Wednesday, November 26, 2008

Son, you got a panty on yo' head

Well, well, well. Yesterday I got quite a few emails regarding my previous post (And now for something completely familiar…) which was some advice I was giving to my recently betrothed brother. The majority of the emails were concerns about marriage itself, specifically from guys and gals who are currently on their ways to becoming husbands and wives, and who had become, as per the dreariness of my post, suddenly concerned. Perhaps the picture I painted yesterday was none too pretty, and that’s because, well, let’s fucking face it: marriage sucks, BUT that’s only because being an adult is one kick in the dick after another anyway, and life gets more and more difficult as you get older and feel worse, look worse and your friends and family start dying and suddenly you’re wearing the most ridiculous clothes because you haven’t gone shopping in a decade and then you’re bald and the chicks you want to get blowjobs from weren’t even born when you got your first summer job and the climate changes and the rivers rise and Bangladesh is submerged along with, like, 70% of the earths lepers, and suddenly all the girls in playboy are younger than you and then they’re the age of your friend’s kid and then you break your hip, a bunch of untalented shits become wealthy for doing the same thing you do, only worse, your funny little dalliance in vicodin becomes a full on heroin addiction, and you always wanted to learn to play the piano but you got old, so that’s not happening now, ditto for that stint on the soap opera and suddenly you’re just another old, pathetic worthless dildo heating up your spaghetti-o’s in the microwave at the Citgo, trying desperately to make conversation with the incredibly polite yet disinterested muslim teenager who works there (I think his name’s Ali?) and then as you walk out go back to your crappy shack with your cats or your playstation (depending on gender) it hits you…Life is a fucking shitty row to hoe, man. Being a kid…about four months to about twenty four, that’s the window, then it starts closing and man, you don’t even see it. Oh, yeah, you’re twenty nine and you’re thinking ‘shit’s awesome. I got a decent job and I get my share of blowjobs…what could possibly go wrong? Let me tell you, buddy. Decent job becomes crappy job as you suddenly realize that you’ve stagnated too long in one shitty spot and now all the new positions you want are being taken by younger people who are more qualified and willing to work for less than you, because they’re only 22 and they don’t give a shit about all the creature comforts you’ve grown accustomed to, like shampoo. Those blowjobs? Let me lay it down for you, sport. The chicks that are A) good at those B) decent looking C) not totally nuts are getting snapped up left and right in their youth. You’ll have a brief window in their early thirties once the ones who made big mistakes get divorced and back out there, but by then, they’re bitter, maybe a kid into the game and it’s just all-around different then the sweet beej that you used to get under the blanket just sitting right there in the seat on your flight back from Philly. Nope, just wait a few seconds, and before you know it, the only no strings attached blowjobs you’ll be getting will be from the craziest/sloppiest/dumbest/most un-deal-withable bitches in the world.
Suddenly, marriage isn’t so bad, eh?
I mean, I love my wife and I loved my wedding. I mentioned before that I’m pretty sure that getting married was the best day of my life, and it was for sure the best decision I ever made. BUT, like everything in life that’s worth a shit, it’s hard and it can be pretty unbearable sometimes. Think about this…getting old sucks, but it beats the alternative, which, for the mongaloids out there, is being dead. Being married may be a series of compromises and barter that involves forced trips to Bed Bath and Beyond in exchange for resentful blowjobs, but hey man, at least you’ve got someone with you at BB&B, right? You’re not that lady picking out another cat bed for yet another cat. And YOU! Dude in the mix! How dare you question the value of having her around. Man, without her you’d be eating brownies for breakfast, shitting in the sink and you’d still be wearing that dumb sweater and those fucking sandals (I don’t care HOW comfortable they were). You’re lucky someone will so much as breathe on your dick! Marriage is a great thing that is also terrible, and I believe this firmly, despite the inherent seeming contradiction, but you know what else it is? It’s a treaty. It’s a pact, it’s like playing survivor, man. You get out there in the middle of the bullshit where there’s nothing but leeches who want to suck your blood and dogs who want to eat your food and wreck your stuff and pigs who want to shit on you and some conniving rich bastard fat cats who have a vested interest in your life being miserable so you go up to the best guy you can find upon looking around (the black guy is a good bet) and you go “hey, as long as we’re out here, let’s make a deal. You don’t fuck me around too bad, and I won’t fuck you around too bad…Hell, maybe we can even fuck around some of these other people for our joint amusement.” He says yes and that’s it. The game’s a little better. Sure, you’ve gotta share the peanut butter, but it beats the shit out of NOT sharing the peanut butter, when you consider that people who don’t share the peanut butter are usually eating it with a spoon while they play World Of Warcraft in their jizz encrusted easy chair in their mom’s basement. That’s the thing, man. Marriage may suck, but it beats the alternative. That’s it.
Oh, but before I go, let me say a thing or two about bad decisions. Everyone knows someone who married the wrong person. This is WAY worse than being single. WAY worse. This is like being forced to cohabitate with someone who doesn’t have your best interest at heart. Jail is a good example of this, as is freshman year in college. There’s no polish in the world that can shine up that turd, so if that’s you, or it’s about to be you…life’s rough, you shouldn’t have picked that bitch. Dump her, then cruise down to the disc exchange and see if you can still buy your records back.
Here’s a story about bad decisions that you’ll all maybe enjoy. It’s a thanksgiving tale, in that I’m so thankful that I haven’t seen the dipshit protagonist of this story in ten years. I hope it brings you joy on your holiday.

Okay, I was getting tattooed about ten years ago by my friend Tom. Now, I’m not sure if this is the case everywhere, but in almost every tattoo shop I’ve ever been into, there’s always a guy, heavily tattooed, kind of a mongo who doesn’t really work there, but acts like he does and essentially hangs out, pretends to the customers that he works there and tries to scam free tattoos. In the shop I went to, this dude was named Carl. Carl was everything you could imagine and less. On his knuckles, he had “shit” and “Fuck” tattooed respectively. Totally, bro.
So anyway, I’m getting tattooed and Carl is the only other person in the shop. He’s making fun of me for being a pussy (big, ugly tattooed guys do this a lot to smaller, less ugly tattooed guys…hmmm) and suddenly he announces to Tom that when I’m done, he wants to get a tattoo.
“Man, right when you’re done with this, I wanna get something, Tom!”
“You know what you want?”
“Nah, not yet, but man, that’s the best way to come up with shit, just spur of the moment. That’s how I got the crafty beaver on my leg!”

Now, for those of you from outside the chicagoland area, Crafty Beaver is a local hardware chain with a mascot that can only be described as a meth addicted beaver in green overalls holding up what I believe is a monkey wrench. Carl lifted the leg of his jeans up, exposing this very mascot, permanently stained onto his thigh, except for one key difference. Carl’s crafty beaver had a speech balloon. The beaver was saying “Fuck it!”
So Carl’s sitting there, and then all of a sudden you can just see the bulb go off in his head and he says:

“Tom, I got it! Right here, under my belly button, hip to hip I want you to do “Time To Eat!” in big ass letters!
“Okay, man. I’ll draw it up as soon as I’m done here”
Carl sat back, pleased with himself, smiling the vapid smile of the mentally infirm, smoking not unlike the way a truly satisfied chimpanzee would smoke. Then, suddenly he sat bolt upright.
“Nah dude! Fuck ‘Time To Eat!’ I got a better one—‘Eat at Carl’s!’ How fucking awesome is that man? Eat at Carls…Heh. Carl, you genius.”
This was met with bemused silence and nods. Carl tipped his chair back on two legs and just kind of owned it all. Suddenly, (I swear this is true) Carl stands up and he’s so fucking excited that he’s literally turning red. When he next speaks, it’s in an excited, spittle flecked shout.
“No dude! I got it man! Under my bellybutton, big ass letters, hip to hip, soon as you’re done with this pussy, ‘Carl is Good Food!’ That’s what it’s gonna be man…’Carl is Good Food!” Oh shit, bro. That’s so fucking awesome. I can’t wait!”

As far as I know, that’s what he got.

So there you have it, decisions, people. They can start out terrible (Time to eat) and quickly, if unchecked, devolve into completely horrendous I’ll-never-get-another-free-or-even-retail-priced-blowjob-again type decisions (Carl is good food). I forget my point, but as I walked out of there with my tattoo of burt and ernie eating a single hotdog from both ends, I chuckled to myself that Carl was a real dumbass. Um…That was also the last time I saw him, or Tom for that matter. Hmmm…Anyway, whatever. I’m done with this bullshit. Have a good holiday, you fucks. I’m doing my Thanksgiving with my mom and the Cobra Skulls (look ‘em up…they’re the best).
As-salaam-aleykum, and happy Turkey day.

Monday, November 24, 2008

Welcome to the doors of hell

God, the fucking holidays are upon us. What a hellish crapscape of heavily populated, soulless, lonely conversation-survivalism. There is nothing more damaging to your spirit, your soul, your thetan (for those of you that are scientologists) than the weeks of bullshit that start now and end on Jan. 1. OKAY, so I’m not a scrooge and I enjoy seeing my family and I love not having to work and the smell of pine trees and the mashed potatoes and the sweaters and spirit and joy and thankfulness blah blah bleh…yeah, that’s some top notch shit, for sure. I’m not trying to shit down the throat of anyone’s holiday, okay. AND I’m not one of those ‘isn’t-it-funny-to-hate-the-holiday-cheer aloof dipshits (who by the way span the grid from Williamsburg dildos to Vince-Vaughn-like dildos) I just dread standing there in my sweater, holding a tiny red plate with some crumbs and a napkin on it in one hand, clutching a glass of wine in the other and waiting for the receiving line/red carpet style grilling to begin. Here’s what I’m talking about:
Everyone in this room knows me as a caricature. These aunts, cousins, in laws, family friends, deranged old people, drunk uncles, boyfriends of people I know, sweet, fat black maids in traditional uniform (I go to some pretty high falootin’ and racist holiday gatherings) they see me, and while their intentions are, in all likelihood purely sweet, they file through the little rolodex in their minds and when they get to the card with my name on it, they pull it out and this is what it says:

Brendan Kelly- Plays in band

They flip the card over, and it’s just blank. BUT, they’re already shaking my hand and saying ‘hi’. So, you know what comes next? Dear jesus:
“So, how’s the band?”
“Oh, we’re good. We’re just doing some weekends here and there, you know…slowly putting material together for a new record. It’s hard to do with the baby, not as much time, you know?”
“Yeah, I can see that. So let me ask you, when you go out on tours, do you have shows set up or do you just show up and figure out where you’re going to play?”
I promise you, this question, along with the next inevitable question is asked to me about ten thousand times a day at any sort of holiday function. Oh, what’s the next question?

“And you guys get paid for that?”

My answer is usually “Yeah, right? It’s pretty crazy and unbelievable, but that’s been my only job for a while. I think they’re starting to wise up though. HAHAHAHAHA.” But what my thetan is screaming from inside me is “What the fuck is that supposed to mean? I mean, obviously you have no idea what being in a touring band is about, as evidenced by your first, absolutely retarded question (okay, just to clear the air here, you MUST PLAN A SHOW, BE IT LOCAL OR AWAY, IN ADVANCE. Otherwise NO ONE WILL KNOW YOU’RE GOING TO BE THERE, including FANS, CLUB OWNERS, SOUND PEOPLE, THE GUY WHO BRINGS THE STAGE EQUIPMENT, ANYONE. This is problematic because if no one knows you’re going to be there, no one will show up, and you will be sitting in a parking lot outside of a locked venue. I don’t know what dumb movie everyone seems to have seen where some band must just jump in a car with no direction and take over the world with their jams, but that’s not really how it works. Booking a tour is a thankless, crappy task but it’s crucial. It’s the ‘wiping your ass’ of being in a band. If being on stage is taking the dump- super cathartic, it feels great, it’s a good way to lose weight…I guess the metaphor kind of falls apart after that…anyway, then booking the tour is wiping the ass [which I know seems counter intuitive since that’s a clean up maneuver, but it’s the thankless, less fun part without which, everything would be a shitty mess, so HA!]. Okay, as a parenthetical note, there are people who set off on tour with no shows booked and just do it. These people are called pseudo hippy rich kids with a safety net. NO ONE can do this unless they really have nothing to lose. If you doubt me, think about this…How do they afford to keep going with no promises of any money? Gas and food, man. Shit costs money. Oh, I’m sure there’s some great legend about some punk band stealing gas, dumpstering food, playing in Laundromats, sleeping under the stars, blah blah blah. To that I say this: That’s the new ‘backpacking across Europe’. It’s a great adventure if you can afford it, because doing that shit for real- ie, traveling around the country with NO MONEY is what hobos do, and those dudes are grizzled from it. Are you grizzled? No. Can you look at a bathroom stall without shivering and going back to a ‘happy place’? Then you’re faking the funk. No harm in it, just don’t treat it like some great victory for freedom when it’s just a vacation.
Anyway, I’m off topic, and I’m ranting in two different directions, so I better get out of these parentheses.)
Okay, so of course I get fucking paid for it. What kind of a person do you think I am? I mean, again, obviously you have no idea about this stuff, but how do you think I survive? I do (did) this all the time, 24 hours a day, and here’s a little rule of thumb, distant aunt: If you don’t get paid, you can’t do something all the time. Anyway…yeah. Then they walk away and someone else comes up and the whole thing starts over again. God help me. Where’s the fucking egg nog?
THEN there's this: I spent the last couple of years writing a novel. There are a few people who have this on their little card. Their card reads like this:

Brendan Kelly- Plays in a band, did some sort of book or something.

These people come up and ask “Hey, what’s going on with the book?’ At this point my first thought is, “Oh jesus, I wish they’d just asked me about my fucking band,” because I really have nothing to say. Uh, yeah, I wrote it, then I went to try and get it published, but that’s really hard and I don’t know anyone who publishes vulgar literary fiction, and uh…as time passed I began to doubt the merits of the book which undermined my determination to break into the impossible world of publishing so I sort of gave up. Oh, I’m not proud of it. In fact, it’s a real drag to think about. Hey, did you know that I actually get paid to play music?
It’s gonna be a long thanksgiving-christmas corridor. Oh, I’ve also got a movie script to pretend to talk about with some people that I wrote with a perverted Norwegian South American ex pat via email. Maybe someone’s got that on their card. Fuck, let’s talk about my book, or cancer. Let’s just talk about cancer.

Yesterday I was in Crate n Barrel (which is exactly what my hell will look like. Throw pillows, slate grey down comforters, decorative sconces, quirky rolling pins, you get the idea) and they were playing this version of Rudolph the red nosed reindeer that was kind of a slow house/ trance, grindy Leonard-Cohen esque slice of audio molestation the likes of which I’ve never heard before. That’s when it hit me. We’re here. The fucking holidays are here. Good luck everyone. This year, I’ve got a baby. He’s taking all questions in my place. Nice.

Friday, November 21, 2008

You know where you are?

So, yesterday I was surfing the internet and I came across a review of Chinese Democracy from the NewYork Times. The review essentially said that the album is lifeless, overthought, overwrought and ultimately way too long and way too dull. This is funny because the review in question was two full pages long and was so hellbent on making sure that we, the readers, understood that the reviewer was A) a competent writer B) An expert on Guns N Roses C) An expert on recording music and D) extremely bummed by the results of Axl’s 17 or whatever year opus, that he ended up writing the Chinese Democracy of reviews, in that it was lifeless, overthought, overwrought and ultimately way too long and too dull.
I realize that people in New York are really into meta- shit and doing stuff that seems stupid until you realize that in fact, dumb farm boy, it’s YOU that’s the stupid one (for example, have you seen any of those juxtapositions of shit and Jesus? It’s wild, man. Someone like, shits, right? Then they put Jesus into the shit somehow. You see what I’m talking about? Sounds dumb, but then you realize ‘DUDE! This guy’s totally pointing out that shit fetishism in America has reached this zealotry that approaches a religious paradigm! Jokes on me! I’m the fucking moron, not the guy taking dumps in an art gallery!) SO, I suppose it’s possible that this reviewer is a genius and he figured that the best way to distill just HOW impossible Chinese Democracy was to get through, was to write a review of it that was also a review of his review that somehow hit all the points of the review while simultaneously exemplifying them, but I doubt it. The guy’s a music journalist for the New York Times…That’s like being the American Ambassador to Monaco. It’s a completely pointless job that makes some dumb prick feel exceedingly important. And man, if you can find me a more inherently verbose combination than New York Times Music Journalist, I’d be pretty impressed. Um…how about coked up art critic lecturing a college Art History class at NYU? That could actually even be the same guy. Huh. Okay, so it’s settled: I’ve contributed to the entropic unraveling of our universe by further commenting on this already bloated area of dicourse, and for that I should be reprimanded.
You know how there are people out there that just bring out the best in you? Like, for example, I don’t know what it is, but I’m always at my peak of wittiness and funniness when I’m with my friend Matt. I don’t know if it’s just that HE’S really funny and it’s like that thing where a bunch of hot chicks go out and the one scud that’s hanging with them kind of just looks hot too because she’s surrounded by so much gourmet clam, or if it has something to do with his expectations of me and my willingness to meet said expectations, but yeah. It’s nice to be around people who bring out the best in you.
My friend Chris DJ’d last night, and I went for a while. Eventually, I had to pull an Irish goodbye, which is, as per my understanding, where you piss in a potted plant, tell the hostess to go fuck herself and shit your pants on the drunken car ride home (or when you just bail without saying anything to anyone…depending on how racist you are towards the irish) but he did a really good job. Great, in fact. Someone in there was making him the best DJ he could possibly be. I think it was Tullamore Dew. Okay, I have to go to work, which I’m dreading significantly more than usual.
Oh, the show was super fun and although the caviar wasn’t that-day fresh, the assholes they were served in more than made up for it. Okay, toodles.

Thursday, November 20, 2008

I Choose none! Then I choose both!

I took the day off. It’s a great feeling. Some of my best friends are in town today, and we’re gonna go out to lunch and I’m gonna show off my baby and all that kind of good shit. My wife’s home today too. It’s a real weekend during the week.
Last night, for my class, I wrote a skit about Winston Churchill working as a waitress at Hooters. I don’t know if it was particularly clever, but it was pretty funny I guess.
Whatever. I’m listening to Howard Stern right now and they’re interviewing a prostitute and a former virgin and talking all about his wacky issues with having sex (none of which involved an aversion to prostitutes, but some of which involved racism being required [he’s a black guy] for him to get a boner). Usually when I write this thing, the blog, that is, the only sounds are those of my neglected child screaming wildly in the background, today it’s an interview about hardons. It’s distracting. That’s all.
My friends are playing a big show tonight and I’m going to go. I’m excited, but I’m also a little apprehensive. I mean, this show is huge, and I hate being around that many people with no exit strategy. I don’t know, man…I’m not like agoraphobic or anything, it’s just kind of spooky to be in the middle of a big crowd. Usually, I spend so much time, you know, backstage, schmoozing with the important people, drinking champagne and eating beluga caviar out of less important people’s assholes while hookers dressed as mimes tie animal balloons with their own, separate, non-caviar-filled assholes that I’m just not used to the big teeming hordes anymore.
Well, whatever. I’m just gonna have to hang out backstage then. Besides, I’ve seen and played shows at this venue before. It’s one of the worst sounding places in the universe. Fine. It’s settled. I’m not watching any music. More caviar and balloon animals for me then. Good.
Okay, I really don’t know what’s going on here on the radio. Here’s what I can’t stand. I think that the staff on Howard Stern is usually pretty funny and right on, but I can’t stand prank phone calls. I mean, not just the dumb ones that they do on Howard Stern. All of em. I think the Jerky Boys are dumb. I think crank yankers was totally stupid, and I just generally don’t find the whole genre to be very funny. Oh, we used to do it when we were kids, for sure. They were almost never that funny either. In fact, what the fuck am I talking about? They were completely stupid. Except maybe one time, and even that wasn’t that amazing or anything. Prank phone calls are like the Jokes in Martin Lawrence’s stand up set. Even the best ones are just BARELY chuckle worthy.
Well, anyway, my friend Farth, back when he was still called Jon, did a ‘good’ one where a woman called his house on a misdial. Rather than say “hey, you got a wrong number” he went into this whole thing about how ‘janie’ or whoever the woman on the phone was asking for, wouldn’t come to the phone because she’s sick of your bullshit, and she thinks you’re a bitch, and don’t call here again. That was a pretty funny gag I thought, for a thirteen year old kid to come up with just out of nowhere. Anyway, that’s not really a prank call….it’s more of just ruining some other lady’s day for a while. Also, it’s not really THAT great. Okay, whatever. I’m suddenly writing an essay about how prank calls succeed or fail as a comedic paradigm? No thanks. This is almost as big a waste of time as listening to prank calls, or watching Martin Lawrence movies.
Here’s the other thing, I don’t like the fucking music that they play between songs on this show. I mean, is there really a reason for hearing anything by Alanis Morrisette? Under any fucking circumstances? Jesus. Look, I thought it was as funny as you when it came out that she’d been blowing uncle Joey from Full House in movie theaters, but uh, that’s where my love affair with anything coming out of Alanis Morrisette’s mouth ended. You know what else is funny? He played a comedian on that show, and I’ll bet you a lifetime supply of donuts and hair gel that if he had to go head to head against Stamos and Saget, his jokes would be the worst. And that’s against Stamos and Saget. That’s like Warwick Davis playing the role of an NBA center and then having to play Steve Buscemi in one on one. Buscemi sucks at basketball, you can bet your dick. But Warwick Davis is way worse. How can I be so sure? He’s British. (if this isn’t immediately funny to you, you should probably image google Warwick Davis…just, you know, so you can get the full brutal force of the joke).
Okay, I’m going to go enjoy my day off. You can all go to hell. See you tomorrow.
Bk

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

the real househusband of chicago

I almost went back to bed this morning. I gave it some serious thought. When the baby went down for a nap, I looked at the pot of coffee and the door to the bedroom, my two divergent Alice in Wonderland style choices, and at the last possible second, I went with the coffee. I’m not sure that was the right choice.
It’s pretty crazy, I read this interview with Johnny Depp, and…well, actually, that makes it sound so much more classy than it really is, so let’s just dispense with the bullshit, shall we? I was flipping through one of those celebrity garbage magazines…in touch or us weekly or something like that and the big pull-out quote on the page, which featured a picture of the Deppster, said something to the effect of “now that I’m older, I talk about good nights of sleep like I used to talk about good nights of getting fucked up.” This is so true. Sleep’s like that bag of drugs that the one dude brought you the one time, but ever since then he only rarely comes through, so you sit around all night, antsy, anxious and just hoping it’s gonna show up, which it rarely does. Every once in a while you score big though. “Oh shit, last night man, I got so much fucking sleep. I started sleeping at seven thirty and didn’t even think about stopping til the sun was up, like way up. It was awesome.”
This is a metaphor, of course, and a not particularly apt one, because I didn’t sleep that well last night. I had crazy dreams and I was cold and hot at the same time, which is pretty uncomfortable, honestly. Whatever, not the point. I’m tired, my boy is sleeping, and I cannot WAIT to see those bitches from Real Housewives of Atlanta duke it out on the reunion show next week. That’s gonna be beautiful.
Anyone watch this thing? It’s about a bunch of rich black ladies (and one skanky drunk white lady who’s fucking some married man…pretty great) and they HATE each other. Even the ones who are supposedly friends just absolutely hate each other. It’s just this fucked up hodge podge mixture of desperate housewives and flavor of love. I’ve gotta be in a very specific mood to be able to handle it, and last night I was able to get through about two and a half episodes of the marathon. I don’t believe that DNA tests proved that Curtis isn’t really Ne-Ne’s father, do you???
Fuck…I have my class tonight and I’m supposed to write a clash of contexts script, like where Jesus is working at a Subway or you have a labor dispute at the great Pyramid. Or, you could do something where, say, you’re talking about movies in the way people talk about their favorite sports teams. I don’t really have any ideas. It’s currently looking like I’m not gonna write anything and not go to the class. Like I said, I’m pretty tired right now. Of course, it’s only 9 am so a lot can still change. Still, I don’t know what the fuck to write. Man. Wow. That’s pretty interesting, huh? My baby is still in there moaning, which means he hasn’t started sleeping yet, which I suppose, technically, means I can still go lie down. It’s tempting, let me tell you. Lord knows this isn’t really going anywhere.
I’m back. Wow. A tiny nap and a shower will do wonders for a guy. I feel about a zillion times better. The other night, my friend who just got back from Africa where he’s shooting this really upbeat little number about AIDS nurses and my friend Farth, who’s currently in the process of breaking into the film scene in Cordoba, Argentina and I went out for some cocktails at the local watering hole. It was nice to feel like a part of a group of people doing interesting things. I mean, in a way that wasn’t just related to being around a bunch of drunk guys who play music for a living. That’s cool too, but there’s a whole scene around that that I’ve been too close to for too long, so I’ve got enemies, and I’ve got issues with how certain bands stack up to other bands and all sorts of shit that just kind of sullies the excitement of it all. Plus, being in a band is so boring so much of the time that there’s hardly ever anything good going on, except what people are doing creatively outside of their musical endeavors. Whatever, I’m just mentioning that the other night when I was hanging out with two guys doing really global, ambitious projects I was like “Well, Kelly, you’ve arrived! Here you are with your two friends from gradeschool, the African documentarian, the bilingual south American script writing jew and you, a stay at home dad with a blog.” Felt good. Oh yeah. What didn’t feel nearly as good was waking up the next morning, but hey, that’s what artists do, right? They indulge. That’s why they…we! Become so compulsive about projects, it’s all the indulgence and excess that inform good writing/films whatever. Indulgence and excess are two things that absolutely MUST go into any good project. Even a minimalist piece, if it’s worth a shit, is by definition self indulgent and excessive in it’s dedication to its final result. So, that shot of Malort…totally in the name of art. Thank god that’s settled. Just so we’re clear, I’m not suggesting that people need to be fucked up to create good art. I absolutely DON’T think that’s true. In fact, while it’s sometimes true that being drunk or high or something can result in a truly off-the-cuff wonderful moment of conception or representation, as a rule, it makes it harder to create consistently good stuff. Just sayin. Whatever, though. Do what you want. Lord knows I don’t care.
My baby has this thing that we call his office. It’s a round desk that he stands in the middle of with all sorts of bells and blocks and fake phones and speakers and monkeys and yodas and shit all over it. Sometimes it’s a real gas, but he seems like a disgruntled little employee right now. He needs a break, I think, from his fake office job. I mean fuck, he’s only seven months old. Okay, this is getting loud, so I’m done. Have a good one, people.

Monday, November 17, 2008

...In worn out shoes.

As a general rule, I don’t believe in stereotypes or racism. In fact, I think that the whole adherence to those fucked up ideas makes for some of the funniest jokes around. I don’t think it’s funny when someone makes some comment about a black guy liking fried chicken because of the actual content, I think it’s funny because well, really? That’s your thing? Black guys and fried chicken? Huh. Okay, firstly who on this earth DOESN’T like fried chicken? Next, you sound like an imbecile. Right? I mean, I’m not alone on this, am I? This sort of racism is so dumb that it almost pans out to awesome simply because the guy who’s spouting it is making a complete dick of himself just by articulating this kind of thing. Is this overly complex theory for fried chicken/watermelon jokes? Perhaps. BUT, I’m merely bringing this up because I ran, against my will, mind you, face first into a completely accurate stereotype like this last night. I wish I hadn’t and I’d actually love to unlearn it…but alas.
So, a few years ago, my friend Marcus and I were bowling. Jon, a dude we went to gradeschool and highschool with was visiting from NYC and was with us. I was in charge of the score sheet. Being the exceedingly clever dude I am, I wrote our names as various purile curses, such as butt, balls and fart. Let’s, for the sake of easy storytelling, say that those were the three names. I was butt, Marcus was balls and Jon was fart. Well, Jon was terribly offended. I mean, he would NOT be fart on the score sheet. Never mind that we, the only other people around were balls and butt respectively, he wasn’t having it. SO, he attempted to alter said score sheet. I think he wanted to turn ‘fart’ into ‘farther’ for some reason (A vastly worse bowling name, by the way…I’ll be fart any time. Farther? What are you, some kind of prog rock minister? Anyhow…) but once he put the H onto fart, Marcus and I caught on and shit got funny. FARTH!!!!??? You want to be called Farth? Uh…no, I was trying to make it say… Nope! You’re farth now. You could have been fart for ten frames, but you got greedy, and now you’re farth for the rest of your life. And, here’s the best part: it worked. My wife, who I’ve known for almost a decade, thought that Jon’s name was Farth until last year. It’s become so ubiquitous that there’s just no denying it any more. My friend from South America came up to stay with me last year, and he referred to Jon exclusively as Farth while he was here. This from a guy who knew Jon in high school, keeps in closer touch with him than I do, and wasn’t around for the renaming…he STILL calls him farth. It’s funny. We’ll nickname your ass. Watch out.
So, Farth was in my bar last night. He walked in and I’m not shitting you, he looked so much like Joe Jonas that I had a moment of involuntary laughter. Again, so we’re on the same page: Farth looks just like Joe Jonas: leather jacket, sweet scarf, gay hair…you get it. He was killing it. Now, Jon’s a pretty handsome cat, so it maybe can go unnoticed down in south America (where he lives) but let me tell you, upon witnessing him walking into a bar in the first world, man…the whole bar got Jonas fever, and by that I mean they were saying “who’s that didlo who looks like a jonas bro?” Jon’s 32. Not sixteen, thirty two. He looks young, and like I said, he’s good looking, but dude, he dresses like Joe Jonas, and in a cruel twist of fate, he LOOKS like Joe Jonas, so yeah. He’s one of those dudes Who I would, for sure, pretend not to know until it became imperative that I cast my allegiance. Then I’d be like “who, Joe Jonas the second over there? Yeah, I know him. He’s like, one of my oldest friends. He’s been in south America for a while. I’m confident he doesn’t realize how ridiculous he looks. Give him a break.”
So, Jon (Farth, for those of you keeping score at home) is jew. I, for whatever reason am always surrounded by jews. My highschool was pretty much all jews, the guy who puts out my band’s records, he’s a jew, it’s super jewy in my life…and that’s great., I’m pretty down with the jews. They’ve got great drugs for one thing. What else? Yeah. Hmmmm….So, man, jews…What’s their story? What do the hillbillies say about Jews? What’s the illiterate writing on the wall, so to speak? They’re cheap? Well, they’ve come a pretty long way since they killed jesus. I mean, they own Hollywood now, as per my understanding, and I think brave pioneers like Harvey Weinstien have made people realize that jews aren’t just cheap bastards, they’re just regular bastards like the rest of us. Nice work. This however, is where my friend Farth unravels all the hard work that brave jew pioneers have done for jews and their cheapness, or supposed cheapness.
Last night, Farth came into my bar at nine. He left with me at 2 to go get a drink at a four oclock bar. SO, that means he sat, drinking for five hours. I, as one of his oldest friends, charged him five bucks for his night of drinking. Guess what he gave me. Go on. Guess. Did you say a five dollar bill? You’d be right. I mean seriously, How badly are you setting back the ‘jews aren’t cheap’ cause, farth? Five bucks? This is a guy who I’ve been very close friends with for 22 years! I can’t even imagine what he’d do if a bartender wasn’t a lifelong bestie. Oh, five bucks? Well, here’s three. Keep the change. Cheap fuck. The thing is, I tried to shame him in front of the bar after this unacceptable display, and he was unflappable. SO, knowing that he reads the BSC, I’ve decided to take my case here. Hey farth! You cheap fuck. Next time, I’m charging you full price for the negronis AND I’m not gonna tell people to relax when they begin to get angry due to your Jonas Bros doppelganging. Eh,…whatever. I’m kidding a bit. I love that guy. Glad you’re in town, you cheap jew;.

Friday, November 14, 2008

It's still a felony!

Okay, is it even legal to have this fascination with Hannah Montana? I don’t personally care about her, but she seems like she’s everywhere. And it’s not even Hannah, it’s her skanky alter ego, Miley that’s all over the place. She’s fucking some twenty year old guy and people can’t get enough of it. Hmmm…creepy? I think so. It’s gotta have something to do with this whole 24 hours of news, 7 days a week thing that we’ve decided was a good idea for some reason. Here’s the problem with that. Journalists, by and large, are uncreative and marginally talented. This isn’t the slight to journalists that it seems. The same is true for any demographic. Musicians, by and large are uncreative and marginally talented. That’s why there are ten thousand records in a store and none you want to buy. Actors, by and large are uncreative and marginally talented. That’s’ why for every DeNiro in Taxi Driver, there are a thousand Ashton Kutchers in What Happens In Vegas. Okay, so just so no one soils their precious journalist panties, it’s an across the board thing, not exclusive to journalists. HOWEVER, journalists do have one distinction, namely they’ve decided that they would not be qualified to actually participate in their field of interest, and instead have opted to discuss it, either through harsh snap judgments, completely lifeless non-biased recitation or in the rare, rare, rare, rare, rare case, something approaching a stand alone piece of decent writing. This, however, is rare.
So, now that we’ve established that, we’ve got this problem. We need shit going on 24 hours a day, seven days a week for these pundits, journalists, and various talking heads and experts to discuss on these twenty four hour news channels. There has to be news or there’s no programming, then there are no commercials, then there’s no revenue and then MSNBC goes off the air and Keith Olbermann has to go back to bagging groceries at the I-26 Winn Dixie, and no one wants that. He’s such a smug bastard. “did you know that even though this says fat free, it still contains corn syrup, so really it’s more fattening than the regular product?” Just bag the groceries Olbermann. Fuck.
The problem is that OJ isn’t always killing and JonBenet isn’t always being killed. There’s not that much news out there. And the news that is out there is deathly uninteresting to Americans. I mean, who cares about some more brown people dead in some other landslide/flood/earthquake/genocide/civil war? Right? All the way on the other side of the world? Whatever. That shit’s depressing. I wonder what’s going on with Miley. Is she still fucking that twenty year old? Is Bill O’reilly gonna ask her if she plans to stay a virgin? I hope so. I loved the way he handled the Jamie Lynn pregnancy. SO, this is what happens. These vapid talking heads and various anorexic/manorexic news ciphers give the people what they want, which is a lot like giving someone a Dorito. At first, no one wants a Dorito. At best, there’s ambivalence. However, after that first one, oh fuck, lock the doors and batten down the nacho cheese, man, those Dorito’s are as good as gone. It’s the same way with this pseudo news. Once you start, you can just sit there and judge people you don’t know who are richer and better looking than you and it’s nice, it’s easy and there’s no worries. Who the fuck wants real news after that? Especially since the real news is usually no good anyway.
I don’t know. I’m not calling for people to get out there and find out what’s happening (I mean, you should, but are you gonna do it because I said so? No. Therefore, I’m not gonna waste our time) I just don’t want to see that girl anymore. WHY is she in the column on the side of CNN.com? I can’t get away from her. I need some solitude.
Remember solitude? Up until I was about 23, I’d find myself, several times a day, just alone, walking, driving, sitting around some coffee shop/bar/bookstore/dildo exchange and I’d just sort of think and relax and it was part of the natural ebb and flow of my day. Now, I can’t walk from my door to my car without making or receiving a phone call. It’s pretty crazy how much cell phones have transformed human existence. Remember the days of making plans and then having to keep them? There was a time when people would talk and say things like “all right, so then I’ll meet you Friday on the corner of broadway and Oakdale at 730” and YOU’D HAVE TO REMEMBER AND BE THERE? EVEN if the conversation took place on a Monday? Remember pulling up and honking the horn to get someone to come outside? Remember walking or driving and not jib jabbing with Bethany about how fucking dope miley’s boots were last week when she played at Knotts Berry Farm? Ah the old days. BUT, I had to walk six miles to school through a rain of stomach bile and period blood in boots made of goat dicks, so in a way, the young people have it better now. Hmmm.
Fuck man. I gotta go to work. My kid’s never gonna know solitude. That’s kind of weird. Eh, whatever. Have a good weekend. I’m gonna sleep.

Thursday, November 13, 2008

Which one are you? I'm Stephen.

Okay, so I was all geared up to write something this morning. I had a specific topic when I woke up, which currently escapes me. It probably had something to do with going to work, as I’m doing that in just a few minutes, but whatever. It wasn’t gonna be that interesting, at least not anything innovative for this particular corner of the internet. Again, whatever. So I took my kid to daycare (where I have the distinct feeling that a lot of, not all, but a lot of the girls who work there [college girls in sweatsuits] are perpetually hung over cockhounds….I could be wrong, I’ve been wrong before. This is just my impression, and they all seem real good with kids, so I don’t care. This is pure empirical observation, people. Their personal lives, besides being fodder for me to speculate about publicly, are really none of my business, and I’m not judging, unless you count ‘cockhound’ as a term of judgment, in which case I just feel bad for you, but as usual, I digress…) and when I was driving home, I was listening to Howard Stern interviewing Michael Lohan and Stephen Baldwin. Now, this is what erased my mind. Do you know what these two guys have in common (besides both being insanely jealous of Alec Baldwin and wanting to fuck Lindsay Lohan)? That’s right everyone! JC! They’re both Christians. AND they said some prayers, talked about their charity work (some dumb quasi celebrity boxing match) their mission work (going to brothels in Thailand and getting kids out of there [which is commendable. Once, I was in a mountain town with my in laws and our waiter was this guy who was just gross. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but besides his comb over, brown teeth, sloppy disgusting Jabba-body and creepy elocution, there was an eeeew factor just dripping, oozing out of this guy. THEN he volunteered the information that he had just gotten back from a solo trip to Thailand. Now, gents, here’s a little word to the wise. Are you going to Thailand by yourself? Okay, now if you answered yes, please carefully look over the following questions: Is it on business? Are you some sort of Martial Artist or aspiring chef? Is there ANY good reason {besides some bullshit, like ‘oh, I just love the architecture’ which is the reason that this guy gave} for you to be going so far all by yourself? Okay, now I’m not saying that every guy who goes on a solo vacation to Thailand is exclusively interested in pumping kids, trannies, goats in coconut bikinis, what have you…I’m just saying that everyone is going to THINK that’s what you’re doing, so just be aware of that while planning your trip. So, long story short, the waiter seemed even creepier after that. Okay.]) And then, Stephen and Michael tried to get Howard to convert his show to a Christian show, promising 15 million more listeners.
Well, this whole thing struck me as odd. Nah, that’s not exactly right. It just seemed like proof. “Huh?” you ask. Well, at the risk of going off on yet another tangent, have you ever seen that “Way of the Master” shit with Kirk Cameron where he points to a banana and calls it every atheists nightmare and then he goes through all this bullshit with the banana to prove that evolution is a farce, and that God is hooking shit up right here, right now? (Bear in mind, he’s one of those guys who thinks dinosaurs and humans walked the earth together, so we’re dealing with a complete fucking mongoloid) He says shit like “it’s got a protective seal and a pop top and it fits right in your hand! Thanks God!” Of course, this is ignoring the fact that the modern banana is completely engineered by human controlled artificial selection, not to mention all sorts of pesticides and shit like that, but whatever, he’s a mongo, like I said. Anyway, if the banana, according to Kirk, is proof of god, I’d like to argue that this appearance by Michael Lohan and Stephen Baldwin is the counter argument. Proof that there is no god. It’s hard to disprove something. That’s the greatest problem in science. It’s nigh impossible. However, sometimes shit comes together and you kind of look at all the data and say to yourself ‘woah, there’s no god.’
This isn’t gonna be long and drawn out, it’s pretty simple. Howard Stern’s show is probably the biggest show in the history of radio, right? I mean, he’s for sure the only A list celebrity to ever come out of the medium. Now, you’re telling me that God got some time on the Stern show to talk Jesus with millions of people – Heathen people, mind you- and he sent fucking MICHAEL LOHAN and STEPHEN BALDWIN???!??!?!?!?! Sorry, don’t buy it for a second. These two cock farmers couldn’t get cast in a direct to DVD tampon commercial; there’s no way that they’re the two members of the flock chosen by god to go on the stern show. AND, lest you think that God’s too busy doing other things, first of all, they (Mike and Steve) talked to him on the air, and it sounded, from what they were saying, like he heard them, and secondly he’s really not doing shit anywhere else. Didn’t we talk about this before? There are kids sucking gross waiter penises in Thailand, and kids eating dirt in Africa and kids in my very town who have to shit into grocery bags because they have no toilets. God’s not doing shit, and yet these representatives of god (not just Mikey and Stevie, mind you, but they’re on my list today), these unbelievable fucks have the nerve to tell these people “it’s cool, you’ll get yours in heaven.” Easy for you to say, Jerry Falwell, Stephen Baldwin, Ted Haggard, George Bush, any number of self righteous millionare douchebags who use people’s own hopeless ignorance against them. YOU SLEEP IN A HEATED HOUSE AT NIGHT!!! “You’ll get yours in heaven.” What an unbelievable pile of bullshit. That’s how I’m gonna start paying my bills. “Hey, yeah, I saw I owe a hundred fifty six bucks for cable, but how bout you just wait til we get to heaven and I’ll get you back then. Hey, fuck it, I’ll double it. How can you afford NOT to wait until we get to heaven?”
Well, there you go. Jesus has ruined my day again. Thanks Jesus. It’s funny, Cisco Adler (the guy with the huge, droopy ballsack) has a really powerful dad, and though he doesn’t really do much, he has this magnetic energy that makes people compulsively watch everything he does and really celebrate him as something special, even though he’s essentially just a long-haired douchebag with a powerful dad and nothing else really going on. Sound familiar, Jesus? Mmm hmmm.
I got drinks to pour. Bye.

(Oh, and just by the way, have you guys seen that M&M's commercial where Stephen Baldwin gets handily out-acted by a CGI M&M? Pretty good work there. Pretty, pretty good.)

Wednesday, November 12, 2008

Oh, Jack! You know i love my Beef n' Cheddars

As an artist, the worst thing you can really try to do is stuff your art into a genre where it doesn’t belong. This may sound odd at first, but this is the way that completely disingenuous crap gets created on a pretty daily basis. Okay, a big, glaring example of this is that guy from Blink 182 who decided his new band was going to be the next U2. BUT, here’s the problem…Our buddy in Blink isn’t really that versatile of a musician, and as a result, he had songs that sounded like Blink 182 with dumb guitar effects, and UNLIKE Blink, his new band sounded hopelessly contrived. (Just for the record, I hate U2 and I’m in no way saying it’s harder to be U2 than to be Blink. I’m saying it’s impossible for the guy from Blink to become a U2 type, capice?) This new band sounded (sounds) desperately like someone attempting to sell the emperor new clothes. You can’t just put some chorus on the guitars and tell people you’ve been listening to the Arcade Fire and call it indie rock. Only the dumbest people on earth will follow you there. And they have, so that’s cool, but that doesn’t make it any less crappy.
Have you seen the movie ‘The Professional’? Now, everyone talks about how great this turd is, and it never ceases to amaze me. This movie, for those who don’t know, is about a little girl (a young princess Amadala) who falls in love with a trained assassin who decides, between long, pointless shots of him gauzily ironing his shirts, that he’s going to teach her to kill. It’s one of the dumbest, most strained, unnatural movies I’ve ever seen. There’s never a moment where anything that any character does seems motivated by anything other than adhering to the pitch that the greasy Hollywood studio turd threw at the other greasy Hollywood studio turd, which was essentially “it’s like the karate kid but with some molester/sexual tension undertones and guns instead of karate.” Yeah, I know this is an imperfectly fashioned metaphor. Take it up with the rest of the dorks that like this piece of garbage movie on your message board. I’m not attempting to convince anyone that they should stop liking the Professional, I’m merely pointing out that it sucks. It really, really attempts somehow to be an art film. There are so many scenes, pointless, completely labored, chorus-on-the-guitars-in-the-guy-from-Blinks-new-band-style-scenes where he’s ironing, or writing, or staring off into space. What’s the message? He’s a regular guy, and he’s lonely and he misses a woman’s touch? So he trains an eleven year old to kill, huh? Great idea. Good economy in story telling too. Do you hear how dumb it sounds? It’s actually somehow dumber. This is what happens when you stuff your art into the wrong box. This should have been a crappy popcorn movie, and maybe it would have been great fun, but it tries to be some sort of French ennui piece and as a result, well, I’m wasting my precious moments while my baby sleeps complaining about it, fifteen years after it came out. Fuck man. I need a new hobby.
So things don’t have to be that good to be great. They just have to know what they are and exploit that to all the advantages. Okay, like an ugly porn star that’s enthusiastic is a lot more palatable than some hot porn star who somehow has the notion that she’s too good for the porn she’s in. Here’s a little social measuring stick. The porn you’re in defines you, not the other way around. This can be applied to almost anything. Look at the biggest piece of social porn that’s been created in the last twenty years: Of course I’m referring to “Metallica: Some Kind of Monster.” Those guys went into that shit as 4 sort of enigmatic, slightly out of touch rock gods and came out of it COMPLETE LOSERS. My lifestyle determines my deathstyle? That’s the lyrics you’re writing now? Jesus fucking Christ. There was a time when James Hetfield was (like it or not, everyone) one of the most innovative rock musicians on the planet, and now he’s this fucked up looking rock and roll colonel Sanders who writes songs that dudes in Metallica tribute bands are going back to being CPA’s because of.
It’s the porn you’re in. You’re not going to elevate the interracial gangbang film with your presence. You’re simply announcing to the world that you are now a person who does interracial gangbang porn. And that’s fine. Okay, I’m in no way dissing that choice. Someone has to do it. Nothing sadder than throwing a gangbang and no one showing up. So I hear. But I’m off topic to be sure, so what I was saying is, things don’t have to be good to be great, but self awareness and figuring out how to maximize what you’re working with is paramount to everything when it comes to creating anything, from the Mona Lisa to Choco-vanilla Anal Parade 76.
The Ramones are a great example of artists who exploited a limited artistic boundary to excellent effect. So is the movie Revenge of the Nerds. It’s got everything, great jokes, timely archetypal, yet believable characters, tits, a rap, a gay character who’s actually sympathetic in the early 80’s in a movie geared towards teen boys…I mean, you may think I’m being glib, but that’s a fucking awesome movie. And it’s not because it’s ‘great’. It’s because it knows exactly what it is, and it excels at that.
Dostoyevsky is a great writer. The book “Demons,” though, is pretty hard to read. I don’t know if it’s too arch for my tastes or if it’s just too theoretical, but I don’t get the compelling exploration of a psyche that I think is Fyodor’s stock in trade from Demons. I don’t know what my point is, because I’m not suggesting it’s bad, I guess I’m just pointing out that things can be technically good without being enjoyable (examples: Steve Vai, Stevie Ray Vaughn, Jerry Seinfeld, Cody Lane) Now, on the other side of the coin, we have someone like David Sedaris. He’s a great writer too, but his writing is great precisely because he knows what he can do, and he pushes THOSE boundaries, rather than pushing boundaries he should just leave alone. This is the disconnect for a lot of people. I’m not saying you can’t explore and expand your horizons as an artist, but let’s say you’re Bobby Brown…You really think that you’re gonna ‘go country’? That’s just a bad idea. You’re an RnB dude, take RnB to bold new places…fuck, infuse some country if that’s your bag, but do it from the perspective of Bobby Brown, not some fucking dumb country avatar or whatever. Okay, again, off topic.
David Sedaris writes great, funny stories about pretty much nothing. Recently (actually, about 3 years ago, I guess) I read a story about him going to his crazy sister’s house and doing all the dishes and feeling bad for her life and it was obvious that he felt guilty about writing about it. And the story was no good. Sedaris excels at saying shit without fear of reprisal, or writing shit like no one’s reading it. That’s what he’s great at. The minute he becomes self aware as an AUTHOR exploiting someone else’s life to entertain strangers, he’s broken the proverbial seal, and it just isn’t as much fun.
Okay, and there’s also shit like the Butterfly Effect which is so bad and so hopelessly unaware that it just becomes fucking AWESOME. That’s one of the most fun movies in the world, whether you’re laughing at Ashton Kutcher winking at the camera during his scenes where he pretends to be inept with the ladies (as if, everyone!) or that big fat dude from My Name is Earl playing a bad ass goth guy (which is fucked up for so many reasons it almost makes my head spin) you can’t go wrong with the Butterfly Effect.
Wow, this is long today. I have my class tonight and my skit is about inter office dating on a porn set. Should be funny. But it won’t be. Ah well…They can’t all be happy days, right?

Tuesday, November 11, 2008

I think "Jamburger" is a pretty good name for a band.

So last night I had a dream that I deleted my Myspace page. Then this morning I woke up, and before I knew it, I was reading an article about the best places in the US to raise kids and (spoiler alert) Mt. Prospect Illinois won the whole thing, which is funny, because the only people I know from Mt. Prospect are perverts and social mongos, but whatever. That’s really not the point. Here’s the point: Dreams about Myspace, articles about raising kids…I’m obviously a very conflicted nerd. I’m two different extremely uninteresting people trapped in one body. As such, I was thinking about zazzing this shit up a tad. Something about blowjobs or felching or crack whores….It’s just been too long.
Okay, so the secret to impressing strippers is money and cocaine. I don’t know how strictly true this is for all strippers, but I’m serious when I tell you that I was given this sage piece of information by a used car salesman in Vegas once. Do you think I’m making this up? Sounds like the most majorly kickass dude on the planet right? He’s getting your grandma into one of those old easily exploding Ford Pintos and then once he’s cashed her pension, he’s off to the coke dealer and the titty bar to ‘impress some strippers.’ Totally great. This guy also told me that if my band ever ‘made it’ I should look him up. What a bro. Maybe I will someday. Actually, that might be just the motivation I need to actually push my little art project of a music career to the next level. Maybe me and the used car salesman can blow some lines, get a few lappies and then head back to the champagne room for a little high five/beej sesh. Oh yeah.
It’s pretty funny, really. To say that strippers are ‘impressed’ by money and cocaine is a lot like saying that dogs are impressed by dogfood and walks. Technically, I suppose there’s probably something to that, but really, I don’t think it’s like what the used car salesman thinks it’s like. I mean, when I want to impress somebody, usually I do moronic things like putting my best foot forward, attempting to speak eloquently or humorously, (whatever the situation calls for) if I’m really in the right space and time maybe I’ll bust out some of my better rap verses. Or you know, I’ll show them some cool places around my town, or introduce them to my friends and family. Shit like that. That’s what I do to impress people. Or at least, that’s what I used to do. Now? Oh, ever since that used car salesman told me what was up, I’ve got a whole new move. Now, I look at people real quick, make a snap judgment about what they really want RIGHT NOW based on a pretty arbitrary set of shitty stereotypes, then I just dangle that shit in front of their faces. It works like a charm.
This guy showed me how to pull out my ‘onion’ (his term for a wad of ‘hundos’ [benjamins, people! Come on, get with the new urban vernacular…or in this case, the California High Desert vernacular] My own onion wasn’t so impressive, but he told me I could just get a couple of twenties changed into a hundo and put that on the outside. Of course, I couldn’t fan it out like he could with his onion, but that would have to come later. This is when he told me that if I ever made it I should look him up…sheesh) and then, when you’re looking through your onion for just the right hundred, you accidentally let your bag of coke fall on the stage. Once you’re sure the stripper has seen it, you apologize and hastily put everything away. Next thing you know, you’re up to your dick in strippers! It’s like the brooms in Fantasia (and that’s not just some gross porn visual based on household dildos and American idol winners, for you youngsters out there. Fantasia is a movie…a Disney movie) The strippers just keep on coming and coming, marching out of the back room to that one song. Cut them in half, they just become two midget strippers. That’s what he says at least. Judging from the impressive cold sore he had, I’d say he knows his stuff, for sure.
Anyway, so now, when I see you, I just decide what you want and get that stuff and hold it in front of you.
If you’re fat, and I want to impress you, I’ll be eating a quad stacker from burger king, and I might accidentally let a chocolate shake fall out of the bag.
Are you gay? Do you want to be impressed by me? Well, I just happen to have the entire Christopher Lowell catalog series sitting right over there, and the first season of ‘It’s Christopher Lowell!’ on DVD. Also some buttplugs.
Hey! Mexican guy! Check out my brand new apron for bussing tables. It’s great. Maybe you can use it sometime if you want to hang out a little.
Black dude! Check out my shoes, and my crack, and my gold chains and my grill and some fried chicken and my Bentley….jesus, this one’s gonna take a while. You see my point.

Anyway…Christ. Vegas is that kind of place. The place where you meet the shittiest people on the earth and they’re somehow still looking down their noses at someone else. Nice. I don’t know. This isn’t supposed to be some morality play or anything. Later on, I’m gonna head down to the strip club myself. I’ll put the baby in the nursery with the strippers babies and just hang for a while.
This reminds me of a funny story. My buddy works as a bartender at the biggest strip club in Denver. A few months ago, the cops came in and arrested this dude who had been in there for a few hours because he’d left his baby in the car. Now, that’s great, but it gets better. Turns out, it was his girlfriend’s baby, and she had given him the money to go get the two of them McDonalds, and he’d used it instead on a Bud and some table dances. So charming. Talk about impressing people. I’m impressed. I mean, that dude’s got balls the size of tangerines! I guess it’s not, you know, ha ha funny, but it is funny, nonetheless. The moral of the story? Never get a girlfriend with kids. Easy. Then you can spend as much time as you want at the club, and your only limitations are the ones in your onion.

Monday, November 10, 2008

Let's be serious for a moment...

Would you rather eat with your ass or shit from your mouth? It seems fairly obvious at first, right? If you’re like most people, you have already instantly decided ‘uh, eat with my ass, dude. What are you, retarded?’ Okay, well firstly, you’re not supposed to say ‘retarded’ any more, okay? And secondly, think about it for a second. Shitting with your mouth would be a bummer, granted. A huge bummer. BUT, you shit all alone, in a bathroom. If you choose eating with your ass, that next dinner out with your boyfriend’s parents isn’t gonna end well, no matter how many witty anecdotes you regale them with.
Simply put, there’s no easy way to stuff food in your ass with other people around. SO that means if you choose eating with your ass, you’re either really flaunting your lack of appreciation for society’s mores, or you’re eating all your meals in the bathroom (just gross, even with regular, mouth-style ingestion) or you’re getting a whole new set of friends and favorite restaurants that I want nothing to do with.
If you shit with your mouth, yeah it sucks, but you just have to carry scope and gum. You should probably be carrying that shit anyway. Just this weekend I hung out with a friend whose breath just about murdered me. I don’t know what he was doing with HIS mouth, but man…wowzers. Let’s just say I wouldn’t be surprised if his ass smelled like sandwiches. Anyway.
This is usually the precursor to the much more interesting discussion, namely ‘what foods would be the best to, you know, make love to’. If you’re a woman or a bottom, well, it’s pretty boring right? I mean, I think the Porky’s movies have pretty much covered all the best ones. Cucumbers, gourds, carrots, bananas (probably not a good idea, actually), um, what else? Popsicles, you know, shit like that. What about if you’re a dude, though? Here’s where some good old fashioned American ingenuity comes in handy.
I have a friend who used to heat up baloney in the microwave and then line a hole in his couch with said baloney and fuck that. He claimed it was amazing. Personally, I’ve had sex with a couch sized woman with a vagina that smells like baloney and you know what? It’s not all that. But whatever, man. Some people like what they like. For example, my wife like’s Wendy’s. I don’t. There you go.
Okay, so people always talk about fucking pumpkins and stuff, but to me, this seems uncomfortable. Pumpkins, melons what have you, all have pretty sharp edges if you bore out a hole, and well, no thanks. I don’t care how soft the inside is (not very, by the way). I don’t know what kind of drillbit dicks these guys have, but the whole thing just sounds too rough and tumble for my sensitive demeanor.
Likewise, people have mentioned things like an apple pie. I don’t know where this came from, but it seems to be popular with the kids for some reason. Listen, an apple pie will just fall apart until you’re essentially fucking a handful of crusts. That’s ridiculous. Fucking a pie. Please. If you want to fuck a food, here’s my suggestions:

A bean burrito from taco bell, no onions and extra red sauce- Now, that’s never the way I’d order it if I was gonna eat it. I’d get sour cream on there and probably extra cheese. But to fuck it? Get those onions out of there. They’re little cubes and they’ll just be distracting at best. The red sauce seems like it’ll keep things um, sliding along smoothly and there you go. You’re fucking a burrito like a champ. Nice one. Oh, and it’s warm, so there’s that.

A jelly sandwich. This is really the winner, I think. You need white bread, not any kind of nice white bread though, you’ll need like wonder or something like that. And you need like Smuckers grape jelly, not preserves, but the real gelatinous stuff. You know what I’m talking about. What about that sandwich DOESN’T scream penile comfort, right? I don’t know that it would be good to eat. In fact, I’m nigh positive that I wouldn’t like it at all, as I don’t like either of the ingredients, but that’s not really what we’re talking about here, is it? It’s like the difference between eating with your ass or eating with your mouth. As delicious as they are to eat with your mouth, can you imagine how difficult it would be to cram a cheesesteak up your ass? I mean, if somehow I wound up eating with my ass, let’s say emergency surgery or something, it would be nothing but turkey dogs (no bun, no mustard, just dog) for the rest of my life. That seems doable, in a sort of “well, things really can’t get much worse now” sort of way.
Ah, here I am again, talking about stuffing food up my ass. It’s because I’m hungry. I didn’t really get much dinner last night and because I worked I slept in, so now I’m all hungry. All this talk of stuffing food up my ass and fucking other foods though, my synapses are all firing at the wrong time. I’m kind of horny and afraid, and every time my stomach growls those feelings increase.
Well, I’m not gonna figure it all out today, that’s for sure. It’s lunch time. I’ll keep you all informed.

Friday, November 7, 2008

smoke em if you got em.

When I was a kid, like, middleschool and early highschool, I’d go up to Canada to play hockey in the summer, because, well, they care about hockey a lot more up there, and as a result, they have good places to play in the summer. Okay, so this is pretty much where my love affair with cigarettes began. It wasn’t the first time I ever smoked. That was in fifth grade when Vic Weffer came to school with a Virginia Slim torn up into little tiny pieces in a Ziploc bag. He showed the contraband to me in the science hallway right after Mr. Barsevich’s class and asked if I wanted the cigarettes (now, I’m pretty sure, in retrospect, that it was one cigarette ripped into about four, inch-long pieces [it was a Virginia Slim, after all, and those things are long as shit]) to which I replied ‘fuck yeah. ‘
So, after school, Jon Mindes and I were skateboarding home and we stopped in front of the hospital to try the cigarettes. Of course, we barely knew how to light matches, much less smoke a cigarette, much LESS smoke a little tiny stump from an unfiltered and jagged end. Nevertheless, we tried. Oh how we tried. The occasional coughing fit was enough evidence that we were doing shit the right way and I left the whole situation with three distinct thoughts. 1) I was terrified that I was going to smell like smoke and my mom would bust me. 2) I was probably a little better at smoking than Jon was and 3) We were, by far, the coolest kids in school. Duuuuuuuude!
So, after that, things were underway. Um, my friend Eric and I, inspired by a Dead Milkmen song, smoked banana peels the next year. Unfortunately, no one told us how to do this and we were pretty unaware of the laws of basic smoking, so we just kind of tried to light one end of the peel and suck the other end. It seems stupid now, but man, we were in sixth grade! At least we were trying new things, right? I don’t know, that may have even been seventh grade. Whatever, it was a disaster of an experiment. For future generations out there, when you smoke banana peels, what you want to do is scoop out the white shit on the inside of the peel and dry it out, in an oven or in the sun. Then, once it’s totally dry, you put the crumbly shavings in a pipe or you roll it in a paper and smoke it. The result is a really sweet headache that should last about three hours. Again, awesome.
Later that year, in the summer, Chris and I snuck out of my house and cruised up past all the lakeview area’s big, black tranny hookers (this was a long time ago, people) to the Gyros place that used to be on Broadway just north of Oakdale before that whole area completely turned over. We used quarters in the cigarette machine and bought a pack of Marlboro reds. The guy behind the counter, who I remember as having a mustache, looked up and saw our shaking hands and said, “gotta have those smokes, huh? I know how it is. Sometimes you just need one, right?”
Which led to this quick exchange between me and Chris:
“Oh, yeah! Right! Totally. We’re totally jonesing.”
“Dude, jonesing?”
“I don’t know dude, what would you say?”
“I don’t know man, but jonesing sounds a little passé…maybe having a nic-fit?”
“that’s gay.”
“Touche.”
“Anyway, thanks dude! See you later.”
“Good night boys”
We snuck down to the Chicago Historical Society which has a giant statue of Abe Lincoln standing in front of a giant chair in the back field. We climbed up into this chair and sat there and smoked for a few hours, practicing inhaling, critiquing each others’ techniques of dragging from the cigarette, holding the cigarette, putting out the cigarette and so on. We discussed our reasons for starting to smoke, the main one being that girls smoke and if we smoked too, we’d have a nice conversation starter. Namely: “Hey, got a smoke?” Because, as we all know, girls just peel off their panties at the first sign of a strange guy mooching off them. It was a moment of divine inspiration, but unfortunately for Joe Camel’s hungry babies, it didn’t stick. We didn’t really start smoking that night. It was just practice, so eventually we could hit the ground running (now THAT is a deliciously ironic metaphor in this case…cuz, you know…running, smoking, they both make me barf…anyway.)
Okay, so fast forward a few years (summer before freshman year) to hockey camp. This was where I met this Indian guy named Dev from DC and we decided that we’d take up smoking as a real endeavor. I was all trained up at this time, and so, presumably, was Dev. The place we went was for dudes of all ages to play, so there were guys who were in their twenties and thirties who were up in this complex who were semi pro, from junior B to major A, and even a couple of low tier NHL dudes, just keeping in shape over the summer, and as such the commissary in the complex sold smokes.
So, yeah, we started smoking, along with EVERYONE at the place. The hockey was seriously just a front for the smoking camp that went on there. This is where I learned to blow smoke rings, and it was fun, kind of like that island in Pinocchio, because the counselors were just hockey dudes who wanted to drink and smoke, so there was no authority in the place.
I was friendly with some of the counselors and they’d come into my room at midnight and wake us up with a case of beer and some smokes and we’d just hang out for a while. Again, there was no other authority in the complex. Lovely time, for sure. There was also a kid there who was rumored to have fucked his own sister…so there’s that.
At hockey camp, I was told that if you smear toothpaste on your cigarette, and let it dry then smoke it, you’ll get high “a very brief but very powerful high”. Of course, we all tried it, and (SPOILER ALERT) of course it doesn’t get you high.
I quit smoking about ten years later, thanks in no small part to inspiration from my friend Toby, in Austin Texas by duct taping my fingers together and drinking beer to heighten the desire for a cigarette and then finding myself unable to have one, as my fingers were duct taped together, I’d be forced to find something else to occupy my time, like another beer or push ups or figuring out how I would have ever talked to any girls without using cigarettes as a mechanism. But quitting smoking is like coming back into earth’s atmosphere in the shuttle. There’s a window, and if you hit the window (you’re mentally prepared, you’re serious, you want it, you’ve got support that works for you) it’s relatively painless, but any other time, you’re fucked. That’s my experience, at least.
Yeah.
I’ve heard stories of this dude who lives in his mom’s basement and pulls bongs of toothpaste when he runs out of weed. Also, and this is all legend, but they say that when people come over and ask him for a hit from his bong, he fills the bowl with his pubes (yes, that’s what I meant to type. I know.) and just sprinkles a thin veneer of shake over the top so it looks like it’s weed. He apparently doesn’t clean the bong, so regardless of what’s going on, it’s full of pube and toothpaste resin. Mmmmm, mmmm. Good stuff. Enjoy your weekends.

Thursday, November 6, 2008

I think about it every night and day

Oh yeah. Back to the grind. It’s been a long time since I worked, and it’s been great, but that all ends today. Fuck. Okay, so here’s what I’m most looking forward to: These smug dipshits who, for the last year have been sitting on the other side of my bar crying to me about how America is too stupid to ever see that the less conservative, slightly more tan/less dead looking candidate was the better choice. I would always respond with “that’s bullshit. That’s elitism and defeatism” and these guys would get even more smug and grin and say “we’ll see. I know this country, man.” This is the point where I would tell them that I did too, and, in fact, I’ve regularly traveled all over this thing for the past fifteen years. AND I’ve talked a lot of politics and registered a lot of kids to vote. Then they just would get all pitying, and look at me like a dumb dreamer, like the way a jaded hockey coach looks at a kid who talks about how it’s gonna be when he’s on the Blues or something.
Well, I can fucking PROMISE you that these same dipshits (I’m thinking of three specific guys and I’m guessing a few randoms) will be in there today talking about how “we did it, man!” and just glowering down their noses at the pathetic Republicans. And, it would cost me my tips and perhaps even my job to say “You didn’t do shit but try to discourage people on your own side and decry the ability of your country to make a simple choice. Now, you’re acting like your shit doesn’t stink just because the ‘dummies’ came around for you? Guess what? THAT’S the elitist liberal attitude that pisses people off in the first place, you fucking retard. It’s not that someone is articulate or intelligent, it’s the smug dicks who cry that everyone’s a mongo and then laugh at everyone else when shit just happens to turn around. That’s the attitude that got Bush elected the second time. Oh, and John Kerry was an ineffectual douche who couldn’t inspire a horny diahrettic baboon to fling shit at a potential mate. I mean, that’s a factor.
OKAY, so I’m not saying it was wrong to be depressed after that election or the one before it. Fuck, I was. I remember after the 2000 election I wrote a piece for punkvoter.com that essentially called the whole of America a bunch of retards. I understand that frustration. HOWEVER, that’s in the face of results, not potential. There’s a big difference between being disappointed when something fails, and never believing it can succeed. Just throwing that out there.
So, awesome. I have to be a bartender again. My baby is not adjusting well to daylight savings, or more to the point, he’s not adjusting at all. He just took that six thirty wake up time and made it five thirty using nothing but consistency. He’s like Mao when he made all the clocks in China run the same, sun position be damned. Result? Fuck. So tired. Last night was my class and it was pretty funny. There are some real fucking dorks up in that piece. AND, in what’s become a rather pleasant surprise, there are some really funny people as well. My skit was about a know-it-all drug counselor. I guess it’s like getting kicked in the balls. It doesn’t look funny just written down, but believe me, it’s hilarious.
I’ve been eating like a champ ever since super Tuesday. Is it super Tuesday or is that something else? Who cares? I’ve had a cheese steak, wings, pizza, cheese and crackers, a bacon cheeseburger, mac and cheese and some combos (cheddar cheese pretzel). My guts are rotten right now. I think I need some broccoli or something.
There was a question I was gonna answer…Hmmmm. I don’t know. Forget it. Oh, you know what? What’s fucking wrong with people in California? You’d think out there where it’s like, on the state charter that you have to be, or at least dress gay to truly live there that they’d be a little less insensitive to a basic human rights issue, right? I guess all those frosted tips and tank tops are just to get the panties off, huh? Huh. It’s a bummer, because it kind of taints (cobras) a great election AND it really sets back the cause. AND if shit like that can go down in California, what does that say about the two dudes blowing each other in Oklahoma City’s chances of ever getting a marriage license? Well, it’s not good anyway. So, gay dudes in OKC, if you’re listening, maybe just move. I am positive you’ll be happier somewhere that doesn’t have dumb congresswomen getting standing ovations for comparing you to the devil. Fuck. One step forward, one step back.
I take it back, we’re doomed.
Nah, it’s a joke you spineless turds! Don’t you see how demoralizing that shit is, though? I got into punk rock because I really loved the way that the message in my favorite songs was always a “fuck everyone, I’m gonna do this or I’m gonna do my best and I’m not gonna quit, and fuck you if you don’t like it, and fuck you if you’re against me, but if you’re with me, then I’m with you” kind of vibe. And that’s still in the songs. But where is that attitude in practice? I mean, that’s hardly exclusive to punk rock, (take R Kelly’s smooth jam “I believe I can fly” if you need an example) but you never really see that attitude out there. Maybe you do, but there’s so much negativity and depression too. That’s fine when everything is great. It’s great to be disenfranchised and looking for ways to detail life when things are good. But when everything’s fucked? You gotta believe, man. That’s why those stories of dusty little kids playing music with dog bones and tin cans and shit in some village with no drinking water are so inspiring. That’s why people like George Carlin are so inspiring. Look around. If you’re on point with the general mood, you’re not trying hard enough. Be bummed if you must, but be hopeful.
Fuck man, I should be a motivational speaker. I’ll bring out my wife and my books on tape and you all can pay $250 to come see me run back and forth and scream shrill easy answers in chant form at you. I’ll have an affable smile and a suit that’s nice without being intimidating. My wife (I’ll have to trade the current one in) must be blonde with huge cans and a revealing tight dress. She is the human embodiment of me achieving everything that America has promised I can achieve. I’ll be athletic without being beefy and I’ll listen to you when you tell me about your job, then I’ll smile, clap you on the back, recite the one of about twenty five canned comments that most closely applies to your situation and move on. I’ll have stock in Coca Cola and Exxon, but I’ll tell you what really made me rich…my relationships with other people.
That’s motivation, right? Or I could be one of those fat slobs like the dude from “according to Jim” who bangs the hot chick against all odds. Actually, that seems a lot easier. I’m gonna go with that.

Wednesday, November 5, 2008

You're right Stan. There's nothing I can say about it. But there's sure something I'm gonna do about it.

That was great. It was emotional. More emotional than I thought it was gonna be. Yeah, sure. Nothing’s really changed in terms of policy, economy, the general right/centrist type view that our government has sort of always held, but dude…I repeat, dude, there’s a fucking BLACK PRESIDENT ELECT today!!!!
That is huge. That is so fucking huge that I couldn’t even see it. It’s like in a movie where a guy is just standing there against a plain grey wall, and you’re watching and thinking ‘man, what a dull little bit of mis en scene', and then all of a sudden the wall begins to move and you realize he’s standing in front of a blue whale who’s, I don’t know, on a truck, or maybe the guy’s underwater. Who cares. Listen, the point here is that this whole thing was so large I kind of didn’t see it until last night when they showed all those people in Grant Park in Chicago. Black people, people. Firstly, TV doesn’t generally show non famous black people having a good time. If you don’t believe me go ahead and watch that again to see how foreign it looked. Secondly, the joy and hopefulness that was sort of just exuding from all these faces was amazing.
It was in my town and I was stuck at home with a kid. Missing history. I didn’t want to be down there in the park. I hate crowds like that. It’s terrifying to me, but I wanted to do something. Celebrate with a fellow random Chicagoan that our guy, our senator, our fellow resident of Chicago is the first black president. It wasn’t a political thing, it was an emotional and a local thing.
So, when my wife went to bed (we did some celebrating over here, so she went to bed with a garbage can, you know, just in case) I took off. I was thinking, ‘man, it’s a little irresponsible to leave a baby and a quasi-passed out woman home alone…I better take my skateboard and make this quick.’
So, I jumped on my skateboard and headed to my favorite local bar, but they were playing Toby Keith and there were just two depressed people in there. Seemed a little wrong. Not the vibe I was hoping for, you know? SO, I shot over to this german bar but it was the same, except the music was German. Again, not really screaming “Let’s celebrate the black guy’s victory.” In fact, you might even say that both bars kind of exuded the exact opposite sentiment. Huh? Hicks and Germans, everyone.
At this point it had been about four minutes since I left my house and I really didn’t want to be gone for long so I went to the creep bar that’s right by my house. I’d normally never set foot in this place. It’s full of…I don’t know, creeps. It’s just gross, and this is from a guy who likes gross bars. There’s just something kind of, ‘there’s an unconscious kid tied to the boiler’ about the ambience. Anyway, two greek looking dudes were in there, but the door was locked and they told me they were closed. I don’t know what they were up to, and I didn’t really care, so I shot over to the gay bar thinking ‘this is gonna be great. I should have gone here first.” When I show up, it’s pretty empty but Ralphie (a woman) was kind enough to join me in a shot of Cuervo (it was on special and I was in a big hurry at this point). We drank to Obama and then I came rushing home. Everything was cool, and I went to bed thinking, man, this is gonna be a funny story to tell my kid when he asks if I was celebrating during the crazy night when Barack Obama became the first black president and spoke to a hundred thousand person crowd in Chicago. Well, you and your mom were asleep so I got on my skateboard and did a shot of tequila with a sixty year old bull dyke at the ‘gay-bar-for-older-people’ in our neighborhood. Not quite the ‘yes we can’ moment of a lifetime, but it’s something pretty good. And I’ll take it.
This kid will not remember a world where there wasn’t a black president. That’s so cool. My friend Katie pointed out that chances are real good he won’t remember a world where there was one either. And that’s just a good joke, man. That’s how jokes are crafted people. You piss on dreams right out of the box. Like they were a bunch of urinal cakes. Nah, I don’t know. Today’s a great day. I feel awesome and it’s beautiful outside. Today is also maybe the only day of your lifetime when you can probably tell your boss you’re hung over, and regardless of what your affiliation or his is, he’ll (let’s be honest, bosses are men…heh) probably be okay with you doing a shot or having a beer. Because he’s either totally happy, or totally bummed. And that calls for a beer either way.
So get your beer. The expiration date on this kind of thing is quickly approaching and next week it’s gonna be the same bullshit we’ve always dealt with. Today though, fuck worrying for a sec. Fuck it. You gotta make time to dance too. This is your only life, and something big happened yesterday that didn’t involve buildings falling down and people dying, you know, unless you count Obama’s ties to Al Quaeda. Fuck, man. I got some living to do and I’m going to get a newspaper for my kid to have when he gets older.
Yeah, I know. It’s Washington business as usual. Tell me all about it next week naysayer. Also, how long before that Alaskan chick (what was her name again?) is getting offers from playboy? I’d love to see her nude with a shotgun holding that Trig guy. Actually, I’ve already got a shirt with that on it. Minus Trig. That’s kind of tasteless in retrospect. I mean fuck. Now that she’s just some hick mom with a pregnant daughter and a kid in Iraq and a retarded baby, I kind of feel bad for her. As opposed to hating her, which I did yesterday. Man. What a day.

Tuesday, November 4, 2008

Um...if you would...

Please, go back and read the post entitled "sack up you fucking pussies" from September which was written after everyone threw a hissy fit about Palin being the fucking chosen one. Hey Jesus! Joke's on you! Looks like it's back to hell.

Got any change bro?

Dudes, dudettes! This is the big day, huh? USA! USA! Well, maybe. I mean, so far shit seems cool, right? There are huge lines outside all the libraries for a change and, well, once they evacuate every building with an eyeline to Grant Park, a million of the black guy’s closest pals are going to descend on downtown Chicago (a million? Jesus fucking louise!) for what’s either going to be the best party or the ugliest riot that we’ve seen around here for a while.
I’m staying in. I think this is a good move for me pretty much forever. I like staying in. I pretty much need to go out once a month to realize how great staying in is. I think, if tonight the old Frankenstein’s monster and the crazy hick lady win, and the black guy’s victory party turns into a gigantic festival of destruction that somehow winds all the way to my neighborhood and I end up dying in a pyre of enraged flames, I don’t think my last thoughts are going to be “man, I wish I had spent more time going out and getting beers”.
I think that’s pretty much been covered.
I voted last week. My friend just told me that it took her 2 hours when she went this morning at six fifteen. That’s pretty wild, huh? I was watching that androgynous smug woman on MSNBC last night, and she played a clip of some Reagan administration dude talking about how the Republicans always stand to gain from low voter turnout. Presumably, because people who vote republican tend to always get out there, but the democrats (which is really slang for a loose confederation of sovereign groups following unrelated ideologies that all in some way don’t fit under the Republican umbrella, kind of like how the Bloods were really just a confederation that developed in response to the Crips in LA) kind of need specific issues to be on the table to get out in force. Yeah, so big lines, good for the black guy, bad for the old man. Heh. That’s kind of funny, if you recapitulate that last sentence as a drug reference. Anyway.
SO, what’s the point? I don’t know, but I’m feeling pretty good about this day. I was talking about the myth of Republican small government last night with my wife, and I was saying (not that I’m revolutionary in this thinking or anything) that in the last 8 years, these fucking people have created a whole new department in the government, passed a gigantic sweeping pack of laws (an ‘act’ if you will) that lets the government enter our homes, our computers our phones, they’ve spent billions of dollars, everyone still pays insane taxes. There’s no small federal government under a republican regime. The only reason they toe that line is because they were never really in control of everything at the same time before. That’s like being straight edge until you’re twenty one. Dick Cheney is essentially Brian Baker recapitulated. Okay, but for the record, Brian Baker is amazing, Dick Cheney, he’s only pretty great.
Yeah, so it’s election day and if you’re just joining us, we’ve been rapping about politics from a barely informed, highly specious, theoretical level here at BSC. We’re gonna have some people over to watch the results come in and I’m in charge of election night foods. Here are some ideas I have so far. (I’m leaving out things that obviously pander to stupid ‘old guy, black guy’ jokes such as Metamucil or watermelon for a few reasons. First, that’s fucked up, questionable in terms of you know, general decency, and just too easy. Also, I had watermelon and Metamucil for breakfast, so I don’t want to do it again tonight.) Here we go:

Wings-both hot and barbecue, representing left and right wing policies respectively. Barbecue seems to be mostly the product of red states (and they’re so fucking good at it, btw…Oh, man, go to Stubbs in Austin and get the hot link sandwich or the ribs….FUCK!) meanwhile hot wings were born in the blue state situated city of Buffalo. Pretty clever, eh?

Pizza- If it’s half pepperoni and half blue cheese, then it’s red and blue, like the election map and it’s already cut into pieces, just like our great country. Plus, I’ve never had blue cheese on pizza, and while part of me thinks it sounds gross, part of me thinks it sounds great. Which is kind of how I feel about you know, hanging out with Sara Palin’s family. I bet those hicks know how to party, but I bet they’re into some fucked up shit. Especially Track. Don’t ask me why I think so, I just do.

Some sort of game meat- I mean obviously. Shot from a helicopter if possible.

Fondue- Representing the great melting pot of America. Dipping pieces of meat and fruit into a cascading fountain of…who am I kidding? I don’t want to clean a fondue fountain. Next.

Cheese Steaks- Pennsylvania is a big deal in this election people, and I don’t want to eat scrapple (look it up, westerners).

Nachos- Representing the ever increasingly important Latino vote. Easy to share, too.

A plate of sausages and clams- This is to show support for the votes about gay marriage which is a big deal in this election, in California, Florida, and maybe Arizona(?). Just let people get married already. And don’t give me that bullshit about it opening the door for people to marry goats and all that shit. No one wants to marry a goat. Haven’t you heard the expression ‘why buy the goat when you can get the milk for free?’ I’m pretty sure that’s relevant somehow.

Falafel and hummus- Because, you know, Barack is a terrorist and a muslim. Oh, wait. That’s fucked up on at least 3 counts, huh? Aye aye aye.

And finally, Wild Turkey, because if the old man wins, I’m going to need a shot or two, and if the black guy wins, I’m gonna want one. Yup.

Get out there and vote please. It’s seriously the least you can do.
xoxo