Oklahoma!

So I was watching a show on the Biography channel... Or maybe it was on some other channel but the show was called Biography. Or something like that. Either way, the show was about Dana Plato, st'ar of tel'vision's Diff'rent Strokes. So a few th'ngs occurred to me as I was watching this. First of all, Aimee was watching Lost which essentially banished me to other realms of the house. I ended up in one of the spare bedrooms sitting indian style on the floor, with a beer and in a t-shirt and underwear just to give you the visual. You know the story of what happened to Ms. Plato, right? Otherwise you should stop reading this before I ruin it for you. I mean, she was a child star of 80's television so she's obviously deceased like everyone else who was on TV in the 80's. And everybody knows that if drugs or alcohol didn't kill them before 2000, they were just gassed in a gigantic chamber shaped like a big TV so they all got their due. Don't you worry about them...

But something that was interesting was during all the little montages of her going on different drug benders, they would show the same grainy stock footage of someone chopping up cocaine on a mirror, followed by an ashtray with lit cigarettes in it sitting next to a rocks glass filled with some copper colored liquor, then a closeup of someone dragging on a cigarette, then someone rolling a joint and then they'd finally move on as the narration continued about her eventual spiral into death. But that was when it hit me. WHO SHOOTS ALL THAT STOCK FOOTAGE? Is there a company who just shoots stock footage of car crashes, hookers walking down the street, airplanes taking off, people doing drugs?Could we make an entire film with nothing but stock footage?

As the show continued, they'd show the cast of Diff'rent Strokes, with the logo font of "Diff'rent Strokes" which got me thinking, "What was wrong with the 'e' in 'Different'?" I wondered if they left the 'e' out of the scripts for this show. There as no 'e' in Dana Plato's name. Nor in Conrad Bain's, who played Mr. Drummond. Did Todd Bridg's or Gary Col'man take offense? Was it because they were black guys? Was this a conspiracy, and did Dana Plato have to die to finally get it all covered up?

Anyway, she died in the back of a Winnebago from an overdose of Soma and Vicodin in Oklahoma...thus proving my theory. Anyone who has ever experienced fame on television, who ends up in an RV in Oklahoma is going to die. And that's just fact.

The Super Bowel

I know it's not spelled that way but boy! What if it was? Super Bowl 44 is in the books and yes, this one took on a little more importance to me because it involved my chummy school yard cheer skidoos, the New Orleans Saints. And yes, they won. We celebrated by getting blackout drunk, and I ended up sitting at the bar demanding Danny make me "A Metallica Shot!" "Um, what's in a Metallica shot?" "I DUNNO... JUSS MAKE ME A FUGGIN' METALLICA SHOT!" For the record, the all new and hastily improvised Metallica shot is basically Goldschlagger and Jager. While I didn't vomit, I came violently close. I then went on to have conversations with people I don't remember, but the Saints hath woneth, so what doth it matter?
Something worries me a little though. Could this be an end-0f-days phenomenon? I mean, I'm not the most religious card in the deck, but naming a sports team after an angelic servant of the Deity (or as wikipedia defines it, A person officially recognized, especially by canonization, as being entitled to public veneration and capable of interceding for people on earth) seems like it might be a little sacrilicious. And with the whole 2012 bullshit quickly approaching, could this spell doom for us? I feel vindicated for being such a fan of them for so long, finally seeing them win the ultimate in sports lore. But, was I kind of comforted by seeing them be eternal cellar dwellars? I kind of resonated with them. I mean, I kind of feel like I've been marred as this seeming forever loser of sorts. Now I can't relate. They're champions to my chump.
But for the moment, I will toast them and bask in their glory. For all the years of watching some grainy highlight film from the great past, with some historic runback or reception constantly happening with a hapless Saint chasing after them, finally this franchise gets theirs. Congratulations to the Saints. You guys did it, and its well deserved.

So here it is. Metallica Shots all around, please!