A Universal Shower

Okay, I feel like I've stood idly by and watched this problem be overlooked and ignored for too long. I am a morning showerer. Sometimes if I've had a particularly disgusting day - perhaps i played some drop-in hockey, or spent some time cleaning up the crawl-space under my home - then I would feel inclined to shower before I laid my smelly soul to rest in my bed, but 98% of the time I shower first thing in the morning. It wakes me up, its refreshing, it gets me out of my pajamas and helps to rinse off that flop-sweat I seem to be getting while I sleep more and more as I get older. That's fine except, depending on when I wake up, I get a Pandora's box of water temperature spewing from my shower head. I cant figure out if it has something to do with the time of day, or just depends on when my brother has showered, run the washing machine et cetera. Now, I recently got back from a trip to see my family in California and had the privilege of staying with my older brother Josh and his wife and boys at their home. Nice place, but when I went to take a shower, I felt like a complete retard trying to figure out how to get the right temperature going. I imagine I looked a lot like if someone were to introduce George Washington to an iPhone, or Britney Spears to the game of chess. I kind of just stared at it cross-eyed with spittle dripping from my mouth for a good 9 seconds. It was one of those old school type of showers that had two nobs (neither one labeled with words or colors) that you have to mix like the worlds lamest chemistry set. Not only that, but both nobs turn forty-five times, eighteen of those times occurs before water even begins to trickle out, so you get carpal tunnel from twisting them before you figure out which ones hot and which ones cold because it takes so long for the water temperature to adjust to your incessant turning. After a few minutes my brother calls in through the door "You figure out the shower in there alright?" To which I mask my frustration with a more grateful tone and reply "Oh yeah, not a problem!" Now since the water has been running and running and only my hands are wet from reaching in I start to feel the pressure of what they can only be imagining is taking me so long, so I just jump in. Thank goodness I somehow managed to get the water a few degrees above freezing so I narrowly avoided hypothermia. Some version of this same thing happens every time I visit a friends house or stay in a hotel. I cant figure out why we cant universalize this whole shower thing and put my shower-nob-anxiety to bed for good. Here in America we have certain things we've all agreed upon to make things easier. We drive on the right side of the road, doorknobs turn toward the hinges to open, side-by-side refrigerators have the freezer on the left... why cant we agree upon a shower system?! Seriously, some have the nob you have to pull out from the wall first, some look like a stick shift, some have the dial that goes clockwise to get hot and some have dials that go counterclockwise. How many millions of gallons of water are wasted by people like me who are scared the water is going to be so cold it will flash freeze them like a salmon or so hot it will boil them alive like a frickin' lobster!? So this is my proposed solution; we work showers across the states like we do an oven. Not the old turn the dial past broil and then a few clicks past 325 degrees ones though. The new kind of ovens are the ones I'm talking about. The ones that have a digital display and an up arrow and a down arrow. So, when I get up in the morning I go to the shower panel, I press the arrows until I get it to my preferred temperature, somewhere around 108 degrees (higher in the winter and lower in the summer months) and let it begin to run and "pre-heat". It gives me enough time to take my morning whiz, and then, when its reached my desired temp a little light could click on, or off, or whatever to indicate its ready and I jump right in nary a headache over the nobs again! I'm just asking for some uniformity, and if we can do it for an oven, I'm pretty sure we can do it for a shower without it costing an arm and a leg.

Best Served Burnouts

We are well into April now and fast approaching Easter. Does anyone know any good Easter-themed movies? Me neither so I'm going to bypass Easter and center this blog entry around the other holiday in April. 4/20. I feel its appropriate to exploit this piece of cannabis-driven-culture with a little tribute to some of my favorite big screen heshers. (Disclaimer: I do not participate in, nor endorse the use of marijuana. I appreciate the following movies like I appreciate good villains. Just because I liked Hans Landa doesn't mean I'm going to start rounding up Jews. Likewise, I am not promoting the use of weed or any other drugs.)

I'm going to begin with 1998's Half-Baked. All of you that have seen Chappelle's Show or have watched or heard any of Dave's stand up know that he kills. He anchors the cast of Half-Baked as Thurgood, partnering up with Jim Breuer as Brian, (the white-guy-piece of the multicultural trifecta) and Scarface, the stereotypical urban Hispanic played by Guillermo Diaz. The three of them set out determined to free their incarcerated friend Kenny, played by Harlon Williams, after he unintentionally kills a cop's diabetic horse by feeding it junk food.

Thurgood, a part-time janitor, and his perpetually stoned buddies are on a mission to scrape up enough money to bail Kenny out of jail in an effort to preserve his innocence and masculinity before he is "corrupted" by his six-foot-plus musclebound cellmate. Among his usual maintenance work Thurgood discovers that the facility he works in has a government run lab dedicated to the research of marijuana. So, by using stolen requisition forms he and his cohorts go about attaining bricks upon bricks of weed and selling it all over New York.

This movie is packed full of great characters and great dialogue. In the movie we meet the likes of the MacGyver Smoker, who is the handiest guy to have around when dealing with all things reefer related. "Hey man, we're out of rolling papers."

"Alright then give me a toilet paper roll, a corkscrew and some tinfoil."

"But, we don't have a corkscrew..."

"Okay, then get me an avocado, an ice pick and my snorkel. Trust me bro, I've made bongs with less. now, hurry up!"

Characters like the MacGyver Smoker, the Enhancement Smoker the I'm Only Creative When I Smoke Smoker and the Historian Smoker are just a few of the funny interjections we get from outside of the comical trio of misfits.

Is it silly? Yes. Is it lacking any real-life believability? Duh! Its made by a pack of stoners FOR stoners. But its more than just mildly amusing to those of us who aren't high - Its hilarious!

So, if you have a free rental coupon, and you're out and about, treat yourself to this movie, and while you're at it "Get some sour cream and onion chips with some dip, man. Some beef jerky, some peanut butter. Get some Haagen-Dazs ice cream bars, a whole lot, make sure chocolate, gotta have chocolate, man. Some popcorn, red popcorn, graham crackers, graham crackers with marshmallows, the little marshmallows and little chocolate bars and make s'mores man. Also, celery, grape jelly, Cap'n Crunch with the little Crunch berries. Pizzas. Two big pizzas, man. Everything on 'em, with water, a whole lotta water. And Funyons."

Friday. Starring Ice Cube as Craig, and Chris Tucker as Smokey. This movie might best illustrate the type of neighborhood my brothers and sisters and I grew up in. Friday is a cultural icon where I lived so much so that my classmates and I actually watched this movie in school when I was in Junior High. As the title suggests, the story takes place in one day as it follows Craig and Smokey through their activities, encounters, and predicaments.

Its the story that's as old as time itself. The one guy gets fired from his job and inevitably gets caught up in the mess of his best friend, who is a drug dealer that ends up owing his supplier $200 bucks for the weed that he smoked instead of sold. We've all been there. Okay so the movies doesn't have much by way of storyline. Its mostly two guys just hanging out. But, the hyjinx ensues as these two go about their day avoiding the neighborhood bully, working through their own relationship troubles, and observing the day to day life of many other amusing characters on their block. Some consider it a ruder, cruder version of House Party, and there is no doubt that it can be classified as a hip-hop, ghetto comedy. But although it was obviously and unapologetically created for a specific demographic, the years have shown that it is well respected among people from a surprisingly large variety of backgrounds.

The chemistry alone between Craig's laid back nature and Smokey's hyper-active and loud-mouthed demeanor are reason enough to watch this movie. Early on that Friday morning Smokey approaches Craig with "Why you not goin' to work?"

To which Craig replies matter-of-factly "I got fired yesterday."

"No kidding? I thought you had the day off yesterday."

"I did. I went in to pick up my check, came home, my supervisor called me about four o'clock, told me they got me on tape stealing boxes."

"What you stealing boxes for? What you tryin' to build, a clubhouse?" (Conversation edited for language)

Because of conversations like this and many others is why I have Smokey as one of my all-time favorite movie potheads.

My favorite stoner movie though is Pineapple Express from 2008. I have seen Friday more times than I can count and have half of the dialogue committed to memory, but Pineapple Express has not only my #1 movie burnout, but perhaps one of my favorite movie characters of all time. I have only seen Pineapple maybe 3 times, and the story isn't exactly a masterpiece, but James Franco's Saul Silver is played to absolute perfection.

The movie actually centers around Dale, played by the world-famous pothead Seth Rogen (playing what I can only imagine will be the easiest role of his career) as a court-process clerk who spends the better part of his existence smoking weed. Between visiting his high school aged girlfriend on campus and finishing his days work of serving people their court summons, he meets up with his dealer, Saul, who introduces him to a new "breed" of marijuana known as pineapple express. "Just sit back and get ready to enjoy some of the rarest weed known to mankind." Saul tells him.

"It's really that rare?" "It's, like, the rarest. It's almost a shame to smoke it. It's like killing a unicorn. With... like, a bomb."

Dale continues on, after getting baked with Saul, to his last delivery of the day when he incidentally becomes the lone witness to a murder by a crooked cop and notorious druglord. In his panic to escape the scene, Dale drops his roach of his pineapple express and finds himself approaching Saul again, but this time to find out just how rare that strain of weed really is. As it turns out, it is extremely rare and can be easily traced back to Dale and Saul. They run for their lives in a weed-exaggerated state of fear and paranoia. "Even if he found that roach, how could he find us?" Dale asks as they hideout in the woods.

"Umm... heat-seeking missiles... bloodhounds... and foxes... barracudas..."

"I'm just - kind of flabbergasted when you say things like that. It's weird."

"Thank you."

"Not a compliment."

Upon first glance, or even first viewing, this movie may not seem to amount to much but the second time I watched it and really listened to the dialogue being exchanged I laughed uncontrollably. James Franco is awesome, Danny McBride contributes plenty of great comedy from the side and the movie delivers some great one-liners and a funny and heartfelt "bromance". If movies of this genre were considered for awards, James Franco would have gotten Best Supporting Actor, if for nothing more than him driving around a stolen cop car with his leg stuck through the windshield.