Tortured Louis Black paragraph of the week

What a sad little man. The namedropping is cloyingly thick in this week's column, "Personalizing the Mythic." For some reason, Black attended the Toronto International Film Festival instead of sending his film critics there and decided to write a whole column about how he's "friends" with Jonathan Demme and John Sayles under the thin guise of recommending their latest films. In the first paragraph, he writes, "This year, even though any number of exciting films were being screened, for a variety of reasons, I only saw a bare handful. Two of the best of them (both by friends), Man from Plains and Honeydripper, are not only great movies that people should be excited about; both also have direct connections to Austin."
Both by friends? What a twat. That really makes me puke. Also, saying that two films out of a handful were the best is not really a colossal recommendation.
He continues in the pathetic, weaselly tones of someone who thinks that standing next to famous people makes him more interesting than, and superior to, a cabdriver or a cook or any non-famous human being.
"Characterizing these films as two of the best at Toronto actually underplays my enthusiasm. Friends were involved in making both films, as I've noted - but I have lots of friends who are filmmakers, so I'm very conscious about trying very hard not to confuse my critical sensibilities with the polluting effects of personal affection. These unique and powerful films blew me away."
I think what really blew you away was the hot air coming out of your mouth, carrying your corpulent husk all over Stupid Town and Jerkville. He goes into hysterics every time a John Sayles and/or Jonathan Demme film is released, piling up the adjectives and effusive gush. I like most of Jonathan Demme's films myself, and I think John Sayles is occasionally interesting, but what is the point of wetting yourself every time they release a film? What good does it do? And why does he have to mention Jonathan Demme in one out of three columns? And please have an editor look over your columns, I beg you. Using "very" twice in one sentence is very, very amateurish and very sloppy. Very. My blog isn't exactly slop-free, but I'm not dropping it off at every kiosk in town.

Here is the tortured Louis Black paragraph of the week (drinking game version). Take a tequila shot every time an adjective appears in this paragraph about Demme's new Jimmy Carter documentary. Call 911:
"Carter's continually understated decency is what absolutely electrifies the screen, especially when considered in the context of the overcharged partisanship of most others involved in this discussion [conflict in the Middle East]. Add in the insane, irrational, myopic nationalism championed by the current administration, and Man from Plains seems like a brilliant haiku rising above a mass of Edwardian English poetry. In fact, the biggest presence in the film is that of President Bush, though he is hardly ever mentioned. Carter's intelligent, deeply felt, and morally centered concerns serve as the most resoundingly deep and meaningful rebukes of this administration's intuitive, happily ignorant, inherently racist, unbelievably naive, self-righteous world-view. This film is so unbelievably loud and ringingly resonant because it is so quiet."

Back to school: report #1

This back-to-school thing is pretty weird. It would be less weird if I was a graduate student, but getting another undergrad degree is weird-beard TNT. Here's where it's OK: My teaching classes are full of people my age, older, and slightly younger, so that's not weird at all. It's nice having an age range of 19-50 in one classroom. My English classes are good. I get to read a lot of stuff I would probably have read anyway, or not read but wanted to, or not thought to have read, or hadn't heard of, or already read but wouldn't have re-read. My previous degree took care of the beginning English classes, so I'm only taking upper-class stuff. People in their early twenties are fine. I don't feel too far removed from them, and they seem okay. Here's where I'm struggling and feeling angry, stupid, sad, bored, and exasperated: the handful of generals I'm forced to take. I'm finding the 101 classes to be about the most difficult things I've ever done. I think something happens to your brain around age 25 that makes it harder to engage in rote memorization and test-taking. I'm having trouble memorizing things I don't care about. I always had that problem, but I could do it if I had to and crammed enough. Now, it's a goddamn insurmountable hurdle. I already paid these dues, motherfucker. And now my decrepit 30-year-old brain can only memorize facts I actually give a shit about. And I think I hate 18- and 19-year-olds more than any group of people on the planet. That may sound funny coming from someone who is planning on teaching high school, but there is a huge difference between a high school senior and a college freshman. Goofy, awkward teenager turns, overnight, into goofy, awkward teenager with responsibilities. Somehow, adult freedom turns these teenagers into jerks. And not just jerks. Stupid jerks. And these 101 teachers gear their lessons to these stupid jerks, and not the 30-year-old jerks like me, who really should have figured out what the fuck to do with their lives several years ago so they wouldn't be sitting in the same seat they were sitting in 12 years ago. For chrissakes, OJ Simpson is involved in another criminal imbroglio. It's 1995 all over again, and I have progressed exactly one inch since I graduated from high school. If Candlebox puts out a new album, I will commit suicide.

So, I'm pretty much going to have to drop my biology class because I'm a fucking idiot and not a visual learner and I'm too fucking old to be there, but I had my first classroom observation last week and I loved it. That made me feel good. Maybe I'm on the right track, even if I have to take three science classes, and Psychology 101, and an online Texas government whoop-di-do, and my old college roommates are well on their ways to Ph.D.'s while I sit in fucking Biology 101, completely lost. What fucking balderdash. Folderol! Fuck! Anyway, I observed a fourth-grade class, and will observe this class for nine more weeks, and it's nice to actually be reminded why I made this rough, tough, and undignified decision to play 18-year-old for the first three years of my thirties. (Although I have spent the last six years drinking beer, buying records, and going to movies while they worked their asses off.) A Reader's Digest condensed version of my first classroom observation.
Boy in John Cena shirt and girl with frizzy, curly hair staring at me in the office of the school.
Girl: We're half cousins.
They lead me to the classroom. I notice that we leave the school and are walking toward some kind of weird back entrance that doesn't look like where we are supposed to be.
Boy: We like going this way but lately they've been locking the doors.
The door is locked. The boy and the girl stand in front of the door for 30 seconds.
Me: Is there another way in?
Boy: Yeah, this way.
He leads me through doors that put us right where we were to begin with, and then to the classroom, which is just down the hall.
The teacher introduces me to the class, I tell them some things about myself. They introduce themselves to me. About half of them are shy and embarrassed, the other half outgoing and happy. One boy pumps his fist in the air and says the following: My name is Kevin. Yodelay-yi! Yodelay-yi! Yodelay-yi-hoo!
The whole class laughs, except for one surly young man with his arms crossed. He says: Yeah, he's funny. He's funny. He's funny. He's not funny.
Girl: He is too funny.
Boy: Shut up.
They discuss a short story they read the previous week. The teacher reads a passage describing a boy dressing for winter. When she reads the words "long underwear," the class explodes in laughter.
I like these kids.

Campus report: Current indie-rock fashion may be changing, if UT trends can be believed. I thought campus would be overrun with asexual anorexics in tight, ill-fitting, multi-colored clothes, sneering at everyone while sharing a single Ramen noodle. I've only seen two of these butt-nuts in 4 weeks. Oddly, everyone looks the same at the University of Texas as they did at the University of Nebraska 8 years ago, except that shoes are much more colorful, nobody wears flannel, and, of course, iPods are everywhere. Cell phones seem to be less omnipresent than I feared. Everyone carries one, but there's less constant chattering than there was the last time I ventured onto UT premises. That's a good sign. I'm still confused about how the craziest lunatics in town--I'm talking the craziest, the guys who can't figure out how to stop confusing Jesus with Mickey Rooney or stop talking to themselves or stop carrying around 68 plastic bags--can always seem to find a campus student union. If you think bugs are crawling on your skin and your name is 56 Galactitroid, how the fuck do you get it together enough to find the food court at the student union of the university?

Tortured Louis Black paragraph of the week

Louis Black didn't write his column this week, so I've been forced to Google-search the archives and present a Louis Black blast from the past. Here's one from July 2003:

"For me, it's usually a bit disconcerting talking to people about (Robert) Rodriguez's films. Most viewers approach each film as an independent entity, while I see all the films as part of an ongoing process. As much as From Dusk Till Dawn, Desperado, or Spy Kids knock me out, as Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over truly dazzles, and as I eagerly await Once Upon a Time in Mexico, these seem like early chapters in what I'm betting is going to be an extraordinary body of work. The quality of what the Rodriguez/Avellán team has already produced just deepens my excitement and anticipation of what will be coming."

I just want to repeat one phrase from that paragraph, for emphasis: "... as Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over truly dazzles ..."

Talkin' the retinal scan pamphleteering blues, or left-wingers are jerks, too

One of the disadvantages of being a non-traditional student taking a second tour of duty at Operation: Enduring University is that I have to hear a lot of class discussions I already wore out in those drunken, THC-fueled days of Talk Much, Think Little. One unfortunate byproduct of attending college is realizing that the neo-cons actually read their worthless manifestos and believe in them, while the supposed "good guys," the liberal students, just skim a couple of pamphlets and spout off a lot of ill-conceived nonsense that has nothing to do with actual human experience and mostly comes from a place of sheltered privilege. When I was visiting friends in Madison, Wisconsin last month, we saw a flier for a liberal youth group giving us the low-down on Bush's foreign policy, and also about the alternative policies, and unfortunate oppression, of that fantastic hero Hugo Chavez. Yep. These are the same people who've made a folk hero out of Fidel Castro. Just go to Cuba and ask the first gay man you meet how great Fidel Castro is. He could tell you some things you didn't skim in your pamphlet. That's just for starters. Unfortunately, this short-sighted stupidity is not just an American phenomenon. In my Adolescent Development class yesterday, we were discussing where we were on 9/11 and what our reactions were. We were paired off in two-person groups, and I was paired with a Panamanian woman. She told me, or, more accurately, lectured me that she had no interest in 9/11. She said we got what we deserved, that the United States fucked Panama over, that she and her friends and family took delight in that day, and that she didn't care at all about 9/11. I tried to tell her that the people being murdered that day were not the same people who were making U.S. foreign policy decisions, that those people never get what's coming to them, that a lot of people who were just trying to go to work got killed for no reason, that I agreed with her that most of the decisions my government made and makes are destructive, that Americans are too often xenophobic and/or apathetic, that we were finally seeing what it was like to live how most of the rest of the world lives, but that her callous attitude toward a massive loss of life was kind of fucked up and kind of a put-on to be shocking, but she didn't buy it. She was apparently unaware of the irony of her moving to the U.S. to attend a U.S. institution and reap the benefits of a U.S. education, so I sheepishly let her continue to be unaware of it. I myself was embarrassed and didn't want to sound like Bill O'Reilly or Rush Limbaugh or Lee Greenwood. But confusing the citizens of foreign countries for their government is supposed to be something we do. Isn't she supposed to know better? Quit stealing our short-sightedness, Panama.

"Panama" is also a great song by Van Halen. For more information, consult your local library.

I had completely forgotten...

...that I hate school. Why didn't I remember that?

Overheard on campus

I have finished my first week and a half as a second-time college student. Here's some stuff I overheard.

Girl on her cell phone, very loudly and desperately, on the bus: "I want to sleep with you tonight." Every single person on the crowded bus looked at her after she said this.

English professor to a student in the hallway: "Saul Bellow doesn't make my stomach move."

For more information on college life, see Teen Wolf Too.

Tortured Louis Black Paragraph of the Week

Black's column this week, "Wild and Delirious," was fairly coherent compared to his usual overstuffed style, but he did manage to slip in a few of his ridiculous tendencies. The unnecessary celebrity name-drop: "Years back, I was lucky enough to spend time hanging out with the king of softcore filmmaking, Russ Meyer... Film Comment ran an interview with him by Ed Lowry and me; I talked to him for the Chronicle; there were also times when we just hung out." The poor-sport attack on Chronicle readers who happen to disagree with him: "The gaggle of geese that regularly write in assaulting me and the paper are quite mistakenly convinced that their honking sounds pass for some kind of snide wit rather than just annoying noise." And, of course, the precious poet of the soul, who gives us the tortured Louis Black paragraph, or honking sound, of the week:
"Eyes closed. Involuntarily, I felt the flushing of all breath being pushed out of my body; like the characters in the cartoon 'Balloon Land,' I deflated. This occurred not physically but in almost every other way: My spirit gushed out like rushing, raging water from a 10-day storm slicing through a dam. It wasn't the writing but the thinking. I had nothing to say and no desire to say it. You, the readers, disappeared, while the flames of my passion went out and even the embers grew cold."

You're not writing the Declaration of Independence, Mr. Black. You're just farting out some ramblings in a local alternative weekly. Try to relax. Your "buddy" Russ Meyer didn't worry about embers growing cold. He liked big breasts and made a lot of movies about them. And they were good.

Mother Superior vs. Space Bear, or the greatest TV interview ever?

At least she cleans up real nice

Thanks to Spacebeer for bringing this to my attention.

New weekly feature: Tortured Louis Black Paragraph of the Week

Editors of publications are usually so busy editing that their writing muscles tend to become flabby and weak. Editing and writing are not always complementary skills, and many good editors are poor writers. Read any random editor-in-chief's letter or opinion column in any newspaper, magazine, or alt-weekly, and you will most likely find mediocre-to-atrocious writing. Why do editors need to have a forum anyway? Shouldn't they let the publication speak for itself? The most egregious example of editor-in-chief pen diarrhea occurs every week in Louis Black's columns in my city's alt-weekly, The Austin Chronicle. Black's sins are many. He has a painfully narrow repertoire of subject matter, writing about the same five topics interminably and interchangeably. He is an absolutely shameless and undignified celebrity whore, awkwardly namedropping famous friends and acquaintances in nearly every column, particularly Jonathan Demme. (Most embarrassing example: a column that mentioned his dog misbehaving included the sentence "That's no way for a dog who's just been visited by Jonathan Demme to act." I'm paraphrasing, but I'm not exaggerating.) His columns are too often mired in nostalgia for the 1960s and 1970s. He is humorless, arrogant, and has a bit of a martyr complex. He thinks his mundane observations are profound. He thinks his taste is exquisite. Most importantly, he's a bad writer. He's an editor, but I don't think anyone is editing him. His prose is an awkward pileup of too many words fighting each other for space. His sentence construction is tortured and often less than coherent. He seems to be working toward Beat poet stream of consciousness or Hunter S. Thompson controlled chaos, but he lacks the energy of the former and the discipline and talent of the latter. And if you're making Beat poets look good, holy shit, you're bad. Which brings me to our new weekly feature: The Tortured Louis Black Paragraph of the Week. Before we get to that paragraph, for those of you who don't live in Austin or read the paper, here is the first paragraph of his most recent column, "Turn to Sinatra," by way of introduction:
"Sometimes you just have to put some Sinatra on just as sometimes you have to put the Stones or Talking Heads or Amy Winehouse on. Other times it's Jefferson Airplane, Love, Steve Earle, Alejandro Escovedo, or Patti Smith, and even other times it has to be music you don't really know like you know the music of your blood and of your life. You have to put it on because you have to leave the linear, deny structured forms, destroy memory, and, as best you can, lose yourself in something else. Movies work for me in that way as well, except there is a bit of time, the buildup – long or short – before you just plunge in, flowing along with the movie as you always have and hope you always will."
Ugh. Can it get any worse? Yes it can. Here is the Tortured Louis Black Paragraph of the Week:
"There are days when you sleep and sleeping is all you can do. Other times are haunted by sleeplessness, when sleep isn't even really a memory but more an image contained in some fairy tale told to you a long time ago by one you thought you loved in a city rarely warm and too often frozen over."

Words of wisdom

from an interview with Paul Weller:
Q: You gave up being vegetarian in the early '90s - was that symbolic of something?
A: It was symbolic of 12 years of being fucking hungry.

Tales of Small-Town Life: Safety First Edition

The last time I was able to spend a significant amount of time exploring my favorite childhood and teenage places of leisure, I couldn't help but feel disgusted. The playground equipment outside my elementary school and the park near my parents' old house had been replaced by puffy, plastic, multi-colored pieces of shit. A large fence blocked the entrance to the railroad bridge near the lake, over the Platte River. This bridge's graffiti alone is a 40-year history of small-town teenage life, a record of who loved who, which class ruled, who sucked, who died, and how much ass Led Zeppelin kicked. Someone painted the Swan Song logo there. I drank on this bridge, walked on this bridge, ran on top of and underneath this bridge, and hung on tightly while a train sped by above, globs of bird shit loosened by the train's weight falling all around me. This is now denied, in perpetuity, to every teenager growing up there. Nearby, at the lake, I wanted to collect my thoughts near the rope tied to the tree at Stoner Beach (supposedly given its nomenclature for being a pot-smoker's hangout, but I never saw anyone smoke dope there, and everyone hung out there anyway), which we would grab onto tightly, swing across the lake, and drop ourselves into the water. Some of us even tried the bicycle/rope combination. Unfortunately, I couldn't collect my thoughts because not only had the rope been cut down, but also the entire tree. These desecrations were committed in the name of safety. A bloodless coup organized by asshole kids' jerk-off parents and aided and abetted by lawyers, park rangers, school administrators, and, why not, let's blame them too, fundamentalist Christians. These jive turkeys want to tear down the house of fun because of some misguided crusade to keep children safe. But you can't keep children safe. Because children are idiots. And they're bored. And they have great imaginations.
Personal example: Sometime in the mid-1980s, in the backyard of my paternal grandparents' house, no playground equipment, railroad bridges, or ropes in sight. I remember a backyard full of kids. My aunt, uncle, and cousin were visiting from their then-home of Germany, so my cousin and brother were there for sure. Probably some other neighborhood kids, too. We ran out of things to do, so I went inside and grabbed some plastic glasses from the cupboard. I started filling them with dirt from my grandfather's garden and throwing them in the air. If you threw the glass just right, the dirt would fly out in mid-air and briefly cover everything. I think I was pretending they were bombs. My brother and cousin got in on it, too, and we were having a great old time throwing cups of dirt in the air. I packed one pretty tight and fired it into the air as high as I could manage. My sister picked just that moment to run outside. I remember her saying, "Hey you guys," and then gravity called. The dirt-packed glass came down directly on top of my sister's head, cutting a gash in her scalp. The blood started flowing, my sister started crying and screaming, and we all ran inside in terror. I remember my mother's calm acceptance of the situation. We could not surprise her. However, my aunt flipped the fuck out. I remember her yelling, "They WHAT? With DIRT? WHY WOULD THEY DO THAT?" My sister calmed down after a while, and we were forbidden to take anything from the kitchen outside. She didn't even need stitches, but she had a pretty nice knot on her head. So, you can build as many fences as you want, but kids are still going to do stupid shit.

The travels of Dr. Mystery

Hello everyone! I have updated my Flickr account for only the second time since the Internet was invented. I spent this past week visiting friends in Madison, Wisconsin and documented my trip via the digital photographic medium of digital photography. Check it out here.

2 Sexy Bob

Remember when I got that angry anonymous comment a few months ago (I believe he/she called me a "fucking piece of shit") about a badly written post I wrote three years ago concerning Old Austin vs. New Austin? It happened again. A tossed-off comment I wrote in a post more than TWO YEARS AGO about how much local semi-celebrity/rock-twat Bob Schneider sucked has garnered an impassioned, anonymous response. I hope it's the same person. Here is he/she's comment:
"See Bob Live...then try and say he sucks. He is amazing. Only music snobs that have only gone as far as his mainstream records would say something like that. He is probably over your head."

My response (because I am insecure enough to respond to each and every criticism I get):
Dear anonymous friend,
Peace be with you. We all love and hate different things. Taste is a fickle mysterious omni-sexual bean dip created by our psyches, geographic locations, friends, relatives, fetishes, angers, joys, intellects, temperaments, digestive successes and failures, and our lord and saviour, Jesus Christ. You like Bob Schneider. I don't. Both easy positions to take, depending on our peer groups and loosely defined subcultural affiliations. However, I don't understand why you jump to the conclusion that I know Bob Schneider from his albums and not from his live show(s). I've never heard a Bob Schneider album and hopefully never will. I've heard a handful of his recorded songs on the radio or on CD samplers from magazines. I have seen him live, however. The very first time I visited Austin, with my then-girlfriend, now-wife and her parents to find an apartment for us while she went to grad school and to dump a bunch of our belongings in her cousin's garage, I saw Bob Schneider live. My father-in-law, a blues fanatic, wanted to visit Antone's. We went. Bob Schneider was playing. First impressions can be misleading, but I found Mr. Schneider to be a preening, mediocre, ambitious yet artistically bankrupt, arrogant dickweed whose songs were boring, calculated, and bloodless. He was the sonic equivalent of his then-girlfriend Sandra Bullock's film career. Additionally, I am puzzled by your assertion that "only music snobs that have only gone as far as his mainstream records would say (that he sucks)." Music snobs stop short at mainstream records, never going further? Zuh? Also, to be considered "mainstream," one has to have some sort of mainstream success. Einsturzende Neubauten have had more mainstream success than Bob Schneider (discounting the Sandra Bullock relationship--we'll just stick to music here). As for your last comment, is he over my head? I don't know. I don't find his music or lyrics horribly complex, but that could be my problem. We'll just have to agree to disagree on this one. My warmest regards to you and yours, anonymous. I might be able to dig up some high school reports you can critique if you're interested, though you have at least two more years of my blog entries to wade through first. Let's meet up for backgammon soon. Kisses.

Lee Hazlewood 1929-2007

Nancy Sinatra & Lee Hazelwood
Uploaded by scootaway

Expletive-free July is over, bitches

I almost made it through July without swearing on my blogs. I slipped up once and wrote "damn," but nobody called me on it, so I owe no one a taco. Let the swearing resume. Fuck yeah!

Buggin' out

About an hour ago, an enormous flying black-and-red-striped bug came from out of nowhere, flew toward my head, and landed on the computer. I ducked and ran out of the room, grabbed the flyswatter, and came back in to do battle. I was gone for two seconds, and the thing disappeared. I poked around for thirty minutes, trying to draw it out, but it seems to have exited as mysteriously as it entered. It looked like an exceedingly unfriendly, sting-happy kind of insect, and was the size of a Volvo or cruiserweight championship contender. I must remain on my guard all night in case it returns. I think I'll have some tequila with a couple squirts of Tabasco in it to sharpen my reflexes. Where is it?

(When I started writing this post, a tiny bug crawled out from under the keyboard and I smacked it with the flyswatter. At least I got to use it. It's always so unsatisfying when the flyswatter comes out and the bug goes away.)

UPDATE: At 1:33 a.m., I killed a large flying beetle. I think it was a different bug. This must be Insect Invasion Night.

Two words

It's Wrestling Post Saturday on Spacebeer and Can-Smashing Robot! Whoo!

All art is quite useless.
--Oscar Wilde

We didn't start the fire

Several months ago, I was interviewed for a city editor position at The Onion. I didn't get the job. My hideously brief five-minute interview in the lobby of a hotel and failure to receive a promised follow-up phone interview tipped me off that I had somehow failed to make a good impression. (Since I didn't get the chance to really make an impression at all, I've always wondered what I did wrong.) At the time, I was stuck in a depressingly horrible office job after a year of unemployment (from quitting a job that, though kind of a drag, was 140% better than the place I ended up), and my failure to get the Onion job made me feel hopeless and depressed. To make matters worse, the person who got the job was my arch-nemesis. I'll refrain from linking to his two worthless bands because that's what got me in trouble in the first place. You see, if this person were a Native American, his name would be Chief Googles Self. However, this period of depression and hopelessness led to my decision to go back to school, turn my English minor into a major, and get a teaching certificate. I am glad I didn't get that job I really, really wanted so, so badly. I will be much happier performing a task that is necessary, valuable, and potentially rewarding for myself and the community than I would be pretending to care about Clap Your Hands Say Yeah ("You don't happen to be a David Byrne fan, by any chance?"). Even if I fail miserably at being a teacher, at least I won't be filling the world with more pointless babble.

To illustrate my point, here are two questions asked by Chief Googles Self, the man who is better than me, in his interview with rock hack Britt Daniel of Spoon in this week's A.V. Club.
"Are you incapable of making a bad album?"
"When you say, 'You got no fear of the underdog/That's why you will not survive,' are you the underdog, or are you the one in fear of the underdog?"

Quick, give this man a Pulitzer!

(This post brought to you by Small Petty Man, Inc. and the Lemons Into Lemonade Society.)

Too many cooks

Remember when David Letterman was on NBC, and his band played with every single musical guest, no matter how incongruous? What was up with that? I haven't seen many Letterman shows since I was 18 or 19, but I think they stopped doing this.

I give up

I was about 1/58 of the way through a post, but wisely gave up when I realized the topic I picked was enormously huge and unfathomable and suitable only as the basis for a fifty-volume memoir. What kind of idiot tries to do that all at once on his fourth drink of the night the night before the last day at his job? Whoo!

One thing I do want to salvage from that post is the phrase "the thing I love about teenagers is the simultaneous openness to everything and complete lack of quality control." To illustrate this point, allow me to mention some bands from my record collection, circa then:


Miles Davis
Spin Doctors
Guided By Voices
Better Than Ezra
Pavement
Counting Crows
Minutemen
Alice in Chains
The Replacements
24-7 Spyz
Mudhoney

To cut myself some slack, I grew up in a town of 1,500 people four hours from the nearest city with no access to MTV. But I'm still baffled. How could I be so wrong, and yet so right? (By this I mean, how could I like all these other bands, when the only one worth a damn is Spin Doctors?)

Access: Wood

I was reading and drinking beer last night with the TV on for a multimedia thrill ride, and "Access Hollywood" came on. Tempted to turn it off when the top story was Eva Longoria's wedding, I somehow found the inner strength to continue. After all, if I "weathered an era in pop culture called Bennifer, and [I] weathered it with strength," I could certainly make it through this five-minute segment. I'm glad I did. I think the dullards at "Access Hollywood" were too dim to have deliberately orchestrated this stroke of genius, so, even more delightfully, it appears to have been unintentional: The woman they sent to interview Hugh Hefner was named Cynthia Woodcock.

Note: Since this is a woman's name, I am technically not breaking my no-swearing-in-July rule.

Men first feel the prick of necessity, then the attraction of utility: next they become aware of convenience, still later amuse themselves with pleasure, thence grow dissolute in luxury, and finally go mad and waste their substance.
-- Giambattista Vico

Expletive-Free July

I've faced a hard truth. I swear too much on my blogs. My god, what would my grandmother think if she were ever to stumble across any of this? I lightly season my spoken words with the occasional profanity, and I haven't heavily peppered my speech with trash talk since I was 16, but I swear all the assfucking time on my blogs. So, for the month of July, all three of my blogs will be profanity-free. If any of you catch me in a swear this July, the first person to point this out to me will receive one free taco of their choice (maximum $5 value). Good luck, gang! To prepare for this momentous challenge, I will send June out in a blaze of titty-licking, cock-stroking glory! Here is a maximum-strength profanity blasteroo of pottymouthed keyboardery to work these swears, real and imagined, out of my system:

Fuck
shit
ass
cunt
poo
twat
cock
nutsac
damn
hell
bitch
son-of-a-bitch
son-of-a-thousand-bitches
sex-gorilla
dick
peter-o'toole
cocksman
fuckfart
shit-ass
perineum
asshole
motherfucking titty-sucking two-balled bitch
twat-neck
goddamn
motherfucker
fuckface
cocksucker
dang
bullshit
pussy
balls
butthole
for the love of Mike
jesus christ (name in vain version)
butt-ass
ass-butt
cock-twat
dicknose
boobies
meat and two veg
cacker
bugfuck
pigfuck
rock critic
chi-chis
testicle-tit
snotcrotch
jizz
come
spoo
shitty
queef
fucking asshole
goddammit why the fuck did you do that
christ-humper
whore
pimp
dirty sanchez
mother of all beershits
fatherfucker
facefucker
assfucker
meat and two veg fucker
the ol' one-two-buckle-my-shoe
twizz-jibbler
punani
ding-a-ling
white reggae
jangadwingdwong
cum-guzzler
a film by Kevin Smith
Pennsylvania mustache
horsecock
skullfuck
shitsniffery
damned dirty ape
the Dartmouth Powderball
"the county line"
pubes
nips
dingus
arse
giving them a root
The Gentleman of Independent Means
cherry
cherry pie
The Blueberry Shuffle
"meeting adjourned"
circle jerk
the inimitable Fran Drescher
fucky fuck fuck
bitch-ass
the gigolo's lonely weekend
babyfucker
godfuckingdamnit
the Albuquerque handshake
crap

See you fuckers for the filthiest August yet. Get fucked and die until then, ass-faced blowjob-craving dickweeds! And mention my blog to your young children and elderly parents, aunts, uncles, and grandparents, as well as your favorite clergyman. July will be family-friendly!

Dammit

I see that some creepo is already selling hipster t-shirts with an image of the dramatic chipmunk on it. Why can't we just enjoy things?

The best thing I've ever seen

(click on image to watch, make sure your sound is on)

This couch got boned

This just got brought to my attention, and it couldn't wait until morning even though I have an apartment full of people drinking booze.

Whoo!

I put in my notice at work yesterday. As of July 13, 2007, a new adventure begins. Unemployment Dr. Mystery returns, followed closely by Rodney Dangerfield in "Back to School" Dr. Mystery. Then what? Teacher Dr. Mystery? This Didn't Work Either Dr. Mystery? Stay in School Forever Dr. Mystery? Fuck It All Thunderbird Wine Iron Maiden Dr. Mystery? Also, please refer to me from July 14 until I get part-time work or school starts as Dr. Leisure.

The blues

I'm going to change the name of this blog to I Am So Tired & Filled With Malaise So Here Are Some More YouTube Clips

Norm MacDonald, unsung hero of comedy:

A grown man on the job

Jet vs. Jet

Circus hyenas

When these photos first hit the web and the magazines, it was reported that Nigerian debt collectors kept hyenas and baboons as pets/collection agents. No money? Guess what? A baboon will rip your balls off or a hyena will chew your balls off. Or a hyena and a baboon will combine forces to pummel your balls off. As exciting and frightening as this story may be, it is not true. These guys are actually a traveling circus troupe who have trained hyenas and baboons to do tricks. Still pretty amazing even though no one is losing any testicles. Why am I posting about this? I don't know. I just haven't posted in a while and these pictures are pretty sweet.

Someone vented some spleen at me

After four years writing this goofy blog, "the home of the bizarre rant" according to KFART radio's "Crazy" Doug Bonercock, I finally got my first hate comment. Someone really, really hates me. The odd thing is, they just left the comment this morning for a post I wrote two years ago that is pretty mild. I'm not going to link to the old post because I find it embarrassingly badly written (my post, not his/her hate-filled comment, which I find beautiful), but it was spurred by seeing parts of "Viva Les Amis," a documentary about a beloved Austin institution that closed down and was replaced by a Starbucks. Everyone in the documentary went on and on about how Austin was great in 1990 and how much it sucks now. My post was about how tired I was of hearing certain people in Austin constantly pine for the good ol' days, talk about how everything was so much better then, remain stuck in the nostalgic rose-tinted inaccurate past while being a bitter whiner about the present. Things change, youth fades, grow up, stop whining, the Alamo Drafthouse theaters weren't here 12 years ago and they're pretty great, etc., you get the gist of it. Not one of my better posts, but it angered someone so much he/she left me this comment:

"Please return yourself and everyone you know back to wherever you came. You suck you fucking douchebag."

Nice. I am confused about one thing, though. On returning myself and everyone I know back to wherever I came. I came to Austin, so I can't really return to it. That's kind of a "back to the future" dilemma, isn't it? I assume you mean "came from," but come on man or lady, if you're going to hate with power, you also have to hate with accuracy. I look forward to continuing our discussion over waffles sometime in the future, anonymous pussy.

Back to School

I'm in, officially. I'm going back to school in late August. I may be teaching your children someday. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!

Everything is for sale, including your corpse

I haven't posted in a long time...

...and I still have nothing to say.

Crustville, episode four

Read episode three here

Frank walks into the bar and sits down next to Bertie. Bertie hacks out a wheezy, longtime smoker’s laugh and offers no greeting.
“You still get any noise out of your bass?” Bertie asks as if they’d been in the middle of a conversation, though the two men haven’t spoken in months.
“A little,” Frank says.
“Bring it by the practice space sometime, if you’d like.”
“I’d actually been thinking about doing that. Tony tells me you got a downsized kid with a prosthetic right side playing keyboards.”
“Yup. He actually can’t play worth shit, but you can’t argue with a robotic claw when it comes to stage presence.”
“I bet that sets the yo factor on blast.”
“And even a blind chicken gets a kernel once in a while.”
“You got that right,” Frank says. “What are you doing drinking alone in this shithole on a Monday night?”
Bertie reveals a quick flash of annoyance but hides it with a grin. He’s up to something, Frank thinks, and he can’t decide whether to let me in on it.
“Waiting for Ronnie,” Bertie says. “He should be along soon. I hope.”
“What are you guys up to tonight?” Frank asks, hoping for some hint.
“Plans and schemes,” Bertie says, grinning and concealing. “Let me buy you a whiskey.”
Frank is about to answer in the affirmative when a blow to the center of his back knocks some breath out of him and almost upends his stool. His eyes water from the pain, and he looks up to see the large, meaty hands of Ronnie digging into his shoulder. The large man’s face is the color of a Roma tomato. He laughs heartily and wraps his arms around Frank and Bertie.
“I wasn’t expecting to see you tonight, Frank,” he says. “What’s new and exciting, chief of staff?”
Frank rasps out his greetings, still trying to catch his breath.
“Where the hell you been, Ronnie?” Bertie asks, irritated yet curiously anticipating Ronnie’s excuse.
“You would not believe this shit,” Ronnie says, pulling a stool out from the bar and forming a triangle with Bertie’s and Frank’s stools. “I was getting my afternoon drunk on, to be ready for my evening drunk, and I had to take a piss. So I go to the bathroom, and I start to take a piss. And I look down, and I watch myself pissing for a few seconds, and I get kind of a funny idea. I think how hilarious it would be if I karate-chopped my urine stream. So I did it. I brought my hand down and I karate-chopped my urine stream. It was hilarious, man. Comedy gold. Of course, I ended up getting piss all over my hand. I didn’t think that part through. So I walk over to the sink, and I turn on the faucet, and nothing. There is no running water. Apparently, a water main broke on my block, and they picked right that moment to fix it. They just shut the water off like seconds after I karate-chopped my piss, so I have urine all over my hand and no way to wash it off. Only in America, am I right? So I zip up and button my pants with the hand I didn’t piss on, which is my left hand. That took about ten minutes. It’s not so easy to button your pants with one hand. I mean, don’t even ask me how I did it. At this point, the urine has dried on my hand, but I still really want to wash the hand, so I just start walking down the street until I get to a convenience store. I decide I’m going to wash my hand in the bathroom in there. This is about six blocks past my house, so they have their running water. I asked them. I made sure before I went in there. I didn’t want to get burned again. Here’s where it gets ridiculous, though. Just as I’m about to walk over to the bathroom, I run into my old friend Phil, and he reaches his hand out to SHAKE MY HAND! The hand that is covered in urine. I couldn’t do that to him, man. Phil’s a good guy. He fed my dog when I went to Lower East Crustville for a week last year. But I didn’t know what to tell the guy. I couldn’t think of some excuse to get me out of shaking hands with him. I can think of at least ten now, but my mind was drawing a blank at that moment. So I just turned around and started running. I ran all the way back home, and thankfully, the water was back on. But what the hell am I going to tell Phil now?”
“What the fuck?” Bertie says. “What did you just tell us?”
Through his intense laughter, Frank notices a sea change in Ronnie’s face. He glares at a tall, thin man with a white scar running from the left side of his nose to his bottom lip. His hands curl into fists and he narrows his eyes.
“I can’t believe this asshole shows his face in here,” he says and walks in the man’s direction.
“Uh-oh,” Bertie says. “I might need your help here, Frank. The two of us might be able to hold him back.”
“Wha?” Frank says, confused.
“Hey, child-beater,” Ronnie snarls at the man. “Beat your kids today?”
The man smiles at Ronnie and rubs his scar in an almost sexually threatening way.
“As a matter of fact, I did,” he says. “What are you going to do about it?”
“Let’s see how you like fighting a grown man, child-beater,” Ronnie says, jutting his chest forward and bumping it into the scarred man’s chest.
“This is getting tiresome,” the man says. “Beat your kids a couple times and everybody calls you a child-beater. I’m also a Seventh Day Adventist. Nobody ever mentions that.”
“Talking time is over,” Ronnie shouts. “Smashing time is now!”
Ronnie lunges for the man, and Frank and Bertie lunge for Ronnie. They are able to hold his arms back, and the scarred man leaves.
“Calm down,” Bertie says. “Save it for Devendra.”
“Okay,” Ronnie says, breathing heavily. “You’re right.”
“Wait, what?” Frank says. “Save it for Devendra?”
Ronnie and Bertie look at each other conspiratorially, then sheepishly.
“Should we tell him?” Bertie asks.
“Might as well,” Ronnie says.
“Tell me what?” Frank asks.
“You want to tell it?” Ronnie asks Bertie.
“OK.” Bertie says. “Frank, I found out some disturbing news yesterday through the friend of a friend. It seems Devendra Banhart has discovered, or more likely been tipped off about, the location and existence of Crustville. He has plans to make a compilation album of the so-called Crustville ‘freak folk’ scene and sell it aboveground. They’re going to find out about us up there, and our way of life is going to be over. Reliable sources indicate that he’s entering Crustville at midnight tomorrow night, and we’re going to be waiting. With lead pipes. We’re going to beat the fuck out of him. You in?”
“I’m in,” Frank says, and smiles. “The boys are back in town.”

Caption contest postponed

We have a problem with our CD burner, defective discs, or glitches in the handful of CD burning programs we've downloaded, or some combination of all three, so I'm going to postpone the contest until we can figure it out. But the contest shall return, hopefully next month.

Astro-Nuts

Did you know that former astronaut Alan Bean was also a painter? This is one of his paintings, called (I shit you not) "America's Team: We're #1":

















UPDATE:
Here's another one, "Lunar High Five":






















Seriously, though, astronauts are badasses.

New blog

Hey everybody. I have yet another blog, this one devoted exclusively to my foolish attempt to watch all 101 horror films in the book "Fangoria's 101 Best Horror Movies You've Never Seen." The blog is called Decapitated Zombie Vampire Bloodbath. Check it out at http://www.zombievamp.blogspot.com, if you dare. This is not an April Fool's joke.

Get Squiered

I think this video speaks for itself, but I do want to mention a couple of things. When I was a kid, this video was always on TBS's "Night Tracks," a Friday and Saturday night all-night music video show that I watched every week, filling the hole in my MTV-less, small-town cable world. Anyone out there ever watch "Night Tracks"? It was on cable, but nearly everyone I've ever asked has never heard of the show. Anyway, when I was a little boy, I thought everything was filmed on location. (Don't know where I thought "Star Wars" was filmed.) I'd heard the term "movie studio," but never paid any attention to what it meant. When I found out that many movies, TV shows, music videos, etc. were often filmed on fake replicas of towns, houses, streets, etc., my mind was blown. It seemed so weird and fantastical to me. So, when I was exposed to this Billy Squier video, I assumed it was filmed in Squier's apartment. I remember thinking how I'd like an apartment just like it, on the top of a skyscraper in a huge city. Good thing I was paying more attention to what I thought was a perfectly desirable home for a future grown man such as myself than to Mr. Squier's dance moves. Say what you will of Squier's dance routine, a repertoire I've dubbed The Closeted Kangaroo, but you've gotta admit he is not lacking in self-confidence.

I have been remiss in my duties as a blogger

I haven't posted in a long time. To remedy this, here is a picture of some clowns. Also, go see The Host. It's good.

Caption contest winner

I tried to post this hours ago, but the site was down. Anyway, thank you to all the contestants. The winter cap has spoken. This month's winner is AM. Congratulations, AM!

Hall of Fame/Hall of Shame

Good and bad album covers from the Dr. Mystery music library

Hall of Shame #4
Silkworm - Italian Platinum
I love this band to pieces, but for this particular album's cover, they decided "fuck it, we're not doing one this year."



















Hall of Fame #4a
Elvis Presley - Elvis Presley
























#4b The Clash - London Calling

Hall of Fame/Hall of Shame

Good and bad album covers from the Dr. Mystery music library

Hall of Shame #3
Prince - Diamonds & Pearls
Never put a hologram on the cover.


















Hall of Fame #3
Melvins - Colossus of Destiny

Talkin' Bear Mountain Saddle Creek Picnic Massacre Blues

March caption contest

Here is the photo for this month's caption contest. Click here for the rules. I also wanted to offer some words of encouragement from Randy Newman. I unwittingly set off a firestorm of Newman debate when I picked one of his album covers for my Hall of Fame. Regardless of his worth, the post was about the album covers, not the music contained therein. But keep it up anyway. I enjoyed it. Good luck, contest entrants.

"I will carry her across the threshold
I will make dim the light
I will attempt to spend my love within her
But though I try with all my might
She will laugh at my Mighty Sword
She will laugh at my Mighty Sword
Why must everybody laugh at my Mighty Sword?"
--Randy Newman, "A Wedding in Cherokee County"

Hall of Fame/Hall of Shame

Good and bad album covers from the Dr. Mystery music library

Hall of Shame #2: The Police - "Zenyatta Mondatta"
The Police were too busy rocking to come up with decent album covers (or album titles). Gaze into the shitty pyramid as Sting contemplates his future as a humorless twat. Andy Summers meets your gaze head-on, daring you to challenge the art direction and design of Michael Ross and Simon Ryan (I did not have this memorized. I looked at the liner notes. Please believe me.) Stewart Copeland, badass that he is, looks away, thinking only of the kickass drumming he will throw down later that afternoon.



















Hall of Fame #2: Randy Newman - "Good Old Boys"

Rack and roll

Remember when I punched the wall, causing a painting to fall and destroy our thermostat? The hijinks continued last week. I'm turning into a walking pratfall. Last Wednesday, I was bringing my fist down on my leg to emphasize a point about an "American Idol" contestant's shitty singing voice but I missed my aim and racked myself hard in the right testicle. On Saturday, I thought a water bottle I'd been drinking was empty and flipped it in the air and caught it. It still had a little water in it, and my glasses and face got drenched.

Texas A&M's press has I think cornered the market on boredom with an upcoming book I have been unlucky to proofread. The whole book is about twine! Twine, goddamnit! I proofread the index today, and while I think it notable that a scholarly tome was written about twine, it is even more notable that the index has entries for both Michel Foucault and "Weird" Al Yankovic.

New Weekly Feature: Good and Bad Album Covers of the Week

Each Thursday, I am going to reach into the Dr. Mystery CD, cassette, and record collection and inaugurate one album cover into the Hall of Fame and one in the Hall of Shame. Sometimes I will explain my reasoning, sometimes I may have nothing to say. The music will not be judged and is irrelevant to my purposes here. These are all albums from my stash, so it's safe to assume that I like at least three songs on them.

Hall of Shame #1
Frank Black and the Catholics - Devil's Workshop
Frank Black has written many fine songs, both solo and as a member of the Pixies, but his album covers have grown increasingly shitty. This cover always makes me laugh. It is half-ass to the extreme! Welcome to the Hall of Shame, Frank.





















Hall of Fame #1
Guided By Voices - Mag Earwhig!

A paragraph reserved for the kings

Sammy Hagar on Van Halen's upcoming induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame:

"My hope is that everyone lets everything go and we go there in complete respect of each other and in a loving way, with the attitude that 'I couldn't have done it without you' towards everybody," says Hagar, who received the official word of Van Halen's selection at his Cabo Wabo Cantina in Mexico, where he and Van Halen bassist Michael Anthony have spent the past week jamming with Red Hot Chili Peppers drummer Chad Smith in a newly developing side project called Chickenfoot.


I can't wait until that Chickenfoot album drops.


Sammy Hagar should be David Lee Roth's butler, goddammit! Van Halen should have been called Lee Roth. Every post-Diamond Dave album sucks so much ass.

Learning to love it

It was a traumatic moment for me when I realized that most adults were every bit as dumb as us kids, and probably dumber. The safety net was gone. Life was a dangerous and supremely unfair game of chance. I think most adults are stupider than children because they stop learning, stop being curious. They get settled in to something and quit thinking about everything else. Keep swimming or die! Be like the shark! If you smell blood, fucking go after it! Yes, I can whip up the exhortations like nobody's business, but do I follow my own advice? Many times, no. Let's take a couple of Sundays ago, for example. I was making some fish chowder, and things were going swimmingly (for more bad puns, email Henry Kissinger at bombthefuckoutofthem@yahoo.com). Unfortunately, the pot boiled over and the water put out the burner. I ladled some water out of the pot and moved it to a different burner (or more accurately, my wife did while I yelled profanities). Unfortunately, the pot boiled over again and put out the pilot light. Instead of cleaning things up and relighting the pilot light, I punched the wall, hard, knocking a painting off the wall, which fell, hard, on top of the thermostat, which broke. My knuckle was also bruised and bloodied. I'm an idiot. But, like Zelmo Swift, I go on. What else can you do? Keep getting out of bed. If my plans succeed, July 2007 will be the last month I ever spend working in an office, and that's something to get out of bed for.

Caption contest winner

I am going to take a brief respite from drunken profane rants to bring you the results of this month's caption contest. All entrants have been placed in the winter cap, and a winner has been pulled from the cap at random. This month's winner is Casual Ninja. Congratulations, Casual Ninja! I especially enjoyed all the captions this month. Funny stuff. Good job, people. And please, losers, enter again next time. There are still five or six regular entrants who haven't won yet, so keep entering.

Dumb things read at work

Some things I've come across proofreading books at work:

From a steaming pile of dog shit that purports to teach college freshmen how to "read" pop-culture texts but mostly does stuff like damn "Magnolia" for not offering solutions to how men can fully embrace the "new masculinity" or how "Being John Malkovich" doesn't do enough to fully endorse Cameron Diaz' and Catherine Keener's pseudo-lesbian romance. This book makes my groin ache more than it usually does, and makes me think my political sympathies should maybe be shifted toward the colossally powerful evil that runs the world rather than the shitty, ineffectual morons I've been throwing my votes toward since I was 18. Adults don't expect fictional characters in artworks to solve the world's minor problems, if indeed they are problems, I hope. Children already have this shit figured out. Get a fucking life. Anyway, here's an excerpt from this piece of garbage (from the chapter on how to read movies and music, as if they were the same thing):
"When I listen to Joss Stone on my Ipod, this says something very different about me, my mood, and how I view myself in the world than when I blast the pulsating alt beat of Audioslave, for instance."
I don't know what this sentence means, except that it reminds me of a really bad television commercial where a white man says "homey" and "that's off the hook." What different something is it saying about you, for christ's sweet tittyfucking sake? That you're willing to trade one empty corporate simulacrum of experience for another? I know what I'm about to say is not popular with many people I know, but I really don't give a fuck about the environment or saving the planet or recycling or any of that shit. We had a good run and we fucked it up. The world will still go on, believe me. We won't. That's alright. Everything has to end sometime. Yet I still weep when I think of the strong, majestic, eagle-of-freedom-worthy trees that were killed to bring the world this motherfucking piece of cock-ass-bullshit. Maybe I'm overreacting. Fuck that. There's no "maybe" in it. This book is inconsequential, and so is my stupid rant. But, goddammit, everyfuckingthing is becoming inconsequential and I am tired of it. Let's have some good times and piss on everything else. Hedonism now! Epicurean diets and rock and roll for all! Solutions for none! Let Sherlock Holmes have his solutions and leave me to my two bottles of wine and Dinosaur Jr albums!

Which is why I am glad to present this next sentence, from a food science book:
"Hollandaise is the aristocrat of sauces."
That's what I'm trying to find, every day. Glorious stupidity, not deadly stupidity, not mediocrity. I want aristocrats of sauces!

Happy Valentine's day! Save the dolphins! Don't blame me, I voted for a more coherent blog!

Crustville, episode three

Episode 1
Episode 2

"Who was that on the phone?" Sheryl asks her husband while he chews on a toothpick and looks irritated.
"My dumbass drug-dealing cousin Tony," Frank says and grunts. "He wants to get that dumbass techno-blues band I was dumb enough to play bass for back together. He's fixing up some sketchy half-douche with a prosthetic robot arm and programming the arm to play keyboards. Fucking Emerson, Douche, and Palmer is hitting the fucking big time."
"Mondays," Sheryl says and laughs bitterly to herself.
"You know the only good thing about Monday nights?" Frank asks his wife. "They're not Monday mornings."
He grunts again and stares at his knuckle. It's red and he doesn't know why, though it's been red since 1987.
"You want to fuck?" he asks his wife.
"No," she says.
"Good," he says back. The phone rings again and he throws his toothpick at the wall. It lands on the couch. He leaves it there.
"Hello," he barks. "Make it worth my while."
"Hi Frank," his aunt says reticently. "It's Marnie. Your uncle has some really bad ideas. I want you to come over here and talk him out of them."
"Shit on my balls," Frank says and groans for an incredibly long time. "You're worried rich uncle Gene is going to squander a few of your million doll-hairs and you want poor working man Frank to come over and put the kibosh on it. Nutsack!"
"Awww Frank," Marnie says. "Come on. Frank. Come on. Awww. Frank. Come on. Come on. Come on. Aww. Come on, Frank."
"Fuck you and fuck John Wayne."
"You don't mean it, Frank. I'll make you some strawberry rhubarb pie and give you all the gin you can drink and you and Gene can have a nice talk about his incredibly stupid ideas and how bad they are and then you guys can play a little ping pong. Wadda ya say?"
"It beats not fucking my wife. I'll be over when I feel like it. Goodbye and piss on it!" Frank slams the phone down and bites a loose piece of skin on his right thumb.
"Gonna go over and keep them in gold-plated televisions for another month?" Sheryl says, laughing. "Have fun." She picks up their cat, Rufus, and walks back to the bedroom. Frank hears the radio go on and he puts his boots on, swearing.

"Frank!" his uncle greets him warmly and hands him a bottle of gin. "Your aunt has the idea that I'm not onto something. Bullshit! Let me turn you on to more of my ever-illuminating brilliance! The ideas flow like wine, Frankie, when you open the tap and let them flow. People have heart attacks from not expressing their ideas, Frank! Real live heart attacks!"
"I have no idea what the fuck you're talking about," Frank says.
"I've got some beverage ideas, and also some television ideas that I think could make some money."
"OK."
"One word, Frankie. Race."
"What?"
"Race, man. Marketers are looking at this world as one big multicultural awareness-raising melting pot. But you have to market to race, man. Niche marketing."
"Not sure where you're going with this one, but I'm already leaning toward Aunt Marnie's side."
"Hear me out, Frank. Check out my beverage ideas. First up, ReJEWvenation: The Sports Drink Too Intense for Goys! What do you think?"
"Uh. I'm going to have more of this gin while you keep talking," Frank says.
"Okay. Also, Halal-cohol: The Non-Alcoholic Beer for Muslims. All the party, none of the guilt. Eh? Eh?"
"What else you got?" Frank says.
"Oh, I got. I got. Check this one out. African-American History Month: The Soft Drink. It's an orange drink, not unlike Sunkist."
"How will you make a profit off a drink only available in February, Uncle Gene?"
"Ever heard of pumpkins, man? Ever buy one of those shits in June?"
Gene snorts disgustedly at Frank's lack of response.
"I can see I'm wasting my breath on the beverage ideas, but let me tell you about my television show. The CW and Bravo are interested. I talked to my buddy Dave at the CW last night, as a matter of fact."
"OK," Frank says, warming to Gene's tone. After all, Gene made most of his money producing Crustville's top-rated sit-com, Whoops, I Fucked Your Niece from 1997 to 2002. "Let's hear what you got."
"Okay?" Gene says. "You know how everybody loves Queer Eye for the Straight Guy? Spin-off time. I got a little variation on that. Black Eye for the White Guy. Heh? Does it smell like a blockbuster hit in here, or am I just inhaling past glories?"
"I don't know," Frank says. "Does anybody still watch that show?"
"Of course they do," Gene says. "But hear me out. What we have are three teams. On each team is a black man and a white man. The white man's ancestors were slaveholders. The black man's ancestors were once slaves for their very partner's ancestors. Get me?"
"Awww fuck," Frank says. "You're a moron."
"This is just the beginning. The black man on the team, once a bell rings, punches the white teammate repeatedly in the face. The first team in which the black guy pummels the white guy until he gets a black eye wins. The black guy will get forty acres and a mule and the white guy wins a trip to Hawaii. Spike Lee is already attached to direct the pilot. This is a winner, Frank."
Frank walks into the kitchen and grabs a slice of rhubarb pie. He eats it and leaves without saying goodbye to his aunt and uncle. He gets in the car and drives past The Place Where No One Is Happy But No One Gets Cut Off. He turns around and drives past it again, slowly. Bertie Hogan, Ass Disagreement's drummer, is sitting on a stool at the center of the bar. Frank parks and sits in his car, the keys in his hand. It wouldn't hurt to jam with them just once, would it?

February caption contest

Enter and win a compilation CD, made by me.
The rules:
1)Leave a caption for the photo in comment form under the post.
2)You have until the 15th of the month to enter.
3)On the 16th, I put all the entrants' names in a winter cap and draw one winner at random. That person gets the CD.
4)Last month's winner is ineligible this month, but may still enter for fun.
5)Go nuts!

More great dead people, and the further adventures of the Hambegglar

He was back again today, working the street while I drove home from the job. The same sign warning all of his imminent need for hunger. This time, he was eating some pizza. I'm almost convinced the motherfucker's a performance artist.

As an amateur necrologist with both a love of celebrity (and semi-celebrity, and non-celebrity) death (and a constant dread of and fascination with my own eventual dirtnap) and a love of music, I would be remiss in paying tribute to the recent deaths of two of my favorite musicians: Flying Burrito Brothers pedal steel player and film animator, Sneaky Pete Kleinow, and Faust cofounder Uwe Boll. Smell you later, gentlemen.

Sights seen on my way home from work

A homeless man was holding a cardboard sign telling of his hunger and immediate need for food while eating an enormous hamburger.

January caption contest winner

Hello everyone,
Thanks to all who entered and please enter again next month. This time, the winter cap has decided to award the compilation CD to Mary P. Congratulations, Mary P.!

Sincerely,
Great Nor'easter HQ
Texas Blizzard 2007
Do Not Leave Your Home for Any Reason Or You Will DIE!!!!!
Hour 39 of the Terrible Freeze!
Little Children Making Depressing Mud and Sleet Snow Angels and Submitting Pictures of this to the News!

(I am obligated by my birthplace in a non-Southern clime to make fun of the puny little storms that shut the town down. Nevertheless, this did not prevent me from taking two vacation days in a row due to the "icy conditions keeping me from driving there." I am usually an honest person, but where my day job is concerned, I consider lying an honorable and healthy thing to do.)

January caption contest

I'm one day late in posting the contest this month, so entries will be accepted through the 16th and the winner will be announced on the 17th. Sorry about that. I've been in mourning for the triple threat of greats we lost over the holiday season: James Brown, Gerald Ford, and Saddam Hussein. But seriously, folks, I've heard a lot of griping from rednecks and oldsters about how James Brown's death was given more attention than former president Ford's. Wise up, jerks. What did Gerald Ford do? Fell down a couple of times, pardoned Nixon. James Brown? 40+ years of funk.

Contest rules here.