Tag Archives: funny

Discotron and On, Mon!

I’m in a silly mood.  And when I’m in a silly mood, you get a silly blog.

Recently my kids have been on a TRON kick.  Specifically, they’ve been on a TRON: Legacy kick, watching it every day.  EVERY. DAY.  They’ve made Identity Discs out of paper plates and Frisbees, every toy motorcycle is now a Light Cycle, the Android tablets are full of Light Cycle games and TRON videos on YouTube, and TRON: Evolution has taken up permanent residence in the Xbox 360 tray.  It’s a phase, and I’m aware that recently they were in Iron Man mode, and Batman mode before that, and of course hockey is always a go-to obsession, so it’s all good.  But I took it upon myself to further their education by downloading the demo versions of the original TRON coin-op game and even found an Xbox Arcade demo for the classic “Discs of TRON.”  (It turns out that this game is not nearly as fun as I remember, but maybe that’s because I’m not playing it inside one of those enclosed sit-down cabinets that the original game employed.)

I seriously doubt my big ass would even fit in there.

I seriously doubt my big ass would even fit in there.

Anyway, word association and rhyming are two ways my addled mind uses to distract me from doing real work, so here’s the way my runaway brain train took off on me…

Instead of “Discs of TRON” I started thinking “Discotron.”  Now, Discotron can be a lot of different things.  A tune by Alex Metric which sounds an awful lot like some of the Daft Punk soundtrack to TRON: Legacy, ironically…

A disco-techno-house hybrid band…

A record player…

I'm guessing it looks like this. Just spitballing here, but with a name like "Discotron" it has to be pretty close.

I’m guessing it looks like this. Just spitballing here, but with a name like “Discotron” it has to be pretty close.

A “Heat Digital Transfer Machine”…

transfer

Or this weird German party truck.

Das auto!

Das auto!

And actually about 4,000 other things.  In fact, if you add alternate spellings like “DiskoTron” or “Disco-Tron” the results from Google explode exponentially.  And goddammit, we don’t NEED more explosions!  My lord, didn’t you SEE that footage of the meteor in Russia?  THINK, PEOPLE!!  This world would be so much better if people would just learn to be responsible with their Google searches.  And don’t even get me STARTED on that Bing crap.
Anyway.
“Discotron” led me to think of Robotron 2084, another bad-ass arcade classic that was sooooo much better than “Berzerk.”
One of the few home-console versions that looked pretty much like the coin-op. It's all we had, people.

Berzerk: one of the few home-console versions that looked pretty much like the coin-op. It’s all we had, people.

And “Berzerk” was infinitely better than “BirdZerk” the cut-rate San Diego Chicken rip-off that infiltrates minor-league ballparks around the United States every summer.
KILL IT! KILL IT WITH FIRE!!

KILL IT! KILL IT WITH FIRE!!

And “BirdZerk” is head-and-shoulders above that Myron Noodleman buffoon.  Seriously, dude:  looking and acting like Jerry Lewis has never been funny, even for Jerry Lewis. Jerry Lewis cosplay is the absolute worst.  Stop it.
KILL IT! KILL IT WITH...ah, never mind.

KILL IT! KILL IT WITH…ah, never mind.

But Discotron also reminds me of Gravitron.  The Gravitron is the single-greatest carnival ride in history, equal parts fun and vomit.  It’s amazing.  Sometimes you sprawl all over the place like a confused Stephen Hawking, and sometimes you hope that the centrifugal force keeps that dude next to you’s puke right on top of him where it belongs.
Or you sack up and make gravity your bitch.

Or you sack up and make gravity your bitch.

In closing, here are some other things that Discotron reminds me of.  Thanks, kids.  Thanks, TRON.  Thanks, Google.  And thank you for making it this far.

ron-jon-41heymondon-juan-demarcowrath of khan 46

About these ads

Randomity!

Getting ready to go camp out at McDonald’s for Ronald McDonald House, so I thought I’d throw a quick blog together.  It’s sort of like leftovers…and it ain’t even Thanksgiving yet!  Bing!  In other words, no rhyme or reason here, just more random thoughts and observations. Such as…

Winter is Coming.

Those are the Stark words, and living in the wasteland that is Northern Indiana, it’s a fact that’s on everyone’s mind.  me?  I love winter.  LOVE. IT.  I love it for many different reason, but one of my guilty pleasures is leaving work after it’s been snowing and using my arm to clear a little space on my windscreen.  Not the whole window, mind you: just a patch.  Then I pretend I am driving an old Sherman tank like in Battlefield.  I suggest you try it.  however, please try not to be too terribly drunk when you do so.

WEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!

Nazis in my shoe

Sometimes the seam of my sock loops over my little toe.  It’s one of those things that I try and tell myself is no big deal at first.  “I’m sure it will shake itself out before long.  No big deal.  It’s just a sock, after all.”  After about thirty minutes, it feels like there is a little Nazi sneaking up behind my toe with a wire garrote.  Little bastard is totally trying to cut my piggy’s head off.  I hate Nazis.

Get...out...of...my...SHOE!

Ethnic names

Some people make a big deal out of “ethnic” names.  You know what I’m talking about: Daekwon, LaToya…names that tip you off  to the far-away origins of the person’s family history.  You know, names like Ian, Connor, or Josh.  Aboriginal names like Braden, Caden, Jaden, and Binladen. (Okay, that last one was a joke.) It goes in cycles, though.  I would say there was a 100% chance that the white kid serving you pretzels at the mall in 1998 was named “Josh.”  And here’s another little insight into my situation:  in college I briefly squatted with some fellows in the campus apartments at the University of Southern Indiana.  Turner Watson, Marcus Gresham, and Micah Hawkins all sharing a room.  People would look at the housing rolls and assume we played for the basketball team.  Racist? Possibly.  But absolutely true. Later in life I had a surfing buddy named Lawrence Hawkins.  Also terribly white.  Never judge a book by its cover, people.  (Notice I didn’t say you people.)

Wu Tang is not a group of troubadours to be trifled with lightly, good sir.

Bachelorette fun!

Adult bookstores are great places to stock up on gag gifts.  Funny cards.  Bachelorette party supplies.  And Avatar-themed Fleshlights.  The bachelorette stuff always strikes me as funny.  You girls are so nutty!  A straw that looks like a penis!  HOW CRAZY IS THAT!  LOLZ!! See, when guys go on a bachelor party, they drink and look at titties.  It’s what you do.  Some cool bachelorette parties do the same thing.  Hell, my lovely wife and I actually ended up at the same strip joint the night of our respective parties.  Got his-and-her lap dances.  It was awesome.  ladies, THAT’S how you begin a healthy marriage.  Which makes me wonder about how much actual materiel the adult bookstores sell every year.  My guess?  A crap-ton.  And there’s a very simple reason: camouflage.  Say a gal wants a personal sexual toy or marital aid.  She goes to the bookstore.  She shops around.  Finally, after exhaustive research and hours of self-debate, she settles on the $250 double-ended Taint Ranger with vibrating love rabbit, perfect for those nights at home watching Twilight!  Only now she feels a little self-conscious.  As she approaches the checkout, the young lady wonders whether the cashier will thin she’s a deviant (hint: no.  No, they won’t.  Those employees see REAL deviants every single day.) So to confuse and obfuscate, she grabs a “#1 Bachelorette” tiara, some penis straws, and a colorful “Bride to Be” feather boa.  She’s going to pass the $250 Vadge-inator off as a gag gift.  And God bless her.

This exists.

Front-clasp bras

While on the subject of femininity, what the hell ever happened to these things?  I remember the first time I ever encountered one in high school…fumbling around under her shirt, prolly clawing the shit out of her back in a vain attempt to smoothly undo her brassiere and free her budding teats into my waiting, eager hands.  After about ten minutes of this nonsense, she pushed me back, lifted her shirt, revealed the magical mamary-constraining mechanism, and out came the globes.  It was very anti-climactic.  I was trying to be all George Clooney.  I was not.  Good riddance to these abominations, now that I think about it.

Whaddayouknow! Heaven has a front gate!

Red Cream Soda

What the fuck is that? Strawberry?  It’s not cherry.  I know that shit for damned sure.

Don't know what it is, but I drank the shit out of it in college art class.

Cracked Pavement

Ever see a parking lot or side street with a spiderweb of cracked pavement…that someone has painstakingly gone over and caulked with that rubbery black stuff?  What the hell, dude?  I understand that you don’t want big asphalt chunks laying all over and the resulting ever-widening holes and whatnot.  But how about just re-paving that shit?  Can it really be more troublesome?  I don’t get it.  I don’t. Then again, it’s pretty obvious that there’s a lot I don’t get.  Life is a mystery to me.  Like a front-clasp bra in eleventh grade.

No problem! We'll have this banged out in about twenty years.

Watch the Magic Pumpkin! Watch!

I wasn’t gonna blog this soon.  I was gonna take some time and do it up right.  But that ain’t my style, bub. Sometimes an opportunity presents itself, and you grab that big pot of gold and dig in.  (Chili.  Not gold.  In my dreams it’s always a pot o’ chili.)

Firstly, on the little radio show I do, The TNT Show, we play a stupid game called “Getting to Know Ya” wherein we ask the listeners a buncha stupid questions.  There are no right answers, simply good answers.  Savvy?  Good.  On Monday’s show, we asked a guy what his favorite Halloween candy was.  His answer?

Skittles.  Fucking Skittles.

You're fucking with me, aren't you? Yeah. You're fucking with me.

Now, don’t get me wrong:  Skittles are a fine candy.  I love playing the “which colors/flavors work best together” game.  Fan-fucking-tastic, Skittles.  Good candy you’ve got there.  But…it’s HALLOWEEN, MAN!!  I’d be less disappointed if he’d declared in a strong, authoritative voice that “Those crappy peanut-butter-taffy things that get stuck in your teeth are the finest confection known to man.  In particular, I prefer the ones in the orange paper wrappers to those in the black paper wrappers, even though I know them to be the exact same candy.  Perhaps I bear some sort of subconscious racism.  No matter.  Hands-down, those particular treats are the finest in my Halloween bag, make no mistake.  I am as firm as the Rock of Gibraltar on this issue.”

Skittles.  Fuck. No.

See? We're all sort of beige on the inside! Just like Lord Vader!

Another Halloween-themed goodie dropped right into my lap via Facebook.  My friend (and excellent drummer, BTW) Joe had posted the following as his status on this fine Monday: “Still have no clue what I should dress up as for Halloween! Come on smart asses what ya got?”

Oh no he DIH-UNT! Joe got a variety of ha-ha replies, and he nixed them all as being “stupid.”  That’s where I came in.  I wanted to just take a screen shot of his Facebook, but it would’ve been all compressed or worse, too frakkin’ big to display properly.  So what follows is a transcript:

Me: Milton from Office Space.

Joe: So far, Turner is winning

Me: Or Mitt Romney.  That’d be cool.

Me: I know! The Iron Giant!

(non-important person): Snooky!

Me: Papa Smurf!

Me: Mitchell S*****n! (*editor’s note: Mitch is a dealer and hockey guy we know who also digs street drag-racing.  Basically a pimp.)

Me: Two chickens!

Me: A tasty McRib sandwich!

Me: Rhubarb!

Me: The Grinch!

Me: Footballing legend Pele!

(some girl): Papa smurf! Lmao ya go as that!

(another, hotter girl): The Hamburgler

Me: Amy Winehouse!

Me: Daft Punk!

(girl again): Joe Dirt!

Me: Willie Nelson’s bar of soap!

Me: Meatsicle! http://www.foundshit.com/raw-meat-popscicle/

Me: A crablouse!

Me: Rusty’s chin! (*editor’s note: Rusty is a smaller, older version of Mitch*)

Me: A mule!

Me: A mule in a sombrero!

Me: Trivial Pursuit!

Me: Gravy!

Me: Harry Potter’s “wand!”

Me: Cthulhu’s cat!

Me: Top Ramen!

Me: Tron!

Me: The Sugarland Stage!

Me: A pair of Vicegrips!

Me: The Boudoir Bombshells!

Me: Knee-high socks and a bloody pitchfork!

RUSTY: Turner wants you to be a Hipster so you can be Hipster butt buddies with him. (*editor’s note: I actually “liked” this comment.*)

Me: A brown tooth!

Me: Barry Thickk’s Old Navy sweatshirt! (*editor’s note: Barry is my co-host.  He is the dude least-likely to own any sort of Old Navy merchandise that I’ve ever met.  And yet, he does…*)

Me: Ray Finkle!

Me: Soap on a rope!

Me: Pope on a rope!

Me: Hop on Pop!

Me: Flubber!

Me: Flash Gordon!

Me: Crash Bandicoot!

Me: Ned Braden!

Me: Ned Ryerson!

Me: Headless Ned Stark!

Me: Tony Stark!

Me: Tony Hawk!

Me: Dolph Lundgren!

Me: Rudolph the Red-Nosed Lundgren!

Joe: I would like to combine all of these into ONE costume!

And then something amazing happened.  The perky young lady that follows our morning show decided I needed reinforcements.  What followed was beautiful…

Jenna: A salad bar.

Jenna: A guy with hair. (*ed: see, Joe’s bald.*)

Jenna: A robot.

Jenna: A banana.

Jenna: A tampon.

Jenna: Apple-bottom jeans.

Jenna: Boots with the fur.

Jenna: Timmy.

Jenna: Poop.

Me: Tommy!

Me: Scoop!

Jenna: Measles.

Me: Weasels!

Jenna: AIDS.

Me: Kool-AIDS Man!

Me: Pierce Brosnan’s colon!

Me: Colin Powell’s piercing!

Me: Powerman 5001!

Me: Jodie Foster!

Me: Steve Buschemi’s used band-aid!

Jenna: Nell.

Jenna: Tay in the weeeend.

Me: Chicka-pay!

Jenna: Harold.

Jenna: Kumar.

Me: Maude!

Jenna: A chicken ring sandwich.

Me: That’s it. Chicken ring sandwich.

Me: Jenna wins.

AAAAAANNND SCENE.  There was more after that, of course.  Banter.  Mainly banter.  But, wow!  What a way to go out!  Chicken ring sandwich!  I don’t have the slightest fucking clue what that even is, but it’s perfect!  Did she mean to type “chicken wing sandwich?”  Or is this some weird internet phrase to which I am not privy?  Will that be tomorrow’s big meme?  Fuck, now I want a chicken ring sandwich, whatever the hell it is.  It’s too good not to be something.

So, there you have it.  Joe’s status garnered 90 comments by the time I wrote this.  Not too shabby, Joe.  And thank you, dear reader, for taking the time to scroll all the way down that bitch.  I owe you a chicken ring sandwich.  I do. But instead, I’ll give you the quick and easy recipe for the celebrated summertime drink the IdaJoe (named after my boy Joe, who’s Facebook is now the stuff of legend.)  Here ’tis: Over ice, pour three parts Sailor Jerry, one part pineapple juice, and add a splash of Grenadine.  It’s bliss. 

When Joe was younger and had hair, he hung out with better people.

Here’s to you, Joe! Happy Halloween!