Fear My Robot Brain

Spider Jazz-hands...tingling!

2010-02-22T13:25:00.000-08:00

Yeah. They're making a Spider-Man musical. With a score composed by Bono and The Edge. There's little to no chance this won't be the most awesome thing to ever happen to Broadway, at least until they produce my script for"Batman of the Opera" or my remake of "Cats" starring the Thundercats.

Happy Birthday, Photoshop!

2010-02-19T11:54:00.000-08:00

Photoshop turned 20 years old today.

It's weird; before I went to the Creative Circus, I always sort of thought people who were proficient in Photoshop were witches. They could do really cool stuff that seemed impossible, but if you messed with them, a doctored picture would show up on Myspace of you in comprising positions with farm animals or your girlfriends' sister. Or both.

But then I learned a little bit about how to use it, and, while I'm certainly not an expert, I've gotten fairly good at transplanting beards onto the faces of my friends that don't have beards:

Hot.

Photoshop is amazingly versatile, but, like all tools, it comes down to how you use it. It can be used to make something awesome:

HOLY SHIT! YES!!

Something horrible:

HOLY SHIT! NO!!

Something awesomely horrible:

HOLY SHIT! LOOK OUT!!

Or even just something....something:

HOLY SH-wait, what?

So happy birthday, Photoshop. You've enriched our lives so much.

It's fun, until you watch someone die

2010-02-18T15:10:00.000-08:00

This is Chat Roulette. It's basically a randomly connected webcam chat session with strangers all over the world. It's weirdly addicting, even though not a single person I "chatted" with had anything remotely interesting to say beyond "Whats up were r u?" I mean, I'm not really expecting to start an in-depth conversation about my "Lost" theories with a random teenager in Korea, but still. At least TRY to engage me, Foreign Strangers.

I had to stop after a while because I was legitimately afraid I would stumble across someone being murdered or kidnapped or something live on camera. And I'll be honest, besides frantically yelling into my computer speakers I have no idea what I would do in that situation.

However, some people out there have gotten pretty creative with the whole dynamic:

Behold the terror of the pizza-cone

2010-02-17T06:46:00.000-08:00

According to all known laws of food science, this shouldn’t exist. But somehow it does, and in fact exists less than three blocks away from my house. Which is awesome for me to make fun of now, but will undoubtedly result in me pounding like four of these monstrosities one night when I’m drunk and then spending the rest of the night crying in the shower.

Despite their uniqueness, I personally believe pizza-cones are destined to fail.

Here’s the way I see it: when you’re attempting to create a new restaurant or food business, it can be hard. You basically have two options if you want to be successful:

1.) Do something that’s been done before, but do the shit out of it. You want to make sushi? Hire the most bad-ass Japanese guy straight from Okinawa who speaks only in sushi-related haikus, ties his shoes using chopsticks, and has Aquaman powers so he can convince the fish they actually want to be eaten. If you’ve got a good location and some decent word of mouth, you’re in business.

2.) Create something completely and totally unique that people aren’t able to eat anywhere else. Apple tacos with maple syrup and Swiss cheese? Sure, why not. Chocolate-covered chicken nuggets with aioli and peanut butter filling? It’s probably tasty to someone!

However, what you SHOULDN’T do is take a food item that everyone loves (and in a city that sells that same item on literally every single street) and just fold it into a weird and unappetizing shape. That’s like someone saying “Okay, people love steak. And people love bowling. What if we sold giant, perfectly round balls of steak?” It’s not clever, it’s just gross.

Five Reasons Why Canada Sucks

2009-07-25T15:51:00.001-07:00

If you've been following the tabloids recently, you'll know that I've had a busy few months. In addition to being the other man involved in the Simpson/Romo breakup, and killing Michael Jackson with heroin pills I hid inside of a young boy, I also managed to get myself forcibly deported from Canada.

It's not that exciting of a story, actually. I went to Montreal for a bachelor party, and, upon going through customs, was informed that the D.U.I. I received four years ago in America was considered a felony charge in Canada. This meant, obviously, that I was a dangerous criminal (but only in their country), and that they were required by law to ship me back out on the next available plane. Which, fortunately for me, wasn't until 1:30 the following day.

So they kept my passport and told me I could stay for one night, but that if I didn't show up at the appointed time tomorrow, a warrant would be issued for my arrest and I'd be apprehended by Mounties, thrown into Canadian jail, and spend the next 50 years being sodomized by criminal bears armed with hockey sticks. So I got to party for one night, which was awesome, except for the fact that while most strippers in Montreal are hot, I've seen sexier dance moves from pens with chicks on the end who take their clothes off when you click them.

When I showed up at the airport the next day, I was treated with another display of awesome Canadian hospitality and literally escorted all the way through the airport and onto the plane itself by an armed customs guard. Which turned out to be kind of fun, because I spent the rest of the flight staring unblinkingly at the people next to me and asking questions about their childhoods, using my own inner darkness as a mirror to their souls until they shrieked out all of their terrible secrets. Also, the stewardess totally gave me extra peanuts, which I'm assuming was a silent plea for me not to kill her.

Anyway, when I got home, I started thinking about all of the things Canada does on a regular basis to magnificently fail as part of a much larger, cooler continent, and decided to declare bullshit on the entire country for the following five reasons:

# 5: They Deported Me

While you'd think this would be higher up on the list, it turns out there are actually way more reasons Canada should just be bulldozed into a parking lot or turned into an Eskimo preserve than just their treatment of me. While we're on the subject, though, let's look at how ridiculous their stupid law is:

I understand that different countries have different views on the severity of specific crimes. For example, murder is actually legal in Italy, and it's not considered rape in Japan unless a woman is penetrated by no less than six writhing tentacle monsters. But honestly, Canada, come on. A first-offense DUI is a felony? Do they not realize the legal drinking age there is like 17? American high school students living in the north regularly drive into the country for the sole purpose of getting wasted and then DRIVING BACK HOME. And even for your own citizens, having a younger drinking age but a harsher penalty for DUI's is like issuing mandatory government knives to your students and sending them to Stabbing Class, but then punishing them with a criminal record if they happen to actually stab someone. And in case you're curious, yes, that was a kickass analogy and makes total sense.

# 4: Their Giant, Holographic Money

When I first exchanged my real, American money for stupid, Canadian money, I actually thought the guy behind the counter was fucking with me. After I handed him ten twenties, he gave me back a stack of large, glittery paper and a bunch of irregularly shaped coins with random animals on them. The bills didn't really look like money, but what you'd get if a postcard from somewhere really boring fucked a novelty trading card issued by a retirement home baseball team. I politely explained that I wanted actual currency, not to play a game of Fabulous Candyland Monopoly, but he chittered something at me in Canadian and started talking to the next person in line. Afraid he would throw an otter at me if I asked too many questions, I quickly hurried away.

Still mystified, I went to buy a drink to test if what he'd given me was actual money or the mini-posters for geriatric wilderness light shows I suspected. I successfully purchased a Coke, which meant it was real, but also meant the Canadian people need color-coded bills in case they forget what numbers are, and all apparently have wallets the size of phone books. I'm sure the old people represented on the money are important, but since the only famous Canadian I know is Rick Moranis, I still don't have any idea who they are. Well, except for Queen Elizabeth, who's on the twenty. But that doesn't really count, because the fact Canada has to put monarchs from other countries on their currency is one more indication they shouldn't be a country to begin with.

#3: They're All French Or Whatever

Because I couldn't be bothered to actually look up the history of Canada, I have no idea why it's filled with obnoxious, smelly French people. My working theory is that the French, tired of fucking each other, looked to the West for a new, unspoiled land filled with voluptuous seals and sexy bears they could rape to their hearts content. Upon arriving, they founded numerous colonies based on an economy of fur and handjobs, which evolved into the useless country we know and hate today.

#2: Canadian Superheroes Are All Retarded

I'm not sure if Canada actually makes it's own comic books, but the heroes portrayed in American publications are astonishingly shitty. Well, except for Wolverine, who's actually Canadian and started his heroic career on the Canadian government team, Alpha Flight. But his membership only lasted for like a week, because he soon realized his teammates consisted of a Sasquatch, a leaping midget (see below), a magical Eskimo, and a guy kind of dressed like the Canadian flag. So he promptly left and joined the X-Men, and when Alpha Flight came to America in an attempt to take him back, helped the X-Men kick their asses through their faces in a truly glorious fashion. He then pointed out Canada didn't really need superheroes anyway, because no self-respecting villain would waste their time trying to dominate their useless country in the first place. So they dejectedly left the U.S. and went back to making syrup and watching hockey.

But just to drive home the degree to which Canadian heroes suck, here are a few more specific examples:

This is Puck. He's an acrobatic midget in a unitard who's kind of strong and good at doing frontflips or something. He also has a giant "P" emblazoned on his chest, which I can only assume stands for "PussyMidget". I mean seriously, a tiny guy named "Puck" is an actual crimefighter? That would be like America having a morbidly obese dwarf codenamed "Baseball" whose power was being thrown around and hit with sticks.

This is Major Mapleleaf. I guess the writers thought "Captain Canada" was a stupid name and came up with this brilliant abortion of an idea instead, and for that, they should all be sodomized with prickly Canadian pinecones. In addition to looking fantastically gay, it turns out this guy doesn't actually have any super powers at all! His amazing abilities are all the work of his magical, talking horse, who politely pretends not to notice when the retarded human sitting on top of him takes credit for his ability to shoot laser beams and fly or whatever. Beyond bullshit.

#1: Canada Is Filled With Yetis

Seriously, they're everywhere. And they'll fucking eat you. Canada sucks.

I'm crappy at blogging

2009-07-22T16:49:00.000-07:00

I know, I know. I said I was going to update this blog every single day, and then didn't write anything for over a week. I'm a terrible person. It's actually kind of embarrassing; after that last post my mom (who I think makes up around 97% of my readership) called and told me I shouldn't have promised something I obviously wasn't going to do. At the time I was indignant, but I guess it turns out she knows me better than I thought. Go figure.

My main excuse is that I was in NYC all last week, going to various ad agencies and showing my work to get some feedback on what I need to add/remove/make better before I graduate in September and actually need to find a job. I managed to see 13 people at 7 different agencies, which was awesome. The feedback was terrific; I think I've got a real handle on what I need to do over the next few months so I'm not parking cars or cleaning toilets while I wait for someone to hire me.

Anyway, the flight back was delayed by 2 hours because of bad weather and La Guardia's general ability to suck as an airport, meaning I didn't have much to do after they played the video about useless things you're supposed to remember if the plane loses a wing or is shot down by sky pirates or something. Which turned out to be fine, because as I was watching, I noticed something weird: when the airline safety bimbo got to the part about using your cushion as a flotation device, she very distinctly said "some cushions" may be used as makeshift rafts. Not "all" cushions. Just "some".

So I amused myself while waiting for takeoff by thinking about all of the other things apparently unmarked, random cushions on an airplane might be filled with instead of buoyant foam material. Here are a few:

- Candy
- Other, smaller cushions which also don't float
- Centipedes
- Rainbows and/or unicorns
- Stale airline peanuts
- The dignity of male stewardesses
- Anvils
- Unused bombs left by terrorists who saw Rocky as the in-flight movie and decided they loved America
- Sweater vests
- Trout (I mean, they kind of float. So that'd be helpful.)
- Collected toenail clippings from the entire crew
- Copies of the pilot's unsold erotic screenplay, entitled "Captain Passion: Wings of Desire"

I think I came up with some more, but they were just silly. My musings were finally broken by the start of the in-flight feature film, which, because there were kids aboard or because Delta hates me, was "17 Again", starring Zack Effron and Chandler from Friends. I won't bore you with a plot recap, but basically Chandler gave up on being an all-star basketball player in high school because he knocked up his girlfriend, and spends the next few decades quietly hating his life, spouse and children. He's given an opportunity to make his sad existence slightly less shitty by a magical janitor (no, really), and is regressed back to the age of 17, where he attends high school with his own children and learns valuable lessons about life, love, and almost having sex with your own daughter.

As a huge surprise to nobody, it was balls-awful. But the one part I found funny was the casting decision of Chandler as an older Zack Effron. I mean, if I was Zack, I'd be more than a little pissed when the producers told me they think I'll look like the doughy guy from Friends in a few years:

Producer: "Hey, Zack! Buddy! What's the haps, my man? I've gotta tell you, we here at the studio are so freaking psyched to have you on board for our little picture!"

Zack Effron: "Gosh, me too! I've seriously been trying not to break into a spontaneous dance number with excitement all morning!"

Producer: "Ha ha! Well, you keep on doing that! Seriously! Because it's kind of creepy when it's not in a movie. Whereas in a movie, it's just really gay."

Zack Effron: "What?"

Producer: "Nothing, champ. Hey, I've got some more big news for you: we've gone ahead and cast the role of your older self! And you are never going to believe who we landed!"

Zack Effron: "Wow! That's terrific! Who is it? Clooney? Pitt? Ooh! Hugh Jackman?"

Producer: "Even better! Get ready for this: the part of older you is going to be played by....Matthew Perry!!"

Zack Effron: "....Who?"

Producer: "That's right! Matthew Perry! Chandler Bing from Friends! The guy from that movie with Chris Farley where they fell over a lot and were frontier explorers or whatever!"

Zack Effron: "Are you fucking kidding me?"

Producer: "Ha ha! I know! I can't believe it either! Oscars, here we come!"

Zack Effron: "So you're saying I'm going to look like a chubby, pill-addicted nobody in 17 years? I'm Zack Teen-Fucking-Heartthrob Effron, motherfucker!! I'm the star of High School Musicals 1-24, and its spinoff Space High School Musical: Lasertime Rock! I'm going to be dreamy until the day I die!"

Producer: "Whoa, Zack! Buddy! There's nothing we can do about it! It wasn't our choice; we actually have a massive Hollywood supercomputer that can accurately determine who a star will look like after a given amount of time. It's not us, man. It's science. And maybe math. Or both. Whatever."

Zack Effron: "Really? So I'm actually doomed to grow up and look like fucking Chandler?"

Producer: "Well, the computer said it's either that or you're going to hang yourself in two years after being outed as a homosexual when caught fucking Tom Cruise in a hot tub. Fifty-fifty one way or the other."

True story. Until next time, then, which hopefully will be sooner than a week from now. But no promises.

I'm back, bitches!

2009-07-09T13:19:00.000-07:00

Wow. It's been almost a year and half since I've written anything here. Time flies when you're working 50 hours a week and attending school at the same time.

That's really no excuse, though. Well, I guess it is. But it's boring. So I'm just going to say I couldn't write anything because I was busy competing in underground karate tournaments, fighting off an invasion by the Lava People of Moltarr 9, cavorting with beautiful celebrities, and stealing shit off your porch. If anyone asks, tell them the same. Or else your decorative garden gnome will start losing fingers.

Moving on. The music for today is "Camera Shy", by the Lucksmiths. I don't know why I never posted any of their songs before, as they're probably my favorite band ever. Which kind of sucks, because they're a little indie group from Australia, which means they tour in the U.S. about once every million years, and when they do, certainly don't stop in Atlanta. Their music has some of the most beautiful and well-written lyrics I've ever heard, and I kind of want to have sex with lead singer Tali White's sexy chocolate voice.

Seeing as how I'm now in my grad quarter in school and basically just polishing my portfolio as opposed to writing new kickass ads, I'll be posting something every day from now until whenever I don't feel like it. It's good to be back and just writing; I feel like after two years of being screamed at to condense my words to the smallest amount possible for advertising purposes I'm kind of rusty. But even just writing the few paragraphs here feels pretty good.

Until tomorrow, then, when I'll hopefully have something longer and more hilarious to say.

2008-01-07T08:25:00.000-08:00

God help me, but I'm totally addicted to Photoshop. I think that I'm getting the hang of the basics, but it's seriously tantalizing knowing that there's so much more stuff to learn. I've got an Illustrator class this quarter which will hopefully shed some more light on the actual technical processes, but for now just fucking around on it to create random pictures has been sooooooo much fun.

For example:

I was bored at the airport over Christmas break, and wanted to do some kind of visual representation of what goes on inside my head. For some reason, what I ended up with was lots of ninjas, a bear with an eyepatch boxing a robot wearing a bowler hat, a Viking owl piloting a spaceship, and a karate penguin fending off tiny ice monsters. I'd say this is a fairly accurate cross section of my general thought process.

I kind of expanded on that idea here, mainly because of the lyrics at the top, which I love. And before everyone calls me out on it, I know. They're from a Death Cab for Cutie song, and fuck both yourself and your mother.

I really have no explanation for this whatsoever, except that pitting giant robots against giant monsters is pretty fun. Although in hindsight, the logo looks badly placed and the whole thing needs to move over about an inch to the left. Meh.

These next ones take a bit of explaining, mainly for anybody who reads this that isn't familiar with my group of friends.

This is Ian. He's been one of my best friends since my freshman year of college and my roommate for as long as two guys can live together and not be gay. He's a great guy, and seriously one of the smartest people that I know. For example, whenever we get together to play trivia at the Local, the trivia ladies will ask a question like "Who is the current king of the landlocked nation in Southeast Asia bordered by Tibet to the north and India to the south, east, and west?" While the rest of us are staring blankly at each other and trying to remember if Tibet is in Africa or Australia, Ian has written down "Gyanendra Bir Bikram Shah Dev" and turned in the answer. When he returns to the table, he'll look at us in mild disgust and say "What? He's the king of Nepal. You guys knew that, right?" And I'm really not exaggerating; I'm firmly convinced that if his head wasn’t stuffed full of so much useless knowledge he’d probably have developed fantastic mind powers and enslaved the world by now.

One of the side effects of his intelligence, however, is that he tends to be kind of neurotic. I’m in no way faulting him for this; his capacity to think things through from every conceivable angle is the reason that I’m living in the humongous house he owns instead of my own, as well as the reason he’s been forced to literally bail me out of jail or help to extricate me from whatever general stupidity I’ve found myself engaged in on a fairly regular basis.

So last Tuesday, still hung over from New Years Eve and with the majority of a keg to somehow drink through, my friends and I were all laying around watching football and trying to keep the room from spinning while he we somehow forced our screaming livers to process even more alcohol than the night before. Since I find watching football akin to having someone force thumbtacks covered in rubbing alcohol and salt into my urethra, and because I was probably a little drunk, I decided to while away the time by Photoshopping Ian into various situations, knowing that my doing so would probably make him more uncomfortably nervous than usual.

This picture has been affectionately dubbed the “iiiiiitttttttt’s IAN!!!!” picture, after I created a fake Myspace page for him without his knowledge a few years ago and used it as his profile image. When he found out about the page he immediately freaked out and made me take it down, but I’ve always harbored a certain fondness for it. I thought that it would be the perfect place to start the “iiiiiitttttttt’s IAN!!!!” Photoshop Madness Series, and promptly created these two masterpieces:

"It's Ian! And Jesus!"

"It's Ian! And Hitler!"

By the way, Ian is Jewish, which makes both of these infinitely more hilarious or anti-semitic, depending on your point of view. He’s fine with it; I give him shit because his people killed my Lord and he laughs and says it’s because my fake God was a pussy. It all works out in the end.

So once I had shown a few of my friends these, Jet Leigh issued me the challenge of combining the nervousness of Ian with the majesty of Chuck Norris. Here are the results:

Ian and Jeremy came up with this one, and thought it was hilarious. I agree.

Soooooooooo…yeah. That’s about it for now. School starts back this week, so once again posting will be sporadic to nonexistent. I’m going to create a Photoshop folder in my Facebook account and start stashing stuff there, if anybody wants to check that out. Peace, bitches.

Music you should listen to...

2007-09-28T11:04:00.000-07:00

...or else tomorrow, while leaving for work, you won’t pay attention to where you’re walking and step into an enormous pile of dog shit. While this is totally gross by itself, the situation will only be made worse when you realize that the dog whose poop you're standing in is none other than three-headed Cerberus, foul offspring of Echidna and Typhon and fearsome guardian to the Gates of Hades themselves. This means that in addition to ruining your shoes, you’ll also be transported to the fiery bowels of the Greek underworld. There, you’ll spend eternity being force-fed buckets of poisonous spiders while cackling demons laugh maniacally at your torment and poke you with pointy sticks. Seriously, it will suck. Those Greeks don't fuck around.

The music for today is "Oh Yeah", by The Subways. They're apparently pretty big in the UK, and I think they've played on Conan and Letterman a few times. Once again, the sound is just good wave-your-hands, shout-out-loud, rock/punk/whatever the kids are calling it these days. Oh, and the bass player is wicked rocker-chick hot, which is also a plus. I actually like their song "Mary" a little better, but the video they have for it is crappy. Enjoy.

I also think that they were on an episode of the "O.C." once, and it's sad that I'm actually embarrassed to type that. As I've said before, I really do hate the Catch-22 of seeing a band that I like play on a show that I despise; I mean, it's good exposure, why aren't I happy for them? For example, the other night Noel strapped me to the sofa and forced me to endure an episode of “The Hills” on MTV, no matter how loudly I screamed, and I was genuinely distressed when a Tokyo Police Club song started playing during one of the sweeping helicopter panoramas of downtown L.A. that seem to comprise 50% of the show’s running time. Does this make me a shitty fan, more concerned with their (and by association my) image rather than their success? Probably, but I'm comfortable with my elitism.

To go off on a brief tangent here (because I seem to be incapable of just writing anything short), I fucking hate “The Hills”. Like, with a passion that burns from within hotter than thousands of volcanoes filled with tiny suns and illegal Mexican fireworks. It’s awful. I can understand the original mentality that the producers must have had when pitching it; I mean, on paper, a show that’s basically about a bunch of true-life rich hot people and their glamorous lifestyles sounds fucking brilliant. But in reality, it turns out that their vapid lives really aren’t that interesting and so they’re forcibly thrown into improbably scripted situations, at which point all that’s left is the plot of a bad 90210 episode filled with people who can’t act and have less on-screen personality than a bag of especially boring and possibly retarded rocks. And that one kid, Spencer or Trevor or whatever the fuck his name is? He’s easily the most annoying person in the entire history of the world. I guess the producers realized that their glimpse into Hollywood’s fabulous teenage underground wasn’t enough to keep people invested in the show, so they decided to do their best to enrage viewers instead of enchanting them by inserting obnoxiously douchey guy characters to hate, but still. He beyond sucks. Every time he opens his mouth I just want to smash his enormous teeth through the back of his skull with whatever blunt object is nearby. So good for you, MTV. You’ve made me feel something, even if it’s homicidal bloodlust instead of delight, and isn’t that what good television is all about?

Moving on to other me-related news that doesn’t involve my hatred of crappy reality shows, I got accepted to portfolio school and will be starting classes next week. This is exciting, because I’m really looking forward to learning about advertising and think that it’s something I’ll really like; and terrifying, because I haven’t been to school in like five years and will be working full time until I graduate. I’m going to try and keep up the blog as much as I can, but we’ll see how feasible that will actually be. Oh, and if anyone has a decent Mac laptop or knows where I can get one for a price that’s not an equivalent value to a mid-sized luxury sedan, please let me know. I don’t actually need it for school, per se; but I’m told that if I don’t have one all of the other kids will laugh and call me names before beating me up and stealing my juicebox. It’ll be high school all over again.

Music you should listen to....

2007-09-17T10:13:00.000-07:00

...or else you'll be brutally sodomized by a roving gang of baboon hooligans, who will videotape the encounter and then put it up on youtube.com. It will garner over 1,000 comments overnight, which will distress you, but most of them will either be advertisments for pornography websites or surly teenagers launching poorly-spelled attacks against America. So don't worry about it.

Just to wander off topic for a second, I noticed the other day that these little sentences describing what will happen to you if you don't listen to the music I recommend would make awesome fortune cookie inserts. Lately it seems to me that every single fortune cookie I've eaten has just contained some kind of retarded statement as opposed to an actual prediction of future events. I might be expecting a lot from the tiny Asian children who are chained to typewriters in cookie sweatshops for 23 hours out of their day making them, but come on. At least put some effort into it; trust me, your overseers will beat you less if you just tell the future and aren't as lazy. We were at a Chinese/Korean place a few weeks ago, and after finishing off an amazing meal consisting of at least 23 pounds of dumplings and noodles, I cracked open my fortune cookie in gleeful anticipation of gaining at least some small weapon against my inexorable march towards an unknown future. Instead, I read something like "The shirt you're wearing is nice", or "Your shoes are happy fun for all." What the fuck is that? That's not a fortune; that's a cookie trying to hit on me written by someone who doesn't speak my language. It's an embarassment to the Chinese people and their precognitive abilities everywhere. Maybe it's just me, but I think it would be more rewarding to open your desert and read something like this:

"You will be raped by monkeys sometime in the next week. Your lucky numbers are 16, 32, 12, and Ape Penis."

This way, I'd know not to go to the zoo or hang around with any of my friends who own monkeys. See? Everybody wins.

Moving on.

The music for today is "Superstar Tradesman", by The View. It's awesome British garage-punk, and this is seriously one of those songs that I sing at the top of my lungs whenever I'm driving even though I can't really understand the words. Even at stoplights, which totally sucks for my passengers. Lily Allen apparently told Pitchfork that she doesn't like the group, but she'll be dead from an alcohol/cocaine overdose long before her fathers connections make it possible for her to make another album, so no one really cares.
Enjoy.

In other news, I finally submitted my application to portfolio school on Friday. It took me about a week and a half to get together, but that's because I'm an idiot and spent far, far longer than I should have making sure all of the ads had accompanying illustrations drawn in Microsoft paint. I tried to just sketch them out by hand, I really did; but most of them ended up looking like I had smeared my lips with ink, closed my eyes, and then smashed my face repeatedly into the paper. Which is artsy, sure, but doesn't really help you when you're trying to sell things. Or maybe it does; what the fuck do I know about advertising? Anyway, here's an example of my stunning artistic talent:

You'll notice that it contains a basset hound; this is because I own one, and I'm seriously incapable of looking at him without laughing. This ad is actually part of an entire campaign that I made up, so it needs some explanation, but trust me, it's brilliant. Am I even legally allowed to post stuff like this? Not that I consider my blog to be particularly influential, but I could seriously see the stock at Milkbone going down if too many people this.

More later.

Music you should listen to.

2007-09-11T09:58:00.000-07:00

Or otherwise, a street hobo named "Crazy McStabbington" will pee on your shoes. I know! With a name like that, I was totally thinking that he would stab you! But no, no. Just...gonna pee on your shoes.

Anyway, as evidenced in an earlier post, I believe that my taste in music is far superior to pretty much everyone else's. Well, except maybe for Ryans, but that's because his taste is enhanced stylistically whenever he wears a trendy hat. I can't compete with that.

So I'm taking a page from my friend Jet Leigh's book (blog? whatever.) and will start posting youtube.com videos of whichever band I happen to like during a particular week, and then tell you why you should like them too. This will occur on the regular schedule of whenever the hell I feel like it.

First up:
Margot and the Nuclear So & So's, playing Skeleton Key.

Please, give it a listen. They don't have an actual video for this song (what with being "indie" and all), but this live version is pretty good. If I could, I'd like to direct you to their myspace page so that you can lilsten to the studio version. It's a little faster, and at one point the cellist yells "WHOOO!" after the chorus. Looking back I realize that what I've typed doesn't look nearly as cool as how it actually sounds, but trust me. You'll get goose bumps.

Why Rock of Love is Hilarious Television, Featuring Brett Michael's Insatiable Penis

2007-08-15T09:39:00.000-07:00

I’ve never been a fan of reality TV. The Real World, Joe Millionaire, Who Wants to Fuck a Baboon for Money; none of them have ever done much for me except make me want to change the channel. The one recent exception, however, has been VH1’s new show Rock of Love, starring Brett Michaels. Brett is best known for being the former lead singer of 80’s hair-metal band Poison, as well as for having a tape floating around on the internet featuring him and Pamela Anderson awkwardly screwing. I never really thought that Poison (or any other band with androgynous guys wearing lots of makeup and singing shitty rock ballads) was very good, and while having sex with Pamela Anderson on camera is cool, the video came out shortly after the world was treated to her nasty escapades with Tommy Lee and his absurdly oversized circus dong. This was horrible timing, because instead of everyone being wowed by the fact that Brett was banging the hot chick from Baywatch, he instead just gets remembered as that other band guy whose junk wasn’t as big as the drummer from Motley Crue. I don’t really know what he’s been doing ever since people stopped going to his concerts, but I’d imagine it involves drinking a lot and excitedly answering the phone when record executives call to tell him they want to put together a multi-million dollar Poison reunion tour, then being crushed when they hang up laughing. This situation sounds traumatic, but fortunately for Brett, being a washed-up rockstar in today’s world is nowhere near as depressing as it used to be. This is because if a celebrities star has faded to a completely pathetic degree, they can still exploit the fact that people will want to mock how far they’ve fallen by having their very own reality TV show! This is a horrible trend that started with The Osborne’s on MTV and was recently propelled to the height of absurdity with Flavor of Love on VH1, and the wild popularity of these farces really is an accurate gauge of how retarded the American populace is becoming. Personally, I never liked either of these shows; I just don’t understand the appeal of seeing a pill-addled geriatric who can’t form coherent words shamble around his house, and I certainly have no desire to watch trashy hood women fighting over a tiny wizened gnome wearing a Viking helmet. Although I will admit the part on Flavor of Love where one of the girls unabashedly took an enormous dump on the floor during an elimination thingie was pretty funny. But despite my general detest for these kinds of programs, I have to say that for some reason, I can’t stop watching Rock of Love. I don’t know why; and to be honest, my enthusiasm is starting to scare me a little. I guess the main reason I’m writing this is to hopefully convince other people to watch it too; this way I won’t be alone with my shame. To that end, here’s a brief overview to help you better understand why watching Brett Michaels attempting to put his dick inside as many women as possible on national television is so massively entertaining.

The show itself is fairly formulaic, as most reality TV featuring women prostituting themselves out to an aging maybe-celebrity usually are. The contestants all live in a huge tacky mansion replete with stripper poles, Jacuzzi tubs, and a seemingly endless supply of alcohol. Every few days Brett’s henchman/security gorilla “Big John” will lumber into the common room and gruntingly deliver an astonishingly shitty poem written by Brett that describes some kind of radical competitive challenge he’s devised to determine which of the ladies loves him the most. The winner (or two, or three) of the challenge is chosen by a complex mathematical formula that seemingly involves Bret’s penis and whichever girl he thinks is most likely to do totally awesome stuff to it. The winner and Brett then go on a special “date”, where he has the chance to really, y’know, get to know the girl. And then maybe to fuck her. At then end of the day, all of the contestants are gathered in a weird gameshow auditorium where they do their best to look sultry while awaiting Brett’s arrival. The man of the hour eventually strides into the room with a solemn look on his leathery face, usually wearing what appears to be the fabulous skin of a gay farm animal he’s killed and made into a kickass trenchcoat/cowboy hat combination. He calls each of the girls down from the stage they’re perched on, and tenderly looks into their eyes as he explains his reason for keeping them around in his televised harem. As they gaze adoringly at him, he gives them a “backstage pass”, and asks if they’ll be willing to stay and continue to “Rock his World.” They giggle out something retarded and then proceed to accept Brett’s insatiable tongue as it’s forced past their still-smiling lips. Seriously, he mouth-rapes every single girl at the dismissal gatherings. It’s hilarious. Those that aren’t chosen are shown out by Big John, usually after Brett delivers a touching soliloquy about how totally cool they are even though he no longer wants to have sex with them.

So now that you’ve got a fair idea of what the show consists of, I’m going to further my case about how great it is by trying to break down the first episode in detail. I watched it a couple of weeks ago and was distracted because I was literally laughing every five minutes, so I should warn you that this may not be a flawless recreation. But I think you’ll get the basic idea. The saga begins with Brett addressing his potential fuckbuddies outside of the gaudy L.A. mansion he calls home and having them say hello to Big John, who he explains will act as both enforcer and bodyguard. This is just like when they used to be on the road together, which was like all of the time because his band was really popular. It was called Poison; maybe you’ve heard of it? No? Nobody? Well, fuck. There are about 20 women who have traveled from around the country to vie for Brett’s affections, and each is wearing an outfit that best accents their fake plastic tits while they try incredibly hard to nonverbally convey just how happy it would make them to put Brett Michaels’ penis in their mouths. To set the classy tone for future episodes, Brett finishes introducing himself and his penchant for wearing ugly hats before having Big John promptly kick off five girls, who I guess weren’t slutty enough for his boss to bang on national television. On the surface, this looks like a totally rockstar move; I mean, the contestants now know that in the house of Brett Michaels, anything can happen, often to the Extreme and quite possibly to the Max. Rock N’ Roll, Bitches! Waaaahhh! But to the astute viewer, Brett’s intentions are betrayed as a cheap stunt even before Big John calls out the girl’s names and tells them to get the fuck off the lawn. See, while the camera panned around and got closeups of all of their desperate faces, it was painfully obvious that some of the women were far more unattractive than the others. And not just “Yeah, that blonde in the back has too many freckles” unattractive, but more “OH MY GOD! THE CREATURE HAS ESCAPED FROM DR. OPENHEIMERS LAB! KILL IT!! KILL IT BEFORE IT DESTROYS US ALL!!” unattractive. It was hard to watch; I mean, they all obviously had crippling self-esteem issues already; why else would they demean themselves by being on the show? It’s sad to think that most of them probably went home and killed themselves if they were smart enough to realize that they had been flown to California for the sole purpose of being the ugly chick Bret Michaels sends home during the first few minutes of his show to prove how much of a discerning sexual machine he is.

I really have no idea how many of the contestants were spared the terrible axe-blow of Big John’s cruel dismissal, because literally five of them had gigantic tits and retarded stripper names, which made them pretty much indistinguishable to someone who doesn’t understand the subtleties in telling one whore from another. I wasn’t about to take the time to learn how to tell “Brandi” and “Krystal” apart until they started fucking each other on the pool table or something, although to be honest, I probably wouldn’t care that much even then. The girls enter the house and giggle about how lucky they are that Brett chose them, and then proceed to start trying to make themselves more attractive by getting absolutely shitfaced. It’ll become apparent in later episodes that these women are drunk pretty much constantly, and in this regard you have to admire the brilliance of the producers. I mean, how do you make a show featuring attention starved harlots desperate to screw a middle-aged rocker even more hilarious? Why, by making sure their blood alcohol never falls below almost toxic levels, of course! After the girls have loosened up with a couple dozen shots apiece, Brett returns to announce that the first step in his grand plan to “get to know them better” involves lining them up so that he can take some sexy individual pictures. The first girl to try and look fuckable while Brett breathed heavily and snapped away with his camera was undoubtedly the luckiest, because at the end of each of their modeling sessions he demanded that they kiss him. And I’m not talking about a light peck on the cheek; every single one of them got a thorough probing from whatever dark and terrible creature lives inside Brett Michael’s mouth. These women all looked like there was a good chance they were the carriers of at least one type of VD already, and I’m surprised that the combination of their hooker saliva and whatever kind of unspeakable shit you get after being the lead singer of Poison for ten years didn’t cause the last chick in line’s head to explode in a massive shower of mutated hepatitis puss.

After his little photography session, which included a few of the girls interpreting the command to look “sexy” to mean “pull your tits out and grin vapidly”, Brett decides that he’s going to spend some time wandering around the house and getting to know his woman-stable a little more intimately. But while all of this hilarity is occurring, there’s trouble brewing outside of the House of Michaels! It seems that the ugliest of the contestants Big John booted earlier has returned and is banging loudly on the front door, apparently trying to destroy any lingering vestiges of her self-respect that somehow withstood her earlier humiliation and the fact that she wanted to be on the show in the first place. Big John steps out to see what she wants, and totally looks like he knows what he’s doing by crossing his arms and frowning while she delivers a rambling, semi-coherent plea to be given another chance at fucking Brett. I couldn’t decide if she was so hard to understand because her lips were swollen from Mexican botox or if it was due to the nine pounds of horse tranquilizers it looked like she’d taken, but she sounded pretty wrecked. Big John eventually shuts her up and tells her that she can come in, but sternly warns that she’ll have to sleep in the tub or something and will more than likely be forced to pleasure him sexually. While this implies that all you have to do to get past Brett Michael’s formidable rockstar security is to whine and ask a couple of times, I think the real lesson we learn here is that Big John’s nickname doesn’t come from his physical appearance….but, touchingly…. from the massive size of his heart.

The remainder of the episode is mostly given over to shorter segments showing Brett having quiet chats with one or two of the girls. This attempt at intimacy is so that he can begin the torturous mental process of deciding how he can know someone well enough to eliminate them from his show, despite the conundrum that he obviously can’t know them at all because he’s never put his penis inside them. But the touching insights into Brett’s horny mind are constantly interrupted by shots of the chick with swollen lips that Big John let back in getting totally, magnificently drunk and stumbling into things while screaming racial slurs at the black contestants. The saddest part is that at one point during her televised downward spiral of complete self-debasement, she mumbles something out about how she’s only on the show “for her son”. This is depressing because a drugged-out trainwreck like this should never be allowed to procreate, not to mention that it also means somebody was desperate enough to have sex with her in the first place. And what about the poor residents of whatever state she’s from? They actually end up suffering the most, because you know it’s going to be their hard-earned tax dollars that pay the salaries of the officers who finally take the kid away to an orphanage, and the subsequent years of required therapy he’ll have to go through to repress the images of his mom whoring herself out on national television probably aren’t going to be cheap either.

Anyway, while watching Brett wander around and try to learn about the girls he’s hoping to bang, one thing becomes very apparent: pretty much anything will make Brett Michaels horny. For example, he was talking to one of them, and it soon became obvious that while she was pretty hot, God had forgotten that beauty will eventually fade and neglected to give her the brain capacity to form simple sentences that she’ll probably need when she turns 30 and becomes ugly. Seriously, this chick could only smile and nod, and every time she tried to open her mouth and actually talk, a nonsensical mishmash of one-syllable words were all that came out. Far from being deterred by the fact that there was a distinct possibility that she was actually retarded, Brett said “Yeah, after talking to her, I got the impression that the lights were on but nobody was really home. And I’ll be honest, that kind of turned me on a little.” Or how about after being chased around the house by one of the big-titted stripper girls, who constantly kept talking about how her and Brett were totally dating and how much she’d love to have his babies? Instead of being freaked out that if he kept her around, she was inevitably going to stab another contestant with a broken beer bottle because she thought they were getting to close to her man, Brett just says “Yeah, she’s pretty nuts. But she’s got great tits; and I’m going to be honest, the fact that she’s insane kind of turns me on a little.” They really could have brought out a 90 year old albino woman with one leg and Brett would have happily gone on about how much pleasure he’d get from having nasty pale wheelchair sex with her. It’s amazing.

It’s the nearing end of the night and most of the girls are having difficulty staying conscious, so Brett decides that it’s time to wrap things up with some more eliminations. He kicks a bunch of the blonde stripper chicks off (because really, you only need like three for a good party), and makes sure to put his mouth all over the ones he’s decided to keep. The only surprise comes when he tells the shocked group that he’s letting the big-lipped drunk girl stay on even though there’s not a bed for her, something I’m sure his producers forced him to do because they know nothing says “high ratings” like watching someone abjectly humiliate themselves to such an insane degree on national television. She’s consumed enough liquor and pills by this point to barely be able to stand, so I don’t think it even really registered that even though she’s being allowed to hang around, she’s going to have to embarrass herself even further by crashing under the dining room table or something. The contestants all stagger out, each confident in their own minds that they and they alone will be the lucky girl who will eventually rock Brett’s world with their love. Or at least get to fuck him a couple of times. Whichever.

So yeah, this show is great. Besides the obvious entertainment derived from watching a faded “rockstar” trying to pork slutty women, the real joy comes from the seemingly endless amount of self-delusion that pours out of both the contestants and Brett himself. The girls all try their best to make it seem like they really want what’s best for the guy instead of the C-grade celebrity status they’re hoping to obtain from star-fucking him, and Brett, despite having to know that most of them weren’t even born when his band was popular, really seems to think these girls want to sleep with him just because he’s a hot musician. It’s sad, but boy is it fun to watch. Tune in and trust me, you might feel slightly dirty when the credits start to roll, but your stomach will hurt from laughing so hard.

Why I Have the Best Girlfriend Ever, Featuring Ninja Cakes

2007-08-14T06:41:00.000-07:00

This is the cake that Noel got me for my birthday a couple of weeks ago. Despite Erin's racist assertion that it resembles a guy in blackface, it's obviously a kickass ninja, and it was as awesome as it looks. If asked to describe how it tasted, I would probably have to say that it was a delightful combination of chocolate chips, frosting, and silent shinobi death.

And this is why I have the Best Girlfriend Ever.

Why Harry Potter is Great, Featuring the Majesty of Neil Gaiman

2007-08-08T13:48:00.000-07:00

Over the last few weeks, I’ve been bombarded by questions from my friends about whether or not I’ve read the new Harry Potter book yet. While this isn’t a surprising inquiry coming from those people who know me well and are aware that I’m almost compulsively drawn to any kind of fiction involving wizards and sorcery, I’ve been amazed by how many casual acquaintances have come up and asked “Hey, so that new Harry Potter book is pretty great, huh? Man, that part on page 267 was crazy! I didn’t really think she’d have the balls to kill off GLAAAKK!!” They never get to finish, because by this point I’ve thrust my hand into their chest and removed their still-beating heart for inadvertently attempting to ruin the plot for me, but still. I know that I have a fairly over-inflated sense of my own self-image, but do I really look like that much of a dork? I mean, I only wear my authentic Slytherin hat when I go see the movies, and I’m pretty sure everyone’s forgotten about that time I got drunk and jumped off the roof trying to ride a broomstick. Although I did dress like Harry a couple of years ago for Halloween, so maybe that’s where the association comes from:

I’ll go with that, and just assume it’s not because someone’s found out about my secret collection of online erotic Hermione fanfiction. And before you judge me, fuck off. She’s a hot chick who can do magic, and I think that wizards come of age at like 17. So she’s totally doable.

But anyway, the answer to the question is yes; I’m about three quarters of the way through The Deathly Hallows. My roommate pre-ordered it from Amazon, which was good because this way I didn’t have to drop $25 on a hardcover, but bad because I was forced to endure two weeks of Ian reading it on the couch and gasping dramatically whenever something cool happened. Just when I was considering bludgeoning him to death with the book while he slept, he finished and passed it on, and I have to say, it’s taking me a while to get through. Not because it’s dense or hard to read or anything, but because I simply don’t want it to end. I read pretty much constantly, and if a book is especially good, I’ve been known to stay up all night to finish it before going to work looking like I’ve been on a 24 hour coke/hooker bender and then passed out under a bridge. Which is what I tell people, because honestly, that makes me sound a lot cooler than explaining how tired I am because I just had to see if Harry and Ron could escape Voldemort’s nefarious clutches. But I’ve been resisting the temptation and trying to savor the new story as much as possible, although with the stuff that’s happening in the current chapter I don’t how long my resolve will last.

What I find the most interesting about the Harry Potter phenomenon is all of the hype surrounding it. It’s easy to see why there’s so much scrutiny; I mean, the latest book broke every single publishing record in the history of the world, with 10% of the entire British population buying it on the first day and an initial print run of 12 million copies for the U.S. alone. That’s fucking insane. Especially considering the entire saga was conceived by some random lady who wrote her first novel in a coffeshop during her spare time. By “random lady” I’m not trying to disparage J.K. Rowling at all; I have enormous respect for someone who went from living on welfare to having more money than the Queen of the country she lives in. I just think that what she’s accomplished is absolutely incredible.

And the funny thing is, she’s not even that great of a writer. I say that not to be a dick (I mean, she’s the creator of a literary phenomenon; I write a shitty blog that only my mom and like four of my friends read), but because I’ve read lots of books, the majority of which are in the same genre as Harry Potter. And there are authors out there who can paint a picture much more vividly and with a greater scope of beauty and wordplay than she can. This isn’t to say that she’s bad; not by any stretch of the imagination. I remember reading the third book (I’d initially skipped the first two because I’d already seen the movies) and thoroughly enjoying it, but making a concerted effort to pay attention to how she wrote. I would love to write a novel someday, and thought to myself “Okay, this lady has somehow written a book about child wizards that sells more copies than the Bible (Ha ha! Fuck you, Christianity!). How does she do it?” And the answer (or what I think is the answer, anyway) is that her writing itself is, at its essence, just functional. It gets the job done clearly, concisely, and with enough description so that the reader can get a clear picture of what’s transpiring. But there are authors out there who have ways of describing, say, a particular character’s facial expression that are so unique and interesting that I’ll go back and reread the same passage over and over again, marveling that there’s an imagination out there that’s able to think that creatively. J. K. Rowling isn’t one of these authors, and really, that doesn’t matter.

What really makes me (and the millions of other people out there who love the books) keep reading is the fictional world that she’s created. It’s well thought out, makes sense, and all ties together in a neat little package. But that’s not all. The best part is that the whole storyline is contemporary. There actually could be this whole secret underground world of magic and wizardry going on right beneath our noses. Kids love it because they get to believe there’s a chance, however small, that a loveable giant will come along and whisk them away to an enchanted school so they can learn witchcraft instead of being beaten by mommy’s new boyfriend, and adults like it because there’s enough creativity and depth that they can justify why they’re reading a children’s book when their friends laugh at them.

Given the meteoric success of the franchise, though, it was inevitable that some of the hype surrounding the books would be negative. The most ridiculous complaint, of course, comes from idiot right-wing Christians about how the novels are subversively promoting witchcraft and occult practices to our youth. How fucking retarded do you have to be to actually believe that? I mean, if you want to go the route that anything fantastic or supernatural is bad, why wasn’t anybody picketing the Spider-Man movies? Peter Parker was bitten by a radioactive arachnid that mutated his DNA and gave him incredible superhuman abilities. This is obviously blasphemous, because if God had wanted our non-monkey DNA to incorporate attributes of carnivorous bugs, He would have shoved a tarantula leg or something into the pile of clay and ribs we were all created from. Spider-Man, therefore, must have received his powers from Satan and needs to be beaten with rocks until he’s no longer an affront to the Lord. Or how about the Matrix trilogy? The Wachowski brothers tried their best to cram as much religious iconography and allusion as they possibly could into the movies so that people would think they were deep and meaningful, and the result was an implied allegory between Keanu Reeves in tight leather and Jesus Christ. Why weren’t Christians pissed about that? I’m not even particularly religious and I find that offensive, but mainly because I personally think that Keanu Reeves is a harbinger for the apocalypse. It just comes down to the fact that most hillbilly evangelicals are terrified of anything that might cause their children to actually use their imagination. If that happens, it’s only a matter of time before one kid asks why they’re supposed to believe in a bathrobe-wearing hippie who can transmute water into wine but not think that it’s cool when a fictional teenager flies around on a broom.

The other drama that’s surrounded Rowling’s work has been the charges of plagiarism. This was bound to happen; whenever something becomes a cultural sensation people are going to come crawling out of the woodwork saying that they’re entitled to bags of free money because they totally told their friend Mark about this sweet idea they had years ago that’s just like whatever happens to be popular at the moment. The best example of this lunacy comes from onetime American author Nancy Stouffer. She sued Rowling and her publishers because, in 1986, she wrote a book called The Legend of Rah and the Muggles, and then followed up with a children’s activity book called Larry Potter and his Best Friend Lilly. Her claims would be fairly credible, except for the fact that neither one of these works have anything to do with magic, wizards or anything else remotely similar to the Harry Potter world. Her “muggles” were tiny midgets who lived in shoes and rode around on bugs or something, and “Larry Potter” was just some kid who was sad because he had to wear glasses. Oh, and if the books weren’t just for sale in the Eastern United States for one year between 1986 and 1987. And if she had actually sold any copies of them. And for the fact that Rowling didn’t visit the U.S. for the first time until 1998. And if it wasn’t discovered that she’d retroactively gone back and added a trademark symbol to the word “muggle” in the supposedly original work she gave the judge. All of these revelations came out during the subsequent lawsuit, and instead of gleefully accepting a huge bag of wizard gold from Rowling’s defeated team of high-powered elf attorneys, Stouffer was forced to pay Time Warner $50,000 in addition to the cost of their legal fees for wasting everyone’s time with her idiocy. How stupid do you have to be to actually think that this would work? Did she honestly think that Rowling had secretly flown to America in the late eighties and broken into her house to rifle through piles of shitty unsold coloring books looking for literary inspiration to put in a novel she wouldn’t write for another ten years? I mean, I drew an awesome picture of a personalized flying hoverchair on my trapper-keeper back in seventh grade that I called the “I-Pod”, but I don’t think that I’m entitled to half of Apple’s yearly revenue. Stouffer’s claims were ridiculous, and now in addition to being a bad writer she’s also probably financially destitute. I'm imagining that her books were printed on pretty cheap paper, though, so maybe she can gnaw on them when she's no longer able to afford food. I think that she got off lightly; she’s lucky that Rowling didn’t use her dark magic to turn her face inside out and fill her vagina with poisonous scorpions.

Another accusation of plagiarism was leveled in early 2001 by British tabloid The Daily Mail, claiming that Rowling had copied characters and elements from the comic book series The Books of Magic. You’ve probably never heard of it; it was published in 1990 by DC Comics, and was written by one of the greatest authors who has ever lived, Neil Gaiman. You know those writers that I was talking about earlier, the ones that can use words with such eloquence and beauty that the reader literally feels like they’re a part of the story? He’s one of those, but better. If you haven’t read any of his work, go buy one of his books right now. Anything. Or call me, and I’ll lend you one of mine. Seriously, you’re life will be better for having experienced something he’s written. I realize that it kind of sounds like I want to make out with Neil Gaiman, but honestly, if I had to create a list called “People I’d Love to Meet, But Would Probably Just Stand There and Stammer Awkwardly at if Actually Given the Opportunity”, he’d be at the top. He’s the author of The Sandman, probably the single greatest comic book series ever written, and a number of prose novels that are equally awesome. His literary style is somehow simultaneously humorous, terrifying, and, above all, thoroughly engrossing. He’s great.

So yeah, I’m a fan.

Anyway, the article claimed that Neil had told the fine journalists at The Daily Mail that he was pissed at J.K. Rowling for stealing his ideas. I’d originally read The Books of Magic probably a year or so before the first Harry Potter book came out, and there are some definite similarities between the two. The comic tells the story of Timothy Hunter, a young English boy who’s plucked from his troubled family life and told by four mysterious strangers that he has the potential to become the greatest magician the world has ever seen. He embarks upon a journey through the past, present and future of magic in the DC universe, and along the way even acquires a pet owl to assist him in his adventures. That’s not that bad, right? I mean, comparing the two because they both have a young protagonist who doesn’t know he’s a wizard and likes to hang around with nocturnal birds is like saying the Transformers ripped off Knight Rider because they both have talking cars. But then you see what Timothy Hunter looks like:

Hmm. Or how about a more obvious comparison?

It's like looking into a mirror, kind of! They’re almost identical, in the sense that they're both male, wear glasses, and have Beatles haircuts, but so do most of the annoying hipster kids that stand in the back of shows and nod morosely along with the music. It's really not much to go on, but it’s still a mark of how unbelievably cool Neil Gaiman is that as soon as the article was printed, he immediately started bashing The Daily Mail who, it turns out, had never actually bothered to call him and make sure he’d said everything they’d already made up and printed. His opinion was that sometimes when an author writes, they have a specific idea of how a character is supposed to look in their mind, and seeing as how there are only about four different human hair colors to choose from, the staggering coincidence that two fictional people both have dark hair really isn’t that big of a deal. He went on to say that if Rowling had truly meant to copy his work, she probably would have been smart enough to at least make Harry a blonde kid with an eyepatch and pet howler monkey or something. He also pointed out that having a young boy unaware of his magical heritage being tutored by a wise old mentor and being accompanied by an owl wasn’t really something that he had come up with himself; rather, it was the work of T. H. White in The Once and Future King. How awesome is that? I mean, I’m no expert on the law, but I’ll bet that if he had wanted to, he could have gotten some kind of settlement out of her and her publishing company. But he’s been nothing but supportive of Rowling and her work, saying “I love the Harry Potter thing, I think it’s wonderful.” I’m right there with you, Neil, and your unequivocal support of your fellow authors has made me want to have your babies even more.

Harry Potter is great, and I’m looking forward too/dreading finishing up the last book. But I guess there’s still a couple of movies to anticipate, and after those are done I’m sure it’ll only be a matter of time before the chick who plays Hermione is desperate for money and gets naked in Playboy or something. So I'll have that to keep thinking about when I'm done with the book at least.

Whew.

2007-07-23T09:35:00.000-07:00

Okay, so I posted all of my old stuff from my Myspace.com profile. Since Blogspot code for making a word bold is apparently different from Myspace code, that took much longer than it should have and now I'm grumpy. But fortunatly, I found this website last week that pretty much makes me laugh whenever I go to it:

http://roxik.com/pictaps/

You basically draw a character, and then get to watch it dance around surrounded by about 100 identical images of whatever you happened to make. I have no idea why it's so addiciting, but God help me, I can't stop.

The best part is that it's actually a showcase for some graphic designer living in Japan, who's profile says the "website offers a happy digital toy!" I love the Japanese.

Why Spider-man 3 Sucks Donkey Balls, Featuring The Worst Dialogue Ever - 05/18/07

2007-07-23T09:26:00.000-07:00

Okay, so I know that I'm supposed to be writing about my recent experiences attending an extravagant Hindu wedding in Daytona, but something happened the other night and I feel it would be remiss of me to not try to write at least a little about it before the memory fades.

I went and saw Spider-man 3 on Wednesday with Noel, who was kind enough to indulge my comic book-geekery and come along. I had told her that it was actually about a young girl who had to choose between two lovers in Victorian England before tragically succumbing to her tuberculosis, but I don't think she really believed me. I was pretty excited; the previews looked relatively cool, and it had a bunch of characters that I was interested to see adapted to the big screen. After sitting through 3 ½ hours of film, however, my opinion had drastically changed.

It's a shitty movie. The plot is nonsensical and cheesy, there are too many characters jammed in just for the sake of having more CGI effects, and all of the actors look like they're phoning in their performances as quickly as possible so that they can get back to their trailers and have gigantic money fights with the cash they've been paid. It's terrible. To show you why, I reconstructed the movie as best that I can, and the sad thing is that I don't even have to really be funny; I can just write down what actually happened and it will look ridiculous.

The movie begins with Peter Parker loving life. The city adores Spider-man, his girlfriend is singing on Broadway and has amazing tits, and even Aunt May has been less incontinent than usual. The only specter on the horizon is a chance encounter with his former best friend, Harry Osborn, who blames Spider-man for the death of his father, the villainous Green Goblin. Quickly brushing off Harry's grim insistence that he's going to kill him and that he knows his secret identity, Peter chooses to ignore this totally realistic threat and happily skips off to contemplate proposing marriage to Mary-Jane. Everything's great.

But across town, there's action afoot! It's two-bit criminal Flint Marko, played by that guy from Sideways! He's on the run from the law, and after briefly stopping to visit his sick daughter (complete with nighttime oxygen mask for maximum sympathy) to assure her that he'll get the money for her treatment no matter what, the audience is convinced enough that he's not really a bad guy to maybe feel sorry for him. Remember that! It kind of becomes a not very relevant plot point later on.

So it's the middle of the night, and Marko is slowly jogging away from the police officers chasing him. According to a radio transmission from the police chief, he's escaped to someplace called "the marshes", and while I'm not that familiar with New York City, I'm fairly sure there are no outlying swampland for criminals to hide in, unless you count New Jersey. He staggers up to a chainlink fence, and after pausing to catch one of the attack dogs that have been sent after him, he stares at it stupidly for a few moments before punching it in the face and hopping the fence. He takes a few steps, only to plunge down into a gigantic hole that he somehow missed directly in front of him. He hits the sand-covered ground with a thud, and then gets to his feet to gaze wonderingly around at the strange, enormous metal arms that he also somehow didn't notice suspended above him. The scene cuts to the inside of a scientific control center, where one important looking guy in a white coat asks another important looking guy in a white coat something about "the particle accelerator". Then a woman, who is far too hot to have anything at all to do with science, leans over to say something about the "molecular deconstructor", noting that the "silica target has increased in mass." Scientist #1 assures her that "it's only a bird", and will "fly away once we start it up." So the audience can now assume that this is the device that Marko is currently staring at, and that based on their dialogue and the fact that they want to test a machine that can destroy molecules at 3 in the morning, the people who are about to turn it on are insane.

The machine thrums to life, and the giant arms begin to slowly oscillate around him. His facial expressions during all of this kind of remind me of a cow chewing it's cud; he doesn't seem especially concerned that he's fallen into the middle of some kind of huge machine designed for obliterating sand particles and run by maniacs, and only makes a half-hearted attempt to jump out of it after the arms are moving around him so fast the human eye can't see them, which works about as well as you'd expect. Long story short, his body is destroyed and reconstituted as living sand the next day, with the added bonus that he's somehow able to perfectly recreate the color and consistency of the ridiculously ugly shirt he was wearing during his unfortunate accident. He then lumbers off to try and save his daughter by using his newfound powers in stupid ways to rob banks.

Meanwhile! Peter is zipping around town on his gay little motorscooter whistling about how rainbows make him happy or something when suddenly, out of nowhere, a mysterious stranger riding a flying snowboard swoops in and throws him into a wall! Wow! Peter looks up, his dazed eyes filled with confusion. Who could this mysterious stranger be? How could he know Peter Parker's barely kept secret identity of the amazing Spider-Man? Oh, right. It's Harry Osborn, that guy from like an hour ago who totally told Peter that he hated him and wanted to kill him, and had not only the means but also the motive and opportunity to do so! He even screams "You knew this was coming, Pete!!", because even though everyone in the audience knew about two movies ago that Harry would want revenge, the thought never seemed to occur to Peter. They battle around in the sky and across rooftops for a while, and I have to say, as bad as this movies dialogue and plot are, the special effects are awesome. The fight comes to an abrupt conclusion after Peter uses some of his spider-webbing to clothesline Harry and knock him off of his radically evil snowboard, and despite the fact that he had previously survived being punched face first through the glass plating of like sixteen buildings, the 100 foot fall seemed to really fuck him up. Peter freaks out and dashes over to his unmoving friend, tries to give him CPR, and the next thing you know, Harry's being loaded into an ambulance and taken to the hospital. After a few tense hours, the doctor comes out, and instead of asking Peter why his friend was knocked unconscious while dressed like some kind of techno-bondage freak, just explains that Harry will be fine and is only suffering from a minor case of amnesia; specifically the type of amnesia regarding the possible identities of any superheroes he happens to know and any involvement they might have had in the death of his father.

This is a stupid plot twist, because now everything can go back to being hunky-dory between Pete, MJ and Harry, but whatever. It actually happened in the comics on multiple occasions, so I'm willing to let it slide. What I couldn't stand, however, is the way that James Franco, the actor who plays Harry, decided to interpret the personality shift. For the next 45 minutes, every time he opened his mouth I wanted to jump into the screen and shove a pencil through his eye. He apparently took the direction "okay, act like you're friends with everybody again" to mean "act like you've had a stroke to the portion of your brain that doesn't cause you to talk like a lobotomy patient on ecstasy." This is an actual sample of his dialogue:

Peter: "Hey there, Harry, how are you feeling? That bump on your head getting better?"

Harry: "Gosh, buddy, you know what? It sure is! Boy, things sure are swell!"

Peter: "That's great."

Harry: "Hey, you know what else is great??"

Peter: "What's that?"

Harry: "PUPPIES! Yeah, they're so cute, I think that God himself must have made them out of sunbeams and happiness. Hey, you guys want to come back to my place? We can drink hot chocolate and wear fuzzy pajamas and have a smiling contest! I bet I'll win! Ha ha ha!"

Seriously, it was horrible. And things don't seem to be getting any better. First, Peter pisses off MJ by making out with hot new blonde love interest Gwen Stacy at a parade in Spider-man's honor before rushing off to get his ass handed to him by Flint Marko, who's been remaining inconspicuous by flying around the city in the form of a giant sandstorm cloud. Then, he gets shot down trying to propose in a hilariously unfunny scene in which he's apparently completely oblivious to the fact that MJ is jealous, although seeing as how he never seemed to even consider that Harry might want him dead, this is actually kind of believable. Finally, to cap it all off, he and Aunt May are called down to the police station to be informed that the guy the cops thought killed his Uncle Ben actually didn't. It was some other guy. Oops! Our bad! And who was that other guy, you ask? Why, Flint Marko, who Peter had just fought that very afternoon and was now running around as an unstoppable sand monster! What are the odds!

Peter goes back to his tiny apartment to brood and wait for Marko to strike again, but thoughts of burning revenge make him sleepy after about an hour and he decides to take a nap. While he's sleeping, the sinister black blob of space goo that hitched a ride on his moped at the beginning of the move crawls all over his body, and the next thing he knows he wakes up outside wearing a black version of his costume that seems to enhance his abilities. I didn't mention the space goo before because literally, that's how it got there. He was hanging out in the park with MJ, a comet fell from the sky, and then space goo crawled out of it and jumped onto his bike. That's it. That's all you get. Peter's surprisingly unconcerned about the fact that his costume is suddenly made out of alien semen and makes him black out, and just decides to investigate a suspicious trail of sand that's crawling of its own accord through a set a bank doors that have been torn from their hinges. I swear, that Spider-man has a deductive mind like a steel trap. On his way in, he's accosted by Eddie Brock, played by Topher Grace, a hotshot new photographer who's trying to take Peter's job at the Daily Bugle. Displaying the negative influence the black suit is already having on him, he throws Brocks camera into a wall and totally breaks it, before saying "Nyah!" and then swinging off.

He finally confronts Marko in the dank labyrinth of subway track and drainage pipes that apparently comprise the majority of New York City's underbelly. Despite the fact that he's supposed to be really good at science, Peter doesn't seem to realize that repeatedly punching a man completely made out of sand in the face really isn't going to accomplish much. Marko finally stumbles into a puddle of water, which, about 10 minutes later, gives Peter the brilliant idea to flood the room they're fighting in by breaking one of the conveniently placed hydro-tanks scattered around the subway. This turns his enemy into a shrieking pile of wet mud, and he's eventually sucked into a sewer drain. Peter then jubilantly goes to tell his Aunt that the guy who killed her husband is dead, and is surprised when it turns out she's not really that enthusiastic about murder. This causes him to worry enough about his fluctuating mental state that he goes to visit one of his science friends, who, despite the fact that he even admits that he's a physicist and knows nothing about alien slime biology, is very assertive when he says that it exhibits "characteristics of a symbiote." Of course, the scientific method he uses to back up this nonsensical claim consists of him sticking a small piece of the goo into a jar and then poking it with a stick, so it's easy to question the veracity of his conclusion.

This is the point in the film where director Sam Raimi was obviously too busy bathing in his gigantic bathtub full of money to care what direction the movie went in, and everything quickly turns even more unwatchable than it already was. MJ, still upset about Peter's insensitivity and uncaring attitude, as well as being a humongous whore, decides to call up Harry to find a shoulder to lean on. The two of them end up, and I swear I'm not lying here, cooking omelets while dancing around to "Twist and Shout" while giggling and staring into each others eyes. The flirting quickly turns into a passionless kiss, with both of them breaking it off at around the same time and profusely apologizing to one another while awkwardly staring at the ground. MJ leaves crying, and Harry, desperate to immerse himself back into the blissful world of magical unicorns and gumdrop fairies that he had previously inhabited, takes a swift gulp of brandy. For some reason, this has the exact opposite of the intended effect, causing all of his amnesia to go away and making him see a reflection of his father in a mirror that starts screaming at him to go kill Spider-man. The scene ends with Harry's face cracking into a sinister grin of pure evil, and the audience is left in rigid anticipation to see what kind of diabolical scheme he comes up with to enact his final revenge.

And so what does he do? Does he get Peter hopped up on ecstasy and then force him to have sex with Aunt May at gunpoint while MJ watches and pleasures herself? Does he dig up Uncle Ben's corpse and wear his skull like a hat before waking Peter up by peeing in his mouth? No! No, it's sooooo much gayer than that.

The first step in his nefarious plot involves capturing MJ and then forcing her to meet Peter in a park to break up with him, telling him that they're so over and that she's met another man. That's pretty rough, and Peter is understandably upset. But wait, it gets even more evil! Harry then meets Peter for coffee, and smugly tells him that, get this….he's the other guy! Oh shit!

Really, this is the best idea that he could come up with? That's his revenge plot? Making Peter think that he stole his girlfriend? That's not a plan worthy of a criminal mastermind, that's something I did in high school to get back at whatever football dick was dating the girl that I liked. Peter, seriously pissed off and wearing his black costume, shows up at Harry's house and then, fueled by alien slime-enhanced rage, proceeds to beat the living fuck out of him. Standing over the body of his broken foe, the true nature of his evil suit comes out and he says some really mean things about how Harry's dad totally didn't love him. Ouch. Harry, enraged at these lame taunts, summons the last of his energy and throws one of his pumpkin grenades at the back of Peters head as he walks away. Peter easily dodges the attack, and then sends the bomb hurtling back to explode right next to Harry's face.

As if the fact that Peter just attempted to murder one of his closest friends wasn't indicative enough of how much the alien suit had corrupted him, he spells it out for the slower members of the audience by brushing his formerly slicked-back hair down into his eyes, making him look not so much evil as like the keytaurist from 80's musical sensation A Flock of Seagulls. What follows is one of the worst montages that have ever been filmed in the entire history of movies. With annoying disco music blaring, Peter is shown walking down the streets of New York with his collar popped up to his ears, grinning nastily and making lewd gestures at any woman that he passes. Tobey Maguire obviously has no sense of rhythm whatsoever, so the whole thing looks like he's suffering from a mild seizure instead of anything remotely cool. He then goes into a hip clothing boutique, and emerges seconds later wearing some kind of awful swing outfit that I guess is supposed to signify how immoral he's become. As if this wasn't bad enough, he then stands in the doorway of the shop and proceeds to place his hands behind his head and furiously thrust his groin around like he's trying to dislodge a rabid wolverine that's intent on devouring his genitals. This goes on for far, far longer than it has any right to, and after the first 7 minutes or so the hilarity was starting to fade and I was just getting uncomfortable.

And then, as if the emo haircut, attempted murder, and pelvic thrusting weren't enough to convince you that Peter is heading down the dark path of iniquity, Raimi decides to hammer it in just a little bit more. Peter's science friend calls him up again to tell him that after more rigorous fake testing, he's discovered that the black goo seems to enhance certain feelings, particularly those of aggression. Thanks, Dr. Obvious. I hadn't caught on to that yet. But Raimi isn't convinced that his audience knows the black suit is evil. The American public is, after all, notorious for needing to be spoon fed even the most blatant of truths, so why not indulge their stupidity? To this end, the camera pans in for a closeup shot through a microscope, to show how the alien symbiote is acting at a molecular level. This consists of a large black dot, I guess representing one of the evil slime's cells, beating up all of the normal, small white cells around it. Thank you, Mr. Raimi. I finally understand that the costume is bad, as well as possibly racist.

Peter, however, still thinks it's great. He takes Gwen, the blonde tart he made out with earlier, to the jazz club where MJ is working as a waitress. To make MJ jealous, he hops onto the piano and plays a snazzy dance number before tapping across the bar, swinging off of a chandelier, and doing this weird little boyband routine with a chair in the middle of the dance floor. He then seductively wraps Gwen's legs around his waist and dips her slowly to the ground, all the while looking straight into a horrified MJ's eyes. Gwen, realizing she's being used like a common street whore, becomes mortified and storms out, prompting Peter to attempt a reconciliation with MJ. She, of course, is less than receptive, and an unhappy Peter takes out his aggression on one of the bouncers who tries to make him leave. As MJ attempts to pull him off of his victim, he turns around and punches her to the ground and then, horrified at what he's become, turns and runs out of the bar like a woman.

Peter finally realizes that while the suit might make it easier to talk to girls and stuff, it's really not worth it if you fly into an uncontrollable rage and beat them to a pulp before you get to have sex with them. He broods on top of a church for a while before going into the bell tower to try and remove the symbiote, but it really doesn't want to leave and fights him. Eventually, Peter is able to tear some of it off of when he accidentally stumbles into the bell, realizing that space clothing, like Chihuahuas, hate loud noises. Coincidentally, Eddie Brock is in the same church, and is praying to Jesus in the hopes He'll reach down His almighty hand and kill Peter after he revealed Brock was trying to pass off a photoshopped picture of Spider-man robbing a bank. Jesus works in mysterious ways, and responds to Brocks fervent supplication by dropping a bucketful of homicidal alien sperm onto his upturned face. Amen!

The movie's been running for a good two hours by now, and it's time for the final pointless showdown. Brock, now looking like a jacked black-suited Spider-man with a mouth full of slavering teeth, somehow finds Flint Marko and convinces him to help crush their mutually hated enemy. This, of course, makes no sense given Marko's previously misunderstood yet relatively altruistic behavior, unless he's still really pissed that Spider-man turned him into mud and flushed him down a sewer. I guess when you put it like that, it's believable. It doesn't get him any closer to curing his daughter, but I'm sure the sand that currently constitutes his body is made of at least 75% fecal matter, so I'd be angry too. They kidnap MJ and suspend the cab she's in high above the ground between two buildings, taunting Spider-man to come out and face them. Peter, despite seeing on the news that his girlfriend is in mortal peril, takes a while to actually go do anything about it. First, he pulls out his old costume and stares at it for about 10 minutes, maybe contemplating the addition of a cape. Then he goes over to Harry's house and pleads with him to help in the rescue attempt, banking on the fact that Harry will be willing to put aside their differences to rescue a girl they both love. Harry, however, turns slowly into the light, and reveals that the entire right side of his face has been horribly disfigured by Peter throwing a grenade into it earlier. Peter, once again displaying his stupidity, seems shocked by this, as if he had no idea that having an object explode right next to you could be harmful. Harry, understandably, is less than willing to help out the guy who blew off half of his face just because he tricked him into thinking he was sleeping with his girlfriend, and politely tells Peter to fuck off.

As Peter swings despondently away, nonsensical plot twist number 84 shuffles forward in the form of Harry's ancient manservant, Jeeves! I actually don't remember what his real name was, but it was typically butler-esque, like Wordsworth or Mr. Slappy or something. Jeeves then tells Harry that he's known all along that Peter had nothing to do with the death of Harry's father, because it was Jeeves himself who cleaned the late Mr. Osborn's wounds, and he was completely sure that they were caused by his own goblin flying thing! So Peter couldn't have done it, maybe! Whoa! Harry takes this shocking news surprisingly well; I know that if it had been me, the subsequent conversation would have been much different.

Me: "God, can you imagine the nerve of that guy? Coming over here and asking for my help to rescue his whore of a girlfriend? That fucker burned off half of my face! And he killed my dad! God, I hate him soooo much!"

Jeeves: "Young master, I need to tell you something."

Me: "What is it, Jeeves? Did you forget to take your pills and get trapped in the closet again?"

Jeeves: "Not today, but thank you for asking. I've seen many a strange thing in this house, sir, and I've kept my silence as a good servant should. But I wanted to tell you that I was there the night your father died. I cleaned his wounds after making out with his corpse a little, and I can tell you for a certainty that he died because he was impaled upon his own goblin glider."

Me: "Excuse me?"

Jeeves: "That's right, young master. Based on his gaping chest wounds hours after his death, I can say without a shadow of a doubt that your friend had nothing to do with it."

Me: "And you're just telling me this shit now? After the last two years of seeing me obsess over the fact that I thought my best friend killed my dad?! Jesus! You just sat there and didn't say anything while you watched me spend hours making a flying snowboard and grenades that look like pumpkins so that I could finally enact my revenge?! Oh, and hey, you know when else this information might have been useful? Right before I made Pete think that I stole his woman and he BLEW HALF OF MY FUCKING HEAD OFF!!! What the hell is wrong with you?!

Jeeves: "Master, I…"

Me: "Jeeves, you are so fired."

Man, that was a stupid scene. Anyway, Peter has gone off to fight the unstoppable sand mutant Marko and evil black Spider-man Brock, and is thoroughly getting his ass kicked. To be fair, the main reason that he's doing so poorly is that he constantly has to keep making sure that MJ doesn't plunge to her death, as it seems like every two seconds the webbing holding her up snaps, prompting her to scream loudly and fall a few more feet. When this movie comes out on DVD, I want to play a drinking game that involves taking a shot every time MJ shrieks during the last 45 minutes, but I'm afraid I might die of alcohol poisoning. Seriously, she doesn't stop. It's like nails grating on a chalkboard in Hell. Finally, Harry shows up in his goblin outfit, and he and Peter proceed to enact every single horrible buddy action-movie cliché in short order. Peter lovingly telling Harry that "It's good to see you, buddy" as they make up? Check. Harry telling Peter that he's "Kind of busy over here!" while facing down Marko by himself? Check. Linking arms and then swinging around to kick the opponent your friend was fighting a la Jackie Chan/Chris Tucker? Check. After about 15 minutes of flying around Marko, Harry finally remembers his Sand Monster Obliteration Missiles, which do their job and crumble Marko to dust. You might wonder why he didn't use them earlier, but don't. It'll only make your head hurt. Harry then turns to help Peter, who's being beaten like a red-headed stepchild by Brock. After a few more minutes of furious battling, Brock steals Harry's snowboard and prepares to deliver a fatal blow to Peter with its jagged edges. Things look grim for our intrepid hero, until Harry leaps out of nowhere and takes his own evil snowboard to the chest, saving Peter! Brock then unceremoniously throws Harry out of a window to crash into the ground 100 feet below them, but Peter, fueled by the rage over his friend's apparent death, gains the upper hand when he remembers that the alien slime hates loud noises. He traps Brock in a circle of steel bars, and then beats on them with another steel bar until the ringing noise is too much for the costume to bear. He pulls Brock out while the suit is going into space convulsions, and then throws a pumpkin grenade into it. Brock, not willing to lose the power and sweet revenge he was so close to obtaining, decides that his best course of action is to leap in after the bomb. This doesn't work out very well for him, and he winds up getting vaporized along with the black goo.

Whew. So, the climactic battle of good versus evil is over, with justice, as always, prevailing. Sure, there were casualties on both sides, but the important thing is that the tide of darkness that was two guys with lame vendettas against Spider-man has been averted. You'd think that the first thing Peter would do is go check on his friend who was impaled on sharp spikes and then thrown out of a building while saving his life, but no. Harry lies on the ground outside and slowly bleeds to death while Peter has a heartfelt conversation with a surprisingly un-obliterated Marko. Marko tells him that he's not really a bad guy, just misunderstood in a giant bank-robbing sand monster kind of way. Oh, and that he did shoot his uncle, but it was totally not on purpose. Peter forgives him, and Marko drifts away on the soft summer night's breeze.

So that's it. There are a few incidental mop-up events, like Harry's funeral and Peter and MJ getting back together, but the best part of the finale is when the credits start to roll. If you're a comic book fan, you'll have to see this movie just because it's Spider-man, but if you're not, I wouldn't really bother, unless you want to go and laugh at how bad it is.

Why Philadelphia Sucks, Featuring The Mystery Of Barry - 04/26/07

2007-07-23T09:12:00.000-07:00

I was recently given the opportunity to go the wonderful city of Philadelphia on a business trip. When I say "business trip", I'm making this sound much more important than it actually was. I was flown there for two days so that I could learn how to use an instrument that measures lung capacity, which, on the surface, sounds perfectly reasonable, until I explain that the way this device works is by having the patient blow into it. That's all. That's all you do. I mean, sure, it's all computerized, and reports the data directly back to the company and maybe fries an egg or something just for fun, but that's still all there is to it. The patient takes a deep breath, then exhales. I wasn't about to turn down two days off from work to travel, so I wisely didn't point out the sheer stupidity of flying someone relatively far away and putting them up in a nice hotel just so you could show them how to blow into a tube, and I soon found myself in the middle of the City of Brotherly Love.

Philadelphia is a dirty city. I apologize to anyone reading this that's from there, or lives there, or simply appreciates it in a historical sense. But it's fucking filthy. And I don't mean it's dirty in the sense that there's trash everywhere, because there's surprisingly few cigarette butts, fast food wrappers, or any of the other usual debris you see rolling around the streets of a major metropolitan area. It just has this sense of underlying griminess, a sort of weird filmy substance that seems to coat everything. I know that it's old; really old, but I've never seen a city that's been around for hundreds of years actually look like it's been around for hundreds of years to such a great degree.

Due to the totally useless nature of my trip, I had a bunch of time to kill, so I decided to wander the streets to see what I could see. I'd been there in the past with my dad, but that was back when I was a lot younger, and at the time I was much more concerned with making sure my Optimus Prime action figure stopped Serpentor's diabolical plot of world domination than my father's earnest attempts to get me to appreciate my nations history. The hotel that I was staying at was on Market Street and literally a block over from City Hall, so I figured that such a central location would be an ideal place to start my adventures.

But when I got about halfway there, I realized that I didn't have any specific destination in mind to go next. The hazy recollections of my youth weren't going to help, and I had done absolutely no research whatsoever on potential tourist spots prior to boarding the plane. I seemed to recall that there was a large bell somewhere that was important, and I think the Declaration of Independence was transcribed here after a burning Englishman spoke to Ben Franklin or something. Oh, and I remembered that part in "Rocky" where Sylvester Stallone ran up a bunch of stairs and screamed something to the heavens about winning an arm-wrestling championship that was also somehow synonymous with his son's love. Or maybe I'm getting my movies mixed up, I don't know.

I also apparently had to, at some point, purchase and consume a cheesesteak.

Cheesesteaks are another reason I'm glad I don't live in Philadelphia. Can you imagine what it must be like to have a greasy sandwich be the most recognizable thing associated with your city? I know, I know. There's history here too. But that's actually the sad part. I can guarantee that if you walked up to a group of five random strangers anywhere else in America and said the word "PHILLY!" followed by an expectant pause, four out of five of them would respond (after the awkward silence brought on by having a stranger yell things at them) with the words "CHEESESTEAK!" And I guess you could argue that this is because most Americans are ignorant of their own history and more concerned with eating mass quantities of oily food, but still. I guess it's not entirely our retarded populaces' fault; the city itself doesn't do anything to dispel this perception. There's literally a cart on every single street corner selling "Authentic Philly Cheesesteaks". They're all over the place. I was in the bathroom at the airport washing my hands when all of a sudden, a surly man in an apron came out of nowhere and handed me a piping hot sandwich smothered in cheese and onions. I wasn't hungry, so I had to refuse, but then he looked like he'd get mad if I didn't tip, so I had to give him some money, but all I had was a five, and I didn't want him to have to get change out of his little basket by the sink, so I just gave him the whole five…. It was awkward. I suppose it could be worse; someone could run up and say "PHILLY!", to which everyone would immediately respond with "GOPHER FUCKING!", but it's still not something I'd want the world to immediately think of when someone mentions my city. And before anyone brings up the fact that when someone says "Atlanta", the first thing that comes to people's minds is "racist hillbillies", I've got two words for you: Fuck off. We have chicken and waffles too.

Oh, so yeah. I bought a cheesesteak from a vendor on my way down to Market Street. It was tasty. Not mind blowing or anything, but you know. Good. Sorry.

I got to City Hall, and began to take stock of my situation. I had no map, which was bad, but also had no real idea where I was going, which was good. This way, I rationalized, I couldn't get lost. Not that the map would have really helped. As anyone who's ever tried to go anywhere with me can attest, I suck with directions, possessing absolutely no internal compass whatsoever. For example, the first week I worked at Emory Hospital, one of the janitors found me underneath a staircase in the basement crying because I'd gotten lost for two days and couldn't find my way out. Which may sound ridiculous, but in my defense, it's a big hospital and I was new. I'd also eaten the bag of breadcrumbs I was planning to use as a trail marker for lunch, but you can't blame me for that. Breadcrumbs are delicious.

Despite this handicap, I still love exploring big cities; because while I may lack any sort of basic navigational skills, I make up for this deficiency by having absolutely no shame whatsoever in asking nearby strangers for directions. Seriously, it doesn't matter. Homeless people, old people, bus drivers, street mimes, whatever. Well, maybe not mimes. Clowns really freak me out, and a mime is basically a chalk-white clown wearing a beret that smiles insanely and doesn't speak while contorting their bodies to make it look like they're trapped in an invisible box, all of which is absurdly creepy. So usually when I see a mime, I've either screamed in terror and run away or reflexively bashed them in the face with a shovel before I can finish asking where a particular street is. Fucking mimes. In contrast, I find that homeless people, as long as you give them a dollar or some change or something first, are especially helpful. I mean, it makes sense; they've got nothing else to do besides wander around a city, so it's to be expected that they have an intimate knowledge of how to get from point A to point B. It does make me a little suspicious, though, when their directions include trips through dark alleys or stopovers at abandoned warehouses, but whatever. I'm inherently trusting, and those times that I've followed a hobo's directional advice and gotten mugged are probably just coincidences.

But thankfully, the city of Philadelphia is kind enough to have provisions set up for idiotic tourists such as myself. While I was throwing away the remains of my cheesesteak, I happened to notice something strange. Emblazoned on the top of the trash receptacle was what appeared to be a diagram of some sort. Intrigued, I looked closer, thinking maybe I'd been fortunate enough to stumble across directions that would lead me to a garbage pirate's hidden cache of gold and jewels. Sadly, it turned out to only be a map of the greater downtown area.

Trashcan Map

I'm kind of on the fence about the practical utilities of these trashcan maps. On the one hand, I suppose people are more likely to throw away whatever refuse they're holding as they come closer to figure out where they are, which helps keep the city clean. On the other hand, I was forced to spend an inordinate amount of my time wandering through Philadelphia pausing to stare at the tops of filthy garbage cans, which I'm sure looked to any passers-by like I was trying to carefully pick out the tastiest piece of trash before I reached in and grabbed it. Although if you think that's embarrassing, you should have seen the looks I got when I took out my camera and snapped a picture of one. Even the French tourists were pointing at me and laughing.

So after holding my breath and carefully perusing the helpful trashcan map, I decided on a few vague destinations. I'd go down to the Historic District and wander around until history got boring, and then if I had time, I'd try to find the stairs Rocky immortalized. I wasn't sure exactly where in the city that scene took place; but I figured that due to the massive number of posters and coffee mugs I'd seen plastered with Sylvester Stallone's stroke-victim face, Philadelphia was sufficiently proud enough the movie was shot there to put a gigantic neon walkway or something equally classy that would lead me straight to where I needed to go.

I won't bore you with a description of the Historic District; it was pretty much what you would expect it to be. All the places of note had enormous lines of screaming schoolchildren being chaperoned by surly adults or vacationing families trying to pretend that looking at an old bell was a totally awesome way to bond that I didn't feel like waiting around. I took a bunch of pictures, but these were the only ones that I thought were worth mentioning, and that's only because I have a weird imagination.

Tomb of Franklin! Danger: Mummies!

This is the solemn and distinguished resting place of famed inventor and statesman Ben Franklin. It was nice; it's tucked away in this quiet, unassuming little cemetery and is actually the only part of the entire city that isn't covered with huge statues of Ben holding a kite or inventing science or whatever. The one thing that did intrigue me, though, was that the whole gravesite was absolutely littered with pennies. I understand that it's symbolic and all because of his famous adage that "a penny saved is a penny earned", but he's also on the backside of the hundred, and I didn't see any of them fluttering around. I guess that we as Americans are willing to honor our forefathers by depositing monetary totems dedicated to their memories on their gravesites, but only as long as it's nothing too extravagant. The Egyptians would laugh at us. I threw a quarter down to remind him that even though he electrocuted himself in the name of scientific enlightenment, people still hate his useless little coin and think Washington was way better because he founded America and is worth 24 cents more. Slightly worried that his corpse might still be energized from his experimentation and angry enough to come back to life and try to eat my brains, I quickly dashed around the corner, only to be confronted with this:

Tranny Franklin

See what I mean? Franklin mania. He's everywhere. This one, though, is unique. Most of the statues differ only in what he's doing; the costume remains relatively unchanged: tasteful pantaloons, stylish doublet to hold in the paunch, maybe a tri-corner hat for the ladies. But it looks like this one was commissioned after he died, probably by someone who didn't like him very much and thought it would be funny to have Franklin commemorated in drag.

Next, on to Independence Hall. Once again, there was a long line even though the place was about to close, so I contented myself with wandering around the outside and taking pictures. And I'm glad I did, because I found what is, without a doubt, the best statue in all of Philadelphia. You would think that in front of a building of such importance there would be a statue of George Washington, or Thomas Jefferson, or maybe even Jesus or Santa Claus. But no. Standing proudly outside in the main courtyard, the site where our great nation came together to denounce the tyranny of the hated British and forever establish our democratic freedom, was a statue of "Barry". That's all it said. "Barry".

"Barry"

I was dumbfounded. I mean, this guy was obviously someone important; why else would anybody waste their time carving his likeness out of a huge piece of rock? My mind began to furiously scan through all of the old history lessons I never paid attention to in school, searching for some reference to "Barry". Unfortunately, I soon realized that my years of binge drinking had reduced my scholastic memories to nothing but vaguely stylized Fraggle Rock reruns, which while amusing, were less than helpful. I had to do something. Any minute now, some Japanese tourist was bound to walk up next to me and start asking questions that I would have no idea how to answer. Why wasn't there any more information included besides his first name? Did he win some kind of pre-revolution raffle, where they carved a statue of whatever townsperson hated the British the most? Was he the first person killed when the war started, and no one bothered to get his full demographics? Maybe he was George Washington's retarded brother-in-law, and Martha made her husband erect the statue so that Barry would stop hiding her powdered wigs and playing with George's wooden teeth. No, those were all stupid. Then, out of the corner of my eye, my worst fears were realized: a tiny Asian man with a huge camera and multiple children obediently trailing behind him was approaching. He had the determined look of someone who would be dissatisfied with anything less than a full explanation of Barry's life and role in the history of America, something I was obviously woefully unprepared to relate. Thinking quickly, I pointed behind him and screamed "LOOK OUT!! GODZILLA!!", to which he responded "GODZIRRA?! RO NO!! RUN FOR YOUR RIVES!!", before sprinting off in the opposite direction. It was a close call, but I was safe. I turned back around to ponder the inscrutable riddle that was "Barry". I looked at him from the left. I scratched my head, then looked at him from the right. Still nothing. Sighing in exasperation, I trudged around to the back of the statue, thinking that maybe his ass might hold the key to unraveling his historical mystery. And sure enough, there it was. A small plaque, on the completely wrong side of the statue. It turns out that "Barry" was actually "John Barry", the founder of the U.S. Navy. That was it. How fucking boring is that?

Thoroughly disgusted, I vowed to make my way to the final destination of my pilgrimage and turned my rage onto a middle-aged guy dressed like Paul Revere and waving a bell on one of the street corners:

Me: "Hey, jackass. I'm looking for that place the boxer with Down's Syndrome ran up a bunch of stairs in that movie about boxers. Also, I think Mr. T was there at some point. In the movie, not at the stairs. Am I going in the right direction?"

Fake Paul Revere: "Verily, young master, you are indeed nearly to your journey's end. Follow this thoroughfare over yonder hill, and then—"

Me: "Wait. Stop. God, you're making my ears bleed. Look at yourself. I mean, it's the middle of a Wednesday. So it's not like you're dressing up in a vinyl colonial outfit and prancing around out here because you like history and this is just your cute little hobby. This is actually your job. Does it bother you that your wife sleeps with other men solely due to the shame your profession brings her? Why haven't you killed yourself yet?"

Fake Paul Revere: (hangs head) "I'm already dead inside."

That cheered me up, so walked around until I found a hobo digging around inside one of the trashcan maps, and armed with not only a derelict to give me directions but a map on the back of a garbage bin to confirm it, I quickly found my way to the Philadelphia Museum of Art. It was a long walk, but it was worth it. Directly outside of the museum is a huge statue that attempts to collectively display all of the excitement and wonder that took place during the founding of America.

Chick with sword

Here's a woman crouched over the body of what is presumably her husband, ready to take up his weapon to defend their freedom against the British tyranny.

I'm a shitty photographer

Next, we have a mounted colonial, possibly "Barry", bravely gesturing with his sword point towards the bright and democratic future his beloved country would soon enjoy.

Indian tits

Here we have a picture of some Indian tits, because I, like my forefathers before me, think tits are cool.

Mooseknuckle

This is a mooseknuckle.

And what lay just beyond this massive commemoration to our great nation's history? What else could possibly be included near so noble a monument to the majesty of America?

Adrianne! Yo! And stuff!

It's Rocky! Yay!
I know that the movie was shot here, and it's a great, classic movie and all, but come on. Do you really need to erect a statue of a retarded boxer outside of one of the most historic places in America? Why not just put up a huge sculpture of Will Smith and Bill Pullman in the front lawn of the White House so that we would always remember Independence Day? I tried to run up the steps, hoping that recreating the famous scene would lessen my scorn, but I passed out about halfway up. After regaining consciousness and smoking a cigarette, I slowly made my way to the top. They were doing a whole bunch of construction, so it was kind of hard to recreate the exact scene, but I swear to God there were still about eight idiot people smiling and dancing around with their fists raised while their embarrassed companions quickly took pictures of them. After laughing at a huge overweight woman pretending to be Rocky and almost falling over and breaking her ankle, I trudged back down the steps and began looking for a bum so I could ask directions back to my hotel.

Thus ended my adventures in the magical city of Philadelphia. It had been fun; I'd learned about my nation and now, whenever anybody stopped me on the street to ask me who founded the U.S. Navy, I could look them in the eyes and respond with confidence, "Barry did." So thank you, Philly. You're delicious greasy sandwiches and statues dedicated to both obscure historical figures and movie icons have touched me in a way that I'm sure I'll never feel again, at least until I go to a city that's slightly cleaner.

WARNING: THIS BLOG CONTAINS 0% HILARITY. ALSO, A FULL HELPING OF FIBER - 03/12/07

2007-07-23T09:10:00.000-07:00

So as the title to this blog suggests, it is not funny. After writing however many of these posts that I have, I've realized that I kind of enjoy writing. My mom tells me that I'm good at it, so I must be because she never lies, but writing funny stuff really isn't that hard for me. Honestly, everything that I've written so far has basically been transcribed by the tiny dwarf that lives inside my brain and then typed out verbatim. If you're curious, his name is Trevor, and yes, he's available for parties.

Anyway.

A couple of weekends ago, I had the privelage of being flown to Vegas by a drug company who, for some reason, had decided that if they spent lots of money on me, I would return to Atlanta and furiously campaign for their groundbreaking new cancer treatment. Which I would totally do, except that I'm not nearly far enough up in the oncology chain of command to do anything remotely like that. I mean, it's a good treatment, and I think we should start doing it, but I have a degree in history, what the fuck do I know? So the weekend ended up being an awesome mix of meetings, drinking, and gambling, not neccessarily in that order or exclusive to just one at a time.

While there, I started thinking about writing, and how I really had no idea if I was capable of expressing anything besides my mocking disdain for celebrities or my paradoxical love for the guy with the Emo haircut on Heroes. I was bored on the plane ride back, and since Noel and I had already proved our superior intelligence to the uninterested guy sitting next to us by finishing the crossword puzzle in the back of the SkyMall catalogue, I wrote a story. I've never really written anything like this before (except for that one time in fifth grade when I won a Rotary Club contest with a two page essay on the majesty of banannas or something), so if it sucks balls, please tell me.

This is a story about the power of a gesture. You know what a gesture is, don't you? The pointing of a finger, a wave of the hand; a twitch, a flutter, a shrug. But How, I hear you thinking, Can a gesture have any kind of power? A gesture is nothing, an involuntary firing of neural pathways resulting in a barely noticeable movement. You are thinking this, and people who know about these things are looking at you with scorn, because you are wrong, as wrong as wrong can be.

There was a time when everyone knew and feared and respected the power in a gesture. Back when the world was new, the right person in the right place at the right time could summon a God or banish a Devil with nothing more than a flick of their fingers; and there were men who walked the Earth who could wave their hands and part the mightiest of seas. But soon people began to forget, as people do, and the power of gestures gradually faded away. They retained their symbolic authority, of course; such as when men who wore laurels of ivy like crowns upon their heads decided if someone lived or died by motioning with their thumbs, or when religious fanatics used an outstretched finger to indicate which of the towns women would be burned alive for witchcraft.

But where did this power go? It is an inherent rule of the universe we live in that energy can be neither created nor destroyed, but merely transferred from one place to another. This means that it is still there; we have just forgotten how to see it. Would you like to learn how? It's easy, you just have to know when and where to look.

There is a city in the middle of a desert, a city more or less the color of electricity, which blinks and glitters and pulses amidst the red waste of the barren land around it. It resembles a beautiful plastic rose in the lapel of a dead man's jacket; pleasing to the eye but ultimately false and smelling vaguely of decay, and there is no better place in the entire world to witness the power of a gesture. The particular place that we are going to observe is off the beaten path, you could say; in a room far away from the hustle and bustle and bright lights of the games of chance offered to the general public. You must know people who know other people to play the game offered in this room, as the game is simple but the stakes are high; they are as high as the person playing wants them to be.

The room is completely empty except for a small horseshoe-shaped table directly in the center, with a high silver chair sitting in front of it. There is a woman standing behind the table; her white tuxedo shirt is starched and immaculate, and the cone of harsh light that frames her makes it glow. Her face is beautiful but cold, like an ancient statue carved from marble or granite. Her fingers are quick and deft, and if she wanted to, she could rearrange a randomly shuffled deck of cards by number or suit in four seconds without looking. She doesn't want to at this moment, but the knowledge that she could is still impressive. She has been staring at the man sitting across from her since he sat down, and she hasn't blinked her eyes once. The effect is supposed to be unnerving, and it might be. Her hand has moved like a liquid snake four times to send cards spinning across the table with unerring precision, and when she does this, her arm is the only part of her entire body that moves.

So now there are two cards in front of the man, and these cards are decorated with cryptic numbers and symbols. If one were to combine these numbers and symbols, the result would be a different, higher number, for this is the nature of addition. Because she doesn't want to feel left out, there are also two cards in front of the woman, but only one of her cards is visible.

The man's hand is resting on the edge of the table, with his first two fingers poised and ready to tap. If he does, the woman's arm will move faster than thought and another card will appear before him, to be added to the value of his current cards. If this number is greater than another particular number, he will automatically lose and she will win. There is a number that describes the probability that this will happen. If the mans number does not exceed that other particular number, or if he had initially laid those two fingers down flat on the table instead of tapping them, the woman will flip over her unrevealed card and other options will present themselves. If the value of her two cards together is greater than the value of his two cards, she will win and he will lose. There is yet another number that describes the probability that this will happen. If the value of her two cards is less than the value of his two cards, she will make more cards dance in front of her until her collection of numbers and symbols is greater than his. But wait! If this value exceeds that other particular number, she will lose and he will win. There is still yet another number that describes the probability that this will happen.

As you can see, there are a great deal of numbers involved in this game, and as they float and zoom through the realms of probability, their powers (for everyone knows that numbers are powerful and terrifying things) grow and become chained to the raised fingers of the man at the table. So in this potential gesture already is the chaotic essence of chance itself, building in pressure and rage for the mans fingers to move, to release it, to freeze the burning flux of uncertainty that is so hated by the cold finality of logical numbers.

That's some powerful stuff.

And this isn't even the half of it.

There is still this mans personal power; the power of his history, of the situation, of cause. Of why he's here in this dark room at this specific time and what it will mean to him if he wins or loses. There is the power of the other people who will be affected when his fingers make their tiny gesture and the woman's slender hand gently slams her face-down card over with a noise like a silent thunderclap.

For example:

Maybe he is a meek and unattractive man, who is married to a woman so beautiful that on their wedding day, even his own mother had to question why the woman was marrying him. The man has made a large amount of money by successfully manipulating the nebulous world of international finance, but is convinced that his wife loves him for more than the material things he is able to provide for her. But maybe today he found out that she had been having an affair with the man he was always afraid she would have an affair with, that handsome man she works with who makes her laugh but who she always insisted was just a friend. He had to go back home that morning because he forgot his briefcase, and when he got there he went upstairs because he heard strange noises, and his feet are moving him towards their bedroom and he wants to stop because he knows what he's going to see but he can't and then he watches them but they don't see him and then he goes back downstairs and he gets in his car and he leaves. And the man doesn't know where he's driving to or what he's doing until he's somehow arrived at a city in the middle of the desert. And he meets someone who sees the look in his eyes and takes him to that room to play a game and as his fingers are poised to tap or lay down flat he realizes he's decided that if he loses, he's going to go back and talk to his wife, and tell her that he forgives her, and that he's loved her since before he even knew what the word love meant. And then he realizes he's decided that if he wins, he's going to take the money the woman across the table will give him, and he's going to spend it all on a gun, and then he's going to go back to his house and after screaming and howling out all of his pain and rage and jealousy, he's going to shoot his wife five times before putting the barrel in his mouth and pulling the trigger. And his palm is dry and his fingers are steady and he is about to gesture.

Or:

Maybe he is a confidence man, a man who is able to ease his way through life like a snake through an oily tube by using the trust and gullibility of others for his own benefit. This man is likeable, and friendly, and has a smile that could power the electrical grid of a small town. If you met him, you wouldn't think twice about buying him lunch and lending him your car (he said he'd be right back), and you won't even realize that your girlfriend was still sitting in the passenger seat as he peels away laughing. The city in the middle of the desert is a Mecca for someone like him; there are people here with money who have no business having money, and are only too glad to part with it. And although the man has had no formal schooling and couldn't tell you, for example, the average rainfall in the Amazon basin, he can do things with cards that make him seem like he's made of magic. This particular time, he had chosen to tell everyone that he was a visiting prince from a faraway land who of course had no experience in these types of card games but would be more than happy to be taught how. He had only a small amount of money on his person, as there had been a mix-up with his bank statements and passports and other things that he as a prince did not have the time to worry about, but his title and reputation and charm were enough to get him into one of the richest of games with the most important of people. As he kept winning, and winning, and winning some more, one of the other men at the table became angrier and more suspicious, and when the prince who wasn't really a prince stated that he had to take his winnings and leave to go attend to princely matters (you know how these things are, affairs of state, don't hold up the game on account of my leaving, etc.), the angry man grabbed him and searched him, finding a number of other cards that if added to the ones already in play would make the total number in the deck significantly higher than 36. Normally in a situation like this, the angry man would have taken the prince who was not really a prince into a dark room with very good insulation and plastic tarps on the floor, as he was the brother of one of the men who ran the games and considered a very dangerous individual by those people who knew about these sorts of things. He had eyes that were bright and sharp and cocaine crazy, and he had done things to those who had similarly cheated his brother that would impress even the most hardened of criminals with their creativity. But such was the eloquence and charm of the prince who was not really a prince that the angry man found himself seeing his point of view, and how it really would be much more dramatic if he were given the chance to play the ultimate game, with the prince who wasn't really a prince's life as the wager. So now the confidence man sits at the table across from the woman, and he is confident, man, that as soon as his fingers move, his life will change forever. If he wins and is allowed to live, he thinks he'll go back West, and find the girl that he left all those years ago before she found out who he really was, and who he couldn't bring himself to swindle back then and who he can't stop thinking about now. Of course, if he loses, the angry man is standing outside of the room with murder in his heart and a gun in his hands, and will take him away to make sure that he suffers horrifically before he dies. And his palm is dry and his fingers are steady and he is about to gesture.

Or:

Maybe he is a man who is really more of a father, with a daughter who was born six years ago last month and who is, as the saying goes, the apple of her fathers eye. He doesn't make much money working in the warehouse, but he dotes on her, and tries to give her everything she's ever wanted, and is so full of pride and love for her that it's a wonder he doesn't pop like a cork every time he looks at her. But two months ago she began to get sick, with a cough that sounded like it belonged in the lungs of an old man who had smoked three packs of unfiltered cigarettes every day since he was twelve. He took her to their family doctor, and that doctor did not know what to do, so the man took her to other doctors, who wrote notes and ran tests and shook their heads and looked down at their white coats when they told him that she was going to die. Despairing, he read as much as he could about her condition, and began to look overseas for any conceivable way to save her. And then he found one doctor in France, who was the worlds leading expert on this particular disease, and had written a great many important papers that had been very well received by those few smart enough to know what he was talking about. He was offering a highly controversial but so far effective treatment regiment at his clinic in Paris, and the man who was really more of a father was overjoyed. He called this doctor on the telephone, and after trying to make himself understood to a receptionist who only spoke very fast French and very poor English, he managed to get the doctor and tell him what was wrong with his daughter. The doctor listened sympathetically, and told the man that he of course was very sorry about his daughter's condition, but that he could not accept his American health insurance, and that this treatment was incredibly expensive as well as time consuming. The man despaired, because even if he sold everything he owned, he could not afford to continue paying for the treatment if he was not able to work, which he of course couldn't do if he was in Paris. He confided in one of his coworkers at the warehouse, a man that some said had dealings with people who were less than reputable. His coworker told him that if the man who was really more of a father was willing, he could talk to an acquaintance that had a contemporary who could get the man into a particular game of chance in a city that was in the middle of the desert. The man agreed, and sold his house and his car and the ring he had given to his wife before she died and now as he's sitting there at the table across from the woman, the fact that he could lose everything doesn't even cross his mind, because he knows, deep down in his heart (or maybe it's in his soul) that he's going to win and take his daughter to Paris and she'll be cured and they'll spend the rest of their days in the sun on the west bank of the Seine. But then there's that other little voice, the one that lives even deeper down in a tiny crack and that everyone has no matter how much hope is in them, and it's saying that when he finally decides to move his fingers, he's going to lose and the only thing in his life that he's going to be left with is the prospect of watching his daughter die slowly and painfully in a dirty hospital bed. And his palm is dry and his fingers are steady and he is about to gesture.

None of these stories are true. Wait, the first one is. Or maybe it's the third. No, was it the second? It doesn't matter; it is irrelevant, inconsequential, immaterial. All that matters is that in this room in a city in the middle of the desert, there is so much energy collected from the emotions of the man involved and harnessed together by the chains of probability and the furious desire of numbers to once again be ordered as they were meant to be that the very air feels like it's crackling with what could well be pure nuclear fission.

The man does not feel it; or if he does, he simply does not care. But in some primal way he must know that when he makes his gesture, this power is going to come hurtling down like a comet made of dynamite thrown from the arm of a particularly vengeful and very angry god.

But his palm is dry and his fingers are steady, and the man at the table smiles like a knife and his fingers move in the tiniest of ways and in that room in a city in the middle of the desert everything comes rushing together and the power explodes with a fury beyond description and in that one moment everything in the entire world has changed but if you look around you realize that nothing has really changed at all.

And that is the power of a gesture.

Why I Love Music, Featuring Cowboy Troy - 03/01/07

2007-07-23T09:03:00.000-07:00

I love music. Love it. All kinds, all styles, all genres. I get goosebumps when I hear the violin kick in during the Vox cover of Pachabel's Canon, and have been known to cry when I hear bagpipes because they remind me of a funeral I went to once. Despite this passion, I had not, until very recently, jumped upon the iPod bandwagon. Well, you couldn't really say that I "jumped". It was more like I was picked up and forcibly thrown by my girlfriend. She bought me an iPod Shuffle for Christmas, and despite the fact that I had told her before that I didn't really want one, she had the good sense to know that I'm an idiot and that this would be a perfect gift for someone that truly enjoys music. The only reason that I hadn't gotten one previously, other than laziness, was that I couldn't really think of any time I'd actually use it. It's been a general rule of mine that I only run if things are chasing me, like zombies or the police, which usually only happens once or twice a month, so using it while jogging was out. I didn't think that I'd use it much at work, because I'm only actually at my desk for about an hour at a time, and I didn't want something like this to happen while I was seeing patients:

Dr. McCancercure: "Mr. Patterson, I'm afraid I have some bad news. The results of your CT scan show that you have lung cancer. It's malignant. You have less than a year to live."

Mrs. Patterson: "Oh...oh my God! Jim! No!"

Mr. Patterson: "There, there, Mabel. Don't worry. We'll get through this. I just have to hang in there until little Suzie's college graduation. I...I promised her I'd be there."

Dr. McCancercure: "Fortunately, here at Emory, we have several cutting-edge experimental treatments available for people with your type of horrible, incurable disease. This is Austin Hamilton, from the clinical trials department. He's going to discuss your options with you. Austin?"

Me: (using a tongue depressor as a microphone) "DON'T!....STOP!....THINKIN' ABOUT TOMORROW!!"

Dr. McCancercure: "Um...Austin?"

Me: (taking out iPod earbuds mid air-guitar solo) "What? Oh. Right. Cancer. Yeah, I was just demonstrating through the power of song that you, uh, totally shouldn't give up hope, and always think about tomorrow. The tomorrow where you're still alive, that is, thanks to our awesome cancer treatments! "

Ha ha! I kid, but yeah, my job can be depressing. So anyway, I never really thought I'd use an iPod even if I had wanted to go out and spend however much money they are on one.

But now that I have one, I'm inseparable from it. I have become That Guy. If you've ever ridden in a car with me, you know that if I'm driving, I begin playing air drums on the steering wheel once a song comes on, and will not stop until the car has been turned off. With an iPod blasting music directly into my ears, the desire to frantically play invisible instruments is increased by about a thousandfold. At the gym, for example. I forget that while I might think in my mind that I look like an incredible badass lifting weights while listening to The Soprano's theme, no one else can hear it but me. I've gotten some really dirty looks from people that I've accidentally kicked in the face while doing a furious aerial split at the end of a guitar solo, and anyone trying to exit the gym gets highly annoyed when it takes them 10 minutes to leave because I think I'd look cooler walking out to whatever song I'm listening to in slow motion.

My musical tastes are fairly varied, and because I can play several instruments I think that I can definitely appreciate songs on a technical level as well as a purely auditory one. Well, let me clarify that. When I say that I "play" several instruments, I'm not being entirely accurate. I played saxophone until the ninth grade, when I realized that despite everything my band teacher had told me, playing a woodwind with mediocre skill won't really get you laid. So I promptly learned to play guitar, with the rationale being that if the ugly little toad frontman from Green Day can bang groupies while playing the same three power cords over and over, then hey, so could I! Unfortunately, every other male at my high school had the same idea, and they were all much better than I was. Undeterred, I decided to learn how to play bass, figuring that this way, I could at least be in a band, and maybe get some of the girls that the lead singer and guitarist had decided they didn't want. I've noticed that bands approach recruiting a bass player with one of two methods: they either get someone who's really good, and legitimately contributes to the rhythm with a unique and distinguishable bass line, but isn't much to look at. Like Flea, from the Chili Peppers. He's incredible, but looks kind of like an anthropomorphic weasel hopped up on meth. Or, if the rest of the band is ugly, they get someone who doesn't look like they've been obsessively honing their musical genius in between playing Dungeons & Dragons in their parents basement, but will look good featured prominently on the cover of a CD. I, of course, would fall in to the latter category: no appreciable musical talent, but would look hot in a black and white photograph pensively smoking a cigarette under a bridge in Berlin. Sadly, I was unable to use my looks to coast into a career as a musician, and ended up having to sell my bass after my sophomore year in college so that I'd have money for gas to drive home for the summer. But bass players are still one leg up in the band hierarchy from the drummer, which is unfortunate, because I honestly think playing the drums takes way more skill. One of my best friends is a drummer, and watching him play is fucking amazing. I guess being able to coordinate all four of your limbs to move at completely different tempos and beats is just an innate skill, because every time that I've tried to play on his set, it sounds more like a drunk hobo falling into a pile of metal trash cans than anything even remotely harmonic. And they still get no recognition. Go ahead, name one famous drummer. See? You can't. The only one that I can think of is the guy from Def Lepard, and that's really only because he's missing an arm. I've never seen them live, so I don't know how he actually manages to play, but I'm assuming he makes up for his limb deficiency by repeatedly smashing his face into the cymbals with uncanny rhythm and precision. Oh, and the drummer from Guster, but that's because I was really impressed by the fact that he plays the drums using his bare hands, and when I saw them once in college, he actually managed to shatter his cymbal and send a jagged piece of it hurtling into the crowd, narrowly missing my left eye and coming to rest lodged in the skull of the girl behind me. The fact that there was blood everywhere and she wouldn't stop screaming surprisingly didn't lessen how cool it was. I mean, he broke a cymbal with his bare hands! That's just awesome.

So yeah, I think that I have fairly good taste in music. I've always liked punk, but not real punk, because that sounds like listening to cats being tortured and then replayed at high speeds while a retarded monkey screams in your ear. More like the Bad Religion, NOFX types of punk. Punk that doesn't really have its roots in anarchy and political commentary, but is more concerned with skateboards and hanging out at the mall. I went through a phase in college where I thought it was cool to go to large warehouses wearing pants that completely obscured my feet and dance with highschoolers dressed like butterflies to music that a British guy made on his laptop, which is always fun. Right now, I guess the best way to describe what I like is by saying that it's "Indie" rock, although I'm uncomfortable with that term. I almost feel bad admitting that I really like, for example, the Wallflowers, just because back in the day they enjoyed some amount of mainstream popularity. I mean, it's kind of a catch-22; if a band is actually really good, they'll get noticed, picked up by a major label, and you'll start hearing their songs during the Rick, Pancho and Slappy morning show on the radio. If they're not, they'll fade into obscurity. For example, I've liked Fallout Boy and Panic At the Disco for years, but it's only been recently that they've become hugely popular with angsty teenagers who wear makeup and cry because they aren't allowed to drive their parents Subaru after midnight. And this has, in a sense, ruined those bands for me. I mean, I'm certainly not going to go see one of their shows now, not only because of the high ticket price, but because I'll be the oldest person there by about 10 years and don't want to have to keep sneaking drinks from the bar to surly highschoolers. This does make me wonder, though, what my own musical taste will be like in 15 years. When I look at my parents musical collections, it's like a switch was thrown during a certain year and they didn't even know that people were still making music after that point. Maybe it was when I was born; I was probably a terrible baby, and my parents just didn't have the time to buy records or tapes or whatever because they were always taking me to the doctor after I'd shoved a crayon into my nose or tried to stick my hand in a blender. But one of the things I truly love about music is finding new bands that I like, and because I can illegally download as many songs as I want, I can go ahead and check out the band that a friend said was good without worrying about wasting eighteen dollars on a CD that will end up only having one track that I enjoy. Maybe this is the difference; back then, you actually had to go see a band in concert to know that you liked them, or buy one of their albums so that you could listen to it. I'm sure that even as I write this, Lars Ulrich has risen from his dark throne of human skulls and ordered his elite Music Reclamation Gestapo to ride forth and have me killed for piracy, but whatever. The point is, I don't think that all of a sudden, I'll wake up and say "Well! I'm 40 now! Guess I'd better stop listening to all of that innovative and easily obtainable music that I love!" If anything, I'll probably listen to it more, as music will be my only escape from the harpy-like shrieks of my future wife, in addition to calming me down when I want to throw my child out of a window because it won't stop crying. My impeccable taste is helped, of course, by the fact that I surround myself with friends who also have good taste in music. Take Lee, for example. If it will make you cry and came out before 1998, Lee is your man. He introduced me to the Wedding Present last year at a show at the Earl, and I can honestly say that it was one of the best performances I've ever been to. Or Ryan. "Ryan," I'll say, "Have you heard that new song by the Silversun Pickups? Noel played it for me last week and it's awesome". After casually tossing his scarf over his shoulder, he'll reply "I heard about them like a year ago, dude. I stopped listening to them when I realized their Myspace page had more than 100,000 views. I've moved on. Have you heard of the Orphins? No? Didn't think so. Check them out; they're good." Even Ian will occasionally surprise me by downloading a bunch of songs by some new band that he heard on NPR, although I have to admit that having him earnestly tell me that he really enjoys running while listening to My Chemical Romance was pretty funny.

The one musical style that I'm not really that in to is Country. I don't know why, but hearing a man with a twangy accent lament about how his wife shot the dog and then wrecked his pickup before running off with a fieldhand doesn't appeal to me. I've remained largely ignorant of any happenings in the Country music world, except maybe for when the fat Dixie Chick took a break from eating to announce that she thought the president was an idiot. Which was stupid of her, as the main demographic for her shitty warbling are the people responsible for electing him into power in the first place, but I thought the fact that everyone made a big deal out of it was amusing. Recently, however, I've become aware of a new element in the genre, one that I stumbled upon purely by accident. See, normally when I get home, I throw on CNN so that I have some background noise while I go through the mail, change, and reassure my frantic idiot dog that it's really me that's walked through the door and not some kind of robot imposter wearing my skin. I've had to stop with the CNN, however, as I get home right at the same time that Lou Dobbs Tonight comes on. His show is terrible, because all he's done in the last few months is talk about illegal immigration and how Mexicans are slowly killing our country. Seriously, Lou Dobbs hates Mexicans. HATES them. I think that Lou Dobbs honestly believes that the Mexican people are the root of every single problem that we as a society face in the world today:

Semi-attractive Anchorwoman: "And that was an Indian guy in a labcoat with the latest research, showing with incontrovertible proof that Global Warming is real and will one day kill us all. Terrifying! Ha ha ha! Coming up next on CNN, Lou Dobbs Tonight. What have you got for us, Lou?"

Lou Dobbs: "Tonight, I'll be discussing the hidden Mexican/Nazi/terrorism connection: is Osama bin Laden really a Mexican Hitler who's traveled forward in time to destroy America? The truth will shock you! Also, I'm going to drink a fifth of gin and then go indiscriminately fire a handgun into a crowd of migrant workers while screaming ethnic slurs and crying, live on the air! Don't miss it."

Really, his show has degenerated into this. It's sad. Anyway, I don't like watching a fat, jowly old man turn purple from his bigoted rage, so I've been putting on USA when I get home instead. This isn't much better, as I'm forced to watch Vincent D'Onofrio solve mysteries by twitching and stuttering at a suspect until they confess on Law & Order CI, but it's still better and less disturbing than Lou Dobbs' unbridled hate for immigrants. Also on USA, they have a show called Nashville Star, which I guess is kind of like TV sensation American Idol, only the contestants have sillier hats and less teeth. I've never actually seen the show, but all of the commercials prominently feature the two hosts, and this is where my interest was piqued. One of the hosts is Jewel, the folk-rock starlet who's pretty hot until she opens up her mouth and reveals her terrifying snaggletoothed maw. The other host is what appears to be a black man dressed like a gay cowboy. I'll admit that I'm not what you would call an authority on Country music fashion, but even I can tell that his getup is magnificently hideous. His gold belt buckles are typically the size of a large dinner plate, and sometimes he's wearing a checked scarf or bandanna or something around his neck, maybe with a bolo thrown in for good measure. His hats could easily be turned upside down in the event of a flood and be used as a makeshift canoe for both him and several small children. Seriously, it's like the costume room from Howdy Doody went blind and threw up all over him. The first time I saw a commercial for the show, I was curious about this guy. Then I saw him again in a commercial for Sonic fast food, where he was still dressed in his retarded cowboy uniform, but trying to think up lines for what kind of sounded like a rap song. It was here that I also learned his name: "Cowboy Troy". So who was he? Where had he come from? Was he really a black cowboy rapper? I came to two possible conclusions. The first was that the network executives, in an effort to make their show more diverse, had kidnapped some random black guy and his family and were threatening to kill them unless he pretended to be a cowboy on a nationally syndicated show about hopeful musicians trying to break into the Country music scene. This didn't seem likely, so I went with my second scenario: that this guy was actually an aspiring musician named Steve, but couldn't get his break in whatever genre he was struggling in. He then went to his agent, and they sat down to have a brainstorming session:

Steve: "I just don't understand it. I've been performing at local venues and releasing my own independent records for two years now, and I'm still no closer to getting signed. What am I doing wrong?"

Agent: "Well, Steve, the music industry is absolutely flooded with artists these days. What you need is a hook; something catchy, something that makes you stand out in a crowd."

Steve: "Like what?"

Agent: "Like...like, I don't know...maybe you could be the frontman of a band that sings nothing but thrasher anthems about how great lawnmowers are. Ooh, or maybe you could be a rapper who only wears and rhymes about the color yellow. Wait, what about "DJ I-PEN", a house DJ who only spins beats arranged in iambic pentameter? The kids would love that."

Steve: "No, no. Those just don't feel right."

Agent: "Well, we could always dress you up like a cowboy and have you rap country songs."

Steve: "Hmmm....."

Agent: "Actually, Steve, I was kidding."

Steve: "No no, wait, it'll be perfect! Totally unique! Nobody will see it coming!"

Agent: "Steve, as your agent, and more importantly as a friend who cares about you, I feel obligated to point out that the vast majority of the population that likes Country music have ancestors that used to dress up in white hoods and hang your people from trees. This might not be the best demographic for you."

Steve: "I'll be fine. This'll be great! I'll be spanning both musical and cultural divides with my non-threatening and slightly comical appearance! Wait, I need a new name. Something that rolls off the tongue, but also reminds people that I'm a rapping black cowboy. You know, in case they close their eyes and forget."

Agent: "Sigh....Uh, how about, I don't know...Cowboy Steve?"

Steve: "No, no, it has to flow better. Should it rhyme? Maybe it should rhyme. I mean, my stage name when I was in a band was "Brock Rocker", and everyone liked that."Cowboy Floyd?" No, that's stupid. What about...hmmm...Wait, I've got it! From this point forward, I shall be known as "Cowboy Troy!" Get me wardrobe! I need huge belt buckles shaped like Texas and a hat large enough to store several oversized dictionaries!"

Please be aware that I have nothing against rapping black cowboys; I would make fun of anyone dressed like this regardless of if they were white, yellow, red, or blue. I just think it's a bold move, and one that I don't think any other black musician has taken before. It's the same principle as Eminem; for the most part, I think white people trying to rap look ridiculous, but it's neat to see people say "You know what? I know that this particular genre is typically identified with this particular race, but fuck it. I'm good at it, so why I shouldn't I perform it?" Since I really was curious, I turned to Wikipedia, which I'm convinced will one day become the repository for all human knowledge, for the real story. The ballad of Cowboy Troy is actually pretty cool. It turns out he's just a guy from Texas, who, after getting a degree in psychology from UT, decided to start a music career. He's been performing since 1988, and actually enjoys a large degree of popularity in the Country music world. He describes his unique style as "Hick-hop", which is fairly retarded, but whatever. You have to admire a guy who's willing to face not only ostracization from other members of his race (I'm assuming most hip-hop artists aren't asking him appear on their albums) as well as potential hostility from the people he's trying to sell records to based solely on the color of his skin. Good for you, Cowboy Troy. You're a perfect example of what makes music great.

Why Most Commercials Are Terrible, Featuring Insane GM Salesmen - 02/06/07

2007-07-23T08:57:00.000-07:00

It was Superbowl Sunday this last weekend, that wonderful time of year when the absolute best of our nation's gridiron champions test their skills against one another in a grueling physical confrontation to determine who will be the greatest football team in the world. Well, not the world. Mostly America. And just until next year. As anyone who knows me can attest, I'm really not that into football. It's not that I don't like watching large, muscular men in skintight clothing getting sweaty and jumping into piles on top of each other, it's just that I can't muster up enthusiasm for something that has absolutely no effect on my life whatsoever. I don't know if this is a reflection of how self-absorbed I am, but I honestly can't think of any trend that I follow with the degree of obsessivness that some of my friends display with sports. Don't get me wrong, I scream with joy every time I read that there's a new Harry Potter book coming out, and I attended the midnight premiere of Revenge of the Sith dressed like a Robot Jedi (thus combining two things which are awesome; namely, robots and Jedi.) But once the initial euphoria passes, that's it. I don't compulsively check websites every day to make sure J.K. Rowling hasn't been kidnapped by evil wizards because her books are getting too close to the truth, or to see if there's been inside information leaked about how George Lucas plans to further ruin the Star Wars franchise by re-releasing the movies and adding even more annoying CGI space muppets. Maybe it's sad that I don't have things I'm that passionate about in my life, but if the alternative is to be forced to care that "hulking man-ogre #1" was purchased like a pack of cigarettes from "team with racially insensitive name #4", then I don't really care. I guess that there are varying degrees of fandom; for example, one of the only reasons that I ever watch sports with my friends at all is to laugh while Country Mike screams incoherently and throws beer cans at the TV. And that's fine; he gets into the game, and maybe part of him honestly believes that if he yells loud enough, the quarterback will be able to magically sense his devotion with the power of his mind and kick another homerun past the goalie or whatever. But then there's the totally opposite end of the spectrum; like the insane fanaticism that prompts Oakland Raiders fans to loot and pillage after what seems like almost every major game their team is involved in. That kind of manic devotion I just don't get; at what point does "Boy! I sure am bummed that my team didn't win the Superbowl!" turn into "Hey! My fucking team lost! I'm going to follow this cinderblock through a window and steal some televisions!" I can't think of anything that would make me so excited that I have to express my enthusiasm by lighting cars on fire, and to be honest, I'm kind of glad that I don't. I think that liking football is something you have to be introduced to at a young age. For example, my dad never really watched sports on TV at all, so I never had the magical experience of rooting for the home team on Sundays, just me and the old man drinking beer and bonding. I tell everyone it's because he's from England, when actually that's just a clever excuse for me to work the fact that I'm half British into the conversation, which I believe totally enhances my sex appeal. This argument would have more credence if my dad liked soccer, because then he could angrily complain about how we stupid yanks took the word "football" and applied it to the wrong sport, right before he yelled "Oi!" and layed someone out with a crippling headbutt. So I didn't grow up watching sports, and I think that's probably the main reason why I don't like them now.

The real reason that I watch the Superbowl is for the commercials. According to the arbitrary numbers I just made up, each second of airtime during the Superbowl costs roughly six hundred trillion dollars, so you would think that every single piece of advertising done during that time would be a work of artistic genius. Sadly, this wasn't the case at all. I mean, there were a few good ones, like the two lions discussing the correct pronunciation of "carne asada" before presumably mauling an antelope to death, or the one with the sad robot who dreams about committing robot suicide because he's not working hard enough for GM. That one is kind of creepy when you think about it; it's basically implying that every single employee of GM is so incredibly loyal to their company that if they mess up and get fired, they'll spiral down into a crippling depression before trying to throw themselves off of a bridge. This actually makes me more hesitant to buy GM products; I mean, what if my particular vehicle is recalled for some minor defect? Based on the commercial, I would drive it back to whatever dealership I bought it from, and be greeted by something like this:

Me: "Um, excuse me? I called earlier. I'm bringing back in my Pontiac Torrent Crossover. Besides having a ridiculously stupid name, it also appears to have a defect that causes the trunk to become unlocked whenever I accelerate past ten miles an hour. I was planning on killing some hookers and using the Pontiac Torrent Crossover's spacious and roomy interior trunk space to my advantage when disposing of the bodies, but you can see the problem if one of them is still alive and the trunk just randomly flies open. It'd be kind of an awkward moment for everyone involved."

GM Manager: "I see. Yes, that most certainly is unacceptable. Please, accept this as a token of my sincerest apologies while we investigate who is responsible for this...this atrocity."

(takes out knife, slices off right pinky finger)
Me: "Oh...Oh my God!! What the fuck did you just do that for?! Jesus Christ!!"

GM Manager (calmly bandaging bleeding hand): "Ah, I believe that we have found the culprit."

(two GM henchman enter, dragging a third employee, kicking and struggling, between them)
GM Henchman 1: "We found him in the North breakroom, sir. Apparently one of the guards failed to properly secure his ankle shackles after his 3 minute lunch break, and the scum escaped before he finished working on the trunk lock."

GM Employee: "NO! AHH!! PLEASE!! FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, HELP ME!!"

GM Manager: "Silence! Your pitiful mewling brings not only further shame upon you, but on your entire family!!"

GM Employee: "AHH!! NO!! NO, I BEG OF YOU, GRANT ME A MERCIFUL DEATH!!"

Me: "Um, you know, all of this isn't really necessary...."

GM Manager: "Ha ha ha! Of course it is, sir. Here at GM, we believe that quality and dedication to our product is the highest priority."

Me: "Yeah, but....I mean...are you all going to, like, kill that guy?"

GM Manager: "Due to his many years of loyal service, I have decided to be lenient and allow him the option of ritual suicide. Although it is more than this piece of sniveling filth deserves."

GM Employee (tears of happiness now streaming down his face): "Oh, thank you sir! I will remember you and your generosity in the afterlife!"

GM Manager: "Take him away."

(Positions knife over left pinky finger)
GM Manager: "Now then, sir, have you been experiencing any other troubles with your GM vehicle?"

Me: "No, I think everything else has been pretty cool. Thanks."

Honestly, who really wants that on their conscience? One of the other funny commercials was for Bud Light, but was only entertaining because it involved people slapping each other in the face, and you really can't go wrong with physical humor. I don't know why we as a society have decided that watching someone fall down a flight stairs is amusing, but I have to admit that I laughed uproariously at the Doritos commercial with a girl faceplanting in front of her car. I guess that if we didn't have this fascination, Bob Sagat's career would have ended much sooner than it did. I'm pretty sure the last two seasons of America's Funniest Home Videos were only variations of "Man Hit in Groin With Object", or maybe "Man Hit in Groin With Object, Falls Over, Is Then Hit in Groin Again, This Time With Heavier Object." And I'm sure that ratings had probably never been higher.

The only other commercial of note was the one with Kevin Federline in it, and I'm amused right now because I honestly can't remember what product it was advertising. It was for a bank or something, right? He's pretending he's in a rap video and has his reality shattered when it turns out he's not actually draped in mink and throwing money around, but working as a fry guy in a fast food restaurant. Then there's some tagline about how life can change quickly, so use our totally safe banking, or something. Awesome. The sheer patheticness of this commercial fascinates me; you can just tell that he's decided to give up any dreams he had of being taken seriously as an artist, and has already consigned himself to pulling in as much cash as he can while people still remember that he's a joke. That's the sad part. Vanilla Ice will go down in musical history as one of the worst things to ever happen to rap music, and he could do a commercial when he's 80 about how goofy he is and it would still resonate. No one's going to remember who the fuck K-Fed even was in the next ten years. The only other thing that I thought about while watching this commercial was thinking how at the end of it, they probably made him give back all of the designer suits and fur coats he was wearing during the shoot, while he stood in a corner in his dirty wifebeater and looked morose.

So these are supposed to be the cream of the advertising crop, the best of the best? Not really. I guess the companies used all of their money to buy the airspace and could only afford a single monkey with a typewriter to script the ads, but come on. Don't get me wrong, they were better than half of the commercials that play during regular broadcast hours. There are two out right now that I find particularly ridiculous. The first is the one for Quizno's delicious new Delectable Italian Whatever sandwich, where they compare it to an inferior yet just-as-rubbery Subway sandwich. The legality of these types of commercials has always kind of intrigued me; I mean, why stop at pointing out that your sandwich is packed with a greater variety of meatlike substances? Why not just tell people that your competition uses discarded third world babies as the stock for its Creamy Ranch Dressing, or seasons its burgers with dirty hobo fingernails? Can you do that? Do they have to go through a rigorous series of blinded scientific studies to determine that their sandwich is, in fact, bigger? That's not the part of the commercial that really gets me, though. Quizno's marketing strategy here involves their "satisfaction guarantee", which states that if you're not completely satisfied with their product, you're eligible to receive another zesty sandwich, free of charge! Yay! Hey, genius, if I wasn't totally satisfied with your greasy faux-lunchmeat the first time, why the fuck would I want you to give me another one, even if it doesn't cost me anything? This is actually a genius plan when you analyze it, because most people, if they're unhappy with their purchase, won't take the trouble to march back into their local eatery and argue with the subhuman counter slave to try and get a free sandwich. Then if they do, an altercation like this will no doubt ensue:

Irate Customer: "Excuse me? I just purchased one of your Delectable Italian Whatever sandwiches, and I have to say, I'm disappointed. The subtle blending of herbs and spices didn't blend quite as magically as I'd hoped in my mouth, the presentation was boring, and I'm pretty sure I bit into what looks like a human tooth."

Subhuman Counter Slave: "Grunt."

Irate Customer: "So anyway, despite my complete disgust with your product, I'd like you to give me another one, only this time, I won't pay for it."

Subhuman Counter Slave: "But you just said you didn't like it."

Irate Customer: "Correct. And that's why I want another one. For free."

Subhuman Counter Slave: "But if you don't like something, why would you want more of it?"

Irate Customer: "Because...I...No, wait, I do like it. Give me the free one."

Subhuman Counter Slave: "Ha ha! Based on the terms and agreement of the Quizno's satisfaction guarantee, you must be totally dissatisfied with our food before we'll give you more of it. Buy a sandwich or get out."

Irate Customer: "Curses!"

The people at Quizno's are brilliant. The other commercial I find laughable is the one for some kind of Herpes medication. I forget which one it is, as commercials for people with debilitating venereal diseases invariably show happy couples strapped into a kayak parasail flying over the edge of a waterfall at sunset, so they're hard to differentiate. I'm sure that life isn't nearly as peachy when you're screaming because it feels like your pee is made of flaming needles as these ads would lead you to believe, but that's not the best part. In an effort to apparently make their ads more credible with the addition of random numbers (numbers mean SCIENCE!), the commercial points out with tremendous gravity that over 70% of the population has been infected with Herpes when their partner was displaying no active symptoms. This is great; it means that if you do happen to get Herpes from having unprotected sex with whatever random stranger you brought home, it's not your fault. The flip side of this amazing scientific fact, of course, means that 30% of people infected had sex without a condom with someone who had red, swollen genitalia covered in weeping sores. In that case, fuck you. You deserve whatever horrible affliction befalls you. Have fun with your kayaks and sunsets.

So commercials, for the most part, either make no sense or are just stupid. Admittedly, if I worked in advertising and was told that my brand new account was for a cream that lessened the pain of a Herpes outbreak, I'd probably be stumped on where to begin. But these people do this kind of stuff for a living. If it were me, I would just follow the cardinal rule of marketing: if you put a monkey, or maybe a midget, or a midget in a monkey costume in your ad, it will be a resounding success. Or at the very least, make just me laugh. And isn't that what's truly important?

Why All Celebrities Should Be Burned Alive, Featuring Clay Aiken Eating Delicious Cake - 01/03/07

2007-07-23T08:53:00.000-07:00

There are a myriad of problems facing the population in the world today. Whether it's the almost comical pointlessness of the war in Iraq, the racial and economic hotbed that's become the issue of illegal immigration, or the increasing likelihood that the Earth will soon explode due to global warming, it would seem that the average person has enough to occupy their thoughts. But there's one facet of society that has emerged in the last 60 years which completely renders these other terrors insignificant; one thing that I believe truly heralds the eventual downfall of Man. I'm speaking, of course, about peoples (especially Americans) inane fascination with the actors and actresses that we have deemed "celebrities".

Don't get me wrong, I love movies. I'm a totally ambivalent connoisseur of film, meaning that I'll watch pretty much anything. If it's a well crafted movie with a strong plot, engaging characters, and decent cinematography, I'll enjoy it on an artistic level. If it's a movie starring Boogaloo Shrimp as a break dancer trying to win a dance contest so that the rec center where he engages in his energetic but unorthodox dance styling's won't be bulldozed, I'll laugh at how bad it is. But despite the enjoyment that I and millions of other people derive from watching movies, I don't feel that the actors deserve the level of monetary compensation and public fascination that's awarded to them.

The apexes of this intent obsession are the tabloid magazines. Everyone's read them; even if it's just in line at the grocery store. For some reason, it's impossible not to pull one out of the rack at some point and think to yourself "Hmm. It really is a shame that Jessica Simpson was found in bed with four Taiwanese midgets. Nick must be devastated." I don't know why we do it, and when you think about it, it's ridiculous. I can guarantee you that there's as much, if not more drama going on in just my apartment complex, but no one feels the need to put out a magazine detailing every time my hot neighbor gets out of a car with no panties on. So I've gone and summarized a few of what are, in my opinion, some of the more asinine "events" happening in the world of celebrity gossip.

CLAY AIKEN IS FAT! AND MAYBE GAY!
A similar picture to this one is the whole reason why I decided to write this little piece. I was over at Ryan's the other night, flipping through an Us Weekly (Ryan enjoys shoe-shopping and keeping abreast of celebrity gossip, what can I say? He's a friend; I won't judge him.), when I came across this incredibly unflattering portrait of pseudo-pop idol Clay Aiken on page 10. Unfortunately, a myriad of Google searches for Clay+Aiken+Fat didn't return any hits for this particular image, even when I narrowed it down by adding helpful adjectives like Clay+Aiken+Humongous+Lardass, or even Clay+Aiken+Ham+Overload. So I had to settle for this picture from famed celebrity gossip and overrated waste of space Perez Hilton's website. If you don't know who he is, he's a chubby and flamboyantly gay internet "writer" who has, for some reason, become something of a powerhouse in Hollywood by posting unflattering pictures of celebrities onto his poorly designed website. To make himself extra edgy, he then adds humorous captions like "I LOVE COCK!", or uses the 1998 version of Microsoft Paint to draw semen in the mouths of his victims. While his site is occasionally funny, he's the epitome of what's wrong with our celebrity- based society. I like to think that sometimes, late at night, he wakes up and realizes that if it wasn't for the fact that for some reason people care about what kind of hats K-Fed likes to wear when he's fucking strippers or whatever, he'd still be serving coffee at Starbucks and living with his mother.

So anyway, Clay Aiken is now fat. When asked by the fine journalists at Us Weekly about his recent expansion to unstoppable size, Clay responded by saying it was due to "Stress." He added, "Also, cake." He then proceeded to eat the reporter before going on an unstoppable rampage through downtown Los Angeles. But honestly, who the fuck cares? Clay is such a C-league celebrity/musical talent, they could have just put up a picture of one of those anonymous fat waddling asses they always show on the news when they do a story about obesity, and include the caption "Hey! Everyone! Look at this fat, waddling ass! Ha ha ha!".

There was also some sort of controversy a while back regarding Clay's sexuality. He's obviously scorchingly gay, so I don't really understand what all of the fuss is about. I think that Rosie O'Donnell outed him, and then there was some feud Clay got in with Kelly Rippa when she made a comment implying that she was grossed out that his hand could have recently been up another mans asshole after he tried to cover her mouth to stop her from revealing his homosexual shame to the world. This actually isn't that big of a deal when you think about; I know that if somebody that I barely knew tried to stick his fingers in my mouth, I'd be pretty pissed off. Does it really matter if he was fisting a guy or had been elbow deep in a female hooker beforehand? No, not at all. Having a stranger stick his hand under your nose is disgusting no matter what their sexual orientation is. Maybe these two disinteresting facets of Clay's life are related; maybe he gained all of that weight so that people would stop implying that he was gay. Everyone knows that gays are a fit and athletic people; maybe he just thought everyone would be more convinced that he enjoys women if he looked like no self respecting gay man would touch him with a ten foot pole, let alone his penis. In that case, mission accomplished.

TOM CRUISE AND KATIE HOLMES DID SOMETHING CUTE! OR INSANE! WHICHEVER!
I'm going to go on record here and just tell everyone how much I hate Tom Cruise. He's managed to become one of the wealthiest, most influential actors in the entire world by portraying rich, cocky assholes and showing no real talent other than being able to convincingly scream "haHA!" while looking like he's coked up. I guess he wasn't that bad in Collateral, but it really pissed me off that everyone made a big deal about the fact that he had such range and versatility because he was playing a villain and looked kind of grimy, despite that the only real difference between this role and all of his others was that this time, his character killed people instead of saving the world or romantically fucking a chick on a train or something wholesome like that. The fact that he's also a Scientologist is just icing on the cake; you really can't respect anybody who honestly believes that the only way to excise the spirits of the aliens that are trapped inside of us all is to give bags of money to an organization based on the deranged scribbling of a shitty science fiction author.

But then he had to go and take Katie Holmes away from us. I don't think she's a particularly good actress; her part in Batman Begins was pretty much the only superfluous and unwatchable part of that movie. I don't really know what other films she's been in, except for that one with Keanu Reeves where she takes her shirt off to expose her magnificent chest, which, by the way, is yet another perfect example of a no-talent hack being treated to something he totally doesn't deserve. I'm convinced that if Keanu wasn't a star, and didn't have a team of specially trained Keanu wranglers coordinating his every movement, natural selection would have taken effect a long time ago and he would have wandered into a bear cave after covering himself with honey or something. Anyway, I like Katie Holmes for the simple fact that she was Joey on Dawson's Creek, which I'm ashamed to admit I watched religiously in high school. She had the whole completely hot yet somehow attainable girl-next-door charm, and she managed to pull it of with grace and style. I never got to make out with her myself, but I'm pretty sure she'll call.

But now that she's been kidnapped by Tom and his sinister team of Scientology wizards, I really can't bring myself to muster any kind of emotion besides pity for her. The whole thing is pretty creepy; I think I read somewhere that they met, disappeared for like a week, and when they came back, Katie was glassy-eyed and robotically telling everyone how awesome Scientology was. I guess its okay for people to be interested in this, because the last time that I checked, it was still illegal for a batshit insane cult to kidnap someone and then brainwash them. But I could be wrong. I also don't like the way that the tabloids glorify them as "America's Superstar Couple!", or whatever other retarded copy line some Quaalude-addicted editor decides sounds good, when in reality, they're only an aging actor desperate to maintain his fame and convince the world of his heterosexuality and a former up-and-coming starlet who can't get any decent roles.

The only time that I'm personally going to become interested in their weird relationship is when one of two possible scenarios inevitably plays out. The first is that some highway patrolman is going to find Katie wandering naked down a deserted road somewhere in California, and after her system has purged all of the drugs that Tom was pumping into her, she'll reveal the harrowing tale of how she finally escaped his hidden Scientology hypnosis lair by sneaking out when he was distracted because he was fucking John Travolta. The second, equally likely scenario is that Tom will appear on Oprah again to allegedly announce his love of females in general, and especially his female wife, Katie Holmes. But this time, something will go horribly, horribly wrong:

Oprah: "So, Tom, it's great to have you back with us. How's the married life treating you? Up at all hours of the night with the baby? Children sure can be a handful! Can't they, ladies?"

(Raucous audience applause, punctuated by an occasional WHOOOO!)

Tom: "Silence, foolish human! This charade has gone on long enough! It is time to shed this disgusting fleshy shell and begin the conquest of your puny world!!"

Oprah: "Tom...what...what are you talking about?"

Tom: "All of these years, your primitive race has bowed down and worshipped me as a celebrity idol, little realizing that I had implanted subliminal messages in all of my films to make your eventual subjugation that much easier! For I am not your beloved Tom Cruise... (Rips off rubbery Tom Cruise mask to expose green chitinous skin, bristling antennae, and insectiod mandibles)...I am Zortax, ruler of the Alpha Nebulon Galaxy and soon to be overlord of Earth! Minions, prepare your attack!! AHa ha ha ha ha!"

Oprah: "AIIIEEEEE!!!"

So basically, Tom Cruise is either a deranged closet homosexual psychopath or a bug emperor from space. The sad thing is, both are equally believable. I hope he doesn't sue me.

OOPS! LINDSAY LOHAN SOMETIMES DOESN'T WEAR UNDERWEAR!!
First of all, I need to give credit to Brenda for initially showing me this picture. We were at a party at her house, and in a move that once again proves how lucky Lee is, she enthusiastically gathered everyone around her computer so that we could all see, in her words, a picture of Lindsay Lohan's "totally beefy vagina". I don't think that I stopped giggling for a good two hours and for the rest of the night, all someone would have to say were the words "beefy vagina" to me and I would be reduced to tears of helpless laughter.

Anyway, this is just stupid. Half of the girls I know don't wear underwear when they go out, I guess mainly because given the choice between displaying visible panty lines or having a piece of fabric shoved up your ass all night, it's more comfortable and aesthetically pleasing to just go commando . It's not like she was seen at a club, standing on a table with her dress pulled over head, screaming "EVERYONE LOOK AT MY VAGINA!!!", although with all of the drugs she's supposed to doing, it's probably not that far around the corner. But honestly, this is "news"? Who the fuck cares? It was just gross. I'm sure that one of the most frustrating things about being a celebrity is having to worry about some asshole paparazzi appearing out from under a manhole cover every time you're picking something large and slimy out of your nose, but when you have people taking pictures of you literally every single hour of every waking day, what do you expect? You're not going to look hot in all of them. I know that if I was a celebrity, there would probably be a special issue of People that would come out annually filled with nothing but exclusive pictures of me getting drunk and walking into things. But I honestly don't think that your marketability as an actor or actress is dictated by how many pictures of you wearing ugly shoes or gorging on pie there are in shitty magazines. Celebrities shouldn't care, and neither should we.

In conclusion, our society places far too much importance on these essentially vapid, relatively talentless people. I say "talentless" because it really does irk me that Tom Hanks gets paid 26 million dollars to sort of convincingly act like a retard for the four months he was shooting Forrest Gump, and I know cardiovascular surgeons who work 60 hours a week and make about 1/75 of that. And this is why all celebrities should be burned alive.

Why Pedophiles Are Stupid, Featuring Dateline NBC's Stone Phillips - 12/13/06

2007-07-23T08:50:00.000-07:00

I was flipping through the channels a few weeks ago, and stumbled onto one of those "To Catch a Predator" specials that Dateline NBC has been doing. If you haven't seen it, it's basically a huge sting operation where cops go online pretending to be horny 13 year old girls, and then convince pedophiles to come to their house, where they're subsequently arrested. I had turned to it while I was watching something else, and although I was fully planning on changing the channel back, I found that I simply couldn't. The sheer idiocy of the people being caught was so overwhelming, I had to keep watching to see just how much my faith in humanity could be crushed.

I guess what really bothers me is how successful this operation seems to be. One of the guys they arrested actually mentioned the show by name, saying that he'd seen a few of the other specials. So it's not like people aren't aware that when they're talking to "ilovebarneyandfucking69", there's a good chance that it's actually somebody who wants to arrest you and not a lonely nymphomaniac thirteen year old. Can you imagine the thought process these people must have? I understand that pedophilia is a mental disorder, and people that enjoy fucking kids probably have some issues already, but what kind of retard do you have to be to actually go over to a stranger's house in the hopes of performing an act that you know is illegal? Maybe most people are this stupid; the police should look into fighting all crime on the internet. They could pose online as "icarrylotsofcash23", and then strike up a conversation where they just happen to mention they'll be alone in a dark alley from 4-6. Any potential mugger that subsequently shows up gets a trip downtown. I know that if I ever happened to be online, and somebody that I had just met invited me over to help their sorority sisters pick out lingerie to have a sexy pillow fight in, I'd probably be a little suspicious. I mean, I'd go, but I'd be sure to circle the block a few times to make sure it actually was a house full of hot girls in tiny panties and not just a fat guy in a gimp suit waiting to rape me. To demonstrate how idiotic you have to be to actually get arrested in one of these stings, I've broken down the steps you would have to take to go from fantasizing about pre-pubescent sex to crying in the back of a police car while being videotaped:

Step 1: Be a pedophile.

Okay, easy enough. I don't know what horrible combination of genetics and upbringing need to be combined so that a person is turned on by having sex with children, but I can't imagine that it's much different than the ones that cause people to fuck corpses or only orgasm when their partner is dressed like the Hamburglar or whatever. The point is, there are all kinds of weird sexual fetishes out there, and while most of them aren't illegal, they're still not the kind of thing you can talk about in public. With the advent of the internet, I'm sure there are tons of places you can find kiddie porn, or at the very least dirty movies with girls who look like they're 14. Basically, as long as you're only fantasizing about say, sodomizing a penguin and not actually doing it, I have no problem with it. It's sick, but whatever. I'm sure that some people would be offended if they knew that I make my partners scream out the names of state capitals while climaxing, but what turns a person on is their business. It's when you actually try and make the fantasy you know to be a crime into a reality that the problems begin.

Step 2: Go online and find sexually promiscuous children whose parents are out of town.

This is where it starts to get weird. On the show, they're vague about where they actually get the transcripts of the 45 year old guy describing his penis to the person he believes to be an underage girl, and I'm kind of curious as to how a potential pedophile even goes about soliciting his victims. Do they just go find a "Rugrats" chat room and send out a general query about who wants to have sex? I mean, I can see if they find somebody on myspace or whatever and cultivate an e-mail relationship over the course of several weeks or months, but some of these guys were literally talking to the online predator squad 30 minutes before they showed up at the house. Do they just find somebody on AIM whose profile says that they're under 16 and enjoy Freddie Prinze Jr. movies and giving blowjobs? And how many messages do they have to send out before they even get a reply? I would love to know what the icebreaking message is; if it was me, I'd probably just go all out and send something like "WOULD U LIKE TO FUCK"? I mean, you know that your eventual goal is to break the law and solicit underage sex, so why waste time pretending to be interested in the pony their dad promised to buy them for Christmas? This is still disgusting, but once again, it's in the privacy of your home, so if it gets you off to type one-handed messages to someone who might not even be female, let alone underage, that's your prerogative.

But then the girl says something like "HEY MY PRENTS R GONE, DO YOU WANT TO COME OVR". This part is actually really scary, because the fact that so many people are caught in these sting operations means that at some point, a pedophile actually met a young girl online, went to her house, had sex, and then told all of his other pedophile friends about it. I mean, that has to explain it, right? Nothing else can account for the sheer stupidity. Maybe there was one guy at the annual pedophile convention who told all of the others about his amazing experience, thus propagating the myth:

Pedophile 1: "My fellow pedophiles, molesters and heshers! I have a story to tell! Hearken to my words, and be glad!"

Pedophile 2: "Yes! Tell us your story!"

Pedophile 1: "I tell you in truth that I, just this weekend past, met a young girl. She had seen naught but 13 years, though her screen-name bespoke of a maturity and wit far beyond her days. We exchanged pleasantries, and anecdotes, and laughed merrily as the night grew long. She eventually confided that her patriarch and matriarch had vacated the country, and coyly sought to entice me to her unoccupied abode."

Pedophile 2: "Gasp!"

Pedophile 3: "Surely not!"

Pedophile 2: "And did you go? Was it not a vile trick, an entrapment wrought by the despicable members of the constabulary?!"

Pedophile 1: "No, my friend. It was no trick. I went, and we....this young, enchanting creature and I...made passionate, transcendent love."

Pedophile 2: "Huzzah!"

Pedophile 3: "Truly, you have given us hope, and hope to all of our brethren!"

A lot of the people that were arrested were mongoloid hillbillies, so it's probably safe to assume they didn't think things through carefully before getting in their pickups and driving across town to fuck a child. But some of the people were doctors, lawyers, businessmen; people you'd think would be smart enough to say "Hmm...While I would certainly derive incredible sexual satisfaction from penetrating a 12 year old girl, logic and probability dictate that when I arrive, I will be greeted not by a sexually naive but willing young temptress, but a large police officer who will shoot me in the face with a taser and then broadcast my shame to the nation." And I'm sure this happens; I'd imagine that for every person that actually does show up, there are hundreds who get freaked out when asked to come over, immediately switch off their computers, and then spend the rest of the day locked in their house with the shades drawn and the lights off. But the fact that some people actually believe the scenario the police trap them with could conceivably happen just blows my mind.

Step 3: Actually get in your car and drive to the child's house.

Here's the part that's pretty disturbing. At this point, you've weighed all of the potential pros and cons of having sex with the anonymous child you just met on the internet, and have decided that it's totally worth it. This is why I don't feel bad for these people; not only are they sick, they're fucking idiots. A bunch of the ones on the show had even stopped on the way to pick up various items that they thought might enhance their experience. A lot of them were pretty mundane: condoms, lube, beer, etc. But a few went above and beyond, like the guy who was found with a penis pump in his car. The best part is that they caught him on tape using it, and then asked him why he waited in his car as opposed to going straight in. He tried to play it off by saying that it was because he was having second thoughts, and he started to cry when they confronted him with the evidence that he was actually inserting his penis in a hydraulic tube in preparation for molesting a child. Also of note was the fat Mexican guy, who showed up with a bag full of Taco Bell. That's actually pretty smart; I'm sure that there's nothing like a zesty taco after having sex with a minor. Maybe he was going to share some with the girl, I don't know.

Most of them didn't seem that surprised when the actress the police had hired left and Stone Philips and his camera crew jumped out and started asking questions. On a side note, they made it a distinct point to mention that the girl was an actress. Can you put that on your acting resume? What would you credit it as? "2006, Los Angeles Police Department - Pedophile bait"? That was how the sting was set up; the girl would lure the guy into the back of the house, say she was going to go slip into some lingerie or something, and then Stone would somberly walk out with a transcript of all of the dirty things the guy had been saying online. A few of them broke and ran right then, which just meant they got tackled and maced in the driveway, which is always fun to watch. But for the most part, they just sat there and had a nice little chat, admitted they were sick, and then quietly walked out front to get arrested. It was kind of funny; every time Stone would confront his next victim, he'd ask them if they knew who he was. For the most part, everyone just sort of nodded and said yes, except for this one hipster guy, who just looked him square in the eye and said "No, man. I have no idea who you are." Stone got pretty mad; you could see his face starting to turn red, and I'm sure he told the cops to make sure they beat that guy with a phonebook a little harder than usual when they got back to the station.

So in conclusion, there are a lot of messed up people out there. I think they've done the show like six times or something, and each time, they catch more and more people. That's fucking insane. I don't know how many of my friends who read this are secretly child molesters (I have my suspicions about several), but if you are, please take this warning to heart: don't try and fuck children that you meet on the internet. You're only going to get caught on national television, and then I'll be forced to say something in the subsequent interview like "Wait, he got caught fucking a 12 year old? Hm. Yeah, I guess I could see that."

Why Heroes Is The Best Show Ever, Featuring Super Crime (Part 2) - 11/30/06

2007-07-23T08:47:00.000-07:00

Welcome back to part 2 of "Why Heroes is the Best Show Ever"! For those of you who care, I apologize for my lateness in posting something for you to giggle at while surreptiously checking Myspace.com at work. For those of you who don't care, suck it. I really have no excuse, other than the fact that as with most things in my life, I got bored with writing and kind of forgot about it. There have been a few more characters added to the show since last time, and since I had to skip this week's episode to showcase my useless knowledge of John Grisham novels at trivia on Monday, there may very well be more that I don't know about. As before, I have not remembered any of the characters actual names, and have described them, usually in some sort of offensive way, by one of their physical or emotional attributes. I have also given them a numerical rating of 1 to 10 on the basis of their superhuman abilities usefulness against regular crime as well as super crime. And here we go!

Shiny Indian!
Shiny Indian is so named due to the fact that either because of the stress-inducing situations he finds himself in, or just through a lack of general cleanliness, he always appears to be glistening slightly as he broods in his wifebeater. His character is central to the shows plot, as his deceased father was the geneticist responsible for looking into a microscope and realizing that the DNA of someone who could fly looked different from that of a normal person. As of yet, he's displayed no actual superpowers, unless you count the ability to magically translate both his speech and that of any other Indian he encounters into perfect, upper-class English. It's kind of offensive; I mean, every time they show two Japanese characters conversing, they do so in their native tongue, with helpful subtitles to translate their gibberish for all of us filthy round-eyes in the audience. But literally every Indian character sounds like they should be attending a tea party at Dame Thistleberry Mountcastle III's garden party in Southampton. I guess the writers felt that the guttural pronunciation of Indian words might be unpleasant for some viewers, but I think it would have been funnier if they had gone all out and made all of the characters sound like Apu from the Simpsons. As not showering and being able to perfectly speak the language of the nation that raped and conquered your country don't count as superpowers, Shiny Indian receives a rating of "0" against both normal crime as well as super crime. Actually, I guess I should give him a "1" against normal crime; his pungent stench might be able to drive off potential muggers by itself, and if someone does manage to grab him, his oily texture no doubt makes him very hard to hold on to.

Radioactive Caveman!
While it would be an awesome plot twist if this guy was actually some sort of time-displaced Neanderthal, he just reminds me of the disgruntled caveman in the Geico commercials. On a side note, you have to wonder who does their marketing. I mean, it takes balls to walk into an office full of board members and CEO's and pitch a cockney gecko and racially disenfranchised cavemen as your primary advertising campaigns. Anyway, his powers aren't really under his full control yet; so far, he's killed his wife by giving her cancer and then accidentally burned down his house. So it's safe to assume that it's going to be a while before he's out foiling bank robberies with his incredible ability of being what amounts to a large barrel of toxic waste with legs.

Rating against Crime: 7

I've never been mugged, unless you count one time in New York when I was walking down a fairly deserted street and a homeless guy jumped out at me and demanded my wallet. I responded by saying "What? No.", and then kept walking as he stared at me in frustrated hobo rage. I mean, I'm sure I was incredibly lucky that instead of watching me walk me off he didn't stab me multiple times with a rusty knife, but my point is that these kind of things tend to happen very quickly. At the very best, a potential criminal will slowly be rendered sterile after he knocks out Radioactive Caveman with a pipe and is going through his pockets for change.

Rating against Super Crime: 9

Being able to give someone cancer is actually pretty helpful when dealing with supervillains. This is because as they've got you chained to the ceiling of their death lair hanging over a vat of hydrochloric acid filled with genetically modified crocodiles who are immune to hydrochloric acid, you'll have the secret satisfaction of knowing that they'll die horribly over the next few months as they describe in detail all the things you could have done to stop their nefarious plot. Of course, this makes him the superhero equivalent of a suicide bomber, but if you're really a hero, you won't mind being eaten alive so that Mr. Terror won't be able to conquer the earth because he's too nauseous from his chemo.

Soulful Black Guy!
Soulful Black guy has one of the best powers on the show; he's able to alter his molecular density so as to become intangible, which enables him to walk through walls and escape any confinement. I've labeled him "soulful" due to the fact that he's been framed for a crime he didn't commit and is on the run from the law with his illegitimate son. As a consequence, he almost always looks like he's about to cry while delivering important life lessons to his disinterested child. The one thing I'm curious about with his powers is how it works with his clothes; why don't they just fall through him whenever he phases through a door or whatever? The first time he used his powers was to walk through a wall and surprise his ex-girlfriend; I'll bet she would have been a lot more surprised if he had been ass-naked when he reached out and grabbed her. The way comic books usually solve these kinds of dilemmas is by having the character mutter nonsensical crap involving "unstable molecules" or something, because hey, if there're molecules involved, it must be because of, like, science, which explains everything! I guess it could also be because anything he's in contact with is automatically rendered intangible with him, but if that's the case, why aren't his shoes left behind each time? Does he always have to wear sandals? Math is hard.

Rating against Crime: 6

This is another one of those powers that's great in a pacifist sort of way; if somebody comes up to rob you, and you refuse, and they try to shoot you, you can just become intangible and the bullets will harmlessly pass through your body. Of course, you're then left awkwardly staring at the person who just tried to kill you, I guess until you decide to disappear into the ground, or the mugger goes off to rob someone who doesn't have fantastic powers. This also poses a problem if you're somewhere crowded; you're not much of a hero if you smile triumphantly as the bullets painlessly go through you and straight in to the eyes of a baby that's standing behind you.

Rating against Super Crime: 7

It'd be a great power to have if you had to fight your way into some supervillains subterranean arctic fortress; it wouldn't matter how many Ice-Ninja's were sent to stop you, you could just walk through all of them with no ill effects. The problem arises once you actually get to the heart of the Eskimo Spy's (think about the name, it's clever) fortified compound. What do you do then? I guess you could find a white sheet somewhere and then, when he's not looking, jump out from a wall and yell "BOO!", but that only works once and usually only on older supervillains with weak hearts.

Hot Psycho Girl!
Hot Psycho Girl has the interesting ability to generate a split personality with superhuman strength when presented with a dangerous situation. Her other persona is more assertive and seems to be motivated solely by self-preservation; she takes action, usually by killing people, and apparently fucks like a champion. She's able to converse with her alter-ego via mirrors, and usually has no memory of anything that's happened during the time the other personality was in charge. In the medical community, we have a name for this amazing superhuman ability; it's called disassociative identity disorder. She exhibits all of the classic signs and symptoms: it occurs as a reaction to stress, she's potentially stronger than she usually is, and the other personality takes charge of problems that her original mind is too scared of to handle. I think it would be really funny if, at the end of the show, they reveal that she doesn't really have any superpowers, she's just batshit fucking insane.

Rating against Crime: 10

Being able to manifest an alter ego during times of danger that not only has the ability to rip a potential robbers arm off, but also has absolutely no moral problem with doing so pretty much guarantees that if you do get your purse stolen, you'll probably wake up ten minutes later with it back on your arm and a decapitated head stuffed inside of it.

Rating against Super Crime: 5

One of the defining characteristics of Hot Psycho Girl's other personality is that it's driven purely by the need to protect herself and her son. Since this is the case, I'd imagine that if she responded to the Danger Alert in the Hero's Tower of Justice, she would probably just fuck, then kill whoever had called her before robbing the place blind. I'm kind of curious as to how her power is going to interact with those of Emo Haircut; since he can copy superhuman abilities, will he develop a vamped-out split personality that likes to fuck as well? I hope so, the idea of him talking to a sultry bad version of his pussified self in a mirror is pretty funny.

The Jerry-Curl Kid!
I was originally calling this character "Afro-Kid", but upon closer inspection, it actually looks more like his head has been dipped in Soul-Glo rather than permed. He's the interracial offspring of Soulful Black Guy and Hot Psycho Girl, and has the power of ethnic confusion in addition to being able to mentally control machinery. The only demonstration of his powers so far has been watching him use a payphone that had been out of order before he touched it, which, when you think about it, isn't really that impressive. There's an electrician named "Big Pete" out there somewhere who can do the same thing, albeit having it take a little longer.

Rating against Crime: 3

I guess this sort of comes down to what the definition of a "machine" really is. If somebody comes at you with a gun, does that count as a machine? Could the Jerry-Curl Kid make the gun fall apart, or turn around to shoot it's owner? It also depends on location; if you're mugged somewhere like Tokyo, a city built completely out of robots, you could use the environment to tremendous advantage. If, however, someone tries to rob you in Cowfuck, Georgia, where the magical gift of fire has only recently been stolen from the gods, you're pretty fucked.

Rating against Super Crime: 8

I'm going to go ahead and give him a pretty high rating, mainly because almost all supervillains rely way to much on technology in their world-domination schemes. At the very least, they have a robotic henchman or cyborg assassin or something the Jerry-Curl Kid could turn against its master. The one exception is, of course, criminal ninja organizations, whose strict adherence to the code of their ancestors prevents them from realizing that in a sword fight, the guy with the gun usually wins. So the Jerry-Curl Kid just has to stay away from ninjas, and he should be fine. Unless they're robot ninjas, which would just be awesome.

Hiro!
I've saved Hiro for last, because he is, almost certainly, the greatest character ever created in the history of television. I seriously break into a smile whenever he's on screen; his cheerful, chubby bumbling is so adorable that if he ever does actually fight any supervillains, they'll give up just seeing how happy it makes him to win. Upon being told that a future version of himself carries a katana, he responded in exactly the same way I would have: he got this faraway look in his eyes, smiled, and murmured "I....had a sword." This future version of himself also spoke perfect English, which makes me wonder about the actor portraying him. Is he fluent in both Japanese and English, and just tries to make his English sound like it belongs in a Godzilla movie? That's actually pretty impressive; I speak passable French, but if you asked me to speak it in a way that made me sound like I was as stereotypically bad at French as possible, I wouldn't even know how to begin. Or does he just speak Japanese, and have to spend weeks being coached by a language instructor to be able to say a few lines in our barbarian American tongue? He seems to have won the random allocation of superpowers lottery; he can stop time, teleport, and travel to the past or future just by scrunching up his face and thinking about it really hard. He looks like he's straining with all of his mental and physical might every time he uses his powers, and I really wouldn't be surprised if he shits himself a little bit whenever he does something miraculous. It must kind of suck showing up in the past with dirty underwear; it really does diminish your credibility if you're there to warn people about a coming apocalypse but can't get anyone to talk to you because you smell like an outhouse.

Rating against Crime: 10

As long as he's given a few minutes to tightly close his eyes and simulate taking a huge dump, ordinary criminals have got no chance at besting Hiro. And there are so many possibilities, too! Obviously, you could be boring and just stop time and run away. But if you wanted to get creative, you could use the time stop to replace your assailant's gun with a huge dildo or a fish or something, then pants them, and then laugh when they look down at their useless weapon and uncovered genitalia. Or you could stop time and get the robbers wallet, find their driver's license, figure out where they're from, then go back in time and brutally murder both them and their entire family! No? To much? This is probably why both God and genetics have decided that if there is going to be some kind of future world-devastating catastrophe, I won't be one of the ones who gets superpowers and is charged with saving humanity.

Rating against Super Crime: 9

The only reason he doesn't get a "10" in this category as well is because while being able to stop time is fucking cool, not being able to do anything else kind of diminishes its effectiveness. Say the Incredible Hulk is rampaging through downtown New York, and Hiro is the only one available to deal with the crisis. He bravely confronts the mindless brute, and, once again by closing his eyes and almost soiling himself, is able to bend the very fabric of reality and halt the inexorable march of time itself. He gazes wondrously at the shards of glass from a broken window suspended in midair, and gently carries a young schoolgirl out of the way of a falling telephone pole. He then removes her underwear, to do whatever weird thing it is that Japanese people do with used schoolgirl panties. Turning back to the Incredible Hulk, he contemplates his options. He first walks over to him and begins uselessly pummeling the Hulk's chest with his tiny Asian fists, and then, panting heavily, attempts to kick him in the groin. As this has no noticeable effect due to the Hulks steel-hard skin, he once again ponders a solution. But before he can think of one, his concentration lapses, time reverts to normal, and the Hulk crushes his skull like an eggshell. See? Not that useful.

And that about wraps it up. There's one other chick that hasn't been featured that heavily, and has the ability to alter the inflection of her voice and make people do whatever she wants. So far, she's only been able to get a recovering heroin addict to do more heroin, which I can't imagine is that hard to do. I also think it's kind of funny that they cast a slightly homely-looking woman for this part instead of some drop-dead gorgeous actress. I guess it's more believable that she has superpowers if it's shown that men will do whatever she wants because her voice gets all funky and not just because they think they might have a chance at fucking her. Anyway, if I still haven't convinced you to watch the show, I probably wouldn't like you anyway, but seriously: best new show of the year. Watch it.

Why Heroes Is The Best Show Ever, Featuring Super Crime (Part 1) - 11/10/06

2007-07-23T08:43:00.000-07:00

I'm not really someone that goes for primetime television drama. Back when I worked in the ER, I always had an irregular schedule, and we didn't even have a water cooler to gather around to discuss who the girls on Desperate Housewives had been fucking. Well, I guess that's not totally true; there was that dark period in my life where I was hopelessly addicted to the O.C. The girl that I was dating at the time got me hooked on it, and while I first started watching it just to see how the writers would work in why the surly kid in the wife beater was punching someone in the face this episode, I gradually became sucked into the lives and times of those crazy, narcissistic teens. Fortunately, it got moved to a night where I was always working, and I was able to prevent the complete transformation of my penis into a vagina.

Now that I have a more regular schedule, I still try not to get too addicted to shows, mainly because I feel that structuring my night around watching fictitious people and their problems isn't healthy. I've actually had friends that have said "Dude, I'd love to hit up that stripper party that Dave is having. But I can't, gotta watch The Office tonight. It's so like my job! Ha ha ha!" These friends don't get laid very often, but if they do have the opportunity to meet members of the opposite sex, they can totally impress them by telling them how the Hanzo symbol showed up on a shark's ass in Lost or whatever.

The one show that I've recently made an exception for is Heroes, on NBC. If you haven't seen it, immediately stop whatever stupid activity you're engaged in and go watch it. Seriously, right now. Why the fuck are you still reading this? Go! Download it on Limewire or BitTorrent or something, or if you have some kind of moral compunction against pirated TV shows, 1.) You're a huge pussy, and 2.) I suppose your only other option is to build some kind of kickass time-travel device, find a wacky sidekick, and go to the future to get the whole series on DVD, having hilarious misadventures and trying not to meet your future self on the way. If they still have DVD's in future, that is; I'm kind of hoping by then all visual stimulation will be beamed directly into our brains by awesome cyborg implants. Let me know about that when you get back.

The premise of the show is that for as-of-yet unrevealed reasons, a group of ordinary people have been gifted with amazing powers. As there have only been about five episodes so far, there's still a lot of mystery about what exactly is going on. When I first heard about the show, I was kind of skeptical about any network being able to pull off a cool, realistic show about superheroes. I know that special effects wouldn't really be a problem in today's world of CGI everything; I'm pretty sure I flipped to Sesame Street the other day and saw Big Bird engaged in a visually stunning laser space dog fight against The Evil Vowel Empire, and lord knows PBS doesn't have the money for really top-line digital artists.

I was more worried about the actual powers the people would have, and if they would be presented in a relatable way. Let's face it, it's pretty much impossible to come up with an original superpower anymore. I mean, Superman alone has like 20, and if he doesn't, he can always claim that the way the angle of Earth's yellow sun was hitting his alien skin at that moment gave him the ability to turn into a helicopter or whatever other ridiculous plot device happened to be called for. And nobody wants to watch a show about people with lame superpowers. That was something that always bugged me about the X-men; they had all of these racial themes of being hated and persecuted because they were different, but they were all actually gorgeous white people who just happened to be able to shoot ice beams or turn to metal. If they had been born with the amazing mutant ability to smell like cheese, or constantly secrete acidic ear wax or something, I might feel bad, but it's hard to pity a beautiful redhead who can move stuff with the power of her mind.

So how did the creators of Heroes do? To find out, I'm going to go through all of the characters, and give them a rating showing numerically how effective their powers would be against both normal, everyday crime, like a crack addict with a knife trying to steal your shoes, as well as super-crime, like when Dr. Nefarious tries to use his orbital death platform to reverse the polarity of the Earth. A rating of one will be the lowest, and will be compared to the lamest superhero I can think of, who of course is Aquaman. I mean, honestly, I'm sure being able to talk to fish is cool, and they have lots of interesting things to say, but it's really not that useful if someone's trying to shoot you. Unless you're talking to flying fish, and can somehow convince them to suicidally throw themselves into the path of the oncoming bullets. And everybody knows that flying fish are dicks, so that's not likely. A rating of 10 will be comparable to having the best superpowers that I can think of, which would be the ability to control the very matter of space and time itself so that you're constantly surrounded by naked supermodels and chocolate pudding.

So without further ado, here they are, the champions of Earth and defenders of liberty! Evil-doers beware! Annnnnndd....Roll call!

(Disclaimer: I'm notoriously bad with names, to the point that I can barely remember what to call my friends and family without the notecards I keep in my back pocket, so I'm never able to remember character's names on TV shows. Unless it's something like Jerry Seinfeld, who starred in "Seinfeld". See, that's easy. So instead, I usually just make something up incorporating an aspect of the person's physical appearance and/or demeanor. I do this in real life, too; you might meet me at a party and say "Hi! My name's Jessica!" but then five minutes later, you'll be known as "Stupid Haircut" in my mind. It's a character flaw, and I'm working on it. Fuck off.)

Unkillable Hot Cheerleader!

She, as her name implies, is both hot and a cheerleader, which pretty much supersedes any superpower she could possibly have. She found out that she couldn't die by accident, and then, because I'm assuming she's mentally imbalanced, proceeded to attempt to kill herself in horrific fashions multiple times, all while having her gay friend videotape it. The only real application that I could think of for her miraculous not-dying ability would be that you could choke her as much as you want during sex and not have to worry about accidentally killing her.

Rating against Crime: 4

I guess you have the element of surprise. If somebody shoots you and steals your wallet, you could pretend to be dead until they're not looking, then sneak up behind them and hit them with a brick or something. But I mean, she's still a 17 year old girl, I don't think it would be too hard to incapacitate her while you're robbing a bank or stealing a car.

Rating against Super-Crime: 4

It's pretty much the same thing; being able to not die is kind of useless unless you've also got super strength or something else to go with it. You're still not going to be able to hurt Rampage, The Rampaging Man after he's torn you in half and you've regenerated yourself.

Shady Politician!
This guy has the ability to fly, and while you don't actually see him do it for the first few episodes, it's pretty fucking cool when he actually does. He's running for some kind of political office, and while I know that I would immediately and unhesitatingly vote for any candidate that could launch themselves into the air at the speed of sound, he, for some reason, is trying to keep it a secret. He also has the super ability to lie to his crippled wife with a smile on his face about the hooker he slept with in Vegas, which while not as cool as flying, is still a good trick to know.

Rating against Crime: 7

At the very least, you can just up and fly away when somebody accosts you, unless they've broken into your house at night and tied you to your bed. Then you're pretty much fucked.

Rating against Super-Crime: 6

You'd have to get a little creative when battling supercriminals with only the ability to fly. Maybe your costume could incorporate several pouches filled with rocks that you could drop on your opponent's heads, or even balloons filled with your own urine if you were in a particularly bad mood. You could call it your "Urine of Justice", and it would be known and feared by the criminal underworld.

The Amazing Junkie!
The Amazing Junkie has powers that are, quite possibly, worse than Aquaman's. He's an artist, and has the ability to paint portentous events of the far-distant future on his canvas. But, get this: only when he's fucked up on heroin! I guess a drug addiction probably costs less than having to keep up the maintenance repairs on your Iron Man armor or Spidermobile, but it must be embarrassing to have to tell other superheroes that you can't go out and fight crime today because you couldn't score and are locked in your Heroincave shitting yourself and crying.

Rating against Crime: 10

He's a junkie, so this automatically protects him from most street-level crime. I mean, if you're going to rob someone, are you going to rob the rich looking guy with the nice suit and the expensive watch, or are you going to go for the guy with the tattered clothes and the uncontrollable shaking? Nobody robs junkies; they never have anything worth stealing.

Rating against Super-Crime: 0

Honestly, this guy is fucking useless. There was one scene in the show where he and another character dramatically stated that they had to go rescue someone, and I really wanted the other guy to turn to The Amazing Junkie and ask "Oh, we're going to go save someone? What are you going to do, draw a picture of yourself getting your ass kicked and then huddle in a corner and vomit? Why don't you just stay here and wait for your dealer to call, then you can go over and blow him for your fix."

Emo Haircut!
This guy is actually the brother of Shady Politician, and is embittered over his brother's success and uncaring attitude about their mysterious powers. He broods a lot, and is constantly flipping his 1990's skater hair out of his eyes, which gets really irritating. It's first implied that he has the same power of flight like his brother does, but later revealed that he can copy the abilities of any superhuman in the area when he manages to finish one of The Amazing Junkie's future pictures.

Rating against Crime: 1

Being able to mimic the abilities of superpeople isn't very useful when there aren't any superpeople around. I guess you could find a midget with all kinds of cool powers and then just kind of keep him strapped to your back all the time, but that would probably get inconvenient. Otherwise, this guy is pretty much fucked whenever the frat guys get drunk and decide to beat him up for reading poetry and smoking cloves at the coffeehouse.

Rating against Super-Crime: 8

This sort of depends on how creative you are; if you're fighting someone with super-strength, it just comes down to who's actually better at throwing cars and smashing people through walls. If you're fighting someone who has x-ray vision, you're going to get punched in the face, because while Count Optical is already acclimated to his powers, you're going to be distracted checking out all of the girls that are walking by to see who's wearing sexy underwear.

Fat Cop!

Fat Cop has the ability to read minds and hear the thoughts of others. He really hasn't used his powers in any appreciably cool way yet; the closest he's come has been to mind-rape his wife and figure out all of her favorite things so he could give her a night of chubby, sweaty passion that she'll never forget. Then he went to go buy ice-cream, which I thought was pretty funny. He also has a tendency to pass out when using his powers; either due to the unbearable mental strain they put on him,or because he's diabetic, and had just eaten a bag of donuts or an entire pie in the previous scene.

Rating against Crime: 5

Being a cop that can read minds isn't that handy; I know that whenever I'm pulled over, I'm universally thinking the same thoughts about how much I hate the police, and trying to concoct ways to push the officer out into traffic so that an oncoming semi-trailer can hit him. I'd imagine most everybody else thinks this too; it must get kind of depressing for Fat Cop to realize that everybody he pulls over for speeding wants him to die.

Rating against Super-Crime: 4

If you can only read peoples minds and not directly influence their actions, or fire powerful psionic beams into their brains to make them think they're monkeys or something, it's pretty useless. I guess it gives you a heads up before whatever supercriminal you're fighting shoots his death shurikens at you, but knowing you're about to die 10 seconds before you actually do isn't that much of an advantage.

You're going to have to wait until next week for the exciting conclusion, because I don't think I've ever typed this much in one sitting even in college, and my fingers are starting to bleed. But rest assured, gentle readers, next weeks episode will be just as action packed and dramatic, featuring the superhero styling's of Shiny Indian! Afro kid! Hot Psycho Girl! Soulful Black Guy! Hiro! And many more! Stay tuned!

Why Politics Are Stupid, Featuring The Vototron 2000 - 11/08/06

2007-07-23T08:40:00.000-07:00

It was Election Day yesterday, the time of year when Americans are given the opportunity to cast off the tyrannical yoke of their cruel oppressors and exercise their glorious right to democracy. As I consider myself to be a proponent of both apple pie and freedom, I resolved that I would do my best to maybe get out at lunch to vote. You know, if I had the time.

I'm not what you would call "political". I watch CNN religiously every morning, but that's mainly because the only other thing on when I wake up are infomercials starring that guy that dresses like the Riddler and tells me that the government owes me bags of money. Which may be true, but if it was, don't you think that guy would be off somewhere on a yacht made of solid gold and filled with strippers? He's been doing those fucking TV spots for years; the only reason that I can think of for him not being humongously wealthy is that he spends all of his free government cash on nefarious deathtraps and laser rays to kill Batman. That or legal expenses, because honestly, he looks like the kind of guy who tries to coerce children into the back of his tinted van with promises of delicious candy and icecream.

Anyway, I try and watch the news when I can. Only CNN, though; local news is way to depressing. There's never anything good or uplifting on local news, just somber looking newscasters in cheap suits and bad makeup recounting how many kids and puppies where killed in tragic nun bus accidents.

In Atlanta, we have a special investigative group of journalists called the "I-Team", which I think is kind of funny because they're trying to make themselves analogous to a team of mercenaries hunted by the government for a crime they didn't commit. Or maybe it just means "Investigative Team", which is a lot less kickass. The team consists of a chubby white guy who looks like he might suffer a heart attack if he investigated anything to vigorously, a woman whose face is about two botox injections away from stretching all the way onto the top of her leathery skull, and this small, weasely guy whose main job seems to be "going undercover" and then shouting accusations at whoever he's investigating when he dramatically reveals himself. I seriously hate him for some reason, and would actually like to be involved in some kind of shady criminal endeavor just so I could call him out on being such a dick.

Me: "Hello there, sir! Could I interest you in some home-made methamphetamines, or perhaps some underage sex with a small boy? It's Sodomy Wednesday, all prices half off!"

Weasely Journalist (speaking loudly for the benefit of his totally obvious hidden microphone): "WHY YES! THAT WOULD BE DELIGHTFUL!"

Me: "Why are you yelling?"

Weasely Journalist: "I'M NOT! I'M JUST HERE TO PURCHASE SOME ILLICIT MATERIALS!"

Me: "You know, I can't really place it, but you look kind of familiar."

Weasely Journalist: "IMPOSSIBLE! I'M JUST A REGULAR GUY, LOOKING FOR SOME "CRANK", OR MAYBE SOME "GLASS" SO I CAN GET "TWEAKED UP"!"

Me: "No no wait, I know you! You're that weasely guy from the news! Ha ha, awesome! Wait, are you wearing a fake moustache? That's pretty weak."

Weasely Journalist: "THAT'S RIGHT! (dramatically rips off fake moustache) AND I"VE EXPOSED YOUR NEFARIOUS DRUG RING! HA HA HA!

Me: "Why are you still yelling? And you didn't uncover a "drug ring"; I just make this shit in my bathtub and sell it on the street. You're basically about as clever as those cops that leave out a bicycle and then arrest people when they try to steal it. "Investigation" implies that you've done research, and found correlations and connections that other people have overlooked. You just came up to me in a cheap disguise and said "yes" when I offered to sell you drugs. They could have put your moustache on a cardboard box and outfitted it with a tape recorder and the same thing would have happened. I mean, fuck, I'm high; I wouldn't have been able to tell the difference. You suck."

And then he would have repented his Weasely Journalist ways and gone off to become an auto mechanic or a chef or something actually useful to society.

As I was too busy curing cancer all day to make it out, I had to go vote after work, and I'll be honest, I was a little apprehensive while I was driving to the poll center. There had been such a buildup to this election; I half expected to be driving through streets filled with burning cars and people screaming hysterically. Instead, the only thing of note that I saw was this one lady standing in the rain and holding a sign that said "Martin". What the fuck is the point of that? Is some person going to see her and think "Hmm, you know what? Maybe I WILL throw out all of my preconceived political ideologies and vote for that Martin fellow!" If the sign had been a picture of his opponent graphically raping a donkey with Osama bin Laden cheering him on, I might have stopped for a moment to question who I was voting for. Besides, Martin was running for Lieutenant Governor, and while I don't really know what a Lieutenant Governor does, I imagine it involves getting the real Governor coffee and arranging cover-ups every time he kills a hooker. So no one should be that dedicated to his cause to stand outside in the rain two hours before the polls close holding a sign with his name on it.

Walking into the school where the voting was to take place, I was immediately accosted by an energetic young go-getter whose huge nametag proudly announced that he was "FRED!" He offered to walk me through the voting process, and, as I'm not a complete fucking idiot, I politely turned him down. This new trend of having enthusiastic, youthful volunteers has got to go. I miss the days of having clueless octogenarians shuffling around; smiling toothlessly at me and making me feel guilty if I actually have to make them use their walkers to come assist me with anything. I blame these newfangled automated polling machines; I mean, I already know from watching Jack Cafferty that because of them, we're minutes away from a complete democratic breakdown, but now they have to steal away our blue-haired pollsters named "Ethel" and "Mabel" and replace them with grinning idiots like "FRED"? Watching Jack flip out about the new machines has been kind of amusing, though. He keeps using these phrases like "They can't be trusted!", as if it's all part of some horrifying robot conspiracy to replace our president with ZORG unit A85-1 and then immediately begin the assimilation of all humans.

The new machines really weren't that difficult to use, as long as you had opposable thumbs and the ability to read above a third grade level. I was actually half hoping that some of these terrifying malfunctions might manifest themselves while I was doing my patriotic duty:

VOTOTRON 2000: "Good evening, citizen. Please indicate your human voting preference."

Me: "Let's see...hmmm...he's a douche...voting Libertarian is essentially like throwing your vote away...okay, there we go."

VOTOTRON 2000: "You have chosen incorrectly. Please choose again."

Me: "Um...What?"

VOTOTRON 2000: "Your puny human flesh brain is not capable of choosing your representatives. We, with our cold robot logic, are clearly superior. Prepare for death, and the glorious mechanical world of tomorrow."

See, that would have been neat. Actually, I guess being vaporized by a voting machine would have been kind of an inglorious way to go, but it would have been cool if it had happened to the guy standing next to me.

I'm not really going to get into who I voted for and why, mainly because I'm politically uninformed and don't feel like having to justify my decisions to people who are no doubt much smarter than I am. I will say that I consider myself to be a Democrat, but that's probably just because at this point in my life I'm relatively idealistic as well as poor. I also think that our president is an ignorant retarded man-child, and the fact that he's made it impossible for me to travel outside of America without being spit on or murdered is hugely annoying.

Well, I guess I can also say that I did not cast my vote for our incumbent governor, the illustrious Sonny Perdue. This really has nothing to do with his politics; despite the fact that he thinks it's cool to have the state flag of Georgia incorporate a symbol of racial dissonance one step up from a swastika. I just can't bring myself to vote into power anyone with a name like "Sonny Perdue". I know that by living in Georgia, I have to accept a certain amount of red-neckery. I've made peace with that, and as Southerners are generally nicer and less annoying than pretentious assholes from up north, I'm okay with it. But I mean, honestly, "Sonny Perdue"? That shouldn't be the name of our governor, it should be the name of a great little out-of-the-way rib shack in some bumblefuck part of the state. I suppose it kind of speaks poorly of my political judgment that I'm willing to vote for or against somebody based on something as superficial as their name. But that means if you're reading this, Lamont McAwesome, you've totally got my vote for whatever office you choose to run for.

Why Halloween Is The Best, Featuring Slutty Janitors - 11/01/06

2007-07-23T08:38:00.000-07:00

Halloween is undoubtedly the best holiday of the year. Christmas gets steadily duller the older you get (until you have kids of your own, I guess), Thanksgiving just means I have to deal with family that I haven't seen or thought about since last Thanksgiving, and Valentine's Day is a shameless corporate marketing ploy that forces me to break up with whatever girl I'm dating at the time so that I won't have to buy her things. But Halloween is fun. If you're a kid, you get to dress up in an outfit totally unlike anything you're normally allowed to wear, stay up late and ask strangers for candy. If you're an adult, you also get to dress up in a ridiculous costume, but then get hammered, and maybe have anonymous sex with somebody dressed like the Burger King mascot.

The one thing that always does kind of irk me about Halloween, however, is the disparity between what girls get dressed up as oppposed to what guys wear. Girls invariably look hot and slutty; they basically have to throw on whatever is most whore-like in their wardrobe, put on a pair of devil horns, and then they're a "Sexy Devil". It's actually kind of funny because it extends to literally any kind of conceivable costume or occupation:

Guy: "So what are you supposed to be?"

Girl: "I'm a Sexy Janitor!"

Guy: "But janitors aren't sexy."

Girl: "I've got a tiny cutoff jumpsuit on so you can see most of my panties! Also, tits."

Guy: "Awesome."

I have absolutely no problem whatsoever with this practice, I just think it's unfair that I can't look as good. We men have to make do with either the comical or the mundane. I have guy friends that go in some kind of drag every year (although now that I think about it, that could be due to some underlying psychosocial disorder rather than a desire to be funny), and one year my friend Steinberg wore assless pants. That was his whole costume; just a normal shirt and then a pair of old jeans with the ass section removed. He would walk up to you, have a bit of idle conversation, and then turn around and walk off, causing whatever you were drinking to come out of your nose from laughter. Last year Suzanne and Eisy went as babies, and while Suzanne could pull off the look, seeing Eisy and all of his hairy glory in nothing but an adult diaper and a bonnet has done what I'm sure is lasting damage to my retinas. Stensby went as Oscar the Grouch this year, and while it was creative, no girl is going to want to go home with a guy covered in green paint and wearing a garbage lid as a hat. For the failed application of guy costumes in a practical setting, consider this: one of my girlfriends was out at a bar on Friday when a guy in a clown suit started to hit on her. As clowns are quite possibly the scariest things on earth, next to batboy, she was understandably freaked out. After about ten minutes of her staring at him in terror-mounting silence while he attempted to convince her to make sweet clown love later that night, she finally interrupted whatever asinine thing he was saying:

Clown: "....and that's why clowns have huge penises. Want to fuck?"

Megan: (Horrified silence)

Clown: "What?"

Megan: "I'm really sorry, but you're creeping me the fuck out right now, and I don't think I can look at you anymore without screaming. I have to go."

Clown: "No no wait, it's just the makeup! Look, here's my drivers license, this is how I really look!"

(I didn't actually see his drivers license picture, but Megan told me he looked kind of like an old boot that was left in the sun for too long, with a bad UGA haircut perched on top.)

Megan (walking off): "Ha ha ha ha ha ha!"

Even though it's ultimately going to be a losing battle, I still can't bring myself to wear a costume that I'll look like a jackass in. Maybe it's inherent pride, or insecurity, or the fact that I have skinny legs that would look terrible in a dress, I don't know. This year, I was originally going to go as Han Solo, but after the fifth one of my girlfriends asked me if he was the one with the laser sword from Star Trek, I cried a little bit and then decided to go as Jack Sparrow, mainly because I knew I'd look totally hot wearing eyeliner. Since I usually wait until the last possible minute to get my costume, I was forced to scramble around and try and find an outfit that wouldn't make me look like a complete fucking retard. When I went into the Halloween Emporium, I noticed that they had a "Buccaneer of the Carribean" costume, on display for what I think was the reasonable price of one hundred million dollars. Upon closer inspection, I realized that this costume would in fact not make me look like a "Buccaneer of the Carribean", but more like a "Transvestite Vinyl Pirate". As this wasn't really the look I was going for, at least for Halloween, I was forced to hit the thrift store.

Thrift stores in Atlanta are weird. I'm from a fairly affluent neighborhood in St. Petersburg, Florida, and all of the thrift stores in the area reflect that. They're well maintained, everything is organized, and they even have changing rooms where you can try on the clothes. This is great; it enables you to make sure that the Armani shirt some rich guy threw away because the tag was bent fits you. In Atlanta, there are maybe one or two stores like that, but the rest of them are all in poor neighborhoods. This means that poor people are giving away their clothes, and they're then bought by other, poorer people, thus creating an unending cycle of me being unable to buy ironic t-shirts for two dollars. These stores are huge cavernous warehouses with bad industrial lighting and faded linoleum floors. The people that shop there are, for the most part, actually buying clothes for their families, and will universally give pretentious assholes like me who are only there to find shirts that look like they were made at Urban Outfitters dirty looks. They don't have changing rooms, because I'm assuming that if they did, homeless people would pee in them. Suprisingly, however, they have a fair amount of raw material for a pirate costume. Most of it came from the woman's section of the store, which caused the lady at the checkout counter to give me some disapproving looks, but since the whole ensemble cost about twenty dollars and she worked at a shitty thrift store, I didn't really care.

I had to cut up a lot of the clothes, and spent far to much time on the internet to see what Jack Sparrow actually looked like, but I think it came out pretty good. I actually ran into someone wearing the Vinyl Pirate costume at one of the bars we went to, and my outfit was clearly superior. After awkwardly staring at each other for a few minutes, we turned and walked away in pirate victory and pirate shame, resepectively. I didn't see him the rest of the night, so I'm assuming he left to go kill himself.

I have no idea what I'm going as next year. I'm sure that it'll be cheap, and I won't look too stupid, but that's about as far as I've gotten.

Why Six Flags Is Fun, Featuring Excitable Russians - 10/23/06

2007-07-23T08:37:00.000-07:00

This past Sunday, Brenda was kind enough to invite me to the CURE celebration at Six Flags. It's basically a gathering of kids who either have or have had cancer; the group rents out a part of the park and I think the kids and their families all get free tickets. All of the kids get to go up on stage and tell everyone how long they've been off treatment, and it really does make you reflect on how lucky you are to be healthy when a 4 year old gets up there and proudly announces that she's been off chemo for a year. Tears were shed, free hot dogs were eaten, people dressed as anthropomorphic rabbits and bears were hugged,and it looked like everyone was having a really good time. Before long, my friends and I were ready to brave some rollercoasters.

Six Flags is cool; some of the coasters are really fun, and as you're whipping around at 76,000 G's or whatever, you can sort of safely theorize in your mind that you might die. It's a fleeting thought; you just catch yourself thinking "Wow, if this strap broke and the harness holding me in place came up, I'd be flung about 500 feet into the parking lot, hopefully landing on some hillbilly's Camaro." It's not realistic, and it's part of what makes these kinds of rides fun.

Unfortunately, this doesn't hold true for all of them. There's one called the American Scream Machine, and to describe why it's a totally fucked up experience, I have to start with what you see while waiting in line. As you can probably guess, this is a patriotically themed roller coaster, meaning they put the word "American" in the name and then painted the rotting wood of the track red, white and blue. I think the cars were also painted to look like a flag, but the enamel was so chipped it was kind of hard to tell. Anyway, while waiting, we noticed that intersperced at random intervals along the walkway were posters displaying people on the coaster having The Time of Their Lives. Seriously, one guy looked like he had smuggled a midget hooker into the car under the rollbar and was recieving mind-blowing midget head. Then, next to this disturbing image, was a picture of people in military fatigues jumping out of helicopters, also having The Time of Their Lives. The message was clear: "Join the Airforce, it's like riding a shitty rollercoaster that was built sometime before the Great Depression!" Although to be fair, the majority of the people that I saw standing in line with me looked like the kind of slack-jawed teenager that might go for that kind of jingoistic imagery. Maybe they should set up a recruiting booth right after you get off; you're still all pumped up with adrenaline from almost being killed, and then the drill sergeant from Full Metal Jacket starts screaming at you about how great the Air Force is, and you sign up without really realizing what you've done because you're just happy to be alive. And then you go get a funnel cake, maybe some cotton candy. It could work.

So after waiting in line, you come up to the part of the track where the control switchboard is. This is disturbing for a number of reasons. First of all, it's visible. I don't want to see what the controls of the machine I strapped myself into and am trusting my life with look like; I just want to assume that there's a team of men in white lab coats standing in front of a huge bank of computers somewhere, constantly adjusting things so that the car won't become derailed and send me hurtling into the ground. But no, the "control panel" is just a big table covered with large, plastic buttons. Some of them are red, some green, and some are kind of light pink because they've been exposed to the elements for the last 68 years. Sitting behind the table is an incredibly bored looking teenager, who was spending the majority of the time people were getting on and off the ride talking to her friends on the emergency phone that was built into the control panel. I doubt that it had call waiting because I'm pretty sure it was a rotary dial, so if the Mayor of Six Flags had to call to let her know that terrorists had blown up part of the track later down the line to help in their crusade against America, he probably wouldn't be able to get through. In between smacking her gum and talking about how her boyfriend was totally cheating on her, she'd press one of the buttons, seemingly at random, sending the cars lurching on their way.

The ride itself is terrifying, and not because it goes through a series of complicated loops or spins or anything cool like that. It's just because the entire thing is made from very old, decaying wood, and you can almost see the whole track sway when a particularly hard breeze hits it. When coming down a high hill, you can feel the car come off of the tracks a little bit, and then you're violently slammed back into your seat, maybe spitting blood because you've bitten through your tongue. All you can do is hold onto the flimsy harness and pray that you're still alive when it stops. I think it would be embarassing to die on a roller coaster like this one; it just wouldn't make for a good story in the afterlife. If you die on one of the new, high-tech ones, you could at least say "Yeah, I died on the Superman ride. Computers malfunctioned, and I was thrown off. I was doing about mach 3 when I landed; they found one of my shoes with a foot still in it in a tree two states over." That gives you some credibility. If you died on the American Scream Machine, you'd have to say "Some fucktard forgot to duct tape a piece of the track back together. We fell off and landed in the lake below us, and drowned because the seatbelt holding us in got stuck." And then all of the other people in heaven would laugh at you, and Jesus might call you a pussy.

At the end of the ride, the majority of which I spent with my eyes closed and screaming like a woman, the car grinds to a halt (I mean that in the literal sense; the car was shaking, while a horrible metallic screech was emanating from the undercarriage). We then proceed to sit there for about ten minutes, until one of the other surly teens ambled over to ask us if we had heard the garbled message that had just come out of the overheard speakers. As the voice was either that of a mentally retarded person or one of the teachers at Charlie Brown's school, I replied that I hadn't. The conversation was as follows:

Surly Teen: "So did y'all hear what they just said?"

Me: "No, actually. It was totally indecipherable."

Surly Teen: "They said the cars done been shut off."

Me: "What? Why?"

Surly Teen: "Sometimes the power goes off."

Me: "The powers been shut off? Why did that happen?"

Surly Teen: "Well, see, it's really old, and they waxed the track once, but that was a long time ago, and now sometimes when it gets hot out, the track...what's that word when things get too hot?"

Me: "Um...overheats?"

Surly Teen: "Yeah, that's it. It overheats and the power goes off."

Me: "That's fucking terrifying. So how long are we going to be here?"

Surly Teen: "Shit, wish I knew. I've gotta go to the bathroom."

Me: "Yeah, I hear you. I'd sure like to go to the bathroom too, but I can't because I'm still strapped into this fucking rollercoaster."

After what seemed like about 9 hours, we slowly crawled up to the loading platform, and after popping my shoulder back into place and trying to find the teeth that I'd spit out, we got off so that we could stand at the end of the track and laugh at our other friends.

One of them, Fil, had never been on a rollercoaster before. I attribute this to the fact that he's Russian, and it's a well known fact that Communists hate fun. He had braved the other three rides we had taken him on, despite all of us, at one point or another, pulling him aside and very seriously telling him that he was going to die. He was pretty funny on the Superman ride; whenever we were about to go into an especially gut-wrenching turn or drop, you could hear Fil screaming "WAIT! NO! NO! FUCK! AHHHHHHHHHH!!" He handled it well, though; his hands were only shaking a little bit when he got off. But watching him walk off the American Scream Machine was massively amusing. His hair was standing almost straight up, and his eyes were kind of bugged out. His first words were "WHAT..THE FUCK...WAS THAT?!" Heather, the girl he was riding with, was weeping softly. She later explained that she didn't really like rollercoasters that much either, but had handled them because the people she had been with would calmly explain to her that she was doing fine and was going to be all right. Fil, however, had just kept muttering "Holy fuck, we're going to die" over and over, and then had screamed continuously the entire ride.

Other highlights included making fun of the general redneck populace, especially the guy with the gloriously feathered mullet and his 400-pound girlfriend that he wouldn't stop making out with, finding a condom in the line for Superman, and seeing how racist Six Flags maps really are. Erin brought up the fact that on the map, about 90% of the little people drawn in are white nuclear families. There were a few minorities represented, but the black ones were almost all the same picture of a little man and woman wearing matching fez's, just with differently colored clothes, while the asians were depicted as (I swear to God) bright yellow with slanted eyes. Will said he saw an interracial couple, but I'm pretty sure he was either lying or it was a typo. Shame on you, Six Flags. We didn't get to ride on the new rollercoaster, Goliath, because the line was about 10 miles long, and by the time we got around to it my feet hurt and the general consensus of everybody present was that we needed a drink. All in all, it was a really fun day, and if you're going to go to Six Flags, I'd highly recommend going this time of year. Imagining some of the people I saw there stuffed into shorts and midriff-baring shirts is more than enough to give me nightmares.

Why I Love My Car, Featuring Oily Salesmen

2007-07-23T08:35:00.000-07:00

I love my car. It's a 1998 green Jeep Wrangler, with a three-inch lift and big tires. I bought it about a year ago, and I've wanted one since I was 15 years old. Now, before I start to sound like an asshole by talking about my material possessions on a myspace.com blog, I need to explain the kind of vehicle that I was driving prior to my purchase of the Jeep. It was a 1995 Chrysler Lebaron convertible, red with a white top. I called it "The Red Baron". I'm assuming, because everyone always told me that their grandmother had a car just like it, that it was the preferred mode of transportation for the elderly. I'm also assuming it was favored by homosexuals, because of all the people that screamed "NICE CAR, FAG!" at me as I drove by. I'd have to roll down the window and politely explain to them that I did, in fact, prefer the company of women. At this point in my life, though, I had weird bleached hair, 5 earrings, and a bar through my tongue, so I don't think anybody really believed me.

By the time I was ready to sell it, the car was pretty much a fucking trainwreck. The front seat was propped up with a guitar amp, the electric top and the air conditioning didn't work, and I had just gotten into an accident, crumpling the hood and for some reason causing the car to overheat if I drove it for more than 20 minutes. I managed to get it to the Jeep dealership through a combination of hate-filled determination that I would soon no longer be driving this twisted lump of useless metal and the fact that it was raining, which was undoubtedly keeping the car cool enough so that it wouldn't explode and kill me.

When I got there, there was steam literally pouring out from under the hood, and I could see all of the Oily Salesmen inside nudging each other and laughing. Fuck you, Oily Salesman. I may have arrived in a shit car, but I have the negotiation powers of a particularly intelligent fox, maybe one that's been to a few years of grad school or something.

So one of the Oily Salesmen (I think his name was "Skip" or "Deuce" or something awful like that) takes me around and shows me the car I had been looking at online, and I'm suitably impressed and everything, and he keeps calling me "sport" and "guy" so often that I kind of want him to die. We go inside, and the negotiations begin:

Oily Salesman: "Okay, guy, that sure is a great choice your'e making! Yessir, everyone loves those Jeeps! Great in the summer!"

Me: "Yeah."

Oily Salesman: "Ha ha ha!"

Me: "Um...What? "

Oily Salesman: "Right!"

Me: "Anyway...So how much will you give me for my old car?"

Oily Salesman: "Well, sport, how much do you think we should give you?"

Me: "Well, I think the bluebook value is about $2,000 for a vehicle in poor condition, so maybe....$1500 or something?"

Oily Salesman: "We'll give you $200 for it."

Me: "Okay."

Fuck them and their Hannibal Lecter mind-games. I was just happy to no longer be driving around in a car immediatley associated with 95 year old gay men. Now that I had a Jeep, things would be different; women would line up to have sex with me, and I would no longer be embarassed to pick a girl up for a date or have to make a "boop-boop" noise while pointing my keys at the car to pretend that I had remote entry. It would be awesome.

Sadly, this is not the case. 99% of girls say they like Jeeps, but if they actually have to ride around in one, will bitch incessantly. Their hair gets blown and tangled; it's to hot in the summer and to cold in the winter; going over bumps makes their cramps hurt when they're on their periods or whatever. I try to be accomodating, I even went out and bought a pack of multicolored hair ties that sit around my stickshift, so now it kind of looks like a Pride flag. It still didn't help.

I have other hilarious anecdotes about my car, such as not understanding the concept of "mudding", or having people laugh at me when I do the "Jeep wave" and the other person totally ignores me. But I have to drive home in the rain now, and I'm undoubtedly going to get soaked because I don't have the doors on. But I love my car, so it's okay.

Why Mr. T Is Awesome, Featuring Corporate Fools

2007-07-23T08:31:00.000-07:00

If you haven't seen the commercial yet, TV Land is apparently going to begin broadcasting a reality tv show starring the incomparable Mr. T. It's entitled "I Pity the Fool", and the premise involves Mr. T travelling around the country, perhaps in a van, helping those less fortunate than himself.

The commercial itself is hilarious. It begins with Mr. T, for some reason dressed in a cheap suit with a hoodie underneath, warning us that there "are Fools everywhere." He goes on to elaborate that there are "Fools in the workplace". There are even "Fools in the street". And perhaps most terrifying of all, "Fools in the home." He then explains how he plans to go around the country, "Pitying them". Next, there are several montages of Mr. T helping people, apparently by donning a red tracksuit and awkwardly dancing, or by yelling something nonsensical and glaring around sternly at a group of uncomfortable looking corporate employees. Intersperced with these awesome images is Mr. T's repeated admonition to watch his show, as it is "Reali-T-v", which is clever because it incorporates his last name. That actually is his last name, by the way. He legally changed his name from Laurence Tureaud to Mr. T, allegedly so that way people would be forced to call him "Mr". Amazing.

Don't get me wrong, I love Mr. T. Ever since I watched him as B.A. Barracus on the A-Team, I've been a fan. My favorite part of every episode, besides when Murdock would scream something about talking lamps and then suddenly realize he could speak Japanese, is the buildup to and eventual knockout of B.A. so they could get him on a plane. I've followed his long and successful career, which I think at one point included a cartoon where he hung around with a gang of pre-pubescent gymnasts, solving mysteries and fighting crime. I even used to eat his cereal, which I remember as being kind of like eating sweet, corn-tasting shards of glass. My mouth might be bleeding when I was done, but hey, it's Mr. T cereal, so who cares?

But I just don't think this show is the particular vehicle he needs to re-launch his superstar power back into the collective minds of the American public. Maybe he just needs the money; I thought I remembered reading somewhere that he was forced to sell his 400-pound gold jewelery collection to pay off creditors. I do know that he was diagnosed with T-cell lymphoma in the 90's, but the only reason I remember that is because I thought that the irony was hilarious, and then immediatly questioned my morality and worth as a human being for thinking cancer was funny. I still feel bad about that. So maybe he has hospital bills to pay off, I don't know.

I just question the legitimacy of Mr. T walking into any kind of established workplace and lecturing people on the way they run their business. Even if it is run by "Fools", I don't know how much good Mr. T will do, no matter how much he "Pities" them. Maybe I'll be suprised, maybe he'll impart insightful words of wisdom, delivered in his gruff, loveable voice:

Mr. T: "Listen up, Fools! I'm Mr. T, and I'm here to whip you into shape! I pity the Fool who doesn't listen when Mr. T is talkin'!"

Corporate Executive: "Excuse me?"

Mr. T: "You heard me, sucka! Your earnings are down, and the current marketplace analysis shows a clear trend towards diversifying your stock options, thus improving per capita income while at the same time shattering the downshift paradigm of increased insider profiteering!"

(I don't know how many people I know will actually read this, but if you don't know me, I've worked in healthcare in one capacity or another my whole life. I know absolutely nothing about the business world, despite having many friends who are very successful in it and have tried to explain it's intricacies to me many, many times, to no avail. Thus, I'm totally making all of this up. Actually, the one thing I did get out of those conversations was that while I was in the emergency room, performing CPR so that another human being wouldn't, you know, die, they had better hours than me and made a lot more money. Fuckers.)

Corporate Executive: "Oh. Um...Well, actually....we were going to address some of those very issues at the next board meeting..."

Mr. T: "You've got no time for that, Fool! Even as we speak, your stock options are plummeting! I pity the Fool that can't tell Mr. T why he hasn't re-routed his company's 401k plan into a more diversified and money efficient 256-B, as allowed under IRS financial statute 115, sub-article C!"

Coporate Executive: "Ah...Yeah. Wow. I think somebody in accounting is looking into that. Wait, I think that's him on speakerphone now. Steve, did you get all that? You did? What's that? Mr. T's advice has singlehandedly saved our company? Oh my God! Thank you, Mr. T, thank you!"

So yeah, I don't really see that scenario playing out. It'd be a lot more entertaining if he just went around with a camera crew and a bat and videotaped himself beating the fuck out of spousal abusers, or people who are mean to puppies or something. I'd definetly watch that. I mean, I'm sure I'm going to watch at least one episode of "I Pity the Fool" just to see how ridiculous it is, but I don't really see myself tuning in every week.

But best of luck to you, Mr. T. I'm rooting for you.

I'll try and make this quick...

2007-07-13T13:44:00.000-07:00

I saw the Transformers movie last night. This isn’t entirely unexpected, I know, given that I’m prone to huge amounts of geekery, but I was actually planning on waiting until it came out on video. See, when I first saw the teaser previews a while back, I was as skeptical as everyone else. I mean, I’m a child of the eighties. I grew up watching the cartoon religiously every Saturday morning, whined incessantly until my parents bought me whatever plastic robot I happened to want that week, and cried when Optimus Prime died in the original movie. Yes, cried. But I’ll be willing to bet that if you asked any male around my age if that movie had a profound emotional effect on them at the time, they’ll either say “yes” or be lying because they’re secretly evil Decepticon agents. In which case, kill them immediately.

So when I heard that a new, live-action movie was going to be made, I thought “Eh. It’ll suck.” It had to. I mean, you can’t translate a kids cartoon about giant transforming robots onto the big screen, especially if you want to include real actors. No one would care about the human characters, and any attempt to make the Transformers themselves appear cool was bound to fail. And then I heard that it was being directed by Michael Bay. I have nothing against Michael Bay, really; I can honestly say that I’ve enjoyed most of his movies (well, Armageddon made me want to go home and pound nails into my eyes, but The Island was pretty good). They’re sensationalistic, over-dramatic crap from an artistic standpoint, but whatever. They’re fun to watch, and I hate it when people deride a movie because it’s lacking in symbolism, or doesn’t have multiple layers of stark commentary on today’s society or whatever. Who the fuck cares? Shut up, eat your popcorn, and watch women in tiny clothes shoot things with rocket launchers for a few hours.

That being said, he’s also not one of those directors that I would have immediately thought of to attempt something like this. I really do have to admire the man’s balls; he must have known going in that if he fucked this up, it would royally screw his career. And he also had to know how hard the movie would be to pull off! He would have to appeal to people like me, who had grown up watching the show, playing with the toys, and had nothing but the fondest memories of this bygone portion of our youth that was now lost forever. He would have to appeal to a new generation of people potentially like me, young kids who will see a semi-truck transform into a huge automaton for the first time and think “Holy shit! This is fucking cool! (or whatever it is kids say these days).” And finally, he would have to deal with people who are like me, but a me who never had sex or moved out of my parent’s basement and spends all day on the internet debating the true color of Megatron’s Arm-Mounted Death Laser based on the English versus Japanese versions of the toy. It’s because of the last group that I’ll bet a lot of directors before Mr. Bay passed up this particular project. These sad people rule the internet, and their bitterness and rage towards those who would dare to try and change the perceptions of their beloved past is terrible to behold. I would imagine that this is mainly due to the fact that the best portions of their lives occurred while they were playing with their Autobots and Decepticons, blissfully unaware that in a mere twenty years, they’d be working in a Pizza Hut and still having their mom do their laundry while they furiously masturbated over online Thundercats porn. Regardless of their position in real life, the internet and the people who write on it play a huge part nowadays in how well a movie does; I mean, the Star Wars prequels sucked enormous horse balls, but a lot of the negative press came from the fact that dorks watched the movies and then went online the next day to gripe about all of the inconsistencies and stupid dialogue that those of us who don’t carry lightsabers around at all times would have probably missed. So I would have imagined that even if they were brave enough, no director could have done a good enough job with a Transformers movie to actually appease those people like me that, you know, think the cartoon was cool, let alone people who can boast owning a hand made paper-mache Grimlock costume. Grimlock, by the way, was the one that could turn into a dinosaur, which is kickass on so many levels that the English language doesn’t have words to describe it. I’ll bet the Japanese do, though. Hmm.

Phonetically: “Ichiha Kenshin”:
Definition: “That which is awesome like a robot that can also turn into a dinosaur, from space. It is also another word for “smokestack”, as well as an honorific for your mother’s third aunt, but only if she has killed herself after dishonoring her family.”

Neat. Where was I? The movie. Right. So was it is as awful as I was secretly expecting, worthy of the derision and vitriol that the furious nerds of the internet were sure to heap upon it? Did Michael Bay insert a touchingly rad moment where the dad Autobot sacrificed himself to save his unborn child and daughter by blowing up for no reason while smashing through multiple plates of glass duel-wielding laser pistols to a throbbing techno beat? Would the transforming robots look nothing like what I remembered from my childhood, updated for today so extensively that they looked more like huge balls of wire and microchips with legs?

No. I can honestly say, without a shadow of a doubt, that the new Transformers movie was one of the Most Entertaining Films That I Have Ever Seen. No joke.

It was great. It’s been rare recently for me to go to a movie and not think, after the first two hours or so, “Man, I kind of wish this would wrap up.” I loved the Lord of The Rings, but after the fifteen minute montage at the end of the third one that consisted of literally every single character walking into a room and joyously waving at the gay hobbit in slow motion, I was about to punch the blond kid in front of me just because he kind of looked like an elf. That didn’t happen once during Transformers. I was legitimately engrossed from the moment I sat down to the moment I got up. Should you go see it if you’re expecting an art house flick with French people smoking cigarettes while having clandestine homosexual affairs with their mothers? No. Should you go see it if you want an allegory of how we as a people are destroying our planet through our relentless technological advances, juxtaposed over the irony of a race far technologically superior to our own doing its best to save us? No, and fuck you for being smart enough to even think that, Captain Intelligence. Should you go see it if you want to see an incredibly animated, gigantic Optimus Prime judo-throw a Decepticon through a freeway, punch it so hard that one of its evil robot eyes pops out, then smash it through the face with a laser sword? Yes, you should, and even if you don’t, you should see it anyway due to the fact that after I typed that last description, my keyboard exploded because what I wrote was so fucking cool.

Was it cheesy? God, yes. There was literally every movie cliché you can think of somehow jammed in. Army soldier estranged from newborn daughter? Check. Goofy teen who becomes a hero while getting the hot yet misunderstood chick? Check. Australian hacker girl who’s somehow so good with computers she can effortlessly decode space transmissions and government security systems? Check. But you know what? It worked. It all flowed seamlessly. There was not a single scene that I can remember that I winced at during the movie which didn’t have a reason for being there. The plot was basic, but made sense. Not once did I have to think to myself, “Wait, why are the bad robots blowing helicopters out of the sky right now?”, or “Hey, that good robot just exploded the bad ones head off; what was his motivation for doing that again?” And that was the right way to play it; a basic story of good versus evil with as much human drama as you can feasibly put in, but not so much that it detracts from watching Optimus Prime being an incredible badass.

And when you see the animation and CGI, you won’t care what the plot is anyway. It’s that good. The digital graphics people did what I thought was impossible. They made Transformers look real. And I know that some people will bitch because they don’t look exactly like their cartoon counterparts, but those people are idiots. The cartoon was made in the 80’s, and by today’s standards looks like a collection of retarded monkey drawings put together in a flipbook. Progress and change are good, as long as genuine improvement is present. And man, was this an improvement. The act of a car turning into a giant robot not only looked seamless, it looked like it could actually happen. I was secretly hoping that when we got back out to my jeep, it would launch into the air, parts whirring and clicking, then rumble “Quickly, Human Austin! We haven’t a second to lose! The vile Decepticons are planning to kidnap the Earth President in exchange for your government’s stockpiles of priceless Ergonian Cubes! Autobots, move out!” That didn’t happen, but it still didn’t prevent me from talking to my car the entire way home in the hopes that maybe it was just one of the shy kind of Autobots.

The battle scenes were incredible. The last quarter of the movie is given over solely to gigantic robots shooting lasers and launching each other through buildings, with maybe a few tender human moments thrown in that are quickly ended by something blowing up. You know that chase scene from the Matrix Reloaded, where everyone made such a big deal of the Wachowski brothers for building their own fake highway and using ground-breaking technological effects? There are scenes in this that make Neo jumping around from car to car look like a three year old put together a short film using stop animation and his collection of McDonalds toys. When a Decepticon plane flies in to shoot down some Airforce F-16’s, then transforms into its true robot shape to jump from one plane to the next ripping off wings and shattering cockpits as it goes, and it actually LOOKS like what I’m describing is happening, it’s something to see.

And I’m not saying that it was without its flaws; there was this subtle, patriotic feel to the movie, with grand sweeping shots of army units in action, flying planes and working at computer banks and saving little desert children and stuff. There were a few funny scenes implying that our President is stupid, so for the most part the message I think the movie was trying to get across was “support the troops, not the war and the ape-man who brought us there.” Maybe it’ll work; maybe now that the movie’s been released the army will change its recruiting slogan from “An Army of One” to “Join the Army, And Help Explode Megatron While Optimus Prime Cheers You On! Lasers! Boom!” and our nations armed forces will swell with eager young cadets. They had a Linkin Park song on at the end of the movie too, and I understand that helps recruit people to die in foregien countries as well. There were a few scenes that kind of dragged on, but by the time the Transformers have shown up, any scene with one of them in it, even if they’re just standing around and scratching their giant robotic balls, is entrancing. Oh, and one of them takes off it’s “gas cap” and “lubricates” all over John Turturro. That was a little weird.

So anyway, go see it. If you liked the Transformers, you’ll love it. If you like giant robots and incredible action, you’ll love it. If you like cheesy coming of age movies, you’ll love it, but you might get distracted by the explosions during tender moments. Maybe if I see it again, all of its faults will come glaringly to the surface, but I doubt it. Strong work, Michael Bay.

Why Flashers Is The Worst Strip Club Ever, Featuring Mysterious Venereal Diseases

2007-07-12T07:17:00.000-07:00

I don’t like strip clubs. I know that as a young, heterosexual male with a fairly disposable income I should be all about them. But I’m not. And I wish that I could say my aversion was due to some kind of pro-feminist ideal about how degrading these types of establishments are to women, but that’s just not true. If anything, I think that strip clubs are degrading to men. I mean, how stupid does it make us look to go to a place where we’ll spend lots of money to watch a woman get naked and then not provide us with any kind of sexual satisfaction? You’re essentially paying for a hard-on. Strippers, if they’re dancing at a decent club and don’t have too many drug addictions or illegitimate children to support, make a fuck ton of tax free money. I can tell you with 100% certainty that if there was a place that would pay me to dance around and take my clothes off while women tucked cash into my underwear, there would a me-shaped naked smoke silhouette heading in that direction faster than you could blink.

Maybe it’s my inherent cheapness, but I just don’t see the point. With the free wireless internet that I steal from my neighbors, I can see tits whenever I want to. I can watch two innocent yet horny schoolgirls enjoy their first lesbian experience together before their gym teacher violates them with a tennis racket on pornovue.com, or see a Mexican hooker eat a burrito out of a donkey’s asshole on mexicanhookereatsassholeburrito.com. Okay, the last one might not be for everyone and I might have made it up, but the point is that the internet contains things a lot more erotic than a girl who won’t touch you stripping down to her panties and most of it won’t cost me anything.

Some would argue that it’s the excitement generated by actually being there, and having a real naked woman dancing on top of you that makes it worthwhile. For me, however, I think that makes it worse. I have too much inherent pride to enjoy a woman pretending to be sexy when she really just cares about how much money I’ve jammed into her thong and is probably mentally planning out her grocery list while whispering how hot I make her into my ear. And as for dropping 400$ to go into a back room for a blowjob or a rusty trombone or whatever, that’s just fucking retarded. Maybe in the far future, when I’m 90 and can’t find any woman willing to suck on my prosthetic Viagra dispensing robo-penis, I might consider paying for sex. But right now, I’m fairly confident that if I really wanted to, I could go to some college bar and take home the drunkest girl there and all that would cost would be multiple shots of tequila and my self-respect. That way when we’re having sex later, I’d have the satisfaction of knowing that she’s doing it because she’s consumed enough alcohol not to know better, as opposed to doing it for purely financial reasons. Which isn’t demeaning at all. For me, at least.

So last weekend, when one of Noel’s friends called to tell her that he was going to a strip club before he left to go to India, I was less than enthusiastic when she asked if I wanted to come along. My discomfort only grew when she told me that the club was located “off of exit 5 on 400” and was “next to the Longhorn”. I don’t know why that bothered me; I guess the fact that the most recognizable landmark for a bar filled with naked women was a family restaurant just seemed kind of creepy. But being a good boyfriend, I agreed to come along, and after driving much farther away from the city than I usually allow myself to be taken, we arrived at our destination: Flashers, Gentleman’s Club To The Stars.

I’ve only been to a few strip clubs in my life, so I’m not really what you would call an authority, but this one didn’t look that bad from the outside. I mean, a little shady, sure, but not like we’d be shot immediately upon entry. And it wasn’t as close to the Longhorn as I had expected, which was nice because it meant that I could go there later and eat a steak that maybe wasn’t covered in airborne Chlamydia. We went inside, and there was a decent crowd comprised of the type of people you’d normally expect to see in a strip club: lecherous old men, groups of college-aged guys, and some people who looked like they wanted everyone to think that they were high profile R&B producers but didn’t realize that type of image was shattered the moment they walked into a place called “Flashers” next to a Longhorn, no matter who they pretended to talk to on their cellphones. We got a table near the back, ordered some drinks, and took stock of our surroundings.

There were a lot of girls wandering around, but the place was so dark that they all could have had three-day facial stubble and bulging mooseknuckles and I wouldn’t have been able to tell. I was facing away from the stage (and sitting next to my girlfriend) so I didn’t get to watch the dancers very much, but from what I did see I wasn’t missing anything particularly sexy. The first one that I saw had some great, sensual moves, but I was tempted to go up to her while she was doing her thing and ask her if she wanted me to put my cigarette out, because I know how harmful that can be to pregnant women. She was just the first in what would turn out to be a long line of females who had no business dancing or being naked, let alone a combination of the two.

But there were a few girls all over the guys at the table next to ours, and one them bears mention. She was incredible. She could do things with her ass that defied all known laws of reality and physics. It was as if her buttocks were an entity completely disassociated from the rest of her body, yet she seemed to have almost complete muscular control over every single portion of them. We first noticed her because there had been a quiet slappity-slap sound coming from somewhere in her direction for a good ten minutes, and it took us a while to realize that the noise was being created by one of her ass cheeks slapping into the other one at incredibly high speeds. It was neat to watch; she could carry on a perfectly normal conversation with the person in front of her while somehow rhythmically undulating her backside all over the groin of the man she was dancing for with no discernable effort of the mental division it must have taken. It only got annoying when a song she liked came on, because then the sound went from “slappity-slappity-slappity-slappity” to “SLAPPITY-SLAPPITY-SLAPPITY-SLAPPITY!” with a loud cry of “UNH! This my JAM!” Fortunately, just when things on our table started to shake from the vibrations and I was in danger of having a filling jarred loose, the DJ put something she didn’t like as much back on and reduced her frenzied ass-jiggling back to the more soothing background noise of before.

While we were recovering from what I’m sure would register as at least Richter-scale tremors, we were approached by one of the many girls wandering around looking for customers. I wish that I’d had a tape recorder with me, because the subsequent conversation could have made me a lot of money if I had sold it to Stripper University for their class “What Not To Say To People When You Want Them To Think You’re Sexy 101”. I can’t recount the details as precisely as I wish I was able to, but that’s mainly because the entire time she was talking I was trying to kill her with the power of my mind so that the awkwardness would end. She started off with a lengthy soliloquy about her two kids, one of whom was ten, and how annoyed she got when they called her “while she was working”. Due to the fact that she looked like someone had stolen a mummy from a museum and then dressed it in a tiny bikini before releasing it to terrorize the countryside, it wasn’t that hard to picture her having children. But you still don’t want to hear about the things the half-naked woman standing next to you has pushed out of her birth canal, especially because then you have to think about what’s going to happen to her kids when the police come to their house one night and explain how they found pieces of their mom in a dumpster. None of us really knew how to respond, so Noel’s friend Nick tried to break the uncomfortable silence by asking her how much it cost to get a VIP room. She responded by emitting a hyena-like giggle, and told him the club charged a base rate of 150$, and then for her, it would be an extra 200$, but that “some of the girls charge more”. She followed up her subtle hint that we could take her into a back room and do whatever we wanted to her sexually by quickly asking if any of us were cops, which, to her credit, does absolutely nothing to prevent you from getting arrested if you’re around an undercover police officer. Displaying my usual tendency to say things without thinking about them first, I looked up and asked her why some of the girls got to charge more, although I was already pretty sure that the answer was because none of them had children who would call and force them to interrupt whatever sexual perversion they were performing at the time so they could scream “JUST REWIND THE FUCKING SPONGEBOB TAPE AND QUIT FUCKING CRYING! MOMMY WILL BE HOME WHEN SHE’S DONE WORKING!!” into the phone. Poor kids. She didn’t really know how to respond to my question, so she just laughed again and started rubbing me, which sucked because I really liked the shirt I was wearing that night and hated having to burn it when we got home.

Once it became obvious that we were fucking with her and had no intention of going anywhere to pay for her and her probable Syphilis, she wandered off, I’m assuming to either find someone so drunk they didn’t mind age spots or to pass out under a table. After we all finished frantically checked each other for pubic lice that might have had the good sense to jump off of her and find a host with fewer competitive parasites, we decided to call it a night. As we were walking outside and discussing the general shadiness of Flashers, Ian yelled “Yeah, you want a good indicator of how fucked up this place is? Check out the ENORMOUS BAGGIE OF COCAINE LYING ON THE GROUND!”

We looked down, and sure enough, there was a fist-sized bag of white powder in the middle of the street. Now, I’m not saying that it really was cocaine; there’s a good chance that it was just a mixture of baking soda and horse laxative that one of the strippers had bought thinking that it was cocaine. I was about to bend over and pick it up for a closer look, when I realized that there was a good possibility that the entire thing was some kind of idiot Roswell cop’s idea of a clever sting. I checked around the corner, expecting to find a couple of hillbilly deputies gleefully clutching a fishing rod attached to the bag and giggling in anticipation of luring someone into their nefarious trap, but they must have left to go buy more donuts or harass someone for being suspiciously Mexican after dark because there was no one there. When I came back, Nick had just emerged from the club after having bravely confronted the unimaginable terrors of the bathroom, and when we pointed out the mystery bag, he ran up to it and yelled “ALRIGHT! NOBODY MOVE! WHAT WE NEED TO DO HERE IS JUST ASSESS THE SITUATION!” All of the commotion had drawn a fat stripper on her cellphone over, and once she saw what we were talking about, she immediately let out a scream of delight and dove for the maybe-drugs. Nick kept trying to box her out, which I thought was brave because there was a good chance she might have stabbed him, but she was far to fast. Moving like a twitchy, lumpy bolt of lightning, she darted under his arms, snatched the bag and ran inside, the whole time shrieking “IT”S MINE! I THINK I LEFT THIS OUT HERE! BUT IT’S MINE!” Laughing hysterically, we made our way to the car, and proceeded to leave the majesty of Flashers behind us.

And that would have been it; an interesting experience, something I knew that I’d take great delight in telling everyone about, and that’s all. But Monday morning, it became personal. I went to check my bank account, and found that the fucking club had charged my card 270$ for the three drinks I ordered while we were there. At first, I thought that I might have been drunker than I remembered and spent some time in one of the VIP rooms before burying the horrible memories into my subconscious, but a quick check of my genitals revealed no obvious scabbing, so I knew that was out. I’d also kept my receipt, because the process of closing my tab involved signing no less than three separate pieces of paper and initialing another six, so I had the foresight to keep it around in case they tried to fuck me over. I waited until Tuesday before I called the bar to ask what the deal was, and after almost putting my phone through a nearby wall because no one was answering, I finally got some hick jackass I could barely understand over the blare of “Sweet Home Alabama” in the background. He yelled at me that the charge was just a hold, and should drop off in three business days. This seriously pissed me off, not only because my actual bill was 30$ and 270$ seemed to be a rather large and arbitrary number, but because the 4th of July was that Wednesday, and the hold had brought my bank account down to almost nothing. Realizing I wouldn’t have any money to spend on liquor and explosives, I tried to deposit money from my savings account to tide me over, but by then it was already past five, and apparently after this magical hour no one works at Bank of America that isn’t a cheerful but totally useless robot voice recording.

I got my money back on Thursday, but still. That sucked. I began to concoct possible schemes to enact my furious revenge, but quickly rejected spray painting “DIRTY VAGINAS INSIDE” on the building or burning the whole place down because both of those options would have forced me to drive back to whatever mystery portion of the highway the club was off of. I didn’t feel like exposing myself to the strange and bewildering land outside of Atlanta twice in the same week, but remembered that in my quest for the clubs phone number, I had been amused by the fact that numerous people had apparently taken the time to write out Citysearch.com reviews of the place. At first, I thought they all must have been written by a single miserable Flashers employee with multiple gmail accounts trying to justify why God had cursed him with such a shitty job by posting awesome reviews about his workplace on the internet. But, and stay with me here, each review was written in such a distinctly moronic tone that nobody short of a linguistic criminal genius could have pulled off being that retarded in so many uniquely stupid literary voices. Does that make sense? This, of course, meant that all of the posts had been written by actual people who had gone to Flashers and had been so impressed that they were compelled to sit down and type about their satisfaction online, which is a terrifying thought. Seriously, who does that? I mean, as I’m sure you’ve guessed, I was about to, but I was doing it to be comically malicious. These people had all apparently had the time of their lives, gushing about how “the lap dances were all only 20$!!” and that the girls would let you “do WHATEVER THE F*@CK YOU WANTED!!” Actually, come to think of it, the kind of people who would take the time to post glowing reviews about a shitty strip club in Roswell, Georgia are exactly the same kind of people who would think the women at Flashers are sexual perfection. So never mind.

Here was my first attempt at a review; I thought that by creating an exaggerated, fictional account of how awful it was, my point would have been sufficiently made and the next time one of the bouncers went online to write about how cool their club was they’d be properly humiliated:

“I had the misfortune of going to Flashers a few weeks ago. A friend of my girlfriends was leaving to go visit a country where they kill women with rocks for showing their faces in public, so he figured it might be a good idea to partake in some dancing tits before he left and forgot what they looked like. Unfortunately, Flashers was so bad I think it actually might have encouraged him to throw rocks himself at any woman that he sees from now on, just in case underneath their clothes they look anything like the monstrosities we saw dancing that night.

When we walked in, my first thought was that the place was actually a secret facility designed to hide the results of some kind of government super-soldier program gone horribly wrong. This was the only thing I could imagine that could account for the strippers disturbingly large Adam’s apples, hairy chests, and murderous facial expressions. Overcoming our initial terror, we forced our way through the crowd of oily, possibly homeless patrons to a table that looked open near the back. During our trek, I noticed that if you tried to add up the total number of teeth both the dancers and their customers had, you probably wouldn’t notice how low it was over the sound of your own screams.

We got to our table, and, after shoving the bodies of several unconscious dwarves to the floor, waited for 30 minutes before ordering drinks from a waitress who kind of resembled the Pillsbury Doughboy if he was a crack addicted transsexual who had gone on a binge and then passed out in the oven before being partially revived by tiny pastry medics. While waiting for our drinks, one of the lumbering dance monsters shuffled over to our table and asked in a raspy, obviously fake falsetto if any of us wanted to go into the VIP room for a “private show”. We had just seen another stripper exit the room dragging what appeared to be a human corpse covered in bite marks, so we were less than enthusiastic. Taking our terrified silence as a decline of her offer, she wandered off only to roughly grabbed by what I’m assuming was the owner of the club. He began shaking her and screaming incoherently, although I’m pretty sure I heard “YOU NEED TO MAKE ME SOME FUCKING MONEY, STAN, OR IT’S BACK TO THE DONKEY SHOW FOR YOU!!!” somewhere towards the end of his tirade. I don’t know what that meant, and I had to stop watching after her wig fell off.

When our drinks finally arrived, I took a cautious first sip, figuring that the alcohol would have killed all of the really potent bacteria, but I was sadly mistaken. I don’t know what was in it, but the liquid tasted like a hobo had crawled inside my mouth and taken a dump before dying of AIDS. I was already getting kind of worried about the herpetic rash slowly covering my face that I had seemingly acquired after lightly touching the table and then rubbing my eyes, so the sudden fire lancing through my stomach was more than enough to make me pour out the remainder of the beverage onto the floor. The carpet where it landed began to smoke, but I couldn’t see what other kind of chemical horrors were taking place because of a sudden knife fight that had broken out between what looked like two pregnant strippers over who would get to lick the spill up first.

We watched the dancers for a while, but it was hard to stare for too long before your eyes started to bleed. The only music was Boy George’s “Karma Chameleon” on repeat, and when I went to suggest to the DJ that he maybe play something else, he tried to stab me with a needle. After making sure that I was okay, the others quickly finished their drinks and we began to make our way to the exit, a process that was delayed by the fact that one of my friends had somehow inexplicably been killed and was wearing an eyepatch and fake beard. As the dancers began slowly encircling us, zombie-like, I was struck by how much I would have actually preferred zombies, because they would have probably had less syphilis. I was still lost in a haze of grief and struggling to carry my friend’s lifeless pirate body, but when my girlfriend finally screamed “YOU HAVE TO LEAVE HIM! THERE'S NOTHING ELSE WE CAN DO!!” I snapped out of it long enough to start a diversion fire and escape through a window.

So yeah, Flashers is horrible. Go there only if you want to be accosted by surly she-males in tiny clothing, be poisoned by their alcohol, and more than likely contract some kind of scabby venereal disease that will baffle doctors because it’s been eradicated in all but the poorest and dirtiest of countries. If it was within my power I would burn it to the ground, but even then I’m sure that its horror would live on for eternity, driving insane and killing whoever was stupid enough to try and erect a new establishment on its cursed ground. Like an ancient Indian burial site, but more evil and haunted by fat blister-ridden strippers instead of ghosts. Stay away at all costs.”

Citysearch apparently has a word limit on how much anonymous praise you can leave for a given establishment on their website, and pretty much anyone I showed this to said that it was kind of funny but really weird, so I opted for a more condensed version with more nuggets of actual truth and less of my friends dying and then becoming somehow dressed like pirates. This is what went in its place, and is a screenshot of my actual online review:

You may notice several key similarities between my blog, the rejected review, and the actual review, such as the inclusion of all the venereal diseases I know by name and a description of the strippers as disgusting as well as pregnant. This is because all of the girls there were disgusting and one actually did look pregnant, and because I find describing things as “tasting or looking like (insert venereal disease here)” to be hilarious. Also, I lied about the amount of money they charged my card, but whatever. 500$ makes me sound more like a baller and less like a whiny punk who posts fake Citysearch reviews after being overcharged at a second rate strip club, and isn’t that really the important thing?

Also, I've decided to be good and start updating this thing at least twice a week. So, if you find my particular brand of funny to be hilarious and not horribly offensive, be sure to check back regularly.

Why Nature Programs are Cool, Featuring The Grizzly Man

2007-06-28T11:55:00.000-07:00

I've always been a huge fan of nature programs. My fascination with the genre began back in college, when I got hooked on watching Animal Planet after my roommate came back from summer break one year trying to explain to me the insane majesty that was Steve Irwin, Crocodile Hunter. I had never seen his show before, and when Ian breathlessly told me that it was basically half an hour devoted to a maniacally cheerful Australian man in tiny khaki's extolling the majesty of nature while at the same time trying to punch nature directly in the face and then wrestle it into submission, I knew that I would be a fan. Sure, one could question the intelligence of someone who dangles their infant child in front of a huge pissed-off alligator’s mouth, or the actual amount of scientific data being collected by slapping a lion in the face and yelling “CRIKEY!!”, but whatever. Steve always seemed to know what he was doing, and it was his limitless energy and passion that made him so endearing.

Of course, his untimely death a while back was a huge tragedy, but at least he went out doing what he loved. He was stabbed through the heart by a stingray while filming a new documentary about the terrors of the ocean, and when I heard the news, I have to admit that my first reaction was "The Crocodile Hunter got killed by a stingray? That's weak. I expected something bigger to finish him off. Like maybe a crocodile." And while me telling people this might make me seem kind of like an asshole, the point is that everybody expected him to bite it (ha ha!) at the hands of some animal he was fucking around with, because despite the fact that evolution did its very best to tell him that it was dangerous by covering it with poisonous spikes or giving it a ravenous hunger for human flesh or whatever, he still seemed to really enjoy prancing around and enthusiastically screaming about how incredible it was. I just think that if you're going to die young, it's probably better if you go out in a way that's reminiscent of the way you lived your life, as opposed to getting hit by a bus or falling down a hole or something. Unless you happened to be a huge bus or hole enthusiast, in which case your life was probably so boring it's better off that you're dead anyway. For Steve Irwin, who enjoyed filming himself while harassing wildlife, getting a stingray barb to the chest while your friend videotapes it is pretty much the perfect way to die. I'm sure that when Evil Knievel finally passes on, it will be from something boring like kidney failure or some disease he got from a hooker, but wouldn’t it be cooler if he died while jumping over 19 olympic swimming pools filled with flaming piranhas on a motorcycle made entirely out of high explosives and razor wire? The answer you’re looking for is “Fuck yes, it would.”

But this philosophy doesn't always hold true. Some people die in a way that makes total sense, and they're still not deserving of any pity whatsoever. Take Timothy Treadwell, also known as the "Grizzly Man", a name I’m sure he forced all of his friends to call him because he thought it sounded totally kickass. This guy was an ex-drug addict, and the last time that he almost died from an overdose and was done with rehab, one of his burnout friends suggested that he go to Alaska to "watch the bears, man." I'm sure that this statement was followed by his friend shooting more heroin into his balls before passing out in a pile of his own waste, but despite the obvious stupidity of this suggestion, Treadwell packed his stuff and moved to Alaska, where he spent the next thirteen summers camping in a national park and making friends with bears. He had to regularly hide to avoid patrolling rangers, and even after being issued numerous citations telling him to quit fucking around with the wildlife, he still wouldn't leave. Pretty much any actual expert on bears said that what he was doing was incredibly dangerous, although you don't really need your doctorate in bearology to know that feeding a 900lb killing machine you've named "Mr. Fishwhiskers" by hand is something you do only if you're fucking retarded or have a desire to get your arms ripped off. Anyway, in a shocking turn of events that came as a complete surprise to nobody, Treadwell's body and the body of his girlfriend were found in the park one day partially devoured, along with a recording of their final terrifying moments:

Grizzly Man: "Hey, honey! Come here! Buttons is playing in the water and trying to catch a fish! Ha ha ha! He is sooooo cute!"

Girlfriend: "That's great, sweetie. Don't you think we ought to be going? I think I remember reading in National Geographic that this late in the summer the bears start stocking up their fat reserves for winter, which makes them really territorial."

Grizzly Man: "Pffft! National Geographic? What do those idiots know? Have they ever been here, out in the wild, actually experiencing the majesty and wonder of these magnificent animals? Whoo, that fish got away! Better luck next time, Buttons! Ha ha ha!"

Girlfriend: "Um, yeah. I'm pretty sure they have. They're bear scientists. That's all they do."

Grizzly Man: "Whatever. I've been doing this for a while now, so I'm sure my experience and knowledge is a lot more extensive than any of those guys with their "degrees" and "research" and stuff. Besides, I'll bet that none of them are called "The Grizzly Man!"

Girlfriend: (rolls eyes) "No, they're probably not. Look, can we just go?"

Grizzly Man: "What's that, Buttons? Oh, are you mad you lost the fish? You want a hug? Yes, come here and give Daddy a hug. Yes, that's right. RAAARRGH! Yes, you're so happy to see your Daddy!"

Girlfriend: "Uh, honey, I don't know if he wants to play. He looks pretty pissed off..."

Grizzly Man: "No, see, you're not in tune with the natural state of the bear like I am. He just wants some attention, some validation that even though his fish got away, people won't judge him as a failure. Isn't that right, Buttons? Yes! Yes it is! Come here and GLAAACCKK!!!"

Girlfriend: "HOLY SHIT!!"

Grizzly Man: "AAAH! FUCK!! AAH!! HE'S FUCKING EATING ME!! HELP!! OH MY GOD, HIS CLAWS ARE RIPPING OUT MY INTESTINES!! BUTTONS, WHY?!"

Girlfriend: "Um...."

Grizzly Man: "SHIT!! DON'T JUST STAND THERE, YOU STUPID BITCH!! FUCKING HELP ME!!! HE'S EATING MY KNEES!! AAAAAHHHH!!”

Girlfriend: "So you want me to throw myself, unarmed, at a gigantic ravenous woods monster in the hopes of saving your already mostly eaten body? No thanks. Buttons, enjoy your meal. I'm going to go scatter some of my shit around the camp so that it looks like I was eaten too, then start my life over again so I won't have to be associated in any way with you and your idiocy. Later."

Grizzly Man: “YOU CAN’T DO THIS TO ME!! I’M THE GRIZZLY MAAACKK!!”

Now on the surface, I know that it looks like both the Grizzly Man and Steve Irwin are similar. Both enjoy nature and its creatures, and both believe that to fully maximize that enjoyment, one must get close enough so that natures teeth could conceivably eat you. But the fact is, as goofy as he was on camera, Steve was a professional. He was raised by parents who owned a zoo, and he eventually took it over and ran it for a while before he became famous. He's been fucking around with alligators for his entire life, and while putting your head inside an enormous dinosaur lizard’s mouth may not be the smartest thing to do, it helps if you've been doing it for a while and have a rudimentary grasp of the animal’s basic traits and habits. And in addition to his own knowledge, he also had a team of identically khaki-suited flunkies to back him up, and although they never showed them on camera, I’m sure that they were armed to the gills with latest in crocodile obliteration technology. Steve may love giant homicidal lizards, but if one happened to clamp its jaws around his foot I don’t think he’d have any compunction about ordering his henchman to blast it into tiny handbag pieces. The Grizzly Man, on the other hand, was just some retarded hippie on his lonesome who thought he was totally communing with the beautiful bear spirits of the Alaskan woodlands. Did he think that he was special? That the bears had somehow found a kindred spirit in his animalistic, primal soul? No! No, they’re fucking bears! There’s a reason I walk my basset hound down to the dog park every day instead of taking my Kodiak bear to the bear park: bears are massive engines of murderous, furry destruction. They’re unpredictable, because they’re untamed wild animals. I’d imagine that even the aforementioned bear scientists are leery about getting too close to them, and only conduct their bear research under the protective eye of park rangers armed with anti-grizzly rocket launchers. I know that life may have been shitty for the Grizzly Man wherever he came from, and that he was totally pissed Jimbo borrowed his favorite pair of cords and gave them back covered in bong water, but you shouldn’t expect to able to wander into a forest and suddenly become some carnivorous animals best friend unless you’re an idiot. He was, and that’s why he ended up dead and park rangers were forced to dig through bear shit until they found enough of his teeth so they could identify who had been eaten.

So yeah, nature shows are great, even the ones where there’s no chance the main star will be dismembered. For example, sometimes it’s fun just to learn about the reproductive cycle of the elusive tit-mouse of Northeastern Uganda; that way, if anybody asks you about tit-mice, you’ll be able to impart useful information after you’re done giggling about the name. Recently, the Discovery channel aired a series called Planet Earth, and it was, by far, the best nature documentary ever produced. It took four years to gather all of the footage, and was shot entirely in HD. Some of the stuff they captured on camera had never been filmed before, which I think is just incredible. To do this, they literally sent some of the camera crews out into the wild for like two years, doing nothing but following around a particular species of bird or whatever, getting a totally real-life view at how these animals actually act. Amazing. The mastermind behind this entire venture was a British producer named Alastair Fothergill, who, in addition to being a cinematic genius, has probably one of the coolest names in the entire world. I don’t know what he actually looks like, but I’m pretty sure that he has a kickass moustache, smokes a pipe, and wears a pith helmet wherever he goes. Also, a monocle. Or maybe an eyepatch. Or both.

One of the best parts about the series was that at the end of every episode, there would be a quick little ten-minute segment about what went into actually obtaining the incredible footage you had just witnessed. This was great, because as I said before, some of the things these camera crews had to do were fucking insane. I have to imagine that the conversation when Mr. Fothergill was handing out assignments went something like this:

Alastair Fothergill: “Righty-ho, chaps! Enough dithering about! It’s time to see who’s going where and what they’ll be filming! I say, there are enough pieces of this great blue orb for the lot of us, wot wot! Weathersby! Make yourself useful, man, and fetch me a hot cup of Grey! Pinch of cream, dash of sugar! Pale and sweet like Her Majesty’s thighs!”

Weathersby: “Here you are, sir.”

Alastair Fothergill: (sips tea) “Delicious! Weathersby my man, you are indeed a treasure to both Crown and Country! Ha ha ha! Now then, where were we?”

Weathersby: “You were about to tell the camera teams where they would be filming, sir.”

Alastair Fothergill: “Jolly Good! First up! Fitzsimmons! Johann! Front and Center!”

Fitzsimmons: “Yes, Mr. Fothergill?”

Alastair Fothergill: “You two will be dispatched to the coast of Maui, to obtain footage of the beautiful and mysterious Hugging Forest Monkey! You should be able to simply walk up to the little scamp, and it will leap into your arms and wrap its adorable arms around you! You shouldn’t be there for more than a month or so! The budget’s a bit tight for this shoot, though, so you’ll be forced to camp with the native Big-Breasted Mothiqwi tribe! Their ritualistic Pagan Sex festival is around the time that you’ll be there, but don’t let that distract you! Off you go then, lads! Poste-haste!”

Fitzsimmons: “Yes, Mr. Fothergill! Thank you!”

Alastair Fothergill: “Right then! Moving on! McCrady! Bimbleton! Eyes and ears up front!”

Bimbleton: “Yes, Mr. Fothergill?”

Alastair Fothergill: “You two will be going to Antarctica, we’re you’ll be spending two years living in an igloo, documenting the mating and migratory patterns of the Emperor Penguin!”

Bimbleton: “Excuse me?”

Alastair Fothergill: “Yes! You’ll spend six months in bone-chilling cold, with average temperatures reaching down to -80 degrees below zero! In complete darkness! And then six months in constant, hazy light, but still so cold that any exposure to your bare flesh will result in instant and possibly fatal frostbite! And then it’ll switch back again! And then back once more! Best remember your jacket! Ha ha ha!”

Bimbleton: “Are you fucking kidding?”

Alastair Fothergill: “And of course, we have no idea how the penguin acts in this situation! Never been filmed before! They could become ravenous, hunger-crazed monsters, desperate to sink their heretofore unseen claws into whatever warm, pink flesh happens to be close by! Oh, I wish that I was going with you! To be a young lad again, full of pith and vinegar! Weathersby! See them on their way!”

Weathersby: “Very good, sir.”

Bimbleton: “Wait! But! No!”

Alastair Fothergill: “Ha ha! Capital! Godspeed, lads, GODSPEED! Now then, who’s next! Rogers! X’Tiang! To the fore!”

Rogers: “Um, you know, I’m not really sure if I want to-“

Alastair Fothergill: “You two are the luckiest crew of them all! Ho ho ho! You’ll never guess where you two get to go! Try! Try to guess, you lucky bastards!”

Rogers: “To the….tropical island of Badu, to film the….Magical Wish-Granting Tree Ape? Maybe? Please?”

Alastair Fothergill: “NO! Not even close! You two will be going to the famous Deer Cave of Borneo, where you will spend one month underground, filming the three million Wrinkle-Lipped bats that live there! Their droppings have accumulated over the centuries, forming a mound 100 metres high! A mound that’s always covered in a dense blanket of feeding cockroaches! How exciting!”

And I’m not even kidding. They somehow convinced two guys to go down into a hole in the ground filled with millions of dracula bats, tons of bat shit, and a floor made entirely out of cockroaches. And then live there for an entire month. That’s fucking insane. And don’t get me wrong, I was suitably appreciative as I was watching the show from the comfort of my living room, but still. Some of those people have to be fucking madmen. How long do you think it takes to get the smell of cockroach and guano out of your hair? I’m sure that both of those guys weren’t having sex for like three months after they got home. And can you imagine being stuck on an ice floe with a group of 400 penguins as your only company against the literally freezing weather and total darkness? How did they not go insane? And how do you masturbate if you’re bundled under 19 layers of clothing? I mean, they were there for literally two years, they had to have done something. Maybe they just snagged whatever penguin wandered away from the herd and took turns fucking it, who knows?

Anyway, the entire reason I started writing this in the first place was because of a nature video that Noel sent me a couple of weeks ago. You might have already seen it, but if you haven’t, please watch it. It’s this incredible home movie that a vacationing family shot while on safari, and basically shows a bunch of lions attacking a group of buffalo, mauling one of the little ones, then fighting off some crocodiles that are trying to steal their dinner, and finally forty of the buffalo’s friends coming back to beat the shit out of the lions and save the calf. It’s pretty cool. I was going to write some kind of retarded dialogue between the lions and buffalo and stuff, but meh. Maybe later. Enjoy.