100-word reviews

The Cracks Between My Keyboard Keys

(October 1, 2010) by guest reviewer Karen Eileen Sikola

In an era of technological advances, it would seem engineers could design a keyboard resistant to the detritus that begins to collect between keys, that unholy sheathe of dust and dead skin particles collecting at the base of my “P.” Perhaps, though, keyboard designers are on to something. In a time when screens have replaced pages and keys pens, these crumbs become our individual histories, the falloff of salt and vinegar residue from the Cape Cod potato chips I ate during my lunch break while typing, “Thank you for the idea, Danny Goodman,” and, “Sorry I didn’t review post-it sizes.”

LOST

(September 24, 2010)

Huh? That’s it? After over six years, I’ve finally finished this labyrinthine, addictive dud of a series — watching every episode on my teeny computer via Netflix in nightclothes — and this is where I end up, confused, disappointed, and right back in the forest where I started?? Being my first serious relationship with a television program, I’m not in a hurry to enter another. No way. We broke up once a few years ago, but I came back, stupidly. Don’t be fooled if you meet LOST — parts are great (ridiculously so!), but ultimately, you’re just another notch in JJ Abrams’ belt.

The Metropolitan Area eXpress

(September 17, 2010)

Smelling of urine and full of people going nowhere, the MAX seems destined for 100 harsh words. But for one morning, let’s look past all that. That morning would be last Wednesday. Leaving downtown at o’dark thirty, I queued up some Beach House in my earbuds and slipped into one hell of a beautiful early morning transcendental event. The train winding around smoothly… the sun rolling up beside our volcano… made everything I was thinking at once super-important and feather-light — elusory. This world’s terribly big and I’m so silly and small. For several eerie minutes, I think I felt unreal.

Happy Hour

(September 10, 2010)

Written about under the influence of direct experience, I can in no way promise that this review will be unbiased, but at least I can certify that it will be overly if not also sloppily honest. Point: I love this idea without any reflection whatsoever! Three Pabsts for me, a glass of a wine for the lady, and an enormous nacho wonderland for just 14 dollars? This country is truly great and often economically amazing. Do you like baseball? Me either, really, but sometimes. But, man, didn’t this week seem long to you? What’d you just say? Huh? So sleepy.

Frodo Baggins

(September 3, 2010)

Is there a “hero” in modern cinema sleepier than Elijah Wood as the tiny frumpster Frodo Baggins? Should you have the amazing idea to watch all three Lord of the Rings films back-to-back-to-back in an extended edition marathon like I have on three occasions, do yourself a favor and side with Samwise Gamgee as the true champion of this bazillion-hour-long trilogy. Don’t get me wrong — Frodo’s got a heavy burden to carry, but man alive, by the end of the third film I don’t think I’m alone in secretly wishing Frodo would just fall into the molten fire of Mordor.

SkyMall®

(August 27, 2010)

Has anyone ever in the history of the world actually ordered from SkyMall®? If purchasing something from a seat 3o,ooo feet above the Earth’s surface isn’t absurd enough, your choices are a decorative living room rain stick or a lightly vibrating sleeping mask with jelly comfort inserts. The catalog seems full of ideas that teenagers dashed off and abandoned after twelve minutes in shop class. A Pooch Poop Power Shovel? God help us. With the Stealth Secret Sound Amplifier, perhaps someone will hear me swear that SkyMall® is one of the worst ideas our species has ever allowed to exist.

College

(August 20, 2010)

In short, I’m skeptical I got my money’s worth. With all due respect to my alma maters (and it’s deep respect, I assure you), even the t-shirts I bought bearing bold scholarly logos had holes in their armpits within months of graduation. Sure, maybe the degrees I spent eight years attaining are not “high yielding in today’s marketplace” or otherwise “in demand by desirable employers,” but in the very least I learned that to be “successful,” it’s wisest to 1) multitask like a tornado, 2) read every sentence, and 3) always, no matter what, show up and raise my hand.

Salutations

(August 13, 2010)

Probably better known as “social niceties,” the trite lines we trade on daily basis are about as interesting as hard, withered raisins. There exists, however, a long list of interesting phrases that can be summoned and deployed to invigorate our most commonplace interactions. Example. You are often asked, “How’s it going?” Try answering, “Off the proverbial hook, my friend!” and see how many heads you turn. Another. “Hey, how was your weekend?” Try this: “Admittedly, it was re-frickin-donk-ulous!” And to, “Do these pants look good on me?” there’s hardly a better answer than, “Frankly, I submit that they do not.”

My Other Cat Named Gilbert

(August 6, 2010)

It’s hard to find the exact words for a cat this friendly, but they’re probably along the lines of “man whore.” With enormous amber eyes and a slinky build, he sits out front and welcomes everyone to the neighborhood, rubbing his face on everything. Some days he comes home smelling of foreign perfume. By all means, then, walk your dog down the sidewalk—he’ll escort you both for several happy blocks. When you want to go to bed, though, he balls up on your head, so it’s best to coax him into the closet where he’ll find someplace to sleep.

Canvassers—Update!

(July 30, 2010)

I found the canvasser training ground! Right on my way to work, it’s a buzzing hive of matching t-shirts and neon info packets. I see you, trolling up and down the sidewalk practicing your clipboardy, fact-filled axioms. Let me guess. You go to college in some other luscious state and are home on summer break? Your major — let’s see — political science? No, wait — international environmental psychology! Well, I’ve readied my little preppy info speech (“An artless world is an awful world”), so it’s time we have a canvas-off. You sell me your fluff and I’m going to sell you mine.

My One-Year-Old Cat Named Basket

(July 23, 2010)

Yeah, yeah, that’s what everyone says: “Basket?” I don’t know, he’s just kind of super fluffy orange and, well, wiry like a broken wicker basket. Anyway, he once launched himself hard and fast from the bed straight into the wall. On the floor he sits like a contorted furry Buddha doll. Now he’s onto traipsing across the neighbor’s roof well into the night. But what I’d really like to know is how this cat’s tail can be twice the diameter of his tiny lion body. Is there a feline algorithm for this incongruency? He’s probably an escaped Russian circus cat!

Bottle Deposits

(July 16, 2010)

Man, I wish I would’ve thought of this. Darnit. Why don’t I ever have dazzling environmental ideas that catch on in progressive states? Or just great ideas in general that people want to emulate? Bottle deposits create an entire social ecosystem whereby people without money can collect the castoffs of people with money and recycle at the very same time. Does it get any smarter? I really don’t think it does. CA, HI, IA, OR, ME 5¢ MI 10¢ : I think I’ll make a cape — no, a flag! — with that insignia and fly it high off my front porch.

The Ocean

(July 9, 2010)

I grew up in several land-locked states in the middle of the country. Before adulthood, I had only ever seen the ocean twice: once, the Pacific, into which I ran and flipped; and once the Atlantic, into which I also ran and flipped. Decades later, that nautical routine is the only one I know — a grand spectacle of embarrassing, childlike proportions that I undertake proudly without any self-reflection. I mention this for two reasons: 1) my favorite noise of all time is the squawk of salty seagulls; and 2) I sadly mourn the death of the magnificent Gulf of Mexico.

Cotton Swabs

(July 2, 2010)

It’s an unjust cultural omission that we don’t talk about Q-tips more frequently. Devised by Leo Gerstenzang in 1923, “after he attached wads of cotton to toothpicks,” why the cuss wasn’t this granted the Invention of the Millennium Award? Hands down, the Q-tip is the most pleasurable body-cleansing tool known in human history. Here’s to you, then, Mr. Gerstenzang, for daring to put a sharp object in your ear and twist! We all owe you for the sublime feeling given by thick tiny cotton balls rolling in our ear holes, which — yeay! — no longer itch with weeks of waxen buildup.

The Sun

(June 25, 2010)

Fact: Sunday was Father’s Day. Another fact: I’ve been reading about outer space, and you know what I’ve discovered? Others stars don’t abandon their planets like this for months on end, blowing into town whenever they damn well feel like it just to buy us bike tires and dinner at Olive Garden. Just because the sun finally made an appearance (wow, three days—that’s great) in this waterlogged hippie hole I call home, I’m not going to take our solar provider back so easily. Not this time. Go and have your midlife crisis tropical lifestyle; we don’t need you here.

Free Taco Bell® Chalupa™ I Procured With A Coupon I Was Given At A Professional Basketball Game Last Winter

(June 18, 2010)

I recently took my typewriter to a repair shop that had garnered great reviews on the Internet (see 5/7). Having lately experienced money issues (see 5/21), and because the shop was far away, I borrowed an auto and decided to take advantage of a crumpled coupon hiding in my wallet. Because I seldom eat meat, couldn’t before define chalupa even at gunpoint (post-consumption interpretation: fat fried floppy taco), and hadn’t used a drive-thru since around 1994, I’d like to say the experience was fantastic… but surely now I know “free” doesn’t mean there isn’t an awful gastrointestinal price to pay.

Canvassers

(June 11, 2010)

Everyday I walk through mud avoiding you, campus sidewalk solicitor. I see you up there with your clipboard and bright t-shirt and I go out of my way to sidestep your political cat-calls, even at the cost of dirtying my socks and pants. Your incessant commission-based sayings make me want to come to your house tonight and, just as you’re nodding off to sleep, spring out from behind your curtains and pepper you with cheesy slogans: “Nice smile, bro! And really nice pajamas! Wanna see these reviews I wrote? Sign here! Just a dollar a day can save this writer!”

Electronic Paper Towel Dispensers

(June 4, 2010)

Talk about rural frustration! Like the postal service, this is another idea gone flaccidly wrong. What started as a way to keep us from contracting diseases that are rabidly and egregiously transmitted via paper towel waste ( ? ), bathrooms across the nation are now outfitted with these ridiculously ineffective “motion sensing” devices that wouldn’t react to a truck driving over them. Now, instead of walking out of the men’s room with dry hands, I have to dance an embarrassing dance that quickly and inevitably devolves into childish violence as I hit the machine repeatedly, and still leave all wet.

The Garden I’m Trying To Grow In My Backyard

(May 28, 2010)

The cats use it as a litter box and my entire “raised wooden bed” is falling apart already — which is frustrating, in a rural sort of way — but my garden isn’t doing half badly, considering. Slugs, too, avoid my tries to drown them in small beer traps and they’re in no way discouraged by the sharp eggshells I’ve strewn. My garden would be better if it also grew shoes, deodorant, and maybe some cheese. Avocados would be nice too. But still: victory! This morning I used the rusty kitchen scissors to cut some lettuce that today will be my lunch.

Overdraft Fees  — Spoiler Alert

(May 21, 2010)

Overdraft fees are in place, hypothetically, to deter us from spending money we don’t have, and yet occasionally, I end up $7 overdrawn buying a mild-tasting burrito in Sellwood and thereby incur a ludicrous $105 in fees. $105! It may be high time, therefore, that Bank of America and I have a come-to-Jesus. The plot of their accounts is labyrinthine, with disparaging loopholes in every transaction. In an unexpected twist, their basic checking account is really just a jargon-filled torture chamber. I’ve got an idea. Why don’t you charge me money for not having any money? Sorry, but, boo hiss.

These Clothes I Found On The Ground

(May 14, 2010)

Serendipity! I’m unsure how this happens to me so often, but here are yet another flannel shirt and wool-ish sweater that someone thought it appropriate to discard right in the middle of the road. It’s no secret my wardrobe is sorely lacking for diversity, but it is nothing if not a quasi-tasteful (nope, I take that back) collection of small wearable lumberjack clothes just like these. They’re even my size! Once the urine and railyard smell have been washed clean, I will be sporting these duds without hesitation in Euro-style succession, day after day after day. The Lord indeed provideth!

The Internet

(May 7, 2010)

Finally, something brilliant we can really use! The webs are chock full of personality, wild rants, funny lists, lavish photos, great rumors, and a lot of sexy times. Though the net’s author, Al Gore, is prone to amateurism, his writing is nothing if not prolific, while many gems of hilarity and news hide throughout the gargantuan electronic tome. A genre-bending work — it’s already been dubbed the “world wide web” — the Internet is bound to launch Mr. Gore’s career and be an infinitely enjoyable source of commentary, connectivity, and ridiculousness, like an earnest version of MAD Magazine, or a drunken encyclopedia.

Bank Tellers

(April 30, 2010)

I’m just going to say what we’re all thinking: what the hell happened here? There was no doubt a time in which you could walk into a bank and be greeted in a manner that was cordially and reliably on a last-name basis. Those days evaporated. Now, not a transaction goes by in which I’m not afraid the talkative, bubbly teller will miscount my money while asking me about my weekend plans. Let’s be honest—I don’t have weekend plans and I certainly don’t have any leeway for financial mismanagement, so kindly just count, smile, and gab some other time.

BlackBerry® Pearl™ 8130 Smartphone

(April 23, 2010)

This was going to change everything. Beforehand, I had a prehistoric Nokia candy phone — it looked like one of those little plastic boxes of candy you could get from the vending machine as a kid. I call the BlackBerry my future phone because with it I can email, check the weather, and ask questions like, “What is acidophilus?” Friends say, “Hey, what’s it like up there in the future?” and I say, “You don’t even know!” Alas, with its constant memory deletion, ridiculous “roller ball,” and stupid photo skills, I want to sink the Pearl off the coast of nowhere.

The United States Postal Service

(April 16, 2010)

Let’s start by discussing the USPS. In theory, this idea is amazing — I give an addressed envelope to Bev there behind the counter and for under fifty cents, it will sail across the country in just a few days? Deal! However, with five times as many customers as employees on any given visit, the cost of routinely using this “governmental service” is the equivalent of driving in rush hour traffic or eating a bowl of glass — the experience slowly shreds your sanity. My recommendation: buy stamps, post from home, and never send a package, unless you have an extra hour.