2/14/2007
Replacing The Arch
I first moved to St Louis in early August of 2004. I have grown to love many, many things about my new home: Dogtown, baseball, the park, the Loop, Soulard, the bars, the lack of people who wear black pants while at said bars... They're all towards the top of a rather long list. And while there are a few things which continue to grind my gears from time to time (the lack of driving ranges, the traffic), there is only one thing which I literally hate about the town in which I have lived and loved in lo these past few years:
The Arch.
It's fucking stupid.
How can I hate something that’s "more than an engineering marvel, [it] has come to represent the spirit of the City of St. Louis, the Gateway to the West?"
Easy:
(Hell, it doesn't even represent the city of Saint Louis as well as other local landmarks like the giant Amoco sign over highway 40 or Joe Buck's monstrous, oddly shaped head.)
When people* think about the Old West they think about two things: The Oregon Trail and saloon style swinging doors. Maybe Young Guns and Back to the Future III as well, but I’m not certain about that.
(By the way, the key to winning The Oregon Trail? Be the banker from Boston. That rich Masshole was wicked smaht and could float the Columbia like nobody’s business.)
And since the good people at the National Park Service refuse to tear down The Arch and replace it with matching 630 foot tall statues, one of Emilio Estevez dressed as William H Bonney and one of Christian Slater as Arkansas Dave Rudabaugh (believe me, I've tried), I think it’s high time someone finally listened to me and replaced the arch with what the true symbol of the Old West is: Saloon style swinging doors.
And I don't want just any saloon style swinging door monument. I want them to be as tall as the arch. And to actually swing.
This is something I have brought up many, many times while drunk, only to be greeted with callous retorts from my friends like “Al, you’re an idiot,” or, “Al, that bartender caught you jerking it in the ladies bathroom last time you were here. She’d like you to leave.”
But this is my vision. 630 foot tall swinging doors, flapping gently in the Midwest breeze over the Mississippi river, helping to transform our city's boring, pedestrian skyline from this:
To this:
"Flap, flap, flap" went the giant swinging doors.
Instead of saying tiresome things like "Did you know that it's actually as wide as it is tall?" slack jawed yokels from around the gloge will view the city's new skyline and let out joyous cries of "Now THAT'S the Gateway to the West!"
We will be the new marvel of civilization. And this won't be some trivial, useless wonder like the Egyptian pyramids or the Maginot Line; Oh, no. This one will have a purpose.
The doors will actually be wind turbines**, producing power which will be given out to the great residents of St Louis, in turn helping to cut down on the preposterous amount of cash us suckersss are paying out tothe worst company in the world AmerenUE every freaking month.
So there you have it, St Louis: Replacing the Arch with giant saloon style swinging doors? Win, Win, Win.
*People being myself and (I assume) everybody in their late 20’s and early 30’s.
** I have literally no idea how things like turbines, power, or even wind actually work, so I don’t really know if this would succeed. It’ll be a hell of a lot of fun finding out, though!
The Arch.
It's fucking stupid.
How can I hate something that’s "more than an engineering marvel, [it] has come to represent the spirit of the City of St. Louis, the Gateway to the West?"
Easy:
- It's pointless
- It's dishonest
(Hell, it doesn't even represent the city of Saint Louis as well as other local landmarks like the giant Amoco sign over highway 40 or Joe Buck's monstrous, oddly shaped head.)
When people* think about the Old West they think about two things: The Oregon Trail and saloon style swinging doors. Maybe Young Guns and Back to the Future III as well, but I’m not certain about that.
(By the way, the key to winning The Oregon Trail? Be the banker from Boston. That rich Masshole was wicked smaht and could float the Columbia like nobody’s business.)
And since the good people at the National Park Service refuse to tear down The Arch and replace it with matching 630 foot tall statues, one of Emilio Estevez dressed as William H Bonney and one of Christian Slater as Arkansas Dave Rudabaugh (believe me, I've tried), I think it’s high time someone finally listened to me and replaced the arch with what the true symbol of the Old West is: Saloon style swinging doors.
And I don't want just any saloon style swinging door monument. I want them to be as tall as the arch. And to actually swing.
This is something I have brought up many, many times while drunk, only to be greeted with callous retorts from my friends like “Al, you’re an idiot,” or, “Al, that bartender caught you jerking it in the ladies bathroom last time you were here. She’d like you to leave.”
But this is my vision. 630 foot tall swinging doors, flapping gently in the Midwest breeze over the Mississippi river, helping to transform our city's boring, pedestrian skyline from this:
To this:
"Flap, flap, flap" went the giant swinging doors.
Instead of saying tiresome things like "Did you know that it's actually as wide as it is tall?" slack jawed yokels from around the gloge will view the city's new skyline and let out joyous cries of "Now THAT'S the Gateway to the West!"
We will be the new marvel of civilization. And this won't be some trivial, useless wonder like the Egyptian pyramids or the Maginot Line; Oh, no. This one will have a purpose.
The doors will actually be wind turbines**, producing power which will be given out to the great residents of St Louis, in turn helping to cut down on the preposterous amount of cash us suckersss are paying out to
So there you have it, St Louis: Replacing the Arch with giant saloon style swinging doors? Win, Win, Win.
*People being myself and (I assume) everybody in their late 20’s and early 30’s.
** I have literally no idea how things like turbines, power, or even wind actually work, so I don’t really know if this would succeed. It’ll be a hell of a lot of fun finding out, though!
Labels: A Ridiculous Obsession with Young Guns, Al's Dumb Ideas
2/06/2007
Vote Fritz (Someday)
The Monday post Super Bowl not being a holiday is one of the sure signs that the terrorists have won. How is this still possible? Does anyone enjoy going to work the day after the Super Bowl? And this has been going on for 41 years now, and beaten into the ground by lazy smart people this entire time? And still...
If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a million times: Democracy simply does not work.
And while I am lucky enough to not work on Mondays anyway (meaning that I was free to drink all the whiskey gingers my belly could handle during the big, crappy game), I could still really use today off. Which got me thinking about:
The Four Day Work Week.
This is one of my grandest ideas and one which I feel the most passionate about. Here's the plan: Everybody works ten to eleven hours a day, from either Monday to Thursday or Tuesday to Friday (rotating to fit one’s schedule if need be). You still get in 40+ hours of work every week, all five working days are covered, but you have a three day weekend every week.
I really need to get voted into Congress and make this happen.This is why nobody can know about all those hookers I killed outside of Houston in July of 1991. Good thing I have a clean record.
------------------------
Alternative Programming: Because every good baseball park needs a grocery store:
"The Cardinals Experience will combine a restaurant and Cardinals Hall of Fame museum, featuring memorabilia and a spot where future inductions can be held, DeWitt said. A grocery store, bookstore, a place for live music and brew pub are among the potential tenants being considered."
Live music? Cool.
Brew pub? Awesome.
Book store? Indifferent.
Grocery store? Greatest idea ever.
If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a million times: Democracy simply does not work.
And while I am lucky enough to not work on Mondays anyway (meaning that I was free to drink all the whiskey gingers my belly could handle during the big, crappy game), I could still really use today off. Which got me thinking about:
The Four Day Work Week.
This is one of my grandest ideas and one which I feel the most passionate about. Here's the plan: Everybody works ten to eleven hours a day, from either Monday to Thursday or Tuesday to Friday (rotating to fit one’s schedule if need be). You still get in 40+ hours of work every week, all five working days are covered, but you have a three day weekend every week.
I really need to get voted into Congress and make this happen.
------------------------
Alternative Programming: Because every good baseball park needs a grocery store:
"The Cardinals Experience will combine a restaurant and Cardinals Hall of Fame museum, featuring memorabilia and a spot where future inductions can be held, DeWitt said. A grocery store, bookstore, a place for live music and brew pub are among the potential tenants being considered."
Live music? Cool.
Brew pub? Awesome.
Book store? Indifferent.
Grocery store? Greatest idea ever.
Labels: Al's Dumb Ideas
1/26/2007
Recess; Monical's Pizza Help
We played the stupidest games in grade school.
I will freely admit that my grade school class wasn’t exactly the most refined group of kids to ever grace the halls of St. Philomena’s; We melted crayons in the teachers coffee, urinated in class room corners, and engaged in enormous "book fights" in the library (as a defining testament to our unruliness, on one particular day in eighth grade, both of our homeroom teachers -- our class was split into two homerooms -- would be out attending a conference, so the school decided to just give the entire eighth grade the day off of school to keep them from being forced to use two separate substitute teachers to try to deal with us. Because nobody doubted those subs would have killed themselves and/or all of us after about ten minutes of class.) -– And yes, most of us had criminal records of one kind or another by the time we were 21.
(Of course, our eighth grade teacher left her husband and ten or so kids and ran away with one of the priests from our parish after we graduated, so it’s not like we were the only fucked up people in that school.)
(Plus, there was that whole "priest molestation" thing, but that’s only funny when it happens to people I don’t know, so I can’t really make any jokes about that.)
But one of the less urbane games to grace the blacktop was "the penis game", which consisted of -- well -- punching someone in the dick and saying "penis." (The premise is essentially the same as my favorite playground game ever: "wet butt," which is where you step in a puddle and then kick another kid in the ass and yell "Wet butt!" at them).
Sure they weren’t the most sophisticated of games, but what the fuck do you want from us? We were ten. As Judge Roy Snyder once ruled, "Boys will be boys."
But it’s not just boys who will be boys, sometimes (supposedly) grown men will be boys as well. As was the case when I was in the Marines, where the "penis game" made a brief comeback, the classic "safety-farting game" was a staple, and whenever a new guy would check into our platoon we would make a point of having someone push him into a wall and yell "How’s my dick taste?" at him, just to see how they’d react (the normal reaction? Confusion.)
(Also, those are some of the things I think about whenever someone talks about how proud they are of our nation’s military – dicks and farts. That’s why I giggle so much whenever the topic comes up.)
One of my favorite days in the Marines was a day where we were allowed to have a "recess" and everyone went out onto the lawn next to our office. We taped off a circle about 35 feet in diameter and proceeded to play "bull in the ring," a game which essentially is a battle royal, except there aren’t any ropes and Diesel has never eliminated seven consecutive people in "bull in the ring."
There were about twenty of us in the circle, and eventually all were eliminated except a giant country boy named Andy and myself.
Andy and I had rather different styles – I preferred the "dead bear" style of fighting (where one lies motionless on the ground and screams "DEAD BEAR!" whenever someone tries to move their stock-still , fat ass; eventually they tire of your nonviolent resistance and move on to try to eliminate someone else) while Andy, in fact, was actually a bear and would fucking military press people out of the ring.
It’s probablyDouglas needles(s) to say, but Andy won our showdown in about three seconds (as soon as he looked at me I ran away screaming like a irrate chinaman and hid in a tree).
(Just kidding, I don’t know how to climb trees.)
What’s the point of this shit-show of a blohhhg post? Well, as I sit here in my office, blinded by the stale lighting, trying to find something to occupy my time, with the theme from "Sanford and Son" running on the TV in the background, it dawns on me that I could really use a recess break in my day-to-day life. You know, just throw on some sneakers, hit the blacktop and punch a dude in the dick! Who’s with me?
Really? Nobody? That’s cool; I never had any friends, anyway. I’ll be meekly throwing a tennis ball against the wall if you need me.
-----------------------
I realize this is about a one in a million shot ("So you're saying there's a chance!"), but The Lady Friend and I need some help. We had been planning on going up to Peoria this weekend, but our plans fell through as I have to work late tomorrow (AmerenUE’s electrical service in the St Louis area has been so crackerjack over the last six months that my company needs to plan power outages just to make sure all of our back up generators are working alright. And guess who gets to make sure all of the computery things don’t die during the outage? I’ll give you a hint: He’s 26 years old and kind of wants to punch another man in the dick.)
We were really looking forward to the trip, my grandpa is having his 80th birthday party on Saturday and we were going to get drunk and play shuffleboard with infrequent-drunken-FYC-comment-leaver Tito and his wife.
But it’s not the friends and family we are most disappointed to miss out on (sorry guys), it’s the pizza. Monical’s pizza, actually.
We freaking love Monical’s. And since the nearest one to the StL is over an hour and a half away, it’s not something that we normally have access to, so whenever we make it up to Peoria, we like gorge ourselves on its deliciousness. And it’s this – not our beloved grandfather celebration into octogenarian land, nor hanging out with some of our best friends – that we were most looking forward to.
(Admittedly, that last sentence isn’t 100% true, but there is a dash of truthiness in there.)
So, TLF and I, in our quest for a taste of Central Illinois, will be trying to make a Monicals-esque pie this weekend.
Now, it’s difficult enough to reverse engineer a pizza period, let alone trying to do it from memory alone, so it is my hope (my slight, faint hope) that somebody, somewhere out there reading this now has either worked at a Monical’s or knows someone who has, and can help a brother out into what, exactly, makes that pizza so freaking delectable.
[Of course, it is rather obtuse of me to even assume that anybody, anywhere is still reading this rambling, incoherent 1200 (!) word mess which I have created, but what the hell, huh?]
If you’re of any help, you’ll be in the running for a special mystery prize!*
[have a great weekend, kids. if you get the chance, try pushing a stranger and yell “hows my dick taste” at them. i think you’ll be pleasantly surprised by the reaction. it works even better if you’re a girl.]
*It’s a crude pencil drawing of Nancy Pelosi and Anthony Michael Hall naked, riding a unicorn together.
I will freely admit that my grade school class wasn’t exactly the most refined group of kids to ever grace the halls of St. Philomena’s; We melted crayons in the teachers coffee, urinated in class room corners, and engaged in enormous "book fights" in the library (as a defining testament to our unruliness, on one particular day in eighth grade, both of our homeroom teachers -- our class was split into two homerooms -- would be out attending a conference, so the school decided to just give the entire eighth grade the day off of school to keep them from being forced to use two separate substitute teachers to try to deal with us. Because nobody doubted those subs would have killed themselves and/or all of us after about ten minutes of class.) -– And yes, most of us had criminal records of one kind or another by the time we were 21.
(Of course, our eighth grade teacher left her husband and ten or so kids and ran away with one of the priests from our parish after we graduated, so it’s not like we were the only fucked up people in that school.)
(Plus, there was that whole "priest molestation" thing, but that’s only funny when it happens to people I don’t know, so I can’t really make any jokes about that.)
But one of the less urbane games to grace the blacktop was "the penis game", which consisted of -- well -- punching someone in the dick and saying "penis." (The premise is essentially the same as my favorite playground game ever: "wet butt," which is where you step in a puddle and then kick another kid in the ass and yell "Wet butt!" at them).
Sure they weren’t the most sophisticated of games, but what the fuck do you want from us? We were ten. As Judge Roy Snyder once ruled, "Boys will be boys."
But it’s not just boys who will be boys, sometimes (supposedly) grown men will be boys as well. As was the case when I was in the Marines, where the "penis game" made a brief comeback, the classic "safety-farting game" was a staple, and whenever a new guy would check into our platoon we would make a point of having someone push him into a wall and yell "How’s my dick taste?" at him, just to see how they’d react (the normal reaction? Confusion.)
(Also, those are some of the things I think about whenever someone talks about how proud they are of our nation’s military – dicks and farts. That’s why I giggle so much whenever the topic comes up.)
One of my favorite days in the Marines was a day where we were allowed to have a "recess" and everyone went out onto the lawn next to our office. We taped off a circle about 35 feet in diameter and proceeded to play "bull in the ring," a game which essentially is a battle royal, except there aren’t any ropes and Diesel has never eliminated seven consecutive people in "bull in the ring."
There were about twenty of us in the circle, and eventually all were eliminated except a giant country boy named Andy and myself.
Andy and I had rather different styles – I preferred the "dead bear" style of fighting (where one lies motionless on the ground and screams "DEAD BEAR!" whenever someone tries to move their stock-still , fat ass; eventually they tire of your nonviolent resistance and move on to try to eliminate someone else) while Andy, in fact, was actually a bear and would fucking military press people out of the ring.
It’s probably
(Just kidding, I don’t know how to climb trees.)
What’s the point of this shit-show of a blohhhg post? Well, as I sit here in my office, blinded by the stale lighting, trying to find something to occupy my time, with the theme from "Sanford and Son" running on the TV in the background, it dawns on me that I could really use a recess break in my day-to-day life. You know, just throw on some sneakers, hit the blacktop and punch a dude in the dick! Who’s with me?
Really? Nobody? That’s cool; I never had any friends, anyway. I’ll be meekly throwing a tennis ball against the wall if you need me.
-----------------------
I realize this is about a one in a million shot ("So you're saying there's a chance!"), but The Lady Friend and I need some help. We had been planning on going up to Peoria this weekend, but our plans fell through as I have to work late tomorrow (AmerenUE’s electrical service in the St Louis area has been so crackerjack over the last six months that my company needs to plan power outages just to make sure all of our back up generators are working alright. And guess who gets to make sure all of the computery things don’t die during the outage? I’ll give you a hint: He’s 26 years old and kind of wants to punch another man in the dick.)
We were really looking forward to the trip, my grandpa is having his 80th birthday party on Saturday and we were going to get drunk and play shuffleboard with infrequent-drunken-FYC-comment-leaver Tito and his wife.
But it’s not the friends and family we are most disappointed to miss out on (sorry guys), it’s the pizza. Monical’s pizza, actually.
We freaking love Monical’s. And since the nearest one to the StL is over an hour and a half away, it’s not something that we normally have access to, so whenever we make it up to Peoria, we like gorge ourselves on its deliciousness. And it’s this – not our beloved grandfather celebration into octogenarian land, nor hanging out with some of our best friends – that we were most looking forward to.
(Admittedly, that last sentence isn’t 100% true, but there is a dash of truthiness in there.)
So, TLF and I, in our quest for a taste of Central Illinois, will be trying to make a Monicals-esque pie this weekend.
Now, it’s difficult enough to reverse engineer a pizza period, let alone trying to do it from memory alone, so it is my hope (my slight, faint hope) that somebody, somewhere out there reading this now has either worked at a Monical’s or knows someone who has, and can help a brother out into what, exactly, makes that pizza so freaking delectable.
[Of course, it is rather obtuse of me to even assume that anybody, anywhere is still reading this rambling, incoherent 1200 (!) word mess which I have created, but what the hell, huh?]
If you’re of any help, you’ll be in the running for a special mystery prize!*
[have a great weekend, kids. if you get the chance, try pushing a stranger and yell “hows my dick taste” at them. i think you’ll be pleasantly surprised by the reaction. it works even better if you’re a girl.]
*It’s a crude pencil drawing of Nancy Pelosi and Anthony Michael Hall naked, riding a unicorn together.
Labels: Al's Dumb Ideas, I Fucking Love Monicals Pizza, Stuff You Probably Don't Care About, The Penis game, Wett Butt
1/04/2007
Al the Inventor
Years ago, when I was a poor black child, I watched Navin R. Johnson invent the Opti-Grab in “The Jerk.” After that, I always assumed that I too would go on to become a great inventor someday. The ideas, they came to me in droves. I would change the world.
Unfortunately, a few years ago, Matthew Lesko filed a restraining order against me (don’t ask) and it became harder and harder for me to perfect my inventions. But I was steadfast in my determination, and despite the many obstacles, I pressed on and worked with a diligence never before seen by man, crafting my many ideas into the kind of inventions that they someday name solar systems after. Of course by “work” I mean “get drunk and scream at people about” and by “many” I mean “one... two tops.”
The first great invention I had was for a prescription windshield. See, I don’t have the greatest vision in the world, but I don’t exactly have the worst, either. And while I should wear my glasses when I drive, I don’t always (much in the same way I should pay taxes and I should stop committing arson). So to alleviate my predicament (the driving without glasses one, not the arson), I thought it would be wise to somehow meld my prescription eyeglasses with my windshield.
Now, the naysayers and Monday morning quarterbacks would all say, “Al that would never work. What if someone else wanted to drive your car?”
To which I would reply, “Why the fuck do you want to drive my car? Get your own, freeloader.”
Anyway, where you killjoys and worrywarts saw a problem, I saw an opportunity. In order for other people to drive my car, they would have to wear “reverse glasses,” glasses which would give them a reverse prescription of mine, allowing them to see 20/20 through the windshield. And if you didn’t have the glasses, you were driving blind, which I believe would count as some sort of a theft deterrent system, thus lowering your insurance payments. Win, win, win.
Unfortunately, due to a nasty accident/lawsuit in my test market of Mae Hong Son, Thailand (again, don’t ask) that idea had to be placed on the proverbial backburner. This was all well and good, because soon after that I came up with my next great idea:
The Steak and Cheese Pizza.
I moved to Pensacola, FL in January of 2000 and soon fell madly and desperately in love with a little pizza chain named Hungry Howie’s. They had this steak and cheese calzone sub which on a few occasions cured cancer and once, as rumor has it, brought somebody back from the dead (some Jew named Jesus or something). It was a soft, chewy pita shell, filled with strips of sirloin, caramelized onions, a variety of melted cheese, and topped off with some shredded parmesan and a secret sauce (the secret? It was melted butter with oregano).
This sandwich had a profound impact upon the rest of my life. It remains, to this day, the greatest sandwich I have ever consumed. It is the apex; the sandwich to which all other sandis are measured. I cannot overstate how much I fucking love that sandwich. In fact, when I was considering taking a job in Tampa, I made a list of the pros and cons of making such a move. The pros were: 1) Beach, 2) Hungry Howie’s, 3) Boobs. (The cons, in case you were wondering: Hurricanes, Mexicans, and Baptists, not particularly in that order.)
Anyway, one day while I was in Pensacola, I was feeling extra gluttonous. So I grabbed an 18 pack of non-light beer and made a call to Hungry Howie’s. I knew I wanted a steak and cheese sandwich, but was there anyway they could make it any worse for me? Indeed there was, as they took all of the ingredients and made it into a pizza for me instead of the more healthy (?) sandwich dripping in butter.
And it was good.
Not too long after that, a bunch of my buddies starting ordering up the steak and cheese pizza instead of their usual pepperonis and sausages. And a few months later, wouldn’t you know it, it appeared on their menu. Even if I never conceived a child, my contribution to civilization was complete. As Costanza was to that Frogger machine, I was to Hungry Howie’s.
Soon after, I moved to North Carolina, where unfortunately there was not a Hungry Howie’s to be found (or, maybe that’s actually fortunately for me, as I would now easily weigh 285 pounds if I continued to have access to those heavenly, butter drenched sandwiches). I have only been back to Hungry Howie’s a handful of times, but the steak and cheese pizza is still there.
It’s still there.
(This is where a single tear starts rolling down my cheek.)
A year after I left Pensacola, Domino’s came out with their “Philly Cheese Steak Pizza.” At first I was flattered. “Hey,” I thought “if it’s good, who cares!” Of course, like everything Domino’s has ever touched (The Noid, anyone?), it was complete and utter crap. I made a few angry phone calls, demanding that I should receive royalties for inventing the Steak and Cheese Pizza, but I never saw one red cent. Not even some free breadsticks. The bastards.
[Note – this is probably the point in time where you say, “Al, that’s not really an invention, it’s just a recipe. And to think that nobody else could have had that idea is, to say the least, absurd.” To which I say, “Shut up.”]
Still, my inventive light bulb burned bright. This time, I had my non-lazy eye set on technology in general, media modes in particular.
For as long as I can remember, I have been a staunch advocate for both VHS and cassette tapes. This all began sometime in the mid to late 90’s after the first CD I ever owned began skipping after it was only a few years old. (And since you must know, the first CD I ever owned was the “Young Guns II” soundtrack. Again, shut up.) Sure, the music didn’t “sound” as good on a cassette as a CD, but if a cassette ever broke, you could simply fix it with some scotch tape, a pencil, and a little Midwestern sensibility. You try doing that to a CD and you know what happens? People die.
So when DVDs came onto the scene a few years later, I simply didn’t buy into them. What was to keep them from scratching up like my Bad Company and Foreigner CDs did after a few years? Nothing, that’s what.
These days, I am far shorter sighted, as I have come to accept my fate (that Michael Gross will have me killed this Fourth of July) (and again, don’t ask.) and frankly I don’t care if my movies end up being scratched, because I wont be around to enjoy them anyway (Damn you, Gross.)
But to once again leave a lasting contribution, I envisioned a solution to the epidemic of scratched DVDs which will no doubt sweep across the US in 2011 like a plague of angry Italians eating overcooked pasta (not my strongest analogy).
I pictured something of a hybrid VHS-DVD combo: A DVD disc, encased in plastic, as to keep the disc from being scratched; that was the answer.
It may be awarded to me posthumously, but that Nobel which I have long deserved would finally be mine.
Then The Lady Friend got me a PSP for Christmas, and I learned that this technology has actually existed for years.
And with that, my life can officially be labeled a failure.
See you in hell, Gross.
[Note- I also claim to have invented Internet gaming because when I was little and playing Bases Loaded II on my NES, I always dreamed that there was someone, somewhere around the world that was actually playing against me. The other player somehow connected to my Nintendo through the power cord, which in the early days of Prodigy and CompuServe, may very well have been the Internet. And, yes, I choose to use this snapshot into my childhood as an example of what a visionary I am and not for what it really was: a pathetic little kid with no friends, sitting by himself playing video games and keeping detailed stats on said video games (I had a scorebook and everything).]
Unfortunately, a few years ago, Matthew Lesko filed a restraining order against me (don’t ask) and it became harder and harder for me to perfect my inventions. But I was steadfast in my determination, and despite the many obstacles, I pressed on and worked with a diligence never before seen by man, crafting my many ideas into the kind of inventions that they someday name solar systems after. Of course by “work” I mean “get drunk and scream at people about” and by “many” I mean “one... two tops.”
The first great invention I had was for a prescription windshield. See, I don’t have the greatest vision in the world, but I don’t exactly have the worst, either. And while I should wear my glasses when I drive, I don’t always (much in the same way I should pay taxes and I should stop committing arson). So to alleviate my predicament (the driving without glasses one, not the arson), I thought it would be wise to somehow meld my prescription eyeglasses with my windshield.
Now, the naysayers and Monday morning quarterbacks would all say, “Al that would never work. What if someone else wanted to drive your car?”
To which I would reply, “Why the fuck do you want to drive my car? Get your own, freeloader.”
Anyway, where you killjoys and worrywarts saw a problem, I saw an opportunity. In order for other people to drive my car, they would have to wear “reverse glasses,” glasses which would give them a reverse prescription of mine, allowing them to see 20/20 through the windshield. And if you didn’t have the glasses, you were driving blind, which I believe would count as some sort of a theft deterrent system, thus lowering your insurance payments. Win, win, win.
Unfortunately, due to a nasty accident/lawsuit in my test market of Mae Hong Son, Thailand (again, don’t ask) that idea had to be placed on the proverbial backburner. This was all well and good, because soon after that I came up with my next great idea:
The Steak and Cheese Pizza.
I moved to Pensacola, FL in January of 2000 and soon fell madly and desperately in love with a little pizza chain named Hungry Howie’s. They had this steak and cheese calzone sub which on a few occasions cured cancer and once, as rumor has it, brought somebody back from the dead (some Jew named Jesus or something). It was a soft, chewy pita shell, filled with strips of sirloin, caramelized onions, a variety of melted cheese, and topped off with some shredded parmesan and a secret sauce (the secret? It was melted butter with oregano).
This sandwich had a profound impact upon the rest of my life. It remains, to this day, the greatest sandwich I have ever consumed. It is the apex; the sandwich to which all other sandis are measured. I cannot overstate how much I fucking love that sandwich. In fact, when I was considering taking a job in Tampa, I made a list of the pros and cons of making such a move. The pros were: 1) Beach, 2) Hungry Howie’s, 3) Boobs. (The cons, in case you were wondering: Hurricanes, Mexicans, and Baptists, not particularly in that order.)
Anyway, one day while I was in Pensacola, I was feeling extra gluttonous. So I grabbed an 18 pack of non-light beer and made a call to Hungry Howie’s. I knew I wanted a steak and cheese sandwich, but was there anyway they could make it any worse for me? Indeed there was, as they took all of the ingredients and made it into a pizza for me instead of the more healthy (?) sandwich dripping in butter.
And it was good.
Not too long after that, a bunch of my buddies starting ordering up the steak and cheese pizza instead of their usual pepperonis and sausages. And a few months later, wouldn’t you know it, it appeared on their menu. Even if I never conceived a child, my contribution to civilization was complete. As Costanza was to that Frogger machine, I was to Hungry Howie’s.
Soon after, I moved to North Carolina, where unfortunately there was not a Hungry Howie’s to be found (or, maybe that’s actually fortunately for me, as I would now easily weigh 285 pounds if I continued to have access to those heavenly, butter drenched sandwiches). I have only been back to Hungry Howie’s a handful of times, but the steak and cheese pizza is still there.
It’s still there.
(This is where a single tear starts rolling down my cheek.)
A year after I left Pensacola, Domino’s came out with their “Philly Cheese Steak Pizza.” At first I was flattered. “Hey,” I thought “if it’s good, who cares!” Of course, like everything Domino’s has ever touched (The Noid, anyone?), it was complete and utter crap. I made a few angry phone calls, demanding that I should receive royalties for inventing the Steak and Cheese Pizza, but I never saw one red cent. Not even some free breadsticks. The bastards.
[Note – this is probably the point in time where you say, “Al, that’s not really an invention, it’s just a recipe. And to think that nobody else could have had that idea is, to say the least, absurd.” To which I say, “Shut up.”]
Still, my inventive light bulb burned bright. This time, I had my non-lazy eye set on technology in general, media modes in particular.
For as long as I can remember, I have been a staunch advocate for both VHS and cassette tapes. This all began sometime in the mid to late 90’s after the first CD I ever owned began skipping after it was only a few years old. (And since you must know, the first CD I ever owned was the “Young Guns II” soundtrack. Again, shut up.) Sure, the music didn’t “sound” as good on a cassette as a CD, but if a cassette ever broke, you could simply fix it with some scotch tape, a pencil, and a little Midwestern sensibility. You try doing that to a CD and you know what happens? People die.
So when DVDs came onto the scene a few years later, I simply didn’t buy into them. What was to keep them from scratching up like my Bad Company and Foreigner CDs did after a few years? Nothing, that’s what.
These days, I am far shorter sighted, as I have come to accept my fate (that Michael Gross will have me killed this Fourth of July) (and again, don’t ask.) and frankly I don’t care if my movies end up being scratched, because I wont be around to enjoy them anyway (Damn you, Gross.)
But to once again leave a lasting contribution, I envisioned a solution to the epidemic of scratched DVDs which will no doubt sweep across the US in 2011 like a plague of angry Italians eating overcooked pasta (not my strongest analogy).
I pictured something of a hybrid VHS-DVD combo: A DVD disc, encased in plastic, as to keep the disc from being scratched; that was the answer.
It may be awarded to me posthumously, but that Nobel which I have long deserved would finally be mine.
Then The Lady Friend got me a PSP for Christmas, and I learned that this technology has actually existed for years.
And with that, my life can officially be labeled a failure.
See you in hell, Gross.
[Note- I also claim to have invented Internet gaming because when I was little and playing Bases Loaded II on my NES, I always dreamed that there was someone, somewhere around the world that was actually playing against me. The other player somehow connected to my Nintendo through the power cord, which in the early days of Prodigy and CompuServe, may very well have been the Internet. And, yes, I choose to use this snapshot into my childhood as an example of what a visionary I am and not for what it really was: a pathetic little kid with no friends, sitting by himself playing video games and keeping detailed stats on said video games (I had a scorebook and everything).]
Labels: Al's Dumb Ideas
