Today is the fifth birthday of Circle Jerk at the Square Dance. It's hard for me to believe it's been that long, or that this is my 701st post. Heh-heh, I said "hard."
That's precisely the kind of upscale, sophisticated humor you've come to expect from this blog. But despite the low road I so often travel in terms of gags, this blog has served a higher purpose for me: saving me as a writer.
I started CJSD at a nadir of my creative writing. I had been rejected twice from the Iowa Writer's Workshop. The first rejection, while initially very depressing, was motivating and educational. Once the dust settled, I realized I didn't deserve to get in, because I wasn't ready to enter a workshop. My writing was rough, labored, cliched, and much too serious. I wasn't playing into my strengths at all, and with the help of The Lovely Becky, I learned so much from that rejection that I was glad it happened. I threw myself into the application process again, writing two stories that were not only light years ahead of where I was just a year before, but probably two of the best things I had ever written until that point.
The Workshop didn't seem to think so, and thanks to some knowledgeable sources, I learned that I had been weeded out even earlier than the previous time. Now, I certainly didn't expect to get into such a competitive program, but I did expect to make a better showing than the year before. I started questioning my abilities and even the idea of trying to be a writer.
Despite those doubts, I couldn't turn off my creative energy, and I eventually conceived the idea of writing a book about a group of improv performers putting on a sketch show. In between the fictional struggles of their quest for love and laughter, I could throw in sketches and other little comedy bits, the way Mark Leyner did in his hysterical book Et Tu, Babe? I even came up with a perfect title for the book: Circle Jerk at the Square Dance.
I threw myself back into writing. I had tried a number of times before to write a novel, and in fact had originally taken sketch comedy writing classes at The Second City to help my comedic fiction. However, these attempts had always petered out quickly, as I'd get 30-50 pages into a book and realize it wasn't happening.
Not so with Circle Jerk at the Square Dance. I pumped out the pages, writing the story and adding the sketches and feeling more pleased than ever with what I was writing. I found myself laughing while writing, which I took as a great sign. I crossed into a triple-digit page count for the first time ever and was sure I had found "the one."
I wound up having to take about a month off from the book at one point. When I went back to it, something funny happened to this funny book: the only parts that made me laugh were the sketches. The rest of the meandering plot and dull characters formed a bland, literary paste. There wasn't anything to rescue, save the title.
That was the real kick to the Faulkners. At that point, I thought I was kidding myself about being a writer. What's more, I lost my desire to write. I was so tired of failing, I didn't want to try to succeed.
Once again, though, my brain couldn't follow instructions. Even though I had no desire to try a novel again, my brain kept pumping ideas, especially for short little sketches, fake news stories, the kind of stuff I wished I could be writing for The Onion or The Daily Show or "Shouts and Murmurs" in The New Yorker (humor nirvana for many an unsatisfied copywriter).
Enter blogging. I had already done a little bit of blogging on some group blogs, but like an uglier, hairier version of Virginia Woolf, I desired a blog of one's own. Starting a blog seemed perfect for the ideas I had, too: short, profane, often ridiculous comedy bits that were not really publishable. Why not stick them on the Internet? All that I needed was a title, which The Lovely Becky reminded me I already had. In fact, Circle Jerk at the Square Dance seemed much better for a blog than a novel anyway.
I started writing. Whatever ideas I had or resurrected from my sketch vault came out. I had no rhyme or reason to what I was doing, other than trying to make people laugh and writing a Top Ten list each week. I had no timetable or schedule, so there was no endpoint. However, I definitely didn't expect I'd keep at it for five years.
But the funny thing is, it was funny. I was usually laughing at what I was writing. Eventually, other people started laughing to, and once that happened, I was hooked. I not only had a creative outlet, I had feedback. I had an audience, and one that grew into a little community of virtual friends.
All those little successes, all those comments of encouragement, repaired my broken writing ego. You have to have an ego to write, to think that what you have to say is so goddamned important that people should take time out of their busy schedules to read what you write. After purifying myself in the waters of Lake Bloggetonka, I felt ready to tackle a bigger challenge.
The real irony today is, five years after I started this blog as a way to soothe myself after the implosion of a novel, I finished a first draft of a novel for the first time ever. I reached the end last night, hurriedly writing my last line so I could say "done" before Starbucks closed. Doing that has given me a greater sense of accomplishment than anything else I've ever done outside of being happily married and being a dad. I have a long revision road ahead, but this one is going to get polished and its going to be sent out to agents. Maybe it'll be published, maybe not, but at least I'm done pretending to be a novelist and actually novelling.
I couldn't have done it without this blog and without all of your feedback over the years. Writing every week, not saying no, and soaking in the comments....it's been wonderful. So thank you very much. I've really enjoyed it and I hope you have too.
Now how about some music?
1) "She's a Rebel," Green Day. American Idiot was a regular soundtrack back in the early days of writing the blog. I can't decide if it's awesome the album is now a broadway production or if it throws all of my punk sensibilities into the air and then impales them on the spear of commercialism. Although getting thrown into the air and impaled on a spear is so punk.
2) "Metropolis," The Church. I have go-to songs for a host of occasions--lifting weights, driving fast, writing fast, feeling mad, feeling sad. This is a go-to song for just feeling good, like it's the day after I just accomplished a major life goal and it happens to be super nice outside. A perfect song for one of those random times when I'm driving around with the window down and the sun shining and I think, "Fuck, I feel awesome!" for no particular reason.
3) "The Times They Are a Changin' (Live)," Bob Dylan. It must be a pretty amazing feeling to write not just a song of the year or a decade but of a generation. I wonder if Bob Dylan ever wakes up and goes, "Hell yeah, I'm Bob fuckin' Dylan." Because that's how I'd wake up every single morning, which is why I'm not deep enough to write a song of a generation.
4) "Dim," Dada. This could be my b-side to "Metropolis" on my Sunny Single. I know we snicker at one-hit wonders, but really, if you write just one song that makes someone still sing along 20 years after you recorded it, that's pretty special.
5) "Hot Rock," Sleater-Kinney. I've gone from being a big fan to thinking they were the best band of the mid-90s and early 2000s. As much as I love punk music, it's really hard to be punk and not sound like every other punk band that came before you. Attitude usually trumps originality in that genre. That's what makes Sleater-Kinney seem greater to me with each passing year. They did what The Clash did, take a narrow genre and blow it up without destroying the key ingredients. Only I think Sleater-Kinney had a harder time because they had 20 years of punk stereotypes to subvert.
6) "Echo Sam," Holy Fuck. Normally, this type of stuff would be too odd and noisy for me, but there's just enough song buried amid the electronic squawks and grunts for me to groove to it. Love this album and love that a Holy Fuck song was once used in a car commercial. Bonus: Lightsabres!
7) "More," The Sisters of Mercy. LOL, the Burger King of Goth music, delicious even as you hate yourself for scarfing it down at 3 a.m. I still cannot believe they toured with Public Enemy, hands-down the weirdest tour pairing of my lifetime. Ideal for the commute from the graveyard to your job at Cinnabon.
8) "...And Justice for All," Metallica. I never thought this song was too long until I tried to play it in Rock Band. It takes a lot for me to wish I was doing something other than playing a videogame, but that's what I felt about five minutes in. I'd much rather have James Hetfield order me back to front or sing about the Angel of Death coming to kill my first-born than noodle around with mid-tempo thrash for 10 minutes.
9) "YYZ (Live)," Rush. Suck. It. H8ers.
10) "I'm the Man Who Loves You," Wilco. Esquire recently put Christiana Hendricks on the cover. Christiana Hendricks is currently at the top of my list of "Sexy women I would love to disappoint," bumping off long-time champ Selma Hayek. (Yes, TLB, you read that correctly. The queen is dead, long live the queen.) Anyway, they stuck her on the cover in a tight black dress, tugging a little at the neckline, a photo so hot I used the magazine to cook an omelet. So I flipped inside, eagerly awaiting an entire spread of Joan Holloway distracting me from my work, and what was there? A close-up of Hendricks eating a piece of watermelon. Worst bait and switch since Little Orphan Annie told her secret club members to drink their Ovaltine.
11) "Hindsight," Built to Spill. Hindsight brings me down/keeps me on the ground. One of the things I'm becoming increasingly thankful for as I get older is not giving a shit about the past. I have wasted too much of my life worrying about what I haven't accomplished, instead of thinking about what I could be accomplishing. It took me wasting a lot of that time to see what a waste that mindset is, but I see it now, and I'm definitely not going to repeat it.
Hope you have a "Fuck, I feel awesome!" day this weekend.
Friday, April 30, 2010
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
Top Ten Tuesdays: What new anti-immigration measures are we enacting?
10) Requiring Hispanics to pass an assimilation test by eating an entire Gordita.
9) Authorizing the Tasering of any person using adding “eh?” to a sentence.
8) Making all legal immigrants display their legal status by wearing a yellow star on their clothes.
7) Demanding that George Lopez present his driver’s license on camera before he can present the opening monologue.
6) Installing an anti-ship missile battery in the Statue of Liberty’s torch.
5) Forbidding anyone not born in the United States from getting on the ballot unless they are of European-bodybuilder or time-traveling-cyborg ancestry.
4) Pre-approving bailouts for the landscaping, child care, domestic servant, construction, restaurant, agricultural, and professional baseball industries.
3) Training all law enforcement officials how to say “Papers?” in a German accent.
2) Preventing racial profiling abuses by requiring at least two white people to agree someone looks like an illegal alien.
1) Following the simple rule: if it’s white, it’s all right; if it’s brown, take it down.
9) Authorizing the Tasering of any person using adding “eh?” to a sentence.
8) Making all legal immigrants display their legal status by wearing a yellow star on their clothes.
7) Demanding that George Lopez present his driver’s license on camera before he can present the opening monologue.
6) Installing an anti-ship missile battery in the Statue of Liberty’s torch.
5) Forbidding anyone not born in the United States from getting on the ballot unless they are of European-bodybuilder or time-traveling-cyborg ancestry.
4) Pre-approving bailouts for the landscaping, child care, domestic servant, construction, restaurant, agricultural, and professional baseball industries.
3) Training all law enforcement officials how to say “Papers?” in a German accent.
2) Preventing racial profiling abuses by requiring at least two white people to agree someone looks like an illegal alien.
1) Following the simple rule: if it’s white, it’s all right; if it’s brown, take it down.
Friday, April 23, 2010
Friday Random 11
It’s one more random than 10!
It was nice to see someone win Project Runway who was a) a cool designer and b) a cool person. For once one of the good guys was also the most talented contestant. I hate when I know the asshole is going to win because the asshole is the best one at turning twigs and newspaper into an amazing red-carpet gown.
I love Project Runway because no other show captures the essence of the creative process the way it does. You see these people taking random bits of nothing—trash bags, candy, Lindsay Lohan—and turning them into something. It also shows both sides of that something: the exhilaration of seeing those trash bags turn into a cool pair of pants, the agony of seeing those trash bags look worse after the designer gets hold of them. There’s a wise old teacher who both instructs and critiques, and then a panel of critics who act like real critics, not cartoon character versions of critics. They offer praise and criticism and while they can be harsh, they always have a reason for their harshness. You could swap in anything for the outfits and judges—say a short story and NY Times critic Michiko Kakutani stomping on the literary aspirations of one of the contestants—and the essence of the process would remain the same. However, no one wants to watch a bunch of writers sobbing as they have their work vivisected, except maybe other writers. Project Runway works best because the fashion is a perfect visual symbol of that creative process. I can't taste what they make on Top Chef, but I can tell if a dress with a poofy bottom makes an otherwise thin model look like an ancient fertility goddess idol. And don't get me started on the shoddy tailoring!
The other fun aspect for me is seeing the older male contestants attempting to look hip. As I approach the age of mumble mumble, I sometimes am hit by questions as: Should I dye my hair? Can I wear jeans with a print pattern? Would I be a hit with the kids if I had a faux hawk? And should I wear one of those scarves that every single one of the gay designers wore this year? Seeing how ridiculous those items look on other people has saved me from some very bad fashion decisions.
Music time….
1) “Smoking in the Boy’s Room,” Motley Crue. A deliberate choice because I’m having one of those days today with my day job. I admit I’m lucky to have the job I do, and I’ve gotten much better of realizing that I am fortunate to have steady employment at a company I like. This morning, though, I had one of those moments where I wondered why in the fuck I ever decided to do what I do for a living. That’s when it’s time to meet the boys on floor number 2 and have a few minutes of dumb fun until I can cope again. No official video on YouTube, but bonus of crazy Russians rocking out. They should make a reality show about that.
2) “Holland,” Sufjan Stevens. And now for something completely different….
3) “Happy Jack,” The Who. Classic Who: poppy, dark, and explosive when it needs to be. I love how the simple, soft verses lull me until the band floors it on the chorus. A lot of those early Who songs are pretty wicked little tales: this, "I'm a Boy," "Pictures of Lilly." It's almost as if Townshend wanted to compensate for his bright, poppy music by creating these deranged little narratives. I love it.
4) “Disintegration,” The Cure. My favorite song from my favorite Cure album. The quiet to loud epic thing has been done a lot, but I’ve always admired how this song starts loud and then keeps layering more and more onto the main beat, like a strained relationship that gets pushed past the breaking point. Possibly the most miserably entertaining song in my collection.
5) “The Comeback,” Shout Out Louds. American slacker rock played very convincingly by Scandinavians. It’s funny: for all of the poking at Europeans, how they have welfare and six weeks of vacation, I don’t think of Euros as slackers. That seems like a specific American thing, because even the unemployed, chain-smoking European still seems like he’s doing something, like sitting in a café, sipping espresso while spewing contempt for the bourgeois businessman waiting for his packages (let him wait). As opposed to a true American slacker, stoned on the couch on a Tuesday afternoon, lacking even the willpower to turn the Wii on, let alone play it. Side note: I remember wayyyyy too many commercials.
6) “Flight of Icarus,” Iron Maiden. I miss songs about Greek mythology. Those always rocked. What didn’t rock was the 40-story steaming Kraken turd known as Clash of the Titans. I am not really a movie snob, and in fact the movies I tend to see in the theater are big, dumb, loud pop fests: essentially "Smoking in the Boys Room" on film. But if they made a reality show about the re-making of the Clash of the Titans, all the challenges would have to be set in the stalls of a men’s room. It’s pretty terrible when every acting performance in this movie pales in comparison to the Cyclops from The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad. At least the Cyclops seems to understand his motivation.
7) “Led Zeppelin Medley,” Dream Theater. Speaking of utter shit. Holy fuck, these guys are terrible. Dream Theater is musical p0rn: relentless, mechanical jackhammering, with no soul, no feeling, no heart. It’s even more apparent when they suck all the life out of three classic Zeppelin songs. They are to classic rock what Blues Hammer is to blues.
8) “Miles to Memphis,” Chris Knight. Here’s a voice that’s lived-in, like a pair of old work boots or a Ford pickup with 350,000 miles on it that runs rough but still runs. I don’t really mind that bad music gets popular, but it makes me sad when stuff like this flies under the radar while Kenny Chesney is sweating in 3D at a theater near you. No YT clip but here's one from the same album.
9) “Let There Be Rock,” Drive-By Truckers. Yee-fuckin’-haw! They may not be the best band of the last decade, but damn if they aren’t the most consistently good band of the last ten years. This is a great ode to rock-concert-going, getting in the car with your friends and a case of illicit beer and rocking til your ear drums bleed. Glad to see that they are having some of the success they deserve.
10) “Start a War,” The National. Anthem? (h/t to fish). I love America, I really do, but I can’t believe how bent out of shape people get when pointing out that this country fights a lot, and usually for some very questionable causes: kicking Indians off their lands, stealing half of Mexico from Spain, stealing the Philippines from Spain (seriously, fuck you, Spain!), keeping Vietnam from oppressive communist dictators so it could be ruled by oppressive capitalist dictators. We’ve even tried to invade Canada (and failed…twice!). Now we have politicians in the south who want to honor Confederate soldiers who fought to uphold slavery, and then get offended when you say that’s what they were fighting for. “It was state’s rights!” they argue. Yeah, a state’s right…to keep black people in slavery. Well, this song is the opposite of all that.
11) “Roll With the Changes,” REO Speedwagon. I’m not sure who I might take more flack for sticking up for, REO or Rush, but this is a great song. Great. Not good, not okay, not decent, but great. It gives me what I want from classic rock: great melody, hot playing, a ton of energy, and a sound big enough to crack the dome of the arena where this is being performed. And it’s got soul. Not soul in the R&B sense, despite the attempt to inject a little with the backup singers and the Hammond organ. It’s got soul because all this song wants to do is rock me for five-and-a-half minutes, and on that front it succeeds spectacularly. When the big rock finish kicks in at the end, damn if I don’t feel rocked. So, to sum up, great. And for you h8ers, check out the hilarious increasing close-up that starts around the 1:15 mark.
Have a great weekend.
It was nice to see someone win Project Runway who was a) a cool designer and b) a cool person. For once one of the good guys was also the most talented contestant. I hate when I know the asshole is going to win because the asshole is the best one at turning twigs and newspaper into an amazing red-carpet gown.
I love Project Runway because no other show captures the essence of the creative process the way it does. You see these people taking random bits of nothing—trash bags, candy, Lindsay Lohan—and turning them into something. It also shows both sides of that something: the exhilaration of seeing those trash bags turn into a cool pair of pants, the agony of seeing those trash bags look worse after the designer gets hold of them. There’s a wise old teacher who both instructs and critiques, and then a panel of critics who act like real critics, not cartoon character versions of critics. They offer praise and criticism and while they can be harsh, they always have a reason for their harshness. You could swap in anything for the outfits and judges—say a short story and NY Times critic Michiko Kakutani stomping on the literary aspirations of one of the contestants—and the essence of the process would remain the same. However, no one wants to watch a bunch of writers sobbing as they have their work vivisected, except maybe other writers. Project Runway works best because the fashion is a perfect visual symbol of that creative process. I can't taste what they make on Top Chef, but I can tell if a dress with a poofy bottom makes an otherwise thin model look like an ancient fertility goddess idol. And don't get me started on the shoddy tailoring!
The other fun aspect for me is seeing the older male contestants attempting to look hip. As I approach the age of mumble mumble, I sometimes am hit by questions as: Should I dye my hair? Can I wear jeans with a print pattern? Would I be a hit with the kids if I had a faux hawk? And should I wear one of those scarves that every single one of the gay designers wore this year? Seeing how ridiculous those items look on other people has saved me from some very bad fashion decisions.
Music time….
1) “Smoking in the Boy’s Room,” Motley Crue. A deliberate choice because I’m having one of those days today with my day job. I admit I’m lucky to have the job I do, and I’ve gotten much better of realizing that I am fortunate to have steady employment at a company I like. This morning, though, I had one of those moments where I wondered why in the fuck I ever decided to do what I do for a living. That’s when it’s time to meet the boys on floor number 2 and have a few minutes of dumb fun until I can cope again. No official video on YouTube, but bonus of crazy Russians rocking out. They should make a reality show about that.
2) “Holland,” Sufjan Stevens. And now for something completely different….
3) “Happy Jack,” The Who. Classic Who: poppy, dark, and explosive when it needs to be. I love how the simple, soft verses lull me until the band floors it on the chorus. A lot of those early Who songs are pretty wicked little tales: this, "I'm a Boy," "Pictures of Lilly." It's almost as if Townshend wanted to compensate for his bright, poppy music by creating these deranged little narratives. I love it.
4) “Disintegration,” The Cure. My favorite song from my favorite Cure album. The quiet to loud epic thing has been done a lot, but I’ve always admired how this song starts loud and then keeps layering more and more onto the main beat, like a strained relationship that gets pushed past the breaking point. Possibly the most miserably entertaining song in my collection.
5) “The Comeback,” Shout Out Louds. American slacker rock played very convincingly by Scandinavians. It’s funny: for all of the poking at Europeans, how they have welfare and six weeks of vacation, I don’t think of Euros as slackers. That seems like a specific American thing, because even the unemployed, chain-smoking European still seems like he’s doing something, like sitting in a café, sipping espresso while spewing contempt for the bourgeois businessman waiting for his packages (let him wait). As opposed to a true American slacker, stoned on the couch on a Tuesday afternoon, lacking even the willpower to turn the Wii on, let alone play it. Side note: I remember wayyyyy too many commercials.
6) “Flight of Icarus,” Iron Maiden. I miss songs about Greek mythology. Those always rocked. What didn’t rock was the 40-story steaming Kraken turd known as Clash of the Titans. I am not really a movie snob, and in fact the movies I tend to see in the theater are big, dumb, loud pop fests: essentially "Smoking in the Boys Room" on film. But if they made a reality show about the re-making of the Clash of the Titans, all the challenges would have to be set in the stalls of a men’s room. It’s pretty terrible when every acting performance in this movie pales in comparison to the Cyclops from The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad. At least the Cyclops seems to understand his motivation.
7) “Led Zeppelin Medley,” Dream Theater. Speaking of utter shit. Holy fuck, these guys are terrible. Dream Theater is musical p0rn: relentless, mechanical jackhammering, with no soul, no feeling, no heart. It’s even more apparent when they suck all the life out of three classic Zeppelin songs. They are to classic rock what Blues Hammer is to blues.
8) “Miles to Memphis,” Chris Knight. Here’s a voice that’s lived-in, like a pair of old work boots or a Ford pickup with 350,000 miles on it that runs rough but still runs. I don’t really mind that bad music gets popular, but it makes me sad when stuff like this flies under the radar while Kenny Chesney is sweating in 3D at a theater near you. No YT clip but here's one from the same album.
9) “Let There Be Rock,” Drive-By Truckers. Yee-fuckin’-haw! They may not be the best band of the last decade, but damn if they aren’t the most consistently good band of the last ten years. This is a great ode to rock-concert-going, getting in the car with your friends and a case of illicit beer and rocking til your ear drums bleed. Glad to see that they are having some of the success they deserve.
10) “Start a War,” The National. Anthem? (h/t to fish). I love America, I really do, but I can’t believe how bent out of shape people get when pointing out that this country fights a lot, and usually for some very questionable causes: kicking Indians off their lands, stealing half of Mexico from Spain, stealing the Philippines from Spain (seriously, fuck you, Spain!), keeping Vietnam from oppressive communist dictators so it could be ruled by oppressive capitalist dictators. We’ve even tried to invade Canada (and failed…twice!). Now we have politicians in the south who want to honor Confederate soldiers who fought to uphold slavery, and then get offended when you say that’s what they were fighting for. “It was state’s rights!” they argue. Yeah, a state’s right…to keep black people in slavery. Well, this song is the opposite of all that.
11) “Roll With the Changes,” REO Speedwagon. I’m not sure who I might take more flack for sticking up for, REO or Rush, but this is a great song. Great. Not good, not okay, not decent, but great. It gives me what I want from classic rock: great melody, hot playing, a ton of energy, and a sound big enough to crack the dome of the arena where this is being performed. And it’s got soul. Not soul in the R&B sense, despite the attempt to inject a little with the backup singers and the Hammond organ. It’s got soul because all this song wants to do is rock me for five-and-a-half minutes, and on that front it succeeds spectacularly. When the big rock finish kicks in at the end, damn if I don’t feel rocked. So, to sum up, great. And for you h8ers, check out the hilarious increasing close-up that starts around the 1:15 mark.
Have a great weekend.
Thursday, April 22, 2010
1-900-ABSTAIN
FEMALE VOICE OVER (sultry)
Are you a Christian guy looking for some young, attractive, girls who just want to talk? Do you want to have some good, clean fun right from the comfort of your own home? Then call 1-900-ABSTAIN.
A GUY calls GIRL on the phone. She’s in the kitchen.
GUY
Hi, what’s your name?
GIRL
I’m Betty. What’s yours, cutie?
GUY
Levi
GIRL #1
Oooh, I love guys with Biblical names.
FEMALE VO
1-800-ABSTAIN connects you with the hottest non-action anywhere, letting you talk to girls who will indulge all of your hottest non-sexual fantasies.
LEVI
So what are you doing?
BETTY (putting a pie in the oven)
Baking a pie.
LEVI (pulling at collar)
Oh, I love pie. What kind?
BETTY
Cherry, of course!
FEMALE VO
All of our girls are saving themselves for marriage and won’t give in no matter how hard you tempt them.
BETTY
Now it’s your turn, what’s your favorite Bible story?
LEVI (lowering voice)
Definitely David and Bethsheba.
BETTY
Levi, you’re so naughty. Someone might smite you for that.
LEVI
Oh, I need a smiting. I’m downright wicked.
FEMALE VO
And with 1-900-ABSTAIN, you’re not limited to just one girl. Bring another girl on the line to double your fun.
BETTY (slicing the pie)
Oh, my girlfriend Veronica just showed up.
VERONICA
Hi there.
LEVI
Hi.
BETTY
Veronica, would you like a slice of my cherry pie? It’s a little warm, though.
VERONICA
That’s okay, I love warm pie.
LEVI (wiping brow)
I like it warm, too…with whipped cream on top.
VERONICA
Ooh, good idea. Let me just shake this up…(sound of whip cream spraying).
BETTY (laughing)
Veronica! You’re spraying whipped cream all over my pie!
VERONICA (laughing)
Sorry, sometimes I can't control myself. (Taking a bite) Oh my gosh, this tastes so good. It’s so sweet and warm.
BETTY
You got some on your lips.
VERONICA (licks her lips)
Mmmm, did I lick it all off?
LEVI (falls out of his chair)
Oooohhhh.
BETTY
Are you okay, Levi?
LEVI
Yeah, I gotta go. Nice talking with you.
VERONICA
Take care of yourself , Levi.
LEVI
Don’t do anything we wouldn’t do.
BETTY
Or we’ll both have to smite you.
FEMALE VO
So what are you waiting for? Call 1-900-ABSTAIN for non-stop pure fun with Christian girls who don’t beat around the bush when it comes to abstinence.
$4.95 for the first minute, $1.95 for each additional minute. In case of arousal consult Genesis 38: 8-10. Not responsible for any unintended erections, blue balls, eternal damnation or divine retribution. This service brought to you by Citizens Hoping Youth Abstain from Rutting, Intercourse, Groping, Humping and Temptation.
Are you a Christian guy looking for some young, attractive, girls who just want to talk? Do you want to have some good, clean fun right from the comfort of your own home? Then call 1-900-ABSTAIN.
A GUY calls GIRL on the phone. She’s in the kitchen.
GUY
Hi, what’s your name?
GIRL
I’m Betty. What’s yours, cutie?
GUY
Levi
GIRL #1
Oooh, I love guys with Biblical names.
FEMALE VO
1-800-ABSTAIN connects you with the hottest non-action anywhere, letting you talk to girls who will indulge all of your hottest non-sexual fantasies.
LEVI
So what are you doing?
BETTY (putting a pie in the oven)
Baking a pie.
LEVI (pulling at collar)
Oh, I love pie. What kind?
BETTY
Cherry, of course!
FEMALE VO
All of our girls are saving themselves for marriage and won’t give in no matter how hard you tempt them.
BETTY
Now it’s your turn, what’s your favorite Bible story?
LEVI (lowering voice)
Definitely David and Bethsheba.
BETTY
Levi, you’re so naughty. Someone might smite you for that.
LEVI
Oh, I need a smiting. I’m downright wicked.
FEMALE VO
And with 1-900-ABSTAIN, you’re not limited to just one girl. Bring another girl on the line to double your fun.
BETTY (slicing the pie)
Oh, my girlfriend Veronica just showed up.
VERONICA
Hi there.
LEVI
Hi.
BETTY
Veronica, would you like a slice of my cherry pie? It’s a little warm, though.
VERONICA
That’s okay, I love warm pie.
LEVI (wiping brow)
I like it warm, too…with whipped cream on top.
VERONICA
Ooh, good idea. Let me just shake this up…(sound of whip cream spraying).
BETTY (laughing)
Veronica! You’re spraying whipped cream all over my pie!
VERONICA (laughing)
Sorry, sometimes I can't control myself. (Taking a bite) Oh my gosh, this tastes so good. It’s so sweet and warm.
BETTY
You got some on your lips.
VERONICA (licks her lips)
Mmmm, did I lick it all off?
LEVI (falls out of his chair)
Oooohhhh.
BETTY
Are you okay, Levi?
LEVI
Yeah, I gotta go. Nice talking with you.
VERONICA
Take care of yourself , Levi.
LEVI
Don’t do anything we wouldn’t do.
BETTY
Or we’ll both have to smite you.
FEMALE VO
So what are you waiting for? Call 1-900-ABSTAIN for non-stop pure fun with Christian girls who don’t beat around the bush when it comes to abstinence.
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Tuesday, April 20, 2010
Top Ten Tuesdays: How did we get busted by the S.E.C.?
10) Followed our #insidertrading hashtag.
9) Sparked an outbreak of Mad Bull Disease among investors in a high-density mutual fund that sustained itself on the ground-up broken dreams of other investors.
8) Left out a large pile of money that a very foolish investigator didn’t take with him.
7) Had to make an unexpected margin call on our fraudulent Volcano Eruption Fund.
6) Ratted out by intern who we used as a human footstool during secret investment meetings.
5) Used the salutation “Dear Suckers,” in investor correspondence.
4) Didn't think anyone would read the investment disclosure document, including Part 6, Section 9, Clause F: Rights of Fund Manager to Completely, Unconditionally Fuck You.
3) Got exposed by some cube jockey in accounting after we took his red stapler.
2) Thought that S.E.C. investigations only existed in fairy tales used to scare young brokers.
1) Raised suspicions by actually making money last year.
9) Sparked an outbreak of Mad Bull Disease among investors in a high-density mutual fund that sustained itself on the ground-up broken dreams of other investors.
8) Left out a large pile of money that a very foolish investigator didn’t take with him.
7) Had to make an unexpected margin call on our fraudulent Volcano Eruption Fund.
6) Ratted out by intern who we used as a human footstool during secret investment meetings.
5) Used the salutation “Dear Suckers,” in investor correspondence.
4) Didn't think anyone would read the investment disclosure document, including Part 6, Section 9, Clause F: Rights of Fund Manager to Completely, Unconditionally Fuck You.
3) Got exposed by some cube jockey in accounting after we took his red stapler.
2) Thought that S.E.C. investigations only existed in fairy tales used to scare young brokers.
1) Raised suspicions by actually making money last year.
Friday, April 16, 2010
Friday Random 11
It’s one more random than 10!
I promise that this post will be Burt-Reynolds-link free. Although I did send that link to Dr. Trapper (of Vegas fame) and told him I found his Halloween costume. (Trapper looks a bit like Burt circa The Longest Yard.) Speaking of which, he and Dr. Hawkeye came up with a hilarious idea for a poster: the two of them sitting in a hot tub, shirtless and serious, with a caption that says, “Shhhh…just let it happen.” My brother Tickle and I think Hawkeye should have his own reality show called, No, Really, I’m a Doctor. It would consist of Hawkeye doing things like running through a hotel hallway in scrubs and a fetish mask (note: I’m not making that up) and then providing medical assistance to people. Instant hit, although it would ruin his professional career and possibly his marriage.
Now for some tunes to wash those images out of your minds….
1) “Gimme Shelter,” The Rolling Stones. It’s difficult to not think of a Scorsese film when this plays, especially the Headshotpalooza that was The Departed. Note to filmmakers: if you have so many people getting shot in the head that people are actually laughing at the end of your non-comedy movie, you have too many people getting shot in the head. I also find it funny that this has become the signature Stones song when the signature of this song is the female vocal from a non-Stone. Great tune, though, exit wounds and all.
2) “Bone Machine,” The Pixies. Filthbot could have a field day with that title. Also an apt description for how most men feel at age 19, when you can’t put two thoughts together without getting an erection. You know how they say with age comes wisdom? It happens for men because once you reach a certain age, you can think for more than 10 minutes without sex getting in the way. I am amazed I graduated from college considering I was in a constant state of sexual distraction.
3) “What I See,” Dirty Projectors. HATE. It’s leftover audio casserole, the equivalent of someone finding mustard, noodles, strawberry jam, broccoli, and jerky and saying, “We can totally make a song out of that.” Blech.
4) “The Fool on the Hill,” The Beatles. This, on the other hand, is how you put together ingredients you normally wouldn’t find in a rock song and still make it appetizing. And LOL at the video. Is it wrong that I kind of miss our former president? Couldn't we have set up some kind of Truman Show situation where he thought he was still the president, and we all got to watch and mock him, but he couldn't fuck anything up anymore?
5) “So Here We Are,” Bloc Party. Sometimes you just need some pretty in your day, and this is a beautiful song: little chiming guitars, soft vocals, but drums that are busy enough to keep it out of the soft rock bin. Like we’re going to hug it out and talk about our feelings, but I’ll still seem like a dude, even if I tear up a little.
6) “Bring the Noise,” Anthrax/Public Enemy. TURN IT UP!!! They should have just broken the rap metal mold after this was made, because this is as good as that rancid subgenre will ever get. This came out when I was wide awake in Bonerland (i.e. college), and it was good enough that I could forget about sex for the few minutes that I was bouncing to it. It also reminds me of my friend Moe, a huge metalhead who also happened to be black (one of the great stereotype-shattering moments in my life). In fact, we became friends when we worked together because he loved my idea to have a lounge act that played nothing but Metallica songs. We would croon together in cocktail-singer style (snapping our fingers, of course), “You must die…when I say die…back to the front.” We would play "Bring the Noise" at the bars and instantly clear the dance floor so we could slam to it.
7) “Crazy on You,” Heart. I do miss the non-essential acoustic guitar opening a lot of 70s rock songs had, when the band would let the guitar player wank on a classical guitar for a minute while the other members did some lines and got ready to do another take. One of Ann Wilson’s best vocals. "Cra-a-a-zy on you!"
8) “Bleeding Powers,” Ted Leo and Pharmacists. Bands steal from the 80s so much these days it’s a wonder the kids aren’t tight-rolling their pants. I’m fine with this thievery—I liked a lot of 80s music, and production and fashion issues aside, think it was a pretty good decade for music. What’s great about Ted Leo is that he encapsulates 80s indie/punk/college rock without sounding like an ancient artifact or that he’s aping what came before. He just cranks out tune after tune of heartfelt, energetic, guitar-driven rock.
9) “Sway,” Bic Runga. It seems like a lot of people with great voices spend most of their musical careers letting you know they have great voices. While there is a great deal of (justifiable) fun poked at guitar/drum/bass wankery, the vocal wankery of the world’s Mariahs and Celines is just as annoying. So it’s nice to hear someone like Bic Runga, who can go huge with her voice, dropping it down to give the verses some warm piano-bar intimacy. This is the kind of stuff that should be idolized by Americans.
10) “Achin’ to Be,” The Replacements. Now this is what an achy, breaky heart sounds like.
11) “Trip Like I Do,” The Crystal Method. How can you go wrong with samples from The Dark Crystal? That’s a trick question: you can’t go wrong with samples from The Dark Crystal (note: highly clickworthy). One of my favorite electronic songs of all time, because when the song kicks it up at the midway point, I feel like I’m in an action movie, falling down a 100-story building while three killer robots are plunging after me, giving me just enough time to turn in mid-air and blast them with my ion wrist cannon, clearing the way for my talking chimp sidekick Dr. Sassafras to rescue me at the last minute in our hovercraft, where I land on the waterbed next to my female co-star, who says “I always knew you’d fall for me” just before the credits roll.
No, I’m really not a virgin.
Have a great weekend.
I promise that this post will be Burt-Reynolds-link free. Although I did send that link to Dr. Trapper (of Vegas fame) and told him I found his Halloween costume. (Trapper looks a bit like Burt circa The Longest Yard.) Speaking of which, he and Dr. Hawkeye came up with a hilarious idea for a poster: the two of them sitting in a hot tub, shirtless and serious, with a caption that says, “Shhhh…just let it happen.” My brother Tickle and I think Hawkeye should have his own reality show called, No, Really, I’m a Doctor. It would consist of Hawkeye doing things like running through a hotel hallway in scrubs and a fetish mask (note: I’m not making that up) and then providing medical assistance to people. Instant hit, although it would ruin his professional career and possibly his marriage.
Now for some tunes to wash those images out of your minds….
1) “Gimme Shelter,” The Rolling Stones. It’s difficult to not think of a Scorsese film when this plays, especially the Headshotpalooza that was The Departed. Note to filmmakers: if you have so many people getting shot in the head that people are actually laughing at the end of your non-comedy movie, you have too many people getting shot in the head. I also find it funny that this has become the signature Stones song when the signature of this song is the female vocal from a non-Stone. Great tune, though, exit wounds and all.
2) “Bone Machine,” The Pixies. Filthbot could have a field day with that title. Also an apt description for how most men feel at age 19, when you can’t put two thoughts together without getting an erection. You know how they say with age comes wisdom? It happens for men because once you reach a certain age, you can think for more than 10 minutes without sex getting in the way. I am amazed I graduated from college considering I was in a constant state of sexual distraction.
3) “What I See,” Dirty Projectors. HATE. It’s leftover audio casserole, the equivalent of someone finding mustard, noodles, strawberry jam, broccoli, and jerky and saying, “We can totally make a song out of that.” Blech.
4) “The Fool on the Hill,” The Beatles. This, on the other hand, is how you put together ingredients you normally wouldn’t find in a rock song and still make it appetizing. And LOL at the video. Is it wrong that I kind of miss our former president? Couldn't we have set up some kind of Truman Show situation where he thought he was still the president, and we all got to watch and mock him, but he couldn't fuck anything up anymore?
5) “So Here We Are,” Bloc Party. Sometimes you just need some pretty in your day, and this is a beautiful song: little chiming guitars, soft vocals, but drums that are busy enough to keep it out of the soft rock bin. Like we’re going to hug it out and talk about our feelings, but I’ll still seem like a dude, even if I tear up a little.
6) “Bring the Noise,” Anthrax/Public Enemy. TURN IT UP!!! They should have just broken the rap metal mold after this was made, because this is as good as that rancid subgenre will ever get. This came out when I was wide awake in Bonerland (i.e. college), and it was good enough that I could forget about sex for the few minutes that I was bouncing to it. It also reminds me of my friend Moe, a huge metalhead who also happened to be black (one of the great stereotype-shattering moments in my life). In fact, we became friends when we worked together because he loved my idea to have a lounge act that played nothing but Metallica songs. We would croon together in cocktail-singer style (snapping our fingers, of course), “You must die…when I say die…back to the front.” We would play "Bring the Noise" at the bars and instantly clear the dance floor so we could slam to it.
7) “Crazy on You,” Heart. I do miss the non-essential acoustic guitar opening a lot of 70s rock songs had, when the band would let the guitar player wank on a classical guitar for a minute while the other members did some lines and got ready to do another take. One of Ann Wilson’s best vocals. "Cra-a-a-zy on you!"
8) “Bleeding Powers,” Ted Leo and Pharmacists. Bands steal from the 80s so much these days it’s a wonder the kids aren’t tight-rolling their pants. I’m fine with this thievery—I liked a lot of 80s music, and production and fashion issues aside, think it was a pretty good decade for music. What’s great about Ted Leo is that he encapsulates 80s indie/punk/college rock without sounding like an ancient artifact or that he’s aping what came before. He just cranks out tune after tune of heartfelt, energetic, guitar-driven rock.
9) “Sway,” Bic Runga. It seems like a lot of people with great voices spend most of their musical careers letting you know they have great voices. While there is a great deal of (justifiable) fun poked at guitar/drum/bass wankery, the vocal wankery of the world’s Mariahs and Celines is just as annoying. So it’s nice to hear someone like Bic Runga, who can go huge with her voice, dropping it down to give the verses some warm piano-bar intimacy. This is the kind of stuff that should be idolized by Americans.
10) “Achin’ to Be,” The Replacements. Now this is what an achy, breaky heart sounds like.
11) “Trip Like I Do,” The Crystal Method. How can you go wrong with samples from The Dark Crystal? That’s a trick question: you can’t go wrong with samples from The Dark Crystal (note: highly clickworthy). One of my favorite electronic songs of all time, because when the song kicks it up at the midway point, I feel like I’m in an action movie, falling down a 100-story building while three killer robots are plunging after me, giving me just enough time to turn in mid-air and blast them with my ion wrist cannon, clearing the way for my talking chimp sidekick Dr. Sassafras to rescue me at the last minute in our hovercraft, where I land on the waterbed next to my female co-star, who says “I always knew you’d fall for me” just before the credits roll.
No, I’m really not a virgin.
Have a great weekend.
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
Happy Birthday, TLB!
The Lovely Becky is another year lovelier today. Libby already gave TLB her birthday gift, a wake-up call at 3 am this morning, because she just couldn't wait to start celebrating. Her publisher gave TLB her birthday gift by saying that her novel is ready to go and on its way toward being a book you can stick on your shelf/iPad. There are even people in foreign lands who want to give her the gift of translating her work into their own languages.
As for me...well, it becomes somewhat more difficult to give your spouse the perfect birthday gift as you spend more and more time together. It's harder to surprise them, because they know you so well and can pick up on your tells, like bouncing up and down and saying, "Wait til you see what I got you for your birthday!" And, frankly, it's harder to resist the impulse to just buy something for them during the year if you can afford it and they want it. So it's not easy for me to come up with something TLB will be very excited to receive.
That's when it hit me: Why not give her the gift of me? Say, in this pose. Minus the mustache, of course. How could she not swoon over that?
Plan B is to make dinner for her and let her sleep in as much as she wants on Saturday. Sadly, I suspect she'll be more excited about that.
As for me...well, it becomes somewhat more difficult to give your spouse the perfect birthday gift as you spend more and more time together. It's harder to surprise them, because they know you so well and can pick up on your tells, like bouncing up and down and saying, "Wait til you see what I got you for your birthday!" And, frankly, it's harder to resist the impulse to just buy something for them during the year if you can afford it and they want it. So it's not easy for me to come up with something TLB will be very excited to receive.
That's when it hit me: Why not give her the gift of me? Say, in this pose. Minus the mustache, of course. How could she not swoon over that?
Plan B is to make dinner for her and let her sleep in as much as she wants on Saturday. Sadly, I suspect she'll be more excited about that.
Friday, April 09, 2010
Friday Random 11
It's one more random than 10!
Last Friday it was 72 degrees. Today there’s snow on the ground. Get me the fuck out of here. And yes, I know it snowed in Chicago, but right now a 60-inch winter seems positively quaint and adorable.
I also realized I’m coming up on five years of blogging. That blew my mind the other day. I can’t believe I’ve been doing this since I was 25. So I might change things up a bit. I have no idea how much I can trick out the old El Camino that is Blogger, but I’ll probably try giving the ol’ girl a new paint job at least.
1) “Crazy Train,” Ozzy Osbourne. The most entertaining Rock Band/Guitar Hero song I’ve ever played, probably because I’ve been air-guitaring it since I was 12 and playing it with a plastic toy guitar strapped around my neck was like taking one step closer to actually being Randy Rhodes. In fact, the whole Rock Band/Guitar Hero thing is probably like having sex with one of those hyper-realistic/extra-creepy sex dolls I once saw on HBO’s Real Sex. It can really seem like the real thing when you’re in the middle of it and letting your imagination take over, but to anyone watching you, you look completely sad and pathetic.
2) “Round and Round,” Ratt. There are two metal bands I hate to admit liking: Dokken and Ratt. I can mentally justify a lot of the other hair-and-leather-pants guilty pleasures: Dio is so bad he’s good, Whitesnake reminds me of the time my friend Tom and I got his booger-green Datsun up to 105 mph on the Capitol Beltway just as the guitar solo from “Still of the Night” kicked in, and Def Leppard were the British Cheap Trick and Cheap Trick fucking rules. Dokken and Ratt, though, are true guilty pleasures: derivative, silly, and simplistic. Then again, I like Taco Bell despite the fact that it’s the digestive equivalent of the Viet Cong: it’s good because it’s wrong. So there’s my justification for Ratt.
3) “Heart of the Sunrise,” Yes. The reason I like songs like this is because they take me on a little mental journey. When artists pull the prog out, it’s like a musical short story. That’s not limited to old-school prog, either. It can be the epic Icelandic chirping of most Sigur Ros songs or the harrowing overdose anthem, “Coma” from Guns N’ Roses. As much as I love catchy, concise rock songs, sometimes three minutes isn’t enough to get the job done. Just ask my wife.
4) “Breaking Us in Two,” Joe Jackson. One of the great relationship laments because it sounds like you’re sitting in a bar, listening to Joe Jackson sing about love gone wrong while you wallow in drink because your love did go wrong.
5) “Hate Breeders,” The Misfits. Yesterday’s menace becomes today’s kitsch.
6) “Out Go the Lights,” Spoon. Having a bit of a difficult time getting into the new Spoon album, Transference. I can’t tell if it’s because it’s not as good as the last one or if it suffers from Expectant Follow-Up Syndrome, where an artist releases the album of their career, one so good the next one is almost certain to disappoint. Very few rock bands can overcome that syndrome.
7) “Tax Rebates and Common Sense,” Lewis Black. I don’t normally include comedy routines if they come up in the Random 11, but this seems appropriate given that we’re a week away from tax day. I also love Lewis Black. He does swear so much that it can sometimes be a distraction, but the way he takes this raging pot of anger and pours cup after cup of hilarious standup inspires me. There’s a bit from this album (The End of the Universe) on post-9/11 homeland security that is one of the best comedic rages against government ever.
8) “Heaven’s Not Overflowing,” Corrosion of Conformity. One of my all-time Expectant Follow-Up Syndrome bands. The album before this, Blind, is one of the most underrated metal albums of all time—an hour of Sabbathy grunge metal that still melts my ears. This album, Deliverance, kicks the same amount of ass for three songs, then sends the remaining eleven off the cliff and into the Gorge of Meh. That’s the worst kind of Expectant Follow-Up Syndrome, where the album starts off strong and I think I have another gem on your hands, only to find out that those gems have been ground up and embedded into the artificial fillers and preservatives that populate the rest of the album. I keep listening hoping I’m hitting a mid-album lull, but the non-hits keep on coming. At least have the decency to suck from the beginning so I don’t get my hopes up.
9) “God Save the Queen,” Sex Pistols. “Anarchy in the UK” gets a lot of the attention but this is the better song, my second-favorite on Never Mind the Bollocks after “Pretty Vacant.” Despite becoming one of the “old” people Johnny Rottten spat this song at, and actually having what seems like a good future ahead of me, I still get a kick out of singing “no future, no future, no future for you.”
10) “Dazed and Confused,” Led Zeppelin. I go through Zeppelin periods where I really like Zeppelin and others where I get really tired of hearing them. Obviously, “Stairway” fatigue is pretty common, but there are times where I just can’t take another burst of “Black Dog” or “Whole Lotta Love” or even “Kashmir.” However, I never get tired of their first album. If “Good Times, Bad Times,” comes on the radio, I’m turning it up. Likewise, I’m going air-drum apeshit when Jimmy Page stops his noodling and the band kicks it to 11 in this song.
11) “You Make My Dreams,” Hall & Oates. Fuck & Yeah. This was used in the movie 500 Days of Summer, and while I think that movie is quite good on its own, it’s worth watching just for the scene where they use this song. Hall & Oates rule because they just make people happy. I’m not really sure why, because on the surface I should hate this. Yet I could be having the shittiest day imaginable and my foot is going to tap along to “You Make My Dreams.” I suspect that, like Samson’s hair, John Oates mustache is a mystical, follicle-rich source of divine strength.
Have a great weekend.
Last Friday it was 72 degrees. Today there’s snow on the ground. Get me the fuck out of here. And yes, I know it snowed in Chicago, but right now a 60-inch winter seems positively quaint and adorable.
I also realized I’m coming up on five years of blogging. That blew my mind the other day. I can’t believe I’ve been doing this since I was 25. So I might change things up a bit. I have no idea how much I can trick out the old El Camino that is Blogger, but I’ll probably try giving the ol’ girl a new paint job at least.
1) “Crazy Train,” Ozzy Osbourne. The most entertaining Rock Band/Guitar Hero song I’ve ever played, probably because I’ve been air-guitaring it since I was 12 and playing it with a plastic toy guitar strapped around my neck was like taking one step closer to actually being Randy Rhodes. In fact, the whole Rock Band/Guitar Hero thing is probably like having sex with one of those hyper-realistic/extra-creepy sex dolls I once saw on HBO’s Real Sex. It can really seem like the real thing when you’re in the middle of it and letting your imagination take over, but to anyone watching you, you look completely sad and pathetic.
2) “Round and Round,” Ratt. There are two metal bands I hate to admit liking: Dokken and Ratt. I can mentally justify a lot of the other hair-and-leather-pants guilty pleasures: Dio is so bad he’s good, Whitesnake reminds me of the time my friend Tom and I got his booger-green Datsun up to 105 mph on the Capitol Beltway just as the guitar solo from “Still of the Night” kicked in, and Def Leppard were the British Cheap Trick and Cheap Trick fucking rules. Dokken and Ratt, though, are true guilty pleasures: derivative, silly, and simplistic. Then again, I like Taco Bell despite the fact that it’s the digestive equivalent of the Viet Cong: it’s good because it’s wrong. So there’s my justification for Ratt.
3) “Heart of the Sunrise,” Yes. The reason I like songs like this is because they take me on a little mental journey. When artists pull the prog out, it’s like a musical short story. That’s not limited to old-school prog, either. It can be the epic Icelandic chirping of most Sigur Ros songs or the harrowing overdose anthem, “Coma” from Guns N’ Roses. As much as I love catchy, concise rock songs, sometimes three minutes isn’t enough to get the job done. Just ask my wife.
4) “Breaking Us in Two,” Joe Jackson. One of the great relationship laments because it sounds like you’re sitting in a bar, listening to Joe Jackson sing about love gone wrong while you wallow in drink because your love did go wrong.
5) “Hate Breeders,” The Misfits. Yesterday’s menace becomes today’s kitsch.
6) “Out Go the Lights,” Spoon. Having a bit of a difficult time getting into the new Spoon album, Transference. I can’t tell if it’s because it’s not as good as the last one or if it suffers from Expectant Follow-Up Syndrome, where an artist releases the album of their career, one so good the next one is almost certain to disappoint. Very few rock bands can overcome that syndrome.
7) “Tax Rebates and Common Sense,” Lewis Black. I don’t normally include comedy routines if they come up in the Random 11, but this seems appropriate given that we’re a week away from tax day. I also love Lewis Black. He does swear so much that it can sometimes be a distraction, but the way he takes this raging pot of anger and pours cup after cup of hilarious standup inspires me. There’s a bit from this album (The End of the Universe) on post-9/11 homeland security that is one of the best comedic rages against government ever.
8) “Heaven’s Not Overflowing,” Corrosion of Conformity. One of my all-time Expectant Follow-Up Syndrome bands. The album before this, Blind, is one of the most underrated metal albums of all time—an hour of Sabbathy grunge metal that still melts my ears. This album, Deliverance, kicks the same amount of ass for three songs, then sends the remaining eleven off the cliff and into the Gorge of Meh. That’s the worst kind of Expectant Follow-Up Syndrome, where the album starts off strong and I think I have another gem on your hands, only to find out that those gems have been ground up and embedded into the artificial fillers and preservatives that populate the rest of the album. I keep listening hoping I’m hitting a mid-album lull, but the non-hits keep on coming. At least have the decency to suck from the beginning so I don’t get my hopes up.
9) “God Save the Queen,” Sex Pistols. “Anarchy in the UK” gets a lot of the attention but this is the better song, my second-favorite on Never Mind the Bollocks after “Pretty Vacant.” Despite becoming one of the “old” people Johnny Rottten spat this song at, and actually having what seems like a good future ahead of me, I still get a kick out of singing “no future, no future, no future for you.”
10) “Dazed and Confused,” Led Zeppelin. I go through Zeppelin periods where I really like Zeppelin and others where I get really tired of hearing them. Obviously, “Stairway” fatigue is pretty common, but there are times where I just can’t take another burst of “Black Dog” or “Whole Lotta Love” or even “Kashmir.” However, I never get tired of their first album. If “Good Times, Bad Times,” comes on the radio, I’m turning it up. Likewise, I’m going air-drum apeshit when Jimmy Page stops his noodling and the band kicks it to 11 in this song.
11) “You Make My Dreams,” Hall & Oates. Fuck & Yeah. This was used in the movie 500 Days of Summer, and while I think that movie is quite good on its own, it’s worth watching just for the scene where they use this song. Hall & Oates rule because they just make people happy. I’m not really sure why, because on the surface I should hate this. Yet I could be having the shittiest day imaginable and my foot is going to tap along to “You Make My Dreams.” I suspect that, like Samson’s hair, John Oates mustache is a mystical, follicle-rich source of divine strength.
Have a great weekend.
Thursday, April 08, 2010
Top Ten Thursdays: How are we welcoming Tiger Woods back to golf?
10) Setting up a private tour of Augusta with our niece, Lacey Underalls.
9) Sending him a coupon for “all he can eat” at the local Perkins.
8) Offering a lucrative sponsorship from Trojan.
7) Changing the green jacket from a sport coat to a smoking jacket.
6) Providing free transportation from the Bang Bus.
5) Letting him motorboat our breasts (Phil Mickelson only).
4) Sticking a monogrammed Fleshlight in his bag.
3) Promoting awareness of sexual addiction by wearing penis-shaped ribbons.
2) Sending him a congratulatory text message that says, "way 2 swing out of that rough and stick it in the hole."
1) Forgiving his years of appalling, adulterous behavior the second he makes an exciting shot.
9) Sending him a coupon for “all he can eat” at the local Perkins.
8) Offering a lucrative sponsorship from Trojan.
7) Changing the green jacket from a sport coat to a smoking jacket.
6) Providing free transportation from the Bang Bus.
5) Letting him motorboat our breasts (Phil Mickelson only).
4) Sticking a monogrammed Fleshlight in his bag.
3) Promoting awareness of sexual addiction by wearing penis-shaped ribbons.
2) Sending him a congratulatory text message that says, "way 2 swing out of that rough and stick it in the hole."
1) Forgiving his years of appalling, adulterous behavior the second he makes an exciting shot.
Friday, April 02, 2010
No Random 11 today
There's a little too much going on today to get to a Random 11 -- including a second showing of our house that will hopefully lead to a sale so we don't have to keep cleaning all the time. So enjoy celebrating a resurrection, the kicking of a pharaoh in the balls, or the delicious welcoming of diabetes. In the meantime, here's an inspiring story to help celebrate this weekend:
Thursday, April 01, 2010
Palin: Quote about gutting every Democrat and eating their still-beating hearts taken out of context.
SKEETERVILLE – During a rally at Americas’s largest mudflap production facility, former Alaska governor Sarah Palin took aim at the media for what she says is a gross representation of her words.
“I’ll tell ya, I’m so sick of all this misquoting going on,” Ms. Palin said. “Every time I read a story about me, I just want to murder the fella who wrote it.”
Ms. Palin was referring to a recent Associated Press article that quoted her as saying that she wanted to, “Stick these socialist Democrats on meathooks, slice ‘em from neck to groin, and eat their still-beating hearts.” The quote touched off a firestorm of criticism from liberals, even causing MSNBC host Keith Olbermann to pass out from a case of the vapors.
“The problem is that these pansy-wansy liberals don’t know nothing about hunting,” Ms. Palin said. “And if they did, they’d know I was speaking hypometatorically.
“Maybe they’d be smarter if they were homeschooled,” she added, to thunderous cheers and air horns from the crowd.
Ms. Palin also addressed a video that surfaced that appears to show her waving a gun and firing a shot at a target in the shape of the Democratic donkey symbol, telling the crowd to do the same with their representatives.
“That’s not a gun,” Ms. Palin said, “I was just using my fingers to make a gun, like this.” Ms. Palin formed her right hand into a finger gun and made several pew pew pew noises, which she claims were the source of the “gunshot” noises.
The Palin controversy is the latest in a recent series of rapid-fire denunciations aimed at liberals by conservatives. House minority leader John Boehner (R-heh, heh) said that healthcare reform would trigger “Armageddon” and would kill everyone in the country because “that’s what healthcare reform does. That’s all it does!” Michele Bachman (R-Duh.) went one further, stating that Democrats were clearly “vampires” who needed to “have stakes driven in their hearts before they turn our country gay by sucking the heterosexual blood out of our children.” Ms. Bachman was unavailable to comment on this story, as a spokeswoman explained that the Congresswoman was recovering from an overdose of Twilight.
While Democrats say that this violent rhetoric is inciting violence, Republicans disagree. Senator John McCain (R-Matlock) took issue that his comment, “What we need to do is take these Democrats and stick them face first into a tank of ravenous piranhas until they agree to compromise,” was a call for violence. “Anyone with half a brain would know I was making a comment about the need for more bipartisanship in Washington. The senator was asked to elaborate, but had to depart for nap time.
Some Republicans also say they have been blatantly misquoted. A New York Times story earlier this week said Senator David Vitter (R-Xxx) wanted to “urinate on the Democratic Party,” but the senator claimed he actually said he wanted the Democratic Party to urinate on him.
“If Americans weren’t allowed to incite violence, there wouldn’t be an America”
While Republican officials have said that their comments have been misunderstood, conservative pundits have argued that their rhetoric is justifiable and in fact patriotic. Fox News host Glenn Beck said as much when he claimed, “If Americans weren’t allowed to incite violence, there wouldn’t be an America, which is precisely why the Democrats are against inciting violence.” Punctuating his point by writing “a-ha!!!” on his chalkboard, Mr. Beck continued, “That’s why it’s our patriotic duty to stomp the throat of progressivism with the jackboot of freedom.”
Radio host Rush Limbaugh said that the Democratic concerns were an attack on the foundation of America, freedom of speech. “If I can’t tell my listeners that it is there religious duty to protect Judeo-Christian family values by driving a truckload of explosives into every Democratic office, then the terrorists have won.”
Even Fox News can’t escape the criticism of distorting the news. Blogger and professional racial delusionist Michelle Malkin appeared the network to discuss how to fight the Democrats, and proposed a plan for rounding up Democrats and sticking them in internment camps.
“They edited out a key part, where I said that the camps would be heated by the burning bodies of illegal immigrants,” Ms. Malkin said. “That would make the camps self-powered, but I guess that was too ‘controversial’ for the producers.
“It just goes to show that the mainstream media will stop at nothing to paint conservatives in a bad light.”
“I’ll tell ya, I’m so sick of all this misquoting going on,” Ms. Palin said. “Every time I read a story about me, I just want to murder the fella who wrote it.”
Ms. Palin was referring to a recent Associated Press article that quoted her as saying that she wanted to, “Stick these socialist Democrats on meathooks, slice ‘em from neck to groin, and eat their still-beating hearts.” The quote touched off a firestorm of criticism from liberals, even causing MSNBC host Keith Olbermann to pass out from a case of the vapors.
“The problem is that these pansy-wansy liberals don’t know nothing about hunting,” Ms. Palin said. “And if they did, they’d know I was speaking hypometatorically.
“Maybe they’d be smarter if they were homeschooled,” she added, to thunderous cheers and air horns from the crowd.
Ms. Palin also addressed a video that surfaced that appears to show her waving a gun and firing a shot at a target in the shape of the Democratic donkey symbol, telling the crowd to do the same with their representatives.
“That’s not a gun,” Ms. Palin said, “I was just using my fingers to make a gun, like this.” Ms. Palin formed her right hand into a finger gun and made several pew pew pew noises, which she claims were the source of the “gunshot” noises.
The Palin controversy is the latest in a recent series of rapid-fire denunciations aimed at liberals by conservatives. House minority leader John Boehner (R-heh, heh) said that healthcare reform would trigger “Armageddon” and would kill everyone in the country because “that’s what healthcare reform does. That’s all it does!” Michele Bachman (R-Duh.) went one further, stating that Democrats were clearly “vampires” who needed to “have stakes driven in their hearts before they turn our country gay by sucking the heterosexual blood out of our children.” Ms. Bachman was unavailable to comment on this story, as a spokeswoman explained that the Congresswoman was recovering from an overdose of Twilight.
While Democrats say that this violent rhetoric is inciting violence, Republicans disagree. Senator John McCain (R-Matlock) took issue that his comment, “What we need to do is take these Democrats and stick them face first into a tank of ravenous piranhas until they agree to compromise,” was a call for violence. “Anyone with half a brain would know I was making a comment about the need for more bipartisanship in Washington. The senator was asked to elaborate, but had to depart for nap time.
Some Republicans also say they have been blatantly misquoted. A New York Times story earlier this week said Senator David Vitter (R-Xxx) wanted to “urinate on the Democratic Party,” but the senator claimed he actually said he wanted the Democratic Party to urinate on him.
“If Americans weren’t allowed to incite violence, there wouldn’t be an America”
While Republican officials have said that their comments have been misunderstood, conservative pundits have argued that their rhetoric is justifiable and in fact patriotic. Fox News host Glenn Beck said as much when he claimed, “If Americans weren’t allowed to incite violence, there wouldn’t be an America, which is precisely why the Democrats are against inciting violence.” Punctuating his point by writing “a-ha!!!” on his chalkboard, Mr. Beck continued, “That’s why it’s our patriotic duty to stomp the throat of progressivism with the jackboot of freedom.”
Radio host Rush Limbaugh said that the Democratic concerns were an attack on the foundation of America, freedom of speech. “If I can’t tell my listeners that it is there religious duty to protect Judeo-Christian family values by driving a truckload of explosives into every Democratic office, then the terrorists have won.”
Even Fox News can’t escape the criticism of distorting the news. Blogger and professional racial delusionist Michelle Malkin appeared the network to discuss how to fight the Democrats, and proposed a plan for rounding up Democrats and sticking them in internment camps.
“They edited out a key part, where I said that the camps would be heated by the burning bodies of illegal immigrants,” Ms. Malkin said. “That would make the camps self-powered, but I guess that was too ‘controversial’ for the producers.
“It just goes to show that the mainstream media will stop at nothing to paint conservatives in a bad light.”
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Top Ten Tuesdays: How are we celebrating the successful launch of the Large Hadron Collider?
The Large Hadron Collider finally started smashing together subatomic particles. How are we celebrating this scientific breakthrough?
10) Holding most explosive matter/anti-matter party ever.
9) Grabbing pet spider, crossing fingers, and jumping into particle stream.
8) Mixing protons and electrons with our lab partners, if you know what we mean.
7) Calling stupid brother-in-law who said we would blow up the world and telling him to suck our neutrons.
6) Preparing for guest appearance on The Big Bang Theory, where the cute girl will ask, “Is that a Large Hadron Collider in your pants or are you just happy to see me?”
5) Getting our favorite isotope tattooed on our shoulders.
4) Watching everything turn white before waking up on The Island.
3) Watching the particle collisions under a black light while listening to Dark Side of the Moon.
2) Unclenching our black holes in relief.
1) Hoping that this amazing triumph of technology and physics will inspire people to see how valuable science is and teach children that science is a noble, rewarding career…just kidding, we’re going to use our extra free time to work on our girl robots.
10) Holding most explosive matter/anti-matter party ever.
9) Grabbing pet spider, crossing fingers, and jumping into particle stream.
8) Mixing protons and electrons with our lab partners, if you know what we mean.
7) Calling stupid brother-in-law who said we would blow up the world and telling him to suck our neutrons.
6) Preparing for guest appearance on The Big Bang Theory, where the cute girl will ask, “Is that a Large Hadron Collider in your pants or are you just happy to see me?”
5) Getting our favorite isotope tattooed on our shoulders.
4) Watching everything turn white before waking up on The Island.
3) Watching the particle collisions under a black light while listening to Dark Side of the Moon.
2) Unclenching our black holes in relief.
1) Hoping that this amazing triumph of technology and physics will inspire people to see how valuable science is and teach children that science is a noble, rewarding career…just kidding, we’re going to use our extra free time to work on our girl robots.
Friday, March 26, 2010
Friday Random 11
It’s one more random than 10!
Barack Obama came to Iowa City this week and The Lovely Becky and I weren’t there. He even went to Prairie Lights bookstore and I missed an opportunity to press a copy of Icebergs by Rebecca Johns into his hands. He would have given it to Michelle, who would have recommended it to Oprah, and who would have made me a kept man. The only thing worse is finding out Stephen Colbert was in the neighborhood when I was out of town, missing my chance to land a gig on The Colbert Report by giving him my best dick joke puns.
The sad thing is, I don’t think the president stopped at the Hamburg Inn for a pie shake. If you come to Iowa City, you have to go to the Hamburg Inn for a pie shake. It’s pie, it’s a shake, morphed together into a super dessert alloy that would make an Al Qaeda operative spill every single secret they’ve ever learned. And now that we’re all getting health care, there’s no reason not to enjoy this cold, creamy cobbler bomb. Hell, order four, one for each chamber of your heart. The pie shake is a sign God loves us and wants us to be happy.
1) “Destroyer,” The Kinks. A classic Kinks song, with Ray Davies doing a terrific job sounding like he’s losing his mind. My only wish is that the guitar had been turned up. It sits a bit in the back like it’s stalking the listener instead of breaking down the door.
2) “Our House,” Madness. Not many 80s hits sound timeless, but this is an exception. It avoids a lot of the reverb/synthesizer/electronic drum issues that date even awesome 80s songs, and in fact sounds less 80s than some new stuff like The Killers.
3) “Glad Tidings,” Van Morrison. I am a recent member of the Van Morrison Appreciation Society. My only real previous contact had been drunken sing-a-longs to “Brown Eyed Girl” in various bars. Once I sat down and started to really listen, I understood what all the fuss was about. He has one of those voices that’s both warm yet powerful, like a hug from your dad when you’re a kid. Surprisingly not on YouTube.
4) “As Ugly As I Seem,” The White Stripes. Bongo time for Meg. Also, the title would work as the theme song for Bill Donohue. While I never advocate murder outside of traveling back in time to kill Hitler, there are some people who I would enjoy seeing die. Bill Donohue is one of them. How can someone take the awful, awful news of the Catholic Church keeping a serial abuser of deaf children in the priest business and twist the story around into some anti-Catholic bigotry by the media? That’s exactly what this puffy, red-faced taint has done. So fuck him, I hope he dies, and better yet, I hope I get to see it, at least on YouTube. I hope it’s one of those great ironic deaths, too, where a sex toy factory explodes and he gets crushed under a hail of falling dildos. And if I’m lucky enough to walk by a burning building and learn that the only person trapped in it is Bill Donohue? Damn if I’m not pulling up some curb to make sure he doesn’t get out. I may even start a chant of “The roof, the roof, the roof is on fire….”
5) “Dodging Invisible Rays,” Guided by Voices. Even as a pretty big GbV fan, I admit they recorded way too much shit. They could have been a huge band if Robert Pollard had any ability to edit himself. Having said that, though, they have more hidden gems than any band in recent memory. Combing through their various albums, box sets, and EPs is like Antiques Roadshow: amid the stuff that’s not worth as much, you find a shiny heirloom like this bit of sunny guitar pop.
6) “Monty Got a Raw Deal,” R.E.M. (good cover since YouTube is cockblocking me today) I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating: I think this is the best R.E.M. album. The early rock albums on IRS have a ton of classic tracks, but I always found the actual albums somewhat uneven. Out of Time is terrific, but it sounds dated to me, like it was custom-made for MTV Unplugged. Automatic for the People, though, takes all the stuff that made R.E.M. great up to that point and pours it into one pristine album. Dark, hopeful, quiet, strong, serious, silly…it’s about as complex of a rock record as I’ve ever heard, like a person you’ve known all your life but who you still learn a little bit more about every time you talk to them.
7) “Day Tripper,” The Beatles. The riff is definitely the meat of this song, one of the best and most memorable that The Beatles ever recorded. It’s like finding a pinky of some ancient human ancestor: you can trace almost the entire lineage of jangle pop to that intro. But Ringo is the bread holding this together. The beat and those little fills were just perfect.
8) “Professional Againster,” New Bomb Turks. Seriously, it's like it's Shitty YouTube Clip Day. This doesn't really do justice to the studio version of this song, which is revved up to 7000 rpms with a bit of crazy piano that sounds like a coked-up Jerry Lee Lewis sitting in with a punk band. Never get tired of NBT’s Scared Straight, best 90s punk album after Rancid’s And Out Come the Wolves.
9) “Reach for Love,” Ollabelle. Conflict of interest disclaimer: The bass player is an old friend. Having said that, Ollabelle is a terrific Americana rock band who sound like the offspring of The Band, which is unsurprising since Levon Helm’s daughter is in this band. This is one of those laid-back Seventies-style songs about love troubles that manages to sound sexy and woeful at the same time. No YouTube clip, but check out “Blue Northern Lights” from the same album.
10) “Blue Monday,” New Order. I have probably danced more stupidly to this song than any other because I love it so, and that love floods my usual self-consciousness about dancing. Best dance drums ever, as if the drum machine is a machine gun, shooting at the ground and forcing me to dance, only without the sadism and possibility that the next last shot is for me because I’m a dirty, backstabbing narc. All of the excitement without the pain and annoyance of exit wounds! It also helps that the main beat is tailor-made for the White Man Shuffle.
11) “Move On,” Chris Knight. (Drunken Redneck Hootin' YouTube Mix) Holy shit, this guy is terrific. A random Pandora discovery that has left my ears in better shape. This is from his album The Trailer Tapes, which Knight actually recorded in his trailer in Kentucky. He channels Steve Earle here, but his studio work also had the best John Mellencamp qualities to it. He’s one of those, “Wow, how have I not heard this guy” kind of discoveries, and well worth checking out.
Bonus clip: What better way to head into the weekend than a 1976 interview with AC/DC where Bon Scott is rocking a mullet, wearing shorts that Freddie Mercury would have found too tight, and has a banana sticking out of his waistband?
Barack Obama came to Iowa City this week and The Lovely Becky and I weren’t there. He even went to Prairie Lights bookstore and I missed an opportunity to press a copy of Icebergs by Rebecca Johns into his hands. He would have given it to Michelle, who would have recommended it to Oprah, and who would have made me a kept man. The only thing worse is finding out Stephen Colbert was in the neighborhood when I was out of town, missing my chance to land a gig on The Colbert Report by giving him my best dick joke puns.
The sad thing is, I don’t think the president stopped at the Hamburg Inn for a pie shake. If you come to Iowa City, you have to go to the Hamburg Inn for a pie shake. It’s pie, it’s a shake, morphed together into a super dessert alloy that would make an Al Qaeda operative spill every single secret they’ve ever learned. And now that we’re all getting health care, there’s no reason not to enjoy this cold, creamy cobbler bomb. Hell, order four, one for each chamber of your heart. The pie shake is a sign God loves us and wants us to be happy.
1) “Destroyer,” The Kinks. A classic Kinks song, with Ray Davies doing a terrific job sounding like he’s losing his mind. My only wish is that the guitar had been turned up. It sits a bit in the back like it’s stalking the listener instead of breaking down the door.
2) “Our House,” Madness. Not many 80s hits sound timeless, but this is an exception. It avoids a lot of the reverb/synthesizer/electronic drum issues that date even awesome 80s songs, and in fact sounds less 80s than some new stuff like The Killers.
3) “Glad Tidings,” Van Morrison. I am a recent member of the Van Morrison Appreciation Society. My only real previous contact had been drunken sing-a-longs to “Brown Eyed Girl” in various bars. Once I sat down and started to really listen, I understood what all the fuss was about. He has one of those voices that’s both warm yet powerful, like a hug from your dad when you’re a kid. Surprisingly not on YouTube.
4) “As Ugly As I Seem,” The White Stripes. Bongo time for Meg. Also, the title would work as the theme song for Bill Donohue. While I never advocate murder outside of traveling back in time to kill Hitler, there are some people who I would enjoy seeing die. Bill Donohue is one of them. How can someone take the awful, awful news of the Catholic Church keeping a serial abuser of deaf children in the priest business and twist the story around into some anti-Catholic bigotry by the media? That’s exactly what this puffy, red-faced taint has done. So fuck him, I hope he dies, and better yet, I hope I get to see it, at least on YouTube. I hope it’s one of those great ironic deaths, too, where a sex toy factory explodes and he gets crushed under a hail of falling dildos. And if I’m lucky enough to walk by a burning building and learn that the only person trapped in it is Bill Donohue? Damn if I’m not pulling up some curb to make sure he doesn’t get out. I may even start a chant of “The roof, the roof, the roof is on fire….”
5) “Dodging Invisible Rays,” Guided by Voices. Even as a pretty big GbV fan, I admit they recorded way too much shit. They could have been a huge band if Robert Pollard had any ability to edit himself. Having said that, though, they have more hidden gems than any band in recent memory. Combing through their various albums, box sets, and EPs is like Antiques Roadshow: amid the stuff that’s not worth as much, you find a shiny heirloom like this bit of sunny guitar pop.
6) “Monty Got a Raw Deal,” R.E.M. (good cover since YouTube is cockblocking me today) I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating: I think this is the best R.E.M. album. The early rock albums on IRS have a ton of classic tracks, but I always found the actual albums somewhat uneven. Out of Time is terrific, but it sounds dated to me, like it was custom-made for MTV Unplugged. Automatic for the People, though, takes all the stuff that made R.E.M. great up to that point and pours it into one pristine album. Dark, hopeful, quiet, strong, serious, silly…it’s about as complex of a rock record as I’ve ever heard, like a person you’ve known all your life but who you still learn a little bit more about every time you talk to them.
7) “Day Tripper,” The Beatles. The riff is definitely the meat of this song, one of the best and most memorable that The Beatles ever recorded. It’s like finding a pinky of some ancient human ancestor: you can trace almost the entire lineage of jangle pop to that intro. But Ringo is the bread holding this together. The beat and those little fills were just perfect.
8) “Professional Againster,” New Bomb Turks. Seriously, it's like it's Shitty YouTube Clip Day. This doesn't really do justice to the studio version of this song, which is revved up to 7000 rpms with a bit of crazy piano that sounds like a coked-up Jerry Lee Lewis sitting in with a punk band. Never get tired of NBT’s Scared Straight, best 90s punk album after Rancid’s And Out Come the Wolves.
9) “Reach for Love,” Ollabelle. Conflict of interest disclaimer: The bass player is an old friend. Having said that, Ollabelle is a terrific Americana rock band who sound like the offspring of The Band, which is unsurprising since Levon Helm’s daughter is in this band. This is one of those laid-back Seventies-style songs about love troubles that manages to sound sexy and woeful at the same time. No YouTube clip, but check out “Blue Northern Lights” from the same album.
10) “Blue Monday,” New Order. I have probably danced more stupidly to this song than any other because I love it so, and that love floods my usual self-consciousness about dancing. Best dance drums ever, as if the drum machine is a machine gun, shooting at the ground and forcing me to dance, only without the sadism and possibility that the next last shot is for me because I’m a dirty, backstabbing narc. All of the excitement without the pain and annoyance of exit wounds! It also helps that the main beat is tailor-made for the White Man Shuffle.
11) “Move On,” Chris Knight. (Drunken Redneck Hootin' YouTube Mix) Holy shit, this guy is terrific. A random Pandora discovery that has left my ears in better shape. This is from his album The Trailer Tapes, which Knight actually recorded in his trailer in Kentucky. He channels Steve Earle here, but his studio work also had the best John Mellencamp qualities to it. He’s one of those, “Wow, how have I not heard this guy” kind of discoveries, and well worth checking out.
Bonus clip: What better way to head into the weekend than a 1976 interview with AC/DC where Bon Scott is rocking a mullet, wearing shorts that Freddie Mercury would have found too tight, and has a banana sticking out of his waistband?
Thursday, March 25, 2010
Liberus
On a golf course, a man lines up a short putt. He hits the ball too hard, however, and it lips out of the hole.
MAN (shaking fist)
Obama!
At a restaurant, the Man sits at a table with other diners. One of them finishes a joke as the man takes a bite of food.
DINER
“…and the guy says, ‘That’s not my dog, you idiot, that’s my wife!”
The Man laughs but immediately starts choking uncontrollably. The Diner gets behind him and gives him a Heimlich maneuver, dislodging a bit of food.
DINER
Are you okay?
MAN (gasping)
Obama!
In the bedroom, the Man lies with his Wife.
WIFE
It’s okay, honey, it happens. We can just cuddle tonight.
MAN (making a fist and whispering)
Obama!
A DOCTOR appears.
DOCTOR
Do you or anyone you love have an uncontrollable hatred of President Obama? Do you find yourself blaming the president for every and any problem in your life?
If so, you may be suffering from Chronic Obsessive Obama Transference Syndrome, a serious medical condition that affects millions of Americans. While COOTS is most prevalent among the elderly, it can strike young and old, of either gender and any race.
But now you have a chance to overcome your COOTS with new Liberus.
A montage shows the man yelling at his elected official, carrying a sign that says “No Death Panels”, and weeping while watching Glenn Beck.
DOCTOR (voice over)
Liberus is a powerful new medicine that can relieve the worst symptoms of COOTS: the huffing, puffing, marches on Washington, marches on city hall, disrupting town halls, disputing birth certificates, uncontrollable filibustering, and bedwetting.
On screen, a picture of a brain shows angry red arrows being transformed into soft blue arrows that enter the nervous system.
DOCTOR
Liberus stimulates the relaxation centers of your brain, the portions that control heart rate, breathing, and rectal clenching, while blocking the neurons that cause shouting, finger pointing, and apocalyptic predictions.
Another montage plays while the warning message is spoken: The Man having a polite conversation with his representative, the Man raising his hand to speak at a townhall meeting, and the man laughing as he watches The Colbert Report.
VOICEOVER (read quickly).
Warning: Liberus is not for everyone. Side effects may include an increase empathy for the less fortunate, trust in the scientific process, trust of official government documents, a decreased interest in carrying firearms in public, and Palin repulsion. Republican members of Congress who take Liberus may suffer a severe loss of talking points; this is normal and will be replaced by a surge in bipartisanship. Taking Liberus while watching Fox News may cause bouts of cognitive dissonance which can be relieved through sarcasm and drinking games. If you currently suffer from cranial-anal insertion, talk to your doctor before taking Liberus, as he may want to return your head to its original upright position before starting treatment.
DOCTOR
To take back control of your anger, your saliva glands, and your life. Take Liberus.
In their bedroom, the Man and his Wife sit watching TV.
WIFE
Honey, do you want to watch Sean Hannity? I think Ann Coulter and Charles Krauthammer are on.
The Man grabs the remote and turns off the TV as he pulls the Wife toward him.
WIFE
Oh, honey, what’s gotten into you?
MAN (looking at the camera and winking)
Liberus!
MAN (shaking fist)
Obama!
At a restaurant, the Man sits at a table with other diners. One of them finishes a joke as the man takes a bite of food.
DINER
“…and the guy says, ‘That’s not my dog, you idiot, that’s my wife!”
The Man laughs but immediately starts choking uncontrollably. The Diner gets behind him and gives him a Heimlich maneuver, dislodging a bit of food.
DINER
Are you okay?
MAN (gasping)
Obama!
In the bedroom, the Man lies with his Wife.
WIFE
It’s okay, honey, it happens. We can just cuddle tonight.
MAN (making a fist and whispering)
Obama!
A DOCTOR appears.
DOCTOR
Do you or anyone you love have an uncontrollable hatred of President Obama? Do you find yourself blaming the president for every and any problem in your life?
If so, you may be suffering from Chronic Obsessive Obama Transference Syndrome, a serious medical condition that affects millions of Americans. While COOTS is most prevalent among the elderly, it can strike young and old, of either gender and any race.
But now you have a chance to overcome your COOTS with new Liberus.
A montage shows the man yelling at his elected official, carrying a sign that says “No Death Panels”, and weeping while watching Glenn Beck.
DOCTOR (voice over)
Liberus is a powerful new medicine that can relieve the worst symptoms of COOTS: the huffing, puffing, marches on Washington, marches on city hall, disrupting town halls, disputing birth certificates, uncontrollable filibustering, and bedwetting.
On screen, a picture of a brain shows angry red arrows being transformed into soft blue arrows that enter the nervous system.
DOCTOR
Liberus stimulates the relaxation centers of your brain, the portions that control heart rate, breathing, and rectal clenching, while blocking the neurons that cause shouting, finger pointing, and apocalyptic predictions.
Another montage plays while the warning message is spoken: The Man having a polite conversation with his representative, the Man raising his hand to speak at a townhall meeting, and the man laughing as he watches The Colbert Report.
VOICEOVER (read quickly).
Warning: Liberus is not for everyone. Side effects may include an increase empathy for the less fortunate, trust in the scientific process, trust of official government documents, a decreased interest in carrying firearms in public, and Palin repulsion. Republican members of Congress who take Liberus may suffer a severe loss of talking points; this is normal and will be replaced by a surge in bipartisanship. Taking Liberus while watching Fox News may cause bouts of cognitive dissonance which can be relieved through sarcasm and drinking games. If you currently suffer from cranial-anal insertion, talk to your doctor before taking Liberus, as he may want to return your head to its original upright position before starting treatment.
DOCTOR
To take back control of your anger, your saliva glands, and your life. Take Liberus.
In their bedroom, the Man and his Wife sit watching TV.
WIFE
Honey, do you want to watch Sean Hannity? I think Ann Coulter and Charles Krauthammer are on.
The Man grabs the remote and turns off the TV as he pulls the Wife toward him.
WIFE
Oh, honey, what’s gotten into you?
MAN (looking at the camera and winking)
Liberus!
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Top Ten Tuesdays: What steps are we taking to prepare for the end of America?
Special health care will kill us all edition!
12) Passing No Child Left Unarmed.
11) Taking out home equity loan to install catapults on our walled compounds.
10) Stocking up on Kook-Aid to sweeten our main water supply: Glenn Beck’s bitter tears.
9) Claiming tinfoil as a medical expense.
8) Steeling ourselves for the possibility that, in order to get through that first winter, we may have to eat Rush Limbaugh.
7) Looking to the Bible for answers, preferably for those involving smiting and/or stoning.
6) Perfecting our combustion engine that runs on rage, hyperbole, and drool.
5) Practicing how we’ll talk to our subjects when we emerge from our parents’ basement to become the new Lord of Smith Street.
4) Heating our caves in the hills of Los Angeles with remaindered copies of Liberal Fascism.
3) Forming our own Teabagger Navy with sailboats powered by mouthbreathing.
2) Polishing our replica Lord of the Rings sword so that Queen Palin can knight us.
1) Breathing into a paper bag until we can think straight about how we’ll survive the coming Obamacalypse.
12) Passing No Child Left Unarmed.
11) Taking out home equity loan to install catapults on our walled compounds.
10) Stocking up on Kook-Aid to sweeten our main water supply: Glenn Beck’s bitter tears.
9) Claiming tinfoil as a medical expense.
8) Steeling ourselves for the possibility that, in order to get through that first winter, we may have to eat Rush Limbaugh.
7) Looking to the Bible for answers, preferably for those involving smiting and/or stoning.
6) Perfecting our combustion engine that runs on rage, hyperbole, and drool.
5) Practicing how we’ll talk to our subjects when we emerge from our parents’ basement to become the new Lord of Smith Street.
4) Heating our caves in the hills of Los Angeles with remaindered copies of Liberal Fascism.
3) Forming our own Teabagger Navy with sailboats powered by mouthbreathing.
2) Polishing our replica Lord of the Rings sword so that Queen Palin can knight us.
1) Breathing into a paper bag until we can think straight about how we’ll survive the coming Obamacalypse.
Friday, March 19, 2010
Friday Random 11
It’s one more random than 10!
Sad news this week with the passing of Alex Chilton of Big Star, who was just 59.
Chilton had one of those blessing and a curse kind of lives. He created music that practically created a blueprint for a host of amazing 80s alternative bands—R.E.M. being his most prominent disciple. And while Big Star never had much commercial success, Chilton at least got to bask in the glow of his critical acclaim and extensive influence (unlike, say, Nick Drake). We should all be so lucky as to have Paul Westerberg write a kick-ass song about us.
At the same time, he suffered from the early genius curse. His best creative output was top heavy, and he spent the rest of his life living in the shadow of what he’d done in his 20s. That happens to a lot of artists, but it’s especially endemic to rock musicians. I think it’s because, when they hit their mid-20s, they still have the teenage fire that fuels rock music, but they’ve acquired enough maturity to articulate ideas that can remain relevant long after adolescence ends. It’s a perfect storm of creativity for rock music, and it’s almost impossible to reproduce when you get older, because seeing someone in their 30s and 40s trying to rock out the way they did when they were 22 usually looks embarrassing. That means they either risk that embarrassment or have to move on, and in moving on they often lose what made their earlier music so captivating. I think that definitely happened in Chilton’s case.
However, how many bands can connect with people the way Big Star connected with me: nearly 30 years after they recorded their last album.
I had a very circuitous route to Big Star. Being a music nerd, I’d heard groups like R.E.M. name-check them, but also being a young doofus, I’d never looked into them because I was too busy doing things like air-guitaring Dio songs.
Ten years ago, when The Lovely Becky and I still lived in Chicago, our apartment was burglarized. We came home from an exciting evening of going to the movies and then late-night shopping at Jewel. Walking up the back stairs with the groceries, I noticed that our back door was open, and not just open, but missing a pane of glass and the deadbolt that normally kept intruders at bay. After calling the police and then entering the apartment, we found it ransacked. Among the many items taken were most of my CDs—about 250 at the time.
Here’s where the curse turned into a blessing. In my aforementioned air-guitar doofusing years, my record collection contained things like Lita Ford’s Greatest Hits, four words that have no business being grouped together. Thanks to renter’s insurance, I got a pretty fair amount of compensation for my CDs, without any judgment on their artistic merit, and also without having to spend the money on the exact same crap that was stolen.
We embarked on the greatest weekend of music shopping in my life, taking our insurance money and buying about 150 discs in a couple of days. I took the moment to upgrade my collection and add at least a few things that TLB would not mock me mercilessly for owning (there are few things as withering as hearing your spouse sarcastically sing, “Kiss me once, kiss me twice, come on pretty baby, kiss me deadly” and having absolutely no counterattack). One of my targets was Big Star. I found a CD of their first two albums, #1 Record/Radio City. Curious about all the fuss, I moved it to the front of the 150 disc listening queue.
I’ve had a few moments in my music fandom where I hear an artist and wonder why in the hell I didn’t listen to them sooner. Nick Drake was one. Graham Parker was another very recent entry. But Big Star was the biggest of the where have you been all my life albums. I was hooked instantly by the mix of instantly catchy melodies and warm jangle pop coupled with the little bits of chaos in the background and fraying at the edges. And while I loved the songs by the late, great Chris Bell on #1 Record, it was Chilton’s voice that was the final hook pulling me into the Big Star boat, so much that if my boat ever gets stranded on a desert island, that #1 Record/Radio City album is coming with me.
So, despite peaking early and never being the big name he should have been, it has to be satisfying to know you had that kind of impact on people.
1) “Back of a Car,” Big Star. I have to start with my personal favorite Big Star song, because it combines the pop sweetness of the first album with the rougher edge Chilton brought when he took over on Radio City. What cements it for me are the big fat drum fills. Everything’s better with big fat drum fills.
2) “All My Best Friends Are Metalheads,” Less Than Jake. Hey, remember the six months where ska punk wasreally pretty kinda huge? I think it was the six months after swing was really pretty kinda annoyingly huge. At the same time, this is one of those songs I still like a lot as long as I don’t listen to it too closely. Kind of like how I will gladly devour a hot dog if I don’t think about the ingredients.
3) “Let Them Eat Rock,” The Upper Crust. The best conceptual gag I’ve ever seen for a band. A bunch of nerdy white guys dress up like 18th-Century French aristocrats and play AC/DC style rock music with titles like, “Once More Into the Breeches,” “I’ve Got My Ascot ‘N’ My Dickie,” and this song. As a bonus, this song seems absolutely perfect for the current economic climate and especially the conservative response to it. Fun fact: one of the guitar players who went by the stage name Lord Bendover later worked for the Clinton Administration and was a Harvard history professor.
4) “We Will Rock You/We Are the Champions,” Queen. iTunes is apparently aware that March Madness is going on. Despite my sports blood bleeding the blue and orange of the Chicago Bears, the opening weekend of the NCAA basketball tournament is the greatest sports day of the year, and frankly should be a national holiday for men. I tried to coin a name for it yesterday, and I thought of Manukah, but that makes it sound like a holiday for the NBA’s Manu Ginobili. So maybe Bracketmas. Oh, and my Final Four: Kansas, Syracuse, Kentucky, and Baylor.
5) “10 Gallon Ascots,” Tapes ‘n Tapes. Two ascot references in one Random 11? What are the odds of that happening? Well, higher than 14th-seeded Ohio University kicking Georgetown in their third-seeded Hoyas yesterday.
6) “Is There a Ghost,” Band of Brothers. Not to get too much into NCAA stuff, but this would be perfect for a March Madness promo, with the slow music going with the slow-mo montage of hoops, and then the fast part kicking into the quick-hitting montage of game-winning shots throughout the years. Even the lyrics work because, “I can sleep” could relate to the sleepers of the tournament. Note to CBS: My rates are quite affordable. I also love how, in this video, the lead singer looks like he was rushed on stage an hour after being rescued from a four-year exile on an uncharted island. "Hey, man, sorry, no time to clean you up, we gotta gig on Letterman. Just change out of that loincloth."
7) “Moby Dick/Bonzo’s Montreux,” Led Zeppelin. From the Department of Terrible Ideas: let’s take arguably the most classic of drum solos and add some really annoying heavily processed drums to the drum solo part.
8) “I’ve Made Enough Friends,” The Wrens. A perfect song for the Facebook-weary.
9) “Colony of Birchmen,” Mastodon. Metal today is definitely cooler than when I was a teenager. Fun fact for certain Genesis-loving readers: the title is an homage to “The Colony of Slippermen” from The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway. Although I’m pretty sure no one in Mastodon is dressing up like a flower, unless it was a flower that eats people.
10) “S.O.S.,” ABBA. Look, I’m not going to shit all over what people like. Well, okay, I will, but at the same time I respect that we’re all like snowflakes and that some of us like music that others find as memorable as an IKEA nightstand. But ABBA in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame? Really? Sure, they’re the fourth-biggest-selling group of all time. But hey, Celine Dion’s in the top 10 of all-time album sales, sandwiched between the Bee Gees and Elton John (which also sounds like a song from another top 10 seller, AC/DC). So does that mean she’s destined to get in? And, no, none of this stems from bitterness over a certain Canadian power-trio being snubbed again. Not at all.
11) “Punkrocker,” Teddybears (feat. Iggy Pop). My acquisition of this is an irony train wreck. 1) It’s a song called “Punkrocker,” that I thought was an Iggy Pop song but is really from a group with the unpunk name “Teddybears”. 2) I bought said “Punkrocker” song that I thought was by the original punk rocker because I heard it in a TV commercial. 3) Rather than taking the punk route of downloading it illicitly from the Web, I went to iTunes and purchased it in an orderly fashion…with credit from an iTunes gift card. I am so not punk.
Have a great weekend, and I’d like to give a shout out to the UC Santa Barbara Gauchos, because we all could use a little more Gaucho in our lives.
Sad news this week with the passing of Alex Chilton of Big Star, who was just 59.
Chilton had one of those blessing and a curse kind of lives. He created music that practically created a blueprint for a host of amazing 80s alternative bands—R.E.M. being his most prominent disciple. And while Big Star never had much commercial success, Chilton at least got to bask in the glow of his critical acclaim and extensive influence (unlike, say, Nick Drake). We should all be so lucky as to have Paul Westerberg write a kick-ass song about us.
At the same time, he suffered from the early genius curse. His best creative output was top heavy, and he spent the rest of his life living in the shadow of what he’d done in his 20s. That happens to a lot of artists, but it’s especially endemic to rock musicians. I think it’s because, when they hit their mid-20s, they still have the teenage fire that fuels rock music, but they’ve acquired enough maturity to articulate ideas that can remain relevant long after adolescence ends. It’s a perfect storm of creativity for rock music, and it’s almost impossible to reproduce when you get older, because seeing someone in their 30s and 40s trying to rock out the way they did when they were 22 usually looks embarrassing. That means they either risk that embarrassment or have to move on, and in moving on they often lose what made their earlier music so captivating. I think that definitely happened in Chilton’s case.
However, how many bands can connect with people the way Big Star connected with me: nearly 30 years after they recorded their last album.
I had a very circuitous route to Big Star. Being a music nerd, I’d heard groups like R.E.M. name-check them, but also being a young doofus, I’d never looked into them because I was too busy doing things like air-guitaring Dio songs.
Ten years ago, when The Lovely Becky and I still lived in Chicago, our apartment was burglarized. We came home from an exciting evening of going to the movies and then late-night shopping at Jewel. Walking up the back stairs with the groceries, I noticed that our back door was open, and not just open, but missing a pane of glass and the deadbolt that normally kept intruders at bay. After calling the police and then entering the apartment, we found it ransacked. Among the many items taken were most of my CDs—about 250 at the time.
Here’s where the curse turned into a blessing. In my aforementioned air-guitar doofusing years, my record collection contained things like Lita Ford’s Greatest Hits, four words that have no business being grouped together. Thanks to renter’s insurance, I got a pretty fair amount of compensation for my CDs, without any judgment on their artistic merit, and also without having to spend the money on the exact same crap that was stolen.
We embarked on the greatest weekend of music shopping in my life, taking our insurance money and buying about 150 discs in a couple of days. I took the moment to upgrade my collection and add at least a few things that TLB would not mock me mercilessly for owning (there are few things as withering as hearing your spouse sarcastically sing, “Kiss me once, kiss me twice, come on pretty baby, kiss me deadly” and having absolutely no counterattack). One of my targets was Big Star. I found a CD of their first two albums, #1 Record/Radio City. Curious about all the fuss, I moved it to the front of the 150 disc listening queue.
I’ve had a few moments in my music fandom where I hear an artist and wonder why in the hell I didn’t listen to them sooner. Nick Drake was one. Graham Parker was another very recent entry. But Big Star was the biggest of the where have you been all my life albums. I was hooked instantly by the mix of instantly catchy melodies and warm jangle pop coupled with the little bits of chaos in the background and fraying at the edges. And while I loved the songs by the late, great Chris Bell on #1 Record, it was Chilton’s voice that was the final hook pulling me into the Big Star boat, so much that if my boat ever gets stranded on a desert island, that #1 Record/Radio City album is coming with me.
So, despite peaking early and never being the big name he should have been, it has to be satisfying to know you had that kind of impact on people.
1) “Back of a Car,” Big Star. I have to start with my personal favorite Big Star song, because it combines the pop sweetness of the first album with the rougher edge Chilton brought when he took over on Radio City. What cements it for me are the big fat drum fills. Everything’s better with big fat drum fills.
2) “All My Best Friends Are Metalheads,” Less Than Jake. Hey, remember the six months where ska punk was
3) “Let Them Eat Rock,” The Upper Crust. The best conceptual gag I’ve ever seen for a band. A bunch of nerdy white guys dress up like 18th-Century French aristocrats and play AC/DC style rock music with titles like, “Once More Into the Breeches,” “I’ve Got My Ascot ‘N’ My Dickie,” and this song. As a bonus, this song seems absolutely perfect for the current economic climate and especially the conservative response to it. Fun fact: one of the guitar players who went by the stage name Lord Bendover later worked for the Clinton Administration and was a Harvard history professor.
4) “We Will Rock You/We Are the Champions,” Queen. iTunes is apparently aware that March Madness is going on. Despite my sports blood bleeding the blue and orange of the Chicago Bears, the opening weekend of the NCAA basketball tournament is the greatest sports day of the year, and frankly should be a national holiday for men. I tried to coin a name for it yesterday, and I thought of Manukah, but that makes it sound like a holiday for the NBA’s Manu Ginobili. So maybe Bracketmas. Oh, and my Final Four: Kansas, Syracuse, Kentucky, and Baylor.
5) “10 Gallon Ascots,” Tapes ‘n Tapes. Two ascot references in one Random 11? What are the odds of that happening? Well, higher than 14th-seeded Ohio University kicking Georgetown in their third-seeded Hoyas yesterday.
6) “Is There a Ghost,” Band of Brothers. Not to get too much into NCAA stuff, but this would be perfect for a March Madness promo, with the slow music going with the slow-mo montage of hoops, and then the fast part kicking into the quick-hitting montage of game-winning shots throughout the years. Even the lyrics work because, “I can sleep” could relate to the sleepers of the tournament. Note to CBS: My rates are quite affordable. I also love how, in this video, the lead singer looks like he was rushed on stage an hour after being rescued from a four-year exile on an uncharted island. "Hey, man, sorry, no time to clean you up, we gotta gig on Letterman. Just change out of that loincloth."
7) “Moby Dick/Bonzo’s Montreux,” Led Zeppelin. From the Department of Terrible Ideas: let’s take arguably the most classic of drum solos and add some really annoying heavily processed drums to the drum solo part.
8) “I’ve Made Enough Friends,” The Wrens. A perfect song for the Facebook-weary.
9) “Colony of Birchmen,” Mastodon. Metal today is definitely cooler than when I was a teenager. Fun fact for certain Genesis-loving readers: the title is an homage to “The Colony of Slippermen” from The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway. Although I’m pretty sure no one in Mastodon is dressing up like a flower, unless it was a flower that eats people.
10) “S.O.S.,” ABBA. Look, I’m not going to shit all over what people like. Well, okay, I will, but at the same time I respect that we’re all like snowflakes and that some of us like music that others find as memorable as an IKEA nightstand. But ABBA in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame? Really? Sure, they’re the fourth-biggest-selling group of all time. But hey, Celine Dion’s in the top 10 of all-time album sales, sandwiched between the Bee Gees and Elton John (which also sounds like a song from another top 10 seller, AC/DC). So does that mean she’s destined to get in? And, no, none of this stems from bitterness over a certain Canadian power-trio being snubbed again. Not at all.
11) “Punkrocker,” Teddybears (feat. Iggy Pop). My acquisition of this is an irony train wreck. 1) It’s a song called “Punkrocker,” that I thought was an Iggy Pop song but is really from a group with the unpunk name “Teddybears”. 2) I bought said “Punkrocker” song that I thought was by the original punk rocker because I heard it in a TV commercial. 3) Rather than taking the punk route of downloading it illicitly from the Web, I went to iTunes and purchased it in an orderly fashion…with credit from an iTunes gift card. I am so not punk.
Have a great weekend, and I’d like to give a shout out to the UC Santa Barbara Gauchos, because we all could use a little more Gaucho in our lives.
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Top Ten Tuesdays: How are we going to get the health care bill passed?
10) Promise wavering Democrats that their spine transplants will be covered if they vote.
9) Rally Republican support by renaming the bill, “the War on Germs.”
8) Engage the support of America’s youth by presenting a special episode of Jersey Shore where Snooki learns she doesn’t have health coverage to get her foot fixed after breaking it off in some snooty Manhattan bitch’s ass.
7) Put on some Barry White, pour some red wine, and invite each dissenting Congressman into the Lincoln Bedroom with Obama.
6) Raise the funds to pay for the bill by selling Republican Congressmen into indentured servitude to the Chinese.
5) Ask the chamber to please pass the bill, and if that fails, say pretty please, and, if pushed to extremes, use the Cherry on Top option.
4) Counter any complex legislative tricks with an unbeatable Triple Lindy.
3) Lock dissenting legislators in a box with a stinging insect until they tell us what we want to hear.
2) Convince tea party activists to change their minds by reminding them their angioplasties will be covered, even in cases of extreme buffet abuse.
1) Tell the House that the Senate already passed the bill, and when they’re all, “nuh uh”, then go, “uh huh,” and when they say, “no way,” totally say, “way, it’s like, all finalized and stuff,” and then when they go, “fine, whatevs,” then presto, healthcare, motherfuckers!
9) Rally Republican support by renaming the bill, “the War on Germs.”
8) Engage the support of America’s youth by presenting a special episode of Jersey Shore where Snooki learns she doesn’t have health coverage to get her foot fixed after breaking it off in some snooty Manhattan bitch’s ass.
7) Put on some Barry White, pour some red wine, and invite each dissenting Congressman into the Lincoln Bedroom with Obama.
6) Raise the funds to pay for the bill by selling Republican Congressmen into indentured servitude to the Chinese.
5) Ask the chamber to please pass the bill, and if that fails, say pretty please, and, if pushed to extremes, use the Cherry on Top option.
4) Counter any complex legislative tricks with an unbeatable Triple Lindy.
3) Lock dissenting legislators in a box with a stinging insect until they tell us what we want to hear.
2) Convince tea party activists to change their minds by reminding them their angioplasties will be covered, even in cases of extreme buffet abuse.
1) Tell the House that the Senate already passed the bill, and when they’re all, “nuh uh”, then go, “uh huh,” and when they say, “no way,” totally say, “way, it’s like, all finalized and stuff,” and then when they go, “fine, whatevs,” then presto, healthcare, motherfuckers!
Thursday, March 11, 2010
Retropost: Interrogation for Dummies
I watched the fascinating interview between torture cheerleader Marc Thiessen and Jon Stewart on The Daily Show this week. It's a fascinating look into the mind of the pro-torture crowd, illustrating how hollow their tough talk is considering how much they whine when people put their logic into stress positions.
That led me to read this brilliant take down of torture by former military interrogator Matthew Alexander, which reminded me of the original brilliant take down of torture as an interrogation technique, "The Dark Art of Interrogation" by Mark Bowden that ran in The Atlantic Monthly in 2003.
Once again, with this whole Al-Qaeda 7 nonsense, we've re-entered the realm of not just arguing for torturing detainees, but also the with-us-or-against-us zone of equating people who don't agree with said torture as being terrorist sympathizers. That makes it seem like a good time to revive this post, which had been held in my archives against its will without any representation since 2006.
Interrogation for Dummies
From the creators of Classroom Bias for Dummies and American Foreign Policy for Dummies!
FOREWORD
by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales
Hola, future interrogators!
I am excited—so very excited—that you are interested in learning more about interrogation. Because the key to winning the War on Terror is information, and most of the time, the only way to get reliable information is to beat it out of someone.
However, as a society, we also follow certain rules and regulations. . . especially when the media are watching us! So to help make sure your next Q&A doesn’t venture into too much S&M, we present this handy guide. Read it, live it, and if necessary, rip the pages out and force feed them to an uncooperative prisoner.
Good luck!
Calibrating your compassion
It is imperative when conducting forceful interrogations to know where to draw the line. The following quick comparisons will help you understand what is considered acceptable behavior, and what is just barbaric.
Hooking a Sears Die Hard battery to a detainee’s scrotum—acceptable
Unhooking life support from a human vegetable—barbaric
Turning prisoners over to countries that practice torture—acceptable
Turning stem cells over to scientific researchers—barbaric
Ignoring the Geneva Conventions—acceptable
Ignoring the Ten Commandments—barbaric
Discarding the Fourth Amendment during a time of war—acceptable
Obeying the system of checks and balances in a time of war—barbaric
Smothering a detainee in a sleeping bag—acceptable
Sharing a sleeping bag with a naked cowboy—barbaric
Beating prisoners with plastic cables—acceptable
Exposing children to plastic boobies on cable—barbaric
Forming naked detainee pyramids—acceptable
Publishing photos of naked detainee pyramids—barbaric
Lie detection checklist
You’ve been at it for hours with an interrogation and your subject still says he’s not Al Queda. Can you believe him? Before you accept his gurgling pleas as truth, follow this checklist.
Did you:
[ ] Attach electrified nipple clamps?
[ ] Let dogs gnaw on detainee’s appendages?
[ ] Rub fake menstrual blood on detainee?
[ ] Sodomize detainee with a glow stick?
[ ] Allow detainee to sit in a mound of his own feces?
[ ] Waterboard?
[ ] Cause sleep deprivation/suicidal tendencies by putting "Sister Christian" on repeat?
If you’ve done all these steps and still haven’t gotten a confession, congratulations, you’ve determined that your detainee is innocent. Pat him on the back and tell him he's free to walk away (or crawl back to freedom if his knees are broken).
Making your extraordinary renditions extraordinarily legal
One of the keys to good interrogation is knowing when to ask for help. That’s what extraordinary rendition is: asking a helpful partner in the War on Terror to see if they can extract information from a prisoner.
Due to the meddling of freedom-hating liberals, however, it is against the law to hand prisoners over to countries that practice “torture.” Here’s how you can make sure your rendition partner isn’t going to “torture” the subject.
1) Ask the representatives from the country if they torture prisoners
2) Check representatives for crossed fingers
3) Ask them again if they torture prisoners, and this time make them swear on the religious book of their choice
4) If yes, hand prisoner over
What to do if you are accused of torture
- Do not admit fault
- Do not discuss the incident with journalists, activists, tribunals, or anyone except your superior officer, the Attorney General, or the Secretary of Defense
- Ask accuser to define torture
- Acknowledge that said definition is only one of many definitions of torture
- Remind accuser that enemies regularly practice torture
- Ask accuser if he or she would like to see the world ruled by a pro-torture Islamic caliphate
- Deny that you are changing the subject
- Offer to show accuser just how humane waterboarding is
- Find the lowest-ranking person involved and blame everything on him or her
Congratulations!
That's all the training you need to be a qualified interrogator. So grab your digital camera and billy club and get ready to embark on an exciting career in information extraction. And remember, your job isn't just to get people to talk, it's also to keep people from talking about what you're doing.
That led me to read this brilliant take down of torture by former military interrogator Matthew Alexander, which reminded me of the original brilliant take down of torture as an interrogation technique, "The Dark Art of Interrogation" by Mark Bowden that ran in The Atlantic Monthly in 2003.
Once again, with this whole Al-Qaeda 7 nonsense, we've re-entered the realm of not just arguing for torturing detainees, but also the with-us-or-against-us zone of equating people who don't agree with said torture as being terrorist sympathizers. That makes it seem like a good time to revive this post, which had been held in my archives against its will without any representation since 2006.
Interrogation for Dummies
From the creators of Classroom Bias for Dummies and American Foreign Policy for Dummies!
FOREWORD
by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales
Hola, future interrogators!
I am excited—so very excited—that you are interested in learning more about interrogation. Because the key to winning the War on Terror is information, and most of the time, the only way to get reliable information is to beat it out of someone.
However, as a society, we also follow certain rules and regulations. . . especially when the media are watching us! So to help make sure your next Q&A doesn’t venture into too much S&M, we present this handy guide. Read it, live it, and if necessary, rip the pages out and force feed them to an uncooperative prisoner.
Good luck!
Calibrating your compassion
It is imperative when conducting forceful interrogations to know where to draw the line. The following quick comparisons will help you understand what is considered acceptable behavior, and what is just barbaric.
Hooking a Sears Die Hard battery to a detainee’s scrotum—acceptable
Unhooking life support from a human vegetable—barbaric
Turning prisoners over to countries that practice torture—acceptable
Turning stem cells over to scientific researchers—barbaric
Ignoring the Geneva Conventions—acceptable
Ignoring the Ten Commandments—barbaric
Discarding the Fourth Amendment during a time of war—acceptable
Obeying the system of checks and balances in a time of war—barbaric
Smothering a detainee in a sleeping bag—acceptable
Sharing a sleeping bag with a naked cowboy—barbaric
Beating prisoners with plastic cables—acceptable
Exposing children to plastic boobies on cable—barbaric
Forming naked detainee pyramids—acceptable
Publishing photos of naked detainee pyramids—barbaric
Lie detection checklist
You’ve been at it for hours with an interrogation and your subject still says he’s not Al Queda. Can you believe him? Before you accept his gurgling pleas as truth, follow this checklist.
Did you:
[ ] Attach electrified nipple clamps?
[ ] Let dogs gnaw on detainee’s appendages?
[ ] Rub fake menstrual blood on detainee?
[ ] Sodomize detainee with a glow stick?
[ ] Allow detainee to sit in a mound of his own feces?
[ ] Waterboard?
[ ] Cause sleep deprivation/suicidal tendencies by putting "Sister Christian" on repeat?
If you’ve done all these steps and still haven’t gotten a confession, congratulations, you’ve determined that your detainee is innocent. Pat him on the back and tell him he's free to walk away (or crawl back to freedom if his knees are broken).
Making your extraordinary renditions extraordinarily legal
One of the keys to good interrogation is knowing when to ask for help. That’s what extraordinary rendition is: asking a helpful partner in the War on Terror to see if they can extract information from a prisoner.
Due to the meddling of freedom-hating liberals, however, it is against the law to hand prisoners over to countries that practice “torture.” Here’s how you can make sure your rendition partner isn’t going to “torture” the subject.
1) Ask the representatives from the country if they torture prisoners
2) Check representatives for crossed fingers
3) Ask them again if they torture prisoners, and this time make them swear on the religious book of their choice
4) If yes, hand prisoner over
What to do if you are accused of torture
- Do not admit fault
- Do not discuss the incident with journalists, activists, tribunals, or anyone except your superior officer, the Attorney General, or the Secretary of Defense
- Ask accuser to define torture
- Acknowledge that said definition is only one of many definitions of torture
- Remind accuser that enemies regularly practice torture
- Ask accuser if he or she would like to see the world ruled by a pro-torture Islamic caliphate
- Deny that you are changing the subject
- Offer to show accuser just how humane waterboarding is
- Find the lowest-ranking person involved and blame everything on him or her
Congratulations!
That's all the training you need to be a qualified interrogator. So grab your digital camera and billy club and get ready to embark on an exciting career in information extraction. And remember, your job isn't just to get people to talk, it's also to keep people from talking about what you're doing.
Tuesday, March 09, 2010
Top Ten Tuesdays: How are we missing George W. Bush?
10) WTF? Are you serious?
9) Okay, it was kind of awesome to be smarter than the president.
8) And we miss Jon Stewart’s Bush almost as much as his Dick impression.
7) Still, we’d rather have a CIA interrogator electroshock our taint than go through those eight years again.
6) Although, if we were rich, we’d love another tax cut to have the money to build walls around our McMansions and not have to look at all the foreclosure signs.
5) We’d also really love to get back to “don’t tax and spend,” which took Americans’ love of credit card debt and made it a national economic strategy. All we’d have to do is make a balance transfer from one foreign creditor to another offering us 0% APR for six months.
4) Plus, there’s something appealing about a president who didn’t overthink things, or even think about them, and instead just did what Jesus told him.
3) He also brought democracy to Iraq for the low price of our national integrity, trillions of dollars, and hundreds of thousands of bodies.
2) Finally, who didn’t admire the philosophical conundrums of his anti-omnipotence, such as: could George W. Bush make a mess so bad even he couldn’t fuck it up any further?
1) In the end, though, this is kind of like saying we don’t like the janitor and instead miss the guy who shit all over the toilet. And everybody hates that guy except for other assholes who think it's funny to shit all over a toilet and then make a black guy clean it up.
9) Okay, it was kind of awesome to be smarter than the president.
8) And we miss Jon Stewart’s Bush almost as much as his Dick impression.
7) Still, we’d rather have a CIA interrogator electroshock our taint than go through those eight years again.
6) Although, if we were rich, we’d love another tax cut to have the money to build walls around our McMansions and not have to look at all the foreclosure signs.
5) We’d also really love to get back to “don’t tax and spend,” which took Americans’ love of credit card debt and made it a national economic strategy. All we’d have to do is make a balance transfer from one foreign creditor to another offering us 0% APR for six months.
4) Plus, there’s something appealing about a president who didn’t overthink things, or even think about them, and instead just did what Jesus told him.
3) He also brought democracy to Iraq for the low price of our national integrity, trillions of dollars, and hundreds of thousands of bodies.
2) Finally, who didn’t admire the philosophical conundrums of his anti-omnipotence, such as: could George W. Bush make a mess so bad even he couldn’t fuck it up any further?
1) In the end, though, this is kind of like saying we don’t like the janitor and instead miss the guy who shit all over the toilet. And everybody hates that guy except for other assholes who think it's funny to shit all over a toilet and then make a black guy clean it up.
Monday, March 08, 2010
Senator Jim Bunning: “I Will Kick a Puppy Until Congress Balances the Budget”
WASHINGTON – Kentucky Senator Jim Bunning is once again in drawing fire from Democrats and Republicans, this time for vowing to kick a puppy until Congress stops all new unfunded spending and gets serious about balancing the budget.
The issue arose as the Senate voted on a bill to continue funding the “Government Gruel” program for orphans held under federal care. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid asked if there were any objections.
“Arf!” came a loud, high yip from Senator Bunning’s podium. The senator announced that the puppy, named “Scooter,” would get a kick if Congress attempted to pass any unfunded legislation.
Chaos broke out in the Senate Chamber. Illinois Senator Dick Durbin asked Bunning how he would explain to the orphans in his state how they wouldn’t get any gruel because “a mean old man was kicking a puppy.”
“Haven’t these orphans suffered enough?” Durbin asked.
“Arf!” was the only reply.
While Democrats were horrified, they were also helpless. “As much as we would all love to go up there and rescue that poor puppy, there’s no procedure that allows us to prevent Senator Bunning from kicking an animal,” said Senator Charles Schumer. “We’re powerless to stop him unless some Republicans join us in an effort to prevent this puppy punting.” When asked why the senator could not simply take the puppy away, Schumer replied, “We’re law-abiding members of Congress, not vigilante savages.”
Republicans were reluctant to condemn a colleague openly. “While I don’t necessarily agree with his methodology, I applaud my colleague for using this puppy kicking as a way to call attention to the budget deficit,” said Senator Mitch McConnell, also from Kentucky. “He’s showing the insanity of Senate Democrats who refuse to change their spendthrift ways.”
Other Republicans attempted to find a compromise that would allow Bunning to make his point without striking a cute, adorable animal. Senator David Vitter of Louisiana went so far as to volunteer to let Bunning kick him, especially if Bunning would call Vitter, “a naughty, naughty boy.”
Conservative radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh was much more open in defending, Bunning. Over the taped sounds of a yipping dog, Limbaugh said that the incident showed “liberals” were “soft” on “spending” and “puppy kicking.” “This is a byproduct of our P.C. culture,” Limbaugh said, “where you can’t kick a helpless animal to make a point. Oh, but if he was kicking a white guy from AIG, it would be okay.
“In fact,” Limbaugh added, “I think Bunning should kick a black guy. Why harm use a puppy when you can use a guy who probably voted for Obama anyway.”
Limbaugh’s comments simply added gasoline to the pyre of puppy abuse, as members of animal rights groups, civil rights groups, and people with souls protested Bunning’s actions and Limbaugh’s suggestions. The Republican National Committee attempted to control the damage by saying the senator and radio host did not reflect the true nature of the Republican Party.
“While we have had some historical issues with kicking both puppies and African Americans, the modern Republican Party does not condone the kicking of either,” said RNC Chairman Michael Steele.
A moment later, Mr. Steele lept from his chair and let out a loud, “Ow! Who the (expletive) kicked me?” Upon turning to confront his attacked, a large sign on Mr. Steele’s back became visible. It read “KICK ME.”
Senator Bunning appeared and explained, “I was only doing what the sign told me to do.”
The issue arose as the Senate voted on a bill to continue funding the “Government Gruel” program for orphans held under federal care. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid asked if there were any objections.
“Arf!” came a loud, high yip from Senator Bunning’s podium. The senator announced that the puppy, named “Scooter,” would get a kick if Congress attempted to pass any unfunded legislation.
Chaos broke out in the Senate Chamber. Illinois Senator Dick Durbin asked Bunning how he would explain to the orphans in his state how they wouldn’t get any gruel because “a mean old man was kicking a puppy.”
“Haven’t these orphans suffered enough?” Durbin asked.
“Arf!” was the only reply.
While Democrats were horrified, they were also helpless. “As much as we would all love to go up there and rescue that poor puppy, there’s no procedure that allows us to prevent Senator Bunning from kicking an animal,” said Senator Charles Schumer. “We’re powerless to stop him unless some Republicans join us in an effort to prevent this puppy punting.” When asked why the senator could not simply take the puppy away, Schumer replied, “We’re law-abiding members of Congress, not vigilante savages.”
Republicans were reluctant to condemn a colleague openly. “While I don’t necessarily agree with his methodology, I applaud my colleague for using this puppy kicking as a way to call attention to the budget deficit,” said Senator Mitch McConnell, also from Kentucky. “He’s showing the insanity of Senate Democrats who refuse to change their spendthrift ways.”
Other Republicans attempted to find a compromise that would allow Bunning to make his point without striking a cute, adorable animal. Senator David Vitter of Louisiana went so far as to volunteer to let Bunning kick him, especially if Bunning would call Vitter, “a naughty, naughty boy.”
Conservative radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh was much more open in defending, Bunning. Over the taped sounds of a yipping dog, Limbaugh said that the incident showed “liberals” were “soft” on “spending” and “puppy kicking.” “This is a byproduct of our P.C. culture,” Limbaugh said, “where you can’t kick a helpless animal to make a point. Oh, but if he was kicking a white guy from AIG, it would be okay.
“In fact,” Limbaugh added, “I think Bunning should kick a black guy. Why harm use a puppy when you can use a guy who probably voted for Obama anyway.”
Limbaugh’s comments simply added gasoline to the pyre of puppy abuse, as members of animal rights groups, civil rights groups, and people with souls protested Bunning’s actions and Limbaugh’s suggestions. The Republican National Committee attempted to control the damage by saying the senator and radio host did not reflect the true nature of the Republican Party.
“While we have had some historical issues with kicking both puppies and African Americans, the modern Republican Party does not condone the kicking of either,” said RNC Chairman Michael Steele.
A moment later, Mr. Steele lept from his chair and let out a loud, “Ow! Who the (expletive) kicked me?” Upon turning to confront his attacked, a large sign on Mr. Steele’s back became visible. It read “KICK ME.”
Senator Bunning appeared and explained, “I was only doing what the sign told me to do.”
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