The Joke's On Me

I am getting older. As such I'm beginning to realize how often the joke's on me (quiet, Ron).

I've talked a lot about watching Rifftrax, a movie parody site where they mock movies, TV shows, short films and what all. Last weekend I watched several Rifftrax offerings with my son in Ohio, one of The Ohio Cosgriffs. As usual, I laughed at many of the jokes.

One of the jokes involved the Internet. It was that a character was so old that he still typed www before website addresses. I laughed at that, well, because it was clear I was supposed to. Yet I didn't quite get the point.

Back here in Detroit I tested that joke. And sure enough, you don't have to type www before a web address. You just type weather.com or aol.com and there it is. I just tried it again: I typed mudhens.com, exactly like that, and was taken immediately to the Toledo Mud Hens web site as I now fully expected.

So the old guy joke was on me. But I had to laugh at the time, if only to cover myself.

Cosplay Christmas

I will confess up front that I am about to go way too far to relate a simple enough joke. But that's okay. I have the time to kill and apparently you do too.

Cosplay (you'll need to know this) is when you dress up for fun as a favorite character of yours from the fiction world, sort of like dressing up for Halloween or a costume party. To be honest, I used to mock it. Then they day came when I realized that when I am buttoning up one of my Detroit Tigers jerseys as I put it on I feel, if only for a moment, that I actually am a Detroit Tiger. So anymore I cut cosplayers a bit of slack.

Now, one thing that our family and a great many others have done for Christmas is get Christmas poppers. They're little gift wrapped sleeves with tiny gifts in them. You can read about them here:

https://www.whychristmas.com/customs/crackers.shtml  

What you do is you and a friend grab opposite ends of one of the poppers and pull. It pops open and you get the contents. Then you do it again so that the friends gets gifts too. 

It is a neat little bit of childlike fun, and while the gifts are only the trinket variety hey, remember, it's fun. Yet I've noticed that there is one common gift which seems to be in each and every popper: a small paper crown. You know, the kind with eight or ten points on it, just like Jughead Jones wore in the old Archie comics.

We were watching a Christmas special yesterday as a family in the show got out some poppers. Soon enough everyone was wearing one of those paper crowns. Soon after that someone else remarked, "Cosplaying Jughead is a treasured family tradition for us."

Look, reading this this far for that payoff isn't my fault. As I said earlier, you clearly had the time to kill. 

Making lemonade

I had a spot of rum luck last night. On my way to the movies a freeze plug blew in my van. By the time I had gotten a tow and had the car at my mechanic, it was too late to see the film. And I had pre-bought the ticket too.

C'est la vie. So it goes. I have just the same been trying to seek the ol' silver lining. It might have been worse: I might have been stuck on the shoulder of the freeway had it happened earlier in my trip. But I had gotten off the x-way and was on surface streets, where I was able to jump into a wide open parking lot when the break occurred. I could get out of my van and walk around without having semis shake me up every ten seconds.

Since I have a scheduled trip to Springfield and then Celina, Ohio tomorrow, it could have happened on I-75 in northern Toledo at 3:15 AM on a Friday. That would not have been fun. Or maybe the plug might have blown 50 miles after I was loaded with drain snake equipment and parts on a lonely two lane blacktop halfway between Springfield and Celina. Again, on a Friday, when the weekend beckons. In fact if I wasn't headed to a Wednesday movie, those things become rather scarily likely.

When life gives you lemons, so they say, and why not? Imagining it had gone better, that I had had no trouble and had seen my movie, really is fruitless. It aggravates you all the more. 

Things worked out as well as the could. I may as well believe it for the best.

It's time for Rifftrax

Tonight is Rifftrax live night. If you're not familiar with Rifftrax, it's a comedy thing where three guys mock old and new, good and bad movies. On nights like tonight they broadcast live to theaters throughout the country, originating in Nashville, Tennessee. Tonight's film is a mocking of The Five Doctors movie from the Doctor Who franchise. It should be good.

Granted, their kind of humor isn't for everyone. But like a lot of good comedy many of their riffs (jokes) actually make a kind of sense. When they question sparkly vampires, as they did when lambasting the Twilight films, it actually makes sense. Why would vampires sparkle? Why, also, would werewolves eat muffins for breakfast, as they do in the Stephanie Meyer, uh, classics?

I'm just skimming the top here. Rifftrax finds and mocks all those old school short films which we were subjected to years ago. It mocks them well; if you know who Mr. B Natural is, you are on my page. Check out their website. There's something for everyone.

All right, enough of this. I'm beginning to sound like a commercial, and I'm not. I simply love Rifftrax. And you should too.

This has been from a non-compensated spokesperson I assure you.