"Neocon sex fantasy"?

Some people have been complaining the last few years that the TV series 24 is a neoconservative's dream come true because of the multiple torturings and mangling of Constitutional law inflicted by Jack Bauer and his colleagues. But what kind of neoconservative has ever fantasized about two black bachelors being elected president in one decade?

At least David Palmer had already been a senator when his term of office began, and he had raised two children with his ex-wife (but it seems unlikely that a presidential candidate's rhetoric about traditional American values would hold much water with certain voters if he was going through a very public divorce during his run). His brother, Wayne, as far as I can remember, had never held any kind of elected office before he became president; he was his brother's chief of staff, but as my friend Beau said, "That's like seeing Karl Rove become president."

And Wayne's never been married. Did he win solely on sympathy votes cast by people who liked his assassinated brother? Sorry, but Wayne is no Bobby to David's Jack. Plus he's bald. Who was our last bald president? Gerald Ford. And just like my friend Beau, Ford was an accident! (Sorry you had to find out this way, Beau.) I think we're still a ways off from electing a black president, yet here comes Barack Obama, who's most likely going to run. (Okay, so he's half black.) Prove me wrong, Obama. But if you really want my vote, I dare you to begin divorce proceedings sometime around Super Tuesday next year.

Real America just isn't as progressive as 24's version of America, but at least real America hasn't watched its last three presidents either (a) decide not to run for reelection because of a personal scandal, (b) become critically wounded in a plane crash and have to cede power to the vice-president, or (c) resign from office because of a political scandal involving treason. Maybe Wayne Palmer got elected because nobody else wanted the job. Good luck handling all of the nuclear—and political—fallout this season, Wayne.

I saw the light ...

I'm really enjoying not showering every single day. I'm also enjoying not flushing every time I use the bathroom. I feel like I've turned a big corner in my life. Thank you, moderately hygienic friends, for showing me the way.

Little Richard invented rock 'n' roll, not politically correct stage banter.

From Ben Ratliff's New York Times review of Little Richard's performance at the B.B. King Blues Club & Grill in New York City on January 15:

Little Richard is wary of photography. During “Blueberry Hill,” he noticed a lot of digital cameras. “Nobody do no video,” he ordered. “I ain’t hired you. Ain’t nothing going on unnoticed on this planet. The angels keep a record. You can take my money, but your child may get killed.” Quite a few people in the crowd drew a sharp breath at that.

Who knew Little Richard had some Native American* in him? "Steal my soul with your electronic flash bulb and I'll steal your firstborn's ability to breathe oxygen. Ah-wooooo!"

“Could I get two black ladies to dance?” he ventured. “I’d like to have two fat white ladies, too. Juicy ones. And two Mexicans.”

But not fat, juicy Mexicans? Just Mexican Mexicans? Fair enough. Form a line, people—we don't have all night.

The most eloquent speakers in the world hail from Macon, Georgia. Hometown pride, y'all! But Mr. Penniman did end his concert with this piece of friendly advice:

“... remember, the Lord is coming soon. Never put a question mark where God has put a period.”

But if you find yourself putting your foot in your mouth, don't be surprised if people react with exclamation marks. Ah-wooooooo!

* In Little Richard-speak, "Native American" translates as "Injun."

Once I can convince a girl to date me for more than three weeks ...

... I'm going to introduce her to my friends as "my lady love." Not "my girlfriend" or "my sweetie" or "the only reason I don't end it all right here and ruin this white carpet." No, I prefer "my lady love." I think she'll prefer it too, whoever she turns out to be.

Let's go to the movies!

Boy, I love the movies! Well, I used to. We broke up around 1998, but we're still friends, I guess. And it's actually good for both of us that I no longer obsess about the movies like I used to, although I doubt the movies have noticed. Now, let's talk about some movies I've seen in the last few months:

1. OCEAN'S TWELVE (2004)
When this sequel to the remake of Ocean's Eleven (2001) came out, I heard it was a disappointment. Sequels often are, but Steven Soderbergh directed it (as well as Ocean's Eleven and this summer's Ocean's Thirteen), so how bad could it be? Soderbergh, like Ang Lee, has a long track record of making good films in any genre he chooses. With 1998's Out of Sight, Soderbergh proved he could make smart, entertaining mainstream fare, and he continued in that vein with Erin Brockovich (2000) and Ocean's Eleven.

But with Ocean's Twelve, Soderbergh stumbles a bit and shows that sequels aren't his strong suit. Not yet anyway—here's hoping Ocean's Thirteen is better, and judging by the trailer, it seems to be paying close attention to the unofficial Movie Trilogy Rulebook, which states that you must follow up a not-as-successful second installment with a third installment that sticks closely to the elements that made the first movie successful. It looks like Ocean's Thirteen will be set in Las Vegas, like the original, with Ocean and his gang (which now includes Andy Garcia and Ellen Barkin) trying to rob Al Pacino's casino. (That rhymes. I guess that's why Al was cast.)

Twelve is set in Paris, Rome, Amsterdam, and other European locations, and although Garcia is back as Terry Benedict, the bad guy from Eleven, he's the secondary bad guy this time. Unfortunately, the primary bad guy, Vincent Cassel's "Night Fox," isn't all that interesting, and his breakdancing routine near the end of the movie is cringe-worthy. Eleven did a great job fleshing out all the members of Ocean's gang as well as Benedict and his love triangle with Danny Ocean (George Clooney) and Ocean's ex-wife, Tess (Julia Roberts). The balancing act doesn't work as well in Twelve, with Bernie Mac, Elliott Gould, and Carl Reiner's characters absent for long stretches of the movie. And although I didn't like the whole meta-tastic "Tess looks just like Julia Roberts" subplot (why didn't anyone notice this in Eleven?), it did lead to the funniest scene in the movie, in which Bruce Willis, playing himself, thinks Tess is Julia Roberts and Tess ends up on the phone with Julia. Sadly, the rest of the movie is pretty unmemorable and even confusing in some parts, and there's nothing along the lines of Eleven's serene little moment at the Bellagio fountains after the big heist.

2. BASIC INSTINCT 2 (2006)
I've been on a sequel kick recently. And it's not over yet. Like Ocean's Twelve, Basic Instinct 2 is considered to be worse than the original, but on a much larger scale. It's generally not wise to release a sequel 14 years after the original, especially if the original's director, writer, and male costar aren't returning for the sequel. Sharon Stone is back, but she's not even the main character in her own star vehicle. Like Basic 1, the sequel is structured around the horny guy who's obsessed with Stone's character, Catherine Tramell. And here's a big problem with Basic 2: Stone is no longer the hottest woman on the planet. It's a little embarrassing watching a woman in her late 40s who appears to have had some botched plastic surgery on her face and breasts talking dirty and trying to seduce every man she meets. (Stone apparently has a scene in Bobby in which she stares at herself in a mirror and realizes her age has caught up with her. Too bad that self-awareness is nowhere in sight in Basic Instinct 2.) I saw Stone interviewed on Primetime Glick in 2003 and she looked great. I don't know what happened between then and 2005, when this movie was shot, but Stone isn't given many close-ups in Basic 2, which is odd considering she's the star of the movie and the reason it got made in the first place. Maybe you just need a higher SPF, Sharon. Ask the hot fortysomethings on Desperate Housewives for some helpful hints.

3. STRANGER THAN FICTION (2006)
Meta-tastic redux! This one didn't intrigue me as much as I'd hoped, but then I remembered that I never fell in love with those Charlie Kaufman-penned films like Being John Malkovich and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind like friends of mine did (however, I really liked Adaptation up until the third act, which is when the meta-tastic qualities started to overwhelm everything else). But to be fair, I was distracted quite a bit by the sound system in the theater where I saw Stranger Than Fiction—it sounded like a plane was about to take off during most of the movie, and that didn't help during the quieter scenes.

I was also bothered that the movie was filmed in Chicago yet no mention of Chicago was ever made. Look, if you're going to have some nameless big city in your movie, film the thing in Vancouver—they're used to it! Granted, people who don't live in Chicago or haven't been here won't notice much when they see the movie, and it's not like Stranger Than Fiction shows the Hancock Tower or Sears Tower or Wrigley Field at any point, but it struck me as odd. Maybe Columbia Pictures was offered a huge tax break if they filmed the movie in Chicago, but I doubt it.

On the flip side, two days after I saw Stranger Than Fiction I watched an episode of TBS's new sitcom My Boys. It's set in Chicago but clearly filmed on soundstages, yet the writers do a good job with the details, name-checking streets like Ashland Avenue and having a character wear a T-shirt with the logo of the Metro, a concert venue here. In Stranger Than Fiction, Will Ferrell's character catches the Kronecker bus every morning. There's no street named Kronecker in Chicago.

4. BORAT (2006)
This movie starts to slow down at the point where the frat boys pick up Borat in their RV (gee, do you think that was staged at all?) and make their sexist and racist comments. But up till then it's as funny as everyone says it is. Sacha Baron Cohen is a funny man.

5. THE DEPARTED (2006)
Another great Martin Scorsese crime movie, with terrific performances all around, although I thought Matt Damon's accent sounded more authentic than Mark Wahlberg's, which is odd since Wahlberg actually grew up in south Boston, right? Didn't Damon grow up in Cambridge? I assume the accent isn't as strong in Cambridge. I like to assume lots of things. My only problem with The Departed is that the plot is moved forward in several instances via text messaging between characters. I hate technology.

6. DREAMGIRLS (2006)
Yeah, Jennifer Hudson has a great voice, but she's not a great actress yet, so people should stop saying, "She's going to win an Oscar!" Eddie Murphy's the one who deserves an Oscar nomination for this movie. It's good to see him this energetic again in a movie for adults, not three-year-olds.

These reviews are getting shorter and shorter. Can you tell I'm getting tired?

I'm gonna burn your Manhattan playhouse down.

Over Christmas my dad read me a short profile on Eugene Levy in the New Yorker. (Yeah, my daddy still reads to me. I dress him, so it's a fair trade.) One detail that immediately stood out was this one:

He doesn’t do appearances in character, except for a turn, with John Candy, as the Shmenge Brothers on Letterman ten years ago....

What? Ten years ago? John Candy died in 1994! I thought you had the best fact checkers in the business, New Yorker. I guess not. I'm going to enjoy lording this over you. Of course, the newspaper I work for, the Chicago Reader, recently ran an article in which June 1968 was listed as the month that Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, even though he was murdered two months earlier. I never got to proofread that article, but if I had, I hope I would've noticed that error. To make up for this fact-checking blunder, all of us at the Reader are here at work on MLK Day.

Eugene Levy and John Candy appeared on Late Night With David Letterman as SCTV's Shmenge brothers (their attempt at "breakout" characters a la Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas's McKenzie brothers) on February 26, 1985, according to Wikipedia. No, Wikipedia isn't the definitive source for this kind of information, but right now I trust them more than the New Yorker. Hurts, don't it, New Yorker?

about a grotesquely obscene car

I just saw a commercial that features Badly Drawn Boy's great song "About a Boy," from the soundtrack of the movie of the book of the same name. The commercial was for Hummer.

Is BDB (not to be confused, of course, with Bush I-era supergroup Bell Div Bevoe) donating the royalties he makes from this commercial to environmental causes the way Moby did earlier in the decade? I don't know. Maybe he lives under a rock and thinks the Hummer is some sort of musical toy for children. Or maybe he thinks he's going to be compensated with another kind of hummer.

Matt doing Matthew

Yet another reason to like Matt Damon ...

I stand corrected.

I took Marrie and Cary's advice and didn't shower yesterday. And guess what? I'm a new man!

No, not really, but it felt good to save a little time in the morning, especially on a Wednesday, the day when I'm supposed to be at work at 10 AM after leaving work only 10 hours earlier after a 14-hour shift. I move slowly on Wednesday mornings, or, more precisely, even slower than I usually move.

So here's to no-shower Wednesdays unless I end up sweating a lot on Tuesdays. If not showering seven days a week helps my skin, so be it. Lord knows I don't want any new dermatological problems.

100% cotton dress shirts

These kinds of shirts take too long to iron. Give me a 60% cotton-40% polyester or rayon blend or give me death.

I need to stop taking showers at 2 PM on my days off from work. Prioritize, panda boy! But at least I shower seven days a week—I found out recently that some friends of mine shower five days a week at most.

I can't remember who said this, but it's true—you get one day for your birthday, not an entire weekend or week or month. I have no problem with gently reminding people that it's your birthday, because most people outside your immediate family aren't going to bother jotting down your birthday, no matter how many times you remember their birthday (no, of course I'm not speaking from experience). Just don't shove your birthday down people's throats or use tired excuses like "Okay, I'll be at the rehearsal tomorrow at noon, but don't expect me to be too productive, because today's my birthday, so I'm gonna be really hung over tomorrow morning." Prioritize, non-panda boys and girls.

two words that should be retired in 2007

I think "vagina" and "douchebag" should go away this year. We all overused them in 2006. If you're a doctor I think you should still use "vagina" when addressing your female patients' problems, but otherwise it should stop being used so much as a funny word. And "douchebag" really seemed to take off in 2006, but let's give it some time to hibernate. Unless you're a doctor who has to hand out free douchebags to his female patients who have vaginas, of course.

The Best and Worst of 2006

Since everyone else is doing it and I'm not one to make waves or even ripples, here's my quick review of the year that's almost over:

THE BEST
1. SUPERMAN
No, not Superman Returns specifically, although I did like that movie. I just mean Superman in general. It was good to see him back in the public consciousness in a big way, even if the new film was viewed as a financial disappointment. I became obsessed with Superman again sometime in June before Superman Returns came out, so I took a trip back to my childhood and watched the first three Christopher Reeve Superman movies from the late '70s and early '80s. Superman III (1983) sucks for the most part, but Superman (1978) and Superman II (1980) still have some great moments a quarter century later. And Christopher Reeve is perfect as Superman. It's too bad that he became defined by the role, but he worked some magic that endures to this day by taking his characters—Superman and Clark Kent—seriously even when his directors didn't.

2. THE BEES
This pop band from Nashville unfortunately have to put "U.S." in parentheses after their name because of a band with the same name over in the UK. The (American) Bees' second album, 2006's High Society, contains 11 songs, only one of which can be considered filler. That's not easy to do, and remember, it's their second album, the one that often causes bands to choke and then change their plan of attack for their third effort. Daniel Tashian, who played guitar on Josh Rouse's 2005 album, Nashville, is the lead singer and songwriter for the Bees, and like Rouse, he has a gift for striking melodies and arrangements. The Bees will rock you, albeit gently. Buy their album. While you're at it, buy their Nashville colleagues' stellar 2006 albums as well: Rouse's Subtitulo, David Mead's Tangerine, and Curt Perkins's Get Something Started. The Nashville pop renaissance excites me. I can't wait to hear what all of these guys come up with in the next few years.

3. THE LEMONHEADS
When I first heard an advance copy of the Lemonheads' new self-titled album, their first in ten years, I didn't like it. Then I listened again. And again. I still didn't like it that much. I expect instant gratification from head lemon Evan Dando, a master of kickass hooks, but the hooks didn't seem to be there the first few go-rounds, and his voice seemed tired. I was pretty disappointed. Then I listened one more time to "No Backbone," the first of the album's tracks that was released to the blogosphere. Hey, wait a second ... this sounds good. This sounds really good! And now most of the other songs are starting to sound good too! "Black Gown," "Become the Enemy," "Pittsburgh," "Poughkeepsie," "Rule of Three," "Baby's Home," "Steve's Boy" ... Dando, you did done it again, you sly dog. I'm sorry I doubted you.

4. MURS AND 9th WONDER
I wrote about this rapper-producer duo's most recent album back in September. You can read about it here if you want.

5. PAUL STANLEY
The bootleg CD that was created from the Kiss lead singer's between-song banter, People, Let Me Get This Off My Chest, was one of the best things I discovered this year. I'm serious, you guys! You can download all 70+ tracks from the CD here if you want. Some people like to laugh at Le Starchild for the silly things he says onstage, but I don't. The man is clearly milking a stage persona for all it's worth, and it seems to be worth quite a lot. Bottom line: Paul Stanley is rich and we're not, so who's laughing now? I salute you, Kiss Army general. Your androgynous rock 'n' roll shriek brought me much joy in 2006.

6. MUSIC BLOGS
I heard a lot of good music, new and old, this year thanks to blogs like Jeff Giles's, Jason Hare's, Heather Browne's, that guy named John who likes forgotten '80s music, and that girl named Kelly in Cincinnati who likes soundtracks from '80s movies. Thanks for the songs, the education, and the friendly e-mail replies.

7. LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE
I meant to write about this movie in October right after I saw it, but I forgot. But now that I have a deadline to meet for a friend's project and would rather procrastinate by writing blog entries, let's talk about Little Miss Sunshine! It's the best movie I've seen since Minority Report in 2002; by that I mean it's the first movie in four years that's made me immediately want to see it again and even look forward to seeing it years from now in the hopes that it still holds up. Sunshine was so good in its first hour that I was scared the final 30 minutes would ruin what had come before it by selling out the characters or wrapping the story threads up too neatly. Luckily, the third act was just as good as the first two. The movie's first-time directors, Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris, pulled off a small miracle with this one.

THE WORST
1. WAR
We're still at war? In two different countries? Bummer.

2. NO HUGGY, NO KISSY
I didn't go out on any dates in 2006. Therefore I had no girlfriend in 2006. I tried to go out on some dates, but I got rejected. Oh well, it happens. The one woman I would like to ask out that I can't ask out, seeing as how she's a happily married mother of two, did tell me a few weeks ago that I have "a fantastically sexy voice." That compliment made my month. And since nothing else this year came close to topping it, I guess it made my year.

3. SELF-ABSORPTION
Wow, it's gotten pretty bad, hasn't it? Like with blogs and stuff. Do I really care what some jerk in Phoenix did today at work before he went home and watched The Office? No, I don't. I only care about myself, and I have 1. 7 readers who feel the same way. Hey, 0.7 of them are calling me right now! Gotta go! (Wasn't I the cutest at age five? Tell me about it! Seriously, tell me about it in the comments section.)

Bring on 2007.

Josh Rouse's "Michigan"

Josh Rouse is one of the best singer-songwriters around. Below are the lyrics to "Michigan," a song that can break your heart. Without hearing the simple, direct melody and Rouse's lonesome, quiet vocals, the lyrics may only tear off a corner of your heart, but that should be enough for now. "Michigan" can be found on the bonus CD that comes with The Smooth Sounds of Josh Rouse, a DVD that's for fans only. But everybody should be a fan of Josh Rouse. Therefore his DVD is for everybody.

Mom and Dad
I'm living in Michigan with Uncle Ray
He and Aunt Terri said I should write
Said I should write or I should phone you
I just don’t have that much to say

See, I’ve been bartending about three nights a week
It's a stand-up joint and they’re good to me
And I stay bored most all the time
Except for the cards that Ray and I play
Yeah, he's the only friend I got in this place
Still it's better than Wichita

Terri, she's fine
She wants you to know she's wrote a song
She's picking up where she left off
She's bringing it back
'Cause it's been years since she's tried
God, has it really been that long?
Mom, I'm sorry, I was wrong
And Dad, I'm sorry, 'cause I just couldn’t stay in that town
Where everyone knows everything about me

Michigan's all right
Still I haven’t found a love
Just want to be happy
Love, your son
Just try to be happy
Love, your son

Happy birthday, faithful reader!

Today is Beau Johnson's birthday. Well, December 28th is his birthday. I'm posting this entry after midnight on December 28, but the posting time that's showing up is Pacific Standard Time. How do I change that? Sorry, Beau, too late, can't stop the birthday wishing magic now.

Beau is 1 of my 1.7 readers. But even though Beau is 1, he is also 32 years young(ish) today. Beau lives in Charleston, South Carolina. Beau is married to Kristen and has an infant son named Parker. Beau plays guitar and sings in a band called Slackwater. Beau has a full head of hair, which I envy much more than his domestic bliss because I am vain. Beau has been a friend since high school, although I didn't really get to know him until after college and we discovered we both had jobs that allowed us to send lots of e-mail. Happy birthday, Beau Bowie Johnson.

(The picture you see of Beau makes him look like he's maybe a little too enthusiastic about average American beer. He isn't. Well, maybe he is—I haven't seen him in a long time. But sometimes he talks about more sophisticated foreign beers in his e-mails, so I'll give him the benefit of the doubt.)

Goodbye, Mr. Ford and Mr. Brown.

Gerald Ford died yesterday. He was our nation's president when I was born on September 25, 1975. In fact, there was an attempt on Ford's life that week. Ford wasn't hurt in either attempt, so the incidents aren't mentioned —and I wouldn’t know about it if I hadn’t looked at an old issue of Time at the University of Georgia library in 1996—but in September of '75 two different women tried to assassinate President Ford. Now, Nixon I can understand, but Ford? The attempt on Ford’s life on September 5 by Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme of the infamous Manson family was followed by another attempt on the 22nd by a disturbed housewife-slash-FBI informant named Sara Jane Moore.

Ford wasn’t elected to the office of president, of course, but he wasn’t elected vice-president either. In both positions he replaced a disgraced leader. What a sweet deal—none of the work, all of the reward! I’m kidding, of course, but it is an interesting piece of historical trivia; Ford's greatest political ambition was to become speaker of the house, not president. I just heard on CNN that in 1980 Ronald Reagan almost asked Ford to run for vice-president instead of George Bush, but both men—and their advisers—realized it wouldn’t work. Maybe Reagan’s handlers figured it was about time Ford got elected to one of the top two offices in the government.

Ford was our last balding president. Al Gore could’ve been our next balding president, but he forgot Antonin Scalia’s birthday in 2000, which made Antonin mad, so George W. Bush became president instead. Since then, everything’s been awesome.

So goodbye, Mr. President. You weren't in office for long, but you did your job well while you were there. I'm proud to have been born under your accidental watch.

The Godfather of Soul died on Christmas Day. As Jesse Jackson noted, the Hardest-Working Man in Show Business upstaged Santa. (Santa jokingly responded, "I won't forget this, Soul Brother #1. You're a dead man! I'm kidding, of course, seeing as how you're already dead ... Sorry, that was in poor taste, wasn't it? Please enjoy your presents, and I'll see you again next year.") James Brown—yes, he was more than just a bunch of boastful nicknames—was born in Augusta, Ga., but he spent some of his formative years in Macon, where I grew up. There's even a legend that Little Richard's manager sent Brown on the road as Little Richard sometimes, hoping no one in the audience would know the difference. That's one way to double your ten-percent take of your client's income, I guess.

When Brown died, I read how some people were shocked by the news. Shocked? Really? I doubt Brown lead the healthiest lifestyle, and I'm not even talking about drug use. Plus when you're the self-proclaimed hardest-working man in showbiz, your body's bound to give out at some point. Brown was in his 70s. And remember, he'd beaten a lot of his wives. That takes energy, y'all.

Oh, I'm sorry, was that a rude thing to say? And is it rude to post this mug shot of Brown from the day before my 13th birthday? (If it's any consolation, James, it was a bad week for me too.) We like to remember our heroes only for their good deeds, don't we? When I die, do I want people talking about how I used to purposely bleed on strangers in public when they're delivering my eulogy? (Okay, so I still do that.) Of course not! Remember me for my work with children in foreign countries. (I never missed a $21 payment to that Christian kids' charity, except for most of 1999, 2001, and 2005.) Remember me for my tutoring of mentally handicapped adults in reading and writing. (But don't mention that mysterious bus crash that killed all of them on the way to the Harold Washington Library after we had a heated argument about the safety of public transportation versus the safety of a stretch Hummer limo. No, I didn't offer to pay for the limo, but seriously, how cool would it be to see a Hummer limo pull up in front of a library? Those guys would've looked like rock stars!) Finally, remember me for my kindness and soft-spoken nature. (Please don't remember the chainsaw-throwing incident at the Rainbow Coalition meeting in November of '03.)

It's strange to me when people say things like "Ever since that Michael Richards incident I find it hard to watch Seinfeld reruns" or "I'll never listen to a Michael Jackson song the same way again" or "I'll never rent another car from Hertz without thinking about O.J. decapitating his wife." Please do shut up. You can still like Kramer's krazy antiks and you can still sing along to "Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'" and you can still laugh at the Naked Gun movies (at least O.J.'s constantly getting hurt in them, if that helps you sleep better) and you can still love songs like "Super Bad," "(Get Up I Feel Like Being a) Sex Machine," and "Get on the Good Foot." Remember James Brown for his lasting contributions to music and the black pride movement, not his questionable personal behavior, but don't whitewash the personal behavior either.

So goodbye, Mr. Hard-Working Soul Godfather #1. You're a music legend, and your legacy will endure. I'm just not sure I would've wanted to be around you when you were pissed off or high on PCP.

etiquette lessons from a possible sociopath

Below is an e-mail I received from a coworker, one who generally avoids eye contact with others, talks to himself constantly (but almost always under his breath), loudly hacks up phlegm into the men's-room sink, and harshly whispers, "Fuck me!" at his computer, possibly in the hopes that his coworkers will ask, "Hey, why so glum, li'l fella?" He also laughs way too loudly at things he reads on the Internet as people pass by his desk, which I interpret as another cry for attention. I've also been told that he generally treats job candidates who come in to take the proofreading test with no respect and tells them the test is self-explanatory if they dare to ask for directions.

Bottom line—I never expected him to be the Miss Manners of the office. It's true that "a little politeness goes a long way," but so does a lot of general weirdness and jackassery over the course of three and a half years.

............................................

Date: Wed, 13 Dec 2006 16:39:54 -0600
To: rcass@***.com
From: "John Doe"
Subject: Fwd: toner needed

Robert:

Toner questions can go to me. Usually, I'm available to help. When you sent the message, I was on a work-related errand.

Please keep in mind two issues:

1. Spare cartridges are usually kept on the third floor. In fact, one was stored directly under the printer. And at one least one other person on the floor knows how to change the cartridge.

2. Your message to info services was harsh in tone. Please consider the feelings of others when asking them for help. A little politeness goes a long way.

Thank you.

"John"

Date: Wed, 13 Dec 2006 14:38:20 -0600

To: is-help

From: Robert Cass

Subject: toner needed

We need new toner in the hallway printer on the 3rd floor.

Thanks,

Robert

Goodbye, girl. Hello, blogosphere fame!

I like soft rock. I also like a subgenre called "mellow gold." Allow Jason Hare and his wonderful blog to explain in a continuing series he calls Adventures Through the Mines of Mellow Gold.

How did this happen?!?!

I've been gone from here for a long time. How are my 1.7 readers holding up? ... Scurvy? Really? People can still get that? Well, take lots of vitamin C, I guess.

Yesterday I heard a cast member on the new season of The Real World say, "I can be an asshole, but I'm not a dick." Good call. There truly is a fine line between the two. Maybe you're just a taint, sir.

The Real World has really gotten out of hand. Remember in 1992 when the show started and most of the roommates seemed like people you might actually want to hang out with? I was 16 in 1992, so maybe I wanted to hang out with Julie, Heather B, Norman, and Andre because they were older and therefore cooler than me, but they also seemed fairly low-maintenance and not too prone to temper tantrums. But once the novelty of the "real-life soap opera" gimmick wore off and once cast members like David from the L.A. cast and Puck from the San Francisco cast made waves and were asked to move out in a dramatic fashion, the show seemed to have more and more attention-starved crazies running around each season. And the casting seemed to boil down to "Do we have a black homophobe who can share a room with a white lesbian this year?"

Then in 2002 the Las Vegas cast seemed to open the floodgates for nonstop drinking and screwing. All the Real World cast members seem to do now is go out to bars, get arrested, and then come home to do each other. They have good manners, though, so they share each other, which I think is nice. And forget any build-up of sexual tension between roommates throughout the season—they now hook up on the first day after a few hours of drinking. Is MTV paying for those drinks? I have a feeling they are. My darling niece Olivia, begin averting your eyes now, please.

The title of today's blog entry is going to be longer than the blog entry itself.

See? I told you.

If you're this guy's manager, you're doing a terrible job.

Then again, you just can't shut some people up.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Fox plans to broadcast an interview with O.J. Simpson in which the former football star discusses "how he would have committed" the slayings of his ex-wife and her friend, for which he was acquitted, the network said.

The two-part interview, titled "O.J. Simpson: If I Did It, Here's How It Happened," will air Nov. 27 and Nov. 29, the TV network said.

Simpson has agreed to an "unrestricted" interview with book publisher Judith Regan, Fox said.

"O.J. Simpson, in his own words, tells for the first time how he would have committed the murders if he were the one responsible for the crimes," the network said in a statement. "In the two-part event, Simpson describes how he would have carried out the murders he has vehemently denied committing for over a decade."

The interview will air days before Simpson's new book, "If I Did It," goes on sale Nov. 30. The book, published by Regan, "hypothetically describes how the murders would have been committed."

In a video clip on the network's Web site, an off-screen interviewer says to Simpson, "You wrote 'I have never seen so much blood in my life.'"

"I don't think any two people could be murdered without everybody being covered in blood," Simpson responds.

Simpson, who now lives in Florida, was acquitted in a criminal trial of the 1994 killings of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend Ronald Goldman. Simpson was later found liable in 1997 in a wrongful death lawsuit filed by the Goldman family.

Messages left with Simpson and his attorney Yale Galanter were not immediately returned.

I used to be somebody.

A Web site I worked on from 2000 to 2003 has been shut down:

http://cartoonorbit.cartoonnetwork.com/

It turns out it has its own Wikipedia entry:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cartoon_Orbit

However, there's no mention of my name anywhere. THE INJUSTICE OF IT ALL! I'll have to correct that with some creative editing.

Working on Cartoon Orbit was the best job I ever had. For the first year anyway. Then it got bad. Then it got okay again. But by that time I was already planning to move to Chicago, and I'm pretty sure I pissed off some higher-paid supervisors along with a few coworkers when it got bad, therefore sabotaging any chance of a promotion if I'd stayed, especially after I wrote my Human Resources rep and asked, "Should I have gotten a raise eight months ago when my coworker left and I took on her job responsibilities? My title changed, but my salary didn't, and now my immediate supervisor is on maternity leave, so I'm technically doing three people's jobs."

HR wrote back and said I was supposed to have gotten a raise, but the paperwork never went through for whatever reason. Unlike Yosemite Sam, steam didn't shoot out of my ears when I read that e-mail, but I wasn't happy, because I knew I'd receive the back payments in one lump sum. The same thing had happened to me at CNN, another Turner-owned cable channel based in Atlanta, three years earlier.

Going over my supervisors' heads probably wasn't the smartest move, but I was in my 20s, and much more impulsive than I would be now.

At least that's what I tell myself.

something cheerier

Last week I was told by two friends that my recent blog entries have been depressing. They're supposed to be funny, but it's true that there's a fine line between comedy and tragedy. Or maybe I'm just temporarily tone-deaf.

Anyway, I haven't been rejected by any girls in the past seven days (although my job and its bleak future are starting to depress me), so to celebrate, here's a picture of my niece that should make you smile, unless you're a Republican who's currently licking his/her wounds.

Yes, yes, I know, she's the cutest thing you ever did see. You're welcome.

She turns two next month. If you click on the picture to enlarge it while using the Safari browser, you may see nothing but HTML code, so use Firefox instead.

Speaking of Firefox, why were movies like Firefox and Blue Thunder so popular in the early '80s? Did it have something to do with the Reagan administration's unprecedented military build-up? Let's not forget Airwolf on TV, as well as the short-lived Blue Thunder TV series featuring a pre-SNL Dana Carvey. I was still in single digits at the time, so you can understand the fascination I had with high-tech jets and helicopters, but what was the appeal for everyone else? Say, wasn't Roy Scheider the star of Blue Thunder? I miss that guy. He made some damn good movies in the '70s.

Well, that was quite a tangent. Getting back on track, I'd like to say to all you Republicans—and I'm including you closet Republicans who call yourselves "independent" (who do you think you're foolin'?)—that I'm sorry if you've run into obnoxious Democrats since Tuesday who want to rub your nose in it. It's been a long six years, you see.

I work in an office where everyone's a Democrat, and they won't shut up about the election results. I'm a Democrat too, and although I'm not as clued in to current events and politics as I should be, part of me wanted to send out an e-mail in response to their endless stream that said, "In case you've forgotten, we're still stuck with Bush for two more years." I even felt like congratulating Schwarzenegger for getting re-elected as governor in a blue state.

But I guess we have to celebrate our small victories whenever and wherever we can. As Evan Dando says about the ongoing Bush saga on the new self-titled Lemonheads album, "Let's just laugh / We can never do anything about anything anyway / Whatever will be, I guess we'll see / So let's just laugh." A fine line between comedy and tragedy indeed.

confidence and conversations

If I don't straighten out this confidence problem of mine in the next two years, then yeah, I could see myself joining a cult. Why not? Everybody wants to feel wanted.

On another topic, here's a non-revelation for you: the problem with public cell-phone conversations is that the people having them think the conversations are private. But I can hear every "asshole" and "motherfucker" you say, sir and madam. I have a bad feeling my soon-to-be-two-years-old niece will know all of those words by the time she hits four. (I do want her to know that "fucking" can be a verb, an adjective, and an adverb, but it may take time for her to learn all the different conjugations.)

"Let's drop the big one / There'll be no one left to blame us ..."

Randy Newman was a guest last week on The Colbert Report, and at the end of the show he sang his song "Political Science." Here are the lyrics:

No one likes us—I don't know why
We may not be perfect, but heaven knows we try
But all around even our old friends put us down
Let's drop the big one and see what happens

We give them money, but are they grateful?
No, they're spiteful and they're hateful
They don't respect us, so let's surprise them
We'll drop the big one and pulverize them

Asia's crowded and Europe's too old
Africa is far too hot
And Canada's too cold
And South America stole our name
Let's drop the big one
There'll be no one left to blame us

We'll save Australia
Don't wanna hurt no kangaroo
We'll build an all-American amusement park there
They got surfin' too

BOOM! goes London
And BOOM! Paree
More room for you and more room for me
And every city the whole world round
Will just be another American town
Oh how peaceful it will be
We'll set everybody free
You'll wear a Japanese kimono
And there'll be Italian shoes for me

They all hate us anyhow
So let's drop the big one now
Let's drop the big one now

The studio audience laughed through most of the song. It's obviously relevant in the current Bush/Iraq era, but Newman wrote it in 1969 and recorded it for his 1972 album Sail Away, during the Nixon/Vietnam era. History repeats.

As for "the big one," our government apparently believes in the policy of "No Nukes (For Anybody Else)." Is this because we've decided no one else is sane enough to keep their nukes in the missile silos where they belong? I guess we just have to stay sane ourselves then. (Make sure you get lots of sleep, Mr. President.)

I ordered an album from CD Baby for the first time on Saturday.

Below is the message that was included in the e-mail sent to me today regarding my shipment. Pretty funny.

Your CD has been gently taken from our CD Baby shelves with sterilized contamination-free gloves and placed onto a satin pillow. A team of 50 employees inspected your CD and polished it to make sure it was in the best possible condition before mailing. Our packing specialist from Japan lit a candle and a hush fell over the crowd as he put your CD into the finest gold-lined box that money can buy.

We all had a wonderful celebration afterwards and the whole party marched down the street to the post office where the entire town of Portland waved "Bon Voyage!" to your package, on its way to you, in our private CD Baby jet on this day, Monday, October 16th.

I hope you had a wonderful time shopping at CD Baby. We sure did. Your picture is on our wall as "Customer of the Year". We're all exhausted but can't wait for you to come back to CDBaby.com!!

songs that will still blow me away years from now, vol. 2

The thing I like most about music blogs is the chance to hear the next great pop song. It could be from 2006 or 1973—it doesn't matter to me. I just like discovering new songs that won't leave my head for months. The thing I like least about music blogs is how narrow-minded they can be. Now, I can't claim to like every genre of music on earth, but in regard to most blogs I've seen, there's more to hip-hop right now than Gnarls Barkley, there's more to alternative rock than Beck and Radiohead, and there's more to '70s soul than Marvin Gaye and Al Green. Expand your horizons, bloggers, and I'll expand mine. I'll also stop complaining since your blogs give away actual MP3s and mine gives away nothing but words.

The best song I've heard recently, courtesy of my favorite music blog, Jefitoblog, is Wheat's "Closer to Mercury," from their 2003 album Per Second, Per Second, Per Second ... Every Second. It's one of those transcendent pop songs that makes you want to be a better person for three minutes and 51 seconds. It shows confidence, and everybody's attracted to confidence, right?

Summer love moves fast
You get a little slower when the fall moves past
But you'll never find another love like my love
Winter slows the pace
Spring brings the summer back to your face
But you'll never find another love like my love

a sad day for music

It's not sad because J-Zee hasn't dissed me yet. No, it's sad because Tower Records is finally closing its doors.

When I was in high school in Macon, GA, back in the early '90s, it was a huge thrill to go to the Tower Records store in Atlanta next to Lenox Square Mall. Before you could order any CD you wanted through CDNow.com and then Amazon.com, it wasn't easy to find certain albums in Macon at small, mall-based stores like Turtle's, Record Bar, or Camelot Music. And as my tastes in music started to expand (or got better, you might say), it became frustrating going into Record Bar (later Traxx, once there was no actual vinyl left on the premises) or Turtle's (later Blockbuster Music and Wherehouse Music) or Camelot (um ... still Camelot as recently as 1995, which is the last time I remember buying something there—Michael Jackson's Off the Wall on cassette and the Replacements' Hootenanny on CD, to be exact) and not being able to locate Paul Simon's One-Trick Pony or albums by lesser-known bands like Big Star.

So when you went to Tower, which specialized in "deep catalog" offerings, it was like Christmas Day. They seemed to have everything, and you could imagine spending an entire day there just flipping through the racks of CDs or reading movie magazines you'd never seen before, like the UK's Empire. I remember Empire having really glossy pages and found it interesting that movie titles in that magazine were neither italicized nor surrounded by quotation marks. I currently have an issue of Empire from 1999 that I still haven't read. Good job, Robert.

Off the top of my head, here are some of the items I purchased at Tower between the golden years of 1992 and 1998, before Internet CD shopping took over:

1) Sly and the Family Stone's Heard Ya Missed Me, Well I'm Back and Small Talk (both of which were Japanese imports, which made me feel like a big man)
2) The Simpsons: Songs in the Key of Springfield
3) Randy Newman's Sail Away
4) Soul Hits of the '70s: Didn't It Blow Your Mind! Vol. 9
5) Big Star's #1 Record/Radio City and Columbia: Live at Missouri University 4/25/93
6) Dave Thomas's SCTV: Behind the Scenes book

Internet CD shopping ruined an important aspect of traveling to other cities and countries for me: going into record stores. One of the only good things about my "study abroad" trip to Europe in 1997 was my visits to various record stores in Italy and England, including Tower Records in London. Pretty shallow, I'll admit, but you should've met some of the people on that trip. In Italy I found a copy of Sly and the Family Stone's There's a Riot Goin' On that featured the original 1971 artwork, and in England I found Lou Reed's first solo album from '72, which you couldn't find in the States at the time as far as I knew, and Geoffrey Williams's The Drop. (Who's Geoffrey Williams, you ask? Let me tell you!)

Now when I travel, the thrill is gone. When I bought the Lemonheads' Hate Your Friends from CDNow.com in January or February of '98, I knew a big change was about to happen. I still like to buy CDs in stores—a Second City performer made fun of me in a show for buying Pete Yorn's Nightcrawler at Virgin Megastore because if you buy albums there you "must be a tourist," even though I'd just explained from my seat in the audience that I had bought the album after walking there FROM WORK (for the record, this happened on October 26, but I'm cheating by leaving this post dated as October 13, which is when I started it)—but there's definitely some convenience in buying albums online, especially if, like me, you don't own a car. You can also save some money aside from the shipping and handling charges, because if you don't buy an album like Nightcrawler at Virgin four weeks after it's released, the price gets jacked up to $18.99.

Here's an excerpt from an article about Tower's financial problems from back in August, I believe:

"We're praying they'll reorganize successfully," one veteran music executive said. "We're praying they'll come back to life. Do I feel they're going to do it? Yes. Tower's enough of a brand, they can come back." The executive added that the dissolution of Tower could have a dire impact on the public's perception of music retailing: "Can you imagine Tower Records with boards on the windows on Sunset Boulevard? It'd be horrifying."

Well, Halloween's right around the corner. Why not give nostalgia whores like me a real fright?

You should be happy, John Belushi ...

... because I just saw a few minutes of Blues Brothers 2000 on AMC and remembered that it took a white guy (John Goodman), a black guy (Joe Morton), and a kid (who knows or cares?) to replace you in the sequel to one of your best movies. Couldn't you have stopped this disaster from beyond the grave? Or at least poisoned the kid before filming started? The kid's presence in the movie makes me wonder if Dan Aykroyd and John Landis, the director, couldn't get script approval from Universal Pictures until they added an underage sidekick. Oh yeah, and the sequel's gotta be PG-13, not R like the first one. Gotta broaden the audience base!

Yep, good move, Universal. The Blues Brothers made $57 million in 1980. Blues Brothers 2000 made $14 million 18 years later.

I also saw parts of Summer School Monday morning on TBS. I hadn't seen it in a long time and didn't feel so good when Harmon's character responded to Courtney Thorne-Smith's jailbait tactics by saying, "When you're 61, I'll still be 75." Thorne-Smith's character is 16 in the movie. 75 - 61 = 14, and 16 + 14 = 30. Wait a second—Mark Harmon's supposed to be 30 in this movie?! That's one year younger than I am now!

I should've titled this post "Numbers aren't just numbers." Oh well, 2 bad 4 all of U. (Nice segue into a post about Prince, don't you think? We'll see. I was very excited to find an uncut version of his never-officially-released song "Wonderful Ass" recently on a music blog.)

"You know me so well, [surname]."

In addition to guys who call their friends "buddies," I also have trouble trusting guys who identify themselves and their buddies by their surname. "Churchwell, what up? This is Ritter. Call me back, brah!" I also don't trust characters in TV shows and movies who do this, especially when it's a man and a woman who want to nail each other. I've never known any wannabe couples in real life, even if they were couples for one night only, who addressed each other that way. Joel and Maggie called each other Fleischman and O'Connell on Northern Exposure, from what I remember, and Pacey called everybody by their surnames on Dawson's Creek, which got weird once he was going after Joey Potter.

Oh yeah, I should mention that I'm obsessed with Dawson's Creek. It's a terrible show in many ways, but it's great wake-up TV at 8 AM every weekday on TBS, so I can't really complain. I recently saw the end of the episode in which Joey lost her virginity to Pacey. Joshua Jackson, who plays Pacey, was going through a puffy period at the time (eating too many fried shrimp on location in Wilmington, NC, maybe?), so at the end of the episode when Joey takes off Pacey's shirt, I wonder if Josh began to regret canceling his workouts with the WB's on-set personal trainer so he could play more video games in his dressing room. Let this be a lesson, young Hollywood stars.

Here's one complaint about Dawson's Creek, although I've grown to love this facet of the show—most of the major characters start out hating any new character who's introduced, because the new characters almost always come across as blowhards before they eventually drop their guard. Sometimes Dawson, Pacey, Joey, and Jen, the main characters on the show, want to sleep with these blowhards, but sometimes they don't. Sometimes the blowhards are old people who can teach life lessons to the younger characters, sometimes they're rich teenagers who really just need a hug, and sometimes they're soulful bartenders working their way through college who don't have the patience to deal with rich teenagers with fake IDs demanding pitchers of beer in lieu of hugs.

My favorite regular character is probably "Grams," Jen's grandma, who speaks in a ludicrous "Pepperidge Farm" accent. Yeah, I realize the show's set in Massachusetts and Grams has a New England accent, but I wonder what the actress who plays Grams sounds like in real life. If she sounds nothing like her TV counterpart, then she owes me a free bag of Milanos.

My favorite season is the sixth and final season, because it's obvious at that point that none of the stars or the writers really want to be there anymore. (The final season is sometimes the most fascinating season for almost any long-running show for that very reason. Watch the fifth and final season of Moonlighting once it comes out on DVD just to see how bored Bruce Willis and Cybill Shepherd look, especially since Die Hard had already come out and made Willis a movie star.) Besides, the show started with the main characters in high school, and whenever TV shows about teenagers extend beyond the high school years, the writers run into the problem of how to keep the main characters together in a realistic way once it's time for them to head off to college.

Another great thing about shows like Dawson's Creek is that everybody hooks up with everybody else. Dawson lost Joey to Pacey, who helped her lose her virginity, but don't worry, 'cause Dawson finally nailed her in season six. Hells yeah, Dawson! Dawson got his virginity out of the way in season five with the help of Jen. Luckily, we never had to watch Jen and Pacey get it on. Wait, scratch that—they did make out a few times and discuss having a sex-with-no-strings-attached relationship in season three. Wow, these teenage soap operas sure are incestuous. Did I miss an episode in which Jen and Joey experimented together? Probably not, but just when I thought I'd seen it all, there was an episode in season four in which Jack, the token gay character, made out with Jen while they were drunk! Now I'm waiting to discover an episode in which Dawson's dad has a one-night affair with Grams.

But the bottom line is that I love Dawson's Creek for its non-nutritional value, and therefore (almost) all of my sarcastic comments about it are made out of love. You've won me over, Capeside High Class of '01! Keep up the good-natured incest.

Hot chicks on the 145! (Part II)

But there's only one hot chick in this follow-up to the June blockbuster. That's okay, though, because this hot chick had enough hotness to cover five hot chicks. For real.

Golly gee, this hot chick knew how to wear clothes. And yet she still looked like a nice girl on her way to work. And guess what? I'll never see her on the 145 again.

That's how mass-transit hot chicks operate: they only use a bus one time, just so all the single men like me can get a good look—a gander, if you prefer—and then wonder for the next half decade, "Say, whatever happened to that hot chick I saw on the 145 on Tuesday, October 3, 2006?"