Goodbye, World.
I have been given six weeks to live. You can read all the details here.
I have been given six weeks to live. You can read all the details here.
★★☆☆☆
Hello, and welcome to my week-by-week review of the world. Today I am reviewing The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.
When a young man named Fresh Prince is sent away by a mother who no longer wants to care for him, she offers only the flimsiest of excuses — that it’s for his own safety. (She works for the post office, an agency with offices in literally almost every town. She could have moved with him anywhere if she truly loved him.)
Fresh is handed off like a hot potato to live with his extended family, a family so rich they live in a mansion with a butler, yet can’t be bothered to greet Fresh when he lands at the airport, and he’s forced to take a 45-minute taxi ride. This is the premise of a television show called The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.
Fresh uses humor to mask the grief he feels over his mother’s rejection. On the outside he is happy and irreverent, but knowing his backstory makes his jokes reek of desperation and a desire to be loved, just like Carrot Top or the late Johnny Carson.
It seems that Fresh’s zany personality is the reason he doesn’t fit in with this family, but at its heart this is a tale of classism. These one-percenters want nothing to do with a poor, young man from a dangerous neighborhood, but are forced to take him in for unexplained reasons. Fresh’s mother must have some real dirt on his aunt.
Fresh manages to make only one close friend on the show, another young man named Jazz. Jazz is as unlikable as Fresh believes himself to be, but smaller and for some reason always wearing sunglasses. I assumed he was blind but he doesn’t seem to be. He may just have ugly eyes.
Fresh’s mother could easily have abandoned him at a fire station — there’s no age limit on that — but she clearly wanted him as far away as possible. Eventually guilt must take over because she begrudgingly manages to visit him a couple of times over the six-year run of the show.
To be honest, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air rarely held my interest but not because I’m racist. I don’t relate to the super rich characters portrayed in this show. I mean they had a butler! The closest I’ve ever had to that is when I order a pizza and a man drives it to my house.
I wrote several letters to the producers of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Airsuggesting they have a crossover starring ALF in order to attract more viewers. They never responded to my letters or implemented my idea. Not surprisingly, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air was cancelled.
BEST FEATURE: The catchy theme song.
WORST FEATURE: Fresh Prince never returns home to live with his mom.
Please join me next week for a special edition of Ted Wilson Reviews the World.
★★★★★
Hello, and welcome to my week-by-week review of the world. Today I am reviewing Goodbye, Vitamin.
The rejection of modern medicine has been in vogue lately, like the anti-vaccination movement or the lesser known practice of putting other people’s poop in your butt — an idea thrust into the mainstream with this scene from Miranda July’s Me and You and Everyone We Know:
For this reason I had assumed Rachel Khong’s Goodbye, Vitamin to be a pro-scurvy manifesto, and I was excited to see what benefits a lack of vitamins might offer. It turns out Goodbye, Vitamin isn’t about that at all, according to the blurbs on the dust jacket. And once I have time to sit down and read the book, I will update this review.
For now, I will tell you everything else you need to know about the book. It’s by author Rachel Khong, who has pretty amazing teeth. I’m guessing they are either digitally altered or she lost them all as a child, and what I’m seeing is the result of many hours spent with a top-tier orthodontist. They’re great teeth!
Typically an author’s appearance is irrelevant, but Ms. Khong’s teeth were such a distraction I stared at them for over an hour, and was only able to look away when I blacked one out with a marker.
Now if you’re a lemon fan, you’re going to love this book. There are lemons all over the cover! And if lemons aren’t your thing, there’s another version of the book with a banana on the cover. If you don’t like lemons or bananas, I suggest removing the dust jacket and drawing your preferred fruit on the book itself. You can draw a durian or whatever.
Currently the book is only available in hardcover, but the cover isn’t that hard to tear off if you want to save a little space on your bookshelf. Unfortunately what is hard to do is to tear off the cover without also utterly destroying the rest of the book. I ended up having to buy a second copy.
If you’re no sold yet, famous person Khloé Kardashian recommended Goodbye, Vitamin, and that’s more than enough for me. Is it a coincidence that Khloé and Ms. Khong share the same KH consonant pairing, or is it a subtle clue that they are actually the same person? I have no way of knowing and neither do you. Not every mystery needs to be solved.
BEST FEATURE: This book reminded me to buy vitamins.
WORST FEATURE: If you drop the book on the floor it is very likely to spill open to the end and ruin the ending for you.
Please join me next week when I’ll be reviewing milk.
★★★★★
Hello, and welcome to my week-by-week review of the world. Today I am reviewing the Fourth of July, 2017.
How was your Fourth of July? Don’t answer that because I won’t be able hear you. But that’s okay because I already know yours was not nearly as good as mine.
The best thing that happened on the Fourth of July is I got a prank phone call from a woman pretending to be my deceased wife. It was a pretty decent impression bolstered by the fact that I haven’t heard my wife’s voice in several decades. What clued me in that this woman was an impostor was the fact that she didn’t know my name. But for ten wonderful minutes I thought my wife was alive again and it was fantastic. What a feeling!
As the tragedy of losing my wife a second time was about to set in, I was distracted by my neighbor Fran’s prank of setting off several hundred firecrackers on my front porch. When I climbed out from cowering under my kitchen table and saw Fran and his two sons pointing through the window and laughing, I shared in their laughter. He plays pranks like that on me all the time and it keeps me in good spirits.
My Fourth of July was off to a great start and it was only 8 AM. I headed down to the river to get a good seat for the evening’s fireworks display. Arriving 12 hours early really paid off because I had the whole river to myself. Unfortunately around 10 PM I figured out I had the wrong river which is why it was so empty except for a small crowd that had gathered to watch a couple having sex. Everyone celebrates in their own way.
I didn’t miss out on the fireworks entirely, because I had recorded last years televised display, so I just watched that. It was good enough.
As I was drifting off to sleep I imagined how lucky I am to be an American. Then I imagined how lucky I would be to be another nationality in a nation where everyone gets healthcare, and a year off to spend with their newborn, and where a much smaller percentage of the population is imprisoned.
All of this made me sad about America and I began crying, but then I screamed for joy because the doctor said my tears ducts didn’t work anymore because I was so old and had overused them, but it turns out she was wrong!
BEST FEATURE: If you want to fire a gun into the air, it’s a good time to do it without anyone noticing.
WORST FEATURE: A bullet came through my window.
Please join me next week when I’ll be reviewing C.H.U.D.
★★★★☆
Hello, and welcome to my week-by-week review of the world. Today I am reviewing Okja.
Okja is the new movie from Bong Joon-ho, director of cult favorites 설국열차 and 괴물. In Okja, a magical hippopotamus named Okja befriends a young girl named Mija in the mountains of Korea. Meanwhile, Tilda Swinton and Jake Gyllenhaal are planning to eat Okja and feed her to America. Okja has been cloned which means hot dogs for everyone.
The message of this movie seemed to be that we should not eat animals, but some of my most delicious meals have previously been animals. And to be honest, the movie actually made me quite hungry, leaving me with an acute curiosity about what hippopotamuses taste like. Dominoes doesn’t offer hippo as a topping. No one in my area does.
I’m not sure why vegetarians value animal life more than plant life. To me, life is life regardless of whether it has a face. I feel the same amount of remorse for eating a puppy as I do a head of lettuce. Not that I’ve ever eaten a puppy, but I probably would if presented with one that nobody would miss. I’ve also never eaten an entire head of lettuce. Go ahead and try it if you think you can. It’s a lot of lettuce.
Okja is partially subtitled which means you need to either wear your glasses or learn Korean. I did neither, but fortunately for me, the woman next to me was able to translate. I would not recommend bringing a translator because it will make other theatergoers very upset.
That’s another issue with this movie — it’s not in theaters. It was released on Netflix.com so people won’t have to leave their house, but some people have roommates they want to get away from and Netflix didn’t consider this.
The theater I went to was an underground theater in a weird lady’s pool house. She shows movies there every once in awhile. Tickets are cheap and there’s no popcorn and it only seats six people. It’s a poor moviegoing experience but I wanted to see Okja and I couldn’t figure out how to watch it on Netflix.com.
I would recommend this movie because it’s fun to watch a trained hippo do tricks. Ever since Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus went out of business, there aren’t many venues for animal tricks. You’re probably best of training your own pets to do things nature never intended.
BEST FEATURE: Tilda Swinton. Tilda Swinton is always the best feature of any movie she’s in. I like her so much I would marry any woman named Tilda Swinton.
WORST FEATURE: The movie is of average length but I was hoping it would be much longer because I had nothing else to do that day.
Please join me next week when I’ll be reviewing Ramadan.
★★★★☆
Hello, and welcome to my week-by-week review of the world. Today I am reviewing a comb.
Most people have hair as well as a desire to see that hair groomed, so this review will have very broad appeal. I came across a comb recently that was your standard black comb but with one exception: Even though it was new and right out of the package, there was a hair in it as if it had been used. I was grossed out but quite intrigued.
I looked around to see if I could match the hair to any of the other customers in the store. There were eight different possible candidates the but none of them would admit it was theirs. Without a DNA test I was out of luck.
I contacted the maker of the comb, Hotel Quality Hair Care Products International to ask if anyone working in their factory had lost a hair. The nice woman I spoke with explained that they do not have a factory and all their combs are made in China. I contacted China but have yet to receive a response.
Other than the errant strand of hair, it was a great comb! Comb technology reached its apex decades ago and no one has come along to disrupt it. There are no electric combs or combs connected to the internet to tell you when your hair is messy. Combs are just combs, simple and effective. If the comb doesn’t work, it’s your hair that’s the problem.
Even bald or slovenly people would enjoy this comb if only for the sensation of dozens of little teeth running along one’s scalp. It feels both invigorating and slightly sensual. It made me feel like an ace.
Unfortunately I lost the comb. That’s to be expected. Lost combs litter America. But when I purchased a new one, it was like the old one had never left me. The combs were identical in every way. Genius.
BEST FEATURE: The comb can very easily be turned into a shiv if needed.
WORST FEATURE: One of the prongs dislodged and got stuck in my ear canal.
Please join me next week when I’ll be reviewing a wicker basket.
★★★★☆
Hello, and welcome to my week-by-week review of the world. Today I am reviewing a watermelon.
It’s summertime, which means watermelons are still available to purchase just as they are any other time of year — but what makes summertime watermelons stand apart from the rest is that they don’t taste like a sheet of paper.
I recently bought a watermelon because I wanted my groceries to weigh 10 lbs. more than usual for the exercise. Unfortunately the watermelon I purchased was too large, and halfway home my arms gave out, so I had to abandon my groceries and roll the watermelon the rest of the way.
With watermelons there is always a certain amount of mystery. Will it be ripe? Will it have been hollowed out by a worm and replaced with hundreds of baby worms? You never know.
I had a good feeling about the one I’d purchased though, but when I cut it open I was met with the most surreal sensation. It was ripe — that wasn’t the issue. The strange thing was the pattern of the seeds looked just like Jesus’s face. Not Jesus the biblical figure, but Jesus my mechanic.
I thought it was a practical joke, or maybe a subtle marketing campaign on behalf of Tech Auto Repair. In Japan they can grow square watermelons, so it wouldn’t be that much of a stretch to think someone could grow ones with seeds in the patterns of a specific human face.
I think the campaign backfired because now the next time I see Jesus I’ll have to pretend I’m not picturing my knife slicing into his face and red juice running out.
The other issue with the seeds was I kept getting them stuck in my teeth. Normally I don’t care if I have food stuck in my teeth because my charm and confidence allow me to gracefully overcome such superficial trivialities, but I always worry about the possibility of a seed taking root in my gums. Getting a tooth removed is expensive. I can’t imagine what it costs to get an entire plant removed.
This watermelon was quite delicious and made even more so with the addition of feta cheese. I don’t know what part of the cow feta cheese comes from but it’s the perfect accompaniment to a watermelon.
BEST FEATURE: I saw my neighbor watching me while I ate the watermelon and I could tell she wanted some too and I’m not proud to say it but I enjoyed the power I held over her.
WORST FEATURE: I found some worms in the rind when I was done.
Please join me next week when I’ll be reviewing a Crayon.
★★★★★
Hello, and welcome to my week-by-week review of the world. Today I am reviewing Windex.
If you have a dirty window, you have two options; smash out all the glass, or clean it with Windex. Smashing the glass is dangerous, costly, and leaves your home vulnerable to intruders. But with Windex, your windows will be so clean that birds will forget you have windows.
Scientists at the S.C. Johnson Laboratory for Windex Studies have determined Windex to be the Most Incredible of all window cleaners. Their pamphlet didn’t get into specifics — which is fine by me because I’m not a scientist — but I have to say that’s a pretty impressive accolade to receive.
Windex is also great for the environment, as I have learned firsthand. Fill your bathtub with it and you don’t need to waste any water to bathe. A tubful of Windex will last up to a week before it starts to get weird and you need to change it. If you typically take a 45-minute shower, that’s millions of gallons of water saved each year.
A lot of people say Windex isn’t safe to drink — and that’s partly true — but you can condition your body to not reject it. Start with very small amounts and work your way up. After a few months you can drink an entire shot glass of Windex without feeling too bad. (I didn’t want to drink Windex, but to understand it fully for this review I had to. I drink everything I review.)
The price of Windex can’t be beat. It’s cheaper than a kombucha. I don’t know what a kombucha is — it might also be a glass cleaner — but it’s much more expensive than Windex.
Because so many people use Windex, it’s a great conversation starter. Next time you’re at a party and experiencing an awkward conversation with a stranger, trying mentioning how you bought some Windex earlier in the day even if you didn’t. I’ve made a good number of friends with whom our only real common ground is Windex. It’s all we talk about. Ever.
Disclaimer: This review hopefully retroactively sponsored by Windex.
BEST FEATURE: It’s addictive but not in a debilitating way.
WORST FEATURE: Bathing in Windex can leave your skin with a blue tint if you stay in for more than an hour.
Please join me next week when I’ll be reviewing Star Trek.
★★★☆☆ (3 out of 5)
Hello, and welcome to my week-by-week review of the world. Today I am reviewing Peter Piper.
Everyone has heard of Peter Piper, the guy who picked a peck of pickled peppers. But what else do we know about him? A lot, actually.
Based on his name, we know Peter was a professional piper. In the olden days, vocations used to be the basis for surnames such as Blacksmith or Farmer. If occupational surnames still existed today, we would have people named things like Stephanie Grocerybagger or Larry Betweenjobsrightnow.
So why would a professional piper be spending his time picking pickled peppers instead of piping? Because he loved pickled peppers. But pickling takes a lot of time — the kind of time only a divorced man has.
Despite being a musician, Peter had no woman in his life. I know this because women love musicians no matter what they look like. Take Mick Jagger for instance, and imagine that he’s an insurance salesman wearing a pair of loose khakis and a polo shirt. Would you still want to kiss him? Maybe only out of pity. If Peter had time to pickle, he was a divorcee.
It’s hard to know what came between Peter and his wife. Perhaps it was his piping attire, or perhaps he accidentally killed someone and only Peter’s wife knew about it and the stress was too much for their marriage to bear. Secret accidental deaths have been the cause of many divorces. Whatever it was, the secret of his divorce is something Peter took to his grave.
I would love to have heard some of Peter’s piping. He must have been quite talented if he was able to make a living as a musician. Or if he wasn’t talented, then he had a good brand built around him.
BEST FEATURE: Peter’s middle name was Pterodactyl.
WORST FEATURE: I was inspired to try piping myself but I was so bad at it that I fell into a deep depression.
Please join me next week when I’ll be reviewing Cheetos.
★★★★★ (5 out of 5)
Hello, and welcome to my week-by-week review of the world. Today I am reviewing cotton candy.
Scientists and religious zealots agree — cotton candy is the greatest of the candies. It’s delicious, texturally superior, fun to watch being made, and can be worn as a wig. At most, a chocolate bar can be worn as a mustache only after warming it up and smearing it above your lip.
You probably remember the first time you had cotton candy: A man you would not normally choose to associate with was spinning the candy into existence, spinning and spinning, leaving you almost hypnotized.
You wanted the cotton candy so deeply that you were willing to risk slightly brushing against the skin of this man’s hand as he passed the cotton candy to you. And the moment the pink, soft, sweet candy touched your tongue, you forgot that man had ever existed.
According to a pamphlet I found on the ground at the carnival, cotton candy was invented by Eli Whitney right after he finished inventing the cotton gin. Local townspeople thought he was a witch when they saw what he had done, and were ready to burn him at the stake. But when they tasted the results of his witchery, they relented.
It’s not easy to fill up on cotton candy. I once ate over two dozen servings at the carnival and still had room for a steak dinner afterwards. And then when I spotted the cotton candy vendor dining alone across from me, we went out to the parking lot and he made me more cotton candy out of the trunk of his car.
He said he could see the passion in my tongue and offered to sell me his cotton candy machine right there on the spot. In honor of Eli Whitney, and because this man said the cash could help him get away from things for a while, I ran to the ATM.
My kitchen was too small to accommodate a cotton candy machine, so I installed it next to my bed, allowing me to start and end my day with a delicious treat. Now sometimes I’ll even spin a 3 AM snack just because I can. I don’t need to wait around for a carnival to come through town.
BEST FEATURE: It’s super easy to break off a piece and feed to a bird.
WORST FEATURE: It’s even harder to get than Girl Scout cookies.
Please join me next week when I’ll be reviewing a bloody knife.
★★☆☆☆ (2 out of 5)
Have you ever seen a pony? I mean a pony in real life. If you haven’t, you should. Basically take a horse and shrink it down to hilariously small proportions and that’s what a pony is.
When I came across this pony at a children’s birthday party in the park, thinking it was a horse threw off my sense of perspective, and I thought the children surrounding it were enormous kids, each suffering from the same unfortunate glandular disorder. Perhaps they were part of a support group and the horse was a therapy horse.
As I got closer I discovered the children were healthy and it was the horse that had a disorder.
Knowing I hadn’t been invited to this party, it was going to be tough to get close enough to that pony to touch it. I told the partygoers that I was a park ranger and I needed to inspect the pony to make sure it wasn’t a bear or anything dangerous. A mom at the party said, “sure, whatever.” That was my ticket in!
The pony smelled like oats, which I love. I eat oatmeal for breakfast every morning, so I really felt a personal connection to this pony. I pictured him coming over for breakfast in the morning. The two of us sharing a bowl of oats and a cup of orange juice. Then the pony would give me a ride to work and all the townspeople would see us pass by and wave and be jealous of our friendship — and my independence from fossil fuels.
But this would never happen because this pony was not sentient and belonged to a party supply rental company. I stared into his eyes wondering if he could sense what the two of us could become, but as near as I could tell, he couldn’t sense anything. He just stared straight ahead. Then with his hind leg he kicked a child.
Chaos erupted and I took this as my cue to run back to my car and drive home. When I got home I spent the afternoon thinking about that pony. It left me with more questions than answers. If I saw that pony again, would I recognize it? Would it recognize me? Are pony burgers a legal thing and if I ordered one, what would the odds be that I could end up eating my almost-pony-friend?
I drove back to the park and looked for the pony, hoping it has somehow escaped and was now living free in the park. I saw a squirrel and possibly a muskrat, but no pony.
BEST FEATURE: I named it Gerald.
WORST FEATURE: I think I saw lice in its mane.
Please join me next week when I’ll be reviewing a salad fork.
★★★★☆ (4 out of 5)
Hello, and welcome to my week-by-week review of the world. Today I am reviewing my TV.
After my traditional TV succumbed to the ravages of time and a mouse, I made a bold decision. Rather than replacing my TV with a fancy flat-screen or one of those tiny portables you see being used in places other than living rooms, I replaced my TV with a mirror. Now every show I watch stars me!
On the surface it may sound like a lot of work to produce entire episodes of television and perform them all in a mirror as my eyes watch. It’s much less passive than the typical TV viewing experience, but there are many upsides.
The most notable advantage to having a mirror for a TV is that I can watch literally any TV show at any time of day. That episode of Family Ties where Tom Hanks plays a pedophile? Yep! That episode of Family Ties where Alex P. Keaton mourns over a dead friend? Yep! That episode of Family Tieswhere Alex P. Keaton becomes addicted to speed? Yep! Or any episode ofFamily Matters.
It doesn’t matter if it’s an old show or a contemporary show, a classic episode or an episode that hasn’t aired. Last week I watched all 18 seasons of Game of Thrones. It was hard to act out a lot of the sex scenes alone, but not impossible.
If an actor passes away and the character has to be written out, no it doesn’t. I have complete creative control. Anything I want to have happen can and will. I don’t want to say it’s like being a God because honestly I don’t know what that’s like. It’s more like being Eddie Murphy.
Most of the shows I watch are commercial-free, although I do sometimes act out a commercial as well, for a more authentic experience. Unfortunately no one is paying for these commercials, but I’m certain they have to be worth something.
With pirated content being such a big deal these days, I worry I could be sued by copyright infringement. Please, please do not tell anyone about my amazing TV that gets all the channels and all the shows free of charge. And if you work for a television company, by reading these words you have legally agreed to not sue me.
The only downside to my TV is that every time I pass a mirror, suddenly the TV is on. I wish there was an off switch.
BEST FEATURE: The more TV I watch the better an actor I become.
WORST FEATURE: I was watching an episode of Friends and a man appeared in the window behind me. That was the worst episode of Friendsever.
Please join me next week when I’ll be reviewing spinach.
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