The Angry Czeck

I just read this on Ain’t It Cool:

“You can’t possibly understand what it felt like for me sitting in the theater watching (Revenge of the Sith) unless you were there in 1977 for the very first film.”
Ain’t It Cool Review

The sad part is that I do understand. You liked Star Wars. You really liked Star Wars. You wore iron-on t-shirts featuring Chewbacca, and for a time, you attempted to master the simple language of the Jawas. When asked your religion, you deadpan “Jedi.” You claim to have summoned the Force with every erection. You list “learning that Darth Vader was Luke’s father” the most startling revelation of your life. You spent three awkward teenage years whacking off to an image of Princess Leah in her steel bikini. (In these tender moments, you refer to yourself as Hand Solo.) In your resume bio, you call yourself a “scoundrel” though you never explain why. The biggest tragedy in your life is that now, for no good reason, Greedo shoots first. Later, you bored your friends and worried your parents with your penetrating, shrill analysis of why Jar Jar sucked. At first, you tried to defend “metachlorines” as an example of Lucas’ genius for tidy scientific deduction, but you later join the bandwagon opposing it. And now the final installment of your lifelong justification for never kissing a girl has come to its thunderous fruition. Once Annie vacuum seals himself into the Darth suit, your license to fail expires. You will suddenly discover that your Masters in Comparative Religions (where your fanatic quest to legitimize Jedi teachings earned you a steady diet of Cs and Ds) is completely useless in the job market. You will have to augment your lightsaber fighting skills with a degree in drafting or air conditioning repair. Before long, after several months of finally earning a steady paycheck, you realize you haven’t uttered a Wookie cry in a crowded Gadzooks store in weeks. You discover a nutritious diet does not include Cheetos. You find that, if you move your action figure collection into the attic, you have room for a stereo and a bigger TV. When a girl says “hello,” you forget to launch into your well-prepared diatribe concerning a padawan’s virginal discipline. Instead, you return her greeting with normal English, and before long, you go on your first date ever. She’ll forgive you for groping her breasts too hard once you explain to her that you never touched breasts before. And you will live my friend. LIVE! Because now you are free. Lucas no longer has his sinister, Sengali-like hold on you. You can end your war with the Trekies and join the workforce. Welcome.

I’m famous! Now I am going to tell you who to vote for! Why? Fuck you, that’s why! I’m famous.

Hey, I graduated from college, so I’m smart. True, my acting degree did not require any science or math credits, but I did get an “A” in Film Appreciation II, and that was hard. Don’t look at me like that! I attended nearly every class.

I’m famous, so you’d better get used to me telling you what policies to embrace, which foods to eat, and what kind of clothes to wear. If you wear fur, you are evil. Because minks are cute and cows are, you know, not. And shame on you if you don’t support Tibet. People got it tough in Tibet. I own a house there.

You want to know who I’m voting for? Of course you do. If Oprah cares, then you care. How do you like it? I’m voting for the guy – or GAL – who’s for solar powered cars, a living wage, homes for homeless people, and advocates the end to hunger and war! My personal attendant has already filled out my ballot.

I’m a gun control authority because I made some easy jokes at Charlton Heston’s expense at the Academy Awards. What a dopey old fuck! Only bodyguards should be allowed to carry firearms.

I have three kids from three different women, so I’m entitled to have my children’s book published. Hell, yeah! It’s about a little boy – much like me — who’s scared of monsters in his bedroom. Been done before? Fuck you. It ain’t been done by a famous person. Besides, my children’s story is real. It don’t talk down to kids. I draw from my own experiences, and I used to be scared of monsters. And besides, nobody was interested in illustrating my children’s book about having a three-way with the two groupies I banged in Orlando.

Parenthood is hard. It’s a bitch! The nanny is always like, “Little Junior would like to see you this month.” Except, I don’t have a kid named something gross like “Junior.” My kids are named Prometheus, Wingnut and Yellow Pages. And when they go outside, I make them wear surgical masks so nobody thinks they’re weird.

Hell, yeah, I’m famous! When I get old and fat, I’m running for governor, because I once played a governor on TV. I’ll tell people how it is. I’ll say, “Dude, we need to raise taxes to help out these poor people. I only make $50 million a year, and I give some of that to poor people, you selfish hotel maid!” That’s “keeping it real” and “telling it how it is.” The people appreciate that from celebrities.

“Just because I haven’t made my own sandwich
in 20 years doesn’t mean I don’t care!”

I can’t understand why every liberal I endorse never makes it to the White House. I’m famous! You’d think my sheltered, glitter-stick perspective would be appreciated by folks from middle America. In a movie, I once played a Southern sheriff who didn’t wear shoes. That was real.

One day, while watching the evening news with a relative of mine, we were updated with the latest report of a particularly destructive Georgian tornado. One survivor, a middle-aged woman who had lost everything in the storm, was in the process of thanking God for sparing her life.

My relative shouted at top volume, “Go ahead! Pray to God! Where’s your God now!?”

Granted, it’s a pretty legitimate statement to make. (It was also incredibly insensitive and entirely too loud.) A tornado had descended from the heavens and reduced the woman’s home to a pile of broken Tinker Toys. Real life of Job stuff, if you ask the Angry Czeck. Seems like fist pumping and curses were more appropriate than thanks.

The problem with many atheists is that they take God’s apparent disinterest with mankind as hard evidence that a higher power is not in command. An atheist sees a world conspicuously short of miracles and draws the elementary conclusion that a world without miracles is a world without God.

Fair enough. It’s a good argument. But it is the atheists’ only argument, and when you only have one argument, you tend to repeat the argument over and over again, at increasing volume. An atheist’s knob goes to 11.

Sadly, The Angry Czeck is related to this guy.

That is not to say Christians are not without annoying twists of logic. Only a Christian can make a weakness, like a lack of divine evidence, and make it into a cornerstone of faith. For example, if my atheist relative grabbed the tornado lady and personally delivered his high-volume message,  Tornado Lady might have replied, “God works in mysterious ways.”

The Mysterious Ways argument is the biggest pussy argument going today. Not because it is vague and leaves God off the hook, but because it’s usually delivered with such smug conviction, you just want the specter of Robert Mitchum to appear with a bag full of bitch-slaps.

You know, serial killers work in mysterious ways. Nobody prays to Ted Bundy.

But what kills me about atheists is the narrow-minded self-righteousness.

Believe me, nobody finds the fish icon on automobiles more obnoxious than me. I mean, what is that icon supposed to say? “I merge for Christians?” Do you enhance the Blue Book value of a Dodge Shadow if you slap a fish icon on the bumper? Christians tend to imagine themselves as part of a big club. So I suppose the fish icon is no less pretentious then, say, a bumper sticker that screams, “Give Blood. Play Rugby.” At least, that’s how I’ve justified it, and it prevents me from running Fish Drivers off the road.

But the atheist can’t leave it alone. The fish icon, as annoying as it may be, is not an attack. Yet atheist feel compelled to strike back with the Darwin Fish (a fish with legs). How insulting. It implies that either a) if you’re a Christian, then you must be a backwards Creationist, or b) you’re just a big fan of On the Origin of Species.

If you think somebody delivers the Mysterious Ways argument with smug conviction, imagine the look on the atheist’s face when he’s slapping the Darwin Fish on the trunk of his Ford Focus. “Take that, religious nuts!”

Nothing riles an atheist’s rancor more than the threat of prayer in school. The Angry Czeck is a big fan of the seperation of church and state. But if a high school in Texas wants to broadcast a prayer before a football game, who gets hurt? A religious minority (Muslim? Jew?) Atheists? Listen, I can’t even send a Christmas card anymore. (I send ‘Holiday’ cards today.) Now a simple prayer is off limits? If my Jewish and Muslim brethren would like to join me in their particular brand of prayer, the Angry Czeck embraces them.

Atheists chose this battleground because, well, what the hell, right? There’s a man in California, a lawyer, who has decided to increase his own notoriety by throwing his daughter beneath a school bus by claiming that the current configuration of the Pledge of Allegiance has caused her irreparable harm. She’s been emotionally scarred, see, because the Pledge asserts than we live in a Nation under God, and she’s an atheist.

I don’t know how old this girl is, but is she really old enough to discount the existence of a spiritual being? No more than I was mature enough to make Catholicism my belief-brand of choice, I suppose. But at least I was railroaded in private. This man not only adheres his personal views onto his daughter (something we all do, like it or not), he decides to drag her life through the mud with a totally needless piece of legal shitigation. What a dickhead.

Christians are often called out for a high-and-mighty attitude, and not without reason. For many people of faith, pressing personal religious values upon others earns them a spiritual merit badge and a magnetic keycard that opens the pearly gates. Too many times, faith interferes with a quiet lunch or even a midnight trip to the porn theater.

Atheists are just as bad, though. But rather than using picket lines and poorly printed pamphlets, atheists communicate through Hollywood, which finds atheism to be a trendy validation of their sponsorship of violence and vice. In Hollywood, the only religious people who appear on screen are the fanatics with bombs, or the Southern senator with a misguided moral axe to grind. When Mel Gibson makes a Jesus movie, and not a movie where he’s shooting people, he’s a zealot. A religious nut. Some even called him a Nazi. (Unlike many of the people who denounced Gibson as anti-Semitic, I actually saw The Passion of the Christ, you pussies. Yes, it was a bloody snuff film. Yes it was oddly moving and spiritually stirring. But I did not come away feeling that the film was an attack against Jews. True, some Jewish priests were the bad guys. Movies have bad guys. I guess if the bad guys are Jewish, it’s anti-Semitic, much in the way Basic Instinct is anti-gay. But lets say Gibson made a movie about a coven of priests who raped alter boys. Nobody would complain then.That’s entertainment.)

My point, I think, is that fanatics are found on both sides of the spiritual fence, and neither do well in promoting their own agendas. Many of today’s Christians are embolden by the presence of a Jesus-guy in the White House, calling for the heads of liberal federal judges and titty-twisting Democrats into rethinking their stance on abortion and gay rights. That w
ill backfire. In the end, it doesn’t matter what kind of faith you have, Americans don’t cotton to bullies. Christians, long vilified in the news and in Hollywood, are getting cocky, and pretty soon they will be re-portrayed as the abortion doctor killing, backwards crazies atheists have always claimed them to be.

Meanwhile, atheists will continue to make pompous statements like, “Do you have any idea how many wars have been waged in the name of religion?” I don’t. And neither do you.

***

I have an incredible threshold for acceptance. I accept that the primary reason for making Iraq the New Puerto Rico was nukes (if I sniff enough gas). I accept the fact that George Lucas fucked up an unfuckable franchise. I accept the French.

But I can’t accept that I must share the road with bicyclers.

Why? My car weighs 3000 pounds. Why must I disignate the same care and consideration to an idiot pedaling a 40 pound toy on a busy boulevard? Who made this law? When did Greg LeMond become a congressman? If it saves me time, can I drive on a bicycle path?

I don’t know many bicycle people, but the ones I do know are nuts. Not a cool nuts either. I’m talking about a leg-shaving, farmer-tan-sporting, no-body-fat-having nuts that doesn’t go over too good at parties.

How these people wield so much power with the Traffic Authority, I’ll never know. Yet I must drive 10 miles per hour on a street maxed at 45 MPH because the bicycler ahead of me can’t handle the bumpy sidewalk. It doesn’t matter if I channel Steve McQueen and manage to maneuver around. While I’m idling at the stoplight, bicycle rider pedals through the red because, hey, I may have to share the road with bicycles, but bicycles don’t have to share the road with The Angry Czeck.

The road signs are the most annoying. SHARE THE ROAD it screams. Like I’m already a felon. Ooops! I need to be reminded not to squish the 14 existing bicycle assholes beneath my tires. I’m so dumb.

Is it just me, or does duping the entire highway system
just make you look smug?

Fuck it. For now on, I’m driving my Big Wheels to work. And you have to eat it, too, sucker, because the law is on my side. You’ll never get to work on time because I’m taking up a whole fucking lane. It’s within my rights. You can honk and honk, but it won’t matter, because you have to SHARE THE ROAD. And you’ll know it’s me because I’ll be wearing tight spandex pants but no shirt. I hate farmer tans. Hell, maybe I’ll make a bicycle fruit pedal behind my Big Wheel, just so he can get a taste of the bullshit he and his healthy hippie commune been shoveling at me. Remember, I don’t need a turn signal because I’m on a Big Wheel. In fact, no road rules apply to me, because I’m riding a child’s toy. I’m completely immune. For bikers, stop signs are DON’T HAVE TO STOP signs. How do you like it? You like it, don’t you?

Are you a man? More specifically, are you a man with a charcoal or gas grill? Do you have a preference between charcoal and gas? Do you wear monogrammed oven mitts? Have you ever received a chrome spatula and fork for your birthday? Do you believe yourself to be the creator of a “secret sauce?” Have you argued passionately in the defense of a rub or baste?

If so, you are probably somebody who barbecues, although if somebody suggested that with those words, you’d be offended. The proper term is “griller.” Listen, it doesn’t matter what you call it. You’re just cooking, Sally. Put on a skirt for full effect.

I’m not above slapping some meat onto my Weber. I just have some perspective. I realize that I am merely doing what I could have done in the kitchen. Except now I have an excuse to drink beer. And my wife thinks I’m cooking dinner.

Except I’m not. See, Meghan is still at work, making beans or toasting bread or setting the table. Not me. I’m standing importantly around my grill, drinking beer and wondering when I should flip something. Meghan probably does more work when I decide to barbecue (my preferred term) then when I offer to make egg sandwiches for dinner.

Don’t bother these guys. They’re grilling.

“Grillers” argue that the act of grilling is far more challenging than applying heat to meat. They talk about baste and sauce as though theirs was developed in a secret bunker at Oak Ridge. Here’s a hint, Emeril: a guy named Kraft makes a decent sauce.

Okay, here’s a wild, uninformed guess from me, but I’m betting 90% of “grillers” claim the secret to their secret sauce is beer. People who make this revelation public always have the same dopey look on their faces – the smug look people display when claiming to be afraid of clowns. (Here’s anther secret: Nobody is afraid of clowns. Nobody. Quit pretending you are.)

.

Beer is not a secret ingredient. If it’s Coors beer, it’s not a secret ingredient.

Don’t say I’m jealous because I have yet to perfect my “grilling technique.” Fuck you. I’m more likely to find something good on the Lifetime Channel than spend time experimenting with rub.

I don’t begrudge you for your little cooking hobby. I just don’t want you rolling your eyes at me when I’m trying to flip a hamburger. And yes, I’m going to pour a whole fucking can on lighter fluid on my inexpertly stacked coals. I might even remove my chicken before sticking a thermometer into it. Why? Because I’m not a Grilling Snob, that’s why. I’m only here to eat.

Meet the “Griller in Chief”

The Memphis Barbecue Fest (What? Not the “Grilling Fest?”) is coming up. It’s a contest much like logrolling or a quilting bee. The only difference is that many of the contestants are completely hammered from consuming too much secret ingredient. I don’t find anything wrong with this, except that some people train all year for this. In fact, the convicts from the Dirty Dozen experience less training than some of the most dedicated “grillers” in the contest.

I’ll bet George W. Bush fancies himself a “griller.”

The modern man doesn’t have a whole lot to cling to anymore. Few social milieus can be claimed as his sole domain. Funny how that man, in his desperation to secure his masculine identity, has embraced the traditionally feminine activity of cooking as his own. I think that’s cute.