Pearly Gates Is Open Late

2005-03-15T22:31:00.000-05:00

I received this filer in the email (I think it might be affiliated with the Magenta guys [my fave Magenta flick!]), but if you will be alive and of your own faculties in Paris on Saturday, April 2, go see One-Two.

Yay!

2005-03-01T20:47:00.000-05:00

The new Ivy album is out today. It's positively dreamy.

"Getting a hit is easy / As long as you're loud and cheap and sleazy"

2005-02-27T13:17:00.000-05:00

Pay TV is what would happen if Stephanie Green from the Sleepover Friends book series entered the Swedish Eurovision heats. And it would be awesome.

"I Feel Cheap and Airy and Want to Talk About Movie Stars."

2005-02-20T01:53:00.000-05:00

The preceding title comes from a diary entry I made February 5, 1995. Looking back, I have no idea what the hell its premise means, but I absolutely adore the stereotypically-Southern, pretentiously-naive line, "I feel cheap and airy and want to talk about movie stars."

Gee, Thanks, Mom (a Follow-up of Sorts)

2005-02-14T22:11:00.000-05:00

Channel Four ran a poll for the 100 Greatest Tear Jerkers of All Time. Or something like that. Anyway, at #16 is this-here movie. Interestingly, the folks at C4 identify this particular scene:

Terms Of Endearment also features one of the most moving ever deathbed scenes, when Winger explains to her son that she isn't going to be around forever.

Alright, now, allow me to introduce my "Why This Movie Is Actually a Short Film Swallowed up in a Big Movie" half-baked "theory." I hold the opinion that you need only to watch the last four scenes (1. this "deathbed scene"; 2. outside the hospital; 3. death; 4. the wake) of Terms of Endearment, and you'll have watched a Terms of Endearment most true to its title. Strip out the distraction of flashy neighbors, misadventures in mother-daughter divadom, and the plot-propeller of "the cancer," and you're left with windows on people who aren't particularly comfortable with one another in a most uncomfortable circumstance. This great "deathbed scene" isn't a grand, weepy confession; it's a frosty eye-to-eye (and this scene has never made me cry, but has only left me more cynically deflated every time I watch it). I mean, come on: if your piously libertine mom propped herself up on, indeed, her deathbed and narrowed her eyes at you and said, "I know that you love me... and I want you to know that I love you as much as I love anybody, as much as I love myself," that might cast a pallor over your memory of the event, what with its notion that she deemed to elevate you up to her own esteem of herself only at her most vulnerable. Or that she pretty much lumped you in the same affection-league with "some dude."

Maybe later I'll continue with how 2., 3., and 4. round out. In the meantime, should you find yourself with too much time on your hands, I dare you to suffer the embarrassment and rent it to test out this hypothesis.

2005-02-02T01:20:00.000-05:00

And, hey, look-- I really did go to Arizona last month.

2005-02-02T01:19:00.000-05:00

Fun with Bathroom Optics #2

2005-02-02T01:18:00.000-05:00

Fun with Bathroom Optics #1

St. Valentine's Kettle Korn:

2005-02-01T20:52:00.000-05:00

I say, convincing yourself you can write for a living is a bit like convincing yourself to fall in love with yourself.

"Is that another boy stuck on your shoe?"

2005-01-27T20:06:00.000-05:00

Yeah, forget Speak: Anniemal, uh, by Annie, is '05's real Lisa Frank binder-stylee deal. And I was all about "Chewing Gum" last summer. And Popjustice has been heralding the full-length; and since we usually agree, like, about 73.44532% of the time, take that as a "yea."

"There are some ba-aaa-aad people on the right..."

2005-01-20T21:58:00.000-05:00

Ah, yes: tonight, walking along the curve of Dupont Circle from P Street, this particular tune from Mr. Morrissey (regarding the Iron Lady, but we'll appropriate where we can get it) resonated quite well with the sight of limousines and charter buses snaking along, ferrying the dutiful across the northwestern swath of the city on this fine, frosty night. Couple this with the smelly, spaced-out hippies who couldn't figure their way out of the Metro with their "coffins" this morning, and you have the book-ends of what's wrong with what's going on.

Lame!

2005-01-19T10:32:00.000-05:00

Behold the cliched laziness that is Jennifer 8. Lee's travel tips for D.C.: from the gratingly expected ("Prostitutes and crack houses have given way to professional couples, quirky boutiques and ethnic fusion restaurants.") to the head-scratchingly stilted ("Unlike most old American cities, Washington has almost no critical mass of ethnic white immigrants to give it a distinct culinary legacy.").

Hey, and did you know that the 9:30 Club "is the performance space of choice for most headliners that pass through the district, like George Clinton and Chuck Brown"? Not just because it's, like, pretty much the only "space" in town, or anything...

2005-01-02T16:14:00.000-05:00

This is a view up Connecticut Avenue from the roof of the Wyoming a few minutes after midnight, Saturday. A few more minutes later, this douchebag from the floor below came up to the roof and complained how we were making noise and causing leaks in his apartment.

Idear!

2004-12-30T13:57:00.000-05:00

When people yammer on about how they wish they were British, they usually offer up a plethora of painfully pretentious reasons. I, on the other hand, usually solely ground my pining in the car-crash television* that the British are so good at packaging in tidy six-episodes bundles.

*My favorite part in their "autobiography" is when they went to Australia in 1985 to set up an ice show, but then Chris broke his leg, so he had to lay around the house they had rented while Jayne and some friend of hers drank a lot of red wine and laughed at him for, like, ten months.

OMG, Is It 1989 Already?!?

2004-12-06T22:54:00.000-05:00

When we last left the magnum opus that is Speak, the nation was asking itself, "Will sound match sleeve?"

The answer: track #2 most definitely does! It's ridiculously Teutonic-- it's so late-1980s German pop-metal (or 2005 Swiss Eurovision entry), it demands to be sung in an accent, with a video set in a rough, yet utilitarianly-chic, Berlin industrial estate, the cast clad in the neon clothing of my youth, the sky overcast with the winds of change.

The other ten tracks, of course, su-u-u-u-u-uck.

"You take the plane / I'll take the bus this time"

2004-12-06T21:44:00.000-05:00

Well-well, good to hear Mr. Hastert will eventually get around to scheduling a vote on that intelligence bill. Because he obviously had more than enough time this evening to step in front of the (moving) GUTS bus on Q Street, escorting his (presumed) appropriately-Talbot'sed wife to a holiday soiree of some kind, Town Car idling in the middle of the street, blocking up traffic to Wisconsin Aveune.

Safety first, right kids?

Best End Credits Music EVAH!

2004-12-03T23:43:00.000-05:00

Ween's "Ocean Man" followed by The Flaming Lips' "SpongeBob and Patrick Confront the Psychic Wall of Energy" on the SpongeBob movie.

Also! The best showing-up-at-work-really-hungover scene, too.

My Heart Is Calibrated 60 Degrees North

2004-12-02T20:26:00.000-05:00

I knew they'd make a pit stop here!

Ah, I remember like it was yesterday: five nights on the harbor, eating green apples at ten o'clock at night on deck, the sun hung like a five o'clock East Coast drive-time on Independence Day. Those across the bridge in the Grand Hotel (but do I vouch for Garbo or Bergman? Hint: I stood in Stöde where she wed the dentist) would never have my view of Gamla Stan, Södermalm, and Queen Christina's fishing in the city.

Also! Wintering Icelanders. Like I've always said, if I were the mayor of Reno, I'd make tracks to be Reykjavik's sister city: the biggest little city in the world.

Yay!

2004-11-24T13:56:00.000-05:00

Netjetters is back.

Jim from the third batch is my favorite: he opted to freeze his heart out from Norway to Japan, which enough people don't seem to do.

“That’s just from your end. It’s ’cause you’re never satisfied with me.”*

2004-11-23T01:46:00.000-05:00

I love Terms of Endearment**. It's an overblown, old-school melodrama trapped in a J.C. Penney catalog. And all of us, at some point or another, talk about everything except what we most wish to say when flush-up against loneliness, decked out in bad clothes and worse hair.

What I like most about it at the moment, though, is the score. Just as the movie tries to be one big Norman Rockwell, the score tries to be an Aaron Copland. But amongst all the copycatting sings the saddest, simplest little melody that resolves itself with this corny optimism: listen to the end credits-- it ends on an honest-to-God twinkle. Your American life can be the most miserable pile of shit, and you'll still have a lone oboe and chime fluttering about you, tilting your washed-out face to the sun.

*Similar to what the NotoriousRRZ has to say about Jennifer Connelly, my money was always on Debra Winger: she had the most expressive eyes and the best throat I'd ever seen. I spent hours in the mirror as a teenager trying in vain to widen and crane my own in the hopes of capturing her spark and defiant ease, ten years out of time and captive only to my own audience.

**This does not mean that I'm going to see that looks-like-a-piece-of-shit Spanglish, however.

"All these accidents / That happen / Follow the dot"

2004-11-18T15:47:00.000-05:00

Or the Amazing Yellow Line. Whichever.

What I dig most about Iceland is the multiplicities people take on, and the hum this makes in Reykjavik.

Correct Me If I'm Wrong...

2004-11-13T15:13:00.000-05:00

...but wouldn't the least metal moment ever actually be the countdown itself on VH1?

Hey, you, Vanessa Carlton:

2004-11-11T22:23:00.000-05:00

If only you'd recorded your song "White Houses" in the B-maj you've been playing on all the morning shows instead of the C-maj-as-heard-by-Billy-Joel on the record, I'd have totally bought a copy off iTunes. Synaesthesia, like.

And I hate "A Thousand Miles," (and "Ordinary Day," and sort-of "Pretty Baby") so, really: trust me on this.

2004-11-09T23:33:00.000-05:00

Is this how to interpret where all the porn is, too?

The question still remains: how do we account for the seemingly proportionate relationship of red states to strip clubs? I'm looking at you, I-45. You, too, I-75. Except Michigan: you're too broke for the champagne room.

2004-11-07T11:52:00.000-05:00

With the nation split like the pants on a fat pastor, can't we all agree that this may just be an oeuvre of such magnanimous tackiness that we may once again unite in shamefaced karoke? I mean, c'mon... for the chirrun, y'all.

Ah, As You Do.

2004-11-05T23:40:00.000-05:00

Continuing my grand tradition of crying at Pixar productions, go see The Incredibles*, and show up for the short "Bounding." The American Jackalope sing-songing about "rebounding" and not caring: *sigh* with regards to recent events , and with a bit of a nostalgia for me being 19 and being laughed at and told to "shut the hell up!" by a six-year-old at Cinemagic on account of blubbering a little bit (okay, a lot) at that part in Toy Story 2 where Jessie the Cowgirl recounts being abandoned.

*My brother kinda looks like Mr. Incredible (in 15-20 years, and if he were on some major 'roids). And Holly Hunter's character so totally has her Broadcast News hair (awww! espesh. being in DC at the mo'). Except my brother also kinda looks like William Hurt in that movie. Which I've always found really creepy. So yeah. But Sarah Vowell is Violet! And my brother and I have bandied about the idea of making a radio documentary about this crazy-ass housing area we technically lived on that kept all the American names after it was turned over to Germany for This American Life. So everything is full circle! Despite lousy sentence construction! Sort of! Or something. Whatever.

2004-11-03T09:21:00.000-05:00

Either way, I'm still going back to bed. And then I'm going to give Jon Stewart a big hug, and then go hang out with the Popbitchers in a concrete shed.

ZZZZzzzzz...

2004-11-01T23:13:00.000-05:00

Ugh, it's, like, so totally quiet in DC tonight, it's like Christmas Eve.

So, as you do, you crawl up with a book and wait to hear footsteps on the roof. Or something. I don't know. Crappy analogy. But I have just read The Partly Cloudy Patriot, and that just might turn into a tradition for me.

Anyway, here's the deal: whenever I've come up against big decisions, I break out a ladder of abstraction, and I go up and down the rungs until I find a focus that suits my comprehension. Four years ago, I was up on the roof and still couldn't be sure if it really was one, amalgamated super-douche or two separate dillweeds that wanted the job. This time around, it's fairly easy to discern: yes, I still have to get pretty damn far up the rungs to get the clearest picture, but it's there.

I've also found that this ladder works when attempting to articulate my frustration with third parties at the moment: being farsighted, it's a drag for me to have to account for every single leaf on the yard that needs raking when I know it's going to get in the big pile anyway. Or something like that. Again, lousy analogy.

Oh, to Be 18 Again...

2004-11-01T10:49:00.000-05:00

...and threatening to kill your girlfriend with a screwdriver because you don't like who she's going vote for.

Overall I'd say the affair is composed of a bouquet of COPS, with a top note of Italian parilament and a dash of a fisticuffs in a 12th grade civics class.

2004-10-30T09:55:00.000-05:00

Bush is so totally Craig.

2004-10-27T10:02:00.000-05:00

"Smell my watch-strap. Yeah."

On Saturday Afternoons...

2004-10-26T08:56:00.000-05:00

...I'd listen to John Peel's show carried on WRAS. He also had the best year-end countdown shows on Radio 1.

The Cotton-Eyed Joe Dance of Doom!

2004-10-24T12:29:00.000-05:00

Stereogum makes it hurt so good!: a famewhore's wings melting under the stage lights on the Peacock. Awesome!

With the remix! Holla back with your shitty lip-synching, bitch!

2004-10-23T22:48:00.000-05:00

It's like somebody watched too many opening credits to The Mary Tyler Moore Show.

Caption Time!

2004-10-18T10:44:00.000-05:00

Dear Asexuals:

2004-10-14T14:51:00.000-05:00

You already have an awareness group; they're called the Shakers.

How Pathetic Is It...

2004-10-09T00:33:00.000-05:00

...that not one of the Big Four networks, let alone any cable outlet, offers an online archive of the debates, yet a foreign state broadcaster has them all in their entirety?

"Yes. That big."

2004-10-06T00:35:00.000-05:00

And some bit in there about how his dad learned math off the TV (Oooo, I get it! 'Cause Gwen Ifil's from PBS!).

Hee. And check out ol' Krang there, being all like, "Negatory! That's not how much pipe was laid."

Excuse me while I go bleach my brain.

Feather-Dustings:

2004-10-03T08:32:00.000-05:00

I don't know if the people behind this are the same behind the Circle Line parties, but I still like this idea. I would say I'd like to see a transatlantic sisterly version take place this Wednesday at 10:40 AM outside the Capitol (copycat architecture, innit), but I don't really want my phone tapped just yet.

"That big, huh?"

2004-10-02T16:00:00.000-05:00

*Snerk*

"Eddie, are we... are we POOR?!?"

2004-10-01T12:08:00.000-05:00

I'm massively bored, so let's play "Insert Caption [Here]". Additional photos stolen from Yahoo! to be posted throughout the day...

Testing

2004-09-30T22:47:00.000-05:00

Yes, I did this on a cameraphone.

"Metin Kunt. Say it out loud. In the voice of a lady robot."

2004-09-26T17:36:00.000-05:00

Hooray! The good folks at b3ta do what I've always wanted to do: tool around on Amazon and compile a compendium of unfortunately funny names.

My New Favorite Place

2004-09-24T12:38:00.000-05:00

People, the Mary Pickford Theater at the Library of Congress rules. They show all types of crazy shit at 7PM every weeknight: film, TV, whatever. But this has to be the most insane bit on the current schedule, screening the Friday after Thanksgiving:

The Loneliest Runner (NBC, 1976) Dir Michael Landon. With Brian Keith, Melissa Sue Anderson. (75 min, 16mm)Writer-director-producer Landon shows us his dirty laundry in this painfully autobiographical teledrama. Lance Kerwin (James at 15) plays the young eneuretic track star whose mother's corrective regimen involves hanging stained sheets out his bedroom window. Shown with an encore presentation of How to Drownproof Your Child.

Billy Ray? As in "Special Attache to Mullet Affairs"?

2004-09-23T19:11:00.000-05:00

*Tsk*:

I had arranged to meet Thomas Wheston in the campus coffee shop, who a few weeks ago retired from being the special envoy to Cyrus and had become a Georgetown teacher.
Oi, Humphrey Hawksley: you should have taken a stoll a bit beyond the lawn, where us folks could have started nattering on to you about how such a typo may speak volumes about you and your identity, your relation to your medium, etc., blah-blah-hey.

"Eighty-seven percent are intoxicated when they watch it. You didn't see that?"

2004-09-22T08:51:00.000-05:00

Hah! These snippets of transcript rule:

STEWART: He wants to get what any politician does: access to a new constituency. He wants to get...
O'REILLY: The stoned slackers.
STEWART: ... that's exactly right, because the stoned slackers, this election is going to rely on the undecided. Who is more undecided than...
O'REILLY: Than the stoned slacker, right.
STEWART: ... the people who are high. Right now, they're thinking to themselves, ice cream or pretzels, ice cream or pretzels.

Prescient!

2004-09-21T12:31:00.000-05:00

Oh, behold, for I am about to lay forth a grand example of pants-on-fire (testify!):

3rd Week of September 2003: Hurricanes that start with "I"! Texas! John Ritter (recently departed)! Choice of drink: Big Red and Vodka (a.k.a. Cloraseptic)

3rd Week of September 2004: Hurricanes that start with "I"! Texas! My grandmother (recently departed)! Choice of drink: Chilean red wine (a.k.a. much better than the Riesling at the overpriced steakhouse in Clear Lake)

Now, you may ask, did John Ritter smite my grandmother in retaliation for taking part in a drinking game bourne out of his Entertainment Tonight tribute broadcast? No, most likely not. But I would gander that John Ritter did run into my grandmother in the hip-happening nightclub that I usually construct Heaven to be, where everybody is fabulous in mind, body, and spirit: my grandmother would have most likely been meeting my grandfather at the bar for that long-overdue bottle of Barbados rum for their 50th anniversary when she was informed by a young man with a penchant for tight denim and polyester that yes, her granddaughter was right that the last hymn sung at the service was the same tune as "Go West" by the Village People and/or Pet Shop Boys.

Oh, and that it was blisteringly, broilingly, ridiculously hot in the Bayou City, so she picked a good time to check out.

Respect, and much love.

Listen Up, Kids:

2004-09-16T14:02:00.000-05:00

My $0.02 shows up on page 209 of this-here book.

Day-um!

2004-09-15T10:31:00.000-05:00

Even his own church's pastor didn't endorse him, and yet...

Rockstar of the Week / My New Favorite British Pop MC

2004-09-12T19:43:00.000-05:00

Back in the day (okay, twist my arm, and I'll say 6/25/02, when I was hanging out in Ealing, West London, observing the kids at a shopping center near Ealing Common while I ate lunch cobbled together from the Safeway and listening to Kiss FM on the headphones while taking a break from trying to sniff out Kirsty MacColl's house [yeah! the one with the jukebox with Right Said Fred on it, and the recording studio where everybody was drinking champagne and strawberries while recording Kite! (I later learned in the early morning of 10/13/03 at a pub lock-in that the address is 48 Something-Something, and that there is usually a silver Saab parked outside it, but I was a bit sloshed and later ended up belting out the theme to Golden Girls in the middle of Lancaster Gate, so I don't remember the name or type of road, but I do recall thinking "Wow, how very... American-sounding")]), I was impressed by Miss Dynamite's "It Takes More". Then that fall, while I was tooling around trying to find a job, I heard her self-titled track "Miss Dynamite" ("I'm just Miss Dyna-mite-tee-hee") throughout many-a-day that September while I farted around on the computer and was like, "Okay."

But then! I quit that job I started 10/22/02 on 8/20/04, and I had in my head that Friday Estelle's "1980" ("1980 / Year that God made me"), and I thought, "I like this song much better than 'Miss Dynamite'." And now Estelle has completed the full-reversal with the infectous "Free," which is kind of like "It Takes More," except it's infinitely less preachy and pedantic. Ergo, Estelle is my new favorite British pop MC and, by association, the Rockstar of the Week.

"Don't think about being less than yourself!" Yeah!

"How Do You Kill a Giant Abraham Lincoln?"

2004-09-06T18:09:00.000-05:00

The scene at Ford's Theatre is fast becoming the Christopher Guest movie that's yet to have been made. The Park Service tour guide is this unconfortably polyester-clad man whose dreams of board-treading seem to have been routinely discouraged ("John Wilkes Booth was like Brad Pitt, people! Riding on a horse in the night into Virginia!" [jumps on stage and points furiously at the stage door]), and there is this woman in the museum in the basement dressed up as Mary Todd Lincoln. Except she works neither for the Park Service nor any shape or form of the Department of the Interior. She just hangs out down there. Dressed as Mary Todd Lincoln.

Sgt. Julu! Bootcamps! Yay!

2004-08-31T18:50:00.000-05:00

Sally is back with an internet-broadcast talk show. Too bad I gave up that do-nothing deskjob I had: this would have easily filled the tricky 2-3 PM gap between Big Brother 5 Housecalls (yes, I will go kill myself right now) and Fresh Air.

"Spectacled bears eat both vegetables and meat but children tend not to be on their menu"

2004-08-31T16:38:00.000-05:00

Somewhere between the nihilism of Feili the smoking monkey and the foibles of Air France lies the absurdist literalism of Juan the bear, who only wanted to go to the Love Parade. Or not. Whatever.

All About Timing.

2004-08-30T17:02:00.000-05:00

Beijing officially gets its hands on the signature media and marketing juggernaut of our time (er, the Olympics [and the last time I'll natter on about it for a long while, I promise]), and we're off to the races.

Meanwhile, up in the (212), it seems like you can jazz it up all you want (elephant dung and past-prime popstars aside), and the kids still won't tune in.

But to get back to China for a moment, here's a story about a depressed, chain-smoking chimpanzee. It's okay, Feili: you could be working at Reader's Digest.

"...and fightin' 'round the world!"

2004-08-29T10:43:00.000-05:00

Heh. Too bad Tugger wasn't there.

"It's Another Saturday Night..."

2004-08-28T23:14:00.000-05:00

Okay, maybe Sunday Morning, but whatever: I still "ain't got nobody." And I still "ain't got no money" because I'm still yet to be paid, so here are my three favorite national anthems I've heard over the past two weeks (when NBC have decided to broadcast non-"O Say Can You See" medal ceremonies):

1. Argentina
2. Morocco
3. Greece

Honorable Mention: Australia. Because, realistically, when ol' paternal great-granddad got kicked out of County Cavan, Ireland, it was either to the U.S. or Australia. So I've got to hedge my bets. And it never hurts to pretend that I grew up in a beachside town in New South Wales.

Rockstar of the Week!

2004-08-26T11:55:00.000-05:00

It's Australian track cyclist Ryan Bayley: the guy eats nothing but garbage morning, noon, and night, and he still spanked everybody in the velodrome. That is some digestive moxie.

Jeez.

2004-08-25T21:28:00.000-05:00

You'd think your mom could fenagle you a proper job by now, yeah?

“He can find another way to advertise himself.”

2004-08-22T15:49:00.000-05:00

Word.

“It is a little naughty,” he [Iraqi Olympic Committee consultant Mark Clark] said. “The players are not very sophisticated politically; they are a little naive. Whoever posed these questions knew that the reaction would be negative. “It is possible something was lost in translation. It’s a free, new Iraq, and the players are entitled to their opinions but we are disappointed.”

"A little naughty"? Seems like the English managed to translate well from the original Douchebag.

"those summer niiiii-ghts!"

2004-08-20T21:17:00.000-05:00

Awwww, Carly Patterson has a crush on Michael Phelps.

Oh, Carly: don't you know that the gymnastics all-around title is the squarest position in the high school that is the Olympics? You're now totally the valedictorian to Paul Hamm's class president. And the swimmers totally rule the cool-kids table in the lunchroom.

So how are you going to win out against Jenna Bush? I would suggest the following equation:

Carly + shopping sprees at Claire's and Wet Seal = semi-jailbait tween star JoJo.

Then you'll totally be allowed to toke up with Kenicki behind the dumpsters before your big dance-off in the cafeteria for ol' Mikey's lurrrve.

I'll Also Consider:

2004-08-18T20:29:00.000-05:00

3. Butters + Cartman = U.S. shotputter Adam Nelson?

Extra Credit:

2004-08-18T13:17:00.000-05:00

3. Butters + Soviet-stylee sports school = U.S. gymnast Brett McClure?

It's Back-to-School Time:

2004-08-17T21:06:00.000-05:00

1. Chloe Sevigny + Soviet-stylee sports school = U.S. gymnast Terin Humphrey?

2. Mary Lou Retton + boozy crack binge = Jerri Blank?

"a head, one bottom and a torso cannot possibly fly on its own."

2004-08-16T15:46:00.000-05:00

I say, isn't French deconstructionism fun?

Rockstar of the Week

2004-08-16T10:24:00.000-05:00

This week it is Jane Birkin. 'Nuff said.

Good Times!

2004-08-16T08:17:00.000-05:00

If I had won Powerball last Saturday, I'd have gone to Dulles Airport Sunday morning and been all like, "One please," and would be hanging out at the beach volleyball venue right this moment. Why, you might ask? Well, it embodies the spirit of the first place I wasn't carded for booze at age sixteen back in the day-- when they somehow turned the shitty Atlanta Beach (read: pool with a slide and some sand around the edges, and at least one drowning a summer) into the most surprisingly happening place of the XXVI Olympiad. Drinking daquiris, listening to cheesy-ass music (this year there sounds to be a lot of DJ Otzi and O-Zone coming out of those speakers-- '96 was a lot of Real McCoy, Gina G, and the Macarena), and getting sunburned before going to work at the park in the evening? And then being buzzed just enough to not to give a shit when people moaned about everything being too expensive or demanding a refund while calling you a bitch (3.1 degree of assface difficulty; and oddly enough, almost solely attempted by the Americans)? Awesome.

Well-Well-Well:

2004-08-13T15:28:00.000-05:00

Looks like someone couldn't afford the upkeep for her vanity site.

Let us now gather round and point and laugh and wait until the moment she undoubtedly claims to have invented Movable Type.

Ooooo, This Must Totally Be My Dishy Day for Heat-Lamped Leftovers:

2004-08-12T14:34:00.000-05:00

I quite like the Delta Shuttle. The rack of free newspapers and magazines and coffee off to the side of Gate 18 absolutely pisses all over the draconian decorum of Gate 15 and the hourly shame-mobile to Atlanta (one morning I saw Newt Gingrich, and the week I went to Iceland the kids were telling me they saw Bob Barr and the-now-certifiably-crazy-ass Zell Miller). Plus you get a nearly-proper breakfast (some semblance of grains and fruit) on the plane in the mornings and occasionally free beer in the afternoons, and an even bigger opportunity to binge on periodicals at LaGuardia. Anyway, the longest we ever had to sit on the ground was four hours, and that plane had on it both Judy Woodruff and Stone Cold Steve Austin. Take that, bitches.

Ooooo, and Now a Bit of Stale 2nd-Hand Gosso:

2004-08-12T12:27:00.000-05:00

Funnily enough, an immediate relative told me a while back that Andy Dick also stuck his tongue in said-relative's ear and asked for some coke at some soiree held by some lads-mag in some city called "The Meadows," or something.

Ergo, if it mentions 1) Andy Dick, 2) sticking his tongue somewhere, and 3) begging for coke, it must be true. It's like a three-part Supreme Court judicial test-thingee, or something.

Also, he's heard to have wanted his E! True Hollywood Story to have been subtitled "The Little Angel Baby Clown Who... That Cried."

"It's Just You and Me Now, Mr. Dog"

2004-07-31T17:06:00.000-05:00

Yay!!: to the LSU School of Veterinary Medicine's canine underwater rehabilitation program.

Booooo!!: to a bunch of lame-o suburbanites who have been laying traps to catch a dog with bad case of mange (or at best with a dingo for a babydaddy-daddy) now that the cicadas have gone.

For All Those Fools Who Bought the Triplecast in 1992...

2004-07-30T13:03:00.000-05:00

...and are too [lazy/gimpy/anti-social/morbidly obese] to participate in those hands-on-the-car contests, your time has come.

Although, the grand prize makes it mildly tempting to enter myself, since I've always wanted to get obnoxiously drunk at an ice dancing final, however not enough so as to personally induce hemorrhoids, epilepsy, and renal failure from staring at a television screen for days on end.

I'm Chanting as We Speak

2004-07-28T10:38:00.000-05:00

This? Is awesome.

And, actually, it would be perfect in the event BC04 got insanely desperate and tried to get all Kitty Dukakis-insinuating-stylee up in THK's grill, because then everybody would be all like, "Duh, that's how Eddie is supposed to be."

The Survey Says

2004-07-28T09:54:00.000-05:00

Who would be more infuriating to watch television with? I'd say it would be an Independent, because Yes, Dear viewership is simply inexcuseable.

I Am Especially Enjoying:

2004-07-26T07:46:00.000-05:00

A Boot and a Shoe, by Sam Phillips, particularly "All Night" and "Reflecting Light." I'm also quite digging (again!) Martinis and Bikinis. Ten years ago, I particularly liked "Baby I Can't Please You," but that was also the summer my heart absolutely belonged to Freedy Johnston, so Sam Phillips unfortunately wound up on a back-burner.

Speaking of whom, oh, Freedy: when will you stop making schlock and go back to making masterpieces?

Let's put it this way: "Bad Reputation" is the song I'll hear as the dance floor clears and reveals... The fact that this song is (1) hardly ever played anywhere near a dance floor, and (2) when it is rarely played, it's usually on a grocery store PA doesn't deter me in the least.

And Speaking of VH1

2004-07-19T15:46:00.000-05:00

Nickelback are such a crap band that they've managed to boot-mash themselves.

Dear VH1:

2004-07-19T13:46:00.000-05:00

Lisa "Left-Eye" Lopes did not burn down Andre Rison's house in 1995, but rather 1994, which also was the same year that CrazySexyCool was released (yes, the video for "Waterfalls" was big in early '95, but the copy for that segment implied that the house-burning happened at the same time). Please stop showing up late to the party and making white people seem even more lame than they already are.

Anyway, a propos of nothing, let's all cheer that the women's gymnastics team has not one but two (2!) members that can not only buy tobacco and alcohol, but also legally rent a car.

Speaking of which, I have some 1996 Olympics stories I'll share once this year's gets underway, 2/3 of which feature directing some drunk-ass himbo tottering out of World of Budweiser to barf in the reflecting pool and not all over my concessions tent in Centennial Park, like eight years ago tonight, with Sinbad being the Park's MC/Commentator for the Opening Ceremonies. And then a few days later we got Kenny Rogers. And he sang both "Lady" and "The Gambler." And sometimes even Janet Evans, fresh from being knocked off the podium, would should up to make a bitchface on the jumbotron for NBC. It was that A-list of a spot to be.

Diamond Anniversary (for Your Cubic Zirconium Self)

2004-07-16T15:13:00.000-05:00

One day you're taking over shit all Disco Sucks!-stylee. The next you're playing rock-paper-scissors in an ill-fitting suit*.

*Props to AP for forwarding this last week; easily the funniest thing I've seen all year.

Rockstar of the Week!

2004-07-13T11:31:00.001-05:00

*blows note on pitch-pipe, taps stand*

"Darling, if you ever leave me,
I'll cry-eye a million te-e-ears.
I'll go to the nearest boo-zer!
And drink ten pints of be-eer-ah!"

And then drink five more, and then blow my balls off with a shotgun I shoved down my pants:

"He had it shoved down his trousers. After the shotgun had discharged he placed it in a rubbish bin and crawled back to his home address."

Awww, bless.

Just... No.

2004-07-12T09:22:00.000-05:00

1. Simpsons did it! And here I thought Cody Gifford was dead, his mom having long been banished to cruise ships and regional musical theatre, and all was right with the world. Although now I must say I prefer the head of the Spawn of Zahn.

2. Hey, and now you can get all PDA on your PDA. Actually, that's pretty cool, except for the whole rubbing all up on yourself, furiously typing on your arms or wherever. In the middle of the street.

3. Why I Want Gail Berman's Job and Would Be n+1 Times Better At It Than Her Sorry Ass, Reason #78723:

Fox is developing a reality series called "Who's My Daddy," in which a young woman will try to figure out which of 16 men is actually her father, industry insiders say.

(Psst, Fox... CBS is already doing a sort-of even more half-assed version of this on Big Brother 5.)

4. Some people like the Nielsen People Meter. Others think it will not fully account for the viewership of everybody who isn't a white male aged 18-49. But will the People Meter and its more focused surveying kill all those non-news stories on your local news? Oh, say it isn't so! How, then, will I ever know not to sleep on the bedspread at a motel, or that dogs like to go shopping in the garbage when the house is empty?

Rockstar of the Week

2004-06-29T15:46:00.000-05:00

It's DMX! Oh, he's just the wacky neighbor from the crackhouse next door you never had. This is my favorite excerpt:

"None of this would have happened if DMX had just paid the parking fee [and left]" Queens Assistant District Attorney Corrine Henderson told the New York Daily News.

She also said that DMX's pants had fallen down to his ankles, but he was so high he didn't notice. Henderson added that DMX wasn't very cooperative with police while being arrested.

"He told them, 'I make moves. I make people disappear. Take these cuffs off me and we can go at it,'" she said.

But fear not! X eventually "caught a flight to Amsterdam, where he will kick of[f] a European tour this weekend." Yes, Amsterdam. For a "tour."

Hey, did you also know that DMX first met his wife while robbing her house? Hee.

And, Hey, Some Dude Killed Some Other Dude with a Spoon.

2004-06-28T12:49:00.000-05:00

Yes, with a spoon. After he stole this other one-legged dude's phone.

Oh, Look: It's a Man Whose Tatooed Himself Like a Leopard...

2004-06-28T12:47:00.000-05:00

...and now lives in a hut away from everybody else.

Oh, Look: It's a Man Peeing Into a Box of Kittens.

2004-06-28T12:37:00.000-05:00

(nicked from PB)

.
' ', .-----------.
/ / _\ ( Delightful!)
| O o /_ /
| ._______ . '--------'
\ '-----'/
',_____,'
/| / | |
\ | | ,
\|/ ..,. meow?
Oo,"' '. /
/ \ ' ________
/ | | | / | |kittens | |
C > < ) |________|_|

Ah, the Irony of Now Having to Use Cigarettes as Currency...

2004-06-23T14:04:00.000-05:00

Tractor Man: catcher/punk or jocker/man/pitcher/daddy? All the girls want to know...

"I wasnae old enough to remember but it wasnae a bird that shit against a wall and the sun hatched me!"

2004-06-23T12:26:00.000-05:00

This is great! I think every bar should run profiles of their regulars.

Anyway, my dad has apparently taken to popping in on occasion here, when he also apparently isn't trying to determine the original gender of this supposed pre-op that works at the local Costco that has had him flummoxed for well over a year. When I go to visit, he's very intent on having someone other than my mother corroborate his findings; but of course, everytime he spots "her," I turn around to see simply a gangly Caucasian person with their back turned, only to be engulfed by the crowd, never to be seen the rest of the time we're there. Loch Ness Monster-stylee.

My brother is appalled by Crystal's, but we both agree that $6 is criminal for pint of Guinness. I think our dad does, too. Completely a propos of nothing, Crystal's is not be confused with Krystal, with an outlet likewise situated on the Marietta Square, with their fucking nasty Breakfast in a Bowl abomination and interior that betrays a bouquet of piss and b.o. Thankfully, my dad stopped going to Krystal around mid-1993.

Points and Laughs

2004-06-21T09:57:00.000-05:00

Jesus H. Christ. The "trauma" of having to change your college email address? Come on. If you're too goddamn lazy and too dull-as-dishwater to think up a handle for Yahoo! or Hotmail, then you should just drop your computer in the tub while you take a bath and kill two birds with one stone.

Rockstars of the Week

2004-06-20T17:53:00.000-05:00

Old Swiss dude loses his false teeth after a prostitute kicks him in the teeth in a public toilet.

That is such a sublime mix of trashy moxie and pheremones, I don't whether to laugh or cry. Probably laugh, though; because having some prostitute kick you in the teeth in a toilet and cause you to lose your false teeth is just inexplicably funny. Like crotches being hit by whiffle ball bats.

iBufoonery

2004-06-18T22:46:00.000-05:00

Recently (okay, yesterday) I had a bit too much to drink and decided to go shopping on iTunes. Kind of like getting blitzed on a plane and ordering a bunch of shit from SkyMall on an Airfone, except sadder. Anyway, I decided to get songs that I thought were absolutely awesome when I was half my age, because I was drunk, and I thought it was a good theme.

Thankfully, there were only two that came up. I once messed around with the dubbing button on my stereo in 7th grade as "Always the Last to Know" by Del Amitri played on craptastic Star94 so that "Always the last to know" sounded like "You asshole." I also thought it was, like, this really cool monologue by this guy who cheated on this girl, because he used all these different verbs ("If he's treating you / If he's pleaded with you / If he cheated on you) and a cowbell and stuff! And it was super-deep ("Although we share the same city / And feel the same sun / When your winter comes"... What? What will happen? I must know! ..."I'll be the last to know." Ah, referencing the title. Of course!).

The other was "Faithful" by Go West. I really have no excuse for this one; in fact, I've already gone back in time and given myself a swirlie in the middle school girls' locker room circa September 1992. It's an evil hybrid of Adult Contemporary and faux-Northern Soul with a sloppy, tinny, cacophonous production. But yet, my ears cannot turn deaf and refuse to bleed because "I will make you see / You can count on me," and I've just gotten a glimpse of my ultra-shitty haircut I got at Supercuts the week before school started that made me look like a boy and my even lamer Duck Head sweatshirt and this awful plaid blazer I got at the Macy's in Herald Square, and I feel a little twinge of sympathy for myself.

They didn't have "Sleeping Satellite" by Tasmin Archer, though, which was my actual favorite. It got remade as a dance song last year and didn't sound that bad. Considering. Actually, most "I love whales!" songs sound really good as Hi-NRG.

Hey, at least it was never emo. Cheesy-bad pop beats the shit out of emo everytime. Fact-a-mundo.

But anyway, the conclusion to all this is that most 12-year-olds are morons and should not be consulted for any decision involving the slightest hint of aesthetic taste. That is why processed foods and wine cooler advertising are directed solely at them. QED.

Eurovision!

2004-04-29T12:04:00.000-05:00

Yes, I will next write about Eurovision, which, as an American, I think is just super-fantastic-trashy-awesome, because the closest thing we have to it is the talent competition of the Miss America pageant, and that's full of boring future local news anchors performing opera, piano, and the occasional violin piece with general technical precision, but no soul, which, come to think of it, is not very Eurovision. But I will expound upon all this later.

Should you like your music a little less fizzy, today is Duke Ellington's 105th birthday. So take a walk across the bridge into Adams Morgan or by the school in Georgetown that have his name, and say hello, should you happen to be in the general vicinity.

"Roses Smell Like Poo-poo-poo-poo"

2004-04-19T20:53:00.000-05:00

Hark! My name has been known to pop up in pop tunes (choons) from time to time. I like this new offering, and I find two others consistently listenable:

1. "Pretty In Pink": Ever read London Fields? Caroline here is like Nicola Six, except nice and not all hell-bent on being murdered. Top song.

2. "Caroline": As one might notice with the aforementioned "Roses", most times when you stick a Caroline in, she's a right bitch. In this particular ditty, Caroline is the one getting repeatedly shafted. It's quite refreshing, actually, and highly mimetic in my neck of the woods.

And that's about it, really.

FACT: "Sweet Caroline" is just an absolute sonic abomination that should have been aborted in the recording studio, it is that horrid and nightmarish.

Two-Hundred-Fifty-Thousand Dollars? And It's Not Even Leather?

2004-04-15T12:59:00.000-05:00

NotoriousRRZ and I agree that The Apprentice, great though it is with its current zeitgeist, really should have aired in the late 1980s, when its inherent absurdity could have been magnified tenfold. You wouldn't even have to change a thing with the show, just skew for contestants born in 1959 rather than 1974 and have that Taj concert be by, oh, I don't know, T'Pau, or whatever. I specifically think it should have been scheduled for the Fall 1987 season as the lead-in for St. Elsewhere, with its finale right before the stock market crash. That? Would have been awesome. No whammies!

Way Back Round the Way

2004-04-12T09:42:00.000-05:00

BBC Radio 2 is running an 88-91 day today. What did I listen to between 1988-1991? Appalling awful stuff. And what did I watch on television? Even worse. See, in terms of American television, we had one channel: AFN. There is a reason why I've seen every episode of Alf, MacGyver, and the first seasons of Blossom and Full House and the bulk of the late '80s/early '90s storylines on Guiding Light: they were licensed for broadcast to AFN. And that was about it. So, at least in my family, we also watched a bunch of German television, which, coincidentally, consisted of a lot of dubbed Alf episodes.

Anyway, when the hell did AFN get all Freeview-stylee n' shit? Good lord. What happened to one channel being programmed with: a shitty spaghetti western, followed by a delayed Good Morning America, General Hospital, Guiding Light, Oprah, news, this gawd-awful boring piece of crap called Gasthaus where somebody dull from USAEUR was interviewed for an interminable ten minutes from 7:50-8:00 PM CET, lame sitcom, lame drama, and Star Trek? Damn.

Resurfaces

2004-04-08T08:59:00.000-05:00

I've got quite a few tidbits from the past few weeks while incommunicado.

In the meantime, I found this site quite fascinating. It's a woman's travelogue as she travels on motorcycle through the areas of Ukraine and Belarus affected by the Chernobyl meltdown.

In Europe, Chernobyl is still a primary charity concern; here, though, it seems to have fallen off our conscience's radar. Maybe it could be something as transparent as Chernobyl sharing the same anniversary month as Three Mile Island, and we've fastened memory to the anglophonic story because it's easier to grasp the geography and demographics of western Pennsylvania than Soviet eastern Europe. Or perhaps we would just rather to suppress the fact that something on the magnitude of Chernobyl ever happened in the first place.

2004-03-19T22:15:00.000-05:00

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2004-03-18T23:19:00.000-05:00

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2004-03-18T22:00:00.000-05:00

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Fact: Rick Mercer Is Cool.

2004-03-15T11:44:00.000-05:00

When I was 19 and lived on the twelfth floor of this building (NB: the blurb at the bottom is the most verbose alternate phrasing of "er... we ran out of space" I've yet to come across), I used to skip school to watch hour-upon-hours of CBC, which was carried on the university's cable system. I was quite partial to predecessor to CBC News: Today, because it had a charmingly hapless pair of hosts, one of whom was a dead-ringer for Darcy Pennell. In the evenings, chiefly as a means to quell my intense hatred for Cherie Bank (yes, it is acceptable to laugh at her wonky shoulder and car accident because she is just that awful), I would watch Montreal's Newswatch, bookended at 10PM with The National (which is just the most awesome news magazine: it pisses all over its American counterparts, because none of them have Peter Mansbridge). In between, there was one show that also raised its leg and hosed down the yankee pap that clogged up the rest of the schedule: the mighty This Hour Has 22 Minutes.

Drunken Epiphanies #72341

2004-03-13T20:55:00.000-05:00

Eugene Levy and Catherine O'Hara are the Torvill & Dean of improv.

And, Yea, Let Us Offer a Guffaw...

2004-03-10T14:15:00.000-05:00

...at the naked woman who bumped into a candle and set herself on fire and smashed through a window before suffering a heart attack.

*books choice table in Hell... again*

Pearly Gates Is Open Late

Yay!

"Getting a hit is easy / As long as you're loud and cheap and sleazy"

"I Feel Cheap and Airy and Want to Talk About Movie Stars."

Gee, Thanks, Mom (a Follow-up of Sorts)

St. Valentine's Kettle Korn:

"Is that another boy stuck on your shoe?"

"There are some ba-aaa-aad people on the right..."

Lame!

Idear!

OMG, Is It 1989 Already?!?

"You take the plane / I'll take the bus this time"

Best End Credits Music EVAH!

My Heart Is Calibrated 60 Degrees North

Yay!

“That’s just from your end. It’s ’cause you’re never satisfied with me.”*

"All these accidents / That happen / Follow the dot"

Correct Me If I'm Wrong...

Hey, you, Vanessa Carlton:

Ah, As You Do.

ZZZZzzzzz...

Oh, to Be 18 Again...

On Saturday Afternoons...

The Cotton-Eyed Joe Dance of Doom!

Caption Time!

Dear Asexuals:

How Pathetic Is It...

"Yes. That big."

Feather-Dustings:

"That big, huh?"

"Eddie, are we... are we POOR?!?"

*Testing*

"Metin Kunt. Say it out loud. In the voice of a lady robot."

My New Favorite Place

Billy Ray? As in "Special Attache to Mullet Affairs"?

"Eighty-seven percent are intoxicated when they watch it. You didn't see that?"

Prescient!

Listen Up, Kids:

Day-um!

Rockstar of the Week / My New Favorite British Pop MC

"How Do You Kill a Giant Abraham Lincoln?"

Sgt. Julu! Bootcamps! Yay!

"Spectacled bears eat both vegetables and meat but children tend not to be on their menu"

All About Timing.

"...and fightin' 'round the world!"

"It's Another Saturday Night..."

Rockstar of the Week!

Jeez.

“He can find another way to advertise himself.”

"those summer niiiii-ghts!"

I'll Also Consider:

Extra Credit:

It's Back-to-School Time:

"a head, one bottom and a torso cannot possibly fly on its own."

Rockstar of the Week

Good Times!

Well-Well-Well:

Ooooo, This Must Totally Be My Dishy Day for Heat-Lamped Leftovers:

Ooooo, and Now a Bit of Stale 2nd-Hand Gosso:

"It's Just You and Me Now, Mr. Dog"

For All Those Fools Who Bought the Triplecast in 1992...

I'm Chanting as We Speak

The Survey Says

I Am Especially Enjoying:

And Speaking of VH1

Dear VH1:

Diamond Anniversary (for Your Cubic Zirconium Self)

Rockstar of the Week!

Just... No.

Rockstar of the Week

And, Hey, Some Dude Killed Some Other Dude with a Spoon.

Oh, Look: It's a Man Whose Tatooed Himself Like a Leopard...

Oh, Look: It's a Man Peeing Into a Box of Kittens.

Ah, the Irony of Now Having to Use Cigarettes as Currency...

"I wasnae old enough to remember but it wasnae a bird that shit against a wall and the sun hatched me!"

*Points and Laughs*

Rockstars of the Week

iBufoonery

Eurovision!

"Roses Smell Like Poo-poo-poo-poo"

Testing

Points and Laughs

Resurfaces