Go Fetch Me A Loaded Bazooka

Tim Burton's "Weatherweenie"

2008-01-09T09:16:00.000-08:00

It is FUCKING COLD in here this morning. 48 degrees, according to my Weather Widget. How the hell cold was it during the night? Did it get all the way down to freezing? I don't even wanna know. Fortunately, I have a big floofy blanket and two small floofy kittens to toast me up in this kind of emergency.

Right now all my non-California friends are going "oh, fuck YOU. I've had to chip a layer of ice off my car every morning since Thanksgiving. I don't remember the last time my snot was liquid. I wear my North Face goosedown full-length to bed, and I wear my shearling booties in the SHOWER. In short, eat me."

My friends are MEAN, y'all!

I know I'm a weather wuss. I've lived in L.A. almost 13 years and have basically forgotten what Midwestern winters are like. I've spent a grand total of one week in the Midwest in winter over the past six years or so, and I'm totally spoiled. But don't judge me, because if you move out here, it'll happen to you. You'll break out the mittens when it drops to 60. You'll open an umbrella when it gets foggy out. When a cloud passes over the sun, you will put snow tires on your Segway.

When I first moved here, I thought I was so cool, putting up with weather that seemed to paralyze everybody else. I thought, "Man was never meant to be so wimpy in the face of the elements." Now I look back at my Midwest winters and think, "Man was never meant to put up with that level of horror." Like a guy realizing he listened to his Walkman throughout the Holocaust. "Why did I never NOTICE this?"

When I was a kid, we used to play "Han searching for Luke on the Ice Planet Hoth" when it snowed. We could do this without using our imaginations very much because every winter there would be a giant blizzard or three, or ten, that would last long enough for us to go out and play games in it. Global warming is bringing that to an end for a generation of kids, not that these kids today understand what Star Wars is all about, with their Narutos and their Avatars: The Last Airbenders and their crystal meths and whatever bullshit takes up their time. It's too bad, because winter is MADE for kids. They don't have to drive anywhere, or deal with heating bills, or buy storm windows. Maybe they have to shovel the walk a few times, but trust me, that's easy to halfass. Mostly, winter is a time when fun falls from the sky, when school could be cancelled at any moment, when lakes become sporting arenas and wet sidewalks become hilarious death traps. As a grownup, I don't miss midwinter, but I do miss KIDwinter. You feel me?

Lastly and off-topic, "Sweeney Todd" was really good. Not everyone is going to like it, but I think it's the tightest, most focused, least shitty movie Tim Burton's made in ten years. Not Best Picture (that's "There Will Be Blood"), but great fun.

My only problem with it is that Sweeney's total romantic disinterest in Mrs. Lovett is a fairly major plot point. That wasn't a problem in the original stage show, where Mrs. Lovett was played by a middle-aged Angela Lansbury. In the movie, she's played by the still-middle-aged-but-OMG-who-cares Helena Bonham Carter, who has not been so utterly five-alarm SMOKIN' since "Fight Club".

You know how, in most horror movies, someone in the audience yells "don't go in there!" to no avail? Every time Depp and Carter were onscreen, I was yelling "GO IN THERE. She's INTO IT. Are you BLIND???"

Anyway, it's a great movie for someone with anger issues who is also a big musical dork. My anti-drugs are Sondheim and rage!

Signing off for now. I have to go to Griffith Park and chop some firewood.

So, What Else Is Goin' On

2007-12-08T00:22:00.000-08:00

I had my heart broken recently, and a friend asked me if I'd learned anything from the experience, and I said "I learned I can cry WHILE napping".

Seriously, it's a real time saver. Ever look in your daytimer and discover you've double-booked yourself for mourning AND hiding in bed with your head under five pillows? Just try the ol' Weep-n-Sleep. Instead of thinking about all the mistakes you've made in your life until you burst into tears, just conk out and DREAM about them instead. You'll wake refreshed, if moist.

Yes, I got dumped. So I decided to get a cat. Which is a little like trying to kick heroin by drinking a mug of hot cocoa. With one (1) marshmallow.

Here's something NOT to say at the animal shelter: "Excuse me, where are your available kittens? I don't wanna die alone."

Doesn't matter how nonchalantly you say it, they are gonna notice.

I wanted a cat because I am used to cats, and I couldn't have one while I was dating one allergic person and roommating with another. I am not anti-dog, but I am rigidly pro-cat. Dog people will tell you cats are aloof and impersonal, to which I respond, "yeah, well, dogs shit and then eat it." Also they need attention all the damn time, and are unfailingly and unconditionally in love with you. I'm not about to deal with that. I want my pet to be as emotionally detached, rampantly entitled, and secretly needy as I am.

I was explaining this to a friend, and they said, "Not even a pug?" as if that constituted an argument. No, not even a pug. Pugs are dogs. They do not read the Wall Street Journal aloud to you in the morning, or write poetry. They do not eat sunshine or poop music. They, like all dogs, will occasionally take a dump, look at it, and think, "hey, that tasted pretty good the FIRST time I ate it. Do I dare?"

Also, pugs are cute, with their little folds, but what no one tells you about the little folds is that you have to clean them. You have to get up in there with a moist q-tip and ream those suckers out, or stuff grows in there. STUFF. When selecting a pet, you know what you should never have to consider? Smegma. That should just never be a factor, at all. I don't wanna get a dog and then have to circumcise its face.

So I got kittens. I named them Tango and Sushi, but I'm going to start saying the names in reverse order when I tell people about them, because waaaaaay too many people have asked me why I didn't name them Tango and Cash. Here's why: it would be funny for no minutes, and then I would be stuck with a kitten named Cash. And he doesn't LOOK like a Cash:

He looks like a Sushi, or possibly an Admiral Chubbins. My cats tend to get a lot of nicknames; we may get to that point.

I try not to give pets "funny" names, or names that I've drawn from pop culture; I named my last cat Gir, like Invader Zim's sidekick, but I made up for that name by never calling him by it.

Sometimes, though, I hear a referential cat name I wish I'd had the balls to use. One time in Westwood I ran into a ten-year-old kid who was carrying a jet-black kitten; I asked him what its name was and he said "Suge Knight".

I don't know about you, but I buy that kitten calendar. Seminal figures in hip-hop history, as portrayed by adorable kittens? Why hasn't this already been done, by me? How awesome would it be to have a picture of Suge Knight the kitten dangling Vanilla Ice over a hotel balcony? And the caption would be, of course, "Hang In There".

I'm tryin', kitty. I'm tryin'.

Theatrikal Korner

2007-09-26T15:04:00.000-07:00

Today on Impresario Paul's Theatrikal Korner, we take a look at the crockery-throwingest acting style of all:

The Method!

Many people believe the Method to be a technique whereby an actor connects their own emotional experiences to the experience of their character, creating a more believable and powerful performance. This belief is widespread but as erroneous as the sky is blue! The Method is actually a technique whereby gorgeous people pretend to have problems.

You see, the trouble with being an actor is that you are gorgeous. All actors are! But sometimes, the character an actor has to portray has problems, such as alcoholism, a history of being sexually abused, or ugliness. Since existence, for an attractive person, is an effortless oiled slide down a springtime hillside of poseys and money, they have a hard time behaving as if anything bad has ever happened to them. And yet, in countless plays, such as King Lear and Urinetown, the best parts (and therefore the parts most likely to go to gorgeous people; have you ever seen a King Lear you didn't want to fuck? I rest my case) are the parts of people who have horrible problems. What's an actor to do?

The Method has the answer. Aspiring practitioners need only sign up for a course, or a series of courses, designed to achieve the desired effect: a convincing display of any emotion other than blank-faced contentment.

Approaches differ. Some classes focus on trying to dredge up actual painful memories from the actor's past. Once in a while these memories turn out to be genuine, but typically they are invented on the spot in the face of extreme "close talking" by the instructor. Any fairly convincing combination of childhood torment and romantic remorse should placate the typical Method acting teacher. The memory is then worked over and analyzed and loudly discussed until it feels real enough to elicit a genuine-looking reaction.

In other classes, the problems are not created by memories of trauma, but by the instructor himself. Recognizing that the students under his charge are angelic beings of an airy-light temperament -- their graceful minds floating as far above the cares of ordinary men as the stars are above the clouds -- he sets about the breaking of their spirits with the care and craftsmanship of a jeweller disassembling a Cartier watch. Treading the kittens of their self-esteem beneath the bootheel of his mighty art, he interrupts, insults, berates, harangues, and petrifies his luckless students until, driven utterly mad, they run screaming into the streets, waving their headshots and auditioning wildly for the part of "Second Dockworker" on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.

And that dockworker is going to have believable dockworker problems, thanks to the Method. Remember all the episodes of L&O: SVU you've seen ruined by nonbelievable dockworkers? Well, take those days and say goodbye to them! That dockworker's going to be depressed, he's going to have a meth problem, he's going to be recently divorced...he's going to be a completely worthless, hopeless human being.

And he's going to be gorgeous.

She Meant "Totalitarians"

2007-09-24T17:46:00.001-07:00

Once in a while, in the course of my trawls through the "pets" section of craigslist for mammals even more pathetic than I am, I run across a typo so magnificent it must be shared with the world:

"Anybody that understands animals knows that pet care has numerous fascists."

I'll think of some jokes later. I just wanted everyone to see this.

I Still Love Bacon

2007-09-12T20:11:00.000-07:00

I just accidentally saw a video of a bunch of dudes chainsawing the head off a live pig. Thanks, internet!

This kind of thing happens to me because I visit this site: http://fuzzysquid.com/LJ.php

There are pages like this all over the net, compiling the most recent images uploaded to livejournal.com, your source for the blogs of a) teenagers who want everyone to know how awesome/sexy/sad they are and b) adults who don't want anyone to read their blogs. These "feed" pages are like glory holes, with the internet dropping its pants on one side, and you the viewer kneeling open-mouthed on the other side. Who knows what's gonna come through the hole? Could be cake, could be jizz, could be pure terror. I've seen pictures of the aftermaths of car accidents, pictures of kittens playing with flowers, pictures of vaginas, and pictures of everything in between (kittens crashing cars into vaginas).

I swear, the only thing that keeps me coming back to the internet is the likelihood that, within five minutes of seeing the most horrible thing I have ever seen, I will then see something like this: Hamster Who Doesn't Know He Is On A Piano

Oh, internet. Let's never fight again.

Emergency Brain Dump In 5...4...3...

2007-09-07T08:25:00.000-07:00

I don't like to admit I'm getting older, but I did once describe a blowjob as "fine and dandy". I'm still a young man. Am I going to be in a BDSM club when I'm 55, mumbling the words "that was some nifty fisting!" through a vinyl mask? And if a total stranger asks me to jerk off on her face, will I say "I believe you have me at a disadvantage, madam"?

***

If anyone is wondering how my out-of-town friend's cats, Milla and Logan, are doing, the answer is "fat and retarded, respectively". They are an odd pair. Neither of them meows. Milla is too fat to meow; the air gets stuck halfway down her throat, so she just opens her mouth and makes a face like she's meowing, but then she just sort of wheezes. She can hiss, though. BOY can she hiss. Logan is too retarded to meow; she thinks she's a pigeon or something, which would kind of explain her fondness for jumping four feet in the air and landing on her head, and would also explain the weird "mrrrrRRRRP?" noise she makes, like a bird trying to purr, or a cat trying to chirp.

They were both hanging out on the bed with me yesterday, and Logan was chirping and Milla was hissing. If they were people instead of cats, their conversation would have gone:

"I'm cute. Love me?"

"PREPARE TO FUCKING DIE!"

Cats are insane assholes. Why do I want one so bad?

***

There's a "new atheism" supposedly sweeping the country. I'm not sure how it's different from the old atheism. Is it possible to ignore religion EVEN HARDER??? A lot more people are willing to publicly identify themselves as atheists than has typically been the case, that's for sure. Most of them are being nice about it, like, "maybe we shouldn't base our moral lives around the stories told by people who believed the cause of schizophrenia was demons living in your skeleton? just a thought?"

Anyhow, the whole situation is making religious people panic and trot out every argument they have for believing in God, but unfortunately these arguments are all from the 2nd century and don't exactly stand up to modern scrutiny in the same way as, say, the screenplay of "Back To The Future". That thing was airtight, I'm just saying. Anyhow again, one argument that gets repeated from the highest echelons of theological "research" all the way down to some of my friends goes like this: I believe in God because life would be meaningless and awful if there was no God and I just can't believe in a world like that.

That's actually their argument. "It would be totally awesome if God existed. Therefore he does!" You'll find it phrased much finer the higher up the academic ladder (and the further into the past) you go, but the basic argument remains the same.

That's a mighty blunt logical tool. Your argument might need some work if it can be used to prove the existence of God and, say, R2-D2. Can anyone deny that the best of all possible worlds, in which we clearly live, would clearly have R2-D2 in it? Therefore it does. See how useful that is? Useful to the point of being useless.

When my car finance company calls me up and asks me why I haven't paid them anything in seven months, I can't say "yeah, I know, but you're in luck, check this out: it's really important to my peace of mind and quality of life to have my car loan paid in full, ERGO I do not in fact owe you eleven thousand dollars. You may cease your collection efforts immediately, my brother. I look forward to buying many more cars from you, and paying for them with my MIND."

***

I recently watched the documentary "You're Gonna Miss Me", about 13th Floor Elevators frontman Roky Erickson. He is a mentally fragile acid casualty who needs loud noise to relax. He turns on TVs and stereos and amps and shit and just sits in the noise with his sunglasses on.

I don't wanna act like the mentally ill don't have their shit together, but can I make one small suggestion, Roky? HEADPHONES. Getcherself some nice big shiny Bose noise-cancellers and a cable splitter so you can listen to the Powerpuff Girls and Metal Machine Music at the same time. There, I just solved all your problems. Like I do for EVERYONE.

Hey, Science: Take A Break

2007-09-05T07:31:00.000-07:00

Two of the headlines on CNN.com today:

"Men want hot women, study confirms"

"Study: Rock stars more likely to die young"

Stories on deck for tomorrow:

"Studies indicate that smoke is frequently associated with fire"

"Shocking study reveals inevitability of death"

"Men, women: different"

"Sky: blue? Yes"

The Age Of Men

2007-09-03T15:12:00.000-07:00

Thoughts on watching "Mary Poppins" as a grownup:

Identified a lot more with David Tomlinson's Mr. Banks than I ever had before. Poor guy. Never has upper-middle-class fatherhood looked more thankless than it did in this movie.

A very stagey film. I can't believe I ever thought any of it was actually filmed outdoors. Sound stages from start to finish; Kubrick would be proud. Also a movie that doesn't bother to make its matte paintings look like anything but matte paintings. Most of it looks, very deliberately, like the backgrounds of Disney's animated films from around the same time.

Julie Andrews is smokin'. Said it before, worth repeating.

The actress who played the housemaid mugged so much that I wanted to punch her.

Movie actors could get away with having much uglier teeth back then.

I still love it when the penguin slaps the other penguin.

A Stitch In Side Saves Nine

2007-08-25T09:01:00.001-07:00

Today, during my walk, I actually RAN for three whole minutes! And then did two whole pull-ups! And I haven't eaten fast food in like four weeks!

America's Next Top Male Model, here I come, as soon as you exist, and as soon as I can do a hamstring stretch without falling over.

I'm in some pain right now. Why am I doing this, again? Oh, so I won't hate myself. Got it. Among other reasons, of course.

***

You like the little asterisk ellipsis thing? Signifies a change of subject. Gonna be doing that from now on, when I remember to and when I give a shit about whether a given blog makes any sense.

What is it about housesitting that makes me want to have loud dirty sex? I guess it's the shock of unfamiliar surroundings. Plus the possibility that a friend's cat will be watching you. And then you and the cat will have a secret that your friend can never know. CAT SECRETS.

Every time I agree to housesit, I can't help but get the thought in my head. I haven't actually done this, ever, and I know it's more than slightly inappropriate; I only even mention it here because the friend in question told me, in these words, "feel free to nail chicks here while we're gone." If it's okay to do it, it's okay to think it, and it's even okay to blog about thinking it.

Thinking about it is probably as far as I'll get. I'm mostly using the house as a second living room with a better cable plan. So far I've watched 40 minutes of Lawrence Of Arabia on on-demand, and gotten the shit scratched out of me by Younger Of Two Cats, who's lucky he's such a cutie-wootie-pants with adorable little white booties on his deadly slicey ninja feet, or I probably would've thrown him out the window into traffic by now. If anything in the preceding paragraph sounds sexy, please send me a message so that I can apologize to you.

This Is Interesting, I Promise

2007-08-17T09:56:00.000-07:00

[I had never heard of this label, I don't like any of these bands, none of the names mean anything to me, and I STILL could not stop reading this article until the end. A truly horrific depiction of life at an "indie" record label, and the music industry in general. I'm reposting it because Victory Records' legal team keeps getting it taken down, and I don't often have the opportunity to fuck the Man. I'll write about my haircut or something tomorrow, I promise.]

THE HORROR
By Ramsey Dean

Music industry veteran Ramsey Dean's venture into the heart of darkness reveals that the independent, compared to the large corporation, isn't always the lesser of two evils.

"Everyone gets everything he wants. I wanted a mission. And for my sins, they gave me one… It was a real choice one. And when it was over, I'd never want another."
Captain Willard – Apocalypse Now

I watched the news boards lit up again: Reuters, AP, The Times, Yahoo, and every rag in the entertainment biz:

"Due to recent events we have decided to leave Victory Records. Our departure is anything but amicable. We have decided to leave Victory in part due to the actions of the man who sits at the head of the label, Tony Brummel. Tony Brummel is a man that cares more about his ego and bank account than the bands themselves…"

It was the beginning of a two-page statement from the band Hawthorne Heights, the independent success story of 2005. They were seen as a pleasant group, playing unpretentious pop-punk and the idols of 14-year-old girls everywhere. But that was just appearances. Behind the glare of stardom lurked the torture that anyone who'd been out to Chicago knew all too well.
The statement continued:

"Why did they (Hawthorne Heights) sound so happy in that interview??? Like being in an abusive relationship we let certain things slide as we were afraid, as many of the bands on Victory are, to stick our neck out for fear of being "beaten," in this case represented by the threat of not being promoted as has been the case with certain bands on the roster. We're done being abused."

"It is impossible for words to describe what is necessary to those who do not know what horror means. Horror. Horror has a face. And you must make a friend of horror."

We'd all seen Brummel threaten people, both physically and, his favored form of communication, e-mail. In person he wasn't intimidating. He didn't appear to break 5'7" and I doubt he weighed in over 150 lbs. To compensate for this, he inked up with a bunch of tattoos including the cobweb on the elbow and "Victory" tattooed on his forearm and across his back as if it were a gang sign. Something by his own admission, he did within the course of a year when the hardcore bug hit him. To further project the image, he was a skinhead, which he shaved almost daily to obscure his receding hairline. The remnants of a chubby childhood still lurked in his face and his belly, leading me to believe his bullying attitude was programmed many years ago at the hands of a schoolyard oppressor. Brummel was a Chicago native. He liked to boast that he didn't go to college, but in fact, he dropped out after the first semester. I think he said he never went because of his distain for anyone who made it through. It was the same with his own musicians. The more they broke through, the more hostile he grew toward them. He'd started as a singer in a band, but his artistic efforts were denied, depriving him of the spotlight. The label he started in the wake of this failure, Victory Records, was at best a vindictive dream against those who rejected his creativity.
The physical threats were usually delivered via e-mail or the phone; sometimes to the more diminutive or aged, like the computer consultant or the old landlord, in person. "You better watch out, I'll kick your ass, motherfucker!" he'd scream, his Midwest over-enunciation giving the swear an adolescent twang. "I'm a hardcore guy! You better respect me!" was often added on, as if the reputation of this dejected genre preceded him.

"He was obeyed, yet he inspired neither love nor fear, nor even respect. He inspired uneasiness. That was it!"

Just about every interaction turned into a crisis, with him yelling, threatening and screaming in a frantic rage that the sky was falling. It didn't matter if it was a label head or an intern; but the kids there couldn't see what I saw: he was just trying to mimic what he'd heard about David Geffen, Irving Azoff, Walter Yetnikoff and the other icons of the business. He wanted their legend as much as he wanted their fame. Instead of a bulldog, the label mascot should have been a parrot.
Technology put him in arm's reach of everyone and he wore his Blackberry like a six-gun. The whole company down to the receptionist was outfitted with one, which they were expected to nurse 24/7, and he fired at will, straining their relationships outside of work with his never-ending need for attention. The messages reached for vehement vitriol, but were received by the office and the industry, as nothing more than colicky complaining.
20 e-mails a day from him was considered a slow day. The broadcasts were constant, starting before six AM and continuing all through the night. Brummel complained of insomnia, even naming the Victory Records tour "Never Sleep Again" after his condition. Employees would often wake to a barrage of messages from him, demanding to know why they weren't responding.

From: Tony Brummel
To: Staff
I have a meeting to prepare for and now I am pissed off and aggravated. I took a 15 second shower, threw on my clothes and am wet because of this. I do not care if anyone feels this is petty. I am pissed off about this. It is childish and ridiculous.

You guys are driving me nuts. I am going to start writing people up for being ignored. I am tired of following up on my following ups. Obviously, you guys are playing some kind of game against me.

Are you trying to drive me fucking crazy on purpose????

HAVE YOU LOST IT OR DO YOU PEOPLE THINK I AM A MORON??? I NEED PEOPLE HERE THAT HELP ME!!!!

MOVING FORWARD I AM ELIMINATING PROBLEMS AND FRUSTRATIONS. I CANNOT TAKE IT ANYMORE. I NEED PEOPLE HERE THAT ARE PART OF THE CAUSE. AND THAT DOES NOT MEAN CAUSING ME PROBLEMS, HEADACHES, FRUSTRATIONS AND MORE E-MAILS.

I HAVE NO PROBLEM WHATSOEVER WITH HAVING LESS PEOPLLE HERE IF THAT IS WHAT IT COMES DOWN TO.

THERE ARE PLENTY OF PEOPLE HERE JUST DOING ENOUGH TO SKATE BY AS IT IS.

When I send a message it is very important that you respond to it and do so in its entirety.

I do not have the time to follow up the way that I have to! If I have to follow up I will have to start writing peope up. I need help to get the company to the next level. I want to win and I am going to! I hope that all of you have the same goals and desire.

I AM GOING TO BE EVALUATING MANY THINGS OVER THE COMING WEEK. THERE WILL BE SOME CHANGES COMING. I ALSO FEEL THAT MANY OF THE MESSAGES THAT I SEND ALL OF YOU ARE PASSED OVER, NOT READ, NOT ACTED UPON AND RIDUCULED. That is not acceptable. If you think that I do not know what I am talking about then why be here?

They were endless; a constant stream of threats, castigation and abuse. Why would an employee go through that? Much like the bands that dream of stardom, music aficionados will sacrifice to get into this dying business, enduring hellish conditions just to get closer to that dream job at a record label. Brummel knew that, exploiting it to the fullest and riding roughshod over their dreams.

"There is no way to tell his story without telling my own. And if his story is really a confession, then so is mine."

It was no accident that I go to be the caretaker of Anthony K. Brummel's memory, anymore than being in Chicago was an accident. I was no angel. Kind of like Henry Hill's "I always wanted to be a gangster," I always wanted to be a record guy. I knew what it was going in, but I was attracted to the lifestyle and, so I thought, the money. Out of college it seems like a great idea. I lived off of open bars and hors d'oeuveres for years (alcoholism was considered a natural cause of death in this business) and owned thousands of CDs, none of which I paid for. But now, as the business slid into its death throes, we were dropping like flies. Nobody expected to retire from this line of work.
In a lot of ways it was like the mafia. It was controlled by a small group of families (Universal, Warner, Sony/BMG and EMI), it attracted the dregs of the society, we always had backstage passes, drugs and strip clubs were practically in the job description, and it seemed corruption was our main function. Corruption in the music business is really a company's only edge. A hit song is nothing more than a collective opinion and more often than not, the last thing that formed that opinion was the music. Hits are made by controlling the avenues of exposure. A radio programmer could tell you the song isn't good and you'd have to say, "How can I make it sound better?" Since they survived on our ad dollars (the big picture) it was an offer they couldn't refuse.
I'd started my career at an independent marketing company back in New York. Outfits like these are popular in this business; they serve as middlemen for things a major corporation wouldn't want direct ties to. My first job was rigging the Billboard Top 200. Best Buy was one of my best relationships. The peak of my career was getting AC/DC to 3 on the Billboard chart when they should have been closer to 30; my work earned me my first platinum record. From there it was just one scam after the next. You get numb to it after a while. I felt guilty when I sold a promotional copy of a CD; but I was making $150 a week. It was below minimum wage but the company's scam was that I was a "consultant". Quite the title for someone who was an intern a week earlier; and an intern who had already graduated college at that. I was actually losing money working for them, so to even it up, I started dealing some of the CDs on the side. Selling promos was even like dealing drugs in the Mafia: Everyone did it, just don't get caught. When you find out later none of the money is going to the artist anyway, the guilt goes away. I was just getting over on someone who was getting over on me.
I was in sales & distribution, just one head of an eight-headed snake. Eliot Spitzer was trying to cut off the radio promotion head, forcing the labels to plea bargain on payola. But it wasn't going to do much. The bright side was that, much like the mob, we were also in our twilight. The glory days were long passed and wouldn't be coming back. The business had been shrinking since the mid-90's, with the CD reaching saturation. Other, more advanced, entertainment options like video games and the internet turned music into background noise for most people. The days of idols were gone. Even the groupies disappeared. Now there was the digital dilemma, or maybe it was the digital coup de grace. We all knew it was coming, we just didn't want to do anything else. This business is more of an addiction, but it was becoming harder and harder to stay tweaked. Like a bar brawl on the deck of a sinking ship, we were more concerned with beating each other than finding a way to survive.
The advent of the digital age condemned the model we operated on. The record business was run like the Carnegie Deli. We sold you more corned beef than you wanted on your sandwich. And we charged you for it. Maybe you only wanted one or two songs, but we made you buy the whole album, and every deli in town was the same. Now there would soon be more iPods in circulation than the top selling albums of all time. And they were being filled not with the nine songs of chafe we were making our margins on, but the singles, for a mere 99 cents. Unlike the advent of the LP, 8-track, cassette or CD, the digital download meant people would be buying less chafe.
Tony made a very public battle against iTunes, firing off one of his infamous e-mails, refusing to sign up for the service unless he was given special treatment:

From: Tony Brummel
To: Steve Jobs

Music consumers would look at your (Apple) tactics as worse than those employed by the major record companies. I am surprised that Apple operates in such an authoritarian manner when its public image is that of a company run by creative types. This "take it or leave it" stance is anti-entrepreneurial, anti-creative and anti-American...My staff and my artists are asked every day why Victory's content is not on iTunes. When the explanation is given, people understand why we are not in business together. In fact, it bothers them. The power of word of mouth is undeniable, especially in the age of the Internet. It may take awhile to resonate but when it does, people typically react accordingly.

He thought that by holding out and publicly castigating Steve Jobs for not having the music of the "1 Independent Rock Label" they would most certainly bend over backwards for him. In a classic bit of egomania, he followed by sending around an editorial to his own statement, which he again circulated.
The peculiar thing was his affection for Steve Jobs. At one point he bought everyone in the office New Balance sneakers, which he insisted they all wear as a sign of cult-like solidarity. He'd heard Jobs did the same thing at Apple, buying all 100,000+ employees a pair. He seemed to believe that with the right footware, Victory could be the next Apple.
Any time he fired off these impotent rants, we were all required to forward them to our contacts and forward all responses immediately. Invariably, responses were light and the rest of the day would be cluttered by e-mails from him, deriding my contacts for not being moved to words by his latest piece.

"I was going to the worst place in the world, and I didn't even know it yet."

The day Hawthorne Heights sent out The Real Manifesto, I'd been trying to forget I'd ever worked at Victory, particularly since I'd left Manhattan for the job, but later that day I got a phone call. I'd be getting a subpoena. I thought it odd when only a few hours later the thing came; but this one was for another former Victory band with unfinished business, Taking Back Sunday. Things were getting interesting. Taking Back Sunday was Victory's largest band, who managed to bail out and go to Warner Brothers. They'd now join Hawthorne Heights in their claims of malfeasance.
The phone rang all day. Tim Smith, who managed Atreyu, the company's third biggest band said they'd hired Marty "Mad Dog" Singer, a Hollywood lawyer with an A-list of clients that included Arnold Schwarzenegger and Catherine Zeta-Jones. Atreyu's accountant turned up over $700,000 in unpaid royalties and they wanted answers. "Expect a subpoena if it goes down," he said. I was starting to feel like Joe Valachi, the wiseguy who revealed the secrets of the Mafia to a grand jury. It was true, there were millions in squandered royalties buried in the Victory books. And I didn't just know where the bodies were buried, I was the grave digger.
Hawthorne Heights hired attorney Rhonda Trotter of Kaye Scholer. She was also a big gun who'd won a case for TVT Records, my former employer, where reneging to TVT on a Ja Rule album turned into a $135 million judgment against Universal, and then-President, Lyor Cohen. Brummel knew they were serious, and the lawyers gave him a chance to settle quietly, but he was like a serial killer: Murder was fun, but he lived to see his deeds in the newspaper, even when it cost him. Instead of coming to the table, he instructed his lawyer to dismiss the entire claim as "frivolous," knowing it would launch a wave of publicity. As the adage goes, any publicity is good publicity. If there was a contest for Worst Boss, he'd want to win just for the press. Victory Records was his long lost band and his ticket to stardom, and like any tabloid star, he needed controversy to keep his long lost fame. I received many calls that day; Brummel was the kind of guy who made enemies faster than he made money. The swell of schadenfreude was overwhelming: bands, industry people, ex-employees; all hoping Victory would be blasted like the Bismarck this time. Tim said other bands were lining up to get their due. Thursday and Hatebreed, two other bands that since moved on to major labels, were considering similar action. This was the Victory way of doing business. Brummel saw it as part of the indie D.I.Y.(Do It Yourself) ethic. The lawyers were thinking of a more familiar term: R.I.C.O.

"He's out there operating without any decent restraint, totally beyond the pale of any acceptable human conduct."

Victory had quietly known success in the past, taking more than a year to break artists that start-up urban labels could accomplish in a matter of weeks. But Brummel had a thing for hardcore, and despised the way the "Jiggy" people, as he often called them, were able to turn a hit so easily. He perverted the hardcore ethos of "being in it for the long haul," "fighting the good fight" and it being "a way of life" to workplace slogans, ironically to satisfy his capitalist ambitions. In addition to the brow-beating e-mails that the staff was barraged with during the day, they were asked to stay late. The 6:00PM e-mail of "I'M STAYING LATE, WHO WILL STAY LATE WITH ME???" was common, a transparent equation he'd worked out where the more hours a salaried employee worked, the less he was actually earning. I was once ambushed at 9:04 with "YOU'RE LATE!!! WHERE'S YOUR SENSE OF LEADERSHIP???" finding out things like grace periods were considered a sign of "weak" companies. Like schoolchildren, doctor's notes were required when sick, employees would be "written up" and even sent home when they made him "frustrated," he would withhold compensation when he felt it hadn't been "earned" and he even charged employees, right on their pay stub, $1.75 per week for coffee, something he felt he shouldn't have to pay for.
There were also cult-like rules: only current Victory music could be played in the office and that employees weren't allowed to associate with ex-employees. He took Caligula's "Better they hate me, so long as they fear me" approach to management. Each morning employees were required to stand before him for their "daily measurements," a process where they would need to recite the accomplishments for the previous day and what they planned on doing today. He would flippantly belittle and editorialize at will, and then ask that what was said be typed up and sent to him, it seemed only so he could further pick apart the words. It was a redundant exercise because each employee was also required to file and End of Day report (or as we affectionately called it, the End of Days report) where again the accomplishments of the day were listed and the evening could be spent bouncing Blackberry messages as everyone tried to justify their existence.
Although Brummel was newly married to a ravishing French woman, Delphine Pontiveux, he would often work until the wee hours, where is activities included reading through employees e-mails and confronting them when he found personal messages; he had even fired a few people upon discovering they'd referred to him in an unflattering way. We clued in the newbies on the more fascist policies just because the constant firing and hiring was another major drain on company resources. Why Delphine was attracted to him was a mystery, particularly since she said her first impression was his striking resemblance to Nazi SS commander Heinrich Himmler. Delphine's presence was stunning, imported as she was, but it appeared this acquisition ended up was just like all the other mis-matched Robb Reports items that cluttered his life. After approximately three years of marriage they had failed to have children, casting even more doubt on the validity of the arrangement.
I recall one of the first times I was called to his office to witness one of his fits. To see him in his office made him seem even smaller: behind a desk that was, I'd estimate, fifteen feet across by six feet deep; he'd sit in a corner of the monstrosity, beneath two computer monitors the size of large flat panel televisions. I'd find myself looking under his desk to see if his feet could touch the ground. He was ill that day. Snot ran recklessly out of his nose to distraction, as he yelled, "I won't let you be subjected to this sort of treatment! My God, they have to know that Ramsey Dean was the one that did this!" He was referring to a promotion for a punk rock endcap I'd set up at Best Buy, the music industry's top mover. Our distributor, RED, was trying to take credit for it, when really all it took was a phone call to a long time associate over there to put the program together. I didn't think much of it, shenanigans as usual, but he hadn't been there before and he felt persecuted.

"And if he'd pulled over, it all would have been forgotten.
But he kept going. And he kept winning it his way."

"…Tony was more upset that we had told the press that he actually wrote the letters (not us) because he was more worried about "rumors" surrounding Taking Back Sunday and Thursday's exoduses being justified than the credibility and reputation of his current biggest band… Our situation with Tony Brummel is indicative of issues that all the bands on Victory Records encounter on some level or another. We have decided to remove ourselves from the negative situation so that we can continue to do what we love best…"

People in the industry questioned if it was a ploy by Hawthorne Heights to parlay their success into a deal with a major label, but "rumors" was a polite way of addressing the mountain of evidence that could easily be uncovered. How many bands had Brummel lost? All the top sellers. Hatebreed was first to bail. Thursday followed Hatebreed when they'd had it with Tony. Taking Back Sunday and Atreyu managed to escape in the last drama-filled year, and now Hawthorne Heights was jumping.
How many employees had he lost? There was me, the sole VP at the company. Heather West, Director of Publicity; who walked out when she reached her limit. Same for Stephanie Marlow, head of Marketing. Jason Deal, the I.T. guy, got into it with Brummel when his wife developed pregnancy complications and needed to be hospitalized. I remember Brummel shouting the day before he whacked him: "She's the one in the hospital, what does he need to be there for? I"ll destroy him!" Then there was Katie Robinson in Marketing, where his unwelcome advances such as "If I weren't married, I'd be with Katie," disturbingly seemed that her consent in this relationship wouldn't be optional. A few months earlier a promising young Long Island band, Bayside, hit a patch of black ice out on a highway in South Dakota. The van rolled, breaking the back of bass player Nick Ghanbarian and killing drummer John "Beatz" Holohan. It was the most difficult time we went through there. Beatz was the kind of guy who reminded us we were also in the business of making dreams come true. Tony quickly signed another Long Island band called The Sleeping; his great idea was to run ads with the tagline "Your Heart will stop Beatz-ing." Katie walked out in disgust: "I was tired of working for a Wizard of Oz who makes threats while hiding behind a Blackberry."

"Tony is a man whose greed knows no bounds. After selling more than 1.2 million copies of The Silence In Black and White and If Only You Were Lonely, we have never seen a single dollar in artist royalties from Victory Records. Tony will claim that we have not "recouped," a term used by those in the music business which means the label has spent more money in advertising than has been made by CD sales. In fact questionable accounting practices are the culprit and we are in fact owed substantial amounts of money much like audits from Taking Back Sunday, Thursday and Atreyu have uncovered. Despite earning more than $10 million, we've yet to see a royalty."

They earned more than that, but after over 15 years in the business, I'd heard this song before: the successful rock star claims he was screwed. It happened all the time. There was an equation in the music business for royalties: Once you start earning money faster than we can spend it, you'll get paid. Paying royalties is like throwing money out that could be buying the one thing this industry worshiped, market share. This business was driven by charts, unit sales, airplay, and anything else you could measure yourself by. Marketing costs (marketing, advertising, parties, lunches, etc.) can be charged back against the band's royalties, so the thinking is that it's better to spend the money on promotion, where it greases the wheels of the machine, than pay the artist their cut.
The thinking at Victory went beyond that. Even if the bands did sell faster than we could spend, we found a way to spend it, and for one reason: not to promote the band, per se, but the Victory brand. Brummel's contracts, which he wrote himself, were a myriad of draconian deals that egregiously cross-collateralized: a frowned-upon term used in the industry where the more stable streams of revenue like publishing and T-shirt sales, are funneled into the forever money-losing area of CD sales. Printing T-shirts can be like printing money in this business. Stores like Hot Topic would order thousands, filling the Victory war chest with additional marketing ammo. Instead of paying bands, he saturated channels like Fuse and MTV, buying all the advertising he could with their money, all touting the greatness of the Victory brand. He even took out infomercial-type blocks of time, appearing like the Ron Popeil of punk rock. Everyone knew the money was dirty, the stores that sold our stuff might as have been selling conflict diamonds, but they didn't care where the margin came from.
Tony did sometimes recoup and pay a small royalty, but it was smoke and mirrors, pennies on the dollar. He would tell a band they were re-couped, and start throwing a few bucks their way, but the big checks never came. It was done mainly to say that if they were at a major label, they wouldn't be recouped, but at Victory, they were that much closer to that dream check. But it never came.
And if success shined on any band, so came the scorn and eventual falling out. Bands would be deemed "disloyal" or "disrespectful" for embracing their fame and their end of the bargain would be flushed into "marketing expenses." Royalties were payable quarterly and, before each quarter ended, I'd get the amounts, totaling into millions of dollars, that were to be dumped into bogus marketing programs to prevent the band from getting a royalty. It was nothing short of malicious. "Fuck those guys, they're not entitled to that money," was his quarterly lament. The royalties, which ranged into hundreds of thousands of dollars, would be calculated and I'd get the amounts I'd need to spend. The last quarter I was there he laid $360,000 of Taking Back Sunday's money on me. I couldn't even find enough places to dump it: television advertising, print ads, sale pricing, endcaps, and then we'd play around with dating to try and make it stick, but sometimes even that didn't purge it all.
In this business people asked you to do unethical and even illegal things all the time. There is a whatever-it-takes attitude to breaking artists; as if we were fighting a war, we did it for the glory. But the things Brummel was asking went against everything me and this miscreant-filled business believed in; these were war crimes. A very small percentage of artists ever get a record deal. Most that do, never even make it to a second album. That very rare artist who has the talent and the drive to get himself to where he sees a royalty is as rare as a four-leaf clover. But when a Victory artist had this grail in his grasp, Tony kicked it away. If "indie" was supposed to be synonymous with integrity, then he'd sold out the entire indie community. He wanted it all to belong to him because that's what Victory Records was about; the brand, and the man behind it should be the lead story. Much like his distant idol Steve Jobs, the focus should be on the company he built and the brand he created. Unfortunately, Brummel was in the business of selling people, and they deferred on his contribution to their research and development as a product.
Victory was a boutique label that cultivated the white, suburban, 14-24 demographic; kids who'd outgrown Britney Spears and N'SYNC. "Emo" was the sound they'd matured into. It was more a matter of being in the right place at the right time, and Victory was trying to be the new Jive Records. Tony believed that with a solid brand, the music would be secondary and he relentlessly promoted the name, even referring to himself as "Tony Victory." The industry bestowed a better nickname, "Victony", because it was all so shameless.
Freud would have had a field day with the way his slogans begged for attention, things like "We Run The Streets," the conflicted "The Best Music, First" and "The 1 Independent Rock Label," a claim the rest of the industry, including Billboard magazine, begged to differ with and was about as significant as "The 1 Midwestern Farm Team." Even the name Victory illuminated his insecurity, along with a bulldog as the company's virile mascot. He never owned a dog; it was something he said came to him in a dream, ironically the same image used by Mack trucks.

"What do you call it when the assassins accuse the assassin?"

Brummel's main form of self-promotion to the industry were his acerbic e-mails. It's his own form of "propaganda," a word he frequently used to describe his promotional efforts. Often he would write an e-mail to the head of a major label, such as Sony/BMG, and then cc or even bcc his own mailing list. He would spam many of the top people in the industry with claims of his greatness, often labeling his achievements "unprecedented," and alluding to a David and Goliath type struggle between the independent label and the major labels. It didn't matter that his label was distributed by a branch of Sony/BMG, or that he didn't even know the person. They represented "corporate mentality," a conscienceless machine, whose sole purpose was greed. He was better than that, he liked to think, the valiant knight, fighting the corporate dragon.
I never bought the whole indie/major argument from him or anyone else. I knew the indie mindset all too well. It was like a pedophile trying to tell a rapist he's less of a criminal because the kids put up less of a fight. We were all peas in the same pod.
The e-mails turned into conversation pieces. "Did you see the e-mail Tony sent? What balls!" People didn't see how they were duped. One of the reasons he was sending the e-mail and bcc'ing the industry was to get himself noticed. It truly was propaganda because the victims responses weren't able to be heard by all the bcc'd shills who would forward the messages to their friends.
What was peculiar about these broadcasts is they were focused on Victory and Tony, not the bands or even the music. The e-mail attacks became so prolific, to 'brummel' became a word:
Brum?mel - [brom-uh l, bruhm-uhl; Ger. brawm -uh l]
–verb (used with object)

1. to bcc someone to display one side of an argument or attack: How do I know? He brummeled me on the e-mail attacking the CEO.

2. to cc someone in order to publicly castigate or embarrass the recipient of the e-mail: Erin got a brummeling she (and the whole company) would never forget for being late with the sales report.

3. to use an obnoxious tone via e-mail and then appear demure when confronted: Bob changed his brummeling tone once the meeting was called and he had to speak face-to-face with his co-workers.

4. to falsly inflate, needlessly repeat, or manipulate data an idea in an effort to look superior: Being a small company, our increases are minor, but let's put it on a spreadsheet and brummel the percentage growth. The big boys can't compete with that.

—Synonyms 1. ambush, attack, assail, harass, molest, to set upon someone forcibly, with hostile intent.

It was probably the only thing he'd be remembered for. I think even he knew he wasn't the next Richard Branon. He was more our own Mark David Karr; he wanted fame, even if it included notoriety, and even if he wasn't worthy of it.

"But out there with these natives, it must be a temptation to be God. Because there's a conflict in every human heart between the rational and the irrational, between good and evil. And good does not always triumph. Sometimes, the dark side overcomes what Lincoln called the better angels of our nature."

Back in February, on the eve of Hawthorne Heights' historic debuts, Brummel was about to achieve the rock star status he once dreamed of. But it was how far he was willing to go that became his legacy.

"Many of you are familiar with the greed driven letters sent out by Mr. Brummel: his manifesto calling rock supporters to arms and virtual declaration of war on hip-hop and Ne-Yo done under the guise of a band message… At the time of the letters we were branded as racists by some, all over a letter we did NOT write, targeting a genre which we have NOTHING against whatsoever."

During their interview at MTV, Hawthorne Heights was asked why they would issue a "manifesto," as it was billed. It called on their legions of a coming war between Rap and Rock. Seemingly out of nowhere, a new artist named Ne-Yo began burning up the singles chart, the projection for first week sales now targeted at 200,000, the exact number Hawthorne Heights was pegged at. The manifesto demanded that real fans of the band go out and buy not one, but two copies of the new album, to ensure that in the end Rock beat out Rap. Where this document was misguided was the intent: Why would a 14-year-old girl care where Hawthorne Heights debuted on a chart? Even more damning was the implication that this was a white-against-black issue.
The first wave of headlines focused on how a band could issue such a poisonous statement. "We didn't write that, our label did," was leader of Hawthorne Heights, Eron Buccarelli's response. The second wave focused on the author of that statement, Tony Brummel. It wasn't the first time he'd been accused of wrongdoing and manipulating the image of his bands for his own aggrandizement.
Months earlier he drew the ire of the estranged Taking Back Sunday by making an unauthorized "tour booklet." The band wanted nothing to do with Tony or Victory, but each night Victory Street Teams would infiltrate the shows and hand out the booklet, which featured Taking Back Sunday on the front.
The band had publicly talked about the abuse they'd suffered, the day and night nagging, the name calling and accusations, racial epithets, the lying, the contracts, the deceptive accounting statements but it still didn't stop fans from being sucked in. Victory defined punk rock, and many kids would support the label's releases based on faith alone.

"You have to have men who are moral, and at the same time, who are able to utilize their primordial instincts to kill without feeling, without passion. Without judgment. Without judgment. Because its judgment that defeats us."

The commitment of these kids created a labor pool to draw them into the Victory street team. A network of kids who would work for free. It was a way to impress their friends and entertain their fantasy of working at a record label. But it was mostly thankless hanging posters and handing out samplers. Vandalizing was practically in their job description. They'd even hit other label's offices when they were in the right town. If they were good, we'd pull then off the streets, give them a van, and put them on salary. From there they might even make it to the home office. "Kids are sheep, we are their shepherds," Tony would say.
Like a Trojan horse, when the Taking Back Sunday tour brochure was opened, the pamphlet hawked the current roster of Victory bands the kids should be buying instead of Taking Back Sunday. The back page featured a full-length picture of Brummel in a disturbing rock star pose, along with a "We are the culture," message from the 37-year old to the kids. Months later he riled the band again with an unauthorized re-issue of their first album with additional material which, the band claimed, along with the unwarranted marketing blitz, was a breach of their settlement. Ironically, this was an album Brummel vindictively refused to certify gold, his first, despite sales far above the 500,000 mark, just to deny the band the satisfaction of the hard earned plaque.

"In a war, there are many moments for compassion and tender action. There are many moments for ruthless action. What is often called ruthless, but may, in many circumstances, be only clarity. Seeing clearly what there is to be done, and doing it directly, quickly, awake."

Articles on Hawthorne Heights' declaration of war started appearing all over the net. They all highlighted one disturbing passage:

"…as well as the "street-team" letter which instructed people to re-arrange our CDs, putting them in higher visibility areas in stores. Unfortunately, the head of street-team, Abby Valentine, who understandably resigned following the incident, took the fall for this."

This haunted me every time I saw it. The infamous street team e-mail that leaked the day the band's new CD came out.
For months Brummel was bragging that Victory would have the 1 album. When that was threatened by Ne-Yo, we came up with an "unprecedented" solution to ensure that rock would beat rap. "We have to do everything we can to fuck with these guys," Brummel said, as we outlined how we were going to use our street teams to attack Ne-Yo. We were about to take "whatever it takes" a step further.
The street team's orders were to go into stores and attack Ne-Yo product:

"As for Ne-yo, the name of the game is to decrease the chances of a sale here. If you were to pick up handful of Ne-yo CDs, as if you were about to buy them, but then changed your mind and didn't bother to put them back in the same place, that would work. Even though this record will be heavily stocked and you might not be able to move all the stock, just relocating a handful creates issues: Even though the store will appear to be out of stock, the computer will see it as in stock and not re-order the title once it sells down and then Ne-Yo will lose a few sales later in the week"

The two-page directive listed detailed instructions on how this operation was to be carried out, listing name brand stores to sabotage: Wal-Mart, K Mart, Target, Best Buy, Coconuts, etc. and how to displace the product without being detected. With 150 street teamers hitting 10 stores a day, moving 10 Ne-Yo CDs over a one week period, we would displace over 100,000 CDs (roughly 20% of the stock Universal laid out there) and cripple Ne-Yo's chances of snatching the 1 slot.

"I am unaware of any such activity or operation, nor would I be disposed to discuss such an operation if it did in fact exist, sir."

The e-mail closed with a quote that some found disturbing:

"Victory at all costs, Victory in spite of all terror, Victory however long and hard the road may be; for without Victory, there is no survival."

Once it hit the net, it took on an ominous tone, being credited to everyone from Brummel to Hitler. But anyone who knew me better knew it was the quote in my e-mail signature. I wrote the infamous street team e-mail. I sent it to Abby. She cut-and-pasted it, inadvertently cutting off the quote's author, Winston Churchill.
That day Tony become angry at Abby for not being specific enough and asked me to step in. Like most employees at Victory, Abby had been an intern, this was her first job. I knew the ins and outs of this end of the business better than anyone. I was also known as an innovator when it came to marketing and promotion tactics. So I wrote up the marching orders, nice and specific, and then showed it to Tony.

From: Tony Brummel
Sent: Monday, February 27, 2006 5:44 PM
To: Ramsey Dean; Abby Valentine
Subject: RE: VST e-mail

THIS IS FINE. IT SHOULD LOOK LIKE IT CAME FROM ABBY.

And that's how it went. In the hours this was in operation, I received reports from street teamers of stores being "de-Ne-yo-ed" and digital pictures of the empty bins came pouring into my inbox.
Then Tony got even more specific:

-----Original Message-----
From: Tony Brummel
Sent: Tuesday, February 28, 2006 7:04 AM
To: PROMO STAFF
Subject: Ne-Yo

Keep in mind that moving Ne-Yo in a white, middle or upper class
neighborhood will have less of an effect than moving Ne-Yo in a more
urban location.

A few hours later, someone on the street team flipped. The e-mail with their mission was all over the net and we were being crucified. Earlier Tony was thumping his chest, hoping to become the new indie poster boy, and come to find out this was how Victory planned to lay claim to being 1.
The worst part was the collateral damage. Since we did it on the floors of the retail outlets who were supposed to be our partners, they were more than pissed off and threats were made as the back-peddle started.
The press was relentless. Indies were supposed to have integrity; that was Brummel's whole shtick. Now Brummel was being called worse things than the majors; industry pundit Bob Lefsetz said he went "from hero to zero" in a matter of seconds. If Bob knew what had been going on all along, he wouldn't even have said that.
Universal was threatening criminal action and we needed a way out. Even worse, we were messing with Island/Def Jam, one of Jay Z's pet projects. Most rappers thought baggy pants and public assistance qualified them as gangsters, but I'd worked with Jay Z protégés the Gotti brothers. Before they formed Murder Inc. they were over at TVT, and they were the real deal. The FBI had been trying to pin everything from drug trafficking to money laundering to shooting 50 Cent on them. And now Tony was on their radar.
His idea was to blame it all on Abby.

From: Tony Brummel
Sent: March 1, 2006 9:57 AM

It has come to our attention a joke e-mail sent to some of our street team members by a junior ranking staff member was posted on the Internet and has created some commotion. First of all, the message was by all means a joke. The day after it was sent this was reiterated to the recipients of said e-mail. Victory as many of you know are the only label that is not on iTunes. We strongly support our friends at music retail day in and day out. Please rest assured that the message was a joke that backfired. Unfortunately it fell into the wrong hands and was anonymously posted on an industry gossip board. From there this joke somehow became a truth and began spreading around cyberspace. It is extremely upsetting to us that someone would go out of their way to cause harm and ignite random and malicious innuendo towards our company. Victory Records supports all artists of all genres on every label at all of your stores in hopes that everyone sells a lot of music. We absolutely want your music section as heavily populated as possible. That is good business for everyone. Thank you for your support.

Nobody believed it and there was another round of Victory bashing. Abby was suddenly a celebrity. People were calling and e-mailing her. She received so many nasty posts on her MySpace page she had to take it down. "He was seriously a total asshole to me about that whole thing. He acted like it really WAS my fault. Didn't say anything like, 'Man I'm sorry this happened,' or anything like that at all. So that Friday I was pretty sure I was gonna quit, but I was going to take the weekend to think about it. Then Tony spent all weekend FORWARDING me hate mail (like I wasn't getting enough of my own). And when I didn't reply to any of it he sent me one of those, 'Let me know when you are out of blackout mode,' emails. And that was it."
She resigned Monday and I couldn't have felt worse. Then I heard the spin, it was just the excuse Tony was looking for: "That person is no longer with the company," was the official line, making it look like we fired her for misconduct and distanced ourselves from any wrongdoing.
But Hawthorne Heights had been irreparably damaged. The band's statement continued:

"Because of these letters, our second album debuted at 3 on the charts, an incredible feat, which would normally be cause for joy, but now is tainted much like Barry Bonds' statistics."

Hawthorne Heights, one of the most promising bands of last year, now saw their career go into an abrupt tailspin. We'd been riding high at Victory Records for so long that we didn't think anything could touch us. I'd crashed and burned more times than I'd like to remember, but Tony Brummel had never known the downside of the rocket ride, let alone worked for someone else in the business.

"…this army of his, that worship the man like a god, and follow every order, however ridiculous."

"I never worked at a label," Brummel liked to say, claiming to have started it with $800 when he was eighteen. He also didn't like people with experience working at his label. The isolation from New York and Los Angeles was intentional. He believed the industry was categorically wrong, and anyone with previous experience, "tainted."
"We need people with malleable minds," he once chillingly told me. Chilling because the only place I remembered that phrase was from Pol Pot; the Khmer Rouge was built on eradicating anyone with ideas, education or contradicting opinions, leaving a population of workers that could be programmed as drones for the state. And that's what I found at Victory; everyone needed to be "working" at all times and casual conversations were strictly prohibited. He would often call people if he saw then talking, demanding to know the reason and why it couldn't have been conducted via e-mail. The no-meetings policy was a big bragging point for Brummel, as if that's all the major labels did; he didn't realize his employees were spending a much larger portion of their day fielding his e-mail interrogations.
I was the exception to the "untainted" policy, a necessary evil. At the time I left, Victory looked like a hot stock; good fundamentals and a nice upward tack. I was known as a person who could accelerate that situation so we were a good match. I was brought in because he needed solid relationships with Best Buy, Target, Wal-Mart and all the other big players. I was brought in to turn the company into the next TVT Records; my former employer was the undisputed 1 independent label, currently enjoying success with Lil' Jon. I resigned after 9 years when I'd had my fill of the mendacity that is the lifeblood of this business. I thought I'd try other things, stayed out two years, but that's where the money was, and like the Godfather, just when I thought that I was out, it pulled me back in.
Tony really wanted me to take it "to the next level," as was so often said in the business. I went to the task at hand, fixing what I could of the jerry-rigged company. There were so many things about it that just didn't make sense, until I found out it was all Brummel's doing. It was as if he read the beginning of a book on how to start a record company and made up the rest. Now with its success, the only yardstick or compass this business used, Victory Records grew into nothing short of The Gospel According To Tony.
Where his model was failing was that with each band's success and defection, the noose tightened around his neck. His uncontrollable antics were career suicide. The horror stories of being signed to Victory circulated endlessly through the small business and even the unsigned bands knew to avoid the label. But there were desperate bands that looked at the success of a Taking Back Sunday and saw it as a last ditch effort, if not to grab the money, at least some degree of fame and the hope that their contract would be bought out. Taking Back Sunday had said they wouldn't record again unless the contract was re-negotiated. An arrangement was made where their contract could be bought out and soon they found a home at Warner Bros. Records, home of alternative holdovers like the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Jane's Addiction. Taking Back Sunday had made it through the Victory meat grinder, been used, abused, ripped off and pissed off. Despite getting over $2 million dollars for the band, Brummel sent a castigating e-mail to the man who wrote the check, Warner Brothers' President, Tom Whalley, calling him an "employee" while Tony was in the vaulted position of "entrepreneur," not only cc'ing many of the top brass at Warner Brothers, but bcc'ing the berating to competing labels. His last words to Jillian Newman, Taking Back Sunday's manager, were "you fat fucking kike!" He was our own Mel Gibson, only he was drunk on his own fluid. A Victory employee once confided to me, "Dude, the level of anti-Semitism in this place is out of hand!" Just another one of the rules in the Victory employee manual Brummel wasn't going to play by.
Even when he was being friendly, there were racial connotations. Employee Brett Greenberg was his "favorite Jew," and Tom Wojick referred to as "Tommy Polock;" they were meant as terms of endearment. Competitors were no exception. John Esposito, President of WEA, was referred to as a "guinea." He referred to Universal President Jim Urie as a "mick." After one heated e-mail exchange (which I was bcc'd on) Brummel quipped, "Real men like to fight, Jim." Later he told me he'd be sending him a bottle of Jamison for further goading.

"After that, his ideas, methods, became… unsound. Unsound."

"John G is a dago cocksucker!" Brummel shouted, loud enough for half the office to hear, as he hung up the phone with Hawthorne Heights' manager, John Germinario. John said the band wasn't happy with the way they were being treated and wanted to set up a meeting. The argument with John was ironically brought on by the upcoming gold record party for the band, and the absence of royalties thus far. The guys were broke and, if this was all they had to show for a gold record, things needed to change.
The gold record party was on a boat called El Presidente; a boat big enough to hold only the staff and the band, no outsiders. Most employees had the life expectancy of a tail gunner, so it wasn't the coming together of those who'd fought long and hard, just those who were around at the time. The boat was an old one, purported to have delivered Eisenhower, MacArthur, Ghandi and a bunch of other dignitaries around their token cruise of the Chicago lakefront. The invite said there would be food and drinks so nobody bothered to eat dinner. There were drinks, but the food amounted to nothing more than a couple of small appetizers. It was a recipe for disaster.
After cruising the dank Chicago river and drinking everything that was on board, we were forced to sit through the aggrandizing moment. Tony presented each member of the band a gold record, and then an envelope. The envelope contained a check for $5,000 - an insult by any standards. The wholesale price of a Hawthorne Heights CD was just over $10.00. Gold certification is for selling 500,000 copies, so in effect they'd earned Victory Records over $5 million dollars. To collectively give the five members of the band $25,000, or a mere .5% of the take, Brummel felt was generous since they were still "in debt" to him.
"He kept complaining to me that the band didn't send him a thank-you for the checks," said John G, "I didn't tell him the band was totally pissed off by it."
At the docks, one of the guys who worked in screen printing took a dare and jumped into Lake Michigan, getting everyone kicked off the boat. We all caught up later at Brummel's favorite bar, a dive called Couch, to keep the party going. The bar was a non-descript dump, but it was crawling distance from Tony's house, which was a 10,000 ft. converted garage on Grand Avenue, one of the city's main arteries. The rumor was he bought a business address so he could list it as a Victory office. As a private business owner making a profit, he needed expenses or the money would just go to the tax man. We'd had a party at Couch a few weeks earlier when the Warped tour came through town. Atreyu stopped by for an angry moment (knowing their time would be done soon), along with Hawthorne Heights. Brummel, in classic form, was the last one standing in the wee hours as the bartender went for last call. Tony brought up the idea of a fake bachelor party at his house, where we'd invite over hookers and he'd be the guest of honor. His wife, Delphine, was out of town, it was an easy play. That he brought this up in front of the girls in the office wasn't even exceptional. A few days earlier he called out Jillian Newman as incompetent merely for being a woman right in front of Heather West, Director of Publicity, and Stephanie Marlow, Director of Promotion. I'd seen the kind of hookers he ordered, too. Cabrini Green girls that looked like he was shopping quantity over quality. We held a party at the office with the band Action Action, another case where it was closing time and we kept going. The four women looked older and tougher than all of us; tattoos on their necks, stretch marks on their guts and a lifetime of smoke on their breath. When we wouldn't touch the merchandise, Tony became incensed. "You guys are pussies! Am I the only one here who's a real man? Ramsey, you're a Vice President, you should be a leader on this!" Still with no takers he tore off his shirt. "I'll take them all." They closed in on him, and he led them back to his office to get his money's worth. I was with John G, who was working with Action Action at the time. When we were about half a block away from the building we heard the fire escape burst open. "They stole my money!" A half-dressed Brummel staggered down the fire escape. They'd gotten into his pants in more ways than one, and lifted $2,000.

The morning after the Hawthorne Heights gold record party John and Tony met. "He seemed perfectly normal in the meeting, and then schizophrenically blew up at me outside his office." This was classic Brummel: He needed an audience, and walked John to a point in the hall where everyone could hear: "I'll kill you, motherfucker!" he shouted, "I'll bury you in the street! Right now, man! Come on, let's go, do you want to fight me?" He caught the attention of everyone. John held a reputation as a class act. Friend to all and enemy to none, so much that he only did handshake deals. "Hit me, motherfucker! Hit me!" Brummel begged, turning flush red and pointed to his chin, but we all knew it was nothing more than drama. He offered it because he knew John wouldn't stoop to his level. John shook his head in disgust, turned and walked out.
When the band found out what was said in the meeting, Brummel was again made the fool, confiding in John that drummer and founder of the band, Eron Bucarelli's, wife was a "gold digger" and calling Eron a "poison" that should be kicked out of the band, a claim that constituted tortuous interference for which he would later be held liable.

"These are all his children, man, as far as you can see. Hell, man, out here, we are all his children."

Talking smack about someone might be overlooked, but putting down someone's wife was unforgivable. Weeks later, when Victory's Never Sleep Again tour came to the House of Blues, Brummel noticeably avoided his headliner. Eron sent him an ominous note the following day: "I'm disappointed that we did not see one another… You crossed a line and I'm extremely upset by that…"
It wasn't the first time one of his bands threatened a beating. After a perceived disloyalty by Atreyu frontman Alex Varkatzas, Brummel tried to talk the much-smaller opening band on their tour, Scars of Tomorrow, into giving Varkatzas an attitude adjustment in exchange for preferential treatment. Instead the band, which was brought to the label by Varkatzas, told him of the plot. He fired off an e-mail to the office, telling Brummel what he thought of him and Victory, more than happy to settle the score man-to-man. The e-mail leaked to the industry and Victory was again the subject of widespread ridicule.
Brummel forwarded Eron's e-mail to singer JT Woodruff and guitar player Casey Calvert, apparently seeking to divide the band and playing himself as the victim to his bcc'd audience.

From: Tony Brummel
Sent: Monday, December 12, 2005 9:15 AM
To: JT Woodruff
cc: Casey Calvert
Subject: FW: Missed you

…I now believe that he (John G) recorded that "meeting" we had a couple of weeks ago which, of course, is illegal. I had a feeling that this was happening as he did not take his jacket off and was extremely nervous. We will look into this further. We now know that he is not someone that we can trust. Because of this, I will have to put a moratorium on communication with him. I do not have time for this counterproductive and juvenile nonsense. ..It is truly a shame…It is mind boggling when artists attack and dismantle the very things that got them where they are… Eron's e-mail makes me physically sick.

The obvious flaw in his logic was that if he suspected John G of recording the meeting, he wouldn't have threatened him with physical violence, which constituted menacing and/or harassment, where a criminal conviction could have been easily obtained, and which still held a great liability for Brummel since there were no less than six witnesses to the display.

"The charges are unjustified. They are, in fact, and under the circumstances of this conflict, quite completely insane."

In August, Hawthorne Heights made their biggest headlines, filing a lawsuit against Victory Records that could genuinely be called "unprecedented." Everything from the docket to the deal memo was up online. It listed Brummel's unethical conduct, and the damage it caused to their career. The suit not only claims the contract, which Brummel wrote himself, as invalid, but that his threats of physical violence to a radio station programmer and their manager John Germinario turned what was once a promising partnership into a gross liability.
But their case was already won in the eyes of music industry just by stepping forward and putting it all on the line. This is the sort of honesty fans love to see. The Real Manifesto, as they billed their statement, went directly to over 500,000 fans; the new paradigm of the internet. It was a bunker buster Brummel didn't see coming. He thought he'd be able to control the press with his ad dollars but only tired industry rag HITS, refused to cover the story. A bunch of middle-aged men wouldn't decide the fate of Victory Records, the kids would. Tony Brummel always wanted to be famous, wanted to be a rock star and now he was about as relevant as Kip Winger. The kids who had rejected him as an artist were now rejecting him yet again for his crimes against art. Hawthorne Heights turned him into the Goliath he once rallied against and beaten him at his own game. They'd stripped him of his scepter of integrity and turned themselves into the next Pearl Jam in one deft move, becoming not only heroes to their fans, but to every musician in a band who'd ever been screwed. It was more than the fame they'd already gained, which Brummel had been chasing with this whole endeavor; they managed to attain the one thing that would forever elude him: r-e-s-p-e-c-t. Not bad for a bunch of kids from Ohio.
The kids were shouting "Burn, Victory, burn!" on MySpace. But it was more a call to burn a Victory band over buying the CD: either way, it seemed, the band wasn't getting anything so who was the thief? It was as if the whole industry was outed; for all they had done to educate fans that stealing music was wrong, it appeared the labels were the real thieves. The naiveté I felt in my guilt at selling promos had been lifted years ago once I saw how the game was played. Now these kids had their eyes opened to the scam. There was no indie and there was no major. There was just corporatism as usual, with the fans and the bands as the exploited.

"I am unconcerned. I am beyond their timid, lying morality, and so I am beyond caring."

Victory would always be an open book; running on charts and numbers, it's easy to spot strength and weakness. And when you're selling people, musicians, who are in the business of writing how they feel, the truth will never be far off. In hindsight, Brummel might have fared better with stuffed animals instead of bands. They'd weather the abuse, and maybe do a better job of filling what was really missing in his life.
Brummel liked to brag that he'd never been to court, his implication being that he'd never done anything wrong. He'd actually been filed against many times but, as he'd also said to me more than once, "I always settle, it's cheaper." The real reason was there were too many people out there to testify against him. He couldn't even show up in court for fear of what would be put on the public record. Settlements were just a way to avoid the truth. The lawyers coming after him now knew this, and they'd probably drag him the distance on principle.
Hawthorne Heights, Taking Back Sunday and Atreyu didn't just want their money, they wanted retribution. And they aren't alone. Surrounded by three bands, supported by his brooding ex-employees, Victory was set to burn like Berlin. It was an attack on multiple fronts even his high priced advisors couldn't repel. Even if he managed a settlement, it was too late; Tony would go down in history as the bad guy but somehow I think the ruler in hell option might have been part of his plan.
I'd be a key witness. Much of their claims hinged on my testimony about their missing royalties. The other gravedigger was Marion Williams. She was another former intern Brummel programmed. He put her through school to get her an accounting degree; with only Tony and her education for guidance, she would be the perfect patsy. But there was one other guide Brummel didn't count on when subpoena time came: Marion was a devout Christian. She'd have to choose her true God when she put her hand on the Bible.

"Horror and moral terror are your friends. If they are not, then they are enemies to be feared. They are truly enemies."

Things weren't going to change. Days after I left the company I got a call from John G. Tony was in the hospital. There was a company outing to Wrestlemania, where some employees, along with the band Aiden, whom John also managed, racked up a thousand-dollar bar tab in a sky box, and then (surprise, surprise) went back to Tony's place for a fake bachelor party. Not even the band, who where notorious for their sexcapades, would touch the low-budget girls. Brummel castigated the band, grabbed the girls and disappeared into his bedroom. The following day he called in sick for work. When he showed up later (without a doctor's note) he asked one of the employees to drive him to the hospital, where he spent the next two days. Tony has a bad heart, and apparently the strain of the all-night binge put him over the edge.
I ran into one of the employees on the street a few days later. Brummel sent a paranoid e-mail from the hospital: he knew people were slacking off just because he was out and there'd be hell to pay when he got back. Weeks later I heard from someone else he was installing surveillance cameras: not to protect the employees, but to keep an eye on them. I'd already seen the Orwellian computer program he used that cycled through every computer in the office, delivering a snapshot of the screen to see what people were up to. Now he wouldn't even need to move to see if people were at their desks.
A corporation is defined as a business entity with all the rights of a human. Brummel, in his quest for the ultimate corporation, became that business entity. He'd crossed over to become a dark alien life form created by business men. He'd ankled his humanity, holed up in his office, and uploaded himself into his Blackberry, and now only sought to satisfy his insatiable inner shareholder. Singular compared to the collective mentality of the major labels, there was something ironically fascist about the independent world, and in Tony Brummel I saw something much more sinister. I had come face-to-face with The Horror; not a dark and powerful entity, but a human who had hollowed out his own humanity to satisfy his own lust for power. I always dreamed of the big score in this business, we all did. But with the morphing morality, the conflict of human emotion against corporate emotion, I'd seen what side that one common emotion – greed - favored. I wanted nothing more to do with it. His horror, if it really was his own, wasn't a horror that inspired fear, but rather repugnance. It was the worst traits we all possess, growing unfettered by any trace of conscious or moral code. Like a mutation, I saw him more as a medical oddity, a nightmare in evolution where our very humanity would be self-extinguished as we fought for survival in the monetized world we created.
Before the Hawthorne Heights album came out, there was an e-mail that Brummel must have sent 30 times to the staff, night and day, even while he was vacationing in the Bahamas, about the coming "David versus Goliath" showdown the first week. He was obviously impressed with himself for writing it and it came sometimes multiple times each day. He'd change the title and trick us into opening it and reading the sermon again:

What we do is REAL. What we say is REAL. A lot of the things that happen and even things that I say might not be sexy but it is REALITY. Reality is not debatable. Reality is not sexy. Facts are facts. This is it you guys.

Darn My Enthusiasm

2007-08-16T16:21:00.000-07:00

I seem to have sprained my foot while working out, which apparently happens to people who have been basically immobile ever since the release of Netscape and then decide to do jumping jacks. I wonder what other weird ailments will befall me in my quest for health. Will the lack of drinking cause my liver to grow wings and flit around my ribcage like a happy wren? Will the lack of pot make my brain hurt, what with all the things it's suddenly able to remember for more than 30 seconds at a time? Will I lift a weight too hard and sprain my balls?

Oh, probably. But then I have to consider how much less I'm hating the way I look, how my cheekbones are growing and my dewlap shrinking, how my upper torso is well on its way to becoming wider than my lower torso instead of the other way around, and it all suddenly seems worth the icepacks.

Now, if I could just find a fucking job...

Who Minds The Store? I MIND

2007-08-12T20:55:00.000-07:00

I didn't exercise this morning -- I had an urgent need to go see "Stardust", alone, and then drive home weeping -- so I thought I'd get my heartrate up by watching the entire Comedy Store open mic. I call it the Calisthenics of Hate. I reached my target rate almost instantly. All but two of the 15 comics on the list ate it, and ate it hard, myself included. I told what I had thought, up to that point, was a fairly funny story, and ended up feeling like I was lucky not to get stoned to death.

When I'm feeling down, I like to go to the Comedy Store, so I can remember what "down" REALLY feels like. To put it another way, I go to the Comedy Store so I can remember why I never go to the Comedy Store.

This is not to say I haven't had good sets there, but it is NOT the place to try out new material, or smart material, or, for some people, any material at all. There are comics working there whose entire employment is contingent upon their ability to observe which races various audience members belong to, and to then comment on attributes of said race. I was simply not in that place tonight, and the price, she was dear.

Later tonight I'll be at the IO West if anyone wants to give me a hug. Or hit me with a rock.

Fun Hurts

2007-08-09T20:30:00.000-07:00

I was at a swimming pool for an hour and a half today and managed to get a sunburn and a charlie horse. My left leg still doesn't work right and my shoulders are the color of a lobster who has had an accident.

I am out of practice at this whole "summer" thing.

I was an expert at summer, once upon a time. I would swim in pools and ride bikes and skip rocks and chase fireflies and burn ants with a magnifying glass and, of course, read books alone in my room. Now what do I do? Sit around scrounging the internet for various media I will never have the time or inclination to watch, read or listen to. I can't even indulge in that traditional adult summertime activity, excessive drinking; not unless I want to be a huge fat man who wants to die.

I need to remember how to do summer stuff without hurting myself. If I tried to chase fireflies now, I'd probably try to eat them, or something. Give myself the ol' "neon mustache". I'd attempt to burn ants with a magnifying glass, but first hold up the glass over my own head to check if it's working and then set my own hair on fire, jump in the pool to put it out, but I jump in the shallow end and snap my spine like a cheap comb. I can probably still ride a bike, in an emergency, but not uphill, or downhill, or on uneven ground, or anywhere where I might fall on cement. Maybe the Bonneville Salt Flats? But then I would have to remember to put sunscreen on, which, as today's adventure illustrates, is not one of my strong points.

I do this to myself every summer. I wonder if I actually LIKE being sunburned. Wouldn't that be a weird fetish? Strange subculture of white people roasting themselves alive and then having tentative, whimpery sex. All the magazines would look like they hadn't been color-balanced properly. "Are the red levels too high?" "No, these goofy crackers look like that on their own." "Why do they run the world, again?" "I...I don't know."

What if you had a sunburn fetish, but you were also a furry? Would you go and lay out by the pool in only a g-string and no sunscreen on, but wearing a huge fluffy lemur mask? How long would it take for a webring to grow up around such behavior? (If this is already an existing fetish combo, please don't tell me.)

I'm pretty sure the only part of sunburn I enjoy is the peelin'. And the biopsies.

No Try

2007-08-08T23:35:00.000-07:00

I stopped cohosting Name of Show because I felt like my onstage banter mojo had withered away. Current host Ed Salazar assured me I just needed to relax and not think about what I was doing, and comedy would flow more freely from me.

Luke Skywalker lifted rocks while he was thinking about something else. Buddhist monks punch holes in brick damn walls while they meditate upon a lotus or whatever.

It seems like the same basic strategy of emptying out your mind can help you to do anything (even use The Force. FUCK YOU, IT'S REAL).

Our brains aren't thinking machines. They are DOING machines. We've been using them wrong. Maybe if we use them right, we can do anything before we think of a reason not to.

I'm gonna go move some rocks.

Y'all Just Don't Get Me, That's Y'all's Problem

2007-08-07T09:06:00.000-07:00

Last night I tried out my "racist nerd" bit at the first place I ever did standup: a mixed (but mostly spoken-word poetry) open mic called Green, over in Culver City. You should check it out. But don't bring your fake-racist alt-comedy, because they don't exactly know what to make of that in the poetry community. I'm pretty sure I was being heckled, but in low tones, because poets are respectful, up to a point.

I forgot to do the "Jawas control the media line". Yeah, that was my mistake. That one would have won them over.

The first time I did comedy at Green, I did the most racist joke I have ever done or ever will do. I am not really funny enough to pull such material off...YET. Look out.

Unrelated: I just finished my first week of exercising every morning! And I didn't even hate it! Now I just have to find out what the hell I should be eating, and my body should be well on the way to working properly again. It's hard to fuel calisthenics with fries.

Jediliverance

2007-08-06T15:58:00.001-07:00

Are there racist nerds? Like, rednecks in the middle of nowhere with no education or humanity to speak of, but somehow they've got a Netflix subscription and a whole box of Golden Age comics, from back when every German was a Kraut and all Asian characters had skin the color of school buses. Nerds coming up with wholly new variations on racial slurs:

"'Nother roadside bomb! Goddamn cowards. Whaddaya expect from a bunch of Sand Ewoks?"

"The Jawas control the media and the banks!"

"You call 'em drag queens, I call 'em Deceptifags!"

"The South shall rise again! Just like the Fremen of Arrakis...Dune...Dixie planet."

How To Tell If You Are Becoming A "Foodie"

2007-08-06T14:12:00.000-07:00

You make a sandwich that could be reasonably described as containing "shaved Gruyere".

This Job Doesn’t Suck Because I Hate It; I Hate This Job Because It Sucks

2007-08-05T09:17:00.000-07:00

[The following is Doug Stanhope's take on psychiatric medication and its typical uses. I listened to this, and suddenly realized I had been thinking about my work-related panic attacks as MY problem, instead of a problem with the horrible brain-cell-killing work I had been doing. Everyone I've told about my last two jobs and the way I panicked my way out of them has said "well, of course you had panic attacks, you were doing data entry eight hours a day, IDIOT." I think my next job will be working with kittens or something. And now, Doug:]

They [the people in charge of drug legalization] don't give a fuck about your health, your well-being; they just care if you're kickin' out boxes at the factory. And that's why they legalize all this fuckin' Prozac Zolofty shit, but all the shit that would make you look through the nonsense, oh, we can't have that!

"I have a job where I alphabetize insurance forms 45 hours a week, and I noticed I couldn't concentrate so well on my job. So my doctor put me on Adderall, and now I just breeze through my workday. I don't even notice that my empty life is being pissed away underneath fluorescent tubes, I have no good stories, I'm probably the most boring person I know, but I'm gettin' so much done! I just go A B C D E F G H I L M N O bladdle-addle blah blah blah."

You don't try to cure that! You're not concentrating on that because it's fuckin' boring! And you die at the end. You should put more time into how you're enjoying your day.

Beware Of All Enterprises Which Require New Clothes

2007-08-04T11:15:00.000-07:00

I think my least favorite thing about my latest exercise kick is how I keep wondering if I should buy stuff to strengthen my exercise infrastructure. Do I need special exercise clothes, perhaps a pair of loose shorts with wires in them that zap my balls when my heart rate drops below target? Do I need a fanny pack to keep my keys in so they don't jangle along as I run and wear a hole in my thigh? Would it be better to keep my iPod in the fanny pack, or buy an armband to hold it? Will all that running mess with my iPod's moving parts? Should I buy a Shuffle or a Nano so that I won't run the risk of scratching a hard drive with my spastic flailings? Am I eating right before/after exercising? Do I need to start purchasing special drinks/powders/fruits/blenders/food processors/cooking lessons/acting lessons/headshots/makeup/blargedy blarg blarg bloo? HOW MUCH DO I HAVE TO BUY BEFORE I'M A WORKING PERSON???

The preceding paragraph is a great illustration of how the least, most minor thought in my head can snowball down the demonic slopes of my mountainous inferiority complex, gathering neuroses and fears and insecurities until it blots out the sun, slams into me, and makes me abandon my plans for the day and go back to bed.

I'll probably end up buying one or two of the least expensive items I just mentioned, because part of my Mighty Working right now is the reversal of old and dumb habits. One of my dumbest habits is pretending to be fiscally responsible in order to get out of doing things I don't feel like doing or am afraid of doing.

"I want to exercise, really I do, but look at all the stuff I'll have to buy to make it work for me and get into the habit! I just can't afford it right now. Now please excuse me, I have to go pay $7 to eat at Wendy's every night for the next year."

Hey, me: here's a little experiment I hope you and I will try. How about we spend money on useful things, and invoke fiscal responsibility to prevent ourselves from buying solid gold towels and meals made of fructose and hog puke? Sincerely, me.

I hope I figure out this whole life thing before I die. I suppose, if I stop eating at Wendy's, that gives me more time.

I'm Just A Paul Who Can't Say No

2007-08-03T10:44:00.000-07:00

Within the last year, I've discovered that weed and alcohol make me horribly depressed. Not while I'm consuming them, of course. While I'm drinking or smoking, bluebirds sing, the sun shines, my car insurance pays itself, George Lucas formally and publicly apologizes for everything he's done from "Willow" onward, you get the idea. It's only the following day, or several days, after the imbibing, that I feel like the best thing I could do right now would be to walk under a speeding bus.

Two very different feelings, one deceptively awesome, one to definitely avoid. Guess which feeling I remember clearly several weeks later, at a gathering that has booze in it. That's right! Line 'em up, barkeep, and sharpen my sword! I hear there's a dragon in these parts and I'M-A CHASE IT!!!

My sense of self-preservation has been pickled in beer and smokehoused in ganja for the last ten years. It's like a little piece of mental jerky at this point, like the preserved bog bodies of Northern Europe, shrunken and leathery and coarse, and you can sorta see what it used to look like if you squint real hard.

Here's the number one super-double-retarded reason why I'm having a hard time stopping the smoking and the drinking; both activities impair memory! The more I do it, the more I forget how stupid it is. It's like God wants me to be miserable and high.

Reason number two: I do standup comedy and hang out with standup comedians. Almost everyone I know is a high-functioning alcoholic. I look at them and think "Wow, they drink and smoke every night and still go out and do stuff and earn a living and enjoy life. Why can't I do that?" For the same reason Stephen Hawking can't do a layup, dumbass. It's in your genes. Don't do it. I think that to myself, and then a few weeks go by, and I think "Maybe THIS time"...but no. I once heard that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. I think that sounds more like the definition of being a fucking idiot, which is what I am when it comes to the major intoxicants.

More than almost anything else in my life, the fact that I cannot get fucked up AND lead a productive life makes me want to lie on the floor pounding my fists and screaming "it's not fair". And of course life isn't fair, and of course me pointing it out won't change anything, and so I'm back where I started: leading a life that I only find bearable, for short periods of time, under the influence of powerful chemicals. But pot and alcohol are out. Is heroin expensive? Just kidding, it makes you nod out, and I already sleep too much.

Maybe I could get addicted to butter. I wouldn't mind weighing 400 pounds if I was at least happy once in a while, and there's no risk of imprisonment.

I mention all this because I'm going to a barbecue tonight where there's going to be free beer, and I'm trying to get myself psyched up to not have any. We'll see how that goes.

The Breeze Feels Good

2007-08-02T19:17:00.000-07:00

As part of my ongoing effort to grow up, I have purchased cargo shorts.

Many are the middle-aged and post-middle-aged men wandering the urban dumbscape of L.A., clad in the most ironic of T-shirt and the most cargo of short. If I am to have a hope in hell of joining polite society, I have no choice but to wear the uniform.

So many older people are now wearing younger-people clothes that the distinction between the generations is becoming irrelevant, but try telling that to the cops who arrested me outside that junior high school last spring. She looked 18, and so did I! No foul, I say.

Gross! Enough of that. Back to my pants. I have two pairs of shorts now. I resisted shorts for a long time, since my shins are simultaneously the hairiest AND the palest parts of my body. They peer out from the apertures of shorts like twin monstrosities out of a Lovecraft story, hairy slug-mammals that dwell eyeless in eldritch caverns and shun the light of day. I did not want to inflict them on all of you, but global warming has placed this bullet twixt my teeth, and down it is time to bite. It's too damn hot in SoCal for jeans, and I want to be able to go for a walk without steeping in my own sweat-vapors from the waist down.

My shorts have many pockets. That sounds like something Fu Manchu would say if he was a skater. But it's true. A preliminary count indicates TEN pockets, the four "traditional" pockets where one keeps manly things like wallets and gin, and six "wild card" pockets, which are presumably for the storage of PDAs and Gogurt and the like. Four of them are so small they might as well be change purses. Perhaps I will fill them with coin in order to weigh them down and keep stray breezes from the subway vent from blowing them up around my waist.

I used to obtain shorts, not by buying them, but by waiting until my pants developed rips in the knees that were severe enough to warrant amputation. The problem with that approach is that pants rarely rip exactly where you want them to. Some were too short and had to be discarded unless I wanted to look like a gay '70s jogger. Some were too long and essentially combined manpris with cutoffs, a look that says "Hello, world! Punch me in the face!" especially when combined with black socks. I was also in the habit of buying most of my clothes from thrift stores, where most of the shorts for sale were stripped from the corpses of transsexual prostitutes, dunked in bleach to wash off the AIDS, and slapped on the rack still dripping. So shorts were not a viable option for a while.

But now things are different. Now I know my sizes, and that I am an "autumn". I know where real stores are and I buy things from them. Recognizing a barely important need, and making a purchase to fill it: what better way to tell that I Am A Man In America?

Get ready, world. Get ready for my calves.

That's "Encyclopedia African-American" To You

2007-08-01T09:38:00.000-07:00

I used to read the Encyclopedia Brown books a lot when I was a kid. If you've never read them, here's what happened in every story: some kind of pansy-ass "Dennis the Menace"-level crime is committed, and is then investigated by Encyclopedia Brown, the most self-satisfied child in all of literature. He interviews all parties involved and reaches a conclusion, but does not reveal how he deduced the truth: the stories usually end with the question "How did Encyclopedia know?" and the answer is in a numbered index in the back of the book.

First of all, I think it's weird that the answer is never given in the story. For all we know, Brown never reveals ANY of his deductive leaps to his friends and family, preferring to bask in his reputation as a godlike oracle, perhaps gathering followers and child brides. From time to time, malefactors are brought before him, to wither beneath the merciless Sahara sun of his mystery-solving overmind, to have their crimes revealed to all, and to beg forgiveness. All of Idaville is known to him; he marks the fall of the tiniest sparrow e'en as he sees into the heart of his foulest nemesis, Bugs Meany.

Or maybe he just strings everyone along for a couple minutes and then gushes, "Okay, okay, I'll tell you. I'm so amazed I figured this out! I am so AWESOME."

Now, that's a problem I just realized I had with the books, but there's another problem that I've had with them ever since I first read them: they aren't so much designed to train the deductive mind as to impart utterly useless facts. Encyclopedia frequently solves mysteries because of some random bullshit he happens to know because he was reading books when all the other neighborhood kids were playing doctor or stealing Luckies from the Five and Dime or drinking malts or what the hell ever.

A typical solution to an E-brizzle mystery would be something like "Bugs's dog couldn't have been enraged by Sally's red shirt, since as everyone knows, dogs are colorblind!" Um, no, Encyclopedia, everyone DOESN'T know that, you weird little fruit. Well, I know it now, but now it's too late, isn't it? I have just encountered the only situation in my entire life to come in which it will be useful for me to know that dogs are colorblind, i.e., reading an Encyclopedia Brown book in which that fact is the fact that solves the mystery. Now that the mystery is over, and shall never be fun to read again, I still have this goddamn fact in my head, a little patch of brain cells with "dogs are colorblind!" written on it in jittery crayon, taking up space that could be used for the quadratic formula, or my home address. Thanks a load, Donald J. Sobol, if that is your real name, which it probably is, since no one in their right mind would think that was a good pen name, so forgive me for lashing out like that!

He's been writing these books since 1963. I wonder if very early versions of the stories were just crazily racist:

"Mr. Hirschbaum couldn't have lent Bugs that money; he would know that Bugs would never pay him back, and as a Jew, he's naturally too concerned with his finances to let that happen!"

"Whoever stole the pie, it wasn't a wop!"

"Sure, Wilford could have won the carnival prizes...if black people were capable of holding down honest jobs! Nice try, Wilford."

Now I'm going to get a haircut. I hope I've given you all a lot to think about.

Cracked.com Ranks The Top 5 Numbers!

2007-07-31T17:34:00.000-07:00

Sure, we've all seen numbers, dancing merrily down columns on our pay stubs, marching sternly around a clock face, even tattooed on the arm of a convicted felon next to a crude blue-green rendering of a stripper with a fire hydrant lodged in her chest. We know some of them are bigger than others and some are smaller, but how do they REALLY stack up? What are the best of the best, the most integral of the integrals, the true victors of the Battle Numerale?

Wonder no more, and behold: our list of the Top 5 Numbers!

#5: 9 (up 25 places from last year)

Sharp, loud, in-your-face and on point, 9 is this year's 11. Coming up the list fast from its #30 position last year, it's the biggest single-digit badass this side of the decimal point. Look for it at the ends of prices and the beginnings of sex-chat pay-per-call telephone numbers all over the country.

#4: 23 (up 19 places)

Some would call 23 a flash in the pan, but those people are pussy-ass pan-flashers! Sure, Jim Carrey's choice of 23 as a costar of his latest attempt to crowbar his career up off the canvas didn't hurt its prospects for this year's rankings, but 23 is no overnight success; it's got a long and storied history of being a number that my friends Tim and Sean were obsessed with for a little while, mainly because they kept falling in lust with UCLA Theatre School grad students who happened to be that age. Also, each disc of the Magnetic Fields' "69 Love Songs" 3-CD set has 23 songs! You can't ask for better indie cred than that, and 23 doesn't have to ask. IT TAKES.

#3: 4 (down one place)

4's cachet was diminished this year after Christopher Hitchens referred to it as "fat and gay" in Vanity Fair's popular numerology column, but it's not down for the count yet: its continuing popularity in the Midwest and ongoing usefulness to the international parallelogram manufacturing industry will secure it a place in the countdown for a long time to come.

#2: 2 (no change)

What's more dependable than 2? Not even a whole Volvo full of St. Bernards with barrels of Jack Daniels' Old Dependable 500 Proof Assmaster Corn Liqueur around their necks. 2 is there for you. It was there for me, last night, when I was wondering how many delicious steaks to eat. It'll be there for you when you're wondering how many days the weekend is. And it'll be here, on our list, again. Forever.

#1: Oprah Winfrey (first time ranked)

To all those who've been saying "Oprah's not a number!" for the past year, allow us to drag you kicking and screaming into the 21st Century. Oprah's wealth and stereotypical-Jew-like power over the media make her a mathematical force to be reckoned with. The ramifying infinity of pure numbers is warped and twisted by her mighty will. Soon all self-help books will be sold at the same price: $Oprah.99. You will measure sugar into your pastry recipes one Oprahspoon at a time. And Earth will be the Oprahth planet from the sun. Get on the bus now, motherfuckers! It pulls out of the station at precisely Oprah:30!

Remember When This Was A Thing That I Did?

2007-07-29T12:21:00.000-07:00

Centuries from now, when the first great History Of The Blog is written, a chapter will no doubt be devoted to the ancient tradition of dropping one's blog like a full airsickness bag, only to pick it up again months later and feel all awkward about one's absence.

I can only attribute my lack of posting to a deep and insidious feeling that nothing I had to say was anything that anyone would want to read. That, and a healthy dose of what I like to call "that ol' Sylvia Plath feeling", the feeling that no matter what I did I would have to do it again and oh lordy what's the point of anything, have kept me from blogging, or indeed doing much of anything else, for months now.

Simply put, nothing much has happened to me, until this past week. This past week, I had the best comedy set I've ever had, quit my job, and am currently minus one (1) girlfriend.

And wouldn't you know; it's all too damn much to blog about! I'd rather just lie down. Which I will tomorrow, with luck: I'm going in to start therapy. It's the initial "tell us the story of your life" interview process, so it'll take a while, and I hope they have one of those couches that you see in the Far Side cartoons. And maybe an airsickness bag.

See you on the other side, I guess?

The Paul Jay Half-Hour Special

2007-05-31T22:48:00.000-07:00

It's finally up.

How To Tell If You Hate Yourself (probably #1 in a series)

2007-05-11T01:42:00.000-07:00

While reading about mobsters on Wikipedia, you get depressed when you find out John Gotti became a capo when he was only a year older than you are now.

The Year Of Magical Black People, by Joan Didion

2007-04-04T10:20:00.000-07:00

The Onion had a great article recently that listed thirteen examples of a Hollywood archetype known as the Magical Black Man: black supporting characters whose only function is to move the plot along to a speedy and happy resolution for the (always) white protagonist, often with the help of magical, or at least Marquezesque-magical-realistic, powers. The examples most people are familiar with are probably Morgan Freeman as God in Bruce Almighty, or Michael Clarke Duncan's magical man-child in The Green Mile.

It seems that, when called upon to write a black character, a lot of the mostly white writers in TV and film are unable to come up with convincing backstories and inner lives, so these characters get magic powers instead. This has been going on for at least as long as there has been white liberal guilt in Hollywood; clearly the scales need to be balanced.

That's why I'm proposing a new archetype: the Scientific Black Man. He's a guy who pops up in the middle of some hilariously unlikely movie scenario -- think Jeff Goldblum hacking the alien computer in Independence Day -- and explains why whatever's going on is basically impossible. Then he does a rap about the scientific method and flies away on a jetpack.

This concept may need work, but it's way better than my last archetype ideas, the Recklessly Thrill-Seeking Jew and the Homosexual Who Hates Everyone.

(addendum: my last post, the one about buttsex, has gotten three comments: one from my girlfriend, and two from ex-girlfriends. I find this way more amusing than I should.)

Hope You Got A Big Trunk, 'Cause I'm Gonna Fuck You In The Ass

2007-04-02T23:55:00.000-07:00

Why is it that the guys who are most likely to beat up gays for fun are the same guys who get mad when their girlfriends won't do anal? Double standard, fellas. You gotta pick a side.

I don't know when it happened, but at some point during the last ten years, the ass became the secret prize at the bottom of the box of sex; the Orifice At The End Of The Rainbow. I don't see the appeal.

"The Ass: It's Like Fucking A Vagina, But When You're Done, You Might Have Poo On Your Balls!"

And it's no fun for the girl either. Porn stars act like they want ass sex because they get paid more for it. Real women have no interest. If the female genital region is Europe, and the clitoris is Luxembourg, then the ass is Alaska: way, waaaaaaaaay on the other side of the, er, globe. A thermonuclear weapon could go off in Alaska and no one in Luxembourg would feel it.

So don't beg your girl for anal like it's something she would enjoy if she "just TRIED it, baby." That's like having your girl over for pizza and saying, "I know you love pizza. I know it's cheesy and delicious and you can't get enough of it. But just tonight, just for me...could you eat the cardboard box it came in?"

Oh, the preceding post is NSFW. Sorry, shoulda mentioned that up top.

"He Only Had 35 Seconds Left 'til Retirement"

2007-03-29T07:52:00.000-07:00

Let me quiz you. You are watching a movie. The opening scene in the movie features a conversation between two soldiers on a battlefield. One of the soldiers has a picture of his girl back home which he proudly shows off, while saying something like "I'm putting her through nursing school. God, she's so beautiful." The other soldier is Mark Wahlberg. Which of the following is about to happen?

a) Picture Soldier and Wahlberg spend the next two hours of the movie reminiscing about the people they left behind, and wondering if this battle is ever gonna get going. Eventually a superior officer pulls up next to them in a Jeep and says "never mind, boys, the enemy went home. Let's get some whores."

b) Enemy fire rains down on the two soldiers. Wahlberg shields Picture Soldier with his body, sustaining deadly wounds to the torso and face. Picture Soldier vows revenge and stalks away across the misty battlefield. His exploits become legend. He lives to be ninety-eight years old.

c) Picture Soldier is cut in half by machine gun fire 30 seconds later.

Yes, the answer is c), and yes, people are apparently still putting these scenes in their movies. The only explanation I can think of is that screenwriters have to plan for the following statistical certainty: that their movie will be seen by at least a few people who have never seen a movie. Such people need a warm and gentle introduction to the world of irony and plot twists, akin to the shallow pool in which baby takes his first swim.

I like to picture the moviegoer for whom the scene described above comes as a complete surprise. I imagine him saying to his friends the next day, "dude, did you see The Shooter? That shit was DARK. Like, they spent all this time up top on this one guy, who had a girlfriend back home, and you totally thought he was gonna go home and be with her, and then BAM they just kill him! It was so sad I wept in the lap of the guy next to me in the theater. And if you think that was extreme, you won't BELIEVE what Marky Mark did! Speaking of which, did you guys know he was an actor? I always thought he sold carpets on local TV or something. Maybe I'm thinking of a different guy. Anyway, there's this part in the movie where you totally don't think he's gonna be able to shoot this other guy, and then he totally does! Really, just a movie that was full of surprises from beginning to end. Also, there was this thing at the beginning -- it was like a commercial, but in a theater -- for something called Spider Man 3? What the hell is THAT about?"

Life must look AMAZING to that guy. He probably greets every morning by yelling at the sky, "Hello, Mister Sun! Back again, huh? I was afraid I'd never see you again! Let's go have an Adventure Of Discovery!" And then he skips to the nearest park and stares gapejawed at dew on a leaf for three hours.

What If He's A Wizard

2007-03-28T02:30:00.000-07:00

I walked into Baja Fresh earlier today, and I was second in line, behind a gentleman in late middle age. He had crazy frizzy long white homeless-person hair, but for some reason had paired it with a nice denim outfit and nice sneakers. And all I could think was, "nice try, asshole. Only one guy I know of can pull off that look, and that's Scottish standup comedian Billy Connolly."

Then he finished placing his order and turned around, and it totally WAS Billy Connolly. I wonder if he can read minds, and if he can, if I upset him. He's probably happy to be in a category of one, but unhappy that I called him an asshole. Am I overthinking this?

Let He Who Is Without Fins Cast The First Stone

2007-03-22T20:23:00.000-07:00

Earlier today, my friend had a piscine emergency: her betta fish jumped out of his bowl. She thought he was dead, but put him back in the bowl anyway; a few minutes later he was swimming around again, totally fine. I told you that story to set up the following IM exchange:

Me: what's goin on
Unnamed Friend: i'm still amazed at my jesus fish
Me: ha
Me: he didn't turn his water into wine, did he? because fish can't breathe wine
Unnamed Friend: I wouldn't put it past him
Me: did he make enough of himself to feed a whole bunch of poor people?
Unnamed Friend: one joke was good enough
Me: i guess he can't walk on water, but he walked on land, which is like the fish version of walking on water
Unnamed Friend: ...
Me: i can think of more, gimme a minute
Unnamed Friend: you are banned

Go To Hell, Me!

2007-03-01T00:33:00.000-08:00

Let's talk about dreams again. Ever had an angry dream? We've all awoken from a dream in a state of terror, or horniness; this morning I woke up from a dream and I was just pissed off. I can't even really remember what caused it; something about being picked on in a bar, and then I'm awake and ready to fight someone. And I realized: this is what Dick Cheney feels like every morning.

I also had an indignant dream once. I dreamed I was in a movie theater and the dream service was terrible, and I was all wondering if I should complain to the dream manager, but then I clearly remember thinking, "fuck it, when am I ever going to be here again?" And sure enough, I've never gone back. That imaginary movie theater has lost my brand loyalty. Let that be a lesson to the rest of the small businesses that only exist in my head. Get it together, Martian Biodome Lion Taming Camp! You too, Fart School!

In closing, as P. Opus' subconscious once said to him, "Why couldn't you dream up bimbos like everybody else???"

I wish I knew.

Come To Me, Jungle Friends

2007-02-28T03:47:00.000-08:00

It probably says something profound about my relationships with humans that the two most spiritual experiences I can remember having principally involve animals.

Well, that's not exactly true. Humans are involved, but only peripherally.

Here they are; the saddest thing and the happiest thing that I have seen, ever:

First, the saddest thing. My street, in Little Armenia, maybe four years ago. A dead cat, hit by a car, in the middle of the street. Between the cat's front paws: a flower. A pretty flower that someone obviously plucked and deliberately placed there.

When I saw this, my first thought was "who does that? what a tool" but my very next thought was "wait a minute, why not? why SHOULDN'T a kitty be commemorated? kitties are people too!" and as I thought about it more and more I got sadder and sadder, because isn't that where we're all headed? And as we lay in our final sprawl, squashed on the pavement of life, wouldn't we all like someone, even a total stranger, to lay a flower between our paws?

Now, the happiest thing:

Tyson the skateboarding bulldog

No religion, no self-help book, no sexual act, and no mind-expanding drug has ever given me such a feeling of connectedness to the universe and all its creatures as this video of a dog playing in a parking lot. And it's NOT because it's cute, and it's NOT because it's such a weird thing for a dog to do. It's because the dog is FUCKING ENJOYING HIMSELF. Look at that face! He loves this. He is not doing it because he was trained to do it for snacks. He's not doing it to please his owner. Sure, maybe that was how he was persuaded to hop on a skateboard in the first place, but now he is doing it because it is fun. He is having fun in his own little doggy world and could give a shit about anything else. That's freedom. That's consciousness. That's LIFE.

That dog...is me.

If I were a resolution-makin' man, I would resolve to do everything in my life with the same reckless enthusiasm that Tyson brings up onto his board. I don't know if I have it in me, but I'm goddamn glad that there's at least one bulldog out there who does.

Last Comic Sleeping

2007-02-26T01:53:00.000-08:00

I just went to the Improv to check out the "Last Comic Standing" line and it was already 1.5 blocks long when I got there. NOOO thank you. Plus side, I met a couple comics I knew there, who were also not getting in line, and we stood and chatted with some of the people in line for a while.

I wanted to at least take a look at the line because standup comics are largely solitary, territorial creatures, and it was a rare opportunity to see a whole gargantuan shitload of them in one place. There were people in sleeping bags, on their headphones, eyes closed, not talking to anyone. There were people looking subtly around for people to hit on. And there were people jumping around, sipping coffee, trading insults with late-night weirdos in passing cars. A typical exchange:

PERSIAN GUY IN GIGANTIC S.U.V.: "What is this line for?"
COMIC: "Last Comic Standing!"
PERSIAN GUY [utterly confounded]: "What is THAT?"

[and scene]

There was also a guy from some sort of Eastern European type area. He was wearing a black tracksuit and stood about 6'4". He was thickset with a military haircut that highlighted the conical shape of his enormous head. He was like Sloth from The Goonies without the restraint or the people skills.

At one point he advised my friend Richie to avoid talking to passing cars because they could be full of gang members. When Richie made a joke about it, the guy said, "Don't be sarcastic. I'm trying to help you."

I like the balls on a guy who says "don't be sarcastic" while standing in line for "Last Comic Standing."

But mock as we might, we still tried not to be sarcastic so loud, because the guy had 50 pounds on us and was scary and Belorussian and stuff. And he kept throwing back smart remarks at the cars that pulled up to look at us, and he was so into on-the-spot humor, and so not good at it, that I realized what a torture it would be if someone was trying to get you to play short-form improv games, and they sucked at it, and you were too terrified for your life to tell them no. We were very glad Vladimir didn't ask us to give him an occupation and the name of a city, is all I'm saying.

All in all, an hour and a half well spent. It was nice to see the wackos, but it was nicer to see my comedy friends. I'll be back next year, early in the day, probably for only like 15 minutes. Look for me. I'll be standing with my car keys, looking at my watch, but I will damn well be there.

Fixing A Hole (In My Flesh)

2007-01-09T16:28:00.000-08:00

I'm breaking in some new shoes. I wore them for about two hours yesterday, walked around the Sunset Strip a good deal while waiting for a comedy show to start, and developed a wicked blister just below the Achilles tendon on both feet. My girlfriend had lots of blisters to deal with just recently, because she's training for a marathon, and I decided to deal with mine the way she dealt with hers: by sterilizing a needle, poking a tiny hole in the blister, draining it, and slapping a bandage over it. What follows is my impression of me going about this task.

"All riiiight, one blister popped by itself! I'll just put a bandage over that one. This is so easy!

"Now, for a needle. Do I have needles? No, I do not. But I do have a box of pushpins and twist-ties and random fasteners. Maybe there's something needley in there that I can use!

"Here we go, a safety pin! I'm so resourceful.

"But how am I going to sterilize the safety pin? I don't have any rubbing alcohol or anything. But I DO have a Bic lighter. Maybe if I just hold the tip of the pin over the flame...?

"....

"It's probably pretty hot by now, right? Maybe just a bit longer...

"....

"Okay, I'm starting to feel the warmth. I think it's ready. I'll just slide it ever so gently into the blister and WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAUUUUUUUUUUUUUUGHHHHH MY GOD.

"Is that SMOKE?

"What is that smell? Oh, right, that would be the smell of BURNED ME.

"Well, at least I neatly cauterized the hole I just made in my foot. I'll just put a bandage on it and never speak of it again. Unless I run out of things to write about in my blog."

As an antidote to the horror and revulsion and whatnot, please enjoy this addendum: I went shopping for some gel insoles for the new shoes, and I almost bought a set of insoles that were totally the wrong size, simply because the package said "Outrageous Cushioning!" I like the idea of someone being cushioned to the point of outrage. "I will not stand for this amount of pure comfort! GOOD DAY TO YOU SIR!!!"

Author, Author

2006-12-28T07:59:00.000-08:00

A comedian pal of mine has a joke about how he has bad dreams, but when he says "bad", he means like a bad movie: incompetent production, unrealistic characters, poor acting and dialogue. Thing is, I don't think he's really kidding; the guy in question is also an actor, and I bet any actor with a brain in his head has had dreams of being trapped in an entire universe of that particular entertainmenty sort of badness. It must be a terrible feeling to wish the Mystery Science Theater guys would unload some snark in the general direction of your own unconscious.

I've never had a dream like that, and I also seldom have bad dreams in the traditional sense. The last dream I had that really unnerved me was at least five years ago and I barely remember it; I think the pod from 2001: A Space Odyssey and an old splintery boat dock on an endless lake were involved somehow. I'm just not the kind of guy who does that standard cold-sweat wakeup take. I have to deal with far more subtle agony. When my dreams take on the task of assaulting my mind, they do it in one of two ways.

Bad Dream Type One: The Wondrous Too-Good-To-Be-True

Often I will dream about something awesome. Perhaps I am rolling around in bed with a naked 6-foot supermodel -- naked, that is, except for a pair of buttery tan thigh-high leather boots. Or I find a duffel bag full of hundreds in my shower. Or maybe Ralph, of Ralph's Supermarket fame, calls me on my cellphone and informs me that I have won free groceries for life because I won a contest to see who could masturbate to the most internet porn in a six-hour period. That sort of thing.

Nothing is intrinsically "bad" about these dreams, while I'm having them. The badness descends when I wake up and discover that I am sleeping alone in a studio apartment in Little Armenia and my four different credit card payments were due seven weeks ago and also I am on fire. It's the perfect inverse of the relieved awakening from a horrible dream of monsters and doom, and I find it far more painful. "Thought everything was going to work out, didn't you? PSYCHE!!!" my subconscious seems to say, before laughing maniacally and submerging back into the depths of my brain to continue stabbing newborn lambs with a knitting needle or whatever the hell it does down there all day.

Bad Dream Type Two: The Terrible Trivium

When my mind gets tired of tormenting itself with dreams of success it thinks it will never achieve, it will break up the monotony with a little monotony. Like everyone else, I have dreams about my job; unlike everyone else, I have dreams where I go to my job, work a full day, go home, and nothing remarkable happens the entire time. I will go out drinking, go home to sleep, and have a dream about being hungover and standing in my kitchen -- not some crazy dream-kitchen with pudding for walls and a faucet that squirts ham instead of hot, my actual dull-ass kitchen -- drinking glasses of water and rubbing my forehead and trying to remember
if I did anything I shouldn't. And then I will wake up from that dream, go to my kitchen, and do exactly the same goddamn thing. It's like my subconscious decided that if a night comes along when it isn't in the mood to terrify or mock me, then the least it can do is waste my time.

I suppose I should be impressed with my mind's ability to perfectly replicate situations from my daily life in stultifyingly eidetic detail, but really I'm just irritated. Couldn't the mental energy required to construct a simulacrum of my gray Honda Civic and its various contents be better spent by, I dunno, summoning Jack LaLanne to explain his workout techniques and motivate me to get some good solid aerobic exercise upon waking? Couldn't I hop on the back of a giant manta ray and take a trip to Times Square or the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, instead of driving for 45 minutes on the 101 to my small brown office? Science may never have the answer.

All in all, a dream that seems to be written and directed by Edward D. Wood, Jr. would be a welcome and luxurious change. Bring on the big rubber monsters and transparent excuses for crossdressing. I'm ready.

The Haul

2006-12-26T21:24:00.000-08:00

Santa had a mixed bag slung on his back this year. Let's talk about it.

All my parents gave me for Christmas was money. I have no problem with this at all. Getting money as a gift is like getting a gift certificate that is good anywhere, for anything, has no expiration date, and can even help pay off your credit cards. Try that with a Borders gift card. You will be laughed at and your home will be seized.

That was the good half of the presents. The bad half? Well, it was pretty much my fault. My mom asked me, on her brother's family's behalf, what I wanted for Christmas. I started off with the usual, "books, music, movies, whatever." And then I made my dire mistake: I got jokey. "And gift certificates are good. Maybe some gift certificates for food. Maybe just some food. Groceries. Bags of groceries. Has Santa got any of those? Can he stop at the Safeway for me, pick up some vegetables?"

I said this kind of seriously, kind of as a joke, since me and my mom both knew I was unemployed and going rapidly broke and hungry. I did not count on these remarks being taken more seriously than any Christmas gift request I had ever made in my entire life.

Here is the final Christmas gift tally from my aunt, uncle and cousin:

Books:
none

Music:
none

Movies:
none

Food:
One (1) 12-pack of instant macaroni and cheese packets
Two (2) boxes of Honey Nut Cheerios
One (1) "Variety Pack" (24 Chicken, 24 Beef) of Top Ramen
Gift certificate for one pound (16 ounces) of See's Candy

And the worst part was, they really meant it. Have you ever received a present which you were sure was a gag gift, and been about to appreciate it as such, and suddenly realized that it is not a gag gift and you had better be genuinely thankful for it before you hurt someone's feelings? It's a bit like figuring out that the woman across from you at a bar is actually a transvestite, opening your mouth to compliment her on her wig, and then she suddenly loosens her scarf to reveal a completely AWOL Adam's apple.

Nothing is more discomfiting to the traffickers in irony than something that is exactly what it appears to be.

I appear to be thoroughly set for groceries for at least a week.

That Went About As Well As Could Be Expected, Considering The Circumstances

2006-12-26T00:58:00.000-08:00

Two days after the previous post, I got fired from my job for writing dirty jokes at work. I immediately went into mourning for this job that I never liked, stopped going out to shows, started surfing the net all the time and pounded depressants into my system for seven straight weeks. All that time, I was still taking my antidepressant, and the fact that I have yet to throw myself under a bus should testify to its effectiveness.

In honor of my return to blogging, please enjoy the Bit That Got Me Shitcanned:

I looked up the side effects of my medication on Wikipedia, and most of the little warning bullet-points were several complete sentences long, like, "may cause nausea after eating but before drinking and if taken before 10 am on a Tuesday, check your Poor Richard's Almanac for the correct time of day to take your dose and avoid projectile vomiting", that kinda thing. The descriptions were very detailed, except for one, which I reproduce here in its entirety:

"Abnormal ejaculation."

End of description. They tell you that and then they leave you twisting in the windy darkness of uncertainty.

Obviously more research needs to be done, and so it's probably a good thing that I've been keeping a log of my ejaculations. Please enjoy the following choice excerpts.

Entry 1: Ejaculated earlier this morning, and am still ejaculating. Had to wear a condom to work and switched it out for a fresh one several times under cover of bathroom breaks.

Entry 4: Was awoken by my own nocturnal emission, which made a loud sharp report like the sound of a Chinese firecracker. I wasn't circumcised, but apparently I am now.

Entry 9: Girlfriend reported a taste and smoothness consistent with Newcastle Brown Ale.

Entry 17: Amount and appearance of semen was normal, at least as far as I could determine in the 15 seconds before it melted a hole through my floor and shorted out the electricity in my apartment.

Entry 21: Sperm emerged cautiously, one at a time, over a period of several hours. I trapped them between a postcard and a drinking glass and released them outside before the cat could start playing with them.

Entry 33: Ejaculated a single 200-foot strand of rubbery stuff with the tensile strength of bridge cable; spent remainder of evening swinging through the city fighting crime.

Entry 48: Ejaculation took the form of a beam of light that projected an image of Ruth Buzzi on the clouds over Silver Lake. Had to close the window and act like I wasn't home when Ms. Buzzi showed up on the street outside, loudly demanding to know who had summoned her.

And soon after that last entry, I started taking the medication. I'll let you guys know if anything ABNORMAL happens! BOI-YOI-YOI-YOINNNNNGGGG! fart.

Good to be back. Merry December Twenty-Sixth to all and to all a good night.

I'm A Driver, I'm A Winner

2006-10-24T10:00:00.000-07:00

I've been on antidepressants for a week. I've been depressed since elementary school. Let's just say the drugs have some catching up to do.

I wonder what school would have been like with the finest products of modern psychopharmacology running through my system. Would I get picked sooner for dodgeball? Would I have lost my virginity any earlier? Would I have, for the love of God, picked a major?

Probably not, but then, no one is ever told what would have happened.

For most of my life, I have lacked motivation, been tired all the time, and expertly formulated excuses for not trying the things that I was sure I would just fail at anyway. I really hope that these are the results of a correctable chemical imbalance. I guess we're going to find out.

The Filth And The More Filth

2006-10-04T08:17:00.000-07:00

*please sing to the tune of the opening line of "Oh What A Beautiful Morning*

"Theeeeeere's a dim greyish stain on my carseeeeeeat..."

I gots mildew. In my car.

And here's the funny part: from washing it!

You would imagine that washing a car would make it cleaner. You would imagine all sorts of things, you silly billy! Talking chocolate dinosaurs, flying Coke machines, and cleaning procedures that actually KILL smelly fungus instead of creating its IDEAL LIVING CONDITIONS.

It's partly my fault; I got my car interior shampooed and didn't know how to dry it out. I also didn't know that you should take off the plastic sheets they put over your seat once you're out of the car. Turns out moisture from the still-damp seat condenses on those sheets and drips right back onto your upholstery and soon enough you have what smells like a colony of tiny filthy gym socks living in the thing that you have to sit on for your two daily hours of commuting. After an hour of driving, my butt smells like Shaq put his foot in it and never took it out.

I'm thinking I'll have to get it shampooed again, but maybe I'm going about this the wrong way. Maybe I need to rub the seat down with Gorgonzola cheese and half-rotted garlic, with a light dusting of poop, and the mildew will get confused and leave.

It wouldn't be the first time this strategy has worked; I've managed to keep cavities at bay for the last eight years via a cunning strategy of guzzling sodas and chocolate and never going to the dentist, and my chronic McDonalds habit has helped me stay slim and clear-skinned. What am I, the Mayor of Not Making Sense Town? Answer: yes. Yes I am. Read the sash: it says "CAPTAIN FUCKLES". Check out my giant ribbon-cutting scissors: they're made of spaghetti.

Seriously, what's the best way to dry out a freshly-shampooed car? I'm counting on you, my zero readers, to help rescue me from my swamp on wheels.

Before I Forget

2006-10-03T20:17:00.000-07:00

Last night I came up with my greatest invention and y'all better not steal it.

You ready?

The Panshake.

It's a pancake, in milkshake form. With syrup and maybe some butter. And batter and ice cream. Mixed together somehow, I haven't worked out the details.

Tell me that isn't the greatest invention ever. I am like the Thomas Edison of breakfast desserts. I call them "bresserts".

Recipes and neologisms. From my brain to your unbelieving joy-tearful eyes.

Hard-Hitting

2006-10-03T08:35:00.000-07:00

Last night I saw a comedian start a joke with the following question:

"Anyway, marine biology: what's up with that?"

I have no idea where he went with this. I was laughing so loudly at this introductory query that a firetruck with sirens blaring could have driven through my head and I wouldn't have heard it. I have no idea if he was intentionally parodying the rhythms of bad observational standup comedy, or if he had a legitimate beef with marine biology that he needed to discuss with us.

I watch a lot of bad comedy, and usually I just sit with my head in my hands while some guy talks about which rapper his dick would sound like if it could talk, trying to think happy thoughts (like toys at Christmas! sleighbells! snow!) and keep my suicidal/homicidal urges in check. I usually don't give big fake sarcastic laughs to bad comedy, because I don't want anyone else to do that to me. If I feel like being a dick, I usually exchange whispered smartaleckisms with my friends in the back of the room and then we laugh and highfive each other and maybe open-mouth kiss a little bit.

Note the repeated use of the word "usually" in the preceding paragraph. "Usually" did not apply last night. "Usually" took a holiday.

Okay, I didn't laugh sarcastically at Mister I Hate Marine Biology. I laughed genuinely, because sometimes bad comedy pushes you to that point. You suddenly can't believe how incompetent this person is, and this disbelief, this astoundment, this amaze-itude, expresses itself through laughter. It is not the laughter of "this is funny"; it is the laughter of "this is incredible". The laughter of one's first viewing of Battlefield Earth. The laughter of watching as a sea serpent rears up out of your swimming pool and devours your dog.

The problem with this laughter is that, for the comedian onstage, it can be very difficult to distinguish from the desirable sort of laughter. I'll bet a lot of awful, awful comedians have felt that they received encouragement and support from an audience that was actually sending wave after wave of astonished, giddy horror.

I think I'm going to start bringing a large picket sign to comedy shows, and hold it up to clarify the emotions behind any easily misinterpretable laughter. I'm not sure what it would say; "THIS IS NOT WHAT YOU'RE GOING FOR, TRUST ME", maybe, or just "YOU ARE HORRIBLE".

Come to think of it, a sign saying either of those things would be useful in all sorts of situations. Maybe I could bring it to church.

Bait And Switch (To A Different Bait)

2006-09-13T11:27:00.000-07:00

I'm deep in debt right now. I have terrible problems with money and cannot resist spending it even when I don't have it. When I get money, I tend to celebrate by spending it. I've managed to avoid collection agencies and make payments vaguely on time for about a year and a half, but my house of cards (credit cards!) is about to tumble down. Every time I open my mailbox, I wince in anticipation of a collection notice of some kind, and last week it looked like I'd finally received one.

It was one of those envelopes that's not an envelope, but a sort of piece of mail-origami that you open by ripping down the sides and then unfolding. It was hashed with staticky ink-marks on the outside so that it was impossible to see through to what was written inside. The return address just said "FINANCIAL DEPARTMENT" and it had "IMPORTANT: FINAL NOTICE" written in big angry letters right in the middle of the address side.

I open it up, and it's an offer to apply for a preapproved Nissan car loan of up to $30,000.

They disguised an invitation to more debt as a collection notice.

This is troubling to me.

It's like if I was addicted to underage male prostitutes, and I went out to get myself some junior high basketball team tail every night of the damn week, and I couldn't stop, and I was terrified my girlfriend would find out, and I was getting more and more anxious, and one day there's a knock at my door and it's a vice cop, and he takes me downtown, sits me in a chair in an interrogation room, aims a floodlamp in my face, and says "All right, you sick son of a bitch. I'll let you fuck my son in the ass for three dollars."

Don't Look Down

2006-08-31T08:39:00.000-07:00

This week, I made the most dangerous discovery that a comedian with a both-sides-of-the-family history of alcoholism can possibly make:

Bombing doesn't hurt when you're drunk.

I've done two drunken sets already this week, and I didn't do so well on the second one, but I didn't really care. Maybe I just didn't hear the silence because I was yelling so loud, but I think it's more likely that the three beers in my system acted as a perfect local anaesthetic to my self-esteem. Like a drunk who plows his car into a school bus, killing a bunch of third-graders but surviving to drunk it up another day because his limp Jello-shot-filled alkie-body did a ragdoll flop over the steering column of his PT Cruiser instead of stiffening with nervousness and rigidly impacting with some big sharp car part, I boinged harmlessly off the pointy surface of my own incompetence and landed on a comfy driver's-side airbag in my mind, a bag that had inflated itself with Who-Gives-A-Shit gas almost as soon as I stepped onstage.

I suddenly understood, as if it were written across my blurred vision in letters of dim blue fire, the reason why so many comics become hopeless alcoholics.

I am not a big drinker, but I've hit the bottle my fair share of times, for a few different reasons: to assuage nervousness in unfamiliar social situations, to relax after a long day, to celebrate a mighty fuck, to just cut loose and get silly and loud with good friends. Before this week, I could remember maybe two times in my life that I drank specifically in order to dull some psychic pain. I found relief from worry more frequently in the chambers of the bong than in the fruits of the vine; my years of marijuana abuse certainly didn't help my depression, but they were probably a good alternative to years of barfing in the office after a Sunday night booze-up, or a series of cars drunkenly lodged in hedges, or homelessness.

Now I have gotten my first big taste of what may have been mankind's very first reason for drinking: sweet analgesia. And it scares me. This is how people become addicts. "Man, pain sucks. I wish there was some kind of physical switch I could flip that would just turn it off. Wait, you say that switch exists? At the bottom of this fourth bottle of Budweiser, you also say? Well, I'd like to get to that switch, but there's all this beer in the way. What the heck am I supposed to do about that? Wait. Hold on. I'm getting a BRILLIANT idea."

The mystic wrappings of my DNA could very easily spin me into a full-on raging alcoholic inside of six months...if I had a good reason to let it. And now I have found, if not my reason, then definitely the reason most people find. Drinking and then doing my set on Tuesday night was like walking out onto a rope bridge over the Grand Canyon and realizing how easy it would be to simply jump the fuck off. You will feel like you're flying, and the wind will cool your face, and the blue of the sky and the orange of the rock will flash past you like a neon sign made out of the whole world, and nothing will touch you or hold you back, and you'll be too breathless to laugh, but you won't care. Until you hit the ground.

We all gotta get to the bottom of the canyon sometime, and some will say that it might as well be quick. Myself, I think I'd rather climb down slowly and carefully...and stop every once in a while for a beer.

Vulcan Sinus Pinch

2006-08-29T09:00:00.000-07:00

I'm getting over a cold, and I'm at the stage of that process where stuff is leaking out of my head and I have to do something about it. In that vein, I blew my nose very hard this morning, and my sinuses got so clogged up so suddenly that they pinched a nerve somewhere in my face, and for about twenty minutes, all my teeth on the upper left side of my jaw went NUMB.

Um, yikes.

The pressure, or bubble, or whatever it was, finally released itself; I know this because a noise that sounded like Pooh Bear's stomach gurgling came from INSIDE MY FACE, and after that my teeth started to feel normal again.

The human body -- specifically, my human body -- terrifies me sometimes.

Fly Away Home, Girl-Jeans

2006-08-27T23:28:00.000-07:00

It's half past eleven. Outside my bedroom window, the hipsters are wending their way home from the Sunset Junction Festival, squinting quizzically through their waxed black bangs as they try to remember whether this brown 1985 Volvo (with the "You laugh because I'm different, I laugh because you're all the same" bumper sticker) is the one they arrived in.

I am not necessarily against the hipsters, even considering their weird Cubist haircuts and truly preposterous jeans. I simply walk a different path. If my life has a fashion motto, it is this: "If you are never in fashion, you can never fall out of fashion."

I don't read magazines to see what people are wearing, or will be wearing, or aren't wearing anymore. When I get a haircut, which I incidentally haven't done in almost a year, I do not point to a photo of Elliott Smith that I printed off someone's LiveJournal page and say "like that, but with green highlights." I read the music reviews on Pitchfork Media with my eyes slitted halfway shut, like a man peeking into the fission chamber of a nuclear reactor to see if he lost his keys in there, and if I listen to a band that I've never heard of, and they sound like garbage, I say to myself, "well, that's why I've never heard of them," and expend no further effort attempting to understand the appeal.

I am getting old.

The hipsters are young.

This is confusing to me.

The great comedy/fantasy author Terry Pratchett once wrote, "Inside every old person is a young person wondering what happened." It's as true for those of us pushing 30 as it is for those of us pushing 60. Inside my head is a college junior who still wears a plaid flannel shirt without a trace of irony, has had less than ten blowjobs in his entire life, and thinks the Magnetic Fields' 69 Love Songs is one of the very best albums to come out in the past two months. Outside my head is about twenty pounds of fat that didn't use to be there, plus a grumpily puzzled expression that pops up on my face like the "No Sale" sign on an antique cash register whenever I hear the words "Avenged Sevenfold".

Why don't I understand these people? I'm THEIR AGE! I work a dead-end job, and I obsess over the pop-culture minutia of my childhood, and I have to get my parents to bail me out of crushing debt that I incur through a total lack of understanding of money and how people get it and how people make it make more of itself, and I don't FEEL like a grownup. I don't FEEL almost-30.

Therefore?

Therefore I'm allowed to procrastinate, and break promises to myself, and slouch along through life with no direction or focus. I'm allowed to not know what the hell I'm doing. And so I don't.

Or I didn't. This is changing. This is scary.

There are few things more terrifying than the sudden realization of just how much of your life you have wasted. And because it's so terrifying, you put it off longer and longer, which means it'll only be more terrifying when you finally turn and look down the empty years and say to yourself, "this better help me out somewhere down the line. This better have made me into a person, better have made me me. Because otherwise the sum total of my life has been to turn me into a combination of all the main characters in The Wizard of Oz: a big hairy hollow shell with no brain, no heart, no courage, no home, and so insubstantial that a carelessly flung bucket of water might well melt me away to nothing."

I've turned, like Orpheus, to look behind me, but I'm not looking for my love. I'm looking for myself. And I sure hope the act of looking doesn't make me disappear.

Thank You For Flying "Fuck It"

2006-08-21T09:06:00.000-07:00

I would like you to please consider two things:

1) I have shoulder-length brown hair and a full beard which is also brown.

2) On Friday afternoon, I had to get on a plane.

The experience went smoothly, but "smooth" is not the same thing as "not remotely fucking annoying".

I'm a laid-back dude who can wait in lines with the best of them, but even I am getting sick of airport security and its headlong screaming descent into total paranoia. In about five years, none of us will be allowed to board a commercial aircraft unless we are sedated and nude. "No liquids" will lead to "no solid foods" which will lead to "no carryon baggage of any kind" which will lead to "no items of any kind, including clothing" which will lead to "bend over so we can fit this electron microscope into your pooper, and no, this will not entitle you to any additional Frequent Flyer Miles."

None of the security measures currently in place at our nation's airports actually make things safe. They make people feel safe, and then only for a given value of "safe", and that value is "whatever it takes to make a born-again Idaho grandmother sleep soundly in the certain knowledge that no non-white people have gone unharassed in their efforts to get to fucking Disneyland."

Airport security is designed to make people feel like every possible source of death and destruction has been totally ruled out; it is, in short, designed for people who have a lot to live for.

What about the rest of us?

If I'm clinically depressed and on a good day don't particularly care whether I live or die, I think I should be entitled to a much faster checkin time.

And when I say "faster", I'm talkin' like 30 seconds. "Hi, I'm Paul, is that my plane? Good, here I go. What? Bags? I dunno. They're back in the terminal somewhere, unattended. Just look for the black leather golf bag with the five-foot bong sticking out of it."

Fantasies like this are currently unfulfillable on America's major carriers. That's why I'm starting my own airline for people who just don't care anymore: Fuck It, Let's Just Go Flyways.

Every passenger on a Fuck It flight will sign a waiver that states "I, (name of depressive screwup), hereby certify my willingness to give up a little safety for a lot of freedom. I also hereby agree that, should a terrorist attack blast me into blood pudding, I will be fucking cool about it."

Fuck It passengers and crew will accept danger, but not inflict it upon the unwilling; every flight will take off from, fly over, and land in an unpopulated rural area, so that a Fuck It crash will not endanger anyone except the people on the plane.

In order to ensure that terrorists do not take over a Fuck It flight and fly it into a populated area, every Fuck It flight attendant will also be a fully trained samurai assassin, armed with katana and tonto and encouraged to commit suicide in the event of a sudden loss of cabin honor. Passengers will asked to do their part as well. You know that presentation at the beginning of most flights where they tell you to wear your seatbelt in case the plane flies into a goddamn mountain? On Fuck It, that presentation is replaced with a ten-minute lesson in Lethal Blowgun Technique. Passengers are also encouraged to bring weapons of their own. Guns, swords, bats, flamethrowers; hell, if you and another passenger are disputing the use of the armrest and decide to settle your differences with a knife fight, a flight attendant will gladly lash your left wrists together and referee. Just be ready to drop your differences if a terrorist rushes the cockpit.

And even if the cockpit is attacked, every pilot will be a drug-addicted, manic-depressive Tourette's syndrome sufferer. With a Taser in every pocket.

And if the worst happens, if a bomb goes off, or we find out al-Qaeda has filled one of the fuel tanks with soft-serve ice cream, and the plane's going down, and we're all going to die, then up on the ceiling, under the air vents, next to the SMOKING PERMITTED light, and the SEATBELTS: WHATEVER light, a third light will come on in flashing red:

PARTY TIME.

Disco lighting will flash from every corner of the plane. All flight attendants will strip to a thong and begin lapdancing on each other and any interested passengers. Led Zeppelin's "Immigrant Song" will blast from every speaker in the PA. Panels in the ceiling will snap open, and instead of oxygen masks, a cascade of PCP-and-Ecstasy gelcaps will rain down into the passengers' upturned faces. And we will all die as God intended: plowing into the ground at 400 miles an hour, screaming along to Zep, furiously masturbating, and jacked to the eyeballs on sherm.

And the price of a ticket? Ass, Gas or Grass.

Flernt...

2006-08-17T09:38:00.000-07:00

...is the way I have decided to spell the noise my farts make.

Something is grievously wrong with my butt this morning. Ever since I arrived at work, I have been "trumpeting from the rear entrance", as my dear old grandmother never used to say. I know where the death gas is coming from -- most of a pitcher of Pyramid, plus a guacamole bacon cheeseburger with onion rings, all courtesy of Barney's Beanery last night -- but I don't know why it's waited until now to emerge. Couldn't this have happened when I was in bed, asleep? Sure, it's not "nice" to spend the wee hours secretly filling my girlfriend's bedroom with a thin green mist, but it beats bringing the problem to work and having my coworkers make fun of me.

I work as a receptionist, in an extremely poorly-ventilated foyer between the outside world and the inner office. EVERYONE who comes to work has to walk through my cloud of funkecules. Nobody enjoys it, especially not me. Maybe I should have some kind of early warning system. A little sign that says "Thank You For Not Mocking My Poots". Or maybe something nonverbal, like whenever I know it's going to be a bad morning, I come to work in a small tasteful gas mask, like the one the Joker gives Vicki Vale in Batman before he takes over the Gotham City Art Museum to the pulsing beats of Prince.

It's so bad in here this morning that I actually looked up "fart" on Wikipedia to try and take my mind off it. Scandinavian translations include fjert and fjart, which are so awesome I just might start using them. The more the word sounds like the thing, the better.

I had a girlfriend once who wanted me to hold in my farts and my burps at all times. Great girl, but it beats me why I didn't laugh in her face and immediately break up with her the second she told me that. According to the Wikipedia article, you CAN hold it in, and the gas will eventually be reabsorbed into your bloodstream, shipped to the lungs, and exhaled. Great. So instead of releasing a few concentrated bursts of horror and then being fine for the rest of the day, I can spew diluted essence de farte with every breath. What girlfriend wouldn't enjoy that? To say nothing of her parents.

My dad farts like a Mexican hippo. It's legendary in our family. My brother and I always used to make fun of him, and he laughed along, but assured us that it was probably genetic and our turn would come one day. Stupid fate. And people wonder why I have "daddy issues".

"I didn't ask to be born! Or to smell like this!"

Why Always The Yelling?

2006-08-16T10:27:00.000-07:00

I went to a very crowded, very fun comedy show last night. I had pretty much written off this particular show, since it had been sold out for weeks and I knew I could see just about any of the comics on the bill at other venues for way less money. But then a friend of mine suddenly had an extra ticket and I was in; he didn't even ask me to buy the ticket off him.

Payment for this karmic debt was extracted from me in the following manner: there was a heckler at the show.

In the two-ish years I've been going to see live comedy in L.A., I have not yet once encountered a heckler who actually formed sentences and expressed thoughts. I understand such people are out there somewhere, wandering invisibly through the night like Bigfoots with trucker hats. I have never seen one. I have only seen -- or, rather, heard -- the hecklers who are just really drunk dudes who love yellin' stuff.

Last night, the heckler started out by yelling "YOU'RE DYING!" at Andy Kindler every couple of minutes. He moved on to yelling "KABOOM!" at no one in particular, and momentarily changed tacks with "YOU'RE KILLING!".

Then Patton Oswalt told a story about watching Jerry Maguire with his brother, which prompted the heckler to yell the last thing I remember him yelling before he left, mercifully, to go puke or whatever: "SHOW ME THE MONEY!"

He yelled "SHOW ME THE MONEY!" several times during Oswalt's story, and then kept yelling it for several minutes more, after the story was over and no one onstage was talking about Jerry Maguire anymore and we had all moved on with our lives. I think this might have been the point when the heckler's friends, who were shushing him louder than anyone else in the place, finally escorted him outside, put him in a cab, and instructed the driver to take him up behind the Hollywood sign and shoot him in the fucking head. I made up that last part because I like to dream about happiness.

Here are some personal cultural touchstones of mine that relate to this experience:

In the television program Mystery Science Theatre 3000, a human host and his robot buddies watch some of the worst movies ever made (and some that really aren't that bad, like I Was A Teenage Werewolf) and make humorous comments about the action onscreen, relentlessly out-entertaining the incompetent entertainment that they are being forced to consume. These humorous comments sound off-the-cuff and in-the-moment, but are in fact written by an entire roomful of people who watch the crappy movie in question at least 15 times in a row in order to wring maximum humor from every gag and record the timecode when every gag should be uttered. The resulting script is then given to the host and the guys who work the robots, who read directly from it during the taping to make sure they don't mess anything up.

This show was hilarious and groundbreaking, and it has ruined the art of live performance and the joy of moviegoing for countless people. It will take at least a generation, maybe more, to undo the damage. I have good friends, people I love and respect, who I simply REFUSE to see movies with, because years of watching MST3K have conditioned them to believe that seeing a movie in the theater is not a complete experience unless they yell out some kind of contribution. What they don't understand is that they are not as funny as the roomful of professional comedy writers who put their heart and soul into every episode of MST, and they never will be.

In Neal Stephenson's novel The Diamond Age, which takes place about a hundred years from now, there is a character named Miranda who works at a theater that has been mostly converted into cubicle-sized motion-capture stages. Usually, Miranda and the other "ractors" work on these stages, creating live performances that are beamed around the world into networked interactive games. Once in a while, though, the ractors put on makeup and costumes and turn on the footlights and memorize lines and actually perform a play in the theater, an artistic process that is nearly extinct in the interactive future. And one of the problems they have to watch out for when they put on a play is audience members jumping up onstage and attempting to become part of the action.

This is our future. The internet has transformed us all from spectators into performers, at least in our own minds. The day is coming when we will not be physically able to restrain ourselves from taking a role in a story instead of merely experiencing it, because no other example or way of thinking will be available to us.

I, as a future old person, am going to miss the lifestyle of the pure spectator. Even though I perform comedy myself, it is a pleasure to occasionally turn off my performing brain and turn on the watch-and-enjoy brain. People who heckle comedians, and people who make irritating Star Trek references out loud in crowded movie theaters, and hypothetical VR-addicted futurepeople who insist on jumping onstage and helping Hamlet kill Laertes, are missing the most wonderful thing about spectating: someone is trying like hell to entertain you, and you don't have to do ANYTHING. All that is asked of you is to please...PLEASE...shut the fuck up.

A Miserable Failure

2006-08-14T09:53:00.000-07:00

Okay, so the great Dan-Mocking of 2006 was a non-starter. I tried to get some of my Interfriends to help me with it, and one of them pointed out the problematic fact that Dan was already making fun of the way he looked, and it seemed pointless to heap more derision on top of him when he was so ably making his own pile. If I can think of anything Dan actually loves or cares about, I'll get my friends to make fun of that.

Maybe I was just jealous. Between working all day, doing comedy all night, and sleeping all weekend, I haven't had a suntan of my own in about a year. I don't have fond memories attached to suntans, since the best one I ever had came about as the result of the worst sunburn I ever had. I was an extra on a commercial in Malibu and had to dance around in my swimsuit all day. I neglected to apply sunscreen and turned lobster-apple-firetruck from hairline to knees. That pain ranks with "chipping a tooth on a gymnasium floor" and "having liquid nitrogen applied to a plantar's wart" as some of the most severe suffering I have ever experienced, and yes I am aware that qualifies me as a lucky son of a bitch. It still fucking hurt.

After four days of wishing I had a water-filled isolation tank to sleep in, like Daredevil, the pain finally began to dull and the dead skin started peeling away, like Darkman, but revealing, instead of a ravaged acid-scarred skull, a deep brown even tan. It was magnificent. I looked like I'd spent my life on the North Shore, communing with sea turtles and kicking haoles in the nuts when they trespassed on my Special Beach. No one had to know that the closest I'd ever gotten to a surfboard was the lavaboarding level in Conker's Bad Fur Day.

So, yes, Dan Bialek, I am jealous of you and your honestly-obtained George Hamiltan. I too would like some easily-displayable physical evidence of a life occasionally spent away from a computer monitor, a life of sun and air and activity and possibly dancing on towels with Gidget. I don't know. Maybe I could get a tattoo of a moray eel on my neck. Then the ladies would RECOGNIZE.

Dan-noyance

2006-08-10T09:35:00.000-07:00

Let's all annoy my friend!

I recently ran into Dan Bialek at the Comedy Store after not seeing him for a couple of weeks, and he had developed a suntan that he himself says makes him look like "a sweaty, skeevy, Mystic-tanned, double-chinned, balding JV girls’ volleyball coach."

When I first saw this tan, I accused him, if I remember correctly, of rubbing powdered Lindsay Lohan onto himself. I also threatened to refer to him as "Mystic Dan" Bialek.

If you're as bored as I am, why not head to his comments section and make some smart remarks of your own? He needs the attention.

Face Faucet

2006-08-09T08:05:00.000-07:00

It's late summer in Los Angeles, and if you know me, you know that means it's time for the Patented Paul Jay Four-Month Nosebleed.

I love the desert and I hate humidity, but JESUS it would be nice if two tiny cumulus clouds could just live inside my nostrils between July and October. The dryness of the Santa Ana air turns my mucus membranes into scratchy, bleeding Fritos. I get so many nosebleeds this time of year that a vampire could drain me without breaking my skin; he could stick two straws in my nose and fill 'er up.

Still reading? Good for you.

I'm not bitter about this, just annoyed. Let's talk about all the things that could be wrong with my nose, but aren't:

- Hole burned between nostrils through constant snorting of illegal drug substances

- Broken during a touch football game that got "a little serious"

- Dripping snot as a result of a chronic bacterial infection that I exacerbate by smoking pot all the time and taking horrible care of myself (hey, this is a list of things that currently are not wrong with my nose, not a list of things that have never been wrong with my nose)

- Ripped off by an eagle

- Pierced, badly

- Pierced, skillfully, but then the piercing was ripped out by an eagle

- Bleeding, but the blood is, like, radioactive and melts through stuff

- Upside down

- Removable

- Hideous rather than Roman and shapely

I think it's clear that I have dodged a number of nose-bullets. I think I am going to count my blessings. I am not, however, going to count the number of times I blow a scab out of my nose for the next few months, because that would be nasty. Also I would lose count fairly quickly.

Hope you're all enjoying your breakfast.

The Stink of Love

2006-08-01T11:05:00.000-07:00

Here’s a fun thing to do at the Gilroy Garlic Festival:

Stop dead in a crowded area and say, loudly, “Wow, it really smells like garlic here! Does anyone else smell that? I’m not crazy, right? I mean, it’s coming from EVERYWHERE.”

Continue until someone tackles and immobilizes you.

When I pulled the above nonsense in the middle of the Festival this Friday last, I didn't go on quite long enough to get stiff-armed by a heat-maddened garlic farmer, but I did manage to make my girlfriend walk on ahead a couple of steps and act like she didn't know who I was.

I count it as our first fight.

Seriously, our first. We've been together for a year and the worst thing that's happened is I found out she really, really loves Billy Joel. That's as bad as it's gotten.

I hypothesized that our first fight is going to be a bed-burning, suitcase-out-the-second-story-window-throwing, momma-insulting corker. She counter-hypothesized that the ensuing makeup sex will be fucking fantastic.
By that logic, a fight that ends in a murder-suicide will be followed by makeup sex so awesome that it may well rip a hole in the fabric of space and time. Someone should try this. Let me know how it goes.

And is Billy Joel that bad, really? Not really. Some dorky synth interludes, some weird vocal tics here and there, but darn solid musicianship, even if he is a bit of an asshole sometimes. See: "Uptown Girl". This song is about him falling for Christie Brinkley and how much she intimidated him, and it's total bullshit working-class-hero nonsense. There's actually a line that goes, "I know I can't afford to buy her pearls, but maybe someday when my ship comes in..." When Billy and Brink got together, he was a multimillionaire. They met at a luxury hotel on St. Bart's, for God's sake. A hotel that, for all I know, was only accessible by ship. If Billy Joel's ship had come in any further by the time he met Christie Brinkley, it would be beached on the side of the Jersey Turnpike, converted into a Mafia-front novelty hotdog stand, and burned down for the insurance money that Billy Joel wouldn't even need because he's so insanely goddamn rich.

Ahem.

Sometimes, when someone says something critical about another someone who is more successful -- let's totally hypothetically say that I say that I think Dane Cook is a lousy comic who had promise but sold out on a truly spectacular level -- fans of the successful person will accuse the critic of being jealous.

Sometimes -- frequently, even -- this accusation is perfectly on the money. I am, indeed, jealous of Dane Cook, and Carlos Mencia, and Larry the Cable Guy. I would very much like to be doing comedy on television and making enough money to never work a shitty desk job as long as I live.

The problem is, it doesn't matter. It's not an argument. The fact that I am jealous of Dane Cook does not magically make him a good comic with points to make and good punchlines to his jokes. My jealousy is completely irrelevant to my criticism. If I was rich and famous I would still think Dane Cook was a bad comedian.

How did I get on this subject exactly? Oh yeah, Billy Joel. I think my deconstruction of "Uptown Girl" comes from a place of jealousy, and I apologize for my intellectual dishonesty. I cannot reliably claim that I would be quite so upset about Billy's fudging of financial facts if I myself were possessed of a multi-million-dollar fortune and countless hit records. And it's a darned catchy song, too. Nothing wrong with that.

At some point in this entry I was telling a story of my weekend. More on that tomorrow.

Ya Think?

2006-07-13T12:22:00.000-07:00

I just now attempted to open the mailbox at my office with the key to the mailbox at my apartment building.

I think I may be short on sleep.

A couple of weeks ago, I was websurfing and happened upon the Wikipedia page for Domo-kun, a Japanese TV station mascot. I was thinking to myself, "That little guy looks like a talking poop", when the phone rang at my desk.

I am supposed to answer the phone like so: "Thank you for calling Company Name! This is Paul, how can I help you?"

But because of the evil influence of the internet upon my brain, on this occasion I answered the phone thusly:

"Thank you for calling Poop!"

I instantly realized what I had said, and I froze solid for at least four seconds, which is an eternity of dead air when you're on the phone with a stranger. Then I rallied and said "guh, Company Name! This is Paul, how can I help you?"

Rare indeed are the moments when I drop to my knees and thank God-I-Don't-Believe-In for our puritanically polite society. This was one of those moments. Like a pastor breaking wind mid-funeral, or a bird shitting in the coffin, this was a moment of such breaktaking embarrassment that the only possible course of action was for everyone involved to pretend that nothing whatever had happened. And that's exactly what we did, and the rest of the phone call went swimmingly.

When I used the wrong mailbox key just now, I was not nearly as mortified as I was by the "Poop" incident. I wasn't mortified at all, actually; just annoyed with myself. I merely pair these stories together to illustrate a point: that I am very tired, and don't have the energy to make every little thing in a blog entry make sense next to every other little damn thing.

Souvenez-Vous Bien

2006-07-06T09:11:00.000-07:00

I ate so much this weekend that I've essentially given myself the opposite of the Star Jones operation; instead of stapling most of my stomach shut, I've actually opened areas of my stomach that were never intended for heavy usage. Or maybe I've just grown extra tummies, like a cow.

The appetizer menu at the Saddle Ranch restaurant has given me a new nickname for my dong. I now call it my Hot'n'Spicy Pulled Pork Slider.

I went an entire 4th of July weekend without looking directly at a single fireworks explosion. Coulda seen some from one of the yards we partied in, but I wasn't about to brave the dark, dog-poo-dotted lawn for a better vantage point. Nothing kills the childlike wonderment of a pyrotechnical display faster than having to garden-hose used Alpo off your Skechers.

At one of the ID4 parties we attended, I went swimming in the same pool as at least one pre-potty-training baby. I didn't realize until just now how not-cool that is. Next time I have a long weekend, I shall try not to have quite so many Brushes With Shit.

We hung out with a whooooole lot of People With Babies. I don't think my girlfriend and I will be leaping into that particular relationship ravine anytime soon. They tell us, "you think you don't want one now, but having a baby changes you", and my girlfriend responds, "but what if I don't WANT to change?"

I have to agree.

In closing, I hope you'll all take this July 4th Week to remember the contributions of the French to our revolutionary struggle against the British. The French gave the rebel colonists money, supplies, generals and troops; if it wasn't for them, we'd all be speaking English.

A HAIRstory Of Violence

2006-06-30T08:37:00.000-07:00

Hair!

Impeder of oral sex, enemy of hats, marching, as its owners do, ever downward toward the grave.

Abandoned to the home-schooled bowlcut, released to hippie glory, shaved up the sides in an ill-advised attempt to look like Mike Patton.

Shall I sing a song of hair?

I wasn't actually home-schooled, but my mom did make a lot of my clothes. She also cut my hair, in the kitchen, for the first 12 years of my life. It was the classic bowl, accompanied by the classic enormous '80s spectacles, except for a few months of buzzcut awfulness brought on by a familywide infestation of lice (never stay at a hotel in Spain unless you plan on wearing your showercap to bed, that's all I'll say).

I started growing my hair out in junior high, but it didn't get very far, and somewhere there are school pictures of me looking like a half-retarded Nancy McKeon after a drive-by Flowbie-ing.

First year of high school, I cut it back to seminormal. Then I truly let it grow; through fluffy moptopness; through skatepunk eye-blocking; and through my least favorite stage, when it's hanging just below my earlobes, but does a truly horrendous Mary Tyler Moore outward flip all on its own, so I look like I'm wearing a badly dented and deeply rusted Spanish Conquistador helmet.

I did not come out the other end of this tunnel of horrors until somewhere around my junior year of high school, when my hair was halfway down my back, long enough to put in a ponytail if I wanted, except for the sides. I could never get the sides into the ponytail, so they would always fly free and wispy in the air. I solved this problem by shaving the sides of my head, from my temples back behind my ears. Thank God it was the early '90s, so no one really noticed. Also, thank God I didn't put my hair in a ponytail for my senior picture.

I DID put my hair in a ponytail for my first driver's license photo, in which my skinny ass is also wearing a wifebeater, some sort of hippie necklace, and a surly expression; I looked like the least popular member of a gay Mexican rap-rock a capella group.

(It is occurring to me that this post is a little heavy on the similes. Too bad. I'm not posting any pictures of these haircuts, not for love or money or some kind of combination of love AND money, so you guys will have to be content with the figurative language.)

Fast-forward to college! Second year, to be precise, when my girlfriend at the time persuaded me to get a massive haircut. I loved her and trusted her and was totally whipped and so I did it. It was actually quite pleasant. I discovered that the George Clooney Caesar is one of the few "trendy" haircuts that looks like it belongs on my head, and I've gotten it a few more times over the years.

I've also shaved my head, first to play Jack Skellington in a highly unauthorized stage adaptation of The Nightmare Before Christmas (remind me to tell you guys about that sometime), and a few more times since then, just for fun.

It wasn't until recently that I started tossing some facial hair into this whole gorilla salad. First, my spotty beard, then that was cut back to some jawlength chops, then cut back again to sideburns, then cut back to nothing. It took me a while to get up the gumption to truly grow the beard all-out. As with the head hair, the face hair goes through some truly hideous intermediate stages before it becomes a Beard. Even then, there are strange empty patches that I only get away with because they're symmetrical, so it looks like it's on purpose.

At this writing, I am bearded and maned; hair length approaching the shoulder, beard length approaching three inches. People on the street yell "Jesus!" at me a lot. I'm getting used to it.

O Scalp well-covered, stalwart hairline, standing fast against the onrushing tide of my Fourth Decade!

O Neckbeard ever advancing, subject only to the razor's vigilance!

O Mustache, soup-catching, sandwich-foe!

The pass of fashion's shadow over the face of my skull!

The pumping of the follicles, as a hand-press grinding out the years!

The thing that I'm pretty sure has gotten me laid a couple of times all on its own!

Hair!

Big Blue

2006-06-28T13:47:00.000-07:00

In the comics, Superman's enemies sometimes refer to him as "the big blue Boy Scout".

I like that. I also like it when people call me "white devil". Not so much "cracker". That term, I recently found out, was originally "whip-cracker", and is associated with slavery a little too much for me to fully ironically enjoy it.

Anyway, Superman Returns. It's good, I liked it. The action sequences are crackalackin' and the script and performances are solid. I felt a bit like I did after X-Men, conscious that I had just seen something amazing, but also that it was a beginning and they could take it more places in subsequent films. Also that I really hoped Brett Ratner would direct one! Can't wait for that!

There were dudes with lightsabers running around the Chinese Theatre. Really, fellows? Really? Now that there are no more Star Wars movies coming out, are you just going to drag your subculture around with you everywhere you go, like a stunted vestigial limb? "Superman's from space! So's Luke! That makes this make sense, right?" In ten years, these people will be walking into independent theaters in full Maul makeup. "Is my bantha prod on straight? Yeah, we're going to the new Woody Allen. Scarlett Johansson's playing his mom in this one, it's weird. Oh, also there's a shot where you can kinda make out a VHS copy of Phantom Menace on top of Mia Farrow's Zenith CRT." Fags.

Sometime in the last year and a half (exactly the length of time I have been doing standup comedy, which is no coincidence at all) my default insult for people I had no truck with became "fags". I realize this hurts some people's feelings, and I further realize that I don't care. If you tell me it hurts your feelings, I won't say it right directly to you, but I won't stop saying it to the world in general.

On the topic of homosexuality, Superman Returns is going to make so much money that Bryan Singer will be able to buy Fire Island. And then airlift it, piece by piece, to Bahrain. A man needs his privacy.

Decisions, Decisions

2006-06-26T08:42:00.000-07:00

Should I post jokes on this thing? Or achingly sincere personal stories about feelings and crying? Or both?

Or neither? Should I just stick to recipes, and tips on cat grooming? (Tip #1: they groom themselves, with no help from you. Stop with the micromanaging, Eisner.)

You know what's great after sex? A nap. That's the only time a nap won't make you feel like you've wasted some of your day. An after-sex nap is like dessert to the steak dinner that is booty.

When was the last time I had a steak dinner? Probably the last time one of my parents paid for my meal. See also: the last time I went to the dentist, the last time I paid off a credit card, and college.

People who remember college fondly probably hate their jobs and can't get laid. Or they, you know, had a pleasant college experience. I wouldn't know about that. I remember college as something to suffer through in between having crushes on actresses and looking for weed.

I should've majored in Putting Up With Theater People. With a minor in Wanting To Fuck Theater People.

I wish I'd graduated, so I could go back and do some post-grad work in Standup Comedy Theory. I'd do my thesis on the Rule of Three and demonstrate that sometimes Four is not such a bad thing, but Five is just silly, and Two? Don't start with me about Two. Two is a dick.

"Two Is A Dick" is the title of the preschooler's counting manual I'm currently developing. We're going out to Russell Crowe for the lead in the movie version. We think we can lock him as soon as he's done with the reshoots on "Everyone Poops".

This has been fun. I'm working on a signoff line for these posts. "You're Welcome" has a nice ring to it.

Moving Day

2006-06-23T21:44:00.000-07:00

Yeah, this place looks pretty good. Nice location, convenient to shops and museums, not a lotta riffraff. I'll take it!

See, I used to live over in MySpace, but it's all kids now, running around, upsetting my gardenias, dripping mascara all over the place, you know how it is. Thought I'd head out to the blogburbs, get some fresh air, a little corner of the world just for me.

Sure, the commute is murder, but I just got a 60gb iPod. I'll rough it, listen to Who Moved My Cheese on tape, kill the freeway time. Got a podcast? Send it my way.

Well, I should probably go meet the neighbors, see if they wanna give me a pie or something. I'll be back soon, don't worry.

We've got a lot to talk about.