Z E I T G E I S T-Y

No-No to Juno

2008-01-31T12:12:00.001-05:00

I hate to say it, but I am really not feeling Juno. It just didn’t do anything for me. In fact, it kind of irritated me. I didn’t hate it. But let me just say that a certain Mr. Wes Anderson has a whole lot of super-contrived quirk to answer for. All that plinky plonky new folk faux-awkward alterna-music. Yeesh. At least they used Velvet Underground’s “I’m Sticking With You” to show how it was actually done back when it was authentic. (N.B. for a far better use of that song, see Morvern Callar, which is an awesome movie. I fucking love Samantha Moton.) Juno struck me as a bad pastiche of the aforementioned Wes Anderson (the plinky plonky contrived alterna-music), a Daniel Clowes movie (comic book elements in the art direction), those fucking irritating Judd Apatow movies (conservative misogynistic morals dressed up as hip and young and cool – of which the pubic hair views in Knocked Up are the most offensive aspect, as opposed to the monogamy/chastity aspect of 40-Year old Virgin and the Papa Don’t Preach baby-keeping aspect of Knocked Up), and Dawson’s Creek.(sassy smart-talking teenagers – and there was a baby-keeping arc in Dawson’s Creek as well…featuring Heath Ledger’s similarly baby-keeping girlfriend, Michelle Williams…whoah, it’s all tied up with a neat little bow…).

I have no clue why Juno was nominated for Best Picture, nor why Ellen Page was nominated for Best Actress. She is super fucking annoying and from interviews I have seen/read, she wasn’t acting at all – they cast her because she was the exact personality they wanted. Plus, I hate to say it but I am sick of Michael Cera – um, Michael, there’s a call for you – it’s Range, because so far you have none. Yeah, he’s charming and shuffly and nerdy and awkward but he’s still playing George Michael. Sick of it.

I did like certain things about it – I liked Juno’s parents (JK Simmons is so awesome in everything. It’s a testament to his acting ability that I am able to forget Vern Schillinger - the white supremacist psycho Simmons played in Oz – and find him totally believable as a typical suburban dad) and I liked Jason Bateman (as usual) and Jennifer Garner (first time I ever said that). I thought their story arc was very realistic and not something you often see. I liked how I was tricked into thinking Jason’s character was cool and Jennifer’s was an uptight bitch, only to wind up feeling the total opposite (well, not that he became an uptight bitch…you know what I mean though). I felt like the audience was able to totally feel the same emotions Juno was feeling towards them as those emotions changed. I like it when you’re able to realize things simultaneously with the character, as opposed to the filmmakers lazily relying on the suspense created by you knowing something the character doesn’t no – i.e. there is no “No, Juno – he’s a dick!! He’s a dick!! Why can’t you see it??”

I also think that Jason’s character finding nostalgia for his youth through Juno is a good analogy for the film as a whole. I have this theory that all the people from about 30-50 who grew up when a freak was still a freak and a jock was still popular are now feeling like they want to go back and experience the acceptance – if not predominance - of the freak in today’s youth. Latching on to a movie like Juno makes people feel good about themselves, like they have some cool cred they did not get in high school because they were too busy being conformist. Does that make any sense?

For the fulfillment of New Year's resolutions

2008-01-24T19:57:00.000-05:00

For the fulfillment of New Year's resolutions, I need this.

Here's how it works: When you're having, let's call it "a moment," you slide off the cap (ever so carefully so as not to disturb the existing pent-up vengeful fumes) and very quickly stuff your new anger on top.

It's a Jonathan Adler apothecary jar, by the way

Anyway, rage reduction is clearly on the agenda for yours truly in 2008.

Other resolutions:
- Be more decisive! And less wishy washy! (Be The Decider!)
- Possibly start think about quitting smoking. Or maybe cutting back? Need to think about this one a little longer...
- Ask my cat, Mimi, if she might consider bullying me a little less.
- Eat less dairy.

RIP Dennis Kucinich

2008-01-24T18:19:00.000-05:00

Crazy couple of news days, people! Trader fraud, Gazan breach, Yahoo layoffs... Add to the mix some late breaking news from the Times Caucus blog. The elfin Dennis Kucinich is set to "transition out" of the presidential race beginning sometime next week! You all might remember that Den-Den was my candidate of choice last election so I have a certain soft (read: laughable, demented, or just plain weird) spot for the guy. I wasn't planning to vote for the man this time around (more on this later). But I can still feel a tiny little tear ever so slowly trickling down my cheek.

We could use Den-Den's drop out as an opportunity to talk about the dearth of presidential candidates who espouse liberal policies or to examine how the mainstream media squashes the "little guy" or even the pretty woman/subpar male combo endemic to American society. (Men: it's 2008. Time to start grooming, okay?)

But, naturally, the mention of li'l Den-Den makes me think of UFOs, which makes me think of little green men, which makes me think of outer space, which makes me wonder: Will space travel ever be a reality for me and my fellow middle-class Americans? I'm no Lance Bass, but I sure would like the chance to take a ride on the Great Space Coaster. Enter kooky English bazillionaire airline/music mogul Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic.

An excerpt from the site

Virgin Galactic is the world's first spaceline. Giving you the groundbreaking opportunity to become one of the first ever non-professional astronauts. Virgin Galactic will own and operate its privately built spaceships, modelled on the remarkable, history-making SpaceShipOne.

Virgin's vast experience in aviation, adventure, luxury travel and cutting-edge design combined with the unique technology developed by Burt Rutan will ensure an unforgettable experience unlike any other available to mankind.

With safety at the forefront, our unique spacecraft is being designed at Rutan's base in Mojave, California alongside a concerted research and development programme.

"The deal with Mojave Aerospace Ventures is just the start of what we believe will be a new era in the history of mankind, one day making the affordable exploration of space by human beings a real possibility." - Richard Branson.

It is these spaceships that will allow affordable sub-orbital space tourism for the first time in the history of the universe.

The catch (in addition to the fact that this sci-fi shit is insane) is that Burt Rutan's precious SpaceShipTwo is still under development with no firm launch date in sight.

But that hasn't stopped Stephen Hawking, Victoria Principal, Philippe Starck, and other such suckas (I mean cultural icons) from signing on for a ride at $200k a pop. For those of us who are less financially well endowed, Branson says, "Even though the dollar isn't worth much anymore, US$200,000 is still too expensive for the majority of people. Within five years of launching, I would hope the price would come down fairly dramatically."

Keep your fingers crossed, kiddies. 'Twould be nice to spend some time in space before we completely destroy the planet and are forced to retreat to escape colonies on Mars.

My Angry Squiggle

2008-01-23T13:31:00.001-05:00

I can never find a picture of the Boynton cat with that squiggle that signifies anger over his head, but you know what I'm talking about. Here's a picture of him sans squiggle. He is at work, and it looks like his job sucks, so it's implausible to me that he is squiggle-less, but whatever. The point is that I have been avec squiggle for some time now. R2B2 and I stepped away from the blogosphere for the holidays, and then I became too enraged to do anything other than rant even less coherently than I do here, while R2 emerged from a cloud of similar rage to enter a new zen-like state which I am calling Post-Rage.

needless to say, the cause of both of our rages is politics. I'll let R2 handle the R2 Rage beat, but mine has been all about John Edwards. I am not going to go on and on about this because a) most of the three people who read this are already the lucky recipients of my rage-filled e-mails over the past month, and b) it's getting old - laughably, ludicrously old. the one benefit of the DefCon 5 level my rage has recenlty reached is that I no longer bother with reasoned arguments, so my rants have been getting shorter. The gist: I have grown increasingly unimpressed by Obama (whre's the beef, Reagan man?) and Clinton (why aren't you asking Obama where the beef is, lady?). I have grown increasingly impressed with Edwards. Bunches and I went to SC to go door to door for him, and we went to a rally here in Atlanta. We love him. Love him!!

There is a poll on The Nation's website which says a lot about how I'm feeling right now. Seems like there are a lot of people out there like me who feel that Clinton and Obama are a) nowhere near progressive enough and b) just what the right hopes to be facing come this fall. And it looks like, unlike Obama, they may actually have a workable strategy behind their "hope" - eg keep the one candidate who can beat them out of the mainstream media spotlight and effectively out of the race. It's no accident that Edwards - the candidate who refuses corporate and special interest donations and has stated his intention to break up this country's intelligent-discussion-sucking media hegemony - is the candidate getting the least attention (by FAR) from corporate-owned media (aka "the media").

Oh angry squiggle....how can I hold you at bay when the only coverage Edwards gets in the mainstream media is about how he let fucking Letterman ruffle his fucking hair????

RIP Ennis del Mar

2008-01-23T13:22:00.000-05:00

So Ennis Del Mar is taking a dirt nap. Sucks. That was one of the best performances I have ever seen by an actor. I still break down in tears when I think of that amazing movie. Heath Bar was robbed of that Oscar (don't even get me started on Best Picture...) - PSH-Balanced was amazing as Capote, but it was an impersonation. When you take on a character who actually existed and whose tics and flourishes and cadence and mannerisms we all know, you may do it well but you're not creating anything. Heath Ledger created an authentically haunted human being from nothing but a few lines of fiction. He reached deep down into the darkest pit of hompohobia that lurks at the heart of every heterosexual man and used it to create an incredibly shattering and unforgettable character. I can think of few actors who have actually made me feel genuine emotional pain, as opoposed to merely sympathy. It actually hurt to watch him.

That said, I reckon he was a big old smackhead, and if you play with fire...I saw a recent interview with him and he was scratching all over his own arms in a manner most familiar. I think heroin is making another comeback. The "coke is it" craze of the past 10 years is over - there is a shortage of coke and it's super expensive and weak. Shitty 8 balls are going for like $175 right now. Meanwhile I keep seeing people with eyes that look like pools of oil, and there was that episode with Ariel Pink and the nodding off on stage, and check out Winehouse (if your eyes don't bleed from looking at her these days - now THERE'S someone it hurts to watch).

Assholes Don't Vote

2007-12-19T18:05:00.000-05:00

I recently read that Cormac McCarthy does not vote because "poets don't vote." Basically, politics are for the rest of us morons - he has better things to think about, like denouements and tragic flaws and character motivation. I always knew this guy was a humorless old curmudgeon, but he had my respect as a writer. Well, that's over now. I looked into his biography, and of course, as I suspected, he grew up privileged and has never had to worry about a damn thing a day in his life - his father was a successful lawyer, so he had a good education and was able to apply for all sorts of grants and travel around the world studying literature. Sure, talent comes into play here, but I can guarantee he would feel very differently about being politically involved if he had to engage with the real world and struggle to get his voice heard as most writers do. His wealth and success have further enabled him to live as a Salinger-esque recluse for most of his life, so it's probably a good thing that he doesn't vote because he probably knows dick about what's going on out there. But I find it reprehensible that anyone - especially an educated person - would not get involved in politics at the most basic level by voting. I know most people don't, but most people are idiots. The fact that McCarthy's books are generally about how fucked up life is and how evil people are only makes it worse. His books clearly say that you can't expect much of people and we're all screwed, which is kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy if you don't do anything to change the world. I find it so offensive when someone who has the chance to influence so many people to do the right thing is an asshole and acts like they are too good for politics, especially when their work is so blatantly polticial. Gerhard "These Paintings of Terrorists Aren't Political" Richter is another shining example of this type of reified assholery. Basically, these guys are leeching off of all the evil in the world, using it as subject matter and making us all think about it and then doing nothing to fix it. It basically amounts to exploitation, which, if you think about it, really takes away from the quality of their work. Fucking pricks.

I Love This

2007-12-13T11:26:00.000-05:00

I was just listening to this song and felt like I should post the clip from the movie because it is so awesome. This is Bing & Frank "acting" drunk (I'm pretty sure they were really plastered) in The "Well Did You Evah" scene from "High Society." They probably trash-talked women (Frank) and Jews (Bing) between takes, but I really don't care because this whole movie is genius and a testament to the perennial awesomeness of Cole Porter.

Silly Cat Picture Starring Orangello

2007-12-13T07:47:00.001-05:00

Separated at Birth: Mike Damone and Alex Van Halen

2007-12-13T06:21:00.000-05:00

The selection of Alex Van Halen pictures is limted thanks to the serial camera-hogging of Diamond Dave and EVH, and most of the photos of Mike Damone (aka Robert Romanus) I could find are small, but trust me, they look alike. Everyone knows what Mike Damone looks like, anyway. At least I hope they do. If you don't please stay home from work today and watch Fast Times at Ridgemont High. Do it at least as a favor to Sean Penn, because the memory of his performance will be the only thing that stops you from serving his pompous ass a knuckle sandwich if you ever see him in real life. Asshole. Is that my ego in there?? IS IT?????

Yet More Extremely Exciting Concert News

2007-12-12T12:08:00.000-05:00

This is a good one. Van Halen, man!!!!! I mean, shit, Van Halen!!! The first time I ever bought an album with my own money, it was 1984. Not the year, the album. And the year too, I guess. I have been wanting to see Van Halen in theory ever since (I was 9 at the time), but it was never even really a fantasy because it seemed like such an impossibility. First of all, they broke up - that kind of puts a nail in the cofin. Then they got a new singer. Then they gotr another new singer. Occasionally, they tried to get their shit together and regroup, but Diamond Daveand Eddie just couldn't help themselves from morphing into Brian Wilson and Mike Love whenever they entered the same room. So I just figured it would never happen. Fast forward to 2007, when I hear that not only are they back together and touring, but they are all sober, in shape, getting alonmg, and rocking the fuck out. Oh, except for poor Michael Anthony, who is still trying to remove his Jack Daniels bottle bass guitar from his rectum, where it was placed by the rest of the band when they fired him so they could hire Eddie's teenage son. Nice to see they're still dicks!!! Okay, so moving on, the next fly in the ointment was the nonexistence of Atlanta or anywhere even close on the itinerary. Well, I guess they finished that rather brief itinerary and decided that they were so awesome that they would keep going. So now, on February 13, I will be in a primo seat at Phillips Arena watching VH with three of my closest friends and Russ Sr.

Let me just say that it is with great reluctance that I post the above picture. I really wanted a still of Diamond Dave being arrested in a towel and cowboy boots from the "Panama" video. That really happened! He's my main Jew. He does our people proud. And we need all the help we can get these days, when it seems like every prominent Jew I read about who isn't polluting the earth with subpar "entertianment" (eg Spielkatzengeffen) is another slimey mono-issue Israel-brainwashed neocon Iraq War architect coming out of the woodwork to justify himself. For shame!!!

However, it is with great enthusiasm that I post this, the video for "Hot for Teacher" - quite possibly one of the greatest vidoes ever made and my hands-down favorite VH song. It is a wonderful example of the Nerd Bullied by Rockin' Cool Kids subgenre of 80s videos (see: "Fight For Your Right to Party") (fyi, the genre is the Nerd genre - another key subgenre is the Nerd Transformed - see "She's Got Legs" or "Goody Two Shoes" or "Blinded Me with Science" - and note that the nerd being transformed is usually a lady who takes off her glasses and lets down her hair and becomes sexy). The best part of the video is the kid versions of each member. No., the best part is the little choreographed chorus line routine the band does - and which my friends and I are already practicing for the show. Thanks god I am second tallest so I get to be Alex Van Halen. Eddie is cool but being shorter means running a risk of being cast as Michael Anthony and we all know where that gets you. Alex Van Halen is a serious badass and an underrated drummer. Ever notice how he looks like....? Oh, is it time for a separated at birth???!

Fighting Bob II??

2007-12-06T12:31:00.000-05:00

There are certain figures I learned about in high school from US History who I thought were really badass and who continue to stand out in my mind. One of these is Robert M. "Fighting Bob" La Follette. La Follette was governor of Wisconsin and served in the senate for 20 years, from 1905-1925. He ran for president in 1912 and 1924, winning 17% of the vote in 1924 as leader of his own Progressive party. This makes him the third most successful third party candidiate since the Civil War, behind only TR and Perot.

La Follette was definitely a little bit crazy, and the reception he recieved in 1912 was kind of like that being received by Kucinich and Gravel nowadays. But he said exactly what he thought and didn't take shit from anyone. His primary concerns were preserving civil liberties, stemming the tide of American imperialism, lessening the influence of big business on politics, limiting presidential powers in terms of declaring war, and protecting workers' rights. The magazine he founded, The Progressive, is still going strong. He was a leading campaigner for women's suffrage, child labor laws, social security, protection of freedom of speech, and the strengthening of unions.

Here are a couple of choice Fighting Bob quotes:

"In times of peace, the war party insists on making preparation for war. As soon as prepared for, it insists on making war."

"The underlying reason indeed why both parties have failed to take the people's side in the present crisis is that neither party can openly attack the real evils which are undermining representative government without convicting themselves of treachery to the voters during their recent tenure in office."

"Every nation has its war party. It is not the party of democracy. It is the party of autocracy. It seeks to dominate absolutely. It is commercial, imperialistic, ruthless. It tolerates no opposition. It is just as arrogant, just as despotic, in London, or in Washington, as in Berlin. The American Jingo is twin to the German Junker…. If there is no sufficient reason for war, the war party will make war on one pretext, then invent another."

"The purpose of this ridiculous campaign is to throw the country into a state of sheer terror, to change public opinion, to stifle criticism, and suppress discussion. People are being unlawfully arrested, thrown into jail, held incommunicado for days, only to be eventually discharged without ever having been taken into court, because they have committed no crime. But more than this, if every preparation for war can be made the excuse for destroying free speech and a free press and the right of the people to assemble together for peaceful discussion, then we may well despair of ever again finding ourselves for a long period in a state of peace. The destruction of rights now occurring will be pointed to then as precedents for a still further invasion of the rights of the citizen."

How fucking appropriate to today are these words? It's amazing. Do any of the present candidates remind me of Fighting Bob? We need a Fighting Bob II! I think John Edwards may be the closest, with this current revival of his angry populist trial lawyer persona, which I think is the Real Edwards, or maybe I just hope so...all I know is that anger is appropriate right now.

Russ's Collage du Who Knows What Jour

2007-12-06T07:40:00.000-05:00

Ru-roh Raggy

2007-12-05T13:22:00.000-05:00

You all know I love Wu-Tang Clan. Like, love love love top ten all time love-style loving. So it is with great excitement that I have been awaiting the December 11 release of their first album in YEARS, the 8 Diagrams. The other day I became tired of waiting and got my hands on some leaked tracks. I hate to say it, but so far I am underwhelmed. Who knows how close what I have is to the finished product, but it's kind of weak. There's a lot of R&B to it, which is what I tend to dislkie about most hip hop. If I want R &B, I'll listen to R&B. Basically I listend to the 8 or 9 tracks I have and swiftly ejected the CD and put the oure genius 36 Chambers in instead. I have this thing where I really don't like very loud music but I cannot play that CD loudly enough. I'm going to chalk the wishy-washy-ness of 8 Diagrams up to the death of Ol' Dirty Bastard. I think each member of the Clan has his own appeal and RZA is for sure a genius producer, but it was ODB who brought the crazy dangerous vibe. This is their first effort sans ODB and I think it's a testament to his memory more than anything else. I will update this early review once I have heard the official release. RIP ODB. Oh, and there's a picture of Method Man up there because he's so damn handsome and he was on The Wire, which makes him the coolest living Wu-Tang member.

My Increasingly Philistine Stomach

2007-12-04T13:04:00.000-05:00

As of this weekend, I have a new favorite restaurant: QuikTrip. For those of you who don't know, QuikTrip is a chain of service stations/minimarts. I generally try to get my gas there since it's usually a few cents cheaper than the other dudes, but I never really go inside. You pay at the pump, so why would you? However, the other day I ventured in as Ed gassed up while we were out driving around the sticks looking for a fucking couch for like the 17th weekend in a row. I figured I would get a bag of chips or something. However, in my giggly and hungry state (you try driving around Acworth, GA looking at couches for 4 hours while stone cold sober), I was drawn to the prepared foods section - a huge long table of those hot rolling metal rods on which sat various cripsy delights, and a wall of drink machines. They seriously had 15 kinds of soda on tap. About 7 minutes later and a mere $6 lighter, I emerged with three taquitos (2 chicken and one beef), a corn dog, and an HORCHATA SMOOTHIE, which was really more of a slurpee. This last item is seriously one of the most exciting things to happen to me in a long time. God bless the 800,000 illegal Cebntral Americans in Georgia who, despite a constant attempt by everyone but me to drive them out, have established themselves so much here that the QT has a special smoothie just for them. I LOVE horchata. To have it in giant slurpee form was almost too much for me to bear. So exotic and yet so mundane at the same time!!! Truly a symbol of the melting pot that is America. Horchata smoothies and taquitos and corn dogs rotating side by side (with egg rolls, but who wants those, R2?) - to quote John Cougar Concntrationcamp (a fellow John Edwards supporter, FYI): Ain't that America?

As if this new obsession weren't enough, I also discovered that I like Krystal. Krsytal is like White Castle down here - I have to say it's more like White Castle's poor hick cousin, with smaller, greyer, squarer, and altogether more frightening burgers. I have long protested any suggestion of going to Krystal, but the other night after the Black Lips show I had to take two hungry squawking drunks there and I tasted a burger and that was pretty much that. I also tasted this tiny little perfect chilli cheese dog and then that really was that, done, stick a fork in me and call me Krystal. I was back there again at 11:30 Saturday night, giggly and hungry and having just watched Spies Like Us (which I now own, awesome!).

White Castle is still better, by the way.

Badass Political Posters

2007-12-04T12:48:00.000-05:00

I love a good badass political poster. It's a true art form. There isn't enough politics in fine art these days, so it's nice to see the tradition of politically engaged creative expression is alive and well. The above-depicted posters being carried by pissed-off Palestinians are seriously badass and I would like to see more. How to google "Palestinian protest posters" without winding up in a naked pyramid at Gitmo with Cheney giving me noogies and indian burns?

By the way, these particular Palestinians are pissed because Israel is now allowing bids to build homes on disputed land in East Jerusalem. Give me fucking strength. I want to be a good Jew and support Israel but they really make it hard. I mean, WHY??? Is it manadatory to take three huge steps back every time the peace process shuffles forward one millimeter? I guess so.

Anyway, returning to happeier topics: political posters. Some of my favorites are those from the May 1968 student protests in France. Here are a few choice ones. Check out that awesome rat!

Russ's Collage du Who Knows What Jour

2007-12-02T18:22:00.000-05:00

Follow-Up Report on Sophia and The Black Lips

2007-12-01T14:54:00.000-05:00

First things first: Sophia is basically fine. She has to stay on her antibiotics for three weeks which means I have to spend approximately 45 minutes each evening tricking her into taking a pill. I have resorted to constructing a sort of layer cake made out of layers of wet cat food, crushed cat pill, Healthy Choice honey baked turkey breast, repeat layers. But of course I would rather do this every night for the rest of my life than have Sophia be sick. I'm posting a picture of Orangello with Sophia since he has been thoroughly neglected this week and is such a good boy. Look at them. They are so fucking cute.

Moving on: Black Lips show. The opening bands, The Selmanaires, Snowden, and Deerhunter ranged from dire to occasionally tolerable. Selmanaires pretty much had the market cornered as far as dire goes. Oh so dire. They are really popular on the local scene here and I'm damned if I can figure it out. Oh well, hopefully their mojo will continue to extend no further than the metro Atlanta area and none of you will have to speculate about this with me. Black Lips pretty much rocked. A lot of their songs sound the same but they sound great and it's a good same. Not everyone can be Ariel Pink and the Black Lips are fucking awesome for what they are - a retro garage punk band. Those are a dime a dozen these days and Black Lips stand out in the pack. They are tight and charismatic and they pound it out with major rock n' roll gusto, old school, which is important. They are HAVING FUN and don't look like a bunch of dorks who you want to give wedgies too. I am fantatsizing that's how they feel about the other 3 bands on the bill. They are cool, cool dudes who you want to party with.

However, the best thing about them is Jared Swilley - the bassist/sometime singer with a mustache. Now you KNOW I love good facial hair and it's so hard to find. You know I've been looking (looking, not buying!) for a mountain man with a beard and stache and long hair like George Harrison late 60s/early 70's. I've also been looking for anything even close to Chef from Apocalypse Now, who is the Holy Grail of hot mustache men (above, right, shortly after leaving the boat, which you should never do, and shortly before having his severed head dropped in Martin Sheen's lap). Jared Swilley (below) comes the closest of anyone I have seen.

He also throws in some young Donald Sutherland and - even better - a healthy sprinkle of David Thewlis in Naked (below - oh man that movie is so good. god love Mike Leigh. I don't think about him enough. Thewlis tore that role up and spat it out and it was beautiful and horrifying and do you know that Katrin Cartlidge died from some heart defect? Sad!).

Point being, I spent half of the show dancing like crazy and the other half staring at this guy's mustache in a pure state of rapture. I hate to say it, but I think if he shaves it, I will like them a lot less. Please don't shave it. I really hope he goes around like Ramathorn in Super Troopers (hot mustache on hot Indian comic genius - grrrrrrr), asking people "who wants a mustache ride?"
Finally, let me give it up bigamatime for Atlanta. When it comes to seeing shows, Atlanta kicks NYC's ass all the way to Fresno. If this were New York, I would have been lucky to even get a ticket because the show would have been at The Bowery Ballroom and Parker Posey and Sophia Coppola would have gotten themselves and all thier indie hipster celeb friends comped and eaten up half the tickets before they even went on sale. Then it would have been freezing and I would havr worn gloves, hat, scarf, coat and taken the subway and been detoured and delayed by weekend track work, and then would have waited in line foever to get in, forever again to check my coat, and then forever again to get it back, whereupon I would find that my scarf, hat, and one glove were all gone. And the ticket would have been twice as much. And there would have been nowhere to blaze a fatty. Hmmm. Let's see - last night I paid $15 for a ticket, got in my car at 7:15, picked up Kristy at 7:45, hung out, left her house at 8:15, arrived at the venue at 8:30, waltzed in comfortably dressed for the 50-ish degree weather with nothing to check, and smoked a joint twice. Next show on my calendar: MF Doom!!! Out of hiding!!! Crazier than a bag of angel dust!!!! December 13!! I bet Danger Mouse shows.

Black Lips Black Lips Black Lips!!!

2007-11-30T13:06:00.000-05:00

I don't know what's going on lately, but there are a ton of good shows to see. Last week, Ariel Pink, and now tonight - The Black Lips!!!! For those who don't know, The Black Lips are one of very few truly awesome local bands here in Atlanta. More on my musings on the local music scne at another time, since I don't really have any time today to write due to being late which was due to Sophia being sick - well, symptom-free but showing bad stuff in her pee and needing blood work blah blah blah. Long story short, worrying, expensive, and stealing my lunch and other free time from me here at work.

Anyway, the most important thing to know about The Black Lips is that they are CRAZY, like crazier than Krazee Glue and Crazy Eddie and Tom Cruise and Mel Gibson all put together. They were banned for a long time from playing live anywhere in Atlanta, and in several NYC venues as well, and they only recently played their first post-ban show in Atlanta and that was at the Claremont Lounge, a famously seedy strip club where 200 pound women crush beer cans between their boobs, amongst other low-rent delights. Apparently their good bahvior on Letterman and at South by Southwest, and semi-good behavior at the Siren festival (they had a chicken running around on stage with them - his name is Popcorn - maybe he will be there tonight).

The point is I am excited. Here's the video for "Katrina". I'd like to put some live footage up instead but I can't really peruse it at work since they are naked/throwing up/a little of both in a lot of it. Keep your fingers crossed for nudity, barf, and, hopefully, Popcorn! And especially keep your fingers crossed that Sophia is okay.

Russ's Collage du Jour

2007-11-24T17:06:00.001-05:00

Could This Ever Happen Again?

2007-11-24T12:00:00.000-05:00

I've been working on collages all morning. It's a strange process because, although the end result is often funny, the images I'm working with are generally pretty fucked up. I mostly manage to stay pretty cool and detached and logical during the process - if I didn't I would never get anything done. You just can't burst into tears at every single photo and accomplish anything, you know? However, I am not a robot, and it's always interesting to see which images get to me on a given day and why. Today I have been looking at concentration camps, African civil wars, floods, Vietnam...the usual. Every once in a while I have stopped and thought a little bit more about certain photos, but this one is the first one that really got to me today. This photo was taken by Ed Clark and appeared in Life magazine on April 17, 1945 (my grandfather's 28th birthday, and, I believe, the last one he spent fighting in World War II). The picture has a cool story and here it is:

"In Warm Springs, Ga., 50 photographers and newsreel cameramen jostled for a shot as the hearse carrying Franklin D. Roosevelt's body headed to the train station.

Suddenly, Life magazine photographer Ed Clark heard the strains of "Goin' Home," a favorite song of FDR's, being played on the accordion. Turning, he saw Navy bandsman Graham Jackson playing the tune, his face showing anguish and tears streaming down his cheeks.

"I thought, 'My God! What a picture,' " Clark said. "I took three or four shots with my Leica, hoping that nobody else noticed."

No one did. Clark's exclusive photograph took up a full page in the April 17, 1945, issue of Life, which was devoted to Roosevelt's death. The picture came to symbolize a nation's grief."

The reason this picture made me stop working and start crying is because it made me think of how far we've come as a nation from that moment. The thought of all those people of different backgrounds coming together and being so upset for the death of George Bush is laughable. It would never happen. The question is, could it ever happen again with any president, or is this image a product of a more innocent, less fractured time? Would Bill Clinton's death spark this type of emotion? I don't know if anyone's could. I have only been really sad and emotional about one public figure's death - George Harrison. But the only time I have experienced shared emotion on the scale that this photo depicts is on September 11 and the few days following. Is that what it takes these days? Sadly, I think the answer is probably yes.

Russ Senior is So Fucking Cool

2007-11-22T14:06:00.000-05:00

Usually there are no names or faces on this blog but this is too cool to not post. Russ Senior has been attending Rock n Roll Fantsay Camp for a few years now -he's benn to LA, NYC, and now Vegas - and has become a true rock star. The man who once entertained Russ by hesitantly playing "Wish You Were Here" and "Fly By Night" over and over (and over) again on the guitar has evolved into a confident and extremely competent bass player with style and stage presence. He's also widened his appreciation of rock n roll in its many forms - no longer just classic and progressive - even enjoying a bass clinic with Dave Ellefson of Megadeth! But perhaps the most satisfying thing of all so far has been watching Russ Senior play "Paradise City" with Slash. I'll post a link to this when I'm back on my PC at work (damn you, Safari). It's so cool because I was fairly obsessed with Guns n Roses when I was about 12 years old. I made my fellow residents of Cabin Lakeside at Camp Keystone in Brevard, North Carolina dress up and perfrom "Welcome to the Jungle" at the summer camp talent show (I was Axl). I had cats named Axl and Izzy and a rabbit named Mr. Brownstone. So you can imagine how tickled I am by the above photo and why I need to break the unspoken blog rules and post it. Rock on, Russ Senior!

Among the Most Bizarre and Satsifying Things I Have Ever Seen

2007-11-21T17:09:00.000-05:00

Okay, real quick, because I think I am the only person who cares. The Ariel Pink show was FUCKING OUT OF CONTROL. They played with Cass McCombs and did one set of Ariel stuff with Cass on stage with them and then a second set of Cass stuff with Ariel on stage. I guess the majority of the band was Ariel's usual band. First of all, he is seriously TINY. He looks like a tiny little pocket monkey. As in, he looks like a monkey and you could fit him in your pocket easily. I was expecting tall and lanky for some reason. Also he is very scrunched up and intenese and tense looking in the shoulders. He is cute though. REALLY greasy hair. The band were cool - the bassist looked exactly like Chainsaw from Summer School (what are eggs?) and one of the guitarists who was also the main tamborine dude looked more like Rod/Todd Flanders then any human being I have ever seen. Anyway so they finally get started and it's like this wall of sound, Phil Spector style, beautiful 60s jangly guitars, very Byrds and Beach Boys but also very disco and new wave but just super intense. Wall of sound is the best I can do. It was so weird because his stuff is so lo fi when you listen to the recordings but this was probably among the fullest, most beautiful sound I have ever heard. It seriously got inside of me and came out of my ears and nose. Bunches and my two friends who joined me, who ranged from skeptical to hadn;t ever heard of him, were all really impressed, so it wasn't just me and my weird Ariel Pink obsession. His voice is amazing. His pants kept falling down. Dude is definitely WEIRD but charming in a tiny greasy way. He seemed really different from his videos and interviews though.

So they played about 8 songs and then announced they were taking a break and having a drink and smoke and coming back out to play more. Well, they came back out and it was tte biggest about face I have ever witnessed, a total 180. It was chaos - totla disarray, amps getting blown out, and when they finally got a song underway, Ariel was standing there with his guitar while Cass was singing, and I guess he was supposed to sing too, but he just kind of scooted the guitar around so that he could rest his chin on it and nodded the fuck off. Seriously, I haven't seen anyone that smacked out since I woke myself up to catch my reflection in my knife at a dinner party at a Portugese restaurant in Newark in 1997 and thought "Damn, I gotta stop doing this shit. I 'm acting like Boy George at Live Aid!" (I did stop, fyi. A long time ago, so there.) Yeah, it was nuts. He fell asleep right there on stage. I felt like I had been magically transported back to the 90s. I mean, who the fuck is still doing heroin??? In 2007??? He managed to shake it off a little but it was obvious that things were only going to get worse and Cass was kind of dull after Ariel (okay, really dull but that is a hard act to follow). So 5 stars for the first half and 4 for the second, but the second set of stars is awarded according to different criteria, like being scarily fucked up.

Oh and the crowd was probably the weirdest I have ever seen. This shit made a Danielson Famile show seem like the American Music Awards.

Silly cat photo starring Mimi

2007-11-21T00:07:00.000-05:00

Mimi had surgery last week! Here she is modeling her soft Elizabethan collar. She told me she'll save it for when she's finally fed up with Brooklyn and with me. She plans to run off and become a circus clown. I hate to lose her but she does seem suited to the carny lifestyle.

Eau de Brooklyn

2007-11-21T00:02:00.000-05:00

Allow me to state the obvious. This is NOT what Brooklyn smells like, or at least not where I'm from. Try adding a little beef patty to the mix and you'd get a little closer.

A father-daughter duo created 'Eau de Brooklyn' fragrance line

BY DENISE ROMANO From today's Daily News:
He's a neurologist by day and a perfumer by night.

Emilio Oribe of Boerum Hill and his 10-year-old daughter, Catalina, began experimenting with scented oils in their basement as a fun project, coming up with a fresh scent they call "Eau de Brooklyn."

"I have always been fascinated with how scents bring back memories," Oribe, 52, said. "I started reading about it and set up shop to make some in the basement."

The Oribes made both memories and scents.

Father and daughter went through many different formulas until they came up with one they liked.

"It was refreshing and full of energy," he said, adding that the first form of Eau de Brooklyn was a soap, created two years ago; a spray perfume was released this summer.

"We live in Brooklyn and we love the place, so this is the best name for it," said Oribe, whose practice maintains offices in Manhattan and Queens. "It's uplifting and full of energy, just like the borough."

Eau de Brooklyn's fresh scent has notes of citrus and tea-bergamot. With the help of brother, Nicholas, 8, Catalina created the design on the packaging, using a photograph of flowers from the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. Even the family cat, Oliver, tested and approved of the smell by sleeping atop a stack of soaps.

"It was a lot of fun, we were lucky to do this," Oribe said, adding that the scents are now manufactured in New Jersey and people with disabilities do the packaging in Astoria.

Brooklyn News asked borough residents if the scent reminded them of home.

"They say trees grow in Brooklyn and it's got this natural smell. It smells like citrus and cinnamon," said Dwayne Walker, 20, of Crown Heights.

Yvonne Waldemar, a doctor from Brooklyn Heights, agreed.

"It reminds me of the Japanese section of the Botanic Garden," she said. "It's kind of like the Orient."

Desmond Eaddy, 26, of Williamsburg, liked its fresh smell.

"Some parts of Brooklyn smell nice and some don't," he said. "It makes me think of the farmer's market at Borough Hall or Prospect Park."

But there are always critics in the brassy borough, and Eau de Brooklyn had its share.

"It smells like the Gowanus Canal," said Joel Slatcher, 73, of Bensonhurst.

For a list of stores that carry Eau de Brooklyn, visit www.eaudebrooklyn.com .

Oscar the Grouch

2007-11-20T10:58:00.001-05:00

It’s Tuesday morning, and again I find myself in a mood so foul that it makes Oscar the Grouch look like a fucking Teletubby. However, there is a lining in my day so silver as to blind me every time it catches the sun. Tonight is the Ariel Pink show!!!! Safe to say I am freaking out. Freaking out! This venue is so small it’s nuts. I have visions of sugarplums dancing in my head. The sugarplum vision is of getting there earlier and hanging out and meeting Ariel because I just know that he will be hanging out there doing god knows what, whatever it is that he does. All I know is that he’s such a weirdo and such a nerd that if I go by myself, which it is looking like may be the case, I won’t feel weird or awkward at all and will make friends with him. I’m considering burning a CD of my artwork and giving it to him and telling him to pick one and he can have it.

His sunny SoCal sounds are currently warming my day as I sit at my desk and experience the alienating drudgery of labor (and stick it to the man by writing this).

Ok so here’s Ariel sounding like the Beach Boys. Here’s Ariel sounding like Hall & Oates. Here’s Ariel being uncategorizably bizarre.

I think I may be a little in love with him.

Flip Flopper Says What?

2007-11-16T22:37:00.000-05:00

I may be in Georgia now, but I lived in NYC for ten years, most of which were Giuliani years. - I moved there about 5 months prior to the start of Count Chockula's first term. So I was there in 1997, when the Count's semi-sane facade started to crack really badly and the Mussolini-on-the-balcony-esque, unstable megalomaniac started to really show. In other words, it was "Giuliani time."

As most Americans know - and for some reason love - Giuliani "cleaned up" New York, the ultimate symbol of this "cleaning up" being Times Square, which transformed rather rapidly from the candy colored, transsexual prostitute-studded wonderland of Travis Bickle's day into something resembling Epcot center, complete with an Olive Garden. In other words, safe for civilization! What people who didn;t live in NYC failed to realize was that the transformation of Times Square was in fact part of a protracted series of battles in NY courts over zoning laws and the sex industry - and that Giuliani was not completely victorious. Although he was able to manipulate the judiciary to bend almost completely to his will in banishing legal sex workers and adult businesses (eg peep shows and x-rated bookstores) to the dustiest and most vacant of neighborhoods (most notably the apocalyptically industrial strech of Brooklyn's 3rd avenue that runs under the BQE), the courts stopped short of full compliance, allowing several adult-orineted businesses that carried a certain amount of non-adult merchandise to stay where they were. Well, the Count was PISSED. Like, psychotically pissd. The only other time I heard him this pissed was when Margarita Rosario, mother of police shooting victim Anthony Rosario, confronted the Count on his weekly call-in show with the facts she had uncovered regarding the cover-up of the monumental fuck up that led to her son's unjust death (I recommend everyone see the documentary about this case, "Unjustifiable Homicide," which features this phone call and will seriously scare the bejeesus out of you. He is a fucking psycho, and the way he talks to Margarita Rosario is proof). The Count was so pissed that he took to the airwaves and asked all concerned New Yorkers to take to the streets and photograph the patrons of these adult businesses as they entered and/or left the premises (my best friend and I promptly spent the day photographing each other waving and smiling as we entered sex shop after sex shop). He said that if the courts would not close these businesses, ehw ould shame their customers away and force them to close by default.

So tonight I come home and read about how the Count has promised to appoint conservative judges. Here are some excerpts from the AP:

"In a speech marking the 25th anniversary of the Federalist Society, Giuliani spelled out a conservative legal agenda in which he cited Supreme Court Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito and Chief Justice John Roberts as models for the judges he would appoint to the federal bench.

He contended that Democrats Hillary Rodham Clinton, Barack Obama or John Edwards, as president, would select judges who were 'activists and try to legislate social policy.'

'We're seeking to find judges who understand the very, very important concept that judges exist to interpret the law, not to invent the law,' he said."

Nice. So let me get this straight - the guy who refused to accept a strictly constructed ruling of the NY bench on zoning laws and went so far as to attempt to circumvent it through a smear campaign of businesses deemed legally entitled to operate in their locations - this guy is now preaching about "inventing the law?" Where is that guy who followed Kerry around dressed as a giant flip flop? We are gonna need him this time aroud.

Russ's Collage du Who Knows What Jour

2007-11-16T07:52:00.000-05:00

Precipitation Update, Part 2

2007-11-15T08:49:00.000-05:00

Okay, it rained a little last night. See you in church! Just kidding. But seriously, I'm glad it rained and also very glad that Governor Perdue Chicken out the prayer thing in the context of praying for god's forgiveness for not taking care of the earth. No new conservation measures were announced, which I'm sure god would have dug, but whatever.

Precipitation Update

2007-11-14T13:44:00.000-05:00

Well, it's still not raining here. It is very humid though, so maybe they just did not pray quite hard enough.

Lord Have Mercy

2007-11-13T17:53:00.000-05:00

Today, Georgia idiot I mean governor Sonny Perdue took advantage of his position as leader of the entire state to grab Georgia’s ongoing drought by the horns and wrestle it to the ground. How, you ask? Through the magic of prayer! You have probably heard about this as it’s exactly the kind of embarrassing stereotype-perpetuating news about the South that gets national media attention. To make matters worse, the sun is currently shining as brightly and strongly as it has done for several weeks now. We need rain so badly that I was willing to suspend my horror/embarrassment/cynicism and hope that Sonny’s multi-faith prayer convention would work – I even optimistically left a bucket on my roof to catch any drops that the Baby Jesus might deign to squeeze out. The rabbis who were invited probably ruined the whole thing by going on the local NPR affiliate this morning to talk about how Jewish folk believe that good stewardship of the earth is a significant part of their faith and that you can’t really ask God to make it rain when you’ve been consistently fucking up the environment with grossly unchecked development for at least as long as I have been in Georgia (since 1980), but hey, they’d show up anyway. I imagine what they really wanted to say was that they would plotz if this bullshit actually worked.

Meanwhile, Senator and professional jackass Johnny Isakson recently proposed another brilliant solution to the drought: suspend the Endangered Species Act in Georgia, Florida, and Alabama. A little background: the three smartest and most sophistimacated states in the union basically share a water supply. Moonshine, sweet tea, and sausage gravy, too, but the levels of all of those are just fine, thanks! The supply consists of some specific bodies of water, such as manmade Lake Lanier, about 40 minutes north of Atlanta. Lake Lanier is managed by the Army Corps of Engineers, who are responsible for doling out water to us and our marginally stupider and more backwards neighbors to the west and south. Although each state uses the shared water supply for a variety of purposes, the general consensus is that it’s used mainly by Georgia for drinking water, by Alabammy for industry, and by Florida for…drum roll…endangered species habitat protection. This is because one of the most significant sources of shared water is the Apalachicola River basin, which is located in North Florida and is one of the most important remaining relatively undisturbed wetland habitats in the United States, and home to three officially threatened species and many more that are expected to become threatened or even endangered if water levels are not protected. Senator Isaakson interprets this as putting - to quote The Muppets Take Manhattan – “pigs and chickens and things” before human beings (and Republican senators). So, the point is that Johnny would rather tell the last purple bankclimber mussel or Gulf sturgeon not to let the door hit him on the way out than work to curb the needless overdevelopment of property in Georgia by loosening the vice grip of property developers on local governments, or insist that watering of golf courses be suspended, or implement a plan to temporarily raise taxes in order to subsidize owners of business such as car washes so that they can be shuttered without the risk of going out of business until water levels are back in the black, or eradicate the inefficient septic tanks which Atlanta has more of than any other city in all of North America.

Back to the subject of prayer. The other day at work, a colleague was having a particularly bad day. Various things where going wrong on both the home and business fronts, and most of us knew about it and had commiserated. Now, we currently have a particularly stupid intern-type person working part time in our office. This woman is attending what I like to call Ronald McDonald Law School, a local degree factory which caters to morons willing to pay through the nose for a law degree which will basically ensure their future hiring at nowhere but the most ambulance-chaser-y, yellow pages-advertised of law firms. One of our more odious and self-important legal assistants recently departed our firm to attend this fine institution and has - to my considerable chagrin - been hired repeatedly since then in a part-time intern-y role, bringing with her many fellow self-important and thoroughly deluded fools who she calls classmates. The aforementioned idiot is one of these. Okay, so this idot rolls in and commences with catching up on the latest workplace drama. Shortly thereafter, I see her whisking the aforementioned highly aggrieved co-worker into the single-occupancy executive washroom that is situated directly acros from my work area. A bizarre ruccus proceeded to eminate from said washroom. At first I thought it was the idiot ranting in a self-absorbed manner about some recent drama in her own life, as is usually her practice (although usually done in a public area for all of us to hear), but I soon became aware of such phrases as "guide this child through the wilderness" and "help her to see the light in this time of struggle" and, of course, the big money word - "jesus." It seriously sounded like Jim Bakker was in the executive washroom and I seriously expected tongues to be spoken at any moment. I went and notified my most heretical co-worker and we listened outside the door with our mouths hanging open in abject horror like the satanists that we are.

In closing, lord help THIS poor child through this wilderness in which those around her seem to have gone completely fucking mad and become even more insufferably religious than they already were. Ay-men.

Way Better than a Romney Bumper Sticker

2007-11-13T12:45:00.000-05:00

Yesterday (see below) I was in such a fowl mood and my day was so irritating that a Romney bumper sticker constituted the shockingly low high point of my day. Well, today is looking up. It seems that those lovely people at the Criterion Collection are releasing Fassbinder's Berlin Alexanderplatz on DVD today. Berlin Alexanderplatz represents a 15 1/2 hour long hole in my goal of seeing every second every committed to film by my ubermensch R.W. I am fairly obsessed with Fassbinder and readily admit it. Shockingly, I don't think I have really gushed about him much here. I'm going to save that for another time but, in brief, my favorite Fassbinder films (thus far) are Katzelmacher, Mother Kusters Goes to Heaven, Fox and His Friends, and (of course) Ali: Fear Eat Soul (people call this film Ali: Fear Eats the Soul, but the German, "angst essen seele auf", actually translates as "fear eat soul" and is how Ali delivers the line in his poor German). If you have never seen a Fassbinder film, Ali is the holy grail and I recommend you see it. As a tribute to Douglas Sirk's All that Heaven Allows, it is far superior to Todd Haynes's Far from Heaven, and that was a good film but no Ali. Prepare to have your heart taken out and bludgeoned into tiny pieces and then put in a blender and then thrown in your face. But prepare for this feeling to sneak up on you so slowly that at moments you may be quite bored and exasperated with the film's typical self-conscious artificiality. And as with any Fassbinder film, marvel at the fact that he made this pure masterpiece in the span of about five days and was coked, pilled-up, and drunk out of his mind for the duration of the production.

Ok now I am doing what I said I wasn't going to do which is gush. I could write about Fassbinder all day and then all night and then all day again. That's how much I love him. Suffice to say, Fassbinder fans have been waiting a long time for this day. Berlin Alexanderplatz, here I come.

It's a Loretta Lockhorn Day

2007-11-12T18:31:00.000-05:00

I was trying to figure out what disgruntled character best matches my frame of mind today. I was originally thinking of that angry Boynton cat with the pissed-off-signifying squiggle over his head, but upon closer self-analysis, I think Loretta Lockhorn works better. The domestic strife is absent, but the heavy lidded reservedness with which she keeps her disdain for all around her barely in check pretty much sums up how I have felt for most of the day. It's just been one of those days where the apathy and philistinism that surround me have really worn me down.

I have had a nagging earache on and off for months now, which can generally be held at bay with Flonase and nasal saline spray. But thanks to a cold that the nasty little non-hand-washing cretins at my office where passing around like Kool-Aid at Jonestown last week, my ear now hurts pretty much constantly. The only thing that works is Affrin, which is more addicitve than crack if used for more than 3 days at a time, and I'm on day two. So I was already in NO MOOD for the atmosphere of idiocy at my workplace, manifested most pungently by the inability of around 25 educated attorneys to discuss anything other than sports (the men) or clothes (the women - see, we can't even defy fucking gender stereotypes). It did not help that there were a bunch of top secret meetings going on with some sort of expensive consultant. I have worked in enough firms to know that most of the time, a consultant could be really awesome, but the firm only hears what they want to hear, never asks for the input of the staff (who often have the best ideas about ways to imporve things - or at least I sure as hell do), and winds up with nothing improved and a bunch of disgruntled staff who know that the firm spent a shitload flying some choad in from Chicago while handing out paltry raises at review time.

It also did not help that the other focus of the day was an orgasmatron-looking single-cup coffee maker sent over for our sampling and potential purchase (again, money very well spent) by Starbucks, along with mini muffins and mini croissants and other modern mini forms of lotus and opium meant to lull us into sweet, sated corporate somnambulism. This may sound innocuous enough, but what really fucking pissed me off is that Starbucks also sent over roughly 350 million paper cups and corrugated sleeves for said cups, which the earth-raping dingbats at my firm dutifully assembled next to the machine. So now, in addition to the paper and plastic cups which everyone had begun filling with caffeine when the day first started, there were Starbucks cups and sleeves all over the place. Here's a solution to a hot cup - get a mug. It has a handle, and you're only going to your desk, you Oryx and Crake-inducing piece of shit. In no mood for such shenanigans, I snuck into the break room during a quiet moment and hid all the cups and sleeves and replaced them with china mugs. Ha. I'm sure people were so confused that they just gave up and held their open mouths under the single serving spout.

I forgot to mention that approximately five minutes after I arrived at work, I was made to assist and calm down a hysterical male divorce client who turned up unannounced in a horrible state trying to file a restraining order against his wife, who he knew for about a month, married, filed for divorce from approximately three months later, and has now spent more time than they were married going through this divorce. I really have no time for people who rush into marriage and are all boo hoo when their wife scratches their door up with her car keys and threatens to call the police making false allegations of rape. I mean, we have celebrities to show us that these premature weddings are a bad idea. Pay attention! Drew Barrymore didn't get married 73 times for herself, you know!

Things started to look up(ish) when I left work and saw two political bumper stickers which I have not seen yet down here. One was Bill Richardson (well, I've seen the Bill Richardson bumper stickers in my trash, but that's it until now) and the other was Mitt Romney. Although I have soured on Richardson since my initial drunken and misguided Romeo-esque window serenading, and would cheerfully shave Romney's head while he slept, for some reason these displays of support for what amount to unusual candidates down here kind of warmed my heart. There's something reassuring in knowing that there are people who have thought about the election enough to not just know about but actually endorse someone other than the Big 3 (Giuliani, Clinton, Obama - I know Romney is popular elsewhere but you don't hear a lot about him down here). After my day of hating all the unengaged fuckwads around me, this cheered me somewhat. Somewhat. Too bad I went to Blockbuster immedialy thereafter and could not find the Danish movie After the Wedding, but could find the place on the wall where 53 copies of I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry would have been had they not all been snatched up by people who apparently have either not a single lone brain cell in their heads or no sense of shame, or both. I would like to think that all 53 copies were at the homes of Queer Theory PhD candidates, serving as research for various theses on the representation of homosexuality in the mainstream media, but I doubt this is the case.

It is indeed a grey, Loretta Lockhorn day when the brightest patch of sunlight is a fucking Romney bumper sticker.

Is this true? Because if it is, it's awesome.

2007-11-12T14:10:00.000-05:00

Bunches told me that he heard a report about John Edwards on NPR yesterday and that he promised that if he is elected and Congress does not approve universal health care, he will suspend health insurance for all senators and congresspersons. I have been looking for corroboration of this too-awesome-to-be-true nugget of butt-kicking genius but can't find any. His position statements on his website have some fighting words about how he's taking names of those who voted "no" on S-CHIP and will see that they are run out of office post haste.

I really like him. I am officially committed and have signed up to volunteer. I read through all of the position statements and have little quarrel with any of his positions, except of course he isn't for drug legalization, but I'm putting that aside (again). I mean, who am I gonna vote for - Mike Gravel? I'd rather post a video of myself throwing a rock. Ha.

The Second Chance Act: Call Your Member of Congress!

2007-11-11T10:13:00.000-05:00

I don't write enough about the issue of prison reform on this blog and I really should, because, as far as I'm concerned, it's one of the most important issues in America today and is barely even discussed. I have been working with a retired federal corrections officer for a little while now, helping him to get the word out about his experiences and the inside dirt on sentencing laws and prison reform. This guy is a decorated lieutenant who was basically forced into early retirement as a direct result of his activism. Since then, he has worked as a community leader with organizations like the November Coalition that focus on prison reform. Unfortunately, this dedicated gentleman has been in poor health for a while now and ilives mainly on disability checks, which amount to very little. Recently he was contaced by the authorites and told that his activism (for which he makes no money - he is not a non-profit organization and works on a strictly volunteer basis) amounts to work, and if he's healthy enough to do that, he's healthy enough to work. They told him to cease his activism or lose his disability pension, which he is entitled to as a retired warden who worked for over thirty years in the federal prison system and who has been officially deemed eligible for disability by approved doctors. The whole thing stinks. Yes, it is about race, of course, but like most things in this country, it's really about money. More and more prisons are either owned and run by private companies or have many of their services contracted to private companies. As with most privatized services, the almighty dollar is the top priorty, at the expense of not only prisoners but alo the rest of us in the free world. Rehabilitation programs - be they educational, psycholgoical, addiction treatment, whatever - are becoming a thing of the past. The implicit goal of incarceration is to ensure recidivism. A single free man or woman represents a loss of an average of $40,000 per year to the private prison industry. In many cases, private corrections firms have contracts with local businesses and provide prisoners to work for virtual slave labor wages. So the community suffers in that not only are inmates basically encouraged to offend again, leaving children fatherless or motherless and families struggling to get by on single incomes, but also in that jobs are lost on a great scale. And, for the prisoners who do this work, finding work upon release is practically impossible as the only skill they have is to do a job that is done by prisoners. So they have no income, and guess what? They offend again. I believe Joseph Heller wrote a book about this type of situation...

Yes, race is a huge part of this. Of course minorites suffer more under this sytem as their already marginalized positions in society make them far easier targets. And since it's all about money, money can keep you out of the system. And who has money? Oh, that's right -whitey. But not every whitey- at the end of the day, like most issues that are cast in a the light of race, class is of almost equal importance. A black man is more likely to be stopped by the police than a poor white man, but once they enter the system and are given court-appointed attorneys, they are equally screwed. The ultimate cash prize for the private prison system is the death penalty, which is why the state agencies that fund defense of death penalty cases are virtually bankrupt.

This is one of those issues that all makes such crystal clear sense, but no one seems to know or care about it. This is because of the stigma of crime. Like terrorism, there is so much innate fear surrounding this issue that it is all but impossible for most people to discuss it rationally. Any discussion of prison reform can be squashed with horrifying tales of coddled pedophiles who emerge to kill tiny children. Pedophiles are the 9/11 of prison reform - an anomaly that is used to distort the whole argument.

Okay, the point is that this Tuesday, November 13, the Second Chance Act is coming up for a vote in Congress. This is one of the first prison reform bills to see the light of day in years. Here are a few of the things this act would do (I pulled this from the Human Rights Watch website:

1. National Offender Reentry Resource Center. Establishes a national resource center for states, local governments, service providers, faith-based organization, corrections and community organizations to collect and disseminate best practices and provide training and support around reentry.

2. Federal Taskforce. Creates a federal interagency taskforce to identify programs and resources on reentry, identify ways to better collaborate, develops interagency initiatives and a national reentry research agenda. Review and report to Congress on the federal barriers that exist to successful reentry with recommendations.

3. National Family Caregiver Support Program. Removes the age limitation of at least 60 years of age for grandparents to receive support and services while caring for their grandchildren due to parental incarceration.

4. Technical Amendment to Drug-Free Student Loan Provision. Ensures that the Drug-Free Student Loans provision only applies to offenses committed while receiving federal aid and encourages treatment.

2. Protection Against Dangerous Felons. Provides grants to states and local governments that may be used to develop or adopt procedures to ensure that dangerous felons are not released from prison prematurely.

3. Assessment Tools. Provides grants to states and local governments that may be used to utilize established assessment tools to assess the risk factors of returning inmates and prioritizing services based on risk.

4. Mentoring Grants. Provides grants to community-based organizations that may be used for mentoring of adult offenders or providing transitional services for re-integration into the community.

5. Demonstration Grants. Provides grants to states and local governments that may be used to provide mental health services, substance abuse treatment and aftercare, and treatment for contagious diseases to offenders in custody and after reentry into the community.

6. Collaboration with Community Colleges. Provides grants to states and local governments that may be used to facilitate collaboration among corrections and community corrections, technical schools, community colleges, and workforce development employment services.

7. Post-release Housing. Provides grants to states and local governments that may be used to provide structured post-release housing and transitional housing, including group homes for recovering substance abusers, through which offenders are provided supervision and services immediately following reentry into the community;

8. Family-Based Treatment. Provides grants to states and local governments that may be used to expand family-based treatment centers that offer family-based comprehensive treatment services for parents and their children as a complete family unit.

If you think this stuff is important, please call or e-mail your member of congress tomorrow!!!

Separated at Birth: Ryan Seacrest and Mark Anthony

2007-11-10T16:17:00.001-05:00

Does anyone else see this one? It's hard to see because Seacrest is always smiling and Marc is never smiling. Seacrest out.

Russ's Collage du Who Knows What Jour

2007-11-10T06:48:00.000-05:00

This one is called "Diplomacy." Its Kissinger and Powell going to prom. That's actually me under Powell - it's my junior prom picture. Look how skinny I was! Those were the days!

The dude I went with was dumb as rocks, but he was hot. He got transferred from the next high school for being naughty. He looked like Richard Greico (who I thought was hot back then, gross) but had the Johnny Depp tattoo of the huge Native American head and dressed all James Dean with a white t-shirt with the sleeves rolled up and a pack of Marlboro reds tucked in. People were jealous of me. Ha. Oh and he stole that car. It was pretty fly.

Silly Cat Picture Starring Orangello & Sophia

2007-11-08T08:33:00.001-05:00

The other day Bunches called on his way home from Target and told me that, among other things, he had purchased "cat stuff." I thought he meant food and litter. Silly me. Of course he meant neckties!!!

I love these ties so much. They are the only hilarious cat clothing that I have ever seen a cat tolerate. I guess because it's a collar. Orangello wouldn't sit still for his picture, by the way. I guess he was too excited about his tie. I love them so much that I wrote a jingle for them, should the cat necktie people ever feel that they need a commercial:

Orangello got to his desk at 9
Cuz you know the boss likes it when he's on time
He's using Excel and Microsoft Word
He's a business cat - haven't you heard?

Business cat, he's a business cat
He's wearing his tie
Cuz he knows where it's at

Business cat, yes business cat
Puts on his tie
And his business hat

Sophia rolls into the meeting room
You know she's gonna get that promotion soon
She's working hard, working overtime
Gotta take home every last dime

Business cat, she's a business cat
She's wearing her tie
Cuz she knows where it's at

Business cat, yes business cat
Puts on her tie
Smooths her suit down flat

Orangello eats his lunch at the mall
Goes to the food court cuz they got it all
Sophia goes to the Blue Ridge Grill
Because she's a VP and can foot the bill

Business cats, they’re business cats
Wearing their ties
Cuz they know where it's at

Business cats, and it ain't no lie
You can tell by their suits
And their business ties

Russ's Collage du Who Knows What Jour

2007-11-08T04:41:00.001-05:00

This one is called "Self-Promotion, Fallujah, 2006." Some new movie in which Tom Cruise chews all the scenery is opening this weekend, so this one's for you, Tom! (please note that Tom will probably sure me over this. You bettter believe I will NEVER make a collage with Prince! What the fuck crawled up his ass? He's suing a fucking baby for dancing to "Let's Go Crazy" on YouTube! I kid you not! Looks like somebody already did go crazy!)

Separated at Birth: Boy George and King Tut

2007-11-08T04:37:00.000-05:00

My Mom came up with this one. But I found the perfect picture of George O'Dowd!

They Actually Paid a Bunch of Morons to Come Up With This?

2007-11-07T18:37:00.000-05:00

I saw a commercial for this the other night (and then approximately 50 more times) and couldn't believe my ears/eyes. Have you seen this latest variation on the cat litter theme? Can you believe this shit (pun intended)? Just in case Odor Alert litter is news to you, allow me to fill you in. Rather, allow Arm & Hammer to fill you in:

"No matter how frequently you scoop out the clumps, you may miss some soiled pieces — which gradually accumulate and begin to smell. New ARM & HAMMER® Odor Alert™ Cat Litter is the only litter with Pre-Odor Indicators that turn blue on contact with urine. So you can see and remove the source of odor BEFORE you can smell it! "

Pre-Odor Indicators? Have you ever SMELLED cat pee? There is no pre-odor! It commences with stinking horribly the second it emerges from the cats nether regions!!! The only pre-odor indicator that makes sense is one that alerts you to an approaching cat with a full bladder. Cat pee is not GOING to smell - it already fucking smells!!! Geez!!! Bunches is always crabbing about how they keep reinventing pizaa (stuffed crust, whole pizza stuffed, two pizzas on top of each other with the top pizza upside down, pizza in strips instead of triangles, and so on). At least that shit can be tasty. This is just stupid. Pre-odor my ass. My panties are in such a wad over this, I need a dose of "The Lighter Side of...", and I mean the real thing!

HA! That is so true! How many times have I reluctantly laid down my giant old school scrub brush while my head was all lathered up and left a relaxing bath only to find that what I THOUGHT was my doorbell was in fact Archie Bunker's doorbell? I ask you!!!

I Knew It!!!

2007-11-07T18:28:00.000-05:00

I always had a feeling about George & Pervez, but I can't believe they have decided to go public with their relationship! And I REALLY can't believe that they are going public by telling us about their phone sex!!! I mean, did Bush REALLY say "I told him to take off his uniform." I need more info. Did he ask Pervez what he was wearing first? Because, you know, if it was nighttime, Pervez may have had on his military pyjamas insyead of his regular uniform. You know, the ones with the built-in feet and the fuzzy epaulets?

And what was the rest of the conversation? Did he tell him to start with the jacket and take it off REAL SLOW? Was there phone-licking involved? Did George make Pervez say hot, sexy things like "martial law," "suspended elections," and "groups of more than five people may not gather in public?"

Ladies, get your brassieres and matches out!

2007-11-07T12:22:00.000-05:00

This weekend ladies everywhere will be observing the 30th anniversary of the First Women's National Congress, held in Houston all those years ago. Or, I guess, they won't—or at least I won't—because... the first I heard of it was this morning on the Brian Lehrer Show. (Ladies, can we get our PR machine in order?)

Anyway, this weekend at Hunter College a bunch of feminist leaders will meet to update the pro-women platform that was constructed back in '77, which included hot button topics like equal pay, equal rights, reproductive freedom, domestic abuse, child care, lesbian rights, minority women, and education.

I guess we won't be crossing any of those items off the list.

Some lady leader I'd never heard of (surprise, surprise) said on the radio this morning that "updating" the platform will really entail adding on to it topics like expanded rights for lesbians, protections for sex workers, and stricter punishment for sex trafficking. And they'll also talk about men: male feminists, how men feel about feminism, etc..

Umm... hello? Why the fuck are we talking about male feminism at a ladies congress? And why are we talking about male feminism in this day and age when young women don't even call themselves feminists? Let's talk instead about why we don't yet have a lady president in office, why the lady who is running for president gets put through the wringer every day (and people think it has nothing to do with her being a lady?!), and why so many women and their children are starving in 2007, in America, the richest country that has ever existed in the history of the fucking universe. What the fuck?! I'm all for third wave feminism, mainly because, what choice do I have, really, but can't we just fucking band together? Let's NOT talk about men and let's pound some sense into young girls who think feminism is an idea of the past.

So, if anyone wants to join me, I'll be on the sidewalk in front of Hunter this weekend setting my brasserie on fire. If I wasn't making $.71 to the male dollar, I might consider burning two.

On the Lighter Side...Police Academy Edition

2007-11-07T12:21:00.000-05:00

You know it's time for an edition of "On the Lighter Side..." when Pat Robertson says or does ANYTHING and when R2 and I start praying that aliens will abduct us. This is especially indicative of a high stress level for me, since I am absolutely terrified of aliens due to watching way too many alien abduction TV shows as a kid. R2, and everyone else I know, make big time fun of me because I think Signs is the scariest movie ever made. If Bunches makes the clicking sound that the aliens make, I seriously hide under the bed for like a week. You better believe he is ALWAYS making that fucking sound. I found my black cashmere turtleneck under the bed the other day! Just kidding, I wish. I don't know where the hell that thing got to. I think the cats are wearing it while I'm at work.

But I digress (shock!). Lately I have been thinking quite a bit about the Police Academy movies. Oh, who am I kidding - I am always thinking about Police Academy. Mahoney, Lassard, Mauser, Sweetchuck, Hightower, Tackleberry, Jones & Hooks, blonde lady with big boobs in the wet t-shirt who fucks the Japanese dude...I love you all. But my true love is Proctor. Proctor has to be among the all time greatest bumblers in cinema history. Here's one of my favorite scenes featuring Proctor. I'm wondering if the phrase "salad tossing" was in usage when this movie came out, because if it was, the reference to "the best salad bar in town" is devillishly clever. Oh, and by the way, has a sex act ever been as poorly described by its nickname as salad tossing? I mean, there is not even a hint there as to what's going on. I had to google that shit!

On that note, do NOT google "teradactyl" if your grandmother is in the room. For some reason my whole family and I were discussing the word roots in that particular dinosaurs name (yes, we are all raging nerds, apparently, not just me), so I googled it...suffice to say, teradactyl is not just a flying dinosaur anymore. I found two other defnitions, neither of which were grandmother-in-the-room-friendly!

Back to Police Academy. My favorite is #2 (if you were Mahoney, you would make a joke of that). It was the first one I saw. I was 10. I must have seen it 50 times. It is one of many 80s movies to feature wild and crazy punks who have nothing in common with actual punks.

Mahoney story: One time R2 and I were on the beach in Queens (shut up) and retired to the sand dunes to blaze a fatty. Upon returning to Bunches and our potato chip-encrusted bedsheet/makeshift beach blanket, a cop walked by. Being stoned and paranoid, we were all "look cool, be cool, cop, cop!", but he passed on by. Literally one minute later, a cop went by on a bike. We were like, "Huh?" Then, a police helicopter flew by. By now we were laughing. Then Bunches says, look, there's a cop on a horse. We were like, ha ha, very funny, but there really was a cop on a horse! Then one went by in one of those little carts with three wheels. Then a car. There were other modes of transportation involved (I think we counted 10 total - a little help, R2?), but the piece de resistance was a cop on a four wheel ATV - just like Mahoney in the opening scene of Police Academy 2!! Needless to say, we were already almost dying laughing, but this seriously nearly killed us.

There are so many more great things to say about Police Academy. Citizens on Patrol is pretty fucking good, for example. I love that David Spade and Ratner From Fast Times are skate punks (a later variation on the punk theme, and just as poorly rendered in most every case) and a bunch of big time skaters from the 80s are in it (another 80s movie standard - where there are poorly rendered skater characters, there are actual real skaters standing right next to them who apparently had no input at all). There is not enough room in the world to say all that has to be said about Police Academy, and I have work to (very reluctantly) do.

Rudy's shit hitting the fan

2007-11-07T11:12:00.001-05:00

Shit! Pat Robertson has endorsed Ghouliani! Someone is going to have to shoot him. I mean shoot Rudy, but why not take out Pat Robertson while we're at it? Apparently, Ghouli and Pat became good friends while recovering from prostate cancer. That's some serious male bonding.

Meanwhile, America is insisting that sexism is not at play in Hillary coverage.

Are we living in an alternate reality? Hello? Will the UFO that swept over Kucinich's head at Shirley MacLaine's house please pick me up and transport me to far off land?

Russ's Collage du Who Knows What Jour

2007-11-07T06:40:00.000-05:00

This one is called "Modified FBI Technique; Neck Index Technique; Classic FBI Technique." I recommend clicking on the picture so you can appreciate W's facial expressions.

Russ's Collage du Who Knows What Jour

2007-11-06T07:25:00.000-05:00

It's been a while. This one is called "Diddy, Tehran, 1979 (After David Burnett)"

Separated at Birth: Count Chocula and Giuliani

2007-11-06T07:22:00.000-05:00

I highly doubt I am the first person to think of this. And does Giuliani wear dentures??? Did he knock all his teeth out chewing on the skulls of Puerto Ricans and sex workers?

Pretty-Off: Japanese Dude Edition

2007-11-04T14:08:00.000-05:00

To show that my objectification of men knows no racial, ehtnic, or national boundaries, I am going to go ahead and hold the next pretty-off today, hot on the heels of the first pretty-off. Don't ask me why these pretty-offs are categorized by ehtnicity - they just are. The closest thing I have to an answer is that there are a lot of pretty dudes out there and you have to categorize them somehow. Maybe when we've had all the pretty-offs, we can have a battle royale of the races. Kind of like Survivor did that one season. Or kind of like the battle of the sexes in tennis, except everybody is a dude and they are all way, way prettier than Billie Jean King. I'm thinking maybe of an ugly-fof too, but I'm so sure that Andrew Lloyd Weber would win that there is really very little point. Let me know if you want to nominate someone. And let me know if you disagree with the winners I choose of the various pretty-offs, or if I left someone very, very pretty out of the competition.

Let me just point out that this is a PRETTY-off, not a handsome-off. So don't be thinking that Allen Iverson is my favorite black dude to look at, because he isn't. I dig him, but I dig Adewale Akinnouye-Agbaje (Simon Adebesi from Oz) more (even though I hear he's a total pill in real life),
or that the winner of the Japanese dude pretty-off is my favorite Japanese dude - he's not; Takashi Sorimachi is.
At the end of the day, I prefer handsome to pretty (see my Alain Delon vs. Jean-Paul Belmondo post). Don't mean I don't like me some pretty, though. So, without further ado, I present for your consideration the following assorted wagashi (delicious Japanese confections):

That's soccer star Hidetoshi Nakata (top), baseball player Kazuo Matsui (center), and baseball player Ichiro Suzuki (bottom). If you've been reading this blog, you know who the winner is. Ichiro!!! Take your sash, please, Ichiro, and I expect to see it on you on opening day next spring. I don't care if it fucks with your pitching arm. The only reason I am even watching baseball at all is to perv out over you and the other hot guys (which is, like, 3 dudes tops - baseball players are an apocalyptically ugly bunch. Yuck, I shudder just thinking about fat disgusting frat boys like Roger Clemens and pock-marked hicks like Randy Johnson. Why did I just think about them? Now I have to think about Tom Glavine for approximately 17 straight hours to wash the folds of my brain clear of those two horrible, horrible, horrible men.)

Pretty-Off: Black Dude Edition

2007-11-03T15:29:00.001-04:00

I don't know why I'm thinking about this shit right now. I'm supposed to be getting ready to go out and am currently wearing underwear, a sweat-smelling Little Miss Bad t-shirt, glasses, no maekup, and more grease on my hair than Gale and Evelle apply in the gas station bathroom right after they break out of prison in Raising Arizona. Only mine is natural! So in the name of procrastination, I was flipping through my newly arrived issue of Entertainment Weekly (an excellent publication, by the way - they have way better writing and more cred than I ever expected. I guess I was just too creeped out by how socially inept Dalton Ross always seemed when he did his little segments on New York 1) and saw this photo of Chris Brown (top photo). You may remember him as the guy who showed Brit how it's done at the VMAs. I have pretty much given up trying to keep up with youth culture, but I do know who Chris Brown is. Sort of. Anyway, I found myself thinking,"He's pretty, but is he as pretty as Chingy?" For those of you who don't know, Chingy (bottom photo) is a hip hop semi-star who basically parlayed Nelly's St. Louis accent into an entire career. He did do one fucking great jam though - "Holidae Inn", with Snoop and Ludacris. It's about hotel parties, which I fucking love and am constantly trying to throw, to little avail (although I did have three in a row at K & Ms wedding, when I wisely booked the giant suite), and Ludacris has a great line where he says "make your mammary glands jiggle." But at the end of the day, the main thing about Chingy (thingy about Chingy?) is that he is exceedingy pretty. He's one of those people who you have to see moving around to truly appreciate, so if you give a fuck, and I'm betting my cats that you don't, I suggest you head to You Tube. I had pretty much declared Chingy the victor, but then I remembered the fairest of them all: Allen Iverson (center). Not many people seem to appreciate the beauty of Allen's face, and it's a shame. Yeah, he is a great b-baller, and yeah, he's a fucking thug with awesome tattoos, but he spends more time and money on his hair than Naomi Campbell, I guarantee it, and his face is just as pretty. Prettier, actually! So we have a winner. I am sending him a sash that says "Mr. Pretty Black Dude." It'll take a few days to reach him, but watch for him to be wearing it when the Nuggets take on the Knicks next Tuesday, or shortly thereafter. I hope it doesn't fuck up his game.

Oh My God Oh My God Oh My God

2007-11-03T13:16:00.000-04:00

Okay, I can barely contain my excitement. It is literally like trying to stuff a sleeping bag back into its carrying case (or an umbrella, your choice). I have been quietly freaking out for several months now at the prospect of the adaptaion of "No Country for Old Men", the newest Coeh brothers movie. I knew it was comng, but I had no idea it was coming NEXT WEEKEND!!!!! While I am embarassed to admit that I have neither read this nor any other Cormac McCarthy novel (which I plan to do immediately - I want to read this before the movie comes out), I have seen every single Coen brothers film at least once. Yes, even The Ladykillers, god help me (I think I have written before about how a major fuck-up only further endears those I love to me because it makes me feel better about myself - e.g. I could kiss Martin Amis for writing Night Train). I would estimate that I have seen Raising Arizona well over 100 times. I often get that Barton Fink feeling. My entire vocabulary is littered with Coen-isms. I will never "be right back" - no, I will always "be back directly." Nine times out of ten, when Orangello meows to me, I say "Ju said it mah, don fuck wid da jesus." I have not called a white russian a white russian for some time now. I often implore Bunches to look into his heart. Food is not good, but "pretty darn good." And so on.

The fact that Javier Bardem is starring in this new film only quintuples my excitment. I love, love, love him and think he is not only one of the handsomest men to ever draw breath, but also one of the greatest actors to ever grace the screen. I find it difficult to think of "Before Night Falls" without sobbing uncontrollably.

The sense that he conveys of a free spirit embarking on life with wild-eyed enthusiasm, drinking up experience and just truly living, and the sense of that free spirit being crushed by the man, the way the life and color and expression and joie de vivre drains from his face by the end of the film... it is so fucking heartbreaking that I actually think it made me cry harder than Jack Twist in Brokeback (am I alone in thinking Jake Gyllenhaal really nailed that shit? God he was just so sweet and optimistic and then so horribly, horribly crushed, and the fact that you don't see it, and it's kind of vague..oh man...). Javier made me forgive Julian Schnabel for both Basquiat (Julian, you WISH you looked like Gary Oldman, and, hate to say it, David Bowie's Warhol is a distant third to Crispin Glover's [#2] and Jared Harris's [#1], and please somebody fold Claire Forlani into a paper airplane and throw her into the caves at Tora Bora, post haste!! I can't believe John Favreau called her skanky irritating ass that many times and was actually bummed that she dissed him. Score, I say!) and those fucking broken dishes paintings. Javier was straight-up ROBBED of the Oscar for that role. ROBBED, I tell you! Yeah, Gladiator whupped major ass and made me actually want to sit on Russell Crowe's short obnoxious Australian wanker lap for a minute, but Oscar-worthy? Over BARDEM? NO! His NOSE deserves a fucking Oscar, for god's sake. Best Performance by a Nose in a Real Life Role.

I am not a violent person, but Javier's rugby nose has made me contemplate on more than one occasion hitting Bunches in the face with a shovel in an attempt to recreate it (and he has a nice broken nose already). Growing up, my parents had this really cool black horse's head sculpture that looked really fancy and heavy but was in fact really light like those fake rocks they would stack up all around Adam Curry/Ricky Rachtman on the Headbanger's Ball set. I was always fascinated by the beautiful lines of that horse's face - it didn't look like a real horse, but more like a horse as painted on a Greek vase (a krater or an amphora or whatever - yeah I took Art History 101, so what?). Javier Bardem looks exactly like that horse. I used to sit and run my hand along its smooth flat black nose, sometimes with my eyes closed. If I ever meet Javier, I will ask him if I can do the same thing to him. And I will now resist the urge to talk about running my hand aong other parts of him with my eyes closed. Fuck, I mentioned it!!! Sorry, but me gusta, Me really, really gusta.

In closing, here's hoping that a) No Country for Old Men is the return to form for the Coen brothers that people are saying it is, b) Javier wins an Oscar this time, like people are saying he will, and c) I make it to next weekend without spontaneously combusting out of sheer excitement as I am thinking I might.

Separated at Birth: Nicholas Rowe (aka Young Sherlock Holmes) and Pete Townshend (aka Ivor the Engine Driver)

2007-11-02T12:50:00.000-04:00

As promised. And, for the record, I think life imitated art a little TOO much when it comes to Ivor the Engine driver. Little Girl Guide, stop all your crying, here comes Pete Townshend to download a bunch of kiddie porn and then say it was just for research. Duh, Pete - the excuse is that it's art. Preferably Victorian art. You need to get with Paul Rubens and Jeffrey Jones, stat. Also for the record, A Quick One While He's Away is in my top 10 favorite songs of all time. Me and Bunches sing it when we drive and we have that shit down pat. I always get to be Entwhistle and when I sing "You are forgiven", Bunches sings "You are a gibbon." (a gibbon...a gibbon...a gibbon...sorry, I am singing it now). Finally, for the record, there is an alarmingly small number of pictures of Nicholas Rowe out there, so that little one is the best I could do. If I were him, I would be pissed. And not just about the career death and the nose!!!

On the Lighter Side...

2007-11-02T12:16:00.000-04:00

Remember back in the day Mad magazine had a section called "On the Lighter Side" with little cartoons about the lighter side of everyday life? I remeber I had two Mad magazines as a kid that I inherited from god knows where or whom, but I loved them so much and read them until Alfred E. Newman's face wore off and the fold-in fell to pieces. I haven't read Mad in years so I don't know if they still do this, but back then the feature of each issue was a movie spoof. The two I had were "The Empire Strikes Out" and "Young Sureschlock Holmes." Oh man, did they play up the schnozz on whoever the fuck that was in Young Sherlock Holmes. Come to think of it, was that Pete Townsend?? Do I feel a separated at birth coming on? Hell yes I do. Stay tuned. Anyway, "On the Lighter Side" had stuff like two dudes talking and making fun of older people: "Yeah, my parents don't know if Fleetwood Mac is a Cadillac shaped like a hamburgr or a hamburger shaped like a Cadillac." Zing! Take that, oldsters! You are way less cool than that hip young Chritine McVie and Lindsey Buckingham! Eat it, man!!! And then there was Spy vs. Spy.

I have a feeling I would appreciate that a lot more today, kind of like Doonesebury and Bloom County (I will never get Mary Worth, sorry...I mean, what the fuck was that shit doing in my funny pages? That shit ain't funny! I'll take Family fucking Circle over that preachy bitch! Damn!)
Anyway, my point is, it gets pretty heated here at Zeitgeisty. R2 and I generally fluctuate between psychotic ranting and St. Teresa of Avila-esque ecstatic adoration. (that's me listening to The Stooges, or R2 listening to Kucinich). So, in the tradition of my main Jew Alfred E. Newman, I am re-introducing On the Lighter Side as a category. Only fun, light subkect matter need apply. On the Lighter Side is all about taking a calm, relaxed view on shit. Even crazy shit that makes you feel like acting like the Tasmanian Devil, or Bill O'Reilly, or whatever. Case in point: I had a real day of it at work yesterday. I was running around like Carl Lewis all fucking day and got great feedback from some clients and nothing but grief from one of my assorted various bosses (I work for a regular Whitman's Sampler of freaky attorneys). Partway through the day I realized who I felt like and changed my desktop background image accordingly to this:
Now, you tell me, does it GET any lighter than Cannonball Run (1 or 2)?? I think not. And Dom DeLuise and I share a birthday (fuck you, Peter DeLuise. I don't care when your birthday is, nor do I care where you have been all these years).

I feel a Cannonball Run post coming on. A curse on this internet fatwa at my job. No, a fatwa on this fatwa!!!

We're Living With Dog Poo (So What?)

2007-11-01T13:25:00.000-04:00

As you may have noticed, I have been psychologically dormat for some time now (hence no posts), but I am back and better than ever, and what better way to show it than with one of my favorite past-times, righteous and strident confrontation? I know most people fear public speaking and many fear confrontation. I, on the other hand, could gladly get up on a stage and indignantly yell at wrongdoers for at least two hours every day. In fact, I may well start doing that. Does Atlanta have a Speaker's Corner? Perhaps I will just make myself a sandwich board in the style of one of those old-fashioned "The End is Nigh" dudes and walk around in traffic like a fireman collecting change in his upside down helmet. Difference being, my sign will read "Most of you totally fucking SUCK. Would you like to know why?"

Anyway, the title of this post is to be sung to the tune of the Stooges' "Dog Food." And yes, this involves that old chestnut, dog owners who do not pick up their dog's poo. Sadly, Bunch & I have a neighbor who falls under this category. Even more sadly, the most popular doggy-do-ing area in our neighborhood happens to be right next to our house. As I am not only always up for confrontation but often actively seeking it, and dog poo is a major pet peeve of mine, I began spying on the neighborhood dog people promptly upon moving into our pad. It's very difficult to officially confirm that dog poo has been left - you have to actually see the poo coming out of the butt and the owner walking away from it. This is easier than it sounds. The culprits generally stand a little ways away, so I can se the dog crouching but can't confirm that the number of the ablution being performed (1 or 2). (aside - girl dogs should start peeing like boy dogs - this would solve all the problems) I can run over real fast to check, but it's important to me that I not look like a psycho (too late, I'm sure), so I kind of saunter over after they have started to walk away, and then it's tough to say that the poo I find definiftely came from that dog. I like for my indigantion to me unimpeachable, so I err on the side of sitting quietly, peeping through my blinds like a poo-obsessed cobra (with blinds), waiting for the perfect opportunity to strike.

Last night all of the poo stars aligned and I struck. Ha! I yelled after the offending neighbor, asking her if she meant to leave the poo, and she said yes!!!! Let me repeat, !!!!!!! She instantly became horribly agressive, shouting over me as I expelained to her that not only was it disgusting, but she was also breaking the law. She flat out refused to pick up, depsite my telling her that it was no different than me pulling my pants down and pooing on her doorstep (which she failed to register as an actual threat, not merley an analogy). It took ever fiber of my being not to take the poo and leave it on her dooretsp, but I took the high road. I the poo away, and then I sat right down and wrote myself a letter, as the song goes. Here is the letter, slightly edited to protect my top-secret identity from the one person I don't know who occasionally read this blog:

Re: Violation of Cobb County Ordinance § 10-138(b) (the “Ordinance”)

Dear Ms. [ASSWIPE]:

Allow me to introduce myself. My name is [RUSS] and I am your neighbor at [101 CANDYLAND LANE]. We spoke yesterday, October 31, 2007, at 6:50 p.m. regarding your refusal to properly dispose of feces left by your dogs in the public area immediately adjacent to my property. I am writing to inform you that you are in violation of the above-referenced Ordinance regarding the proper disposal of animal feces and to repeat my reasonable and legal request that you comply with this Ordinance immediately.

I would like you to understand that I in no way wish to be un-neighborly or cause any discord or strife among the residents of [SUBURBAN DYSTOPIA]. Quite to the contrary, I feel that it is you who is being un-neighborly and creating an unpleasant atmosphere. Not only are you putting the health of your fellow residents and their pets at risk, your nasty attitude when I politely approached you regarding this issue is a disgrace to the spirit of a condominium community such as [SUBURBAN DYSTOPIA]. Your fellow residents strive to coexist harmoniously and we all – yourself included – pay monthly dues of Two-Hundred Forty Dollars ($240.00) to maintain as pleasant an environment as possible, a fee that includes landscaping which you are in effect vandalizing. The fact that your defense when approached regarding the violation of the Ordinance was that you have lived here for twenty-five (25) years and never picked up after your dogs is shameful, disgusting, and laughable.

Furthermore, you claim that other dog-owning residents do not pick up after their dogs. I can assure you, Ms. [ASSWIPE], that this is not the case. I take this issue very seriously and, although I can obviously neither speak for every resident nor account for the feces of every dog on every occasion, I can attest that, in the course of my observation, you are the sole resident in violation of the Ordinance.

Although I find it highly implausible that you truly think it is acceptable to leave dog feces in public areas which all residents share and pay to maintain, I will give you the benefit of the doubt. Hence, I have enclosed the Ordinance for your edification (please see Exhibit A). Furthermore, I am treating you with the neighborly respect that you refuse your fellow residents in that I am refraining from lodging a formal complaint at this time. By copy of this letter to the both the [SUBURBAN DYSTOPIA] Condominium Association, Inc. and the Solicitor General (the Cobb County official responsible for prosecuting ordinance violations), I am simply establishing a public record of our dispute.

Please be aware that, in addition to continuing your violation of the Ordinance, it would be highly inadvisable for you to engage in any sort of further un-neighborly behavior, such as retaliation. I do not wish to imply that you would contemplate such action, but I must say that your aggressive and hysterical reaction to my simple request that you help keep our neighborhood healthy, safe, and clean warrants this mention. We have all heard horror stories of simple neighborhood disputes becoming something much more serious due to the overreaction of the parties involved. My request to you is legal, reasonable, and politely stated, and your only proper response is to cease your violation of the Ordinance.

Ms. [ASSWIPE], I thank you for your time in reading this and expect a positive resolution to this issue. If I witness you violating the Ordinance again, I will have no choice but to lodge a formal complaint with both the housing association and the authorities.

GOVERN YOUR ACTIONS ACCORDINGLY.

Sincerely,

[RUSS]

Exhibit A

COBB COUNTY ORDINANCE § 10-138(b)

a) Animal owners must keep their yard, property, porches, balconies, decks, etc. reasonably free of animal feces. Animal waste will be removed in a timely manner by placing said material in a closed or sealed container and thereafter disposing of it in the animal owner’s trash receptacle, sanitary disposal unit, or other closed or sealed refuse container.

(b) Persons who permit their animals to defecate on public or private property other than their own property are required to immediately pick up the feces, bag the feces, and properly dispose of the feces. Animal waste shall be removed by placing said matter in a closed or sealed container and thereafter disposing of it in the animal owner’s or public trash receptacle, sanitary disposal unit or other closed or sealed refuse container.

(c) Any person found in violation of subsection (a) or (b) of this section shall be in violation of this chapter, subject to the following exceptions:

1. Persons using guide dogs or assistance dogs are exempt from removing feces;
2. Hunting dogs being used in a legal hunt with permission of the property owner; or
3. Law enforcement officers working police trained dogs.

[END OF LETTER]

Sometimes I am really glad I work at a law firm. It teaches you how to write very polite yet threatening letter. In closing, people, pick up your dog poo. This isn't fucking Paris.

From the mouths of freaks

2007-10-24T11:33:00.000-04:00

Oh god! This is too good! I'm sitting in my work cubby trying my damndest to squelch the squeals welling up inside! Manna from heaven, I tell you!

Kucinich, MacLaine, alien encounters. People, you couldn't make this stuff up! Check out the Plain Dealer's "Shirley MacLaine claims Kucinich had UFO encounter" below.

Incidentally, I grew up in an era where my first taste of Shirley MacLaine came via Terms of Endearment (and other way worse late-career movies) and her bizarre-o memoirs, like Out on a Limb, that detail dalliances with aliens and (human) sexual partners. But then a few years ago, I watched The Apartment and was blown away. Hard to believe, but Shirl used to be extremely adorable, charming, and not at all scary. The Trouble with Harry and Irma La Douce are both fun too, but you must check out The Apartment. Jack Lemmon is fantastic too. I do not exaggerate when I say that it is one of the best American movies ever made and I'll fist fight anyone who disagrees.

Poor Den Den. People are having enough trouble accepting his short stature and vegan politics! This is simply more fodder for poking fun, I suppose.

Shirley MacLaine claims Kucinich had UFO encounter
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
Mark Naymik
Plain Dealer Politics Writer

Democratic presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich has claimed to have seen a UFO, according to Shirley MacLaine in her new book, "Sage-Ing While Age-Ing."

Kucinich "had a close sighting over my home in Graham, Washington, when I lived there," the actress, a close Kucinich friend, wrote. "Dennis found his encounter extremely moving. The smell of roses drew him out to my balcony where, when he looked up, he saw a gigantic triangular craft, silent, and observing him.

"It hovered, soundless, for 10 minutes or so, and sped away with a speed he couldn't comprehend. He said he felt a connection in his heart and heard directions in his mind."

Kucinich's campaign and congressional representatives did not return calls and e-mail asking whether the Cleveland Democrat, now in his sixth congressional term, in fact saw a UFO or if there was some other explanation for MacLaine's recollection.

MacLaine is a well-known believer of UFOs and reincarnation. And she has been close to Kucinich for decades. MacLaine is the godmother of Kucinich's daughter and attended Kucinich's 2005 Cleveland wedding to third wife, Elizabeth, who's often campaigning by his side.

MacLaine also recommended in the 1980s that Kucinich visit New Mexico spiritual adviser Chris Griscom, whom MacLaine featured in her then-best-selling book, "Dancing in the Light," describing how Griscom helped her communicate with trees. Kucinich has insisted that Griscom was not his spiritual adviser but a "teacher and a very good friend."

MacLaine, who shares Kucinich's opposition to using weapons in space, doesn't shed any more light in her book on Kucinich's close encounter, including when it happened. Her book goes on sale next month.

Ghetto rumor mill

2007-10-18T20:06:00.000-04:00

Actual quote I heard while walking home today, uttered by a girl who looked to be 14:

"I don't know why they said we sent Blender [?] over to knife that n*****. They're just making shit up."

Ouch.

Luv ya, Sweet Jesus!

2007-10-18T11:27:00.000-04:00

Story in yesterday's New York Post

CHOCOLATE JESUS REBORN
October 17, 2007 -- Chocolate Jesus is resurrected.

"My Sweet Lord," a nude anatomically correct milk chocolate sculpture of Jesus Christ that infuriated Catholics before its April unveiling was canceled, returns Oct. 27 to a Chelsea art gallery, its creator said yesterday. This time, artist Cosimo Cavallaro said he expects no problems.

"There is nothing offensive about this," Cavallaro said of his 6-foot confection.

The Catholic League, which led the charge against the earlier exhibit, because of its timing -a day after Palm Sunday - and location - in a Manhattan gallery visible to passersby - won't protest this time.

"This is much less an in-your-face assault on Christians, and it's not happening during Holy Week," said Kiera McCaffrey, the league's director of communications.

What the Hell is That?

2007-10-15T17:36:00.000-04:00

This past Saturday, the entire Russ clan went to commune with various fleabitten farm animals at the Smith Plantation's Fall Farm Day. This momentous occasion occurs once a year, when Roswell's premiere antebellum tourist attraction, The Archibald Smith Plantation Home, flings open the doors to its old-timey toolsheds and meticulously replicated slave quarters and invites Roswellians of all ages to spend some much-needed quality time with goats, chickens, sheep, mules and llamas. Well, the llamas may have been alpacas or vicunas - I really couldn't tell you the difference. They also have old-timey activities, like panning gold, and old-timey demonstrations, like a 1,000 year old blacksmith making lawn decorations.

I will avoid the obvious question of why a family ranging in age from 32-82, with nary a small child in sight, would make a special trip to an event otherwise patronized almost entirely by people under 3 feet in height and their chaperones. I will avoid pointing out that not a single parent had Purelle or wet wipes or whatever with them, which would be unheard of at the Propsect Park Zoo's annual farm day, Brooklyn's equivalent event. I will avoid going into detail about how I'm no germ freak, but my heart is squarely with paranoid Brooklyn parents on this issue. To paraphrase Bob Geldof, that place was tick with mixamatosis and anthrax, not to mention fleas, ticks and god knows what else (oh, the Bob Geldof thing is this: Russ Sr and Mrs. Russ Sr. were at a party in Bermuda once upon a time, and Bob Geldof was there, and some fellow reveller suggested he get in the hot tub, and he said, "Are you kidding me? That things tick with AIDS.").

No, I will not be going into any further detail on any of the above because I have a far, far greater vignette from our visit to the Smith Plantation. Let's just say my llama vs. vicuna vs. alpaca confusion was not the only zoological mystery of the day. My story involves this fellow:

I saw this thing from far away and thought it was a Maltese crossed with a chicken and then killed and made into the type of bedroom slipper sold at Frederick's of Hollywood. Shockingly, it wasn't. I was also reminded of the old SNL sketch where Steve Martin and Bill Murray are bumpkin tourists and all you see is them scrutinizing something from the something's perspective and they keep saying "What the hell is that?" over and over again. At some point one of them says "Kids, get your lips off that thing." It well could have been the above-pictured creature (or "critter", as we saw in these parts). Who knows. However, no one in the Russ clan is dumb enough to not figure out that this thing was some kind of fancy chicken. It was chicken-sized, chicken-shaped, and pecked like a chicken.

Not so for the redneck who appraoched my mother and asked her - wait for it - "What the hell is that?" My mother answered that she thought it was some kind of chicken. The redneck paused, sucked his teeth dismissively, and said "No ma'am, I reckon that there is a baby ostich."

I know I make a lot of typos but please note that he really did say ostich.

For the record, it's called a silkie bantam, it is indeed a fancy chicken, and for anyone who is interested, there is an alarming amount of litertaure out there by and for fancy chicken fanciers.

Some Cool Arubuian Shit

2007-10-14T14:05:00.001-04:00

Here are some of the more random and unusal photos we took in Aruba. First of all, I have always really liked those hand-drawn baber shop signs that you really don't see much in America. I love them because they tell you even less about the haircutting skills of the barbers within than the incredibly out of date 80's-style photos that cover the exterior of most American hair places. There were a lot of these drawn or painted haircuts in Aruba.

We really liked the Dutch bar food. On the left, bitterballen, which are croquetes filled with a meat ragu. On the right, pork sate. And, of course, fries. I have been known to slam Holland for it's shitty munchy food, but obviously, in my stoned haze, I was looking in the wrong places. I think I was scarred by an early Amsterdam experience in which my best buddy Floris and I got really baked (duh) and bought a big carton of chocolate milk at Schipol airport, only to dicoever, as we shook the open container over our open mouths to no avail that we had ourchased a carton of CHOCOLATE PUDDING. Dutch people were laughing at us. It sucked!

We went into some really old and cool caves in which I saw more bats - and bigger bats - than I have ever seen in my life. They were amazing. We shone our light up into the top of the cave and literally hundreds, maybe even thousands, of bats came out in every direction and never even brished against us, which would have been kind of cool, actually.

Finally, this was my favorite random thing in Aruba. We were driving around literally in the middle of fucking nowhere, and we saw this thing:

A Pink-Letter Day!!!

2007-10-14T13:23:00.000-04:00

Today is a good day. A fine day. A wonderful day! Not only is the weather beautiful, not only did I have a Dunkin' Donuts Croissant Sandwich for breakfast (does Burger King have exclusive usage rights for the wonderful word "croissanwich"?), not only is it Sunday and hence there is no work and, in my heathenish case, no church - no, there is more. Ariel Pink is coming to Atlanta!!! November 20!!! I EXCITE!! There are about 10 bands/musicians whom I regularly google to see if they are coming here (they include Of Montreal - WHO ARE ALSO PLAYING HERE THIS NOVEMBER - and the Black Lips - WHO ARE ALSO PLAYING HERE THIS NOVEMBER!! - and Welsh rappers Goldie Lookin' Chain, who I doubt I will ever see again, which sucks, even though some chav in head to toe pink burberry plaid slipped me a mickey the last time I saw them, and also The Upper Crust, who dress like they are in the court at Versailles but sound like Bon Scott-era AC/DC - okay, I have to do a photo of them due to their extreme awesomeness)

(and you lucky fuckers in NYC can see them on October 23, apparently. i hate you all.)
ANYWAY! Yes so Ariel Pink will be here at The Earl on November 20 and I can't recall the last time I was this excited for a show. He will be at the Bowery Ballroom on November 12 if you in NYC feel like seeing him. He's playing with Cass McCombs, whom I know little about but like so far. He sounds way more conventional than Areil from what I can tell.
And ha ha The Earl is about 1/8 the size of Bowery Ballroom, so thumbs up for Atlanta on this one.

Has R2B2 Submitted to the Rolling Stones??

2007-10-12T14:18:00.000-04:00

Well??? R2, I am dying here. It's been almost two months since I sent you The Greatest CD Ever Burned By Mankind. So???? Still hate the Stones? Please bear in mind that answering that question in the affirmative will result in me programming my Caller Tunes so that you hear Honky-Tonk Woman instead of a ring whenever you call me. And in me doing a Mick Jagger chicken dance right next to you on the sidewalk when I next come to NYC. And recruiting someone (Sparky?) to throw in a couple of the Bowie/Jagger moves from their Dancing in the Streets video.

Sabbath!

2007-10-12T13:06:00.001-04:00

The most odious part of my job (well, one of the most odious) is entering in attorneys' time. It depresses the shit out of me because they have terrible handwriting, the task is neverending - there is a new timesheet to enter every fucking day, and the whole exercise is a constant reminder of my meagre salary and social status as a lowly, lowly worm.

Having just returned from vacation, I have a giant pile of these annoying things to take care of, and the only thing worse than one day's worth of timesheets is more than one day's worth of timesheets (in this case I have a total of 16). Fortunately, I have discovered a way to make this horrible, mindless task slightly more palatable - Timesheet Music. I have found the perfect music for time entry - serious metal, thrash, and hardcore punk - and burned a couple of appropriate CDs for myself.

Which brings me to my point. Sabbath! Black Sabbath are so fucking awesome that it is actually quite ridiculous. I think Geezer Butler may be my favorite bassist of all time. One of them anyway (Russ Sr. is angrily saying something to his computer screen about Geddy Lee as he's reading this, I guarantee it). Plus, look how cool Geezer Butler is. I love this look. The whole Furry Freak movement is kind of bringing this look back, but only kind of. Devendra Banhart and Co. are hairy, sure, but in a much more 60's mountian man kind of way, not a 70s working class English proto-methhead kind of way. I can't put my finger on it, but somehow Lemmy and Geezer and all those guys just look cooler, harder, and way more like the kind of fuzzy Muppets you would want to get really drunk with. There is a reason why the only people in entertainment who had long hair and beards in the period from 1980 until now were all speed metal guys. Because of Sabbath!!!

We were not killed by Dutch frat boys!

2007-10-11T12:20:00.000-04:00

That's right, we're back! Despite the hysterical overreactions and attempts at negative buzz marketing on behalf of team Holloway, Aruba is a wonderful, beautiful, safe and friendly place. We had a fantastic time, and the trip had many highlights. I have a lot of photos to go through and will post some highlights with accompnaying illustrations once I get my act together. As of now, I am back at work and hating it. Hating it!

The best thing about Aruba was the birds. I am a huge bird geek and I was in heaven. My favorite was the brown pelican, pictured above. I have seen these before but never really appreictaed just how cool they are. They are huge, and their feathers look like muppet fur when they are wet, and they dive all around you in the water for fish, and they are really, really good at it.

I also liked this guy - the bananaquit. There was one who came to the bar where we stayed every afternoon and drank the residue of the liquor that had gathered on the lips of the pour-tops on the bottles. The bartender said the bird never gets drunk, and his story checked out.

Finally, the bare-eyed pigeon is hilarious looking. Hilarious!!!

Kick me! (but please not with a bootie)

2007-10-03T10:37:00.000-04:00

Sorry to Russ and sorry to readers for my sporadic appearances as of late. Things have been hectic, especially at work (and I don't need to remind you, work is the single best place from which to blog).

Of the many many things that have been burning me up, here are the ones foremost in my mind.

To all of you Wes Anderson fans, a hearty R2 thumbs down for the Darjeeling Limited. I don't mind a movie that's generally plotless but I dislike one that relies on one quirky episodic bit after another to add substance. And Adrian Brody! Can someone please snuff him out? I was sorely disappointed, and I count myself among the few who really liked the generally sucky Life Aquatic.

In your fucking face, Isiah Thomas!

Fall has begun, which in NYC which means having to acclimate ourselves to a whole new season's worth of unbearable fashion trends. The booties are killing me already and it hasn't even dipped below 70 degrees.

In the continuing story of the weirdness of my life in the 'hood, I found out that my neighbor in Apartment 4B is being sued. By Sears, if you can believe that. And how did I discover this? Because someone Scotch-taped the full subpoena, including damages being sought, to her mailbox. It's been there for the last 48 hours which means that I have to gently maneuver the pages aside when checking my mail lest I crush them. The best part of the story is that that Ms. Apartment 4B is no longer, replaced by a pair of no good skinny little hipsters (actually the boy is skinny and his fag hag roomie is chunky—my favorite hipster combo) who are apparently too scared to move the pages or don't check their mail very often. Another choice tidbit about Ms. 4B. When I first moved in and had to borrow a can opener, we had a five minute conversation during which time she was wearing nothing but a bath towel (though I think she might have had a second one on her head). I bet that towel was from Sears!

Aruba, Jamaica, Ooh I Wanna Take Ya...

2007-10-02T12:03:00.000-04:00

I'm going to Aruba! Tomorrow! I will be gone until next Wednesday!! If I can post from there, I will, but needless to say it is not my first priority. My first priorty involves cream of coconut and a blender. My second priority is avoiding the clothing-optional beach, since in my experience, the people who opt to take their clothes off are the people who should not opt in such a manner. My third priority is bird watching, and in true nerd fashion I have printed out color photos of the birds I most hope to see (the troupial! the bananaquit!the ruby-topaz hummingbird!). Bunches, in true mick fashion, has printed out the address of a mick bar.

In honor of this momentous occasion, my first real vacation in years and years and years, plus my first family vacation with my (incredibly generous and awesome) parents and (incredibly excited and soon to be tipsy and sunburned) husband, above is a picture of my all-time favorite Aruban, the tantalizingly scandalous Euro-frat boy Joran Van der Sloot, with slightly less tantalizingly scandalous Arubans Satish and Deepak Kalpoe.

Cottaging Confusion

2007-10-01T10:50:00.001-04:00

I heard this commentary opinion piece by Scott Simon on Weeekend Edition this past Saturday. Scott talks about the Larry Craig scandal and how he does not care for the schadenfreude that episodes such as this elicit from those who like to see right wing, gay bashing hypocrites exposed. In Scott's opinion, the exposure of these guys comes at a great cost in that it condones police setting out to entrap "deviants" who are engaging in legal sexual behavior, albeit behind closed doors, leading to the ruining of lives, marriages and reputations. To him, this is a great waste of police resources, not to mention prurient and anachronistic.

I like Scott and tend to agree with him, but I don't know how I feel about this one. I agree that the police have no business in people's consensual sex lives and that they have far greater fish to fry, but I am also absolutely one of those who rejoices in the outing of assholes like Larry Craig, Ted Haggard, and the scores of upper crusty British Lords who have been caught with their fishnets down on Clapham Common throughout the years. Despite recent "advances" - the shift from "do ask, do tell" to "don't ask, don't tell", the fact that Carson Kressley is one of America's most trusted celebrity endorsers, the now-proven lack of total career destruction that results from coming out - homophopia is still incredibly rife. I certainly encounter more casual homophobia than racism. Whether this is because homophobia is truly more prevalent or because people tend to think it's acceptable to be homophobic more than they think it is to be racist is beside the point - in fact, the fact that so many people think it is okay to express homophobic views kind of underscores my point, which is that gays and lesbians have a responsibility to come out, and the more people who are out - voluntarily or not - the better. If people knew that even half of those who are LGBT are LGBT, people's ideas about what gay is and what it means would soon start to shift - for the better. Being in the closet is no different than passing, and we all know how people feel about passing nowadays - just look at the posthumous attention Anatole Broyard is getting.

When the film Brokeback Mountain came out, Daniel Mendelsohn wrote a truly remarkable piece in The New York Review of Books that I feel says a lot about the status of homosexuality and contemporary American society's comfort level with it. Mendelsohn was appalled at what he saw as a serious rift between everything the original novella and the film adaptation stood for and the way that the film was being marketed. The novella is very specifically about gay themes, as is the film (duh), but the marketing of the film focused heavily on the "universal" nature of a story of true love unrealized and the sorrow that results when one is not true to one's self - or more exactly, when society does not allow one to be true to one's self. Mendelsohn's point was that the torment that results from living in the closet is very different from that experienced by other star-crossed lovers - sure, biracial couples face abuse, little rich girls daddies squash their daughters dalliances with the boy from the wrong side of the tracks, and religion gets in the way of true love on a regular basis. But all of these situations, horrible as they are, Mendelsohn says, result in the sufferer hating society and the people around them. It is only those in the closet who hate themselves. I wish the article was still live so I could link to it.

My point is, the closet sucks, and only contributes to the warped view of homosexuality in our society. It is precisely because of people's shame that cottaging and other anonymous sexual encounters remain so prevalent in the gay community, yet I guarantee you that most Americans think that this prevalence is because gay men are oversexed deviants who will fuck anyone with neither discernment nor concern for public health. This plays into the notion that gay men are an active threat to the heterosexuality of all straight men and children. (Please note that you rarely hear this type of language applied to the millions of straight men who patronize prostitutes anonymously and secretly without the knowledge of their familes, friends, and co-workers, and without taking health precautions).

Don't even get me started on lesbians. The dueling stereotypes of hairless bisexual porn vixen and butch bull dyke trucker persist as strongly as ever - in fact, the former only gets stronger as it is fueled by the increasingly exponential explosion of pornography. Lesbian sex exists primarily as a gimmick for men's entertainmnet and stimulation.

So yes, Scott Simon, you have a point. Outing should not be the duty of the police. But it should be the duty of someone. The media shoulders a lot of the burden, but increasingly, LGBT activists, sick of bearing the brunt of the public's hatred while their would-be comrades cower in the closet, are speaking out. Out gay men played a role in the outing of both Craig and Haggard. As far as I'm concerned, these guys are right on. People in the public eye who are financially secure and can buy their own independence, privacy, and safety owe it to the legions who have to live their lives Brokeback-styl for fear of serious reprisal. As for people in the public eye who go so far as to rail against homosexuality while engaging in it themselves - well, they deserve everything they get. It's not like they can't just sign up for GayBeGone camp and be cured, after all.

PS The painting is by Paul Cadmus, who was gay and is creditd with being among the first in American culture to really try to bring gay sex practices out of the shadows. He exposed the hypocrisy of locker room and rest room gays as early as the 1930s.

The Kingdom (of Dirty, Dirty Ay-Rabs)

2007-09-28T15:59:00.000-04:00

To be fair, I have not seen this film and should not be making assumptions about it. However, a) that is no fun, b) I have heard quite a bit about this film from trusted (aka lefty) news outlets, and c) I know enough about Hollywood movies to be able to predict the entire plot arc and sum up all the major characters in most standard Hollywood fare, including this drivel. I mean, seen one, seen 99% of them. And yes, I adore Chris Cooper and Jason Bateman, but that doesn't mean I need to watch either of them take a shit, which I suspect is basically what I would be doing if I saw this movie. Jamie Foxx I could cheerfully slap. Jennifer Garner I could cheerfully...zzzzz...sorry, I fell asleep for a second there. Where was I? Oh, of note: for some bizarre reason, Anne Deavere Smith is in this movie. What the fuck? Is this some kind of joke? The again, she was on The West Wing (never seen it, but thanks to IMDB, I know she was in it). I'm going to chalk this up to research. But it's kind of like Cornel West being in Norbit 2.

Anyway, as you all know I like to say Michael Haneke's name every five seconds or more often, if possible. Conveneintly for me, his genius ass is relevant to this discussion. There was an excellent article about him in the Times magazine last Sunday. (note: I just had a truly harrowing Bad Georgia moment when I saw that Haneke will be personally introducing a screening of Funny Games on October 15 at MoMA. This would never, ever happen here, and I am having one of those "why am I living here?" moments). He said some stuff in this article that seems especially apt in light of the latest entry in propganadistic, jingoistic genre of Ay-rab-bashin, foreign policy-advancing American cinema that is The Kingdom. Here goes:

“Political manipulation is rampant in the American media,” Haneke told me over lunch in downtown Manhattan last winter. “It’s present in the movies too, of course. It’s everywhere. I teach filmmaking in Vienna, and I like to show my students ‘Triumph of the Will,’ by Leni Riefenstahl, then something by Sergei Eisenstein — ‘Battleship Potemkin,’ for example — and then ‘Air Force One,’ the movie in which Harrison Ford plays the U.S. president. Each of these films has a distinct political agenda, but all make use of exactly the same techniques, all have a common goal — the total manipulation of the viewer. What’s terrible about the Harrison Ford film, though, especially terrible, is that it represents itself as simple entertainment. The audience doesn’t realize there’s a message hidden there.” Haneke sat back and shook his head gravely.

(then further on in the article)

Haneke has his own theory for the divergent routes taken by Hollywood and Europe, one in which, perhaps not surprisingly, the darker side of German and Austrian history plays a central role. “At the beginning of the 20th century,” he told me, “when film began in Europe, storytelling of the kind still popular in Hollywood was every bit as popular here. Then the Nazis came, and the intellectuals — a great number of whom were Jewish — were either murdered or managed to escape to America and elsewhere. There were no intellectuals anymore — most of them were dead. Those who escaped to America were able to continue the storytelling approach to film — really a 19th-century tradition — with a clear conscience, since it hadn’t been tainted by fascism. But in the German-speaking world, and in most of the rest of Europe, that type of straightforward storytelling, which the Nazis had made such good use of, came to be viewed with distrust. The danger hidden in storytelling became clear — how easy it was to manipulate the crowd. As a result, film, and especially literature, began to examine itself. Storytelling, with all the tricks and ruses it requires, became gradually suspect. This was not the case in Hollywood.” At this point, Haneke asked politely whether I was following him, and I told him that I was. “I’m glad,” he said, apparently with genuine relief. “For Americans, this can sometimes be hard to accept.”

I love this guy. I really, really love him.

Bad Georgia: A Message to Congressman Tom Price

2007-09-28T09:33:00.000-04:00

Tom Price is my Congressman, and he has voted "No" on the new SCHIP bill. I wrote this letter to him this morning. If you live in Congressman Price's district, I encourage you to do the same.

Congressman Price:

I forward petitions to you almost daily regarding one issue or the other, but I believe this is the first time I have written a personal message. I cannot stress enough how disappointed I am in your No vote regarding SCHIP. I am in receipt of your letter explaining your position, and while I truly appreciate your efforts to communicate with your constituents and keep us informed, your words have only made me even more appalled at your vote.

Although I am sure you have many constituents whose lives and the lives of their children are made better by PeachCare, I wonder if you have ever had a personal relationship with someone who struggles to make ends meet and must choose between such basics of daily life as rent, food, and their child’s healthcare. I wonder if you or anyone close to you has ever sat up all night in an emergency room with a sick child. Given your vote on SCHIP, I doubt you have.

I would like to tell you the story of a very good friend of mine. Like you, I am a relatively privileged Caucasian with a strong educational background. I grew up with a wonderful, supportive family and was given every opportunity in life. I grew up in the 30067 zip code and did not know anyone from a disadvantaged background until I left home for university. I know work at an Atlanta law firm, where I have forged a strong friendship with a young African-American woman who is a single mother with two children who benefit greatly from PeachCare. This young woman grew up with every possible obstacle to success that you can imagine. Her family was very poor; she had no father; alcoholism, drug abuse, and disease were rife. She was the victim of childhood sexual, physical and psychological abuse. She is very, very intelligent and a high school graduate, but was unable to attend college due to cost. Despite these remarkable odds, she has done everything “right” her whole life, according to what our society expects of its citizens. Her children were born in wedlock to the same father; he left her just over 3 years ago and she has raised her children alone since then. She drives over an hour each way every day to come to work, where she has truly transformed the department she runs single-handedly for a salary of around $25,000 per year. Last year, she was diagnosed with a serious, incurable illness, yet she has an almost stellar attendance record and is one of the most beloved and respected members of our staff. She has been told by her doctor that she could claim disability and hence government medical benefits for herself and her children, but she is proud and a good mother and wants to set a good example to her children by working hard. She also provides moral and some financial support to extended family members struggling with addiction, autism and long-term unemployment. Her husband seldom makes any child support payments. With her salary, she can barely make ends meet each month and constantly has maxed-out credit cards. Without PeachCare, she would be unable to provide health care for her children.

This young woman could easily have been the poster child for the anti-welfare movement – the disadvantaged “loser” who falls prey to (or opts for, depending on your belief) childhood pregnancy, unemployment, addiction, and a life of crime. But she has worked very, very hard her entire life to embody the American dream that anyone can make something of themselves.

The thought that a person like this may soon have the added enormous stress of night-long emergency room visits thanks to you and your cronies disgusts me. You claim that this new SCHIP incarnation is the first step on a slippery scope to government-funded single-payer healthcare and invoke the specter of socialism. Given that your top contributor is a private healthcare company (Resurgens Orthopaedic) and your number five contributor an insurance company (AFLAC), I find this stance to be very disingenuous. I am also sickened that a person whose voting record shows a consistent lack of support for family planning, abortion rights, and reproductive health care measures would vote against children’s health care. Sir, you embody the cliché of a selfish, privileged man who wants to tell women when and how they can reproduce yet denies them any assistance in the raising of their children while bolstering the interest of a greedy, corrupt, and thoroughly broken private health care system that will, I am quite sure, be the downfall of our society if it is to continue along its current course. I also feel that, given your votes on issues regarding separation of church and state, that you have an agenda concerning reproductive freedom that is informed by ideas that our Constitution clearly states have no place in American politics.

I do not think I have ever agreed with a single vote you have cast, but have generally respected you for your efforts to explain your position and supported your right to your beliefs in this free society. On this occasion, however, I must say that, frankly, I am completely disgusted by you and truly ashamed to have you represent me in our nation’s government. I wish that you and your cronies could be made to live for just one month with the circumstances that my friend and millions like her must endure throughout their lives, as I am quite sure that this would quickly change your vote on SCHIP. As this is an impossibility, all I can do is let you know how I, your constituent, feel.

Sir, I respectfully ask you to please reconsider your position on this incredibly important issue. Thank you very much for taking the time to read these heartfelt words.

REALLY Bad Georgia: Let Me Just Say This Now

2007-09-27T12:54:00.000-04:00

If Newt Gingrich runs for President and wins - which I hate to say I think he actually could, but then again I am negative about the '08 elections to the point of complete insanity and can no longer tell wehre being negative ends and not wanting to jinx it begins - I will, most likely, be writing this blog from jail (I bet the computer I will have access to there will be nicer than the one I have at work, and the IT people will probably be a lot smarter).

I have a particular hate for Newt Gingrich because he has been a part of my life longer than he has for most of you lucky stiffs. I grew up in what was, from 1990 on, Georgia's 6th District and Newt's undisputed kingdom of very rich, very loyal, very Republican, and very stupid idiots (yes, I said stupid idiots and I am aware that's redundant). Newt had been around a little before that but the 6th district hadn't been gerrymandered/DeLay'ed to his liking until '92.

Since it is probably no news at all to most people who read this (ie, R2B2, my parents, and the occasional Brazillian who tries to sell me a t-shirt - or at least, I think he/she is trying to sell me a t-shirt but my Portuguese is fair at best...okay, it's non-existent. Oh, wait, no it's not! Obrigado! Christiano Ronaldo! Mas que nada! Nem vem que nao tem!!) that Newt Gingrich really, really sucks, I will not harp on about it, but rather will attempt to entertain with a little story about growing up in the 6th district.

The year was 1992. I was a senior in high school. Newt Gingrich was running against a poor, doomed schlub of a lawyer called Tony Center (for a blast from the past, see this profile of the contest from the New York Times archive), who would wind up losing by a shockingly narrow margin - Newt took 57%; Center took 42% - at the time it was represented as a thorough trouncing, but it's actually kind of amazing given how red the district was and continues to be (current grade-A asswipe/Georgia Senator Johnny Isaakson was involved in local politics at this point and his equally unappealing son, Kevin, went to my high school).

Anyway, it was the week of the homecoming football game and, accordingly, Spirit Week, which meant that each day had a different theme, usually involving some kind of dressing-up, and always culminating in the cheerleaders dressing in football uniforms and the football players dressing in cheerleading uniforms. I remember one particularly Ogre-like fellow who wore a cheerleading skirt around each huge, fleshy thigh (note: I would, that following spring, do shots of Evan Williams with this guy in a hotel room in Panama City Beach. At the time, he was wearing swim trunks and had a Confederate flag tied around his neck like a cape, and Skynrd's "Simple Man" was playing. Oh, the irony-flooded memories! Spring Break '93!!). One of the themes was 80s day, when everyone got to come to school dressed all 80s (something most people just can't ever get enough of, as discussed here). Senior year was the year that most of us took US Government as our Social Studies class, and, as a part of our political education, Gingrich and Center held a debate at the school, with the entire senior class as their audience. It was awful. The 7-10 of us who identified as Democrats huddled together and fearfully, half-heartedly cheered poor Tony on as the remaining 590-ish students waved the Gingrich lawn signs they had yanked out of thier parents' yards that morning and whooped and hollered and drooled all over Newt. A contingent of very slutty girls went mental and screamed "baby killer!!" at Tony Center when the subject of baby killing - I mean, abortion - came up (again, irony, as I'm quite sure some of these girls were pregnant shortly thereafter and either had or could have used abortions. Irony was big at George Walton High School).

The best part about the whole affair (you mean none of that was the best part?!)was that the Atlanta news media was, naturally, on hand to document this and interview the student body (sans brain). Unfortunately, none of the news outlets bothered to explain that it was 80s day, so there we all were (well, not me), on the evening news, looking like we were in some kind of time warp, with dudes with pink sweaters tied around their necks, gummy bracelets galore, huge bangs, etc.

Walton High School had only been on the news two other times that I knew of prior to this. One time was when a Cambodian immigrant was found to have TB (Maddox Jolie! You scamp!) and we all had to be tested and all the popular girls pretended to be really traumatized by the little pricky test thing and screamed and fake-passed out and shit and one really big guy actually did pass out, and my test came up red and I was going to have to go to the CD fucking C but then it turned out it was all a big mistake; I don't recall why. The other time was a year or two before I started school there, when someone let a greased pig go on the football field during the homecoming game and our campus cop, a very disturbed Appalaichain-type Vietnam vet with what seemed to be a serious case of PTSD, was humiliated by falling flat on his face while trying to apprehend said slippery pig, and proceeded to take out his gun and shoot it in front of about 2,000 people, many of them children and fans of Charlotte's Web. He had a his gun taken away and, thereafter, had to stab, suffocate, garotte, strangle, or beat to death all greased pigs released onto the football field.

The school has been on the news since then but I'll save those bedtime stories for another time. In summation, if Newt Gingrich is a dick, and he made my school look out of style to the entire metro area.

A Cool Twist on a Horrible Cliche

2007-09-24T13:08:00.000-04:00

As previously ranted about, I despise unnecessary remakes of movies, and am essentially of the opinion that every remake is unnecessary, with few exceptions. What I hate the most about remakes (aside from the fact that they assume we are all dolts who can't watch stuff in black and white or read subtitles, and aside from the fact that the remake phenomeon is indicative of Hollywood's unwillingness/inability to make anything original other than a morning turd) is that they strip away the original intention of the director and assume that story is everything to a movie. They also seriously alter the original film by replacing actors who are relativley unknown, either by virtue of being foreign or by virtue of being from another era, with stars as familar to us as our own families. Okay, yes, granted, we can of course "know" these old/foreign actors, but the distance of geography or time adds something to a movie, making it easier to truly appreciate the stuff we don't appreciate when we watch a Hollywood blockbuster. As fine of an actor as some big Hollywood star may be (and I can't think of many I think are even particularly good), it is very difficult to tell because we know too much about them and their personas become inseparable from the role they are supposed to be playing. That's why it's called a "star vehicle." And it seems to be in the very nature of the remake that it routinely feature exactly these type of stars. I guess the kind of lazy-ass who wants to remake a movie is the kind of lazy-ass who doesn't want to think too much about casting, just making money.

So imagine my happy surprise today as I discovered that one of my favorite directors, Michael Haneke (previously glorified here), is remaking his own foreign language masterpiece, Funny Games, for an English-language audience. Oh man, this movie is so awesome, and so brutal, and probably wouldn't get remade by an American studio anyway because the brutality of it is so cerebral. It's about a home invasion in which two overprivileged little fuckers take a nice, normal family hostage at their vacation home and (spolier alert!) psychologically and physically torture them before killing all of them. Turns out they did the same with the neighbors, too. The conciet is not altogether unfamiliar, but what makes the movie so great is that Haneke isn't simply entertaining us by showing us a scary story - he's actually torturing the audience too. This is the most common thing you will hear about Haneke and it is spot-on, particularly in the case of Funny Games. It lulls you along with what should be really scary, harrowing fare but which is merely entertaining as you have seen something resembling it a hundred times before in horror movies and thrillers. Then, Haneke pulls the rug out from under you and makes you, the viewer, a part of the action. The killers start manipulating the actual film istelf, not just the story line, and even talk to the audience. All of a sudden you are chillingly aware of how numbed you have become to the horrific. How it's just popcorn to you, and it shouldn't be. It doesn't hurt that it's also a great movie, well acted and fantastically written and paced.

So yes, I am okay with this remake. The cast makes me more than okay with it. Tim Roth (where has he been? i have definitely missed him) plays the patriarch. Naomi Watts plays the matriarch. I didn't think much of her until I saw Mulholland Drive. She does fear and desperation better than most, I think, and she kind of looks like a real person. My favorite piece of casting, though, is Michael Pitt as the far more clever and sadistic of the two killers, the undisupted leader who often seems to be torturing his sidekick as much as his victims, and Brady Corbet as the slow, picked-on sidekick. I really like both of these young actors. Michael Pitt did the heartless privileged youth thing to perfection in Bully (another must-see - the best Larry Clark movie, if you ask me), and Brady Corbet did the easily-led loser sidekick to the ammoral sexy guy equally well in Mysterious Skin (another out of control awesome movie, and Joseph Gordon-Levitt is amazing in it...love him...).

Bring it on, Haneke! I would of course rather that you make another amazing original movie, but whatever. This I can live with.

KKK expose

2007-09-21T00:13:00.000-04:00

It's been a while since we've dissected a little known fact here on Zeitgeist-y and I've got a live one to lay down on you today.

Here's a common misconception about the KKK. Though it's recognized today as the largest white power (saying white supremacist is so un-PC, isn't it?) group in the United States, the group actually began as a small nineteenth century company of craftsmen and potters who operated under the name of Kountry Kousin Krafts. (Try saying that three times in a row and you'll understand why they decided to go with the abbreviation!) For many happy and productive years the KKK produced ceramic figurines of ghosts, silver crosses, and watch fobs until one very deranged member of the family overpowered the gentle and soft-spoken artisans and took things in a very unexpected direction.

You can still see the tradition of fine craftsmanship and attention to detail at work at Ozark Crafts, whose ecommerce page links directly from the KKK's site.

OK, in all seriousness, I have to share with you some Klan speak I found posted on good old Wikipedia.

First off, if you suspect you're in mixed company, you can say "AYAK" ("Are you a Klansman?!). The other person will either respond "AKIA" ("A Klansman I Am!) or else run off in horror.

And check out some of these terms created William Simmons, the man credited with reviving the Klan in 1915. I have nothing to say about the monster, except to wonder if he might have been a space alien?
* Klabee: treasurers
* Kleagle: recruiter
* Klecktoken: initiation fee
* Kligrapp: secretary
* Klonvocation: gathering
* Kloran: ritual book
* Kloreroe: delegate
* Kludd: chaplain

He Speaks So Well!!!

2007-09-20T16:02:00.000-04:00

I encounter racism (well, I guess "witness" would be a better word than "encounter" - I "encounter" sexism and the occasional dollop of anti-semitism) much less than one might think I would, living in Atlanta. It's definitely there, but hardly more than in NYC, and definitely WAAAAAY less than in England. Most of the stuff that makes me squirm down here is directed at the Latino population, aka "the Mexicans."

There have, however, been one or two doozies, and naturally they occured where I (sadly) spend most of my time, the workplace. A few months ago, the receptionist buzed my desk to tell me a courier was there for me. I went up to the front desk, baffled as I was not expecting a courier, to find a tall, attractive black guy in his early 40s, wearing what was clearly business attire, complete with a motherfucking bluetooth wireless "hi, I'm on Star Trek and when I take this thing off I look like I had a skin graft because of the mark it leaves" earpiece-thingy. Um, yeah, he was a client. The receptionist knew she fucked up and at least had the decency and common sense to turn all kinds of beetroot color and get flustered and try to explain how she thought he was a courier because he had a file - hello, it's a law firm, show me a person who comes in here without some kind of file, fool.

So that was relatively mortifying. I also bore witness to an elevator conversation between an unknown older white dude and a business-clad younger black dude (you mean there is more than one!). They were chit chatting, small talk (strangers speak to each other in public here), and suddenly the white dude asks the black dude what he's doing in the building, does he work here, perhaps in maintenance? Yeah, jackass, he's taking out the trash in his Dockers and tassle loafers. That briefcase? That's where he puts the trash. Duh!! Everyone knows "The Mexicans" take out the trash!!

Fast forward to today. I witnessed the signing of a prenuptial agreement between a young black couple. They were both very attractive, so after we finished I went to rib my (black) co-worker who had declined to serve as the second witness, telling him how he missed out because the girl was cute. So then the attorney who did the prenup comes by and butts in and informs us that the guy is a doctor, a surgeon even, and he's so well spoken! At this point, I returned to my desk to put my head in my hands. I waited until the coast was clear and went back and asked my co-worker if he knew the guy was black the second the attorney described him as "well-spoken." Said co-worker proceeded to bend over double in hysterical, knowing laughter. Appalled glee and high fives were exchanged, in addition to extensive quoting of Chris Rock. I love Chris Rock. Following is the quote we referenced:

"Whenever Colin Powell is on the news, white people give him the same compliments: 'How do you feel about Colin Powell?', 'He speaks so well! He's so well spoken. I mean he really speaks so well!' Like that's a compliment, sh*t. 'He speaks so well' is not a compliment, okay? 'He speaks so well' is some sh*t you say about retarded people that can talk. What do you mean he speaks so well? He's a fuc*ing educated man! How the fu*k you expect him to sound, you dirty motherfuc*er? 'He speaks so well.' What are you talking about? What voice were you expecting to come out of his mouth? 'Imma drop me a bomb today', 'I be Pwez o dent!'.""

Bottom line, this is funny but scary. This dude had NO CLUE what a faux pas he made when he said what he said. And this is an educated Jew from New York. I feel like telling him that what he said is akin to saying "That Mr. Cohen! So nice! And so free with his money!"

A Little Bit of Dubai in Atlanta

2007-09-20T13:41:00.000-04:00

I received a press release yesterday regarding winter activities in Atlanta. This little nugget caught my eye:

"Hotlanta will officially cool off on Nov. 10 with the grand opening of Snow Mountain, featuring 10 tubing runs and spots to create snowmen, snow angels and snowballs. Open every weekend through Jan. 27, the attraction’s state-of-the-art snow-making magic guarantees you more than 200 tons of fresh snow daily. And, with a moving sidewalk to lead you up the 400-foot tubing hill, you’ll want to go again and again." (my emphasis)

Hee hee. This reminds me of the indoor skiing they have in Dubai. I'm sure the only real difference here will be that people will have rat tails, peach tattoos, and Jesus t-shirts instead of Prada shoes, huge diamonds, and hijabs. The moving sidewalk is a hilarious testament to the laziness of the average Georgian. Yeah, when I picture that moving sidewalk loaded up with fat snowy hicks, I do want to go again and again - go pee in my pants laughing!

Obviously, I will be there with bells on. Stay tuned for photos of said snowy hicks.

Quiz time!

2007-09-19T17:23:00.000-04:00

This one's a little tough, but try your best.

(cue Sesame Street song)
Three of these things belong together
Three of these things are kind of the same
Can you guess which one of these doesn't belong here?
Now it's time to play our game (time to play our game).

If you tagged sightless Stevie Wonder, who's been blind from birth, you are wrong! Babyface is also an incorrect response, even though he is the only one with a babyface. Anyone who chose Garth Brooks—the only one of the four wearing a hat—gets ten points.

Now what do these four actually have in common? Believe it or not, they are four of the singers that performed at the Dream Concert at Radio City Music Hall a couple nights ago to raise money for the building of the Martin Luther King Memorial in DC. The rest of the lineup included Aretha Franklin, Carlos Santana, and Joss Stone. Now, I'm not trying to say that there isn't room for a person of non-color at an event celebrating a great civil rights advocate. We're not talking Nation of Islam, here; MLK would've wanted whitey to represent. But if you're going to hire a token white man, why the fuck Garth Brooks?

Well, I do believe Google can shed some light on the manner. Do a search for "Garth Brooks" and "Civil Rights" you get Wikipedia page about Garth's 1990 song "The Dance."

The song is written with a double meaning both as a love song about the end of a passionate relationship and the lyrics also work to tell the story of someone dying because of something they believe in, or a moment of glory. Brooks illustrated this in the music video for the song.

The song's video shows several American icons and examples of people who died for a dream they had. These include archive footage of the following:

* Lane Frost - World Champion Bull rider, who was killed by a bull after riding it for a full eight seconds in the arena.
* Keith Whitley - Country singer who died after he became addicted to alcohol.
* Martin Luther King, Jr. - Baptist minister who is best known for his involvement in the American civil rights movement and was assassinated in 1968.
* The crew of the Space Shuttle Challenger, shortly before it exploded after its launch in 1986.
* John Fitzgerald Kennedy - President of the United States who was assassinated in 1963.
* John Wayne - Film actor best known for his roles in Westerns.

The song has since become an anthem. In 2001, after the death of Dale Earnhardt, Brooks was invited to an awards ceremony that was honouring him to play the song as a tribute. It is has also been played at funerals.

Aw, Garth... I'm really touched that that you put MLK in the same class as Lane Frost. Eight seconds in the ring with a bull? That's something alright!

Shout at the Casting Agent!!!

2007-09-19T16:51:00.000-04:00

As a youth, I spent what seemed like an eternity but was probably more like one year being obsessed with Motley Crue - in my chronological pantheon they were the bridge between Duran Duran and Guns n' Roses (brief predicatble Poison dalliance before GNR, but we won't count that...can we not count that, please?). I started with Theatre of Pain but loved them enough to actually backtrack and get Shout at the Devil and Too Fast for Love - this was probably the first time I manifested any interest in what a band had done before I discovered them, so I guess it was kind of my first mature fandom experience. I remain a fan to this day, although my favorite has definitely switched from Tommy (idiot!) to Nikki (hot and witty!). I even finally realized my long-lost dream of seeing Crue perform live when they returned to Phillips Arena - Atlanta's answer to Madison Square Garden - to pick up where they had left off a year earlier when Vince Neil had broken his ankle during the 4th song while jumping off a riser. One for Razzle, I guess (in case you don't know, Razzle was the drummer of Finnish glam punk band Hanoi Rocks and was killed in a drunk driving accident one New Years Eve, with Vince behind the wheel. I had a cat named Razzle after him. Razzle the cat didn't fare much better in the end but Vince Neil stayed out of that one.).

A couple of years ago an autobiographical book called The Dirt came out, chronicling the crazy rock n'roll adventures of the Crue in attaempt to settle, for once and for all, the ongoing debate over just who is the world's hardest-partying rock band (claims to the throne have been made for Van Halen, Aerosmith, Zep, the Stones, and G n' R). These adventures include the aforementioned manslaughter, plus a couple of near-death drug overdoses (Nikki was actually declared dead on one occasion, but the paramedic was a huge Crue fan and insistd on giving him further adrenaline shots. Nikki escaped from the hospital, went home, and shot up. Rock n' fucking roll.), firey marriages to various celebrities (usually blonde TV stars, strippers, or mud wrestlers, although Nikki was married to Prince protege Vanity, who is now born-again), Vince'slawsuit of a chemical company after his daughter died of cancer caused by toxic dumping) and much inter-band strife, with various departures and retirns, punches in the face, slamming doors, etc.

Hollywood, in its continuing resistance to developning original story ideas, knew a good thing when it saw it and decided to adapt The Dirt into a major motion picture (what does that mean, exactly? I love that we still use that phrase - it's so old school, very studio system. My other favorite is "the motion picture event of the ___ [insert season]"). Since this adaptation was announced, much speculation has focused on casting. So far, there are no confirmations and scant "official" rumors ("official" meaning it's actually on IMDB) - three, in fact. The word is that Christopher Walken will play Ozzy Osbourne (this idea I like) and Val Kilmer will play David Lee Roth (this idea I do not like - yes, I will be in love with Chris Knight and Nick Rivers, but have you SEEN him lately? He actually makes the David Lee Roth of today look svelte, and I'm guessing they need an earlier incarnation of Dave for this movie). Finally, the Crue will be played by unknowns, but that's no fun as far as specualtion goes.

So the big question is, who will play the Crue??? Who?? I think about this alot. I don't LOVE any of my ideas thus far, but here goes: Vince Neil=Steve Zahn. Seriously, that's all I have. I was thinking Vince Vaughan as Tommy, but just being a tall idiot isn't good enough. Walken would actually make a good Mick Mars - remember how creepy Walken looked with long, greasy black hair in Search and Destroy? (he had just finished filming this and still had that hair when he came into the Whitney on my first day working there and TRIED TO PICK ME UP, succeeding in scaring the hell out of me). Nikki is the hardest because I love him so it really matters. Gina Gershon in drag would actually make a great Nikki, but people would say that's a rip off of Cate Blanchett playing Dylan (snore!).

Help me out here, people. Ideas?? Predictions? How cool would it be if all the wives played themselves?? I guess no-fun Vanity is out, but Larry Cahrles, who directed Borat is directing The Dirt, and he got Pammie for Borat, so who knows?????

Angry man with small penis issues the ultimate insult

2007-09-14T10:12:00.000-04:00

Not sure what happened on the 4 train this morning but I had to listen to a man (wearing a pantyhose colored do rag!) go off on this woman. Presumably she said something to start it, but you never know. Here's the choicest portion of his 10 minute rant:

You thought I was looking at you? I wasn't fucking looking at you. You're just mad cause I ain't gonna holler at you. You're not very smart, are you? You ain't got no bread. And you don't have a good hairstyle.

It got more bizarre. At one point he said something about how she should pluck out his eyeballs and pay his rent.

Fuck these assholes who 1) holler at you and then 2) turn on you if you give them lip in return. In my younger years, before this hellhole city beat me down, I would tell them to you-know-what, and in return, I've been berated, called a skank, gotten racial slurs, listened to long tirades about how ugly I am, and was once even chased down a subway platform, by a redneck wearing an American flag bandanna. The weird part is that it's made me appreciate how polite the come-ons are in my neighborhood. They ask if they can talk to you. Or tell you to have a nice day. Or ask you to marry them. Tell you they have a good job and a car.

Life in the concrete jungle isn't pretty, girls.

Delon vs. Belmondo

2007-09-13T11:33:00.000-04:00

This is the kind shit that keeps me up at night. I'm curious as to the consensus here. I think I am personally going with Belmondo on this one. I find him more charming and rugged, and I do like rugged. Plus the boxer's nose...I like that (see Javier Bardem, although please avoid seeing his tiny tiny penis at all costs; I guerantee it will fuck you up in the head. It's just not right!) Anyone who has seen Bunches knows I am a Belmondo girl.

However, the power of Alain Delon's sheer physical beauty in his youth (the above photo is from Rocco and His Brothers, an early neorealist Visconti flick which I highly reommend. Then again, I live and breath for Visconti so I am biased) is not a thing to be toyed with. My research on this subject led me to something rather odd - Alain Delon's MySpace page. This is just too weird for me. Picture if you will for a moment Alain Delon working on his MySpace page. See? I mean, we all know he is 5'10, athletic, and smokes and drinks. Caucasian is news to me. Just kidding. "Proud parent" is pushing it - didn't he deny his son with Nico and said son wound up a homeless junkie on Staten Island? Am I making this shit up? The best thing about his page, though, is the link to Sex, Drigs, Jews, and Rock'n'Roll, which is a tribute to Jewish songwriters. Maybe I should rethink this if he loves Jews. I'm no songwriter, but I did whip up a little number the other day about cat food, to the tune of Kool & the Gang's "Celebrate". (Cat-food-bration..come on...let's eat cat food...we're gonna eat some cat food tonight....bring your meows, and your begging too, I'm going open this bag and pour cat food out for you...etc).

Jean-Paul Belmondo does not appear to have a MySpace page, which restores some order to the universe.

This is turning into a bit of a rambling, shapeless post. I have too much time on my hands today - it's Rosh Hashannah and I work at a law firm, so there are no lawyers around.

That Doesn't Make Any Sense

2007-09-12T18:21:00.001-04:00

I'm starting a new category called "That doesn't make any sense", to be said the way that Johnnie Cochran said it in South Park (as in "Chewbacca is a Wookie. That doesn't make any sense."). The inspiration is this bizarre factoid I learned today - I.M. Pei is designing the NASCAR Musuem. Huh? Now, as an Atlanta resident, the NASCAR museum has been on my radar for some time since Atlanta was bidding to have the museum based here. Winston-Salem won, which I guess makes some kind of sense in terms of where NASCAR comes from or whatever (is Talladega Speedway there? We have the Georgia Motor Speedway here. David Cross wears a Georgia Motor Speedway t-shirt throughout most of the movie Run, Ronnie, Run. He's from here. It's a good movie.). Personally I think it's probably because they have even bigger hicks than we do. Anyway, obviosuly I could not have cared less whether Atlanta got a NASCAR museum or not, but I didn't for one nanosecond imagine that the project would get an amazing architect in his twilight years. Atlanta does not have many buildings by big-name architects (we have one Richard Meier, one Renzo Piano - and those two are the same place - plus two Michael Graves and one Philip Johnson; we are getting a David Chipperfield and a Santiago Calavatra - I am excited for the Calavatra; I fucking love him - he's one of the few I really love), so Pei would have been welcome as far as I'm concerned. I just can't imagine how that pitch meeting went. Did he pitch NASCAR or did NASCR pitch him? Is Pei a NASCAR fan? Did he shave a #3 into his back hair? So many questions!!!

Good Things, Bad Things

2007-09-12T13:45:00.000-04:00

My thoughts are a little all over the place of late. I can't settle on a rant, so here are some random thoughts.

BAD

1. I am officially not an Obama fan. I didn't really care either way, but he really made an ass out of himself at the Daedalus I mean Petraeus thingy. Who didn't though, really? John Warner, that's who. God bless his red little heart. The rest of them are all grandstanding morons. Biden is so humorless - I am seriosuly going to send him a batch of my new fancy brownies I perfected over the weekend. My Edwards-ism is continuing, but I'm starting to think it's just because I don't have to hear him making an ass out of himself from the Senate floor every day.

2. I am very, very unhappy with this turn of events in Robert Downey, Jr.'s hair. Anyone who knows me knows that my love for RDJ knows no bounds, but this shit has got to go. The only thing that is making up for it right now is the picture of Ryan Gosling with a beard that I just saw. No, an actual beard, not the usual kind guys in Hollywood have. I love beards. I spent most of last Saturday night going on about needing a mountain man with long hair and a beard (theoretically of course; I have Bunches and he looks best without long hair and a beard - the long hair needs to be not Irish and ten different colors) and how he should be as close to Billy Crudup in Almost Famous as possible, but with a beard. Now I think he can just be a Ryan Gosling with a beard and that would be just fine.

3. Orangello, and to a lesser extent Sophia, has fleas. It sucks. It sucks for him mostly, but it's driving me crazy too. He is so unhappy. They are disgusting, and so hard to get rid of. I just learned that the little black specks they leave all over him are dried blood passed as feces. Oh man.

GOOD

4. Someone wants to buy one of my collages, which kind of makes me a professional artist I guess? Cool, because "professional idiot" did not look good on my biz cards.

5. 30 Rock is seriously the funniest show since Arrested Development. I am particularly fond of Tracy Morgan (pictured), although you gotta love Kenneth the Page. If you have not seen it, go and get season 1 on dvd. I watched the whole thing in about 2 days. Did I mention those brownies yet? Yeah, make some of those before you watch.

6. I can't think of anything else. I am not talking about Britney Spears! Shit, I just talked about Britney Spears!!!!!

Will R2B2 submit to the Rolling Stones?

2007-09-11T14:42:00.000-04:00

Russ has been pressuring me to submit to the Rolling Stones. It's going to take a lot of really really good tunes for me to forgive them Honky Tonk Woman. And Mick Jagger? Blech.

Little known fact--did you know that Jagger was slated to co-star in Fitzcaraldo? They actually shot most of the movie then it went on hold and he eventually had to bow out to go on tour. He was to play the semi-retarded assistant to Jason Robards in the lead role. Robards caught some kind of fungus and had to go back to the states at which point Herzog tried to recruit Jack Nicholson. Which would have been pretty amazing, but nothing beats Klaus.

Anyway, I got my 21-song "R2B2 Will Submit to the Rolling Stones" CD in the mail. I think Russ might be shooting herself in the foot with footnotes that say things like "Beggars Banquet is hands-down the greatest album ever recorded, ever, in the history of all time, since time began." But I'll try to keep an open mind.

Hippie, frat boy, farmer

2007-09-10T22:46:00.000-04:00

I helped my friend HJE's non-profit at Farm Aid and got a free ticket in return. Can you say freak scene? The demographic was: 2% farmer; 23% New Jersey redneck, many of whom were sporting concert t-shirts from years past; 20% hippie hipster, wearing horrible vegan footwear but dressed like hipsters from the ankles up; and, last but not least, 55% frat boy. (Black people: 2, Asian people: 2, including yours truly; Latinos: just watching. Oh, and two midgets on crutches!)

I've spent most of my life in the pursuit of avoiding frat boys (no team sports; attending lesbian dominated women's college; living in New York City) and to find myself surrounded by them for a full 10 hours was a major shock to the system. Though I did learn some fascinating things! Who would've thought they could be so complex?

1) When push comes to shove, frat boys will pay lots of money for beer. They all got totally wasted on $7 Heinekins, a far cry from the usual Bud Lite party ball.

2) Frat boys will pay $50 to attend an event all about peace and love and veggies but will not hesitate to fist fight while there. I know I live a sheltered existence, but I haven't seen someone throw a punch in a good ten years. Good thing they were so wasted that they practically missed each other.

3) Frat boys will shamelessly dance and sing along to painfully horrible acoustic slow jams about breakups and lost love. Especially while standing around in a circle passing a joint. Ain't that sweet?

4) Frat boys love flexing intellectual muscle. It's all about the problem solving!

>Frat boy 1: Dude, how much money do you think people spent on weed for this thing?
>Frat boy 2: Shit. There are thousands of people here!
>Frat boy 3: I bet there's a pound of weed here.
>Frat boy 1: Are you kidding? There's way more than that. We went through an ounce already.

Aah, the future leaders of America.

Overall the day was pretty fun. Organic corndogs fortified me against all the music that was making my ears bleed (am I the only person who thought Counting Crows broke up in 1998?). But it was totally worth it to hear Neil Young's gently proselytizing song intros, especially the rambling aside about the sinister disappearance of the blackbirds who used to live in his backyard.

R2B2 is a juvenile delinquent

2007-09-10T21:27:00.000-04:00

Sorry to Russ and our 5 (4?) loyal readers for my sporadic posts as of late. Things have been a little nutty, especially at work, which, as you can imagine, is the absolute best place for blogging.

Rest assured, I spent all last week (angrily) taking notes...

Monday: PMS chocolate bars embarrass a whole new generation of feminists
Having grown up in the waning years of FDS and Summer's Eve, my generation has no tolerance for products marketed toward women's "problems." You know, like when "Aunt Flow" comes to visit, nudge, nudge. This PMS bar is even more unbearable what with its hippie cum yuppie undertones. For the record, my understanding is that chocolate really doesn't have that many health benefits since it's so highly processed, anti-oxidants (flavonoids) are basically non-existent in finished products. So boycott that chocolate flavored toothpaste that's scheduled to hit shelves any day now.

Tuesday: Gravel SO crazee!
File under now-that-there's-Gravel-you-can-no-longer-make-fun-of-
R2B2-for-voting-for-Kucinich. If you haven't seen this yet, check it out for an awesomely awkward 2 minutes and 51 seconds. I love how you keep thinking it's going to end, especially at the two-minute mark, but it keeps going and going and going. So existential!

Wednesday: Taxi strrrike!
My inner schadenfreude is loving that the taxi strike is coinciding with fashion week. You can picture all of the anorexics tottering along in their stilettos--along the cobblestoned streets of the Meat Packing district, no less! Um, have you heard about this crazy invention? It's this weird underground tunnel? And they run this metal tube through it using, um, electricity? And you can get inside the tube (!) and it will take you from the Narciso Rodriguez runway show to the Prada after party! No joke!

Thursday: R2B2 confirms suspicion that people are meant to eat lots and lots of carbs
R2B2, in the throes of yet another experimental diet sans wheat, soy, dairy, sugar, and a long list of other excellent foodstuffs, finds herself in an even hungrier state than earlier this year. God damnit.

Friday: More Asian American malfeasance
Hill's taking some heat for refusing to divest contributions from the felonious Chinese American businessman Norman Hsu. Sneaky Chinese crook! But us yeller fellers are forced to bathe in the glory of any news we can get. At least there haven't been any recalls on Chinese imports in the past 48 hours.

Campaign Watch '08: The View from Down Here

2007-09-10T15:03:00.000-04:00

I'm only going to comment on how Georgia is handling the '08 election when something out of the ordinary catches my eye - in other words, when there seems to be some break in the hegemony. Only problem is, I'm not seeing a hegemony here. The lack of a decent Republican candidate is felt especially down here, where it doesn't take much more than the image of an elephant in an Uncle Sam hat and a passing reference to "The Silent Scream" to ignite voters. I was expecting my reliable bumper sticker polls to have established a couple of favorites down here by now, but I actually cannot think of a single Republican bumper sticker I have seen thus far. People here seem more excited about W than any of the candidates. Yeah, it's THAT conservative here. Poeple take very seriously the idea of supporting your leader - if he's in charge, he MUST be good. They are also quite possibly the only people on earth still very excited at the prospect of having a beer with the Pres, I guarantee it. Loyalty to Bush (aka "patriotism") seems to be trumping any commitment to a specific candidate.

With one notable exception: Ron Paul. Ron is known for his small but vocal (and growing) cheering section, which seems to be out in full force in Atlanta. It's bizarre. I have seen probably ten bumper stickers, roughly ten people canvasing cars, and a poster for a benefit show at a rock club. This isn't much, but it's huge compared to the apparent apathy towards the rest of the republican candidates.

As far as Democrats go, again, it's mostly anti-Bush stickers or message-specific stickers as opposed to actual candidate support stickers. I guess I have seen the most stickers and t-shirts for Obama, but it's not overwhelming. The Ron Paul thing is really the only interesting thing I have noticed thus far. Do with this information what you will. I personally am hoping that Ron's growing popularity will mean I can stop explaining who he is to Bunches. For some reason he seems incapable of retaining this information. Perhaps he is onto something. Most of will probably have forgotten by December 2008 anyway.

I'll Have Sex on Your Grave, Next Time You Die

2007-09-06T13:48:00.001-04:00

Okay, it's official: I have television. Bunches finally convinced me that we should get basic cable on the grounds that we could have both it and internet access for $20 less per month than we are currently paying At&T for internet and a phone line which we don't use. Although I am no R2B2 when it comes to loving a bargain, this was too good to pass up. So today when I get home this evil little monster will be waiting there, ready to pollute my brain and turn me into one of those idiots who knows that Dancing With the Stars isn't slang for getting really, really fucked up, and watches Good Morning America instead of listening to Morning Edition.

Being a semi-optimist, or at least a semi-realist, I am accepting this new development and trying to make the most of it by remebering all the good things tv has brought me. Two of my most favorite tv moments ever came courtesy of Maury Povich.

The first was an episode in which wild, trashy teens were confronted by their distraught (and equally trashy) parents and a typically livid, disapproving (and, again, equally trashy) audience. One wild teen in particular came under fire for professing to have had sex on tombstones. A lady in the audience took the mic from Maury and berated her for this disrespectful behavior, to which the girl had THE BEST comeback EVER: (in a Southern accent, please) "Fuck you! I'll have sex on your grave, next time you die!!!!"

Number two: Maury, again. This time the topic was "Are You My Baby's Daddy?", one of Maury's favorite topics because he gets to pretend to care about women while making them look and feel like total sluts. So there's this very angry woman claiming that an equally angry man is the father of her baby. He is denying this on the usual grounds (only did it once, she slept with everyone in town and the next town too, the baby doesn't even look like him, etc.) and the woman interrupts and yells "If you ain't my baby's daddy, how come you bought him a brand new Timberland outift to come on Maury?!!" To underscore the point, the camera cuts to the green room, specifically to a very cute 18 month old (who looks exactly like the angry guy, btw) porpped up on the green room couch and decked out in head to toe Timberland to the point where he can't even move his poor little arms and legs and looking tres confused. Indeed, madam! Excellent question! A zinger! Who needs a paternity test? Man wants a kid to look sharp on Maury, must be his kid. Logic at work!

I have also enjoyed many other fine moments of my life thanks to tv. MTV started on August 1, 1981, my first birthday, and I started watching it pretty much the same day. My entire vernacualr is shaped by the cliches of early 80s videos. I can't see a courtroom without picturing the witness box morphing into members of Judas Priest or Sammy Hagar's bands and jumping to Rob Halford or Sammy's defense. I can't take my glasses of and let my hair fall out of a bun without thinking of the transformation scenes in Goody Two Shoes, Blinded Me With Science, or Legs. My entire concept of British colonialism is defined by Dura Duran videos.

I'm a stoner, so you know I'll be happy to have South Park, Family Guy, Aqua Teen Hunger Force, and Robot Chicken back. TV does have some good serious shows too, stuff that I get on dvd, like The Shield and Nip/Tuck. I hear 30 Rock is good. I love House. I'm a sucker for a Law & Order franchise, especially now that I hear Coco is guesting on SUV (I know, SVU) with Ice-T. Love him, too. I'm curious about that new show with the ad men in the 60s. I'm wondering if we get Logo, the gay channel (no, not Spike, the other gay channel). They have good videos and you know I like gay people. The Food Channel has its merits. And I can stop bugging my Mom to Tivo Wide Angle and Frontline that I will never come over and watch. I wonder if we will have IFC or Sundance, or both? What about that Turner movie channel with all the goof old movies? Or is that AMC?

And I have heard the siren call of Joe Millionaire, America's Next Top Model, and...well, actaully, that's it. But the best part is that, while I am quite the smarty-pants when it comes to current events, I have pretty much no idea what people in the news look or sound like. I only hear their voices on NPR, which means I only hear certain voices, and I read stuff like the New Yorker and The New Republic that are scant on photos. TV can change this for me. I am also looking at it as a chance to know thy enemy, or whatever. I find the two seconds of Fox News that I catch whenever I enter pretty any public space with a tv to be harrowing, but educational. Who knew so many white women were missing and so many pedophiles on the run???

Okay, mostly, I will admit it - I am dying to see Britney Spears slip on a pile of blow pop wrappers at the VMAs this Sunday. So there.

I'M BACK!!!

2007-09-06T12:16:00.000-04:00

I have been stricken these past four days by an awful case of what I was calling Muppet Mouth (as in, the inside of my mouth looked like the inside of a muppet's mouth, and i sounded like Frank Oz - more like Frank Oz administering the spy test in Spies Like Us than Frank Oz as Kermit, but whatever). My doctor called it strep throat (no fun at all, doctors). Anyway, point is, I am now full of antibiotics and back.

Come On, Man!!!!

2007-08-31T14:47:00.000-04:00

So apparently Tony Snow is resigning now too. Who cares??? I was excited to see the door hit Ari Fleischer (Bad Jew!! Bad, bad Jew! Elephants are NOT kosher, dude!) and Scott McClellan's respective tushes, but Tony Snow is really not so bad. I mean, in the grand scheme of things. He seems about as a nice a guy as he possibly could, given that he's a) Fox goods and b) part of the Bush II administration. I think I have a slightly less hard than diamonds spot for him because he went to Rock n'Roll Fantasy Camp, like Russ Senior.

The only thing that could put a bigger smile on my face than the demise of Ashcroft (shockingly looking not so bad after Gonzalez, which is a testament to the scariness of Gonzalez), Rummy, and Gonzalez would, of course, be No More Cheney. As if. He'll probably figure out some way to be VP next time. Hey, maybe he'll run with Thompson! You know Thomspon is going to win, right?! He's on the tv!!! He drives a truck! He thinks he's people!!!

Footsie Flirt

2007-08-29T12:35:00.000-04:00

Larry Craig says he's not gay or lewd; he only pleaded guilty when he shouldn't have. Whatever, mister! You get arrested, you keep your lips sealed and call a lawyer. Have you never watched an episode of Law & Order? Though judging by his age, Craig might be more of a Quincy-viewing man which would explain the bumbling manner in which he handled things.

Check out the police report on the Smoking Gun to see how Craig defended himself upon arrest. Can a man help it if he's got a "wide stance" when it comes to urination? Is that a crime?

I like how he keeps his cruising style old school. Aside from airport bathrooms, he's allegedly done the deed at Union Station in DC. Seedy! No internet chat rooms for him.

And, just because I've got to, allow me to rehash this oldie but goodie from the days when Craig was eviscerating Sick Willy during the Lewinsky to-do. Who's a naught boy now? Tee hee!

MR. RUSSERT: Larry Craig, would you want the last word from the Senate be an acquittal of the president and no censure?

SEN. CRAIG: Well, I don’t know where the Senate’s going to be on that issue of an up or down vote on impeachment, but I will tell you that the Senate certainly can bring about a censure reslution and it’s a slap on the wrist. It’s a, “Bad boy, Bill Clinton. You’re a naughty boy.”

The American people already know that Bill Clinton is a bad boy, a naughty boy.

I’m going to speak out for the citizens of my state, who in the majority think that Bill Clinton is probably even a nasty, bad, naughty boy.

Driving all the way to Stupid Town

2007-08-28T12:29:00.000-04:00

Yesterday's NYT printed a story about adwraps, a phenomenon that I've been blissfully unaware of up until now. Basically, you get paid—either with a free car or monthly check of up to $800—to have a gigantic ad pasted over the entire surface of your car. If you have no scruples, this might seem an easy way to make a few bucks, but there are guidelines to be followed, some of which require real work, or at least some behavior modification. For instance, you're not allowed to smoke, swear, or litter near your car! You have to send in reports, with photos of your car parked in different locations, to prove that you've been driving around. Some companies even require you to drive your car to "influencer" events, to hand out samples or coupons.

As if sitting in traffic wasn't torture enough... Maybe I should develop some kind of humanwrap for public transportation commuters?

Check out this hilarious copy and photos from a company called Adwraps.

Adwraps began in traffic. The company's business concept exploits and capitalizes on one of societies most counterproductive inventions, personal transportation. Today, the personal vehicle dominates the outdoor landscape more than any other time in history. Vehicles can be seen on every street, in every driveway, every school, every religious institution, every mall and any other location imaginable. The car is king of the outdoors. The sheer physical dominance of the car coupled with the worst traffic congestion levels in history make the personal vehicle a natural medium for outdoor advertising. Currently, the average person spends two hours a day in their vehicle, drives more than 40 miles per day, takes four plus trips per day and travels more than forty-eight miles a day on weekends. Translated, these statistics reveal that people are outside in their vehicles looking at other vehicles, which make them perfect mobile billboards. Moreover, recent Federal Highway Administration studies forecasts a sharp increase in the amount of time spent in personal vehicles and the number of trips per household in the future. This data suggests that the personal vehicle will become even more prevalent and will been seen by more people with greater exposure and frequency.

Adwraps "wraps" private vehicles in a high quality vinyl adhesive with graphic images promoting and maintaining products and brands. These "wraps" are visually stimulating, unique and cannot be avoided due to their conspicuous location. The wraps educate, entertain and inform motorists and pedestrians while they are commuting and outside on social and family business. They can reach consumers in conditions that radio, television and print are ineffective and they are appreciated for their ability to humor motorists and pedestrians as well as alleviate boredom when stuck in traffic. Most important is that "wraps" are one of the only forms of advertising that cannot be switched off, tuned out or lost in a quicksand of other advertisements.

Brain divide

2007-08-27T16:58:00.000-04:00

Are people in LA really stupid as everyone says? Maybe it's not a matter of being stupid so much as shallow and vapid? This story in the LA Times Food section on paletas is pretty awesome. I don't mean to digress, but I can't help but point out that corn and popsicles sound like a match made in heaven.

Anyway, have you ever noticed that the LA Time's most-emailed stories don't at all resemble those of the NYT? I'm not going to pass judgement on whether I think Angelenos are stupid (even though a close friend who lives out there says they are not very "sophisticated.") I'm sure that a large percentage of NYT readers are egg heady but non-NYC based, which serves to make us look less dumb than we are. There is plenty of vapid and annoying stuff being discussed on NY mag's site, that's for sure. But still, these LA Times stories seem like the perfect little tidbit for that itty bitty little slot of time between the sports and credits on the 11 o'clock news.

TOP 5 from the LA TIMES
1. Take notes: websites for students
What did students ever do without the Web? Maybe learn less about topics their parents would prefer remain under wraps.

2. The power of produce
Whether it fights cancer depends on which you eat, how you eat it -- and your genes.

3. A teenage girl, a terrible injury and a will to recover
Samantha Palumbo, 16, had her future mapped out. Then came the car crash -- and damage to her brain that doctors said was 'not compatible with life.' But they didn't know Sami.

4. Dangers of drug patches overlooked
The FDA has cautioned about delivering painkiller fentanyl through the skin, but healthcare providers don't seem to be getting the message. Other drugs pose problems too.

5. Dancing all the way to the bank in Vegas
The city's popular nightclubs, which have mushroomed from a handful to about 30 today, are producing the next generation of moguls.

TOP 5 from the NYT
1. With Turnover High, Schools Fight for Teachers

2. As China Roars, Pollution Reaches Deadly Extremes

3. Your Ad Here, on My SUV? And You'll Pay

4. Drop Foreseen in Median Price of US Homes

5. Kibbutz Yasur Journal: The Kibbutz Sheds Socialism and Gains Popularity

Whatever Happened to No Snitchin'?

2007-08-27T13:22:00.000-04:00

I know I am walking straight into a heated racial debate here, but this Michael Vick situation is riddled with hypocrisy. On the one hand we have Vick's (mostly black) defenders working from two angles: a) dogfighting is a part of black culture, so to decry it while saying nothing of white sports that involve animal cruelty (eg hunting) is racist (this is a good point, if you ask me), and b) the principle of "innocent until proven guilty" is being trampled all over here, in a way one would not see if the defendant was white (again, I basically agree - people have lost all sense of procedure in this case, but it's clearly due more to the fact that Vick is accused of murdering man's best friends with his bare hands than with his race. I mean, really, if white people flipped out and joined in every time the legal system rushed to judgement of a black man, none of us would have time for anything else).

On the other hand, we have the whole No Snitchin' thing. For those of you who don't know, No Snitchin' is the hottest issue right now in black cultural politics and law enforcement. Black leaders feel that the endemic culture of intimidation of witnesses by gangs and whatnot is a major cause of the ongoing destruction of the black community - crime cannot be effectively fought because witnesses are threatened and hence no one comes forward to testify against anyone and the cycle of crime, violence, and poverty continues, unabated. As usual, rappers are being blamed for glorifying No Snitchin' in their music (my personal favorite No Snitchin song is "Oh Boy" by Cam'ron). Meanwhile, what is Vick doing?? He's snitchin'! He's twistin! He's bitchin' Oh damn! If Feds was listenin'! (Cam'ron reference, people). I don't see any of Vick's defenders coming down on his ass for snitchin. This wouldn't be so egregious if dogfighting wasn't a part of the same culture that gave us the No Snitchin' movement, but it is.

All I'm asking for is a little consistency here, folks. I want to see all those dogfighting apologists on the news tonight threatening to put a hole in Vick's sweater with their Beretta (that's Biggie Smalls) for being a squealin'-ass bitch. Is that too much to ask???

NO WAY JOSE!!!

2007-08-27T08:46:00.003-04:00

Dare we believe this??? I nearly had a wreck on the way to work when I heard this shit so it better be for true!!! Como se dice ECFUCKINGSTATIC?????

Cool Artists of the Day: Leon Golub & Nancy Spero

2007-08-25T09:20:00.000-04:00

Coolest artists EVER, in fact. Nancy is now 81 and Leon died in 2004 at the age of 82. They were married for 54 years. Both of them stayed true to figurative art and, more importantly, their passion for progressive political engagement and social activism throughout their careers, which meant that they were both basically contrarian and unpopular for first 20-odd years of their careers as the art world embraced minimalism, abstraction, earth art, and pretty much every genre that rareified art and shunned poltics in keeping with the Modernist ethos (the feminist art movement was clearly heavily politicized but never based in traditional figurative painting, while pop art has been interpreted as political, most notably by Ken Silver, whose queer theory reading of Warhol in the Hand-Painted Pop catalogue is one of the most brilliant pieces of art criticism I have ever read). Thier work is some of the most fantastic and powerful stuff around, and although they stand alone wonderfully, I prefer to look at their work as a collaboration, the product of a life together. It's too simple to say that Nancy represents the female and Leon the male. They are both universal, compassionate, brilliant artists who demonstrate that art can be political and formally stunning at the same time.

A highlight of my charmed existence was meeting these two. I worked at the Whitney Museum bookstore and ticket booth for a couple of years, and virtually every celebrity you can name - actors, authors, artists, musicians - came in and bought tickets and/or books from me. It was certainly cool to see all these famous people (Harrison Ford is a dick and his children are filthy; Woody lets Soon-Yi do all the talking; Keanu Reeves is shockingly hot; Brad Pitt is shockingly tall; Gianni Versace was one of the coolest, most down to earth people ever; Denzel Washington triggered a mass abandoning of posts by all the female security guards and was totally charming; David Bowie had three credit cards declined but I called in sick that day and have never forgiven myself; Faye Dunaway and Sharon Stone are both crazier than bags of angel dust), but I was rarely over-excited by any of them and only once truly overwhelmed, and that was when Leon and Nancy came in. I was selling tickets and, all of a sudden, there they were, these two tiny smiling awesome people. I completely flipped and abanodoned my post, Denzel-style, rushing around the little booth-thing and accosting them. This was the only time I ever said anything to anyone about how much I loved them, and I really let it rip. They were gracious and friendly and just the coolest people ever. I cried when Leon died.

Greatest Halloween Costume Idea Ever

2007-08-23T16:55:00.000-04:00

Ooh, I just thought of the greatest Halloween costume: BA Barucha. Basically it's a Jewish Mr. T. A yarmulke and phylacteries on top of the Mohawk, tons of big gold Stars of David, and a tallis instead of whatever the fuck that was that Mr. T. wore. Carry a shofar and say you pity the fool who doesn't observe the Sabbath.

Sexy Person of the Day: Allen Iverson

2007-08-23T16:39:00.000-04:00

It's been a while since I did the sexy person thing, but for some reason I keep thinking about Allen Iverson today. I've always thought he is very pretty. I still do. I used to have a link to a great website with all his different hairstyles on it, but no more. Too bad he's a Bad Attitude Baracus.

Bad Georgia: Beware of Baggy Pants and Bra Straps

2007-08-23T11:53:00.000-04:00

Once again, the Great State of Georgia is excelling in making itself look stoo-pid and racist and classist. Yes, again! Recently we have had another string of sneaky attempts at black voter disenfranchisement, with Secretary of State Karen Handel (as in “Can you Handel the fact that your Secretary of State is a flaming jackass?”) embarking on a mass mailing campaign to helpfully notify people of the new state requirements for voter ID cards – you can use one of four state-issued forms of identification or get a free (that makes it all okay!!) new type of ID specifically for voting. Only problem is, Georgia’s voter ID law was struck down by the courts last year and the appeal is still pending, which any good Secretary of State can tell you means we HAVE NO VOTER ID LAW. So all these people - the rural and urban poor who already have low voter turnout due to lack of transportation, childcare, and voter education - are getting mail telling them that there is yet another step they have to take to vote, and it isn’t even true. There is a reason why Georgia is trying to restrict access to voting with what would be the nation’s strictest voting laws, and that reason has everything to do with the traditional (Democratic) voting habits of poor and/or black Georgians.

Meanwhile, in the We Hate Spics (But Love Taco Bell!) Department (now Georgia’s largest branch of government), various counties are currently working to pass laws banning “boarding houses”, aka houses with multiple unrelated adult residents, aka the houses of Latinos. Supposedly this has nothing at all, heavens no, to do with race or the rabid brown immigrant hatred that seethes from the pores of most red-blooded Georgians.

Then, today, news of a truly brilliant new entry into this litany of idiocy: Atlanta councilman C.T. Martin, a Bill Cosby-esque mess of a self-hating black man, has introduced a ban of baggy pants. Thank god! Why, just the other day I was accosted by several pairs of baggy pants and was lucky to escape with my wallet. And don’t get m started on that overcrowded house down the street – I swear I have seen at least 14 different pairs of clearly unrelated baggy pants coming and going, and several of the baggy pants park their cars RIGHT ON THE LAWN!!!!

Fortunately for the baggy pants, they will not be spending the night alone in jail when martin gets his mitts on them. They will be kept company by equally offensive exposed thongs, boxer shorts, and bra straps. Okay, let’s break this down:

1. Visible Thongs: The only people who should be arresting a girl (or guy; this is the gay Mecca of the South, you know) whose thong is showing are the fashion police. I mean, really, whale tails are so 2002!!!

2. Visible Boxer Shorts: Hmm, Councilman Martin better get his butt down to every majority white high school with relatively wealthy students at final exam time, because everyone knows that well-to-do preppy girls wear college sweatshirts (the grey kind with the always-SEC college letters appliquéd in plaid) and BOXER SHORTS during finals week. It’s a look that says “I studied so hard, I could barely find a Scrunchi in the same plaid as the letters ‘SMU’ on my sweatshirt, let alone wear PANTS!!! Geez!”

3. Visible Bra Straps: I may have to stop typing this at any second as the fuzz are about to do a raid on my office. And every other office in my building and in all of Georgia. And anywhere else where bra-wearing women congregate. Shit, if you have worn a bra with straps, you have flashed a bra strap. It’s what they call a tautology, Councilman. Here, try this bra on with this tank top and I will show you.

4. Baggy Pants: Oh, Baggy Pants. How long is it now that you have been de rigueur for black people and Kevin Federline? What’s that, going on 20 years, you say? Clearly this baggy pants thing is just a fly-by-night fad, like hip hop and naming your kids after luxury cars, that can easily be stamped out by an appropriately outraged black politician. Well, sorry Councilman, but if Bill Cosby couldn’t get his peeps to change, neither can you. Just be thankful that the rolling up one leg look went by-the-by. But in a world where fro pics are still jauntily shoved into fros and the airbrush nail business is still booming, baggy pants are here to stay.

Some choice quotes from Councilman Martin:

"Little children see it and want to adopt it, thinking it's the in thing," Martin said Wednesday. "I don't want young people thinking that half-dressing is the way to go. I want them to think about their future."

Sorry, buddy, but baggy pants are the “in thing” for many, many people. And “half-dressing”? Shit, that’s as old as rolling your eyes when your parents are talking, as far as young people go. And I don’t hear too many complaints about one-quarter-dressed cheerleaders.

Baggy pants are going nowhere, fool, face it. And get yourself some Cornel West or Henry Louis Gates or bell hooks and brush up on your black cultural politics, yo.

Don't trust the hump

2007-08-20T11:10:00.000-04:00

I always thought there was something creepy about camels. Suspicions confirmed by a BBC story!

Pet camel kills Australian woman

A woman in Australia has been killed by her pet camel after the animal may have tried to have sex with her.

The woman was found dead at the family's sheep and cattle ranch near the town of Mitchell in Queensland.

The woman had been given the camel as a 60th birthday present earlier this year because of her love of exotic pets.

The camel was just 10 months old but already weighed 152kg (336lbs) and had come close to suffocating the family's pet goat on a number of occasions.

On Saturday, the woman apparently became the object of the male camel's desire.

It knocked her to the ground, lay on top of her and displayed what the police delicately described as possible mating behaviour.

"I'd say it's probably been playing, or it may be even a sexual sort of thing," the Associated Press news agency quoted Queensland police Detective Senior Constable Craig Gregory as saying.

Young camels are not normally aggressive but can become more threatening if treated and raised as pets.

R2B2 WILL Submit to the Rolling Stones

2007-08-18T09:43:00.000-04:00

R2B2 and I are such good friends largely due to the fact that we agree on pretty much everything. We spend hours sharing our mutual enraged indignation about various issues, people, foods, trends, movies - in other words, we spend a lot of time engaging in the satisfying art of preaching to the converted. So it is a rare occasion when we truly disagree about something and one of us must take on the difficult task of convincing the other that they are WRONG, WRONG, WRONG, WRONG, SNOOP WRONGY-WRONG, WRONG MCWRONG, SIR WRONG OF WRONGHAM, THE WRONGIEST WRONG THAT EVER WRONGED, THE WRONG BARON, COUNT VON WRONGENSTEIN, AN ASTRONAUT WITH THE WRONG STUFF, TAKING A WRONG AT THE LIGHT INSTEAD OF A RIGHT, and so on. Case in point: R2B2 claims to HATE, yes, HATE, The Rolling Stones. I know!!!! Crazy!!!! Nuts!!!! And above all else, WRONG!!!!! Further questioning revealed that R2's hatred for the Stones is basically all about Honky-Tonk Woman. To which I say: Fair enough. It's an annoying song. But therein lies the true beauty of the Stones. They can, and often do, kind of bite. They are hands-down my absolute favorite band of all time, and yes I like the Beatles, but don't even be asking me that "Beatles or Stones?" shit. STONES, every time. It will always be that way. But I am the first to admit that they do suck sometimes.

Here's the thing about the Stones: They are a) the world's greatest rock band ever (case in point, Gimme Shelter), b) the world's greatest pop band ever (case in point: Emotional Rescue), c) the world's greatest blues band ever (case in point: Parachute Woman), and d) the world's greatest country band ever (case in point: Sweet Virginia). In their ability to suck, they are also the Martin Amis of music. Like the Stones, Amis is capable of truly sucking, and unabashedly does so on many an occasion. Personally, I find this reassuring. I love the humanity of someone who is so genius yet so flawed. It's comforting. I started reading Martin Amis with Money, London Fields, and The Information, back to back, and thought I might actually kill myself because I felt so fucking inferior as a human being because I could and would never write anything so perfect. I hated Martin! He was so relentlessly brilliant. Then I read Night Train. Ouch! It sucked! Suddenly, I felt spiritually renewed. If Martin Amis could suck AND be genius (and Yellow Dog sucked even worse than Night Train), I could also potenially be genius, but only have sucked up until that point. Maybe there was a great novel or something inside of me and I would stop sucking! I knew I felt something inside of me just waiting to be unleashed on the world (turns out it was poo, but whatever).

It's the same with the Stones. The fact that I can barely watch the Mick Jagger of the last 15 years for even a milisecond as he struts around huge arena stages, with his silk shirt billowing, singing Brown Sugar and looking fucking RIDICULOUS, makes it all the more of an earth-moving experience to lose myself for the 1,000th time in Mick singing No Expectations in 1968 . Shit, even the actual band themselves has always contained extremes of genius and lameness. In the same band, Keith Richards and Bill Wyman. The coolest man ever and the biggest putz ever. Yeah, Bill's a putz. The rest of the Stones all think so too, and often made fun of him in barely coded messages in their songs, casting aspersions on his masculinity and deriding his small hands. Hee hee! Loser!

I digress. This isn't about Bill Wyman's hands. And I don't want to give R2 any more reason to "hate" the Stones, so let's not dwell on Bill at all. My other theory about the Stones is that they are victims of the Chumbawamba syndrome. That is, the songs they are best known for are not their best. Chumbawamba is an extreme example of this, and I plan to blog at some point about the unjust legacy that is Tubthumping (I can barely even type that song's name). Think about it - many of the best-known Stones songs are not the best Stones songs. I reference the aforementioned Honky-Tonk Woman and Brown Sugar. I am also no fan of Jumping Jack Flash, Dead Flowers, most of Exile on Main Street (which is most people's favorite Stones album), a lot of Sticky Fingers (a lot of other people's favorite Stones album), some of Let it Bleed (probably the 2nd or 3rd most often referenced as a favorite Stones album), most of Tattoo You and pretty much everything since. BUT! Beggars Banquet is hands-down the greatest album ever recorded. No question. None! And there are many genius moments among the canon of hits: Angie, Paint it Black, Shattered, Gimme Shelter, Monkey Man, Midnight Rambler, Time is on my Side, Let's Spend the Night Together, Satsfaction, Mother's Little Helper, 19th Nervous Breakdown, You Can't Always Get What You Want, Street Fightin' Man, Sympathy for the Devil, Missin You, Beast of Burden, Wild Horses, Emotional Rescue. I could go on but I won't.

So my self-appointed project is to make R2 at least tolerate and have a modicum of respect for the Stones. Love or even like would be nice, but R2 is a tough crowd. Hence I have made R2 a CD of my favorite Stones songs. I have tried to avoid any popular ones that R2 has probably heard, like all of the above, which I think R2 could at least recognize. I'm going deeper with this. Here is the playlist (with song, album, year) - any input, comments, suggestions are welcome:

1. I'm a King Bee, The Rolling Stones, 1964
2. Play With Fire, Out of Our Heads, 1965
3. Mercy, Mercy, Out of Our Heads, 1965
4. I'm Alright, Out of Our Heads, 1965
5. Complicated, Between the Buttons, 1967
6. She Smiled Sweetly, Between the Buttons, 1967
7. She's a Rainbow, Their Satanic Majesties Request, 1967
8. Stray Cat Blues, Beggars Banquet, 1968
9. Factory Girl, Beggars Banquet, 1968
10. No Expectations, Beggars Banquet, 1968
11. Jigsaw Puzzle, Beggars Banquet, 1968
12. Dear Doctor, Beggars Banquet, 1968
13. Prodigal Son, Beggars Banquet, 1968
14. Parachute Woman, Beggars Banquet, 1968
15. Salt of the Earth, Beggars Banquet, 1968 (Keith sings!!)
16. Love in Vain, Let it Bleed, 1969
17. Moonlight Mile, Sticky Fingers, 1971
18. Sweet Black Angel, Exile on Main Street, 1972
19. Sweet Virgina, Exile on Main Street, 1972
20. Angie, Goat's Head Soup, 1973
21. Fool to Cry, Black & Blue, 1976

I put most of Beggars Banquet on there. And okay, yeah, I put Angie on there. I had to. I love that fucking song, man. It plays a part in a fond memory for me. August 1, 1991. My 16th birthday. I got my driver's license and an awesome red Jetta with balloons tied to the mirrors. The next morning, I got up really early and snuck out and went for a drive all by myself for the first time ever. It was dawn, one of those beautiful Atlanta summer mornings where it's nice until about 9:00 A.M. I drove probably a mile or two, just around the neighborhood, and as I drove, I listened to the classic rock station, which was playing Angie. It was perfect. The beauty of that morning, my feeling of absolute freedom for the first time in my life, combined with the witsful awareness that this day, this freedom, also meant the end of something great. Angie is such a wistful song, and I don't think I would have realized the mixed emotions I had about that moment if that song hadn't been playing. I remember sitting at a stop sign, listening to Mick whispering "Where will it lead us from her?", and I was crying. Appropritae that next line is "Oh Angie don't you weep," which of course only made me cry more.

The shit of the whole thing is that I cued up Angie just as I started typing out this memory, and when I thought about tearing up at the stop sign in my little red car and how happy I was and what a great childhood I had, I teared up, and wouldn't you know that the song was lined up exactly same as it was that day so that the next line was "Angie don't you weep." So yeah, I'm a fucking dork sitting here crying.

R2, to quote Bernie Birnbaum, look into your heart. Look into your heart when you listen to this cd I'm sending you. You may well hate every song on this list but I hope at least you will get something out of Angie, even if it's just the image of 16 year old Russ sitting at a stop sign in her new red Jetta in the neighborhood of Princeton Lakes in Marietta Georgia at 6 A.M. on August 2, 1991, being a huge fucking dork with tears rolling down her unlined 16 year old cheeks and balloons tied to her side mirrors.

Internet robot declares R2B2 "Asshat"

2007-08-16T12:59:00.000-04:00

Slate posted an interesting story yesterday called "How to hack Starbucks," not just about America's obsession with the rotten hell hole that panders $6 blended drinks made from powder, but specifically weird sites devoted to dissecting the Starbucks experience. Check it out.

Anyway, the story links to the Oracle of Starbucks, a funny site that tells you your personality based on your drink of choice. The Slate writer (tall house) was declared "Lame;" Vin Diesel (decaf triple nonfat espresso), "Freak." No argument there.

I'm an Asshat (double espresso)!

You carry around philosophy books you haven't read and wear trendy wire-rimmed glasses even though you have perfect vision. You've probably added an accent to your name or changed the pronunciation to seem sophisticated. You hang out in coffee shops because you don't have a job because you got your degree in French Poetry. People who drink grande espresso are notorious for spouting off angry, liberal opinions about issues they don't understand.

Also drinks: Any drink with a foreign name
Can also be found at: The other, locally owned coffee shop you claim to like better.

Lincoln officially declared funny looking

2007-08-14T14:21:00.000-04:00

Abe Lincoln may be long dead, but that doesn't stop experts from attempting to diagnose him with a variety of ailments. Small pox, Marfan's Syndrome, clinical depression, and, the scariest contagious disease of them all, homosexuality. Most recently, laser scans of two of Lincoln's "life masks" reveal cranial facial microsomia. In layman's terms, that means he was crooked and funny looking around the face, not that we don't already think that every time we pull out a $5 bill. I've always had a weird soft spot for Abe. I tend to trust people with oversized ears, for one. And he seemed so ungainly and emotional— so unlikely to be successful. He'd never be elected today. Ditto Taft (too fat), Van Buren (too short), and Buchanan (too single). What bit of Abe trivia will be revealed next? That he wasn't honest? That he didn't really wear top hats?!

Anyway, check out AP's take on it:
Artists, sculptors and photographers knew Abraham Lincoln's face had a good side. Now it's confirmed by science.

Laser scans of two life masks, made from plaster casts of Lincoln's face, reveal the 16th president's unusual degree of facial asymmetry, according to a new study.

The left side of Lincoln's face was much smaller than the right, an aberration called cranial facial microsomia. The defect joins a long list of ailments - including smallpox, heart illness and depression - that modern doctors have diagnosed in Lincoln.

Lincoln's contemporaries noted his left eye at times drifted upward independently of his right eye, a condition now termed strabismus. Lincoln's smaller left eye socket may have displaced a muscle controlling vertical movement, said Dr. Ronald Fishman, who led the study published in the August issue of the Archives of Ophthalmology.

Severe strabismus leads to double vision and can be treated today by surgery.

"Lincoln noticed double vision only occasionally and it did not bother him a great deal," said Fishman, a retired Washington, D.C., ophthalmologist and history buff.

Most people's faces are asymmetrical, Fishman said, but Lincoln's case was extreme, with the bony ridge over his left eye rounder and thinner than the right side, and set backward.

Lincoln's appearance was mocked by his political enemies, historians say. The author Nathaniel Hawthorne, a Lincoln fan, wrote of the president's "homely sagacity" and his "sallow, queer, sagacious visage." Hawthorne's description was deemed disrespectful and deleted by a magazine editor, said Daniel Weinberg, owner of the Abraham Lincoln Book Shop in Chicago.

Mount Rushmore sculptor Gutzon Borglum described the left side of Lincoln's face as primitive, immature and unfinished.

When Lincoln was a boy, he was kicked in the head by a horse. Laser scans can't settle whether the kick or a developmental defect - or neither - contributed to Lincoln's lopsided face, Fishman said.

The scanning technique is usually used to create 3-D images of children with cleft lip and palate before and after surgery. Fishman teamed up with Dr. Adriana Da Silveira, an Austin, Texas, orthodontist who specializes in children with facial defects, to scan a bronze and a plaster copy of two life masks, owned by the Chicago History Museum.

Life masks were in vogue in the 1860s, said James Cornelius, curator at the Lincoln Presidential Library in Springfield, Ill.

Lincoln cooperated with sculptors to make them twice, in 1860 before his first presidential nomination, and in 1865, two months before his assassination. Lincoln probably did it for political purposes more than posterity, Cornelius said.

"It's the equivalent of TV face time now," Cornelius said.

The Poo Skink

2007-08-13T15:39:00.000-04:00

This weekend I went to see an exhibition called Lizards & Snakes at the natural history museum here in Atlanta. It was really, really cool - there were a ton of amazing snakes, geckos, iguanas, chameleons, etc. My favorites are the pretty green snakes that look like they are smiling, but I was fascinated with this one seriosuly disgusting creature called a Shingleback Skink. I am hereby changing the name of this dude to the Poo Skink. I think it's much more descriptive.

Would you like a side of egg foo yung with that?

2007-08-13T13:29:00.000-04:00

Proceedings from an actual conversation that took place this past weekend in front of my apartment building. At 1:00 am no less.

R2B2: Pulling up to my apartment on my bicycle.

Neighborhood dude: Looking over at me.
Hey, you got my Chinese food?

R2B2: Ha ha.

NB: Pretending to look at his watch.
I put my order in a long time ago. You don't have my chicken chow mein? Ha ha ha ha.

R2B2: That's really fucking funny. Every Chinese girl living in this neighborhood gets that comment.

NB: Oh, I'm sorry! I'm just fooling wit' choo.

R2B2: Ok, whatever.

NB: It's the basket! It's the basket!

Neighborhood dude's lady friend: Hoo hoo hoo hoo hoo hoo...