Archives for October 2013

Bert and Ernie are two grown men sharing a house and a bedroom. They share clothes, eat and cook together and have blatantly effeminate characteristics. In one show Bert teaches Ernie how to sew. In another they tend plants together. If this isn’t meant to represent a homosexual union, I can’t imagine what it’s supposed to represent.
– Reverend Joseph Chambers on his radio show, 1994

Yes, there really is a Muppet Wiki site and, yes, this is on it. To be fair I should note that the makers of Sesame Street have continually denied that Bert and Ernie are meant to portray gay men. It sounds to me like someone’s in de-ni-al.

That being said, it seems that America’s beloved poofs aren’t the only gay puppets in the world. The Israeli government has long used two, Sheka & Teka (Plug & Socket in English) to promote clean energy. Tia Goldenberg, at ABC, notes that now that the puppets have adopted an unnamed child they have spawned a debate on gay rights that no one saw coming.

Before you make you kosher jokes you should give this a a read.

The goal was merely to promote clean energy in Israel — but television ads starring a pair of male puppets called “plug” and “socket” have instead unleashed a debate about gay pride.

The puppets, named Sheka and Teka in Hebrew, have appeared in ads for the state-owned Israel Electric Corp. for more than a decade. Israelis have long playfully questioned whether they might be gay. But the arrival of a baby puppet in the new campaign set off fresh speculation about their sexual orientation.

The ads highlight a striking paradox of the Holy Land: Although religion holds great sway and there is no civil marriage, gays have gained a widespread acceptance that is increasingly noted around the world. Gay activists demand the ad characters, who have a close but ambiguous relationship, officially come out of the closet.

Some gay rights advocates accuse the company of being intentionally ambiguous about their sexuality in a cynical publicity ploy.

“This should weigh on the conscience of everyone who worked on this campaign, who will come home and ask themselves whether they would want to raise a child in a country where the electric company says: ‘Hide, don’t be proud,'” wrote Dvir Bar in nightlife magazine City Mouse.

Sheka and Teka have drawn comparisons with another famous puppet pair: Bert and Ernie, whose sexuality also has come into question in pop culture. Sesame Workshop, which produces “Sesame Street,” has declared that the two are just good friends and they “remain puppets, and do not have a sexual orientation.”

In their latest ad, Sheka and Teka are seen in a living room, talking to a pinkish baby puppet with a tuft of orange hair. The scene then flashes back to a hospital nursery, where the baby is sucking on a pacifier and Teka congratulates Sheka on the birth of his child. It’s unclear who the mother is.

Later in the ad, the duo sits on a park bench with the child. They breathe in the fresh air the electricity company suggests is made possible by cleaner energy production. Teka sniffs and suggests that the baby needs a diaper change.

Other ads have seen the two on a shaded paddle boat in the Dead Sea, driving a red convertible in crisp black suits and sunglasses, and lounging on the couch in their pajamas. They have also been seen sharing a room with single beds. Many of the ads are public service announcements, warning children about the dangers of climbing electricity towers or getting too close to space heaters.

The Israel Electric Corp. says it does not understand the fuss over the campaign. It says the puppets, who have been on the air since 2002, are merely delivering the company’s messages.

“They represent the concerned Israeli, who is really worried about the air quality he is breathing and the environment he lives in. The baby that was born now represents the next generation,” said Oren Helman, a senior vice president who is behind the commercial. “There are no hints or ambiguities here.”

Although sections of Israeli society — especially ultra-Orthodox Jews and Arabs — remain conservative and often deeply opposed to homosexuality, Israel is seen as one of the world’s most progressive countries in terms of gay rights.

Gays serve openly in Israel’s military and parliament, and the Supreme Court has granted gays a variety of family rights such as inheritance and survivors’ benefits. Gays, lesbians and even a transsexual are among the country’s most popular musicians and actors.

Officially, there is no gay marriage in Israel, primarily because there is no civil marriage. All weddings must be carried out through the Jewish rabbinate, which considers homosexuality a sin and a violation of Jewish law. But the state recognizes same-sex couples who marry abroad, although they are not granted all the rights extended to heterosexual married couples.

Gay adoption is allowed in certain circumstances but activists say same-sex couples are discriminated against during the process. Surrogacy or adopting abroad is also an option and the partner of a parent can adopt the child of his or her partner, at a court’s discretion.

In a column on the Walla website, writer and blogger Nir Hoffman lambasted the ad.

“As long as the policy of ambiguity continues, Sheka and Teka are preserving and perpetuating a situation in which there is something strange, funny and mysterious in homosexuality that must be hidden and should not be spoken about,” he wrote.

Gil Kol, a spokesman for the Israeli national LGBT task force, an advocacy group, said the criticism was far-fetched and that his interpretation of the pair’s relationship was clear.

“Sheka and Teka have represented the Israeli Electric Corp. for years and have been gay for years. Having kids and expanding the family seems to be a natural stage in the evolution of the story. That pretty much represents what is happening in the LGBT community,” he said.

The majority of the ads, some of which can be found on You Tube, can be interpreted individually in many ways. But, when taken in the aggregate, those puppets have never met a women they’d like.

Also, just FYI to headline writers, saying that these puppets “electrified the debate” because they represent an energy company is slovenly work.

Let’s look at it this way, Bert and Ernie have been together coming up on 30 years. Sheka and Teka have been together for 11. They’re all doing better than either of my marriages. We should be lauding their commitment to loyalty, love and friendship.

Everything else is their business.

Okay, cool, welcome back.

Well, while that film can never be made, and the Supergirl / Power Girl love story should but never will, there are still a variety of films that have had money tossed at them and then disappeared.

One such film is Superman Lives. Meant to star Nicholas Cage and be directed by Tim Burton it died barely a year into the making. My buddy, Jon Schnepp, is making a documentary about it called, cleverly enough, The Death of “Superman Lives”: What Happened? Here’s a bit from Jon on why he is making the doc.

As news slowly bubbled out, news buzzed around about Rainbow Robot Outfits, Brainiac Skull ships, Superman not “flying”, Fighting a Giant Spider, Polar Bears guarding the Fortress of Solitude. It all sounded so crazy, so weird, so different, that I honestly was hoping that they would actually make it, just so we would have something different from what had come before.

Okay, maybe I can see how that one got left on the cutting room floor. Then again, he’s right about one thing, it would have been different and, sometimes, different is good.

Thomas Mentel, from the Wall St. Cheat Sheet, says there are 8 more that should see the light of day if there were any justice in the world.

Click on the movie titles to see related artwork in a new tab.

With the news of Warner Bros. (NYSE:TWX) greenlighting the production of Superman & Batman for release in 2015, the seemingly impossible quest to get the two superheroes in the same film appears to finally be happening. If plans for a Justice League film follow in 2017 like Warner Bros. says, that will be two films that movie-fans everywhere had become convinced would spend an eternity in development and never see the light of day.

But while Superman & Batman looks poised to break the cycle of development limbo, there’s still a wide variety of exciting films just waiting for the opportunity to break free.

Here are 8 interesting films, in no particular order, that are stuck in development hell for a variety of reasons.

1. Ghostbusters 3

While fans of the Ghostbusters franchise have been clamoring for a third film in the series for years, the hold-ups for Ghostbusters 3 have come from seemingly every direction, starting with the script. Dan Aykroyd originally wrote a script that revolved around the original group of Ghostbusters getting transported to a hell-like version of Manhattan, but according to Harold Ramis, “no one was motivated to pursue it,” and the script ended up being used as the basis for Ghostbusters: The Video Game.

Then, Gene Stupnitsky and Lee Eisenberg, writer-producers on The Office, wrote a script that introduced a new group of young Ghostbusters with the old ones appearing in a mentor role, according to Ramis. However, the failure of their comedy Year One then put that version of the film in jeopardy. As if the story situation couldn’t get any more complicated, Aykroyd appeared on Larry King Now in May and said, ”It’s based upon new research that’s being done in particle physics by the young men and women at Columbia University,” seemingly giving out concrete story elements.

However, Aykroyd has never exactly been the person to ask about the status of the film, having said the film was on the verge of production on various occasions for a decade. And then you have potential Ghostbusters 3 director Ivan Reitman, the director of the first two films, telling Slash Film in July, “we’ve been thinking of alternatives, and we’re actually making some real progress, and we’ll see what happens. That’s the most honest answer I can think of.” So who knows what’s really going on with this film on the script level since even the filmmakers can’t give consistent answers.

Script problems aside, one of the biggest issues with a potential Ghostbusters 3 has also been that actor Bill Murray reportedly isn’t interested in returning — which is probably the only consistent factor in the history of Ghostbusters 3’s development. “I would love to work with him again. I’d hope that he could be in this film. He could be, he might not be, I really don’t know,” Reitman told Slash Film. The lack of Murray’s Peter Venkman in a potential third film begs the question as to whether there’s even a point in trying to figure out this decade-long train-wreck.

2. Halo

The story of Halo’s attempts to reach the big screen start in 2005 when Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) hired screenwriter Alex Garland (28 Days Later, Sunshine, Dredd) to adapt the hugely popular game franchise for the screen. When the script was completed, it was sent to all the major studios where most studio-heads balked at Microsoft’s asking price of $10 million against 15 percent of the gross.

Then, 20th Century Fox (NASDAQ:FOXA) and Universal (NASDAQ:CMCSA) decided to partner up for the film. Soon after, Peter Jackson (Lord of the Rings) was attached to be executive producer along with director Neil Blomkamp (District 9, Elysium), who at this time had not directed a feature film.

D.B. Weiss and Josh Olson were later involved in rewrites of Garland’s script while arguments over profit-sharing reached a standstill, causing the studios to pull the plug. Blomkamp and Jackson went on to collaborate on District 9 soon after — but not before Blomkamp’s seven minute Halo movie demo hit the Internet and galvanized fans.

At this point, the rights to Halo have reverted back to Microsoft, but all the signs point to the film being made at some point. In 2009, Steven Spielberg expressed interest in making a Halo film and Blomkamp said this past April, “I still really love the world and the universe and the mythology of Halo. If I was given control, I would really like to do that film.”

3. At the Mountains of Madness

At the Mountains of Madness would have been based on the famous horror novella of the same name written by H. P. Lovecraft. The story follows a group of explorers in Antarctica who discover the remains of an ancient, alien city, eventually finding that the creatures were once the creators of all life. The explorers also find out that they’re not alone, discovering six-foot tall blind penguins that serve as livestock for something much, much worse.

Director Guillermo del Toro and screenwriter Matthew Robbins wrote a screenplay based on the novella in the mid-2000’s and immediately ran into trouble trying to finance the project due to the dark nature of the story. But in 2010, it seemed like Del Toro had finally gotten the go ahead; it was announced that not only would the film be moving forward starring Tom Cruise and in 3D, but James Cameron would be producing. The (linked) picture (click on the movie title) is from Del Toro’s personal journal sketches from the film (go here to check out some of Del Toro’s other sketches).

Then, in March 2011, which was only months before Del Toro had believed he was to start filming, Universal refused to greenlight the film due to Del Toro’s insistence that the film be R-rated. Del Toro then tried to shop the film around to other studios without any luck.

However, Del Toro said in January that he’d like to give the film one more shot and that Tom Cruise is still attached. “Once more into the dark abyss. We’re gonna do a big presentation of the project again at the start of the year,” he said.

4. Akira

Akira is one of the most famous Japanese manga series, which was later turned into one of the most famous animated Japanese films of all-time. The story depicts a dystopian version of the future as a teenage biker Tetsuo Shima begins to discover his psychic powers and threatens to unleash the imprisoned psychic Akira. Tetsuo’s friend, Shotaro Kaneda, is then forced to go on a mission to save his friend from his destructive powers.

Warner Bros. acquired the rights to Akira in 2002 and has been trying to get the movie made ever since. Around 2010, the film came as close as it’s ever been to being produced, with Leonardo DiCaprio attached as one of the film’s producers and Albert Hughes attached to direct; however, Hughes later dropped out over creative differences. Jaume Collet-Serra was then brought on to direct before the film was shut down for the fourth time.

The sheer amount of actors rumored to be involved in the film seem endless; DiCaprio, Joseph Gordon Levitt, James Franco, Michael Fassbender, Justin Timberlake, Joaquin Phoenix have all been considered at one point for one of the two leads — and that’s only a fraction of the actors who have been considered.

Recently, Jaume Collet-Serra entered the project once again as director and it looks like the film might actually get made this time around.

5. The Tourist

The Tourist is a science-fiction screenplay that’s been making the rounds since 1980. Written by Clair Noto, the script initially caught the attention of Quadrophenia director Franc Roddam along with well-known production designer HR Giger. The website io9 describes the film as “a darker, sex-charged Men In Black.” More specifically, it “revealed a secret alien world in Manhattan, including a secret alien club called the Corridor, where various aliens from all over the universe meet, have sex, and commiserate about being stuck on Earth.”

The film began its 30 plus years of development hell at Universal, but was immediately met with creative differences and personality clashes, according to io9. The structure of the script was influenced by the New Wave and director Brian Gibson and writers attempted to revise the script into a more conventional structure. At the same time, HR Giger was brought in fresh off the success of Alien and asked to design the aliens of the Corridor.

When the process stalled, Noto was able to use a rare clause in her contract to shop the script to another studio. It found it’s way to Francis Ford Coppola’s Zoetrope Studio for a brief moment, with director Francis Roddam showing strong interest, but financial issues at Zoetrope caused the project to stall once again. Universal then came back for the screenplay rights and the project simply hit a dead end.

So where is it now? Well, Universal still owns the rights to the script, but it doesn’t appear that the film is any closer to making it to the big screen today than it ever was. As io9 laments in the title to their article on the project, The Tourist might be the greatest sci-fi movie never made.

6. Blood Meridian

Cormac McCarthy’s dark western Blood Meridian has often been referred to as unfilmable for many different reasons, but it hasn’t stopped directors from trying — the most recent being James Franco. Blood Meridian follows a teenager referred to as “the kid” and his experiences with the Glanton gang, which was a historical group of scalp hunters who massacred Native Americans and others in the United States-Mexico borderlands between 1849 and 1850.

If the synopsis doesn’t tip you off to one of the biggest problems, let’s make it clear: this book is unbelievably violent. In fact, it makes the violence in McCarthy’s No Country for Old Men seem tame in comparison. While McCarthy’s lyrical prose almost makes the violence in the book bearable, a film wouldn’t have the benefit of that beautiful prose — what you see is what you get. And what you get is violence that rivals and surpasses even a film like Hostel.

Of course, someone will figure out the key sooner or later and make a film of it despite the violence. Franco supposedly reached the point of shooting test footage with actors Mark Pellegrino, Scott Glenn, Dave Franco, and Luke Perry, but now he joins Todd Field and Ridley Scott as directors who have tried and failed to get this film on the big screen.

But with All the Pretty Horses, The Road, and No Country For Old Men all having been translated to award-winning films, it’s only a matter of time before Blood Meridian does the same.

7. The Dark Tower series

The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger is the first book in a series of eight novels by Stephen King, which are often referred to as his magnum opus. The story revolves around the gunslinger Roland Deschain and his pursuit of “the man in black” and his eventual journey to the titular Dark Tower.

Talk of a film adaptation of The Dark Tower started to gain momentum when J.J. Abrams was briefly attached to direct in 2007 before removing himself from the project, calling the adaptation “tricky.” Ron Howard then became attached to the adaptation, along with partner producer Brian Grazer, and the film has seemingly been on the verge of production ever since.

Universal and Howard were supposedly close to a deal at one point before the studio backed out due to Howard’s scope being too ambitious at a time when Universal was trying to cut costs — the very same reason the studio backed out of Del Toro’s At the Mountains of Madness. Warner Bros. later came close to a deal before backing out for similar reasons.

Most recently, Howard and Grazer were able to secure funding from Media Rights Capital to produce a single movie based on The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger with Russell Crowe set to star as Roland Deschain. Another option is an offer for funding from a ”mysterious Silicon Valley investor” who has offered to finance the full realization of the project, including three films and multiple TV mini-series which would air between films.

King fans likely have their fingers crossed that it’s the real deal this time.

8. Rendezvous With Rama

Written by Arthur C. Clarke, the writer of 2001, Rendezvous With Rama tells the story of an alien starship that enters the Earth’s solar system and the group of explorers who journey to it in order to discover its secrets.

Actor Morgan Freeman has been the strongest driving force to get a film adaption of Rendezvous With Rama made, and he’s been trying since the early 2000’s. It nearly went into production in 2003 with David Fincher slated to direct, but the production later fell apart, and in 2008, Fincher said, ”It looks like it’s not going to happen. There’s no script and as you know, Morgan Freeman’s not in the best of health right now. We’ve been trying to do it but it’s probably not going to happen.”

However, as recently as 2012, Freeman said that the film is still moving ahead with Fincher in the director’s chair. The only thing they need is a good script.

One film that never gets mentioned is Clark’s Childhood’s End, not to be confused with the Minneapolis based, soft core porno, about being a teenager.

Clark was embarrassed by the book in later years due to his use of a Ouija board as a plot point. I can understand that but the book is epic storytelling on a level rarely attained by anyone. Also, unlike most other alien invasion books this one has no violence, no paranoid governments (although it does have some paranoid people) and it does have a very moving story about what mankind could become. In the right hands it would be legendary.

Sadly, I know that studios are now run more by accountants than film makers, it’s the same in the music industry, so the skew on what the studios will and will not accept is heavily tiled to the mundane.

Maybe producers should follow Jon’s lead and just do a Kickstarter campaign.

Life choices. We all face them every day. Some would seem to be easy, like should I take the hair dryer into the shower and use it? Allegedly the answer is no. And yet, every year some schlub dies with a hair dryer in a shower. Because the whole interaction between electricity and water has never been examined. In Australia they created a video about many of the dumb ways you can die. I warn you now; if you click that link you will never unhear that song. It was clearly designed to be the equivalent of a perky nursery rhyme. It just happens to be a perky nursery rhyme about feeding your genitals to piranha and stepping in front of a moving train. Which, you do have to admit, are some pretty stupid ways to die.

Of course, not all people who die useless deaths are stupid. See this list of gems for example “A”.

Attila the Hun:
One of the most notorious villains in history, Attila’s army had conquered all of Asia by 450 AD–from Mongolia to the edge of the Russian Empire–by destroying villages and pillaging the countryside.
How he died: He got a nosebleed on his wedding night
In 453 AD, Attila married a young girl named Ildico. Despite his reputation for ferocity on the battlefield, he tended to eat and drink lightly during large banquets. On his wedding night, however, he really cut loose, gorging himself on food and drink. Sometime during the night he suffered a nosebleed, but was too drunk to notice. He drowned in his own blood and was found dead the next morning.

Tycho Brahe:
An important Danish astronomer of the 16th century. His ground breaking research allowed Sir Isaac Newton to come up with the theory of gravity.
How he died: Didn’t get to the bathroom in time
In the 16th century, it was considered an insult to leave a banquet table before the meal was over. Brahe, known to drink excessively, had a bladder condition — but failed to relieve himself before the banquet started. He made matters worse by drinking too much at dinner, and was too polite to ask to be excused. His bladder finally burst, killing him slowly and painfully over the next 11 days.

Francis Bacon:
One of the most influential minds of the late 16th century. A statesman, a philosopher, a writer, and a scientist, he was even rumored to have written some of Shakespeare’s plays.
How he died: Stuffing snow into a chicken
One afternoon in 1625, Bacon was watching a snowstorm and was struck by the wondrous notion that maybe snow could be used to preserve meat in the same way that salt was used. Determined to find out, he purchased a chicken from a nearby village, killed it, and then, standing outside in the snow, attempted to stuff the chicken full of snow to freeze it. The chicken never froze, but Bacon did.

Jerome Irving Rodale:
Founding father of the organic food movement, creator of “Organic Farming and Gardening” magazine, and founder of Rodale Press, a major publishing corporation.
How he died: On the “Dick Cavett Show”, while discussing the benefits of organic foods.
Rodale, who bragged “I’m going to live to be 100 unless I’m run down by a sugar-crazed taxi driver,” was only 72 when he appeared on the “Dick Cavett Show” in January 1971. Part way through the interview, he dropped dead in his chair. Cause of death: heart attack. The show was never aired.

Aeschylus:
A Greek playwright back in 500 BC. Many historians consider him the father of Greek tragedies.
How he died: An eagle dropped a tortoise on his head
According to legend, eagles picked up tortoises and attempt to crack them open by dropping them on rocks. An eagle mistook Aeschylus’ head for a rock (he was bald) and dropped it on him instead.

Jim Fixx:
Author of the best selling “Complete Book of Running,” which started the jogging craze of the 1970s.
How he died: A heart attack….while jogging
Fixx was visiting Greensboro, Vermont when he walked out of his house and began jogging. He’d only gone a short distance when he had a massive coronary. His autopsy revealed that one of his coronary arteries was 99% clogged, another was 80% obstructed, and a third was 70% blocked….and that Fixx had had three other attacks in the weeks prior to his death.

Okay, some are just ironic.

But firefighters in London are trying to stem a horror that has me baffled. Men who have intercourse with active toasters.

London firefighters have launched a public shaming campaign to stem the rise of locals summoning urgent help to remove foreign objects stuck on — or inside — their bodies, but the kinky topic is so taboo in America some top U.S. emergency workers won’t discuss the behavior.

Except in Los Angeles.

L.A. Fire Department medical director Dr. Marc Eckstein acknowledges that 911 operators do receive a small number of sexually bizarre rescue pleas and do dispatch ambulances, including instances in which they must assist men with heavy steel rings lodged around their private parts. 

In some of those scattered cases, Eckstein said, the firefighters, paramedics or emergency medical technicians use bolt cutters or, when necessary, the blazing torch of a plasma cutter to burn the rings off of the men’s penises.

“They have to be careful because the plasma cutters cause a lot of heat and sparks,” Eckstein said, adding he could not provide statistics on the number of such calls. He did emphasize, however, that the L.A. Fire Department receives high a number of other types of “inappropriate” 911 calls from local residents that tie up ambulances, fire trucks and personnel — resources that could otherwise be used for people in actual medical trouble.

When contacted for comment, officials at other emergency agencies struggled to answer if — as in London — they have marked an uptick in the rate of 911 calls or ER visits from Americans with foreign objects wedged into their rectums or folks with sensitive body parts jammed into kitchen appliances or other embarrassing orifices.

“I don’t have any statistics to that kind of claim or inquiry in New York City,” said Frank Dwyer, a spokesman for the New York Fire Department.

A spokeswoman for the National Association of EMS Physicians simply responded to the query with: “I’m just not sure where to go with this.”

But in London, fire officials aren’t holding their tongues about how they must perform tasks like freeing a man’s penis from a vacuum cleaner.

The London Fire Brigade has launched a public campaign dubbed “Fifty Shades of Red,” theorizing that an increase in such randy rescue calls in that city is perhaps propelled by the popularity of the erotic romance novel “Fifty Shades of Grey.”

The campaign simply urges people in London — especially guys — to exercise more common sense before inserting their manhood into gadgets made for cooking or cleaning. The brigade reports that it responded to 416 stuck-body-part calls in 2010-11, another 441 in 2011-12 and 453 in 2012-13. Among those emergency requests for assistance, 79 people were wearing handcuffs they could not remove.

To help fuel the agency’s gentle request to just stop doing these things, the brigade has added a dose of public shaming, often taking to Twitter to share some of these ambulance requests from people who have become oddly entangled.

Like this couple.

And like this man.

CBS late night talk show host David Letterman heard about the issue and decided Wednesday to dedicate a top 10 list to “Thoughts Going Through The Mind Of The Guy Who Had Sex With A Toaster.”

“Boy, I mean I can think of maybe a dozen things around the house I’d pick before the toaster, just off the top of my head,” Letterman said. “But that’s just me. I mean, everybody has different tastes.”

My tastes may wander a bit but they’ve never wandered into a kitchen and tried to seduce an appliance. In fact, as a general rule, I limit my penis placements to living humans of the opposite sex. But that’s just me. I mean, everybody has different tastes.

I’m not good around kids. Oh, I can be if need be but the things I like to do – drink, swear, frolic with naked women – are prohibited by a variety of state and federal laws, not to mention some social mores, in any situation involving kids. I suppose that’s for the best. Nevertheless, since parents are (in the main) reluctant to do the mattress mambo in front of their spawn they occasionally will ask someone to take their darling progenies elsewhere for a nonce or two. And since horny parents do not make good life choices, I have taken children away from their safe homes and into my world. Well, not into my world, that would be wrong, but away from their little safe havens. Since bars and strip clubs are off the list I tend to take them to zoos, museums, baseball games and parks. I also have a bad habit of introducing them to music and food, since I dearly love both.

Apology time.

Dear Tyrone, I’m sorry. I know that you think Burger King is too zesty and, thanks to an afternoon in Pilsen with me, your kids now shop for gourmet hot sauces at Whole Foods and I know that I introduced them to Stevie Wonder before you did, but your oldest was 9 then and they’re both in college now. We need a new topic of discussion.

My friend Enrique raised his kids to be good Catholic children who respect their elders and do good in school. They are all that. They are also avid fans of funk and bad horror movies thanks to me. And they are teaching their children the joys of grooving, Elvira and Svengoolie. Enrique’s grandson, who just turned four, does a mean version of Brickhouse. Unfortunately that fact was discovered when he busted it out during a lull at mass.

Oh well.

Everyone blames me.

But there are some things you can’t blame me for. Sebastian Murdock says that no matter how much I warped those kids, I was a better influence than the parents of these ingrates.

Sometimes, work can seem unbearable. Your boss doesn’t appreciate you, your co-workers suck, and you always stay late. But at least now you can take solace in knowing you aren’t these seven souls who lost their jobs. Share this with Mark in accounting and laugh about how you “can totally see Brett getting fired that way.”

• 1
  These KFC Sink-Tubbin Gals
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  Chicken breasts weren’t the only thing simmering at this KFC. Two female employees at KFC decided to go for a swim in the company sink, later uploading the pictures to Myspace with captions including “haha KFC showers!” and “haha we turned on the jets.” They forgot the caption: “haha we’re so fired!” because that’s exactly what happened once the manager found out.
• 2
  “Weedpriest” Subway Worker Puts Penis On Bread
  

  In a story broken by HuffPost Weird, a Subway worker was seen defiling a foot longwith his less-than-a-foot-long after posting images of it on his Instagram. Ian Jett copped to putting his penis on the bread in an exclusive interview with HuffPost, and was later fired by Subway.
• 3
  This News Anchor Who Couldn’t Make It One Day Without Dropping An F-Bomb
  Ever have one of those days? Newbie reporter A.J. Clemente made his debut and said his goodbyes his first day on the job at KFYR in North Dakota. In the video,Clemente can be heard saying “F—ing sh-t,” before being introduced. If that’s not bad enough, Clemente had a rather…awkward time introducing himself after the slip up.
• 4
  This Guy Who Called His Boss A “Serial Masturbator”
  ReactionGIFS
  A South African 23-year-old man was fired after calling his boss a “serial masturbator” on Facebook, AFP reported. Hilarity aside, (and it is pretty hilarious) the man probably should have kept that thought to himself — or at least off Facebook.
• 5
  This Woman Who Called Obama The N-Word, Hoped He’d Get Assassinated, And Didn’t Really Seem To Get What The Big Deal Was
  Denise Helms, a California Cold Stone Creamery worker, was fired after she posted on Facebook: “And another 4 years of this [n-word], maybe he will get assassinatedthis term…!!” On the off-chance Obama got assassinated: “I wouldn’t care one bit,” she told Fox 40 News. She then said: “OK, but what did I do wrong?” Oh, honey. So much. You did so much wrong. Cold Stone later tweeted saying Helms was fired.
• 6
  This Drunk Gym Teacher
  
  Erik Schock, a former Washington middle school gym teacher, was fired after administrators reported his breath reeked of alcohol and his speech was slurred. It was estimated that his blood alcohol level was a whopping .15. In a truly alpha move, Schock is actually seeking to get his job back because he did not engage in “flagrant misconduct” as defined by state law. Look, we get it — we’d be getting wasted if we had to deal with children all day too, just not if it was our job to responsibly look after and teach them.
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  This Guy Who Peed On His Coworkers Chairs…For 5 Months
  West Des Moines Police
  Raymond Foley, a 59-year-old IT worker at Farm Bureau Financial Services, was caught on surveillance video allegedly urinating on four female co-workers’ chairs over the course of at least five months. He was suspected of going through the company’s database of worker profiles, picking out the most attractive females, then whizzing on their seats. Listen, guy: there are better ways to flirt with pretty girls. You could start by, for instance, doing literally anything other than peeing on their chairs. They don’t like it. Foley had the piss taken out of him when he was promptly fired, then arrested.

Give yourself a round of applause and knock back a drink, chances are you’ve never lost a job through this level of incompetence!

YEAH! You’re not an ingrate!

I do have to admit one thing. In all my years of hitting on women it never once occurred to me to pee on their chairs as a way of introducing myself.

I must be getting old.