Author Archives: Doug Walker

Ana Gasteyer’s Quest for Justice and Other Important News

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Things Holly Hunter Should Not Say

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“Thish ish a delischus reschippee, what’sh your scheeckrit?”

“I’ll have the hassch brownshh schattered, schmotherrd and covehrrd.”

“I’d like to schorrt schell this schtock.”

“I wonsh won a Oshker for a role in whicsh I didn’t even schpeak a worrd.”

“Yessh offisher I will schubmit to a schobriety tesht.”

“Thingsh Holly Huntrr schoud not schayy.”

Ask Robert Plant

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Q: There seems to be some sort of bustle in my hedgerow. What should I do?

A: Foremost, do not be alarmed! 

 

Q: Is it OK to wear linen after Labor Day?

A: Oh yeah. Ah yeah. Ah, ah, ah! It’s perfectly OK in warm climates!

 

Q: Does anybody remember laughter?

A: Yes. Phyllis Diller, Dick Cavett and Alan Greenspan. Thanks for asking!

 

Q: Where was the soul of a woman created?

A: That’s a terrific question! Below.

 

Q: Hey, Robert, what do women need?

A: It. And in most cases, way down inside.

 

Q: Hey, Robert, what are your theories about big-legged women?

A: I don’t know for certain, but sources tell me they’re soulless.


K-Mart’s Fishy Holiday Charity Angels: Bah Humbug!

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How cynical am I for thinking this is a brilliantly executed marketing campaign by K-Mart? Google “K-Mart layaway” (without quotes) and you’ll see 650 news links, national and local, all associating this feel-good holiday story with K-Mart. Why would these anonymous Christmas layaway angels not also drop by Wal-Mart or Marshall’s or Best Buy? (To be fair, these reporters at least checked with Wal-Mart, which said it had seen some cases of anonymous charity. But the overwhelming and extremely valuable positive press coverage focuses on K-Mart.)

I am officially calling a special Scrooge Edition Bullshit. Please Santa prove this cynic wrong.

A ContainsEggs Cry for Help

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There are two things I need you to help me find:

(1) In the early 1980s, there was a TV public service announcement by the Department of Labor that educated viewers about their minimum wage entitlements. I know this one existed; I recall the song, a punchy, uplifting soundtrack for a 30 second inspirational montage of happy people celebrating minimum wage employment. Some sample lyrics:

“Three-ten, three-ten an hour is federal minimum wage / For most jobs your hired to do / You’ve got three-ten coming to you”

The spot ended with a flourish: A race runner joyously broke through the finish tape, victorious in his quest for stifling poverty. As he pumped his fist with unbridled delight, the song punctuated our shared exhilaration: “You’ve got three-ten . . . YEAH! coming to you.”

I have searched online to no avail, and even my friends with encyclopedic pop culture knowledge don’t remember it. It would comfort me if someone acknowledged remembering it. It would thrill me to the point of Kelly Ripaesque giddiness if someone has or can point to a clip.

(2) In the sixth grade (1982), we had to watch a drug scare film in science class. I recall a scene with a young man, maybe 20 or so, who had suffered a psychotic break after taking PCP. Institutionalized, he was dancing atop his bed singing “Shadow Dancing,” apparently now under the delusion that he was Andy Gibb. I laughed aloud and the teacher asked me if I thought something was funny. I replied, “Are you watching the same thing I am?” Then she made me leave the classroom.

Now, I challenge my own memory of this incident. First of all, you’d think a school anti-drug filmstrip with PCP Andy Gibb singing “Shadow Dancing” would’ve found its way to the Internet by now. Google comes up empty, at least for me.

Secondly, my memory seems to have made me an impossibly clever and quick-witted 11-year-old.

But the details of the film seem unusually specific for my mind to have simply invented over the years, and I’ve been recounting some version of this incident for as long as I can remember. So I cling to hope that this cautionary educational gem did indeed exist. Please, someone out there, deliver me this humble Christmas wish.

Surely, someone among the double-digit daily readership here at ContainsEggs can help solve these mysteries.

UPDATE 2/3: An exciting breakthrough! It looks like someone else remembers the school drug-scare film, and that perhaps my memory failed me on the particular song. This person recalls the PCP kid singing Andy Gibb’s “I Just Want to Be Your Everything,” which in retrospect seems more appropriate for an angel dust overdose. But the other details were the same. http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20081121144317AAblDO9

Things to Keep in Your Pocket

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  • We’ll have a good time, with me and all the gang. Learning from each other, while we bang and blame! #CosbyCoversREM (Inspired by the @JohnMoe, NPR’s greatest contribution to our society.)
  • Headline yesterday: “Police: Bieber sex may be investigated.” We’ve had our suspicions, but is this really a law enforcement issue?
  • “Prostate cancer found in 2,000-year-old Egyptian mummy.” Well, at least they found it early.
  • Remember the 90s NBC sitcom Wings? It turns out costar Steven Weber has become an underemployed, relentlessly creepy and unfunny Twitter troll. And he has launched an embarrassingly shitty Web site called . . . wait for it .  . . The World Wide Weber! And we thought our site sucked! A tip for Lowell: If you feel the need to label your own Web site as “humorous,” then it probably isn’t.

Campbell’s Soup: Also made with meat from carbon-based animals

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We’re sure others have noted this before us, but tonight a TV commercial bragged that Campbell’s makes its soups with “farm-grown ingredients.”

Our expectations for Campbell’s soup already linger pretty low. Still, Campbell’s impresses us with the brazen suggestion that the benchmark for soup quality and wholesome yumminess is having ingredients grown on a farm.

“You won’t find back-alley carrots or interstate-median herbs in Campbell’s soups. Our produce comes from a special place—the place where produce comes from. Does Progresso make its minestrone with beans and potatoes formulated in windowless concrete laboratories staffed by inmates from federal psychiatric prisons? We can’t say for certain, but rest assured that we pack every can of Campbell’s soup with vegetables picked by migrant workers aching with sweat, crippling joint pain and financial desperation. And they picked those vegetables on a farm.”

Here’s a super bonus from our extensive research for this post: A couple of eerie old animated commercials featuring the Campbell’s Kids.

In the first commercial, two creepy tomato cannibal twins cheerily boil a naive, trusting Midwestern farm tomato alive. (“Welcome to the jungle baby!”) Apparently the sun is complicit in their blood lust:

In the second commercial, two new serial agri-killers harvest a colony of fat, smiling mushrooms for Campbell’s delectable and apparently hallucinatory cream of mushroom soup. If the kooky kids didn’t already motivate you to bolt to your corner grocer, just wait until the closing shot in which a gelatinous glob of gummy fungi concentrate slithers from the can like an alien afterbirth. A special containseggs prize to the person who can best articulate the sound it makes. Bon appetit!

“Unknown Soft Items”

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I love the dueling A&E and TLC shows about hoarders because crazy people fascinate me and provide a comforting benchmark for my own relative sanity. I actually admire their resolute passion to cling to a package of hair bows or a jar of relish.

(I do wonder how many of those 1-800-GOT-JUNK guys making $12 an hour walk into those houses crammed with dirty diapers and cat carcasses and say, “Fuck this shit; I’ll work at Burger King.”)

But this story tests even my tolerance for hoarder horrors. A court in Ypsilanti Township, Mich., has ordered a property management company, residential association and a derelict condo owner to clean up a condominium stuffed to the ceilings with rotting raw meat, rodents (dead and alive), and insects. I can’t describe it in any more grisly detail than this:

Upon inspecting the property at the end of August, township officials found rotting meat in plastic bags, decaying animals, animal feces, money strewn throughout the debris, around 30 bicycles, “unknown soft items” in various states of decay, mold and even raw chicken stuffed in the mailbox.

(Mailman: “Fuck this shit; I’ll work at Burger King.”)

The repulsive, sad story speaks for itself, but the article also serves up this delightfully misplaced promotional link about a third of the way through:

When this story first posted last week, the page served up an ad link for this local pizza place. We’re guessing Happy was anything but.