Ten things you should definitely try to get ahold of

Today's post will be less about me and more about stuff that legitimately rocks. Some of it might not be for everybody, but that's okay, because chances are you aren't everybody anyway.

10. Are You Afraid of the Dark?, Season 1
Are You Afraid of the Dark was a tremendously great show. Not only did it teach us the value of mortal terror when we were children, but these days it hits the spot like no other when you're in the mood for some inadvertent humor from the ever-deep well of terrible '90s hairstyles and super baggy shirts. Are You Afraid of the Dark Season 1 can be found on YouTube, provided you know which episode you're looking for.

9. Robot Dinosaurs That Shoot Beams When They Roar
Not only does this short Flash game combine at least four of the most awesome things on planet Earth (that being dinosaurs, robots, flying, and roaring), but it does so with a hilarious soundtrack and a strangely satisfying intro video. Highly recommended, especially since it's free to play and to love. Robot Dinosaurs That Shoot Beams When They Roar can be found here.

8. Middle Cyclone, by Neko Case
Neko Case is the co-front (wo)man of The New Pornographers, and also has about a billion albums from her solo career, which is more alt country than indie rock but still somehow manages to rule (for more on this phenomenon, consult bands like Jenny Lewis and She & Him). "This Tornado Loves You," the first track, is especially dece. Way more dece than Pat Benatar, and that's saying something. "Middle Cyclone" can be stolen off the internet in any number of creative ways or bought in an actual store.

7. Gak
Not sure if Gak even still exists, or how one could come across it even if it did, but it's too great not to be mentioned. Once I wrapped Gak around my cat's tail back when he was only a kitten, and my mom had to shave the tail to get the Gak out.

6. Super Metroid
Super Metroid is Super Dece. Basically, you're an ass-kicking female robotron named Samus whose main goal in life is to kill every animal that ever existed. You run around shooting blobs of slime and blasting doors open with missiles, and every so often you have to jump over lava or solve little puzzles. As far as SNES games go, it's one of the better ones. Super Metroid can be downloaded from www.vimm.net or bought on Ebay.

5. From Dusk Till Dawn
I still haven't picked my jaw up off the floor from the first time I saw this intentionally awesomely bad trans-genre Tarantino project, and I think it still stands as one of the most hilarious and most strangely satisfying super violent movies ever made. I won't spoil anything about the plot, because it's 900 times funnier if you go into it without knowing a single thing about it, but I will say that it's as just about as close to perfect as any movie could ever come. From Dusk Till Dawn can be downloaded from any number of sites or rented at Family Video from the two for a dollar section.

4. My Maudlin Career, by Camera Obscura
Many bands do the "I am sad, but sound very happy" thing with a fair amount of success, but Camera Obscura are masters of the art. Tracy Ann Campbell and friends came out with this record yesterday (April 21st, for the record) and I've had it on repeat between classes and Are You Afraid of the Dark viewing sessions. I think it's a pretty solid one-up on their last album, "Let's Get Out Of This Country," which was also great, and again I get a perfect mental picture of a slasher movie set in a high school from the 1950s. Argyle socks and everything. "My Maudlin Career" can be bought in a store or downloaded just like any other CD.

3. Franny and Zooey, by J.D. Salinger
Although you are reading this right now, it is possible that you do not like to read. And while that's perfectly acceptable, the fact remains that this would prevent you from ever reading this book, which is only like 100 pages long and could be said to be a pretty profound part of American literary culture. It originally appeared as two short stories in the New Yorker, for chrissakes! It was the last book the man ever wrote! I plan to name my future dog after Zooey! Franny and Zooey can be gotten from any library worth its salt and probably found someplace on the innanet as well.

2. Crank 2
It's rare that a bad movie spawns a sequel that takes extreme (and by that I mean XTREME!!!!) advantage of the original's badness. Crank 2 is that movie. Although it did seem a little like they were trying to channel the spirit of Kill Bill by casting David Carradine, interjecting quirky typographic design into random scenes, and occasionally featuring bizarre flash backs reminscent of Beatrix Kiddo calling out, "Present!" in her 3rd grade classroom, it was still a pretty damn hilarious and dece movie. And I won't even go into the absurdly stupid (but somehow very compelling) plot that follows Chev Chelios as he clobbers an infinity of badguys in order to get his stolen heart back. It scores a solid 3 Pat Benatars out of 4, at least. Crank 2 can be seen in theaters or probably downloaded.

1. Army men
Not the stupid video game series, I mean the actual toys. The little green plastic guys who were supposedly designed to be able to stand but never needed much help when it came to falling over. Army men are truly great. Not only are they literally hours and hours and hours of entertainment on their own, but they're entirely recyclable if you have an open fireplace at your disposal. Sometimes that's the most fun thing to do with them, actually. Army men earn a perfect score of 4 Pat Benatars out of 4, and the official Jack Lawrence seal of approval. Army men can be bought in creepy old toy stores, and as soon as the required technological leaps are made by the computer science nerds of the world, there will be a way to download them off the internet. You heard it here first.

Love is a battlefield

Every so often there comes a song that doesn't conform to any logical standards of goodness, and yet is still worth YouTubing and listening to at least four times in a row. I think for each person that song is different, but for me, it's Pat Benatar's "Love Is a Battlefield." I don't know exactly where my my enjoyment of this cheesy pop "gem" from the '80s came from, but I believe it has its roots in three separate but equally important schools of thought.

1. The "shoulder shaking" dance that Pat does in the music video to scare away the asshole in the strip joint is one of history's best (and possibly first) examples of a problem being solved by a dance off.

2. It's catchy enough to like, but not catchy enough to openly admit to liking. This gives listening to the song a "forbidden" vibe.

3. Pat Benatar somewhat resembles a dragonfly.

I wouldn't go so far as to say that my enjoyment of this song is cause enough for me to write Pat Benatar a fan letter (especially since I bet she would start doing the shoulder shakes at me if there were any typos, and I don't want any of that action), but if she sees this blog, which I assume is likely since all she probably does these days is Google herself, I would like to make it known that I think Pat Benatar is still dece. At least two times decer than Guns N' Roses ever was, and about 3/4ths as dece as The Cure currently is. And she's probably equal to Morrissey. Pat Benatar's general decency can be determined using the following equation:

(The White Stripes - Cursive) x 5
____________________________________________

marketability of Shia LaBeouf

Although scientists are still working to determine the exact level of dece possessed by Pat Benatar, great advances are being made thanks to increasing interest in the '80s. It is my fondest hope that by 2010, we'll at least know whether or not it's socially acceptable for Miley Cyrus to do Pat Benatar covers.

The top five ways I maintain my dignity

These don't go in any particular order, but I thought they would be good to share anyway. We're all humans, after all! (Koko the gorilla, this post is not for you.)

• Refusing to add the Snowball Fight application on Facebook.
I've added my fair share of screwy applications, but for some reason, Snowball Fight strikes me as a level of depravity that's just too deep for me to sanction. I hate getting the little red flag in the corner of my screen, which raises my hopes up so high that it probably indicates a severe mental imbalance on my part, only to find out that some dork I went to high school with threw a snowball at me, and if I add this suck ass application, I can annoy all my friends in the same way I was just annoyed. No. No way. Not me. Not Jack Lawrence.

• Only playing "cool" SNES games on my SNES emulator during lectures.
Even though I maybe do have Final Fantasy III, Chrono Trigger, and Tiny Toon Adventures: Wacky Sports Challenge squirreled away somewhere on my laptop's hard drive, the only games I play when pretty girls could be looking over my shoulder are Mario Kart and Tetris.

• Refusing to take a multivitamin if there's a stupid picture on the label.
Sure, I may have gotten a little anemic last month from living on nothing but bags of microwave rice, PB&J sandwiches, and bowls of raisin bran cereal, but at least I didn't open up a bottle of "Active Kids Complete," take out a bright green capsule shaped like a bicycle, and put it in my mouth like some kind of wussy.

• Avoiding Best Buy employees who clearly want to help me find something.
I know exactly where the Pete and Pete box set is, thanks.

• When someone walks into the room, changing the channel just in time for them to not notice I had been watching Gilmore Girls.
Uh. Sorry, what? I was just flipping channels here... oh, monster trucks, that looks good. Okay, now what were you saying?

Old stuff was the best stuff

Turntables. Spider-man. Sean Connery as James Bond. Game Boy. What do all these things have in common?

They're old, and they still melt face.

How come stuff has to constantly be updated? I mean, seriously, are there seriously that many improvements that truly, honestly needed to be made to the '60s-'90s? Rap rock improved neither rap nor rock, and, in fact, made both of them quite a bit worse. Virtual Boy was lame, and I heard it caused headaches or cancer or something like that. Stradivarius violins were the best ever, and those bad boys were from the 1700s. Zelda is still the best video game. The Beatles are still the best band. David Bowie is still the best person to cast for any role in any movie. Some things have gotten better, like medical technology, but that also indirectly leads to overpopulation, which is not as good as normalpopulation.

One of my professors told me last semester that he hates everyone's current fashion because it's just the '70s again, and since that's sort of true, I suppose there is a silver lining to new stuff--it's sometimes the old stuff. However, if we're going to be in the '70s, I want the full '70s. Big mutton chops. Bad wigs. Plaid suits. Plaid pants. Golf clubs as accessories. And when the '80s make their big comeback, which is already starting (evidence of this can be seen in current releases like Keane's "Perfect Symmetry" and the movie Watchmen), I hope everyone's hair puffs back up again. I was only four when the '80s ended, but that hair was hilariawesome. My mom had that hair. Big, permed curls that added a solid three inches to her height. Alright, so maybe the Garbage Pail Kids were the opposite of awesome (and in fact may have subtracted from the awesomeness of other, completely unrelated, things around them), but that was just one tiny part of the '80s. And they're easily canceled out by such dominant things as Regular Nintendo, the movie Labyrinth, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

If they ever invent time travel, I'm for sure going to spend the fortune it will have taken me my whole life to earn on a chance to relive the banning of slap bracelets and the theatrical release of Mortal Kombat.

Asshole '90s Guy Just Having A Goof

MIAMI, FL -- An asshole from the 1990s approached you in a cemetery late last week with the intention of scaring you, and when your reaction was unfavorable, he attempted to justify his actions by referring to them as "just a goof," witnesses reported.

The asshole, dressed in a baggy blue t-shirt with no visible logos or brands and a pair of lame kakhi shorts, allegedly jumped out from behind a large tombstone and shouted, "Boo!" at you before grinning like a complete moron and then mockingly asking you what you were doing in a cemetery.

As if this weren't enough, the asshole's more down-to-earth best friend then stopped you from leaving so that the asshole could continue to act bothersome toward you. "Maybe," the asshole remarked sarcastically when you claimed to have been putting flowers on a grave. "Or maybe you were ghost hunting," he added, almost supernaturally oblivious to your grief.

Apparently not aware that berating a female for mourning a loved one is not typically considered an acceptable method of starting a conversation, the asshole and his friend then attempted to proposition you for a date. "C'mon," the asshole was heard to say.

The asshole and his friend, both clearly in their late twenties, then remarked that their high school's prom was approaching and proceeded to relate to you the story of the murdered prom queen said to haunt this cemetery.

As of press time, the asshole was not available for comment. Sources report that he lost his mind and has been shrieking continuously since learning that you were, in fact, the ghost of said prom queen, and that it was actually you who was having a goof with him the entire time.

The girls at the office would like a word with you, Harvey

I don't think there's much explanation needed once you've watched this totally awesome Folgers commercial from the early days of TV. Hey man, we may have a bad economy, stupid celebrity drama that gets more coverage than important political issues, and the creation of Grand Theft Auto video games on our collective conscience, but at least we modern humans wouldn't never have run this ad.

Well, I guess maybe I could see Hugh Hefner giving it the green light, but he hardly qualifies as a modern human anyway.

College would be so much better without classes

So I have a class this semester called "Intro to Logical Thinking," and I can't quite decide what to make of it. On one hand, there's the fact that it's actually very vaguely interesting to me in an "I feel like Aristotle when I think about this stuff" kind of way. On the other hand, it starts at 9:40am, which is clearly illogical. And like I said, it's only vaguely interesting. In fact, I'm avoiding the logic homework that's due tomorrow morning right at this very moment in order to waste impressive amounts of time on the internet and poking around my room for books and video games and other things that are more interesting than logic. I spend most of my time in that class on Facebook or Wikipedia'ing string theory (because when abstract thinking gets me in the mood for deeper abstract thinking, Wikipedia is always my first stop), and then when the teacher calls on me (who calls on people in a lecture, anyway?), I look up very slowly because I'm not sure he's really talking to me.

Why? Because he calls me Jake Pendergast. That's right, Jake Pendergast. He got both my first and last names incredibly wrong but sticks to his guns every time I try to politely correct him.

"Oh, right, Jack, sorry. Okay, everyone, let's listen up to Jake here, because he's got the answer. Go ahead, Mr. Pendergast."

I don't even know where he got "Pendergast" from. I think there's actually another Jack in the same class that might have that last name, which might be what tripped him up, but I'm almost positive there aren't any Jakes. And not that I don't appreciate the move to get to know his students, but if he's going to forget my name literally two seconds after I tell it to him day after day after day, why even bother trying to learn names? I wouldn't be at all offended if he referred to me as Piano Scarf or Big Shoes Guy. I think tomorrow, when he calls on Jake Pendergast while staring me down with his rheumy marble eyes and one open palm clapped against dry erase board next to the illegibly scribbled problem he wants someone to solve, I'll just belch really loud. That'll show him.

Another dummy class I have this semester is "Digital Premedia File Creation." I still haven't finished deciphering the course title, but what it boils down to is playing Super Mario Bros. 3 on my computer while the teacher rambles on about not traveling to Mexico because of drug lords or something. He gave us a giant assignment about scanning various things and putting them in a big document to print and some other garbage, but all it left me with was the following burning question: who the heck scans anything anymore? The last time I saw a physical photo album was in an episode of Buffy that definitely hadn't been on the air since 1996. Plus, all the pictures and junk we had to scan came out of a dusty cardboard box labeled "IMPORTANT!" even though it was clearly not that. And neither were the creepy awkward family pictures or photographs of breakfast sausage still lifes sitting inside that we ended up scanning.

Once again: man, college would be so much better without classes.