What a Difference a Day Makes: Z drowns in 24 posts
Published January 21st, 2009 in 24, TelevisionI’m a big fan of 24. Sure, the story is good [Ed note: not last year!], but I’m mostly impressed by how much Jack Bauer manages to squeeze into a day. To illustrate, I compare each hour of Jack’s day to the corresponding hour in my own day.
Jack’s Day, 11 AM – 12 Noon: We start the show with Jack in transit. Hallelujah. See you in-
11:06 AM: -SIX MINUTES?!? DAMNIT!!! Jack arrives at “CTU Headquarters,” though until I see differently I’m going to figure it’s Bill’s apartment. I’ve never liked Bill, but now I’m actively pissed at him for living so close to the FBI and not providing me with a bunch of down time.
What a Difference a Day Makes: Another Friggin 24 Post
Published January 20th, 2009 in 24, TelevisionI’m a big fan of 24. Sure, the story is good [Ed note: not last year!], but I’m mostly impressed by how much Jack Bauer manages to squeeze into a day. To illustrate, I compare each hour of Jack’s day to the corresponding hour in my own day.
Jack’s Day, 10-11 AM: Arrrrrgh. Already we’re off to a bad start: due to a DVR mix-up, I don’t start recording the show until 10:35. Thankfully, Fox puts the full episodes online. I’m sure my five-year old Toshiba laptop will be more than capable of duplicating the viewing experience of my high-def TV.
What a Difference a Day Makes: 24 Little Hours
Published January 19th, 2009 in 24, TelevisionI’m a big fan of 24. Sure, the story is good [Ed note: not last year!], but I’m mostly impressed by how much Jack Bauer manages to squeeze into a day. To illustrate, I compare each hour of Jack’s day to the corresponding hour in my own day.
As you’ll recall, Tony, Jack’s presumed-dead sidekick, had obtained a circuit board that could hack into our nation’s infrastructure, meaning power plants, water treatment facilities, airports… basically, Tony could play a really awesome game of SimCity, with a lot less Sim to it.
Jack was about to get some info that would have led him straight to Tony and ended this thing, except, as you’ll recall, the first five or six episodes of any 24 season are always chock-full of futility. In this case, a sniper who killed Jack’s lead.
Jack’s Day, 9-10 AM: You know what Jack always says: when life gives you lemons, grab a pen and threaten to stab the lemons in the eye until they piss lemonade. One informant might be dead, but Jack knows that the sniper will know where Tony is, and as long as he’s got a head… shoulders, knees and toes, knees and toes… then Jack can work with him.
What a Difference a Day Makes: 24 Little Hours
Published January 17th, 2009 in 24, TelevisionWhat a Difference a Day Makes: 24 Little Hours
Published January 15th, 2009 in 24, TelevisionJack and Zach are back! I wasn’t sure I’d every do this again, after that last travesty of a season. For inspiration and guidance, I just re-read a few of the last 24 blogs I wrote and they’re nearly incomprehensible, so much so that I actually looked up the definition of the word “frenetic”, to see if it was really strong enough.
“Wildly excited or active; frantic; frenzied…alteration of Greek phrenitikos… ‘inflammation of the brain.’” Yep, that pretty much describes it. To new readers, those posts probably sounded like I was trying to write them while waiting in line for a funnel cake at a topless amusement park.
In my defense, last season was brutally awful. That last month or so, I wasn’t happy to see ‘24′ waiting for me on my DVR list. New characters came in every two episodes: my recaps are filled with hackneyed nicknames like Cheetara, Silver Spoon, The Widow, Agent Cockblock… and it’s not like knowing their actual names makes it better. Who the hell was Wayne? I don’t know, but count him among the twenty or thirty people who Jack begged at some point. And didn’t Jack have a son or something? Jesus.
Luckily, I didn’t read these recaps before starting this new season. As always, Fox was wise to start 24 following a playoff football game, meaning that by the time the show started I’d spent the previous couple hours consuming beer and food with no nutritional value and I was wearing a dull-eyed, slack-jawed look that said: whatever Jack Bauer’s selling, I’m buying. Let’s do this thing.
Great Achievements in Publishing, Part Two
Published January 13th, 2009 in A day in the lifeDon’t pretend like you don’t know what I’m talking about! Girls and Corpses! Because “Girls With an Enormous Number of Deep-Seeded Psychological Issues” was too hard to fit on the cover!
This thing really exists. On the January issue’s cover, there’s an attractive girl with a samurai sword and what really appears to be an actual human corpse. Part of me wishes I had looked inside more that I might better report back to my readership, but there’s no unremarkable way to take an issue of Girls and Corpses down from the rack. (“Girls and Corpses? Oh, no, I just read it for the stories…”) They even keep it on the top shelf so there’s no way for you to take a copy down without making a spectacle of yourself.
Think I’m lying? Check out the piece they did on G&C magazine on Attack of the Show.
Here is some interesting trivia:
- G&C has over two million readers.
- G&C has been around for five years.
- All of you just re-examined what you do for a living or whether or not you want to bring children into this world.
I now know the elation that comes with appearing in a magazine for the first time. [Shit, I was gonna write a blog post about it!] First thing I did, I called my family, so naturally I began to reflect on the family dynamics that might bring a woman to become a “Slaymate.” [I don't know if they're called Slaymates. I just made that up myself. In fact, I pray they're not called Slaymates, because if they are I'm getting divorced in three...two... one...]
Okay, actually, I’ve spent over an hour trying to come up with a family background traumatic enough to lead to the cover of Girls and Corpses magazine while still remaining plausible. This is the closest I’ve come:
- Ma always pressured her to carry on the family business. That donkey show had been passed down through six generations.
- Typical family dinner was a salad made of cigarettes drizzled with rye whiskey.
- Pa never paid much attention to her, working nights at the funeral parlor. But he tried to provide: her fondest memories are of Christmas mornings, when he would come home with a paper bag for each of the children. Inside was a rag soaked in embalming fluid, and they’d all sit around the tire-fire, huffing, sharing stories, and roasting squirrel.
Seriously: nothing says “Dear Dad, you’ve failed epically,” like a spread in Girls and Corpses magazine. Somewhere there is a clown with his dick in a garlic press saying, “Girls and Corpses? Man, that’s fucked up.”
But wait – don’t forget: this post started because I’ve finally been published in print. We’re here because that milestone of my writing career was stashed BEHIND Girls and Corpses. And let’s also not forget that this is the article that was supposed to run back in October, which would have coincided nicely with my appearance on the “Contributors” page. (This month, I’m not as prominently featured on the contributors’ page, and my name is spelled “Zacj Olberman.”)
You know what, though? I couldn’t care less. I’m in print, motherfuckers. And while they may not be the biggest game in town, and they may have the occasional editorial slip-up, I genuinely like Geek Monthly magazine, particularly the January issue, with Janeane Garofalo on the cover, a tremendously funny article on page twelve, and most importantly, my name spelled correctly in the byline.
In the words of the immortal Peter Gabriel: “BIG TIME! I’m on my way, I’m making it…”
What up, 718!
Published January 3rd, 2009 in A day in the life"Hello?"
"Hi... Zach?"
"Yeah?"
"Hey, it's [Charlie.]“
“Oh… Uh, hey… how’s it going?”
“Wait a minute… is this Zach OBERMAN?”
“Yeah…”
“Oh my god, I’m so sorry… I called the wrong Zach. I’m so sorry.”
It’s like they say: once you go Zach, you never go back, though the specific Zach may change. I just have to wonder: what was I doing in her phone? I deleted her number sometime in 2000. Yeah, there’s good odds I was sobbing when I did it, but whatever. I know I lay the pipe well, but she’s got to give up the ghost.]
I moved to New York four and a half years ago. At first I kept my number because my dad is a skinflint, and he wanted to avoid long distance charges. I don’t even know if phone companies have domestic long distance charges anymore. One day he’s going to say something like that to my kids and they are going to stare blankly at him. I’ll have to remind them to humor the crazy old man, just like when he starts going on about the “CD player,” “gasoline” or “Taiwan.”
More importantly, I kept my number because it was one of the greatest numbers of all time: 310-488-1488. Look at that repeating 488 sequence! When have you seen something so sexy? Its curves are so sensual, yet the four gives it an edge. The eights say, “when you’re sick, I”ll give you soup and a grilled cheese sandwich,” while the four says, “and a blowjob, first.” I thought I would never give up that number, but I’ve got a new love now, and her blowjobs are much less metaphoric.
Wonder Woman and I decided to join a family plan, which will save us a good deal of money. What we didn’t know is that to be on a family plan, all of the phones must have numbers in the same “market”. Again, the idea of “area codes” seems like an outdated concept. Let’s just accept that phone numbers are now just ten digits long and move on with our lives. But that still left us in the phone store with a dilemna: one of us would have to change our number or we wouldn’t be able to get the family plan and save that money.
I was speaking with John Law about this yesterday and he told me that when he and his wife ran into the same conundrum, they forwent the family plan altogether. [Did you know that forwent was a word? I sure didn't. It looks wrong, but who am I to argue with an animated paper clip?] If I didn’t know them as well as I do, I would think this is a bad omen for their marriage. I can just see them in a delivery room:
“What should we name the baby?”
“Theresa.”
“I was thinking Samantha.”
“Well, then you’ll just have to have your own daughter then.”
“Fine! Dibs on this one!”
“No way! I saw her first!”
“THAT’S BECAUSE SHE WAS COMING OUT OF MY VAGINA!” (and scene!)
Because I’m as stingy as my father, WW and I both knew we were going to join the family plan come hell or high water; it was just a matter of deciding who was going to give up their phone numbers. If you haven’t done it lately, it’s a scary prospect. All of a sudden you find yourself imagining the tremendous list of people who will need to be notified. You picture nightmare scenarios of people frantically trying to contact you: what if your stockbroker needs to tell you that your $26 is now only worth $13? Or what if your junior-year lab partner finally finds your pencil? Or what if your ex-girlfriend needs you to tell you that she is sorry for everything that happened (because it was all her fault) and that no other man has ever measured up to you, and that she only pretended to have called the wrong Zach because she was afraid you’d reject her when she begged you to take her back?
Then you think about your spouse. After all, why can’t he or she change his or her number? Nobody calls them! Goddamnit, why do they have to be so selfish all the time! Why must I sacrifice so much of myself!?! You wonder how the statement, “Judge, I had that number for nine years! NINE!” would play in a divorce hearing.
All of this takes place in three minutes, and neither of you says a word. Instead, your faces contort between anxiety and rage while the AT&T rep debates how long she has to watch this pantomimed marital drama before she moves on to the next customer.
Eventually I gave in, because I realize that WW’s phone number is on a lot more important documents than mine. I’m not saying she’s a more important person, I’m just looking at the facts: she’s a lawyer; I aspire to write dick jokes professionally. I also see it as a gesture of my overwhelming willingness to compromise, which I intend to hold over her at the movies tonight. [It's all worth it if I don't have to see Benjamin Button.]
If there is a silver lining, it is that I no longer have to deal with Larry Goldstein. Larry Goldstein used to be a broker for Merrill Lynch if I remember correctly. He also was the previous owner of my 310 number, and I have every reason to believe that when he changed his number he looked at his address book filled with hundreds of contacts and said to himself, “Fuck this; I’m going to Chipotle.” [I imagine Larry going to Chipotle because it is the nastiest approximation of Mexican food, made by people who have clearly never met a Mexican person. I can't understand why it is popular, and I've concluded that it's because assholes - like Larry - eat there. Also... it just occurred to me for the first time that Larry might have died. Just now. That's how long my brain needs to think "outside the box."]
For the first year I averaged at least one call a day for Larry. I used to plead with the callers that when the found Larry: would they please ask him to notify his contacts? No dice. Sometime in year two when the calls showed no signs of abating, I decided that Larry was my new archenemy, beating out my previous archenemy – American cheese – by a wide margin. It was time to hunt Larry down. First I got his last name, simply by asking, “Larry who? Oh, Larry Goldstein??? No, he’s not at this number anymore.” Then with the next caller, I pretended to be Larry’s assistant, and I took down the caller’s info. Then I called back immediately and apologized, saying that I actually worked for a different man – Harry - and that I hadn’t been paying attention, and sorry, Larry wasn’t at this number anymore. [I really did this. I was bored a lot back then.]
The next part of my plan was to wait a day or two, then have one of my cute-sounding female friends call up Larry’s contact and explain that she had been trying to contact Larry, and that the nice young man who had answered the phone referred her to this number in case he knew of a way to reach Larry. Then I was going to use that info to hunt Larry down.
Except then I started playing Halo and that was pretty much it for my grand scheme. The calls gradually stopped, though even after this much time I still got one or two a year. Ah well; they’re someone else’s problem now, along with a call from my ex-girlfriend in about five years.
So that’s it. I have a new phone number. I emailed most people about it, but I’ve never been the most thorough of people. Don’t take it personally if I didn’t email you; if you are under the impression that I like you, please email me and request my new number, and we’ll find out once and for all whether you’re correct.