RANDOM THOUGHT ALERTS!!! (Vol. 1, No. 5)

Unintentionally, Mrs. Scribbler gave me the alley-oop for this week's intro as we were watching one of my favorite movies that surprisingly didn't make the "Tuesday Night at the Movies" cut, the perpetually-hilarious White Men Can't Jump.  (Truth be told, I'm actually pretty salty with myself for excluding it because I'm always quoting it and I watch it every time it comes on TV, but I digress.)  So one of my favorite parts is when Billy (Woody Harrelson) has to shoot his way back into girlfriend Gloria's (Rosie Perez) good graces after blowing his stack on a bet that he could defy the myth that...wait for it...White men can't jump.  Sidney (Wesley Snipes) takes him to the b-ball court where his boy Robert (Cylk Cozart), who's a security guard on the lot where Jeopardy is shot, is willing to get her on the show if Billy makes a shot.  When he assumes that he's shooting toward a much easier goal, Robert's partner-in-crime Zeke (Kevin Benton) stands up and says, "No, no, no, no, Billy boy, this is Ghana.  You, my friend, are shooting for the Sudan."  After the always-funny "and a hook shot", everyone on the court waits with baited breath as Billy does his best Sky Hook from long distance, hits the difficult shot, the crowd goes wild and it immediately cuts to the old school Jeopardy music--and the best version of it, I might add.  Yeah, classic stuff right there.  Now that I've inspired you to go watch White Men Can't Jump, try to hold off for a while and tough out another edition of "RANDOM THOUGHT ALERTS!!!" first...

WHEN YOU'RE NOT ALONE IN YOUR RANDOMNESS, PART 1: DANCING WITH DELI CHEESE.  If you haven't realized it by now, then there's a distinct possibility that I might be a certified weirdo.  When Silento first came out with "Watch Me (Whip/Nae Nae)" and emphatically said his name in the first four bars of the song's intro, the normal part of my brain initially heard, "SILENTO...SILENTO...SILENTOOOOO!!!"  However, whenever I saw a particular brand of cheese with burgundy and black wrapping at the grocery store, I would sing in my head, "SARGENTO...SARGENTO...SARGENTOOOOO!!!"  At this point, I thought that I was the biggest geek in America...until exactly a month ago.  While shopping at the Shop Rite in White Oak, I see a brother with his girlfriend by the cheese and what does he utter as he's picking up a pack?   What else..."SARGENTO...SARGENTO...SARGENTOOOOO!!!"  I was totally about to backtrack, be like "bruhhhhhh, I do the same thing" and high five the guy like never before, but all I heard was "don't be weird" as I made a bee line for the Herr's Sour Cream & Onion chips instead.  We're not alone though...there are actually two YouTube videos where people have made their own parodies Weird Al Yankovic style, particularly this brother here who published his video on my 36th birthday.  (That fact on its own rocks more than the song itself.  It's always about 9/28.  Never forget.)  Ah, the wonders of being quirky mixed with viral dance trends and delicious baby Swiss...

PLAYERS GONNA PLAY...BALLERS GONNA BALL...ROLLERS GONNA ROLL?!?!  So for the past eleven to twelve years, I have developed an interesting, but potentially offensive theory.  I have either known women or have known of women through friends that drive around in Expeditions, Tahoes or the big truck of the moment while "doing their dirt".  Maybe it's rebelling against the idea that men are the only ones who are allowed to do certain things like drive Expeditions or even muscle/sports cars.  Either way, what I've noticed with these women is that they are either more sexually liberated, possess a certain nasty look in their eyes when I see them ride by or just have that straight-up "I'm a roller" vibe .  ("Roller (rolla)" = person, usually in reference to a woman, who will have sex with anybody and everybody. Your quick tutorial in D.C.-area slang, so just remember whence you got it when it creeps into your vocab.)  Now do I have concrete statistical data to back up this off-the-wall theory?  Of course I don't, silly rabbit.  I also don't have video evidence of Sherri Shepherd being a stone cold freak behind closed doors, but that look in her eyes tells me different.  I can just see when people are letting their freak flags fly without actually flying it from the top of their polo green Yukon like a dreaded Dallas Cowboys flag--the latter about which I can deduce even more roller tendencies, but I'll leave that alone for now.  So to all of you ladies who may have felt some kind of way about this section, don't fret just yet because the next section might make up for it...

NEGROES IN TRUCKS.  I have been saying the less politically-correct version of this for about as long as I've had the "rollers in trucks" theory and I'll tell you why: outside of New Jersey and Virginia drivers, there are very few people in this world who burn my biscuits on the road more than Negroes in trucks.  Let me be clear: just like the aforementioned section, I'm not talking about dudes driving "baby mama Benz trucks", CR-Vs or RAV4s; I'm specifically referring to the bammas in Tahoes, Yukon XLs and Denalis, Suburbans, Escalades, Expeditions, Excursions, F-150s, Ram 1500s, etc.  These jackwagons are infamous for driving like bats out of hell, cutting people off in traffic, parking in spaces clearly designated for compact cars, pulling into said spaces instead of backing into them (which makes life unbearable for any smaller car that has to park next to them) and often parking over the line because their SUV or pickup truck is so massively gargantuan and they don't know anything other than pulling d-head moves.  Although the epidemic is rampant regardless of the small town or metropolitan area in which you reside, my annoyance is compounded by the fact that a lot of D.C.-area folks have this entitled attitude anyway and act like they own the road by birthright.  There are some who might say that it's no different than the theory that men who own muscle or sports cars are overcompensating for "something" and you'll get no argument from me--although that's really none of my business.  At the end of the business day though, it only takes about between $30 and $40 to fill up my Accord whereas these jokers are coughing up between $85 and $100.  As far as I'm concerned, have at it, slim...

THE ERA OF THE WEIRD COMMERCIAL MUST END.  Now I'm all for weirdness, but like anything, it must be done in moderation.  Unfortunately, companies like new marketplace website Jet.Com and the "#BeardlyAwesome" candy-maker Trolli have completely bucked convention to the point where they make Gonzo look more like he has a wife, 2.3 kids, a dog and a house with a picket fence in Arizona.  In fact, Trolli says on their website, "It's going to get weird if we have anything to do with it.  Which we do."  When you have someone with an exorbitantly high-top fade and cats taking shelter in it or James Harden's head popping out of his own head shooting lasers from his eyes with another head popping out of that one with Trolli candy coming out like a Jack-in-the-box, it's clear that it's not going to get weird; it already is weird and me no likey.  Taking from the same theme of taking off the tops of people's heads, Jet.Com isn't far off from Trolli as a man and a woman have purple smoke emanating from their brains in one advertisement, which sets off the sprinkler system and causes the Jet.Com robot to malfunction.  Frankly, I blame Skittles and Old Spice for this trend--the latter of whose commercials were kinda cool at first before taking a ridiculous turn for the not-so-cool.  I don't mind when companies think outside the box to draw interest in their products, but out-of-control shrinking machines and gummies for brains aren't selling me.  Let's reel this in a little bit, people.

(RANDOMNESS UPDATE ALERT!!!  I'd like to believe that I'm not responsible for this because I'm only getting about 45 views on average right about now and I doubt that any of them are from someone at a fast food chain's corporate office.  However, as I took another trip to the New Carrollton Bojangles over the weekend, it appears that someone got hip to Yng Lgnds' mildly-clever marketing strategy and finally removed their promotional sticker from the drive-thru window.  My whole thing is that it was up there for weeks, so who's doing their grounds checks and why are they just now taking it down?  Maybe they were either getting a check on the side or promised certain "favors" from groupie rejects.  At this point, I'm just spitballing, but hey...that Cajun Filet Biscuit cranked though.)

If your brain has been going off in tangents as of late, then join the Random Revolution and share a thought or two in the comments!  Don't forget to come back next week for another exciting and quirky-but-not-as-weird-as-a-Trolli-commercial edition of "RANDOM THOUGHT ALERTS!!!"  We now return you to your irregularly-scheduled opportunity to watch White Men Can't Jump, which might be in progress...