Ten Thousand Shows About People Digging Things Out of The Ground

I've watched a lot of shitty movies in my life. I don't mean to the extent of seeking them out and I'm not talking about charmingly bad movies that were made on a modest budget but with complete and utter Ed-Wood-ian sincerity, I mean big, dumb-shit blockbuster movies that have no plot and seem to only exist so there can be a scene where someone is walking slowly away from an explosion. I watch those movies. I don't necessarily like all of them but in a way I find them comforting.
I like them much better than television.
I have no idea what is happening on television anymore.

Now, I will clarify that I do have shows that I watch regularly and some of them are nothing more than candy, nothing ground-breaking or necessarily artistic, just fun. Mindless fun. And I will also fess to watching marathons of Deadliest Catch.  I will watch episodes, seasons, that I've already seen because I like the ocean and I don't have the balls to do that stuff myself so I will endure hours of grizzled men, most with mullets, regurgitating hyperbole about the dangers of their job as if they are doing something more noble than scraping the sea clean of crustaceans for a substantial profit, all set to Bon Jovi and other nauseating rock 'n' roll cowboy dreck.

I'll watch that. But that's about where the line is drawn for me. I dabbled in some American Pickers this winter with Ms. Falk, however that show is only tolerable when altered, and was in fact the inspiration for an entire drinking game which can be found here* (Bonus Link!)
But that was it for me. I can't watch people work anymore. Every show on every channel that isn't HBO seems to be about some weird, crazy job that some 'character' has and they want to let you know that not just anyone can do it. Loggers, truck drivers, swamp animal wranglers, prison guards, motorcycle builders and let's not forget Dirty Jobs, a show that features a new such occupation every episode. 

This doesn't even count the sub-genre of chef based shows about people preparing everything from raw fish to cupcakes. Everything becomes a "war" battling it out between who makes the best bowl of New England Clam Chowder. But it's not just about how good it tastes, it's about the presentation.

Another sub-genre that we won't even talk about are the house-wife and children-of-fringe celebrities based shows. We're all adults here and we can all agree that the only thing worse than people trying to inflate the worth of what they do for a living is watching people who do nothing for a living while they shop, tan, and talk shit for an hour. We don't even need to talk about that.

And since I'm already going all high-horse I may as well confess I don't know what the hell happened to the History Channel. I used to like some of their shows and not just the endless barrage of World War II documentaries. They used to have shows about, um, history. Finely produced original documentaries on things like Watergate, Benjamin Franklin, the War of 1812, Andrew Jackson, etc. They still parade some of these out every once in a while but they have caught the "job" bug just as bad as any network. Between Ice Road Truckers and unleashing the American Pickers on poor, unsuspecting senior citizens to low-ball them on their classic cars and oil signs I don't even bother anymore.

I'd rather watch shit bombs like Wolverine or Terminator: Salvation (or more preferably any of the oft-mentioned Nicolas Cage films I've cited here over the years). Sure they're schlocky entertainment but you're watching people whose job it is to make schlocky entertainment.

Of course I find other ways to occupy myself, like occasionally poorly animating Blumes' Facebook status. Perfect blog link of the day: is here
It's kind of a double dip self-promotion but I'm kind of happy with it.

I think I'm going to rant about wrestling tomorrow.
Or maybe later.
If you're good.

The Tommy Lee Jones Manufactured Podcast from Western Wyoming Pennsylvania (not Really)

There are people downstairs talking again. Talking alot. They're drunk. The Monday drunks are much more lively than the Sunday drunks. At least in East Rutherford. At least this week. Maybe there was a better game on tonight.  Anyway, I just heard some guy talking say (something) like this:
"I mean out of all of them Tara probably fits my life-style the best, but is that the kind of fucking criteria I want to be judging this on? Is that what I want from my life?"

He went on but they were headed down the street towards the diner that is closed for renovations. I got worried for a second because I thought it was some past flashback of me drunkenly ranting about girl problems to poor ol' Reinhold Hadrich or Headmaster Porr of Slytherin. But I don't know any girl named Tara, at least not one that I've ever had any existential, alcoholic fits about. Maybe it was me from the future.

I didn't give this too much thought because Tommy Lee Jones just showed up to tell some of these "biker types" to keep things down because people, good people, are trying to sleep around here. But he did it in a 'no-nonsense' folksy way. He called one guy Junior and the other guy "bub" which lead me to wonder if in his younger days Mr. T.L. Jones would have made a good Wolverine. It must've have worked on the bikers because they kept it down. And Tommy Lee Jones went back to New York to finish making Men In Black 3 which from what I read is going to be quite a hot commodity at the box office.

So now that there were no more movie stars in the area and the drunks had all been warned about their antics there is very little to do.

Here is the perfect blog link for today, don't think I forgot about all that nonsense:
The Alexxcast
Alexx Bollen has a podcast.
I had one that is currently being excavated from the vaults of the New Jersey State Podcast Archive and will perhaps be available to public soon. But until then more of this.

Dispatch from the Kitchen Table

It's not that late. People are sleeping here in the apartment, the bars are getting out a little bit but it's really not that late. I don't have to be anywhere in the morning so what do I know. But I used to have to wake up with the alarm and even then I never considered midnight to be too late. I can't sleep anyway.

I saw the movie JFK  when I was a kid, 12ish I think. I have no idea why. Maybe I was a Costner fan. Anyway it scared the shit out of me then and it still does now. I realize there are terrible inaccuracies and fictions in the film that even people who believe in a conspiracy point out but it's a topic that's always fascinated me. So on a jaunt over to Barnes and Noble to birthday shop for Ms. Falk I came across a book in the bargain bin arguing some of the points in the Warren Commission report. This was the first real book, (according to it) that discussed the potential of a conspiracy ("with over 1 million copies sold!")  and was a catalyst for some of the scenes in Oliver Stone's film. So I read the introduction where the author pretty much talks about why he thinks the movie is bullshit. I won't mention the name of the book or the author, partially because after looking him up it is possible alot of what he cites could be out context, and maybe partially because he's already sold a million books and I haven't so what does he need me plugging him for.


Anyway, I read the first couple chapter and the shit is just too heavy. Too many ghouls involved. Too much talk of bullet trajectories and shadowy men and cover-ups and it's too much to have dancing on your head on a Sunday night. I'm convinced there's a team waiting to take me out downstairs disguised as drunks.
I have more immediate problems like complete and utter lack of money, lack of stamina for doing anything to change that, and the decreased tolerance of being around any one else I know so I doubt trying to enlighten myself on a 50-year old alleged national mystery is really something that should be at the top of my to-do list.

But anyway, this really has nothing to do with that. I've put that book down in favor of something more fun like Notes From the Underground. The main gist is that I can't sleep. Not at midnight, or half-past midnight as it appears to be, so all this leads me to the perfect blog post.

I got an email from a writing site that I enlisted with a while back that sends you "Daily Writing Tips". Some of them are helpful some of them are useless, last week I got the "10 Tips to Creating a Perfect Blog Post" email.

Now, we here at Bleak.Blogspot do not have a strong following, sure if we link a post to Facebook or Twitter we'll get some extra hits, but to be honest 12-20 hits is a lot here so we are certainly not above taking some advice on how to get our numbers up. So think of how happy I was to find that I now had in my possession the ten ways to create a perfect post. Think of all the followers I can gain after I employ these tips with my own winning brand of neurosis!

Well I'm not going to go ahead and list every point they gave me because for one I would be giving away all the tips and then how would my perfect blog post stand out from all the rest? But I can reveal that a good, ahem, perfect title was key. So after shooting down several serene sounding handles, I chose what I chose because I can see there being more entries like this if the old apartment is going to be lights out this early.


I was also advised to add a video, to give the whole thing a "multi-media" feel to it.
So, in honor of Mr. Horgan moving his children's car seats out of the back of his Dodge Ram in order to watch a burned disc of the Bobby Heenan Show in the back of his truck in the parking lot of the Orange Lantern.  So  here is a video for your viewing pleasure.

Now, this was probably not the perfect blog post, I can be self critical, but I think I'm on my way and once I compile all my notes of what the drunks fumbling their way down the street to diner are saying I think I might even have a few masterpieces in me.

From the Heat Outside.

I saw this girl I used to date walking across the street towards a baseball field, large duffel bag slung over her shoulder.
She wasn't a girl anymore.
She'd filled out into an adult.
Someone who looked like someone's mother.
At a baseball game.
None of this is true.
I just thought it was her, but it wasn't.
I don't really think about her at all.
I certainly don't miss her.
It's just strange thinking about how quietly the world swallows people up.