Halloween Costumes Enter The Age of Television

So today for your Monday Morning Funny, we continue with the parade of bad Ben Cooper kiddie Halloween costumes.

When some of us were kids, sitting around our newfangled COLOR TV sets, we were treated to a cornucopia of family programming such as The Brady Bunch, Gillian’s Island, Adam-12, Emergency and Dragnet. There was also Love American Style (truer than the red, white and blue), Laugh-In and Happy Days. Here are a few blasts from the past –

Suicide may be painless but the changes this costume brings are too many to count but I’ll give it a go. The drawn on lapels, the painted on buttons and belt, the standard name across your chest so people know for sure who you are and the slick plastic jumpsuit. The mask is also terrifying in a dead corpse way and doesn’t convey the hard-working, army doctor feel.

What is wrong with just going to the army/navy store, buying some Army greens and putting a red cross on them? OR if you really want that M*A*S*H feel, pair those with a bathrobe, cowboy hat and a martini glass for that dashing Hawkeye Pierce look.

Moving on to the land of WTF, I give you The Love Boat, Exciting and New! Oh yes, come aboard, we’ve been expecting you!

Ladies and Gentlemen, I present to you – Captain Stubing! The happiest Captain ever to sail the Caribbean with a bunch of horny and angst filled passengers. Oh and that wacky crew! Who could forget perky Julie the Cruise Director, Issac the wise-cracking, hip bartender (Look at how progressive we are! We have a black bartender to liven up our white crew! It’s almost like The Mod Squad!), Doc the ship’s doctor who we know is smart because he wears glasses and of course Gopher who grew up to be a Congressman!

The thing that’s most terrifying about this costume, aside from the slightly creepy pedophile Uncle mask is the jumpsuit itself. A life saver? Really? You put a giant, round life-saver on the front of this costume with a big picture of the whole cast? I suppose since the creepy mask has the hat on, people will be able to pick your character out of the handy line-up you’ve provided them. GAK!!!

Again, white pants, white shirt, white sailing hat, black shoes – you are done. What is so hard?

Next time? A potpourri of horror from films, to music groups to puzzles. Yeah, the strangeness continues.

Attack of the 100 Foot Yachts, the 1% And The Entitled Mega-Rich

In case you have been living under a rock, the America’s Cup is coming to San Francisco in 2013. What is the America’s Cup? Is it a sport? Yes. Is it Hockey? No, that’s the Stanley Cup. It’s sailing. Large boats sail about and it’s a race of sorts. Honestly I have no idea of any of the particulars past that. I don’t have a membership at the yacht club, I don’t summer at “The Vineyard” and have usually get sick on a boat.

However, this race is a huge deal for our city, will bring in a ton of tourists and a large percentage of wealthy yacht enthusiasts for this event. That’s good. Money is good. I’m all for visitors spending money, especially having the 1% here dropping a chunk of change, bits of caviar and small pocket dogs. What I’m not for is trashing our waterways to accommodate the needs of the very, very few.

What am I talking about? I’m talking about the 1% and their yachts. Now these aren’t just regular people with a butt load of dough and a nice boat. These are the uber-wealthy that are planning to bring yachts a little smaller than a cruise ship to San Francisco Bay and need a place to park it. We are talking a boat about 180 – 260 feet long and four stories tall.

The organizers of this event want to park two dozen super yachts along Rincon Park. The problem?
1) These yachts are so tall, they would block the view for all the rest of the people (residents and visitors alike). Since these boats are way too wide for the regular marina they would be docked past the Ferry Building, creating a fantastic view of the Bay and the race for the billionaires on board but a large, white wall for the rest of us.

But wait, there’s more….

2) The agreement brokered between the city and the America’s Cup Event Authority gives them the right to dredge if the yachts are too large to dock (which they are) and create a recreational marina.

If the agreement isn’t tweaked what this would do is actually take a stretch of open lawn and waterway and turn it into a marina for future large yachts, greatly impacting the access and enjoyment the residents and visitors now enjoy.

Hey, I’m all for pumping money into the economy but it should be tempered with an eye to the consequences. Should a prime viewing spot for the race be the exclusive property of two dozen yacht owners just because they have more money than God and a boat the size of a building? Should the citizens and future visitors of our city have to surrender a lovely park and water view for the docking convenience of a select few who don’t want to take their boats to the Marin side of the bay?

I think there should be a way to be good hosts and good stewards at the same time. There have to be other places to park these mega yachts that won’t permanently change the look of our bay side parks. After all, the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.. or the 1%.

Ben Cooper Meets Aquaman

Ladies and Gentlemen, let me introduce you to Aquaman, founding member of the Justice League and the Prince of Atlantis. He can swim, breathe underwater, communicate telepathically with fish and is the one member of the Justice League that I would bet bats for the other team.

I admit I had a bit of a crush on Aquaman when I was seven. He had that swoopy hair, the tight outfit and he hung out with dolphins. Chicks dig dolphins. Just sayin’. Now my childhood fantasies of a seashell marriage under the sea with an alleged bi-sexual, trans-species hunk has been destroyed with this cheap and cheezy costume. Just as a note for the distant future to all the little boys out there. You will NOT get laid in this outfit. It isn’t chick bait, it’s just creepy.

As creepy as this little kid with his Frankenstein’s Monster meets the creepy Stephen King Clown from It costume. Creepy Frankenstein clown – that’s what the picture on his chest says to me! “Yeah F-you Ben Cooper and your freaky lame costumes. I will never get laid in the future because of you and your candy sucks!”

Asshats Abound In San Francisco And Two Try To Run Me Down As Well

Whack-A-Doodle Wednesday is back! After over a month of “outdoor theatre performance eating my brain” I have returned. Granted, I am parceling out my time between writing a first draft of my second humor novel but I’m determined to at least stop in her twice a week at least.

The news is full of the disaffected nowadays. Occupy Wall Street, Occupy San Francisco, Occupy Winchell’s Donuts, the list goes on. My heart goes out to them. The state of our Union is failing. I am all for earning money through hard work. Believe me! I would LOVE to work hard and have a beautiful house in Newport Beach. It took me SEVEN YEARS just to find full-time work. I was not proud, I was not uneducated, I had experience. I was willing to do whatever would pay me money though I stopped short of selling crack to school children. I will admit there were times when that was looking pretty damned attractive but I fought the urge to become a criminal.

I understand the frustration of seeing uber-wealthy people and corporations take the money of the middle-class (after screwing us out of our life savings) and then screwing us again. It would be humorous if it wasn’t so sad and pathetic. Will we ever learn?

So what I have learned from this? I’ve learned that a great many people don’t live in San Francisco or Los Angeles or Reno. They live in the State of Me. They exist in a deluded state of entitlement that puzzles and pisses me off. Rules are for other people. They don’t apply to them.

Case in point, the other day I was almost killed twice in a ten-hour period by self-entitled asshats.

I get into the office early, I’m talking up at 4:45 or 5am and in the office at 6:45am. This is what I like to call the “butt crack of dawn”. It is still dark at this time of year. I was crossing the street to my office at 2nd Avenue and Harrison. The light was green and I was in the cross walk. A pickup truck comes around the corner nearly hitting me then has the nerve to stop and bitch at ME for being in the cross walk when he wanted to turn. Evidently I was supposed to stop for HIM.

Note for any future asshats who want to pull this shit, don’t get into this kind of idiocy with me at oh butt thirty when I haven’t had my grande, non-fat, no water Chai tea latte! I yelled at him to keep on driving, pedestrians have the right of way and the light is green or is he too stupid to figure that out. He then yells that I need to move, I tell him hitting me will move him to a jail cell where I would make it my life’s mission to make sure he was sold to the con with the most cheese sandwiches. He then drives off.

Cut to 4pm. Same day, same corner. SAME DAMN CORNER only this time it’s a woman in a brand new Mercedes who comes flying around the corner literally 12 inches from hitting me. Again, I’m in the cross walk with a green light. I lose it. I took down, see a small rock and toss it at the clueless bimb in the new Benz. Yes, I hit her car. Did it dent it? I have no idea. I’m sure it didn’t. It wasn’t much of a rock. Maybe it nicked her paint job.

The real question is how much more damage would she have done to me if I was walking just a touch faster when she barreled around the corner, talking (non-hands free) on her cell phone and paying zero attention to the road.

Yes, I am surrounded by self-entitled asshats. I can only hope that majority of us sane people re-assert ourselves and work to take our lives back. It is better than petty violence though I admit, hitting that car did feel good.