The semi-fictional chronicle of the greatest (or worst) band of our time. By our time I mean now. By now I mean the present. By the present I mean our time. You figure it out.
Brick was sitting in the MFUJSF office yet again. Yes, we know. We keep starting in the office over and over again. You work in an office too, you can relate. What? You just lost your job in a massive company-wide layoff? Oh no. I’m so…You lost all your pension, benefits and insurance? Really I’m so… You can’t pay your mortgage now. Buddy…Your wife left you and took the children to live with her successful lover? Dude…I’m so sorry. I had no idea your life was in such disarray. Here I was about to start some trivial article and you’re hurting. You brave man. Ok, can you sit here for a bit while I finish this blog. Afterwards I’ll take you to meet some nice women I know. We’ll have a good time and get your mind of off this. Can you do this for me? Thanks. Stay strong, Bro! Where were we? Oh yeah…
It was a murky looking day, some sick joke from Zeus. Rain and snow at the end of March? WTF is that? He checked his To-Do list:
·Hang out with a cool lady friend from high school and talk about КИНО (C)
·Finish writing novel (not finished yet, working on second to last chapter)
·Get Married (oops, that’s from Tigerman’s list)
·Remember to buy milk (C)
·Finish recording Dead Falcon Rising (?)
“Hmmm?” Brick thought in his usual way, which is to say hey hey hey! That’s what I say! Huh? He got on the phone and called Slate’s cell (his phone that is, Slate made parole last week).
“Yo?”
“Slate?”
“Yeah…”
“We have to talk about the album. It’s not finished yet…
“Who is this?”
“Slate, stop fooling around.”
“Uncle Leo?”
“I’m thinking we should start with songs that we already know.”
“Uh-uh.”
“How about Tigerman’s Boogie/Shadow’s Waltz?”
“Never heard of that.”
“Really? But you played those live along with Those Monogamy Blues.”
“Never heard of that song either.”
“We have video of you playing both songs along with a lot of other songs from the album like Overkill and Love is a Riot, which did really poorly in the Focus Group. Some thought it was too chaotic. Screw them! It was supposed to be the antithesis of those overly precise cheesy love ballads that are played on the radio, raw emotion channeled through the chaos of the guitar and bass…I’m sending you the video link.”
“That’s…not me.”
“Oh, it’s certainly you. The hair, the beard, the dragon tattoos on both arms. It’s totally you. You even stole my guitar for that video.”
“Whatevs.”
“So are we going to record something today?”
“Yeah, sure. I don’t care.”
“Cool.”
“Laterz.”
“…douchebag.” Brick mumbled as he hung up the phone. Looks like he’d have to get the gang together for a recording session…
Hey buddy. How are you holding up? You wanna go get some ice cream now? No? You want to listen to Depeche Mode? Yeah? Ok. We’ll listen to Depeche Mode. It’s all going to be ok.
·Assisted Artistic Director in running the day to day operations of Summer Conservatory, rental space and helped to establish and run the Help-a-Jungle-Cat charity
·Worked with prospective students and other clients, as well as doing solo projects such as a marketing campaign to promote the opening of the mixed feline training center.
·Learned about how to run a business, how to balance a budget, how to work with a small team efficiently to benefit the business with projects like seeking new clients and assisting the sneaking and growling instructors during classes as well as maintaining the studio and office in good condition
Mike’s F’d Up Journey 2007-2011
Bass Player and Crew Member
·Participated in all parts of putting together a rock band: playing bass, set design, sound engineer, putting up flyers for shows, fighting club owners to get paid for a gig, etc.
·Developed good team work and leadership skills by mentoring less experienced band members (Brick and Slate)
·Assisted the manager by organizing and supervising additional sessions for band rehearsal when necessary (it happened quite often, we needed a lot of work just to sound half-bad)
·Utilized social media to keep group in constant communication and up to date with deadlines and playlist changes (no, I did not just stay up late playing family feud and Uno online), resolved problems by taking on additional responsibilities as well as distributing the responsibilities for maximum efficiency
Skills:
·Languages: Growling (fluent), Grunting (intermediate), English (basic)
·Proficient with Meowcrosoft Office software, knowledge of Adobe Pawtoshop
·Can play bass and stand upright on my rear paws for hours at a time
Education:
B.S. in Stealth – Minor in Creative Writing2005-2009
And so, after a long intermission, we return to the MFUJSF offices to find our hero, Brick, faced with a rude awakening….
“I have to get a job?!?”
That’s right. After finally spending the last of the band’s royalty checks on stocking up the vending machine with bagel chips and cheez-it, it turns out that Brick and the other three members of MFUJSF are officially broke.
“What to do? WHAT TO DO?”
ACT 1: THE RÉSUMÉ
Brick was confused and alone, well, more so than usual, so he consulted his band mates and got some advice. The drummer, Shadow, after taking a healthy sip of his can of his strawberry banana soda, got up from his stool and with a big booming voice announced that he would help Brick make money.
Shadow’s Guide to Writing a Perfect Résumé
Step 1: Find a font that works for you.
If you’re going to collect bananas for a living, or something even better, you’re going to need a résumé. But the first step is to pick a font that represents you as a gorilla, er man, in order to show the employer who the alpha male really is. You’re going to want to pick something legible yet full of manly spirit and boldness. So basically, no webdings!
Step 2: Evaluate your skills and experience.
Once you’ve chosen a sweet ass font, you’ll need to think about how you’re going to convince that banana vendor that you’re the top ape for the job. You shouldn’t just list the details of the jobs you’ve done before. Instead you should focus on the accomplishments and lessons you learned at each job. Did your recipe for banana sake boost profits by 300% for the brewery you used to co-manage? Write that down! You do have to distinguish between useful skills and just plain awful skills. If you’re applying to an office job, I doubt that being able to stand on your head for over five minutes will be a selling point for you as an employee. Be bold, and exciting but don’t come across as crazy. Be the alpha male!
Step 3: Lie at your own peril.
Lying is bad. No one likes a liar. Sure it’s useful if you’re a lawyer or if you work on wall street and sell banana bonds to foolish rich folk, but it will ruin your karma. It’s also something very risky to do on your résumé. You should never put anything down that you can’t prove or at least speak of intelligently. If you say you speak Spanish fluently but can’t even say hola to save your life, you’re screwed buddy. You might get away with fudging some details to make you sound better than the other guys and gals trying to get the job, but as soon as they find out that you have no idea how to manage an office because you never did take that management seminar at Gorilla U., you are out of there like a stale banana peel.
Step 4: Read it. Reread it. Have everyone you know read it. Read it again, dammit!
Your résumé is the first impression you make on your potential employer. The last thing you want is for their to be a typo. (See what I did there?) If you can’t even spell bananas right, how can you manage a whole factory that makes pudding out of them? Make sure you put your best paw forward. Show them that you’re the alpha male they are looking for. Ladies can be the alpha male as well. Let’s not get into this whole gender debate now, though. I’m just a drummer turned author. Men and women can both be kick ass candidates and do a great job in the work place.
Well that’s about it for the résumé. Go forth, Brick and kick some ass, Shadow-style. Were there enough banana jokes for you,you @#$%%^&*ers? Oh boy. Looks like Shadow’s been drinking the fermented banana wine again. Good night folks. We’ll see you soon with Act 2.
And now resident romantic, Tigerman, addresses his bride-to-be, whoever she might be.
Dear you, oh so unforgettable you,
Ours is a love that the bard wrote about in iambic pentameter, the Beatles sang about with their mop-top little heads, it was immortalized in the greatest, dirtiest limericks of all time… and you haven’t even met me yet.
Or maybe you have. Maybe we took the same journalism class back in college but never spoke to one another, just occasionally shot each other longing glances from across the lecture hall. You admired the way my fur and ears looked in the sunlight. I was entranced by your luscious lips and your big, beautiful…eyes. Alas, neither one of us had the nerve to approach the other. Then, one day, I was returning from an overnight trip to Brooklyn, strolling away from the union square station and you, running late back to work after breaking up with your beau at lunch, happened to bump into me on the street corner. I helped you off the ground by lending a helpful paw, apologizing profusely.
You, after recovering from the fall and the impact of your recently crumbled relationship, took a good look at me and said
“Hey, didn’t we take the same Journalism class?”
I of course, having blocked most of college from my memory, took a moment to ponder your question.
“Hmmm...” I muttered in a crude way of buying time. As soon as I got a good look at your bodacious...eyes, I of course remembered all the stolen glances between us in perhaps the most boring class we took in college. “Oh yeah! Hey. How are you? You look fantastic.”
Of course this was but the first step of a whirlwind romance whose passion exceeded the censor’s strict limit on fun material that I’m allowed to share here. But trust me when I say our romantic exploits would make even the most experienced lovers blush.
The years roll by. My fur isn’t as thick as it used to be, you start replacing coffee for vodka and we end up sleeping in different rooms on opposite sides of the house. You start passive aggressively insinuating that marrying a tiger was the biggest mistake you ever made. I no longer bother bringing you a fresh gazelle for dinner anymore because you just mention how that lion you dated in high school used to bring you fresh zebra. I of course explain that a) zebras and tigers never cross paths in nature and b) I’m against all stripe-on-stripe crimes. You slam the door in my face and I run off to the river to take a nice swim and relieve my stress. I come home, refreshed, only to find you in the feathers of our pool boy, that damn flamingo with the crooked beak.
Of course all of this could have been avoided if we had never gotten into a debate over what the best album of the 1970’s was. More relationships end over silly music debates than, well, over something else…
So when I come home and pack my bags, don’t take it too hard. It’s not you, it’s her. She just has better taste in bands than you
Sincerely,
Your first husband
Tigerman
P.S. For the record, the following are bands that I’ll be ok with you calling your favorites:
Pink Floyd, Queen, Led Zeppelin, The Beatles, Radiohead, The Smiths, Nirvana, They Might Be Giants, MFUJ and a few dozen others.
I apologize for being so strict about this, but good taste in music is so much more important than anythingelse. Believe me. I’m a bass player. Bass players know things.
Tigerman is a self-taught bass player as well as a six foot tall anthropomorphic tiger creature. He spends all of the time he isn’t playing music talking about his future wives. So far he has had no girlfriends. A lot of women seem to be turned off by the whole talking tiger standing on two legs thing.
And now, a Haiku by resident artiste, Shadow (the drummer turned poet).
*Clears throat*
Outside a Window by Shadow
Lonely ghost of night,
Who shrieks past my small window,
Keep the damn noise down!
*bows*
Thank you very much.
This has been a Haiku by our resident sleep deprived poet, Shadow. For more of his poems, short stories and high school "What I did over summer vacation essays", check out his upcoming anthology "Words I put Together on Paper and Sold for Money: vol.3"
We interrupt your normal web surfing to bring you this burst of insanity from MFUJSF's resident pundit, Slate.
As the people of the world look on at the recent uprisings and tragedies occurring abroad, one story seems to be neglected by the so called press: The New York Times published an article on its website with clear and present typos! “Oepration”? Really? Are we going to allow this institution to corrupt our children and gullible adults by butchering the English language as if it were nothing? It’s a slippery slope here folks. I only noticed that typo when skimming an article at random. Imagine if I were to look through it more carefully? How many more atrocities of misspelling would I find?
It’s precisely this liberal irresponsibility with the written word that has led to the demise of western culture and the rise of garbage-core filth like Twilight! Vampires are supposed to be fearsome monsters, not sparkly! And, and… *starts stammering* It all starts with the gatekeepers of information! Once they start living by a standard that comes short of perfection, all hell breaks loose! Reality TV shows become the zeitgeist, good scripted shows get cancelled way too early (Terriers!!!) and soon we begin to worship unremarkable people on television whose one claim to fame comes from being on TV! Am I the only who sees where this ends? CHAOS! And American Idol on the air indefinitely! Save yourselves from this worst of all possible realities and start respecting the language that your mama taught you.
What do you mean this was not the number one news story of the day? Bad spelling and bad grammar are the first steps towards total collapse. Look at Rome. When the emperors stopped minding their p’s and q’s, the empire was doomed to be toppled. What? I used the expression incorrectly? Oh god. It’s catching on! Incorrectness is spreading like the plague. We are damned. WE’RE ALL DAMNED!!!
This now concludes this burst of insanity from resident pundit, Slate. We now return you to your regular Web surfing.
- Slate Man is not an actual pundit or expert on language. He is merely an overly opinionated alter ego that sometimes erupts in nonsensical though occasionally humorous rants. The views expressed by Slate Man do not reflect those of MFUJSF or Google. He only speaks for the trees and occasionally a lamppost with an axe to grind. Do not look Slate directly in the eye. He will melt your soul.
And now we present to you a very special entry for Mike’s F’d Up Journey Sans Frontières. It’s a tale that’s ‘based on a true story’. For legal reasons we have to say that ‘based on a true story’ does not mean that the following events happened in the way they are described below. Nor does it imply that they happened at all. In fact, ‘based on a true story’ could imply that I saw a man with a weird hat chewing some gum and I constructed a whole story that just happens to include that guy with the gum and suddenly it’s ‘based on a true story’. And now, on with the story. Here’s our first attempt at being socially relevant.
Once upon a time (Editor’s note: cliché opening used for irony or perhaps it was just laziness), there was a young man named Brick. He was a kind, creative fellow and had friends and loved ones who really cared about him. But Brick had a problem, a terrible problem, a shame that haunted him and made him the target of ridicule and constant lecturing. He didn’t have a job. The horror! All Brick wanted to do was work on his art in peace but that made him a pariah amongst his more successful peers. Even the town drunk laughed at Brick for even he had a job in the city council. Things were looking pretty bleak for poor Brick.
One day, Brick sat on his leather chair with a notepad writing dialogue for his novel. As he took a sip of clean, crisp and refreshing Poland Spring bottled water (Editor’s note: blatant product placement to pay the hypothetical bills and hypothetical rent for the hypothetical MFUJSF offices), he noticed he had a message from his old classmate, Simon Ramses on Instant Messenger.
“Hey, Brick,” said Simon in text so innocuous and unexpected. “How are you, man?”
“Hey, Simon. I’m ok, dude. How have you been?”
And before he got a response to his polite chit-chat, Simon asked the question Brick dreaded most.
“Are you working?”
Distraught and ashamed of his status as a worthless bum, a barnacle of society, Brick replied with a solemn ‘no’.
Instead of jumping to judgment, Simon began making Brick an offer. He said that not only was he have a great job, but he was also looking for more people to work there as well. Brick asked how this could be? He thought all the jobs in the world had been taken or reserved for people of a higher class than he, like the town drunk. Simon assured him that his company was expanding and his boss asked him to find people who were fresh, new and ready for such an opportunity. But wait, Brick thought. I have no financial experience. I’m but a simple artist, the lowliest of scum on the face of the earth. No problem, Simon assured him. People skills were all that was necessary. Perhaps it was the allure of the offer, the amount of times those around him nagged him to stop being a parasite and get a job or maybe the oatmeal he had eaten for breakfast had gone bad but Brick agreed to attend the interview.
“By the way,” Brick finally asked, “what’s the name of the company?”
There was a brief pause accentuated by the swelling of an orchestra in Brick’s imagination; blood rushed to his head, making him nervous.
“Pyramidica” was the response. (Editor’s note: Name of company changed to protect the corrupt from libel. Also, we wanted to make it a pun, and an obvious one at that.”
Brick was ecstatic. With jubilant euphoria so hyperbolic that it made him see brand new colors beyond ROYGBIV, he went around and told everyone that he finally had a job interview, for a major company no less. His friends rejoiced. People cheered in the streets as he walked past them. No longer would they have to pity or look down on this sad wretch, this artist. He was now going to be another productive part of the employment machine and that made them happy inside. Some thought it was peculiar that he didn’t know that many details about the job or Simon’s job for that matter. Brick argued with them with supreme righteousness.
“Simon is my friend. He would never do me any harm. How could he? I’m Brick, the Protagonist.”
And so he toiled away at his résumé, looted his closet for a decent pair of slacks, a shirt and a blazer and studied articles on proper interview technique written in English, Spanish and Linear B. With a grin and a prayer, Brick ran from his home to the subway station. On the train, Brick rocked out to Pink Floyd and Кино and could not care less about the strangers laughing at him. On the way out of the train, he passed by a man with a pyramid shaped hat chewing some gum. (Editor’s note: red herring. No, not the fish!)
With a mighty strut, Brick walked out of the station and headed towards the Bad Joker Hotel, the place Simon had told him to go to. Why anyone would schedule a job interview after 7:00 PM at a hotel was something he should have given some thought but he didn’t. Why? He was still busy humming the bass line from Money. The building was old, the bricks were anemic and the windows cast no reflection. Yes, the building defied the laws of science and Brick still walked in anyway. What a sharp kid, huh? Oh brother…
The lobby reeked of cigarettes and despair. Brick walked up to the front desk. The guy behind the counter was closer to 100 than 90 in years and was slumped forward.
“Hey Brah”, Brick said, suddenly adopting the accent and mannerisms of a seventies California surfer (Editor’s note: which is funny because he’d never been to California, let alone live in the 70’s and had never stepped foot in a natural body of water). “Could you tell me where I might find the Pyramidica meeting?”
Wheezing and snorting, the old codger looked at Brick. “Humph” he said. “Another one. Room 306, kid.”
“Bitchin’! Thanks, brah.”
Before Brick was completely out of hearing distance, the old man said “Be careful kid. Selling insurance…it’s not as easy as you think. Beware the pyramid…Beware!!!!”
The worn out wallpaper and dingy carpets didn’t scare Brick away as he climbed up to the third floor. He reached a large metal door with the numbers 306 carved in large stone. “Don’t go in there!” is what the readers may be saying, but of course, Brick can’t hear you. He’s a character in a story and this is all written in the past tense so it already happened. Sorry. Get a soda and some popcorn and enjoy. We’ll wait. Good, you’re back. Oh, you forgot the popcorn. Go back and get it. Are you all set? Oh c’mon! You’re making a mess. Pull yourself together, reader! Ok. Let’s continue. Where were we? Where do we go? Where do we go now? Where do we go? Sweet Child O’miiiiiiine? Sorry.
The room was large and dark. There was a ring of light a few yards ahead but that was it. He could see twenty other potentials waiting inside there. He sat down next to them on the bench and a supervisor from Pyramidica greeted them. Some other employees stood behind him like soldiers behind their general. One of them was Simon. He looked thinner and paler than Brick remembered.
“Welcome to Pyramidica” said the supervisor in a strong baritone. He was a formidable looking fellow. He stood over six feet tall with a hairline to die for and wore dark silks. A strange aura surrounded him as he spoke and Brick could not help but listen as ridiculously gorgeous women stood at either side of the supervisor. Their energy was just as intoxicating as the supervisors voice was to listen to. He spoke of many things. He pulled at the heart strings. He alluded to freedom and entrepreneurship as the last frontier, the only way to achieve greatness in this world. In a hazy trance, Brick sat in the circle of light in the room full of darkness. He could not see anything beyond the rim of light but could feel something beyond it. Something incredible. Powerful. Terrifying.
With the presentation over, Brick was left with feelings of desire that he could not control. The allure of the women in business casual clothing was strong but it was something deeper. The promise of greatness burrowed inside his mind and soul and took root. Ambition and coveting were now all he could think about. Out of nowhere, Simon appeared next to Brick and he saw that all the other potentials had been conveniently removed from the area to intensify this scene. (Editor’s note: Deus ex machina…we think. Sorry. We were just hired off the street with no real training but we’re making good money. Ask us how we did it and you can do it too.)
“Are you ready…to sell insurance?” he asked, hunger in his eyes
A shriek came from the other side of the room and caused Brick’s blood to run cold and snap out of his trance. He ran past Simon to investigate and bumped into something ,a large soft wall. He fell backwards. The lights turned on and he finally got a glimpse at the pyramid he had heard of. Layers upon layers of bodies were stacked on top of one another. The ones on the bottom were constantly trying to reach out and grab someone, including Brick, but always failed and thus remained at the bottom for good. The people above them had their fangs around the necks of those below, growing fat off of them. The higher one looked up the pyramid, the fatter the bodies got and on top was the supervisor, sucking upon the life energy of everyone beneath him.
Simon appeared next to Brick once again, laughing. “You can be a part of something great like this too. You just need to pay your dues.”
“I thought you dealt with life insurance.”
“We ensure our lives are better than those below us. Join us.”
Brick looked up and saw the supervisor wipe the froth from his lips and begin to chant. Soon all the bodies opened their mouths and joined in, their voices echoing through Brick’s entire being. “All our lives we sweat and save, building for a shallow grave. Must be something else we say. Somehow to defend this place. Everything must be this way…”
The pyramid pulsed with power, a dark heart circulating misery, and though intimidation froze Brick in place for a moment, fear of failure sealed his doom.
As Simon approached, fangs emerging, ready to seal the deal, Brick murmured “The soft parade has now begun” and he was assimilated into the pyramid. No more would he be alone in his misery. His malaise was now legion. "There was nothing to fear and nothing to doubt".
I hope you kiddies learned the valuable lesson from this story: never drink expired milk!
Establishing shot of the MFUJSF office building drenched in mellow sunshine worthy of a 3 minute acoustic pop song. Ugh… We see our hero, Brick, sitting at his desk, nonchalantly searching the internet for songs to listen to and wondering about what direction to take with his life. He then realizes that the mundane details of his twenty-something year old life would only be interesting if sex and hip but utterly replaceable music are involved and the show is on the CW. Which it isn’t. Now I need a topic. Hmmm. *Looks at the title* Eureka! I’ll talk about endings. Or write about them. I literally took that too far by using the term literally.
Endings are hard. Duh. Wait, this is only the second post and already we’re talking about endings? Oh no. We got cancelled after one episode? Things end, sometimes too soon. Youth, romance, TV shows… Terriers! Firefly!! But endings can suggest a new beginning. How cliché of you, Brick? It could be the end of winter and the beginning of spring, the end of tyranny and the beginning of democracy or…the end of being a parasite still living at home with no job to the beginning of being a sycophantic gofer in service of the man. Yes endings are all around us and we can’t do anything but accept them because if we try to fight them, we won’t win. It’s like fighting the law (unless you’re a rich white guy), you just can’t win (even rich white guys can’t stop some things from ending, although they might try to delay them from ending until it’s just plain ridiculous). Things end.
Really, Einstein? Things End? That’s your whole big speech? No wonder you’re out of work and she left you. Low blow, italicized voice. Low blow…
As you might know, I’m working on trying to finish my novel. Some say that I’ve taken way too long to write it, and perhaps they are right. It was supposed to take place in the future but at the rate I’m going, 2033 will come and go and it’ll be seen as current. They don’t care about your book. You’re just like one of those desperate artists who has to advertise their stuff all the time because no one wants to see it anyway. What’s up with you? What’s up with you? While you sit here and argue with yourself, your audience has lost interest and moved on to twitter, youtube or they just want to go look at some hardcore… Enough! You know sex sells, dude. Witty banter will only take you so far. Whatever. I wanted to have a serious discussion about how difficult it is to wrap up a story that has lived inside you for almost two years, where the characters become extensions of you and their pain and struggles become your pain…Emo…But no. Apparently intelligent conversation is not popular. I have to become mainstream to appeal to the youth market. Make a movie starring ridiculously ripped dudes and unrealistically thin women with large bosoms and play trashy music and make lots of money. Yay!
*Movie Announcer voice*: Gerald Faulkner woke up in a hospital not knowing who he was. But sometimes, the past is not so easy to forget. Now, he will search the country for the men who ruined his life, stole his woman and totally dissed him in front of his crew. Starring some random male model who slept with the producer and costarring aging has-been B list actors as the villains and a former porn star as the one dimensional male fantasy of a woman disguised as a viable love interest but is really just a slap in the face to feminists everywhere. Featuring a highly anticipated soundtrack by Roger Waters featuring Jay Z. This summer one man will remember all the crap he’s been through and see through the bull shit. And when he does, he’ll say “Ha Ha, Charade You Are!” Rated R.
Oh god. Did we just advertise that movie? Hell yeah we did! I feel so cheap. You are cheap. What were we talking about? Oh yeah, endings. Sometimes an ending is a slow cool down, fading off into black, white or sepia. Sometimes it’s about climaxing so hard that she squeezes you tight as she moans… A happy ending, eh? Ha ha. Two posts in a row and you’re talking about o… And sometimes an ending is abrupt, unexpected and leaves nothing resolved, only more questions. Like, “if the whole story was a dream, why the hell did I just spend 300 pages reading about something that didn’t matter and had no actual consequences?” Or “why the hell were they vampire werewolves from mars? There was no suggestion that anything supernatural existed in the continuity of this story. Why the hell did they all end up being freaking vampire werewolves on mars?!” What can I say? Endings vary. Sometimes you start the song with a guitar solo and sometimes you finish with a badass fretboard workout. Something real face melting that’ll make people praise you thirty years after your last listenable album was released.
Brick looks at his desk and sees that time is almost up for this post and realizes he has to end this post on endings. What moral does this show end with? This show has morals? Well, I could end with the predictable Oedipal epic by the Doors but you’d expect that, wouldn’t you? Readers are so annoying when they try to predict what the author is trying to do. Writing is hard work. Stop judging us from your comfy chairs! Are you done? Yeah! Yeah… We’re going on and on and on… do not confine your mind to one frame but let it inhabit an infinite amount. Never settle for one point of view.
Zoom out with a corny message on the screen as Brick walks away from his desk and turns off the light. We see the telephone ring and just as the machine answers…
Never thought I’d see YOU here. How are you, you crazy bastard?
Oh no, It’s the first post and I’ve already resorted to calling people bastards. This is a PR nightmare. Think. We can still salvage this blog before it gets shut down or worse, ignored. Dammit. They didn’t teach us how to handle internal monologues at Blog School. Wait, Blog School? I’m freaking out for no reason. Wait, did I just say Dammit? That’s worse than saying bastard… I hope no one is keeping score at home. Or at work. Or wherever they are reading this. But they are reading… Aren’t they?Must. Salvage. Blog!
Welcome to Mike’s F’d Up Journey Sans Frontières. Up until yesterday, Mike’s F’d Up Journey was merely the name of a band that got its name from…well that’s a story for another time. There’ll be plenty of time for flashbacks and origin stories later. Now we begin the story in medias res, which is Latin for in the Heat of the Moment (or some other song by Asia, I think. Sorry, our fact checker got fired for embezzlement. It’s been a rough first day of writing this blog.). Here. We. G.O.
Did I just divide go into two parts? Screw it. Keep going.
Previously on MFUJ: Our hero, Brick, was struggling to finish recording his fifth album, write the last couple of chapters of his novel, find a job and figure out whatever happened to the woman of his dreams. There were so many plot twists and emotionally charged montages set to maudlin music by whoever was the hip singer/songwriter du jour that the viewers could not contain their enthusiasm and helped get the show renewed for another season.
Well, it turns out the the show was just a convoluted metaphor for life and that is where MFUJ Sans Frontières comes in. Huh? Just like JLU expanded the scope beyond the original Justice League, MFUJSF is more than just the ravings of some random dude. No, this time it will cover a wide range of topics and it will go so deep into your soul that you will tremble and moan with ecstasy so pure that the neighbors will mistake your cries of supreme joy for a cat’s rendition of Bohemian Rhapsody. Whether we get to that level is still up in the air but, together, we can make that a dream worth living for.
Oh no. I just compared this blog to achieving an o…They can still hear me? Uh oh…
This is but the first step on this journey. I’m not going to lie. It isn’t going to be pretty. Some of you might not make it. *Spoiler alert* You, in the blue shirt. No. Not the red head. You. Yes, you. Sorry. This doesn’t end well for you. I wish that I could say that you went peacefully and it served some greater purpose. Unfortunately, it’ll be sweeps week and the writers will be lazy and get rid of you just to get a cheap boost in ratings. We will however still see you at reunion specials and you might get to return later on and play your previously unmentioned evil twin out for revenge. See? You have something to look forward to.
We’ll see if there are any antagonists or romantic interests in store. For now we close on a zoom out shot of our hero, Brick, as he examines his newly furnished office at MFUJ Sans Frontières which replaced the MFUJ office that imploded in last season’s cliffhanger ending.
