Funnsylvania

Typical

2008-05-05T20:14:00.004-04:00

I think the internet may be destroying what hope I had for humanity. I keep making the mistake of reading user comments. This makes following the election an even more miserable experience than it would otherwise be. Same thing for the recent disastrous playoff series between the Wizards and the Traveliers. The political stuff is a little more upsetting, I guess, because of the magnitude of the thing and the scope of regular folk who are interested in the outcome. I realize, as with talk radio, the part of the audience that chooses to participate is probably not representative of the audience as a whole, but... I don't know. If I read one more comment about how Obama supporters drink lattes, I may well scream, and that would be fun for nobody.

I thought about scouring the world-wide web and finding some good examples of dumb comments, but a) it's not worth the effort, and b) I found something that probably sums it all up. It refers to an article on ESPN.com. It is a ridiculous story about a pretty lady in Nashua, New Hampshire who, in a fit of Yankees pride, mowed down a bunch of Red Sox fans with her car, killing a man. This happened outside a bar called Slade's. In many ways, it is the single greatest news story I have ever read. It demonstrates better than any dramatist could that at least some of us are animals. So I should have been satisfied just to read the article and move on. Instead I clicked the link for reader comments.

The most recent one, right at the top of the page, was written by someone named AdamPatsFan. Here is what he had to say:

Typical Yankee fan.
Classless.

Which I think may be going over the line. And also, now that I think about it, an awfully classless statement in and of itself. More than anything, though, I think AdamPatsFan has neatly encapsulated the state of modern discourse, and for that I pray that someone beats him in the face with a snow shovel until he goes blind.

Ivonne Hernandez, typical Yankee fan

Oh yeah, wait...

2008-04-23T15:44:00.005-04:00

I forgot that I actually had something of an ending in mind when I started to write yesterday's pointlessly long thingy. The premise was basically that people in cities like Baltimore don't have a ton of things to get excited about, unless they're big syphilis aficionados or get all jazzed by high infant mortality rates. They are, by and large, bitter, stupid people with little to cling to besides their rosary beads and their Saturday night specials. And, of course, their giant foam fingers. And these New York fucks, with their charity balls and their opening nights, are so greedy and malevolent, they have to invade Mid-Size Market, USA and ruin everyone else's fun and rob them of what minimal joy they're allotted. It's creepy, aberrant behavior. I don't know about anyone else, but seeing my native land invaded by hordes of drooling half-retarded bullies who say things like, "Give huh uh bayg of chawklit" makes me pine for the days when murder was legal.

Maybe I've said it before on this site. I know I've said it in real life. THERE IS NO REASON FOR NEW YORK TO HAVE PROFESSIONAL SPORTS TEAMS. There's already enough going on here. It's not fair to people in Cincinnati, who have nothing. NOTHING.

Also, Hank Steinbrenner has pushed ahead of Robert Mugabe on my annual list of The World's Most Evil People. The list isn't going to be officially revealed until June (timed to coincide with J.C. Penny's "Spring Into Summer" sale), but some prominent names you'll see include George H.W. Bush (shape-shifter king of our Reptoid overlords), perennial favorite Zach Braff, and Vampire Weekend frontman Ezra Koenig, who is as fine a lyricist as I am a catamaran and whose singing makes me want to hear me sing, and who, like Zach Braff before him, has a big smug face that was just made for punching.

All right. I gotta take my meds. Pizzeace, sizzuckizizzaz.

Go Back to Onondaga, You Filth

2008-04-23T02:18:00.003-04:00

So many things I can tell you, so few of them worth writing down. I have been in a weird mood lately, where I am sort of outwardly cheerful and inwardly full of venom. The Washington Wizards play no small part in my misery, though I cannot be angry at them. I am in no position to demand anything of them, though I do have a very good friend who's a season ticket holder, which should count for something. It hurts me to see Andy taken advantage of this way. He didn't pay all that money to watch them lose.

Fucking sports. I went to a baseball game the other day, Orioles vs. Yankees in Baltimore. I went with my cousin, his son, and my uncle. I love my uncle, but I think he has said maybe a dozen words to me, combined, over the 34 years he's known me. My cousin, who I do not necessarily love because he is not a blood relative and thus I am not obligated to love him, is a very, very nice guy, but he is a Yankees fan, and when the subject of baseball comes up, I cannot help but want to grab him by the neck and throttle him until he apologizes, then volunteers to personally hack off Derek Jeter's stupid gay head.

I understand, though. He cannot help where he was born, and I'm sure if he'd been able, he'd have been born in Baltimore same as any other worthwhile human being. And surely being from Long Island is punishment enough. I also suppose that, had I had the terrible fortune to be from this wretched Empire State instead of the mighty Old Line State, I'd have chosen the Yankees over the Mets, because, really, if you're going to make a terrible decision, you might as well go all out and make the MOST terrible decision. Plus, Babe Ruth, storied history, etc.

So, while I pity my cousin for feeling so insecure he has to root for the team with the most money and the most overall success, I recognize that he is, somewhat like me, a human being, and can thus be counted on to maybe not be as smart as we like to think ourselves. Where he crosses a line, however, is that he both assumes and expects the rest of the world to give a shit. He genuinely believes there is something called "THE YANKEES MYSTIQUE" that not only exists, but is significant, and not just significant to Yankees fans, but significant to anyone who enjoys baseball. For instance, he really believes that a good player should be recognized by the world as a great player if he played for the Yankees, because the Yankees Mystique should rightfully boost any player's prestige.

Which is, you know, insane. A Yankees homerun is worth exactly as much as a Pirates homerun, i.e., one run. There is no conversion rate. Yes, the Yankees have won 26 championships. That's an impressive number--nearly as impressive as the huge numbers separating the Yankees' typical payroll from that of the average team. But it doesn't matter. It's the past. Just because Mickey Mantle was great doesn't mean Melky Cabrera is a future Hall of Famer. The Yankees have been an elite team the last ten years or so because they were stocked with good, expensive players. If the Milwaukee Brewers had the same guys, they'd have won a bunch of World Series, too. You know why there's no Brewers Mystique? Because Milwaukee isn't the biggest, richest city in America. Athletes pay for whoever wants to give them the most money. Babe Ruth would have happily led the Red Sox to a million pennants if they hadn't sold his contract to New York. New York has no claim on Babe Ruth. I'm sure, like anybody, he would have preferred to play for his home town team; that's every kid's dream, right? Unfortunately, his home town lost its team in 1903, when the Baltimore Orioles moved to New York and were renamed the Highlanders, a name they kept for ten years before finally changing it to--wait for it--the Yankees. Maybe it's worth noting that about 2/3 of the Yankees' World Series victories came in 1953 or earlier, and that the St. Louis Browns did not become the Baltimore Orioles until--wait for it--1954.

All right. This is all very fascinating to everyone, I know, but here ends the history lesson. Let's get back to today. Better yet, let's go back to two days and about seven hours ago. Somehow, Camden Yards had managed to be the single spot in the state of Maryland not to be hit with heavy downpours. I think it was the 6th inning when it finally started to rain. Now, I don't know if you're aware of how things work throughout much of the east coast, but there is a delightful tradition that's really blossomed over the last decade involving New York and Boston fans invading other cities' ballparks when their team is in town. So it was that Oriole Park at Camden Yards, inarguably the finest stadium in the world, was half-filled with asshole Yankees fans who think that wearing a shirt with the word "Mattingly" on the back gives them a certain credibility abroad they would not otherwise have at home in New Paltz or West Hartford. Unfortunately, because I was with relatives who already eye me with suspicion and distaste, I wasn't really free to scream "faggot" at them or flick pennies into the back of their heads. Even when Chad Bradford came in in relief and promptly served up a two run homerun to one overpaid sissy or another, I stifled the urge to accidentally kick the guy in front of me--who had the gall to cheer--repeatedly in the neck and chest until he died. Actually, he wasn't exactly in front of me; he was in the row in front of me, but, like, 8 seats down. My blood just boils thinking about it. I can picture him now, with his fancy stubble and big shot New York City windbreaker. Asshole.

But no one was actually sitting in front of me until it began to rain. I failed to mention that we were sitting in the shittiest seats available, in the very back row of the centerfield bleachers. My cousin tried to put a positive spin on the seats, pointing out how you could really spot the location of the pitches from that vantage point, but they were not good seats. There's no way to spin "literally the furthest spot from the pitcher in the entire stadium" into something good. There was a legitimate advantage that bore out once it began to rain, though: we were sitting directly underneath the massive scoreboard, which obviously made it impossible to watch the bloopers and the animated hotdog races and whatever other whimsical bullshit they use to keep the drunken fans from punching each other out of boredom between innings, but it did keep us dry (at least until the wind picked up).

The Orioles were coming to bat as the rain really started to fall, but all the Yankee fans' eyes were on the visiting team's bullpen, and they whispered to each other in eerie, almost awe-filled anticipation, like Ba'al had just been summoned. It turned out Joba Chamberlain (pictured here surrounded by flies, because he is too fat to properly wash himself) was coming in to pitch.

This is not the best organized piece of creative nonfiction to come down the pike, I know, but please let me backtrack a minute, just to mention that throughout the game, I'd been keeping my eye on certain, especially distasteful Yankees fans. There was the Mexican guy who kept waving his hat around every time something went NY's way, and appeared to be at the game alone. There was the guy with the windbreaker I mentioned before--but I didn't tell you before that he had an iPhone. You can't even use an iPhone in Baltimore--no AT&T service. The only cell provider you can use in the area is something called CrabNet. Anyway, there was one guy I paid special attention to. I'm not sure why, really. He just looked dumb, and so did his ladyfriend. They were the ones I trusted the least. I admit it was an impression based almost entirely on the way the backs of their heads looked, but my scumbag detector is as fine-tuned as anyone's, so I knew I was on to something. So it made perfect sense that, when it really started raining, those two were the first rats to scurry back to where we were, where it was nice and dry, and sit directly in front of me. I quickly wedged the tip of my shoe under the seat in front of me, so that when the guy sat down, the seat would stay up a moment too long--just long enough so that he'd be slightly uncomfortable for half a second, but not long enough that he'd realize iI was doing it and beat me up.

Back to Joba Chamberlain now. As soon as the fat fuck (whose name is pronounced "Jabba" and who, as I mentioned at the beginning of this sentence and also a couple paragraphs earlier, is fat) starts waddling onto the field from the bullpen, the dickface in front of me starts yelling "Joba! Joba!" over and over again. I'm sure a billion people have made "Joba the Hutt" jokes, but I'd never heard any, so once the connection was made in my head, I could barely keep myself from shouting it, but I did, even though the guy in front of me kept shouting his name and cheering him on (while, incidentally, his wife slipped on a fetching black garbage bag to protect her from the storm). Fortunately, the jerk's cheers only seemed to encourage Chamberlain to give up hits to the first two batters he faced--the worst two hitters in the Orioles lineup. It was after the second hit that I finally let go and yelled, "Keep 'em coming, Joba!" That was when the umpires called for ground crew to roll out the tarp, and my uncle made the executive decision to not try to wait out the weather, and we left.

Admittedly not much of an ending there. Sorry about that.

BONUS! Some insults I wanted to yell to distract the players but could not given my companions:

Johnny Damon - Your mom must be so proud of you, you lisping ogre; she may have gotten paid to suck, but you're getting paid, like, $25 million!
Derek Jeter - Hey, look! An attractive six-year-old-boy, you pedophile creep! Nice hairdo, too, by the way, you dimwitted pervert!
Hideki Matsui - Hey, nice skin, you hideous mutant!

If either of you plan to vote for Clinton, please click here and read this

2008-04-13T18:26:00.002-04:00

Otherwise, never mind.

An Idea That Will Probably Go a Long Way Toward Making Us All Equals

2008-04-13T17:17:00.005-04:00

Quick pop quiz: Who is the current monarch of the United Kingdom?

Give up? The answer is Queen Elizabeth II. That's right, "the second". A little pretentious, right? I mean, the woman is a billionaire. "The second". Is that really necessary? Aren't you far enough above the rest of us already? Yeah, lady, that's right--I'm addressing you directly. Scared? Does it make you a little uneasy having a commoner all up in your shit like this? Well, too bad. This is not the world you think it is. You know you lost Hong Kong, right? Pretty much everything else, too. There's no more Rhodesia. I think you might be down to Bermuda, Cornwall, and Gibraltar at this point. The Falklands, too, I guess, but I just read that Argentina's new leader aims to take them back.

Look, hon, I'm not rooting against you. I will admit that old wounds have begun weeping pus lately thanks to HBO's wonderfully above-average "John Adams" miniseries, but I think I speak for all of America when I say that I am in your corner. You speak English, after all, and you're nothing if not white. And, yes, we may be well on our way to joining you in The Big Book of Once-Great Empires, but we've still got a firm grasp on the cliff edge, and China is not necessarily a lock to find a hammer and bang our fingers until we let go, if I may stretch the analogy until it snaps. Whatever the case, there is one thing we are surely still best at: cynical marketing strategies.

I won't draw this out any more. You're a smart lady, and I'm pretty sure you'll see the potential benefits in what I'm about to suggest. I know that you will buck against it, because you are old and a billionaire and it is your birthright to be one of the most out-of-touch people on earth, but it is too simple not to work. Just remember that the world beneath your gilt-embellished windows is moving ever forward toward an age of populism. I am not one who believes that we can ever effectively demolish class systems, but I am wholly certain that there will be less and less people like you. That doesn't mean you should give up; no, never give up, m'lady. Never! But, if you are as wise as your one assumes you must have been to acquire all that wealth and power, you will put aside some of that famous entitlement of yours and make some concessions.

Actually, I think a lot of ground could be gained by just making one concession. As I mentioned earlier, it's a simple one: as I mentioned earlier than that, barring the arrival of some latter-day, English Robespierre, your position above the rest of us has been well cemented, at least enough that you can forego some of the more ostentatious, self-inflating trappings of the throne. As with any rebranding, we must begin with the name. I, for one, cannot think of a more pompous-sounding name than Queen Elizabeth II. I'm not saying you need to start calling yourself Lizzie Schwartz (or whatever your real surname is--it's something more along the lines of Goethe-Himmler, from what I recall). I don't think things are that dire that you need to lower yourself that much. But how about something just a touch more common? What if--just hear me out here--you did one thing like everybody else in the world, drop that ridiculous "the Second", and start going by Queen Elizabeth, Jr.? It might take some getting used to, but I really believe it could make a difference, just like I believe that, had he heeded my similar advice to him, the previous Pope would not have been torn to pieces by a violent mob.

All right. Do what you want. Send my regards to your idiot children.

Your loyal servant,
X (unable to sign my name because I am a peasant)

Evan Bayh Can Also Go Fuck Himself

2008-04-12T17:38:00.004-04:00

Still, I am SHOCKED that Barrack Obama could come away from a trip to Philadelphia with the feeling that some people in this country are bitter. Seriously, Philadelphia provides the world with 3 things: bitterness, cheesesteaks, and goofy bands. Would people have been offended if Obama said that he thinks some people in America are G. Love and Special Sauce? Probably. It's no coincidence that "Evan Bayh" rhymes with "making political hay". Ugh. I'm so tired of this. You know how people are always threatening to leave the country of so-and-so wins? Well, I don't care who wins anymore. I'm not saying any place is any better, but I need a change. If I have to live somewhere with horrible politicians, it might as well be somewhere I don't care about. Of course, it's a moot point, really, seeing as I'm signed up for two more years of New York schooling starting September. In my heart, though, I'm in Greenland starting... NOW!

What else? Just back from my drawing class, the one thing that now stands between me and a college diploma. Had to look at a guy's thing for three hours. Well, I didn't have to look at it. We did about 6 drawings. I think mine were all of his knees and shoulders. The teacher compared my work to that of American artist Cy Twombly. Here is a Cy Twombly painting called "Leda and the Swan":

I thought she was just trying to make me feel better about myself, but now that I've seen what Cy Twombly is all about, I'm thinking that she was basically calling me talentless. Oh well. Comes as no great surprise.

Why Gary Condit Should Be The Next VP

2008-04-08T23:28:00.003-04:00

I had this whole big idea for a a big special audio treat, but no one seems to read this site, so I ain't gonna bother. Not even going to bother writing it, since it's the kind of material that I may as well save for the novel. Here's a wee taste of how it might have been:

(Imagine you are listening to me read this in a subtle but hilarious character voice)

I'm Bram, and here is what's going on around town:

Music -
Friday, Prognosis brings their unique brand of synthesizer operatics to Club Upstairs with supporting act The Uncle Machine.

Tribute acts Whole Lotta Led and China Cat Sunflower duke it out in another round of Hippies vs. Metalheads Saturday night at Tequila Sunset's. Half price shooters from 11 to midnight.

Comedy -
Improvination is hosting another tickle night at the Improvination theater

Theater -
The Six Counties Community College Player are staging the original musical, "The Man From Minnesota", about the life and times of Walter Mondale. Tickets are free.

The Earnest Little Community Theater is running their production of von Trindel's "Night, Dark, Black" for one final week. Red wine, Triscuits, and apple wedges will be served.

That's all you're getting, maybe forever. This totally isn't worth it if no one's reading, and I'm not about to go through the hell of trying to drum up traffic again. This blogging shit's yesterday's news. I'm going back to stripping. (Ha ha ha! That's a Diablo Cody joke! If I had half her talent, it would have been a much funnier joke. She's a comic fucking genius. The George S. fucking Kaufman of her generation, if you ask me.)

Okay. Eat one. Bye.

I deserve more credit in general

2008-04-01T16:25:00.001-04:00

I was staring out my window just now, watching two birds have sex on the fire escape (ah, springtime!), and it reminded me of the time I saved a man's life. Well, not a man so much as a college student; an adult, I think, would have had the sense not to fall out of a window like that.

I'm getting ahead of myself, though. Let me set this up.

It was probably around this time of year, nearing the end of freshman year, Univershitty of Crotchshitster class of '96 (not to be confused with "Class of '96", which, I believe, did not premiere until the following fall, but that is really a subject more fitting for my other site, retro80sand90sflashback.biz). It was, as I recall it, a warm night. The regular gang was hanging out in Dan and Toby's room. I believe it was gin that night. I further believe that was the night we did something called barbershop shots, or something like that. It involved taking a shot and sitting back really fast, or something dumb like that. I promise that we did not make a game out of drinking most nights. Most nights we'd just drink and smoke pot and then someone would throw up and we'd go back to our rooms and go to sleep. If there were drinking games, I managed to steer clear of them. But this night, someone had the idea to do this stupid thing, and we did it. I'm sure it got me drunk, but ten shots of gin will tend to do that to a teenager anyway, so I cannot vouch for the efficacy of this particular device, whatever exactly it may have been.

So many nights tend to blend together from this period. Was this one of the nights when the RA knocked on the door and questioned us about the smell of pot? Was it one of the nights when there was a fire drill so we just shut off the lights and kept drinking? All I remember is that at some point, probably around one in the morning, I decided it was too nice a night to sit indoors. No one else agreed, so I set off alone. On my way out, I noticed the window by the dorm's exit (slash-entrance) was open, so for some reason I decided to exit that way. It was all of two-and-a-half, maybe three feet from the cold, unforgiving patch of grass below, but I was feeling indestructible, probably from all that gin. I've heard before that really drunk people sometimes survive horrific car accidents because they're too out of it to brace themselves the way a sober person would, and are thus relaxed enough to let their bodies be tossed around a little instead of tightening up and forcing their spines to fight momentum. Or words to that effect. If I thought anybody was reading this, I'd go back and clean up that sentence. Anyway, whatever. The point is that he principle behind that drunk driver thing is probably what allowed me walk away from my daring leap. A long fucking way to go for that payoff, huh?

Once I got my bearings, I saw my old pal Rudy "El Gatito Cansado" Alvarez (whom I've given the name of a fake boxer to protect his identity, as the last time we communicated, he seemed like he'd become very stern in his adulthood and by now would probably want to distance himself from me as much as possible. Fucking jerk.) sitting on the stoop in front of Gilbert Hall's other entrance/exit, which faced the one I would have just come out of had I not been the devil-may-care rogue with ice water in his veins that I knew not how NOT to be. (So you can picture it better, the building is basically C-shaped, with doors at the two ends and basically just a big empty, lawn in the middle. Anyway...

I'd known Rudy from high school. He was the guy who first introduced me to pot, oddly enough. Smoked it with an empty Coke can in my parents' basement. Turned out to be fake, apparently. He was a good guy, a close friend for many years who grew increasingly to see me as a reprobate as he increasingly became a fan of latter day white ska. I'm not entirely sure there's a connection between the two other than that they seemed to occur simultaneously, but I can kind of see how they could fit together. At least, I kind of hope they do; I strive, in my way, to be all things that ska is not. If you see me in a pork pie hat, I pray to God it's because someone cut my head off and put a pork pie hat on top of it. In Rudy's credit, he never got that far into it, as far as I know. Maybe he bought a pair of black and white patent leather shoes or something, but it's not like he walked around dressed like the trombonist from Reel Big Fish (assuming Reel Big Fish had have a trombonist and he/she dressed/s like a ska person). Christ, this thing has spiraled into nothingness, hasn't it? Oh well.

So I go over to Rudy, who at this point in time still presumably likes me, and I sit down beside him and we start having a nice chitchat. I always liked Rudy and he, at this point, still seemed to like me, had never once let his true, sinister nature slip through in my presence, had been expertly careful to keep his disloyalty a secret. So we talked and were having a gay old time of it when, alls of a sudden, this guy plummets backwards out of a third story window onto the courtyard below. Being a dormitory on a college campus, the area was pretty well-lit, but being late at night, it was also pretty dark. Furthermore, neither of us were looking at the side of the dorm when it happened. I can't speak for Rudy (and if I could, I'd be too busy telling me what a great friend I am and how much I''ve missed my sparkling wit all these empty years that have passed since I last beheld your awesome countenance, oh my great hero, oh my Messiah!), but I remember a blur, then a thump. Rudy and I looked at each other. He said something like, "Did someone just fall out of a window?" I remember him sounding drunker than he sounded a moment before, and I remember feeling strong and alert. I don't recall what i said in response, but I know that I was quick to my feet, and quick to the body.

The guy was on his back, not moving but groaning weakly. I looked up at the window from which he'd fallen. There was a girl there, panicking. "Is he okay?" she cried.

"I don't know! Call Security" I shouted, but she was frozen in panic. I started knocking on the nearest window until another girl I didn't know opened it. "Someone fell out of the window," I told her. "You have to call Security."

"Oh my God," she said. "What happened?"

"I don't know! Just call Security!"

So she did. I stood watch by the body, and tried to assure him that help was on the way. Maybe Rudy stayed with me, but in the way I want to remember it, he was afraid Security would write him up for being drunk and so ran off to hide under his bedclothes. Or maybe he stuck around. Though I really do think he took off. Either way, I'd taken point, and was thus shocked and insulted when the dweeb from Campus Security finally showed up, saw me sitting by the injured student, and forcefully demanded that I not touch or move him. I explained to the guy, who was no older than I and definitely a much bigger nerd, that not only had I not endeavored or planned to move the patient, but that I was the one who saw him fall and got someone to call the incident in to Security. The guy from Security made me leave.

That's pretty much the end of the story. The kid lived. I know he was in a wheelchair for a time, but I don't think it was expected to be permanent. Apparently, he'd gotten drunk at an event for one of the few fraternities I can confidently say was lamer than the one I was in. There were rumors of lawsuits and charter revocations and all that good shit, but I never really heard anything about it once the guy was out of the hospital and back to school. I thought about sending him an anonymous letter tipping him off to the true identity of the mystery hero who saved his life, but decided that, in the end, being a hero is kind of its own reward. Plus, if there's a Heaven, I''m probably at least gonna get a suite.

April Fools!

2008-04-01T10:13:00.001-04:00

Oh no! I have been imprisoned for a crime! What an awful turn of events! I am so scared!

Ha ha ha! April Fools! Fooled ya! Fooled ya! Stupid! The only prison I am in is the prison of my mind! I am my only torturer! Hooray! Suckers!

Quick kiddie show idea, not for stealing

2008-03-23T02:21:00.001-04:00

Cartoon, aimed at spreading multiculturalism for secret, insidious Jew purposes, featuring adorable insects. It's called, "The TolerANTs", and would ideally feature the vocal talents of:

Hoops legend Michael Jordan as Sweetfeet, the cool black ant.
"Sweet Science" sex sizzler Hector "Macho" Camacho as Crazy Loco, the wisecracking but dumb Hispanic ant who wears a hairnet.
The Geraldine Ferraro of the 21st century, Sen. Joe Lieberman (Fuckface-CT) as Thrifty Cheapowitz, the chubby, grinning, gray-haired, avuncular ant who owns all the businesses in Ant Town, especially the bank.
World-reknowned wiener swallower Kobayashi as Roboyashi--half ant, half calculator, ALL APPETITE!
Syrian President Bashir Assad as oh god this is going nowhere. Probably not an idea worth fleshing out, in retrospect.

So what is, then, an idea worth fleshing out? And let's see if we can get through this with using the word "fleshing" again, okay? I find it a little unsettling.

You know what else I find unsettling? Massive earthquakes. Hi-yo! A little something for all the geologists with us here tonight, ladies and gentlemen. So, I was going to the convenience store today and I got to thinking, "Why do they call them convenience stores? Is it because they're conveniently located and serve customers who almost always want to pop in and buy one, maybe two things? Because if so, I totally get it. Otherwise, what's the deal, right? I mean, seriously."

You know what else I have trouble understanding? Egyptian hieroglyphics. Seriously, it's like, "I got an eye here, a cat here, some kind of serpent over here, this one looks like a cat dressed up like King Tut..." I don't get it. Pardon me for being politically incorrect for a moment, but certain ancient civilizations got left in the dust a loooong time ago. Seriously, where would you rather live today, America, or 4th century BC Macedonia? You're free to choose whichever one you want, but I got one question: which one is it that has Kia Low Pressure Sales Events? Cause that's the one I want to live in. Nuff sed.

Speaking of sales events, this store near me was going out of business and having a massive clearout sale, with some items marked down as much as 99%. Well, to cut a long (and rather humiliating) story short, say hello to the proud new owner of 360 feet of retail shelving! It cost me less than $10,000, too. If I can convince the city to drive the gypsies out of this one location I've had my eye on, I'd say were no more than a couple months away from Tire Iron City becoming a reality and not a fever-dream like the sisters keep telling me.

Speaking of which, I promised Sister Ashlee I'd unclog the blood tube in the main Jesus--the big one that hangs over the thing. The stage, or whatever. You'd think, living in the basement of a church most of my life, I'd remember the names of some of these things. But me, I'm always forgetting stuff. Like the time I forgot to finish what

I Wrote This Yesterday, But It Took Forever to Upload the MP3s, and Then I Got Caught Up in Some Other Shit

2008-03-19T00:21:00.004-04:00

Hooray, it's St. Patrick's Day! Unfortunately, an arrangement I made with a circuit court judge in Culpepper County, Virginia precludes me from consuming alcohol in anything that can be construed as a "crowd situation", so I am pretty much limited to drinking straight green food dye. It's got an interesting tang to it, though. I think I'll be all right.

Okay, on to business. Amidst the thousands of gifts and floral arrangements and telegrams from various captains of industry wishing me well on my birthday (March 15th, just like will.i.am and Park Overall. You should know this, people!), I have also received a spate of emails from people begging me to shut down the Christs Song of the Week promotion. An example:

Dear Stupid,
Please take that horrible music off the internet. I have tried to live my life as a good and just person. Why are you doing this to me?

I hate you.

Yours hatefully,
Fuck You

Well you know what, Mr. or Mrs. quote-unquote "Fuck You"? Fuck YOU! How ya like that, huh? It hurts, doesn't it? So how do you think it makes ME feel? You think you've got some monopoly on feelings? You know what? You're a hypocrite. Your scorn--calling out from some black chasm in your ruined soul--shall only strengthen my resolve.

Here's then, are last week's song which I was too lazy to post, this week's song, and some backing tracks that we'll just call instrumentals for the time being. And then I think that's it for the Song of the Week. Not because I've actually gotten complaints, but because I haven't.

Grave News from the Front
Your Girlfriend
Crank (instr.)
Donkey Parade (instr.)
Devilled Meat (instr.)
Penn Yan (instr.)
Donyell Marshall (instr.)

Onto the next piece of biz: Living in a culturally mixed neighborhood as I do doesn't just mean gangfights and sleep lost worrying over our vanishing America--it also means an opportunity to see language adapt right before one's very eyes (ears). To demonstrate my point, here are three real life examples of Spanglish I've heard in my neighborhood.

"Yo, nigga, estos zapatos son phat!"

"Disculpame, senor, do you know anywhere I can purchase el windshield washer fluid en esta neighborhood?"

"Girl, how you get pregnant again? That's, like, seis tiempos already, and you only twelve. I thought you said you was using un condom. Damn!"

More at another time, maybe.

I changed my mind

2008-03-13T22:57:00.000-04:00

Hey, Geraldine Ferraro! I'm taking your picture out of my hope chest, you sleazy piece of shit!

2008-03-13T20:37:00.006-04:00

I've pared this down, but not in any sort of misleading way. If anything she says here does not fill you with disgust, I don't think I like you.

(CNN) – Geraldine Ferraro said she blames Barack Obama's campaign for the uproar over her recent comments।

... the onetime vice presidential candidate also said the Obama campaign made a mistake in taking aim at her remarks.

"I do think this was a mistake on part of the Obama campaign," she said. "They didn't have to do this, and they did it to hurt Hillary. I just think that's bad. I think it's bad business, and I think it's bad politics.

"I was accused of being divisive. I think those tactics are divisive," she added. "And the amazing thing is it's not something I started, its something they did in reaction to this."

Ferraro also implored Obama's campaign to turn "the spigot off the hate mail I am getting."

"I find it very, very upsetting," she said. " I've been called all kinds of names, and the attacks are ageist, they're sexist, they're racist. It's been very, very uncomfortable.

... In the interview Thursday, Ferraro suggested she did not regret making the comments, saying she was "talking to the facts," and that the issue of race has been raised several times in the campaign before, including by Obama himself.

"The enthusiasm you get from the black community over this black candidate is wonderful, and I don't think you can deny it," she said.

"No more than I remember how people felt when I was running।"
--------------------------

Right. "The enthusiasm you get from the black community over this black candidate." How people felt when she was running. You know how people felt when she was running? They felt like voting for Ronald Reagan, and maybe going home and watching "Riptide". If people were excited by Geraldine Ferraro that election (and really don't remember it being a big deal, seeing as she was only the VP nominee, which no one ever gives a fuck about), it was only because Mondale was exceedingly dull and Reagan was a shoo-in. Or shoe-in. I'm not sure how you spell that. Anyway, this article really bugged me. The whole tenor of the Clinton campaign has bugged me since they won Ohio and sort of won Texas.

She knows the only way she can win is if she tears down Obama. This is how much she cares about this country. Fuck you, Hillary Clinton. I would have gladly accepted a Clinton win as a fine consolation prize, but I have trouble feeling that way right now. Unfortunately, the next two big rounds are in Pennsylvania and Indiana, both of which are packed to the gills with white idiots. Now that we know Obama is black, this could be a whole new ballgame.

Two Half Things for the Price of None

2008-03-12T20:30:00.004-04:00

Rob is in Burundi judging a powdered sugar eating contest. Filling in tonight is Mr. Larry King.

That Hitler was a real so-and-so... I go through more emery boards... If I could be any Pip, I'd be Bubba. He always had a quiet dignity to him... Chicken is A-okay poultry in my book... I wonder what it would feel like if a bee got caught inside my eyelid.... Is it me, or does this Barrack Obama bear a striking resemblance to the Billie Holiday? I watch the debates, and I keep thinking it's Lady Soul up at the lectern. Whatever the case, I hope he doesn't steal my wallet!... Scott Turow's latest thrilla, "Operation: Fire Explode" had me on the edge of my seat, because I dropped it on the floor and didn't want to have to stand to pick it up. I'm old, you know... I just can't say enough good things about the way Billy Crystal finally getting to be a Yankee makes me feel...

Which is as good a segue as any into our next bit (hi, Rob here, back from Africa), in which I tell you about some other legendary funnyviduals who got to live out one dream or another and play professional sports, in some cases when the comedian was way too old and lacked any and all self-awareness, only a tiny amount of which would have been needed for them to see that they were only embarrassing themselves by living out their creepy daddy issues in front of the world--the sports world, no less.

Anyway, here we go.

IN 1978, the Edmonton Oilers gave a ten day contract to an 84-year old Charlie Chaplin. Chaplin had played hockey regulaly throughoout his orphanhood, but had not played in over hafl a century. He pled to let him just sign some autographs or something, maybe even have a big retrospective screening of his works when the weather got nicer, but they would hear none of it and conscripted him into the team. He ended up playing eight games as a third-line wing. What he lacked in size he also lacked in agility, what with being so close to his death by this point, and while he could scrap a little, his stamina was low. His numbers were not very good, but they were not horrible. Probably a lot of Hockey players with brief NHL careers ended up with similar stistics to Chaplin's. Just goes to show you, don't it now?

In 1980, Gallagher joined the Harlem Globetrotters for a a one-week tour of the Carolinas. Promoter Harvey Slickman was hoping to team the two stellar acts for wha he envisioned as the greatest touring entertainment extravaganza since that one huge one that ended in that shocking way that no one is allowed to talk about ever again. The Carolina shows were to be a stripped-down test run. Elementary school gynasium shows, mostly. High schol gyms would have been making too big a deal about it. Slickman wanted it to be subtle and low key. Most of all, he just wanted to see the on-court chemistry between the roundball goofballs and, at the time, the owner and caretaker of America's greatest comic mind.

It was a disaster. Watermelon is much harder to squeegee off the court than confetti. It makes everything wet and slippery, and then it gets sticky, and it gets your shoes sticky, and it's really unpleasant having to listen to people running around in sticky shoes, and then the crowd started shouting radom things, and then Gallagher's giant inflatable sneakers accidentally inflated... It was a nightmare, and it took about an hour before action could continue. They stripped Gallagher of his props, but it only got worse. The guy couldn't make an open fucking layup. He was 0-9 from the field. His one jump shot was a line drive straight into the floor about three feet in front of the basket. He flinched when someone passed him the ball. He cowered and/or ran away from charging offeses, and every time one of the Globetrotters tried to get him inolved in ther playful acrobatics, Gallagher would invariable either clutch the ball and stand with it until someone demanded he "give up the rock", or, a few times, he tried to participate and end up knocking the ball in some totally unexpected direction. One girl in the front row had to get surgery to get her contact remooved from the back of her eyes, another young lady suffered a miscarriage.

I had some other examples, but would it have been worth it?

BONUS FLASHBACK: Creepy comments!

Why We MUST Boycott the American Tangerine Industry TODAY and NOT Tomorrow

2008-03-03T01:56:00.011-05:00

Hi. So, there was a bit of a problem. Fire termites, which live off metal and plastic, got into the equipment, and the engineer had to flush them out with C-4. No major damage, but things got held up, thus no Christs Song of the Week, and so soon into the promotion. Well, the band feels pretty bad about it, so they're giving you last week's song, this week's song, and a MEGABONUS third song, all for the regular low price of your overall disinterest and cruel silence.

God'll Be With You

Sad

I Am Donyell Marshall

Satisfied? No, of course not. You do not come here for free mp3s, except when they are intentionally funny ones, and even then, not so much. People used to tell me they enjoyed when I'd make funny mp3s (in those words), but I could never gauge how many people were actually listening. A couple folks actually suggested I put out a CD, but I thought that was crazy. I went back the other day and listened to a bunch of them, though, and I found it to be a pretty delightful experience at times, intolerably dull at others, and occasionally really embarrassing. I honestly never quite realized how much of a hack I can be. Oh well. That is why I am a writer, I guess. I can always go back and tweak shit.

You know, while I'm on the subject kind of, can I just say that it really pisses me off that I do not have the ability to write something and have it come out perfect right away? It's really frustrating, let me tell you. I never know quite where to begin. And if I made the wrong choices to begin with, how am I supposed to believe I know how to fix it? And whose opinion do I trust when the feedback is all over the place? Furthermore, why do I feel guilty that this isn't funny, like I'm letting down the people who don't even come here anymore? And why am I bothering to do this at all?

Listening back to those old recordings of yesteryear gone by, I was struck, mostly, by how much effort I used to be willing to put into this site. It was fun back then, in the carefree early-to-mid-aughts. I was reckless, I was dangerous. If I walked the edge, I wouldn't have known; I'm not sure I even knew there was an edge. I was too busy livin' life to worry about shit like that.

Seems like a million years ago. Nowadays, the bursitis is so bad, I can barely raise my arm to adjust my shawl or ring for a nurse. Way back when, I was a lust-fueled satyr. I left scores of quivering bodies in my wake. Nowadays, the only way I can get an erection is if it's injected with two big syringes full of some sort of blue gel and make me stick it in the freezer for three hours. Which, needless to say, has something of a numbing effect and sort of winds up defeating the whole purpose. Why I guess wouldn't be so bad, except it's about 8 grand a pop and isn't covered by my Medicaid, since it's totally untested and is administered late at night in the basement of Crispus Attucks Colored Elementary School. And the doctor is actually my nephew Jeremy, who is more of a shift manager at Toys-R-Us who likes to read up on controversial medical procedures than he is an actual doctor, but I have yet to die under his care, so thumbs up so far!

All right. It's nigh on 3 in the AM. I better go sleepy. L8rz LOL!!!

I Forgot to Give This a Title

2008-02-25T22:24:00.005-05:00

This is my target audience. Try being more like them.

So, I did something stupid. I got the stats going again for this site, so that I may torture myself with them. Traffic is really low, of course, but I've been away for awhile and it seems like there's a little uptick now. Like, it's gone from 3 people a day to about ten. Looking at the stats, I can tell that, of the average ten visitors, 7 scome searching for "world's longest cock" or some variation thereof. Actually, to be fair, only 4 of the last 20 visitors searched for that. For what it's worth, those people were in London, Denmark, Guyana, and Calcutta. Someone in New York searched for "ugliest celebrity feet". Someone in Staten Island wants to know "what differentiates a New York bagel." It's the attitude, anonymous Roadrunner customer. It's all about the attitude.

Repeat vistors today include someone who either works for or who has hacked into the network for the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. I have no idea what that is, nor do I want to endanger my well-being or the well-being of my loved ones by asking too many prying questions. All I need to know is that it makes me proud to think that I am in some small way doing my part for the security of this nation and, by extent, the very planet that we as a nation own and control.

Another repeat visitor is in a hotel in Sarasota. An employee? A guest? Could it be a big league baseball player in town for spring training, just whiling away the hours in his hotel room? Maybe even an Oriole? Is that you reading this, Melvin Mora? If so, you really need to stop being so lippy all the time. It's no fun hearing a millionaire complain, especially when he's really gone south as a hitter the last couple years. I love you and everything, man, and I pray every day for you and your wife and your famous quintuplets, but you've gotta ease back on the 'tude, Bhropal.

Who else? Someone in Ireland's come to visit a few times now. Is it Graham Norton? Boyzone, maybe? The ghost of Father Ted? Could it even be Michael Flatley himself? I hope not. I couldn't bear the pressure.

And that is the end of this. Hooray! We all win!

Press Release

2008-02-20T17:25:00.003-05:00

"Funnsylvania.com", flagship property of the Abu Dhabi-based Funnsylvania Group, is proud to announce, through its partnership with the world's hottest young band, The Christs, Funnsylvania's new "Christs Song of the Week" promotion. The program, which is endorsed by both UNICEF and the American Pediatrics Society, is aimed primarily at at-risk children. "Children are our future. That nearly goes without saying," said affable Funnsylvania chairman and founder, Robert E. Lee Diener IV, in a press conference Monday at the Corpus Christi Marriot Marquis. "If we can help one child with this, we'll have more than done our job."

The promotion works as follows: approximately once a week, as mood dictates, the Christs will release a new song through megapopular webhub "funnsylvania.com". In exchange, the Funnsylvania Group will donate one carton of milk per download to the schoolchild of the band's choice. In addition to the obvious benefits to consumer and milk-thirsty tot alike, the "Christs Song of the Week" promotion frees the band from any previously stated commitment to have a completed album by the end of February. That was a ridiculously optimistic projection. Naive, really. Imbecilically so, perhaps.

To kick off the big event, here's another track off the forthcoming Christs LP, "Enchanted Tales From the Pan Flute Forest". It is called "Noble Rot (The Hungarian National Anthem)", and it is presumably about nothing in particular, or maybe a bunch of different things at once. Imre Nagy gets namechecked in it, so that should help move some units. It is probably not as fun a song as last week's, but not every band can be the Offspring, right? Right.

-------------------

What else can I tell ya? Life is grim. The apocalypse may well be upon us, and with it--thank Him so--our Redeemer Himself, returned to grant us life anew in the eternity of Paradise. And not just for them that accept the Lord as their Salvation; I know Paradise to be all-welcoming. Won't only be Jesus returning come Judgment Day--Moses'll come back, that fat Jesus them Chinees got, whatever sicks or whatever the Indians worship (hee-haw-hiya-waya Indians, not obsequious but you can tell they look down on you just the same Indians).

And here is where I come to show why P.J. O'Rourke is a success and I am not. He'd have kept going and felt no shame over it. I haven't read any of his books, but some of the stuff he wrote for National Lampoon is appallingly racist, and he's appalling dead-on in his observations. It's a little scary, and it is not who I want to be, but I think I have a knack for it. And let's face it: you can call it "ironic racism" all you want, it's still categorizing people by race and negative stereotypes to them. Just because there's no hatred involved doesn't mean that what I'm saying doesn't come from some real feeling of racial superiority. I honestly don't know, and neither do you, Sarah Silverman, if somehow you're reading this.

I do find that stuff funny, of course. It's taboo, and it usually ends up working really well or really poorly. There's a thin line. When the Imus thing went down, a lot of people said the only reason why he got in trouble and, say, Sarah Silverman doesn't, is that what she says is funny. I'd argue that a big part of the reason that she's funny and he isn't is because because he's clearly a racist and she's clearly not. Unless she's racist in the way I suspect myself of being. Not being a racist and not wanting to be a racist or two entirely separate things. People who assume they're not racist because they don't set out to be racist are their own category.

All right. This was a hoot for all of us, I'm sure. Please listen to the songs.

Also

2008-02-04T17:37:00.000-05:00

Two funny things I forgot to link to before:

A funny thing the Spoonbender did.

Something funny the Wizznutzz did.

NOTE: WIZZNUTZZ PIECE NOT WASHINGTON WIZARDS-RELATED. DO NOT BE AFRAID.

A Funnsylvania Exclusive!

2008-02-04T16:56:00.000-05:00

As you may know, I have been the sole friend and supporter of the world's official number one band, the Christs, for many years, and it has accomplished nothing for anyone. Well, until now. Finally, the Christs have thrown me a proverbial bone (you all know the old proverb about the bone, right?). Speaking more specifically, they have granted me exclusive limited rights to post a sneak peak at their new album, tentatively titled, "Live at Budokan". Here, then, is what could theoretically be deemed "the first single". It is called "Who's the Boss?" and I'm sure the Christs hope you enjoy it. Me, I couldn't care less.

The Christs - "Who's The Boss?"

BREAKING!

This just in: a telegram from Christs HQ, somewhere in the foothills of the Carpathian Mountains. It reads as follows:

STOP. ATTN PUBLIC. SONG WHOS THE BOSS NOT TO BE CONFUSED WITH THEME SONG FROM TV SHOW WHOS THE BOSS. STOP. CHRISTS SONG IN NO WAY RELATED TO SITCOM. STOP. SPECIAL GUEST APPEARANCE BY MR TONY DANZA PURELY COINCIDENTAL. SONG WAS WRITTEN FOR MR. JOHN LARROQUETTE BUT HE WAS BUSY SO WE CALLED DACK RAMBO BUT WERE TOLD HE DIED OF AIDS IN 1994. STOP. ROGER MOORE WAS NEXT CHOICE BUT HE WAS IN SACRAMENTO WITH TOURING COMPANY OF A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET PART 2: FREDDYS REVENGE: THE MUSICAL. STOP. NO DIS TO HART SPRAGER BUT ROGER TOTALLY REDIFINES THE ROLE OF TEACHER SO WE ARE HAPPY FOR HIM. WOULD HAVE LIKED TO HAVE HIM ON THE RECORD BUT MAYBE NEXT TIME. ALSO TALKING TO GEORGE LAZENBY BUT TOO EARLY TO SPECULATE ON FUTURE OF THAT. STOP. SO ANYWAY WE GOT DANZA. TRUE SHOWMAN. STOP. TRIPLE THREAT NON PAREIL. END COMMUNICATION. OVER. STOP.
--------------

Hi, Rob back again. I have no closing words.

Because it worked out so well when I endorsed Wesley Clark the day before he dropped out of the race...

2008-02-01T18:10:00.001-05:00

Here is something I just posted on a baseball message board and felt was just slightly too good to be wasted on a baseball message board, so I copied it and will paste it below just as soon as I am finished typing this sentence:

I'll admit right off the bat that I've wanted Obama to be our next president since he spoke at the Democratic Convention in 2004. I strongly believe that the President's biggest role is as mouthpiece for the country, and the guy strikes me as very presidential in that regard.

When it comes down to business, I expect Hillary would be more driven, but I think they'd both be competent. I buy into the argument that he'd be more likely to having growing pains at first, but I don't see either of them fucking up. The only remaining candidate who scares me is Huckabee, because, as has been mentioned, he is a man of the cloth. Romney's an empty suit. McCain, I don't know. Of the Republicans, he's the only one I can really stomach, but I think I prefer him as a thorn in the President's side rather than as the President himself.

Anyway, back to Clinton, the only thing that distinguishes her for me IS her involvement for 8 years in White House politics, and she was definitely a strong voice in the Senate. But I don't quite see her as the long time politician she presents herself to be. I think more than that, the Clinton era may have been a really good one, but it ended horribly, and I think even most of the people who felt the whole Lewinsky thing was a GOP witchhunt just want to move past it. What does Hillary Clinton have to offer that Al Gore didn't?

Let's face the facts. This is a popularity contest. Most Americans (most people everywhere) are going to vote for a) someone from the party their parents supported, and b) the candidate they'd most like to watch an episode of "According to Jim" with. For me, Obama's that candidate. If you prefer someone else, you're even dumber than I am.
--------------

Here. Just to spice this up with a little Funnsylvania Exclusive Content, here is a recent photograph of me sharing a tray of erotic pastries with the living members of the "Facts of Life" cast. (DEFINITELY NSFW!)

(Pictured, l-r: Lisa Welchel, Nancy McKeon, Kim "Tootie" Fields, Charlotte Rae, R. Diener, Mindy Cohn)

Oh, what a sick, sick night that was. Remind me to tell you about it some time.

Scraping off the rust

2008-01-29T00:09:00.000-05:00

I feel like B.M. at the moment, and I have no specific plan for this, but I figured I'd try to force the issue and see if I can try to work my way back up to form, see if I can recapture the magic that won this site 3 straight Webbies in 1997-'99. I'm not expecting this to be any good, but I can't say that it bothers me. Let's roll.

A funny thing happened to me on the way into the office this morning. About a mile and a half from my townhouse (I live in Townhouse Village, by the way, right by the putt-putt on Route 3), I noticed ol' Lucybelle (my Vanagon*) was running low on oil, so I turned off into Pop Magroo's Fill-'er-up station. So, I pull in, and I get out of ol' Lucybelle, and I see young Gussy-Loo over by the diesel pump. So I says, "Now, Gussy-Loo"--Gussy-Loo is Pop and Fenel-Anne's 2nd youngest, of their blood-children...

All right. This is just like riding a bike. I fell off just now, but I'm okay. Barely a scrape. Still, my endurance is not what it should be. I need to work up to that. I had kind of a lingering cold for a while and my respiratory system is still ailing a little. I really shouldn't try to overdo it. Anyway, I was just trying to see if I could do it, and I couldn't. There's no shame in that. I tried, it wasn't going anywhere, and I gave up, the same as countless other great men and women, most recently Fred Thompson. Judge me and you judge America. And when you judge America, then why not just move to Stalingrad now, Frenchy. Tell me that why, smarty-face. Tell me that why.

* Normally, I don't like to buy German products, not after what they done in WWI, but it's a beautiful machine, can haul ass like a tank on acid, and has plenty of cargo room for transporting dozens of boxes of my newsletter, "The Bargain Hunter's Bible". For what's worth,the reason I say WWI is, a) at the time, they called it the war to end all wars, and until I hear otherwise, I will continue to consider everything that's followed it to be either a conflict, a skirmish, or a free-for-all, depending on number of lives claimed, and b) I still blame WWII on the Italians mostly, which is why I have not worn a tank top or beaten my wife for fucking up the sauce once since April 7, 1939, the day Mussolini invaded Albania and forced King Zog into exile. In our heart, you live forever in Albania, our great King, blessed Zog, may you rule us evermore.

Lag

2008-01-27T16:39:00.000-05:00

Hi, friends. Sorry for the lack of updates, but a) I've been busy, and b) I get insulted when no one leaves comments. Anyway, expect more nothing for a little while. I do have a Big Idea that will make this site content-rich and still be a practical endeavor for me, but it's not time for that yet. For better or worse, I am sacrificing all else at the moment as I help the Christs in their big push to finish up their new album, provisionally titled, "The Christs Present: The Best of Stu Sutcliffe". Normally, I am not a big fan of the Christs. I find their music grating and amateur (not even good enough to be called 'amateurish'). But they've come up with some real corkers this time around. The singing still sucks, but not enough to keep me from formally declaring it one of the top ten record albums of the last 50 years. Expect a February release.

Stuff!

2008-01-20T17:27:00.000-05:00

Here are some things:

1. Seven sketches, some of them unfinished.
Basketball Paul
Chukk
Eddie Munion, Boy Detective
My Super Sweet 6th Birthday
Stakeout
Time Travel
Gossip Column

2. Something much funnier that I had no part in.
Swish!

EDITED TO ADD:

3. The video for the Christs superhit, "Surf's Down!"!

A Brief History of Time Well Spent

2008-01-06T00:17:00.000-05:00

I haven't been very good about keeping in touch, I guess. I should fill you in, basically tell you what I've been up to since I moved to New York. Let's do it.

July -Aug. '05 - Moved to NY. Stayed with one friend for about a week, another for about a month. Found a place the night before the second friend was going to kick me out. It was not available until mid-October, so...

Sept-Oct. '05 - Went back to my parents. While in the DC area, produced a couple dozen tracks for popular R&B combo, the Christs.

Oct-Dec '05 - "Acclimated" myself to New York. Went through most of my car insurance settlement money.

Christmas '05 - March 1 '06 - Wrote the acclaimed, failed "novel", "Trouble is My Gun", living on a diet of toast, buying lottery scratchers with my one remaining credit card in an attempt to generate a little cash.

March-May '06 - Existential panic over whether my novel was any good. I'm not sure what I was doing for money. I must have found some somewhere.

Summer '06 - Unable to find work, decided to go back to college. The New School was the only local university that was still accepting applications. Around the same time, I noticed a new business being built around the corner, a doggy daycare center.

Sept '06 - Started school and a new job working graveyard shift in said doggy daycare center. This proved to be too much for me. My grades that first semester were: A, A-, D, F. Sections of my novel get amazing reaction in one writing class, tepid-at-best reaction in the other. Agent who asked to see it holds onto it for months then leaves job to galavant around Spain with Teemu, her Finnish boytoy. Doubt level high.

March '07 - Now taking just two courses so I could better focus on my dumb job, fired for, I suppose, insubordination. Probably other things, too. Get food poisoning the next day, shit the bed.

Summer '07 - Manuscript rejected by other agent, decision is made to put it on the shelf indefinitely while I begin work in earnest on hot new idea sure to be called a Neal Pollack/Scharpling & Wurster ripoff if it ever sees the light of day, which presumably it will not, because I am doomed to failure. Work halted when intensive summer schooling begins. At same time, asked to submit a mediocre sketch packet that will garner zero reaction to an acclaimed cable TV sketch show. Weeks wasted. I should put all that stuff up here, I guess, since it's not gonna be used anywhere else. Decide to pursue grad school in hopes of someday becoming a college professor, because I cannot think of anything better to do.

Christmas '07 - Jan 5 '08 Having narrowly missed out on straight 'A's for the first time since 4th grade, am now forced to throw myself into the grad school application process, begging and scrounging for recommendations, and just doing a generally shitty, rushed job. Jan 3 is due date for top choice school. Optimism level low. #2 school app due the day after. THings grim, but everything off. Today, Jan 5, was GRE day. I did no preparing, slept poorly the night before, did not have a chance to eat before the exam, and had a mid-grade cold. Still did well, because I am good at shit like that. At least, I think I did well. Im not sure what a good score is.

So that's where I'm at. Tomorrow I'm off to Maryland for a little r&r and what I hope will be an insignificant medical procedure (I'm gonna get turned back into a woman--these balls keep getting in the way. Am I right, fellas?). God knows after that. Only two courses next semester and I'm a college graduate. I could not care less, but at least I get a fancy piece of paper for all the money I'm gonna owe. Shit, and I've been living off the excess from my loans, too, and I'm down to about nothing. I'm kind of fucked, but that ain't news. I'll try not to let it affect this thing.

Speaking of which, a few upcoming treats are on their way, including:
Aforementioned shitty sketches!
A Christs video or two or three!
An idea I had tonight that would be totally groundbreaking were anyone to give a shit and might mean new life for this once robust website!
Extended absences, self-pitying meltdowns, and pleas for money!

Stay the fuck tuned.

A Memento of My Failure as a Human Being

2007-12-27T00:00:00.000-05:00

Here, as an exclusive December to Remember present to you, my loyal reader, Ian Carey, is the one funny part from my recently shelved hit novel, "Trouble Is My Gun". Apologies to Mr. Jerry Lewis. Enjoy!

Thanks For the Laughs
Charlie Harp Dead at 77

Actor, comedian, filmmaker, and philanthropist Charlie Harp succumbed to heart cancer Wednesday evening in his Beverly Hills home. He leaves behind a wife, Juicy (24), two adult children from three previous marriages (twice to the late Kitty Fike), and a film legacy that includes such classics as 1956's 'Pardon My Bartender,' 1961's 'A Man About the Horse,' and his acclaimed 1981 comeback, 'Darn That Crazy Waiter!'

Born Leopold Schmutz in Kroskvt, Ukraine in 1929, Charlie Harp’s family immigrated to Brooklyn when he was seven. At an early age, young Leopold knew he had a gift for comedy. According to his 1985 autobiography, Let's Talk About Me for a Second, "I knew I was funny at an early age. When you're smaller and poorer and maybe a little smarter than all the other kids, you have to use comedy as your defense. There was also a rich tradition of comedy in the neighborhood. Every Sunday, we'd all go over to Mr. and Mrs. Klubotzky's house and watch Mrs. Klubotzky make blintzes. For some reason, this is what we thought was funny."

In 1947, when he was 18, Leopold Schmutz married his high school sweetheart, Bernice Fleminthal, changed his name to Charlie Harp, and began performing comedy in burlesque clubs, most notably Miss Kitty-Cat's Kit-Cat Club in Manhattan, where he quickly gained acclaim as the most manic young comic of his generation. As he later described his early act, "It was precisely controlled mayhem. I was a virtuoso of silliness. See, the difference between a comic and a comedian is that a comedian goes by instincts, while a comic writes everything out in advance. A comedian is naturally funny, whereas a comic is more like an actor pretending to be funny. I was—and am—a comedian."

His first big break came three years later, one month after the birth of Charlie and Bernice Harp’s only child, Debra, when popular vaudevillian-turned-radio-host Jilly Lafeet discovered 21-year-old Charlie Harp performing at the El Cocomacambro Room in Los Angeles and introduced him to Bert Klein, Lafeet’s long-time agent. It was through Klein that Harp met 30-year-old showman Vic Thomas. The smooth-talking, smooth-singing, dapper Thomas and the hyperactive, clowning Harp became fast friends, and soon developed a popular stage act, which quickly earned them a motion picture contract.

Their first movie, 1950’s Morons for Sail, was an immediate success with younger audiences, who loved Charlie Harp as much as their parents found his pratfalls, his shouting, and his all-around juvenile antics indescribably irritating. It proved to be the children whose opinions mattered; in all, the duo starred in fourteen films in nine years for Loysie Studios, nearly all of them successful.

In 1958, Harp’s nine-year marriage to first wife Bernice ended, and he became notorious for a time for dating some of the most attractive women in show business, claiming in his 1993 biography, The Joys of Being Me, to have bedded nearly all the top stars of the day. The peak of Thomas and Harp’s fame came that same year, with the release of Two if By Sweden, generally considered their finest collaboration. It went on to become the second highest grossing picture of the year (after the Marvin Aloo musical, A Moonlit Dance Through Paris), and the ninth-highest grossing comedy (adjusted for inflation) of all time.

On the set of 1959’s The Jockey is a Dimwit!, however, Thomas and Harp had a falling out. As Harp described it in his 1980 autobiography, Don’t Tell Me I Can’t!: “I was—and am—a perfectionist. Vic Thomas was—and is—not. I felt that what we were doing out there was art. He thought it was a game.”

Vic Thomas disagreed; in his 1978 autobiography, Vic, Mr. Thomas implied that Charlie Harp was the problem: “You go to work every day—year in, year out—with some egotistical little monkey always jumping around your goddamn feet, and see if maybe the magic doesn’t start to fade after a while.”

Whatever their differences, the two men officially ended their eleven-year partnership the day principal photography wrapped on The Jockey is a Dimwit!, and embarked on separate new careers. Vic Thomas began what would turn out to be, in essence, an eighteen-year run at Lucky Lady’s casino-hotel in Las Vegas, with a kitschy, boozy, song-and-dance act that appealed enormously to fans of old Hollywood.

Charlie Harp continued to focus on motion pictures. After acting in several films in 1959-1960 (most notably, Clown About Town), Harp turned his hand to writing, directing, and producing. His debut as producer/director/writer/star was the 1961 smash hit, The Goofy Marine, for which he also composed and sang the theme song, “The Night We Danced,” which went on to become a top 5 single, and led to the 1962 release of Charlie Harp Sings At Last, which sold respectably but was never followed up.

1962 also saw the release of what many critics considered Harp’s masterpiece, The Astro-Nut, which, in addition to playing seven different characters in the film, he wrote, produced, and directed. The Astro-Nut also marked Harp’s sole foray into feature film scoring. In his 1990 autobiography, Charlie Harp: A Penny For My Thoughts, Harp reflected on what The Astro-Nut meant to his legacy, especially abroad: “Vic and I had been extremely popular from day one, and that, in its own way, can be very hard for a performer, especially if you’re a perfectionist and constantly driven to do better and bigger things. ‘The Astro-Nut’ was really the first time I felt in total control of the filmmaking process, and it was an invigorating feeling. On top of that, it really cemented my reputation in Europe, Finland in particular, where I was given a Medal of Distinguished Service to Mankind from the Finnish government and hailed as the greatest film artist of all time.”

French critics and cineastes also began to heap praise upon the American filmmaker. Jean-Luc Godard was quoted as calling Charlie Harp, “the world’s funniest, saddest man, and a true artist, totally unimpressed and not even slightly intimidated by the mores and constructs of conventional cinema.” Unlike most American artists and entertainers who are lionized by their French contemporaries, however, Harp’s domestic success continued unabated with such hits as The Backwards Detective (1963) and Too Many Chefs (1964).

Apart from the typical and expected success of Too Many Chefs, 1964 was a chaotic year for Charlie Harp. In February of that year, he married 18-year-old aspiring actress Catherine “Kitty” Fike. That same month, the ill-fated “Hour of Charlie” television talk show premiered. To the dismay of those who’d grown to love Charlie Harp’s childish antics and clumsy pratfalls, “Hour of Charlie” was, ostensibly, a “serious” program that featured dry interviews, generally with academics and politicians. While high school dropout Harp did his best to set a sophisticated, intellectual tone, the show garnered poor ratings and was cancelled after just two months. According to his 1979 autobiography, May I Be Serious? : “When the show got cancelled, I felt the world turn its back on me. I was no longer batting 1.000. I’d only been married to my second wife for a couple of months, but things were already sour between us. I’m sure my depression had a lot to do with it. I had no films in the works, since I’d expected the show to take up most of my time. I started drinking in the afternoon. Between the booze and the pills I was taking for my leg pain, I spent most of my time in a haze. I basically dropped out from society.”

Harp would not make another film until the 1967 flop, The Dippy Hippy. Exhausted from twenty years of non-stop work and a tempestuous second marriage that had just ended in a bitter and very public divorce, Charlie Harp withdrew from the limelight. He made no public appearances for nearly a year before coming out and announcing on “The Jilly LaFeet Show” that he’d decided to devote his time and energy to charity work, primarily with the organization Crutches for Kids.

In 1970, Harp hosted the first Crutches for Kids “Glitz-athon” televised fundraiser. A roster of all-star talent including such luminaries as Eddie Cantor and Burl Ives helped make the “Glitz-athon” a rousing success, one that continued without fail every year for the next thirty-five years.

In 1972, after a five year break from filmmaking, Charlie Harp produced, directed, and starred in The Night the Clown Wept. His first attempt at drama either as actor, director, or producer, The Night the Clown Wept tells the story of Sigmund Bloor, an impoverished clown living in WWII-era Germany, who is arrested by the Gestapo for impersonating Hitler and thrown in a concentration camp, where he spares his own life by agreeing to lead Jewish children into the gas chambers.

Not surprisingly, critics and theatergoers alike dismissed the movie as inappropriate and unwatchable. Apart from the unsettling subject manner, many who did see the film were quick to point out its many glaring incongruities and production mistakes, like the casting of healthy blonde-haired, blue-eyed, well-fed Scandinavian children (The Night the Clown Wept was filmed primarily in Sweden) in the parts of Jewish concentration camp prisoners, or a scene in which a German officer is seen watching a color episode of Hawaii 5-0.

According to his 1986 memoir, The Road to Me-ville: “The devastation I felt when ‘Clown’ failed to achieve the kind of success I felt (and feel) it deserved was too much for me. I poured my guts into that goddamned picture, and it hurt me not to get any returns on my emotional investment. All through filming, I’d taken pills for my back. After the movie flopped, I started taking the pills just so I could get through breakfast.” In 1976, after four years of near isolation, Harp checked into the Ida McKinley Clinic.

In 1981, still in recovery, Harp co-wrote, directed, and starred in Darn that Crazy Waiter! a throwback film that capitalized successfully on a resurgence in slapstick humor. Critically panned, the TV cable evergreen went on to be one of Harp’s three highest-grossing films.

By 1985, Charlie Harp had conquered the addiction problems that had plagued him for twenty years. Invigorated, he remarried second wife Kitty, twenty-one years to the day after he first married her. Their only child, son Everett, was born a year later. In 1987, Charlie Harp and Kitty Fike Harp divorced for the final time.

That same year, talk show host Jilly Lafeet arranged a surprise reconciliation between Charlie Harp and Vic Thomas on his show. While Thomas and Harp both appeared thrilled to see each other and spoke of rekindling their friendship, the private animosity never truly abated; when Vic Thomas died of liver failure in 1992, Harp did not attend the funeral.

Charlie Harp’s final film comeback attempt came in 1993 with the generally ignored low-budget independent science fiction comedy, A Ramble Through the Yesterbrain. While critics praised Harp’s performance, few movie-goers had the opportunity to find out for themselves thanks to low distribution and, at three weeks, by far the shortest run of any Charlie Harp movie. According to his 1995 autobiography, Me & My Public: A Love Story: “The problem with a movie like A Ramble Through the Yesterbrain is that the people who like it don’t like to admit it. A film like that succeeds only through word of mouth. If the people who are supposed to be spreading the word don’t want to open their mouths, then they, in effect, are responsible for killing the picture.”

For the next five years, Charlie Harp rededicated himself to his charity work, though even this was not free from controversy; in a 1997 interview with Parade magazine, Harp was quoted as having compared handicapped children to broken toys and stating “if they don’t want people to feel sorry for them, they should die already.”

Although the ensuing complaints and protests did little to affect the Charlie Harp Giltz-athon’s ability to raise significant amounts of money for Crutches for Kids, it did seem to sap some of Charlie Harp’s enthusiasm for the charity. Less than one year after the Parade interview, Harp again shifted his focus and opened his successful, autobiographical one-man show, Charlie Harp: The Story of Me, which toured the U.S., Canada, parts of Europe, Australia, and Malaysia until 2003, when he officially retired from performing.

In 2004, Charlie Harp once again made headlines when he married twenty-two-year-old former Miss Teen Kentucky, Juicy Jamison. He was seventy-five at the time.

On July 29th of 2006, Charlie Harp made his final public appearance as host of “America Honors Charlie Harp”, a two-hour televised celebration of his life. Much to the shock of everyone in attendance, Harp opened the show by emotionally announcing that this would, indeed, be his final television appearance; only a week before, doctors diagnosed him with inoperable heart cancer. He had told no one, not even his wife. “Only my doctor and my lawyer knew before just now,” he told the audience. The show went on as planned, but the outpouring of emotion from such celebrity guests as Walter Mondale and Gil Gerard turned the show into something many found immeasurably more riveting than a typical Hollywood “love-fest”. Less than two weeks later, Charlie Harp passed away.

Indeed, there is probably no more fitting way to close an account of Charlie Harp’s life than with the very words he used to close his final public appearance:

“I’d die right now if I knew Heaven is anything like tonight’s been. You’ve been a lovely audience, always. You’ve made it all worthwhile. Thank you so much. Goodnight.”

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Hmm. I promise the thing I'm working on now is a lot funnier.