It’s one more random than 10!
I don’t know why the United States went through the trouble of coating blankets with cholera and giving them to the Indians. They could have just had the Indians handle toddlers. I went from phantom illness last week to chest cold today, courtesy of my little bundle of germs.
In fact, I had to explain to my daughter why it's not a good idea to lick random objects. We were in the post office last week, and the counter walls have some glass panes. My daughter decided that said glass was eminently lickable. I told her not to lick the glass, but that only seemed to increase the lick appeal of the glass, but also created a punchline to a joke she kept repeating over and over, laughing each time I pulled her away. I had to take her out of the post office and deliver a lecture about why we don’t lick glass.
--Libby, don’t lick things like glass or walls or anything else.
--Why?
--Because it’s yucky and you’ll get germs.
--What are germs?
--Germs are things that make you sick.
--Why do they make you sick?
Here we reached the three-question maximum most parents run into. I could have patiently explained the mechanics of bacteria transfer and the immune system and whatnot and turned this surface-licking incident into a teachable moment. Instead, I said:
--LIBBY, JUST DON’T LICK THINGS!
Because all I wanted was a) to have her not get sick and b) to avoid being the parent of a kid who licks things. Now, this behavior is perfectly normal among three-year olds. However, my daughter is the size of a five-year old, which is where random taste testing of counters, walls, and windows ventures into “look at that kid” territory.
Of course, this didn’t completely end our dialog. She quickly found a whole in the complete ban of licking. In the car, Libby asked:
--Can I lick suckers?
Which, of course, she could. We further elaborated that suckers were okay, as were ice cream and popsicles. Within 60 seconds my child had already found four large holes in the licking ban. I can’t wait for her to outsmart me on things like borrowing the car, dating that boy who needs a haircut and needs to look at me when he talks, and if drinking is bad for you why does Daddy seem so happy while watching football or gambling with Uncle Tickle?
On to the tunes….
1) “Rock the Casbah,” The Clash. I think that every time a pundit says “Arab Spring,” Thomas Friedman should have to take a drink, and then the lazy butthole who uses that phrase has to suck the moisture out of his mustache. It’s been almost a year, time to talk about this like big boys and girls and not parrots asking for a cracker.
2) “Ragged Wood,” Fleet Foxes. Makes me want to don a flannel shirt, climb a redwood, and yodel. Which is much better than donning a flannel shirt, climbing a redwood, changing into women’s clothing, and hanging around in bars.
3) “Beat on the Brat,” The Ramones. This song is the anti-“Luka.”
4) “In the Meantime,” Helmet. Fuck and yeah. Helmet’s re-entered my rotation a bit because I’ve been trying to get my doughy ass back into shape and songs like this make me feel like I can dead-lift a stack of Marshalls and carry them up a stair machine made of skulls.
5) “Weekend,” Smith Westerns. Chicago kids who do manage to inject just the right amount of Beatlemania into their songs. One of my favorite songs of the year.
6) “You Don’t Know What Love Is (You Just Do as You’re Told),” The White Stripes. I think this was written about Todd Palin.
7) “Three Days,” Jane’s Addiction. A band I would have liked a lot more if Perry Farrell didn’t creep me out so much. I have always found him unsettling, and that makes it hard for me to love Jane’s Addiction, even when they produce a song like this that’s a mind-blowing mesh of grunge, punk, progressive rock, and love oils. But it always makes me think of Perry Ferrell, his oversized head and aggressive nose and hair that alternates between bleached dandruff trap and greasy 70s porn helmet. Him singing a 10-minute song about a druggy threesome conjures the mental image of a funk so powerful even George Clinton would have run away screaming in fear. The papier-mâché album cover showing a little bit of shaft doesn’t help.
8) “Elevation,” U2. It’s like they got together and said, “let’s write a party song.” Not for some party after a Live Aid or the Concert for Grenada or Artists Against Excessive Restaurant Portion Sizes. An honest-to-goodness party where Larry Mullen, Jr. actually smiles and The Edge puts on a foam hat with two beer holders and Adam Clayton dyes his hair five colors again and Bono uses “party” as a verb. No donations are solicited, no guilt is issued, and they vow to not stop partying until Sting finishes having sex in the back bedroom.
9) “Ace of Spades,” Motorhead. Makes me want to don on a leather jacket, climb a Harley, and yell at the guy in flannel who’s yodeling from a tree.
10) “The Flame,” Cheap Trick. I still can’t believe this is how I commemorated my wedding to The Lovely Becky. It’s a case study in being careful with what you play at the start of a relationship. It’s not like I could have made a mix tape of Ozzy or Dio songs when we started dating. I played with fire as it was by slipping “Closer to the Heart” in there. I couldn’t pick The Cure because I was actually happy (this is pre-happy Robert Smith), and New Order was too quick and dancy. Any kind of metal ballads were out, and I worried that going the Styx or REO route would make me seem like too much of a pussy. So I reached for the next “best” thing, because hey, they recorded “Surrender” and that song rocks, and this song was slow and it was about love and it would be perfect!
11) “The Boys Are Back in Town,” Thin Lizzy. I don’t go out of my way to play Thin Lizzy that much, but I’m always happy when it pops up. A great song for getting ready for the weekend.
Speaking of TLB, The Countess came out in paperback this week, and TLB has been doing quite a lot of great blogging about the book and the infamous lady who inspired it.
Have a great one.
Friday, September 30, 2011
Tuesday, September 27, 2011
Ancient and Modern
[The following is Special guest post by Zombie R. McDonald, Chief of Neurosurgery Buffet Tasting at Empire of the Senseless. ]
Because we did wager blog posts upon the outcome of the Bears-Packers game, and despite the “utterly random football stylings of Jay Cutler” the Bears did fall.
And I need to interject here that I totally liked the Bear’s throwback uniforms.
Hey, I ain’t gonna rehash the game here. You can get that elsewhere. I recommend calling Brando, if you don’t mind a lot of profanity. And some tears.
But I come here not to bear-y the Bears (see what I did there?). OK, I will leave the fucking funny to Brando. FACK, amirite?
I have to admit that over the first few games, the Packers have been lousy at pass defense. Also inexplicably, the Lions are in first place, mainly because they stomped the shit out of a couple of teams to result in a similar 3-0 record, but have a huge advantage in Points For. But in the end, the Packers are 3-FUCKING-0, the Vikings are winless, and the Bears....well.
Yanno, I grew up in Wisconsin. Probably saw a few Bart Starr games on the t-v, not that I remember. I know we saw at least one game when they still played in Milwaukee. I saw a finals game at Lambeau, the last game played before they finished the Big Remodeling.
But the Packers have always been known as a tough team, and one of the longest lived teams in the NFL; what the NFL won’t tell you is that the Packers are a SOCIALIST team, owned by a non profit corporation, with any number of cheeseheads holding stock certificates, but also unable to move anywhere else. No fucking wonder the NFL made it impossible for any other team to organize around the same ideals. But fuck you; we believe in blue collar workers in Wisconsin, and that’s what we do. Until, of course, Turdwaffle Walker slimed his way into the Gov, but my blog will cover that somewhat more. O, I digress. Also of some interest is the fact that the waiting list for Packers season tickets has topped 80,000 names.
Growing up in Wisconsin, with nearly-genetic sports allegiances, we viewed people from Minnesota, Michigan, and Illinois with suspicion at best. These are the people who have, with us, formed some of the most long lasting and legendary rivalries. They called us Cheeseheads. We not only wore it proudly, but turned it into money making opportunities; we aren’t stupid.
But fuck me, I ain’t here to talk about football. I am here to talk about friendship.
I have to admit that I have never been good at making friends. I have always been more than a bit of a geek, and kind of bookish; that did not bode well in high school and when I made friends, those friends were deep. That continued into college; I had acquaintances, and I had those I called my FRIENDS.
And I have always recognized that I don’t make friends easy, but I do it HARD. Few friends, but they are loved.
And so, what happens when the Internet intervenes? Through luck, chance, and the fact that I just became an obnoxious presence at several blog sites, I came to know some people: Jennifer. Snag. Von. Fish. Pinko Punko. MenD. Plover. Thudner. Chuckles. Kathleen. mikey. Righteous Bubba. Those fuckers who live upside down. I am sure I am missing someone, and I blame it on the drink and the tears. And I came to know those people, and I call them my friends.
They are as much friends as anybody I have ever known, and not the less because I haven’t met them all.
Wife Sublime and I refer to them semi-sardonically as “imaginary digital friends” and she is is always bemused when we travel somewhere and inevitably meet some of them. (It is surely a random happenstance that whenever this happens, there is drunkenness)
I really looked forward to meeting Brando when his wife did a book reading up here, and unfortunately child sickness prevented it; perhaps Brando might get over his Wiscons-aversion long enough to visit Summerfest next year.
Brando and I share a number of weird, geeky commonalities; not the least of which is a love of the band Rush. We both wave that banner in the face of daily ridicule and uncoolness. And rock on.
But here; One of my first ever concerts, as a weedy highschooler, was Rush on the Permanent Waves tour. And a couple of years later, I took a young lady to see the Moving Pictures tour; it was her first real rock show, and apparently the noise, the crowd, and the lasers disrupted her higher cognition to the point that she eventually married me.
There are all kinds of ways to find friends. And if they mean something to you, then the interface----digital, music, or meatspace--- what’s the difference?
There are two ways to end this post. One would be to talk about how much I love all the people who read the shit I sometimes write, and the other would be:
Friday, September 23, 2011
Hypochondriamatic
I woke up in the middle of the night with a blinding headache and sweating from head to toe. I had felt fine before bed, but my head throbbed and I felt a wave of nausea that was on the fence of stay in stomach/sprint up the esophagus. My first thought was that this must be what menopause feels like.
Incidentally, the Zombie and I have a little wager on this weekend's Bears/Packers game: the victor gets to post whatever he wants on the other's blog on Monday.
I tried to go back to sleep, figuring it was just a fluke, but I couldn't shake how much my head hurt and how much I was sweating. I started thinking about how I had missed my blood pressure medication this week. Yes, I have high blood pressure. The doctor believes its from family history and my practice of strapping a bag of chips to my face and eating like a Cool Ranch mule all day long. I like to think it's from being so hot that my blood just boils. Either way, I have to take pills to control said gluttony/hotness. There was a screw up with my refill this week, causing me to miss five days of pills, until I finally got them yesterday.
So my brain switched from menopause jokes and sleepy nonchalance to what if I'm having a heart attack/stroke/lycanthropy episode? I quickly ruled out the latter, as the only thing I've been scratched by recently is a cat, and werecats tend to just sleep all day and lick themselves, which makes it an attractive disease. Regarding the heart attack/stroke angle, I told myself in my best Balkie inner voice, "Don't be ridiculous." But I kept thinking that I'm old enough to not completely write it off. Unlikely, yes. Impossible, not at all.
I thankfully fell back asleep and woke up before work with the same symptoms but a clearer mind. I figured if I was going to die, it would have happened already. I also told my symptoms to TLB, who assured me I was indeed overreacting and probably ate some bad leftovers the night before. Laughing at my paranoia, I asked her if she thought when she'd met me that she'd wind up with the neurotic version of me for the rest of her life.
"No," she said. "You were pretty cocky back then. You felt like you were hot shit having lived in San Diego, you were tan, you were in really good shape...."
I began faux-sobbing, although a part of me was crying a little inside.
I debated calling into work. When you work at home, it's hard to justify taking a sick day because you lose the "don't come in and infect everyone" excuse. Usually if I'm not horking, I'm working. But my mind pulsed like house music at a night club, so I decided to take the day off, sleep, and soak in the aching joy of the sick day, when I feel like I'm 12 again and home from school.
In lieu of the random 11, I'll just do one song today:
Incidentally, the Zombie and I have a little wager on this weekend's Bears/Packers game: the victor gets to post whatever he wants on the other's blog on Monday.
Thursday, September 22, 2011
Top Ten Thursdays: What should we be getting a MacArthur genius grant for?
10) Pheromone that causes men to become aroused when their female companions shop for shoes and handbags.
9) Hemp-powered engines that make everyone hungry for green energy sources.
8) Genetic crop research that causes Brussels sprouts taste like donut holes.
7) Discovering a new element, Sheenium, that is impervious to toxic levels of stimulants, sexually transmitted diseases, and film roles.
6) Creation of eGarlic app that protects e- readers from bad vampire fiction.
4) Digital video recording technology that takes our recorded programs and automatically just shows us the good parts.
2) Holothin® technology that makes us appear svelte to others without having to sacrifice our love of Ding Dongs.
Friday, September 16, 2011
Friday Random 11
It’s one more random than 10!
I am using Skype today for the first time (sadly for work rather than anything naughty). I’m not sure why it’s taken me so long, because in retrospect it would have been nice to use during the three years I was in the UP's Overlook Hotel. (All snow and no sun make Brando go something something.) I also feel rather silly because, while I am not necessarily a cutting-edge tech guy, I tend to adopt fairly early in the new tech progress. I jumped into e-mail back when I had to go to the computer lab at school to access it. Of course, I used this newfangled technology to e-mail D&D trivia questions to my old Dungeon Master and best friend, Tom. Yes, Al Gore built this system with his bare hands so I could send messages like “How many hit dice does a Mind Flayer have?” Seriously, how have we survived as a society?
Speaking of Tom, he is coming to visit this weekend. Our D&D days are decades behind us, but as I’ve mentioned before, we still play an old board game called Grav-Ball that is like hockey set in zero gravity with a heavy lead ball and a killer robot for a referee. We are intensely competitive about it and have saved all of our sheets listing the players on our teams from the ages of 14 to the present day. It is ungodly nerdly but we love playing it. In fact, should the two of us ever find ourselves spending the shower portion of our golden years in a nursing home, we would probably spend our days playing Grav-Ball and yelling out things like “assault!” and “strike with ball!” until the orderlies sedated us.
However, this does remind me that I’d best make any attempts to romance The Lovely Becky before my friend arrives, because there is a minimum two-week loss of attraction after she watches me play this game.
1) “Hurt,” Johnny Cash. Who’s ready to slash their wrists this weekend? Love the song but it’s harshing my impending nerdgasm.
2) “Mr. Tamborine Man,” The Byrds. It’s appropriate that this was released in 1965 because it really sounds merger of both ends of the Sixties. There’s the poppy British Invasion sound in the ringing 12-string guitar, but a flowers-in-your-hair vocal delivery that foreshadows said flowers in said hair.
3) “Game of Pricks,” Guided by Voices. The recorded version sounds like 90s lo-fi Byrds, although they tended to Who it up when they played it live. I was listening to a lot of GbV for the first time in a while yesterday, including the entire Live From Austin City Limits where they sounded completely drunk. Seriously, Robert Pollard is well on his eighth or ninth sheet near the end of the show. That’s the “aw, fuck it” attitude that made them so entertaining and also prevented them from being huge despite writing some of the catchiest rock songs since the British Invasion.
4) “Mystery,” Dio. Really, really, really not very good. I loves me some “Rainbow in the Dark” or “Last in Line,” but the last thing Dio ever needed to do was slow things down and reflect on the mysteries of life. It’s a good illustration about sticking with what you know, which in Dio’s case was dragons and demons.
5) “Back in the U.S.A.,” MC5. The things we learn from Wikipedia. Since iTunes showed this was released in 1970, I wondered if it was written in response to The Beatles “Back in the U.S.S.R.” So I consulted our truthiest online resource to find out, no, it’s a cover of a Chuck Berry tune and that The Beatles song was a bit of a parody of the Berry song. The more you know…. I also have to take this moment to admit (if I haven’t before) that I am a Wikipedia junkie. When I was a kid, I used to go to the library a lot and read encyclopedia entries (control yourselves, ladies). I’d be looking up something for school and then find myself looking up everything but what I needed to look up for school. That was especially true if the encyclopedia had anything about the occult, tanks, rock music, pro football, or female anatomy (not necessarily listed in order of interest). That would often spur a trip to the stacks to find out more about Aleister Crowley, the firepower of a Panzer versus a Sherman tank, or something called the G-spot. And now I can do all of that on one site right from my desk, with the addition of not being burdened by boring facts or the library’s fascist requirement to wear pants.
6) “Seether,” Veruca Salt. During the 90s, while I enjoyed a lot of the music coming out, I definitely looked back longingly on the 80s—the bubblegum of the pop, the politicalness of the punk, and the pomposity of the power metal. During the first decade of the Aughts, I found myself looking straight ahead as the Web opened up a cornucopia of indie rock that I might not have otherwise overlooked had a Wikipedia entry on Winston Churchill not mentioned that his favorite band was The New Pornographers. But now, with 2011 nearly in the rearview mirror, I am going through a bit of 90s nostalgia. I’ve been combing eMusic for 90s alternanuggests like this, fun blasts of distorted Nirvana-esque pop that were the popcorn shrimp of alternative radio. I just find it funny that my nostalgia skipped a decade.
7) “Come on Eileen,” Dexy’s Midnight Runners. I was about 12 when this song came out, in that mid-point where my interest in dragons still competed with my interest in girls. On top of that, I came from a conservative Catholic family and went to Catholic school, which meant I was well acquainted with the word “fuck” but not necessarily well educated on all that went into said word. I remember talking about this song with a pair of female classmates who were a little more world wise than I was. They kept making a comment about “come… on Eileen” and I kept saying, “Yeah, that’s the name of the song. What’s so funny?” They repeated it a few time and laughed at my inability to get the joke. Let me tell you, there are few things more emasculating at that age than being out-dirtied by a couple of girls, and the psychological fallout is probably that I go out of my way to know the slang for every possible organ, act, and occasional felony.
8) “Born Slippy (Nuxx),” Underworld. One of those songs that can only be listened to while dancing or driving, and even driving is a stretch. Like a lot of electronica back in the 90s, it’s stretched by endless percussive repetition, which is great if you’re drunk at a club, not so great if you have to, say, focus on something. Plus it makes me think of Trainspotting which makes me think of creepy babies and appalling toilets.
9) “Calgary,” Bon Iver. I never expected “snow-blown Wisconsin folk” and “Kanye” to go together, but the autotuned falsetto works really well on the new Bon Iver album. I even get a little bit of a Daft Punk vibe when the drums and synths show up. He managed the tough trick of still sounding like himself without repeating himself from the first album.
10) “Back of the Van,” Ladyhawke. Love, love, love. First, it manages to sound of the 80s without sounding like a pale imitation of much better songs. More than that, it really nails the nervous excitement I felt when I was a teenager and finally had left those dragons behind. The first time I ever kissed a girl (avert your eyes, TLB) was in the back of a friend’s van—and not just any van, but one of those conversion vans that could quickly be converted to a heavy petting zoo. My friend and his girlfriend were in front, while I and my date were in the back, riding to the beach at night. I had never done more than held hands with a girl, primarily because I had the romantic self confidence of a frightened ostrich. I was now poised for my first kiss, and I was so nervous, it’s a wonder I didn’t piss all over the futon cushion in the back (seriously, this van was a hotel on wheels, it’s a miracle that my friend’s parents let him drive it). But said kiss happened and every bit of nervousness and memory of previously missed opportunities and razzing from my friends melted away into just pure happiness. The funny thing is, while I was way more confident in myself by the time I met TLB the following year, my first date with her was full of the same nervousness, until we broke the ice and found a warm bliss center inside. This illustrates again why music kicks ass; as much as I love reading and movies and games, no other form of pop culture lets me personalize it as much as music.
11) “Walking to Do,” Ted Leo and the Pharmacists. Great, great tune, one of my favorites by him, with a breakdown in the middle before he comes back with a louder version of the chorus. I listen to a lot of Ted Leo at the gym and I always think this sounds like the perfect concert closer, so it’s a fitting way to end the list today.
I am using Skype today for the first time (sadly for work rather than anything naughty). I’m not sure why it’s taken me so long, because in retrospect it would have been nice to use during the three years I was in the UP's Overlook Hotel. (All snow and no sun make Brando go something something.) I also feel rather silly because, while I am not necessarily a cutting-edge tech guy, I tend to adopt fairly early in the new tech progress. I jumped into e-mail back when I had to go to the computer lab at school to access it. Of course, I used this newfangled technology to e-mail D&D trivia questions to my old Dungeon Master and best friend, Tom. Yes, Al Gore built this system with his bare hands so I could send messages like “How many hit dice does a Mind Flayer have?” Seriously, how have we survived as a society?
Speaking of Tom, he is coming to visit this weekend. Our D&D days are decades behind us, but as I’ve mentioned before, we still play an old board game called Grav-Ball that is like hockey set in zero gravity with a heavy lead ball and a killer robot for a referee. We are intensely competitive about it and have saved all of our sheets listing the players on our teams from the ages of 14 to the present day. It is ungodly nerdly but we love playing it. In fact, should the two of us ever find ourselves spending the shower portion of our golden years in a nursing home, we would probably spend our days playing Grav-Ball and yelling out things like “assault!” and “strike with ball!” until the orderlies sedated us.
However, this does remind me that I’d best make any attempts to romance The Lovely Becky before my friend arrives, because there is a minimum two-week loss of attraction after she watches me play this game.
1) “Hurt,” Johnny Cash. Who’s ready to slash their wrists this weekend? Love the song but it’s harshing my impending nerdgasm.
2) “Mr. Tamborine Man,” The Byrds. It’s appropriate that this was released in 1965 because it really sounds merger of both ends of the Sixties. There’s the poppy British Invasion sound in the ringing 12-string guitar, but a flowers-in-your-hair vocal delivery that foreshadows said flowers in said hair.
3) “Game of Pricks,” Guided by Voices. The recorded version sounds like 90s lo-fi Byrds, although they tended to Who it up when they played it live. I was listening to a lot of GbV for the first time in a while yesterday, including the entire Live From Austin City Limits where they sounded completely drunk. Seriously, Robert Pollard is well on his eighth or ninth sheet near the end of the show. That’s the “aw, fuck it” attitude that made them so entertaining and also prevented them from being huge despite writing some of the catchiest rock songs since the British Invasion.
4) “Mystery,” Dio. Really, really, really not very good. I loves me some “Rainbow in the Dark” or “Last in Line,” but the last thing Dio ever needed to do was slow things down and reflect on the mysteries of life. It’s a good illustration about sticking with what you know, which in Dio’s case was dragons and demons.
5) “Back in the U.S.A.,” MC5. The things we learn from Wikipedia. Since iTunes showed this was released in 1970, I wondered if it was written in response to The Beatles “Back in the U.S.S.R.” So I consulted our truthiest online resource to find out, no, it’s a cover of a Chuck Berry tune and that The Beatles song was a bit of a parody of the Berry song. The more you know…. I also have to take this moment to admit (if I haven’t before) that I am a Wikipedia junkie. When I was a kid, I used to go to the library a lot and read encyclopedia entries (control yourselves, ladies). I’d be looking up something for school and then find myself looking up everything but what I needed to look up for school. That was especially true if the encyclopedia had anything about the occult, tanks, rock music, pro football, or female anatomy (not necessarily listed in order of interest). That would often spur a trip to the stacks to find out more about Aleister Crowley, the firepower of a Panzer versus a Sherman tank, or something called the G-spot. And now I can do all of that on one site right from my desk, with the addition of not being burdened by boring facts or the library’s fascist requirement to wear pants.
6) “Seether,” Veruca Salt. During the 90s, while I enjoyed a lot of the music coming out, I definitely looked back longingly on the 80s—the bubblegum of the pop, the politicalness of the punk, and the pomposity of the power metal. During the first decade of the Aughts, I found myself looking straight ahead as the Web opened up a cornucopia of indie rock that I might not have otherwise overlooked had a Wikipedia entry on Winston Churchill not mentioned that his favorite band was The New Pornographers. But now, with 2011 nearly in the rearview mirror, I am going through a bit of 90s nostalgia. I’ve been combing eMusic for 90s alternanuggests like this, fun blasts of distorted Nirvana-esque pop that were the popcorn shrimp of alternative radio. I just find it funny that my nostalgia skipped a decade.
7) “Come on Eileen,” Dexy’s Midnight Runners. I was about 12 when this song came out, in that mid-point where my interest in dragons still competed with my interest in girls. On top of that, I came from a conservative Catholic family and went to Catholic school, which meant I was well acquainted with the word “fuck” but not necessarily well educated on all that went into said word. I remember talking about this song with a pair of female classmates who were a little more world wise than I was. They kept making a comment about “come… on Eileen” and I kept saying, “Yeah, that’s the name of the song. What’s so funny?” They repeated it a few time and laughed at my inability to get the joke. Let me tell you, there are few things more emasculating at that age than being out-dirtied by a couple of girls, and the psychological fallout is probably that I go out of my way to know the slang for every possible organ, act, and occasional felony.
8) “Born Slippy (Nuxx),” Underworld. One of those songs that can only be listened to while dancing or driving, and even driving is a stretch. Like a lot of electronica back in the 90s, it’s stretched by endless percussive repetition, which is great if you’re drunk at a club, not so great if you have to, say, focus on something. Plus it makes me think of Trainspotting which makes me think of creepy babies and appalling toilets.
9) “Calgary,” Bon Iver. I never expected “snow-blown Wisconsin folk” and “Kanye” to go together, but the autotuned falsetto works really well on the new Bon Iver album. I even get a little bit of a Daft Punk vibe when the drums and synths show up. He managed the tough trick of still sounding like himself without repeating himself from the first album.
10) “Back of the Van,” Ladyhawke. Love, love, love. First, it manages to sound of the 80s without sounding like a pale imitation of much better songs. More than that, it really nails the nervous excitement I felt when I was a teenager and finally had left those dragons behind. The first time I ever kissed a girl (avert your eyes, TLB) was in the back of a friend’s van—and not just any van, but one of those conversion vans that could quickly be converted to a heavy petting zoo. My friend and his girlfriend were in front, while I and my date were in the back, riding to the beach at night. I had never done more than held hands with a girl, primarily because I had the romantic self confidence of a frightened ostrich. I was now poised for my first kiss, and I was so nervous, it’s a wonder I didn’t piss all over the futon cushion in the back (seriously, this van was a hotel on wheels, it’s a miracle that my friend’s parents let him drive it). But said kiss happened and every bit of nervousness and memory of previously missed opportunities and razzing from my friends melted away into just pure happiness. The funny thing is, while I was way more confident in myself by the time I met TLB the following year, my first date with her was full of the same nervousness, until we broke the ice and found a warm bliss center inside. This illustrates again why music kicks ass; as much as I love reading and movies and games, no other form of pop culture lets me personalize it as much as music.
11) “Walking to Do,” Ted Leo and the Pharmacists. Great, great tune, one of my favorites by him, with a breakdown in the middle before he comes back with a louder version of the chorus. I listen to a lot of Ted Leo at the gym and I always think this sounds like the perfect concert closer, so it’s a fitting way to end the list today.
Have a great weekend and let your nerd flag fly!
Wednesday, September 14, 2011
Top Ten Wednesdays: What will we do if elected president?
10) Will permanently shift the U.S. government’s official position on sex education to “missionary.”
9) Will change the social safety net into a real net that will hold the unemployed in place until there are jobs available.
5) Will support the right of Americans to die whenever and wherever they choose to fall into a coma.
4) Will require schools to strengthen the counting skills of children by using Bible verses and ammunition calibers.
2) Will cut taxes so that the rich can stimulate a robust American recovery by creating more jobs for Guatemalan housekeepers, Mexican greenskeepers, Brazilian waxers, African adoption officers, French restaurateurs, Italian designers, Dutch jewelers, German automakers, and Swiss bankers.
1) Will promise not to trigger the Rapture until our second term.
9) Will change the social safety net into a real net that will hold the unemployed in place until there are jobs available.
8) Will support a strict originalist interpretation of the Constitution that will make it illegal for anyone to be president if they only count as 3/5 of a person.
7) Will save money by putting social security funds into a lockbox that old people will never figure out how to open.
6) Will vow to keep gay romance away from the church altar and instead leave it in the confessional where it belongs.
5) Will support the right of Americans to die whenever and wherever they choose to fall into a coma.
4) Will require schools to strengthen the counting skills of children by using Bible verses and ammunition calibers.
3) Will strengthen faith in science by making science faith-based.
2) Will cut taxes so that the rich can stimulate a robust American recovery by creating more jobs for Guatemalan housekeepers, Mexican greenskeepers, Brazilian waxers, African adoption officers, French restaurateurs, Italian designers, Dutch jewelers, German automakers, and Swiss bankers.
1) Will promise not to trigger the Rapture until our second term.
Friday, September 09, 2011
Friday Random 11
It’s one more random than 10!
Months of the football lockout, of worrying about how I would feel the void left by no Bears games and no fantasy leagues, were swept away last night after one of the best season-openers I’ve ever seen. That happiness makes me feel dumb, and I should feel dumb, because rooting for sports teams is stupid. All summer, I read about the lockout, hoping that a group of billionaires, millionaires, and thousandaires could resolve their differences so I could watch enormous men assault each other and then listen to Terry Bradshaw try to use his words on the post-game show. Added to the gnawing feeling that this was a colossal waste of time was a twinge of guilt that the sport I love to watch may be destroying athletes’ brains faster than a gallon of turpentine being passed around the parking lot before a Judas Priest concert. The only thing missing was a Sarah McLachlin song playing in the background while a bunch of concussed football players look blankly into the camera.
But then the lockout ended, I drafted my fantasy teams, and Green Bay once again found a reason to exist. Huzzah to distractions! I was even able to forget the pants-soiling idea that the Mayan prophecy of the world ending in 2012 could be coming true thanks to the Perry campaign. Hey, at least I’ll get to see one more Super Bowl before that happens.
1) “Celluloid Heroes,” The Kinks. Will we ever walk down Hollywood Boulevard and stand on top of Snooki’s star? We might not recognize it at first because the name will be partially obscured by vomit, but there it will be. Think it won’t happen? Well, they gave one to John Stamos, so anything is possible.
2) “Barely Breathing,” Duncan Sheik. I can’t tell if this is a guilty pleasure for me. It wouldn’t be if I was female, it would just be romantic. But for a dude to like this…well, it might even be too wimpy for a scene on Friends where Ross is pining for Rachel but can’t have her because he came out to Chandler, but only because he swore off women because he didn’t want to get divorced again, but just as he decides to take a chance and tell Rachel the truth (around the time the bridge of the song kicks in), he sees Rachel kissing Joey, except they are just practicing for Joey to kiss Phoebe, and then Monica shows up and tells Ross that Rachel would have him if he’d pick music that didn’t make his balls shrink. That’s a shame, because I like this song, but I’d also feel more comfortable requesting the Goo Goo Dolls before asking for this.
3) “You’re Only Human (Second Wind),” Billy Joel. I don’t even know why I have this. I fucking hate Billy Joel. I had my period where I found his singalong stories interesting and I may have even belted out “The Piano Man” a few drunken times in my life. But now, it’s a level of hate probably only surpassed by The Goonies and Brett Favre. And yet I will not delete this, because I don’t delete anything from my music collection. I even have Volume III of Joel’s greatest hits, which makes me want to fill my ears with gasoline and use a lit match for a Q-tip. I’m like a music hoarder. Becky would have to intervene with me, and just as we’re about to delete it, I’ll start crying and saying, “But I might want to hear ‘Uptown Girl’ someday! He and Christie were so happy!” And then they’ll sedate me and agree that we won’t permanently delete the files, just keep them in the Recycle Bin.
4) “Russian Autumn Heart,” The Church. That’s better. This is one of my Songs I Love Despite Having No Idea What It’s About. I mean, I think I’ve owned this album for 20 (!) years and I have played this song hundreds of times. If you asked me what it was about, I’d take a minute and then say, “A girl, I think. And maybe the foliage around St. Petersburg.” But who needs lyrics you can understand when you’ve got a great ringing riff on your Rickenbacker?
5) “Up on Cripple Creek,” The Band. In my Admire but Don’t Listen To folder. Great band, that’s why they are The Band. But like Dylan or jazz, I never get into them.
6) “Dominion Road,” The Mutton Birds. Fantastic guitar pop from New Zealand, with a great chorus that stutter steps from the verses and jumps into a nice guitar line.
7) “Subdivisions,” Rush. I got a package from my mother for my birthday, opened it up, read the card, and then unwrapped the gift: a Blu-ray copy of Rush’s Snakes and Arrows Live concert. The only Rush video I do not own. From a woman who referred to Rush as “that Chinese music” when I was growing up and blaring “By-Tor and the Snow Dog” out of a boom box. It’s the greatest gift she’s ever given me (or second greatest if you want to get picky and count life) because it was not only perfect, it probably burned her fingers to even touch it. That’s love and also how I’ll probably feel when I give Libby the Bieber Box Set.
8) “I Knew the Bride When She Used to Rock and Roll,” Nick Lowe. What Mssr. Lowe is implying here is that he knew the bride when she used to have sex, which seems so quaint now. Who doesn’t know a bride who used to rock and roll? Even one of those little purity pledge pains in the ass probably has a few dry humping skeletons in the laundry hamper. Don’t get me wrong, I generally applaud the openness of our society, but we probably have gotten too open. Today, this song would be “I Knew the Bride When She Used to Flash the Blackhawks Bench” or “I Knew the Groom When He Used to Tweetpic His Junk.”
9) “Livin’ in the Jungle,” Black Joe Lewis and the Honeybears. The end of summer means the end of summer songs, which is a shame, because there are few things I love listening to more than a great summer song. Case in point, this booty-shakin bit of James Brown’s chicken that just begs to be played on a hot day while drinking a case of cold ones and watching attractive 20-somethings dive into your backyard pool (okay, so maybe that doesn’t happen to me, but it’s what I see when I close my eyes). You just won’t feel that while listening to this when wearing a sweater.
10) “Once,” Pearl Jam. Three studio albums from Nirvana, 20 years of studio albums from Pearl Jam. There is no justice in the universe. (Plus Scott Weiland hasn’t had the good manners to die of a heroin overdose, but that's a rant for another song). Still, I do like the original PJ album, but I’ve never seen the point after Ten and maybe Vs. If you’ve heard one grungy set of mumbling from Eddie Vedder, you’ve heard them all. Also, video shows PJ playing this at a Seattle band competition.
11) “A Little Respect,” Erasure. I feel like I should butch this up by playing some more Duncan Sheik, but fuck it, I’ll throw my hands in the air and wave them like I just don’t care about people questioning my sexual preferences. Because if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that you should never avoid listening to something because you care what people will think about you listening to it (how else would I have remained a Rush fan?). Another thing I’ve learned is that it’s fun to dance like a gay guy. That’s why gay men always look so happy while they are dancing. It’s the guys dancing like they are straight who look awkward and miserable.
Have a good weekend!
Months of the football lockout, of worrying about how I would feel the void left by no Bears games and no fantasy leagues, were swept away last night after one of the best season-openers I’ve ever seen. That happiness makes me feel dumb, and I should feel dumb, because rooting for sports teams is stupid. All summer, I read about the lockout, hoping that a group of billionaires, millionaires, and thousandaires could resolve their differences so I could watch enormous men assault each other and then listen to Terry Bradshaw try to use his words on the post-game show. Added to the gnawing feeling that this was a colossal waste of time was a twinge of guilt that the sport I love to watch may be destroying athletes’ brains faster than a gallon of turpentine being passed around the parking lot before a Judas Priest concert. The only thing missing was a Sarah McLachlin song playing in the background while a bunch of concussed football players look blankly into the camera.
But then the lockout ended, I drafted my fantasy teams, and Green Bay once again found a reason to exist. Huzzah to distractions! I was even able to forget the pants-soiling idea that the Mayan prophecy of the world ending in 2012 could be coming true thanks to the Perry campaign. Hey, at least I’ll get to see one more Super Bowl before that happens.
1) “Celluloid Heroes,” The Kinks. Will we ever walk down Hollywood Boulevard and stand on top of Snooki’s star? We might not recognize it at first because the name will be partially obscured by vomit, but there it will be. Think it won’t happen? Well, they gave one to John Stamos, so anything is possible.
2) “Barely Breathing,” Duncan Sheik. I can’t tell if this is a guilty pleasure for me. It wouldn’t be if I was female, it would just be romantic. But for a dude to like this…well, it might even be too wimpy for a scene on Friends where Ross is pining for Rachel but can’t have her because he came out to Chandler, but only because he swore off women because he didn’t want to get divorced again, but just as he decides to take a chance and tell Rachel the truth (around the time the bridge of the song kicks in), he sees Rachel kissing Joey, except they are just practicing for Joey to kiss Phoebe, and then Monica shows up and tells Ross that Rachel would have him if he’d pick music that didn’t make his balls shrink. That’s a shame, because I like this song, but I’d also feel more comfortable requesting the Goo Goo Dolls before asking for this.
3) “You’re Only Human (Second Wind),” Billy Joel. I don’t even know why I have this. I fucking hate Billy Joel. I had my period where I found his singalong stories interesting and I may have even belted out “The Piano Man” a few drunken times in my life. But now, it’s a level of hate probably only surpassed by The Goonies and Brett Favre. And yet I will not delete this, because I don’t delete anything from my music collection. I even have Volume III of Joel’s greatest hits, which makes me want to fill my ears with gasoline and use a lit match for a Q-tip. I’m like a music hoarder. Becky would have to intervene with me, and just as we’re about to delete it, I’ll start crying and saying, “But I might want to hear ‘Uptown Girl’ someday! He and Christie were so happy!” And then they’ll sedate me and agree that we won’t permanently delete the files, just keep them in the Recycle Bin.
4) “Russian Autumn Heart,” The Church. That’s better. This is one of my Songs I Love Despite Having No Idea What It’s About. I mean, I think I’ve owned this album for 20 (!) years and I have played this song hundreds of times. If you asked me what it was about, I’d take a minute and then say, “A girl, I think. And maybe the foliage around St. Petersburg.” But who needs lyrics you can understand when you’ve got a great ringing riff on your Rickenbacker?
5) “Up on Cripple Creek,” The Band. In my Admire but Don’t Listen To folder. Great band, that’s why they are The Band. But like Dylan or jazz, I never get into them.
6) “Dominion Road,” The Mutton Birds. Fantastic guitar pop from New Zealand, with a great chorus that stutter steps from the verses and jumps into a nice guitar line.
7) “Subdivisions,” Rush. I got a package from my mother for my birthday, opened it up, read the card, and then unwrapped the gift: a Blu-ray copy of Rush’s Snakes and Arrows Live concert. The only Rush video I do not own. From a woman who referred to Rush as “that Chinese music” when I was growing up and blaring “By-Tor and the Snow Dog” out of a boom box. It’s the greatest gift she’s ever given me (or second greatest if you want to get picky and count life) because it was not only perfect, it probably burned her fingers to even touch it. That’s love and also how I’ll probably feel when I give Libby the Bieber Box Set.
8) “I Knew the Bride When She Used to Rock and Roll,” Nick Lowe. What Mssr. Lowe is implying here is that he knew the bride when she used to have sex, which seems so quaint now. Who doesn’t know a bride who used to rock and roll? Even one of those little purity pledge pains in the ass probably has a few dry humping skeletons in the laundry hamper. Don’t get me wrong, I generally applaud the openness of our society, but we probably have gotten too open. Today, this song would be “I Knew the Bride When She Used to Flash the Blackhawks Bench” or “I Knew the Groom When He Used to Tweetpic His Junk.”
9) “Livin’ in the Jungle,” Black Joe Lewis and the Honeybears. The end of summer means the end of summer songs, which is a shame, because there are few things I love listening to more than a great summer song. Case in point, this booty-shakin bit of James Brown’s chicken that just begs to be played on a hot day while drinking a case of cold ones and watching attractive 20-somethings dive into your backyard pool (okay, so maybe that doesn’t happen to me, but it’s what I see when I close my eyes). You just won’t feel that while listening to this when wearing a sweater.
10) “Once,” Pearl Jam. Three studio albums from Nirvana, 20 years of studio albums from Pearl Jam. There is no justice in the universe. (Plus Scott Weiland hasn’t had the good manners to die of a heroin overdose, but that's a rant for another song). Still, I do like the original PJ album, but I’ve never seen the point after Ten and maybe Vs. If you’ve heard one grungy set of mumbling from Eddie Vedder, you’ve heard them all. Also, video shows PJ playing this at a Seattle band competition.
11) “A Little Respect,” Erasure. I feel like I should butch this up by playing some more Duncan Sheik, but fuck it, I’ll throw my hands in the air and wave them like I just don’t care about people questioning my sexual preferences. Because if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that you should never avoid listening to something because you care what people will think about you listening to it (how else would I have remained a Rush fan?). Another thing I’ve learned is that it’s fun to dance like a gay guy. That’s why gay men always look so happy while they are dancing. It’s the guys dancing like they are straight who look awkward and miserable.
Have a good weekend!
Thursday, September 08, 2011
GOP Nearly Sets Record for Most Number of Dildos Displayed During a Debate
Controversy erupts over downgrading of Ron Paul to “butt-plug” status
WASPTOPIA, CA – Herman Cain. Rick Santorum. Jon Huntsman. Newt Gingrich. Ron Paul. Michele Bachmann. Mitt Romney. Rick Perry. As the candidates for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination filed into Ketchup Hall at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation, Library, and Sanitarium, the enthusiastic audience applauded what they thought was an historical occasion for the GOP: The largest number of dildos ever displayed during a presidential debate.
Certainly the diversity of the dildos on display was the most varied the GOP had ever seen. Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney represented the traditional crooked and white dildo wings of the party, which historically have driven the Republican presidential process. Rick Santorum, once part of the traditional dildo wing, isnow firmly lodged in the bent anal dildo camp that appeals to certain hardcore members of the Republican party but is too painful for most Republicans to consider.
However, four very unorthodox dildos have been thrust into the Republican limelight. Businessman Herman Cain is only the second black dildo to ever be considered for president by the mostly white party. While not a frontrunner, he is seen as a smoother, sleeker version compared to the bumpy dildo that was former African American GOP candidate Alan Keyes. Unfortunately, Cain has not only bucked tradition, but he has courted controversy by inserting himself into some sticky debates, such as whether he would consider a Muslim for his cabinet.
WASPTOPIA, CA – Herman Cain. Rick Santorum. Jon Huntsman. Newt Gingrich. Ron Paul. Michele Bachmann. Mitt Romney. Rick Perry. As the candidates for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination filed into Ketchup Hall at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation, Library, and Sanitarium, the enthusiastic audience applauded what they thought was an historical occasion for the GOP: The largest number of dildos ever displayed during a presidential debate.
A controversial, last-minute reclassification would put the record out of reach and leave the Ron Paul campaign complaining of a conspiracy to “make Ron Paul pull out of this race.” Nevertheless, most pundits agreed it was as impressive a display of conservative political dildos as the Republican party has ever witnessed.
Certainly the diversity of the dildos on display was the most varied the GOP had ever seen. Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney represented the traditional crooked and white dildo wings of the party, which historically have driven the Republican presidential process. Rick Santorum, once part of the traditional dildo wing, isnow firmly lodged in the bent anal dildo camp that appeals to certain hardcore members of the Republican party but is too painful for most Republicans to consider.
However, four very unorthodox dildos have been thrust into the Republican limelight. Businessman Herman Cain is only the second black dildo to ever be considered for president by the mostly white party. While not a frontrunner, he is seen as a smoother, sleeker version compared to the bumpy dildo that was former African American GOP candidate Alan Keyes. Unfortunately, Cain has not only bucked tradition, but he has courted controversy by inserting himself into some sticky debates, such as whether he would consider a Muslim for his cabinet.
Jon Huntsman of Utah was perhaps the most realistic dildo of the field, one representative of the modest stature and appearance of the average middle-class Republican voter. Huntsman did not try to force his way into the debate or pound such popular issues such as whether global warming was real. Yet, while admired for his approach, the former governor is considered too unimposing and veiny to appeal to many voters, and the audience seemed less than satisfied with his performance during the debate.
Ron Paul is by far the least conventional of the GOP dildos, a squat, inflexible candidate whose hard-headed approach is his main draw to like-minded voters looking for a more freewheeling, unrestricted governmental lifestyle. But like Cain, Paul lacks broad appeal and seems only able to fill a libertarian niche in the race.
Michele Bachman came into the debate standing tall and erect after her performance in the Iowa straw poll, and she clearly looked ready to ride the momentum generated from that climactic victory. She is the pink strap-on of the field, feminine and yet masculine at the same time. But while she appeals to both male and female voters, many have wondered if she was simply a temporary stand-in for a larger male candidate.
That certainly seemed to be the case as the focus shifted to the biggest dildo in the race, Governor Rick Perry of Texas. Perry is considered by many to be the ideal representative dildo for the GOP nomination: big, white, and sporting a large base. He is also a man who revels in his dildo status. “He doesn’t try to hide what he is,” said John Harris of Politico, one of the moderators. “Furthermore, Perry did what smart dildos do: He waited until there was a clear opening and then pushed his way in.”
The buzz around Perry caused a clear vibration of excitement among the audience, as they routinely applauded and cheered his performance. He scored the most when he engaged the other frontrunner, Romney, in direct swordfights, tussling with the former Massachusetts governor on job creation and health care. His blunt discussion of what he would do to Social Security, income taxes, and the direct election of senators—talk that until recently seemed far too risqué for mainstream political discourse—only seemed to excite the crowd that much more.
Moderator Brian Williams of NBC Nightly News also garnered a cheer from the crowd when he said that the eight dildos simultaneously on televised display was a presidential record, breaking the old one set by the second Democratic presidential debate of 1988. However, that enthusiasm was quickly quashed when it was determined that Ron Paul was technically a butt-plug and not a full-fledged dildo. The classification came at the behest of the Republican National Committee, which explained in a press release that, “while we appreciate the important role Mr. Paul plays in the act of nominating a presidential candidate, his stature, appearance, and constant state of being a pain in the ass make it clear he is more of a rectal plug than a true dildo.”
“That’s a lot of crap,” Paul said when reached for comment. “The whole thing stinks, and it’s indicative of how I’ve been buried in this whole debate. But at the end of the day, categories don’t matter. All that matters is that I represent the real desires of Americans. You may not see me as much in this debate, but you will definitely feel my presence.”
Despite the controversy, the debate was considered a successful display of the varied dildoship of the party. It was also a clear victory for Perry, whose campaign seems to be gaining stamina as the rest of the field flags a bit. After the debate, Brian Williams summed up Perry’s performance in one statement, “He’s clearly the Jeff Stryker Monster Cock of the field.”
Friday, August 19, 2011
Friday Random 11
It’s one more random than 10!
I had my fantasy football draft last weekend (well, my main fantasy football draft). I’ve been in this league since 2006, and most of the other nine guys have been in it that entire time as well.
We met at the league commissioner’s house, located in a small Illinois town for the beginning of a guy’s day. We played basketball for a couple of hours, then poker, before we headed into our draft. We drank and grilled and generally indulged in alcoholic and digestive gluttony. Once the draft ended, we headed to a townie bar where the female bartender plied us with a shot called an Apple Pie that indeed tasted just like apple pie. We drank a whole pie's worth. We capped off the night when my brother Tickle bought a tight pink tank top that had the bar’s name on it and we all took turns wearing it. I suspect a picture of me in that item of clothing will surface at some point (I’m surprised it hasn’t been posted to my Facebook page yet).
The funny thing about this group is that four of the ten guys work in secondary education. The commish who hosted is actually the principal of the local high school. Three of the other guys are teachers. And here they were, drinking like fish, acting like fools in a bar, and revolving an entire day around building a pretend football team.
When I was in school, I never would have imagined my teachers and administrators doing this, because I never imagined them having lives. They seemed like animatronic figures in a museum who only came to life when the school bell turned on, and then shut off with the final bell of the day. They didn’t need companionship. They didn’t spend their weekends getting plowed with their friends. They were just teachers. In my mind, that was all they did. Even being married to The Lovely Becky didn’t change that perception—her father was a teacher, but he spent most of his free time talking about what happened in school (or Vietnam, which sometimes sounded less scary than the school).
I would have been shocked to find my teachers engaging in drunken shenanigans, wildly inappropriate humor, gambling, and idiotic hobbies. If I had walked in on a group like those present at the bar the other night, I’m not sure what I would have made of them. On the one hand, I might have thought it was the coolest thing ever and seen them as real people with lives outside of school.
More likely, I would have snapped a pic of the principal in a skin-tight pink tank top and kept it as my get-out-of-jail free card for the rest of my school career. Lucky for our commish that none of his students were out bar crawling with fake IDs that night.
Tunes….
1) “Can’t Buy Me Love,” The Beatles. I appreciate the late Beatles more—the adventurousness, the way they shattered the boundaries of pop music so much that they still sound like one of the most experimental groups in history—I like the early Beatles more. Those early songs are like perfect diamonds. It was interesting to see what strange jewelry they would later craft, but there’s such a simple beauty in holding a single, flawless gem in the palm of your hand.
2) “Mamma Mia,” ABBA. Fucka mia.
3) “Since You’re Gone,” The Cars. I have always loved the interplay between the click track and the drums that drive this song. Also, Ric Ocasek is 62, which seems almost as unbelievable as his still being married to Paulina. I saw him on Colbert when the Cars played, and I will say that he is like Geddy Lee in that he looks better now that he’s older. Neither of them will ever be considered good looking, but they don’t seem quite as ugly as they did when they were younger. That’s a benefit of having the looks bar lowered as you age. You can be an ugly-ass 35-year-old, but if you still look a lot like that ugly-ass 35-year-old when you’re 55, people will say, “Hey, he looks so much better than he used to.” That’s one of the only things about aging that I’m looking forward to.
4) “Set Yourself on Fire,” Stars. Self-immolation has got to be in the top five for awful ways to kill yourself. In fact, I’d go so far as to put it at number one, above jumping out of an airplane (at least you get to enjoy the rush of the fall) and having sex with Anne Coulter (she always feeds after she mates, so it’s basically a form of suicide). First, there’s the buildup to immolation. You’re pouring gasoline or charcoal fluid on yourself, or wearing your best little black Kingsford Match Light Molotov Cocktail dress. There’s the anticipation that pretty soon you’re going to look like the cover of the Wish You Were Here album. Then there is the obvious pain of being on fire. A lot of times I microwave dishes and then, like a dumbass, take them out of the microwave without using any protection for my hands. Two seconds of touching hot glass after two minutes on high and I’m screaming like I just dipped my fingers in acid. How could anyone volunteer for that feeling? Sure, self-immolation makes a dramatic statement about killing yourself, but so does taking a vial of pills and hiring a skywriter to trace your suicide message above your ex’s/boss’s/dictator’s apartment/office/palace.
5) “Head Like a Hole,” Nine Inch Nails. At the age of 40, there aren’t any songs in my collection that I won’t listen to out of some sense of age-inappropriateness. I’ll rock out Whitesnake’s “Slide It In” like I did when I was 15, for example, or any number of punk anthems that were aimed at the time at people who are my age now. In that respect, I’ll channer my inner industrial rage whenever Trent Reznor makes an appearance. But what about 20 years from now (assuming a giant sausage grenade doesn’t lodge in my heart and explode before then). Will I be cruising down the street in a convertible K-car hybrid, Panama hat on my head and wearing sandals with socks, singing “I’d rather die than give you control!”? I hope the answer is yes.
6) “Skin of the Night,” M83. I loves me some electronic tom-tom beats. This song cries out for a scene where Demi Moore and Andrew McCarthy have sex on a waterbed in a room full of Nagel posters.
7) “Bloodletting (The Vampire Song),” Concrete Blonde. Count Chocula on a crutch, the vampire thing needs to fucking die. They are the least interesting of the classic scary monsters. Zombies? Always awesome. Werewolves? Not only scary, but also amazing basketball players. Ghosts? Scary enough that you can base entire shows of people on night-vision cameras going “Did you hear that?” every time a cockroach farts in an old asylum. Demons and possession? Two words: Pea soup. But vampires? Best case scenario, they seem like roadies for Bauhaus. Worst case, they seem like Keanu Reeves trying to show range. I’m hoping the next trend is a Creature from the Black Lagoon revival. What’s scarier than parking your Chevelle at Makeout Pond, only to be assaulted by a frog-man who craves man-flesh? That critter never got his due.
8) “He’s My Star,” Poster Children. A terrific specimen of 90’s alternative that was sadly overlooked. It does the quiet/loud/quiet/LOUD thing really well. Trivia: These guys once crashed at TLB’s house in college.
9) “When You Don’t See Me,” Sisters of Mercy. Weirdest tour pairing ever? These guys touring with Public Enemy in the 1990s. What would those fans have in common?
Sisters of Mercy Fan: “My father doesn’t understand me because I wear eyeliner and lace and write poetry in the style of Byron, although much darker.”
PE Fan: “My father was murdered by the Klan.”
Sisters of Mercy Fan: “Oh, how dreadful. I weep bitter tears for your loss, although there is a dark beauty in agony, don’t you think?”
PE Fan: “Why do you smell like Cinnabon?”
10) “Never Gonna Change,” Drive-By Truckers. You could use this as the theme music for a new show, The Real Dukes of Hazzard County. Bo would be a hardworking country boy caring for his cousin, Luke, who was left paralyzed after a terrible stock car racing accident. But Bo loses his job at the American flag plant after production is moved to China. He also cares for his cousin, Daisy, a single mom of two whose husband was murdered, but in caring for her, Bo struggles with his romantic feelings toward her. Desperate for cash, he turns to his Uncle Jesse, who reveals that his derelict trailer in the woods is just cover for a lucrative meth enterprise. However, he runs afoul of Boss Hogg, a crooked contractor who wants total control over all the drug traffic and rules through his heartless right-hand man, Sherriff Roscoe P. Coltrane. Hogg has it in for the Dukes (and his eyes on Daisy), but is thwarted by his deputy, Enos, whose mild-mannered bumbling is just an act to conceal his real identity as an undercover DEA agent. Enos becomes conflicted because of his feelings for Daisy and a real affinity for Uncle Jesse (the father he never had) and his duty to root out drugs from Hazzard. Will love win out, or duty? Tune in Fridays at 10 PM to find out.
11) “Purple Rain,” Prince and the Revolution. Get out your lighters, people, but make sure you keep the flame away from your lace cuffs. That shit’ll ignite faster than a feud with Morris Day.
Have a great weekend.
I had my fantasy football draft last weekend (well, my main fantasy football draft). I’ve been in this league since 2006, and most of the other nine guys have been in it that entire time as well.
We met at the league commissioner’s house, located in a small Illinois town for the beginning of a guy’s day. We played basketball for a couple of hours, then poker, before we headed into our draft. We drank and grilled and generally indulged in alcoholic and digestive gluttony. Once the draft ended, we headed to a townie bar where the female bartender plied us with a shot called an Apple Pie that indeed tasted just like apple pie. We drank a whole pie's worth. We capped off the night when my brother Tickle bought a tight pink tank top that had the bar’s name on it and we all took turns wearing it. I suspect a picture of me in that item of clothing will surface at some point (I’m surprised it hasn’t been posted to my Facebook page yet).
The funny thing about this group is that four of the ten guys work in secondary education. The commish who hosted is actually the principal of the local high school. Three of the other guys are teachers. And here they were, drinking like fish, acting like fools in a bar, and revolving an entire day around building a pretend football team.
When I was in school, I never would have imagined my teachers and administrators doing this, because I never imagined them having lives. They seemed like animatronic figures in a museum who only came to life when the school bell turned on, and then shut off with the final bell of the day. They didn’t need companionship. They didn’t spend their weekends getting plowed with their friends. They were just teachers. In my mind, that was all they did. Even being married to The Lovely Becky didn’t change that perception—her father was a teacher, but he spent most of his free time talking about what happened in school (or Vietnam, which sometimes sounded less scary than the school).
I would have been shocked to find my teachers engaging in drunken shenanigans, wildly inappropriate humor, gambling, and idiotic hobbies. If I had walked in on a group like those present at the bar the other night, I’m not sure what I would have made of them. On the one hand, I might have thought it was the coolest thing ever and seen them as real people with lives outside of school.
More likely, I would have snapped a pic of the principal in a skin-tight pink tank top and kept it as my get-out-of-jail free card for the rest of my school career. Lucky for our commish that none of his students were out bar crawling with fake IDs that night.
Tunes….
1) “Can’t Buy Me Love,” The Beatles. I appreciate the late Beatles more—the adventurousness, the way they shattered the boundaries of pop music so much that they still sound like one of the most experimental groups in history—I like the early Beatles more. Those early songs are like perfect diamonds. It was interesting to see what strange jewelry they would later craft, but there’s such a simple beauty in holding a single, flawless gem in the palm of your hand.
2) “Mamma Mia,” ABBA. Fucka mia.
3) “Since You’re Gone,” The Cars. I have always loved the interplay between the click track and the drums that drive this song. Also, Ric Ocasek is 62, which seems almost as unbelievable as his still being married to Paulina. I saw him on Colbert when the Cars played, and I will say that he is like Geddy Lee in that he looks better now that he’s older. Neither of them will ever be considered good looking, but they don’t seem quite as ugly as they did when they were younger. That’s a benefit of having the looks bar lowered as you age. You can be an ugly-ass 35-year-old, but if you still look a lot like that ugly-ass 35-year-old when you’re 55, people will say, “Hey, he looks so much better than he used to.” That’s one of the only things about aging that I’m looking forward to.
4) “Set Yourself on Fire,” Stars. Self-immolation has got to be in the top five for awful ways to kill yourself. In fact, I’d go so far as to put it at number one, above jumping out of an airplane (at least you get to enjoy the rush of the fall) and having sex with Anne Coulter (she always feeds after she mates, so it’s basically a form of suicide). First, there’s the buildup to immolation. You’re pouring gasoline or charcoal fluid on yourself, or wearing your best little black Kingsford Match Light Molotov Cocktail dress. There’s the anticipation that pretty soon you’re going to look like the cover of the Wish You Were Here album. Then there is the obvious pain of being on fire. A lot of times I microwave dishes and then, like a dumbass, take them out of the microwave without using any protection for my hands. Two seconds of touching hot glass after two minutes on high and I’m screaming like I just dipped my fingers in acid. How could anyone volunteer for that feeling? Sure, self-immolation makes a dramatic statement about killing yourself, but so does taking a vial of pills and hiring a skywriter to trace your suicide message above your ex’s/boss’s/dictator’s apartment/office/palace.
5) “Head Like a Hole,” Nine Inch Nails. At the age of 40, there aren’t any songs in my collection that I won’t listen to out of some sense of age-inappropriateness. I’ll rock out Whitesnake’s “Slide It In” like I did when I was 15, for example, or any number of punk anthems that were aimed at the time at people who are my age now. In that respect, I’ll channer my inner industrial rage whenever Trent Reznor makes an appearance. But what about 20 years from now (assuming a giant sausage grenade doesn’t lodge in my heart and explode before then). Will I be cruising down the street in a convertible K-car hybrid, Panama hat on my head and wearing sandals with socks, singing “I’d rather die than give you control!”? I hope the answer is yes.
6) “Skin of the Night,” M83. I loves me some electronic tom-tom beats. This song cries out for a scene where Demi Moore and Andrew McCarthy have sex on a waterbed in a room full of Nagel posters.
7) “Bloodletting (The Vampire Song),” Concrete Blonde. Count Chocula on a crutch, the vampire thing needs to fucking die. They are the least interesting of the classic scary monsters. Zombies? Always awesome. Werewolves? Not only scary, but also amazing basketball players. Ghosts? Scary enough that you can base entire shows of people on night-vision cameras going “Did you hear that?” every time a cockroach farts in an old asylum. Demons and possession? Two words: Pea soup. But vampires? Best case scenario, they seem like roadies for Bauhaus. Worst case, they seem like Keanu Reeves trying to show range. I’m hoping the next trend is a Creature from the Black Lagoon revival. What’s scarier than parking your Chevelle at Makeout Pond, only to be assaulted by a frog-man who craves man-flesh? That critter never got his due.
8) “He’s My Star,” Poster Children. A terrific specimen of 90’s alternative that was sadly overlooked. It does the quiet/loud/quiet/LOUD thing really well. Trivia: These guys once crashed at TLB’s house in college.
9) “When You Don’t See Me,” Sisters of Mercy. Weirdest tour pairing ever? These guys touring with Public Enemy in the 1990s. What would those fans have in common?
Sisters of Mercy Fan: “My father doesn’t understand me because I wear eyeliner and lace and write poetry in the style of Byron, although much darker.”
PE Fan: “My father was murdered by the Klan.”
Sisters of Mercy Fan: “Oh, how dreadful. I weep bitter tears for your loss, although there is a dark beauty in agony, don’t you think?”
PE Fan: “Why do you smell like Cinnabon?”
10) “Never Gonna Change,” Drive-By Truckers. You could use this as the theme music for a new show, The Real Dukes of Hazzard County. Bo would be a hardworking country boy caring for his cousin, Luke, who was left paralyzed after a terrible stock car racing accident. But Bo loses his job at the American flag plant after production is moved to China. He also cares for his cousin, Daisy, a single mom of two whose husband was murdered, but in caring for her, Bo struggles with his romantic feelings toward her. Desperate for cash, he turns to his Uncle Jesse, who reveals that his derelict trailer in the woods is just cover for a lucrative meth enterprise. However, he runs afoul of Boss Hogg, a crooked contractor who wants total control over all the drug traffic and rules through his heartless right-hand man, Sherriff Roscoe P. Coltrane. Hogg has it in for the Dukes (and his eyes on Daisy), but is thwarted by his deputy, Enos, whose mild-mannered bumbling is just an act to conceal his real identity as an undercover DEA agent. Enos becomes conflicted because of his feelings for Daisy and a real affinity for Uncle Jesse (the father he never had) and his duty to root out drugs from Hazzard. Will love win out, or duty? Tune in Fridays at 10 PM to find out.
11) “Purple Rain,” Prince and the Revolution. Get out your lighters, people, but make sure you keep the flame away from your lace cuffs. That shit’ll ignite faster than a feud with Morris Day.
Have a great weekend.
Thursday, August 18, 2011
Top Ten Thursdays: Why are we dropping out of the presidential race?
10) Lost voters by repeatedly injecting family values into campaign intern.
9) Said we would curtail agricultural subsidies even though everyone could smell ethanol on our breath.
8) Only wore the minimum required amount of American flag flair.
7) Put a little too much dark into “dark horse” for our political base.
6) Couldn’t shake the tag of being the boring Mormon.
5) Strong disdain for federal government caused us to cough “bullshit” after every campaign promise we made.
4) Khakis couldn’t conceal excitement when discussing the slippery slope of gay marriage.
3) Instead of hypnotizing voters with our eyes, we put them to sleep with our voice.
2) Plan to curb social security costs and promote conservation by relocating endangered gray wolves to America’s nursing homes was not received as well as we hoped.
9) Said we would curtail agricultural subsidies even though everyone could smell ethanol on our breath.
8) Only wore the minimum required amount of American flag flair.
7) Put a little too much dark into “dark horse” for our political base.
6) Couldn’t shake the tag of being the boring Mormon.
5) Strong disdain for federal government caused us to cough “bullshit” after every campaign promise we made.
4) Khakis couldn’t conceal excitement when discussing the slippery slope of gay marriage.
3) Instead of hypnotizing voters with our eyes, we put them to sleep with our voice.
2) Plan to curb social security costs and promote conservation by relocating endangered gray wolves to America’s nursing homes was not received as well as we hoped.
Friday, August 12, 2011
Friday Random 11
It’s one more random than 10!
Hello there, nice to see you again. Sorry for being away so long. I was away on business, traveling to Nigeria to claim a lottery prize. I was informed by the Minister of Prizes that I had been hand-picked among millions of people on the Internet to claim a lottery prize that was left unclaimed. He even e-mailed me the part of the Nigerian constitution that showed it was legit. So I hopped a plane to Lagos and was met by the minister and four of his strapping interns. They took me to the alley where they had the lottery money stashed for safe keeping and yadda yadda yadda my therapist says the nightmares should stop in a couple of years. The lesson, of course, is don’t believe everything you read on the Internet.
1) “Even Hitler Had a Girlfriend,” The Mr. T Experience. I read a couple of things this week poking fun at the time-travel fantasy of going back and killing Hitler, which is perpetually in the top two of time-travel fantasies (only occasionally topped by meeting Jesus, as if he wouldn’t know you were coming). The funny thing about the Hitler-time-travel fantasy is that it relies on the logic that Nazi Germany would have completely collapsed without Hitler. You have a gun, you get Hitler’s mustache in your crosshairs, and pow, no more World War II. As if the rest of the Nazis would have no clue on how to proceed. “Der Fuher ist dead? Was die Fuck are we going to do? Did anybody take notes in the last meeting? I remember something about Poland but I feel asleep from all the Schnitzengrubers I ate for lunch.” Or if you went back and killed him as an infant, that it would have also stopped anti-Semitism in Germany. People like Goebbels would be lost, thinking, “Boy, we have all of these problems after World War I. If only there was an ethnic or religious group we could use as a scapegoat, but I can’t think of one.” It just goes to show that time-travel is often not a viable solution to our problems.
2) “Sister Havana,” Urge Overkill. Probably in my top 10 of favorite songs from the 90s because it makes me think of Ric Ocasek covering Cheap Trick. I also used to hear it a lot on Chicago’s Q101, the Windy City’s alternative station, which sadly just bit the dust about a decade after the term “alternative rock” did. Q101 was a classic commercial alternative station, essentially a radio version of MTV’s Buzz Bin. But for every Better for Ezra of Harvey Danger, they would play Nirvana or Rancid. It was a good listening stop on days when I felt like a rat in a cage despite all of my unresolved anger issues.
3) “The Bends,” Radiohead. Best song ever written about a bad Taco Bell experience.
4) “Your Time Is Gonna Come,” Led Zeppelin. I love the church organ opening and Bonham’s steady beat changing into big fat fills during the chorus. I’ve said it before but I’ll say it again, as great as the fourth album is, the first Zeppelin album is my favorite.
5) “The Needle Has Landed,” Neko Case. I get goosebumpy from the harmonies because they are so damn perfect. I really need to see her live at some point.
6) “Cousins,” Vampire Weekend. We just celebrated our tenth anniversary of our annual family vacation with TLB’s family. We travel to North Carolina every August to frolic in the waters of the Atlantic, eat a trawler-load of fried seafood, and generally unplug and unwind from the world. I’ve always enjoyed the trip, even when we were childless, because it was a great way to spend a week drinking beer, reading a couple of books, and potentially paralyzing myself via feats of aquatic-based prowess. But it has become far more enjoyable since the arrival of Libby. My sisters-in-law both have a boy and a girl each, all between the ages of four and nine, and this year in particular the gang of five cousins had a blast. They dug in the sand, they played in tidal pools, and even did a bit of shoreline surfing on boogie boards and innertubes. Libby has started to understand the concept of siblings and has asked if should could be a sister. It’s sad to tell her that she probably won’t be—it would take 20 grand and a team of scientists to even have a chance—but it’s easier to tell her she's likely to be an only child when she is near cousins that she already treats like siblings. I really hope they stay that close as they get older.
7) “The Patient Ferris Wheel,” The Gaslight Anthem. I am from the school of thought that originality is not a big requirement for rock music. It’s nice when you run into it, but I think you need heart more than anything else. I’ll take four guys from Jersey channeling their inner Springsteen on two guitars, bass, and drums over sound collages and polyrhythms and other fancy-pants shenanigans.
8) “Here Comes the Rain,” Chris Knight. I played this album that was recorded in a trailer in Kentucky as I drove through Kentucky, TLB and Libs asleep in the car, leaving just me, the road, and a man on his guitar. That’s my version of meditation.
9) “Tonight We Fly,” 20/20. I miss record stores and I am sad to see physical music dissolving into a series of 1s and 0s stored on PCs. At the same time, I have discovered so much more music because of it being untethered from retail locations and shared on the Internet. I never would have found this power pop gem browsing the stacks at Tower Records.
10) “Lights & Music,” Cut Copy. Now is the time on CJSD when we dance!
11) “Helter Skelter,” The Beatles. The Fab Four at their most punk. Also probably McCartney’s most Lennon song. It’s hard to believe it’s by the same man who would go on to record “Silly Love Songs.”
Hello there, nice to see you again. Sorry for being away so long. I was away on business, traveling to Nigeria to claim a lottery prize. I was informed by the Minister of Prizes that I had been hand-picked among millions of people on the Internet to claim a lottery prize that was left unclaimed. He even e-mailed me the part of the Nigerian constitution that showed it was legit. So I hopped a plane to Lagos and was met by the minister and four of his strapping interns. They took me to the alley where they had the lottery money stashed for safe keeping and yadda yadda yadda my therapist says the nightmares should stop in a couple of years. The lesson, of course, is don’t believe everything you read on the Internet.
1) “Even Hitler Had a Girlfriend,” The Mr. T Experience. I read a couple of things this week poking fun at the time-travel fantasy of going back and killing Hitler, which is perpetually in the top two of time-travel fantasies (only occasionally topped by meeting Jesus, as if he wouldn’t know you were coming). The funny thing about the Hitler-time-travel fantasy is that it relies on the logic that Nazi Germany would have completely collapsed without Hitler. You have a gun, you get Hitler’s mustache in your crosshairs, and pow, no more World War II. As if the rest of the Nazis would have no clue on how to proceed. “Der Fuher ist dead? Was die Fuck are we going to do? Did anybody take notes in the last meeting? I remember something about Poland but I feel asleep from all the Schnitzengrubers I ate for lunch.” Or if you went back and killed him as an infant, that it would have also stopped anti-Semitism in Germany. People like Goebbels would be lost, thinking, “Boy, we have all of these problems after World War I. If only there was an ethnic or religious group we could use as a scapegoat, but I can’t think of one.” It just goes to show that time-travel is often not a viable solution to our problems.
2) “Sister Havana,” Urge Overkill. Probably in my top 10 of favorite songs from the 90s because it makes me think of Ric Ocasek covering Cheap Trick. I also used to hear it a lot on Chicago’s Q101, the Windy City’s alternative station, which sadly just bit the dust about a decade after the term “alternative rock” did. Q101 was a classic commercial alternative station, essentially a radio version of MTV’s Buzz Bin. But for every Better for Ezra of Harvey Danger, they would play Nirvana or Rancid. It was a good listening stop on days when I felt like a rat in a cage despite all of my unresolved anger issues.
3) “The Bends,” Radiohead. Best song ever written about a bad Taco Bell experience.
4) “Your Time Is Gonna Come,” Led Zeppelin. I love the church organ opening and Bonham’s steady beat changing into big fat fills during the chorus. I’ve said it before but I’ll say it again, as great as the fourth album is, the first Zeppelin album is my favorite.
5) “The Needle Has Landed,” Neko Case. I get goosebumpy from the harmonies because they are so damn perfect. I really need to see her live at some point.
6) “Cousins,” Vampire Weekend. We just celebrated our tenth anniversary of our annual family vacation with TLB’s family. We travel to North Carolina every August to frolic in the waters of the Atlantic, eat a trawler-load of fried seafood, and generally unplug and unwind from the world. I’ve always enjoyed the trip, even when we were childless, because it was a great way to spend a week drinking beer, reading a couple of books, and potentially paralyzing myself via feats of aquatic-based prowess. But it has become far more enjoyable since the arrival of Libby. My sisters-in-law both have a boy and a girl each, all between the ages of four and nine, and this year in particular the gang of five cousins had a blast. They dug in the sand, they played in tidal pools, and even did a bit of shoreline surfing on boogie boards and innertubes. Libby has started to understand the concept of siblings and has asked if should could be a sister. It’s sad to tell her that she probably won’t be—it would take 20 grand and a team of scientists to even have a chance—but it’s easier to tell her she's likely to be an only child when she is near cousins that she already treats like siblings. I really hope they stay that close as they get older.
7) “The Patient Ferris Wheel,” The Gaslight Anthem. I am from the school of thought that originality is not a big requirement for rock music. It’s nice when you run into it, but I think you need heart more than anything else. I’ll take four guys from Jersey channeling their inner Springsteen on two guitars, bass, and drums over sound collages and polyrhythms and other fancy-pants shenanigans.
8) “Here Comes the Rain,” Chris Knight. I played this album that was recorded in a trailer in Kentucky as I drove through Kentucky, TLB and Libs asleep in the car, leaving just me, the road, and a man on his guitar. That’s my version of meditation.
9) “Tonight We Fly,” 20/20. I miss record stores and I am sad to see physical music dissolving into a series of 1s and 0s stored on PCs. At the same time, I have discovered so much more music because of it being untethered from retail locations and shared on the Internet. I never would have found this power pop gem browsing the stacks at Tower Records.
10) “Lights & Music,” Cut Copy. Now is the time on CJSD when we dance!
11) “Helter Skelter,” The Beatles. The Fab Four at their most punk. Also probably McCartney’s most Lennon song. It’s hard to believe it’s by the same man who would go on to record “Silly Love Songs.”
Hidden bonus track
“Paradise City,” Guns N’ Roses. Tomorrow I venture out to a quiet town in the middle of Anywhere, Illinois to join eight other men and one guy via Skype as we indulge in our fantasies of being pro football GMs. It’s a league most of us have been in for years, and this marks the first time we have had zero turnover among the 10 owners By all rights I should be embarrassed if not completely ashamed by how much I look forward to this every year. But like my beloved fake drumming game, fantasy football indulges a desire that is as strong as it is completely out of reach. So tomorrow I will spend the day discussing the groin status of running backs while drinking excessively with a bunch of other sports nerds, all in the hope of finding the lucky combination of gridiron production that will give us bragging rights for the year and a bit of cash in our pockets.
Have a great weekend.
“Paradise City,” Guns N’ Roses. Tomorrow I venture out to a quiet town in the middle of Anywhere, Illinois to join eight other men and one guy via Skype as we indulge in our fantasies of being pro football GMs. It’s a league most of us have been in for years, and this marks the first time we have had zero turnover among the 10 owners By all rights I should be embarrassed if not completely ashamed by how much I look forward to this every year. But like my beloved fake drumming game, fantasy football indulges a desire that is as strong as it is completely out of reach. So tomorrow I will spend the day discussing the groin status of running backs while drinking excessively with a bunch of other sports nerds, all in the hope of finding the lucky combination of gridiron production that will give us bragging rights for the year and a bit of cash in our pockets.
Have a great weekend.
Wednesday, August 10, 2011
Top Ten Wednesdays: What are we really worried about?
Special extra fretting edition!
10) Stimulus failing to produce sufficient growth in pants.
9) Conservative uncle who tells us he can cure our homosexuality if we spend some time alone and pray together very, very, very hard.
8) Silicone insolvency reducing our chest rating from DD to A.
6) Norwegians.
5) Getting embroiled in a caloric quagmire during an endless buffet at Golden Corral.
4) Canadian acquaintances will be able to make us perform unspeakable acts for one of their precious dollars.
3) Won’t be able to resist Michelle Bachmann’s eyes when she floats outside our window and asks to be let in.
2) Retirement will be ruined due to our heavy involvement in bacon futures.
2) Retirement will be ruined due to our heavy involvement in bacon futures.
1) Having to save money, spend within our means, buy houses we can afford, drive small cars that get decent gas mileage, and show a little economic prudence instead of spending like drunken sailors who downed a fifth of Viagra and before taking their leave in the Glory Hole District.
Wednesday, July 20, 2011
Top Ten Wednesdays: What else are we hacking into?
10) The Matrix.
9) Hand not holding our cigarette.
8) Best-seller lists.
7) Chastity belts.
6) Stuff rich white people don’t like.
5) A prison full of FAIL.
4) Former "business" associates who didn't know how to keep their mouths shut.
3) Any occupied womb we choose,
2) Our belts with a hole punch.
1) The sources of our power.
9) Hand not holding our cigarette.
8) Best-seller lists.
7) Chastity belts.
6) Stuff rich white people don’t like.
5) A prison full of FAIL.
4) Former "business" associates who didn't know how to keep their mouths shut.
3) Any occupied womb we choose,
2) Our belts with a hole punch.
1) The sources of our power.
Thursday, July 14, 2011
Top Ten Thursdays: Why are we refusing to compromise on the debt ceiling?
10) We were elected to restore the Judeo-Christian values of this country, and that means we should stick to our guns and not make peace with our political enemies.
9) Plus we all know that taxes are an affront to Jesus.
8) Jesus came to die for our sins, and that meant crucifixion. That wasn’t going to happen if He only got a nail in one hand, right?
7) That’s why we have to rescue the American government from its fiscal sins by crucifying it.
6) The biggest way we can reduce our deficit is by cutting entitlement programs, because if there’s one thing the New Testament teaches us, it’s that you shouldn’t just give poor people stuff for free.
5) That goes double for free medical care, which is the work of Satan.
4) And lets face it, this whole mess was caused by the Democrats and their tax-and-spend ways.
3) They are trying to win political points by increasing tax rates and unfairly asking the rich to pay more than their fair share in taxes….
2) When everyone knows that when the rich get richer, everyone else benefits. Isn’t that the Christian thing to do?
1) Besides, everyone knows austerity is for poor people.
9) Plus we all know that taxes are an affront to Jesus.
8) Jesus came to die for our sins, and that meant crucifixion. That wasn’t going to happen if He only got a nail in one hand, right?
7) That’s why we have to rescue the American government from its fiscal sins by crucifying it.
6) The biggest way we can reduce our deficit is by cutting entitlement programs, because if there’s one thing the New Testament teaches us, it’s that you shouldn’t just give poor people stuff for free.
5) That goes double for free medical care, which is the work of Satan.
4) And lets face it, this whole mess was caused by the Democrats and their tax-and-spend ways.
3) They are trying to win political points by increasing tax rates and unfairly asking the rich to pay more than their fair share in taxes….
2) When everyone knows that when the rich get richer, everyone else benefits. Isn’t that the Christian thing to do?
1) Besides, everyone knows austerity is for poor people.
Thursday, June 30, 2011
Top Ten Thursdays: What have we been convicted of?
Special extended deliberations edition!
12) Loving too much, especially when it comes to our staffers.
3) Using too many checks to increase our balances.
1) Having no convictions.
Thursday, June 23, 2011
Happy Birthday
Today marks three years since the War on Childlessness ended. It's going by fast but I am loving the ride.
Here's Libs recent performance as a flower girl.
Here's Libs recent performance as a flower girl.
Thursday, June 16, 2011
Top Twenty Thursdays: How are we rewriting history for our presidential campaigns?
Special extended revised misinformation edition!
18) The Constitution is protected from undoing by activist judges because, at the very bottom, it says “P.S., no backsies”
15) The Civil War started over breach of etiquette by the North.
13) The Spanish-American War was fought over the introduction of bilingual education.
8) Joe McCarthy knew who the communists in the American government were because they were colored red while everyone else was in black and white.
20) The United States is a Christian nation because it was founded when the pilgrims rolled away Plymouth Rock from the tomb of Jesus.
19) The colonies revolted against the British Empire because Great Britain unfairly taxed the colonists to fund universal leechcare.
18) The Constitution is protected from undoing by activist judges because, at the very bottom, it says “P.S., no backsies”
17) There is no separation of Church and State in America because the original states and the New Testament didn’t allow divorce.
16) American Indians marched on the Trail of Cheers as they gleefully left their native lands to create reservation casinos.
15) The Civil War started over breach of etiquette by the North.
14) Jim Crow laws were enacted to protect newly freed African Americans from the burden of being white.
13) The Spanish-American War was fought over the introduction of bilingual education.
12) The Sixteenth Amendment on federal income taxes was an April Fool’s joke, but because news was slow back then, nobody got the joke until April 15, after it was ratified.
11) The Great Depression was named after Americans’ sadness over the socialism of the New Deal.
10) During World War II, Japanese Americans were interns for the U.S. government.
9) The Cold War started because Ronald Reagan wasn’t president.
8) Joe McCarthy knew who the communists in the American government were because they were colored red while everyone else was in black and white.
7) Hippies were only supporting peace ironically.
6) Nixon had to leave office because he really wanted to hear what Democratic presidential nominees had to say.
5) The United States won the Vietnam War because the United States never leaves a war until it’s been won.
4) In 1981, ketchup became the state vegetable of America.
3) Ronald Reagan won the Cold War by tearing down the Berlin Wall with his bare hands.
2) Bill Clinton had sex on the Constitution while using the American flag as a condom and eating a bald eagle.
1) The Republicans won the 2000 election decision because Jesus Christ and George W. Bush have the same number of letters.
Friday, June 03, 2011
Friday Random 11
It’s one more random than 10!
Holy balls, has it been six weeks since I did this? Time flies when you’re not having fun.
I have been in a creative funk for sure. Being busy with work has certainly kept me away from writing dick jokes/missives about Canadian prog rock. But it’s been more than that.
After climbing to the mountain of getting a draft of a novel done, I was on a big high. Then I started trying to revise it, and also shared it with a couple of trusted advisors (you can probably guess one of them). That process confirmed something that I already suspected: that I had a draft with some pretty funny stuff in it but hardly something resembling a real novel.
The Lovely Becky has said the hardest criticism you receive is the kind that reveals a bit of truth you know but try to suppress. She summed up my novel perfectly: it was like an action buddy comedy. I have nothing against action buddy comedies, and they can certainly be lucrative. But I didn’t spend two years of my life trying to write a mildly entertaining book. I want to write a searing social satire of American foreign policy and hubris, a book that could be a Catch-22 for the War on Terra era. That’s a lofty goal and I doubt I’ll get there, but fuck if I’m going to settle for meh-cond place. You can’t shoot for the moon by building bottle rockets, even if bottle rockets are kind of cool.
At the same time, I realized I had to put the book away for a bit, to get space from it and also so I could start another novel that was the 1B to my 1A.
That caused some emotional complications for me. I realize this is a perfectly normal part of the writing process, but like an adolescent battling with puberty, I had never gone through this before and didn’t know how to act. So I reverted to my usual MO: feeling sorry for myself and not writing anything. Hence not only the lack of novel #2 writing but also any blogging.
I always have to go through this process, unfortunately. It’s like I have to sweat out all my you suck vibes, like the cold sweat of a hangover, until I feel like I can face the creative process again. The first part of that is realizing that feeling sorry for yourself has never, ever produced any actual work. If it did, I would be the James Patterson of negative self image parties.
The second part is sitting down and doing the work. I started the new book, and even after just writing a little bit, I love it. I feel like I have something really special on my hands, and not only do I think it’s benefitting from having written a shitty first draft of another book, it has the punch of some of my favorite posts I’ve written here. Which in turn reminded me how much I have missed blogging.
So it feels nice to be back and to feel like myself again, and what better way to celebrate that than with some tunes.
1) “Urgent,” Foreigner. One of those groups like Loverboy who are kind of terrible but have a handful of songs I really, really like. This song and “Hot Blooded” are insta-crank material whenever I hear them on stations with lunkheaded slogans like “Where Classic Rock Still Lives!”
2) “When You Were Young,” The Killers. It’s a toss-up between this and “Mr. Brightside” for songs of the last 10 years that I most like to sing when no one is listening. “Mr. Brightside” probably wins due to the absurd theatricality of the lyrics, but this has a louder arena-shaking quality to it, where I can see myself picking up one of the stage lights ala Bono in Rattle and Hum and shining it into the upper rows as I sing, “When you were youuuuunnnnnnng!” That would be completely awesome.
3) “Army Bound,” Ted Leo and the Pharmacists. He borrows a little bit of the bass line from The Kinks “Victoria” before turning up the rock, especially with the marshalling guitar riff at the end.
When I’m at the gym and doing any mindless cardio stuff like riding the bike, I love to throw one artist on random and do the rock star fantasy thing as mentioned in #2 above. Ted Leo gets the nod a lot because his music is energetic and I see myself on stage, sweaty and singing pointed barbs about my sorrowful country.
4) “Cody, Cody,” The Flying Burrito Brothers. I should really listen to them more often. I don’t like Crosby, Stills, and Zzzzzzz, but this sounds like CSN covering Wilco, which is not surprising because Wilco sounds like Uncle Tupelo covering The Flying Burrito Brothers.
5) “Caught In a Mosh,” Anthrax. Speaking of gyms, I just recently started hitting the weights again (after letting the weight hit me). It’s so very, very difficult to work out again after a long layoff, and every time I have a layoff, I vow to never have a layoff again. It’s a vicious cycle like time travel in the Terminator movies (“but how can the Terminator come back if it was killed before, unless he went forward in time to make it possible to go back, or maybe he went back before he was killed and then went forward…fuck this, let’s just listen to the remix of Christian Bale swearing at the crew.”) Anyway, I need all the support I can get, both physically from forcing my muscles to move and mentally when I have to start over with baby weights. Anthrax comes in handy for that.
6) “All the Small Things,” Blink-182. I have confessed this before, but I really like Blink-182. Beneath the horndog puns and high school antics, they can both write catchy little punk pop ditties like this or crank the speed like this. And I’m obviously a sucker for horndog puns.
7) “Norway,” Beach House. I need to stop buying albums I think I should buy. This one got a lot of raves, but didn’t do much for me when I sampled it on eMusic. However, said raves convinced me it would be a grower. Sadly, it is still just a lump of potting soil on a sunny day. I’m not sure why—after all, I like stuff that’s definitely in the same pop zipcode as this. I just feel, as they say, that there’s not a lot of there there. It’s a bunch of pleasant-sounding stuff that happened.
8) “Dance Song ’97,” Sleater-Kinney. The Lovely Becky and I officially rejected the new IFC sitcom Portlandia. If you haven’t seen it, it’s a sketch show from Saturday Night Live’s Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein, guitarist of the late, great Sleater-Kinney. They do pieces about Portland specifically and about liberal/progressive culture in general. I love the idea of mocking those things, because it’s good to have your sacred cows roasted. One of my favorite SNL sketches of all time is “Dukakis After Dark” which skewered so many late-80s liberal icons. The problem with Portlandia is that, while it’s very creative and the ideas are original, there are no jokes. We watched an episode where Aimee Mann was working as a housekeeper because the music industry is in the toilet, and while clever, it wasn’t funny, which is important if you’re writing “comedy.” It’s almost like someone decided to make a sketch show out of New Yorker “Shouts and Murmurs” pieces, which is the sketch show I will be working on if I wind up in hell.
9) “Angel,” Massive Attack. Starts out so menacingly until the female vocal shows up. Is she my savior? Or my adversary? Will she show me the way out of the computer program that we are trapped in, or will I learn she has been sent by an android Rutger Hauer to seduce me before she kills me after we mate? Or will we start out on opposite sides before realizing we must unite to prevent both Keanu Reeves and Ridley Scott from making any more movies, unleashing a slow-motion fury of automatic gunfire as the empty shell casings hit the floor in perfect time with the drum beat? That’s the beauty of Massive Attack, they are so deep.
10) “She Sells Sanctuary,” The Cult. Oh hells yes. Easily one of my top 10 80s songs. I was really into The Cult back in the day (as the kids say). I saw them open for Billy Idol when they were supporting Electric and Idol was supporting being Billy Fucking Idol. Just as The Cult were singing “Rain,” Ian Astubury’s mic went out. The band kept playing anyway, and finally he got a new mic at the very end of the song. I remember feeling ripped off that they didn’t stop or play it over. Sure, keep playing when something off the B-side of the new album doesn’t go right, but don’t skimp on the hits, bucko.
The other two things I remember were having a perfect view of Idol guitarist Steve Stevens standing on the side of the stage before the show and talking to two women wearing, shall we say, the costumes of the sexually liberated. The other was of a guy in front of me. He was the size of a pro football linebacker and was dressed in a pink t-shirt, white baggy pants, and a pair of pink Nike slip-on shoes. He stood up and shook his groove thing throughout the entire Billy Idol set in one of the greatest displays of amateur male Caucasian dancing I have ever seen (outside of Trapper, that is). God, I miss the 80s sometimes.
11) “Just Like Honey,” Jesus and Mary Chain. The Lovely Becky and I celebrated our 17th wedding anniversary last Saturday, which is amazing considering we are both 29. Anyway, we celebrated on the Friday night before with a terrific dinner and then a so-so trip to see The Hangover 2 (My review: See the movie you loved all over again for another $12!) However, said screening was awesome because we were two adults out for a night in the city and watching a movie with penis shots and smoking monkeys and Billy Joel jokes instead of something animated and cute. Let me say that the built-in babysitting of family members alone has made the move back worth it.
On the actual anniversary, we had company: Tickle, his wife, and my one-year-old niece. However, we also had Tickle’s friends Veetz, Smoke, and Pancake Z. They were originally supposed to come for game 6 of the Heat-Bulls (fuck!), so instead the dudes played Risk. And then the next night the dudes came over again and we played Rock Band (with the ladies, too). Note that this was all done with the blessing of my wife, which is why I am one of the most happily married men I know. If I may paraphrase Chris Rock and use one of Jennifer’s favorite words, “New pussy don’t let you nerd out!” And one of the reasons I love my wife is that she never, ever prevents me from nerding out, even when she’s making fun of me for saying things like, “I will drive you from Kamchatka!”
Have a great weekend. Oh, and I wasn't sure if I was going to finish the last Vegas piece, but Tickle and Smoke reminded me of some funny stuff, so I'll get it done soon.
Holy balls, has it been six weeks since I did this? Time flies when you’re not having fun.
I have been in a creative funk for sure. Being busy with work has certainly kept me away from writing dick jokes/missives about Canadian prog rock. But it’s been more than that.
After climbing to the mountain of getting a draft of a novel done, I was on a big high. Then I started trying to revise it, and also shared it with a couple of trusted advisors (you can probably guess one of them). That process confirmed something that I already suspected: that I had a draft with some pretty funny stuff in it but hardly something resembling a real novel.
The Lovely Becky has said the hardest criticism you receive is the kind that reveals a bit of truth you know but try to suppress. She summed up my novel perfectly: it was like an action buddy comedy. I have nothing against action buddy comedies, and they can certainly be lucrative. But I didn’t spend two years of my life trying to write a mildly entertaining book. I want to write a searing social satire of American foreign policy and hubris, a book that could be a Catch-22 for the War on Terra era. That’s a lofty goal and I doubt I’ll get there, but fuck if I’m going to settle for meh-cond place. You can’t shoot for the moon by building bottle rockets, even if bottle rockets are kind of cool.
At the same time, I realized I had to put the book away for a bit, to get space from it and also so I could start another novel that was the 1B to my 1A.
That caused some emotional complications for me. I realize this is a perfectly normal part of the writing process, but like an adolescent battling with puberty, I had never gone through this before and didn’t know how to act. So I reverted to my usual MO: feeling sorry for myself and not writing anything. Hence not only the lack of novel #2 writing but also any blogging.
I always have to go through this process, unfortunately. It’s like I have to sweat out all my you suck vibes, like the cold sweat of a hangover, until I feel like I can face the creative process again. The first part of that is realizing that feeling sorry for yourself has never, ever produced any actual work. If it did, I would be the James Patterson of negative self image parties.
The second part is sitting down and doing the work. I started the new book, and even after just writing a little bit, I love it. I feel like I have something really special on my hands, and not only do I think it’s benefitting from having written a shitty first draft of another book, it has the punch of some of my favorite posts I’ve written here. Which in turn reminded me how much I have missed blogging.
So it feels nice to be back and to feel like myself again, and what better way to celebrate that than with some tunes.
1) “Urgent,” Foreigner. One of those groups like Loverboy who are kind of terrible but have a handful of songs I really, really like. This song and “Hot Blooded” are insta-crank material whenever I hear them on stations with lunkheaded slogans like “Where Classic Rock Still Lives!”
2) “When You Were Young,” The Killers. It’s a toss-up between this and “Mr. Brightside” for songs of the last 10 years that I most like to sing when no one is listening. “Mr. Brightside” probably wins due to the absurd theatricality of the lyrics, but this has a louder arena-shaking quality to it, where I can see myself picking up one of the stage lights ala Bono in Rattle and Hum and shining it into the upper rows as I sing, “When you were youuuuunnnnnnng!” That would be completely awesome.
3) “Army Bound,” Ted Leo and the Pharmacists. He borrows a little bit of the bass line from The Kinks “Victoria” before turning up the rock, especially with the marshalling guitar riff at the end.
When I’m at the gym and doing any mindless cardio stuff like riding the bike, I love to throw one artist on random and do the rock star fantasy thing as mentioned in #2 above. Ted Leo gets the nod a lot because his music is energetic and I see myself on stage, sweaty and singing pointed barbs about my sorrowful country.
4) “Cody, Cody,” The Flying Burrito Brothers. I should really listen to them more often. I don’t like Crosby, Stills, and Zzzzzzz, but this sounds like CSN covering Wilco, which is not surprising because Wilco sounds like Uncle Tupelo covering The Flying Burrito Brothers.
5) “Caught In a Mosh,” Anthrax. Speaking of gyms, I just recently started hitting the weights again (after letting the weight hit me). It’s so very, very difficult to work out again after a long layoff, and every time I have a layoff, I vow to never have a layoff again. It’s a vicious cycle like time travel in the Terminator movies (“but how can the Terminator come back if it was killed before, unless he went forward in time to make it possible to go back, or maybe he went back before he was killed and then went forward…fuck this, let’s just listen to the remix of Christian Bale swearing at the crew.”) Anyway, I need all the support I can get, both physically from forcing my muscles to move and mentally when I have to start over with baby weights. Anthrax comes in handy for that.
6) “All the Small Things,” Blink-182. I have confessed this before, but I really like Blink-182. Beneath the horndog puns and high school antics, they can both write catchy little punk pop ditties like this or crank the speed like this. And I’m obviously a sucker for horndog puns.
7) “Norway,” Beach House. I need to stop buying albums I think I should buy. This one got a lot of raves, but didn’t do much for me when I sampled it on eMusic. However, said raves convinced me it would be a grower. Sadly, it is still just a lump of potting soil on a sunny day. I’m not sure why—after all, I like stuff that’s definitely in the same pop zipcode as this. I just feel, as they say, that there’s not a lot of there there. It’s a bunch of pleasant-sounding stuff that happened.
8) “Dance Song ’97,” Sleater-Kinney. The Lovely Becky and I officially rejected the new IFC sitcom Portlandia. If you haven’t seen it, it’s a sketch show from Saturday Night Live’s Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein, guitarist of the late, great Sleater-Kinney. They do pieces about Portland specifically and about liberal/progressive culture in general. I love the idea of mocking those things, because it’s good to have your sacred cows roasted. One of my favorite SNL sketches of all time is “Dukakis After Dark” which skewered so many late-80s liberal icons. The problem with Portlandia is that, while it’s very creative and the ideas are original, there are no jokes. We watched an episode where Aimee Mann was working as a housekeeper because the music industry is in the toilet, and while clever, it wasn’t funny, which is important if you’re writing “comedy.” It’s almost like someone decided to make a sketch show out of New Yorker “Shouts and Murmurs” pieces, which is the sketch show I will be working on if I wind up in hell.
9) “Angel,” Massive Attack. Starts out so menacingly until the female vocal shows up. Is she my savior? Or my adversary? Will she show me the way out of the computer program that we are trapped in, or will I learn she has been sent by an android Rutger Hauer to seduce me before she kills me after we mate? Or will we start out on opposite sides before realizing we must unite to prevent both Keanu Reeves and Ridley Scott from making any more movies, unleashing a slow-motion fury of automatic gunfire as the empty shell casings hit the floor in perfect time with the drum beat? That’s the beauty of Massive Attack, they are so deep.
10) “She Sells Sanctuary,” The Cult. Oh hells yes. Easily one of my top 10 80s songs. I was really into The Cult back in the day (as the kids say). I saw them open for Billy Idol when they were supporting Electric and Idol was supporting being Billy Fucking Idol. Just as The Cult were singing “Rain,” Ian Astubury’s mic went out. The band kept playing anyway, and finally he got a new mic at the very end of the song. I remember feeling ripped off that they didn’t stop or play it over. Sure, keep playing when something off the B-side of the new album doesn’t go right, but don’t skimp on the hits, bucko.
The other two things I remember were having a perfect view of Idol guitarist Steve Stevens standing on the side of the stage before the show and talking to two women wearing, shall we say, the costumes of the sexually liberated. The other was of a guy in front of me. He was the size of a pro football linebacker and was dressed in a pink t-shirt, white baggy pants, and a pair of pink Nike slip-on shoes. He stood up and shook his groove thing throughout the entire Billy Idol set in one of the greatest displays of amateur male Caucasian dancing I have ever seen (outside of Trapper, that is). God, I miss the 80s sometimes.
11) “Just Like Honey,” Jesus and Mary Chain. The Lovely Becky and I celebrated our 17th wedding anniversary last Saturday, which is amazing considering we are both 29. Anyway, we celebrated on the Friday night before with a terrific dinner and then a so-so trip to see The Hangover 2 (My review: See the movie you loved all over again for another $12!) However, said screening was awesome because we were two adults out for a night in the city and watching a movie with penis shots and smoking monkeys and Billy Joel jokes instead of something animated and cute. Let me say that the built-in babysitting of family members alone has made the move back worth it.
On the actual anniversary, we had company: Tickle, his wife, and my one-year-old niece. However, we also had Tickle’s friends Veetz, Smoke, and Pancake Z. They were originally supposed to come for game 6 of the Heat-Bulls (fuck!), so instead the dudes played Risk. And then the next night the dudes came over again and we played Rock Band (with the ladies, too). Note that this was all done with the blessing of my wife, which is why I am one of the most happily married men I know. If I may paraphrase Chris Rock and use one of Jennifer’s favorite words, “New pussy don’t let you nerd out!” And one of the reasons I love my wife is that she never, ever prevents me from nerding out, even when she’s making fun of me for saying things like, “I will drive you from Kamchatka!”
Have a great weekend. Oh, and I wasn't sure if I was going to finish the last Vegas piece, but Tickle and Smoke reminded me of some funny stuff, so I'll get it done soon.
Wednesday, June 01, 2011
Top Ten Wednesdays: What advice are we giving graduates during their commencements?
10) As college graduates leaving the hallowed halls of higher education, the world is your oyster. Except for those of you who majored in humanities and social sciences. Your world will be the deep fryer and, if you show a little initiative, the shake machine.
9) When it comes to the choices you make in life, remember this: it is better to have had cheezburger and eated it than to have never had cheezburger at all.
8) Ask not what your country can do for you. Seriously, don’t ask, now’s not a good time.
6) Success in business is much like success in college: study hard, work hard, and when those two things fail, cheat like a motherfucker.
2) Benjamin Franklin once said an investment in knowledge pays the best interest. Please keep that in mind when your student loan provider sends you your default notice.
9) When it comes to the choices you make in life, remember this: it is better to have had cheezburger and eated it than to have never had cheezburger at all.
8) Ask not what your country can do for you. Seriously, don’t ask, now’s not a good time.
7) If you don’t know what to do, consider graduate school. Not only will you be able to still suckle at the teat of college, but in 5-7 years, you will have the honor of being called “Dr. Loser” in the unemployment office.
6) Success in business is much like success in college: study hard, work hard, and when those two things fail, cheat like a motherfucker.
5) Fat, drunk, and stupid is no way to go through life. However, it is an excellent way to get on reality TV.
4) You have seen many changes in your lifetime. The birth of the Internet. The easiest access to pornography in human history. The ability to stalk exes and see if they got fat and/or wound up with someone who is fat. Sexting. Having acts that were once outlawed as high depravity now being considered just another Saturday night. You may not be the Greatest Generation, but you bastards are sure as hell the Luckiest Generation.
3) Never underestimate what can be done with one chubby kid, some trashy Eurodisco, and a Web cam.
2) Benjamin Franklin once said an investment in knowledge pays the best interest. Please keep that in mind when your student loan provider sends you your default notice.
1) Gunga gulunga, gunga gunga lagunga.
Wednesday, May 25, 2011
Oprah Winfrey Leaves Earth for O: The Planet
CHICAGO – As the countdown approached for the final episode of The Oprah Winfrey Show, much speculation was made about what Ms. Winfrey would do after ending the iconic program. It turns out her plans were out of this world.
Ms. Winfrey’s tearful goodbye was not just for her viewers, but to the planet Earth, as she announced her plans to leave for her own planet, GO-GRL-12954, which will be known as O: The Planet, located in a system near the constellation Orion that was also rechristened the O-lar System.
“I would like to thank all of humanity for being so very, very malleable,” Ms.Winfrey said. “I will miss my ability to influence you, from the books you read to the food you eat to the presidents you elect. And I would like to thank the Earth itself, for being so hospitable, for providing air to breathe, water to drink, soil to grow delicious food, and an atmosphere that is so warm and friendly to television broadcasting.”
Not only did the studio audience weep at the announcement, but so did the heavens, as massive thunderstorms unleashed sheets of sad, sad rain across the Chicagoland area.
However, the frowns of her studio audience soon turned upside down as Oprah unleashed one last surprise.
“The void of space is a lonely place,” she said, in a rhyme penned by her close friend, Maya Angelou. “So as I go far away starting today, I’d be honored if you’d colonize my new base.
“That’s right! You’re going to outer space!” Ms. Winfrey exclaimed, pointing her finger at the crowd. “And you’re going to outer space!” She repeated the phrase and finger pointing several more times before taking out her iPhone and entering a secret code.
The sets in the studio immediately reclined and turned into hyperbolic sleep chambers, used to keep the audience in stasis during the trip. The stage flipped over and became a command center, complete with a reclining leather captain’s chair provided by La-Z-Boy. Within minutes, the entire studio had been transformed into an interplanetary starship, the U.S.S. Harpo.
“Now let’s meet your crew!” Oprah said. She introduced Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Oz, First Mate Dr. Phil, and the captain of the Harpo, Gavin MacLeod, adorned in his costume from The Love Boat. “We blast off in T-minus five minutes,” Captain MacLeod announced, “so please use this time to visit the restroom or say a final farewell to your loved ones.”
Nearly all of the studio audience were thrilled. “I can’t believe I’m going to space with Oprah!” said Fern Rabinski of Northbrook, Illinois. “It’s like a dream come true.” When asked if she had any friends or family she was leaving behind, she replied, “None as cool as Oprah!”
Jennifer Drummond of Chicago was also ecstatic to go. “I was trapped in a loveless marriage with a couple of kids who took me for granted. Now I get to start all over on a brand new planet. My horoscope was totally right!”
A few audience members/colonists were not so gung ho. “Not that I would ever say no to Oprah,” said Laurie Wilson of Columbus, Ohio. “But I would have liked to have hugged my kids goodbye, you know? And I left my iPad in my hotel room.”
Another, LaVerne LaRoux of Gary, Indiana, brought up a practical point. “I love Oprah and all, but there are no men in this room, at least not straight ones. A girl’s got needs, and while I love my Oprah sisters, I don’t love my Oprah sisters, know what I’m saying?”
No sooner had Ms. LaRoux brought up the point of companionship than Oprah made one final announcement. “Ladies, there’s one final thing. I know you are leaving behind husbands and boyfriends, but I’d like to introduce you to something better. Say hello to the STED-MAN 3000!”
A fleet of humanoid robots emerged from behind a door, one for every member of the audience, and marched toward the seated members. “They are yours to keep and do what you like with!” Oprah said. According to the flyers that came with the STED-MAN, it was an advanced service/pleasure bot with a wide range of domestic, romantic, and communication skills, including confectionary, housekeeping, insect killing, “vibrational massage,” and listening. A cheer rose from the crowd as the STED-MAN models immediately began administering foot rubs and asking the audience how there day was going.
When asked about the nature of the planet and the starship, a U.S.S. Harpo spokesperson was not very forthcoming. The planet had been purchased from NASA for an undisclosed sum, and the starship’s means of propulsion was “proprietary information that we do not wish to give to our competitors, lest there be other talk-show planets springing up all over the universe.” Sources who wished to remain anonymous said that the White House had given Oprah top-secret documents on faster-than-light travel as a “favor for 2008,” but the U.S. government would neither confirm or deny that report.
As takeoff time neared, Oprah told her audience to strap themselves in. “Dr. Oz, take us out!” she cried.
“Darn it, Oprah, I’m a doctor, not a captain!” he replied.
All media and non-passengers were escorted to the launch area, as the starship rumbled to life and blasted high into the air, but not before writing “Thanks!” in a plume of white smoke.
In an unrelated story, hundreds of non-celebrities were killed due to severe burns caused by intense heat and flame.
Ms. Winfrey’s tearful goodbye was not just for her viewers, but to the planet Earth, as she announced her plans to leave for her own planet, GO-GRL-12954, which will be known as O: The Planet, located in a system near the constellation Orion that was also rechristened the O-lar System.
“I would like to thank all of humanity for being so very, very malleable,” Ms.Winfrey said. “I will miss my ability to influence you, from the books you read to the food you eat to the presidents you elect. And I would like to thank the Earth itself, for being so hospitable, for providing air to breathe, water to drink, soil to grow delicious food, and an atmosphere that is so warm and friendly to television broadcasting.”
Not only did the studio audience weep at the announcement, but so did the heavens, as massive thunderstorms unleashed sheets of sad, sad rain across the Chicagoland area.
However, the frowns of her studio audience soon turned upside down as Oprah unleashed one last surprise.
“The void of space is a lonely place,” she said, in a rhyme penned by her close friend, Maya Angelou. “So as I go far away starting today, I’d be honored if you’d colonize my new base.
“That’s right! You’re going to outer space!” Ms. Winfrey exclaimed, pointing her finger at the crowd. “And you’re going to outer space!” She repeated the phrase and finger pointing several more times before taking out her iPhone and entering a secret code.
The sets in the studio immediately reclined and turned into hyperbolic sleep chambers, used to keep the audience in stasis during the trip. The stage flipped over and became a command center, complete with a reclining leather captain’s chair provided by La-Z-Boy. Within minutes, the entire studio had been transformed into an interplanetary starship, the U.S.S. Harpo.
“Now let’s meet your crew!” Oprah said. She introduced Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Oz, First Mate Dr. Phil, and the captain of the Harpo, Gavin MacLeod, adorned in his costume from The Love Boat. “We blast off in T-minus five minutes,” Captain MacLeod announced, “so please use this time to visit the restroom or say a final farewell to your loved ones.”
Nearly all of the studio audience were thrilled. “I can’t believe I’m going to space with Oprah!” said Fern Rabinski of Northbrook, Illinois. “It’s like a dream come true.” When asked if she had any friends or family she was leaving behind, she replied, “None as cool as Oprah!”
Jennifer Drummond of Chicago was also ecstatic to go. “I was trapped in a loveless marriage with a couple of kids who took me for granted. Now I get to start all over on a brand new planet. My horoscope was totally right!”
A few audience members/colonists were not so gung ho. “Not that I would ever say no to Oprah,” said Laurie Wilson of Columbus, Ohio. “But I would have liked to have hugged my kids goodbye, you know? And I left my iPad in my hotel room.”
Another, LaVerne LaRoux of Gary, Indiana, brought up a practical point. “I love Oprah and all, but there are no men in this room, at least not straight ones. A girl’s got needs, and while I love my Oprah sisters, I don’t love my Oprah sisters, know what I’m saying?”
No sooner had Ms. LaRoux brought up the point of companionship than Oprah made one final announcement. “Ladies, there’s one final thing. I know you are leaving behind husbands and boyfriends, but I’d like to introduce you to something better. Say hello to the STED-MAN 3000!”
A fleet of humanoid robots emerged from behind a door, one for every member of the audience, and marched toward the seated members. “They are yours to keep and do what you like with!” Oprah said. According to the flyers that came with the STED-MAN, it was an advanced service/pleasure bot with a wide range of domestic, romantic, and communication skills, including confectionary, housekeeping, insect killing, “vibrational massage,” and listening. A cheer rose from the crowd as the STED-MAN models immediately began administering foot rubs and asking the audience how there day was going.
When asked about the nature of the planet and the starship, a U.S.S. Harpo spokesperson was not very forthcoming. The planet had been purchased from NASA for an undisclosed sum, and the starship’s means of propulsion was “proprietary information that we do not wish to give to our competitors, lest there be other talk-show planets springing up all over the universe.” Sources who wished to remain anonymous said that the White House had given Oprah top-secret documents on faster-than-light travel as a “favor for 2008,” but the U.S. government would neither confirm or deny that report.
As takeoff time neared, Oprah told her audience to strap themselves in. “Dr. Oz, take us out!” she cried.
“Darn it, Oprah, I’m a doctor, not a captain!” he replied.
All media and non-passengers were escorted to the launch area, as the starship rumbled to life and blasted high into the air, but not before writing “Thanks!” in a plume of white smoke.
In an unrelated story, hundreds of non-celebrities were killed due to severe burns caused by intense heat and flame.
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