Thank Odin It's Friday

The Final Chapter

2007-04-04T23:05:00.000-07:00

This post will officially wrap up my critically acclaimed & much ballyhooed web log. Fear not, loyal adherents; even as we speak, a new, super-sophisticated blog is being fabricated that will make this trite technological tome an ancient dinosaur of the past. Rather than focus my creative output on grousing & kvetching, I've decided to steer things more in the direction of a "day-in-the-life" series of dispatches.

Think Harvey Pekar meets Hunter S. Thompson. My new blog won't be anything like that, but it's a funny concept if you think about it.

So for all of you out there who ever wondered what it's like, day in & day out, to walk a mile in my clearance-sale shoes, I say this: brace yourself! Steve Martin said it best..."Comedy is not always pretty".

"Time enough at last!"

2007-02-01T22:12:00.000-08:00

Class is in session, people! Let's all read through these quaint song lyrics & see how I was able to score in the 99th percentile on the vobulary section of the State of California's annual standardized tests for grades K-12...by looking up every word I didn't know in the lyrics of the three albums that constitute Bad Religion's "classic" period. Well, that & reading like I was that guy on The Twilight Zone.

"1,000 More Fools"
I heard them say that the meek shall reign on earth,
Phantasmal myriads of sane bucolic birth.
I've seen the rapture in a starving baby's eyes,
Inchoate beatitude, the Lord of the Flies.
So what does it mean when your mind starts to stray? Kaleidoscoping images of love on the way.
Brother you'd better get down on your knees and pray. 1,000 more fools are being born every fucking day.
They try to tell me that the lamb is on the way,
With microwave transmissions they bombard us every day.
The masses are obsequious, contented in their sleep.
The vortex of their minds ensconsed within the murky deep.
So what does it mean when your mind starts to stray? Kaleidoscoping images of love on the way.
Brother you'd better get down on your knees and pray. 1,000 more fools are being born every fucking day.

"Get Off"
lascivious, it's all that i can think of as i drag my feet, searching like Diogenes,
dangerous, the adjectives of the decade and of your alluring intricacies,
i can see your green-screen mentality and i feel the sting of its consequence,
and i know i shouldn't but it's too much to ignore, an emotion i deplore,
every time i look at you, i just want to do it, i can clench my fist right through it but i just want to get off,
rectilinear, this direction we've been heading never realizing we are on a runaway machine, angular, the momentum that does turn us one step further on our ladder, one more turn toward the east,
yes i realize your green-screen mentality and i know it's shared by many more,
i know it's quite impossible but i'm damned to find a way to revolve the other way,
every time i scrutinize i just say "screw it",we're on a ride down a blind conduit and i just want to get off

"I Want To Conquer The World"
Hey Brother Christian with your high and might errand,Your actions speak so loud, I can't hear a word you're saying.
Hey Sister Bleeding Heart with all of your compassion,Your labors soothe the hurt but can't assuage temptation.
Hey man of science with your perfect rules of measure,Can you improve this place with the data that you gather?
Hey Mother Mercy can your loins bear fruit forever?Is your fecundity a trammel or a treasure?And I want to conquer the world,
Give all the idiots a brand new religion,
Put an end to poverty, uncleanliness and toil,
Promote equality in all my decisions
With a quick wink of the eye, And a "God you must be joking!"
Hey Mr. Diplomat with your worldly aspirations,Did you see the children cry when you left them at the station?
Hey moral soldier you've got righteous proclamation,And precious tomes to fuel your pulpy conflagrations.
And I want to conquer the world,
Give all the idiots a brand new religion,
Put an end to poverty, uncleanliness and toil,
Promote equality in all of my decisions
I want to conquer the world,
Expose the culprits and feed them to the children,
I'll do away with air pollution and then all save the whales,
We'll have peace on earth and global communion.
I want to conquer the world!

OCD in the 323

2007-02-01T21:20:00.000-08:00

When I was just a wee lad, knee-high to a grasshopper, I had a hang-up where if I touched something accidentally (like bumping my foot on a chair-leg, or brushing against a door-jamb as I walked through) I had make sure I touched it with the same body part three more times. That's four times total. Within a year, this little pecadillo faded away into memory.

But it was replaced by an uncomfortable preoccupation with not being turned around. This one's a little harder to explain; if I were to turn to my left, & keep turning until I was facing forward again, I would become extremely uncomfortable until I turned all the way around to my right & was subsequently re-aligned, or untangled, or whatever the hell I was. That one took a while be over & done with. But eventually it was a thing of the past.

Then I started up with something that still has me in it's grip, although in recent years it's been notably toned down. I started checking things. First it was the doors. I wanted to make sure they were closed all the way, & locked. No biggie, right? I was just being safety-conscious, right? It was a strange day when I mustered the lucidity to realize that getting up in the night to unlock & relock the door several times wasn't the standard fare for people in their early twenties. The point was driven home when I found myself checking the stove afterwards. Standing there in my dark & dirty kitchen, staring at the blue flames of the burners, turning them on & off, leaning down to see if I could smell gas, I knew that what I was doing was, in a word, STUPID...so why did I keep doing it?

And why do I check the front door now, sometimes unlocking & locking it until I like the way the click sounds. Sometimes I get out of my car again & re-check just to be sure. And sometimes I get halfway from my parking spot to work & have to go back & check if my car doors are locked. If it rains, I fight, I mean FIGHT, to keep from walking down to see if I left the windows of my truck open.

The isolated instances in all these years when I discovered an unlocked door made it all worth it.

Another little trick is setting the alarm clock so the minutes add up the hour. I know that sounds a bit Dali-esque, but it makes perfect sense upon cloder examination. Let's say it's 8:17. There! 1 & 7 add up to 8. What better time to get up? Or let's say you want to beat traffic. Well, how about getting up at 7:43? Or 7:34? Or even 6:51? I've tried to re-set my girlfriend's alarm clock this way but she's on to me. Hey, it used to be a lot worse...I used to only be able to get out of bed when the numbers added up.

Just for giggles, I did a perfunctory look-up online & found a self-administered test...the Yale-Brown Obsessive Compulsive Scale (Y-BOCS) that kindly explained to me that I was most likely experiencing "moderate" OCD. Now, let me be honest with you, dear reader, & admit that I probably would have scored lower, or "mild", but I didn't like the way it looked when I filled in the answer-bubbles that way.

That can't be a good sign.

I know I've only relayed the "compulsive" aspect of this little merry-go-round. I'll save the "obsessive" for a dark & stormy night. I mean, if I could just write about it here like it was no big deal, I wouldn't have to run around checking things & futzing with 'em like a freakin' maniac, now would I?

Poop & the world poops with you.

2007-01-10T16:39:00.000-08:00

Let me start this post where the last one left off, much like the 1st track on Mayhem’s “Grand Declaration of War” starts with the exact same guitar riff that wraps up the last track on their previous EP, “Wolf’s Lair Abyss”.

I shouldn’t be surprised that I’m already logging some potty time, what with all the vegetables & fiber. But one thing that I’ve learned about myself is that when I’m dropping the kids off at the pool, privacy is a beautiful thing. I dunno why…maybe I’m maladjusted or self-conscious or neurotic or whatever, but it really puts a crimp in my style when someone else is moving their bowels less than 3 feet away from me. Seeing their feet brings their presence to the forefront of my awareness & I have to dig deep & focus on the task at hand, or else I’ll spend all day in the damn latrine.

And let me ask you, friends & faithful readers, who in the hell talks on their cellphone while they’re taking a dump?! I can see talking on the phone while you take a leak…AT HOME. In fact, I’ve done it a few times in my younger days when the steady intake of beer dictated several bathroom breaks during the course of a normal telephone conversation. But to be grunting & groaning & befouling the communal air of those around you (apparently when it comes to the courtesy flush I’m the Last of the Mohicans), then to take a call & carry on a conversation…it’s beyond the grasp of my diet-enfeebled mind.

Now, I know I’ve discussed reading on the toilet, but the difference is that reading is a quiet, solitary activity. Unless you’re reading aloud to someone. That’s an idea…I should bring a book to the john @ work & start reading out loud to myself. I’m wrapping up the 1st volume of the complete Sherlock Holmes stories; think that’s too incisive for the men’s room crowd? Might wanna start them off with something a bit more pedestrian, like Grisham’s latest smattering of legal claptrap.

Health-nuts & dingle-berries

2007-01-09T15:07:00.000-08:00

Back to Phase 1 of the SouthBeachDiet...except I’m still eating fruit & oatmeal for breakfast. I’m trying to get down to 160-165lbs. My strategy for keeping hydrated is drinking a quart of SmartWater (makes Evian taste like donkey-piss) before lunch, then refilling the bottle at work after lunch. The water cooler here dispenses something akin to recycled pond-water, but adding a dash of powdered CrystalLite nudges it towards potability. I grabbed a couple psyllium-husk fortified dried-fruit bars at Trader Joes too, we’ll see how disastrous the results are. Speaking of Trader Joe’s, a little while ago, this blogger & his significant other split the cost of some greeny-green pills (I think their official name is “Green Life” or “Live Green” or “Living la vida verde”) from their vitamin aisle. I spotted blue-green algae” & dried spinach on their ingredient list & knew I had to try ‘em…those are two key ingredients in “Life Force”, a supplement endorsed by Randy Couture. Good enough for the first man to win titles in two UFC weight-divisions, good enough for me.

Warning: the next sentence is disgusting.

Using some hard-learned foresight, I picked up some Charmin’ wet-wipes from Target in case I have any trouble smoothly processing some of the culinary joys Phase 1 has to offer.

Marquis of Queensbury Spin Cycle

2007-01-08T16:22:00.000-08:00

Conversation between an old black man & your humble narrator at the laundromat, once he saw I was reading “TapouT” magazine:

OBM: “You know when De LaHoya’s fighting?”
YHN: “Huh?”
OBM: “You know when De LaHoya’s fighting?”
YHN: “Naw.”
OBM: “He’s fighting this month though, right?”
YHN: “Yeah, I think he is.”
OBM: “He’s getting up there in years, but he can still make it to the bank.”
YHN: “Yep. He owns the company, right?”
OBM: “That’s right. Even when he lose, he win.”
YHN: “He still needs to go down in weight. Not up.”
OBM: “Oh hell no. There’s nothing for him up there. You seen Rocky yet?”
YHN: “Yep, that’s what I’m talking about.”

21-haiku salute to Gerald Ford.

2006-12-27T17:26:00.000-08:00

Without any votes
You blundered into power,
A would-be fascist.

The road to DC
Is too oft traveled by fools,
Clumsy & righteous.

After Watergate
Nixon called in a favor.
“I beg your pardon?”

At Hell’s seventh hole
The Devil is teeing off
Heads up, Mr. Ford!

Look into his eyes,
The true window to the soul.
Still I see nothing.

Hey that reminds me…
Dubya wasn’t elected
And neither were you.

Another one down,
And another library
Named after a fool.

The road to Heaven
Can be a difficult one
Whoops, you tripped & fell.

Commander-in-chief;
Cerberus fast approaches
Nipping at your heels.

Plants die in winter.
Elections in November.
Ford met us halfway.

The truth sets us free.
And you, you ignoramus,
You set Nixon free.

You were MVP
And part of the GOP;
So long, SOB.

The funny part is
You were always dead to us,
We who choose to vote.

The world keeps burning,
Young soldiers keep on dying.
No one will miss you.

Another dead jock.
Say hi to Ty Cobb for us
When you meet in Hell.

I have to wonder
If you knew how to spell it;
d-e-m-o-c-r-a-c-y, fool.

Hells gain is our loss.
They’re retiring your number
And your carcass, too.

Slow news day today:
“Dunderhead ex-President
Bites the Goddamn dust”

I heard Betty Ford
Really put away the sauce.
That’s right, I went there.

Hey America,
Dust off your dancing shoes
Meet me at Ford’s grave.

Not the sharpest knife;
Still you stabbed us in the back,
Unaccountable.

How Muhammed Ali ruined the sport of boxing

2006-12-15T16:59:00.000-08:00

“His momma called him Clay; I’m’a call him Clay.”
-Arsenio Hall, in ‘Coming to America’

Here are just a few things that Muhammed Ali contributed to the downfall of boxing. And yes, boxing is suffering through an inglorious Autumn with the icy throes of Winter on the horizon, poignantly juxtaposed against the blossoming Spring of mixed martial arts. Let’s examine in closer detail…

- By relying solely on his athletic ability to win fights, he turned his matches into overhyped Toughman Competitions. Keeping his hands practically at his waist instead of anywhere near his face, & employing his idiotic “rope-a-dope” tactics, Ali not only erred against the axioms of the sport he ironically called a “sweet science”, he also ensured the most possible damage to his body over the course of his storied career. Pugilisms elder statesman didn’t have to be a brain-damaged, nerve-damaged, broken shell. But that’s what happens when you break the unforgiving laws of science.
- By converting to Islam & joining the ranks of Elijah Muhammed & Malcom X, Ali’s message was painfully clear. Fuck America, where he had risen from poverty to become a self-made man & the most famous athlete of the century. Who needs the American Dream when you have the vituperative rhetoric of the Nation of Islam? Ali was graciously paving the way for his worthy successor, “Iron” Mike Tyson.
- By not reporting for duty during Vietnam, he could have made a statement about humanitarianism & the brotherhood of man. Instead he made it a racial issue, specifically pointing out that no Viet Cong had ever called him a nigger. So instead of bringing attention to how senseless the war was, he fanned the fires of racial hatred. What better way to stop a war abroad than to start one at home?
- By constantly shooting off his mouth before, during & after his fights, he single-handedly molded boxing into the obnoxious spectacle it is today. Now fighters feel they have to say something outrageous & wear something outrageous, instead of making an impression by being a great boxer. Which, I have to say, Ali was not.

Next time you see Mike Tyson do something stupid on national TV, a tip of the hat is due to Cassius Clay. We were the dopes, & he roped us indeed.

J. Alfred Prufrock vs Alfred E. Neuman

2006-12-05T13:14:00.000-08:00

I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.

Somehow T.S Eliot was still able to allude to his male-pattern-baldness no less than four times. What a nerd!

Jimmy the Greek I ain't

2006-12-04T18:38:00.000-08:00

Wow. My football picks SUCK! I wonder if my new health insurance covers kneecapping?

Legends of the Fall

2006-11-30T18:57:00.000-08:00

So after all that ballyhoo I ended up taking a brief respite from my ass-kickings. I hurted my poor back & was buried at work. And I had a hangnail. Actually my back really has been tender lately & was starting to bother me when someone would plant their knee on it while going for a choke. A couple months ago I was taking a nice chicken dish out of the oven & felt something twinge in a very uncomfortable way. But I tell people I hurt it cliff-diving on the Ivory Coast…sounds a little more dashing. And I really have been buried at work too. I have another assistant though, so my goal is delegate everything short of tying my shoes. I guess I’m approaching that point when you realize that while you may be reasonably skilled at what you do, the world is in no way improved by you doing it.

And once again, that time of year is upon us. Jesus died for our sins & they made a bunch of awful movies, cartoons & musicals to celebrate the salvation of mankind. The fact that Willem Dafoe can play both Jesus Christ & the Harry Osborne (aka the Green Goblin), both with considerable gusto, is testament to the fact that he is the unsung American Olivier. But I digress, faithful readers. I just wanted to brag that I won last weeks’ office football pool, thanks to me picking always-a-bridesmaid Tennessee over the sputtering Giants. This weeks’ hot picks? Arizona over St. Louis, Minnesota over Chicago & Buffalo over San Diego.

People forget that Arizona took Chicago to the edge, & have as good a chance of winning on the road as they do at home. And SF had the Rams on the ropes last week. So I think this could be Arizona’s big chance to get their 3rd win of the season over a below-.500 indoor opponent.

Minnesota is also below .500, but I like the fact that they’ve stayed on course & haven’t self-destructed in the face of adversity. I personally think that the Bears are the most overrated team in football. That record is very deceiving. Me & my girlfriend could take that schedule & go 9-2. Yeah, they beat Seattle…without Sean Alexander! Whoop-tee-fucking-do. Grossman has a bad habit of throwing off his back foot when the pressure’s on, so I predict one or two key interceptions that sway the game in favor of Minnesota.

Buffalo over San Diego?! Yep. It’s gonna be a snowy Sunday in upstate New York. I don’t think Ladanian Tomlinson will be his usual self when he has to run, block, pass & receive in weather so cold it literally freezes the snot in your nose.

So there you have it. I guess it took me a while to get interested this season, what with all the UFCs that have been on tv

supine & amplified

2006-11-02T18:33:00.000-08:00

I know I said I wouldn’t go on & on about Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu but here’s a short walk-though of how I’ve been spending Monday & Wednesday nights. Actually I’ve missed the last couple Wednesdays. I think I have a virus or bug or whatever. I’ve been feeling tired as all hell, have had a lingering backache & have been at the mercy of a mutinous digestive tract (i.e. I’ve been making bubbling sounds). So I opted to just go once a week the last two weeks to minimize the possibility of soiling my jockstrap after an awkward hip-throw or botched single-leg takedown.

Anyways, what we do is start stretching on our own while people are still showing up. They don’t hold your hand through a bunch of particular stretches; after a couple of classes you know what needs to be limbered up. Then we pair up & do wrestling drills, working underhooks. That’s where you try to get your arms under your partner’s arms, alternating sides. Once we get in the flow, we start moving around, pushing & pulling while we go for double underhooks (both arms around our partners, under their arms). Once you’re in that position, you can pretty much do whatever you want with them, so we restart from there. That gets your arms, chest & shoulders warmed up & ready for the fun. The head instructor gives us a demonstration of the move we’ll be working on by doing it on one of the advanced students. Then we pair up again & go to work. Sometimes we just focus on a simple movement that we need to have imprinted onto our muscle memory, sometimes we actually work on submissions. This week we worked on taking the back of an opponent throwing punches in our guard. That translates to me, on my back, trapping my opponent with my legs, dodging his punches & scrambling around his torso to end up sitting on his back.

Once in a while we put the gloves on & practice some basic boxing, mostly jabs & straight rights. Invariably, this is just a lead-in to throwing a jab, then diving in for a takedown. Getting taken to the ground costs ten push-ups at the end of the round. We also start off on the ground, in the guard & try to pass. For each time your opponent passes your guard (gets out from your legs & gains control), you do ten push-ups at the end of the round. Needless to say, I’ve been dong my share of push-ups.

Then, the grand finale: free training. Pick a partner, put in your mouthguard & let each other have it. We start off on our knees, facing each other. Shake hands before each go-‘round & get to it. This is where most of my bruises come from. Someone like me, introverted & introspective, has a very tough time with a lot of this, especially since I’m loathe to let strangers into my personal space & try to avoid conflict, albeit more out of laziness than cowardice. Trying to strangle someonewith my forearms while they try to bend my arm backwards, rolling around on the floor all the while, is challenging on many levels for me. Which, at the risk of paraphrasing G. Gordon Liddy, is why I must keep doing it.

Meanwhile...

2006-11-01T17:10:00.000-08:00

It’s been a while! Let’s see…what’s been happening?

I stayed on the South Beach Diet (well, stayed as close as I could) & lost approx 35 lbs. I suspect most of that was due to my no longer eating fast food 2-3 times a day. Oh yeah, & I finally got my ass into a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu class. So I’m bruised & sore but happy about it. I was gonna make a whole ‘nother blog about my training but it would be pretty repetitive. If I ever make it into a competition (next year maybe) I’ll be sure to give all the gory details. Right now I’m just happy to not puke after class.

I’m going to the fucking dentist next week, for the first time since who-knows-when. I think L.A. still had a football team last time I went.

I hadn’t updated this jaunty journal for a few moons, & was ready to scrap the whole thing. The way I figured, all I was doing was the literary equivalent of doodling on a piece of scrap paper. Then, for some stupid reason, I stumbled across the blog of a childhood friend, now living in the Bay Area & working in the music industry in some vague capacity. I was astonished to see that this fellow was keeping a blog, since my recollection was of him barely being able to write his name in the dirt with a stick. And I thought to myself, “Surely, if this is the crap floating around the toilet, there’s no harm in me adding to the mess.” Sadly, it’s the same kind of thinking that allowed Bill O’Reilly to get his own show. Truth be told, I’d rather just keep a journal for myself, but this is easier.

I think my truck needs new fuel injectors (or 02 sensor maybe?) She’s running rough & seems to have less power. I make my last car payment in a month. That’ll be something.

Oh yeah, & I finally got something to read! I picked up the complete Sherlock Holmes, parts 1&2. It doesn’t get much better than that. Oddly enough, I had just re-read (well, more like re-perused) the first story (“A Study in Scarlet”), so I felt like I had hit the ground running when I jumped into “The Sign of Four”. I also snagged the second NY Times Monday thru Friday crossword book. By the time I hit Thursday or even Wednesday I start to feel dumb but for me, finishing a crossword is one of life’s little joys.

I’m here at work writing this & this modern-day confederacy of dunces is planning how they’ll spend the money they win on tonight’s super-lotto. Truth be told, I wish they would go ahead & win already. That way they could quit their jobs here & be out of my life. It’s been a long journey from hanging out on Burnside to sitting on my arse in a cubicle. My birthday present to myself will be a new job.

UFC 61, "Bitter Rivals"

2006-06-26T21:52:00.000-07:00

So the rematch of Ken Shamrock & Tito Ortiz is coming up. Now, as we all recollect, Ortiz dominated the head of the Lions Den the first go-around, winning by TKO. Shamrock was almost unrecognizable by the end of the fight.

Ken later explained that he he had been recovering from a torn ACL up to & during the fight.

Tito went on to leave the UFC on extremely bad terms after a contract dispute with UFC president Dana White, reportedly demanding $300,000 per fight. Shamrock proceeded to KO a ketchup can from his past, Kimo Leopoldo, half a round into their much-ballyhooed rematch of a fight I watched about 10 years ago. Shortly thereafter, he flew to Japan for PRIDE 30, where long-in-the-tooth fan-favorite Kazushi Sakuraba won by KTFO in the 1st.

Ken argued the ref stoppage, saying he fell to the ground but hadn't been knocked wholly unconscious.

Then, inexplicably, he was pitted against Middleweight champion & Xyience-fueled maniac, Rich "Ace" Franklin as the basic-cable main event of "The Ultimate Fighter" Season 2. After his traditional leglock attempt, the battered, time-worn 41-year old former "King of Pancrase" slipped & fell on his after attempting, for some bizarre reason, a kick to Franklin's head. Franklin, true to form, proceeded to calmly beat Shamrocks face in, winning by TKO in the 1st.

Shamrock later claimed (ready for this?) that his cornea was scratched early in the fight.

So now, for reasons that elude me, Shamrock is rematching the Huntington Beach Bad Boy, after a mending of fences between Team Punishment & Zuffa. They were coaches of the two opposing teams on TUF 3, & made it clear to the world that they shared a deep & mutual hatred of each other, almost coming to blows. Tito is coming off of a split decision over TUF 1 winner Forrest Griffin as a warm-up for this fight. His recent record, after first facing Shamrock in '02, features a memorable KO at the hands of current champ Chuck "The Iceman" Lidell & a split decision over slumping Brazilian "Phenom", Vitor Belfort. Tito is 31 years old, a senior citizen in the NBA but entering his prime in MMA. He says his motivation for the rematch is to retire Shamrock. You have to give Tito credit for brazenly using Ken as a stepping-stone. The ongoing feud with the Lions Den camp has made for good TV & kept Tito in the spotlight. Latching on to the declining Shamrock has kept Ortiz afloat in a fickle arena that has seen fan favorites come & go faster than you can say "B.J. Penn".

As for Shamrock, he obviously wasn't paying attention when Welterweight champ Matt Hughes devoured the legandary Royce Gracie like a country breakfast. After losing to Tito again, he will have provided the win necessary to earn Ortiz another shot at the LH belt. So we'll go from Shamrock-Ortiz II to Lidell-Ortiz II. And if Tito actually uses his wrestling skills against Chuck & is able to earn a decision, that would set the stage for another monster of a rubber match on the heels of Lidell-Couture III, also happening to feature Lidell. That's a lot of the same fighters in a short time, but when they're Hall of Fame caliber fighters it isn't so bad. I just hope Ortiz remembers to thank a bruised & battered Ken Shamrock when he claims the title from Lidell.

p.s.

This fan's official prediction for Shamrock-Ortiz II is Ortiz by TKO (stoppage) in the 2nd. To be followed with Ortiz by unanimous decision in Lidell-Ortiz II.

fatty fatty 2x4

2006-06-24T15:00:00.000-07:00

Whoa...I'm on this South Beach Diet, right? Well I was getting pretty tired of eating grilled chicken breast, diet Jell-O, & NO BEER & then, all of a sudden, while I'm looking for something to wear while I do a monster load of laundry, I discover that I can fit into my old army pants again. No, they're not from my combat tour of duty, unless you count the time I spent living upstairs from Al's Bar. They're just an old pair of fatigues that had mysteriously shrunk several waist sizes. I'm wearing these bad boys right now as I type this & watch The Ultimate Fighter marathon. Hell yeah! I should celebrate with a pizza & a pitcher but I think I'll let cooler heads prevail & enjoy a sensible dinner of chicken salad with a healthy glass of red wine. You know, the high-falutin' kind that comes out of the box.

Yeah so anyways, here's my motivation for staying on this obscene diet. Alls I gotta do is think of it as trying to make a fighting weight. These pampered Ultimate Fighters have the luxury of saunas & high-profile trainers. I'd like to see them try it my way, by not getting hammered & eating like one of the girls from Sex & The City. Actually no one wants to see that. Well, whatever it takes, right? If I can lose a little more weight maybe I'll be able to fit through the door of another jiu-jitsu place. After that, who knows? Maybe the maitre'd will stop asking for collateral before he seats me at Robin's BBQ. Now THAT would be something.

Is that how you spell maitre'd? I guess that's the wrong term for the guy who brings you a large Pabst before serving up a trash-can lid full of roasted meat.

Blah blah blah, etc

2006-06-04T18:53:00.000-07:00

Ok, so I'm back. I read John LeCarre's "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy", "The Honourable Schoolboy", & "Smiley's People" over the course of 40 lunch-breaks & now I have nothing to read except my fishing magazines & the occasional hot rod magazine. Rat rods rule. I'm starting the South Beach Diet tomorrow, which ought to be good for laughs. I went to see Hank III (that's Hank Williams' grandson, people!) at the Anheim House of Blues last night. It was pretty crazy.

Well I was starting to feel despondent after finishing le Carre's "Smiley Trilogy" & having read every issue of Peter Bagge's "Hate", including the Hate Jamboree that pretty much wraps up the series for good. And then, just in time, I stumbled across the re-issue of the Weird-Ohs. They're these goofy models of goofy monsters driving goofy hot rods. Ought to keep me busy for a while, especially since I haven't built a model since I was a kid in short pants.

But here's the real news, & another big part of why I haven't graced the internet with my disjointed ramblings lately...I moved! I told my stinky, stuck-up, simpleton roomies to blow it out their tailpipe & hit the road. My girlfriend was nice enough to take me in while a scrounged together 1st & last, & now I'm out of Downtown & into Koreatown. I'll try to put some fotos up if I can ever figure out how to do that. It's a tiny-ass place but it feels like a penthouse, what with the windows (didn't have any of those at the old place), the fully functional bathroom (roommates tried to remodel the old bathroom & gave up halfway), the complete lack of cat, dog, & turtle droppings (use your imagination on that one). I'm not even going to touch on the interminable procession of cars & motorcycles the roomies were going to "fix up" & take to the salt-flats for a chance at the land-speed record. I have news for them & all other would-be automotive aficionados...the first step towards the land-speed record is getting the damn thing running, not carving a "gnarly-looking" headlight mount out of discarded fiberglass.

Anyways, I'm also back on the job-hunt. Had a decent interview the other day & hope to get hired somewhere before flipping out & going Kool-Aid Man at the office. I know, I know, after all that bitching I'm doing the whole thing all over again. What can I say?

Don't call it a comeback.

2006-05-25T17:52:00.000-07:00

Just like the stalker
That shows up on your doorstep
I am back with you.

From Marty McFly to the Morlocks

2006-03-19T00:09:00.000-08:00

Lately I've been thinking a lot about time-travel. Why, I don't know. But the idea has been following me around like a belligerent meter-maid. Why, I asked myself, has no one come back from the future, either to conquer the world or at least bet a sawbuck on the Red Sox. Turns out there are some very reasonable, uh, reasons, that we've never seen any physical evidence of time-travel. And there are some very simple axioms, which are very hard to dipsute, that lay the groundwork for proving time-travel possible. All of which is very encouraging to someone like me, who's always stuck in the past or daydreaming about the future, while this month's bills get lost in the pile of crosswords & comic books.

So...it turns out that in theory, you could actually go back in time & inadvertently cause the death of one of your direct ancestors & still not cease to exist. According to some English dude on the internet, one of the tenets of quantum, uh, physics...well, quantum something or other, is that for every decision made in the universe, a parallel universe picks up to account for each possible result. It's like, based on the principle of what an electron would do if faced with the option of becoming a proton or a neutron. How they prove that I don't know. Oh wait...the fact that they CAN'T prove what the electron would become is what makes the axiom feasable. You still follow me? I hope not 'cause I got lost myself somewhere around "So..."

Yeah so anyways, that whole last paragraph was a total waste of your time & mine. You can't go back in time, people! How can you go back to a time before time-travel was possible. It just doesn't work! That would be like someone trying to light their cigarette with a Zippo before Zippos were invented. It just ain't possible. At least, not according to the poindexters who hatched the whole concept of quantum-mechanics. Quantum-mechanics! That's what I was trying to think of. At least that's what I think I was trying to think of. And THAT'S why we haven't had any visitors in tin-foil suits. Yeah...I know what you're thinking. For a while, I too foolishly entertained the notion that UFO's were actually time-machines. That was before I came to the sound conclusion that if the UFO's were from the future, they would have at LEAST taken the spread on the Eagles/Patriots. The fact that the line stayed consistently at Pats +3 is proof that no otherworldly wagers were placed. If a visitor from the year 3035 had bothered to come back to this dismal era, they wouldn't have bet a measly grand or two. It would have been a bet big enough to put the trime-travelling Maverick in the futuristic cat-birdseed. And a bet of that magnitude would have wreaked havoc on the over/under. Numbers don't lie, people.

Somewhere in time

2006-03-06T15:37:00.000-08:00

I’m at my new job & not able to blog at work, not just yet, at least. I mean, I am now, but this doesn’t really count. In the meantime, I humbly refer my rabid hordes of readers to:

http://tommy.mlblogs.com/

http://popsleibold.blogspot.com/

http://scratcherx.blogspot.com/

By the end of the month I should be back with more petty rants about being sick, driving in the rain, the Academy Awards, Trader Joe’s, “sexy” newscasters, cold war-era spy novels, learning Spanish, schizophrenia, shotgun-wielding Vice Presidents, do-it-yourself haircuts, the price of beer, & disestablishmentarianism in general.

Thank you for your patience.

Zen & the art of anger management

2006-02-09T12:06:00.000-08:00

I just gave notice at my job, which has alleviated a lot of the stress I'd been experiencing. And as I sit here at my desk, running out the clock, I think back to my last job, & the remarkable similarities between it's effects on my personal life. I was getting to be less & less fun to be around, & was having trouble enjoying even the simplest pleasures, like drinking a Fosters while watching my favorite tv shows. During this rare moment of clarity, I'm starting to realize that I need some kind of outlet for all the bad feelings.

What I did before was join this goofy martial arts place out in Santa Monica. It was a blast at first, because I got to put on those gloves they wear in the Ultimate Fighting Championship & beat on random people. In a controlled environment, of course. They would be covering up with these leather pads. And I didn't mind taking a few shots back...hell, I was covering up with those pads, too. And between you & me, most of the guys there were weekend warriors who punched like toddlers. And when someone with a real arm would wind up on me, it felt good, like I was really excercising. It was strange how good it felt to focus all my frustrations at some poor soul bracing himself behind a 2x4' mini-punchingbag. As for the "martial arts" aspect of the classes...well, I haven't been in a fight since taking them, so I wouldn't know. Probably never will. Most people don't want to fight, anyways, they just want to talk shit.

Well, then I got a little ahead of myself & thought, "if I'm having such a blast taking such meticulous potshots, wouldn't it be great to just go all-out & go toe-to-toe with a like-minded individual?" So I tried kickboxing. Let me tell you, it was no kind of fun. The cardio was amazing, but the thrill of hitting people was immensely dampened by the fact that not only were they trying ot avoid being hit, they were trying to hit me back, harder & faster. That...wasn't...part...of the deal!

Yeah, I know, I must sound pretty bad. I can dish it out, but I can't take it, eh? Well, shit, I won't make any bones about it. It's no fun having your mouthguard punched out from between your teeth, or being kicked in the lower ribs. I know that sounds like fun, but it isn't. So I tried a change of venue...Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, something I'd always dreamed of trying. For those of you who haven't been following mixed-martial-arts, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu is basically wrestling, only instead of trying to pin your opponent, you're trying to get him to submit by choking him or bending his joints backwards. It's mindblowing stuff. Well, it was a blast learning the fundamentals, but it was the most frustrating thing in the world having a bunch of more experienced students drag me around the mat like a CPR dummy. It was just like getting my ass kicked in kickboxing, only this time I was gagging from being choked out so much & my arms felt like they'd been pulled out of their sockets & put back with a few pieces missing. And what do you know, that teeth-gnashing anger I'd been funneling out was suddenly stopped up again, clouding up the horizon. Ah, sweet irony!...now I was the weekend warrior getting the ass-end of some other asshole's cathartic workout.

Since the classes had changed from an outlet for my frustration to a source of it, I stopped going. Yeah, I know, I'm a quitter. So sue me! Well, now I'm trying to figure out a way to lose some weight & had the idea that maybe I should try something similar...unfortunately, most of the boxing gyms around here are "boxcercise" (no contact...can you believe it?!) or else cost an insane amount of money, which is somehow justified by the fact that the instructor once sparred with Marvin Haggler, or used the bathroom at Cusomano's Gym back in the day.

The Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu places are just as expansive, & for the same ludicrous reasons. If the head instructor went to the same chiropractor as Carlson Gracie, those classes are gonna be exPENsive!!! There's a place here in Hollywood that I might try out, though. I stopped by to watch one of their classes & I guess it was ok. Kind of a high blockhead-ratio but then that's to be expected in this particular sphere of influence. And hey, I'm not looking for people to sit down & discuss Chaucer with. I'm looking for people to beat up legally. There, I said it. Hey, I'm starting to feel better already!

State of the Union (no pun necessary)

2006-01-31T17:51:00.000-08:00

Tonight is the State of the Union adress. I'm watching FOX hyperbollically fellate Dubya. I'm usually not that interested in what he says (hey, he's not MY fucking President) but I like to watch him speak, it keeps America's class war fresh in my mind. This is as good a time as any for a similar adress regarding the state of affairs I find myself in...

I just finished paying off a hefty back-taxes penalty. It took three years. Three years! The knucklehead accountant I had been going to took a few liberties on my returns, & in all fairness, I had no objections when I saw my refunds. Well now I have a clean slate. And yes, I'm going to deduct the classes I'm taking. I don't cut & run at the first sign of trouble.

I know I spend an inordinate amount of time on this blog bitching about my job. Well, I'll have to wait a while before I can do that again; I just got an offer from another company that I'll be taking...that is, unless the interview I went on today pans out. Either way, I don't think I'll be seeing the old gang of smug pug-ugly humbugs anymore.

The class I'm taking is all paid up. All I gotta do is get some more hands-on experience so I can eventually get licensed. Then I can see about trying to make back the money I sank into the tuition. And maybe have a little fun along the way. Gotta remember not to be an asshole about it like so many others in this field.

Still have another year (?!) of payments on a truck that is technically obsolete (1995). Still, it drives a hell of a lot better than my old truck, i.e. it can go in reverse & the dome-light turns off when it's supposed to, & once it's paid up, knock on wood, I won't have to deal with car payments for a long time. Gotta remember to keep up maintenance on it, so's I can get the most out of it.

Went on that Consumer Credit Counseling thingamawhatsit. At least I don't have to talk to these jagoff creditors anymore. Hey, they should've known better than to take a chance on me. I loved it when they tried to threaten me with bad marks on my credit report. Ooooooh! We can't have that! People always say well, now you can't get a house for another 7 years. Like I can afford a fucking house around here! By the time my credit report is starting to heal, the housing bubble will either have burst or gotten so big they'll be building projects on the ocean floor. Either way, I'll have a roof over my head.

I started phasing out the death-rocker/'90s grunge look in favor of a SLIGHTLY more conservative image, partly because I was getting too old to pull it off anymore. I think I might be getting a little more respect because of it. Go figure. People would rather talk to a guy in a track jacket & obscenity-free tshirt than a torn flannel & Cannibal Corpse tshirt. A harsh, harsh reality.

Jesus, I'm trying to tune out the fucking Dubya speech but I just caught myself angrily talking back at the tv. Fucking inbred aristocrat. He's having trouble with some of the bigger words.

Speaking of the Commander-in-Chimp, at least there won't be a second term of this bullshit. I don't care who steals office next, it can't be this insulting. Could it be that John McCain will be the first respectable Republican candidate since Thomas Jefferson?

And, looking down the line, Conan O'Brien will replace Jay Leno in a few years. Now THAT'S progress! Us late-night tv watchers finally have a pie in the sky to dream about. Yeah, I'm sure they'll make him tone it down (no more cokehead werewolf) but anything is better than Leno. I'm sure he's a nice guy but his comedy stylings give me sinus headaches.

So! All I gotta do is hang in there. At today's interview at a certain tv channel here in Los Angeles, they asked me, "What's your most admirable trait?" Since they probably wouldn't have appreciated the fact that I know more about Star Wars & The Rockford Files than %98 of the population, I answered with a trait that I actually find admirable in others, & am trying to teach myself:

Patience.

Throw the book at them

2006-01-26T16:12:00.000-08:00

When I was younger, I thought I wanted to be a writer when I grew up. What kind of writer, I couldn't tell you. Did I write short stories & poetry? yes. Did I have the common courtesy to promptly destroy them? yes. Technically, I am now officially grown up, & have not yet stumbled on to a way to get paid for typing lurid pulp all day, so it's still off to the salt mines in the morning. But just think of what could have been...think of the company I'd keep!

What in the blue blazes am I talking about, you may ask?Well...Nicole Ritchie, you know, Lionel Ritchie's stepdaughter, star of The Simple Life, & occupant of bed # 27 at Sparkling Hills rehab clinic, has churned out a literary masterpiece, based loosely on her own experiences. On her own fucking experiences! It even has her goddammed photo on the cover. Not the book jacket...the fucking cover. I leafed through it during a trip to the bookstore & had to put it down for fear of barfing all over it & then having to pay for the damn thing. How did it read? Imagine yourself at a boring party, trapped in a corner by the blabbermouthed daughter of an 80's popstar, on hiatus from her reality show, rambling on & on about herself between sips of her apple-tini about how tough she's had it all these 19 years. It's sad that this is an all too conceivable scenario in this town. Yes, life imitates art, but in a terrifying, dismal way.
And then there's this blithering idiot, James Frey, who's controversial memoirs are riding a roller-coaster of popluarity, thanks to Oprah's Book Club endorsement & the revelation that his book is in fact a work of fiction. "A Million Little Pieces" of bullshit. No, he never did time, & no, he didn't cause a car crash that killed his best friend. Did he wake up on a plane, teeth smashed out, addicted to crack? Not bloodly likely. Maybe that part was metaphorical. Metaphorical for what, I don't know. I wouldn't watch Oprah if you threatened me with castration (after all, watching Oprah is just another kind of castration), but I would've liked to have seen the rise & fall of this spineless wahoo over his absurd "book", which he had originally shopped to publishers as a fucking novel.

But hey, if he can do it, I can do it...I'm releasing my own, slightly embellished memoir: "Modern-Day Adonis: Confessions of a man with no beer belly, a full head of hair & perfect skin." So anyways, I went to Border's to pick up a book that my girlfriend is going to use at her office's white-elephant-type party. I got Yann Martel's "Life of Pi" because a) this one guy at work recommended it to me right after a gushing, unsolicited review of "The Kite Runner" (another book now permanently defaced in my mind just by the stigma of that recommendation) so I figure that's what people are reading these days when they're not , and b) apparently that M. Night Shamalamadingdong fellow, the one what made "Signs", is gonna adapt it for the silver screen, & it if it's gonna be made into a movie, that means it obviously must be an irreproachable masterpiece that will ultimately take it's rightful place in history alongside the works of the French Impressionists.

Still, "Signs" was the one movie that made me do a room-by-room of my apartment with a Louisville Slugger when I got home from the theater. It really appealed to my paranoid, cynical side. But I digress, for the nth time...The last piece of popular culture I'm going to shit on today is "Capote", the big-screen adaptation of the sorry story of Truman Capote researching the tragic news story that he re-wrote as the story "In Cold Blood". Jesus. All we need now is a behind-the-scenes, so we can enjoy the making of of the making of of the making of of the goddamed movie. Is that where we're at, now?! Every book known to man, from Pride & Prejudice to Curious George to The Scarlet Letter to The Fantastic fucking Four, has been made into a movie & then RE-made as a CG-fueled action-thriller, so now we're making movies about writing the books that we make into movies & re-make as CG-fueled action-thrillers? God's wounds! It's like we're unraveling a giant sweater, & someone keeps on knitting, & knitting, & knitting, & knitting, & knitting!

Someone asked me if I had gotten a chance to see "Capote", & I wish I had a photo of the expression on their face when I said, " I don't know if I can handle hearing that voice for an hour & a half." Imagine nonplussed combined with perplexed.

Nonplexed?

News from the front

2006-01-06T18:27:00.000-08:00

I have blogger's block.
i.e.
The muse is not upon me.

Reason being? I might also have finally passed through the barriers of sanity, like Hamlet's father walking through a castle wall, but knowing me, it's probably just Pollonius hiding behind a tapestry. Then again it may just be the weather. Some weather we're having!
i.e.
Potential abuse of axioms founding expanding universe theory. Next level of ionic winter no longer fettered by molecular structure.

Also of note: next level of ionic consciousness escaping confines of molecular structure.
i.e.
Saner, more detailed entries to follow.

2005-12-30T12:51:00.000-08:00

TV Rots Your Brain (caution: Spoilers)

2005-12-20T23:00:00.000-08:00

Hey...I just had this brainstorm as I'm watching the series finale of Nip/Tuck...they're about to reveal the identity of the Carver, a homicidal maniac who's been stalking the main characters on the show. They showed a commercial for the new season of The Shield, & it hit me...I really get involvedwatching these cable soap operas. No, really...I get way too into them. I'm a different person when it's The Shield season, & I can't help but watch Nip/Tuck, it's a guilty pleasure. And I even started watching repeats of that Rescue Me. Not really my cup of tea, though. Weird...they're all FX shows. Go figure. Oh yeah, but how about The Sopranos...I was reading the episode guides of the end of season 5 the online the other day. See, I asked if I could watch a UFC at my girlfriend's place (she has a more comfortable living room & a bigger TV, plus I felt sure she'd want to see the long-awaited rematch of octagon-throwbacks Ken Shamrock & Kimo Leopoldo as much as I did), & when I plugged it into her TV, for some reason all of a sudden she had like, 500 channels. So we watched The Sopranos; that's what you do when you have fancy cable. And even though I'd missed the last TWO seasons, I was right back in the thick of it. Then, one day, those cruds in Eagle Rock took away the high-end channels that we weren't supposed to be watching in the first place. And then they have the temerity to casually go out of service during a) Monday Night Football, 2) the season premiere of Lost, & d) during the Detroit game on Thanksgfuckinggiving!

What the hell was I talking about?

Oh yeah...stay outta my booze! Sorry folks, thats just a little Simpsons humor for you all. Sheesh, talk about jumping the shark, huh? Why won't they let that show die a humane death? Anyways, I just saw on FOX Sports that Damon just got traded to the Yanks. Well this is a dark day for baseball. See how they retaliate for having Nomar snatched away from their tentative grip by a free-wheeling Dodgers front office?

Whoa...they just revealed who the Carver is...or should I say, who the Carvers are? Who woulda thought that it was a secret brother-&-sister team, both of which were known characters on the show. And they would've gotten away with it, too, if it weren't for those meddling kids!

Whoa...I just realized that more than half of the shows I'm talking about are on FOX. Well played, Mr. Murdoch...well played.

I write haikus instead of telling people they're full of shit

2005-12-14T14:03:00.000-08:00

"Bullit" is better
Than "Bad Boys II", you pea-brain.
What are you smoking?!

None of us have yet
To die of Asian bird-flu;
Don't you feel stupid.

Your opinions on
What's wrong with America
Are irrelevant.

Bennifer, Tomkat,
Brangelina, Vaughnifer;
Guillotine fodder.

Listening to you
Is a Herculean task.
Must...not...kill...again.

When I said hello
I didn't think I'd have to
hear your life story.

You just spat on me
While you were blathering on,
You ignoramus.

For God's sake, people,
It's October in L.A.;
Please take off your scarves.

Just ask Mycroft Holmes

2005-12-09T13:39:00.000-08:00

The first step in conquering an addiction is admitting that you have a problem. At least that's what I hear. So it's with a heavy heart that I bare my soul & tell the world: I can't stop reading. I walk to Borders on my lunch breaks & lose track of time. I borrow books from my brother, since I can't afford to buy a new one every week. When I bring a lunch to work, I sit in the cafeteria reading, blissfully oblivious to the buffoonery around me. I pick up catalogs for the Learning Annex when I walk to the liquor store, & read about the absurd classes they're offering. I read, re-read, & re-re-read trade paperbacks, mostly Peter Bagge's "Hate" & Harvey Pekar's "American Splendor". I...read...while...I...poop. Sometimes I get lost in the book & end up sitting there after I'm done. Yuck. When I lived in Portland, some of the best times were spent sitting alone in a coffee-shop, with a cup of joe & a Lucky Strike, reading H.P. Lovecraft while I waited for the waitress to bring my biscuits & gravy, miles away from any acquiantances who might threaten to disrupt my concentration.

Back to reading on my lunch break. It's the one time of day that I sepcifically set aside for reading. Not talking, not listening, not interacting...reading. One of the things that really frosted my beehive back when I rode the bus to work was that there was always some cretinoid who would ask me, "Whatcha reading?" I got into a couple of scrapes with people over it. Sounds dumb, I know, but when you're immersing yourself in the world a book has transported you to, it really sucks to be snapped back to reality, & it can make tempers flare.

So now when I'm sitting there, eating my sandwhich & minding my own business, my nose buried in a Raymond Chandler novel or a Chuck Paluhnik book my brother has loaned me, my temperament has mellowed, like a fine scotch, to the point where I don't go ballistic when someone pokes at the cover so they can see what it says, or they ask, "Oh, you like to read? Well, you must have read such-&-such! What did you think?"

9 times out of 10, the book they assume I've read & cherished is "The DaVinci Code", written by some pitiful hack, & soon to be a major motion picture that I won't see. Not only have I not read this much-ballyhooed piece of drivel, but I have no intention of wasting a perfectly good week of lunches wading through it. The fact that so many of my co-workers have gushing reviews is warning enough. Let's approach the situation logically. If the people who adore this trite tome have nothing incommon with me, besides the fact that we're both bipedal carbon-based life forms, I would say it stands to reason that our tastes in literature would not fall in the same realm. And no, I haven't read "Memoirs of a Geisha" either, people! Life's too short. Not to mention I've already taken up a costly amount of brain cells committing Star Wars trivia to memory. I'm not going to waste any more real estate in my cerebral cortex with selections from Oprah's book-of-the-month club. There's no room for literary Twinkies when I still haven't tried all the main courses sitting on the bookshelf. So why do I read the catalog to the Learning Annex, you ask?

Because I have a fucking problem! Didn't you read the beginning of this post?

Do Killers Dream of Electric Chair Sheep?

2005-11-28T12:03:00.000-08:00

As we near the execution date of Crips co-founder Stan "Tookie" Williams, a slew of Hollywood celebrities have been urging Governor Schwarzenegger to commute his sentence to life in prison without the possibility of parole. The latest actor to speak out against the execution is Academy Award-winner Jamie Foxx, who played Williams in a made-for-TV movie. As we all know, actors are the definitive authority on subjects they've addressed on-screen. That's why Martin Sheen thinks the viewing public actually wants to hear about his political views; after all, he was the President, right?

Foxx weighs in: "If Stan Tookie Williams had been born in Connecticut in the same type of situation, and was a white man, he would have been running a company." It's unclear exactly what kind of company, or what business school Williams would have opted for. I'm going to go out on a limb here, & say he would've been a Yale man.

Anyways, Stan Williams & a high-school buddy (killed long ago), co-founded the biggest street gang in the world. In 1979 he was convicted of two capital crimes: killing a convenience-store clerk during an armed robbery, then executing a couple who owned a motel, along with their daughter. That's Yale for you! To this day, Williams maintains his innocence. Here are the three main points, listed on his website, that sum up what he poignantly calls his "innocence issues":

1) There were other, unidentified fingerprints found at the scene of both murders. His fingerprints were nowhere to be found.

2) A bloody bootprint was found at one of the crime scenes, which was determined not to be made by Williams.

3) His jailhouse confession was in fact submitted by another convict, a "white man" who was given access to intimate details of the case & was granted leniency for his efforts.

In summary: he didn't leave fingerprints, someone else stepped in the blood of his victims after he fled the scene, & the testimony of a jailhouse snitch sealed the case against him. Aw, poor Tookie.

What's interesting is that his website also bemoans the fact that the prosecutor in the case used out-&-out racist tactics to convict him. Such as? Williams, as a prominent figure in the South Central Los Angeles underworld, was likened to a Bengal Tiger in the San Diego Zoo. Er...that sounds more like a metaphor than a racial slur, but then I've never been to law school. The other complaint from the Tookie camp is that the prosecutor was able to dismiss the three African American prospective jurors, leaving a lily-white jury that was all to happy to convict the poor gangsta. Tough break, landing a prosecutor that actually knew what he was doing.

Just for shits & giggles, I thought I'd show you, my loyal audience, a brief excerpt from Tookie's petition for clemency, as addressed to the Honorable Governor...

"This petition is, in a way, about what America is and what it offers to its people--the right to strive, to seek and find purpose, to have hope, to put failure & wrongdoing behind... the knowledge that America is a nation which is built on these values, and believe in second chances." God bless that poor mass-murderer...he brought hope back to a despondent nation, when we needed it the most!

Something I thought was strange was the notable absence of any mention of his victims. In fact, his main concern seems to be stopping "youth-on-youth &amp; black-on-black violence", & he's particularly disturbed by news that sets of Crips have sprouted in South Africa. Then, as I read more of his petition, I found:

"This message is not about the death penalty, or about reversing the judgement of the courts. Nor does it diminish the death of Albert Owens, Yen-I Yang, Thsai-Shai Yang, Yee-Chen Lin, or the suffering of the family members and friends who loved them." Gee thanks. Well I'm sure their families have gotten over it by now, the important thing is that Tookie keeps churning out children's books, right? We don't want his Nobel Peace Prize nomination to be jeopardized by lethal injection, do we? What kind of message would that send?

Well, it's in the hands of the Governator now. He'll be meeting with attorneys, then deciding whether or not to spare poor old Tookie. Will he be swayed the Hollywood elite he once rubbed muscular elbows with? Or will his conservative backers put enough pressure on him to keep Williams on Death Row? We'll know soon enough. The execution date is set for December 13th. When asked for comment on the clemency hearing, Schwarzenegger replied, "It's never a fun thing to do." Less fun than having your family murdered by a career-criminal, I would imagine.

Haiku written while waiting for my shift to end

2005-11-22T19:15:00.000-08:00

Beam me up, Scotty;
No intelligent life here.
And that includes me.

Shirking for the man

2005-11-08T18:46:00.000-08:00

I work at a post-production facility in Hollywood. We help crime dramas get on TV & we help student films get to the "rejected" pile at film-festivals. And I hate every nanosecond of it.

It wasn't always like this. I used to work at another, similar job, just down the street. I had worked my way up from delivering videotapes in a goofy-looking company car to supervising the account-executives at the company's corporate headquarters. I had been the employee of the month, & employee of the year. It could've been a lot worse.

But then we were bought out, & a new CEO, CFO, & some other SOBs were brought on board. I had a new boss, new staff, & new responsibilities. I hated all of them. %99 of my friends at wwork were fired, one ofter the other. My job started keeping me up nights & making me not much fun to be around. Yeah, yeah, we all have jobs we hate, I know...but this is my blog, so keep your problems to yourselves until I'm finished, please. Anyways, it got to be where I wanted out so bad I would take a paycut & work shitty hours if it meant getting away from that awful place. And lo & behold, a friend who worked here (where I'm at now) put in a good word for me, & got me an interview here. Well, I totally tanked the interview but I guess no one else applied, because I got a job here. The day I found out, I gave notice. Then I decided to give them the same notice they gave my friends, & that was it. I told my new job I could start in a week, & took that week off. I slept in & watched Columbo. It was fun.

So my new job was ok, I guess. Same pay, which was good, & the hours were decent. It didn't exactly give my life meaning, but I was able to pay my bills & still have enough to take my girlfriend to El Coyote on the weekends.

And then?

And then the same bastards, the same human paraquats, they bought this place out too. Can you fucking believe it? Now I gotta answer to them again, & work with that ship of fools I bailed out of last year. Sometimes it gets me down, like when they lay a bunch of people off on paydays, but what can you do. They haven't let anyone from my department go yet, but I don;t have any illusions about it, I know I'm the low man on the totem-pole, & I'm ok with it. That's why I blog at work! Anyways, I'm half-hoping to get laid off so I can be done with it, & half terrified of not being able to pay my bills & still take my girlfriend to El Coyote on the weekends.

Every day, more e-mails on new policies, which are prompyly revised, rejected, & forgotten, usualyy inthat order. Everyday, more motivational jargon & capped smiles. And every day, I care a little less. That's not true...a lot less. That old addage about 100 monkeys trying to type "Hamlet" is as close as I can describe it to the unanointed. Luckily, I can see the humor in it so I usually don't get too riled up. I'm also counting down to February, when I'll get my certificate form the Nick Harris Detective Agency & Academy, & can find some work that won't zombify me the way this psyche-ward does.

I'm not going to lie, I considered trying to get fired. Could I say, "I would prefer not to," whenever someone asks me to do something? The only snag is, these guys know how to screw disgruntled ex-employees out of their unemployment checks. At least that's what my friends who were fired have told me. Dammit. I guess I'll be back here tomorrow morning after all.

Ah, Bartleby...

Extradited from Marlboro Country

2005-11-04T15:20:00.000-08:00

Here I am, after lunch, on a beautiful November afternoon. I did laundry before coming in to work today, so I'm wearing fresh clean army pants & a nice lint-free black t-shirt. You know what would really hit the spot right now?

A fucking cigarette!

I haven't smoked in a dog's age. Well, if you consider about half a year a dog's age. See I had this thing where I would smoke, quit, smoke quit, ad infinitum. Not to feel too sorry for myself, but as I took on more responsibilities at my old job, I would really start puffing away. I had been smoking on & off, mostly on, since I was a kid in short pants, which may explain why my "little" brother towers over me.

My friend Erin & I had a saying we would bust out with, whenever someone said, "Hey, I thought you quit smoking." We would say, "Shit, I quit every time I put one out!"

Most recently, I had quit for over a year. Then I succumbed to temptation & bought a pack of Chesterfield Lights at the 76 station on Santa Monica & Las Palmas. They were good. Of course I couldn't stop at just one pack. But I knew my girlfriend disapproved. What to do? Well, like a fool, I thought I could play it off...you know, chewing gum & washing up with those hand towelettes? Stupid. One morning she & I ended up at the same red light on the way to work. Awkward!!!

So I quit again, then & there. And that was the last cigarette I've had the pleasure of smoking since. Now I see that the liquor store I patronize exclusively (I'm trying to get an endorsement...they already gave me a t-shirt) is selling Export A's. What are Export A's, you may ask? Well, my pink-lunged friends, they're a Canadian brand that come in a flat package, & are a bit shorter than regular American cigarettes. Are they a better smoke? Well...yeah, sure, why not. The point is, I used to smoke them when I had my first apartment. Yep, we used to fill empty can after empty can of PBR with Export A butts. Good times.

Deep down, I know it's not a good idea to deliberately inhale carbon monoxide & molten tar. But I still hold my pen like a cigarette. Deep down I know that smoking causes cancer...it's been scientifically proven to cause cancer. But I still crave a smoke after a Combo Ultimo at Acapulcos. I know that several members of my family have been directly killed by smoking. I look at their pictures on the wall at my parent's house. They're smoking in the pictures. What can you do.

C. Auguste Dupin, $200 a day plus expenses

2005-10-26T12:29:00.000-07:00

In case you didn't already know, I'm training to be a private investigator. After work I drive up to Van Nuys & listen to a semi-retired P.I. give lectures & sordid anecdotes from his personal experience. The instructor pretty much looks how you'd imagine a semi-retired P.I. would. We also watch videos, more than I would care to. But some of them are pretty funny, produced by the National Insurance Crime Bureau. Ah, those wacky claims adjusters.

Anyways, the hardcore fans of this acclaimed blog (I call them "bloggies") will remember from some of my first posts that I was trying to start training about a year ago. Unfortunately, my previous lame-ass job prevented me from really attending regularly. So now here I go again, slightly fatter & eager to learn.

So what we're learning at the P.I. academy...hey, "P.I. Academy", that sounds like one of those B-movies they used to show on USA's "Up All Night"...anyways, what we're learning isn't quite as glamorous as Magnum PI, or even Simon & Simon, for that matter. But it beats post-production, which is where I've been treading water for the last few years. Right now we're learning about worker's comp, accident reports, taking statements, insurance fraud, & stuff like that. Later on we get to the stuff you'd expect to be in the curriculum; skip tracing & asset searches...you know, stuff you can market to people besides Mutual of Omaha.

I don't know if they're going to teach us how to drive our cars under trailer-trucks, or on just the wheels on one side. Luckily, I've amassed a wealth of information on such subjects by watching countless hours of detective shows on KDOC, Orange County. What have I learned about private investigation from these televised seminars?

1) Your client is usually setting you up, but that doesn't mean you can't seduce her.

2) You'll be framed for murder on a regular basis, so try to play it cool when they drag you downtown in the middle of the night.

3) Traffic laws do not apply to you.

4) Army buddies always bring trouble when they come to visit.

5) Always turn the light on before you walk through your front door; more than likely, there will be someone standing there waiting to brain you with the butt of their gun.

6) You need four elements to prove murder: motive, means, opportunity, & the fact that the victim as about to expose the killer's embezzling.

7) Make lots of seedy contacts: bartenders, prostitutes, bookies. Strange as it may seem, these are the people who will be able to help when you get framed for murder (see #2, above).

8) Surly mobsters & humorless government agents will constantly hamper your investigations. Deal with it.

9) Master the art of the suckerpunch.

10) Finally, remember that the public expects you to do things like drive cars off of piers & get forcibly ejected from fancy restaurants. For God's sake, please don't disappoint them!

The real punchline is that I actually have an autographed picture of James Garner proudly hanging on my wall. Anyways, with these golden rules of the trade deeply imprinted on my psyche, I know I'll be one of the best. Look for me in the crime blotter of your local newspaper.

The Beer-Hall Putsch

2005-10-24T13:34:00.000-07:00

I was gonna wait until I was able to put up some pictures we took of this, but figured I may as well get this one over & done with, & deal with the fancy stuff later. It's old news now anyways, but what the hell.

10/24/05:

We spent Saturday gardening. Beer-gardening! Down at Alpine Village, where they hold Oktoberfest. I really can't say enough good things about it. Oktoberfest, that is...Alpine Village is so-so, I guess. The Alpine Inn is pretty cool, but the Village part is basically a few dusty souvenir shops, & a driving school, & a dentist's office. But we were there for the celebration going on in the big tent in the parking lot. Actually we got there early, so were were among the first few people inside. Who would've thought it's that much fun to sit & listen to oom-pah-pah? I must admit they had a rockin' band. These dudes in leiderhosen were chugging beer & running through the crowd & jumping up on the bench tables & basically earning their money during their 8-hour set.

I'm gonna try to post some of the pictures my girlyfriend too, especially one of the beer-garden safety guide, which, the security guards assured me when they saw me reading it closely, were not hard-&-fast rules. In the meantime, lemme tell ya:

The next day I was actually a little sore from waving my damn stein around like a drunken fool. At first I was just being campy & ironic or whatever, but after the third stein of the house brew I was really into it. It helped that the band kept playing songs which, they explained, you had to drink when the sang the chorus. Whew! Lotsa beer. The steins we bought at the gate (losta people brought their own freakin' beer-steins) got broken in pretty quickly. When we took them to the counter, theold guy working the taps saw that they were new & rinsed 'em out with beer. The first stein-full of Alpine Lager took a little while to get through, but the rest started disappearing pretty damn quick.

Almost as much of a spectacle as the beer-garden was the port-a-potty garden! The proverbial sea of humanity: as the night wore on, people were a little less concerned with keeping up appearances, & a little more concerned with finding somewhere to take a leak before they had an accident. I'm one to talk; I had to pull over on the way home to, uh, relieve myself. Jeez, I just realized...I took my beer into the john with me on one of the bathroom breaks. Eew. Was I really peeing with a half-full stein of beer tucked under my arm? Well, that must be the German way; after all, they're supposed to be super-efficient, right?

One of the funniest moments of the night, oddly enough, happened when we were first walking in. The guy behind us in line saw the coupons I had printed out off of the Alpine Village website, & asked in a booming baritone: "Ah, I see you haff a coupon zat you fotocopied!" When I handed my lady friend hers, he laughed, "Do you haff enough copies? I hope you haff von for your vife!" Before I could make with any kind of comeback, they opened the doors to the beer-garden, & he loped away towards the entrance like a Panzer rushing the Polish border.

Post script:

You can buy Alpine Lager at Cap'n'Cork in Los Feliz...that place with the Captain Morgan statue out front. It probably won't be the same unless you have a bunch of German roomates though.

A Chorus of Disapproval

2005-10-18T18:55:00.000-07:00

I've always liked music. Even when I was going through a phase where I listened exclusively to bands that didn't technically technically play "music" per se (check out Cannibal Corpse's "Vile" or even their early stuff like "Tomb of the Mutilated" & you'll know what I mean), I still loved to listen to the albums in my room, reading along with the lyrics. Some of the bands I would listen to actually knew how to play their instruments & write songs, & some were just interested in making a statement. I was never that good at playing music myself, despite countless hours practicing the guitar when I should have been doing my homework. So I had to settle for vicariously experiencing the thrill of music through listening.

It's funny how some music can profoundly affect the way you feel. And it doesn't have to be Beethoven's 7th. Or 9th. Or anything by Beethoven, really. As stupid as it sounds, I've felt the same overwhelming sensation while listening to Misfits, where you're taken away to another place that words alone cannot adequately explain. I've listened to early Rancid & known that the people making that music, raucous & abrasive as it was, had felt exactly what I was feeling at that moment, & were able to canvey the emotion in their music. These sounds helped me through some hard times, aka the foodstamp days.

Nowadays I listen to stuff that would revolt me back when I had Cannibal Corpse in the CD player. And even though I've sold just about all of my Emperor & Burzum CDs to Amoeba, I've held on to the ones that still give me that tingling feeling when I hear them. Unfortunately, it seems that when it comes to this reverence of the power of music, I'm in the minority. I can't condemn other people for their taste in music, but I can say this: it seems like these days everyone wants their music to be as loud as humanly possible. I could relate to this when I was 15, but now it seems crazy to be sitting in your car at a red light, by yourself, blasting Tupac, or Los Tigres de los Norte, or Yellowcard, or ANYTHING, for chrissakes. You can't tell me you're really enjoying the music. When my friend Erin & are hanging out we would blast the radio during blocks of Social Distortion & pound beers. Well, we did until he went under house arrest. That was what I consider a social setting; but even then we would sing along with the chorus & appreciate the music.

My girlfriend's neighbor plays the blandest music so loud you can feel your teeth rattle. Dave Matthews Band, loud as an airplane jet, late at night or early in the morning. Linkin Park, Staind...Gwen Stefani?! As you can easily surmise, he has the personality of a dead moth. And NO appreciation for music. I suppose the part that pisses me off is that he isn't really LISTENING to the music. He's talking on the phone & watching tv or jacking off or taking a shit, NOT experiencing the interplay of words & music. My girlfriends other neighbor plays loud music at inopportune times, but, since he actually loves music & wants to enjoy what he's listening to, it's loud but not counterproductively loud, & it's decent fucking music. I may not be King Crimson's #1 fan, but it's more engaging than Green Day's new concept album. Why not just turn The Price is Right up full blast? Why not just start screaming at the top of your lungs? Why not just go outside & be deafened by the construction & gardeners & traffic?

Next time you're listening to music, ask yourself: am I really listening to music?

Haiku written while staring out the window when I should be working

2005-10-17T15:27:00.000-07:00

Outside in the rain
There are pigeons on the ledge
Stoic as gargoyles

Postcards from Arkham Asylum

2005-10-12T13:29:00.000-07:00

You know who really loved their jobs? Those supervillains on the Adam West-era Batman. Think about it; they were always cackling & rubbing their hands together gleefully. They could barely contain themselves as they hatched each week's nefarious scheme. You never saw Caesar Romero dragging his heels as he poisoned the Gotham City reservoir. Frank Gorshin never had to be prodded into coming up with those tantalizing clues, in the form of riddles. If you think about it, he didn;t have to leave the clues at all, he could've just robbed the banks & been on his way.

I kind of like living in the industrial part of downtown (KIND of; I'm not crazy about it), partly because when you live a good distance from those farty lofts, the buildings around you look like the hideouts of those classic villains. Abandoned toy factories, paper recycling plants, decrepid self-storage units & slaughterhouses; these are the places you would find the Penguin, or even Vincent Price's Egghead ("Eggsellent!") sitting around chastising their bumbling gang in matching turtlenecks.

Let's see...there was the Bookworm, who was that, Roddy McDowell? And There were a couple of different Mr. Freeze's. Or were they Dr.Freeze. And I know there like, at least 3 Catwomen. Eartha Kitt & some other chicks. And, uh...King Tut, & the Black Widow...I don't think the Scarecrow was on that show, though. When you think about it, it all comes down to the Riddler, that's the quintessential supervillain. I mean, he lays it all out on the table, no bones. Plus he always had snappy comebacks for Burt Ward & Adam West. What did he call 'em? Now I forget. "Boy Blunder" & uh, what did he call Batman? Must've been funny or I wouldn't have thought to mention it.

Hey that reminds me...my mind really is starting to show some signs of age. Or signs of abuse, whatever you want to call it. Why, just the other night, I was in line at Big Mac's Liquor, right there on Sunset & Lucile, & some dude walked in who I vaguely recognized as someone I should be pissed at. Why I should have been pissed I have no idea. None whatsoever. But I started to get pissed anyways, & was giving him the stinkeye even though he showed no signs of recognizing me. Was he someone who talked shit to me at my old job? Did he steal a parking space from me? Maybe he was one of those pricks who walks in front of you on the sidewalk like you don't exist, then gets all huffy when you bump him out of your way with your forearm? WHO WAS THAT ASSHOLE!?!? Ah, fuck it. Next time he does whatever he did, I'll be all over him. Maybe I oughtta start writing these things down in a notebook I can carry with me.

Heh heh. Everybody in the office is at lunch so I'm blogging at work. I'm getting paid to blog! Hey...Does this make me a professional writer? No. No, it doesn't.

It's a long way to the top when you wanna be a supervillain.

Hooligan's Island

2005-10-11T16:22:00.000-07:00

So we went & saw that "Green Street Hooligans" movie, the one with Frodo like you've never seen him before. Lemme tell ya, if I could do it again, instead of being a beer-swilling ne'er-do-well in Los Angeles, I'd be a beer-swilling football hooligan in ye olde United Kingdom. I'd loosely followed that scene via the mystical magical internet & some light reading, but what a great concept, a whole movie about British soccer fans running amok. I especially liked the fact that they were able to sprint through such superfluous elements of the plot as story & character development. No, I'm serious!!! I didn't pay to see Elijah Wood act, I paid to see him fight!

So now it turns out there's a whole slew of similar movies that were released in the UK that I gotta get my hands on. There's even one starring Gary fucking Oldman! Yeah, yeah, I shoulda known, I shoulda known, this is old news & I'm just another American johnny-come-lately. So fucking what. Here are just a few of the things I'd be able to do if I were a supporter out there, instead of a Monday-morning quarterback out here:

1) When your home team (I guess in this instance we'll have to suppose it's the Dodgers) is getting beaten, & there's some pricks making a ruckus in the stands cheering for the other team, you know, you see it at every goddamn game...well, instead of just glaring & giving them the finger like I do, you beat the everloving shit out of them. There's a way they say it in the movie that sounds a lot wittier...."Beat seven shades of shit out of them" or something like that. Very English.

2) You get to drink 24-oz cans of Fosters. It's Australian for beer, mate! Never mind the wimpy oversized cans you buy here, they have tall-boys of Fosters readily available. At least they did in the movie.

3) You get to be a snappy fucking dresser. They call it "casual" out there. The outfits these guys wear to streetfights cost more than two months of car payments. Awsome! Could this be my new look, a departure from Dickies & goofy t-shirts? The answer is yes, people!

4) English pub: your home away from home. These guys spend their free time in honest-to-goodness English pubs (well, they're in England, so I guess that's not such a big deal to them). I've found a pub in Pasadena that I took my brother to, & it wasn't half bad. Imagine living in a city where EVERY bar is a rowdy English pub. Nice!

5) You get to drink & sing & throw things & basically go buck-wild. Does it get any better than that? The answer, my dear readers, is no.

So in lieu of uprooting myself & heading across the pond to support Cardiff City, I guess i can settle for watching the games...yes, watching soccer. It's not so bad. The games I've watched have actually had some scoring, which helps. It's a little trickier to warm up to the sport watching 0-0 ties. Oh wait...that's nil-nil! Haha. I don't guess they'd appreciate any token acts of hooliganism at that place in Pasadena. That's how us Americans get a bad name.

Sheesh. Obviously I need to find a way to blow off some steam. Getting drunk watching Raider games isn't quite enough. And that's saying something!

Cotton candy & human sacrifice

2005-09-14T14:52:00.000-07:00

When I was a wee lad, knee-high to a grasshopper, I went to a Sunday-school summer camp. Each night they would get the whole camp together & do church stuff...you know, singing & praying, & there were these youth pastors who tried to make scripture fun & exciting for us, with varying degrees of success. Some of them tried to scare us away from the path of temptation, too. One fellow explained to us, with the assistance of a slideshow, that while AC/DC & Led Zeppelin were about as Satanic as ham on rye, British rockers Venom were devout devil-worshippers hellbent on recruiting followers through their music. Imagine my disappointment years later, when I went out & bought Venom's "Cast in Stone" anthology, only to discover that they were in fact very close to a carbon copy of Spinal Tap. I guess anthologies don't realy do an album justice, as a concept. But I digress. One guy at these little meetings stood out above the others. He was determined to put the fear of God into us brats...or should I say the fear of Satan.

He told us a story about how once he was preaching a sermon to a similar group of tykes, about how reprehensible this Lucifer fellow really was, & was about to really break through & get the message across, when the door to the church suddenly slammed shut, breaking everyone's concentration & pretty much disrupting the momentum of his lecture. It was only later, he told us, that a friend came up to him & said that he'd been near the flagpole out front, & could see that there was NO WIND blowing at the time. Boogedy!!! So the Prince of Darkness, on top of everything else, is remarkably inconsiderate.

Well that was just the chips & salsa before the fajita plate; his next story was something that I still think about, twenty years later. Years ago, there was an amusement park in Long Beach called The Pike. It's been shut down, bulldozed, & built on now, but back in the day it was considered "the Coney Island of the West". Apparently, this guy & some buddies decided to spend an evening at The Pike, not realizing the horror that awaited them.

First of all, as soon as they walked through the front gates, this guy immediately got a terrible, terrible headache. He wrote it off as a coincidence, but after spending some time taking in the sights, he came to an eerie realization. "Hey," he whispered to one of his friends. "Have you noticed that all the employees here.....don't blink?" It was true. The guy who sold tickets for the ferris wheel, the Hot-Dog-On-A-Stick girl, the carnies working the shooting galleries & ring-toss, even the animal handlers at the petting-zoo...none of them were blinking, at all, ever. It really gave this guy & his friends the creeps. The rides were kinda spooky, too...he remembered one roller coaster in particular that had a horror-movie sort of theme. At certain parts of the ride, mannequins dressed as monsters would spring out of the walls on the side of the track, & for some reason it scared him more than a goofy haunted-house ride should.

Well, it was no surprise that this dude's headache went away the second he left The Pike. And it was only years later, after the park was closed, that he was made aware of a sinister truth: the entire operation, he discovered, was run by a Satanic cult. The employees were all members, branwashed by the the Devil's unholy power. And...ready for this?...the mannequins on the haunted-house ride were REAL CORPSES that had been murdered by the cult, then callously recycled as stage props.

Now, I don;t know about you, but that sounds like an amazing place to spend a Saturday night! Sure beats Disneyland. Of course, I haven't been to "the happiest place on Earth" since before I went to that freakin' summer-camp. Maybe things have changed. But as evil as Walt Disney was, I don't know if he could compete with something that cool. Some things you just can't fake.

Career Opportunities

2005-09-07T17:35:00.000-07:00

Yes, it's true...I work in the entertainment industry. While I oh so slowly work my way towards making a career out of private investigation, I've paid the bills for the last few years by helping rot the collective minds of America. When you're sitting around watching some lame-ass movie on TV becase there's nothing else to do in your God-forsaken town, you can thank me for being one in a series of middlemen who helped today's tepid, bland programming reach the drooling masses. Man, for someone who watches as much TV as I do, I sure am hard on myself! It's hard to explain the buzzkill one feels when you see your work, which already can't stand, being broadcast on that beloved medium. Well, I just tell myself that I watch the good stuff, not the steaming piles of crap I deal with at work...

-Rockford Files re-runs
-Going Tribal
-Dog the Bounty Hunter
-The Shield
-The Ultimate Fighter
-Stella
-Miami Ink
-Cheaters
-Arrested Development
-Columbo, baby! Monday & Friday nights.

Now that's good stuff. Anyways, on those days when my job seems like karmic punishment from a Caligulan past life, I think of the other means of employment I've weathered, for substantially less pay. It kind of, you know, puts things in perspective.

Now let's see...

Repossessing cars; I got paid $25 for every car I picked up, & $15 for every trip returning cars to the dealership in Fontana. What did I learn? Well, besides how to steal car stereos, I learned how to break into locked garages, how to climb barbed-wire fences, how to deactivate car alarms, how to sneak into gated communities, how to sneak into parking lots with electronically-activated gates, & how to deal with watchdogs. Ironically, I learned very little about stealing cars.

Working in a poster-bootlegging warehouse; before there was Napster, there were small companies that counterfeited posters & stickers. You know when you go to an independent record store & they have all thos goofy posters of goofy bands & goofy movies all over the place, & all those goofy stickers under the glass counter? They pay pennies on the dollar by ordering fake stuff in bulk. $6 an hour to pack & ship "Reservoir Dogs" & Limp Bizkit posters all day, out of a gutted office space near MacArthur Park. What did I learn? Be respectful to the local gang members but be sure to look them in the eye when you walk past them, & they most likely won't hassle you. Also, police may think you shoot heroin if you have tattoos on the insides of your arms. Good times!

Working in an porno theater; no, you perverts, I charged admission & changed the tapes in the projector between movies. $7 an hour isn't much, but they actually paid for meals on duty since we were stuck there for our entire shifts. Plus if we worked the closing shift they would pay for cabfare home. What did I learn? Don't get a job working in a porno theater, it'll lower your opnion of your fellow man.

Working in a bar/punk-rock club; $40 a night & free beer is actually a good deal, but hard to make a living doing 2-3 night a week. What did I learn? There're a lot of awful bands out there. I guess there're a few good ones too. Oh yeah, I also learned the right way to pour a beer, which is a skill I've used more in my day-to-day life than any others listed here.

Conclusion: I need to be self-employed. At least then, I won't have an excuse to bitch about my lame-ass job, right? Right.

(insert fish pun here)

2005-08-19T15:11:00.000-07:00

This weekend I'm embarking on an exotic safari in search of that most most rare & noble beast: the channel catfish. I've been seeing good things in the fish reports over in Big Bear, & was able to cajole my girlfriend into coming along with me for a day. Now, when I learned to fish, it was at Kern River, & we were after trout. And since then it's been mainly trout & sometimes a vain attempt to land a bass. But after reading about the catfish record being broken repeatedly as of late, guess who wants a piece of the action.

I'm a little concerned that my light rig won't hold up if I sink a 6-8 lb cat but then that's probably getting a little ahead of myself. I upgraded my line to some rugged Trilene that can be used for both trout & cats, & hopefully won't get left behind trailing out of some raibow trouts maw. And, not being inclined to face the fish on a level playing field, I splurged & picked up some Crave Gravy, which you use to soak the catfish biscuits...apparently this stuff has both strong food scent & strong pheremone scent. Sounds like a perverse combination to me, but then catfish eat all kinds of things I'd send back to the kitchen.

Now some people, caught up in the disco-esque fad of fly-fishing, may look down their polarized sunglasses at me, but I for one am all in favor of taking advantage of the leaps & bounds in scientific research. Powerbait, Crave Gravy, why not exert some authority over our fishy friends? Yeah, yeah, I don't make my own lures & dig up my own nightcrawlers. I also don't grind up the corn to make my own tortillas. You know who does, though, is La Parilla, down on Sunset near the Silverlake Lounge. What a great place, except for the house "band", aka 2 or 3 mariachis that look more like Tijuana car salesman, who won;t hesistate to stand at your table & badger you to pay 'em 5 bucks for a song.

What the hell was I talking about? Oh yeah...fishing. If I don't come back with something in my cooler besides melted ice & empty beer cans there's gonna be trouble. Trouble! Maybe if I make a small but thoughtful sacrifice to the gods of fishing...don;t think I'm above trying something like that, ask around & they'll tell you, I've done goofier shit without thinking twice.

Return of the Fly

2005-07-16T22:10:00.000-07:00

So lately I've been looking for something to direct my mania at...you know, something to collect? I had tried dabbling in collecting comics but was a little intimidated by the sheer magnitude of the subject matter, & the assholes you invariably run into at comic book stores (it's not quite so bad at HiDeHo in Santa Monica actually, but that's a lotta gas when you drive an American-made truck). SO...I tried narrowing it down to just a few titles. Man, what a great feeling! When I dug up the individual issues of Peter Bagge's "Hate" (yep, they were at HiDeHo) that comprised the out-of-print "Fun With Buddy & Lisa" trade-paperback, it was a magical feeling. I felt like I was a lil nipper finding that last Star Wars trading card, you remember how the backs made up a big picture of Dath Vader?

Well anyways I was feeling a bit despondent. I mean, I can collect Daily Racing forms but it doesn't quite have the same pop. That's more of an intellectual pursuit. Dodger paraphernelia? Hey, I'm not made of money. Star Wars toys? Fuck no! Don't you read this blog?!

Well anyaways I was looking for some snappy new duds, since I'm officially in need of size XXL, aka 2XL, aka "big-boy" size t-shirts now, seeing how my sixe XLs are starting to look more & more like spandex on my boyish figure, & size L affords passers by a disturbing view of my navel. So what did I chance upon? A Misfits shirt. I was looking through the merchandise on their website & thinking how terrible the new incarnation is, with only one original member who's balder than me & yet still insists on trying to maintain the old devilock that I obediently mimicked in high-school. I mean, the new guitarist may have once, briefly, played for Black Flag, but that was back when I collected Star Wars cards, & having met him when I lived on top of Al's Bar, I can't recall having met a more vacuous dolt more undeserving of this kind of cult status.

So I stopped by Vinyl Fetish on Cahuenga, (no more trips to Amoeba...don't be fooled, young folk; they're wolves in sheeps clothing...the Clear Channel of record stores) & I picked up the Misfits Collection II. I was kind of annoyed when I remembered, after sticking it in the CD player, that the "Walk Among Us" tracks are actually re-RECORDED by Glenn Danzig, not re-MASTERED. And they suck. Yeah I guess there's some dispute with the original record company or the ex-members of the band...I won't bore you with the details. Well I was kinda bummed over that, I mean it had the only available CD versions of some of the tracks off of the "Beware" EP, which is cool, but now I wanna pick up "Walk Among Us". There was also something there called "The 12-inch Compilation", which it turns out I shoulda bought...

...which brings me full circle. Isn't this what I spent my allowance on when I was a snot-nosed kid? Isn't this what I obsessed over happily for years? Isn't this what brought me indescribable joy back then? It had all the key ingredients...a) it was collectable, since they were never widely distributed, b) it was music, Odin's gift to humanity, and c) the subject matter matched my personality to a T; don't you know about the Misfits? Haven't you seen Plan 9 from Outer Space?

Well here it is, then...something to quietly direct my mania towards. All those old records are on CD now. I even heard that the much-hyped "lost album", 12 Hits from Hell, is available if you know where to look. I mean, I didn't even know it existed until recently. Now I'd cross the Sahara to get my greasy mitts on it. Once again, I have something to look forward to.

Yeah, it's a shame that some idiots have to make an embarassing spectacle using the same name (just goes to prove my theory that everything is being ruined these days, be it Kojak or Star Wars), but since they have the rights to the merch, aka bad-ass shirts, I guess we'll have to peacefully co-exist. These are the moral compromises one must learn to accept in this crazy world we live in.

p.s.

If you've never listened any Misfits records& don't plan on doing so in the near future, you can always check out the B-movies that inspired them instead.

i.e.

"Beware":
Psycho
THX-1138
Hollywood Babylon

"Walk Among Us":
Plan 9 from Outer Space
Invaders from Mars
Night of the Living Dead

"Earth A.D.":
The Monster from Green Hell
Bloodfeast
Die, Die, My Darling

...any of Ed Woods' later horror movies will do in a pinch, though.

Two if by sea

2005-07-07T16:12:00.000-07:00

You know I remember this one time when I was living up in Portland; it was a quiet night & the roomies were at work so I thought I'd kill some time by grabbing a bite to eat & stopping by the record store. Little did I know the horror that awaited me! The first ominous portention of impending doom was the stomach cramps I started getting while I was waiting for the bus. I shrugged them off & caught a ride over to a diner I'd been going to. At the counter, looking over the laminated menu, the 'special" caught my eye, written in day-glo marker on a black dry-erase board over the kitchen door..."fish & chips". It never occurred to me that a cheap diner off Burnside wouldn't exactly have the freshest fish. Stupid, huh. So after the greasiest meal I've ever eaten, I got back on the bus for the record store, I forget the name now, but it's the one nearest Powell's City of Books.

For some strange reason, my fetid dinner did very little in the way of easing my stomach problems. "I'll go to the bathroom whan I get home, " I told myself. Well, I was half right.

I didn't exactly shop around liesurely when I got there, I felt like doubling over right there in the used CD aisle. Maybe the intense physical discomfort affected my judgement; instead of picking up the old Bathory album I'd been meaning to add to meager collection, I ended up getting Metallica's "Master of Puppets" on cassette. I still remember the look the cashier gave me when I went up to the counter, she made this face that was both withering & dismissive, like I was a strange & repulsive insect that had crawled in from the wet streets outside. I imagine she had ample opportunity to hone that look to perfection, working in an independent record store.

Well by now, "using the facilities" was rocketing toward the top of the list of priorities. The bus ride back was the longest, bumpiest bus ride I've ever had, with the most stops. When I finally got off I was in a cold sweat. I lurched off into the night, with my new tape playing in my headphones. It was a haunting soundtrack only fitting for what was to come. I remember it was towards the end of side 2, during "Damage, Inc", that I pulled the headphones off in desperation, realizing it wasn't really helping me stay calm in this time of crisis. I cut across a couple of alleys & it was then, rounding the corner that led to the apartment building I was staying at, that the terrible thought that I might not make it in time came creeping into my head.

When I got to the back door of the building, by the laundry room, I wasted precious seconds fumbling through my camos looking for the damn keys (we all had to share one set so they were never in the same place twice, it seemed), then I was up the stairs like a bat out of hell. I shoved my way past a bewildered tenant coming down fromthe 2nd floor, not daring to look back, like some crazed, metalhead Orpheus, sprinting away from Hades.

It was zero hour. Unlocking the door to the apartment seemed to take an eternity. I knew it was going to be close, much much closer than I would ever want. Luckily the apartment was tiny, even for a studio, and the bathroom was only 3 steps from the front door.

If only it had ben 2 steps instead.

I'm not going to lie, I totally shit my pants. It was a terrible, helpless feeling, and my cramped sprint turned into a stiff lumber in mid-stride. I won't bore you with the gory details but let's just say that when it came to my wardrobe, nothing below my spiked belt was spared. Socks & Vans hi-tops joined the tiger-stripe camoflauge pants as undeserving casualties. I'm still thankful that no roommates were home, only a startled cat.

Into the shower I went, fully clothed, my face still frozen in a silent scream. But when I turned the water on full-blast, only a dribble of water dripped out. "This can't be happening," I thought, "I'll wake up at the bus stop any second now." But it was all too real. I unscrewed the shower head & shook out the opaque deposits that were blocking the water flow, & proceeded to hose myself off as best I could. It was a somber time spent waiting for the clothes to finish the wash cycle in the basement laundry room, & I still ended up throwing away the pants. Bad mojo.

It wasn't long after that I decided maybe Portland wasn't the place for me, & got on a Greyhound for downtown LA, where I had come from inthe first place, & where I had never soiled myself. To this day, I get that creepy feeling when I hear that stupid Metallica song.

Dealing out the agony within
Charging hard and no one’s gonna give in
Living on your knees, conformity
Or dying on your feet for honesty
Inbred, our bodies work as one
Bloody, but never cry submission
Following our instinct not a trend
Go against the grain until the end

Blood will follow blood

Dying time is here

Damage, incorporated

Cat People

2005-06-30T18:59:00.000-07:00

Well, as I hitchhike down the road of self-discovery, I'm constantly surprised at what I stumble across along the way. Let me tell you about something that I guess should have been obvious but wasn't.

I got my first pet cat when I was still a boy in short pants. I remember naming her, even though I can't remember where the idea for the name came from. If I recall correctly, she was from a litter that my aunt's cat had. This cat was with me until I was almost out of high school, & is still buried near my folk's house. But for some reason, I always bitched & kvetched about not having a dog. Everybody else had a damn dog, it seemed. Why not me? Bear in mind I had no concept of picking up a dog's fresh feces or pulling fleas & blood-gorged ticks off of a dog's belly. All I was thinking about was...I dunno, playing fetch, I guess.

Years went by & I found myself living in a house just off the 2, in Glassell Park. It was a family-owned 3-house duplex, & guess what? They had 3 dogs. A pitbull, a german shepherd, & some curious beast that can only be described as a midget sea-lion with the head of a muskrat. Well those were some of the worst times I've ever spent. Dogs have a nasty habit of pissing on things you hold dear, & if you think dog food smells bad, imagine what their farts smell like. Not to mention, they keep their own hours & have no qualms with barking all night outside your bedroom window just to pass their miserable time on this earth...mangy curs! They chew on your only pair of shoes and snap at you when they're cranky. Of course if you shove a dog in a harpooning motion with an umbrella you're some kind of sadistic monster. Hm, what's that? That's right, in a harpooning motion, people! If an upstart canine throws the gauntlet I don't wait to be asked twice. Oh, & going to the dog park? Rubbing elbows with a crowd of buffoons who enjoy the company of these pea-brained pests? Thanks but no thanks. Some advice for a pet-owners first trip to the dog park...Watch your step, people; the hills are alive with the sound of music. By "the sound of music" I mean the hills are alive with dogs defacating, urinating, & dry humping on everything in sight.

In any event, I had an epiphone...a moment of clarity, if you will. My friend over by Dodger Stadium has a cat that had a litter, & was looking to move them out of his house asap. I was watching the game & enjoying a civilized drink when I mentioned that my girlfriend wanted a cat, even though, technically, she wasn't allowed to have one at her place. Long story short, now she has the kitten. Siamese markings. Strong resemblance to the cat my grandmother had when I was just a boy in short pants. And what do you know...it's relaxing having a cat. They like being around you & can be easily trained to use a goddamn litterbox. And then it hit me. My parents have a cat, they've always had a cat. My friend in Vegas has a cat. My friend by Dodger Stadium has a cat (of course). When you're around a cat, it's difficult to stay in a pissed-off state of mind. For me, at least. It helps that my girlfriend's cat has the temperment of a circus clown.

So now I know. I'm a cat person. Me, a cat person! Who'd a thunk it?

Man's best friend? Sorry, Fido. Like Bob Dylan said, "You're gonna have to find yourself /another best friend somehow."

Hammer of the Blogs

2005-06-20T19:32:00.000-07:00

You know, I'm not exactly what you'd call an internet enthusiast. Yeah, I check the Dodgers scores online, & the results at Hollywood Park/Santa Anita, & loosely follow the MMA scene, & read the Onion every Tuesday, & check to see if GWAR is making a new record, but that's about it. Well, mostly, at least. Anyways, I don't really keep tabs on other people's blogs. And hoo-ee, look at what I've been missing! Apparently I'm not the only dork who feels obliged to espouse his most trivial views as if they were gospel. Well guess what, people...your blogs suck!!!

My friend at work sent me a link to some dude who thought it would be cute if he kept a blog & acted like he was Darth Vader (yes, back to Star Wars, just for a minute), so the posts were like an inside look at his mind. And you thought Star Wars fan fiction was bad! Darth Vader's diary. Even if the concept wasn't a terribly misconceived abomination, he routinely strayed from the story & took cute little "liberties" in order to make the dreary reading a bit less painful to it's readers. So he couldn't even do that right.

Then my girlfriend shows me some site, "Blogging LA" or something, which is basically a journal of terrified West-siders & Midwest transplants who can't accept the fact that their fashionable SilverLake duplex is in reality on a block that some homeboy lives on who just did a drive-by on 18th Street & now they want a piece of him. Do your homework before you move into a strange new city. Here's a hint: if you have a bunch of loud Nissans & Civics on the street & you're not in a Chinese neighborhood, lock your doors at night. If you see any shiny Imapalas, buy a gun. Oh yeah, & when people spraypaint their gangs name over another gangs name, it doesn't mean they're challenging them to a spelling-bee. If you look closely you can see where the grafitti has been painted over by the city or the neighbors...did you want the local gang to bring a fruit basket to your house when you moved in? I read one hilarious entry on there; this guy was complaining that there had been a shooting near his house: "I heard gunshots, & when I shot a glance out the window to see where the gunshots had been shot from & who shot the gunshots & where the gunshots were coming from & who was shooting a gun, I saw a gunman running down the hill, holding a gun, & after the gunman & his gun who had shot the gunshots got in his car, he gunned the engine & shot away." Ok I'm paraphrasing but that's what we call poetic license here at the OK Corall.

I'm not going to even dignify the countless blogs about people's day-to-day humdrum existences. The whole slice-of-life thing works great for Harvey Pekar, but there's one Harvey Pekar & ten million people whos slices of life could stand to be a la mode, or maybe even have some American cheese melted on top. And of course, these are the people who feel compelled to blog their hearts out. Why do they bother? Have they not seen the glorificent (glorious/magnificent) modern-day sermon on the mount that you, yes you, have the pleasure to be reading this very second? To quote Mike Tyson, "How dare they challenge me with their primitive skills."

Yes I'm aware of the irony of me writing this in my blog.

You have failed me for the last time, Admiral Lucas

2005-06-14T19:44:00.000-07:00

Well...not to make Star Wars the dominating motif of this esteemed collection of my innermost thoughts & feelings, but I finally got around to seeing Episode III. And man oh man, what a steaming pile of crap it was. I had been putting off actually going to see it because I knew that once I had seen the last installment, there would be no more to look forward to. Well, except the constant stream of re-releases, redigitized version, 3-D versions, DVD versions & so on & so forth. But I couldn't put it off any longer, co-workers were talking about it in front of me & I pretty much knew what was gonna happen inthe damn movie so I drove out to the stadium-seating multiplex in Alhambra & plunked myself down in front of the screen, armed with peanut M&Ms & a gibungous soda.

Right away I knew there was going to be trouble. This may sound dumb, but the opening theme song sounded really...weak. It just didn't have that power, that resonance or what have you, that lets you know you're about to see an epic saga. It sounded like it was a junior high school band playing halftime at a pop-warner football game. Why they would record a version like that I don't know. And to tell you the truth, throughout the whole movie, the score really failed to get me interested. Maybe John Williams was having a bad day. Hey, we all have 'em.

But the actual story? About as engaging as Pokemon. I was starting to get annoyed. I mean, Episode IV was the first movie I ever saw & thusly, it had tremendous influence on me. Maybe I had too much emotional baggage going into this, but surely Lucas must have realized the pressure, the, the scrutiny this movie was gonna be subjected to.

So this was supposed to wrap up all the loose ends, but the only contributions to the overall plot took place in rapid-fire succession at the absolute very end. The creation of the Darth Vader persona is frustratingly reminiscent of Abbot & Costello meet Frankenstein. And Yoda calls the Senate "Congress", for christs sake! Since when did this become a story about democracy?!?! Not to mention democracy had yet to be conceived by the Ancient Greeks. Yeah, the beginning of Episode IV reveals the Senate has been dissolved. If I knew the prequels were going to be the backstory of a fictional political upheaval I would've just read War & Peace instead...which, might I add, would've taken a lot less time & cost a lot less, & would involve a lot less dizzying CG. And speaking of which: Why is it that novice actors Harrison Ford & Mark Hamill, circa 1977, can get you emotionally involved in the story by making you believe their spaceship is navigating its way through a dangerous asteroid field, when they're sitting in a small prop being shaken by bored stagehands. Meanwhile I was more interested in what color M&M I was eating than watching an intricately detailed CG space battle in Episode III that literally costs millions to produce.

Eh, what can you do. Doesn't mean I can't sit back with a Heineken keg-can, pop the original trilogy into the VCR & let it take me back to a more civilized time...before the Empire.

The Beer Hunter

2005-06-09T19:28:00.000-07:00

Let it be known: today starts the dawn of a glorious new era; an age in which light beer (or "Lite Beer" as it's known in the common vernacular) is only a disturbing memory, a campfire story told to frighten unruly children. A little over a year ago, I set out on a bold & daring experiment, in the same vein as the Curies, or that dude who discovered you could cure Polio with mold. Or was it cure VD with mold. I know mold cures something even though we always throw away bread the second we see a speck of green on the crust.

Now what the hell was I talking about?

Oh yeah...Anyways, I vowed to only drink light beer, in the desperate hopes of enjoying the euphoric side-effects of the fermented barley, without the inconvenient after-effects of the distended-abdominal-syndrome more commonly known to the layman as a "beer belly". This, I discovered, was a harsh reality that was harder & harder to ignore the more "Mickey's Fine Malt Liquor" I consumed. Well, that & eating Jack in the Box @ midnight every night. Hey I worked the night shift, ok?

Ok so anyways, I decided the solution was ridiculously simple: swith to light beer, of course! And after a steady regimen of Miller Lite, I was happy enough. And yet, there was something amiss...I had to drink more than usual amount of beer to feel the soothing effects it's renowned for. And that soothing effect wasn't quite what I remembered it to be. Imagine, regularly putting the premium gas from Chevron in the tank, then suddenly switching to the cheapest pump at the AM-PM/ARCO. The difference is subtle, but not entirely intangible. And when I would splurge on paydays & buy a half-rack of Tecate (I know, I'm a regular Donald Trump), it would be a somewhat jarring experience. But hey, I'm not afraid of committment. I stayed on course for a year, a full year! I ended my freakin' twenties staying on course. See what happens when you throw yourself at a cause with blind devotion? You leave yourself vulnerable to the watered-down swill of compromise: Miller Lite, Coors Light, Michelob Ultra, Coors Aspen, Rooling Rock Green-Light, even Pabst Blue Ribbon light.

Well, finally, the shipmates on this tragic voyage have revolted, & turned the bow towards more esteemed waters.

I'm going to swallow my pride & let go of my dogmatic loyalty to domestic beer while I'm at it. Hey, with W in office, I only feel obligated to support the local (city & state) economy. St Louis & Milwaulkee are far away lands that will have to learn to survive without the allowance I've been doling out to them all this time.

After a bit of deliberation, I've decided to start with English beers, & then I'll see how long it takes me to get tired of them & move on to, oh I don't know, Mexican beer, then Japanese beer. I'll probably skip over German beer (try some if you wanna know why) but maybe Dutch beer will make up for it, isn't that in the general vicinity? It's a mission of world diplomacy, & I can say with a straight face that I now consider myself the James Bond of lagers & ales (& the occasional stout of course), on a perilous mission to stop the sinister, shadowy group known only as Anhueiser-Busch. Wish me godspeed, & have a drink on me.

Pope on a rope

2005-04-19T23:41:00.000-07:00

Have you ever heard people go on & on about Satanists & devil worship & how cultists killed their cats & kidnapped a baby & drank it's blood last Halloween? Have you ever seen daytime TV talk shows blither on & on about Satanic cults & how they turn teenagers into evil robots, how Satanic heavy-metal lyrics inspired two dumbshit dropouts to kill themselves?

I've never seen anything like that, & I've investigated the subject more thoroughly than 1,000 Geraldos. But I'm not going to bore you all with my personal philosophy. Let's just compare, for the sake of argument, the Catholic Church with the Church of Satan (neither of which, I'm proud to say, I'm a member of)...

There are no, repeat NO cases of bona fide "Satanists" harming animals or people during their "Black Masses". The Church of Satan's rituals are a bit over the top, but only in the sense that they're heavy on the theater. Conversely, there are several rape/child-abuse cases still pending against Catholic priests.

The Catholic Church openly condemns abortion, homosexuality, birth-control & euthansia...& no exceptions, people! The Church of Satan openly condems organizations that enforce strict dogma.

The new pope, God's earthly representative, was in the Hitler Youth. Anton LaVey left home to play the organ at a carnival.

I could go on & on but I've learned, though bitter experience, that no one wants to hear this. If you've read this far, you've heard more about it than anyone I've tried to explain it to. Does it really sound that crazy?

To me, an elderly resident of a Church-State who lives his life literally protected from the world by palace guards, & who weilds influence over millions of poverty-stricken families with arcane rituals conducted in gargantuan cathedrals literally made of gold, & who is literally believed to be fucking infallible!!! If he says up is down, up is down, baby!.....THAT sounds crazy to me.

Some guys up in the Bay area want to wear black & fuck with people's minds by lighting incense in front of a drawing of a goat's head, & they're the lunatics? Well call me crazy, people.

Take this master cylinder & shove it

2005-04-14T23:32:00.000-07:00

Well, as just about anyone can tell you, having automotive problems can be one of the most frustrating feelings. My Ford truck had a VERY old set of brakes when I bought it, & I've been having various components repaired as money & time allow. Most of the work has been done at the Midas on Sunset just off the Hollywood freeway. But the days of me forking over my dough on to those dunderheads' plates are long gone. Turns out the only thing those wahoos specialize in is pissing off your humble narrator. Can you believe I went there three, that's right THREE times trying to get my brakes fixed? My ABS light & the emergency brake light were both turning on intermittently, along with an ominous tightening of the brake pedal. So those blithering idiots string me along to the tune of a few hundred dollars doing various odd jobs that do absolutely nothing towards solving the problem. When I take the truck back they say everything is fine, it's just an old ABS sensor & it's not a safety issue. When I take it back again with both lights flashing & the brakes siezing up, they tell me (after a 3 hour wait) that they're missing the adaptor that can check the computer for ABS errors. Take it to the dealer, they say, then bring it back when they know what the problem is & they'll fix it for me (the dealer charges $120 just to turn the diagnostic machine on). Well folks, you would be proud of the restraint I showed that day. A few blunt statements & a brief squealing of tires where there was once the stream of obscenities & the randomly hurled object. Let me tell you, there'll be some outfielders hating their jobs this season (if you read my previous post that'll make more sense). The next week my daily commute is cut short by a terrible sound & a stream of acrid smoke shooting out of my rear wheels, causing a bit of a stir on the eastern stretch of Santa Monica Blvd. Turns out the rear cylinders were sticking, and subsequently burning up the shoes. But I catch a break, my parent's signed me up for AAA for xmas...turns out to be a better present thanthe Jabba the Hut playset, which I didn't think was possible. A local mechanic, recommended by the towing company that picks me up, fixes the problem & I'm on my way. Well naturally the same symptoms promptly set in. I bring it back to the local guy and here's what he tells me, in so many words: the truck's computer, which turns on when the truck is started, is not unlike the computer you use at work or school. After you boot up, it takes awhile for various programs to open up. There was a problem, or "virus", if you will, in rear anti-lock brake circuit, so when the ABS program activated, it was causing the rear brakes to lock up. Solution? The guy reaches under the truck & unplugs the ABS unit, & sends me on my way. Well, first he explained to me that one day, like the new Mercedes E-class, mankind will be controlled by small, sophisticated computers...then he sent me on my way.

Now where was I? Oh yeah, in the thralls of another rambling internal monologue...now let's see...Midas, if I recall correctly, was a king whose lust for gold ended up destroying his life in an ironic twist. Yeah, you never hear about his kids who were transmogrified into golden statuettes eternally frozen in silent screams of agony & terror. Reminds me of when Han Solo was encased in carbonite. That's right folks, I was able pull out not one but TWO Star Wars references out from this mess.

Still got it.

I see you boys of Summer, pretending not to hear my drunken taunts

2005-04-03T22:31:00.000-07:00

Ah, the euphoric descent into full-blown psychosis. When reality taunts me with obstacles that verge on the comedic, why do people look at me like I'm crazy when I laugh out loud? Why do I feel my blood pressure start to rise when I see typos in the inter-office e-mail? Why does it infuriate me to no end when people don't mind their goddamn manners? Luckily I have several coping mechanisms that allow me to channel the terrible feelings into productive means. For instance, I like to heckle outfielders at baseball games, and feed goldfish to my pet fishes, & now that I think about it, I guess it's not that productive after all. Ah, back to the arcane meditation excercise that is heckling outfielders. I'm sorry, in a strange way, that Barry Bonds will be missing the Dodgers home opener, & possibly the entire season. What will I do with the taunts I fine-tuned during the off-season? Will mankind never know the beauty & power of my beer-fueled oratory delivered fom the loge section? Is this how Van Gogh felt when he died peniless, the world oblivious to the gift he was leaving them? The answer, of course, is yes...yes, yes, a thousand times yes!

So this brings us to the issue of the day: steroids! Why in God's name would a baseball player need performance-enhancing drugs? They spend %95 of each game literally standing around. Now, please don't get me wrong, I love baseball. I may not be able to tell you how many RBIs Willie Mays had in his rookie year, or who won the All-Star game in 1982, but that doesn't mean I don't enjoy the game immensely. Well, watching the game. And I've been watching it long enough to tell you that baseball players don't need steroids. Rarely do they run for more than 5 seconds continuously. Double-plays & occasional stolen bases are spread out through 9+ innings. Hitting the ball requires strength, yes, but without the reflexes, strength will only get you a pop-fly to shallow right. Do you need to take steroids just to spit sunflower seeds onto the dugout floor? Seems like they would be more apt to get high to pass the time after they strike out & have to wait for the entire rotation until they're up again. Granted, the guys who were on the juice were the guys who were routinely breaking the home-run record, but there's a solution to the problem that's a thousand times simpler than government hearings & official investigations. It's called walking the batter, you bozos. Any pitcher who actually tries to strike out a hulking left-fielder with 50 home runs is either way ahead in the count with a 3-run lead & no one on 2nd, or has been taking bong hits in the bullpen. So maybe there IS a drug problem in the Major Leagues.

Serial Killer Open Tournament

2005-02-28T21:01:00.000-08:00

Disclaimer: I don't really mean any of this, it's the 14-year old in me talking.

Now that the BTK killer has been apprehended after 30-some-odd years, there can be no debate: the murders committed by the Zodiac killer must be considered the crime of the century. Well, last century. It doesn't look like we'll ever know the killer's true identity, since he has most likely passed away & left no evidence behind that anyone knows of. While the two serial killers had similar M.O.'s in that they both wrote taunting letters to the police & media, we can see now that, however strange it seems, a confused & disturbed individual (Zodiac) with a tenous grip on reality was able to elude numerous law enforcement agencies in a major metropolitan area, while an organized, inconspicuous, respected man about town (BTK) couldn't get past local authorities in a suburb of a small Midwestern township. Strange. So now we go to the scoreboard.

Zodiac
--------------- Zodiac
Manson

-------------------------------------------Zodiac

Dahmer
----------Night Stalker
Night Stalker

----------------------------------------------------------winner: Zodiac

BTK
---------------BTK
Son of Sam

--------------------------------------------BTK

Ted Bundy
-----------Green River
Green River

Quick recap: Zodiac defeated Manson simply by knowing when to play it cool & subsequently evading authorities, while Richard Ramirez earned a unanimous decision by surviving prison life, outliving an incarecerated Jeffrey Dahmer & even getting married as he sat on death row. BTK held on to a strong lead as Sam Berkowitz was forgotten on Rykers Island. And Green River looked like he was going to run away with it, racking up huge numbers & eluding authorities for years, in what many considered an upset over the "Hollywood-serial-killer-prototype" Bundy.

In the semi's, Zodiac made short work of Ramirez; it was over before it started....sticking to his simple, conservative gameplan of knowing "when to say when" after the stunning display that earned him his 1st place seed, Zodiac seemd unbeatable. BTK made it past Green River when authorities finally closed in on the Pacific Northwesterner, & made a strong showing by renewing his correspondence with the police.

Ultimately, it was this last ploy that cost BTK in the finals, as Zodiac's complete lack of evidence shut out the Wichita resident we now know as Dennis L. Rader. With BTK in custody & literally truckloads of evidence having been confiscated, even if reports that Rader has already confessed to more crimes than originally attributed to him are true, Zodiac will take home the honors & is bestowed the 20th century Serial Killer Open Tournament title.

Stay tuned for out next installment, as Zodiac earns a well-deserved seat alongside Jack the Ripper on the roster of the much-anticipated "Tournament of Champions".

Daquiri of a madman

2005-02-14T00:16:00.000-08:00

So I guess that last post was kind of bitchy but, as fellow blogger St Anthony once said, "quod scripsi, scripsi". Or was it St. Mark....St. Patrick? Anyways tonight was Grammy's. I only watched the part where all those dudes jammed with Skynyrd but I accidentally saw part of a segment where this rapper turned into an angel and started flying away during his song. They have this category now called "Urban / Alternative", & let me explain to anyone reading this who hails from the inner-city, "urban" actually means "black". They have an "Urban Comedy" special on Comedy Central. "Urban attire" means Sean John, though let me tell you, not even the most hardened thug can look tough in a velour jumpsuit. Anyways I just got over a nasty cold, & let me tell you that despite what you may have heard, being sick really sucks. I blew my nose so much it looks like a have sunburn. I think it was some kind of poetic justice because I called in sick so I could go to a concert with my friend. Well, see what happens? Poetic justice, I tell ya, Emily Dickinson style. I don't know what that's supposed to mean. I guess because it's bleak and...and it rhymed. Yeah so I went to this show & ended up getting my Talledega t-shirt stained when some dolt got jostled by some other dolt & I ended up wearing most of his beer. I guess it wasn't a lite beer because you can definitely see where he got me. I'm guessing it was Anchor Steam or possibly Amber Bock. Anyways when I was sick I thought what might help would be some good food & a stiff drink. You know, feed a cold, starve a fever? I think that's how it goes. So I had this thing at Acapulco called the Combo Ultimo & couple of margaritas, then I got some Z's. Well it made me really tired & I slept for like, over 12 hours & felt a lot better when I woke up. So I don't really know which part really was the key ingredient. Now, I'm guessing if I had downed a few "tropical" drinks that would've really put me over the top. You know, because they have fruit juice & stuff? Lots of vitamin C & what have you. Yeah I read this one recipe thats "The Cure for the Common Cold" & it's a shot of Scnapps, one of those Trader Joes beers, some garlic, some chlorophyll tablets, & a raw egg, & you drink the whole thing all heated up. I've never seen chlorophyll tablets for sale anywhere, otherwise I would've tried it his time. I don't guess margaritas are the most efficient way to fend off a virus but it's a lot classier than downing tequila shots during dinner. Hey that reminds me, how come they don't have that super-strong cough-syrup anymore? You know, the kind you can't drive after taking? It's no fun drinking a glass of that kid-stuff mixed with ginger ale! Haha, I kid folks! I don't like ginger ale. Yeah so I guess they put SOMETHING in it still because I took a shot of this stuff my girlfriend got from the Rite-Aid & it was harsher than the first time I tried Jagermeister. Anyways this gay repartee is all well & good but I gotta go to bed so I can get up & go to work tomorrow & continue this ominous charade as another productive member of society. See you in the funny pages.

Bleeding hearts, medium rare

2005-01-14T01:12:00.000-08:00

So over there across a couple of oceans, they had this huge tsunami, & it's one of the worst natural disasters ever. Well over 100,000 dead, & more dying in the aftermatch. In it's wake, people around the world are coming together to help their fellow man. But, in a free country, we must tolerate critical views of current events, lest we lose the privilege of our own beliefs. What the blue blazes am I talking about? Let me share with you a pearl of wisdom overheard at work the other day. Ready? Ok......

...Ok I'm paraphrasing..."Since we've become a society that focuses so much on red meat, the demand for more & more cows has increased. These sacrificial bovines need grazing room, so we cut down tree upon tree, until the rain forests are depleted. The resulting lack of oxygen, in turn, causes the ozone layer to further deteriorate. What happens then? Well, look at the headlines, people, tsunamis happen! And these tsunamis would've been stopped in their tracks by the trees we so ignominiously cut down, & countless lives would have been spared."

I dressed this up a little; "ignominiously", as you may have guessed, is too big of a word for someone who thinks like this. But then again, so is "resulting."

So next time you callously indulge in a steak, or burger, or Swedish meatball, remember that in doing so, you're signing 100,000 death warrants.

Can you believe the superfluous bullshit that comes out of people's mouths on a daily basis? Superfluous bullshit...Is that redundant? Well you get the idea.

It's times like these I contemplate moving to the mountains, where my only concerns would be catching enough squirrel to make a casserole & fighting off rogue ATF agents.

"Let the music be your master"

2004-12-15T20:00:00.000-08:00

So I just bought the new Tiger Army CD & it's pretty good, I don't think it's as good as "The Power of Moonlight" but maybe it'll grow on me. What I was thinking about when I drove home from Amoeba listening to it was that when I bought it, I found the section it was in (rockabilly) by spotting the rockabilly dude who was lurking around. It got me to thinking about rockabilly dudes who drive old restored cars & wear those goofy outfits, & really play the part. Do they wear pajamas from the '50s, too? What about food, are they allowed to eat those new low-carb sandwhiches?

I'm one to talk. I'm only recently stopped wearing death metal t-shirts exclusively, & my old Ford Ranger was plastered with heavy metal stickers, like some kind of macabre entry in the Craftsman Truck Series. I used to regard people who didn't walk around constantly touting their taste in music with extreme suspicioun, like "What's the matter with you, don't you like music?" Of course, I still keep the Emperor shirt in the rotation. And the Iron Maiden. And the Slayer. Ok so I'm not ready for the cover of GQ just yet, or even an Old Navy catalog. Somehow I'm working through it.

et tu, Roger Daltrey?

2004-11-25T14:30:00.000-08:00

So this is like, my 2nd post in less than a week, which is pretty uncharacteristic. But this is out of control. I just saw a Buick commercial, and who was hawking the wares? Aerosmith! Not that they were ever this total anti-establishment kind of outfit, in fact, I always thought they were a pretty lame band anyways, but come on! Out of control, people. The real heartbreaker was hearing The Clash on some other luxury-sedan commercial. And I thought it was bad hearing Led Zep selling Cadillacs. Apparently when one member of these groups dies, it swings the vote, & the ones who need/want the money have the majority. That's what I heard happened with Zeppelin, apparently Page was outvoted when John Paul Jones passed away. I guess that's also how The Who ended up selling cars too, I think that was around the same time John Entwistle died. Now, The Ramones did a beer commercial, but at least it was a BEER commercial, not an ad for a car that most of America can't afford!!! Now I'm seeing U2 all over the place with their ridiculous new song; on iPod commercials, during halftime on Monday Night Football, I bet they're playing it on goddamn elevators. See, I think that if a band wanted to make some money by selling their songs, they should do an ad for condoms or domestic beer, a product that their fans could use, which is why I don't really think The Ramones did such a bad thing. Now, I'm sure that if I was a professional musician I would feel different. But I'm not, & I don't. I say, if I wanted to listen to someone try to sell me something I would watch QVC. I understand that a lot of the people who grew up listening to these bands are now in the market for these obnoxious cars, but that just tells me that maybe I should stop listening to classic rock, for fear of spending my golden years listening to my iPod as I drive up to my townhouse in my luxury 4-door. Shudder to think.

Wild Turkey couldn't drag me away

2004-11-22T23:06:00.000-08:00

So we're coming up on Thanksgiving. We commemorate the Pilgrims & the Indians getting together & learning how to plant corn, etc. What came as a shock to me is that other countries also have Thanksgiving. Would you believe that they have it Korea?! Korean Thanksgiving. What I want to know is, what the hell do Korean Indians look like. And do they have turkeys over there? The only Korean food I've ever had is Korean BBQ down there by Mid-Wilshire, which is supposed to be turning into a "cool" place. If you ask me, the only "cool" thing about it is the reception I get when I go through there. But I digress.........Thanksgiving is one of those non-denominational holidays that I can really get behind. For one thing, they have football games, & usually pretty decent ones. Detroit always plays one game, & so does Dallas. Neither team is really on fire this year but what the hell.

Thanksgiving also marks the time of year when TV show marathons bless our households. When I was growing up they would play "The Twilight Zone" on channel 5. Nowadays, what with all these new-fangled cable channels, they have all kinds of whacky movie-marathons too. I think they might have these marathons because people are up and about waiting for the turkey to cook, waiting for relatives to arrive, getting the house ready, drinking etc. This year I'm making my 3rd turkey, & hope to remedy the mistakes I've made in the past. I'm going to wrap the ends of the drumsticks in foil so they don't burn, & I'm going to turn the turkey around so one end isn't more cooked than the other. I'll probably employ a little foresight & buy a little extra beer, too.

This is as good a time as any to revive the fierce debate that rages through any Thanksgiving: could I hunt & kill a live turkey in the wild, armed only with a bolo & knife? The answer, of course, is yes. Now, I'm not saying that the bird wouldn't get a few good licks in, what with me being on his home turf. But come on, people! The odds would be on the same level as deep-sea fishing. Yeah, once in a while you see one of those yellow-fin tunas pull some yokel wearing one of those fishing-pole harnesses off of the boat & into the briny deep, but the difference is, I'm no yokel on America's Funniest Home Videos. I don't even need a bow and arrow to catch a turkey, that would take the sport out of it. In fact, I could even ditch the knife & just wring the damn thing's neck. I could go on & on about man vs. turkey but I'm saving the real bombshells of the debate over Thanksgiving dinner. So, let me leave you, dear internet geek, with this holiday tip: Make every effort to wake your ass up early & start with the prep; it'll free up a huge chunk of the day to sit on your glutes, watch football, & drink beer etc. Unless you're one of those people who thinks that eating turkey is cruel! Imagine a world where turkeys raise US to be slaughtered & eaten during Autumn festivities, during "The Turkey Zone" marathons. It's enough to make your blood run cold, isn't it? So let's all do our part to contribute to turkey population control, one look into those beady eyes is all it takes, can't you see the calculated, plotting fury behind them? Eat a turkey, the life you save may be your own.

prime directive

2004-10-15T18:01:00.000-07:00

It's official, I've patronized that car wash down on Sunset by my girlfriend's place for the last time. Pulled into one space & saw that it was out of order. The next space had a fucking snow-cone cart parked in it. The last one was out of order, too, & one of the drunken louts standing around pointed a scribbled piece of paper taped up on one of the walls: "no service." So I was backing my truck out, right? And as I'm putting in in drive & getting ready to bail out I see 'em all staring at me. So I'm staring back like "What the hell are you looking at?" & promptly drive into three-foot concrete post that's in the parking lot for some reason. That got 'em pretty riled up, I guess I was disrupting drunken snow-cone time. It kind of cheered me up that it bothered them so much, I was was actually laughing when I drove off. I took a look at my truck there's a small dent on the fender, not really noticeable except for the small amount of paint that rubbed off from the cement. I consider it a testament to the durability of Ford trucks, I put my vehicles through a fair share of punishment, & the last 3 have been Ford trucks. I should have my own Ford commercial: "Only Ford trucks can endure my catastrophic road rage!"

On another, less psychotic note, I started my private investigation training at Nick Harris Detectives. Pretty cool stuff. It was weird to get the actual lowdown, it wasn't too far from what I've been looking at on my own, mostly free stuff, public records and shit like that. What a bunch of nut-jobs in class with me though! I can't imagine them thinking the same about me, the walking talking picture of normalcy. The instructor was pretty cool & said I could "sit in" on the classes & pay the fee later. I normally feel bad about paying for that kind of stuff since I was totally ripped off by some correspondence-course ruse. But these guys are legit, several of the agencies I've called looking for work have said to call back when I took this class. And these guys let you get some hands-on experience. Yeah, they let you pay to work for them, goofy huh. But you get to socialize with other P.I.'s & use their databases & they give you equipment & shit like that. So I'm excited about it. It's Mondays & Thursdays, 7-10, so I bid a tearful farewell to Monday Night Football. This is the one thing that I'll take over football though, so it's all good.

To wrap it up, let me leave you, the earnest reader, with a nickel's worth of free advice: If you like spicy food, try not to scarf down your meals in less than a minute, lest you be stricken with explosive diarhea. I'll spare you the gruesome details, just enjoy the opportunity to learn from someone else's mistakes.

...and if those...Bar Wars should ever end...

2004-10-13T19:26:00.000-07:00

It's no secret that I'm a huge Star Wars nerd. When people claim to share my geekish obsession, I ask them a few simple questions that easily weeds out any impostors:
1) How fast could the Milenium Falcon complete the Kessle Run?
2) Name two Bounty Hunters BESIDES Boba Fett (no, Greedo doesn't count).
3) What did Jabba intend Han, Luke & Chewie's method of execution to be?

If they can't answer those questions, they probably only saw the trilogy a few times, which I can't relate to. It's funny, sometimes to annoy my girlfriend I start reciting one of the episodes. That always goes over great. Now, as for the "new" episodes, the jury's still out as far as I'm concerned. Maybe they'll grow on me. I've only watched them like, 5 or 6 times each. I liked Qui-Gon's little Zen quips in Episode 1, those helped carry the movie. They just seem so child-friendly. I guess even Lucas has bills to pay.

archie bunker's revenge

2004-10-10T02:07:00.000-07:00

Washed my truck today @ the place on Santa Monica & Cahuenga, but forgot to clean & dry my towels since last time so they were all mildewed, & I had to buy those stupid fucking paper towels out of those dispensers. Costs a little more but the equipment works fine & the change machines work. Tried out the "scratch remover" that I bought last week, I guess it worked ok. It's annoying how many little nicks & dings you can get living in the "big city". I guess it beats having to pry a deer out of your radiator grill. This may not make me any new friends, but I'm going to go on record with a sweeping generalization that seems to be holding true: people from El Salvador can't drive. There's a stretch along Santa Monica Blvd in Hollywood that goes through a Salvadoran neighborhood & those fools just can't get it together when they're on the damn road. My theory is that they just don't have that many cars down there, what with it being a third-world nation. So put 'em behind the wheel in a crowded part of town & watch mayhem ensue. In all fairness, it's a pretty small neighborhood that would have congested streets no matter who lived there but COME ON, PEOPLE! It's a fucking obstacle course.

So, they made a "Daredevil" movie, & the Kingpin was played by a black actor (that giant dude from "The Green Mile"), which was kind of an interesting twist, I guess. Now they're remaking "Kojak", & the title character will be played by a black actor (Ving Rhames). They're also making a movie out of "The Honeymooners" starring Cedric the Entertainer. The Wayans Brothers are remaking "The Munsters". Not that I watch 'em, but I heard that the MTV Awards looked like the Source Awards. I know I must sound like a total racist but COME ON, PEOPLE! It just doesn't make sense.

While I'm on this politically-incorrect tangent, I work in an entertainment-industry related field, I'm sorry to say, & a few weeks ago all these Jewish holidays started popping up. There was one day when anybody who was Jewish had to be home by sundown & stay home the next day, I guess they couldn't turn the TV on or drive a car or whatever. Is that "Yom Kippur"? That sounds like an Israeli FM talk radio host: "Yom Kippur here, taking you to traffic at the top of the hour." Also I understand that they can turn the TV on the night before & that way they can finnagle around the rules. Very convenient. I guess there's a way to justify anything. Anyways that one day there was like, no one at work, apparently all the bosses are Jewish. And I guess all the hard-asses that work in the industry are Jewish too because it the mellowest, most easy-going day at work I think I've ever had. Next year sometime I should be moving into a different line of work, I'm trying to get into the private investigation business, & I wonder if it'll be the same then. Probably not, I think this is just one business where Jewish holidays are just a fact of life. Yuck. It's funny because I used to take that Krav Maga, you know, what they supposedly teach the Isreali Commandos or Mossad or whatever. Sheesh, gimme a break! Some advice if you ever go toe-to-toe with an Israeli soldier: fight dirty & protect your groin. Plus the classes consisted of two groups: total posers & total assholes. People either checking themselves out in the mirrors the whole time, or trying to convince the rest of the class that they were bad-ass mother-fuckers. Can you imagine, once they made us work out while they played Britney Spears! I mean, COME ON, PEOPLE! What in thee hell?!

21jkfc
77777 <------that was courtesy of my girlfriend's cat, & is as good a closing statement on the subject as I can think of.

acid rain

2004-10-05T21:13:00.000-07:00

You know, when I had my old truck, I refused to wash it. People would make all kinds of stupid comments, you know, since you could barely tell what color it was. (It was red, under the quarter-inch layer of dust & bird shit.) When they asked me why I never washed it I would tell them that since it wasn't really mine (my reasoning being that I was still making payments on it), why the fuck should I wash it? Let the finance company come downtown & hose off the fucking truck! Anyways I guess I'm a little less...I don't know, whacked out of my head these days. So I've taken to washing my new truck a little more regularly. Of course, since I'm a man on the go who also happens to be a miserable cheapskate, I go to the self-service car washes. Oddly enough, it kind of relaxes me. I used to rush through it like it was a chore to be dispensed with in as little time as humanly possible, but now it's an almost meditative experience. The place I usually go to, a few blocks down from my girlfriend's house, is convenient because it's a few blocks down from my girlfriend's house, but the change machine never seems to work, & there are invariably a ragtag assembly of middle-aged Mexican dudes who stand around the parking lot drinking beer & pissing against the walls. Kind of like an inner-city "King of the Hill". I'm such a creature of habit that it's already hard to imagine patronizing another car wash but it looks like I'll have to spread my wings & take flight. Maybe the one up by Santa Monica & Cahuenga, it's just that there's so much traffic up there, it doesn't seem like it would be as relaxing. But hey, maybe it'll teach me to "tune out" my aggravating surroundings, now THAT would be meditation!

So Rodney Dangerfield died today. It's not like he was cut down in his prime but I'm still bummed. I always thought his character in "Easy Money" was the most admirable portrait of the modern day "everyman". Fuck that "HCE" shit, James Joyce was too in love with his own writing anyways. And what the hell would someone from the UK know about being an "everyman" anyways, all that aristocracy & criss-crossed bloodlines. How can an "everyman" sit down to tea-time?! And if Joyce was such a genius, how come no one can wade through "Finnegan's Wake" & be able to tell one page from the other without checking which page is dog-eared! Genius isn't worth squat if it isn't accessible, right? I mean Van Gogh was a fucked-up guy & no one really knew what kind of bizarre ideas were floating around in his one-eared head, but even a small child can enjoy looking at a print of one of his paintings. What was I talking about...oh yeah, Rodney Dangerfield. He was one comedian who consistently made me laugh, & who never seemed to be copying anyone else. In fact, I would say he set the standard. Seems like he was just being himself when he was doing his act, which is always a huge plus. Not like these smug dipshits & ghetto-tastic stand-ups who think they're rock stars.

By the way the melatonin isn't making a difference yet. Maybe I could dissolve it in a shot of Jager.

endless sleep

2004-10-04T22:51:00.000-07:00

So I'm starting to take Melatonin before I go to bed, it's this kind of herbal supplement that's supposed to help you get a more restful night's sleep. I keep waking up in the middle of the night, thinking about work, & my car payments, & how I'm getting gray hairs even though I'm only 29. My girlfriend warned me that possible side effects of taking Melatonin may include "vivid nightmares." She's up on things like that so I have no reason not to believe her. Anyways I hear that a good night's sleep can do you a world of good, so what's the harm in trying. If I start having vivid nightmares I'll probably just go back to polishing off a few Miller Lites before bedtime. Right now I'm kind of concerned that if I drink too much before I pop one of these I'll like, sleep for twenty hours straight.

On a totally unrelated subject, I went to Meltdown, this comic book store in Hollywood, for the first time last weekend. I've lived here in Los Angeles my entire life, a few failed attemps to relocate aside. And I've liked comics for as long as I can remember. It's only been this last year or so, though, that I've started reading "non-action" comics, so I've had to branch out & find new stores that sell more than just Batman & Superman (D.C. Comics have always been a steaming pile of crap anyways). Hi-De-Ho in Santa Monica is where I've been hanging out now, I started going there because I was working just a few blocks away. This year I was transferred to Hollywood, so I figured I'd stop in at Meltdown & see what all the hype is about, people keep saying it's such an awesome place, but I was disappointed to learn that it was basically a glorified toy store. They had more action figures & collectors' cups & baby-clothes & pez dispensers than comic books. AND while they had an extensive selection of "Love & Rockets" (should have been my first warning), they only had two titles by David Collier, & I went there specifically looking for the "Vietnam" issues of American Splendor that Collier illustrated. Suffice to say, I'll be driving the extra few miles in the future. Plus I'm already "in the system" at Hi-De-Ho, if I buy like, fifty bucks worth of comix I get like, one free. Or something like that.

Anyways that's enough ranting & raving for one night, eh? I think I feel the Melatonin "kicking in". If I have any vivid nightmares here's hoping they involve me having to drink my way out of the Rolling Rock brewery.