So I have a roommate who, contrary to any interest I’ve ever been aware of, got obsessed with seeing This Is It, the movie that took 1,000 hours of editing in order to make Michael Jackson look like he wasn’t a total weirdo pain-in-the-ass to work with – and an additional 1,000 hours to make it look like he wasn’t going to die the following evening. So, interested in being part of some sort of moment in history (even though I was on Hollywood Boulevard for the Jackson Memorial), I decided to accompany him to the movie. But that’s not what this post is about.

26 Years prior to this experience I couldn’t drive, drink, and wasn’t sure how to chase women, so I had a lot of sleepovers with my buddies. Most of these nights would involve making radio dramas with my big red Realistic Brand Tape recorder. One night my friend  and I decided to record a radio show where we played music and pretended we were DJ’s. One of us would talk the next hit up into the tape recorder while the other changed the records.

We did not have any advanced technology so we pushed the tape recorder next to a speaker to accomplish all of this. So the tape recorder recorded everything, including everything that happened in the room despite desperate “shhhh’s” from a couple of ten-year-olds that were “on the air.”

I had forgotten about this until I saw This Is It and realized something about the song “Thriller.” When WXYZ (yep) spun the 1983 hit song; in the background, playing Atari Hockey was Fred (Dad 2.0) and a family friend who came over every Friday night to play Atari Hockey, Dave (though Mom used to call him “Scroaty” – it’s true). At the beginning of “Thriller”, right when when the wolf howls, Fred lost a close game of Atari Hockey with Scroaty and screamed “AH SHIT!!!” Which went out “live” on the “air.”

I did not realize until I saw This Is It, that ever since then, I have never heard that song and not heard “AH SHIT!” in my head after the wolf howls.

Good story. Allright, back to your day.

Just a scant nine years after Michael J. Fox starred “Teen Wolf,” Jack Nicholson made his own mark on the genre with “Wolf,” a film that probably would have been even more successful if it had been considered the third of the “Teen Wolf” trilogy.

Nicholson plays a mousy book editor who is fortuitously bitten by a werewolf the same week that he is demoted, his position filled by his weaselly metrosexual protege, played by James Spader, who is also sleeping with his wife. 

Now filled with the “passion of the wolf,” Nicholson’s senses are heightened: He can read without his glasses, he can smell the tequila his co-worker drank for breakfast, he can leap shrubs in a single bound, snap the neck of a deer, and drink from its neck like its severed artery is a spigot. He can insult Michelle Pfeiffer straight into bed.

And when James Spader dares to make idle chit-chat with him at the urinal, Nicholson turns his spray on his enemy’s suede shoes. “I’m marking my territory,” he tells the pretty-boy, before cruelling adding to the insult by identifying this batch of urine’s vineyard: “Asparagus.”

If “Teen Wolf” is the puberty allegory of this trilogy, “Wolf,” it seems, is the Viagra metaphor.

 You can stop calling, emailing and speculating behind our backs — Sandy and I are still married.  I have long suspected that Facebook is more trouble than it’s worth, and yesterday all of my suspicions were confirmed.  Here’s what happened:  Sandy in an effort to streamline his Facebook profile, removed and altered a bunch of his personal information in order to simplify (after all, do people really need to know if you were raised Methodist and are a fan of bacon?!)  He *thought* his had changed the necessary setting to private.  Nope.  All of his 636 “friends” and all 248 of our “mutual friends” when they logged on yesterday were greeted with the update that “Sandy is no longer married” — which is accompanied by a broken heart symbol (just in case you can’t read).  Let the chaos begin.  People start emailing and calling him.  People start emailing and calling me.  Thank God Sandy called me at work and told me what happened BEFORE the calls and emails started coming in. I went to dinner last night with 5 of our mutual friends (Sandy wasn’t there) and I was the last to arrive.  A few minutes into dinner, I announced that Sandy and I were still married and half the table admitted that they discussed whether or not they should ask me what was up.  Jesus, Facebook!  I knew you were going to be a pain in my ass, but this is one scenario I didn’t see coming.  Word spreads fast, man.  And also, my apologies to all the guys that had a little glimmer of hope and were thinking about asking me to go The Dark Knight this weekend.