you know, ask a friend who has checked his or her local listings. Or, if you do not have friends, you could go and get one! Here are some good places to start looking: The Mall, The Malt Shop, The Library, The Skate Park, The Dunes. Good luck!

And, hey, godspeed. It never hurts to have godspeed.

Cowabunga,
Matt