Danny Gallagher

As Addictive As Crack: Donkey Kong

Wed, 28 Jul 2010 20:42:43 -0400

There is something to be said for the video games of yesterday. Sure the graphics are crude. The sounds are muffled and couldn't sound more realistic if every living thing talked like a tracheomety patient. The challenges seem so easy that a child-aged caveman with rudimentary motor skills and a crude understanding of the concept "Fire no like skin" could complete them.

Wait a minute, Mr. Metaphorical Exaggeration (if that's your real name). Just because the game lacks a fast processor and an ability to digitize real world conditions in a high definition environment doesn't mean they are easy. Some of the hardest and most difficult video challenges came out of the 1970's and 80's, challenges that left glitter haired glam rockers in arcades for days on end trying to eek out another win in the column for "man" against "machine."

Take for instance the perrineal Nintendo arcade and home console classic, "Donkey Kong." The entire game consists of only THREE levels and they will be the hardest three of anything you'll ever encounter in your life (i.e. trimesters, little league at bats, steps of a 12-step program).

The first time I played it, I was actually a fully grown adult (in physical status only, emotionally is another blog post). I couldn't even get passed the first three levels of the FIRST LEVEL. That stupid monkey just kept throwing barrel after barrel down the chute and poor weak Mario could barely muster enough leg and calf strength to vault over them. Even when I managed to snag that useless hammer and clear three or four of the barrels away, one would always manage to sneak on top of me or underneath the head of the mallet and send Mario into another death spiral of doom. And that monkey, that stupid monkey would just keep grinning and laughing in his snooty monkey laugh that just screamed, "Human evolution? Bah!"

Since I landed a Wii, I've been playing the original NES version a lot trying to improve my high score with each session. It's almost become an obsession trying to best the biggest monkey ego since that gorilla who learned sign language. This relentless pursuit of infinity has showed me that even though it's just a three level layer of maddening fun, it's still very deep.

Take the game's titular protagonist. He's a giant monkey who kidnaps our hero's dainty girlfriend and puts a never-ending waterfall of obstacles in his path to keep him from reaching him. Perhaps it's an allegorical metaphor for man's unrelenting insistence on distancing himself his animal roots whether that be evolution, the non-existence of a divine creator or just our innate ability to deny our true existence, even in the face of a never-ending flow of information and emerging discoveries. You'd never get that much philosophy in college for a quarter.

Personally, I like to believe it's really about the immovable and unstoppable force of love. Physical strength may separate us. Hate may tear us apart, but love will repair the damage, that and a whole roll of quarters.

Monster Horror Chiller Stream of Consciousness Theater

Sun, 6 Jun 2010 22:42:31 -0400

I haven't done one of these in a while and I'm finding it more than a little difficult to start writing tonight, so here's an old trick I picked up from my college days (other than get drunk, pass out and wake up in another time zone.)

I take a book, any book (WARNING: the book you choose must have words), pick three words out of it and write a continuous story based on those words. The story can either turn out to be cohesive and serious or completely mental and either way, it's funny, intentional or not, which most of my writing is anyway.

These words were taken from Joe Queenan's hilarious "Red Lobster, White Trash and the Blue Lagoon," a book that every self-respecting pop culture hater should either have read or at least used to replace a missing leg on their couch.

So here goes...

-sang
-putrid
-disembowelment

Milli Vanilli took to the stage. This was their big comeback tour. They have been thrown out of the spotlight since the lipsyncing scandal exposed them for the frauds that they were, but after a few short lessons and some vocal training, they were ready to let the world hear their true voices.

Milli was a little afraid to let his golden throat shine.

"Vanilli," Milli said with fear in his voice, "we really shouldn't be doing this. It's not right."

"Shut your face, Milli," said Vanilli. "We've paid our debts and worked hard to get here. Sure we did sing before, but it's time we gave it another shot and look at that crowd out there. They love us!"

The crowd cheered in impatient glee for the men (?) of the hour. Little did Milli or Vanilli know that they weren't actually fans. They were just anticipating a massive train wreck, an utter disaster of Hindenburg sized proportions, a vocal fuck up so great that NASA was also monitoring the Earth's sound wave levels from space so they could hear the groan echo in the vacuum of the infinite universe.

"You know what happened last time," Milli said. "I can't get over it. It's still running through my mind. It's taken me years to get over what happened to those people. I can't go through that again."

"Stop yer blubberin," Vanilli said. "So a couple of people died. Big deal. Just because you sang at the concert that killed don't mean you're responsible."

Milli's thoughts raced back to that horrible time that almost cut him and his vocal brother out of the business like a putrid, rancid, benign tumor that's not even good enough to produce cancerous cells. The audio equipment had malfunctioned causing a massive amount of feedback to surge through the crowd. The sound knocked some people off of their feet and cracking their skulls on the hard pavement. One spectator's head actually exploded, presumed from the amount of force that pushed him on the ground and made his noggin blow up like a ripe cantaloupe on Gallagher's smashing table.

The duo took the crowd to thunderous cheering mixed with hints of laughter. Vanilli soaked the entire moment in but Milli had a cautious look of worry on his face.

"Hello Hoboken!" Vanilli screamed without using a mic. "Tonight, we perform for the first time live in almost 10 years and to prove that we can actually sing, we're not only going to do but we're not even going to use microphones."

Vanilli slapped Milli on his purple coat, cueing him.

"Er, that's right, New Jersey," he said. "The voices you hear will be our very own."

The band cued up and began to take their first breath before unleashing a monster note. Milli and Vanilli simulatenously took deep breaths and began to utter the first D-minor they had uttered since their career went belly up like so much oil coated catfish.

The note echoed through the amphitheatre and hit the crowd like a tidal wave, sweeping them off their feet, barely giving them time to scream in terror. The sound of their pain was muffled by the awful rankness of the sound eminating from the duo's curse layrnxs.

The light orange glow soon gave way to a dark hue of black and red as the mist of human blood filled the air. The note ended and silence stood all around Milli and Vanilli. No crowds cheering/laughing at their horrible music. No back up band or singers trying to drown out the notes of their awful badness. Just a pile of bodies lay around them and their blood soaked clothes. Signs of disembowelment and carnage lay all around them. The place looked like a strip of film from a Quentin Tarantino movie that barely saw five seconds of time on the cutting room floor.

"Not again," Milli muttered. "Not...again."

Don't Shoot Until You See the Whites of Their Balls OR Why Golf is The Universe's Greatest Reliever of Pent Up Aggression

Mon, 24 May 2010 01:49:50 -0400

Some of you may not know this, but the flesh sack that carries my internal organs, skeletal structure and soul turned 30 a few weeks ago. Those of you who have survived this momentous milestone know the thoughts one has when the day passes them by like a Brooklyn cabbie in a Harlem neighborhood.

"Oh, that's right, I'm mortal. I can die. I'd better cut back on the cake and whiskey or at least not have them back to back so much."

"I need to find someone to prolong my species. I probably shouldn't use that line when I'm asking them out, though."

"AUUUUGHHH! I'm a smoking, red meat eating, Xbox playing, beer swilling, libertarian voting couch potato! I'd better change my ways or I'll die tomorrow."

Surprisingly, I didn't have those thoughts. I'm not in great shape, but I eat relatively healthy and try to find new ways to get active. I'm not a heavy drinker and by that, I mean, I don't try to find the worm in every bottle of Jack Daniels. I was okay with it. Luckily, my friends were there to remind me of it.

One of them bought me a membership to a new high-tech driving range. It's one of those golf facilities that keeps track of your score as you whack golf balls into the ether of darkness to not only remind you how much you suck at golf, but to also remind you that if this were a real golf course, you would probably have hit some 80 year old schmo in the head and have to cover your greens fees and felony assault bail before you get back to the clubhouse to clean the divots off of your shoes.

The funny part is that I've become quite addicted to it. There is no greater method of relieving tension and stress than by whacking something with a driver as hard as your flabby arms will allow. All the nerves and frustration of the day just drain out of your body like sap from a tree spigot.

And the really scary part is that I'm quite good at it. Just think, by the time I turn 40, I may be one of those plaid pants wearing, cigar chomping retirees with a 12 handicap and a 401K that could make my student loan company wish they had held on to me a few years longer.

iMad at the iPad OR How the Audible Gratification of Information Can Make the Smartest Man Look Like a Drooling Clown AKA Hype

Tue, 18 May 2010 01:20:07 -0400

I'm not proud to admit this but when I first heard about the idea of the iPad, I immediately fell in love with it. It was like watching a tall, striking blonde sashay into the club as her long, yummy legs and inviting smile turned every male head in the room so hard, the spine crack could be heard by the martian's' SETI program.

It just sounded exactly like the kind of thing I thought the future would hold as a kid. The very thought that I would be around when the Earth turned to the year 2000 could hold on to the corners of my imagination. It wasn't just a number. It would be a massive change. Streets would be replaced with skyways in which solar powered flight cars zoomed across the blue ceiling of space. Televisions could sense what you wanted to watch and zap to it in a instant without you even having to get up and curse at the missing remote. Coffee and other stimulants would come in pill form erasing the need for stained teeth, stink breath and change since Starbucks would still charge you a loan payment just to get your shaky hands on a cup.

Of course, hearing and seeing are two entirely different senses, even if both of them are hooked up to your brain. Hearing about something is a little limited since you can't actually see the thing you are hearing about, so your brain conjures images of something fantastic and wonderful. When I heard Apple was producing an iPad (back then, it was nicknamed an iTablet because everyone thought Apple wouldn't be stupid enough to release a product that sounded like a high tech feminine hygiene product), my brain thought it would completely replace the laptop, a device that is already wonderful since it allows you to put off work by surfing the Internet and playing "Jeopardy!" online no matter where you are instead of just at the office.

Seeing it made me wish I could punch my own ears without causing permanent ringing. It's a clunky, bothersome piece of machinery. The thought is in the right place, but the execution is as horrid as an axe-wielding beheader with poor depth perception.

My local Best Buy got their mitts on a couple of test models and I raced out the door to try them for myself. All of my tech savvy reporter friends had gotten a chance to test drive the baby at various conventions and even after Steve Jobs' infamous "unveiling of the evil," the lesser known tagline for the event.

People who called it an iPhone that didn't make calls were scorned and ridiculed in my mind as cynical knee-jerkers who only looked at things with their eyes, the way Jesus told us not to. Now I'm demanding that Jesus apologize to them because they were right on. There is nothing really different or redeeming about it compared to the iPhone, except that the screen is 10 times bigger and you can play racing games by driving it like an actual steering wheel, which is twice as cool if you duct tape it to your car's steering wheel and play it as you drive.

The keyboard is also a mess. My grand plan was to buy an iPad and turn it into my "on-the-go" computer since my laptop is the only major piece of machinery I have for my writing. It treats every pair of hands as if the fingertips are the same circumference as a set of baseballs, so every time you hit a key, you also hit every key surrounding it. If I tried to turn in a story or a piece on an iPad, my editors would have started wondering if I scored an English degree from DeVry (which is still twice as useless as a degree in medieval tapestries from any other university).

It's still a cool thing to have and might be fun if all I did for a living was playing video games and watching television shows. Of course, that is in a nutshell what I do for a living but I also have to write about it and until Apple develops an "iNdentured Servant," I'm not going to buy an iPad anytime soon.

I'll Be Attending...and Speaking (?!?) at the Erma Bombeck Writer's Convention

Wed, 14 Apr 2010 15:24:24 -0400

I've done a lot of crazy things in my time. I've ridden the DART train without the benefit and comfort of my pants. I've driven a souped-up Corvette Z28 at Texas Motor Speedway (I swear that story is coming soon). I've voluntarily drank a shot glass of Tabasco.

I never thought that "shaping minds" would be added to that list, especially since mine is in the shape of a roadkill raccoon, as evidenced by the above.

I'll be flying to fabulous Dayton, Ohio for the Erma Bombeck Writers' Convention where I'll be one of a dozen very talented speakers including such notables as "Stuff White People Like" creator Christian Lander, author Tracy Beckerman, "Late Show with David Letterman" writer and author Bill Scheft, author W. Bruce Cameron, publishing expert Sophfronia Scott and USA Today columnist Craig Wilson.

LINK: http://humorwriters.org/

Oh and thanks to Chris White, the creator of the legendary comedy site TopFive.com, for cooking up with "I'm with Bobo" image. I wish I had thought of it earlier. I could have bought and sold the world ten times over on the T-shirt sales alone.

Two New Lists of Hilarity for Spike.com

Tue, 13 Apr 2010 05:12:44 -0400

If you had...
one shot...
and one opportunity...
to seize everything you ever wanted...
Would you capture it or just totally wussy and go back to your comfortable life of using bean bag chairs as living room furniture and mooching off your neighbor's cable?

If you wouldn't, check out some of these larger pair carriers on my list of the "Eight Ballsiest Bets that Paid Off Big" for Spike.com.

LINK: http://www.spike.com/blog/8-of-ballsiest-bets/93745

And why am I voluntarily putting a picture of Boy George on my webpage? Am I suffering from some kind of neurological disorder that only House can diagnose? Will my insurance cover it?

He's just one of the "10 Funniest Celebrity Near-Deaths" on my other Spike.com list.

LINK: http://www.spike.com/blog/10-funniest/94021

A Recollection of Childhood Memories Through the Miracle of Social Networking OR Why I Drink

Mon, 29 Mar 2010 06:09:33 -0400

If you ever start thinking about your childhood, one of the following thoughts pops into your brain...

1-"Oh God, I was such a nerd back then."
2-"I hope that guy/gal who called me a nerd is burning in the lowest level of Scavullo hell, especially if they aren't technically dead."
3-"I wonder where that teacher who ran the AV Club ended up."
4-"I better eat something. Don't want to take my Zoloft on an empty stomach."

Memories of lost childhood moments are tolerable, because they come with the awesome, God-given power of self-delusion. The actual moments are hardly as accurate as your brain recorded them and your subconscious always tweaks little aspects to spare your ego from suffering any crippling pain.

Video tape, however, can make your brain jump out of your skull in search of the nearest, sharpest object, so it can commit hari-kari.

Just such a memory came rushing back to me when an old junior high school chum uploaded a video we produced to YouTube. We wrote a faux news show called "WLIB News," named so because we shot it in the school's library, that tackled such hard hitting issues as the dangerousness of "Beavis and Butt-head" and the level of violence in video games. The CIA took forever to answer our "Freedom of Information" requests for the missing files on downward bullet penetration in the Warren Report, so we were forced to do "fluff" pieces instead.

Here is the first episode we ever produced of the show and it better be the last one or I'll have to start charging my subconscious overtime. There's a depression on, people.

00:10 - Before you ask, no, the tape was not sped up causing my voice to reach the pitch of a dog whistle. That's all me, baby. Puberty would not hit a homer for another two years and my voice cracked all throughout junior high. You could set your watch to the A-minors my hormonally deficient voice would hit. In fact, that's how the school announced the start of the next period.

I also make no apologies for my choice of wardrobe. Wearing thick wool plaid in the height of the New Orleans heat is what kept me down to such a gangly 90 pounds, 20 of which actually came from my hair.

00:20 - Ralph is quite the character. In fact, like a lot of guys I knew at that time, his unbridled enthusiasm for "stuff that is cool" has inspired a lot of characters and stories in my work in some form or another. Plus, "Naked people are cool" isn't a bad mission statement to have for life.

01:00 - To me, the funniest part of this "Beavis and Butt-head" debate is the fact that two guys are on the "for" side and two girls are on the "against." Could their be a clearer metaphor for our nation's drop out rate?

01:53 - Blake Bailey, Mr. Bailey as we called him, was my eighth grade advanced English teacher at the time and he was an unbashed fan of "B&B," so much so that he incorporated them into his lessons and actually had a hand-drawn, motivational poster of them in his classroom. This made him twice as cool as he already was, which in teacher conversion was just above the guy who exchanges tickets for plastic combs at the arcade.

He was a really interesting and captivating English teacher. He introduced me to authors like George Orwell and Raymond Carter and achieved literary stardom in his own right as a biographer of writers such as Richard Yates and John Cheever. I like to think he looks back at our interview as preparation for bigger moments in the media spotlight like his sitdown with NPR's Diane Rehm for how not to conduct an interview (here's a tip: use a microphone that actually works).

03:54 - Ahh, the "Hidden Talent Search," a true exploration of education that occurs in our national school system. If it weren't for the million of tax dollars that went to our public education system, I would never have learned how to wiggle my ears, imitate random strangers for my own amusement or the elasticity of the metacarpals.

05:18 - Even at 13 years of age, my comedic timing was Ginsu-sharp. Catskills, here I come!

An Exploration of the Passing of Time and Man's Inhumanity to His Own Mortality OR Desk Calendars That Suck

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 21:16:00 -0400

My desk has more useless clutter than the $1 DVD discount bin at Wal-Mart. It's stacked with papers that need to be filed but never will be, notebooks from events that my Zoloft-coated mind can barely remember and tons of desk toys that only serve to mock me as they stand on high as "Kings of Crap Mountain."

So it's beyond my comprehension why I ventured out to the local book vendor to purchase a desk calendar, a device designed to keep business folk in line by constantly reminding them of the date with some humorous theme to take their mind off the fact that they are slowly dying. Sure every day is just a closer day to one's own passing, but it's not so bad thanks to Garfield!

The desk calendar itself is so cluttered with variety and chaos that it almost defeats the purpose of owning a desk calendar. It's designed to keep your life more organized by giving you one more thing to place in your already cluttered life. Some of the themes of desk calendars defy description. It's jaw-dropping for two reasons: (1) it's hard to imagine that anyone would buy them and (2) that they are bought with such frequency that they keep returning year after year.

The New York Times irks me on a daily basis, but none more so than its infamous crossword puzzle, edited by the evil puzzle genius Will Shortz. I love doing crossword puzzles, but Shortz's are something of a mental torture test, an intellectual session of waterboarding, a virtual testicle clamp for people who aim for smartness.

Having to do one on a daily basis would not only keep me from completing the most basic of daily tasks, but it might also cause an untold number of brain maladies that my insurance company would consider as "pre-existing conditions" since I was born with a brain.

Here's all you need to know if you purchase this calendar: every song ever written by Blink 182="crap." It's a fact.

Something tells me that people who play "World of Warcraft" might find this calendar helpful since they have no concept of time due to their complete avoidance of the outside world. Of course, when your days consist of "flaming some noob with a +1 sword" and not dating, maybe calendars are of little use to you anyway.

Yes, if you didn't shell out $150 in NPR donations for this hilarious desk calendar, you can also pick up at your nearest book store at your convenience. Now you can constantly hear the Boston cackling of Click and Clack every night of the week instead of just Sundays after you catch their show.

Mine is telling me to "kill." I guess that means I should eat more fruit.

Yes, don't sweat the small stuff. Sweat the big stuff like not being able to pay your taxes, figuring out what that purple lump on the back of your neck is even though you have no insurance and if your oldest son wanting a purse for Christmas is just a "phase." Besides, you could use to sweat a bit more, fatty.

Get Out of My Dreams and Into My Credit Score or (in best Rod Roddy voice) A NEW CAAAAAR!

Sun, 21 Feb 2010 22:33:51 -0500

That car you're looking at and drooling over like a hungry dog staring into the dumpster of his neighborhood Chili's (which many people don't know is actually the FIRST step in their food service process) isn't just my dream car. It's my actual car.

Last week, the ride that used to just sit in my fevered imagination as an unattainable dream became the unattainable. My car is a Ford Mustang!

Well, it's not the same exact Mustang as the one in the picture. It's the regular V6 model, not the souped-up GT version. It's only two headlamps instead of four. Mine is the hard top model, not the convertible. It's also silver, not red. And I don't have a cool, open desert landscape to park it so I can marvel at its awesomeness when I'm not driving it. Also, Steve McQueen's dead and even if he wasn't, I couldn't hire him to drive me around at high speeds like we're chasing down two hitmen in trenchcoats.

Of course, it's not exactly mine. Technically, the bank still owns it but I get to drive it around, so that's a pretty sweet deal. They are, however, welcome to come over on the weekend and marvel at its brilliance and the power it bestows upon me. I'll even kick in the beer.

It's just awesome. It always has been, always will be. The Mustang has set the design and technical standard for muscle cars. It's cool. No, it's beyond cool. No, it's the reason D.C. has been getting all that snow.

There's always a danger, of course, that it's too cool. Don't get me wrong. I'm not an egotistical jerk who thinks that someone's vehicle of choice defines their character and worth as a person. The color also plays an important part. I like being an approachable person and I don't want anyone to think that this awesome car of American ingenuity and work ethic actually puts people off or turns them away from me. Everyone has a gut reaction when they see someone driving down the road in a certain type of car. That's why I drove the hunk of metallic junk that I had for so long, that and I really like having central heating and air conditioning and running water in the same apartment.

So if you see me in my Mustang, don't be afraid to come up to me, shake my hand or whatever part of my body of your choosing. Don't be afraid to say hello or even give me a big hug. Of course, you'll have to catch me first.

Samuel L. Jackson Learns from His Doctor that the Tumor Was Benign

Thu, 18 Feb 2010 20:24:00 -0500