Greetings, Bayside High School, Class of 1993

Welcome all friends, family, and faculty to this year's graduation ceremony at Bayside High School. I am proud and honored to be chosen as the Salutatorian for today's proceedings, even though I missed Valedictorian by one-fiftieth of a grade. I'm not bitter, though. Instead, I would like to take this opportunity to express my hope for the future and my elation at finally getting out of this damned school where I and so many others have languished in obscurity for a long time. Many people are not going to like what I have to say, but I feel it is necessary.
There is a culture of privelege and favoritism at Bayside High School, but it is not striated along ethnic or social boundaries. No, the priveleged group at this institution contains six people, each one as different from the next as night is to day, and yet they are bonded together through friendship and, regrettably, getting over on various authority figures at Bayside. None less than our principal, Mr. Belding, has allowed these six students to reach tremendous heights while the rest of the student body--totalling almost a thousand in number--have struggled to gain the slightest recognition and accreditation afforded students at other high schools. I will show how this injustice has prevailed for these past four years.
At the lowest end of this totem pole of popularity are Lisa Turtle and Samuel "Screech" Powers. While these two may be the lowest-profile of the popular crowd, they still manage to edge out all others in nearly every category. Lisa is the president of the Fashion Club, an invisible army of hopeful girls that knit and sew at her bidding. She earned the title of Homecoming Queen this year, and she was able to hold a fashion show at our beloved hang-out, The Max in order to gain acceptance to the Fashion Institute in New York. I would like to note that no other student was allowed to use The Max in this fashion. In fact, I have been going there for four years, and the owner still doesn't know my name. "Screech", on the other hand, has won the Science Fair and the Mathlympics four years in a row, and he is allowed to hold an annual insect rodeo in the cafeteria, where we eat. This goes against many health and safety laws for the state of California, and yet when Mr. Belding was approached about the issue, he shrugged and said that "Screech" would be careful. Even after Screech accidentally released several hundred silverfish into the girls' locker room and caused it to be shut down for fumigation late last year--ruining, incidentally, our chances at winning the state field hockey championships for which we were contending.
If these were the only two abusers of the selective favoritism at Bayside, it could be overlooked. However, there are still more that reap the benefits of being Bayside High School's favored elite, namely A.C. Slater and Jessica Spano. Jessie is this year's Valedictorian--she only beat me by one-fiftieth of a grade, if I didn't mention it before--as well as the Senior Class President, editor-in-chief of the yearbook staff, and captain of the Debate Team. She is also the founding member of Bayside Against Global Assassination, a position which she has refused to relenquish even though her other duties prohibited her from consistent participation. Jessie was a long-time girlfriend of A.C. Slater, who is captain of the wrestling team, the football team, the baseball team, and the swim team. Granted, since A.C. has been captain of these various teams, Bayside has enjoyed its first State Championships in every category. However, I wonder if the accolades afforded Bayside are worth the helplessness felt by many athletes who were never offered the opportunity to excel.
By far, the most egregious abusers of Mr. Belding and other members of the faculty's good graces are Bayside's favorite couple, Zack Morris and Kelly Kapowski. Kelly was elected Homecoming Queen in her Junior Year--a first for Bayside--and is captain of the volleyball team, the field hockey team, and the cheerleading squad. I got to spend a lot of time around Kelly when I was on the field hockey team last year, and you know, that bitch never talked to me once. Even when I assisted with a goal, not so much as a "thanks" or "good job." I never got invited to any of her numerous sleepovers--only Jessie and Lisa were invited to attend. Kelly seemed to be well-liked by people who hope to gain a modicum of recognition at this school, but seeing that school is over and it didn't do us any good, I think you'll find that many of us think she's a stuck-up cunt. This is at least partly due to her tumultuous relationship with Bayside's favored son, Zack Morris. Zack is on the track team, but otherwise doesn't have many extracurriculars on his list, however he has been allowed to miss more school and pull more pranks without real punishment than any other student while be attended Bayside. He gave out every girl in school's phone number as part of a hireable dating service, an offense which should have resulted in expulsion, yet he received little more than a slap on the wrist. I still have to screen my calls for strangers from the local reform school looking for a date. Zack also fell short of graduation by one credit, which should have forced him to go to Summer School, and yet Mr. Belding allowed him to perform in this years laughable ballet production of Swan Lake to make up the credit. I took AP classes every summer for years just to get to the point that I am at today, while Zack Morris has been afforded a free ride the entire time.
It has been a tremendous relief to get this off my chest before my fellow classmates and esteemed teachers and professors. I know many of you feel the same way I do. May the Class of 1993 go on to do bigger and better things without hiding in the shadow of the elite six popular members of we graduating seniors. May Mr. Belding heed my condemnation of his actions not as bitter retribution, but an awakening so that he will never express such favoritism for so few for the rest of his career. And may Kelly Kapowski get fat and have her hair fall out and her nose go all crooked, the stuck-up cunt that she is. Thank you all, and enjoy the rest of the graduation ceremony.

The Good, the Bad, and the Mediocre

Single-panel comic strips

THE GOOD: The Far Side


You don't need to be a comic strip aficionado to like this one. Gary Larson pretty much closed the chapter of the single-panel comic strip back in the 1980's and early 90's. His artwork was crude, but helped to convey his surreal humor, and he displayed a unique sense of timing in his art and punchlines that most single-panel cartoonists ignore. It was still a damn sight better than Dilbert. Where most single-panel comics are static talking heads and a punchline at the end, Larson was able to imply a much more detailed scenario, like you had stumbled upon something incredibly bizarre right in the middle of it. Happily, before Larson could completely burn out, he hung up his pen and left a legacy of Page-A-Day calendars and nerdy t-shirts for future generations to enjoy.

THE BAD: Ziggy


Have you ever gone to see a comedy movie, and something happens on screen that everyone in the theatre laughs at, but you don't get the joke? That's basically how I feel everytime I read Ziggy. Here's a guy dominated by a parrot and the guy working the complaints desk at the local department store. That's supposed to be funny? Get this guy on SSI or something, he's clearly mentally deficient. Recently, Ziggy has been taken over by Tom Wilson's son, Tom "Tom II" Wilson, Jr., to terrible effect. As if the drawing wasn't terrible enough, Tom II likes to break out the Sharpie to ink his cartoons, giving it the effect of having been drawn by a kindergardner. Add the moronic punchlines and simply sad situations, and you'd got a single-panel comic strip more pointless than those Love Is... cartoons. Next time you wish on a star, Zig, do us all a favor: wish yourself to die.

THE MEDIOCRE: The Lockhorns


The refrigerator at my aunt and uncle's house is covered in clippings of this comic strip. I guess it's kind of a microcosm for their decades-old marriage, steeped in resentment and passive-agressivity, bonded together through familiarity and revenge fantasies. The Lockhorns is really brilliant, in a way, because you could conceivably keep it up endlessly by just applying a few joke logarithms per week. Leroy Lockhorn can't stand Loretta Lockhorn's cooking. Lorretta is bored by Leroy's incessant sports-watching. Leroy flirts with pretty, young women at social events. Loretta can't drive. Leroy doesn't like his mother in-law. Loretta spends too much money while shopping. There, I just came up with a week of Lockhorns strips. If you need me, I'll be on the boat, sipping on beer and waiting for the fish to bite.

Conversations with Ben: the Sports Edition

Okay, so I tried this once before and got some good responses, so I'm going to try to convey the confusion and hilarity that is my friendship with Ben. I've known him a long time, and I never have a conversation with him that doesn't leave me wondering if I have unexpectedly arrived in an alternate dimension or if Ben isn't truly the victim of a wayward chromosome. This is another attempt to bring some of that strangeness to you, the reader.

I don't watch sports very often, but I do catch a game of baseball from time to time, usually in the company of friends and in the interest of male comraderie and such. Whatever the sport, if Ben is in the room, you can be sure that he will make the most simple and asinine observations about what is happening in the game. If a team is down by two points, he'll invariably say, "They only need three runs to win the game." If a player is visibly injured with a compound fracture and needs to be taken off the field in a stretcher, he will say, "That guy's going to be disabled for a while." So you see that his sports knowledge is volumnious and his color commentary is astute.

Some sports fans may remember that, in the year 2000, New York had its first Subway Series in decades when the Mets and Yankees won their respective league titles and faced each other in the World Series. The Mets took the first game, and the Yankees essentially rocked them for the next four to win the pennant. More pertinently to this blog, however, was Ben's commentary as we watched game five, the final game of the series:
"Arrgh!" I groaned, "The Mets are really fucking up out there." I am a Mets fan, as is Ben.
"Well," replied Ben, "the Mets can't win this one because the Yankees are an older ball club."
I paused for a second, then got kind of indignant. "What does that have to do with anything?"
"They have more experience," explained Ben, "and they've been in this spot before."
Being that I am somewhat naive about sports, I thought he might have a point and probed further. "That's true, Ben," I said, "this ball club has been in this spot dozens of times. But these individual players and this team has only gone to the series twice before. The Yankees may outmatch the Mets, but it's not largely due to their ball club's legacy."
"Yes it is," he stated, firmly, "they have a history of winning World Series so they have an edge."
"What the hell are you talking about?!" I exclaimed, "The legacy is undeniable but it's not like Babe Ruth and Mickey Mantle are still on the team. A lot of these players were former Mets, anyway. The manager was on the Mets, for chrissakes!"
"That doesn't matter," Ben resolved, "the Yankees are an older ball club and so they know how to win World Series."
I had to try and make my point to him. "Ben, do you realize that, by your logic, the only teams who could be winning pennants are the Yankees, Red Sox, White Sox, and Cubs? These teams are made up of new players. I understand that the Yankees have won the last two series, but the Marlins--a relatively new team--won it in 1998. How do you explain that?"
Ben was thoughtful for a second, and then he stated, "Well, they must have picked something up from an older ball club. That's the only way they could do it."

Then, just yesterday, we were talking about steroid abuse in baseball, and we were talking about Barry Bonds breaking Babe Ruth's homerun record, and how this controversy will affect baseball stats. I mentioned that Barry Bonds and others had cried racism, being that he had broken a white player's record:
"It's a smokescreen," I said, "it's like he's trying to take the heat off the fact that he used steroids."
"I don't think so," stated Ben, solemnly, "I think it has more to do with the fact that he's broken the season and career homerun record."
I thought for a second. "No," I began, "no, I think it's really more about the steroids, Ben."
"No it isn't," he replied, "people are upset that he's broken both records in his career."
"Yes, people are upset that he broke these records, Ben. On steroids."
"No, Reggie," Ben denied, adamantly, "I know people are pissed that he took both records. Hank Aaron beat Babe Ruth's career record but not his season record."
"Yes, but that was because he is black. The common consensus is that Bonds cheated to beat Babe Ruth's record. If he beats Aaron's, he'll still be a cheater in many peoples' eyes." I tried yet again to drive my point home to Ben, "Any real racists will hate Bonds on principle no matter what he achieves. But baseball fans who venerate statistics will always question his record because he got so many homeruns by using drugs. I don't think it matters if he beat the career, seasonal, and game records, he still cheated to do it."
Ben chewed on my words for a moment, but still did not agree. "If he had just beaten the career homerun record, that would be one thing. But he beat the seasonal record for homeruns and that's what people are so angry about."
"Ben," I yelled, getting a little frustrated with his lack of logic, "the career homerun record is far more respected than the seasonal one! If anything, you've got the whole thing backwards."
Ben had to admit that point. "Maybe so, but I know that the hate against Bonds has nothing to do with him using steroids."

Read a newspaper lately, Ben?