Try, Try Again

“Okay Gus, it’s Friday night, we got a bottle of whiskey, a Tony Montana-sized-amount of coke and a laptop. Let’s come up with some reboot ideas!”

“Beautiful Stan. What cha got?”

“Alright, hmmmm. People liked Dinosaurs, right? That was a popular show in the 90s. Let’s bring them back.”

“Umm, I’m pretty sure they all died in the last episode Stan. Killed by a sudden ice age brought about by environmental pollution or some shit.”

“Who cares G-Dawg? Easy fix. They find a time machine and travel to our present time and try to live like normal dinosaurs in the modern world, trying to go to school and hold down jobs whilst wearing shirts but no pants. They have a stone house and animal appliances. Wait, was that them or The Flintstones with animal slave labor? Who cares, we can still make it work!”

“Alright Stan, I’ll put that in the ‘maybe pile. What’s next?”

“Okay, okay. Let’s see….Ooh! How about we reboot ALF? Everybody loves that little scamp and his acerbic sense of humor!”

“Well, in the last episode, he was captured by the government and it was implied that he was going to be experimented on and dissected.”

“Really? Wow, that’s some heavy stuff for a kids’ show about a small, fuzzy, adorable alien. That was the thing that drew everybody into that show! Tell you what, let’s say the government does experiment on him, but they turn him into a full-sized adult male? That way, we bring the nostalgic fans in with what they think they want, but instead we give them what they don’t want, there by telling them what they really wanted all along!”

“That doesn’t make any sense Stan.”

“Yeah it does! And as an adult male, he works as a P.I. using his knowledge of Melmac and what cats taste like, to solve murders! We’ll call it Gordon Shumway, PI!”

“Who’s Gordon Shumway?”

“Duh G-Man, that’s ALF’s real name.”

“So why do they call him ALF?”

“Sigh, it stands for Alien Life Form. You think ET’s name was ET? Nope, his name was Barry Schwartzberg. Get with it man.”

“Anyway, enough about ALF. But you do seem to be really stuck on rebooting tv shows with puppets.”

“Puppets! Yes! Brilliant! We’ll bring back Today’s Special? But make it edgier!”

“…Stan, only you and maybe five Canadians in their late 30s remember that bullshit show.”

“Exactly. This is the 21^st Century G-Wheezy, the age of the Millennials. The more obscure and pointless shit they know, the cooler they are in the eyes of their shiftless brethren. We could make it a web-only show. All of the puppets will be addicted to opioids, (so topical! “Ripped from today’s headlines!”) the mannequin guy is a gigolo, but only for men who are into stiff pieces of wood (get it?)  and the black chick is an inept hitman. We’ll make that shit viral!”

“These ideas are insane Stan. I love them! But tell me, why are we doing reboots of previously existing properties? Are the legends true? Has the prophesy come to pass? Is Hollywood out of original, creative ideas?”

“Of course not! Why just look at Jupiter Ascending. That was very original and creat…actually, forget that one. Rebooting previous franchises means we already have a built-in audience for whatever it is. Plus, there’s always the nostalgia factor. No matter how garbagy something was when people were kids, they only remember it with fondness. That, combined with bringing in a new audience and pushing merchandise is why you’ve got Michael Bay rebooting Transformers and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.”

“Oh, that seems kind of soulless and manipulative. Don’t you think? Aren’t we here to create fresh, innovate and entertaining works of art for people to enjoy? Or are we here to just make easy money and take sexual advantage of naive, innocent young women looking for their big break in ‘Tinsel town’?”

“Wait. Who hired you again?”

Milestones

Well, it sure as hell took me long enough, but we’re finally here! My 300^th Eighty-Four Glyde entry. You’ve come a long way baby! Of course it took my lazy, thin-skinned ass 12 years what I had planned to do in six. But oh well, better late than never, right?*

Over the last twelve years that I’ve been airing my inner demons via bad jokes and pointless observations about white people. I’ve had quite the existence. I’ve been sent to Iraq twice, I’ve moved nine times, have had six or seven jobs and assassinated four heads of state. Never a dull day for me!**

I started Eighty-Four Glyde in 2006, during my second tour in Iraq. This is a matter of historical record and can be easily verified in any reputable library. (Side note: with all the biopics they’re making these days, when are we gonna get a movie about that Dewey chap and the creation of his decimal system? The world awaits eagerly.) I started writing for a few reasons. I’ve covered them in depth in previous entries, so I’ll just skim here. I was a journalist in the Army and enjoy writing. I always liked the humor columnist Dave Barry and wanted to do something similar. This year was also when MySpace was gaining in popularity (I have no MySpace jokes. I’m going to let Tom rest in peace.) and it made a great platform for people trying to write, discover their talents and spread their work to the world. Unless you were Tia Tequila who chose MySpace to publicly document her decent into madness and obscurity.

I’ve covered a lot of topics over the years, from movies to Japanese porn, all the way to movies. It was truly a comprehensive list of subjects. I tried to never get political, though this blog has existed during Republican and Democratic leaders in office. Presidents come and go.

I took a year off in 2017. My head just wasn’t in the game and couldn’t think of anything funny that didn’t also open the door to my own issues. And I wasn’t ready to be that open to a bunch of (nonexistent), faceless people online. So a break seemed in order, perhaps maybe something more permanent.

You see, there’s been a huge shift in Internet content. People used to enjoy reading stuff online. But tides have changed. Amateur videos on YouTube are all the rage right now. These days people are more into images and symbols (like Wing Dings) than words. Why write the word “penis” when you can just post an eggplant emoji? (Also who decided that shit?) they say a picture’s worth a thousand words, and much easier to read. Lazy millennial bastards!

Sorry bout that. Anyway, with the sea change taking place online, people like me have to translate their skills because blogs and their ilk are relegated to the outskirts of the web. They still exist, they just get fewer visitors these days. Like your grandfather in a nursing home. Gee, that sounded darker than it should have. Let’s brighten the mood!

Everybody raise your Zima high in the air! Let us celebrate the past 12 years and 300 entries and pray (in English) to god I get some kind of book deal soon so I don’t have to do this for another 12 years!

*Wrong.

**Still wrong.

We Can Rebuild Him, We Have The Technology

Congratulations ladles and jelly spoons! Eureka! We did it! You can pack up all your shit and go home now. The job is done. Science has achieved the unachievable! Obtained the unobtainable! Postered the preposterous!

Forget living on other planets! Screw aliens! Spare nary a thought on time travel, nor perpetual motion machines. The Matrix? Child’s play. And don’t even get me started on those damn hoverboards. All of those things are as a house made of sticks, to the stone house science has just created!

As I’m sure all of you knowledgeable, well-informed people have already heard, good old-fashion American SCIENCE! and KNOW-HOW! gave us the first attempted (and successful) full-on junx transplant!

Last month at Johns Hopkins Hospital (MOTTO: Forget about Ben Carson. We sure have.) An American service member underwent a 14-hour operation to replace some…body parts. It turns out that dude had his whole area blown way the hell off by a bomb in Afghanistan. This was a major deal. This explosion wasn’t like the plethora of times that Bugs Bunny has blown up Daffy Duck. This is more like…hmmm. Well, the closest thing I can compare it to is having a bomb explode your crotch into many small chunks scattered around a 25-foot radius.

Ouch.

It turns out that a majority of soldiers who are wounded in battle (or from Karaoke Night at Gus’s Saloon and Spittoon) and wake up in the hospital immediately ask if their twig and berries are still intact. Now that’s how proper priorities work!

Private Deacon: Uhh, hello?

Nurse: Sir, you’re awake!

Deacon: How long have I been out?

Nurse: Eight days. We were losing hope. The chaplain came by and spent two days praying by your side with your best friend. We flew your entire family out here in hopes that their very presence would somehow radiate hopefulness and good vibes. Bono and U2 wrote a song for…

Deacon: How’s my dick?

While there have been two previously successful johnson transplants, those were just the wangs. This soldier got a new dick AND balls. Both of dude’s legs were blown to hell right above the knees, but it was his manhood that really got him worked up.

“That injury, I felt like it banished me from a relationship,” he said in an interview last week. “Like, that’s it, you’re done, you’re by yourself for the rest of your life. I struggled with even viewing myself as a man for a long time.” * Of course this dude’s keeping his identity a secret. He probably wants to avoid the groupies and whatnot.

But the real question isn’t can we do this surgery? The question is should we do it?

The answer is a resounding: Nahhhh

Being the elite journalist that I am, I spent the day querying how people would feel if they either were given or interacted with transplanted genitalia. Naturally, this is both a delicate and serious topic. So I made sure to approach people and asked them with tact and discretion their thoughts. It went like this:

Me: Yo man, could you spend the rest of your life with somebody else’s DICk and BALLS between your legs?    

Invariably, most of the guys’ answers were quite similar. They ranged from “I can’t do it,” to “If my own shit was blown off I would have to set off another bomb for the rest of me.” Some guys simply sent me rude and offensive pictures and one gentleman even took a swing at me.

The women, on the other hand, were far more openminded about having interactions with relocated schlongs

Me: Yo, would you DO IT with a guy who had a phallus transplant?

“I probably would be ok with it as long as it works. It might be a little weird at first, but it’s not like I’m staring at it,” said one lady person.

Another responder answered “I mean, it doesn’t matter as long as he’s disease free and it’s consensual.”

So there you have it. Something happened and people think stuff about that something. They have opinions and beliefs and prejudices, and gingivitis. We have only scratched the surface of this topic here today in this column. There’s still a million questions to be resolved. Such as:

Is the dick the same color as the guy its attached to?
How do you bring a dead dick back to life?
Does it work?
Whose little soldiers are swimming around in that ball sack?
Can he get a chick pregnant?
Is it possible to get “phantom limb” syndrome with your dick?
Will the previous owner’s personality take over the new host and he’ll end up killing and/or making love to a lot of people?

All these questions and more were probably answered in the news article I just skimmed, but I’m too lazy to go back and read. So let’s just assume that science is magical and beyond our mortal comprehension. Science works in mysterious ways and we should all be humbled to be in science’s presence. **

*If he dated any of the women I‘ve dated, he’d consider himself lucky to not have to deal with relationships, amirite guys?!

**Ha! I made it through the whole thing without saying “penis” once!...Oh, wait.