So Zany It'll Make Your Asshole Hurt For Days

We've all got our little pet peeves now, haven't we?

Some folks carry that no-bread-with-the-crusts-on thing well into adulthood, when it just isn't cute anymore, Goddamnit. And it is hardly prudent, either, for that matter. Just ask anybody over thirty who's tried to eat an Uncrustables in the break room in front of colleagues.

You will surely not be surprised to learn that I have lots of pet peeves.

Some of them are too annoying to mention in this blog, for fear, mostly, that it'll totally turn you off. Some of them are actually too annoying to even remember so, if I wanted to include some or all of them in this blog, I wouldn't be able to. Not completely, at any rate. They're just too damned annoying and, really, there's just too damned many of them. A lot of shit gets on my wick, don't you know, which makes for a rather challenging existence. Not to mention a, frankly, malodorous little wick.

To spare you unending agony (and, let's be honest, to avoid another emotionally-charged un-following) we're only going to chat about one of my pet peeves today. If you're interested in learning what some of the other ones are, drop me a line.

Trust me-- the cornucopia's full up.

Pet Peeve for Today: Zany

"Zany" might just be one of the worst word in the English language. For me, it ranks up there on the Shit List with awful, nasty, buggery little words like "zoster," "elephantitis," "torsion," and "oprah."

The word "zany," along with words like "crazy" and "hot" and "whatever" is a word that has been so train-fucked by common usage and misappropriation that it no longer carries with it any meaning whatsoever. I have no research to back this up (which is true of most things that I say and write-- caveat emptor) but I'm willing to bet that, if research were done on this topic, said research would be likely to prove that the word "zany" can most commonly be found in the paragraph or two of text used on the back of VHS, Laserdiscs, DVD, and Bluray cases describing comedies for the general public.

Not that the general public actually reads the backs of movie cases, but we persist in some traditions without actually thinking about why we do it. Look at the missionary position, for example.

I try my best to not purchase, rent, or view a movie that features the word "zany" in either the synopsis on the back, or any hand-plucked review quotes from "The Washington Post" or some schmendrick working at an ABC affiliate in Atlanta. If some idiot thinks this film is "zany" then, chances are good that I'd rather stick a funnel into my left ear and pour a pot of freshly brewed coffee inside it than watch said "zany" movie.

I might have liked "zany" movies back in... I don't know... 1991. Ironically, that's when "Drop Dead Fred" came out, which I recall enjoying very much when I was eleven. The scene where Phoebe Cates is in the restaurant on a date and the invisible (to the guy) Fred is making Phoebe Cates do Dr. Strangelove-like motions with her hands and then makes her fling a plate of pasta across the room is classic. Well, it was classic. And, probably, zany.

........

Aw, hell-- I just watched the clip on YouTube. And it's. still. both.

Anyway, I looked up the definition of "zany" and "zaniness" and it just never quite seems to fit the media it supposedly defines.

"Ludicrously or whimsically comical; clownish."

I mean-- does that sound like Monty Python's Flying Circus to you? I don't know-- maybe at times, and I've heard the boys described as "zany" but it just is a word that feels so irrevocably... cheap. And insipid.

One of my favorite films-- maybe my favorite film is called "Funny Bones." It's a little movie that most people have probably never heard of (that makes me sound like a zany fucking little snob-bitch, but I think it's true) that was filmed in Blackpool. A long time ago, a friend of mine showed me the film, and I fell in love. Only after viewing it did he show me the box for the VHS tape. And I saw that word "zany." It wasn't zany at all. It was funny, yes, desperately and painfully so, and that's part of the film's message-- about how dark and twisted and, frankly, sad comedy can be-- but it wasn't at all zany. Even though there were clowns. And pratfalls. And sightgags.

It was... I don't know. Beautiful.

You can call me a lot of things. Just don't call me zany.

Stop Me If You've Heard This One Before

I complain a lot. I mean, Jesus-- look at yesterday's post.

You like it when I complain. I know you do. It's the main reason you stick around here, isn't it? That, and I use words like "burgeoning" and "dildo-face" in the same post-- so you can feel sophisticated and immature all at once around here, and nobody's going to judge you. Least of all me.

Dildo-face.

If you start to think about it, there's a lot of shit in this world to complain about. The padding on the seat of my wife's car, for example-- it's too thin. This brotha just needs more cush for his tush, n'yah mean?

While we're on the subject of complaints, I drove past a guy today who was walking along one of the main drags out here, and I feel the need to create a formal complaint against him. See, he was wearing dressy trousers, wingtips, a blue Oxford button-down shirt, a navy blazer, a red and blue patterned bowtie... and a baseball cap.

Call my reaction to this sight disproportionate, but I was outraged, such that my eyeballs popped, I did a double-take, and I actually hit the steering wheel with my fist out of sheer frustration and disbelief. I mean, get a fucking fedora, man. You look like a baseball umpire from the 1930s. I just didn't understand what would have inspired this man to top of his otherwise smart ensemble with the symbol of don't-give-a-shit-Americana: the baseball cap-- the ubiquitous skull-toppery of the given-up class. This man is about two steps up from sweatpants. And we all know that, once you go out in sweatpants, you are two things: 1.) truly a Philadelphian and, 2.) never having sex that doesn't involve a five dollar bill and/or feces ever again.

I could fill a book with complaints about America's obsession with professional sports, but, instead, I think I'll just devote a paragraph to it in this blog-- because people don't actually read books anymore, they read blogs, which is a good thing for me, since I haven't had a book published since I was a junior in college. And nobody read that either, even back when people were reading books, or at least pretending they were.

I don't mind that people go to sporting events-- that's their thing. What I do mind is the incessant yammering on about sports as if the outcome of a sporting event somehow has some importance to the rest of the world. I'm never more outraged than I am when I see a headline about how So-and-So linebacker has a sprained ankle, or Thus-and-Such pitcher has a jammed index finger. This is news. I'll never forget, back in 1995 or 1996 I think it was, one Saturday night three Philadelphia police officers were shot in separate incidents, and what was the headline on the front page of the "Inquirer"? Some d-nut on the Eagles hurt his ankle.

For realsies.

Oftentimes I'm tempted to complain about the music at the gym. If I had a portable music device, I would bring it, and elliptical myself to death to the music of "The Yeomen of the Guard" or perhaps some celtic folk ballads, but I don't. Actually, my wife has an iPod, but we mostly use it for long car trips, so, when we're not on a long car trip, I tend to operate as if the iPod doesn't exist.

At the gym, they play a Philly station that plays what I guess is popular music. There's that song that uses the music from "There's a place in France, where the naked ladies dance"-- I don't know what it's called, but it's on all the time. And the one with the chorus, "I'm going solo, going solo, going solo." I don't know what any of these songs are, but they're always on. Always. And there's one about having sex or something. They're probably all about having sex. Well, except the "going solo" one-- that's obviously about masturbation.

Of course, the more I thought about these stations that play the same song six or seven, make it inordinately popular, and then drop it like a cold dog turd, the more I realized that I would be a bit of a hypocrite were I to complain about the music at the gym if I did not identify myself as an equal perpatrator of this very practice.

See, it's all Pandora's fault. It really appeals to my perseverative nature in that, once I find a station I like, and have selected twenty or thirty songs that I like affiliated with that artist or station, every time I am at the computer for an extended period of time (usually blogging) I subject myself, and my wife, who is often up here sewing sock monkeys or tea wallets or clothes, to the same twenty or thirty songs.

And lots of them are old maritime songs. "Leave Her, Johnny, Leave Her," (Stan Rogers) "Mussels in the Corner" (Gordon Bok), "Lullaby for the Times" (Ewan MacColl & Peggy Seeger), oh, and there are lots of others. Playing over and over. And I could complain about that, too, but I'm far too busy reaching out to you.

And enjoying my mussels in the corner.