There are some of you who might want to know a bit more about the holiday — and for you I present this video. The song’s title comes from the humorous precis of the Passover Seder: They tried to kill us. We survived. Let’s eat. The duo that sings is called Good for the Jews.

Direct YouTube Link

I hope this clarifies a couple of things…

I’m not simply taking credit for an idea which wasn’t mine in the first place.

Nope. All I’m doing is being a guest blogger for today.

I’m doing it for Miss Hilly of Snackie’s World. While she’s relaxing in Florida, I suppose she could have just shut down her blog for a couple of days. (“Oh no! Snackie’s world is closed!”)  Instead, her blog remains open for business with me behind the counter. Which means the register will likely be quite a bit short by the time she returns.

So — join me, won’t you? Let’s go on over there together and answer today’s Snackie Sunday question of the week…

As I mentioned yesterday, I had a truly wonderful idea for a culminating piece for the week. I worked on it a lot. Well, I didn’t really do that. Instead, I thought up some great ideas in my head that simply hadn’t been executed yet, but I put so many eggs in the proverbial basket that my idea got ahead of me. Never mind that, I thought — it’s a wonderful idea and it deserves the head start!

But what I didn’t realize is how serious people can be about their work! Word got out about this video I was planning to do — with corporate tie-ins, celebrity cameos and the like — and the owner of the creative property got word of this — and he dropped his lawyer on me! Actually, even worse: they had a law intern named Jacob Needleman do the deed. And to add insult to injury, it seems that poor Jakey is actually the nephew of Ira Needleman, senior partner of the firm. He doesn’t even want to be a lawyer; he’s doing this to pass the time before CBS notifies him as to whether or not he’ll be participating on Big Brother this summer.

Anyway — a long, verbal melee came about between my own legal team and the fine folks at Needleman, Yudelwitz, Cohen, Weinstock and Dubinsky, Attorneys at Law.  Legal briefs were written up, and legal writs were far from brief. (I don’t even know what that joke means.) Many lewd comments were thrown across a mahogany table which looked so appealing that I could simply lick it from end to end.  And finally, at the eleventh hour, we came up with a deal.

Sadly, I conceded quite a bit in this so-called “equiatble solution.” But that’s behind us.  At this point, the terms of the agreement are as folllows:

(1) I hereby apologize for spitting at the intellectual property owner any time within the past 28 hours.

(2) I hereby will not attempt to merchandize on this specific parody of said intellectual property.

(3) I will no longer use the Hebrew term I made up for members of the legal team, Mizdayneem b’Tapud. Which loosely translates to “potato fuckers.”  I surrender this made up term for members of opposing counsel to use freely.

(4) I will validate parking for all legal counsel for the rest of 2009. Harsh…

(5) My PW09 derivative work may go onward — but must be edited as to decrease the likeness to the original intellectual property.

Basically, the pit-bulls of Needleman, Yudelwitz, Cohen, Weinstock and Dubinsky, Attorneys at Law (or N. Y. C. W. & D.) have cornered me against a lon, solid, uncurved wall. My attempt to plagiarize Cereal Wednesday was officially deemed appropriate under a certain condition: that I do not refer to the word “cereal” in my derivative work, nor display or promote cereal at all. Believe me — this is easier said than done.

But I’ve attempted something nonetheless. And with that — I give you the PW09 Finale:

Direct YouTube Link

So — as I bring PW09 to its finale, my thoughts were to come up with something really breathtaking. Something which would build upon an institution known in my little part of the blogosphere by just about anyone.  Something great! Something with a whole lot of multimedia! Fireworks! Something which people would talk about all the way until PW10!

I was proud of this — so much so that, in fact, I got ahead of myself.  So much so that I started bragging a bit about how wonderful it would be.  Nothing could go wrong in my mind.

And then — around lunchtime — two things happened which greatly disturbed me. The first was on a quick trip to Quiznos to get a toasted sub. I was excited that they had lowered their prices across the board on most of their subs, and from experience I’ve enjoyed a tasty veggie sub of theirs with guacamole.  However, when looking at their calue menu, I saw that the veggie sub was not one of the discounted items on their value menu. In fact, the subs with meat and poulty were cheaper to buy than the veggie subs — even though both types of subs came with the same vegetables on them! WHY WOULD QUIZNOS CHARGE A PREMIUM FOR EATING VEGETABLES AND NOT PUTTING MEAT ON A SANDWICH?!? EPIC FAIL ON THEIR PART!!

You know who gets it? Chipotle.  Their vegetarian “burrito bol” costs less than those with poultry and meat! That’s the way it should logically be. Which is why I fully support their establishment and not Quiznos.

(Just for the record — this was not a blog plagiarism; it was just a bullet plagiarism.)

The second thing that happened was far more of a problem — as I received an email from one Jacob Needleman, an intern working at a law firm representing one of the bloggers in our little community.  Before I go on, I might as well say that I really enjoy all of your blogs immensely. And I’ve really appreciated the outpouring of positive feedback from those of you who feel that this has been a clever experiment. And thanks, most importantly, to those of you whom I plagiarized who aren’t total bastards about it and laughed along with everyone else.

Because, apparently, this representative from the law firm informed me that my blog entry for this evening was no laughing matter, I was threatened with an injunction based on a likeness clause for this blogger’s creation which would block me from blogging the offending material. Apparently this institution is an important staple of this blogger’s livelihood, and this blogger felt that my parody hit too close to home.

Maybe I shouldn’t have boasted so much about this to him. Perhaps I shouldn’t have opened a Zazzle store with appropriate t-shirt designs, and I certainly think that, after the fact, dropping 20,000 leaflets out of a helicopter over a town in Ohio advertising my blog was a bit much.  But hopefully we can work something out and come to some agreement that will allow me to post something in the spirit of PW09 which is somewhat relevant and mildly funny.   I’ve gathered the legal counsel I’m assembled for Plagiarism Week, and they are currently in touch with Needleman’s employers to see if something can be worked out.

So — until then, I’ve got no blog entry.  Sorry about that.

But to hold you over — I do have an Utterli!

Direct Utterli Audio

But I’m just going to roll with the punches if anyone gets upset by it… seriously. Nothing else I can do at this point, right? I’m doing this for fun and if someone doesn’t like the way I’ve gone about it, they can seriously suck my left tit.

Have we gotten that all out of the way? Everyone? Good. Moving right along…

I was thinking back to how I obtained such a passion for imitation and parody. Perhaps it was from when I would watch episodes of Saturday Night Live in the early 80s and was always so seriously in awe of the commercial parodies. Or the title screens for “Mister Robinson’s Neighborhood” which were so dead on to the original. It was fifth grade when my friend Ethan introduced me to the music of “Weird Al” Yankovic that I was totally hooked. I mean, “Eat It” sounded almost exactly like, yanno, “Beat It.”  Well, it was actually still quite a bit far off.  But at least it seemed like he was making an effort to replicate the sound.

And I continued to watch SNL. I saw Dana Carvey perfect his George Bush impression. So much so that the real Bush would appear on SNL when Dana was hosting to riff with him.  To me, that was the pinnacle of success: when the person you were imitating saw it as such a wonderful copy that he would laugh alongside you and everyone else.

I continued to be methodical about it. I was Dana Carvey’s “Church Lady”  in a high school skit, and I studied the tapes I had intensely to get the facial expressions and voice just right. I wanted to do it 100%. And since then, I’ve immitated logos and catch phrases for t-shirts for the youth group with which I volunteer.  I suppose I just love imitation to that extent.

I think everyone does imitation. People copy. Let’s get real: *nobody* has a style of writing, talking, or being that he hasn’t gotten from somebody else, right? Whether it’s using a specific weekly blog meme that someone else has, or deciding to use a phrase originally heard from someone else, or pronnouncing the word “aluminium” differently because someone else already has and it sounded cool, there’s always that sense of derivation from someone else. I don’t think it’s anything to be ashamed of as long as you give credit where credit is due.

With that said, it’s time for…..

WHAT IS SOMETHING YOU DO OR SAY OR WRITE
WHICH YOU’VE TAKEN FROM SOMEONE ELSE?

As embarrassing as this may sound, my snarky comedy style (and yes, I’m writing the word “snarky” as Shiny, not as Hilly)  has a lot to do with Matthew Perry’s delivery on Friends as Chandler Bing. The ability to say something funny, to me, gets even funnier when you can say it cleverly enough while (a) keeping it on topic to the conversation at hand and (b) not cracking a smile when you deliver your line.  Which is why I use facitiousness a lot in my delivery — so much, in fact, that I’ve had people wonder if my funny statement is serious or not. (But usually by people who simply don’t get comedy.)  I also owe a lot to Dennis Miller’s school of obscure reference in similie — which I use quite a bit as well.

What about you? Whom have you stolen your style from? Has it worked?

Imitation Plastic Synthetic Kisses,

Me

Direct link.

And follow up with a short fragment.

And then something in italics!

But let’s face it — I’m a bit loopy on the notion that Plagiarism Week ’09 is just about halfway done. It makes me wonder: will I get everything done that I wanted to? Will I have to just put stuff on the back burner for next year? Will my choices for Plagiarism Week ’09 affect the friendships I’ve kindled across the blogosphere?

Will they? (See? I can do short fragments in bold type as well.)

I’m not going to worry about that now. Instead, I’ll give you a sneak peek at what I’ve been doing over the past two days in my life — using pictures. Because that’s what Plagiarism Week ’09 is all about.

We in Virginia has a special ritual which we undergo with our cars every year. As a relatively recent transplant to the south (from one state up), I was pretty amazed at the nature of this annual tradition.  But it’s something I’ve been able to get used to.

Unless everything goes wrong.

How to get your car inspected in Virginia.

1. Look at the date on your inspection sticker. Mine says “1-09.” so it means that my inspection needs to reoccur in January.

2. Procrastinate until the end of the month and go at the last possible moment to a gas station / garage. There will be a line, probably. That’s just the other procrastinating shmoes.  Solidarity!

3. Look for a sign that says that, yes, they do inspections.

4. Find out if this is one of the two years you need an Emissions Test. It costs about 1 1/2 times more than just the standard vehicle safety inspection.

Rule of thumb: if you can’t renew your registration online, it means you probably have to do an emissions inspection.

5. Give the nice mechanic your car keys. And money. ($16 for the safety inspection; $28 for emissions. Ouch!)

6. Wait. Outside in the cold. Make a phone call and forget to take pictures during this part of the journey.

7. Get told that your Emissions Test passed! With flying colors!

8. Get told that your safety inspection, however, failed. Why? Because of broken orange glass on the turn signal! The very same broken turn signal that you passed with for the past two years!

9. Hang your head in shame when they slap a “rejection” sticker on the inside of your windshield.

10. Make an arrangement with the garage owner — you’ll pay him to fix the part when he gets the part in (the next day) and he’ll overcharge you.  However, he won’t make you reinspect the vehicle again because everything else passed.

11. Bring the car around at the requested time and watch it not get worked on for a bit.

12. Finally, the guy whose job it is to fix it will fix it for you.

And then — the sticker is affixed! Giving you the privelege of doing the same thing again in January 2010.

Just one more sentence fragment to finish this off.

At first I was wondering if I was going to do this — as a lot of you people have made it abundantly clear how much you avoid reading blogs on Thursdays due to the gratuitous nudity which appears. But then I realized something: it’s certainly my style on HNT to open with an introductory paragraph mentioning the obstacles encountered when attempting Half-Naked Thursday. However, I always seem to come through for you all in the long run!

It was a cold, icy day in the DC area. Cold enough for me to want to wear socks. That must be saying a lot because I’m usually one to bare it all! Alas, as I didn’t want my toes to turn into icicles, I decided to keep them on after a long day at work.  But sometimes it’s simply just time to take off the pants and kick back:

See that birthmark? When I was about three I fell on some glass and cut my leg quite badly. When everything healed, I completely freaked because there was still this huge stain on my leg! I cried to my mom about it, and she had to explain to me that it was actually there when I was born, and I just hadn’t noticed it that entire time.  True story, I only thank my parents for not returning me to the hospital to exchange me for an unblemished kid.

And for those of you wondering — yes. That is an original HP PhotoSmart 850 camera in the background. Used to be my father-in-law’s. The thing sucks up battery life like there’s no tomorrow, so I retired it.

Have you guys met tymothy? He’s our stuffed monkey I got when living in Durham, NC at the Ben and Jerry’s store. Some would call him a “Chunky Monkey,” but he’s very sensitive about weight issues.

However, he’s certainly not sensitive about nekkidity and wanted to join in!

And, of course, how can HNT survive without a picture of my neck?

Now — head on over to Os’s place for more HNT fun!

(Apologies to those who feel slighted that I didn’t put the “unoriginal bone” mentioned above on display.)

It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s a derivative of an idea that I’ll pretend was my own from the start! I know you’re all intrigued, excited, and likely pressing charges, because it’s Snippet Wednesday!

Housebroken

I’m pleased to announce that the House of representatives has defeated the bill to delay the transition to digital TV in the USA. For those of you haven’t watched a television show for the past nine months, you probably haven’t been interrupted by public service announcements about howin February your television set might not receive broadcasts anymore.  Word has been out about this transition literally for years now, but they still feel like the general public is not ready for it.  Perhaps they’re right; I was just asked today by Katie my wife socKs if our upstairs TV which receives analog cable would be affected. (No.)  I’d like to share this handy flowchart from the Consumerist about what to do:

Click the image for a larger copy

Mars

Life on Mars is back on ABC tonight. I’m stoked for its return. I wasn’t sure if I’d like the USA version after seeing the UK version in full, but I think they’ve done some impressive things with the series. They’ve carefully blended some of the UK storylines into this incarnation, but they’ve also let this show go its own way in more of a Lost-esque mysterious universe. I didn’t think Michael Imperioli as rival detective Ray Carling would do much for me, but he came through quite well.  Same goes for Dean Winters as Sam Tyler’s dad. And Jason O’Mara as Sam.  Speaking of Jason O’Mara — did anyone else catch Trust Me on TNT on Monday? Good show — and good guest starring role for O’Mara as well.

Gaseous

Dave tweeted about this already, but I’ll ask the same question: What’s up with all the fart apps for the iPhone?  I’m a pretty humorous guy who likes the funny, but is this really something we need multiple apps for? And — here’s the clincher — do we need to have Lite and Pro versions?  Call me boring or a prude; I just don’t get why people would download these if they can simply produce a fart more quickly au naturale.  While I was writing this, an iPhone “burp app” was presented on my RSS reader. I guess that’s progress…

Freeze

Following yesterday’s DC area snow and last night’s area-wide icing, the roads were a bit treacherous this morning.  It took me about 30 minutes to de-ice my car to the point where I could open all four doors!  There’s something serendipitous, however, to getting to the point where an entire chunk of ice shaped like the entire back of your car slides off.  I just wish that people would let that happen in their driveways rather than driving on the Interstates where that ice becomes a projectile.

Flinty

And speaking of the ice storm, President Obama had a few words to say about it. “Can I make a comment that is unrelated to the economy very quickly? It has to do with Washington. My children’s school was canceled today. Because of what—some ice? As my children pointed out, in Chicago, school is never canceled.”  He pretty much told DC area residents that we should stop being pussies and emulate, what he called “flinty Chicago toughness.”   I suppose he has a point — but I also suppose I’m biased because all of my Snippet Wednesday segments seem to skew with a Chicago bias for some reason.

That’s it for this week — stay warm! Happy! And Flinty!

Totally Unrelated Aside (TUA): I now realize that I completely forgot to wish a happy birthday yesterday to Avitable.  This young starlet just turned 32 years old. That may still be quite young, but believe me — Avitable is going to be a star. My own personal connection with him occurred at TequilaCon ’08 where he not only was kind to me, but left my driver’s license in my wallet when he stole all the cash and credit cards from it. It’s this type of generosity which simply makes him beloved.

So, yeah. I forgot yesterday. Guess I’ll try again next year.

Today I dive right into one of my more creative regular features which I’m proud to say has been a big hit: my weekly “Snowy Tuesday” video:

Snowy Tuesday – 001 from Mike S. on Vimeo.