All Hail C-dog

America’s Worst Haunted Houses

Spooky King - Hartford, CT

This is a Burger King that some enterprising franchisee has draped in fake cobwebs and rubber bats on strings. The teenager manning the drive-thru is dressed as a Dracula and all the other employees are dressed as The Crow, save for LaShonda, who doesn’t need this shit from no $8-an-hour job. The Whoppers are usually lukewarm at best, but the fries are hot, salty, and completely devoid of the Halloween spirit.

Darren’s Haunted Trailer of Doom - Lansing, MI

Just a large-ish moving trailer parked out by the dump. It is spray-painted black, inside and out. Darren is usually asleep outside on a lawn chair, though occasionally he’ll get drunk enough to put on a fright wig and dance around. This usually results in him falling over and cutting himself on some scrap metal. You will have to take him to the hospital. There is nothing remotely scary about the trailer itself, however the paint fumes can cause some interesting hallucinations.

Nightmare Horror Factory EXXXTREME - San Jose, CA

After standing in line for three and a half hours, you will be admitted into a room lit only with a black light. On a couple of stacked cinder blocks, there is a glass punch bowl filled with what are clearly de-breaded McNuggets. You’re told to put your hand in the bowl. “They’re eyeballs, or whatever,” says a girl in a sexy kitty costume, in between huffs from a paper bag containing… what, exactly? Oven cleaner? Varnish? It’s unclear, as you are immediately hustled out of the room and back outside. You will most likely find that your car has been towed.

The Old Cemetery Road Haunted Hay Ride and Apple-Bobbing Extravaganza - Waxahachie, TX

Not a haunted house, nor is it a hayride. Technically speaking, it’s more of a trap. Steer clear unless you’re into the idea of being hunted for sport.

Mrs. Cavanaugh’s 3th Grade Scare-a-teria - Tempe, AZ

A fundraising venture mounted with the hopes of raising enough money to take care of the many wasps nests that have infested Elmer C. Burnblatt Elementary, this haunted house offers nothing in the way of thrills and/or chills. It mostly consists of a strobe light, seventeen children in ill-fitting ghost costumes, and a lot of urine (the kids have yet to really master “potty time”). Much scarier is the walk to and from your car, where you will invariably be attacked by great clouds of wasps.

I’ve been a little (a lot) (an obsessive lot) preoccupied with baseball these past few weeks, so things like Tumblr and normal social interactions and bathing have kind of gone by the wayside.

Baseball season is over now, and tragically so. At least for me and mine… those of us that call ourselves Rangers fans. If you follow sports, you know what happened. I don’t want to talk about it and am even looking into some kind of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind scenario that would wipe my brain clean of anything that happened after the ALCS. Heartbreaking… 

But anyway… regular posting should resume starting now. I’m sure I can find time to squeeze it in between the crying jags and the shots of feelings-numbing grain alcohol.

White-Knuckling It Until Spring Training

C-dog

Movies I’ve Seen Lately

MONEYBALL - I hate that Brad Pitt is in this movie (even though he’s the perfect choice to play Billy Beane) because it makes it seem like Moneyball is a HUGE. BLOCKBUSTER. DRAMA. Which it’s totally not. His celebrity warps the whole production, making it kind of like trying to read an insightful piece of social commentary through a prism of tabloid rhetoric and a million adopted foreign babies. Moneyball is an intimate, small film about statistics and, at its core, hope. It just happens to concern an event written large in the public landscape of professional sports. Making it a BIG MOVIE does it a disservice.

That being said, it’s actually a pretty excellent film. Not perfect, but certainly something that should be seen by anyone with even an iota of interest in baseball. Pitt, for the record, is fantastic in a role that would almost seem too perfect for him if it weren’t based on an actual person. Jonah Hill, too, is great in his character that is an amalgamation of people, facts, and Oakland A’s hats.

Moneyball is an engaging little movie about an interesting shift in the tide of major league baseball that, as the A’s current status in the standings reflects, proved to be somewhat irrelevant. Nonetheless, do yourself a favor… there’s a scene at the end where Hill and Pitt’s character, while watching a noteworthy clip from a minor league game, discuss the romance associated with the game of baseball. It will make a believer out of you.

PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 2 - A little late to the party on this one, but since the third one is about to come out, I figured I’d give it a whirl. So… it’s exactly the same movie as the first one. Some different people are involved, sure, and there are a few more big scares than the first one… including one that, in the interest of honesty, made me jump about a foot off my couch… but still. It’s a bunch of rich, white yuppies being tormented by… okay, I guess if you buy into the mythology it’s NOT ghosts, but demons… but whatever. It’s basically spooky ghosts. Weird things happen and are ignored, then things get really weird and everyone is confused, and finally things go apeshit and everyone has the presence of mind to keep the video camera running. Wash, rinse, repeat.

I will say this about Paranormal Activity 2, as well as it’s predecessor… its best moments are in its quiet, static shots of empty rooms. These films do more with silent footage of suburban home landscapes than any film in history. The total lack of score and edits make for some creepy atmosphere and it goes a long way towards covering the fact that these are actually kind of terrible movies that happen to have good marketing.

CONAN O’BRIEN CAN’T STOP - Artists are needy assholes and watching them create their art is, in turns, tedious, obnoxious, and deeply, deeply boring.

There, that’s the entire movie.

Okay, I guess that’s not entirely fair. Our beloved Conan doesn’t come across THAT badly… he basically just seems like insecurity personified in a red-headed giant. It doesn’t let him off the hook, either, though. He comes across as a good guy who has A LOT of emotional issues related to the heaping helpings of fame that have been dumped upon him.

The whole “boring” thing is another issue. Let’s just say that if you’re REALLY into the meetings that go on behind the scenes of a major entertainment property then, brother and/or sister, have I got the documentary for you.

Mitigating factor: The Masturbating Bear DOES make an appearance.  

My Campaign of Terror

Last night, the St. Louis Cardinals clinched the NLCS, sending them to the World Series for the first time in… who cares, doesn’t matter. What DOES matter is that the St. Louis Cardinals are going to be facing my beloved Texas Rangers on this, the grandest of stages. That makes them THE ENEMY. Also THE ENEMY, their fans, as they are obviously just the worst.

Which brings me to my buddy Mike. He is from the St. Louis area and is a die-hard Cardinals fan. Here’s a picture of him and I from a few years back, drinking beers in an arcade-themed bar:

That’s me on the right, totally for America and cows. On the left, that’s Mike, wearing a shirt that is a color called, I believe, “Al-Qaeda Blue.” I don’t know who the girl in the middle is, but she is quite simply photobombing the hell out of us and, hey, good for her.

As you can see, Mike and I are fairly chummy. We have enjoyed many alcoholic beverages and we once even sat through a screening of Madagascar 2 together for reasons that were totally normal and not in any way creepy at all. I have called him “bro” and, in return, he has done the same.

Unfortunately, the time has come for me to ruin Mike’s life. Being a Cardinals fan when they are in the World Series against the Texas Rangers is an aggression that will not stand. Thus, I begin…

MY CAMPAIGN OF TERROR!!!

-A lot of this campaign of terror will happen on Twitter, as he lives in the godless, hedonistic city of Manhattan and I live in the beautiful, Jesus-laden city of Dallas and it’s hard to harass someone on a regular basis when airfare is required. Basically I’m going to send him taunting messages and pictures of Rangers-related miscellany… our fans all dressed up in their crazy fan garb, my Texas Rangers pillowcases (of course I have those, duh), shots of Nolan Ryan looking menacing, etc. I’m @zombieshark but you knew that already. He’s @mikeryan and he kicks nuns in the shin and then laughs when their nun hats fall off.

-Sending him a dead cardinal (as in the bird, not like Albert Pujols) in the mail would probably be crossing some kind of line, so maybe I’ll just paint some Marshmallow Peeps red and squish them up in a poster tube. Getting that would probably be pretty freaky (also maybe delicious).

-Prank phone calls? Hells yes. DRUNK prank phone calls? Well, yes, but only because I’ll be drunk anyway. Drunk prank phone calls that EMPLOY THE USAGE OF SILLY ACCENTS? Sure, why not?

- And I’ll probably blow up his apartment or something.

Anyway, Mike Ryan, you have officially been put on notice. Get ready for the most terrifying week of your life!!! Until I get bored with this idea and decide to make a funny list about how my genitals resemble certain rock stars!!!

Facebook Updates of My Friends and I: Then & Now

THEN

Me: “We sure got wasted last night! Also, topical humor/amusing observation!!!”

My Friends: “Yeah, we TOTALLY got wasted. Funny quote and/or a statement regarding cool bands.”

NOW

Me: “I sure got wasted in front of the TV last night. Attempt at humor that’s a little bit desperate.”

My Friends: “[Child’s Name, Which is Uniquely Spelled] did a thing that is totally unsurprising for a child to do. It was amazing/hilarious/heartwarming/a conformation of our lifestyle choices! He/She is a Jesus miracle from Heaven. Look at these 428 pictures of [Child’s Name, Which is a Combination of Syllables Heretofore Unseen By Humans; e.g. Myqulibeth]. He/She is a little adult!!! Potty training is horrifyingly disgusting, let me discuss it in public!!!”

Terrible Hashtags

# firstplaceatthecountyfairproblems

# OccupyLaneBryant

# iwishmydadwasShrek

# infectedtoenails4life

# sleepyblowjobs

# FMBBQ

# JustinBeibermakesgoodsandwiches

# PawnStarsguysforCongress

# Obamasomethingsomething

# peanutsareamyth

# JesusLovesSprite

# Applebeessuccessstories

# isthesymbolforhashtag

Fondue

A couple of days ago, my girlfriend and I went apeshit on a three-course fondue explosion. Some thoughts:

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Names of Spiders That Could Also be Nicknames for My Penis

-The Golden Huntsman

-The Filmy Dome Spider

-The Texas Recluse

-The Triangle Weaver

-The Curlyhair Tarantula

-The Hobo Spider

-The Slender Crab Spider

-The Regal Jumper

-The Labyrinth Orbweaver 

-The Big Bend Recluse

PBR Swag

I got these last night at a bar. Well, technically it was a bar/movie theater/historical landmark, but that’s not relevant to the story. What IS relevant is the nightly special… a can of Pabst Blue Ribbon and a shot of well whiskey for $6, in which I indulged three times. Those three times earned me these four pieces of crap:

PBR Pin: Eh. I’m not really a pin-wearer. There was a time… high school, maybe… where I had a bunch of funny and/or ironic pins that I stuck on my backpack in an effort to be more of a cut-up, but now… I don’t know. Wearing a tiny circle of cheap tin that declares a love for a brand of beer that, frankly, I’m indifferent to really doesn’t really give me much of a thrill. And don’t get me wrong, I’m not AGAINST the idea of pins… they’re useful for punk kids looking to gussy up their wardrobe and they help identify those that are running for political office. Pins just aren’t for me. I refuse to apologize for that. C-

PBR Bottle Opener: Kind of obvious, but okay. I get it. I mean… you don’t really see a lot of Pabst being sold in bottles these days, so mainly you’d be using their swag to open beer produced by their competitors… however, that strikes me as more of PBR’s problem and not mine. The bottle opener itself seems fairly sturdy and I’m sure it could handle any cap set in its maw. Handy swag is good swag. A

PBR Pen: Crappy giveaway pens are always a solid choice because, hey, free pen. I always need pens for work, so that’s great. However, there is a dark side to this pen. As I said, it’s crappy. Which translates to “breaks easy,” which translates further to “C-dog has a stained black nipple because the cheap, ass-y PBR pen he got at a bar exploded in his shirt pocket.” Not cool, PBR pen. Not cool. B-

PBR Chapstick: Had this tasted like Pabst Blue Ribbon, it would have gotten an “A+” for being awesome and disgusting. But it doesn’t. It tastes like mint, if mint were created in a lab by robots with no tongues. It makes my lips unpleasantly greasy, like I just ate a lubed-up candy cane. It’s horrible and I hate it. Also, think about lubed-up candy canes for a minute. Your brain is going to some dark places, isn’t it? The PRB Chapstick has infected your mind. What’s that elf doing with that lubed-up candy cane? Why is he smiling? Oh god, is this a dream…? F-