Type: atom
Encoding: UTF-8
Title: Jay Pinkerton.com
Link: http://jaypinkerton.cracked.com/
Description:
Creator: 

****************************************
Item: Hello Again
<http://blogs.cracked.com/cgi-bin/mt-atom.cgi/weblog/blog_id=15/entry_id=6357>
Date: 2007-04-19 18:07:04 UTC
Our former IT guy dropped by the office this morning to say hi. He'd 
left earlier in the year for a better-paying job, but had the day off 
and was in the area, so thought he'd stop in.

So I'm sitting at my desk watching him walk in and receive excited 
greetings from everyone, and I'm totally confused, because I remember 
incredibly clearly that he'd /already dropped by this week:/ he'd even 
stopped by my desk. We'd shaken hands, I'd asked him all about his new 
job. We'd had an elaborate, detailed conversation for upwards of fifteen 
minutes.

Or wait... /had/ we? Doubt set in. Had I just dreamed it?

It was possible. The memory of it seemed incredibly lucid. On the other 
hand, I routinely have stultifyingly boring dreams about going to work: 
commuting in on the subway, returning email, laying out articles for the 
web, goofing off online. Often I'll have gotten almost a full day's work 
done and will just be returning a few final phone calls before calling 
it a day, when I'll wake up suddenly and realize with mounting 
depression that I now have to go to work and do it all over again.

Not wanting to come off rude, I walked over to our former IT guy to feel 
out the situation. If we'd already talked this week, my greeting should 
obviously be more subdued; after all, we'd caught up with each other two 
days ago. I'd look like a callous ass if I came off like I'd completely 
forgotten about our conversation.

On the other hand, If I'd dreamed it, that would mean we /hadn't/ 
actually talked in over four months. Casually waltzing over with a 
cursory head nod and a "What's up?" would come off pretty rude. The 
situation would require tact and delicacy if I wanted to come off 
non-crazy here. I thought for a minute about what my best opening volley 
should be.

"Hey! So, did you already stop by this week or did I just dream that?" I 
ended up going with, because to hell with tact and delicacy. It's not 
like I'm not /intimately/ familiar with looking like an idiot in social 
situations. As regular readers of this site might remember, you're 
reading the website of a guy who's been caught masturbating by 
construction workers. Once you walk away from shame like that, admitting 
you can't separate dreams from reality to work friends is a cake walk.

Our former IT guy's confused, slightly frightened look told me 
everything I needed to know: I /had/ in fact dreamed his previous visit, 
and, yes, now sounded like a dangerous, unbalanced psychotic. Hoping to 
rally the situation, I immediately ramped up the enthusiasm level and 
greeted him, now confident we hadn't seen each other in months. 
"Heyyyyyy!" So how /is/ everything?" Then I sat back and 
listened—feeling more than slightly pissed off, however unreasonably, 
about getting locked into the same goddamn conversation twice. I didn't 
want to be rude. It was simply that from my perspective, however caked 
with lunacy it might be, this entire reunion was pretty redundant. In my 
head I kept thinking, "Damn it, we just /did/ this! I want to get some 
lunch."

And so, after ten minutes of catch-up, I did just that. (Luckily I 
didn't wake up at this point. I have a bad memory and lucid dreams, it's 
not like I'm living in a /Twilight Zone/ episode or anything.)

Feed: Jay Pinkerton.com
<http://jaypinkerton.cracked.com/>
Author: Jay Pinkerton
Filed under: 2007
****************************************
Item: Action Hero Showdown
<http://blogs.cracked.com/cgi-bin/mt-atom.cgi/weblog/blog_id=15/entry_id=6350>
Date: 2007-04-13 16:02:06 UTC
[A][1]

It is widely recognized in academic and scientific circles that I have 
gifts. Powerful gifts involving prose, and its crafting. With this 
burden in mind, I decided it was damn well time I gave back something to 
the community: hence an article exhaustively analyzing which '80s action 
movie hero is the hardest badass.

I must point out: this article was written at *no great personal risk to 
me*, and was written in my capacity as *an authority on absolutely 
nothing*. By this I mean to say that this article should be read as its 
author intended: as unvarnished, objective *fact*. If you disagree with 
the article in any way whatsoever, it is important that you understand 
this is *your* moral or intellectual failing, and that with proper 
counselling you can be brought back from the abyss of improper views on 
Rambo, and rejoin society as a fully functioning person with correct 
views. *Click Here to Read
"Action Hero Showdown"*(at Cracked.com)[1]

[1] http://www.cracked.com/index.php?name=News&sid=1838

[A] http://www.jaypinkerton.com/img/rambopainting.jpg

Feed: Jay Pinkerton.com
<http://jaypinkerton.cracked.com/>
Author: Jay Pinkerton
Filed under: Cracked
****************************************
Item: It Came From My C Drive 2
<http://blogs.cracked.com/cgi-bin/mt-atom.cgi/weblog/blog_id=15/entry_id=6316>
Date: 2007-04-01 19:01:18 UTC
Once again (read the first one here[1]), the results of a leisurely 
stroll through my C Drive over coffee this morning. Old Sci Fi Novels
[A]
[B]
[C]
[D]
[E]
[F]
Date Quest
[G]
Hollywood Pitch Meeting

Too wide to fit here, so I had to give it its own page. Also, watch your 
back, sports fan: it's not work safe.[2]
Microsoft Holocaust
[H]
Oscar Contenders
[I]
[J]
Probably Not Oscar Contenders
[K]
[L]
[M]
New Board Games
[N]
[O]
Prince's Car
[P]
Racially Insensitive Superheroes
[Q]
[R]
Apparently I Don't Think Much of Devry
[S]
Comics I Read Now That I'm Old
[T]
Someday My Solos Will Be Like This. (Right Now They're Like Frozen 
Margarine.)
[U]
Gelcorp Sales Campaign
[V]
[W]
[X]
[Y]
Getting To The Point
[Z]
My Girlfriend's Performance Review
[AA]
[AB]
[AC]
[AD]
History of the Internet
[AE]
[AF]
[AG]
[AH]
[AI]
[AJ]
[AK]
Invisible Poop
[AL]
No Idea How This One Came About
[AM]
Rick James: Biography
[AN]
[AO]
[AP]
Me
[AQ]
War is Hell
[AR]
Captain America's Head Keeps Getting Smaller!
[AS]
There Might Be a Thinly Veiled Commentary in These...
[AT]
[AU]
[AV]
My Hidden Secret...
[AW]
That's All For Now, Folks! Let's Get Drunk!
[AX]

[1] http://www.jaypinkerton.com/2006/01/it_came_from_my_c_drive.php
[2] http://www.jaypinkerton.com/pitchmeeting.php

[A] http://www.jaypinkerton.com/img/cuntcrazy.jpg
[B] http://www.jaypinkerton.com/img/sexpredator.jpg
[C] http://www.jaypinkerton.com/img/talesmildsuspense.jpg
[D] http://www.jaypinkerton.com/img/nobodybelieved.jpg
[E] http://www.jaypinkerton.com/img/marsisstupid.jpg
[F] http://www.jaypinkerton.com/img/andaliens.jpg
[G] http://www.jaypinkerton.com/datequestsmall.jpg
[H] http://www.jaypinkerton.com/paperclip.jpg
[I] http://www.jaypinkerton.com/img/vaginalies.jpg
[J] http://www.jaypinkerton.com/img/rapedwomen.jpg
[K] http://www.jaypinkerton.com/img/kattanvertigo.jpg
[L] http://www.jaypinkerton.com/img/vandammegrad.jpg
[M] http://www.jaypinkerton.com/img/toomanykids.jpg
[N] http://www.jaypinkerton.com/img/dontgetbleached.jpg
[O] http://www.jaypinkerton.com/img/pileashitz.jpg
[P] http://www.jaypinkerton.com/princesportscar.jpg
[Q] http://www.jaypinkerton.com/takethatblackpeople.jpg
[R] http://www.jaypinkerton.com/img/wassupthing.jpg
[S] http://www.jaypinkerton.com/devry.jpg
[T] http://www.jaypinkerton.com/crediblehulk.gif
[U] http://www.jaypinkerton.com/hendrixsteamy.jpg
[V] http://www.jaypinkerton.com/gelcorp01.jpg
[W] http://www.jaypinkerton.com/gelcorp02.jpg
[X] http://www.jaypinkerton.com/gelcorp03.jpg
[Y] http://www.jaypinkerton.com/gelcorp04.jpg
[Z] http://www.jaypinkerton.com/usualsuspectsend.jpg
[AA] http://www.jaypinkerton.com/wagonperformance.gif
[AB] http://www.jaypinkerton.com/wagonperformance4.gif
[AC] http://www.jaypinkerton.com/wagonperformance5.gif
[AD] http://www.jaypinkerton.com/wagonperformance6.gif
[AE] http://www.jaypinkerton.com/history1.jpg
[AF] http://www.jaypinkerton.com/history2.jpg
[AG] http://www.jaypinkerton.com/history3.jpg
[AH] http://www.jaypinkerton.com/history4.jpg
[AI] http://www.jaypinkerton.com/history5.jpg
[AJ] http://www.jaypinkerton.com/history6.jpg
[AK] http://www.jaypinkerton.com/history7.jpg
[AL] http://www.jaypinkerton.com/invisiblepoop.jpg
[AM] http://www.jaypinkerton.com/wheelies.jpg
[AN] http://www.jaypinkerton.com/james1.jpg
[AO] http://www.jaypinkerton.com/james2.jpg
[AP] http://www.jaypinkerton.com/james3.jpg
[AQ] http://www.jaypinkerton.com/jaypic1.jpg
[AR] http://www.jaypinkerton.com/maeling.gif
[AS] http://www.jaypinkerton.com/newav02.jpg
[AT] http://www.jaypinkerton.com/overhyped-letdown.jpg
[AU] http://www.jaypinkerton.com/sexpistols.jpg
[AV] http://www.jaypinkerton.com/zephouses.jpg
[AW] http://www.jaypinkerton.com/quizwentworth.jpg
[AX] http://www.jaypinkerton.com/pinkercran.jpg

Feed: Jay Pinkerton.com
<http://jaypinkerton.cracked.com/>
Author: Jay Pinkerton
Filed under: Misc
****************************************
Item: Stupid Detective Mysteries
<http://blogs.cracked.com/cgi-bin/mt-atom.cgi/weblog/blog_id=15/entry_id=6291>
Date: 2007-03-20 17:26:14 UTC
[A] [B]
[C]
[D]

[A] http://www.jaypinkerton.com/img/obviousdick01.jpg
[B] http://www.jaypinkerton.com/img/obviousdick02.jpg
[C] http://www.jaypinkerton.com/img/obviousdick03.jpg
[D] http://www.jaypinkerton.com/img/obviousdick04.jpg

Feed: Jay Pinkerton.com
<http://jaypinkerton.cracked.com/>
Author: Jay Pinkerton
Filed under: Original Comics
****************************************
Item: Put My Blarney Stones In Your Mouth
<http://blogs.cracked.com/cgi-bin/mt-atom.cgi/weblog/blog_id=15/entry_id=6284>
Date: 2007-03-17 16:36:53 UTC
Happy St. Patricks Day! How are you? I'm ridiculously hungover, It's 
fucking cold out, and I'm going back to bed.

But first: a scathing holiday-themed piece of mine is up at Cracked 
called St. Patrick's Day Exposed[1] (it's a shit title, I know), as well 
as another holiday-themed piece of mine from last year that one of the 
Cracked editors exhumed and reposted. It's mostly just an excuse to tell 
a lot of filthy jokes about pooping and sexual assault[2]. (Guess which 
article's getting linked around more?)

Anyway, thats all I got. By the sound of it, two feral cats are clawing 
themselves to death in the alley outside my apartment. I might referee 
that for a while if they let me. Otherwise, some aspirin and a warm bed 
beckon.

[1] http://www.cracked.com/index.php?name=News&sid=1729
[2] http://www.cracked.com/index.php?name=News&sid=1730

Feed: Jay Pinkerton.com
<http://jaypinkerton.cracked.com/>
Author: Jay Pinkerton
Filed under: 2007
****************************************
Item: Getting Angry About Things I'm Unqualified To Discuss
<http://blogs.cracked.com/cgi-bin/mt-atom.cgi/weblog/blog_id=15/entry_id=6283>
Date: 2007-03-15 16:00:10 UTC
[A]

Like most superhero team-ups, when Peter Lynn and I get together to 
co-write something, it usually involves us beating up on each other for 
a while before channeling our powers towards the defeat of a common 
enemy. In this case, movie trailers. Be sure to check out our snap 
judgments and harsh condemnations of the world of film based only on a 
cursory viewing of a blurry YouTube clip in Trailer Trash: Cruel Reviews 
of Upcoming Movies[1] over at Cracked.com.

Or, at least, as much as you’re able to check out before the sun sets. 
Frankly, it’s a touch long. We each took ten trailers to review, 
assuming they’d be about a paragraph in length apiece, somehow 
forgetting our respective longwinded prose styles. It now sits towering 
and blotting out the sun, an imposing /War & Peace/ of catty film 
review.

If you /do/ manage to get through it and, against all reason, decide it 
/still wasn’t long enough,/ do yourself a favor and surf over to Pete’s 
blog link to the same article,[2] where—Pete being Pete—he’s helpfully 
posted all the weaker bits I cut out of the damn article in the first 
place, this time as an introduction to the article proper: as the old 
maxim goes, put your club foot forward.

[1] http://www.cracked.com/index.php?name=News&sid=1724
[2] http://manvsclown.cracked.com/2007/03/post_30.php

[A] http://www.jaypinkerton.com/img/wahlberg.jpg

Feed: Jay Pinkerton.com
<http://jaypinkerton.cracked.com/>
Author: Jay Pinkerton
Filed under: 2007
****************************************
Item: In Times Of Crisis, You Can Count On Me (To Be A Big Pussy)
<http://blogs.cracked.com/cgi-bin/mt-atom.cgi/weblog/blog_id=15/entry_id=6268>
Date: 2007-03-15 15:52:12 UTC
[A]

I didn’t know it when I woke up Friday morning, but in less than an hour 
I would be tested.

Tested as a man. A /real/ man. The kind with chest hair, muscles and an 
actual chin. The kind of man that women look at and think, “You better 
believe I’d let him drill me.” It was to be a morning where, in the 
space of a single split-second moment, my character would be called 
daringly into question. An “Oh my Christ look, a woman’s screaming from 
the top floor of a burning building, WHAT TO YOU DO, HOTSHOT?” moment. A 
“You're walking home from a game of catch at the park when you notice a 
baby flying off the balcony of Eric Clapton's house, WHAT DO YOU 
MOTHERFUCKING DO, SPORTS FAN?” moment. (And no, I’m not sure who 
specifically is yelling at you so angrily in either of these scenarios, 
or why they can’t get off your back and catch the damn baby themselves. 
Probably just some asshole.)

This was also to be a morning where, in addition to measuring my 
instinct for cool-headed bravery in the face of crisis, I would learn 
that I don’t have any. It turns out I’m sort of a huge pussy, and that 
if given one of the above scenarios, I’d stare blankly in confusion 
while women fell, burning and shrieking, from the windows of 
fire-engulfed condos, or look on with ineffectual concern while Eric 
Clapton’s baby picked up speed. Yes, surprising nobody but myself, it 
turns out I’m the sort of can-do hero who, when called to action, will 
immediately freeze like a tender-eyed fawn in terrified brain-lock. If 
placed in a highly metaphysical conundrum involving a collapsing bridge, 
a loved one hanging off of either side and the choice of saving only 
one, I would in all likelihood cause both to plummet, cursing me, to 
their deaths, having opted to “hang back a little and mull over my 
choices” until the time for action had long since sprinted past.

I am, it seems, incapable of reflexive bravery. This is never good news 
to hear. And it certainly doesn’t make the medicine go down any easier 
if you’re reaching this epiphany while an old man buries his face, 
deeply and lovingly, into your crotch. Let me explain that.

*Figure 1: Subway Car Layout*
[A]

Here’s how it went down. On the left is me, reading a book and minding 
my own business. Second from the left, another commuter, also reading 
and minding his own business. Further down the subway car bench is an 
old man and a young boy, presumably either his grandson or a child he’s 
elected to abduct. In either case, I’m not aware of them yet. As I 
mentioned, I’m reading a book and minding my own business. The layout 
looks more like this from my perspective:

*Figure 2: Subway Car Layout (My Perspective)*
[B]

It’s helpful to keep this image in your mind when I tell you the next 
part of the story, so you can understand the limited amount of 
information I had when my character was suddenly tested and I responded 
by acting like a laughably enormous rose-scented pussy.

*Supplemental Information:* It’s also helpful to note, if you’ve never 
ridden public transportation in New York City before, that it’s prudent 
to adopt the Fifty-Yard Ignoring Stare at all times (a topic I’ve 
touched on before[1]). Why? Because fully 30% of the population of any 
given subway car is pants-shitting crazy. On this particular subway 
ride, I’d already ignored no less than three homeless people, one crazy 
person (probably, let’s face it, also homeless) and one really angry 
dude who, for reasons lost on the rest of us, wanted to fight the shit 
out of someone, anyone at all, as soon as possible.

One homeless guy even walked up and down the car for three stops singing 
old Motown hits at the top of his lungs, explaining that he wouldn’t use 
the money he expected us to give him to buy drugs, and assuring everyone 
present, against all current evidence, that God was a loving God. (I 
never give these assholes money on the simple principle that they’re 
taking advantage of our helpless captivity to beg for money, which makes 
them selfish pricks no matter how pathetic they look. As far as I’m 
concerned, waiting until a hundred people are locked in a moving subway 
car before you pull out a guitar unprompted, butcher something by 
Leonard Cohen and beg me for a dollar is tantamount to breaking into my 
house, barging into the bathroom while I’m crapping and asking to borrow 
the magazine I’m reading. I don’t care why you want what you want or 
when you ate last, Three-Finger Pete. Get the fuck out of my bathroom.)

So for perspective’s sake—and by that I mean, “for the sake of somewhat 
excusing what a big pussy I’m about to act like”—note for the record 
that I’d been quietly ignoring a continuous stream of homeless people 
and short men with anger issues for at least twenty minutes when, 
apropos of absolutely nothing, I suddenly found a man’s head buried 
face-first in my dick and balls.

The car hadn't jolted to a sudden stop or anything. There was no logical 
explanation for it, other than a man had suddenly decided, without 
including me in the decision-making process, that the best place for his 
face was nestled, like lettuce on sandwich meat, on top of my groin. My 
first thought was that one of the crazy homeless guys had tripped while 
making his begging rounds. Actually, that’s a lie—this was my second 
thought. My /first/ thought was “Aghhhh Jesus Jesus!”, and my first 
reaction was to leap up reflexively like my dick was on fire.

As it turned out, what had happened was that the older gentleman two 
seats down had... fuck, I don’t know, done one of those old people 
things. I have no idea what happened to the guy. My only experience with 
something like this isn’t even firsthand; apparently my grandmother did 
something similar two Thanksgivings ago. She was at the dinner table 
with everybody else, eating turkey and complaining about how dry it was 
to everybody, when suddenly something went *LINE 298 ERROR* in her 
brain, she spoke a few sentences of utter nonsense and just… turned off. 
The lights were on, but there was nobody home. I couldn’t make it up for 
Thanksgiving that year, so I only heard about it afterwards: 911 was 
called, she was completely unresponsive for about a half hour—then, just 
as suddenly, the back-up generator flickered to life and she was herself 
again, complaining about the doctor’s presence and wondering where the 
fuck her pumpkin pie was. It weirded my family right out, and I mention 
it only to illustrate that sometimes old people get up to some wacky 
shenanigans, and all medical science can do is keep them away from sharp 
cutlery.

Anyway, it looked like this:

*Figure 3: I Don’t Know What the Deal is With Old People, I Seriously 
Don’t*
[C]

In case you were getting impatient with the constant anecdotes and 
asides and started impatiently scrolling down to read the part where I 
was a huge pussy, this is the part where I was a huge pussy. I leap up 
from my seat, making a strangled “Gah!” noise and basically freaking 
out, like I’d woken up to find a huge spider on my face. The old guy, 
disgorged from my lap and still in freefall, sails downward to the floor 
of the subway, where his head connects with the base of one of those 
upright steel poles in the middle of the floor with this extremely 
nasty, extremely loud, extremely wet *K-RRK!* noise. Imagine dropping a 
watermelon down a flight of steps, and it doesn’t split open or 
anything, but when it hits a step it makes a sound that lets you know 
it’s probably at least leaking a little now. That was the sound. It was 
stomach-churningly gross.

I’m standing stock-still, book in one hand, the subway train still 
moving. About three-quarters of a second has passed, and it dawns on me 
that I’ve just killed a guy. He’s not moving. Someone shouts “Oh my 
God!” and then someone else shouts “Oh Jesus God!” while the first 
person says “Oh my God!” again, but louder.

Then the old guy /does/ start moving, just a little, and groaning. 
(Hooray! I’m not a murderer!) I immediately start wracking my brain for 
whatever half-remembered safety tips I might have filed away for 
situations like this. /Wallet under the tongue?/ I think. /No, that’s 
for epileptic seizures./ I remember I’m supposed to not let him go to 
sleep if he’s suffered a concussion, though this doesn’t seem 
immediately helpful.

I also suddenly recall a plot point from one of those procedural cop 
dramas about not moving someone with spinal injuries. They need to lift 
you up with one of those special paramedic gurneys after your head’s in 
a brace and you’re all strapped in. Again, not immediately helpful, so I 
leaf through more mental files. I recall that whenever this happens to 
someone in the NFL, the medical procedure is to talk very quietly while 
showing his injury from multiple angles in slow motion. Everyone waits 
for him to get up on his own and give the crowd a thumbs-up sign, at 
which point you cheer his bravery and he’s helped off the field.

While I’m thinking all this, in the space of a few seconds, some 
handsome young guy stands up, walks calmly over to the old man, wrenches 
him upright, sits the dazed old guy back down in his seat, chucks him on 
the shoulder, laughs “Hey, we’ve all been there, oldtimer” in a 
comforting, stage-whispery voice to help the old guy keep his dignity, 
tousles the grandson’s hair and tells him he's a pretty brave little 
kid.

That *motherfucking jerk.*

The handsome young guy smugly walks back to his seat, where he pretends 
to ignore the quiet admiration of everyone else on the subway car. 
Elsewhere on the train, five attractive women get down to the business 
of imagining what the handsome young guy would feel like inside them, 
drilling them right there in the car. Meanwhile, I’m standing around 
like a moron, wearing a dumb “woke up with a spider on my face” 
expression and still internally debating whether I’ll break the old 
guy’s spine if I move him. (Apparently not.)

Calmly, hoping to save as much face as I can, I put my book down, smooth 
out my jacket, walk over to the handsome young guy and punch him as many 
times in the throat as I can before I’m pulled off his quivering, bloody 
body. (Note: this doesn’t actually happen, I just sit back down.)

[1] 
http://www.jaypinkerton.com/2006/05/people_i_have_decided_to_kill.php

[A] http://www.jaypinkerton.com/img/subway02.gif
[B] http://www.jaypinkerton.com/img/subway01.gif
[C] http://www.jaypinkerton.com/img/subway03.gif

Feed: Jay Pinkerton.com
<http://jaypinkerton.cracked.com/>
Author: Jay Pinkerton
Filed under: 2007
****************************************
Item: "...And You Can Take That to the LAKE."
<http://blogs.cracked.com/cgi-bin/mt-atom.cgi/weblog/blog_id=15/entry_id=6250>
Date: 2007-03-15 15:52:12 UTC
[A]

Larry Holmes' GrillMaster XL[1] makes its advertorial debut over at 
Cracked.com. With acknowledgement to JP.com forum regular Scott Feenstra 
for the idea, since he actually talks like this in casual conversation.

[1] http://www.cracked.com/index.php?name=News&sid=1682

[A] http://cracked.com/jp/holmes02.jpg

Feed: Jay Pinkerton.com
<http://jaypinkerton.cracked.com/>
Author: Jay Pinkerton
Filed under: Cracked
****************************************
Item: Two-Fisted Tales of Fisting
<http://blogs.cracked.com/cgi-bin/mt-atom.cgi/weblog/blog_id=15/entry_id=6160>
Date: 2007-03-15 15:52:12 UTC
[A] [B]
[C]
[D]
[E]
[F]

[A] http://www.jaypinkerton.com/img/fisting00.jpg
[B] http://www.jaypinkerton.com/img/fisting01.jpg
[C] http://www.jaypinkerton.com/img/fisting02.jpg
[D] http://www.jaypinkerton.com/img/fisting03.jpg
[E] http://www.jaypinkerton.com/img/fisting04.jpg
[F] http://www.jaypinkerton.com/img/fisting05.jpg

Feed: Jay Pinkerton.com
<http://jaypinkerton.cracked.com/>
Author: Jay Pinkerton
Filed under: Original Comics
****************************************
Item: Tales Written With the Express Intent of Astonishment
<http://blogs.cracked.com/cgi-bin/mt-atom.cgi/weblog/blog_id=15/entry_id=6154>
Date: 2007-03-15 15:52:12 UTC
[A] [B]
[C]
[D]

[A] http://www.jaypinkerton.com/img/timeapparatus00.jpg
[B] http://www.jaypinkerton.com/img/timeapparatus01.gif
[C] http://www.jaypinkerton.com/img/timeapparatus02.gif
[D] http://www.jaypinkerton.com/img/timeapparatus03.gif

Feed: Jay Pinkerton.com
<http://jaypinkerton.cracked.com/>
Author: Jay Pinkerton
Filed under: Original Comics
****************************************
Item: Dogs Are Idiots
<http://blogs.cracked.com/cgi-bin/mt-atom.cgi/weblog/blog_id=15/entry_id=6141>
Date: 2007-03-15 15:52:13 UTC
[A]

Whenever I try to leave my apartment, my dog will dart out of the 
closing door with alarming, Indiana Jonesesque speed. Nine times out of 
ten I won’t even notice it. I’ll be out in the hallway, fumbling through 
my pockets in the dark for my keys. (The hallway lights have been out in 
our building since September—I think our super is either dead or long 
since escaped to Tijuana with a suitcase full of lightbulbs.) At some 
point I’ll remember that I keep my keys in my jacket pocket, and have in 
fact done so for fifteen years. (It’s early, and I’m legally retarded 
before noon.) I’ll finally get the door locked and turn around, where 
I’ll find my dog sitting in the middle of the hallway with a pleased, 
curious look on his face—as if saying “Man, that took you some /time/, 
huh? Can we go now?”

My wife, who watched the dog escape when I left, will now be listening 
from the couch with (evil, small-minded) amusement as I try to re-find 
my keys in the dark (front jacket pocket again), unlock and open the 
door, then walk back in, grumbling and calling for the dog—who knows 
damn well that staying in the hallway equals Walk, and so sits 
motionless, staring at me like I’m some idiot who likes to stand in 
doorways shouting “Come!” for no reason.

“He’s so /smart/,” my wife will say, after my faux-enthusiastic shaking 
of a rubber dog toy eventually convinces him to pad his furry ass back 
into the apartment. To my mind, given the battle of wills that’s just 
taken place, this of course leaves hanging in the air the implied 
addendum /He’s so much smarter than you./

[B]“He’s not smart,” I’ll say. “He’s /fast/. Cars are fast. That doesn’t 
mean they understand algebra.” It’s not, in other words, like the dog 
has calculated his escape with flowcharts for when I open the front 
door. He has a brain the size of an under-ripe walnut. More likely he 
was just thinking *OH BOY DOOR WALK GO POOP WALK DOOR OH BOY*, his legs 
moving independently of his brain the second he heard the doorknob turn.

He’s a moron, is what I’m trying to say, because all dogs are morons. 
Sure, my wife and I enjoy swapping stories with other dog owners about 
how smart and observant our pets are, but all bullshit aside, of course 
they aren’t. In the context of pet ownership, having a smart dog means 
he can sit or poop when you tell him to. When you’re gauging the 
intelligence of a mammal on its ability to understand that it should 
walk towards you when you flail your arms and make noises, I’m sorry, 
but that’s a low-set bar. The buck-toothed Hispanic woman from the 
Subway near me with the horseshoe-shaped divot in her forehead can sit 
and poop on command, as well as punch up to five distinct 
sandwich-themed buttons on a cash register, but I don’t think anyone’s 
making any convincing arguments that she isn’t as fuck-dumb as a pile of 
sticks. The difference between the buck-toothed woman and a dog is that 
we’re disappointed when the woman forgets to shit in the right place, 
but astounded beyond belief when the dog manages to remember.

Compared to other dogs, sure, our dog is pretty sharp. But whatever. 
Compared to humans—meaning me—my dog is, I’m sorry, an idiot. I can poop 
in designated areas as well as he can or better. I’m also able to 
perform any number of simple tasks that, frankly, soar right over his 
tiny bullet head—and I don’t mean reading /The Iliad/ or programming my 
VCR to tape /24/ or what have you. I’m talking about basic survival 
instincts he should possess as a mammal but doesn’t, like how you 
shouldn’t decide to eat something based exclusively on the criteria that 
it’s directly in front of you and not on fire.

The Entirety of a Dog’s Thought Process [C]

I have no idea what a festering pigeon carcass tastes like, but I can’t 
imagine “delicious” tops the list. If the only thing stopping my dog 
from gobbling broken glass or lapping up a puddle of bleach is me 
reefing like a crazy guy on his leash, I’m curious how dogs have lasted 
as a species all these millennia when I wasn’t around to yank rat 
poison, car keys or pinless grenades out of their mouths.

Another example: I stepped on my dog a dozen times yesterday, resulting 
in a high-pitched “YIP!” sound and a betrayed expression from floor 
level. It was accidental every time, and I do make an honest effort to 
feel guilty about it—but at the end of the day, one of us keeps veering 
into the path of the other before diving headfirst under their 
descending feet. As the latter person in this scenario, I put forward: 
seriously, what kind of idiot does this more than once? The first time I 
put my finger on a hot stove outlet, it resulted in a high-pitched 
“YIP!” sound and a betrayed expression from me level. The take-away 
point from this experience wasn’t “Next time I’d better try that with my 
face.” It was “Pain = Bad.” My dog’s cumulative experience from me 
stomping on him like a burning oven mitt, on the other hand, seems 
closer to something like “Pain = Dog Food” or “Pain = I Can See My 
Reflection in The Mirror, Hooray For Toys”.

Me vs. a Dog: Dumb Shit We Did Yesterday [D]

To summarize, I’m way fucking smarter than a dog. The reason? Unless you 
do something a thousand times in a row for their benefit, dogs don’t 
have the capacity for pattern recall. Their inability to remember basic 
cause-and-effect lessons makes them, as a species, ridiculously easy to 
outsmart. If I tried distracting my wife with a rubber ball every time 
she complained that I never listen to her, I realistically couldn’t see 
it working past the seventh or eighth time. But when the dog annoys me, 
the rubber ball trick’s worked consistently now for something like three 
months, with no indication he’ll catch on any time soon. There’s 
something touching about the naked trust my dog has that when I throw a 
ball for him to fetch, I’m not suddenly going to leave the apartment and 
lock the door behind me once he runs after it—and I receive immense 
satisfaction from abusing this trust on a daily basis without any 
consequences at all.

Last week I lopped his balls off—not personally, I just took him to a 
place where someone else did—and the poor little guy trusted me every 
step of the way to the animal hospital. The only one of us feeling 
anxious about the future was me, as I’d been quoted a price of $200 over 
the phone. This struck me as high, since I knew from the research I’d 
done that most animal shelters would neuter my dog for $75. But the pet 
store we’d bought him from had given us a deal for a year’s worth of 
free vet visits (operations not included) if we went to a specific 
animal hospital for the entire year. Going elsewhere would annul this 
deal, so $200 now meant free visits for the next six months.

Once I got there with the dog, the receptionist handed me a list of 
“optional” services I could purchase, including an IV and pain 
medication for the dog. Under the IV description, the list made a point 
of explaining that, in the event of a complication during surgery, this 
option could mean the difference between life and death. Under the 
description for pain medication, the text stressed that “if YOU were 
getting neutered, wouldn’t YOU want pain medication?” Never mind that if 
I was getting neutered, I wouldn’t want pain medication so much as a 
pistol, six bullets and five surgeons. But come on. Since when are IV 
stands and medication considered /optional/ for surgery? I’m surprised 
they didn’t try to rent me the pillow or charge me extra for the 
scalpels.

Since the list was phrased in such a way that refusing any of the 
not-really-optional “optional” perks inferred you’d be about to wave 
your dog off to a painful, drawn-out death, the price tag for the 
operation was now up to $300. So imagine my dubious look when the pet 
surgeon introduced herself to me soon after, then asked me if I’d be 
purchasing a pet ID microchip for an additional $50 that would be 
implanted in my dog during surgery.

“I’m not sure I understand,” I said, although in fact I did understand: 
my bill was now $350 and climbing steadily with no end in sight. “If I 
lose the dog, this will find the dog?” I asked, looking behind the kiosk 
for radar equipment.

“No, not exactly,” she said.

“Because we live in New York City,” I clarified. “It’s bumper-to-bumper 
traffic outside of our apartment all day and night. If our dog escapes, 
he’s dead in five minutes. I’m not sure if it’s worth $50 to help find 
his corpse.”

Apparently this little piece of logic came off a little coldhearted, if 
the looks of shock and horror on everyone around me were any indication. 
I might have imagined it, but I think the surgeon, who was holding my 
dog, tightened her grip a little.

“No, it’s if your dog goes to an animal shelter,” she explained. In my 
mind, I imagined someone from the shelter taking dogs out of a box and 
running them over one of those check-out counter lasers like at the 
supermarket. It all struck me as ludicrous, but realizing that I’d 
already come off a bit troll-like, and aware that the unfairness of life 
dictated that I’d probably need this thing some day _only_ if I decided 
not to get it now, I agreed to the microchip. After this I kept glancing 
at the door, waiting for another in a series of dog specialists to come 
in and coax money out of me for another twelve optional choices that my 
dog would die during surgery without. But apparently I’d reached the 
cap-off point, and managed to walk out of the place minus $350 and a 
pair of dog testicles.

The whole affair was incredibly depressing, in the end. At no point did 
my dog really understand what was happening, what he’d lost or my 
involvement in the transaction. As a proud owner of my own pair of 
testicles, part of me /wanted/ him to be angry at me—to cast me 
immeasurably betrayed looks for robbing him of his manhood, to look down 
at his poor shriveled little nutsack, then stare me in the eyes as if to 
say, “I know what you’ve done, and frankly, sir, you should be ashamed 
of yourself.”

But nothing like that happened. He jumped around beforehand, thinking we 
were going for a walk. He had no idea I was leaving him at the vet until 
I actually left. He was oblivious to what was coming next when they put 
him under. Afterwards, snoozing on the couch with his swollen crotch, he 
never connected me to the pain. He was just happy to be home and 
snoozing on the couch. I’m not sure how I expected it would play 
out—possibly with him getting drunk and taking a swing at me—so the fact 
that he doesn't blame me for, or is even remotely aware of, his own 
castration means I don’t have any option but to shoulder the guilt for 
it until one of us dies.

Maybe he’s not as stupid as he looks.

[A] http://www.jaypinkerton.com/img/retardeddog.jpg
[B] http://www.jaypinkerton.com/img/walnut.gif
[C] http://www.jaypinkerton.com/img/dogthink.gif
[D] http://www.jaypinkerton.com/img/mevsdog.gif

Feed: Jay Pinkerton.com
<http://jaypinkerton.cracked.com/>
Author: Jay Pinkerton
Filed under: Essays
****************************************
Item: Shameless Hype #3
<http://blogs.cracked.com/cgi-bin/mt-atom.cgi/weblog/blog_id=15/entry_id=6072>
Date: 2007-03-15 15:52:13 UTC
[A]

Hot on the heels of Shameless Hype #2 is Shameless Hype #3, detailing my 
involvement with Cracked #3, which hits newsstands officially next week 
(though it looks like most of the comic book stores are already stocking 
it). This officially catches me up on my self-congratulatory 
navel-gazing until Issue #4 in two months. What will I do in the 
meantime? Rape things, maybe. I don't know. Maybe I'll knit a pair of 
socks.

Click below for the Issue #3 rundown. As before, if you're not 
interested, no hard feelings. Actual updates on their way. Stuff I wrote 
for this issue

- *Pg. 1:* "Stealing Money From Old People" ad

- *Pg. 9:* "Larry Holmes GrillMaster X-L" fake ad
Our Art Director is extremely talented and a bit of a perfectionist, so 
I think I shorted something out in her brain when I submitted the script 
for this and specifically asked that she make the ad look awful. "Like 
an ad in Reader's Digest," I suggested. I think it came out looking 
awful (i.e. great). I love Larry Holmes' slow descent into 
unintelligible nonsense, and the phrase "You can take that to the LAKE" 
got tossed around the office quite a bit.

[B]

- *Pg. 10:* Cracked Photo All-Stars comic; about half of the Rachel Ray 
quotes
Writing the Stock-Photo All-Stars comics has quickly become one of my 
favorite parts of the job. My personal favorite doesn't show up until 
Issue #4, but there ain't nothing wrong with a little melon farming 
jocularity.

The Rachel Ray one was just something getting passed around the office 
that I contributed to. Mine are #1, #4, #5, #6 and #7.

- *Pg. 11:* "Resolution Reality Check"
Not much to say about this one, other than it's based more on my actual 
life than anything else in the magazine. I always tend to get myself 
roped into Herculean self-improvement plans this time of year, and I 
invariably backslide around February. As a side note, I invite you to 
try "No thanks, I don't need a Scotch. I brought some in a Thermos" 
sometime. It's a pain in the ass to carry around the Thermos prop all 
the time, but well worth it on the off-chance someone asks you if you'd 
like some Scotch.

- *Pg. 12:* "CelebScoop"
At the time of its writing (two months ago), the idea of an actor 
promoting racism seemed like a crazy-hilarious idea. Post-Michael 
Richards, of course, the punchline comes off a bit tame. All the same, I 
have to admit I'd be at least a little curious to watch a show calling 
itself the 2006 Racism Awards.

- *Pg. 13:* "Celebrity Intervention: Jon Heder"
I seem to always get lumped with the Celebrity Interventions (see 
Shameless Hype #2[1] for more of my inability to avoid eye contact at 
meetings), but I actually thought this one turned out pretty well. I 
enjoy the sandwich metaphor, anyway. The bit about picking up runaways 
on the subway used to be a lot more graphic, perhaps excessively so, but 
was wisely edited out by reasonable men.

- *Pg. 23:* "Maddox's The Big Rant" (photoshops)
Maddox had supplied his own photoshops for this, but we hadn't paid for 
the images, so I had to redo them from scratch. I had a fun time 
shopping the lettuce one. Look at him mash that shit in there.

- *Pg. 30:* "So You've Regained Consciousness" (writing/photoshops)
[C]A letter from me to the person I've just hit with my car, attempting 
to buy them off with expired Hamburger Helper if they don't go to the 
cops.

This marks the last article appearing in Cracked Magazine that has 
previously appeared on my site. As of Issue #4, I'd officially run out 
of backlog I could sell off as new stuff ("It's new-/ish/") and was 
forced to, /gasp/, come up with original material. So in Issue #4, 
there's an original article about St. Patrick's Day that I wrote, much 
in the style of "My Vagina, The Prison" or "How To Buy a Mexican Child 
for 300 Pesos." I love writing these for the sole reason that the 
narrator's always such an oblivious asshole. Coming up with new ways for 
him to be cruel to people for no reason is the highlight of my daydreams 
on the subway ride into work.

Photoshopped picture also by me. That I was able to find a picture of a 
guy actually pumping his fist into the air while driving is no less than 
an act of providence.

- *Pgs. 36-37:* "Super Bowl Primer"
I believe I had to punch up some of this article, though if you strapped 
me to a lie detector, I doubt I could recall what I added. (I do 
distinctly remember adding a "the" in paragraph five, though. Watch out 
for it!) This was a big "group-write" article that went through many 
many drafts, and is discussed by one of the authors, Jake Bell, in his 
blog.[2] (I know, I tend to commission work by comic bloggers a lot. 
What can I say? I read a lot of comic blogs.)

- *Pgs. 50-52:* "Fastman: Rogues Gallery" (co-written with Peter Lynn)
Credit where it's due: Pete Lynn actually wrote most of this, from the 
idea of the rogues gallery to all the backstories; my major contribution 
was to take his story outline and try to cram it down to three pages of 
story and add a few throwaway gags into the dialogue here and there. [D]

One of the jokes here might have suffered a bit from being a bit too 
regional, I later discovered. Growing up in Canada, the "Face Wash" was 
as famous a torture technique as a Wet Willy or a Titty Twister. 
Essentially, you sit on someone's back and scoop snow into their face, 
and laugh like a cock. Apparently it's unknown here in the States, as I 
got nothing but blank stares from the reference. "Why is Fastman washing 
that guy's face?" [E]

- *Pg. 53-57:* /New Yorker/ parody
I'm sure I contributed something to this. I had to edit a lot of it, 
anyway. I know I wrote the fake ads, at least. I was particularly proud 
of Iain Sinclair's Ribbed Condoms. [F]

"Great for sex," assures Sinclair.

- *Back Cover:* "Exposing Yourself at Burger King" ad
That's two Burger King references in one magazine. Jesus, Pinkerton, get 
it together.

Pieces I commissioned

*Kupperman Komiks, Michael Kupperman*
See Shameless Hype #2[1] for my thoughts on Michael Kupperman. [G]

*"New Sex Foods", Maddox*
See Shameless Hype #2[1] for my thoughts on Maddox.

*"Marketing Consultant For The Homeless", Sir John Hargrave*
John Hargrave, who runs the website zug.com, was one of those guys that 
proves how vastly big a place the web can be; he'd been doing 
professional-level pranks for years, had gotten linked all over the 
place, was the subject of interviews and articles, and had a book out, 
and I'd never heard of him. Only after I'd commissioned a piece from him 
and met the guy did I actually sit down and read his book, /Prank the 
Monkey/. It was incredibly smart and funny. "Holy shit, this guy's 
amazing," I thought. "How could I never have heard of him before?" 
Because the net's a big place. And because I'm an antisocial, 
self-absorbed little troll.

His piece, "Marketing Consultant For The Homeless", ended up being 
hysterical. Dude actually got dressed up in a suit and went out 
badgering homeless people, trying to get them to expand their homeless 
earning power. He even made a Powerpoint presentation. It was absolutely 
brilliant.

*"Unintentional Comedies," Michael J. Nelson*
See Shameless Hype #2[1] for my thoughts on Mike Nelson.

*"Laugh Audit: Romantic Comedies", Chris Sims*
See Shameless Hype #2[1] for my thoughts on Chris Sims.

*"White Face, Red Nose", Peter Lynn*
I'll let Pete tell you about this one[3].

*"More Information Than You Require: Interview with John Hodgman," Max 
Burbank*
Max Burbank is/was one of the writers over at Roger Barr's 
I-Mockery.com, and I'd worked with them both a few times while at 
National Lampoon. Max contacted me about a potential interview he 
thought he could get with John Hodgman, the frequent /Daily Show/ 
correspondent, "PC" in the Mac/PC ads and writer of the funny almanac 
spoof /The Areas of My Expertise/. I'm always more of a fan of humorists 
(i.e. writers) than comedians (i.e. stand-up comics) anyway, so it was 
nice to get an interview with someone who's more comfortable in front of 
a word processor than a microphone.

Final Thoughts

Working for a magazine like Cracked starts to feel a bit like a reality 
TV show after a while—you're a contestant trying to get as much of the 
stuff you've either written or commissioned into the mag, while 
competing with other editors who are trying to do the exact same thing. 
Because comedy's so subjective, this sort of creative tug-of-war 
ultimately makes the magazine a lot better, since there's probably a lot 
of stuff you find hilarious that I wouldn't, and vice versa. The more 
people contributing, the more varied it becomes.

The downside of this, though, is that there are always one or two things 
that make it into the magazine that I /just didn't think were funny/, 
either because I felt they were too pandering, or too "easy," or too 
lowbrow (I'm a bit of a comedy snob). Then they get the biggest response 
of anything else in the magazine, and I hate humanity just that much 
more.

Issue #3, for me, had the highest ratio to date of shit I either loved 
or really liked over stuff that I thought was lacking. Leafing through 
it now, it's just really strong. It feels like we started to hit our 
stride a little, and I liked the fact that we got adventurous with some 
higher-brow comedy (like our /New Yorker/ parody) that might not be the 
most popular thing in the issue, but damn it, it was funny and smart. 
John Hargrave's "Homeless Marketing Consultant" is probably the funniest 
infiltration we've done yet; I liked being able to get Fastman in for 
another story (even if he does only have a walk-on appearance in it); 
Michael Ian Black's got a hilarious essay in there; Neal Pollack has an 
extremely cutting spoof column of the /New Yorker's/ David Remnick. 
There's just a lot of stuff in here I enjoy an awful lot.

[1] http://jaypinkerton.cracked.com/2006/12/post_1.php
[2] http://yeoldecomicblogge.blogspot.com/2006/12/published.html
[3] http://manvsclown.cracked.com/2006/12/cracked_3_is_now_available.php

[A] http://www.jaypinkerton.com/img/iss3/cover.jpg
[B] http://www.jaypinkerton.com/img/iss3/grill.jpg
[C] http://www.jaypinkerton.com/img/iss3/regained.jpg
[D] http://www.jaypinkerton.com/img/iss3/fastman2.jpg
[E] http://www.jaypinkerton.com/img/iss3/facewash.jpg
[F] http://www.jaypinkerton.com/img/iss3/sinclair.jpg
[G] http://www.jaypinkerton.com/img/iss3/drunkio.gif

Feed: Jay Pinkerton.com
<http://jaypinkerton.cracked.com/>
Author: Jay Pinkerton
Filed under: Cracked
****************************************
Item: Shameless Hype #2
<http://blogs.cracked.com/cgi-bin/mt-atom.cgi/weblog/blog_id=15/entry_id=6071>
Date: 2007-03-15 15:52:13 UTC
[A]

A few months back, I posted an update aptly titled "Shameless Hype[1]", 
where I walked through the first issue of Cracked Magazine explaining 
what I did and how it came about. Surprisingly, I've gotten a lot of 
email from people who wondered why I didn't do the same thing for Issue 
#2. Honestly? I just got busy and forgot.

So here's my behind-the-scenes, /DVD special feature/-style breakdown of 
Cracked #2. Those of you who never bought Issue #2 and couldn't care 
less about what I wrote in it, please skip this entry entirely, 
confident in the knowledge that I won't hold it against you. Stuff I 
wrote for this issue

- *Pg. 1:* "Making Babies Cry" ad

- *Pg. 7:* "Do It All Over Again" ad

- *Pg. 12:* CelebScoop
[B]CelebScoop's one of the bits I brought along with me from my NewsSkim 
writing days at Pointless Waste of Time[2]—a single-page /Us Weekly/ 
spoof that essentially serves as a fun excuse to make up incredibly 
slanderous lies about celebrities. I hate to start things off here on a 
low note, since there's a lot of great stuff in Issue #2 I'd like to 
talk about, but for the record (I guess I can say this now), I was 
really unhappy with the way CelebScoop turned out in Issue #1.

The fault's mine: I'd written about twice as much copy as I should have, 
forcing me and the rest of the staff to edit the jokes down at the 
eleventh hour on the laid-out page. Now, writing a 30-word joke isn't 
that difficult; cutting a 100-word joke /down/ to 30 and still having it 
make *any kind of fucking sense* requires a skill I freely admit I do 
not possess. Having to trim down copy under a tight time frame is a 
recipe for "Whoops, where'd the joke go?" moments. Here's one of the 
original bits, to give you an idea:

/*SUPER-SCOOP!
We’re All Going to Die!*
The largest ice shelf in the Arctic is now melting, according to top 
scientists in actual lab coats! "On a cosmic scale, the human race is 
little more than a blip," explains Oxford geologist Bill Cunningham. "A 
stray meteorite, environmental collapse, over-population and even a 
devastating virus are all very real concerns. To ensure our survival we 
absolutely must, within the next five years, put into place a…”

Blah blah blah, Bill! The only danger we’re in is of you boring us to 
death! Here’s an exclusive pic of CHLOE SEVIGNY in something we like to 
call FASHION DON’TS!/

Okay—so admittedly, it's not a /great/ joke. The world's going to end 
and all the celeb rags care about is what Chloe Sevigny's wearing, ho 
ho. Here's what ended up in the first issue:

/*We're All Going To Die!*
Global warming is causing ice caps to melt and blah blah blah! The only 
danger we're in is of being BORED to death! Here's DENISE RICHARDS in 
something we like to call a "FASHION DON'T!"/

Notice anything missing? If you guessed "The joke," give yourself a big 
pat on the back. Since then, I've learned a valuable, valuable lesson 
about not writing the CelebScoop section too long. I think Issue #2's is 
a *lot* better.

- *Pg. 13:* "Will Work For Food: AC Slater" (photoshop); "Celebrity 
Intervention: Adam Sandler" (writing)
I was never a big fan of /Saved By The Bell/—the show always struck me 
as the sort of thing you might put on a loop at a cancer ward so people 
don't feel as bad about dying. I was pretty proud of my photoshop skillz 
here (the /Variety/ headline reads: "Mark-Paul Gosselaar Signs $20M 
Deal"). AC's hands still bug me, though—the original photo was of a 
homeless dude in his late-50s. I offer no explanation for why Slater's 
hands have been ravaged by time, leaving his face a boyish, dim-looking 
25: [C]

As for the intervention: for the record, I don't actually feel that Adam 
Sandler's constant employment of his C-level comedian friends is a 
scandal meriting righteous outrage. But, you know, it's a magazine. A 
piece about Adam Sandler needed to be written. I was unlucky enough to 
make eye contact right when my boss said "Who wants to write this?" at a 
meeting. Doodly-doodly-doot, I'm writing a piece about Adam Sandler. 
Tell me you haven't gotten yourself in this position at your job 
occasionally. However, the piece did allow me to use the phrase 
"clenching out turds like /The Longest Yard/," and since it's one of the 
worst films I've ever seen, it all worked out in the end.

- *Pg. 16:* "Souldering Pistol: Jonathan Frakes MySpace page"
[D]Co-written with Sean Crespo about a year ago, when I'd first moved to 
New York City. The piece was labeled "evergreen"—meaning that, unless 
Frakes died or had his face ripped off by monkeys or something, it could 
pretty much go to press any time at all and have the same result. It got 
bumped from Issue #1 for something more timely (a Paris Hilton sex 
contract, I believe), but I kept annoying everyone about it until it 
resurfaced in Issue #2. What can I say? I think it's pretty funny. 
Something about imagining Jonathan Frakes living an existence this 
pathetic makes me laugh in a way that could only bring him misery and 
pain if he heard it. I am a *small man*.

- *Pgs. 20-21:* "A Letter of Apology"
A mock-letter I wrote last year about a guy apologizing to parents after 
an all-hamster production of /Hamlet/ he put on at a public library 
resulted in casualties and a firefight with the police. [E]

I wasn't the biggest fan of the Photoshop work on this, but to be fair, 
I remember the poor guy who did it was swamped with about a million 
other things for the magazine. This was one of the last he got to. It's 
alright, I suppose. I've never really been happy with the slapped-on 
look of the POLICE logos on the cars, but I freely admit it's the sort 
of detail nobody else is going to give a shit about. Plus, in the 
artist's defense, the skull-holding hamster he came up with is kick-ass.

- *Pg. 39:*"The Freemason Lodge" (photoshop)
[F]I volunteered to do the psychedelic Freemasons photo collage, on the 
grounds that those photo collage things you always see in magazines look 
like they were thrown together in like ten minutes. How hard could it 
be?

Harder than you'd think, it turns out. Anyway, it is what it is. You can 
sort of /just/ make out a horned devil figure superimposed over the old 
white guy in the center. If I'd had more time to dick around with it, I 
probably would have made that stand out more.

- *Pgs. 44-46:* "Christmas Around the World"
Another piece co-written by me and Sean Crespo, essentially mocking 
other cultures for daring to have holiday traditions slightly different 
from ours. The article blatantly skips over the most obvious 
counter-argument—that our Christmas traditions are just as senselessly 
insane as anything Brazil could come up with—but I think that's part of 
its charm. Any article that ends with an all-caps "USA! USA! USA!" is 
probably requesting that you don't take it too seriously.

- *Pg. 81:* "Kids Love It!" ad

Pieces I commissioned

*"The Four Most Simultaneously Awesome and Shitacular Gifts to Give This 
Christmas," Maddox*
[G]George "Maddox" Ouzounian is about as nice a guy as they come, and 
pretty much the antithesis of his online persona. It was a real pleasure 
getting him for the magazine, for two reasons. First: I've always 
thought his hilarious "How to become an obnoxious internet cam whore in 
five easy steps[3]" was right on the money, and his book, Maddox's 
/Alphabet of Manliness/ was the sort of filthy, funny guy-humor book 
CollegeHumor /should/ have put out.

Second: he told me he really liked my website, and I always go all 
girl-crushy when established net humorists lavish praise on me. (To this 
day, getting a nice email from Erik "Old Man Murray" Wolpaw telling me 
he and his co-workers still use the "Why don't you find a cure for me 
fucking your mom in the ass!" catchphrase from my Superman parody ranks 
up there with the nicest all-time compliments I've ever gotten.)

George is just about the nicest, down-to-Earth guy you could ever meet, 
full of helpful advice and self-deprecating wit. It was great to get him 
for the mag.

*"My Life of Failure", Michael Kupperman*
I first got turned on to Michael Kupperman through the JP.com forum, 
where a few guys were just /lavishing/ praise on this comic called 
/Tales Designed To Thrizzle/ by Michael Kupperman. I was sufficiently 
intrigued to hunt it out the next time I visited my local comics store, 
and holy shit, it is *hilarious*. I don't think I've ever laughed so 
hard, so often, in years. My favorite bits from /Thrizzle/ were these 
ridiculous one-page ads, done in the mock-style of advertisements from 
old comics, so I located Kupperman and asked if he could whip a few of 
them up for us (they've so far appeared in Issues #1, #3 and I believe 
the upcoming Issue #4).

While commissioning the faux-ads, Kupperman asked me if I'd be 
interested in some of his written work. Unaware he even did 
non-comics-based comedy, I said sure, and he sent over a hilarious, 
surreally meta piece called "My Life of Failure," a mock-review of a 
non-existent biography about a fictional film director who, by his own 
admission, makes the worst films of all time. The dumb-as-shit film 
titles end up making the piece: my personal favorites are the swinging 
sex comedy /Swingers Love Doing It/ and the crime caper /Murder 
Irritates My Sinuses/.

*"The Freemason Lodge", Harmon Leon*
I've been a fan of Harmon Leon ever since I read a piece of his called 
/Blind Date, Leiderhosen and Me[4]/, where he manages to get on the show 
/Blind Date/ and thoroughly embarrasses both the show and himself in the 
name of comedy. I'd bought pieces off him during my time at the National 
Lampoon, and when I found out that Cracked wanted to do regular features 
called "Infiltrations"—where the writer disguises himself and causes 
trouble somewhere incognito—I knew Harmon would be perfect for it.

I remember this piece was originally called "The Freemason Code" until I 
realized I had two articles with the same damn word in the title (see 
"The DiCaprio Code", below). Cue one frantic, last-minute search through 
thesaurus.com for substitutes.

*"The DiCaprio Code", Justin Skinner*
[H]Justin Skinner is an old college friend who worked on a campus comedy 
paper called /Golden Words/ with me. He was a few years older than me, 
and so served as a bit of a comedy mentor during those first few 
fumbling years when I was still learning how to write humor articles. He 
remains a good friend, and he's always been a reliable go-to for me, 
whether at Cracked or the National Lampoon or for my now-defunct trailer 
review website, /The Trailer Trash/, when I need a few pages of good 
comedy fast.

In this case, we realized we had a lot of sports, pop culture and 
political comedy in the issue, but not a lot of relationship stuff. I 
emailed Justin with the extremely vague task of coming up with something 
"relationshippy" for me, and he returned with this two days later. It 
was a pretty funny article about what your girlfriend's celebrity crush 
says about her and, more importantly, you. Justin Skinner: no-nonsense 
professional, ladies and gentleman.

*"Snob Comedies", Michael J. Nelson*
I've written so many love letters to /Mystery Science Theater's/ Michael 
J. Nelson in the forum by now, anything I say here would be redundant, 
but: Michael J. Nelson is one of the funniest people alive. I love his 
books, I love his work on MST3K, and I'll buy pretty much anything he 
puts out there for me to purchase. Getting him to write for the magazine 
was about as awesome as it gets.

*"Laugh Audit", Chris Sims*
Chris Sims writes the incredibly funny /Chris's Invincible 
Super-Blog[5]/, a comic book blog that, when I first started reading it, 
was something of an underground word-of-mouth site. His considerable 
comedic talent has since gotten noticed, earning him mentions on TV 
shows and freelance gigs with other media, so I'm just happy I got in on 
the ground floor.

Fond Remembrances

A lot of good comedy articles were already purchased and banked long 
before I took a job at Cracked, and Cracked #2 was the issue where, as I 
recall, we managed to use up the last of them. So there's not as much of 
my handiwork here as there would be in future issues, and consequently, 
not as many memories of putting it together. Still, looking through it 
now, it's a pretty strong issue. There's a lot to like here.

One thing I do remember about Issue #2 were the repeated discussions of 
which issue should be our Holiday Issue. See, Cracked is a bi-monthly, 
meaning that any given issue stays on stands for two months. Issue #2 
hit stands in mid-October and has stuck around until mid-December, so 
it's just now, as I write this, being replaced on the racks by Issue #3.

This meant that if we saved the Holiday Issue until #3, it'd hit stands 
right in time for Christmas—but then linger on until 
mid-fucking-February, long past when anyone would give a crap about 
Santa Claus and eggnog. Conversely, by making Issue #2 our Holiday 
Issue, we managed to be on stands with it throughout November and 
December—but also through /half of October,/ which, seriously, come on, 
is a bit early for a magazine with jokes about Christmas. It was a real 
"damned if you do, damned if you don't" puzzle. We ended up going with 
Issue #2, which we felt was the lesser of two evils.

Whew! Okay, that's it. Issue #3 hits stands this week, so watch out for 
Shameless Hype #3. Thanks for reading.

Jay

[1] http://jaypinkerton.cracked.com/2006/08/post.php
[2] http://www.pointlesswasteoftime.com
[3] http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=cam_whore
[4] http://www.thewavemag.com/printarticle.php?articleid=24594
[5] http://the-isb.blogspot.com/

[A] http://www.jaypinkerton.com/img/iss2/cover.jpg
[B] http://www.jaypinkerton.com/img/iss2/celebscoop.jpg
[C] http://www.jaypinkerton.com/img/iss2/acslater.jpg
[D] http://www.jaypinkerton.com/img/iss2/frakes.jpg
[E] http://www.jaypinkerton.com/img/iss2/hamster.jpg
[F] http://www.jaypinkerton.com/img/iss2/freemasons.jpg
[G] http://www.jaypinkerton.com/img/iss2/maddox.jpg
[H] http://www.jaypinkerton.com/img/iss2/dicaprio.jpg

Feed: Jay Pinkerton.com
<http://jaypinkerton.cracked.com/>
Author: Jay Pinkerton
Filed under: Cracked
****************************************
Item: No, I'm Not Dead
<http://blogs.cracked.com/cgi-bin/mt-atom.cgi/weblog/blog_id=15/entry_id=6058>
Date: 2007-03-15 15:52:13 UTC
I've gotten a lot of emails recently wondering if I'd died or was 
otherwise incapacitated grieviously. I suppose it's a reasonable enough 
conclusion, given that I haven't posted anything new and have barely 
visited my own forum in weeks and weeks and weeks. Below, then: what 
I've been doing instead of updating the website.

We Bought a Dog

[A]We recently brought home a four-month-old rat terrier named Orwell. 
We chose him at the pet store because, unlike the other dogs we looked 
at who ran all over the place in a flurry of barking and sprayed urine, 
he was ridiculously mellowed out. /Surely this dog will be the perfect 
addition to our alcohol-basted, low-energy lifestyle,/ we thought.

We were played like chumps, of course—having settled into our home for 
over a month now, Orwell has abandoned his relaxed facade in a manner 
similar to a cackling '30s villain removing his false moustache and hat; 
and has revealed himself to be a biting, sprinting, barking little poop 
factory. I'd had no idea, but caring for a puppy is terrifyingly similar 
to looking after a baby, the only differences being the amount of fur 
and length of prison time if, after having found a ripped-up pile of 
your favorite comic books scattered around the bedroom, you logically 
decide to drown it.

The Jay Pinkerton with time to spare in the mornings and evenings is 
gone, in other words, at least until the little dude grows up into a dog 
and learns how to entertain himself for five goddamn minutes without 
destroying something valuable or getting his head caught in a closet 
door. My free time can now be broken down into the following categories:

- Taking the puppy for walks;
- Training the puppy not to shit all over the place;
- Cleaning up vast, mountainous piles of shit when he, with willful 
defiance, shits all over the place anyway;
- Telling the puppy "No bites" when he bites me;
- When this fails, simply ignoring the puppy when he bites again;
- When this also fails, entertaining the idea of simply hiding the puppy 
in the freezer until Karla gets home;
- Idly wondering how the ungodly hell a small handful of kibble can 
somehow become eight pounds of wet, creamy fecal waste in less than 
three hours. (I suspect he must be eating shit when I'm not looking.)

Travelling

[B]We flew up to Kingston, Ontario for Canadian Thanksgiving with my 
parents, then over to Indianapolis for American Thanksgiving with 
Karla's mom. I'm sure there are some webmasters who can fly off for a 
few days without it interrupting their update schedule. I am not one of 
those people.

In all honesty, I can barely maintain a regular posting schedule in the 
absence of any interruptions. Relatively minor lifestyle adjustments 
like losing the can opener or setting the clocks back an hour can 
transform my life into a bleak, chaotic wasteland that takes weeks to 
crawl out of. Given that a trip to Indianapolis has the raw potential to 
destroy a healthy, organized mind, I didn't honestly stand a chance.

My Day Job

[C]Back when I wasn't writing comedy for a living, I'd come home from 
work bursting with creative energy. There's nothing quite like spending 
a day writing business proposals outlining the consumer benefits of 
value-added technologies to make you want to let your hair down and make 
fun of the Bible or put raunchy dialogue in Spider-Man's mouth. Now that 
I'm at Cracked Magazine, though, I'm pretty much writing, editing, 
commissioning and designing Photoshop work for humor articles all day. 
When I get home from work, I don't even want to /think/ about jokes.

Worse, the sheer number of submissions I read every day tends to sour 
you a little on comedy writing. Namely, you start to read the same 
articles over and over and over and over again. If I see one more 
fucking guide about how hilarious ninjas or pirates are, I'm going to 
lose it and pull someone's dick off with my bare hands. As you can 
probably imagine, it tends to damper one's incentive to sit down and 
write something funny about, say, Michael Richards, or the latest James 
Bond movie, when you've spent the day reading 30 articles apiece about 
them.

JayPinkerton.com is Five Years Old

[D]I can't believe it either. I know some people who've happily crawled 
into their blogs like a second womb, recording every aspect of their 
existence for future generations to pore over (they won't, of course, 
but isn't it nice to think they would?). Personally, I've just gotten a 
bit tired of it lately. Have you ever hit that horrible, depressing 
point where you realize you've spent the majority of every day for the 
better part of a decade staring at a computer screen? I look back on my 
20s and realize I spent every weekday in front of a computer at work; 
every night at the computer writing comedy; and every weekend at the 
computer, playing video games, surfing the internet and writing more 
comedy. This isn't to say I'm becoming a Luddite; simply that I've 
learned the benefit of unplugging the computer for a bit on weekends to 
enjoy the finer things in life. Watching DVDs, for instance.

Anyway, with 2007 rolling around, I'm at a point where I'd like to try 
something a little more ambitious. I'd like to produce a comic book, or 
try writing an actual novel. Of course I'll continue to update the site, 
if only to keep enough of you around long enough to try out something a 
bit longer. Truth be told, I really just need to kick my ass to get back 
in the writing groove.

So that's the deal, folks. Sorry I haven't posted in so long, and thanks 
for checking in occasionally to see if there's anything new. Hopefully 
I'll be back with regular updates soon enough, and by this time next 
year, I'll maybe even have tried out something a bit more ambitious for 
you to look at. (It'd be nice to turn Back of the Bible into a 
full-length book, for instance.)

Oh, I've been getting a lot of email about posting another one of those 
"What I Did In the Latest Issue of Cracked," like I did for Issue #1. So 
I'll post that tomorrow.

Jay

[A] http://www.jaypinkerton.com/img/notdead01.jpg
[B] http://www.jaypinkerton.com/img/notdead02.jpg
[C] http://www.jaypinkerton.com/img/notdead03.jpg
[D] http://www.jaypinkerton.com/img/notdead04.jpg

Feed: Jay Pinkerton.com
<http://jaypinkerton.cracked.com/>
Author: Jay Pinkerton
Filed under: 2006
****************************************
Item: Why I Am Not Allowed To Shop By Myself
<http://blogs.cracked.com/cgi-bin/mt-atom.cgi/weblog/blog_id=15/entry_id=5973>
Date: 2007-03-15 15:52:13 UTC
[A]

The wife and I got paid recently, and—since the Los Angeles government 
has yet to incarcerate me for tax fraud[1]—we spent the weekend stocking 
the larder. I admit it: I’m a commerce whore and love spending money. 
Whenever I have a legitimate excuse to go out and burn through some 
cash, it is, I assure you, like Christmas morning in my pants.

I don’t necessarily /care/ what it is I’m buying—ten pounds of couch 
wax, flammable candlesticks, a karaoke deep fryer, I honestly don’t give 
a damn. What’s important is that I have *bought something*. I have 
placed money on a table and, as a result, now hold in my hands a big, 
beautiful, expensive-looking /thing/ (preferably covered in buttons, 
fully collapsible and featuring a digital display of some kind). It is 
shiny and glorious, and I don’t honestly care what it does, if it even 
does anything, because the lights dim when I plug it in. It is mine, and 
you are never allowed to use it.

Keeping that in mind, I hope you can imagine my unbridled, 
pigtailed-girl-skipping glee when we headed over to our local Costco 
yesterday. In a momentary flirtation with insanity, Karla let me load up 
a shopping cart (until it made a satisfying SKREEE noise) with as much 
barely useful shit that would reasonably fit into our apartment. 
Christmas morning, I’m telling you. Christmas morning in my pants.

Having lugged all this crap home, we’ve since discovered that we might 
have miscalculated the available storage space in our small New York 
apartment. Finding room for eight drums of black olives, for instance, 
has meant having to completely re-organize the kitchen shelves. (We now 
have room for a plate and two cups.) A tankard of shampoo the size and 
weight of a guitar case now stands upright in the bathtub. I don’t mind 
sharing the real estate but live in perpetual fear of it collapsing on 
me while I’m showering, pinning me naked under its weight while I’m 
pelted with hot water, my only option being to shampoo my hair until the 
fire department arrives. Because I usually order cheesesticks when we’re 
out at the local pub, we’re now the proud owners of two mammoth boxes 
full of the damn things. They take up fully half of the available space 
in our freezer, and will likely mean having to incorporate cheesesticks 
into every meal I’ll cook this month in an effort to free up room. The 
next time you’re in New York, drop by for some double-decker cheesestick 
sandwiches with a side of cheesestick-stuffed cheesesticks, as well as a 
drink I’ve invented called Puréed Brownish-Orange Surprise. (The secret 
ingredient dies with me.)

In short, as inexpensive as Costco is, it deals out harsh and brutal 
lessons in owning too much of a good thing. There are some items that 
you simply can’t justify purchasing in bulk, regardless of the savings. 
It is a lesson Karla’s managed to learn with disarming speed, but for 
some reason continues to elude my grasp. For this reason, I usually keep 
my credit cards in a sealed envelope nailed to the kitchen wall, and am 
not under any circumstances allowed to go shopping by myself.

[B]If this seems a bit harsh, keep in mind that a few months ago I left 
the apartment to do a little preliminary research on buying us a puppy, 
and came back hours later with a used Xbox and a stack of video games, 
one of which was a puppy-owning simulator. I’d felt at the time to have 
intelligently weighed the issue at hand and come up with the most 
obvious solution (no early morning walks or barking; getting to pretend 
I’m Batman in no less than two different games). I would later have it 
explained to me that I had direly miscalculated, and as a result would 
get to pretend I’m a version of Batman who fights crime while not 
getting to have any sex.

Even when supervised, I am not to be trusted at Costco; Karla is 
familiar enough with my weakness for impulse buys to watch the shopping 
cart like a noir detective, ready to interrogate yours truly at the 
first hint of retail idiocy. “Why do we need this again?” she’ll ask 
dubiously, holding up one of my awe-inspiring finds like a dead salmon. 
The triumphant orchestral swell that’s been playing in my head in 
accompaniment to my bargain-hunting prowess will taper off at this point 
to a low, fat and embarrassing tuba sound, like a bear farting sadness. 
I’ll find myself having to make a case for why precisely we need a box 
of 20 cast iron salad tongs designed for the cooking staff at a large 
restaurant, or a ten-liter bottle of industrial-strength bleach. (“So I 
can make *these* white!” I’ll argue defiantly, holding up a 
fifteen-pound barrel of price-slashed argyle socks.)

A madness overtakes me, gentle readers. A madness. Except, for some 
reason, when it comes to clothes shopping. I can’t figure this out. Ask 
me to buy you a plasma-screen television and I’ll spend the afternoon in 
a blissful halcyon fog, comparing various models for obscure features I 
don’t understand, or pestering the salesmen with irrelevant questions—“I 
can’t help but notice the buttons on the remote are round instead of 
rectangular—will this affect performance?”—to the point where they’ll 
invent imaginary bargains at non-existent competitors just to get me to 
leave. (“You didn’t hear this from me, but SuperShitz Video Warehouse on 
Steinway has the same model with /triangular/ buttons. It’ll be like 
channel-surfing through /God/.”) Yet make me go pants shopping and I’ll 
invariably grab whichever pair looks near my size and is closest to the 
entrance. I can’t explain why this is; only that I hope it helps clear 
up why I dress like a Goodwill exploded on me and have a closet full of 
oversized clown pants.

To summarize: I’m really bad when it comes to purchasing goods. What’s 
depressing is how much /worse/ I am with services: I have no facility 
whatsoever for haggling. I’ve passed it off as Canadian politeness since 
moving to America. My American friends accept this explanation at face 
value, even though, of course, it’s a load of crap. Canadians aren’t 
genetically bred to politeness—I’m sure most of us can talk the price 
down on a used car like anything. The truth is that I personally just 
suck balls at it.

I can never remember to negotiate the price beforehand, and invariably 
end up getting stuck with an enormous bill I’m too embarrassed not to 
pay. I’ll hop into one of those discount limos at the airport and rattle 
off a destination, forgetting to ask how much something like that might 
cost. I’ll tell a butcher I want “two big ol’ thick steaks,” neglecting 
to add that I’d rather not spend $40 a cut. I’m well aware I might as 
well be writing cab drivers and butchers out a blank check when I do 
this, yet I nevertheless feel guilty when presented with whatever 
ludicrously inflated price they give me. I mean, I /did/ ask for it, and 
they’ve already cut the meat up for me/driven me to my destination/built 
me a non-functioning clock radio that also sharpens my toothbrush in the 
shower and plays new country.

I just can’t bring myself to quibble about the price after they’ve 
already performed the service, and tend to just hand over an upsettingly 
thick sheaf of bills, making a brain-note to myself that next time I’ll 
ask what something costs beforehand, knowing I am doomed to repeat the 
same mistake in an endless loop. My only salvation, really, is that the 
envelope with all my credit cards in it is nailed to the wall securely. 
This is realistically the only way that Karla can even leave the house 
without coming home to an “I bought magic beans with our rent money” 
scenario.

As for me, I’m happy enough to have relinquished the money management in 
the household. Our Xbox puppy simulator is engaging enough that I barely 
have the time to go shopping now anyway.

Now if you’ll excuse me, Batman needs a walk.

[1] http://jaypinkerton.cracked.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=2757

[A] http://www.jaypinkerton.com/img/wallet.jpg
[B] http://www.jaypinkerton.com/img/batmanxbox.jpg

Feed: Jay Pinkerton.com
<http://jaypinkerton.cracked.com/>
Author: Jay Pinkerton
Filed under: 2006
