I’m going to save TV

Throughout human history, there have been but two absolute truths. The first is that jean shorts will never go out of style. The second is that television reached its peak on November 19, 1982, when Knight Rider introduced us to the character of K.A.R.R.

There is a third thing that I’m almost 100% certain should be added to this list, and it’s my assertion that Dave Matthews has a vagina. I’m still working to confirm this, however, and it’s been a struggle to do so since I am failing miserably at posing as a groupie at one of his concerts because I find it deplorable to be within 500 feet of him and I look just awful in go-go boots. So I’ve gone the route of becoming a licensed plumber, at which point I will wait anxiously for his shower to break and hope that he finds my ad on page 379 of the phone book. I also hope that he attempts to take a shower while I’m fixing it. So confirmation should be forthcoming soon.

But back to television. Anyone that knows me can tell you that I am a full-blown Knight Rider junkie. I’m sure the pitch for the show went something like this:

TV EXECUTIVE: I’m highly cynical of everything and doubt your proposal will amount to anything, but go ahead.

SHOW CREATOR: This show stars David Hasselhoff and is about a talking car and a guy who got shot in the face.

TV EXECUTIVE: That sounds nothing short of awesome!

And that TV executive was right. The only thing he got wrong was just how awesome the show would become. (Editor’s Note: It was super-awesome.)

Who can forget the aforementioned K.A.R.R., reminding us all just how close we are to evil machines taking over the world. Or better yet, Garth Knight, played masterfully by David Hasselhoff with facial hair. Rumor has it that Mr. Hasselhoff didn’t have time to grow said facial hair properly for the role so he ripped off his chest hairs on set and glued them to his face. I actually made that rumor up just now, but I assure you it comes from a very credible source, that source being the lock of David Hasselhoff’s chest hair I purchased on eBay for the ridiculously low bid of $6.99. (I wanted to bid $300 but I didn’t have it in my checking account and nobody would extend me that much credit.)

(Editor’s note: I can’t confirm if it was one of the chest hairs he glued to his face.)

But there hasn’t been a TV show like Knight Rider ever since. Oh, people have tried. Baywatch was a noble effort. Baywatch Nights was equally interesting. And Saved by the Bell taught me many valuable life lessons, most notably that even nerds can grow up and make sex tapes one day. But no one else has gotten the formula down for great TV.

That is, until now.

See, I wrote a pilot episode for a little situational comedy I think you’ll enjoy called Mermen and a Baby. It’s about these two guys named Mitch and Corey and they live together, and they seem like normal guys, except they both have this birth defect where they got gills instead of lungs, so they have to live underwater. Mitch is an insurance adjuster and Corey works in banking and they both have special offices filled with water and their escapades on dry land lead to sometimes heartwarming and always entertaining results. Also, they both bone a ton of mermaids, which is hot.

Here’s the thing, though. In the pilot episode, Mitch is totally boning this mermaid when there’s a knock on the door and it’s this girl he met in college who he also totally boned. But she’s got this baby and it’s his and she’s going to study abroad next semester so Mitch needs to take care of the baby. And Corey’s a cool dude, so he says he’ll help and so these two guys that have to live underwater have to raise a kid on their own that’s an air-breather. (That’s what they call us normal folks.)

So that’s my sitcom and it’s really funny and I made sure to include a lot of gay jokes because that’s what people laugh at nowadays. And at some point I’m going to have them meet a fisherman named Tyrelle, and he’ll be their black friend and he’ll try to teach them how to rap and be cool and he’ll make fun of how they dance.

Problem is, the networks are too stuck on their stupid show ideas to give mine a shot.

Same with my test script I wrote for Law & Order: Dogs. It would be like regular Law & Order, except with talking dogs. The big twist: They’d keep running into the stupid cat judge. And everyone knows that cats are soft on crime. I also don’t understand how these TV executives fail to see the spinoff potential. The wheels in my head are already spinning on Law & Order Dogs: SVU and Law & Order Dogs: Who Stole my Chew Toy?

Living your life is easy as 1, 2, 3

As 2009 comes to a close, I’m realizing just how much I have on my plate. I’m building a time machine. I’m trying as hard as I can to get accepted into the community college. I’m dealing with my always tenuous living situation. And I haven’t even mentioned my whole freelance architecture business.

(Editor’s note: Until now.)

But that didn’t stop me from putting an ad in the local alternative weekly for a new service I’ll be starting. I figure life coaching is right up my alley. I know that in sports teams are always looking for coaches with experience and I’ve got plenty of life experience.

For those of you that don’t know, a life coach meets with people that aren’t very good at life and gives them advice on either how to get things turned around or the most effective way to kill themselves. I’m pretty sure a life coach is one of the only people allowed to kill somebody else. We’re really the only people qualified to determine who should live and who should die.

(Editor’s note: We’re like God if God were a life coach.)

Normally I charge $75 per hour for my services plus an extra $10 if you want to make out a little at the end of our session. But it’s resolution time and if nothing else I view this blog as a public service. So I’m going to help you make your life better with this free life advice.

Tip No. 1: Life is really long

If there’s one thing I’ve learned in all my years, it’s that this whole living thing takes a long time. In fact, if somebody would have told me beforehand that this was going to take somewhere in the neighborhood of 70-90 years to finish, I’d probably have just passed to begin with.

But here I am with no real choice in the matter (because as a highly-qualified life coach I’ve deemed myself worthy of continuing to live) just kind of counting down the years because I’ve accomplished most of what I wanted to in life. All that stuff I mentioned earlier isn’t really important. I’m just trying to do it all because I’m bored.

Here is my list of things I hope to accomplish before I die that I made in high school. I’ve put an * next to all of the things I’ve accomplished.

• Wear jean shorts.*
• Trick someone into thinking DiGiorno pizza was actually delivery.*
• Learn to swear in casual conversation.*
• Fly a kite.
• Kick a midget.*
• Be on Knight Rider. (Note: This will be completed once my time machine is finished.)
• Bone a mermaid.
• Drive a Big Wheel.*
• Kiss Matt Damon.*
• Kill a hobo.*
• Eat at at least four different Applebee’s.
• Meet Pat Sajak and mistakenly think he’s the host of Jeopardy and repeatedly tell him throughout our evening together that Jeopardy is way better than that crapfest Wheel of Fortune and that surely Hell could be nothing more than sitting in a room full of old people watching constant reruns of Wheel of Fortune only to realize too late that Pat Sajak is in fact the host of Wheel of Fortune and not Jeopardy and I can’t backtrack because I’ve already presented him with a notarized certificate stating how much better Jeopardy is than that crapfest Wheel of Fortune and things just go downhill from there and he eventually stops returning my calls and we end up not talking again until we run into each other one day on a bus and there are a few moments of awkward conversation and staring blankly off into the distance and we realize that we’ve grown so far apart that we can never have what we did before but we both agree that this bittersweet moment has brought us closure on this whole ugly incident.*

So that’s something like 8 out of 12, which is 75%, and Michael Jordan shot under 50% for his career so I think that if I finish my life at 75%, that’s cool.

You should make a list, too. Sit down and think of everything you want to do before you die and then set out to complete 75% of them.

(Editor’s note: It’s easier if 75% of your list is comprised of things you’ve already done.)

Tip No. 2: Everyone is out to get you

The biggest obstacle you’ll encounter in your life is other people. For some reason our society teaches us to value others and be nice and to share. That’s all well and good except for the fact that everyone wants to see you fail. And I don’t mean “you” generically. I mean “you,” the person reading this. Everyone on Earth hates you and is conspiring against you.

If you take that attitude towards life, you’ll see instant improvement. Your relationships will improve dramatically because you’ll now understand them better and realize that your girlfriend is only dating you so that she can find the right time to rip your heart out and step all over it. Sure, she could do it now, but you’re in a good mood so there wouldn’t be much point. She’s just waiting until you get laid off, your house is about to be foreclosed on and there’s this funny looking teenager at your door claiming he’s your son. Then she’ll sit you down and tell you that it’s just not working out and she’d like to see other people.

Same with your coworkers. They’re only being nice to you because they want your job. It may not seem like it because you’re the janitor and that guy in the fancy suit is the human resources manager, but believe me, that thank you he said to you when you cleaned up that coffee spill in his office was just his way of saying, “I could have your job if I wanted it and I’ll take it if you get the least bit complacent.”

In my perfect society, you’d be allowed to punch people like this in the face. But in our current, broken society punching someone in the face is given a silly, corporate buzzword name like assault and battery.

So you need to approach all these bastards (and by “all these bastards” I mean everyone) with the knowledge that they would give anything to see you dead. And if doing so makes you a little bit paranoid in the process, all the more worthwhile.

Tip No. 3: Change your name to something awesome

Fact: Your name sucks.

Fact: If your name was Craig T. Nelson, your name would not suck.

The bottom line is Craig T. Nelson is one of the greatest actors of this or any generation, but the totally sweet star of Coach would have never gotten the gig if his name were David Smith. Why? Because that name sucks.

If you want your life to improve, you need to change your name to something that will make people want to be in awe of you. Craig T. Nelson is the perfect example. Not only does it throw off the shackles of the first name-last name system, but it also includes a mysterious middle initial that could stand for anything. (Craig Tits Nelson?)

But you don’t have to follow Craig T.’s lead. In fact, I don’t think you can handle it. Don’t worry. Since I’m trying to come up with my own cool name, I will now share my list with you and you can choose one of your own:

• Gunnar
• Hairy Frank
• Bone City Johnson
• Fast Mikey
• Tiny Mo
• Jim Lehrer
• Hoss
• Willie “Fancy Walkin’” Jackson
• Jesus of Nazareth
• Wild Wendell and his Hillbilly-Rockin’ Band
• Doc Bologna
• Top Gun

Mind you, these are not nicknames. You’ll have to go down to the local courthouse and apply to have your name legally changed to the above choice. And just so you know before you pick it, you’ll have to use Wild Wendell and his Hillbilly-Rockin’ Band in its entirety every time you write it, say it or think it. It’s impossible to shorten awesome.

Polishing my resume for the job hunt

So a few of you suggested to me that one of the reasons I couldn’t get a job was because of my lack of a solid resume. Of course, none of you have seen my resume, so none of you actually said that to me. Mostly you said it was because of my unrealistic salary demands, my wardrobe consisting mostly of cut-off jean shorts and replica jerseys and my general lack of oral hygiene. Again, none of you actually said that to me, but that’s generally the feedback I receive from people who interview me.

It’s a free country, so you’re allowed to question my oral hygiene, but last I checked the Bible doesn’t say anything about God creating toothbrushes. Why would he give you teeth but no toothbrushes? Think about it. Seems to me that the guy who made teeth would know a little bit more about taking care of them than some guy who works for a company called AquaFresh. This is what happens though when Big Toothpaste gets their hands on those Washington fat cats in Congress.

But I digress. I was reading up online about resumes and how to make them (turns out your birth certificate isn’t your resume), and it seems like an awful lot of work to me. I don’t think it’s fair for a company to expect me to put in work just so I can go interview with them and not pay me throughout the process. I’ve suggested this in various board meetings (that I’ve crashed) but no one seems to be interested in my ideas to get the best of the best to apply. I know I would apply to tons more jobs if I were getting paid $25 an hour to do it.

Still, I need a job and the whole freelance architecture thing still hasn’t really taken off yet despite the fact that I spend a lot of time sitting around and thinking about how to make it work, mostly by playing Sim City. I thought I had a pretty good project lined up when I heard my next door neighbor’s kid begging his dad for a treehouse. I took a little initiative and drew him up some plans for a pretty sweet treehouse/grotto that I could have built for him for about $15,000, but before I could show it to him the plans got thrown away after they got mixed up in my old newspaper collection that my mom threw out.

I know what you’re thinking. “Why do you have an old newspaper collection?” It’s because for a while I thought I had a pretty nice money-making scheme where I would stand on the street corner with a stack of newspapers and yell, “EXTRA! EXTRA! READ ALL ABOUT IT!” and peddle headlines from a few years ago as new ones. (Holy shit! The Twin Towers collapsed again!) Turned out those newspaper kids didn’t make as much money as I thought and on top of that old man Carter, the publisher of the local paper, took two-thirds of every nickel I made selling papers and kept it for himself. He also locked me in his basement and fed me nothing but gruel. Even worse, it turns out old man Carter wasn’t actually the publisher of the local paper but just some random old man who locked people in his basement. It all worked out in the end, though, when he fired me because he thought I was editorializing too much in my sales pitches.

Getting back on point, though – my resume. I need a resume. So here it is. Any advice would be welcome, or if you want to steal it and use it as your own, that’s cool, too. Just be warned that you’ll find yourself sorely overqualified for most jobs to which you apply.

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Bill Legarm
Address withheld (no way am I giving you creeps my address – unless you’re a lady – then we can talk)
Phone number withheld (see above note)

 

Experience

January 1997-February 1997 | Assistant cafeteria worker

Worked here as punishment for repeatedly calling science teacher a witch (True, by the way. How else could he have built a full working volcano in our classroom?); Washed dishes; Cleaned up trays; Ate leftover scraps for money; The story about the pickles in the back room is totally untrue and not why I got fired.

April 2001-April 2001 | Communist hunter

Rounding up communists for fringe organization in Michigan; Was responsible for the arrest of 14 communists, mostly children; Fired when group found out about my refusal to acknowledge a united Germany – also I don’t know what a communist is.

November 2001-December 2001 | Mall Santa

Point of clarification: By Mall Santa I mean Front Yard Santa. The company that hires the Mall Santas didn’t hire me, so I got my own costume and set up in my front yard. In hindsight that wasn’t the best idea, but if attempting to bring joy to the neighborhood is wrong (and, according the arrest warrant, it is), I don’t want to be right.

July 2005-May 2006 | Stalker

Long story short, apparently the girl I thought I was dating wasn’t actually dating me. More on that in a later post. Still, this counts as a job because I got a hold of her bank account number and so I was kind of getting paid to do it.

September 2008-present | Freelance Architect

Designing and building buildings for major cities and corporations. My designs can be seen in various places including in my head and scribbled on public restroom walls, which is where I do my best thinking.

Education

All my life | Street smarts

You could hire somebody that reads books and has a degree, but do they know how to make a weapon using some rope, a piece of gum and a medium Frosty? Neither do I, but while they’re reading and getting degrees, I’m sitting around in my underwear watching MacGyver. Who do you think is going to figure it out first?

Skills

• Bob Barker trivia
• Opening Excel on my computer
• Watching Knight Rider
• Driving exactly 7 miles per hour over the speed limit
• Playing the Flying W on the guitar
• Really good at I Spy
• Boiling water
• Pretending to be Jason Bourne
• Eating ravioli
• Huntin’ commies
• As a general rule, if Ronnie James Dio can do it, I can do it better

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By the way, I completely agree with you. I have no idea how I haven’t been hired yet.

 

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Answering comments I haven’t gotten

Even though I’m still awaiting my first real comment, that doesn’t mean I can’t make a few up for a brand new Friday tradition. For some reason, the made up people who posted these made up comments posted them in letter form. Also, someone actually sent me a letter. I didn’t even realize mail service still existed. Guess you learn new things every day.

Dear Bill,

I also get the chills whenever I think of KARR from Knight Rider. How can we prevent this from happening in real life?

Sincerely,

Mike, Florida

Dear Mike,

That’s just it. We can’t. If somebody happened to make two Pontiac Trans-Ams with artificial intelligence and one had a programming error that made it evil, there’s nothing we can do about it, mostly because David Hasselhoff is too old at this point to kick KARR’s ass.

I’ve sent numerous letters to my congressman demanding action be taken to prevent just this situation, but so far I’ve gotten no response. Isn’t it just like Washington fat cats to wait to fix a problem until it’s too late?

-Bill

Dear Bill,

Who’s to blame for the suckiness of The Matrix? Keanu Reeves?

Sincerely,

Dave, Ohio

Dear Dave,

First off, don’t you dare ever speak poorly of Keanu Reeves again. As a general rule, I don’t wallpaper my room with posters of bad actors, which is why I have my Wall of Keanu (and by “Wall of Keanu” I mean “Room of Keanu”).

Still, he could have really saved us all a lot of trouble by just picking the blue pill. So if anything, maybe blame Keanu’s dedication to his craft and therefore his unwillingness to go off script. Also, there’s a good chance he was getting paid by the hour, so it certainly benefitted him to drag things out as much as possible.

-Bill

Dear Bill,

I know you think it would be cool to “bone a mermaid,” but trust me, I dated a mermaid once. It seemed like a good idea at the time but, long story short, I forgot to put water in the bathtub one day and when I got home from work she had dried out and I was left to clean up the mess and flush her down the toilet. My landlord was not happy.

Sincerely,

Tyler, Texas

Dear Tyler,

That’s horrifying. Still. Totally worth it.

-Bill

Why I decided to start blogging

Have you ever seen The Matrix?

If so, let me first apologize and I also wish you could have those two precious hours of your life back. Secondly, that movie is a lot like my life…well, until Keanu goes into that weird alternate universe and starts getting shot at in slow motion. My life is nothing like that, which is good because that’s when the movie starts to blow.

But the part where he has to pick the blue pill or the red pill? My life is a lot like that. Because I have two choices.

1.) Wait patiently for my opportunity to meet Ronnie James Dio and challenge him to a guitar battle in which the winner would get the hand of a fair maiden in marriage. (We’ll call this the blue pill.)

2.) Write a blog while I wait patiently for my opportunity to meet Ronnie James Dio and challenge him to a guitar battle in which the winner would get the hand of a fair maiden in marriage. (We’ll call this the red pill.)

[Editor's note: I removed a third white pill option, which would have been to bone a mermaid. I don't know any mermaids, so that's just not a realistic option.]

At first it seemed like option one would be best because I would need to have time to learn to play guitar while I’m waiting, but then I realized learning to play guitar is probably really hard and that anyone with the ability to type and who hasn’t lost library Internet privileges can write a blog. In the name of full disclosure, I actually have lost library Internet privileges, so my friend Barry is actually posting these for me. He’s still allowed to use the computers at the library and he’s also very good at reading my handwriting off the back of Wendy’s napkins.

I figure I can just wing it when I do finally meet Dio because he’s old and there’s only one old person who rocks, and that’s Jon Bon Jovi, so I should be able to out-ax Ronnie James. Plus, as a previous post mentioned, I know a few chords already.

Anyway, blogging is pretty easy, and when you’re like me and have a lot to talk about and a lot of knowledge to pass on to the youth of this world, it’s even easier. I might not have an education in the formal sense, but I’ve spent many hours watching my DVD sets of Knight Rider which really serves less as entertainment and more as a textbook for life. Though I’d recommend not taking these lessons literally. Turns out there are very few companies out there in search of people who have been shot in the face. Turns out even fewer of these companies want to rebuild said person’s face and give them a talking car. It’s a lesson my friend Rich had to learn the hard way, though admittedly it was pretty sweet when they wheeled his casket in to the funeral to the Knight Rider theme as he’d laid out in his will. So, in that sense at least, it was totally worth it.

But that’s not something I’d recommend for everybody. Knight Rider is meant to be viewed as a metaphor for life, not a way to necessarily live your life. It’s really complicated and sometimes it makes my head hurt and just thinking about KARR gives me the chills. But it’s certainly made me a better person and that’s why I’m blogging. Because we’re all in this together and I have a responsibility to pass on my deep knowledge of life to you, my blog readers.