We're Baaaaackk (Room Email #2)

I got a lot of positive responses to my last room parent email, so I thought I'd post them here from now on. Hope you enjoy, and if you don't please don't' let me know!

  

Q: What do you call a fly with no wings?

A: A walk.

Hello!

I promise to keep this one short and sweet(ish). I even put the topics in a numbered list to be real organized-like!

1. Thank you for those of you who donated to our room fund. Unfortunately, we have only received a few donations thus far. In an effort to fix this, we have decided to release one name per week of those who have not yet contributed. We are calling this the "Name of Shame Challenge" and I think it's going to be real popular! JUST KIDDING. Please donate what you can as it all goes to a good cause! You can Venmo, or pretend you're a housewife in the 1970's and bring a handwritten check to the classroom.

2. We need two volunteers to help out with Science Lab. Please let us know if you are able to help. You will need to provide a negative TB test to be a helper on campus, so please sort that mess out beforehand. I know Val Kilmer made tuberculosis look super cool in Tombstone, but in real life it is a big no no. You can get tested at your local CVS and it's covered by most insurance providers. I can also stab you in the arm with a thumbtack for $10 while saying "I'm your huckleberry," but I'm not sure the front office will accept my paperwork.

3. We are still looking for volunteers for our awesome PLINKO booth! Sign up! Just do it! All your friends are doing it. The first sign up is free! Don't think about it just sign it!

Sincerely,

McGregillyims

P.S. Why did the cow cross the road? Tune in next time for the answer!

Hello from the three room moms and one room dude! (Room Email #1)

I have taken on the job of co-room parent for my daughter's class this year. My first assignment was to compose an email asking parents to contribute to our room. Here are two things you need to know in order to get the best out of the reading.

1. My daughter has two teachers who have combined their last names into one (i.e. Smith + Johnson = Smithson).

2. I redacted personal information for privacy reasons, and also because it made me feel like a spy.

   

Hello wonderful families!

With the help of my daughter, I am going to start every email with a joke: “What do you call a fly with no wings?” (Tune in next time for the answer!)

My name is Ryan Sims and I am one of your four room moms people this year. The other room moms include Sarah, Angela, and Chelsea. While they are all decidedly more beautiful ladies than I am, I happen to write the words real good and therefore have been chosen to author our email messages this year. Inspired by the combination of names used by our fabulous teachers, I have decided that the four of us shall henceforth be (collectively) known as McGregillyims [Mc-Greg-illy-ims]. Be sure to say hi when you see any of us on campus! 

I think we can all agree that our classroom is an awesome place for our little ones to learn and thrive. It’s like we are all part of one big family, supporting our kiddos through their elementary school experience. And like any family, there is that one dirtbag cousin who’s always asking for money. I am that dirtbag cousin.

Which brings us to our first order of business. As the 90s’ rap supergroup The Wu-Tang Clan would (sort-of) say: C.R.E.A.M. or Cash Rules Everything Around Mrs. [teacher names redacted]. We all love and appreciate the hard work that both of our teachers and both of their aides do and what better way to show them love than to put up some cold hard cash? In all seriousness though, we are collecting money from every parent in order to provide our teachers and aides with birthday gifts, Christmas gifts, and end of year gifts. Please do not give your cash directly to me as I will undoubtedly gamble it away at the local dog track. You can either Venmo, or drop a check off to our teachers.

Our second order of business is our carnival booth! If you’ve been at our school for a while, you know that signing up for one of the shifts to run a carnival booth is like the last round of shots you shouldn't have taken at the bar. At first you take the shot (sign up) thinking “I feel great and this is a great idea!” Then the morning (carnival) rolls around and you’re filled with regret thinking “why would I ever think that was a good idea?! Is it too late to call in sick?”

Well not this year, people! We have (drumroll please) the PLINKO booth!!! This booth is by far the most popular booth at the ‘val (I’m test running a short version of the word carnival here. Try it out, it’s fetch.). It is also the easiest booth to run. Are you able to hold out your hand and give someone a game chip in exchange for a ticket? Then you can do this job! The more people that sign up, the easier it will be on all of us. And honestly this is the bare minimum in terms of helping, people! It’s the “taking the email writing job” of your room mom group.

Sign up today, I promise you won’t regret it!

I know this thing is long (and no, I will not be taking the bait here and making a base “that’s what she said” joke because this is a parent email thread and it would be totally inappropriate), but there is a lot of info to share so get your mind out of the gutter and please keep reading!

Angela would probably have me hunted down if I didn’t mention that there is a [redacted] Fall Donation Drive going on now. Our school is amazing, and a big part of that is due to what this program provides. Our art teacher, music teacher, Science Lab and more are all 100% funded by the program, so donate today! It’s like donating to NPR but without getting a dumb classical music CD that you can’t even put in your car to play because it’s a freaking CD and who listens to classical music anyway unless they are trying to make their baby a genius?

Also, please become a PTA member. I think we can all agree that attending PTA meetings is boring at worst and tedious at best, but it is a necessary group of devoted people who are advocating for the parents at our school. You don’t have to sit through the meetings, but you should become members because they need that sweet moolah to do great things for our kids

I think that about covers it. Thank you for reading until the end and have a fantastic day!

Sincerely,

McGregillyims

We shopped 'till I almost dropped

Last October my wife Debbie and I were on a primetime gameshow!!! We were on Season 2, Episode 5 of Supermarket Sweep hosted by Leslie Jones.

It originally aired on ABC and is currently available on Hulu. Although we are in the second half, I recommend watching the whole thing to get a feel for the game before we are on. If you see me in person I'm happy to tell the story!



P.S. Leslie Jones is lovely.

Taste the lime bro

I just bought my first bag of Skittles in nine years. If you've been following this blog then you know that for most of my life, Skittles was (were?) my favorite candy. Then in 2013, they replaced the original lime flavored green Skittles with barf-flavored™ imposters. I raged against the machine for a few years and eventually gave up on being able to ever taste the true "original" lineup again.

Until today.

Skittles has now gone on an apology tour. I can't bring myself to watch the entire video, but I'd be surprised if they didn't mention my haiku.

About Me

I was recently asked to make a collage representing my hobbies and interests for a project I'm doing. I thought I'd post it here so that once I blow up I can save future stalkers from having to go through my trash. 

 

Hi I’m Ryan, and my life . . . is kinda crazy.

(This title is from a TikTok meme, but in my case it's actually true.)

Since I stopped regularly posting to this blog I have been on a primetime gameshow,* I found (and looted) a shipwreck a mile off the shore of Long Beach, I was asked to submit a comedy writer packet to The Late Show with Stephen Colbert and I finally made the decision to stop using the Oxford comma. We also adopted puppy and named him Bodhi (after Patrick Swayze’s character in Point Break).

I will post more soon, but wanted to catch everyone up so we're all on the same page. (I'm looking at you, Jim.)

*Card Sharks stopped filming, but the producers liked my application so much they put my wife and I on another show! I'll post details later.

Don't call it a blogback, I've blogged here for years

(Also blogback isn't a word.)

I'm back, baby! Ryan Danger Sims has been BUSY. Not busy enough to abbreviate my name for this post, but BUSY. Stay tuned for updates!

ABC: Always Be Contestin'

I just applied to be a contestant on the ABC show Card Sharks. Here are some answers I submitted on the form:

Are you a risk taker? Why or why not? Tell us about it - we love stories

Danger is my middle name. Really. It's my legal middle name (on my driver's license and everything). Why am I a risk taker? Well, as my grandma always used to say (and Drake copied without so much as a shout out in his rap song), you only live once (YOLO!). Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it. That's another quote from my grandma. She's very wise.

I almost blew my hand off with an M-80 as a teenager. I am not exaggerating when I say I was half a second away from sporting a pirate hook for the rest of my life.

I wear white after Labor Day.

How did you hear about casting?

My wife and I were watching the show and she was like "we gotta sign up to get on there!" And I was like "that's a great idea!" So now here we are.


I mean, with enthusiasm like that, how can they not pick me?

The results are in

I just took a DNA test and while it turns out that I am not, in fact, "100% that bitch," I did find that a good number of my distant relatives were seafaring, horned-helmet and/or flannel skirt wearing badasses, which is kinda cool.

By the looks of my results it looks like I'm about 1/3 English, 1/3 German and 1/3 Celtic/Viking.

After looking into my ancestry, I am left with two major takeaways:

1. Scotland's national animal is a unicorn (this is true, look it up).

2. My warrior ancestors would be extremely proud to know that all the toil and suffering they endured has resulted in at least one of their surviving progeny devoting his life to writing comedy.

Writer inspiration

The Infinite Monkey Theorem is a proposition that an unlimited number of monkeys, given typewriters and sufficient time, will eventually produce the complete works of Shakespeare. This derisive concept is pretty depressing to think about if you are a writer. Fortunately it turns out that it's total bullshit.

In 2003, lecturers and students with the University of Plymouth’s Institute of Digital Arts and Technology (i-DAT) got a grant to place a single computer and keyboard in the macaques enclosure at the Paignton Zoo.

After a month with the computer, the macaques had produced five pages of nonsense text, but otherwise seemed to limit their screen time to urinating and/or defecating on the computer until such time as it stopped working.

In conclusion:

🐒 + ⌨️ = 💩

click for source

I made another friend on Skype!

I keep getting messages over Skype from people trying to scam me in some way or another. I like to flip the script on them and see what happens. Here's my latest interaction. It's long, but I promise it's worth a read.

Happy Not 2020 Anymore!

As Norwegian playwright, theatre director, and person generaly recognized as the "father of realism" once (kind of) said, "A Bitmoji is worth a thousand words."

Speaking of Henrik Johan Ibsen. Check this dude out. There are at least 1,000 words that could describe his sideburns alone.

Low wattage

If you want to know what it's like being a Chargers fan, this 39 second video says it all. Click the bolt below to watch. (The audio quality is terrible so make sure to turn your sound all the way up.)

 

I tried to embed this video into my blog, but the NFL claimed copyright infringement. Which is crazy because that means that YouTube recognized this video after I recorded it in my own home by holding up my iPhone to my TV. I then edited the clip (cropped, clipped, and adjusted for perspective) and uploaded it to YouTube. Within less than a minute, it was flagged as a copy. WHAT IS HAPPENING

One (Putter)ball to rule them all

 

Ladies and gentlemen, theys and thems, allow me to introduce you to the next big backyard game craze:

It's Putterball y'all! A cross between beer pong and mini golf, Putterball is the ultimate party game. And no, I am not getting paid for this endorsement. I just want to share about it because it's super duper fun. That's right, I added a duper to my super. That's how fun this game is.

 

Putterball can be played inside, outside, at the beach, at the park, on a boat, with a goat – the sky's the limit! My friend and future Putterball pro Shawn Pavlik and I came up with some alternate rules to make the game even mo' better. Here are the ones we came up with so far. I'll add more as we go!

Blind (eyes closed)

Backwards (putt from the other side of the green)

Distraction (distract your opponent as much as possible)

Windmill (swing your club back and forth in front of your hole like the windmill in mini-golf)

Icing the Putter (once per game a player may yell "Ice!" in their opponents back swing, which cancels their opponents shot and ends their turn)

Shoulder Shot (looks like a chip shot but must be fluid movement that ends with putting)

U-Call (call your shot and if you make it you cover two holes, if you miss you take away a cover)

Petty (if you don't make it to the last section of the green your opponent can putt from one section up next time)

Double Corner (shoot from a corner behind the logo and if you make it your opponent covers two of your holes)

Billiards (get on the ground and shoot the ball with the back of your club like it's a pool cue)

Tweener (putt from between your legs, grandma shot style)

Logo Bonus (if you land your ball on the ‘PutterBall’ logo you immediately get an extra shot)

One Handed (either hand)

Upside-down Club (basically impossible)

Dizzy Spinner (place your forehead on the top of your club and spin around 3 times, then run to the green and putt your ball)

Tee Off (putt your ball from the top of two hole covers stacked on top of one another)

Reverse Putter (putt with the club facing the wrong way)

Shot Putt (place one or more shot glasses/beers in the middle of the green and if someone hits it they have to drink)

Countdown (place a nickel, dime, or quarter on the green and if a player rolls over it and makes the shot, the opponent counts out each cent the coin is worth while the player drinks)

Also remember that you can put a towel or other objects beneath the green to change the terrain in order to make it more challenging.

Have fun!

Beer to the rescue!

This article's from a couple weeks back, but the world's still on fire so I figure it's still relevant. Stock up on cheap beer people!

Man Uses Bud Light to Help Save His Home from California Wildfire: 'I Didn't Have Any Water'
People Magazine (article excerpt) - August 26, 2020

A man was able to help save his home from one of the many wildfires raging across California thanks to some quick thinking and a case of Bud Light.

Chad Little and his family were preparing to evacuate from their Vacaville residence last Wednesday when he decided to use his drink of choice as a last-ditch attempt to stop the LNU Lightning Complex Fire from destroying his property, KCRA reported.

Little — who had lost his home in an attic fire five years ago and is in the process of rebuilding it again — told the outlet he initially tried using water from a hose, but realized that his utilities had been shut off when the surrounding flames quickly approached his workshop.

“I didn’t have any water,” he recalled. “I had one barrel with a little bit of water in it and I tried using that, but it didn’t work."

That's when Little said he reached for the only other liquid he had left: a 30-pack of Bud Light.

Using a nail he had found to puncture the cans, Little said he began "shaking it up, popping it and spraying them, throwing them down and grabbing another one" to help dose the fire. 

Eventually, firefighters arrived on scene and [were] able to put out the blaze.

The Great TikTok Pub Quiz #2!

If you liked the first one, you're gonna' love the sequel! It's a another big download (353 MB), but it's worth every bit of those bytes. Again, all you need to do is familiarize yourself with the presentation and have everyone who's playing print a copy of the answer sheet to play along.

Click the image below to download the PowerPoint deck!


I shouldn't have to say this, but it's 2020 and the president is trying to ban TikTok so here goes: rest assured that all TikTok videos in this PowerPoint were downloaded to my secure MacBook before independently being incorporated into the game with no links back to TikTok. This download will not compromise your personal data or privacy in any way.

The Great TikTok Pub Quiz!

I created an interactive pub quiz game to play over Zoom! Trust me when I say it is awesome. It's a big PowerPoint file (282 MB), but it is all self contained and ready to go. All you need to do is familiarize yourself with the presentation and have everyone who's playing print a copy of the answer sheet to play along.

Click the image below to download the PowerPoint deck!

I shouldn't have to say this, but it's 2020 and the president is trying to ban TikTok so here goes: rest assured that all TikTok videos in this PowerPoint were downloaded to my secure MacBook before independently being incorporated into the game with no links back to TikTok. This download will not compromise your personal data or privacy in any way.

Making friends

I made a new friend on Skype!

I believe I have my stapler

That moment when you realize that one of your favorite video game franchises (Just Cause) is referencing your all-time favorite movie (Office Space):


(Click the above image to enlarge.)

Speaking of Office Space, look what I found (and immediately purchased) on Amazon last week! I can't believe they are actually selling this cross promotion. I thought I had gotten the right one last year at my former job, but this one's the real deal.

Visualize this video

I found this video both informative and comforting. Hope it helps.