YOU’RE WELCOME.

***

CZ: How does it feel to be the 62nd person interviewed for Zulkey.com.?

DR: It’s the 62nd-best thing I’ve ever done. The other 61 best things I’ve ever done:

1. Bought that WEEN country album - TRUE
2. Won 7th place in a pinball tournament - TRUE
3. Went on tour with Corn MO - TRUE
4. The dream I had about Joey Ramone and bees - TRUE
5. Memorized the lyrics to “Baby Got Back” - TRUE
6. Purchased SHORT CIRCUIT and TRIUMPH OF THE WILL at the same time - TRUE
7. Learned how to play “House of the Risin’ Sun” on guitar - TRUE
8. Met David Blaine - TRUE (that I met him, not that it was the best thing)
9. Got the Egg Wave and now I no longer have to settle for messy, greasy pans, or unhealthy sweets for breakfast - FALSE! MY EGGS ARE LIES!**
10. The hot dog tattoo on my right shoulder - NOPE
11. Downloaded the POLTERGEIST theme for my cell phone - TRUE? That was like six cell phones ago. But probably.
    
12. Turned down the role of “Chandler” on FRIENDS – NOPE (Source: Duh Afficionado magazine)
13. Got a photo credit in JANE magazine (9/03 issue) - TRUE
14. Remembered my Metro card this morning - TRUE (Still true!)
    
15. Named my cat Charlie Alpha Tango, instead of Superman Ratliff - TRUE
16. Made up a roller skating routine to “Footloose” – TRUE
17. Watched TEEN WOLF 42 times in the summer of 1986 - TRUE
18. Have never shit in a hamper - TRUE, but I know someone who has.
19. Do not pay too much for long distance - TRUE, but I know a guy who did.
20. Once had Paul Stanley leave my outgoing phone message - TRUE
21. Said “Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!” to my parents without getting in trouble - TRUE (jealous?!!!)
22. Learned how to drive - TRUE
23. Voted for Clinton. Twice. - TRUE. Both times.
24. Started eating meat again. - TRUE, then FALSE, then TRUE again.
25. Had a “pathetic geek story” turned into a comic strip in The Onion - TRUE
26. Won 2nd place in a beauty pageant (every time I play Monopoly) - TRUE (Monopoly-wise)
27. Built a robot out of old stereo parts and an already working robot - NOPE
28. Took that photo of Bush streaking the Alien hangar at Area 51 - NOPE
    
29. Got this lousy T-shirt (and nothing else) - FALSE? I do have a lot of lousy t-shirts, though.
    
30. Served ice cream to Sonny Bono - TRUE
    
31. Finally got “Lukenbach, Texas” out of my head - TRUE
32. Got “organizized” - TRUE (mostly)
33. Was published on Modern Humorist - TRUE
34. Met FOGHAT in a truck stop - TRUE
35. Learned thirty-two new Velveeta recipes - NOPE
    
36. Drank beer out of Jeff Sillie’s shoe on a dare - TRUE
37. Edited a movie called “Inbred and In Trouble” - TRUE
38. Finally collected all 432 “Precious Moments” - NOPE
39. Made a racist eat my scab - TRUE!
40. Survived the 60′s (but can’t remember them!) - NOPE
41. Started a religious cult in the 4th grade - TRUE!!!
42. Convinced my boss to let me buy silver binder clips instead of black ones - TRUE
43. Prom - TRUE?
44. My mom made Shake n Bake, and I helped - NOPE
45. Got a DVD of CATCH ME IF YOU CAN from David Cross - TRUE (Just found it yesterday)
46. Whoops!
    
47. Made Chris Weber see JOHNNY MNEMONIC on opening day - TRUE
48. Created kittenpants - TRUE
49. Learned to surf - NOPE
50. Turned down the role of “Puck” on The Real World - NOPE (I turned down the role of “San Francisco”)
    
51. Attended the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta - TRUE
52. Ordered the “guaco loco” for dinner - TRUE, although I prefer the Queso Loco.
53. I took college - TRUE
54. Learned how to play “Afternoon Delight” on the flute - TRUE
55. Hugged Jack Black - TRUE
56. Participated in “Hands Across America” - NOPE
    
57. Coined the phrase “You can put your boots in the oven but it don’t make ‘em biscuits.” - NOPE. I heard that from Dolly Parton.
    
58. Moved to NYC - TRUE, several times
59. Wrote a fan letter to John Schneider - TRUE
60. Survived spinal menengitis - TRUE
61. Got lost in Detroit with Steve Delahoyde and Claire Zulkey - TRUE. And now they’re married. Coincidence?
    

*all=none. But you already know that.

**according to my “lady doctor”

Note: the title of this post is an inside joke I have had with one of my best friends for so long, that it is hard to remember why it’s even funny. It combines a terrible impression of a character from Kids in the Hall with a scene from the movie Warlock and it originated some late night when lack of sleep and abundance of mind-altering chemicals made lots of things funny. There’s no reason why it would make sense to anyone except Rhonda Boaz, and it says “Suck It” to all the other titles in the world that would have made more sense. You’re all, “I ain’t care!” but I thought I’d explain it anyway.

Hello Darci! A loooong while back, you may recall you kindly contributed your two cents via your friend Eric Gillin for a Maxim article on “What Women Think About During Sex.” Anyway, I’m hoping that you might have a story to contribute to a new article I’m working on for Playboy. This one, however, isn’t about sex with men. It’s about sex with women. If this is not something you’ve tried or you have and don’t want to talk about, feel free to ignore this query and forgive my forwardness! As a magazine writer I have no shame, unfortunately.

If, on the other hand, you have had sex with a woman and would like to relay your experiences, I’m all ears. Anonymity is guaranteed. Whether you’re bi-curious, bisexual, or a full-on lesbian, I would love to hear about your experiences–your first time, your only time, your best time, or all of the above. How did the seduction happen? Who made the first move? What did you say to each other? During sex, what surprised you most? What did you enjoy the most? In what ways was it different from sex with a man?

If you know any other women who you think might be up to contribute to this, please pass along this query. Thanks so much!

Sincerely,
Judy
***

Dear Judy:

Sorry to disappoint, but I actually have no experience with other women. I am, however, dating a guy who likes antiquing, taking baths, and watching HGTV. Does that count?

Good luck!
xo,
Darci

So, I had to do something. And the something I did was turn on the TV. And what was on the TV was the movie Zathura. And even though I was so so sleepy, and even though I have seen this movie before, and even though I am not actually a fan of Zathura, I ended up staying awake to watch it through to the end.

The nightmares stopped, which is good. But the nightmare that is Zathura lives on. Here’s why.

I had this (totally rational) panic this morning that maybe the movie wasn’t actually called Zathura and that I had made that up. So I just logged onto IMDB.com to check myself. (Wreckage of myself? Prevented.)

Once there, I clicked around, like you do when you are verifying the name of a movie you saw in the middle of the night, the viewing of which you have not told (and will never be required to tell) anyone about, even in passing, therefore rendering the checking of the name completely unnecessary. Through a series of clicks, I found the list of plot keywords for Zathura.

The plot keywords list is a reference tool, manually generated by someone(s) to describe elements of the movie’s central plot. For example, I might say this movie is about a “board game”.  Then if you were ever searching the database for movies about board games, you’d find this one. Make sense?

What does not make sense is almost the entire list of plot keywords for Zathura. Is the movie about “sibling rivalry”? Sure. I get that. I took college. You know what it isn’t about? “Hugging.”

“Hey, sweetheart, tell me something: you got any movies back there about hugging?”

You mean a story specifically about hugging? Like a particular kind of hugging?

“Just give me any movie in which hugging is central to the plot.”

I guess there technically is some hugging in the movie. But not enough to qualify this for the Hugging sub genre. Like, when the AFI releases it’s list of 100 Movies About Hugging, this is not going to make it in, AT ALL. Sure, I know I missed the beginning of the movie, and so maybe I missed or forgot about some really pivotal scene in which hugging is discussed or done at length. But I doubt it. Because I definitely saw the 30 seconds of the movie in which one kid decides to make macaroni and cheese and gets distracted. And as unimpressive and unimportant as it was to the story (the kid never even makes it!), “macaroni and cheese” makes it into the plot keyword list.

“What’s that movie where the kid tries to make macaroni and cheese, and then he doesn’t?”

Zathura. (Duh.)

Here’s what else shows up in the plot of Zathura (SPOILER ALERT): Gravity.

No, just gravity. I just wanted you to know that this movie contains gravity.

Also,

• hair dryer
• footprint
• sofa
• whispering
• frozen
• apology
• sandwich

You know what else has all those elements? LITERALLY EVERY MOVIE EVER MADE.

Okay, I’m sure you can find one movie where there isn’t any whispering, or none of the characters are ever BOUND BY THE LAWS OF GRAVITY. My point is, these words are supposed to help identify elements one might be searching for in a film, not random things that appear briefly with little to no impact on the story. What the fuck is “frozen” telling you? Who’s searching for a movie about “frozen”?

“So what’s that movie about?”

Frozen.

“What do you mean? Like the characters are frozen? Frozen in time, or like actually frozen in ice?”

Just frozen.

“Oh… Great, can’t wait to see it.”

My research didn’t take me to any other films on IMDB to see if their plot keywords were equally ridiculous. I’m sure some are, but I don’t care a whole lot either way. I am just happy to know that someone felt it was worth his or her time to enter plot keywords for the Jumanji spin-off, and that this list equals what he or she considers to be the central takeaways from the film.

And also that I found the list and felt that its lack of merit was important enough to blog about.

Sigh…

Disturbing.

I’m a feminist. I am grateful for the work of women smarter and stronger than me, who fought for my opportunity to work long hours for little (but equal) pay and without danger of being constantly sexually harassed (and believe me – that danger is great. Have you seen the cans on this one?).

But I now understand how hard it was for men to give up all the creature comforts they had grown accustomed to. Who wouldn’t want all those things to come home to?

I mean, whatever, they’re pigs. But I get it.

She replied, “You are not making adult choices, Darci.”

If you click the li’l picture there, you’ll see the tagline for the movie:

Yesterday’s history. Tomorrow’s the future. Tonight’s the party.

That sort of applies to the election, too. Although I guess “Yesterday’s history. Tomorrow’s the future.” really applies to everything, as it’s pretty much just the definition of “yesterday” and “tomorrow.” And in this case, tomorrow’s the party, and tomorrow will make history. Which I guess leaves the future for yesterday and today. Math!

My point is, I’m finding it hard to concentrate. I’m totally going to lose my job at the orange juice factory!

But listing can become an obsessive habit that lasts forever. Uncle Sloppy, and I would get stuck on a topic and wear the fuck out of it until the list reached its pinnacle of cannot-be-topped. Then we’d forget about it for a while, and then list some more. Examples, you say?

Celebrity Knock Knock Jokes. (Richard Pryor who? Richard Pryor hands off that crack pipe! Etc.) This started as a road-trip driving diversion and lasted from rural Pennsylvania to Brooklyn, NY. Just as we pulled up in front of our apartment, John started to cry from laughing and finally choked out the words “Tempest Bledsoe!” I did not quite make it to the bathroom in time. Who’s there? Pee pants.

Rape lyrics. For whatever reason, John had a group of us substituting the word “rape” and other rape themes into every song ever written (“Despite all my rape I am still just a man in a cape“). This lasted for days – maybe weeks. It ended one night at 4 a.m. when I left him the following voicemail: “Clap your hands everybody/If you got what it takes/Cause I’m Kurtis Blow and I want you to know that These. Are. The Rapes!!“

Band Names. John’s the prolific one here, with his definitive list (an, [incredibly] abridged, 18-page version appears on KP) that has been crafted for over a decade. But my new Twitter is carrying that torch into 2010.

The Ninth Configuration of Morrissey. Okay, this is more inside-joke-gone-too-far, than listy, but John and I replace all Smiths lyrics with two quotes from The Ninth Configuration: “Colonel, what are you holding?” and “I cut off his head with a wire, but it kept on talking.” Just imagine singing either of those lines with Morrissey’s voice and you get it. You may not like it, but you get it. I like it and I get it.

I started listing in high school. All the cool kids were doing it, and I couldn’t withstand the peer pressure. Okay, none of the cool kids were doing it. Or maybe they were. We didn’t have cool kids at my high school. But it began when my friend Rhonda and I spent ALL NIGHT singing up new idiotic verses of the “Diarrhea song” (“When you’re talking to your dog, and your pants are full of smog, diarrhea…”) and has been a compulsion ever since.

Which brings me to today, and what made me think about my listing obsession. My friend Howard sent me the BroMania list-in-progress, which is a project fueled by hours in a tour van logged by the members of Centro-matic, and continued by the bros in Tre Orsi and The New Year.

Centro-matic bassist, Mark Hedman, explains: “See, wha’ had happened was, we started talking about the need to expand our list of salutations. Addressing someone as “cuz”, “captain”, or “commodore” will motivate a vanmate to pass the pretzels/current issue of Maxim only so many times… The solution? Delve deeper into linguistic depravity by commandeering the Abercrombie & Fitch attired salutation “Bro” and grafting it with the newly pioneered context reference technique of [attaching any noun or verb that could describe a person's current action or context].”

The result is the Encyclopedia Brotannica, conveniently Google Doc’d for you here. I asked Howard if I could talk about it in this article. He answered, “Brotally.”

Feel free to list your loves and hates of this post in the comments.

if this is a picture of you, I’m sorry but you are wrong.

Reminds me of the time Uncle Sloppy and I were driving down Sixth Avenue in NYC and saw a guy who, I swear to Jarod, must have weighed 600 pounds wearing a baby blue t-shirt that said, “Are you gonna eat that?”

He just totally owned it, you know?

This lady was wearing matching “Genius” pants. She is not “owning it.”