Jumping the Sharknado

When I first heard about the Sharknado, I'll be honest, I thought it was real.  In my mind, I pictured a series of angry shark attacks in a limited geographical area.  Sort of a Bermuda Triangle meets the killer bees meets Jaws.  With all the freaky stuff going on in the world today, I figured, "Why not?"

Then I found out it was a movie.  And a sci-fi movie, at that.  And suddenly I had lost what little interest I ever had.

I was on Twitter Thursday night when the Sharknado began.  At least three out of every four tweets on my feed were Sharknado-related.  As is often the case when seemingly everyone jumps on the bandwagon of anything, I become even more averse to that thing.

I briefly considered unfollowing everyone who tweeted anything about Sharknado.  "That'll show 'em," I thought to myself, suddenly feeling like someone you'd most often find living in their parents' basement.  But as that would have left me only following about eight people, I decided to pass.

And then...

Someone made the mistake of tweeting something about Ian Ziering being in the movie.

And that's all it took for me to be sucked into the Sharknado.

Yes, while many guys may have been watching to see Tara Reid, I was not among them.  I was watching for the actor who once played the affable Steve Sanders on Beverly Hills 90210.

You see, I have an obligation to watch any and everything featuring any former cast member of the original 90210.  (Except for Andrea. Blech!)  Why else would I have watched even the fifteen minutes I did of Tori & Dean: Inn Love?  Exactly.  There is no other acceptable reason.

For the few of you who may still be reading, er, wondering what Sharknado is, I quote from the ultimate source of all internet knowledge, Wikipedia: "Sharknado is a 2013 made-for-television disaster film about a tornado that lifts sharks out of the ocean and deposits them in Los Angeles."

Sort of a City of Angels meets Jaws meets Twister.

However, Sharknado was much more than just a movie.  It was, simply put, a Twitter phenomenon.  Soon I found myself making sarcastic comments about the movie with people I'd never met.  For two hours, that's all we did.  Even a few members of the Twitterati were chiming in.  It was such an in-the-moment, true-life experience... in a virtual setting, obviously.

In fact, I do hereby declare that from now to forever, all subsequent Twitter phenomena in which more than half of all Tweets in the world at any given moment are about the same topic also be referred to as a "Sharknado."

Some examples: "Boy, Twitter really sharknadoed last night."  "That UFO landing caused Twitter to Sharknado last night."  (Note: There hasn't really been a UFO landing. At least, not that the government will admit.)

For your confusion, I will be using the term "Sharknado" to refer to both the movie and the Twitter phenomena.

The fact that 1.4 million people watched Sharknado probably says more about the lack of halfway-decent summertime TV options than anything else.  Because it was bad.  We're talking  USA-Up-All-Night bad.  But the thing is, it was so bad, it was hilarious.  I would estimate SyFy spent upwards of five, six thousand dollars on the 1960's-era special effects.

What could have made it better?  I have two words for you: Brandon Walsh.  Well, any additional original 90210 characters really.  You telling me "Sure, Donna Martin graduated, but can she survive... the Sharknado?!?!" wouldn't have made a killer tag line?

But I'll take what I can get.  It was nice to see Ian Ziering not be typecast for once.  In Sharknado, his character is a California surfer and bar owner. As opposed to 90210, where his character was a California frat boy and club manager.  (I think we all remember the Peach Pit After Dark.)  So, very different.

I also have a few suggestions for future SyFy movies that I would like to see:  Dogcano.  Snakequake.  The scarier-than-you-might-think Hurricrane.  And the catch-all Zoonami.  And by "I would like to see," I mean, "I can't promise that I'll be watching."

One wonders what might possess SyFy to make such a bad movie in the first place?  Well, if nothing else, it keeps actors like Ian Ziering gainfully employed, so that they don't have to resort to a career in the porn industry.  I mean, even I don't want to see that.  Well, maybe.......  No, definitely not.

In closing, I'm sure this post has raised several questions in your mind, about me, about the world we live in... but mostly about me.  And I'm sure some of you are also wondering, could a Sharknado ever really happen?

Well, if you're referring to the tornado/shark natural disaster portrayed in the movie, my answer would be: I don't really know.  I'm not sure I understand all the science and meteorology behind it.

But if you're referring to the Twitter phenomenon which will now and forevermore be known as a Sharknado, my answer would be:  It already has.

"And I've given up hope on the afternoon soaps and a bottle of cold brew / Is it any wonder I'm not crazy? / Is it any wonder I'm sane at all?"

Today's hurdles, tomorrow's "goals"

So what does Bone do all day?

Perhaps this is a question you've found yourself asking before.  Perhaps it is even a question I have found myself asking before, when several hours seemed to have disappeared with not a trace of anything tangible to show for them.

Today, we begin to answer that question. For today, Google unveiled it's latest interactive doodle: the hurdles.  Go ahead, click over and play for an hour or so.  This post will still be right here when you get back.  It's not like I'm gonna blog again tomorrow or anything.

So I played Google hurdles today.  And -- and this is an important "and," for without it this post would be over now -- I tweeted about it.  (Don't worry, I'm still watching the Olympics, but occasionally I need a break.  I mean, there's only so many hours of Greco-Roman Wrestling a man can watch.)

I believe my day can most accurately and succinctly be summed up in these 140-characters-or-less bits of social media goodness.  Therefore, with apologies to J. Adamthwaite and anyone else who follows me on the Twitter and may have already had the misfortune of reading these once, I present today's tweets:

/begin Twitter log
Oh I'm gonna be doing this Google hurdle thing all day now.

Just shaved 3 seconds off my hurdles time! That's gotta be virtually unheard of in Google-ympics, right?

I don't wanna work. I just wanna play Google hurdles all day.

Someone should video me playing this. Teeth clenched, face in some sort of odd contortion. Don't tell me this isn't a real sport.

My guy is slow! Where's the option to select the Princess from Super Mario 2? She could float right over these hurdles.

I kept getting tripped up by the first hurdle for the longest! That'll ruin your whole day. I mean, race. (I meant day.)

11.3 seconds! They need some Easter Eggs on here, like hurdle invincibility, or "break twelve seconds and unlock the Usain Bolt character."

Amazing stat: Every 2.5 seconds today, someone has tweeted about #GoogleDoodle... And that someone is me.

Remember the Laff-A-Lympics?  I loved that!  The something Yogis, the Really Rottens, and... can't remember the other team.

FYI, I'm using both index fingers to run, and my left pinkie to jump. Requires extraordinary index-pinkie coordination.

Get your arms up! You run like you're about to do the vault.

I think I would do better if there were music playing like they have in gymnastics.  Maybe "St. Elmo's Fire." Or "Ride Like The Wind."

11.9. Crap! And why isn't Google showing the Olympic and world records in the bottom left corner while I run?

Oh!  The Scooby Doobies!  Duh.  #LaffALympics

Could one say that I am easily entertained? I think at this point it's at least conceivable.

Why do people keep walking in?!! You think Missy Franklin's boss keeps coming into the pool place every five minutes while she's practicing?

This requires like twelve seconds of absolute concentration and focus. Which is the longest I've focused on any one thing in five years.

11.3! BOOM! #GoogleDoodle OK, my hand is cramping. Seriously. #athleteproblems

Tomorrow on the Keyboard Olympics: Modern Pentathlon. YESSSSS!!! I'd better do some finger limbering exercises tonight.

11.0! OK, I think I'm done. Thanks to all of you who did not unfollow me. Today, and always.
/end Twitter log

And that's what Bone does all day.  At least for today.  And no, I'm not gonna spend all day tomorrow again playing the hurdles. Don't be silly.  Give me a little credit, would you?

There's a new doodle tomorrow: Basketball!

I'm gonna spend all day playing that.

"It is the night / My body's weak / I'm on the run / No time for sleep / I've to ride / Ride like the wind / To be free again..."

Has the whole world gone crazy, or is it just me?

I'm not one to follow the news too closely.  Watching NBC Nightly News about once every three months is usually plenty to keep me depressed for a year.

But it's nearly impossible to have not seen something about Penn State and Aurora, Colorado, the past few days.

One channel was showing some Penn State students yesterday as they reacted to the sanctions being levied against the school by the NCAA.  Their faces were aghast.  I couldn't help but wonder had they been as heartsick about the horrific allegations (and eventually conviction on 45 counts) of child sex abuse by assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky.  And were they bothered at all that their beloved head football coach, Joe Paterno, was implicated in concealing the allegations for years?  I hope so.

Twitter was overrun yesterday with the same thing:  How dare the NCAA punish Penn State!  What does this mean for the Penn State football program?  Those poor football players!  One deeply disturbed person (immediately unfollowed by me) was already making jokes about the situation. 

But I think the moment that stands out most to me came last week when throngs of people gathered around Paterno's statue to show their support for the coach and voice their opposition to the possibility of the statue being taken down.

Really?

Look, I get it.  No one is a more rabid football fan than I.  Few things are more important to me than football.  But the few that are, are pretty damn important.

KIDS. WERE. MOLESTED.  And you're out there staging an all-night vigil -- NOT for the victims, mind you -- but for some statue?

I was glad they eventually decided to remove the statue, because all I could think about was the victims and their families turning on the TV every day, and the slap-in-the-face it must have been seeing those people out there demonstrating.

Then there's the Colorado shooting.  And again, I use Twitter for my example.  One of the people I follow has posted no fewer than four pro-gun messages in the wake of this tragedy.

I'm sure you know the ones I'm talking about:  "Guns don't kill people. People kill people."  And "If the people in that theater had all been armed, this wouldn't have happened."  Like I'm sure a hundred people all firing guns in a dark theater would have turned out real well.

And look, I know there are just as many anti-gun messages out there.  This is not at all intended to support one side of the issue or the other. 

It's just... people died.  And the initial reaction of some is to use the occasion to push their personal agenda?  I just want to ask them, what if that was your son or daughter, or brother or sister?  Would you still be rushing to turn this into a political issue?

When did the world become so desensitized?  Or maybe it's always been that way, and the internet just gives those people a voice now.  Or maybe it's just me.  Am I the one that's crazy?

I just feel like the victims in both of these tragedies-too-terrible-for-words almost become an afterthought sometimes. 

Whatever happened to mourning the dead?

Can't we simply be sad for awhile?  Is that still OK?

"How I wanna hear the anchor man talk about a county fair / And how we cleaned up the air / How everybody learned to care..."

XXI to XVII

For those of you who don't follow me on Twitter, we have a special treat for you today.  Seeing as I basically live-tweeted the Super Bowl yesterday, I thought I might share said tweets with you.

Think of it sort of like when the cable company offers free HBO for the weekend.  A brief glimpse into the premium side of Bone.  Or if you missed the game, think of this as the Cliff's Notes.  This is all you really need.

So sit back, pretend you're on the couch there with me as we take in the sights and sounds of Super Bowl XLVI.  Or I'll even let you sit on my Bama beanbag if you want.  And I hope you brought a friend.  Otherwise, there could be some weird tension if it's just the two of us.

(Note: I dozed off a couple hours before kickoff.)

/Begin Twitter log
I just dreamt I was chewing like twenty pieces of gum -- Wrigley's, Spearmint and Doublemint. #nap #subconscious

Aaaaand I missed Kelly Clarkson.

Why don't they keep score with #RomanNumerals? OK, I will. That's IX to... Wait, what's zero in Rome?

Apparently, there is no Roman Numeral for zero.  #IGuessThatsWhy

Officially abandoning my quest to elliptical the whole first half. Can't hear the commercials.

IX to III. Ah, much better.

My Mom, the other day: "Tom Brady's nearly too pretty to be a football player." What's an appropriate response to that? "Uh, yes, he is?"

Speed dating! Bahaha.

There's way too much football game in between these commercials.

X to IX. VIII seconds left in the half.

What's Madonna gonna sing?  I'm hoping for "Papa Don't Preach."

Oh!  That was a G.I. Joe movie trailer.  I thought it was gonna be a kickin' Mountain Dew commercial when it started out.

Bueller!!!! FTW!

I sure hope everybody's at a Super Bowl party.  Else I'm probably losing lots of followers tonight.

Off night for Budweiser. Wow.

Collinsworth: "You get an offsides, and then that 3rd and 8 turns into 3rd and 2." Evidently they're giving 6 yards for offsides now.

Hyundai tonight.#winning

Also loved the Seinfeld commercial. Betcha never could've guessed that.

And then there's the ads that make me never want to buy a product from that company.  Ever. #Samsung

And your Roman Numeral final tally: XXI to XVII
/End Twitter log


If you would like to join me on Twitter -- and after that, well how could you not -- just leave your Twitter handle in the comments and I'll follow you.  But hurry, I plan to cut it off at a thousand followers.  (For those who are curious, I currently have 22.)

If you would like to subscribe to HBO, contact your cable or satellite provider.  Then you can DVR Curb Your Enthusiasm and invite Bone over for a TV night.

I know, BYOB... Bring your own beanbag.

"Papa don't preach, I'm in trouble deep.  Papa don't preach, I've been losing sleep..."

Rockin' Robin

From the get-go, Twitter sounded like a verb I may have tried doing to a girl once when I was nineteen mistakenly thinking she would enjoy it. I never really saw the point. Of Twittering, that is.

Who wants to read someone else's every waking thought of every single day? Well, apparently 2,687,219 people, if the someone else is Snooki.

Also, I have always been afraid of saying something in cyberspace that could come back to haunt me and any future political career I may have. Not that I'm pursuing one, but you never know. And so I continued to resist Twitter.

Besides, I'm not what you would call a social media socialite. I post a status update on Facebook maybe once a month -- albeit often an incredibly witty one, if only in my own mind.

Figuring that if I'm already a bad Facebooker, there's no way I would be a good Twitterer, I took the only logical next step: Throwing caution to the wind as it pertains to any future political aspirations, I joined Twitter.

That's right, I am now one who Twitters. Or as the kids say, Tweets. Whatever you call it, suffice it to say, I am in that Twitting arena.

While that may not seem like much to you, it's kind of a big deal to me. You see, if things continue to progress, I will soon become the first person in my family to use a hashtag. Sorry, sometimes I get choked up talking about it.

One of my first impressions of Twittering has been how difficult it is to keep Tweets to the predesignated limit of 140 characters or less. To date, I have Twitted eight times in five days. But I've probably typed at least that many others that were well over the limit. To somewhat remedy this, I've decided that any over-the-limit Tweets which cannot be shortened without losing the integrity of the original thought will be filed away under possible future Facebook statuses. Or stati, as I like to pretend the plural of status is.

Meanwhile, one of the unforeseen benefits of Twittering is that it really cuts down on the time you need to spend conversing with the other humans. I mean, if you Tweet the highlights of your day along with most every thought you have, what's left to say?

Answer? Not a lot.

You just wind up having lots of conversations like this:

Bone: "Hey, did I tell you I finally popped my enormous back pimple?"
Twitter friend: "Yeah, I saw you Tweeted about it."
Bone: "Oh.... well, I'll see you later then."

Needless to say, that's just an example of what a conversation might entail. I haven't had a back pimple in months! Still, there's an indescribable peace that comes when you realize you don't have anything left to say. Or maybe that's just me.

In closing, I would say that Twitting has been better than I anticipated. And while I'm just getting started, I fully expect that after this post my number of followers will at least double. From four to eight.

As for what comes next for me, it's hard to say. Perhaps I'll finally break down and get that DVR.

I feel like I'm rushing headlong into 2008.

"Even on a slow day, I could have a three way, chat with two women at one time. I'm so much cooler online..."

The time I boycotted ESPN (for one day)

You know that girl you keep breaking up with? At first, you start to miss her and do anything to get her back. So she takes you back, once maybe twice, but it's never quite the same. Then after a couple of times, you just don't care anymore. The very sight of her makes you nauseous. Her voice makes you want to jab a toothpick into your pupil and see what oozes out. You start to avoid her calls hoping she'll eventually fade out of your life completely. You can't believe you ever thought you loved her in the first place.

Brett Favre is that girl.

Let me tell you a little story. Every day of my life since we first got ESPN on our cable, circa 1981, I have done three things: breathe, sleep, and watch ESPN. (Shower? No, I've skipped a lazy Saturday here and there. Sorry, but it's true. Eat? Nope. See "stomach virus of 2007.")

Today, I can no longer say that. Because yesterday, I boycotted ESPN.

Why? Because I'm sick of hearing about Brett Favre. And I knew that was all they would be talking about. Oh yes, if Favre stubs his toe, ESPN has a reporter at the scene. Brett got a bad peach today at Joe's fruit stand? They're on it. Brett woke up feeling all emotional this morning? It's their top story.

You know what I wish? You know how when you're watching a game and some spirited (and possibly nude) fan runs onto the field, they never show the fan on camera so as not to give them the attention they so crave? I wish they would do that to Favre. Oh, you're coming back? You're not coming back? You're working out shirtless at some high school in Mississippi? We. Don't. Care.

Of course, that'll never happen. Which is why I was reduced last night to watching Nutella commercials, reruns of Married...With Children, and the episode of South Park where Cartman starts a christian rock band. ("It worked for Creed.") Thank goodness I had the forethought to only impose a one-day boycott.

Maybe if my afternoons didn't revolve around ESPN, this wouldn't even be an issue. Oh great, now I'm over-analyzing my own empty life. All because Mister Center-Of-The-Universe can't make up his ever-lovin' mind.

And it's not like I'm not sympathetic to indecisiveness. Au contraire. Heck, this morning I spent five minutes trying to decide whether I should wear this shirt or my other clean shirt. But this has gotten ridiculous. I don't need a play-by-play of every single thought and inclination Brett Favre has and every little thing he does.

That's why there's Twitter.

"Set me free, why don't you, babe? Get out my life, why don't you, babe? Cause you don't really love me. You just keep me hangin' on..."