The Underachiever's Progress w/ Your Pal Pete

My 15 Seconds Of Fame On TheBest Show on WFMU

2011-08-22T14:35:00.000-04:00

I called The Best Show on WFMU with Tom Scharpling the other night after being a fan of it and Tom for quite a while. As I put together my podcasts, it’s his voice I hear going, “Work, dummy!” because that’s exactly what he’s done himself. I try to entertain by any means necessary, but he does it, by writing, directing, tweeting, and talking for 3 hours (for no pay!) on the Best Show to a nation’s delight. I wish I had his work ethic, maybe if I’d been born in Jersey.

The Best Show was brought to my attention through the albums released of the phone conversations Tom has had on it with Superchunk drummer Jon Wurster; Tom playing straight man to Jon’s a variety of characters, often from the fictional Newbridge, New Jersey. When I lived in Iowa, I would listen to Scharpling and Wurster almost every day while I wrote my retail book. It was funny, but it was also clever in a way that has influenced my storytelling a lot in the time since.

I hadn’t listened to the show in a while and didn’t know that Tom had just banned all regular callers. It was like driving alone down a 6-lane road. In 1983, my calls for things like Adam Ant tickets in Ft. Lauderdale were answered with a busy signal. In 2011, the host of one of the most popular radio shows in America answered right away.

But I had the wrong number. I recognized Tom’s voice, but I never acknowledged it as he gave me the right line to call. As a listener to the show, I thought it best just to go through the proper channels as to not agitate Tom. He was already dealing with enough from the fallout from the regular caller ban.

As I waited on hold, I got to listen to the show and it was Tom at his prickly best, offering his services as a buffet bouncer so seniors don’t make off with the prime rib. Between that and the Led Zeppelin he played before, it was a good soundtrack to the muted America’s Got Talent that I had on.

What I wanted to share on-air was of a topical nature, in a way. The Gathering of the Juggalos was the weekend before and I used to work with a Jugglette that went. She was smart enough, but oy, the self-created drama! I would start with her joining a dating site called- lord help us all- Juggalove and end with a Justice of the Peace marriage in full ICP-related regalia to a dude we (her ex co-workers following her exploits through Facebook) all thought had died.

I have found it important to write notes when I tell stories like this, so my enthusiasm for telling the story doesn’t make me lose my place. This was what was written on my note page (I won’t subject you to my handwriting). I’ll present without context, because I might want to do a separate post about it and it’s kinda funny that way.

Juggalo that I know
Drama Salvadoran immigrants
Juggalove- Cupcakes, Bonghits, Orgasms, Scrubs
Stadium full of jackasses

Grease Painted White Trash Soap Opera
Jugga-stein 1)allergy 2)Powdered Stimulant
3) Baby Mama
The dude went to jail
She dated a guy that died
And came back then
She married a third guy
Aliases
Take Status Updates Literally
Quasi Sci-fi Rock Musical

How Many More Times
Pinball
Elton John

So I was ready when I heard a slight bit of static and,
“WFMU”
“Hey Tom, it’s Pete from DC.”
“Hey Pete, how are you doing?”
“Pretty well, it seems better than you, big guy. I wanted to try to cheer you up. As you know, The Gathering Of The Juggalos was this weekend and I’d like to tell you about a Juggalo that I know. If that’s OK?”
I heard nothing, “Hello?”
I was disconnected.

That’s cool. I knew the show, I realized that he could have not been interested and to not take it personally, he cuts off people all the time. To be honest, it was a little bit of a badge of honor for me, as pathetic as that may sound.

Yesterday, I listened to the podcast of the show to hear the rest of the show to hear Philly Boy Roy (Wurster)’s call about the Gathering of the EOTs (enemies of Tom), Tom threatening to rain retribution on his high school bullies …..and check out my call. As I was about halfway through my introduction… my voice cut out. Tom didn’t disconnect me, my fucking phone did!

So, I may call again. I might share my absolutely true story about the taxes I’m being forced to pay for royalties I never received for a hit song that I didn’t write.

And I’ll use a landline.

The Irony Alert System!

2011-08-11T14:02:00.003-04:00

The thing we forget when we rely on text-based communication is how important body language truly is. With no physical cues or vocal inflections to go by, the raw expression of words paired with our often-poor grasp of grammar can have an unintended impact.

Also, the reconnecting of people over Facebook has it’s own challenges. The people from earlier in your life knew you when you were happy-go-lucky (or as much as you were going to be), before you were beaten repeatedly by fate. They simply aren't used to the sardonic you and, unlike when you were in high school, they now take what you say seriously.

Sarcasm is our gift as English speakers, as most of the rest of the world takes things at face value. I once had to explain it to two Swedish women, but even with the help of another American, I couldn’t explain why something like the Onion was funny, they just saw it as being mean, yet I've rarely been prouder to be an American.

So I created the Irony Alert System, a way to gauge the sincerity of statements, based on the Terror Alert System. Attach it to any blogpost, tweet, status update, or comment. It's an attempt to create more understanding, arguments will continue unabated, but maybe we'll get pissed about the right things.

Red: Irony: using words to suggest the opposite of their literal meaning! I am full-on fucking with you and pulling your metaphoric leg. I don't actually mean a syllable of what I'm saying. This should go without saying, but I'm going to anyway.

On the other end is blue for sincerity. I realize that green is the color on the other side of Terror Alert System, but for me, blue just seemed more apt for the tone; true blue! More earnest than Bono and Jim Varney put together! What I am typing is being dictated from my VERY SOUL! Therefore, all basic rules regarding grammar, punctuation, and over-capitalization will be pushed aside.

Orange: Despite the overall sardonic tone, there’s at least a hint of genuine emotion. To use a personal example: I tweeted a month after the earthquake in Japan whether it was cool to play the song “Radiation Vibe” in front of people yet. Although I was kidding mostly, people don’t actually come to see me play, but if some one said, “Too Soon” (and it was Irony Level Blue), I would understand. It’s the alert color that says, “Hey, I may rock, but I’m not made of stone.”

Green: Discourse on the internet is like a big bottle of snark juice. You can drain it and fill it with sincerity, but you’ll still taste a bit of snark. That’s what the green irony level is all about.

And right in the middle is yellow, the color of yielding. Yielding gets a bad rap these days, but it’s what keep us out of accidents and not just in cars. The yellow alert is wisdom and maturity working together to strike a balance between sincerity and irony. I don’t expect this color to be used all that much.

I'm Back, Baby

2011-07-22T12:09:00.000-04:00

The Underachiever's Progress is becoming a podcast. Podcasting seems to be a natural fit with where my mind has been for a while. It's taken me a while to put stuff together and I hope it's as fun to listen to as it is to do.

My motto for it is, "Entertainment By Any Means Necessary", which means: let's roll and see what happens. That's not saying everything that's being recorded is part of it. I'm just opened to the opportunities having live mics in my apartment.

Music, comedy, musical comedy, stories interviews, whatever works. I've already recorded some skits and songs and a VERY loose interview with Filmmaker/uberdrummer Brendan Canty.

I will also be podcasting my Surviving Retail show and a musical called "Ragna-Pop or She's Got The Bomb" but I will also post here more to relieve my need to snark in more than 140 characters.

Stay Tuned.

Lovvers- Popagenda Fail

2009-10-23T01:12:00.004-04:00

I went to see a band tonight, Lovvers, that play great songs and put on a great show. But I will never see them again and will never buy any of their music. Why? You may ask, since those are the very traits that send my heart a-flutter? Because the asshole lead singer violated the Popagenda. I went to Comet Ping Pong to catch them; I did the last time they played, but they went on too late for me to stay too long.

I should have been able to pick them out of a line-up:

Ironic T-shirts: Check

Ironic haircuts: Check

So skinny they run the risk of falling through their ass and hanging themselves (and the girl jeans aren't helping): Check

Ironic glasses that were last seen as "spare glasses" that kids used to dread wearing: Check

They have the markings of the North American Hipster Doofus, but they came from England. They might have tried to grow beards too, but I'd be surprised if they were able to grow pubic hair. The drummer carried a canvas tote bag that said in big letters "Fuck Your Blog". I thought what a negative and pointless statement, so very English.

I heard the lead singer grouse that playing was "Pointless" because only 8 people showed up. Then when they played, he complained that one one was getting right up front. But when he said before one song that he was playing in front of "Nobody", I lost it.
"We are not nobody!" I yelled, motioning to the other seven people, WHO WERE REALLY INTO THEM.
"Well, why are you hiding?" He replied to me.
"Who the fuck is hiding?" Comet is slightly larger than a classroom, there is no place to hide.
So I get the next song dedicated to me, accompanied by an middle finger. Clever boy, aping our obscene gestures along with our easy-to-mock affectations.

I was just going to leave, but I thought, fuck it. I stood in front, not aggressively,just trying to enjoy their music. Then I had to dodge, lest I be impaled by the singer's bony hips being thrown at me. Great, asshole, I do what you say and you start shit with me?

After the last song, people wanted to hear more and the lead douche snidely said,"We learned something from Fugazi about encores," and disappeared backstage.

I had a rant boiling up inside me, but the rantee wasn't available, so I took it out on my poor bartender. "Look you limey piece of shit, I know it sucks to play in front of 8 people, but don't fucking insult the people that bothered to show up, someday it might be nobody at all! I played for YEARS those kinds of shows and had to work my ass off to get even that kind of crowd, but I played my heart out anyway because it's a lot more fun to do that than piss off people that like you!"

I have a personal manifesto called "The Popagenda" and the second tenet is: honor every audience regardless of their size or interest. They could always be doing something better than watching your lame ass.

One of my most favorite memories playing with my old band the Milk-O-Matics was one show where we didn't think we were playing in front of ANYBODY, but still rocked out to the best of our abilities. After the show we were unloading and a couple of people came out of the club with one of our posters.
We were surprised, I didn't know where they were hiding.
"Thanks for showing up!" I called out to them.
"No, thank you, THANK YOU!" they replied. We may have only seen a hundred faces, but we rocked most of them.

The Ramones changed the world with 8 people in the audience, to name merely one example. Talk about Fugazi: If they were in your position they would have still delivered the goods without moping and insulting the crowd. Then they would have eight people telling their friends for years how amazing Fugazi was in front of eight people. That's the lesson you should have learned.

Signed, a guy that could have been a loyal fan.

P.S. The blog says, "Fuck you, too."

UPDATE:11/5/09 I actually ran into Fugazi Drummer Brendan Canty- he's a customer at the store and one of the nicest people you'll meet- told him this story and asked him about my guess about how his band would have handled that situation. He sheepishly admitted that he's never played that small a show but said if they had they would have most assuredly kicked out the jams (I paraphrase).
"That's what you're there for," he said. Exactly.
"And if those people wanted to hear more, we would have played more."

Hey, you know who's still alive? Prince!

2009-07-19T00:04:00.002-04:00

“Remember when we were kids and we’d fight about who was better: Michael Jackson or Prince? Prince won.”- Chris Rock

Hearing about Michael Jackson’s death didn’t really effect me all that much and I haven’t been sure why. Not that I would have thought I would have pounded my fist into the earth and scream “Why, God, why?!?!” but I thought I would have felt SOMETHING. When I did actually think about it I felt a sense of relief for him, he just seemed to be at war with himself.

The man lived a life that is about as unique as any person could possibly live. He went from being merely famous as a child to being the de-facto king of the world for a good chunk of the Eighties. This set quite the stage for the inevitable fall and with all the records he sold he had the money to fall anyway he saw fit.

But if Prince had died, forget it. I’d be right out there sobbing with the masses, in a bootleg T-shirt celebrating the other Jehovah’s Witness music superstar. I haven’t be listening to much Michael since his death, but I’ve been listening to tons of Prince recently.

This is partially because Spin just did an awesome story about the making of Purple Rain, the movie –and soundtrack -that made Prince’s career, complete with a downloadable Purple Rain tribute album. Did you know that it was basically recorded live? I kinda did, but I’m a music nerd. It wasn’t completely live, but compared to many other albums recorded in the 80’s, it might as well have been recorded on a boom box at practice.

Did you know that Vanity- according to Purple Rain director Albert Magnoli- dropped out of the movie at the last minute to appear in as Mary Magdalene in The Last Temptation of Christ? I wonder how that worked out for her?

Did you know that Wendy and Lisa were an actual, factual Lesbian couple? Thank God I didn’t know that in 1984, it would have been all too much. The fate of the chick that was all up on Wendy in the “1999” video was not disclosed.

Ah, the “1999” video, that was my introduction to Prince. My parents had separated and we moved in with my grandparents in South Florida and got my first real dose of what I had previously only seen when I was able to slip away at gatherings where the hosts had cable: MTV.

Prince was the one person making pop music in the 80’s that I actually liked from the beginning. Except for my metal-head friends, he was the only person we could all agree on; I wasn’t into Janet Jackson and they certainly weren’t feeling The Replacements.

Oddly, I didn’t buy much of his music until I got a bit older; I just didn’t want to explain to my dad why I wanted to buy an album that came with a poster of the artist in bikini bottoms or sang songs like “Jack U Off”. Jeez, I got embarrassed when my parents saw toy commercials. Luckily, I didn’t have to; he got a lot more radio time than most of my other favorites by a light-year.

And the man is still making ridiculous amounts of music- too much, a lot of writers say- and people still flock to his concerts. In short (sorry, Prince), he is still alive and worthy of celebration and that’s just what I intend to do.

In a music nerd side note –and this isn’t in the story- there is kind of this weird connection of Prince’s exes and Motley Crue; Vanity was engaged to Nikki Sixx before she became born-again and Tommy Lee was engaged to Prince’s ex-wife Mytae Garcia. I wonder if he ever came up in conversation.

In yet another music nerd aside- Prince and Larry Graham- bass player for Sly and The Family Stone- have gone door to door together for the Jehovah’s Witnesses. Something tells me that they got a lot fewer doors slammed in their face than most missionaries.

How to have a hit song and not know it.

2009-02-23T16:15:00.002-05:00

In 2007, a song I co-wrote, “I Still Burn” was recorded as the debut single of the winner of the German version of “Pop Idol”. It was a smash hit through out Europe, charting in many countries that I have yet to set foot in.

The problem is, I didn’t write that song; someone else named Pete Wright did. When I say I did, it isn’t like claiming responsibility for the achievements of my namesakes, otherwise I could say I played bass for the band Crass and was a former British secret service agent turned author. The difference is that two very important organizations seem to think I did.

First, I’ll start with the IRS, who recently sent me a two thousand dollar tax bill. Although I haven’t seen the bill myself, they said I didn’t claim $16,000 in royalties that I had made in 2007. I made $16,000 in 2007? I sure could have used it; I spent most of that year eating tuna and ramen as I finished my book and spent a few months as a kept man in Texas. I would have loved to take my wonderful then-girlfriend to Outback a couple of times to show my appreciation.

Then there’s ASCAP, the American Society of Composers, Arrangers, and Publishers. This esteemed organization has been vigilantly protecting the rights and royalties of artists such as myself since 1917. Obviously they were much more zealous about my rights than necessary, since I was getting someone else’s money. Since I’m my own record company and get no radio airplay to speak of, I didn’t feel the need to burden ASCAP with the details of my travels over the last few years, so I didn’t give them a change of address. So to my old apartment, fat royalty checks were arriving completely unknown to me.

But between the night I found out about the royalty tax bill and the next day when I was able to investigate the matter, my mind swam with possibilities. To get that much money, the song in question would have to had some substantial sales and airplay. In this country, I’m almost completely obscure, I haven’t sold a physical CD in over 3 years and can’t get a arrested in this town. To think that there was some place on Earth where people were feeling the magic of Your Pal was a thrilling proposition. This hope was dashed quickly by a visit to the real Pete’s myspace page.

Hopefully some one at the IRS reads my blog.

Holy Crap! I'm one degree from Obama!

2009-01-19T11:09:00.001-05:00

I've been a big fan of the soon-to-be President for quite a while. Even though he has yet to be inaugurated, he's already made more of an impact on my DC than 8 years of George Bush. Just last week he ate dinner at George Will's house; in the coverage of it, door was opened by his wife Mari, a longtime customer at my toy store and super-nice lady who've I've dealt with many times. It didn't hit me at the time, but this gives me one degree of separation from our new president (or two, I've never been a hundred percent how that works).

But this didn't excite me nearly as much as Obama's recent lunch with DC mayor Adrian Fenty(who's shopped at my store, too)at Ben's Chili Bowl. I have been there many times in various states of intoxication, in fact I even found God there once. Seeing Barack Obama at the same counter that I've ordered my favorite chili cheese fries gave me a thrill that I couldn't easily describe. But a couple of days ago, I figured it out: we often try to follow in the footsteps of greatness, but this time greatness walked in mine.

2008:My Year In Suck

2008-12-30T14:06:00.002-05:00

In the excellent Clash documentary Westway To The World, a journalist surmises about Mick Jones’ childhood living with his grandmother in the projects; that he probably looked out on to the westway by where he lived and wondered what was to become of his life. Thinking about my own life, I knew that my family was aggressively middle class, so I didn’t have that feeling of growing up hopeless. I didn’t realize it at the time but I was soon to find out what it felt like to have grown up hopeless.

I didn’t have the Westway, but when I lived in Phoenix I had the South Rim, with the mountains making a hazy outline against the thick smog, visible as milk in the cereal bowl of the valley. I wondered, what the fuck now? I still don’t know.

To finish my book, I kind of took myself “off the grid” as it is popularly said. I spent a huge part of 2007 living at a house in Iowa, then in Texas living with my then-girlfriend. I finished the book and unfortunately the relationship didn’t work out, so I tried moving back to the DC area and you know, get back on “The Grid.”

The Grid keeps throwing me back off.

January: After unsuccessful attempts to get a job (although I worked the Christmas season at my old toy store job. It was only part-time, so it was only partly masochistic) and a place to live, I move in with my Mom in Phoenix. As I may have mentioned…

Pros- I get to spend more time with my family, especially my niece and nephews.
Cons- Just about every other god-damn thing about it.

I fucking hate Phoenix, and I got to spend part of the summer there. People love to say, “But it’s a dry heat!” So is being on fire. Tim Roth in the movie Bodies, Rest and Motion when he said an Arizona summer was good practice for Hell.

July: After saving enough money from working at a place that refills printer cartridges, I move back to the DC area. Not wanting to repeat previous mistakes I get a place to live with my friend Misha and a place to work full-time. It’s at my friend Dave’s guitar store, so it’s kind of the perfect job for me. Or it may have been if my hours were constantly getting cut until I only worked two days a week. I understood their need to cut costs, but my landlord would probably not be as understanding.

Fall ’08: I got another job pretty quickly, as a theater manager at the new Montgomery Cinema and Drafthouse. As with many new places, the inspections and finishing touches took a little while, so thank God for those two days a week at the Guitar Store. When it finally opened, the stress of juggling and putting out fires (metaphorically, of course), almost got the best of me there. I got laid off at the Guitar store, which I didn’t mind at the time because it magically gave me two days off a week, up from zero.

After a while I really started to enjoy my work and even got promoted to shift manager. A new wrinkle developed by chance one night when I got pushed on stage to introduce a comedy show there and did about 5 minutes worth of material that went over pretty well. My bosses said that I could do some more MCing if I wanted to. Uh, yea, I do!

Then it closed. Just a bit before Christmas, in the midst of an economic panic. What the fuck was I going to do?

2008 fucking sucked. But looking my life right now, the evidence of how lucky I really am is impossible to ignore.

Of course there’s my Mom, for letting me live with her and trying to help me out of the paralyzing depression that dominated the first half of this year.

There’s Misha, who took me in when I needed it and made moving back to the area that I feel most comfortable in possible.

There’s Steven, my boss at the toy store. His help this year has saved my ass more times –especially- this year more times than I can relate.

And last, but certainly not least, is my friend Shawn, who has supported me in every conceivable way this year.

Overall, I’m doing pretty well considering that I got laid off twice this year. I have a roof over my head and no out of control debt. I actually have a job, albeit one that has almost driven my literally insane in the past. After the year I just had, the stresses there are a lot easier to deal with. Yes, it’s sad that I am wistful for when I was merely unhappy, but that seems to be as much as anyone can hope for with what everyone else is going through. We as Americans are not used to worrying so much about our survival, but we’ve learned a valuable lesson that much of the rest of the world already knows: until you stop worrying about survival, fretting about happiness is a luxury that’s easily left behind.

2009 has to be better, right? We can still hope, so I will. Happy New Year and many happy returns to everyone. I don’t have any resolutions personally, I just want more of what this year sorely lacked: money, security and happiness.

Oh, and feminine affection. Much more of that, please!

My Failed Seduction

2008-12-09T09:02:00.001-05:00

Realizing that my readership has dropped WAY off, I can be a bit more honest in expressing myself in a blog fashion. Flat out, I've been almost stupefyingly lonely the last few months. The only thing that has helped is just trying NOT to be, like some imaginary someone standing over me slapping me in the face until I don't feel lonely anymore. This is a story from before I learned to "deal".

A couple of months ago, I had a female friend visit me for that wonderfully ambiguous activity known as “hanging out”. I wanted to use this opportunity to make an in earnest pass at her. I had always been very attracted to her, but didn’t have the kind of fantasies that I had have starring some of my other female friends. But the possibility that she just MIGHT be receptive to a pass from me changed that quickly in my deluded mind.

It was pretty obvious that this wasn’t going to work very quickly. She had spent the day with a woman that she was attracted to, took out her sexual frustration on her ex-boyfriend and was IMing a third person that she had never met. As she talked about the stew of drama in her life, she admitted that she probably enjoyed it on some level. It was right about then that I added another ingredient: I told her of my plan to seduce her.

“You were not!”she said, lightly slapping me on the shoulder. I was, actually. "Well, I'm flattered," she said, which I know from TONS of experience means, "Thanks, but no thanks." Shit, I even wrote a song about it( although I wrote it about a gay man hitting on me).

As my friend left, I realized that it was probably a good idea that it didn’t work, although my loneliness continued unabated. With the two texting conversations going on while we watched a movie, it was the next best thing to being by myself. I opened the door to my newly clean bedroom and quickly realized that the dog had peed in the corner.

It was not my night.

The Graduation Party

2008-12-05T16:19:00.001-05:00

A little over a decade ago, I was at a college graduation for a friend of mine that I had known for a while. Meeting members of her family, I had my eye drawn to one of her cousins. I thought that she might be young, but I was surprised to learn she was only 18. Talking with her and my friend, I found out that she was the same cousin that accompanied us to a Cure concert in 1987. I was shocked because she bared no resemblance to the 13 year girl that I remembered from back then. Obviously my baldness gave a her a similar problem.

“No, you didn’t go with us,” she said, matter-of-factly.
“Yes I did, “ I said, ”Disintegration tour, Cap Centre.”
“That’s the show, but it wasn’t you. There was Mike, there was Cess there was Pete.”
“Yes, Pete. I’m Pete.”
“No this Pete had,” she put her hands flat 8 inches over her scalp to signify the empire of hair I once. Short back and sides with a longish moppy mushroom up top is how I wore it when I wore a younger man’s hair. But those days were gone.

I was that Pete alright, that show was the beginning of the end of my –screwed up-relationship with my Cessi, my ex-fiancée. I had made a mistake of saying that Cindy Crawford looked awesome on the cover of the new Cosmo, and she was very upset about it. She was never shy about saying who she was attracted to who was not me, but the fact that this was the first time I had said something about someone that wasn’t her justified her hurt. At the show, she pointed to a girl sitting behind us asking me, “Isn’t she pretty?”
“Sure,” I shrugged and I swear I never looked at her again, not wanting to exacerbate our situation. After the show, she sulked the 3 hour drive home saying that I had stared at that girl all night. My protests to the contrary were negated by Mike, who said he noticed the same thing. Did I mention that she cheated on me with Mike most of the time we were together? It wasn’t my last dysfunctional relationship, alas, but it did set a pretty high standard for me.

I didn’t unload this part of the story for her, this is just for you (you’re welcome!), but this memory added to my frustration dealing with her disbelief that I wasn’t present at such a significant moment in my life.

“You know, you’re about 6 inches taller than you were then, but I still believe it’s you!”

Open Letter to Blue State America.

2008-10-29T11:50:00.002-04:00

VOTE, VOTE, FUCKING VOTE! I say that to people on both sides of the political fence, if you're registered and have a choice, make it!

Let me make this clear, I am not one of these people who says,"If you don't vote, you can't complain." People in this country never wait to have the right to complain before they do it. If you have the choice and have the ability, DO IT!

But to my fellow Obama supporters, don't listen to people when they say your vote doesn't count. The popular assumption is that if you make voting harder- be it bad weather, long lines, or stricter regulations- democratic candidates suffer. Don't let these things keep you from your duty as Americans.

Republicans have had many cases of de-facto vote suppression, hiding it under the guise of trying to stop voter fraud. The ACORN "scandal" is a great example; even if Minnie Mouse was registered to vote, she would still have to provide some sort of government issued ID to vote. ACORN has to- by law- take every application, even if they know it's fake. This is no guarantee that that'll turn into a vote, but it certainly looks bad if you just take the news at face value.

I've been able to vote since 1988 and until 2000 the most prominent Republican that urged people to vote was Ted Nugent.

But vote regardless for this reason: if there is some sort of Electoral College mishap and Obama wins the popular vote but McCain still becomes president there can be as many as possible of us that can say "I voted in the majority!" and the Electoral process- which I believe was created as a way to suppress votes- can be abolished.

Palin:Pot meet Kettle

2008-10-21T13:28:00.004-04:00

I just heard Sarah Palin take Obama to task for going after "Joe The Plumber" for asking him a question when great steps have been taken so she's not put in a similar position.

She's also afraid of Joe's taxes being raised, forgeting the fact he would pay less taxes under Obama's tax plan than McCain's. I think it's sweet that Joe's concerned about people who make more than $250,000 paying more to the government, but I assure you those people don't care about him.

McCain and Palin should keep in mind: live by Joe the plumber, die by Joe the plumber.

It's the Cognitive Disconnect, Stupid

2008-09-17T22:24:00.001-04:00

It's obvious that the GOP doesn't have THAT big a problem with celebrities running for office given their excitement over the attention Sarah Palin has received with her nomination for VP. I won't get into all of the hubbub on either side that has happened since, instead I want to talk about the culture war that accompanies every presidential election.

The war is "us" against "them"; us being good, moral people and them being the morally bankrupt folks that are hell-bent on subverting the moral foundation that this country-supposedly- was built on. The problem is, neither group really exists. What there is are people who have chosen over the past few years to be identified by their political persuasion.

Sarah Palin's daughter can CHOOSE to raise her baby, being in a position to do it a lot more comfortably than many teenage mothers. On the Palin family blog, Sarah's husband congratulates his daughter on her pregnancy with,"It was just last year that I escorted you to the purity ball.." Social conservatism seems to have a lot to do with seeming virtuous without actually being virtuous, the magic abstaining powers of the "purity ball" lasting about 6 months.

Ask any worker at an abortion clinic, many "pro-life" people have ended up as patients. Abstinence-only sex education has led to a reversal of the downward trend of teenage pregnancy and Palin's daughter is only the most famous example. As much as conservatives love to paint certain activities as being exclusive to morally bankrupt liberals, the fact is Sarah Palin smoked pot, Dick Cheney's daughter and her lesbian life partner have a baby, Cindy McCain was addicted to prescription drugs and John McCain chased anything in a skirt for a while. This is not even counting the various examples of adultery and closeted homosexuality that have pop up among the staunchest conservatives over the past few years.

There are very few things in this world that have worked themselves out because people lied about it or denied it existed. Teenagers- then, now and forever- will have sex in some form, it's better if they are informed. Homosexuality is not a choice and should not be treated as such and there is no "Homosexual Agenda", any one who has had personal experience with gay people know this. People will look for some release, be it alcohol or drugs. And we will always make decisions that we'll regret later, but it doesn't make us "them". Let's live in a world where these things are seen for the facts of life they are, we'll all feel much better.

When "Because We Can" Becomes "Oh Fudge, We did".

2008-08-12T23:11:00.003-04:00

I consider myself somewhat of a libertarian, but believe in at least some governmental regulation of business. You might think this is a contradiction, but it not to me. I believe in personal freedom (and responsibility), but corporations aren't persons. When something goes wrong there is not a person responsible, it's management pointing the finger at the stockholders or labor if things go wrong and everybody pointing the finger at management. This is the symptom of the free market, things take on a life of their own things get done "because they can" and never have the person make the decision when they should.

Now, I realize businesses exist to make money, but the point is "because we can" is gonna be bad for business. Look at some of the major problems facing the country:

1. The mortgage crisis- Banks and lenders gave away shitty financing "because they could" exploit the fact that people want big houses. Now they have a bunch of foreclosed homes that they can't sell and money that they can't recoup.

2. Oil prices- Hopefully the oil companies are socking away all the windfall profits. Big oil has fought it at every corner, yet have done more for alternative energy with $4 a gallon gas. They can protest "supply and demand" all they want but everybody knows what the phrase "record profits" mean, regardless of how you spin it.

Bernie and Issac

2008-08-10T18:09:00.003-04:00

What a screwed up weekend! Russia is kicking the shit out of Georgia and doesn't seem to want to stop. John Edwards is the latest reminder that hypocrisy and questionable behavior knows no political party.

Wow, Bernie Mac. As sad as his death is, I feel disingenuous calling myself a fan; more accurately I was an admirer of his. He did a great job in movies both good and bad, but he was first and foremost a stand-up comedian. He was a rare performer whose obvious love for his audience was unmatched; approaching every show like a prize fight and knocking them out every time (except at a recent Obama rally).

The image that I think of when I think of him was from the Kings Of Comedy movie. He stood behind the scrim as he was being introduced by Steve Harvey with a stone faced solemnness. As the intro built up, he started moving his hips back in forth; stoking up the crowd, who could only see his shadow. And when he is finally set loose he gives them everything he's got. Having a good show is honestly better than sex, and that segment is the best representation of that I've ever seen (and I wish I had a clip of it.

I've got a feeling that's the image he would want us to remember, too.

Issac Hayes, that's another story. Most people might remember him for his acting, maybe even only as "Chef" on South Park, and that would be enough for one life. I remember him from Rockford Files and as "The Duke Of New York" in Escape from New York; not to mention I'm Gonna Get You Sucka (a nod to his title role in Truck Turner)

But then there's his music career, with his Oscar winning "Theme from Shaft" being only one example. Issac (with David Porter) wrote some of the best soul songs ever:"Soul Man", "I Thank You", and "Wrap It Up"

Legend has that while Porter was on the john in the middle of a fruitful writing session, Issac called for him to check out this riff he had just come up with and Porter said, "Hold on, I'm coming!", which turned into one of their hugest hits.

Issac Hayes was a bad mother........fucker (I decided against shutting my mouth).

How Not To Run A Political Campaign

2008-08-04T14:28:00.000-04:00

If you look back on news reports surrounding previous elections, undeniable patterns. For me, I noticed it when I watched a Simpsons episode about the Dole/Clinton election of '96 during the Kerry/Bush election of 4 years ago. The culture war, the "flip-flops" were all there. Every year they trot out how people you don't know are evil and looking to destroy your way of life, when they've done more than their share of damage to the status quo. It's a surprisingly effective strategy; even though a lot of the legislation they are responsible for directly hurts their way of life and/or benefits the kind of "elitists" they are suppose to hate, Republicans can always count on a decent share of the blue-collar vote. Would Bill Clinton have been re-elected if he had left the country in the shape it was in after Reagan's or Bush II's first terms?

Which brings me to John McCain. I like him, but I don't want him to be president. And the way his campaign is being run it seem like it seems like he doesn't want to be either.

1. Don't talk shit about your opponent's unused passport and then complain about it when he calls you on it.
What a freakin'backfire! We got to see how massively popular Obama is in Europe and at ease he is on a world stage. Then, McCain's campaign calls it a "premature political victory lap." Obama tried to down play this by bringing Republican senator Chuck Hagel and heeding the Pentagon's advice not to visit a military base's hospital, then McCain hammers him for that. He's hoping that the emotion of his objection will out-last the facts of the matter. Senator Hagel himself has accused McCain of "going over the line".

2. Don't throw glass "flip-flops".
You think after 8 years of an administration that has only flip-floped on the matter of their own legal responsibility, you think that the term would have lost some of it's potency. McCain better hope so, he's had quite a few himself, the most noticeable and recent one was chiding Obama for not supporting off-shore drilling, when he didn't support it himself until recently. McCain sees his run for the presidency of an extension of his patriotism, while Barack Obama is more fueled by his ambition, when in his own autobiography he admitted that ambition made him run for president. And who can forget his flip-flop on torture, where he famously has first hand knowledge about how in-effective it is.
Let us allow our politicians the right to change their opinions based on the facts and admit when they are wrong, so that we can put this to bed.

Politics is the only game where the players never admit that they're playing it.

3. Don't play the race card unless everyone knows what game's being played.

McCain's accusation of Obama playing the "race card" becomes itself a winning hand in the game of "He Who Doth Protest Too Much", becoming hair-trigger defensive. He said the right (not McCain himself) want to play on the fact that he "doesn't look like all those other presidents on the dollar bills". This is denying that there weren't people on the right who saw The New Yorker's recent controversial cover of Barack and Michelle Obama not as satire, but as a rare instance of the magazine showing the truth. This reminds me of people who called Obama racist after his comment about "bitter" people clinging to guns and religion when times are bad; besides the fact that it wasn't that far off, this phenomena is hardly exclusive to white people. You may see racism if you're looking for it, but don't be surprised if not everyone agrees with you.

4. Then there's those commercials.
I won't go into the "Obama is the cause of high gas prices" one, but I will mention the "Britney, Paris and Barack" one:

Hmmmm, so being popular is bad? It seems to have helped Ronald Reagan and George W Bush-as I mentioned earlier. You know who else being popular and well-liked helps? Everybody, so thanks for reminding us how popular your opponent is.

There there's this web-only one. It is the worst political commercial I have ever seen, not because of mud-slinging, but just because it is very close to being a pro-Obama ad:

Take the last sentence,"Is he ready to lead?", switch the first two words and change the question mark to a period and you have an Obama ad. Not a good ad, mind you, who wants to vote against "The One"?
I leave you with a live video of my new favorite song, "Cunts Are Still Running The World." This is NSFW but his introduction is priceless.

Thoughts, I Think Part 2

2008-08-01T02:00:00.001-04:00

I read somewhere recently where more cars are coming with gauges the fuel efficiency. I foresee a new passive aggressive style of car racing, where people compete for MAXIMUM EFFICIENCY!

I can imagine that Horatio Sanz is praying that Bill Richardson gets to be Obama's running mate so he can get his job at Saturday Night Live back playing him.

Then there's Timothy Bottoms, an actor coming off of eight years of sure employment. Here's why:

That's My Bush! Did you know he played the surfing soldier in Apocalypse Now?

I just heard about a guy getting beheaded on a Greyhound bus by his seatmate, which makes me want to take a bus. I know how human nature works and even though the guy is in custody and how unlikely it is that something like this might happen again, I imagine that a lot of people aren't going to be taking the bus and they'll probably be SO HAPPY to see me.
But I probably won't be taking a nap.

O.K., Now I'm Writing A Rock Musical.

2008-07-28T13:42:00.002-04:00

I posted my plans on recording a concept album a little while ago. My friend Chris and I were trading e-mails about Joss Weaton's Musical, Dr. Horrible (which is no longer available free, I'm afraid), and he suggested that I try to write a musical. Like my Dad's suggestion that I move to Iowa to finish writing my book, I scoffed at first; but after a while it made a lot of sense, at least to me.

The best part about this is that the songs for it are practically already written, I was already writing a concept album, after all. It takes place 10 years in the future, at the record release show for a failed singer-songwriter. It's kinda like Hedwig and The Angry Inch, minus the gender confusion and plus mass murder. I'm hoping it'll be the most feel-good apocalypse musical ever.

I don't want to talk too much about it now, It's still in the beginning stages. The working titles:
Without You I'm Something(which was the title when it was a concept album)
She's Got The Bomb (which is the title of the song that was the seed of this idea)
A Man, A Song and A Big Fusion Bomb (Which sounded cooler in my head than it does written down)

Dustin "Screech" Diamond, American Douchebag

2008-07-25T10:52:00.002-04:00

I think there are three things that have had a far reaching (and negative) effect on society:
1. People not taking responsibility for their actions.

2. The growing wave of entitlement.

3. Douchebags being WAY to proud about being douches. It doesn't mean they won't get pissed off if some one calls them that, it's like OJ; he might get pissed if you call him a murderer, but the evidence speaks for himself. If you do an image search of "Illusionist" Criss Angel or "Seduction Expert" Mystery, no picture has less than 6 pieces of douchebag flair. Yes, I count hairless abs as one, the oil that covers the abs for the pictures counts as another.
It's all a bit of overkill, just calling themselves, "Illusionist" and "Seduction Expert" gives them a lifetime douche pass.

Which brings me to Dustin Diamond, who doesn't to be taking his inevitable slide into obscurity very well and is insisting on leaving the unmistakable scent of vinegar behind him. You'd think that if the defining thing about you was that you were SCREECH ON SAVED BY THE BELL would prevent you from walking through like with a false sense of entitlement that makes Kevin Federline look like a monk by comparison, but you'd be wrong. His latest move is a tell-all about his Screech days. It's kind of like the new X-Files movie of celebrity tell-alls: regardless of what's in it, it's way too late for anyone to care.

Sometimes you feel bad when an actor gets typecast, many don't realize that typecasting was going to be the only kind of fame they would ever achieve; Mr. Diamond is one of those people. Instead of being happy of the crumbs he got off of pop culture's table, he keeps coming back like herpes, and he never gets less itchy.
First, he beats up Ron "Horshack" Palillo in celebrity boxing:

He fights a guy decades older and noticeably smaller, but still acts cocky.

Then there's Celebrity Fit Club; there are many douchebag highlights, but this is douchy and dangerous (about 1:30 in):

But the cherry on the top of the shit sundae is his sex tape. Thankfully, no one is interested in seeing it, so let me summarize(from what I heard). He not only gets two women to sleep with him AND preserve the magic moments in video, he also performs one of the most heinous sexual acts this side of the Donkey Punch, the "Dirty Sanchez". Folks, that just bad three-way etiquette. I have never seen the whole sex tape- and hopefully never will- but I did see an excerpt (Not strictly NSFW, really it's just in poor taste. Also I apologize for the link, I couldn't embed it):
Screech bragging

If I was a lawyer for the court of Pop Culture, the bragging at the end of the excerpt would rest my case. He obviously has some sort of hook-up contest with his friends and he feels that there being shit smearing involved earns him some extra credit.

Douchebag.

The story I linked to thought that coming out with a book was going out of the normal order of the desperate celebrity move, but I would disagree. When you've sold yourself out all you have to sell are your friends.

4 dollar gas? What 4 dollar gas?

2008-07-21T04:00:00.001-04:00

I've been without a car so long, I'd literally have to think hard about how long it's been. I got rid of it basically to get rid of the hassle of the heavy metal burden and the bureaucracy and expense that goes with it; but of course not having one brings brand new hassles. Luckily, I live in a city with an excellent public transportation system(for an American city, that is).

With my new job in-relatively- far-flung Olney, Maryland, the bear of a commute has me actually scanning for cars in the classifieds to buy. It's an inconvenient time to do so, of course, with gas prices as they are. There is nothing that foments people to action quite like an upsetting of the status quo and this- along with the mortgage crisis- is doing this in a way that Americans haven't seen since the late Seventies. But we need to step back from our political ideologies and look at the facts.

We have to do something about fossil fuels, flat out. Some people say we have 50 years of gas, some 500, regardless it's a finite resource, now is a good a time as any to figure out a way to deal with it. With China and India working hard to beat us at our game, consumption wise, we don't have much time.

To the people on the Right- Drilling for more oil is not going to bring oil prices down. Besides the actual time to build facilities and actually pump it out of the ground (some estimates say it may be as long as 10 years), the actual eventual cost savings will only probably be a couple of cents a gallon. People on both sides don't realize how much oil is already being pumped out of the ground already and the vast amounts we already use. Which brings me to..
The people on the left- Bio-fuels are not the answer, especially Ethanol. Besides using more resources to produce than it creates, people like to eat corn. Even if this wasn't the case, if they used every kernel of corn for Ethanol, it would only account about 20 percent of our fuel consumption. We use a fuck-load of oil, folks.

So then what? We have a LOT of natural gas in this country, but we should still use this opportunity to develop more efficient forms of power. The problem is, right now it's nuclear. In fact, it's just about about perfect, if we could just figure out where to put the waste...

Muppets Kicking Ass!

2008-07-07T14:02:00.002-04:00

I don't know if you saw Cookie Monster on the Colbert Report, here's the clip(and yes I realize that He isn't a muppet, but he was created by Jim Henson and voiced by Frank Oz)

Milton Berle having his ass handed to him by Statler and Waldorf

Miss Piggy and Raquel Welch, what else needs to be said?

And a double shot of my favorite Muppet, Animal. I wish he could be my drummer, really.
Here's his drum duel with Buddy Rich:

Does violence belong in music, or is it just getting disciplined by Rita Moreno?

This is what I'll offer in place of a (late) July 4th post.

Phoenix:It's F*#kin' Hot Part 2

2008-07-03T01:26:00.002-04:00

Part One Here

I wish I was making this up, but Phoenix was recently named "America's Sweatiest City". The average Phoenix resident pumped out 26.4 ounces of sweat per hour, PER HOUR! I spend as little time in the heat as possible, which means that someone else is taking care of most of my share, at least 20 more ounces.

The thing that you notice about the "Dry Heat" is how the air steals all the moisture it can get. Fall asleep with your mouth open and you'll wake up with the dry mouth of a all-night bender. My dad used to say that the flicked dry booger was the state bird of Arizona.

You can only escape the hot, hot, heat of everything indoors with powerful conditioned air. The dry heat allows for the occasion use of a evaporative air cooler, it's just a fan blowing through a damp sponge, but it works really well as long as humidity stays in the single digits. After it rains, forget it. Not even shade can give you much relief. I was at a Sonic and I touched a black metal chair that had been in the shade for a while and it was almost too hot to touch.

Phoenix, it's good practice for Hell.

The Immigrant Labor Arts Project

2008-06-26T00:38:00.002-04:00

My friend Johanna has started The Immigrant Labor Arts Project to pay day laborers their regular rate to paint pictures. The art they've created is worth seeing and if you feel so inclined, you can donate to keep the project going.

The Immigrant Labor Arts Project

School Of Rock 2: The Year After

2008-06-24T21:07:00.000-04:00

I just heard that they might do a sequel to School Of Rock. You see, I still like Jack Black and I loved that movie. Honestly, just the fact that he's half of Tenacious D would give him cred with me that not even The Pick Of Destiny could erase. To read screenwriter Mike White's interview that I linked to earlier, it might be a little more bitter than sweet.

I think I loved School of Rock so much because it came from the same energy that I approached music. The essential quote from the movie when Dewey tells the kids how important their rock band project is:"And it may sound easy... but nothing could be harder. It will test your head... and your mind... and your brain, too." That accounts for much of the joy I've gotten out of music, the shear unexplainable "YEAH!" that you get from playing music. I haven't played in a very long time and I miss that a lot, although my enthusiasm has been a double edged sword. It's created some thrilling rock moments and some sonic missteps but the pluses (in my non-objective opinion) outweighed negatives, but not many people joined us at our shows. This would not stop us from giving it our all; in fact we rocked out so hard the night before in front of four people, The Milk-O-Matics Damon's guitar didn't work at our huge outdoor gig we played the next day. Dude, that's what happens when you test your head, mind and brain.
If I was going to write a script for this movie, I would paint my version of a realistic portrait of what would happen in the wake of the events from the first movie. They'd get some attention for their age, more than that shitty band that won the contest at the end (that's what I loved about the bad contest, in the movie as in real life, the best band doesn't win any battle of the bands). However, after the first couple of things that don't go their way and they hear "no" a few times, the band will lose a few under committed members, if not break up outright. A couple members may form their more "serious" musical project soon after, I'm guessing the bass player and the guitar player (dude wrote Mooney Suzuki quality songs in Junior High!). They have some ups and downs but realize that if they make the music they like, they'll have at least one fan, themselves.

It's not as sad as it sounds.

George Carlin, Man!

2008-06-23T01:59:00.002-04:00

I am so pissed off. Fuck that motherfucking cocksucker. Who does that cunt think he is dying when we still need him? Shit.

Oh, I almost forgot, tits.

Phoenix:It's F*#kin' Hot

2008-06-18T02:05:00.002-04:00

No, seriously, really hot. For anyone not familiar with the unique heat a desert summer hits you with, it's difficult to relate. The people I've talked to say, "But isn't it a dry heat?" Yes, when they say, "With the heat index, it feels like 100 degrees!", here it actually IS 100 degrees. Or it would be if it got cooler around here, today it was 113; as of 10:30 tonight it was a brisk 101 degrees.

In a normal summer, temporary relief can be had by a fleeting breeze. Here no such luck, breezes just bring another wave of heat, even at night; like God opened a gigantic oven door.

Sun here is like the sand at the beach, despite your best efforts to prevent it, it gets in where you least expect it. I constantly find myself with a low level burn on my head on days where I wear a hat and have only spent a half hour out of the shade. The homeless people- who are plentiful and aggressive- looked like they've been straight-up braised from all their time outdoors.

Did I mention that I want to move back to D.C.? Yes, I do. I've got a job, but I need a place to live and I would prefer to live with people I know. E-mail me at yourpalpete@gmail.com.

People Behind the Music Forgot

2008-06-16T04:00:00.001-04:00

The VH1 series Behind The Music was like video crack for a music geek such as I. As I've mentioned before, it's worse in one way, you can't tape crack to smoke it later.

However, my geekiness gives me the ability to call bullshit on some aspects of their version of the rise and fall of some of music's biggest artists.

1. Cliff Martinez and Jack Sherman- The big theme of The Red Hot Chili Peppers episode was the musical brotherhood between the original members before the death of guitarist Hillel Slovak. They fail to mention that this line up was only together for their third album, The Uplift Mofo Party Plan. Jack Irons and Slovak left the Chili Peppers when their more "serious" band What Is This? got a record contract with MCA. How did they do? I bought their album from the dollar store where I used to work. They replaced them with Martinez and Sherman for their first album and Slovak returned for their second.

2. Michel'le- The first honest-to-God pop hit that Dr. Dre was responsible for was for when he rapped on and produced her top 10 single "No More Lies". She also bore him (and later, Suge Knight) a child. Don't you think she deserved at least a mention on his episode?

3. Ed King- On the Lynyrd Skynyrd episode, a lot more is made of King's replacement, Steve Gaines, who died in the tragic plane crash that also took the life of lead singer Ronnie Van Zant after being in the band a year. King played and co-wrote on their first three albums, yet he gets no mention at all. Another fun fact, he also played bass in The Strawberry Alarm Clock ("Incense and Peppermints").

4. Sly Stone- The fact that there is no Sly Stone Behind The Music is- in my opinion- is nothing short of a travesty. Something tells me that the fact that Sly is inconveniently still alive and probably not willing to participate in any way may be the reason. His story has all the elements of the classic BTM episode: hard work leads to stratospheric fame leads to the inevitable drug-fueled decline, not to mention truly groundbreaking music. When people wonder what music someone like Jimi Hendrix or Janis Joplin might have made, they might look at Sly- who did live- and realize they might not be making music at all.

VH1, make it so.

Thanks for indulging me.

Why Couldn't It Have Been Bill O'Reilly?

2008-06-14T00:22:00.002-04:00

The sad and sudden death of Tim Russert is sad on a couple of different levels; there's always the tragedy of such a seemingly decent guy dying an untimely death then there's the symbolic loss for political journalism. There where three men that you could count on asking the hard and relevant questions to those in power if given the opportunity: John Stewart, Bill Maher, and Tim Russert and Russert was the only reporter of the three.

Meet The Press is the absolute gold standard of political interviewing, if you look bad on Bill O'Reilly or Stephen Colbert you've fallen victim to their gimmicks to generate humor both unintentional and intentional, If you look bad on Meet The Press, it was your own fault. Tim never missed an opportunity to show his guests their own hypocrisies and always did it with class.

I almost didn't write this post, but once I did, I knew what the title would be. Bill O'Reilly is in many ways the anti-Russert, he constantly slays the truth for his ego's sake, hoping we'll believe it if he shouts loudly enough. He's afflicted with the disease that many of us- of every political stripe- have; it's true because we say it is, facts be damned. He calls his show "The No-Spin Zone" when you can practically dry your clothes in his actual, factual spin.

Getting a journalist to report the truth is like getting a politician to tell the truth; you'd think it's their job, but they'll go out of their way to prove you wrong. Meet The Press was the real no-spin zone; Tim Russert didn't have to say it, he just did it. Now there's one less reporter doing his job by telling politicians they're not doing their's.

Five Reasons Internet Lists Suck

2008-06-05T02:03:00.003-04:00

1. They're instant arguments, this is probably the main reason why they're so popular. The varieties of the "Most awesome/lame things of all time" are absolute in format and often ranked arbitrarily by a self proclaimed expert (or experts). It doesn't help that people that read them treat these lists like they are last discussion on the subject. "How could you have a list of 'Awesome Welsh People' and not include Bonnie Tyler?" Somehow, Bonnie Tyler remains Welsh and Awesome regardless of her placement on a list saying so.

2. They assume that someone gives a shit about your opinion, which is essentially what most of these lists are, opinions. This is indicative of the larger societal problem of the overall shortage of humility and treating our opinions like facts. There is no shortage of shouting these days, let's give listening a try!

3. They generate bad vibes by the bushel. From the subjects of the list to the "flaming" from the commenters, the anonymity of the internet allows us to indulge that little voice inside us that discretion prevents us from saying out loud. Discretion, now that's something we can use more of these days!

4. I can't get enough of them. As much as I've bitched about them already, I read them all the f'n time. I can't believe that they left Red Sonja of a list of "Breast" Marvel Characters and Married With Children off a list of TV Shows That Wore Out Their Welcome.

5. I'm not in any of them.

At Long Last: Barack!

2008-06-04T10:03:00.002-04:00

When I endorsed Barack Obama a year and a half ago, I didn't think he had a chance, I just honestly respected the man and thought he would make a great president. After all of the (inevitable) mud-slinging, I still do. In the past week or so, I've seen him accused of suppressing votes, being a terrorist Muslim sleeper agent, a murderer and a closeted homosexual, and that's just by Clinton supporters(mind you, not by any credible member of the Clinton team).

He's not perfect, far from it and he's-gasp- had to play politics occasionally. The best metaphor I can think of is when I explain my preference for Apple Computers. I end up taking a lot of shit when some new Apple thing doesn't work right. I say,"I never said they where perfect, just that they're better." The "Barack is our savior" meme is not one that I or any other Obama supporter would subscribe to, it's just another attempt for the press to do our thinking for us.

Obama is just better.

(I apologize for not attributing and linking to the people I referred to, I've been sick. If you google "obama gay sex" or something, I'm sure it'll pop up.)

Brushes With Greatness:Jon Spencer and Cristina Martinez

2008-05-30T02:36:00.002-04:00

I saw all kinds of political-type celebrities and some music people that are famous to me. I've been able to keep my cool and not get too geeky, but that went out the window when I saw Jon Spencer and Cristina Martinez. If you don't know who they are, this is them in their band together, Boss Hog.

Also, Jon Spencer is in the awesome Blues Explosion(formerly called The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion).

As a couple, they were kinda like a Nineties indie rock Brangelina. All of the guys in my old band (The Milk-O-Matics and I listened to both bands A LOT; going far enough that Damon- our guitarist- and I would scream "Blues Explosion!" at our own shows.

In a Blues Explosion song called "Flavor", Jon proclaims "The Blues is Number One in Kansas City, New York City, Albuquerque" and so on. I co-oped that into one of our songs that "The Milk Is Number One" in various slight burgs throughout Wicomico County," In Fruitland, Willards, Pittsville." Damon said that me saying this might make us seem arrogant, and I asked him if he felt the same way when Jon Spencer said it.
"No," he said, flatly.

However, when they were at the toy store she was just some dishy chick who looked like she was from New York-which she is- and Jon was hiding behind a ENORMOUS beard that he latter turned into some killer muttonchops. I couldn't find a picture of them, sorry.

They had been in the store for about 40 minutes and were almost out the door when I did something I've never done before: A full body geeky fanboy, "OMIGAWD!" I collected myself quickly and said I was a huge fan. Cristina introduced herself, but I knew exactly who she was, I had seen Boss Hog twice-awesome- and I actually stood next to her at a Blues Explosion show in Baltimore. Jon was a bit shy until I told him that the Baltimore show I just mentioned was the best one I had ever seen and he seemed very touched.

They would come in every once in a while, usually visiting family in the area and always go out of their way to say "Hi" and were always super nice. If my 27 year old self knew that this would have happened, I would have plotzed. Cristina especially has an amazing presence, she once turned my head when I was looking in the opposite direction.

They were saying good-bye once when I told Jon that I was going to the upcoming Blues Explosion show and he said that he would put me and a friend on the guest list. I thought that was pretty cool.

Subtlety trying to impress my friend, Hilary, I sidled up to the ticket window, "Yes, I'm on the guest list." I wasn't a dick about it,I was just enjoying my fleeting moment on the catbird seat.
The ticket person said,"Who put you on the list?"
By the authority granted me by the truth, I said, "Jon Spencer."
A minute later, we had our tickets.
We were still in the 9:30 Club lobby when Jon came in the front door, shaking off the cold. When he saw me, he looked shocked.
"I forgot to put you on the guest list."
He had forgotten to put me on the list, but I got in anyway. I am a really bad bullshitter, but when I don't know I'm bullshitting, I'm fucking brilliant!

Your Pal's Movie Cliches:Action Edition

2008-05-27T02:42:00.000-04:00

I posted a set of Rom-Com cliches a little while ago that I thought hadn't quite made Roger Ebert's Movie Glossary and I have a few dealing with action movie- a cliche laden genre if there ever was one. Quite a few made the Ebert list, but some didn't (at least I couldn't find them). I'd been wanting to post this for a while, but after seeing the new Indiana Jones movie- or more accurately, how I've seen it written up. People talk about it's implausible situations or obvious CGI like it's the first movie to ever have those things. Indy's not the only thing that's aged 19 years, action movies themselves have been building up bigger, louder and independent of logic ever since those quainter days and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is merely the latest example. For the record, it was much closer to the tone and quality of the earlier Indiana Jones movies that the Star Wars prequels were to the original trilogy.

The Physical and Mental villains- It happened in a lot of 80's action movies, I'll use Die Hard as an example: Alan Rickman was the mental villain, Hans. The mastermind and leader of whatever nefarious operation that has the plot set in motion. Any sort of physical confrontation, however, would be over quickly. This is where the physical enemy comes in, Alexander Godunov in this example. This gives opportunity for a spectacular fight scene where either the bad guy dies spectacularly or is presumed dead only to pop up to get shot dead when every one least expects it. Or both.

The Magic Gear: During a race or chase, when everybody seems to be going as fast as they possibly can, something motivates the hero to shift to a heretofore unused magic gear for them to catch up.

The "at first" superfluous skill: Any skill that any character shows that seems pointless at first will come in conveniently handy at some point.

The "Why?" script: Another big 80s thing: The hero has been given the challenge or task that they will spend the rest of the movie trying to accomplish, they invaribly ask,"Why me?" and the answer is almost always, "Because you're the best."

The killing of the henchman script: Ebert's glossary mentions how bad guys often assert their badness by offing an incompetent henchman, but it doesn't mention that the script for these scenes tends to be exactly the same.
Doomed Lackey: "I'm sorry boss, it'll never happen again."
E-vil Guy: "I know"
BANG!

The most basic action movie cliche can be described in 4 words: Bad Guy, Bad Aim.

Thoughts, I Think

2008-05-22T07:30:00.000-04:00

If you watch Last Comic Standing tonight, you might see footage of my failed attempt to get on the show. DO NOT watch it for that alone (not that you would) because I might not be on it, but they definitely got footage of me. oh, and I'm 38 today. At my brother's wedding a couple of months ago, I said I was 37 and my dad said, "But he's going to be 38 real soon!" Like I don't have a whole year to be 38!

Why do they call them ski masks? Nobody thinks you're going skiing when you wear one, they think you're going to rob them. Yes, I believe in starting off strong! No that was not one of my Last Comic Standing jokes, I did about 40 seconds of this song:

I think Angelina Jolie is easily one of the most beautiful women on the planet. You may not agree with me but at least you may agree with that she is beautiful enough that if they don't mention it in her movies it's an instant plot hole. Are we to believe that all her movies take place in a universe where she's just normally attractive? Where she doesn't leave behind a wake of snapped necks and people saying "Who. Is. That?"

This is an ad that's been running a lot around Phoenix for Interactive Male

I just don't think is gay enough, honestly. Some guy's going to think, "Hey, I could use more dude friends!" Next thing they know, they're in a fiction bro-mance.

I'm Sorry, But You're Being F*#king Stupid

2008-05-16T01:44:00.000-04:00

One of the biggest problems I have with today's society is how people treat their opinions like facts, in fact it's a basic rule of humanity in my oft-plugged book. That doesn't mean that I don't do it myself, it just means I'm hard on myself when I do it.

I'm a pretty "live and let live" kind of guy. I think of myself as left-leaning politically, but I recognize the importance of the balance that the right wing provides. I'm an atheist but I'm not mad about it, I recognize the need for the spiritual fulfillment that religion provides. But then there's just stupidity, things that flat out people of reasonable intelligence shouldn't honestly believe. But that's just my opinion, of course.

If you think that Barack Obama is a Islamic "Manchurian Candidate" you're just being fucking stupid. Didn't you hear the whole crazy CHRISTIAN preacher thing that the pundits wouldn't shut up about?

It's O.K. to not like same-sex marriage because you don't like the idea of gay people getting married. I don't agree, mind you, but you're entitled to your opinion. But if you think that it homosexual unions denigrates hetero ones, you're being fucking stupid. Do I really have to get into the many way we straight people do that already? Are they afraid that they might make capricious decisions and get married to someone and it doesn't last? How incredibly precedented.

If you believe that Hurricane Katrina was New Orleans punishment for it's sinful way, then you're REALLY being fucking stupid. If I believed in God, I'd think He'd done a better job. The first places to open after the storm were the same sin palaces that were suppose to be it's undoing. If this was God's modus operandi, why isn't Europe facing His wrath like Louisiana did? Why is Vegas- Sin City after all- still standing? It's a city build out of Legos in the middle of the desert, it wouldn't take much.

A Tale of Two Cities: Part 2, L.A.

2008-05-15T01:26:00.003-04:00

I made my first trip to Los Angeles the weekend before last, my first real trip anyway. About 4 years ago I drove to Long Beach then to Malibu, driving through L.A. both ways. I saw the Queen Mary, the Hollywood Sign and THE mall that spawned the "Valley Girl", but nothing else. Both L.A. and N.Y.C. are centers of the very popular culture that pollutes my mind so I can't remember the correct way to perform CPR. But the sheer pervasiveness of the entertainment business in Los Angeles makes it impossible to avoid.

On the way back from the airport, my friend Anna and I got breakfast at a Silverlake diner. Driving back to her house, we passed by the place where the cover photo from Elliott Smith's Figure 8 was shot, a studio owned by the Black Eyed Peas, the place where the finale of Grease was filmed, the street from the end of No Country For Old Men
and Eric Stoltz's house from Pulp Fiction. Mind you, we didn't make some special trip to see these things, this was just the way home.

I went to Grauman's Chinese and The Kodak Theatre right next to it were the Academy Awards are held and right next to THAT was a mall, all in the same block. It was a nice outdoor one with a huge courtyard, but it's still a mall. I'm sure the employees of the Virgin Megastore get Oscar night off.

Winding through the courtyard was a ribbon of Hollywood related anecdotes attributed to various anonymous sources, and I was shocked how honest some of them were. Some, flat out, did not have the happiest of endings and some were like: "I tried to be a director, but more people complimented the food I made for my release parties than my directing, so I became a caterer." The ribbon led to, I shit you not, a monument of a casting couch.

The sign that the guy is standing in the way of says, "The Road to Hollywood- how some of us got here."

I walked about 6 blocks or so and in that space I saw three separate crews filming and somebody that sounded A LOT like Alicia Keys practicing at S.I.R. studios (She actually played in L.A. the next day, so...)

Anna I went to see Jeanane Garofalo at the World Famous Improv, but not a lot of other people showed up. We had a great time and I actually ruined one of her jokes; she asked "Who was the Rock Of Love guy?"
"Bret Michaels," everyone said.
"Who's the Attorney General?"
I said, "Mukasey."
"I wasn't ready for that, usually I hear crickets when I say that."
The only other famous person I saw was the guitarist for The Plimsouls, if you saw the movie Valley Girl as much as I have that's kind of a big deal.
Oh, and I finally got to sing Pulp's "This Is Hardcore" karaoke. I was awesome.

Despite the attempts to change the aspects of their cities that are less than positive to potential tourists, all the commercialization and gentrification in LA and NYC are a lot like those "One Day Install" bathtubs where they're just putting a new facade over the mildew of it's true nature. That might seem like a harsh metaphor but I mean it as life that exists regardless of any attempt to cover it up and that's what I love about both cities.

I almost forgot,if you've never been frightened by Scientology before, you will be after you visit Los Angeles.

A Tale of 2 (American) Cities, Part 1: NYC

2008-05-14T01:15:00.000-04:00

I apologize for not writing, flat out, I've been too creatively stunted from depression to post. I actually update my Surviving Retail blog pretty regularly, it's easy to do when I've already written the whole book.

After my weekend trip to Los Angeles, I realized that only good things can happen if I do productive things that I love as much as I can. Writing is at pretty much tops on that list. So I'm going to talk about my experiences in the two iconic American cities: New York City and Los Angeles. Today, New York; Tomorrow, Los Angeles.

I first went to NYC about 10 years ago, basically for just a few hours. The glow as I approached Times Squares started a few blocks away and steadily grew into a nearly blinding brilliance. At 10:30 at night. A gossamer banner of Uma Thurman hung down the entire length of a nine story building advertising her upcoming blockbuster, um, The Avengers. After the deafening thud it would make at the box office it would be gone, a 90 foot Uma Peel merely a happy memory.

The second time I visited was just a couple years ago when I went with a team of friends to try out for The World Series Of Pop Culture. I got a better taste of the city this time, getting to travel in it's famed subway and drink at a honest-to-god Lower East Side dive. The actor that played Zed in Pulp Fiction happened to be there. We found out after my friend Fred, who was a small town boy making his first trip to THE big city, ran into the man he associates with brutal sodomy waiting for him to get out of the tiny men's room.

The next time I went was solo to try out for the pop culture edition of "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire". I decided to walk from the Port Authority to Peter Jennings Boulevard, where the audition was, by way of Times Square. The afternoon sun rendered the overbearing lights useless but it still was visual overload.

But the people are the real sight to see in this citiest of cities. Of course there are many attention seekers vying for you,like this guy:

but that's not what I mean. I'd go into some of the stores along the way and all of the retail workers in the studio stores all had the same look on their faces, basically saying wordlessly, "This job isn't NEARLY as cool as I thought it would be." I walked by the MTV studios during the famous TRL, but it was during a commercial or something. When they'd get the signal they would all go completely apeshit; but as I walked by they couldn't have looked more bored if they had showed them Woody Allen movies. If it wasn't for the barricade and extra police, I could have passed them without knowing they were there. I got a look at some of the signs that these girls were waving- or would when told to- and they looked awfully similar, same size, same writing just different messages: "Marry Me, Justin!", "John 3:16" or whatever.

The juxtaposition of Central Park's greenery with the rest of the city stopped me in my tracks, but just me. The thousands of people fast-walking their way through the city mostly kept their heads down. They may have been once wide-eyed like me, but their wonder had been blunted by the numbing of repetition. That's why New Yorkers are so famously blase; if you can get bored there, you can get bored everywhere. Some try to find the perfect coffeehouse or bookstore to soak up bits of obscurity before the rest of America ruins it for them.

For them the magical power that New York City has on me is a natural result of my touristness. So be it.

I'm Going to LA!

2008-05-02T02:19:00.002-04:00

I'm going to LA this weekend to visit my friend Anna and we're doing stuff that is cooler with more people, like karaoke (I'm finally going to sing "This Is Hardcore" by Pulp!). Anybody in that area that wants to be a part of the fun e-mail me at yourpalpete@gmail.com.

4/20 Fake News: The Stoned Food Critic

2008-04-20T21:09:00.003-04:00

I visited one of those new pizza joints downtown, I'm totally spacing on the name, D'anardo's or Dichico's something like that. They caught my attention during the hour of the Simpson's that channel 5 had at 11 with their commercials with a cartoon dude juggling pizzas that looks a lot like Mario from Donkey Kong. So if you see a Mario-lookin' dude on a commercial, that's the place I'm talking about.

Cheddar, the dude I checked D'whatever's with, said that it was a little dingy, but I wasn't paying attention to that atmosphere shit that he goes for. My nose - and grumbling tummy- kept my eye on the prize and I said, "Garcon, 4 of your finest kinds of pie!"(gotta love an expense account!) Those magnificent swarthy bastards totally hooked me UP! Ched and I dug in with the vengeance.

Man, they were AWESOME! Just, you know, Awesome. Just really awesome. Cheddar said shit like the Lotta Meata pie was too greasy, but I don't know what the fuck he's talking about, it's really fuckin' good! Cheddar always gets on me for not taking this food critic gig seriously, but what can I say? I'm like an umpire, I calls 'em like I sees 'um!

It wasn't all good though, the cheese fries sat in my stomach like a fuckin' rock; though going down they were AMAZING. Between that and the dudes working there making fun of me for suggesting they put gravy on said fries (nobody has taken that suggestion from me, yet), I'm docking them a half star. This means that D'blahblah's gets my lowest rating ever: 4 and a half stars out of 5.

Delaware's unintentional humor

2008-04-17T02:03:00.003-04:00

As regular readers may know, I grew up in Lower Delaware. Growing up there, especially before I started driving, sucked. Fun was rare, but there were plenty of locations whose names filled me with sophomoric giggles.

The Assawoman Bay, and of course the Little Assawoman Bay.

Brown and Stiff Realty- Swear to God, their signs were all over the lowest part of lower Delaware, stuck in the front lawn of houses for sale.

The Suicide Bridge Restaurant- I'm cheating a bit, this is actually in Maryland, but they advertised heavily on our local radio stations. This place is still open, despite having the least appealing name I've ever heard for a restaurant. Check out the website at the link, they talk about the suicides that inspired the name AND offer to host your wedding reception. That's right, people actually put on the invitations, "Reception to follow at the Suicide Bridge Restaurant, 6304 Suicide Bridge Road...

Berry's Funeral Home- If you don't get that, say it out loud.

MurderKill River-Fuck you, Pennsylvania with your Brandywine, we've got the Murderkill!

Update: I almost forgot Slaughter Beach! Maybe I was trying to forget because my foot got super infected after I stepped on a horseshoe crab there.

Saturday Videos

2008-04-12T18:22:00.002-04:00

Is this funny? I think so, but I'm too jazzed to see The Kids In The Hall. Then I become mesmerized with how big their heads have gotten.

I was going to put this one up last week and I flaked.

9/11 Conspiracy Theories 'Ridiculous,' Al Qaeda Says

A guy finds something interesting on his friend's computer

Naked Pictures of Your Buddys Girlfriend - Watch more free videos

These people are the very definition on dumb luck. Sorry I couldn't embed it.

Stupid Game Show Answers

If you haven't seen it, you need to: Saul Bass vs. Star Wars

The Return Of Saturday Videos

2008-04-05T17:45:00.002-04:00

Sorry for the absence the past couple of weeks, one Saturday, my brother got married, the other no excuse.

Here's a Vid of one of my favorite characters on my all-time favorite live action comedy, 30 Rock.NSFW

This is the first 5 minutes of Morgan Spurlock's new movie, the fight at the beginning is priceless.
Forgive the stupid commercial at the beginning

Mario's had enough of this jumping on turtles Bullshit!

John Malkovich's commitment to every thing he does is inspiring.

The "If you haven't seen it, you need to" section. South Park did a parody of this last episode and it seemed like a lot of people never saw the original. NSFW

And if you didn't see the South Park Parody

You're Welcome!

Signs The Movie You're Making Is Gonna Suck

2008-04-04T00:05:00.005-04:00

With all of the focus grouping and second guessing in the Motion Picture Industry an awful lot of shitty movies get released. This wouldn't make much difference if they made a lot of money to counteract their lack of quality, but this is often not the case. The people whose money really matter is mine and yours.

There are many unofficial rules I use that a movies going to suck that hold strong and true while some (goes straight to DVD, stars Keanu Reeves) have been proven wrong, albeit rarely. These are the surefire ones.

1. When the most famous person involved with the movie is the executive producer.
This is especially true when the person hasn't had the best track record ("from Executive Producer Jennifer Lopez"). I would be the last person in the world who thinks you need proven stars to make a worthwhile movie, but the persons that make shitty movies don't share my opinion.

2. When you make a sequel and you can't get the star to commit, but do it anyway.
This is especially true when the original movie is the biggest one the star has ever done. I mean if you can't get Jeff Fahey to do Lawnmower Man 2, pack it in. Who's Jeff Fahey? Exactly. You can almost guarantee suckage if the star DOES come back when they died in the first one. Then they have to be shoehorned in with flashbacks or improbable resurrection (The "Sean Connery in Highlander 2 Rule").

3. You have to connect two obviously separate scenes to get a laugh in the trailer for a comedy. What? There aren't enough jokes to sacrifice for a thirty second commercial?

4. Your making the third, fourth or more in a series where nobody even realizes there were any sequels at all. Do you know there have been 4 Tremors movies? 8 Hellraisers? 4 Revenge of the Nerds? Have you already turned your browser elsewhere?

5. Three Words: Starring Paris Hilton. She's like the Pauly Shore of the new millennium. Just awful.

Today in Fake News: Made-Up Conspiracy Believed By Conspiracy Theorist

2008-04-02T15:14:00.002-04:00

Since The Onion doesn't accept submissions, I have to pose my own fake news.

Eugene, Oregon- Local Conspiracy Theorist Lee Abbott, creator of the web site It's All Connected, is spreading the rumor of another government plot to control the general population that saw it's origin as a joke.

Mike Franklin, who has lived with Abbott for two years explains: "I was at a party discussing Lee's crazy blog and we started coming up with our own out-there plots to crack ourselves up and someone said that the government employed subcultural taste makers to get kids to wear their pants big, so they would fall down if they ran from the authorities."

"I didn't think we went far enough, so I said that they also encouraged facial piercings and tattoos to guarantee that they never infiltrate the upper classes. When I got home, I told Lee about it and I though he'd get the joke, but 20 minutes later it was on his site under the headline, 'Subjugated By Subculture', with a theory that everyone from Fred Durst to Fallout Boy was on the government payroll."

The other people in Abbott's newsgroup have run with the story as well. Gary "Stumps" Campbell of the Altoona Truth Network says, "This merely confirms what many of us have thought for years, that the Military-Industrial Complex will use any tool the keep the "sheep" in line."

Franklin has been shocked at the impact his fictional story has had. "I thought about telling Lee it was just a joke, but how I want to make up more 'conspiracies'. It's just too easy!"

My Concept Album (really)

2008-03-30T18:28:00.005-04:00

I come up with A LOT of ideas; some good, some (most) are bad, but I have learned to use my internal editor to stop me from talking too much about it so I have less to explain when I don't actually do it. The only thing that I talked freely about long before it was done was Surviving Retail because I knew it would happen, eventually.

Which brings me to the concept album. I haven't recorded it, but do have almost all the songs written, which is the time consuming part for me. The concept is: a songwriter is writing his regular songs about music and women. The songs are upbeat, in stark contrast to the lyrics which betray a deep depression. This is where it gets a little more....Right around this time, fusion power is developed to the point where every home has it's own reactor that's powered by running on trash (like the Delorean in Back To The Future). It is quickly found out that the reactors can easily be converted to fusion bombs. Every home has a potential WMD and the paranoia that springs up in society as a result starts creeping in to the songs on the album. The songwriter (let's call him Your Pal) looks at the world around him and sees how everyone is just as miserable- if not more so- than he is. This is where he decides to try to destroy the world. Between hints in his album and numerology on the cover, he tries to get his listeners to set off their bombs after he detonates his at his home record release party after plays the last song. He dies of course, but he doesn't see himself as a mass murderer; he's more of an opportunist. He knows that people, driven mad by the power they have in their home appliances, will do what he has done. By coordinating other people to do it,he will cement his place in history. If there's anyone left to write it, that is. But by default, it's the most historically significant pop album of all time; how many people did Sgt. Pepper's kill?

This concept came together after I noticed that all of the songs I was writing had to do with various kinds of heartbreak and the end of the world. One of the songs, "She's Got The Bomb," got turned into a story that I'm currently writing about the aftermath of these explosions, since Your Pal isn't nearly as popular as he thinks he is.

Possible titles:

Without You I'm Something

Earth Don't Suit You

We've Got The Bomb

Update: I've decided to call it Ragna-Pop.

My First Untimely Death

2008-03-26T13:23:00.003-04:00

Late Summer- Early Fall 1989

I was 19, just starting college when I ran into my ex-girlfriend's best friend. This ex and I had kind of a bad break-up, so I wasn't sure if her friend would want to talk to me. I was not prepared for what happened; upon seeing me, she stopped walking, shocked at the very sight of me.
"Pete, I thought you were dead!"

Because I am so very quick on the uptake, I immediately responded with a, "No!"

It turns out that someone from my past had told her that I had drowned at the beach a month before. It was Tommy, my former next store neighbor that I punched once; which was one of my least proud day, I even wrote a post about it. I was at the Indian River Inlet beach, like he said, but I wasn't (that) drunk and I certainly didn't drown. Since it had supposedly happened a month before she found out, she didn't check the news to see if it was true; she even almost called my parents.

I had no idea why Tommy would have said something like that, unless his sense of revenge has a shelf life of more than 5 years. I had even seen him at a party where I met the ex a few months prior, but I thought that he didn't recognize me. I had a lot more hair then than I had 7 years prior- or now for that matter. Most of the kids at the party were my age- 19- and Tommy was very conspicuous being the youngest person there- about 14. It seemed like his brattiness had flowered into delinquency, drinking and smoking pot with the older kids, who were visibly freaked about a 14 year-old grabbing their joint. If he knew who I was, he didn't say so.

Which brings my back to my death. We talked about it, and we decided that her friend should tell her I was still alive. As fun as it would have been to do, I couldn't in good conscience call her and go:
"This is Pete calling....FROM THE GRAVE!"

The Last Iraq War Anniversary Blog! (Hopefully)

2008-03-21T13:16:00.003-04:00

I go through my day thinking of things to post here some time big, fat, glowing topics just drift right on by; the fifth anniversary of the Iraq War. After reading the book Fiasco, about the planning of the Iraq war, my roommate-who works in politics- said that his organization put more planning into political campaigns than the Bush Administration did for this war. He wasn't exaggerating.

I've been wrong about so very much in my life, but my mind has never been swayed that the Iraq War was a bad idea. But I'm just a person, what I know about Iraq is what I've taken the time to learn. So when President Bush first said that Saddam Husein was going to have to atone for his role in 9/11, I thought, who said Iraq had anything to do with it? Did he just make that up?

Of course, as through most of the Presidency, we were suppose to take their word for it with a administration-wide game of "Do as I say, not as I do." A lot of us on the more liberal side of things had our patriotism challenged when we balked about war with Iraq, but a lot of us wanted exactly what President Bush said HE wanted: to punish those responsible for 9/11. We were also cursed with memories good enough to remember all of the promises that have been broken in the meantime.

Saddam had WMDs, you know who else does? Us. We sold them to Iraq as a matter of fact. WMDs are great if you want to sit the big boy's table of international diplomacy (which is the reason Saddam loved the idea that people thought he had them), but they are a bad strategic move to actually use. Even if a rogue group got a nuke or nerve gas that they used in any part of the world that they MAY have gotten from Iraq, Baghdad would most likely be blinked out of existence by our own WMDs.

Saddam was an evil guy, without a doubt, but this world is full of evil guys in power. Imposing our foreign policy on this part of the world reminds me of a rich friend I had in High School; whenever I'd have some financial limitation that he didn't, he say,"Can't you ask your parents for the money?" No, I couldn't, and not just because of pride. It wasn't as simple as he saw it.

The simplistic approach of the Bush Administration's "They hate us for our freedom, so we'll force it down their throats" does not take into account the deep ethnic divisions and the economic inequities between them. A basic rule of human behavior is they have to take care of themselves before they can devote time to worry about their freedom. Many Iraqis are happy that Saddam's gone but are now refugees or have dead and disfigured relatives and the lucky ones who might have dodged such peril regularly go without power and water. I wonder how much we as Americans would value our freedom if we didn't have a clean place to take a shit for 5 years.

Another thing that I knew that the War would affect adversely was good old-fashioned political discourse. I had a political discussion with someone on the Washington Metro who was in support of the war because of Saddam's WMDs. We disagreed, but were respectful of each other's opinions and shook hands when he got to his stop. I told him, "The saddest thing about this, is this might be the last civil political discussion either one of us will hear for a long time." I was more right than I could have imagined.

But who could could have foreseen a screw-up this huge? It's not like this couldn't have gone better, like we didn't have people who had the experience to help us avoid this, but were fired for their honesty. The egos of the President and Vice-President won't allow them to admit openly that they've done anything wrong, regardless of all the bleeding, exploding evidence to the contrary; a conceit that even their most ardent supporters can no longer share.

I wish I could have seen where we'd be in Iraq now. I would have loved to ask the people who supported it at the beginning if they still would if they knew for a fact that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11 and had no WMD program whatsoever. After refusing to believe either or both (Hell, I believed they had WMDs) I believe they'd say that they wouldn't. Well they didn't and don't after six years where the government worked pretty hard to find even the barest tread of real evidence. But our reasons for fighting morphed enough to satisfy most people to believe we're still doing the right thing.

9/11, WMDs, to establish democracy, to fight terrorists? I'm not one of these people who believes that war is never an answer, just not when we're not sure what the question is.

Eatz,Pwns and L3av3s

2008-03-21T02:00:00.002-04:00

When I actually went to college, my English professor refused to recognize contractions (you know, can't instead of can not) as proper English. His reasoning was that contractions were born out of improper use of language that became so common that now it's widely accepted. Although I was pissed off at him when he marked my accidental contractions with red ink, I now recognize his way of thinking.

Correct grammar and spelling are incredibly important to me, but it doesn't mean I'm any good at it, though. Thank God I'm living in the age of word processing, though it is disheartening to mangle a word so thoroughly that spell-check either suggests words that are not even remotely close, if there are any suggestions at all (like when I misspelled "thoroughly" writing this sentence, in fact). There are many grammar things that the computer cannot help you with that I've tried to pick up through my writing; if you read my blog posts in chronological order, you can almost pick up exactly where I discovered the semi-colon. I still have so much to learn.

Which brings us to our current age of intentional misspelling. The granddaddy of all this is, of course, Z in the place of S. Boyz, Girlz, it all drives me fuck nutty. For a short time it seemed like "i" for "y" ("Boi") would surpass its popularity, but the "z" still holds strong.

Using numbers in lieu of letter(3 instead of E, ect) has the benefit of being both stupid and confusing, thankfully it doesn't seem to be catching on; it might be because it's easier to just use the real letters when you're chatting online or texting. Which brings me to..

The contractions of texting -l8r,LOL and the like- which blends elements of all of these linguistic peeves and may prove longer lasting for the same reason that regular contractions have; they make life easier. Each spared keystroke puts the eventual case of Carpel Tunnel Syndrome that much further away. It creates a kind of technological snobbery with it's own lexicon that seems hopelessly obtuse to a budding curmudgeon like myself.

"The Speech"

2008-03-19T02:21:00.002-04:00

Being very isolated in general, I am not connected into the ongoing reaction to Barack Obama's speech on Race yesterday. I have read a lot of the first reactions with a sense of shame and anger and not any sort of cohesive way to express this. Until I saw Jon Stewart.

Obama's speech was to observers transcendent, historic,cloying, honest and political suicide; sometimes by the same person. But it shouldn't have to be. As Jon said, he spoke about race like we were adults and it's obvious a lot of us can't handle that.

Just taking in the speech before the reactions, I could not get over how amazing it was for him to say what we, as a nation, needed to hear about this most touchy of subjects, damn the political consequences. But the reactions made me realize how right he truly was.

When I worked at the toy store, at the surrounding neighborhood everyday I saw an almost casual kind of multi-culturalism; kids of every color from around the world playing together. But did that mean there was no racism? Uh, no. We as human beings cannot control our prejudice, but we can know that these impulses are wrong and still be ashamed of them.

The kind of racism that displayed itself there was of the reverse kind; where you do something racist while trying too hard not to be racist. I'll explain:
Once a lady didn't want to leave her bag in the store, but she made sure to let my black co-worker know that it wasn't because she thought she was going to steal it. It's the by-product of these politically correct times; in an attempt to prove that everyone's the same, we've forgotten that were actually all different, we just shouldn't be judged by these differences and we shouldn't forget that they exist.

Ignorance is when your smart enough but you just haven't learned enough to know better. It's hard to remedy anything if you don't acknowledge it exists or won't honestly talk about it. What specifically am I talking about, Race, Culture? That nagging cough? What am I NOT talking about?

Your Pal's Cinematic Cliches

2008-03-17T13:55:00.001-04:00

Roger Ebert has had a long-time collection of movie cliches called his Movie Glossary. He augments his observations with ones submitted by readers and I've got a few for him; I've checked but I don't think he's covered these yet.

The ROMCOM!

Romantic Comedy has quite a few cliches that often make it possible to know the exact plot just by seeing the trailer.

1.The asshole boyfriend.

If one of of the participants in the budding romcom romance is in a relationship, the boy/girl (more likely boy)friend will be so objectionable, you have no idea what they saw in them to begin with. (Wedding Crashers, The Wedding Singer, ect.)

2. The Helper.

The protagonist has a helper to get (or regain) the heart of his beloved, a member of the opposite sex that is just as cute, much more interesting, and much more in love with him than the original object of his affection. (Some Kind Of Wonderful, Better Off Dead, ect.)

3. The Consolation Prize.

After the couple in the Romcom make their final coupling or after the final break-up, someone is left alone. Suddenly, their eyes meet a new love, so you know they're going to be OK. (Pretty In Pink) Sometimes this new love looks exactly like that person (Better Off Dead, Wayne's World 2)

Binoculars.
When ever they show the binocular perspective on a movie, it's always the two images side by side, when we look through them in real life, it's just a single stereoscopic image(countless films).

Whenever someone REALLY needs to see something when they're using binoculars or a telescope, they use their naked eyes to see it instead of continuing to see it more magnified. (Stakeout, Men At Work, Body Double ect.)

I'm pretty sure my friend Ed brought this to my attention but every single to-go coffee cup in New York City seems to be made by the same company. (blue and white with writing on the side)

Saturday Videos

2008-03-15T12:56:00.002-04:00

This is an honest-to-God Australian commercial for feminine hygiene products.

Mallrats of Justice- NSFW

You've gotta admire this guy's commitment

http://view.break.com/469591 - Watch more free videos

One Word: Yikes!

You've either seen it, or need to: Kinetic Sculpture

Your Pal Answers Anything!

2008-03-14T02:26:00.003-04:00

Earlier this week, I asked my readers to ask me any question about anything (as long as it wasn't about math) and I would answer it. I got a grand total of two questions. I won't protect the identity of the askers because they posted openly on my Myspace, I hope they don't mind.

Liam asks: "Where do babies come from?"

Excellent Question! No one knows for sure where babies come from; I suppose it boils down to your perspective:
If you're the first-time mother of a newborn, your baby came straight from Heaven on a fluffy cloud of dreams. The child will spend much of the next 18 years contradicting this belief.

If you're a childless man being kept awake by a sleeping baby on a plane then babies come from fate to remind them to ask about that vasectomy the next time they go to the doctor.

I think they come from the vagina, but don't quote me.

Jerry asks: "How do you do it?"

Excellent question! No one knows for sure how I do it; I suppose it boils down to perspective:

If you're my Mom, the answer is, "Do what?"

If you're an ex-girlfriend, the answer is, "With as little effort as possible!"

Putting aside anything resembling objectivity, I'll say that I use my natural charisma, boyish good looks and attention to what makes humanity tick to bore you as efficiently as possible.

The blog for my book: Surviving Retail

Eliot Spitzer and The Eighth Circle of Hell

2008-03-12T10:16:00.000-04:00

In Dante's Divine Comedy corrupt politicians and hypocrites reside in the penultimate circle of Hell, up to their necks in boiling tar for all eternity. The punishment on this mortal plain in this time is significantly less severe, although the embarrassment is almost as bad.

There's a concept that I touch upon in the last chapter of my book called "Trickle-Down Bullshit". Trickle-Down Economics couldn't work because people like to hold onto their money, but they're more than happy to pass bullshit down. People not only do things privately that they decry publicly, but -in many of the recent cases- actively work against people just like them; Spizer was brought down by the very legal mechinations that he pioneered to prosecute white-collar crime and Mark Foley was one of the most vocal congressional opponents of internet sexual predators.

I'm glad Spitzer resigned, flat out. Not because prostitution is wrong, I personally think it should be legal and, unlike the "legalize it" post I did Friday, I don't (and won't) have any personal experience to color my opinion on the subject. Not because he betrayed his wife; some couples may be tolerant of such things, but the look on her face at the press conference suggests otherwise.

No, he should have resigned because he's a hypocrite and hypocrisy up high leads to hypocrisy trickling down below. I realize that politicians and integrity go together like healthy and bacon, but the modern day political machine runs on getting worked up over issues that gets quickly forgotten when it's politically advantageous. Military service is an easy example: one of the reasons Bob Dole and George H.W. Bush were more suited to be Commander-in-Chief than Bill Clinton because they served in the military. Suddenly, when the person that isn't their guy has more military service- Al Gore, John Kerry and John McCain- then they get "swift boated". With McCain this is especially heinous, the man could have been released after 6 months, but refused to use his father's considerable political power to be released any earlier than the POWs captured before him and spent an extra 5 years in the "Hanoi Hilton".

Lest you think I'm not an equal opportunity slammer, check out this speech from Bill Clinton from when John Kerry ran for president:

In fact it's kinda good that Spitzer is a Democrat, it's gives us of the more liberal persuasion a chance to walk it like we talk it. What would it make us if we didn't?

Ask Your Pal Anything!

2008-03-10T13:03:00.002-04:00

I've had a bit of a writer's block lately; not for writing, but for blog subjects. So if you want to ask a question in ANY subject: advice, history, science, opinion, politics, ANYTHING (Actually, not math, but anything else), write me at yourpalpete@gmail.com and I will answer them in a way that'll be either insightful, informative or funny or any combination of the three. I will keep your identity secret, just keep in mind that- like Miss Cleo's phone psychics of yore- any answers are for entertainment purposes only.

Saturday Videos

2008-03-08T14:17:00.002-05:00

A history of modern warfare told through food.

This seem like a SNL skit (and a rather tasteless one at that), but this is a honest to God sitcom.

A brief history of the sitcom.

The Hilarious Reggie Watts. absolutely NSFW

If the internet was real and had a party. This is been popular, but if you haven't seen it, it's a hoot.

One More Reason To Love The Wire

2008-03-07T13:33:00.002-05:00

The best TV drama series ever, The Wire is showing it's last episode on Sunday. This just my opinion, but it's shared by many. It portrays a world I could never know, unless I get lost driving in Baltimore, but it still strikes a solid emotional chord. The unofficial theme of the show is "everything matters" and illustrates that point with unforgettable characters put into untenable situations exacerbated by the very systems constructed to prevent it. The show is so dense, when they started showing it on BET I wondered how they could hack 12 minutes out of it for commercials. The answer was to make it an hour and a half.

Each season expands the focus on a new element of systematic dysfunction. When I started watching, it was the beginning of last season when it was on how the education system has failed and how "No Child Left Behind" has just made it worse. This season it's been the press and from how TV critics have responded to it, it might be a little too on the nose for their comfort. The implication is that we assume as outsiders that the priority of the educational system is education, the justice system's is justice, and the press is to report the truth, but they'll prove you wrong.

The writers of The Wire had spent many years chronicling these real life failures before crafting them into the spiderweb of lives that make up the show. I've never seen an episode that wasn't excellent, but there have been plenty that have broken my heart.

Which brings me, finally, to my point. The writers of the show have written an excellent editorial for Time Magazine. If we've learned anything about ourselves is that we need to be honest with ourselves. Demonizing drug users doesn't move anything forward, it just hurts us as a society.

The War on Drugs is one of those thinks that we fight because of morality instead of practicality. As long as we try to fight it we can feel like we've done "the right thing" regardless of the fallout. And what is said fallout? 1 out of every 100 people in jail? We should be ashamed of ourselves, how much more obvious can it be that something needs to be done. And no, building more prisons is not the answer.

Legalizing drugs won't solve all the problems associated with them, in fact it'll probably create new ones. But it will move things forward. It'll clear out much of the violent crime associated with it being illegal. It'll be a pretty big strike in the War on Terror, since a lot the Taliban's funding are generated by the booming poppy trade. The medicinal applications for illegal drugs can finally be used; besides marijuana, both LSD and MDMA were making inroads as miracle drug to treat mental illness before becoming illegal.

The problem is that the scare tactics, like "Reefer Madness", still resonates with people who don't know anything about drugs. But anyone who knows ANYONE who has ever smoked pot knows that there is no kind of weed that makes you wild-eyed and crazy and hasn't been because no one's looking for it.

Frustrations-Alphabetically or in order of importance

2008-03-06T12:37:00.005-05:00

I haven't been posting very regularly, I've been pimping the Surviving Retail Blog pretty heavy. I disconnected myself from my life to finish writing it and have not been able to reconnect since. There's part of me that would love to lay it all on the line and be bluntly honest about how I've been feeling the past, oh, year and a half but I don't think the consequences are worth it.

The creator of the funky and surreal Howard The Duck comic book died a little while ago. I liked it OK (don't confuse this with the historically awful movie), but the real impact it had on my life was that I've often adopted Howard's slogan- "Trapped in a world that he never made"- as my own. I am constantly being reminded of this fact when things happen like spending millions of dollars to make my favorite breakfast cereal crunchier in milk. Or when they release Meet The Spartans, The Hottie and The Nottie, Bar Starz and Superhero Movie, but release The Onion Movie direct to DVD. NSFW.

You know what I realized is not as easy as it might seem? EVERYTHING!

My ex-roommate Ed and I talked about the Democratic field of candidates when they were first emerging and we said the great thing about it was there was a black candidate and a female candidate where race and gender was secondary to their ideas and appeal. That was until people actually started voting, then the choice seemed to be whether you were more sexist or racist, not who you actually wanted to be President. It reminds me of the complaint that promiscuous men are called "studs" while promiscuous women are called "sluts". But in my experience, men are only called studs ironically and slut is much more of a gender-neutral insult. There might be people that think this way, but I don't know any of them personally.

When I first learned of the concept of "Intelligent Design", I thought that it was basically an acknowledgment that evolution and natural selection exist, but working through the divine. I thought, great, people are finally putting aside the ridiculous notion that the universe is a few thousand years old. But what it actually is backdoor creationism. Which brings me to Ben Stein's movie Expelled:

I will see this movie at some point, but he misses a couple of inconvenient truths in this trailer. He talks about the scientific community ostracizing people putting forth theories on Intelligent Design, but there's a good reason for this: it doesn't hold up to the scientific method, and that is kinda important to scientists. Saying "God did it" without being able to put it through the scientific method or prove it tangibly is flat out not how science works. I recognize that I could be overlooking some more scientific evidence that the movie features, but I'm going by the trailer.

Stein talks about the belief that life started, as he says, "Mud animated by lightning" like it's so much more ridiculous than God creating everything in seven days. If these scientists want to find a venue for their alternate theories of life without having to prove it scientifically there are tons of venues and groups that I'm sure would love to give them a voice, like Ben Stein for example. The problem is when ANYONE hears something that seems dumb to them, they don't take it very seriously, facts or not.

The story of creation was written in a time when we thought that the universe revolved around us literally instead of figuratively like we do now. It would have been impossible for people to handle the theory of evolution back then, look at how we're talking about it now! It's interesting that Stein says that Intelligent Design wouldn't have seemed so crazy in Galileo's time. You know whose idea's seemed crazy back then? Galileo's! Then he wasn't "The Father of Modern Science", he was an oppressed teaching the heretical idea that the Earth went around the Sun.
update: Darwin was also called crazy in his day, I forgot to mention. He kept his theory of natural selection secret from almost everyone for many years because it went so far beyond conventional (read :creationist) thinking.

These latter-day oppressed scientists may be vindicated by the same history that will vindicate George W. Bush, but I wouldn't put any money down on it.

Days of Fortified Wine and Malt Liquor

2008-03-05T13:54:00.004-05:00

The late teens and early twenties are when you make your more "adult" type mistakes. It's your first experience with the kind of freedom that marks the rest of your life. But you also still have a lot of residual immaturity and poor impulse control of childhood, couple that with the complete inability to recognize those things and that's a recipe for disaster.

My mom told me recently, "In your early twenties, I was afraid you had a drinking problem."
I said, "Nah, I was just in my early twenties."
I was a bit more inexperienced by the time I had turned 20 than most people I knew. I had gotten puke-encrusted drunk when I was 16 and I actually heeded my day after promise to NEVER DRINK AGAIN! For a year or so. In that time all my friends got a lot better at it, but I caught up eventually.

This led to questionable decision, like drinking fortified wine; Sisco to be exact. I only drank it a few times, but those were the times when I did the things that I wouldn't take responsibility for (until I discovered Gin and Tonics). Once I bought some at a 7-11 and the guy behind me said, "Sisco? That stuff made me quit drinking." If someone said that to me now, I would probably get something else. But then:"All Right!"
Two hours later, I was trying to unhook a friend's front-hook bra with my teeth- with her consent- 20 feet from the front door at a bar that I had expected my girlfriend show up at any second.

Malt Liquor was a much more gentle mistress. Sometimes I still will drink a Mickey's to revisit my misty watercolor memories, but it vividly illustrates how much more sophisticated my palette now. Mickey's was one of the only malt liquors that didn't have some sort of "wink, wink" marketing. Colt 45 had Billy Dee-of course- but a lot of their names had parody built right in: Crazy Horse, King Cobra, Power Cylinder, Hurricane and Haffenreffer (you even say it, you sound drunk). Eventually they went too far with the menthol flavored ones, but I still gave it a try. One word review:Yikes!

It got a lot easier to buy this stuff after I turned 21 and not just because of the legality of it. I could never talk any of the people that bought beer for me to be seen buying King Cobra (my all-time favorite).

Sometimes, even now, I'll pick up a forty because it was a good ration size for staying out of trouble and it's a fantastic conversation piece. Once, at a pool party, my friend Jay and I got 40's and somebody said, "Wow, 40's!"
I said, "Yep, we're not messin' around."
A few minutes later, someone else said, "You guys aren't messin' around!"
I said, "Glad to see the word's getting out."

Awesome Parody (NSFW)

Update: I went to to store right after posting this and found a 40 of KING F'N COBRA! I bought it and it went down smooth. Or as smooth as it ever did.

One Hit Wonders Who Have Had More Than One Hit

2008-03-04T12:05:00.001-05:00

Stardom is a funny thing, especially in the music business. Who know what catches millions of sets of ears to make a song a hit? And why is it than some people can only do it once? History is another thing, as time goes on things get remembered differently, regardless of the facts to the contrary. One of the definitions of "One Hit Wonder" is an artist who have only one hit on the Billboard top 40. This definition ends up classifying such accomplished artists as Jimi Hendrix ("All Along The Watchtower" #20) and Janis Joplin ("Me and Bobby McGee"#1) as one hit wonders. The perception of some of the most notorious one-hit wonders does not always jive with the facts.

1. Vanilla Ice- "The" Hit:"Ice Ice Baby"
I don't blame people for forgetting the amplified abortion that was "Play That Funky Music", but that doesn't change the fact that it hit #4 before he slid his way into obscurity. He got sued for sampling without crediting the song of the same name; but money aside, I'm surprised any one would want to take credit for it.

2. A Taste of Honey- "The" Hit: "Boogie Oogie Oogie"
Before it became known as the "kiss of death award", the Best New Artist Grammy was something that people took very seriously. So when A Taste Of Honey won it in 1979 over The Cars and Elvis Costello, people went nuts. But before they went gently into that obscure night they had another hit in 1981 with "Sukiyaki", that is mostly remembered by people my age is it's quoting in Doug E. Fresh's "La Di Da Di"-"It's all because of you, I'm feeling sad and blue.." Besides, if you look at the list of best new artists winnershere, you'll wonder why they were EVER taken seriously.

3. The Romantics- "The" Hit: "What I Like About You"
Its appearance in EVERY FUCKING COMMERCIAL notwithtanding, that song was actually not a hit. Two songs they released 3 years later were bigger hits with one, "Talking In Your Sleep", hitting #2. But the song was so popular that they named a 1990 greatest hits collection after it.

4. Richie Valens- "The" Hit: "La Bamba"
This was actually the B-side of his biggest hit, "Donna", eventually making it into the top 30. Valens learned the spanish lyrics phonetically, like most of the people that heard it when it became a hit in the 80's, since Richie didn't speak much Spanish.

There are more but I'm tired.

When Artistic Bankruptcy and Corporate Synergy Collide

2008-02-29T01:38:00.002-05:00

A lot of the very nice rejection letters that I have gotten from literary agents talk about the huge amount of books that get published every year. When I see the kinds of movies and TV shows that get made these days, it makes me think I should do that kind of writing and a couple of things I've seen recently makes me think that it's only going to get worse.

Universal has struck a deal with Hasbro to make movies based on board games. Finally the excitement of Candyland in a $9 movie. Hold on, I'm not done:
Monopoly: Like There Will Be Blood with Jersey real estate and Steve and Edie. The big catchphrase will be, "I Eat Your Buffet!"
Battleship: A epic naval battle where the ships don't move at all, unless someone cheats. The catchphrase: Could it be anything else? They'll have to shoehorn it in but we'll hear "You sunk my battleship!"
Ouija: The message the board is sending is undeniable, spelling out over and over, "All of these movies are gonna SUCK!"

I saw a commercial for a new dating show that MTV is casting for a new dating show inspired BY A DORITOS FLAVOR! That's right, they were looking for "sweet and spicy" young men and women to match their new "sweet and spicy" new salty snacks.

Speaking of trashy MTV dating shows, there's a new one featuring a cast-off on the god-awful Tila Tequila show called "That's Amore". Check this out:

It's a little Night At The Roxbury, no?

It's a testament to how desperate people are to get on TV when they'll tangle with a dozen other women to catch the eye of the kind of dude they have to shake off of themselves any weekend at the eurotrash disco.

Beatles or Beatlesque?

2008-02-28T12:04:00.002-05:00

(Commercial Message: The book that I blanked out my life to write, Surviving Retail, has it's own blog where I post excerpts from it. You can get there here)

As I have said, I love the Beatles. I was watching something on the TV on and there was a feature about popular music combo Panic At The Disco, who I have made it clear I hate. The story was about how "Beatlesque" their new songs are. I had heard their song and it was OK- although the frontdouche's mugging that he does in all their videos makes me turn the channel before I hear too much- but it didn't strike me as sounding like The Beatles.

This got me thinking about inspiration vs. influences; when musicians put up ads to gather other musicians, they say who their influences are. Then they put some of the same ingredients as their favorite bands, both the kind of instruments they use and the way the songs are structured. But the factor that is missed 99.95 percent of the time is actually being good or at least good in the same way their "influences" are. It's that spark that so many musicians chase; every guitarist can play the G and C chord, but not everyone can write "Every Rose Has It's Thorn".

Being inspired is another thing. You can take elements from what moves you to make music that tries to move the listener the same way. This is by no means a guarantee that you'll be successful at it, mind you.

So using trumpets and descending chords-like the Panic lads- might make you sound "Beatlesque", but it won't give listeners the impact that the Beatles still provide after more than 40 years.

Just ask Oasis.

I Tried Out For Last Comic Standing Today

2008-02-26T17:02:00.003-05:00

Regardless of the egalitarian aspect shows like American Idol or Last Comic Standing approach, not everyone is truly created equal.

I went to the auditions today with the impression that everyone was going to be put under the same decision process as everyone else, but was not surprised when it wasn't.

I only have the right to say so much. Some of the people there had waited since Sunday to try out, but I got to audition a lot sooner than those people because I had answered a Craig's List ad for "Wacky People". This is a recreation of my audition Polaroid:

The people that got to wait the shortest were actual comedians, who looked at this as more of a networking opportunity than one of national exposure. I got a little intimated talking to comedians who had been working for years, I felt the impulse to stop saying, "I've only done stand up one other time 4 and a half years ago to saying, "I've been doing comedy for 4 and a half years."

The cool thing: Talking to so many cool people. I met all kinds of folks. I talked up Surviving Retail, of course and one guy said he had heard of it. I don't know if he actually had, but he definitely thought he did.

The Bad Thing: I've done a few of these cattle calls before and hopes can be dashed in an instant, but mine got dashed after about 45 seconds. I'm really proud of the song that they wouldn't let me finish, so I've posted it here: NSFW

Three Things I had To Learn The Hard Way.

2008-02-25T11:35:00.000-05:00

I got "blogtagged" by my good friend Lonnie. I don't know if this a new phenomenon or not, since I'm generally behind on such things. Anyone it's a challenge to post on a subject that gets past around like a chain letter, except that nothing will happen to you if you don't do anything. Besides, didn't you ever think it was weird that a letter knew what happened to the people that didn't pass it on? Anyway this is what I had to learn the hard way.

1. Talent means nothing.

I will freely admit that I think I'm a talented motherfucker. I also realize that I may be the only person with that opinion. I've recorded an awesome CD that I hope I will crush with the awesomeness of my next one. I've written a book that is a good editing away from being a total monster. I don't normally say (or write) stuff like that out loud, I let my ego hide away where it won't embarrass me when I've got company. Having every creative thing I've done rejected by everyone but a devoted few has gone a long way toward keeping my ego in check.

But this isn't about me, believe it or not, this about all the people who deserve a lot more attention than they've received. THEY are most assuredly talented motherfuckers.
Actors: Jeffrey Wright, Nathan Fillion, Joel McHale, Judy Greer (I'm sorry I'm getting tired of linking, forgive me)
Comedians: Doug Benson, Kristen Schaal, Charlene Yi, Craig Robinson
Bands: Jeez, where to start? Where to finish? The Smugglers, Squatweiler, Cry Baby Cry, Menthol, The Dirtbombs, Anne Summers, The Five Maseratis, Lee Harvey Keitel Band, Jurassic Five, Blackstar, Boss Hog, The Chubbies, Brainiac, Cornershop, Bad Brains, The Damn Personals, Delta 72, Electric Six, The Figgs, The Friggs, The Interpreters,The Makers, Outrageous Cherry, The Pooh Sticks and many others that I can't think of right now.
For talent hasn't been enough. As I often say, pop culture is a whore running at the speed of light; you can't catch it, you can only hope it runs you over.

2. It's not what you say, it's what they hear.
I've been as honest and straightforward as I can be most of my life. But if a person only chooses to hear one part of what I've said or has chosen not to believe me outright, it doesn't matter how honest I am. Some of the most sincere apologies I've delivered in my life have been rejected mainly because it was easier for the person to swallow that I was being insincere. You are only responsible for half of someone's opinion of you, people filter everything that happens to them through the filter of their own beliefs, experience and prejudice.

3. I will never understand women.
I didn't learn to understand women the hard way, I learned that I would NEVER understand them the hard way. It started when I was a kid and I thought that if you liked a girl, you were nice to them. I thought that my bad luck with girls was just me not being attractive- not that I'm totally ruling that out. But I was talking to some girls from my high school and they said flat out, "I like it when a guy treats me like shit."
"Yeah, nice guys are boring."
In a less explicit and perhaps more subliminal way, this has been a hallmark of my romantic life. I wrote a post about this called The Nice Guy's Burden

I think the most basic disconnect is even recognizing that there is difference between Men and Women. Some of the women that I've talked to about this refuse to believe that there's any difference other than our reproductive processes, like that wasn't enough to have us disagree until the end of time. Women tend to look at the observation that they are emotionally driven and empathic than Men like it's an insult. It's not, us men need the balance that women provide, it's no coincidence that some of the most stunted societies on the Earth are the ones that most severely subjugate their women. There are differences between us, but they aren't so severe that a woman shouldn't have any job she's qualified for, even President.

But you can't have it both ways, you can't say that you don't want to be identified by the perceived shortcomings of your gender and then blame something like- say people supporting Obama- on sexism. If the dream of the true level playing field for all people comes true, these excuses are going to seem even sillier than they do now.

I MAY have some big news tomorrow, I'll let you know.

My Whole Life Is A Bit

2008-02-21T14:34:00.002-05:00

There are many impulses that I have that I cannot truly explain to people who don't know me. I've grown out my hair and beard for Halloween, most extensively to be Sean Connery. Right around this time, I did stand-up comedy for the first and, to date, only time. Even though I joked about this during my act, one of the other comedians said afterward, "Have you thought about shaving your head and beard?"
Yes, I'd been doing it for the better part of a decade, in fact. It's not just a joke, it's my life. My whole life is a bit.

When I was packing to move to Arizona, I successfully fought an impulse to take my fez; the one in my myspace profile picture. I thought, when would I need a fez? Well, I need it now. For what? I don't want to say right now, just trust me that I need a fez. My whole life is a bit.

I've thrown away a lot of clothing and furniture with all my moving, but I won't throw away my 3-D glasses. There have been too many times that I've needed them and not had them. But I have them and today I needed them for this Trailer:

This is the reason why my life is a bit. In my life, 3-D glasses are much more important than a dresser.

Why all the Obama hate?

2008-02-20T14:23:00.003-05:00

I have made no secret of my support of Barack Obama. I saw my first "Obama for President" sicker shortly after his star-making making performance at the 2004 Democratic Convention and I was quite skeptical. I had a lot of the some of the some concerns that so many people voice now about him. But I learned. But it's not just that he had shown me so much since then, but how bad things have gotten in this country. The eight years under Bush have pitted Americans against each other. Look at what conservatives have done to John McCain, smearing a true American Hero because he's audacious enough to have his own opinion. We identify ourselves as our political affiliation and act like the folks on the other side are destroying America. But we humans are more alike than we're different, no matter what our affiliations are. The thing that makes America so great are the balance between our conservative and liberal impulses and Obama is the man most likely to restore that balance. But after hearing all of the same criticisms, I felt like I needed to respond.

1. "He's Inexperienced!"
Three words: George. W. Bush. People seem to forget that his only experience with elected office was the 5 years he spent as Governor of Texas. Or that Bill Clinton was the only the Governor of fricken' Arkansas before assuming the Presidency. Or that both made a big deal about their "inexperience" when they ran, because it afforded them "outsider" status.

I think it's telling that some of his biggest supporters are people that have worked with him in the Illinois and U.S. Senate that have seen his skills bringing people together first hand.

2. "He's all style!"
When has having good oratory skill such a crime? Don't we want a non-boring president? He's the only president in my lifetime that I will actually look forward to hearing from and that can talk for 20 minutes and still hold my attention. And do I really need to bring up our current president and his skill at public speaking?

3. "He has no substance!"
Of course he doesn't seem that way, if you don't look hard enough for it. The man himself has all of his policy plans on his website here. You may not agree with them, but you can't say that he hasn't given some of the most pertinent problems facing us some real thought.

4. "How is he going to pay for all his programs?"
How are we paying for them now? The common cliche are that Democrats are "Tax and Spend" while the Republicans since Reagan have been "Charge and Spend".

Don't get me wrong, I think all of the Presidential front-runners would do a better job than our current administration. But when I vote for Obama, I'm voting FOR someone instead of voting AGAINST someone else, and that's what you're suppose to do.
Update: Hilzoy breaks it down better than I do here.

Yes, More Videos!

2008-02-19T22:58:00.002-05:00

Since these video post are kinda like cheat blog-writing, so I'm going to try to post these on the weekend only. I'll try to make them every weekend for the people who don't surf at work. I reserve the right to post videos during the week, but only if it's illustrating a point. I also apologize if you've seen these before.

From a less politically correct time. To be on the safe side- NSFW

That's right, that's Casey Kasem as Adolf

This quickly goes from self-parody to icky really fast. NSFW

This reminds me of my nephew Adien going after my niece Alex.

This guy must be seen to be believed. NSFW

This is all over the place, but if you haven't seen it you need to. It's just so damn cute.

The LONG Reach of DC Bureaucracy

2008-02-15T20:17:00.002-05:00

Trying to put the figurative tent stakes down here in the PHX, I went down to the DMV to get my Arizona License. I knew that I'd probably have to take a driving test of some sort since my Maryland license expired a year and a half ago and, riding a bike to work and taking advantage of public transportation to avoid DUIs, I didn't have any need to get a new one.

There was an unforeseen problem, though, the DMV lady said there was I had an issue with the District of Colombia that needed to be resolved before I could even try to get an Arizona license. After racking my memory for what this could possibly be, I came up short. I mean, Christ, I haven't even driven in over 2 years!

After calling the District to find out what this "issue", I was told that I had paid a traffic ticket 2 days late IN 2001! I remember the ticket, and remembered paying it on time since it was a sizable ticket to begin with. I don't recall ever getting any notice that entire time telling me about this and they didn't say anything to me when I got a car registered in Maryland the next year. Most of that time I could have easily afforded the $95 reinstatement fee; but now, not so much.

Now, one of the main reasons I never bothered to get a DC license (or plates for my car) was to avoid the legendary clusterfuck of DC Bureaucracy. But it still got me, and good!

It reminds me of one afternoon working at the toy store when a customer was marveling at how efficient we were (we got that a lot). I said, "Yeah, we're not like the government at all."
Another customer listening took umbrage, "Hey! I work for the government!"
I clarified my position, "I'm sorry, I was talking about the DC government."
"That's who I work for!"
"Then you know."
"Yeah," she said with a hint of resignation as she slinked out of the store.

Patterns of The North American Hipster

2008-02-15T18:33:00.003-05:00

One of the many differences between Phoenix and D.C. is the relative lack of hipsters. I would have thought that this would be a positive thing, the North American Hipster can be quite a loathsome beast. It has a pack mentality and code of conduct designed to denigrate others animals sense of coolness while simultaneously affirming its own.
The lack of Arcade Fire shows and visits from McSweeney's contributers cannot provide the supply of irony needed to sustain large packs of hipsters.

Unfortunately, because of this, groups of earnest alterna-rockers and the type of angsty downtuners that were thought to had gone the way of Korn flourish in numbers unknown in other parts of North America.

So the choice is: people who are too cool to exist or people who are too sad to stop screaming. Hmmmmmmm.

F@*k Valentine's Day!

2008-02-13T19:50:00.003-05:00

Seriously, f@*k it in whatever orifice is available. I mentioned my aversion to it last year and nothing has changed. The newest objectionable commercial is the one where a man hypnotizes his significant other with a diamond necklace, "I am a good husband, I am a good husband". It should be called "Avoiding Female Emotional Landmines Day" because, let's be honest, no woman I've ever heard of has spent time in the doghouse for fucking up her Valentine's gift to her boyfriend. We, as men do our best- emoting is not something we're all that great at to begin with- but regardless of our attempts, a wrong step and BOOM!!!!. Does it sound like I may have a personal problem with it? Congratulations! You are absolutely right!

It's all a part of my ironic life; I liked girls from a very young age-like 6, but I was almost out of high school before I had my first real girlfriend. You'd think a sweet, thoughtful guy such as myself (if you don't know me personally, just go with it for the sake of argument) would have have some decent Valentine Day stories, but I don't, not even the few ones when I actually had someone to share it with.

1. 1989- I was at a difficult time in my life, I was kicked out of my house and living with my friend Karen. I had just started a job that I had yet to get my first paycheck from when Valentine's Day rolled around. I had a very specific gift that I wanted to give my fiancee (don't even get me started on THAT!) that required money. I gave her the lyrics of a song I had written for her-admittedly handwritten and on notebook paper- but that wasn't good enough to stop everyone around her from hammering me for not getting her something more substantial. This lead to my romantic rival for her- her male best friend- to give her a bouquet of flowers to make up for my shortcomings. It got to be so much, I borrowed money to get her what I wanted a week later: 2 dozen roses and a red tambourine, which was symbolic for us. She loved it, but the damage was done. Did I mention that her gift to me was sexy (not explicit) pictures taken by said best friend, that I found out that she was cheating on me with through most of our relationship?

2. 1996- If V-day fell at a better time in the relationship I was in at the time, things might have turned out much better. I was actually about to break up with her; we spent so much time together when we got together, we kinda burned out. Plus her long-distance boyfriend had just found out about us. I didn't want to break up with her on Valentine's Day, but I've always had a hard time hiding my feelings and this was no exception. We broke up the next day, but got back together soon after and about 6 months later she broke my heart so badly I moved to Rockville.

3. 2004- My then-girlfriend and I had a bumpy and trying relationship. There was a lot of love there, but I was her first real boyfriend and had to navigate around her fears and concerns about being in love. Add to this the fact that we lived far away from each other through a lot of it. But things were looking up, we were making plans to move in together that fall and I had cleared- I thought- the last emotional hurdles. Since we had had a pretty lackluster Valentine's Day the year before, I wanted to really give her something that expressed my love in a way that she would never have another reason to doubt me. Even though we couldn't be together, V-Day itself was pretty good. But little did I know, I was setting myself up for the break-up less than two weeks later. It wasn't because I did something wrong or we didn't love each other, that's the fucked thing. I did too well, she started freaking out about how we were on the fast track to marriage and how she wasn't ready for that, even though I had absolutely no plans to ask her. This still stings me obviously; I wrote about this in last year's post, too. I can't even say what I gave her, its very memory makes me feel like an idiot. It just epitomizes so much of my love life; the harder I tried to make the women in my life feel special and loved, the stupider and more powerless I feel when it's not enough.
So, fuck Valentine's Day.

Today In Schadenfreude!- The Hottie And The Nottie

2008-02-13T18:49:00.003-05:00

I wasn't going to say anything about this, but I couldn't help myself. Many of you might have read the "New Low" reviews for Paris Hilton's new movie The Hottie And The Nottie, the kind of film you'll never see but know exactly what happens in it (I bet the nottie becomes a hottie too!). It only made about $25,000 TOTAL its first weekend out, or a dollar for every bad review. I don't think that amount covered the Cristal and Cocaine for the release party!

But, keep in mind, Meet The Spartans made enough money to make another stupid-as-shit movie. So we, the moderately intelligent, might have won the Hottie And The Nottie battle but we're still losing the War Against Stupidity overall.

The Writers Go Back To Work Today!

2008-02-12T13:44:00.003-05:00

I haven't written much about the Writer Guild strike, which officially ended Tuesday. I don't know the particulars of the deal; it doesn't matter much, it's not like I wasn't getting writing work because of the strike. I supported the writers- in my own ineffectual way- as I do all people in the creative part of the creative arts. As unfair as the music business often is, songwriters are pretty well taken care of, assuming that they're on top of their performing rights. The way the movie and TV industry are so star, focus-group and opening-weekend driven, it seems like they forgot long ago that writing is the foundation of everything and their reluctance to deal with the WGA dealing with "New Media" was proof of that.

No, I might not be a "real" writer, but I am a real fan and I'm psyched that this is all over. Besides the headlines that all the Law and Orders can be ripped from have been piling up awfully high.

The Good News:
1. Among many other shows, The Daily Show and Colbert Report are now going to be at full strength. Not that they've been bad lately, Colbert especially has used this opportunity to display how gifted a performer he really is, it just hasn't been the same.

2. Great, now The Oscars can go off with out a hitch! Is it wrong to say I don't care? I didn't care about the Grammys either, though I love that Barack Obama and Flight of The Conchords won.

3. All of the production assistants can get back to work, too. These folks where the ones that people tended to have to most sympathy for in all this because they just regular folks that weren't striking, but they weren't working either. The thing is, most of those people belong to unions too and should have some idea how collective bargaining works. Not that I don't have compassion for them as well, but the effects of striking should an assumed risk in this union-driven industry.

The Bad News:

1. Now the seasons are shorter. This affects some shows more than others, but for a show like 30 Rock that's had a hard time finding an audience, loss of momentum could prove fatal. That would be a flat-out crime, it's becoming dangerously close to my favorite live-action sitcom ever. This world would be so much easier to live in if I liked According To Jim.

2. If the shows come back at all. Unfortunately Battlestar Galactica might be one of them. If you've followed that show, you know how devastating that is; they were only halfway through their last season before the strike started and it's possible that it won't be completed. Sure, folks on the internet will protest, but-as Firefly and Snakes On A Plane proved- that might not mean anything.

3. According To Jim Is Coming Back.

I'm Sorry Paris, I'm Going To Have To Deny Your Myspace Friendship.

2008-02-06T14:04:00.000-05:00

Hello, Paris, is it? I know this is probably not your real name, but this is the name that comes up when you've E-mailed me or friend requested me through Myspace. BTW, you may want to change your name, there's a famous woman of questionable virtue with the same name and you don't want to confuse people. Or do you? You are a complicated woman.

It started off you feigning ignorance with how Myspace works and wanting me to chat with you online. I realized that you were just being coy when you sent me 6 more e-mails with your picture from other accounts like: Sexyparis, Sexxxyparis, or Sexiparis, so you obviously know your way around Myspace.

Don't get me wrong, I'm very flattered- and calling me "Cutee" certainly appeals to my vanity, but you're coming on a little strong; especially when you started sending me more than a dozen e-mails a day for months, with you in various stages of undress. Another tip: wording all of your e-mails the exact same way makes me question your sincerity. The thing is I'm more attracted to a Tina Fey-type woman, that's just me. Also, the fact that your job seems to consist of performing livecam sex shows is also a bit of a dealbreaker for me.

I'm using this blog as a forum to talk to you because my marking your every correspondence as "spam" has not stopped your advances. I even tried to chat with you to threaten legal action against your harassment, but you were too busy preparing for your livecam sex show to chat.

Please just stop, don't make this any more more difficult than it already is.

Fear of Flying

2008-02-04T17:30:00.000-05:00

The few times I flew in a plane as a kid, I really loved it. You couldn't get me away from the window, watching the people and cars get smaller and smaller. We got so high up, the clouds looked like they were coming out the ground in huge billowy columns. Before the knowledge of the amount of school I'd have to have killed the desire, I wanted to become an astronaut; I'd look up at the darker shade of blue sky up there and wondered how far I was from outer space.

For whatever reason, I didn't fly from the time when I was about 11 to about 25, when I flew back to the East Coast after my mom and brother moved out to Arizona in 1996. I made sure to have the window seat and I was beyond psyched, it looked like I was going to have the whole row to myself.

Right as the stewardess tried to shut the door, two late-comers pushed through the door- a mother and child- and guess where they were sitting. The mom was a bit, quite a bit, overweight and her 3 year-old had more than the standard share of precociousness. Despite his mother's timid protests, the boy wouldn't keep his seatbelt on and kept putting the tray table down. Anyone who has flown knows what a big no-no this is, even if we don't know why. Only after gaining the ire of the stewardess did the mom get him to settle enough to bounce away, strapped in his seat.

Once the seatbelt sign turned off, the mom asked if he wanted to sit on her lap. Since she was sitting in the center seat, her perching him on her ample girth created a wall of flesh that sealed me off from the rest of the plane. I angled myself toward the window to pay more attention to the majesty of this great country and less on the squirmy and increasingly musky mass next to me.

I started writing a letter to the now-defunct 'zine Ben is Dead about their exclusion of Some Kind of Wonderful in one of their "Retro Hell" issues. This movie had been the quite bone of contention with me and my friends, mainly due to the "Lea Thompson vs. Mary Stewart Masterson" debate (I wrote a post about it here). Basically, I thought with all the attention that Eric Stoltz paid to..... holy shit, what's that unholy shaking? I realize now with many flights under my belt that I was lucky that my plane trips before were exceptionally smooth, but this one was weathering a fairly robust amount of turbulence that my young rowmate thought was hilarious. The fact that we were seated next to a wing only made the situation more terrifing, the wing looked like it was moving independently of the rest of the plane, making it seem like we were riding on a ungainly metal bird.

The anxiety didn't ease when we approached the safety of the ground as my ears felt like they'd explode. I tried to muster a dry pressure equalizing swallow, having drank the last of my water long ago. But I landed and survived, of course.

I have flown many times since- about seven times in the past 12 months, in fact- and I haven't recaptured that magic feeling I had as a tyke, but I have landed and survived everytime and that's the more important thing.

Popular Wishes (and why it would suck if they came true)

2008-01-31T16:11:00.000-05:00

The "Kids Don't Understand" post I've done over the last couple of days were written for submission to a comedy website (not The Onion) who, it turns out, has already run a similar story(and had used Steve Martin and Eddie Murphy as examples). So I might do a couple more, but not right now. Instead, I'm doing this one about wishes.

The list of differences between animal brains and humans isn't as long as we would like to believe. But we can fantasize and even if animals could, would -a dog for instance-imagine things like Gods and interstellar travel or a slab of bacon to call their own? But we can dream of realities that can go for impossible to possible with merely a "wish". But most stories that deal with people who are granted their wishes never end with the person living happily ever after, instead they at the mercy of the literal meanings of their own words; often with tragic or ironic results. There was an X-Files episode that dealt with this phenomena with many common wishes that I would be using if the episode never existed. One guy that wanted to be invisible, only to get run over by a truck. With all of the traffic accidents and pedestrian collisions that happen when we can SEE each other, this could have only have gone badly. Moulder wishes for world peace to end up being the only person on Earth, since that is seemingly the only way this could occur. If I had some opportunities to have a wish come true i would have to get back to the wish granting entity until I was able to affix all the necessary qualifiers and conditions to the wish to avoid such a fate.

1. I wish I could fly!
That would be cool: This wish is definitely a personal favorite of mine; I fly in many dreams and it seems pretty awesome. With as much trouble as it is to get from point A to point B with all the transportation methods that are available, why not just fly to where you need to?
Why it would suck: For one, you'd freeze your ass off, two, how fast do you think you can fly before your clothes disintegrate? The image of Superman flying over Metropolis with Lois Lane makes for a great movie scene, but the whipping wind and lack of oxygen that you'd have the higher you got, the harder it may be to stay alive. Unless you put those concerns in your wish.

And while you're at it, make sure you wish for a good GPS system. If you've ever flown cross country in a plane and looked down mid flight, did you ever have any real idea where you where you are?

2.I wish I could live forever!
That would be cool: You could see and/or participate every phase of human history through every twist and turn that fate sends it's way. Besides that, you could jump out of a plane without a parachute or other things that people only want to do when they're feeling suicidal.
Why it would suck: Do you have any idea how long FOREVER is? Imagine a really, really, really, really, really, really long time, and that is less than a drop in the temporal bucket. To out live every single person who'll ever live and witness however the universe ends, with what will probably be billions and billions of years of boredom in between. Good luck with that!

3. I wish I could travel through time!
That would be cool: Another personal favorite, I'd love to be able to go back and witness the pivotal events of history or forward to see if we ever get flying cars or several hundred other things that we could have never forseen.
Why it would suck: Forget all of the time paradoxes that occur in any of the movies or shows- although they wouldn't forget you- think of all the bacteria and viruses that are harmless to everyone in that time (future or past) but would be lethal to you as a temporary visitor. Besides, there are very few points in history were some yuck-a-puck could just pop out of nowhere, say, "Where's Jesus/Napoleon/JFK at?" and be welcomed with open arms.

4. I wish I was famous!
That would be cool: Do I really need to say why?
Why that would suck: You'd have to be pretty clear with the qualifications for this wish. Do you want to be Charles Manson famous? Do you want to be Britney famous, where people are following you waiting for you to do something stupid so millions can see it on TMZ?

5. I wish I was rich!
Hey, me too! I was going to write something about where this money may come from and economics and all that, but being broke sucks! Still and all, some of the most unhappy people I have ever known have also been the most wealthy. Which brings me to...

6. I wish I was happy!
That would be cool: That is really the most basic wish, isn't it? Most other wishes seem to just be roundabout way to be happy. That's think that wealth or fame (or flight) will bring.
Why it would suck: What is happiness anyway? Could you be home and toothless and happy, too? Do you want to be that kind of happy? Happiness can be different for everyone, if you wanted to be charitable and wish for happiness for everyone then we would have to live in their own matrix-like world with their own version to live through, since we've all known people whose joy seems to be derived from making other people miserable. In fact, in the Matrix movie itself they mentioned creating a Utopian simulation world that the humans couldn't accept so they made more of the joy and pain world that we're more used to. After all, what is the sweet without the bitter?

The Kids Don't Understand Steve Martin

2008-01-29T22:48:00.000-05:00

The second of a multi-part series.

2. Steve Martin
You don't understand: Starting off as a successful comedy writer for the Smothers Brothers and Sonny and Cher, it was Steve Martin's absurdist stand-up act that catapulted him to stardom in the late-70's. He was one of the first rock star comedians; his albums went platinum and he could fill amphitheaters with fans wearing his trademark arrow-through-the-head and shouting back "EXCUUUUSSSE ME!" and other catch phrases like they were singing along with "Freebird".

Here's a taste:

His first movies and numerous Saturday Night Live apperances captured a lot of the same type of humor- I call high/low brow, basically dumb comedy made by smart people- that has been enormously influential. Steve Martin displayed both a smart, fresh approach to the stale medium of stand-up and a gift for physical comedy better than nearly anyone before or since.

What went wrong: His own sense of self. The end could have come circa 1981, when he quit stand-up and tried to "get serious" with his bomb movie musical Pennies From Heaven in 1981, but he bounced back with more zany Carl Reiner-directed comedies like Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid and The Man With Two Brains, then more nuanced turns in Roxanne and Parenthood. Where thing really went wrong was the slow but sure separation of his high brow (writing Picasso at the Lapin Agile and for the New Yorker) and low brow (except Bowfinger, every comedy movie he's made in at least a decade) tendencies. Neither is very funny, although only one is suppose to be. However, over the years he has given us enough good material and performances that when we see him in, say, The Pink Panther 2, we're still more likely to go, "That's a shame" instead of, "It figures".

How The Kids Know Him: His low-brow efforts prove to still pull it in at the box office, although he seems to get the white-guy versions of the hit-in-the-nuts type characters that Eddie Murphy plays. The kind of roles that go to Eugene Levy if they don't have Steve Martin money (or to Albert Brooks if they can't afford Levy). At least he hasn't had to wear a fat suit. Yet.

Where you can learn: The Jerk. I saw this and Blazing Saddles(which Martin had nothing to do with)recently and was amazed at how well they've aged. The humor is as broad as Meet The Spartans, but much funnier decades later, which, I realize isn't saying much, I've seen funnier bowls of Alpha-Bits. You should find out for yourself. When I start making money, I'm going to pick up his memoir of his stand-up days, Born Standing Up.

This clip kinda tells the tale, but the end(the best part) has been cut out.

The Kids Don't Understand Eddie Murphy

2008-01-29T01:56:00.000-05:00

This is the first of a series of articles that I'm writing for eventual submission for a certain website. I wanted to blog it first.
Life is long and things change. Seeing the career paths of some of the biggest stars and greatest artists of my younger days careened down paths that are odd, ill advised and downright bizarre, especially considering their early promise. These folks are still famous mind you, but... you don't understand!
1. Eddie Murphy
You don't understand: Before he became the first break-out star of the second era of Saturday Night Live, he was an underutilized "featured" player during the disasterous 1980-81 tenure of producer Jean Doumanian. Her replacement, Dick Ebersol, didn't make the same mistake and took the cast's suggestion to make Murphy a regular cast member. From then until his departure in early 1984, it became the de-facto "Eddie Murphy Show" almost single-handedly save the show from cancellation with his singular talent. The show relied on him to the point when Nick Nolte cancelled an SNL apperance, they simply had Eddie go up and do stand-up. And he killed, as he always did.

From his comedy albums to his HBO specials, he was a almost supernaturally gifted comedian with easy charisma to spare. He made sure that when he made his inevitable move to movies that he wrote his own dialog, even making complete and utter crap like The Golden Child minor classics to his many fans. There seemed to be nothing keeping him from being as major star as long as he wanted to be.

What went wrong?: Harlem Nights. It was probably the most can't-miss formula you could imagine at the time: Eddie Murphy stars, writes and directs three generations of comedy legends (His idol Richard Pryor and Redd Foxx); how can they go wrong? Alphabetically or in order of importance? Pryor's sleepwalking performance, the ugly script too reliant on profanity and misogyny? The tone is set in the first scene when Murphy's character as a child shoots a guy in the head; the shootings outnumber the laughs and are much more memorable. Instead of bouncing back, he just digged the hole deeper with lazy sequels from his do-no-wrong past like Beverly Hills Cop and 48 Hours or crap that he didn't even try to save, like Boomerang or Vampire In Brooklyn.

How the kids know him: Starring in movies where he either gets hit in the nuts, wears a fat suit, or both. Any career juice he might have gained for his Oscar-nominated turn in Dreamgirls dried up quickly with his new-low follow-up Norbit.
The Onion posted a picture of Murphy in his fat-suited performance of Norbit's wife Rasputia with the caption "Eddie Murphy get paid $20 million to fuck himself." They were right in more ways than one.

If you want to learn: get anything, ANYTHING you can from his pre-Harlem Nights days, with the exception of Best Defense. Murphy's shoehorned role as a "Strategic Guest Star" was way too little to save this "alleged" comedy starring another once great comic actor going through his own decline, Dudley Moore.

Tomorrow: Steve Martin

Writer's Block: The Movie!

2008-01-24T15:18:00.001-05:00

As if moving to Arizona wasn't enough, I've been hit by a major league case of writer's block. Even with the Surviving Retail blog- where I've pretty much written everything already- I've still been a bit too paralyzed to post. All is not lost, I've just made a video about it.

Check it out and share it with a friend if you like it; if you don't, share it with an enemy!

RIP Heath Ledger

2008-01-22T18:49:00.001-05:00

Heath Ledger's death has completely taken me by surprise. It becomes standard when someone dies to lionize them with praise and regard that they wouldn't think of heaping while there were alive. But I honestly believe that a amazing talent has been cut down in their prime. He's been in his share of clunkers, but it hasn't been his fault (The Brothers Grimm comes to mind). His performance in Brokeback Mountain - in a lesser actor's hands- could have been been one-dimensionally stoic; making it merely the "gay cowboy" movie that people who didn't see it thought it was. But the river of passion and regret that ran underneath Ledger's performance of Ennis made the heartbreak of the last scene completely real. This was a man at war with himself, putting himself emotionally and geographically far away from the people that loved him. Not until he sees his lover and friend's bloody shirt does he truly realize the price he's had to pay for his isolation. It's one of the most powerfully emotional scenes I have ever seen.

I'm sure that he is going to be amazing as the Joker, but I know he had many more great roles ahead of him. My heart goes out to his family and young daughter.

Your Pal's Movie Previews

2008-01-14T09:59:00.000-05:00

Cloverfield -A multi-million dollar monster movie that looks like a home movie! Bring the Dramamine!

Rambo- John Rambo fights his most formidable opponent yet: The AARP!

First Sunday- Ice Cube (Friday,Next Friday, Friday After Next) bravely tackles another day of the week!

One Missed Call- Terror goes to voicemail!

In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale- The fantasy epic with the elements missing from all the other ones: Burt Reynolds, Ray Liotta, and any quality whatsoever.

Finding God At Ben's Chili Bowl

2008-01-09T09:41:00.000-05:00

I am soon to leave DC again, by necessity. I'm moving to Phoenix, good part: I'm going to be closer to my family for the first time in a long time. Bad part: almost everything else, although it is beautiful this time of year. I've tried to take in the sites of the district the past couple of days and the weather could not have been better for January. It saddens me how I've taken such little advantage of the fabulous FREE museums in the District after living here for 10 years.

But this isn't about that, this is about a trip I made to the World Famous Ben's Chili Bowl on U street a little while before. As I prepared to dig my fork into a steaming order of chili cheese fries, I felt a presence I can only describe as divine, I looked up to see the mouth on a one of the many pictures of Bill Cosby move.
"Hello, Peter."
I answered hesitantly, "Yes?"
The picture of the Coz said, "This is God."
"Really?" I was willing to play along, "What's the meaning of life, then?", I said in a manner that suggested my doubt.
God said, "You people and your 'meaning of life', I shouldn't be surprised so many people ask, but I still am."
(I would like to say at this point that- as strong as the feeling might be to read it that way- the voice of God sounded nothing like Bill Cosby. He actually sounded more like Woody Allen.)
God said, "O.K., fine. Look in front of you"
And I did, I looked at the beautiful mess before me; molten cheese and chili topping, slowly sliding around the perfectly brown tips of the fries jutting in every direction.
"That, my friend, is the meaning of life."
"Really ?", I said, through my second forkful of gelatinous heaven. It was so good it actually made the claim make a lot of sense.
"In a way, it is. Does that make you feel joy?"
"Oh, yeah," I said, rounding the fries for a fifth time.
"Humans can think and reason and sometimes they do it straight into unhappiness, but they don't have to. They can seek and find joy, if they choose to; you just walked in here and got your fries of joy. Throughly unhealthy fries are fine once and a while, but if you eat them everyday and eventually your heart will freakin' explode." God stopped as I chuckled at the Lord's slight funny into choking up a greasy, starchy blockage, then The Almighty continued slyly, "or you'll choke to death."
I was starting to get what he meant.
God continued, "There is all kinds of joy on this Earth and Chili Cheese Fries are an easy joy, but many easy joys can hurt you in the long run. Hard joys like a good career or happy family are good and fine, but they take so much WORK! And if you follow someone else's version of joy, you'll probably lose your own and you'll do all that work for nothing."
"So what should I do?" I asked.
"You just asked about the meaning of life, and I answered you, smart guy. If you're honest with yourself and what you want out of life, you'll know. Just grab all the joy you can, but just be careful what kind."
"And if I don't?"
And God said, with a flourish, "Well, the world will always need burger-flippers!"

I wouldn't say that God made these past few days so beautiful so I'd have the chance to see The Bill Of Rights and Prince's guitar in the best possible weather, I just got whatever joy I could gather while the getting was good.

Get Britney Help!

2008-01-07T11:11:00.000-05:00

This is the post I thought I'd never have to write. I may love pop culture, but I don't think much of the current purveyors of it. When I make this kind of plea, I can't say that I've been shielding myself against her antics. I think honesty is important in every relationship and if Britney needs to be honest with herself than we need to be honest with ourselves. I'd love to say I haven't kept at least one eye open on her career, it would be impossible for me to not to, with all the dizzying highs and puzzling lows.

Britney has famously sung that, "I'm not that innocent," but I never thought she was. I got the same first impression that many of us did: The "Baby, Hit Me One More Time" video, with the soon-to-be iconic schoolgirl outfit. It was a flip on the old script;"The men don't know but the little girls understand", became, "The little girls might not know, but the skeevy men understand." I couldn't have foreseen the multiple beaver flashes or a bald Brit attacking a car with an umbrella but still, it didn't seem to me like Britney was going crazy, Britney was just going Britney! With the latest, we need to stop gawking and/or snickering and get Britney some help!

Whenever you see one of those "when animals attack" videos there sometimes comes a point where you have to say, "Why doesn't the guy put down the camera and try to get that moose off of that guy?" We're kind of at the "Put down the camera" point with Britney, everyone that has been getting paid to facilitate and chronicle the train wreck now needs to put out the fire it's caused before the kids get hurt.

There is more at stake. What if-God forbid- she dies? Is her destiny to become martyred as the American Princess Di in our age of diminished expectations? We have to do something, and by "we" I mean,"somebody else but me"; I'm merely a humble blogger, after all. But, I'll be seeing our progress on What Would Tyler Durden Do, don't worry.

The Problem with Passion

2008-01-03T12:57:00.000-05:00

At some point over the last few months I saw all six Star Wars movies. Not in any order or with my full attention, but no matter; I've seen them all enough times in the past, especially the original trilogy.

It drove home a point that I'd thought about since I first saw Episode III. Not that Harrison Ford held the whole original trilogy together in a way that Ewan McGregor could have if the stories of the newer trilogy weren't so convoluted and silly, but that it made a pretty good case for the dark side. I actually wrote a parody Episode VIII blog post a little while ago that addressed some of my problems with it.

The system of government of the old republic in Episodes I to III was obviously irrevocably broken where absolutely nothing could get done and someone as ignorant on interplanetary affairs as Jar Jar could have the power to affect galactic policy. With a clone army and a planet obliterating space station, the planetary systems fell into line like second graders being threatened with no recess. The Empire may have been oppressive and cruel, but at least they made the spaceships run on time. This is by no means an endorsement of oppressive governments, please hear me out.

Enter the rebellion, people from all over the galaxy united under their passionate hatred of the Empire. Their goal is simple to see, if not simple to reach: destroy the leaders of the Empire and their mechanizations of doom. With cunning and, um, walking teddy bears, they finally do it and the galaxy rejoices. (yea.)

Now what? Do they reform the same impotent system that caused the Empire to rise in the first place? How do they deal with the people who actually preferred the Empire and was more than willing to give up their civil liberties for the order and security that it provided? Happy endings don't require that these questions be answered, so we can safely assume that everything is gonna work out fine.

That's the problem with passion in the real world, it doesn't need ideas or reason to exist, but it is awfully powerful nonetheless. I believe that things like Anarchist organizations exist solely because real anarchy is a goal that can never be reached, structured societies exist because societies want them. This is true even among Anarchists, they have meetings and leaders, don't they? This might be being simplistic, but they're the ones calling themselves Anarchists.

Trying to make a point using Star Wars as a metaphor might be awfully nerdy, but it was impossible for me to illustrate this point from just one example from the real world; there are just too many. I think right now it applies to the Democratic Party, just like it did for the Republican party in 2000.

Passion is what an underdog has that the "overdog" often lacks, the rocket fuel for their rise against the status quo. But the Overdog has had to do the actual job that the Underdog wants and passion-as it sometimes does- gets in the way of responsibility. The underdog fights the good fight with both loyal and hesitant supporters. But after the fight is over, promises made are expected to be kept and the bill for all that passion comes due. That is the problem with passion, it can motivate you to try to solve a problem, but not necessarily in the right direction.

My Time in Iowa.

2008-01-02T11:04:00.000-05:00

With all the furor leading up to the Iowa Caucus tomorrow, I haven't felt compelled to talk about the months I spent in Iowa in 2007 finishing my book. Two common reactions that I fielded from people around DC after telling them my plans were:"Are you going to the writer's conference out there?" or "You're going to be right in the thick of it when the Caucuses roll around!" Politics and higher learning are such a huge part of being in the District, so it's not surprising that's where the mind goes. But honestly, if I wanted to be in the thick of politics, why wouldn't I stay living where I can take a short Metro ride and be right in front of the White House?

First off, let me tell you about Iowa, (or Shenandoah, where I was). The people were nice and the community is strong and I've never been in a town that is as deserted on Sundays. From it's greenest greens to the knocked-up women, it's an undeniably fertile place and you will NEVER have better corn or pork than in Iowa. Anyone that's had either will agree.

But, oh lordy, it is white! It is nothing less than completely amazing to me that Obama is doing so well there. There are far more black people on the dais at an Iowa Barack Obama rally than I saw in the whole five months I lived there.

I know it's not fair of a dilettante such as I to speak of the perceived bias that voters in Iowa may have against someone named Barack Hussein Obama, much less a black man with that name. But I spent much of my first 26 years in Southern Delaware and the Eastern Shore of Maryland and I have been made intimately aware of the biases there, and Delaware is the freaking UN compared to Iowa.

Barack Obama- be it the man or the rhetoric- has already done the impossible, in my opinion.

2007:Your Pal In Review

2007-12-31T09:37:00.000-05:00

So ends the most tumultuous year in my life, and the changes have not ended yet. I've lived in DC, Iowa, Texas, Maryland and it looks like I'm going to be living in Arizona before the end of next month. I finally finished the book I've been talking about for 8 years. I would love to write about the news events in 2007- the most "W.T.F.!" year in my lifetime, but The Onion has done a much better job.
My favorite posts:

Pretentious and pretentiouser
Obama for President
The Lonesome Bass Player
My Dad and The Shoney's Waitress
Is Being Bald THAT Bad?- This was my most popular post and like a lot of my popular ones it was written very quickly. It got featured a few places and people still find it when they look for pictures of a bald Natalie Portman (which it turns out happens a lot).
What I've Learned- My attempt at a Esquire-esque list of life lessons.
Muppets Vs. Disney
What I've Learned ....About Pop Culture
The McJob Dilemma
No Seriously, Is Being Bald That Bad?- a sequel to my then most popular post, that-after being featured on wonkette.com- dwarfed the popularity of the first post and for a brief time I put the "temporary" in contemporary blogging, getting thousands of hits from all over the world. For three days.
I Love Passover!
The Worst Best Man Speech Ever!
Childrearing Tips From A Childless Bachelor- Surprisingly, I got a lot of positive responses from actual parents, and that made me feel good.
15 years of "Baby's Got Back"
You Damn Kids!
Secret Language of Musicians
Ways Men Call Themselves "Asshole"
The King Of Kong and America
Territorial Pissings
Reasons Why Guitar Hero Is Better Than Playing Guitar
RUN FOR YOUR LIVES! IT'S MADE IN CHINA!

Things I Hate About Getting Older.

2007-12-28T08:18:00.000-05:00

Don't get me wrong, I love being older -for the most part. The silliness of being twenty-something is much more fun to watch than experience first hand. But it isn't all knowing laughter and VH1 retrospectives on my childhood, there are a couple things that make me feel every millisecond of thirty-seven.

1.Not being able to stand for long periods of time.
My dad took me to see one of my favorite bands, The Replacements, in Philadelphia in 1991. My dad tried, but couldn't stand the whole time. I should have looked to this as something to look forward to, but I didn't see it coming until I saw Ted Leo recently. I spent a good bit of the second part of the show trying to shake the feeling back into my legs, and I'm five years younger than my dad was at The Replacements show.

2. Not being able to wear boxer shorts.(WARNING, T.M.I. ALERT!)
Underwear in the latter part of my life had gotten a bit complicated. I used to love boxer shorts, and it was a surprisingly popular gift choice for my platonic female friends to give me. Then I started getting intense pains in my malely bits, my taint in particular. It turns out that my boys needed support, which is now provided by boxer briefs; they're comfortable, but I miss swinging freely. Before, as long as my underwear was covering my naughty bits up front and my dirty bits in back, I'd have no reason to throw them away. Sometimes just a couple slender threads were the only thing keeping my boxers from becoming a full-on skirt, but now I have to throw away a pair when they wear out of their original level of abutment.

3. Grey nose hairs.
As it is already, I have the most insidious nose hairs of anyone in my age group. As much as I root around with my battery powered nose hair trimmer, it's just a couple days before I see hairs bending out of my nostrils, longer than ever and taunting my efforts. Making them grey just makes it seems like I groom them with a high lighter rather than blades designed to cut them into submission.

4. Feeling like a dirty old man.
Even though she's 20, I still feel like a perv for digging Ellen Page.

What's a cracker to do?

My Retail Christmas Song

2007-12-25T16:17:00.000-05:00

I wrote this on Christmas Eve Eve night(the 23th) to entertain my co-workers after the store closed on Christmas Eve, but I liked it so much I wanted to share it with you. This song celebrates the short time when the retail worker can maybe actually enjoy the Christmas season: from when the store locks up on the 24th to when it opens on the 26th. Spread the holiday love!

The Lyrics:
Doors are locked/ nobody died
Where's the booze?/our nerves are fried
Looks like we made it/ though there were some near misses
There's been a ceasefire/ in the war on Christmas
Chorus: But we love Christmas/oh yes, we do
And not just cause Jesus wants us to
We love Christmas/but the best part of the day
Is knowing it's a whole 'nother year away
Second Verse:Returns are coming/ they can't be beat
Disappointment and lost receipts
But that's tomorrow/ to deal with that aggression
Now I've got my greatest gift/ A day without stupid questions
Chorus again add
since it's a leap year it's an extra whole day away

Surviving Retail:The Blog!

2007-12-20T18:14:00.000-05:00

In an attempt to get some interest generated for my first (non-fiction) book Surviving Retail, I've created a separate blog where I'll post news and excerpts from it, along with any other retail related things that might come along. It's at http://survivingretailbook.blogspot.com if you'd like to visit. To regular readers of my blog, some entries may be familiar, but many new morsels of retail goodness will be posted.

In related news, it seems like Karl Rove is having problems selling his book, too. That's where the similarities end; after all, mine is non-fiction.

I Love My Life.

2007-12-19T08:52:00.000-05:00

I love my life, I really do. Yesterday a congressman came in to the store, but not just any representative,but Iowa's Fred Grandy. My fellow pop-culture geeks will recognize the name, but for those who don't, he played "Gopher" on The Love Boat. I watched that show every Saturday mainly because my TV only got three channels, though I must of liked it on some level. It ruined a lot of my early relationship though, I thought you could just say "I love you" because people who just met each other were saying it on that show all the time. It took a little while for me to learn what a mistake that was because I believed my soon-to-be-ex girlfriends when they told me that wasn't the reason they were breaking up with me; "No, I think it's sweet." Right.

It still figures prominently in my day-to-day life; I sing the "Love Boat Theme" ALL THE TIME. When I see someone I'm happy to see, sometimes I'll sing their name in the place of the word "love" live, "John Dimes, life's sweetest reward, let him float, he floats back to you!" Conversely, to crack up my co-worker Lizzy I sing it in a German accent, "DAS LOVE BOOT!"

So any way.... The other day in the Toy Store, I looked in our notebook where we keep customers requests and saw his name and went to my boss "Is that Fred 'Gopher from The Love Boat' Grandy?"
"I don't know," he said, which didn't surprise me; he's had a life. It was. When he actually came in, I was still bleary from the cold I had spent the previous day battling so I didn't notice it was him until halfway through ringing him up. I could just barely contain my geeky excitement. If I knew where he was from I could have told him about about my recent Iowa adventures or regaled him with a verse of "DAS LOVE BOOT!" but my discretion -thankfully- proved successful and kept everything on a professional level.

He was a nice guy, by the way.

I need a job and a place to live.

2007-12-17T10:01:00.000-05:00

My temporary situations on employment and habitation have been going for a while and I would love to be able to get into something more permanent. If any one knows of any opportunities, please e-mail me at yourpalpete@gmail.com.

Thanks.

Videos, Videos, Videos!

2007-12-13T11:38:00.000-05:00

I'm a bit out of the loop, so I don't know how wide spread these are. Excuse me if I'm being redundant.

The whisper at the end of Lost In Translation REVEALED! Spoiler

I got hooked on a British show in Austin called The IT Crowd It's 2 seasons, 12 episodes total; yep, it's English. This is part of one episode, all the others are available on Youtube.

Do you want to see something about Larry the Cable Guy that's actually funny? Here's Larry using his real name Dan Whitney "the Freight Train of Comedy"

Recognize this guy? this is a 1982 commercial for the first video game I was ever nightmare-inducing obsessed by, Pitfall.

Another "before they were semi-famous" moment:

This is probably the most wide spread of these vids, but I still talk to people who haven't seen it, so..

You're welcome!

The Awesome Power Of Oprah

2007-12-11T10:14:00.000-05:00

Much has been made over Oprah Winfrey's stumping for Barack Obama, as well it should. The woman has genuine pull that I have seen the effects of personally. This is from my book Surviving Retail (which is still without an agent, by the way, the scene is about 8 years ago when I worked at a Sharper Image, merely the best example at the power of "O", not the only one:

"I was eating a late lunch and watching the Oprah show and they were having a 'Oprah’s favorite things' show. One of her absolute fave raves was a corkscrew that we happened to sell. It was honestly the world’s best, there are tons of commercials on now for the Houdini Corkscrew, this was the first, expensive version of that. Ms. Winfrey demonstrated this wonderful product, but twisted the cork out by hand. I joked at the screen, 'Oprah you're doing it wrong, just press the lever again!' It cost about $130, more than the combined total of all the wine I had ever purchased-especially if you only count bottles with corks -so it was usually only sold around the holidays when it makes the perfect gift for the wine consumer that couldn’t justify the expense for themselves.

After my lunch break I told Javier(a co-worker) about what I had just seen and he said, 'That was probably why we just got two calls for it.' That was just the first 10 minutes, by the next day we had fielded about 3 dozen calls about them with most people going,”$130? Figures Oprah wouldn’t mention that part!” But a surprisingly large number resulted in actual purchases, and we ran out within a couple of days. It seemed like the company wasn’t aware of the upcoming big “O’ shoutout, because most of our stores ran out and we had to get as special shipment to replenish from the company."

I call her my "Favorite Billionaire" because even though she is a bit pompous and self-righteous at times; compared to how bad she could be, she's downright humble.

Let's just hope she only uses it for good (or for awesome)!

Checks and Balances in the 21st Century

2007-12-10T11:35:00.000-05:00

When you look at history through today's politically correct lens, the founding fathers fall far short and it has been popular to bash them for this in recent years but that's one of the truths of human history: it's often made by Assholes.

One of the things you can't deny is that they were political geniuses. When they were crafting the Constitution, they couldn't have foreseen all of the changes that have occurred since but they knew one thing: one branch of government cannot run everything. The Bill of Rights are the first ten amendments because George Mason (among others) were afraid that future governments would not honor certain basic rights unless they were legally obliged to.

Can you guess why I'm bringing this up now? Look at what's happened in this country with unchecked power? Now it's the Iran NIE and the "destroyed" interrogation tapes being the latest things that will "bring down" the Bush Presidency; but they won't. I'd like to take this opportunity to say that I hate the political system in general, I'll sure I'll say the same thing when the Democrats are in power and make their eventual fuck-ups. The Democratic Presidental Canadates are mainly good at not being George Bush and not much else (although I do still like Obama) and calling the Democratic Congress impotent is an insult to people that suffer from erectile dysfunction.

But let's be honest, what would the GOP do if a Democratic president had:

had shadowy ties to some of the most egregious examples of corporate wrongdoing in history?

not caught Osama bin Laden six years after 9/11? And attacked a country that wasn't responsible for it?

Left an American city to rot two years after it was destroyed after a hurricane (especially since after 9/11 we were suppose to be better prepared for things like this)

a senior member of his staff that exposed a CIA operative to a journalist?

Regardless of what they might say neither party is truly about freedom or morality, it's about their version of politics as usual. It's a little like being a sports fan, you love the players until they're wearing another uniform. I'll explain: both sides love say how much they value integrity when it's the integrity of the person on the other side being called into question, but downplay it when it's someone on their side.

But this time around it's a Republican Administration that wants us to trust them without being worthy of it. They're the ones that love to say that people who don't support the Iraq War don't support the troops but then don't give them enough armor or give maimed soldiers a bill.

But regardless of what happens or who gets elected it's still politics-as-usual. People love to say that 9/11 changed everything, but it didn't. 9/11 excused everything.

RUN FOR YOUR LIVES! IT'S MADE IN CHINA!

2007-12-06T10:49:00.000-05:00

The hysteria of "dangerous" Chinese toys is a bit like the last scene in the original Invasion of The Body Snatchers where the protagonist realize he's too late, THEY'RE ALREADY HERE; and they have been for decades.

I'm back working at the toy store (where I worked before I left to finish my book)for the holidays and I have a fraction of the stress that I've had in previous years. Here's a post I wrote about it last year. I put the credit to my boss, who has made sure I haven't worked too much, but also a more zen way of being. But this whole China fear has put a new wrinkle in things. The people that are concerned about it -about 3 or 4 a day- cannot be reasoned with.
Customer: "Is this dangerous!"
Co-worker: "No, besides it's for a 9-year old, they don't put stuff in their mouth."
Customer: "So that means it's OK to buy something that will poison her?!"
Stuff like that. This by no means should be read as my not caring about the welfare of children, I'm just a big fan of keeping perspective. These recalls are happening even if there could be a threat and a very small percentage of toys have been affected. It's done wonders for my TV screen time, ABC and CBS have both been in the store in the past week to shoot stories; if you see (or have seen) a bald guy ringing up toys recently, it's me.
The problem is EVERYTHING is made in China, and has been for a long time. When I worked at The Sharper Image, people would come in and ask, "What do you have that's not made in China?" and I'd say, "You're in the wrong place." The thing that people (some one!) should be concerned about as the INSANE amount of money being poured into the (Communist)Chinese economy. Do you know what happens when so much economic growth happens in a system not designed to handle it? I think we're about to find out.

But the consumer needs to understand their own role in this. For years, people have made it clear that they'll shop where the price is lowest, they're even sacrifice customer service and get packed into "big box" stores for the privilege. Have you had problems finding a certain Lego set? Thank Target and Walmart, to keep up their required stock supply and keeping prices low they move a lot of their production to Mexico. The entire first run were defective and had to all be scraped; a year and a half later, they still haven't recovered. This is merely one example of hundreds of companies being forced overseas to keep their prices down.

In a way, it's a bit like this video, just think of the American Public as the girl and Corporate America as her parents:

Corporate America:"Isn't this what you wanted? Cheap prices? What did I do wrong?"
You've found out what the Paparazzi and Catholic Priests already know: fuck with the kids, and all bets are off.

Rejection, Rejection, Rejection!

2007-12-04T12:29:00.000-05:00

I've been trying to pitch Surviving Retail: Anecdotes and Observation from a Life Working Retail to literary agents, who will in turn sell it to publishers. Theoretically. I've sent out query letters to about a dozen agents as of yet, and gotten about 4 letters of rejection. As much as I have a issue with rejection, this doesn't bother me at all; I am so proud of what I've done I see it as their loss-or at least I do now. But after reading how writers often behave towards their agents and the wording of the rejection e-mails, it suggests that writers in general must be really twitchy. But I'm cool with it, there's nothing like being musician to get used to being rejected. This is the typical theme:

We say no for many reasons -- because of changing trends in the market; because we already have something similar on our list; because we know of similar published or forthcoming books; because something isn't right for us; because although something may be strong and even publishable, we didn't fall in love with it.

Try to keep "No" in perspective. All it takes is one "Yes." Editorial opinions are, of course, subjective. There are many authors whose manuscripts have been rejected, and have then gone on to find the right publisher for their work. In fact, you might say this is a time-honored publishing tradition, and we hope that it will be the case for you.

Ain't that something? It's really the very best way to be rejected; this agent has shown me more emotional sensitivity than some of my girlfriends.

Post-Party Apology Form E-Mail

2007-12-03T09:33:00.000-05:00

Standard Form
(Check all that apply)
Dear _______ , I would like to apologize for the events of last night:

< > I was slightly too drunk.
< > I was WAY too drunk!
< > I was under the influence of drugs
< > I was on A LOT of cough syrup

Thus resulting in the:

< > General obnoxiousness
< > Destruction and/or stealing of property
< > Attempted Hook-up
< > Successful Hook-up
< > With your significant other
Rest assured, this is out of my character. I hope this incident will not influence your decision when considering me for future:

< > Party Attendance
< > Friendship
< > Hook-up

Sincerely,

_____________

Reasons Guitar Hero is better than really playing guitar.

2007-11-29T11:10:00.000-05:00

I've been playing guitar for 22 years and playing with other people in bands almost that long, but this means nothing when I strap on the guitar controller for the wildly popular Guitar Hero videogames. The first song I played was "You Really Got Me", which I know on the regular guitar; I tried to do what the game required to truly "ROCK OUT!", but my finger muscle memory moved my fingers to a G to A riff instead of red button to green button. This resulted in strangled strings, almost instantaneous booing from the audience and disapproving head shakes from my bandmates. Brutal. Affectations like pointing the guitar skyward and hitting the whammy bar are ways to earn points in the game; with the real guitar playing it just makes you look like a member of Ratt or knock your guitar out of tune(respectively).

I don't have any problem with Guitar Hero as a musician, although I'm sure that some do; it's easy to imagine a nation of 9-year olds kicking the asses of their "real" guitar playing relatives. It's based on guitar playing like any "fact-based" movie that's "Based on a true story"; The good stuff has been tarted up to the point of being almost unrecognizable and the boring stuff has been eliminated. Trust me, being a musician has A LOT of boring stuff; The onscreen avatars in the game even reflect this, throwing and spinning their guitars more than actually strumming them.
Anyway, on with the list:
1.Practice, Practice, Practice. In GH there is none, thankfully. There is the practicing of the instrument itself, with me there in the writing of the song as well; then there is the practicing with other people, which is it's own kind of nightmare. When a band really gels, there is nothing like it, but if things aren't going well it's almost like an amplified bout of constipation that lasts 2-3 hours.
2. Logistics of the gigs. Loading in gear, loading out gear, getting the shit there, getting YOU there; I could tell countless horror stories about all of those things, not to mention what to do if your shit doesn't work or gets stolen in the process. In GH, you just fire up the 'ol console. Another advantage: you can use your intoxicant of choice without arguing who's going to drive home.
3. You don't have to listen to other bands. One of the most unfortunate things about bands is that there are more cool ones than good ones. My aversion to lying once led me to say to a band, "You guys travel light!"
4. Built-in audience. I spent a lot of my time when I played in a band promoting; getting shows, printing and distributing fliers and networking at every opportunity. This let to many people recognizing my band's name, but not to people actually going to our shows. GH audiences are always stacked, packed, and racked (as my nightclub promoter boss used to say). The is a price to be paid for their availablity though; thank God I never played for an audience as expecting of perfection as in this videogame, I would have booed off many a stage.

5. The money. As in, there is none. At least with Guitar Hero, you aren't expecting to get any.
Rush-guitar hero style:

It's Official, They Think We're Idiots!

2007-11-28T14:53:00.000-05:00

I saw this on Keith Olbermann last night and thought I might have dreamed it, but no!

The GOP treats us who pay attention to the news like the boyfriend getting caught cheating and then saying, "It wasn't me!" Unfortunately, too many of us have been too in love to look beyond the obvious lies and insults to our intelligence. Congress pushed for the vote to war? I believe Karl Rove is the only person with balls big enough to even say that out loud.

I wonder what his book is going to be called since Lies (and the Lying Lairs That Tell Them) has been taken.
My suggestion?:Cracker, Please!

Texas Never Whispers

2007-11-28T11:36:00.000-05:00

As you may or may not know I'm back in DC after a sojourn to Iowa and Austin, Texas (to finish my first book Surviving Retail). I thought I would share some Texas observations with my loyal readers.

1. Texas is BIG. No, really. It's big like the Grand Canyon is big, no description of it's vastness can prepare you to experience it first hand. You get a bit spoiled living in the Northwest, and DC in specific, where a two hour drive can get you to the mountains, the beach, Norfolk, Philadelphia and back and forth from Baltimore. A two-hour drive from Austin gets you... an hour from Dallas. It's hard to not notice how many of the flights at the Austin airport go to cities that are still in Texas.

2. Texans love Texas, it's almost like Texas is it's own country.Drive down any residential street and there are almost as many Texas state flags as their were American flags after 9/11. I think that Texas would be the best state in the union to have Alzheimer's in, you would at least know what state you were in at all times; everything mentions Texas from beer cans to the national commercials("Ford, Texas tough", "Dairy Queen, that's what I like about Texas!").

3. They are INSANE about football! They televise high school games, ferchristsakes! If you flew in to Austin not knowing a thing about The University of Texas Longhorns, you'd probably figure out by the writing on the t-shirts you'd see that the local college football enjoys a healthy amount of support. Soon after you'd realize that the Longhorn head logo that IS FUCKING EVERYWHERE also was a show of support for the 'Horns and you might become a little concerned. At some point it would come to you that burnt orange- this:

is their official color and you realize you're in the non-UT supporting minority. The color is so identified with it (legend has it that that was the only color uniform available when the UT football program started) that often shirts are just burnt orange with no writing or logos at all.

Movies that should never be remade (but if they did)

2007-11-27T11:17:00.000-05:00

Hollywood had made no secret of their longtime creative bankruptcy, updating old properties- some that weren’t all that popular to begin with (the Wicker Man?). Nothing seems to be sacred these days from the long knives of revisionist cinema. Since disapproving Internet flames do no actual damage; nothing can stop the ill-advised remakes. Nobody ever listens to me, much less Hollywood types, but this is what I think should NEVER be remade. But if they did….

Blade Runner- Few Science fiction anything from that era have aged as well as Blade Runner, funny considering that it didn’t take place that far into the future. I think it worked so well because the Sci-Fi elements were necessary to serve the story, not stuck on instead of a story. You could create the right sets, have the right story and miss almost everything that makes that movie great: The grimly claustrophobic feel, Rudger Hauer, and Harrison Ford. It still feels futuristic as well, something that the Star Wars movies cannot claim.
But If they did they would probably cast:
Decker (Harrison Ford)-Dane Cook. He wouldn’t be the first choice-that would be Jake Gyllenhaal , he’s just the first one that would say yes.
Roy Batty (Rudger Hauer)- Vin Diesel. He actually would be the first choice when a joke at the development meeting for the project gets taken seriously.

Annie Hall- I think this one, like the Godfather movies, are un-remakeable until at least everyone who would object to it would be dead. It’s absolutely the perfect romantic comedy right down to the ending, where they don’t end up together. I was going to stay Spoiler Alert, but if you haven’t seen this movie yet, you deserve to be spoiled.
But if they did they’d probably cast…

Alvy Singer (Woody Allen)- Zach Braff, he’d be perfect! Not as nebbish (close) but much cuter, which is much more important these days than when the original was made.

Annie Hall (Diane Keaton)- Oh, Anne Hathaway, why not? She’d look great in that tie and vest ensemble that Diane rocked with a vengeance!

Apocalypse Now- Arguably the most accidentally great movie ever made, if you don’t agree I suggest you see the documentary Heart of Darkness. It has all the makings of a total disaster: One of the stars (Martin Sheen) has a serious heart attack at the beginning of shooting, almost constant rewriting, filming in a police state (the Philippines), the general insanity of Marlon Brando. Add to that the nagging doubts about the abilities of Francis Ford Coppola, most notably from Coppola himself, who is convinced that he’s making the worst movie of all time. Out of all this, he actually made one of the best films of all time; my Vietnam Vet uncle Steve said that it certainly captures the isolation and dehumanization better than he’s ever seen in a movie.

Possible cast:
Col. Kurtz (Marlon Brando)- Nicholas Cage or Val Kilmer. Cage seems to be on the very short list when they want someone to play crazy who is actually crazy, now that Nick Nolte is too old. I read a story about Val Kilmer that made me think he might do a good job if only because he seems to be as focused in his insanity as Brando. Whouldn't you like to see the slap-fight that those two would have over this role?
Willard (Martin Sheen)-Christian Bale. All kidding aside, he would be awesome in this. It still shouldn’t be remade, though. Seriously. Don’t do it.

The HD Dilemma

2007-11-20T10:41:00.000-05:00

As I have posted before, the future ain't what it used to be. All the "futuristic"-sounding new wave music from the 80s doesn't sound like 2007, it sounds like 1984. One of what makes old science fiction so unintentionally hilarious is this future world of 2000 still use technology that was made obsolete seconds after filming, like tape reel mainframe computers and dot matrix printers. I watched some episodes of the old school "Battlestar Galactica" and on one, the crew of the Galactica discover a spaceship that contained some humans in suspended animation. They surmised that the only thing they could figure out about them was that they were obviously far more technologically advanced. I was going to have to take their word for it; after 25 years of my slow-building cynicism, if you've seen one set spray-painted silver, you've seen them all. The only thing that they seem to have was Disco rope light technology. Don't think this has stopped because we have all these wonderful gadgets that make our lives that much sweeter, even something as recent and forward thinking as The Matrix is starting to show it's age.

The thing that I always notice now are the displays; from the painted screens of "Star Trek" to the monochromatic picture tube displays of almost every sci-fi movie from the late 70s-early 80s, it crushes the "illusion" of the future that made it so easy for me to get lost in when I was younger. It doesn't help that one of the most enduring elements of old sci-fi is that font that everyone used that made it seem like everything in the future was going to be written out using pocket calculators. Like this:

Even though it could have been easily done, George Lucas didn't screw with the starship displays when he redid the original Star Wars trilogy and that, to me, clashed jarringly with the stuff that he did digitally "enhance".

This, believe it or not, leads me to HD TV. I had my first real taste of big screen HD this Sunday when I went to a friends house to watch football. It was like the first time I saw color TV, it made me see familiar things in a whole new way. The most striking thing was the contrast between programing made in HD and things that aren't. I realize that they don't make Plasma TVs to make the old way of broadcasting look good, but the HD stuff looked positively three dimensional, nearly to the point of distraction. You get caught up with watching the blades of astro-turf and not all the beefy football dudes falling all over it.

But, as you might have heard, not every one is excited about High-Definition. The Porn industry has never met a technological advance that it couldn't ride to a multi-million dollar bonanza-from VCRs to the internet and almost everything in between, but HD is another story. Every stretch mark and ingrown hair is now in clear and unflattering focus in High-Def. From what I saw from my football-filled Sunday, is that may be good that they're showing some restrain in that area. But, they're far from the only objectors, and it was obvious to me why people in front of the camera would be concerned. The amount of make-up shellacking that everyone from Beyonce to Terry Bradshaw is subjected to is really obvious in this format. Beyonce has the advantage of being a beautiful woman, but Terry looks like a pink-frosted face on Mount Rushmore.

HD is real (or more real) and TVs and movies are not about the real. As anyone who has worked on a movie or TV set can tell you, if you don't see it in the shot, it probably doesn't exist. With the ease and wide spread use of digital effects, seeing it doesn't make it real; be it a Transformer to the dead celebrities that dance with stuff that didn't exist while they were alive. But clogged pores pose a bigger challenge to maintaining the illusion of perfection that make regular people feel bad about themselves.

But now we as viewers have made it clear want the HD, we want the real. It's just a little more real than Hollywood has learned to cover quite yet; it might just take an extra layer of shellac to get us there.