I’d Rather Drunkenly Yell At Steve Harvey [Friday Thoughts W/ TeeCoZee]

Good Moleman. There is no escape from The Fortress of the Moles! It’s Friday, February 22nd, Two Thousand and Nineteen. The weather in Brooklyn is 40˚ & Pantone 11-0601 and somewhere, somebody needs to check their motor oil. Well actually, they were told by their dashboard to check their engine, but oil is part of the engine [right?] and that’s the only thing that they know how to check. That’s what the light is supposed to mean, right? Obviously, Pontiac doesn’t want you to actually open up the engine and check it. That would break the warranty. Or is that just the rule for Playstations? The person uses their phone to look up and see if the Playstation voided warranty rules also applies to Cars. Google offers no answers, but they DO find a good deal for Cars on PS2. It also got really good reviews. Who would’ve thought that THQ could make a good racing game based off a Disney movie? This they most certainly need to see. They buy a copy on eBay for $4.23 and then drive their sputtering car into the morning sun. And me? Whenever my check engine light goes on, I just ignore it and cross my fingers. If it catches fire, I just abandon it. I also have some things on my mind…

– We received a mysterious package in the mail this week. How it actually got in the mailbox, I have no idea. How I got it out of the mailbox, well, I’m even fuzzy about that. It wasn’t a Sears Catalog. It wasn’t detergent samples. It was a giant stack of paper.

This girthy stack of paper could’ve been a lot of things. It could’ve been a working script for Waterworld. It could’ve been the instruction manual for a Gateway 2000 computer. But unfortunately, it wasn’t anything nearly as cool. Instead of my cousin’s manuscript, it was 38 Explanation of Benefit mailers. At 9 pages each, that means that Blue Cross sent us 342 pieces of paper. If that doesn’t seem absurd, it gets better. All 38 of the EoBs were for bills that were already paid for by Rachel’s previous Medicare Provider. So every “not a bill” was for totals ranging from $0.00 to $0.00 and Blue Cross felt to need to let us know that they won’t be paying for any of them. This common courtesy is just one of the reasons why Blue Cross is ahead of the game. Putting humans first and trees absolutely last.

– I’m still getting used to being engaged. The last 6 months have been so chaotic that I forget my name sometimes. Last night, a friend I hadn’t seen in a while told me congratulations and it took a while to remember why. Just a moment ago, I made the mistake of referring myself as “Rachel’s Boyfriend”. She got extremely offended. She made me feel real guilty about it for about 30 seconds before revealing that “fiancé” also isn’t the right title. I’m officially her “Future Ex Husband”. How could I forget? Crap, I really have to get my nose to the grindstone. I have a divorce to plan!

– I’ve been watching a lot of Game Show Network lately because apparently, they’re a bunch of geniuses. Not the contestants, ew no, but the programmers of the channel themselves. Every single cable channel competes for the same time slots. It’s always 8-11 for prime time and 11:30-1 for basic late-nite talk shows. But what about after that? Surely, people still watch TV after 1 and they’re met with a cornucopia of infomercials, uninspired movies and re-runs of prime time shows. And then, there’s the Game Show Network. They’ve tailored their programming schedule to coincide with the bar crowd coming home. Because after all, when you’ve had a few drinks in you, game shows are enriching entertainment. It’s a great feeling to drunkenly yell at Family Feud contestants or answer questions way too late on Cash Cab while exclaiming, “Oh, that’s right! Duh!”. It’s a perfect way to end your day. And GSN cashes in on this demographic. If you watch throughout the day, you’ll notice that all of the premier shows that are being advertised are at 1-3 AM. This has become their Prime Time. They know that they’ll have basically no competition and it fits into the schedule of inebriated millennials. They have basically become the target audience, as the elderly generally hates modern game shows and Steve Harvey. And with this culture shift, they adapted right with it to give the people what they want. So the next time you’re blitzed out of your gourd, might I recommend you watch Jerry Springer host a dating show where contestants admit to each other that they chug soy sauce. It’s quality entertainment and it’s made for YOU!

– I don’t know anything about kids, but I have a lot of assumptions. I assume that they smell bad. I assume that they’re jerks. I also assume that in this digital age, they are no longer interested in the simplistic games that we once enjoyed. Which is why I was so intrigued by one yesterday. While waiting at a doctors office, I saw a little girl’s eyes light up in joy at the prospect of playing Tic-Tac-Toe. I was actually impressed. Tic-Tac-Toe is a boring game that usually never has a winner and this girl was squealing in delight over it. Except it was not real Tic-Tac-Toe. It was some bootleg shit. Instead of 3X3, the board was 5X3. There was also Y’s involved with the X’s and O’s. I’m not even trying to figure out how something like that works. Typical kids. Leave it to them to take a lame game and make it even dumber. What’s next? Heads Up 7 Up with index fingers as wild cards?

– This edition of Ad Nauseous is brought to you by The Orgasm Council: Counseling Your Orgasms Since 2004!

There’s a lot of things to unpack here. I have to start out by saying that I agree with everything that this ad says. If women want to wear fur, it should be made from fake animals. Also, nobody should have to fake an orgasm. It’s a natural and beautiful thing that should never be fabricated. As a straight white male, I show my full support of these ideals, even though you never asked for them in the first place. The real issue that I have is why I’m even writing about this in the first place. This isn’t just an ad in a magazine or a flyer on a light post. This is a gargantuan billboard strategically placed outside of the Holland Tunnel. There couldn’t be a larger public forum for this message. I understand that as a nation we have gone leaps and bounds in becoming more progressive and sexually liberated. But this crosses a certain line. Every day, hundreds upon hundreds of kids will see this ad and ask their parents what it means. And while the parent has spent hours in gridlock traffic, this is the last question they want to hear from their kids. On the other end of the coin, if a person is part of the appropriate target audience [people that actually fake orgasms], there are much better places for people to get the message. When you’ve spent all this time white knuckling in traffic, the last thing you want to think about is how you’ve been living a lie and your partner isn’t satisfying you. This is how car accidents happen. This causes road rage. Although yes, I agree with this message, something so profound should not be questioned in a place that is so generally miserable. Also, a lot of people that commute from New York to New Jersey by car wear Canada Goose.

Try this trick over the weekend: go to an emergency room and heckle people for not recycling.

Have a green weekend, everyone!

– TeeCoZee