Time flies when you're being flayed alive

Has it already been a year since our last normal day before the Mayan Apocalypse? How time flies when you’re being flayed alive by demons as lava bubbles up from the poisoned Earth below you.

How I remember that last day of normalcy. With the sun hugging the horizon, I went about my business blissfully. I went to work. I cooked dinner. I watched TV. And how I scoffed at those who were making their final preparations before the world went to hell. Oh, how I scoffed. I mean, how could the end of a calendar from thousands of years ago prophesy anything? How could we possibly read “Apocalypse” into any of that? But I learned a hard lesson the next day.

The image will be forever burned in my mind. We were driving to Ohio for the family Christmas party. All of a sudden, dead ahead of us, the eastern sun turned black. The earth shuddered and cracked, leaving the Pennsylvania Turnpike a charred and smoking mess. I could hear them all around: the flapping of wings and screeching coming from a million horrors thought long dead, once again walking the Earth.

Then I saw it: the advancing army of zombies, the reanimated corpses of the ancient Mayans come to destroy all those who laughed off their prophecy. Idiots like me who thought 2012 was just a disaster movie. A year ago tomorrow, Dec. 21, 2012, nothing was left of Christmas joy except the torn wrapping paper and scorched wreaths of how we once lived.

Oh, I guess it isn’t so bad now. I’ve grown accustomed to our new Mayan overlords and the beatings don’t really even hurt anymore. But I can’t help but look back one year ago at the society we were and wish I’d appreciated what we had a little more. I will never scoff at an Apocalypse prediction again.

Brian's I'm-a-Couch-Potato Top TV of 2013

Oh, here we go. I watch a lot more TV than I go to the movies and I agree with the argument that TV is better quality than the movies these days since there are shows I will not miss but very few movies that I have to see immediately. Here’s the best of what I saw in 2013. (There are a few shows that would score high on this list, such as Mad Men and Veep but I’m still catching up and didn’t see a 2013 episode of either.)

9. The Goldbergs. I find The Goldbergs to be delightful with the great touch of ending every episode with the actual ‘80s home videos from the show’s creator that portray what the episode recalled. The show is more than just a greatest hits parade of ‘80s kitsch since the family dynamics have an emotional truth that transcends the decade. At first the anachronisms bothered me as the show mixed up cultural touchstones from different points in the decade but I realized they don’t matter because that’s how families remember things: We don’t always remember what year something happened and events get all mixed up in time.

8. American Horror Story: Coven. I will have to wait until the series ends to see what point it might be trying to get at. The show is worth it to watch Jessica Lange, Angela Bassett and Kathy Bates chew scenery.

7. The Walking Dead. I finally gave in and started watching, despite my disinterest in zombies. We just finished season 3, which notably improved on season 2’s torpor at the farm. I was happy to see the season end with Rick realizing how cold he’d become to strangers and letting some Woodbury people stay at the prison. When the world is overrun with zombies, humans can’t afford to go killing (or not trying to save) what few humans are left, not without a really compelling reason.

6. House of Cards. This show was a fun, campy potboiler. I don’t know enough about the inner workings of politics to know if it’s realistic but one thing I do question is why Kevin Spacey would leave the gorgeous, commanding Robin Wright to have an affair with annoying, ferret-faced Kate Mara. I assume season 2 will be about Spacey’s fragile power falling like the titular house of cards, given the awful thing he did in season 1, which I’m sure won’t stay a secret for long.

5. Parks and Recreation. I guess NBC will just show this sporadically whenever it wants between reruns of Ow! My Balls! or whatever’s on that network now. Parks and Rec, despite not quite being able to hit the delirious high notes of seasons 3 and 4, is still a riot. I am happy to see the characters’ situations evolving, with Leslie being recalled from council and Ann and Chris leaving Pawnee.

4. The Middle. This show is criminally underrated and gives me the loudest laughs of any sitcoms on TV. Not since Roseanne has a sitcom taking such a bracing look at what the lower middle class has to go through to survive. The cast is absolutely stellar.

3. Orange Is the New Black. Speaking of a stellar cast, I’ve never seen one like this incredibly diverse group of women prisoners. This show was a little picaresque for me at first and didn’t lead to urgent viewing until the last few episodes really moved the plot along. The best part of this show is the sympathetic back stories that so many of the women get and I need many more of these back stories, including for characters like Taystee, Poussey and the nun. The characters are much more than easy caricatures, which I saw clearly in the heartbreaking scene when bug-eyed Suzanne asked Piper why everyone calls her Crazy Eyes.

2. The Americans. Oh God I can’t wait until this show returns in February. It is an absolutely riveting, pulpy look at Soviet spies in America in the early ‘80s. The spies not only go on thrilling missions but also have to deal with their ambivalence toward their marriage and ostensible American citizenship. The most thrilling moment all season was a rightfully enraged Keri Russell beating the hell out of Margo Martindale, waterboarding her and screaming “Show them your face!” Then there are all the ‘80s wigs, costumes and music. Tusk!

1. Breaking Bad. People who know me are probably sick of hearing me proselytize about this show but Breaking Bad is one of those rare cultural phenomena that deserves the universal, sometimes hysterical praise it gets. I thought the series kept getting better and by season 5, it had earned its title as my favorite show of all time. The series climaxed with the perfect episode of television, “Ozymandias,” and wound down with two hours of denouement that actually did tie up most of the loose ends and gave Walter White a poetic ending. This show was a rare combination of staggering levels of acting, writing and direction.

Brian's I'm-Not-Well-Rounded Top Albums of 2013

I listen to new music more often than I go to the movies but not too much more. Here is how I rank the narrow list of new music I heard in 2013.

9. Delta Machine by Depeche Mode. Back when artists would release at least one album per year, it was easy to brush off a bad one because a new album would be along shortly. Today it’s disappointing when an artist releases a bad album, especially when that artist is on a schedule of one album per presidential inauguration. Depeche Mode was away for four years and this is what they came up with? What a waste of my time and theirs.

8. The 20/20 Experience by Justin Timberlake. I won’t be back for part 2 (of 2). It’s OK but the songs go on way too long without justification. I like the trill effect on the single “Suit and Tie” but I don’t get the accolades for “Mirror.” As a love song, it’s narcissistic and misguided because if you tell someone “It’s like you’re my mirror,” you’re really saying “When I look at you, all I see is myself.”

7. Artpop by Lady Gaga. I only listed to Artpop (I stand corrected — ARTPOP) once and will give it a few more spins. It’s alright but unbalanced. On the good side are the seductive “Do What U Want” and slurred ballad “Dope,” while on the bad side are first single “Applause,” which sounds generic to me, and the terrible “Venus.” I am a little disappointed that after all Lady Gaga’s talk about merging art and pop, so many of the songs have that same-y car alarm dance sound. There should be more variety. 

6. Reflektor by Arcade Fire. I’m not sure what to make of it yet. I like “Here Comes the Night” but during the title track, I get a little tired of hearing the word “Reflektor” after they repeat it 2,700 times.

5. Thr!!!er by !!!. This wasn’t the band’s best work but was still a fun album, although a little mellower than previous efforts.

4. Hesitation Marks by Nine Inch Nails. The title apparently refers to the marks people leave on their wrists when they try to slit them but don’t go through with it so Hesitation Marks is sort of a sequel to The Downward Spiral in which we find out what happened to the guy after he didn’t commit suicide. I love the aggression of “Copy of a” and other songs like “Satellite” and “Came Back Haunted.” “Everything” is bizarrely upbeat and sounds out of place. My only complaint is starting the album with some ponderous instrumental bullshit like “The Eater of Dreams.” If you have a great song like “Copy of a,” just open the album with that instead of some droning intro.

3. Nanobots by They Might Be Giants. I love how They Might Be Giants sort of reprised “Fingertips” with the handful of short tracks interspersed through the album, like “Hive Mind,” “Decision Makers,” “Nouns” and “There.” I liked Nanobots much more than some of their recent work.

2. Electric by Pet Shop Boys. After the snoozefest album Elysium, the Pet Shop Boys returned nine months later (as if issuing a corrective) with the wonderful Electric, a collection of nine bangers. It’s PSB’s vintage combination of dance floor sounds with a very specific brand of romantic and social commentary, as in “Love Is a Bourgeois Construct.” I love the hysterical overstimulation of “Shouting in the Evening” and album closer “Vocal.”

1. The Next Day by David Bowie. In contrast with number 9 on this list, a decade was worth the wait for new material from Bowie, considering both its quality and that everyone assumed he had slid into retirement. The Next Day is his best album in ages, opening with the title track, which stomps with a defiant energy that contrasts with morbid lyrics like “Here I am/ Not quite dying/ My body left to rot in a hollow tree.” Other highlights are “The Stars (Are Out Tonight)” and album closer “Heat,” in which Bowie croons creepy lyrics like “My father ran the prison” like a man walking to the gallows.

Brian's I-Don't-Get-To-The-Movies-Much Top Movies Of 2013

In December, every writer is legally required to rank the top 10 of each art form, so that’s what I’m just going to have to do this month. I’ll start with movies. The brevity of this list is due to the fact that we rarely see current movies in the theater or on Netflix. We usually just get to them whenever. I’m sure the major Oscar movies being released this month are lovely; we’ll see them sometime before 2016. Here is my ranking of movies of 2013. Not the best movies from 2013 — all the 2013 movies I saw.

5. Escape From Tomorrow. This was an hour and a half of my life I’ll never get back. It was a black-and-white independent horror movie shot at Walt Disney World. The cast shot it with iPhones surreptitiously at Disney because obviously no company would never give anyone permission to shoot such a thing that might cast its park in a bad light. I was hoping Escape From Tomorrow might be a subversive look at Disney — especially given the irresistible cover image of a clawed, bleeding Mickey Mouse hand — but none of the movie made a bit of sense. Some dad had a weird obsession with teenage girls at the park and ended up dying of cat flu in his hotel room. It was just awful. Do not see this.

4. Iron Man 3. No. As a comic fan, I have a weird relationship with the movies. Some, like The Avengers, are entertaining enough and close enough to the spirit of the source that I can overlook the continuity errors. Iron Man 3 just irritated me by making the Mandarin, a promising villain, into a joke; a goofy character as a front for some less interesting unpowered terrorist. Yeah, deconstructing superheroes was novel 25 or 30 years ago but I’m sick unto death of it. Can’t we have more comic movies that actually celebrate the medium’s giddy heights? Can’t you stop your eye from winking ironically for two hours? Plus, I am completely sick of Robert Downey Jr. in this part (which, by the way, is way more obnoxious than how Tony Stark has been portrayed in the comics since 1962). What I would give for a scene in Avengers 2 where one of his teammates says, “Christ, will you shut up for one second?!”

3. Lovelace. This was OK. It’s a direct to Netflix biography of Linda Lovelace, star of Deep Throat. This was kind of avant garde and had a nice look to it. Chloe Sevigny was fine as Lovelace. Not much else to say about it.

2. Olympus Has Fallen. I am a sucker for this type of “destroy the White House” movie. It’s not because I want to overthrow the government or anything but I have a weakness for disaster movies and my imagination runs wild to speculate what happened with the disaster outside the scope of the movie. I thought this was just fun and entertaining and I got a little riled up when the terrorists started destroying the White House and killing people. I wanted to scream, “This is America and this doesn’t happen here! Kick these bastards out of our house!”

1. The Conjuring. This movie didn’t really scare me (at least beyond some jump scares) but it was a good, solid horror movie. I felt like the movie was checking off boxes and doing sort of a greatest hits version of horror movie tropes (demonic possession, the creepy doll, the dog that won’t go in the house because he knows it’s haunted), which could be a strength or a weakness. The cast was pretty good and the writing was fine.

Well, that was fun

Did my snark draw the wrath of Mother Nature? Were my loved ones being punished yesterday because I made one too many comments that mocked the snow?

You know I can’t miss an opportunity to laugh at the panic over the weather. I mostly just ridicule the idea that people think they’re going to be stuck indoors for weeks and starve to death when most people in this area have at least somewhere to walk to so they can get food. Yesterday actually did turn out to be a hot mess, though. I guess it’s because nobody was prepared. I was surprised to see it start snowing yesterday morning. I was at the gym and when I finally got off my machine and turned around to leave, it was a winter wonderland.

I usually don’t let weather keep me from doing what I want but yesterday I sort of did. I was on my way to my parents’ for dinner and it was fine at first driving through Delaware up 202; just a little slow. By the time I hit Route 1, I could see the brake lights ahead were not moving at all. I called my parents and told them I was turning around and going home. God knows what time I would have gotten to their house and I noticed the cars sliding around on the back roads and took it as a sign that I shouldn’t push my luck.

That was a minor inconvenience but what happened to Steve was a major inconvenience. He was stuck on I-95 and it took six hours for him to get home from Delco. For some perspective, we can make it to Ohio in eight hours. I felt bad because I knew he was crawling along the highway and I wished there was something I could have done.

At least I got to see an unforgettable Eagles game. I absolutely love watching football in the snow and the sight of snow falling so hard that it looked like static on the screen was glorious. That is the way football should be played and I wished I could have been down there. Oh, and we won.

I left a half hour early for work this morning and got to work a half hour early because I didn’t have any problems. One good thing about the snow is if you time it just right, everybody stays home and you can just zip on by.

What Happened Next Will Inspire You

In my continuing quest as a writer, I have been submitting pitches to the Inspirational website Upworthy. I just keep getting rejected and I don’t know why. Maybe you’ll be able to help me understand. Take a look at these headlines I submitted because I can’t imagine who wouldn’t want to read the attached articles.

This Woman Drove A Different Route To Work One Day. What Happened Next Will Inspire You.

We Compared Low-Fat Sour Cream With Fat-Free Sour Cream And The Results Are Damning.

A Scientist Started Studying The Effects Of Weightlessness On Tiny Screws. What He Found Will Change Your Life.

When You Find Out Why This Toddler Is Throwing A Tantrum, You Will Be Floored With Awe.

This Guy Is Getting Dressed The Same Way We All Do Every Day. But Why He Does It Will Delight And Amaze You.

College Students Are Deleting This New App From Their Phones In Droves. The Reason Why Involves All Of Us.

A Football Team Went For It On Fourth Down. The Result Is Incredibly Moving.

This Viral Video Of An 80-Year-Old Man Eating Soup Will Take Your Breath Away.

Look Closer At This Yield Sign. What You Can Barely See Will Haunt You.

A Man Returned A Pair Of Pants To A Department Store And You’ll Never Guess What Happened Next.

This Live Tweet Of A TV Show Is All You’ll Ever Need To Read.

You Won’t Believe What This Grandmother Found Inside A Box Of Cheerios.

This Woman Ordered Pasta At A Restaurant. What The Waitress Brought Her Was Beyond Her Wildest Imagination.

Bottomless Outrage

Boy, I don’t know about you but I can’t wait to go online and see the latest screen shot of a (fake) receipt with a (fake) nasty note instead of a tip so I can once again summon my BOOOOTOOOOMLESSSSS OOOOOOOOUUUUUUUUTTTRRRRRAAAAAAAAAGE!!!

My God — somewhere in America, a waiter or waitress didn't get a tip! Stop the presses and prepare the six-column New York Times headline! We’ll always remember where we were when this major injustice happened!

Yes, I tip the service industry decently and think it’s a shame that some assholes will write a personal insult in the “tip” field on the receipt. (I think it’s especially ridiculous for people to cite religious reasons for why they don’t tip. What church do they belong to? The First Church of St. Cheapskate?) But one of the downsides of viral photos and videos is that now every small social slight has to be greeted with disproportionate hysteria. I’m sorry the server lost out on a little income but does that really mean the entire nation has to weigh in on what is basically a bad day at work? Do you know how many other people had a bad day at work today? All of us. I feel bad for these servers but maybe we should have a more proportionate sense of outrage that doesn’t involve nationwide attention and 43 follow-up articles on scandalous receipt du jour.

The latest National Outrage I saw was a waitress who didn’t get a receipt because she was a fan of Auburn and the customer was an Alabama fan who was upset that his team lost. Again, it’s a shame that the person didn’t get a tip but there is no reason this should be news. It boils down to “one person was rude to another” and that happens all the time to everyone and is by definition not news.

Besides, the bill was like $20 so this server only got cheated out of $4. Let me organize a beef and beer so we can replace that $4 plus an additional $12,549 for her trouble. Perspective.

Yes, I thought it was a shame that the former military waitress with the short haircut didn't get a tip because the diners disapproved of her gay lifestyle. The waitress got a ton of donation money, which she admirably donated to charity. That the receipt with the gay slur is now allegedly fake highlights something ridiculous about this whole story: It was nice that strangers raised money to support the waitress but did she really need thousands of dollars in compensation? I could see the woman getting reimbursed for the amount she lost in tips plus a little more for her trouble but that’s about it. It’s nice that she’s not pocketing the money and is instead donating it to a charity but if I want to give to charity, I’ll just cut out the middleman and donate directly.

Really, what is the going reimbursement rate for servers for a slur on a receipt? Is it per slur or hourly or what? Do the labor laws cover the compensatory wage for this? Shit, I’d put up with abuse for at least a few shifts if it would mean I could post screen shots of anti-gay receipts to every website in existence and thousands of Americans would send me checks. I’d take the money and my gay husband and I could go on a nice vacation.