Things of Which There Are Only One (part one of one billion)

Welcome to the first edition of "Things of Which There Are Only One". Often times when walking around, I say, "Never seen that before" or "that isn't safe". In either case, I quickly pass judgment, take a picture, and restrain myself from offering helpful advice. Please note that I do absolutely no research on whether the object is actually the only one of its kind. If I haven't seen it before or at least don't remember, that's good enough for me.

In this first edition, I present a photo I took in Boulder several months ago. To set the stage for those of you more familiar with Texas, I often say Boulder is Austin with no sense of reality. Yes, it's full of real hippies and former hippies and wannabe hippies. But after going to church there for almost a year, I have made quite a few Boulderite friends --- even some who think eating meat means someone killed an animal. And while I'm happy sharing opposite viewpoints with many of them, I still don't get cyclists. (For those of you who don't know my true feelings on the disease of Cyclism, I'll have to one day repost the now infamous article.)

But what I don't understand about cycling, I really don't understand about taking your tiny kids along for the ride.
Introducing the kid trailer! For the enterprising environmentalist with small children and muscle to spare, you can now treat your kids to the thrill of being slowly dragged in a tent!

I thought these units just meandered all over Boulder full of children who look... confused. That is, until I saw this particular bike trailer:
Yes, that would be a very expensive bike trailer built for hauling children being used to transport a propane tank. I still have so many questions. And I expect, so long as I look, I'll never see this again... hence the series.

Claiming a Millennium

While watching a part of the Oscars tonight with Ryan & Lauren, we got into an interesting discussion about Will Smith. (See also: I was with Bethany talking about Will Smith; I was at church talking about Will Smith; etc.) In this particular conversation, we were wondering how he made the jump from dorky teenage rapper in the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air to action hero. Seriously... he was in Fresh Prince for 5+ years, did Bad Boys, then did Independence Day, and now he's in approximately half the movies that require someone to shoot someone else.

I can't think of anyone else who has gone from totally cheesy to legitimate actor without any stops in between. The one thing that he didn't get rid of, however, was his ridiculous music. (Ridiculous music that I liked, but ridiculous nonetheless.)

So as Will Smith was lifted up onto the Oscar stage on a rising platform, we were wondering why he got to do that when no one else did. Ryan responded, "Well, I guess it technically is his millennium."

And this led us to an obvious question: How come Will Smith got to claim the entire millennium for himself? (In case you're not aware: Willennium.)

Who makes up these rules? Is it like shotgun... you just are in sight of the millennium and yell your name + "ennium"? If so, I challenge his claim. This album came out in 1999. There's no way he could have seen all the way to 2000 (or 2001, depending on how you look at it). In that case, I can only assume after doing no research that nobody else has realized this, nor have they disputed Will Smith's tyrannical rule.

It's time for a new tyrannical rule. I hereby declare this the Jeffennium. In a related note, I've been told "Jeffennium" sounds stupid, so I'll also allow "Fuzzennium", which has a certain ring to it. Please call when you have written my career launching vehicle co-starring Martin Lawrence.

Some of you may say that you can't yell shotgun once you're already in the car. Well, you can if the other guy cheated. Get in the back, Will.

Explaining my terrible blog title

So tonight I bit the bullet and created a blog and a Twitter account. I am one of the many who thinks Twitter is one of the most ridiculous ideas to come out of Web 2.0 (and please stop using that term, everyone...) But, I keep seeing post after post where people say "Yes, Twitter sounds like the worst idea ever, but it's amazing." We'll see.

Anyway, to explain away my blog title. First, I had to make my blog URL "fuzzymazoid" because every other name under the sun is taken. This is the exact same problem AIM had back in the day, and I can't imagine how bad it is by now. (And yes, my name back when I actually used AIM was also fuzzymazoid, for the exact same reason.) I remember getting Cody on AIM after years of resistance. He originally started with "PartyMoose", paying homage to the stuffed animal moose that made its home in our dormroom. You wouldn't think PartyMoose would be a common term, but alas, it was taken. He then tried "TheRealPartyMoose", somewhat akin to "The Real Ghostbusters" which was way, way better than "Ghostbusters." As expected, someone had taken TheRealPartyMoose. We thought this was a little ridiculous.

PartyOx. There's no such thing as a party ox, and it sounds stupid, so that will work. It would have worked, but it was taken. Last resort? TheRealPartyOx.

I bet someone will be writing a similar blog post someday, except they will be disappointed that TheRealPartyOx is taken (by Cody... who has probably not logged in since 2003). They'll have to go with the less socially adept animals, like PartyMongoose and PartySloth.

Anyway, that brings me to my blog's title, which is terrible. (For someday when I change it, the current title is "What about the fuzz, boss?") It's the only thing I could think of with part of "fuzzymazoid" in it other than Hot Fuzz.

"What about the fuzz, boss?" is a line, also, oddly enough (and I didn't even think about this cool tie-in when I started writing this... seriously) by Cody from way back in early high school in the classic Dave Ellison film, Rico and Suave. It was long before we bothered writing scripts for our movies before filming. Each scene started with "Ok, so you guys are going to have to talk about meeting at the docks and how you're going to kill the good guys, and then you walk out the door." This led to some pretty compelling dialog, such as...

Bad guy boss (me): There's a big coke deal going down tonight.

Henchman (Cody, complete with Elvis glasses and giant sideburns): What about the fuzz, boss?

Boss: WHAT ABOUT THE FUZZ!? [hardest slap ever, complete with punch sound effect #15 from Street Fighter 2]

Henchman: Sorry boss.

Boss: I've got the idea... I MAKE THE GOOD IDEAS. [hoping Cody's adlib does not cause him to ask me about this good idea]

Someday, someday I'll get all those old movies copied to my computer. Then I'll have video clips of the classics on here instead of typing transcripts of terrible lines we made up 13 years ago.

Not sure why I think that's better.