R.I.P. Arthur Lee

August caption contest

I'm back from D.C. I had a great trip, but a horrible tale of airplane and airline woe occurred on our final day (which turned into days). That story to come. Here are three highlights from my trip:
1) I ate great food.
2) I saw a homeless man's dick when his pants fell down.
3) I drank at a bar that has 1,000 beers.

Here is the August caption contest photo. You all know the rules by now.

Exciting new hip-hop developments

Hey everybody. Whoo boy, you turn your blog over once to a guest hip-hopper, and it turns into a real hootenanny! I'm talking a real lollapaloozer! A freestyle rap battle has just begun between Grandfatha Klock and Grandmutha P.I.E. on the comments section under Grandfatha Klock's guest post. P.I.E. issued a stern challenge, and Klock responded boldly. Klock's handlers have just left word with me to challenge P.I.E., wherever she may be, to continue the battle. When I return from D.C., I will post Klock's response for him (like most old people, he doesn't know a fucking thing about using a computer, not a goddamn fucking thing). I guess that's okay with me. Let the battle of the hip-hoppers continue! Hooray!

Tales of small-town life redux: the sequel to the prequel

What's up, bitches? I was at a fun party on Saturday night seeing off some friends' old home before they move to a new home a few blocks away. I got a little too drunk, as is my public wont, and I said a couple of dumb things. First, I claimed that a funny incident happened at my home, when in fact it happened at a place I've never been. This was quickly brought to my attention. This made me appear rather foolish. In my defense, I truly believed the incident happened at my house, probably because the man behind the incident either came to my house later or relayed it to me on the phone that night, if my memory is reliable, and as this boring anecdote proves, it is decidedly not. I have a sneaking suspicion that I quickly wear out my welcome when I have too many beers. I think I may turn into the kind of person I don't like much, but people keep inviting me back, so maybe I'm mistaken. Perhaps they just prefer the company of my lovely wife and I am a necessary evil. If this is the case, I can hardly blame them, and I will amp up my obnoxious behavior so I become violently hated, not quietly tolerated.
The second dumb thing I said was that besides my family, everyone in my hometown should be drowned in the river like extra kittens. People seemed a little creeped out by this comment. After careful consideration, I am going to revise that comment. Forty percent of the people in my hometown should be executed by firing squad. It's not such a bad place by tiny town standards, and a certain love/hate relationship will always exist. It is a complex, twisted, weird ball of reactions my hometown rustles up in me, and if you grew up there, you might understand my morbid outburst.
As far as my promise to hold cockfights in my backyard as soon as I purchase a house, and my call for every graduate student to drop out of school, I still tentatively stand by both drunken exclamations. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to watch a video conversation between Zach Braff and Kevin Smith on MySpace. I wonder if they're going to cover such topics as whether a Jedi light saber could pierce Frodo Baggins's anus-matrix, how one can make it through the trailer for "Garden State" without hemorrhaging angry blood-vomit, why Kevin Smith is such a talentless douche, or why Zach Braff's name sounds like a fart (e.g. "I just zach-braffed so hard that I had to change my underwear.")

I'm going to D.C. in a few days for my summer vacation, so I probably won't post for several days. The August caption contest may be postponed a day or two. I will close with a rare excerpt from a transcript of a live Grandfatha Klock show:

"(yells at crowd to keep it down, inhales oxygen from nearby tank)
Let me tell you suckas what GK is about
My Lincoln Town Car is all pimped out

I was raised on a farm but my name ain't Cletus
Been droppin' dope beats since Lillian Gish was a fetus

Bust it
(spins on back for one hour)"

See you later, friends.

A guest post from the world's oldest rapper, Grandfatha Klock

Grandfatha Klock, c. 1997

Yo.

My name is Grandfatha Klock and you better recognize
Cooling on the windowsill are three blueberry pies

Taking out rappers like a lyrical sniper
Even though I'm wearing an adult diaper

I own my own home--I don't need to take out a loan
I use a telegraph machine, not a cellular phone

People think hip-hop begins and ends with Tupac and Jay-Z
But I've been droppin' rhymes since issues one of Mad, Cracked, and Krazy

The bitches all love my phat Social Security checks
But I need to take Viagra when I want to have sex

My mobility is limited and my skin looks like a troll's
The first book I ever read was the Dead Sea Scrolls

I'm the world's oldest rapper, from my rhymes you've all been looting
I use my Rascal scooter when I need to do a drive-by shooting

I'm old, beeyatch!

Yeah, boyee! Grandfatha Klock in the house!

Grandfatha Klock will be performing at the Hip-Hopatorium in Grand Rapids, Michigan August 3, 4, and 5, weather permitting

Expressway to yrAnus

Phrases taken out of context from a collection of philosophical investigations of Jean-Francois Lyotard's The Differend that I have been proofreading at work:

solar anus

mad anus

haunted by the ring of the anus

anus-matrix

Caption contest winner

Hey, everybody. The winning name has just been pulled from the hat. July's CD winner is Krouchdog! Congratulations on your random victory, Krouchdog. Email or Myspace me your new address since you just moved/are moving.

Tales of small town life

"He [Reverend Hightower] still kept the cook, a negro woman. He had had her all the time. But they told Byron how as soon as his wife was dead, the people seemed to realize all at once that the negro was a woman, that he had that negro woman in the house alone with him all day. And how the wife was hardly cold in the shameful grave before the whispering began. About how he had made his wife go bad and commit suicide because he was not a natural husband, a natural man, and that the negro woman was the reason. And that's all it took; all that was lacking. Byron listened quietly, thinking to himself how people everywhere are about the same, but that it did seem that in a small town, where evil is harder to accomplish, where opportunities for privacy are scarcer, that people can invent more of it in other people's names. Because that was all it required: that idea, that single idle word blown from mind to mind."
-- from Light in August by William Faulkner

This passage in the Faulkner book jumped out at me when I read it last week. It reminded me, generally, of what private life means in a small town, which had already been on my mind for a few weeks because of the reemergence of a couple of false stories about me (thankfully much more benign than in the Faulkner novel). My reputation was hardly tarnished by the well-meaning but imaginary fluff said about me, but other people weren't so lucky. I particularly remember two stories spreading through town while I was in high school, one about a man caught screwing a pig in a barn during a cattle branding, the other about a twentysomething woman "allowing" thirty guys to gangrape her at a party. The line stretched out the door and down the block, apparently. She was mercilessly taunted for close to three years by school kids, and her first and middle name became slang for "whore" the entire time I was in high school. I always wondered why nobody said anything about the two men from my town who were named in the story as being a part of the gangrape. Everyone in my hometown, at one time or another, has had something untrue spread about him or her, but the most malicious gossip seems to be reserved for those who are poor, not very bright, and/or a little odd. This was the case for both the alleged pigfucker and gangbangee. Both stories were, most likely, complete bullshit, and probably everyone repeating them at least suspected as much, but the idle words blew back and forth from mind to mind for a long, long time. Then they stopped, as abruptly as they started. Faulkner had something to say about this, too, in the same novel: "But Byron believed that even the ones who said this did not believe it. He believed that the town had had the habit of saying things about the disgraced minister which they did not believe themselves, for too long a time to break themselves of it."
Former classmates of mine have a habit of repeating a story about me that never happened. I've tried to set them straight so often that I no longer bother to correct them. They don't listen. What can I do? The fake story is funnier than the boring truth, so I don't have a lot of convincing ammo. It "took place" the first time I ever got drunk. I was newly 16 and at a large (for my hometown's standards) house party. It was Homecoming weekend, and the football game had been snowed out, so the party had become much bigger and started much earlier than planned. It was a few miles out in the country. I had just finished my shift at the grocery store where I worked, and I called my friends to give me a ride to the party. (I didn't have a car.) Unfortunately, because of the cancelled game, they were already at the party. I walked to Main Street in the snow and waited until someone my age drove by, flagged them down, and got a ride. I was one of the last people at the party, and I was a little too exuberant. My previous maximum beer intake was a modest three. College kids were at this party, home for the weekend. I attempted to keep up with them. I hit the booze with gusto, relish, and determination. I had about 11 beers in an hour, plus a couple of shots. Picture me then. I was about 101 pounds and newly 16. Sometime in the next hour, I passed out. Then I woke up and vomited. Then I passed out again. Then I woke up and vomited some more. Then I blacked out, for the only time in my life. I remember brief splotches of vomiting, giggling, and dancing to Cypress Hill. I remember someone carrying me out of the house and hitting my head on the ceiling and door frame. I had bruises on my head the next morning. I remember it starting to snow, and vomiting in the snow. Then a friend drove me home. Pretty standard stupid teenage first-time drunk life lessons learned, am I right? Then the story begins, and the reality gets even more dull. After my friend dropped me off, I walked to the back door of my parents' house. It was usually unlocked to let the dog in and out in the middle of the night, and it presented a straight shot to the basement stairs and my bedroom. Unfortunately, the back door was locked. I walked to the front door. I tried to open it. It was locked. My friends' car was gone. It was snowing. I had no choice but to knock on the door. My dad was up having a midnight snack, and let me in. He apologized for locking me out, then noticed the state I was in and got pissed off. When my dad gets pissed off, he is impossible to take seriously. I told him I wasn't drunk, just sleepy, and went to bed. The End. Somehow, though I explained how I was locked out to many friends and classmates, I was made fun of for the next two years for walking up to my unlocked front door and ringing the doorbell. When I walked down the hallway at school, people would ask me if I rang my doorbell today. When I was in town for my dad's wedding last year, I was asked at the bar by a former classmate's uncle if I remembered ringing my own doorbell. If you look at my MySpace page, a high school friend has left a comment on my page saying she remembers me ringing my own doorbell. Obviously, this doorbell story has really stuck with these people. I guess they can have it.
My mother ran into a former grade school teacher of mine a few weeks ago. This former teacher is a nice old woman, but she is not immune to the charms of a fabricated story. She asked my mother how and what I was doing. Then she told my mother that she remembered how, during recess, I sat against the wall and read books while the other kids played. This is colossal bullshit. I was on the merry-go-rounds, tires, swings, slide, basketball court, kickball area every recess. I played four-square. I did not read books during recess! I loved to read, still do, and as a child, I was very enthusiastic about telling everyone I met about the books I was reading (this was before I learned that enthusiasm about anything other than work, money, and sports generates suspicion and hostility), but come on, lady! Just because I was apparently one of the only males in Bridgeport who read books, people have to talk shit. I know you mean well, but you're making me look like an even bigger dork than I was/am.
Now that I come to the end of my rambling tale of gossip, I wonder if it is a tale of small town life, or a tale of human nature in general. We are all constantly full of shit. But are small towns filled with different shit than cities? In the city, at least, you can live a private life, but what about your neighbors? Your coworkers? What are you saying about them? What are they saying about you? What are you saying about me? I know what I'm saying about you. You're a lot of fun, but, damn, you need to stop being such a whore. And you smoke way too much pot. And your dog never stops barking. I also heard you had gonorrhea once. And you secretly have a Dave Matthews CD in your car. It's inside a Modest Mouse case.

The time to mourn Syd Barrett has ended. Ric Flair week continues

Mid-1980s Ric Flair had a weird fixation on training bras.

RIP Syd Barrett

Just when you thought it was over ... more Ric Flair! Whoooo!

July caption contest

Rules: Post a photo caption in comment form for this blog entry. July 15 is the last day to enter. A winner will be drawn out of a hat on the 16th. The winner gets a lovingly hand-crafted, wood-fired, flame-broiled compilation CD forged from the darkest recesses of Dr. Mystery's loins and/or psyche. The CD will also have a limited-edition-of-one cover. It is possible that the CD will contain at least one song by Hollywood legend Eddie Murphy. It is also possible that this will most decidedly not be the case. You can't win if you don't play. Good luck, losers.

Sometimes it's okay to laugh at crazy people

Believe me. It's okay. Here is your proof.

Odds and ends

A few things to pass along:
Little Dr. Mystery remembers air-guitaring his ass off to this song. He doesn't remember ever seeing the video. Why is that? Fortunately, my sister emailed me the video this morning. The song was huge when Little Dr. Mystery was first becoming aware of the powers of rock and roll. It is incredibly easy to make fun of this video. I laughed my ass off, to be sure. However, I wish any rock band gave as much of a shit as this band does. The song may be laughable, but it doesn't suck as much as any Modest Mouse song. Try to argue with me. You will lose. In my book, giving a shit beats not giving a shit any day of the week.
I had something else funny to tell you, but I am possibly an alcoholic, (if you believe in the Bible) and I forgot.
One final thing:
I think vegetarians are complete scum, but if anyone told me I was eating a dog or a cat, I would start crying. Here is one way to help dogs this Fourth of July season (if you live in Austin):
he Town Lake Animal Shelter needs rawhide bones and chews to help keep the 300+ dogs in it's care calm on July 4th. The shelter, at 1156 Cesar Chavez, is very close to the city's fireworks show which causes a lot of stress to the dogs.

The shelter is asking for donations of natural rawhide treats of all shapes and sizes for the dogs before July 4th. For more info. call 972-4738.

"There is a party in my mouth-arm, and everyone is invited" 

Late-night TV delivers the goods

I was watching television in bed last night, and I saw many strange things. First, late Saturday night is a fenced-off, segregated dumping ground for commercials featuring black people. As if this wasn't racist enough, the commercials are pretty blatantly Amos-and-Andyish. First, a McDonald's commerical for their new Asian chicken salad. This commercial features a collection of animated (as in computer-illustrated) black women, one of which is in the middle of a yoga exercise. The yoga woman is telling the others about the chicken salad and how great it is. Oddly, she speaks in grammatically correct English, while the other women speak like this: "No, he din't/You go, girl," etc. The yoga woman breaks down each ingredient and is met with either approval or, oddly for a commercial advertising a product, bafflement from the Ebonic Chorus. Here is some actual dialogue from the commercial:

Yoga woman, listing salad ingredients (chicken, mandarin oranges, etc.): Edamame!
Sassy chorus member: Eda-who?
Other sassy chorus member: Yo, I just found my Shangri-lunch!

A commercial for Bounty paper towels was identical to any other, except the family was black. However, the Bounty theme song was given a funk reworking, complete with boom-chicka-chicka guitar. The family wasn't even remotely funk-appropriate, besides the color of their skin. They were upper-middle class and putting together a wooden dinosaur diaroma at the kitchen table with their children.

Additionally, I watched a bit of a some summer blockbuster preview special hosted by Joel Siegel. First of all, Siegel is supposed to be a film critic, so he really shouldn't be hosting a show that advertises for films. That's kind of a conflict of interest, isn't it? (Though, with the exception of Roger Ebert, film critics on television are, almost without exception, ill-informed, ignorant, stupid, press-junket whoring, celebrity ass-kissing, hype-shoveling dullards with no dignity.) Anyway, Siegel and some vapid blonde wasted several minutes of my life promoting films that everybody already knows about, in between interviews with movie stars conducted by Siegel in which he laughs hysterically at every slightly humorous comment escaping from the mouths of Greg Kinnear and Liev Schrieber. However, that is merely a rambling prelude to something so baffling I have no words for it. The vapid blonde introduced a clip to an upcoming summer film with the phrase: "It's not summer without a Wayans Brothers movie." Huh? Then she interviewed some Wayanseseses and showed clips and the trailer for their upcoming film, Little Man. Read the plot outline and watch the trailer for this movie. I have nothing to say about this movie except WHAT THE FUCK?

Caption contest results

The name has been pulled from the hat. This month, my lovely roommate/wife Spacebeer has won the contest. She will be ineligible next month. Thanks for playing the game. There will be a new contest next month. Congratulations on your random victory, Spacebeer!

Angry young man about town

I have been a socializing fool at party-attending school for the last three weeks. During this 21-day children's telethon-worthy marathon of thrills and spills, I have reverted back to the college version of Dr. Mystery, known as Robot X. Robot X went out every night. Dr. Mystery prefers a biweekly night or two on the town, but is predominantly a homebody. Fortunately, Sweet Lady Austin had other plans. (Do I sound like a complete douchebag yet?) Every night (barring today, yesterday, and the day before that) I have either attended film screenings, barbecues/BBQs/Bar-B-Cues, birthday parties, booze-'em-ups, super secret screenwriting/PBR-drinking meetings, social gatherings, and live rock and roll exhibitions. Additionally, I had a chance to drink with long-time listener, first-time caller Milk and Cake, fresh off the plane from Sweet Lady Ft. Collins. I ate a lot of grilled meat. I saw about six Hitchcock films on the glorious big screen. I drank with the best of them. I went to a convenience store where all females are referred to as "sir," alcohol is sold to minors (and probably to miners as well), and Pro Wrestling Illustrated is displayed at the front counter. If it wasn't for that abscess known as my dayjob, this would truly be one crazy summer. However, this is merely a setup for what I wish to discuss at present, a McGuffin if you will. (I'll try to stop being a douchebag now.) During my near-month of frenzied activity, a mild but unfortunate problem reared its ugly head a handful of times. I was put in a position where I momentarily lost my temper due to another person's careless disregard of the people near him/her, but I was the one who ended up looking like a prick. This is not right.
Situation #1: My wife and I were seeing "The Puffy Chair" at the Alamo Drafthouse Downtown. This theater serves beer and food, and there is a thin wooden table-like eating surface in front of the seats, with gaps every eight feet or so for people to take their seats without causing already-seated people to squish up against their own seat to let them through. (Sorry about that poorly worded sentence. I said "seat" so much.) Ten minutes into the movie, someone comes in late and squishes up against us on the inside of our seats. A few minutes later, someone else does this. A few minutes after that, a couple does the same goddamn thing. Four people in five minutes not understanding that they could take the outside path to their seats without making us stand up or get squished, all of them at least ten minutes late to the fucking movie (I'm irrational and neurotic about this, but if you are late to a movie, don't fucking go. If I owned a theater, the front doors would lock up tight one minute before the movie starts. Maybe I am a douchebag, but I don't want to hear, see, or feel you in front of me or the screen once the movie begins. I'm in the movie zone, cocksucker. You are fucking with my zone.) The last couple, though bearing only 50 percent of the irritation-causation, felt the brunt of 100 percent of Dr. Mystery and Spacebeer anger. The normally mild-mannered Spacebeer was moved to exclaim, "Jesus Christ! Don't knock over our beer!" (The guy almost knocked over our beer.) Then I said, loudly, "The fourth goddamn time in five minutes. You can get into your seats from here!" (pointing angrily at gap between table-thingies). Then I watched the rest of the movie feeling like a jerk because I'd yelled at this couple who had probably never been to the theater before and didn't know better. It was dark, after all. Though if they had been on time, it wouldn't have been a problem. So fuck 'em.
Situation #2: The Twilight Singers/Mark Lanegan show last Friday night. Good show, but marred by many douchebags in the crowd, specifically a Tawny Kitaen lookalike who spent the majority of the show making out with her boyfriend and doing stripper dances while looking into his eyes. This would have been easy to ignore, but her fucking purse kept bouncing into my back or my elbow for two straight hours. I kept shooting them dirty looks, but she was too busy giving boyfriend the sexy eyes to notice that her purse was invading my personal space. Finally, after being bumped hard in the neck, which I assumed was deliberate, since I was taller than either of them, I turned around and yelled "What the fuck is your problem?" Apparently, it wasn't deliberate, judging by the look on the woman's face. She experienced shock, then fear, then complete and utter deflation. She and boyfriend were unaware of the irritation they had been causing me all night. To make matters worse, she had the most vacant eyes I've ever seen on a live human being. This was a dumb, dumb person. It made me feel like I had been yelling at a squirrel. A squirrel with big hair and a fake tan, but a squirrel all the same. I kept waiting for her boyfriend to punch me in the back of the head for the remainder of the show, but they went back to the bar. Then they waited at the bar for quite a while after the show ended, presumably so boyfriend could kick my ass, but we ended up talking to our friends for so long that they left. He obviously preferred sex to a fistfight, so maybe he wasn't so bad after all. But shit. That purse. Fuck. All night long. That stupid purse bouncing off my elbow.
Situation #3: I'm driving to work today. There is a work parking lot, and also many spaces on the opposite side of the building along the street. I prefer the latter when I park my car. There are usually plenty of spots. Today, for whatever reason, a bunch of people who don't even work there parked their cars in my favorite spots. I was running late already, and this set me back a couple extra minutes. I became furious, mad as I've been in weeks. It culminated in me flipping off a bunch of empty parked cars. This might be the nadir of Angry Dr. Mystery's 2006. I flipped off empty cars. I bet those empty cars sure got my message. Loud and clear. What an idiot.
Situation #4: The wife and I are taking our evening constitutional through the neighborhood when a car driving at least twenty miles over the speed limit veers dangerously close to us. "Jesus Christ!" I yell at the car. An older woman on the grass next to me looks at me disapprovingly. She thinks I'm the bad guy. I look closer at her and realize she is standing on the lawn of a Protestant church. I've just loudly taken her Lord's name in vain. I get embarrassed.
In all four situations, I was right to be angry. So why do I feel like an ass? Then again, Protestants don't care that much about Jesus. It's all lip service, isn't it? It's more of a club than a religion, right? Why so disapproving, lady? You're not a Catholic. You just kind of like Jesus.

"Children Are Edible"

June caption contest

You know the drill. Leave a caption in comment form under this post. Last day to enter is the 15th. On the 16th, a winner will be drawn from a winter cap. The winner will receive a Dr. Mystery brand custom-made compact disc. Last month's winner is ineligible. Eat more pineapple.