Brian Explains: Freaks

Freaks are all around us. It is easy to say that someone is a freak if they have a third leg or tree bark skin. I saw the movie “Freaks” (from 1932) years ago and was fascinated. I wasn’t fascinated because of the sideshow performers in the movie, but more that the sideshow performers allowed themselves to be in the movie. Now, I realize that being in that movie was probably good for them. They got paid for being in the movie and reached at least a certain amount of fame from it. Being a “freak” allowed them to make a living for themselves and their families. It is no different from the freaks that are in the movies and on television. The true freaks are in Hollywood. All the top stars are freaks. The more freakish someone is, the bigger the star they are (though, there are exceptions to every rule - even the one I just created).

Some people may not agree with my terming these Hollywood-types as freaks. My definition of a freak is anyone who has some distinguishing characteristic about themselves that sets them apart from other people. Some freakish qualities consist of what most people term talents while others consist of physical characteristics. Even brain power can distinguish someone, though, this is a rare rarity for the public to be interested in such higher pursuits without some other freakish qualities also being apparent. "Freaks" is the all-encompassing term for all those qualities combined. Just as love is hard if not impossible to define, so the term freak is easier seen than defined.

As I write this, I realize that I have several freakish qualities that it takes to become a star. In other words, I am quite the freak. My main qualities are in areas of rarity, but I do have a few major freakish qualities of my own (that I keep in a cage by my TV). Utilizing the dictionary, we (you and I on the journey of discovery) find that "freak" is defined as "something very queer or unusual" and as an "animal, plant, or person that has developed abnormally." Jack Nicholson, one of my favorite freaks, was born on April 22, 1937, on a Thursday. Whether his parents knew that he would achieve total freakish fame can only be guessed at by other freaks and non-freaks alike. I am guessing that they knew he was not normal from his voice and unique looks.

Perhaps if more people embraced their freakish qualities, they would feel better about themselves and other freaks. They wouldn't feel the need to sit in front of an audience on a talk show being stared at just to get their 15 minutes of fame. Your unique qualities are the things that make you distinct from other people. If we were all the same, we would all have just typed this sentence in this article on this day as I just did. Unfortunately for you, only I can claim ownership of the freakish qualities that it took to create this article. Okay, I understand many other people possess the unique qualities that it took to create this article, but I was the only one who used my freakish hands to actually create it.

Does everyone want to be a freak? Does everyone want to be liked? Does anyone? (Which question am I questioning?) Some people don't want to be freaks merely because they don't want to stand out from other people. I understand this, but I still feel (deep down under my arteries) that everyone wants to be a freak of some kind or another. They may not admit to their freakish side and they may not appreciate their freakish qualities, but they exist. Then again, what do I know. I'm just a freak.

Brian Explains: Time

I have a never-ending series of weird and scary things that I do. One of my abilities is to wake up seconds before my alarm clock goes off. I go hours without looking at the clock and I have managed to time it perfectly a chilling amount of times. My internal clock works overtime even when I am sleeping (reason 1389 why I have a hard time sleeping at night). I play and write music, which might have something to do with my connection to time. I have developed good timing to play music, which translates to a good understanding of timing in life. I don’t usually lose track of time. I own time and it does my bidding. Time is my bitch.

When I was a kid, my cousin was unable to tell time on an analog clock. In case you are in the same club as my cousin, an analog clock is a clock with hands and a face. A grandfather clock and Big Ben are analog clocks. Digital clocks (the only clocks my cousin ever knew) just tell you the time in digital numbers. I prefer an analog clock mainly for doing time math. If something is 6 hours away, it is on the opposite side of the clock. Count up or down from 6 hours and you can count just about any length of time by 3 hour increments. I prefer carrying a cellphone rather than wearing a wristwatch because I don’t need to stare at a clock every few minutes. I look at clocks quite often, but I at least get a rest when I am walking from place to place where I can just rely on my inner clock.

Military time is another helpful mathematical time tracker. 17 minus 8 hours shows that an 8 to 5 day is actually 9 hours out of your life that you will never get back. I don’t always agree with the military (especially their love of early morning hours), but a 24-hour clock makes sense considering there are 24 hours in a day. To convert military time to regular time, you simply subtract 12 hours. I usually think of the time as 2 hours and go to the hour that makes sense. To go from regular time to military time, you add 12 hours (or 2 hours). Consider this paragraph your invitation to be drafted into the armed forces. Before you head off to Canada to avoid the military time draft, just move on to the next paragraph.

My wife and I have been to Europe twice in our lives. Just as I find it hard to sleep much of the time at home, I could not sleep on the plane to Europe or the plane back. We both experienced the jet-lag when we arrived in Europe and when we arrived home. Because of the jet-lag, my concept of time was off from my normal timing. I had bad timing like you would not believe. The change in time threw our whole regular routine into shambles. When time is thrown into chaos, your life is thrown into chaos. Eventually, your timing regulates. The moment you get used to European time, it is time to return to your home time.

I thought it would be appropriate in this last paragraph to discuss late timing. It is one thing to be late for things on your own time, but it is another to be later for things involving someone else. Lateness is an insult to those around you. You are saying that whatever you were supposed to remember was not important enough to involve planning for it. Unless you are 5 years old, you know by now how long it takes you to prepare for going somewhere. Plan ahead and be on time. Before I am late in putting out this article, I will just say that time is easy to master, but hard to control. It gets on my nerves and is the greatest thing I crave (next to money). Learn how to deal with time and you will learn how to deal with life. After all, timing is everything.

Brian Explains: Television

The subject of my article this week is something that is near and dear to my heart. To this day, it is the friend that helps wake me up in the morning and the companion that puts me to bed at night. It comforts me when I am sick and even helps me exercise so I do not get sick in the first place. I am of course talking about my maid, Alice. If you understand the reference in the last sentence, you also know that I am actually talking about television.

My taste in television shows has always leaned more toward comedies and animation than dramas and news. The serious realities of adult life have not beaten my love of comedies or animation out of me. I have seen every episode of the Simpsons and plan to keep watching it until it is yanked off the air in 2015. Watching psychics on Oprah taught me that I am psychic. I enjoy watching documentaries and behind-the-scenes shows as well. I watch American Choppers and L.A. Ink, but I have no interest in riding motorcycles or getting a tatoo. It is like watching a soap opera without all the fakeness. It is a view of people's lives that I do not normally see.

Something that I have never enjoyed is watching sports. I had a time when I watched tennis and I will sometimes watch basketball, but I never really care about the outcome of the matches or games. When I was a kid, I played baseball for 1 1/2 seasons. I played 1/2 a season because I wasn't good and took myself off the team when the assistant coach yelled at me for not getting hit by the ball (the only way I could get on base). I actually hate watching football (the American version for my three international readers). I disagree with the sport morally (just like I disagree with boxing) and the game play bores me. I also do not understand why anyone has any loyalty to any team that they are not playing on. Most of the players of a profesional football team are not from the area where the team plays their home games so why do people root for one random accumulation of people over another? Before I go too far down the road of this subject (when I should just write an article about sports), I promise to get back to television in the next paragraph.

The two things my wife and I watch concerning football are the Superbowl commercials and the halftime show. We never watch the Superbowl live. We record the show and watch it later so we can fast forward past the boring game and get to the funny commercials. I hear people saying that they would like to watch a show, but they won't be home when it is on. In this day and age, that is the equivalent of saying, "I would love to remember this moment, but I don't have time to pose for a painting. VCRs, DVRs, and TiVos have been invented. You no longer have to watch live TV. In addition, DVDs, Blu-rays, Netflix, video rentals, video on demand, and many other services give you many other options for watching what you want when you want. If you say you do not know how to program your recording device, I think your television watching privileges should be revoked.

For my second to last paragraph, I would be incorrectly representing my television life if I did not mention Forensic Files. It is a show that plays late at night on TruTV and it is my wife's favorite show by which to sleep. The show usually follows a murder that is solved using forensics. This is what my wife has chosen to be our lulliby. Death and murder are not exactly bedtime stories, but I have gotten used to them. I am probably just bored with the stabbings, shootings, and stranglings (oh my).

Television has changed a great deal from when it first appeared in the late 1920s. It switched from being analog to digital, comes to us through a cable, satellite, or computer, and connects to everything from a Blu-ray player to an interactive video game system. The idea of television is simple. You watch moving images on a screen. What you watch on the screen is the complex part. I watched a Marx Brothers movie on Netflix the other day. It was as if I was watching the future and the past at the same time. But as Oprah has taught me, the past and future are merely what you make of them in the present. Actually, it might have been SpongeBob SquarePants.