Cake vs Pi

Genre-bending music or ground-breaking constant?

RYAN: In the clique-filled world of numbers, there stands one maverick who refuses to conform to the rules. It’s not odd. It’s not even. Hell, it’s not even rational. I talk, of course, of pi. Pi’s so great (way greater than one, two, or even my personal favorite three) it’s got its own fucking symbol. Does 12 have its own symbol? 7? 36? 2359? Yeah, thought not. See, those are all just drops in the metaphorical bucket of numbers. Where’s pi, you ask? Pi’s doing fucking circles around the bucket. For centuries, maybe even decades, people have long tried to figure out the secret of pi. How far does it go? Is there any pattern? Any repetition in its numbers? But long after these friendless losers gave up, pi is still going strong. It’s like the Energizer bunny of numbers, except after the bunny is dead (or the company ends the marketing campaign), pi will still be going.

SHAWN: You think pi is maverick? How about a funk/rockabilly version of Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive”? Or an album recorded entirely using solar energy? Maverick enough for you? Yeah, that’s why Cake is way better than pi. Do you think some number you multiply by to find out the circumference of your penis (that math compass hurts) is far more rational than covering “War Pigs”? And if you want something that goes on and on, look no further than “Italian Leather Sofa”. But at least “Italian Leather Sofa” knows about twelve minutes into it that it’s time to end the perfection and let the art just be. Pi, on the other hand, just becomes a tedious, neverending quest that not even Frodo would dare attempt. Everyone knows pi gets boring by the 37th digit. Is it a 7? Who the fuck cares? Last I checked, nobody was dropping $100 to see pi live.

This bunny's got nothing on pi.

RYAN: Being a maverick requires more than being a bunch of song-stealing hippies. But keep at it Cake, stick to those covers with the occasional original song thrown in-between for good measure. To be honest, I’m impressed that Cake can play a song that even lasts 12 minutes. Based on The Distance and Never There, I thought they could only play in three-minute intervals before needing to stop. Then again, the band is really just a bunch of quitters. Are they on their fourth or fifth drummer right now? I can never keep that straight. Maybe the members of Cake could learn a little something about social harmony from pi. With pi, it’s not about each individual number; it’s about what they can do when they join together. Check your ego at the decimal (especially you, #8), and then bask in the glory of knowing you’re involved in something that can never be recreated with mere fractions or integers.

SHAWN: Is there something wrong with three-minute songs? Apparently, there is with three-digit numbers. C’mon, pi, you indecisive pric—just choose a real number for yourself and be on with it. You can’t even finish spelling your own delicious name! And don’t equate quitting with something being wrong. Quitting means perfection. Cake has just realized their band has nothing to do with the drummer (or bass guitarist) because they are perfect with or without. Anyone can pound out those beats—Cake’s about heart and soul and funkality. Pi will never be perfect and knows it. And I can’t help but notice you referring to it as “pi” rather than using the actual symbol that represents it. What? Can’t find it on the keyboard? It’s not there, you say? You have to Insert: Symbol? Well, I hope it has fun in typographical purgatory up there with the umlaut.

Does John McCrea have to drum himself?

RYAN: I guess I don’t consider anything to be great when it only lasts three minutes. At least that’s what my wife is constantly telling me, and I don’t think you want to argue with her. Believe me, I’ve tried. It doesn’t work. But explain to me how quitting means perfection. Doesn’t really make sense. Maybe I’m crazy, but last I checked, something can’t be perfect when it’s not even finished. Pi, on the other hand, will never quit. Sure, it won’t finish. But it sure won’t quit. It will go as long as you want it to, and then some. But God bless Cake. They’ve been around for 17 years now, and it sounds like you think they’re going to be around for a lot longer, so long as they don’t give up. Oh. Wait…

SHAWN: Are you familiar with Cake? Sure, John McCrea sometimes likes to talk about becoming a farmer or an astronaut or a dinosaur, but they’re still going strong. And, hell, are you in Milwaukee on New Year’s Eve? Well, check ’em out, rocking the Milwaukee-renowned Riverside Theater with all the funk of a storm cloud. And the kind of “quitting” I’m talking about is more like “stopping because you are perfect” – like when your wife tells you to stop talking before you say something stupid, which you inevitably don’t do. Let’s allow songs to exist for what they are, rather than causing grief, pain and exhaustion to mathematicians for centuries by continuing long past its welcome. Keep going, pi, and maybe one day you can have the kind of relevance and popularity today as that Energizer Bunny everybody’s still talking about.

Sears Tower vs A Deck of Nudie Male Cards

108 floors of glory or 52 cards of manliness?

SHAWN: When you’re done looking at your deck of nudie male cards, let me show you something eight times as awesome and 108 times more phallic. Yes, the Sears Tower. Bursting through the Chicago sky with equal parts moxie, sway, lust and zeal, it casts a shadow of both recognition and joy upon the Midwest. Thanks for being just about the tallest building in the world that we aren’t going to waterboard (sorry, Middle East)! You look like Jenga with antennas, and who hasn’t played Jenga without wishing two antennas came with the pack? Sure others have come along to fight you, like the Trump Tower, but they could not, and instead only get to shine their merciless light into my fucking eyes while I type this.

RYAN: When I’m done? More like if I’m done. The beautiful thing about this deck of nudie male cards (besides the musclebound men) is that there’s 52 of them, meaning I can look through them for hours and hours and hours. One look at the Sears Tower and I think “I’ve seen bigger” and immediately move on. After all, the Sears Tower is just another instance of a guy with a Napoleon complex trying to overcompensate for his tiny penis, right alongside the Washington Monument, the Dallas Cowboys, and that giant statue of the Jolly Green Giant. Rest assured, there’s no overcompensating with the 52 men adorning these cards. Well, actually 53 if you include the strapping firemen twins on the king of hearts. Phallic symbols are nice and all, except that anyone can make up anything when it comes to symbology. Oh, yeah, the candelabra really symbolizes the lost innocence of your youth. Sure it does, Grisham.

I want my money back, Grisham!

SHAWN: Good point: nothing says “I have a huge penis” like staring at 52 naked men. The men on those cards might not be compensating, but a musclebound freak in an assless fireman’s costume, rescuing a kitten from a burning forest? Yeah, that’s not some overcompensating fantasy; everyone knows firemen just let forests burn themselves out. Just stare at those cards and dream away. But you know what else you could stare at? The beautiful Chicago landscape from the top floor of the Sears Tower. Sure, it gets uncomfortable rubbing one out with 8-year-old tourists surrounding you, but not more uncomfortable than the multiple times your wife caught you doing the same with the four of diamonds. You were “admiring the artwork”. She totally believes that.

RYAN: Unlike you and the creator of the Sears Tower, some of us don’t need to convince the world that we’re well-endowed. I know I’m perfectly comfortable with the size of my penis, which, for the record, is huge. So I don’t need a deck of cards to say “I have a huge penis” when the giant bulge in my pants does the trick quite nicely. The cards aren’t about that anyways. They’re more about spicing up the otherwise monotonous world of card games with a well-placed wang and some glitter here and there. Imagine your grandma busting these cards out at her weekly gin rummy game with her girlfriends. She might be a little more reluctant to give up that 7 of clubs since she likes the way the light bounces off that doctor’s thunder.

SHAWN: Did you just ask me to imagine my grandmother staring at porn? I think that might be an open-and-shut case against the people who are for these male nudie cards you love so much. Plus, everyone knows that bulge in your pants is a pear, since the stem is clearly sticking out. That’s the thing about the Sears Tower—nobody’s going to look at it and be all, “Wow, I bet it’s really small.” Because it is huge. Forget the creator; we’re talking about the building and the building makes Ron Jeremy look like he has a mole down there. And you know what else would spice up grandma’s card game? Playing it at the top of the tallest building in the United States. The Sears Tower is so big, it had to have sway built into its foundation to accommodate wind and airplanes. Your deck of nudie male cards, however, are so unpopular, you can only buy them at specialty shops or on eBay from user Ryan69, who for some reason has an unlimited supply.

Shawn's grandma doesn't like losing gin rummy.

RYAN: Not only did I ask you to imagine your grandma looking at porn, but I’m pretty sure you just did. Regardless, we all know people aren’t impressed by tall buildings anymore, no matter how big, phallic, wind-resistant, or phallic they may be. Even if they were, which I just clearly proved they aren’t, they wouldn’t bother wasting their time with something as lame as the Sears Tower. Not only is it no longer the tallest building in the world anymore, but it only was because of the added antennas on the top. How the hell antennas count is beyond me. That’s like you claiming you’re 5’9″ just because you’re wearing a giant top hat and platform shoes. Nobody’s buying it, so you shouldn’t be selling it, unlike Ryan69’s seemingly endless supply of nudie male cards, which are selling like the hot cakes shown on each and every card (Buy It Now for $4.99 plus shipping!). At least with with said deck of cards, there’s no debating they’re as pure as they are erotic. No camera tricks. No prosthetics ala Marky Mark in Boogey Nights. Just real, unbridled man dong. Just the way we like it.

Next on Danger Queue: Cake vs. Pi—Which is More Deliciously Educational?

Unicorns vs Fisting

Unicorns are swell, but fisting, well... need we say more?

SHAWN: Who doesn’t love a fine unicorn? Gorgeous white hair, all the rage and speed of a horse, cloven hooves, magic powers, pride, and of course a fucking horn that NEUTRALIZES POISON. Amazing. People have sought this mythical beast for years, equally encouraged by its beauty and mystery. Some of the world’s greatest art features its majesty—the tapestries, The Unicorn in Captivity, David. In many cases, it also flies, which as we recently discussed, is just a plain awesome as heck ability to have. Plus, it’s not a minotaur or a Bill O’Reilly or any of those other mythical beasts constructed to instill fear. The unicorn is one of the few creatures in existence built on love. What has fisting ever given us? Surely not a cure for poison. Surely.

RYAN: The real question is who doesn’t love having a fist up their vagina?

SHAWN: I concede the point.

Next On Danger Queue: Happy Trees vs Happy Meals—Smiles Are On Us

Fight vs Flight

Fight like a man or fly away like some kind of super man?

RYAN: I’ve seen my fair share of fights, and every time I think to myself “you’re doing it wrong”. See, despite no formal training or experience whatsoever, I’m kind of a self-proclaimed expert in fighting. Every now and again I’ll tune into UFC and well, let’s just say I’ve picked up a few moves. Now, combine that with all my natural, God-given talent and oh, man, you don’t want any of this. Now all you tough guys out there are probably asking how much I can bench and all that other garbage you like to brag about. Well guess what, suckers, I don’t waste my time and money on some gym when I’ve got everything I need right in my home. My workout routine consists of lifting chairs over my head, opening and closing doors really fast, and curling cans of soup before I eat them for dinner. And not those dainty Campbell’s condensed soup. I’m talking the real deal. The Campbell’s Fully Loaded. Those things probably weigh like 20 pounds each. Minimum. It sounds tough, and you’re right, it is. But it’s all worth it to keep my body in peak fighting condition. And just so I won’t even be tempted to run when things start going down, I don’t even bother doing any cardio workouts.

SHAWN: Maybe if you threw a couple minutes of cardio in there every day or two, you wouldn’t be a beer-bellied big-armed freak who can still wear his skinny pants. But I digress from an argument I haven’t started yet. Fighting may be all well and good, as my personal foray into the WWE has taught me, but you know what’s better? Flying. Fucking flying. Humans took years, even months, to develop a flying machine, after millennia of staring into the sky, wishing, praying they could be like the birds. And you know what? We still do that. With airline prices these days, who hasn’t stood on the top of their office building, arms outstretched, wishing, hoping they’ll take off into the clouds rather than getting tangled in the awning again? Although there is one human who mastered flight and we call him Superman. Yeah. Super. Without flight, he’d just be Batman, which is a bit of a misnomer it itself, as the man can only fight on the ground. Hell, when you run out of Campbell’s, don’t you just wish you could fly to the store? Yeah. You do.

Someone wants to fly, but he's scared of heights.

RYAN:The only people standing on top of their office buildings with arms outstretched are bankers and stock brokers, and I don’t think they’re trying to fly when they jump. See, even though it hasn’t been around that long, flying is already overrated. Security checks. Layovers. Aisle seats. Turbulence. Little tiny cans of Coke and Sprite. It’s just plain ridiculous. Thankfully, fighting is as timeless as it is awesome. Monkey knife fights. Pillow fights. Cripple fights. It doesn’t matter. They’re all cool as hell and amazingly fun to watch. That’s why the Romans built the Colosseum, and that’s why UFC, boxing, and even wrestling (for the record, trying out to be a WWE diva doesn’t count as a “foray”) are so popular. In high school, we’d randomly start chanting “Fight!” in the hallways to see all the people who would come running. The best part wasn’t laughing as they walked away; it was seeing the disappointment in their eyes as they realized there really wasn’t a fight. Even the mere hint of a fight gets people all riled up. When was the last time you got pumped up for flying? When you realized the in-flight movie was Last Holiday?

SHAWN: Thanks for not actually reading my argument, by the way; I really appreciate that. I agree that airplane flying is pricey and overrated, which is why Superman and I support ACTUAL FLIGHT—soaring through the sky like a strong eagle, swooping down to snatch up fish or babies, and then suddenly landing squarely in Hawaii fourteen minutes later. There’s a reason we invented skydiving; we crave flight and understand that, yeah, it’s pretty much the most awesome thing ever. And if you thought kids came running in high school when you chanted “fight”, imagine who would come running if suddenly a kid started flying? Like the mute kid in that movie you probably aren’t familiar with because it doesn’t involve people slapping the hell out of each other. Plus, flight would take fight to a new level. Imagine punching and cutting…in mid-air! How cool would that be? Yeah, flight is so superior a concept that those Romans long ago couldn’t even fathom how to make it happen. That’s why they built an arena and sat back and watched people kill each other. Even we realized that’s a little sick and rejigged the rules, calling it football.

Yes, we are entertained.

RYAN: Just to summarize, your argument for flight centers around skydiving, where people jump out of a plane and plummet straight to the ground—never actually flying—and how cool it’d be if people could actually fly? Unless you think we all live in the Matrix, I don’t think people flying will be happening anytime soon. And even if we did, I highly doubt you’re The One (Keanu’s way more man than you). But yeah, it would be cool if we could all fly. Oh, you know what else would be sweet? If we all had the ability to teleport anywhere we wanted. Or, what if we could all crap out gold bars? That’s be kickass. Oh, and know what else rocks? Unicorns and leprechauns and a mutant turkey-duck-chicken (what would we call it???). Flight may be a cool concept, but damn, here we are stuck in stupid reality, where none of those things exist. You go ahead and keep dreaming. I prefer to keep myself grounded in reality. A reality where I don’t have to imagine what’d it be like if people could fight. All I have to do is watch TV, see a movie, search online, or go to any public place and start shoving people (preferrably children) to the ground.

SHAWN: Fine. You know what? DON’T read my argument; I don’t even want you to. It’s easier this way. I’m not pro-skydiving; I’m just saying it’s one of the many ways us poor humans attempt to simulate, even for a second, the one hope and dream we all share: flight. And funny that the one man who once cherished his entire childhood because he was enamored with a Looney Tunes-ridden dream world would so openly reject fantasy. OHHHH, DID I JUST REFERENCE A PREVIOUS DANGER? Well, readers, I bet you thought that would never happen, but there you go. Besides, every time you get in one of those fights with children you either (a) lose, or (b) end up in prison again. Fantasizing about flying certainly doesn’t hurt other people and, when humans eventually evolve wings, your petty fighting will be deemed useless as escape would be simple for those poor, poor kids (even you, Little Tommy, whether or not Ryan apologizes). Besides, some of us have been out of high school for more than two months and don’t see fighting as a viable solution for all of life’s problems. Oh, but flight. No one’s too old for flight.

Next On Danger Queue: Unicorns vs. Fisting—What Do Women Really Want?

Europe vs Journey

Illusions, Michael.

Shawn: Yeah, we’re listening to Journey’s Greatest Hits in the office right now on the owner’s iPod. You should totally come work here.

I don’t know where I’ll be tomooooorrrrrooooooowwwww.

Ryan: I’ll counter that with Final Countdown by Europe, which just came up on my iPod.

Shawn: I don’t remember the part of that song where Europe tells you not to stop believing. Because, sometimes, that’s what you really need to hear.

Thanks, Journey. Thanks.

Ryan: Maybe you don’t appreciate the subtle genius of Europe’s lyrics.

We’re leaving together

But still it’s farewell

So true, Europe. So true.

And don’t forget the rhyming of “Venus” with “seen us’.

Shawn: You win this round – “find you” and “bind you” can’t compete with “Venus” and “seen us”.

Although I’d like to see a guitar battle of “Final Countdown” and “Separate Ways”, as I’m not entirely convinced they’re separate songs.