10. “The Macho Man” Randy Savage

Fate was unusually kind to professional wrestlers this year, claiming (aside from a few no-names) only Sir Oliver Humperdink and the left foot of Kamala the Diabetic Headhunter. (Kamala joins other prominent names such as “The Texas Tornado” Kerry Von Erich, Zach Gowen, and Maurice “Mad Dog” Vachon in being crossed off the “Alive Wrestlers with Two Feet” list.) Oh, and there was one other big one: Who would have guessed that “Macho Man” Randy Savage would have been the first one called home by Jesus in the much-rumored Rapture predicted for the day after he died? One would have pictured Savage’s end coming in a cocaine-fueled rampage of Macho Mania, like Tony Montana at the end of Scarface. Instead, much like the late Junkyard Dog, his end came from crashing into a tree after suffering a heart attack while driving; medical examiners said that his aortic valve snapped like a Slim Jim. But while Macho Maniacs mourned, they looked forward to their hero’s reunion with the lovely Miss Elizabeth in heaven. That, and to hearing his brother “Leaping” Lanny Poffo deliver the greatest rhyming eulogy of all time.

9. Dr. Jack Kevorkian

The world of arts lost oil painter and jazz musician Jack Kevorkian this year. Of course, the world lost a lot of other people courtesy of Dr. Kevorkian, in his better-known guise as the world’s foremost encourager of suicide prior to T-Pain’s introduction of Auto-Tune to mainstream music. It’s interesting that Kevorkian died the same day as Gunsmoke actor James Arness and Andrew Gold, composer of the Golden Girls theme “Thank You for Being a Friend”; the whole thing stinks of a suicide pact, really. It’s also interesting that the euthanasia advocate notoriously known as “Dr. Death” managed to outlive the wrestler “Dr. Death” Steve Williams before finally exercising his own right to die, despite being 32 years older than him. And, his death was followed only three weeks later by that of NFL cornerback Alonzo Thomas, surely the only man in history to be nicknamed both “Skip” and “Dr. Death”. At least Osama bin Laden’s presumed successor, Ayman al-Zawahiri, is still out there to carry on the “Dr. Death” nickname.

8. Clarence Clemons

To those excellent adventurers Bill and Ted, he was one of the Three Most Important People in the World. To Bruce Springsteen, he was affectionately known as “The Black Man”. To many of the rest of us music lovers, he was none other than Clarence Carter. Let’s clear up the confusion about that right now: Clarence Carter wrote “Strokin’”; E Street Band saxophonist Clarence Clemons died of a stroke, most likely one induced by his fury at being mistaken for Clarence Carter one too many times. Clarence Clemons is dead. Clarence Carter won’t die until he knows you’re sas-ified. And he can always tell when you get sas-ified. ‘Cause when you get sas-fied, you start calling his name. You’d say, “Clarence Carter, Clarence Carter, Clarence Carter, Clarence Carter, ooooh shit! Clarence Carter.”

7. Amy Winehouse

Clarence Carter—sorry, Clemons—wasn’t the only loss to the music world. Rock-and-roll hitmaker Jerry Leiber ain’t gonna rock and roll no more (yakety yak, heart attack). Gil Scott-Heron is dead (the funeral will not be televised). Rapper Heavy D abruptly lost his qualifications to rap the theme song for the impending revival of In Living Color. (Which rapper will be next to succumb to his unhealthy lifestyle? Big Fat? B-Runch? Ice Cream? The Morbidly O.B.E.S.E.?) And, in memorial of Warrant frontman and “Cherry Pie” composer Jani Lane, stripper poles were at half mast. But the biggest, though certainly the least unexpected, loss was that of soul songstress/crack cocaine enthusiast Amy Winehouse, which was followed by a predictable round of jokes about how she should have gone to rehab after all. Guess what, dummies? Winehouse outlived former first lady/drunk Betty Ford by over two weeks, thus proving rehab wouldn’t have helped.

6. Andy Rooney

As usual, lots of old people died, because that’s what they do. “Just no more things,” reads the tombstone of Peter Falk, TV’s beloved detective Columbo. (Condolences to his wife, if she ever actually existed.) Family Circus cartoonist Bil Keane joined Dead Grandpa in one-panel heaven in what might have been foul play; police have narrowed their suspects down to Not Me and Ida Know. (Those taking part in his funeral procession were advised to check their maps and follow the circuitous route marked by a dotted line.) M*A*S*H actor Harry Morgan moved on to a spin-off called AfterLIFE. And Len Lesser, better known as Seinfield‘s Uncle Leo, said “Goodbye!” after presumably catching something off a bathroom book. But the oldest and fogiest of them all was Andy Rooney. Let’s hear from the famed curmudgeon himself:

You know what I hate? Heaven. You’d think walking around on a cloud would be soft and fluffy, but it’s cold and damp. And harps. Have you heard these? For my money, the only stringed instrument worth a darn is the banjo. Why can’t angels play banjos, instead of harps? And another thing: wings. I never needed wings before, and I certainly don’t need them now. You can barely walk through the pearly gates without catching your wings and having to stop and turn sideways. I don’t like heaven, but I suppose it’s better than the alternative.

5. Elizabeth Taylor

With due respect to fitness guru Jack LaLanne, boxer “Down Goes” Joe Frazier, and tough-guy actor/space hippie Charles Napier, the manliest man who died in 2011 was unquestionably Major Richard “Dick” Winters, the inspiration behind WWII miniseries Band of Brothers. But who was the womanliest woman? With her death, singer/dancer Lena Horne left behind an uncompleted autobiography entitled Me So Horney (probably). Mourning breast men raised their penises to half-staff after a cruel February that claimed both Hollywood bombshell Jane Russell and Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! star Tura Satana. Linda Christian, the original Bond girl, passed on, albeit from colon cancer rather than being painted gold. And the sun set for Anne Francis, star of Honey West. But, although many of us knew her only during her “Fat Elvis” period, Elizabeth Taylor was the Angelina Jolie of her day, in that she was called the most beautiful woman in the world, had multiple marriages under her belt, was a notorious homewrecker, and famously adopted a small black child (sadly, she is predeceased by Michael Jackson). Put it this way: Anyone who could appear opposite James Dean, Montgomery Clift, and Paul Newman and still be considered the most beautiful thing onscreen has to take the prize, and she did.

4. Kim Jong-il

With the passing of Kim Jong-il, let’s remember that his father, Kim Il-sung, remains Eternal President of North Korea and is still technically in charge. Seriously. (Fact: All political decisions in North Korea are made by standing by the grave of Kim Il-sung and asking things like, “If you want us to feed all the peasants, just say so.” “Hey, if you want us to fix the power grid, just give us the word.”) Nevertheless, good luck to third-generation despot Kim Jong-un on succeeding his father and supreme leader. Those are one big pair of elevator shoes to fill. Speaking of which, what is going to become of Kim Jong-il’s 2700 pairs of elevator shoes, his collection of Elizabeth Taylor movies and the Elephant Man’s bones? And won’t it be awkward when Corey Feldman shows up to Kim Jong-il’s funeral dressed just like him?

3. Muammar Gaddafi

The only error a howling mob committed by pulling the late Libyan dictator out of a sewage pipe, sodomizing him, and summarily executing him was that they didn’t just toss him back in the sewage pipe when they were done. While a bit of a headache for the guy charged with engraving his tombstone (who likely agonized over whether to spell it “Gaddafi”, “Khadafy”, “Qadhafi”, “Cydypheigh”, or “Q’daffEE” before eventually just electing to dump him into an unmarked grave), his death is a victory against the perpetrators of human suffering, if only because it means seeing one fewer regular Fred Armisen character on Saturday Night Live. Come to think of it, Armisen also played the late Steve Jobs, so considering these things come in threes, Barack Obama should be seriously worried. But while we’re killing off Fred Armisen characters, let’s get that political comic Nicholas Fehn guy next, whoever he is.

2. Osama bin Laden

Let’s all thank President Obama for finally doing in May 2011 what should have been done long before: knocking the royal wedding out of the news cycle. Seriously, though, Osama bin Laden’s death is more satisfying than that of any movie villain—not least because the evil terrorist mastermind actually went down using a woman as a human shield—so kudos to Obama for doing what neither George W. Bush nor Morgan Spurlock could accomplish. Of course, he still could have done it better in a few ways. For instance, why wouldn’t Obama avoid the whispers of conspiracy theorists by just releasing bin Laden’s death photo, rather than just filing it in his secret wall safe next to his birth certificate? Why didn’t his press conference announcing bin Laden’s death consist simply of Obama declaring “This is a song Hulk Hogan stole from the U.S. Express. I’m stealing it back,” then blaring “Real American” while performing a posing routine amid a display of pyrotechnics. And, rather than burial at sea—actually a pleasant change of scenery for bin Laden, who spent much of the last decade buried in a hole in the ground—his body should have been dumped in an old mine shaft with a toilet seat installed at the top and enough velvet theatre rope for a line three hundred million people long.

1. Christopher Hitchens

As we’ve seen, some powerful dictators had their cults of personality decisively snuffed out this year: Kim Jong-il, Muammar Gaddafi, Osama bin Laden, Steve Jobs … the list goes on. It looks pretty good for President Obama to have had all this happen on his watch, but if he really wanted to win favor with Bible belt voters, he’d claim to have killed vociferous atheist Christopher Hitchens with a predator drone. (It would have kind of served Hitchens right, given his forceful support of the misguided invasion of Iraq, although he did put his money where his esophageal cancer was by volunteering to be waterboarded to prove it constituted torture.) His utter conviction in the lack of an afterlife justifies his ranking as the single deadest person of 2011, and now Hitch is finally in a position to know if he was right all along about that, though it is certain that he never doubted it. Of course, if Hitch is in a position to know anything at this point, it would logically have to be that he was wrong. But that ornery, drunk son of a bitch would argue that point with God himself.

Wednesday, I was out of the office. Thursday, I ate half the soup for lunch and left the other helping in the fridge for the next day. That afternoon, I got an e-mail from the office manager warning us that the fridge would be cleaned out for the holidays the next day, so I took a note to take lunch a little early the next day and make sure my stuff was out of the way.

This morning, because I was out of milk and time, my wife gave me a couple of cookies to take for breakfast, which I put into a pocket of my briefcase. I later discovered that I now had a briefcase pocket full of powdered sugar, and had to take my wallet out of it and lick it clean. When I limped into the break room for my second cup of coffee around eleven o’clock, I noticed a couple of dishes on the break room table. I dimly remembered a couple of something being there when I’d come for my first cup of coffee, and now I could tell what they were. By the time I came for my third cup, I noticed that one of these dishes was my half-full container of soup.

The fridge clear-out had begun. Before ten o’clock in the morning, as far as I could tell. What kind of lunatic does a fridge clear-out before lunch?

Irate, I returned to my desk and I fired off an email to the office manager to say that I thought the morning was a little early to be doing so and that she’d left my lunch out, and then wished a merry Christmas to her and a happy food poisoning to me. She answered by saying she’d done the clean-out when she’d had time to do it, that my food hadn’t been sitting out long, and that she would happily give me that address of a nearby after-hours clinic.

Still grumpy after an hour, I went to the break room to retrieve my lunch from where I’d re-refrigerated it. On my way by the break room table, I noticed another familiar-looking Pyrex container. The other dish was mine too, I realized. Curious, I cracked it open—and immediately gagged. It was half full of a previous batch of split pea soup I’d evidently brought in sometime in the last few months. The other half was full of green mold.

Pausing to nearly vomit several times, I washed the putrid mix down the sink, declogged the sink of split pea mold, and washed the container several times. I then microwaved my remaining soup, took it back to my desk, and thought about the fact that I was the reason we were doing a fridge clear-out in the first place, as well as the irony of having the same meal again today. I ate about three spoons of it over the next fifteen minutes, then got up and washed the rest of it down the sink too.

NEW DETECTIVE: Well, I just got here, but the obvious suspect is Quinn.

QUINN: What?!

MASUKA: Gotta be Quinn.

BATISTA: Quinn.

DEB: Or Masuka. But he’s too fucking weak to crack a hooker’s sternum without a fucking bone saw.

QUINN: Come on, you guys. If it’d been me, you’d have found my gun and one of my shoes still in the room. Besides, I was drunk and asleep in my car at the time.

DEPUTY CHIEF MATTHEWS: That’s good police work, son.

* * *

MATTHEWS: You don’t know what it’s like, Debra, how lonely it is to lose a spouse.

DEB: I could ask Dexter about that, I guess. His spouse was brutally fucking murdered, after all.

MATTHEWS: I’m disappointed in you for investigating the crime I committed, Debra. What would your father think?

DEB: Once again, I’ll ask Dexter. He’ll find out.

[OUTSIDE]

DEB: Hey, LaGuerta! Why’d you fucking rat out Matthews? Now he thinks I did it and he has to fucking resign.

CAPTAIN LAGUERTA: This is what the deputy chief gets for blackmailing me into promoting you, as well as for then coming to me in confidence with his dead hooker problem.

DEB: Well, why the fuck would he do that?

LAGUERTA: This is how the game is played, Lieutenant.

DEB: You mean fucking idiotically?!

LAGUERTA: This is Miami Metro, isn’t it, Lieutenant?

* * *

DEB: Holy fuckballs, my therapist just brought up a bunch of repressed memories, and I think Dexter might be a serial killer!

NEW DETECTIVE: I thought everybody knew Dexter was committing every murder in Miami. It’s been obvious from the moment I got here.

DOAKES: Surprise, motherfuckers! Turns out I wasn’t incinerated in season 2 after all! That was just an overdone pot roast you found in that cabin in the swamp!

NEW DETECTIVE: So should we go arrest your brother now or what?

DEB: Fuck it. Thanks to my therapist, I also want to bone him now. Just frame that bitch LaGuerta for all the murders. I’m assigning Quinn, Masuka, and Angel to strip club duty from now on, and you two are now in charge of all the competent police work in Miami.

* * *

GHOST OF HARRY MORGAN: Dexter, I think Deb is on to you.

DEXTER’S INTERNAL MONOLOGUE: I think Deb is on to me.

DEXTER [ALOUD]: I think Deb is on to me.

* * *

DEXTER: Hey, Masuka, can I borrow your computer for a minute?

MASUKA: Uh, sure Dexter. Let me just … uh, hurriedly close this tab before I leave.

DEXTER: Okay, great! Okay, let’s see … [typing] “GOOGLE NAME OF DOOMSDAY KILLER.” Well, what do you know? It’s “Travis Marshall.”

DEXTER: Well, I’d better throw the rest of the police off the scent so I can kill him myself. [typing] “FRAME PROFESSOR GELLAR FOR CRIMES.”

DEXTER: Huh. Says here Gellar is dead. No problem. [typing] “DELETE DEATH CERTIFICATE.”

MASUKA: Hey Dex, are you nearly done with the computer yet? I have to get back to … um, work.

DEXTER: No problem. I was just leaving.

MASUKA: See ya, Dex. [typing] “DOWNLOAD GROSS PORNOGRAPHY.”

* * *

INTERN: Hey, why are you calling Travis Marshall “DDK”?

DEB: “Dooms Day Killer”, fuckwad.

INTERN: “Doomsday” is one word. You should just be calling him “DK”. Or, better yet, “Travis Marshall.”

DEB: You know you don’t even fucking exist, right? You’re just a fucking figment of the collective fucking imaginations of Dexter, Masuka, Angel, and Angel’s fucking sister.

INTERN: Well, this sucks.

GHOST OF HARRY: Eh. You get used to it.

GHOST OF BRIAN MOSER: Besides, being a ghost is better than the alternative.

GHOST OF BROTHER SAM: Speak for yourself. I’m supposed to be in heaven right now.

GHOST OF PROFESSOR GELLAR: You and me both, pal.

GHOST OF RITA MORGAN: At least you get to continue to watch over your loved ones.

GHOST OF FRANK LUNDY: Until you’re reunited in death, that is.

GHOST OF DEB: What in the fuck is going on here?!

“Baby, It’s Cold Outside”
Though I’ve been informed that Glee has now done it, I still wonder why we don’t hear more same-sex versions of the date rate-themed Christmas classic “Baby, It’s Cold Outside”. Whether sung by two men or two women, this would undeniably be more taboo and therefore sexier. Consider the the pairing of Michael Bublé and Rufus Wainwright, the latter coaxing the former into sharing more than their nationality and love of Christmas music. Or what about Zooey Deschanel, who’s recorded this song twice previously, but never with her sex-doll doppelgänger, “I Kissed a Girl” singer Katy Perry? Or how about a May–December romance between celebrated duettist Tony Bennett and heartthrob Justin Bieber?

Secret Santa
I think I’ve figured out how to turn the office’s Secret Santa exchange into pure profit this year: Once you draw a coworker’s name, begin a ceaseless campaign of undermining, rumour-mongering, and evidence planting to get that guy fired. If it doesn’t work, so what? You still break even. But if it does work, that means you get a gift and don’t have to buy one, putting you up twenty bucks or so. The only way it can’t work is if you draw your own name, but that doesn’t mean you have to follow through on getting yourself fired. Just throw the slip of paper back in the hat, dummy.

The NHL All-Star Game
Starting next season, the National Hockey League is moving to a four-conference format. This raises the question of how to arrange the format of the annual all-star game, which previously pitted East versus West or North America versus the rest of the world. The answer is that they’ll just stick with the fantasy draft idea they debuted last year. But wouldn’t it be interesting if each conference actually had its own team, with four squads playing in a single match? Put the Eastern Conference in white-on-red home jerseys, the Atlantic Conference in red-on-white away jerseys, the Central Conference in white-on-blue home jerseys, and the Pacific Conference in blue-on-white away jerseys. Then the game itself would essentially work as a round-robin tournament within a single game. Each period is split in half, with teams changing after ten minutes of play (first period: Atlantic vs. Eastern, then Central vs. Pacific; second period: Atlantic vs. Central, then Eastern vs. Pacific; third period: Atlantic vs. Pacific, then Eastern vs. Central) The winner would be determined through win-loss records against the other teams, with goal differential as the first tiebreaker, and then goals scored as the second tiebreaker. Or, forget all that, and just put all four teams on-ice at the same time on a baseball diamond featuring a giant squircle-shaped rink with four nets and two pucks. It’d be nuts.

Mount Rushmore
It’s not politically correct to endorse bullying these days. And rightly so. But at the same time, tell me you nerds wouldn’t visit a mountain featuring the 60-foot high sculpted visages of the four greatest bullies of the 1980s: Biff Tannen, Billy Zabka, Ogre from Revenge of the Nerds, and the positively intimidating Dwayne Myers from Degrassi Junior High. You can’t, nerds. You can’t. Because bullies rule.

And I must admit she has a point, because Young’s Double Chocolate Stout does have a 98% rating at Ratebeer.com. So let me just say quickly that, as usual, this clocks in at just under 80 minutes, a suitable length for burning to a CD if you should be so inclined. And, as some of this is recorded from less than ideal sources from the perspective of the audiophile, volume levels may vary, so adjust your preference to equalize such things on playback and/or feedback. As for fidelity, this is probably not enjoyed best through earphones, but rather, on the stereo, in the background, surrounded by friends and family — the way Christmas music is always meant to be enjoyed.

Here is the track list:

1. The Beach Boys – “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town (vocal sessions)”
2. The Raveonettes – “Come On Santa”
3. Glo-Worm – “Holiday”
4. The Magnetic Fields – “Everything Is One Big Christmas Tree”
5. Coldplay – “Christmas Lights”
6. The Killers – “The Cowboy’s Christmas Ball”
7. My Morning Jacket – “Christmas Must Be Tonight”
8. Shelby Lynne – “Squat”
9. Gruff Rhys – “Slashed Wrists This Christmas”
10. The Pearlfishers – “Blue December (In the City)”
11. Kayla Williams – “Little Saint Nick”
12. Sufjan Stevens – “Christmas in the Room”
13. Sally Shapiro – “Anorak Christmas”
14. Sofia Talvik – “Christmas”
15. Vetiver – “Merry Christmas (I Don’t Want to Fight Tonight)”
16. She and Him – “The Christmas Waltz”
17. Aimee Mann – “Calling on Mary”
18. Matt Andersen – “Silent Night”
19. Catie Curtis – “2000 Miles”
20. James O’Malley – “You Must Go Home for Christmas”
21. Badly Drawn Boy – “Do They Know It’s Christmas?”
22. Beneath Wind and Waves – “The Gift”
23. Amy Winehouse – “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus”

Get it here.

* * *

In the mood for a little less than eleven more hours of the same? Download links to my previous holiday mixes (detailed here, here, here, here, here, and also here) are still active, so get ‘em while they’re hot and the weather outside is cold.

X-mas I (2003)
X-mas II (2004)
X-mas III (2005)
X-mas IV (2006)
X-mas V (2007)
X-mas VI (2008)
X-mas VII (2009)
X-mas VIII (2010)

“Well, I’m tired and hungry.”

“I already ate. I don’t know what you want.”

“What do we have?”

“We have bean soup.”

“I had bean soup for lunch. I don’t want the same thing again for dinner.”

“I can make you a salad.”

“I don’t want a salad. Salad isn’t a meal. Salad is what you eat before the meal.”

“Well, I’m out of ideas then.”

“Do we still have the meatballs?”

“I ate the rest.”

“I only had two.”

“I thought you had more. Sorry.”

“What else do we have?”

“Nothing. Everything’s frozen.”

“Everything?”

“Well, we do have a can of SPAM.”

“I guess I could have SPAM and eggs.”

“No you can’t. That’s mine.”

“What do you mean, it’s yours?”

“It’s for me to eat when you work late.”

“Then what am I supposed to eat when I work late? And why did you eat all the meatballs then instead of the SPAM? And why did you even bring the SPAM up if I can’t have any?”

“I don’t know.”

“All right, forget it. I’m making a grilled cheese sandwich.”

“You can’t do that! It has carbs!”

“Now I’m making two grilled cheese sandwiches. Want to keep going?”

“No.”

• I believe women should have the right to abort fetuses that have Down Syndrome or are Italian.
• Probably the worst part of being World Menstruation Champion is having to defend the title every 30 days.
• Tip: When drunk at a wedding, try not to throw up on the bride until she’s cutting the cake. That way, you get all the cake.
• “I didn’t know they had a MERLIN!”–my girlfriend, looking at the most impressively long-white-bearded Oak Ridge Boy
• Just read Sammy Hagar’s memoir, Red. I’m doing it wrong, not branding myself with a signature color. From now on, Pantone 553c, all the way.
• “That creep with the hairband on his face—I don’t want to see him anymore. Put him in engineering or whatever.”—Picard, “Geordi’s Promotion”
• I just dropped a whole bunch of F-bombs at the supermarket. (That’s what I call farts.)
• “BACH FM, 103.5! If it ain’t Bach, it don’t rock!” – classical music DJs, I assume
• DR. TALKING VS. KING STUTTERS — working title of THE KING’S SPEECH
• Q. “Hey Alexandre Daigle, what was the most memorable dump you ever took?” A. “No one remembers number two.”

• Archie is aghast when Dilton Doiley buys his sperm as part of his scientific experiment to create life.
• Archie is upset when Jughead decides to follow his lead to raise hamburger money, and all the girls in town rush to buy his extremely rare sperm instead.
• Archie is afraid—and possibly a father—when he clumsily spills his sample all over Midge, and Moose goes berzerk.
• Archie discovers that he and Josie are long-lost siblings when she tries to buy redheaded sperm from the next town over.
• Archie is conflicted and uncomfortable when Riverdale’s token gay teen, Kevin Keller, offers twice the going rate for Archie’s sperm.
• Archie fears for his life when Sabrina the teenage witch needs the seed of a hanged man for a magical ritual.
• Archie can hardly keep up with the demand when his sperm becomes the hottest selling product at Riverdale’s sperm bank—until it turns out Mr. Lodge is buying and destroying it in an effort to drain Archie’s libido.

• I shit my pants one leg at a time, just like anyone else.
• I feel like all every tweet by @denisleary should be preceded by RT @billhicks. Only fair, right?
• Because Rebecca Gayheart is pregnant again, a reminder: Always secure your child in a car seat while running over someone else’s child.
• Just saw a note on a coworker’s monitor that read “[NAME] will return on August 2″ and was very tempted to add “in ‘DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER’ “.
• I’m putting together a girl group/dance troupe called the Pussyfart Dolls.
• Girlfriend: “Why won’t you see THE HELP with me?” Me: “I just don’t like movies with Oprahs in them!”
• “Always see the good in goodbyes, and in this case, also see the ODB.”—Ol’ Dirty Bastard’s eulogy
• I’m going to start writing food-based parodies of Weird Al Yankovic’s original songs. Let’s see how he likes hearing my “Dare to Be Stew”.
• “All my horny friends are coming over tonight!” ~ Monday Night Fuckball theme
• Just farted four times walking across the parking lot. “That feels good!” cried Bon Scott into my headphones.

“Peter, I want you to remember one thing: With great power comes great responsibility.

“Oh, one other thing: Photojournalism is a dying art. Videography is the way of the future. That’s the way visual journalism is going. Getting into conventional photography at this time in history is more pointless than musical theatre.

“On a personal note, be nice to that Gwen Stacy girl. I don’t want you breaking her heart, or worse.

“Also, have you ever noticed that red and blue is a color combination that simply is not found in the insect world? I’m just throwing that out there.

“Okay, this is kind of awkward, but I have this recurring nightmare where Adolf Hitler is having sex with my wife. If you ever meet anyone who looks anything like that at all, please, keep him away from your Aunt May.

“Lastly, if you’re ever in the position to foil an escaping crook, you really should probably do something, because you never know what a desperate fugitive from justice might do next. Don’t just stand around and act like it’s none of your problem. Just trip him or something.

“Promise me you’ll remember all that? Good. Now, here’s your permission slip for your school trip to that nuclear reactor thing. Run along now.”