Attention, whoever runs the music at my office building

You can lay off the Christmas music now. And if you're not going to lay off of it, how about at least not piping it into the bathroom? Do you have any idea how hard it is to go when the velvety smooth voice of Lou Rawls is singing O Come All Ye Faithful? I can't figure out if I should take a piss or go go splash on some High Karate and pour myself an Old Fashioned before going out to find some foxy chicks who want to swing.

Lay off the Christmas music. Please.

My back pages

I had plans for some actual content here today, but I've apparently contracted every disease in the world simultaneously. So, when not praying for my own death and nearly passing out in the drug store (fun day around the Shark Fin Hat world headquarters), I did some web surfing. Remember this? Well, lookie here.



What the hell? Who's coming with me to Asia so we can eat food endorsed by Robocop? I wonder if ED-209 is the pitchman for any rival noodles.

I swear to God that I won't do any more Robocop posts until '09.

And here it is, Merry Christmas

So, here's a couple of things on Christmas. First, Ron.

Ron had a happy little Christmas
Ate a waffle and he put away the dishes
Ron read the paper and he went for a run
No one can say that he doesn't know fun

Ron called his mom and his sister
Called his Aunt Jane but he missed her
Ron doesn't go to church these days
Now that he's older and set in his ways

Ron chopped wood and he stacked it up
Poured a little whiskey in his favorite cup
Ron built a fire as the sun went down
King of his world with a royal crown

It's ain't exactly "Yes, Virginia," but it's what I got.

And the Muppets + the Hold Steady = a reason to smile



Have a good day, whoever you are and whatever you're into. Cheers.

Philo Farnsworth and me

I don't watch a lot of TV. I'm not making any kind of big stand here, there are a few shows I try to catch, but I just don't make the time commitment for most television. As a result, I become a bit of a social pariah whenever any of the following come up:

Lost
Heroes
24
ER (This is still on, yes?)
Desperate Housewives
Grey's Anatomy
House (Actually, just saw my first episode of this. They showed a little kid bleeding rectally in the first five minutes. Pass.)
Battlestar Galactica
Law & Order in any iteration
CSI
How I Met Your Mother
American Idol
Dancing with the Stars

And so on. But, I've spent this evening catching up on Elvis Costello's Spectacle on the Sundance Channel. Holy lord, this is a fine example of the medium. Each episode is Elvis sitting down with a guest to discuss their mutual love and experiences with music, with performances scattered throughout. So far I've seen the Elton John and Lou Reed episodes, and both were electric. It's easy to forget just what a great musician Elton John is with all of the grand showman aura about him. His episode dispels a lot of that, and Reed's episode breaks through the coldness that has been attributed to him over the years, rightfully or not. This is informative, enjoyable and warm television, something all too rare.

If you're not a music nerd and are starting to doze off after my little spiel above*, you should still give the show a chance. The performances alone are worth the price of admission, as seen below. The ones I've included here are Elvis performing covers of his guests' songs, but there are some incredible duets featured, too.





*Yeah, I realize that could have less to do with whether or you're not a music nerd and more to do with me being a shitty writer, wiseass.

Addendum

The package has been located. It's in the front office of my apartment complex. I am an idiot. That is all.

My Christmas wish...

If I had but one wish this holiday season, it would be for the jackoff that stole the Amazon package left at my door to get cayenne pepper in his eye. And then his brakes fail. And he hits a wall. And his car explodes. All while I'm banging his wife.

Hey, asshole. Are you enjoying the Red Steagall and Supersuckers CDs and the book of short stories by Larry Brown? Isn't that exactly what you were hoping to find when you opened that box? I'm sure that's right up your alley. Dickhole.

Okay. Rant ranted. I refuse to let this make me any more of a misanthrope than I already am. I am going to accept the fact that the world is a horror (see two posts back), and in the context of that, I am going to find something that make me happy. I was going to find some kind of Christmassy song/video to post here, but everything just seemed so cliche, so instead I'm just going to put one that makes me smile. Here. Happy holidays, folks. It's all good in the hood.

Fried chicken

As a life-long resident of the south, I kind of figured we had the market cornered on the world's best fried chicken. However, the fried chicken in Korea appears to be fuckin' amazing...

This holiday season...

Over the last two days, I went to five different stores looking for the right Barbie for my niece. Spending two days and a whole bunch of fossil fuel looking for a hunk of plastic that will most likely be forgotten within a couple of years kind of encapsulates why I'm pretty sure I'll never have kids, but I did it for two reasons:

1. I'm going to tell a 5-year old that she didn't get what she wanted because her uncle didn't feel like driving around and wanted to teach her a lesson about materialism? How much of a dick do you think I am?

2. She wanted Zoo Doctor Barbie. ZOO DOCTOR BARBIE. I have a niece that's expressing an interest in science, however tangential. I'm going to cultivate the living shit out of that.

More about the holiday season. About a year ago was a grim, grim time, even for me. A number of things personally and professionally had gone wrong, leaving me feeling like I couldn't trust anyone, most of all myself. I pulled through thanks to some heretofore untapped internal reserves and the support of a small group of friends and family. Another thing that helped get me through that time was a rant by Little Steven on his Underground Garage show. I posted this on my old blog, and I reproduce it here now:

“Okay, who wants to commit suicide? Raise your hand. One, two…quite a few this year. All right, let’s try and figure this out, shall we? Three reasons, I’m thinking:

Number One: Society says you should be happy and thankful this time of year, and you’re not either one.

Number Two: You are lonely. It’s the time when people celebrate family and friends, and you either don’t like a lot of your family, or you don’t have much of a family, and you really don’t have that many close friends, either.

Number Three, and this is good any time of the year: You’re broke. Busted. Tapped out. Bills are piling up, and now you’re supposed to buy people presents?

That pretty much covers it, right? Well guess what? Everybody’s depressed. Everybody with a brain, anyway. That is reality for most people. Some people are better actors, and some people can live in denial more successfully than others. But the reality is, life sucks. It’s a horror.

Yes, there a few people who have wonderful families and friends and money. A very few. Everybody else going around looking and acting happy is a moron. They’re idiots. Don’t they read the papers? New Orleans, the Asian tsunami, AIDS in Africa. Need something closer? Go out your door, make a right, how far do you get before tripping over a homeless person?

Life sucks, trust me. Most people’s families are dysfunctional, most people’s friends are backstabbing hypocrites, and our economy is permanently screwed. It will be bad for the rest of everybody’s lifetime because of the debt. Not just the deficit, the debt. So it ain’t just you.

So what do you want to do? Sit around and whine about it? Commit suicide? Check out and let the bad guys win? Because they want sensitive, intelligent troublemakers like you out of the way.

No. We are not going to whine and complain. We are not going to very cowardly check out. We are going to acknowledge that the world is a horror show, and in the context of that reality, and in spite of that reality, we are going to find some things to celebrate.

Like what? Like the Beatles. Like Little Richard. Like the Ramones. Like Jon Stewart. Like the Simpsons. Like Bill Maher. Like dogs and elephants and sex and love and the one family member maybe you do like, or the one friend maybe you do trust. Or the little kid down the street that smiles at you when you’re in a bad mood. Like truth. Like books. Like movies, flowers, go-go girls, and Christmas.

Christmas is cool. That’s why everybody celebrates it, regardless of their religions. It doesn’t matter if Jesus was really the son of God or not. Like all religious writings, it is symbolic. Christmas symbolizes rebirth, renewal, a second chance, an opportunity to start over. We’re not on this planet very long to begin with, so while we’re here, let’s try and have a little fun.”

Be good to each other out there, folks.


"Tom Waits and Peter Murphy" duet on a Christmas song. There are no visuals. Wash the dishes or something while you listen.

Shuffle poem

The game: put your ipod or what-have-you on shuffle. The first line of the first 20 songs is your poem, the first line of the 21st is the title.

Everything's So Easy for Pauline

Sun Green started making waves on the day Grandpa died
I know you think we're pretty thick
Smack crack bushwacked
Can you hear the little girls asking "Daddy where have all the little boys gone?"
A man can't do no more than a woman will let him

She was a girl from Birmingham
Should we give it up?
I walk the thinnest line
Take her to heart
They'll talk about it after dinner over after dinner drinks

I crept from a soft dimension
She's nine years old and sweet as she could be
I could live inside a teepee
This forest is growing faster than I could tell
You said that I would be sorry if you went away

My my, hey hey
When you lie don't you cry because it's over
We used to kiss
You got a dangerous background
Oh, life is bigger


Hmmm. It actually kind of hangs together for a bit before it totally breaks down into randomness.

Swifty meals.

A few thoughts on fast food...

1. I'd like to have a word with the people at McDonald's who let the word "nuggnut" enter the lexicon. First of all, for this to have happened, somebody had to brainstorm it from their advertising team. Then they had to present it to McDonald's executives as a good idea to build a campaign around. Then it was tested through multiple focus groups and passed with flying colors. Then commercials were written and filmed, Web sites conceptualized, written and constructed. AROUND A WORD AS GODDAMN GROSS SOUNDING AS NUGGNUT. Christ.

2. Attention, Arby's. My office window overlooks one of you, so we have an uneasy truce of a co-existence. I have accepted this. What I cannot accept is your commercial where the guy has his wife dress up as an Arby's worker and carry in a tray of roast fucking beef as a way to sexify the ol' lovelife. I might have left this well enough alone, but then you have your logo sproing to life above his head in the most blatant bit of phallic symbolism I've seen on television since the last time I watched one of those Sunday morning fishing shows on ESPN. The hell?

3. You guys had one of the chicken biscuits from Wendy's? Chicken the size of your head. It's horrendously awful for you, but it soaks up a hangover quite well.

Best shows, plus bonus

Best shows I saw in 2008:

1. The Dirtbombs at the Earl, April 2nd— The best show I saw this year, hands down. Two hours of insane Detroit garage soul rock. They loved the crowd, the crowd loved them and nobody stopped moving the whole night. Their We Have You Surrounded album is essential. See them whenever, wherever.

2. R.E.M. at Lakewood Amphitheater, June 21st – The third time I’ve seen them, and the best. Touring behind their best album in 10 years, they sounded like a band re-energized. The mighty Justin Waddell and I went to this show together and I think both of us nearly cried when they fired up “Harborcoat.” Well, Justin cried. I stood there being all stoic and awesome.

3. Tom Waits at the Fox Theater, July 5th—I never thought I’d get the chance to see Waits play. But he came here a couple of years ago, the show was great, and I figured that was it. Then he comes back two years later with the Glitter and Doom tour and completely blows the previous show out of the water. “Innocent When You Dream” with the audience singing along—chills.

4. The Drive-By Truckers/The Hold Steady/Bobby Bare Jr. at the Ryman Auditorium, October 31st—Every bit as good as I hoped it would be. I’ve become a big fan of the Hold Steady over the last couple of years, and their live show lived up to their reputation. I can’t remember that last time I saw a band that so completely captured the emotion of what rock and roll can come to mean. The Truckers were on fire, and the whole night was pure joy. Couple that with the surprise of finding out that a good friend of mine from high school was Bobby Bare Jr.’s drummer and you’ve got a perfect show.

Now if somebody could hook a brother up with AC/DC tickets…

And now...

Mork calling Orson. NaNo, NaNo

First things first, new comic strip here.

Second things second, I finished my novel for NaNoWriMo 2008, On the Beach. Whether it’s any good remains to be seen, as the editing and rewriting process lies ahead now. But I do think the germ of a good story is there, and I accomplished at least some of what I wanted to do. If nothing else, it stands as the longest piece of fiction I’ve ever written and proves (to me) that I can take a disciplined approach to my more creative endeavors, which is what had been missing for quite some time.

Anyway, I don’t know if spending a month straight writing about an alcoholic, suicidal asshole was therapeutic or dangerous, but it’s done. Here’s the honor roll for this endeavor:

Neil Young’s On the Beach album—“Ambulance Blues” is the best song ever. I realize I say that about a lot of songs. The mood of this record was a huge influence on the book.
SIP
That girl with pink hair who works there
Manuel’s Tavern
The Independent
George Dickel
Peets Coffee
The World's Greatest Sinner
The I Don’t Care trivia team, whose creativity inspires my own
The Mighty Mighty Matt Myers and Cary Christopher for the same reasons