Weird Shit From Russia!

[Currently Listening To: Talking Heads - Remain in Light]



By now it's no secret that I spend a lot of time traversing the globe. I've been to a lot of countries, and seen the type of cool shit you expect to see in foreign lands - old buildings, exotic food, etc. But since I'm always traveling on business, finding myself in major cities with little time to thoroughly explore, my favorite way of discovering other countries has been to mine them for weird shit. The States have become such a wasteland of blandness, such a vapid expanse of corporate sameness, that any opportunity I can find to score some strange foreign crap is more than welcome. To that end, something I often find dismaying about the world outside of America (here's a handy map for those of you confused as to what that might be) is the alarming lack of weird shit. The angry beast of globalization has spread its red-white-and-blue blandness across the earth with insatiable aggression, ensuring that in exotic-sounding places like, say, Budapest, where I am right now, there's still a Burger King down the street, The Simpsons Movie at the local cinema (in English), Coke Zero in the vending machines, and "My Humps" playing loudly on the radio. Like cultural HIV, America continues to spread unfettered.

I love Japan because it's one of the few places I've been to whose uniqueness seems impervious to the American disease, managing to filter U.S. influence through its own bizarre cultural lens and present it as something entirely its own. And for the same reason, it was a pleasure to recently visit Russia for the first time, and find with much relief that there still is some weird shit in Europe after all (although the rest of Europe likes to exclude Russia from the precious title of "European," geography places Moscow and St. Petersburg firmly within the boundaries of the European continent).

To an American, Russia seems a strange and backwards place - a country struggling to get its shit together after centuries of chaos and turmoil. Things don't seem to work the way they should, no one seems to have discovered deodorant, and you are warned from the beginning that corruption is rampant: Stay inside the main cities, because more or less anything goes in the outskirts, and you're likely to be kidnapped. Keep your passport on you, because if you get stopped by the corrupt police and don't have it, they might kidnap you. Don't take taxis, because many of them aren't real taxis, and they'll kidnap you. We had to fly from Moscow to St. Petersburg instead of driving, because on the country highways, sometimes you'll find a broken down truck blocking the road. Stop and get out to help, and you'll be met by men with guns, who will kidnap you. Kidnapping is apparently all the rage in Russia. It's also, by its nature, a terrifying concept, mostly because it's so vague. The term "kidnapping" describes only the act of being taken away itself, and leaves the rest of your life after that point open to any sort of possibility. Will you get killed? Anally raped? Held for ransom? Sold into prostitution? The future is an open book! With all of that in mind, I stuck to the central parts of Moscow and St Petersburg, and found them to be refreshingly nice places, especially for a country that completely collapsed a couple decades ago. Sure, you can't drink the tap water, but come on - baby steps.

So now, sit back, and let me now take you on a wonderfully xenophobic tour of the strangest moments from my extremely brief and limited Russian experience. For your enjoyment, I've decorated this post with deliciously homoerotic stickers I found of this mulleted Russian pop star. Mullets, by the way, are still high fashion in Russia. Anyway, let's begin...

The People.................

There are a handful of stereotypes about Russian people, and at least one of them is true: those fuckers like to drink. As soon as they get off work - and sometimes before they get off work - they flood outdoor gathering areas and chug beer and vodka on the streets like there's no tomorrow. On my first night in Moscow, while walking through an underground passage near Red Square, my friend and I encountered an absurdly drunk Russian dude, dancing to terrible techno music and shouting loudly. He was wearing one of those big furry Russian hats, and his shirt was unbuttoned, exposing his pasty, sweaty gut, which jiggled as he danced. This is him:



He leapt in front of me and yelled something about Russia. He seemed to desire some sort of response, but I can understand Russian about as well as I can menstruate, so I was clueless. In a situation like that, what else could I do? I handed my camera to my friend, and started an impromptu Russian dance party. Homeboy put his big furry Russian hat on me, and for approximately forty five seconds, we partied like few have partied before. Scope the unbelievably hot dance moves:



That was pretty much the high point of my entire time in Russia.

The Food.................

I'm still not exactly sure what exactly constitutes Russian food, but expectedly, meat plays a heavy role. So how could I pass up a restaurant with an incredibly straightforward sign like this one?



As soon as we saw that, there wasn't really any other option for lunch that day. Inside, the waiters wore strange fur hunting outfits, and every wall was decorated eerily with dead animals and primitive weapons. The whole place was a sort of morbid celebration of carnivores where animals stared at you while you ate their relatives. Near our table were creepy squirrels on the wall, and a genuinely terrifying wolf:



The selection of meat on the menu was no less bizarre than the decorations:



I was going to avoid stating the obvious, but fuck it: "Beaver with cowberry sauce" might be the best new euphemism for a menstruating vagina since "muff marinara." And of course, I tried it. When it Rome, right? Bear was actually my first choice, but they were out. Big rush on bear. So beaver it was. You're probably wondering what cowberry sauce is, and I'm afraid that after eating it I'm no closer to having an answer for you. I can, however, assure you that beaver meat is without question the most nauseatingly awful thing I have ever had the misfortunate of putting in my mouth. I've eaten some gnarly shit in my time, and I have a seemingly iron-clad stomach when it comes to weird food, but this time I nearly puked before the meat even hit my throat. It was impressively terrible. It tasted like disease. Like pure, miserable death. Pretty much what I imagine rat meat tastes like. So, lesson learned: If you ever see beaver on the menu and you're feeling adventurous (or just want an excuse to make a sophomoric sexual pun), don't do it. You will be very sorry. Try the wild boar instead.

The Arts.................

One of my favorite things in Russia is how they've adapted the beloved tradition of the matryoshka - the Russian nesting dolls - for the 21st century. In Russian souvenir stands, the variety of hand-painted matryoshkas ranges from quaint and traditional to utterly, fantastically bizarre. Consider, for example, my new prized possession, the George W. Bush Russian Doll - complete with the "I'm a fucking tool" cowboy hat that characterizes our great President so very well:



That's just the beginning, though. Strangely, Osama Bin Laden has been immortalized in Matryoshka form, with other terrorists and dictators nesting inside him:



You can also find dolls for various Soviet dictators, British and French politicians, and even a Bill Clinton matryoshka with a doll inside for each of his many women. None of them, however, can compete with the selection of dolls from the music world:



The greatest compliment I can give the Russian artisans who created this unique masterpiece is that they have captured with alarming accuracy the spiritual essence of Freddie Mercury's overwhelming gayness. You can almost smell the butt sex. Here's another stunning masterpiece:



When I was a wee child, if a magical fairy had come down from the stars and told me that some day, my journey through life would somehow bless me with a genuine traditional matryoshka doll adorned with a hand-painted portrait of Jon Bon Jovi in all his trashy 1980's glory, and that if I cracked him open it would reveal yet another doll featuring Richie Sambora's stupid fat face, I would have said "No, magical fairy, you are a liar, for I could not imagine a life so good for myself." And yet, here I am. But alas, it gets even better. For even as I delighted in the glory of the Bon Jovi Russian doll, I knew not that my next discovery would be...

THE MANY FACES OF MICHAEL JACKSON RUSSIAN DOLL PLAYSET (OR: THE GREATEST THING EVER CRAFTED BY MAN):


Look at it! Feast upon its greatness!! My favorite part is how only the last and tiniest doll portrays Michael when he was still black.

If my funds had been unlimited, I probably would have bought every bizarre Russian doll the country had to offer. Some of the other ones I saw included Britney Spears, Elvis, Metallica, Kobe Bryant, Madonna, AC/DC, Depeche Mode, and many more.

Assorted Weird Shit................. Here are some miscellaneous photos of weird shit from Russia: These are some super cool Russian music dudes. Most importantly, check the terrifying guy at the top. He wants to eat your soul. It was really nice of Kevin Smith to lend a hand on the bongos, too.
Loosely translated, this Russian t-shirt says "I don't drink with gays." Tied with this for best Russian t-shirt ever.	Speaking of homophobia, it's ironic that the Russian police force, often criticized for violence and discrimination against gays, has "HOMO" written backwards on all their uniforms. LOL @ TEH HOMO PATROL!!!!1
I guess Jessica Simpson has fallen on hard times lately, as she's apparently been forced to take up work as a Russian escort.	This is my new favorite drink.
Here's a strange and incredibly unpleasant-looking trans-species stuffed animal, which I can't imagine has any effect other than to frighten children.	Look how tough this dude thinks he is with his Yoda tattoo.
This is a statue that was on the street. Children were getting their pictures taken with it.	Like Germany, there's a lot of highly questionable fashion in Russia. I saw more than a few women dressed like my Grandma's couch.

Well, that just about concludes our tour of Russia. I'm confident that it accurately represented all aspects of the entire country. If for some reason you want more, I took some arty tourist photos of Moscow and St. Petersburg and put them up here. They're actually very beautiful cities.

And before I go, please enjoy the unique musical stylings of an old Russian dude playing Celine Dion on a saw, interrupted by a strange dancing man:






EDIT: I can't believe I forgot about this - just a few hours after my tragic encounter with beaver meat, I saw this t-shirt at a souvenir stand. I have no idea what it says (my bet is on sexual innuendo), but it was so eerily appropriate I had to pick it up:

An Open Letter To The Person Who Vomited In My Sink On New Year's Eve

[Currently Listening To: The indescribably irritating sound of my idiot friends laughing obnoxiously loud at the television from downstairs]


Dear Person Who Vomited In My Sink on New Year's Eve,

On the eve of the new year, I invited you into my residence to partake in festivities relating to our passage into 2007. It is my sincerest hope that you enjoyed yourself and that I for my own part was a gracious host. However, I am disquieted to confess that I have not prepared this correspondence in good temper. Quite on the contrary, my message is one of disappointment and admonishment. You see, in the morning following my new year's gathering, I was alarmed to discover a scene of no small horror laid out in my downstairs washroom. The sink, part of the counter, and indeed even part of the mirror were painted quite generously with an extremely foul green-colored sludge of a substance which I came to recognize as vomit. Certainly you can understand my reaction of considerable disgust, for I am no savage, and prefer not to encounter the stomach contents of myself nor anyone else, if indeed it is possible. As such, I found your actions in my washroom to be quite disagreeable.

Please, Person Who Vomited In My Sink On New Year's Eve, do not think me brutish for my words: I fully comprehend the rather fragile predicament you must certainly have found yourself ensnared in that fateful night, and hold great sympathy for it. The intake of spirits by all parties was understandably more gratuitous than might be considered appropriate on an evening of any lesser festivity. I will confess that on certain gay occasions even I have been known to act in poor judgement and indulge too heavily in the consumption of adult beverages, and I have on those occasions found myself feeling quite ill as a result. Undoubtedly this was the case for you on the eve of the new year, and for that you have my sympathies. However, I must take issue with your choice of location when emptying your stomach contents. Customarily, one who is overcome with the need to be ill does so in the toilet, as it is by its nature a repository for things unclean. Had you merely repositioned yourself thirty six inches due east when emptying your stomach, and flushed the results, I doubt with great sincerity that I would presently be inclined to exchange words with you.

I don't know who you are, Person Who Vomited In My Sink On New Year's Eve, for you did not own up to your wrongdoing. All I can be certain of is that you ate a salad for dinner on Sunday. From the looks of it, a spinach salad, possibly with tomatoes. Full-sized tomatoes, not the miniature ones they put in salads sometimes. It appears also that you made at least a passing attempt to clean your mess from the surface of the mirror, as it was streaked with foul-smelling, spinach-laiden bile in a pattern suggesting it had been partially wiped off. While I appreciate this, I would have preferred a great deal more effort be invested in the attempt, as the unenviable burden of undoing your grotesque wrongs subsequently fell squarely upon myself. I should also note that the unpleasant results of your salad, marinating overnight as they did, saturated the washroom with an impressively pungent aroma. I have never sliced open a goat's belly and let its filthy innards spill out, then left them sitting in the summer's heat for several days time, rotting and collecting maggots under the unforgiving sun - nor have I any desire to engage in such a practice. However, if I had, I am certain the fragrance produced from said rotting innards, although awe-inspiring, would fail to equal the uniquely unbearable odor which hailed from inside your body and took unwelcome residence in my washroom.

In closing, Person Who Vomited In My Sink On New Year's Eve, I hope that this letter finds you, and causes you to rethink your choice of vomit receptacle if ever again you find yourself needing to be ill in my or any other washroom. The sink is a poor location for stomach contents, and any persons who think otherwise are quite unwelcome in my home. I very much doubt I will ever know your true identity, Person Who Vomited In My Sink On New Year's Eve, but should I discover it, I would be strongly inclined to shake my finger at you and say "for shame!"

With regards,

Robert

My Fourteen Year Old Self Was So Fucking Goth

[Currently Listening To: Home Video - No Certain Night or Morning]


I've been a little busy lately, so the ol' blog hasn't been getting much love. It keeps asking me "Rob, maybe you could... write in me tonight?" and I say "Not tonight honey, I have a headache. It was a long day at work. Maybe tomorrow."

Yes, I speak directly to my blog, and I call it "honey."

Anyway, I'm still busy, but while I was looking for something today I came across a folder of funny old drawings from when I was a kid, and I felt they were worth sharing.

When I was a wee lad, drawing was everything to me. I would draw all day, every day, filling any scrap of paper I could find with the fruits of my overactive imagination. I drew comic strips and trading cards and 3-d pictures. I had hundreds of little characters I'd created, and I spent hours upon hours carefully rendering their little adventures. The sheer volume of childhood art I produced bordered on obsessive-compulsive, but it was all very cute and innocent - exactly the type of spaceships-and-monsters fantasia you'd expect from the mind of a little boy. This, for example, is a drawing I did when I was eleven years old:



Aww, isn't it cute? A cute little dragon in a magical land. At twelve years old, I got into an extremely neurotic phase of drawing giant, elaborate mazes. I don't know why - they were too unwieldy for my friends to even want to attempt. But I was oddly fascinated with them. I drew dozens, maybe hundreds, each more pointlessly complex than the last. Here's one I found:



In retrospect that's a pretty weird thing to do, but I was only getting started. As puberty encroached, bringing with it the strange traumas of acne and voice changes and hair growing on my balls, something must have snapped in me. Out of nowhere, my formerly cute drawings became absurdly graphically violent. At the tender age of fourteen, I was very into comic books, and spent a great deal of time perfecting my ability to draw Spider-Man and Wolverine, as any other artistically-inclined teenage nerd would do. One day, during math class, I inexplicably felt the need to draw Wolverine ripping a guy's head off with his claws:



These days, I realize most fourteen year olds already have three kids and a coke habit, but in the comparatively innocent days of the early nineties, being dweeby pubescent boys meant that our days were spent playing Super Nintendo, our nights were spent lighting off fireworks in the park, we'd never so much as sipped a wine cooler, and our closest encounters with sex involved trying to glimpse a nipple through the fuzzy lines of the scrambled Playboy channel, and denying that we ever masturbated (i guess not much has really changed in my life). So it was probably some sort of pent up teenage angst that turned me into that kid - you know, the one sitting quietly at his desk, wearing torn up jeans and a black Nine Inch Nails t-shirt, scribbling away at methodically-rendered images of death and violence. I didn't feel mentally disturbed, I just... really liked drawing blood and guts.

The result was hundreds of drawings and sketches, usually done during school when I was meant to be paying attention (what do you learn in middle school, anyway? I don't remember any of it), of people being violently maimed and tortured in the most graphic and imaginative ways I could come up with. My mother was very concerned about me, and I was sent to the school counselor by worried teachers on several occasions. I really don't think there was anything wrong with me, I was just beginning the long and wonderful journey towards complete and utter desensitization that would culminate in this atrocity.

I was so enamored with my Wolverine drawing that I decided to explore some other interesting ways of killing people. Here's a guy who was caught off guard by some angry spikes while he was, I don't know, just sitting around in a dungeon, I guess:



For some reason, my victim was always the same guy - some anonymous, perpetually shirtless dude with bad nineties hair who apparently deserved to suffer endlessly at the merciless hands of my colored pencils. Maybe it was just the only guy I could draw, but either way, the incredibly homo-erotic overtones of all these buff, topless men were somehow lost on me at the time. Here's my same shirtless guy again; the spikes theme was working out well for me, so I expanded upon it by tossing the poor fellow into a pit of them, where his body tore into pieces like a stuffed animal:



Then I brought the grim reaper in for some good ol' fashioned beheadings. I like the cross going through the guy's severed neck hole, out his mouth, and leaving a piece of his nose stuck up at the top. Nice touch, teenage Rob:



And, yes, the tombstone on the right says "R.I.P. K Cobain" (although the date listed is the date of the drawing, not the date of his death). Could I be any more of a cliche angst-wridden nineties Seattle teenager?

What I considered to be my masterpiece at the time was a two-page spread I called "The Rack," depicting a torture chamber which looks more like it's one semen stomach pump incident away from being a gay S&M club gone horribly wrong (click to enlarge):



As ridiculous as these are, I have to at least appreciate the knack for detail I had at such a young age. Notice the rats gnawing away at the whip-lashed flesh of dead buff shirtless guy #1:



Or the vertebrae coming apart amidst snapping tendons and tearing flesh as the medieval stretching device pulls a little too hard on dead buff shirtless guy #2:



Needless to say, I, uh, wasn't exactly a big hit with the ladies at this point in my life.

There are many, many more where these came from. Thankfully I was pretty much out of my death and gore phase by the time I got to high school, but some sort of subconscious need for balance plunged me immediately into an arguably more disturbing phase of drawing really gay psychedelic fantasy art. Looking back on it all, it's hard to imagine my mother didn't send me to therapy.

Okay, back to work now.

Paradise Lost (OR: How My Hawaiian Vacation Ended In A Big Pile Of Shit)

[Currently Regretting: Writing this entry]

There is a universal sensation we've all experienced at some point in our lives - a unique blend of urgency, fear, and sometimes pain. We rarely talk about it, but it's happened to us all. It's an ill-acknowledged commonality amongst all of humanity. Christians, Jews, Muslims... It unites us, if perhaps only subconsciously. I'm talking, of course, about the sudden, overwhelming, uncompromising need to rush to a toilet and shoot hot molten stink liquid out of your ass. That's right, diarrhea.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let me rewind a little bit.

Last week I went to Hawaii with Tam for a few days. Nothing huge, just a quick getaway after finishing a big project at work. I'd never been to Hawaii, and it's kind of one of those places you have to go - or so I'm told. We stayed on Kauai, which is the smallest, prettiest, and least developed of the islands. There you can snorkel amongst exotic fish, see dolphins and sea turtles in the open ocean, hike through the rain forest... Orrr, sit on your gargantuan ass and sip mai tais by the pool all day long while your back fat boils lobster red in the sun - which seemed to be the favorite activity amongst the many super-sized American tourists scattered along the sand like beached whales. I don't really understand traveling four thousand miles to sit on your ass at the beach as a vacation from sitting on your ass in your living room, but whatever - I've never been good at relaxing.

Kauai is refreshingly rural - you won't find any tall buildings or Wal-Marts (yet), and most of the shops and restaurants are Mom & Pop operations. Near the condo we stayed in, for example, a tiny general store became our regular stop for food and other day-to-day needs. The quaint little market had the type of basic necessities you'd expect - snacks and groceries, beverages, some Hawaiian gifts, and a tiny health care rack, stocked with Tylenol, Band-Aids, Chapstick, cough syrup, and enemas.

Wait... enemas? That was our reaction, too. There were two of them, sitting inconspicuously at the bottom of the rack, just like that. They looked like this:



Naturally we examined one, and giggled like fourth graders at the instructions and funny diagrams on the side. It was a very juvenile "hee hee you put it in your butt" moment, inspired largely by how utterly out-of-place such an item was on this tiny rack, in this tiny store. Why would a place that doesn't even carry condoms have an obscure item like a home enema kit? Maybe more people need to cleanse their bung chambers on a regular basis than I realize, but it still seemed weird. Tam decided that we needed to buy one - as if its unusual presence were some sort of sign that we were, in fact, destined to buy one. Besides, she added, there must be something funny we can do with it. I concurred, but suggested buying both of them, so we could use them as squirt guns and have an enema battle. It seemed the logical thing to do, right? Of course it did. I grabbed the two boxes, effectively clearing out the store's enema stock, and handed them to Tam. "Here, you buy them." She refused, saying that I should be the one to buy them. I told her that it made much more sense for her to buy them. "If a girl buys an enema," I told her, "the assumption is that she has some legitimate medical purpose for it, whatever that might be. If a guy buys an enema, they assume he's a pervert - which I am, but not in this particular case." Still, she refused, so I suggested rock paper scissors as a compromise. Loser buys the enemas.

I always lose at rock paper scissors.

Maybe things like this should be easier for me at this point in my life, but I really, really was not excited about purchasing two enemas from the little old Hawaiian lady we had bought groceries from every day at this tiny general store. I tried to go back on the whole thing, suggesting it was stupid of us to be buying enemas in the first place. "Let's just forget it, we don't need these." Tam wouldn't let me off that easy, and insisted I proceed with my mission - taking delight, of course, in my misery. Fuck. Okay. Suddenly I was a nervous teenager buying condoms all over again - I scoured the aisles for appropriate padding material, as if attempting to conceal the enema boxes amidst candy bars and soda would somehow de-emphasize them as the clerk rang them up. Of course, she didn't say anything - they might as well have been boxes of shortbread cookies, for all the difference it made. But inside, I knew what she was thinking. I could feel her judging me. Bitch. We left the market ten dollars poorer, two enemas richer, and blissfully unaware of the horrors that awaited us.

Later that night, we returned to the condo after eating too much at a luau (luaus, incidentally, are kind of boring, but the food is good), and found ourselves wondering what to do. Kauai is hardly a nightlife kind of place, so it can get a tad mundane during the later hours. Debating our options led to the enemas, which sat in their boxes on the coffee table, glowing with the promise of some sort of untapped entertainment. Should we have an enema squirt gun fight? Should we throw them at each other like water balloons and see if they explode? Should we... "I dare you to use one," Tam suddenly said. "Use... use one?" I asked. "Like, use one?" Oddly, the enema's intended purpose had been the last thing on our minds. "Yeah. I dare you."

Oh, the power of those three simple words. How many obscene, dangerous, humiliating, extreme situations have occurred throughout history as a result of the unique provocation implied by those three words?

"You dare me?"
"Yes, I dare you."
"I dare you!"
"You can't dare me after I dared you!"
"Sure I can! I just did!"
"I'm not going to do it!"
"Fine, be a pussy."
"I'm not a pussy! You were the pussy first!"
"Fine. I'll do it if you do it."
"Fine. You go first."
"You go first!"
"Rock. Paper. Scissors."
"Fine."
"FINE."


I never win at rock paper scissors.

And so it was that I would be the pioneering explorer into the uncharted world of rectal cleansing.

First, though, let us pause for a moment to consider the nature of the enema. For the wholly uninitiated, a home enema is kind of like a DIY colonic. Its primary use is to clean out all the excess shit that builds up inside you. It looks like this:



The little skinny end goes in your bunghole, and then you squirt it like a turkey baster and fill your stink cavern with liquid. Once you're filled up, you then poop the liquid out like you would anything else, and it theoretically flushes out a lot of other crap along with it. The power of the dare had left me determined to experience all of this for myself.

I went to the bathroom, and followed the instructions on the box. The process, so you know, is fairly simple and painless, although it's indescribably weird feeling your bowels fill up with liquid. As soon as you've squirted it all in you feel a very strong need to send it back out, and so you poop, and that's the end of it. No big deal, really.

Or, so I thought.

I left the bathroom and proudly shrugged off the whole ordeal to Tam. "Dude, that was nothing," I told her. "It's like a walk in the park." She wanted to find our for herself, and so disappeared into the bathroom with the other enema.

And at this point, I learned something very interesting.

As it turns out, the liquid I had just squirted up my ass was not simply some kind of purified water, as I had naively believed. In fact, it's a powerful saline laxative - it even says so on the box. I'm not sure how I missed that detail, but as I sat there on the couch, relaxing as if the event was long behind me, my stomach suddenly cramped up in a very alarming way. I shifted uncomfortably, and went to get a glass of water in the kitchen. It hit me again like a punch in the gut - a hard, crippling blow that made me lean forward in pain, clenching my abdomen. The agony rumbled down lower into my intestines, and settled into that ominous spot just above your groin which tells you one thing very specifically: Things are about to get messy.

Still clutching my stomach, I hobbled down the hallway and banged on the bathroom door. "Are you almost done in there?" I shouted, "I have a problem!" From the other side of the locked door came a loud "Go away!!" Fuck. Okay, okay, it's alright, I can wait. Maybe it'll pass. A deeper, harder tightening of my intestines pointed urgently to the contrary. Something wanted out of me, and it wanted out immediately. Fuck, fuck, okay, what now? The condo had only one bathroom. I ran back into the living room and paced back and forth furiously, my eyes darting around as if they might discover another hidden bathroom I hadn't noticed before. Inside me, my guts twisted as if some menacing, unseen birthday clown was crafting a little balloon poodle out of my intestines. I was sweating profusely. My ass clenched up in instinctual defense. This must be what labor feels like. Except I don't think my baby is going to be very cute.

Back to the bathroom, and I banged on the door again. "Tam, seriously, I really need to get in there!!" I pleaded, which was met with an aggressive "GO. AWAY!!" I figured she must be in a similar Hell. But where did that leave me? My body was not going to hold out much longer. I was getting dizzy and insane. The feeling in my bowels was angry and urgent. In my delirium I imagined a mob scene of slimy brown turd people shouting and waving torches as they stormed the gates of my sphincter. They had built a battering ram and were slamming repeatedly at my ever-weakening last defense. They were desperate to escape their fleshy prison, and with each charge they came closer to freedom. But if I didn't figure something out in the next thirty seconds, they were going to be escaping all over my pants.

Back to the living room. Fuck, fuck, fuck. Okay. At this point there was going to be no happy ending. At this point it was pure damage control. I looked towards the back door. Maybe I could just run outside. Settle this the way nature intended. No, no, there might be people outside. Fuck. Owww. Okay, garbage can? Is there a garbage can?? No, fuck, it's just a tiny little wastebasket oowwwwww fuck fuck fuck, okay, okay, uhhh fuuucccckkkk. I was out of time. This was it: Make a decision, or shit your pants. And then, I saw it...

The sink. The kitchen fucking sink.

Fuck. I had no choice. The sink had a deep basin, so there would be no splashbacks. Stainless steel for minimal mess. It had a large drain for quick disposal. Most importantly, it wasn't my sink. It would work. It would have to work. I ran to the sink, pulled down my pants, and leaped up on the counter backwards, hanging my ass into the basin just in time for a Roman candle of turd blasts to explode from my strained rear end. The simultaneous feeling of relief, agony, disgust, and shame was almost too much to handle. The room seemed to be spinning as I sat there hunched over, fingers digging into the edge of the counter, stomach churning like an alien was about to burst out of it, and molten mud lumps from the farthest reaches of my innards splatting against the bottom of the sink with one wet thump after another.

After a couple minutes of intensity, the misery tapered off and I could breathe again. I didn't move for another minute - I just sat there, breathing, dripping sweat, wondering what the hell had just happened to me. It seemed to have subsided, at least for the moment. But now what? Thankfully there were paper towels to substitute as toilet paper, but another major issue remained: A big pile of poop sitting in the sink drain, too thick to go down on its own. Fuck. It didn't smell very good. In fact, it smelled uniquely terrible. Clearly the enema had worked - this poo didn't smell like poo, but rather like stale insides. Like guts. Like it had been rotting inside of me for a very long time. And it was getting worse. My relief turned to panic once again as I looked around for some sort of solution. I turned the faucet on, but the water didn't help. Fuck, fuck, now what? The garbage disposal. The fucking garbage disposal. I flicked the switch on the wall, expecting it to whisk the poop away in that magical way that only garbage disposals can. It shouted a loud angry "VHWHRRRRRRRRRR" as the blades inside the drain began to spin. And what happened? Well, more or less what common logic - distinctly vacant from this whole situation - would suggest would happen: It started splattering little bits of poop everywhere. FUCK! FUCK FUCK FUCK, I turned the switch off as quickly as I could - thankfully with little damage done.

Now what? The problem, I deduced, was that the shit pile was too high up in the drain - instead of being sucked down in, it was being pushed upwards by the garbage disposal. Okay, so, how to get it farther down? Tam would almost certainly be walking in any minute, and happening upon a uniquely grotesque situation. I yanked open one kitchen drawer after another, digging through the kitchenware for... A fork! A big fork! It was a long, oversized skewer of some kind, with two prongs. Like something you'd poke a steak with. I guess. Whatever, it would work. It would have to work. Holding my breath, I poked my slimy mud pie with the sharp prongs, stabbing it frantically as the faucet ran, working it down into the drain. Okay, good, good, it's working! I reached over to the garbage disposal switch, and...

OWW FUCK! I keeled over again, struck with another sudden intestinal cramp. It was back. God help me, it was back. Round two had commenced - and like a Jerry Bruckheimer sequel, it was bigger, badder, and more explosive than the first. Helpless, crippled, I struggled to pull my pants down and leap back up on the counter for a second agonizing barrage of filth. This one was quicker, but no less painful. Groaning, sweating, catching my breath. Paper towels. The faucet. The long fork thing. Okay, let's try this again. I flicked the garbage disposal switch and flinched a little, defensively backing away in the event of another poop shower. The angry drain roared with life, and...

It worked. It worked! The slimy goo pile slid down the drain and was gone as quickly as it had appeared. All that remained was the dramatic odor, which I imagined was more or less what the underside of Satan's nutsack must smell like. Sighing, groaning, clutching my wounded stomach, I left the water running and stumbled into the living room and collapsed on a chair. I sat there for a moment, sweat dripping down my forehead, heart racing, breathing deeply. It was over... It was over. Tam appeared then from the hallway, looking pale and distraught, as if she'd just seen a ghost. She collapsed on the couch next to me, and sat in silence for a moment before saying "What just happened...?"

"I don't know," I told her. "I really don't know." All I knew was that, with the agony and embarrassment fading behind me, I felt refreshingly light and cleansed. I felt like demons had been exorcised from my colon. I felt like I'd had a religious experience. Tamar then asked me, "why did I hear the garbage disposal?" and so I told her my story, and we laughed for a long time. Dolphins, boat rides, lush tropical landscapes... None would emerge as highlights of our trip quite like the time I shit in the kitchen sink.

So if you're ever in the mood for a unique, possibly traumatic, ultimately cleansing experience, you can buy enemas from the comfort of your own home right on amazon.com, for only $1.69! And if you ever happen to find yourself staying in unit 167 at the Outrigger Plantation condos on Kauai... don't use the steak skewer.


P.S. - While searching for images to use in this post, I happened upon a very strange Japanese website called The Enema Museum. It is, as the title implies, a gallery of various enemas. Why? I don't know. Some things aren't meant to be questioned. I love Japan.

Investigating Lunchables' Alarming New Desire To Mess With My Mouth

[Currently Avoiding: Work]



For my entire K-12 public school career, I was a brown-bagger. While other kids lined up in the school cafeteria for wondrous $1.25 meals of macaroni and cheese, chocolate milk, chicken nuggets, and other lukewarm fat-kid-food delicacies, I dined enviously on my boring home-prepared sack lunch formula: ham sandwich, apple, juice box, and small treat. My jealousy peaked on pizza days, when those very fortunate school lunch kids were treated to the legendary rectangular pizza slices, topped with that curiously rigid layer of white cheese which could be easily removed as a single piece. Pizza for lunch?? To me it was an unfathomable luxury. After all, my family was hardly wealthy, and my frugal mother saw absolutely no reason to waste money on unhealthy school lunches when she was more than happy to prepare a sensible alternative for me every morning. So when the mighty Lunchables arrived in stores, and were marketed to children as being mysteriously more fun than regular lunch, it was beyond perplexing to my mother why I would persistently beg her to buy them for me, when she could easily and economically prepare the very same ingredients herself.

In case you live under a rock, Lunchables are little pre-made lunch packs which include crackers, slices of cheese, and slices of turkey or ham. At least, that's what they originally contained. Later, juice and candy were added, and in recent years the Lunchables line has expanded to include grotesque-looking tacos, chicken fingers, mini hot-dogs, and other high-fat snack foods that children really don't need.

I don't know what it was that made Lunchables so appealing to me. Perhaps it was how neatly arranged and packaged everything was, with the individual components of your eventual cracker sandwich stacked flawlessly within their own compartments. Or maybe it was the amazing perfect circles of slimy lunch meat - a shape that assured you nature took no part in their creation. Perhaps it was the delicious, high-fat cheese slices, brought to you by the crowned kings of processed foods, Kraft. Kraft's flagship cheese is so far away from being actual cheese that the box labels it "Kraft Pasteurized Prepared American Cheese Product." Whatever the case, I was somehow convinced that Lunchables were in all ways superior to any cracker-cheese-meat combination my mother could prepare, so when she occasionally gave in and packed them for me in my sack lunch, it seemed almost as exciting as rectangular pizza.

I ate Lunchables regularly, even through high school. By that point most of my peers had come to regard the little lunch packs as the disgusting, over-priced processed garbage that they are, but not me - I still loved them. I also discovered that those perfect circles of slimy lunch meat had mysterious adhesive properties. If thrown directly upward with a good bit of force, they would stick to the cafeteria ceiling and never, ever come down. Whenever I had Lunchables I would add another meat circle to the ceiling, as part of an ongoing art installation / science project which, as far as I know, is still there.

These days I don't eat Lunchables anymore, and I haven't tried their many off-putting new varieties. But the other day at the grocery store I noticed a particularly alarming new twist on the classic Lunchables formula that was simply too bizarre to pass up.



What you see above you is the new Lunchables "Mess With Your Mouth" line of lunch packs. Displaying an admirable dedication to new frontiers of disgusting, unhealthy children's food, Kraft has outdone itself by adding a packet of "Sour Tongue-Teasing Fizz" powder to the package, and directly suggesting that you pour it onto your turkey and cheese cracker stack. Here's a close-up, lest you doubt me:



Think about this very carefully: Kraft wants kids to pour what is essentially sour Pop Rocks onto lunch meat, and eat it. This is not some small notion on the back of the box - it's the foundation of a whole "Mess With Your Mouth" ad campaign, and the entire packaging is dedicated to this seemingly unHoly marriage of sour candy and processed meat. Oh yeah, they also want you to pour sour fizzing powder onto tacos and hamburgers:



Now, I realize children are much more, shall we say, "open minded" about what they'll eat than adults are, and most seemingly-disgusting snack foods are easily excused by being designed for the adventurous palettes of children. But this time, even with a child's interests in mind, it seems like Lunchables has gone way too far. That meat is nasty enough on its own, but with sour candy on top? EWWW. Still... I bought it. I just needed to know.

When I got home, I opened up my Lunchables pack with excited trepidation. The cheese squares and meat circles were as unnaturally perfect as I remembered them, and every bit as artificially delicious. Now accompanying them, though, was the much-hyped new packet of sour fizzing powder:



Determined to try it out exactly as the box demonstrated, I poured the powder out directly onto the turkey of a cracker stack, and it looked like this:



Mmmmm. Appetizing, no? Its appearance has nothing in common with the colorful popping confetti candy shown in the illustration - rather, it looks more like a pile of cocaine on top of wet turkey. But hey, Kraft is devoting a lot of marketing to this concoction, so maybe they know something I don't. Maybe, despite common sense's drastic assertions to the contrary, it's actually delicious. There was only one way to find out. Here's a grotesque close-up of my tongue teasing the powdered turkey before it went down the hatch:



As it turns out, the taste of Ritz cracker, Kraft cheese, Oscar Meyer meat, and third rate Pop Rocks combining in your mouth is every bit as unpleasant as it sounds like it would be, confirming my suspicion that this is the most disgusting and senseless product in grocery stores at the moment. Convinced that someone at Kraft had completely lost their mind with this promotion, I decided to search for answers.

On the Lunchables website I found a whole section devoted to the "Mess With Your Mouth" foods. "Messing with your mouth" is apparently the prerogative of The Lunchables Brigade, an animated crack team of processed food enthusiasts comprised of a white boy, a black boy (complete with dreadlocks to assure you he's black, and glasses to assure you he's not threatening), and an ambiguously brown girl, who conveniently could be either Asian or Latino, depending on your specific needs for ethnic identification.



As demonstrated in this TV ad, The Lunchables Brigade seems convinced that your lunch is far too pleasing in its current form, and will break through your walls and aggressively coat your food with disgusting fizzy powder, thereby effectively messing with your mouth. This approach likely stems from the Kool-Aid Man School Of Food Mascot Tactics, which teaches that the door is simply a far too inconvenient entry point when fun food is urgently needed.

Even more perplexing is the Kraft website, which is advertising some sort of dancing game and makes no real mention of food whatsoever. I suppose it's a half-assed attempt at giving the impression that Kraft is out to get kids active, when of course its true mission is clogging millions of little arteries with its strange adhesive meats.

Okay, it's way past time for me to stop procrastinating with artificial food and get some work done.

Adventure Notes: Aquatic Humiliation, Renaissance Faires, Tyra Banks, and Hip-Hop Looney Toons.

[Currently Listening To: The Rapture - Pieces Of The People We Love]



Beach culture is easily avoided when you grow up in the overcast gloom of Washington State. There we defined beaches as cold, gray, uninviting places where Laura Palmer's plastic-wrapped dead body washed up onto the rocky shore is far more appropriate iconography than a bikini-clad Pamela Anderson running slow-motion through golden sands. Add to that my penchant for activities that involve sitting in dark rooms basking in the artificial glow of various screens, and my pale Irish complexion which conveniently sidesteps golden brown on its short journey from pasty white to bright pink, and you have a recipe for someone who feels very much out of place on the sunny beaches of Southern California. So in hindsight, I can't exactly say why Tamar and I chose Big Bear Lake as our destination for a much-needed weekend off last week, but it doesn't surprise me in the slightest that we were only actually on the water for about 30 minutes of our 48 hour journey. And, appropriately, it was an absurdly awkward thirty minutes.

Our intention had been to rent jetskis, but the nearby marina didn't have any in. All they had short of a fishing boat was a pedal boat - one of those little plastic things you sit in and pedal like a bicycle. Fuck it, we thought, let's try the pedal boat. It seemed fun in a quaint sort of way. That is, until we gave the lady at the marina our ten dollars, and she took us over to the dock where our aquatic chariot awaited. It was tiny, and plastic, and falling apart... and pink. Bright, flowery, pillow-biting, little girl's bedroom pink. It was the water sports equivalent of a Barbie tricycle. Still, we had come this far, so with some uncertain laughter we climbed aboard and pedaled our way out into the open waters at something akin to a snail's pace. We knew we looked retarded, but it was nice to have it validated by the children who were laughing at us as they zipped past on their jetskis. After fifteen minutes of constant pedaling, our little pedal boat that couldn't had taken us maybe thirty feet out onto the lake. And then, as if fate had constructed a diorama to demonstrate to us exactly how out of our element we were, we lurched right past a big fancy boat where two hunky, golden-skinned frat boy types were drinking beer and rubbing sun tan lotion onto the perfect bodies of two bikini-clad, silicone-enhanced beach babes. They were listening to some kind of sophomoric rock anthem - Linkin Park or whatever frat boys listen to - and laughing and drinking and having a great time, which got even better when they spotted two pasty LA hipster douches with black t-shirts and "I'm an asshole" sunglasses, chugging along the lake on their ironic little pink dingy. They pointed and laughed at us, along with the children who were already laughing at us, and we felt about as uncool as humanly possible. Even the lake itself seemed to be patting us on the head condescendingly and saying: "Oh, my dear little pale, out of shape city-dwellers, you really don't belong here. Please move along, before you get run over by frat boys on jet boats." And that was pretty much the end of our time on the water.

We were actually going to try again with the lake, but then we saw a sign for a Renaissance Faire going on that weekend, which sounded like pretty much the most amazing thing we could possibly do with our time. I'd never been to a Renaissance Faire, so if you're in the dark about this, Ren Faires (as the kids call them) are basically weird little events where the type of people who watch Xena Warrior Princess get all dressed up and party like it's 1399. It's mostly a lot of fat, greasy thirty-somethings who would look strangely at home at a swingers party, and who for some reason find the culture and stylings of the medieval period completely irresistible. I mean, I like Lord Of The Rings as much as the next guy, but these people take it a little too far. They talk in Olde English and sell chain mail and dragon goblets at little stands, and they drink ale and have sword fights and romanticize over a period of time that in all actuality was probably unbelievably shitty to live in. Everyone gets all into character, and it makes me feel indescribably uncomfortable having to talk to someone - say, for example, a guy at a food stand selling me the medieval equivalent of a gyro - who insists on speaking to me in exaggerated Olde English. "Good day, my Lord, art thou interested in a devine feast of dragon's flesh wrapped within the finest pita bread in all the land?" Dude, please just stop it. Clearly I'm not wearing a tunic and drinking mead, so I'm not one of you people, and I know you don't actually talk like that, and it's weirding me the fuck out, so just give me my gyro and let's pretend this never happened.

Oh, and it gets about ten thousand times more embarrassing when they start to sing and dance.



The most alarming thing you'll see en masse at a Ren Faire, though, is a staggering volume of fat mutant tit flesh. There are scores of very large middle-aged women who have stuffed themselves into heavily-strained corsets, and their cups runneth over with ye very olde giant, stretch-marked flesh pillows. I like big boobs as much as the next guy, but it doesn't really count when the boobs are only big because everything else is big, too. It's like if some of my aunts got together and dressed up like medieval princesses with ninety percent of their wrinkly fat old knockers squeezed out into plain sight. It looks something like this, but way worse:



Speaking of large things: Last week I got a call from a producer for The Tyra Banks Show asking if I would go on camera and elaborate my opinions expressed in a blog entry from two years ago entitled "Fuck, I Hate Fat People". That was about the weirdest phone call I've ever received. I tried to explain to her that most of what I write - particularly over-the-top rants like that one - is exaggerated, tongue-in-cheek absurdity for the sake of humor, and that entry was really about my disgust for laziness and gluttony, not some blanket disliking of anyone who's overweight. I'm not going to back down from my stance that you're fucking grotesque if you weigh 400 pounds because you stuff your face with cheeseburgers all day long and never exercise, and even worse if you let your kids get fat by giving them whatever junk food they want. But somehow, the thought of sitting on a daytime talk show looking like the world's biggest asshole as I try to explain the intricacies of my opinion while Tyra Banks paints me into a corner and the blood of a million overweight housewives boils over with rage... Yeah, that didn't seem too appealing to me. So that was the end of that. But hey, Tyra, if you're reading and you want me to come onto your show and talk about how much I hate right wing Christians, I'll fucking show up with bells on. There's no intricacy to that opinion, at all. I just fucking hate those ignorant fucks, and I'll talk about it until I'm blue in the face.



Anyway, after the Ren Faire started to get creepy we ventured into the town of Big Bear where we discovered The Super Bear Arcade - only the greatest old arcade in the world. I've discussed at length my remorse over the tragic death of the great American video arcade, so whenever I happen upon one which, either through extreme care or extreme negligence, has managed to retain that forgotten magic of yesteryear - it excites me to no end. The Super Bear - nearly forty years old and wearing age on its sleeve - is pure, glorious nostalgic heaven. It has well-worn but working original versions of every classic arcade game ever made, a long, gorgeous row of skee ball lanes, a homemade light gun shooting gallery, a curious offering of punk rock t-shirts for sale, and an adorably Mom & Pop selection of bizarre redemption prizes. Where most arcades reward you with stuffed animals and candy when you collect enough prize points, this arcade's big-ticket items included an iced tea maker, dinner plates, and yes, a crock pot:



What lucky child will save up FOUR THOUSAND coupons for that enticing prize? Amazing. But best of all, The Super Bear Arcade was home to Hercules - THE WORLD'S LARGEST PINBALL MACHINE:



An oddity from the late 70's, I'd never actually seen one of these before, and this place had two of them. They're about twice the size of a normal pinball machine, and smack around an 8 ball with their giant flippers. It's actually not all that fun - everything being so huge slows the action down considerably - but hey, the novelty factor is through the roof.

We also became oddly determined to collect the entire set of a particularly distressing series of Looney Toons figurines from a 50 cent machine. To this day, the classic Warner Bros. animated shorts of the 40's and 50's remain some of the finest cartoons ever produced. But the old-fashioned simplicity of Bugs Bunny and his pals aren't nearly as attractive to the trend-savvy children of the 21st century, which have led to many desperate attempts to modernize the Looney Toons characters and make them "hip." I really hate seeing great American icons dirtied with the callous, shallow trappings of disposable fads for the sake of making a few bucks, so when we discovered Hip-Hop Looney Toons figurines, it was an alarming new low for me. Take a look at these, and cry a little inside as I did:



Porky Pig wearing a gold cross? Taz freestylin' on the mic? Daffy saying "holla at a duck"? Seriously, what the fuck is going on? Aren't capsule toys meant for ten year olds? The day the word "bling" enters my ten year old's vocabulary is the day we pack it all up and fucking move out to the middle of Montana and fertilize crops with our own feces, Unibomber style, and have a six month detox course of reading Tom Sawyer and watching old Disney movies and, like, learning to play the piano or something.

Also, does anyone know what "flossin'" means? Apparently it's what Porky Pig is doing, and I don't think it involves his dental care. Man, I'm so not down with the kids these days. Anyway, my favorite Hip-Hop Looney Toon - and by that I mean the one that makes me cringe the most - is that hapless hunter Elmer Fudd, now ready for some ballin' as he asks that you please, "don't playa hate!"



Ironically, there was a Robot Chicken parody of Eight Mile starring thugged-up Looney Toons characters in a freestyle rap battle. It would be funnier if it were as absurd as it thinks it is, and not the exact characterization of Bugs Bunny the Warners marketing geniuses are apparently going for.

Maybe we can get The Smurfs involved in some Xtreme sports, and have 50 Cent star in Da Muppets All Up In Da Club 'N Shit, just to make sure none of my childhood icons escape tragic pop culture exploitations.

Our trip to the lake ended with a viewing of Snakes On A Plane (which might be the greatest movie ever made), followed by an energetic half hour of sending personalized phone messages from Samuel L. Jackson to everyone we could think of. Apparently they took down the website where you can do this, which is an incredible shame, but for a while there was a clever promotion for the movie which let you fill out some questions about one of your friends, and then a computer program, which very effectively simulated Samuel L. Jackson's voice, would call the person up, refer to them by name, and yell at them to go see Snakes On A Plane. I can't tell you how confused my poor Grandmother was when Samuel L. Jackson called her up and aggressively harassed her to see a movie she'd probably never heard of. In fact, I'd be impressed if she even knew who Samuel L. Jackson was. Sorry about that, Grandma.

Memories And Ruminations Of 9/11, And Why It Still Matters

[Currently Listening To: Calla - Televise]



I honestly hadn't given much thought to the anniversary of 9/11 - in a way, the whole thing has become soured to me, having been used so shamelessly as a political tool and a weapon of fear thousands upon thousands of times since it actually happened. Media tributes seem like desperate rating grabs (or even thinly-veiled political propaganda), and the absurd posturing of Bush and his weird Christian Zombie wife laying wreaths at ground zero seem like desperate popularity grabs. I'm sure that somewhere - amongst those who lost friends and loved ones on that fateful day - there is a great deal of sincerity and emotion buried within the 9/11 media exploitation, but it is certainly not coming from our evil android Vice President Dick Cheney, seen here looking like he was coached for hours on how to appear to be showing emotion. Call it cynicism, but I don't buy for a minute that the phrase 9/11 brings anything but joy to the neocons of the Bush administration. After all, it's been their weapon of choice in garnering support for a variety of insidious and absurdly unrelated campaigns, most notably the Iraq war. So yeah, 9/11 had lost a lot of power to me. Buried in politics and treaded on recklessly by administrative mis-steps in the five years since, I'd become cynical about the whole thing.

Then, this morning, I read a good op-ed piece on salon.com which really captured the way I think people should be thinking and feeling in regards to the 9/11 anniversary. It took me back to the weird sensation in the air the weeks following the attacks, and the opportunity to unify the nation and the world that we so tragically squandered.

In September of 2001 I had just gone back to school in New York after a long tenure down in New Orleans (yeah, I have a peculiar habit of living in tragedy-prone cities - I'm half expecting Hollywood to finally sink into the Pacific now that I'm living here). I had just moved into my Brooklyn apartment, so it was little more than a couple empty rooms with some boxes and a bed. I had no TV, no internet, no phone. I didn't even have a cell phone - I was stuck in the 90's with my pager. For someone who is usually so connected I practically have wires coming out of me, it was a curious little period of disconnectedness for me, where the world could literally have been falling apart right outside my window and I'd have no idea.

I was meant to go to a meeting in Manhattan on the morning of the 11th, but I overslept and was awoken by the abrasive buzzing of my pager. It was text from my Mother: "are you okay?" She'd paged me a few days prior and I had never called her back, so I figured it was her usual Motherly paranoia, and ignored it. I got dressed and ready to head out to my meeting, and received two more pages from my Mother. I was getting annoyed, ready to scold her for worrying too much when I don't get back to her right away - just as soon as I could get to a payphone (yeah, payphones, remember those?). I went outside, onto my little ghetto Brooklyn street, and I specifically recall how strange everything seemed. There was an eerie quiet to the city, interrupted periodically by the passage of ambulances and fire trucks zooming down my avenue (a main Brooklyn artery). An unusual amount of people were out in the street sort of aimlessly; shopkeepers out of their stores, people gathered together around radios and televisions. At the time, though, I didn't pay any of it any notice - I was late for my meeting, and I had just gotten a page from a coworker down in New Orleans asking "dude are you okay?" I was incredibly annoyed at that, certain my Mother was having a weird paranoid moment and was calling my work to ask if they'd heard from me. Determined to call her and tell her to chill the fuck out, I found that every single payphone was being used. I made my way down the street, and it was starting to feel like a scene from a comedy, the absurdity of not a single payphone being vacant when usually they're just collecting dust. I was thinking to myself, what the fuck is going on today? As more ambulances flew by and I hurriedly passed a couple shops where people were huddled around televisions, I briefly heard something about terrorism and bomb threats, and I thought, ah, okay, there was a bomb threat in the city or some shit, whatever. I finally found a vacant payphone and - after numerous attempts ending with "all circuits are busy," I got through to my Mother at work. As soon as she answered, I snapped at her: "Mom, what?? I'm fine, you have to chill out when I don't call you for a few days!" Her response was a long pause, followed with, "...You don't know?" And right then, right at that moment, I did what I somehow had not managed to do the entire time I'd been outside: I looked up. Above me, a thick black plume of smoke was spreading like a shadow across New York. It wasn't like "Oh, something's on fire," it was like "Oh my God, the world is ending." It was a big, ugly, menacing tower of smoke.

From there everything just got weirder and weirder - pieces started to fall into place, and I made my way to a rooftop of my school where I had a clear view of the former World Trade Center. Everyone has seen pictures, and pictures, and more pictures of that smoke pouring out of the buildings, blanketing the city, but if you didn't actually see it in person no photo can describe how massive and scary it was - how weird and uncertain and fragile the mighty city of New York had suddenly become under the weight of that smoke. The day carried on in kind of a fragmented blur. I remember standing in front of an electronics shop where dozens of people were watching the news on the televisions in the window, CNN playing the footage of the collapsing buildings over and over again. I had a class scheduled for noon and no one even showed up. At my three o'clock class, the teacher was there but at a loss for words. After five minutes he dismissed us. As dusk fell, the city was unanimously scared and uncertain. Every television report we'd heard discussed at length the possibility of a follow-up attack. Everyone was on edge. I did all I could do - I sat on the roof of my school with a small group of friends, drinking Brooklyn Lager and not really saying much while we watched that incredible smoke light up with the glow of the setting sun. For such a terrible thing, it was actually incredibly beautiful at that moment. I took this picture:



It was difficult sleeping that night. Sirens continued blaring around the clock, and paranoia had a strange way of waking me up every time something sounded like a plane passing overhead - wondering if the sound of a great explosion would be soon to follow. Normally I'd be listlessly watching the news and reading websites until all hours of the morning, desperate to glean every ounce of knowledge about the situation I could. But in my black hole of connectivity - without even a radio to tell me if another attack had occurred - I could do nothing but lay there in bed, antsy and uncertain, trying to fall asleep.

When the subways reopened I took the first opportunity to venture into Manhattan and see everything close up. The entire city south of Canal Street was closed off, so I stood there at a police barricade, alongside confused tourists and mourning locals, watching the utter chaos of police and fire trucks, and that dreadful smoke still flowing steadily. The ground was covered in a layer of dust and ash. As the days pressed on, the atmosphere in New York was without exaggeration one of the strangest, eeriest, most incredible things I've ever experienced. With life basically frozen for everyone, my classes were canceled and my job was on hold, so I spent a few days just wandering the city and soaking everything in. No one really seemed sure what to do, for a while. No one wanted to just stay at home, but no one could work. Businesses were open, but only out of a need for familiarity. No one was buying anything, and nothing was getting accomplished. People were just sort of vacantly going through the motions of regular life, while everyone's thoughts were on the same thing. Every surface in Manhattan was covered with these horrible "MISSING" flyers - handmade papers duplicated on Xerox machines with pictures of people who were unaccounted for after 9/11. They would say things like "My brother Tom Stevens, last seen on the 32nd floor the morning of 9/11, please call if you have seen him." They felt so hopeless and tragic, those flyers - and they were everywhere - a constant, sobering reminder of the event's ongoing human impact. Union Square Park - my favorite Manhattan gathering place - became one of dozens of open memorials around the city that went on for months. I took this picture there, two weeks after 9/11:



Meanwhile, the sense of unity and nationalism in New York was rising. Like never before, everyone was together in grief and compassion. Everyone you passed on the street felt like family - suddenly you had something huge and powerful in common with millions of strangers - something bigger than all of your differences combined. It was the first time I'd experienced the unprecedented warmth and humanity that swells up in people amidst a tragedy. New York's famously callous attitude had melted away, at least for a moment - it soon returned, in the form of a focused and unified anger. Everyone wanted revenge.



As the blame for 9/11 fell into place - squarely on Osama bin Laden - there was much ado about how bad we all wanted his head on a plate. Walking down the street in Brooklyn at any given point you were bound to hear someone spouting their own colorful opinions about America's new #1 enemy. T-shirts like the one pictured above (and the far more exploitative one at the top of this entry) sprung up as quickly as the American flags had, with the cheap Chinatown souvenir industry anxious to capitalize on the unified aggression. Everyone gathered to watch how Bush was going to respond. Are we going to war? Certainly there's going to be some retaliation, right? Why haven't we invaded Afghanistan yet? Let's kill those fuckers!

This was a crucial moment in American history, because the entire world was united with us. This is a time when France - fucking France - even proclaimed, "We are all Americans." Republicans and Democrats, Americans and Europeans - we were one, with a common enemy, and there was no question that retaliation was necessary, it was just a matter of when and how.

It's also important to remember that few people hated Bush at this time. Sure, he was a bumbling idiot who'd stolen the 2000 election, but he hadn't done anything yet to light the fire of opposition that would ultimately engulf him. In fact, 9/11 was the first significant thing to happen in his presidency, and he initially seemed to be handling it very well. It's important to remember that in those days following 9/11, everything was stacked up in our favor. It's important to remember that because it underscores how badly we blew it. Five years later, many thousands more have died, the world views us as arrogant war mongers, we have incited a rise in terrorism and anti-American sentiment, freedoms of our citizens have been stripped away, we are less safe than we were before 9/11... and we still haven't even caught the man who was once so squarely in our crosshairs.

The Salon article discusses this far more eloquently than I can, so I suggest you read it and observe a very important point that the mainstream media tends to strangely ignore: While the oft-quoted number of American casualties on 9/11 - 2,873 - is a staggering number, it shouldn't ever be quoted without an addendum of the 2,700 Americans who have been killed fighting the needless Iraq war. They're all victims of 9/11, but for different reasons - and the latter group is never given the same respect and honor as the first, because Bush solemnly honoring the victims of the World Trade Center is good for his image, but acknowledging the victims of the war he started certainly isn't. So of course there is no memorial for those victims - no television events to remember their sacrifices. Rather, images of soldiers' coffins draped with American flags have been aggressively shielded from the media. God forbid the truth make our fearless leaders look bad. Oh, and we haven't even mentioned the almost 50,000 innocent Iraqis reportedly dead. Certainly, their deaths are not as important as the people who died in those towers, right?

The point is that while we are being bombarded with patriotic exploitation as we're asked to remember the people who died on 9/11 - let's not forget 9/11's real impact, and the many, many more people who have died as a result of our arrogant country abusing 9/11's emotional power.

In October of 2001 - roughly three weeks after 9/11 - I had the opportunity to tour ground zero, while it was still being searched and gutted, well before it was open to the public. From the balcony of an adjacent skyscraper, the view of the wreckage below was staggering. Seeing it in person transcended the images on television so much more than I could have expected. The only experience in my life I can compare it to is seeing the destruction in New Orleans first-hand. I took a picture from that balcony, looking down on the former World Trade Center:



When we came down from the skyscraper and stood on the ground, dwarfed by twisted spires of warped structural beams and mountains of rubble, we walked onto a hastily-constructed wooden platform where the families of those who had died in the towers had been allowed to stand and view ground zero. There, the bereaved who had come before us had carved their thoughts and prayers into the platform's wooden guard rails. Messages like "To my fiance Karen, rest in peace, I love you so much," and "I miss you Daddy," were among hundreds of gut-wrenchingly sad goodbye notes scrawled on that wooden beam, each one more heart-breaking than the last. It flooded us with the deeply personal sadness of the whole thing, and brought tears to our eyes. It was clear that the world was going to change - we only hoped it could be for the better.

Five years later, television will attempt to tug at your heart strings with stories of tragedy and mourning. Politicians will attempt to tug at your patriotism with stories of why we fight. But few places will discuss the real impact of 9/11. We should all remember what we lost that day - but the most patriotic thing any of us could do is acknowledge all of what we lost - and ask if it was really necessary.

E3 Ramblings and Xbox Live Terrorism

[Currently Listening To: The Kinks - The Complete Collection]



When I was a kid, time was measured in terms of how far away it was from December 25th. Christmas was the pinnacle of childhood joy and excitement - it was far and away the best day of the year. And as such, the night before Christmas was unquestionably the longest night of the year. The arduous wait for morning left me lying awake in my bed until late into the night, jittering in seizures of anticipation, excitedly fantasizing about what wonders would await me under the Christmas tree in just a matter of hours. Confined to my bed ("Santa won't come if you're not sleeping," my mother would tell me), I desperately tried to fall asleep to advance morning's arrival, but the excitement was simply too overwhelming.

The sad thing about growing up is that rarely, if ever, does anything even begin to approach those monumental levels of childhood excitement. If anything, becoming an adult is more or less a process of the world becoming more boring, as all of the wonders of life are gradually stripped away by reality. No, there's no such thing as magic. Animals cannot talk, nor will they ever. There's no such thing as Santa Claus, or The Easter Bunny, or The Tooth Fairy. Family Matters isn't funny - at all. The world just isn't as magical as you were led to believe it was.

It is a rare and wonderful occasion, then, when something manages to capture even a slice of that youthful Christmas Eve enthusiasm - and so it was for me last week as I grinned ear to ear while playing the new Nintendo system at E3.

E3, for those of you unaware, is the Electronics Entertainment Expo - a massive trade show for the video game industry, where every game-related company from around the world gathers to show off their upcoming software and hardware. It is not open to the public, as it is meant specifically for retailers, press, and members the gaming industry. I am none of those things, but I managed to get in anyway (this time without even having to put anyone's balls in my mouth). The whole event is a rather surreal experience - a nerd's wet dream of electronic overstimulation. It's also the sausage party to end all sausage parties. Never will you be in the company of more sweaty, pasty-faced men than at E3 - hell, even Comic-Con draws in a fair amount of girls (nevermind that they're 250 lbs and dressed like Klingons). With exceptions you could probably count on two hands, the only girls you'll see at E3 are the hired ones, who are referred to as "booth babes."

"Booth babes" are one of the strangest and most hilarious aspects of the E3 experience: Across the convention floor, each company hires attractive models to dress up in skimpy clothes (and/or as a video game character) and promote their product by luring horny nerds to their company's booth. The hotter the girls are, the shittier the product probably is - no surprise then that Nokia's N-Gage, the retarded little brother of portable game consoles - had a virtual army of gorgeous models attempting to trick people into thinking their product was even slightly cool. As companies struggle to outdo each others' booth babe presentations, they set up photo ops and giveaways, which often result in dumb stripper type chicks standing on a stage with a microphone, yelling - in that unique stripper voice which might as well be a neon "IDIOT" sign on their forehead - things like "Okaaay guys, who's next to come get your picture taken with some sexy laaaadies, and check out awesome new video games from Namco?"

Pictures taken, indeed. The funniest part is watching the nerds - or, the "sweaties," as I call them - actually line up just to get their photo snapped with a pretty girl or two. This is done for the same reason I would take a picture of myself in front of the Swiss Alps: Because it's probably something I'll never be that close to again for the rest of my life. Here are a couple fun examples I took:





It's kind of sad, right? I don't get it - what do you do with that photo? Jack off to it? Impress your equally lonely friends? I mean, at least the first one has a silly theme, but most of the examples I saw were more like the latter photo - just guys standing next to pretty girls, and looking damned happy about it. Best of all, as you watch these vacant model chicks go through the motions with sweaty after sweaty, feigning a smile over and over again, you can almost see how bummed they are that instead of posing for Playboy or some shit they're stuck at the bottom of the modeling barrel, getting slimed with geek grease all day and yapping about video games they'd never so much as touch if they weren't getting paid. For more evidence of how excited guys get over these chicks, IGN has many extensive pages of booth babe photos. In case girls in space suits are your thing.



Anyway, I got to spend some time with Wii, Nintendo's new system which promises to use its uniquely intuitive controller to take gaming outside of its steamed-up box of dweebery and appeal to a wider audience. People who don't normally play video games, or have lost interest in them because of the complexity of game controls, can pick up Wii and just have fun - and I think that's great. I could, in fact, write pages and pages about how I think this is an amazing approach and how the obsession with next-gen graphics is decreasing the overall quality and innovation of games, and bla bla bla, but I'll spare you all that - all I'll say is that, from hands-on experience, Wii is incredibly fun, and the philosophy behind it is perfect. While other systems are shitting out the same exact games with more reflections on the metals and more beads of sweat on the characters' faces, Nintendo is doing something bold and different, and, most importantly, fun. The next six months of waiting for its release are going to be like one big long Christmas Eve - I'm incredibly excited. My entire life will grind to a hault when I fire up that new Zelda game.

For right now, though, my favorite gaming hobby is Xbox Live terrorism. In case you're not aware, "Xbox Live" is the online service for the Xbox and Xbox 360 game systems. It allows you, among other things, to play video games against people from around the world via the magical powers of the internet. It seems like a neat idea, in theory - but the reality is, unless you're the hardest of hardcore nerds - the type of pasty, overweight male who lives in your mom's basement, sustains yourself on a steady diet of Cheetos and Bawls, and gets a stumpy little boner while snapping a photo with Lara Croft at E3 - you don't really stand a chance on Xbox Live.

I've discussed the pitfalls of the global arena before, and they rear their ugly head once again with Xbox Live. As much as I love video games, I don't have the time to get into them the way I used to - so when pitted against legions of sweaty, acne-faced know-it-alls who have been playing any given game for roughly seven thousand hours more than I have - it's not much of a competition. So, since I'm not going to win, I have to get creative to make it fun.

Xbox Live's best feature is that you can talk to your competitors while you're playing, by way of a headset. When you're wearing the headset, you look approximately this stupid:



Yes, that's me. Wearing my Xbox 360 headset. Take a number, ladies.

The device is actually a pretty significant nerd test: If you can manage to put the headset on and not feel so utterly and completely lame that you have to promptly remove it and announce "I can't do this" - you're probably a nerd. Just like me. I'm a huge fucking nerd, by the way - when I make fun of other people for being nerdy, I do not do so lightly. I have Star Wars spaceships hanging from my bedroom ceiling. I look at screenshots and trailers of upcoming video games on the internet. I have a stupidly large collection of action figures, both in and out of the packages. But I have to draw the line somewhere. I have to employ some degree of moderation in my nerdiness. The fine folks you'll be chatting with on Xbox Live know no such moderation. They are more or less the same type of pit-stained dweebs who populate internet gaming and computer forums, the anonymous stomping grounds of the opinionated loser elite where sniveling, empowered teenagers spend all day having fictional arguments with each other. It is here where you might see CovenantLord666 mocking l337CommandWarrior1984's laughably inferior knowledge of Final Fantasy chronology, to which SephirothTheAlmighty might wittingly chime in with "H0ly sh1tz0rz j00 0wnzorzed him upz0r!1" Riveting interactions like these come to life in a whole new way when you slide on your headset and discover that, when you finally get to hear them talk, all of these sweaties manage to have the exact same voice. You know the one: that snide, nasally tone, drenched in the overconfidence that only anonymity can provide, each sentence suffixed with a breathy sneer of a chuckle that says, in no uncertain terms: "I firmly believe that I am better than you in every way possible... so long as we're safely distanced by the internet." They are quick to call you "n00b" and snort cockily at your pitifully low gamerscore (incidentally, your gamerscore has an inverse relationship with the amount you get laid). And they do not like to be bothered during their online gaming. That's where I come in.

Since I'm usually losing miserably in the online mode of any game, I keep myself entertained by taunting and annoying the other players in amusing ways. I have a variety of voices that I use, like a pushy gay dude who makes his opponents incredibly uncomfortable by aggressively asking about their sexual encounters with other men, and a cocky Russian man named Boris who persistently claims victory for the motherland even when he is in last place. An actual in-game conversation I had - talking in my shitty Russian accent while playing some lame mech-combat game I'd had roughly one minute of experience with - went something like this:

Me: Stuuuupid Americans. Mother Russia crush you with iron fish!
SmugGamerNerd1: Ha! It's iron FIST you foreign idiot!
Me: You are puny little America faggot. I smash you with mighty fish. I kill you and your sissy face.
SmugGamerNerd2: Is that why you're in LAST PLACE?? HA!
SmugGamerNerd3: Ha ha, oh man, this guy is a TARD!
Me:I am much of the winner, little anus boys. You play many little videogame and never to touch woman. In my country, I make love to hundred woman. Two woman is touching my pennis right now, sweaty boy.
SmugGamerNerd2: Yeah, right! Maybe if you tried shutting up you wouldn't be getting your ass kicked so bad, fag!
Me: It is you who have ass kicked, puny America faggot. In my country, I touch the naked vagina and you play little games. You should eat of my cock, smelly ballbag man!
SmugGamerNerd3: Dude, shut the fuck up, we're playing a game here!
Me: I put my fish in your rear hole, stinky boys! Victory for motherland!
SmugGamerNerd1: What the fuck? Do you not understand English? You're LOSING douchebag!
SmugGamerNerd2: Yeah, and your country sucks anyway! Russia is like poor and stuff!
Me: Mother Russia make a giant shit on puny America! You are eating of cock, little scrotum boy! In my country, I touch many more of vagina than you! Vagina of Russia woman very wet and with much smell! Smell is like salty clam! You will never know! You are worthless fuckermother with no vagina touching! In my country -
SmugGamerNerd3: SHUT UP!! You're ruining the game!
Me: Russia not to be silence! We destroy you country little puny faggot boy!
SmugGamerNerd2: Ha! We could kick your stupid country's ass! We have like more nuclear bombs than you have people!
SmugGamerNerd3: Guuuys, honestly, stop, this is so annoying!
SmugGamerNerd1: Fuck off noob, you're talking just as much as them!
SmugGamerNerd3: Fuck you man, this is fucking bullshit!
Me: FREEDOM FOR MOTHERLAND! DEATH TO AMERICAN!!
SmugGamerNerd2: SHUT UP!!!
Me: I PISS ON YOUR MUSTACHE!!!!!
SmugGamerNerd3: FUUUCK YOOUUU!!!!
Me: MY COCK IN YOUR FATHER!!!!!!

And from there it just descended into chaos. And yes, I am extremely easily amused.

Another favorite activity is having a girl do the talking while I play the game - this causes all sorts of trouble, because the nerds' skid-marked tidy whities become soiled with the prospect that they have actually encountered the veritable Holy Grail of online gaming: The Girl Gamer. The girls I've done this with each have different approaches - Eileen put on her "phone sex voice" and flirtatiously pried into the sweaties' personal lives, while Tamar giggled and taunted the lesser players about how they were losing to a girl. The result is usually a subsequent landslide of friend requests and private messages, as the boys jerk off that night imagining they just had an online face-off with one of the booth babes who talked them into buying an N-Gage. Sometimes then I'll send them a message back, talking in my gay voice, at which point they realize they've been duped and become infuriated.

All of this is much funnier when you can actually hear what's happening - if anyone knows how to record both sides of an Xbox Live conversation, please let me know - I'd love to post some Xbox Live terrorism podcasts.

New Year's Drama, Guys in Bands, and A Public Service Announcement for the People of Los Angeles

[Currently Watching: Metropolis]


Last year, my roommate and I had a big new year's party. It was kind of insane but a lot of fun, so we decided to do it again this year, even though my roommate has since moved out and I've taken the place over for myself. Her involvement meant twice the amount of people would be showing up, as usually a large chunk of the crowd at our parties is her friends and their friends. And indeed, there was quite a crowd this year. It was more or less perfect when we all shouted the countdown and toasted with champagne, but after that more people just kept coming, and by about one o'clock I was no longer having fun, as I was neurotically shoving my way through the masses into various rooms, policing the dozens of strangers who were wandering throughout my house. There were as many people outside as there were inside, completely packing the patio and spilling out into the driveway and street, and the majority of them were complete douchebags. Douchebags with beards.

I don't know why, but LA hipsters love their fucking big ugly 70's beards. There are always large groups of sweater-wearing bearded Silverlake uber-douches that crawl out of dirty coffee shops and used record stores and manage to find their way to my house whenever I have a party, just so they can sausage out the place and drink up all the beer. I think they feel like having a beard and wearing a sweater distinguishes them as record-collecting, coffee-drinking, PBRs-at-Silverlake-Lounge hipsters who are in math rock bands, rather than the beardless, drug-snorting, Jack-and-Coke-at-The-Beauty-Bar hipsters who are in new wave bands. The irony beard is one of my least favorite looks for lame hipster dudes. It doesn't look cool, guys. There's nothing even remotely attractive or interesting about it. You look like complete tools. Shave that shit and please put a fucking bullet in this asinine 70's trend that no one can seem to let go of. That includes shirts like these:



You know the type: Idiotic, faux-vintage shirts with stupid tongue-in-cheek 70's/80's graphics and/or catch phrases. PLEASE. Everyone. Go to your closet and pull out all of the shirts like this that you've bought at Urban Outfitters since this dumb trend started a thousand years back, and burn them to the fucking ground. Don't sell them to a thrift store, that will only compound the problem. Just set them ablaze. It's time to let go. It's fucking over. It descended into mall fashion more than two years ago but still no one can get enough. I'm ashamed that my generation is going to be looked back on as the one who couldn't muster up enough creativity to define their own style, but instead had to drudge up bad fashion statements from the past and feign nostalgia for shit that happened before they were born.

Another vile infection of my party - and this city in general - is everyone's need to be in a shitty little local band, and - more importantly - that anyone still thinks that's cool. It's not. It's not cool, it's not unique, it's not impressive. These days, it's much more unique to not be in a band, and have no desire to be in one. Literally everyone in LA is in some manner of insignificant indie band, and guys in bands can't wait to find a way to tell you about it. I can't tell you how many times some friend introduces me to some typical LA dude with shaggy hair and stupid clothes wearing sunglasses inside, and I say something nonchalant like "Hey, nice to meet you, what's going on?" and his response is along the lines of: "Oh, not too bad. Just finished up recording some new tracks with my band." How am I meant to react to that? HOLY SHIT!! Whoa, WHAT?? You're in a BAND??? FUCK, that's SO COOL!!! I had NO IDEA I was talking to someone who's IN A BAND!! Please, tell me all about it! Tell me how you got signed to a record label that your girlfriend's cousin runs out of his basement, and you're releasing your first EP in March, and by releasing you mean it'll be on the local music shelf at Amoeba because this girl you used to date works there and she'll hook you up if you keep knocking the drinks off of her bill when she comes into the restaurant you work at. Please, tell me which combination of early 80's post-punk bands you sound like, and by sound like I mean a watered-down copy of a copy of a copy, stripped of talent and innovation and sincerity.

Or, my other favorite: "So, what do you do?" "Oh, I'm in a band." Okay, let me rephrase that: "What restaurant do you work at?" Or: "Do you just work the cashier at Amoeba, or do you stock the shelves too?" Unless you are one of the few people who actually have had enough success with your band to be able to quit your day job, being in a band is not your fucking occupation. It's just a dumb hobby that no one is impressed by. It's like if someone asked me what I do and I said "I play video games and bitch about shit on the internet." Yes, I wish that was my job, but it's not. It's funny how people who are in good and/or successful bands tend to be the ones who don't feel the need to bring it up at every possible opportunity.

Even worse is the girlfriend of the guy who's in a shitty little local band - the vapid scene princess who looks like a rejected American Apparel ad and lives vicariously through the non-accomplishments of her talentless boyfriend. For as many times as I've talked to a guy who can't wait to mention that he's in a band, I've also talked to girls who can't wait to mention that they're dating someone who's in a band. Like, I'm introduced and I say, "How's it going?" and her response is "Oh, not much, I was just over at the studio where my boyfriend is recording." Translation: "My boyfriend stands on a stage at small, half-empty clubs and plays an instrument, and because I'm inexplicably drawn to that I'm overlooking the fact that he can't support himself with his wait staff job at Fred's, and that he's a burnout heroin addict who cheats on me with herpes-infested Hollywood sluts, and he barely qualifies as having a tenth grade education! But none of that matters because he's in a BAND and that means something to the shallow, bottom-feeding social parasites I call my friends!" Wow. Color me impressed.

Okay, sorry, that was a bit of a tangent. The point is that my party was starting to fill up with unbearable douchebags, and I was trying to get some of them to leave when a couple of my friends told me that some girls were upstairs in my office doing coke, and they wouldn't stop - so I stormed up there to investigate, and found the door to my office locked from the inside. I banged on the door and yelled, and after a moment it opened, revealing several girls who I didn't know gathered around a white dust stain on my glass office desk where a great deal of cocaine had presumably just been ingested. I told them to get the fuck out, and I didn't appreciate them A) coming up to my office without my permission, and B) bringing drugs in my house and getting them all over my furniture. They grumbled sheepishly and headed downstairs. I told them I was going to call the cops if they didn't leave.

I have a very strong distaste for cocaine. I find it a vile, dirty substance that corrupts personalities and destroys lives. I don't want to do it, I don't want to be around it, I don't want to be around people who are doing it... I don't want it in my life in any way, shape, or form. I've watched it destroy far too many lives of people around me to offer anything other than condemnation of it at this point. I don't think you're even slightly cool if you do it, I think you're sad. And that anyone could think it's even remotely okay to bring it into a complete stranger's house and spread it out all over his furniture in a room they've entered without permission is completely beyond my understanding. They couldn't even just do it in the bathroom like normal cokeheads. So when I saw the girls still at my party a little while later, after having already asked them to leave, I had to resort to humiliation to get them out. Coke is, after all, the drug that everyone does but no one talks about - so you can imagine they were none too pleased when I pointed at them from across the room, shouted at the top of my lungs and announced to everyone, "HEY LOOK, IT'S THE COKEHEADS! THOSE GIRLS WERE DOING COKE UP IN MY ROOM! THEY LOCKED THE DOOR TO MY OFFICE AND SPREAD IT OUT ALL OVER MY DESK AND SNORTED UP A SHITLOAD OF IT! ISN'T THAT COOL? BE SURE TO TELL THEM HOW COOL YOU THINK THAT IS!!"

It appeared to be working, as they scowled at me and started heading for the door. Then, one of them came up to me, furious, and said, "Hey, we're leaving, okay? I don't appreciate you humiliating my friends like that!"
and so I said: "Really?? Well I don't appreciate you and your friends going into my office without permission and doing coke in there!"
and she said: "What the fuck do you expect? It's a party, of course people are going to be doing drugs!"
and I said: "Well it's MY party, and I don't want anyone doing coke off of my furniture! It's fucking disrespectful and disgusting!"
and she screamed "FUCK YOU!" and grabbed a nearby glass bottle and threw it at me as hard as she could, then started running off.

It would seem that I'm some sort of magnet for glass bottles. People just really like to attack me with them. This time, however, the girl missed, and instead hit Tamar - an innocent bystander - in the shoulder. Who the fuck does that? Seriously, she could have given someone a concussion, or broken someone's nose. That is utterly insane behavior. By this time, of course, everyone at the party was watching the incident unfold. I stormed after the girl, screaming at her that she was out of her fucking mind. A couple other people were chasing her too. She ran out towards the street with her friends, and shouted back at me - this is the best - "DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM?? DO YOU KNOW WHO MY FATHER IS??" She actually said that. Verbatim. The most retarded Hollywood cliche in the book. I and everyone at the party roared in laughter as she disappeared down the street. I find myself forced to say this far more often than I'd like, but it's once again appropriate: "Only in LA."

Since then we've found out that the girl's name is Alia Intably, and as a public service I would like to warn everyone in Los Angeles to stay away from her, as she is dangerous and has been known to attack people violently - Tamar's shoulder is still sore from the incident. I never did find out who her father is, but I hope he finds out about this, as I'm sure regardless of who he is he wouldn't condone his daughter's reprehensible behavior.

After that bit of drama, the number of weird strangers invading my home continued to grow, until I could take no more and had to shout out "ATTENTION EVERYBODY! YOU PROBABLY DON'T KNOW WHO I AM, BUT THIS IS ACTUALLY MY HOUSE YOU'RE IN RIGHT NOW, AND MOST OF YOU ARE BEING EXTREMELY DISRESPECTFUL OF IT! SO ANYONE WHO DOES NOT KNOW MY FIRST AND LAST NAME, PLEASE GET THE FUCK OUT IMMEDIATELY!" Slowly but surely, it worked.

What a pain in the ass. At least it got better when the crowd thinned out to my actual friends. Next time I'm having my own party with only people I actually know in attendance. And I'm having a guest list. And a bouncer at the door to enforce it. A midget bouncer. A really buff midget bouncer. With a top hat. And a laser gun.

Story Time: The Best Little Whorehouse In Amsterdam (Or Not)

[Currently Listening To: Bill Hicks - Salvation]


     In addition to being solicited by one of Boy George's mantoys and watching a transvestite sex show in jaw-dropped disbelief, there were a couple other bizarre stories from Europe that I'd meant to write down at the time, but never got around to. This is one of them... (this is a long post, but I had some time on an airplane this evening and I wanted to write this down so I wouldn't forget the details - read it or don't read it, I don't give a fuck)

     At some point in the middle of our European trip, we stopped in Amsterdam for exactly one night off before we were to catch a flight to Spain the next day. We were tired from traveling but determined nonetheless to make something of the few hours we had in a city with a reputation for trouble. So myself and a couple friends set out on foot towards the famed red light district, where adventure surely awaited us. Or did it? We quickly discovered that even Amsterdam, the city of sin, is dead as balls on a sunday night. After an hour of walking, the novelty of looking at weathered hookers standing in little red fish tanks was quickly fading, and all we wanted was someplace to sit down and have a drink - but every bar seemed to be closed or closing. Only one dingy-looking tavern on the corner of a dark sidestreet showed signs of life - in fact, it was overflowing with loud, drunken European men. Even from the outside it looked filthy and cramped and potentially dangerous, but damnit, it was open, so we decided to give it a shot.

     The entrance to the bar was a tunnel of large, scarred, skinheaded British rugby thugs whose boisterous drunken conversations gave way to silent scowls when we - three pale, skinny, black-clad Americans - squeezed our way past them to get in. Clearly, we were not particularly welcome in this place, but it seemed like it was too late to turn back at that point.

     The bar's interior was truly a wretched hive of scum and villainy; a dark, narrow, rotting dump of a place which looked as old as time and smelled even older. The musty, humid air was thick with cigarette smoke which, along with the succulent aroma of stale beer, vomit, and body odor, seemed to have been collecting on every surface of the room for two hundred years, unchallenged by proper cleaning or ventilation. From somewhere in the back, a dying jukebox blasted a cacophony of Irish drinking music cranked too loud for the capabilities of the weathered speakers. All manors of unsavory characters filled every corner of the room - laughing and shouting and drinking heavily - and many of them cast their eyes suspiciously upon us as we walked in. I felt like C-3PO stepping into the Mos Eisley Cantina - I was half expecting one of the bartenders to point at us and say, "we don't serve their kind here!"

     We sat down reluctantly at the bar, still taking in the breadth of our surroundings. As I adjusted my stool, I accidently bumped gently into the back of a rather large man next to me. He spun around and glared at me with a soul-piercing look of death and said, in the thickest of consonant-free cockney accents: "watch it." I sheepishly apologized and scooted my stool so far in the other direction I was practically sitting in my friend's lap. It was definitely time for some drinks. My friend Dave got the attention of a wiry old man bartender with a big hook nose, a horseshoe of stringy white hair, and an apron so filthy it was stained in colors I didn't even know existed. He spoke no English but understood the word "vodka," and that was all we really needed. He presented us with three shots (mixers, I presumed, were a foreign concept here) which we quickly gulped down (it was the cheapest, most throat-searing vodka I've ever tasted) and asked for another round. The bartender took our dirty glasses, dunked them in a sink filled with dark brown dishwater, and set them back in the stack of clean glasses, where they were immediately picked up by the second bartender and filled anew for some other customers.

     After a couple rounds, we eased up a bit and began to enjoy the atmosphere, spending the next hour or so people-watching, bullshitting, having a great time. By that point the crowd was thinning out, and at 2am the bar's bright overhead lights turned on, announcing closing time in the most disorienting of ways. The question, of course, was now what? Surely there must be somewhere else to go and continue our night. My friend Jason, a couple shots drunker than Dave and myself, called for the attention of the other, English-speaking bartender. He was a large middle-aged man with an accent of undetermined Eastern European origin. He had a barrel chest, a leathery face, a buzz cut, and a bowling shirt with the name "Frankie" embroidered on the breast. He walked over to us, keeping one eye on a trouble-making drunk over in the corner, and told us "no more drink, bar is closed."
     "No," Jason explained, "we want to go to another bar. Do you know anywhere around here that's still open where we could get a drink?"
     Frankie thought about it for a minute, then nodded slowly and said, "yes, I know of good place."
     "A bar?"
     "Yes. It is sex club. But it is bar. It have drinks. It good."
     We looked at each other suspiciously. Jason asked if there were any normal bars still open.
     "No," Frankie replied, "bars all closed. Only sex club open now."
     "But it's a bar, right? I mean, they serve drinks?"
     "Yes, yes, it bar. Drinks. I call car for you. I get you there. You get there, you tell them Frankie send you." Frankie flipped open a beat-up cell phone from his pocket and disappeared to the other side of the bar, apparently making a phone call. Dave and Jason and I huddled together to discuss. Jason assured us that he'd been to one of these "sex clubs" last time he was in Europe - that it was just a bar, but with girls hanging out who you can purchase and take upstairs if you'd like.
     "If you don't want any girls," Jason told us, "you don't have to get any. We can just sit there and drink."
     "So it's a whorehouse?" I asked.
     "No, well... I mean, yeah, but it's classier than that. It'll be just like any other bar. Look, it's the only place to go right now, and it'll be an adventure."
     Dave was not convinced - rather, he was beginning to panic: "That guy is calling us a fucking car right now, and if we get in that car, we're dead. Do you see that guy's watch? That's a fucking ten thousand dollar Rolex. You think he makes that kind of money washing dishes behind a bar? No, he makes money robbing naive tourists like us. We're going to end up in fucking pieces inside Frankie's trunk."
     "Dude, I don't think he's making that much money from robbing tourists. I mean, how many tourists would even come in this place?"
     "Oh come on - 'Frankie sent us'?? That's fucking code for 'gut these witless Americans and dump them in the river'!"
     Just then, Frankie returned, and said, "I have arrange for you. Car is come to get you."
     "Actually," I said, "if you could just give us the address, we'll catch a cab there - we need to, uh, pick up a couple friends."
     Frankie shrugged and said he would get the address for us, then disappeared again.
     "There," I told Dave, "now we don't have to ride in Frankie's car."
     "I still don't trust this guy."
     Frankie came back with an address of gibberish Dutch street names scribbled on a dirty napkin. "You go here, you tell them Frankie send you." Thanks, Frankie. Then he leaned forward, and said, "Tell me - you are in band, no?"
     "Uh, yeah," I said, appeasing him. "Yeah, we're in a band." We weren't, of course, but I guess we looked the part.
     Frankie's face lit up. "I knew this! I am friend with many rock and roll band. Last week I meet Keith Richard from Rolling Stone!" He ducked down behind the bar and pulled out a photo album, then leafed through it until he found a photo of himself standing next to the corpse drummer from The Rolling Stones. "You see? Keith Richard!"
     "Oh, wow. Cool, man. Real cool."
     Frankie beamed, clearly very proud. "I have to clean up bar now. In thirty minute, I see you at club, and then we talk."
     Yeah. Sure. That'll be great. I can't wait for our talk, Frankie. We said goodbye, headed out to the street, and grabbed a cab.

     On the ride to Frankie's mysterious sex club, we grilled the cab driver for clues about our destination. He told us that there were about five of these clubs in the city, some of them more expensive than others. This one, he told us, was not one of the expensive ones. We weren't sure if that was a good or a bad thing, but what did we care - all we wanted was a fucking drink.

     The cab came to a stop on a dark, residential-looking street. "This is it," the cab driver told us.
     "Um... where?"
     "Right there." He pointed to the unmarked door of an apartment building, indistinct from a dozen other doors of a dozen other adjacent apartment buildings. There was no sign, no people outside, no lights on in the windows - no evidence at all that this was anyplace other than the residence of someone who had long since retired for bed. Still, we got out of the cab, determined to investigate. Jason knocked on the door..... Nothing.
     Dave was flipping out: "Dude, this is fucked, this is fucked, we're going to die right now for sure."
     I was beginning to agree, as Jason knocked again with no results. "Yeah, this is pretty weird. We should get out of here." Jason nodded, and we turned to walk back towards the cab.
     Just then, from somewhere above us, a voice shouted "Hey!" We stopped and looked up - a rugged-looking old black woman was leaning out of a window on what must have been the third floor, peering down at us.
     "What you want?" she yelled in a gruff, heavily accented voice.
     "Uh... is this a bar?"
     She paused. "Frankie send you?"
     "Um, yes. Frankie sent us."
     She slammed the window shutters closed. We all gave each other the same look of "what the fuck is going on here?"
     "Dude," Dave said, "let's get out of here. This is fucking weird."
     I glanced over at the cab driver, still waiting for us at the curb. "Yeah, let's go."

     And then, just as our minds were made up, the front door swung open, and there was the old black woman, standing there leering at us. She was probably sixty years old, and had frazzled black hair with streaks of gray. Deep dark circles hung under her eyes, and what few teeth she still had were crooked and yellow. She was wearing a faded silk slip - something that might have been sexy when it was worn by the woman who originally purchased it, thirty years and seven owners ago, before it was retrieved out of a dumpster by the beast who stood before us. It had stains of unknown origin scattered across it, and one of the straps was held together with a safety pin. From the bottom of the slip emerged a pair of scrawny, veiny legs, capped by the filthiest pair of slippers I'd ever seen. "Come in," she told us, in a tone used more commonly for demands than invitations.

     We exchanged glances - should we go in this creepy place? My every instinct was screaming "run for the fucking hills." But Jason, buzzed and adventurous, stepped forward. "C'mon, how bad could it be?" What we saw inside hinted at the answer.

     The room we walked into was dark and empty. There were no people, there was no music. There were no signs of life. In one corner, a ripped up old couch sat next to a dying plant. The other side of the room was mostly occupied by a shoddily-constructed bar with five or six almost-empty bottles of nondescript liquor sitting behind it. Another corner of the room had a pole in it - the stripper kind, not the fireman kind. The air smelled like cigarettes and death.
     "Sit down," the old woman told us.
     "Wait," Dave said, "is this a bar? Is this a club?"
     "Yes, it is club."
     "Are there... people here? Anybody?" I asked.
     "Yes, people here. Sit down. I call girls for you." She disappeared down a hallway and up some stairs.
     We sat down at the small bar and laughed nervously. "What the FUCK is going on here?"

     Then, a shorter, fatter old black woman emerged from the hallway, and walked behind the bar. Acknowledging us only with a disinterested glance, she flicked a switch that turned on an overhead light, which momentarily illuminated the dark room, then flickered, and fizzled out. She pulled out a remote from behind the bar and pointed it at a tiny television mounted high up on the wall above the bar. A fuzzy image wobbled into place on the screen - some sort of European music video was playing. It wasn't up very loud, but at least finally there was something other than dead silence in the room. The woman set glasses down in front of each of us, and then looked at us expectedly. Oh, I get it, she's the bartender. "Vodka," Jason said. Dave and I nodded.
     The woman poured our drinks from a plastic bottle with the word "vodka" written on it with a Sharpie. We toasted, "to Amsterdam," and emptied the glasses quickly. The woman filled them up again and said, "So. You know Frankie?"
     "Yes," Jason said, "we met Frankie tonight. Uh, nice guy."
     She nodded unenthusiastically. We did another shot. Dave, still nervous about the situation, sat down on the dirty couch, his eyes darting around suspiciously.

     Just then, a woman came in from the hallway, and slumped down on the stool next to me. She was probably 21 but looked 40 - rake thin and pale, with greasy unwashed hair, a wart on her cheek, and teeth so yellow they were closer to brown. An expression of disdain carved creases into her weathered face as she sucked on a cigarette like it was oxygen at the bottom of the ocean. And she just sat there, looking straight ahead, not acknowledging us. Squirming awkwardly, I turned towards Jason and Dave and joked, "back off guys, she's mine." Jason snickered. I turned back to the girl and decided I might as well make this entertaining. "Hey there," I said, in the lightest tone I could muster. She continued smoking, without looking at me. "So... uh... where you from?" She turned her head towards me, scowling, giving me the death stare.
     "Mars," she replied bitterly, in a tone you might use to speak to someone who had just killed your mother.
     I chuckled awkwardly. "Mars, huh? It's, uh, pretty hot there this time of year, isn't it?" She grunted unintelligibly and resumed her smoking. For a girl who was expecting me to solicit her for sex, she really wasn't selling herself very well.

     At that point two more girls came in from upstairs, both of them as hideous and unfriendly as the first. One sat down next to Dave, and the other next to Jason. No one said anything. The atmosphere was getting creepier and creepier. I turned to Jason and whispered, "I think we're all getting AIDS just from sitting here. We need to get the hell out of this place. At some point they're going to expect us to pay these girls for sex, and I don't think they're going to be happy when they realize we're not interested in that." Jason nodded. But just as I was getting up to tell Dave the same thing, the old black woman reappeared, and said, "You have girl now. Rooms are upstairs. More girls coming." We all glanced at each other.

     Suddenly the doorbell rang. Now what? Frankie? "I hope that's not Frankie..." Jason mumbled.
     "It is more girls," the woman said, moving towards the door, "I call more girls for you." Great, just what we need. She opened the door, and there was Frankie, wearing a clean shirt and a shiny gold necklace. He said something unintelligible to the old woman, and then the plot thickened: They embraced, and kissed sloppily and passionately. I think I threw up a little when I saw that.
     Frankie looked around and smiled. "You are here! Good! Many beautiful girl for you. Have fun with girls. Then we talk. Much to talk about. I want know about your band."
     Dave, starting to freak out, did exactly what I hoped he wouldn't do, and explained to Frankie, "Look man, we actually don't want any girls tonight. We just wanted a drink. So..."
     "What you mean no girls!" Frankie interrupted, sounding offended. "You must have girl! It is Amsterdam! This is sex club! You will take girl. This one," he gestured at the putrid troll sitting next to Dave, "she do anything for you. Beautiful girl."

     So at this point we find ourselves in a bit of situation. We're in a foreign country, in a seemingly vacant part of town miles away from our hotel, in the creepiest whorehouse in the world, without any means to call a cab, being pressured by a large Russian man to have sex with possibly the ugliest girls in Europe. How the fuck were we going to get out of this one?

     The doorbell rang again. "Ah, that is girls," the old woman said. She opened the door, and to our surprise, it was the cab driver. The cab driver! The fucking cab driver came back. To this day, I do not know why he returned, but it didn't matter. It was a Godsend. His arrival was like some sort of divine intervention. Thank the fucking Lord, I thought to myself. We're saved!

     Immediately I jumped up from my seat. "Oh, hey, Jason, there's the cab driver! Remember you forgot your jacket in the cab?" He looked at me, confused.
     "No, I di--" You could almost see the light bulb illuminate above his head. "Oh, riiiight! My jacket! Yeah, let's go look for that!" We quickly shoved our way past Frankie and the woman and ran outside to the cab. "We'll be right back, just getting something from the car!" The cab driver, confused, followed us outside and watched us leap into the back seat of the car.
     "Come on!" I yelled at the cabbie, "let's go!"
     "You... you want to leave?"
     "YES!!"
     "Fuck, where's Dave?" Jason shouted. Dave hadn't followed us outside.
     "Fuck fuck fuck!" I jumped out of the car and ran to the doorway, leaned in, and said "Dave, we need your help with something out here!" He shrugged and came towards the door. I grabbed his arm and pulled him outside. "Come on, dumbass, we're getting out of here!"

     As we piled into the cab the woman had caught on and ran out the door screaming "Where you going!! You can no leave!! I call girls for you, you have to pay!!" Like a scene from a movie, I yelled at the driver to "step on it" as the woman ran towards the cab. The car peeled out, and we laughed hysterically as we watched the woman run down the street after us, cursing and screaming, with Frankie standing behind her dumbfounded.

     On the ride home, we couldn't stop laughing, about Frankie and the creepy ugly prostitutes and the dingy bar and how, at the end, Dave had actually thought we were going to the car to fetch Jason's jacket. The driver asked us if we wanted to try a better club. No thanks, we told him. We'd had more than enough of Amsterdam.

The Internet Ruins Everything (OR: Arcade Nostalgia And The Legend Of The Silent Asian Kid)

[Currently Listening To: Autolux - Future Perfect]


A couple months ago, while I was back home for a bit, I found the time to have a party at my apartment, in an effort to see some of my L.A. friends before I split town again. It was pleasantly mellower than most of our parties and, although there were no passed-out midgets like last time, at least we had my new arcade table, which drew fierce competitions and long waits for a chance to play (I should have set it to require quarters). By the time the cops shut us down at 4:30, we were playing scandalous games of Twister, molesting passed-out strangers, and trying to get Emilie to stop puking in my bathroom. Good times.

The morning after, I stumbled downstairs expecting the worst. Amazingly though, nothing was broken or stolen. There was nobody still passed out in the living room. The mess was relatively minor. Everything had survived intact... Or so it seemed, until I sat down at my beautiful arcade table and shrieked in jaw-dropped horror. What I saw before me was the most terrifying of worst-case scenarios. The unthinkable, the impossible, that which I feared the most had happened...

Someone had beat my high score on Ms. Pac-Man.

It wasn't even a situation I had considered. I didn't think it could be possible. I didn't think any of my friends were skilled enough. But someone was, and truth be told they didn't beat my high score so much as they annihilated it. Pulverized it. Raped it, sodomized it, tortured it, pummeled it into a formless bloody heap of guts and fluids, and then lit it on fire, just for fun.

Following that dreaded discovery, I became completely obsessed with returning to my 8-bit throne. For two weeks it consumed me, gnawed at me, ate away at my psyche as if a vital piece of my being has been stripped away and I needed to get it back. I sat at that table for hours, exasperated, attempting again and again and again, and I could not even approach that impossible score. And every time I played I would have to look at that big six digit number, sitting up there at the top of the screen, taunting me. Laughing at me as I failed, again and again. As my frustration and desperation grew. And I knew I would soon have to leave town, and I would do so with a great weight on my shoulders. I would leave my home knowing that my beautiful machine was still infected by someone else's superior abilities. It would be like going out of town and leaving your wife with another man. Lying awake every night thinking about some stranger fornicating with your beloved in your own bed - soiling your sheets with their passion - and knowing you could have done something to prevent it, if only you had been better at Ms. Pac-Man. Or something like that.

Anyway, my frustration led me to the nerd mecca of the internet in search of some sort of tips or tricks to aid me in my mission. Obviously, I have the master controls to the game - I could lower the difficulty setting, or increase the number of lives. But I am not a cheater. I would derive no satisfaction from that. I want to earn this. So perhaps, I thought, the internet would provide me with useful strategies from a seasoned Ms. Pac-Man veteran. And of course it did, but the effect was more defeating than anything. Because the internet is the ultimate humbler. The internet ruins everything. You can't compete with the online global arena. There is someone out there with more time, more ambition, more skill than you. If you have a good idea - someone has already done it. If you've made an interesting observation or thought of a funny joke - you're not the first. If you think you have a kick-ass video game score - you don't. No matter what, there is someone on the internet who is better than you. There is someone smarter, more talented, more creative, and certainly there is someone better at Goddamn Ms. Fucking Pac-Man.

You see, what seemed like such a monumental score to naive little me was dwarfed a hundred times over by the unfathomable achievements of video game obsessives around the world. Even my most triumphant run on Ms. Pac-Man didn't even begin to touch the scores discussed so matter-of-factly by the geek elite on various gaming websites. Such a little fish was I, in such a very big pond.

Most alarmingly, I discovered this document, which breaks down every miniscule aspect of Ms. Pac-Man with stunningly complex scientific analysis. This is one of the most amazing things I have ever read, and also humbling beyond description. There is so much I never knew. This runs so much deeper than I could have ever imagined. Here I was, just chasing ghosts and eating fruit. Thinking that's all there was to it. As if it's really that fucking simple. And now, thanks to the internet, I can never again feel good about my high score, no matter what it might be. Because it will never touch this. Now that I've read this, I know that I am merely a day tripper in the world of Ms. Pac-Man. I rode in on the tour bus with a group of overweight couples from Wisconsin, and I snapped a few photos, and bought a t-shirt, and went home. Dinner at Bennigan's. A couple of nice postcards to send to Mom. I'm George Bush checking up on Hurricane Katrina. I came down and got my picture taken handing sandwiches to some little black kids, and then I washed my hands and choppered straight back to the ranch for my pedicure. I don't know shit about Ms. Pac-Man. This man - nay, this God who wrote this document - he's fucking Sean Penn. He's the Sean Penn of Ms. Pac-Man, wading through the fucking flood waters, and I'm looking down on him from my cushy leather seat on Air Force One. This is how the internet has changed things. You don't stand a chance.

Before the internet existed, in the innocent golden years of my childhood, Nintendo was a way of life. I, along with my friends and schoolmates, lived and breathed Nintendo. We dreamed Nintendo. It was a language, a culture, a social structure. And the schoolyard was our internet. It was there, on the picnic benches and tire swings of the vast recess empire, where secrets were traded, rumors spread, strategies discussed. It was from a strange group of fourth graders we first heard descriptions of the b-levels on Super Mario Bros. Someone's neighbor's brother knew how to get invincibility on Kid Icarus. A friend who went to another school brought us the bathing suit code for Metroid, scrawled in green marker on a tattered napkin, like an archaeologist presenting us with scriptures from an ancient civilization. I remember how excited I was to be the first kid to receive the issue of The Nintendo Fanclub Newsletter that showed the very first screenshots of Zelda 2. Zelda TWO?? They're making a new Zelda??? It was as big of news as there could be in our little universe. I couldn't wait to get to school the next day, to present this gem to my peers so we could pore over those tiny images, and speculate wildly about what the game would be like. In the only world I knew, I had a valuable piece of information that no one else did.

I cannot imagine how boring it must be for kids these days, to have that sense of discovery stripped away. Now, all of the secrets are up on the internet before the game is even out. Someone has already beat it, and spoiled the ending for everyone. The wildly exaggerated rumors and legends that persist amongst gradeschool kids can be easily extinguished with a quick Google search.

Does anyone remember the apparently nation-wide childhood rumor, popularized after the release of Back To The Future II, that hover-boards did in fact exist but were prevented from being released by parents concerned about their safety? The version I heard - and believed - even went so far as to give these cruel parents an identity: The Parents Association of America. This group was responsible for stifling the availability of any and all cool inventions, lest we helpless children hurt ourselves playing with them. Oh how we loathed the PAA, wondering suspiciously if our own parents were members of this evil superpower. Today, of course, a rumor like that would be snubbed before it even had a chance to take on a life of its own. Some savvy kid would have looked it up on the internet, and smugly shut the whole thing down.

In my youth, the only microcosm we had of today's online global arena was the arcade. Mine was the last generation of true arcades, which have been in steady decline since the advent of home gaming consoles, and are now barren wastelands of outdated music and redemption games. A far cry they are from the glory I knew as a child: endless rows of brilliantly glowing screens; a cacophony of midi theme songs and digitized sound effects; kids shouting and banging frantically on buttons; big beautiful gaming wonders far beyond the reaches of our paltry home Nintendo systems. Paradise. But the arcade took away the safety of competing in the comfort of your living room, where your only opponents were your peers - friends, neighbors, acquaintances from school. Your friends presented a challenge, to be sure, but a manageable challenge. You knew their moves. You learned their weaknesses. With enough practice, you could destroy them. You could be better than anyone you knew - anyone in your little childhood universe. That is, until you took your skills to the arcade, where a melting pot of competitors waited anxiously to put you in your place: kids from other schools, kids from other grades, and - worst of all - teenagers. Like the internet, it opened the arena to an unmanageable scale. Someone at the arcade was bound to be better than you. And chances are, it was the S.A.K. - The Silent Asian Kid.

The Silent Asian Kid was a phenomena largely associated with the rise in popularity of Street Fighter II. Seemingly overnight, Street Fighter II became a religion amongst adolescent boys. We played it constantly, whenever we could, lining up to take turns pissing our allowances away with match after match of martial arts bliss. We debated intensely over the merits of each fighter. Great tournaments were held to determine who amongst us was the best. The genius of it, of course, was that the winner got to continue playing, and the competitor would have to put in another quarter for another chance. So the mark of a good player was someone who could stay at the machine for long periods of time, vanquishing any foes who dared to step up and challenge him. A boy's social status was, for a while, determined largely by his prowess on a Street Fighter machine.

We knew all of the locations of SF2 machines around town - in pizza parlors, laundromats, movie theatres - and my friends and I would seek out the least-known machines to avoid long lines and hone our skills in peace. But no matter where we went, there was always the possibility of encountering a Silent Asian Kid. The term S.A.K. is derived first from his ethnicity, and second from his behavior. The S.A.K. can be immediately identified as trouble, simply because he's always found playing SF2 by himself in a crowded arcade. NO ONE played SF2 by themselves, unless they were SO good that all potential opponents had finally given up. So when you dare approach his machine, you are already nervous. This is his turf. You are the challenger. The skills you were once so confident in are already being called into question. You're doubting yourself. Hands shaky, you insert a quarter into the machine. His machine. The S.A.K. says nothing. Not a word. He doesn't even look at you. You are as significant to him as a fly buzzing around his peripheral vision. He chooses Ryu. They always choose Ryu. You can almost feel him sneering when you select Ken, or Blanca, or Chun-Li. Laughing at what a foolish decision you've made. Of course he doesn't actually laugh - he doesn't do anything. He just stares straight ahead, showing no emotion. An unflinching rock of confidence. A merciless killer. Your palms are sweaty as you hold the joystick. Fuck this guy, you're thinking. I can do this. You've trained for hundreds of hours. You've mopped the floor with all of your friends. You're a fucking God at this game. Unstoppable. You can do this. The match begins... And within seconds, it ends. You didn't even see the S.A.K. blink. You didn't see his hands move. But you're dead. Just like that. He says nothing in regards to his victory - you remain unacknowledged. You walk away humbled. Defeated. Twenty five cents poorer. The only thing left to do is dick around on a non-competetive machine like TMNT until the S.A.K. finally gets tired of winning and retires for the day. Then the machine is open again for everyone else in the room.

Nothing ruins an arcade like a Silent Asian Kid. The internet is like millions of S.A.K.s all united together to take the fun out of everything. So now, as I return home to face my tainted arcade machine, the only thing I can do is forget about those Pac-nerds whose mighty scores mock me from across the information superhighway. Forget about all the S.A.K.s in the world. Try not to think about how no matter what I do, I'll never be able to have a score that matters. I will never, ever be a competitor in the global Ms. Pac-Man arena. I'll just keep chasing ghosts and eating fruit, insignificantly.

Whatever. At least I get laid.

Doing battle with Japanese toilets - and other oddities from the East

I had some other non-porn-related items of interest left over from my trip to Japan that I hadn't gotten around to posting - so I'm going to do that now.

First of all, Japanese people take pooping very seriously. My hotel room was equipped with one of Japan's notorious electronic bidet toilets, which I affectionately refer to as the Robotoilet. It features a heated seat and a wireless LCD control panel. This is a close-up of the control panel:



The buttons at the top control Robotoilet's most exciting feature: a little motorized device which extends out from underneath the toilet seat and shoots your puckered brownhole with a blast of warm water, sending a brief shiver up your spine and leaving your formerly poop-encrusted asshole feeling oh so fresh and so clean. The sensation is odd but not entirely unpleasant, although it's alarming how accurate the device's aim is. You'll see in the picture that the icons on the buttons represent butts, and water spraying at said butts. I never pressed the pink "bidet" button - that one's for the ladies - but I assume it's the same thing, only aimed a bit differently to target a different hole. In retrospect, since I don't have a vagina it probably would have sprayed my balls, which might have been interesting. Ah well, live and learn.

Anyway, when you've decided that your bits and pieces are good and clean (it's up to the user to determine how long the spray continues), you can finish up with a gust of warm air that comfortably blow-dries your ass. I have absolutely no idea what the LCD panel is meant to display, but maybe it has something to do with temperature of the drier or the heated seat (which, by the way, is a much nicer luxury than you might imagine).

I was so fascinated by the ass-cleaning Robotoilet that I wanted to see it in action when no one was sitting on it. I tried pressing the "wash" button with the lid open, but nothing happened. Robotoilet, it seemed, had outsmarted me, by way of a sensor somewhere which informed it that no one's asshole was present to receive a cleansing. So I waved my hand around near the toilet seat, continually pressing the button until I found where the sensor was. You see that, Robotoilet? I'm smarter than you after all. Holding my hand over the sensor, I watched in delight as the little spraying device extended mechanically from within the toilet, and took its position a few inches underneath where a dirty butthole would normally reside. This is so exciting! It's going to spray! And then it sprayed - all over me. Robotoilet, angry at my sphincter deception, had retaliated with a powerful blast of water! The pressure was far greater than I'd anticipated, and, without an ass to break its trajectory, the stream of water shot high above the toilet seat and out onto my pants and my shoes and the floor. This photograph I found at Wikipedia illustrates the situation pretty well, just imagine me on the receiving end of that spray:



Robotoilet: 1. Rob: 0.

But if Robotoilet is the pinnacle of pooping luxury, the traditional Japanese "squat toilets" are, to use a terrible pun, the dumps. The squat toilets are often found in public restrooms throughout much of Asia, and, instead of the chair-based toilets we're used to, are built into the ground, requiring one to squat over them in order to take a shit. This is what they look like - this is not some kind of urinal, or bidet, but an all-purpose toilet:



I'd heard about these before, but I was strangely excited when I saw one (so much so that I took that picture) - it was one of those "Oh look it's funny how foreign people go poo" moments. Observation, however, was not enough. I wanted to try this thing. I wanted the full experience. So I waited, and waited, and waited, until a rumbling in my bowels told me the time was right, and I rushed to the nearest squat toilet for a one-of-a-kind immersion into Eastern culture. As it turned out, it wasn't as easy or fun as I'd imagined. Maybe I have weak legs, but squatting over something so low was extremely tricky, particularly while concerning myself with keeping my ass out far enough to avoid shitting all over my pants. I had to stabilize myself with one hand against the wall while my skinny little trembling legs (my bad knee didn't enjoy any of this one bit) fought to keep me from collapsing into a pile of my own fecal matter. The sheer effort involved in preventing poop from falling onto my pulled-down pants left me convinced that I was doing something wrong. Do Japanese people take their fucking clothes off when they do this? Do they have some kind of third leg we don't know about, to prop them up? How else does this set-up even begin to make sense? What the hell happens if you have explosive diarrhea? I left the toilet stall with a sore knee, a great deal of questions, and a strange new affection for my old nemesis Robotoilet.

For everything you ever wanted to know and then some about Japanese toilets, check out Wikipedia's page on the subject.

Now let's move backwards up the digestive tract to the subject of food. Japanese food, as you know, can be exceptionally good. It can also be incredibly, inedibly horrific.

I am adventurous when it comes to unusual food - I'll try anything once, just for the experience. Of the many weird food items I punished myself with in Japan, by far the most horrible were "octopus balls." I found them at a small stand in Shibuya which exclusively served these delicious treats - and how could I see a big sign that said "octopus balls" and not need to know what all the fuss is about? I thought maybe they'd be some sort of fried thing, like calamari. I like calamari. Instead, octopus balls were doughy, gooey balls of octopus parts (lots of tentacle chunks and suction cups) and unidentifiable slime, covered with soy sauce, mayonnaise, and unbelievably smelly fish flakes. If that sounds bad, I can assure you that eating it was a thousand times worse. And the smell... Oh God, the smell. I made the mistake of attempting to eat the octopus balls in a car, and the stench of dead fish became so unbearable I had to throw them out the window.

A similar snack we discovered was a giant bag of squid tentacles, sold on a rack alongside potato chips and chocolates. We saw the package - pictured below on the left - and couldn't believe that we'd open it up and find exactly what was shown on the front. Well, we did - the contents of the package are picture below on the right.



They didn't even look real, they looked like rubber toys. They tasted like rubber toys as well, but slimier and fishier. Yes, I tried one. I regretted it.

Tentacled snacks aside, even a couple days of good Japanese food left us craving something familiar. So when we passed a Shakey's Pizza - the last thing we ever expected to see in Japan - it called to us with the promise of delicious American comfort food. I wouldn't even notice a Shakey's Pizza in the states - it's not even very good pizza, I don't think I've eaten there in years. In fact, do they even exist anymore? Whatever the case, Shakey's suddenly seemed like the best thing in the world. Unfortunately, the familiarities we were so craving were nowhere to be found. Shakey's served its pizza buffet-style, with several options laid out on a table for you to pick from. Missing were the staple selections like pepperoni, cheese, sausage, etc. Instead the pizza varieties included: tuna & corn pizza, squid & pork pizza, and egg & seaweed pizza:



Thankfully we found a KFC later on, where we were able finally satisfy our craving for shitty American food, and also where we found the adorable Japanized Colonel Sanders:



At one point we went to a weird little amusement park in the middle of Tokyo. We rode on some cheesy rides, played some carnival games, and stumbled upon this incredibly bizzare scene.

We also encountered the highly mischievous French Fry Man, who guarded the french fry stand and seemed to enjoy eating pieces of his own head:



And we got some weird little pastries of peoples' heads, one of which had been lobotomized to display his delicious brains underneath:



And we saw some Japanese wanted posters, which take the curious approach of making their criminals look incredibly unthreatening by cutting out their heads and pasting them on undersized cartoon bodies:



Those guys are definitely guilty. Especially the one on the upper right. He looks like he's spent some serious quality time with the butt funnel.

Okay, that's all I have from Japan. Time to get some sleep.

Curiosities from Japan's porno shops.

As everyone is well aware, Japan is absolutely brimming with bizarre shit, particularly when it comes to adult material. Tentacle rape, bestiality, people shitting on each other... They've got it all. So when I stumbled upon a seven-floor adult superstore, I knew I was going to walk out with some amazingly weird stuff.

First, though, there's plenty of pervasive material available right out on the street, before you even make it into a porno store. For example, these delicious-looking treats I found at a market - "Yokohama Bust Pudding":



I like how, the way the packages are set up, the girl on the right appears to be scowling at the girl on the left, as if jealous of her younger, perkier pudding breasts.


In Japan, vending machines are EVERYWHERE. Soda, candy, porn, dairy products... You'll find it all just a button-push away (This site catalogs some of the more unusual vending machines in Japan). Thankfully, this also includes machines that dispense capsule toys, which seem to be hugely popular in Tokyo. Unlike chintzy American capsule toys (cheap digital watches, plastic rings, etc), Japan's are incredibly cool and come in endless varieties. From capsule machines alone I got Excruciatingly detailed tiny little classic Nintendo systems (here being enjoyed by Wolverine), a Spider-Man figure, 3D Mario Bros. magnets, a monster trapped inside a cube, a miniature video game table (with fully working game), glowing Star Wars light saber keychains, and robot pandas being controlled by real pandas.

But amidst all of that, side by side with Pokemon and Dragon Ball Z, are adult-themed capsule toy machines which dispense little figures of partially naked girls doing all manors of unsavory things. Of course it's random so I felt compelled to try my luck and see what the porno figures looked like. The ones I got ranged from basic assortments, like girls showing their boobs and masturbating...



...to more illicit figures, like this one:



Yes, she's tied up to a post. Yes, her tit is falling out. Yes, that's a Kabuki mask between her legs. And yes, she comes with a collection of intricately-detailed little dildos. Amazing. However, easily the most disturbing assortment of adult-themed capsule toys involved doe-eyed, childlike girls in suggestive poses. This was one of the more expensive machines - 500 yen (about five bucks) for one toy, but it was certainly worth it, as I now own my very own toy of a little girl squatting to pee:



How fucking creepy is that? As you can see from the flyer included in the capsule (note the kiddie crayon font), the other toys in the assortment include little girls spreading their legs, little girls sucking suggestively on popsicles, and little girls dry-humping their teddy bears:



Incredibly, incredibly disturbing. And let me remind you, I didn't find these in some seedy back alley - all of these machines were right on the sidewalks in busy shopping areas.

Of course, capsule machines aren't just for figures - I found a vending machine called "Men's Gold Ticket," which offered an assortment of little sex toys for men, like little rubber vaginas and anal beads.



Unfortunately, the one I got wasn't very exciting - just some sort of French Tickler thing, with a little bottle of lube:



But sometimes all the French Ticklers in the world can't stop that lonely feeling, so you could always try your luck at a capsule machine that dispenses girls' phone numbers for you to talk to - I didn't actually get one of these, but it appeared as though each capsule includes a photo of the lucky lady, and a number to get in touch with her:




So if I found all that amazingly ridiculous stuff out on the street, what awaited me in an actual porno store? Of course I had to find out. The seven story adult megaplex included a floor for sex toys, a floor for magazines, two floors for DVDs, a floor for condoms and lubes, and even a floor for costumes. Japanese men love them some role-playing, so you can buy all kinds of elaborate outfits to suit your wildest fantasies, most of which appear to be based on popular anime characters.

In the condom and lube section, I found an assortment of funny manga-inspired condom packages - like this one, called "SACK 2":



I like the numerous phalluses on that robot, and also the writing at the top: "TRY NEW TYPE CAN YOU SURVIVE? 12 TIMES" Is that challenging me to survive safe sex twelve times? What, in a row? How do I survive, by not getting her pregnant? Not getting the hiv? Whatever the case, I hope I can survive - although I have yet to put my SACK 2's to good use.


On the sex toy floor, there was a large wall with dozens and dozens of cans - all of them in different colors and sizes, and all of them with different naked cartoon girls on them. A great deal of Japanese men were perusing this wall, carefully studying and comparing the different cans before making their decision. With nothing in English, it took me a few minutes of analysis to figure out that the cans were actually fake vaginas. They were all similarly priced - suspiciously cheap at 5-600 yen - so I wasn't sure what the difference was, except the girl on the outside. I guess you were meant to pick which naked anime girl you liked the best, and fuck this plastic can while fantasizing about her. Interestingly enough, none of the cans were very long - maybe six inches at the most. I was trying to avoid the whole Asian-men-have-small-penises thing, but they kind of handed it to me on a silver platter. Anyway, this is the vagina can I bought:



Yes, I bought one, purely out of curiosity as to what might be inside. Well, this is what's inside - a smelly, pre-lubricated Styrofoam opening:



Sexy, huh? Just like the real thing. I don't know what I was expecting when I opened up the can, but it certainly wasn't that. I guess that explains the low price - they're meant to be disposable, you fuck it a couple times and then get a new can.

This reminds me of a story I know I'm going to regret telling, but here goes: Quite a few years ago I was passing through New York for some reason or another, and one night I went out bar-hopping with a couple friends. We stumbled out of the last bar around 3am, drunk and giddy, laughing and tripping as we walked back towards our hotel. On the way we passed a porno store, which aside from the occasional pizza place was the only thing open at 3am. I'm not sure why - I think one of my friends wanted to buy a magazine - but we went in, and annoyed the shop's patrons by picking up every ridiculous sex toy and laughing about it loudly. The most absurd thing we found was a large plastic beer can - meant to look like "Coors Light," or something, but much larger - and when you unscrewed the cap at the top, there was a latex vagina inside, that you were meant to stick your dick in and fuck the can. Well, not really "fuck" the can, exactly, but masturbate with it. Same concept as the Japanese ones, but more elaborate. In fact, this is pretty much exactly what it was.

So of course we have to buy the beer can vagina, because we're drunk and it's funny, and we figure we'll find some entertaining unintended use for it. So we paid for it and continued on our merry way back to the hotel. Once there we said our goodbyes and retired to our rooms, and I realized that somehow I'd gotten stuck carrying the bag from the sex store. I set it down on the desk and didn't think much about it. That is, for a few minutes, until I found myself sitting on the bed in my hotel room, drunk and lonely and sexually frustrated, and I kept staring over at that stupid beer can vagina. "Maybe I should just try it. Just see what it feels like..." I mean, why not, right? You know. Just for kicks, right? So you know what? I fucked it. Yeah. I fucked a plastic beer can. I fucked the shit out of that can. And you know what? It felt alright. It did the trick. That is, until it was all over. Until the moment after, when I was hit by a sobering freight train of humility, looking down at my dick stuck inside a latex vagina housed in a plastic beer can. Moments like that you start to question everything - "How the hell did it come to this? Who am I? What am I doing with my life?" I probably sat there for an hour, silently with my plastic lover, pondering my existence.

The next morning, when the subject of the previous night came up and someone said, "oh, where's that funny beer can thing we got? Rob, you had it, right?" And everyone looks at me, and I just stare at them for a moment, and then say, "...I fucked it. I fucked it and I hated myself, and now it's gone." There was a slight pause, followed by uproarious laughter. The ridicule took months to subside.


Anyway, back to weird Japanese sex toys. This next one was a heavily featured product at the store, clearly a very popular item. It's a clear plastic funnel meant to be inserted into someone's ass, and it comes with a little flashlight to shine inside the ass, and, well, look around. Ya know, see what's going on in the ol' anal cavity. Here's the sign with the product itself down below:



Yes, behold the butt funnel. There was a sign next to it which said, "This is truly amazing! See the things which you have never seen before!" You know, you're right, I have seen a lot of things, but never the inside of someone's rectum. And is that really such a bad thing? Is that something I need to see? I'm not sure, but I bought the funnel, so the option is always there. That's one of those things that, if you really wanted to look inside a girl's ass via the butt funnel, how do you bring that up? "Hey, baby, so, I was thinking... Uh... You know, I just love you so much, and I want to see all sides of you.. You know, from the inside out... so, you know, I was thinking it would be really romantic if I, you know, spread your asshole open with a plastic funnel and shined a flashlight inside your gaping rectum. Would you like that, baby?"

The illustration on the package is fucking fantastic:



Look how embarrassed she is! "Oh no, don't look inside my butt! Tee hee!" Amazing.


Last, but certainly not least... There was a rack in the porno store with dozens of little packages hanging on it. Each package had a photo on the front of a cute Japanese girl, dressed like a schoolgirl or a maid or a nurse or Sailor Moon or some shit. In each photo, the girl's panties or pantyhose were clearly visible. And inside the package was the girl's (presumably dirty) actual panties or pantyhose that she wore in the picture. Okay, that's weird enough on its own, but the best part was over on the side of the rack there was one package with a sloppy polaroid of an ugly, pantyhose-wearing Japanese girl. It stood in contrast to the cute young girls professionally photographed on all the other packages, and as a result it was marked 50% off. Discount used panties, dude. Unwanted goods. I started laughing right there in the store, which earned me a scornful look from the shopkeeper, who clearly took the panty selection very seriously. I wondered if maybe the ugly girl was his girlfriend, and he'd talked her into letting him sell her panties at the store, to see if they could make some money on the side. Apparently it didn't work out too well, and she had to come down in price:



So there you have it. Now that I've purchased all this crazy shit, I'm all set for a hott night of masturbatory heaven - fucking a greasy styrofoam opening while I sniff some crack whore's crab-ridden pantyhose and examine the insides of my rectum.

Japan - I love you, man.

UPDATE: MORE Curiosities From Japan's Porno Shops!

Back from the Land Of The Rising Sun... almost in one piece.

Presently I am once again on an airplane, already bored senseless only a half hour into my 13 hour flight from Australia back to LA. I just endured one of the most ludicrously long journeys through airport security I've ever experienced. It started when I made the mistake of trying to carry on board my $150 Star Wars Master Replicas Force FX Luke Skywalker Light Saber that I bought in Melbourne, instead of checking it with my luggage. This light saber is the coolest thing in the world, it lights up and makes sound effects when you swing it around, and basically just kicks all sorts of ass. Even right now if you're reading this and thinking "what a fucking nerd" - which you undoubtedly are - I can guarantee that you would change your tune if you saw this thing in person, and instead say, "holy fuck I want one." I do not, however, advise trying to bring it on an airplane with you. The mongoloids at airport security were baffled when they watched it pass through the x-ray machine, and took it out of the box to inspect it suspiciously. I told them that I didn't want to check it for fear of it breaking, as it was a gift for my little brother. Of course, I don't have a little brother, but I figured that would garner more compassion than the sad reality of a full grown man playing with a light-up laser sword. But it mattered not, the light saber was clearly a major security issue, and required the undivided attention of a whole group of people with various badges on. And so was assembled a crack team of highly trained security professionals, with whom the good people of Australia have entrusted their airborne security, who spent a half hour looking it over, turning it on and off, discussing whether or not it could be considered a weapon. When they couldn't reach an initial conclusion, they called upon the expertise of their superiors to further study my menacing plastic stick and join in the debate over just how lethal it actually might be. Rolling my eyes, I tried gently to remind them that although the magic of Hollywood special effects made it appear as though light sabers could cut the arms off a Wampa with the flick of a wrist, that's only in the land of make-believe, and this CHILDREN'S TOY I was carrying was really just a big plastic glowing cylinder which could in fact inflict no damage at all to anyone whatsoever in this or any other universe. Still, they were not convinced. I actually heard one of them say that she'd heard light sabers were very dangerous. Are you fucking with me? Is this a joke? Is Ashton Kutcher about to pop out with a hidden camera and tell me I'm being punked? Only memories of the worst airport security cavity search horror stories kept me from screaming in exasperation, "YOU FUCKING IMBECILES, THIS IS A TOY!! A HARMLESS PLAYTHING FOR CHILDREN AND AGE-REGRESSED ADULTS!! IT IS NOT A REAL LASER SWORD!! SUCH THINGS DO NOT EXIST!" The least retarded of the security monkeys told me it was less the actual threat of the light saber, and more the perceived threat of the light saber to paranoid passengers (fifteen minutes prior I would have had to ask if there really could be anyone stupid enough to see a toy light saber and perceive it as a threat). He told me that, particularly with my face sliced up as it is (I'll get to that later), I might look pretty menacing on a plane wielding an illuminated "sword." I argued that me standing in an airplane threatening the passengers with a glowing stick would unquestionably be the shortest, most ludicrous, and least-successful hijacking attempt in the history of modern transportation. Still, the vigilant security team at the Sydney airport stood unwavering in their decision, and insisted on checking my light saber as a "security item." Unbelievable.

Next up was the second check point, at the gate, where a security person looks at your passport and boarding pass, and then "randomly" decides if you can carry on about your merry way, or if you'll be sentenced to fifteen minutes being felt up while some lunkhead carelessly rifles through your belongings. No surprise that I was "randomly" sent over for the full treatment. Yeah, me, the kid wearing black with his face all mangled - of course they're going to pick me. Ol' scarface looks like a trouble-maker, for sure. I joined a long line of other misfits who were clearly chosen one hundred percent arbitrarily: A lanky stoner kid with long hair and dark sunglasses, an asian rock chick with camo pants, an Indian woman and her daughter, and a tall brown-skinned bald man of undetermined ethnicity. Meanwhile, a steady flow of clean-cut white people proceeded past us without delay.
When it was finally my turn for the cavity search, I discovered why the line was moving so slowly: The girl checking the bags couldn't have escaped being officially classified as mentally retarded by more than a few IQ points. As she looked through the many strange and potentially hazardous items in my bags, the conversation went something like this:

Her: "What's this?"
Me: "That's a hard drive."
Her: "It's a computer?"
Me: "No. Well... No."
Her: "Does it turn on? Where's the screen?"
Me: "It doesn't have a screen. It turns on if you connect it to a computer."
Her: "Well what does it do?"

Have you ever been asked a question that's so simple you have no idea how to even answer it? Something that blind-sides you with how complex it is in its noncomplexity, and you don't even know what to say? How do I describe to the fucking missing link here what a hard drive is? How do I even begin to approach that? "Um... you... you put stuff on it? I don't know." Thankfully, she didn't want to venture down this bumpy road any more than I did. Our conversation continued:

Her: "Hmm... okay... What's this?"
Me: "That's a battery charger."
Her: "How do you put batteries in here?"
Me: "It's not for alkaline batteries. It's for a battery pack, for a camera."
Her: "You charge a whole pack of batteries at once?"
Me: "No, it... Yes. Yes, that's what you do."
Her: "Oooh, is this one of those Playstations?"
Me: "It's a PSP, yes."
Her: "Is it cool? Is it like a Playstation?"
Me: "Yup, like a little Playstation."
Her: "How much does it cost?"
Me: "Um, I don't know. $250, or something."
Her: "That's an awful lot... Does it play DVDs?"
Me: "Look at it. Look at this size of it. It clearly, unquestionably, is smaller than a DVD. How, then, in a world bound to the laws of physics, could it possibly play a DVD, you utter retard?"

Okay, I didn't say that last bit out loud. But oh, how I wanted to.

The flight I'm on right now is returning me home from a week spent in Japan, which was a fantastic time despite some drunk asshole smashing a beer bottle across my face one night on a street corner. Yeah, good times. He was fucking with these two girls I was talking to outside the bar we'd been at, and I told him to fuck off, leave them alone. So he starts getting in my face, talking like a fucking wigger (he's American, go figure), and I tell him again to fuck off - not trying to anger him, just genuinely trying to diffuse the situation. It may come as a huge surprise to some of you, but I'm not much of a fighter. I'm actually rather skinny, and probably punch like a girl (although I wouldn't know, because I've never punched anyone). But at the same time, I'm also too ballsy for my own good, so when this guy took things up a notch by shoving me, I instinctually shoved him back - hard - and started to once again tell him to fuck off, and that's when he pulled a bottle out of nowhere and shattered it across my face. It didn't knock me down, or even phase me much, as I think he was expecting (thank you Jack Daniels), so he ran away. Fucking bottled me and ran, just like that, like a fucking pussy, with me screaming at him as he disappeared around the corner, "what the fuck was that, you fucking wuss!! Get back here!!" Thinking I'd escaped unscathed, I turned and looked at the girls, who were cupping their mouths in horror. That's when I put my hand to my face, and found it to be gushing blood. There was a LOT of blood - I mean, fucking pools of it cascading down to the sidewalk. My clothes were covered in it. I ran back into the bar, hand to my face, plowing through the dense crowd of people trying to get to the bathroom to find something to stop the bleeding. People screamed in horror and jumped away from me as I moved past them. I was leaving a trail of blood the whole way through. I got to the bathroom, and of course there weren't any paper towels. By then, though, someone who worked at the bar had caught up with me and brought me a towel. Long story short, I hopped a cab to a nearby hospital and got all stitched up - seven stitches on my nose and cheek - and woke up the next day with a black eye and a swollen face.

This is me outside the emergency room:



And this is me all stitched and bandaged up:



Lookin' good, no? Yeah. It's real fucking fantastic. I actually scare children now. I frighten babies. I was in an elevator, and a woman was in there with her baby, and the baby looked at me and I smiled, forgetting that my face was covered in bandages and dried blood, and my eye was the color of a plum. The baby just looked at me, eyes wide with horror, and you could see the emotional buildup. You could see the pressure rising as the tears welled up. You could see the dam about to burst. And then, all at once - screaming. Crying, sobbing, ear-piercing shrieks of terror. A cascade of tears. All because of the scary gore-faced man. The mother, alarmed, scowled at me, the source of her precious child's misery. Yes, sorry Ma'am, I should have known better than to make eye contact. I'm terrifying. Sorry. It's a humbling feeling to look at yourself in the mirror and say, "I make babies cry." I should just play it up. Just roll with it. Get me an eye patch and a hook, and walk around limping, laughing maniacally and saying "ARRR!! Stay away, kiddies! I'm Scarface The Horrible, and I eat little children for breakfast! ARRRR!!"

But, looking on the bright side, I'm going to have a pretty rad scar. I get the stitches out later today, so maybe I won't be quite as frightening.

Other than random acts of violence, though, Japan is a fantastic place, and I never feel like I've spent enough time there. Unlike Europe, Japan doesn't share the same western roots as America, and therefore is one of the few places left that truly feels like a different world. Walking through Tokyo is like being in the future - but not America's future, which is almost certainly a smoldering radioactive wasteland - rather, the future of a society that has its shit together. A densely-populated metropolis that still manages to be clean and largely devoid of crime. People who are polite and respectful, and who take pride in their work, no matter how menial their job might be. A culture that's rich with tradition but isn't held back by it. The antithesis of America's selfish, lazy, rude, excessive, greed-driven culture. Oh, and they have really cool toys. Lots and lots of really cool toys. I am returning from Japan at least a couple thousand dollars poorer, but far wealthier in the currency of neat stuff. My bounty includes a new digital camera, a host of unreleased video games, a giant Optimus Prime figure, a variety of incredibly bizarre Godzilla toys, some evil robot panda bears, a tiny puppy that lives inside a cube, tons of weird little Nintendo toys, and best of all... Little radio-controlled robots that play soccer. Okay, it's cooler than it sounds. Time to put up more toy shelves.

I'm going to post more really insane crap from Japan, probably tomorrow. In the meantime, enjoy this video I just found that I thought I'd lost - a creepy midget woman with most of her teeth missing singing songs on the streets of Amsterdam.

Naked transvestites and giant gummy bears (unfortunately not at the same time)

So once again I'm in Europe, traveling on business, and I decided I should make some sort of attempt to document my adventures, trivial or otherwise. I came away from my last major trip to Europe - some five years ago - wishing I'd kept a journal that I could look back on years later. This time I'm going to do it - or, try, at least (my ambition may never make it further than this entry), and this is much more for me than it is for you, so don't bitch at me if the entries to come are less ridiculous, mean-spirited, or entertaining than what you've come to expect.

With that said, I'm somewhere in Germany today - exactly where, I'm not sure. Outside the window of the bus I can see a lot of trees, and the occasional cow. It's a cold and gray afternoon outside, which is nothing less of what I've come to expect from Europe in the summer. Walking around earlier reminded me of the that first Autumn day in New York when you have to put a sweatshirt on to go out for lunch, and on the walk back your fingers are getting a bit numb, and you realize that the beautiful warm afternoons of early Fall have come to an end and the long, cold winter is just around the corner. Except, of course, that it's June right now.

The other night I went out exploring in Hamburg with a couple friends, and after several failed attempts to find entertainment at local bars, we found ourselves wandering the sex district of Hamburg - specifically, a large street (the name of which escapes me) well known for porno shops and strip clubs. Hamburg is one of Europe's capitals for all things seedy, and is apparently the origin of all those disturbing German porn clips you've seen on the internet of girls farting on each other and the like. Naturally, then, we were in heaven perusing the German video stores, and came out with a stack of hilarious DVDs which will likely get us arrested passing through customs. There is one called "FREAKYDICKS," which features men who have mutilated their penises beyond recognition (and the women who love them). Another, "Extreme-Power-Video: Scheiss- und Fickorgie," is mostly old people taking dumps on each other.

Still, it was the theatre that proved the most entertaining. After popping our heads into a couple of very underwhelming table-dancing clubs, a doorman persuaded us to enter his theatre, which he guaranteed would give us a show we would not soon forget. He told us that the boring table-dancing places we had been "are kiddy familyshow! Not even vagina in those place! Mine show is German sexyshow! It is everything! Vampire! Dildoshow! You will not disappoint!" Wait a minute... Vampires? Dildos? Curiosity got the best of us, and we went in. The place was small and dark inside, with a little cabaret stage and a seemingly inappropriate audience of mostly businessmen and middle-aged Asian couples. On the stage, a woman with short, dyke-ish hair dressed in lingerie was doing an uninspired lip-synced performance of "All That Jazz" from Chicago. We took a seat in a dark corner on the left side of the stage, and a grumpy old lady came over to take our drink orders. "What to drink!" she shouted at me. "Diet Coke?" I requested. She just looked at me, and said "Beer?" "No, DIET COKE." "Beer?" "No... COCA. COLA." She just looked at me angrily. "Okay, fine. Beer."

Meanwhile, the woman on stage was slowly removing her lingerie in a fashion one might describe as "teasing," were she even mildly attractive. It was typical burlesque crap, nothing bizarre or exciting as we had hoped to see in a seedy theatre in Hamburg. She reached full nakedness at the end of the song and the curtains closed to a gentle applause, with no sign of vampires or dildos. Perhaps we'd been ripped off. We contemplated leaving, but decided to give it one more chance. After a few minutes, the lights dimmed, the curtain opened, and a mediocre German girl with bad teeth stepped out, wearing a sort of stylized school girl costume, again performing a song by way of lip-syncing to a tape. I recognized the tune as one of Janet's songs from The Rocky Horror Picture Show, and sure enough, out came Dr. Frank-N-Furter (Tim Curry's famous drag queen character from the film, for those unaware) to join in the performance. Oh, and what a sight he was. He was a hideous, fat, 40-something German drag queen with shaved eyebrows, a bad wig, and a DIY make-up job not worlds away from that fat secretary's on the Drew Carey Show. He was wearing a tiny speed-o, a garter belt, high-heeled shoes, and half of a corset which his flabby man-tits spilled out of. His entire body appeared to be freshly shaved, giving his lumpy skin an odd sheen under the stage lights. The speed-o, at least two sizes too small, wrapped like tightly-stretched cellophane around his manpackage, displaying with perfect clarity an oddly-shaped lump which protruded awkwardly from beneath his corset-restrained belly. It looked as if he was either stuffing his speed-o or had a bloated, lumpy penis worthy of a scene in "FREAKYDICKS." His only real resemblance to Dr. Frank-N-Furter was that he was a drag queen, but he performed the character's titular song from the film nonetheless, prancing around the stage as he did so, and then stepping into the audience, where he lap-danced a couple of German businessmen and even kissed a bewildered Chinese guy (whose wife laughed and clapped with delight) before returning to the stage to finish his performance. It was like watching a trainwreck, this fat old German dude with his mysterious penis bulge, his wig occasionally falling off to reveal a shiny bald head. But it got even weirder.

"Janet" re-appeared on stage, and the two of them did a duet - another song from the film. By the time they reached "Creature Of The Night," Janet had been stripped naked, and it became painfully clear what was about to happen. Frank-N-Furter laid her down on a prop couch which decorated the shoddy stage, and then he fell to his knees and buried his face between her legs. She, looking as bored as you might imagine, continued to lip-sync "t-t-t-t-t-t-tooouuuch meeee" as the fat bald transvestite lapped away at her beef curtains with the tenacity of a thirsty dog at a water bowl on a summer day. This went on far longer than it should have, and then Janet sat up, and Frank-N-Furter took position in front of her, his lumpy speed-o at eye level to her. The music blended out of Broadway cabaret and into bad German techno as Janet reached her fingers around the elastic of Frank-N-Furter's speed-o, and slowly pulled it down. What emerged from beneath the black spandex was a horrifying monster of a penis. It was not particularly long, but it was fat and lumpy at the base - probably as wide as a fist. It looked as if a thousand bees had stung it, or elaphantitis had just set in. Oddly, though, it tapered off significantly towards the end of the shaft, ending in a floppy, uncircumcised nozzle of squishy pink. All I could think about were the giant sand worms from the movie Dune, burrowing out of the ground to attack their prey, much as Dr. Frank-N-Furter's underpants worm had now burrowed out of its sweaty home to feast upon its own prey. The girl took the flaccid flesh lump in her hand and awkwardly stuffed it in her mouth. She bobbed back and forth, attempting to lure it into an upright position - and, like an unholy demon awakening from slumber, it began to rise. Frank-N-Furter, meanwhile, held his head back, making forced grunts and moans of pleasure.

Throughout all of this I sat in jaw-dropped horror, occasionally exchanging glances with my equally horrified friends. I had seen a show similar to this, years ago in Amsterdam, although it lacked the Broadway pizzaz and was kept at a fuzzy distance by virtue of my being incredibly high on mushrooms. This time, however, I was stone sober and a mere seven or eight feet away from the action, incredibly disturbed and yet utterly transfixed. By now Frank-N-Furter had mustered up a crooked boner, his little purple helmet peeking out from behind a blanket of puffy foreskin. He laid his victim down on the couch, climbed on top of her, and began thrusting away clumsily, while Janet feigned interest, holding on to his flabby sides.

So at this point I'm thinking: I've been in Europe for half a day, I'm jet-lagged and delirious, and suddenly I'm watching a skanky girl and a very ugly transvestite have awkward sex on stage in front of me to bad techno music, while middle-aged Asian couples watch with great interest. How is this my life?

The on-stage fornication continued for an ungodly amount of time, changing positions occasionally, until "Let's Do The Time Warp Again" crept up out of the thumping techno beats, and both cast members resumed lip-syncing, this time in the midst of their uninspired love-making. It had transcended from gratuitous to absurd, and I couldn't help laughing. As the song came to an end, Frank-N-Furter removed his creature from its den, helped Janet to stand up, and both of them took a naked bow to a golfing round of applause from the delighted crowd. The curtains closed, and I could do nothing but look at my friends in disbelief, and we all just started laughing. There was clearly another show on the way, but we decided one was probably enough for a night. On our way out, the overzealous doorman stopped us, asking "why you leave so soon? It was not good?" No, no, we assured him, it was very good, but we're tired, and need to go home. "But you cannot miss vampireshow! It is next! It is the star!" He pointed to a photo on the outside window of the theatre, which showed a pony-tailed man in a ridiculous vampire costume, fake blood running down his chin, his wide eyes peering at us. As tempting as it was, we told the doorman we needed to save something for our next trip to Hamburg. Whenever, if ever, that might be.

The next morning was far more mundane. I spent some time walking around the city, and quickly remembered that metropolitan areas in Germany are about as interesting and exotic as Cleveland, Ohio. Most of Europe is like a bootleg version of America, anyway. It's the same shit, but not as good. Nothing works quite right, or tastes quite right. CD's cost too much, movies come out months too late, the power outlets are cumbersome, Coke is always warm and flat, television is shitty, phones are weird. Nevermind that Americans are arrogant, fat, lazy, white trash pigs - at least we've figured out that warm soda tastes like wet balls, and you have to put more than two ice cubes in there to keep it fucking cold. Europeans can bitch about America all they want, but when you come over to Germany and everything is McDonald's and Burger King, the latest Brad Pitt movie is playing, CSI is on TV, 50 Cent is topping the charts, on and on down the line... it makes this place feel irrelevant. Make your own movies, and cook your own fucking hamburgers, or shut the fuck up about how much you hate us and continue to happily mooch off of our pop culture.

I did, however, come upon at least one fantastic thing that you don't see in America: An entire store devoted to gummy candy. They had every kind of gummy you could imagine, and in massive quantities. They even had my new prized possession - THE WORLD'S BIGGEST GUMMY BEAR!!! Behold its glory:



Okay, so maybe it isn't the biggest in the world, but it's the biggest one I've ever seen, and I'm happy enough with that. I also got several gallon-sized bags of fruit-shaped gummies for only a couple bucks each:



Or, at least I think they were only a couple bucks. No one really gave me a solid answer on what the conversion is over here, so I either spent twenty bucks or two hundred bucks at the gummy store... Either way, it was worth it.

Time to bundle up for another 45 degree summer evening in Germany!

My Grandmother, and her unhealthy obsession with my testicles.

My Grandmother, who I have previously discussed, appears to have a new mission: To save my testicles.

Last time I saw her, at Christmas, she sat me down and told me with great concern about something she'd seen on the news: "Robbie," she said (she calls me Robbie), "I know you have one of those lap computers." "Laptops?" "Yes, lap tops. I know you have one of those, and I saw on the news the other day that those things can break your testicles!" I couldn't help but laugh, awkwardly. Why on earth is my Grandmother talking to me about my testicles? This should not be occuring, in any context, ever. She continued: "You know I love your testicles because they are going to bring me Grandbabies! I want you to be very careful with that lap top, because if you have it on your lap all the time it can make you so you can't have babies! And you know Grandma is looking forward to some little ones in the family! And Heaven knows I don't think we can count on anyone else in the family, at this point... So don't you be using that lap top on your lap! I hope you don't already..." Anxious for this conversation to end immediately, I assured her that I actually very rarely use my laptop on my lap, so there's nothing to worry about. But apparently that wasn't enough reassurance.

What has followed in the several months since then has been a relentless mail and e-mail assault, as she continues to hammer home the significance of my testicular safety. I have received numerous web links, newspaper clippings, and general words of concern relating to the subject of laptop computers and sterility. Especially after she found a web article which rated the Powerbook G4 - the laptop I use - as "the hottest laptop on the market." Which is true, but the particular article she sent me was making reference to its popularity, not its temperature. Senility is fun.

Most recently I received this letter as part of a St. Patrick's Day card she sent me, which arrived much closer to Easter:

Hi Robbie: You are the only Irishman in the family so have a good time but stay away from Green beer. There is a legend that Leprechauns will give you green babies, if you drink a lot of green beer. Ugh I don't want Green Grandbabies.

Enclosed is another article on keeping your lap top off your lap unless you put a pillow or something between the computer and your legs. You should by now catch on, that I am looking forward to a few grandbabies.

Mom keeps me informed of your travels. Be careful, the whole world is going nuts. I want you safe.

Grandpa keeps asking for you, his mind is really going.
The weather has been super here, better than summer.

Take care and hurry home!

LOVE GRANDMA

I enjoyed this letter so much I put it up on my fridge. It more or less follows the general structure of letters from my Grandmother, which is as follows: Introduction, general update about the family, plea to be careful and hurry home, nonchalant remark about my Grandfather's deteriorating health, and an update on the weather back home. The Grandpa thing is always the best, because, at its most ludicrous it goes something like this: "We all miss you very much, hope to see you very soon. Be sure to be careful in your travels. Grandpa had another accident at church on sunday, and had to go to the doctors for another check on his bad heart. His brain gets worse and worse every day. The weather has been pretty good here but it rained yesterday. Take care! LOVE GRANDMA." At the most, the letter comes as part of a hilarious care package, which always includes random food items she clearly was just trying to get rid of. Last time I got a box of Tuna Helper® which had expired in 2002, and a half-eaten bag of Hershey's Kisses. The time before that I got a can of pitted prunes, petrified cookies in a zip lock bag, and a pack of sanitary wipes. Sometimes there's a five dollar bill with a note attached instructing me how to use it: "Buy an ice cream cone," or "Go out to the movies."

Well, it's the thought that counts, right? I just wish her thoughts weren't so focused on my testicles, lately. It's a bit creepy.

I'm so not looking forward to getting old.

Smoking fags in London.

So I've spent the last week or so enjoying bad weather, bad food, and bad teeth in lovely London. I don't really romanticize London the way a lot of people do - I've only been there on business travel, and the charms of a foreign country tend to get lost in that environment, so more often than not I've come away viewing England as a dreary, silly place where the bars close too early, the meat tastes like tree bark, CD's cost thirty dollars, and I can't plug my Game Boy into the fucking wall without it exploding (five years ago or so we fried a Nintendo 64 in a frenzied attempt to feed our addiction to Super Smash Bros). But this time, after the rain cleared (however briefly) and I had the opportunity to explore the town a bit and have some fun nights out, I came away thinking maybe this place isn't so bad after all... If only someone would send it some orthodontists. And somehow, like every other time I've stayed in London, I managed to get a couple good stories out of it involving ridiculous situations with obscure celebrities (ask me sometime about Tom Jones making out with some skeezy British chick behind a couch in the penthouse at 5am).

The hotel I stayed at is the type of posh, ultra-modern, Ian Schrager style-over-substance wallet-drainer where the bellmen are black-clad aspiring models who fancy themselves too good-looking to help you with anything, and a Snicker's from the mini-bar will cost you eight dollars. The hotel bar is a roped off, guests-and-important-people-only type of deal, and models are usually stumbling in and out of the elevator at 3am. But damned if it isn't conveniently located, so I found myself in there almost every night, begrudgingly adding $20 drinks to my room tab over and over again. As of this writing I haven't seen my final bill, but it's not going to be pretty. It's funny how easy it is to forget about the exchange rate after a couple drinks. "Oh, it's eight bucks. That's a bit pricey, but what the hell." Except it's not eight bucks. It's eight pounds, which is sixteen bucks. And you just bought three of them. Dumbass.

Anyway, so one night we wander into the hotel bar and see that a good portion of it is being monopolized by none other than Boy George and his harem of man-boy playthings. My friends and I took an empty booth in the corner and couldn't help but keep an amused eye on the lavish cornucopia of faggotry that was on display at George's table(s). There was also an extremely drunk, and probably high, woman dancing frantically by herself in the small open floor space. She was twirling and squealing and singing entirely different words to whatever music was playing, and then she twirled into our booth, and sat next to my friend, and started telling us that she was a bumble bee, and she needed to fly, but she'd sting us if we weren't careful, or some other such nonsense. This seemed like a good time to get up and order another drink, so I wandered over to the bar. While I was waiting, a man standing against the bar next to me, sipping a martini, looked me over a couple times and then said hello. He was dressed very GQ, with tan skin and about as much stubble as that guy from Coldplay, and he had a low, creepy, Jude Law British accent. He made some small talk before asking me if I knew George, gesturing at Boy George. No, I said I didn't, and he told me that he was an old friend. That should have been the first sign of trouble, but I wasn't paying attention at the time. He then made some comment about sexuality, and asked if I was gay. I made the mistake of joking around with him, saying: "Oh, I like the girls. Well, for the most part." "For the most part, eh?" His interest was far too piqued, but again, I didn't notice, and continued to joke: "Yeah, you know, I smoke a bone or two every once in a while, just for kicks." He laughed, and said: "Oh really?" Um, no. Not really. I told him I was kidding, that I'm straight. But it was too late. The damage was done. His foot, he felt, was in the door - the back door, if you will, har har - and it was time to fight his way in. He asked me if I'd ever been with a guy, and I made the mistake of telling him the truth: No, I haven't. I probably should have said yes, because I think the tantalizing opportunity to be the first was tremendously exciting to him. The wheels were turning in his creepy little head. Oh, the possibilities! At this point I was well aware of what was going on here, and made an awkward escape into conversation with someone else. But he quickly re-appeared, and asked if he could buy me a drink. Oh, no, I don't think so, I'm okay. That's what I told him, but he wasn't going to take no for an answer. So I said okay, yeah, buy me a drink. Mostly to shut him up. He disappeared for a bit, and I thought maybe he'd forgotten about me, when suddenly he made a grand re-appearance.

He slithered up to me, drink in hand, and said, with his eyes looking dead into mine: "You know, you're very attractive. I'd quite like to blow you." Now, unfortunately no amount of words could describe how creepy that sounded in his particular voice, with that debonair accent. I was kind of taken aback. What the hell do you say to that? I laughed awkwardly and again tried to turn it into a joke, by pointing at the drink and saying, "Ha ha, well, uh, I haven't had quite enough of these yet." That was a stupid fucking thing to say. Very seriously, he responded, "Well how many will it take? Because I have a tab running." Still chuckling awkwardly, I told him I appreciated his forwardness, but really. I'm into girls. Really. He rolled his eyes, as if my sexual preference was not even remotely a factor in the situation. "Come on. Trust me, it'll be the best blowjob you've ever had." You know, that's entirely possible. I wouldn't know, and I don't plan to find out. Not tonight, at least. So he backed down for a moment in favor of a different approach, which was revealing to me that he's some sort of gay porn star in England. Great. I tried using this to turn the conversation away from my penis being in his mouth, and we had a brief chat about the levels of censorship in British porn. And then Boy George walked by, and said hello to Mr. Gay Porn Star, and asked how he was doing. "Not bad," Mr. Gay Porn Star replied, "just trying to convince this straight boy how much fun he could have with me." Boy George looked at me, cocked an eyebrow, looked back to Mr. Gay Porn Star, extended his hands roughly a foot apart from each other in a gesture of measurement, and said, "does he know how fucking big you are?" Mr. Gay Porn Star just looked at me and shrugged and said, again in the world's creepiest voice: "Well, I am a porn star for a reason, you know." Oh Lord. How do I escape this? Now with Boy George's support, Mr. Gay Porn Star continued his assault on my heterosexuality: "Trust me, it'll be amazing. You just lay back, close your eyes, and think about a girl. You'll never know the difference. I could be out of your hotel room in ten minutes." Jesus Christ. Really, ha ha, um, it's okay, but really, thanks for the offer. "I really love blowing straight guys. It's a sort of hobby of mine. And I give incredible blowjobs. It really will be the best you've ever had. Just ask George!" Oh, fucking hell. Now I've got this atrocious mental image of Boy George's lumpy old skinlog in this dude's mouth, with his long old man balls drooping off of his chin. I can't drink fast enough. Please, someone ssaaaave meeeeeee.

And then, like an angel from Heaven, who suddenly appears? None other than crazy bumble bee lady, who twirls her way right in between me and Mr. Gay Porn Star, screaming nonsensically along with the music. And that was my escape route. "Hey there!" I say delightedly to the crazy lady, "I guess I owe you that dance now!" "LET'S FUCKING DANCE!!" she yells back, and I twirl away with her, mumbling something about thanks for the drink to Mr. Gay Porn Star. And then, instead of dancing with the crazy lady, I get the fuck out of there, and feel like I need a thousand showers to wash that dude's breath off of my face.

Ah, London. You don't disappoint.


P.S. - Because I really want a front row seat in Hell and still can't stop making fun of Terry Schiavo, please enjoy these two links:

Terry Schiavo's Blog

Photoshop Terry Schiavo on to Album Covers

On leaving New York, fun in the ghetto, and potato chip incompatibilities

(this is an unnecessarily long and rambling entry. but i was bored on the plane, so deal with it)

New York is not a city to be lived in, so much as it is a city to be experienced. It is vital, urgent and alive in a way that no other city could ever be. It is a place that gets under your skin and flows into your veins and becomes a part of you, or maybe you become a part of it. In that sense, New York is an addiction, and most people who live there will tell you that, whether they love or hate the city, it feels weird being away for too long. It's an itchy, uncomfortable sensation, less comparable to homesickness than to the feeling of going too long without a cigarette, or a cup of coffee, or whatever your vice might be. And to return is to get a much-needed fix; to let the city soak back into your veins and fill you up. In that sense, stepping out of the subway and finding myself on the noisy, filthy, crowded, beautiful streets of Manhattan for the first time in months was kind of like getting high... and it was great.

Of course, the experience was bittersweet under the circumstances, since I was returning home strictly for the purpose of packing up everything I own and having it moved to the west coast. Over the course of three years, my place in Brooklyn had undergone the long but rewarding transformation from simply a place I lived in to an actual *home.* Every inch of it was furnished and decorated and occupied in exactly the way I wanted it to be. I had repainted every wall, and finished doing so in irritating proximity to my sudden departure to California. I owned several giant, frivolous items - like a full-sized arcade game and a giant antique table from India - which were retardedly difficult to get up the stairs and into my living room. Memories both good and bad had taken root in every nook and cranny, permanently entwining themselves with the location. The point is, I felt settled for the first time since leaving for college six years ago, and I had accumulated a LOT of shit. Which meant that on several different levels, moving across the country (for the second time) was going to be tremendously difficult. And it was, indeed, an arduous and expensive nightmare of a project which occupied almost every moment of the nine days I was back in New York.

Thankfully there was time for a bit of fun. Midway through the process, with my belongings boxed up and the furniture scattered about, I decided it was a great time to have a party. The original idea was to have all my New York friends over at once since I wouldn't have time to hang out with them individually while I was back. But somehow that didn't seem good enough for my last hoorah, so I posted a bulletin invitation to the mass of strangers I have collected on MySpace, and several of my friends began calling their friends and telling them to come, and to bring all of their friends. The result was over 100 people in my apartment, in the stairwell outside my door, up the stairs, in the hallway, and on the roof of my building, screaming and dancing and drinking. Thank God no one else was living in the building, because the noise level was ridiculous. The next day I tried to count, and I think only about twelve of my actual friends were there. I have no idea who all the other people were, but they seemed to be having fun, and they did a spectacular job of trashing my empty apartment. In the morning the hardwood floors were black and filthy and sticky with beer. Garbage was strewn about, the toilet was crusted with puke, and several broken forties had scattered shards of glass across the floor. Still, despite the extra work it created for me, I was delighted to have gone out in style.

But aside from that night, I had very little opportunity for diversion, and the long days of packing and working and cleaning and running around were making me a bit loopy by the last day. I felt like I was about to lose my mind from lack of sleep and stress and sheer exhaustion, so a necessity was born to have some fun with the monotony. And somehow, tuesday's full ten hours of cleaning the apartment turned out to be the most fun I've had in months.

I should pause for a moment to note that although I loved my apartment dearly, it was not exactly in the best neighborhood. In fact, it was in the straight-up ghetto. Often this made daily life a unique adventure, but it had plenty of pesky downsides, like muggings and fatal shootings and a lot of really loud rap music in the middle of the night. The point is that the people in my 'hood are really, really ghetto, and by that I am not referring to their income level so much as their state of mind. So on tuesday, while Melissa was graciously helping me with the process of getting the apartment totally clean and bare, we decided that the best way to get rid of my unwanted belongings was to put them out on the sidewalk with a sign that said "FREE STUFF," and watch from above as the locals scrambled and fought over what would be, to most people, nothing but trash. If there is one thing I have learned about the people in that neighborhood, it's that the word "FREE" has a powerful and entrancing effect on them. It compels them to take something, no matter what it is or how little use they have for it. Often they will take as many of whatever it is as they can hold, not knowing why they would ever need so many, but knowing only that it's free. Resistance is futile. They are powerless in the mighty grasp of those four letters. And I knew that this phenomena would make the "FREE STUFF" pile a very entertaining experiment.

Our first round of items were reasonably decent. We put up a cardboard sign and set out a box containing an old answering machine, a (probably broken) coffee maker, a small Christmas tree made of tinsel, my old DirecTV receiver box minus its power cord and remote, a naked Barbie doll (shut up, it was from a school art project), and some women's shoes in various states of disrepair which my ex-girlfriend had left in my closet and didn't want anymore. I went back upstairs, grabbed a couple more things, and came back down to put them out, and ALREADY, in one minute's time, there was an old black lady with several gold teeth struggling to carry as much of the free stuff as she could. It seemed that she had just grabbed anything that looked electronic, figuring certainly it must be valuable. She scowled at me and grumbled, "don't even think about it, it's mine now!" as she hobbled down the street, trying not to drop the incomplete DirecTV box which would surely be of absolutely no use to anyone.

Clearly, "FREE STUFF" was an immediate success, and quickly began to cause a commotion amongst the locals outside. We were going to have to lower our standards in order to keep this up. We brought down a box of old food items of various desirability, although the ceiling on that was not particularly high, as a can of string beans was the very best of what we had to offer. There was also a pack of Top Ramen, a small box of Aunt Jemima pancake mix, a mostly empty can of Pam cooking spray, half a bottle of vegetable oil, and some Banana Boat sunscreen. And then there were the things that certainly no one would take, but we had to try: A half-eaten jar of Ruffles onion dip (with bits of broken potato chips stuck in it due to chip incompatibility*), and a half-filled bag of uncooked pasta which had been opened, used, and then rolled up and sealed with a plastic chip clip. We even found some used toiletries under my sink: Near-empty bottles of after shave, hand cream, some disposable razors, a 99 cent bottle of shampoo, and a year-old bottle of vitamin C with exactly four tablets remaining. Certainly no one would take any of this, we concluded naively.

*(A quick aside to comment on something that has been bothering me for a while: Have you ever noticed that Ruffles brand chip dip has been specifically designed for non-compatibility with regular potato chips? Try dipping a Lay's chip into Ruffles dip and you'll find that, unless you employ the most careful of dipping techniques, the chip will break off every time, embedding itself like shrapnel in your sour cream and onion. The dip itself is thicker, requiring the more solid structure of a Ruffles chip to survive the plunge into creamy goodness. It's some kind of fucking conspiracy, is what it is: If you've invested in a jar of Ruffles dip, but only have Lay's chips, you will be appalled by their insufficiency, and will be FORCED to buy a bag of Ruffles chips. If you have Lay's dip, however, you're in the clear: It is compatible with both Lay's AND Ruffles chips. Am I the only one troubled by this? Probably...)

But oh, the Mexicans. We were having our doubts about vitamins and after shave, until a group of our little brown neighbors to the South showed up and, like piranas on a drowning calf, swarmed the pile and picked it clean. They were bickering over coat hangers, sticking sun tan lotion in their pockets (a good eight months before they could conceivably need it), and checking the vitamin bottles to see if there were any left inside - apparently four pills was good enough, because they took it. One of them came, grabbed what he could hold and then disappeared, only to return moments later with a cart, allowing him to stock up on some of the bigger items, like the world's dirtiest toaster:



Now, keep in mind that these are not homeless people, nor even impoverished people by most definitions. They're just fucking ghetto. These are the same people I see in the bodega across the street, bickering over the price of a sixty cent bar of soap while spending ten dollars in lottery tickets. And now they were fighting over my garbage.

One woman, who apparently worked - or maybe just hung out - at the beauty shop across the street, had taken to watching out the window to see when we were bringing down a new batch of junk, and then immediately coming out to get first dibs on the new stash. She got in a fight with the guy who brought the cart, over a junky bookshelf with holes in the back of it. She ran out to stop him as he attempted to load it onto his cart, and shouted at him that she had seen it first. By this point we had run out of stuff for the pile, but we were laughing so hard as we watched out the window (Melissa fell on the floor laughing at one point) that we simply HAD to find more.

The event reached a moral low point when Melissa suggested we offer up the filthy, beer-stained trash can from under my sink. CERTAINLY no one would want a $1.50 plastic trash can caked in filth and missing its lid. Melissa began stuffing the can with other things no one would want, among them a great deal of coat hangers and the well-worn bath mat from my bathroom. When I asked her why she was stuffing it so full, she responded, teared up in laughter: "I just want to watch them root through the trash!" Amazing.

To test the reaction time of the beauty shop lady, I filmed Melissa as she brought out the trash can filled with, well, trash. This little clip from my digital camera shows Melissa bringing it out, and within seconds the woman appearing from across the street and heading over to see what's new. A minute later she had, in fact, taken the trash can:



We were dying. In the end, we had managed to drag on our ridiculous diversion for roughly five hours, and it had gone a long way to kill the monotony of cleaning. Almost everything had been taken from the free stuff pile. The best part was, even though no one had gone for the open bag of pasta, someone HAD stopped to take the little plastic chip clip from off of it! And later, with all of the free stuff gone, I came outside to find a woman rooting through my trash. I told her to get out of my trash, and she said, "I keep it nice! I won't mess nothin' up!" I told her that wasn't the point, that I had thrown out my trash for a reason and I didn't want her going through it. She told me, "I just wanna see if maybe there's one a them prepaid phone cards in here." No, I told her, there aren't any. "Well I is just gonna take a look and see, you never know." No, lady, I DO know, it's MY fucking trash, I know what I threw away! So she asked me, "how about CD's? Got any of those?" NO, there are no fucking CD's in my trash. She wanted to look anyway. I told her I was going to call the cops. Just then, she produced a couple scratched up CD-R's from one of the garbage bags, and lit up with excitement. "See, I found some CD's!" I tried to explain to her that those were useless to her, they had been burned from a computer, and she should leave them there. "Oh, this is a computer?" No, it's not a computer, it was made with a computer. "How's a computer gotta make this?" I gave up, then, and left her to dig through my garbage.

A couple hours later it was time to say goodbye to my apartment and then spend my last New York hours in a haze of whiskey, Polish candy, bad television, photo booths and debauchery, before groggily making my way to the airport at 6 in the morning and journeying reluctantly back to Los Angeles.

I wrote most of this entry on the plane, but while I was waiting at the airport I wrote this:

A fat kid just sat down next to me with his father, and said, in a gaspy, excited voice, "can I Dad, can I get it??" His father, not looking up from his newspaper, nodded and produced a five dollar bill from out of his pocket, which the fat kid eagerly snatched up with his grubby little fingers and dashed away, towards the food vendors. A minute later he returned, horking down scoop after scoop of chocolate ice cream from a large cup. He slurped it loudly and wiped the chocolate dribble on his chin with his sleeve. Now, mind you, it's eight o'clock in the morning, and porky here is already hitting up the ice cream. If I had a fat kid, I certainly wouldn't be adding to his girth by buying him chocolate ice cream for breakfast. I'd have him on a fucking treadmill, eating a stick of celery for each meal, and thanking me for being such a responsible fucking parent. This kid, on the other hand, appears to be the victim of a father who views his child as a nuisance, and will do anything - or, as the case may be, feed him anything - to get the little brat out of his hair for a few minutes so he can read the stock report or the sports scores or whatever it is that average American Dads like to do.

Now the chubby little snot, his sweaty ass sitting on the sleeve of my jacket, is leaning over and looking at my computer with great interest, hopefully unaware that I'm writing about him. I'll start using big words so he doesn't know what I'm talking about... Nevermind, I don't know any big words. I'll just hope - probably not unreasonably - that he doesn't know how to read. He is now asking me about my computer. "Does it have a DVD player?" Yes, you bloated little dipshit, it has a DVD player. "My Dad has that computer too." Really? Does your Dad have a leash for you, you little beast? Stop breathing on me.

He just said to me: "My Dad works for a computer company, what does your Dad do?" I told him, not looking away from my computer: "My Dad is a government assassin. When people are causing problems for high-powered political figures, my Dad hunts them down and kills them, usually in their sleep." The fat kid, wide-eyed, paused for a moment and then shouted "NUH UH!!" spitting on me a little as he did so. I just shrugged and continued typing. Then, beginning to doubt himself, the kid said "Wait, for real?" and I just shrugged. "Tell me!" "I already told you," I said. "If someone is causing problems for the United States, my father strangles them with their own intestines." He was clearly curious, but unsure whether to believe me. "Do you mean like George Bush?" "Yes, like George Bush." "My Dad is voting for George Bush." "That's nice. Your Dad must be rich and stupid." "My Dad's not stupid, he works with computers!" "So do the people at the drive-thru window at Burger King, if you want to get technical." Then his Dad reappeared and told him to stop bothering me.

I genuinely like children, so bad parenting is a tremendous pet peeve of mine. When I got in from LA and I was waiting outside the airport to be picked up, I witnessed one of my least favorite examples of this: An obnoxious fat Jersey mom smoking a cigarette and carelessly blowing the smoke right into her 7 or 8 year old son's face. When a car arrived to pick her up, she loaded her bags in the trunk and put the kid in the back seat, all the while sucking away at her cigarette desperately, trying to get in a couple last hits of precious nicotine. She was making my blood boil, puffing away onto her poor kid, so when she flicked the still-lit cigarette on the sidewalk, I had had enough, and I walked up, picked the cigarette up off of the ground, handed it to her, and said very dryly: "Excuse me ma'am, you dropped this." She just looked at me, confused and irritated. Around me, onlookers snickered as she snatched the cigarette from my hand and, still without saying anything, threw it to the ground and snubbed it out with her foot. "Ooohhh," I shouted at her as she escaped into her car, "that's a MUCH better place to put it! On the sidewalk!" Quite a few people were watching now, and laughing. The woman was wrought with embarrassment and clearly wanted to punch me in the face. She said nothing, though, and as she started to take off I yelled, "I hope your kid enjoys that cigarette smoke!" It was a uniquely satisfying experience.

Cockblocked by Snoop Dogg, and other adventures.

If there is one good thing about Hollywood, it's that it seems to be an endless supplier of ridiculous situations. Whenever I go out in this town, something interesting seems to happen. I suppose that's the inevitable result of so many ridiculous people crammed into one small city.

So last night I was out with my friend Eric, who has been my best friend for more or less my entire life, despite the fact that - at this point - we have essentially nothing in common. Much in contrast to the person I grew up with, Eric now is a total "dude." He lives down on the beach, wears flip-flops in any occasion, and always asks me if I want to come down on the weekends and play volleyball with him and his friends. I'd rather drive a rusty nail through my testicles, I tell him. But he always asks anyway. He's the kind of corny guy who hangs out at college bars, buying girls drinks and trying to outdo his personal record for how many phone numbers he can collect in one night's outing. He's always dating at least three or four girls at a time, and says cheesy misogynistic catch phrases like "chasin' tail" and "she's got a smokin' bod." And he has at any given moment exactly one thing on his mind: The pursuit of the opposite sex. All of this comes from a tremendous burst of confidence gained from a post-high school hormone explosion which has turned him from shy, scrawny shrimp to tall, muscle-bound hunk. He's training to be a firefighter, and you could easily see him as Mr. August in the firemen calendar, standing sweaty and shirtless with a suggestively-placed fire hose.

Still, I love the guy, and going out with him is always an adventure, so last night we found ourself (on his suggestion) at Sky Bar - a notoriously pretentious night spot - because Eric loves going out to trendy Hollywood bars and trying his luck with snotty socialites. And for my own part, I enjoy the absurd situations that usually come out of it.

Sky Bar, as per usual, was ripe with the scent of a hundred expensive colognes melding together, and the crowd was bustling with would-be models, industry suits, and a lot of guys wearing shiny shirts and sunglasses at night. Douchebags, the lot of them, but it's hard to complain because the place itself is so damned nice. At one point, I was standing near the bar and I turned around to see a man smiling at me and extending his hand. He was in his fifties, wearing a suit and tie, and had kind of a Ted Kennedy look to him, but not as puffy. He had a smile like a car salesman. He was holding a martini. "Hey there!" he said, and asked me how I was doing. I told him I was well, and he started complaining about having to wear a suit, that "I have to meet with these fucking business guys and I hate wearing this type of shit, I can't wait to get back into some comfortable digs." Yeah, he said "digs." His name was Pat Roxbury, he told me. But everyone calls him "Rox." He was very friendly, and quickly offered me a drink, which I declined because I had just gotten one. Then he launched right into telling me about his job at PepsiCo. Something about Taco Bell and KFC and Pizza Hut, and something about him being out here from Tennessee to meet with California politicians about some law regarding corporate health insurance and BLA BLA BLA BLA BLA. It was around this time that I recognized the source of his overbearing friendliness: He was coked up out of his mind. Fitting. So Eric and I endured his blabbering for a good ten minutes, and made inane conversation with him about the mind-numbingly boring inner workings of whatever the hell he does for a living. Then he told us he had to get back to his business companions, but told us that if we wanted a drink, to just use his tab. Just tell them Roxbury, he told us.

I asked Eric, "Does this guy want to fuck us, or is he just high?" Eric mentioned that he saw a wedding ring on his finger. "That doesn't mean he doesn't want to fuck us," I told him. Regardless, we had an alcohol benefactor, and we weren't going to let it go to waste. The first thing to do was test it. I went and ordered a drink, and said, "it's on Pat Roxbury's tab." The bartender nodded, and that was that. Free. I asked Eric if he wanted the complimentary drink, because I wasn't even halfway done with my previous one. He didn't want it. We set it down on a table and left it there. What do we care? It's free. We can always get more.

With a rich cokehead's bar tab at our disposal, a tidal wave of possibilities were flooding into our mischievous minds. We decided then that our goal of the night would be to run up this asshole's tab as high as we possibly could. So we approached a group of girls and asked them if they wanted drinks. It's on us, we told them. Well, it's on Pat. We ordered six drinks, and told the bartender, "just put it on Pat Roxbury's tab." Thanks, Rox. Then we ordered a round of shots for the ladies. Oh, and I got an extra one, for Pat Roxbury. "That's just cruel," Eric told me, and I laughed. I walked to the other side of the bar where Rox was sitting with his fellow suits. "Here, I got you a shot!" I told him. With his money, of course. He gulped it gleefully, and gave me a high five. Yes, a high five. "Thanks buddy!" He told me. "No, Rox," I told him, "thank YOU."

Meanwhile, Eric was deep in conversation with a girl he'd been eyeing all night. He bought her a drink. Thanks, Rox. They seemed to be having a good conversation. Her body language suggested she was into him. And then the most incredible thing happened. Eric is talking to this girl, and she's in mid conversation, when from out of nowhere - like a fucking hawk, swooping down on its prey - fucking SNOOP DOGG appears, puts his arm around the girl, says "wussup baby?" and ushers her away from Eric. We never saw her again. Just like that. Gone. Property of The Doggfather. We asked her friends if she knew Snoop previously. They were as befuddled as us. "No," they told us, "she's never met him before." So if you were wondering how someone like Snoop Dogg picks up chicks... wonder no longer. I couldn't resist turning to Eric and saying, "Dude. He just nizzled your shizzle."

Around this time, Pat Roxbury re-appeared, no doubt fresh off an eightball. He told us that he was on the list at the Foundation Room, and we should come with him. We thought it would probably be entertaining to tag along with this crazy drug-addled business dude, but it was getting late and we figured staying at the bar with his open tab would be more fun. So we told him "Gee, we'd love to, but unfortunately, we have to head home." We have to wake up early. Or something. Rox was disappointed, but was sure to give me his business card. He told me, for no reason in particular, that he knows a lot of big wigs in the music industry. I think he thought I was in a band. Without missing a beat, I told him my father was the president of Universal Music, and we should do business together. It didn't even make any sense, it just seemed like a funny thing to say. This piqued his interest, and he put his hand on my shoulder and said, very intently, "We should talk, big guy." Yes, "big guy." "You've got my card," he said. I told him - I actually said, with a straight face: "Have your people call my people." "Sure thing buddy!" he exclaimed. "I'll see you boys later!" And he told us, again, "If you need one more drink before you split, put it on my tab." Thanks, Rox. We'll do that. You're the best. And then he left, and our mission continued. We found several more groups of girls, buying rounds of drinks and shots for the lot of them. Drinks that no one was even drinking. Shots we left sitting on the bar. It didn't matter. Oh, and keep in mind this is one of the most expensive bars in LA. Ten, fifteen dollar drinks. We must have been running up quite a total by this point. Thanks, Rox. Eric tried to buy Snoop Dogg a drink. I suggested a bottle of Cristal. "I wonder how much that costs?" Who cares? It's free. But Snoop's unfriendly-looking body guard vetoed Eric's offer, so we had to try plan B. Eric caught the attention of the waitress who was serving Snoop's posse, and said, "Get those guys a round of drinks for me. Whatever they want. Just put it on Pat Roxbury's tab." Thanks again, Rox.

After several rounds of drinks with a group of girls from Mexico City, the bar was starting to close and Eric decided it was time for the coup de grace. Our grand finale would be a round of shots for the entire wait staff. Put it on Pat Roxbury's tab. But when Eric tried to order, the bartender told us, "Oh, that tab has been closed. Pat is over there." Our nervous eyes followed her finger down the bar, and there was Rox, at the other end, arguing with one of the bartenders about his bar tab. Oops. I guess he was sobering up. We needed to get the fuck out of there, quickly. I grabbed one of the Mexican girls, and said, "walk with me!" and I hid behind her as we slipped out of the room, behind Rox's back. Then Eric and I drove home, laughing gleefully at how many drinks we'd managed to buy with Rox's money. I'm sure it's a company expense, anyway. Thanks, PepsiCo.

In Rox's honor, I'm drinking a Diet Pepsi today instead of a Diet Coke. Fuck Diet Pepsi, it tastes like ass. This one's for you, Rox.

I just got a voice mail from Eric, saying "Hey dude, I'm just calling to confirm that all that shit really did happen last night. It seems a bit surreal." Yeah. Welcome to LA.

Missing in action

So I've actually been getting hate mail from people demanding that I post a new journal entry, now that it's been over a month. As if I owe you fuckers something. Well, here I am, and I have nothing in particular to say except that I was sick with motherfucking bronchitis for a fucking MONTH. A MONTH. Thirty days. I snotted, I puked, I coughed up bloody mucus, I lost weight faster than Mary-Kate Olsen... It was a Goddamned blast. The highlight of being sick, however, was the doctor I went to see. A general practice doctor who I chose more or less randomly from a list provided by the insurance company website. But when I went to see him, I noticed on his office plaque that he was not just a general practice doctor, but also an AIDS specialist. Whatever, I just need some antibiotics. So the doctor comes in, and he is tall, good-looking thirty-something with a deep booming voice. He seemed like a motivational speaker. Like that one dude with the big horse mouth. Tony Robbins.
Anyway, I tell him my symptoms and he starts right up with, "so you've had a sore throat?"
"Yes."
"That could be gonorrhea of the throat. It could account for your other symptoms, as well."
Really, what the hell am I supposed to say to THAT? It was possibly the last thing I would ever have expected to hear, short of him telling me that flamingos had laid eggs in my esophagus. I am sick, and tired, and now quite confused, and the best response I can muster is: "Um. Okay..."
Then he says, "And how might one contract gonorrhea of the throat, you might ask?" I hadn't asked, but I had a feeling he was going to tell me anyway. He leaned in real close to me, and said, in a low voice, with his hot breath musking my face: "From going down on a woman!" And then he paused. "Or a man. Whichever. I'm not here to judge."
Again, all I can think to say is, "Uh. Okay." So he continues chipping away at my confidence that I couldn't possibly have gonorrhea of the throat, until he asks, "do you still have a sore throat?"
I tell him no, I do not.
Looking a little defeated, he says, "Oh... then you probably don't have gonorrhea of the throat."
Really. That's really good to know. That's fucking excellent. Thanks, doctor.
Next, he pulls a seemingly total non-sequitur and starts lecturing me about hepatitis. This guy is so hung up on STDs it's like he was desperate to diagnose me with one. Let me remind you I came in to see him about a COUGH. Not penile discharge. Not open fucking sores. A COUGH. He starts telling me about the different types of hepatitis and the dangers they represent and how one might contract them. And then he leans forward again, and says:
"You can also get hepatitis C from rimming." And then, in a quieter voice, "do you know what rimming is?"
For a moment I debated saying no, just to hear his explanation, but this was all coming so far out of left field that I couldn't get it together. I just said, somewhat in disbelief: "Um.. Yes."
"Good!" He seemed excited. Yes. Good for me. That's excellent for me. I know what analingus is. I get a gold fucking star. Now can we please address my violent cough now, which has happened at least fifteen times while you've been telling me about gonorrhea and rimjobs?

An hour of poking and prodding and testing later, he managed to diagnose me with bronchitis, but only after determining that I probably didn't have gonorrhea, or chlamydia, or hepatitis, or AIDS. All of which are major causes of a head cold, I'm sure.

So, a couple weeks and some antibiotics later, I am finally better, and a week of feeling like my old self again has led me to discover something about Los Angeles: It eats a fucking dick. My apologies to you Silverlake (aka Williamsburg three years ago) hipsters who swear to your beloved plastic playground, but New York City kicks the sloppy cunt out of this shithole, and somewhere deep inside you all know it's true. Like that stupid "song" that INDI 103 can't quit playing, with that snotty LA asshole sniveling sarcastically that "New York is sooooo cool!" Deep down inside, he knows what he's saying is true, and he masks it with sarcasm because he knows he could never afford to move to New York with his bussing job at the 101 ("It's only for right now, until my band takes off"), and his lame-ass band would get trampled and battered and spit on and left to die in New York City. You all know it's true. Defend this town all you want, but it ain't got shit on the big apple. Look, we even have a cooler nickname. THE BIG APPLE. That conjures up an image of giant fucking red apple that doesn't take shit from nobody, and could fucking squash your ass. What chance do you have against a giant apple? None. Not a fucking chance. What's Hollywood's nickname - TINSELTOWN?? Please. What a pussy nickname. TINSELTOWN. That makes me think of an eight year old's arts and crafts project. A shoddy little cardboard village decorated with those tacky little strands of silver that white trash families put on their Christmas tree. A flimsy, shiny little tinsel town, living in fear of giant pieces of fruit that could crush the fuck out of it.

Prove me wrong fuckers, if you feel strongly to the contrary. In the meantime, I'm going to go work on my tan.

Stinky Old Lady Poop and Airport Holy Wars.

So today I traveled from the sweaty, rain-drenched filthpit of New Orleans to the welcome sunshine of California. Overall it was an irritating trip, to say the least.

When I got on the first plane, and everyone was settled in, that is when they decided to tell us that there was going to be a 45 minute delay getting off the ground. Bad weather, or something like that. So, I figured I'd go pee while I had the chance. I went back to the "lavatory," as they call it on airplanes, and opened the door, which read "vacant" on the little indicator by the handle. To my surprise, there was a little old woman in there, standing at the sink, thankfully already done with her business. She was five foot nothing with large spectacles and a mop of curly white hair - the archetypal Grandmother. I apologized and reached to shut the door again, but she said it was alright, that she was just coming out. "That's why I had the door unlocked," she told me, in that "Grandma knows best" tone of voice. She then told me, looking back into the bathroom somewhat hesitantly, "I don't think there's a way to flush in there, but if there is I'll leave it up to you." At least I think that's what she said. It was an awkward moment, and I was anxious for it to end, so I paid no mind to her comment and simply said "okay," and made my way into the bathroom, locking the door behind me. Not really looking, I reached to lift up the toilet seat while fumbling with my zipper. And then I smelled something that hit my nose like a fist. I looked down and saw it, staring back up at me: In the dry toilet basin sat a single, large, oily greenish-brown old lady turd. It was long - serpentine, if you will - and it was nestled comfortably under a blanket of cheap single-ply airplane toilet paper, which itself was decorated in Grandma's colorful skid marks. Oh, and it stunk like the fucking unholy bowels of Satan.

There is a function of toilet water that most people rarely, if ever, consider: The water considerably masks the ripe odor of a stinky poo. However much your shit might stink, consider that, if it were not safely submerged in its porcelain swimming pool, it would be at least three times more potent. And this, as frequent travelers are aware, is exactly what happens with the water-free toilets in airport lavatories.

So the old lady turd was just sitting there, in the open air, its stench free to permeate the claustrophobic interior of the bathroom. I literally almost gagged, it was so strong. Also, it looked as though Grandma had eaten something with spinach in it for her most recent meal. For a brief moment I became concerned for the elderly woman's digestive health, and wondered if I should suggest to her that perhaps she talk with her doctor about incorporating more fiber or other digestive aids into her diet, since her system was clearly not effectively processing leafy greens, which we all know are a very important part of a healthy lifestyle. And then I remembered my far more immediate concern, which was the increasingly unbearable stench of bodily waste, presently causing me to feel a bit light-headed. I quickly reached down for the button labeled "PUSH TO FLUSH," which somehow the old woman hadn't managed to spot, despite it being in plain sight. The toilet made that magnificently loud "FWOOOOSH!" sound that airplane toilets make, as the bottom of the basin opened up and sucked the turd away into darkness. However, Grandma's hotsnake had marked its territory. It had left a piece of itself behind as a reminder, a long streak of brown on the curved interior of the toilet. Grimacing, I peed, quickly washed my hands, and made for the exit. And as soon as I opened the door and started to step out, I stopped dead in my tracks. Who was standing there, waiting for the next vacancy, staring me right in the eyes as I froze up awkwardly in the doorway? It was the prettiest girl on the plane, of course: a young blonde-hair-blue-eyed girl-next-door type who I'd noticed in line boarding the plane. And she was about to step into a nauseating sauna of filth, of which she would surely assume - not unreasonably - that I was the culprit of. I had to say something. I had to assure her that I had not produced such an ungodly odor, nor decorated the toilet so magnificently with spinach-colored turd remnants. The moment was only getting more awkward as I stood there, like a deer in headlights. As her nose was no doubt already detecting the first signs of wretchedness. SAY. SOMETHING.

"Uh, I didn't do that."

Great. Excellent. How incredibly eloquent. Of ALL the ways I could have possibly phrased that, I picked by far the most idiotic. She looked back at me, her eyebrows cocked as if to say, "sure you didn't, buddy," and I moved on, leaving her to her cruel fate.

Fucking old ladies.

After that portion of the trip, I had a stop-over in Dallas for roughly an hour. The airport there was an absolute disaster. Flight delays, cancellations, gate changes and over-bookings had thrown the terminal into chaos. Massive crowds of frustrated, confused, middle America normal people were clustering around every gate in various states of travel panic. I made it to my gate just in time to be informed that it had been suddenly changed, and myself and the couple hundred other people waiting to board flight 2633 now needed to walk roughly eight hundred miles to a different terminal. This announcement was met with a cacophony of groaning and complaining, as everyone grudgingly stood up and gathered their belongings for the trek to terminal C. And during the walk over there, something amazing happened.

While making my way through the long pathway, alongside a couple dozen huffing and puffing overweight tourists, one of those airport tram vehicles rode up alongside me. Those little passenger cars that zip around from gate to gate, transporting anyone too fat or old or handicapped to get from point A to point B by way of their own two feet. It was filled with about six or seven old ladies, all of whom had silly, vacant grins across their wrinkled faces, as if this fun little tram ride was the greatest adventure they'd experienced in a very long time. The tram made its way past me, slowed a bit by the heavy foot traffic, and as it reached a narrow bend in the passageway, it came to an abrupt stop, jolting the elderly women a bit. Replacing their glee with confusion. As I rounded the corner I saw the problem: Another tram, this one heavily stocked with fat women, was coming around the corner from the opposite direction, and the two had nearly collided head-on. Now they were both stopped, about six feet away from each other, It was a good old fashioned show-down: The old ladies versus the fat ladies. And neither of them were going to budge.

This is where it got really good. I was already late for my connecting flight, but I had to stop and see how this was going to pan out. The drivers of each tram were both some variety of middle-eastern ethnicity, and they started shouting and gesturing at each other to back away. Neither car budged. Then they began full-on yelling at each other in some indiscernible, furiously-paced foreign language. It was almost as if the two airport employees were bitter rivals, and neither was willing to compromise in this intense situation. It was like a microcosm of mid-east tensions, right here in Dallas, in the walkway between terminal A and terminal C. The old ladies and the fat ladies were exchanging nervous glances at each other, unsure of what to do. The shouting grew louder. People were stopping and staring. Then, the drivers' argument suddenly gave way to a very uncomfortable silence, as they both just stared at each other, bitterly. I thought Jihad was about to be declared. I thought they were about to leap at each other and stab at each others' throats with pencils. But both trams began inching slowly forward, as both drivers turned their steering wheels hard to the right. The vehicles turned as they moved forward, avoiding impact by mere inches. The two drivers never took their eyes off each other as they went by. The old ladies looked apologetically at the fat ladies, and vice versa. And when the trams were a safe distance apart, each sped away from each other at a determined pace. It seemed that Jihad had been avoided, and the fragile peace at Dallas-Ft. Worth had held together... at least for now.

Obese Trailer Trash, Violent Ass-Raping, and The Keanu Reeves Honorary Wooden Acting Award.

So I got talked into seeing "Troy" tonight. What a truckload of steaming shite that was.

I should start by mentioning that I love movies, all kinds of movies - and generally I'm all up for the big Hollywood epic. Vast landscapes, sweeping orchestras, storybook heroes, impossibly poetic dialogue... the whole lot of it. It's the type of popcorn fun that movies were made for. But with the success of "Lord Of The Rings," everyone is trying to jump on the epic bandwagon. Every egocentric filmmaker wants a piece of the glory, and they're all digging through the history books, looking for an exotic new premise for their bloated, self-indulgent masterpieces. So now we've got an overload of epics, which is bad, because what helps make them epic in the start is that they're only around every so often. It's meant to be quite an event, like a movie you're looking forward to for months. Now there's one every few weeks, and most of them are shit.

So I went in to "Troy" with low expectations, and they were met. Maybe it wouldn't have been as bad if I wasn't in Hicksville USA, also known as the wretchedly miserable suburbs of New Orleans, Louisiana. Rarely have I been to a geographic area where so consistently my movie-going experiences have been ruined by the other theatre patrons. And this presents a tremendous problem for me. You see, I love seeing movies in a packed theatre. The atmosphere of an audience is what the cinema is all about. However, I also utterly despise, from the bottom of my heart, people who haven't figured out the very basic concept of SHUTTING THE FUCK UP. Which is more or less everyone down here in the dirty south.

So this time, in Louisiana's continuing efforts to ruin every movie I see, I enjoyed the company of a tremendous beast of a woman who was sitting directly behind me. She was a fucking cow, absolutely massive, and looked fresh out of the trailer park. She was apparently by herself, and sweaty rolls of lard were spilling off into the empty seats beside her. From the very first second of the film, she was launching a violent assault on her extra super size two gallon bag of heavily buttered popcorn. I almost felt bad for the little kernels of popped corn, they didn't stand a fucking chance. I was imaginging them, all huddled together in their bag, amongst them the bodies of those who had already drowned in the tidal wave of chemical butter topping she had poured on them. Terrified of what might happen next, they let out shrill cries of horror as the shadow of her sweaty sausage fingers draped over them, and what must have looked like some hideous blob monster from worlds beyond swooped down and snatched them up from their home and tossed them into a dark slimy pit where the giant yellowed mashers of some infernal machine crushed their frail, butter-greased bodies into tiny little pieces.

I am not a fan of loud chewing noises, and I am particularly not a fan of them when they're louder then the film I'm making my best efforts to enjoy. She was chomping away at it with her mouth wide open, and it was so loud that it felt like she was inches away from me, crunching her helpless popcorn directly into my inner ear. I could practically feel her humid stinkbreath painting the side of my face with condensation. But I dealt with it, and after the initial popcorn assault she slowed down a bit as she got into the film, and reduced her intake to a somehow more infuriating pace of one kernal at a time. What made this unbearable was that every time she'd reach into the bag to pull out her next victim, she would rustle it in a way that produced sound far louder than any paper bag should ever be able to make. I mean, you probably could have heard it from the back of the theatre, and I was right the fuck in front of her. And it was stadium seating, so guess where my head was? Practically in her fat fucking lap. Right at ear level with the noisest bag on earth. Literally she must have been attempting to eat the bag from the bottom up, because it sounded like she was burrowing her blubbery hand all the way to the bottom each time she dove in to retrieve a new kernel. And, after every few bites, she would - somehow very loudly - wipe the salt and grease off of her fat fucking mouth WITH HER SHIRT, and then grunt and wheeze a bit, as if she was having trouble breathing. It was absolutely grotesque.

I'm a bit of a nazi about movie-going. Part of it is that I genuinely enjoy going to see films, and it infuriates me when someone makes an effort to ruin it for me. But the other - perhaps more significant part - is that a bad movie-going experience tears away at my faith in humanity. It is absolutely beyond me, on every level, how anyone could be so ignorant, rude, selfish, and utterly lacking in any sense of self restraint, as to be noisy during a film. It's a basic concept, we learn it in preschool: Quiet time. This is quiet time. For two measly hours of your life, you have to shut up. It's that simple. 120 minutes of keeping your fucking mouth closed. 7,200 seconds of restraining from voicing your every inane reaction to what you're seeing on the screen. It's not your living room. You're not by yourself, watching a DVD. You're in a room full of other people, who are trying to enjoy the film.

Shut. The fuck. Up.

A great many people have not got this figured out. These are the people, I presume, who got sent to the corner a lot during quiet time, because they simply couldn't not talk. It wasn't something they could get their little pea-brained heads around. It was inconceivable that for any length of time, they were not allowed to try and draw attention to themselves. For one miniscule portion of their life they had to concede to the idea that there are other people in the world besides them. For once, they had to not be the center of the universe. And they couldn't do it. They failed. So when this mentality manifests itself during a movie - particularly during a movie I'm excited to see - I'm a complete asshole about it. I'll be the guy screaming "SHUT THE FUCK UP!" during a movie, when someone on the opposite end of the theatre is talking. I'm the guy who will complain to the theatre staff if a couple "SHUT THE FUCK UP!"s prove fruitless. I cannot stand having my experience ruined by some ignorant twat.

So as we approached thirty minutes into "Troy," and fatty was still rustling away without so much as a second's rest, I finally snapped. I turned around, and thrust my own bag of popcorn up into the air, about eye level with her, and rustled it around as violently as I possibly could, spilling popcorn onto the floor as I did so, and shooting her the meanest pair of evil eyes I could muster up. Amazingly, she stopped rustling. For about five minutes. When she resumed, I spun around and glared at her again, right in the eyes with a very genuine look which said, in no uncertain terms, "I am going to slit your fucking lard-padded throat and stuff the bleeding wound with the rest of your popcorn if you make one more Goddamn rustling noise, you bloated fucking whale of a woman." And she, looking back at me, lowered her popcorn bag slowly to the ground, the way a criminal would lower his weapon when surrounded by the cops. My message was clear, and she looked actually quite afraid of me.

I am not a threatening person. I am thin, and pale, and metrosexual enough that you might on occasion mistake me for being gay. I am far from a tough guy. However, intrude upon my movie-going experience and I will become possessed by some form of unholy demon. One of these days, it's going to get me stabbed or something.

Actually, one of these days I'm going to make a members-only movie theatre. You have to fill out a lengthy application to get in. There will be background checks. You will need to list references. If you're accepted, you will be treated to the biggest screen in the world, with digital projection, and the lights all the way out, and the sound fucking cranked. Fresh popcorn, served in tubs. Big comfy reclining seats with lots of leg room. The ultimate movie theatre. The best film experience you'll ever have. However, there are rules at my theatre, and when you sign up you'll have to agree to the consequences of breaking these rules. There will be a lot of paper work. The main rule - the really important one - is that there will be ushers in the theatre at all times, and they will be watching you. If you make even the slightest bit of unnecessary noise... If you talk, for any reason. If you rustle loudly. If your phone rings. If you're one of those obnoxious fuckers who like to crunch on their ice, one cube at a time, when you're done with your drink. If you make any noise at all, the film will stop. The lights will come up. The ushers - who are large, humorless, tattooed men, will drag you from your seat and up to the front of the theatre, where everyone in the audience can heckle you while you are stripped naked. Then your membership card will be torn up, and stuffed down your throat, and each of the massive ushers will have their way with you, one at a time, raping you violently in the arse, in front of everyone. And then when they're done, and you're laying there, naked and humiliated, your ass all kinds of torn up and dripping with man goo, the people in the front row spitting on your broken shell of a body... then the ushers will cut your fucking head off, and they'll hang it in the theatre lobby amongst all the other heads, the "hall of shame" to remind other patrons what will happen if they dare talk during the film. Harsh? Perhaps. But I'm convinced that ruling with an iron fist is the key to cinematic utopia.

But anyway, even if lardass hadn't been noisily gorging herself behind me, and even if the projection hadn't been inexcusably out of focus... the movie still would have sucked. It was a long, bloated, hollow shell of a film, so concerned with trying to be epic that it forgot to be a good movie. And Brad Pitt is a fucking abysmal actor. He's terrible. He wins the Keanu Reeves Honorary Wooden Acting Award for 2004. Don't get me wrong, Brad Pitt is a fine specimen of the male gender. I'm not even gay, and I would go fucking Roman on his chiseled ass something fierce, and probably enjoy it more than most of the sexual experiences I've had with females. But it takes more than perfect abs to carry a film, and good fucking Lord is he terrible in this. I've enjoyed him in other roles in the past, where he didn't have to stretch too far from what must be his real personality: A likable dumb guy. But heroic Greek warrior he is not, and talented actor he most definitely is not. Stick to looking pretty, Brad. It's a better gig for you.

Christ, it's late. Why am I still awake?

Stream-of-consciousness from an airplane.

I was on an airplane the other day, and in an effort to curb my boredom I started typing everything that was going through my head during the flight. The results are as follows:

I'm on an airplane right now, and the guy next to me is a stinky hippie. Dirty, stinky, filthy. With long, blonde-red hair, and a scruffy blonde-red mustache-goatee thing. He's the person you'd see coming down the aisle and think "please don't sit here, please don't sit here, please don't sit here..." Well, he sat here. He looks a bit like a terrorist. Not a "You will be judged by Allah!" terrorist, but more of a Ted Kaczynski confused and isolated, saving his poop in jars type of terrorist. He's wearing a patterned tunic type thing. You know, those things that hippies wear. And loose-fitting, sky blue fifteen dollar K-Mart jeans. His ratty old guitar case is taking up most of the space in the overhead compartment. It's probably filled with his poop jars. He dutifully watched the entire airplane safety demonstration, as if, in the event of a disaster, any of us have a chance of ending up in some condition other than incredibly dead.

Sitting to my right is what must be an upper east side family - two sisters, it would seem, and their mother. One of the sisters is a "hot mom" thirty-something type, perfectly groomed and impossibly fit, wearing those type of sweat suits that rich people somehow think are okay to wear in non-jogging environments like, say, an airplane. I guess they couldn't be too rich, though, if they're flying jet blue. The mother, probably 60, has a bleached tower of hair which she clearly thinks is stylish but but is hilariously out of touch. Like Morrissey as an old woman.

The Smurfs is on TV, and it reminds me of being a kid and firmly believing that, if I searched hard enough, I could find Smurfs in the forest, living in little mushroom houses. The little cages that Gargamel keeps the Smurfs in have gaps between the bars at least twice as wide as the Smurfs themselves. They could walk right out of the cage with no effort, but they're standing there, hopelessly holding the bars, apparently convinced that they are imprisoned. It's really ruining the tension of the whole situation. The terrorist keeps looking over at my computer. He's probably wondering why I'm typing in illegibly small font. Well, Mr. Poopsaver, it's because I'm exposing the horrible truth about you and your feces jars and ill-conceived plans of government opposition. Now I'm channel surfing. Holy shit, Telemundo has the most amazing sitcoms. Do you think Vanity Smurf was gay, or just metro? I never realized how insanely fucking queer he acts. I would say, in light of the Smurf Village male-to-female ratio, Vanity is probably smoking bone, and not just suspiciously flamboyant. Here's what I believe to be the breakdown of gay and straight Smurfs:

Straight: Jokey, Lazy, Handy (probably homophobic, i get a right-wing vibe from this one), Clumsy, Farmer (probably some experimentation under his belt, but I'd say he's straight at the end of the day), Harmony.

Gay: Vanity (flower in the hair? please.), Hefty (overcompensation), Tailor (anyone who came up with tights and no shirt as a standard Smurf outfit must be a little light on his feet), Painter (art fag), Poet ('nuff said), Baker.

Closeted, probably for life: Brainy

Self-hating fag: Grouchy (denial, denial, denial)

Pedophile: Papa Smurf (notice how he's always hanging out with the little kid smurfs?)

Okay, so Poopsaver has gotten his little mid-flight snack, a bag of "Munchies." Have you seen these? It's a delicious mix of Cheetos, Doritos, Sun Chips, and pretzels. Crazy, you say? It could never work, you also say? Not so, friend. It's quite scrumptious! Anyway, so with such a bold assortment of snack foods all mixed together, you wouldn't expect someone to be eating it meticulously, ONE PIECE AT A TIME. But yes, this is what Poopsaver is doing. And thank God for my headphones, because he's crunching really loud, and at this rate he'll be working on that tiny little bag for the rest of the flight and still have some left for the ride home. There's something sacrilegious, and, dare I say, downright un-American about defiling a snack food compilation by reducing it to its individual parts. It's got terrorist written all over it, the lot of it.

Holy shit! BRUM! There is a disturbing and amazing children's television show called "Brum," about a little old-fashioned car - named Brum - with headlight eyes, who helps people out in their times of need, and also catches robbers. This is all live-action, it's not animated. So Brum is a little mechanical car, which basically drives around and bumps into things as its means of saving the day. The crooks are always exaggerated, goofy, "Home Alone" style incompetent thieves who slip on marbles and banana peels. You can almost feel the pain on the actors' faces as the dreams they had in acting school go up in smoke. The show is also Australian, which adds an extra layer of strangeness to it. There's a voice-over by a child with an Australian accent saying things like "Way to go, Brum!" and "You never give up, Brum!" and "Oh no! Catch those thieves, Brum!" and "You're a heeeerrroooo, Brum." But all of this is inconsequential, really, compared to the song. Oh, the Brum song. There is a song that plays at least twice during the show, it's the Brum theme song. And all the the townspeople, their faces aglow with impossibly wide children's programming smiles, do this unbelievable dance number as Brum, hero that he is, drives around and struts his stuff, like he's such hot shit. The only time I have ever seen this show, prior to now, is during fits of insomnia, as it generally tends to show up at 5:30 or 6 in the morning. And let me tell you, when you're delirious from lack of sleep and the sun is rising on your fourth hour of mindless channel surfing, nothing is more unnerving and hilarious than a bunch of goofy, colorfully-clothed Australian people jumping around and singing about a car with eyes. I encourage you all to watch it.

Al Gore has amazingly awful hair.

Poopsaver has now emptied the contents of his "Munchies" bag onto a napkin, apparently in the interest of working around one particular type of snack. At the moment I can't tell if it's the Sun Chips or the Doritos he's not interested in, but I'll be keeping a close eye.

I just had an interesting experience at the lavatory. I went back there to find myself second in line, behind a middle-aged man wearing a sweatshirt for some sports team. As I stood there, waiting, he turned to me and asked if I had to go number one. This he did with one finger held up to me, to further illustrate his query. I was a bit caught off guard, but I managed to answer yes. He told me to go ahead of him, into the vacant bathroom he'd been standing next to. So I did, and when I got out, he went in after me. It would seem, then, that he was hanging out back there, waiting to see if anyone needed to hit a quick number one before he dominated the facilities for what - with this much concern involved - must be a gargantuan dump brewing in his bowels. Imagine knowing ahead of time that you're going to cause such intense damage to a public toilet, that you actually stand around and let everyone else get their business done first, because you don't want to be rushed. If I feel "number one" calling again, I think I'm going to use the bathroom at the front of the plane. I don't want to know the horrors.

Surprisingly, Poopsaver has made it to the bottom of his snack bag (except most of the Doritos) and is now doing something peculiar: He is licking his finger and pressing it into the pile of leftover chip crumbs which are scattered on his napkin, then licking the crumbs off his finger. And don't think he's doing this quietly. There is a horrid slurping sound accompanying each serving of crumbs.

He's watching my TV, as if curious as to what's on the other channels but unwilling to part with the provocative lure of The Weather Channel on his own television. He must be waiting for the weather update for Bumfuck Nowhere, and he's afraid if he switches channels - even for a moment - he might miss it.

Fucking Christ, someone farted!!! Jesus. I think it was the old lady in front of me. I'm not going to blame Poopsaver for this one, I'm going to cut him a break.

I think I'm going to watch The Ellen Degeneres Show, because it's the type of show that I would never, ever, ever watch unless I was on an airplane with extremely limited entertainment options. Not unlike the one time on an airplane when I watched that Hugh Grant/Julia Roberts (could any team-up be more loathsome?) movie, in its entirety, without sound, and was able to follow the plot with no difficulty. Needless to say, it was an incredibly long flight. Oh, and The Ellen Degeneres Show is horrible. It's unwatchable. And I can't stop thinking about Ellen chin-deep in Tea Leoni's clam sauce. Wait, it wasn't Tea Leoni, was it? Who is Tea Leoni? And if she didn't chow beav with Ellen, who did? What was that chick's name? She was in that movie with Harrison Ford, right? That was an awful movie, I'm disappointed in Harrison for being a part of it and more disappointed in myself for, somehow, seeing it.

The hot mom has a hot ass. And I think I just got busted checking it out. Nice.

The old woman in front of me, who I believe to be the culprit of the ultra-stinky fart, had to get up out of her seat to let her husband out. But she's one of those people who gets out of her seat, but does not sit down. Instead, she stands in the aisle waiting for her husband to return from the bathroom, presumably in an effort to save herself the trouble of sitting down and then back up and then down again. But I, curious fellow that I am, looked to the back of the plane and saw her husband at the tail end of a rather long line for the bathroom (presumably on account of sweatshirt guy's mega-dump, still in progress). Which means that fart lady is going to be standing in the aisle waiting for quite some time, and she already looks impatient. I want to tell her "sit down, fart lady. You've got a long time to wait! Trust me, I know what's going on in that bathroom." But really, what do I owe her? Did she think of my well-being when she squeezed out a stinker for the whole plane to enjoy? No, I think not.

Wow, the commercial for ADD is pretty arty. And, just for a second, there's a person wearing a scary bunny suit.

I'm back to watching poorly-produced children's programming. I would be endlessly delighted if I ever saw one of those snotty drama kids from high school on one of these shows, years after they left for LA in search of their "big break," now reduced to wearing floppy ears and crawling around on the floor, singing a smiley song about how fun it is to be a horse.

Dude, the old lady totally just ripped another one.

Ellen Degeneres. I know you're a lesbian, but you don't have to dress like one. I'm mad at myself for being kind of entertained by this show. Her next guest is Sarah Gilbert, who you may remember as Darcy... No, wait, it wasn't Darcy... What the fuck was her name? The moody daughter from "Roseanne." I always thought she was cool because she had rad comic book posters all over her room. And I was nerdy enough to recognize that they were all DC Comics characters, so there must have been some product placement shit going on. Or the company that owns ABC also owns DC. Which makes sense, because that Superman show used to be on ABC. Holy shit, Darcy got old. Wait, no, DARLENE. That was her name, Darlene. But she's still got the same high-pitched voice, like a teenage girl. Creepy. I wonder if she's a lesbian, too? The suit she's wearing is a little suspicious. Shoulder pads. I wonder if she got a carpet ride from Ellen backstage. Do you think Ellen shaves her bush, or rocks it au naturale? I'm going to say shaved, but not well. Little red bumps, I'm guessing.

HOLY SHIT, sweatshirt guy JUST got back to his seat. He's been shitting for like a half hour! He looks a little rough, I can't imagine things went well in there.

I just learned that big Barry Manilow fans call themselves Fanilows. I shit you not. Fanilows. It sounds like a type of horned animal.

FUCKING OLD NAVY COMMERCIALS. It's as if the creative team behind these hell-spawned commercials sat around together and said, "Let's see here... we've got BY FAR the most unbearably obnoxious ad campaign on television... What can we possibly do to make it even MORE annoying? Hmm.... Oh! I know! Let's get that chick from The Nanny! She's the only force in entertainment that comes close to our level of irritation power... If we join forces, we can DESTROY THE WORLD!"

So now Pink is on the Ellen show, and she's a fucking man, so maybe her and Ellen are going to make out. Also, the chorus of her new song is, "If God is a DJ, then life is a dance floor." I don't even know how to comment on that.

Oh good, we're landing. Time to turn off the laptop.