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The “just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in” line actually comes from the third and mostly awful Godfather movie, which I still also look back at for its portrayal of the way I least want to die, but that fucker who I had been watching for the past few weeks pushed me over the edge by letting Lae’zel die while simping Shadowheart as his “RP” love interest. So much for my console abstinence—which was hardly a show of principle if I’m to be honest, and more stubbornness to remount the gear treadmill, both in-game and out.

Work took me to a sparse apartment in one of New York City’s most dangerous neighborhoods, as evidenced by a crime scene right outside, but I felt fairly safe by staying inside with the door locked and lights on. When morning came I was joined by my team, a rag-tag group of folks, young and old, and one of them, a tall Kramer-type with a curly blonde afro, came out of the bathroom allowing me to go in next to shower and change for a final visit to the client today before returning home. I removed my pants, my only pair for the trip, and set them down but noticed there was water, no, urine pooled on the tile, and appalled as I was by the behavior of our resident hipster dufus, I had to prioritize drying them off in what little time I had. Dabbing it with a towel wasn’t likely to be effective, as wet as the jeans became like they had been submerged.

Somehow it was this incomplete response to an interview about Larry David that ingratiated myself as a cast member on his show and score a scene at the end of the episode where everyone looks to me for a line I can’t remember. Being part of the entourage meant hanging out in a mansion full of assistants and extras, and one of the Korean-speaking kids came to ask me if I knew Japanese and could translate for a new arrival, a colorfully-clad pretty young woman. Our awkward conversation went nowhere and next thing I knew I was escorting a Black guest celebrity back home; his flaky girlfriend was ahead on the street and expected us to wait on her, though I turned to him and said we didn’t even have a car to pick her up, what was she thinking, and he understood. When I did obtain one it was a fast and sporty but I took a turn onto long stretch of road without an off-ramp to come back for my passengers. They became a White couple upon reuniting with them and were interested in a thrill-ride where a giant tree trunk laid above a thousand-foot chasm and another was attached to it perpendicularly, released when a hammer struck the top like a nail and let swing in an 90° arc below.

Watching with disbelief as the local Pokémon Go chapter still met up in the height of the pandemic to add pictures to their phones, I thought they were a due a good razzing but beats me why I expected it from the Simpsons of all places. Last laugh out of this dead horse came, what, 17 years ago and then it was an episode from ten seasons before that. Besides, I always felt that timely fad parody was something better suited for late night television or South Park and they handled so much more deftly in their heyday anachronistically (or at least only on Halloween). Just look at this and tell me that isn’t the appropriate reaction.

My son told me the other night that I’m his, which I’m hoping he’ll remember when he’s older and hanging out with little wieners called Milhouse instead.

…Unless he’s the Milhouse.

Somewhere on the Garbage Island of time is a cassette tape with the theme song I recorded “over the air”, as it were (before I discovered and amassed quite a collection of audio cables and mini-plug adapters), when the show returned to syndication on one of the local UHF networks. The music alone was positively thrilling, with an energy that distinguished it from the soundtracks of spy-king James Bond, and went nicely alongside the end credits to Space: 1999, which Chris will tell you I ruined by humming to. Martin Landau and Barbara Bain were in it, too, but we’d move away only a few weeks into the first season.
It’d be years later when cable afforded me the opportunity to revisit the series, and agree with the opinion that Steven Hill was the better frontman than Peter Graves. I watch Phelps now and it doesn’t even feel like the Sixties anymore, though “The Mind of Stephan Miklos” will always be one of my favorite episodes. There are fewer of Rollin’s ridiculous masks in that brilliant opening year than I remember, but Barney still does most of the work, ninja or otherwise, and the Rogosh one makes me wish the IMF had been charged with breaking No. 6.

Woke up with a longing-from-long ago for Sugar Smacks, which have apparently since been updated to drop the unhealthy but apt moniker and imbue the once-innocent mascot with Poochie-like ‘tude.

from to (Speaking of temporal displacement and eating, remind me one day to elaborate on my new approach to Chinese food: chow down by moving your stomach two hours into the future.) My usual grocers didn’t stock it at all, leading me to suspect more food-related intrigue before finding it on the shelves at former strike-buster Stater Bros. The retro bug was again short-lived, as a single bowl left even my Mountain Dew-hardened frame jittery for the rest of the day, but it did prompt research into the ever-elusive discontinued C.W. Post cereal of my youth. The rock-like granola will probably be too hard for my teeth now.

Netflixing the first season made me realize Community’s recent tear started further back than I thought, and the “Classic Wingers”/”Ab Mentions”/”Notches” scene from last night’s has me convinced there’s more to this Simpsons comparison, too. Sure, there’s no Homer, and real-life characters tend to be less likeable, but the ensemble is jelling in a way I’ve not seen since maybe Newhart. Now if they can keep it up for a few more seasons, I think everything’ll be alright.

It’s what they’ve started calling them in this blog, and it’s sadly true. I gripe less about the “animation”, of course, than the writing, and in fact one of my favorite frames from the show is a very zombie-like Homer:

Ironic then, that The Walking Dead should make it up to TV and not deserve the same head shot. It and Community (whose Halloween episode scored with yet more undead action) surely point to an epidemic of Korean-American actors where once Johnny Yune was all the talk for his appearance on the Love Boat.

Wunderbar, because Lisa’s ball of leftovers never worked for real:
(2) Designer’s got to be Korean, with a name like that; and (3) not everyone’s converted to that wasteful liquid stuff!