Monthly Archives: July 2014

July 31, 2014 · 11:15 pm

Dad Jokes

A dad joke is a joke that your dad would tell you. They are the corniest jokes of all time. You might say, “My nose is running,” and your dad will respond with “Well, then you better go catch it!” You might say, “I’m hungry,” and he will respond with “Hi Hungry, I’m Dad!” They aren’t funny and they make you groan, but you learn to appreciate them. You might even start to use them and quote him. That’s how you know that you’re getting older. Dad jokes will never impress anyone much. You could never have a standup comedy career using them. But you can never be a dad unless you tell them. It’s required.

Critically Rated at 12/17

Written, Rated, and Reviewed by Brendan H. Young

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July 31, 2014 · 11:14 pm

Bee Sting

A bee sting is when you place a rubber band directly over your victim, stretch it out, and let it snap on to their bare skin. It hurts. It stings. Like a bee sting. Hence the name. Bee sting. It makes sense. Just don’t think about it too hard or your brain will start to hurt. A bee sting is like snapping a towel at your friend. You don’t do it to win a fight. You’re not trying to hurt them. You’re simply trying to cause them some minor discomfort and get a cheap laugh out of it. Doing a bee sting will inevitably lead to retribution because they will want to get you back and they have the right to do so. They deserve revenge, especially if it was unprovoked and it usually is. Don’t dish it out if you can’t handle it in return. If it seems childish, it’s because it is.

Critically Rated at 9/17

Written, Rated, and Reviewed by Brendan H. Young

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July 30, 2014 · 9:42 pm

Don’t Feed the Pigeons

There’s a guy I work with that has a nasty habit of talking your ear off. He likes to dominate the discussion, especially when he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. If you give him an opening he will start talking loudly and cluelessly for at least five minutes before you find a way to escape the conversation. You literally have to smile at him and start backing out of the room. A few of my coworkers still ask him follow-up questions so as not to seem rude. To which I say don’t feed the pigeons. Engaging him in conversation only encourages him to keep coming back to start new pointless conversations with other unfortunate victims. I’m not trying to be a dick, I just don’t have the patience to deal with nincompoops. On a side note, this is the first time I’ve used the word nincompoop in any of its forms on my blog.

Critically Rated at 6/17

Written, Rated, and Reviewed by Brendan H. Young

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July 30, 2014 · 9:40 pm

Buying Cans of Beer at the Bar

I was at the bar the other day and couldn’t help but notice when a bunch of bros walked in and ordered six cans of Pabst Blue Ribbon. I’m not a big fan of PBR but I don’t shit on it, but I still couldn’t figure out why you would go to a bar and essentially order a six pack of a cheap domestic that you can get at the store for a quarter of the cost. In fact I don’t know why anybody would buy cans of beer at a bar. Get something on tap or at least get a bottle of something decent. Live a little. Canned domestics have no place in a decent bar. I can’t respect you if you order a can of Budweiser from a bartender. The bartender won’t respect you either.

Critically Rated at 4/17

Written, Rated, and Reviewed by Brendan H. Young

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July 28, 2014 · 11:14 pm

Coming Home After a Trip

Coming home after a trip is always weird. It feels like you cheated at life. It’s not normal to wake up in one place and fall asleep on the other side of the planet. You wake up in a hotel room a thousand miles away from home, go on a plane for a few hours, and end up sleeping in your own bed under your own roof at night. You feel tired, groggy, and out of it, but you’re home so you can’t complain. Coming home after a trip is a relatively new thing. Traveling used to take a long time. It took months to traverse the Oregon Trail. Now you can travel from San Francisco to Paris in under twelve hours. It feels good to come home, but you’re too lazy to unpack so just wait until its time to go on your next trip or it is laundry day. Delay the inevitable for as long as you can. Just make sure you have clean underwear.

Critically Rated at 9/17

Written, Rated, and Reviewed by Brendan H. Young

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July 28, 2014 · 11:13 pm

Stone Enjoy By 08.16.14

Stone Brewing Co.’s Enjoy By series is one of my favorite line of beers. Every couple of months they release a new beer that you must consume by a certain date, in this case you must enjoy it by the August 16th, 2014. It’s a fresh Double IPA with lots of citrus and floral hops and a nice malty backbone. It’s a big boy beer. You have to appreciate beers with high IBUs and you won’t enjoy this brew if you don’t know what IBU stands for. It has a 9.4% ABV so you only need one or two to start having a good time. It’s pretty drinkable for a heavy beer. I’ve always been a fan of Stone Brewing and limited releases. They seem to have hit gold with Enjoy By. Try it today and see what all the fuss is about.

Critically Rated at 14/17

Written, Rated, and Reviewed by Brendan H. Young

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July 27, 2014 · 4:42 pm

Lifting Up the Toilet Seat with the Your Shoe

You’re out on the town when you get the urge to pee. You find a public bathroom to use but all the urinals are taken so you find an open stall. The seat is down and you want to put it up because you don’t want to pee on the seat, but you don’t want to touch the seat. You could use a piece of toilet paper to lift it, but you don’t want to waste paper. That’s when you resort to lifting up the toilet seat with your shoe. It’s a balancing act. It takes some skill. You want to make the minimal amount of contact with the seat as possible, and you want to get the job done as fast as possible because, shit, you really have to pee. Lifting up the toilet seat with your shoe brings you one step closer to sweet relief. Once you’ve finished going you can prove your dexterity by flushing the toilet with your shoe too.

Critically Rated at 12/17

Written, Rated, and Reviewed by Brendan H. Young

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July 27, 2014 · 4:40 pm

Genious

As a Grammar Nazi, I love correcting people’s mistakes. Misused commas, unnessesary apostrophes, misspellings… you name it, I notice it and I’ll call you out on it. Unless you misspell genius and write out genious. I’m not sure if that a paradox or irony, but I know that I will never correct you. It’s too awesome to correct. The sad thing is that this happens far more than it should and I can’t explain why. If you type out genious on your phone or computer, it either gets autocorrected or you get that red squiggle line under it. It’s obvious that you didn’t spell it right. But you still go forth and publish it on social media so that other people can see how dumb you are. It’s a fast and easy way to make yourself look like a dumbass.

Critically Rated at 13/17

Written, Rated, and Reviewed by Brendan H. Young

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July 24, 2014 · 2:16 pm

Platform Shoes at Disneyland

A few years ago I went to Disneyland with some friends. We were waiting in line for Splash Mountain. That line takes a while so we started to mingle with the other people around us, including the family with three young kids behind us. They were your standard Disneyland tourist family. There was mom and dad with two boys and a girl. The girl was the oldest and was probably nine years old, the middle boy was about seven, and the youngest boy was four years old. The youngest kid was tiny, but he was able to stand in line because he met the ride’s height requirement by a fraction of an inch thanks in part to his pair of platform shoes. He looked like he was wearing stilts. Those platform shoes gave him an extra two and a half inches. I had to compliment the parents on their ingenuity. They told me that the shoes were hand-me-downs and that their other kids had worn them previously. They told me that platform shoes were the only way to do Disneyland with kids. I told them I would pass on their words of wisdom. Today I finally have. You’re welcome.

Critically Rated at 14/17

Written, Rated, and Reviewed by Brendan H. Young

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July 24, 2014 · 2:14 pm

Bloody Knuckles

Bloody knuckles is a game where two players take turns punching each other on the knuckles until somebody gives up or someone makes you stop playing. It’s most often played by bored high school kids and drunk assholes at the bar. If you ever wake up with your hand hurting after a night of drinking, you were probably one of those drunk assholes playing it at the bar. It’s a game of machismo, a casual contest of strength that you play with your friends like arm wrestling or slap boxing. You’re not trying to hurt the other person necessarily, you’re simply trying to win and getting hurt is sometimes an unfortunate byproduct. Pain is a good thing though. That’s why people play games like bloody knuckles. It’s always entertaining watching people get hurt.

Critically Rated at 13/17

Written, Rated, and Reviewed by Brendan H. Young

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July 23, 2014 · 2:11 pm

Colorized Old-Timey Photos

Nothing brings the past alive quite like colorized old-timey photos. You can gaze upon the daguerreotype of a forgotten Civil War soldier whose name has been lost to history, but you have evidence that he existed, proof of a moment that was captured on film well over a hundred years ago. Black and white photos from the past are beautiful in their own way, but colorizing them makes them more real and more relevant to the now. We see the world in color, not in shades of gray. The black and white pictures that you saw in you high school history textbook were interesting but had no meaning to you. The fire from the Hindenburg isn’t imposing until you add a little color and see the glow from the flames. You can stare into the face of Marilyn Monroe and see exactly what the producers, directors, and screenwriters saw in her that turned her into the poster girl for Hollywood actresses. You see a few familiar landmarks but an unfamiliar skyline from your city’s early years. That has impact, that has meaning. I’m sorry if you’re colorblind, but color is the key to reality or so it seems.

Critically Rated at 14/17

Written, Rated, and Reviewed by Brendan H. Young

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July 23, 2014 · 2:09 pm

“Tequila” by The Champs

“Tequila” is one of the best instrumentals of all time. Well, it’s not really an instrumental because they say “Tequila” three times. It’s one of the easiest songs to karaoke to. It was first recorded by The Champs and has gone on to appear in many memorable movies and TV shows. You hear it in Pee-wee’s Big Adventure, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, The Sandlot, Happy Days, and to a lesser extent Two and a Half Men. I remember I went to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico with my family when I was sixteen and we went to a restaurant for dinner. There was a mariachi band walking around taking requests. I requested “Tequila” and they played it on the spot. If choosing a song is a competition, I won that shit because all the other customers got in on it. We turned the restaurant into a party for a couple of minutes. The song is infectious. You only need to hear it once to know it for life.

Critically Rated at 15/17

Written, Rated, and Reviewed by Brendan H. Young

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July 22, 2014 · 2:06 pm

The Carlton Dance

The Carlton Dance is a fixture on The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. It happens when Carlton Banks (played by Alfonso Robeiro) starts wildly flailing to Tom Jones’ “It’s Not Unusual.” His spastic motions ensure a laugh every time. The beauty of the Carlton Dance is that anybody can do it. It looks bad but it’s supposed to look bad so it’s ok to do it. And it’s contagious. Seriously. The next time you hear “It’s Not Unusual” (which happens fairly often if you pay attention), be sure to bust out in the Carlton Dance and start an impromptu dance party. You won’t be disappointed.

Critically Rated at 14/17

Written, Rated, and Reviewed by Brendan H. Young

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July 22, 2014 · 2:03 pm

Beer Goggles

I met a hot bartender the other night. At least I thought that I did. Beer goggles can really fuck with a person’s judgment. Beer goggles are a very real phenomenon. The more you drink, the more symmetrical a person’s face appears, and they become more attractive. It’s science, it’s a fact, and the results can be devastating. So anyway, about that supposedly hot bartender… she was blonde, she had a nice body, she was laughing at my lame jokes and giving me enough attention that I felt compelled to tip her twenty bucks and give her my number. I waited a few days and went back to see if she was working. She was, but she definitely didn’t look like I remembered. I wouldn’t say that she was ugly, but she wasn’t the stunner I thought she was when I was a few drinks in. It was disappointing to say the least. I had to drink a couple until she got hot again. It’s a vicious cycle.

Critically Rated at 5/17

Written, Rated, and Reviewed by Brendan H. Young

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July 21, 2014 · 2:31 pm

Missing Days

I’ve been slacking. I don’t know if anybody’s been noticing or if they even care, but I’ve been skipping blog posts and missing days. I try to publish two a day, but that stopped when I went up to Alaska and had to work twenty-five hours a day, eight days a weeks. Then I came back home and still haven’t found my groove again. Writing isn’t hard, it’s finding the time to write about things that is hard. There have been quite a few days where I don’t have a minute to myself, much less twenty minutes to blog about something. But for whatever reason, my stats haven’t gone down. My traffic seems to be increasing on the days where I don’t publish anything. They say less is more but nothing at all seems to work the best. Go figure.

Critically Rated at 10/17

Written, Rated, and Reviewed by Brendan H. Young

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July 21, 2014 · 1:59 pm

A Day That Never Ends

Yesterday was an epic day. It was one of those days that stretches on and on and you do so many random things that it doesn’t seem like you did them all in the same day. It was like a real life version of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. I hung out with some amazing friends, we did a lot of amazing things, and we somehow managed to cram it all into a twenty-four hour period. We started the day by meeting at McDonald’s and grabbing a quick bite to eat before going to Golden Gate Park to participate in the AIDS Walk. We walked for a few miles and helped make the world a better place. Then we decided to get some bottles of champagne and have mimosas on the beach. We deserved it. We went to the grocery store and bought some booze and juice, plus a few other essentials like sandwiches, chips and dip, and some bubbles. You gotta have bubbles. We marched out to the beach and staked out a good log to sit on while we munched our munchies and drank our drinks. We talked and we laughed and we people watched. We saw a group of guys flying kites in formation, doing all kinds of synchronized tricks like they were the Blue Angels of the kite world.

We finished our four bottles of champagne in record time and decided to keep the party going. We went back to the grocery store to reload on booze and chips, but then we decided to find a cool spot in the park rather than go back to the beach. We took a few overlooked paths before finding a cool spot with rocks to lay on and trees to climb. I cracked a brew, shimmied up a tree, and posted up there for a few hours. There was a restaurant nearby that had outdoor seating and it was out of sight but still close enough that we could hear their music blasting. Luckily their music was an actual band that played classic rock songs from the ‘50s and ‘60s. We were essentially listening in on a live concert. We could have stayed there forever, but the music eventually ended, the sun went down, and it started to get cold.

At that point we said fuck it, went to the store and got more booze, and then went to our friend’s house to hang out. We had more drinks, more laughs, and we listened to gangster rap and released our inner thugs. At one point I left to have dinner at a Mexican restaurant, but I came back to the house right after. We partied some more, drank some more, and laughed some more. Did I mention the drinking and the laughing? Because that was the theme of the day. Midnight came and went, and things were going great until someone mentioned that it was 1:30 a.m. and we still had time to go to the bar to make last call. You can’t survive the whole day and suddenly become a party pooper, so I reluctantly went for one last drink. I didn’t even order my own, I just sipped from my friend’s beer.

I wish I could say that I was responsible and went home after the bar closed, but we went back to my friend’s house for a little bit longer. It was somewhere around 2:30 or 3:00 that I finally threw in the towel and went home. I got home and fell into my bed and slept like a rock until I got up, checked Facebook and saw all the pictures and comments from the day before, and decided my day was awesome enough to Critically Rate it. So that’s what I did, and now I’m done. The best days in life are the spontaneous ones, the ones that never end. I knew that yesterday was special early on. I knew that I would remember it forever. I made sure to live in the moment and I’m a little sad that the moment’s already passed. And now I can’t wait for my next epic day.

Critically Rated at 16/17

Written, Rated, and Reviewed by Brendan H. Young

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July 18, 2014 · 11:41 pm

Sunglasses at Night

There’s a timeless song by Corey Hart that contains the lyrics “I wear my sunglasses at night, So I can, So I can.” Nobody knows what he’s referring to and nobody wants to. They just want to sing along and also rock some shades. Wearing sunglasses at night makes you feel like a badass because you aren’t supposed to wear them at night. Half of the pictures I took of my group in Alaska were of us wearing our sunglasses at night because it never got dark and you actually needed to wear them. I wear my sunglasses at night because they are practical doesn’t have quite the same ring to it, but it’s still a valid statement in the 907. That’s the area code for Alaska. The whole state has one area code. The biggest state in the United States has only one area code. How quaint.

Critically Rated at 12/17

Written, Rated, and Reviewed by Brendan H. Young

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