In 1943, an American Air Force mechanic named Jimmy “Screwdriver” Curtis was stationed in Ankara, Turkey, supporting Allied overtures for Turkish support while German economic pressure on the region increased. Sanctions on chromite exports spearheaded by ambassador Franz von Papen had destabilized local markets enough – along with antiwar sentiment that had arisen out of the recent Turkish independence war just a few decades back – that there was essentially a stalemate between Allied and Axis allegiances in Turkey. Without active duty, many of Curtis’ days were spent on communal military bases, where American soldiers regularly preferred to drink contraband Okhotnichya Soviet vodka, and German soldiers preferred to drink freshly squeezed orange juice, as oranges had not yet been invented in Germany at the time. In a rare gesture to extend an olive branch to the Axis troops and in the spirt of the upcoming Youth and Sports Day in mid-May, Curtis decided to create a new drink by combining vodka and orange juice together. And while his original attempt was misinterpreted as an insult and caused his entire unit to be gunned down by Nazi soldiers, he stands remembered by history as the originator of the classic screwdriver cocktail drink.

That, at least, is the story a grey haired man named Roger Sterling told me while I was drinking at the bar at a downtown Wild Wings a few years ago. Or possibly the results of a fever dream I had while suffering through COVID over Christmas.

Regardless, I think it is a fine introduction for this cocktail recipe I invented tonight.

Ingredients

• 1 leftover orange juice box because the kids actually wanted the other red juice boxes not this one
• 1 can of Perrier to pad it out
• 1-2 ounces of vodka in a dusty bottle you haven’t touched since before kids
• half a lemon you found on the counter, for garnish

Steps to make it

1. Put your kids to bed
2. Suddenly two hours later remember you were in the middle of making a drink
3. Return to ingredients and mix them together
4. Squeeze some drops of lemon into the drink
5. Fish out the lemon seed you accidentally dropped into the drink with your fingers
6. Mix with the other end of a single chopstick from dinner
7. Garnish with lemon slice
8. Serve with some leftover steamed fish that you don’t really want to eat but don’t have the heart to throw away

Here’s to you, friends, I hope this helps get you through whatever personal crises are upon you currently.

You know what, this is not a very good drink at all.

My name was Brian McGee,
I stayed up listenin’ to Queen
When I was seventeen.

It is upon us!

Flurries! I saw it tonight while walking back to my car. Or maybe late afternoon? I don’t even think it was that late, but the lack of sunlight throws off my entire internal clock these days.

Or maybe it was sleet? I’m not sure what the difference is. I just recently learned, close to four decades into my life, what sleet actually is. Apparently it’s snow, caused by cold temperatures up there in the cloud, that falls, encounters a layer of warm air that melts it into raindrops again, but then hits another layer of cold air that re-freezes it back into ice, or presumably what is known as sleet now? So it’s refrozen snow, basically, but I guess…mushier? I don’t know.

Anyway I’m just glad I was able to remember my password to log into this site.

Snow dad’s better than no dad!

It is upon us!

Welcome to your annual notice of snowfall in my general area! This happened again, so I think you should all know.

What a wild year right? Maybe years from now we’ll all look back and marvel at how wild it all was. If I had been a bit more consistent with the posting, maybe I would have had the luxury of going back and revisiting all my thoughts about everything that happened and all my smart, cool, hot takes on stuff. But I guess that didn’t happen, so all of this year’s events will fade into the fog of history and soon enough we won’t be able to distinguish any events of 2020 from the events of any other year.

Snow dad’s better than no dad!

It is upon us!

Actually it was yesterday but I don’t think there’s an expectation of timely posts anymore, so I think we should all be happy with what we have.

While you’re here, please enjoy this 32 second cartoon called Frasier and Niles Become Demon Lords, a video that came out about a year ago, about a show that ended 15 years ago. I think it actually does a very good job of hitting the beats of a typical episode.

I bet it’s hard to not make a Frasier parody with love. And to prove that, here’s another one from 30 Rock.

Snow dad’s better than no dad!

There was some noteworthy box office news from this past weekend. Let’s talk about it!

This report that a movie called Arctic Dogs bombed caught my eye…because not only did it bomb, but it bombed badly. Or did it?

I mean…a $50 million animated movie featuring the voices of three Academy Award nominees and an Academy Award winner? Projected to gross $5 million opening weekend and only actually debuting with $2.9 million – that’s hardly Dark Phoenix territory we’re talking about here. I mean it’s a low stakes animated movie for kids, is it that noteworthy that it didn’t gross that much total money? I mean Terminator: Dark Fate is like their third kick at trying to make a sequel and grossed almost the same amount this weekend but against quadruple the budget. Cloud Atlas was supposed to be this highbrow, yellowface-justifying, ensemble cast art piece. John Carter had like a $263 million budget and might have cost Disney $200 million. Those are all-time bombs.

The oft reported headline is that it was the “Worst Opening Of All-Time In 2,800+ Theaters” which seemed like an interesting qualifier. Because off the top of my head, I don’t know what significance that 2,800+ theatre figure has. “Major” releases like modern superhero movies or Fast & Furious iterations get domestic releases to 4,000+ theatres. Crazy Rich Asians which was notable as the first “popular” film with all Asian American principles launched with 3,865 theatres, whereas The Joy Luck Club only had 600 when they did it first in 1993. For reference Box Office Mojo (which is where most of this post is sourced from) considers 600+ theatres a wide release, although it further sorts movies into 2,000+, 2,500+, and 3,000+ theatre categories.

So why the 2,800 cut off? Is it some creative numberwanging to generate a more interesting headline? Like comparing competent professional basketball player and zero-time All-Star Thaddeus Young (whose Basketball Reference page notes a 0.0% – predicted – chance of making the NBA Hall of Fame) to four of the top 10 players of all time?

Sure looks like it. Calling this an “all-time” anything is pretty disingenuous. Going down the list of worst opening weekends in 2,000+ theatres, it ranks #44. Coming in at #28 on the list is Victor Frankenstein which grossed less than Arctic Dogs but on only 2,797 screens. And also The Rocker at #33 with 2,784 screens (0.5% short of the arbitrary cutoff). So if only three additional theatres across all of North America decided that yes, back in 2015, they did want to bet on yet another Frankenstein movie but from Daniel Radcliffe’s perspective as young and sexy Igor witnessing James McAvoy’s portrayal as young and sexy Victor Frankenstein while directed by the same guy who did Lucky Number Slevin…then no such article about Arctic Dogs exists today. But no, everything’s gotta be “of all-time” all the time. And so here we are.

There’s even less to note when you look at worst opening weekend per-theatre averages a list on which this movie ranks #184. This is how you turn a run of the mill movie release that made 4% of it budget less than projected during its opening weekend into a stupid click bait article about an “all-time” event we all just witnessed together, and we should lament the ongoing decline of the movie industry and the creative bankruptcy of everyone involved and yadda yadda yadda. Real dumb stuff.

Oh and The Irishman had a “limited theatrical release” in just eight theatres across New York and Los Angeles because the major North American cinema chains did not like that Netflix wants to put this sucker on streams in just four weeks after premiering in theatres which is also an interesting thing to talk about, but I’ve spent too many words on Arctic Dogs and have no more left for today.

An interesting side note: that’s the 14th one-run game for the Tigers already this season, tops for any team north of the Mason-Dixon Line, whose home games are not played in a dome.

The trailer for the Sonic the Hedgehog movie came out today, which I thought was important enough to warrant a post, so that I could capture and document this moment in my life forever. Sometimes you just get a sense that something so momentous is happening that you’ll want to look back on this years from now so you can revisit it as honest to gosh history. I can’t imagine anything else that has happened in my life over the last seven months that would qualify, which hopefully explains the long duration between posts.

I don’t know if I have a new take on it that hasn’t already been splattered all over the internet already, but mainly I just want to emphasize the core sentiment here, which is…why? I’m struggling so much to make sense of the reason that this exists. Has Sonic recently spring jumped back into collective pop culture consciousness to justify any of this? Presumably some people needed to pay some money to some other people to make this. Are they trying to tap into the nostalgia of today’s 30 or 40 year-olds, in the hopes they want to bring their young children to watch this…? But it doesn’t seem like that type of movie…?

What a terrifying and senseless world we have created for our children to inhabit.

Moving onto other business…

– This is True Detective Pikachu, which still isn’t half as horrifying as that Sonic…although still very horrifying. It’s those Asian eyes. Amazing McConaughey impression though, to the point where I thought it was originally audio pulled straight from the source.

– Then a short hop over to The Matthew McConaughTree which visualizes the top 100 permutations of 10,000 attempts to spell Matthew McConaughey’s last name. I personally fall off the double-N branch every time, and have yet to do it without confirming from a Google search first. The tree data is pulled from The Gyllenhaal Experiment which is another excellent way to waste your time and at the same time feel bad about your spelling of celebrity last names.

– This continued Anthem drama is absolutely delicious to me, even though I don’t really have a dog in the fight, as I don’t believe in dog fighting as a metaphor for disagreements. We shouldn’t have any dogs in any fights. Unless it’s a dog fighting a bear in defense of its family in a life or death situation or something, I don’t know, I’m not saying 0% of dog fights are acceptable. That’s an absolute statement I’m not ready to make yet.

After the fascinating Kotaku article alleging all sorts of creative and cultural issues with Bioware’s development of the game, it doesn’t seem like anything’s really corrected. This whole thing is like a No Man’s Sky level disaster, with reports of a broken loot system, general loading screen and logistical issues, and even stuff like how due to oversights with level balancing the default starting rifle remained the best weapon in the game. Updates and fixes promised to be delivered post-launch have been indefinitely delayed, and allegedly a dwindling playerbase is causing matchmaking problems.

That Forbes article by the way, is pretty garbage, just one guy’s opinion phrased in a way that resembles news. No references to sources or anything, just some guy saying some stuff. It’s not hard to link to some stuff to justify it either. Anyone can check the list of most played game on Xbox and see Anthem is currently ranked 45 out of 48 games, behind clunkers like Fallout 76 or previous iterations of Mortal Kombat and NBA2K. So you can only imagine how well the PC gamer crowd is taking it. Additionally, taking a look at the Twitch category for the game, there are currently rougly 300K subscribers and 350ish active viewers at time of writing. Compared to similar loot shooters like Destiny 2 (3.3 million subs and 4K viewers) or the newer Division 2 (comparable 340K subs but 2K+ viewers), it doesn’t seem great. I mean I bet they would even be happy with Farming Simulator 19 numbers at this point.

I take no joy in watching one of my favourite companies take such a bath with now a pretty bad second misstep, but I think the accepted reality is that the Bioware that we remember from such games as Mass Effect or Star Wars: The Old Republic, is no longer. And maybe we should be actively rooting against the success of these types of games. With a falling playerbase on a pseudo-MMO games as a service platform, I think we’re seeing the usual MMO-drain-spiral, where less players means less incoming money which means less resources to dedicate to fixes or updates which means repeat from less players. At this rate, Anthem will be on the streets turning tricks for their next hit, free to play within months. Considering they pulled the plug on Andromeda patches and DLCs less than six months after launch, you really couldn’t fault Anthem fans for looking at Bioware’s initial claims of stories “for years to come” with skepticism. This entire scummy industry trend with GaaS is disheartening, with either incomplete games like Anthem getting pooped out with empty promises of improvements to follow later, or games like Star Wars Battlefront II or Mortal Kombat 11 initially launching with predatory monetization elements that are eventually backtracked due to public backlash. This is a major game release from a major publisher, this shouldn’t be happening. And if it takes a few studios bombing with some sucky releases to change that, then so be it. Yes, I bought some skins for Mass Effect 2 a decade ago because I thought they were cool and I thought it was a fair exchange for the number of hours of entertainment and alien lesbian relationship role playing the game provided to me. I didn’t know I was opening the floodgates to all of this!

– From the department of videos named literally what they are that still get you, here is Making chainsaw noises while cutting cheese and Watch A Woman Tell Her Husband She’s Pregnant While Conan O’Brien Pours Good Milk Down The Sink. I can really sympathize with the sentiment of the latter. Sometimes you just want to destroy something beautiful and like…pour a lot of perfectly fine milk down the drain.

Think of the hubris it must take to, yank a soul out of non-existence into this…meat. To force a life into this…thresher.

Today I’d like to introduce you to the Polo Zoo, which is basically a collection of polos with embroidered animal logos that I have be striving to identify and acquire for a number of years now. If you must know, currently my collection stands at like…two. Because, look, some of these polos are ridiculously expensive. Seriously, what type of normal person has like $150 to spare for a polo shirt?

Here are some arbitrary rules I’ve made up to define the scope of this collection.

1) Short sleeve polo shirts that must be available for men. So for example this disqualifies things like this Brannan Bear polo from Gap, which has long sleeves. Also, it is for babies. Like literal children and infants, it’s not available in an adult size.

2) It must be an embroidered logo, without any additional fluff around it or text. So for example the Roots beaver is out, since I’ve yet to see the beaver logo on its own without the matching “Roots” text under it, nor have I seen it embroidered as opposed to screen printed. Also I don’t think I’ve ever seen a short sleeve polo shirt from Roots. This also disqualifies polo shirts where the logo is on a crest or a patch or something ironed on instead of embroidered directly on the shirt. Must also just contain just the animal logo with minimal extra decals, and no text surrounding the logo. For example this shirt from Paul & Shark which violates both of the previous rules – it is both on a crest instead of a logo embroidered directly on the shirt, and also contains the company title. Fortunately they have a plain shark logo offering which appears below.

3) Maintain the purity of the zoo concept. Imagine the whole logo could actually belong to a real zoo, as is. For example, no Ralph Lauren or Burberry, who both have logos of a man riding a horse. You could put a horse in a zoo, but not the man, this is not intended to be like a morbid intergalactic zoo owned by The Collector or something. Too high concept. For example Ferrari polos would be valid…except they violate Rule #2 as the horse is on a crest. Also no anthropomorphic animals. For example, Ralph Lauren’s anthropomorphic Polo Bear, who is commonly seen dressed like a human being (and in some cases with polo gear on, which makes you really wonder about the nature of the horses that a bear would ride). Anthropomorphic bears wearing human clothes implies sentience and I’m just not ready to answer the moral and ethical questions that would come with throwing such an intelligent bear in a zoo. This would also disqualify a polo with Mickey Mouse on it as a mouse logo, for example. Note that I have made exceptions below for Jack Wills and Original Penguin, which seem to both feature regular birds dressed (unwittingly by a human perhaps…?) in formal attire. Also for BAPE, who have based their logo on characters from Planet of the Apes. So although the logo could be interpreted as the face of a regular old chimpanzee…we are all keenly aware that this is not actually the case, and these apes are indeed sentient. Honestly I’m not sure how to feel about these choices. History may judge me harshly.

4) Reasonable availability. I should be able to go out and buy one with reasonable effort (if you can call dropping $150 on a polo shirt to be “reasonable”) so these can’t be from a limited collector item run or anything like that. For example, Thomas Pink’s Cheeky Fox or Marc Jacobs’ Stinky Rat are no longer available for sale, so those are off the list. If I have to go on eBay or third party sites to source your polo shirts, I can’t add you to the list. These should all be directly available from reasonably large, national or global brands. I can’t be expected to dig through every single Etsy shop or mom and pop apparel company with an embroidery machine for entrees to this list. Also, no custom build-it-yourself polos, which disqualifies Ralph Lauren’s custom polos which feature a few types of regular dogs. Listen, Ralph Lauren polo shirts are expensive, best believe I’m throwing all the made up rules I can at them to disqualify them from the collection.

5) Conformity. In order to establish a uniform look, it has to conform to the approximate standard size and position of all these other polo shirt logos. Say…I don’t know…an approximately coin-sized logo? So none of this craziness from KENZO, who also have a smaller logo that breaks Rule #2 for featuring text within the logo. Also no Fox Racing who put their oversized logos up at the shoulder.

6) No sports teams. I think it just goes against the core concept, and there’s just too much extra baggage that comes with wearing like a Chicago Bulls or Florida Panthers polo shirt around. What, am I a fan of their training staff…? I guess this could also apply to other non-apparel companies with animal logos, although I can’t think of any at the moment that would be reasonably available for purchase.

Okay, good? I mean there are numerous other exceptions and contradictions I’ve made to stretch the criteria, but that’s the general framework we’re working with here. It’s not an exact science, I’m talking about logos on polos.

Chimpanzee – A Bathing Ape

Crocodile – Lacoste

Eagle – American Eagle

Elephant – Banana Republic

Kangaroo – Kangol

Lion – Express

Moose – Abercrombie & Fitch

Penguin – Original Penguin

Pheasant – Jack Wills

Puma – Puma

Rabbit – Psycho Bunny

Rhinoceros – ECKO

Rooster – Le Coq Sportif

Sailfish – Tommy Bahama

Seagull – Hollister

Shark – Paul & Shark

Sheep – Brooks Brothers

Skipjack Tuna – Southern Tide

Turtle – Vilebrequin

Whale – Vineyard Vines

Zebra – Paul Smith

Some men hunt for sport,
Others hunt for food,
The only thing I’m hunting for,
Is an outfit that looks good…

It is upon us!

Actually I think it may have snowed already earlier this week, but I didn’t actually see it happen. I’ve been home a lot and haven’t been outside much, you see. So for all I know it wasn’t actual snowfall and could have been instead like some sort of aggressive frost arising from the ground. I mean if I didn’t actually experience it myself, then who knows what really happened? Reality is subjective, right?

Snow dad’s better than no dad!

It’s hard to think of a more fitting metaphor for the last 16 years here than this montage of The Rock continuously falling throughout the majority of the last two decades. What starts relatively slow and controlled just descends deeper and faster than what you thought possible, ultimately ends in a foolish misguided leap of ambition, face down in the concrete. And downward. Always downward.

One day I will find the courage to end this.

I mean this site, obviously, I don’t want police combing through my internet history after my death and ruling it all a suicide. If my death is not from murder or heart disease then consider it super fishy!

I have always toyed with the idea of starting a smaller sub-site, like something that would mirror the topics and interests of the original but finding it’s own way and path in the end to become a new, unique combination of good and bad. But it’s difficult to think in those terms, and I can imagine nothing else that really mirrors what I’m trying to express. Maybe something to think more about in the years to come.

Here’s to another.

“You thinking what I’m thinking partner?”
“Aim for the bushes.”

What do you mean “am I still posting stuff to The WAMBAG?” What am I doing with my life? What are YOU doing with YOUR life? Why are YOU posting stuff on The WAMBAG still, huh!?!

– Look at this fucking shit, Mahjong “artisan” keycaps. Twenty American dollars for a piece of plastic created in the likeness of a Mahjong tile so that you can put it on a key on your keyboard. Fucking crazy right? I think it is the greatest thing ever and I want to buy like a dozen of them.

– Hey, remember when the Oscars happened like…three months ago? I’m sure this link to a Lonely Island song concept is still funny and relevant today, in June.

– Ah, posting a new Between Two Ferns With Zach Galifianakis feels just like old times again. There’s a lot of the same motions here…which I think is good, people want to hear the classics. But the whole thing has a funny meta thing to it, being a video in the late 2010’s now, containing an icon of what was funny in the late 1990’s and his late 2000’s counterpart. Although Old Man Jerry’s crankiness is a hilarious angle he didn’t have before, which I would argue is the new fresh spin that makes it work. Hey, we live in a world where Sting and Shaggy got together somehow and it works great. Let’s mix more wacky things together, I’m all for it now. (Is this a weird veiled statement about interracial marriage? I will leave that up to your interpretation, dear reader!)

– And in keeping with the general temporal tone of this post, have I discovered a new fetish in watching Natalie Portman eat spicy food? And more importantly, how does this stack against watching Nicole Kidman enthusiastically eating insects? Honestly I could have written this entire post ten years ago. I mean, maybe I did already. Absolutely nothing has changed. There’s only so many permutations I’m capable of here.

– Here is a video titled Heartbreaking: Hibachi Chef Tries to Make Meal on a Regular Table and it is everything it says it is. It came out over a year ago but fuck it, I’m posting it anyway.

How dare you? You don’t think I know how much my wife weighs in dead animals?