Top Ten Tuesdays: What misconceptions do we have about our own religions?

Special extended intellectual religious limbo edition!

12) 2% of American Muslims believe blowing themselves up is a great way to meet girls.

11) 28% of female white Protestants believe they can’t have orgasms because they’re not mentioned in the Bible.

10) 34% of Episcopalians can’t believe they’re not Catholic.

9) 38% of Mormons believe they can take an additional spouse as long as it contributes to the story arc of the series.

8) 53% of Lutheran comic book fans believe their religion was formed by Lex Luthor.

7) 57% of Southern Baptists believe that Jesus made the ball go through the uprights.

6) 65% of atheists believe that a lack of belief in God gives them the divine right to be really goddamned smug about belief in God.

5) 69% of male Jews believe that a woman lying with a woman as if she were a man is a sign that G-d loves us.

4) 71% of California Buddhists believe “Buddha” is slang for “weed.”

3) 80% of Catholic Pat Benatar fans believe hell is for children.

2) 87% of Jehovah’s Witnesses believe there is a Ninth Beatitude, “Blessed are the annoying, for they shall pester their way into the Kingdom of God.”

1) 99% of Evangelical politicians believe that saying America has a Judeo-Christian heritage is the same as Americans knowing what the fuck that actually means.

Top Ten Tuesdays: What marches are we organizing?

Special inflated participation edition!

11) The Rally to Restore America’s Masonic Heritage (requires secret handshake)

10) The Furry-Up for Keeping Craigslist Freaky

9) The March for Jerking Around Rally Attendance Statistics

8) The Million Man Limp Against Erectile Dysfunction (consult doctor if event lasts longer than four hours)

7) The Rally for Stuff White People Like to Scream About

6) The Coven to Show Dumb Fucks What Witchcraft Really Is

5) The Waterboarding of Glenn Beck (at the National Reflecting Pool)

4) The Nominal Excuse for Writing Off Your Trip to D.C.

3) The Quest Against Virginity (meet on WoW at 24:00 GST)

2) The 500-Ton Buffet Against Mobility

1) The Single-Man March to Kidnap Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart Until One of Them Gives Me a Job.

Friday Rushdom 11

It’s one more Geddy than 10!

First, the bad news. My house drama had gotten more melo than mellow. It’s quite possible that this second deal may fall through because of a combination of greed and gall on the part of the buyers. I can’t tell if that is an upgrade from phantom cat pee as a reason to walk away from the deal. Actually, it is an upgrade, because then it’s most definitely them and not us.

I was rather depressed about this last night, as the thought of having to start all over again with selling the house made me want to just cave and get it over with. But The Lovely Becky (aka the Strong One) responded with “fuck them” (I may be paraphrasing). And she convinced me to say fuck them, too. It may be a buyer’s market. I may be somewhat desperate to sell, especially before the big, bad U.P. winter arrives. But the difference between accommodating and butthurt is consent, and I’m not consenting to being butthurt. I feel like I’m fighting off The Sisters in Shawshank Penitentiary. Maybe I’ll win, maybe I’ll lose, but at least I’ll take a swing.

However, the good news: I am going to see Rush this weekend!

I’m off to catch them with my old dungeon master, to revel in nerdom, to frolic in geekery, and maybe, just maybe, dine on honeydew. So this early edition of the Friday Random 11 will focus on my favorite band and my 30-year relationship with their music. For the h8rs, I will at least try to make it entertaining. And, as always, I welcome your ridicule in the comments.

1) “Tom Sawyer” Even my iPod knows where to start on a Rushdom 11. It’s the song that got me and millions of other budding nerds into the band. When I heard they were touring, I initially didn’t plan on going. Then I read that they were going to play ALL OF MOVING PICTURES! EVERY LAST SONG, EVERY LAST NOTE! OMFG!

Ahem. So I called my friend Tom, because the guy I had to go see Rush with was the guy I used to roll twenty-sided dice with.

2) “The Trees” The last time I saw them play this live, I yelled out “Fuck yeah!” as loud as I could. It was completely involuntary, like breathing or falling asleep after sex. It’s about trees and socialism and Canadian nationalism and lumberjacking. It’s fruitier than a mulberry bush. And yet I don’t care, because I air-guitar that solo every single time.

3) “Cinderella Man” My musical obsessions started in the fifth grade, after my parents gave me a boom box for Christmas. After an initial dabbling with Kenny Rogers Greatest Hits, I moved on to The Beatles, because I’d heard so many songs and thought Yellow Submarine was an awesomely weird movie. That gave way to months-long obsession with REO Speedwagon’s Hi-Infidelity, which in turn got me to pay more attention to new music and start taping off the radio. I liked a lot of rock and pop music, and I was just as likely to record AC/DC as I was Juice Newton.

One day I heard “Tom Sawyer” and really dug it. Rush was hitting their most popular stride, and one night the classic rock station set aside two hours to play all Rush (back when radio stations could do cool stuff like this). I took two of my Memorex tapes, full of The Knack and The Police and even Kool and the Gang, put scotch tape over the recording holes, and erased them so I could record the Rush marathon.

That’s when this Rush fan was born. I had no money then, and my family wasn’t that well off, so there were not many opportunities to buy albums. Instead, I played those two Memorex tapes over and over again for the next several years, until I got a job in high school and eventually acquired every Rush album. “Cinderella Man” was one of the last songs in the marathon and is the only time I’ve ever heard it on the radio.

4) “Between the Wheels” I was in eighth grade when Grace Under Pressure came out, and it was the first Rush album I bought on the release date (I saved my birthday money for the cassette.) My interest had been peaked by this song getting played a lot on the radio before the album came out. My mom took me to the record store (remember those?), and when we got home, I popped it into my boom box. I spent hours, literally, sitting on my bed listening to the album, just doing nothing but listening to it and letting my mind wander.

They dug this song out on the R30 tour (which I also saw with Tom), and it took me back to that time, to sitting on my bed and letting my mind make its own music video. I miss both having the time and the right imagination for doing that.

5) “Vital Signs” Did I mention that we’re going to he concert IN A LIMO? With a GIRL RUSH FAN?

Here is one of the great things about persecuted for your musical beliefs: You instantly bond with your fellow Rush nerds. Tom was having a neighborhood barbecue with his neighbors, including one woman named L. Somehow the subject of Rush came up (ed.-it was probably destiny). Tom sheepishly revealed he was a Rush fan. L revealed that she, too was not only a Rush fan, not only born with girl parts, but was also Canadian! That’s like finding a black unicorn.

L, it turns out, has some connections, and through said connections had limo to take her and some fellow fans to the concert. She invited us to come along. So I will get to drink and not drive to the concert in style. I may even stand up in the sunroof and take my shirt off.

Anyway, the reason I mention this is because Rush fans finding each other are like two Masons meeting in the produce section. They may keep their secret hidden, but they sense a force in the other. Tentatively, they make gestures and before you know it, they’re behind the bananas engaging in the secret handshake. And then sharing a limo to the next temple meeting.

L said she is dying to hear this song live, and because she has added an enzyme to my Rush digestive process, I hope they rock the shit out of “Vital Signs” for her.

6) “The Spirit of Radio” I also watched the new Rush documentary, Beyond the Lighted Stage, this week. My review would be, “Come for the kimonos, stay for the insightful interviews.” It was a great documentary, not just for fans, but also in examining how three Toronto misfits formed a super popular band by playing rock music that almost guaranteed its listeners would not get laid.

There’s a point, after they discuss Hemispheres—the album where the 18-minute title track details a battle between Apollo and Dionysus for the soul of humanity (no, really!)—that they said they were through with those kinds of albums. “The Spirit of Radio” was the first song off the next kind of album they were going to make. This song is not about Greek Gods or battles or black holes (also part of the story). Instead it’s a jab at the music industry and a celebration of music, wrapping up a cool riff, a catchy chorus, and a reggae-ish finale in five minutes. They would make those kind of style shifts every few albums.

I know a lot of Rush fans who long for the Hemispheres days, and who hate the style shifts, who wish they had made Hemispheres over and over again (a sentiment shared by some of the people interviewed in the documentary). But even though I dig the old stuff and haven’t always liked their shifts, I like that Rush keeps trying new things. It keeps them interesting to me, it keeps me buying their albums, and it ensures that no matter what they play on Saturday, I’ll be into it. Bonus: a little "Paint It Black" before they start the song.

7) “2112” (so long it takes two videos!) Twenty minutes. Seven parts. Three kimonos. Two instrumentals. One pentagram. This song is more or less a blueprint for why I became a Rush fan:

--It rocks hard. The problem I had with a lot of prog was that it was too soft. I was in junior high and, despite liking sports and being one of the bigger kids in class, I was kind of sensitive. I was a class clown buy not assertive. I liked music that had balls, because it made me feel like I had balls. This was pretty heavy stuff back in the days before Metallica. And...

--It’s chock full of science-fictiony goodness. I was always very creative, and between the ages of 10 and 15, my creativity was channeled mostly into fantasy and sci-fi stories. Because those stories are full of heroes, confronting cosmic evil, yadda yadda yadda. Plus, the hero in this story, after confronting the cosmic evil, kills himself at the end because he couldn’t quite overcome his evilness. That fed into my growing love of anti-heroes. Plus...

--It annoyed the cosmic shit out of my mother. What good is rock music if your parents like it?

8) “New World Man” The fantasy epics may have been what hooked me, but songs like these are why I stayed a fan. One of their songs I always prefer live because they crank up the rock quotient more.

9) “One Little Victory” It’s tough to rock out as you get older. First, I think there’s a natural impulse to mellow with age. Second, there’s perhaps a self-consciousness about trying to look young and instead looking like an old fool. Third, you are more likely to pull something.

In 2002, after a seven-year layoff, after their fiftieth birthdays, and after Neil Peart lost both his only daughter and wife, Rush came back with this song, a raging slab of heavy rock that kicked down the door. I may borrow that approach when I turn 50.

10) “Cygnus X-1” Even I have my limits. I didn’t even like this screeching sci-fi epic when I was in the target demographic for it. I’m taking a mulligan.

10) “Finding My Way/In the Mood (Live)” Much better. Dare I say catchy. This is the old, pre-Neil Peart Rush, singing about workin’, drinkin’, and amazingly enough, screwin’. They were practically slaves to their influences, and it reminds me of the early stuff I tried to write, where I was aping epic fantasy novels and gory horror stories. They do have riffs and chops galore, which I did not have way back then, and while riffs and chops alone may not make great music, they will get me on my feet and waving my hands in the air.

11) “Resist” And we go out with the lighters in the air. I would be lying if I said this doesn’t get me in the gut a little, especially with the unplugged treatment. Because, as I’ve said before, this band is the soundtrack to my life. I’ve moved a dozen times in the 30 years I’ve been a Rush fan, and for each of those moves, there’s a Rush album to go with them. Do I really think they’re the greatest band of all time? No. But are they my all-time favorite band? Hell yes. Every time I get some variation of the desert island album question, Moving Pictures is always at the top of the list. And now I get to go see them perform that all-time desert island disc in its entirety with a friend who has shared my Rush fandom for three decades.

Have a great weekend.

Top Ten Tuesdays: What's hurting us in the polls?

10) Screaming white people in intimidating breeches and tricorne hats.

9) Rumor that we will recycle all old people into Korans.

8) Failure to transform unemployed Americans to transform into employable Hispanics, Chinese, or Indians .

7) Audacity of government to rob us of our freedom to become ruined by crushing medical expenses.

6) Repeated attempts to win the blessing of voters least likely to give a shit.

5) Questions about our birth status when we couldn’t produce film of our mother giving birth to us onto a mat made of apple pie, next to an American flag, while a smiling Don Ho sings “Born in the U.S.A.”

4) Inability to articulate a plan to save America in less than 140 characters.

3) Ill-advised strategy of doing our own thinking instead of letting Jesus do it.

2) Constant discrimination against America’s marginalized, silenced, and downtrodden rich people.

1) Proliferation of polls saying that say we’re hurting in the polls.

Turning my sports pain into your reading pleasure

I am once again blogging about the Chicago Bears at NFL Blog Blitz. Since most comedy comes from pain, 2010 should be another rich year for this disgruntled Superfan.

I'm two posts into the season and have already compared this week's Bears victory to the Rod Blagojevich trial and made an allusion to Walt Whitman. My ultimate goal is to squeeze in a dick joke and an Emily Dickinson reference into the same post.

Next week: The Bears vs. Tony Romo's smile. I'm taking the smile and the points.

Friday Non-Random 1

I went to a funeral today. Pancake Z, one of Tickle's friends, lost his mom this week. Z demonstrated a large amount of fortitude in delivering a beautiful eulogy to his mother. I didn't know Z's mom but he made me wish I had, and I especially felt sad for her two young grandchildren. It's very tough to lose a loved one at an early age.

I came home and threw on some Drive-By Truckers, and this seemed rather appropriate.



I hope you have a good weekend and get to spend time with those you love.

Top Ten Wednesdays: Why are we outliving non-drinkers?

Special extra case of research edition!

11) Cancer cells way too hung over to report to work

10) Free market approach allows liver to decide what it wants to process

9) Inebriated state increases chances we’ll forget to get sick and die

8) Much more likely to get full eight hours of sleep after passing out at the beginning of the work day

7) Increased cardiovascular exercise due to frequent walks of shame

6) Negative nutritional benefits of late-night eating nullified by positive nutritional benefits of late-night vomiting.

5) Drinkers less likely to suffer from rectal bleeding due to lack of pole up ass about drinking

4) Strengthened immune system due to increased contact with disease-ridden dumpsters, bathroom floors, street gutters, and sexual partners

3) In the event of attack, a shattered beer bottle makes a much more effective weapon than plastic water bottle

2) Existence of irony increases likelihood of the drunkest person surviving a car accident

1) God’s will demands that water be turned into wine and not Propel

Friday Random 11

It’s one more random than 10!

When my dad turned 40, we bought him a T-shirt that said “40 and Sporty.” It was one of those cheap T’s with bubble-font lettering. He loved it and wore it pretty regularly. It was the kind of shirt you’d expect your dad to wear.

It suited him because it was the kind of funny shirt a man could wear. And my dad was indeed a man by the time he was 40. He had four kids, worked two jobs, served in a war, saw combat, saw his friends die, saw his father rot away from alcoholism...he saw all that shit and dealt with it, rose above it, and didn’t let it hold him back. After a lifetime of serious challenges, he was entitled to wear a goofy T-shirt.

I turn 40 tomorrow, and if I got a T-shirt that said “40 and Sporty,” I wouldn’t feel like I could wear it. I could wear it ironically, sure, but honestly I feel too old for ironic T-shirts. At the same time, I don’t see myself as a man the way I saw my dad as a man. I have a kid, but it’s only been for a couple years. The worst thing I’ve dealt with is infertility—a big problem but not the same as having your buddy die in your arms in a foreign jungle far from home. My dad worked hard, damn hard, to make sure we didn’t grow up the way he grew up, in a home with a broken-down father laid to waste by the bottle. Because of that, I didn’t have to struggle a lot, and frankly, it’s made me a little soft.

At the same time, I’m way more comfortable about turning 40 than I was about turning 30. My 29th year was fraught with angst about turning 30. I wouldn’t be “young” any more. I’d have to start wearing Dockers. I couldn’t listen to new bands without looking like an old poseur. Just thought after ridiculous thought popping into my head. The Lovely Becky even made fun of me in cake form, getting a cake in the shape of a tombstone that said “Here lies Brando’s youth.” (That cake was a masterpiece, with little chocolate crumbles for dirt.)

Then I went to bed, woke up, and realized I was the same dick-joke-loving doofus I was before, only a day older. It was one of the best lessons I’ve ever learned.

So even though I wish I was a little rougher around the edges, a little more battle-hardened, a bit more Don Draper (minus the serial adultery), I’m happy with where I’m at after four decades. Sure, as of tomorrow, any window I had to still be considered “a young man” will be forever closed. My foray back into exercise after a summer layoff has been my most painful yet. I’ve got gray chest hair.

I’ve also got a happy marriage, a great daughter, financial stability, and the first draft of a novel that has a shot at being a good and maybe even a great book. Thanks to the Internet and modern technology, I’ve got more than 10,000 songs on a device that’s a quarter of the size of a Walkman, and it’s filled with plenty of new groups as well as old guy standards. So fuck it, I’m ready for 40.

1) “Surrender,” Cheap Trick. We’re all alright, we’re all alright, we’re all alright, we’re all alright! My favorite song from the 70s. It’s so catchy, clever, rocking, and funny. It’s also aged incredibly well while still capturing a particular moment in time. Cheap Trick were also rather prescient, as the idea of mom and dad getting high while getting down on the couch while cranking Kiss sounds downright normal these days.

2) “Starship Trooper,” Yes. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve had a reduced tolerance for fantasy and science fiction writing.* A lot of it has to do with the writing itself—residual emotional scars from re-reading the Elric series as an adult and wondering how in the Stormbringer I had ever waded through Moorcock’s ridiculous prose in the first place. But movies, TV, and music still get a free pass, including a great Yes tune about sci-fi warriors floating through the sky. Worth it for Steve Howe’s epic flanged guitar alone. Bonus video coverage: Wall-to-wall sequined capes!

*Thankfully, writers like Cormac McCarthy, David Mitchell, and Max Barry have restored some of my faith in the genre.

3) “Blew,” Nirvana. Cobain is a cautionary tale on the price of not taking proper stock of one’s life. The death of the young and talented is sad when it happens by misadventure, but it’s downright tragic and infuriating when it’s done deliberately.

4) “Budge,” Dinosaur Jr. The music of J Mascis, on the other hand, has aged well, in part because I think Mascis is a bit of an old soul. Get beneath the youthful, noisy surface and there’s a lot of depth and maturity here. Video commentary: Everything looks better in front of a stack of Marshalls.

5) “Do It Again,” Nada Surf. I could listen to catchy, hooky, guitar-driven pop like this all day long. In fact, since I work at home, I often do. I also dig the nice unplugged version they do here. Video comentary: White-guy dreads are always a bad idea. Last weekend at Starbucks I got served by a very friendly, very competent clerk who had albino dreads, and I all I could think about was that it looked like he needed to wash his hair.

6) “Babe I’m Gonna Leave You,” Led Zeppelin. It vies with “Good Times, Bad Times” and “Communication Breakdown” as my favorite Zep tracks off the first album. They were soft-loud-soft-LOUD before being soft-loud-soft-LOUD was cool.

7) “Faster Gun,” The Wrens. I have no idea what this song is about, and yet that has no impact on my enjoyment of it. There’s a great Pixies vibe to it.

8) “Pot Kettle Black,” Wilco. I got tagged in a Facebook memo the other day—pick 15 albums that will always stick with you. The object was to reply quickly from the gut which I did. I didn’t put Yankee Hotel Foxtrot on it, and when I saw that another person had, I instantly regretted it, along with the other 75 albums that I regretted leaving off. Sometimes I think the thing I love the best about these lists is the second guessing.

9) “Watch Me Jumpstart,” Guided by Voices. The house band for not giving a fuck about getting old.

10) “Vanderlyle Crybaby Geeks,” The National. I say with absolute certainty that “Bloodbuzz Ohio” from the new National album will be on my best-of-the-year list, but the entire High Violet album is fantastic. A couple of weeks ago, after a terrible no-good day, I decided to chill out by laying on the bed, putting on headphones, and listening to this whole album (something I rarely do but should do more often). What’s incredible about The National is that they manage to have these intricate arrangements without losing the intimacy of their songs.

11) “Here’s Where the Strings Come In,” Superchunk. (no vid, but a cool piece on Merge Records, including a Grayson Currin appearance for Pinko and UC) They put out this album of the same name at the mid-point of their career, and it’s one of the best, most appropriate album titles ever. Because what do you do after a few albums of loud, wild, youthful punk exuberance? Keep doing the same act and wind up looking like The Ramones? No. At the same time, you don’t want to mellow so much that the Raleigh-Durham Orchestra presents a Symphonic Evening of Superchunk. Instead, you adapt, you grow, and you realize that adding a few strings can not only show maturity, but a little adventurousness, without throwing water on the youthful fire that powered you in the first place. So here’s where my strings come in.

Have a great, long weekend.

Ten-Year-Old Boy Looks Back on His First Decade With Regret

NAPERVILLE, IL - As Chandler Davis looked down at the ten burning candles rising out of his Transformers-decorated birthday cake, he made a wish: that he could go back in time and undo some of the life choices he had made during years zero to nine.

“When I was younger, I was a real poopie-head,” Davis said. “If I knew then what I know now...,” he added, letting the thought linger as he took a long pull on his Capri Sun.

Davis’s first decade of life is a story of regrets, lost loves, and lost economic opportunities, and it began literally with trauma. “The first thing I remember was my big brother Ross dropping me on my head,” Davis said. “We were playing Power Rangers and he picked me up and dropped me on the floor. Mom said I was hurt pretty bad. I guess that’s why I can’t remember anything before then.”

There were other distressing events—an accidental bathtub defecation during potty training, the death of a pet gerbil, Mr. Snuggles, and a traumatic 26-minute ordeal of being separated from his mother at the mall. “Being away from my mom for that long made me question if Jesus really loved me like grandma said.”

Those events paled in comparison to what lay ahead for Davis between the ages of eight and nine. It started with a girl named Montana.

“She was real pretty,” Davis recalled of classmate Montana Kowalski. “Blonde hair and blue eyes. She started in third grade ‘cause she moved from somewhere. I wanted to tell her I liked her but I was too shy.” The admission causes Davis to shake his head slowly.

“The popular girls like Dakota and Carly were really mean to her. My mom says it’s ‘cause of something called jealousy, where you want to be the other person but can’t ‘cause you’re ugly or something. They called her Montana Cooties, and the boys started saying that too.

“I didn’t say anything—gosh, how I wish I had—but I tried to be nice to her. One day I picked up a book she dropped and handed it to her. ‘Thanks, Chandler, you’re so nice,’ she said to me. Harrison and Liam and some of the other boys started laughing. I panicked and said, ‘You have cooties.’” Davis stopped to wipe his eyes.

“She transferred the next year. I never saw her again, but Phoebe and Monica said she’s like the most popular girl in school. And she could have been mine.”

The following summer, Davis was caught in the economic crunch rampaging through the newspaper industry. “My paper route got cancelled.” He attempted to help his brother Ross with his lawnmowing business, but an unfortunate sprinkler accident caused him to lose the job after one week.

A loveless, jobless, school-less Davis drowned his summer sorrows in breakfast cereal. “I started eating Trix and watching Nick all the time: Nick, Nick West, even Nick Jr.” But soon Trix weren’t enough—“they’re for kids, and I wanted something more hardcore”—and Davis turned to Coco Puffs. He developed a box-a-day habit. When his mother tried to get him to switch to Cheerios, Davis went off the deep end. “I’d do anything for sugar, even eat it out of the jar in the kitchen. It got so bad I couldn’t get out of bed without a couple of juice boxes and a Pixie Stick first.”

By the time fourth grade started, Davis was in a full downward spiral. His schoolwork suffered as he could only focus on getting sugar and what he would say to Ms. Kowalski if she had still been at his school. “I don’t even remember fractions, and we spent, like, three weeks on them,” Davis lamented. His friends began to shun him, causing Davis to seek companionship from anyone who would provide it.

“I was at my house playing Wii with Bobby Butterman,” Davis said. “I got mad ‘cause I rolled a gutterball in bowling, and I broke the nunchuck. My mom yelled and Butterman had to go home. When I invited him over again, he said he didn’t want to play with me.

“That’s when it hit me: Even ‘Stinky’ Butterman didn’t want to come over. I needed help.”

Davis turned to big brother Ross. “Chandler said, ‘Help me,’ and I said, ‘Help you do what, homo?’” Ross Davis said. “He said he had to get off sweets. So I came up with a plan: every time I saw him eating something sweet I punched him.”

The plan worked. Although the rehabilitation left his arms bruised and he suffered several debilitating Charlie Horses, Davis kicked sugar, even forgoing Christmas cookies for fresh fruits and vegetables. Aside from a brief relapse at Easter, which Ross fixed with a round of therapeutic noogies, Davis was finally sugar-free. “I allow myself a Capri Sun once a day,” Davis said, “but that’s it.” He also manages his sugar cravings with Trident gum.

He also found a new attraction, a girl named Hannah. “She’s awesome, even cuter than Montana. Plus, the other day when she said, ‘hi’ to me, I said ‘hi’ back. I think she likes me.”

While acknowledging recovery is a struggle, Davis remains optimistic. “My family has been awesome. My dad said I have to take it one day at a time. I asked him how else I could take it, and he told me not to be smart.” Still, Davis plans to learn from his mistakes. “When I become a teenager, I’m totally going to make all the right choices and not be a butt face like Ross.”

Then, with no one looking, he allowed himself a scoop of frosting from the birthday cake, letting his finger linger in his mouth until biting it after his brother punched him.

Top Ten Tuesdays: What did we bring to Glen Beck's rally in Washington?

10) Spare gun.

9) Funyun Casserole.

8) Cousin with G.E.D. to proofread the signs.

7) Extra batteries for the Rascal.

6) Sympathy onions to generate tears on cue.

5) Special Commemorative Tea Party M&Ms (removes all black and brown ones).

4) Plenty of hand lotion for use during Sarah Palin’s speech.

3) Demand that everyone over 300 lbs be counted as two protestors.

2) Patriotism, as demonstrated by our American-flag decorated T-Shirt, sweat pants, baseball cap, pin, bandana, wife-beater, underoos, combat boots, socks, cell phone holster, gun holster, belt buckle, belt, sunglasses, beer cozy, and first-born child.

1) A desire to discuss our deep concerns with the direction of the country and start a dialog on how we can address our growing deficit, unemployment, national security, and other key issues...just kidding, we brought a megaphone so people the people up front could hear us yelling, “Obama’s a hypocrite/show us the certificate!”

What would the most infamous female serial killer in history say on Twitter?

My lovely wife The Lovely Becky (aka the author Rebecca Johns) has a new novel, The Countess, which will be out October 12. It's about Countess Erzsébet Báthory, aka Elizabeth Bathory, aka The Blood Countess, a sixteenth-century Hungarian noblewoman who was convicted of murdering dozens of her servants. Over the centuries, the legends grew that Countess Bathory used these murders for black magic rituals, such as bathing in the blood of her victims to preserve her youth. Unfortunately, as the countess found out, that plan falls apart when you're caught and walled up inside your castle as punishment.

TLB's The Countess tells this story from Bathory's point of view. My wife told me that she wanted to find the human behind the historical monster, to get inside the head of someone who was an intelligent, charming, witty, powerful noblewoman (in an era dominated by men), while also diving into the dark, violent, brutal acts that made gave her The Blood Countess moniker.

So as the publication date approaches and TLB was discussing ways to use this new-fangled social media to get the word out, we came up with an idea:

The twitter feed of Countess Elizabeth Bathory

Where you can read the thoughts of the countess herself as she shares ideas on motivating one's servants (the secret ingredient is stinging insects), how to kick royal ass even while wearing dainty footware, and how even murderous noblewomen get the blues. Her first tweet:

The problem with bathing in blood is that it's hell on your towels.

You can follow Countess Bathory's Tweets at BathoryElizabet. Don't be fooled by the imitation Bathory's on Twitter. This one's as close to the real deal as you'll find.

TLB also has a good post about how you need to not be nice to characters if you want to write compelling fiction. Having read the book twice now, I can attest that while TLB's Bathory is enthralling and charismatic, she is most definitely not nice. In fact, after seeing what came out of my wife's imagination, I decided to be extra nice to her in real life. Just in case.

Friday Random 11

It’s one more random than 10!

Ken Mehlman is gay. Has there been a less surprising political revelation in recent years? What would be less shocking than this? Bush drinking again? Sarah Palin making up a new word, Muslimy, in her Twitter feed? Democrats saying that they have several cracked verterbrae in their political spine?

I don’t agree with being a Republican, but I understand why people outside of the traditional Republican demographic become Republicans. If you have enough money, enough fear of change, and enough fear of God, it can be the party for you even if you’re a few (dozen) shades past the usual color palette, or you make up for lacking a penis by whipping out 14-inches of crazy like an ideological Dirk Diggler and itimidating the other dudes in the Republican men's room.

But gay and Republican? Why? Not to say that gay men and women should automatically be Democrats, but why would they choose a party that treats them with indifference at best and Biblical hellfire at worst? Especially as the Teabaggers increasingly make their presence felt on the GOP’s chin. True, if you have a fetish for closet cases, than it certainly is a Grand Ol’ Party for you.

Oh, but we support the party on 90 pecent of the other issues. Okay, fine, but that last bit is a pretty big, throbbing 10 percent. I’ll put it this way: if the Democratic party came out against hetero sex and said that breeders were icky and should keep their yuck-a-duck man-on-woman action to themselves and be grateful that they have any rights at all, guess what? I’d be looking for a new party faster than you could make a hand signal under a bathroom stall.

The size of government, tax policies, foreign policy, health care...I care a lot about those things, but at the same time, I’m willing to engage in dialogue about them. If the administration turned around tomorrow and said, “We’re broke and we’re going to have to cut a lot of programs,” while I’d strongly disagree with that approach, I would at least discuss it. But if my party of choice told me that I wasn’t free to love who I want, to express the human emotion that drives us more than any other, the experience that nearly everyone puts at the top of the list? I’d tell them to fuck off. And I sure as hell wouldn’t help them implement those policies.

Rant over, time for music...

1) “Please Don’t Be Gentle With Me,” Minutemen. My iPod has a great sense of timing.

2) “The Plan,” Built to Spill. A 7-layer dip of indie rock guitar goodness. The clip reminds me how much I miss the old HBO music show Reverb.

3) “One Two Three Four,” Feist. One of those songs I don’t necessarily go out of my way to play, but am always glad to hear. She’s got a great voice, and I really like how the arrangements grow throughout the song.

4) “The Four Horsemen,” Metallica. METAL! While I was on vacation with TLB’s family, I played Guitar Hero Metallica for the first time. Even though my plastic-guitar chops were a bit rusty because my busy summer has left little time for fake-guitar playing, I managed to get through most of the songs on the hard difficulty, while the other participating family members played on easy or medium. After even surprising myself by getting through the difficult solos at the end of “One,” my brother-in-law turned to me and said, “You’re really good at this game.”

“Not really,” I said. “I butchered a few parts. There are a lot of guys better than me.”

“You’re really good for someone who has a job,” he clarified. I took pride in that, although part of me figured I shouldn’t have.

5) “Slide,” Goo Goo Dolls. Normally, I don’t really fight admitting that I like something completely unhip. I mean, I’m a Rush fan, for Peart’s sake. I like what I like, and sometimes that music is considered cool and other times its looked at like an acne-ridden 15-year-old wearing a wizard cape. So be it. Yet I hate to admit that I like this, because I know deep in my bones that the Goo Goo Dolls are what you get when the Crash Test Dummies go through the windshield of a Matchbox 20 car, leaving you Third Eye Blind as well. In fact, if their first hit “Name” comes on the radio...I turn it up. I’m so ashamed.

6) “In Your Eyes,” Peter Gabriel. I saw a very funny Tweet today: “My daughter has gone from listening at Peter Gabriel at age 2 to Justin Bieber at age 9.” No that is tragic. Also, if I’m not mistaken, 2011 will mark the 25th anniversary of this album. Holy Big Time, where has the time gone?

7) “Liberty and Freedom,” Rancid. They ska it down a little from their usual bursts of punk, which makes them sound slightly Pogue-ish (minus the pennywhistle).

8) “I Don’t Know,” Ozzy Osborne. “Crazy Train” gets all the press and sports arena play, but this is my favorite song off Ozzy’s first album and probably my favorite Ozzy song after “Flying High Again.” What I love about Randy Rhodes is that he’s one of the few rock guitarists who could be so technically precise and yet totally wild, like a cross between Van Halen and Keith Moon. It’s a shame he didn’t record more.

9) “Bulls on Parade,” Rage Against the Machine. They’re my hard-rock Smithereens: Not a huge fan, but every album has 2-3 songs that I never get tired of hearing. And while I know that this song has absolutely nothing to do with the NBA, and in fact is taking shots at the kind of greed that drives professional sports, it always got me pumped for the Jordan-era Bulls.

10) “Like the Weather,” 10,000 Maniacs. Years ago, when TLB and I lived in New York, we often stayed in to rent movies because we were broke. Back then, I was much more adamant about not watching “chic” movies. One evening as I left for the video store, I asked TLB what she wanted to see. She requested Little Women. I made some kind of protest, and my wife launched into a life-changing tirade. She laid into me about how she watched countless numbers of testosterone-laden, lobotomized action flicks for me with nary a complaint, yet the one time she requests something with a female orientation, I protest. I stood there, speechless, because I knew she was right.

I headed out ready to be a changed man. However, the owner of the store was this stereotypical Brooklyn guy: Big, mustache with perpetual stubble on his face, often dressed in a track suit. We were regulars, so he would certainly know that if I approached the counter with Little Women, I was likely getting it for TLB. Yet I couldn’t quite bring myself to bring only that to check out. So what was my double-rental feature? The Program with James Caan, the college football movie that inspired some brain-dead football players to lay on a road full of traffic because they saw it in the movie. Needless to say, I got a much-deserved eye roll from TLB. We watched Little Women and The Program, and I wound up liking Little Women much more. It was a good lesson in not being a stereotypical dick-ist.

I tell this story because I wish to profess I’m a changed man, and that I don’t dislike 10,000 Maniacs because they are girl-rock or Lillith Fair material, but because I genuinely find them boring as shit.

11) “The Waiting,” Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. I have been on a Petty kick lately, and this is my favorite Petty song. It’s such a simple, straightforward pop song on the surface, but there’s a lot of little subtleties floating around, like a good glass of red wine. The lead-in to the brief-but-perfect guitar solo gets me every time.

We have a showing tomorrow, another chance to shake the last of the snow off our UP boots. Hopefully it will be Douchebag-free.

Screw the Nobel Prize for Literature

This is the greatest honor any author could hope for. Completely, unabashedly NSFW. Also catchy as hell and probably guaranteed to worm its way into your brain.

Top Ten Wednesdays: Why are we protesting the Ground Zero mosque?

10) Refuse to believe that any Muslims are moderate until they convert to Christianity.

9) Don’t want to give radical Muslims a public, observable place to gather, and instead would rather drive them underground where they will be less dangerous.

8) A mosque near the site of 9/11 would serve as a trophy of Islam’s victory over America, akin to introducing your new wife to your cancer-stricken ex-wife.

7) Refuse to let a mosque be built at Ground Zero until they can build churches in Mecca. Also, will no longer be constructing any strip clubs, sex shops, Dunkin’ Donuts, hot dog stands, delis, sports bars, Starbucks, and corporate offices in lower Manhattan until they are built in Mecca.

6) Cannot allow the construction of sites dedicated to religions that preach violence, sexism, homophobia, and porkism.

5) Crying guy on TV told me to.

4) Building a mosque near Ground Zero is as insensitive as letting a white guy drive a rental truck around Oklahoma City.

3) New York is considered sacred ground, as detailed in Paul’s First Letter to Joey from Bay Ridge.

2) Provides a safe, refreshing new way to once again yell at black people in public.

1) Because in the United States, all religious freedoms are created equal, but some are more equal than others.

Friday Random 11

It’s one more random than 10!

First, thanks for all the nice comments about the passing of our cat, Bubba. It was a rough early part of the week, having to prepare to put him down and then dealing with that. But it’s already getting easier, mostly because I know we did the right thing.

I thought of a funny thing related to him. At one point, Bubba weighed 22 pounds. He was huge. He also used to sleep on top of The Lovely Becky’s head every night. We’d get in bed, turn out the lights, and wait for the inevitable leap of Bubba on the bed (usually aimed toward my crotch). Bubba would climb up on TLB’s pillow and park himself above her head like a fat orange fur hat. However, if Becky had to get up, this would cause Bubba to roll down off the pillow and usually into my face. I dubbed this a “flabalanche.” Considering how large and in charge he was, it was amazing he made it to 17.

In fact, Fatty Fat Fat Cat appeared to be in better condition at the same point in his feline life than yours truly. While I have never really been fat in my life, I have had bouts of not being in great shape. The sedentary nature of my job plus the craziness of the last few months have led to one of those bouts again, and despite a few attempts to work out and even jog, I generally have gotten pretty out of shape.

I’ve attempted to rectify that by not only joining a gym, but actually going to it. As part of the membership, I get a free hour of personal training, which I took advantage of last night. Or, more accurately, which took advantage of me last night.

My trainer, an energetic young woman named E, had developed a routine that was pretty fast-paced and based on a lot of non-dude exercises—medicine ball twists, walking lunges, and things that generally involved no weights or moderate ones. Much different than the usual clean-and-circle-jerk exercises I did. As I saw the rather light amounts we were working with, I had a Brave Sir Robin “That’s easy!” moment.

Flash-forward to an hour later. I arrived back home, a liter of Fiji water in hand (nature’s IV as far as I’m concerned), and fell into—not sat down on—the living room chair. “How was it?” TLB asked. I tried to answer but TLB couldn’t hear me over the wailing and gnashing of tendons coming from my hamstrings. So I have adjusted my fitness goals from increasing cardio capacity, weight loss, and increasing strength to being able to walk again without groaning. Baby steps, as they say.

Onto the tunes...

1) “South Tacoma Way,” Neko Case. I grew up hating country music because I never knew country music could sound like this. Side note: Every night, The Lovely Becky, who possesses a lovely voice, sings Libby to sleep. There’s a little ritual where we both take Libby to bed, Libby gives me my hug goodnight, and then she turns off the light and climbs into Becky’s arms for her song. TLB often sings Neko Case to her. Nothing has ever made me wish I could sing more than that. Unfortunately, the point of that ritual is to get Libby to sleep, not run screaming.

2) “Jellybelly,” Smashing Pumpkins. Great, even the iPod is calling me fat. Underrated tune from the Infinite Album Title album. I like the mini-freakout in the middle and the Velveeta-level processing of the guitars. Sometimes you just want to gobble down a heaping bowl of cheese food.

3) “Ten Speed (Of God’s Blood and Burial),” Coheed & Cambria. The first time TLB ever heard these guys, she asked me if that was a girl singing. After about 30 more seconds, she used her iPod veto power to change the song. I wasn’t surprised, because they are shamelessly prog, but I like them because I also find them catchy and heavy (pubescent vocals notwithstanding). The video also has an awesome Drummer Face at the beginning and cosmically bad Singer Hair that must been seen to be believed. He looks like he was assaulted with highlights and a crimping iron by Terri Nunn.

4) “Outfit,” Drive-By Truckers. Sometimes when a really great song comes up, I get writer’s block. What do I say to convey how much I love this song? Inevitably, I end up starting a line and then deleting it over and over again. So this time I’ll just say that this is so great, I’ve got nothing other than to say you should listen to it.

5) “Communication Breakdown,” Led Zeppelin. The first album is the only one I can get all the way through without skipping any songs, which is funny because I think some of the other albums are overall better. But IV has “Four Sticks,” Houses of the Holy has their worst song ever, “The Crunge,” and I could definitely wouldn’t miss “Boogie With Stu” or “Sick Again” on Physical Graffiti. The first album, though, just rocks all the way through, and I think “Communication Breakdown” almost has a punk sensibility, with that sharp riff, rather no-nonsense drumming from Bonzo, and the quick burst of guitar solo at the end that sounds like Jimmy Page added some safety pins to his dragon-embroidered kimono.

6) “Songbird,” Fleetwood Mac. Light, airy, and pretty, but I could use a little more Hawkwind.

7) “You Make My Dreams,” Hall & Oates. I have a rule for the Random 11 where I skip songs that I’ve written about before, but I’m more than willing to break that for my favorite Hall & Oates song. In fact, I was really hoping this would come up today, because this song is instant good mood to me. Pet deaths, shredded muscles, living with my in-laws for the foreseeable future because no one wants to buy a house in the U.P. (shocking, I know)...all of that fades away as I tap my feet to this. Dare I say if said in-laws were not home, I might have paused to dance throughout the house. Also, the video is one of the most perfect uses of music in a movie ever.

8) “Say You Will,” Foreigner. This is the dark side of the greatest hits purchase. eMusic added their best of, and for a Jim Dandy price at that. While not a great band, I could use me some “Hot Blooded” and “Urgent” from time to time (Foreigner fall under what I call the “Loverboy Corallary” of music). However, the catch was I had to buy the whole album. That’s pretty common with some major-label releases on eMusic—they don’t always let you get just the songs you want. Still, it was a good deal. Well, then something like this comes up, which is so generic and bland that even Toto wouldn’t record it.

9) “Nails in My Feet,” Crowded House. I’m ringing in my 40th in a couple of weeks by seeing these guys with TLB. I remember hearing they were coming to UC San Diego for a show back in the late 80s. I wanted to go but couldn’t, and I figured I’d catch them later. Didn’t quite think it would be 20 years later, but better late than never.

10) “The Flame,” Cheap Trick. If I had a time machine and could do three things with it, I’d do the following: 1) Kill Hitler. 2) Tackle Steve Bartman before he could grab that foul ball. 3) Pick a different song for my wedding. TLB and I both would veto this now, but when you’re young and in love, well, sappy songs stick to you like Gorilla Glue. We both often talk about how we wish we could get married again, so that we could do our wedding differently (for instance, I’d recommend “Hot Girls in Love” as our wedding song). Sometimes we even discuss staging a divorce and then remarrying a year later to have that second wedding. The problem is no one would believe it if we actually said we were divorcing, and I’m also concerned what an unfettered TLB might do during that year off. It might wind up taking a lot more than holding a boom box over my head blaring “The Flame” to get her back.

11) “Ageless Beauty,” Stars. Another worth breaking the no-repeat rule for, and a damn fine way to rock into the weekend. It’s on my Cannot Be Overplayed list and triggers an instant volume-knob reflex. It’s also one of the rare songs where I like the verses a bit more than the chorus.

Have a great weekend, and don’t pull anything (unless the romantic mood strikes).

Saying goodbye to Bubba

The Lovely Becky and I had to put our oldest cat down today. Butterscotch was his Christian name, but to us he was Bubba. He made it to the ripe old age of 17 before his failing health forced our hand.

TLB got him the year before we were married, so he's been a part of us as long as their has officially been an us. He also seemed very human, very aware of things, in ways that our other two cats were not. Bubba was the anti-LOLcat, a cat who would speak in complete sentences if he could speak, whose eyes said he was trying to understand the meaning of his existence in a vast, uncaring universe. He seemed so much like a person trapped in a cat's body that he almost made me believe in reincarnation.

His lasting legacy is that he made me a cat person, despite my best efforts to fight it. Prior to today, I probably wouldn't admit that. But as I petted him for the last time at the vet's office, there was no question that I was a cat person.

We buried him in the backyard at TLB's parents house, next to his half-brother, VC. VC was also put down earlier this year at the age of 21, a longevity made even more astonishing by the fact that he was completely blind for most of his life. They both enjoyed far more licking, petting, table scraps, and naps than most cats. Bubba had a good life, and we didn't want to see that good life end painfully.

R.I.P.

Everything you need to know about my fantasy football draft

Throughout my life, I aspired to hold a number of fantasy jobs: drummer for The Who, creator of the hyperviolent videogame Nothing But Headshots, host of the satirical news program This Just In My Pants, and more recently, bra wrangler for Christina Hendricks. But atop this drum kit/videogame/dick joke/cleavage fantasy resume sits one dream job: general manager for a professional football team (or even the Cleveland Browns).

This is why I play fantasy football, and this is why I gathered for my fifth season with a motley crue of football onanists, gathering in a circle to satiate our fantasies of running our own teams. For the first time in three years, I could do this in person, and even better we were holding this year's draft at a casino.

What is it like to descend straight into the bowels of sports geekery? Let's go to the highlight reel:

• Average age of casino patrons: 68 including us, 93 not including us.
• Early pair of jokes that set the tone for the day: Morris, a rather hefty gentleman, made an offhand comment that he was hungry, to which our commissioner, PJ, responded dryly, “Really?” This elicited a big laugh from us. Morris acknowledged he left one over the plate and then replied to PJ—who is a cancer survivor—“You’re getting at least three cancer jokes this weekend.”
• There were enough explicit, offensive references to hot man-on-man action to fill a dozen comedy roasts. 90 percent of them were directed toward Lil’ Danny, the smallest member of the group, to the point where I think LD started to believe they were not jokes.
• Best man-on-man joke which also happened to be the cleanest: In the buffet line after our draft, we were discussing how much we already hated our teams. An older gentleman in front of us (who was waiting with his wife) overheard us and asked what first prize in our league was. Morris pointed to Lil’ Danny.
• Best hair of the weekend: the guy in front of me at the breakfast buffet sporting a Costanza-esque hairline, but with the back grown out and pulled into a small ponytail. He was also wearing a Paul Konerko jersey, jean shorts, and sandles. The whole ensemble prompted my brother Tickle to nod and ask me, “What’s going on here?”
• Veetz, one of Tickle’s friends, arrived wearing a t-shirt that said “Make Awkward Sexual Advances Not War.” A woman and her husband approached Veetz and said how much they loved his shirt. He thanked them and then told them to wait until he had a few drinks in him. The wife laughed, the husband did not.
• Tickle will be appearing in at least three wedding photos.
• We ran into the logistical problem of where to seat 8 pretty big guys (plus Lil’ Danny), with room for note pads, beers, fantasy football magazines, and a laptop so our one AWOL member could join us via Skype. The hotel rooms weren't big enough. The hotel conference rooms were taken up by the aforementioned wedding party, and we didn’t think they’d want us interrupting the best man’s speech with offers of exchanging Ronnie Brown for Philip Rivers* or the 72 instances where PJ offered to trade Jacksonville’s Mike Sims-Walker.** The hotel suggested we pull together some tables outside of their little cafe, located in the hall between the casino floor and hotel reception. In other words, right in front of constant groups of passersby who wondered what the hell we were doing. So we set up shop, including openly drinking beers out of the cooler we had brought with us and destroying any chances the single guys in our party had with the female wedding guests who walked by. Kudos to the hotel staff for not giving us a hard time about the booze, that was exceptionally cool of them.
• Our Skyping participant, CB, appeared on screen shirtless. He spent the next two hour being shirtless and drinking beers. With one of my early picks, I said I was drafting CB’s left nipple and hoped to handcuff his right one later in the draft.***
• Thanks to the addition of a new member, Uncle Andy (note: not anyone’s actual uncle), I am no longer the oldest owner. At one point out of the blue, Morris asked Uncle Andy what it was like in the 60s.
• Under no circumstances should Jameson ever be served in a plastic glass.
• Under no circumstances should Jameson in a plastic glass be repeatedly consumed, even after noticing that the plastic gives it a funny taste.
• Under no circumstances, no matter how many funny-tasting Jamesons I’ve had or how much he asks, should I give Tickle $100 on the casino floor at four in the morning.
• The next day, after waking up, Tickle couldn’t find his debit card. We went to security and, amazingly, they had my brother’s card—he had dropped it or left it at the bar. We had to wait for the security guy to bring it out, and after looking at me and then at Tickle, he didn’t even have to ask which guy had lost his card.
• After brunch, only Tickle, Veetz, and I were left. I had a final beer and then said I was leaving, while I was still up (despite my late-night loan to my brother). Veetz and Tickle said they were going to gamble a little and then also leave. An hour-and-a-half later, I got this text from Veetz: “Had 340 in wallet when u left. Now there is 19. I hate ur brother.”

Now doesn't that sound like material for a Miller High Life commercial?

*Actual trade I made.

**72 is probably too low. Also, a player’s fantasy value is inversely proportional to the number of times he is offered in a trade.

***In fantasy terms, to “handcuff” is to draft a player’s backup, in case that player gets hurt. Although a literal joke about handcuffing nipples would have suited the weekend perfectly.

Friday Random 11

It’s one more random than 10!

I had a funny moment a couple of weeks ago. I was working from the new home office in Civilization, Illinois, pretty much the way I did for three years while I lived in Beaver Trap, Michigan. Near the end of the day, I got an e-mail from one of my work colleagues in one of our main offices. She was in Downtown Civilization for a conference and said I should come out for drinks.

It took me a moment to process this. Come out for drinks. In the city. Because I live near a city now. I live near stuff to do.

To be fair to the beautiful Beaver Trap, there is lots of stuff to do there, just not much that I like to do. Now, however, I have an abundance of choices for things I love to do, like listen to live music. Crowded House and Aimee Mann in September. The reformed Guided by Voices and The New Pornographers on back-to-back nights in October! I would have eaten the still-beating heart of an elk to get any one of those artists to play Beaver Trap, and now I have to wonder if I can see them all.

It’s still taking time to sink in. I’m still in the mode where I don’t really think about going out much because it doesn’t occur to me that there’s a whole urban sprawl at my disposal. It may take some time to undo my Beaver Trap Syndrome and return me to the dazzling semi-urbanite I once was. In fact, as I looked ahead the other day to a certain milestone I’m approaching next month, I had a dilemma: where should I go to celebrate/mourn said milestone? The choices are almost overwhelming, and for perhaps the first time in my life, overwhelming feels pretty damn good.

Time for tunes...

1) “Night Lies,” Bang Camaro. The other night, The Lovely Becky and I were extolling the virtues of late-night eating and how we would love to be in some greasy spoon gobbling down comfort food. It’s admittedly awful for you, but it is the most emotionally rewarding eating for me. I told her that I wanted something smothered in chili right then. I didn’t care what--eggs, hot dog, pancakes--as long as it was covered with layers of chili like it had erupted from a chili volcano. Bang Camaro is that late night meal. Hardly gourmet, made from some possibly suspect ingredients, but it still hits the spot when I need it most.

2) “Short Bursts,” We Were Promised Jetpacks. So earnest they should have named themselves Hemingway.

3) “Route,” Son Volt. As much as I like Wilco and believe Jeff Tweedy has left Jay Farrar far, far behind, I think that first Son Volt album is better than anything Wilco’s done, even the incredible Yankee Hotel Pitchfork 10.0 Review. Farrar took everything that made Uncle Tupelo great and baked it into 10 incredible tracks.

4) “Should’ve Been in Love,” Wilco. Well, this is awkward. Look Wilco, I didn’t mean you’re not great, because you really are. And I’ve been really faithful to you for, like 10 years. Sure, I still think about Trace and the good times we had, but it was just one album and I was really young. No really. Just because I’m humming “Route” right now while you’re playing doesn’t mean I’m not into you. Fine, if you’re going to be like that, I’ll just move on to the next track.

5) “When I’m Sixty-Four,” The Beatles. It really takes on a completely different meaning after the Heather Mills divorce. Will you still sue me, will you still rue me, when I’m sixty-four?

6) “On the Way,” Dinosaur Jr. I’m fond of the opening freakout. They just blast a wall of drums, bass, and guitar like a wave hitting the Poseidon. Then the adventure begins. Bonus: No Ernest Borgnine!

7) “Eyes As Candles,” Passion Pit. Never underestimate the power of a well-placed set of nah-nah-nahs. They are the paprika of rock music.

8) “Fashion,” David Bowie. Project Runway may have run its course for me. The return last season to New York, coupled with some contestants I loved to hate, had me watching it every week (live, no less, without DVR assistance). This year I tuned into the season opener and was kind of meh, and in fact only realized today I’d missed the last two episodes. I think it’s because it’s hard to get excited about people winning a big competition when so many of them have already had pretty good success with their designs. Could you imagine American Idol with Neko Case or Bon Iver on it? Sure, that would be a big improvement and those two would go from being successful to superstars, but it would sort of defeat the whole purpose, even if they were forced to do things like make a song using only lyrics about baked beans, Elmer’s glue, and Legos.

9) “Telegraph Road (live),” Dire Straits. I have a deep, burning hatred for jam bands. I have never liked the Dead because they always seemed to take what seemed like a good idea and stretched it out from 3 minutes to 23 minutes, like the musical equivalent of a Saturday Night Live sketch that has to keep going to fill some air time. Do I really need to hear someone playing around the same riff for 15 minutes, just because they can, or listen to the audience sing back “iko, iko” 50 goddamned times? Sure, you can stretch out a beat-off session for 30 minutes, but why would you, especially when you got shit to do?

However, I also happen to like extended songs when they actually go somewhere, when the bands take time out to put together a well thought out musical composition. The problem is, many of those compositions involve mystic lands and dragons and more artificially fruity sweetness than a bowl of Trix. Sure, when I was 12, a Boris Vallejo calendar full of well-endowed women in chainmail bikinis attacking a multi-headed hydra may have caused a stirring in my Bag of Holding. These days, that kind of stimuli is going to be more amusing than arousing (thank God).

Enter “Telegraph Road.” Eleven minutes, with plenty of musical twists and turns and some nice jamming, but with a hardscrabble story that seems like Raymond Carver to my prog-rock Piers Anthonys. So thank you, Dire Straits, for allowing me to enjoy my love of extended songs with an acceptable level of maturity.

10) “Jackie Dressed in Cobras,” The New Pornographers. The drumming elevates Twin Cinemas to my favorite New Pornographers. Kurt Dahle throws in fill after thunderous fill like a B-2 bomber dropping a full payload of delicious chocolate cupcakes on its targets. Side note: I clearly need to eat lunch after posting this today.

11) “Snakes for the Divine,” High on Fire. Speaking of Boris Vallejo...As if the title and band name didn’t give it away, this is pure, freshly forged metal. It’s also my go-to driving song of the moment. Sure, I enjoy riding around listening to a wide variety of music, and am also basking in the warm aural glow of the best radio station in the country, Chicago’s WXRT. I love hearing a good, poppy song on a sunny day or some sad folky lament while driving in the rain. But when I want to drive—windows down, music blasting over the wind, both hands on the steering wheel while I take a curve a little too fast—I need some heavy riffs, furious drumming, and vocals that sound gruff enough to cover up whatever silly lyrics the singer is actually singing. Even better, I now live in a location where I can’t go from one end of town to another before an eight-and-a-half minute song finishes melting my ears.

Have a good weekend. I am unfortunately going to miss the monster mash to my north because I have to go south to participate in a fantasy football draft at a riverboat casino. Who wants to touch me?

Local and Area Men File Defamation Suit Against The Onion

We’re not laughing through our tears, says local man

Madison, Wisconsin - Lawyers representing local and area men nationwide have filed a civil suit against the satirical newspaper The Onion, claiming the publication has had, “a long history of repeatedly slandering us with the same old gags.”

“Frankly, my clients are tired of these shenannigans,” said lead counsel, Hedley DeMoney. “Ever since the founding of The Onion, they have been portrayed as duds, cruds, losers, boozers, misfits, halfwits, upper-class twits, nerds, turds, stalkers, gawkers, stoners, moaners, braggarts, laggards, and Methodists.”

DeMoney is best known for his prosecution of Jokers, Smokers, and M. Tokers v. S. Miller. That case was settled successfully but the results were kept off the record.

“It’s been hell, honestly,” said area man Lenny Baxter of Bloomington, Indiana. “Everyone assumes I’m an idiot who doesn’t know Shiites from Sunnis, even though I am working on my Ph.D. in Middle Eastern Studies. Women won’t go out with me because they say, ‘they know all about my type,’ from reading The Onion. Just because I read comic books and don’t own a TV doesn’t make me one of those locals who masturbates all day long.”

“I’ll tell you what the real crime is,” said Cam Peterson, an area man from Humboldt, California. “They can just do whatever the (expletive) they want, and me and my local brothers can’t do (expletive) about it, man. That’s because they have a monopoly on the satirical means of production.”

Peterson is also filing a separate suit at the paper for calling him a hippie and using his picture without permission.

Some guys who know about these lawyer types have accused DeMoney about being in it only for the money, but DeMoney says the suit is about respect. “My clients are not only tired about being the butt-end of jokes, but of being the butt-end of the same jokes.

“I mean, what does it say about our society when so-called ‘comedy writers’ simply recycle what others have written for cheap laughs instead of bothering to come up with new material?”

Top Ten Tuesdays: How are we reducing our defense spending?

Special extra savings edition!

12) Saving on ammunition costs by replacing inefficient automatic weapons with bullet-saving muskets.

11) Eliminating full-time staff and instead hiring temporary workers during the heavier holiday bombing season.

10) Guaranteeing to win all wars within 30 days or the next war is free.

9) Restricting surgical strikes to countries that are enrolled in our bombing networks.

8) Cutting down on nightvision expenses by only attacking in broad daylight.

7) Switching from expensive training bootcamps to one intensive weekend session of Call of Duty.

6) Transitioning from paid private contractors to unpaid interns willing to beat a detainee with a urine-soaked Koran for the free experience.

5) Saving on fuel costs by introducing the Bradley Fighting Prius.

4) Outsourcing our policing of the world to China.

3) Allowing the GI Bill to only pay for tuition at the School of Hard Knocks.

2) Replacing our expensive, fallible fleet of military analysts, experts, and secretaries with Paul the Psychic Octopus.

1) Carefully considering whether a future military action is truly necessary and exhausting all other options before embarking on the costly course of war...just kidding, we’ll just stick to invading countries whose asses we know we can kick.