WTF?!

It's funny. I went to bed in Portland, Oregon and woke up in North Dakota. I don't know how it happened, and frankly I am not too thrilled about it. See, Snow is pretty and all, and I really like the effect it has on the ambient sound of the outdoors, all muffled and strapped together with pillows, but I was under the impression that we had an unspoken agreement-- that Snow would only put in appearances on the periphreals of wherever it was that I happened to be operating at the time. If I wanted a rendevous, got a hankering for frostbite and wet shoes, numb feet and a frozen nose, then I would drive the 1 hour to where Snow had its place. Today, Snow crossed the line.

So, forgive me while I become juvenile for a moment or two.

I give you the Fleshy Bird of "Go Back to North Dakota!" Snow!

I sully your Virginal Whiteness with the Urine of Cheap Beer and Spite, Snow. This is my town!


I Poop on you, Snow! You must leave me in Peace, for this is no place for you!

Now that that is out of my system, well, I suppose I have to find something else to curse. Sorry for the ass shot, everyone. You know the Donner Party would have done the same thing had they digital cameras and a blog as well.

I promise, next time, something a little more relevant to the Bigger Picture, if you will.

(Photos: David F.)
(Stunt ass: Will Conquest)
(Special thanks to Pabst Blue Ribbon, Polaroid, and my Uvula)

A small poem...

Actually, it wasn't meant to be a poem. Just something I jotted down on the fly. But I have yet to find a home for it so I offer it up as a sacrifice to the Demons of the Writer's Block.

(the following has no grounds in reality...)

("dot, dot, dots" hold a lot of weight in my reality)

(take that as you will)

Occasionally A Sentimental and Mildly Cliche Moment in the

Night Time is a Flash of Well Deserved Violence in Disguise, Delivered by a Girl Who

May Not Actually, Considering Recent Developments, Be Receiving that $4,000 Diamond Ring that Is Nestled Warmly in Your Coat Pocket

I thought I saw a shooting star,
but it was just your fist,

all pale and small

in the moonlight
arcing towards my head.
That’s the last thing I remember.

Thank you...

Thank you very much.

Is it wrong for a title to be longer than the actual piece?

To my dear readers...

-Uncle Jesse said...
Where are you Pinky? I miss your posts..


-J. Herzog said...
Yeah Pinky, some of us rely on you to give us your unique take on the world at large. Come back to us, we miss you.
I hope you didn't OD on tainted eggnog....

Friends, my two "fans," your calls for action warm my cockles. I have not disappeared nor, J., have I overdosed on taints.

Gross.

No, I am convalescing in San Diego, CA, learning all about this Sun thing again and really enjoying being able to go outdoors without having to bundle up for the arctic air. It's a joy to be able to go to a bar and not have anyone smoking in it.

I have spent the Holidays with a great friend and a fraction of her unnervingly functional family members. Well behaved children, Key Lime martinis, and at some point I agreed to let one of the kids shoot me in the ass with a paint-ball gun (see photo #2, notice the barrel in the right hand side). Luckily his aim sucked and he shot high with a diminished CO2 charge and the thick army jacket his dad loaned me to protect my clothes saved me from a welt. I was a bit disappointed as I really was just doing it to have a bruise worthy of a blog posting. No such luck.

Then there is beer, good times, a lot of music, lazy days of doing nothing and one unexpected near hurricane last night that had me marvelling at the tenacity of the root systems of these ubiquitous palm trees.

Good times, friends. I have had no reason to write anything as I have been without irritation or work woes. This vacation thing could be habit forming.

Don't fret though, loyal readers, Royale will be back soon enough. Until then, I repose and question the wisdom of living in the Pacific Northwest. This old body can't hang.

Stay strong, and thanks for the encouragement.

BORED AT WORK UPDATE, 2:23 PM

hours spent at work so far: seven hours, twenty-three minutes
seems like: five weeks of Christmas eves in a row, without the payoff of presents

time until I can leave: one hour, seven minutes remaining
seems like: a five week root canal, sans drugs, with the dentist asking a lot of questions that require more than a 'yes' or 'no' answer

I just ran 4 laps around the warehouse at top speed. Listened to 5 CDs and now can't decide if I need to listen to something quiet and slow or loud and pissed off. Johnny Cash isn't cutting it, I may try The Locust.
I am not loosing my mind…
I have lost it. It's nothing to be proud of, nothing to brag about to people who think you are a dolt for saying how crazy you perceive yourself to be. I'm not insane like "Ooo, I'll drink urine and go talk shit to a cop."
No, I'm insane like I've been locked in a fucking damp cellar for 15 years and have eaten nothing but wet dog food and whatever skittery things that have crawled across me in this deep, deep darkness.
Alone in this giant building on a Sunday… I've considered adopting a Sabbath of some sort if only to have an out when this weekend work comes up. The fun of blasting music and no supervision looses its charm quickly. I put 2000 sheets of paper in a copy machine that is getting increasingly difficult to work with and sit, and wait for it to eat and shit out its material. Then I stick it in a box, refill the machine, and all over again.
I've been doing this for 5 days now. Please Lord… no specific requests here. Just, "Please Lord…

Am I Missing Something?

The upside of moving into a house full of strangers is that there is a whole slew of new music to listen to. Luckily the girls I live with have awesome taste in music. I consider it a blessing that between them they have a large chunk of the Butthole Surfers catalog. Top that with their love for Sleep, Tom Waits, and not only owning and listening to CDs by Crash Worship, but actually having seen them. Things could be a lot worse. I don't think they could get better, as far as musical compatibility goes.
As a result, I get to listen to a bunch of stuff that I am not familiar with or have wanted to hear but just haven’t gotten around to, or, such as the case right now, music that I never listened to when it came around the first time but over time has developed a reputation as being groundbreaking or highly influential, therefore compelling me to give it a whirl if only to have ammunition when the time comes to shoot down the praise when some dick-neck starts spouting off. That said, I was perusing a small selection of CDs in one part of the house, I came across Liz Phair's Whip Smart. Now, the guitar-rock bomb that dropped in the early 90s was not my cup of tea. I was more into the grindcore/death metal frenzy that was competing unsuccessfully with brainless pop music movement and the aforementioned six-string backlash to its vapid existence.
Time has gone on and now, as an older and wiser person, I have learned to appreciate Napalm Death and Dinosaur Jr. I'm still wary of a lot of the big names from the era, like Soul Asylum, the Lemonheads, Sugar, as well as the lesser known but no less revered bands like Seaweed, Jawbreaker, and Toad the Wet Sprocket (one of these doesn't belong… if you don't know which one it is you are dumber than I am, and Jesus weeps for you as he orchestrates various genocides and SIDS deaths).
So, back to Whip Smart. I gave the disc two listens and I am now wondering—Is it just me, or is Liz Phair boring? This may seem sexist, and I don't intend it to come across that way, but how much of her enshrinement in the early indie scene is tied to the fact that she was a pretty attractive woman who played the guitar in a non-folk manner and had the habit of throwing the word "fuck" around and talked about sex in a frank and alluring manner? As far as I know, that was a rarity in semi-mainstream circles back then. If that is the case, and I am aware that life isn't a competition, but really, if that is the case, then PJ Harvey could snap her neck with one trebly guitar chord. The very existence of the Rid of Me album should have rendered Whip Smart totally null and void.
But that is probably not the case, and if we were going by that logic, then I would have to stop listening to the Thrills and move backwards to Rod Stewart who I'm pretty sure would have an airtight argument for suing them on the basis that their singer is Rod Stewart with better hair (not hard to do, admittedly). Though if Rod Stewart did enter a courtroom for this or any other musical argument, I would hope that any self-respecting judge would have him shot on sight for raping more than one Tom Waits song, but that's another rambling, loosely constructed story in itself.
Now, my knowledge of this era, this genre, is seriously lacking, so I'm looking to you, my two readers, for some input. I assume that Liz Phair made a splash precisely because she was a girl who didn't play the typical girl role. She came across like an approachable girl who a lot of guys would like to hang out with (OK, hump), and who a lot of girls could relate to as the Carole King model of womanhood had collapsed long before and not really been replaced with any accurate or valid representatives. The 80s by and large offered up nothing but a ton of albums that made legions of mid-to-late20s/ early 30s people feel good about doing coke and dancing to hideously mechanized and soulless tripe. Not much was being said to your average late-teen/early-20s kids that weren't into the questionable and occasionally laughable nihilism offered up by punk music.
So I can imagine when Ms. Phair came along a lot of people jumped in her direction, as they did with a lot of the bands of this moment, as they were voices that spoke to reality. Songs about everyday business, the shittiness and excellence of relationships, work, drugs… all of it must have been overwhelmingly refreshing because music was for the most part being made by real people again for the first time in awhile (who, strangely, later on, after the explosive success and visibility of Nirvana and Pearl Jam, would be attacked for being too mopey and depressing, which was what a lot of people this age tend to be, and paved the way for, among other regrettable backlashes against the backlash, the ska/punk debacle, music made by that mildly retarded kid who always got beat up in school).
Assuming that this were the case, I must go on record and say, for me anyway, that this has not aged well. As most things that are considered revolutionary or groundbreaking, they don't tend to age well as the machines that they were inadvertently or quite blatantly raging against tend to fade into history, more so than the reactions to it. Well, on a grand scale this doesn't hold water (hello, Jews, Rwanda, Atari Teenage Riot), but for minor things, like musical trends, I have no reason to believe that this isn't accurate.
I suppose I am guilty of this behavior now that I think about it, getting great satisfaction of something that was a pipe bomb in the face of majority musical consensus. For example, I still love Napalm Death's Scum album because nothing like it had existed prior to it. Same for Carcass' Reek of Putrefaction and Naked City (any release). Since I was closely tied to these episodes of musical evolution (an arguable assessment, I agree) I can relate to them. But as far as the Guitar Rock movement, it was peripheral at best for me so I can't see the draw.
And if the attraction was just to the jagged backlash to all things synthesized, then thank god it happened, but c'mon, the Brits trumped our guitar explosion with the placenta-ripping cacophony of Grindcore. Sure, like most things that become a genre, it is comprised of roughly 97 metric tons of garbage, but the first ones to do it, to push that envelope, well damn… they really pushed the envelope. Hell, they lit it on fire, shat on it, ate its shit stained ashes, then shit it out again and mailed the results to The Thompson Twins. Pack it up, Doctor, Doctor, your King For Just One Day request has expired.
But I can allow that it takes a sensitive ear (or one wracked with tinnitus) to appreciate songs like "Polluted Minds" and "Siege of Power" and when people question my love for Napalm Death I typically have to drop into a minor history lesson to justify it. I appreciate it from the POV of a serious musical paradigm shift, but also, fuck it, Scum and From Enslavement to Obliteration are awesome albums. Everything beyond the Lee Dorian years are, as far as I can tell, pretty useless. We'll leave it to some other metal apologist to argue that one.
When probed for answers about the longevity of the ghost of Liz Phair (as everyone seems to agree that her newest albums are soccer mom rock and are largely reviled, which is odd as her original fans are now, more than likely, soccer moms themselves. Or Wynona Ryder) I suppose that I would get the same sort of justification that I drop in regards to my fascination with early grindcore.
…
Shit. Here is the part when I totally forget why I am writing something, and how exactly I got to this point where I end up totally, mind-numbingly lost. I suck at staying on track AND at summing things up. If I had a dollar for every time I had to re-read something I was writing to figure out what the hell it is I was talking about, I could afford a plane ticket to visit the two people that read this crap, thereby encouraging me to waste precious gigabytes of some server in a distant land. I assume (maybe 'hope' is a better word) that this happens to a lot of people and that they never admit to it. I have to dig deep now for some off-the-cuff, slipshod summary. My fondness for dot, dot, dots can only take me so far
…
Oh yes, Liz Phair started this. I guess, if my previous assumptions are right in even the slightest respects, I understand why she has such clout. Those were rough and tumble times and there was a lot of disenfranchised people who just couldn't get behind Annie Lennox, whether as an Eurythmic or as a Diva. Ms. Phair was a godsend for a whole generation, I suppose and had I not been so pissed off at puberty and the dawning realization that life was going to get complicated with bills, jobs, relationships, and drugs I may have been able to find solace in the voice of Billy Corgan instead of Al Jourgensen.
Jesus, now that I just wrote that last sentence, about the growing awareness of life being a beautiful and delicate flower growing out of a mound of raw manure, I suppose all those bands were speaking directly to me and that by all rights I should have totally embraced this particular community.
But I didn't, and I don't. Sure, I can now admit that J. Mascus is a guitar genius who could, apparently without any effort, hide an awesome melody inside a sloppy tangle of noise, and others may follow for me. Someday I may be singing belated praise for Soul Asylum, but I don't get the feeling that Liz Phair will ever rise any further than a sign post on the treacherous and many-forked highway of music history. A lot of history fades away with little to no fanfare (Canudos, Julius and Ethel Rosenburg, The Great Space Coaster) but that doesn't make it any less important as it sits on the sidelines waiting for someone to unearth it and champion it, reanimate it for public appraisal once again. These days that resurrection usually comes in the form of jerky, low budget documentaries. I have no doubt Ms. Phair will return, in celluloid form (Jesus, I'm talking about her as if she's been dead for 100 years. She's like 35 or something. Life is cruel, and it isn't helped by dismissive assholes such as myself) or another medium. More power to her, I wish her the best because, unlike my feelings towards Hootie and the Blowfish, I wish her no ill will. I just don't get her.
I will say that I do like that line about the guy she met telling her he like to fuck backwards so they could watch TV. She had some good lines, I'll give her that. And as a co-worker I asked, who also couldn’t explain why he liked a few of her songs, he quoted a line from her song Flower:

I want to be your blow job queen.

Nuff said.

Snippet...

"The idea that truth has to fight for its life is a sad discovery. The idea that truth will not out, unless it is given a lot of help, is pretty upsetting."

-Douglas Hofstadter

Metamagical Themas

I have been reading this book for 2 years now, on and off, and I am totally enthralled with it but I can't understand more than 20% of what the guy is saying. I'm particularly fond of his essay on self-replicating and self-referential sentences, mainly cuz I am a word geek and also, to a larger extent, because I fully grasp the concept, thereby making myself feel smarter for no good reason.

Late Night Taco Trucks and a Band Named Faggot

So, once again, I am off to the well-lit and piss-stained kingdom of downtown to participate in a puppet show. How I became a rogue, blood-spotted, amateurish puppeteer is well beyond the grasp of my mental abilities. To put it simply, an old friend who happens to be a professional puppeteer has for one reason or another pulled me into his fold. He gave me a wooden therapist puppet which I was to lovingly ass-rape a disturbed adolescent puppet with in front of a room of tattooed, pierced, and black-clad people who for the most part displayed haircuts that would be better off referred to as cataclysmic mistakes.
So tonight, our second show, shadow puppets, spraying blood, and the public beheading of Donald Rumsfeld were on the slate for The Dictionary of Blood Puppet Theater. Things went off without a hitch and we settled in to watch Amps for Christ and a few other bands whose names I could not remember as I am not fluent in the diabolical arts of goth/industrial Latin phraseology. I was interested in seeing the last act, a band from Minnesota called Faggot. Their name, when I saw it on the flier (which is where I also found out that we were performing), caused me to laugh out loud. It was absurd and offensive, not to mention juvenile, and that is exactly where my heart is these days.
So I sat through 3 hours or so of parenthetically self-indulgent ($29 to the first person who can explain this term to me) music that is no doubt more entertaining to make than it is to listen to. I am guilty of this crime myself, and at one time wet my pants over the idea that the audience is laughably insignificant. In fact, I too have been in a fistful of bands who have for the most part been totally oblivious to the fact that there is a room full of people who would appreciate hearing something with some attention paid to the listener. But as I get older, and beer money becomes scarce, and my time more precious, and my hearing closer to disappearing forever, and my patience slimming down to a mere sliver of its former self, music like this by and large just wears on my nerves. I will give it credit for eschewing the verse/verse/chorus/verse/ chorus/chorus methodology, but that does not mean I want to stand against a brick wall in an unheated warehouse listening to it for hours on end.
So I left, took a break, my mood dire and not fit for public consumption. I walk over to one of the many late night food trucks that thankfully dot the Portland downtown area. These small converted trucks are a godsend to the drunks and mildly successful panhandlers that wander these streets and alleyways. This one, the yellow truck on Burnside, happens to be one of my favorites, making some of the best tacos I’ve ever had. The man inside is happy to see a customer, and he tells me he is doing some heavy duty cleaning because business is slow. This makes me question the motivations of the universe as the food here is so good and so cheap that he should have a line stretching off into the horizon.
But there is no justice, and I fear he will fade away, only to be replaced by another small vehicle peddling orgasmic flavors and carbs over nourishment. He calls me miho and talks as though we have known each other for years and this makes my mood inch up a notch or two. I stand aside and wait as he busies himself with whatever it is he has to do to create my food. A prettier than average girl is making her way across the street towards the truck, my sanctuary from humanity. She is attractive in a non-intimidating way, someone who probably doesn’t need to spend 12 hours prepping in the bathroom before going out. She is just a normal, attractive human being.
Now, I know that I had hoped people would flock to this particular truck and begin throwing money about, but I forgot to add that I would like for them to wait until I was gone.
No such luck.
She walks up, stands by me, and orders her food as I try to look anywhere else but at this moment in time. But I can’t drift away as I have food on the way, so we are standing there, two strangers in a lonely city, late at night, with supernaturally similar desires and hunger pangs that brought us to this same not-so-desolate location, for the same reasons. That alone would be enough reason to say something to one another. Hurray for solidarity! Call it coincidence, synchronicity, chaoism, whatever.
While looking this way and that, I notice she is doing the same, with an expectancy in her face. Nothing serious, just a, "Hey, say something. We’ve got nothing else to do." Our eyes clash in the ether once or twice, clanking silently as sightlines collide.
All I wanted was a taco and some alone time. I am aware that there is a beer or 2 and 30 ounces of coffee in me, and that my mood is not quite black, but definitely a greyish color, but I know that this just isn’t some slight intoxication impression. Words are expected to be exchanged, and I’ve got nothing. And upon realizing this it also dawns on me that this is getting carried too far in my head, one of those times when I wonder if this is a natural human condition, this sporadic and intense aversion to human contact, or if I am in the running for a long term prescription to one of those magic medicines that I see advertised in shitty magazines.
I decide it is normal. I base this on no solid science, but out of sheer laziness. The idea of trying to maintain a non-recreational pill regimen is beyond my grasp.
If you weren’t aware of it, or hadn’t noticed, I was born with spinal meningitis that almost killed me and a serious social-skill deficiency that promises to finish the job, to succeed where the meningitis had failed. I can usually be civil and sincere, crack wise and fumble with polite smiles and generally sub-par small talk, but during times like this, when my mind is all akimbo, I seize up and hope for an apocalypse to distract me from the heartbreaking fact that I am socially retarded.
My food comes, on a plate as I had requested, and I stand at the small table (where the hell are the chairs?) and eat quickly. Happily, the prettier than average girl gives up on trying to engage me in conversation and takes up with the proprietor. He is en forme, and I find that she has wit and charm that, had I been in a normal mood, still would not have been able to keep up with. I don’t know why, but this realization makes me feel better about myself.
I finish eating and head back to the club, well fed and lips on fire from some potent homemade salsa. I pass 4 men sleeping in doorways, one man who I suspect is going to murder me, and 47 well dressed people standing in line for a club that I have absolutely no desire to enter.
Back to our club and Faggot is setting up. 3 men in assless chaps and speedos are setting up equipment. Bass, drums, and guitar. These 3 elements give me a modicum of hope that I will at the very least be hearing a song before the night is over, no matter how rudimentary. Anything to make up for the feedback drones and insistent knob twiddlings that have no discernable effect on the wall of hell that is dumping out of the speakers.
Finally the band takes the stage. The aforementioned three men who have the hair and mustaches of an Mississippi Creedence cover band are barely dressed and driving me to assume that with the images of their skinny mono-asses and inner thigh sideburns, misshapen and well advertised packages dancing through my head that I will not be having any ‘alone’ time when I return home. Imagine a naked, hungover, and coked-out Doug Clifford that hadn’t slept or trimmed his mustache for about a week. That’s what I was looking at. Then, kind of thankfully, four girls come out, similarly attired, with various words written across their lower backs and exposed midriffs: slut, AIDS, faggot, etc.
All but one of the girls are close to appearing malnourished and obviously are actively boycotting hair stylists and all related hair-care products. One girl though is a bit meaty. I remember her from the bathroom line. She entered the queue behind me and uttered a "Jesus" at the amount of people waiting for one toilet. She caught my eye as I was doing all I could to keep the two pints of urine I was struggling with from blowing out all over the floor and wall. She looked normal then, but backstage had transformed into a go-go ho with something to the effect of "More Fun" written on her backside and offensively teased hair that reached for the sky in a manner that was not inspirational.
But even with that un-make-over, that deconstruction, she was still cute.
Then the band started and as far as I could tell the only words to the first song were, "Fuck you." I was not intrigued. The second song started and I believe all they said was something about wanting or being on drugs. The music was rote gutter punk tripe that never really had a heyday and the vocals were nothing to keep me interested. They were billed degenerate scum punk or some such business. I’m all for degenerates, and scum, and punk even, but this particular recipe had no effect on the palate so I up and left. The only thing I could give them was that they weren’t putting on a show... I sensed no irony. This was who they were, fucked-up and tore-up. Props for authenticity.
That said I was not elated as I had just spent five hours of waiting around to see a cheap GG Allen sideshow with go-go dancers and no blood, shit, or hepatitis..
I would allow that if I were hanging out with them, snorting coke out of the dancers cleavage and sucking whiskey from their belly buttons, screaming along to lyrics written by maladjusted 14 year old, that they would be the best band in the world. But it gets back to what I said earlier, about some things being more interesting for the creator than the observer. A lot of art and music falls into this category and I don’t begrudge the creators their happiness. It’s awesome to be able to get paid in money, drugs, or free beer to be obnoxious, and there are plenty of people who can sit through a show like this and think it is the best thing since internet porn, but sadly, at this point in time, I haven’t the patience.
And that’s where I am. I won’t say that the whole night was a wash, because it wasn’t. Indeed, any night that I can sum up with the title of "Late night taco trucks and a band called Faggot" is undeniably an awesome night. And knowing that much put me back in good spirits, on top of the world, and back at home, late at night, with a much loved album on the stereo, rain on the skylight, beer in the liver, and these keys at my fingers...11/26/2006- 3:05 AM

Work Journal, 11/30/2006- 10:10 AM

Are you there God? It’s me, Margaret. I am bored as hell. I have played 67 games of Freecell in the past 2 days while at work. There is nothing, absolutely nothing to do. I know that it sounds great to be able to get paid $12 an hour to sit and twiddle thumbs, listen to the iPOD, drink hundreds of cups of coffee, but really it is driving me overwhelmingly batty. I can’t handle it any more. I realize that by bringing this up, you may be tempted to kill me or someone I love in a particularly hideous fashion, or drop an anvil on my head, or have some maniac run in with a machete and hack one or both of my legs off before taking a bloody, pin-worm infested shit on my face as I lie there bleeding, crying, and cursing you, but that’s not necessary. I was just wondering if you could send some work my way before I completely loose it. Just some POD items, or a Quickturn job… something that will get me to the end of this day. Yesterday I spent 3 hours in a texting discussion with Dr. Avalanche about the merits and facets of Tony Danza’s longevity. I peed 12 times, fell asleep at my desk for what I believe was no more than 2 minutes, though it could have been 2 hours and I doubt anyone would have noticed. I made a fleet of paper airplanes using the templates in Microsoft Word. I walked 3 laps around the warehouse pretending to be looking for something that had no name and in actuality never existed. I wrote an apology e-mail to my sister after she called me a prick in response to a characteristically off the cuff message I sent her about not sending me forwards. I put myself into 4 different moods one after the other just to see if I could (I used the iPOD for motivation: Anger (Unsane), Sadness (The Cure), Happiness (Madness), and Insanity (Boredoms), the final being the easiest considering I’m barely holding on at this point what with all the coffee and inactivity). I feel like one of those otters at the zoo that go nuts and run back and forth in their cage wearing a rut in the concrete floor.
So far today I have checked my e-mail 13 times, made 2 pots of coffee, and gone to the bathroom 4 times (I’ve only been here for 2 hours and 45 minutes). I marked up a printed out spreadsheet with pens and highlighters and opened said spreadsheet so that if anyone comes in I can pretend like I am studiously reworking my inventory list. I have wandered out and read every word in the main and metro sections of the newspaper, which is going to make my lunch break pretty boring. I texted reworked Alabama lyrics to my mom in an attempt to mock her for liking ‘Oakey’ music now after she such a vociferous opponent of it for the first 19 years of my life. She was not amused. Later on in the afternoon I plan to vacuum the insides of the copy machines, as the paper dust has been building up, but I’m waiting for someone to notice I haven’t done anything for hours before I start in the hopes of being able to drag it out until 3:30.
This is killing me…

The End is NIGH!

Today the New York Times announced that Tony Danza will be stepping into the role of Max Bialystock in Mel Brooks’ work of madcap genius The Producers.
Now, I have announced this before, either through a case of mistaken identification or through heavily caffeinated hyperbole, but this time it is true... the 7th Seal is set to snap like a new born kitten’s spine under the weight of a size 15 steel-toed work boot. As soon as Tony takes the stage for the first time, all lines will be drowned out by Earth shattering Trumpet Blasts, the Thundering Hooves of Pestilence, Famine...K-Fed...? The WB?
Whoever it is, things will decline quickly and we will be bathing in the blood of our loved ones, and burning in eternal torment.
Of course, I could be exaggerating. I may merely be a panicky old lady with a penchant for Pop Culture Idolatry (Thou Shalt Not Defile the Throne of Mostel!). If this is true, and the show does go on, Apocalypse-free, then another issue comes to mind.
I am wondering if Mr. Danza is capable of playing a character whose name is not... Tony. As far as I can remember, and granted my knowledge in the area is far from extensive, for every semi-successful and flat-out bomb he has ever had his hand in, his name has been Tony. That doesn’t go very far in dispelling my notion that he is, though probably a good guy, nothing but a bone-headed Italian stereotype character.
I brought this up to my good friend and prolific texting partner Dr. Avalanche and he pointed out that Tony may have not been named Tony in the film "She’s Out of Control" with Amy Dolenz (daughter of greatest drummer in the world Mickey Dolenz).
First and foremost I was appalled at his ability to recall this ridiculous bit of Shit-Cinema trivia without having to resort to a Google search. This from a man who could, in great detail and plied with whatever alcohol or pills you could pilfer from Grandma, go on at great length about the merits of... well, I don’t know... something about e.e. cummings, Tom Brokaw, and/or Miles Davis’ "In a Silent Way" album.
What I am trying to say is that he is an incredibly intelligent fellow who never ceases to make me feel stupid or shame me every time I open my mouth (as an aside, it is truly unfortunate that his parents opted to name him after the Sisters of Mercy’s drum machine). All of these smarts and then he can pull up a fucking AMY DOLENZ/ TONY DANZA reference, right out of the ether (a.k.a. his ass), like it’s nothing. Times like that I wonder if he isn’t some sort of idiot savant. As a defense he claims that he owns "She’s Out of Control" on DVD, the Criterion Collection no less, and that he got it from a well-meaning yet insane aunt and he hadn’t gotten around to selling it yet. As they say in places where people with all of their teeth are considered ‘show-offs’: That Dog Don’t Hunt.
But that is why I love him. Let’s just hope that this praise from such an esteemed source (insert mocking laughter) doesn’t go to his head.
So, with this new question as to whether or not Tony Danza has ever been able to answer to another name other than Tony, I turned to my good friends at www.IMDB.com for some answers. Briefly, as my battery is about to die and I forgot my cord, here’s what I found.
He has appeared in roughly 27 Films, a lot of them being the cataclysmically retarded and always disappointing MADE FOR TV movies (that is not counting the phenomenal "The Day After" which scarred me for life... and I only saw the previews as a child). He has also been in a ton of TV series episodes. Only in 4 roles, apparently the only 4 I’ve ever seen, has his name been Tony. Though there was one Tommy and one New York Cab Driver. Those must count for something.
So I stand corrected.
Tony, I apologize for the assumption that you can only answer to the name Tony, regardless of the role (imagine if I was right though, and he was cast in some Shakespearian gibberish... wait, were there Tonys (Tonies?) back then?).
That said, Mr. Danza, take heed: I still insist that the world will end if you do not back out of this engagement in The Producers. Nature will not abide.
(By the way, his name was Doug, Doug Simpson, in "She’s Out of Control.")

I hate Dave Eggers!

"Our mouths are all over each other. All the talk of plans and new worlds... We sit upright as we kiss, and at first we kiss like friends, with our eyes open, almost laughing. But as our hands start moving, we begin to believe, and our eyes close, and our heads turn this way and that, we’re kissing each other but so much more, kissing like warriors saving the world, at the end of the movie, the last two, the only two who can save everything– and because we are too post-drunk tired to keep our heads upright with our eyes shut, we recline, and soon the towel underneath Meredith is just a crooked snakeskin and we have taken off our pants, the air cool where we are now bare. And sex, inevitable, will make us more powerful. A manifesto consummated under this great sky, the approval of the pounding sea– "
-Dave Eggers
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

It was reported that, upon reading this passage, Pinky Royale exclaimed:
"Huh? Whu..? Are you fucking kidding me?!"
S/he then threw arms up to the sky and yelled:
"That’s it, I’m never writing another word again! Ever!"

The Liver Weeps...

The other night was a friend’s birthday, we’ll call her Chanth. Yes, Chanth will do nicely.
Anyway, a few of us went over for a mellow dinner and high powered and horribly offensive B.S. session. Chanth’s roomie, we’ll call her Leen, had decided to make her a birthday shot, something called a Disco Ball. She had found it in some goddamned book, Miss Charming’s Book of CRAZY Cocktails. "Over 200 Outrageous Drink Recipes to Turn Any Night into a Party." In reality it is full of a bunch of bullshit drinks christened with names that have little or nothing to do with what they are for the most part. How a bunch of sugary, vomit-inducing liquors combined in a martini glass and called a Tom Cruise are in any way related to anything, to any facet of Tom Cruise is beyond me.
Anyhoo, I’ll save the book review for another time (don’t hold your breath). The Disco Ball was a shot of Goldschlager thrown back with a mouthful of Pop Rocks. I admit I was intrigued but Leen only shoplifted 2 airplane bottles of the ‘Schlag so it was just gonna be her and Chanth. The drinks didn’t go down smooth. Chanth only dropped about half of her shot (she’s not much of a drinker) and the Pop Rocks were killing her, all watery eyes and exploding mouth. It didn’t look fun.
Eventually they got the cursed drinks down and I believe a vow was made to never make a Disco Ball again. Happy Birthday, next year we drink Draino!
I was in the mood so I told Leen to go into the kitchen and make me a dare shot with the tequila she had and whatever she had lying around. I know she has a cruel streak and I was feeling like being punished. I sucked Chanth’s boyfriend (BF) into my self-destructive tendencies and called for 2. Leen disappeared, no doubt dredging up a bunch of shit she probably had every right to hate me for but had never acted on. Now was her opportunity to exact her revenge. She disappeared for a few minutes, malicious giggles fluttering from the kitchen. She came back and handed me a shot glass filled with a dark, milky brown substance. BF’s shot was a milky white substance. I knew that sniffing the contents would present aromas that would more than likely hold me up from just drinking the cur’sed concoction. I figured she wouldn’t actually try to kill me. I was pretty confident that she didn’t have any ipecac in the house, so all this really would be was gross at best, revolting at worst.
I threw it back and was viciously kicked by:
A) cheap tequila
B) lots and lots of...MSG
Jesus, it sucked.
BF shot his and things teetered on vomit for a tense few minutes. He wasn’t as much of a team player as I had thought and looked as though this type of game was not something he was planning on partaking in ever again.
It’s hard for me to find friends who will destroy themselves with me in juvenile and disgusting ways.
After his eyes stopped watering and the pinched, puckered look of disgust and loathing left his face we were clued in by Leen as to what it was we had just swallowed.
I had tequila and a bullion cube–Maagi to be specific, for old times sake (oh Senegal, how we miss you at the strangest of times). Gross, sure, but nothing I couldn’t handle. Sure I wouldn’t order it in a bar but it sure beat lung butter and Crisco mixed with tequila.
BF on the other hand, and to everyone’s surprise, got the shitty end of the stick by group consensus. His was tequila and oyster juice. That is just rude. Once you start mixing fish products into drinks I think a serious and incredibly precise line has been crossed.
What I learned, I suppose, is that Leen doesn’t hate me as much as I thought she did, and that Chanth’s boyfriend has been leaving the toilet seat up or something of the sort to incur her wrath.
On a related note, back in August it was Leen’s birthday. Once again, alcohol was involved. We went out for buffalo wings then came back to the house to drink a box of PBR in cans (when you have a lot of guests, you gotta go cheap. I hide the good beer in the toilet tank when people come over). Someone... OK... I got the bright idea to shotgun the cans for "old times sake." Unfortunately the times were so old that no one really remembered how to do it.
Was it necessary to shake the can?
Did you just stab it and suck?
Did you have to pop the top on the can before the stabbing?
After?
Did it all shoot out or did you have to suck or squeeze the can?
The first thing we had to do was find the proper stabbing tools. I had a couple of screw drivers, a pocket knife and some thumbtacks. The tacks were deemed by all present as too small, so the screwdrivers and knife were selected.
People choose their own preferences. BF (OK, I suppose I take it back. He is a sport. He just hates oyster juice) opted to shake the can while the rest of us just went for the stab, open, and suck, squeeze, whatever technique.
It was not a graceful scene.
A handful of what some would refer to as adults (27-32) spraying beer all over the place and sucking it out of a hideous wound inflicted on an innocent can. We were like vampires at a Born Again Virgin Jamboree...? (Sorry. I suck at analogies.)
The beer did not, as we were expecting, come spraying out like a punctured artery. No, after the initial spray that covered everyone and everything it just dribbled down shirt-fronts and breasts and wasn’t all that eager to leave the cylindrical and asinine confines of the Tall Can (oh, the Tall, a harbinger of good times, bloody knuckles, and more often than not, a wicked hangover). We ended up having to squeeze them dry-ish. Strangely, with a hole popped in the bottom it was not that easy to get all of the beer out. I suppose we just got impatient at the suckling of the cans like tin teats, so they were thrown with great ceremony and fanfare over shoulders, and new beers were opened, the proper way, and nursed(ish) for the duration of the night.
This wasn’t really a new low, just an old low revisited. It’s funny how something that was so fun as a teen turns over the years into something so wasteful and ridiculous. You begin to realize later on down the road how much of being a teen was sheer spectacle, practiced or demonstrated to get just a little more attention from people who will later end up dead, in jail, or long forgotten.
Praise be to Allah that we never have to go through that disaster again.
But the night goes on, all drunk and lazy-eyed, and terrible things fall from mouths that were born innocent, imbued with hopes of greatness by parents who would shake their heads sadly if they were to witness this, us, all of it.

Bar Journal, 2006

:All drunk and solitary on a stool, indulging in far too many $2 baby pitchers of PBR that taste uncomfortably like hot dog water.
:Unluckily the low levels in the bank account dictate that I have limited choices of the nation’s brews on this fine and crooked night.
:Luckily after 2 pitchers the taste buds retract into some heretofore unnamed sheath system to escape the hideous flavor, the cheap and potentially carcinogenic carbonation.
All of my energy is concentrated on avoiding looking at the TVs that hang on either side of the bar. The screen to the right is playing some absurd and stereotypically homoerotic sport, and the one to the left is subjecting us to some cur’sed Sam Neil movie that, under normal circumstances, would compel me to go and do something else, like turn the channel, walk away, or shave my kneecaps off with a planer.
But those are not viable options, and the dual assault of the Cyclopean beasts are proving to be more than I can handle. The left TV is muted and in spite of that, or thanks to it, I am getting into the plot of the film, and to the right, with no idea which teams are playing, where they are, and what their motivations are, I am rooting for the maroon uniforms. My attention is broken only to order another beer or look towards the jukebox and nod approvingly when Neil Diamond comes on (did I put that in? Maybe. Probably. Jesus, gotta ease up on the drinks. What am punishing myself for?).
Give me any room in the world with 15 people in it and I bet $10 that if you play "Sweet Caroline" at LEAST 6 of them will drop whatever it is they are doing or saying and sing the "BAH, BAH, BAH" part (Sweet Caroline, BAH, BAH, BAH, Good times never seemed so good!). I stand by that. Go ahead, challenge me.
It’s a slow night at the bar. It’s always a slow night here. That’s why I like this place. No matter what is going on in town, no matter how packed all the other bars are, this one can always be counted on to be quiet. The bartender leans lazily behind the counter smoking a cigarette, watching the TV with about as much energy as I am.
What is she thinking?
Does she hate everyone here?
She seems nice enough. This is the point of intoxication when I have to make a concentrated effort to not end up unconsciously gazing at a woman who has caught my eye. It’s not that I’m particularly lecherous, I just take a glance and then my mind wanders to related or ridiculously unrelated subjects leaving my eyes and face pointed in such a direction that I’m surprised it hasn’t been kicked sideways and inside-out yet.
This lady, the provider of my drinks, the collector of my $1 tips, she has got maybe 3 good years left in her if she leaves tonight... right this instant.
10 minutes ago under optimum circumstances.
She is attractive, but she was hot, and you can see the rapidly forming age lines becoming deeper with every drag, with every beer served up. She’s got 30 years under her black studded belt, but spending her nights in this hermetically sealed chamber of smoke, alcohol, gamblers (the lotto machines are never empty) and alcoholics will push her up to 65 by the time she’s 35. The clock is spinning faster for her than for other people that work in places that see sunlight, fresh air, hope, and dreams. I want to grab her by the arm and guide her forcefully, carefully out the door and send her to a place where whatever verve she was born with can sync back up with her for her remaining years. Because she is cute in a "capable of kicking my ass" kind of way and no one likes to see a rose covered in shit.
Christ, here we go. Look, here’s how it is:
Men, when drunk, think of only one or two things (self-pity isn’t a thought but an involuntary program like blood circulation and REM sleep, so it doesn’t qualify as a thought). Mainly, they think about sex, which is funny because the only thing sadder, sexually speaking, than a drunk man trying to perform is... well, nothing. That is actually the saddest thing in the world. Granted, that is a coming from the POV of a man, but I think a lot of women would agree with me, as would all men, when I say that it would be easier to laugh at a baby cocker spaniel being beaten to death with a claw hammer than it would be to watch a drunk man pull off half the shit his brain tells him he can do.
But there goes my brain, not planning anything, just wondering things.
How is she in bed? Loud? Bored? Violent? Tender?
No, not tender.
She might be verbally abusive, in a challenging way. It all ends with a sigh and a cigarette. I have a plan to never be with a person who smokes in bed. The slothful, lazy cunt in me considers the bed a sacred placed and stinking it up with cigarettes seems sacrilegious. It’s probably the only thing I consider holy, a bed. Draw your own conclusions from that bit of Royale trivia if you are so inclined.
I wonder these things about a lot of random people, what they are like during the sex act. People on the bus... well, mainly people on the bus since that’s where I spend a lot of my time going to or from work. Excitement is my middle name. I wonder this about some friends as well, but not all of them (don’t freak out, you’re not one of them, unless you feel slighted by the exclusion, then I know all about that thing with the knitting needles and the dog biscuits, I know you make a high pitched trilling noise during orgasm and are unbelievably ticklish for the first 20 seconds post-love explosion).
So I sit and wander through hazy, sometimes sexual, but usually idiotic and cluttered hallways of my mind so very thankful of the fact that no matter how under the influence I get I know better than to stray outside of basic pleasantries that relate to ordering beers or saying, "Sorry, I don’t smoke." Don’t try to be charming or funny or engaging. Just sit there and keep on drinking, dwelling on the void, looking at some fixed anonymous point until that silent alarm goes off inside the brain that tells you to up and go home, the night is done. Unfortunately that alarm hasn’t worked for me, ever, so last call is announced and I drink up, leave another $2 tip for good measure, zip up the sweatshirt against the harsh Portland night and head home.