Category Archives: Freak Speak

Freak Speak, Uncategorized

I don’t want to be a planet. I want to be THE SUN!

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Humor Post #38 from Middle School’s Crankiest Curmudgeon’s Blog (and probably the awesomest YA blog too) –

Woo-hoo! Anybody see that shot by Austin Rivers to beat UNC last night? Yeah, I guess a couple million people did cause that’s all they were talking about on Sports Center afterwards. Yeah, I’m a Duke fan. Have to be since Daniel is, and without him I don’t get to post here. But I’m not really that happy for me. Hey, it wasn’t me who made that shot. And it wasn’t me who won the game. Actually it wasn’t even the school who won. I didn’t see any buildings playing out there. Yeah, I guess Duke got all those guys to come to Duke so officially Duke won, but I’d still rather be one of the Duke players or especially Austin Rivers after that game. He’s the one who did it, not the fans, not Duke, just him and his team.

Yeah, just like I said about David Freese of the St. Louis Cardinals way back in October, I think it would be SO COOL to be a sports hero and have everyone jumping up and down over whatever it is I did. I can’t even imagine how good that must feel. But I’d sure like to find out.

See, the deal is Austin Rivers gets to remember making that big shot the rest of his life and even if I remember the same thing, I’ll be remembering someone else being the hero. Ya know, I’d rather be thinking about myself making that shot, being the hero in some way. Wasn’t it more fun for the New York Giants in that Super Bowl parade than it was for all the people cheering for them? That’s why I’ll keep working to be somebody so people might remember me too. Don’t know what it’ll be yet. Much as I hate to admit it, it probably won’t be sports or I’d already be a star at something. (Though I can always hope. Gotta keep working on that cross dribble.) And it probably won’t be at hip hop, cause even though I think I can write pretty good stuff, I think I’m — sorry to say — at a racial disadvantage in that career. (Again, I can hope and if I keep working, maybe Usher will notice me like he did Justin Bieber. I know lots of people hate JB, but Usher thinks he’s cool and he knows a lot.)

Somewhere I heard that you can divide everybody into two groups: the 10% that are the movers and the shakers, the people everybody else follows and goes ga-ga over. The other 90% are like the fans that cheer for Duke or Carolina. Nothing the matter with them, nothing at all. A great bunch of people, I’m sure. (Well, most of them anyway.) It’s just that they’re not the ones making the shots. I wanna be the guy making that big shot.

It’s like the way the Universe is all set up. There’s gabillions of planets revolving around a bunch of suns. The planets are like all those fans out there. The suns are like the stars that the planets follow around. I wanna be a sun, not one of the planets. You ever notice that the Sun is so cool, it doesn’t even have a name, like all the planets have. It’s just THE SUN. Like “I don’t even need a name, dude. You know who I am.” How cool is that?

Now I have only one thing left to figure out — how am I gonna be that sun?

from your “still waiting to reach his potential” dude with the ‘tude,
Dr. Crankenfuss

Freak Speak

I’m through trying!

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Humor Post #37 from Middle School’s Crankiest Curmudgeon’s Blog (and probably the awesomest YA blog too) –

Good night to all and to all a good night. Wait a minute, that’s not what I meant to say. I meant to say, “Good evening to all.” Guess I’m kinda confused ’cause I’m all excited about the Super Bowl which is about to start in like a hour. So I’ll get right to tonight’s topic. And though I hate to admit it, the topic for tonight has been stolen. Yes, I heard two eighth graders talking about this in the hall and I doubt that either one is a blogger — don’t ask me how I concluded that — and since I don’t know the name of either and don’t know when I’ll see them again, I’ll just go ahead and tell you what they were saying. So here’s a shout-out to those two eighth graders.

Anyway, here it is. I’m not going to try anymore. Not at anything. Nope, trying is for losers. That’s the lesson I’m here to teach you.

“Now, just a darn-tootin’ minute!” That’s probably what you’re saying right now. If you’re from Hicksville, that is. But you probably have some issues with my statement no matter where you come from. Everyone always says you should try, don’t they? Never give up, they say. But I say, TRYING IS FOR LOSERS. SUCCEEDING IS FOR WINNERS.

Like with the Super Bowl tonight. After the game, who’s going to be jumping around shouting, “We tried! Oh, how we tried!” Not the winners, that’s for sure. They’ll be jumping around, congratulating each other, screaming “We won, we won!”, telling the world they’re going to Disney World, whatever. But one thing they’ll never say (or almost never) is that they tried to win. Nope, that’ll be the job of the losers.

Think about it this way: The teacher walks around the class. She says to Student #1, “Crankenfuss, I want you to work this problem.” She goes to Student #2 and says, “Mr. Not-as-good-as-Crankenfuss, I want you to work this problem as well.” Then she gets to Student #3 (who’s quaking in his boots) and says, “Mr. Nowhere-near-as-good-as-Crankenfuss, I want you to try your best on this problem.” Now which of the three students do you think the teacher doesn’t have a whole lot of confidence in? That’s right. It’s #3 ’cause she asked him to try his best. Yep, that’s code for “I don’t think you can do this, you sad little being, so just do your best and I’ll understand.”

What do mamas of the losing team always say to their babies? “Well, honey, you tried your best. That’s all anybody can expect you to do.”

WRONG! You can expect to succeed. You may not, but you can expect to and that’s maybe half the battle right there. Why just the other day this kid in my class told the teacher he was TRYING TO THINK. Say what? How do you try to think? I wouldn’t trust that guy to get much done.

Now I know there are still some of you who aren’t convinced. Well, if I handed you a pencil and told you to give it back to me, I think you’d have no problem. But if I asked you to TRY to give it to me, you’d look at me funny, wouldn’t you? You just wouldn’t know exactly what to do.

So in the end all I want to say is if you want to make the winning shot, tell the coach you’re going to make the shot. Don’t say, “Coach, I’ll do my best.” Tell him you’ll DO it. See if he (or she) doesn’t like that attitude a lot more.

Okay, I set a new record here. Well, not for brilliance. I usually tie myself each time I post. It’s hard to outdo myself, you see. No, I mean in terms of time. Twenty minutes. YES, I did it. Didn’t really try that hard. Didn’t try at all really. Made a plan and just did it. Like Nike used to say (and probably still does): Just do it. Notice they don’t say: Just try to do it.

Case closed. Game, set, and match to Crankenfuss.

Oh, yeah, and to those two eighth graders too.

from Dr. Crankenfuss, the Dude with the ‘tude (and the guy who still has to set up all his food for the big battle. Can’t tell you who I’m for. I’ll see who wins and probably pretend I was for them. That makes me look a lot smarter, you know.)

Freak Speak, Uncategorized

Tennis players and golfers must be wussies

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Humor Post #35 from Middle School’s Crankiest Curmudgeon’s Blog (and probably the awesomest YA blog too) –

So I couldn’t sleep Thursday night and I wake up at like 3 AM and turn on my TV. Not much to see at that hour unless you’re interested in infomercials for football-shaped coffins with your favorite team’s colors and logos plastered all over them, which was pretty funny for awhile, but then it was just kind of pathetic, you know. It was enough to make me go back to sleep. Almost. Then I saw that the Australian Open was on. And there was this great match between Andy Murray (whose name I can spell) and Novak Djokavic (whose name I can’t spell). And even though there were some great shots and stuff the main thing that got to me was every time they were ready to serve, the crowd got real quiet and if there was the least little bit of noise, the announcer would come on and say, “Quiet, please” and everyone would shut up even more. And I thought to myself, “Crankenfuss, it sure seems like those players are pretty sensitive. They can’t take any noise? Any noise at all?” I couldn’t think of any other sport like that, unless you count the National Spelling Bee as a sport. Then I did. Golf! Yeah, I remember one time — though I can’t remember where — they kicked this guy off the course for taking a picture during a big putt or maybe he just yelled something like “In da hole!” Anyway, I remember the TV announcers talking about how rude and crude that spectator was and how he didn’t have any respect for the game.

Please don't breathe too loud or this guy will collapse.

Huh?

What about most every other sport? I like to watch pro football and basketball and most of the time I’m sure the players can hardly hear anything, the crowd is so loud. Yeah, when the home team guy is shooting a foul shot, the crowd gets quiet, but when it’s the other team, the crowd goes nuts, waving their arms, probably yelling stuff about the foul shooter’s mama, and generally acting like maniacs. How come the announcers don’t talk about those fans’ disrespect for the game? In baseball I don’t see how the pitcher can concentrate on anything with the crowd so out of control.

Is this how a tennis player responds to a cheer during his serve?

So I have one question about all this? How come tennis players and golfers are such wussies? Why don’t they just go ahead and play like every other person on a sports team? Maybe they should get their mommies out there to tell them to do their best. (But not while they’re putting or serving, of course. That would be rude.) Just askin’.

I mean, when I write my posts, I never do it in quiet. I have the TV on or the radio or the stereo or something. And on top of that, I have all those voices in my head that keep me from concentrating. So if I can do it, so can those tennis and golf superstars. Time to suck it up, gentlemen (and ladies). Get with the program. Bring on the noise.

from the Dude with the ‘tude, your truth teller and blogger supremo,
Dr. Crankenfuss

P.S. And yes, I did get back to sleep. Thank you for asking. It’s hard for me to get excited about much anything at 3:00 in the morning. I think I lasted probably 20 minutes.

Freak Speak

Let’s get excited like they do in Mexico

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Humor Post #34 from Middle School’s Crankiest Curmudgeon’s Blog (and probably the awesomest YA blog too) –

English is a great language, I’ll say that right up front. First off, it’s probably spoken by more people than anyone else in the world. Now Chinese might be catching up but I’m pretty sure that since they speak English in India, good ol’ English is still on top. Second off, stuff sounds good in English. Songs sound good in English, movies and TV shows sound good in English, my jokes sound good in English, and hey, what else is there that really matters?

But what I’m really getting at is even though English is cool, it could still use a bit of tweaking. Especially with a couple punctuation marks I’ll be talking about today. That would be the question mark and the exclamation point. I never thought much about these two little guys till I started taking Spanish. And it was there that I found out that Spanish speakers have got two things right that we really should copy.

And don’t go telling me we shouldn’t be copycats. (BTW, where did the word “copycat” come from? Cats can’t even write, much less copy.) We copied pizza and ice cream from Italy and China and I don’t hear anyone complaining.

So anyway to get my ADD brain back on topic, here’s the way we ask a question in English:
Hey, Joe, whatcha know?
And here’s how they ask the same question in Spanish:
¿Oye, José, qué sabes?

Do you see a big difference?
No, no, banana head, I can see that the words are different. I’m talking about the punctuation. Yeah, that’s it. They put an upside down question mark at the beginning of the Spanish question. Now why do I like that? Because it warns you that the next sentence is going to be a question, that’s why. Just last week we were taking turns reading out loud from this novel in English class. (Our teacher is big on getting us to practice our “public speaking voice.”) And I was near the end of this sentence that went something like, “And then you’re going to the market and you’re going to talk to Maria?” But I didn’t see the question mark till I was almost at the end of the sentence and it didn’t sound right. If someone had warned me a question was coming up, I could have been prepared. In Spanish, I would’ve been.

They also do the same thing with exclamation points. If you see an upside down exclamation mark at the beginning, you know you’re going to act excited for the whole sentence. Look at these two examples:

With English punctuation:
“I love you incredibly, so much that it makes my heart ache and my eyes tear up to look at you!”

With Spanish punctuation:
“¡I love you incredibly, so much that it makes my heart ache and my eyes tear up to look at you!”

See the difference? It’s huge! In the first one you could be using a romantic, sexy voice and you think you’re supposed to act all sad. Then you see that ending punctuation mark and you have to come to a screeching half on the mushy stuff and start yelling the last few words. Not good. But in the second sentence, you get that warning so you’re all excited right from the get-go. By the time you get to “heart ache,” you’re practically ripping your heart out of your chest and by the end of the sentence, that girl would need Noah’s Ark. Now THAT’S what you could deliver if you knew what was coming.

So, to all of you people out there who can read — and I hope that’s a good percentage of you — if you know who I can write to ask about making this a new grammar law, I’d really appreciate it. I was thinking of writing my Congressman, but my mom says Congress never gets anything done except giving themselves pay raises so that’s probably not the way to go. But who’s in charge of punctuation out there? Guess this’ll take some real research. Maybe the Mexican or Argentinian government can help me. Hope they speak English.

from your gifted gabber, your seeker of sagacity (ooh, sagacity, whoo-hoo!), your middle school master of merriment,
Dr. Crankenfuss, the Dude with the ‘tude

Freak Speak

Daniel uses a four-letter word on the Freaky Dude Books site — DIET

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Daniel Berenson, head guy at Freaky Dude BooksConfession from the guy who brings you most of the junk at Freaky Dude Books (except the art and animations that come from Maureen, but we all know her stuff doesn’t hold a candle to Daniel’s genius writing)–

So here’s the confession. I’m going on a diet. Again. Now this site is supposed to be entertaining and we hope it is, but there’s nothing entertaining about not being able to tie my shoes because my big ol’ gut’s in the way. Okay, it’s not that bad, but here’s the story. I spent most of last year losing 30 pounds. Ooh, I was so proud. I exercised all the time, kept my food intake under control (most of the time) and was ready to lose even more. Then I made my first mistake. Went on a dance cruise with Maureen.

No, honey, I didn’t mean you were the mistake. Honey, no, no, not the electric toothbrush in the eye! Let me explain. O-w-w-w!

Whew, that wasn’t fun. Anyway, back to the subject before she comes back with something sharper. And the dancing was fine too. It was those all-you-can-eat-anytime-you-want buffets and snack bars that did me in. And when I came back, I’d caught the food fever. So I’ve gained back 1/3 of what I lost. That would be 10 out of 30 pounds.

Daniel no happy with himself.

So now I’m putting it on the line. And online. I’m going to lose 10 pounds in two months. Don’t believe me? Just watch. Today’s Saturday. This morning I weighed exactly 179.8 pounds. So my goal is to get below 170. That’ll get me back to where I was 20 years ago. Back when McDonald’s was offering to put me on their breakfast menu as a Studly McMuffin. Okay, that’s a slight exaggeration. But only in reality, not in my fantasies.

I’ll let you know at my Twitter page how I’m doing. No, I won’t bore you with constant tweets like, “Just had a nice hot bowl of water for dinner” or “Who knew styrofoam peanuts had so much flavor?” But once a day I’ll announce that day’s weight. Anyone who wants to join in, feel free. If you let me know how much you lost or are losing by posting your news at this site, hey, I’ll give away three of my books — you know, like by way of a drawing — to three people who lost weight too. And since the book is called STORIES GUARANTEED TO MAKE YOU SICK, reading the book will probably help you lose even more weight.

Okay, that’s it for now. Gotta get to work. This afternoon, it’s an hour on the step machine. Or an hour trying to convince myself to do 15 minutes on the step machine. (I don’t want to start too fast, you know. Might peak too early.)

Wish me luck. And good luck to you if you feel like joining in.

from soon-to-be-svelte-and-saucy Daniel