Special Guest Writer: Tom Mahle!

I have been asking my good friend Tom Mahle to help in contributing to some writing on this website. I'm hoping to get more people involved in this site to begin to grow it and have it be updated more often. He pretty much tells the whole story of how his boredom led to him actually finally writing for The Very Unimpressive within this post, which goes a little longer than we're used to here at TVU, but it's a good first posting nonetheless:

July 23rd, 2009

So, I'm heading back home for the weekend, and I find myself in Chicago's Union Station talking to TayTay. The conversation between Tay-lizzle and I progresses through it's usual vaulty heights of wisdom and culture:

"Hey, how's it going?"
"Can I call you back i-- no, no, nevermind, we won!'
"Coo, who were we pl-"
"Shit, no, we lost!!!"
'Really, who were we playing?'
"Blah Blah Blah, I'm Taylor and I'm boring and like baseball, etc."

Suddenly: carolers. With my luck you're probably reading this in December, so go ahead and look at the date. July. Carollers. Carollers... July... They're even all douchy and up on a stage like we give a damn.
Frosty the Snowman. Because, really, the last thing you'd want to be is nonseccular when cramming the birth of Christ down my throat 5 months too early. Frosty the Snowman is melted right now... if he's lucky. More likely he's water vapor, not even visible to the human eye, by this point.

Our conversation continues in spite of the ear rape that Disney and some horse-shit for brains producer are, evidently, putting me and the other 7 people in the Station through to promote a movie I've already forgotten the name of. Oh, there's a sign, the Christmas Carol comes out in November... months from now. I count the seconds before my ears will be assaulted only by Taylor's cacophonous Mickey-Mouse-meets-braking-semi voice, rather than the monotonous rhythms and tired melody of out-of-season Christmas carols. I count the seconds until this crime against Time itself ends.

"For Frosty the snow man Had to hurry on his way,"
Yes, Frosty, hurry, go, NOW.

"But he waved goodbye saying, 'Don't you cry, I'll be back again some day.'"
Dude, seriously, don't even worry about it, just leave for now and we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.

"Thumpetty thump thump, Thumpety thump thump,"
Oh, right, the thumps, I forgot, they're like, the best part.

"Look at Frosty go."
Okay, but could you maybe just shut up about it?

"Thumpetty thump thump,"
No?

"Thumpety thump thump,"
Seriously, still singing?

"Over the hills of snow."
Oh, okay, you're done now?

Finally. The conversation between Taylor and I has progressed to him enumerating his top baseball rivalries in order of severity. I ask myself what I've done to put myself in this situation, and consider the myriad ways to exit it. Bludgeoning myself to death with the laptop seems good, as does running out in front of a train. Getting off the phone, however, makes its way up to the top of the list. I spring into action:

"So, yeah, I sh-"
"~Deck the halls with balls of holly ~Falalalala lalalala"
"Goddamnit, please don't make me listen to this..."
"Tomorrow Brett Favre is going to announce that he's becoming a Viking"


Oh, thank god, he'll be going for entire minutes on this one. I'm spared from being stuck alone with nothing but my thoughts and a blatant assault on reason. All things considered things are looking up.

'Deck the Halls' ends. I barely consider the possibility that perhaps my haunting ordeal has come to an end when Jingle Bells starts. Taylor tells me why the fact that my roommate is a Cubs fan is funny. Did you know they haven't won the World Series in over 100 years? I didn't care either, but pretended I did to avoid murdering relatively innocent carollers.

'Jingle Bells' ends. The carollers finally shut up. Taylor has found something legitimately interesting to talk about, so I keep him on the phone for a while. At the end he says "So, while you're waiting for the Megabus you should write a TVU article"

What would I write about?

"I dunno, out of season Christmas Carollers?' I tell him I might take him up on it and get off the phone before the punchline happens.

In spite of the end of Christmas Caroling and my woe someone insists on making noises into a microphone over by the schlocky fake brick display for that Christmas movie. It strikes me as funny that he probably thinks he's talking to people. There are about zero that I can see who seem remotely interested in what he's saying. At this moment he mentions that he's introducing important people that produce movies and stuff.

Who cares? Not me. Don't even pay attention to the names of people that do that. He introduces blah blah blah Robert Zemeckis blah bl- wait, wait, Robert Zemeckis? Didn't he make Back to the Future? 'producer of blah blah Contact blah and writer of such classics as Back to the Future...'

Oh, wow, I wasn't expecting any useful information from you, delusional guy that thinks people are listening. Now, Robert Zemeckis, not only does your presence give a tacit endorsement to douchebags performing Christmas music in July, but when you actually stood up and talked for a while at a presentation no one was at, God killed a kitten.

You should have something better to do, like invent the hoverboard or calling up some aliens. Putting that shit into my dreams and not making good on it is bullshit; you know it and you owe me. Now stop assaulting my ears and get to it. Thanks to you the first week after Thanksgiving is now off-limits for Christmas music. You cost the people a week of glee with your blatant disrespect to the seasonality of Christmas music.

How do you sleep at night?