RANDOM THOUGHT ALERTS (Vol. 1, No. 13)

If you rode behind a truck which said "Follow me to your perfect paint color" on your way out of town, what would be your first set of thoughts?  Well, as I inadvertently followed this True Value tractor trailer on I-495 through the wonderful city of Wilmington, Delaware, my vivid imagination took a dark turn.  Instead of perhaps some jovial gentleman being armed with paintball gear and taking you to the time of your life--which I literally thought as I began typing this intro--it's some poor soul with an axe to grind with both his company as well as his wife who he believes is cheating on him because he's always on the road.  You decide to follow him without knowing his rig is actually a front for his paint bootlegging business.  He leads you down a secluded alley in a sketchy neighborhood to meet a few unsavory characters.  While the deal is going down, your inability to be incognito in life-or-death situations spells your demise as you are spotted by the truck driver.  He thinks it's a setup, pulls out a pistol and shoots in your direction.  If you didn't high tail it out of there like you were playing Need for Speed, then you would've found out the "perfect color" he was leading you to was crimson.  Moral of the story (and with my DIRECTV voice-over narrator swagger): don't follow anyone to your perfect paint color.  Get the Sherwin Williams app instead.  Now that you're creeped out, let's fly into some safer havens...

GREAT REFLEXES OR POOR COORDINATION?!?!  I was in denial about how clumsy I was for the vast majority of my life until living with Mrs. Scribbler gave me a reality check--although that's a case of "hello Kettle, I'm Pot and you're black AF" if you ask me.  (Yeah, I'm taking shots.  Come see me...you know where I live.)  In fact, I thought I could possibly be a wide receiver when I was younger because I could catch well, but upon further review, my lack of consistent coordination would've failed me in key moments if the absence of breakaway speed and Chad Johnson-like quick feet didn't kill my dreams first.  Anyway, on this particular day, the mug to the far right was nearly the latest casualty of my clumsiness, but what I've always heralded as superb reflexes kept it from shattering into pieces.  However, in a separate occasion while having one of the worst days in months, the clumsy bug took a ferocious bite out of one of my coworker's cups as I went to hug her and knocked over her water-filled receptacle.  My coworkers had never seen me so frantic as I was mad at myself for breaking her cup and scampered to find paper towels, so they had to calm me down and assure me maintenance was coming to clean up the mess.  Long story short, my self-proclaimed great reflexes are actually less about great reflexes and more about preventing my OCD from going into overdrive.  Sad part: as many times as he runs into the wall, bumps into the love seat and trips on the carpet because he thinks he's Eric Dickerson, Baby Boy Scribbler is also showing signs of being cousins with Clumsy Smurf.  Not the ideal family heirloom, eh...

WHAT DO KNOCKOFF CARTOONS AND 80s ROCK- INSPIRED THEME SONGS HAVE IN COMMON?  The Transformers franchise should be used to flattering imitation--although 1) the North American toy molds have their origins in Japan as far back as the 70s and 2) the short-lived GoBots craze came first.  (Sorry Tonka and Hanna-Barbera, but Hasbro did it better.  I don't hide my bias.)  To counter that intergalactic shoot-em-up component, Sprout TV came up with Super Wings where the main character Jet always say "transform" when sent on various missions to different countries around the world.  If that potential "knockoff" isn't enough, Sprout execs must've realized how much the new version of Bob the Builder sucks.  Therefore, Terrific Trucks is not only their answer to Scoop, Muck, Dizzy, Lofty and Roley sans a building contractor, but it's also what Mrs. Scribbler has hilariously described as "truck porn".  (No bull, I literally watched a slow motion scene of someone soaping up the trucks and thought, "Wow...all they have to do is swap these people out with girls in bikinis!")  As for the music driving these Sprout "Originals", composers Seung Hyuk Yang and Jono Grant must've been listening to Bon Jovi, Def Leppard, Whitesnake and Autograph as inspiration for these kick-butt theme songs and scores to Super Wings and Terrific Trucks, respectively.  There's the distinct possibility these themes are simply retooled from some hard rock band's long lost hope of making waves.  Being a particular fan of Super Wings, I know Baby Boy Scribbler ain't mad at that...

THE FIVE GUYS CHRONICLES, PART 1: TWO OUT OF FOUR AIN'T BAD?!?!  So one of my many culinary guilty pleasures as of late has been a Little Cheeseburger and Little Fries--the latter of which is certainly not little--from Five Guys.  At the nearest location in my neck of the woods of Silver Spring, I went there on a Saturday night and was greeted by this White woman at the cash register who looked to be in her 50s.  As she takes my order, she looks at my "Mt. Rushmore of Black leaders" T-shirt with President Barack Obama, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X and Nelson Mandela and says, "That's a really interesting shirt you got there."  She takes a closer look and says, "Now I agree with President Obama and Dr. King, but the other two, I don't know about them.  They're pretty controversial."  Now I could've engaged in this philosophical debate with this woman who clearly didn't study Black history as closely as I have if she 1) couldn't even refer to Malcolm X and Nelson Mandela by name and 2) used a coded word like "controversy" without acknowledging how hated Dr. King truly was in his day.  (See the need for COINTELPRO as Exhibit A.)  However, considering I had a hungry wife waiting at home for some Qdoba, I simply smirked and said, "Well, you know sometimes controversy is good."  Judging by her facial expression and not being able to hand me my receipt fast enough, I know that statement made her uncomfortable enough to realize I wasn't the "safe" or "inoffensive" Black man who she probably encounters on a regular basis.  To quote the great and arguably "controversial" thinker Shawn Corey Carter, "Pardon me, I had to laugh at that..."

"KILLER JOE!"  When I was a kid, John Smith was supposedly the most common male name in the United States.  However, although Smith is still the most common last name, five of the most popular full names according to a blog on Ancestry.com are James Smith (No. 1), Michael Smith (No. 2), Robert Smith (No. 3), David Smith (No. 5) and James Johnson (No. 10).  With that said, I was watching football a few weekends ago and made two observations: 1) I didn't realize that the initials in Ohio State quarterback J.T. Barrett's name stood for Joe Thomas, and 2) I was reminded there's a linebacker for the Packers named Joe Thomas.  Then I said to myself, "Isn't there also an O-lineman for the Browns named Joe Thomas?  This is looking like a popular name in football."  That train of thought immediately took me to Grammy-nominated singer/songwriter/producer Joe (Thomas), famous for hits like "All the Things (Your Man Won't Do)", "I Wanna Know" and "Stutter".

From there, the Self-Proclaimed King of Researching Useless Information went to Wikipedia and discovered 34 entries for variations of notable people with Joseph Thomas in their birth name--including an English actor, a former Alaska State Senator, two jazz musicians who were born in the early 1900s and died in the mid 1980s from different parts of the country and two people who have played for the Packers in the past fifteen years.  Of course, the certified geek in me didn't stop there: according to NameStatistics.com, Joseph is the 10th most popular first name while Thomas is the 12th most popular.  Furthermore, according to HowManyOfMe.com, there are 6,005 people in the United States named Joseph Thomas.  Granted, the five aforementioned popular names from Ancestry.com are rolling strong in the tens of thousands, so Joseph Thomas is actually a far cry from the James Smiths, James Johnsons or even Joseph Smiths of the nation.  Either way, as someone close to me is good for saying, "There's always room for more guys named Joe."

So now that I've bared my soul, it's your turn...let's hear some of that indiscriminate pensiveness in the comments if you dare!  Don't forget to return soon for another edition of the mildly-popular-but-always-entertaining-according-to-me "RANDOM THOUGHT ALERTS!!!"