Top 11 Sequels?

I'm a firm believer that these days movies are all about the sequel.  At least when it comes to summer blockbusters and superhero shit.  The first movie sets up what we need to know so that we can get right into the action in the sequel.

There are plenty of films that never required a second installment.  But what if, for some reason, they had gotten one anyway?  Let's play God for a day, shall we?

11. What Else Is Eating Gilbert Grape?
Gilbert is back with a whole new set of problems and issues to deal with.  His brother, Arnie, is back too and has eaten an entire tub of radioactive goo.  Arnie, now a destructive goo monster, is hell-bent on helping his brother Gilbert solve his issues...by swallowing him and his problems!  This time, something really IS eating Gilbert Grape...

10. Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot Part 2
Picture it, Sicily, 2016... It's the sequel you never knew you wanted. Return to a life a solving crimes with Stallone's mom, but this time in full-on glorious 3D CGI... since Estelle Getty is no longer with us.

9. 2 Thelma 2 Louise
If you thought Thelma and Louise were on the run before, you ain't seen nothing yet.  Thelma and Louise have unknowingly gotten their hands on a rare Egyptian artifact and are in a race against time, and the law, to save all of existence from a robotic, alien, Brad Pitt-like thing.  Directed by Michael Bay.

8. Junior's Baby
The unusual comedy team of Arnold/Danny Devito are back!  This time they have to shrink themselves down to mini-size so they can enter into Junior's womb and stop him from getting pregnant by and army of vicious sperm before it's too late.

7. 8 Mile 2: Going The Extra Mile
If you didn't quite get enough of Eminem's more expensive rip off of Purple Rain, then don't worry - he's back and he's going the extra mile!  His mom's spaghetti is back too, and also going the extra mile! With guest appearances by 50 Cent, Wiz Kalifa, MC Hammer, and Niki Minaj, you'll be so wrapped up in the rap battles that you'll fail to notice this movie is just a more expensive rip off of Graffiti Bridge... assuming you ever bothered to watch Graffiti Bridge in the first place.

6. How To Lose A Guy In 11 Days
Like many romantic comedy sequels (I'm looking at you Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights) this film has nothing to do with the one you have grown to love, except that the title will try to bring you in and watch it.  This time around, though, there's a twist - Kate Hudson's character will be played by a dude who gets romantically involved with another dude on a bet from his buddies, and spends eleven days trying to get rid of him in hysterically over-the-top and just-offensive-enough ways, until he realizes that he has actually fallen for another man.

5. Return of the Son of Forrest Gump
This action epic, directed by James Cameron, needs no plot details.  You'll go see it based on the amazing title alone.  Rated NC-17.

4. Another League of Their Own
Sure, The All-American Girls Professional Baseball League was a fun story, highlighting a joyous time for women's rights during the war time.  But what about that other professional baseball league you might not know about because there was no movie made about it? We're talking, of course, about the one you heard about once on The Simpsons from Mr. Burns and thought he was senile - The Negro League.  Yup, it was a real thing and a movie all about it would be fantastic.

3. More Snakes on More Planes
If you don't want to see Samuel L. Jackson scream about them mother fucking snakes on the mother fucking plane one more time, then I'm sorry, because you don't have a soul.

2. Mr. Nanny Returns
Mr. Nanny has to come out of retirement one more time to stop more past-their-prime former WWF superstars from kidnapping rich kids.  Hogan clearly knows best in this sequel, as he spends more time in a tutu, and leg drops the kids to safety. Whatcha gonna do when Mr. Nanny cuts the crusts off your sandwiches for you????????

1. E.E.T.: The Extra-Extra Terrestrial
Elliot is all grown up now, and can't figure out why his finger keeps glowing. Suddenly, he transforms into The Extra-Extra Terrestrial and has to adjust to his new life as an ugly alien in a world full of fear, and people who won't share their Reese's Pieces.  But when the world is threatened by an army of Neo-Nazis (this IS a Spielberg movie, after all) the world will call on E.E.T. to save the planet and the world's supply of Reese's Pieces.

Thanks for reading!
-ryan

The Earring

I was a pretty girl.  A pretty ugly one.

I have one piercing.  A simple little hoop earring in my left ear.  It's old school.  It used to be pretty rock n' roll.  It doesn't really represent or mean anything or than I wanted an earring when I was nineteen.

I got my ear pierced just after my nineteenth birthday.  The summer of '99.  Maybe I was killing time because I was young and restless and needed to unwind.  No wait, that would have been the summer of '69.  I get them confused sometimes.

I waited for my parents to be out of town before getting my ear pierced.  They're a bit old fashioned.  They wouldn't have disallowed me to get an earring, but there would have been thirty questions designed to make me change my mind about it.

"Well, why would you want to go and get an earring?"
"Well, is this something that you think you really need to do?"
"Well, have you heard that earrings can lead to diseases..."
"Well, why not just get a fake one?"

So my parents were in Winnipeg visiting my sister, and I was still celebrating being nineteen.  Just a few days earlier I had spent a lovely evening at a strip club.  But that's a story for another day, if I haven't already blogged about it.  I was working that summer at an art camp, teaching art to children and showing them how to be a cool teenager.  They thought I was the bees knees.

After work one day, on my way home I stopped by the mall to get a hole punched in my ear.

"Hi, I'd like to get my ear pierced," I said.
"Just one?"
I had forgotten that many dudes were getting both ears pierced at that time.  It was a cool thing to do. "Yeah, just one," I replied as she sat me down in the chair.
"...so which one?"
"Which one am I supposed to get?" I asked, raising an eyebrow in my patented way much like The Rock had stolen from me.

I miss that GnFnR t-shirt.

The nice girl just stared at me for a moment.  She looked at my long hair, my red jeans, my leopard print shirt.  I knew what she was thinking, but it was also the late nineties and people weren't as forward about such things back then.

"Just give me a second," she said, and then poked her head out of the store to yell at her friend in the clothing store across the hall.  "Hey, I've got a guy here who wants just one ear pierced! Do you know which one is the one I'm supposed to do?"

From across the way I heard a little bit of silence and then a louder girl's voice. "Is he queer?"
"I don't think so!" She looked at me and didn't ask, but lifted both of her eyebrows in an curious manner.
"I'm not," I said. "Don't let the clothes fool you.  I just really want to be Steven Tyler."
"He's not," she shouted back to her friend.
"Then do the left one!"

A couple minutes later I had a hole in my ear.  And it's still there today.  I ended up having to get a gold hoop to wear in it because, as it turns out, I'm allergic to most metals.  The cheap earrings I was buying had studs made of cheap metal that were eating away at the back of my ear lobe.  Pretty gross, huh?

A week or so went by and my parents came home from their vacation.  It was late at night and I was in bed, but not asleep.  They came in separately to visit but knew I had to wake up early for work, so our chat was quick.  After my dad said goodnight I could hear him in the living room, all the way from my bedroom.

"Your son got an earring."

Thanks for reading!
-ryan

Fuck You, I Love Annie!

The sun WILL come out tomorrow, because you know what?
Fuck you, I love Annie.

The Annie soundtrack from the 1982 flick will forever be special to me.  I've had that record since I was a kid, and while some grown men may be embarrassed to know all the words to all the songs, I'm not.  Because fuck you, I love Annie.

The Annie remake from a couple years ago with Jamie Foxx? Nope. I watched that awful movie.  What a horrible piece of shit.  It definitely tries, I mean, don't get me wrong, that movie has good intentions, but they should have called it something other than Annie.  Because at the end of the movie, I looked at the TV screen and said, "Fuck you, I love Annie."

The one from the 90s... "A Royal Adventure" or whatever it was called.  Heck nope.  Double heck nope!

Give me Carol Burnett, Tim Curry, and Albert Finney.
And goddamit, give me Punjab!
Fuck you, I love Punjab.
Love.
Punjab.

I love the movie Annie so much that I'm going to write a haiku about it right now.

I love the movie
Annie, because it is great
Fuck you, I love it

Did you see that? That right there was love.  Love, goddamit.  Love for the movie Annie.  Oh sure, I love other movies too.  And even though Annie isn't my favourite movie of all-time, and not even in my top ten, it's a different kind of love that I have for it.  The kind of love that you can profess to the world, assuming the whole world is actually listening.  If you love Annie enough, the world will listen.  They'll listen, because fuck you - I love Annie.

Do you love Annie too?  Not that it matters.  If you do, hey great for you.  If not, I've got plenty of love for Annie.  If you do love Annie and someone tries giving you a hard time about it, just tell them, "Fuck you, I love Annie."

Thanks for reading!
-ryan

Because you're never full dressed without a smile!

Top 11 Awesomely Awesome Things

Just sit back and relax. Enjoy this ride. There's enough random in here to randomize your rando-meter.

11. Supermarket Sweep
Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune ain't got nothing on Supermarket Sweep. This was hands down the best game show on Earth (excluding Bumper Stumpers) and the proof is in the pudding! What other game show had their contestants run around a grocery store and fill up their carts with random shit?

Castle Mother Effing Grayskull

10. Castle Grayskull
Quite possibly the ultimate childhood toy, Grayskull was the castle that He-Man protected from Skeletor. There were traps, laser guns, and a real working jaw-bridge! 

9. Pink Highlighters
Highlighters were a big craze in the late 80s and early 90s. For a while you could only get them in yellow, and then all-of-a-sudden appeared the pink version. It seems like everything in the early 90s was neon pink and yellow anyway, so why not our writing utensils?

8. The Hoff
David Hasselhoff is just plain wonderful. What a great human being. You don't hassel the Hoff, and that makes him awesomely awesome.

7. Bacon
Everything is better with bacon. When hamburgers became boring, they put bacon on it. Real men didn't want to eat salad, and so bacon was added to Caesar salads. You can get bacon flavored chips and syrup. And I'm pretty sure that Jesus Mother Fuckin' Christ ate some good tasting bacon at the last supper.

6. Canadian Tire Money
Shit yes! You may think that CT Money is a nuisance that seems to gather up on the floor of your car, but this stuff is way more valuable than you can imagine. Take my parents for example. My dad does about 75% of his Christmas shopping with Canadian Tire money. He's not being cheap, he's being economical. And hell, these days you can get just about anything there... if you can find which aisle it's in... and the Canadian Tire dollar seems to be worth more than the actual Canadian dollar.

5. 1989-90 O-Pee-Chee Hockey Cards
Considered the greatest hockey card set ever (by me) this one had a Sakic rookie card, Gretzky with the Kings, and a lot of cards from the once-great Hartford Whalers.  THE WHALE! THE MIGHTY WHALE!
4. Vinyl 
Music is just better sounding on vinyl. Sure, an iPod is easier to use but you don't get that "warm" sound when you listen to music digitally. And I just so happen to have a lot of shitty records that were never re-released on CD... kinda like I have some shitty VHS that never came out on DVD (John Stamos is Born To Ride). Long live vinyl!

3.Twenty-eight Moosehead for the price of 24
We all know I like beer. I like beer like... really a lot. And what could be better than getting 28 of a great beer like Moosehead for the price of only 24? Well, maybe 29... but the dimensions of a case don't really lend themselves to that. Either way, I'm just happy to have a fridge full of Moosehead.

2. Randy "Macho Man" Savage

"Ooooh Yeah!!!!"

He was involved in the greatest Wrestlemania match of all-time. He paraded around with the lovely Elizabeth. He had a variety of hats and crowns that he wore. And he snapped into a Slim Jim. And even though he's dead, he's still awesome.

1. "Kokomo" by The Beach Boys
I'll be honest, this whole list was created because on my way home today I heard "Kokomo" and when that first chorus hit I felt the need to go and dance with anyone. Damn! If "Kokomo" can do that to me, maybe it can bring about world peace.


And... uh... there you have it!

Thanks for reading!
- ryan

Don't Wanna Kiss Your Thing

Back in Spring 1998, at the lustful age of seventeen, I was sitting in my Creative Arts class, working on a large drawing of all my Scourge characters. I had become absolutely obsessed with Aerosmith. It seemed like I couldn't have a conversation without bringing up one of their songs. Steven Tyler was my hero, and sometimes I'd refer to him as my "spiritual father".

We were listening to the radio in class when suddenly I could hear Tyler's signature voice. Could this be their new single from Nine Lives? I thought to myself. Nope, I'd listened to that album at least one hundred times and told my friend's Rebekah and Laura everything about the album at least two hundred times. I would've recognized a song sooner. I had all their albums, so the only logical explanation was that this song was something completely new.

I waited by the radio until I got the chance to hear it again and tape it off the radio.

I Don't Want To Miss A Thing is a beautiful song. The lyrics, the melody... I really thought Steven had outdone himself with this one. Then, as it gained more airplay, the CD became available. The Armageddon Soundtrack which had enough Aerosmith songs to pretty much be an Aerosmith album, was pretty solid as far as soundtracks go.

Pretty soon though, "IDWTMAT" started getting lots of backlash. But why? Aerosmith had done love songs before and they were huge hits. People loved Angel, Crazy, and the best of them all, What It Takes. Were people just sick and tired of the formulaic "Aerosmith Ballad"?

Then the news broke: Oh my God, this song wasn't written by the Tyler/Perry songwriting combo. No, the Toxic Twins had nothing to do with it. IDWTMAT was written by Dianne Warren. And she was best known for Celine Dion songs. Celine Fucking Dion.

Before you knew it, a country singer also recorded the song and people were saying things like "Did you hear Aerosmith's remake of that country song?" Suddenly people were referring to the band as sell-outs, calling them Aero Supply, and making it hard for anyone to be an Aerosmith fan. Even Steven Tyler himself has referred to the song as I Don't Want To Kiss Your Thing. Is this the song that made Aerosmith so jaded? Yes, that pun was intentional. You might even say that IDWTMAT was "Hey, Over-Play-ded". Okay, that wasn't quite as funny.

So where does the song stand all these years later? Some people really hate it. And I mean absolutely loathe it. But when you think of how many married couples had their first dance to this song, and how many children were probably conceived to this song, it kinda lightens it all up a bit. Call me a softy, but I don't really mind this song at all. Mind you, being the obsessed Aerosmith fan that I am, I do have a harder rock mix of it, and that's the one I tend to listen to.

It's also a different song when listened to from different perspectives.  Mostly these days when I hear this song it's because I'm singing it to my daughter as one of her lullabies.   Don't get me wrong, she loves "Dream On", and her favorite Aerosmith song is "Livin' On The Edge", but when it's lullaby time, she really wants to hear  that song from the movie about the asteroid.

I guess it all comes down to personal taste. I mean, there will always be crappy music that is popular while some real artists are over-looked. Even Aerosmith themselves are victims of it. While their popular songs like IDWTMAT, Crazy, Jaded, Cryin', and Pink flourished on the radio, some of their real gems of the same time period like Eat The Rich, Beyond Beautiful, Taste Of India, and Hangman Jury are barely recognizable to the public. I'm not going to pass down a judgement that is set in stone, but I will say if you like the song, good for you. If you don't, and you don't mind missing a thing, then that's no problem either.

Thanks for reading!
- ryan

Fuller House

Whatever happened to predictability?
It's alive and well in Fuller House.

Okay, here we go... there's a lot to process after watching the entire first season of Fuller House.  Believe me, I had all the feels - I was nostalgic, overjoyed, angry, and legitimately laughed more than even I expected myself to.  I wasn't able to binge-watch the entire season like so many of you have.  I did that for the first season of Full House when it was released on DVD back in 2005.  I watched the whole season over the course of the weekend (I did watch the first episode twice though) and had to wrap my head around the entire thing before sharing my thoughts and feelings with all of you.

The original Tanners
The original cast of Full House look pretty good and mostly act like we remember them. This makes jumping back into the show pretty easy. In the first episode of Fuller House, which is more like a suave recap to bring us up to speed than an actual story because nothing really happens, each returning character manages to get out their catchphrase and gimmicks to remind us where in San Francisco we are.
Uncle Jesse finally seems to have a secure job on General Hospital, eats fried chicken, and sings "Forever".
Joey is a stand-up comedian in Vegas, still loves hockey, busts out the Bullwinkle impression, and brings out Mr. Woodchuck.
Aunt Becky is still a babe, but seems to be more obsessed with babies than ever before.  She doesn't seem to be the career woman she used to be.  Maybe because Jesse actually has a job now and can pay half the bills.
DJ Tanner is a widowed mommy of three, and pretty much takes over the role of Danny Tanner as single parent trying to have a career and get back on her feet.  She needs help from her sister Stephanie, who has been traveling the world as "DJ Tanner", spinning records and trying to start her own music career.  She's essentially the new Uncle Jesse character.  Doesn't want kids, can't actually have them, and is leaving her party lifestyle to help raise DJ's kids.
If you were expecting the original cast to be the forefront of the show, then you're gonna be disappointed.  Oh, sure, after the first episode they visit here and there to keep themselves familiar, but they are certainly supporting characters now and not the stars of the show.  The majority of original characters are so familiar that you wouldn't have thought much time passed since Michelle fell off that horse all those years ago.  The only character that seems to have developed over the years is Danny Tanner - he's moved on, gotten married, and doesn't seem to be obsessed with cleaning as much as he used to be.  Instead, he's proud to see his grandson Max being a little clean-aholic in his place.
For the most part, the Tanners are who we remember.  The show does what's necessary and limits the use of the old folks to make their guest appearances actually really special.  When we see them, we're excited for the nostalgia of it.

The New Kids
DJ's three kids - Jackson, Max, and Tommy - are pretty cute.  This should come as no surprise, given that the original show's formula relied on the three Tanner girls being cute as a button.  Again, just like how DJ, Stephanie, and Kimmy have taken over the Danny/Jesse/Joey trio, these kids essentially become the characters we're used to... but now they're boys instead of girls.  At first I didn't like Jackson, and once he started calling himself "J-Money" I was ready to beat the kid with an Uncle Jesse doll.  But then, he grew on me. 
I liked Max right from the beginning - he's overbearing.  He's obnoxious at times.  He's loud to get attention.  He fits in perfectly with the Full House universe.  And hey, he tried potty training a puppy.  If you can get me to think a puppy is cute, then you've worked a miracle.
Tommy is an adorable baby. Maybe not as much as Mary-Kate and Ashley were back in the day, but we shouldn't make this about a comparison even if we're naturally drawn to do so.  Tommy gets bonus points for wearing the same pajamas in the intro as my little boy Grayson does.
What struck me as odd though, but at the same time not really for a Full House show, was how these boys were dealing with the recent loss of their father.  He's only mentioned a couple times in passing, much like Pam was on the original show.  Don't get me started on Papouli.

Kimmy Gibbler and Ramona
I can't believe I'm saying this, but Kimmy Gibbler is actually the best part of Fuller House. She's the "Joey" archetype now, but she has a bit of Danny and Jesse in her too (hey, get your mind out of the gutter).  Her ex-husband Fernando fits in really well with the Tanner universe as well.  They managed to keep her stinky feet references to a minimum, and made her out to be a career oriented woman.  And honestly, I'd like to do it "Gibbler Style".
Her daughter Ramona is pretty cool, and hopefully she gets more screen time for season two.

Flashbacks/ Nostalgia
This is where my feelings get a little muddy. 
The first episode was very high on nostalgia and, as mentioned before, it needed to be to bring us back to the Tanner state of mind.  So that was all fine, but at the end of that episode we get this split screen while they sing The Flintstones theme.  I get that it's meant as a tribute to the first show, and it's a passing of the torch, so to speak, but we didn't need the split screen.  If you want to treat the real fans with a special nod like that, you don't show the old one too - the die hard fans are going to get the reference.  After all, it was meant for them.
Later in the season, Stephanie has a flashback to her backyard wedding with Harry Takayama (we'll get to him shortly) and it's literally a copy/paste job of old footage.  And it goes on forever.  It's actually really bad and slows the episode down to a standstill. 
And even late in the season, we get a flashback to DJ and Steve's prom night, but this time the present day DJ and Steve and Matt actually go into the footage to give commentary to it.  I actually thought this was quite funny, a neat idea, and should have been used for the Stephanie wedding flashback too.

The love triangle
Were you Team Steve or Team Matt? I was surprised by DJ's final decision to not exclusively be with either of them.  The whole thing is almost a metaphor for the show itself.  Is it going to be a nostalgia show or will it go forward with something new we've never seen?  Even DJ doesn't know for sure, and I get the feeling that's how the show feels about itself.
In case you're wondering, I was on Team Matt.  Something happened to Steve over the last twenty years.  Not sure how he can go from being a cool guy (captain of the wrestling team) to being so whiny and emotionally demanding.  He certainly felt entitled to be in DJ's life just because he used to be before she was married.  His full name should be Steve Can't-Understand-Why-I'm-Stuck-In-The-Friend-Zone Hale. 

The Olsen Twins
They weren't there, and the cast made sure to let us know a few times.  My favorite was the jab about how expensive Mary-Kate and Ashley clothing is, and how that's why they don't need to act anymore.
(Bonus points for the jab at Alanis Morisette's song about Dave Coulier)

Harry Takayama
This is where I get angry. Every returning character - right down to The Rippers - were the original actors.  Except Harry Takayama.  If they couldn't get the original Harry then fine, use a different character. Stephanie had other friends.  What about Brett?  Remember how her heart went 'brett brett' for him?  What about Walter "Duckface" Berman?  That was a huge missed opportunity to have the original Duckface do a Duckface selfie.  Harry Takayama was the man on the original show.  How dare they disrespect him like that.

The Fullers Without The Tanners
So the question now is, how did the show do when there were guest spots by the original Tanner clan?  Surprisingly well.  It's important to remember that this is still a Full House show.   If you were expecting anything other than cheesy plots, predictable one-liners, and cute sight gags, then why were you watching it?  The Fullers manage to continue doing what the Tanners always did.  The relationship between Stephanie and Kimmy is good, and actually started to take form in the last two seasons of the original Full House. 
I was completely expecting myself to lose interest when there were no original cast members on screen, but  the spots that involved Jackson and Ramona skipping school, borrowing money from Max, and performing backyard wrestling were actually some of my favorite moments in the entire season. 

Theme Song 
Carly Rae Jepsen's version is pretty good.  Updated with some new lyrics.  It's obviously not the original, but certainly no harm no foul here.

The Verdict
I'm happy with Fuller House.  I do hope for a second season.  As I mentioned with the love triangle representing the show's focus, I would have liked to have seen something more definitive for the season finale.  It felt like there was little to no closure.  It's hard to say if we'll ever get any in season two.  Full House was never a show to really expand on ideas after they were introduced and used as plot devices.  If they were, we would have seen Joey's girlfriends more than once.  It'll be interesting to see if the subject of Stephanie not being able to have kids is ever touched upon again, or was it just there for some one-shot emotion. 
What I always loved most about Full House is what most critics always hated most about it.  How completely unreal it was.  Every problem can be wrapped up in 22 minutes with some ice cream and hugs.  It's a world of fantasy.  I, personally, don't watch TV to see real life.  I live in real life.  I know what happens.  That's what has always drawn me to the Tanner family.  They have such elaborate self-fulfilling lives.  Nothing can happen in San Francisco unless a member of the Tanner family is somehow included.  That's kind of beautiful in a weird way.  How in this big world, you really can be the center of it all in your heart and mind.  Fuller House, like the original, is about the importance of family and how your family, however it is made up, should be the center of your everything.  It's that unrealistic appeal, not real life standard, that we watch Full(er) House for.  It shows us just how sweet and caring and great everything could be, if we somehow allowed it to be.
Because, when you're lost out there and you're all alone, a light is waiting to carry you home.  Everywhere you look.

Thanks for reading!
- ryan

Just Who Is Bon Jovi Anyway?

Are you ready to LET IT ROCK? Are you ready to LET IT ROLL?

If you have decided to answer "YES" to both of those questions and raise your hands at the same time, then you are ready to partake in the Bon Jovi experience. So grab a bottle of Dos Equis, point to a random spot on a map of New Jersey, and make out with your sister's cute friend... because it is time we gave love a bad name.

Bon Jovi is one of those bands that is so awesome that you either love them or you hate them. And if you hate them then everyone else wonders why you hate them. Take my wife for example. She can't stand Bon Jovi. That doesn't make her a bad person, it just makes her wrong. Bon Jovi could provide the soundtrack to our lives. They help us keep the faith. Or something like that.

Sometimes it isn't very cool to like Bon Jovi. This was mostly true between 1995 and 2001. But we'll get to that in a bit. Just remember, that when someone sees your Bon Jovi t-shirt and says "Jon Bon is a Fag!" you have every legal right to kick his/her ass. 

There Are Really Two Incarnations of Bon Jovi
It's true! Bon Jovi released their first album in 1984 and rocked hard through albums such as "Slippery When Wet", "Keep The Fait", and the perfect "New Jersey" well until 1994 when their Greatest Hits compilation (Crossroad) came out. They totally rocked too. You could party to their music. You could get drunk and make out with your Aunt and it would still be okay because you were listening to Bon Jovi. Chances are, if you were a teenager between '84 and '94 then you even wore your Bon Jovi t-shirt in the shower.

After their Greatest Hits album came out though, the music world changed. And Bon Jovi was just too good to change with it. Vinyl had already been replaced by Cassette Tapes, and those tapes were doomed to be replaced by CDs, and nobody even knew what an mp3 was at this point. Bon Jovi just took one good look at the world and decided they were needed elsewhere.

Yes. Bon Jovi piloted a spaceship to the outer regions of Siuqesod 2 where they have been rocking and getting people to raise their hands for fifteen years. The song "Always" was actually a poetic 'good-bye' of sorts to our planet.

But Jon Bon wasn't an idiot. He knew that if Bon Jovi left the planet without a replacement then there would be mass hysteria and destruction. So he cloned the band, and then cloned himself again for good measure before saying so long to us all. The problem with this is that clones aren't perfect. Did you ever copy your favorite Bon Jovi tape for a friend, but that dubbed tape you made didn't sound just right? That's because it was an imperfect duplicate. Kinda like Bizarro in the Superman comics (which is a neat analogy because Jon Bon has a Superman tattoo on his arm) or that wonderfully awful movie Multiplicity with Michael Keaton (whom was never a card-carrying member of the great Bon Jovi).

This new Bon Jovi tried to rock on their 1995 "These Days" album, and there were moments of greatness there, but ultimately the teens of the 90s just didn't care. So "Bon Jovi" (the clones) disappeared for a while and returned in 2001, which was just long enough for everyone to forget about the real Bon Jovi.  The new band, which I will call Clone Jovi (or maybe Bon Clovi, you can pick which you like best) cranked out hits like, "It's My Life", "Have A Nice Day", and "You Want To Make a Memory".  These fucking clones even recorded a country album in the name of Bon Jovi.  The new kids really liked it, and they raised their hands.  But we all knew better.  The real Bon Jovi was conquering the world of outer space rock n' roll.

C'mon, I couldn't make this shit up. 

Jon Bon, The Actor
That second Jon Bon clone I mentioned earlier is the dude who does all the acting. If you've seen that National Lampoon movie "Pucked" then you can tell that isn't the real Jon Bon, but an imposter. A clone. 

...What The Hell Is Heavy Metal?
In the 80s Bon Jovi was considered heavy metal.

You might think that's fucked up, but heavy metal has really changed over the years. Led Zeppelin and Aerosmith were heavy metal once. When you look at today's "heavy metal" versus the classic stuff you can see that heavy metal has just gotten heavier. It's louder and more distorted. There's more screaming than singing. Maybe I'm getting old. It's not that I don't like the new stuff, I'm just pointing out the differences. 

And Their Best Album Is...
I've been arguing this for years. Most people consider "Slippery When Wet" to be the definitive Bon Jovi album. I'm here to tell them that they're wrong. So let's do a Top 5 list. 

Top 5 Bon Jovi Albums
1. New Jersey
2. Slippery When Wet (hey, it came in second place!)
3. Bon Jovi
4. Keep The Faith
5. These Days

And for good measure, here's a list of their best songs. 

Top 11 Bon Jovi Songs
1. Raise Your Hands
2. Runaway
3. Bad Medicine
4. Lay Your Hands On Me
5. In & Out Of Love
6. I Believe
7. Born To Be My Baby
8. She Don't Know Me
9. In These Arms
10. I'll Sleep When I'm Dead
11. Any other song that came out before or during the "Crossroads" Greatest Hits album.

So in the long run, Bon Jovi is just plain incredible. It took me over an hour to write this blog because I felt the need to keep one hand raised the entire time in honor of their music. Now that I think about it though, why did Bon Jovi tell us to raise our hands, and then write a song called "Lay Your Hands On Me"?

With the band living in outer space, I guess we'll never know.

Thanks for reading!
- ryan

My 13th Birthday Was a Friday the 13th

Ah, August 13, 1993... the year I turned thirteen on a Friday the 13th.
What a glorious day it was, indeed.  At least in my mind I seem to think it was.  As I sifted thru photos looking for some to accompany this blog all about my thirteenth birthday, I realized I don't have any.  The early 90's weren't like today.  Not everyone had a camera in their phone to take photos of every little detail of their mundane lives.  And the phone was attached to the kitchen wall anyway.

Also, it occurred to me as I did some fact-checking that I kinda lump my 11th and 13th birthdays together in my mind.  I often reminisce about how on my thirteenth birthday I was given my first little boom box cassette player and the new Spin Doctors tape, "Pocket Full of Kryptonite."  I'm also warmed by fond memories of being given a cassette single for Bryan Adams' "(Everything I Do) I Do It For You", and how my friends and I all played a WWF Wrestling Challenge board game with the Ultimate Warrior featured on the box.  But all of that stuff really occurred in 1991, not '93.

Where the hell did my memories go?

So when I think a bit harder about all of it, I vaguely remember having a couple friends over for a sleepover, watching "Cool World" and "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" on VHS, drinking an entire case of Loeb Cola, and having pizza.

My friend Brian sneaked in some dirty porno magazines that he stole from his older brother's room and we gazed over them in the basement after my parents went to sleep.

My twelfth birthday gets lost in the mix of it all, because my sister's wedding was two days after so there wasn't time to have a party or anything like that.  Luckily, the WWF was in town on my birthday and I saw the Ultimate Warrior fight Papa Shango.  However, after trying to Google anything about it, I can't find a single thing about the WWF coming to my town on my birthday.

I'm actually starting to think this never existed and it was all made up in my mind.

Being thirteen was pretty good, and it lasted about a year until I turned fourteen.

And hey, here's a photo that isn't at all from my thirteenth birthday.

The end!

Happy 16th Birthday Ryan!

So Long, Hot Rod

I was very sad yesterday to learn that "Rowdy" Roddy Piper had passed away at the age of 61.

Piper, one of my very favorite WWF wrestlers of all-time, made a huge impact on impressionable wrestling fans like myself when we were growing up and following Hulkamania right through to the nWo and into today's still stupidly named "WWE".

My earliest memories of Hot Rod were that he was the bad guy. 

I first discovered wrestling in the mid-80s on the Hulk Hogan's Rock N' Wrestling cartoon.  Week after week, the Hulkster would have to foil the dastardly plans of "Rowdy" Roddy Piper and The Iron Sheik.  I knew Hogan was the champ, and that he bodyslammed Andre The Giant.  I also knew that Piper was the bad guy, because he was on the cartoon.  Little did I know that at this point Roddy had already begun his transformation from wrestling heel to crowd favorite. 

I just can't bring myself to type that Piper was a babyface.  I imagine he wouldn't have wanted to be called one either.

I was a wrestling mega-fan from 1989 to about 1994.  I ate, slept, and breathed wrestling.  It was in the Spring of '89 that Piper returned to the WWF to begin his second career there.  At first I still thought he was one of the bad guys, because I had such fond memories of the old cartoon and the sticker album that went along with it.  But then he started feuding with guys like Ravishing Rick Rude and The Mountie and he was clearly over with the crowd.

But he wasn't a babyface.  After all, color-commentator Jesse "The Body" Ventura would praise Piper's wrestling from the booth while he was quick to denounce Hulkamania.  And the real wrestling fans loved The Body because he told the truth.

I only got to see Piper fight live once in my life.  I was at Wrestlemania VI when he fought Bad News Brown, and had painted himself half-black.  That was something.

But looking back on Piper's career, what's interesting is what he taught us - that sometimes the 'bad guy' isn't really all that bad.  Sometimes he's just misunderstood in a world where he doesn't really fit in anyway.  And as time goes on, that misunderstood character can break through and get past other peoples' perceptions while not deterring from what he ever was in the first place.  In time, he isn't just accepted but actually revered and beloved by many, simply for being himself and telling it like it is.

In today's wrestling world I find something similar with Dean Ambrose.  Only time will tell if he's the real deal like Piper was or if he's trying to do a really solid Hot Rod impression for a new generation.

Piper taught us many things over the years.  That it's not just okay to wear a kilt but highly respectable, and that you can stop an alien invasion with a cheap pair of sunglasses, and most importantly that you never throw rocks at a guy who has a machine gun.

So long, Hot Rod.

- ryan

Remembering My High School Graduation

It's that time of year, that everyone seems to be graduating from high school.  Well, everyone except for those couple kids in your class who you knew weren't going to quite make it.  It's a good thing Wal-Mart is hiring.

Anyway, I thought I'd take today to reflect upon my own high school graduation.

To put it in perspective, when I graduated high school the Ryan Fan Club had only been around for six months and had approximately seventy-five or eighty card carrying members in it.  I had really awesome long hair.  I wore jeans to my graduation ceremony.  They were red.  I had figured that since the gown would be covering my legs anyway that it didn't matter.  I might as well be me anyway.

"I hope you're not planning on pulling another stunt like that cartwheel thing you did at Awards Night," said the principal to me as I was getting my gown on.  He was referring to the cartwheel I did when I accepted some certificate for achieving an average in my grades that wouldn't ever really matter for anything ever anyway.

"Let's both be happy I'm wearing pants," I replied and went to get a rolled up piece of paper in front of my adoring fans and their families.  I didn't do the cartwheel.  I bent down to make it look like I was going to, but then pretended to tie my shoe instead.

I don't honestly remember much else about graduation.  It was really long and I think afterwards my parents took me to East Side Mario's for dinner.  There was a graduation party on a local cruise ship, with dinner and a DJ and a bunch of drunk high school kids.  I actually remember more of that than I do the graduation ceremony.  It's funny when you look back and realize what was actually important in life.

- ryan

I Was A Fat Kid

I was a fat kid.

It's not something I talk about overly much, but I was a fucking fat kid.  And I was picked on a lot too.  No biggie, right?  Happens to a lot of us growing up.  Some might even say they are who they are today because of the way they were treated by their schoolyard chums.  Like the caterpillar to the butterfly.  I'm sorry, I can't help but laugh at myself as I type that last sentence.

I was a fat kid with a really short brush cut.  The other kids called me Pugsley, like the fucking fat kid from the Addams Family movie.  I distinctly remember this one time in Grade 7 that one of my friends pointed out how I actually had bigger titties than most of the girls in class.  Granted, theirs hadn't quite come in yet.  So I guess I kinda looked like your stereotypical dyke with an affinity for eating chips and drinking Pepsi.

Grade 8 Graduation.

I'm not telling this story today to garner any sympathy, or help anyone else out.  I can guarantee you that somewhere else is a boy or girl getting picked on for being fat.  And maybe it's their fault or maybe it's not.  That's not my place to say.  I'm not in charge of the world.

I have two children of my own now - two beautiful children who I encourage to be whatever they want to be.  My son Grayson, at four months old, already eats like a champ and is going to be a thick boy.  I predict a future WWF Champion in my family.  My daughter Ryleigh, only four years old recently had her first experience of not feeling like she was beautiful enough at someone else's hands.  Just hearing about it tore me apart.

I was a fat kid.  And I was also a lazy kid.  I liked reading books, drawing Superman comics, watching Star Wars, playing Super Mario Bros. 3, and trading O-Pee-Chee hockey cards.  When I did get my exercise, which was road hockey, I usually played goalie because I didn't want to run.  I was a fat, lazy, pimply kid who could down an entire 2L bottle of Pepsi while watching TGIF.  At the age of twelve I could easily knock off an entire Godfatha pizza while watching the Coca Cola Countdown on Much Music. 

That's when I decided I wanted to grow my hair long, from my early interests in rock music, but I knew I'd probably look like the singer Meat Loaf.  It was bad enough that everyone already called me Pugsley.  I had a hard enough time getting girls to like me without the other boys telling me that I'd likely do anything for love. 

Grade 9 photo

How was gym class, you ask?  Not bad.  You learn how much time you have to let your mind wander when you're always picked last.  I did some of my best daydreaming during gym class.  I even created a few super-heroes while there. 

I was fifteen when I decided enough was enough.  I was sick of people thinking my name was actually Pugsley because they didn't even know me.  I was a fat kid, and a lazy kid, and a shy kid because I didn't want to be seen by anyone.  For all anyone knew, my name really was Pugsley.  They'd hum that theme song, and ironically, I couldn't even snap my fingers to try and lighten up the mood.  So I created a very green diet.

This diet was so green that all it consisted of was Iceberg Lettuce and Lime Kool-Aid.  And that's pretty much all I ate for a few months.  I'm not proud of it, but I did lose a lot of weight in a short time.  People have large worded terms and conditions and disorders for these types of things nowadays.  I never made myself throw up; I hate vomiting more than just about anything.

Now I'm not trying to tell anyone a quick way to lose weight here, because listen to me, doing something like eating only lettuce and drinking Kool-Aid will fuck you up really good.  But you know what?  We live in a really fucked up world.  Nobody ever thinks they're good enough, no matter how truly great they are.  Fucked.  Up.

I had become friends in high school with a girl, Angie, who told me. "Ryan, nobody else can love you until you learn to love yourself."  Not sure if she got that from a Jewel song, but it's something that's always stuck with me. 

All kidding aside, this shirt was fucking awesome.

What really sucks is now, as an adult with kids of my own, I see all these stories about bullying and obesity and it's clear that the real problem is and has always been that nobody teaches their kids to fucking stand up for themselves anymore.  Yeah, I was a fat, lazy kid who got picked on a lot - but I also didn't stand up for myself when I should have.  I didn't know how.  It's one thing to be a pansy-ass and go cry in the corner until you starve yourself and then it's another to do something about it. 

Parents, please, you can teach your kids all you want about anti-bullying but you're really better off teaching your child how to stand up to those bullies and make them go away.  Sure, they'll probably get hurt a few times in the process, but it might just be worth it.  And I'm not talking about them telling a teacher, or writing a poem about their feelings - teach your kids to punch someone right between the eyes.  Hard.  Seriously.

As for me, I'm not a kid anymore.  I'm a little round in the belly, and yet I get more exercise these days than ever.  I've replaced the 2L Pepsi bottles with a few pints of Banana Bread Beer.  I can eat a whole Tata's pizza if I want to, but I like to save some for lunch the next day.  I'll change the TV channel if the Addams Family is on because it makes me emotional.  I still enjoy salad, but ninety-nine percent of the time I put something on it so it's not just lettuce.  I can't remember the last time I had green Kool-Aid, and that's fine.  I've learned to love so much about myself (hence why I have my own fan club), but there's parts of me that I don't truly believe I can ever come to terms with.

I guess some part of me will always be that fat kid.  And I bet you're the same, in your own way.
Fucked up, eh?

- ryan

Ryleigh and Grayson; my two exceptionally awesome kids.