The newest, greatest super heroes

I’ve got some pretty good ideas. It’s why I’m running for President, actually. One of my ideas is to let homeless dudes fix our roads. That’s a good idea because we could pay them in nickels and my campaign’s internal studies show there’s only a 75% probability they’d run off with the paving materials.

I’ve had other good ideas, too, like the one about a new national anthem, my soon-to-be-hit show Mermen and a Baby, and, of course, my foray into teen literature.

Those are all things that I can really work on once I win the election, considering the President is not only Commander-in-Chief but also runs the recording, film, and publishing industries. So once I’ve provided the homeless with road-paving equipment and declared war on Greenland, the other three things will just fall in to place.

But some things just can’t wait because the creative process isn’t about patience and diligence, it’s about doing things right now and throwing caution to the wind. That’s why I’m releasing the cover to the first ever comic book I’m writing:

This must have been how it felt when the dude that made Superman put the cover of the first issue on his blog.

It’s just a concept at this point, but The Douchebag League is a collection of the crime-fightin’-est, freshman-girl-bonin’-est super heroes around. If I were a freshman girl tied to some railroad tracks, there aren’t four heroes I’d rather have save me and subsequently bone me. (Editor’s note: Spoiler alert.)

Here are the four members of The Douchebag League:

Sideways Hat Guy

Alter ego: Chet, a cell phone salesman.
Powers: Was transformed one day when he was walking down the street and tripped. Upon landing, his hat was turned sideways and, through a combination of rays from the sun and some kind of black hole or something, he got the ability to shoot lasers out of his hat, which is pretty sweet.
Weaknesses: Curved hat brims; pockets of poor cell phone service.

Vert Stripes Dude

Alter ego: Brett, bartender at a trendy night club downtown and driver of a Camaro.
Powers: Blinds you with the power of his shirt and it’s alternating color scheme. His powers were acquired the first time he stepped into a GAP.
Weaknesses: Shopping at Old Navy; 18 and over clubs.

Middle Part Man

Don't eat this stuff. And don't ask how I know that.

Alter ego: Blake, a bank teller with dreams of becoming an investment banker; former high school basketball star.
Powers: Hair is extremely flammable and became as such when he first discovered the hold provided by mass amounts of gel. Also has the ability to rescue baby birds by allowing them to nest on top of his head.
Weaknesses: Showering at night; getting caught up in conversations about how the team could have won states his senior season if the coach weren’t such a jerk and let him take the last shot; democrats.

Captain Affliction Shirt

Alter Ego: Vin, a guy between jobs and just waiting around and working out until something breaks his way.
Powers: Announces his arrival by blasting Creed/Nickelback and has incredible upper body strength. Always ready to pick a fight and usually does so by ripping his shirt off and screaming, “Let’s go!”
Weaknesses: Shirts that don’t show off the barbed wire tattoo on his bicep; not having a spotter.

Issue 1 is going to be all about how The Douchebag League goes up against the Axis of Hipsters in the first of many battles. They win, but little do they know the hipsters are working on this sweet iPhone app that’s going to allow them to rule the world. Your move, Douchebag League.

It’s Funday Monday!

What a douche.

A few years ago, my friend Barry and I saw this great movie called “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.” Seeing this movie resulted in two things:

1. It started my own personal cold war with Matthew Broderick. It would have been a real war, but the stupid government wouldn’t let me get a gun because my background check wasn’t up to snuff. Apparently if you accidentally point a realistic looking toy gun at a flight attendant demanding peanuts “now or everyone on board’s going to get it!” one time, it sticks with you forever.
2. It made Barry and me realize that we weren’t really maximizing our potential and living life to its fullest. In fact, while Ferris was faking sick to stay away from school, we were doing everything we could to be at the school because nobody serves hotter, cheaper lunches this side of the soup kitchen, and neither of us likes soup.

So we decided we needed to do something to make our lives a little more fun. Not that Barry transcribing my thoughts that I’ve written on Wendy’s napkins in to blog posts isn’t fun, but sometimes you need a break from the daily grind and sometimes Wendy’s gets tired of you sitting in their dining room for six and a half hours a day without ordering anything.

That’s why we instituted Funday Monday. We were going to go with Monday Funday, but Barry’s brother, a disbarred attorney, told us he thought the senior center in town used that for their Monday bus trips to the fabric store and he didn’t want us to get sued for copyright infringement. We also thought about maybe having Fondue Friday, but that’s probably a bit much to take on until Funday Monday gets off the ground and I think we were both hoping that the other would actually know what Fondue is. I guessed that it was some kind of foreign car and Barry thinks it might be a type of tree.

So Funday Monday is our day of fun and living.

We decided that, from the minute we wake up until the minute the sun goes down, we would maximize every second of the day. That’s roughly 90 minutes, so we have to pack a lot in. Activities vary, but our favorites include:

• Cross-checking my spreadsheet of Bob Barker’s tie color with DVR’d episodes of The Price is Right.
• Running up and down the street alongside the neighborhood cats.
• Finding every book in the library about chickens and telling the lady at the check-out that we’re doing extensive research on cocks.
• Bare-knuckle boxing with homeless dudes over behind the liquor store.
• Taking bus trips to the fabric store with the local seniors.
• Playing a little game we like to call “See it, eat it” where we walk up and down the sidewalk and have to eat anything we see on the ground. (Editor’s note: Barry cheats because he walks with his eyes closed.)
• Head over to the lake and look for beached mermaids so we can bone them.
• Paying kids at the high school money in exchange for their tater tots, because Monday’s tater tots are the best.

I can’t tell you everything we do because “the man” is probably reading this, but I promised Barry my run for President wouldn’t interfere with Funday Monday, even if I got elected. I figure the President is pretty powerful and can take three-day weekends whenever he wants.

I’m building a time machine

If I had a time machine, all my problems would be solved.

That’s why I’m building a time machine in my garage.

To be fair, it’s actually my mom’s garage. But it’s kind of like mine, though, because I live over the garage. Think Kirk Cameron in Growing Pains, but less preachy. Also, my room is less a room in the traditional sense and more some stuff I put up on the roof of the garage. It’s cold in the winter and things tend to get wet when it rains, but it’s a small price to pay for freedom.

But back to my time machine. It was designed by a well-respected design firm. And by “a well-respected design firm” I mean it was designed by a homeless guy outside the design firm’s office. But it’s cool, because if you’ve ever seen Good will Hunting you know that if you’re around something long enough you’re bound to learn about it. You also know that Matt Damon is the perfect man.

But I digress. I’m not sure what the homeless guy’s name is, so I just call him Hoss, but he’s very reliable. Whenever I need to have a meeting with him, he’s always there, usually sans pants.

Recently Hoss asked me for a progress report on my time machine and I told him that things were going well. I told him that because I’m a liar. Things aren’t going well at all. In fact, I’m way behind schedule. The problem isn’t so much that I’m not putting the work in to get it done – I spend close to 15 minutes a week on the damned thing – as much as I’m having trouble tracking down the parts.

I thought I’d found some plutonium on eBay, but I was unable to purchase it before the government took away my computer and arrested me for cavorting with known terrorists. First of all, cavorting sounds like a made-up word to me. Secondly, isn’t this America? If I want to buy a little plutonium from a dictator in a country I’ve never heard of I should be able to do so. This eroding of our civil liberties is getting out of hand. (I plan to touch on this in a later post.)

So no plutonium. Of course, fuel wouldn’t do me any good, anyway, because I don’t have an engine to fuel yet. Hoss and I had originally decided on building a jet engine from scratch, but stupid Auto Zone doesn’t carry jet engine compressors. So it was on to Plan B – the engine from a 1983 Chevette, and good luck finding one of those that works.

So my time machine is completely unusable and that’s too bad because I’ve got big plans for it. It’s kind of like when I went house shopping and I was looking at a house and the real estate agent laughed at me when I told her I was ready to make the purchase. Turns out she thought I was just a drifter looking for someplace to stay warm. She also didn’t like my payment plan which involved winning the lottery. She didn’t care that, based on my calculations (which I made up), I was sure to win some time in the next 27 years. She also didn’t seem to understand that I had already invited all my friends to the housewarming party.

Now here I am again … big plans and no way to execute them. All I want to do is form an army, go back to 1862 and beat the North and the South in the Civil War and form a new nation known simply as the United States of Awesome.

I’d bring my electric guitar, too, and I’d shred out some “Holy Diver” for everybody and get credit for writing it and make it our national anthem. And when Ronnie James Dio tries to release it in 100 years he can go fuck himself because I already recorded it and released it on the phonograph. That would also give me plenty of time to learn how to play guitar, which is good because right now I only know three chords – a C, a G and one I invented that I tentatively named a flying W. You have to play it while you hold the guitar behind your head. If you don’t, it sounds wrong and you look less awesome.

Of course, on top of all this, “the man’s” trying to hold me down. Hoss and I were talking about this just the other day. Building a time machine costs money and neither he nor I have any money. Neither of us has a “job”, per se, though he donates plasma regularly and I dabble in freelance architecture. I’m currently working on a building I hope to erect (pause for laughter because I said “erect”) a couple blocks over. It’s going to be 200 stories of solid steel and the windows will be made out of bulletproof glass and there will be gargoyles all over the place – maybe every other floor or so. I talked to a developer the other night and he told me I need to find some tenants if I really want to sell this to city council. He also said something about not knowing why a small suburb of 5,000 people would need a 200-story office building at the end of a residential street and I thought I heard something about years of schooling to become an architect, but I had pretty much stopped listening at that point.

So I’m working on lining up some tenants. My brother, Chad, is a lawyer, and he doesn’t really talk to me anymore, but I think he’d be interested. Also, my friend Barry is going to start an electronics company. He actually already started it and he finished building his first LCD TV the other day, so once he gets a buyer for that and really starts making money, he said I could block out a couple floors for him (but nothing too high because he’s afraid of heights). So things are looking good on that front. Once the money for my design starts rolling in, Hoss and I will be able to really get moving on this time machine.

But until then, I’m stuck in this holding pattern, staring at a bunch of useless parts and listening to my mom tell me to get that monstrosity out of her garage because she has to park her stupid Ford Taurus in there. As a certified time machine expert (I made the certificate myself) I can tell you this – the next Ford Taurus that goes back in time will be the first.