hallowwwwwwwwwweeeeeeeeeeeeeeen

Do you guys believe in ghosts? It’s kind of a stupid question, because it seems like there are two schools of thought regarding ghosts and they’re this:

Uh, totally. (this one stupid place) is totally haunted and I’ve seen that shit with my own eyes/(some asshole) swears up and down that he’s seen (some weirdly specific ghost, usually female) and you KNOW that he’s not the kind of person that goes for that shit.

Or

What are you, fucking retarded?

I’ve personally never seen a ghost but I have a lot of friends and family that have claimed to have seen them, including my stepdad, who’s a chemist and generally not the kind of person that goes for bullshit like that (although, to be fair, he’s got some ideas about the bible that fall in line with er…’going for bullshit like that,’ I suppose) and he’s DEFINITELY not the kind of guy who’d do drugs or in any way be discombobulated enough that his ‘ghost encounter’ could be blamed on his perception.

According to him, he saw a female by the bookcase in the upstairs hallway of the house I lived in in 1993. I guess she was kind of transparent and she had no feet, although as I type that I’m not sure if he said that or if that’s just how I pictured it. Whatever. That’s not the point. The point is that sober, intelligent chemists don’t tend to just walk over to their stepsons and make up bullshit stories about their experiences of seeing women in their house just because it seems like a funny thing to do. It’s weird. I don’t think I believe in ghosts, but whatever caused him to relay that story to me is at LEAST as unexplainable as the idea that the spirit of a dead woman is floating around checking out our books.

My mom always says shit like ‘that owl that was outside last night, I think it was your grandmother’ which is patently lame. A ‘gut feeling’ ghost sighting is, first of all, ENTIRELY the realm of females and total dipshitty turd guys. There’s no man worth a shit out there who’s ever said anything like that to anyone ever. For whatever reason, on females it’s whimsical and quasi acceptable as long as you’re not bringing it up all the time or blending it with other forms of mysticism crap (an entirely irritating set of interests). Secondly, it cheapens the entire notion of supernatural phenomena in the same way that dumb kooks who don’t want to listen to science because they willfully choose to be stupid cheapen the intellect of conservatives by and large. (at this point it should be overtly noted that ‘cheapening the entire notion of supernatural phenomena’ is a hilarious thing to be concerned about. It’s like saying that the guy that’s going weeks without showering is cheapening the reputation of all the known sex offenders at the halfway house).

Make no mistake, there’s weird shit out there. Like I was saying with regards to my step dad. I tend to think he didn’t see a ghost, but fuck me if SOMETHING weird didn’t go down, right? And that shit happens all the time. There are things that cannot be explained and that fall under the category of ghosty supernaturalist shit and perhaps it IS ghosts, but maybe ghosts aren’t actually the wandering souls of the departed, but they’re something else entirely, like cosmic energy waves or some other such bullshit that’s impossible to talk about without sounding like a fruitcake.

Anyway, my point is that the world is weird and there is shit out there that can’t be explained, and if that all falls under the category of ‘ghosts’ then fuck it, I guess I believe in that, but I don’t think my grandpa is in the attic or in the dog or any of that shit, and I don’t think the dali lama is the same guy and I am vastly more afraid of living people than I am of the dead, so I dunno…am I repurposing the word or just prattling on like a dipshit? Whatever. Happy Halloween. My kid was a butterfly/Olivia Newton john and the other one was a dinosaur/Dash from the incredibles. And the shit’s mind meltingly cute.
xoxoxo

they sounded....asian.

I’m waiting for the cable guy right now. It sucks. I know this kid named Nate, and he’s kind of a weird, greasy haired little Mitch Hedberg disciple (though that sounds like a shitty description. He’s a good guy) and one of the jokes in his routine is “I was fucking the cable guy the other day, and it was a real bummer, because you know how long it takes for the cable guy to come.”

It’s okay. It’s pretty good. It would be a lot better if the cable guy was fucking him, because let’s be honest, if you’re fucking the cable guy do you REALLY care if he comes? But if he’s fucking you, I’d imagine that he couldn’t come fast enough. If there’s one thing that I don’t think of when I think of cable guys it’s that they’re attentive lovers. Which brings me to my point:

Do people really end up fucking their cable guys and plumbers and pizza boys and shit? Does that really happen? Okay, I’ve GOT to imagine that there’s a situation, say in Boystown or Manhattan or the Castro where there’s an everyone’s-gay-at-every-stage-in-the-life-of-the-pizza situation and that occasionally, or even often, leads to blowjobs, but that’s a fairly unique situation, and really it’s not at all what I’m talking about.

I’m referring to the standard trope where someone is home in a regular neighborhood, waiting for a regular pizza guy or cable guy in skimpy clothes and with a little hinting and seduction Boom! Free HBO! Does that happen? It seems like something drummed up by either cable guys or porn directors because man, it just seems a little too good to be true. I’d think bored, sexy housewives (or houseboys in the case of gay guys) would be able to bang someone a little bit more exciting than the cable guy, if for no other reason than because in my experience, by the time the cable guy shows up I’m fucking pissed off and tired of waiting. I’m definitely not horny. Usually, I’m staring at the clock, pissed off that they gave me a four hour window of time and managed to show up either half an hour early or an hour late. Usually I’m noticing that they smell significantly worse than my house and usually I’m incredibly frustrated by their lack of interest in fixing my problems or even really identifying them beyond, “well, yeah. You’ll probably have to get an electrician in here or something. I don’t know.”

But hey, I’m kind of an asshole, and I can imagine that if I was single and a hot female cable girl came over and was somewhat helpful that I’d probably try to put the moves on her. But that’s because I’m a guy and the hot female cable guy does not exist. It’s like saying I’d attempt to fuck a unicorn or a gorgon, and besides, her entire life would be just a series of creepy dudes hitting on her mercilessly. “Hot cable girl” is up there with embedded female journalist in the supermax prison shower room in terms of rapey potential because, well, it just is. If you’re a hot woman, as a general rule, having a job where you go into the houses of strangers by yourself is a pretty bad idea. It’s an unfortunate truth. Just like short guys don’t tend to get jobs in the NBA and guys are rarely Hooters girls (and yeah, working at hooters is ‘exploitive’ I guess, but I’d WAY rather be a hooters girl than a cable guy).

That said, do you think it EVER happens? Do you cable guys/pizza guys/plumbers/poolboys out there ever actually get seduced by women (or dudes) in their homes? It seems really, really unlikely that it ever happens, but fuck, that one guy in Germany found someone who wanted to cook and eat his penis with him and if you were gonna ask me to bet on which is the more likely situation, I’d say the cable guy blowjob WAY before the mutual cannibalism (although when you factor German weirdness into the whole thing I guess it becomes slightly more even in terms of odds). Only one thing is for sure: When this guy shows up, I’m gonna suck his dick, whether he likes it or not. Maybe I’ll answer the door naked and wet and tell him my lock is malfunctioning.

That’s all. Have a good weekend.

a harrowing tale of adventure and thrills

This is weird. I go to the gym three to five times a week. I know pretty much everyone there, at least by face and they know me and my kids and overall, it’s a pretty nice place. Lately, there’s this dude who’s there and although I’ve never seen him actually working out, he’s completely ripped. Not an ounce of fat on the guy. How do I know this? Because he’s ALWAYS completely buck naked, just hanging out in the locker room. I’ve never seen him go for his clothes, I’ve never seen him in underwear or holding a towel. He’s just down there, super ripped and super naked.

Now, logic dictates that based on his physique and his constantly being at the gym that he’s exercising like crazy, but again, I’ve never seen him up in the gym, even when I come down from working out and he’s sitting there naked and wet with no towel, just SITTING there. You’d think that over the course of the previous hour I’d have at least glimpsed this dude amongst the weights and medicine balls, but no. I can’t overstate this point: this guy is just naked in the locker room all the time. I don’t know what’s going on, but it’s kind of bugging me out.

ANYWAY, yesterday I was taking my sweaty gym clothes off and naked locker room dude pops his head around the corner real quick then vanishes. About ten seconds later I remove my earphones and he pops back around the corner, again, completely naked.

“Hey.” He says. “I borrowed a lock from the guys at the desk out there and now it won’t open and I’m stuck. Can you go tell them so they can help me get to my stuff?”

Now, this seems pretty reasonable, but because it’s naked lurker lockerroom guy, I’m a little taken aback. Again, it bears mentioning that as usual, the dude is completely naked and wet. I recover, walk out and say to the young black guy at the check in desk “hey, there’s a dude in there who borrowed a lock and now it won’t open and he’s naked, so he can’t come out here. Have fun!” and my deed good deed was done for the day.

But as I’m going to my car, some questions emerge. Like, firstly, WHAT THE FUCK? Where were the clothes that he had, the ones that weren’t in his locker? Did he perhaps lock ALL his clothes in his locker? That seems crazy. Where are his gym shorts? Where is his swimming suit (I’ve come to the conclusion that he’s gotta be spending his time at the pool. It’s the only explanation unless he’s doing spin classes or something)? In short, what happened to his clothes? It bears mentioning that yes, a locker room is a place where people go to get naked. Being naked in a locker room is normal. It’s not a big deal, but engaging a stranger in conversation while naked is a little bit weird, and making some dude come in and cut off your lock while naked is pretty fucking uncomfortable for everyone involved, right? I mean, it would stand to reason that even if his shorts were soaking wet (there are dryers in the locker room, so this is pretty invalid anyway) he’d at least put them on to ask me to go talk to the guy, or he’d put them on and just go ask the dude himself, right? I mean, right? Am I nuts?

I suppose that the following could be an explanation: He got done with his spin class (heh), came to the locker room to take a shower and sit around naked all morning like he does, put all his stuff into his locker before his shower, locked the locker, went to the shower, came back to find everything was locked up and boom! He’s stuck (there are no towels available in the locker room. That’s a significant point, I guess) and he’s got no choice the one he made. In that circumstance, I guess it’s reasonable, BUT, what kind of fucking move is that? Who locks up their dirty gym clothes or goes to the shower without a towel or clothes? This guy, recall, is in this locker room every day, so he’s presumably keenly aware of the towel situation.

My friend thinks I got cruised. I told her the story and she was instantly positive that I had been cruised. To this I can only say, well, it IS a YMCA, and the guy obviously has a real love of the male form (in order to be a really ripped dude, you need to have a hilarious passion for the look of dude torso) AND hanging out in the locker room naked seems like a pretty trademark move if you’re looking to randomly exchange dick tastes with someone, so I guess that’s a pretty decent theory, although it doesn’t really add up to me. “Hey, my shit’s stuck in my locker, can you do me a solid and go get an employee” isn’t exactly the most sensual pick up line I’ve ever received, and while he may just be testing the water so to speak, you gotta figure that if you’re at that level where you’re lurking nude in the locker room, you’ve probably developed a smooth intro or two, right? You HAVE to have workshopped something better than “can you get a janitor in here.”

I don’t know. The whole thing is weird. I mean, I blew him, but I’m still not sure if that’s what he was hinting at.

Life’s really mysterious.

I know kung fu!

Remember the Matrix? Of course you do. The Matrix, the original one, is a great movie with an extremely compelling and thought provoking script. The next couple were absolutely terrible (as is everything that Jada Pinkett Smith is involved in) but that first one, man. It’s good, and it’s more of a zippy, apt metaphor for sentient existence than almost anything else I’ve ever consumed intellectually.

There’s one part that particularly sticks out to me and it’s the scene where Morpheus offers Neo the two pills. The red pill, Morpheus explains, will cause Neo to wake up in his bed as though nothing has ever happened. The blue pill, on the other hand, will show him the world as it truly is, though once he sees it, he can never unsee it. He’ll never be able to return to his world of blissful ignorance once he sees what the blue pill illuminates.

Of course, Neo takes the blue pill and he quickly comes to learn that where he once thought he was strong, he is actually weak. His safe world is actually full of danger and terror. Food is no longer delicious. Sleep is fleeting and elusive and fraught with nightmares. Happiness exists only in a different world populated by ignorant fools who don’t know how hard and scary life really is and he, Neo, though discombobulated, weak and confused, is the person that must take command and push against all hope and logic towards a brighter tomorrow.

This is exactly what having kids is like. Kids are the real blue pill in the Matrix. I used to think that life existed pretty much between five pm and five am. I subsisted on beer and taco bell and slept late and was extremely happy and carefree. My neighborhood was safe, my wife was attentive and great, my body was resilient and strong, I had everything completely figured out. I never worried about anything and I felt very strongly that all the typical shitty trappings of adult life, the financial worries, the worries about physical deterioration, the marital spats, the concerns about how people perceive one another just straight up didn’t apply to my life. I had no frame of reference for relating to comedians (for example) because their tropes were all about things that were completely foreign to me. “I’m fat,” “I’m broke,” “I haven’t gotten a blowjob in six months!” Whatever! I’m not ever gonna be fat, I don’t need any money! I am positively SWIMMING in blowjobs! Everyone else’s life may suck balls, but somehow (despite the fact that I’m really not that spectacular of a human being and I haven’t worked particularly hard) mine is amazing. I have a cool job where I travel the world and I go out every night and sleep all day. It’s a perfect existence!

So, yeah. Then I took the blue pill and a few things became abundantly clear: the world is fucking dark and terrifying. Kids are so sweet and perfect and cute and the world, in stark contrast to them, is ugly, exploitive, dangerous, poisonous and generally horrific. The world actually exists from five AM to about ten PM. Anything that happens after ten is just drunken blur shit that, while it may end up with you punching someone in the face or getting laid or sealing some sort of deal over cocktails and blow, it’s not the real world. There’s no way to explain this until you see it from the other side. People tried to say this to me and I’d say shit like “well, it’s the real world to me, man.” HA! No fucking way. I was living in a dream, cocooned in blissful ignorance, but now I’m awake. I can’t unsee it. The world is terrifying, and even the things that I thought I’d bested, the bullets I thought I’d dodged are back and they’re scarier than ever because I’m not even driving the car this time.

For example, I got through my youth without ever fucking myself up on drugs. I mean, I definitely got drunk and hurt myself or smoked some weed and acted like an asshole or whatever, but I never wound up toothless in a meth house. I never sucked a dick for crack. I never pissed myself in an alleyway with a needle in my arm. I never sniffed glue or lost a septum to cocaine or went to jail or any of that shit. I beat the ‘temptation’ of drugs, right?

Well, not really. Now my kids exist, and what if all of a sudden they’re over at their best friends house taking oxycontins every day after school? I can’t stop that! I mean, I can encourage open dialogue and hopefully raise responsible people who won’t get into really dangerous situations, but at a certain point it’s kind of out of your hands as a parent. Drunk driving, stupid drugs, reckless mischief that’s seriously illegal. KNOCKING SOMEONE UP (or GETTING knocked up!) or getting herpes or HIV or any of that shit, this is shit I thought I was absolutely done worrying about, written off as ‘kid shit’ but NOOOOOOOOOOO fucking way, man. It’s all back and it’s worse than ever.

Now the world is a place where I need money, not for my needs but for the needs of people who depend on me. I eat over the fucking sink, and it’s leftovers of what my kids stubbornly refuse. Food is no longer delicious, sleep is fleeting and elusive an fraught with nightmares, I actually become too tired to want to even attempt to receive blowjobs and my wife is definitely too tired to just pass them out for no reason other than ‘hey, how bout a blowjob?’ That’s the shit of distant dreams and distant shores, bro.

And here’s the thing: I can NEVER unsee it. I can NEVER go back to how it was before. Even if I just left this stupid, shitty café I’m sitting in right now and went straight to the airport and flew to Uruguay and never came back, I’d be haunted by the dangers of the world, and my family that I abandoned (!!!!!) and that would be an even darker world than this one. Even if I became a zillionaire, there would still be a dark world around me. I’m not saying that my life is gloomy and depressing (although I know it sounds like I am), because kids bring a TON of joy into your life, just as Neo was ultimately stoked to be living in the real world battling computers and plugging his brain into that cord and seeing the world in code and all that, I’m exactly the same way in that…no. No. The analogy breaks down pretty badly at that point.

I’m fucking starving. Gotta run. Later, dildos.

I used to eat a little but a little wouldn't do it so the little got more and more

You guys have all seen Axl in Rio, right? No? Oh, shit. Well, you should really google it. For those of you who are too lazy to go and see for yourself, let me paint a picture, if I may. Axl is in Rio with a band that he’s calling Guns n Roses, but who is VERY clearly not Guns n Roses (the drummer, according to my sources is a black Cuban guy, just for example), and he’s playing a humongous outdoor concert with these guys, and they’re playing Guns N Roses songs (or approximations of them, but we’ll get to that in a sec) and it’s raining. That’s pretty much the clip…

Except for a couple of details. First detail: Axl is clearly fat as shit now. He looks, to quote my friend Summer, like he’s slowly turning into Mario Batali. Next detail: because of the rain, he’s wearing a bright yellow, knee length rain slicker, a la Paddington Bear. Third detail: He comes out, and before launching into what would be a pretty passable version of Mr. Brownstone were it being performed by a band that wasn’t supposed to be Guns N Roses (say, in Baraboo, Wisconsin on a Tuesday night at the Larue Tavern and Dance Hall), he announces to the massive crowd of Brazilians that due to the rain and the slipperyness of the stage, he’s gonna go ahead and forego the dancing and instead just concentrate on singing and hitting the notes. In his yellow rain slicker. And Cab Calloway style pimp hat. Did I mention that? No? Okay, detail four: Axl is wearing, besides the knee length, bright yellow rain slicker, a big, stupid Cab Calloway hat and some sunglasses. That’s pretty much all you could ever need to know about this whole deal. Well, except for detail five, which is that Axl’s voice sounded like complete dogshit. It was pretty fucking disgusting, honestly.

Now, I know, that sounds harsh. Axl is fifty for fucks sake! He’s allowed to get fat! Who cares if he’s got a different band? What the fuck is wrong with wearing weather appropriate gear or not wanting to fuck yourself up in slippery conditions? Well, I’ll tell you exactly what’s wrong with that, mother:

Ahem.

I’m gonna leave the fatness aside for now because I’ve got a different problem with the fatness than I do with the rest of it. I’m gonna start with detail two: He’s wearing a rain slicker. Sure, what the fuck? No big deal? The man doesn’t want to get wet! That’s practicality, brah. You wear raincoats and hats in the rain! Get off Axl’s cloud, captain businessman! No. No. No. No. He looks like a pud. He looks like a squeezebottle of mustard. Look, if he’s gonna take every other person out of Guns N Roses and replace them with weird Cubans, a dude from the Replacements (who is cool but who also wore PAJAMAS when they made their legendarily crappy reappearance on some pointless, jerka--thon awards show when Axl first unveiled his new band and his Terence Trent D’arby braids) and a Slash impersonator who wanks his way through a BluesHammer-esque approximation of the (traditionally AMAZING) main riff in Mr Brownstone, the least we can ask for is a little genuine Axl at the helm, right? And you know what Axl Rose is NOT known for: dressing appropriately. This motherfucker used to wear nothing but American flag spandex and a cropped top mink fur coat! He used to wear boxer briefs and an umpire chest pad! In the Estranged video where he’s swimming with Dolphins, he’s wearing jeans and a flannel in THE GODDAMNED WATER!!!!! Don’t tell me you need a fucking slicker. It will not fly.

That leaves only one, very obvious explanation, namely, he’s ashamed of his fatness and he’s hiding behind all sorts of hats and coats and excuses not to dance (which, by the way, since when are we concerned with Axl dancing? I know he does the awesome Serpentine and all that, but we love him for his amazing voice and his reckless, ‘fuck em all’ attitude, which…well, eschewing the dance portion due to slippery conditions ain’t reckless, bro. That’s like the announcement on the deck of a cruise liner, not a Guns N Roses show) so we won’t all make fun of him for being fat.

But guess what, David Blaine! You didn’t make your fatness disappear. You just put a big yellow circle around it and then announced that you weren’t gonna do any cardio before wheezing your way through what should be a low-mid-level song in terms of the vocal difficulty of your cannon. That’s highlighting your fatness, not hiding it. And here’s the biggest thing: YOU’RE FIFTY!!! YOU ARE ALLOWED TO BE FATTER THAN YOU WERE WHEN YOU WERE 22!!!! Fuck, you can even have a different band and not dance and all that, but what we really, really want is that same ‘go fuck all y’all’ attitude. That’s what makes the whole thing such a travesty. Axl is a meek, apologetic, shy little fat boy who feels bad that he’s past his prime.

Fortunately, Axl, if you’re reading this (and I know you are) I’ve got the solution. And it’s easy. Read on:

Fuck, look, if Christina Aguliera can do it, so can you: Get out there in the fucking spandex American flag shorts and the harley suspenders and be fat and gross, for fucks sake! Can you imagine how rad that would be? There’s no dignity in gracefully (?) trotting out songs that made you famous with the kinds of people that participated in gangbangs 20 years ago, so fucking go for it, Axl! Be fat and gross and show us your belly and get down on your knees and act like an asshole and sneer and serpentine with all your sloppy glory and kick ass like the aging miscreant that you are. Don’t apologize! Revel in your current look, because really, if you take away all the bullshit (raincoat, lame hat, dorky band) you still look AWESOME. You don’t look like young Axl anymore, but guess what? You wouldn’t look like young axl even if you were still in good shape.

Embrace it. You’ve got a fanbase that would love it, and I for one need to see that kilt and catcher’s mask setup again. I think it would look even better now. In closing, (and these are words that I didn’t think would ever need to be written) Axl Rose, quit being such a goddamned pussy.

xxoxoxo

TL;DR

“The terrorists hate our freedom” is a phrase that’s bandied about pretty casually these days. For people with one kind of ideology, it’s a reminder that we’ve got it pretty good, and some people who don’t have it so good really don’t like that, and through no fault of our own, mind you(!), our way of life, one blessed with opulence, choices, and the ability to act how we want when we want even if it’s not completely appropriate at all times (god bless America), has created a tension between us and some of the world (the parts with less freedom, god bless ‘em) and they hate us. Not because we’re dicks, but because those people, those spoil sports, are jealous of the freedom we enjoy.

To another group of ideologues, “the terrorists hate our freedom” is something that idiots say to avoid looking in the mirror and recognizing that many complex issues are on the table when it comes to a global economy and people on the bottom are gonna tend to be pissed at the people on the top. People who have it easy as a result of other people having it bad tend to not be the favorites of those who have it bad.

In an America that’s really not too old, we (white people [high five!]) owned slaves. I wasn’t around for any of that, but I have been privy to some of the aftermath and it seems like “the slaves hate our freedom” could very well have been a slogan. What I mean is, there’s still obviously a little racial tension here and there lingering in this country, right? There are (get this!) black people who have grown up in generations, legacies of poverty ever since the days of emancipation where they walked away from their former masters free, penniless, uneducated, without any direction, home or understanding of what was going on, all while being obviously black, into a world that didn’t want to help them get jobs, educate them or do anything but sit around and stew because suddenly everyone needed to PAY for the work once done by slaves. (In fact, it could be said by ex slaves that “those ex-slaveowners hate our freedom” and it would probably be the most accurate application of this type of maxim in the history of language). And it seems like there are still white people out there who are terrified of black people, who fetishize them, who think they’re dumb or inferior or any number of things that dominant cultures tend to think about subjugated ones. Cuh-razy. You gotta imagine this all started with the slave thing, right? Because before that…well, I don’t think that white guys and black guys really hung out at all.

My point here is that yes, slaves undoubtedly hated the ‘freedom’ of the white folks, but my guess is that they hated that freedom in a large part because they were the ones who were providing it at the expense of their own freedom. Anyone can say “man, the slaves hate our freedom” and it’s true, but it’s also shortsighted, shitty and really, really, really condescending, innit? The slaves hate our freedom! What a bunch of selfish slaves!

Now, I’m not likening Bin Laden to Frederick Douglass by any means, but I am saying that the notion of someone just blindly hating someone else’s freedom usually comes from a pretty rational place. Nobody just hates the freedom of someone without reason. If they did, then there would be a spate of people hating freedom in every single microcosmic community in the world. It’s not a thing. It doesn’t exist without a context that puts the hater in a position of subjugation, which, in turn, makes them feel bitter and shitty towards whoever they think is shitting on them.

I’m not saying this is always justified by any means, but man, if you live in (for example) an oppressive theocracy, you’ve got essentially two ideological choices (neither one of which are really relevant to the notion of hating someone far away):

1) be religious and not notice that your choices are being oppressed or
2) recognize that you’d like to do things that aren’t allowed and proceed to be scared shitless of what’s going on.

There’s no point where in either of those persepctives just randomly hating someone halfway around the world comes into play at all. In situation 1, you’re essentially a born again grandpa living in Texas (which is, let’s be honest, a bit of an oppressive theocracy with a scary tendency to kill people). You’ve got all the freedom you want because your idea of freedom is lock step with the freedoms provided by your state. You may look at ‘hollywood queers’ and find them to be gross, but it’s fairly abstract. You really don’t find a lot of born again Texas grandpas plotting to kill Brad Pitt (or even RuPaul). If anything, they impose the rules of their own community (which could be totally uncool, as in ‘no fags,’ ‘no coons’ type stuff) but that’s a local thing based in a pragmatism about a day to day lifestyle you (as a close minded dick) would like to maintain (still shitty! But not at all the same as the idea of hating “freedom” remotely). In 2, you’re terrified of your government (you’re the gay black guy in Texas from hypothetical situation 1, perhaps) and you’re not trying to do anything but avoid having your nose chopped off or your ass dragged behind a truck til you die. You probably don’t give two shits about anything except for the people who are persecuting you. Again, there’s no real hatred of freedom that’s coming into play there.

In fact, I can think of only one instance where people, from a distance, remotely, absolutely hate the freedom of someone despite the fact that it has no bearing on their lives. And that’s the case of my beloved (and increasingly disgusting) Lindsay Lohan. She does blow and blows off court appearances. Big fucking deal. Who cares? “I fucking care! If I did that, they’d lock my ass up!!!” Yeah, sure. But you don’t even WANT to do that shit (or maybe you do, but she’s not stopping you, and she’s certainly not making it harder for you to do it). It doesn’t apply to you. She has more freedom than you based on circumstances that, depending on your ideology are either because of her hard work, or because of the person that she was born as. Either way, you hate her freedom and she’s NEVER done anything to you. At least the US maintains a military base on holy lands and fucks with the notion of a Palestinian state. What the fuck did Lindsay’s coke habit ever do to you? So why are you so happy now that her probation’s revoked and she’s going to jail. There’s only one answer: You hate her freedom.

Now who’s the terorist?
Seriously though, her teeth are getting pretty disgusting.

better late than never, eh?

Steve Jobs is dead. I know you’ve all heard about that. It was big news. Nerds cried, people who maybe didn’t even know they were nerds cried, the Onion had a headline that said “Last American Who Knew What the Fuck He Was Doing Dies” and generally, the whole thing was very sad. In what’s gotta be the most brilliant crosspurposing of a death ever, the new iPhone also just shipped, and it actually speaks to you, which, well, if you were the kind of person that thought of Steve Jobs as a father figure, there’s gotta be some sort of creepy comfort that you get from his last great gift to the world having a personality and voice. I heard Howard Stern this morning asking the new iPhone where he could get a handjob in Manhattan and the phone seemed to be happy to help him figure out where to go. That’s a good final bit of a legacy: a handjob providing, talking phone.

There’s no doubt about it, Steve Jobs was an important dude. Even if you dislike him or apple his footprint is gigantic. Ambitious people often set out to change the world, completely change an industry, and most of them don’t end up doing that at all. Steve Jobs revolutionized not only personal computing but also telecommunication, the music industry, the retail industry, publishing, turtlenecks, the whole deal. Like him or not, he was a visionary guy who shaped the world he lived in and it will likely be quite a while before someone else with that kind of vision and acumen comes along.

I have an iPhone. It’s got a broken screen. It’s kind of slow and it has, in no uncertain terms, destroyed my ability to just sit there and relax. I can’t just sit (or walk or even [and this is totally fucked up] drive or be on my computer) without having my phone right there just in case I need to check Twitter or get an email or a text or read an article or avoid doing pretty much anything that doesn’t involve staring into a tiny cracked screen. I no longer need to remember directions, phone numbers or to grab a camera, notebook, walkman, a watch or a personal gaming system (not that I fuck with video games, but you get the idea). I don’t need to talk to my friends because texting is so much more direct and requires less commitment. I’ve been in full on fights via text messaging, just because it’s less emotionally draining than talking on the phone to someone (and WAY less taxing than standing in a room together, yelling and punching walls and shit). You’ve got to imagine that the emotional numbing that these little devices provide is gonna have some twisted ramifications on humanity, right?

And that’s also the legacy of Steve Jobs. The personal phoneputer thingy that he so brilliantly put together is a marvel of human isolation. It’s also (and this is something that people tend to never discuss when they talk about the Steve Jobs legacy of invention, though it’s one of his most profitable ideas) built to break after a little while.

When the apple store in Chicago first opened I remember being shocked that they had recycling bins for ipods. Signs above the bins said something to the effect of “it’s been good to you, recycle it.” This was at a point where the oldest iPods in existence were about 2 years old. That’s fucking INSANE! I don’t want to sound like a grandpa or anything, but it used to be that if you paid hundreds of dollars for a device, that shit would last your lifetime. That was sort of WHY you paid that much for it. The notion that someone would sell you something designed to break after about two or three years (which is what iPods were [are] designed to do) so you, as an addicted consumer would have no choice but to upgrade to the newer version, is an insidiously brilliant strategy. And it’s no accident. We’re talking about a brilliant businessman and strategist and inventor. He invented disposable technology and, just to make sure that really careful people didn’t slip through the cracks, he built obsolescence into his devices as newer models appeared (changing the interface for the laptop power cable, for example).

So there you go. Before Apple, and the ipod and all these amazing, life changing devices, I believed that if I bought something for a lot of money, it would last forever. I also used to just sit there and look out the window of the bus. I don’t know if I was happier because I was just younger and more excited to exist than I am now, or if my new life full of things that are designed immerse me in a culture of information overload and ultimately to just up and break is just a darker, slightly sadder place, but one thing’s for sure. Things done changed. And until the Chuds come out of the sewers and/or the earth cleanses humans from its skin and we’re reduced to nomadic cannibal tribes (and that’s gonna suck balls), this is the life we got.

Wooooohooo.

The one where I fuck Brad Pitt

Last night I was entertaining some guests and the subject of Brad Pitt’s star power came up in response to what I believe was a poorly phrased statement made by Robin Quivers, the news person on the Howard Stern show. She essentially said that Brad Pitt isn’t a movie star because his films tank and he can’t open a successful movie. At best he succeeds as part of an ensemble (like in the Oceans series), or when someone with a tried and true sense of vision is doing the heavy lifting (Inglorious Basterds) but for the most part, his movies completely flop.

And she’s right about that. Brad Pitt does not bring people to the theaters in droves. There’s a ton of evidence that backs this up. However, to say he’s not a movie star is absolutely fucking crazy. He’s a HUGE star. Everybody knows him and everyone can name his movies, whether or not they’ve seen them. That makes him a movie star. Yes, his private life is more interesting than his career, but the amount of bullshit mental gymnastics you have to do in order to exclude Brad Pitt from movie stardom is indicative of the fact that anyone making that argument is just an antagonistic cocksucker. He’s a movie star. He may not be great at the ‘getting motherfuckers to watch the movie in the theaters’ part, but he’s got the general ‘being a movie star’ thing down. Angelina is the same way. She’s been in exactly one movie that wasn’t a bomb and that was based on a fucking video game. Pretty impressive cults of personality those two have, you gotta admit.

One of the young ladies at my house last night suggested that this weird dichotomy between the Jolie-Pitt sardom vs success was particularly weird now that they’re “both not even that good looking anymore,” which prompted everyone in the room to groan loudly “oh, right. Like you wouldn’t fuck Brad Pitt if you had the chance!” She quickly capitulated and admitted that of course she would (citing the old “you HAVE to fuck a famous person if you get the chance, just for the story” theory). I opined that I would even fuck Brad Pitt if I had the chance, although as my reasoning through the situation progressed lots of interesting things were revealed and ultimately, I don’t know if I could go through with it. You guys want to hear about this? If so, read on. If not, see you tomorrow.

Okay, I’m a heterosexual male. I’m not physically attracted to Brad Pitt at all. I find him about as fuckable as a pig or a dog or a baby, which is to say the thought of fucking him revolts me. So why, oh why, gentle reader, would I offer to my peers that given the chance, I would have sex with Brad Pitt? Well, it’s simple: Because it would bum so many people out so badly (and unlike the other things on my “it’s revolting to fuck” list, there’s nothing morally wrong with fucking Brad Pitt). I’m kind of an antagonist by nature and I can think of very few things that would make a large swath of people so immediately and awesomely bummed out as if I was the person that fucked Brad Pitt. Women: devastated. Gay guys: Furious. People who read Us Weekly and love Brangelina: Heartbroken, Punks: Er…I don’t know, but that’s a reaction I’m dying to see. It seems like a no brainer: I fuck Brad Pitt really quickly and suddenly the entire stupid celebrity obsessed world is bummed out beyond belief and I’m (most likely) making money on some shitty interview circuit where I hold up my hand to mime the size of his dong to Wendy Williams and say things like “he was actually very tender.” That’s funny. No two ways about it. It’s funny.

But then, I thought about it and some more practical concerns came into play. For example, as I just mentioned above, I’m not in any way attracted to Brad Pitt. This would make it pretty difficult for me to get an erection and fuck him. This means that most likely the only way I could have sex with Brad Pitt is if he fucked me (because, have you seen me? There’s no doubt that he’d have no trouble pushin’ steel for a hunk like me), and that sounds a lot less appealing to me for some reason. Intellectually, it shouldn’t, since there’s nothing really sexual about me fucking Brad Pitt, and associating it with the way that I’m used to having sex (being the person doing the fucking) shouldn’t make it any easier, but you know what? It does. I don’t like the idea of Brad Pitt fucking me. I don’t know if I think it’s worth it to bum out a bunch of people. I’m not ruling it out, just saying it’s not as cut and dry as it is the other way. So what’s my move? Viagra?

This raises some more questions. Namely, how big is Brad Pitt? A quick googling reveals his height to be about the same as mine. He’s undoubtedly in better shape than I am, which means, pound for pound he’s bigger and more masculine than me, which is good because (in what’s surely a twisted, inverse version of the psychology above in which I discussed how I didn’t want him to fuck me) the more masculine, the better. I don’t want to be fuckng a tiny, hairless, smooth bottomed Brad Pitt that could kind of be a lady but who’s actually got a dong and balls and Brad Pitt’s head. I don’t like that proximity to my ideal type of sex partner. It’s better if the whole thing is just completely out of my comfort zone. No peas in the mashed potatoes, and so forth. And this is where shit gets weird(er):

Does Brad Pitt wax his asshole? I think the smart money is on ‘yes.’ I can’t picture that dapper father of six with a big, hairy ass crack, can you? But here’s the thing: Does that make him more or less fuckable? The knee jerk reaction is to say more, because hairy assholes, eeeeew. However, a very quick trip through my actual notion of what makes straight, male human beings cool reveals that it’s not so cut and dry. Think about this: If I were to wax my asshole, does that make me more attractive or less attractive? Picture your best straight guy friend: What does the notion that he waxes his asshole do to his sex appeal? I kind of think it makes it go down. (It bears mentioning that this is a crazy grey area because I know lots of gay dudes wax their assholes and totally dig it and I fully see why gay guys waxing their assholes is the way to go, and I AM talking about gay sex, although kind of not really, so we’re in a very odd corner of the ‘when’s a waxed asshole better than an unwaxed one’ protocol, and I don’t want to offend my happily waxed gay readers out there [and ladies, of COURSE waxing your asshole is totally fine {and much appreesh}]. Keep waxing those assholes!!!!)

So that creates a weird double edged sword where it’s either the more acceptable (but vastly grosser) hairy asshole or the more appealing (but icky) waxed asshole. That’s not exactly Sophie’s choice, but I’m not crazy about it.

So, I guess I don’t know. Maybe I wouldn’t have sex with Brad Pitt just to bum everyone out.

But I’d definitely suck his dick. That would be a stone cold groove.

See you tomorrow at the HOB!

I HATE this stuff!

Today I don’t have a lot of time. I have to go pick up my kid at school and then we have to have a rollicking good time so I can feel like a decent dad and not a gross, lazy pile of shit. It’s a delicate balance, because lord knows I don’t want to put TOO much effort into anything and make my kids think they’re ‘special’ or something. That’s a recipe for uppity kids. That’s some free advice, new parents. Anyway, since I’m gonna be flying free and easy today, I figured I’d just make a list of some stuff I really don’t like. I used to do lists here all the time, but for some reason it’s been a while. So, all you old timey Dogs Of War, get on your nostalgia glasses and get ready to party, eh? Without any further ado, here’s some stuff I hate:

Crystal Meth- I know what you’re thinking: Beex, what’s wrong with meth? It’s pretty much the ONLY way to roll if you need to stay up for four straight days and not eat anything. Also, if you’ve got a tooth that’s bugging you, meth will melt that pesky little fucker in no time! And yeah, you’re right. This is all true, but I miss the old days when I could go into Walgreens and by ten packs of batteries, a case of Sudafed, a large bottle of ammonia and a bunch of rubber tubes without the man getting all up in my business. Also, and maybe this is just me, but I get a little uncomfortable being around people covered in sores who have obviously just pissed their pants. Call me a princess if you must.

Child Pornography- Now, don’t get me wrong, I LOVE regular old pornography, but child porn seems like a whole different kind of thing to me. Maybe it’s just my old fashioned ways, but I’d say that when it comes to children, I think it’s stepping over a line to have them in porn. Honestly, I’ve never seen any kiddie porn and I really don’t even ever want to, because it sounds pretty uncool to me. Again, maybe I’m just a prude or some kind of draconian weirdo, but for whatever reason, I feel like people who make or consume child pornography should be uh….slowly and painfully destroyed? Is that fair? I know that may sound out there, but SOMEONE has to take a stand against that sort of thing. At the very least I think it should be illegal. Child porn, that is. Regular porn, to reiterate, the kind with NO kids in it, is good stuff.

Police Brutality- This one’s a bit of a grey area because I think that there’s lots of times that cops use excessive force and it’s just awesome, like when they burned those people in Waco or when they beat up Rodney King or yanked off that grandma’s diaper, but not long ago (fifteen years ago), I was being helped into a squad car (public urination) and the cop bumped my head against the door frame. AND he had the cuffs on so tight that I had creases in my wrists the next morning. That kind of shit is unnecessary, man. You know who else pisses in your precious park, Corning, NYPD? Hobos and dogs. Do you treat them that way too? Because that’s animal cruelty and/or hobophobia. Speaking of:

Bums- I can’t stand them. They’re always pissing in the parks and asking me for change or to help them out with some money to get their “lives” on “track” or to get their disgusting lip infections patched up. Listen, if I wanted to hang out with a helpless, stinky, illiterate, selfish asshole who shits their pants and sits around in the resulting filth demanding things from me, I’d hang out with my children.

Farting- I love it when I fart. It’s a dream come true. Not only does it smell great to me, but it bums out everyone else so instantly. It’s funny. But when you fart? Come on. Nobody wants to deal with your disgusting farts, man. And there you are just loving it! Scooping it up to your nose from your asshole with your cupped hand. It’s revolting. It makes me want to vomit, frankly.

Black People- KIDDING!

Hippies/Crusties- You’re the same. You both have dreadlocks and bugs living in your vest and you’ve got that dog on a rope and you stink and you cry about assholes not giving you things for free while you, in fact, give nothing to anyone at all (your dog would be much better off if he wasn’t tied to you, by the way). You spout high minded rhetoric and eat garbage. You HATE being called hippies when you’re a crusty, and you REALLY hate when people call crusties hippies when you’re a hippy, but guess what assholes? You just have dreads in different places and different shitty patches on your shitty jackets. If I wanted to sit next to someone that smelled like shit and wanted to steal my lunch, I’d hang out with bums. At least they’ve got no choice. Being a hippy or a crusty is like slumming in the world of mental illness. It’s the cerebral equivalent of cruising around in a wheelchair for fun.

Curtains/blinds- Um, excuse me curtains. I was trying to watch the young lady inside get undressed. Do you mind?

I dunno. This list could go on for a while. Maybe it’s time to quit while I’m behind. Oh, I’m playing with NOFX this weekend. Come witness the magic.

Marketing! Rock! Marketing! Rock!

Every band needs publicity. Labels and independent bands spend most of their time hiring publicists, writers, designers, and so forth. These people have, essentially one job and that job is to market the band to not only you: the dipshit out there in the world who may buy a record or go to a show someday, but also to the ‘tastemakers’ (which is a shitty, stupid, self-aggrandizing word that nerds with strong opinions who influence other nerds made up for themselves long ago) and the other people in the business. The reasons why are obvious, but maybe not as obvious as you might think. Of course these publicists, writers and designers want to rally behind a package that gets good reviews and is acclaimed, but that’s hardly the endgame with all this fluff. The ACTUAL endgame, stated or otherwise, is just to simply get the band’s name out there.

Fifty bad reviews are better than one good review, because no one gives a shit about reviews when push really comes to shove. Oh, there are a few people who may, for example, not go see a movie if Ebert says it’s bad, but almost no one is swayed towards trying something they’re naturally predisposed to disliking on first contact (some band with a shitty name or dumb bunch of faces or a movie about wacky black guys in drag and fat suits) just because someone they don’t know writes a few paragraphs about why it’s good.

People know this. That’s why, despite being critically acclaimed, nobody gives a shit about American Steel’s amazing, truly weird album ‘Jagged Thoughts.’ There just wasn’t enough noise surrounding it. Meanwhile, a band like Brokencyde, who NOBODY has EVER said a nice thing about, has been checked out by all of you, simply because EVERYONE talks about them, even though it’s 100% negative. The results of this is that Brokencyde videos get tons of plays, which translates to evidence for big guarantees, good spots at festivals, radio play and attention paid by everyone whether anyone likes it or not, and at some point, someone who actually likes that shit is gonna stumble across them because it’s reached a tipping point where Brokencyde has turned into the kind of thing that people just stumble across, due to massive word of mouth saturation.

So you see, there’s no inherent benefit in something actually being good. Good reviews are nice. They’re great. But they’re not gonna do anything for a band. If they did, the Smoking Popes would be huge thanks to Destination Failure. Instead, bands that get visibility become big, which is why publicists and agents and management can seem so important. They’re the gatekeepers who can call Chuck Klosterman and cash in a favor to get him to review this new record by this new band (let’s call them the Shitty Cheeses for the sake of ease). Then, they can leverage the fact that Klosterman reviewed the new record to get other people to review it. Then they can talk to people at magazines and bargain for the back cover adspace for the month when Brokencyde (a major influence of the Shitty Cheeses) is the cover band with a featured article. They can call their friends who service videos to gyms and Journey’s and shit and get the Shitty Cheeses video up in those spots, not so people will see them and LIKE them, but so they will see them at all. Just the act of them existing in as many places as possible will hopefully create conversations that will lead to the Brokencyde-esque tipping point where quality is completely irrelevant, which, unfortunately, happens after the very first step of being a band.

The thing is, this is all marketing and innovatively presenting new bands in 2011 is like trying to shoot a porn that’s new and interesting. It’s not gonna happen. There have been so many bands who have tried so many angles that there’s literally nothing new you can say about a band that hasn’t been said a zillion times before. The upshot of this is that there’s exactly 3 ways of marketing a new band. And here they are:

1) The Shitty Cheeses are playing something truly new and innovative! You’ve never heard anything like this genre-defying mindfuck!

2) The Shitty Cheeses are taking (genre of music) back to its roots, they’re not new jack trend hoppers. They’re GENUINE!

And finally

3) Do you like Brokencyde? Well the Shitty Cheeses are carrying the torch first lit by those trailblazing pioneers! They sound just like your favorite band WITHOUT BEING DERIVITIVE!!!!

That’s pretty much it. You can have subtle variants on these, but that’s all you’re really gonna get. It bears repeating that I’m talking about new bands here, where no journalist alive gives a fuck about reading their bio or listening to their record. The challenge is to make it interesting.

Now, you’d think in this world of twitter and email and facebook, where everyone is so connected that someone would, at some point think “gee, we need to start to approach band bios in a very different way because just stuffing effusive praise up the asses of a bunch of nobodies and presenting it to a bunch of jaded old shitty music journalists who barely get paid and have nothing but cynicism to keep them afloat is a pretty useless waste of time.” But let me tell you something: people RARELY think that way when it comes time to launch a band.

I know this because I write bios for bands. I try, with limited success, to make the bios something that people would be interested in reading, for the exact reasons I spelled out at the top of this page. To me, the band is secondary. Just getting someone to READ a bio is a victory, and I like to stay away from the three above methods of pitching bands. I like to tell stories, bullshit, joke, do things that could be easily described as BSC blogs about whatever band I’m dealing with. That’s what I think the world of indie band marketing is missing. But while that may be the breath of fresh air that a journalist, dj or other (shudder) tastemaker is dying for amongst their stack of bios, it’s almost never what a band or a manager wants to see.

Bands are obsessed with the record and the lyrics and the subtle influences and, in short, all the things that NO ONE who’s not in the band actually gives a fuck about. Yes, once someone is a fan, these details become the cherry on top of the fan experience, but do YOU give a fuck about what records the Stinky Cheeses listened to while crafting “Space Station Twister”? Not yet, you don’t. You don’t care about reading their out-of-context lyrics or the paragraph on their “dynamic, unclassifiable guitar sound.” You just don’t, because when it’s just words describing music, music sounds stupid. This is a universal truth.

Management is even worse because they want (without exception) the following: name dropping, superlative accolades, name dropping, superlative accolades, no mention of anything at all that could possibly be construed as negative or humorous, more name dropping.

This is weird because the human element (ie the actual ugly, weird, warty lives of the people in the band) are the ONLY aspects of a bio that could possibly EVER be interesting (especially to a jaded dipshit journalist who gets one hundred versions of bios 1, 2 and 3 every day) but there’s no room for that in the minds of the band or the Manager. Humor, likewise, is something that could, at the very least, get someone to read to the end of the bio, but for some reason too dumb for me to understand, people (musicians and management alike, actually) think that if something’s funny, it’s making fun…and Music Is Serious Business and My Art and How Dare This Dipshit Bio Writer Joke About ME/my boys??????? This Band Is Not A Joke To ME!!!! which is a humorless and shitty attitude and a huge part of the reason that most bands and most managers have no fucking idea what they’re talking about and are rewarded with a corresponding amount of success.

Anyway, I don’t care. I’m not famous, and I obviously don’t know what I’m talking about, or I’d be living out the rest of my days in gold-plated luxury, so take all this with a grain of salt. I just wanted to share some notes from the other side of the curtain.
I’m gonna go hang with the Holy Mess and the Menzingers now.

Later dildos.

Movie Reviews for Movies I Haven't Seen: That Dumb One About The Fighting Robots

This movie that’s coming out (I believe it’s called Real Steel but I could be wrong and I refuse to look the title up) that’s about the fighting robots looks absolutely terrible. Essentially the plot is something like this: it’s the future and giant fighting robots have somehow become interesting to watch. Apparently Wolverine gets involved and by figuring out how to link this one, highly special (I’m assuming) robot up to his own movements, a la some kind of motion capture technology, he not only goes on to win whatever stupid fucking competition he and his robot are involved in (I’m assuming here that the stakes are extremely high, like maybe it’s a dystopian future where your robot’s fate determines your own [which would make the whole let’s-link-the-robot’s-motion-to-my-motion angle highly reflective and, if you’re a fucking idiot, poignant]) but he also apparently becomes a great role model for/restores faith in humanity for/saves the life of some little boy who’s probably his son or his stepson but may just be a ragamuffin-y, spunky orphan with an aptitude that other adults have chosen not to notice because they’re too busy scoffing at his social status/dorky demeanor.

This is just what I can glean from the trailer. I’m filling in the details with guesses based on what I know about terrible movies in general, and I bet I’m at least 80% right. This is possibly the absolutely dumbest looking movie I’ve EVER seen an advertisement for. Let’s break down why briefly, shall we?

The movie is about robots fighting. That’s at the heart of the film, right? Right. Well, that’s not interesting. Remember the show Battle Bots? That show was one of the most uniquely dull programs ever forced into my home. And it failed spectacularly, which makes me wonder why on earth some studio person would go so far out on a limb as to make a large budget motion picture out of its horrible premise. Fighting robots aren’t interesting for the same reason that two robots fucking aren’t interesting. There’s absolutely no tension there. There’s no sense of sympathy, empathy or verisimilitude engendered by two machines just performing functions. If there were, then cogs in a gigantic clock or a functioning oil derrick could conceivably get us in the mood to fight or make our dicks hard but, with the exception of a few pretty awesome perverts that I’m just guessing probably exist, that shit’s not even anywhere NEAR anybody’s reality. People care about machines, but they care about machines that are THEIRS and they care about them like this: “fuck! I lost my phone. Now I’ve gotta get a new one!” That’s less than people care about their fucking goldfish and a movie about fighting goldfish would be…well, nevermind. That would be awesome.

You know what would be a better premise? People fighting. Or dogs. Or anything but robots. But you know what? Fuck it. If you MUST have robots make at least make it interesting. Like, if the robots controlled the people and it was the people who were in the ring. Do you see why that would be better? Because then there would be a visceral issue at stake. I’m sure, in fact I’d bet anything that in some way the fate of the robot is tied to the fate of Wolverine and the boy that he cares for like a father, and that they’ll either die or be sent to some terrible place if the robot loses, but the thing is, I can tell from the trailer that the robot wins. SO, that’s pretty much the whole thing. The guy stands on the sidelines and ‘fights’ while the robot takes the hits, so the guy’s not even in any real danger at any time. I know that without knowing anything about the movie. It’s fucking stupid.

Now, revealing the whole movie in the trailer isn’t always bad. Free Willy, which was geared to kids, kind of needed to show everyone the “hey, not only does this movie have a happy ending, but this whale jumps OVER THIS FUCKING KID!!!!!” scene in the preview to let people know that an upbeat payoff existed (because seriously, a live action movie about a whale and a boy and their friendship? Puh-lease). Similarly, that movie 50/50 that’s out right now is a comedy about cancer. The guy who the movie’s based on is one of the writers and he’s doing publicity tours now, which means, obviously, that his character doesn’t die in the movie, but that’s a very important fact to have out there when you’re trying to make a feel good comedy about one of the darkest subjects humanity will ever face.

When it comes to a bunch of stupid fighting robots, however, you can’t even leave a shred of mystery? Really? So there’s nothing at stake, but it’s okay because the good guys win, right? Whew. Sign me up for the 3D experience and the Blu Ray. What a fucking turd.

Now, in closing, I’m sure this movie is intended to be a gateway film for 8-12 year old boys, ushering them into the world of action movies with a low-stakes Transformers-meets-karate-kid mashup, but here’s the thing: I watched Karate Kid, where Ralph Macchio gets pushed down the hill on his bike and gets his ass whupped by skeletons. In the original Transformers, Optimus Prime, the protagonist of the whole movie, DIES half way through! I watched the Goonies where pervy old men were after young kids and wanted them dead. If this is, as I expect it is, a lazy example of the softening of the edges of the cultural and psychological landscape for not only our children but also to spare our OWN wimpy little feelings, well, then this movie isn’t just stupid, it’s dangerous.

But one thing is for sure, it’s fucking stupid.

The secret of flying as explained through wieners.

There’s no quicker way to make a woman not want to have sex with you than for her to think that you’re trying to have sex with her. This is such a crazily universal maxim that it not only applies to complete strangers, it also applies to people who have been in committed, monogamous relationships for years. In fact, even in those cases where it seems like this doesn’t hold true (you are a famous star and a woman comes right up to you and asks to suck your dick, you’re newly dating/married and you just reach under the table at brunch and grab her vagina and she responds positively) it’s all just a holdover from that moment when she first decided she wanted to bang you but decided in her mind that you weren’t gonna be interested. That’s a powerful moment and it can last a long time, but mark my words, it will wear off. Whether you’re dealing with a young Katie Holmes who first looked at your posters and thought “wow, he’s so gorgeous! Too bad he’s famous and gay and I’m just a nine year old girl” or you’re a guy at a bar who just seemed fascinating one particular night, that sheen of seeming like you weren’t gonna bone whoever it is that you currently bone will wear off. And where will you be after it’s all said and done? Playing the weirdest game in the world where you use all your will to try and not do the one thing that you want to do in hopes that by not doing it, you’ll be allowed to do it. It’s like the way Douglas Adams describes how to fly in his amazing Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series. “The secret to flying is to fall at the ground and miss.” To do this, you must, at the very moment you’re falling, completely and without guile, not be aware that you’re falling. This is a lot like getting laid, and it’s amazingly complicated. If god had any kind of heart he’d just give us longer necks and let us be done with the whole thing.

The thing is, men, almost without fail, have zero ability to just leave a woman alone. This probably accounts for about 90% of why this entire crazy catch 22 of a rule is in place. If you come up to your girlfriend/wife/beautiful stranger and kind of casually hint that you’d maybe like a blowjob, she knows what you’re hinting at. This is always true. She rebuffs you and you feel rejected and in an amazing feat of misguided super-confidence-in-the-face-of-rejection the male brain works out this thought process that goes something like this:

“Man, I REALLY would like a blowjob and it seems like it would be a great time for everyone. Why can’t she see that? Oh, I get it…She didn’t get my subtle advance. She probably DOES want to give me a blowjob but doesn’t realize that I’m interested. Fuck. I don’t want to miss out on a blowjob just because of my subtlety. I’d better make it a little more obvious.”

Of course, this leads down a slope of increasingly mongoloidian advances that ultimately culminate in the boner being grinded into the thigh/buttocks or the wolf-whistle out the window of the moving car (that’s in the case where you’re dealing with “women at large” instead of just one particular woman) and while these types of moves probably HAVE worked at some point in history, they’re not gonna work for you. They’re just not. Again, maybe if your relationship is still in a honeymoon type phase where you’ve already sealed the deal and haven’t yet become the non-dynamic dullard that you’ll ultimately become in her eyes, you can pull this type of shit off, but for everyone else, casual dudes in bars, cohabitators, even long term friends with benefits (what a dumb phrase) nah…not gonna happen. But it makes a lot of sense. The desperation builds, and though you know “Man, I gotta stop constantly pressuring her to bone” the worry grows that if you DON’T pressure her then she’s gonna think you don’t care and you’re cool with not boning, which is unacceptable, so you put on the pressure more, which makes her withdraw more, which makes the advances more blatant and shitty and on and on like this until you’re sitting there one day and you say “Hey, wanna go screw? It’s been like a month” and she says “you gotta stop that shit” and then you feel like a dick, but you’ve made her feel like a dick too, because it didn’t need to come to that. But it always does, and here’s why:

Men and women have some fundamental differences. One of the biggest ones is, obviously, our genitalia. Consider this: for a man to have an orgasm, he doesn’t need to be thinking about it at all. He can literally be asleep. He can just be sitting there and blow a load in his pants at the SIGHT of the right set of cans without any physical stimulation whatsoever. In short, it’s completely mindless. It requires no effort and it’s SO out of our control that it’s a source of pride to have control over your orgasms (Ron Jeremy, Sting) and a source of shame to be at the mercy of them (almost every male on earth at some time or other). Compare that to women, who need to concentrate, need specific stimulation, which varies not only from woman to woman, but from day to day. It’s hard. It can be a frustrating chore. And while everyone can probably think of a time that a woman has tried to come and failed, it’s no secret that some women never EVER have orgasms at all. Of course the end can be totally worth the effort, that is IF you can come to a happy resolution, though there’s no promise of that. It’s like having your kitchen remodeled. It’s a lot of work, a gigantic pain in the balls, it requires patience, concentration and dealing with clumsy dudes that seem to be intent on fucking things up and getting in the way as much as they’re trying to help and at the end, there’s absolutely no guarantee that you’re gonna be satisfied with the results.

And this brings me to my point: Women tend to LOVE to remodel their kitchens, but they don’t want to do it every day. For men, getting off is like taking a dump. The longer you put it off, the more it’s gonna occupy all your thoughts until eventually it just happens in your pants. I was taught by my dad at a young age that I should ALWAYS go to the bathroom every chance I get because you never know when you’re gonna get another chance. I hope this analogy is perfectly clear.

This is why men will absolutely jump at the chance to do it any time it comes up, and to a greater extent why they’re constantly hounding all women, and why it’s such a completely unappealing thing to do. This explains why men are pigs, but also while they’ll bone when you’re/they’re sick, if you wake them when they’re sleeping, when they’re at work and busy, while they’re dying/at a funeral/getting cross examined for a serious crime. I mean, that’s a MAIN plotline of everything from sitcoms and porn to the funny pages: the busy husband who despises the idea of banging his horny wife. You know why that’s such a popular trope? Because it DOESN’T HAPPEN (porn addicts, closeted gays, medicated manic depressives and people harboring huge amounts of guilt notwithstanding). It’s a fantasy. People watched Al on Married With Children turn down the vastly out of his league Peg every week not because they could relate to it, but because the WISH they could relate to it. Al’s a slob, more of a slob than our viewer at home, but he’s got a vastly more beautiful wife, one who constantly wants to fuck him and he’s turning her down. That’s strangely satisfying for a guy with an average wife who constantly has to pretend he DOESN’T want to fuck his wife in order to sneak across the border, because he gets rebuffed every time he makes one of his increasingly less confident and clumsy advances.

It’s a real dance, this getting laid business. Fortunately for me, I’m amazing at the dance. I should be on the goddamned Dancing with the Stars, alongside fellow total studs and lady-slayers Rob Kardashian and Chaz Bono. The point here is not that women hate boning, it’s that men are slobs. And yes, I’m keenly aware that this is broad stroke “Late Friday Nite Comedy Jam” type generalization. It’s also remarkably true, so throw your stones. For those of you out there saying “this is complete bullshit. This is not how it is at all,” let me close with a warning. For maximum effect, imagine it said in a hollow, Vincent Price-y echoing voice with chains rattling and screams in the background.

It will happen to yooooooooooooooou.

It will.

It will happen to yoooooooooou.