Friday Random 11

It's one more random than 10!

Blue Girl started an interesting discussion about hate this week, and in leaving a comment, I said that while I wasn't a big fan of hate, I felt that anger was healthy. I'm usually at my best creatively when I'm mad about something. I think that's because my creativity almost always expresses itself as humor, and it's much easier for me to be humorous when I'm irritated about something. I don't need to do a Lewis Black, but there usually needs to be some conflict to drive my creative impulses.

The same day, Dr. Fish (who is a doctor in real life but I think plays a fish on Animal Planet) posted a link to a dance remix of Christian Bale's ice-cap destroying metldown on the set of Terminator 4. I didn't know much about this incident, so I listened to the original audio. (Neither of those links are work safe.)

I definitely believe that Bale went way overboard and acted like a complete prick, but I also sympathize with him trying to concentrate on something and having another person repeatedly interfere with his work. I had a boss once who had me research a project, a free item we could include with a promotional mailer we were doing. My boss was notoriously flaky, and after spending a good deal of time finding some items based on the parameters he gave me, I presented what I found. Sitting in his office, he suddenly changed his mind and wanted to go in a completely different direction. Not a big deal, and certainly par for the course when you work in marketing and advertising. However, he talked to me like I was an idiot for presenting what I presented, when I simply gave him exactly what he asked for. That little bit of attitude made every other little irritation I had with him suddenly boil over, and I proceeded to yell at him, loudly enough that my coworkers were prairie dogging over their cube walls. I probably laid into him for about two minutes, letting him know that I did exactly what he asked and if he wanted something different, he should have said something. When I finished, I got a bit nervous, because he certainly could have taken disciplinary action against me. I probably would have done that if a copywriter came into my office and talked to me like that. Instead, he actually apologized and we moved on. So anger can be constructive.

At the same time, I didn't pepper him with profanity or threatened to "kick his ass" (I was pissed, not insane). If I had done either of those, I would have been out on my ass, because that's how things work in the real world. He makes a call to HR, HR has me escorted from the building. But I guess there's no HR in Hollywood, and if you're Batman, you apparently get to deliver a little vigilante justice.

The irony is, if Terminator 4 is as bad as Terminator 3, this might be the best scene from the film. And Bale's little tirade produced a hell of a dance mix. So in honor of the creative power of anger, here are 11 random songs about anger or angry-sounding songs.

1) "Can I Play With Madness," Iron Maiden. The Bruce Dickinson two weeks in a row? Maybe my iPod is having anger issues. Or spandex withdrawal.

Funny story: Despite harnessing anger for comedic purposes and yelling at condescending bosses, I'm not an angry person by any stretch, and in fact am quite laid back. However, I have had a couple of "Hulk" episodes, where something sets me off and I just go Lou Ferrigno. The Lovely Becky saw one of these very early in our relationship. We used to go to an under-21 dance club in the north Chicago burbs—the kind of place that would have played the Christian Bale remix. You had to present ID to prove you were under 21 to get in.

This place was about a 45-minute drive, and one night, one of the guys forgot his ID (despite a reminder before we left to make sure everyone had ID). I had my military dependent ID in addition to my driver's license, so I decided to give that to him. We didn't really look very much alike, but he clearly wasn't 21 and it's not like we were trying to sneak into a bar. We spaced it so that I would go in first, then he'd come in about five minutes later.

Inside, his date came up to me. The bouncer didn't buy it, and worse, he took my ID. I was pissed at our doofus companion already, and now had to go beg for my ID back. The bouncer gave me an earful about it, and I explained what happened and that I wasn't trying to be a dick, we just wanted to dance. He started to hand me my ID back, but right before I reached for it, he dropped it so I would have to pick it up.

I lost it. I started screaming at the guy, letting loose a Bale-ish broadside of f-bombs, c-bombs, and pretty much any form of profanity I had in the armory. I was so furious that even though I was sure this guy would probably kick my ass, I didn't care. Luckily my friends led me away before that could happen. But poor TLB had to walk with me to my car and get in, with me cursing like a man bitten by a profanity werewolf on a full moon. Like the werewolf after the moon goes down, once I returned to normal, I felt like a complete jackass, because even if the bouncer was a jerk, I was in the wrong.

Luckily I didn't scare her off.

2) "From Ritz to Rubble," Arctic Monkeys. Hey, a song about getting thrown out of the club by a bouncer. SPOOKY.

3) "Fuck You Aurora," Alkaline Trio. Given that they are from Chicago, I think they are referring to the town of Aurora. However, when TLB and I lived in Iowa City, we always got excited when we hit Aurora on the highway, because it meant we were almost to Chicago. Which, if you've ever been to Aurora, is a little sad.

4) "Never Talking to You Again," Hüsker Dü. "Anger" would be even angrier with an umlaut. "I am so ängry at you!"

5) "Prison Sex," Tool. On the surface, that would indeed seem angry, but don't forget about the make-up sodomy. (I really wish I had a clip for the last one. It's one of my favorite SNL skits.)

6) "Hyper Enough," Superchunk. Pretty much every Superchunk song sounds pissed about something.

7) "Stan," Eminem (feat. Dido). I like this song enough to not do the FACK voice. Plus there's been plenty of all caps on the blog this week. Really, a pretty brilliant song about stalkers, with a little O. Henry twist at the end.

8) "Angry Mob," Kaiser Chiefs. They give the word "mob" a bad name.

9) "Helter Skelter (live)," U2. When you inspire the Manson family, you're going to wind up on an angry song list. Their cover is too tame, though, compared to the raw original.

10) "Fight the Power," Public Enemy. It's kind of depressing that one of their members went from this to Flavor of Love. I imagine that has to make Chuck D a little angry.

11) "Ace of Spades," Motörhead. What's even more angry than umlauts? Face warts. Which Lemmy has in spades. If I was more badass I would consider having this played at my funeral. The fact that I have to think about it means I'm not badass enough. I also don't own a belt made out of bullet cartridges.

Here's to a happy, peaceful, non-confrontational weekend.

A Prayer for Sarah Palin

by John Irving McCain


I am doomed to remember a woman with a wrecked voice, not because of her voice, or because she was the dimmest person I ever knew, or even because she was the instrument of my mother’s death, but because she is the reason I no longer believe in God. I am no longer a Christian because of Sarah Palin.

I met her at a prayer breakfast after she had been selected as my running mate. She was pretty in a J.C. Penny catalog model sense, although she was not rich enough for my tastes. It was when she opened her mouth that I realized how unique she was. She had a voice that sounded as if it came from another time zone. Now I’m convinced that it was a voice not entirely of this world.

“HI YA, JOHN. I’M SARAH,” she said. “WE’RE GOING TO BE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES.” She spoke with a series of tongue clicks and winks that made me think she had Tourette’s. I think she had all of those tics because the endless reserves of incompetence and incoherence that bubbled beneath her soul needed to escape in any way possible.

Her manicured hand had mine in a crushing shake. “DO YOU LIKE HUNTING?” she asked me.

I did not, but it was an election season, and I did not want to appear less manly than my female running mate. “Sure,” I said.

“WE SHOULD GO. BRING YOUR MOM,” Sarah said with a wink.

It took some cajoling, but I convinced Mother that this would be a great photo opportunity for my campaign. I dispatched my aides to the nearest Cabella’s store to purchase suitable attire. When Mother and I arrived for the hunt, wearing orange jackets and hats, Sarah stood in full camouflage, her face painted the same green and black pattern as her outfit. She carried a large rifle on her shoulder. She leaned against a helicopter, bathed in the machine-gun bursts of flash bulbs from the reporters. “Oh, dear,” my mother said.

“Why do we need a helicopter?” I asked.

“I LIKE TO HUNT FROM THE AIR,” Sarah said. “LIKE A BALD EAGLE. ONLY WITH A GUN.”

I saw Mother blanch, but in her classic WASP demeanor, she swallowed all emotion and plastered a smile across her face. “Sounds splendid,” she said, climbing into the helicopter.

We flew above the forest. “TAKE THE FIRST SHOT,” Sarah said. I spotted a moose down below, in a break among the trees. I aimed and fired, missing, and sending our prey galloping back into cover.

“YOU HAVE TO LEAD,” Sarah said. “LIKE THIS.”

She spotted another moose. Raising her rifle to her shoulder, she turned quickly to her right to track the animal. The gun barrel slammed into Mother, who lost her grip and tumbled out of the open chopper door. I screamed and grabbed for her, but my hands came away with only her orange hunting cap.

“OOPS,” said Sarah.

At the funeral, I said that it was an accident and that I didn’t hold Sarah accountable. Sarah said she was sorry, although she told the reporters, “THAT’S WHY THEY SAY BUCKLE UP FOR SAFETY.” Inside, I wanted to throttle her, to crush the very box that produced that voice. Instead, I smiled and hugged Sarah in front of reporters, swallowing my fiery rage for political gain. It’s what Mother would have wanted.

We met before the Republican convention and discussed policy points. When I asked her about her position on science, she said, “THE DINOSAURS DIED OUT BECAUSE NOAH DIDN’T HAVE ENOUGH ROOM ON THE ARK.” We talked about health care, and she said, “JESUS IS THE BEST DOCTOR YOU’LL EVER HAVE, AND THERE’S NO PRE-EXISTING CONDITIONS, EVEN IF YOU’RE JEWISH.” Regarding Iraq, she said we had to stay because “QUITTERS NEVER PROSPER.”

“No, it’s, ‘Cheaters never prosper,’” I corrected her.

“THEY DO IF THEY DON’T GET CAUGHT,” she answered.

After consulting with my advisors, I told her, “Maybe the convention is not the best place to discuss policy. Just go out there and be yourself.”

“WHO ELSE WOULD I BE?” she asked. “I COULD BE SOMEONE ELSE, THOUGH. I WAS IN A SCHOOL PLAY ONCE. I PLAYED A TREE.”

The eve of the convention, I could not sleep. What had I done? How could I ask America to vote for this woman when I wouldn’t vote for her?

But then it happened. She stepped in front of the microphone and won over not just the party, but America. She was folksy, charismatic, and not dim. “You did great,” I told her when she came off the stage.

“I HAD ALL THESE THINGS I WAS GOING TO SAY,” she said. “BUT THEN ALL THESE WORDS APPEARED BEFORE MY EYES, LIKE MAGIC. I JUST READ THEM, AND THEY SCROLLED DOWN AND MORE APPEARED AND THEN PEOPLE CLAPPED. I THINK JESUS WAS SPEAKING THROUGH ME.”

“Yes,” I said, “I’m going to go out and speak the magic words too.”

“YOU SHOULD SAY THAT ‘COMMUNITY ORGANIZER’ IS A CODE WORD FOR ‘SECRET MUSLIM.,’” she said.

“I will if that’s what Jesus writes,” I replied.

The polls shot up and what looked like certain political doom turned into a convention miracle. Maybe I was wrong about Sarah. Maybe I really did not understand what ordinary Americans wanted.

“THAT’S EXACTLY RIGHT,” she told me. “I’M LIKE THEM. OR THEY’RE LIKE ME. AND YOU NEED TO SHOW THAT YOU’RE ONE OF US.”

She started telling me about The Plan. It came to her in a dream. “I SAW A MAN, UNDER A SINK. I COULDN’T SEE HIS FACE, JUST THE TOP OF HIS HINEY STICKING OUT OF HIS JEANS. YOU WERE IN THE SINK, NOT REAL SIZE, BUT TINY SIZE. THE MAN WAS TRYING TO FIX THE PIPES.”

“What do you think it means?” I asked her.

“I DON’T THINK THE PIPES ARE REALLY PIPES. THEY’RE AMERICA. WE HAVE TO TALK ABOUT WHO’S GOING TO FIX THE PIPES.”

I looked at her, thanked her, and told her I would take her advice under advisement. “WOW, NO ONE HAS EVER DONE THAT BEFORE,” she beamed.

She started doing interviews, and things turned disastrous. When asked about looking for oil in ANWAR, she said, “I HAVE THE SAME BELIEF ABOUT OIL THAT I DO ABOUT SNUGGLE TIME WITH TODD: DRILL WHERE YOU WANT, AS MUCH AS YOU WANT, WITHOUT ANY PROTECTION.” She told Katie Couric that she had a plan for dealing with Russia. “IT’S LIKE D-DAY, ONLY WITHOUT NAZIS. AND WITH NUCLEAR WEAPONS.”

“Sarah,” I told her. “You have to watch what you say.”

“I WAS,” she said, “BUT THE JESUS WORDS DIDN’T APPEAR, SO I SAID WHAT I HEARD IN MY HEAD. GOD TALKS TO ME THAT WAY, TOO.”

After another meeting with my advisors, we fixed it so she would only talk when she had ‘Jesus Words’ in front of her—at least until we could get her to memorize the Jesus Words we wanted her to say. But the damage was done. The media had a field day with her. One evening, she telephoned me. Her voice was quick and her pitch a full tone higher. The receiver was like a diamond-cutter sawing at my eardrums.

“JOHN,” she yelped. “I’M ON THE TV, BUT I’M ALSO RIGHT HERE. HOW IS THAT POSSIBLE?”

I turned on the set. “Which channel?” I asked.

“CHANNEL SEVEN,” she said.

Channel seven on my system was the cable guide. “Which network?”

“THE ONE THAT’S ON CHANNEL SEVEN.”

I eventually found what she was looking at. “Sarah,” I said, “That’s not you. That’s Tina Fey.”

“WHO?”

“An actress playing you.”

She paused for a moment. “WHEN DID THEY MAKE A MOVIE ABOUT ME?”

My political fortunes continued to slide. Privately, I resigned myself to losing. But Sarah would not accept defeat. She kept admonishing me to follow The Plan, even though she didn’t know what The Plan really was.

Sarah called me. “TURN ON YOUR TV TO CHANNEL 32.”

After some investigation, I determined she was watching CNN. They were running a piece on my opponent, who was being questioned on a campaign stop by a plumber named Joe. I asked her what was so important.

“THAT’S THE GUY WHO WAS FIXING THE PIPES IN MY DREAM,” she said, her voice giddy. I asked her how she could know that when she had not seen the man’s face. “I JUST KNOW,” she said. “YOU HAVE TO TALK ABOUT HIM. IT’S THE PLAN.”

I may never know why I listened to her. Maybe I was desperate. Maybe I wanted to seem like a man of the people. And maybe—and this is what I think, deep down, is the answer—I wanted to believe. I wanted to be part of the America that thought they could find answers in dreams and Jesus Words, to be able to just believe what you wanted, without the gnawing fear of being wrong.

During the debate, I didn’t just talk about Joe the Plumber. I invoked his name over and over, making him my prayer, my mantra, my hymn to the average American that my running mate so clearly exemplified. When I finished, Sarah greeted me as I left the stage.

“IT’S GOING TO WORK. IT’S THE PLAN.”

The part that haunts me, more than anything, is that I believed her.

Of course, it didn’t work. It failed spectacularly, and in many respects, The Plan made me look even more out of touch than ever. On the night of the election, after I conceded, I turned to Sarah.

“So much for your plan.”

“I KNOW. I THINK I MISUNDERSTOOD THE DREAM. DREAMS ARE HARD, LIKE MATH.”

She looked genuinely sad, and for a moment, I felt bad about hurting her feelings. I hugged her and told her that was okay, that we gave it our best shot.

“I HAD ANOTHER DREAM,” she said. “IT WAS 2012 AND PEOPLE WERE CALLING ME ‘MADAM PRESIDENT,’ LIKE ON BATTLESTAR GALACTICA. ONLY IT WAS REAL LIFE AND NOT IN SPACE. MAYBE THE PLAN WAS TO GET ME THE EXPERIENCE I NEEDED SO I COULDBE PRESIDENT.”

“So you’re saying that The Plan—God’s plan—was for me to lose so that you could become president?” I asked her.

“YES,” she said. “AND IF I WIN, YOU CAN BE MY VICE-PRESIDENT. IF YOU’RE STILL ALIVE.”

For the second time, I believed her. That God wanted her to become the leader of America because she was the future of America. And that belief—that searing, hot, ball of conviction in my gut—is why I am no longer a believer. Yet I still pray. I pray that I will join Mother in the sweet, peaceful oblivion that is as far away from The Plan as possible.

Top Ten Tuesdays: How did we celebrate our Super Bowl victory?

10) Filled the streets of Pittsburgh with molten steel to preserve the city just as it was when the Steelers won their sixth title.

9) Overturned and burned any car with Arizona plates.

8) Went to Disneyland and shot up It’s a Small World.

7) Added masking agent to the postgame champagne.

6) Made a trophy out of the buffalo wing we choked on when Holmes caught the winning TD pass.

5) Added new love stains to our Ben Roethlisberger Fathead.

4) Called Kurt Warner to tell him it’s Jesus and, because he didn’t win the game, he’ll be left behind.

3) Vowed to not change out of Steelers jersey until next season, no matter how much wife threatens divorce.

2) Conceived our next child, Santonio Polamalu Tomlin (or Santonia if it’s a girl).

1) Put that sixth championship ring on something other than a finger.

Friday Random 11

It’s one more random than 10!

I was talking to one of my friends about politics this weekend, and I got on the subject of why I went from being conservative to a liberal. It boiled down to two things: the anti-intellectualism of the post-Gingrich GOP, with its emphasis on faith over reason; and the policing of personal behavior, instead of letting people manage their morality themselves.

Part of that policing involves the annoying overhyping of how depraved American culture has become, that we’re a “culture of anything goes.” Nothing exposes that myth more than Super Bowl week. It’s the biggest game of the year, and nothing adds to the excitement of sport like a little wagering on the side. Yet I can’t make a bet on the game because it’s against the law. I have to jump through a bunch of hoops and send my money to offshore agencies which may or may not be run by drug cartels or Al Qaeda or Danny Gans. I don’t find the effort worth it, especially since I am terrible at betting on sports anyway, so I don’t bother. But it’s such a crock of shit that our society is “out of control” when I can’t put $20 on Baby Jesus giving Kurt Warner another Super Bowl.

However, I am also a big believer in questioning your own beliefs, especially when confronted by evidence that suggests the other side may be on to something.

While I have given up on online sports wagering, I play poker online regularly, as does The Lovely Becky. A couple years ago, we did jump through the hoops of getting our money into an account at a poker site that rhymes with Bull Shilt, because the only thing worse than listening to a sermon about the evils of gambling is playing poker for fake money.

Since then, we’ve managed to win enough that we didn’t need to deposit additional money. In fact, at one point, we went on a pair of tears. We managed to go from $5 tournaments to $10 ones to $24 ones. We had enough money that we actually talked about cashing some of it out.

Of course, the poker gods taketh more than they giveth, and we went on a reverse tear that was like watching the Cubs collapse in the playoffs. It was hard to go back to the cheaper games, in part because the more expensive ones featured better players, and we both damaged our bankrolls by lingering longer in expensive waters than we should have. However, when it became clear that we either had to go cheap or go through the hoops of depositing more real money in our accounts, we grudgingly went back to the $5 games.

I mentioned this the other night when I was talking to TLB about how much we had in our accounts: would we have taken this more thrifty approach if it was really easy to deposit our money? I’m sure the answer is no, and it was in fact the efforts of the American Purity Police that kept me from dumping more into my account and probably losing more money. They may not have saved my soul, but they certainly saved me some money.

It sucks to realize that.

1) “Going Mobile,” The Who. Speaking of going mobile, how about Governor Blago getting kicked to the curb? That’s a man who needs a reality show. We could see him jogging, shoplifting from the store, getting his hair done and asking what the stylist is going to do for him if he leaves her a tip. It takes a lot to get the good people of Illinois, who anticipate corruption like they anticipate snow every winter, to sit up and say, “wow, that’s pretty corrupt.”

2) “I’ll Feel a Whole Lot Better,” The Byrds. I do feel better now that the waste of our 43rd president has been flushed back to Texas, but the aftermath is certainly depressing. It’s going to be a long time before we right the ship.

3) “Green Arrow,” Yo Lo Tengo. This song certainly helps, though. A quiet, beautiful instrumental track that feels like dusk descending on my ears.

4) “Run to the Hills,” Iron Maiden. I have to give them credit for writing a song sympathetic to plight of American Indians, but it makes me laugh because I watched “The Cigar Store Indian” episode of Seinfeld last night. The scene where Jerry is going out with the Native American woman and tries to avoid saying words like “reservation” and “scalper” is both funny and a biting comment about how much we’ve demonized and stereotyped the original Americans. BTW, this video has got some amazing pants in it.

5) “Everybody’s Got Something to Hide Except Me and My Monkey,” The Beatles. Their greatest song title. I also see that the creationists were at it in Texas again, losing their bid to expose the “weaknesses” of evolution. In an earlier article about this, the New York Times mentioned that the head of the Texas State Board of Education, Dr. Don McLeroy, is not just a creationist. Oh no, he’s a Young Earth Creationist, who thinks the earth is a few thousand years old, because dag gummit, that’s what the Bible says. Like I said to Michael Baines earlier, how do you become the head of a state educational board when you clearly hate education?

6) “Ride,” Joe Satriani. One of the best Guitar Heroes, who manages to be flashy without wanking like this Swedish meatball.

I am facing a bit of a fake music game dilemma. Both of my fake plastic toy guitar game controllers are dying. My old Guitar Hero one won’t strum, and the Rock Band one has always been a little wonky and imprecise. I told this to The Lovely Becky last night while I was playing (and she was playing poker), after my own ham-fisted strumming coupled with the controller’s malfunctioning made one guitar solo sound like a coked-up Neil Young playing in a clothes dryer. “Just get another one,” she said. She really is quite lovely.

The problem is I feel like a fool. I have already gone through TWO fake guitars, and now I need another one because I can’t quite play my fake music game at the level of expertise I would like. A normal person would either say enough is enough, or realize that, fake or no, said game provides hours of real pleasure and another guitar is no big deal. Instead I have to spend too much time analyzing this before eventually succumbing and buying the goddamned thing anyway. This is how I make myself nuts.

Of course, I have the money to buy a new controller because I haven’t been spending all of it on poker.

7) “No More My Lawd,” Ollabelle. This is how you can make Christian music that doesn’t sound like Tiffany singing about holding hands with Jesus. TLB and I are friends with Ollabelle’s bass player, and we got a big thrill when we saw them play on Conan O’Brien a few years ago. Why is that? We were of course happy for him and the band’s success (he may be the nicest person in the music business), but why do we take such pride in “Hey, I know that guy”?

8) “Suffer,” Bad Religion. Their songs are like lectures set to punk rock. I liked going to class in college (usually) and I like punk, so they don’t bug me the way they bug some people.

9) “The Fox in the Snow,” Belle & Sebastian. That might be what’s leaving tracks outside my back door. By the way, we’ve hit nearly 160 inches of snow for the winter. And only two more months to go!

10) “Sing for the Moment,” Eminem. OH FACK, IS THAT AEROSMITH? I DON’T LIKE AEROSMITH EXCEPT FOR “SWEET EMOTION.” THIS IS LIKE RAP KARAOKE.

11) “The Boy With the Thorn in His Side,” The Smiths. OH FACK, I’M SO FACKING MISERABLE BECAUSE NO ONE LOVES ME….*cough*, ahem, sorry. Hard to turn that off. Here’s my imitation of every Smiths song: I cried and I cried and I cried, oh did I tell you how I cried?

Enjoy yourselves this weekend.

Mistress Layoffs Felt Up and Down Wall Street

FADE IN

INT. TV NEWSROOM

Anchor JUDY VAN LICHEN sits at the news desk.

VAN LICHEN
The current economic downturn continues to affect nearly all sectors of the American economy, and now even a once-robust sector is taking a considerable pounding: the mistresses of businessmen.

According to the latest numbers from the Government Accounting Office, nearly 70 percent of all mistresses were either laid off or are only working in spurts. The report states that economic conditions coupled with stricter accounting standards have led many businessmen to immediately pull out of the mistress market.

We turn to our Economic Analyst Grant Silverstone for his insights.

ON CAMERA
Grant Silverstone

VAN LICHEN (cont.)
Grant, how bad is this mistress meltdown?

SILVERSTONE
In economic terms, it’s unprecedented. The entire businessmen-mistress industry has gone suddenly soft. Just look some of these figures:

ON SCREEN
A graph showing “Mistress Industry Shrinkage”
The graph shows the following figures:

Fur: -177%
Edible panties: -125%
Fuck pads: -115%
French Maid outfits: -97%
Pearl necklaces: -82%

SILVERSTONE (cont.)
The losses in the “fuck pad” market are especially devastating, considering that it’s nearly impossible to sell a million-dollar, one-bedroom condo downtown without the enticement of it being perfect for discreet intercourse between shareholder meetings.

ON SCREEN
B-Roll showing an older businessman escorting a young woman in fur and jewelry into a fancy restaurant.

SILVERSTONE (cont.)
This contraction is also seeping into other fields not traditionally dominated by mistresses, such as fine restaurants. Owners are losing those vital businessman-mistress dinners that usually resulted in expensive wines, caviar, and enough chocolate mousse to cover two fully naked lovers.

The jewelry industry may be the hardest hit, however.

INT. JEWELRY STORE

CARLA SCAMPI, owner of Scampi Jewelry, stands behind a jewelry counter, playing with her many rings as she speaks.

SCAMPI
Not only are we losing out because businessmen aren’t buying jewelry for their mistresses, but their increased fidelity has drastically reduced our lucrative guilt purchase market. So we’re really feeling this mistress thing at both ends.

INT. NEWSROOM

VAN LICHEN
Grant, what about the human cost?

SILVERSTONE
Well, no one is taking it harder than the mistresses themselves. Most are not trained to do more than have acrobatic, mind-blowing sex and destroy marriages. Some are seeking employment as escorts, but that industry only has so many openings that can be filled at once.

VAN LICHEN
Has this crisis reached its climax yet?

SILVERSTONE
Sadly, we’ve probably seen just the tip. There are already signs that this problem is dribbling from Wall Street onto Main Street.

ON SCREEN
B-roll of a motel advertising hourly rates, followed by footage of adult magazines on store racks

SILVERSTONE (cont.)
Many small businessmen are forgoing mistresses or seeking younger, more inexperienced lovers interested in working pro bono. Others are turning to in-house solutions for their sexual fantasies, employing adult material and their imaginations.

INT. NEWSROOM

SILVERSTONE (cont.)
It’s pretty clear that, without some sort of external stimulation, this will continue to be a pretty rough ride for mistresses everywhere.

VAN LICHEN
Well, let’s hope the industry gets off its feet and back on its back soon.

FADE OUT.


Adapted from a concept by the Onion News Network.

Top Ten Tuesdays: Why are our teenagers not having sex?

The New York Times reports that teenage sexual activity is down since the 1990s. Why are more teenagers saying they are not having sex?

10) Thought we did have sex, but realized abstinence-only teacher had no idea what he was talking about.

9) Would have totally done it with our girlfriends if we could have made it to the bed in time.

8) Converted to lesbianism after getting creeped by the dads at our purity ball.

7) Inflation in cost of dry cleaning makes dry humping cost-prohibitive.

6) Discovered mommy’s “back massager.”

5) Saving selves for that special someone on Facebook.

4) Became impotent after finding online porn that featured our parents.

3) Rising teenage obesity rates make it too much effort to remove pants.

2) Rainbow parties are so 2003. Now we just dirty Twitter.

1) Actually boffing like rabbits but know better than to say that to researchers.

Friday Random 11

It's one more random than 10!


My life now revolves around sleep.

I’ve had an adversarial relationship with sleep for most of my life. It’s not that I don’t like sleep, it’s that I don’t like going to bed. I want to be up, up, up, and I especially love being awake in the early morning hours, when it seems like I have the whole world to myself.

I dubbed this Brando’s War Against Sleep, after Gurdjieff: The War Against Sleep, a book about the philosopher I remember stocking in the Mizzou college bookstore. The Lovely Becky, who loves sleep and dreams of a world she could run from her bed, has never understood why I fight going to bed like a child.

The irony is, in recent weeks, my child has fought going to bed like her adult father. Libby originally lulled us into a false sense of security. The first six weeks were standard issue infant sleeping, which we were prepared for: sleep for three hours, eat, poop, repeat. After we returned from our vacation in North Carolina last August, something magical happened—she started sleeping through the night. She would go down for nine to twelve hours. Having been fed so many horror stories of sleep deprivation from parents, we reacted like Sir Robin seeing the Bridge of Death: That’s easy!

Like Brave Sir Robin, we got too eager and were thrown into the Gorge of Eternal Peril.

The sleep honeymoon lasted about another six weeks. For a while, Libby usually got up once or twice a night, which was manageable. But in the last few weeks, she shifted into overdrive and was getting up three or four times a night. The baby books said she was attached to us and simply didn’t want the fun to stop. I could totally relate, and it also revealed what a fool I was to every declare war on sleep. Now, all I want to do is surrender to my once sworn enemy, to come out of my consciousness trench at 9 p.m., my hands raised, waving the white night cap of surrender, and praying for sleep to take me to its POW camp. Or at least machine gun me so I could sleep when I’m dead.

We launched our own offensive this week, following the strategy of letting Libby cry and taking turns staying up with her while the other person sleeps in the quiet guest room, which is an odd thing to do in your own house. It’s worked pretty well, though, and last night the Libster woke up once for a bottle and hardly made a peep otherwise. This of course helped me sleep, and I figured I would feel like my old self.

Yet, like a veteran returning home, I am not the same. The war has changed me, and even with a couple of full nights of sleep, I found myself yawning and droopy long before The Daily Show came on. Like water cutting through rock that eventually forms the Grand Canyon, I am slowly being changed from Rock N Roll Brando* into a dad, the way my dad was transformed from the D-Train (a hell raiser straight out of an S.E. Hinton novel) to Dad. Because when I was growing up, the one thing Dad yearned for more than anything else was a good night’s sleep. I don’t know if he ever fought the transition, but I can see why he eventually gave in, because sleep feels wonderful.

So, this week, I’m doing a theme: 11 random songs about sleep.

*(Note: level of rock n roll unverified by inspectors and is heavily disputed by spouse.)

1) “I Go to Sleep,” The Pretenders. Of course, this song is mostly about missing somebody to get freaky with before going to sleep, as Chrissy Hynde sings about missing the person next to her. (I’m not sure, but there could also be some implied DiVinyls action going on as well.) Despite this, her voice is a perfect lullaby. Wow, is it really only noon? I could use some sleep right now.

2) “Sleeping Lessons,” The Shins. It does seem funny that you have to teach someone how to sleep. We gave into Libby’s crying a little too much (as a lot of new parents do) before getting fatigued enough to become irritated enough to be sleep fascists with our baby. But all the books say that’s what you have to do, and as writers, who are we to argue with books?

3) “The Devil Never Sleeps,” Iron & Wine. This is true, and maybe this is why I liked staying up. I’m not a fan of The Devil and don’t really believe in his approach, but I have to admit, when he’s around, things get pretty exciting.

Speaking of possession, I am a big Paranormal State fan. For someone who generally prides himself on being fairly logical, I love things that have to do with ghosts, demons, and all that occult stuff. I don’t necessarily believe it, but like Fox Mulder, I want to believe it, because it would make the world more interesting if it was true. Anyway, Paranormal State usually involves the research team conducting “Dead Time,” a type of spirit communication that takes place at 3:00 a.m. (supposedly because that’s the exact opposite time of when Jesus died—SPOOKY). Most of the time, the researchers don’t uncover much, or hear things that could either be a soul-sucking demon or a running toilet. Every once in a while, though, they see or hear something that, at least in its edited form, is kind of freaky.

I’ve told TLB that I wish I could have a paranormal experience. I’ve never had anything remotely resembling one. No déjà vu, no cold spots (unless you count the UP as a cold spot), no floating orbs or light, nothing. Lots of people in my family have had ghost experiences, including my parents and my siblings. Of course, like a certain star of The Wizard of Oz, I don’t want to experience this when I’m alone, and I would prefer to see such things from behind a wall of chanting Jesuits. But I’m always super curious and a little jealous when people tell their ghost stories.

4) “Sleep Tonight,” Stars. After all that writing, I’m a little tired. A very nice, very simple song that always relaxes me.

5) “Sleepwalker,” The Kinks. Ray Davies sounds like a man who is wandering the streets in a half-conscious state. I’ve never had this happen to me or ever seen it happen, but there are those stories of people killing others while sleepwalking (which has a killer name, Homicidal somnambulism). So, like a solo paranormal experience, it’s probably best I haven’t run into this.

6) “Singing in My Sleep,” Semisonic. I have heard people talking in their sleep. I once shared a bed with my cousin when we were teenagers, and he rolled over in the middle of the night and said, “I know I can seem like a jerk, but I’m really a nice guy.” I thought he was having a moment of clarity, but he was the same person the next day.

BTW, for you kids watching the videos, that thing at the beginning of this one is a cassette tape. They were used to steal music before the Internets and to explain, through music, why you would love your boyfriend forever/were dumping him for someone who made a better mixtape.

7) “Get Some Sleep,” Bic Runga. A wonderful New Zealand singer, introduced to me by a wonderful New Zealander, my friend Paula (and her trusty squire, TMiddy). Paula recently wrote a post about her adventures in air travel that made me feel like I was exhausted, unwashed, and vowing to declare war on Air France.

8) “Sleep Spent,” Death Cab for Cutie. They sound a little sleepy themselves here, like the drummer can barely step on his bass pedal. You definitely don’t want to fall asleep while you’re playing a concert, that’s for sure.

9) “Sleeping Giant,” Mastadon. In case the title and band name don’t tell you this is the opposite of Death Cab, this song is from the album Blood Mountain. Sleeping giant could refer to me since, in typical new dad fashion, fatherhood has delivered a few extra lbs to me along with my wonderful child. Mastadon is a little too aggro for me and I only play this at the gym, which I don’t go to enough because I’m too goddamned tired. Perhaps I’ll record my own prog metal album called The Couchening: Waistline of the Napping Gods. It’ll be a concept album about a man on a quest for the perfect nacho dip to eat before falling asleep during a majestic football game.

10) “Sleepless Nights,” Gram Parsons. I’m really sorry that it took me 37 years to finally listen to Gram Parsons. The steel guitar here is nice and weepy.

11) “I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead,” Warren Zevon. Kind of sad in light of his death, but it’s a great ode to putting off some sack time to raise a little hell. Which works even better when you try to raise it during Dead Time.

It’s supposed to snow again this weekend, and we’re already at 150 inches for the winter. So maybe I should just bag the next two months and hibernate. It would keep me from eating dip in my sleep.

Have a good weekend, and stay warm.

Top Ten Tuesdays: What commemorative inaugural merchandise are we purchasing?

Special extra collectable edition!

12) Yes, We Can! home canning kit.

11) Starbucks Kenyan Roast/Cafe Americano blend (comes with genuine certificate of origin).

10) 24k Gold Compromise Necklace (note: clasp is very fragile and may break under the slightest pressure)

9) Red, white, and blue Deficit Shovel (with free Bailout Bucket).

8) Franklin Mint Obama Administration vs. Bush Administration pewter chess set.

7) Danger Mouse remix of Barack Obama reciting The Gettysburg Address over Jay-Z’s Black Album.

6) Inauguration key chain with laser pointer (warning: do not point during inauguration).

5) Keepsake vial with drop of Oprah’s inauguration swoon sweat (includes free trial size of O: The Cotton Swab).

4) Box of Ol’ Conservative Sour Balls (available at Fox News media tent).

3) Hillary Clinton Inauguration Ball Glass Slippers (made from genuine shards of glass ceilings).

2) Joe Biden Dental Dam.

1) Hope-on-a-Rope

Friday Random 11

It’s one more random than 10!

So this is it, the last weekend of George W. Bush in office. Appropriate that it’s been cold enough for hell to freeze over.

I really don’t think there’s been eight years of FAIL the way there has been with the Bush White House. Nixon was worse—Watergate was just the tip of the illegal iceberg. And I think there have been more ineffectual presidents. But I do think Bush is the worst to ever serve two full terms.

I understood the 2000 election. I think if someone not from the Clinton administration had run, Bush would have lost. I certainly don’t think adultery is an impeachable offense, but let’s face it: Clinton was an embarrassment his last couple of years, both for his behavior and his choice of mistresses. I mean, he was the president. Get Diane Lane or at least Meryl Streep in there. Have some respect for the White House. A hummer from an intern is so Mark Foley. Gore bore the brunt of that frustration, and it cost him.

Anyway, Bush was an assface back then, but he seemed like a relatively unexceptional assface, another Calvin Coolidge who would cut taxes and be out in 2004. Then September 11 happened, and he turned into a feces flinging monkey with irritable bowel syndrome. He found this nexus of incompetence, arrogance, idiocy, and zealotry that I’ve never seen from any politician before. He would crap in your oatmeal right in front of you, deny that that he didn’t actually crap in your oatmeal, admit that he did and then ask why it’s a big deal, and finally tell you that crapping in your oatmeal was good for you, and that he’d love to tell you why, but that’s classified.

The really unbelievable part is how apparent all of this was by the 2004 election. We knew everything we needed to know about Bush by that time. And yet tens of millions of people came out and said “more, please.” Kerry was a pretty poor candidate, true, but really, anything was better than Bush. A bowl of poopy oatmeal would have been better, because although totally incapable of making decisions, it would also be incapable of making the worst possible decision every single fucking time.

Now he’s finally going. I thought I would feel happier. But the interviews this week just infuriated me. He’s leaving, having accomplished nothing but leaving the country in much worse shape than he found it, and he’s the same clueless fuckwit he was when he was sworn in. Even worse, he gets to skip off into the sunset, collecting large speaking fees (sweet Jesus) from conservative mouthbreathers who want to see him smirk just one more time, while millions of people struggle and suffer because of the policies of his administration.

I have no idea if Obama will be able to right the ship. The problems are so big, and go far beyond our shores, that I suspect we’ll only be able to stem the bleeding and maybe have to amputate a limb or two. However, at least when I see the president speaking, I won’t feel the urge to throw a pie at my television set.

1) “11 O’Clock Tick Tock (Live),” U2. This is the peak of U2.1, the period before they morphed into the world’s biggest band with The Joshua Tree. Much like Live at Leeds is better than any Who studio album up to that point in their careers, I think Under a Blood Red Sky captures U2 at their early, earnest best. If given a time machine, I might be tempted to go back and see them at the Red Rocks concert. You know, after I kill Hitler and punch Clinton in the balls before he could become infellatimous.

2) “Allison Road,” Gin Blossoms. I’ve been going back and re-burning some of my CDs, and when I did this one, I noticed it came out in 1992. Has it really been seventeen years since the Gin Blossoms? Oh my God, I’m almost dead!

I’ve been getting that feeling a lot lately because of Facebook. I’ve connected with a few people I haven’t talked to since high school or college. In some cases, I haven’t spoken with them in more than 20 years. How can I be that old already? The Lovely Becky and I remember what our parents were like in their late 30s, and they seemed, well, old. Okay, not old, but older than us. Certainly not having kids until now let us indulge in some of our more carefree, adolescent impulses. Still, I seem younger than my dad did at this age. I use product in my hair! I dig the rock and roll that these crazy kids listen to! My dad probably felt the same way about his father, which makes me wonder if it’s a common psychological reaction, or if our society really is stretching adolescence further and further into adulthood.

Despite being mortified at seeming “old,” I am equally terrified of not aging gracefully. Back in high school, wandering the Mission Beach area of San Diego with my friends (some of whom I’m now talking to on Facebook), I saw this older gentleman—balding, gray hair and beard—cruising in a convertible Mercedes, with the speakers blaring Oingo Boingo. Now, maybe he was really a swell guy who just dug his alternative rock. But he looked like a giant cobag looking to pick up a new trophy wife. When I’m edging toward retirement and riding in my Smart hyrid, cranking the latest record from Flavor of the Week, I’m going to keep my windows rolled up.

3) “In My Head,” Queens of the Stone Age. I should like these guys more than I do. This is the only song of theirs I have, bought after I heard it on an episode of Entourage. They rock hard, they occasionally play naked, and they don’t take themselves too seriously. Yet I’m fairly meh on them. But I go ape over Dio. My tastes make no sense sometimes.

4) “Where Boys Fear to Tread,” The Smashing Pumpkins. The theme song for Mark Foley’s office.

5) “Game of Pricks (Live),” Guided by Voices. A top five song from a top five band for me. I had the pleasure of seeing them play this twice live, in a small club, where I could get up close and jump around with 300 other people having a ball. That was the beauty of a GbV show: it was one giant party.

6) “I Will Dare,” The Replacements. I usually have the cover view on when I have iTunes opened, so I can see the album art with the song list. The cover of The Replacements Let It Be has them on a roof, looking like four kids fresh out of high school (and I think the bass player was still under 18). Seeing that photo and then hearing what they could produce—some of the best rock music of the 80s, music that sounded so mature and assured—it’s hard to believe it was made by kids. Of course, they also have songs about boners and tonsillectomies on the same album, so they didn’t forget their roots.

7) “Strapped for Cash,” Fountains of Wayne. I got my year-end 401k statements last week. I’m not a panicky person as far as retirement goes. I know that there will be boom years and bust years. But holy shit, it’s amazing how much things tanked last year. Seeing figures in black and white that suggest I might be revisiting my high school career as a grocery bagger when I’m 65 did make me pucker a bit. Even worse, there was no place to hide—every possible fund was a loser. The only difference was the variance in the amount of compound suck. If monkeyface got his wish and privatized Social Security, you would have seen old people overturning and burning motorized carts, hurling shuffleboard pucks at police, and looting Miracle Ears and Brylcreme from stores.

8) “KC Accidental,” Broken Social Scene. An unusually structured song that works really well. It has a mellow sung section sandwiched between two soaring instrumental parts.

9) “3rd Planet,” Modest Mouse. It took me a long time to warm to Modest Mouse. They’re not a first-listen-fave in my opinion. They pack all these odd turns and tweaks in their songs, with lyrics that require you to really concentrate before you get them. Music you have to think about: what a concept!

10) “No Place to Go,” Lupe Fiasco. I’m hipping and/or hopping to this. I don’t get all the references because I’m not well versed in rap, but his lyrics touch on so many themes, including how hard it is to like songs that say things you normally would find offensive. Why is that? If I heard someone talking to a woman the way David Coverdale sings about women in Whitesnake’s “Slide It In,” I would be totally appalled. Yet it comes on the radio, and it goes to 11 (with the car windows rolled up, of course). I know that a lot of my lingering love for some 80s metal stems from nostalgia, for enjoying that feeling of being 17 again, if only for four minutes. Why can I not grow out of the truly embarrassing stuff, though? Does my inner Beavis fight it precisely because it is so immature, and that immaturity is where the nostalgia comes from? I wish I knew the answer to that.

11) “99 Problems,” Danger Mouse. From The Grey Album, a remix of Jay-Z’s Black Album with The Beatles White Album. Ha, talk about feeling like a hypocrite for liking a song. I put this on when I’m working out and I can’t help but groove to it, because Danger Mouse did such a good job working the samples in. What he didn’t remix was any of Jay-Z’s sexism, which by rap standards is not that terrible, but by people standards is the snout, hooves, and squiggly tail. So why do I tolerate this? Again, I don’t know. And, honestly, if I understood how my brain works, life would be a lot less interesting.

Have a good weekend, and stay warm. My advice to Obama is also to not pull a William Henry Harrison: Wear a hat! Preferably one that says “I licked Bush in 2008.” 'Cause that would be tits.

Top Ten Tuesdays: What presidential regrets do we have?

10) Making too many decisions without using our “thinkin’ juice.”

9) Forgetting to plant the WMD before invading Iraq.

8) Crying out “Mission Accomplished” in bed before the First Lady could have hers.

7) Not finding a way to keep immigrant labor cheap but not so immigranty.

6) Failing to build more support for invasive interrogations by turning them into a game show, Wheel of Torture.

5) Having typos when updating status on the White House Facebook page.

4) Walking into the Vice President’s crypt during a feeding.

3) Thinking that New Orleans was supposed to be underwater, like Atlantis.

2) Smirking so hard that face is permanently frozen.

1) Listening to anyone else except the voice that’s probably God’s.

Friday Random 11

It's one more random than 10!

Over at Three Bulls, Pinko and the Uncanny Canadian are doing their annual epic rundown of Pitchfork’s top 100 songs of the year. It is one of my favorite blog posts of the year, and their ability to say something funny for 100 songs is re-mehrk-able. For those of you unfamiliar with Pitchfork, it’s an indie music review site that has grown into the Second Life version of Rolling Stone during its late 70s/early 80s pretentious zenith. In their reviews, sentences get slaughtered, metaphors murdered, careers castrated, and sincerity sliced up—all done with the detached coolness of a Brett Easton Ellis protagonist who is a record reviewer stalking and eating bands he likes, humming old Ramones songs as he adds bits of the bass player to his goulash.

It’s like Pitchfork reviewers fall into the Dick or Barry category from Hi Fidelity. They are either obsessive-compulsive music nerds or arrogant windbags (who often lack Barry’s sense of humor). I am a Rob Gordon. I recognize that I have elements of Dick and Barry in my musical personality, and I can obsesses/pontificate quite well. However, I have a sense of self-awareness when I am doing this, as well as a nagging sense that these obsessions are a colossal waste of time, that I’d be better off obsessing about things that might be productive or Mean Something. This doesn’t make me better than the P-Fork cobags—in fact, you could argue that it’s stupid for me to obsess over obsessing about music when music brings me so much pleasure. It just explains why they annoy me so much...and why I keep returning to them for that annoyance. Which makes me part of the problem.

One other thing from last week: I wrote about how we went to dinner with some old friends, and one of their comments reminded me that I left out the funniest part of the evening. Now, the thing to understand is the restaurant we were at was pretty Del Boca Vista in terms of its clientele. We were definitely the most energetic and vocal group in the place. At one point, the six of us happened to zip it long enough to hear someone other than our selves. The first thing we do hear is an older woman at the next table finishing a sentence with the words “stool softener.” Which launched us into a flurry of laughter and conversation until we were the last people in the place and the management booted us so they could close. Reality really does provide the best punch lines.

1) “Don’t Stop,” Fleetwood Mac. Wow, everything is coming up Clinton again. It’s like someone took a snapshot of the White House in 1996 and Photoshopped Barack in place of Bill. I am not a gianormous Fleetwood Mac fan, but I have always really liked their biggest hits. I suppose that applies to the Clintons as well: not into the albums but have Clinton Gold in my collection. Unrelated: How much higher could Mick Fleetwood look in this clip? The answer is, "None." None more higher.

2) “Reptile,” The Church. An overlooked 80s gem and my favorite song of theirs. Song production in the 80s was always a mixed bag, because it tended to spoon so much sugar on songs, they lost whatever bite they had. Here, however, the trend of reverbing the shit out of everything really helps, because it makes the plunky main guitar riff sound a lot bigger and meaner.

3) “Romeo and Juliet,” Dire Straits. Precisely the kind of song Pitchfork would hate, because it’s so very sincere and admittedly kind of cheesy. But, to dip into another John Cusack movie, so is holding a boom box over your head outside of Ione Skye’s house—and that cheesy sincerity kills me every time I see Say Anything. Whereas some P-Fork reviewer trying to win a girl over would play some electro-noise track from the B-side of a self-released single that he loves because no one outside of the band has ever heard it. The girl wouldn’t be paying attention because she’d be inside sleeping with the guy who put “Romeo and Juliet” on an iPod playlist for her.

4) “Working Man,” Rush. It’s a dumb, dumb, dumb song, with a bare minimum of lyrics that serve merely to break up the jamming. But damn if that opening riff doesn’t snag me in its air guitar web every single time, and then rope me back in after all the wanky soloing. I have this song in Rock Band, but could NEVER play it with other people, because I get so into it, I would embarrass myself even more than I already do when I have a plastic guitar slung around my neck. Hi, I’m almost 40.

5) “On the Way,” Dinosaur Jr. They find their way back for the second week, with a much better song this time. A blistering track, with the drums and guitar freaking out during every fill, to the point where the song seems like it’s going to fly apart like a cartoon car that just exploded around Bugs Bunny—with Bugs flying through the air while still seated—until J Mascis brings it back together.

6) “Big Me,” Foo Fighters. One of my favorite videos. Dave Grohl is the best rock star in rock music. Not the best performer, or the most talented, or even the most deserving. But he gets what it means to be a rock star. He’s got just enough ego to keep an arena rocking while being down to earth enough to not seem like one of the Cock Brothers from Oasis. He seems like a guy who would be fun to get hammered with, but won’t strip naked, dive face first into a pile of coke, and drive a motorcycle out of the fifteenth story of a hotel into the swimming pool. So even though I’m not a huge Foo Fighters fan, I hope they keep being big and successful, because Grohl plays that role so well.

7) “Chicago at Night,” Spoon. The Lovely Becky and I have an odd relationship with The Windy City, our home town. When we are away from it, we miss it. We were back there for a week over Christmas, and it felt so nice to be back. Every Christmas Eve, we drive back from my grandma’s in Indiana to TLB’s parents’ house. Driving through Chicago at night, especially if the weather is clear and you’re not screaming at the asshole in front of you, is invigorating. I think it’s the prettiest city in America at night.

Yet, every time we’ve lived there, we’ve gotten restless and wanted to move away after a bit. I suppose there’s a grass-is-always greener effect at work, but I’ve lived in the area four separate times in my life already. It’s like getting married and divorced over and over again to the same person. You either love them for the wrong reasons or leave them for the wrong reasons. I’m not sure what the case is here.

8) “In a Simple Rhyme,” Van Halen. Their music has aged really poorly in my opinion. For starters, the production on all their records except 1984 really sucks. They always did had Eddie’s guitar coming out of one speaker when he was playing the main riff (and in this case, during his solo). Why they did this, when the best thing about Van Halen was those riffs, makes as much sense as thinking they could make it with Gary Cherone as a singer. The bigger problem, though, is their albums were paper thin in terms of quality. After that first album—which is pretty solid throughout—they phoned it in, giving a shit for a couple of songs so people would buy the album, only to deliver a bunch of half-assed tracks like this one. And David Lee Roth seems exponentially less entertaining the further away I get from 16. Although, to be fair, at least he was entertaining. Unlike, say, Sammy Hagar.

9) “Little Bombs,” Aimee Mann. Top-shelf Aimee Mann here. I don’t think she’s gotten back to the heights of Bachelor No. 2 (which, admittedly, would be hard to top), but this is one of her great ones.

10) “Fake Empire,” The National. Fake empire is a pretty apt label for the US right now, especially economically. I hope that Bernie Madoff and his Ponzi ass get put away for life, and in real prison where he’ll be food for freaks (to borrow from Out of Sight). At the same time, our whole fucking economy is a Ponzi scheme. Bernie was just more blatant about it. We use credit to buy shit we don’t really need, which provides money to the people who make and sell that shit, giving them the capital to buy shit from other people, and so on and so on. Speaking as a man who has owned five of the last six videogame consoles released to the public, I am certainly one of those feeding ExLax to the American economy.

The troubling thing is how obvious it all was, yet how much it got ignored. We were walking on a tightrope between two skyscrapers, but had no idea how high we were until somebody said, “Man, aren’t you afraid of falling?” We looked down, screamed, and are now plunging toward the pavement. Our only hope is to inflate one of those big stuntman mattresses so we might only break all of our limbs instead of splattering all over the pavement. This kind of stuff is supposed to happen to Albania, not us.

Am I buggin’ ya? I don’t mean to bug ya. Okay, The National play terrific, intimate pop with some rock flourishes and are well worth checking out. This song is from Boxer, which I don’t like quite as much as the outstanding Alligator, but it’s still a damn fine album.

11) “Keep ‘Em Coming,” Alkaline Trio. A little emo to make me feel better. Why does emo make me feel better? Because it’s nice to hear someone singing obsessively over problems like girls (or guys) or how they're so depressed because no one gets them or how they have to work at Cinnabon in the morning. It makes me miss little things to worry about.

So, after all that, I hope you have a good weekend. Despite thinking these things, I'll probably listen to some tunes, play with Libby, watch some football, and relax. Because what else can you do?

Top Ten Tuesdays: What new Wii games are we playing?

10) Wii Intervention

9) Wii Miracle Worker (includes blindfold and ear plugs)

8) Wii Breakfast (milk sold separately)

7) Wii Cock Fight

6) Wii Seizure (may cause seizures)

5) Wii Frost/Nixon (compatible with Wii Interview Chairs)

4) Wii Duel (honor not included)

3) Wii Family Time (real interaction optional)

2) Wii Hospital (health insurance not included)

1) Wii Kama Sutra

Friday Random 11

It’s one more random than 10!

Over the Christmas holiday, we got to do something we had not done since the first week in September: Go out with other couples sans children. The Lovely Becky and I have been more than happy to spend our weekends with our little girl, but a night in the company of adults still has its appeal. We were staying with my in-laws and they were glad to take their granddaughter for a night.

We met up with two other couples, people I used to work with when I lived in Chicago. We get together every couple of years to have a wonderfully entertaining dinner that usually lasts about three hours and involves oodles of humor, most of it very politically incorrect. It’s one of those nights where, even if we haven’t seen each other in a while, we take the bookmark out and pick up right where we left off.

One of the guys started talking to me about the blog, specifically the Random 11. He said that he enjoyed reading it and had found a number of songs he really liked and had purchased a few.

I know some of the regulars here have done the same thing, but I always feel odd when I see the blog having an effect on the real world. My friends and family read the blog, yet I’m always surprised when they bring it up in actual conversation. I’m always flattered, and a comment like the one my friend made about the music posts can make my week. It just feels a little strange to receive what feels like a comment in spoken form, face-to-face or over the phone, without typing or some note about what the word verification was. You know, the way people used to communicate before blogs. It’s like the streams get crossed and two worlds that should remain separate collide. Is it just my freak brain that feels this way, or do other people have the same reaction?

By the way, I'm also sorry I've been absent from many blogs. The end of year got pretty hectic and I also needed to take a little break from the Internets over the holdays. I'm now refreshed and ready to have conversations that require word verification.

On to the first tunes of aught-nine...

1) “Janie Jones,” The Clash. Do you have those songs you love and play all the time, yet have no real idea what the hell they are about? This is one of those for me. I can kind of tell it’s about some guy disenchanted with his working life or something, but beyond that, I’m clueless. Yet it still doesn’t prevent me from singing, “Fill er up, Jacko!” like I know what I’m singing about.

2) “Thumb,” Dinosaur Jr. When you can’t really sing, you really shouldn’t sing slow songs. I like Dinosaur Jr., and when they are in full rock and rollicking mode, the nasally whine of J. Mascis serves as the low-key foil to the frenetic solos and spastic drum fills. But slowed down to a slacker ballad, it focuses too much on the weakest part of the band.

3) “Whiskey Bottle,” Uncle Tupelo. Much like drinking a bottle of whiskey itself, the song starts off slow and a bit sad, before exploding into a more violent outburst during the chorus. Also, much like “Janie Jones,” I have no idea what “whiskey bottle over Jesus” really means, but I like to sing it. The link has a great live version from their last night together. Is there anything you can't find on YouTube.

4) “The Times They Are A-Changin’,” The Byrds. I like this a little better than the Dylan original, but then again, I’ve always been a little more rock and roll. The video is worth watching for the terrible introduction and the set.

5) “Heron Blue,” Sun Kil Moon. April is one of the best albums of last year, full of slow, hypnotic folk songs that repeat the same motifs like the tide coming in and out. Good enough that it leaves me snarkless.

6) “Slugs in the Shrubs,” Les Savy Fav. As Christian would say on Project Runway, “fierce.” By the way, Entertainment Weekly recently opined that the phrase “hot mess” should be retired, a nod to Christian’s “hot tranny mess.” I disagree. We’ve started feeding Libby solid foods, and she has a habit of sticking her fingers in her mouth while eating, getting drool and strained whatever all over her face, which I dub “a hot Libby mess.” I can’t wait for the parent-teacher conferences when my child’s instructors try to discuss the phrases Libby uses, and I have to pretend that I have no idea where she learned them.

7) “Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere,” The Who. Over Christmas, I bought The Who Live at Kilburn: 1977, the concert that originally was supposed to provide footage for The Kids Are Alright documentary. It’s an amazing disc that captures Keith Moon’s second-to-last live performance, with him wearing a purple outfit bedazzled with stars and sequins. I read the liner notes in the disc booklet, and there’s a quote from Roger Daltrey that said the Beatles and Stones made music to dance to, while The Who made music to fight to. That’s about as accurate and succinct a summation of there differences as I’ve ever heard. Anyway, if you’re a Who fan, Kilburn is worth checking out.

8) “No More Heroes,” The Stranglers. Possibly the only punk song to feature a keyboard solo. Given when this was recorded (late 70s) and that keyboard solos were usually played by people wearing sequined capes and singing songs about mystical lands, that’s a pretty ballsy thing to do.

9) “Let Your Loss Be Your Lesson,” Robert Plant and Alison Krause. Plant sits this one out, but still, this album is a blueprint for how to move your career in a new direction after being a shirtless, trouser-stuffed rock legend. It’s everything The Honeydrippers should have been, instead of being The Honeydrippers.

10) “Making Time,” Creation. The best song from the awesome Rushmore soundtrack. If there’s one movie I wish I could have written, it’s Rushmore. Funny, sad, sarcastic, and sincere, it’s one of the most genuine movies I’ve ever seen, ironic considering that all of Wes Anderson’s other movies have been stuffed with more artificial filler than a Chinese hot dog. The soundtrack isn’t just terrific, it’s a vital part of the movie, an enzyme that serves as a catalyst for the humor and drama in the film.

11) “Evil,” Interpol. Libby gave me Rock Band 2 for Christmas (she’s stealing our credit cards already), and much to my delight the game has Interpol’s “PDA” in it. I hope they add “Evil” because the winters here are long here and go by much faster when I have great music to play on my plastic toy instruments.

Have a great weekend.

Top Ten Tuesdays: What New Year's resolutions are we making?

Special extra resolve edition!


15) Locate the gym we joined last January.

14) Watch everything we TiVo’d in 2008 by the end of 2009.

13) Read more book reviews so we’ll seem more well read.

12) Stay in Iraq until the job is done (repeat).

11) Throw off investigators by using pig Latin when discussing the illegal sale of political offices.

10) Reduce butter habit to three sticks a day.

9) Switch to decaf before some other chattering asshole gets his lips stapled shut for talking while we’re trying to get the numbers to accounting before the month end!

8) Remove all art flicks from Netflix queue so that we’ll actually watch what’s in our Netflix queue.

7) Write the first presidential memoir in pop-up book form.

6) Take a drink every time the change we deserve is changed into the compromise we expect.

5) Join Alcoholics Anonymous three days after the inauguration.

4) Vow to stay in soul-crushing dead-end job until market for ditching it all to pursue your dreams improves.

3) Stop Twittering about our boner status.

2) Write more complex, nuanced, intelligent humor instead of falling back on easy dick jokes.

1) Quit lying.

Top Ten Tuesdays: What's being stuffed in our Christmas stockings?

Special 12 days of Christmas therapy edition!

12) The last of the forensic evidence.

11) Pack of smokes and candy-cane shank (prison only).

10) Our own personal “massager”.

9) Invisible lump of clean coal.

8) Deluxe Blu-Ray of Fred Claus: The Director’s Apology Edition.

7) Gift-wrapped subpoena.

6) Something kind of wriggly and bitey.

5) Collectible Santa’s reindeer cockrings.

4) Slightly used cookies.

3) Wad of singles and VIP pass for the Champagne Room.

2) Personal trimmer and copy of It’s Not You, It’s Your Nose Hair.

1) Print-out from some gay country music dancing blog wishing you Happy Holidays and a Happy New Year.

Travel safe, stay warm, and drink heavily if it makes the family more bearable.

Friday Favorite 11: 2008

It’s one more critically significant than 10!


Best-of lists are officially supposed to praise the best artistic achievements of the year. In reality, they are designed to cause validation and irritation. The validation comes from being able to positively answer questions such as: Did I buy the “coolest” or “bestest” records? Am I “in the know” culturally? Do I have the same opinions as people who get paid to do provide their opinions?

On the flip side—and where the real entertainment value lies—is the irritation these lists bring: Why did they include The Bestest, when I heard it and thought it sucked The Mostest? How could those eyeglass-wearing hipster doofus elitist cobags not recognize the brilliance of The Overlooked and their tour de force, Too Cool for the Critics to Recognize Because They’re too Busy Sucking off The Bestest? And, perhaps the greatest hit of best-of irritation: I’ve never heard of these groups.

However, I think the Internets have made the best-of list a more useful feature, especially for music, because now you can hear the songs or albums that get selected. I was trolling the Bestest List Evah, as I do every year, and I found some new songs that I had overlooked that I really liked. Even better, I got to hear some other songs that gave the irritation quotient the hat trick: I don’t know who the hell this is, and now that I’ve heard it, I don’t know why the hell they picked them over The Overlooked.

So, with that in mind, what I’m presenting here are my favorite tracks of 2008, in something resembling my favoritest order. I like them, and I like turning people on to music they might like, too.

At the same time, there’s a lot of music I missed this year, and I like when people turn me on to music I might like. Because, at the end of the year, I don’t listen to music to find validation or irritation, but to find more favorites. So lay it on me in the comments: Who were your The Bestest?

11) “Inní Mér Syngur Vitelysingur,” Sigur Rós. The irony with doing a favorite eleven is that I had no problem at all coming up with my ten favorites. Then I got stuck at eleven. I went back and forth between “Lost Verses,” by Sun Kil Moon, “I Will Possess Your Heart,” by Death Cab for Cutie, and this track by Sigur Rós.

I finally decided on Sigur Rós because they are from Iceland. Now, I realize that Iceland is actually quite green, and that Greenland is quite icy, and that this explains why the Vikings died out, because they inadvertently kept travelling to their icy deaths when they thought they were going someplace lush and green for vacation. However, there still is a lot of ice and snow in Iceland...much like there is where I live. And while the winter-inspired song I would write would be called, “Punch Me in the Nuts (So I Can Feel Something Other Than How Cold I Am),” Sigur Rós write beautiful, uplifting songs that feel like snow on Christmas...after you’ve already done all of your travelling.

10) “Oxford Comma,” Vampire Weekend. This one came up in the Random 11 just a short while ago. It’s one of those songs that instantly rooted itself into my brain, being both catchy and memorable. The whole album conveys the feeling of a summer full of longing, love, and loss, interspersed with parties on someone’s deck while grooving to the surprisingly good house band and drinking ice-cold Red Stripe (hoooray, beer!).

9) “Whose Authority,” Nada Surf. There is nothing quite like a great sandwich. I enjoy a night at a fancy restaurant with creative cuisine that paints a Jackson Pollack on my taste buds. But, as enjoyable as that is, there’s something uplifting about a great sandwich, when you have oven-fresh bread, crisp lettuce (that’s real lettuce, not that iceberg shit), cheese that’s just started to melt, mustard that spars with you a little, and meat that’s been cooked just enough to make sure the animal is dead but not enough to make it seem like something other than meat (vegetarians, feel free to substitute the best eggplant ever planted). Nada Surf makes those sandwiches all the time. They won’t surprise you, but then again, you’re not listening to them to be surprised. You’re listening because it’s lunchtime and you want a goddamn awesome sandwich.

8) “Two Daughters and a Beautiful Wife,” Drive-By Truckers. The Lovely Becky really, really hates the book The Lovely Bones, to the point where it became a joke among our friends to ask her if she liked the book. Part of the problem with that book is that the afterlife, and the reaction to being in it, seems completely fake. That’s not surprising, considering that no one knows what an afterlife—if there is one—will feel like.

That’s what makes the Drive-By Truckers so special. They write hi-definition lyrics that paint the most evocative pictures, to the point where you can see the blood-stained tub full of meth, smell the burning of a moonshine still deep in the woods, and even feel the sadness, shock, anger, and eventual hope of a man who just died, looking down from heaven at his two daughters and a beautiful wife.

7) “Hollow Man,” R.E.M. Accelerate was their All That You Can’t Leave Behind, and I love it for the same reason I loved U2’s album: because they managed to summon what made them awesome in the first place without sounding like an R.E.M. cover band. There’s nothing terribly original about this song, but it’s delivered with such energy and conviction that it doesn’t matter. Watching them play on The Colbert Report emphasized the point even more: they looked like they were having fun. Michael Stipe and fun—who would have thunk it?

6) “Death to Los Campesinos!” Los Campesinos. I am not a fan of bands who include their names in songs, but they managed to avoid the triple-Lindy sin of naming a song and an album after themselves (which I believe was pioneered by the thankfully-forgotten Living in a Box, who had a song and album named Living in a Box).

I am, however, a fan of Los Campesinos, because Los Campesinos are fans of fun. Every review I’ve read of them says that they are “fun,” which makes me feel unoriginal for using the same description, but it’s just too apt not to repeat. Much like Vampire Weekend, they had me from the minute I put the CD on for the first time. Even better, they manage to sound young without making me feel old, like they would invite an old guy like me to dance with them out of the goodness of their young hearts and not so they could make fun of me afterward.

5) “Kim and Jessie,” M83. Of course, I am getting older, old enough to not only know that many of the kids today are ripping off the 80s, but also to own the cassettes they’re stealing from. I can name that original chirping Casio riff in three notes.

However, I like a lot of that 80s music. Beneath the slickness and greed, there was a great deal of originality and heart if you knew where to look. “Kim and Jessie” has that heart. It’s a song that doesn’t just sound like the 80s—it is the 80s, from the synths to the drum machine to the breathy lyrics to the outro guitar solo to rock things up just a tad. It’s clearly written by someone who understands what made the great music of that decade great, making it a blast from the past that doesn’t feel retro or kitschy, just really awesome.

4) “White Winter Hymnal,” Fleet Foxes. As much as I make fun of the harsh winters here, I doubt I will ever live in a place more beautiful than the Upper Peninsula. It’s one of the unfortunate rules of life that natural beauty tends to keep to itself in the middle of nowhere. If you want natural splendor, get ready to have no culture. If you want fine dining and theater, get ready to smell urine in the gutters during the summer.

Fleet Foxes could be the soundtrack for the UP and any other place that has fresh air and a million trees and people who can talk about “beaver dams” without snickering. This song in particular is a morning sunrise coming out of your speakers, and the whole album keeps that fresh air blowing into your ears.

3) “Ion Square,” Bloc Party. I love the slow build to the loud climax, where a song starts out quiet and ends sounding like it can fill an arena. That structure can always get to at least second base with me. No song followed this structure better this year—in my humble, contacts-wearing hipster doofus elitist cobag opinion—than “Ion Square.” Like the name if the album it comes from, Intimacy, it begins with a quiet, pillow-confessional quality. As the song continues, it builds, yet it never loses that intimacy, even as singer Kele Okereke belts out lines that reach not only the nosebleeds of the arena, but the guys in the parking lot who couldn’t get tickets. The kicker for me, though, is when the song grows on the low end, the bass building from a whispered conversation to a throaty rumble that counters the high vocals. This will never outgrow my car speakers.

2) “Sequestered in Memphis,” The Hold Steady. I played this song more than any other song this year. It’s got a great hook, tells a seedy story, and rocks in the way only The Hold Steady can rock. There’s a line here, She said I know I look tired/but everything’s fried/here in Memphis, that I wish I had thought of. But what really cemented it for me was that it showed some growth from one of my favorite bands.

It’s a difficult thing to figure out how to grow as a band. Too much change confuses the fans. Witness U2, R.E.M., and this year’s WTF band of the year, My Morning Jacket, who made some music that wouldn’t have sounded out of place on a Cameo record. Staying the same, though, leads to getting stuck in a rut (Weezer is a good recent example.) As much as I love The Hold Steady, they play the kind of music that’s high-risk rut material: guitar-driven, classic rock-influenced tales of beer-soaked woe and high school angst, with the added geographic limitation of songs locked in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area.

“Sequestered in Memphis” managed to avoid the rut while staying on The Hold Steady highway. It smells of the same stale smoke and desperation, but tells a new story, in a new locale, with a soundtrack that sounds just a bit more grown up. And that’s why I played this one over and over again, belting out Subpoenaed in Texas/Sequestered in Memphis all summer long...when TLB wasn’t around to make fun of my singing.

1) “Skinny Love,” Bon Iver. The first time I listened to Nick Drake’s Pink Moon, I was floored. I had never heard a record that sounded so naked and bare, yet fully formed and realized. It was also haunting and yet uplifting, like a ghost who scares the shit out of you before telling you he’s just letting you know grandma is okay in heaven and, no, she can’t see what you’re doing in the bathroom.

I had that kind of moment a few years ago when I heard “Naked as We Came” by Iron and Wine, and I had it again this year when I heard “Skinny Love.” The first time I played it, I wound up playing it over and over for probably an hour. The lonely guitar, the plaintive vocals, the chorus that still crushes me, even after all those listens. The whole album is amazing, and this is its most amazing track. It’s not surprising that it was recorded in a cabin in northern Wisconsin during the winter—you can practically feel the wind blowing in and see the snow through the icy windows. If I could only play one song from 2008, it would be this.

So there we go. The Random 11 will be back January 2. I am hoping to use my time off work to finish some posts that I have been dying to write. Have a good weekend, and find some music that warms your soul during this Arctic blast.

Top Ten Tuesdays: What are we being indicted for?

10) Loving too much and way over our credit limit.

9) Double-dipping.

8) Being too sexy for our shirts and especially our pants.

7) Calling "shotgun" when kidnapping someone on our beer run.

6) Executive producing National Lampoon’s Insider Trading.

5) Running the world’s largest Fonzi scheme and illegally selling Henry Winkler to multiple investors.

4) Being a confused old man who has no idea how all those shiny new gifts kept getting into the house. Where’s the crime in that?

3) Shooting first, reloading, shooting again, lobbing a few grenades, making sure no one is still moving, and then asking questions.

2) Being too stupid to live, let alone run a state.

1) Um, which one are we talking about?

Friday Random 11

It's one more random than 10!


It’s been a sleep-deprived week here at CJSD Enterprises, Ltd. Our little Libby decided last weekend to start waking up 2-3 times during the night again, which would be awesome if she was throwing a rave and providing us with a ton of drugs to help us stay up all night. It’s hit The Lovely Becky the hardest because this new schedule came during finals week, when she’s at her busiest with grading. But it’s certainly made me pretty damn sleepy, which has made my brain rather mushy and unfunny, leaving me with only enough creative energy to think of posts like,“Poop. Heh heh heh.” Which, now that I think about it, would be kind of a funny post.

Anyway, it’s all perfectly normal, or so say all the baby books, but that doesn’t make it any easier, does it? I really wish the authors of said books, when saying you should let your baby cry, would post evidence that they wrote such advice at 3 a.m., while their babies were crying. Like the writing was full of typos or soaked with tears of fatigue or devolved into tangents on the intrinsic humor of the word "poop."

Of course, I know these experts are right, much in the same way people who are thin because they have no taste buds and get Tantric orgasms from doing crunches and step aerobics say I would lose weight if I ate less “bad” foods and worked out more. That doesn’t make it any less annoying or reduce my desire to push down on the bench press bar when they need a spot.

In all honesty, though, parenthood has been grand and Miss Libs has been a very easy baby by most baby-measuring standards. So the real answer, as usual, is that I am a wuss. An accusation I would be more upset by if I wasn’t such a...okay, let’s have some music, shall we?

1) “My Brain Is Hanging Upside Down (Bonzo Goes to Bitburg)”, The Ramones. The original title of this classic Ramones track was the parenthetical part, but Johnny “God Bless President Bush” Ramone thought it was offensive to President Reagan. So un-punk.

2) “For No One,” The Beatles. Such a pretty McCartney ditty. And you don’t get a lot of clavichord and French horn in rock. Speaking of which, it’s funny how seemingly insignificant phrases become staples of your linguistic arsenal. I used to read the Letterman Top Ten books pretty religiously (shocking, I know). One of the lists—something about surprising revelations—had this entry: “Mr. T: gayer than a French horn.” That stupid little phrase has stuck with me for nearly 20 years, all because I read it in a silly little book, probably while I was in the bathroom.

3) “Living Loving Maid,” Led Zeppelin. The most lyrically-challenged great band of all time? Don’t get me wrong, I loves to get the Led out in the cheesiest, classic-rock-radio-Zeppelin-rock-block manner. But the other day when I was at the gym, “Misty Mountain Hop” came on. Great song, perfect for working out, but seriously, the lyrics? Not only nonsensical, often unintelligible. “Living Loving Maid” falls into that category, as do probably 80 percent of Zepp’s songs. I just find it kind of funny.

4) “White Mystery,” Minus The Bear. Where I currently live is a bit of a white mystery, in, “why would all these white people choose to live here when all they see is white for six goddamned months out of the year.” No, I’m not bitter like an Alberta Clipper.

5) “Stop Breakin’ Down Blues,” Robert Johnson. Seems like a perfect song for the this week.

6) “Monsters,” Band of Horses. One of the best songs from one of my favorite new bands. They have a penchant for off-kilter melodies that still manage to root into my brain, delivered with an earnestness that never feels forced or melodramatic.

7) “Night of the Living Baseheads,” Public Enemy. The samples really knock my block off. It also sad that so much of what Chuck D sang about then is still true today.

8) “In My Bed,” Amy Winehouse. There’s no way I’m crawling under her covers without a hazmat suit and a scuba tank full of penicillin.

9) “Lola Stars and Stripes,” The Stills. Big, serious, mopey rock that would have sounded more appropriate 20 years ago. It almost annoys me, but I dig the big beat and the jangly bursts of guitars, so I overlook the annoying aspects. I’m so easy.

10) “Sad and Lonely,” Secret Machines. Speaking of big and easy...I get suckered in by the huge, John Bonham beat of this song. As much as I love indie rock and the independent spirit of bands like Guided by Voices, my heart belongs to rock music that sounds huge. Lo-fi is great, and hearing a song that sounds like it was recorded in someone’s bathroom often lends an immediacy to the work you wouldn’t get in a big schmancy studio. But the drums always suffer with those kinds of songs, and there are times when I need my drums to explode out of my speakers. So this song always gets cranked when it comes on.

11) “All This Time,” Sting. My favorite solo song of his, and frankly, one of the best he’s every written. It’s catchy, it’s clever, and it’s impeccably arranged. A shiny, bouncy way to head into the weekend.

Next week: My 11 favorite songs that I heard this year. Every other cobag gets to do a best of, so why not me?

Have a good weekend.

Top Ten Tuesdays: What concessions are we making in exchange for our bailout?

10) Manufacturing new Ford Piñata hybrid that explodes with sweets when rear-ended.

9) Allowing new car czar to call “shotgun.”

8) Providing own knee pads and Blistex when reporting to Congress.

7) Designing new CEO engine that purrs like a kitten instead of braying like a jackass.

6) Giving union members dental coverage only for first five years or 50,000 chews.

5) Securing G.O.P. votes by making Jesus fish standard on all new models.

4) Offering a free “lube job” to any citizen presenting a recent tax return in the alley behind local dealership.

3) Agreeing to have every all bailout checks treated with RustBelt-oleum.

2) Replacing benefit-driven workforce with one that runs on chicken-fried sushi.

1) Installing new GPS system that shows precisely where the fuck all of this is heading.