By CHRIS PACKHAM
Somewhere to the right of this block of text, there's a category link for Daily Briefs, which today has the number 100 next to it. One hundred days and some nonworking weekends ago, we had the idea — a mistaken one, in retrospect — that snotty daily commentary about local media would be the quickest Mario beanstalk warp zone to the satisfaction of all five levels of Maslow's hierarchy of needs in one fell swoop of cocaine-fueled sex parties and shopping for yachts at the marina from the comfort of a private helicopter. It has to be said that this has been only a partial success; though I'm still subsisting on WIC-approved tuna, I have been prescribed Ritalin, which confers a cocaine-like high when pulverized and snorted through a rolled-up low-denomination bill. What follows, below the jump which you SIMPLY MUST CLICK -- is a postmortem analysis of Daily Briefs successes and failures in satisfying Maslow's hierarchy.
(1) Physiological/Survival Needs: Daily Briefs is almost completely non-nutritive, tricking subjects into thinking they are full while slowly starving them to death. Frankly, it might have been better positioned as a weight-loss formulation. On the other hand, Daily Briefs can be considered helpful for excretion, drinking and breathing, inasmuch as it does not actively inhibit those vital physiological activities.
(2) Safety: There's nothing I miss more desperately or want more badly than the absolute warmth and safety of the womb, which — tip for you Lotharios — actually creeps people out pretty badly if you tell them about it, for instance, on dates. The fact that it can't be successfully simulated with a Land's End Kids' Percale Appliqué Sleeping Bag filled with body-temperature aspic and a snorkel is now empirically verified via a careful double-blind study conducted by, um, scientists, so ultimately, I have to keep hoping for complete financial security, as represented by no less than $1 million, the quest for which instigated the Daily Briefs project in the first place.
(3) Love/Belonging: A lot of people who asked me what I thought about Sex and the City were optimistically fishing for sarcasm, and my reply ("OHMYGOD! The clothes! The hair! The vaginas! IT WAS PERFECT!") convinced some of them that I was being sarcastic. I'm also girly enough to want the love and acceptance of my peers. How has Daily Briefs fared in that department? Has Yael T. Abouhalkah invited me to join his entourage for late-night club hopping or spontaneous private jet flights to the West Coast for fried peanut butter sandwiches? Anyone who has seen me standing at the back of the line outside NV already knows the answer to that goddamn question.
(4) Esteem: The last of Maslow's deficiency needs. I'd already brought a lot to the table in terms of self-regard in the form of the the internal delusion that I'm one hundred times handsomer than pretty-boy stallion Phil Witt, which is the only way I'm able to walk up to girls at bars with my patented opener, "Hello, lovely lady." So, there's that. However, according to the original Daily Briefs white paper generated by the American Enterprise Institute, this level of Maslow's needs is best satisfied with some elective surgical procedures so expensive that the clinic won't even tell me how much they cost over the telephone unless I submit to a credit check.
(5) Self-actualization: In 1986, the De Laurentis Entertainment Group released Maximum Overdrive, the only film ever directed by Stephen King, who also wrote the screenplay, the short story it was based on, 70 percent of the output of the U.S. publishing industry and who even starred in the film's original ridiculous poster as the "puppetmaster" who "pulled the strings":
Once your portrayal as a spooky-ass puppeteer is used as a selling-point for a terrible movie, it's pretty safe to say you've self-actualized the living shit out of Maslow's hierarchy. Until that happens, I can enjoy the quiet, Ritalin-induced euphoria that only comes from Ritalin and having hit the "save" button in Movable Type 92 times. Thanks to my excellent co-workers for doing it those eight days when I was out of town.
KMBC Channel 9 has a prolapsed number hole: There was a giant brawl, or maybe just a brawl, at the VooDoo Lounge in Harrah's Casino early Sunday morning. Channel 9 says 450 people were involved, which is just 50 people shy of a European-style futbol victory celebration, but the area's paper of record, The Sedalia Democrat — HAHAHA! Just kidding — The Kansas City Star, says only 25 of 450 people present were actually involved in the fight. Four hundred and 50 people would have been some spooky M. Night Shyamalan's The Happening shit, followed by the M. Night Shyamalan's Surprise Twist Ending where it turns out that Bruce Willis was Keyser Soze all along. What with Occam's Razor and the whole plausibility factor, it turns out that KMBC is not so good at counting. This is why I never give hard figures and instead use generally accepted nondairy whipped numerical substitutes such as "shit-ton," "motherhuge" and "assload."
Crime pays handsomely: In an escalation of the city's crime wave of copper thievery, copper thieves knocked out all cable service in south Kansas City. If this isn't a selling point for books and satellite dishes, then I'm not a rakishly handsome, twice-convicted perpetrator of mail fraud. Whenever I'm not reading books, I'm probably teaching my master course about books or loudly talking about books on my cell phone at the bookstore, but as a public service to my neighbors in south Kansas City, I'll be providing summaries of Yes, Dear episodes until such a time as service is restored.
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Cue Green Day's "Time of My Life" and a montage of E. Thomas McClanahan, the over-sized novelty mayor, Mike Hendricks' sketch of two Lincolns holding hands, and the immortal "Ben Bernanke, you so ugly I could smash yo' face across some dough and make gorilla cookies."
If you're going to get all governmental with a first 100 days, though, you should next offer us a Contract With America. Please! The problem with the first contract with America is it failed to address our nation's dwindling supply of awesomeness, a supply that Daily Briefs daily increases.
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