The future looks bleak, yo

Waking up with "We Are The Champions" by Queen stuck in your head is more than enough to get the gears turning and the wonder machine working on trying to figure out whatever happened to heartwarming, clever, well-written kids sports movies like The Mighty Ducks and The Sandlot. Airbud does not count, nor do the many sequels where Airbud has to play soccer or football. Somehow Beethoven is close, although that didn't really involve sports in any way. But seriously, where did these films go? When and why was it decided that all kids movies must be some type of animation? (And on that note, why are all animated movies now done in that Pixar style rather than drawn? Sorry, I just don't like that stuff. It feels effortless and generic, like the bad Flash animations Flash tutorials have you make.)

I think maybe part of it is that the actors who rocked those old school kids sports movies have all grown up into gross adults and stuff. For instance, I rented this awesomely bad-looking horror movie a while back because it had the fat kid from The Sandlot (he was also the goalie in The Big Green) in it, but it turns out he lost weight when he grew up. LAME. There are some people who just shouldn't be allowed to not be fat; Wayne Knight, better known as Newman from Seinfeld, is another one. That guy just would not be hilarious if he was thin. Who would want to see a dilophosaurus maul a thin guy? Not me. Not even if they played the same scream three times in a row.

Somewhere along the way, the sincerity in kids movies just evaporated. Oh sure, there are probably some good ones that came out in recent years, but I seriously doubt that people will still be making t-shirts of their catch phrases twenty or thirty years from now. I bring that up because I saw an awesome "You're Killin' Me, Smalls!" shirt the other day and wanted the crap out of it, but I had to pass it up because I am poor. But that's okay, because I've got my memories, unlike today's kids. When they grow up and go to college and be poor, there's no way they're going to see shirts of Bolt or Cars and want them. There's just no way! I would seriously bet my roomie's right pinkie against it.

The year in review

As of 12:15 this afternoon, all of my lectures, labs, and studios were finally completed for the academic year. Finals week is still left, but that almost doesn't count as class because the schedule becomes so random and weird and there isn't really much work left to do. I'd like now to recap a few of the more memorable things that happened this year.

• In the big art history lecture hall, which was very dark and silent as we took an online test, someone's computer suddenly began blaring porno music and impassioned moans. Whoever it was took nearly thirty seconds to close the video.

• I saw a guy get kicked out of my intro to logical thinking class for replying "recess" when the professor asked him what his major was.

• My terrible theater professor, who was a pudgy, socially awkward jerk, was met with muffled laughter when he tried to casually toss it out there that he had had a girlfriend at one point. (Unrelated, but another funny thing with this guy was when we Googled him and found out he has a Geocities portfolio website that's done entirely in Papyrus.)

• In painting, our friend Stan's tradition of reading to the class from his Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark 3 book was eventually integrated into the course's official schedule as a 15-minute block every Tuesday and Thursday that became known as "Homeless Stan's Illicit Story Time."

• One of Jon's most recent offerings of foamcore (the musical genre), known officially as "Transcendence," became more affectionately known as "The Neighbor Song" because it was what we always blasted with the subwoofer face-down on the ground at 3am when we were feeling mischievous.

• Jonathan Taylor Thomas was named the King of the Mid-'90s Fadeaway Into Obscurity by President Obama as part of one of his lesser known campaign promises.

• The phrase "jive ass bitches" was inducted into the official vocabulary of our apartment one afternoon after Jon and I watched a especially enlightening episode of Fresh Prince.

I want that

It doesn't surprise me that in our ultra-material culture, there are a bunch of things that I find myself wanting throughout the day. What often does surprise me is how come Christmas time, I can never think of any of it, and I end up with some Barnes & Noble gift cards, a CD or two I could download for free, and a new collar for the cat (which, if you think about it, isn't really so much for the cat as it is for me).

I kind of want my own podcast. There are a few major problems with this idea, but before I get to them, I'll tell you why I'd enjoy having a podcast. I think it would be very cool to falsely assume I had a cult following. It would be blatantly obvious that I wouldn't have a popular following, but since I'd see one or two new downloads per month pop up, I could probably convince myself that my music selections and interesting musings on the state of whatever had earned me a special place in the hearts of at least a few perceptive individuals. I wouldn't really care about whether or not it was true so as long as I could name the podcast something like "Snack Break." Or "The Bus Stop."

Then again, I still am not really sure what a podcast is or how you make one, so that's probably out the window. Plus, it would pretty much be the same shit you can read here, except I wouldn't be able to put funny pictures I find on Google at the beginning of each installment like I can on a blog.

I want to like Twitter. It seems like something that should either come easily or not be a stressful thing to ignore, but somehow Twitter seems like such a cool, modern idea until I actually go to update my status with it. I never know what to say. "Met a hobo"? "Went 2 the hospital"? "Still using Twitter"? Why even "microblog" in the first place? Hardly anybody reads my long blog, let alone my carefully-worded-so-as-to-fit-into-the-140-character-limit microblog.

I want a giant White Stripes poster. I actually already have one that's nearly as tall as I am, but I think it would be super keen to have two of them right next to one another. Then people could come into my apartment and think I was some type of White Stripes goon, but I could just be like, "Naw, check it out--if you stand right here, it looks like that Meg White is whispering something to the other Meg White." And then I would be thought a visionary.

I also want to bore a tunnel from my living room to the basement so I could do laundry without having to walk all the way around the building, but I'm going to be moving out soon anyway so I may put that one on the back burner for a while.