I have a post on vibrators at Minimum Safe Distance. C’mon. Click the link. You know you want to.
Archive for November, 2004
As far as I can tell anyway.
We went out Friday night, as you do, and happened upon a quaint little bar called Howl at the Moon. This bar is quaint because it features two piano players in the middle of the room, who “duel” all night via popular songs written on napkins by the drunken investment bankers and faceless office drones that overpopulate the excessively mediocre establishment. Any given Friday night will feature Jimmy Buffett, Elton John, Billy Joel, a “hip hop” version of Green Eggs and Ham, and showtunes, then repeat. It’s the same 20 songs, repeated ad nauseum, every weekend. It’s enough to make one want to booby-trap the piano keys to release “sterilization gas” into the audience. That way the horribly banal taste in music of the patrons won’t be passed down.
So what the hell am I doing there? It seems that if you fill out a little postcard on one of the tables you’ll be entered in a “drawing” to win a free happy hour. I put quotes around drawing because everyone always wins. This way they can trick you and 100 of your closest friends into coming in by offering a free buffet and 2 free drinks between 5 and 8. We always show up long enough to get the 2 free drinks, eat more than our fair share of wings and pizza, and maybe buy 1 or 2 half priced happy hour drinks before leaving to go someplace else. We usually end up full, and at least on our way to tipsy, having spent no more than 5 dollars. It’s a pretty sweet deal.
So, what the hell is the point of this story? It’s to explain how I invented the Mapplethorpe AKA the Dirty Kmart.
I went back down to the entrance because I “forgot” to collect my 2 free drink tickets on the way in, and was given 3 tickets. I passed them out to my friends, and Kmart asked me to use the ticket I gave to him to get him a drink. He said he wanted liquor, and he didn’t care how it came.
Stupid man.
I went to the bar and looked at the list of rail liquors that were available for consumption. Let’s see, let’s see… ah tequila! That’s filthy. SO what doesn’t go with tequila at all… hmm… oh Sprite!
The bartender looked at me like I had just asked him if he could squat a grumpy, blend it into a smooth, frothy mixture, and pour it on his grandmother’s lap. However, he obliged, and moments later I was handing the yet to be named drink to Kmart.
“What is this?”
“Drink it and guess,” I said.
“Hey, this is good! What is it?”
“What the hell? It’s good!? Let me taste that… Holy crap, it is good!”
“So what is it?”
“Tequila and Sprite.”
“Oh jesus that’s filthy!”
Thus, the Dirty Kmart was born. In an attempt to save more money, we left and went to a bar that was offering a $10 All-You-Can-Drink deal. Tequila was included in the all you can drink list, so we introduced Matt to the Dirty Kmart phenomenon, as we had coined it on the way over. At this new place, however, the drink was served with a wedge or twist of lime, making it all the nicer. We decided to call the original concoction the Dirty Kmart, because it sounds wretched, and Kmart is dirty… I mean, because Kmart was the first to try it.
The second drink was named the Mapplethorpe because Tequila, Sprite, and Lime still sounds like a filthy concoction, but Mapplethorpe sounds very blue-blooded, patrician, came over on the Mayflower-ish. It’s also kind of like the artist, Robert Mapplethorpe, who seemed very proper, but liked to photograph stuff like homoerotocism, and S&M. So it’s ironic. Sort of. Shut up.
Finally, my drink is not to be confused with a “Cool Kid” which is equal parts Vodka, Tequila, and Sprite.
P.S. Heh. I said booby.
For the first time in my life, I saw A Tribe Called Quest, and it was simply fantastic. All the things I had to go through to see them, not so fantastic.
First of all, I only found out about the show a few days ago, so when I ordered my tickets through Ticketbastard, they wanted to charge $20 to ship the tickets to me. Keep in mind that I bought the tickets a week in advance. Had it been a day, or two days even, the $20 would have been reasonable. But a week? C’mon. So now I had to go for the “Will Call” option, which is always sketchy.
When we finally got there, I realized two things. First, the show was being sponsored by a popular menthol cigarette maker. Menthol cigarettes + hip ho show = marketing based on racism. They were giving away merchandise like crazy, and I’m pretty sure I could have gotten a pack of cigarettes for nothing more than my name, email, and home address.
The second thing I noticed was that the doors hadn’t opened. Will Call was supposed to go on from 6:30 to 8:30. We got there at 7:15 and we didn’t get inside until 8:00. We didn’t get inside the hall until 8:30 or so. Everything was running behind.
The first thing we did upon getting into the hall was buy a couple of drinks (Awesome! $3 cans of Budweiser and Coors Light! /sarcasm) and stake out a spot at the front. And then we were treated to quite the show. First, a fairly decent DJ, though no Mix Master Mike, warmed up the crowd. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, two women came out and started having seizures all over the stage. The weren’t exactly dancing with the beat, but they were scantily clad, and just kind of jiggling around on the stage. At first it was amusing, but then it became kind of sad. And then very, very boring. Just when I thought I couldn’t take it anymore, we were offered a reprieve… a fashion show! That’s right, this hip-hop show had everything- cigarette giveaways, dancers, and a fashion show. Just no hip-hop. It was 9:45, and the crowd was getting rebellious. The fashion show plugged on, and it featured some of the worst models I’ve ever seen. They were attractive, but way over the top. Think the Zoolander Walk Off.
There was the young black guy who would strike bizarre poses, like laying on the floor. There was the tall white guy who had all the walking rhythm of Frankenstein’s Monster, and that whole sucked in cheeks thing. Then there was the long, blond headed white guy, whose eyes were completely devoid of anything resembling the ability to form a complete thought without the help of a personal assistant. There was also black guy who looked like P. Diddy, and he also didn’t look like he thought modeling was something anyone should be serious about. He had the exact opposite attitude of all the other models. The female models were no better. There was a Paris Hilton clone, a model that looked like Xena that everybody went crazy over for some reason, and some other forgettable looking women. It seemed like it would never end, but it finally did. And we were back to the DJ and the spastic dancers.
I would have killed a box of kittens (not really. I wouldn’t have had the time to make it through the whole box.) if a guy carrying a Naughty by Nature banner hadn’t started walking on stage.
That’s right. Naughty “O.P.P.” By “Hip Hop Hooray” Nature. I can’t even describe how awesome it was to see Naughty By Nature after all the bullshit we had to put with so far. And when they opened with OPP, the crowd went hyphy.
Naughty By Nature went on for about 30 minutes, and then we receded back into the 9th ring of my personal Hell- dancers, models, and no fucking hip hop.
Finally, after what seemed like an hour, A Tribe Called Quest came on. They played a show designed for fans. They played all the songs I never thought they would play live, and they played all the songs that I ever wanted to hear live. It was a perfect mix of their more obscure stuff, and their fan favorites. It was a great show, and to say anything more about their performance wouldn’t do them justice.
As a bonus, giveaways were being thrown into the crowd all night. I collected:
3 Tank Tops
1 T Shirt
3 Naughty By Nature Bumper Stickers
1 Promotional Mix CD
and
1 Pair of Naughty By Nature Thong Underwear
I gave the extra stickers and shirts to people around me. The only stuff I missed getting was:
1 sweaty, ripped tank top from Naughty by Nature
1 sweaty towel used by Phife from ATCQ
1 cup of Hennessey meant for NBN, leftover after they left the stage
So I’m not exactly sure I “missed” getting that stuff. The guy who go the towel, however, gets the “Weirded Out!” award for the evening when upon catching the towel (covered with another person’s sweat mind you) he immediately put it up to his face and inhaled. Guhhh.
Whoopty shit. You managed to do the one thing you were put here to do. You reproduced. Big deal. Isn’t that the point of our overlong, and tiresome existence? You got knocked up? Great. I managed to not get killed today, thus continuing my chances to eventually impregnate someone. Does this make me special? I thought not. Neither is getting yourself loaded up with a parasite. Sheesh.
P.S. Children are very cool, and congrats to everyone who deigns to have them and actually accomplishes it. I hope you make good parents. But for Pete’s sake, do we have to pretend like your pregnancy was the first this world has ever experienced? People get pregnant all the time. It’s not that big a deal. Excreting baby and raising it right, now that’s laudable.
“Saw” was a letdown for me. Kmart may disagree, but I have my points and he has his.
First of all, it’s worth seeing once, but not necessarily in the theater. It’s not particularly visually interesting, and there’s no fantastic sound work to speak of, so wait and see it at home.
The next thing that bugged me was the characters. Most of the characters, even, unfortunately, Cary Elwes, were whiny, and shallow. I couldn’t connect to the characters at all. I didn’t feel bad for them, so when they were threatened I didn’t feel suspense.
Which brings me to my next point. This movie was not the type of movie to rival Se7en as a psychological thriller. Se7en was great. Visually interesting, the characters were strong, and some parts of it really messed with your head. Saw can’t hold a candle to Se7en.
Also, I’m not sure what the director had in mind with the way he cut the scenes together, but the movie wound up feeling clunky when it came to scene changes.
Finally, I was unable to suspend disbelief for a dozen or so different details that I can’t reveal without spoiling the movie. The movie is not so bad that I want to spoil it, but it’s not so good that you should rush out and see it.
On a scale of “Ladder 49” (0) to “Evil Dead 2″ (5) I give it a 2.5.
Sometimes I go for weeks without talking to my friend Jim. It got to the point in High School (when I was dating the horrendous devil woman I called a girlfriend and who monopolized all my time) that Jim and I would only see each other in the 1 class we had together.
But whenever we got together, we would always have a great time. It would be like we had only been apart for a few minutes. I know I’m making it sound like Jim and I are in a relationship, but it’s hard to describe in other terms. We follow the same cultural happenings, and we have the same interests. So it’s no trouble finding something to talk about. The conversations always eventually turn hysterical, and it’s hard to understand why unless you can actually witness.
For example (and I warn you, this isn’t going to be very funny) when we were in High School, our near demonic girlfriends, who were friends, decided to throw a party with the rest of their friends. They were always so busy playing grow up, and Jim and I just wanted to be kids. So while they were sitting around having polite conversation about the most mind-numbing crap I had ever heard, nibbling on pretzels and 7 layer dip, drinking diet cola and iced tea, I turned to Jim and said,
“Hey. When you were a kid, do you remember there ever being Bible action figures?”
He said he remembered, and it just went off on a tangent from there. We talked about how Moses had Kung-Fu grip, and his stone tablets could be used like a “Death Frisbee” on the other Bible action figures.
We talked about how the probably would have had dinosaurs as their “Sidekick Pets,” completely ignoring the fact that fundamentalist dogma can’t cope with the idea of dinosaurs at all.
We had only begun to get into the topics of playsets (the Judas Iscariot back alley/hanging tree, one playset for each Egyptian plague, etc.) when we noticed that our girlfriends and their friends had stopped talking and were sitting around us in a semi-circle like it was story time and they were on the reading rug. (See, I told you it wasn’t funny.)
Well don’t you know it, but that pretty much fucking ruined it for us. Every time Jim and I hung out after that we had people coming up to us and saying, “Talk about Bible action figures again!” We couldn’t talk about anything without someone expecting it to be hilarious. Never in their egomaniacal dreams could they conceive of a world where we weren’t there to entertain them. We talked about such goofy stuff because our brains worked the same way, and because we needed a coping mechanism and an escape from a group of 16 year olds who were eager to be 45.
I’d love to blog about some of the conversations Jim and I have had over the phone. (He’s in Arizona now, working on his masters in short story writing.) But they just wouldn’t make any sense.
For example, he just turned in a paper about characters who grew up in a poor part of Baltimore. This caused 2 ignorant comments to be made by one of his peers, and the chair of the department. First, his peer knew that most of Jim’s stories were based on things that had happened to Jim when he was growing up in some of the poorer parts of Baltimore. So when Jim portrayed an extremely white trash family living in subhuman conditions, his peer thought she should take it upon herself to ask if that was how Jim’s family lived. Jim was about to take it upon himself to explain that, no, that’s not how he lived, when he decided instead to pretend like it was. (See, we both like to lie to people if we can get away with it.) It culminated at the point when they were at a bar later that night and he “confided” in her that he was the first in his family to finish high school, college, and even go into a masters program. As he said, “The odds are against me. I’m not even supposed to have made it this far. I look up to people like you, because you know how to behave. Your whole family has degrees. I don’t even know what I’m doing.”
But I digress, the really funny conversation came with the dean of the department when she wrote, “Why don’t you just say it’s a black neighborhood?” when Jim was describing in his story a run down part of Baltimore. That gave us fodder for a good half hour. We imagined the dean wanting to make more comments like, “Can’t you have a few more young black men standing around listening to rap music or playing basketball? Maybe they could be drinking orange soda and eating fried chicken and watermelon. They should probably be selling drugs and not paying their child support either. Perhaps you could describe a scene where they all start robbing each other.” Jesus titty fucking Christ! Could it be more ignorant to assume that a “poor” neighborhood is a “black” neighborhood?
Oh well. Probably not all that funny to you. See that’s what I’m talking about. If you could see us in action, follow the train of thought, it’s pretty funny. We’re two guys with one brain. But when I relay it to you like this, it just turns out crap.
For those of you who like Homestar Runner, I present, the Homestar Runner Switcher Commercial!
When I was driving to pick up ACWGF to bring her back to my place I was in a strange mood. I felt great that I was going to Chicago, and I was happy to not have to go to work the next day. At the same time, I kinda wanted to break free of all the day to day stuff. I knew good times were ahead, and that I would get a change of scenery, but the doldrums still had their clutches on me.
So I thought about what I frequently think about when I’m driving: causing accidents. Before you worry about me, let me clear things up by letting you know that I have no desire to end my life. There are too many things to see, too many things to eat and drink, and too many people to know. This is not something that I would consider.
But, I do think about what it would be like if I lived in a Grand Theft Auto world. What if I stomped on the accelerator and went over that embankment? Would the car explode? Would I go over, or would the car hit and bounce off? If the car bounced off, would it roll? Could I block traffic for hours? What if I floored it until I reached top speed, dodging traffic all along the way? How many times would the car roll if I jerked the wheel to the left and hit the emergency brake? Could I catch air off the back of that empty car trailer? When I landed, would I pull over, or would I keep going? Oh, there’s a cop. Should I sideswipe him? I know he can outpace me, but could I lose him? What if I stayed on the highway, then made a move for the exit at the last second? And what if I went off the exit after that? Could I make it all the way to Mexico?
That’s when I had a really great idea, but unfortunately an idea I would not be able to fulfill. I decided, in my head, in another alternate reality, that I was going to drive south. I figured it wouldn’t take too long, and I could sleep in my car. I drive an old Tercel, and it’s covered with bumper stickers. I’m sure I would draw the ire of some. I would stop at all the little roadside diners, and take pictures of all the weird Americana that I saw. I may pick up a few hitchhikers, but I wasn’t sure about that yet. Whenever someone would ask where I was going, I would simply say, “South.”
I slowly wind my way south, crossing the Mississippi, and heading deep into Texas. Driving past thousand acre cattle ranches and “The Largest Cross in the Western Hemisphere.” However, I was bummed because I would only be able to get as far south as Mexico. Then I realized that the border between the US and Mexico was as realistic as everything keeping me from driving south in the first place, and I then started driving to the southern tip of Argentina, once again, in my head.
I’d pass through Mexico City, and be sure to keep my door locked from the scoundrels who carjack you, kidnap you, take you to an ATM, make you take out $300, and then leave you on the side of the road. I’d pass through towns that resembled sets from Robert Rodriguez movies. I’d wonder if these towns were towns that he had based his sets off of.
I’d practice my Spanish as I drove, and communicate in English only when possible. I’d scan the radio station to find whatever music, or announcements, or sports reports were being transmitted. I’d try to stop in the cities that seemed the most modern, but I wouldn’t hesitate to stop in a town that looked like it had a good cantina or restaurant.
I wouldn’t be the typical American tourist. I’d respect the cultures, and try to observe, rather than force my culture on the people around me. I’d try not to disturb customs of the land.
I had only made it to the Panama Canal when I made it to ACWGF’s house. Once I was with her, and now that I had traversed thousands of miles in my head, I felt the odd mood lifting, and was ready to have a great time in Chicago.
I never do any of that stuff, but I frequently think about it when I drive. And any small amount of desire I have do do any of that stuff is relieved when I play Grand Theft Auto. Plus, I always think about the consequences. I certainly wouldn’t want to hurt myself or anyone else. I wouldn’t want to make anyone upset. I wouldn’t want to go to jail. Plus everything I said before about loving life. So why do I think this stuff? I’m not sure, but it does make driving to places go by a little bit more quickly.
If you count the states I’ve had a layover in, you can include Alabama and Georgia.
create your own personalized map of the USA
Yup. That’s right. It’s Mr. European Traveler to you.
create your personalized map of europe
This one’s funny because I went all of 300 yards into Canada, and it counts me as having seen the wholes damn province.
create your own personalized map of Canada
And finally, as the French say, the piece of resistance.
