How to Spot the Various Types of Human Stupidity

I know that we watched season 2 of The Next Food Network Star. I know that I cared enough about it at the time to write this comic. But, I swear, sitting here, I have no memory whatsoever of that season or anything that happened in it.

I remember that the show lost me when the Food Network brought in three of their most successful cooking show hosts to act as team captains and had them constantly antagonize each other. Not only did that make me like the show less, it made me like those three hosts less. It was a show so bad it damaged four or five other shows. The show had an actual measurable blast radius.

Note from Missy: I had to look back through the Wiki for The Next Food Network Star to confirm that it’s where the world was given Guy Fieri for the first time.  Turns out he was on season 2 (if memory serves, we voted for Reggie), and this comic must have been written about season 9, which aired in 2013 and had a contestant named Nikki and a guy who made pie.

Also, holy crap, it was season eight when they changed to the Alton/Giada/Bobby smack-talking team system.  So we watched nine or ten seasons of a show, and all I can really remember of that 100+ hours of television is 3 celebrity chefs being total dicks to each other, and a vague memory of greatly disliking Guy Fieri before disliking Guy Fieri became cool.

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How to Explain Why You Like Something

Wolverine is haunted by things in his past he can’t remember. I never thought about that before. How does that work?

“I’m haunted by horrible things I can’t remember.”

“How do you know they happened, or that they were horrible?”

“That’s just the thing. I don’t!”

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How to Live on the Edge

I was all set to write a paragraph about how I should try to start a TV career setting myself up as someone who explores the extreme edge of quiet, mellow, grown-up activities, sort of like the Bear Grylls of safety and complacency. Then I realized James May has beat me to it.

I offer the following videos as evidence.

James May reassembling a toy train.

James May making a sandwich.

James May replacing his car’s tire valve stem caps.

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How to Watch Mistakes Compound

The movie theater I go to (or at least the one I used to go to, back when going to a movie was an option) has pumpers of butter flavored oil out in the lobby where anyone can get as much of it as they want, and do whatever they chose with it. That is a freedom that cannot last. Someone, somewhere, is going to do something that will ruin it for everyone. I don’t know what kind of accident, tragedy, or act of public depravity will occur, but I do suspect that whatever it is it will smell delicious.

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How to Develop a Successful Product

This is only tangentially related, but since Halloween is coming up, I thought I’d share a video of the best costume I’ve ever seen.

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How to Evaluate Another Person's Artistic Expression

Memory is a strange thing.

For years . . . YEARS, I would quote a specific Kids in the Hall sketch where Bruce McCulloch called the rest of the guys “a bunch of human load-holders.” I loved it because it was nonsense, meant absolutely nothing, but was so clearly a terrible insult.

I am now convinced that I imagined it somehow. I believe I’ve watched every episode of the Kids in the Hall, and their one movie, Brain Candy, and if McCulloch or anybody else ever said “human load-holder,” I can’t find it. The closest thing I can find is a sketch where he calls someone a “human loser.”

That said, my second favorite Kids in the Hall insult, when Kevin MacDonald called the rest of them “Crap-burgers,” definitely happened.

Note from Missy: Rick’s “guitar solo” just makes me want to go play one of the Borderlands games. Though Rick is definitely no Mister Torgue Flexington.

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How to Enjoy Something for What It Is

People look down their noses at me for being a morning person, and give me grief for liking my steak well done, but I get my revenge when coffee time comes. I take my coffee black. As such I get to judge my friends for trying to MacGyver together a crude latte using a cup of coffee and several little tubs of half and half.

They’re weak, I tell you! As weak as the “coffee” they’re drinking!

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How to Give Advice

I love the PBS Documentary series NOVA. Missy doesn’t enjoy it. So, for the last few years I’ve mostly watched it on my tablet with headphones in bed. Doing so has conditioned me to subconsciously know it’s sleepy time when NOVA is on. I’ve reached the point where I’m lucky to withstand ten minutes of an episode before I pass out. At this point, someone could probably subdue me with nothing but an audio recording of Zachary Quinto talking about the planet Saturn.

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How to look Out for Your Own Interests

There was a time when dentists would get a young adult in their chair, look into their mouth, and if they found the patient was going to need anything more serious than a few fillings the dentist would make them an offer.

“We can drill these cavities out and fill them. It’ll cost money and it’ll hurt. And when you come back in another six months I’ll probably find more. Or you can pay me the same amount you would for the fillings, and I’ll just pull all of your teeth, set you up with a full set of dentures, and you’ll never have to worry about cavities again.”

My mother told me about this. She made dentures for a living. I’m not sure now if she told me this to scare me, to make me feel grateful for modern medicine, or if it’s just that she and her denture making colleagues considered those to be “the good old days.”

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How to See Someone Else's Point of View

R. Lee Ermey was not originally cast as the drill sergeant in Full Metal Jacket. He was originally brought in as a consultant to help the actor they had cast to play that role. That actor didn’t pan out, Ermey replaced him, and a fine career as a character actor followed.

There’s a story, one that I hope is true, that Stanley Kubrick wasn’t sure that a first time actor would be able to maintain his character and the false reality of a scene while surrounded by all of the distractions that come with filming a major motion picture. To see if he could hack it, Kubrick filmed R. Lee Ermey improvising insults in character and shouting them into the camera as several crew members threw tennis balls at his head.

I would pay good money to watch that footage.

Inside joke from Missy: “We just want to see if you can continue acting after being struck by a falling Spider-man.”

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