Never Question My Methods

My brother’s (NEW) blog is a place for the strange and wonderful, which is depicted below. It has kind of a beach theme, much like my brother.

I’m trying to convince the Twitterverse that Justin Wilson is a star in the new Predators movie.

Honestly, I’ve had better ideas. And there are better uses for my time. But it’s been kind of a crummy day and my allergies are acting up, and it’s kind of a funny idea.

Who is Justin Wilson? He is like Adrian Brody, a cajun and a born raconteur, who was on PBS in the nineties. He also once said, “I ain’t got time to bleed, I gawr-run-tee”.

These are all lies. I encourage you to make up your own.

There is one bodega within a square mile radius of my apartment that has tonic water, and it is home to a mid-size parrot named Biddy.

I first encountered Biddy while waiting in line, waiting for a bunch of people to finish buying lotto tickets. There, sitting on the unattended cash register, was a yellow and gray parrot staring right at me. So I said hello.

The bird let loose a screech that sounded a lot like a dry squeegee scraping a windshield, only much louder, and I decided to break off eye contact with the bird. This did not help – - the bird shrieked again. I guess this was “hello”.

Yesterday I stopped in and said hello to the shop owner, and asked if the bird was around. “Oh yeah,” he said, “he’s over there in his cage. He’s mad at me.”

Sure enough, sitting in an open cage, was the parrot, staring back at me. The shop owner tried to get him to fly over, but Biddy wasn’t interested.

He told me that the bird seemed to have an understanding of just about everything that went on around him. “Just like a person, he wanted to play and I didn’t have time for him,” he said, “Now I have time and he won’t come over.”

Biddy, sounding like a car radio with the volume low, muttered a few things that I couldn’t really hear. The shop owner called to him a few times, and Biddy continued muttering.

Eventually, after much prompting, Biddy flew over and sat on the shop owner’s shoulder. Looking at me, after a long time,  almost shyly, opened his beak and let loose another deafening shriek.

Like Rod Serling in the Twilight Zone, the Zima man is one of those curious spokespersons who is condemned to only interact with himself, and us, the hapless viewer. While he can show up before the rooftop barbeque, he swiftly vanishes after the first bottle of Zima is opened, leaving only an over-sweetened mist where he once stood.

That’s good, because I would probably have to call him out on that z’s for s’s affectation.

Like you, Dear Reader, I can barely watch this commercial. The blue shirt that’s buttoned up to the neck, the blandly wretched “pile it on pile it on” dialogue, the vest worn in lieu of a shirt, and the idea that a group of six would all drink Zima – - to believe this, even in an advertisement, is like being asked to hike up a mountainside in three minutes wearing crocs 1 and carrying an anvil.

Even Zima drinkers, whose sanity is already in question, were not fans of the campaign. The distressingly convincing petition to bring Zima back states in paragraph 2:

We proud and intrepid Zima drinkers have managed to look past Zima’s ill-advised, credibility-killing “Zomething Different” advertising campaign of the early ’90s; have resisted switching from Zima to more popular “malternative” beverages like Smirnoff Ice and Mike’s Hard Lemonade; have continued to bravely drink Zima in public despite catcalls of “it zucks!” and “tastes like zhit!” from smart-alecky fellow bar patrons; and have even realized that Zima is an excellent (and much more potent) substitute for tonic water in various cocktail recipes. For our devotion to this oft-unfairly-maligned alcopop beverage, we deserve to be able to continue enjoying its fresh citrus essence and bubbly effervescence.

While it is weird that the petition specifically mentions being mocked in public, you cannot doubt Patrick Young from Ohio’s rallying cry:

I Am The Most Drinking Zima Man In The World!! BRING BACK THE ORIGINAL PLEASE!!!

My only experience with Zima was during my after high-school writers’ group (fifteen years ago) in which, during what could be considered a poem, an aspiring Jim Carroll shouted, “We drank Sprite and Zima together” about a doomed love interest, and emphatically pounded the table of the library in which our group met. It was then that I vowed to leave the state of Virginia, hoping to never be recognized again.

Zima was discontinued in the United States in 2008, presumably due to a very rational fear of the Obama administration.2 But if you’re feeling zentimental, there is a sign for auction.

- – - -

1. OK, I had no idea that this had already sort of happened, with predictably unfortunate results. The fact that they suggested other hikers wear them is beyond bizarre.

2. Wikipedia notes that it’s STILL MADE IN JAPAN, which seems like an unfair burden for the Japanese. It also denotes the many attempts of the Simpsons and Family Guy to frame Zima as a gay beverage.

Just throwing this out there: I have never heard a single gay person in my lifetime say, “I’ll have a Zima.” Also, if it were true, it seems like Zima, having absolutely no marketable angles to speak of, would have hopped on that bus.

ATT, my friend – - right now you are like the kid in elementary school who keeps rambling about how fast his new sneakers are. That’s right, his sneakers, not him.

Except I didn’t get a huge bill from him every month, and I could at least freeze-tag him into silence.

Please never put “Wicked” in an email to me again.

It makes me feel slightly ill.

I’m serious.

I was never really into “Dillweed” as a playground insult. I don’t know, if a botanist were to call me that, I would probably be annoyed, but it meant zero coming from some kid who was overly attached to the balance beam.

HOWEVER. Seeing it in print changes everything.

. . . Anyway, chinos are on sale, dillweeds.

I was at Book Expo America yesterday, and after my second or third errand for coffee, I walked past The New York Times subscription booth. The booth worker asked someone if they wanted a subscription, and rather than replying nicely, the guy just screamed “I’M DIGITAL!” and walked by, presumably in a hurry to be rude and stupid to someone else. I could write a longer rant on the subject, but the crux is this:

I cannot wait for everyone to just shut up about how they’re reading what they’re reading.

Three minutes of pure American slapstick as vibrant as any cartoon.

Quality components, folks.