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If you're not watching Arrested Development Sunday nights on Fox, you need to start. Best sitcom out there right now. Until Curb Your Enthusiasm starts its new season. Even then, it will rate highly.

If you are watching Blue Collar TV, either on Comedy Central or on WB, you need to stop. It's a waste of time. I mean, I sat through a whole episode, and not ONCE did I hear Larry the Cable Guy say "Git 'r' done!"

I took that bullet. I took it for you. Because I care deeply about each and every one of you, and don't want to see you hurt.

I also took a bullet by seeing Alien Vs. Predator. I'll admit that I kinda wanted to see it. But, for fuck's sake, they blew so many great opportunities. First of all, they didn't need to put humans in the movie at all. It would have been a fantastic hard sci-fi flick had they taken that route. Secondly, they could have set up SOOO many things that would flesh out the backstory of the Alien series. You had Lance Henriksen playing Charles Weyland, an aging billionaire. Henriksen also played the android Bishop in Aliens. Aging billionaire, concerned about his legacy... it writes itself, people! Weyland Corporation=The Corporation... Thirdly, they had a fantastic concept of an enclosed battleground that reconfigured itself every 10 minutes. This makes sense from a combat standpoint. They could have done something awesome and amped up the tension by shooting in real-time. I know there were other things that occurred to me, but it's been a few weeks since I saw it.

Seeing it, though, made me realize that the world NEEDS my Terminator/Highlander crossover fanfiction. Which I will never, ever write. Cripes. I'm a nerd, but, I try to keep some shit in check.

---

Am I the only person who works shit out via one-act plays? There's a great line in Punch-Drunk Love (Barry Egan is so close to me it's scary) -- "I don't know if there's anything wrong with me, because I don't know how other people are." I assume that other people talk to themselves inside their heads, but, am I the only one who is compelled to publish their inner monologues on the internet?

For the record, Chad Spencer and Indie-Rock Steve are not personalities. They are simply aspects of my personality that I have given names to and amplified.

Indie-Rock Steve is my elitist side. The side of me that stopped listening to Top-40 radio in 8th grade (and I'm not kidding about that). The side of me listens almost exclusively to college radio stations. The side of me that, in an effort to not let Corporate Music dictate what I listen to, has probably wound up missing out on a lot of good stuff. At the same time, if it weren't for Indie-Rock Steve, I wouldn't have discovered Belle & Sebastian, The Streets -- hell, pretty much anything I listen to now. So, I have no regrets about that. 'Cept for the fact that not many people have heard of what I dig.

Chad Allen Spencer has had quite an evolution. One summer, back from college, I was working at McDonald's. Since I was working with teenagers (and teenagers are STUPID), I would hang out in my head while I was at work. One of the things I would do in my head was make up fragmentary characters. One of them was The Weed Whore -- a girl who thought she had to have sex in order to score weed. No one bothered to tell her that scoring was, actually, really easy. The other was Chad Spencer.

One day at work, that classic piece of juvenalia "There's a place in France where the naked ladies dance/There's a hole in the wall where..." and, all of a sudden, I knew that it was Chad Spencer who was standing at that hole in the wall, seeing it all. Chad Spencer came into money from an inheritance. Chad Spencer's goal in life was to find that place in France, to find that wall, and to look through that hole. For some reason, he's stuck with me, and grown. Into what, I don't know.

Neither one of these cats is never in charge of me. I'm Grant Bennett, for what it's worth. I've just found that it's handy to give names to certain parts of myself. Hell, if I were Chad Spencer, I'd be an obnoxious asshole. If I were Indie-Rock Steve, I'd be just as intolerable. I don't know if it's good or bad or what, but, they only really show up when I'm updating here.

I hope that I don't sound like some sort of wack-job.

---

For what it's worth, I don't make light of mental illnesses. There's the obvious reasons, and then, there's the not so obvious ones.

One of the best books I've ever read is
Flowers for Algernon. Yes, I may call someone retarded. Yes, I do have a movie in my head called In Depends Day that stars Chris Burke. But, I don't make fun of people with developmental disabilities.

One of the many memories I wish I didn't have:

In elementary school, my nemesis was a cat named Jason Kunc (pronounced KOONTS). I lived in fear of this kid. For some reason, he took a dislike to me in Kindergarten, and it carried through until junior high.

In 7th grade or so, I had gym with Jason and a guy who got dealt the shit end of the stick. Timmy John is what everyone called him. He was ugly. I mean seriously ugly. Ill-proportioned (beyond typical teenage proportions), acne -- nothing attractive at all about this guy. Plus, he was mildly retarded, had Tourette's, and had a habit of masturbating in class. (For the record, Tim has grown up just fine. Has a steady job and a wife. I run into him every now and then. He knows my name, I know his, some small talk, and we're on our way. No one thinks anything bad about him now.)

Anyway, we were playing one of those made-up games that you only play in junior high gym class. I think it was Mat-Ball.

I don't know exactly what happened, but, I do know that Jason had fucking laid Timmy John out. Timmy John was laying on his stomach, with Jason straddling his back. Jason had Timmy John in a choke hold, and was driving his spiked Punk leather bracelet into Tim's throat. Tim was crying, Jason wasn't letting up, and, then, eventually, the teacher broke them up.

Go, go, gadget humanity!

So, when I use terms like 'wack-job' and 'psycho' here, I'm not making light of anything. 'Cept myself.

---

Part II!!!!!

Chad: Go to hell? Why?
Grant: You can't possibly believe that shit you're spouting.
C: Dude, it's a game. It's all a game. Everyone knows it. It's a game, and you're not playing.
G: I'm not playing because I think that game is seriously fucked.
C: You're not playing because you're scared of losing.
G: I'm not playing because I disagree with the rules.
C: You're not playing because you don't even know what the rules are, and you are scared to lose. You are afraid of rejection.
G: Aren't you?
C: I'm not afraid of it. You move on. Don't dwell on shit. Acknowledge and move on. You seriously need to learn how to do that.
G: I don't know if that's a skill I want.
C: Are you even interested in sex?
G: Well, I'm a guy...
C: You need to get a thicker skin. You need to get off your fucking high horse. You need to get unstuck from yourself. Everyone is just as confused as you are. You're no martyr.
G: I never claimed I was.
C: Yeah, but you want to be. "Boo, hoo, hoo. Girls are confusing. Won't someone spoon-feed me?"

---

There may be a third part.



posted by Grant Bennett at 1:26 AM