Bill Murray's still got it

What do you do when you become a comedic superstar? Take advantage of it.

I found out about Bill Murray's antics one night after telling the story I heard about Emma Watson in college (see my earlier post).  Kyle, a friend of mine, told me the story of his friend that happened one early morning outside of Union Square.


Kyle's friend (let's call him Damien) bought hash browns from a nearby Dunkin Donuts and was waiting to cross a street.  As he waited for the light to change, a hand reached over his shoulder and grabbed a hash brown.

The hand moved in one smooth motion, like grabbing a toothpick from the complimentary bin at a hostess's stand.  Damien turned to confront his hash brown burglar and ended up staring Bill Murray in the face.

Bill Murray finished eating the hash brown and looked square into his vitcim's face. "No one will ever believe you."

And, he walked away.

Can anyone else really pull it off with being a major d bag?  I doubt it.  Bill knows it too, and has a monopoly on these candid moments of comedic gold.  Don't take my word for it, take the interenet's. . .

Bill Murray At Random

Fantasy, the Heroic Anti-hero of football.

Before I rant, I'll lay out my back story with football.  It's relatively new to me.  When I was a kid, I was shunned from pop culture.  Shunned to the extent of not knowing what the Superbowl was when I was 9.

Public high school and a liberal arts college did their part in giving me a crash course on everything trendy.  But I've always been an outsider to the sports world.  I can't speak the language of sport stats. I can't tell you what school whatever burly, short-lived sensation of a running back went to.  At least, I couldn't until Fantasy football brought me in. Hard.  Now, onto my rant.

Fantasy Football makes football relevant in a weird, perverted way.  Granted, I don't get it half the time.  But when I do, it's not rewarding. I don't feel happy when a player does well, I feel relieved.  Fantasy football's a constant stream of worrying about players living up to projections, warding off injuries, avoiding season ending tackles, recovering quickly from a concussion, or finishing off a suspension for being a dumb ass and getting busted for drunk driving in San Diego. Twice.

I don't have team loyalty, I only care about certain players. I obsess over stats like Emperor Dawes (a best friend of mine who's anal about having an immaculately kept wardrobe) obssesses over wrinkles in his starched oxfords.  I root against defenses and pray to all the gods for injuries to rival superstars.  I watch games, but cheer for both sides. I'm a bastardized fan.

Fantasy turns football into sales and turns up the heat for every fan invovled.  Like Alec Baldwin preached in his cinematic apex (30 Rock is tv, not cinema), you have to always be closing.

This one's for Dena

There I was, a second semester freshman sitting in a class struggling to make sense of biological classifications. 

In this class, 25% of your semester grade depended on a presentation of a biological disease, depiction of its causal pathways, treatment options, and predicting what future research can lead to in terms of dealing with it.

As a group led us through Huntington’s Disease, I was enamored.  Not with the presentation, but with a presenter.  Her name was Dena.  She had Demi Moore’s hair, Claire Dane’s eyes, and Reese Witherspoon’s body.  

All I needed was a friend’s approval and I was sold on going after her.  So I leaned over to my friend Hannah.  “She’s pretty cute, right?”

“Yeah, you should ask her out.” Her words felt like gunfire at the start of a race. I was ready.  I was going for it.

 

The timing couldn’t have been better, and the timing couldn’t have been worse.  As Hannah unknowingly gave me a green light, Dena’s presentation reached the question and answer portion. 

This was my chance.  My hand shot up.

“Yes, you.”  Her eyes locked on me. She was ready to answer anything.

I stalled, tried to compose myself, and squeaked “How do we detect it at an early age?” It was a bullshit question and a lame cover for wussing out on asking her out.

A few more people asked equally boring questions and the presentation reached its end.  As Dena’s group made their way towards the side of the stage in front of our lecture hall of three hundred students, my hand shot back up.

“Wait, Matt’s got another question for the group.”

“Actually, this question’s for Dana.” Her name was Dena, not Dana. I’d already shot myself in the foot but kept sprinting for it.

“What are you doing tonight? I was hoping we could grab some coffee, talk about Huntington’s Disease, and go from there.”

Dena was ready for any question except that.  Her eyes locked onto mine in shock, her mouth dropped, and silence came out.  This was all the class needed for laughter to erupt.  It started with a cackle in the upper right where someone woke up and realized what was happening.  Then it spread like Chlamydia in the late sixties. 

Little did I know, Dena had a personality like a corpse and a long-distance boyfriend of five years.

My friends fell out of their seat as their bodies contorted with bursts of laughter.  Seriously, they were on the ground. When you combine a strict classroom striving to be as professional as college students could be, a twist is a shock and a shock is what a class of calculated thought never expected.

Dena’s face glowed with red like Darth Vader’s lightsaber before he took of Skywalker’s hand.  Without a word, she walked off the stage and made her way towards her seat in the crowd of people who couldn’t stop laughing at my expense.

I couldn’t think, I could only react.

“Did I mention I’ll treat?” Was all it took for her to turn about face as she walked by my row and snap back. As she turned, the class silenced themselves to see how much worse I could crash and burn.

“For the record, I have a boyfriend and he’s visiting this week.”

Again, I couldn’t think. So I reacted.

“Can I meet him? I’d like to see what I’m up against.”

Once again, she wasn’t ready for my question.  She turned her body away from me and her hair flung like a middle finger as it followed suit with the snappiness of her walk away.

Laughs died down slowly as people dabbed their eyes and sighed like they just had a Thanksgiving meal.

“Matt, remind me to never let you ask a question in my class.” Of course my professor couldn't resist kicking me when I was down.  Who could?

Three Points for Griffindor

This story came from the little sister of a friend of a best friend of mine and it's still great.

Emma Watson is a pre-med student at Brown University.  Apparently Hermione, Harry Potter's uber studious best friend, wasn't too foreign of a character to her.

Our story takes place at Emma's Organic Chemistry class at Brown.  Emma sits in the front row to avoid excess attention and help her focus on class content.  The teacher loves to quiz his students on the fly and today he targets Emma with a hard question about covalent bonds.

Emma pauses, thinks, and answers.  She gets it right.  Then, the inevitable happens from the back row.

"THREE POINTS FOR GRIFFINDOR!"

The class erupts with laughter.  Everyone, including the teacher, wheez, cough, and roar with delight. Everyone except Emma who took in stride and took it in silence.

True story.

Twenty bucks says the guy who yelled it out only took the class for that opportunity.  I know I would have, which leads to my story of using a pre-med class to try to get a date.  I'll tell it next time so stay tuned.

My relative. Cornelius O'Neil.

I'd like you to meet Cornelius O'Neil, he's from my Irish side.

This is a picture which a good friend of mine uncovered while image searching.  I don't know how he found the picture because it's hung on an oak mantle of a grandiose cabin deep in the northern forest of Wisconsin.

As you can tell, he was beautiful.  Women sang songs of warning about him and men sang songs in general.  He lived with a touring whistler band that swooned the hearts of hummingbirds (colonial talk for crowds of slaves who came up with soul songs by humming them while they worked the fields) using only puckered lips and tonal duality.

Sometimes I wonder who I would've been had I been around for that photo.  As you can tell, he dressed well in colonial layers with a fashion forward victorian esque edge.  

Sadly, Cornelius's reign was cut short by pneumonia. He survived, but it killed his lung capacity which short handed his career. 

Bet you didn't know I was that cool, or at least my blood is.


Final note on Cornelius, you may have heard his most famous song, it's the jingle at the end of the Old Spice spots.

Bon Iver in Paris

Bon Iver is a favorite of mine. If you know them, you will love this.  If you don't, be ready for an intimate folk sound that was born in the deep Northern woods of Wisconsin where Justin Vernon escaped to after a hard break up.

He did something beautiful with his pain and created music that anyone who's ever been through a rough patch can find solace in.

Especially this set. It was done in Paris while they were on a break from their European tour.  Thank you JibberJabber.com for posting this for me to steal.


Take Away Show #93 _ Bon Iver (full version) from vincent moon / temporary areas on Vimeo.

Their words taste like a plumber's hankerchief

It's hard to be a writer in advertising.  Duh.

I try to keep my subconscious loaded with quality content of Hemingway, Dostoyevsky, and Jersey Shore (kidding).  But when I see tags like "Treat your eyes to a feat of surprise" plastered across a bus for Cirque De Solei, I feel the creative feces return to rot the brain like Bon Jovi doing a reunion tour in Jersey.

Bitching about it won't do any good.  I'm done ranting and complaining, it's time to find inspiration which means I need to get after the creative scene out here in Chicago. 

I don't have a major cash flow to hit up every rock show across town, but I've heard whisperings of a decent creative scene in this city.  It's yet to be seen by yours truly.  I won't lose heart, and I'll start asking around a little more.  And when / if I find a few decent spots, I'll write them up here for the one person who still reads this after my fourth month hiatus.  I love you mom.