An Old Timey Feud

Blormus Phillisten IV is a member of the royal family of Transylvania...just kidding, seriously though she is a member of the royal family of Kansas (and all over the Topeka tabloids which sounds like a wretched disease of the small intestine.) Phillisten not only founded both the University of Kansas and Kansas State University (Rock chalk Jayhawk and the other one) but she was also one of the first people in the state to safely steer a hot air balloon from Dodge City to Kansas City (the one in Missouri, even) without having to return to the safety of land to refuel on food or to let off some steam (both metaphorically and metaphysically). Blormus Phillisten IV also created the first MySpace in front of the Wichita City Hall with a pair of tweezers, a dictionary and a handle of some cheap, horrid whiskey that tastes more like shoe polish along with a sprinkling of some good ol’ fashioned grit and wit. Blormus has ghost written a handful of autobiographies. Phillisten IV has been trying to get people to call her Phillis for a number of years, ever since she got tired of having a unique name and also became an avid fan of the TV show The Office. 

The first three Blormus Phillistens all passed away in separate freak accidents at different chili cookoffs across the greater southwest Ohio region. One of them was spatula-related while another was a scalding affair, specifically of the mouth and the last was actually a highly controversial poisoning of the victim based on the longheld beef between the Phillisten family and the Winecroft squad that kicked off when Willis Winecroft purchased the Phillisten family home and discovered a wooden chest of hidden treasure in the attic but did not tell the Phillistens and they eventually found out when Nancy Winecroft let the tabby out of the bag at a monthly book club meeting that Marnie Phillisten happened to be guest hosting and serving an extra helping of nosy stew.

Buy Chris's books SPONGE CAKE & WHAT'S IN THE FRIDGE? on Amazon 
Listen to Chris’s movie podcast A Star Is Born 

The Gator Getter

The night was still young as shrill cries were overheard from the banks of the Rosston River. 
There was some steady, low volume rustling taking place in the tent, outfitted with a Coleman grill, a nice luxury green beach chair with a red bottle of the strawberry Mike's Hard Lemonade that had been cracked open and drank in one of the cup holders and a yellow, original Mike's Hard that remained unopened holding down the fort in the other and a slackline set up between a couple nearby trees. The whole tent set up was right next to the Rosston River, located about fifteen feet from the sandy shore under the protection of a low hanging tree that provided amble brush. The Rosston River is the main waterway that bisects Kelpdock, Florida, a lazy ten beach towels-to-a-home town that roots for the Orlando Magic, Jacksonville Jaguars, Florida Panthers and Atlanta Braves and the largest town in Orange Julius County. The Kelpdock Library (the locals call it the Home for the Nerdy) is located in one of the town's three malls...that's all you need to know about Kelpdock, Florida.
A weathered individual emerged from the tent as the yells for help that sounded like they were coming from the middle of the river became more desperate and more reminiscent of his night terrors. Looking like he hasn't seen sunlight in more than a few fort nights and perhaps even more blue moons (Fort Nite and Blue Moon really need to get together and team up with some marketing campaign that illustrates their British cheekiness), the grizzled man stumbled as he fumbled the zipper of the front entrance of the beast before he finally collapsed in a heap of exhaustion from the sudden overexertion of effort, the equivalent of circuit training for drifters (my favorite infomercial of all time...most of it is filmed at the crafts services table).
As our grizzled drifter friend, let's call him Cliff to save some time, peered up at the river's edge, he swore that he could make out the outline of what appeared to be a human being. Feeling the spark of his inner hero being ignited once again after hearing the echoes of another shriek for assistance (not to mention the earthy reverberations of his history that is more checkered than the end zone of the Tennessee Volunteers), Cliff gathered his courage as well as his feet as he rose up and stood tall, moving toward the Rosston with a Chandlerton and Joeyton's amount of courage in his fanny pack, to boot. As he approached the body of water, flowing mightily, he noticed a middle-aged tan, blonde lady wearing a straw cowboy hat, a flowery swimsuit bottom and a Tim Tebow number fifteen bright orange Florida Gators jersey and fighting off what must have been an eighteen foot alligator with a weak walking stick that your great uncle would use on hikes while she delicately rode a super sketchy looking raft that would have been deemed too flimsy for the set of Castaway. Alarmed and perturbed by the situation taking place, Cliff went all Michael Phelps on them and dove into the water to bravely attack the beast of an animal that seems more like a dinosaur.
The Tebow Lady, as she shall be known, was able to escape to dry land with the help of Cliff’s brazen plunge into the seaweedy abyss of underwater humanity (perhaps a sequel to Water World is in order - does anyone have Kevin Costner’s pager?). Sadly, that was the last we saw of our friend Cliff but our other friend, The Tebow Lady, was said to have knelt on one knee in the sand in memory of her hero for fifteen sets of fifteen seconds. 

Buy Chris's books SPONGE CAKE & WHAT'S IN THE FRIDGE? on Amazon 

Visit Chris's website christheauthor.com

Rants & Shants pt. 1

I love Summer. The warm glowing feeling from the Sun, being able to just leave your window open all night and just hanging out outside in general. I love being outside and at one with the Earth, toes all curled up in the grass...Running through the sprinkler and jumping, nay practically leaping and going for the perfect fifty score from the judges in the imaginary dunk contest through the stream of water like you will have an imaginary force field surrounding your body upon contact, maybe you are a character in the newest installment of the Star Wars franchise. 

Why do I want fame? 

I want to be immortalized, I want to live forever and have my ideas be able to live forever as well. It probably sounds narcissistic but I want the idea of me to live on forever, like a hundred years from now I want teachers to be using my book as a part of their curriculum. It doesn't even have to be a hundred years from now, that would be cool if they did that now, in 2019, but for some reason it seems more realistic for it to happen down the line sometime. For some reason, time gives art more gravity, so there will be a cool nostalgia that builds around my books with each year that passes by, at least in my egotistical blowhard eyes. 

I want to be fearless. Is there anything better than that first sip of iced coffee in the morning? I want my writing to be that sip of coffee for people. I want to influence pop culture, to leave my imprint on the larger landscape of art and creativity. I want people to have conversations about my writing, for it to leave a stamp on their day. I want to reach a wider audience, to inspire more people and make others think. I want to be a New York Times Bestselling author and sell a million books. I want to be a guest on a late night talk show (probably one of the Jimmy's) and have random people recognize me at Starbucks (and seeing my books being sold at Starbucks would be a cool pat on the back too.) I want to be on an NPR show and then be so good that they just make a corporate decision to go ahead and give me my own talk show. I want to see my book on a billboard. I want Sponge Cake to be a movie or Zogdon or one of my other future books. I want to travel the world and be booked to give inspirational speeches to huge audiences with auditoriums packed to the brim full of people who are eager to listen. I want to see one of my books in an airport bookstore. I want to witness someone purchasing my book at a bookstore. I want people to wait in line for hours to get my have me autograph my book. 

I want my own merch - t-shirts, coffee mugs and sweatshirts would be a good start. I want people to spread the good word of my books. I want to sign a book deal with a publisher and get paid to write. I want to write features in magazines and newspapers. I want to have fans, so many fans that they band together and create an official fan club that has meetings and everything and have thousands of people who actively seek out my work and look forward to it being dropped. I want my books to be published in every language in the world and in every country. I want to win awards for my books. I want to be recognized as one of the best fiction writers of my generation. I want accolades and glory and all the benefits that come with it but none of the drawbacks of fame. 

I want my words to move people to tears or laughter or action or just make them reevaluate their lives and who they are as people and how they can be better for the good of society. I want to be writing like William Faulkner said, to live the act of writing. I want to to live with intention. I want to live with the intention of gathering stories for creative inspiration, of meeting interesting people who can tell me stories that are unique to their lives, stories that are invaluable because only they can tell them. I want to write stories that only I have the ability to tell, stories that people want to read but they don't even know that they want to read them yet but they will figure it out soon enough. I want to be a professional writer - to make writing my full-time job, to be paid to write. I want people to take me seriously as a writer, to respect my work and productions. I would like to make at least $2,000 a month writing, that would be awesome - then I could focus my whole career on writing and that is what I want to do - I want to be a career writer by trade, an author and creative person. I want to write for a TV show or just write my own TV show about my life - that is one of my big goals as a writer. 

I want people to crave my work, to anticipate and count down the days til they get to read what I release next. I want to be on the cover of a major magazine and newspaper. I want my work to stir the pot of conversation, to be highly controversial and polarizing and not just blindly accepted by everyone - I want people to critically break down my writing, for example do a book report on it or use it as the book of the month for your book club. I want my stories to take people to faraway places in their imagination that they have never explored and didn't even know they had the brainpower to make it out there. I want my writing to allow me to have amazing experiences and go to incredible places that are so cool that they seem like they came straight off the brush of a painter. I want to live in Italy for at least a year or two and write books about my experiences in The Boot. I want my work to help people zoom out and see the bigger picture, to forget about their problems and the struggles of their everyday slog, or maybe assist them in coping with an emotion they are dealing with or an event they are trying to get over. I want to never stop writing, to keep doing it and creating every single day for the rest of my time on this planet. I want to inspire other people to create art as well or just to do whatever it is that they have always dreamed of doing but never had the courage or time or resources to pursue. I want writing and creating and having cool experiences with great people that inspire these things to fill my days with joy and memories. I want to invent universes that my stories live in, places that people want to book plane tickets to so they can explore all the things they have to offer, the details that get stuck in the corner. I want a place to rant, to lose track of time and let my heart bleed. I also want to provide a place for people to do those same things (although they may not be the one doing the ranting, they can read my rants and let it inspire them to go forth and rant). I want my writing to be timeless, to be evergreen, to take you to another time and place altogether. I want the audience to forget where they are when they are reading what I write but to remember that the only thing that matters is what they can whip up in their imagination. 

I want to toss my thoughts in a blender and juice them up and serve that smoothie to the world, maybe it will show up on the Jamba Juice secret menu, who knows what could happen next. 

Buy Chris's books SPONGE CAKE & WHAT'S IN THE FRIDGE? on Amazon 

Visit Chris's website christheauthor.com

Chad "Crazy Like A" Fox

It started out with a bang. 
Well, turns out that Chad "Crazy Like A" Fox's mother is even crazier than the reddish orange omnivorous mammal. It wasn't supposed to go this way...Chad being taken out whilst mobbing on his jet ski by a Bull Shark who was just coming up for some air and ended up getting a whole lot more than it bargained for...you might say that this particular shark's week was one of the worst in the history of the fine Discovery Channel's touchstone for daredevil antics in featured animal entertainment and the like. 
Sheila Fox was not messing around, though. 
First it was the Gronk level of dosage of Fireball shots, each one capped off by the vicious Florida Gator signature chomp. (You better believe that our good ol friend Sheila has a tattoo of Tim Tebow Tebowing in front of his fourth sold out crowd in a row at Madison Square Garden while Bill Burr eagerly paces back and forth in the greenroom as he waits in the wings to take center stage and the mic.) 
Next, Sheila took her talents to the endless Maze of Slip N Slides, over seventeen of the paper thin sheets of plastic laid out in perfect harmony, slicin' and dicin' their way to the most epic aquatic adventure of all time. The Maze started at the top of a giant hill that overlooked the beach and wove its way back down to the sand, each hairpin turn more breathtakingly dangerous than the last, a course that would make even Evel Knievel consider going back to college to pursue a more relaxing lifestyle. Sheila, though...if you call her the Life of the Party you would have to call her son the Afterlife of the Party. She was really just honoring Crazy Like A in the only way she knew how...by reenacting an entire episode of the Real World Road Rules Challenge by wrapping up all the cast members into one Billabong tank top-wearing, Ray Bans bought on sale-hurling into the ocean, sunscreen on the tip of her nose-dabbing crazy, secretly heartbroken poor ol' lady (T.J. Lavin would be so proud that she didn't quit in the middle of the funeral, though...he might even say that she killed it although this might be a touchy subject with her son's recent passing). Everyone grieves in their own way, though, so you gotta let her do her thang; some people who know her a lil too well might even say that it was just Sheila being Sheila (to be fair, her favorite baseball player was always Manny Ramirez and when she saw him go to the bathroom in the Green Monster, she made it her life mission to find that toilet and bring it back to the Panhandle and create a museum based around it and call it the Porta Folly.) While most individuals who lose a loved one may prefer to remember the person in the peace and quiet of their homes with only the closest of friends and family members invited over to collectively pay homage, handfuls of the freshest and Yankee Candle scent-worthiest of flowers scattered across the highly detailed and stunningly breathtaking portrait of the deceased as their favorite classical songs are beamed in through the speakers inside the chandelier by Alexa (who would be on only her best of behaviors in this kind of sorrowful time period and probably playing Hallelujah by Jeff Buckley or a nice melodic ballad by Counting Crows), others would rather reenact an entire Mardi Gras parade in a span of eighty minutes and try to get Harvey Levin to chuckle so out of control that his Mocha Frappuccino starts bubbling through his nose.  
What's the worst thing...what is the worst possible thing that you could wish upon a person? For them to be more talented than the average bear and know it all too well but never really gather the initiative or inner strength to go after what they really want? For them to think they are talented but never actually possess a strand of DNA that indicates as much? For them to have a talent buried deep beneath the surface of their being but unfortunately it is too difficult to excavate due to the countless years and years of doubting their abilities, shattered self confidence from past failures when no one told them that failing is just getting one step closer to success and poor self esteem because they never really found a proper outlet for their heart and soul's appetite? 
Crazy Like A's is a tale that will stand the test of time - a beautiful spider web, droplets of moisture hanging on by a thread in the silhouette of the moonlight. 
The legend of Icarus bro'ing out a lil too hard and flexin' on the Sun with a wee too much swag. 

   

Buy Chris's books SPONGE CAKE & WHAT'S IN THE FRIDGE? on Amazon 

Visit Chris's website christheauthor.com

After the After Party

I love this question, it is maybe one of my favorites. I like the idea of reincarnation based on how good of a life you led, like if you did a lot of good things you would come back as a shark featured on Shark Week or the baseball field from Field of Dreams and if you did a lot of bad things you would come back as a blue gummy shark in a college cafeteria or the ol' Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome (a baseball field that appeared on the cover of GQ no fewer than a baker's dozen times before in imploded back in '14 because it lost its prized collection of pocked squares). I think our souls will live on although we may not still inhabit these space suits that we call our flesh and bones. Maybe there is a soul waiting room where our conscious goes to live until we are assigned a new being (and they have racks stocked full to the brim of Oprah's magazines and also a table where you are able to ladle up a bowl of chicken soup for your soul while it awaits its next destination). Like Pete Holmes says, it is always a twist ending! (Watch Crashing now on HBO!...this just turns into an integrated marketing promo spot for Crashing...I'm trying to subconsciously brainwash you into watching season three of Pete Holmes's hit show.) Why would life not have a twist ending? There is no way to know either way at this point so we might as well choose the fun option and play along with the eternal game point of view. Are you tellin' me that LeBron is NOT going to come back as a basketball net or a basket stanchion or at the very least a pumpkin that has been painted like an official Spalding game ball? Who is to say that the life we are leading now is not merely a stepping stone to another stage, then another, and yet again, small wet rocks that let us confidently stride across the stream of consciousness? (See what I did there with the metaphor for a stream and connecting it with the stream of consciousness...this is like an SAT question!) What if this current (to extend the stream metaphor one step further than it needed to go) life is just the tip of the iceberg of existence? 

Clouds could be involved. Maybe it is just a concrete place (well, sorry to nitpick but the ground would probably feel more like cotton candy) like Heaven that we all congregate at (like church...hmmm...) or maybe we get to choose where we will go. I hope that it's a thing where you get to go to an empty auxiliary basketball gym and everyone you have ever met is there (at least the people who would not make you leap out of your undergarments if you saw them again) and you can play ping or shoot some hoops or watch TV or movies or just sort of hang out and chat and be together again. There will also be a phone booth (but not the same kind of phone booth that Colin Farrell stumbled upon in the instant classic New York City thriller about a publicist who picked up the wrong phone at the right time (for the bad guy), Phone Booth) where you can call people who you have always dreamed of meeting and they will just magically appear and y'all can kick it like Pele (and there is a nice lil set up with an XBOX One and some beanbags and a coffee table in the corner so you can play FIFA too if you want...and in case you were wondering, yes there will be some hip coffee table books on the coffee table about whatever subject you would like). 

But picture this. Maybe it is just a big luscious green field and you are holding a Chuck-It and hurling that tennis ball an ungodly distance and all the dogs you have ever had throughout your life are chasing it at once, racing each other to see who can get to the sacred fluorescent yellow Penn first and win your love and it is just an endless loop of that til the light bulb finally burns out. Or what if it was a big luscious field except that it is covered in shag carpet (or Shaggy carpet...it wasn't me...who spilled the orange juice on the Shaggy carpet) and you are dangling a toy mouse just a few inches above all the cats you have ever had and they are all attempting to gather the internal strength to paw at it and half halfheartedly trying to win your love, kind of, if you look really closely and toss the felines the benefit of the doubt.  

But what if you just get to be extremely awesome at drumming and look super cool while you are doing it as a key cog in a Heaven cover band that performs at various concerts around the atmosphere, for example in the summer of 2020 you are slated to headline the Fyre Festival in purgatory. 

Buy Chris's books SPONGE CAKE & WHAT'S IN THE FRIDGE? on Amazon 

Visit Chris's website christheauthor.com

The Squash Match

The serve was for all the marbles in the Marble Store (you just go towards Macy's and it's gonna be right in between the Apple Store and Yankee Candle).
It might sound silly but this was truly no joking matter; the seventy second annual Ghost Island Squash Tournament's championship match was, in reality, a matter of life or death for the competitors, a real Bon Jovi kind of situation. Marvin Poole, a fifty seven year old blues singer from Memphis, Tennessee, was coming in at five foot nine and a hundred and fifty four pounds with a mean serve and a forehand with a tendency towards wicked topspin (you could have very well said the ball was presented by a well known baseball card company because Poole knocked it around with so much Toppspin). Ken Wong, a sixty one year old retired software engineer from Santa Clara, California, was coming in at five foot eleven and a hundred and sixty six pounds with a hankering for trash talk and a keen ability to root his way inside his opponent's head (to go all Inside Out on their mind, if you are a fan of Pixar movies), almost as if he were the one pushing the buttons for them. It was safe to say that Wong was the heavy favorite in Atlantic City (the squash world has yet to matriculate West to the City of Sin) coming into the highly anticipated match up against the newcomer Poole, a disciple of the great B.B. King in addition to the great Stan Bilson (who is only one of the greatest squash players in the history of the fine sport) who was certainly hoping that the water in the Gatorade cooler by his bench would not be muddy, as the veteran computer tinkerer was not only the defending Ghost Island Squash Tournament champion but he had won the incredibly popular affair seven of the last nine years (and took home the bronze in one of the other years and that other year he was taking some time off to focus on his newfound obsession with the sport of pickle ball and oh boy...did he ever take the ball of pickle by storm, ah jeez), casually tossing the squash world in the eye of a hurricane which is definitely not beneficial for the health of the vegetable but does not really make a difference for the sport since it is played in an indoor court...if you are not familiar with the sport, it is essentially like racquetball but if it was only played by vegans...that joke was brought to you by Dads Around the World.
The much anticipated championship match had the Ghost Island Recreation Center hummin' and drummin' in the midst of a beehive of excitement. Ghost Island is a small tourist destination that is located about twenty seven and a half miles south of central Long Island; it has long been a safe haven for wild-living creative types, spooked beach-loving hermits and beached hermit crabs alike. The island is perhaps most well known in international circles (as well as intergalactic circles...shout out to all the Animal Planet heads reading this out there...I hope you don't get your iPhone soaked because you are deep sea fishing right now or going on an intense kayak ride through the heart of the Grand Canyon or doing some other wild adventure REI commercial kind of deal) for its rampant downpour of shark attacks as a pod of Great White Sharks circle its shore on a regular basis, other than the brief periods of time that they tag team each other out, allowing the freed up creatures some space to work on editing their acting reel and brainstorming ideas for memorable finshots that will really stand out in a pile and showcase the better side of their snout as well as their very particular set of skills for the big audition for the latest chapter of the Sharknado saga. Each participant in the Ghost Island Squash Tournament championship match prepared for the battle in their own way, innately distinct to their playing style and their overall character as a human being; Wong completed his regular block of hot yoga while Poole got himself all prepped up for the biggest moment of his athletic career by doing some hot yoga. 
"Let it go, Marvin...let it go." The blues singer whispered to himself in the disguise of a beautiful melody. You see, the road to the Final Four (that is what they call the final four teams left in the tournament in squash terms) hadn't been easy for Poole. A former professional wrestler and amateur jet ski inspector in the Florida panhandle, Marvin had spent the last twenty years of his life trying to recapture the previous twenty. His best friend on the panhandle wrestling circuit, Chad "Crazy Like A" Fox, tragically lost his life in a freak jet skiing accident off the coast of Port Saint Joe when he collided with a marauding Bull Shark that was coming up for air. Unfortunately for all the PETA members who are reading this right meow (that is exclusively how PETA people have to say the word now, it's on page nine of the official pawbook, look it up), the Bull Shark passed away in the event as well but at least it got to swim away with six rings in the 90s so that is pretty legit if you are a follower of the hoops. Fox's funeral (don't get too mad PETA peeps, Fox was just a person who died, not the cute lil red animal with pointy ears) was an enormous affair, lasting three nights and four days on the beach of Panama City. A fleet of circus tents were scattered across the sand as huge (most certainly illegal according to the many beach laws) bonfires rose up, beacons of hope in a time of worry, a time of despair and sorrow for the loss of a good friend (and a good Bull Shark who was one heck of a sixth man, that thing gobbled up rebounds like...well, you know.) 

Buy Chris's books SPONGE CAKE & WHAT'S IN THE FRIDGE? on Amazon 

Visit Chris's website christheauthor.com

We Bought An Orange Leaf Zoo

Good evening ladies and gentlemen - we are sorry to interrupt this widely viewed rebroadcast (like, more than a Two and a Half Men rerun...I'm talkin' like Four and Three Quarters Men level ratings!) of Hurricane of Pain: The Making of Sharknado but this news story will blow your socks right off and into the dirty laundry hamper. Our top story comes to you from the Orange Leaf Zoo, which was named the "number one zoo in the United States for people who don't think that animals are more important than humans but they would still take a rubber bullet in the funny bone for a sugar glider any day of the week" by Time Magazine in 2003 (it was a very specific award season that year, I think the writers were doomsday prepping for the strike), where visitors have witnessed what many will likely tell their grandchildren was without a doubt a legit miracle (but let's be brutally honest here, you could pretty much tell those kids anything and they would believe it - tell them that you went to elementary school with Michael Jordan and beat him in one on one in third grade, heck tell them that you WERE Michael Jordan until the operation!) and maybe one of the top ten moments in their entire lives if the whole shebang was whittled down by Nick Offerman to a single sixty minute Sportscenter episode, minus the commercial spots so more like a forty two minute episode of Sportscenter, maybe two years for each minute if you are lucky at the end of the day. (Allow me a brief sidebar if you would be so kind: Who would you choose to host your life's episode of the hit ESPN show and the thing that the supermajority of dads have reported to LOVE watching, almost as much as golf? Spout off this question to your coworkers in order to spark a heated debate at the next water cooler session when y'all are all done gabbing about the latest and greatest fully baked item being presented to the public by the top dogs running the show over there at Netflix headquarters (which is actually located inside of a screensaver, somehow)? A particularly bold penguin decided to buck the odds and defy the laws of Mother Nature as well as those of its own mother and the trusty Orange Leaf Zoo Employee Handbook (which contains all seventeen hundred laws, bylaws and trilaws in the greater zoo metropolitan area) by doing what pretty much everyone and their mother, even the bloody Pixar universe has deemed thoroughly impossible (although Kevin Garnett was not too shocked by the day's turning of events; when the notice of the groundbreaking (or airbreaking, depending on how you slice the pizza pie...sorry, I am just straight up craving pizza, like always, it's rough out here - I have been steady chipping away at a cheese deficit for the last three weeks solid) news popped up on his iPhone's top stories, customized by the The Big Ticket's mild obsession with Antarctica, being that KG is not surprised by much these days (other than the occasional wicked surprise birthday party that comes about once a year and some of the years his friends don't even do it at all but they don't tell him that they aren't going to do it so it's a surprise non-party if you look at it like a weirdo) to his beliefs about what is and is not possible that he has spoken about to the media after winning a ring). The Orange Leaf Zoo Employee Handbook is known in animal circles as the phone book of rule books so it is nothing to sneeze at but also please don't sneeze at the animals, the zookeepers don't want them to catch a cold then they have to feed tomato soup to a baby orangutan and read bedtime stories to a kangaroo...well, on second thought maybe the zookeepers DO want you to sneeze at the animals because that sounds like a five star movie on the Hallmark channel, all day, throw the season pass on that gem of a film.

While a bored zookeeper zoned out and nearly nodded off in a random, disgusting trough, losing her mind and having fallen into the well of a thousand exhibit stare (not to be confused with a thousand Xzibit stare, which so many viewers of MTV in the mid aughts tried so desperately to cope with but most of them failed and ended up installing a custom vending machine stocked full of every single edition of the Madden video game next to the frozen yogurt and fortune teller combination machine (a FroYo, FoTell machine if you are in the biz) in their decked out hippie Volkswagen bus), an unbelievably breathtaking goddess of a creature rose up from the depths of despair and took flight despite what all her friends and family and teachers told her about her wings being just for show, kind of like Christmas lights on a house (except in the neighborhood in Christmas with the Kranks) or an exotic belt buckle from a faraway land that you got on a cruise when you re-upped your Parrothead membership and cashed in your stash of Tiki Tokens that you accrued every time you used your official Margaritaville blender, every time you played a Jimmy Buffett jam on Apple Music (or politely asked Alexa to pull up a cheap beach chair and a Yeti cooler) and every time you went to the gym in flip flops (and I am NOT talking about the sauna...have you ever dropped a dumbbell on your pinky toe?... Well, how big of dumbbell did you drop on your pinky toe?... Let's just compare pinky toes; we'll call it by toe.) Our zookeeper friend, the one who went from being the most bored person on the Animal Planet to a poor individual who could not bring herself together enough to scoop up all her marbles, looked skyward as a drop of ice cold water dripped on the bridge of her nose, falling delicately from the belly of the airborne, well-dressed beast. If you were one of the attendees at this afternoon's session of Bingo with Bears, a charitable event that is held each year after the Chicago Bears are finally and thanklessly, once and for all eliminated from competition but not from the hearts of their beloved Windy City faithful, consider yourself fortunate that you were able to view this lil side show for free.      

That is all from Open Window Studios and we will now return you to your originally scheduled programming of the latest installment of the critically OK'd eight part mini series, Starbucks Without WiFi: A Real Life Horror Story. I have been Karen Mendosa...good night, my flightless friends. 

Buy Chris's books SPONGE CAKE & WHAT'S IN THE FRIDGE? on Amazon 

Visit Chris's website christheauthor.com

Cheater! A Dating App

A smart looking, attractive British woman with librarian glasses perched on the bridge of her nose looks up from her iPhone, which she is angrily swiping at like a honey badger pawing at its roadkill regular badger prey, each movement packed with a healthy scoop more of frustration than the last. She is holding it down at a fancy bar that probably has a bigger cover fee than an establishment in Disney World (the empty bottles of Grey Goose that doubled as lamps were a nice touch, though, I must admit that Bar Rescue would not have had much to try to improve with that one) which appears to be closed except for a couple of lazy barbacks kicking it in the back of the kitchen, you know just shooting the breeze, playing cards and talking about the latest stand up specials that comedians have dropped on the Netflix network.

"Have you ever deeply desired to step out on a significant other only to find out that you have no idea where in the heck to begin?" The woman says to the camera with a knowing smirk on her beautiful face as her lips curled upward, coated in rosy red lipstick.

The commercial cuts to a man with a cowboy hat in tow and several layers of disgusting dirt located far underneath his fingernails stumbles through the double swinging doors into an old Western bar, like from Back to the Future III or something, and orders a shot of tequila and another one for his imaginary friend who has a drinking problem. Taxidermied woodland creatures encapsulate the bar including a stuffed squirrel in the corner that can also be used as a bottle opener and a grizzly bear that lives in between the vending machines and sings only the Motown blues. All of a sudden, the cowboy man desperately starts trying to get his expensive wedding ring off with an urgency that is typically only seen in most medical professions or on the film set of movies in the Jackass universe or other projects that have been inspired by their authentic daredevil brand. A stunning lady in a bright red cocktail dress and lips glossed in the same shade is making eyes at the cowboy while she stirs her Moscow Mule with a dark chocolate Pirouline wafer and pretends to pay attention to the winter beanied hipster buffoon who is trying to take her back to his micro-home/yurt combo duplex for a rousing night of ironically watching B horror movies from the 80s, going over the outline for his cookbook for college kids that he has been working on since he dropped out of junior college back in '98 and messing around with his calico cat, Ava, with a laser pointer on the wall of the living room but making sure to steer well clear of his collection of Death Cab For Cutie posters of album cover artwork.

Right in the middle of the hipster's sentence (probably about some sort of trend that he was one of the first people to know about), the gorgeous woman in the bright red cocktail dress just flat out stands up and walks out of the bar and straight into the backseat of a Black Escalade Uber while our cowboy friend is left in the dust as we can see him in the backdrop frantically shaking a can of WD-40 as he is still struggling to get that danged golden rock off his finger.     

Buy Chris's books SPONGE CAKE & WHAT'S IN THE FRIDGE? on Amazon 

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The Super Bowl Party

To say that Molly's Super Bowl party was an undertaking would be the understatement of the century. Between the balloons with the haunting depiction of Tom Brady’s sporting a cheesy mug whilst gently swaddling a pair of adolescent goats on them lining the walls, themselves mostly chock full with Patriots championship pennants and beautiful banners that would make Bill Belichick blush, and the enormous red, white and blue New England themed cake with an army of miniature militia men calmly coasting atop its frosting, let’s just say she had the whole thing covered from a hotel lobby brochure point of view. If Bill Simmons ever came around he would skip around her magnificent foyer like he himself had just caught the ball that won the Super Bowl in the final seconds for his beloved squad. It is also impossible to miss the brigade of G.I. Julians stalking the kitchen, looking for a sliver in the defense whilst protecting the silverware.
Guests of a wide variety of all different types of NFL allegiances flooded into the party, ranging from Patriots fans who began following the team after Tom Brady took over and became the GOAT to Patriots fans who began following the team BEFORE Tom Brady took over and became the GOAT. It's safe to say that if your hoodie sweatshirt had sleeves, you would probably not have a very good chance at making it past the offensive line that was in a stout party protection formation. 
Prior to the opening kickoff, Molly felt the need to signify the importance of the whole event, at least for any of the New England loyalists who would have liked a pair of reading glasses to help get a better view of where the day ranks in the history of the modern sports world if they couldn't already make it out from the Moon. She did this with the help of her healthy inventory of fireworks and her trust sidekicks who happen to be massive pyromaniacs, Dawn and Shawna. The neighbors were none too pleased with the giant display of explosives, but hey, it's a national holiday right? Dawn and Shawna lit off mortars colored in the shades of the American flag in synchronization as the procrastinators and latecomers straggled into the affair, hanging their painted faces in embarrassment by their tardiness but thrilled by the unexpected grand entrance (after they got over the initial shock of skirting past an enormous cardboard cutout of Gronk, as our favoritest, frattiest tight end was decked out in a full on chef outfit (with an apron that said, "Spike the cook" and featured a highly detailed, illustrious picture of himself spiking a legitimate, full size turkey as a feeble gathering of orphans huddles together in the corner in hunger, fearing for their lives and those of the Patriots's future opponents) a classic spatula in his right hand and a bottle of Tapatio hot sauce in tow in his left, already several slugs of Fireball deep judging by the cut of his jib and that thousand miles of Slip N Slides stare in his eyes that the big guy usually only gets when he gets within barking distance of a wave pool.)
Alas, Molly and her fellow New Englanders made merriment like it was 2002 as her beloved squad took down the Rams in a classic Boston and Los Angeles rivalry match up and so countless shots of clam chowder were passed around the TV room and toasted high to the sky, celebrating a long-awaited championship for a city that so desperately needed yet another ring to dangle over the New York City skyline, merely a ball of yarn to be pawed at for the feline spirit of the Big Apple.    

 Buy Chris's books SPONGE CAKE & WHAT'S IN THE FRIDGE? on Amazon 

Visit Chris's website christheauthor.com

Another Totally Honest Review of The Incredibles 2

Jack Jack is a legit, straight up gawd, truly a five tool player and can only be described as the Jason Kidd of cartoon babies if you are into multifaceted prime time performers who can take it all the way to the crib. This sequel is dripping with the foul stench of millennial angst; if a Twitter Trending Topic were a film it would have more substance. TMZ reports have alleged that the director, Brad Bird, secretly used one of the characters (Elastigirl to be specific) to actually stretch the length of this feature an additional twenty minutes, though these rumors can neither be confirmed nor denied as Bird spends the majority of his free time holed up in his superhero lair which is located underground somewhere in New Jersey in parts that have not yet been explored by wayfaring and Wayfarer wearing guidos. Sure the movie is nearly flawless from a technical standpoint and everything was fine and dandy with all the characters and their progression since the first Incredibles but it would have been nice if Rachel Ray had Mission Impossible'd her way into the writer's room and just thrown some hot sauce on the plot, maybe some nice Tapatio or Cholula, to really spice things up and put the whole blueprint in more of a Shyamalan perspective, you know. Also, we as an audience (I'm speaking for all of us now...you're WELCOME) understand that Jack Jack has a treasure chest full to the brim of superhero powers at his disposal by this point in time but how is that going to help him get ahead of the other students when it comes to applying for colleges? (Can you imagine the mountain of stress that the guidance counselors for these superhero students must have to climb out from under at the kick off of every semester? I think we just stumbled onto a couple more sequels, Pixar, I will accept my royalty checks via Amazon Escargot mail (you know, like Amazon Go and snail mail combined with a French twist)...wow, I stretched almost as far as Elastigirl for that last one, that was nearly as impressive as that Michael Jordan dunk in Space Jam.) Last time I checked, that is NOT part of the demographics section in the application for most universities but I haven't checked for a few years so maybe things have changed with the higher education landscape and their relationship with the top young rising superheroes in the world. 

 Buy Chris's books SPONGE CAKE & WHAT'S IN THE FRIDGE? on Amazon 

Visit Chris's website christheauthor.com

The First Pitch

Baseball was always your favorite sport, ever since your older brother's walk off home run took home the Shady Oak Little League championship game for the Papa Murphy's Padres. It wasn't just any ordinary home run, though, as the ball sailed past your left ear and nearly decapitated you as you watched the game from the outfield bleachers. Well, to say you were watching the game would be a stretch as you were more buried in your handheld game of Yahtzee at the moment, one of the most addicting video games in the history of the sport, a staple in the playbook of waiting room activities and a gateway drug to stepping up to actual gambling like Keno and Bingo. The red stitches of the baseball almost grazed the brim of your shamrock green Notre Dame Fighting Irish fitted ball cap, enough to wrestle your attention away from electronics forever...at least until you got an iPhone, but thankfully your attention span would be protected for a few more years. From that moment on, you could not get enough of America's favorite pastime...I guess you would feel the same way if you almost got your block knocked off by an aerial missile, sent off with an eerie ping (the signature sound of the aluminum bat).
Baseball would be number one and handheld Yahtzee and any other weird games that you would find in an Elk's Lodge lobby would have to take a backseat from that point on for you, to say the least. 

You stumble to the mound as the late arriving crowd files into their seats, buzzing with anticipation for the late season affair between the two rivals. 

To say you have been looking forward to this moment would be the understatement of the century...your whole life has been building towards it for almost as long as you can remember at this point. Wrigley Field has always seemed like a utopia in your eyes, but you have never had the chance to make it there and never thought you would have the time or money to do so, what with your busy schedule that is chock full with you splitting time between being a Fed Ex truck driver and writer. It was September 5, 2022 and the Chicago Cubs were taking on their arch rival, the St. Louis Cardinals at their legendary home ball park. It wasn't just any game either - the Cubs and Cardinals had been knotted in a tight race for the lead of their division for the majority of the season and the good guys had the edge by two and a half games on the big day - excuse me, more like on your big day (it would be like if it was the Super Bowl for you but for everyone else in the stadium it is just another September major league baseball game that will have playoff implications). You had somehow weaseled your way into a situation where you were offered the once in a lifetime opportunity to toss out the first pitch at a major league baseball game, a legitimate dream come true scenario and an event that you will be bragging about at breweries and house parties for decades to come. The chance came your way with the help from the Field of Dreams gods as your old buddy from college, Tony Moores, who had worked for the Cubs organization as an assistant in the marketing department for the past year and a half hooked you up with the golden ticket after the team's first option, Nathan Fillion dropped out due to a scheduling mix up because he was actually supposed to be filming a show about a criminal-turned-cop from Detroit who isn't afraid to bend the rules to get the job done, even if it means risking it all to catch the perp...The best episode of the show is when Fillion goes to his high school reunion and puts his old bully in a headlock on center stage in front of the whole class before spiking the punch and doing a dance that he choreographed himself after several painstaking hours in the lab with a Paula Abdul wannabe. 

This is easily the best day of your life and you are doing your best to eat it all up before the clock strikes midnight on your fairy tale spider web of a story and the time arrives in which you are no longer being cheered on by thousands of people while stomping all over one of the most historic landmarks in all of sports and also getting to kick it with a bunch of professional athletes and pretending that you are one of them too.
Your Mom and Dad were going nuts the second that Nate hit the ball that won it for the Papa Murphy's Padres, a moment that he will never live down, not for ten thousand family Christmas get togethers at our Aunt Kathy's cabin by the lake. I dare you to try to get through a game of Apples to Apples with that dude without him spouting off about the aerial projection of that hit, like he had a high level, super smart science degree and hadn't worked at the post office since he graduated from high school.   
At first, you couldn't believe your eyes. 
A streaker. 
This wasn't just any streaker, though - this was a streaker of epic proportions, the kind of streaker that those in attendance will never be able to shake clean from their brain's Etch-A-Sketch, no matter how much therapy they go in the coming years to as a result of the event. An elderly man who was wearing nothing more than his long gray hair, which reached down to the middle of his back, strided across the outfield grass, a breathtaking gazelle; it was as if the life had never escaped his old timey legs. His mane soared in the wind as the Wrigley Field crowd roared in excitement and unfiltered joy at a level that had never been realized in their lives until that day. 
The whole team went to Dairy Queen after Nate's big home run. He couldn't stop bragging about it which you and your little sister, Macie, thought was pretty funny but you had to give it to him - it was probably the coolest thing that he would ever do in his life. Anyway, the first round of Blizzards was on Coach Dan and when Nate tipped his over to test the sturdiness of how well his Reese's Pieces Blizzard had been packed, all his ice cream came flying out everywhere...at least that's what you wished would have happened - it would have slowed his roll a little bit, that's for dang stinkin' sure, you can bet on that much. Nate never did become a New York Yankee, though, or a player for any major league baseball team for that matter. He caught the chess bug in tenth grade and never looked back, going on to become a four time Great Lakes Amateur Chess Champion and a legend in most YMCA circles across the greater Midwest.  
In an amazing spinning of the office chairs, another streaker splashed onto the scene. 
His soul mate, a gorgeous goddess of a woman with a similar hairstyle, aimed to meet the disgusting ogre at center field as she leapt over the wall behind third base, he over the first. It was truly a roller coaster ride for the Wrigley Field crowd on that sunny afternoon, flipping back and forth between agony and elatement like a couple grandparents relaxing on their favorite pieces of furniture and settling in with a couple mugs of chamomile herbal tea for a night of arguing about which major league baseball game to watch because they have the MLB Extra Innings package and get all the games so it is quite the paradox of choice type of experience for them (imagine the agony if they would have to deal with if they had Netflix - oh the horror!).
You never did get to throw out that first pitch - a couple ball boys rushed you off the field during the big commotion and you were simply too swept up in the crazy emotions of the situation that you didn't know what to say or do but all you know is that you kind of wanted to cry and aren't too proud to admit that a little tear did smudge down the side of your cheek, maybe. 
As a consolation prize of sorts, the Cubs offered you an opportunity to do it again in the beginning of the 2023 season but your old college buddy Tony Moores got fired for gambling on the Cincinnati Reds to win the World Series...some talking heads have called him the Pete Rose of major league baseball marketing departments while others have likened him more to a young man who got caught up in a high stakes gambling operation that was way over his head and nearly ended up stealing his life... to be totally fair, most talking heads are not as familiar with Moores and his minor exploits.   
You ended up taking home a couple Iowa Cubs tickets, a mug that says #1 Cub and one of those singing tunas that exclusively talks like Harry Caray but the experience was priceless and you came to the decision that this would make the best Mastercard commercial ever so you are going to shoot their marketing team a couple Tweets in the morning. 

 Buy Chris's books SPONGE CAKE & WHAT'S IN THE FRIDGE? on Amazon 

Visit Chris's website christheauthor.com 

A Rocky Road

You stumble outside after a night of heavy drinking, gorging on cheap Mexican food and doing your darndest to complete a competitive Netflixing obstacle course. Tilting your gaze skyward, you all of a sudden feel your face being pelted by an unknown chilly substance - perhaps a chocolate Frosty from Wendy's or a McFlurry? Fast food is on your mind after this rambunctious bender, a well known remedy for such level of hangover and a family tradition passed down by your grandparents. Upon closer inspection by your taste buds, however, you determine the flakes to be of the Rocky Road flavored ice cream variety. You run around the block, nay sprint at a faster speed than you have ever approached, in excitement before falling to your knees to thank the heavens for blessing your humble self with such a bountiful and delicious surprise snack gift. Then you sprint even faster inside your abode to alert your family about the great news and to bring them outside to share in the frozen joy that does not have anything to do with Frozen for once. Your wife doesn't even believe you but your kids can't believe their luck - the fact that they might be able to eat a dessert such as ice cream at an hour such as this, prior to suppertime, is simply an absurd premise that they can't wrap their little brain around yet so they just revel in the whole situation and ride out that sugar high. You all hustle outside, barging through the front door like you didn't just drop $7,700 for an exotic maple tree from the Netherlands to be carved up, flown in and slapped up there by someone else who doesn't know more about The Doors than doors. As you shuffle outside, fancy China bowls and dinner spoons in tow, ready to feast like Thanksgiving in February, you find...blue skies. Your wife raises her arms in victory and begins chanting her name ("Kar-en! Kar-en! Kar-en!"), thrilled that she was right about you being wrong and your kids are purely devastated with a heavy sprinkling of shock that what sounded too good to be true was in fact too good to be true, thus proving the old saying to be useful. As they walk back inside with their heads hanging, spoons clanging in their empty bowls in shame, you shake your fist at the cloudless atmosphere as you curse your wondrous imagination that must have gotten the best of you on that fateful day when your kids later found out that Santa Claus is a made up story too - it was just a really stressful day for everyone, sometimes you gotta chalk it up to an L.

Buy Chris's books SPONGE CAKE & WHAT'S IN THE FRIDGE? on Amazon 

Visit Chris's website christheauthor.com