Make Friends with Kool-Aid!

This Kool-Aid commercial from 1966 just sends the wrong message...



A few things...

- No wonder Jimmy didn't have any friends - he's a dick! After Bugs Bunny provides him the Kool-Aid that gives him all his friends for some reason, he doesn't even share! Then abandons him for the friends who are clearly just using him for his 'Aid.

- After Jimmy says that no one's around, Bugs's logical solution is to make some Kool Aid. Now, I'm no expert, but I'd think there's a lot on a ten-year-old boy's list of things to do when no one's around that would be ahead of that...and may or may not include undressing your sister's Barbies.

- 0:28 -"Hey Johnny, you know what this picture really needs? Fat kid."

- All these kids just sort of materialize when Jimmy makes the Kool-Aid. One kid comes from a damn tree. A TREE.

- Somehow, the fact that Bugs Bunny is right there isn't as big a deal as the pre-sweetened sugar-water. It was the sixties, that kind of thing was a regularity. But Kool-Aid?! Hell, we gotta sneak into the yard of that kid we hate to get some of that.

I bet a lot of lonely children were duped into buying Kool-Aid in 1966.

Birthday Booze, Blondes and Blowouts (and Spray Tans...but that didn't start with B)

We get up every day for unique experiences, at least I'm pretty sure no one gets up hoping for a similar routine every day (Professional Lapdance-Getters Aside...cuz they exist). These unique experiences pepper and enrich our lives, shaping who we are and what we want out of our existence. I brought about a unique experience for several close friends this weekend. When planning an open bar for my birthday, because I wanted to take a year off from the standard McDonald's/magician combo, I contacted a guy I know who bartends at what I considered to be a pretty cool place. He said he could get me an open bar at not that bar, but the other bar he worked at. Hey, not bad, it's probably an equally cool place...why should I think otherwise, right?

Here are the reasons I should have thought otherwise:

- As I walked in, three guys who looked like Spencer Pratt stood at the bar with mojitos.

- As I asked who to talk to about the open bar, I was told "the guy at the front with the ponytail."

- It was in Murray Hill

- The manager explained to me that the open bar would begin at 10, "when the tv's go off, the lights dim, and we turn on the disco ball."

- The manager looked like Jeff Probst

- I had not realized at the outset that I was sharing this open bar with a "hot chick". I guess I was expected to just get an instant, uncontrollable boner when I heard this news, as the manager was very excited to tell me. However...

- Hot chicks are friends with tools, and...

- Tools travel in packs.

- The acquarium in the back which consisted of two of the most miserable looking turtles I've ever seen. I guess turtles never really look happy, but these turtles were miserable. I feel ya turtles.

- The manager asked me at one point what I wanted to drink, and heard my "Jack and coke" as "Jack and cock". Hilarity ensued. For him. For three solid minutes.

- "I didn't know if this was the right place. You'd never come here" was the first thing at least twelve of my guests said upon arrival.

- "We're...gonna get going" was the second thing at least fifteen people said upon arrival.

- Identifying my guests amidst the hot chick's guests was fairly easy. If I didn't see a blowout or bleached blonde hair in a particular spot, I assumed my friends were standing there.

- They had a plainclothes bathroom attendant. I started using a ladyfriend's Purell just to avoid him.

- The Yankees won, on a popup error, against the Mets, the game of which played on the one television that was still turned on. With guidos primarily split between Jersey/Long Island, there was nobody indifferent about that game, and they all expressed themselves. A "Let's Go Yankees" chant broke out, despite the fact that the game had just ended, and the television now had post-game lockeroom analysis.

- Lotsa Bon Jovi on the jukebox. Lotsa.

I have since been going around like an obligated sex-offender, apoligizing to any and all friends who attended. For in their own way, they were all violated and shall never truly be the same. However, their lives have also been secretly enriched, as none of them would have ever willingly been put in a similar situation. How's that for a shitty silver lining?

So, back to Mickey D's and balloon animals next year.

IRS - I Really Suckatmath

So today, I had my first instance of my poor math skills resulting in something awesome. Alright, maybe they were not the direct cause of something awesome, but they did not result in a "C - You're terrible at this" mark from eight grade trig teacher Mr. Brook, which for math, is something of a first.

Let me explain...

So today, I receive two envelopes in the mail from the IRS. One of them is obviously my tax return, judging from the envelope. The other left me curious, as I could not imagine why the IRS would send me two things on the same day after going the whole year with nary a Christmas card. Anyway, I open this mystery letter to read the following...

Why We Are Sending You This Notice: We are writing to you because we made a change to your 2008 Federal Income Tax Return. We will explain why we made this change below.

Why We Made This Change: We computed your recovery rebate credit for you on Line 9 of Form 1040.

Now, I never claim to be a math wiz, or even a math guy-who's-decent-at-it, but numbers and myself have been natural born enemies since Sesame Street tried to teach me to count with that scary-ass singing orange. We go together like Susan Boyle and sanity (topical!). I am aware of this.

Unfortunately, the IRS obviously realizes this, as simple tax form calculations are not exactly long division. I find long division really hard. Therefore, they obviously looked at my form, had a good laugh at my easily-avoidable mistakes, and couldn't let the issue go. No, they needed to send out a separate form to remind me how bad I am at math. Really, the first draft of the form probably went like this...

Why We Are Sending You This Notice? Because you suck at math.

Why We Made The Change - Because you apparently can't handle simple addition, Ace.

Sure, I got a larger refund check that, due to my own failed computations, was a pleasant surprise. However, 'tis bittersweet, because now the IRS just thinks I'm a dumbass. However, I'm writing them back to set the record straight.

Dear IRS,

I've always been more of a History/English guy.

Love,

Michael

Platonic Dude Pickup?

Sunday morning, I looked at my phone's recent received calls history. My mind's reaction went like this: "Wait...who the hell's Mike Sulli....ohhh right."

Going out to bars is something I like to think I've done a good amount of by this point in my life. Thus, when something happens while out that I've never had occur, a red flag goes up and I am as the French say, thrown for a loop. One of these things happened this past Saturday night at The Globe on the LES (Lower East Syclops). A longtime friend of mine is moving to LA for some unknown reason I can only imagine involves a love of jetlag, and the attendees of the bar were mostly her friends and coworkers. There, scene set.

I was standing at the bar, ordering a drink, and a dude standing next to me introduces himself as Mike. Oh hey, that's my name too, and I tell him. This guy gets really excited by that development. I'm not sure how he's gotten this far in life without realizing it's one of the most common male names between the years 1820-forever, but here we are.

Next, he asks me where I'm from. I say a little south of Boston, he says that he too is from Massachusetts. Again, lost of excitement from this guy. Too much. Keep in mind we were not excavating in the Andes (can you excavate there?), we were a three-hour Chinatown bus ride away from Mass. So again, not that unusual to run into someone from the area. Maybe I've just set the bar for excitement too high.

Then, he asks me where I live right now. I say Astoria, and he nearly flips a shit and says he lives sort of near there. Again, we were in Manhattan. There was a 1/4 chance that we lived in the same burrow (I refuse to count Staten, Long, or Jersey Island). Then, seamlessly...he asks for my number.

Now let me point out that this guy had his girlfriend there with him. He was clearly straight...or at least she was a very convincing beard, but the point remained...

I got picked up by a straight guy.

Now, I'm all for making new friends, but I mean, why get my number based on what our conversation had been up to that point? Is he gonna call so we can talk about how cool it is to have the same first name? Are we gonna exchange information on whether or not our parents call us "Michael"? Talk about how we sort of live near each other and verbally high five?

Well, it's been three days and he hasn't called. Just like a man. Am I right ladies? It's also annoying when they leave the seat up! Okay, SatC's on! L8taz!

Grape Expectations

Ladies and mengentles, I would like to take a minute to address one of the greatest hoaxes of modern society; something that has occurred right under our very noses with nary a second guess from our perhaps overly-passive society. I'm speaking (obviously) of grape-flavored items that in fact do not taste like grape. Think about it - popsicles, Skittles, jelly beans, freakin' jelly (!!!) - all claiming to be grape-tasting, while you know as damn well as I do that you've never eaten a grape that tastes anything like a grape Skittle. Where are they getting these mystery "flavor grapes"? Is there a magic winery somewhere that harvests solid purple grapes for artificial flavoring and consumption? At this point, that's as good of a guess as any. Better than yours, you didn't even try!

The strange thing is, through this engraining of grape flavor from the liberal media on the public, I do believe that I have developed a fondness for "grape-flavored" items that far surpasses the flavor of actual grapes. And I'm sure you'd agree. Who doesn't open a box of Popsicle brand popsicles and first look for the one which sort of looks purple through the solid white plastic wrap? Or when given the option, select a refreshing grape slush puppy from the vast array of seemingly endless flavor selections at our local Astoria street fair? Yes, it's sad, but we as a society have been programmed so deeply to just roll with this fake grape flavor, that we've stopped asking questions, walking this earth blindly accepting the fact that grape flavored items have nothing to do with the fruit on which they are based. Not since Apple Jacks has such a fruit-related faux pas swept the nation.

Yes, I did write this with the idea of the title first.

New Tumblr Page! At last!

I keep getting told by jerks that I should start a tumblr page. So I did it. Happy jerks?

It's called HadgeTastic, and on it, I tell America what is HadgeTastic and what is not so HadgeTastic in an effort to spark internet controversy and end up on Rachael Maddow somehow. Please visit often. I know you'll make the right choice.

HADGETASTIC!

Hey, we gotta start advertising Angels and Demons!

Tom Hanks/Ron Howard/Dan Brown vehicle Angels and Demons waits in the cinematic wings to knock Wolverine out of the No. 2 spot at the box office this weekend. Obviously, the ad campaigns, TV spots, and Arby's promotional thermoses are going to be thrown at us, the public, like advertisements at...a public. However, I caught a TV spot today that mentioned what the critics are saying about Angels and Demons. The list went like this:

"Better than the DaVinci Code...!"

...followed by an (I hope) unintentional awkward pause, and then the film title. It's almost as if the promotions people were saying "Yeah, we know...we aren't gonna see this either." Hailing that a sequel is better than the original in a trailer only ever works if the original was awesome. This worked for Spiderman, Toy Story, and the first four Land Before Time's. Here, the quote was probably taken from a critic's review that went something like this:

"Angels and Demons was, I don't know, I guess better than the DaVinci Code, but what isn't? That thing was a three-hour pile of Pope feces. Don't ask me how a pile can be three-hours long, that's not the point. I enjoyed my last three kidney stones better than the DaVinci Code. There's no way someone could take any of what I'm saying out of context!"

They really may as well have said...

"Critics are calling it 'Better than Something Really Boring and Unenjoyable"

"Critics are calling it 'Better than just taking thirteen dollars and throwing it in a wood chipper. Slightly."

"Critics are calling it 'Better than that time I accidentally got a boner in math class and had to stand up, but I was wearing sweatpants!'"

Saying a thing is better than a bad thing does not necessarily compliment that first thing. Anyway, if anyone sees it and its awesome, let me know. At the moment, I just know that one guys liked it better than something that was terrible.