Fucking hell.
Okay...in no particular order...
Chris and I finally finished rewatching Firefly and we're both still confused and angry that there is nothing else*.
After the last episode rolled credits, Netflix suggested that I watch Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog...something I had never seen before**.
Yes, it was great and yes, it was what everyone in the world has already said before, but, what I took away from DHSAB was that, even in a forty-two minute web series with, ostensibly, three characters, Joss Whedon still killed off the most likable character.
And that is pure, fucking hilarity.
This is one of the reasons I enjoyed The Cabin In The Woods so much (aside form the fact that it was 100% amazing), it was a chance for Whedon to get as dark as he wanted to get; no PG-13 or TV Standards and Practices holding him back: a nice, sanguine R.
Don't get me wrong, there are pitch black elements to a lot of Whedon's stuff, which is one of the reasons he's so sought after and lauded, but, imagine a villain like Jubal Early in the next Avengers movie..
Chills.
After those forty two minutes were up and they STILL had not uncancelled Firefly, Netflix suggested something called The Guild, simply because Felicia Day (who I'd never seen before Dr. Blog) was in it. Over the next few days, I proceeded to watch all that, which was mostly great. And then I found out that Will Wheaton (who I'd also never seen before) was a TMBG Super President (shhhh...) like me, at which point I mentioned that fact on Twitter and, to my surprise and delight, got a response from the Wheat Man himself.
Occasionally, I enjoy the Internet.
After the fifth season of The Guild...well, that's where I am now as far as solo TV, although Lisa and Jen and fucking everyone in the world is telling me to watch Community, so I just may do that.
As for the sport of Tandem Television Watching, Chris and I finally started up the fifth season of True Blood, which is exactly what one would expect from the fifth season of True Blood...thus far... I'll say it's kind of heartbreaking to watch the writers desperately trying to get the viewers to give a shit about Terry SO HARD that they have now introduced ifrits to the show.
Whatever.
Flame on.
Chris also bumped a lot of good female comedies (written by and directed by, usually) to the top of our queue and we took in Bridesmaids again which, mostly, held up, and Friends With Kids, which was like an alternate universe version of Bridesmaids because it starred the entire cast of Bridesmaids pretty much, plus Scott Adams and Jon Hamm's wife. I had a few issues with this one: specifically the fact that Scott Adams' character is so smart in it, but he doesn't realize that this chick he's been best friends with for almost two decades has a thing for him. "Help! My emotions are stupid!!!"
Other than that, Jon Hamm continues to amaze me, Maya Rudolph looks like a gargoyle and Chris O'Dowd needs to be in a lot more American stuff. Maybe as Simon Pegg and Nick Frost's brother...?
And then there's Resident Evil 6...
Over this past weekend, I had Lisa and Jen for a sleepover, during which I recorded my first podcast (more on that later), ate more meat than a doctor would agree is healthy for me and played (some of) the fuck out of Resident Evil 6.
Lisa was my navigator/backseat snoozer and Jen was my co-op partner for Jake's first two chapters and Leon's first three chapters; basically about one quarter or so of the game.
Something positive about all these shitty reviews the game has been getting: it really lowers one's expectations and makes the game better.
That, plus I don't think a lot of these reviewers are really correct about a lot of the shit they're slinging.
Yes, the trial and error QTE's and insta-kill areas get frustrating, very much so, but other than that, we enjoyed ourselves quite a bit.
Some of these complaints..."this isn't the same Resident Evil as it was in 1998...", "your characters feel too powerful" and "they put too much stuff in/made the game too big" seem...what's the right word...fucky. These complaints seem fucky.
I look forward to having another sleepover (maybe with more people because I FUCKING LOVE SLEEPOVERS (even though, at one point, my bottom touched the freezer door at the supermarket and my bottom got cold)!!!
Now, for those of you who remember the beginning of that last paragraph, you'll recall that I mentioned my podcast. This is NOT to be confused with my second appearance on the epic, 2.5-billion-listener-strong digital opus that is Bookend Tiger Radio which I recorded last Wednesday, no. I've had an idea kicking around in the back of my head for a while, and I figured that having Lisa and Jen over for a huge amount of time would be a great impetus to upgrade it from idea to reality.
And I did so thusly.
The...episode?...had a nice bookendy quality, seeing as I was talking with my oldest friend and my newest friend.
The idea is pretty straightforward; some basic intro stuff, then a set of questions for the guest(s), then some conversation starters, some guest-specific questions, then the guest(s) has to pick a word that I invented and define it.
We recorded for 94 minutes total and I can probably cut that down to...slightly less than 94 minutes as I honestly believe it was interesting and enjoyable the whole way through and will be enjoyed by others.
Maybe.
One can never fucking tell with the Internet, can they.
No.
But Lisa and Jen did an excellent job with what some might have thought of as an awkward situation.
I have a pretty extensive list of friends I'm planning on interviewing, so if I call you at some point...don't answer your phone unless you'd like to be asked to come on my podcast.
My reasoning behind this whole thing is that, after thirty or so years, I have quite a collection of cool and interesting friends with their own cool and interesting stories/experiences/lives, so why not get to talk with them and get to know them/get random people to know them better?
Although I really have no clue who my audience is or will be...maybe if I interview all my friends, then all my friends will listen, and that's, like, forty people listening!
WOO! INTERNET MONEY!!!***
I'm going to do it up right, with production value and transitional music and all that.
I mean, I have that superdope mic set up and since someone hasn't written any more books for me to narrate...well, I might as well use it for something, yes?
Waste not, haste not, yes?
And, speaking of creative things...while we are still a few days of shooting away from wrapping on my very first web series, Unker & Physia, we are premiering the project on Wednesday the 24th of October at a place in downtown New York City call AI.
Or AI New York City.
You know? Here's the link, go have a look and, if you're around and interested, maybe join us.
Also, "like" the Facebook page, follow us on Twitter (@UnkerAndPhysia) and kiss us if you see us on the streets.
Thanks.
The other web series I'm going to be working on (conceived by Becca Kopec and written by Mary Beth Walsh and Alan Kistler)...some time...which might or might not be titled "My Super(?) Life" or "Superhero(ish)" or something along those lines, shoots on Octobr 30th. The plan is to shoot a pilot and put it up on Kickstarter to raise some funds to shoot the whole series. The writing is snappy as hell and steeped in great female characters and pop/geek culture "out the butthole", as they say in the biz.
I play the Trenchcoat Man.
He wears a trench coat.
Or maybe he doesn't, depending on costume availability and script changes.
Then, there is my upcoming (later this week or perhaps this weekend) reappearance on the most popular and erotic podcast on this here Internet, Bookend Tiger Radio. Since Andy O. was in NYC for the week, we recorded at my studio (digressive_obscenity) and linked Danny D. into my M-Box via a gnarl of cords. The results...well, let's just say that long time BTR listeners will be STUNNED at the quality.
The audio quality at any rate, as there is no discussion of either of the Human Centipede films.
Why even bother listening, right?
THEN, there s Electromagnetic Radio, which is, for lack of a less 1920's term, a radio play. I was hooked up with the director, David, through Becca and auditioned for a few characters last weekend. Turns out he liked my stuff**** and wants to record some stuff at the end of October/beginning of November! Hopefully my schedule will allow for that, because it looks like a fun project, and one where I'll get to talk all different!!
Which I enjoy.
Suddenly, BAM, back to media...the new Bond theme was released a few days ago and, well, although it's super classic, I don't love it. Adele's voice works just fine, but the music doesn't have that "grab you by your balls and make you watch the new Bond movie while somone is grabbing your balls" feel that "You Know My Name" and "Another Way To Die" do.
But perhaps that has something to do with the tone of the film...the first line of "Skyfall" is, after all, "this is the end". And, speaking of "the end", in honor of how fucking excited I am to see the new Bond movie and the fiftieth birthday of James Bond, I am going to wrap up my Bond movie reviews.
You may***** remember the first run I did some years back, but I'm pretty proud of them and only stopped because I had written either one or two more and lost the goddamn paper on which they were written.
Fuck paper though, becaudse now I own a fucking iPad.
I'M SAVIN' MY SHIT TO THE CLOUD, BITCHES!
Below, please find a list of the first batch of Bond movie reviews and the links to the aforementioned Bond movie reviews.
Thanks you.
Thanks you lot.
"From Russia With No"
"Thunderfinger"
"On Her Majesty Only Twice"
"Live And Let Diamonds"
"The Spy Who Loved Gun"
"For Your Moonraker Only"
"An Octopussy To A Kill"
Coming soon:
The Living Kill
Tomorrow Never Eye
The World Is Not Die
Quantum Casino
Two last bits: watched the first half of the last season of Breaking Bad and...my soul hurts.
And, with all the talk of Borderlans 2 being great, I finally got around to popping in my pre-owned copy of Borderlands I bought and never played over a year ago.
I played for several hours and decided that it's like Fallout 3 but without the talented voice work and interesting, engrossing story.
Not planning on playing anymore of this.
There might be more, but I'ma let you finish.
* I'm not counting the movie, not because it wasn't good but because IT'S MY BODY, HOLLYWOOD, MINE.
** Or, to be more precise, I'd seen the first minute, during which NPH does his evil laugh then comments on it and then I decided I wasn't in the mood.
*** Which is not a thing.
**** My butt.
*****Read: don't.
Showing posts with label Uber Ramble. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Uber Ramble. Show all posts
10.08.2012
8.16.2006
Coming to you, 1,000 beats per minute...
8.16.06
5:16 PM
In early 1997, the Coca-Cola Company released a new caffeine charged soft drink called Surge. It was the green of a cirrhosis patient’s piss and tasted like rotten fruit infused with ultrasugar.
I drank it like babies drink breast milk.
(For some reason or other) I stopped drinking it for a short period of time. After that period was over, I picked up a can, opened it and drank deep of the poison sweet within.
I never drank Surge again…until today.
Yesterday I picked up the 8th season of the Simpsons on DVD (my favorite season) and doing so spurred me to contact an old friend from high school, Sunir Joshi.
Hang on, that’s not fair.
Sunir and I were. It’s hard to describe and grasp. We just were. And now, like before, we just is. We just is SuPaul, we just is on this Web, still wondering who the Spider REALLY is (it might be Mr. Snow, but no one can really know for sure…), we just is not allowed to be in the same room as Phil and Will or everything will just not be.
He is about to become a doctor (Infant rape counselor, transsexual anal gynecologist, something along those lines) and that is more frightening than the idea of me babysitting visually impaired, pre-adolescent albino Negroes…..wait…
So we spoke for a bit yesterday and he told me that there is a new Coca-Cola “energy drink” out called Vault and that it reminded him of me as soon as he tried it. He told me to find some and find some I did. Ladies and gentlemen, Surge has returned Granted it is now called Vault and being marketed as an energy drink, but it’s Surge. It even comes in the same green bottle with the same black cap it used to. Those bastards. Filthy dog-fucking whoresons. I have promised not to play their game, but as I type this manifesto of rebellion, I am searching for a vein in which to stick the IV.
Hm.
Just kidding, this shit tastes worse than Surge. I don’t know if they altered the formula a bit or if it’s just what Surge tasted like all along. Yeech.
Changing the subject.
The plans for this weekend have been altered. I am joining Will, Will’s Ladyfriend Megan (maybe there’s an “h” in there, I don’t know but she strongly resembles Jessica Alba so does it really matter?) and Will’s brother, Dr. Drew, in New Haven, Connecticut for the best pizza in the galaxy (this is what Will has actually been working on since he graduated Harvard), something called a “double-fried donut” (which, if it’s anything like chicken-fried steak, I will have lots of and then experience chest pains and osmotic diarrhea) and a documentary about the increased number of reptiles in the field of aviation. It’s a think piece.
True, I won’t be able to see it with Bob Franklin, but maybe he and I can just hit a titty bar next time I go to D.C.
I bet he abuses strippers. It probably all starts out with him using his fame to get the best looking ones and then he jokingly grabs their throat, putting them on guard, but then he smiles his disarming, I-tamed-Madonna-with-this-smile smile and all is forgiven…until he pins their arms behind their head and then finishes the job. He’s probably got dozens of people to clean up his trail of dead prostitutes…
What price, fame?
Also caught the new Scissor Sisters video today. Funky, scary and fagtastic like all their stuff even though the song is a bit of a letdown when compared to their other singles.
And I have been a bad little consumer recently but, fuck, if I’m going to be dead before I’m 32, I am going to use the money I’ve accumulated over my time here. Seriously, what’s eight DVD’s in the grand scheme of things? Carpe diem! Memento mori! Vichyssoise! VICHYSSOISE!!!
S E G U E
Beck has put out quite a lot of his new album by either putting up tracks on his website or putting the videos (the album comes with a DVD containing videos for each of the 15 tracks) on his myspace page. The overall sound is funk like skunk, baby. There is a lot of his other albums’ sound on this one and I am just fine with that. He also seems to have done a lot of “rapping”. I call it “rapping” because it isn’t as idiotic as a lot of rappers out there rapping today. I should probably call it “talking fast with a set meter”. Yeah, there is a lot of talking fast with a set meter and it is blistering. After listening to some of these bits (the talking fast in a set meter bits) I hearken back to something Beck said about his relationship with lyrics in his music. He said something along the lines of the lyrics being the most and least important thing in his music. From anyone else that would sound conceited or stoned, but Beck not only professes it, he proves it. In fact, he fucking LIVES it. I mean, Midnite Vultures makes hardly a lick of sense, but it fits together like Tetris.
Excuse me, could you tell me how to get to the Soviet embassy?
I saw “Capote” the other day.
Laughed my ass off.
I have a feeling that the length and…diffusion (?) of this entry might possibly in the slightest fashion be because of this foul green ichor I have introduced to my unsuspecting body.
Take thy beak from out my heart and take thy Vault from off my wang.
Like a chicken egg to the Gnome King…poison.
8:28 PM
Goodness gracious it has hit me!! Energy drink Xmax!!! Begin the procedure! Hit me with your rhythm stick and sew up the wounds will rain clouds.
I have the inside in my mouth and the dancers are all upstairs except for Joe who is renting the cabin on the third floor (beware the dripping faucet) and dodging the hair attacks when the loon coo coos at 6:35PM. Bad mojo, man. The baddest. Only you can prevent me from preventing forest fires and I ask politely that you don’t. Just let me be. Let me be.
Christ on horses my hands are shaking almost too much for me to communicate to you and the world just how FUCKED UP THIS DRINK IS!!!! IF WE FEED IT TO THE BABIES, THEY WILL DIE OF ANOREXIA AND OTHER DISEASES WITH "X"s IN THEM!!!!
THE
PHONE
IS
RING
It stopped.
IT FUCKING STOPPED!! GLORY BE THE PHONE IS RUNG OUT!
Leaping Jesus it’s like my brain is moving faster than my fingers. If only I had smarter fingers. They would know what to do. They would call someone in charge and report this heinous violation of finger policy. I could lose my finging license for this infraction. Back to the beginning!!! Cigarette smoke! This room smells like cigarette smoke and I can’t do a thing about it. Fire the cannons! YES! I sank your battleship and now I will sink your dream boat. Bam. Sweet, sweet candy. Bam. Touch it!! WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
Chasing my thoughts down like Elmer Fudd.
Wow.
Okay.
Calm down.
I just took a few breaths of this nasty air (armpits…FOUL armpits) and it seems to have worked. I don’t know if this stuff it affecting me this way because I have only had a bowl of cereal today or because there is a lot of “energy” in the drink. Either way my tongue feels scummy. I plan not to drink this piddle again, even though this was a fun little waste of time. My food should be arriving soon and everything will stop blurring then…I hope.
Pray for my blood sugar.
5:16 PM
In early 1997, the Coca-Cola Company released a new caffeine charged soft drink called Surge. It was the green of a cirrhosis patient’s piss and tasted like rotten fruit infused with ultrasugar.
I drank it like babies drink breast milk.
(For some reason or other) I stopped drinking it for a short period of time. After that period was over, I picked up a can, opened it and drank deep of the poison sweet within.
I never drank Surge again…until today.
Yesterday I picked up the 8th season of the Simpsons on DVD (my favorite season) and doing so spurred me to contact an old friend from high school, Sunir Joshi.
Hang on, that’s not fair.
Sunir and I were. It’s hard to describe and grasp. We just were. And now, like before, we just is. We just is SuPaul, we just is on this Web, still wondering who the Spider REALLY is (it might be Mr. Snow, but no one can really know for sure…), we just is not allowed to be in the same room as Phil and Will or everything will just not be.
He is about to become a doctor (Infant rape counselor, transsexual anal gynecologist, something along those lines) and that is more frightening than the idea of me babysitting visually impaired, pre-adolescent albino Negroes…..wait…
So we spoke for a bit yesterday and he told me that there is a new Coca-Cola “energy drink” out called Vault and that it reminded him of me as soon as he tried it. He told me to find some and find some I did. Ladies and gentlemen, Surge has returned Granted it is now called Vault and being marketed as an energy drink, but it’s Surge. It even comes in the same green bottle with the same black cap it used to. Those bastards. Filthy dog-fucking whoresons. I have promised not to play their game, but as I type this manifesto of rebellion, I am searching for a vein in which to stick the IV.
Hm.
Just kidding, this shit tastes worse than Surge. I don’t know if they altered the formula a bit or if it’s just what Surge tasted like all along. Yeech.
Changing the subject.
The plans for this weekend have been altered. I am joining Will, Will’s Ladyfriend Megan (maybe there’s an “h” in there, I don’t know but she strongly resembles Jessica Alba so does it really matter?) and Will’s brother, Dr. Drew, in New Haven, Connecticut for the best pizza in the galaxy (this is what Will has actually been working on since he graduated Harvard), something called a “double-fried donut” (which, if it’s anything like chicken-fried steak, I will have lots of and then experience chest pains and osmotic diarrhea) and a documentary about the increased number of reptiles in the field of aviation. It’s a think piece.
True, I won’t be able to see it with Bob Franklin, but maybe he and I can just hit a titty bar next time I go to D.C.
I bet he abuses strippers. It probably all starts out with him using his fame to get the best looking ones and then he jokingly grabs their throat, putting them on guard, but then he smiles his disarming, I-tamed-Madonna-with-this-smile smile and all is forgiven…until he pins their arms behind their head and then finishes the job. He’s probably got dozens of people to clean up his trail of dead prostitutes…
What price, fame?
Also caught the new Scissor Sisters video today. Funky, scary and fagtastic like all their stuff even though the song is a bit of a letdown when compared to their other singles.
And I have been a bad little consumer recently but, fuck, if I’m going to be dead before I’m 32, I am going to use the money I’ve accumulated over my time here. Seriously, what’s eight DVD’s in the grand scheme of things? Carpe diem! Memento mori! Vichyssoise! VICHYSSOISE!!!
S E G U E
Beck has put out quite a lot of his new album by either putting up tracks on his website or putting the videos (the album comes with a DVD containing videos for each of the 15 tracks) on his myspace page. The overall sound is funk like skunk, baby. There is a lot of his other albums’ sound on this one and I am just fine with that. He also seems to have done a lot of “rapping”. I call it “rapping” because it isn’t as idiotic as a lot of rappers out there rapping today. I should probably call it “talking fast with a set meter”. Yeah, there is a lot of talking fast with a set meter and it is blistering. After listening to some of these bits (the talking fast in a set meter bits) I hearken back to something Beck said about his relationship with lyrics in his music. He said something along the lines of the lyrics being the most and least important thing in his music. From anyone else that would sound conceited or stoned, but Beck not only professes it, he proves it. In fact, he fucking LIVES it. I mean, Midnite Vultures makes hardly a lick of sense, but it fits together like Tetris.
Excuse me, could you tell me how to get to the Soviet embassy?
I saw “Capote” the other day.
Laughed my ass off.
I have a feeling that the length and…diffusion (?) of this entry might possibly in the slightest fashion be because of this foul green ichor I have introduced to my unsuspecting body.
Take thy beak from out my heart and take thy Vault from off my wang.
Like a chicken egg to the Gnome King…poison.
8:28 PM
Goodness gracious it has hit me!! Energy drink Xmax!!! Begin the procedure! Hit me with your rhythm stick and sew up the wounds will rain clouds.
I have the inside in my mouth and the dancers are all upstairs except for Joe who is renting the cabin on the third floor (beware the dripping faucet) and dodging the hair attacks when the loon coo coos at 6:35PM. Bad mojo, man. The baddest. Only you can prevent me from preventing forest fires and I ask politely that you don’t. Just let me be. Let me be.
Christ on horses my hands are shaking almost too much for me to communicate to you and the world just how FUCKED UP THIS DRINK IS!!!! IF WE FEED IT TO THE BABIES, THEY WILL DIE OF ANOREXIA AND OTHER DISEASES WITH "X"s IN THEM!!!!
THE
PHONE
IS
RING
It stopped.
IT FUCKING STOPPED!! GLORY BE THE PHONE IS RUNG OUT!
Leaping Jesus it’s like my brain is moving faster than my fingers. If only I had smarter fingers. They would know what to do. They would call someone in charge and report this heinous violation of finger policy. I could lose my finging license for this infraction. Back to the beginning!!! Cigarette smoke! This room smells like cigarette smoke and I can’t do a thing about it. Fire the cannons! YES! I sank your battleship and now I will sink your dream boat. Bam. Sweet, sweet candy. Bam. Touch it!! WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
Chasing my thoughts down like Elmer Fudd.
Wow.
Okay.
Calm down.
I just took a few breaths of this nasty air (armpits…FOUL armpits) and it seems to have worked. I don’t know if this stuff it affecting me this way because I have only had a bowl of cereal today or because there is a lot of “energy” in the drink. Either way my tongue feels scummy. I plan not to drink this piddle again, even though this was a fun little waste of time. My food should be arriving soon and everything will stop blurring then…I hope.
Pray for my blood sugar.
1.05.2006
1.5.06
7:34 PM
Oh Lordy Lordy! Phat Burger has destroyed me. I thought, “I’m hungry, but not TOO hungry. I won’t get a burger.” I had been hankering for a nice bowl of chili allll day so I figure, “A nice bowl of chili and some cheese fries will quell this belly beast.” So I order at 6:55 and arrive back at work mere minutes before it shows up. At first, I am worried because there appears to be very little cheese on this bright orange waffle fries…wait…bright orange? I didn’t order sweet potato fries! What is this bullshit? I open the container to see my healthy potato friends have been drowned in a veritable OCEAN of melted sharp cheddar. I orgasm twice in quick succession, not being able to tell where one ends and the next begins. Then I open the chili container. BAM! Three more orgasms. My pants are a mess now, but I hardly notice the sliding warmth in my boxers. I dig in, dipping the cheese fries in my chili and smacking my lips audibly, stopping every few seconds to sip from my (glass) bottle of root beer. After about ten minutes or so, the fries are gone and my vision is getting hazy. There is a mote dancing behind my eyes and it is getting bigger and bigger, blocking my vision. Through its stringy, spinning mass I can see the empty fry container…and the three quarters full chili cup! “Good God…” I mutter, “Good God!” I scream. This makes no sense. I have eaten my fill but I still see delicious food in front of me! What has happened to me?! Am I bewitched? Am I shrinking? Has my sickness flipped some switch inside of me?
I was still grappling with this realization when I started typing. At this moment, I am still full and when I look at the chili cup still containing MORE THAN HALF of its original contents, I do not curse under my breath, I do not weep a silent, cheese-flavored tear…I merely smile and whisper the word…“oog”.
In other news I watched Boiler Room today. Not as bad as people made it out to be. Giovanni Rabisi was iight. Ben Affleck was tolerable. Vin Disel was great. I dug the soundtrack and how all the stockbrokers were whiggers xmax. Very funny stuff. The ending was pretty good too.
You know I think someone might have drugged this chili. I feel like I’m wrapped in a big, warm blanket. There is a buzzing in the back of my head. It agrees with and supports all my thoughts and ideas. It is my friend. I like it. Good. It’s as if I am underwater.
I am planning on seeing Sufjan Stevens in concert on Saturday the fourteenth. He is playing in the Allen Room at the Jazz at Lincoln Center space where Megan works. I might get to hang out with him. This isn’t like a Nine Inch Nails or They Might Be Giants thing; I am a fan of what this guy does but I don’t know him or his music (he has five albums (or eight if you count the three Xmas EP’s), I’ve heard one in totem) well enough to be obsessed. His music is deep and layered, beautiful and sad. And he has a song about zombies. Will put a track from his latest album on his Bite the Music submission and Christina Girlfriend fell fast in love with that track. The album (“Come On! Feel the Illinoise!”) is very thick. It is the second in a series of “state albums”. He has already released “Greetings from Michigan, the Great Lakes State!” and plans to write and release an album per state. Take that, John Linnell, you lazy robot! At this point, I am hungry for new music. Last year sort of spoiled me. Two new They Might Be Giants’ releases (both of which turned out to be rather lean indeed), a new Cake album (excellent), a new Beck album (nothing genre defining, but excellent nonetheless), a new eels album (monumental) that resulted in an amazing live show (which is coming to CD and DVD February 21st) and a new Nine Inch Nails album which has yet to leave my stereo (see, I bought the regular CD and the Dualdisc versions…). On top of that, Depeche Mode’s new release was a pleasant surprise as well. I saw a few concerts: Beck (very energetic), They Might Be Giants (fun as always, but nothing earthshaking), eels (amazing) and Nine Inch Nails (the definition of “100% perfection”). As far as 2006 looks, there is the eels live CD/DVD of the concert I saw (literally the concert I saw. They videotaped and recorded the Town Hall show that Phil and I were at), Cake with some others at the Unlimited Sunshine Tour (not going), talk of some new half-assed TMBG release and NIN is coming around for another leg of its tour. As far as that goes, I’m pensive because the last one was really perfect, I’m not exaggerating. Musically speaking, none of the aforementioned bands are planning any new material (except some tiny thing from TMBG which, based on their past two efforts, will not wow me). Trent Reznor has said he wants to have a new album out before 2007 but it has been NO LESS than FIVE YEARS between proper album releases for NIN, so I’m skeptical. You know, I’m just going to make a list of things to which I am looking forward…goddamn dangling participle.
Bullet Time…
• “eels With Strings” live CD/DVD (look for Phil and I standing for the last two songs)
• Something new by Beck (considering he has a lot of new stuff lying around)
• Not one, but TWO new Stephen King novels (Cell on 1.24.05 and Lesley’s Story on 10.24.06). Retired my ball sac.
• The Complete Tori Amos video collection (finally)
• Nine Inch Nails concert (hope it surpasses or at least lives up to the one before. This will be more like the first two of the With Teeth tour, but he has discussed doing a solo piano tour. That would be…indescribable.)
• Whatever stopgap release They Might Be Giants are planning (Something along the lines of the kids picture book Bed, Bed, Bed, Bed, Bed with a four song CD but “more Edwardian”. Any idea what that means?)
• Silent Hill the movie (although based on interviews and stuff, I feel like I am going to be disappointed and that totally blows. At least Uwe Boll isn’t involved…)
• The PS3 (drool)
• Acting in Ray’s film and John’s play. I like acting.
• The release of The Simpsons Season Eight, my favorite season, containing such excellent episodes as “The Springfield Files” guest starring David Duchovney and Gillian Anderson as Mulder and Scully, “Homer’s Nemesis” guest starring John Waters as John the gay guy, “You Only Move Twice” guest starring Albert Brooks as Hank Scorpio and, my all time favorite episode of The Simpsons, “The Mysterious Voyage of Our Homer” (although the original title is in Portuguese). This episode guest stars Johnny Cash as the Space Coyote, is chock full of excellent lines and has one of the best endings in Simpson history. In fact, almost all the episodes in the eighth season have excellent endings. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, seasons six through ten are pure gold.
Now, these are all things to which I am looking forward, most of them (you will be surprised to notice) are material possessions. These are not goals, they re products. What goals do I have? Nothing but getting into SAG and then, instead of making stupid good money on my acting shit, I’ll make Ariel Sharon post-stroke money on my acting shit. Yeah, paralytic mumblin’ dollaz y’all.
7:34 PM
Oh Lordy Lordy! Phat Burger has destroyed me. I thought, “I’m hungry, but not TOO hungry. I won’t get a burger.” I had been hankering for a nice bowl of chili allll day so I figure, “A nice bowl of chili and some cheese fries will quell this belly beast.” So I order at 6:55 and arrive back at work mere minutes before it shows up. At first, I am worried because there appears to be very little cheese on this bright orange waffle fries…wait…bright orange? I didn’t order sweet potato fries! What is this bullshit? I open the container to see my healthy potato friends have been drowned in a veritable OCEAN of melted sharp cheddar. I orgasm twice in quick succession, not being able to tell where one ends and the next begins. Then I open the chili container. BAM! Three more orgasms. My pants are a mess now, but I hardly notice the sliding warmth in my boxers. I dig in, dipping the cheese fries in my chili and smacking my lips audibly, stopping every few seconds to sip from my (glass) bottle of root beer. After about ten minutes or so, the fries are gone and my vision is getting hazy. There is a mote dancing behind my eyes and it is getting bigger and bigger, blocking my vision. Through its stringy, spinning mass I can see the empty fry container…and the three quarters full chili cup! “Good God…” I mutter, “Good God!” I scream. This makes no sense. I have eaten my fill but I still see delicious food in front of me! What has happened to me?! Am I bewitched? Am I shrinking? Has my sickness flipped some switch inside of me?
I was still grappling with this realization when I started typing. At this moment, I am still full and when I look at the chili cup still containing MORE THAN HALF of its original contents, I do not curse under my breath, I do not weep a silent, cheese-flavored tear…I merely smile and whisper the word…“oog”.
In other news I watched Boiler Room today. Not as bad as people made it out to be. Giovanni Rabisi was iight. Ben Affleck was tolerable. Vin Disel was great. I dug the soundtrack and how all the stockbrokers were whiggers xmax. Very funny stuff. The ending was pretty good too.
You know I think someone might have drugged this chili. I feel like I’m wrapped in a big, warm blanket. There is a buzzing in the back of my head. It agrees with and supports all my thoughts and ideas. It is my friend. I like it. Good. It’s as if I am underwater.
I am planning on seeing Sufjan Stevens in concert on Saturday the fourteenth. He is playing in the Allen Room at the Jazz at Lincoln Center space where Megan works. I might get to hang out with him. This isn’t like a Nine Inch Nails or They Might Be Giants thing; I am a fan of what this guy does but I don’t know him or his music (he has five albums (or eight if you count the three Xmas EP’s), I’ve heard one in totem) well enough to be obsessed. His music is deep and layered, beautiful and sad. And he has a song about zombies. Will put a track from his latest album on his Bite the Music submission and Christina Girlfriend fell fast in love with that track. The album (“Come On! Feel the Illinoise!”) is very thick. It is the second in a series of “state albums”. He has already released “Greetings from Michigan, the Great Lakes State!” and plans to write and release an album per state. Take that, John Linnell, you lazy robot! At this point, I am hungry for new music. Last year sort of spoiled me. Two new They Might Be Giants’ releases (both of which turned out to be rather lean indeed), a new Cake album (excellent), a new Beck album (nothing genre defining, but excellent nonetheless), a new eels album (monumental) that resulted in an amazing live show (which is coming to CD and DVD February 21st) and a new Nine Inch Nails album which has yet to leave my stereo (see, I bought the regular CD and the Dualdisc versions…). On top of that, Depeche Mode’s new release was a pleasant surprise as well. I saw a few concerts: Beck (very energetic), They Might Be Giants (fun as always, but nothing earthshaking), eels (amazing) and Nine Inch Nails (the definition of “100% perfection”). As far as 2006 looks, there is the eels live CD/DVD of the concert I saw (literally the concert I saw. They videotaped and recorded the Town Hall show that Phil and I were at), Cake with some others at the Unlimited Sunshine Tour (not going), talk of some new half-assed TMBG release and NIN is coming around for another leg of its tour. As far as that goes, I’m pensive because the last one was really perfect, I’m not exaggerating. Musically speaking, none of the aforementioned bands are planning any new material (except some tiny thing from TMBG which, based on their past two efforts, will not wow me). Trent Reznor has said he wants to have a new album out before 2007 but it has been NO LESS than FIVE YEARS between proper album releases for NIN, so I’m skeptical. You know, I’m just going to make a list of things to which I am looking forward…goddamn dangling participle.
Bullet Time…
• “eels With Strings” live CD/DVD (look for Phil and I standing for the last two songs)
• Something new by Beck (considering he has a lot of new stuff lying around)
• Not one, but TWO new Stephen King novels (Cell on 1.24.05 and Lesley’s Story on 10.24.06). Retired my ball sac.
• The Complete Tori Amos video collection (finally)
• Nine Inch Nails concert (hope it surpasses or at least lives up to the one before. This will be more like the first two of the With Teeth tour, but he has discussed doing a solo piano tour. That would be…indescribable.)
• Whatever stopgap release They Might Be Giants are planning (Something along the lines of the kids picture book Bed, Bed, Bed, Bed, Bed with a four song CD but “more Edwardian”. Any idea what that means?)
• Silent Hill the movie (although based on interviews and stuff, I feel like I am going to be disappointed and that totally blows. At least Uwe Boll isn’t involved…)
• The PS3 (drool)
• Acting in Ray’s film and John’s play. I like acting.
• The release of The Simpsons Season Eight, my favorite season, containing such excellent episodes as “The Springfield Files” guest starring David Duchovney and Gillian Anderson as Mulder and Scully, “Homer’s Nemesis” guest starring John Waters as John the gay guy, “You Only Move Twice” guest starring Albert Brooks as Hank Scorpio and, my all time favorite episode of The Simpsons, “The Mysterious Voyage of Our Homer” (although the original title is in Portuguese). This episode guest stars Johnny Cash as the Space Coyote, is chock full of excellent lines and has one of the best endings in Simpson history. In fact, almost all the episodes in the eighth season have excellent endings. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, seasons six through ten are pure gold.
Now, these are all things to which I am looking forward, most of them (you will be surprised to notice) are material possessions. These are not goals, they re products. What goals do I have? Nothing but getting into SAG and then, instead of making stupid good money on my acting shit, I’ll make Ariel Sharon post-stroke money on my acting shit. Yeah, paralytic mumblin’ dollaz y’all.
10.29.2005
Maladroit
10.28.05
9:20 PM
I just realized that Masters of the Universe (the cartoon show) was conceived simply for the merchandising potential. Think about it, was there ever a character or vehicle or location you couldn’t buy at Toys ‘R’ Us? No. What marketing geniuses those people were. Man, they knew how to exploit kids in the 80’s. Not to say they don’t know how to today. Imagine the forests that have been decimated simply to create all those fucking Yu-Gi-Oh game cards. I think that is the only cartoon show I know of that is responsible for eradicating a species of woodpecker from the earth.
Thundercats were awesome toys. They all came with a battery thing you stuck into their backs to make their eyes glow. Anyone remember the Toxic Crusaders? They weren’t allowed to call it Toxic Avengers because they couldn’t get the rights, so they called it Toxic Crusaders and made up an entire cast of supporting characters, villains etc. And man oh man did they market it. Those toys were cool too.
And all those crazy Marvel and D.C. action figures…man did I have a hard on for those things.
In fourth grade (I think it was fourth grade…) Battle Beasts were introduced. They were awesome as well. Every single piece of it was a choking hazard. You could kill three little kids with ONE package of Battle Beasts. They had a lot of detail to them.
Before those were Muscle Men. So simple. SO brilliant. And you could melt them on light bulbs.
I remember one time going to my father’s office when I was a little kid. I poured a shitload of sugar on the coffee machine hot plate and then turned it on. About five minutes later, the secretary came over and yelled at me. I demanded to know why she immediately assumed it was me. I suppose I thought (as 6 year olds do) that there might just be some fifty-something year old in a business suit pouring sugar on a hot plate just to relieve the monotony.
Trips to my dad’s office were almost always fun. There was always a large candy jar full of Hershey’s Miniatures: Krackle (by the way I have NEVER IN MY LIFE seen a full sized Krackle bar), Mr. Gooodbar, regular chocolate and dark chocolate. I would go and eat all of one kind, then all of another, then all of another until they were all gone. Then I became a problem. Imagine me…at age 6…having consumed about 3 pounds of chocolate…loose in a real estate firm. Yeah. One time, I went with my father to work because I was too sick to go to school and the babysitter wasn’t showing up until the afternoon. I remember feeling better (or thinking that I felt better) and having pizza for lunch with my dad. I remember KNOWING that I was going to throw up and also that the bathroom was down three hallways, and locked with a keypad lock. I got some puke on the walls, the floor, even a little on the ceiling of the bathroom. I can’t explain how, but it happened. That was when my dad’s office stopped being fun…until I discovered Forbidden Planet.
Back in the 80’s Forbidden Planet was in a different location…about a block from my dad’s office. I would go to his office and then go to Forbidden Planet for HOURS just hanging out there. It used to be cooler. There was like a vault downstairs where you could find ANYTHING. I never knew anything about comics then. I didn’t even buy them based on sequence. I looked at a bunch until the cover looked cool and I would buy it. For that reason I have dozens of worthless comics from the 80’s with cool covers.
There was this kid in my school named Andrew Goss. We never really got along but then again, no one had enemies back then. In an all boys’ school with excellent teachers, and a class numbering 20 (the same 20 people you’ve known since first grade) you knew everyone and you never really had enemies, you just had kids who you didn’t hang out with after school. “Play dates” they were called. You would never have anything to do with arranging them usually. Your mother or babysitter would tell you that after school you were going to _____ house. In the case of best friends (Will Marsh and later Simrall Meem) you would spend the majority of your time with them, but usually you would hang out with a good 50% of the class after school at their houses. Sometimes you would watch TV, sometimes you would play Nintendo (or later Genesis) or sometimes the other kid's babysitter would make you play in the park for a while before letting you go home and play video games and watch TV. I remember hanging out with Colin Murphy who lived right across the street from school. That was fun. I remember hanging out playing M.A.S.K. with Will Marsh (I knew him from pre-K and kindergarten too), playing Zelda with William Horstman, and trading comics with Andrew Goss. The thing was, and I think I just figured this out recently…if a kid was picking on a kid or excluding him from activities, the school would contact each of the kids’ parents and suggest a play date so the kids could become friends. I think I might have excluded Andrew from enough stuff as to attract the attention of the teachers, because, sure enough, one day after school I found myself at his house. I don’t remember much from when I was in 6th grade, just little moments and occurrences, but I do remember feeling awkward. I think it might have been the first time I ever felt that. Anyway, I was feeling awkward and then he and I started reading and trading comics. I can still remember the one I got FROM him, but I cannot remember the one I gave TO him. I got an issue of “The Mighty Thor” when Thor fought Juggernaut. I think it was pretty cool. Someone got fused with the ground. It was part of a larger story, I’m sure, but I never had any idea. I would just read the comic struggling to figure out who the fuck these people were and what they were doing and why they were doing it, and at the end of the issue, I would always think, “hm, I feel unfulfilled” not grasping the concept that I could easily go out and find the next part in that story. Eventually, I figured it out and I accrued a nice collection. I think. I really have no idea of the value of comics. I think the most valuable thing I own is some bullshit title (Captain America and the Falcon) from 1972. Shit. Well, I never went into collecting them anyway.
I did collect Matchbox cars. Those things were awesome and I actually remember playing with them and having fun. Simrall and I would stay up for HOURS playing with those fucking cars. It’s hard to remember a time when I didn’t need electricity or a controller or a keyboard to have fun.
As it is today, just being with friends was what was fun. Sim and I could play with cars, we could play Streets of Rage 2 (put in the Game Genie infinite life code and set the game on its hardest difficulty), we could torture his twin brother and sister (Halsey and Bard) or whatever.
Simrall used to make these tapes for me. He called them the “F.U. tapes”. He would put a blank tape into his family’s answering machine and record himself instead of the greeting. But the machine was weird in that sometimes it would let him talk until the tape ended, some times it would give him a minute or thirty seconds or one second so time was of the essence. Between his talking (which was pretty fucking funny; we were awesome friends) he would put songs from the radio, from his CD’s (of which he had about 7 at the time) or whatever he felt like. At this moment, in my desk at home (in Florida) I have 30 or more. I need to break those out and reminisce.
When I left New York, for some reason I didn’t tell anyone. Not anyone. I came into school one day and told Sim I was moving to Florida. He blinked and then gave me the seven dollars he had in his wallet and a cassette tape he had in his locker (I think it was “Diary of a Mad Bitch” by some terrible female gangsta rapper; remember this was 1993, the birth of gangsta rap…) and said, “I’ll see you later.” We kept in touch for a while, still staying best friends. I saw him when I visited the city; he continued to send me FU tapes and strange packages. Very strange packages. Once he sent me a shell casing and a picture of him at a shooting range. One time, he sent me (from his father’s office) a very official looking envelope containing a whole sheaf of blank paper except for a few pages that were photocopies of ads for strip clubs in the city. Once, during my difficult transition from New York City to Mungtown, I had him prank call a bunch of assholes from my class over summer vacation. We didn’t have three way calling, but he told me everything that happened. At some point, either he or I stopped communicating. I can’t remember why. I called him a few years later to find out he was into pot and the Grateful Dead. That depressed me on such a level I am unable to dwell on it.
What that meant to me was…I don’t know. The door between my very best friend ever. My first best friend was closed. Not just because of the pot (although my disdain for people who are dependant on drugs weighed in quite significantly) but because there was nothing left of the snappy banter and intelligent contact we used to have. It was the same with Aaron Gunn when he came to visit me freshman year in NYC. He was a dull, blurred shadow of his former self. He had lost his edge. As had Seth, although I have seen him since and he is a new man. He is so TALL. Compared to high school, of course.
So many memories with Simmy will remain that. Nothing new will come from that bond we once shared.
I guess. I mean I really haven’t spoken to him in a decade. He might have cleaned up, gotten a degree as…something and gone on to crazy things. His old apartment was on 86th and Park. I remember right where it is, I could go over there tonight and see if his family is still there. That would be crazy. Just show up. I should definitely check that out.
Hang on; I’m gong to look him up in the phone book…
I think I got them! Hang on, I want to double check with the operator…
Okay, got an address, two phone numbers (same except for the last 2 digits), which I cannot remember if they are the same, although I DO remember Sim’s parents having two numbers AND there is only one of his family's name in New York City.... That was amazingly easy. Like finding-someone-in-the-phone-book-in-a-movie easy.
What do I do now? If I had nothing in common with him and a sense of disdain because of the drugs ten years ago, what’s going to happen today? Jesus. I feel emotionally overwhelmed. Memories of all the fun we had. Years of memories and fun. Days straight spent with each other. This is too much for me right now. I’m still sick and this all might just be a reaction I’m having to the broccoli slaw. I need my throat to stop doing this.
I need a clear head.
I wish it weren’t so hot and dry in here.
My throat screams with each breath I pull in.
I started writing to distract myself and blow off some SOC steam but I find myself here, completely aware of what I am writing. My aim has turned in on itself. I can no longer find the stream. I want to be home watching TV. I bought Resident Evil 4 today. In the scheme of things, it's nothing new. Nothing is anything new. Ever.
After a pause, I feel better. I called Christina to see if the Dresden Dolls show was over only to be treated to a cell phone serenade of DD covering “Science Fiction Double Feature” at their Halloween show. I feel better already. I am tossing around ordering pick up from El Paso, but I am still debating. I feel like rice and beans would make things better…At this moment I’ve been typing for one hour and twenty minutes straight. It doesn’t feel that long at all. When you are really into what you are writing, Phil should know this, you forget time and, for a short moment, Time forgets you.
I downloaded “Doom: The Movie” for a Nine Inch Nails remix that's in the movie somewhere. The file cut out 2 seconds into the song and, from what I gleaned (I didn’t watch it, I skipped through listening for the song) it’s not as bad as reviewers made it out to be...it’s actually worse. The Onion reviewed it and absolutely shredded it. Same as Saw II. No surprises.
Mm, those rice and beans are really making me think happy. I think I will place that order right now.
This was a good spell, I think.
9:20 PM
I just realized that Masters of the Universe (the cartoon show) was conceived simply for the merchandising potential. Think about it, was there ever a character or vehicle or location you couldn’t buy at Toys ‘R’ Us? No. What marketing geniuses those people were. Man, they knew how to exploit kids in the 80’s. Not to say they don’t know how to today. Imagine the forests that have been decimated simply to create all those fucking Yu-Gi-Oh game cards. I think that is the only cartoon show I know of that is responsible for eradicating a species of woodpecker from the earth.
Thundercats were awesome toys. They all came with a battery thing you stuck into their backs to make their eyes glow. Anyone remember the Toxic Crusaders? They weren’t allowed to call it Toxic Avengers because they couldn’t get the rights, so they called it Toxic Crusaders and made up an entire cast of supporting characters, villains etc. And man oh man did they market it. Those toys were cool too.
And all those crazy Marvel and D.C. action figures…man did I have a hard on for those things.
In fourth grade (I think it was fourth grade…) Battle Beasts were introduced. They were awesome as well. Every single piece of it was a choking hazard. You could kill three little kids with ONE package of Battle Beasts. They had a lot of detail to them.
Before those were Muscle Men. So simple. SO brilliant. And you could melt them on light bulbs.
I remember one time going to my father’s office when I was a little kid. I poured a shitload of sugar on the coffee machine hot plate and then turned it on. About five minutes later, the secretary came over and yelled at me. I demanded to know why she immediately assumed it was me. I suppose I thought (as 6 year olds do) that there might just be some fifty-something year old in a business suit pouring sugar on a hot plate just to relieve the monotony.
Trips to my dad’s office were almost always fun. There was always a large candy jar full of Hershey’s Miniatures: Krackle (by the way I have NEVER IN MY LIFE seen a full sized Krackle bar), Mr. Gooodbar, regular chocolate and dark chocolate. I would go and eat all of one kind, then all of another, then all of another until they were all gone. Then I became a problem. Imagine me…at age 6…having consumed about 3 pounds of chocolate…loose in a real estate firm. Yeah. One time, I went with my father to work because I was too sick to go to school and the babysitter wasn’t showing up until the afternoon. I remember feeling better (or thinking that I felt better) and having pizza for lunch with my dad. I remember KNOWING that I was going to throw up and also that the bathroom was down three hallways, and locked with a keypad lock. I got some puke on the walls, the floor, even a little on the ceiling of the bathroom. I can’t explain how, but it happened. That was when my dad’s office stopped being fun…until I discovered Forbidden Planet.
Back in the 80’s Forbidden Planet was in a different location…about a block from my dad’s office. I would go to his office and then go to Forbidden Planet for HOURS just hanging out there. It used to be cooler. There was like a vault downstairs where you could find ANYTHING. I never knew anything about comics then. I didn’t even buy them based on sequence. I looked at a bunch until the cover looked cool and I would buy it. For that reason I have dozens of worthless comics from the 80’s with cool covers.
There was this kid in my school named Andrew Goss. We never really got along but then again, no one had enemies back then. In an all boys’ school with excellent teachers, and a class numbering 20 (the same 20 people you’ve known since first grade) you knew everyone and you never really had enemies, you just had kids who you didn’t hang out with after school. “Play dates” they were called. You would never have anything to do with arranging them usually. Your mother or babysitter would tell you that after school you were going to _____ house. In the case of best friends (Will Marsh and later Simrall Meem) you would spend the majority of your time with them, but usually you would hang out with a good 50% of the class after school at their houses. Sometimes you would watch TV, sometimes you would play Nintendo (or later Genesis) or sometimes the other kid's babysitter would make you play in the park for a while before letting you go home and play video games and watch TV. I remember hanging out with Colin Murphy who lived right across the street from school. That was fun. I remember hanging out playing M.A.S.K. with Will Marsh (I knew him from pre-K and kindergarten too), playing Zelda with William Horstman, and trading comics with Andrew Goss. The thing was, and I think I just figured this out recently…if a kid was picking on a kid or excluding him from activities, the school would contact each of the kids’ parents and suggest a play date so the kids could become friends. I think I might have excluded Andrew from enough stuff as to attract the attention of the teachers, because, sure enough, one day after school I found myself at his house. I don’t remember much from when I was in 6th grade, just little moments and occurrences, but I do remember feeling awkward. I think it might have been the first time I ever felt that. Anyway, I was feeling awkward and then he and I started reading and trading comics. I can still remember the one I got FROM him, but I cannot remember the one I gave TO him. I got an issue of “The Mighty Thor” when Thor fought Juggernaut. I think it was pretty cool. Someone got fused with the ground. It was part of a larger story, I’m sure, but I never had any idea. I would just read the comic struggling to figure out who the fuck these people were and what they were doing and why they were doing it, and at the end of the issue, I would always think, “hm, I feel unfulfilled” not grasping the concept that I could easily go out and find the next part in that story. Eventually, I figured it out and I accrued a nice collection. I think. I really have no idea of the value of comics. I think the most valuable thing I own is some bullshit title (Captain America and the Falcon) from 1972. Shit. Well, I never went into collecting them anyway.
I did collect Matchbox cars. Those things were awesome and I actually remember playing with them and having fun. Simrall and I would stay up for HOURS playing with those fucking cars. It’s hard to remember a time when I didn’t need electricity or a controller or a keyboard to have fun.
As it is today, just being with friends was what was fun. Sim and I could play with cars, we could play Streets of Rage 2 (put in the Game Genie infinite life code and set the game on its hardest difficulty), we could torture his twin brother and sister (Halsey and Bard) or whatever.
Simrall used to make these tapes for me. He called them the “F.U. tapes”. He would put a blank tape into his family’s answering machine and record himself instead of the greeting. But the machine was weird in that sometimes it would let him talk until the tape ended, some times it would give him a minute or thirty seconds or one second so time was of the essence. Between his talking (which was pretty fucking funny; we were awesome friends) he would put songs from the radio, from his CD’s (of which he had about 7 at the time) or whatever he felt like. At this moment, in my desk at home (in Florida) I have 30 or more. I need to break those out and reminisce.
When I left New York, for some reason I didn’t tell anyone. Not anyone. I came into school one day and told Sim I was moving to Florida. He blinked and then gave me the seven dollars he had in his wallet and a cassette tape he had in his locker (I think it was “Diary of a Mad Bitch” by some terrible female gangsta rapper; remember this was 1993, the birth of gangsta rap…) and said, “I’ll see you later.” We kept in touch for a while, still staying best friends. I saw him when I visited the city; he continued to send me FU tapes and strange packages. Very strange packages. Once he sent me a shell casing and a picture of him at a shooting range. One time, he sent me (from his father’s office) a very official looking envelope containing a whole sheaf of blank paper except for a few pages that were photocopies of ads for strip clubs in the city. Once, during my difficult transition from New York City to Mungtown, I had him prank call a bunch of assholes from my class over summer vacation. We didn’t have three way calling, but he told me everything that happened. At some point, either he or I stopped communicating. I can’t remember why. I called him a few years later to find out he was into pot and the Grateful Dead. That depressed me on such a level I am unable to dwell on it.
What that meant to me was…I don’t know. The door between my very best friend ever. My first best friend was closed. Not just because of the pot (although my disdain for people who are dependant on drugs weighed in quite significantly) but because there was nothing left of the snappy banter and intelligent contact we used to have. It was the same with Aaron Gunn when he came to visit me freshman year in NYC. He was a dull, blurred shadow of his former self. He had lost his edge. As had Seth, although I have seen him since and he is a new man. He is so TALL. Compared to high school, of course.
So many memories with Simmy will remain that. Nothing new will come from that bond we once shared.
I guess. I mean I really haven’t spoken to him in a decade. He might have cleaned up, gotten a degree as…something and gone on to crazy things. His old apartment was on 86th and Park. I remember right where it is, I could go over there tonight and see if his family is still there. That would be crazy. Just show up. I should definitely check that out.
Hang on; I’m gong to look him up in the phone book…
I think I got them! Hang on, I want to double check with the operator…
Okay, got an address, two phone numbers (same except for the last 2 digits), which I cannot remember if they are the same, although I DO remember Sim’s parents having two numbers AND there is only one of his family's name in New York City.... That was amazingly easy. Like finding-someone-in-the-phone-book-in-a-movie easy.
What do I do now? If I had nothing in common with him and a sense of disdain because of the drugs ten years ago, what’s going to happen today? Jesus. I feel emotionally overwhelmed. Memories of all the fun we had. Years of memories and fun. Days straight spent with each other. This is too much for me right now. I’m still sick and this all might just be a reaction I’m having to the broccoli slaw. I need my throat to stop doing this.
I need a clear head.
I wish it weren’t so hot and dry in here.
My throat screams with each breath I pull in.
I started writing to distract myself and blow off some SOC steam but I find myself here, completely aware of what I am writing. My aim has turned in on itself. I can no longer find the stream. I want to be home watching TV. I bought Resident Evil 4 today. In the scheme of things, it's nothing new. Nothing is anything new. Ever.
After a pause, I feel better. I called Christina to see if the Dresden Dolls show was over only to be treated to a cell phone serenade of DD covering “Science Fiction Double Feature” at their Halloween show. I feel better already. I am tossing around ordering pick up from El Paso, but I am still debating. I feel like rice and beans would make things better…At this moment I’ve been typing for one hour and twenty minutes straight. It doesn’t feel that long at all. When you are really into what you are writing, Phil should know this, you forget time and, for a short moment, Time forgets you.
I downloaded “Doom: The Movie” for a Nine Inch Nails remix that's in the movie somewhere. The file cut out 2 seconds into the song and, from what I gleaned (I didn’t watch it, I skipped through listening for the song) it’s not as bad as reviewers made it out to be...it’s actually worse. The Onion reviewed it and absolutely shredded it. Same as Saw II. No surprises.
Mm, those rice and beans are really making me think happy. I think I will place that order right now.
This was a good spell, I think.
5.19.2005
So what.
5.18.05
6:09
Sew buttons…motherfucker.
A few nights ago saw Nine Inch Nails at Hammerstein Ballroom. Pretty awesome shit. Not only did they play one of my favorite songs, but I was three feet from David Bowie (and, incidentally, twelve feet from Chris Rock). He came out to his seat about five minutes before the show started but one fan noticed him and thought it would be helpful to shriek “DAVID BOWIE DAVID BOWIE DAVID BOWIE DAVID BOWIE DAVID BOWIE DAVID BOWIE DAVID BOWIE!!!!!!” It seemed Mr. Bowie found this less helpful than the fan thought it would be and left. A moment or so after the show started, he came out and took his seat. At one point, another overzealous fan wanted me to pass a drink up to Mr. Bowie, thinking that he would love to accept and drink from a cup passed to him from a Nine Inch Nails pit. I explained to the guy that I didn’t think Mr. Bowie wanted to be disturbed and that he didn’t look all that thirsty to me. After the show the guy came up to me and said he understood why I didn’t pass the cup to him and that he bore me no ill will. Whew. That would have totally ruined my night otherwise.
After the show I mingled with people who have more artistic ability in their feces then I will ever have in my entire body…unless I fill my body with their feces.
I also noticed yesterday that the new Star Wars comes out tonight (midnight) and I discovered that being able to say I was at the first showing is about as important as being able to remember where I was during 9/11. It isn’t. Why would I go that far out of my way to see it? So I can impress my unborn children by telling them I was there? I don’t plan on raising my kids to be impressed with bullshit like that. Jesus.
In a short time I will put up a link to Iggy Pop’s cover of “Louie Louie”. It is pure rock and it features a guitar solo that will singe your pubic hair…guaranteed.
Philip joins our cadre on Monday. I find myself unable to become excited. I think I have damaged my circuitry. All I can do to show my eager anticipation is wander around in a priapic state much to the chagrin of the local authorities. I will soon be cited for “sexually assaulting the air”, a fine I will gladly pay.
I am two episodes away from the end of Oz and the episode I watched today had me bawling for a good fifteen minutes. I have received the first two discs of “The Sopranos” from NetFlix and I look forward to redigesting that series soon.
At this moment, I have over four hours left in my shift at the Hospital and I am bitter because I was only scheduled to work four hours total (3p –7p) but blah blah called in and blah blah blah. Idiots. They couldn’t schedule an erection at the Priapism Clinic…where I was earlier today.
I can feel the warm, fuzzy fingers of Sleep fluffing a pillow under my head and I just might doze off a bit. The board and phone have been rather quiet…oh wait, I turned them off…well, anyway, I might answer a few calls and then lay my head down for forty winks or so. A power nap. Yeah, a power nap…
NO! I must not succumb to Satan’s Sleep Whisperings!!
MUST…STAY…DISTRACTED!!!
So, as some of you might know, I am doing two more performances of Lysistrata: The Musical this weekend in New Lebanon, New York at a place called Theatre Barn. We have replaced three people in the cast and I have charged myself with welcoming them (officially) to the cast this weekend.
We arrive just before noon on Friday and rehearse until 6. Then a cast dinner somewhere in New Lebanon. We have another day of rehearsal until our 8pm show on Saturday night, after which there will be a mind-bending/erasing cast party during which the Welcoming shall commence. Part one will welcome the two new girls: Liz and Debra. It consists of me lip-synching to Beck’s “Debra”, treating Liz as “Jenny” and Debra as “Debra”. Debra has seen almost every incarnation of Lysistrata and now that she has become a part of it, she is happy as a theatrical pig in theatrical shit to be here. Liz, I don’t really know, but I hope she likes to be groped and offered “a fresh pack of gum”. Part two of the Welcoming will be for our new “Cadman”, Ricky. I plan to serenade him with Electric Six’s “Gay Bar”. If he isn’t actually gay now, he will be once I’m done. Sursly.
Now, Christina, I’m sure you remember a certain cast party where your certain boyfriend made out with a lot of other certain people and then there was a certain Mono scare going around. Well, this time around I promise not to kiss ANYONE, male or female, gay or straight, plant, animal or mineral…not that you’d notice. I can barely make you out on the horizon as you speed off in your Short-Filmobile with your new talented friends with their talented feces and leave me in my Theatredust with my own nutrient deprived waste products.
Anyway, after the Brain Washing Bash on Saturday night, we have a second performance set for Sunday afternoon at 2pm. Personally, I think that is a BAAAD idea. Quite a few members of the cast are horny problem drinkers with no morals to speak of and I fear that come 2pm on Sunday, half the cast will have drowned in a pool of OPV (other people’s vomit) while the other half will be dealing with OPSTD (other people’s sexually transmitted diseases). Which leads me to ask: Why the fuck are theatre people so goddamn loose?
The Theatre Company at Fordham was a veritable Fuckfest. A student just arriving at Fordham this year could, conceivable catch the same crabs that afflicted a senior from twelve years ago. I remember my Freshmen year these two girls (ugly ones who would never be a part of the fucking, so they had to find something wrong with it) did some digging and created a flow chart of hook-ups, blow jobs, one night stands and anything else that connected the students, past and present of the Theatre Company. It was a sobering diagram, my friends. Lisa’s college was a total Fuck Out also. I am amazed and thankful that she didn’t contract syphilis, clamydia or some new STD created solely by the licentious droves of Florida Southern simply from being in contact with these walking Petri dishes. Just thinking about it makes me want to wear a condom and immerse my genitals in bleach.
So why is it? Why do Theatre people fuck so much? Is it that much of a turn-on to pretend you're someone or something you are not? Or does acting not have anything to do with it? Is it just a gathering of people who understand on the most instinctual level that the people around them will put out? I am baffled by it, but every single show I have ever been in with more than one person in the cast has had sexual tension you could cut with a pink jelly double-dong.
8:06
I don’t know if you ever got around to digging up the story or not but a few weeks ago, a man just wandered out of the Hospital. He showed up here two weeks later, grinning like an asshole. Anyway, the security here is not top notch, to be nice. A moment ago, some lady in a wheelchair rolled passed the security guards into the security office and sat talking to me for a solid twenty minutes about how she feels bad that she annoys me and wanted to apologize for everything she’s done and she hates that she’s impatient but sometimes she can’t help it…only I have no idea who this woman is. I don’t know if she thought I was a priest or her dead husband or what but, oh my fiery lord was it creepy! She had almost no hair and her eyes were fucking HUGE in her gaunt, waxy face. She wouldn’t look me in the eyes, but I felt her gaze on my arms like ants trying to find a way in. Finally, after too long to tell, the phone rings and I turn away. I continued speaking for three minutes after the person hung up, feeling these ants on the back of my head. Suddenly, her ants were gone and she was rolling away, down the hall. If I ever do call the press about how bad things are run and done here, remind me to spend a point or two of blood to shame the balls off of the Security Force, the lazy fuckstains.
You know, my encounter with this sepulchral woman reminded me of a thought I had a few nights ago. I was thinking about being older. Not getting old or being old, but being older. Forty-five or some age like that. At first, I was unable to picture myself at forty-five, then I saw myself clearly and decided that I would have to kill myself before I get much older than thirty. Aside from how creepy I’ll look in twenty years, there’s all the medical stuff that is only peripheral right now but will get worse and worse as I age. I figure once I start to get up there, you all will have forgotten this LiveJournal entry and I will have successfully phased myself out of your lives over a period of years and then, BAM, a lanky, beautiful god-star becomes a lanky, beautiful copse before it can become a creepy zombie man trying not to look at people for fear they misconstrue my accidental glance as a psychic assault on their unborn child or something equally plausible. You see, with the advent of the new TMBG, Beck, eels and NIN albums this year, I realized something: no matter how much importance I place on material possessions, there is still an emptiness, even bigger than before I obtained whatever object I was looking for, and the only thing that will stop the hole from widening is to stop the one with the hole in him. All I really have to look forward to is aging and pain and complications brought on by my various maladies. My eyesight, my connective tissue, my heart, none of that is going to get better with age. The only things that gets better with age is cheese and wine and even the best of each will become unusable after enough time has passed. Friends, I am NOT cheese nor am I wine. I have accepted this. Everything I do is just a distraction. Watching HBO series from NetFlix, checking the same dozen websites hour after hour, day after day for news about a concert, a video, a single, a poster, sleeping whenever I can, everything. The big question up until now was: A distraction from what? Life, folks, life and the fact that it is ending, right now. I sit here reading, talking on the phone, listening to beeps, phones ringing…I am killing time. Killing time until I can get home and watch TV shows that stopped being new three years ago, so I can buy food from the deli, so I can go to sleep, so I can download music, find it lacking and delete it. I’m always desperately looking for something to kill time. Maybe I should stop killing time. You know, time had no real meaning for me until my sophomore year in college. Then all of a sudden, a day was a day. There really were sixty minutes in an hour. I could count three seconds and three seconds would have passed. The time elongation I enjoyed as a kid ended abruptly in my second year at college. I didn’t feel older, I still feel like an 8th grader in a 24-year old body. But I was now able to feel the passage f time for what t was. Days no longer lasted forever. I remember the last day I feel the elasticity of time. It was the birthday of one of Danielle Grelik’s roommates and also the first day of Daylights Savings. We had just gained an hour but I did so much that day. I finally looked at my watch and saw it was only seven o’ clock at night. Five hours later, it was nine. Three hours later, eleven, an hour and a half later, midnight. Slowly, but surely, time became time. It’s only going to keep getting faster from here on out. Some writer described time as “the old bald cheater.” I don’t think time can be personified like Death or the Fates. Time is too immense to be crammed into one, finite form. Time is sort of like a wind. When you are younger, you don’t feel it moving, because it isn’t really. It is surrounding you, swirling this way and that, keeping you warm in your happy, blurry kiddie days. As you get older, it starts to move a bit, gets less warm. Eventually, it starts moving in one direction: towards the future and it gets colder and faster as you grow up. That’s why old people are always cold and forgetful. Time is moving so fast that they have nothing to hold onto, not even memory. God damn that’s grim; and I, for one, would NOT like to be a part of that. So how about this: as soon as I run out of things to do (as in, as soon as I stop finding things to distract me) or my body finally goes from passive to active as far as self-destruction, I’m out of here. Deal? Good.
My head hurts.
6:09
Sew buttons…motherfucker.
A few nights ago saw Nine Inch Nails at Hammerstein Ballroom. Pretty awesome shit. Not only did they play one of my favorite songs, but I was three feet from David Bowie (and, incidentally, twelve feet from Chris Rock). He came out to his seat about five minutes before the show started but one fan noticed him and thought it would be helpful to shriek “DAVID BOWIE DAVID BOWIE DAVID BOWIE DAVID BOWIE DAVID BOWIE DAVID BOWIE DAVID BOWIE!!!!!!” It seemed Mr. Bowie found this less helpful than the fan thought it would be and left. A moment or so after the show started, he came out and took his seat. At one point, another overzealous fan wanted me to pass a drink up to Mr. Bowie, thinking that he would love to accept and drink from a cup passed to him from a Nine Inch Nails pit. I explained to the guy that I didn’t think Mr. Bowie wanted to be disturbed and that he didn’t look all that thirsty to me. After the show the guy came up to me and said he understood why I didn’t pass the cup to him and that he bore me no ill will. Whew. That would have totally ruined my night otherwise.
After the show I mingled with people who have more artistic ability in their feces then I will ever have in my entire body…unless I fill my body with their feces.
I also noticed yesterday that the new Star Wars comes out tonight (midnight) and I discovered that being able to say I was at the first showing is about as important as being able to remember where I was during 9/11. It isn’t. Why would I go that far out of my way to see it? So I can impress my unborn children by telling them I was there? I don’t plan on raising my kids to be impressed with bullshit like that. Jesus.
In a short time I will put up a link to Iggy Pop’s cover of “Louie Louie”. It is pure rock and it features a guitar solo that will singe your pubic hair…guaranteed.
Philip joins our cadre on Monday. I find myself unable to become excited. I think I have damaged my circuitry. All I can do to show my eager anticipation is wander around in a priapic state much to the chagrin of the local authorities. I will soon be cited for “sexually assaulting the air”, a fine I will gladly pay.
I am two episodes away from the end of Oz and the episode I watched today had me bawling for a good fifteen minutes. I have received the first two discs of “The Sopranos” from NetFlix and I look forward to redigesting that series soon.
At this moment, I have over four hours left in my shift at the Hospital and I am bitter because I was only scheduled to work four hours total (3p –7p) but blah blah called in and blah blah blah. Idiots. They couldn’t schedule an erection at the Priapism Clinic…where I was earlier today.
I can feel the warm, fuzzy fingers of Sleep fluffing a pillow under my head and I just might doze off a bit. The board and phone have been rather quiet…oh wait, I turned them off…well, anyway, I might answer a few calls and then lay my head down for forty winks or so. A power nap. Yeah, a power nap…
NO! I must not succumb to Satan’s Sleep Whisperings!!
MUST…STAY…DISTRACTED!!!
So, as some of you might know, I am doing two more performances of Lysistrata: The Musical this weekend in New Lebanon, New York at a place called Theatre Barn. We have replaced three people in the cast and I have charged myself with welcoming them (officially) to the cast this weekend.
We arrive just before noon on Friday and rehearse until 6. Then a cast dinner somewhere in New Lebanon. We have another day of rehearsal until our 8pm show on Saturday night, after which there will be a mind-bending/erasing cast party during which the Welcoming shall commence. Part one will welcome the two new girls: Liz and Debra. It consists of me lip-synching to Beck’s “Debra”, treating Liz as “Jenny” and Debra as “Debra”. Debra has seen almost every incarnation of Lysistrata and now that she has become a part of it, she is happy as a theatrical pig in theatrical shit to be here. Liz, I don’t really know, but I hope she likes to be groped and offered “a fresh pack of gum”. Part two of the Welcoming will be for our new “Cadman”, Ricky. I plan to serenade him with Electric Six’s “Gay Bar”. If he isn’t actually gay now, he will be once I’m done. Sursly.
Now, Christina, I’m sure you remember a certain cast party where your certain boyfriend made out with a lot of other certain people and then there was a certain Mono scare going around. Well, this time around I promise not to kiss ANYONE, male or female, gay or straight, plant, animal or mineral…not that you’d notice. I can barely make you out on the horizon as you speed off in your Short-Filmobile with your new talented friends with their talented feces and leave me in my Theatredust with my own nutrient deprived waste products.
Anyway, after the Brain Washing Bash on Saturday night, we have a second performance set for Sunday afternoon at 2pm. Personally, I think that is a BAAAD idea. Quite a few members of the cast are horny problem drinkers with no morals to speak of and I fear that come 2pm on Sunday, half the cast will have drowned in a pool of OPV (other people’s vomit) while the other half will be dealing with OPSTD (other people’s sexually transmitted diseases). Which leads me to ask: Why the fuck are theatre people so goddamn loose?
The Theatre Company at Fordham was a veritable Fuckfest. A student just arriving at Fordham this year could, conceivable catch the same crabs that afflicted a senior from twelve years ago. I remember my Freshmen year these two girls (ugly ones who would never be a part of the fucking, so they had to find something wrong with it) did some digging and created a flow chart of hook-ups, blow jobs, one night stands and anything else that connected the students, past and present of the Theatre Company. It was a sobering diagram, my friends. Lisa’s college was a total Fuck Out also. I am amazed and thankful that she didn’t contract syphilis, clamydia or some new STD created solely by the licentious droves of Florida Southern simply from being in contact with these walking Petri dishes. Just thinking about it makes me want to wear a condom and immerse my genitals in bleach.
So why is it? Why do Theatre people fuck so much? Is it that much of a turn-on to pretend you're someone or something you are not? Or does acting not have anything to do with it? Is it just a gathering of people who understand on the most instinctual level that the people around them will put out? I am baffled by it, but every single show I have ever been in with more than one person in the cast has had sexual tension you could cut with a pink jelly double-dong.
8:06
I don’t know if you ever got around to digging up the story or not but a few weeks ago, a man just wandered out of the Hospital. He showed up here two weeks later, grinning like an asshole. Anyway, the security here is not top notch, to be nice. A moment ago, some lady in a wheelchair rolled passed the security guards into the security office and sat talking to me for a solid twenty minutes about how she feels bad that she annoys me and wanted to apologize for everything she’s done and she hates that she’s impatient but sometimes she can’t help it…only I have no idea who this woman is. I don’t know if she thought I was a priest or her dead husband or what but, oh my fiery lord was it creepy! She had almost no hair and her eyes were fucking HUGE in her gaunt, waxy face. She wouldn’t look me in the eyes, but I felt her gaze on my arms like ants trying to find a way in. Finally, after too long to tell, the phone rings and I turn away. I continued speaking for three minutes after the person hung up, feeling these ants on the back of my head. Suddenly, her ants were gone and she was rolling away, down the hall. If I ever do call the press about how bad things are run and done here, remind me to spend a point or two of blood to shame the balls off of the Security Force, the lazy fuckstains.
You know, my encounter with this sepulchral woman reminded me of a thought I had a few nights ago. I was thinking about being older. Not getting old or being old, but being older. Forty-five or some age like that. At first, I was unable to picture myself at forty-five, then I saw myself clearly and decided that I would have to kill myself before I get much older than thirty. Aside from how creepy I’ll look in twenty years, there’s all the medical stuff that is only peripheral right now but will get worse and worse as I age. I figure once I start to get up there, you all will have forgotten this LiveJournal entry and I will have successfully phased myself out of your lives over a period of years and then, BAM, a lanky, beautiful god-star becomes a lanky, beautiful copse before it can become a creepy zombie man trying not to look at people for fear they misconstrue my accidental glance as a psychic assault on their unborn child or something equally plausible. You see, with the advent of the new TMBG, Beck, eels and NIN albums this year, I realized something: no matter how much importance I place on material possessions, there is still an emptiness, even bigger than before I obtained whatever object I was looking for, and the only thing that will stop the hole from widening is to stop the one with the hole in him. All I really have to look forward to is aging and pain and complications brought on by my various maladies. My eyesight, my connective tissue, my heart, none of that is going to get better with age. The only things that gets better with age is cheese and wine and even the best of each will become unusable after enough time has passed. Friends, I am NOT cheese nor am I wine. I have accepted this. Everything I do is just a distraction. Watching HBO series from NetFlix, checking the same dozen websites hour after hour, day after day for news about a concert, a video, a single, a poster, sleeping whenever I can, everything. The big question up until now was: A distraction from what? Life, folks, life and the fact that it is ending, right now. I sit here reading, talking on the phone, listening to beeps, phones ringing…I am killing time. Killing time until I can get home and watch TV shows that stopped being new three years ago, so I can buy food from the deli, so I can go to sleep, so I can download music, find it lacking and delete it. I’m always desperately looking for something to kill time. Maybe I should stop killing time. You know, time had no real meaning for me until my sophomore year in college. Then all of a sudden, a day was a day. There really were sixty minutes in an hour. I could count three seconds and three seconds would have passed. The time elongation I enjoyed as a kid ended abruptly in my second year at college. I didn’t feel older, I still feel like an 8th grader in a 24-year old body. But I was now able to feel the passage f time for what t was. Days no longer lasted forever. I remember the last day I feel the elasticity of time. It was the birthday of one of Danielle Grelik’s roommates and also the first day of Daylights Savings. We had just gained an hour but I did so much that day. I finally looked at my watch and saw it was only seven o’ clock at night. Five hours later, it was nine. Three hours later, eleven, an hour and a half later, midnight. Slowly, but surely, time became time. It’s only going to keep getting faster from here on out. Some writer described time as “the old bald cheater.” I don’t think time can be personified like Death or the Fates. Time is too immense to be crammed into one, finite form. Time is sort of like a wind. When you are younger, you don’t feel it moving, because it isn’t really. It is surrounding you, swirling this way and that, keeping you warm in your happy, blurry kiddie days. As you get older, it starts to move a bit, gets less warm. Eventually, it starts moving in one direction: towards the future and it gets colder and faster as you grow up. That’s why old people are always cold and forgetful. Time is moving so fast that they have nothing to hold onto, not even memory. God damn that’s grim; and I, for one, would NOT like to be a part of that. So how about this: as soon as I run out of things to do (as in, as soon as I stop finding things to distract me) or my body finally goes from passive to active as far as self-destruction, I’m out of here. Deal? Good.
My head hurts.
12.17.2003
Long Day Pt.1:All Saddam, All The Fucking Time, Pt.2:Baby Jesus: Bornto Rock, Pt.3:R&B:The Formula
Ok, so everything beneath this sentence was written during my 7am to 7pm shift at the hospital where I work as switchboard operator last Sunday, the 14th…quite a long day…
12.14.03
9:47 am
At this moment it is 9:47 AM and I am in the Communications center at TCC (the hospital I sometimes work at as switchboard operator). I’ve been here for two hours and forty-eight minutes now and when I walked in at seven, the radio was set to WCBS, the news station. I don’t know if any of you ever listen to WCBS, but here’s how it goes: Something happens…anything and it is talked about over and over and over and over ALL FUCKING DAY. This story (today it happens to be the capture of Saddam Hussein) is reported, then the weather is given, then a commercial, then sports, then commercials, then Saddam, then traffic, then a commercial, then Saddam, then weather, then a commercial, then sports, then a commercial, then Saddam et fucking cetera, literally, all day. If you are skeptic, try it some time. Then picture yourself locked in a small room with this radio for twelve hours. The only things that changes in these news “reports” are the descriptive terms. “The people of Iraq are: joyous/jubilant/happy/celebrant/horny/dancing/exultant/erect/slimy/tall after hearing the news.” At the start of the day it was simply them talking incessantly about “unconfirmed reports” which they kept reporting until finally some top brass nut sac over in Iraq made a two minute statement…which was then sampled incessantly over and over and over and over. I heard that Fuck Stick G. Paul Willard or whatever say, "Ladies and gentlemen…(pause meaningfully because you know this is the equivalent of the moon landing or the invention of Viagra and you know it will be quoted for THOUSANDS of years to come)…we got him” about nine hundred times. Then there are the sports. Since there are only five sets of scores, they were listed about six thousand times. Then, of course, the absolutely in-depth DISCUSSIONS about the weather. I swear to God that I would rather them try to count the snowflakes than TALK about the snow. Jesus. I hate Saddam more for being caught than for all his atrocities. Then again, they would have just jabbered about some other shit. God I hate things.
P.S. Among the other things I hate are the people who say, “Does this mean the war is over?” almost as many times as, “And now…more on the Capture of Saddam Hussein…on WCBS…dun dun dun…
10:57 am
Okay, so some well-meaning but utterly damned-for-their-crime-against-humanity person just changed the station to…before I say it I want you all to imagine something worse than what I mentioned before…oh and New York City does NOT have any country music stations before you jump to that almost-equally-beshitted conclusion. Did you guess yet? Wrong. The answer is fucking “lite” stations that convert to “all your favorite Christmas music ALL THE TIME” starting November first. I figured out the reason why I hate Christmas music (this kind, at least) so much. It really has nothing to do with my feelings for or against Christmas. Not at all. It has to do with the fact that this kind of music sucks blood-laced shit from the still-warm anus of an obese suicide. THAT’S why I hate it, because it does that whole shit thing. Those goddamned breathy renditions of “Do You Hear What I Hear?”, those fucking twangy-ass versions of “The First Noel”, those creepy pre-pubescent covers of “Little Drummer Boy” and worst of all: any and every song that uses a Casio keyboard to imitate bells, trumpets, violins or any fucking instrument. The list of good Christmas songs is very short and includes the following songs:
First, Prince’s “Another Lonely Christmas.” This song is about one of Prince’s girlfriends who died on Christmas a few years before. Every Christmas since then he “drinks banana daiquiris until I’m blind”. I think it’s amazing to have a Christmas song in which the only thing that is associated with Christmas is loss and death. So sad, so powerful, so lovesexy. Only Prince can make a dead love sexy.
Next, the They Might Be Giants In Holidayland EP. This EP features the songs:
“Careless Santa”, which is about a guy retelling his tale of a Careless Santa. “Bag of money/Was all I asked him for” and Santa delivers…by robbing a bank then dropping the money down the chimney and breaking the guy’s arm. Then, the police trace the money back to the guy who is unable to escape because of his broken arm.
There’s also “Santa’s Beard” which features the line “I saw my baby wearing Santa’s beard/She kissed him once and whispered in his ear/I wish he would go/He’s breaking up my home”. That there kind of sums up the song although there is a lot more to it. Then there’s “Santa Claus” a song by the Sonics, covered by TMBG. This song is about wanting everything for Christmas and getting nothing…for not particular reason. Also, the original German version of “O Tannenbaum” sung slow and sad. Very “all I want for Christmas is my two slit wrists”. Finally there’s “Feast of Lights”, a crushingly depressing Chanukah song about only seeing people around the holidays, but fighting bitterly with them nonetheless.
Also on this short list are two songs by eels. The first, “Christmas Is Going to The Dogs” is a Christmas song from a dog’s perspective. Sounds borderline, I know, but since it’s written and performed by E (lead singer and mastermind of eels, you uneducated floozy) it isn’t corny at all, it ends up sounding ironic and smirking, plus, it, like the next song, rocks hard. There’s also “Everything’s Gonna Be Cool This Christmas” which sounds, just like “Christmas Is Going to The Dogs”, borderline corny, but again since it’s eels, it is anything but. The title is not a true fact, but more a fevered mantra muttered by the singer in order to assure himself that, no matter how bad it was last year or the year before “everything’s gonna be cool THIS Christmas”, but based on the lyrics, sarcastic and biting and intoned with such contempt and disbelief, he can’t quite convince himself.
Aside from these, there’s a Beck song called “Little Drum Machine Boy” which is indescribably and stratospherically funky. Funkier than James Brown’s underwear.
Those are the only songs with lyrics that I will tolerate/enjoy. As far as instrumentals go, wow, that’s a dangerous country. Since most instrumental Christmas music drives me into a genocidal rage (due to the aforementioned fucking Casio keyboard mutations) but there is something excellent in this field: The Vince Guraldi Trio’s score to “Merry Christmas, Charlie Brown”. This soundtrack is made up of tired old Christmas songs played softly and subtly by one of the greatest Jazz trio’s ever and it also features the funniest/creepiest Christmas song I’ve ever heard called “Christmastime is Here Again”. That is the only original/vocal track on the album. Everything else is bass, piano and drums- REAL bass, REAL piano and REAL drums, not a Casio in earshot.
See, pretty short fucking list, and yet I still hear abysmal R&B versions of “I’ll Be Home for Christmas”, “fun” bluesy permutations of “Santa Claus is Coming to Town” and more shit in that same vein. Then there are the “funny” or “clever” Christmas songs; parodies and “kooky” Christmas songs like “Christmas in Hollis” by Run DMC and “Grandma Got Run Over by A Reindeer.” These “funny” songs serve only to insult, bore and enrage the listener. And personally, I feel that “Christmas in Hollis” is the reason the guy from Run DMC was gunned down, but that’s just me. Oh and P.S., all of those “A Very Special Christmas” CD’s? I feel that each and every participant in these should be given AIDS for making life that much worse for those who are going to be alive for the twenty or thirty thousand repeat playings. Those AIDS patients are lucky! They just get a letter signed by this famous people saying, “Hey there!! Sorry you’re dying of a terrible disease, but don’t worry, the pain and agony you feel now will be visited upon the world ten thousand fold once we record this fucking album. You’ll be long gone and hopefully the news that this atrocity shall be committed will make you feel better about dying! Best Wishes, Vanessa Williams/Elton John/ Yo Yo Ma/Simon etc.”
And “Jingle Bell Rock”? No. No no NO! “Jingle Bells” should NOT be made to “rock,” it should stop and be forgotten. Just fucking end. Bam. Done.
With all this terrible music floating around and stabbing us in the brain, is anyone really surprised that the suicide rate is so high? I’ll tell you one thing, no one is slitting their wrists because of Jesus, they’re doing it because of goddamn Kenny fucking G and his skin flute. He should wrap his lips ad the barrel of a shotgun and record that.
And Elvis donga Christmas song? Fuck that! He’s as Christian as Satan’s gay, heroin-addict brother. Why the fuck didn’t he ever record a song about jerking off to fat girls in white cotton panties wrestling? It would have meant more. Then John Lennon doing that creepy “drugged children on backup” song? Why the hell would he write a song about Jesus’ Birthday? He’s bigger than him. Asshole.
You know, one of the biggest problems is that there isn’t a shitload of Christmas songs to begin with. That’s why there are about eighty different shitty versions each of the dozen of so songs that exist and the rest are shitty original works. The one thing I will support wholeheartedly is Jingle Dogs. That’s some dope shit.
“I Hope That I Get Anal for Christmas”
By
Guido Paparazzi
Verse 1
The tree is up, the snow is down
Even Ebenezer couldn’t wear a frown
The kids are all thinking of that Santa clown
But not me, baby, I’m dreaming of your brown
Chorus
I hope I get anal for Christmas
I really hope that I do
I hope you’ll let me baby
Let me stick it in your poo
Verse 2
The town is dressed in flashing lights
Even the Grinch wouldn’t put up a fight
Hon, you shouldn’t be afraid of my Manly Might
Please let me get anal tonight
Chorus
Verse 3
The children are sledding, you can hear them shout
They think they know what this season’s about
Well, they don’t, but I do, without a doubt
Now I’ll put my penis where the poop comes out
Chorus
Verse 4
Oh how I love you let me count the ways…
What? You think ‘cuz I like the butt I’m gay?!
You crazy, babe, you don’t know what you say
I guess I’m just a Pirate of the Hershey Highway
I’m just coo coo…for poo poo…
5:28 pm
So, some hemorrhoid turned the radio back on, but to neither “news” nor “shit”, at least not Christmas shit. It’s the local R&B station. I’m not writing to blast the Blacks or anything, that’s www.kkk.com/blasttheblacks . I’m writing because in the past half hour, forty-five minutes in which I’ve been forced to listen to WBCX I’ve figured out the mathematical formula to making successful R&B.
Now we all know that R&B stands for Rhythm (which this music has, but then again if you fart regularly enough, so do you) and Blues (there’s nothing “blue” about these artists as far as “sadness” goes because every one of these bastards make more money than God, who’s worth about 6.2 billion) but what we don’t know why these high school drug dealers/drop outs/deadbeat fathers/another stereotype make so much money from it. Well, because of the FORMULA.
{a + b + c = z}
Now “z” can be a few different things, but since this IS a mathematic formula, “a”, “b” and “c” must always be the same. Here we go:
a = Title of song, repeated over and over throughout duration of song in a breathy, sometimes harmonized voice.
b = Spoken/crooned/whined/moaned lyrics rife with very thinly veiled sexual terminology and utterances of incitation and/or approval such as “Woo!”, “Yeah!”, “Come on!”, “All right!” etc.
c = A slow, 4/4 beat, usually constructed on a child’s synthesizer (i.e. “Playskool’s My First Keyboard” or “The Keyboard for the Mentally Handicapped”)
Although there is the OPTION of adding elements to the formula, as long as your R&B song is comprised of “a”, ”b” and “c”, your result will be “z”.
As stated, “z” can equal different products; here are some of the most common results:
z = financial rewards (“bling-bling”), vaginal secretions from stupid women (“juicy hos”), plus others.
Just thought I’d share.
12.17.03
12:23 pm
There, no matter how boring you found this, I had to live it, so shut up and die.
12.14.03
9:47 am
At this moment it is 9:47 AM and I am in the Communications center at TCC (the hospital I sometimes work at as switchboard operator). I’ve been here for two hours and forty-eight minutes now and when I walked in at seven, the radio was set to WCBS, the news station. I don’t know if any of you ever listen to WCBS, but here’s how it goes: Something happens…anything and it is talked about over and over and over and over ALL FUCKING DAY. This story (today it happens to be the capture of Saddam Hussein) is reported, then the weather is given, then a commercial, then sports, then commercials, then Saddam, then traffic, then a commercial, then Saddam, then weather, then a commercial, then sports, then a commercial, then Saddam et fucking cetera, literally, all day. If you are skeptic, try it some time. Then picture yourself locked in a small room with this radio for twelve hours. The only things that changes in these news “reports” are the descriptive terms. “The people of Iraq are: joyous/jubilant/happy/celebrant/horny/dancing/exultant/erect/slimy/tall after hearing the news.” At the start of the day it was simply them talking incessantly about “unconfirmed reports” which they kept reporting until finally some top brass nut sac over in Iraq made a two minute statement…which was then sampled incessantly over and over and over and over. I heard that Fuck Stick G. Paul Willard or whatever say, "Ladies and gentlemen…(pause meaningfully because you know this is the equivalent of the moon landing or the invention of Viagra and you know it will be quoted for THOUSANDS of years to come)…we got him” about nine hundred times. Then there are the sports. Since there are only five sets of scores, they were listed about six thousand times. Then, of course, the absolutely in-depth DISCUSSIONS about the weather. I swear to God that I would rather them try to count the snowflakes than TALK about the snow. Jesus. I hate Saddam more for being caught than for all his atrocities. Then again, they would have just jabbered about some other shit. God I hate things.
P.S. Among the other things I hate are the people who say, “Does this mean the war is over?” almost as many times as, “And now…more on the Capture of Saddam Hussein…on WCBS…dun dun dun…
10:57 am
Okay, so some well-meaning but utterly damned-for-their-crime-against-humanity person just changed the station to…before I say it I want you all to imagine something worse than what I mentioned before…oh and New York City does NOT have any country music stations before you jump to that almost-equally-beshitted conclusion. Did you guess yet? Wrong. The answer is fucking “lite” stations that convert to “all your favorite Christmas music ALL THE TIME” starting November first. I figured out the reason why I hate Christmas music (this kind, at least) so much. It really has nothing to do with my feelings for or against Christmas. Not at all. It has to do with the fact that this kind of music sucks blood-laced shit from the still-warm anus of an obese suicide. THAT’S why I hate it, because it does that whole shit thing. Those goddamned breathy renditions of “Do You Hear What I Hear?”, those fucking twangy-ass versions of “The First Noel”, those creepy pre-pubescent covers of “Little Drummer Boy” and worst of all: any and every song that uses a Casio keyboard to imitate bells, trumpets, violins or any fucking instrument. The list of good Christmas songs is very short and includes the following songs:
First, Prince’s “Another Lonely Christmas.” This song is about one of Prince’s girlfriends who died on Christmas a few years before. Every Christmas since then he “drinks banana daiquiris until I’m blind”. I think it’s amazing to have a Christmas song in which the only thing that is associated with Christmas is loss and death. So sad, so powerful, so lovesexy. Only Prince can make a dead love sexy.
Next, the They Might Be Giants In Holidayland EP. This EP features the songs:
“Careless Santa”, which is about a guy retelling his tale of a Careless Santa. “Bag of money/Was all I asked him for” and Santa delivers…by robbing a bank then dropping the money down the chimney and breaking the guy’s arm. Then, the police trace the money back to the guy who is unable to escape because of his broken arm.
There’s also “Santa’s Beard” which features the line “I saw my baby wearing Santa’s beard/She kissed him once and whispered in his ear/I wish he would go/He’s breaking up my home”. That there kind of sums up the song although there is a lot more to it. Then there’s “Santa Claus” a song by the Sonics, covered by TMBG. This song is about wanting everything for Christmas and getting nothing…for not particular reason. Also, the original German version of “O Tannenbaum” sung slow and sad. Very “all I want for Christmas is my two slit wrists”. Finally there’s “Feast of Lights”, a crushingly depressing Chanukah song about only seeing people around the holidays, but fighting bitterly with them nonetheless.
Also on this short list are two songs by eels. The first, “Christmas Is Going to The Dogs” is a Christmas song from a dog’s perspective. Sounds borderline, I know, but since it’s written and performed by E (lead singer and mastermind of eels, you uneducated floozy) it isn’t corny at all, it ends up sounding ironic and smirking, plus, it, like the next song, rocks hard. There’s also “Everything’s Gonna Be Cool This Christmas” which sounds, just like “Christmas Is Going to The Dogs”, borderline corny, but again since it’s eels, it is anything but. The title is not a true fact, but more a fevered mantra muttered by the singer in order to assure himself that, no matter how bad it was last year or the year before “everything’s gonna be cool THIS Christmas”, but based on the lyrics, sarcastic and biting and intoned with such contempt and disbelief, he can’t quite convince himself.
Aside from these, there’s a Beck song called “Little Drum Machine Boy” which is indescribably and stratospherically funky. Funkier than James Brown’s underwear.
Those are the only songs with lyrics that I will tolerate/enjoy. As far as instrumentals go, wow, that’s a dangerous country. Since most instrumental Christmas music drives me into a genocidal rage (due to the aforementioned fucking Casio keyboard mutations) but there is something excellent in this field: The Vince Guraldi Trio’s score to “Merry Christmas, Charlie Brown”. This soundtrack is made up of tired old Christmas songs played softly and subtly by one of the greatest Jazz trio’s ever and it also features the funniest/creepiest Christmas song I’ve ever heard called “Christmastime is Here Again”. That is the only original/vocal track on the album. Everything else is bass, piano and drums- REAL bass, REAL piano and REAL drums, not a Casio in earshot.
See, pretty short fucking list, and yet I still hear abysmal R&B versions of “I’ll Be Home for Christmas”, “fun” bluesy permutations of “Santa Claus is Coming to Town” and more shit in that same vein. Then there are the “funny” or “clever” Christmas songs; parodies and “kooky” Christmas songs like “Christmas in Hollis” by Run DMC and “Grandma Got Run Over by A Reindeer.” These “funny” songs serve only to insult, bore and enrage the listener. And personally, I feel that “Christmas in Hollis” is the reason the guy from Run DMC was gunned down, but that’s just me. Oh and P.S., all of those “A Very Special Christmas” CD’s? I feel that each and every participant in these should be given AIDS for making life that much worse for those who are going to be alive for the twenty or thirty thousand repeat playings. Those AIDS patients are lucky! They just get a letter signed by this famous people saying, “Hey there!! Sorry you’re dying of a terrible disease, but don’t worry, the pain and agony you feel now will be visited upon the world ten thousand fold once we record this fucking album. You’ll be long gone and hopefully the news that this atrocity shall be committed will make you feel better about dying! Best Wishes, Vanessa Williams/Elton John/ Yo Yo Ma/Simon etc.”
And “Jingle Bell Rock”? No. No no NO! “Jingle Bells” should NOT be made to “rock,” it should stop and be forgotten. Just fucking end. Bam. Done.
With all this terrible music floating around and stabbing us in the brain, is anyone really surprised that the suicide rate is so high? I’ll tell you one thing, no one is slitting their wrists because of Jesus, they’re doing it because of goddamn Kenny fucking G and his skin flute. He should wrap his lips ad the barrel of a shotgun and record that.
And Elvis donga Christmas song? Fuck that! He’s as Christian as Satan’s gay, heroin-addict brother. Why the fuck didn’t he ever record a song about jerking off to fat girls in white cotton panties wrestling? It would have meant more. Then John Lennon doing that creepy “drugged children on backup” song? Why the hell would he write a song about Jesus’ Birthday? He’s bigger than him. Asshole.
You know, one of the biggest problems is that there isn’t a shitload of Christmas songs to begin with. That’s why there are about eighty different shitty versions each of the dozen of so songs that exist and the rest are shitty original works. The one thing I will support wholeheartedly is Jingle Dogs. That’s some dope shit.
“I Hope That I Get Anal for Christmas”
By
Guido Paparazzi
Verse 1
The tree is up, the snow is down
Even Ebenezer couldn’t wear a frown
The kids are all thinking of that Santa clown
But not me, baby, I’m dreaming of your brown
Chorus
I hope I get anal for Christmas
I really hope that I do
I hope you’ll let me baby
Let me stick it in your poo
Verse 2
The town is dressed in flashing lights
Even the Grinch wouldn’t put up a fight
Hon, you shouldn’t be afraid of my Manly Might
Please let me get anal tonight
Chorus
Verse 3
The children are sledding, you can hear them shout
They think they know what this season’s about
Well, they don’t, but I do, without a doubt
Now I’ll put my penis where the poop comes out
Chorus
Verse 4
Oh how I love you let me count the ways…
What? You think ‘cuz I like the butt I’m gay?!
You crazy, babe, you don’t know what you say
I guess I’m just a Pirate of the Hershey Highway
I’m just coo coo…for poo poo…
5:28 pm
So, some hemorrhoid turned the radio back on, but to neither “news” nor “shit”, at least not Christmas shit. It’s the local R&B station. I’m not writing to blast the Blacks or anything, that’s www.kkk.com/blasttheblacks . I’m writing because in the past half hour, forty-five minutes in which I’ve been forced to listen to WBCX I’ve figured out the mathematical formula to making successful R&B.
Now we all know that R&B stands for Rhythm (which this music has, but then again if you fart regularly enough, so do you) and Blues (there’s nothing “blue” about these artists as far as “sadness” goes because every one of these bastards make more money than God, who’s worth about 6.2 billion) but what we don’t know why these high school drug dealers/drop outs/deadbeat fathers/another stereotype make so much money from it. Well, because of the FORMULA.
{a + b + c = z}
Now “z” can be a few different things, but since this IS a mathematic formula, “a”, “b” and “c” must always be the same. Here we go:
a = Title of song, repeated over and over throughout duration of song in a breathy, sometimes harmonized voice.
b = Spoken/crooned/whined/moaned lyrics rife with very thinly veiled sexual terminology and utterances of incitation and/or approval such as “Woo!”, “Yeah!”, “Come on!”, “All right!” etc.
c = A slow, 4/4 beat, usually constructed on a child’s synthesizer (i.e. “Playskool’s My First Keyboard” or “The Keyboard for the Mentally Handicapped”)
Although there is the OPTION of adding elements to the formula, as long as your R&B song is comprised of “a”, ”b” and “c”, your result will be “z”.
As stated, “z” can equal different products; here are some of the most common results:
z = financial rewards (“bling-bling”), vaginal secretions from stupid women (“juicy hos”), plus others.
Just thought I’d share.
12.17.03
12:23 pm
There, no matter how boring you found this, I had to live it, so shut up and die.
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