No, she didn't fuckin win. That was not a win. Not shitting your pants on public television isn't a win. You're not SUPPOSED to shit your pants on public television. That's baseline. That's actually BELOW baseline. If you're running for Vice President, your baseline should be somewhere above "I know when to move to a toilet so I don't fill my pants with recycled meat." Sort of like how "The Stratosphere" is somewhere above "Death Valley." Those are the rhetorical distances I'm pretty sure we should be holding our aspirants to publice office.
She answered all of 3 questions posed to her in 90 minutes (that's 1 question every 30 minutes) mis-pronounced Nuclear like 30 times, vomited more "homespun, folksy" dialog than your average episode of "Prairie Home Companion," all while mostly saying absolutely nothing about anything. Except for when her ignorant ass accidentally reminded Biden of his first wife's terrible death. That was a real winner.
Saying she won this is like saying you can win the Boston Marathon by running in place for 3 hours without ever moving off the starting line. That's what she did. She waved, and she winked, she smiled and she lied. She looked cute and dimply but not once did she come off that starting line. She just jogged in place and we, the american people, have apparently decided that because she didn't cry and dissolve into a puddle of vomitus and defecation, she finished the race.
She sucked. She said nothing. She did not win because she didn't fuck up. She fucked up plenty. Hell, Bush at his most coherent didn't sound like this candidate did.
Did Biden underperform? yeah. Did Palin do better than expected? Since most of us apparently expected her to short out like a Fembot, yes, she did better than expected.
That's not a win. That's not even a MORAL victory. She lost and she lost hard because she's a fucking moron. The Presidential Race is not something you wanna judge by SPECIAL OLYMPICS STANDARDS, PEOPLE. I don't know why, after 8 years of this undending rain of shit on our heads, we haven't figured this fact out. The "wisdom" circulating around today says "well, people underestimated her." No. No people didn't. The prefix "under" needs to be taken off the front of that statement. She was ESTIMATED, and in that estimation, she came up "FUCKING STUPID." She can look into a camera and recite words she's memorized after study. You know who else can do that? Newscasters. Weatherpeople. By that standard fuckin AL ROKER is a qualified candidate. KIRSTEN DUNST is a qualified candidate. You guys wanna elect The Grimace and Skeletor to the presidency?
If she was your supervisor at work you wouldn't put up with this. You'd have gone to HR like 5 times by now. You'd have started putting in applications at other businesses. You'd start putting water on her chair just to see her sprint to the bathroom 20 minutes later because she thought she pissed herself. You'd come home tired as hell and unload on your significant other for an hour straight about the retarded nimrod inexplicably holding a position above you at the company you've been employed at for years on end now, and you'd threaten yourself with an aneurysm the longer you talked about it.
But that same clueless middle manager trips and faceplants into a VP debate and you guys go "well, she didn't shit her pants or cry so that's a win?"
WHAT. IN. THE. FUCK.
At one point she said something like "John McCain knows how to win a war."
WHICH FUCKIN WAR, BIBLE BARBIE? Vietnam? That war? The one we LOST? I know he was in that war because he reminds us every twenty FUCKING MINUTES that he's a POW POW POW POW POW POW POW POW POW.
But because she threw a few gosharoonies in there and didn't stutter and winked more than Tweek from South Park, that's a WIN?
For a country so obsessed with competitive reality shows, sports, and video games, you'd think we'd at least have a basic grasp on what constitutes a win. I'm pretty sure I do. And yunno what? What she did last night wasn't a win. Not by any stretch of the word, not even fucking close. She failed. She didn't fail SPECTACULARLY. She didn't explode into a million shards. It was more like a tasty souffle deflating slowly after leaving the oven. But who the fuck would eat that?
She fuckin lost. Goddammit.
SHE LOST.
This is the fuckin presidential race we're talking about here. Move that bar the fuck up off the floor.
Currently
listening
:
The Big Come Up
By
The Black Keys
Release date: 2002-05-14
In my childhood home, we had a thin hallway that ran to the kitchen. Thin enough that at age 4 or 5, I could place my hands on both walls. I used to put on red jammies and a ski cap, sing Spider-Man at the top of my lungs and climb up the walls, waiting for my little brother to come into the hall so I could drop on him. Mom didn't even have to be in the vicinity--her mom senses could discern thumps from thuds and whumps from ka-chunks and knew that I hadn't top-roped from the back of the couch, or slipped and hit my head playing ice-skates in the kitchen with super slick socks. I had been griming up the walls with my dirty hands and jammie'd feet playing Spider-Man, plowing my brothers chest into the carpet by landing on his back from 7 feet up.
The fastest I ever climbed up the wall was watching Superman on TV, before our family got a VCR and we could tape movies. I think that's where I got my taste for editing, as I was the family's pause button. It was one of those tank VCR's, basically a top-loading Ford Granada. The remote control was tethered to the thing by a cord. I would stretch it out as far as it would go, and lay on the carpet. The family would pleasantly be watching the movie, until the screen started to fade to commercial. Then everyone in the room would violently shout "PAUSE IT PAUSE COMMERCIAL ADS PAUSE" and I would jam on the pause button to ensure an unbroken viewing experience on tape later. My little brother got partial revenge on my Spidey-drops by taking a scissors and cutting the VCR umbilical to the remote, ensuring I had to sit DIRECTLY UNDER THE TV with a thumb on the pause button for family recordings of classics like "Annie," "Alice in Wonderland," and "GI Joe the Movie"
So, anyway, I'm watching Superman, in my regulation Superman costume of Underoos, a red towel, and mom's calf-high red knit socks as boots. I'm grinning and humming the theme to myself whenever I see the S show up onscreen. I'm so enthralled that I'm not noticing my leg itches. Well, I'm noticing, but I'm not even caring to scratch. Besides, everytime I think about itching, it stops itching. And then the itch moves somewhere else. And somewhere else again. And no matter that Superman is flying around the weird-looking dark haired woman with the voice like a pail of crawfish climbing up her throat, and she's singing a really awful song about mind-reading to him, suddenly I'm wondering just what the heck is wrong with my itchy legs. I push myself off the carpet and sit on my knees. Something quietly explodes between my calf and my thigh. I feel warmth. And goo. And then another itch on my inner thigh.
I look into my super-trunks.
I see a giant spider crawling on my balls.
I look up at the ceiling and go "SHAARAHARGHGGHHHHH"
I look down at the floor and somehow I have spidey climbed up the hallway walls in 0.3 seconds. There is a spider in the puddle of jammie pants I have shedded on my miraculous ascent towards the ceiling. This is when Mom runs into the room and hat dances on my pants. Looks up at my scared face and tells me to get down. I drop. Unluckily for my brother, he has at that moment chosen to wander into the hall to see what "SHAARAAHAGHGGHHHHH" means. I land on his back and drive his chest into the carpet. I hum the Spider-Man theme and go get some legos.
My brother and I used to build forts out of couch cushions and watch Zoobilee Zoo from inside the forts. Zoobilee Zoo was a show where Ben Vereen turned into a Furry and his cat-like furry friends would teach you about sharing and secretly implanting deviant sexual fetishes into your impressionable mind. It's a minor miracle my brother and I escaped from adolescence without wanting to turn into some conquering Lion-O on a serengeti of waiting Cheetarahs. Some of my generation did not. Between the Thundercats and Zoobilee Zoo, it's no wonder there are conventions in Vegas where you can catch some of the brightest minds of my generation in an elevator watching man in a Sea Otter costume getting pawfuls of Squirrel tit. I merely wondered why Ben Vereen wasn't hitting the cats with newspapers when they misbehaved.
The couch cushion forts were also, probably, the reason I became such a theater junkie. I remember circling the day that Pac Man was to become a saturday morning cartoon. I raced up the stairs at 6am, threw some Cap'n Crunch in a bowl, slopped some milk on top, decimated the couch and set up an elaborate fortress of padded cushion. I left an opening at one end and scooted backwards into it. Only the spoon protruded out beyond the borders of my comfy cave. The glow of the TV was caught inside that cave, like lightning bugs in a mason jar, softly illuminating the polyester walls of Castle Saturday Morning. I spooned sugar into my face and disappeared completely into the tale of a giant mouth with legs who vanquished the spectral undead by eating them up. I didn't realize it until much later, but I had basically built my first home theater that morning.
We also used to build little mini-carnivals in our family room with dad's plethora of Diet Pepsi bottles. The glass ones. I'll save that story for later. It involves Heavy Metal music, strobelights, and John McClane style bravery on the part of my mom and me.
Currently
listening
:
Paper Television
By
The Blow
Release date: 2006-10-24
It appears one of the 5 shining diamonds of the AICN review staff, Alexandra DuPont (Moriarty, Beaks, Vern and Herc comprising the other 4) has dropped my name in one of her reviews. I'm gonna guess a lot of you looking at this blog are here because of that. So here's what you came for:
Click that. The download should start pretty much automatically. The "official" description goes as such:
A decades worth (1997-2007) of mediocre mashups/remixes/re-imaginings of TV show themes, movie scores, video-game music, and other compositions that were really perfectly fine on their own before I took a knife, a record needle, and a couple keyboards to em.
Geek Remixed II is currently being worked on, there's a couple of those tracks in the MySpace player. Should be ready by November, if you dig what you're getting.
God Put Me Here To Be Karate Chopped in the Throat
There's been a lot of self-discovery over the last year or so. One thing that I trust in completely, and without fail, is that I make people laugh. Usually by letting other people kick me in the balls. My suffering is funny. As I've said before, I am a walking roast. God's special pincushion. Mel Brooks once wrote "Tragedy is when I cut my finger opening a letter. Comedy is you falling into an open sewer grate and dying," and I'm a sewer-grate diving motherfucker, motherfucker. I'm the poster child for accidental sadomasochism. There's something to the way my voice bends and my face contorts when something painful and mean is happening to me that people just eat up like happy hour tater tots. My schadenfreude is delicious. You wanna put malt vinegar on it and dip it in ranch.
It's with that in mind that I helped Aaron Duran and Jayesunn Krump envision the direction of our 48 Hour Film Project this year. Last year, I was basically a set photographer and random idea generator. This year, those hard-to-categorize but indispensible roles were filled by Ms. Bobbie Winchell, who also helped our producer, Miss Catherine Eckrode, with all the organizational hoo-hah's and flibberty-glahs and what-have-you. That left me to help out writing the script for our movie, "Singhiozzo Dellamorte," which is a bit of a mad-scientist/revenge movie. Crossed with Looney Tunes. And shot for pretty much no money in about 8 hours. I mean, we used the other 40 hours they gave us on stuff like Editing and Scoring, but also other, just as essential things. Like drinking. Telling filthy jokes. Eating breakfast burritos and spaghetti. And stabbing me with pointy things.
So after Aaron and Jayesunn came up with the story, and Aaron banged out the first draft, I was asked to polish and flesh out some of the Looney-Tunes style gags. This was after being told that they needed someone to react to being tortured. And they stared directly at me. For like 10 seconds. Like "Hey, who could we get to play this" while their eyes burned holes in my chest. So KNOWING that I was going to have to endure whatever i came up with for comical torture (yunno, like Saw. Or anything with Larry the Cable Guy in it.) I still wrote scenes where our patient gets physically abused for laffos. When you finally see the movie, either at the screening Wednesday the 13th or on YouTube when it eventually goes up, you'll probably be able to tell which gags I wrote. They're the ones that leave me coughing and spitting things up. I'm betting you're grinning at the mere concept of it, just like most of you are grinning at the photo of me looking confused with blood dripping out of my nipples and a stray green wire going straight up my nose.
This time out, it wasn't the hectic exhiliration of running all over the city and having shots interrupted by shit bands starring stupid assholes loading equipment in frame as slow as possible while staring straight into the camera. Once Aaron and Jayesunn hit upon their mad genius idea, Geek in the City Studios became our one and only location, and all of 5 people were cast. Last time problems included having to sync sound from an external source, adding and dropping characters while adding and dropping locations and scenes, making sure tapes didn't jam up, running out of light, losing the crew to a nearby bar, the score not matching up correctly, yadda yadda. This time out, there was basically one problem: The studio wasn't well ventilated, and there were about 13 geeks inside a 20x20 room with hot lights reflecting off white walls. It smelled like the floor at a LAN party in there after about 20 minutes.
Well, okay, there was another problem. The food. Not the craft services that Diana from Downtown whipped up (BREAKFAST BURRITOS FROM HEAVEN I AM TELLING YOU PEOPLE FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS HOLY SHE IS A TOWERING BARBARIAN QUEEN) but the kingly gift that Clyde Lewis dropped off: A 5 gallon pail of Voodoo Donuts. I was like Pippin from Lord of the Rings: "It comes in pails?" It's doughy exoticness enraptured me. A BUCKET. OF DONUTS. Amazing.
They were cool for the first two or three hours. But after that, they started to change. to BECOME. To become what, I don't know, because I feared going near the bucket after awhile. They were slowly compressing down on each other, the icing sliding off like snot on a little kids upper lip, pooling around donuts I imagined screaming in tiny donut voices for air, "we're trapped. let us out of the bucket. the people above us won't let us leave. Nobody will find us, we're suffocating." It was a pastry Poseidon adventure. I didn't want to go near that bucket and hear those cries. Not so much the rest of the crew, who sporadically feasted on what became a bucket of Donut Soup, which upon ingestion, impregnated members of the production with Donut Babies. And since we were stuck in one room with nowhere to go for almost all of Saturday, people would go "Shit. I'm bored. Uhm, think I'll wander the 20 feet of free space here in the studi--OH YEAH DONUT SOUP I think I'll grab me up a handful." And next thing you know, half the room is in a sugar coma, walking dead style, 25 pounds heavier with tummies full of Donut Twins and Triplets waiting to be expelled into the world.
And honestly, those were the two MAJOR problems. And if those are the two major problems on a film set, count yourself lucky. Once again the center of our 48 Hour Film Project was Sadie Gregg Who, as Aaron put it, "Shatnered" some serious mouthfuls of ridiculicious dialog like the pro she is. This movie rests on her shoulders and she didn't even flinch. The fact I had to act across from her and not look like a total stupe was probably what made me the most anxious, seriously. Sound worked fine. Editing went pretty damn smooth thanks to the eagle eye and crack timing of one Aaron Barnard. Score was pretty much done before we even shot a frame of film on Saturday morning, save for some fine tuning and extra instrumentation on Sunday afternoon. The shoot was finished in about 8 hours thanks to how efficient Jayesunn was with the camera. He got the shots he wanted and got em pretty much instantly. It was almost spooky to see him settle on the perfect angle and distance for the next shot in all of 3 nanoseconds. And Aaron basically turned into Sam Raimi about an hour into shooting. The one time I for real got stabbed, as in metal piercing my skin, it was Aaron. And the mad bastard couldn't stop giggling all night long. The props were above and beyond what we expected in the 3 to 4 hours it took us to write the script, The set was way more relaxed than last time, and a lot more people had a lot more smiles on their faces.
Maybe it was just that we'd done this before and were prepared for the sprint, maybe it was that we didn't care if we won jack shit, maybe it was just that it was a good weekend with good people, good food, and great ideas. Maybe we were comfy with the idea that it's a decent little bit of slapstick for 48 hours worth of work, and that it didn't matter if it wasn't oscar-worthy, or art-school friendly, or any of those "Serious" things that make indie film feel more legitimate. Maybe it was just that we were having a blast watching a beautiful crazy woman karate chop the fuck out of my throat for cheap giggles. Maybe a 6 minute film that combines the sensibilities of James Whale and Johnny Knoxville is worth a weekend with friends.
Plus we got free beer and pizza when we dropped the flick off.
Pics by Bobbie Winchell are in my photo folder, and also here. Check em out, and when the movie itself gets posted, I'll link you to that, too.
Well, I got three questions. Two of them I will answer with glib internet linkage. One I will answer with glibness alone. My bike broke, so working out has gotten interesting, and I haven't exercised the glib in awhile. Time to get those glibs glistening. Feel the burn.
Q: What would the world be like if George Bush was not elected president?
A: I'm not much for historical fiction. The quick, easy, and partially funny answer would be to imagine the world as a green utopia where sunflowers ruled and could double as wi-fi hotspots when they didn't rain gold coins from their fertile pistles. Or something. I could write that, but instead, I will link to a story written by Dave Eggers, who has also written "A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius," which I highly recommend, and wrote the screenplay for the adaptation of "Where the Wild Things Are," which is being directed by Spike Jonze, the guy behind "Being John Malkovich," and "Adaptation."
Dave Eggers already sorta answered the question the way I'd like to, in a story called "Your Mother and I" and he's a better writer than I am so there you go. That's one question down.
Q: What would the world be like if there was no internet?
A: It would be 1985. Marty McFly and Ferris Bueller would rule the world, the Wolfman would have nards, and entire planets would transform into Orson Welles and, of course, being Orson Welles, would eat other planets. Of course, if the internet had never been invented, I'd probably be prompted to write more speculative fiction of a dystopian nature. Where it rains oppression and Lucy doesn't hold a football for Charlie Brown, she holds a kitten, and he kicks that sonofabitch every goddamn time.
Of course, again, better writers than I have tackled that sort of dystopian outlook, so I suggest you pick up, borrow, check out or steal "Watchmen" by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons. You might have heard of it. It's about superheroes, but it sorta completely deconstructs and blows open how superheroes really wouldn't work in our world, and actually describes an alternate America, an alternate 1985 that still has Nixon in charge, Russia threatening nuclear war, and partially insane, mostly sad people dressing up in outlandish costumes to make little to no difference in the world when all is said and done. Two down. Last question.
I can't believe I only got three. I give you guys carte blanche to have at me and I only get three questions. I'm telling you, It's like a wheelbarrow of epic fail was dumped at my feet and Bruce Lee did a flying kick into my back. Then again, that's a pretty apt reward for my narcissism in believing you guys are THAT interested in what I have to say:
"Get a load of Fat Guy or whatever he calls himself. Like he's sooooo important that there are total strangers just "chomping at the bit" to get a look into his brain. I mean, what kind of self-involved douchebag uses words like "chomping at the bit" anyway. That's old people talk. His heart pumps doilies. Fuck him. Let's teabag 12 year olds on Xbox Live."
Q: Why on Earth do men Suck?
A: We're stupid. That's basically it. Even the most intelligent of us are, emotionally, pretty fuckin dumb. Big, dumb, lumbering animals. Lummoxes. That's an old-timey word that sums up our core nature. Oh, we think quick when it comes to playing games. Football, baseball, basketball, video, even relationship games, any game. I've written about THE GAME before in this blog and I stand by that. Strategies, playbooks, x's and o's on dry erase boards, those sorts of things leap to mind with the nimbly-bimbly ease of a cat jumping from tree to tree.
But when it comes to women, we are stupid. I've told women too many times when they ask me this question, that the mistake is leaving it up to us to interpret your actions. Because we can't. We assume there are meanings under meanings, layers upon layers of signals so mixed that Anthony Anderson and a Compaq 5150 couldn't decode the signal if Shia LeBeouf's life depended on it.
There's not, typically, but we psyche ourselves out into believing there is, probably from years and years of social indoctrination by popular culture that tells us Men are from Mars, Women are From Venus, and forever shall the twain butt heads and slapfight while gentle canned laughter cascades over the trite dialog we've been told to recite. Parents don't understand, and neither do men when it comes to figuring out what women want.
So just tell em. Yes, I know, this wrecks the romantic nature, and leaves you feeling like you're doing all the heavy lifting, that stripping the request to the bone (heh. bone) and just putting it out there, but on the other hand--if you wanna get what you want, especially out of a man, you just flat out order him to do it.
Example: Girl calls boy. Girl tells boy in call that boy, she is bored. House is boring, doesn't want to go out. Boy responds that he's playing xbox and is totally teabagging 12 year olds and calling them shitcocks. Girl says that sounds like fun, because girl wants to share in boys experiences even if the experiences themselves are wholly uninteresting to her. It's the sharing that's important. It's why girls end up getting into crap like Star Wars at age 25 when they were raised on ponies and Babysitter's Club: Because they want to be into what their man is into. Most guys interpret this as them expanding the girls horizons and educating them. It's not. They just want to be closer to the guy, and if they have to deal with hearing the guy talk about walking carpets, that's the bullet they'll bite.
Guy ends the call by saying she should watch Star Wars or something. Girl looks at phone like "you idiot, I'm bored, and I think being un-bored could include you coming over here and repeatedly putting your genitals on or inside of mine for prolonged periods of time." Girl takes long shower with 8 way showerhead and pulse action.
Now, if Girl had called guy and said "I'm bored. You're cute. Lets fuck." granted, all the mystery is completely out the window, but the chances of getting what girl wanted go up exponentially. Granted, the dumb man is going to think this is some sort of trick at first, so the request will have to be repeated, with the tag "I'm serious" going at the end of it. But the man will respond positively because guys like simplicity. Point a to point b type stuff. "Hey. This girl just flat out said she wants to bone. that's fuckin awesome. Holy shit I'm lucky. Alright 12 year olds on Xbox Live. Done teabaggin. Gotta go get some from this awesome girl I know."
There's romance inside guys, there's thoughtfulness, but these intuitions happen at random. They spring forth unexpectedly. There can be touching gestures lost in that brain, bouncing against Ron Guidry career pitching stats and the way through the third dungeon in Zelda II, but they're in there. You can't force them out though. They'll come when they come. In the meantime, you have to make it easy. If you want the object of your affections to do something, you have to direct them. Clearly.
So, wait, actually, I guess I'm saying we don't suck, per-se (insert gay joke here.)
(heh. I said "insert." and "gay" heh. lols. I'm on vacation, fuck it)
So yeah, we don't really suck, I guess, it's that the instruction manual for "how best to operate MAN" got lost awhile ago and the translation we've currently got is sorta mangled. Like the word of God after King James got through wiping his ass with it. We're pretty easy to wrap your heads around once you keep in mind that we're big dumb animals. Dogs. Happy, grinning, tongue-lolling, shaggy furry animals who think poop is funny.
I'm going to take a week off work starting the instant Super Troopers begins unspooling this Friday night. I don't really have much planned, I think I'm gonna try to give my brain a rest. Maybe add some tracks to the still gestating "Geek Remixed II" which has some cuts already up on the MySpace player, if you haven't checked em out yet.
The Blog has been neglected, due to a combination of being really busy, having mild writer's block (if you've heard Dirty Laundry lately, you'll realize how blocked the writing has been) and a total lack of inspiration. So I figure I'll do what I always do: Shove the impetus onto you, the reader/listener. You come up with something FOR me, and I'll run with it.
You respond to this blog with a question you want to ask. Any question. Anything you've wanted to know. You get one question.
For the entire Vacation, I'll answer the questions as in-depth as I can. Each question will get it's own blog entry and I'll get down and dirty in that entry trying to answer your question as fully as possible.
The only ground rules:
1) Don't use my comments page to bitch about fuckin Rockfest. That's fuckin dumb. If I had the sort of power to change things like that, I wouldn't be where I am. I'd be ruling worlds of some sort.
2) uh...that's basically it, I guess. I can't think of anything that I'll deem off-limits for the purposes of this egotistical, narcissistic exercise. Oh, and educational. egotistical, EDUCATIONAL and narcissistic exercise.
So fire away in the comments here. Any question you've ever wanted to ask me about pretty much anything, here's your shot. One open kick at the soft squishy parts of my brain.
It should smell faintly like freshly cut grass, with a twinge of lemonade and cinnamon/sugar. The air should feel like a terry-cloth cloud, fresh out of the dryer on your shirtless body, as the droplets from the pool you just exited are sliding down your skin. And that pool can be a community one, a backyard one, or a kiddie pool with an inflatable dinosaur head. Filling said pool with 15 bags of ice from the supermarket, 2 cases of cheap canned beer and your two feet as you read a book in a beach chair is optional.
It can smell like lightly toasted wood, as well, but only on a slight breeze that intermittently wafts in every 15-20 minutes or so. Just enough to remind you of the accompanying sweet/sour scent of lighter fluid on charcoal, of juice dripping off seared metal and sizzling, evaporating into that breeze.
It sounds percussive, like ice cubes bouncing and skating around the inside of a sweaty glass, syncopating with hi-hats and guitars and flutes and pianos from a thousand different stereos from a thousand different open windows, cutting through the low bass hum of lawnmowers and vaccuums, air-conditioners and dropped chevys, gunning engines and rattling trunks, blending with the helicopters overhead surveying us surveying ants as they pick up the crumbs from the bun of the burger that comes off the grill and onto the plate.
It feels cold to the touch like porcelain in the shade, like a leaf from a backyard tree coming to rest on the top of a flip-flopped foot. The cubes that were drumming the inside of your drink have turned to water that washes the sticky off a forehead as the glass is dragged across it. Everything clings, clothes are scotch-tape and glue, sweated through, the fan of your hand and the puff of your breath as you exhale a "whew" is the only way to wedge some air inbetween your skin and your shirt. Dead grass leaps from the cracked dirt and hitches a ride on your browned, barefoot heel. Dandelion fluff stuck to the hairs on your ankle like tufts of an old man's hair peeking meekly over his ears.
It looks like shiny metal boxes sitting on windowsills, propped up by shelves ranging from the ornate to 2x4 planks bungee corded to the side of a weatherbeaten apartment building. Even rusted tin gleams in the summer. It looks light orange as it comes through the closed blinds, slats of light catching dust dancing. It never settles, it's always swirling, but it's only visible in the light leaking through the slats, reflecting off the table and the flat black of a TV screen turned off, casting just the perfect fuzzed out glow to read by.
It is quiet burbling of kids down the street dodging sprinklers oscillating over their private playground, and it is cacophony of gunpowder and cardboard, whooping and clapping. It is laughter and loud stories boiling over the back fence, it is clinking of bottles and rustling of plastic as parties are disposed of neatly and planned again. It's christmas lights strung through reddening leaves like electronic fruit. It's bending, liquid bands of sun skipping across the water and back into the sky like a pebble from an 8 year old on the banks of a creek that's winding lazily through the mud somewhere in the boondocks.
It is open windows and all activity stopping simultaneously as a breeze squeezes through the squares in the screen, necks tilted back and eyelids gently closed in welcoming acceptance. The pause that refreshes, if you will. It's bubbles and fizz racing down your throat and spicy burning gold slowly sipped and savored.
It's sleeping under only one sheet, knowing it's gonna be kicked off by the end of the night anyway. It's eyelashes and soft breath on the back of your neck if you're lucky, the cool side of the pillow if you're less lucky, one more drink and streetlights leading you to sleep, book on your chest, or neon blue light dancing off your resting frame as pretty people in pancake makeup silently sell their 2am crap to the unconscious.
Mix for three months. Let cool. Serve in winter, for cold nights when blankets and heaters are no substitute for the warmth of pleasant memories.
Currently
listening
:
You Get What You Give
By
The New Radicals
Release date: 2002-08-23
almost 2 years on MySpace, and for the first time ever: A blog entry dedicated solely to answering 50 survey questions about myself. Because why the fuck not, I guess. I didn't have anything else to write about and everyone's on facebook anyway, or twitter, or surgically implanting beacons into their nose like John Kimble from Total Recall. So the embarassment at caving to such peer pressure will be minimal, because nobody's really looking at MySpace anymore. So here goes:
1. What curse word do you use the most?
Fuck. I prefer to use it in creative permutations. I was inspired at age 12 by a movie called "Night of the Demon" in which a college frat boy character told another, prissy, cheerleader type that if she wasn't cool enough to go and do what he said to do, that she could go and "eat a bowl of fuck." I remember being astounded at the idea that "fuck" could be put in bowls and eaten. That there was a mechanism for not only holding the fuck, but that it could be measured by the bowlful. It was this moment in my life that I think set me on the path of poetry in profanity.
2. Do you own an iPod?
Nah. Hell, I still have a discman that I throw in my backpack whenever I go ride my bike. My cellphone has 2 gigs worth of mp3's available, but the earbud headphones I have for it don't stay in my tiny-ass ears, and the headphones I like don't fit in the cellphone, so I just roll with the discman still.
3. What person on your Friends List do you talk to the most?
Probably Bobbie. it's a tossup between her, Aaron, and Beth. And Jen. Jesus, I guess I talk more online than I thought I did.
4. What time is your alarm clock set to?
the instant my ass got fired from the call center I stopped setting the alarm, period. I really don't have to now that I'm banished to the night-time wasteland. I mean, I guess I could set my alarm for 3:30pm in the afternoon, but if I need to be forcefully awakened by a bleating electronic noise directly in my ear by 3:30pm, there's something really wrong with me.
5. Do you still remember the first person you kissed?
Yes. Her name was...uh...awww SHIT, I think it was Misty. She moved to Texas shortly thereafter. I would say it definitely WASN'T because of the kiss, but it possibly could have been, since I went for her lips and landed on her nose. I, in a moment of ridiculously quick thinking, pretended that's where I was AIMING. I then moved down to her mouth, properly, but I mean, I could tell she wasn't into it, because I probably had her boogers all over my lips and I was putting them onto her mouth and it was just awkward and stupid. 2nd person I kissed was WAY better. So much so that it became like a summer tradition. for the next three summers, it wasn't like we were boyfriend and girlfriend or anything, but if we had free time, I'd ride my bike to her house, and we'd make out all day. that was pretty damned cool, the more I think about it.
6. Do you remember where you were on 9/11/01?
yeah, I was asleep in my bedroom when I lived in Eugene. My best friend Pete ran in the room like "Holy shit they're fuckin bombing the pentagon wake the fuck up Fatboy." I remember being plugged into CNN and the internet and alternating between the two getting about 30 different stories and variations on stories as the day went on. I remember thinking that Tony Blair gave a kickass speech and Germany and Russia had our backs and I had that quick glimmer of hope that maybe this would finally unite the world in the way it should have been ever since the end of WWII, but instead, well...I kinda got an inkling a mere two weeks later that this was all going to end badly.
7. Would you rather take the picture or be in the picture?
I'd rather take the picture, as it's one of the few things I'm sorta preternaturally good at: Framing. I dont' know shit about lighting, contrast, none of that, but I can frame a picture really damn well. I think. I dunno. I don't mind being in front of the camera, but I'd prefer to be behind it.
8. What was the last movie you watched?
Wall*E. It's a great film. It's about on-par with The Incredibles, which is by far the best Pixar film made, and easily the best Superhero movie ever. And this film is just as good--and maybe even better. I'll have to see it again. there are moments in this film so purely CUTE that I actually clapped a hand over my mouth and went "OH!" at the cuteness of it. It was so cute it surprised "oh!" out of me.
9. Do any of your friends have children?
Almost all of them. And all of my siblings do. I am one of the few people I know that is unmarried and without rugrats.
10. Has anyone anyone ever called you lazy?
I call myself lazy more than anyone else has in the past few years, but yeah, I've been called lazy before. Mostly by my mother, who has seen me at my laziest, although she contributed to it by feeding me almost nothing but corn dogs and frozen twinkies for a couple years. you lay on the couch with 250 pounds of hydrogenated corn starch and processed pork shoulder pumping through your veins and tell me if you feel like being active. And by active, I mean "sitting upright from a prone position."
11. Do you ever take medication to help you fall asleep?
I can sleep almost at will in almost any space. I love sleep. I wish I was awake when I did it so I could enjoy it more.
12. What CD is currently in your CD player?
Flobots - Fight With Tools. It's like what would happen if Ozomatli got high with Rage Against The Machine. They're more than a little naive and simplistic when it comes to the politics, but I can't argue with the delivery.
13. Do you prefer regular or chocolate?
regular or chocolate what? Milk? Gasoline? Regardless, Chocolate. If you are offered a choice between regular or chocolate ANYTHING, you pick chocolate if you're sane. Cheese. Anchovies. Ass. Whatever. its' better with chocolate on it. Automatically.
14. Has anyone told you a secret this week?
Yeah. I'm sorta like a repository for secrets, always have been. I think it's because everyone knows I'm italian, and we know how to shut the fuck up. We're a people who invented the vendetta specifically to deal with people who can't keep secrets.
15. When was the last time you had Starbucks?
about 2 months ago. I was drunk as hell after a ratings party and I had just eaten a burrito and thought "I should treat myself to dessert because its' the weekend, I'm drunk, ratings are good and I weigh the equivalent of a mousefart. Putting a bigass cookie and some Iced Mocha in my gut won't hurt. I'll just wobble across this parking lot to the starbucks and OOOOH CARAMEL VANILLA ICED WHIPPED MOCHA FRAPPACAPPACINO FUCK YES and a cookie too thanks."
16. Can you whistle?
Yeah, but I do it weird, and I can't do it loudly.
Whistling, that is.
larf.
17. What is the first thing you notice about the opposite sex?
Their eyes. and then their smile. that's the 1-2. I know I was supposed to say Ass. And titties. Ass and titties. ass ass titties titties ass and titties but really, it's eyes and then smile. And then hair. and then eyebrows. I'm weird about eyebrows, and I think it comes from growing up in Salem in the early 90's when that weird "Shave your eyebrows off and draw em on with a pencil" thing was whipping through ladies fashion. Girls in severe brown eyeshadow and Ben Davis workshirts with drawn-on eyebrows kinda gave me a complex or something.
18. What are you looking forward to?
Tomorrow night. It's the last work-day before 4th of July, Daren's gonna come in and review a beer, which means I get to drink on the job, and then I get to hang out without worrying about having to get up and search for news stories and be professionally funny (mediocre) the next day.
19. Did you watch cartoons as a child?
Yes indeed. this seems like a pointless question, because who DIDN'T watch cartoons as a kid? Amish people? They don't have internet, so they're not answering these questions online anyway. And even if they were online, they're answering shit like "Did you milk goats as a child. Do you remember the first barn you raised. Your 2nd cousin: Hot or not."
fuck, I watch cartoons NOW. Cartoons are cool. Cowboy Bebop, Aqua Teen Hunger Force, Futurama, and on and on etc etc.
Questions 20-22 are missing because I copied this from one Anno Superstar and she didn't have these on her blog so I'll be cool like she's cool and skip them as well.
23. Do you own any band t-shirts?
A couple. Local bands, mostly: My Life in Black and White, My New Vice, etc. Got em for free because of work. Most of my T-Shirts are from work now. I should probably buy some since rocking a polo and a suit jacket isn't gonna be all that comfortable in balls-melting weather. I used to have an oldschool Public Enemy shirt like every self-righteous whiteboy in the suburbs from 89-93. I'd probably rock that again.
24. What will you be doing in one hour?
Being a professional smartass on the air.
25. Is anyone in love with you?
I don't know about that just yet. But there's some severe LIKAGE going on. the levels of Like are quite high and continue to rise, with slight chances of adoring and admiration as high pressure fronts of ridiculously cute sweep in from the north. Yup, prolonged LIKAGE is expected to continue for the near future.
26. What was the last song heard?
Everything in it's Right Place by Radiohead.
27. Last time you cried?
I welled up pretty considerably (single tear spilled over onto my cheek like that sad indian who hates that you litter) when I was watching "The Hub," the 2nd to last episode of this half of Battlestar Galactica's 4th season. There was this part where Adama took off his wedding ring, and put it on Roslin's finger, and said "you go. you go and you rest now. I'm not gonna be selfish anymore." And that was some powerful shit.
28. Are you on a desktop computer or a lap top?
Desktop. I want a laptop. depending on how Christmas goes, hopefully I'll be broadcasting live from a macbook.
29. Are you currently wanting any piercing or tattoos?
No. I'm averse to the piercing of my skin via needles. Because that's a stabbing, and I was raised to avoid unneccessary stabbings, even if the stabbings lead to pretty pictures on my calf or arm or whatever. I'm not AGAINST tattoos at all, or piercings, I jus't don't want em for myself.
30. What the weather like?
it's fuckin hot out.
31. Would you ever date a girl/guy covered in tattoos?
I dunno about COVERED, but yeah, I've dated girls with like 5 or 6 tattoos on their body before.
32. What did you do before this?
I worked in a Call Center. The Call Before You Dig Center. If you wanted to dig in your backyard but didn't want to explode because you put a garden trowel through an electrical line or a gas line, you had to call me, and I'd send notification to the utilities, and they'd come and vandalize your yard with spray paint so you know not to dig there.
33. When is the last time you slept on the floor?
I slept on the couch night before last. I didn't mean to. I was drunk and the couch was there and I woke up like "ahh, thank you couch, for being there and supporting my butt in this time of zzzzzz'
34. How many hours of sleep do you need to function?
to function? 2. to function WELL? 6. How many hours would I PREFER? 15.
35. Do you eat breakfast daily?
Didn't used to. Until I found out that not eating breakfast makes you potato shaped. and then I made myself put SOMETHING in my body within 10 minutes of being up. I make a kick ass homemade egg mcmuffin, that is WAY better than the actual thing, and better for you as well.
36. Are your days fast-paced?
They start slow, but ramp up ridiculously as I get closer to 7pm. And then it's all off and running.
37. What did you do last night?
read comics, talked to a couple people via text and AIM, and then I fell asleep. that was pretty much it.
38. Do you use sarcasm?
No. Of course not. Pssh. Sarcasm? Me? Oh no, I'd never be snarky in any way, shape or form.
Duh.
40. Are you picky about spelling and grammar?
not really. As long as I can understand what you're saying, I'm cool. But if you're one of those fuckin kids who thinks that just because you know how to text you don't have to even TRY to learn how to communicate effectively, then yeah, I get picky, because you're volunteering to be willfully ignorant and look like a fuckin moron when you go online. The idea that kids are trying to get passing grades in school writing shit like "idk my bff jill?" is a special combination of infuriating and depressing.
41. Have you ever been to Six Flags?
Nah. Not much of a theme park kind of guy. I can spin in circles until I yark in my own living room. Okay, that's sorta crochety and unfair. I like the atmosphere of a theme park/fair, I like that smell of popcorn and elephant ears and hay, even if sometimes that smell is mixed with some sort of exotic animal shit and crackheads loosing all kinds of bacteria from under their fingernails. I just don't do rides so much.
42 is missing. I could make one up, but fuck it, I'm already getting internet poll fatigue. Nobody's fault but my own, though.
43. Do you get along better with the same sex or the opposite sex?
I think I get along better with girls. I was raised around large numbers of them for a very long time. I've learned a lot of your secrets, ladies. After awhile, if I'm quiet enough, you forget I'm there, and I hear some of the most vile, nasty, diabolical shit come cascading out your mouth. And I just sit there and soak the game up. I nod, and I laugh, and I catalog all the insane little twists and turns. And I make note and I keep all this shit in mind when I'm in a room full of your kind. And that's how someone as crass and abhorrent as myself has survived this long. ;)
Seriously though, usually, at a gathering, at some point the guys and girls will totally segregate themselves to separate rooms to discuss guy and girl stuff. I end up eating oerderves and nodding with a grin on my face in the room all the girls have congregated in. Men are from Mars, and Women are from Venus? Fuckin bullshit. It's the same flavor of crazy infecting BOTH sides of the gender line. It's just dressed differently.
Although now, the girls have noticed that if they get me drunk, they can pump ME for man secrets. And I will give them up willingly. Because I am a soft-touch and a pushover and I'm in a room surrounded by women and I'm drunk so why WOULDN'T I capitulate, right?
44. Do you like mustard?
Yeah. plain yellow more than spicy brown, but honey mustard is the only thing you can put on a ham sandwich to make it a real ham sandwich. its' a fuckin rule. Don't question it.
45. Do you sleep on your side?
I fall asleep on my side, but I typically wake up on my back or my tummy.
46. Do you watch the news?
I read it more than I watch it, as I find televised news programs are so up to the eyeballs full of SHIT and unimportant flashy pandering to entertainment programming tropes, that the amount of actual NEWS contained in any one program is about the same amount of actual news contained in your average pellet fresh from the ass of a jackrabbit. READING the news tends to get me more actual news.
47. How did you get one of your scars?
I hit myself in the head with a baseball bat. I'm sure I've told that story before in a blog posting. I think it's the one about getting drunk.
48. Who was the last person to make you mad?
Damn. I honestly can't remember right now. It takes quite a bit to actually make me MAD. As in angry. I get frustrated and annoyed, but that dies down pretty quickly. I honestly can't remember off the top of my head the last time I was MAD at somebody, though.
49. Do you like anybody?
Well, yeah. If I didn't, belonging to a social-networking website would be some sort of sadomasochistic joke.
If this is one of those 3rd grade-style implied "do you LIKE anybody?" as in "do you like, LIKE anybody?" well then, yeah. :)
50. What is the last thing you purchased?
I went grocery shopping last night. The last thing that went across the scanner was a box of Multi-Grain Cheerios. that's a kickass snackfood.
Yeah, I don't think I'll do this for another 2 years or so. At least. ugh.
Currently
listening
:
Catch a Bad One
By
Del tha Funkee Homosapien
Release date: 1993-10-21
You're a white boy. You're what other, more jealous white kids would call "down," all snotty-like, trying to use popular slang in a mocking tone to devalue what you have. The special gift, bestowed upon your lily-white shoulders by your melanin-rich friends who have deemed you cool enough to be worthy of such a treasure: The Ghetto Pass.
There are plenty of white kids who befriend black kids for the sole purpose of getting that Ghetto Pass. Like a badge of pride for a Suburban Social Butterfly of a Boy Scout or Webelo, who got a patch on his sleeve that says he managed to infiltrate another culture, like Elvis and Rob Van Winkle before him. Those kids are chumps, and will never get their Ghetto Pass because inauthenticity stinks like overcooked ham. They're Graymeat Whiteboys with a piggy, porky scent of desperation wafting off of them. You know em when you see em: They affect the blaccent a little too thickly, they turn up the stereo a little too loudly, they wear the clothes a little too baggy, hoping someone real, someone BLACK, will see them and give them the approval they're looking for, because they don't like how lame they are and instead of working on it, they'd rather steal some cool from the next man, or Culture.
They want that ghetto pass for one reason and one reason only: The power the ghetto pass affords. That power? To say "Nigga" in front of a black person and not get your ass beat. Why do they want that power? Who knows, really? There's a variety of theories. Maybe it's just so they don't have to look sideways when they're singing along to the 50 cent and their boys are in the car? Maybe it's the illicit joy in owning something you shouldn't be able to have. The freedom to do Chris Rock's "Niggas and Black People" routine word for word without shrugging and fading into the back of the room after the first few lines. The uncensored parroting back of all the cornerstones of a culture you might not truly understand, and only exists, in your mind, for your own personal entertainment, in a vaccuum, as a fertile soil for stand-up comedy routines and hip hop albums and nothing beyond that.
The Ghetto Pass is a tricky gift to handle. The people who understand there's more to the Ghetto Pass than just being able to drop N words and not get rib-shots in return are the people who know the secret of the Ghetto Pass: Even if you get one, YOU DON'T EVER, EVER USE IT.
that's Rule 1. The giving of the Ghetto Pass is symbolic. If you're smart, you don't ever use it. You don't need someone to tell you this, you already know. Because you know there's more to the culture you're trying to misappropriate than just the blase tossing off of the word "nigga." There is no ceremony, no circle of friends in hoods, carrying swords, in a candlelit hall with "Doggystyle" playing. There is no secret handshake or knowing nod during a bonding moment. It's not Nolte and Murphy in 48 Hours. It's not Pryor and Wilder in Silver Streak. It's not even Smith and Damon in Bagger Vance. Most times you won't even know you HAVE the pass until you misuse it and it's taken away from you. And again, the only proper use of the Ghetto Pass is NO USE at all.
Rule 2. Even if you were to use your Ghetto Pass, say in an extreme circumstance, like say "And then Billy looked at Troy and then flat out called him a...a nigger" you immediately apologize. Even then, you make sure the only person you use The Pass on is the person who gave it to you. Because the Ghetto Pass is non-transferable. Black people don't have some sort of Borg-like hivemind, white people. If you are given a Ghetto Pass, that information isn't wirelessly transmitted to all of Black America upon reciept of The Pass. Martian antennae don't protrude from the fro/rows/puffs/braids/dreads. You won't be recognized on sight as an owner of The Pass. The Pass doesn't afford you diplomatic immunity. It just means your friend is cool enough with you to know that you don't think of him as a "black person" but simply a person, and thus, free to goof on everything that makes him a person, including his skin color from time to time.
Rule 3. Don't acknowledge that you've got the pass. To call attention to the pass means you're more than likely trying to misuse it. To shine light on your pass is to admit your friendship is less a friendship and more akin to a fraternity pledge. That when you get down to it, you think The Pass is justification for "I can indulge in just a little bit of racism today." in the same way you do an extra 10 minutes on the treadmill to say "I can have a donut or two at work." That you can say "Some of my best friends are black" in a totally straight face and all the sadness that phrase inherently holds doesn't apply to you. This assumption would be WRONG, and as Sam Jackson once eloquently put it, when you make an assumption, you make an ass out of U and Umption. Put light on the pass and you're simply letting people know how best to snatch it away from you because you're undeserving.
Rule 4 Don't act like you want The Pass. It puts undue importance on that aspect of the friendship. Like, what, you can't be friends with a black guy unless it's okay for you to say "nigga" in front of him every now and again? Huh? Is that all this is about? Yunno what? I was about to give you this Ghetto Pass, so you don't have to be all lookin at me sideways when we're in the car and N.O.R.E. is playin and you're all sweating and smelling like hot dogs in the passenger seat with your pale ass, nervous as shit, and I thought you was cool in your mousy little whiteboy way, but I think you wanna say "nigga" out loud a little too much. So no, I think I'm gonna hold onto this Ghetto Pass right here. I'm gonna keep it real tight and cozy. You go ahead and you chew on that "nigga" you got waitin to come burstin out your mouth, okay? You grind that up between your teeth and you swallow that motherfucker down. I hope it tastes like chalk. Gritty, nasty, dirty white chalk all dusting up your throat. But dont' think I dont' still have somethin for you. You can get this dick. How bout that? That a nice consolation prize? Huh? Go ahead.
Rule 5. There's no difference between "a" and "er." The Pass does not recognize such a silly distinction. Even the word "Wigger" is suspect because you need to use the word "nigger" inside of it, and at that point you've broken Rule 1 which is, again, you don't EVER USE THE GHETTO PASS. Mounting a defense of your Ghetto Pass should one try to remove it from your hands will simply result in your losing it faster and possibly more painfully. And the longer the justification/explanation of your improper use of the Pass (which is any use of The Pass) the more embarrassing and prolonged your Whiteboy Probation will extend.
So there you go, white kids. Never before have these secrets of The Pass been so explicitly spelled out. Put them to good use, kids. Honor the rules, and maybe then, a harmony can be achieved. I do this for you out of the goodness of my own heart, the pain of my own experiences, and the hope of a future where I don't have to look at or listen to stupid fuckin white kids performing some sort of paleface minstrel show at the goddamn bus stop in the hopes some Angel of Beign Down will descend upon them and bless them with ill-gotten authenticity. Fronting is, and forever shall be, frowned upon.
I was 24 and a Teetotaler. That's a fancy, old-fashioned word, like "sarsparilla" and "raspberries" except teetotaler means "lame-ass square." or something like that. It means you don't put poisons made from corn mash or fermented barley in your body. I wasn't teetotaling because I sneered at the idiocy of inflating your liver like a water balloon, or that I had some prim and proper idea of how to behave in public. I ran with some dirty fuckin whiteboys who spray painted colorful names in colorful designs on grey, dingy walls and train cars. It was an activity that lent itself to refreshing 40 oz, charcoal filtered beverages the color of horse piss.
I didn't drink because I have control issues. As in I like consciousness so much I've only been knocked out once in my life, and that was because I hit myself in the head with a baseball bat. Not on purpose, of course. It was my little brother's birthday party. I was in 4th grade. A bunch of us wanted to play a quick game of baseball. We had no baseball. We found that a mini-basketball would fuckin fly if you tagged it. so picture about 8 4th graders knocking towering 400 foot shots with an aluminum bat and a charlotte hornets mini-ball. The pitcher, skinny, bucktoothed Josh Howard from 6th street in Aumsville, uncorked teal and white flame from his right arm. I began to swing, and stopped short. checked myself, thinking the pitch was too high. I misjudged. The ball hit the bat. The bat swung back and hit my head. I hit the ground. I blacked out. 4 seconds later I woke up to what looked like the gangliest, palest, pre-adolescent imitation of the Straight Outta Compton album cover. And then my head leaked blood like the Beverly Hillbillies opening credits leaked crude. Oil, that is.
So I hated losing consciousness to the point where only getting brained with a big metal stick would do it. I'd seen enough of my friends to notice that drinking (be it St. Ides, Mickeys, or Manischiewitz, the kosher jewish blackberry wine, which became "mackenschmacken" due to the inability to pronounce the name while trashed off a bottle and a half) tended to cause people to black out. I wasn't about all that. I wanted to be able to remember all the transgressions I'd committed, and waking up in a strange bed with strange things caked to my body seemed not so favorable to me.
This idea was reinforced at a party one night, during my Sam Goody era. A party after work included a couple co-workers, including a younger co-worker who I didn't quite get along with. The liquor made her...not more attractive, but more palatable as a person. And then as underage drinking tends to do, careened rather quickly into hot mess. Her friends apparently thought the same, as they left her in a back room to vomit on herself. Not a very friendly act. I took note of the fact that drunk people sometimes become what I call "accidentally inconsiderate." They don't mean to be assholes that leave their friends to puke on themselves in a back room somewhere. It just doesn't occur to them that their compassion is drowning slowly under a 5th of HRD.
So I wander back there, because there is where the bathroom is, and the girl is in her underwear, lying on her side. vomiting. Unconsciously vomiting. The vomit is stacking up and congealing, and is about to block her mouth. So I pull the girl into the bathroom, this girl I don't really know outside of terse conversations at work, this girl I don't like too much, and I'm running cold water from the shower on her near-naked, and vomit stained body, and she's crying and vomiting and shaking and blinking. She can't move aside from the shuddering and the puking.
Eventually her eyes open and stay that way, and I ask if she's okay and she says no and begins crying only to suddenly stop. She looks up and realizes, the pupils widen, and she becomes cognizant of how ridiculous and pathetic she looks in this shower, in front of this asshole from work she can't stand with his stupid fuckin hat and his stupid fuckin facial hair and his stupid fuckin T-shirts. And she starts bawling all over again. And asks for a towel.
There are examples upon examples of sober me, observing drunk friends doing all manner of making all sizes of asshole out of themselves, ranging from the mundane to the towering achievements of drunkenness that result in fires and debris fluttering from the sky, and all these examples blew away like so many ashes when faced, at age 24, with the prospect of getting laid.
I liked her. I knew at some point it was going to go down. I knew she enjoyed 2 or 3 beers after work. I knew beers were going to help speed this process along. I knew I was punching out of my league, and I knew that pretty much everyone I knew was drinking and not everyone I knew was a colossal, vomit congealed failure. At some point the idea that one could drink and somehow maintain control in some way over that poison began to creep in. And that there were a lot of people who somehow managed to avoid succumbing to the gallons of liquid asshole I'd seen consumed in my teenage years. My sisters, my brothers, my roommates, my co-workers. They could drink responsibly. Not to say that there aren't stories of theirs that involve giant buckets and regurgitated spaghetti coating the bottom of a bathroom sink looking like so much stomach casserole, but those were rare occasions. They drank responsibly. It wasn't just a slogan at the end of a beer commercial.
Hey.
I'm a responsible person!
And I can get LAID!
Fuck yeah, crack a beer, lets get this experiment on.
So down the hatch went 2 Corona's with limes. And I learned that I'm a happy drunk. I was worried about that as well. Would I be a sad drunk? An angry, belligerent drunk? Would I just clam up and stare at things? Would I pass out in public?
No, I just speak a little slower and laugh a little louder. I get a little huggy. I get a lot forgiving. I lean in closer, my eyes open a little wider, and I love everyone who even remotely loves me back. And it was very quickly that I learned I was about to become a beer snob. Because good lord that tasted like someone slipped a fruit in a mare's bladder. Get me a good porter or stout. Lagunitas. Young's Double Chocolate Stout. Black Boss Porter. Black Butte Porter. Black Rabbit Porter. I drink more Black liquid than Lisa Lampanelli at a celebrity roast.
Rum and Coke. Whiskey and Coke. Evan Williams on the rocks. White Russian. I can make those motherfuckers taste exactly like a bowl of milk after you just ate the last cocoa puff floating in it. Vodka and Cran. Southern Comfort. I went on a journey through the land of distilled spirits and microbrews that gave me a bit of a gut, but I can't say I regret it.
Did I get laid? No. Not that time. Eventually. I'm pretty sure the beer had nothing to do with it when that finally happened, too. But this is probably the only time peer pressure has ever worked on me, and I figured I should mark this event down as reinforcement of the idea that almost every man's reversal of conviction, every weakening of moral fortitude, tends to be centered on the potential to get some. Even terrorists understand this, it's why they promise suicidal assholes an eternity where women throw their genitalia at them like Josh Howard mini-basketball fastballs, right at their dicks.
Currently
listening
:
BUCKTOWN
By
SMIF-N-WESSUN
Release date: 1998-02-01
Musings on Professionally Insulting People You Like
I've gotten a lot of requests to post video of the Rick Emerson Roast that, by all accounts, My Cap'n and I did pretty decently at. Unfortunately, it was an old-school roast, which means no video. no audio. If you slept, got trapped in an elevator, fought grizzlies in Alaska, wrestled tube-snake in the presence of a Chasey Lain video, whatever caused you to miss the party last Thursday (it was only last Thursday? only a week ago? Jeeezus) then the best that you can do? The BEST that you can do? Is fall in love. If you get caught between the moon and New York City...
The 2nd best that you can do (and it's a low, far off 2nd best) is to bounce around the various otherblog andphoto entries available on the web, along with reading this little random collection of memories loosely gathered into something resembling a narrative. Kinda.
Seriously, it was only a week ago?
Okay, here goes the James Ellroy-esque recapping of my life last Thursday
Wake. Stumble. Coffee. Viso. Computer. News Stories. Realization hits: I don't have to look up news stories, I don't have to go to work. Our benevolent boss has decided a best -of show would suffice for our on-air presence to ensure that Rick's roast gets the injection of bile-flavored mediocrity it deserves.
Messageboards. Blogs. Battlestar. Bicycle. Pushups. Situps. Sweat. Shower. Closet. Contemplation of Clothes. A tornado of tailored tryouts, tossed on the bed. The Blue? The Grey? The sweater? Sweater with the Suit? You've turned into Clinton from What Not To Wear. What's wrong with you?
Try the plaid vest. You look like Dobie Gillis in the plaid vest. Throw the jacket over it. Put the fedora on. Ah yes. Goodwill Fashion Show in the house, ya'll. This'll work.
Pack the bag. Have a snack. Hit the door. Hit the street. Get hit by the heat. Fucking HELL it is hot as balls out here. Hit the store. Hit the fridge. Viso in hand. Viso on counter. Wallet in hand. Card not in wallet.
Eyes wide open. Fear and Frustration frothing in stomach. Hit the door. Hit the street. Hit the house. Hit the phone. Hit the couch in frustration because I got hit with a stolen debit card. Bracing for hit to bank account via guy who hit my wallet hitting store. Hit never comes. No pending transactions. I kill the card. No cash in hand. Can't buy drinks with MAX tickets. Good thing I'm cute and we're getting comped drinks in the green room. I start again, sweatier, saltier and stressed. Time shoves down on my shoulders along with sun. I run my roast routine repeatedly till it's rote. I ride electric rails silently.
Hit work. Hit desk. Grab check. No time to cash it. Check-in at Crystal Ballroom comes in 20 minutes. I'm 20 blocks away. I can make it. I'll look like a crackhead, but I'm from Salem. I can swing that. Check doesn't have bonus on it. Wallet groans. Lost card. Lost bonus. Lost time. So much lose in such a little man. Little legs light out for large ballroom. Sun dropping in sky. Stomach dropping in guts. Sweat dripping down back. Showtime approaches.
Ballroom. Staircase. Expansive and Empty. Pre-show prep being carried out. Emerson approaches. Cap'n comes with. I'm almost calm. I'm amongst friends. Aaron Duran and Scott Dally apparate out of nowhere. Aaron looks like Asian Curtain Factory exploded. Ascot assaults eyeballs. It's perfect. It's glorious. I anticipate comedy gold. Scott sticks to key details. Scott says "Free Beer in Green Room." Scott says "Storm Large in Green Room." Scott steers us to the stairs swiftly.
Green Room. Rock Stars. Nickel Arcade tuning guitars. Emerson Starship getting dressed. Storm Large by the sink. Storm Large sizzling. Storm straightens her hair. Straight legs jammed against side paneling. Smartass comments stream like overflowing sink. Fucking stunning.
Sarah Dylan smiles. Tim Riley surveys. Peter Carlin studies. Byron Beck stares. Lasciviously. Leering. Laser-like. Lisa Desjardins laughs. Ladylike. Adorable. Accomodating. Bearing loaves of bread and brie. Bread is broken between Lisa and I, building beds in our bellies for the booze to bury itself in. She doesn't yet understand. She will be loved by the throng. The standing O will be long. Loud. Loving. She doesn't quite understand the wave about to crash into her. She will. She drinks. I drink. We toast. We nosh.
Rick zips in. Rick zips out. Eyes dilated. Unblinking. Getting dressed one article at a time, one person at a time, like a car on an assembly line passing under robot after robot. Tie. T-Shirt. Overshirt. Jacket. pants. Socks. Built brick by brick. Geek Deity: By Lego. Emerson Starship prepares behind closed doors. Bon Jovi is Belted as a form of bonding. The roasters recuse themselves and reverently listen. Ritchie Bristol runs around, redolent in his reek.
5 minutes. Pictures popped. Flasks tipped back. drinks mixed. Jokes like javelins, spearing and spiked, readied. Muscles tensed. Rick zips in. Rick zips out. Mouth moves. Statements staccato. Syllables shot at speeds almost incomprehensible. silence achieved. The starting has started. We start off. Green Room abandoned.
The Hallway beckons. The Long Walk. The Stage. The air vibrates. The air is visible. The air is like a kid's Crayola watercolors. Run under a sink, swirling overhead. I can see the sound of the crowd before I see the crowd. I see Aaron Duran, Storm's arm crooked in his elbow. I see Carlin's face drain of color. I see Byron smirk bemusedly. Carl Click. Pink Clad and Solid. A statue. Surprises lurk under that strained cummerbund. I stick by my Captain. I see the crowd itself.
Holy fuck.
HOLY FUCK.
It's like a tidal wave of humanity crashed and beached 1200 people inside the building. They roar. I'm in a lion's mouth. I'm in a whale's stomach. I'm in a bear's den. 1200 teeth waiting to close down on my neck. My first attempt at stand-up comedy, everybody. I look to my Captain. He looks like he killed a Hasidic street-vendor. I look like I beat up a bum. I can't see his eyes, he's hidden them behind sunglasses. He is so much smarter than I am. If he's shook, he doesn't show. I lock it down. We go last. Let it loom.
Click claps. Corrals the crowd. Focuses their frothing. Unleashes Rick, Ritchie, Sarah and Tim. Unleashes the Crowd. The noise pushes my chest back. Lifts my arms. Pounds my hands together. Lifts my cheeks. I'm smiling. Videos are projected. Laughs roll out of the roiling humanity below. THAT'S what winning this crowd will sound like? It's terrifying and terrific all at the same time, intoxicating. I chase it with whiskey. I might as well be pounding water.
Rick introduces Lisa. Screams steamroll the stage. Her eyes lose their ability to blink. She understands now. She smiles so wide the sides of the structure stretch to accomodate. From Such Great Heights we can only stumble: Scott and Aaron take the stage. Sark is in charge. Cutty Sark. He sits silently on the podium. Surveying the slip-sliding string of jokes stumbling off the stage. Time stretches. Storm snatches up a mike, snipes a headshot from the dais. The crowd lurches to life.
Byron brings his best. A tale of teenage trysts. Rick Emerson as gay hustler. Fisting is key. Wrist deep in young lust, Byron tells the tale. Twitters and titters. The chair Rick is resting in was made for squirming. He obliges under the lights and the rain of revulsion splashing the stage from Byron's script.
Carl Click: "It says on Scott Dally's Bio Page at Film Fever Radio that he loves sci-fi, movies, video games, and Duran Duran. No wonder your wife left you a couple months ago."
Brains on table. Heart in ass. Roast has officially begun.
Peter Carlin writes Rick's obituary. Sweats like perp under hot lights in box downtown. Sweats more than that. I'm afraid he's going to dissolve. He's making me thirsty. Whiskey goes in. Breath comes out. Whiskey goes in. Sarah stands up. Flask comes out.
Script goes down. Drink goes in. Script comes up. Laugh goes out. No slips, no stutters. Knife slides in. Edge of notecards serrated
