Top Ten Tuesdays: Why did we break our abstinence pledges?

10) Took internship in Republican Congressman's office.

9) Meant to only do anal but never learned anatomy in home school.

8) Received an urgent revelation from a different kind of burning bush.

7) See, this one time, at band camp….

6) Thought it would cause the hair to fall from our palms.

5) Wanted to get out of going to another creepy purity ball with Dad.

4) Priest promised it wouldn't count if we went to confession right after.

3) Turned 40.

2) Played Twister at the Purity Party.

1) Touched by an angel, or some guy claiming to be St. Michael.

Friday CJ Random 11

It's one more random than 10!

It was five degrees when I woke up this morning. Five degrees. I haven't even put up the Christmas tree yet. The other day during our first winter storm, the wind was blowing so hard that the house was vibrating and the monitor on my desk was actually shaking a little. That's what we call in layman's terms, "fucked up." I wouldn't pull the lever for a Republican (or pull the lever of a Republican, no matter how much he taps), but voting for someone with a pro-global warming agenda sounds pretty enticing right now. I would feel really bad for New Yorkers being flooded out, but look at the bright side, the rising tides would wash away that urine smell in the summers.

1) "53rd & 3rd," The Ramones. Speaking of washing away the urine smell of New York… I lived in New York during the Guilani years, when the city was getting cleaned up (read: Disneyfied), so I can only imagine the grungy scariness of 70s New York portrayed in this song.

2) "Back on the Chain Gang," Pretenders. I love the guitar rift and Chrissie Hynde's vocals. One of their best songs.

3) "Grindstone," Uncle Tupelo. I started out as a classic rock/metal kid, eventually widening my rock horizons to stuff like The Cure and New Order, and then getting into classic punk late in high school and during college. But it took a long time before I could listen to anything that sounded like country music, especially anything that had a prominent steel guitar the way this song does. I preferred Uncle Tupelo's punky songs much more than the traditional Americana they played later on. But over time, that changed to where I liked their sad, twangy songs a little more than their fast, angry songs. Maybe it's because country music sounds more lived in, and I had to do a little more living to appreciate it. Or maybe it's because you can't be 14 forever, no matter how hard I try to do that.

4) "Outsiders," Franz Ferdinand. Sometimes you just have to shake your booty. Franz Ferdinand is a group that completely understands that need. I would find it impossible to keep my hands below my head if I was dancing to this.

5) "Von," Sigur Ros. The way The Ramones sound like New York, Sigur Ros sound like Iceland. There's a soft, icy beauty to this, like a winter sunrise. Which I can appreciate much better now that I live in the Artic Circle.

6) "Far Cry," Rush. And this sounds like Canadian bacon. Mmmm, hammy. This is one of those classic cases where you buy an album, love love love the first song, and then wish the rest of the songs had sounded like that first song. Oh well, they have brought me enough geeky air drumming happiness over the last 26 years that I automatically contribute to their IRA by buying the new album.

7) "Crazy Rhythms," The Feelies. Like a methed-up Talking Heads. And I mean that as a compliment, as I always thought the one thing missing from the Talking Heads was more meth. As opposed to more cowbell.

8) "Dogs Got a Bone," The Beta Band. If you ever just want to chill, sit on the deck on a sunny day and pop open a beer like you're starring in your own Corona commercial, this is a pretty damn good song to play. In fact, most of the songs on The Three EPs album occupy that laconic, groovy frequency that induces involuntary head bobbing. You can see it in action in Hi Fidelity, where John Cusack says "I will now sell four copies of The Three EPs by The Beta Band" and gets everyone in the record store shuffling in synch.

9) "More Human Than Human," White Zombie. Okay, so I can't be 14 forever, but I can still tickle my inner Beavis with the diaphragm-pounding thump of Rob Zombie's monster mashes.

10) "Copperhead Road," Steve Earle. A much better song about a smuggler's blues than Glenn Fry's "Smuggler's Blues." Probably because he was an actual desperado instead of a fake one.

11) "Save a Secret for the Moon," The Magnetic Fields. I could hear this happy, bouncy song playing over the closing credits of a romantic teen comedy, where a boy (Superbad's Christopher Mintz-Plasse, showing his McLovin' range) realizes he's been mistakenly chasing the pretty blonde popular girl (Heroes' Hayden Panettiere), when he really loves his geeky brunette female friend (Hillary Duff, showing her range by dyeing her hair and wearing corrective lenses), who becomes just as pretty once she takes off her glasses! They kiss as this song plays over the credits, while the boy's dad (Eugene Levy) dances to the song with the boy's mother (Jaime Lee Curtis), who became attracted to Levy without him having to remove his glasses or wax anything, because female scriptwriters don't write this shit.

Have a great weekend. And go Mizzou!

Official Blackwater Job Application

PERSONAL DATA

Name:_______________________________________

Rank:________________________________________

Serial number:_________________________________

Height (in stacked bodies)_____

Weight (in skulls)______

1. Nationality
a) United States of America
b) No, really, just select “a.”

2. Do you have any Hessian ancestry?
___Yes
___No, but I'm pretty Aryan.

3. Religion
a) Christian
b) Jewish (please stop and accept Jesus Christ as your lord and savior)
c) Muslim (please stop and wait for the authorities)
d) Norse (cool!)

4. Former military service:
a) Conventional military
b) Special forces
c) Death squad

5. Do you take drugs?
___No
___Why, do you have some?
___Only in the Barry Bonds sense of the word

6. Which of the following tattoos do you have
___Skull
___Skull and crossbones
___Eagle
___American flag
___American flag with skulls instead of stars
___Dagger
___Bloody dagger
___Heart that says "Mom"
___Skull that says "Mom"
___"This space for rent"

7. Have you ever suffered from any of the following ailments?
___Guilty conscience
___Compassion
___Not-for-profit work
___Voted Democrat
___Asked questions first, shot later

8. Are you proficient in any of these interrogation methods?
___Sleep deprivation
___Waterboarding
___Electroshock
___Electric slide
___Forced viewing of The View
___Playing "Sister Christian" at deafening levels until subject confesses to being a terrorist and/or member of Night Ranger
___Exposing subject to the elements
___Exposing subject to Paris Hilton cold sores
___Securing front row seats for Danny Gans

9. Have you ever been implicated in a civilian killing?
a) No
b) How would you define "civilian"?
c) I’m sorry, I couldn’t hear you over the recoil of my gun

10. Do you have any legal training in the area of human rights?
___Yes. (Please discontinue this application. We thank you for your interest.)


PSYCHOLOGICAL PROFILE

11. Which movie catchphrase best captures your philosophy of life:
a) Terminator 2: Hasta la vista, baby
b) Apocalypse Now: I love the smell of napalm in the morning
c) Lethal Weapon 2: Diplomatic immunity!

12. Regarding the movie 300, which of the following is true.
a) I have seen it.
b) I have seen it and I bought the DVD.
c) I have seen it, I bought the DVD, and I regularly masturbate to it.

13. You cannot open a jar of pickles. What do you do?
a) Run the lid under hot water until it expands.
c) Beat on the lid with my large combat knife until it loosens or I no longer want pickles.
d) Shoot the jar with a shotgun to teach all the other pickles a lesson.

14. I would step over the still-warm body of my own mother for ________.
a) Jesus
b) George W. Bush
c) A five-figure signing bonus

15. It takes ______ to save a village.
a) a village
b) an insertion team
c) a blazing fire

16. Would you torture a detainee for information?
a) Only if I thought he knew of a “ticking bomb” and it would save many lives
b) Only if something in the room was ticking
c) Wait, when wouldn’t you torture a detainee for information?

17. Laws are _____.
a) made to be obeyed
b) made to be broken occasionally, like thumbs
c) made for people without political connections

18. You see some natives talking together in a part of town known for insurgent activity. What do you do?
a) Gather more information before taking action.
b) Gather more ammunition before taking aim.
c) Gather more coordinates before calling an airstrike

19. In the event of an "incident" involving the loss of innocent life, what's the best approach?
a) Reach into your heart and apologize.
b) Reach into your stash of hush money.
c) Reach into your pocket for a pen to change "innocent" to "insurgent" on the government report.

20. Where do you see yourself in 20 years?
a) Retired on the beach of one of the beaches I took
b) Halfway through prison term
c) GOP vice presidential candidate
d) Valhalla


LEGAL DISCLAIMER
I hereby claim I have answered in a truthful and honest fashion, and that I will deny everything under Congressional subpoena.

Sign or make mark: __________________________________

Top Ten Tuesdays: How are we promoting peace in the Middle East?

Special extended negotiations edition!

12) Settling question of Palestinian state on special episode of Deal or No Deal.

11) Conducting workshops on how to enact the policies you want despite overwhelming domestic political opposition.

10) Insisting that our allies can be a civilian dictator or a military dictator, but not both.

9) Giving oppressed people a taste of freedom by filling their lungs with the sweet water of non-torture.

8) Easing tensions by having Arab leaders roasted at the Friar's Club by America's best Jewish comedians.

7) Proposing signing of Israeli-Palestinian peace treaty in exchange for one night with Condoleeza Rice.

6) Outsourcing peace process to Blackwater.

5) Working through Holocaust denial issues on Oprah's couch.

4) Getting Ehud Olmert and Mahmoud Abbas to pledge to be in each other's five.

3) Harnessing the lasting power of small talk, forced handshakes, and photo ops.

2) Staring at the Middle East with a steely squint until it decides to be peaceful, or until term is up.

1) One ammo clip at a time.

It was 20 years ago today

STONE PHILLIPS (VO):
November 21, 1987. The Reagan presidency still reeled from the sting of Iran-Contra. The stock market still reeled from the Black Monday drop in October. And the first reels of The Simpsons appeared on the Tracy Ullman Show.

On this day, in a tiny suburb north of Chicago, a young man—his hair Dep'ped, his Bugle Boy pants tightly cuffed, his jean jacket washed in acid—went on a date with a beautiful young woman. She had won him over with her winning smile, her sharp wit, and her beautiful eyes. No, really, he was looking at her eyes. Though she had made fun of him the first night they met—quickly seeing through his brass-plated Southern California veneer to determine that he was, in fact, a Hoosier—that sauciness would charm the pants off him. Or so his seventeen-year-old glands hoped. He sort of asked her out. She sort of said yes. And history was made. And it was good.

Today is the 20th anniversary of my first date with The Lovely Becky.

I met TLB when I was dating her best friend at the time. We went to different high schools but lived in the same suburban area. I worked at the local grocery store with her friend, and our first conversation occurred when I gave both of them a ride after work. TLB proceeded to make fun of my enjoyment of Rush, my arrogance about having moved from San Diego, and especially my state of origin, Indiana, which made my arrogance about being "from" California even more ridiculous to her.

I would like to report that my inner monologue said, Someday I'm going to marry that girl, but in reality it was more like Who are you and when can I drop you off?

However, our next encounters were much more enjoyable. In addition to being quite fetching, TLB shared many of the same characteristics I did. Her humor was clever and also blue, giving her the bawdy, cerebral appeal of a Shakespearean character. She had a dorky side to her without being too dorky, with an interest in fantasy and science fiction that tickled this D&D player's heart, even if she made fun of me for playing D&D. While my love of heavy metal did not appeal to a girl who grew up on the border of Mullet and Mini Truck Counties, my love of new wave and alternative music gave us a soundtrack to share.

Over the next few weeks, I saw her at the store, on double dates with her best friend, and at the local library where TLB worked. As my relationship with her friend eventually changed from dating to friendship, I found myself thinking about TLB more and more. One afternoon, I stopped by the library. It was TLB's last day, and she was trying to make the reshelving of books go by more quickly.

I helped by talking to her for hours. Three, I think. It was one of those everything and anything talks, enough material for Richard Linklater to make two films. I didn't want the conversation to end, and that's when the first thoughts of i really appeared. After all, she was pretty, funny, and sassy—why wouldn't I go out with her?

We did a short time later, on the birthday of her friend. It wasn't a date-date necessarily. I, being a chicken, didn't really ask TLB out. We instead had one of those negotiated romantic understandings, brokered by her friend. He's interested in you, she's interested in you, how about a bilateral exchange? A bunch of us jumped into a couple cars and headed to Ed Debevic's, a retro burger joint where the staff knowingly insulted the customers.

I sat in the booth next to TLB, with another guy flanking my right. I was nervous. I wanted to make some expression of affection, but was afraid of embarrassing her in front of her friends.

TLB managed to break the ice in her patented delicate style. She decided to play a prank on the guy on my right by extending her skirted, nylonned leg across my lap and plopping her foot playfully into his lap.

Someday I'm going to marry this girl!

By the end of the evening, after a screening of Monty Python and the Holy Grail, we were officially a romantic couple. Even the troubling smoke on the horizon of my love life—my serious girlfriend back in California—cleared when said girlfriend called to dump me the next day.

And really, that's the story of our relationship. Things have always worked out for us. Long-distance separation, dating other people, economic woes, career challenges, location changes, reproductive issues—even when things have seemed bleak, we've managed to get through them. I think it's because, in the end, we're still those two kids talking for hours in the library, neither one of us wanting the conversation to end.

Top Ten Tuesdays: How are we coping with the writers strike?

10) Halting all national security policies until Jack Bauer starts telling us what to do again.

9) Making our ad libs completely spontaneous.

8) Using down time on the set and training in method acting to really nail new role as a drug mule.

7) Looking under couch cushions and drink coasters for Netflix DVDs we've had for seven months.

6) Going blind after drinking the comedy bathtub gin of Frank TV.

5) Discovering mysterious polygonal objects filled with words that make a TV show appear in your brain.

4) Going into porn.

3) Creating a new type of reality show that requires no scripting.

2) Offering blood sacrifice to smiling TiVo god.

1) Spending an evening interacting with family, asking them how they are doing and listening to their replies and OH GOD PLEASE BRING TV BACK THIS IS KILLING US!!!!


BONUS: How are we coping with the stagehand's strike?
Paying $7.50 to watch two bums fight on Broadway instead of paying $75 for Broadway musical about the exploitation of the homeless.

Friday CJ Random 11

It's one more random than 10!

If you’re having a dinner party and you’re looking to take the entertainment level up a few notches, simply have a book of Jewel’s poetry laying around. Hilarity will ensue like a red, red rose.

1) “My Best Friend’s Girl,” The Cars. It’s pretty easy to establish your career when your debut album opens with “Let the Good Times Roll,” this song, and “Just What I Needed.”

2) “Pretty Vacant,” The Sex Pistols. Their best song in my opinion, and it’s in my top 5 punk songs. I find that the legendary songs on this album are kind of slow, while the fast songs aren’t as memorable as the legendary songs. This is the one where they both meet: a punchy tempo full of classic Pistols bile. And the chorus is a must-sing-along.

3) “A Lack of Color,” Death Cab for Cutie. And now for something completely different...The UP is about to have a lack of color for the next few months. Hopefully there won’t be any red from me slitting my wrists when I remove that 100th inch of snow.

4) “She Bangs the Drums,” The Stone Roses. It is impossible to have a bad day when this song helps start it off. The guitar is like an old friend who is in town for a bit and who you can’t wait to hang out with again.

5) “The Hungry Wolf,” X. They were definitely the city wolves, but without losing their cool at the site of an exotic dancer.

6) “Domino,” Van Morrison. While not everyone will ever like a particular song, this is one of those timeless classics that nearly everyone can like. It’s soulful, catchy, sad, happy, and the song you could play at the end of a teen sex comedy where the snobs and slobs dance as they learn they have two things that transcend their social classes: a love of good music and unmitigated horniness.

7) “Paschendale,” Iron Maiden. Good Lord, I really am all over the place today. No one has the heavy-epic-about-historic-battles market cornered like Maiden. Despite having death in their name, Death Cab for Cutie isn’t writing a song about charging over the trenches into a hail of German machine gun fire.

8) “Milano,” Sigur Ros. This beautiful song is long enough that I could eat an entire bag of Milanos before it ended. Which would probably put me in a diabetic hallucination where Death Cab for Cutie were fighting the Germans.

9) “Let It Go,” Def Leppard. A song that exemplifies the principle of Tufnel’s Razor: if you’re not sure if lyrics are sexy or sexist, they are probably the latter.

10) “For the Widows in Paradise, for the Fatherless in Ypsilanti,” Sufjan Stevens. Now that I live there, I think he really did capture the spirit of Michigan. A beautiful, delicate song.

11) “Party Til You Puke,” Andrew W.K. And here’s the opposite of that coin. This song has aged as well as an open bottle of beer left in the sun. It might be because there’s an expiration date on using the word party as a verb, and I’m beyond that point except when I go Vegas. At the same time, it’s a hell of a closer to a truly random 11.

Have a great weekend.

Top Ten Tuesdays: Why are we coming down with VD?

Americans set a new record in sexual disease cases. Why are we contracting VD so easily?

10) Abstinence education programs not preventing genitals being left in behinds.

9) NBA players on the road again.

8) Rampant popularity of Paris Hilton’s new fragrance, Clap.

7) Forgot to use toilet seat cover at GOP headquarters.

6) Slept with McAfee sales rep who refused to allow Trojans.

5) Played new, more potent version of Spin the Bottle which requires random sex act from urbandictionary.com.

4) After pastor said he would fill us with The Holy Spirit, we came down with Immaculate Infection.

3) Watched TMZ on TV without wearing full body condom.

2) Partner’s sexual history reads like Caligula’s autobiography.

1) Used faith-based contraception.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go home and have a heart attack

Friday afternoon, The Lovely Becky started bleeding. Bad bleeding, the kind we've run into before, the kind that says no soup for you. "We have to go to the emergency room," Becky said.

I couldn't believe it. Everything had gone just fine on Tuesday! How could things go south in the same fucking week? I knew we have a long way to go, that lots of things could cause this to end, but Jesus H. Christ, I hadn't even finished my touchdown dance yet.

The last time I cried—I mean really opened up and just sobbed my eyes out—was after our first miscarriage, in 2001. I didn't even let the tears rip when our last IVF went bust. Yesterday, I stood on the stairs, getting ready to put my shoes on, and I felt a wave of grief collapse over me. I took my shoes and hurled them up the stairs, throwing them as hard as I could. My eyes swelled and I prepared for the waterworks when I realized I couldn't do that to Becky. She wouldn't blame me, because she's lovely, but I couldn't saddle her with my emotional breakdown in addition to her own physical breakdown. I took a deep breath, grabbed a small chunk of control, and picked up my shoes. There would be plenty of time to lose my shit later.

We've seen medical staff for fertility-related matters enough that we know when things are really fucked. Their body language, the things they say, and especially the things they don't say, can give off a bad vibe that no amount of positive thinking can shield me from. As Becky told the nurses and doctors her symptoms, that vibe came as thick as amber covering an insect. The initial exam just made the amber harden around us. "It looks iffy," the doctor said as nicely as he could. "It doesn’t mean you're miscarrying, but it looks iffy."

But iffy does mean miscarrying for us, because our fertility script is more predictable than a bad horror movie. Despite being more or less a model married couple, we're the fornicating teenagers that are always getting impaled by the Golem of Childlessness. The doctors needed an ultrasound scan to tell for sure, but I sure as hell didn't.

The ultrasound tech, while friendly and very nice to us, went about his business in total fucking silence. I looked at the pixilated images like one of those hidden paintings, staring at it and waiting to see little pixels form a giant middle finger. Finally, after feeling like we had been at the hospital for two years instead of two hours, the tech finished. He couldn't tell us anything because that's the doctor's job. But he did tell us that the baby's heartbeat was 138. That's even stronger than it was on Tuesday.

Wha???

The doctor arrived and delivered the unexpected: as far as they could tell, Becky and the baby were fine. The heartbeat was not only good, the baby had grown since Tuesday and was cruising right along the development chart. He told Becky to stay off her feet this weekend and let them know if anything else happened, but otherwise she was free to go.

Becky and I looked at each other, unsure how to react. We're still getting used to good news. So we did what we always do when we either want to celebrate or bury our sorrows: we drove to Culver's and picked up some Butterburgers.

I don't know if Ashton Kutcher has some kind of fertility punking machine, but if he does, I'd appreciate it if he would knock that shit off.

It also seems like an appropriate time to show my favorite movie scene of all time:

Friday CJ Random 11

It's one more random than 10! (there, fish, I got it right this week)

I apologize for not writing more lately. There have been a few reasons, preoccupation with human reproduction being a big one. Another big one is that I’m working on a short story that has squeezed a lot of my creative juices. But the biggest reason is that I started a couple pieces that unfortunately haven't panned out yet. Unlike some other blogs out there, I refuse to just set my posting bar at half-assed. In fact, CJSD guarantees at least three-quarter ass or your money back. (That should make Larry Craig tap with joy.)

My frustration with the couple pieces I was working on made me want to pump up the volume a little bit today. Earlier in the week, I was reminded of The National Review’s list of the 50 greatest conservative rock songs which ran last year. The inanity of the list still astounds me. This went well beyond the standard shovel-to-the-head stupidity, crossing instead into George Romero decapitated-with-a-shovel insanity, as if the writer’s disembodied head landed on a keyboard and tried to co-opt his favorite songs by wildly clicking at keys with his tongue before he finally expired. Then it occurred to me: that sounds like fun! So this week's Random 11 is written in the demanding style of The National Review, which is known in laymen's terms as out of your ass. (And a tip of the hat to Jon Swift, who did more songs in a more timely fashion.)

1) The Smiths, “Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now.” Why do I have to smile at people I’d much rather kick in the eye? Morrissey is clearly rebelling against the politically correct mores that require us to hug those we disagree with, such as Muslims, instead of bombing them, as good Christians should.

2) “Bolted Down,” Bob Hillman. This legendary conservative songwriter describes how all of the things in his New York apartment are “bolted down.” Why? Because New York’s anti-gun laws prevent him from defending his property as our Founding Fathers demanded. As he notes in the song, this keeps him from even drinking his coffee because the cup is bolted down. This is where anti-gun legislation will lead us.

3) “Crosstown Traffic,” Jimi Hendrix. A terrific anthem abut how evil carpool lanes attack our liberty to travel freely.

4) “Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic,” The Police. Given the rampant godless socialism expressed by most British musicians, it is extremely gratifying to see Sting’s courage in writing this touching, moving homage to Margaret Thatcher. He even wishes to “marry her in some old fashioned way.”

5) “When It All Goes Wrong Again,” Everclear. Even though this was written in the late 1990s, it’s really a Nostradamus-like warning against a Hillary Clinton presidency. I will be sitting on top when it all goes wrong again—Clearly our country cannot afford to again fall for the peace and prosperity of the Clinton years.

6) “A Legal Matter,” The Who. Noted Tory Peter Townsend rails against the frivolous lawsuits plaguing the American court system. He obviously would not be a fan of presidential candidate John Edwards, and it’s a shame that his lack of citizenship prevents him from voting against the Democratic ambulance chaser.

7) “Where Boys Fear to Tread,” The Smashing Pumpkins. Billy Corgan’s searing screed against allowing homosexuals into the Boy Scouts. The distorted guitars perfectly capture the distorted truth of the gay agenda.

8) “Lips Like Sugar,” Echo and the Bunnymen. Long before Oprah discovered it, singer Ian McCulloh wrote about the immoral enticement of teenage rainbow parties.

9) “Drain You,” Nirvana. It is now my duty to completely drain you. No other singer has ever written so passionately about the devastation of Democratic tax and spend policies.

10) “The Swish,” The Hold Steady. These Minnesota-based rockers address the confusion of transgender politics: She said my name’s Neal Schon but people call me Nina Simone, some people call me Andre Cymone. Which is it?

11) “Gary’s Got a Boner,” The Replacements. A song that that is a battle cry for abstinence education.

It is a little frightening how much fun that was.

I am on the road for work next week. I am going to try to get the jerking back into three-quarter ass form. Until then, enjoy yourselves, and keep on rocking in the free market, er, world.

Top Ten Tuesdays: Why are we triumphant?

10) Our nominee for attorney general successfully tortured the definition of torture.

9) Resistance to our policies from Congressional Democrats rated between “speed bumps” and “French.”

8) Iraq's political stability has surged ahead of Pakistan's.

7) Launch of Fisher-Price’s My First Recall wildly successful.

6) Scriptural rethinking on divorce allows Christians to protect marriage from gays while gaily choosing a new spouse.

5) Soaring oil prices will help improve national obesity crisis when Americans are forced to push their Hummers.

4) Writer’s strike gives conservative Congressmen chance to continue their studies of the gay lifestyle in peace.

3) Mortgage crisis makes it easy to find empty houses to squat in after our foreclosure.

2) Allowing people with criminal backgrounds to join military will make it easier for the military to recruit from Blackwater.

1) None of the shit going on in the world can depress us because we just might be parents after all.

Thanks to everyone for the wishes, prayers, and ritual sacrifices to various deities. It really helped, and we appear to be on our way toward setting aside all of our hopes and dreams for a creature who will later sneak out of the house and tell us we just don't get them.

I shoulda done the Alzheimer's joke

Featuring the worldwide Internet video debut of Brando!

Slate V announced the winners of their comedy contest and yours truly didn't make the top five. Oh well. I think the guy who did the Dali Lama piece should have won. That was a very clever joke.

I know these things are subjective, but I would be lying if I said I wasn't a little disappointed. I was pretty happy with the jokes I wrote, but in hinsight, I probably should have done the Alzheimer's joke. It was an easy joke to say, and it didn't require a long set up. And where was Nancy Grace with her reproductive set up when I needed her?

So here it is, the video of yours truly after 22 hours of taping.

A CJSD programming note: tomorrow is the ultrasound for The Lovely Becky, so the Top Ten may not happen, especially if we get bad news. And if it's good news I may be too drunk to write!

Friday CJ Random 11

It's one more random than 10!

It’s been a shitty week. I don’t have a more clever, humorous way to put it. Our war on childlessness is completely fucking with our heads. Stress from work managed to overflow my perspective levies and drive me to eating the 80 bushels of candy corn that we had lying around the house for Halloween. I went back to the gym for the first time since the end of July, which reminded me quite painfully just how long I had been away from the gym and how much candy corn I have been eating. And I started writing fiction again for the first time in a while, which is great, except that writing fiction makes you crazy even when it goes well.

It’s times like this that I’m glad I am a such a music fan. TV and movies give me a lot of entertainment, but honestly, not much comfort. Football could give me some comfort if the Bears hadn’t gone from Super Bowl to Super Suck. Video games have the double-edged sword of relieving stress but also causing stress when I keep getting my ass handed to me. Reading can carry me away from all this, but when I’m already stressed, I either think I’m never going to be as good as the author I’m reading or I can’t believe that this hacky fuck is successful and I arrive back at the intersection of Pissed and Depressed.

Music bypasses all of these pitfalls for me. I put on some tunes and my savage beast is immediately soothed. Singing about the blues makes me less blue, and rocking hard channels my anger into a much more positive type of fist pumping. So I am really, really looking forward to the list today.

1) “Let It Ride,” Ryan Adams and the Cardinals. I feel better already. Without getting into the did-they-or-they-they-not suck the soul out of the country rock, this song is closer to the feeling of The Eagles “Take It Easy” than “Take It Easy” is. You know, shit happens, what’re you gonna do, have a drink and relax. That’s damn good advice.

2) “Falling for You,” Weezer. I’ve got a number of irrational fears / That I’d like to share with you. I would love to have an fear-off with Rivers Cuomo, lead singer of Weezer. I’ll bet his #1 isn’t getting sucked through an airlock into space. And you call yourself irrational—ha!

3) “See the Sky About to Rain (Live),” Neil Young. Now here’s a piano man I want to sing us a song. With him just on a piano, Young’s voice has just the right amount of forcefulness and vulnerability. We’re starting to shift to the bluster of winter, and November is the stormiest time on Lake Superior, so this song is just perfect for the start of the month.

4) “Tornadoes,” Drive-By Truckers. Today’s Friday Random 11 is brought to you by The Weather Channel! A very vivid song, written by someone who sounds like he went through a tornado. When we tell people we went through a tornado, they often ask us if it sounded like a train. The Lovely Becky always has the best description: no, it sounded more like a big fucking column of wind.

5) “Train in Vain,” The Clash. On my Can’t Be Overplayed list. Even before I really liked The Clash, I loved this song. Random weird Brando bit: I do not fancy myself a singer, and I also don’t watch American Idol. But one day my mind was wandering, and I wondered what song I would sing if I wasn’t tone deaf and had compromising pictures of Simon Cowell giving a thumbs up to Right Said Fred so I could pass my Idol audition. This was the song that popped up. Such a good song that even if I did sing it on American Idol, I don’t think I could ruin it for myself.

6) “Very Loud,” Shout Out Louds. This has a skittering snare drum beat that also gives the song a train feel. It’s a desperate, earnest love song that feels like a frayed pair of blue jeans—not terribly original, but still your favorite thing to wear. That’s what most of my favorite songs wear.

7) “Carry the Zero,” Built to Spill. As George Bush would say, this is just a phenomonable song. Layers of guitars stack on top of each other with the meaty deliciousness of a Dagwood Bumstead sandwich, only without the bland aftertaste of Blondie.

8) “Enivrez-Vous,” Stereolab. Dreamy shoegazing with a little French lyric dressing. I am expecting comments from the Stereolab fetishists waiting in the wings. You know who you are.

9) “Oh!” Sleater-Kinney. Oh yes! There’s a bouncy retro feel to this, courtesy of the synthesizers and harmonies, but it also has a modern rocking punch. Plus the drum fills on the chorus fill me full of drum heady goodness. Songs need more drum fills.

10) “My Old Friend the Blues,” Steve Earle, Townes Van Zandt, and Guy Clark. This live track just features Earle on guitar. He sings like he is BFF with the blues, and hearing his warm rasp can make any day feel a little brighter.

11) “Mr. November,” The National. A rousing, fitting way to close the list and open the last month where I’m likely to still be warm. The National are the best purveyors of catchy melancholy to come down the pike in quite some time, and another reminder that you can take that frown and turn it upside down to 11.

It’s almost silly how much that helped. I hope you all take it easy, in whatever fashion you choose, and have a good weekend.

Top Ten Tuesdays: How did we drive ourselves crazy this past week?

or Anatomy of a Comedy Breakdown!

As I mentioned on Friday, I entered a video for Slate’s comedy news contest. The premise was simple: write a joke based on an actual news story and film yourself delivering it. The folks at Slate would select 10 finalists, who would then be judged by a celebrity judge: Kevin Bleyer, a writer for The Daily Show. Right up my alley, right?

The problem is that, when I have some external pressure to be funny, I sometimes turn into Ted Knight after Rodney Dangerfield says, “1000 bucks says you miss that putt.” I immediately felt the greasy, ethereal clump of writer’s block clogging my psyche. I read through the Sunday New York Times, scanned the Web for news stories, and watched The Daily Show for inspiration. After a week, my best effort was a mildly amusing joke involving Dolph Lundgren. Not the stuff that wins contests. But since writing is 10 percent inspiration and 90 percent perspiration, I managed to keep grinding away and finally had a breakthrough two days before the contest. I wrote about four pages of jokes, whittling it down to 10 I really liked. Now all I had to do was pick one and film it. Piece of cake, right?

I don’t have any kind of video device in the house, so I picked up a Microsoft Web cam. Of course, I forgot that Microsoft is English for doesn’t work worth a shit. The picture was grainy and the audio kept going out of sync with my lips, which would have been hilarious if my joke was about fucking Godzilla. I returned it for a Logitech cam, got it to work flawlessly, and seemed ready to go. I planned to finish work for the day, then film myself that evening, plenty of time to meet the midnight deadline.

Except that when I was ready for my closeup, the video started stuttering for some reason. I tried disabling programs, installing it on another computer, and offering to blow someone at Logitech if it would result in 25 seconds of workable fucking video. After a good hour of troubleshooting, I figured out the light settings were cocking up the works and got the video back to acceptable quality. Now I was ready.

Except I wasn’t. I couldn’t for the life of me get the delivery down. Despite being a ham, I am not really a performer. I am not kidding when I say that I did at least 50 takes. I would get my voice right but my face wrong, or my face right and the voice wrong. I looked stiff, I looked stoned, I looked like a man who had been saying the same thing over and over. After all that, I got a take I liked and showed it to The Lovely Becky.

“Why did you add ‘there’ at the end? That’s throwing off the whole joke.”

Fuck! She was completely right, one word I had added almost unconsciously screwed up the joke. I broke for dinner(!), deciding that only the soothing meatiness of a Culver’s Butterburger could take the edge off. Rehearsing in the car, I managed to get the joke just as I wanted while I was waiting for my food. I came back, ate my dinner, and finally recorded 21 seconds of video I was happy with. If by some stroke of luck I happen to win this thing, the $500 should cover the cost of my medication.

Anyway, after all that, here are my ten favorite jokes that came out of this process. Number one is the one I submitted.


10) Researches at New York University believe they have located two parts in the brain that trigger optimism in people. Still undiscovered: the parts of the brain that caused people to vote for George Bush twice.

9) Legendary rock group Led Zeppelin has finally agreed to release its songs in digital form on iTunes. The band promises that these new digital versions will sound even more overplayed then the originals.

8) Top forest officials in the U.S. said that global warming may be contributing to “hotter and faster” fires like the ones that spread through Southern California. A spokesman for the Bush administration denied those claims before leaving to tour the devastation in his coal-fired Hummer.

7) British biologists said that changes in the shape of a St. Bernard’s head can only be explained by evolution, and that these changes offer strong evidence against creationism. Creationists responded that the St. Bernard could not be used as evidence since the dog is not mentioned in the Bible.

6) Recently declassified files revealed that during the 1968 presidential elections, the FBI monitored candidate Eugene McCarthy, who vowed to fire FBI director J. Edgar Hoover. It’s believed Hoover oversaw the operation personally as the files were smeared with lipstick.

5) According to a recent study, inflation and a drop in real earnings are making it harder for Americans to live paycheck to paycheck. The study also finds that it’s easier than ever to find employees willing to give dollar handjobs in the executive washroom.

4) This past week, wildfires decimated Southern California, Turkey prepared to invade Iraq, and a nuclear-armed Pakistan suffered a series of destabilizing attacks from Islamic terrorists. This prompted the White House to announce that it is way ahead of schedule in triggering The Rapture.

3) Scientists this week reported progress in developing a blood test for Alzheimer’s. In other news, scientists this week reported progress in developing a blood test for Alzheimer’s.

2) An Australian barmaid was convicted of indecency for crushing beer cans between her bare breasts and hanging spoons from her nipples. During the trial, police noted that the investigation was especially arduous, requiring two dozen officers, hundreds of hours of overtime, and thousands in tips.

1) In the recent Republican presidential debate, Senator John McCain mocked Senator Hillary Clinton’s support for a Woodstock museum, joking that he could not participate in the legendary music festival, because as a POW, "I was tied up at the time." When asked for his opinion of the museum, President Bush said he couldn’t attend Woodstock because, "I was way too drunk to drive."

If you tag yourself too much, you’ll go blind

Blue Girl has this funky meme that seems tailor made for my blog. The idea is that you find five statements that, when typed into Google, list your blog as the number one hit.

Given the kind of search terms I find in my site meter, I thought this could be...enlightening. I also decided to up the degree of difficulty by not using “circle jerk” in the search, although the terms I did use showed the same level of charm, class, and sophistication.

5. mitt romney dry hump. I have to give credit to dooce for inspiration, because her blog was where I first read about what passes for a randy Friday night at BYU.

4. nipple nazi rat poison. This goes to The Lovely Becky’s favorite piece I’ve ever done. I was always sorry I never did another sketch show -- I would have loved to see this performed.

3. iraq quagmire ass bacon. It’s because I walk around with things like this in my head that I started this blog.

2. republicans longing clinton’s penis. Since I wrote this, the “clinton” part has really become superfluous.

1. girthy sodomizing tribulation. I’m not only number one for this term, I am the only result for this. That’s probably for the best.

Friday CJ Random 11

I didn’t do much blogging this week because I was working on my entry for the Slate comedy news contest, which I have to submit today. I will probably write more about that later. For now, let’s listen to read about some tunes!

1) “Happy,” The Wrens. Hands down, The Meadowlands is my favorite album of the 2000s (or is it the aughts?) Four guys living together in a house in New Jersey, working day jobs while working on this album for seven years, and releasing an astounding pop/rock record. This song really epitomizes the album, starting out bitter and sad over a slice of life that went bad, yet ends on an optimistic note thanks to the closing jangly guitar riff that offers much needed therapy to the first part of the song. That’s what makes this desert-island-disc material for me.

2) “There’s No Other Way,” Blur. The Manchester-drums will forever keep this stuck in the early 1990s. But the mark of a good band is one that can add the flavor of the month without becoming that flavor, which is why Blur didn’t become EMF after this hit.

3) “Waking Up,” Elastica. Hey, it’s the Blur guy’s ex-girlfriend. Their debut album is very underrated, and unlike the drums in “There’s No Other Way,” it doesn’t sound dated to me.

4) “Airplane,” Peter Case. A little bit country, a little bit rock and roll, and a whole lot of good. There’s just enough steel guitar to sweeten things up without drowning it in syrup.

5) “A Fine Day for a Parade,” Fountains of Wayne. They definitely flirt with the sweet/saccharine edge. They manage to stay sweet here with a nice, low-key number that indeed sounds like the blue skies and warm temps of parade weather.

6) “O My Soul,” Big Star. The gold standard of power pop. Catchy yet original, adventurous yet familiar. Also one of the few songs in rock history that manages to incorporate the band’s name into the lyrics without sounding like it came from a bunch of egotistical cobags.

7) “Country Girl,” Black Sabbath. Dio!

8) “Knife,” Grizzly Bear. They love, love, love reverb. I saw them in concert in Iowa City, the reverb in the singer’s voice sounded like going to a barber shop as a kid and looking at yourself in the mirror looking at yourself in the mirror to infinity.

9) “Somebody to Love,” Queen. Speaking of piling layers of vocals on themselves. The backing vocals stretch upward like the Tower of Babel, only the tower gets to stay because God loves to rock.

10) “Day of the Lords,” Joy Division. I have this thing about spicy food. I go into restaurants and they will have a little asterisk or maybe a red pepper next to the spicy items on the menu. Nine times out of ten, the item is mildly spicy, and I get annoyed that they made a big deal out of how spicy it is. But one time, at a Cajun restaurant called Heaven on Seven in Chicago, I ordered the spiciest thing on their menu: Hot as a Mutha Chicken. The menu was all blah blah blah burn your face off. They even brought out a little consent form that said I, NAME, being of sound mind and soul, have ordered the Hot as a Mutha Chicken blah blah blah. Like George Bush, I looked the waiter in the eye and said “Bring it on!” And like George Bush, I bit off more than I could chew and got the shit burned out of me. I could tell I was in big, big trouble as soon as I smelled it. This wasn't spice, it was napalm. I only got through about 1/3 of the dish, and it took a half dozen beers just to get that much down. The next day, I had a 12-hour day at work, and let me tell you, I had many conversations with The Lord, asking him to take me if it would make the burning stop. So Hot as a Mutha chicken is my standard for "spicy."

The reason I bring this up is because a lot of bands get labeled as dark. Ooh, you have to listen to Morose Belly Lint, they’re so dark! And I listen to Morose Belly Lint and think, “eh, they’re not so dark.” But when I get to the point where I think no band is really dark, Joy Division pops up on my iPod and reminds me what the standard for "dark" really is. Pick a song, any song, and it really won’t surprise you that Ian Curtis killed himself. Nick Drake sounded sad, Kurt Cobain sounded angry, but Curtis sounds haunted. Thirty years later, songs like “Day of the Lords” still pack a chill, especially when Curtis sings lines like where will it end? That’s pretty damn dark.

11) “Destination Ursa Major,” Superdrag. Destination major hooks. Soaring, guitar-driven songs like this are why speakers should go to 11. Joy Division has its place, but when I’m getting ready to head into a weekend, I need some audio parade weather.

Have a good one.

Top Ten Tuesdays: What's the most unattractive aspect of our cities?

Special expanded Eat it, Fodors edition!

Travel and Leisure magazine recently ranked the attractiveness of 25 American cities. What did the magazine find most unattractive about each city?

Atlanta: No matter how hard you squint, you can’t forget you are in Georgia.

Austin: Citizens unable to mate without singing Texas fight song.

Boston: Accent makes pillow talk sound like orders from a dock foreman.

Charleston: Can still smell the burning rubber from General Sherman’s treadmarks.

Chicago: Four words—mustaches and zubaz pants.

Dallas: Sexual partners always call out "Romo" (male and female)

Denver: Overuse of pickup line, “In Denver, you’re already in the mile high club!”

D.C.: High probability of having blood drained by member of the Vice President’s office.

Honolulu: Can’t erase image of tarantula crawling on Peter Brady.

Las Vegas: Seemingly large number of eligible men is actually just Danny Gans impersonating different guys.

Los Angeles: Most citizens now contain only 53% organic matter.

Miami: Airport call letters are STD.

Minneapolis: High horny-Republican-to-restroom ratio.

Nashville: Ten gallon hats conceal secret rib stash.

New Orleans: #1 recreational activity is gunplay.

New York: Prevalence of attractive footwear offset by prevalence of public urination.

Orlando: Inordinate number of furries.

Philly: Standard greeting is a shiv to the kidneys.

Phoenix: Hot date consists of an early bird special and shopping for Depends thongs.

Portland: 90% chance of getting carjacked by a Trailblazer.

San Antonio: Tallest downtown building shorter than average bang height.

San Diego: Two words—fish tacos.

San Francisco: Total eclipse of the Sun every time Barry Bonds’s head is in town.

Santa Fe: Conversations never move past, “So what do you want to do?”

Seattle: Frequent rains still fail to wash away the bad taste of grunge.

The Mutated Gene Meme

Kathleen tags me with the most complicated meme in history:

There are a set of questions below that are all of the form, "The best [subgenre] [medium] in [genre] is…". Copy the questions, and before answering them, you may modify them in a limited way, carrying out no more than two of these operations:

— You can leave them exactly as is.

— You can delete any one question.

— You can mutate either the genre, medium, or subgenre of any one question. [For instance, you could change "The best time travel novel in SF/Fantasy is…" to "The best time travel novel in Westerns is…", or "The best time travel movie in SF/Fantasy is…", or "The best romance novel in SF/Fantasy is…".]

— You can add a completely new question of your choice to the end of the list, as long as it is still in the form "The best [subgenre] [medium] in [genre] is…".

You must have at least one question in your set, or you've gone extinct, and you must be able to answer it yourself, or you're not viable.

Then answer your possibly mutant set of questions. Please do include a link back to the blog you got them from, to simplify tracing the ancestry, and include these instructions.

Finally, pass it along to any number of your fellow bloggers. Remember, though, your success as a Darwinian replicator is going to be measured by the propagation of your variants, which is going to be a function of both the interest your well-honed questions generate and the number of successful attempts at reproducing them.


My origins:
My great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandparent is Pharyngula.
My great-great-great-great-great-great-grandparent is Metamagician and the Hellfire Club.
My great-great-great-great-great-grandparent is Flying Trilobite.
My great-great-great-great-grandparent is A Blog Around the Clock.
My great-great-great-grandparent is Shakespeare's Sister.
My great-great-grandparent is Excuse This Mess....
My great-grandparent is Jennifer.
My grandparent is Snag.
My parent is Kathleen of the Oakland Dilletante Kathleens.

1. The best comedy in alternative universes is: Fox News. Sean Hannity, a scary DeVinci Code albino who says people are at war with Christmas, fembot and mandroid newscasters, Ann Coulter without irony, and Bill O'Reilly, all packaged by a greedy Australian.

2. The best sexy song in rock is: "Hot Girls in Love" by Loverboy. Headbands! Mullets! An album cover featuring a man's ass in red leather pants! And 100% Canadian! Yet they were hunted by many hot girls in love. That takes a special kind of sexy.

3. The best cult novel in absurdist fiction is: The Apprentice by Lewis "Scooter" Libby. A grown man named Scooter writes scenes of animal sex before working for a vice president who eats puppies.

4. The best Jim Varney movie in American film is: Slam Dunk Ernest/Ernest Scared Stoopid (tie). In the first film, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar plays an angel who teaches Ernest how to dunk. It's nice when the facts write the jokes for me.

5. The best use of ground meat in American cooking is: The Culver's Butterburger. In my heaven, these grow on trees, and in real life, every bite gets you that much closer to going to heaven.

6. The time-travel story in nonfiction is: The Republican Party national platform. Gays, back in the closet. Women, back in the kitchen. Hispanics, back in Hispanola. Blacks, back of the bus. Michael J. Fox and DeLorean sold separately.

In keeping with my actual biological status, I will be unable to pass the meme onto others. But with answers like these, it's probably for the good of the species.

Friday CJ Random 11

I’m always surprised that driving wears me out. It’s not like I’m doing anything strenuous. I’m sitting in a chair, listening to tunes or talking, and occasionally getting annoyed with drivers who don’t understand that the left lane is for passing, not passing the time (I’m looking at you, Wisconsin!). Honestly, if I had a TV and controller, it would be just like playing videogames, and it’s not like I ever say I just played Halo for eight hours, and my ass is kicked! Yet two consecutive weekends of driving 18-20 hours round trip wore me out and made me just want to sit on the couch and play videogames all week.

Last weekend's engagement party for my brother Tickle and his fiancée was fun and free of fecal prop bets. I can tell the wedding will be a blast, as my future sister-in-law’s family seems a lot like ours: a fun machine that produces even more entertainment when properly lubricated with alcohol. We played a game of Balderdash on Friday, where Tickle would take five minutes to come up with an answer, only to have it be something with the word “balls” in it. Yes, he has a college degree. The clear winner of the weekend was The Lovely Becky, who not only mopped the floor with us in Balderdash, but took everyone’s money in a poker game the next night. Come to think of it, maybe staying up late drinking and playing games had something to do with me being so damn tired.

I am also ashamed to admit how excited I was to go to a real shopping mall. Not only does the local beaver trading post lack reproductive endocrinology services, it lacks something almost as vital: a Banana Republic. On to the tunes...

1) “Coming Up Close,” Til Tuesday. A classic long-distance-mix-tape song from The Lovely Becky. We made a lot of those for each other back in the day, and I this wonderful, catchy, earnest song was on the one she gave me right before I left for college. Jesus Christ, we are old.

2) “Wouldn’t Have It Any Other Way,” The Streets. The Ray Davies of English rap music. His rapping is really more like storytelling set to music, with the emphasis on the plot than the beat, with an accent that would be perfectly suited for a Guy Richie movie. This song involves our hero sitting on the couch, smoking a spliff, wondering where his relationship with his girl went wrong. Which, while not an ideal way to resolve your relationship woes, is much more effective than watching Dr. Phil.

3) “I Apologize,” Hüsker Dü. Classic 80s indie aggression. Catchy enough to sing along to, hard enough to slam around to. That’s a tough combination to get just right and it’s really what made Hüsker Dü so great.

4) “Hoboken,” Operation Ivy. The counterpoint to the above. More slammin’ than jammin’. On the surface, it almost seems like mindless hardcore, with rapid-fire shouting and a speed-addled beat. But there’s a real energy and charisma underneath that makes me want to stick around. Kind of like Hoboken itself.

5) “How Many More Times,” Led Zeppelin. I miss the time when bands could be enormously popular and still considered good. As much as the Zepp gets overplayed on (deep announcer voice) the home of classic rock in [YOUR CITY HERE], they rocked. They gave the people what they wanted—big, fat riffs and vocals so charged with sex they were like a lemon ready to be squeezed—and yet they still took a lot of chances with their music. That’s why people like the guy at Jiffy Lube and the indie rock critic getting the oil changed on his Gremlin can love them. Now it seems like if a band is popular, indie guy assumes they suck, and if it’s a great band no one has ever heard of, Jiffy Lube guy asks you to play some Zeppelin.

6) “Southern Anthem,” Iron & Wine. Not your father’s Southern Anthem. And definitely not your grandfather’s. Beautiful, wistful folk music from the real soul successor to Nick Drake.

7) “That’s What I Get,” Nine Inch Nails. The Journey of industrial music? I’m not sure, but what seemed so angry then does seem kind of corny to me now, even though I still like Reznor’s first album.

8) “To the End,” Blur. This is at the exact opposite end of their stadium-shaking woo hoo! It wouldn’t be out of place at a cocktail lounge, albeit a very cool, ironic cocktail lounge.

9) “Boomtown,” The Blasters. Classic roots rock, with that chugga-chugga-chugga train-track beat that Johnny Cash used all the time. It reminds me of driving into Barstow, seeing just enough artifacts of past prosperity to answer the question, why the fuck did anyone live here?

10) “Kreuzberg,” Bloc Party. Overdub Bono singing and this wouldn’t sound out of place on a U2 album. Whether you like it will depend on whether you think Bono is the shit or just full of shit. I am in the former camp myself, but I understand the latter and admit giggling a bit.

11) “The World Is a Mess! It’s in My Kiss,” X. I got a fever, and the only prescription...is more Hammond organ. That sweet Hammond sound takes an already perky, revved up X song and turns it up to 11. It’s one of those keyboard parts where you can feel the player standing up and doing that jerky, epileptic pounding that you only see during a keyboard solo or on every episode of Letterman. It’s as if the keyboard guy is so happy he gets to do a solo, he loses control over all motor functions except his fingers. Much like Bono, I love that shit.

Have a good weekend.

Top Ten Tuesdays: How are we reaching out to religious voters?

10) Through hole in bathroom stall.

9) Tying story of loaves and fishes to campaign contributions.

8) Going ix nay on the Mormon-ay.

7) Offering to retroactively stone Bill Clinton.

6) Calling for the revival of the Crusades.

5) Revealing “Church” and “State” tattoos on each buttock.

4) Letting Fox News crucify our opponents.

3) Outlining national Manishevitz/Blood-of-Christ exchange pogrom program.

2) Swearing that sanctity of remarriage will not be sullied by gay unions.

1) Promising The Rapture by 2008 or your money back!

On the road again

The Lovely Becky and I are embarking on another 8+ hour car ride today, this time to the engagement party for my brother Tickle. There should be no soiling of garments for money, but given that many members of Clan Brando shall be attending, there may be airing of grievances for free.

Actually, given that I'm not sure what Tickle's fiancee or my parents know about the scandalous Poop-for-Gambling-Relief program, there could be some money-making possibilities....




I am traveling with a computer, so there may be some blogging this weekend.

What would you rather lick?

The Lovely Becky captures a representative sample of our nightly conversations.

Top Ten Tuesdays: What are we putting in our memoirs?

10) Five-page sex scene that really only lasted about a sentence and a half.

9) An assload of coveting our neighbor's razor.

8) El Presidente Bush es un chingando pendejo grande!

7) A few dozen pertinent facts that we forgot to tell the jury.

6) Revelation that we would only cut interest rates after killing a drifter and reading his innards.

5) Harrowing tales of snorting coke off of Elizabeth Hasselbeck’s tits.

4) Harrowing tales of snorting coke off of Vince Neil’s tits.

3) A marriage secret: the couple that stays together is the couple that shoots old men in the face together.

2) Lots more material for this blog to plagerize.

1) Limited edition pubic hair bookmarks.

Home away from home

I didn't post a Random 11 yesterday because The Lovely Becky and I were on the road. We traveled back to Iowa City this weekend as part of our War on Infertility. You can get a lot at the local beaver trading post in Da UP of Michigan, but not reproductive endocrinology services. So we had to come back to Iowa for a quick visit to the hospital (the outcome of that will be forthcoming).

The body of our former home is still warm, and not just because of global warming. Coming into town was a bit like looking through a photo album, reminiscing about the past, and then stepping into the picture. By Saturday, after a trip to the mall (such a modern luxury!), I felt like we were still here, that the move had been part of some two-dimensional past stuck in a bound book. I'm sure that will reverse itself once we drive back up to our Sasquatch-infested new home.

There was a fun music-related event on Friday: I saw Suzanne Vega in concert. My friend Bob, who used to tour with Vega before he settled down in Iowa City, opened for her. The show was great, with Vega doing a cool version of "Left of Center" accompanied only by her bass player. Afterward, Bob and I hit the bar for a drink with Suzanne and the band. I sat outside on the main Iowa City drag, enjoying the warm weather, cool suds, and feeling like I never left.

Here's a clip of Suzanne Vega performing her new song "Anniversary" on David Letterman. I'll be back to regularly scheduled jerking after the weekend.

Bush Makes Children’s Health Care a “Faith-Based Initiative”

WASHINGTON – President Bush, explaining why he used a veto to block an expansion of health care to lower income children, said he was reclassifying children’s health care as a faith-based initiative.

“Health care is expensive,” said the president at a press conference. “But prayer is free. So it was a no-brainer.”

When reporters challenged President Bush on the effectiveness of faith to heal childhood diseases, Bush defended his beliefs. “I prayed to Jesus to become president and it happened. My prayers also kept me out of Vietnam and kept my urine clean. So I believe that if prayer can do that for me, it can cure childhood diseases like mumps or Scarlett Johansson fever.”

Bush also emphasized the importance of praying to the right Jesus for healing. “Children under the age of 12 should pray to Baby Jesus, while those ages 13-17 should pray to Teenage Jesus. Those prayers are much more effective if you stay within your Jesus prayer demographic.”

Bush’s decision touched off a heated debate in Congress, as Democrats sought to gain enough votes to overturn the veto. “It is more than usually desirable that we make some slight provision for the poor and uninsured,” said Democratic Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. “Many thousands are without comprehensive coverage. Hundreds of thousands are in want of even Flintstone Vitamins.”

Representative John Boehner, the House Republican leader, stood with President Bush and delivered the GOP rebuttal to those sick children who were not cured by prayer.

“Are there no emergency rooms?” asked Boehner. “And the Ronald McDonald Houses—are they still in operation?”

“Many can’t go there,” Pelosi countered, “and many will die.”

“If they would rather die,” said Boehner, “they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population!

“Besides,” Boehner continued, “when we ban abortion, we will have plenty of replacements."

Top Ten Tuesdays: Why did we become conservatives?

10) Desired socially acceptable outlet for hating minorities.

9) Envisioned self as more of an armchair general than a foot soldier.

8) Learned the power of the capitalism after parents made us find a free-market solution to potty training.

7) Wanted the thrills of gay sex without the spills of being “gay.”

6) Saw first-hand the dangers of illegal immigration after being raised by Salvadoran nanny who didn't let us get our way.

5) Enjoyed the ease of answering all of life’s tough questions with “God’s will.”

4) Tended to shout rather than talk.

3) Launched crusade against high school girls being easy after getting turned down by the easy girls in high school.

2) Felt that Locke’s social contract entitles all men to seek their fortunes in a free and unfettered fashion...okay, we just wanted to lower taxes enough to get a gold bidet for the yacht.

1) Forced to have childhood lobotomy due to lack of mental health coverage.

Friday CJ Random 11

Is it possible that, for once in their entire sad history, the Chicago Cubs could do something the easy way? They finally get a good lead on the Brewers, need just a couple wins to more or less cement winning the division, so what do they do? Get swept by the last-place Florida Marlins to keep the Brewers in the hunt this weekend. They even brought in Bill Murray to try and loosen the players up, which apparently worked about as well as showing Garfield to a roomful of people over the age of seven. I know the idea of a playoff run is an illusion for this year's team, but how about at least getting to the playoff part of that illusion and let me dream during their first-round exit?

Okay, music will soothe the savage sports fan…


1) “Me in Honey,” R.E.M. Out of Time always makes me think of visiting The Lovely Becky at Mizzou. We did the long-distance thing in college, with me in California and her in the Show Me State. I would come out to visit her, and we played this album and Crowded House’s Woodface to death during those visits. This song in particular, with Kate Pierson’s vocals, makes me think of that excitement of seeing her and the dread of having to leave.

2) “Ain’t No Easy Way,” Black Rebel Motorcycle Club. They have all the honky tonk pieces in place—slide guitars, harmonica, a Steve Earle-ish vocal—but I sense just a little more honky and not as much tonk. Still, a pretty good foot stomper for a Friday morning.

3) “Vincent O’Brien,” M. Ward. It still amazes me that M. Ward can sound so old when he sings, but also not seem like an affected cobag. He gets a little more poppy here, with an energetic tune that throws enough curveballs—a chirping piano, some feedback—to keep things interesting.

4) “Sing It Pretty, Sue,” Johnny Cash. How can he say so much in a song that’s less than two minutes long?

5) “Tryin’,” Eagles. Ruh-roh! There was a pretty heated debate over at Neddie Jingo’s blog about the Eagles, with Neddie blaming the Eagles for everything from destroying country music, to giving birth to Journey and Britney Spears, to killing puppies (I’m paraphrasing and possibly making stuff up). Blue Girl responded, as only she can, that the Eagles “ARE HUMANS!” The whole thread is an entertaining dive into the pool of polarizing bands. Personally, I’m in the middle. I was never a big fan, but it’s pretty hard for me to not crank “Take It Easy” and “Already Gone.”

6) “Message in a Bottle (Live),” Sting. Hey, it’s Mr. Polarizing himself. I have poked a lot of fun at Sting on many a Friday. This, however, is one of the greatest live renditions of a song ever. It’s from The Secret Policeman’s Other Ball, an Amnesty International comedy/music benefit from the early 80s. Sting did this song and “Roxanne” just on an electric guitar, and he absolutely brings the house down. One of the best things I have on my iPod.

7) “The Tallest Man, The Broadest Shoulders…,” Sufjan Stevens. I am too tired to type out the whole paragraph that is the song title. Sufjan walks that razor’s edge between “baroque” and “twee,” but I always like his arrangements and song structures. There’s almost a filmstrip feel to this, yet it manages to not suck the way every filmstrip ever made did. For those of you not born at the same time as the Geico Cavemen, filmstrips were a mind control device used by schools during the 1950s through 1980s. Still pictures would illustrate an important event in history, while the warbled audio coming from the cassette tape would mask backward messages: In 1820, the Missouri Compromise allowed Missouri into the Union as a slave state EAT YOUR VEGETABLES SIT UP STRAIGHT YOU’LL GO BLIND IF YOU KEEP TOUCHING IT SO MUCH!!!

8) “Heaven or Las Vegas,” Cocteau Twins. Another Brando/TLB kollege klassic. TLB always sings along very well to the incredible harmonies here. The title bothers me, though: are they suggesting that Las Vegas cannot be part of Heaven? If that’s true, does it mean that heaven will be like Branson, Missouri? Because if it is, I swear I’m turning around and heading the other direction after I die, if I’m not already where Las Vegas is.

9) “Magic Man,” Heart. Since we’re going back in time, here’s a fun family fact: Magic Man was my uncle’s CB handle. Our family had our brief six-month flirtation with CBs around the time Smokey and the Bandit came out. And thankfully it ended long before Smokey and the Bandit II was released. Every time someone goes off on how annoying cell phones are, just be thankful you don’t have to say breaker breaker before you call home to ask if we're out of milk. As for the song, the decent beginning and end are assaulted by the marshmallow fluff synthesizer noodling in the middle.

10) “I Can’t Get Over You,” The Queers. Immature? Yes. Original? No. These guys were so much like The Ramones that they did a complete cover of the Rocket to Russia album. But good? Hell yeah, at least on the one album of amazing Beach Boys punk they produced, Don’t Back Down, which this song is from. This is a sunny, catchy tune featuring a female vocal from Lisa Marr (of Cub). Good stuff.

11) “Crummy Lovers Die in the Grave,” The Fucking Champs. Three guys cranking out retro instrumental prog metal. They sling crazy 80s metal riffs like short-order cooks working the batter at a Waffle House, channeling Iron Maiden without the Bruce Dickinson howling about secret Satanic rituals and cavalry charges. Plus they have song titles that tickle my inner 14-year-old: “Thor Is Like Immortal,” “These Glyphs Are Dusty,” and “Esprit de Corpse.” So up my alley they should be called The Fucking Brandos. And yes, my poor wife went through years of long-distance romance to wind up with a grown man who loves this stuff. Pray for her.

Have a great weekend. Go Cubs, damn it!

O’Reilly expresses surprise that Asians “can be good drivers and bad at math.”

NEW YORK - Days after a controversial broadcast about his visit to a Harlem restaurant, Bill O’Reilly is in hot water again after making comments about Asian Americans.

“I’m at this great Oriental restaurant,” said O’Reilly on his radio program, The Radio Factor. “And I’m trying to figure out the tip. Our waitress was terrific—you might say she serve us long time. So I asked another waiter, who was also Asian, if he knew how much 18 percent of $24.07 is.

“He just gave me this blank stare and said, ‘I don’t know, I go to Juilliard.’ That’s an arts school, for the Factor listeners out there. I replied, ‘Okay, but you probably have to know math really well to play the cello, right?’

“The kid gives me a funny look and says, ‘The correct tip would be eighteen dollars, Mr. O’Reilly.’ That sounds a little high, but what do I know about math: I’m Irish and he’s Asian. So I left an eighteen-dollar tip. Sure enough, I find out later that eighteen percent of $24.07 is not eighteen dollars. I thought maybe he was just rounding up to make it easier, but eighteen dollars was more than three times what I should have left.

“It just goes to show how stereotypes can mislead us, because Asian college students can be just as stupid as other college kids. Next time I need to calculate a tip, I’ll use a calculator or ask one of my Jewish friends.”

O’Reilly then went on to discuss his trip home.

“I hailed a cab, and as soon as I see the driver’s last name is Wong, I start thinking, this is going to be a Wong drive. But I’ve never seen such driving. He got me to the office in record time, without coming close to causing an accident or backing up traffic. I told him at the end, ‘Wong, you’re all right!’

“I learned more about Asian guys in one day than I had learned in my whole life.”

Kelly Cho-Meyers, head of the Asians Against Stereotyping and Slander (AASS), said that Mr. O’Reilly’s logic “doesn’t add up.”

“It puts Asian Americans on the spot when people assume we can naturally solve for x or break boards with our bare hands,” said Ms. Cho-Meyers. “If he thinks we're all good at math, I’d like to show that blue-eyed white devil my checkbook.”

Mr. O’Reilly did not take very kindly to the criticism. “My attempt to point out stereotypes has been undermined by limp-wristed, freedom-hating liberals. When I say black people can eat without swearing, Asians can drive as well as I can, or American Indians can have last names that sound like normal last names, I’m fighting racism.

“Now we need to put this racist nonsense behind us,” O’Reilly continued, “and talk about real problems, like those dirty illegals darkening our fair country.”

The Chicago Bears QB story in LOLCAT

The Sex Cannon falls silent in Chicago.

Top Ten Tuesdays: How are we committing career suicide?

10) Accepting position in Bush administration.

9) Delivering the most embarrassing spectacle at the MTV Video Music Awards since Adam Curry’s hair.

8) Adopting a narrow stance on everything except our pants.

7) Letting John Daly pee for us.

6) Putting name and address on the collars of our fighting dogs.

5) Greenlighting show about the Geico Cavemen.

4) Giving Lorne Michaels a funny sketch for Saturday Night Live.

3) Not shooting well with others.

2) Believing that acting like a screeching, screaming, sobbing psychopath is no way to land a TV deal.

1) We don’t recall.

Friday CJ Random 11

It’s one more random than 10!

Inspired by Danny Gans, I have decided to christen my office The Brando Circle Jerk Theatre. I realize what the name implies, but please, no unzipping until the captain has turned on the unzipping sign.

There’s a Hollywood-quality storm going on today, which is one of my favorite times to listen to music.

1) “The Revolution Starts Now,” Steve Earle. For a country that was founded on revolution, we’ve really come to hate revolutionaries. I think that’s the crux of most of Earle’s recent music.

2) “Back to the Lake,” Guided by Voices. I can’t see how to get back to the lake because it’s shrouded in mist right now. Luckily it’s not green, or I would be worried I was starring in the real-life remake of The Fog. Marquette definitely gives off that Fog vibe, but I’m not sure if there were many pirates on Lake Superior. If there were, they probably went, “Arrg, eh?” As for the song, this is like a Friday night with me: three minutes of bliss that you wish would go on longer. That joke is dedicated to The Lovely Becky.

3) “Explode and Make Up,” Sugar. I never thought the 90s had a unique sound when I was going through them. It seemed like bands just pulled their sounds from bits and pieces of the 60s, 70s, and 80s. But Sugar definitely sounds of the 90s: the crunchy guitar chords and thick drums.

4) “Born to a Family,” The Go-Betweens. A nice bit of Aussie pop that can make the sun shine even on a cloudy day.

5) “Magic,” The Cars. Whenever I hear this song, I am always in eighth grade again, wearing corduroy Op shorts and Pony sneakers and parting my hair down the middle. The production is Exxon Valdez-slick, but the guitar riff and the way the bass chimes in between the chords hits a sweet spot for me.

6) “Flavor of the Month,” The Posies. This has been the greatest year of music acquisition I have ever had. I’ve managed to catch up on a lot of bands I missed back in the day, and I’m often scratching my head: how did I overlook this? That goes especially for The Poises. They play classic power-pop, Big Star with bigger guitars that would easily help me pass the days on a desert island. Although I’d need to make some type of coconut charger for my iPod.

7) “Army Corps of Architects,” Death Cab for Cutie. Talk about music for a rainy day. Classic DCFC, with a slow, chiming guitar riff and melancholy Ben Gibbard vocals. They do that voodoo that they do so well.

8) “Hounds of Love,” Kate Bush. A great blast from the 80s. I have to thank TLB for this one. She was a big Kate Bush fan when we met, and I had the natural teenage boy reaction to Bush’s lilting, theatric pop: that’s girly music. But because I love and respect TLB, I gave Kate Bush a shot, and this song in particular got the scales to fall from my ears. It manages to sound orchestral and kick ass at the same time.

9) “Where Have All the Rude Boys Gone,” Ted Leo and the Pharmacists. Already on my cannot be overplayed list. Bounces with the energy of an eight-year old after four bowls of Cookie Crisp, but without making you want to give him a Flinstones With Insulin vitamin.

10) “Let’s Call It Love,” Sleater-Kinney. How many female groups have recorded a song longer than ten minutes that can out-cock-rock just about any boy band on the planet? I know of only one. Crazy drum fills, searing guitar licks, and a female singer howling about how much she needs some lovin’? For ten minutes? I don’t need a cigarette, I need the whole damn pack. In fact, just leave the carton.

11) “Add It Up,” Violent Femmes. I really could use a couple slow songs and maybe a roast beef sandwich before another fast song about sex, but the iPod wants it now. The Violent Femmes feature the most in-your-face brush drumming in rock history. This one reminds me of piling into a car to go to a high school party, singing along at the top of our lungs, hoping we’d get to add it up later, even though we were much more likely to wind up dancing with ourselves. Hands-down the best thing to ever come out of Wisconsin (not that the list is that long….that’s my worm on the hook for billy p.)

I am sadly bacheloring it this weekend, as TLB is gone until Sunday. I’ll probably do my usual: play a lot of videogames, watch a lot of football, and have a tea party with the cats. I hope your weekend is as exciting as mine.