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.

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?

This and that. Mortal enemies. And best of friends.

RYAN: Have you seen this? This is awesome. This is amazing. People are going to be talking about this for a long, long time. Seriously, no one cares about that. That is all the way over there, in a whole ‘nother room. This is right here. This is right now. This is everything that hopes to be one day. Don’t believe me? Then believe in the wonderful lyrics of Woody Guthrie’s hit song from the 40s. He sang about this land. This land being our land. This land being your land. This land being made for you and me. He sure as hell didn’t sing about “that” land. That would have been communist and gotten him blacklisted faster than you can say “Joe McCarthy”.

How about "I'd like that, please"?

SHAWN: What’s that, you say? Oh, I’ll tell you what that is. That is awesome. That is great. Sure, you may not know exactly what that is, but that’s what makes that so fabulous. That could be anywhere from inches from your nose to far beyond the horizon. Part-mystery, part-semantics, part-lioness, that is what this wishes it could be if it ever freed itself from your horrible grasp. Yeah, I bet the Pilgrims said this land is my land, this land is your land before raping the Native Americans and changing their tune. People kill over this; people think about that and want it so bad. How about you look at the stunningly beautiful lyrics of Chris Brown? Gimme that.

RYAN: The only thing stunning about Chris Brown’s lyrics is just how lazy and greedy he really is. Maybe if he put in some hard work and effort, that would become this and he couldn’t have to write songs asking people to give that to him, whatever the hell that really is. That’s really the problem here. No one knows what that is. That is a generic description that could refer to everything and anything. What’s that? Did you see that? She’s All That? Be specific people. If you like mystery and lioness, fine, but some of us around here don’t like leaving things up to chance. When Budweiser says “This Bud’s for you”, I know exactly what I’m getting—the cold, delicious Budweiser being poured in the commercial. If it was “That Bud’s for you”, well, now I’m wondering what’s wrong with it. Already opened? Filled with pee? Tell me!

There's no question which Bud is for us.

SHAWN: Already opened? Filled with pee? That’s what she said…about your mouth! Ohhhhhhh! And, yes, that is what she said because she would never waste her time ambiguously talking about this. Everybody knows what this is; I mean, it’s right there! But that…oh, everybody wants to know what that is, even you. But, still, if you fear mystery or drinking a beer that you’ve never seen before (see second sentence), there’s always the opportunity to turn that into this. See that bacon over there? Let me just go ahead and grab it and OH GOD THIS ISN’T BACON! But, hey, you got the mystery and the solution all in one. Once you have this, it could only dream of being that again. Meanwhile, that remains a nonthreatening, fun enigma. That’s what I’m talking about.

RYAN: I think you’ve got it backwards (that’s what she said). This doesn’t want to be that. This has been that, and it’s never going back to that. This is up in the big leagues now while that keeps toiling away in the minors. The only time when that is good is when it becomes this. Think about it. That bacon isn’t all that great until it gets on your plate and becomes this bacon. That bacon could be anything, if it’s even bacon at all, which you just pointed out it isn’t. That’s why it’s that. That is lying and deceitful, never to be trusted. But this, this would never do that to you. This would never betray you. This is here for you. No surprises. No tricks. Just real, honest this.

SHAWN: I think you’re confusing the big leagues with a straight jacket. Do you remember the college days (or, in your case, the days of hoping to pass the GED on your fifteenth try)—the opportunity, the hope? Now that life has become this life and, well, you’re stuck. This is it. Don’t you long to go back to that? That sense of possibility? Rather than this life with this stupid job and this bottle of Target hand sanitizer on your desk that you could possibly drink and get out of work all day. Meanwhile, that guy’s a freakin’ billionaire playboy with four cars. Or maybe that guy’s a happy-go-lucky fisherman catching crustaceal gold and his weight in shrimp. Either way, how does that guy do it, and how is that so awesome? Take your pick: THAT fire is out of control or THIS fire is out of control? Yeah, only one of those is going to burn you. That’s the way – uh-huh, uh-huh – I like it.

Next on Danger Queue: The Sears Tower vs. A Deck of Nudie Male Cards—Someone’s Fixated at the Phallic Stage…

Both were born and raised on the streets.

SHAWN: What could possibly be sweeter than Georgia Brown? Well, take a look at this line: “What makes me laugh? Richard Nixon always made me laugh”. Ho ho! And that brilliant line right there was 100% pure Vilanch. Bruce Vilanch is pretty much the most clever and sassy writer in history, and the man whose hand was up Billy Crystal’s ass every time the Oscars were good. EVERY time. Starting off lowly, being both a Jew and a writer for the Star Wars Christmas Special, his fluffy hair, miscolored beard, and masculine nature helped him soar to prominence at awards ceremonies and, yes, Hollywood Squares. Stay off my dribble, Globetrotters; I’ll take Vilanch for the steal.

RYAN: I don’t care how many Christmas specials, Oscars, or low-rated game shows Bruce Vilanch has had his fat, stubby hands in. Has he ever played basketball against a group of robots in a special edition of Gilligan’s Island? Has he ever had his own Saturday morning cartoon show? Thought not. Those are the things that impress me, and that’s why the Harlem Globetrotters will always have a special place in my heart. With silky smooth dribbling and the occassional use of ladders, the Globetrotters defied the odds and racked up more than 20,000 wins on their way to worldwide fame. Bruce Vilanch’s claim to fame is being enormously fat and, on occassion, saying something funny. Whoopity do.

Teaching kids valuable lessons about low post moves.

SHAWN: I think it’s time someone finally called out the Harlem Globetrotters for what they really are—dirty cheaters. Comedy? Showboating? Above-the-top exhibitionist displays? That’s not what basketball’s about! And if there’s one rule about true basketball it’s DON’T be animated. Do you think there’s any other good reason Michael Jordan is live action in Space Jam? Plus, the Globetrotters aren’t even committed to the sport. Last time they were on their way to a basketball game, they found a green van that broke down and, rather than playing the Wizards, they helped some talking dog and his hippie friends solve a mystery! Sure, they made it to the game with a minute left and still won, but that kind of crap shouldn’t fly. And don’t even get me started on how roided out they all are. But you know who’s definitely not roided out? Bruce Vilanch. He may not fight robots, but if you have something against fat, occasionally funny guys, you might as well take down that Horatio Sanz poster and disconnect CBS because they’re the bread and butter and bacon and pork and burgers of this world.

RYAN: Everyone knows the golden age of fat people died with the stapling of Al Roker’s stomach. Bruce Vilanch is just too stubborn to acknowledge it. Call out the Globetrotters for their commitment to the game all you want, but don’t think for a second they’ll apologize for caring about something just a little more important. Something called making the world a better place. So what if they showed up to a game just a little late, those hippies and their talking dog needed their help. Mysteries don’t solve themselves, Shawn. It’s called being a good Samaritan. No matter how famous the Globetrotters are, they never forget where they came from—incidentally not Harlem—and the people who helped get them there. Bruce Vilanch doesn’t do anything to help anyone unless he thinks there’s the potential reward of a sandwich. Maybe he should think about doing steroids, or anything to get into something that could remotely be considered “in shape”. Seriously. That guy needs to stop eating. And, please, grow the beard back. Or wear a scarf, a turtleneck, anything to cover up that second and third chin.

The original script had far less profanity.

SHAWN: First of all, how dare you play the fat card, Joe McGriddles, you don’t know if that’s glandular. And, secondly, you’ve clearly never heard of a little TV show called Celebrity Fit Club on VH1, in which Mr. Vilanch roared his way to a weight loss of 21 lbs in Season 3! If you lost that, you’d be back to birthweight, so consider him a champ. So not only HAS Vilanch done things to get back into shape, but what have the Harlem Globetrotters done recently to become, I don’t know, FAMOUS again? It’s been a long time since they helped Scooby-Doo and I haven’t seen any Pokemon screaming for their help from the side of the road. So they can help people for a few years and then vanish? Sure, you may not have physically seen Vilanch’s good works lately, but that’s because he’s not a dirty glory hog. He works behind the scenes to make the world a better place. Who came to the rescue of scripts like Die Hard 2 and Raiders of the Lost Ark? VILANCH! Who opened up doors for gays in comedy? VILANCH! He may prefer Nixon, but who makes America laugh? I think we all know the answer.

RYAN: Are you seriously questioning what the Harlem Globetrotters have done lately while defending Bruce Vilanch? Bruce Vilanch? He whose claim to fame is having helped write Raiders of the Lost Ark and Die Hard 2, both of which are so old that not only have the trilogies already been wrapped up, but there’s been enough time for a bastardized fourth film to be added to their respective series. I do pride myself on not knowing about Celebrity Fit Club on VH1. It kind of goes along with my rule to not watch shitty television shows, which is also the reason why I’m going to have to trust you on on the Globetrotters not being on Pokemon. You’re the Pokemon expert round here, not me. But if this is really a contest of who appeared on the crappier thing, then Harlem Globetrotters, Little Nicky. All’s forgiven, though, once you see the proverbial dream team of honorary members of the Globetrotters. While Vilanch is nothing more than an E-list celebrity—even Kathy Griffin doesn’t return his calls—famous figures from all around the world are literally killing each other for the chance to don the red, white, and blue jerseys of the Globetrotters: Henry Kissinger. Nelson Mandela. Whoopi Goldberg. Bill Cosby. And Pope John Paul II. Yeah. The Pope. Even God’s BFF loved the sweet whistling of Georgia Brown.

Next On Danger Queue: This vs. That—We’re Nothing If Not Proper

Two invented flight. The other two look alike.

RYAN: Kitty Hawk. 1903. In an act of unprecedented defiance for their time or ours, Orville and Wilbur Wright instantly became household names by extending a giant middle finger to gravity and flying with the birds. Until that day, gravity had been a cruel dictator that ruled that entire world with an iron fist, forcing people back down to the ground no matter how high they jumped or how many balloons they held. While lesser men cowered and obeyed gravity’s every demand, the Wright Brothers dared to dream. To dream of differential drag and the coefficient of air pressure. And with their historical 59-second flight that surely felt like at least two or three minutes, they broke free from the shackles of physics and weight distribution and said “Hey gravity, how ’bout you sit this next one out?”

SHAWN: If you think The Wright Brothers were ahead of their time, just take a look at a progressive (and hilarious) WB comedy from the mid-90s. Tia, Tamera, Roger and the whole Sister, Sister gang taught us about extending a middle finger to the gravity of sadness by laughing our asses off. Twins have always been funny (see Olsens or Apollo/Artemis), but the Mowrys made twins cute, sassy, and fashionable. Not since Blossom have overalls and fishermen caps been so mischievous and fun. Hell, even their crappier jokes provided laughs that lasted longer than 59 seconds, Wright Brothers. And those brothers were one-hit wonders, whereas the Mowrys’ career extended to hit films like Twitches. The Mowrys are the real heroes. The Wright Brothers are America’s Roger.

They'll always have their Doublemint gum.

RYAN: How exactly was Tia and Tamera’s “comedy” ahead of its time? I like mistaken identity jokes and twins pretending to be one another as much as the next guy, but I liked them more the first time around with “The Parent Trap”. The 1961 version with Hayley Mills, not the career-launching Lohan-ized version. I guess the suits at ABC realized the same thing when they cancelled Sister, Sister almost immediately. Good thing the WB is around to pick up other networks’ scraps. But don’t sell their careers short. There was also Twitches, Too, and, here comes the big one, The Hot Chick starring one Rob Schneider. At least the Wright Brothers had enough class to know when to stop and never sunk down to Rob Schneider territory. For shame, Tia and Tamera. For shame.

SHAWN: How was Sister, Sister ahead of its time, you ask? Fine, if I have to spell it out for you: it’s a black show that only white people talk about fondly. There you go—a thrilling precursor to That’s So Raven, My Brother and Me, The Boondocks, and The OC. Sister, Sister may have been ABC’s scraps, but The WB baked those scraps into a five-season mincemeat pie juggernaut. I mean, why would the same network that cancelled Pushing Daisies and My So-Called Life cancel something people like? Granted, The Hot Chick was a mistake, but that didn’t stop these perseverant sisters from launching singing careers that breached Billboard Top 100. That’s a true champion. Not flash-in-the-pan “inventors” who lucked into creating something that was pretty much already invented. Yeah, they weren’t the first to build and fly an experimental aircraft; they just added controls. I can Wiki your side, too.

Real men only need 59 seconds to get it done.

RYAN: Just added controls? Just added controls?!? That’s like saying Michelangelo just painted the Sistine Chapel or Einstein just discovered the theory of relativity. Downplaying something so monumental is just plain insulting. Sure, not everyone can better the world by paving the way for shows like That’s So Raven. But the Wright Brothers laid the groundwork for all the things we take for granted today: Blue Angels, airports, Top Gun, the Mile High Club, the Travelocity Gnome, and oh so much more. How about this: When you fly to Hawaii in your lavish coach seat, you take a second to thank the Wright Brothers for making your trip possible. And next time I’m ordering a Happy Meal at McDonald’s, I’ll be sure to thank Tia and Tamara for remembering to make my cheeseburger ketchup only.

SHAWN: I suppose controls are important to an airplane but, think about it, how long do you think the airplane would’ve lasted without them? Hours? Years? Well, some are clearly running for United, so I guess it’s still a problem. But here’s the thing: SOMEONE would’ve invented those controls. There’s nothing special about the Wright Brothers besides being born years after the bubonic plague when brothers would’ve been considered disease-ridden evil and left to die in a farm cart. Tia and Tamera, on the other hand, were irreplaceable, as we’ve seen from every twin-related sitcom that’s come since, including Apartment 2F and the recently googled Twins—a poor attempt by the WB to recreate something beautiful and sacred (mostly beautiful). And I’m not sure what McDonald’s you go to, fatty, but the only thing the Mowrys will be doing there is discussing Tia’s 2008 NAACP Image Award nomination over coffee before she gets back to work on the CW’s hit series The Game. Meanwhile, Mr. Wright, my bicycle tire is flat. You better get on that.

Dostoevsky's going to feel so stupid after reading this.

Ever since the two were joined together in holy literature (Are You There God, It’s Me Margaret?), there’s been a consistent battle over who claims the more badass territory. Finally, Dostoevsky can truly rest in peace.

SHAWN: There are two things in this world that you can really count on: taxes and vehicular manslaughter. Crime is the ultimate in interesting. Sure, sometimes it results in injury or your pants suddenly disappearing, but it’s more interesting than Rosie Live and only half as violent. What would Law & Order be without the first half of the episode? Order? Lame. It’s the destruction of order that keeps us interested. We wouldn’t even have cereal, as mascots teach us the only way to get it is by stealing it. As unfortunate an evil as it is, we need crime or we’d be bored to death—which also should be a crime.

RYAN: If you weren’t so busy trying to track down your missing pants, you’d have realized crime’s nothing without the punishment. What makes crime so much more interesting than Rosie Live (which is saying a lot) is the risk of jail time, court-mandated community service, or at the very least a hefty fine. Take away the punishment and every law turns into an empty threat, like when parents say they’re going to turn the car around or when my wife says she’s going to leave me. Neither of those carry any weight. If you want people to follow the rules, they need to know there will be repercussions for their actions. Otherwise it’d be anarchy. Anarchy, Shawn. Anarchy.

Sometimes empty threats do work.

SHAWN: Are we heading to chicken/egg territory now? Because nobody would’ve even invented punishment without a little crime thrown in. It wasn’t until somebody realized, “Hey, my shit got stolen and I’m not happy,” that we decided to lock people in a cell where they could become angrier and angrier until they kill the other guy in that cell. Which would you rather watch: a half-hour of a guy paying a judge, or a half-hour of The Joker breaking into a bank using every trick in the exciting book of crime? Criminals are the delicious butter in our white bread world. Plus, with crime, you have the added bonus of fighting back. Watching someone get tied down to be electrocuted to death doesn’t have the thrill of the hunt, the fear of getting caught, the ability to lay the smack down before it’s first laid down upon you.

RYAN: Well, thank you very much crime for forcing our hand and making us create punishment to deter people from stealing, killing, and littering. If it weren’t for you…well, frankly, I don’t want to imagine a world without crime. What a horrible place that would be. People walking the streets at night without knowing the thrill and excitement of thinking they could be raped at any minute. Old people living without fear of being snuffed out by their greedy, money-grubbing children. If you can even call that living. Which I don’t. Really, what’s the point of living when you’re not even worried about being held hostage in your own home by a gun-wielding madman who’s down on his luck? Thank God crime is as prevalent as it is so we don’t even have to consider such wild hypotheticals.

Is there a note? Did they leave a note??

SHAWN: Well, thank goodness punishment came along to solve all crime and create utopia. Nobody ever shatters car windows anymore: how could they possibly live with themselves after a “good talking to” and a slap on the wrist? If there’s one thing that deters and solves crime, it’s punishment—just ask O.J. And, admit it, your world without crime would be as eventful as Season 3 of Boohbah. Plus, I don’t think you have to worry about being raped, and don’t even bring up that time you were strutting around in those assless chaps. You were asking for it and that guy at the gas station just wanted a taste. These crimes you refer to don’t happen often and surely don’t destroy the fabric of this great country. Forcing every movie and newspaper to only talk about lilies and skipping in your little crimeless world, however; that’s just cruel and unusual.

RYAN: I’m going to give all the readers a minute to google “Boohbah” so they’ll pick up on your joke. Maybe next time don’t go with an obscure reference to a crappy children’s television show. Just remember, kids aren’t reading this unless they think it has something to do with the Jonas Brothers. Even then, they’re probably only looking at the pictures and then commenting on how sexy they all are. But I digress. Your argument against punishment is as flawed as your “he was asking for it” rape defense. Just because there’s still crime doesn’t mean punishment isn’t working as a deterrent. Sure, there are still a few bad apples and O.J.’s out there, but I can’t tell you how many times I’ve ignored my strongest desires to get my stab on (most notably right now) because of the surefire murder charges. Punishment may not stop all crime and create your “Boohbah” utopia, but at least it’s doing something. Crime’s not doing anything to stop crime. If anything, crime’s helping crime.

Next on Danger Queue: The Wright Brothers vs. Tia and Tamera Mowry—Brother Brother or Sister, Sister?