3/17/05: Guess Who, Don't Sue

I admit it.  I like a lot of wack things. Just the other day, I was semi-seriously discussing my intense emotional reaction to the Real World: Philadelphia season finale. So I have decided to  preemptively criticize myself for another lapse of taste.  Gulp. Here goes. I used to really, really like Movieline magazine back in el dia. It was catty and shallow and fun.  I haven't read it in maybe 8 years, and I don't know if it even exists anymore. But from like 1992-1995, it was good.  I swear.  I even had a subscription, which I eventually let lapse in maybe '94, when my renewal check for $9.95 bounced and I didn't have the heart to send them another once payday came around.

They used to have a delightful column called "Guess Who, Don't Sue" in which they would describe some super-juicy rumor about a celebrity, but they would leave out the name. They would give you just enough information so you thought you might know who they were talking about, but not nearly enough for you to be sure (or for someone to sue their ass).  It would go something like this:

"What twice-married fortysomething action/comedy star shook up the set of his new, actress-turned-director-helmed movie by demanding a separate trailer for his boyfriend, a onetime studio honcho who's hit hard times but is trying to re-launch his career -- as an opera singer?"

Well, I heard a decent rumor recently, and so in the spirit of Movieline Classic, I will present verbungle.com's first-ever "Guess-who, Don't Sue":

"What politically conservative, dribble-happy former NBA point guard was recently forced to sell his just-renovated $5.2 million Upper East Side apartment after his wife caught him in flagrante delicto with another woman and demanded a divorce?"

***

One thing I often think about is the old "If my 13 year-old (or 15 year-old, or 8 year-old, or 24 year-old, etc.) self could see me at this exact moment, what would he think?"  Would he be proud? Would he be appalled at my physical appearance? Would he be embarrassed of my humble surroundings? Would he be disappointed by my station in life? I think about it most often when I'm doing something ridiculous or pathetic, like squeezing my han-d-gas in an elevator or awkwardly stooping down to pick up a bunch of fritos I've spilled. I picture my younger self shaking his head and wondering how it all turned out this way.

There was a moment about a year ago when I asked a co-worker what would happen if his 15 year-old self could see him at that exact instant.  Let me set the scene. When we are in production at work, there are about eight of us who sit in the control room when we are taping segments.  In between segments, four or five of us leave the room to perform our duties either on the set or in the tape room down the hall.  And a couple other people might use this between-segment period to take a leak or catch a quick smoke. So at any given moment between segments, as many as six or seven of us might be outside the control room. We started playing a game in which the last person returning to the control room when we were about to start another segment was responsible for closing the sliding door behind him or her. If you were the eighth person, and you forgot to close the door before you sat down, you received a demerit.  Of course, the game got out of control pretty quickly. We decided that you would also receive a demerit if you closed the door prematurely, meaning if you weren't the last one in. So every time you entered the room, you had to take a quick look around to see if everybody was back before you made your decision to close or not to close. 

At one point my colleague, 48 years old at the time and holding a very respectable title within the company, was crouched on his hands and knees, hiding beneath the counter in an attempt to fool the next person to enter into thinking he didn't have to close the door. It was a great move, a successful move, but imagine if his 15 year-old self could see himself at 48, crouched like a lunatic beneath the counter?

What reminded me of all this was seeing Hootie in those Burger King commercials. I imagine the life of the 1994 Hootie: getting a hummer from a different woman each night, sleeping under a blanket of $100 bills, thrilling arenas full of white-baseball-cap wearers on a regular basis.  And I picture this 1994 Hootie at a party, drunkenly carrying on to a room full of enthralled models and hangers-on about the lyrics to "I Only Wanna Be With You" and wondering how come nobody takes his band seriously? And then I picture myself walking up behind him, politely waiting for a pause in the conversation, and then tapping him on the shoulder.

"Excuse me, Mr. Hootie," I'd say. "There's something I'd like you to see."

"Hootie!?!" he'd ask. "Hootie!?!"

Then he'd turn to his entourage and say, "See what I'm talking about? This kid's calling me 'Hootie'. What the hell is that? My name is Rucker, kid. Darius Fucking Rucker. Show me some goddamn respect."

I'd say, "I'm very sorry, Mr. Rucker, and I'd really appreciate it if you could come with me to this adjoining screening room, where my special time-spanning VCR is all cued up to play you something very interesting from the year 2005."

Intrigued but skeptical, he'd tell his little hottie friends that he'd be back in just a minute, and then the two of us would walk into the next room. Right as we entered, I would hit the button on the VCR remote and the Bacon Cheddar Ranch spot would begin to play.  And he'd go, Holy Shit you gotta be kidding me. And I'd have a good laugh. And then the tape would end, and he'd sit there for a full minute with his head in his hands while I patted him on the back in an effort to console him.

Then he'd pull himself together, walk into the next room, and resume banging models with a newfound intensity bordering on desperation.  And I'd try to climb into the VCR so I could get back to 2005.

***

Just when you thought Dan K's iPod musings couldn't get any more enjoyable, we hit you with this: separate empeetreys for each day of iPondering. Each empeetrey may or may not represent the best song Dan heard that day.  We'll leave about three or four up at a time, and then we'll pull 'em down, so get 'em while they hot. Right now we've got days 1,2 and 3/4 up. Thanks much to Dan.

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It's official: getting the HD set has condensed my watchable channel spectrum from about 150 channels to maybe 14.  It has become more and more difficult for me to abide the regular programming when the HD stuff looks so vastly superior. Yesterday I spent about an hour watching an HD show on Discovery about gross bugs.  It was awesome.  There was like a foot-long centipede on there that would absolutely chew you to bits if you ever came across it.  Thank God I live in New York City.  This thing was horrifying, and we should seriously consider domesticating it so we can train it to defend us against the inevitable squid invasion.

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Boy, did I blow my NCAA picks again this year. Why am I so stupid?