Thursday, April 16, 2009

Rickey Recommends

This is where Rickey posts recommendations of noteworthy consumables, practices, and pastimes that have been deemed invaluable for the reader’s betterment. All products and pieces of advice listed herein have been Rickey tested and approved. Again, this is in no way shape or form a complete rip off of McSweeney’s (fa-la-la-la-la, lawyers, Rickey can’t hear you). Enjoy our latest installment of

RICKEY RECOMMENDS

The Daily Puppy. Confused? Here’s how this works: each and every day a new image of a puppy is posted on this website. People go there and look at the aforementioned images. It’s all very complicated, we know. Web users are free to check out the website, bask in the adorability, then curse their octogenarian Yugoslavian landlady for enforcing a strict no pets policy in the apartment. It’s similar to Cute Overload, but featuring puppies (much to Rickey’s deepening concern, there has been an influx of frogs, bugs, and other non-puppy related material trickling in over at Cute Overload). Rickey’s current fave: Tin Tin. Goddamn that little bastard is adorable. He’s so cute he makes Rickey want to swear. Fuck. Is there some sort of job out there that involves playing with puppies all day long while getting paid a hefty six figure salary?

“No Line on the Horizon” by U2. We’d bitch and moan about how this album doesn’t measure up to earlier efforts like “Joshua Tree” or “Achtung Baby,” but that would be an exercise in futility and wanton negativity. Bottom line: even a mediocre U2 album far surpasses 99% of the garbage that’s out there these days (yes, Rickey’s looking at you, John Mayer). See, everyone complains about the quality of modern rock/pop music, but whenever a band tries to do something different, their fans whine and yearn for the "good ol' days." Bands that try to create the same music over and over are boring and not worth listening to and we’ll take U2's efforts to do something different on every CD over uninspired dreck any day. If Rickey wants to hear “Joshua Tree,” then Rickey will listen to it, end of story. This isn’t exactly a ringing endorsement, we know, but there are some seriously great tracks on this new album, ranging from intimate and mysterious to downright shoe tappingly good. Pick it up.

Killzone 2. Much to the alarm of watchful parents everywhere, videogames have reached a point where the only thing more realistic than your average M-rated FPS experience is actually signing up with the Army and demanding a pocket knife and immediate deployment to Mosul. Short of that, you’ll be hard pressed to find a more immersive experience than Killzone 2, as you play the role of a space marine (what’s with all the space marines these games?) and take on the Helghast, a fierce militaristic race whose only weakness is their ill advised decision to leave conspicuous red explosive barrels everywhere for the player to shoot at. Fireballs ensue. Rag doll physics are demonstrated. Good times are had. And speaking of turning the nation’s youth into cold-blooded killers, Rickey also recommends….

The Nerf N-Strike Vulcan EBF-25. Wow. You could singlehandedly liberate an entire grade school with this thing. Toys like this make Rickey wish he was a kid again. If the government was smart, they’d just take away everybody’s guns in the country and replace them with assorted Nerf weaponry. Racially motivated shootings would suddenly be entertaining to watch!

Almond Milk. It’s like soy milk but without all the pesky calories. Give it a shot you unhealthy bastard.

Not flying Qantas Airlines anytime soon. Look, it's one thing to leave off the 'u' in your company name if it starts with the letter 'q'. That's ok we guess. Rickey can forgive that. But allowing a bunch of snakes to escape mid flight? Completely unacceptable. For those keeping score at home, between this and the kangaroo uprising we mentioned on Monday, you now have no reason whatsoever to visit Australia.

Compressed Air Canisters. Egad, have you looked in between your keyboard keys recently? There are untold worlds of microbes living in there! Vast universes of germ colonies eagerly plotting the downfall of your fragile immune system! A few periodic blasts from your good friend the compressed air canister do wonders to attenuate the situation, as well as nurture your inner Howard Hughes. Never has something so ridiculously flammable been so useful!

Michael Chabon. Nine years late to the party, Rickey finally started reading “The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay” and it’s terrific stuff so far—a wonderful look at the great mythmaking tradition of the comic book industry circa WWII. We’re deluged with lousy watered down comic book movies, so riddle Rickey this: why couldn’t this book be developed into a movie? Oh and by the way, for you geeks out there, Chabon’s currently working on the script for the film adaptation of “John Carter of Mars” which is a lot like Mario Puzo writing Superman II, but times a bazillion on the coolness scale.

Stew Leonard’s. Somewhere along the line, somebody got the bright idea of making grocery stores fun, kind of like a theme park. But unlike a theme park, this actually serves a purpose, because you get to go home with some seriously good food instead of a case of motion sickness and a severe distaste for consumerist culture. What thrilling excitement awaits you around the next corner? A trio of mechanical cows playing banjos? Perhaps some tasty handmade mozzarella cheese? Buy the ticket, take the ride! Just remember, rather than the typical supermarket layout, Stew Leonard’s aisles are set up like a winding path, so if you forget something, it’s nigh impossible to retrace your steps and go against the ebb of traffic. So you must do your very best to leave no kumquat behind. And remember, when the nice lady offering free samples of banana donuts asks if you’d like one, you say YES. Yes you’d like a banana donut. You’d like 10 million banana donuts.

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9 comments:

Noah said...

Smitty Jr. is getting old enough to enjoy nerf swords and nerf guns. Our lives, and the lives of his tortured twin brothers, has taken a turn for the...interesting and slightly painful.

TheJackSack said...

I avoid Stew Leonard's because it's TOO FUN. I want to gobble my way through that place like Pac-Man following 100 successive bong-hits. They have achieved a level of food service that is frighteningly flawless.

Rickey said...

Yeah, it's impossible to spend less than $150 there. The good news is that when you do spend above $100, they give you a free froguart. Free froguart!

Alex L said...

That nerf gun is off its chops... when I was a kid we just threw rocks at each other, kids these days have it lucky.

HC said...

Think of the possibilities if Stew Leaonard's constructed nerf shopping carts, so it could be like a big grocery shopping/bumper car bonanza!!

Mr Furious said...

Chabon is great. "Kavelier and Clay" is excellent and "Wonder Boys" ain't too shabby either. I was standing in the library debating checking out his last novel, "Gentlemen of the Road" about an hour ago.

I walked out empty-handed since I knew it would sit unread until it started racking up overdue fines...

(I hardly read at all anymore since 1. moving from NYC and the subway; 2. having kids.)

Mr Furious said...

Stew Leonard's is fun, but when I was in NY is wasn't worth a drive to Danbury. There's one in Yonkers or somewhere now right?

It's like the IKEA of grocery stores...a big maze that forces you to succumb to impulse buys due to sheer over-exposure and over-stimulation. Oh, and samples.

Mr Furious said...

All non-cow milk sucks.

alex said...

Rickey,

I believe the stew leonards frogurt is cursed.