Sorry about the delay in my returning to Project Mouth Slime, but sometimes more important things in life get in the way. In this case, “more important things” are “anything.” But past is prologue! Onward! When last we left off, Sophie and I had discovered that mouth slime appeared when using Listerine Total Care Zero, an alcohol-free nighttime rinse, but not when using Rite Aid Tooth Care, which contains alcohol. I opted to try a night of swishing with Listerine Total Care, a brand-name mouthwash with alcohol, to eliminate the possibility of brand peculiarities. I paired the rinse with regular fluoride toothpaste; Sophie rinsed after brushing with whitening toothpaste. Neither of us awoke slime-mouthed. So mouth slime appears to be linked to nonalcoholic mouthwash.
Seth Madej
Project Mouth Slime: I’m Gonna Spit in a Cup and Bake It
#SethBuyMeLunch Lunch No. 13
I met writer-producer-director-actor-comedian-queef-joke-enthusiast Ann Marie Lindbloom for lunch at Simple Things Restaurant, a sandwich and pie place on West 3rd, where she ate half a turkey-and-avocado sandwich and took the rest home. I promptly insisted she reimburse me for the uneaten portion, because page 53 #SethBuyMeLunch contract clearly states that the complimentary lunch includes only food eaten during the course of the meal. She kicked me in the eyes and ran off. Luckily I still had time to enjoy my reuben,1 which was of high quality, if a little overpriced, with thick, tender corned beef.
If you were to say the phrase “thick, tender corned beef” to Ann Marie, she’d make a joke about it of questionable taste. Which is, of course, the reason you should have lunch with her. She’s quick witted and walking around with a shoulder bag full of ideas for animated comedy series, all of which are of questionable taste, which is why you, being a development executive, should ask her to pitch them to you. She’s one of those types who can talk to a room full of people for four minutes and have them all convinced that they must work with her. For all of the above reasons I wish her nothing but ill.
Ann Marie (AKA @AnnMarieTV) is certainly the most under-followed person I know of on Twitter. Follow this link to rectify that, but know that here be potty mouth. Truth is though that Ann Marie admitted to being secretly mortified every time she types a joke about lower body parts or anything that one wouldn’t bring up in polite conversation with Charles Kuralt, and she hates mean jokes. Endearing qualities both, which is why I didn’t tell her that she kind of freaked me out because she looks like my old high school girlfriend.
You can win lunch with me simply by tweeting #SethBuyMeLunch any Monday, including today. Details here.
----- My second choice, because Simple Things was out of their famous fried chicken sandwich. [↩]
For Gawdsake Listen to This Great Radio Comedy
If you’re a supporter of my series Special Relativity, then you either enjoy radio comedy or are something of a sucker. I’ll assume it’s the former and thus you’ll like the best example of radio comedy I’ve heard in a long time: the first episode of Mike Henry’s new podcast, The Songs We Sing. It features blues legend Lester “Polecat” Brown and is positively — dare I say? — Frebergian.
You can listen to it right here in the player below. Then go subscribe to new episodes via Tumblr or iTunes. And if you like it, Mike would probably appreciate you telling him so.
Special Relativity: The Digestion Has Begun
A couple of weeks ago, I predicted that as people became absorbed by the holidays, fundraising for my radio series Special Relativity would dwindle to such a point that the project would fall into a deep pit in which it would slowly be digested over 1000 years. Dear reader, I spoke the truth. Gastric juices have already eaten a third of my seventh toe. The fourth week of fundraising ends today, and we are now a full 50% off track. By now I’d hoped to raise $2800, and we’re just shy of $1400.
I don’t like to resort to negative reinforcement, but I feel like I have no choice. I’m forcing you to look at this image, which will now be burned into your mind for eternity:
Please, if you’ve been meaning to support the project, do it today. All donations make a difference. You can get a Fundamental Force Manipulator or a shirt for your dog or even have your name officially declared the cutest in the Universe. And remember that if you’re unable to donate, simply sharing a link to Special Relativity’s IndieGoGo page helps immensely by increasing the project’s secret and enigmatic “GoGo factor,” which fell for the first time last week. Simply use these links to share the campaign by email, Twitter, Facebook, or your web site.
Many donors have said they gave not out of charity, obligation, or the crushing guilt I bestow on those who don’t, but simply because they want to hear the show. I’d like to give them that chance. Please donate now.
Project Mouth Slime: Phase One Results
When we last left Project Mouth Slime, Sophie and I had begun eight days of testing to determine which combinations of mouthwash and toothpaste were most prone to producing sticky white mouth boogers. Since then we’ve had some interesting developments. The movie rights have been optioned; Katherine Heigl will star, opposite Casey Affleck as Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar. We’ve also collected some interesting data.
You’ll recall that we paired our two most frequently used mouthwashes (Listerine Total Care Zero and Rite Aid Tooth Care) with one whitening toothpaste and one regular toothpaste (Colgate Total and Colgate Cavity Protection, respectively). Here are the results:
Let’s Look at Mouth Slime
As you know, in households all across America the week between Christmas and New Year’s Day is reserved for the annual tradition of amateur home science experiments. This year in the manse of the west coast Madejs we’ll be getting to the bottom of our nation’s most notorious scourge, one both hissed at by Tea Partiers during Republican presidential debates and downward-fingerwiggled by Occupy protestors: morning mouth slime caused by mouthwash.
Snow Job
Wednesday night marked the fortieth annual broadcast of the “classic” holiday television show, Rankin/Bass Production’s Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer. I tuned in for probably the twenty-fifth time (but the first in many years) expecting to find a rudimentary moral lesson tucked amongst all the holly-jolliness and evil-looking puppets. Instead I had the frightening realization that, for forty years, RtR-NR has been cramming several sleighloads of bad ethics down our chimneys. In this holiday nightmare, nearly every character demonstrates a distinct lack of moral integrity bordering on turpitude, and none other than Santa himself comes away as the worst of the bunch. Here’s an ethical play-by-play.
Stuff I Like: Inland Empire
I’m a guy who used to take a bus after school to the mall to catch a movie before dinner. I’d go see the ones I liked a couple of times, and sitting alone in the theater1 I felt sort of carried away each time, often by movies that I have absolutely no interest in now. I doubt Dances With Wolves would move me to rapture anymore, even accounting for the firelight dancing along Kevin Costner’s pointy little core. But even so, I’ve had only the smallest handful of moviegoing experiences during which I felt truly transported — when I left the theater through the screen or into my own brain, when I mentally went elsewhere in the closest to literal sense possible, and only returned when the credits rolled. The last of those trips was during David Lynch’s Inland Empire.
- There wasn’t a huge crowd in Mt. Lebanon, Pa. for Shadows and Fog at 3:15 on a Wednesday. [↩]
Stuff I Like: The Marisol
Despite James Bond’s myriad horrible characteristics and the many equally horrible movies made about him, I’ve been something of a Bond enthusiast most of my life. I even think I still have, somewhere in a storage locker in Pittsburgh, a complete set of the Victory Games, Inc. 007 role playing games.
Alcohol is an integral part of the Bond mythos, so much so that Ian Fleming’s first Bond novel, Casino Royale, contains a recipe for a now-classic cocktail called the Vesper:
Week 2 of Special Relativity was Not as Good as Week 1
It was a disappointing week for Special Relativity. We fell $250 short of our fundraising goal. So as punishment, I’m making you look at this sad, humanoid deer holding a large, dead fish:
Nevertheless, the project received a few very generous donations, for which I’m extremely and genuinely grateful.
I know that most of you will be spending the next several days in a desperate bid to fend of elvish home invasion, but please take a moment from your nog intake to donate to or share the campaign, so we don’t find ourselves starting 2012 in a deep, deep hole in which we’ll slowly be digested over a thousand year. Thanks.
