And I Am Not Lying, For Real

I've Moved - New Blog, New Link

2008-01-28T10:50:00.001-05:00

New Situation, New Blog

2007-09-24T09:32:00.001-04:00

Some of you may have noticed that this blog's been a little lean on posts recently.

My friend Jon once said about moving to New York,

It's like this. It doesn't matter how much money you have, how solid your relationship is, what kind of apartment or job you have lined up. Within the first three months of moving here, the city will kick you in the guts, HARD. It will find some way to absolutely break you. Then you'll recover, and the rest will be just fine."

He wasn't playing. Shortly after I got here my freelance work dried up, my girlfriend called it quits, and I had to temporarily share bedroom with another grown man while we packed 4 adults into a 2 bedroom apartment. I had hit the trifecta: no job, no lady, and barely had a home. If anything else happened, I'd have had to learn the guitar and hop on an empty freight train heading south, cancelling my dreams of a writing career to become a rough-and tumble folk-blues singer.

I didn't want to post much because it would have been so easy to whine about everything. And to readers, a little angst goes a looooong way.

Now things are different. I'm working now, contracting in the Web Production department of a large educational company. The work is really boring, but the people are incredibly nice and so laid-back. The first question n my 5-minute interview was

Where is your threshold for very boring work?

My answer:

A lot higher than my threshold for unemployment.

We had an office cake party the other day -- someone's birthday -- and it wasn't weird at all! People were really enjoying themselves!

I've come to terms with the breakup, too. The relationship was great, lots of good times and it went a long way to healing some old wounds, but just wasn't something sustainable. It was obvious to both of us that we were in different places, and now that I have a little perspective, I know it was the right thing to do ... and the breakup is just about as amicable as they come.

Two of the adults in my 2-bedroom place got their own crib, so I am back in a room of my own, and I'm incredibly grateful to my patient, understanding roommate for being willing to double up for a month or so.

And there is this: I have a new blog. It's on Wordpress, on its own domain, and I've been designing and testing and working the kinks out. It's the same name, same spirit, just a little more professional, hopefully. I learned, from this big, long break from blogging, that I don't like being away from it. I missed it every day, felt fat and lazy from the sheer sloth of not posting, but also more and more shy about writing this publicly with each passing day.

So I hit a low point there for a while, and I'm on the way back up. I'm making a go of it blogging in New York, trying to see if I can grow traffic, get ads, elbow my way into the crowds up here. So, lease redirect your bookmarks and reorient your RSS to : And I Am Not Lying. I won't be posting here any more, but now you know where to find me.

Let me know if you see any kinks or suggest any tweaks ... and to those of you that are still with me, thanks for sticking around.

Five Facts About "Frankenstein"

2007-08-08T21:51:00.000-04:00

There are few tiny diamonds buried in the shit swamp that is Clear-Channel-controlled classic rock radio, but Edgar Winter's "Frankenstein" is one of them. You can hear the song at almost any time in any town in America, and you could be forgiven for thinking it was just another old played-out song.

But, brother, it's not.

"Frankenstein" never gets old and "Frankenstein" will never die. Winters' stopless riffs can turn a church picnic packed with Republicans into a stone-cold groove-fest.

I saw a DVD of Edgar Winter Group banging out "Frankenstein" last weekend and it was like the contents of the Lost Ark in rock form -- my face nearly melted off my skull.

I couldn't believe Winter played synth, sax, drums and amp effects so effortlessly. It's worth a watch just for the guitar faces alone. Check it out:

Here's a few fun facts about "Frankenstein":

1) Winter painstakingly constructed the song in the studio, making his bandmates play their parts over and over again, then splicing the recordings together to compose the song from yards of recording tape.

Says Winter: "When we were editing it in the studio, back in those days when you edited something, you physically had to cut the tape and splice it back together, so it was all over the control room, draped over the backs of chairs and the couch. We were making fun of it, trying to figure out how to put it back together, saying 'Here's the main body; the leg bone's connected to the thigh bone ... ' Then Chuck Ruff, my drummer, says, 'Wow, man, it's like Frankenstein.' As soon as I heard that, I went, 'Wow, that's it!' The monster was born."

2) Rick Derringer plays lead guitar on the song -- Rick Derringer of "Rock & Roll, Hoochie Koo" fame. Rick Derringer may have the world's most perfect name -- that name suits any awesome profession: astronaut, cowboy, porn star, guitar-slinger ...

3) Derringer also produced the recording of this song

4) This was the first hit song to use the synthesizer as a live instrument. Winter was also the first to strap a synth to his neck, spawning the key-tar several years later, though the key-tar would never rock so hard.

5) Edgar Winter is a huge Scientologist. He produced, arranged, and performed on the album Mission Earth. Mission Earth's words and music were actually written by L. Ron Hubbard, Scientology's founder, who supposedly left detailed directions and audio tapes for whatever musicians made the album.

6) This isn't really a fact, but here's "Frankenstein" on the Simpsons:

If any of you can find a clip of Otto humming the song as he drives the school bus, let me know ...

That's all I got for now.

Rolling Battle-Bots and Limited Freedoms -- The Future is Coming and It's Terrifying

2007-08-07T18:17:00.000-04:00

A grim sci-fi future is coming faster than we think, and it's not going to be cool at all. I love dirty visions of a repressive robot-patrolled future when I'm watching them in air-conditioned comfort, but the painful reality of it is coming. I swear to you that every geek is going to snap his Robocop special edition in half with bitter, Mountain Dew flavored tears when the days of true Terminators come -- and it's going to happen in our lifetime, too.

From Wired's Danger Room:

After years of development, three "special weapons observation remote reconnaissance direct action system" (SWORDS) robots have deployed to Iraq, armed with M249 machine guns. The 'bots "haven't fired their weapons yet," Michael Zecca, the SWORDS program manager, tells DANGER ROOM. "But that'll be happening soon."

Robots occupy exactly the same position in our culture now that personal computer did in the late 70's, with this critical difference: they're going to develop a LOT faster. We can share information and build communities better than ever before. Scientists, hobbyists and madmen are already standing on each others' shoulders at light speed to create machines that think like us, act like us, and carry out our little desires -- and it's only going to speed up.

Wars propel technical innovation. Soldiers bring their tools home and adapt them into tools for the mass culture. Look at all the Humvees on the streets, the hunters hunting with M-16s, the camo cargo shorts that I'm wearing right now. These 'bots, or the chips that power their metal guts at least, are going to make their way onto the streets and into homes by the time I've old enough to have grandkids.

And as you all should know by now, the Bush administration bent America over and helped themselves to the power to spy on us like never before over the weekend. From the Washington Post:

Many congressional Democrats wanted tighter restrictions on government surveillance, but yielded in the face of Bush's veto threats and the impending August recess.

"This bill would grant the attorney general the ability to wiretap anybody, any place, any time without court review, without any checks and balances," said Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., during the debate preceding the vote. "I think this unwarranted, unprecedented measure would simply eviscerate the 4th Amendment," which prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures.

I know it sounds paranoid, crazy even. I know this might brand me as a frothing blogger nut. But something tells me I'm right here. Think about it:

How long do you think it would take before Bush -- or Giulani, or whoever they tell us we voted for -- puts these things on the streets of New York to "protect us from terrorists?" How long before our phone conversations flag us as terrorists and these things are sent to the GPS coordinates that are in every cell call?

Imagine making a joke to against freedom to a friend in another country while you're walking home from the subway -- and having these things roll up on you. They can't hear your argument, and there's no human behind the armor to ease off the trigger.

Yeah, I'm a sci-fi nerd. But I like it best when it stays FICTION.

The Hunt Continues

2007-08-02T01:57:00.001-04:00

Rules of the House
Originally uploaded by chinese_fashion

Being interviewed as an employee and a roommate in the same day makes the soul feel like a splotch of water on the countertop, shortly after being touched with a dry sponge. I need a place to live soon, and the process of finding one is exhausting.

I got lost going to an open house underneath the BQE. Once I made it, the open house was over, but the doors to the building were still wide open. I wandered inside. All the doors were shut, except for the front and back door to the concrete garden. An enterprising building manager had inscribed the rules of the building right on the wall with a Sharpie -- see the photo.

The super's number was written on another part of the wall in permanent marker, and each floor was carefully labelled, too: "3rd floor" on the 3rd, "4th floor" on the 4th, and so on.

This was written on the wall on the ground floor hallway, just above a stepladder leaning against the wall:

My inner grammarian shrieked: "What was the former? And how can someone stand on it to thank me?"

I looked at a place in Bushwick last week, and it was not the artsy-gentrified Bushwick that I was hoping for, the part that less scrupulous brokers refer to as "East Williamsburg." It was the "mattress leaning up outside the front door" part of Bushwick.

There is one tough lesson in Brooklyn real estate that I am quickly learning: there is an inverse relationship between the quality of apartment and quantity of neighboring fried chicken joints. If the ad mentions an apartment's proximity to White Castle or KFC as a selling point: no, thanks.

The building itself smelled like tigers had been pissing in the hallway. It seemed to be working to suppress the gazelle and springbok populations. The room was tiny, dingy, and painted a color precisely at the midpoint between dark brown and a diseased wound.

I lasted ten seconds in there and may have said "fuck this" out loud.

This place seemed right -- great location, good price. Then I read the ad:

The building is kinda dirty and smelly, but the apartment isn't. There are mostly Hispanics in the building, and some blacks and Italians. Very Brooklyn. I love it, but I understand this is not for everyone.

A lot of these ads, it's what they don't say. It's between the lines. This one reads like Annie Wilkes is looking for a roommate, which makes the question "what happened to the last occupant" exceptionally important.

The search continues. Every morning that sponge wrings a little more of me out on the countertop and I respond to a few ads and get soaked up again by nightfall. If you live in Brooklyn and want to share a place with a quiet writer who doesn't smoke, let me know.

Quit Crashing the Lineup, Dude

2007-07-26T11:36:00.000-04:00

I saw this picture online of dolphins surfing and pretty much loved it immediately ...

Open Letter to the Important Guy from Down the Hall

2007-07-25T17:33:00.000-04:00

I see you in the bathroom in my office every afternoon at about four o'clock. I think we're on the same cycle that way. I think you're a VIP in your company judging from the deferential reverence in younger men's voices as they talk to you at the sinks and urinals. You respond to in clipped, quick sentences. It's obvious that your words are almost as precious as your time, and given just as sparingly. You've got decisions to make, places to be, and barely enough time to take lunch.

This afternoon you strode purposefully into the bathroom, robotically munching Cheez-Its from a little bag. Without wasting a single motion, you unzipped, pulled EVERYTHING out and started pissing away a good two feet from the toilet -- using both free hands to keep eating those Cheez-Its.

If you're that busy, you're in heart attack territory, man. And then where will you be? Dead on the floor, lying in a puddle with your piece out and Cheez-its on your lips. That's no way for a man of industry to go.

Going to the bathroom is important, and so is snacking. Nobody is so important that they have to do both simultaneously. That's not efficient, it's just nasty.

Take a little time to taste the Cheez-its. Get outside, get a little air, some sunshine. You're building a world and that's great, but take some time to enjoy the world you're in. It's a hell of a mess, but there's some beautiful stuff if you stop and look.

Take care, man. Take care.

--Jeff

BLTs are a Universal Truth

2007-07-19T20:34:00.001-04:00

BLT Sandwich
Originally uploaded by jasonperlow

You can't conjure up resonant, universal truths on purpose. They just have to happen, right in front of you or dribble out from between the lips by accident for someone else to discover.

There was this discussion on Metafilter today about bacon salt. Not that it wouldn't have caught my attention anyway -- who wouldn't want to learn more about bacon salt -- but having just read about bacon ice cream in the Post, I clicked a little faster.

The chat itself was okay, pretty good by Metafilter standards (read: nobody got crapped on), but this comment from a guy called Divine_Wino slapped me in the face like a big cold carp made out of universal truth:

I don't know about bacon salt, really, but just think about this for a minute:

You cook up some of that thick slab bacon, slooooowly. Then you take some fresh sliced sourdough bread and toast it lightly. Then you cut up one New Jersey beefsteak tomato (wait till you get a good one!), you need four thick slices because you are going to end up eating two of these, then one (ONE) piece of red leaf lettuce or Romaine (you need about 1/3 stem/thick end to leaf ratio), not too wet from when you rinse it under the tap. Mayo, fresh ground black pepper ...

Here is the amazing thing about this amazing sandwich, really, really, anyone can make it and it's fucking delicious, it's the most democratic thing in the world a BLT, with a BLT every man is a king, every woman is president-for-life, every dog is a pony.

Drink ice water while you are eating your BLT's and then quickly go wash your hands and face and lie down on a freshly made bed in an airconditioned room, read sci-fi paperbacks from the seventies, take a little nap.

That's about as good as being a human being gets, I'm pretty sure.

That's summer afternoons at my grandparents', trips to my aunt and uncles' farm, long slow weekends with plans for later but nothing much to do right now and the splendor of simplicity all in three paragraphs. Try pulling that one off on purpose and see how it goes.

Birdman on the L Train

2007-07-16T14:07:00.000-04:00

I was just sitting there on the L train back to Brooklyn, trying to come up with something to post today when it fell in my lap with a bow and a smile.

A middle-aged black guy wearing a hat with a big old peacock feather in it, sunglasses and a fanny pack got on the train and stood right in front of me. As soon as the doors shut, he let out a warbling war whoop and launched into a series of bird calls. What was really fascinating is that he had no discernible facial expression at all -- this was TOTALLY normal, as normal as reading the ads on the train or checking out the subway map

Here's a video:

What I really loved the most about the whole experience was that nobody paid any mind to him at all. They just looked at the floor or their watches or something as though this happened all the time.

Then I realized that in New York, it DOES happen all the time.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: once you really, truly don't care if other people don't think you're crazy, the world is yours.

Rods Trimmed, Sac Drained, Rachel Heads Home

2007-07-13T02:36:00.000-04:00

Rachel was standing next to her bed when I got to the hospital this morning. I mean, she still had her IV in and everything, but she was standing there, her same old self except with a big old bandage and no weird lump.

The surgery went off just fine. As it turns out, Rachel's rods were sticking out far enough that her body formed a giant bursa around the ends. Bursa are fluid-filled sacs formed where muscle or tendon slides across bone -- or titanium, in this case. Her bursa was pretty enormous and filled with all kinds of revolting bacterial goop. It grew steadily over the years as the rods moved away from her spine, according to Rachel's mom.

Extrapolating mentally, I envisioned Rachel at 55 with a hunched back full of gnarly pustulent poison. If that nasty sac detonated under pressure, like on a roller coaster or something, it would have killed Rachel immediately and probably anyone within its blast radius.

But now it's over, the rods are clipped and the sac is drained.

Pardon me with an aside here, but: is the word sac nasty or what? It's so strange -- sack is just fine. Groceries come in sacks. Santa Claus carries a sack, and you can get a sack of burgers, which are delicious.

But sac. Ew. When I think of the contents of a sac, I think of pus, testicles, and spider eggs.

Rachel's fine though, barring a surgical opening that needs to heal shut. She's certainly well enough already to clown around with the medical equipment by her bed:

This is a real conversation that we overheard this morning between her hospital roommate, a doctor and a nurse:

Doctor: "How are you feeling this morning?"
Patient: (Replied in Spanish, which neither the Doctor or I understood.)
Nurse, in Spanish: (How are you feeling today?)
Patient: (More Spanish)
Nurse, to Doctor: "I think we can let her go this evening, she's much better."
Doctor: "Well, that does us no good, we need her bed by noon!"
Nurse, loudly to Patient: "Congratulations, pack your things, you're going home immediately!"

Luckily for Rachel and the nurses -- who were probably preparing to dump her in a grocery cart and shove it onto Fifth Avenue -- she's already home recovering. Me, I'm back down from nervous to normally neurotic and heading out to her parents' place this weekend with a bunch of Sopranos on DVD.

Thanks so much for all your concern and comments, too -- we both really appreciated it.

Yes ... Offices for The Win

2007-07-11T23:29:00.001-04:00

It always started the same way: I'd get up from my chair, push it in and set an "away" message that said "Gone to the moon motherfuckers, see you when I see you."

Then I'd carefully step up onto my desk and elbow-drop my cubicle-mate into slumberland, his eyes and mouth opened wide with disbelief until I connected with his temple.

I would make my escape by swinging away Spider-Man style, gripping the space between ceiling tiles and cupping my hand to my mouth to better broadcast my victorious hooting.

When I wasn't having that particular workplace fantasy -- that one usually occurred several hundred times daily, but only after lunch -- I'd have this one, flawlessly illustrated below by some mysterious genius. Be forewarned: cartoon nudity appears below, may not be safe for work.

This also shows up with the subhead "Step 1 - flip your desk ... 2 - block all exits... 3 - smash everything in sight... 4 - set fire... 5 - get naked, reproduce... 6 - hippies" which isn't too bad, either. If anyone knows who did this originally, please let me know in the comments.

Thanks to TechSnap ...

Update:

First of all, credit where it's due. This cartoon seems to come from the Centennial Society, who produced it to put in postage-paid, business-reply envelopes that come with junk mail offers. That makes it just that much funnier, if you ask me. Here's the original link. You can't link directly to this cartoon, but it's under "Business Reply Pamphlet." "Welcome to Geneva" is pretty solid, too.

Also: welcome, Digg readers! Chances are you just came here to see what all the hoopla was about. On the off chance that you're thinking "gosh, I bet this guy does more complex, 'artsy' posts. If only I could see them," well, here you go:

Snake Man of Venice
When the Doves Die
We Make Memories Together, Pretty Or Not
'Roo Shooter

Ectomo: Eight Slimy Thumbs Up

2007-07-11T12:09:00.001-04:00

Ectomo's Octobee
Originally uploaded by chinese_fashion

My days are usually spent in a series of endless laps around a tiny track online, flicking through Fark, BoingBoing, Reddit, Digg and Metafilter, Fark, BoingBoing, Reddit, Digg and Metafilter, Fark, BoingBoing, Reddit, Digg and Metafilter until it's 2 am and the whole Internet reads exactly the same. Stuff kinda bleeds over between those sites until it's all a grey wash of lame video game jokes and Ron Paul supporters.

Now there's a couple new rungs in my digital hamster wheel: Ectoplasmosis aka Ectomo, "a wonder closet of fringe art, culture and ephemera." This catchall phrase really refers to robots, comics, Cthulu and more octopus/squid themed oddities than you can shake a slime-coated tentacle at.

Here's a few recent posts, for example:

How To Smoke A Pipe Through Your Eyeball
Chewbacca Sexually Assaults Marilyn Monroe
Alpha the Robot Meets Zorine, Queen of the Nudists

Ectomo's co-editors used to run Wired's now-deceased Table of Malcontents, a former fave of mine. Right now it's a ghost ship floating the electronic seas -- pillage it while you can, before it gets yanked.

John Brownlee, co-helmsman for both blogs, had the good sense to link to me a month or two back. While I'm all about the virtual reacharound to return the favor, this blog's really, really cool. Even if I thought Brownlee and Eliza Gauger (his partner) were the sort of weasel-minded shit-sniffing remoras that pass for pros online these days, I'd have to begrudgingly admit they've got a good thing going here.

So check it out, readers -- leave a comment and tell 'em I sent you.

Bionic Woman , Pre-Tune-Up

2007-07-11T01:44:00.000-04:00

This is Rachel, my girlfriend. She's beautiful, sweet, loving, and endlessly patient with my constant mood swings. She's also sort of bionic.

When she was a little girl, she started developing scoliosis pretty badly. Doctors eventually opened her back right up and fused two titanium rods to her increasingly unruly spine.

"That oughta teach it a thing or two," everyone thought. Rachel healed up, and life proceeded normally, with flawless posture.

Now, though, there are some new problems. See that bump right beside the scar there? That's not her shoulder blade -- that's the ends of her titanium rods, bending away from the spine and sticking out. It's causing some problems. Her back is sore, there's some numbness.

Tomorrow afternoon, Rachel's going under the knife again. This time the surgeons are going to go in and saw off the ends of those rods, get 'em to lay down a little bit. For some reason I envision her doctor using bolt cutters, those big clippers people use in the city to steal bikes. I doubt those are in the toolbox, though.

They say it's no big deal, she's only going to be in the hospital for two days and will be up and around in a week. If you ask me, two days is an eternity in an age when heart attack victims are all but shoved out the door in a shopping cart after their surgery.

I know this is no big deal, and that everything's going to be just fine. But man, I'm worried all the same. Say a little prayer for us, please?

The Japanese Are Crazy: Exhibit X

2007-07-09T14:18:00.000-04:00

My Grandpa once told me "every last one of the Japanese are crazy, Jeffrey. They're all out of their minds, each and every one of 'em." He's prone to saying stuff like that, like most grandpas are.

Although, I have to say, this commercial doesn't exactly prove him wrong. Mildly NSFW unless the boss is one of those freaks that writes Ann Landers to gripe about public breastfeeding.

Man With the Yellow Arm

2007-07-06T00:58:00.000-04:00

Maybe it's just 'cause I'm new here, but I'm amazed at what New Yorkers will steal: anything that's not cemented into the earth. In broad daylight, too.

This is the life-size 3-D promotional display for the Simpsons movie in the Loews' on Union Square. Hundreds of people shuffle past this thing at a time, all day long. Which means that sometime in the not-too-distant past someone with balls the size of Bart's eyeballs up and stole Homer Simpson's arm off.

What do you even DO with that thing? It could look pretty cool sticking up out of a grave at Mount Zion ...

Three Days a Brooklyn Resident: Thunk, Thunk, Thunk

2007-07-04T03:48:00.000-04:00

I'm settled in now, mostly. I'm living out of garbage bags and boxes in my friend's sublet ... but the truck's been returned, the storage shed filled and I've managed to make a tub of hand-cranked ice cream in the new kitchen.

Here's a tip for all you ice cream makers out there: if you're making coffee ice cream, never, ever flavor it with espresso. The results are cold and creamy, yes, but suffused with a black grit that triggers the bowels while destroying your bedtime. The taste is not unlike eating the sweet sludge from the bottom of a Turkish coffee.

My farewell party was better than I could have hoped. All the folks I loved the most in DC came ... along with a mysterious emissary.

Suicide_blond has been a regular reader and frequent commenter here over the past year or so. She's always had a few kind words for me, punctuated with vigorous ellipses. When some of the DC blog scene's egregious rotten twats have had a good go at me, she's stuck up for me. I've never met her in person and I'm not sure I ever will.

After the farewell drinks had flowed for a few hours, a tall, grey-haired man in sunglasses and a suit walked into the bar. He immediately began shouting my name at the top of his lungs. All the patrons around him followed suit, until finally my friends grabbed me. He said

This card's from Suicide_blonde. She wants to stay anonymous

He handed me a card, addressed to my name at And I Am Not Lying, For Real. It read "Dear Mr. Simmermon: Enjoy the Big Apple ... or die trying!! Put some Johnny Cash on the jukebox & have a round on me ..." There was a twenty dollar bill inside.

The man in the suit took a photo of me with the card and us together, then walked out into the night.

That's class right there -- weird, story-worthy class. It's better than meeting in person, if you ask me.

Moving day was clear, cool for July. Every other time I've moved, it's been a hundred degrees out. The one time I moved in December I was in Australia, so it was still a hundred degrees. I had plenty of help packing and cleaning from some incredible people, and the day was pretty painless, all around.

I got up early Sunday morning, well before the alarm. I was heading up to hail a cab to the U-Haul facility (never, ever use U-Haul), when I just had to freeze. The street was completely quiet except for the trees whispering. I was just absorbing it all when I heard this sound all around me, from inside and outside my eardrums -- a sort of THUNK, THUNK that shook me to the mitochondria.

I've heard that sound before and I love the way it makes me feel. It's the best feeling in the world.

I got the truck, we loaded it up, ate some pizza and swept the apartment out. Me and my friends stood there in the empty place, swapping stories and toasting from a warm bottle of ouzo. Our laughter rang out in the empty apartment, and the stories started to fall flat pretty quick. It was time to go -- two hard dude-hugs and I was out.

I was driving the truck down 16th Street, taxidermied owl in attack position strapped into the passenger seat and lucky ram's skull on the dash with "Like a Rolling Stone" blaring when I heard it again: THUNK, THUNK, THUNK, louder this time, and feeling better with each THUNK.

I heard the sound at 16, as the theme from "The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly" announced the Ramones' imminent performance. I heard the THUNK an hour before landing overseas with 3 grand and nowhere to live, heard it when I flew to LA this winter to pitch a TV show.

It's the sound of my life as a giant roller coaster, THUNKing its way up that first big hill with me in the car up front. I can see the track curving away up ahead and I've got no idea what that first drop's going to feel like, but I know what it is. It's the wild ride of the rest of my life, fast and full of turns. It scares the crap out of me and it's the most exhilarating feeling in the world ... and every time I feel it I say "hello, old friend. Didn't think I'd see you again, and I'm so glad you're back.

I've been living out of trash bags in Brooklyn for the past three days. Haven't got a job yet, but I've got some leads and I can't think of anything at all that I'd rather be doing.

What the Heck is E-Mail: Honeywell E-mail Ad, 1977

2007-06-29T00:38:00.001-04:00

Honeywell E-mail Ad, 1977
Originally uploaded by chinese_fashion

The crunch is on -- packing's a bear under the best conditions and I don't have air conditioning. Imagine sorting through months of old mail while a giant dog the size of God breathes on your face. That's about where I am right now.

In lieu of a bigger thing, here's an unintentionally awesome ad from 1977, found via Technobusiness, via Reddit:

What the Heck is E-mail?

Farewell Drinks at the Raven Friday

2007-06-28T18:27:00.000-04:00

Hey folks -- a lot of you, I've never met. And may never meet. I'm having a drinks night on Friday, and if you're in the area, come out and shake hands:

This crowd's a bit different than the DC Blogs Happy Hour crowd -- but at least as welcoming and effervescent. Hope you can make it ...

Paper-Mache Power Figure

2007-06-27T12:47:00.000-04:00

If the Garment District is low on wire hangers, they need to call me soon. If Smuckers has a jar crisis this week, they need to let me know by Friday. As mentioned previously, I'm a terrible packrat and I'm moving. Everything must go, and it's a little heartbreaking.

While the bleeding-heart greenie in me, the boy partially reared by the thriftiest woman of the entire Depression era hates to see such useful stuff hit the bin, there's another kind of heartbreak happening here. A lot of the quirky errata that clots my shelves is soaked in personal, emotional significance, and on some level, letting the item go means chucking the memory out into the road.

In my mind it's no different than Congolese power figures or Orishas in Santeria - collections of ordinary objects are repositories for powerful feelings and forces beyond human understanding. One man's wooden figure with nails in it is another man's prayer for strength, made in a time of duress and filled with sadness and hope.

Or, in my case, an Incredible Hulk pinata:

My sister came to visit me on for my 29th birthday (2005) and gave me this pinata, filled with candy. I was suffering some serious heartbreak at the time -- a woman I loved had left 2 weeks before to go home to her side of the planet. I felt numb most of the time, a paper dummy filled with wood shavings. Sometimes termites would invade my wooden body and chew up my guts, making me cry, cry, cry. My work was heading south, and every day at the office felt like stepping into crosshairs.

Jess (my sister) and I had been on the outs for several months. We spoke, but briefly, and mostly at family functions. Every time we talked, we focused on not fighting rather than actually communicating.

We love each other so deeply, me and Jess, that it's hard sometimes to cut each other a break. She and the lady that had recently left shared a love for me, a naked loathing for each other and a temper like our green paper friend up there. I'd been stuck in the middle and it made me resent everyone.

But then it was my birthday, at one of the lowest points in my life, and Jess came to visit. And instead of saying anything at all about my situation, she came in with a big bag and bigger heart and gave me a big, long hug as soon as she walked in the door.

"You know I love you, Jeff, right? You're my fucking brother and you always will be. Now check this thing out," she said, pulling the pinata from the bag. "Open that bad bitch up, 'cause we both need some candy right about now."

Then she took me out to a Mexican restaurant where we ate, drank margaritas and talked about everything in the world.

Do you think the person that finds that pinata will pick all that up, too? Either they'll get a sweet blast from the Hulk's paper skin and feel a lot more at home in the world -- or I'll get to hang onto that a little longer. It's a win-win either way, really.

Transformers Art by Me, 1985

2007-06-25T19:14:00.000-04:00

I'm a total packrat, a lifestyle that I inherited from my mother. As much as I chide her for keeping old papers and magazines around the house (just TRY to throw out a damn National Geographic down there, man), the apple doesn't fall too far from the tree. My problem is, I can see the artistic potential in freaking EVERYTHING and I hate letting something interesting just go to waste.

Old comics with the covers tore off and gnawed up corners still have these insane ads in them that could totally go on a t-shirt one day, and if someone writes me a love letter or a christmas card, I can't bring myself to just wad that sentiment up and throw it on top of some old coffee grounds.

When I was visiting my folks a few weeks ago, I found some old drawings of Transformers I did in 5th grade. Touching them made me come unstuck in time, and I swung instantly back to my childhood bedroom in Herndon. I was sitting at that desk my Dad built for me one snowy afternoon, drawing the Transformers and listening to the Saint Elmo's Fire soundtrack on cassette. Look, it was my first tape.

Here's the art itself:

I'm excited about the Transformers film for a number of reasons:

1) I was super into Transformers as a kid, and experiencing the story again reactivates memories that make me feel good
2) The movie looks cool as all hell (cool and good are two very different things)
3) It's the purest example of a sheerly commercial film that has ever existed.

Seriously. This is a movie based on a cartoon that was developed to market a line of toys that had been popular in Japan to American children. There's no originality or artistic integrity to squander here, no mythos or greater canon to honor -- it's just gonna be flames and explosions and giant hunks of metal left right and center. It's going to be the cinematic equivalent of smoking banana peels and I can't wait.

Learning With the Heart the Hard Way

2007-06-25T00:25:00.000-04:00

I've been sweating into the same reasonably priced department store suit for the past three days, dragging ass and laptop all up and down Manhattan looking for a job. I leave my wool jacket on during interviews out of the very real fear that my shirt will draw flies to its translucent back.

My feet are two thick flaps of pure pain, suffering daylong beatings in my dress shoes then slapping the pavement in a pair of hip and useless Chuck Taylors at night. I sleep four, maybe six hours a night, get up, put on the suit and trawl the town all day in a flurry of meet-and-greets with recruiters, then spend the night drinking iced coffee in my underpants, hunched over a laptop trawling the job boards and sending cover letter after cover letter.

Everyone knows this, everyone understands this, and nobody says it out loud: New York doesn't fucking care. New York doesn't care about what you think, how you feel, or what kind of behavior was normal back in your sleepy Southern hometown. Anyone that thinks differently is a complete fool. That city's full of heartbroken fools that thought they knew and learned with their hearts the hard way.

The past few months, I've been slacking on the writing and slacking on the gym. I've just sat here in my festy little apartment swatting cockroaches and cussing the darkness, getting fatter by the day. I've been mad at the world for denying me adventure, travel, work and thrills and mad at the Web for delivering just enough distracting material that I can't get down to brass tacks for myself. I've been mad at everyone and everything, blaming everyone but myself and then I swept that clutter away in the past few weeks and had a good go at blaming myself.

The thing I've learned, the thing I always forget is this: everything starts now. Right now. That new job, that fitness program, the blog post, that pitch to that magazine. It starts right this second and doing anything else means not doing what you wanted in the first place. Which leads to too many drinks, too many late nights and dreading the morning, when you wake up to a huge empty day alone in the apartment blaming the entire world.

I've realized that I'm never going to be happy with myself or my writing unless I find a challenge and a challenging community -- find a place where everyone's racing ahead and try to catch up. I need to be someplace I haven't figured out, someplace that doesn't care and just fight like hell for a little while.

And maybe I'll never be happy with myself or with my writing. It's my personality that needs to change, not my ZIP code. I'm a moody dude, and things are never good enough. I'll come to terms with it or I won't, but I'd sure like to tackle this in a new town.

The mother in Almost Famous sees right through a cocky rock star's bullshit and tells him "Be bold and mighty forces will come to your aid." Works for me. I've been bullshitting myself for a long time and when I heard those words the other night they cut me like a laser.

I'm moving to New York City, the city that doesn't fucking care, in precisely seven days. I've put in notice at my building in DC, rented a truck and a room in that beautiful stinking city. Hopefully, this will be bold enough.

Smithsonian Images on Flickr

2007-05-23T11:37:00.001-04:00

Mammoth
Originally uploaded by chinese_fashion.

A non-profit group has posted 6,288 images from the Smithsonian's archives to Flickr in an act of protest. According to Carl Malamud of Public.Resource.Org, the Smithsonian has been taking money and applying copyright for images that are fair-use and open to the public.

From an AP story:

"I don't care if they sell the photos, but then once they sell it, they can't say you can't reuse this photo," said Carl Malamud, co-founder of the group Public.Resource.Org, advocates for posting more government information online.

"You're not allowed to chill debate by telling people they can't use something because it's under copyright when that's not true."

Most images the Smithsonian is selling, including photos of artifacts and historic figures, are not protected by copyright, Malamud said. But the Smithsonian site carries copyright notices and other warnings that would discourage most people from using historic images that should be publicly available, he said.

Malamud testified last year in Congress against the Smithsonian's long-term television deal with Showtime Networks because he said it could restrict public access to the national museums' archives. He is also critical of other Smithsonian business deals, calling them "privatizing of the archives."

In an open letter to the entire Internet, linked off of Public.Resource.Org's photostream, the group explains:

To understand why the Smithsonian is over-reaching when it comes to photographs, one must remember that works of the U.S. government have no copyright protection whatsoever. Works of the United States Government are in the public domain. 17 U.S.C. § 105 While there are subtle exceptions, such as work prepared by private contractors exempted under special exemptions established in the Federal Acquisition Regulations ( FAR 52.227-14), the general principle is quite clear and applies just as much to the Smithsonian Institution as to any other part of our federal government. As Rachell V. Browne, Assistant General Counsel of the Smithsonian Institution said in a statement submitted to the U.S. Copyright Office:

“The Smithsonian cannot own copyright in works prepared by Smithsonian employees paid from federal funds.”

This link will take you to the Smithsonian collection on Flickr.

The upshot is this: this is an AMAZING batch of photos on Flickr right now that you should definitely see and use while you still can -- there' photos of coal mines, aircraft, dinosaurs, all this incredible, beautiful historic stuff -- see it while you can, because I doubt this will be up for long.

Me And Cindy Sheehan Couldn't Stop a Teen Girl Fight

2007-05-15T18:57:00.001-04:00

Cindy Sheehan
Originally uploaded by chinese_fashion.

o I'm sitting here in Busboys and Poets (a coffee shop in D.C) just hammering away at the freelance work when the phone rings. Its an unavailable number, which, to me, is a good sign. A lot of corporate phone numbers read "unavailable" on my cell. I've spent a fair bit of time these past few weeks trying to get that word to appear on my telephone. I jumped up and outside onto the street.

it was indeed a company interested in my writing/web content services. And man, it feels good to be wanted. Even when you don't want the thing that wants you, it just feels good, like the universe is giving you a wink and a nod.

So I'm standing out there on the street, cell on my head and thumb in my ear going on and on about my services when this pack of teenage girls comes hollering on by. I could hear them down the street, hence the thumb in the ear. Then the gaggle stopped right in front of me, right as I as talking to this recruiter. And it wasn't just boisterous anymore.

Shit got HOT and onlookers circled up and went "OOOooOOoo daaaamn I wouldn't take that if I was you!" There was about to be a girl fight right in front of me, during my phone interview, right in front of Busboys and Poets. Looked like it was gonna be a real weave-ripper, too.

I moved down the street and hands started flying. It got UGLY. "I'm so sorry, I'll have to call you back, there's a fight happening on the street," I said, hanging up abruptly.

Then I didn't know WHAT to do. I didn't feel like I could break it up exactly, and the crowd was growing. I just stood there anxiously, an official grownup who is supposed to DO SOMETHING, just watching and fretting and hoping it didn't roll into the street.

The fight went into the street. Traffic stopped. The crowd on the sidewalk grew, a bunch of nervous grown white people standing around, saying to each other "somebody should really do SOMETHING," but none of us knew what.

The fight rolled across 14th and sort of evaporated like a dust devil that just quits all of a sudden and then it was just us nervous citizens on the sidewalk. One of those nervous citizens was Cindy Sheehan and a lot of the other citizens were part of her peacemaking brigade.

I know that her thing is more stopping the war in Iraq instead of breaking up teenage girlfights, but I thought she could have tried SOMETHING. Sort of like how on an island full of castaways a veterinarian delivers babies and takes out swollen appendixes every month or so. But you know, she's another nervous grownup just like me too and neither one of us really had a clue.

It was just me and Cindy and this big weird girlfight on the street this afternoon and there wasn't any point to anything at all.

Mother's Day 2007

2007-05-13T16:35:00.000-04:00

I've written about my mother on here before -- and words are really failing me here. But this is my mother on her wedding day. I think she is younger than I am now:

In this photo, my mom is actively teaching me how to love the way she does: the right way. She hasn't stopped. And in return, I haven't stopped being grateful.

I went home this weekend to visit my mom and grandma ... my mom's mom. We took my grandparents out for ice cream, which holds special significance for me. It was perfect. The day was sunny and warm and my grandpa was feeling good, which had my grandma feeling great. Daro's a bit of a pistol, and she's not afraid to just touch somebody's motorcycle when she's in a good mood:

The ice cream parlor had sugar-free butter pecan ice cream, which thrilled my grandpa no end. My grandma tore up her sundae, too. Here's my mom and grandmother enjoying their ice cream:

It's more or less impossible to shop for my grandma. She's got her husband and kids that happily take care of them both -- no replacing that. But there's a million reason her kids and grandkids want to take care of her, and I thought I'd share one of mine.

In 1984, I made the severe mistake of reading the Creepshow comic book, written by Stephen King and illustrated by horror master Bernie Wrightson -- to my fragile little mind, the most compelling and terrifying stack of paper and staples ever created. Now I love that stuff, but at that time, bedtime was freaking CANCELLED until further notice. My grandmother, in her wisdom, slept in my room every night for a week until I could settle down, even though she knew I knew I had brought that terror on myself.

Love, real love, is made of a million tiny kindnesses that the giver forgets immediately and the recipient always remembers. I wrote down my memory of that event for my grandma and gave it to her for Mothers' Day -- you can see it here if you want:

There's no real conclusion, no big thought to wrap this up. Just love and gratitude, which anyone know are way too big for a tight closing sentence.

Worst Graffiti Ever/Best Graffiti Ever

2007-05-11T12:22:00.000-04:00

Graffiti art takes a LOT of practice. We can't all be the next Dalek overnight, and there's a lot of clumsy property damage between that first can on paint and gallery shows worldwide. It takes tags to make murals and murals validate Krylon krapmeisters -- that' s the yin and yang of it.

Sometimes graffiti's just some prick with a spray-can. And every now and then, that spray-can lameness is so incredibly lame that it collapses in on itself and becomes a white dwarf of sheer wackness that blazes so brilliantly that it's a form of retarded genius. It achieves artistic singularity, simultaneously shitty and incredible.

My friend Phil snapped this from a bike trail in Chapel Hill, N.C. Hey man, even Banksy had to start somewhere ...

The only way this graffiti could be improved is if there were never a band called "Grateful Dead."

Spider-Man 3: Hope it Delivers

2007-05-07T01:55:00.000-04:00

It was incredibly important to me to see Spider-Man 3 this weekend, and not just because I'm into Spider-Man. For me, sci-fi, comic book and other monkey-ass flicks are cinematic grilled cheese: comforting, and they don't have to be but so well done. As long as a few key elements are in place, everyone's happy. But there's more than that afoot with the Spider-Man franchise.

I'm taking a terrific risk by telling you this. The forces of the world work in mysterious ways, and they hate to have their movements broadcasted. But time is short and the need for content is constant , so:

Spider-Man films tend to wreak tremendous, much-needed changes on my life. They are the harbingers of change, the engine that pulls my stalled situation up the next hill one chink-chink-chink at a time. If the past two films are any indication, I'm in for a ride. Take a look:

Spider-Man

I live in Richmond, VA in a small, crumbling townhouse. A homeless, mentally disabled Vietnam vet frequents our front porch, demanding to hear Rick James' Ghetto Life several times a week. A stray cat named Brad climbs into my screenless bedroom window and onto my sleeping face several nights a week, stopping in the music room to urinate on some guitar cords before investigating our garbage.

I work in the basement of a shoe store for a struggling multimedia startup. My boss compulsively scratches his crotch, sometimes rubbing it on the back of my chair -- while I am sitting in it. My coworker and I discover his secret cache of teen porn on the office network, Photoshop moustaches onto some of the "models", then prepare our resumes.

Shortly after seeing Spider-Man, I am inspired to sell all my stuff and go to Australia. The experience melts my personality down and recasts it into a more adult form, teaching me painful and true things about love, work, and adventure.

Spider-Man 2

I am back from Australia, penniless and living with my parents. I have recently completed a stint pouring concrete. My boss, though generous and fair to his employees, keeps a loaded Glock tucked into the back of his shorts at all times. The foreman has a braided mullet that gently dusts his the tanned top of his exposed ass and uses the term "doo-doo hole" with a straight face. A LOT. When I politely decline to smoke pot at 7:30 a.m. with my co-workers, saying "I'm about to operate a jackhammer, guys, I probably shouldn't," I get a lot of funny looks.

I take a temp job at a real-estate firm in a Virginia Beach strip mall, training one of the accountants to use Photoshop. We share a desk, phone, and computer. When my chair breaks, we share a chair, too. Somebody brings fresh doughnuts from Krispy Kreme to leave in the break room every day.

The high point of my day is entering the empty break room and biting into a fresh doughnut, still hot from its grease bath and glaze shower. The day's low point occurs immediately afterwards, when I realize exactly why it is that everyone in the office is overweight apart from me: I'm the new guy and the doughnuts are everyone's high point. Given enough time, I'll fit right in. I begin chewing the doughnuts in the empty break room for flavor and spitting them into the trash can when nobody is around. Eventually this feels normal.

I see Spider-Man 2 with a good friend who is going through a divorce at the age of 25. By the end of the summer, she is engaged and I am moving to start my first office job. Although I have technically held a salaried position before, it was in 1999 at a dot-com art gallery. Our trash can was a milk crate with a plastic bag in it. This job in DC has an unmistakable air of validity and I am thrilled.

Spider-Man 3

Although visually devastating, the story was a little disappointing. I like emotion and high drama as much as the next guy, having engineered more than my fair share in real life, but seeing heroes, villains and love interests all weeping in the same shot is hardly what I want from a summer blockbuster. That whole part in the middle where Peter Parker looked like Jared Leto and acted like something four very tired guys cooked up to move the plot along was for the freaking birds, and no Spider-Man film should have a single dance sequence in it. Spider-Man 3 had two. Cool fight scenes, though.

I could be wrong -- probably am (he says, in a nod to the all-powerful forces that have bound Spider-Man films to career development) -- but I don't think the Universe cares if the Spider-Man movies are any good or not. They just have to happen in order to pull the plunger on life's pinball machine way back and send the ball careening forward. At least I hope so. I'm not looking to sink a skill shot here, but man, I need that table to light up a little again. Something tells me it will -- I just hope my patience holds out.

Ten Spider-Man Appearances That Will Never Hit Hollywood

2007-05-02T15:10:00.000-04:00

Long after humans succumb to self-induced extinction, alien anthropologists are going to visit Earth and come to an obvious conclusion: Spider-Man was our God. Even if you discount the unholy rotten truckloads of Slurpee cups and action figures used to market the films, Spider-Man's so much a part of our collective consciousness that he may as well be a God -- we use the story to tell moral fables and ... forget it. Just forget it.

I was trying to put an intellectual spin on everything here, but the fact is that I'm a nerd and way more stoked about Spider-Man 3 than an adult should be. The whole point of life is to be excited about stuff, as excited as you can be, and I'm trying my damnedest to access the passion I felt for Spider-Man as a kid. It's working pretty well, too. So instead of inflating this post with a bunch of pseudo-intellectual nonsense, I'll get to the nerdy fun.

Here's ten incarnations of Spider-Man that will never, ever make it into a movie:

Japanese Spider Man

The Japanese Spider-Man TV show aired in the late 70's and did what Japanese culture does best: took a pre-existing idea and made it completely insane. Check out the opening credits:

In the following clip, several samurai led by a man with a beer can for a face have captured Spider-man and are menacing him with their swords. A Japanese mariachi appears on the hillside, strums a few chords and hoses the bad guys down with a stream of bullets emanating from his guitar, which naturally doubles as a machine gun. Spider-man escapes to thrilling music, using his spider-like abilities to strike some poses and rapidly climb a large dirt pile. Our hero bests several bad guys with a few well-timed kicks and calls for his sports car over his wrist radio. The man with the beer can face grows to Godzilla size and since this is 70's Japan, low-budget Voltron shows up to save the day.

Check it out.

Spider-Man in the Bible

It's not really Christianity that's so bad, it's just that Pat Robertson and Ned Flanders have pretty much given it a bad rap. I found a couple folks on Flickr that are using Spider-Man to tell Bible stories. One of them's definitely making fun of Ned Flanders Christians ... the other guy isn't.

Spider-Man Ganesh

Why is it weak when Christians co-opt Spider-Man to tell Bible stories, but when Hindu folks make a Spider-Man Ganesh it's cool? I'm not 100 percent on this, but I think it's because white people are just kinda lame.

Bollywood Spider-Woman, Superman

In this clip from a Bollywood classic, Superman and a woman in a Spider-Man costume fly over the city kissing, pausing to break funky dance moves in a city park, fight bad guys and celebrate their victory with more funky dance moves and in-flight smooching.

Spider-Man Latte

First the Virgin Mary on a grilled cheese sandwich, now it's Spider-Man on a latte.

The Electric Company - Spidey Meets the Yeti

Man, I used to LOVE the Electric Company, especially the Spider-Man segments. Turns out they're still great -- this one features a young Morgan Freeman as a grape soda-loving cop, Spidey jogging, and a misguided villain who self-medicates his homesick heartbreak by sitting on cold foods. The kid narrating has the thickest New York accent I've heard in all my life.

Spider-Man Tag Teams With Lou Albano

Spider-Man's fought alongside some pretty colorful people in his day, but none quite so colorful as WWE Superstar Lou Albano. In this Indian comic, Spidey teams up with Lou Albano, Superman, Batman and large wizard who looks like Moses to save the day. Unfortunately, an evil wizard turns Lou Albano into an violent giant and an Indian superhero is forced to kill him by force-feeding him some deadly snakes.

My Son Sean, on his 7th Birthday, with "Spiderman"

I found this story really touching:

I met up with lady who use to work in the costume department at whichever movie studio did Spiderman stuff. She was able to get hold of some Spiderman films and made a costume for her son to wear. It was pretty good, except his glasses showed underneath the eye cut outs ... As a single mom at the time, a spiderman Birthday Party for that many kids was a big deal for my wallet, and I was so hoping Sean would like it.

Jay Pinkerton's Spider-Man Comic Remix

Pinkerton writes for Cracked Magazine, among other publications. His remixed Spider-Man newspaper strips are really funny .. or funny enough for fifteen minutes or so, anyway.

3 Dev Adam

Loosely translated to "3 Mighty Men," this Turkish film delivers the stange, alright. El Santo and Captain America team up against a villainous Spider-man with glasses and giant fluffy eyebrows. He instructs some gangsters to bury a woman up to her neck in sand, puts rodents into a tube aimed at some guy's face (a la 1984) and has a neglected physique that makes your IT guy look like Hercules.

This review from I-Mockery sums it up best.

That about wraps it up ... if you have anything else, leave it in the comments.

If You Can't Take the Traffic, Stay in the 'Burbs

2007-04-30T02:25:00.000-04:00

It was beautiful today, one of a handful of truly beautiful days in 2007. Me and my man Martin got on the bikes and ate up the trails, winding 30 miles or so out into suburban Virginia.

There's nothing like having the sun on your arms and the wind in your face for a workout. Being in the gym is okay and all, but it always makes me kind of feel like I'm on a space station somewhere.

The ride itself was pretty uneventful, apart from this completely typical incident on the Key Bridge on the way home. I was riding over the bridge, slowly, on the wide pedestrian/bike lane. I was going slow enough to avoid freaking people out, and calling out to people before I passed, letting them know what was going on.

Then, all of a sudden, this woman on the opposite side of the path(walking back towards Arlington) took a hard right and jumped right in front of me. I yelled out as I braked -- she jumped out of the way a split second before I would have plowed into her. She shouted "fuck you, man!"

"No, actually, fuck YOU," I said. "You jumped in front of me!"

"Well SLOW DOWN," she shouted, loud. "There ought to be a sign up that says 'no bikes allowed!'"

Really. I think one that says "Watch Where You're Going," might be a better idea, or, simply, "No Bitches."

At that point, some kid in those stupid shoes with wheels in the heels could have dusted me. Speed was not the issue. The real issue at hand was that because I was on a bike, I was in the wrong.

This interaction is completely typical for cyclists in D.C. I'm not sure how it is in other cities, but here, you can't win. If that woman were driving when I was riding in the road, she'd be mad at me too. Drivers honk and shout at you to get on the sidewalk, and it's not like it's friendly or safe up there either.

There's one solution that keeps D.C. cyclists and Sunday pedestrians both happy though: when cranks like that lady stay in the suburbs where they fucking belong.

SF Bay Guardian's Blog Coverage of the Tech Tragedy: Utter Bullshit

2007-04-19T01:54:00.001-04:00

SF Bay Guardian Screencap
Originally uploaded by chinese_fashion.

The San Francisco Bay Guardian has covered the Virginia Tech shooting with minimal thought and maximum bullshit in a move that is making me re-think my whole situation as a knee-jerk liberal.

This post by Tim Redmond blames the massacre on the availability of handguns in the USA, particularly Virginia. It goes on to say that George Bush is partially responsible -- quite a deductive leap. I'm from Virginia, and I'm no Bush fan. And it's true that Virginia has no real gun laws of note. They're really more like implied rules of thumb. Many of my good friends in Richmond own enough weaponry to stave off a zombie uprising. I'm morally opposed to that and will be until the first zombie bite makes the news.

Another hard-hitting post relates the killing to Virginia gun laws (again), then pirouettes like a hippo on roller skates to reveal the real shocker: Virginia's pretty ass-backward when it come to gay rights, too! Next, Redmond might reveal that Virginia openly condoned slavery less than 200 years ago.

If you read between the lines here, you'd think that Virginia itself ordered Cho Seung Hui to shoot those kids. Thompson's points are essentially: Bush sucks and Virginia has its priorities backwards when it comes to guns and civil rights. While this is all true, it's hardly news. The Weekly freaking Reader shows more insight.

If a Bizarro George Bush had outlawed the sale of all handguns when he was first elected, there would still be enough in homes, barns and attics all over the country to cause some serious problems. This country is full of people who think that they have a God-given right to own weaponry. Like it or not, most Americans associate available weaponry with freedom. I think those people are wrong, but I am outnumbered in my home state ... and my opponents are armed.

And even if there were no guns, the killer could have built a fertilizer bomb, driven his car over folks on the way to class or used an ax. Affordable, available guns are a big problem in America, but they're far from the only factor in this week's shooting. Timothy McVeigh didn't use guns, and neither did Lizzie Borden. The Unabomber hand-made his bomb parts. Something about our culture breeds people sick enough to kill at random, and when Americans are that desperate and driven, we'll figure something out. Always have and always will. I daresay that's the real problem here.

Jack Thompson and Dr. Phil have already blamed video games for this massacre, and some assmouthed blogger is using the situation to bash Richard Dawkins.. Just because I agree politically with the SFBG doesnt mean they get a free pass: using our nations' latest tragedy to score cheap political points less than 24 hours later is just wrong.

It's gross enough watching TV pundits ask shellshocked students "why do you think this happened?" or "who do you blame," desperately fanning any spark of emotion into something good for the camera. And don't even get me started on that maggot-filled gasbag Nancy Grace.

Adequacy.org summarizes the rapid politicizing of tragedy pretty well:

Many people will use this terrible tragedy as an excuse to put through a political agenda other than my own. This tawdry abuse of human suffering for political gain sickens me to the core of my being. Those people who have different political views from me ought to be ashamed of themselves for thinking of cheap partisan point-scoring at a time like this. In any case, what this tragedy really shows us is that, so far from putting into practice political views other than my own, it is precisely my political agenda which ought to be advanced.

Blogging is hard -- even if you're not good at it. If it's easy, it's not worth doing. It can be a grind, just grunting posts out to stay relevant and keep your audience. Every blogger knows how important it is to jump on a story and be a part of the conversation -- but in this case, the Guardian's serving up some pretty thin gruel. There's no news here on either side, no insight - just the same old song.

For now, this situation isn't about politics. It's about compassion, understanding, support and regret. Any media that is not expressly news-related that comments on this situation should show gravity, depth, and copious emotional intelligence ... or enough sense to shut the fuck up. We're close enough to a major election and the spin will come soon enough, followed by the lawsuits. Right now, we're all shocked and stunned and hurt. The only thing we can do as media and human beings is to tell the stories and let the tears flow.

So It Goes

2007-04-12T17:35:00.001-04:00

So it goes.
Originally uploaded by egg..

Kurt Vonnegut is dead and now I am unstuck in time.

It is 1989, my thirteenth summer. I am visiting my Aunt Kay and Uncle Dave on their honey farm in South Bend, Indiana. It's a form of indentured servitude to eccentric, loving masters. Life out on the honey farm is probably really boring, but I wouldn't know. I'm busy reading.

"The library's pretty good out here in the sticks," Aunt Kay says. "Nobody else out here reads, so we get the good stuff pretty much to ourselves." On one of many trips to the library in town, I discover Slaughterhouse Five. "Oh, Vonnegut," Aunt Kay says, a little surprised. "I think he's a good fit for you." I start the book in the parking lot on the way home and do not speak for the next 24 hours.

I sneak in a few pages in the truck on the way out to the beehives with my Uncle Dave. I _eat_ the pages while he gets out our netted hats (they are simultaneously ridiculous and ominous) , readies the bee smoker, gets my gloves out of the box in the back. He doesn't make me get out until it's time to hit the hives. "I know how it is," I remember him saying. "If you read real fast, you get to find out what happens next. But if you take your time, it lasts longer."

I do both, my eyes running laps over and over each page. I know what the Tralfamadorian ship sounds like as it hovers over Billy Pilgrim's back yard: it sounds like hives full of sleepy, smoke-addled bees.

I read more while walking slowly to the car that night on the way to the only pizza restaurant in town, read it at the table and in the car on the way home in ambient light from slowly strobing streetlights. Once we get outside town, it's too dim to read. I sit back and imagine saucers, war, time travel.

A beehive is little more than a series of stacked boxes (called supers) containing frames for bees to build honeycomb on. When the hives are full the frames are bloated, pregnant with honey and larvae. Hardcore vegans think that eating honey is cruel because it is an animal byproduct. Hardcore vegans are a uniformly joyless bunch, and I would imagine that they have never had someone else masterfully clean their apartments in an afternoon. I am providing that service to these bees, and in their tiny little hearts they are grateful.

To clean these cramped, boxy little apartments, I stack the supers in a tiny room containing a large, heated bowl with a hole in the bottom, an electrically heated knife, a centrifuge and a DustBuster. After supper I enter the room and shut the door, prying the frames out of the super with a crowbar. A few addled bees inevitably escape. They're no real threat until they come to their senses. Their stupor allows me to take the electric knife and shave both sides of a frame bloated with honeycomb into the heated bowl. There, the beeswax melts and rises to the top, allowing heat-thinned honey to trickle through a hose and into tanks on the floor below me. Then I load the frames into a centrifuge, spinning the remaining honey out and into the same tanks below.

I sit on a wooden box while the honey twirls, reading Slaughterhouse Five in one hand and sucking bees into the Dustbuster with the other. Wisely, Uncle Dave pays me per pound of extracted honey rather than by the hour.

Late at night, when all the honey is twirled, I go into the yard release the bees. I stop reading long enough to stare up into the Indiana sky. A storm system is moving in, erasing the stars one by one.

The next morning, over honey-slathered slices of thick Amish toast from Uncle Dave's personal toaster (he keeps one by his feet at the breakfast table), I am asked to mow a path to the hives. The grass is too wet from last night's storm, so I sit on the porch and wait for it to dry. And while I wait, I finish Slaughterhouse Five and start it over again.

Now it's April 12, 2007. Kurt Vonnegut is dead, and so are most of the bees. So it goes ...

Hear Vonnegut reading an excerpt from Slaughterhouse Five.

Truck at 14th and Rhode Island: Space Is the Place

2007-04-10T14:09:00.000-04:00

A lot of people think that D.C. is just grim, grey buildings full of conservative careerists with beige bland dreams. Those people are right.

Which is why I get so excited every morning when I pass this truck at 14th and Rhode Island:

Every time I see it I think "Sun Ra is alive and well and living in a truck in Northwest D.C."

Update

A commenter left a link on this post last night that unzipped the mystery of this truck into something weird and wonderful.

As it turns out, C. Kret is equal parts Sun Ra and Daniel Pinkwater. He may be the living incarnation of a Pinkwater character, a colorful extra from The Snarkout Boys series. He's a children's book author, illustrator, a rambling limerick-spouting poet. Like most other Northwest residents, C. Kret has a law degree ... but prefers to beautify the world instead. Here's a self-conducted interview.

From his website:

Itzah C. Kret is also known as The Phantom Planter because he goes around planting flowers in public places. Since 1979 he guesses he's planted over 41,317 flowers in ten states and six foreign countries. In October, 2003, he planted 202 tulips, crocuses and windflowers right under the St. Louis Gateway Arch. On April 12, 2004, he struck in Buenos Aires, Argentina, planting dozens of Morning Glories in La Boca and in the park in front of the Casa Rosada. Last fall he checked out the Liberty Bell and decided to plant daffodils at the Brith Shalom nursing home in Philadelphia. In 2005 he planted over 20,000 morning glories in Bangalore, India. (He may have an obsessive compulsive floral disorder.)

C. Kret is an ambassador for International Ice Cream for Breakfast Day, celebrated on the first Saturday of February. From the Ice Cream for Breakfast FAQ:

Some people have been known to play a competitive card game called "Nuts" on Ice Cream for Breakfast Day. Often, the edge in such activities is had by the person who most adroitly combines a sugar high and caffeine buzz to their greatest advantage.

I've done a lot of wailing recently about wanting to escape D.C. It's really encouraging to see someone who escapes it inside his mind, and may never have let it get to him in the first place.

Why Yes, It Is a Good Friday

2007-04-06T21:36:00.001-04:00

dr. manhattan
Originally uploaded by C!b0rg5.

I am wearing my favorite jeans -- Diesel, bought 'em 18 months ago stiff and rough like concrete planks. Wore 'em damn near every day since, and now they're faded soft and tattered, a giant form-fitting teddy bear the shape of my legs. I get the holes patched and THAT my friends is how you get legit faded, worn jeans. None of this artful distressing, whiskering and looking like you sat in a puddle of bleach.

I am wearing my latest favorite t-shirt: sky blue, a large diagram of a hydrogen atom on the front. It's the symbol etched on Dr. Manhattan's forehead in the Watchmen, a book that is to comics what the Stones were to pop music. I bought at the most amazing comic book store on earth last weekend: Forbidden Planet, near Union Square. Yes, I do have a girlfriend.

My best friend on Earth lives two buildings down from me. When we were in kindergarten I could read and write and he knew all the cuss words. At his direction, I wrote them in the dirt by the monkey bars. Together we were Prometheuses (whatever) of the playground. He and me and the woman who became his wife had a band together a few years ago. I'm getting ready to go over to their place now to talk trash and fill my flask.

My best friend in D.C. lives in my building. She keeps a tub of ice cream in the fridge and lets me barge in and eat it at eleven o'clock while we talk about our days, our jobs our loves, and why everybody's gotta be so stupid all the time.

My best friend from college always watches monkey-ass horror movies with me. We saw Night of the Living Dead together, Snakes on a Plane, House of 1000 Corpses, Exorcist, Creepshow, Videodrome, all that shit. She pretends to be a art-film snob and I always talk her into it. She has a great time.

So me and my three best friends and my new favorite clothes are gonna fill some flasks and go see 'Grindhouse' at midnight in Chinatown, a theater that may actually offer partial refunds if you are able to yell through the entire movie. At least, that how it seems sometimes.

I can't wait.

Floating Behind the Bar

2007-04-06T11:20:00.000-04:00

My old boss used to say that "perfection is the enemy of good," meaning that perfectionism stops a lot of good things from happening. That's the case with this post I've been working on about the greatest bar in the USA. I made myself late to work this morning trying to get the photos together. Rather than be all high-maintenance and hold out, I'm just going to post the two best images from my trip to that bar:

That's me in the background:

Speak of the Sun, See Its Rays

2007-04-05T15:39:00.000-04:00

I applied for the job just to see what would happen. I have no business development experience and no management experience, but I like to think I know a few things about blogs. SO I sent a resume in with a quick e-mail and forgot about it completely. I mean, come on. A blogging job in paradise?

I had visions of blogging in a thatched hut by the beach, laptop plugged into a nearby palm tree. One of my monkey assistants brough me fresh cups of strong Costa Rican coffee while another waxed my waiting surfboard.

I've been in paradise without a job, and it was actually hell. Paradise with a job -- with monkeys for admins -- could be pretty sweet.

I was at a bar this weekend with my friend Valaer, who said "What sucks about looking for a job is that it's committing yourself to at least another year in a box. And you don't want to think that you've already had your biggest adventure -- or your last one." We toasted, but it wasn't enough. I had to pour a little on the floor for that one. Then I came home from New York, sighed a deep sigh and wrote my most recent post.

Twenty-four hours after clicking "Publish" on that grey little missive, I got a phone call. Weblogsareus had decided they wanted to interview me ... in San Jose, Costa Rica. I asked for details on the position. Details were sketchy at best. I asked for links to sites the company had created in an e-mail. "I'm going to send it from my partner's account, just so you know," the guy said.

Here is the response I received:

We are a subsidiary of a much bigger organization that specializes in Web Hosting,
Software development and Communications. We Operate out of San Jose, Costa Rica and have our own office building where we Lease turn key call center solutions.

We provide computers, desks, telephones and web hosting for our tenants. We offer web marketing via 100’s of portal sites designed specifically to there businesses. We also maintain an IT-MARKETING-PROGRAMMING department to further market and stay technically advanced for our client’s needs and wants.

Our software development team is enriched with expertise in development of many business models. From call center solutions to accounting systems for cruise ship’s.

Also, we have a real-estate development arm where we buy land and build develop properties. www.Buildingzoneconstruction.com.

At this time I can not give out names of our clients websites due to obvious reasons, but I assure you that we are for real. If you would like to call me , I will be at X-XXX-XXX-XXXX to discuss further what our intentions are. Like I said, we would be more than happy to bring you down for a week to discuss and negotiate terms for our future agreement.

I told my friend Nate about it via IM, who had this to say:

nathan: the job sounds crazy. they have the internet in costa rica?!

nathan: "hi, i'm answering the monster.com ad for 'drug mule.'"

nathan: "qualifications desired: tight lips, flexible rectum."

It does look pretty sketchy. My mysterious benefactor doesn't have links to the Web companies he's referring to, or his own e-mail address. He did mention that he lived and worked in a sweet house with all kinds of satellite hookups.

But I've worked at startups before, and there's always at least one guy who's brilliant, forward-thinking, and terrible with details to get things going. Admittedly, the startups I worked for were doomed. Then again, most are.

It kind of feels like I'm being recruited to work on the island in 'Lost.'

Adventure is discomfort in an exotic location -- and adventure just called. I'm a little scared, but incredibly curious. At the very least, the interview process will make for a hell of a story. I've got to go. That's all there is to it.

I'll keep you posted ...

God Listens

2007-04-03T08:27:00.000-04:00

An old friend sent this photo to me this morning ... there's just something so classic about it:

Sitting on the Horns

2007-04-02T18:21:00.001-04:00

I'm disillusioned with D.C. I'm over it. I didn't come here to work in politics, not trying to destroy the world or save it. I'm just ... over it. Even the wacky liberals are boring here -- same clothes, different bands, same dogma. I don't happen to find politics very interesting at all anymore, and I cringe internally when I hear someone say to a group of people "so, what do you do?" because I'm about to have to feign enthusiasm over and over again.

Admittedly, this could be because I am not thrilled about what I do, either.

Which is too bad, because I've become one of those people that bitches about the city without having any new plans.

What it comes down to is this: I want to move out of here, but I'm really scared. All my favorite people live within four hours' drive from here. They've all heard this vague litany, too, over and over: I'm tired of D.C., I wanna move, blah blah. Thing is, I don't know where, and I don't know what I'll do when I get there.

A couple years ago I sold everything I could, packed up everything else and moved to Australia without a working visa. And, while it was this amazing, transformative life experience, it was traumatic as hell at the same time. I spent the whole time looking for a job, felt desperate and destitute, and though I'm glad I did it, I don't ever want to do that again.

So why am I writing this? Because. If I tell someone, put it in print right there on the screen, I'm backing myself into a corner. I'm daring myself to jump. I've got a great job lead here that I would consider staying for, but otherwise I am out by summer. It's the risk/reward corollary.

I was in New York this weekend, loving it, of course. My friend Jon said to me "No matter how much money you have saved up, this city will find a way to punch you in the gut in your first three months. I don't know if I like living here or not, but I'm addicted to it."

Somehow, I see that as a selling point.

The first step in beating your fears is admitting you're scared, then facing them. This post is that step.

David Lynch on Product Placement

2007-03-30T12:35:00.000-04:00

That about sums it up ...

Vote For Change

2007-03-28T08:40:00.001-04:00

crunch bar
Originally uploaded by roboppy.

The monotony, it's too much to bear. Repetition can be good thing when you're talking about music, poetry or exercise, but this, this has got to stop.

Every apple, every spoonful of cereal, every time we the people fall hard into a big fluffy snowbank: the same damn thing. We need change, dammit, and the sooner the better.

I'm not talking about bloody coup or neck-slitting junta here, just SOMETHING new. We are men, not machines, and a steady diet of the same blurs that line disturbingly well. I think you know what I'm talking about, and when the revolution comes, remember my platform:

As emperor of the land, I will banish all crunching sounds. From that day forward, apples will WHISTLE when we bite them.

Happy Friday: The Hell Fruit

2007-03-23T11:46:00.001-04:00

The Hell Fruit
Originally uploaded by Gems from the Collection.

Life is good, but hadn't a damn thing worth writing about happened in a little while. Here's a batch of links to tide you over and make that workday whistle right by ...

When people talk about art as a religious experience, they invariably invoke Michelangelo, Da Vinci, or Greek statuary, as though God stopped speaking to people hundreds of years ago and this art are well-read love letters from a long-dead romance. Fuck that. When I look at great sci-fi art I feel the earth slip away and get chills that radiate from the back of my skull all the way down my arms.

See if you can look at this incredible gallery from British pulp-mag artist Ron Turner without calling a tattoo shop.

Robotics engineers have invented a robot that can not only perceive rhythm but dance to it. From an article in the New Scientist:

Psychologists have shown that people are more engaging when they synchronise their movement to their voice or to the voice or movement of another person. Michalowski argues that robots will need a sense of rhythm if people are to accept them. "In the future you are going to be talking to some robot and just the ability of the robot to nod to what you are saying will make it easier to interact," he says.

Check out this video of that cute little fluffy robot, dancing to Spoon. If marshmallow peeps could dance like that, they might appeal to our hearts and escape our gnashing jaws each springtime, surviving to populate the entire planet.

Way out, deep in outer space, cosmic bullets are piercing a giant cloud of space gas. There's a cheap joke in there somwhere, but I can't quite find it ... Anyway, from Space.com:

Each bullet [image] is about ten times the size of Pluto’s orbit around the Sun and travels through the clouds at up to 250 miles (400 kilometers) per second—or about a thousand times faster than the speed of sound ... As the bullets plow through the clouds, they leave behind tubular orange wakes, each about a fifth of a light-year long.

The photo is like, the best Trapper Keeper cover ever.

True dat: 16 things it takes most of us 50 years to learn

According to a number of sources, the I (Heart) Huckabees set was an utter emotional trainwreck. Director David O. Russell is widely reported to be brilliant, demanding and exasperating in equal amounts, and he and Lily Tomlin tangled like hell on the set. Defamer and WFMU's Beware of the Blog have more detailed posts on the matter, both well worth reading. Even if you don't read the posts, plug the headphones in and watch one of the best spontaneous displays of truly rotten behavior that I have ever seen:

Defamer posts:

Tomlin Vs. Russell: The 'I Heart Huckabees' Outtakes
Lily Tomlin On That Whole 'Huckabees' Deal

Happy Friday, people ...

A Little Tooth, by Thomas Lux

2007-03-23T01:10:00.000-04:00

Great poems are diamonds and the words in them individual carbon atoms laid perfect and tight. William Goldman said in Which Lie Did I Tell that poetry is the ultimate form of compression. It's true. I'm terrified to write poems myself, terrified because I know they're giong to suck eggs and I need to hide behind a little benefit of the doubt.

I first read the following poem on the New York subway a few weeks ago. It was part of some ad promoting mabe a book store or something. I just read it over and over again, stunned at how the author could sum up aging, life, disappointment, idiocy and change so perfectly. That last line has reverbed in my head ever since.

Rather than crap on and on about it, here it is:

A Little Tooth
by Thomas Lux

Your baby grows a tooth, then two,

and four, and five, then she wants some meat

directly from the bone. It's all

over: she'll learn some words, she'll fall

in love with cretins, dolts, a sweet

talker on his way to jail. And you,

your wife, get old, flyblown, and rue

nothing. You did, you loved, your feet

are sore. It's dusk. Your daughter's tall.

Found Cell Phone, Sorta

2007-03-21T11:08:00.000-04:00

My land line rang at 2 am. A tentative voice said, "Hello? I found this cell phone at the gas station in Bowie. Is this Jeff?"

For backstory: I drove to BWI from D.C. Sunday night. I've never been there before. Mapquest screwed me and I got ALL lost in Northeast D.C., several times. I was an hour late, and more frantic than I'd care to admit when I stopped at some gas station up in Bowie to ask directions. After I left the gas station, I got a few miles up the road and realized I didn't have my cell phone. I freaked, pulled into the emergency lane and ransacked the car, then turned around and went back to the gas station. The attendant said there was no phone there, nobody had turned one in, nothing.

According to this guy on the phone, I must have left my cell phone on the counter when I went in that gas station to ask for directions. He came in a moment later "to buy my girlfriend a pack of smokes which I usually never do 'cause I don't like her smoking" and found my phone on the counter. At that moment, I was two miles up the road, parked in the emergency lane and turning the car inside out, looking for my phone.

He sounded hesitant, a little scared. He apologized for taking so long to call, said he wanted to do the right thing, but he was scared he'd get in trouble somehow. He even blocked the number he was calling from "so if things go bad, I can't be tracked." He claimed his mom had taken the phone from him, and then he took it back. "I'd bring you the phone myself, man, but I don't have a vehicle," he said. Unfortunately, I don't either. I asked if I could e-mail him. "I don't hardly ever get on the computer, man," he said.

"Maybe you could come out here and pick it up," he offered. "It would take like fifteen minutes from DC, and I can see the road right from my patio." The thing is, it would have to be at night. "My schedule, I can't sleep at night, so I stay up all night and go to bed early in the morning. I do carpentry on the weekends, don't need to work much because I stay with my mom. Maybe you could meet me at the job site in DC this weekend and I could give you the phone there?"

He swore he hadn't been making calls on it, apart from one to see what the number was. Verizon said someone had made a call at 2:45 the day after I lost it. I told him I'd cancelled that phone, so even if he had been calling Africa at lunchtime, I wasn't going to be charged. He sounded genuinely relieved.

"My mom, she takes our phone to work all day, and she brings it home at night," he said. "Maybe call me tomorrow after 7:30 to figure out how we can give it back?"

I told him I was a little sketched out by just driving out to a problematic part of Maryland after dark to meet a stranger at his house. He claimed he totally understood.

We're going to talk again tonight to figure out what to do, where to meet. I have a new phone already, I just want all my old numbers back. Something about this situation is ringing bells in my head, and I'm not sure why. He sounds legitimate, just handling this in a way that's a little dumb.

I didn't want him to incur any out-of-pocket expenses or hassle by mailing the phone to me, but something about meeting at night out in Bowie, MD, meeting a guy who waited 24 hours to call me, called me at 2 am and says he always sleeps all day and only works weekends ... it's not quite right.

SO I'm asking you, friends: what do I do? I want to believe that this guy is legit, but this whole thing is weird and I am NOT trying to get my ribs ventilated in a parking lot over a missing cell phone.

Please leave your advice in the comments ...

Living the Dream

2007-03-21T10:04:00.000-04:00

We've all had annoying co-workers. A couple jobs back I worked in an office with a woman that used to ramble on and on, LOUDLY, into her phone about all kinds of crap -- medications, family problems, her "cycle." I used to fantasize about leaping over the cubicle wall and just elbow-dropping her, pro-wrestling style.

We've all had that dream, I think.

This guy lives it:

It's almost definitely fake. As one YouTube commenter points out, security cameras don't record sound. Probably fake, but real enough to be awesome.

Lost Cell Phone

2007-03-19T01:22:00.000-04:00

I just got back from a nightmare trip to BWI (Baltimore Washington International airport), and managed to lose my cell phone while I was lost and wandering around Northeast D.C. looking for directions. This sucks.

Most of you that read this are my friends in some capacity, and have given me your phone numbers. If you are so inclined, please contact me via MySpace (click the Tron picture on the right) and share your numbers again. Or, just e-mail me.

Or, just leave your e-mail address and telephone number in the comments section. That should be a smart move that will work out great for EVERYBODY.

Ice Cream Lessons

2007-03-14T23:59:00.001-04:00

Daro and Pop-Pop, Summer 2004
Originally uploaded by chinese_fashion.

Today was Nature's apology for the spitting ice all over the place for the last few weeks. People in downtown D.C. were out on the sidewalks at lunchtime in full effect. Everyone was striding around and trying to look all important in their suits and "business casual" attire, punching away at their Blackberries in the sun and dreaming of chucking the whole lot into the storm sewer and just skipping work. It was ice cream weather, first we've had all year.

I stood in line at the sandwich shop, looking at the ice cream counter and crying my eyes out. Every time I think about ice cream, I think about my grandparents, who taught me the importance of eating it myself and sharing it with others. My grandparents have more cones behind them that they have to look forward to -- as mentioned before, my grandpa's got diabetes and congestive heart failure, and his kidneys are slacking on the job. My grandma's doing awesome for ninety-four, but ... she's ninety-four. Every day is gift and for her, tomorrow is not a promise.

My grandparents are going to be gone soon. It's both completely normal and utterly fucked up and in case this is not immediately obvious, I'm having a hard time with it. I was kind of embarrassed at first, crying like that in the sandwich line, but then I decided to just let it go.

Shunryu Suzuki said in "Zen Mind, Beginner Mind" that stopping a ripple on a pond only causes more waves. I think. I read Suzuki in college, back when I bleached my hair blond, wore overalls and listened to a lot of free jazz. A lot's changed since then.

So I stood there, ordering a turkey on wheat through a face full of tears, just losing it. And then I remembered: I am trying, consciously, to write more paper letters. I've all but stopped using the mail, and it's kind of a shame. I love getting letters from people, real ones, and I really miss it. So I'm trying to revive the habit.

Especially to my grandparents. I want them to know how special they are to me, what an incredible impact they've had on my life, and I'd rather give them this ahead of time than deliver a fantastic eulogy later. So I pulled out a Sharpie and a legal pad, and wrote them a letter about ice cream, and why they'll always be associated with it in my mind.

It took a long time. I sat on a park bench in the sun, a grown man writing, eating, periodically bawling while a city full of suits streamed past talking about policy, briefs and whitepapers and totally ignoring me. Better that way, but weird all the same.

And now that I've written that letter and gone through those tears, I feel completely drained, but a little better. I'm going to sleep now, and when I wake up I'm going to send this thing, just as soon as I find a stamp.

I've typed that letter up and posted it below, if you're so inclined. I feel kind of weird about it, telling the whole world like this. But ultimately, I want people to know how great my grandparents are to me, and I want to be able to click back, six months from now and read this and remember this day, too ... over and over again.

Dear Daro and Pop-Pop,

I'm on my lunch break, standing in a sandwich line and staring at the ice cream case, thinking of you both. I think about you both a lot lately, and this ice cream is amplifying it, because I can't look at ice cream without remembering two very, very wonderful experiences, both of which you created.

Pop-Pop, I can remember when I first learned how to eat an ice cream cone. I think we were at the mall, and at that moment, I had only ever had ice cream out of a bowl, with a spoon and someone nearby with a lot of napkins. I'd seen people on TV eating cones, seen older kids and grownups with them, but never had one of my own. I was incredibly excited, to say the least. I can remember you handing me that cone and me taking it in both of my little hands -- it was so HUGE -- and then having no idea what to do with it. I think I just started biting it from the top down, kinda like an apple. Man -- if you thought I needed napkins before ... I think I actually got ice cream in both ears.

You said "No, not like that. Like this," and then paused. As a diabetic, demonstrating how to eat the cone would have been risky. "Lick the sides," you said. I did, bottom to top. "NO, around it," you explained. I tried, but made a bigger mess. You thought for a minute, evaluating the risk against the importance of the lesson. Then you said "here, let me show you," and took the cone. You quickly, patiently showed me how to lick a circle around the cone, how to head off all the drips, how to take little bites off the top, and how to nibble the cone away, biting the bottom tip off and sucking the last bit of melted ice cream through the hole. Somehow you managed to show me this without eating the whole thing yourself. Every time I eat an ice cream cone, and sometimes when I don't, I remember that lesson. I hope I get to turn right around and teach it to someone small one day.

Daro -- do you remember Tilfred? He lived next door to you, and he was such a little pill. He tackled too hard and yelled too much, threw toys in the air and was quick to ball up his fists and use them. One afternon, me and you and Jess hand-cranked peach ice cream together and you let us invite one friend each over for dessert.

I picked Paul from two doors over. I certainly did not invite Tilfred. Nevertheless, as we all sat down and you scooped soft, sticky peach ice cream into our bowls, there was a knock at the door. It was Tilfred, who said "my babysitter said I could come and eat peach ice cream with y'all after dinner." You invited him in and told him to get himself a bowl out of the cabinet.

This kind of blew my little mind. You'd taught me that it wasn't nice to invite yourself places, and told me just that day that ice cream was for well-behaved children. That same day, Tilfred had thrown two of my Star Wars guys and one of my flip-flops into the oak tree out front AND invited himself over after supper. And here you were, rewarding the behavior with ice cream! I just shrugged, figuring the world had gone completely crazy, and handed Tilfred a spoon.

You knew then something it has taken me years to figure out: Sometimes all jerks like Tilfred need is someone to be nice to them ... then they can stop being such jerks. Tilfred was never my best friend after that, but he did stop hitting me quite so much. 24 years later, your example is still a tough act to follow, but I'm going to teach it one day, too.

I've got to get back to work now, but please know that I love you both more than I can possibly explain. And despite all appearances, I actually was paying attention to you ...

Love,

Jeffrey

Did You Just Put That In Your Mouth?

2007-03-14T08:22:00.000-04:00

Brenda Hughes of Savannah, GA was accused of throwing acid on her neighbors in an alleged hate crime. She claims she didn't do it, and even has a special t-shirt that proclaims her innocence. And, even if she did do it, the acid wouldn't have hurt anyone, she asserts, proving it on the TV news by putting some in her mouth. Have a look:

Fight Club for Sweaty Cupcakes

2007-03-12T12:33:00.001-04:00

hostess experiment 012
Originally uploaded by kim in color.

"Cardio boxing" class is only marginally more like real boxing than a round of 'Mike Tyson's Punch-Out.' Still, it's a decent workout. It feels more real than watching TV on the elliptical or "spinning" class, which is essentially a game of make-believe in a dark little room with incredibly shitty house musinc for a soundtrack. "We're approaching logs on our mountain path," the instructor calls out. "Turn your resistance up and power of those logs while I turn the music up ... this part is so rockin'!"

But back to boxing class. Ridiculous as it is, I go. And I've gotten to where I look forward to sweating onto squeaky-clean wooden floors in a room full of synthetic tough guys. I spend my days silently in cubicle, dreaming of kicking someone's ass without opportunity or skill to deliver on the dream. I've gotten good at throwing punches in a controlled environment without having the slightest idea how to do it in real life. Boxing class is to me what a wheel is to a caged rat: nowhere near to close, but the best thing going.

The first few times are terrible -- you're sweating and heaving for breath and the gloves are like millstones tied to your wrists. "My god," I always think, "I am getting my ass kicked by an invisible person that is not even hitting back." The invisible opponent always pummels my Fight Club fantasy pretty good.

My partner last week was new to the class. And without wanting to be overly cruel, it seemed like it was his first trip to a gym, period.

Usually, I'm into that. I like seeing people making a fresh start, going for a personal best. And usually, I love an underdog. Like any adult worth being around, I was picked on in gym class during my formative years. Seeing normal people, dorks like me taking the gym back usually gets me stoked.

Not this time.

This guy, he was awful. Awful at the class, awful as a partner. His punches were like Hostess sno-balls on a hot day, limp and sticky little things that fell short of the mitts. Like he was applying gold leaf to my mitts with each whining grunt. His hips swivelled and jerked rhythmically while he swung a limp series of uppercuts, hooks, jabs. Richard Simmons may be the only other man to to bring that sort of hip motion into a fitness environment. He was even bad at holding the mitts while I punched, fliching and dropping them so much that it threw my rhythm off, inspiring the instructor to bark at me. He flopped and sweated, gut heaving beneath his soaked shirt. His ponderous pigeon impression was giving him a workout but leaving me sweatless.

And the thing is, in case you haven't noticed: I really resented the guy for it. Who was this guy, crapping up my workout, bringing this effete, pathetic indifference to the whole thing? I mean, it's not like he would have gotten detention for leaving. The frustration built, blossoming into anger. I swung harder, hit faster, secretly hoping I could tag this guy in the face.

What is it about pathetic people? Why is it that the desire to help someone out is layered on TOP of the desire to just crush someone? There was something about this guy, something simpering and sad that I just wanted to grind under my heel, to smack and splatter like a mosquito fat with blood. I swear, I have no idea how professional therapists and counselors deal with people who are yes, hurting and in need of help, but also so crying out to be crushed by Darwin's hammer.

And in that class, in that particular moment, I totally understood the bullies that used me for sport when I was a kid. I was a gawky dude with glasses and ZERO interest in sports. Add a short temper and no patience for idiots to that mix, and you've got someone who's going to explode fabulously and predictably every time. Kids are dumb, every last one of them, and patient self-control is not something they aspire to. It must have been so AWESOME for those mouth-breathing bozos to bounce a kickball off of my head.

In that moment, in that frustration with that simpering, sweaty sack in front of me, I understood some old demons and was able to make a long-delayed peace with myself. Jesus himself said "Love your enemies," and in that moment, I did, and I could feel my heart expanding to encompass the whole world. I understood bullies past and future, and understood the guy in front of me a little better -- we're just two schlubs who want physiques far better than the ones we get from our sedentary little lives. Even if his workplace dreams involved ice skates and perfect pirouettes and mine involve blood and concrete, we're more similar than different. This expansion and understanding, it felt magnificent.

But pulling my fist back after the bell and hitting the his mitt with thundering thwack, jolting that sweaty cupcake off-balance ... I have to say that felt pretty awesome, too. And now I understand why.

Having Some Beers, Doing Some Witchcraft

2007-03-07T16:42:00.000-05:00

Breaking the Spell
Originally uploaded by chinese_fashion.

This post is part 3 of an ongoing series. Click to read the first and second installments.

The Santero's message said, simply "I'm going to be having some beers later and doing some witchcraft if you want to come over. All that stuff is too much for the phone."

It must be said: his apartment is beautiful. I think that when most people think of Santeria (or Voodoo), they picture squalid little huts, dark apartments with blood on the wall, feathers on the floor, maybe a couple giant heaps of newspaper in the corner. Nothing could be further from the reality of the Santero's crib.

The house is filled with art and artifacts, including personally constructed fetishes that represent each Orisha. No one fetish looks the same from house to house, but with a little study, one can tell one Orisha from another pretty easily. For example, Yemaya's colors are blue and white, aquatic colors that represent the ocean -- the source and symbol of her vast power.

So if you're in a Santero's house looking at a large blue-and white vessel of some sort with a woman's face on the front, adorned with beads and candles: you've got Yemaya dead in your sights.

I can't tell, exactly, but these objects, essentially found-object 3-D collages, are either gateways to the Orisha, or physical manifestations of the Orisha itself. I like that a lot. When I was in college, I was really into power figures from the Congo as well as the art of Voodoo and Santeria.

I like that practitioners of these religions actually, literally build their deities, that it takes sweat and love and a keen eye to make that gateway to God -- or Gods. From a Christian perspective, man is created in God's image. This does not so much mean that God has legs and underarm hair as it means that people are meant to create stuff the way that God created us.

And trust me, I'm using the term 'created' loosely here. To say that we were put here by some magical freaking thunderbolt and fossils are meant to test our faith is just ridiculous. I like believing in a higher power that created science, set the ball rolling and learned to love the results a lot more than I like thinking that we are the product of a deity that made dinosaur bones just to fuck with us.

Most of my beef with the Christianity I was raised under is aesthetic. My mom and grandparents, aunt and uncle and the minister at my childhood church are all generous, loving and productive people, and they take their faith seriously. It's just that most of the worship services I've been to are so flat and passionless that when it's over you're not really sure that it happens.

I know that I like the Church of gospel and shouting, of clapping and barking in tongues, of building the things you worship with instead of doing a drive-by once a week and having some hard old cookies after. Life, death, love and happiness aren't boring. Why does worshiping them have to be?

But before this high horse I'm in rides off into the sunset, I have to bring it back to the Santero's apartment. We were sitting there, me, the Santero, and my friend Lola, having a few Budweisers and talking. Santeria music played in the background and this little dog Lola was babysitting just kind of wandered around being real cute. Then the Santero excused himself and stepped into the corner, lit a few candles and chanted, said some stuff in Yoruba and Spanish and threw four pieces of coconut shell on the floor.

He came back, saying "Eleggua says that he will talk to everyone in this house. That includes you (nodding to me). The oracle is open. Think of what you have to ask him, and let's talk. You don't have to start immediately, just form it in your mind before you ask. But ask tonight."

The Santero explained that you can only ask Eleggua yes-or-no questions. No life or death stuff, just concrete, everyday things. The Santero helped shape my questions into ones that Eleggua could answer right there in the living room. This was a little weird to me. Not the whole talking to a voodoo god, but the fact that Eleggua himself was essentially standing in the corner right over by the front door, and here we were standing in the living room talking like he couldn't hear us. Once I figured out my line of questioning, I stepped over to Eleggua.

This is what the Orisha looks like in that particular apartment:

It was right then, when I was standing in front of the Santero being anointed with four pieces of coconut shell that I got a little scared. The phrase "Thou shalt have no other Gods before me" definitely ran through my head a million times, real, real fast. Was I about to step across a thin little line and condemn myself to hell?

Then I thought about it. Eleggua is, essentially, the one who is covered when we say "God works in mysterious ways," and he's ONLY that. He's part of a bigger, more confusing whole, and this was a pretty good way to focus on one aspect of the entire universe. I like that about Santeria -- it breaks a power that we can barely comprehend down into smaller chunks, powerful beings that have certain specialties. Kind of like the Avengers or the Justice League, to be completely flip about it. But it's all the same thing, and the energy all goes the same place.

I can't tell you what I asked. It would be disrespectful and turn everything pear-shaped. And I certainly can't tell you what Lola and the Santero asked Eleggua a) because it would be even more disrespectful, and b) because it was done entirely in Spanish, a language I do not speak.

I can tell you this, though. After the Santero asked a question and threw the coconuts, his eyes widened along with Lola's. Then he said "Okay then," and marched across the room to dismantle Yemaya. "We're going outside," he said.

The main vessel that forms Yemaya contained shells, stones and a large amount of ocean water. Apparently, that ocean water had absorbed a lot of negative energy and needed to be poured out immediately. The Santero was pouring it onto the dead doves to eliminate the last vestiges of the broken curse and fully wash it away. So, we stood out in the road last Friday, around midnight, holding out hands over the dead doves while the Santero poured ocean water out of Yemaya, over our hands and onto those poor dead doves, chanting in Spanish. Here's a photo:

At one point the Santero turned his head, mid-chant, shouting something in Spanish at a nearby van. Its occupants looked curious, to say the least. "What did he just shout" I asked. "He said 'Go home, motherfuckers, I'm doing witchcraft'" Lola replied.

We went back inside. "Sit, talk to Eleggua," the Santero said. Lola and I sat in front of the fetish. "Just pray," she explained, "focus your thoughts and let them flow out of you. He'll pick it up."

The Santero lit a cigar and turned it backwards, carefully placing the ember into his mouth. He blew hard, blowing clouds of smoke all over Eleggua. It made perfect sense to me, and I slipped into my own mind, pushing out fear and doubt, letting it hang there. It was nice.

Then the Santero took a large swig of rum from a bottle by Eleggua and spat it all over him. He took another large swig and spat the rum on Lola, then gave me a good spraying, too.

"What was THAT about," I whispered to Lola. "To get Eleggua tipsy," she whispered behind a hand. "It make him talk to us more, tell us more stuff."

She and the Santero resumed talking to Eleggua out loud, and again, I have no idea what they said. I got my answers, though, and I can honestly say that I feel pretty blessed.

The night ended, finally, and I went to bed. Don't get the wrong idea. I'm not ready to convert or anything. But at a time when I needed answers, guidance, something to hang my soul on, I got it. It brought me closer to two great people and I had one of the deepest, most fulfilling experiences that I've ever had, and I feel calmer, more relaxed. That's got to count for something.

I'm not done here, either. Eleggua was kind enough to talk to me, even though I'm an outsider. He took me into his house and treated me well. I'm not ungrateful for that, either, so I offered him a small gift in return. He accepted, understanding that it may take me a few days to get the gift together. Now I've got it sorted out.

So, sometime after work this week, I'm going to run a little errand, then drop by the Santero's place and leave my offering to Eleggua.

Brujeria: Son of the Pirate Witch Queen

2007-03-05T07:44:00.000-05:00

This post is part 2 of an ongoing series. Click to read the first and third installments.

Those dirty white doves lying by the curb alongside three little samurai hats made of coconut, their car-flattened heads some distance away -- they're not just some sick coincidence, a bored metalhead's idea of art or a Hot Topic teen's notebook dream rendered real. According to my neighbor, they're part of a spell meant to discredit him in the DC Santeria community and rob him of some of his prominence and prestige.

We stood out in the road together Friday night, six beers deep into the evening as he explained, flicking the dead doves around with a stick. "This is sloppy work, too," he said. "Amateur shit. This is some poorly hidden amateur shit and an embarrassment to everyone who practices Santeria. The spell was broken the second I laid eyes on this, and it should have been hidden better ... in the bushes at least, or wrapped in some brown paper and then hidden where nobody could find it."

According to my friend (who must remain nameless), someone else in the community is jealous of him and his standing. He believes this is an Anakin and Obi-Wan situation, an old former friend resentful of his spiritual growth, his influence over new initiates, and his role as an elder. If he is correct, the perpetrator of this spell owns a popular Botanica, a voodoo supply store that initiates new members into Santeria. Apparently, she charges for her services and for supplies.

"I don't make any money off this myself. It's my religion. I have my career as a network engineer and that's separate. This is my life, my spirituality and to her, it's her business, and I'm taking her customers."

He adds "This was confirmed to me by both my Orisha and my high priest. That bitch wants to knock me down, to see me fail."

That's only part of the reason that there are two dead headless dove lying in the road by my house, in a direct line of sight from the friendly Santero's apartment. There's more. An offering of doves is an offering to Obatala, the owner of all heads who is always dressed in all white. See, the perpetrator of this spell was ordained under Yemaya, mother goddess and creator of the world, same as my neighbor.

Since they both have the same guardian angel, a direct attack via spells cast on the spiritual plane would harm both parties. By appealing to Obatala, the attacker hopes to knock off my friend's "crown", or cause him to publicly embarrass himself and lose status.

"Yemaya, she is the creator and the destroyer," my Santero friend elaborated. "She's a caring mother but defends her children like a she-wolf, like a grizzly bear or something. Yemaya Okoto is a pirate witch queen who defends her children by rampage, and that's the the aspect I come under. Eleggua told her to go ahead with this spell, but he brought this to me through you, and now he's told me to do what I need to do to defend myself." He paused for a moment, looking into the sky, then continued, saying "Really, this is all so wonderful and it just reaffirms my faith in Santeria. This is so amazing, such a beautiful display of Eleggua's power. I feel so blessed right now."

Eleggua is the Santeria trickster-god, and, according to Wikipedia "plays frequently tempting choices for the purpose of causing maturation."

"See here," my neighbor said, "look at the coconut shells here, by the doves. It's the divination she threw before she left the sacrifice ... see how the whites are facing up? That's a 'yes,' from Eleggua, he's telling her to go ahead, but he's bringing you past these birds yesterday and having you e-mail me about it after we hadn't even talked for a whole year. That's random as hell, man, and that's Eleggua for you, especially considering how we even met, man."

It's true. I met my neighbor because he's the best friend (and spiritual godfather) to a woman I met on Myspace about a year ago. We went out on a few dates and then it sort of fizzled, more due to work, timing, and baggage on my part than anything else. I 'friended' my Santero neighbor last year and then fell out of touch with him and her, although I had no negative feelings.

I can't say that I'm converting to Santeria anytime soon, but the fact that we all met last year and then I happened to see these dead doves in the road a year later and be moved to photograph them and e-mail them ... it's pretty staggering. I remain an open-minded skeptic, but I can honestly say that I've felt Eleggua's power firsthand.

After many divinations, many questions asked of the oracles and many coconut shells thrown, it all comes down to this. My friend the Santero is the victim of a vicious spiritual attack by an enemy who was willing to perform a blood sacrifice to see him fail. By discovering the sacrifice and alerting him, I was the agent of the Santeria trickster-god Eleggua. Once he saw the sacrifice itself, the spell was broken.

My friend will retaliate, and nothing's going to stop him. He's not telling how or when, only that "a shield is built and the divination said that the situation is 'an eye for an eye.'"

When the Doves Die

2007-03-02T14:53:00.001-05:00

This post is part 1 of an ongoing series. Click to read the second and third installments.

It rained on the last of the snow this morning, getting rid of the nasty slush but making a much nastier mess in the meantime.

Me my friend were walking around Adams-Morgan in the rain talking about nasty old snow. Like that one gross black clump you find under an abandoned car in like, June, and you think "DAG -- how is that still even there?" Then we came across one tenacious chunk of dirty white slush. "That's really hanging on there," he said, and we went to investigate the tough little lump by the curb.

Turns out it wasn't snow at all. It was two decapitated doves, tied together at the feet:

Two chunks of coconut lay nearby, along with the dove's heads themselves:

Now there's no getting around the fact that this is kind of nasty to me, as a middle-class cracker from Southern Virginia. Way nastier than some old black snow clump for sure. But it's not as creepy as it seems to the uninitiated. After the initial rush of heavy weirdness settled, I remembered. I live right next door to a powerful Santero, a high priest of Santeria, a form of voodoo widely practiced across Latin America. Animal sacrifice is a big part of their practice, see.

I sent my friend, the Santero neighbor the first photo above and asked him, "Dude, was that you?"

I'd done a little Googling and learned that Santeros were sacrificing doves to either heal or kill Castro last fall, depending on how they felt about him. Maybe that was it.

It wasn't. He didn't do it, he says, and he hadn't heard anything about the Castro thing. The ramifications are possibly more sinister.

According to what he told me, two doves are a sacrifice to Obatala, the father of peace but also the owner of all heads. If someone were to cast a spell over my Santero neighbor, they'd have to knock his spiritual "crown" off of his head. So he's going to look into this, as soon as he gets home from work.

It kinda gives me the creeps, all this animal sacrifice going on right outside my house. I'm all for religious freedom and freedom of expression, and I do eat meat ... but still. I mean, somebody threw two dead birds in the street out there, and they're still there right now, just kinda rotting.

On the other hand, pigeons and rats die in the road all the time and I'm used to it. If anything, those doves make for more interesting roadkill than the grey feathered leather we usually get here. And those doves, they mean a lot to a lot of people.

Overall, I'm pretty excited at the situation. There's a good chance that I am living in the crossfire of an escalating epic battle between two Latin voodoo priests, and how cool is THAT? A bunch of kids came skipping down the street this afternoon, passing a basketball and yelling "y'all play too much" with high spirits and they passed right over that vicious little offering. They moved right through the spiritual warzone, laughing, happy and unharmed.

I just got an email from my friend, who says "I plan to investigate via divination what this all means. and if it is an attack on me, then I am off to war. I have a few enemies in the community, that because of ego do not want anyone to prosper and my house happens to be growing, meaning I just initiated 2 more people into santeria last week..."

All it took was one look in the gutter to see something nasty and fantastic, incredible evidence that the world is full of mysterious magic. It's all around us, propping up our humdrum lives in ways we barely understand and no matter how it seems at the surface, it's pretty cool to know it's there even if you don't completely believe in it yourself.

There's more to this story. Click here to see what the doves mean.

He Was Also Charged With Damage to a Mini-Bar

2007-03-01T14:54:00.001-05:00

Donkey
Originally uploaded by Victoria Reay.

I love stories where things go completely off the rails -- where events just pile up and pile up and the next thing you know, the newspaper is printing a sentence like this:

McCarney was found in the room wearing a latex suit and handcuffs, the key to which the donkey is believed to have swallowed.

You can find the rest of the story (found via BoingBoing) here, and it pretty much tells itself. On the one hand it's a sad tale of a sick and lonely man with a very, very unfortunate hangup. His donkey's not in much better shape, either. But on the other: holy crap.

Imagine the conversations the guy had to explain himself, the look on the night manager's face when someone told him what was happening in all seriousness. I'd like to hear Mr. McCarney's side of the story, a plain, ordinary explanation of how one man ends up in a hotel with a donkey.

You don't really get anywhere without taking little baby steps, and I'd love to hear how he crossed that line. One person's black and white line is another's broad, grey field.

And in one way or another it happen to everyone, all the time: you linger too long on the far side of the playground, over near the dark woods. Then a twig snaps and you look up to see that it's getting dark and everyone's gone home for dinner -- and the sky is flat and heavy, the color of dark charcoal.

'Defenders of Stan', Episode V

2007-02-28T01:54:00.000-05:00

I mentioned in an earlier post that did some work as an extra in the superlative 'Defenders of Stan.' 'Defenders' is a Web-based TV series about Stan, the last man on earth without superpowers. His brother is Captain Ultra, who is both the world's most powerful superhero and biggest jerk.

That episode's gone live and you can see it right here:

Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on who you ask) you can't see me at all. I was the DJ in the nightclub scene, complete with an American Flag for a cape. Now I'm pixels on a cutting-room floor in an editing room that never really existed. The show itself is still really funny and well worth a watch. It's only five minutes, so you probably won't get busted looking at it at work.

This link will take you to a page where you can see all five DOS (Defenders of Stan) episodes.

I said it before and I'll say it again: these guys are really sharp, and they're a real inspiration to me and my writing partners as we write our show. Sure, we're doing things differently than they are, but not an hour goes by when we're working together that one of us doesn't say, "Well, the 'Stan' guys did this, and it seems to be working well for them."

No More Sleeping In

2007-02-27T18:10:00.000-05:00

I'm doing some Web work for a P.R. firm. Reasonably stoked about it. That is all.

That Saddle, It Feels Mighty Fine

2007-02-22T03:08:00.000-05:00

I flew to LA with my writing partner a while back to pitch an idea for a Web-based TV show. More about that here, but suffice it to say that despite it being politely rejected almost immediately, we got some good advice and I had probably one of the most exhilarating experiences I've had in my career as a writer.

My partner and I vowed to get back on the horse, and saddle up we have.

We've spent the past few weeks tearing out virtual hair out to re-craft a treatment for our story, one that reads "funny" immediately, as opposed to one that relies on gobs of wacky backstory to explain itself.

Or, in our case, gobs of wacky backstory delivered by me in a nervous monotone, too scared to look at the development exec but too proud to look at the floor. This results in a flat delivery from a bald guy in a necktie with a thousand-yard stare that would make the Son of Sam say "C'mon man, lighten up, jeez."

So yeah, the two things I learned were: you got to SELL the funny, right there on the paper. And during the pitch, lighten up a bit your damn self.

That's what a story treatment is, as I understand it: a two-page document that encapsulates the spirit of the show and all its characters, written magnetically and simply for people who are, in all actuality, too busy to read it themselves. Here's one for "Freaks and Geeks," a doomed and fantastic TV show that was also too smart for its audience. We've been pretty much using this as a Bible, really. The series Bible itself is pretty fascinating, too.

And that "as I understand it," that's the doozy right there. I didn't even THINK about any of this stuff before January. January, 2007. So yeah, I have no idea what I'm doing. We're just winging it here. Totally making it up as we go along. It's terrifying and frustrating when there's nobody to turn to, but sometimes, just sometimes, it's jsut awesome enough to make everything turn four inches tall except us and this towering pile of golden copy ... which will become compost in 24 hours. You gotta kill your darlings, man, and today's golden egg is tomorrow's shit-smeared goose fetus.

People have been saying to us "Why don't you guys just make it yourselves and put the thing on YouTube? You know, generate some buzz?" And those people, they have a solid point. But I mean, look. I'm not an actor or a director. Yet. I just got into this in January, and my partner, he's not a seasoned pro, either. We don't have a camera, editing software, any of that stuff. But we got laptops and meager enough connections to pitch through. So to our way of thinking, why work for free when you can try to get paid along the way to developing it yourself?

I mean, shit. YouTube and the rest of Web 2.0 is making a lot of money off the great mirage of user-generated content. And to some extent, that's fine. I mean, I don't get a dime for this blog. But one day people are gonna realize it and say "man, we're a bunch of suckers." And how awesome would it be to get paid for writing now, rather than later?

That mindset, I think has been my greatest helper AND hindrance in my writing career. On the one hand, I get paid. Sometimes. On the other, I might not go out on limbs that I should.

Anyway. After working as an extra for my friend Meredith's stellar Web-based TV show 'Defenders of Stan' this last weekend, my beat got turned right around. Please, if you have a few minutes, go check out the shows. They're only 5 minutes apiece and they're AWESOME. And you know what? These guys are just DOING it, for real, seat of the pants, not holding their breath for a damn thing, and it's working out well for them.

That's right: they're becoming very successful by simply doing the exact opposite of what my partner and I think is a good idea.

So we started writing scripts this week. We're moving forward again, and CHRIST is it ever cool. I forget, on a weekly basis, how much I love writing. Maybe blogging makes me a little tired sometimes. It's a freaking treadmill. But just WRITING, creating stuff, making jokes, telling stories ... there's nothing like it in the world. One of my writing partners and I cranked out two 5-minute scripts this week. They're rough. They might not be funny, and they probably completely suck. Just pixels on the hard drive, knowing you put in a solid couple days and made yourself laugh doing it ... again, nothing like it in the world.

Now I'm exhausted and giddy. I've been consuming bourbon and coffee in a 1:1 ratio all night and it's time to lie down and let them fight it out. Tomorrow, we're going to talk. We've yet to cram these tattered little rags with stories on them into a real story structure, but I feel awesome all the same.

Now if I could just get PAID to feel like this ...

This link will take you to a pretty awesome tutorial on the basics of story structure for Web video. It's a fascinating read, and goes a long way toward explaining why some short films are worth re-watching and forwarding to your friends, and why a LOT of "user-generated content" in the video-sharing world completely blows.

Hey Out There: Englewood, Colorado

2007-02-22T01:22:00.000-05:00

Look, this isn't fingerpointing or anything -- I'm just really curious. You out there, in or near Englewood, Colorado ... who are you? Have we met?

You Google me almost daily and read this blog very, very religiously. Perhaps more frequently than I even write in it. Whoever you are, I appreciate the attention.

If you (or any of you, really) want to get in touch, that picture of me on the right there, on the phone will take you to my MySpace page. Shout it out loud ...

Bling King

2007-02-21T15:43:00.000-05:00

A pilgrimage to Graceland is every American's civic duty, right up there with voting and paying taxes. And unlike voting and paying taxes, the consequences are nowhere nearly as dire if you screw it up. Just show up, put the headphones on and start walking and you're pretty much solid gold.

Graceland is also one of the few remaining examples of late 60's/early 70's interior design anywhere in the world. It's an example of life and decor at its finest, before to 80's inspired everyone to get with track lighting and black leather.

You can dismiss his music as irrelevant if you want, but you've got to admit this: Presley is the godfather of bling-bling as the world knows it. His house may be a little anticlimactic to a generation that's been inoculated against true fly style by MTV's 'Cribs', but this is where it all started.

A long tradition of talented mouthbreathers with more money than IQ points owe it all to the King, baby. He may not have been a musical genius, but as a performer and stylesetter, there is no comparison.

Look at what the man wore AROUND, for Christ's sake:

As a side note -- while I was photographing this, two children had their faces pressed against the glass, rapt in fabulous sequin-studded wonder. One of them began to slowly, rhythmically bounce his forehead off of the glass. A no-no, but I was feeling it, too. The spangliness of the suit just hit this boy and struck him retarded, so retarded he had to play a little rhythm of praise with his own face. A mother of some sort came screeching over, hollering "Stop hitting that glass with yer FACE!!" and belted the offender's BROTHER on the back of his head, sending his face into the glass with a loud thud. An alarm went off. Crying, the brother said "Mom, it wasn't even me, it was HIM!" "Sorry, baby," she said. "Let's get out of here, quick."

I felt like hauling off and nailing her on the chin with a right cross and saying "Oh, sorry, I meant to punch my girlfriend."

Check this suit out:

If George Bush had jumped out of that airplane on the aircraft carrier wearing THIS little number, I'd have believed him when he said "Mission Accomplished."

Shoot the Freak

2007-02-20T11:24:00.002-05:00

Now that I've had 24 hours to piss and moan about my block -- and had my public self-flagellation indulged with some very nice comments -- I'm trying something else.

I'm going through the And I Am Not Lying, For Real Official Photo Archives (aka my hard drive) and running my better photos until the words come back.

Like this one:

Click here for a larger version.

I took this on Coney Island this year, during the first week of January. It was freakishly warm, and people were out walking around the boardwalk in an approximation of warm-weather behavior.

Some asshole was even rollerblading up and down the boardwalk in a pair of little tiny shorts. Right attitude, wrong coast, I say.

There are certain people that can ONLY exist in New York tri-state area, like this guy:

Let's have a closer look:

This guy makes me think that maybe the Sopranos is not so fictional, after all. Don't get me wrong here -- I'm not pointing and laughing. You haven't seen anything until you've seen a Southern man with a 48-inch belly and 36-inch pants down around his upper thighs and held on with suspenders.

All I'm saying is that this guy, this image, and the whole day was this strange kind of awesome I've never seen before. The crowds of Russian immigrants and people playing in the weak winter sunset were so fun and beautiful -- but it all felt like a memory that we'd share after the seas rose.

We'd be sitting around a campfire on the beach somewhere in Indiana, hiding from America's army of prancing headless dogbots and someone would say "Man, remember Coney Island?" And maybe my writing partner (who is duh, a good friend) would scurry closer to the fire and say "Yeah, we went there in the wintertime, right before the big sheet melted off of Greenland, remember that, Jeff?"

And I'll look over the gnarled head of my staff and nod affirmatively, slipping backward in time to relive those hot dogs, the cold breeze, and that incredible blood-red sunset ...

It's All A Dirty Smear

2007-02-19T03:20:00.000-05:00

A few weeks ago I was riding the escalator up out of the Metro station -- coming back from another demeaning trip to the staffing agency, another conversation with a "professional" interviewer who said "Uh, okay, what's your name again? We don't get much for writers, but we'll let you know." Freezing rain spat itself onto the top of the escalator, melting into droplets.

Some of those droplets were just heavy enough to move and they took the plunge, colliding into tother droplets and gathering steam and falling apart again as the water trails they made left drops behind, drops made out of the drops of other drops until no drop had any of the personality it had fell out of the air with and it was all one grey and dirty mess. The whole scene was hypnotic and I found myself taking a few trips up and down the escalator to watch the whole thing over and over again.

I think I caught something, doing that. Ever since then, my body's felt heavier than normal from the fingertips back. Just lifting them to write this post is taking a lot more energy thatn usual. But my thoughts, my mind, that's been the worst part. It's like all my ideas are doing what those droplets did, falling hard and melting as soon as I can look at 'em, then smearing themselves together and running off until I can't tell 'em apart any more and they're all just a bunch of dirty water that fell out of the sky.

It's cold outside, cold enough to make stupid people think that global warming was a short-lived hoax. All snow is ice and everything's dirty and wet. It's all filthy and slipping together, everything, and none of it seems to be worth staying awake for.

I used to think that writer's block was a myth. Hell, I still do. If you've got to write, I used to think, just do it. It's all in your head, the block, and if you stop whinging and start typing. eventually you'll be somewhere good. Writers' block is for the weak -- for people that don't know how to grab their own bootstraps and just PULL until they get somewhere. I still believe that.

But everybody's weak sometimes and right now it's my turn. I can't thing of a fucking thing worth saying and I'm taking offense at everything I read -- I leave a comment somewhere and a couple days later it looks hostile as hell. Most people, they just shut up till they feel better. I've been trying to, it's just making it worse.

What do you do when you get blocked? How do you get unstuck? And man, how long does it TAKE?

Old-School Romance for Valentine's Day

2007-02-09T01:16:00.000-05:00

My grandpa's been diabetic for as long as I've known him. His diet was further modified after his 6-way bypass when I was in college. Now he's on some sort of other diet for diabetic heart patients with renal failure.

I think by now he just photosynthesizes, mostly. He looks kinda green sometimes, anyway.

So when I went to visit him this afternoon, we just watched the Food Network together. He watches that Food Network all the time now. It used to be the Western channel. But it turns out the only thing Pop-Pop likes seeing more than cowboys killing Indians is watching overzealous women make foods he hasn't truly tasted in twenty years.

"They always gotta moan whenever they taste something, see that?" he says. "Who makes that noise when they eat something? I've been eating for 87 years, never heard anyone carry on like that before."

All these cooking shows were okay by me. I needed a few recipes for a Valentine's dinner, which I've been dreading. Truth be known, I am not a big fan of the holiday in general.

When I don't have a Valentine, it's kinda crappy. When I do, it's not that I'm ungrateful for the company. Nothing, to me, says romance quite like conjuring up something spontaneous and magical to fit silent, possibly gargantuan expectations on a pre-designated day.

I'm sure Punxutawney Phil likes going outside for a stroll in the snow, but there's something about doing it in front of TV cameras and a brass band that probably takes the joy out of it. So yeah, I got some performance anxiety. Conclude away, readers, and I'll thank you to stop smirking before you leave your little comments.

I asked Pop-Pop "How do you feel about Valentine's Day? What do you and Daro (my grandma, her name was the first word out of my mouth) usually do?"

"Well," he said, "we like to go to the card store and pick cards out for each other. She gets one she'd like to give to me, and I pick one out I think works for her. Then we trade 'em and read 'em to each other."

"That's really nice," I said. "What happens after that?"

"Oh, we put 'em back on the shelf and go home," he said. "No sense wasting all that money for Valentine's Day."

Couldn't have said it better myself, really.

When Astronauts Attack

2007-02-07T12:39:00.000-05:00

By now, you've heard the sad and terrible tale of Lisa Nowak, the astronaut who drove 900 miles in diapers to kidnap a romantic rival. I got nothing to say about that, really.

But it's not the first time astronauts have gone off the rails. Check out this awesome video of Buzz Aldrin punching some guy upside the head:

Andd the guy had it coming, too! Go ahead on, spaceman ...

One Long Wednesday

2007-02-07T00:37:00.000-05:00

People with jobs think that being unemployed is like a constant weekend. You sleep in, don't dress, hang out, go to bed late and catch up on all your reading, according to popular wisdom. And sure, you do these things. But you've got no context for these activities, nothing to look forward to except the work of finding work.

When you're unemployed, every day is one long Wednesday.

Things get flat and complicated, all at once. Speaking of complications, here's one:

My primary outlet for my writing and my feelings is this blog. This is, to a greater or lesser extent, where it all comes out in squalid and, I would hope, entertaining detail.

However, I am looking for a job. This whole pitching a TV show thing is awesome, but unfortunately you don't get paid to pitch. The very little I understand about pitching is this: it's not like pitching a baseball. Or a softball. It's more like pitching a watermelon to Mark McGwire and hoping that he misses -- or that you stay dry. So I'm looking for paying gigs without giving up the dream.

Somebody, somewhere, finds this blog by Googling my name several times a day. It's increased since I've started looking for work. If it is possible to dooce one's self, it's certainly possible to preemptively dooce one's self, too ... to blog yourself out of an initial phone call. All it takes is one post to wrinkle the wrong person, and they just don't call you.

It's like this, readers. Most of you are my friends. But a lot of you aren't. You've never met me, and you never will. Some of you think you know me, really well, based entirely on what you read here. And to some extent it's flattering. I've worked really hard to develop a conversational voice, to use bits of my life to entertain people and establish some sort of warm connection through a cold collection of pixels.

So when some of you offer me unsolicited lifestyle advice (I know I spend too much time online, thanks, I feel great), or input on how to handle my relationship with my sister via IM or whatever, I guess I should take it as a compliment.

I don't though. Keep that shit to yourselves. I know you just want to help, but damn, it drives me NUTS.

You don't know a person by their blog posts any more than you know a tree by its dead leaves in the gutter. And that's the big illusion of public availability right there -- you think you know someone based on their carefully constructed facade, and WOW are things different in person. Good employees get sacked, bad writers get praised, and ugly people with Photoshop skills get first dates like never before.

Did you know that Bing Crosby beat his wife?

So I'm feeling kinda cramped right now. My grandpa's sick, I got no job and the bills are piling up. Blogging in detail about tough times (or anything, ever, period, if you ask media lawyers) opens me up to the judgment of a million strangers, some of whom control purse strings that I really want to fondle between my own grubby little digits. Or it makes me look like a whiner.

A couple of you have mentioned my posting drought to me, and I appreciate the concern. That's the deal, and what I'm dealing with.

But here's my question: Is there stuff in this blog that would shut me out of a job I need? Is it wise to shut up just because you're scared of losing opportunities? Is it right to live with your soul muzzled so you can keep as many doors open as possible?

You know, I think I know the answer to that last one.

Frisky Dingo: Cheese in Crust, This Is Funny

2007-01-26T15:49:00.001-05:00

It's after three on a Friday for all you people on the East Coast with jobs, which means you're pretty much just on cruise control. So long as nobody's looking, check out Frisky Dingo.

Maybe you love it or hate it already, but I just discovered it this week, and man, does this show ever crack me up. It's from the creators of Sealab 2021 and airs on Adult Swim most nights, I think.

I'm one of those annoying guys who doesn't have Tivo or cable, and until recently used to go around saying "I don't watch TV," which is total bullshit. Most of you people that say you don't watch TV are bullshitters, too -- what do you think Youtube and Sopranos from Netflix are? Just get out of the closet and move on, I say.

I digress. This show is HILARIOUS -- from About.com's profile:

Killface is the most evil villain of all time, and he's determined to destroy the Earth by propelling it into the sun. But when you're running a business, even if your goal is to destroy the planet, there are a lot of boring details -- media buys, budgets and marketing. Doing everything he can to stop him (or at least keeping up appearances) is Awesome X, the alter ego of billionaire Xander Crews. But Xander has some ambivalence about stopping Killface; doing so will cut into his toy sales.

Here's the first half of the first episode on YouTube:

You can see all 13 episodes in the first season here.

Muscle Beach

2007-01-26T15:12:00.000-05:00

I like to work out at the Muscle Beach in Venice when I'm in LA. It's ground zero for the bodybuilding scene that spawned California's current Governator. Mostly I enjoy it because I like lifting weights but hate being in the gym, so it's nice to get a bit of fresh air and sunshine. As an added bonus, it is the most ridiculous thing that I can think of.

When I'm there, one of these kids is not like the others, if you get my drift. A balding nerd in blast-shield orthopedic sunglasses and jeans, surrounded by glistening muscle-heads talking about a "good pump."

Doing something ridiculous in all seriousness is really, really good for you. True strength comes from repeatedly, demonstrably not caring about what other people think. Once you can do that, the world is yours, man, for real. Doing something "as a joke" doesn't count, either. If you're doing something as a joke, you're still doing it -- just give in and be part of the parade.

Getting outside my comfort zone is pretty much my favorite thing to do. I never feel like I belong, even when I'm surrounded by friends and family ... that's my paradox. Being on my own in a new, strange situation is both comfortable and invigorating, and man, you meet the most fascinating people.

So I'm there, just me, some average schlub with a peanut butter wetsuit underneath his t-shirt and jeans, surrounded by all these glistening, pumping maniacs, most of whom are incredibly friendly. The vibe I got, totally not the one I expected, was that if you're here and working, welcome aboard. This one bodybuilder in a zebra-striped loincloth was the friendliest guy I'd ever met in any gym situation.

He spotted me, helped me rack plates, made a little chit-chat, and posed for photos for a phalanx of Japanese tourists every time they asked. Every time he got close to me, they put their cameras down and waited politely until he was done with the average guy that would have ruined their photo. Once he moved away from me, it was click city.

Here he is:

"They're shooting some movie or something over by the paddleball courts, man," he said. "I hate that shit. If you look, you'll see a trailer or something that they keep all the people who think they're better than us in. They call those people 'talent' around here, but I ain't sure what they're talented at exactly except maybe sitting around. Yeah, you can take my picture."

He gave me his best muscle pose:

He continued:

"Seriously, bro, what happens is when those guys are on break, a couple photographers scurry over here and take pictures when you're not looking. Then next thing you know, your photo's in a magazine somewhere and you're not getting a dime for it, 'cause once they're gone, how are you gonna know, you know? It pisses me off something serious. I just get here, listen to death metal as loud as i can, do my thing and go home, know what I mean?"

With that, he turned and walked away ...

Conversations like that CAN'T happen when you stay inside your bubble.

With A Pink Heart Dyed On Its Ass

2007-01-23T18:04:00.000-05:00

Right after that pitch meeting yesterday, I was pretty dejected. I was walking to the car, thinking all sorts of dark, grumbling things about how it wasn't fair that the world was so unfair, and that last time I checked smart was a good thing, so what exactly the fuck is wrong with too smart, and on and on, the sorts of things everyone thinks as a defense mechanism against rejection.

Then I saw this dog:

It's the gayest dog in the world, possibly the gayest dog EVER. Here's a shot of the dog, held by his owner:

And man, I cheered right up. I mean, if there's a place in the world for a little white dog with a pink heart dyed on its ass, there's a place in the world for me. That fluffy little drag queen was a bolt from god, a reminder that the world is weird and nothing makes sense, EVER ... and it's best that way.

I said it before and I'll say it again: when you're a moody motherfucker like I am, a dizzying high is right around the corner, and the tiniest stuff cheers you right up.

Get Back On The Horse

2007-01-23T11:21:00.000-05:00

There is definitely a tech bubble happening right now, and it can't last forever. That bubble is definitely big enough to contain one starry-eyed blogger with an idea for a streaming tv show. However, it does not yet contain a company that wants to pay that blogger and his partner for their streaming tv show idea.

So yeah, they didn't take the pitch.

And sure, I was bummed for a little while. But 24 hours later, I'm forced to look at the facts:

1) We'd never pitched a show before
2) We'd never written a treatment before, and those suckers are HARD
3) In the beautifully frank words of the exec who met with us "This concept is too smart for our audience."

So, back to the drawing board. Now that I think about it, if we'd gotten some sort of deal it may have been worse. Getting what you think you want right away without even understanding it completely is really, really bad most of the time. See 'The Monkey's Paw' by W.W. Jacobs.

The exec that met with us was really great, though. She took the time to explain a lot of things that we hadn't thought of and offered some really helpful, valuable advice. Really, she could have split in ten minutes but she spent an hour or so with us, and once I got over the sting of rejection I appreciated her input immensely.

So whatever. I'm going surfing today, metaphorically dusting off my chaps and getting back on that fucking horse tomorrow.

My friend Eliza has pitched some TV shows in her day, with hilarious and spectacularly disastrous results. She's the one in the black jacket:

I Wanna Be Sedated

2007-01-22T12:29:00.000-05:00

I'm in a coffee shop on Venice Beach in Los Angeles, California. People have been talking about how COLD it is, but it's not. These people that are crying about the cold are soft like rotten avocados, spoiled by too much sunshine and yoga.

I flew out here last Wednesday for a meeting -- my writing partner and I are pitching an idea to a Web media company out here, and frankly, I'm thrilled. I' have no idea if they're going to go for it or not, no idea if our idea is even a good idea, but holy creeping Jesus is this ever exciting.

We spent two days locked in my friend's apartment, rehearsing and tightening, working out a story treatment and editing, revising, revising. We snuck out for coffee and a trip to the Santa Monica Trader Joe's and otherwise it's just been "Would our character do this? Why? how's that relate?" We're creating a world, or the groundwork for it, laying down riverbeds and fossils and hoping someone will pay us to populate this silly litte reality we've come up with.

I'm nervous. Really nervous. Nervous good, like before a great date or the terror I felt as a teenager in a packed nightclub right before the Ramones hit the stage. Something is about to happen one way or the other. It may knock my glasses off and grind them to dust, like that first Ramones show did, but it's going to change me forever.

We may get laughed out of this company's offices. Our jokes may spawn little more than tight smiles, or the death knell of all great projects "Hey, this sounds really great. Keep up in the loop and let us know what you develop!"

But I don't even care. I mean, I do, in that I would really prefer for this thing to fly. But I don't, because I've gotten a taste of a ew kind of writing and the life that comes with it ... and I'm here to tell you that it tastes pretty good.

I drove up to Santa Barbara yesterday, ostensibly to visit friends, but really to calm my nerves. We ate fish burritos and hiked on the beach, watching the sunset and talking about everything everywhere and nothing at all. Then it got dark and I headed home, just me in the car ripping south along the 101.

This Ramones song came on and everything in my whole life synched up. I'm doing what I wanted to do, writing, travelling, LIVING. It may not last, but what ever does? Right now I can feel the ferris wheel ticking around, and the view from up here is pretty incredible. I've got goose bumps as I type this and I can't stop jigging my leg. My stomach is a hard little nut and my tounge's playing speed-metal riffs against the back of my teeth. The meeting's in forty minutes and if I don't die beforehand, I think we're pretty well prepared.

I love this, and I can't wait.

Here's the song, if you're so inclined.

The Nastiest Thing in the Whole Wide World

2007-01-16T14:09:00.000-05:00

My apartment has had an incurable cockroach problem for some time. When the exterminator comes they just move out for a few days, leaving only the slowest and stupidest ones to perish in clouds of ineffective poison. Then they all come back and keep on partying.

I should have known this. I really should have. But the exterminator had come recently and things had really quieted down in the kitchen. So when I left that peanut butter jar to soak so I could wash and recycle it easily, it was with a peace of mind that was naive, shallow, and short-lived.

When I came back home later that day, I was treated to an experience so revolting and pure that I was almost excited. The sight on my kitchen counter, in that jar full of peanut butter water, may well be the nastiest thing in the whole wide world.

I spend a lot of time online, and I've got a dark sense of humor. My friends and I all have squalid, feral senses of humor and sit around being super-gross every chance we get. So the bar's pretty high, is what I'm saying here. Goatse is old hat, and we're all a little desensitized by now.

To stumble across something that clears that bar and busts the filters, making the stomach do a slow roll like a lazy whale heading for the surface -- it's almost refreshing, fulfilling like a new sensation or long-forgotten song. It's like hearing the Spin Doctors on the radio and then following it with Zeppellin. You always knew Zeppelin was awesome, but man, in comparison!

A long- dead disgust waking up -- or a feeling of pure revulsion -- really makes you take notice. The moment itself is awful, but you get a sense of clarity and keen appreciation for life and beauty. Once the moment passes, the air is so clean, and flowers smell so sweet.

So take a look at this picture if you like, and see if your day doesn't improve immediately after:
Six dead cockroaches, drowned in peanut butter water.

Isn't everything so beautiful and pure now?

Bangin' Mash

2007-01-12T14:21:00.000-05:00

Yum ting
Originally uploaded by Nutaroonie.

Since getting laid off last month, it's been one long Wednesday, but sort of a Friday, too. And in honor of my memory of Friday, here's a pile of fun mash-ups.

I love a mash-up, man. I can listen to all kinds of crap bands if they're mixed just right -- and it's not an ironic hipster "hey, dig me digging this band" thing, either.

Here's some of the best recent mashups I found last night, sitting here in the dark in a dirty t-shirt and just looping aroiund the Web like a marble in an empty bathtub:

From The Best of Bootie, 2006:

A plus D – Sexy Peek-A-Boo (Justin Timberlake vs. Siouxsie & the Banshees)

DJ Moule – Black Sabotage (Beastie Boys vs. Led Zeppelin)

Disfunctional DJ -- You're the One That I Want In the Next Episode (Snoop Dogg vs. Olivia Newton-John & John Travolta)

From CultureBully's Favorite Mash-Ups, 2006:

DJ BC -- Free Adidas (Tom Petty vs. Run DMC)

A plus D – Beethoven's Fifth Gold Digger (Kanye West vs. Beethoven vs. Walter Murphy)

Soulwax is, in my mind, the greatest bunch of mashup artists in the world -- their latest album, Nite Versions is a mashup of ITSELF, a remix of previous Soulwax work that is even better than the original stuff. Here's a video of a previous incarnation of one my favorite songs:

Happy Friday, folks.

The Philip K. Dick Android Head Has Been Stolen

2007-01-12T13:08:00.000-05:00

PKD's android head
Originally uploaded by jmarshallpittman.

BoingBoing and Wired reported on this story almost a year ago, but I've only just become incredibly fascinated by it:

In 2005, Hanson Robotics debuted the arguably the greatest development in robotics to date: The Philip K. Dick robot. The robot looked remarkably like Philip K. Dick, a prolific, visionary sci-fi writer whose books have been the source material for A Scanner Darkly, Blade Runner, Minority Report, and Total Recall, among other films.

A camera in its eye enabled it to "see" and make eye contact with people. It could make rudimentary conversation about the world around it, as well as discuss Philip K. Dick's work in terrific detail, but often totally liberated from correct context. David Hanson, the Philip K. Dick (PKD) robot's creator scanned hundreds of Dick's novels, journals, short stories and other nonpublished writings into the android's brain, housed in a powerful laptop.

This is all true. Here's the Dickbot, if you don't believe me:

PKD was a tremendous hit at Wired's NextFest, 2005. Several months afterward, David Hanson and his astonishing creation were on a flight from Dallas to San Francisco. PKD's body was travelling separately, but his "brain" and head were part of Hanson's carry-on luggage. Hanson had not slept for several days, and immediately passed out upon buckling his seatbelt. Hanson was shaken awake by his plane's crew in Las Vegas for an unexpected plane change.

From the New York Times:

He had been traveling for weeks, pulling all-nighters in a race between his work as a roboticist (he also made a much-discussed robotic head of Einstein); as the founder of a fledgling company, Hanson Robotics; and his doctoral work. But unlike his creation, Mr. Hanson is, apparently, distressingly human.

"They woke me up, I got my laptop from under my seat, and being dazed, I just forgot that I had the robot in there," said Mr. Hanson, referring to the head in a black, American Tourister roller bag, left in the overhead compartment. "

He rushed off in a sleep-smeared stupor, only remembering that he left the head behind sometime after his second liftoff. The airline claimed that they shipped the head back to him, but a package never arrived.

Philip K Dick's android head is missing, possibly stolen.

I found this photo on Flickr ... I like to imagine that this is how it must have looked in its new owner's hotel room.

Imagine. What if you had that head? Why would you keep it for so long?

Blogger Summit: Brown Noses, Smiling Faces

2007-01-12T00:31:00.000-05:00

If my life were a body of water, right now it is a fish-packed Montana stream. I used to feel stagnant, lying on my back at the bottom of a murky pond but now I'm out in the thick of it and things are getting exciting.

Shhh. I'm not trying to spoil it, either.

But if that rushing river is full of flopping brown trout and this blog is my net, some big guys have been slipping through the holes.

Like, for example, the blogging summit put on by the Washington Post this week. The Post is trying to integrate its coverage into local online media, which is a big fancy way of saying that they want a bunch of frustrated neck-talkers like yours truly to talk directly to their readers. So they invited a bunch of us out to hear their plans and openly critique them.

And we sat right there in front of a nice little buffet and got to Q&A a panel made up of some bigwigs in the Post's online media division. I got to ask Marc Fisher a thing or two about electronic journalism's uneasy hybridization with print media. And boy, did I ever feel smart hearing those words come out of my mouth, on a microphone and everything! And even smarter when he actually took me seriously!

Some of my blogging peers must have felt even smarter than I did, because they were all UP on that microphone. Not naming names here, but I mean, damn. Some folks were just enthused, some folks were super-enthused, and some folks were just bleating bags of hot gas. It could be argued that duh, what do you expect when you get a bunch of bloggers, people who BY DEFINITION have more opinions than social skills into the same room, but still.

It was a real personal victory for me to have Jim Brady's ear for a minute or two as well. Jim, you see, is the editor / VP of Washington Post online, and I was so busy either shooting my own mouth off or sucking on a glass of bourbon that I forgot to tell him this:

The Washington Post is a terrific, tremendous institution in the Simmermon family. The Post brought me in with Calvin and Hobbes and by fifth grade I was reading about D.C. crime while the rest of my peers were still having trouble sounding out the latest Sweet Valley High installment. My mom goes to 7-11 in Norfolk, Virginia to get a Post every day, and the only thing that has EVER stopped her is the hurricane in 2003.

My mom loves to clip articles and give them to my sister and I. She's a bit of a saver, too, so we've got piles of newspapers all over the damned place. If you guys ever need a back issue, you just go ahead and let me know, we'll dig one up for you.

But because the Post has done such a great job of translating itself online, the paper piles are dwindling. My mom still buys a paper every day, but she e-mails us links to relevant articles, and now the papers only hang out for six months or so before reverting to compost right there by the sofa.

So thank you, Jim Brady, Marc Fisher, and the rest of the WPNI staff, for putting in so many long hours to keep my parents a little bit safer in case of an accidental fire.

I was also terrifically flattered that the main-stream media took this blog, my labor of love and frustration, seriously enough to ask my opinions. And while I might unveil a blogging strategy a little differently than the Post is going to, their initial offering is very well-thought out and bound to succeed. I think. I'm a writer, not a strategist.

Okay. That's it. Something smells funny, and I think it's clumped at the end of my nose. But I was serious, all the same ...

Brooklyn Superhero Supply Store / 826NYC

2007-01-08T13:45:00.000-05:00

The Brooklyn Superhero Supply Store in Park Slope is a front, an elegant sham and a beautiful hoax. If this store had been around when I was seven I might have moved in completely, coming home only to quickly inhale a meal and racing back with imagined super-speed. I'm 30 now and still considering it.

The store itself claims to sell all manner of super-equipment, including canned chaos, an apprehended mini-blob, various grappling hooks and secret identity products. They offer capes in all colors and even have a cape-testing area where you can stand on a steel grate and flick a switch that powers several fans, causing said capes to furl and flutter.

The signage in there is omnipresent, dry, and freaking hysterical:

My favorite display, hands-down, was the Super-Skeleton:

This link will take you to a Flickr set of photos from the store.

The store itself is a cover for the 826NYC program, a nonprofit that offers free homework help to kids between the ages of 6 and 18. White-hot literary superstars Sarah Vowell and Dave Eggers are on 826's board. The 826 program itself is an outgrowth of McSweeney's, and their brand of bone-dry hipster comedy permeates the place. Proceeds from the sale of superhero equipment and memorabilia fund the 826 program. The store also sells a full complement of McSweeney's-related releases including Eggers' latest book, recent issues of The Believer, and pretty much anything the McSweeney's press has cranked out.

But real magic at the Superhero Store isn't the grappling hooks, the capes, the Secret Identity Kits, all of which would blow a kid's tiny mind. It's that there are NO kids in the store itself -- or there weren't when I was there. You can hear the sounds of kids laughing and talking bubbling from behind the walls, off doing something better, even better than messing around with superhero gear.

I got a volunteer to let me past the store's secret door and into the reading room itself. The atmosphere was magical. Kids were coloring, drawing, writing and LOVING it. There were no toys, to GameBoys, no electronic devices, just kids flexing their imaginations in a way that will never die.

This quote from McSweeney's Questions and Answers About 826NYC says it much better than I could:

Everywhere you look, at every available desk, table, or couch, there are two people—one student and one adult tutor—hunched over one piece of paper, getting the words just right. It's just plain beautiful.

It's true, totally true, every word.

The Jackman Community is Pleased, Sorta

2007-01-08T02:22:00.000-05:00

My previous post about Hugh Jackman at the Whitney has been linked to from a Jackman fan forum in one of the weirdest referrals this blog has EVER seen. Check out the discussion for yourselves.

Even though it's the Web, and copy-paste is totally normal, it's strange to see my words republished in the forum ... and stranger still to see the word "shit" starred out, misspelled, or otherwise danced around. I lived in Australia for nine months and I never once met a single person that even seemed to think "shit" was a bad word.

That post got more than the usual amount of comments over the weekend, mostly from Jackman fans who thought I'd done the right thing by not taking/posting a photo. And while I generally like it when the public confirms my suspicions that I am, in fact, awesome, I have to wonder ...

If there is a community that exists solely for the purpose of discussing a celebrity's life (note that in the link above, I am called to task for misidentifying Jackman's kids), do they really think someone who doesn't take photos of said celebrity is all that great? Because you know these folks would pounce on any photo they could if they were given the chance. It's only human nature.

Anyway. I've been on a bus for five hours and hiking around New York in a pair of played-out Chuck Taylors. My dogs are barking, people. More soon ...

Hugh Jackman at the Whitney

2007-01-06T11:05:00.000-05:00

The Whitney's elevator beeped and we all shuffled off on the Picasso floor -- at the entrance to the Picasso and American Art show. Some guy, buried in the crowd, was standing there reading the entire text of the show's intro, aloud.

There's always somebody trying to read something too loud at every art show.

Except this time, it was a little different. The guy reading aloud was Hugh Jackman, reading to his kids, and I am not lying.

It took me a second to grasp it. The cool thing is, nobody was looking at him or Deborah-Lee or paying them much of any mind at all. Suffice it to say that at least one of his kids was not the least bit into Picasso, much more excited about sprinting around the gallery. When he got scooped up and asked to behave, he complained, loudly.

I thought about offering Hugh Jackman a plastic bag and sharing my disciplinary tip with him, but thought better of it. They moved ahead in the gallery.

You know you'll be at an art gallery and off in another room someone's kid will be hollering all loud and you'll think "PLEASE. Would somebody just break out the narcotic lollipop already?"

This time I caught myself thinking "Dag, Hugh Jackman. Get on this, please." But you know what? He did. He scooped the little screamer up and they went off into the stairwell for a bit of quiet time, and it totally worked. They had nannies, friends, etc with them, and he could have passed that task off to someone else. But he didn't.

I have no idea why that makes me like the guy, but it did. One of the world's biggest movie stars was frazzled by his squirrelly toddler and dealing with it with good cheer.

At one point, I was checking out a Kiki Smith piece and I turned to walk away and nearly bumped into him. Our eyes caught each others' for a second -- his said "Come on, man. Please be cool here -- we're just trying to have a nice time."

We nearly collided again, in the lobby, on the way out. Jus ton the same cycle in the gallery, I guess. He had his toddler high over his head, looking up and laughing at her ... and his fly was very, definitely all the way down.

"Mister Jackman," I mumbled quietly, almost in his ear. "Your fly is down." He looked nervous for a second, seeing a stranger that close, then looked down to confirm my statement and broke into a huge grin, saying "Shit, thank you!!"

The whole afternoon my camera had been itching. If I had a photo for this post, it would have been a shoo-in for Gawker, TMZ, other celebri-tainment sites. I'd have gotten apeloads of visitors, maybe gotten a bump in actual readers, too. And you couldn't have blamed me. Maybe.

But something about the guy being so normal, affable, and that nervous look whenever I almost bumped into him a few times ... I couldn't bring myself to do it. So yeah, I'm doing the right thing here and preserving a privacy that he is sort of choosing to give away by being a public figure in the first place. And as usual, the high road doesn't carry a lot of rewards. But I feel good.

Now though, now that I've taken the high road and written a whole blog post about myself and what a great guy I am ... what does THAT mean, exactly?

Overheard in New York, New Year's Eve

2007-01-03T19:40:00.000-05:00

I was at a party full of strangers, fell into it sideways through a friend of a friend on the way back from the subway on New Years' Eve. We were sitting on a tiny bed in a tiny apartment in Williamsburg somewhere. Someone fired up the computer and we were watching a girl's website, embedded videos of her toddler daughter singing the ABCs.

It was absolutely precious. I was going to mention it, but was interrupted by a partygoer who said:

"Oh. My. God. That is SO cute. If I hadn't been doing coke all night, I'd want to conceive a baby right now!"

Overheard In New York

2006-12-31T17:51:00.000-05:00

Last night, while I was waiting for my friend Jeannie to get off work at Diner, this white dude with a big afro and a pair of Oakleys sat down next to me. When the bartender walked past he advised everyone within earshot:

"Next time you get stoned, either eat a cold orange or use an electric toothbrush. I'm serious. The simple pleasures in life, man."

Maybe so. But it would take a lot more than marijuana to make those experiences pleasurable back-to-back.

Like an Infant Werewolf at a Bris

2006-12-31T00:30:00.000-05:00

I wrote this on a little thing called a "notebook" with an actual "pen" (remember those?) on the bus last night, on the way from DC to New York City. I'm cooling it in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, aka hipster heaven, the densest concentration of white men that have never, ever won a fight in all their lives.
___

"Can I still buy a ticket for the eight o'clock to New York." I asked the ticket counter lady. It was 7:58.

"No," she replied, "but I can sell you one for the nine o'clock and if the eight is still out there, you can get on it." Bus rides are like that.

"I'm gonna need my headphones for this one," I thought as I stepped on the bus. Sometimes you can just tell. I invested in a giant pair of padded monsters at Radio Shack a few months back, a pair big enough to allow me to safely go out and bring in a plane with a few glowing cones if the situation were to arise.

I sure enough did need 'em, too. Some kid up front has been howling like a baby werewolf at a bris. I'm talking about nonSTOP. From the sound of it, his parents haven't even tried to clam him up, either.

I'm not a parent myself, so I don't really know how these things go. I made a little pact with myself once my friends started having babies that I'd try not to critique someone else's parenting skills without developing a few of my own first.

Maybe this kids' folks are just numb to his shrieks, or he's autistic or something, or they just know it's useless. But man, this little dude SUCKS.

My mom tells me that both my sister and I had our miserable moments when we were little. Apparently I didn't sleep through the night until I was three years old. Two little terrors, and at least I turned out fine. Seriously. I'm TOTALLY NORMAL.

I also made a pact with myself some time back never to spank my children out of anger or in public. Nothing sucks like seeing some toddler get jerked and whapped at the grocery store, and Simmermons don't play that. I earned a few beltings when I was little, but my folks always talked it over first and made sure that my behavior had been, in fact, a spankable offense.

My disciplinary tactics will be much more subtle, and much less embarassing in a crowded grocery store or on a bus full of people heading to New York for New Years' Eve.

When my kids are acting up, I'm simply going to pull a plastic bag over their heads for no longer than a minute. If the offense is particularly bad, I won't keep the bag on there any longer. I'll just throw a spider in there, too.

It's not going to happen often. It may only happen once. After that, all I'll have to do is pull a filmy little plastic bag out of my pocket and crinkle it menacingly. You best believe the shrieking will stop then, and QUICK.

I think I've got one on my messenger bag, actually. I'm going to go offer it to this kid's mom right now.

Before I go, Happy New Year to all of you. I'll let you know how this turns out.

We Make Memories Together, Pretty Or Not

2006-12-26T03:12:00.001-05:00

Layla Leaves a Present Under the Tree
Originally uploaded by chinese_fashion.

We'd finished Christmas Eve dinner with time to spare, even allowing for Mom to lose and find her keys again like she does before every church service. The dogs had been fed and walked, and our coats were on.

"Hang on a second," Dad said. "Do you think we should all head over there in the same car?"

"What are you even TALKING about," asked Jess, my sister.

"Well, I mean, I don't mean to be grim on Christmas Eve here, but what if there was an accident on the way to church? That way some of us would be spared and the whole family wouldn't get taken out. You've got to think about these things, you know."

"Dad," I said, "that sort of makes sense. Should we borrow two cars from the neighbors and drive over in four vehicles so only one of us gets wiped out, or just risk it in two separate cars? But hang on. Doesn't taking four separate cars mean that it is four times more likely that one of us will be in a car crash tonight?"

"I don't know," Jess interjected. "But it makes this idea four times as fucking stupid as it already is. Let's GO for God's sake, SHIT."

It may have been 55 and drizzling in Norfolk this Christmas Eve, but it was a white Christmas at our church, same as it is every year. Even if our congregation were capable of clapping to a song, our hymns are delivered with a reserved, earnest piety that leaves little room for rhythm. As Presbyterians, we are not so much moved by the Spirit as we are gently nudged by it. Personally, I have only seen our church decorated with poinsettias or palm fronds during the last decade, and the Holy Spirit tends to move me into dreamland.

We were out of church in record time. I just got laid off and neither my sister or I are engaged yet. None of us were that anxious to discuss those details with former Sunday School classmates who are off making money and families or converting heathens in Asia somewhere.

"Layla's stomach looks all swollen," Jess said immediately when we came home from church. Layla is Jess's dog, a nervous little black lab/beagle mix with tremendous separation anxiety and a broader palate than all the goats in Afghanistan combined. Last week she climbed on top of the dining room table and ate an entire package of chocolate covered cashews and a largeish sack of spoonbread mix, chasing it with the contents of two water bowls and half the water in the downstairs toilet. This suspicion was not without probable cause.

"Swollen" was putting it mildly. The dog looked eligible for UNICEF aid. Her stomach was so distended that she couldn't lie down. All she could do was sit awkwardly or stand there, shifting her weight uncomfortably, glassy-eyed and panting. "My God, the fucking FRUITCAKE" Jess shouted. "BAD DOG!" There was more cursing, followed by spanking, followed by even more cursing.

My sister's 30 pound dog had unwrapped a 5 pound fruitcake (my other grandmother's Christmas gift), removed it from its decorative tin and eaten the entire thing.

Just imagine: consuming 1/6 of your body weight in fruitcake.

Details are hazy here, and I'm not a judge. But it seems that my mom had left the fruitcake on the kitchen floor -- despite knowing the dog's Hoover-like tendencies when left unsupervised. My mom's feeling at the time was that the fruitcake was in an aluminum tin requiring opposable thumbs to open, and if my sister's dog weren't so miserably behaved, none of this would have happened in the first place. I had no patience for a standoff over a fruitcake on Christmas eve, and I snapped a little bit.

"I'm not saying who it is because I have no idea," I exclaimed at the ceiling above the Christmas tree. "But if somebody would say 'I'm sorry' to somebody else right now, and then the recipient of that apology would then say 'I'm sorry' back, we could all move forward emotionally right now, JESUS CHRIST."

As it turns out, we were all very sorry, very soon. Immediately following that proclamation, the perpetrator wobbled in front of the Christmas tree with a crazed look in her eye and vomited giant chunks of fruitcake all over the carpet. Lots of times. All night long.

"Jeff, it's like these are puzzle pieces for a 'build-your-own-fruitcake' set, for real," Jess said, picking up a fresh deposit an hour later. "Can my dog even chew, or is she secretly part python?" She had a point. The fruit looked nearly reusable. Imagine if Spider-Man imprisoned bad guys with fruitcake secreted from his wrists and you'll have a pretty decent idea of what decorated the living room carpet, the stairs, an easy chair and the area under the Christmas tree during the night.

Other families spent their Christmas morning together basking in the scent of aromatic food, perhaps the scent of cinnamon, nutmeg or spiced cider. We had our Christmas coffee by the tree while marinating in a stale potpourri of fruitcake, Lysol, and canine bile. We were laughing pretty hard at the whole situation at this point, though, which is the important thing. I had tears coming out of my eyes. But man, that smell was kinda brutal. It was too cold to open all the windows, and spraying air freshener would have made it worse. Something came along to replace it soon enough.

We keep all our bread, cereal, cookies, and other various carbs in the oven. Always have. The cabinets are full of canned goods, dried beans, rice, Jell-O in flavors long since discontinued, you name it. No room for bread in there. When zombies take over Norfolk, Virginia my family will be able to barter food for our choice of assault rifles and still have three squares a day until the Rapture takes us all home.

Usually, people remove all the foreign objects from the oven BEFORE turning it on. Most of the time. Or we at least catch it in time. This morning, my mom turned the oven on to preheat and immediately picked up the phone to call someone about something totally unrelated. Within minutes flames were leaping inside the oven and the noxious smoke that can only be released by burning plastic filled the entire house -- effectively masking the vomit smell. Suddenly it was no longer too cold to open all the windows in the house.

After the smoke cleared, we scraped several pounds' worth of plastic-infused mincemeat cookies out of the bottom of the oven. We packed up and headed over to my aunt and uncle's place, where we were greeted by Uncle Jimmy, resplendent in his Christmas Pants.
Although his pants were fantastic (bright red corduroy with little wreaths embroidered all over them!) and we all had a lovely time exchanging gifts and eating together, it was honestly the most uneventful part of the day.

We rolled home early, by 6 o'clock or so. It felt like midnight. My dad and sister took the dogs out for a quick walk.

"Don't let Layla come over here in the neighbors' yard," Dad said. "Why not?" Jess asked.

"I just barfed. I just barfed in the neighbor's yard and I don't want her getting into it."

There was no sound, no fanfare, no suggestion that he would be returning home. The man might as well have dropped a nickel into the storm drain, for all the consternation it was causing him.

Barf avoided, dogs voided, everyone came inside. We all settled into my bedroom -- and I am so, so grateful to still have one here -- to watch 'Little Miss Sunshine' as a family.

It pleases me deeply to think that it took one brilliant writer many torturous rewrites, two amazing directors and a cast full of comic geniuses to come up with a family as eccentric, cursed and lovingly dysfunctional as my own this Christmas. That's the thing about the Simmermons: We make memories together , pretty or not.

When Bearded Men Fly With Mysterious Packages

2006-12-22T15:13:00.000-05:00

My aunt and uncle own a year-round Christmas store in Smithfield, VA. On that side of the family, we don't call certain garments "Christmas sweaters," "Christmas sweatshirts," or "Christmas socks." They're just called "clothes."

When I was growing up, it was not unusual to see five fully decorated Christmas trees at Uncle Jimmy and Aunt Elaine's house. In August. Right after Thanksgiving, the ranks swelled to as many as eight or ten fully decorated trees. And by fully decorated, I mean: no visible green on the tree whatsoever.

There has always been one tree thematically dedicated entirely to pork as a concept -- lots of pigs wearing chef's hats, ham ornaments, what have you. There's another devoted to fishing and the sea, and my favorite -- the catchall that has every crazy, animated windup ornament ever invented. There's a small globe that simulates popping corn, another containing little tiny plastic kids skating on a frozen pond and the ornament that means Christmas the most to me: a small diorama of the original 'Star Trek' cast, complete with orbiting Enterprise.

How the crew manages to be seated on the bridge while the very ship they are on orbits their heads remains a mystery to me, but hey -- it's Christmas and the key to enjoying it is kinda turning your brain off a little.

This piece of decoration melted my synapses a little, though. My aunt and uncle have never been terrifically political people, as near as I can tell. Maybe I 'm wrong here, but then again, we are Southerners, so there are entire worlds of knowledge that we will never, ever discuss in front of each other. It just wouldn't be polite, you see.

We are as likely to talk about politics as we are to share recipes for pot brownies.

However, in my aunt and uncle's foyer, there is a statue of Uncle Sam, looking a lot like an emaciated Boris Karloff. He clutches the American flag in a tight, bony fist. And hanging from that sword -- is Santa Claus' severed head, dangling from a length of golden cord.

I don't know what that says, exactly, but it sure says SOMETHING. If y'all have any interpretations, drop 'em in the comments ... and Merry Christmas

Christmas Time is Kicking Time

2006-12-21T12:29:00.000-05:00

Snarl
Originally uploaded by Tread11.

It's nearly Christmas, which means it's almost time to slip on my kicking shoes and visit the neighbor's dog again.

My friend Eric Roosevelt and I have been tight for over twenty years, and grew up in the same neighborhood. The Roosevelts are like my surrogate parents, showering me with love and driving me nuts just like my own family. They're giving, funny, weird, warm and have huge hearts. Hearts that may, in the case of their dog Francis, be a little too big.

Francis is a poorly-trained, emotionally disturbed chow. He was an ill-advised gift from a girlfriend to my best friend's little brother. That guy's got anger management issues of his own, but the dog, my god ...

It's been completely spoiled rotten and never so much as quivers its upper lip around its owners. They never hear him growl in anger, and I am fairly certain that Mr. Roosevelt has never had HIS testicles threatened by Francis' surging, snapping jaws. I'm basing this conclusion on the fact that the dog is still alive.

Words cannot describe the pure hatred I feel for this gorgeous, poncey, miserable beast. It's a fluffy wad of velvety pumpkin fur with serious, snapping teeth. Imagine if the plant from Little Shop of Horrors was a giant fluffy dandelion.

When Francis came to the neighborhood, I brought our family's dog around to visit. He immediately mounted my dog and when she yelped and tried to get away, he bit her on the back legs.

Humans get LOTS of prison for that kind of behavior. Mrs. Roosevelt saw the whole thing and said, "Funny. I've never seen him do THAT before."

Every Christmas I go around to the Roosevelts' to bring general good tidings, and every year, they act amazed that their dog could be so poorly behaved. They are shocked, SHOCKED, when Francis takes advantage of my cross-legged state to get closer to my balls than ever before and begins a low, muttering growl. Then he stands there growling at it unless I move too quickly -- like, at the speed a human moves when he takes off his coat -- and then he lunges at my testicles, snarling and punching at them with his fluffy, elegant paws.

The Roosevelt's role in this little charade is to impotently wheedle "Here, Francis." "Just stay kind of still for a little while," they say. "He needs to get used to you."

What he needs is to be put to sleep, and the Roosevelts are too nice to do it. So instead, this nasty little monster is going to bring them joy and love until he breaks loose and savages a toddler.

I've kicked him across the room in front of both Roosevelts at least twice. One of them was a beautiful, hefting kick that lifted the dog bodily off of the ground, sending him skittering across the room to collapse in a heap. Later, Eric told me "I know it looks like I was comforting him, but I was actually rabbit-punching him in the ribs. I hate that fucking thing, too."

I was jogging across the Duke Ellington Bridge this summer, thinking about nothing at all. The sun was warm, the air was fresh, all was right with everything. Then this fully-formed thought bubbled into the middle of my brain: "FUCK, I HATE that dog."

Now the scent of pine is in the air, and we're all heading home for Christmas. It's going to be a time of giving, sharing, catching up and eating together. And just for old time's sake, I'm going to have my kicking shoes on ... just in case.

Christmas Shopping For Someone Special

2006-12-19T11:06:00.000-05:00

I came across this awesome, hilarious holiday video from Saturday Night Live of all palces on my last trawl of the Web. Don't get your hopes up, but there's a chance that SNL could become funny again, and it looks like they're starting to get the whole "people watch TV online" idea. Plus, Justin Timberlake, OMG!!!!

The awesome-est part of all (it's a word NOW) is that J.T. sings with the same intense passion that he applies to his single-handed recovery of all that is sexy, night after night.

Cap for the Toothpaste, Ketchup for My Shoe

2006-12-19T11:03:00.000-05:00

Astute readers of this blog may be thinking "Whoa, hang on there. What's happened to that last post?"

I took it down. I've actually never done that before, I don't think.

In writing about my recent layoff, I was attempting to make some sunshine out of a tough situation. I crafted something immediate that was written quickly and passionately -- and meant nothing but good things towards all the people involved. It's come to my attention that those very people didn't take it that way, and I'm really, really sorry.

Ever see the original 'Frankenstein', the Boris Karloff/James Whale version? There's this scene where the monster is kneeling by a riverbank with a little girl who is picking flowers and throwing them into the river. In an honest, well-meaning attempt to play along, the monster picks the little girl up, snaps her neck, and chucks her corpse into the river.

It kinda went like that. Or maybe it didn't -- but in my paranoid, oversensitive mind, it did, and that's the only reality I've got.

Blogs are awesome and terrifying because you can put your foot in your mouth faster than ever before with long-lasting results. At the moment, I feel like I've deep-throated my entire leg up past the knee. Involved parties know who they are, and I hope they know I'm really sorry.

Have you guys, my dozen loyal readers, ever really crammed a foot in there in a public forum? What did you do, and how'd you handle it?

Walter: An Outline of Dirt

2006-12-12T20:39:00.000-05:00

Derek Vockins
Originally uploaded by chinese_fashion.

I barely know Derek Vockins, but his storytelling prowess is legend. We had a number of mutual friends at JMU, and every time I hung out around them -- and Vockins -- the crowd was doubled over pissing themselves with laughter.

Now Derek plays the drums for The Natural History, who you can read a little more about here.

Somewhere in the Internet's basement I managed to find a Derek Vockins story captured in print form, which I am going to republish here.

Walter was from Blacksburg or Roanoke, Virginia, I can't remember exactly. He was from a town that was big enough to have a mall with a Chess King, because he worked there during high school. I think he may have been paid in clothing in lieu of currency, because there were three piles of Chess King clothes on the floor of our room, about two and half feet tall and five feet in diameter. It was like a Chess King Giza.

Despite his passion for Chess King, Walter wasn't very dapper. He didn't bathe very often. He didn't wash the Chess King Necropolis very often, if at all. Necropolis is an appropriate metaphor - the piles smelled like something died inside them. Something old and mystical from an ancient civilization.

Walter used sheets on his mattress for about a week. He couldn't be bothered with sheets after that. He would sleep on the naked mattress. Walter had created a silhouette of himself on the mattress with the filth from his unwashed body after about a month. The silhouette was not exclusively grey as one might expect. There was plenty of dinge, but the dinge was punctuated by red. This was because Walter had chosen to pledge the TKE fraternity, and he was often painted the fraternity colors during the hazing period. This phenomenon inspired the creation of the art rock band Walter: Outline of Dirt.

Walter's family came by for visit once. I could smell them from the stairwell on the first floor and my room was on the third. It was a pioneering, groundbreaking stench. Walter's family was like the Picasso of body odor. His mom also had some weird condition - diabetes? There was all this fat or fluid on the thigh, but her knees and calves were normal. The excess thigh just folded over her knees. It made her look like she was wearing clamdigger shorts made out of her own flesh.

Despite all of this, he was an OK guy. Probably the first person to make me appreciate Shakespeare. He moved across the hall after first semester anyway.

Mary Poppins Is a Harbinger of Terror

2006-12-06T00:40:00.000-05:00

I stumbled across this on the ever-astounding BoingBoing, and for the sake of full attribution, they found it on the Disney blog.

It's Mary Poppins, cut as a horror film trailer -- kinda Exorcist-style.

There's a lot of crap movie trailer mashups out there, but this is up there with that Shining one that came out a few years back. Here it is again, in case you missed it.

Snake Man of Venice

2006-12-05T08:51:00.000-05:00

He was America's hood ornament facing westward from Venice Beach into the setting sun, leading the country into twilight armed only with two rubber cobras, a soccer ball and a tiger-striped loincloth.

I'd seen a lot of fascinating characters on the boardwalk that afternoon, but this guy, he was special. He shifted through a litany of poses atop his stepladder with a practiced, careful confidence, using the soccer ball and massive rubber cobras to counterbalance his taut outstretched limbs.

"These are magical snakes man, I swear. They bring good things and great fortune to everyone that views them. Do anything you want with the pictures bro, for real. Everyone that sees them will blessed with the magical cobra's blessings. Would you excuse me for second?"

He turned to a crowd of Japanese tourists and shouted

"Hey, you take pictures, maybe you want to put some money in the bucket, man!"

I asked him how he came to be there, about the chain of events that got the snakes into his hand. Here's his answer:

There is a colossal dignity that comes from confidently doing something ridiculous in front of the entire world -- it's the strength that comes from repeatedly, demonstrably not caring about what other people think. Once you get over the fears associated with other people's expectations, the world is yours.

Nobody Hits My Sister, Not Even ME

2006-12-04T02:00:00.000-05:00

Some fuckwad punched my little sister in the face.

I was sitting here trying to put this brilliant and disjointed post together when I saw the number jump in my inbox ... and as any writer knows, new e-mail is an even better reason not to write than a dirty apartment or disorganized bookshelf.

It was just the photo you see above, sent from my little sister's Treo.

She was out at the bar with a friend the other night, just waiting on the valet to bring the car around when a couple rowdy drunk guys came up and pulled some serious space invasion, laughing and shoving and stepping on her friends' toes on an otherwise uncrowded sidewalk.

Her friend asked the guys to move along, and they declined. He asked again, and one of the drunks just started swinging at him. My sister tried to break it up and got cold-cocked right there on the lips and chin, splitting her lip and possibly chipping a tooth.

Takes a bad motherfucker to punch a girl right in the face, doesn't it?

She dropped to the sidewalk immediately and the guys took off. Once her friend saw the blood pouring from my only, beloved sister's lips, he caught the puncher and paid him back in spades, right in front of a shocked dinner crowd at a packed restaurant. Bouncers tried to break it up, took one look at my sister's face and figured it out -- they let her friend continue uninterrupted until the cops came.

She is pressing charges.

My sister's tough. Real tough. She can handle this.

I remember her consoling me through my first teenage breakup, hugging me until the sobs stopped and drying my eyes with a Kleenex. In the quiet that comes after a big cry, she looked me lovingly in the eye and said "Jeffrey, I just want you to know that I always hated that bitch. And if you want, I'll go around to her place with a dog chain and set shit straight, you just say the word."

Now she says to me with soft, puffy syllables, "Damn, man. All that shit I pulled in high school, and NOW's the first time a motherfucker clocks me in the grill."

Apart from some split lips and a bruised face, she's fine. The guy's face looks a LOT worse than hers now, and the law is on it.

But if all this is in motion, why am I not satisfied? Why do I want mob connections and handguns? I want a Louisville Slugger and a stolen car, a length of hemp rope and an open road. I want to drag this guy out of his bed by his hair and make him beg for something I can't give him.

Instead I'll go to bed.

We'll all wake up in the morning, and go to our respective jobs and the wheels of justice will turn or not, and nobody will get hurt any more than they already are and everything's going to be fine. That's what I hope, anyway.

I think.

Poster Art

2006-11-30T11:40:00.000-05:00

I rarely talk about this for some reason. But I thought I'd mention here, in the interests of relentless self-promotion, that I design posters for my uncle who is a small town music promoter. His outfit is a non-profit called Smithfield Music and they put on shows in the local little theater and people's homes to benefit music education in Isle of Wight County.

I've done several of these, but this is my most recent.

Please feel free to go back to shopping online now.

Like Pedro Almodóvar , This Post Is 'All About My Mother'

2006-11-27T23:06:00.000-05:00

Most of this post comes from a letter that I wrote to my friend Claire, who is in school to become a psychotherapist in Los Angeles. Ever notice how med students get kind of excited when you cut yourself, or you need to take your temperature? Claire must have felt the same way when she said to me recently "Tell me about your mother."

Here's my response:

My mom is not a super-mom or a domestic goddess -- never has been, never tried to be. She just has a heart as big as the world and has always used all of her power and influence to help the people she loves to be happy. She has no idea that when she is being pragmatic, she's kinda being a downer, and I don't have the heart to suggest that I know exactly which branch in the family tree bore me as a somewhat depressive fruit. She doesn't need that shit.

My mom taught me to read before I started kindergarten and took me to the library every single time I asked, even after I was old enough to drive myself. We still go together, sometimes, and I'll never get tired of it.

Here are a few anecdotes that you can use to triangulate your impression of my mom, and the rest will have to come in dribs and drabs.

1) When I was in kindergarten, I came into the kitchen where my mother was cooking supper. She was standing there, chopping, I don't know, something, and leaking tears, sobbing. "Mommy, what's wrong?" I asked her.

"I just want to run away," she said. "Just run away from everything and everyone and hide forever. There's so much to do and so much I can't do, and I just want to run away."

This happened more than once. I didn't get it for a long, long time, but I get it now: being the Mom is really, really hard and there's no clocking out.

The important thing to understand here is: my mother never did run away. Never once, not even metaphorically. When I look back over the last twenty-five or so years since that particular conversation, I can't think of a single time that my mom has ever let me down. Never once. Whenever I was down, dumped, fired or whatever, she was always there with a hug, open ears, and a peculiar brand of pragmatic hope. She has always found it in herself to be there for the people she loves, every time. It's a hell of an example.

2) I have personally been present twice when my parents BOTH forgot that it was their anniversary. Both times they realized it around dinnertime, looking up from whatever they were doing and saying "Hey, wait. Did we get married today?" "Maybe," my dad says. "Kinda feels like it. What's the date again?"

Both times they celebrated by ordering takeout and watching Masterpiece Theater together, which they were planning to do anyway.

3) Once I asked my mom what the secret was to making a marriage last now 33+ years. "Low expectations," she said. "Simple as that." While I was not prepared to hear about how to keep it hot in the bedroom, that came across as pretty flat to me. "Jeffrey," she said, "It's really quite simple. I only have a very few things that I actually EXPECT your father to do, and those things are really simple and VERY obvious. After that, all the things your father does for me are constant, wonderful surprises."

That is why I think 'Sex and the City' can fuck right off. Sure, it's entertaining, but I've seen its essential premise eviscerated in thirty seconds by a nervous senior citizen in a sweatsuit.

4) Right after I had my tonsils removed (an operation that came as a gift to their underemployed 27-year-old son, I might add), I was recuperating at my parents' house. I couldn't speak, could barely move. My mom and I bonded over the first season of Six Feet Under, watching every second of it in order, together. It was a wonderful thing to share, a memory I will take to my grave.

During that first season, there is a scene where David Fisher is caught by the cops having some ROUGH gay sex in a parking garage with a prostitute. Not precisely the sort of thing I wanted to be watching with my mom. I fumbled for the remote, trying to say "Oh, I'm so sorry, here, let's watch something else" but with shrunken, bloody vocal cords that only whispered and squeaked.

While I sat there, horrified and trying to apologize, she turned to me with a look of eternal sadness on her face, a hand flying to her chest.

"Oh Jeffrey," she said. "This is just terrible. I feel so bad for him ... he's so LOST right now."

There's so much more of this, a lifetime's worth. But it's all I have right now, tonight. I'm off to ignore my filthy dishes and sleep in an unmade bed. There's some things the best moms on earth can't teach ... and I know this because one of those moms is mine.

Cool Guy, 1988

2006-11-27T01:33:00.000-05:00

I found this photo just laying out on the bookshelf like it was a normal picture at my parents' house this weekend. It was taken on school picture day, 1988. I was in the seventh grade. Maybe the eighth. As this photo illustrates, my sartorial skills have increased dramatically, possibly deleting disk space allocated to math skills in my brain. I'm okay with that.

This is the only one of its kind, I think. I doubt my parents bought the full suite of school pictures that year, somehow. They must have, though, unless Olan Mills offered the "Awkward Years Special" that consisted of exactly one wallet-sized photo.

What you see sprouting powerfully from my scalp in this photo is the line in the sand between my burning desire for waist-length Jane's Addiction hair and my parents' insistence that their kid look somewhat normal.

I managed to wrangle coolness back on my side, though -- by shaving the sides and back of my head but leaving the top exactly as it is in this photo. The cut never had a real name, but I now think of it as "the Primus fan" or "the brain handle." That cut really showed the world who was cool, though.

I can honestly remember sitting in my room at that age and listening to Bauhaus' 'Bela Lugosi's Dead' over and over and thinking "gosh, why aren't girls paying any attention to me?"

The one conclusion I can draw after four days back home, visiting local hangouts and running into WAAAAY too many former classmates is this: Nobody worth being around now had an easy time of it in high school.

A bunch of you that read this blog have blogs of your own. Some of you even care what I have to say -- and I challenge you: let's see a photo from your awkward years. Send me a link or leave one in the comments ... unless you're too cool now.

Gnawing at the Bones

2006-11-21T08:30:00.000-05:00

The inspiration for this morning's post comes from "No One Cares What You Had for Lunch: 100 Ideas for Your Blog," by Margaret Mason. Face it, people: sometimes you're stressed for content and the well's run dry. Sure, you could, I don't know, point out REALLY OBVIOUS stuff about other bloggers that everyone already knows ... but let's be above that.

Here's Margaret's idea, reprinted word-for-word. Consider this an ad for her superlative book -- the t-shirt at that link is good, too.

#30 -- Be Yourself

"Things I like -- dogs, reading, movies, hanging out with friends."

Honey, who doesn't? As long as you're writing one of those ubiquitous list de likes, at least make it worth reading. You readers don't care about whether you love kittens, they care about the quirky things you love, the things only you love. Say something surprising.

Hot rotisserie chickens bring me closer in spirit to any dog that's ever drooled on a lap at the dinner table. Once I have one in a filmy plastic shopping bag, I have to head straight for the nearest private place and immediately devour its limbs. The breast meat can wait. I'm talking here about leg and thigh meat hanging off the bone and that delicious wet sucking pop you hear when you pull the thigh from the body.

If I'm alone with a hot chicken, I get to hear that wet pop twice.

There's this weird little triangly bit at the back end of the chicken, between the place where the legs are bound with that weird elasticy rubber band. I call it "the nut." It's delicious, whatever it is.

I love to find the oysters, those two tender little meaty ovals of chicken muscle that have never been exercised and savor them, but quickly. The chicken is cooling, you see. And cold rotisserie chicken is never as fun.

Here's where my hot chicken lust gets weird: I like to eat the bones.

Bird bones are so soft and savory, and they've been marinating in chicken broth pretty much since the egg hatched. I love the gentle cracking you get from gnawing the cartilage off of the end and the calcium-rich broth that results from carefully, thoughtfully chewing chicken bones. It takes a little time, but man, it's worth it.

I'll eat the rest of the bird's bones when I get around to seperating the breast meat for use in pasta, burritos, whatever. Cold chicken bones make for a decent appetizer, as long as nobody's looking.

This whole exercise, gobbling chicken extremities, takes maybe half an hour, and is always conducted while standing over the kitchen sink.

Then I wash my hands and put the rest of my groceries away, taking a shower if necessary.

As a matter of fact, I am still single, ladies. How could you tell? Feel free to get in touch.

The Two Times You Skip a Prostate Exam

2006-11-19T21:56:00.000-05:00

It stands to reason, I guess, that before The Doctor officially became The Doctor, he had to be a doctor-in-training. While in med school, he worked a stint at the VA hospital. Since this was before America began creating thousands of new veterans, his patients were overwhelmingly male aging baby boomers -- just the right age for prostate problems.

Med students were to run the standard intake procedure for each patient: blood work, take temperature, then pull the glove on and run every guy's favorite -- the good old fashioned "turn your head and cough."

The Doctor had been skimping on the prostate portion of the procedure, for obvious aesthetic reasons. He got found out by his attending REAL quick, too.

As soon as the attending found out about The Doctor's digital delinquency, he hauled him into the hallway in front of his entire class, many of whom had picked up the habit.

"Son, let me clear something up for you," the attending said. "There's only two times you don't do a prostate on a patient: if the patient doesn't have an asshole, or you don't have a finger."

Last Night I Read A Damn BOOK

2006-11-16T08:52:00.000-05:00

I came home last night with a new friend -- the computer headache. The computer headache is a large gerbil that lives right behind my eyeballs and snores very loudly. When he rolls over in his sleep, it makes my eyes bulge.

When the headache gerbil's thrashing around, pretty much the last thing I want to do is sat back down at home and write another brilliant piece of electronic navel-gazing.

So you know what I did instead? I read a damn BOOK. VARIOUS books, actually. I've found that I can simulate rapid-fire web browsing quite well by simply making a big sloppy stack of newspapers, novels and comic books and fluttering right through the pile. It's great!

I'm pleased to report that Bill Bryson's new memoir is spit-your-coffee funny, and Y: The Last Man continues to thrill and entertain.

The best thing about reading some damn books is that nobody's trying to flex their social agenda in them. When you close a book for a minute and come back to it, nobody comes and scribbles catty things under a poorly veiled pseudonym in the margins. There's not much authorial infighting, and when I read say, Ken Kesey, never roll my eyes and think "what kind of a profession have I gotten myself into, where ADULTS act like this!"

And you don't get that weird headache, either. Try it tonight, people: real books by real writers. There's nothing like it in the world.

THAT'S a Compact Car Right There

2006-11-14T00:14:00.000-05:00

My friend sent me these photo today of this car crash she saw this summer. She and her friend Jackie were just driving down the street early one Sunday morning this June when they saw this cab's aggressive parking job:

How do you even DO that? Jackie said nobody was even around and everything was totally still. The cabbie had just pulled in and casually ruined a couple cars, then went home and went to sleep -- how does that HAPPEN?

If any of you are or know the owners of one of these cars, please get in touch. I'm DYING to hear this story.

God's Soldier Goes to War Every Day

2006-11-13T01:33:00.000-05:00

I've had a long and erratic social orbit with Detective Jason McCall of the Waynesboro police force. It started in kindergarten when one of his teeth got knocked loose in some sort of playground accident and he would pull his lip down to shown me the purple, wounded gum tissue in his mouth. I used to nearly vomit, which tickled him no end. We hung out on and off throughout elementary, middle, and high school, our orbits growing further and further out of sync. By twelfth grade we were nodding acquaintances in the hallway, and although we attended the same college for four years, we never went to the same parties.

Still, there's a connection there. You share a neighborhood and a school system with someone, there's an obligation to the past that cannot be denied. I try to stay as cool with as many people from my past as possible and Jason McCall is a living, breathing connection to my childhood, a deep-voiced time machine back to tearing around the playground acting a fool and grossing everybody out, and how many of those does a guy get? We tumbled into a tenous electronic connection over MySpace a few months ago, and and when he was in D.C. last week for some sort of work conference, I was pretty stoked to catch up with him.

We met at a cigar bar near his hotel and caught up over the election returns on the flat-screens. He was pulling for the Republicans, me the Democrats. He got married thirty seconds after college graduation and joined the local police force shortly thereafter. I think that at every single decision point in our lives, we must have made opposite choices. It was amazing -- and so cool to catch up with this guy, a married cop with three kids, and just catch up and marvel at life, and at divergent roads re-crossing.

Here's some thoughts I got from Jason about having a family and being a cop, some stuff I doubt any of the dozen or so of you that read this thing regularly can confirm or deny from personal experience:

When I was on the force, every day I'd put on some pumped-up music. I'd pull on the vest (bulletproof), polish my boots, comb my hair and think to myself "Once again, McCall, you're going to war."

I'd kiss my wife goodbye every day and say "Honey, I love you," because in all reality, I might not come home. But you've got to have it in your head that you're coming home, no matter what. You get it in your head, and you get in in there early and you get it in there deep that no matter what, you're coming home -- you are getting over on the bad guys, NO MATTER WHAT.

"Was there ever a time that you thought you might not make it home," I asked. "Can you tell me about it?"

Yeah, twice. One time, we got to this house on a call, and a guy with a rifle meets us at the front door. So we immediately fall back and take better cover, whatever that was -- behind some cars or something. We've all got our guns out, and the whole time, he's holding the rifle, raising it and lowering it without quite aiming it at us, but MAN. And while I'm screaming at him to drop the rifle, I'm thinking "Shit. Either he's gonna shoot me or I'm gonna shoot him. And I really think he's going to shoot me, but I really don't want to shoot him."

So I'm bargaining with myself in my head, saying "If he raises the rifle past this angle, I'm gonna shoot him," and then he drops the rifle and runs back into the house. So we chase him back into the house, I'm fighting him in the bathtub, and we arrested him.

"What about the other time," I asked.

Man. I was all the way out at the edge of town on a call, all alone. And it was COLD, such a cold cold night, man. And there's this huge redneck there, drunk like you wouldn't believe and he's just FIGHTING me. He'd taken another officer hostage at gunpoint in the past, and I knew that while I was fighting him. And I'm fighting with everything I've got, man. I'm beating him with my flashlight, and he's punching me in the face, the neck, the chest, all over. He nailed me hard in the chin and I'm wrestling him and just bashing his face into the tailgate of his pickup, and he's still beating me! I was thinking "Oh man, if some backup doesn't get here soon, I'm not gonna make it home. But backup made it there, out to that lonely stretch of highway, and I got home.

"Why do you do this," I asked, ""go fight these guys and nearly get killed? What drives you?"

Well, it's not for the rush, I'll tell you. The rush comes and it goes, and when it's gone, you're not left with much. I say you're doing it fir the guys you're with, and to be a part of something bigger than yourself. I think every cop wanted to be something good that was more than just himself. I don't care what a cop says, the party line is that you're serving the community, but ultimately, you're doing it to take care of your friends. You get in these intense situations with those guys, and you just love them and want to help them out no matter what. You're doing it for the guys, to get home to your wife, and then for the community.

There's a tiered system in your head when you're out there. You're thinking "who would I die for?" You'd die for your team without even thinking about it, and for a kid -- no problem. Then you'd die for a woman -- that's third place. Some guy, you'd die for him last. In the end, you'd die for any of them, but you kinda rank 'em in your head, and it takes milliseconds in an actual situation.

Cops -- all cops -- we get jaded and cynical. Ultimately, I don't think anyone has good in them, innately. When I heard about Ted Haggard, some anti-gay minister being all on meth and getting with a gay prostitute, I was just like "Wow. I can't believe it took this long."

But I'm part of that problem. I don't need to look any further than my own mirror to see a bad person. I'm of the opinion that we're all innately evil and have to be set on the right path. I feel that anything good in my life, anything good at all, was given to me by God. God is what sets me on that right path.

Ninety-nine percent of the guys on the police force, the guys out there in a uniform, those guys have families. When you call 911 you expect the cops to be there. Nobody ever calls the cops to say "hi." Whatever you think of the police, you want 'em when you want 'em, and the rest of the time, they're at arms' length because they're an impediment to what you want to do.

Jason and I talked about our families, our friends, more about our lives. There was no grand conclusion, no ultimate moment -- just two very different guys with very similar pasts reaching out and catching up. At the end of the night, I walked him to his hotel and hugged him goodnight and goodbye, real, real hard. He might need God to set him on a good path, but in the eyes of this mortal, liberal sinner, he's one of the good guys and it makes me really, really glad.

Romancing the Cuss Word: I Swear to Christ, Bruce

2006-11-10T07:49:00.000-05:00

tokyo c-60
Originally uploaded by looseleaf.

I can't tell if not cursing at work is a good or a bad idea. On the one hand, it keeps everybody civil. On the other hand, my forehead feels like a pregnant tick's belly looks. Had I been able to step outside and send a purple RPG of filth towards the sky this afternoon, things might be a little different.

Cussing in general, I support wholeheartedly. I was always told as a kid that articulate people don't use profanity to express themselves because they can think of other, better ways. As a grown professional writer, I can tell you that's bullshit.

The English language only has a finite number of epithets, most of which only have four letters apart from my favorite, which has 12 and starts with "M". The palette is limited but the possibilities are endless -- kind of like haiku.

In college we all used to sit around and listen to this cassette of a guy named Bruce cussing with purple, passionate power.

Bruce was known throughout suburban New Jersey as the most amazing cusser that had ever lived -- and this tape proved it. My buddy Ben had been high school buds with Bruce's two sons, Ethan and Josh. Once, one of them hid a tape recorder in the garage while Bruce was fixing a piano without the proper tools -- and the rest is comic legend.

I thought the tapes were lost forever, but the ever-astounding WFMU's Beware of the Blog posted an MP3 of the legendary Bruce tapes the other day.

Click here to hear some of the finest cussing that Caucasian Americans are capable of. Note Bruce's rhythm, how he builds and builds to climax, perfectly punctuating it with hammer blows, all while balancing between the profane and the comically G-rated.

When I hear this I think of sitting around on ratty thrift-store couches with my college friends, weeping with laughter. Now I know the rage that Bruce has felt a little better, and I am less laughing at him than I am thinking "Goshdarnit, Bruce, give that miserable piano what-for," and daydreaming of the day I have own garage that will give me the space to rock back and bellow "PHOOEY" to rattle the rafters.

Surrender to the Night

2006-11-04T13:15:00.000-05:00

Last night was kind of a stiff mellow horror show, to be perfectly honest. No real monsters or demons, evil occurrences on the dance floor or heartless treachery happening at the bar, just the slow numb noooo that comes from realizing that I may be trapped inside this concrete area code with the rest of you bland policy wonks. You know who you are, deep in your shy beige-carpeted hearts.

My man Charlie and I usually default to dive bars and smoky hipster enclaves, the sort of places where the chicks all have "interesting" homemade haircuts and the dudes are vegan but look like they've never had a green vegetable in their entire anemic existence. In the spirit of aggressively expanding the social horizons we met up at Panache and man what a hardcore drooling yawnfest that turned out to be.

In life the answer should always be "yes," you should say "yes" to everything and try as much as you can every chance you get but I got to tell you in all honesty that most of the time the ROI is pretty piss-poor. You get some magic moments but man, usually you end up getting drunk and bored around a bunch of strangers. Last night, shall we say, did not fall far outside the old bell-curve.

The man of the hour and star of the show turned out to be this dude and a brown suede jacket with a map on the inside who does rolling publicity performances for political candidates. He had a small crowd of cold pretty women in thrall with the story of his appearing on CNN dressed in a furry beaver costume for a rally protesting a perceived misallocation of government funds to prevent beaver damage.

Was I frustrated? Yes. Jealous? Absolutely. I am a storyteller extraordinaire and my ego is a green hungry dragon that craves constant belly scratches from as many people as possible. To have my stage stolen by such an obvious rookie is a cosmic insult of the highest order and the dragon is in a high state of apoplectic fury.

You see, at times I am a reincarnated zombie god, a chattering klanging ratlling magic phoenix that stitches stars into magic fabric stapled together with words, spewing the tapestry over and under entire cities. I need people, lots of people, thousands of people to look up into their polluted sky and surrender to that night, to settle down comfortably for a long winter's nap under the sparkling velvet blankets that fly out of my soul. They need to know, these people, they got to understand that they are cold and tired and it's time to stop chasing it, stop catching cabs and trains from parties to bars and looking looking looking to dance with similar strangers, to just lie down and surrender to my night.

And man, I have been taking this message to the people in the street one by one ever since that greedy dragon god cracked out its golden egg deep within the belly of my brain. Writing down the dragon and spraying him across the world in ink and pixels is a more effective delivery mechanism but it keeps me trapped in a cluttered room, sitting here in the dim dark daytime pressing buttons and never seeing that mysterious public that hangs hiding around every corner.

Chuck Palahniuk said it best when he said

The worst part of writing ... is the fear of wasting your life behind a keyboard. The idea that, dying, you'll realize you only ever lived on paper. Your only adventures were make-believe and while the world fought and kissed, you sat in some dark room, masturbating and making money.

It's that fear that gets me out and keeps me cranking, drinking laps around this town through endless curtains of boring people. It's the hope that one day, one way or another, I'll connect somehow and and all this frantic frenetic verbal energy will find a home that can hold it. It's the dream of real adventure, that magic conversation with a guy from beyond the stars or a lady with psychedelic magic deep in her pores -- that real, earth-shaking human connection that you never get from writing -- that's what I want, and it hurts every time I cast the nets onto empty, dying oceans. This satisfaction of connection can't come from one human. No man is big enough to wrangle my multitudes. There's just the hope that somewhere, outside my apartment and beyond the world of shuffling, dreamless sleep, I can find something, whatever that is.

Then it's time to stop taking my own cabs and trains and realize that it's me, I'm the one that needs to stop chasing that hope and just come back to my rumpled, unmade futon and surrender to the night.

Anti-Iraq Simpsons -- on Fox Sunday, or This Blog, Now

2006-11-01T20:50:00.000-05:00

I'm actually okay with a heavy liberal bias in the media. I encourage it, frankly. Truth is the sound of the most popular voice, after all, and I'm hoping it works in reverse: if we hear enough liberally slanted news, maybe the America's Republican deathmarch off a cliff can be reversed. And if this episode of 'The Simpsons' is any indicator, America's getting good and angry at the war in Iraq.

Here's an excerpt from an article originally appearing in Radar Online:

The episode, which airs Nov. 5, concludes with an Iraq war satire that may rank as the most pointed political statement the show has ever made. In the segment, aliens invade Springfield to prevent mankind from obtaining "weapons of mass disintegration," but their mission, called "Operation Enduring Occupation," turns into a quagmire. "You said we would be greeted as liberators!" accuses one alien.

You can wait until Sunday to see the episode on TV -- or watch it righ here. The rest of the show is kinda lame by Simpsons standards -- or the standards they set in the mid-90's -- but the writers bring out the heavy artillery at the very end.

TS XVII HS
Uploaded by Lastnightontv

I've been wondering where the groundswell is, when media and people in the street are finally going to weigh in on this. Hopefully this is just the start.

The BEST Halloween Costume of 2006

2006-10-31T22:14:00.000-05:00

The sex appeal on this particular costume is about zero, but man, the awesomeness factor is through the freaking ROOF:

For the Damaged Right Eye

2006-10-28T17:11:00.000-04:00


According to some unnamed source out there on the Web, this film was one of Stanley Kubrick's inspirations for the chaotic mod look and feel in 'A Clockwork Orange.' Probably true. Watching this makes me feel like Alex and the boys have beaten the business out of my brain and robbed its little house, I'll tell you that much.

More Things to Not Blog About

2006-10-25T00:18:00.000-04:00

I made it back from Baltimore okay, although I should have gotten a new ass at that bike shop. Man, talk about sore. I've got a ton of photos and video from the trip that I'm sifting through -- trying to find the perfect pics to illustrate a post. In all probability, it really matters to me much more than anyone else. You guys will just see three bozos with helmets, but me, I'm invested.

My boss often says that "perfection is the enemy of good" and he's right in this case. For some reason, I can't just crank a post out -- the adventure was so great to me that I need to match the perfect photo of myself in a helmet and ridiculous fitover shades with it.

As for my other writing project -- I can't blog about that, either. Suffice it to say that I've never done something quite like it. And it's really, really exciting. And even though I will just crap on and on about it into anyone's ear that will stand still long enough, posting about just seems like it will curse the whole thing.

Do you ever get that fear? The irrational fear that if you give yourself over too much to a project and actually talk about it, you'll doom it to failure? What is that? Where does it come from?

Repair Issues in Linthicum

2006-10-22T15:13:00.000-04:00

We biked to Baltimore this weekend -- which I'll tell you about in a while. Suffice to say that we rode past two prisons, a paintball course, a sewage treatment plant and some very profoundly spattered roadkill.

I'm using a shop computer in Linthicum, Maryland -- broke two spokes and got a flat in Baltimore. My tires are screwed at the moment, and we've got a long way to ride yet. This little shop in the middle of nowhere is the only one that's open.

Anyway. That's all I got to report -- mechanical failure and darkness coming.

Adventure is discomfort in unusual circumstances and after a solid year in a carpeted grey cubicle, it's about freaking time.

Stories to follow ...

Night of the Living Dead

2006-10-18T20:54:00.000-04:00

Just to make up for the posting drought: George Romero's 1968 classic 'Night of the Living Dead'.

Yes, Virginia, the whole movie.

You probably can't get away with watching the whole thing at work, but just play it and minimize your window. The muffled screams, music, and Duane Jones' badass dialogue make the workday just FLY past.