The Angry Czeck

Five years I’ve been pounding out The Year Under Bitter Scrutiny, and I’ve spent the most time on this one. It won’t be any better than the others I’ve hacked out. In fact, I’m tempted to say that this year’s Year Under Bitter Scrutiny is the worst, but the bar is set very low and it’s difficult to slip beneath it.

Not that 2009 wasn’t without its golden poop nuggets. Quite frankly, Ragers, we were treated to all kinds of goofy shit in 2009. This year, we put a black man in the Oval Office – who later hosted a Beer Summit for two men who probably should have settled their differences on Jerry Springer. The Governor of South Carolina took a hiking trip on the Appalachian Trail and somehow ended up in Argentina banging some broad that wasn’t his wife.

This Really Did Happen in 2009!

The Nation’s nuts exposed themselves during health care reform “town hall meetings.” A child rapist was arrested after 30 years on the run, and naturally Hollywood responded with a petition for his release. Michael Jackson – another alleged child molester – died mysteriously and of course it was the best thing that happened to his career in years. Also joining the ranks of the departed: Pontiac and Saab.

The taxpayers bailed out banks, the auto industry and Wall-Street while absorbing Jimmy Carter-like unemployment numbers. We watched with jaws agape as the Republican party totally imploded by becoming an association comprised chiefly of whiners, liars, and fear-mongers. By the end of the year, Tiger Woods was linked to 14 mistresses, the guy who hosted George Michael’s Sports Machine was dead, and I’m still astonished by how many people watch Lie to Me. (Come on! It’s an entire show based on somebody saying, “Look! He blinked! He’s lying!“)

On an emotional and socially degrading level, 2009 was an up-and-down year.

Trending Up: Morons
It’s safe to say that 2009 was The Year of the Moron. Impressively, the achievement of one moron cannot eclipse the achievements of several others. That’s testimony to the strength of this year’s crop of morons.

The list of contributors is tremendous: Dad of Balloon Boy, Joe “You Lie” Wilson, the quotable Sarah Palin, the Birthers, The Town Hall criers, Kayne West, John Edwards, Blagovich and his Hair, the entire state of South Carolina, the blubbering Glenn Beck, Tiger Woods.

We’re Americans! Not Smarticans!

A man who exchanged a super-model for a harem of unappetizing skanks, it would be easy to name Tiger Woods as “AC’s Moron of the Year™”. But I think I’m going to award it to Alex Rodriguez instead. Not because he was busted for steroid use (all baseball players to that). But because he was busted for owning not one, but two oil-painting portraits of himself likened to a centaur. Come on, A-Rod! One is good enough, and that should be hidden by a secret panel over the fireplace. Like mine.

Furious Quote of the Year
“It is as throughout all Alaska that big wild good life teeming along the road that is north to the future.” Sarah Palin, seemingly saying “adios” to Alaska.

Trending Down: Stardom
This year, I was asked to appear on Blake Rutherford‘s radio show, Arkansas Sunday Edition.

I work with Rutherford, so this is how the invitation happened: “Hey, Czeck, you should be on my radio show. We got to get you on. How about Sunday?”

Sure! What Southerners secretly demand is the viewpoint of a transplanted Yankee with a thin voice and very little knowledge (or affinity for) University of Arkansas sports. But the blog wasn’t exactly garnering Oprah viewership numbers, so I had nothing to lose but my dignity. And I hadn’t used my dignity much since the mid-1990s.

As Sunday approached, I found myself a frequent visitor to Rutherford’s messy office. “What are we going to talk about?” I wanted to know. As the week progressed, the question was being asked with increasing urgency.

“Well, what do you want to talk about, Czeck?”

“I don’t know. Anything but health care.”

“You got it.”

The end of the week arrived, and no radio agenda with it. Mrs. Angry watched as I anxiously paced the floor of my secret volcano lair. “You’ll be fine,” she yawned.

Fine? My reputation was at stake, Woman! What was worse, Rutherford was billing me as one of the funniest guys on Twitter. Cup of Christ! An imbecile can craft a 140-character quip! One cannot hope to amuse an audience as sophisticated as Rutherford’s with cheeky tales of demon sex and soup diets. I need sound effects and back-up singers! This is radio, damnitt! The Arena of the Big Boys.

“Just be yourself,” suggested Mrs. Angry.

Did she even know me? Mrs. Angry hadn’t laughed at one of my jokes since 2005! I was doomed. I would be lucky if the FCC censored Rutherford’s show out of mercy.

It was ten minutes to seven and raining when I arrived to studios of 103.7 The Buzz. The parking lot was completely empty. I had been listening to the station on the drive over. The entire broadcast centered on the miracle medical applications of seaweed. The minutes ticked by, and I began to think I had arrived to the wrong radio station. That happens, right? Relieved, I was restarting the Anger Mobile when Rutherford’s vehicle splashed into the space next to me.

It was three minutes to air.

“Czecker,” muttered Rutherford miserably. It appeared that he had recklessly fished his attire from the bottom of the hamper. Where was the natty bow tie? The crisply ironed shirt? The fresh, red-cheeked shave? Rutherford’s fiance, Jessica, had also arrived. In contrast to Rutherford, neither the rain nor the early hour had dampened her electric cheer. Jessica is a frequent guest of the show. She bounced into the studio. Rutherford and I numbly followed like the Dirty Dozen.

Rutherford & Jessica demand chuckles from The Angry Czeck

“Donuts! Who wants donuts!” announced Jessica. I was pretending to be on a strict diet, so I declined. The headquarters of Arkansas Sunday Edition has the ambiance of a German U-Boat. Microphones hang from the ceiling like periscopes. The decor consisted mostly of coffee mugs and posters bearing the likeness of The Buzz’s biggest celebrity, Tommy Smith. We assembled around some kind of archaic command center. At the controls was ASE’s twenty-something producer, RJ Hawk. We shook hands, and he directed me to a microphone.

Meanwhile, Rutherford was rummaging through the latest edition of The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. “Are we going to make NFL predictions?” he asked RJ. I brightened a little. I can make football predictions! And clearly, Rutherford wasn’t any more prepared than I was. If he was winging it, I could wing it.

My fortune only increased when RJ revealed that he had been struck by lightening earlier that weekend. Radio Gold! Rutherford estimated that surviving a lightening strike equaled to twenty minutes of air time. Also, the second half of the broadcast would be devoted to Arkansas House Majority Leader Steve Harrelson, was was calling in. I wouldn’t be carrying the show after all!

“We’re on in 3…2…1…” said RJ, and I slapped the headphones over my ears.

What followed for the next two hours was some fairly forgettable radio. Rutherford and RJ made some football projections. I was asked to recount my visit to Disney World (an opportunity to recycle some old blog material). I ate a donut. I offered my views on Arkansas State University football. Later, I tried to make fun of Rutherford for attending yoga classes with Jessica, but he starred-up on me and cut that line of humor short. I did get to ask Steve Harrelson a question, though. (To my dismay, I still had to pay state taxes at the end of the year.)

When it was over, Mrs. Angry and my two boys marveled at my “performance.” I think Mrs. Angry was mostly happy that I didn’t drop an F-bomb, take off my pants, or shame the family.

Trending Up: Angry Matrimony
I called it*. Tiger Woods is blaming his seedy infidelity on addiction. It’s not that Tiger cares nothing for the vows of marriage and that he’s simply a man-whore who’ll screw any woman who’s nice to him. No. He’s got an “addictive personality.” You know what? I’m addicted to microwavable sausage biscuits. That doesn’t mean I’m going to fuck one any time soon.

Meanwhile, Mrs. Angry and I celebrated a decade of marriage in 2009. That’s ten years of Mrs. Angry listening to the same dumb jokes. Ten years of putting up with my snoring. Ten years of watching me become a fantasy football slug. Mrs. Angry’s courage is to be commended.

I met Mrs. Angry at a bar. She calls it a restaurant (or the Opera, or the Symphony), but really it was a bar. I introduced myself by doing something unique and classy: I bought her a beer (her favorite, Rolling Rock).

After that, everything went downhill. She was like the world’s greatest hockey goalie: none of my great jokes could get by her! She revealed that she was a student at UT. I asked her what she was studying.

Micro-biology? Really? You know, I don’t tell this to every one, but my pancreas is the size of a softball.

Nothing! I was throwing 100 MPH heat, and she was buzzing line drives past my head. I would have given up, but she was wearing a belly-button ring and it was driving me crazy. I had to get in! But I needed the launching codes! DENIED! DENIED!

Finally, perhaps out of pity, the future Mrs. Angry’s friend asked me what I did every Sunday night at 7:00. The answer was on my lips before I had a chance to think better of it.

“I’m watching the X-Files!”

That was my in. The Future Mrs. Angry was a Files Fan, too. It was the beginning of a legendary romance. I still need a doctor to take a look at my pancreas, though.

*At least, if you followed me on Twitter, you would know I called it.

Trending Up & Down: Furious Angry Czeck Statistics

11,052 Number of Visits to the Blog
:54 Average Time Visitors Spent on Blog
500 Facebook Fans Page Fans
2,895 Tweets on Twitter
9/9/09 Most Visited Day (234 visits)
“St. James Davis” were the most popular search words
“Men wearing tampons” was the weirdest

Trending Up: Cats
I make no secret of my disdain for cats. I don’t call it “hatred” because I hate Hitler. But cats are right there on that totem pole.

No amount of intense psychoanalysis can pinpoint when and how my distaste for felines emerged. It just mysteriously appeared, like a mole. I’m not the guy tossing cats out of car windows or gluing them to the highway. I’m not the Michael Vick of cats. But if you own a cat, I immediately dock two points from you. You can win those points back, of course, but you still get a minus two points for owning a cat.

One day, a cat appeared at our front door, meowing like crazy. “Shut up,” I muttered on the way to the car.

For the next several weeks, I passed the cat by on the way to car, and every morning it raised it’s stupid gray and white head at me and mewed. I couldn’t stand it! The blatant begging! This cat didn’t need a handout. It needed a job and some self-respect! No bailouts!

I want to eat your cat.

It took a couple months, but I finally realized that the cat was starving. It appeared to weigh less than Dick Cheney’s soul. I’ve been feeding the damned thing every morning and every night since. When my family and I are away, we arrange for somebody to feed it. Earlier this summer, it picked a fight with the wrong cat, and I paid a vet bill as a result. Sometimes it leaves me the grisly and mangle corpses of birds and baby rabbits in my garage – right where my foot can squish into the torn remains of a severed head or still-warm entrails.

Trending Down: Super Crime
You know what was interesting about Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the Fort Hood Maniac? It was an easier solution for him to purchase a pistol at a civilian gun shop than it was to obtain an automatic weapon on his own military base.

No firearms were used in the theft of my lawnmower this winter. You could possibly classify it as a “Crime of Opportunity” but I think it was more an “Exercise of Laziness.”

I was sitting in my chair, watching the football game, when I heard some rustling in my garage. I thought that Mrs. Angry and the kids had returned from shopping, but I hadn’t heard the sound of an engine. Only mildly curious, I sauntered over to the kitchen door, looked out the window and peered into my garage.

The garage door was open – it often is. I could see out onto the street, where a man was busily stuffing a lawnmower into the back of his SUV. I thought maybe he was a guy who went around the neighborhood mowing lawns. However, it was the middle of winter, and by the time I realized that my lawnmower was being stolen, the thief was already in his vehicle.

I charged out of my garage like a cowboy, hollering and screaming tough-guy phrases like, “Hey! HEY!”

By the time I made it to the curb, the thief had sped out of view. I had no license plate number, but I decided to call the police and make a statement, if only to alert the authorities that punk-ass lawnmower thieves were operating in my neighborhood. I never expected to see my red Toro again.

Except that I was reunited with it within two hours.

About half an hour after my call to the police, a cop car pulled up to my front door. “We think we found your lawnmower, Mr. Czeck,” said the officer. Yes! Would I be willing to go with the officer to identify the lawnmower? You bet! I hopped into the squad car and we zipped to the location where the thief had been pulled over.

Sure enough, the police had indeed found my lawnmower – and my weed whacker, which I hadn’t even realized was missing. Because the crook had entered my garage to steal the items (lawyers call that breaking & entering), I was asked to fill out a police report at the precinct downtown.

There’s a great deal of stress to writing the perfect police report. I’m supposed to be some kind of writer, so I wasn’t content with a dull recount of basic facts. I peppered the page with all kinds of unnecessary adjectives. I created the Absalom, Absalom! of police reports. My intricate prose alone would probably earn the perpetrator an extra three years in the slam.

I was a little disappointed that all the cops in the building didn’t request that I perform a dramatic reading for their rapt entertainment. But I was allowed to return home with my lawn equipment. As far as I know, the guy who tried to rip me off is now doing a stretch at Shawshank with Bogs Diamond.

Trending Up: Porn Star Twits
The Angry Czeck opened a Twitter account this year. I needed another worthless distraction on top of the unprofitable blog (you bastards!) and the Facebook Fan Page. And to be sure, Twitter is pretty damned worthless. It generally consists of people congratulating each others wit, which is probably why I spend so much time on it.

An entire sub-culture exists on Twitter whose members simply spend the day generating 140-character quips. Some of them are genuinely funny. Some would be rejected by Dane Cook. Others resort to dumb formulas, like the Sam Kennison Technique™: Start your tweet in a nondescript fashion BEFORE SUDDENLY SWITCHING TO ALL-CAPS! To some Twit Wits, this is a trusty well that cannot be visited too often.

There are also a number of celebrities trolling Twitter. You follow them with the hope of gaining some insight into what makes them so fantastic. However, mostly you get TV Guide-like updates for their next appearance on Leno or some banal bitching about a late flight. People who I have followed and then de-followed for the crime of banality include Eliza Dushku (disappointing), Al Gore, Chad “Ochocinco” Johnson, and Katie Curic (dreadfully dull).

But one celebrity that has remained oddly fascinating is Jenna Haze.

Jenna is a porn star. She’s a four-time winner of the Female Porn Star of the Year. You can appreciate her work in titles like Cum Spoiled Sluts and Real Female Orgasms. But she also makes appearances in mainstream movies, for which she will often remind you – Crank 2 and Superbad.

Jenna bought a house and made some skin movies this year.

I found Ms. Haze on a list of celebrity Twitter users. I had enjoyed Ron Jeremy’s penetrating autobiography, The Hardest (Working) Man in Show Business, and I thought maybe Jenna would provide a similar level of insight into the big business of pornography.

Not really. Jenna bought a house this year. She hangs out with a guy named “Jules,” and sometimes works with a colleague named “Scott Nails.” She spends a great deal of time traveling across the country and dancing at strip clubs. She endorses Mike Huckabee for president and she thinks she pays too much in taxes. Jenna eats like a man-horse, and she smokes a great deal of pot. In fact, about 25% of her tweets are related to “smoking a bowl.” She’s the Kevin Smith of porn Twits.

Most of Jenna’s twits are complaints about LA traffic or rants about Southwest Airlines. Every now and then, she’ll post a picture from “the set,” though it’s never a provocative photo. Usually just her putting her make-up on (which is important when you’re naked a lot). Sometimes, just for the hell of it, she’ll post a tweet like this:

jenxstudios Just shot PG pics gonna do my tease and then get to fucking

But that kind of salacious bulletin is few and far between. This is what Jenna’s followers mostly get:

jenxstudios Okay maybe the bowl after the food wasn’t such a good idea.. I totally crashed out!

I worry about Jenna because she travels too much, eats poorly, and smokes way too much grass. Sometimes, I share these concerns with Mrs. Angry, but she has startling little sympathy for a fellow female making her way in a male-dominated world.

Twits That Were Funny in 2009

• sloganeerist God is my copilot. That’s how fucking awesome my airplane-flying skills are.
• KarlRove Leaving for the airport. Everyone in my office has a Snuggie on b/c the office is cold. So weird and creepy.
• shitmydadsays “The dog is not bored, it’s a fucking dog. It’s not like he’s waiting for me to give him a fucking rubix cube. He’s a god damned dog.”
• mabelsblog This morning I exchanged nods with a driver whose car had what seemed to be bullet holes in the side. She seemed nice enough.
• fakemongo You want change, Memphis? I’m a shapeshifter! Do you look for answers to the city’s problems to come from outside? I”m from outer space!
• kyranp 5 year old just jumped in my lap and said, “At least I didn’t hit your BALLS.” Mommy’s tucking, honey.
• bentendo Would like to thank ALL the veterans, but I have a 140 character limit. I’ll do what I can, however, in alphabetical order. Thanks go out to
• sloganeerist Listen up, couple things: DON’T order The Serpent and the Rainbow Roll at Bluefin sushi bar. Also, DON’T let them bury me. I’m not dead.
• 1972GrandPrix When God was finished with the Earth, He said, “Enough practice!” And then he made The 1972 Pontiac Grand Prix.
• blaine23 Yeah, I’ve got a tattoo. A tattoo of some badass tumbling dice. Okay, some badass 8-sided Dungeons & Dragons dice. Ladies?
• InyukChuck “Form of sneeze!” and “Shape of sick gorilla!” may have been the Wonder Twins most feared combination
• Zaius13 The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was coining an aphorism in which the central conceit was his deceptive prowess.
• amybhole My dirty 2yo is wandering aimlessly & singing to himself. Cute. If he were an adult, though, he’d just look like a drunk, homeless person.
• blaine23 In our nation’s darkest hour. When confused voices cry out for justice. When we need it the most. That’s when the McRib knows to come back.
• sloganeerist This Cubs mug sucks. My coffee always starts out hot, but then drops 9 straight after the All-Star break and the Cardinals win the division.
• JeffRodgers My fortune cookie said someone in my life needs a letter from me. Here you go: the letter Z, for Zorro.
• 1972GrandPrix You take the Rubik’s Cube, and I take your girlfriend. Look, I didn’t make up the Dirty Santa rules. Hand her over.
• badbanana Thirteen more inches of snow? This Christmas is going to be whiter than a Tiger Woods mistress convention.
• InyukChuck During Christmas, Green Lantern’s nativity scene clashed both sacredly and secularly with Gleek’s Saturnian Space Laser Execution diorama.

Trending Up: Dying (Trending Down: Living)
In 2009, everybody died.

I did a census, and it’s true. Even people you never heard of died, like Les Paul. Even guys you thought had died ten years ago actually died in 2009, like Walter Cronkite. Of course, the people who should have died in 2009 remain disappointingly alive (I’m talking right at you, cast of Grey’s Anatomy).

You probably forgot, but Michael Jackson died this year. He used to sing songs. Patrick Swayze died, too, and he used to dance to songs. Connection?

If you’re a man (like me) Swayze is one of those guys you don’t appreciate much at all until he dies terribly from pancreatic cancer. He starred in a lot of “tough guy” movies, but you never really thought of Patrick Swayze as especially tough. It was hard to forgive his love of ballet, and quite frankly, his head was abnormally large. Later, he kicked America in the nuts by starring in To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar. I could have lived my whole life less angrily without that.

But looking back, self-deprecation was the Sacred Strength of Swayze. Remember his appearance on Saturday Night Live? The entire hour and a half was devoted to making Swayze look ridiculous. And it was funny; an SNL episode routinely mined for classic material. By contrast, examine the SNL appearance by Swayze’s tough-guy contemporary, Steven Segal. What a disaster! Segal took himself too seriously (surprise!), and it generated one of the worst episodes of SNL ever.

Nobody will ever mistake Swayze for Brando, but Patrick Swayze never mailed in a role. Whether it was Ghost or Next of Kin, you were going to get a full-Swayze even if the material required much less.

Trending Down: Expectations
I can’t figure out what was the bigger let-down in 2009: The movie Watchmen, or President Obama’s first year in office.

I’ve screened The Watchmen three times, and that included the extended version. The extended version made me want Watchmen even less, because it merely proved what we secretly knew from the beginning: The Watchmen is un-filmable.

“We’re just not quite pulling this off, are we?”

Part of what made Watchmen the graphic novel so compelling was the way it successfully captured the paranoia and dread of the Cold War. Remember when we were all certain that the USSR was one vodka shot away from dropping atomic bombs on us? Remember when Sting wore a tuxedo and sang Russians during the Grammy Awards? Remember when Rocky cut the Russian and then delivered a heartwarming speech to an arena full of Communists?

I barely do, and I was alive in the 1980s when The Watchmen is set. Today, we don’t fear monolithic superpowers hoarding a stash of nuclear ICMs. We’re scared of sweaty, bearded nuts with rudimentary piloting skills. The climate of fear has changed so radically that even the idea of the Soviet Union seems like a Tom & Jerry cartoon. There was no way to put the audience in the catbird seat because we’ve all moved on.

In fact, we have all moved on to Barack Obama.

For a year, we forgot one basic and fundamental truth about Mr. Obama: he is a politician. He may be eloquent in speech, refined in his manners, and cut around the abdominals, but he’s still a politician, which means that his primary function is to get elected.

So BO got elected by making us a ton of promises. He said he was going to fix the economy, get us out of Iraq, give us a public option for healthcare, clean the environment, and elliminate the cast of Grey’s Anatomy with a missile fired from a drone. (Admittedly, the last was a promise Obama made exclusively to the Angry Czeck).

Today, not only are we still in Iraq, we’ve made a fresh investment in Afghanistan. In Copenhagen this December, we played a non-productive game of ozone-layer chicken with the Chinese. The economy is improving, but we made too many comprises on healthcare reform. In short, the promise of Obama has fallen short of the reality of Obama.

Republicans are chortling because 1) Republicans like to chortle, and 2) Obama finished the year below 50% in approval rating. They forget that the last president to fall beneath 50% after his first year in office was the mighty Ronald Reagan, but that’s a fact, and Republicans are more about gut than facts.

The blubbering voice of the GOP

And the fact is, it’s been one year. Hell, less than a year – eleven months. Obama did make a load of fantastic promises, sure, but even Hercules needed time to perform his Twelve Labors. What Obama has accomplished in one year has been fairly remarkable, considering the mess W. left the Oval Office. And in a very real way, Obama is still plowing through the dung heap of the Bush Administration, whether it’s being blasted by the former VP on Sunday Morning talk shows (didn’t you say that criticizing the President is unpatriotic, Dick?) or enduring the petty, fearmongering insults of Joe Wilson, the Birthers, and every idiot who believed Obama would take his Presidential oath with his hand on a Koran.

Sure, the Angry Czeck is a little let down by Mr. Obama. Where are the puppy dogs and sunshine? Where’s my early retirement, Canadian-style healthcare, and peace in the Middle East? Obama can’t provide it anymore than Oprah can. There’s something about the Presidency that makes great men medicore.

Year 2 had better be the bomb, Obama.

Related posts:

1. Four Times? Really? (4th Annual Year Under Bitter Scrutiny)
2. Grit Your Teeth: 3rd Annual Year Under Bitter Scrutiny
3. Get Into Wincing Position: The 2nd Annual Year Under Bitter Scrutiny