CUSTOMER approaches CASHIER with single purchase. That purchase is BEANO, a dietary supplement that more often than not bars the voluble and/or odoriferous processes that accompany the digestion of complex sugars.

CASHIER
You find everything you need?

CUSTOMER
Yezzir.

The CASHIER picks up BEANO.

CASHIER
Huh. What’s this?

CUSTOMER
(mildly flustered)
It’s, like, you know how certain foods–vegetables, beans–

CASHIER
Oh, it’s like a protein thing? Like a protein pill?

CUSTOMER
…Sure. Yeah.

CASHIER turns over BEANO, examines the box upon which is emblazoned the words “Stop gas BEFORE it starts!”

CASHIER
Okay, a protein thing. Power-packed. You gotta take this every day?

CUSTOMER
No, just…whenever.

CASHIER
It help you wake up in the morning?

CUSTOMER
Uh, not really. It’s just, uh. Hm.

CASHIER
Man, they got MAD inventions out there! I’ve never even heard of this!

CASHIER smiles broadly. CUSTOMER scurries out.

Howard Ulman, I don’t know who you are, but thank you. Thank you for reaching out to the fourth-grader in all of us. Or at least me.

So listen. That right there? That does not taste like “juicy pear.” When I went to the store in search of Welch’s brand Fruit Snacks, and was thwarted, I sought solace in your “Fruit Bowl” offering. “A delightful array of fruity flavors!” I said. “They might not be Welch’s, but this is the kind of pinch they just might…do in.” So I began to eat them. And everything was fine, until the devil crapped in my mouth. I found the offending bean and matched it with the legend on the back of the bag. “Juicy Pear!” it said. It seemed gleeful. However, the label is all wrong. I’ll grant you the modifier, Jelly Belly, but the rest of it concerns me. If you will, allow me to suggest some revisions that may improve your descriptive accuracy.

Thanks so much for your time.

Best,
Consumer (Ex)

1. Drank coffee named after an “eclectic community whose character is defined by hip cafes, neighborhood restaurants and tree-lined streets filled with Victorian brownstones, townhouses and young middle-class couples pushing double-wide baby strollers.” Gross. The coffee itself is great, though.
2. Wrote a rap verse from the perspective of an angry Tera Patrick¹
3. Ate a burrito, which was not entirely satisfying thanks to a distinct laziness on the part of the guy who made the burrito. Instead of a pleasing consistent stratification, I was met with discrete pocket of unmelted cheese, as well as one of cold salsa, both of which compromised the Taste Quotient (as standardized by scienticians) of the burrito.

4. Ate some delicious Welch’s Fruit Snacks (Raspberry and White Grape variety)
5. Had a filthy pun contests. Had many filthy pun contests.
6. Fleetingly wondered what it’s like to write a “sales report.”

¹ While I’m not entirely proud of this, I am in the lead against my dude Justin Monroe, who wrote one from the perspective of an angry Jenna Jameson. Check it out.Warning: there is some mighty tart language involved.

Love, K & P

Thanks to this book, which I’m still only about a third of the way into, I’ve become embarrassed all over again about the movies I haven’t seen—the number, the scope, and the quality. Which isn’t to say I don’t like good movies, but I’m for some reason more likely to glaze over in front of Constantine or Volcano than I am in front of…The English Patient. Especially Volcano. And especially, ESPECIALLY The English Patient. Okay, bad example. But I’ve only seen, for example, 30 of the AFI’s 100 Greatest Movies. Which is sad.

The thing is, I know it’s sad. And over the past couple of years I’ve made some decent headway, especially through late-’60s and ’70s stuff. Alan J. Pakula (Parallax View, Klute, All the President’s Men), Don Siegel (Coogan’s Bluff, Charley Varrick), Play Misty For Me, Three Days of the Condor, etc. Basically, any heisty/capery or paranoid/espionagey joint from that era has made its way to the casa, and has since been funneled into that Great Tivo/Netflix Algorithm that dictates my future viewing practices. But Steve Erickson, in using a severely maladjusted, possibly Aspbergian cineaste as his focus in Zeroville, has found the perfect vehicle to broadcast all the old-movie trivia his wife forbade him from dragging out at parties. So now it’s precursor time, time to go and catch up spaghetti Westerns, Harold Hawkes joints, John Ford joints, all the red-meat selections I wrote off as Cliff Huxtable Saturday-afternoon hoagie-and-orange-soda fare. And failing that, I’ll watch this clip of Marge Simpson krumping until my eyes turn into giant fried eggs.

Oh, Professor X, your crippled genius knows no bounds.

Anyway, the main site is updated and ready to, uh, see above. Lots of recent featurey goodness and the like. And more to come, including profiles of globally famous overpaid actors and actresses whose pockets you can’t stop yourself from lining!