How It Was That We Met

Coloured Plastics

2011-06-05T15:50:00.000-07:00

After a dry spell of creativity, mostly due to scraping jissom from a plate in a Scandinavian prison -- the prison guards are the one you have to look out for; the prisoners are mostly heroin-addicted professors who are more focused on uploading their lesson plans to the University of Phoenix online so their TA's while have something to work off of during the videoconference classes. After doing these "pet tricks" for a little over a year, I was released on my own reconnaissance, provided I track down Urlof's wife in the Wal-Mart she was supposedly helping open in N.E. Siberia and put a bullet in her skull. He paid me upfront (the fool), so I skipped town, hopped the first bullet train to Little Tokyo (any one will do), and beat feet for the nearest In-ternet cafe. In my time in the pen, I only managed to dole out one transmission, a negative review of the David Cronenberg film "Eastern Promises". We screened it during "free night" when a transmission of a European Basketball Association game accidentally went on the fritz. Unfortunately for me, I was looking forward to seeing the Green Circles play the Ice Cream (somebody needs to fire that Anglo-to-Euro team name translator). Luckily, the one jail guard who wasn't in the business of making me eat men's sperm off of various Ikea dishware (I swear, a few of those devils used to order one of each item from the homeware section). Side note to my secretary -- remind me to write a letter to the president of Ikea and reprimand him for publishing a completely new catalog each month with over sixty new dishware items in each issue. Good for your product-hungry consumers, bad for your work-a-day prisoner who is forced to lick "come" off of them for the amusement of European perverts with too much time on their hands. What's that you say? You're not my secretary? Well, what the devil are you then? A barista? I'll be damned if that's a real word.

Anyways folks, I balked for a second there, but I can go all night if you want me to ;) Eastern Promises was hastily loaded into the Playstation 2 we were still forced to use as a DVD player, and we all snuggled into our Lacks to watch Gandolf from Two Towers take on a gang of Russian mobsters for the chance to win a baby's hand in pre-cognitive appreciation (Maria Bello swore he'd remember when he was 'round six). I had traded a carton of Gitanes and my last pair of "used" Levi's for a pen and paper around the fifteen minute mark so I could jot down a devastating review and mail it to the director's agent (some Hollywood hack, no doubt), thereby ensuring that she would fire M. Cronenberg and hire me to direct some magical Hollywood science fiction claptrap. What's that? My coffee-boy is talking to me in English. Don DeLillo you say? Well, do tell me it's Ratner's Star. Hmmm...that'll probably be a pass for me then. My good man, do tell me how I can access America Online here and how much that will run me? OK, great, yes. Username is PerotRollerblader33. Yes, the ending number IS a euphemism for butt-fucking. You're a smart little Nip aren't you? You don't like to be called that anymore? Since when? World War 2.0 you say? Fair enough, I recant that last derogation, but do be a dear for me: look up the URL h-t-t-p, that's Heather-Thomas-Teardrop-Palestine followed by colon forward mark, forward mark. World-wide-web unicron, how it was that we met-dot-blogspot and then a dot and a com. Yes, I'm looking for the review I wrote of the David Cronenberg movie "Eastern Promises." I paid a German mechanic to transcribe it in the King's English and upload it to this site. He was a boy no more than fourteen, but he managed to transfer all of the toilets in our gang shower to the Sloan waterfree system. Brilliant lad. What's that you, say? There's no review of "Eastern Promises" on my website? Well, what's in its place? A review of something called Jersey Shore? Why would anyone know or care what that is? And you mean to tell me that's the last thing posted on this site for over a year? I thought I gave my password out to two of my most trusted writer-friends. Harumph. Well, be a dear young Japanese boy and tell me how many hits my site has received since I've been away. I bet the publicity we've gotten by listing our website in Hotbot and Lycos has driven the traffic to upwards of a million hits per day. Well, go ahead, I'm waiting for the results. Don't be shy now.

Oh...

Jersey Shore

2011-01-21T22:33:00.000-08:00

Technically, we're currently in the second half of J-Shore Season 2, but this edition refers to the excellent Miami series. While S1 and the Miami episodes show progression between the roommates, it is the return to Jersey Shore that will be written about by whatever constitutes a television historian. As important and profound a series as MASH, Seinfeld or the Americanized version of The Office, the return to Jersey Shore shows a group of previously unknown strangers coalesced (congealed?) into a sort of tribal band of gypsies whose closest antecedent should be cited as Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters. Fortunately, we don't need Tom Wolfe's superlatariat prose to describe what we can see each week on cable for a nominal fee: seven postmodern versions of celebrity/rock 'n' roll star that drain a specific strand of New Jersey of its alcohol, electricity, gym equipment, laundry detergent and physical expressions of love. The most important of these castmates is Mike "The Situation" Sorrentino, the de facto leader, decision maker and trend setter of the group. Like Charles Manson before him, he withholds the appropriate amount of affection and psychologically forces the rest of the cast to "come together" like a proper family. Alcohol, drugs and sex are used as currency to drive the castmates' biological families and hometown relationships away, resulting in an incestuous pool of potential romantic partners, each of whom share similar interests. Should these partners happen to fall outside of the core group of cast, they would likely be excommunicated from the Shore House upon completion of coitus (or, in several instances, heavy petting), and left to wander dazedly down the Boardwalk to a specific t-shirt shop to purchase souvenir merchandise emblazoned with various catchphrases, usually uttered from the mouth of The Situation. The owner, a sort of millennial "Colonel" Tom Parker, sits on the sidelines, admonishing the cast while surely collecting a greatly exaggerated income due to the use of "Jersey Shore"-branded t-shirts. To sum it all up, this is the closest mankind has come to recapturing the fondly remembered strain of the mid-to-late 60's that we now refer to as "The Hippie Era." As opposed to failed shows like "The Real World", The Jersey Shore smartly culls similar personalities, encases them in a glass house, and lets a justifiably egomaniacal "adult" to guide them into a tribal love musical/Age of Aquarius, that by anyone's guess will continue to run until their faces are corroded by overexposure to artificial sunlight.

First Date Jitters

2010-05-27T23:23:00.001-07:00

Barry had me at hello. It might've been goodbye. We were in Hawaii at a luau. You do the math. He was a pilot for Valu-Jet; hadn't worked in 13 years. "Are you angry with me?" I kept asking. He hadn't said a word to me all night, preferring to express his emotions through an endless game of Hangman that he drew on our table with a felt pan and had designs on our neighbors'. They were a young couple, "doing it". Parents must've paid for the vacation. Eyes were black and sweet like Ben's from "Leaving Las Vegas". Drunk and stupid, we were too, but nearing blackout. I think Sting was playing on the bandstand but it might've been our server, I can't remember. His voice sounds like everyone else; like a Werther's Original.

Barry took me back to a motel in Honolulu; some nice joint. We soaked in the hot tub. I did all the things to him that I always wished every couple did on "Blind Date". He had a devilish grin drawn on his face with my lipstick when we woke up. He demanded eggs but settled for cereal. I was just bored. I called my Mom after seeing her three missed calls. Decided to drive my rented Tercel into a snorkeling party off the reef of "Quiksilver-Roxy Island". Made it to a Korean BBQ shack before I cut the engine off. Spent the rest of the trip pigging out and getting pregnant by a land-boy named Tigershark. Tattoo read "Winona Forever", the way it was supposed to.

Xoxo,

Good News Bear

Paul Simon Tourin', I'm In

2010-02-24T22:10:00.001-08:00

Met bad bitches at the small fade
Down at the mall, ballin' on gallants all day
Pick me up at the bar, my only car
Stoned and on bricks like Rian Johnson at a movie bar
Like the Alamo Drafthouse
Pour half out and fill the rest with the shit you laugh bout
I'm high off fumes, dusted on a red balloon
These goons will make cartoons
In alliterative rhyme schemes like MF Doom
Too soon?
I gave a joke about 9/11
To a Desert Storm luncheon
And took headshots in '97
A glamor puss
Working at the front counter
Her crooked nose buried in books
I said, "excuse me, Miss"
"Do you like to dine"
"And if I brought by a bottle of wine
Would you consider joining me in the lunch line?"
She smiled, put her hands together, they stayed stuck there
Courted her for 3 years
We were bound and fucked fair
And square
Like my Chinese sirens
Siamese twins breathing through four tubes
In these environs
To get any higher
Would be like Byron
And his dual heroes
We spit rhymes, still De Niro
No more, like Converge said
Bought a gun, pack of detergent and a verb thread

Easier

2010-01-22T17:33:00.000-08:00

After Regine left, I did a bit of a solo flight through Mexico City in an attempt to relearn my high school-grade Spanish, sample some of their fantastic cuisine and, if I was truly lucky, be murdered by a drug gang simply for farting too strongly or blinking in the wrong direction. I blew a wad of cash staying at a trendy hotel and took cars and cabs to the hottest discos in an attempt to comingle before my life ended. It was at Los Vertiges, a bawdy techno club, that I met Cassarotto, a beautiful half-Italian, half-Latin fashion model with a penchant for fast cars and uncut cocaine. We spent our nights making love in my hotel room. Before you start moving your hand down to your crotch to unzip, wit: this was no ordinary lovemaking session. We spent our private time recreating her first sexual awakening: horseback riding through the Oaxacan countryside. This meant leather and horsehair legs and arm shields for me, and a horsehair gobbler over my diamond mine that could only be teased out with a diamond-studded riding crop. She wore a horse head we had to first kill and then gut in my bathtub. Lugging it upstairs was the hardest part, and I ruined a perfectly good Gucci bowling ball bag hiding it in there.

Fortunately, Cass' fantasies were meant to be a moving tableau and our second week together, I got to be Luigi from the Super Mario Brothers video game series while she dressed smartly in a frilly pink Princess Peach costume. I'm looking forward to the next phase of our sexual relationship. We've put the hotel room on retainer, turning it into a modern swingers' palace with mirrors over everything, especially the toilets. I can only hope that Cassarotto's next phase related to a bloodflow in the loins caused by Peter Weller's RoboCop and possibly Miguel Ferrer's breath.

Raindrops

2009-12-06T22:17:00.000-08:00

In 1990, I wrote a videogame that revolutionized the Christian cartridge industry. It was originally a pornographic 8-bitzer game for the Nintendo Entertainment System entitled "Leathercock: The Quest for Delicious". I was working as a programmer for CarlCo, Carl Cornwalis' XXX manga imprint and coding in my spare time. While my prg'ing was mostly mods for Super Mario Bros that turned Luigi into either Chevy Chase or Jackie Mason (Caddyshackerz), I was given some divine inspiration by our receptionist, Deborah Lee Fensler. Deb and I had a protracted courtship that consisted of driving to the Westwood Chili's and necking like mad in the parking lot before gorging ourselves on chicky popperz and Miller tall boyz. When I was putting the finish touches on a Leathercock's last level -- a crudely drawn homage to Caligula where, due to the technology of the time, most of the orgy participants looked like Kid Icarus, Deb peaked her doughy head over my shoulder and screamed.

"That's the last half of Luke 3:21!" I looked at her incredulously, my fists balling up in rage. I took a breath and repeated my anger management codeword, "Cookies", to calm me down. Taking a second look at my erotic creation, I noticed that this dumb bitch might actually be onto something. We printed up 10,000 copies of Leathercock that night, slapping a logo that said "Spiritual Warfare" on it, and prayed to Satan that purchasers would confuse the milky cumshotz I included with Zeus' lightning bolts. Luckily, Christians love to see Jesus on a waffle, so they did. We sold out of that first caseload in two weeks, and at $35 a pop, I broke up with Deborah Lee and took off to Italy via time machine with a young Amanda Knox on the promise that we would be able to engage in real games that would fulfill my wildest fantasies.

Give 'Em Their Own Show

2009-11-29T16:23:00.000-08:00

Starchild here. As a workaday reality producer, I have the opportunity to provide precious wealth and celebrity to people that have a pre-ordained contract with Satan: Evan Marriott, Sarah Kozer, Paul Hogan (butler), etc. After witnessing the miracle that was "Balloon Boy", I came up with the idea to do a reality show about reality show contestants: find 5 families and tell them that they are in competition with 4 other would be "reality families" and the most "compelling" family wins. We'll watch the families try and top each other's zany antics and the most outrageous family will be tabulated by the amount of tweeting, blog posting, "fizzing", etc. Maybe in season 2, the family that actually does "win" for being the most obnoxious, fattest, "realitiest" family will be featured on national TV in a series that will make "Jon & Kate Plus 8" look like "7th Heaven". If there's any god in the Earth's crust, the people that win will be millionaires and be able to start their own line of salad dressings, cookbooks, wines, or graphic tees for babiez.

In other news, I got an email from an old co-anchor of mine, Suzy Salmon. She had just left her husband, a professional "footballer" for the Premier League's Chelsea. He was apparently verbally abusive and used to call her "Tiger Woods" in bed. I invited her out for a drink to celebrate her newfound freedom. I've been single my whole life, with only one illegitimate child and a Pearl Jam "10 Guy" tattoo in the piss bucket. We went to an Olive Garden and got drunk on bread and olive oil. Not wanting to drive home in my condition, we stopped at local Motel 5 where I rented a room under the same "Surf Ari". Suzy lit up a roach she had clipped with a butterfly knife. I coughed out a couple of hits and went in for the kill on her, but she told me she was re-virginized and we could kiss a little bit if I needed to, but she was saving herself for marriage. I ripped a fart of disgust and spent the rest of the night getting spooned by her and watching the Simpsons Movie for the umpteenth time. I don't even laff at Spiderpig anymore. Suck it.

--Bobby Cocks

Fall in Love With Me

2009-11-20T18:13:00.001-08:00

Man is a tornado and when he craves cocaine, not even a branding iron to the cock or a chance to win big on the price is right can save him from his certain fate. I learned this lesson the hard way when I took my best girl, Weekend Wendy, down to the barrels of Alvarado Street in search of the white dragon. I ran into a few line cooks who promised that they only cut their shit with roach powder and bacon grease. In this part of town, that's the best you can hope for. I asked to a key bump out just to get my wallet loosened up. They cut me off a slice of the corner of an old, reused Ziploc baggie and I took a big rip, trying to swallow the key up my nose if I could. At least it might puncture a nerve and kill me then and there.

Unfortunately, all it did was make me loose. Made my shirts fit better. I gave Wendy to them against her will in exchange for the rest of the bag of dope and a McCafe gift McCard. Ended up in a Biloxi casino placing bets on which loser would take a quarter out of a pissed over urinal cake. I always bet against man, assuming the best, and lost every dollar I had in my wallet and those pit bosses took my moths too. New Orleans doesn't like a loser in their city, so they choppered me back to LA where I'd fit right in.

Got home. Forced out of a first floor walk-up (and rob), I dragged a queen size mattress out onto the streets of Pico Boulevard with a sign that said "Fall in love with me:)" Made a quizno's a day for 6 months and replaced that sign with one that said "A sandwich a day keeps the reaper away" and starved to death.

The Lady in Red

2009-10-28T12:19:00.000-07:00

I arrived on scene with my Air Jordan’s and Lite-Brite to collect some samples from the scene. Some girls can’t stomach the work I do, which is why I demand so much respect at suicide sites. “Here she comes! Lilly will solve this case and see if there is any foul play. She demands respect!” I walk up to the Sergeant and grab his ball pouch and say, “Fuck off! Let me do my shit!” He tipped his KFC bucket-hat to me and stepped aside.

I go in and realize the monkey in the sequined red dress is sprawled on the floor with an empty 200-count sleeping pills mason jar next to her lifeless face. “She was a famous actor in the Piccadilly Square in London,” one baby said, “but she recently lost her only hamster, and the grief was too much.”
I examine the drool and banana bits coming out of the primate’s mouth and realize no foul play was involved. I took out my Lite-Brite, made a skull and crossbones, threw up and realized I wasn’t wearing any clothes.

I woke up in a cold sweat, realizing my brown bear husband was still in hibernation. I felt relief knowing I still had work in this economy even though I was a greeter at Hopscotch-Mart. His Monster, Inc. bed sheets were keeping him warm. There were deer corpses in the fridge for when we he gets up in April. I licked my eyelids and fell into a coma.

Scarlett O Haira

2009-10-27T09:51:00.001-07:00

The year was 1992. I was thirteen and Dan Cortese was teaching me how to snowboard every Sunday morning. Susan le Crema was a neighborhood virgin that I desired from deep in my stone-washed, elastic-banded Bugle Boys. The hair on her head was minimal but she had a condition where she would pick it out and eat it. I found this erotic at that age.

One day after school, we began watching Ladybugs starring the great Jonathan Brandis. “He’s gonna be the next Mel Gibbons,” Susie claimed. She was right. He was wonderful on camera and made cross dressing not gay for adolescent males, which was good because I spent the previous summer tucking my junk like that cool dude from Silence of the Lambs. As she admired my dad’s Vietnam memorabilia, I told the tale of how he sneezed on twenty four gooks there in one day. Her eyes lit up like Winnie Cooper’s did the first time Kevin kissed her. So I moved in, pulled down her shirt and licked her right mosquito-bite nerp. She slapped me and I never spoke to her again.

But on the anniversary of that day, I crack open a can of Juicy juice, turn on Ladybugs, and lick my nipples as my dick sneezes into those same jeans. She’s a lawyer and I find jewelery for rich MILFs for a low cost. I saw her at the high school reunion and she had married an extremely famous reality star named Puck. I lived my years since that day doing what Dan Cortese did: living life on the edge. Autoerotic asphyxiation is the tits.

--Jorts McGee

Metal Postcard

2009-10-23T11:37:00.000-07:00

She dressed my leg wound with a bandage made out of three glued together cruellers and one jelly donut. I looked into her eyes and saw scorn. She cycled through her lenses and the next set of peeperz brought love and empathy. We dragged my buddy Roach back inside. He dranked three quarts of moonshine and a bottle of Thunderbird. Thought he was jesus. No exaggeration on the liquor because this took place over a month in a centrifuge. He said he was ready to die so we killed him then and there. Ate the body to cover the evidence. I went straight for Jenny's neck. Saw it on Twilight. Still waiting for first Twilight copycat murder by two 13 year olds, but since they're still lighting each other on fire, I guess it's still Beavis & Butthead. She pulled me back, stabbed me through the leg with a spoon, dug the tissue out of my bruise. Begged her to heal it. We had done Krispy Kreme fundraisers for the middle school that morning and tried a 5K but made it 3. Made it better to know that they let the wolves loose at the finish line. The only people that survived were the quitters.

Made it down to one of the British pubs in Santa Monica. They were showing Premier League games and had expensive pints. I felt alright, to wit Steve Earle. Tony's got his own process, to wit Silvio Dante. We were in tracksuits by age 22 permanently. Getting fat on everything in the fridge. I cut an invisible bullet out of my stomach with a metal postcard. And when I woke up in the morning, you were gone. A smoldering ashtray in your place in bed.

Bowling

2009-07-29T16:11:00.000-07:00

My brother Chaz was in town for our cousin's wedding. I didn't get invited even though he lives in Santa Monica and I live in Venice, but I wasn't super bummed because I had a bowling tournament that weekend with my 3-man "God" squad, The Green Lanterns (named after comic book). Chaz managed to snuggle in a bar of hash he wrapped in a Three Musketeers wrapper and then buried in a jar of peanut butter, and we broke it out before my tourney and his journey, mixing it with an eighth of the medical marijuana I take for my swimmer's ear, Dr. Destructo #9. We rolled up two B.M.'s and smoked them on my sex swing before Chuzz got into his tux and I got into my bowling shirt, mongrammed "No Raid" and hiked a few blocks to the AMF Venice Dirt Shop Lanes and Buffalo Wing Bar. Me and another rotund gentleman had a little snafu with the electronic doors, which did temper my high a hair, but other than that, I got in scott free and my bowling (and life) partner Apron had a cold Coors Cutter waiting for me and my lucky ball Bustieros polished and being air-dried by our son's fake hand.

The Witchdoctor started things off by shooting two dead roosters out a canon, both of whose throat's had been slit, arguably 7 or so hours ago judging by the rigor mortis. I was a bit shaken by the sight of two lesbians making love in the middle of Lane 9, but I knew this meant we were bowling for keeps. I cut a nice thick gator tail up on the edge of our computer and snorted it all up before I rolled two strikes and a spare. Confident in my skill, I decided to switch from N/A to real beer and that's when things got UGLY: I ended up on stage with this band: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jLsOWiqQbO8, playing a keyboard I'd never touched and singing background vox on a song I'd never heard in some Abilene, TX horsehole. I stuck around to dry out a bit after the gig and ended up falling in love with a Mexican senorita named Luz whose chocolate chili never failed to bring him a blue ribbon at the state fair, and whose innovations in the data entry field led to the formation of the Texas Instruments corporation, of which I am an honorary charter member although all I really do is race Go-Karts with the employees' kids at the company picnics.

Scent of a Woman

2009-07-28T20:56:00.000-07:00

Suzz was a kinda girl whose legs tucked inside of her body like a pre-teen spider. She had a pair of bugger blue jeans that she wore day in and day in, ready for a trip to Australia that never came (but I did, heh heh heh). We had our first date at a cowboy bar in Villanova, second date at the Alter in a Los Alamos restoration of the Alamo, but made out of tin foil and twenty thousand Kermit the Frog dolls recoverred from Lady Gagger's bed box. I knew I'd made it when I could sleep on a block of ice underneath a blanket of golden skulls, stitching by Stella McCartney, daughter of the Lady Linda. Twenty years later and she's puttering out of the driveway in my Datsun with a car bomb I strapped underneath as soon as the ink dried on the divorce papers.

I'm standing by a giant keyboard with red buttons on all the black keys, and when I play the melody to "Chopsticks" on it with my feet (like Big) that bomb is going to go off. My son's staked out by the Hardee's near I-75 so when she stops at the drive-thru to get a Six Dollar Burger and pick up that 20 year old Mexican wet rat she's been fucking, I'm gonna do the dance on top of those keys in a tux with tails, top hat and sails. Once the car explodes into a million gooey pieces and takes out the kitchen to that fast food hellhole, I'm gonna take a cab to the Cedar Lines where I will bowl a 240 while my best friend John Paetsch watches on in terror and Mission of Burma plays live in the party room and where they will encore with "Peking Spring" at gunpoint. I will then proceed to climb to the top of the building and blanket the parking lot with salt water taffy I made myself, down a shot of Jagermeister, touch the edge of the roof and, running at a full sprint, swan dive off of the top of the building, catch the wind in my homemade Human Sailboat costume that I've spent the previous two wives on designing and fly away into the coolest Sun Spot where I will live forever off of Megan Fox's hair.

Ready For the House

2009-07-08T13:54:00.000-07:00

My girlfriends Suzanna and Tina II were down at teh [sic] Rathskeller where they were setting up inflatable pool tables for the Twilight fan-fic conference. I was at a burning down Taco Bell with a supersized Bella Swan, trapped inside. You were at a Jimmy Eat World concert with my best friend Roger, getting high off of Margaritas and clove cigarettes. Dad was a cop; Mom was a butcher; Brother was a queen who used to blow my boss at the video store in exchange for fish food. Some enemies fought us off with knives and swords, some fought us off with punches and words. Some flushed keys down the school toilets; that is, I had to go in after it. Some dressed like losers to try to get the half of it. Too pretty, too young, too Red.

One Album: Off the Wall

2009-06-26T15:03:00.000-07:00

I took a Sabbatical after college for a two month intensive ropes course in Argentina in order to buffer my self esteem and get blow-jays from college co-edz when I finally did get thurr. I ended up 15 pounds overweight due to an addiction to Avocado-flavored Fruit by the Foot, but upon arriving at school, my roommate Martin Steinway burned me a copy of Michael Jackon's 1979 CD "Off the Wall", and I fell in love with something that, while made of plastic and lasers, still provided me with more pleasure and comfort than any girl would ever have been able to.

I played that durned album every Saturday morning, as I forced down three whiskey and lemonades plus a few lines of No Doze, a cheap stimulant I used to shoplift from Eckerd Drugs. The pills were for keeping unwanted erections down. The booze was so I could better acclimate myself with my braying jock classmates who wouldn't know the game of Othello if it was personified and performed by Anne Hathaway and James McAvoy at Shakespeare In the Park while in blackface. If it was a covert homage to the Minstrel GMC Robots of Transformers 2, then all the better.

From the soft strains of "The Girl Is Mine" to the crescendoing po-mo Lindy Hop of "Wanna Be Starting Something", "Off the Wall" was an album that really delivered. I remember getting my first real makeout with a transformer of my own, while my roommate watched in horror from the dense, farty pit of his bedspread. I would eventually graduate to the refined sophistopop of Usher Raymond, but back then, at age 23, I couldn't beat good old Mike Jaxson.

Un-Involved

2009-06-14T20:30:00.000-07:00

Dear Penthouse Forum,

This letter is to inform you that I hereby renew my subscription until June 12, 2012, which is less than or equal to the first day of Armaggedon. I'd like to commend you for your grammatical choices, strings of violent, sexual doggerel and the panting WET images of Men and Women in various erotic settings -- Office, Library, CarMax, Six Flags, Serengetti, etc. etc. However, I do have one bone to pick. As I am legally blind in both eyes, I would like to recommend that you alter my subscription to the Audiobook format (or current technological equivalent), and that these salacious stories be read by President Barack Obama. I am confident that Obama's authoritative speaking voice will be able to present these stories the way your writing staff has always intended: as a living, breathing, omnipotent, cosmic narrative. As God is not presently available to read me Penthouse Forum, I am fine with settling for President Obama.

I would also like to recommend that your finely crafted bi-rotic tales by not only read by B.H.O., but set to the music of ZZ Top. I am fine with any song choices off of "Eliminator", or the entire "Greatest Hits" tracklist. Achieving orgasm to the twin guitar attack of the Brothers Gibbons while Frank Beard's percussive thrust keeps my masturbatory rhythm intact as Barack Obama himself rains down verbal Money Shots from the precipice of Mount Olympus would likely cure my blindness and likely influence my hand to select the correct Mega Millions numbers, thereby ensuring that every member of my extended family would also receive lifetime subscriptions to The Forum.

I understand that this is an unorthodox request, but one that I urge you to please consider. I can be reached at gasgzlr@rocketmail.com when you're ready to say yes.

Best Wishes,

Lyonel Huts

Oceanfront University

2009-06-14T13:01:00.000-07:00

I decided to pack it up at the small shingle I was running out of Raymond Skeller's Air Conditioner warehouse in the Jewelry District, Downtown Los Angeles, California, after my office was broken into for the third time in two years. Each robbery had gotten increasingly more violent, and this most recent "go", three thieves battered down the door with a dog whose throat they had just slit. The Rigor Mortis gave the dog the density the they needed to pummel the door, and like the Unearthed Story of Romulus, I soon find myself sucking the end of a single-barrel shotgun like a dick while they tattooed the lyrics to Don Henley's "Dirty Laundry" on the insides of my thighs. To make matters worse, they stole the Macbook Pro which contained the entirety of my Final Draft files, including the pilot I wrote, "Duck Soup", a sort of post-modern family sitcom revolving around a harried, overweight mother named Rosette, her blue collar husband Don, and their maladjusted, sexually/socially experimental children Darlene, Curdle, and Monroe. The show was set in just one room of a cramped four room roachbox, 88s 88s 88s, and I was ready to "go wide" with it by printing the Courier text in a fake newspaper format, printing 10,000 copies, and tucking each one into an LA Times with the hopes of maybe catching the eye of some young, hungry agent or executive who might ride my coattails to Vicodin and First Class Tickets to New York Fuckin' City on Virgin America.

I took the GMAT, crushed it, and transferred to Oceanfront U, a quaint, sleepy community graduate college in Venice. My daily ritual consisted of getting incredibly stoned on medicinal marijuana, hitting Muscle Beach for an hour, taking one class, and chasing tail at Stringer's Bar et Grill until they kicked me out. I quit writing (a fool's procedure I always thought. See also: Breast Implants, Fatherhood). We wuz at Stringer's one night. Me completely loaded up on a bocce ball full of Rum Raisin Ice Cream and Johnnie Walker Blue when I saw Serafina, a F.O.T.R. from Guadalajara who managed to survive a bad case of swine flu to come to America to learn ceramics and cray pas non-fiction art. I used a couple of cold openings, The Cube, Best Friends Test, and made her fill out a Dairy Queen questionnaire for Store #436 in Birmingham, AL, before realizing that the only English words she new were "South", "Park", and "Cartman". I took her back to her no-tell on La Cienega and woke up nine and a half months later with a pair of twins strapped onto my body in a double-breasted Baby Bjorn that Sera obviously had time to handcarve, what with her cryogenically freezing me for nine months, inducing me into legally-binding Mexican wedding, shaving my entire body, mailing my parents and brother pictures of me performing fellatio on Dustin Lance Black, phoning bomb threats into every major television studio in LA and cancelling my Netflix subscription after turning in my Graduate Thesis which was just the Director's Commentary from the Jim Carrey movie "The Number 23", erroneously set to Emperor Hitohiro's conciliatory speech after Fat Man and Big Boy knocked the tits off of Nagasaki -- all of this for a 2nd Degree in Political Science. Not a bad way to spend a lifetime.

Seacrest Out,

Violent J

Ground Chuck Vs. Ground Round

2009-06-05T17:41:00.000-07:00

Suzette and I took a beeline to Cabo San Wabo for our 2nd Honeymoon, and though I can no longer predict the future, I knew that I was going to fall in love with some exotic flower the second we touched down on Wabian soil. Our porter took our bags to our ground floor condo, and I told Suze to take a quick spritz and shitz while I took the opportunity to scout out some of the local talent roaming the poolside cabanas.

Much to my chagrin, the deck chairs and bar stools (hey, that's a Chesney album!) were full of pale, pudgy middle-aged women from North Carolina, most of whom had forgotten to take off their name tags from the blue collar jobs they worked back home. So determined was I to cap off our 2nd Honeymoon with a fling or at least a beavershot on my Kodak Klickster underwater camera, that I purposely took Suze to an all-you-can-cram Pasta-thon at the local J.T. Hawaii's that she had no choice but to return to our chateau and fall asleep hanging from two separate window blind cords, one wrapped around her neck and one around her crotch, as is her people's custom.

After dropping Sudz off, I crept around the bar and hotel restaurant (Carochi's), where Sam Hagar was playing an all acoustic set of all things, Aerosmith songs. He built up a head of steam with a taught "Toys In the Attic" cover but blew his goodwill with one too many "Get a Grip" songs, and I split for leaner pastures. With most of the ladies hanging on Sammy's every throaty growl, I putzed around the tennis courts and beaches by myself until I came across a couple of Japanese businessmen putting down Bud Lights at a tiki bar on the beach. I pulled up a stool next to them, swapped stock tips in broken English for about 45, and retired to my twin bed to let off some spuzz in my palm to a mixture of Susan Boyle in an Elvis jumpsuit and Kirstie Alley in the last season of "Veronica's Closet" (a little fat).

How About A Little Fanfare?

2009-06-05T14:40:00.000-07:00

Hey fans,

I'm pleased to report that I've no longer decided to hang myself from an electrical cord for the following reasons:

1) Michael Tyson's daughter did it -- too passe
2) David Carradine did it -- jumped the shark
3) I just won my first radio contest after daily attempting after 48 years

If you balk at the first two, please understand that the third was a slamK [sic] DUNK after I called up the Mark & Brian radio program when they requested the name of Track 9 off Todd Rundgren's "Todd" LP. I called up and Mark himself answered after the first ring. "Whad'll Ya Have" he asked?

"King Kong Reggae!!!" I screamed through the receiver. A basketball buzzer went off and they started playing John Tesh's "Roundball Rock" at a deafening volume. It was so loud everybody on Olympic sidewalks started going batshit crazy and doing invisible crossover dribbels between their legs and dunking on each other.

I drove straight down to the station to pick it up, and in my sincerest attempt, drank a little too much Captain Mo out of my hip flask on the way down, and accidentally wrapped my Celica around a telephone pole on the way down there, killing me instantly.

--Nitemare Lite

Monsterville, U.S.A.

2009-05-07T13:55:00.001-07:00

I was hiding out in Cancun, not really doing anything mayjor save for judging a couple wet t-shirt and sock contests in Girlstown with my buddy Kris, and selling some G-13 to a couple Mexican ninos part time for Los Narcos. I punched in on Friday at 3:30pm at Los Van's Swimshack, the bar where I backed at and judged those few contestos. Kris and I pounded a few stiffies; mostly, Bloodies and some Baja Vidas (Tecate and a shot of Sauza) before the 5pm Happy Hour when the touring college kids set in like rigor mortis in my Ed Hardy's when I saw some of these dizzy brujas. One girl, Tiffany, I think I regressared from high school. She was on the arm of some tan jocky looking motherfucker, twirling her hair and pressing her rack up against the bar trying to get our Dyke bartendress Tricia's attention.

As I was almost unrecognizable from my high school self: pale, skinny pussy turned into cocaine-thin, leathery, tan jagoff with a moustache made of dirt and the wings of la cucaracha, so I took it upon myself to try to lure her into doing of our wet T-shirt contests. "Take Our Test" I said to her, the Minutemen reff obv. lost on' er ('s OK though). Her jock douche boyf looked at me with a serious duhgree of scorn, and reared his hand back to hit me. I caught my breff when he just twisted the brim of his Dodgers cap backwards and slapped one of her tits to let her know she should dance for a whopper of a grand prize, a five back of room temp bud lights and some spanish peanuts.

Tiffany got up on stage and set the cabana on fire. She danced slowly at first, to Janet Jackson's "If I Was Your Woman" and then fast, to Lady Gagger's "Player Face", grinding her untamed bikini zone against a fake palm tree and pouring jugs of iced tea all over her hair and neck. She really clinched that fiver of beer when, as a finally, she grabbed the Emergency in case of Fire Axe and with one clean stroke, took her boyfriend's head completely off the neck. A geyser of boozy red blood erupted from his stump of a neck, dousing the patrons and turning most of them into HalfSharkHalfHumanHalfVampire creatties when the blood touched their lips. I stayed away from the spray, mostly to avoid turning into a human thing, but creat'd a few geyser sprays of my own when I rubbed out a gallon of milk hanging upside down in my Suspended Bat Slingerz that nyte...

Peter North

2009-04-25T20:55:00.000-07:00

My "wife" Vikram and I were playing foosball at the Parlor, a local Santa Monica sports bar, and a favorite watering hole of ours. A couple of dazed frat boys came in at about 9pm Pathetic Time, and I thought nothing of it. See, normally, I take my hamburger like I take my steak (black on outside, charred on the inside), but these pathetic putzes came in with a MAJOR chip on their shoulders.

One of them immediately reached for a pool cut, thrusting it under Vik's neck, I guess in some sort of attempt to frighten me. The other frat scumbag punched me in the face, pinning my arms back against my sides, taunting me with his creemy Mojo and flavor savor moustache. I couldn't spot a bartynder within a 7 mile radius, and the benches were filled with Watermelons in Sunglasses, so I did the only thing I could do: I blew my Peter North whistle.

Peter exploded through the ceiling tiles, cracking an 8-ball over the head of one of the goons before upending the pool table on the heel of the other one, slicing him right above his Achilles' tendon and sending him screaming to the ground. He threw a pool dart perfectly through the eyes of one of the other tuffs, and grabbed an empty Double XX, winging it at the bartender who North must've known had a gun.

Taking Vik and I under his massive wingspan, Peter flew right through the front door and out into the safety of Wilshire Boulevard. We piled in the back of his GMC Jimmy, and Peter, behind the wheel, peeled out onto the streets, leaving a cloud of dust in his Hellish wake. Back at his Reseda manse, he offered Vik a cold glass of scotch, and iced my bruised knees for me, exercising compassion and tenderness, that I must admit, left me a little turned on.

When he excused himself to use the bathroom, I took the opportunity to glance at his prodigious member, practically black in the warming glow of his blue-lit bedroom that reflected off his medical mirror. He invited Vikram and I into his bedroom, where he put on his band Havin' Parliament's demo, "Time for School", and before we knew it, we were walking out of the front door in a daze, wiping flumes of creamy sperm from our bottom lips and chins.

'Til Next Time,

Teddy Kennedy

Fucked!

2009-04-20T22:23:00.000-07:00

Oh shit, I think she stopped breathing. Oh, wait...there she goes again. God, for a second there I thought I was gonna have to drag Deana out of the meat locker, into the alleyway and try to bury her body in the bottom of the seafood dumpster.

I used to have a rule about not dating co-workers, but I had never worked at Red Lobster when I jotted that rule down New Year's Eve 2003 after Jessica stole my 300ZX and left a pair of my manager Paul's boxer briefs in my glovebox. Deana was our hostess, barely 18, and she had the most elegant blonde hair, flowing from the top of her widow's peak, down to her asscrack. I courted her with an increasingly sexualized series of crayon'd placemat drawings I would disguise as to-go orders for her to pickup.

Things started to heat up like a motherfucker between us, with a few steamy seshs of making out in her parents basement and disguising the sound of me cumming in my pants by keeping Wolf Blitzer crank'd ta 11. I took a train up to Syracuse to purchase a ring, but I stayed a day late to watch my friend Rune's Ring of Honor tryouts, and when I came back, I caught Deana sucking my manager Joey's dick in a cleared-out banquet and Bar Mitzvah area. I flew into a murderous rage, which alcohol failed to temper and Hardee's failed to soothe.

Why is it that the women in my life are only attracted to restaurant managers?!?!? What do those guys have that I don't?

I lured Deana into the kitchen by lying and telling her I got Randy Orton to autograph a Delta dinner roll for her (I lied, it was just Mankind). She bounded to the back, only to get hit right in the face with a frying pan, cartoon style. Unlike those classic Chuck Jones, spots, she lay there motionless. I'm not sure if I was expecting her to bounce back up like Daff or Buggz, but I did esspect her to at least do something aside from laying there motionless and not breathing.

Then, like a nightmare painted by God himself, my manager Joey walked in.

Did I:

A)

B)

C)

Hey "Hows We Met" fans! Here's a chance for you to fill in your ending. Send your entries to drcomedy69@gmail.com by December 11, 2012, and your winning entry might be read by President Elect Palin one calendar day before the World ends.

Othello the Game

2009-03-26T18:11:00.000-07:00

At the World's Othello Championships in Horton Foote's hometown of Fort "Foote" Lauderdale. Suckin' dry the exhaust from the back of a CruiserVan where I slept for three nights and three days on a bed of crushed sardine (and other weeeird fish) tins. As you know, we've successfully lobbied for a name change -- back to Othello, and away from that fucking shit name Reversi. When my driver Tumi pulled up to the convo center, I felt the hairs on the back of my back rise when I saw my ex-girlfriend Ritzy. She was my chief competitor last year, and my triumphant victory on her Othello hand gave me bragging rights to brand her hand and douse it with lye (the chief ingredient in soap). This rule wasn't brought up until 1999, and enforced in 2002, after Clark Gregg's "Fight Club" became a massive cult hit. She barely caught our CruiserVan as she led her boyfriend, professional wrestler Tommie Dreamer into the reception hall for a buffet that was sure to shock and awe.

It's Tumi. We're here together in bed, me and my 2nd unit driver Crispin. There was a talk about a flaming skeleten that lacerated through my door. Left handed and in bed with a professional wrestler. It wasn't real until it waz.

Love,

Chaz

Hot Sperm

2009-03-01T21:39:00.000-08:00

Genevieve and Jack were two real cool cats
And they lived inside of a satin space
The exterminator came and shook out a roach
And the centipedes all died in the flames
As the bailout hit, it was a second time writ
And all the axes were sharpened on stains
Were the water wheels rolled
Now it's blood that flows
Through the rivers and the lakes in the Siene
Well, those seaseed plants they really started to dance
And man climbed right back out of a game
On a nuclear board, I drove my Honda Accord
Into the side of your Range
And both cars exploded, in my pocket the antidote
Coded, with the last helix of a recipe to cure AIDS
But that's how our story went
And with all the money spent
I only had to go back two spaces to claim

Young girl,

They call us the breakfast logs.

Young gurl,

They called us the last of the white Nogs

Beware,

They year of the just-right wrongs

Drive-Thru Window (Into Your Soul)

2009-02-24T02:25:00.000-08:00

You -- black haired, black eyed in a white Celica waiting patiently for your four tacos at Jack in the Box. You were talking to your friend Bonces. She sat next to you. Her eyes betrayed a weariness of the soul that only a Junior Jack with Cheese and a chocolate malt could even hope to cure. I overhead a fragment of your conversation. You spoke of "Adam". A boy who had ripped your heart in two with his doublespeak and broken promises. Sensing my moment was about to pass, I ran past the sightline of your car, right as you were about to grab your bag of goodies and sprinted out into the street, spiking the food in the middle of Pico Blvd. and doing a can-can kick meets Super Bowl Shuffle, all while wearing full football regalia. I don't know where I get these ideas, or why I do such things. Well...I'm off to set fire to my neighbor's house, but first I, uh, gotta stop off at the CVS to pick up some T.P.

Here we go

2009-01-31T09:41:00.000-08:00

Hey Howswemet,

I've been thinking about submitting the tail of me and brü's romance for quite some time (long time reader), but I hadn't been able to find just the right wording. Until now that is. So, here goes:

1997. For me, the year burgeoned not unlike the previous. Just another oak ring for me and "the twins" (my two spaniels from a previous marriage -- Oh yeah, and, howswemet'rs, don't look forward to seeing any posts on that spun-out of a marriage anytime soon!). I wasn't really up or really down -- just doing time so to speak. Work. Eat. Sleep.

That changed abruptly though. On a saturday in early march, I got a call from an old NSMU friend (we had pledged the same sorority, but both dropped out after the sharpie judgement day). She wanted to grab some drinks and catch up on the "oil days". We met at Sparky's on US-6 around 9pm. After about three hours of chatting/chuckling/hissing, we got ready to leave. Just then, though, out of the clear blue Sky Vodka club room, Bruce Elliot Seer, Jr grabbed me and offered to buy me some shooters. "No, thanks", I said. But Brü was persistent. When he sees some "thang" he wants, no stopping him. Nothing. Period.

The next 3 months were just your classic, fairy-tale courtship Flowers. Chocolates. Theatre. Miniature Golf.

We just celebrated our first anniversary, and there doesn't appear to be any end inside us.

Thanks for letting me share!

Dizzy Dean

2009-01-30T16:49:00.000-08:00

We were down at Brad's lake house rushing some little punkass kids in order to get their parents to cough up enough money to float the Ying Yang Twinz to play at our Halloween party another year. I picked out one of the gumps and quoted him $2,000 higher than our yearly rate because I need to pay for my girlfriend's hysterectomy (got that idea from D.D. Afternoon), and he seemed game -- heck, even happy to get in the house and post up a bunch of Jimi Hendrix posters and build a bong box instead of studying for finals or doing crunches. It's how it is in the South. Hot as hell and we all spent most of our time playing Three Card Stud and Texas Hold 'Em, smoking Marlboro filters and trying to get drunk. I dropped my gump off at a Publix in East Brewster, and made it a point to fire a round or two off in the air with my Daisy handheld in order to impress his smokin' hot MILF of a mom, who pulled up in a Subaru Outback with a DMB "Dancer" sticker on the back. I took this as a sign that she wanted me to drill a hole in between her legs and quickly nuding my gump, I had him invite me over for a steak dinner. Steaks on him. I told him that I like my women like I like my meat, black on the outside, and pink on the inside, just to get a further ryse out of him. He tried to crack and smile, and stammered out "You're not going to try and have sex with my Mom, are you?" I told him it depended on his perception of sex, and whether or not he considered anal sex or coprophagia to be acceptable forms of lovemaking. It took this steambean a little longer than I expected to get his mom lubed up enough for me at dinner. He did his best to tip her carafe of Carlo Rossi repeatedly, practically filling up seven chalices of vino. She gave me that come hither stare, and unfortunately, I forgot to roofie myself and put on a pair of my good shorts, so I simultaneously blew a milky wad of beer shit into my dooks and made a boner that tore through the roof of my zipper and canvas, spraying arcy ropes of jissom all over the dinner table. To quote my favorite MTV movie -- "Better Luck Tomorrow".

Born to Run,

Bruce

The Pleasures of the Flesh

2009-01-24T23:51:00.000-08:00

My girlfriend Lily and I met the neighbors across the hall from us today. They're a cute, young couple like us -- I noticed a Max Ernst painting in the main room, a sign of good taste. There was a couple strategically placed Bruce Springsteen records around the apartment in case anybody came to interview them or question his sexuality. During a robust game of Charades, I managed to dump a fingernail's worth of "roofie" powder into her drink (not "Spill"y's mind you, the other girl -- name's changed to protect the date raped). After blowing a couple of easy cues with her husband (Tom Cruise, Tom Wolfe and Tom Servo), we dragged this sexxed-up foxx and her more-than-willing husband back to their bedroom. Since the bed was (unfortunately) only made out of pillows, I left illy there to do the dirty work, while I took a carobener out the first open window and through the skylines of Gotham City to track down my arch nemesis Mr. Freeze.

I ended up in SkyBar at a Ministry listening party for shit album "Rio Grande Blood" back in 2002 with Chaz, Ben Busters and Matchstick, trying to scoop up as many jello shots as time would allow before the refuse went to ladies' wrestling. Don't remember much of the rest of the night, 'cept I woke up alone. She must've left in the middle of the night because she cleaned out my wallet and left a bunch of Moondog's receipts in there instead.

Here Cums Success

2009-01-13T18:44:00.001-08:00

To Whom It May Concern,

Attached please find my resume in consideration for the Assistant to Mid-Size Sales & Distribution at the Nissan dealership next to Vivid Video in the Valley. I am recently laid off from my job at M.A.C. Cosmetics for putting half a bottle of hot sauce (Osama bin Laden's Heat-Seeking Fuck Missile-flavored from The Grove hot sauce stand to be exact[ing]) into the tester bullets of "Swollen Purple" lippystick, and as a result, I desperately need a new source of employment in order to support my weblog How's We Met, as well as my Netflix Three-at-a-Time DVD rental plan.

I consider myself skilled beyond most mortals' beliefs in the fields of administrative assistance, as well as sales. I have a strong feeling that most of the Vivid Video girls -- Jesse Jane, Jenna Jameson, Kobe Tai, and Tera Patrick amongst them -- will want to not only buy mid-size sedans from me, but fraternize with myself and my inner circle of co-workers at the dealership. After making initial contact, myself and my chosen work partners will proceed to undress, fondle and make love to these heretofore unobtainable women in a variety of positions, most of which I am certain the majority of the Nissan Sales Staff had never thought possible, either due to lack of imagination or excessive girth around their lower abdomen, groin and thigh areas.

After toweling off, I will proceed to close a series of deals with not only the stars of Vivid Entertainment, but the executives and assistants at the company, making sure that they know that Valley Village Nissan is the premier destination for new and used Nissan sales and service.

I look forward to scheduling an interview to discuss the position further, and I advise you to proceed with haste, as I have several offers at a variety of mall kiosks and three regional Spencer Gifts locations, where my extensive knowledge of blacklight installation and maintenance would serve the company well.

Best Regards,

Dick Cheese

Dark Magus

2009-01-12T21:10:00.000-08:00

A throng of sleepless nights in bed with Annette, a shot girl I picked up at a conference in Los Alamos. I was sharing my double room with Ted Griffin, a sharp account exec (luckily, on my wavelength) who I managed to buy out of splitting the room with me in exchange for the key to the mini bar and the use of my SkyMiles to attend his stepdaughter's funeral. Nights we would slink down to the "jazz lounge" where some hack band of border hoppers and unreasonably narcissistic dilettantes would be warming up the bandstand with winking versions of old Charlie Parker songs (I counted "Koko" and "Salt Peanuts") before tearing into a swampy, funky froth of avant-something. Each number would endtroduce another band member -- most of them were percussionists. These Mexican peanut counters would lug a homemade gunga drum, tabla or trap on stage and play the living ghosts out of it. My skull was fucked six ways through Sunday when they tore through an unrecognizable version of "Spanish Key". Tom Cruise was in the audience. He pointed to the trumpet player and said to me, "He's improvising". I knew that wasn't the case, and that he was just restating the melody, but try telling that to the star of "Rusty Business".

After a few drinks they brought on a replicant version of Paul Gonsalves and ripped through a few hard-charging fusion numbers that sounded like Jerry Garcia sitting in with Peter Brotzmann and Mike Thorne. We got so worked up that Annette stripped her dress off over her head and proceeded to dance amidst the shirtless, black Cuban men that penned her in on each side, in the audience. The biggest man in the group, a negro wearing a human skull necklace, threw her over his shoulder and carried her off to his Dodge Caravan. I felt a ribbon of petrified old LSD trips and dandruff blanche down my spine like the first time I read and internalized The Rum Diaries. I knew death was certain if I dared to follow, so I let Suzette ride away with those long-dicked savages, certainly sucking cock on the way back to their penthouse suite at the far superior Ramada New Duquesburge.

I called up Ted to commiserate, but he was with the all night watchmen at a bowling game, close to spiking a 265 on his 10th frame. I left him alone and managed to find my buddy Too Many Cutlets, who bought me a warm cup of coffee down at Nighthawks. We sat together, spooning lukewarm tomato soup until the blood red sun rose over the horizon, forcing us to rethink another day.

Advanced File Settings

2009-01-06T16:28:00.000-08:00

Jenny was a City Editor at the AJC when we first met. I offered several times to let her take me out on the town, hoping to get my foot in the door at a couple local Atlanta hotspots since the owners hobnobbed with her on a regular basis to try to get a good write-up in her section. What did she want with Ralph Mahler, Auto Section Junior Copyright? Turns out absolutely nothing, but I did manage to finger fuck Laika Khalamed, the F.O.B. Assistant Sports Editor at the company Christmas party after I fed her seven glasses of peppermint schnapps I told her was "Southern Eggnog". Two paternity lawsuits later and I'm ready to drop a lead boot on the accelerator of a loaner [Pontiac] Fiero and take it over the edge of Riverside Drive with myself in the passenger seat because I know I'm too chicken shit to put the pedal to the metal myself. Tune in next time for the exciting conclusion!

Knife Hits

2008-12-03T12:10:00.000-08:00

After seeing the movie "The Dark Knight", I decided to come clean to my father about the extracurricular activities I've been involved in over the years. Nothing (extremely) gay -- just your typical 31 year old male superhero fantasies. I don a cape, climb some rooftops, try to take out some bad guys or at least beat up on the homeless, and scurry home before my secret identity is revealed, so I can go on living my normal life as a drug dealer.
I broke the news to my father over Thanksgiving. He took the Amtrak down here from Olympia, and we spent Thanksgiving Dinner in a "dualie" between IHOP and the Sizzler, where I unfortunately had to boot & rally after some cherry cobbler made my throat swell like it had been stung by a hundred wasps. He carried me back to my apartment, where I showed him a highlight reel of my stunts. Expecting him to curl his harelip in horror, he showed a rare moment of reporach (I can show you a phrenology charts of the cerebral lacerations I received at his hook as a kid), and congratulated me for doing something with my life instead of selling drugs at the In & Out Burger near Hollywood High.
We shook hands like men for the first time I can ever remember. Not the type of handshake you might give an interviewer or your landlord or a prison guard on one of those heaven-sent days when they take you in through the out door, but a handshake that makes you break into a hug to solidify it.

I took Dad on a stroll through the ratty L.A. streets where I lived. We laughed as he pointed out oil stains in the shape of Jesus' face, or dead cats that lay in the fetal position on the sidewalk, slowly returning to the Earth from whence they came. He suggested we stop in at a local juke joint, Q's, for a pint and maybe a couple rib stickers. I obliged. "It's on me Dad", I offered. After getting through the door, I whipped the .380 I'd stashed in my leather jacket out and pistol-whipped the bouncer, and killed the bartender just to prove I was serious. My Dad started foaming at the mouth. "I'm having a heart attack" were the last words he ever spoke to me. Even those, spoken clear as day, floated into the miasma of life as I grabbed the long black hair of one of the Miller Lite trivia night girls. It was her bad luck and my good fortune that she covered for her roommate Trish that night. She wasn't even a Miller Lite girl; she was a USC law student that was unlucky enough to have the necessary requirements to do the job. "Sandy" I said as I threw her through the men's bathroom door and bolted the latch behind me.

Crack the Skye

2008-12-02T10:46:00.000-08:00

My bowling bud Chaz convinced me to make the trek back to West Palm for my 10 year HS reunion. I didn't actually graduate with the class; not because I failed out or anything, but because I spent graduation rehearsal week doing DMT with my mortal enemy Max Kraigen and listening to Dio in his cherryed-out Vanagon. My wife was in Alaska on research, so I tried to convince my step-sister Nitsy to be my date for the dance, but she gave me some bullshit excuse about going in to labor even though I heard her 7 month old crying in the background. I ended up going stag, and boy, am I glad I did: after Chaz and I hit the beer bar, I spotted Kathy Mixon knocking back a white wine spritzer and doing one of those half-dancing, half-joking kung fu kicks to "Nookie" (jeers to the DJ for only playing late 90s hits the whole time, ugh). Now I'm not one to brag, but I had a Rasputin-sized bone for Kathy throughout Middle School and on up through Junior Year of High School until I heard a rumor that she spent her spring break locked in a glory hole at Inserection. She looked fine now, done up in black eye shadow and fishnets, with just a leisurely cunt gut poking over her spandex undercrotch. I shook my way over to her, doing the 21st century robot made popular in the Beastie Boys "Intergalactic" video, and though she pretended to ignore me, I got some stink-line vibes that I could see in real-time (see, I had 3D contacts permanently welded to my eyes). I gave Chaz twenty greenbacks for a cab ride to IHOP, making sure to book him a 24-hour table res there, and took Kathy back to the same Motel 6 I lost my dignity at 10 years earlier (I let my pal Wes nail my prom date while I watched an ECW pay-per-view), except this time, we set the place on fire with a lovemaking session that, while consisting exclusively of the missionary position, was deeply passionate and obviously came from a very personal place. The next morning, as I leaned over to whisper to Kathy, "See you in ten years", she beat me to it, as she had bailed, emailed my wife the details of our "fucking" (cc'ing me on the note), stolen my wallet, charged two continental breakfasts on my credit card, and left the Shoney's tray and receipt on my stomach. Oh well, better late than never.

Work Shirts

2008-12-01T16:41:00.000-08:00

Drug out of local custody battle by wife's new husband, an American Gladiator named only "The Sergeant". Thrown out down courthouse steps like a cartoon character, right onto a packet of hot sauce (Tapatio), staining my striped suit. Wouldn't have been permanent, but I doubt I can afford dry-cleaning bills since Ford's (Filling Station) been garnishing my wages due to unpaid burger bills. Judge said we're close to a decision. That means another day off of work to fight my ex-wife because we both don't want the kid. I waved to him today, my son, Max Ernst Snow. He flipped me the bird. The judge saw it and smiled.
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I called Teddy, my last friend in El Lay. He took me out for a Coors and some sliders. He left after his dinner, but I slumped further into the red leather. Teen Caffeine was playing a couple of old Fall songs. I requested "Smile" and they played "Reformation". Must be like a real Fall concert. There was a girl though. Couldn't have been older than 18. Said she was a college radio DJ. I went to college, told her that plus "we have a lot in common". Laughed at my own joke. Freud says that encourages them to laugh. Guess she didn't take her intro course at university. She pulled out a stack of books, asked me to autograph each one. Held up The Pumphouse Gang. I'm not Tom Wolfe, I said. She looked crestfallen. Her face was a mush of pea soup and burnt sienna Crayolas. Two more drinks and she looked like the cowgirl that hangs the moon on the Miller High Life labels, except come to life. She said she told the policeman what she really thought. I asked if she'd like to go to the Windy City.

She said yes, had some extra frequent flier miles as long as I could fit in a dog kennel she customized for a rottweiller she loved until he ate a 3 year old in La Cienega Park. That's Turtle and Drama's favorite type of dog I said. "Don't be a loser" she said to me, and I had to agree. We robbed an Urban Outfitters before the flight. I had some photomatic cameras and vinyl LP coasters for the flight. Giving these to the stewardesses gets you free beers. It's like beads at Mardi Gras. I used to get drinks with this Cajun named Samm. He drowned diving off a dock on Jeff Buckley Day. His last words were "Jesus in a tape recorder" that he spoke into a microphone he made out of his fist. Nobody knows this but me.

Rough Trade II

2008-11-25T13:58:00.000-08:00

EXT. ARENA PARKING LOT - NIGHT

From a distance, we see hordes of people purposefully walking across an expansive parking lot towards a giant sports arena. Moving in closer, we see that not all of the masses entering the arena are human -- there are some flesh-colored androids, metallic robots and even a few half-human/half-machine creatures.

One of the half-human/half-machine creatures, B.O.B., slings his robotic arm over a GELATINOUS BLOB.

B.O.B.: God, I can't remember the last time I saw Kraftwerk. It has to have been a least a century.

As the crowd slows to a bottleneck at the entrance, a couple familiar notes waft out of the arena doors, causing one of the ticket holders, a silver ROBOT to start twitching.

ROBOT: Showroom Dummies!!!

He continues to twitch violently before finally erupting in flames. As the fire engulfs him, the Robot starts ping-ponging through the audience, setting fire to everything he bumps into.

As more and more of the machines catch flame, the horrific, violent panic of the crowd intensifies to the point where robots are climbing on top of each other, crushing one another's circuits and motherboards to reach the entrance of the arena. This maelstrom of burning metal and circuits causes an O-shaped ring of molten flame to encase the center of the crowd. Trapped inside the ring, we see the lone HUMAN ATTENDEE of the Kraftwerk concert.

A FEMBOT spots the human amidst the ring of flame and rapidly messages the other robots.

FEMBOT: Save the human!

The human quickly strips off his "nature"-coloured polo shirt and shimmies out of his matching khaki dockers, attempting to fan the flames with his clothing.

A MELTING MACHINE trudges through the flames, the human in his sights.

MELTING MACHINE: Can...not...identify.

HUMAN: It's me, Chaz Bryan.

The Melting Machine processes this, adjusts his tone.

MELTING MACHINE: Bryan? Get your ass out of this locker room and put it in left field. I'm puttin' Clayton on third today.

The Melting Machine dresses down CHAZ BRYAN, 24, brown-haired, looks like he works with computers.

MELTING MACHINE: Way you've been hittin' this season, you're lucky if I even get ya an e-vite to the pizza party after the playoffs.

BRYAN: I'm sorry coach, it's just that --

MELTING MACHINE: It's just that, it's just that, it's just that, it's just that --

BRYAN (mimicking his loop): It's just that, it's just that, it's just that --

Suddenly, the Melting Machine explodes, sending a wave of WATER and DIRTY MONEY through the wall of fire, extinguishing it. Waiting until most of the flames have died down, Chaz gingerly tiptoes over the rest of the melting robots, maneuvering his way to the front of the line, through the doors and right up to the front row where the suspended SPINES of Ralf HUtter and Florian Schneider bounce up and down on tiny toy keyboards, producing what some humans used to consider as the finest sounds in the World.

FADE OUT.

She was my checkout girl at Bristol Farms. I had a bouquet of flowers that I knew my girlfriend would cram down my throat because I wrecked her BMW, while I was drunk, on my way home from team trivia. I decided to cut my losses, buy a bottle of seltzer water and two creme pies to go with the squirting flowers and make it to Memphis with this little ladytron.

Hungry, Just Hungry

2008-11-24T17:48:00.000-08:00

I had a crystal ball it said: Here are we in January, 2009. You had a linted pocket, a mothy wallet, a snout full of cocaine and burst blood vessels, a train ticket back home, a deader dream. There was a skylight window. She was goin' bald. I remember when she woke up the nyte after Halloween to see Cousin It on her pillow. She hallored like a black clam, he was castin' spells all night on the roof. I got slipped some badacid from a Witch. I found myself up on the roof in Phoneix, AZ watching the Devil Rays play the Suns in a mixed-league game. A caramel helicopter pulled me off. I ate my way through the guard bar and fell into The Deer Hunter. There were sharks all over the waters. Me and Mark Sandman did it all in spite of you. David O. Russel introduced me to his mother. She wasn't as pretty as I pictured. Kurt Vonnegut was writing Breakfast of Champions for Bruce Willis. I found it at the video store where I worked, neon dinner vest and expandable black cotton pants my mom dug out of Filene's Basement. Dinner in Hong Kong with my agent, we saw Harrison Ford scaling a window looking for Replicants. He pointed his gun at me, but I was already gone.

Plane Crash

2008-11-09T17:38:00.000-08:00

How hard could it be? Put your chip down, stand back and watch fame, fortune and firm handshakes come your way. Plinko.

I was mostly excited about the handshake part ever since my Mom & Dad's friend Mark Allison gave me a camel-crusher back in 1990. He almost broke a couple bones in my hand, but I don't blame him: I had just done a year and a half of private preschool in Nashville, and here I was in Marietta, Georgia with the rest of the inbred rednecks, rubbing it in their faces by wearing rainbow-coloured Lacoste polo shirts while they were picking crumbs off of their David Justice tees. Mark went on to leave his wife after hiding a 2nd family from his own family of wife, two kids, dog, full bar, swimming pool for about 12 years and earning plenty of money as a Delta pilot. You can't really begrudge him for that either. It was his firm, "gay-grip" handshake that sent my world spinning off its axis though. After feeling his scorpion sting, I crove to have my hand crushed every time it got shook. This fetish lead me to pledge a fraternity not for the camaraderie, but more so because I loved shaking hands during Rush Week. I would sleep with bags of Jergens over them the Sunday night before school started and shake like a wet cord in a French wall outlet. I needed about a horse needle full of Airborne by week's end, but fugg it, it was worth it.

I applied this handshake technique later on in life after my agent Mark Pfeffer coached me on "the art of the pitch" right before we went into NBC and bombed in front of Teri Weinberg after trying to pitch her "The Trouble With Jenny's Ear" in Space. We took the next plane back to Vegas. If you'd believe it, Mark Allison was the pilot. He tried to announce himself as Breckin Meyer over the vodaphone, but I had just seen Breckin Meyer staring at me as I gobbled down Mexican food with my girlfriend and Amy Smart, professional actress. I asked to visit the cockpit so I could add another pair of Delta wings to my long-gestating airline pin collection, and upon pulling back the curtain, saw Mark Allison with a White Russian in hand, no co-pilot and a dead stewardess writhing in the throes of rigor mortise. He looked me square in the eye, said the word "handshake" and plunged the plane down into Death Valley, exploding it into shards of fusilage, blood, guts, brains, eyeballs, limbs, joints, cell phones, dog caddys, luggage, notepads, DVDs, TVs, iPods and blue toilet water all over the sizzling sand. We were cooked alive and the last thing I remembered as I lay dying was a thousand black vultures licking their lips over God's grill.

Pare to God

2008-10-31T19:22:00.000-07:00

July 4, 1992. I was a frontrunner for the Nathan's Famous Hot Dog Eating Contest in Tompkins Park, New York City. It was me, Barry Krzyweski, Gooch, Molar, Rowdy Rod, Tommy "The Teeth" Thompson, and a few starving crackheads that had worked up a healthy appetite by not eating for 17 days straight. One of 'em had an AIDS tapeworm that he bartered for on the black market by sharing a needle with a gay ghost. This is before the days of IFOCE, so any and all food contests were held in cycloramas. I had a regimen of dipping my buns and shafts in boiling hot coffee, so understandably, I was piping mad at the introduction of perpetual motion. A sheep walked by and stopped in front of us, staring at the assembled vacantly. Suddenly, a tiny Asian man ripped out of the sheep, disemboweling it with a butterfly knife and prying open its quivering torso with his hands as the sheep crumpled to a heap on the concrete. I knew this meant the contest had begun though some of the other assembled weren't as certain; you better believe I took advantage of my head start.
CUT TO:
20 minutes and an intestinal mile of hot dogs, buns and rat tails later, and I was looking like Mikhail Gorbachev on X-Mas morn. My chief competitor, a young woman named Brick Wahl was plowing through about as many dogs as I was and dunking the buns in a glass of soupy boiled custard, perhaps to smite me in my quest for delicious. I tried to wave her off and keep plowing through, but as she was eating, she began to disrobe in front of me. We locked eyes, and realizing she wanted me to do the same, I started to strip quickly, filling my gullet with hot dogs all the while. As soon as I stripped down to my cerulean underwear, "my bugger blues" as ex-wife Midge Candybar was fond of saying, Brick threw a boiling hot pot of coffee at my groin, scalding my google, elongating to such a sizeable length that I was able to find substantial work in Silicone Valley as the star of the "Johnny Rodden" saga of films, a sort of punk-rock look at fucking. It was actually on the set of "Johnny Rodden 3: Metal Box" that I met my wife Sally Stanfill aka "Synderella" who was playing the part of "Concerned Guy" with a strap-on in Scene 3. We got married on the glass bridge over the Grand Canyon and were pampered with deep-tissue massages in Santa Fe, a Tom Shackler favorite.

Mucho mucho,

Thom Sizer

Night Hawks

2008-10-23T10:45:00.000-07:00

From out of the blackness, Jessica Simpson's "A Public Affair" PRE-LAPS

INT. NIGHT HAWKS DINER - NIGHT

Two stone-faced detectives, both dressed in houndstooth suits and nursing steaming mugs of coffee stare at their waitress, a pretty blonde-haired waif named SUZETTE.

SUZETTE: Are you two boys gonna stare all day, or are you gonna order some food?

One of the detectives, a pinhead named ABRAHAM dumps a cup of creamer into his java.

ABRAHAM: Stare. Joe?

His partner Joe reshuffles his genitalia and readjusts his eyes on Suzette.

JOE: Stare.

Joe pulls a twenty dollar bill out of his jacket pocket and slaps it on the table.

JOE: Water!

SUZETTE: Water's free, hon. You sure I can't get you some food?

They all look towards the kitchen. Steam shoots out of the steel windowsill, engulfing plates of food in black smoke.

JOE: Almost sold, sugar bee.

He slides the twenty off the counter and back in his pocket.

SUZETTE (to kitchen): Ramirez, you fuckin' asshole!
(sotto)
I have to feed my daughter for God's sakes.

RAMIREZ: Sorry, Jenny.

JOE: Jenny? Thought your name was Suzette.

SUZETTE: He can't pronounce Zees.

ABRAHAM: Joe, give ol' Suzette some money for her daughter. I bet her baby needs diapers.
(to Suzette)
Your baby need diapers?

Suzette nods, the smallest hint of a tear in her eye. Joe digs in his pants pocket and throws a couple quarters, a business card and a nail clipper up on the counter.

JOE (sneering): This work?

Crying, she sweeps the change into her apron.

ABRAHAM: You want ta hit it, Joe?

Joe slides off his stool, one foot out the door.

JOE: Let's go.
(to Suzette)
Great job, doll. There's just one thing.
(beat)
I'd like ta see a little more make-up next time.

SUZETTE (sotto): God damn night hawks.

Muggy's Farm

2008-10-22T17:12:00.000-07:00

Fuck yeah, bRo!!! Just got back from teh G N Fuckin' R concert. When that riff from Chinese Democracy came through the arena speakers soundin just like the Dire STrights Money for Nothing, you heard that AXel's howl from HELLL you just knew...shit was on! Thank god those guys are fuckin' bakc, man. I'm sea sick of all this pussy crap that has been clogging our FM airwaves since 1989, man. Even used your illusions 1 and 2 fucking sucked, man. Talking bout bringing it back to that classic Appetite for Destruction sound. I've been playing that album every day for the past twenty years, bro. That's fucking dedication! I saw Slash at the Whisky Dick last Friday, and he agreed with me -- that was their best record. I saw him giving some tranny a handjob back behind the dumpsters later, so I knew it had to be a Slash impersonator or something because theere is no fuckin way the real Slash is gay or has ever even thought of another man besides his dad (and to kkklarify, only on his dad's deathbed).

Anyways, I'm just so glad this record is finally hittin' the shelves, just in time for nobody to buy it since nobody in their right mind (or under 50) has touched "the shelves" since the 2nd Eminem CD. I hope when they come back to LA next year thye just play Appetite all the way through and maybe encore with "nothing else matters" and "man in the box". Those songs fucking rock.

--Ed DEcter

Want An Axe to Break the Ice?

2008-10-21T11:35:00.000-07:00

Another late night putting around the animation studio office, dressed in my usual garb du choice: a musty bathrobe pilfered from Planet Hollywood's G.O. in 1992 and a pair of Homer Simpson slippers (the kind you put your feet through his stubbly mouth -- I had always fantasized about putting something else through there, but I digress...). I was putting the finishing touches on a line of digital shorts I had been developing where a popular superhero franchise character would be retouched to have his/her creator's face on the body (Spawn was a particularly lethal one). I had been getting about 317 hits a day on my YouTube page and had been bandying about with a local Burger King franchisee to get full sponsorship for the project.
He invited me over to the restaurant for a meeting. He was wearing an apron, cape and visor with the company's popular "hamburger" logo emblazoned on each item. He said he had 45 minutes to go over our business proposal, and suggested we adjourn to another local chain, a Wendy's, where we could just escape from the pressures of the World. I pitched him my idea about doing a feature-length retelling of Ang Lee's "HULK" with Jack Kirby's face superimposed over Eric Bana's, and Stan Lee's legs ripping through those shredded jean shorts. Suffice to say, Hank loved it and offered to buy the project, right there in the (play)room. I told him I'd have my attorney, Jerry Nachez of Nachez, Riffler & Sons, contact him. "I prefer to do all my negotiations in the World of Warcraft" Hank said. He gave his avatar as "SquireTuck69" and demanded we seal the deal with a kiss. I hesitantly obliged but sent my agent, Mark Pfeffer, to investigate further.
After some carefully placed fone calls, Mark came back to me with bad news: not only was Hank not a successful BK multi-territory franchiser like he promised me he was (he was really a lowly fry cook), he wasn't 29 like he promised me either: he was 26.

Bad to the Bone

2008-10-15T23:24:00.000-07:00

I don't want to sound like a dilitante, but I just came off one of the worst three day weekends of my life. I got what we call in the entertainment industry a "day without pay" due to my camcordered shenanigans in the office: upskirts and toilet cams for my website Boylet.com. My boss, Lucy Londgren (a woman, natch), is primarily the reason for the hub-bub. I used to work for a guy named Kevin Packard, but he got laid off for coming to the Christmas Party with one of those "Hi My Name Is" name tags that said: "Craven Morehead" on it. He also brought a transvestite as his date. And she was a little too dressed down -- Old Navy t-shirt and a pair of side-stitch Jordache jeans from 1991. And the two of them drank too much and held up a college student at an ATM and when he tried to resist, Kevin's date Trish stabbed him in the kidney with a pen knife and dragged his body around the back of the bank to die. The cops eventually found him and so much fluid had drained from the organ that it had to be removed and replaced with a metal one full of Mountain Dew. They were stopped by the police for having an expired Kerry '04 bumper sticker, and hauled off to the police station's holding cell. Kevin used his one phone call to check his E*Trade stocks, but convinced his date to use her phone call to reach me. I begrudgingly drove through the pouring rain to bail them out, cashing in several books of stamps, a coin collection and a Remington superposed shotgun at Alleyway Up-All-Night's Pawn & Steakhouse (where "Duckman" and "Weird Science" played as a double bill indefinitely). While I was waiting in the bonding line in prison, I came across the most delightful woman. Her name was Sarah Borealis, she had red legs and a yellow torso. She claimed she was going to her Homecoming at FSU, but I knew she originated from El Sol (The Sun -- ed.). We got to talking about photosynthesis, the desert, global warming and aliens, and I decided to spend the money I was going to use for Kevin and Nardine's bail on taking her up on her offer to try to make it down to Mexico without setting one wheel in Texas before the cops closed in on us. She asked what the one thing I learned from Locust Abortion Technician was. I said: "I don't know. I'm just 22 going on 23". She shook her head and laughed. "No silly," she said. "It's better to regret something you have done than something you haven't". With that, we got into her tail-fin seafoam green corvette, and drove all night and day through the guts of America, our one dying wish to make it to Cancun alive...and in time for the Banana Boat Bikini Bake-Off.

Hounds of Love

2008-10-12T11:17:00.000-07:00

I had just finished "ace"-ing my audition for the part of "Robert Beausoleil" in CAPOTE 2: ELECTRIC TYPEWRITER, when I accidentally bumped into Cecile on my way to craft services (at an audition, which is just tap water in styrofoam cups). She was working at a catering company she started after a few failed attempts to make it big as a waitress after college. She looked like Jennifer Coolidge meets Miss Piggy, which is to say, a human version of Miss Piggy.

I asked if she knew where CSA kept the "vino". She gave me a blank stare. I told her I had skimmed over a book on Italian on my to Cannes last year. I wasn't in the film festival, but I was there on a business trip for Travelocity.com, my worst job ever -- I was tasked with renting two rooms on opposing floors, overflowing the bathtub on the upper floor to rate how much water damage was caused to the ceiling on the lower (I had tried to avoid my duties by chasing a fistful of Valium with a half bottle of Glenmorangie, but it just made the measurements more accurate). I needed another night on the floating platform. I guess my name is hypoallergenic.

We made plans to meet up for Clams Haas and beaujolais at Dantana's later that night. I gorged on flatbread for an hour when a small trip to the bathroom to "powder my nose" kicked in the realization that she was indeed not coming. If I hadn't met Marcus that night, a young black bartender who was making ends meet in between tours with the LA Avengers Arena Football League, I swear I might've autoerotically asphyxiated myself with a piano string.

That night, I kept things inside me that were much larger than my crumbling emotional walls used to be (uh huh huh), and after a brief sojourn to the basement (where I keep the time machine/leather mask), I was overcome with a burning, harranguing Deja Vu. The song "Once in a Lifetime" started playing over the scene, which is funny, because I hate the Talking Heads' music (give me Miami Sound Machine anyday, plz). I woke up in the basement, and after exploring upstairs, found no actual evidence of Marcus ever being there. I opened the drapes expecting a bright morning in Los Angeles, and when the light poured in through the room, I realized I was living in a two-bedroom chateau in Atlanta, Georgia and had been working on a website called "My Last Rainy Birthday". I went into my roommate's room, hoping to find Marcus relaxed and ready for more, but I was confronted with an almost impassable graveyard of Krystal "Sackfuls" and tan-colored socks.

I am become icy

2008-10-11T22:10:00.000-07:00

Let it sweat, jane. Let yourself see what can't be seen in that scene. 'So-so' isn't an insult -- its a badge of honour. Yes, I accept this sharp constrast between our lives and other and ancient lives. But that doesn't belittle this short story about our marriage beginnings; now, does it?

Touch Down Lions

2008-10-11T22:09:00.000-07:00

Walking under that umbrella of thunderous applause and rag-tag towel wavers in a sunlight, open air stadium (post 9/11) is probably the greatest feeling in the World. My name's Rick Barrenwomb and I just kicked the winning field goal for the New Mexico Coastal University Rappin' Lions to win 3-0 over our bitter rivals, the Albequerque College of Machinery and Braille Notation. It was a hard-won victory and all the free Mountain Blast in the state could not stop me from sweating about two coolers worth of boy juice.

I took off my helmet and flung my sports towel into the bin, stripped down to just my birthday suit and got in the shower. While lathering up, I heard some funny noises coming out of the locker room. "Is that you coach?" I said, to a chorus of school girl giggles.

"Hey" I said, as I wrapped my full-length towel around my bare, rippling torso, "No girls allowed in here. Show yourselves". All of a sudden, I was ambushed by three beautiful co-eds in the tightest cheerleading outfits you've ever seen. One of them, the moxy I'll never know where she got from, stripped me of my shower towel while her two friends, Angelina Valentine and Stacey Dosh, got on their knees and polished my "first down marker" with their ruby red lips. I spent the next 12 minutes penetrating all three girls in a variety of cavities while the pixie that stole my towel, Syndy Energiebar, performed oral sex on the other two girls from behind.

Oddly enough, a camera crew that had been taping our practice regimens and the game was there to capture the whole thing on video tape, though it was a smaller camera crew than I remember -- only a grip and a camera man, and they were wearing t-shirts emblazoned with the words "Pleasure Time Video", which I did not recognize as a reputable sports broadcaster. Even weirder, I can't actually remember ever meeting our team's coach, much less kicking a football at the competitive level.

Born To Hula

2008-08-02T14:47:00.001-07:00

I think that might've been the coffee that killed me. I'm back at my apartment with one hand over my mouth, futility taking over my body & mind as I type this with one hand. I had been IM'ing with this cute guy I met on an AOL chatroom for people who work in the Justice business (courtrooms, booking clerks, Court TV watchers), and he suggested that I meet him for coffee ipso facto at this coffee shop called "Marauders" down on Melrose and Beverlyville area near Plaques (they sell customizable trophies and plaques for the victoriously ironic set) and The Sarah Silverman Show Store (t-shirts & merch from her Comedy Central sitcom). I pulled up outside and a wave of panic washed over me.

[10 Point Courier New]
Pulling in closer we move through the door of Marauders into what is obviously a shell of a coffee shop, gutted by flames many years ago.

Julie:
Gavelbanger11, are you here? What is this place?

Cue: Eerie music FX

Gavelbanger11, who we will come to know as Gavin:
SwizzMizzzzz? Is that you? Come closer...closer...

Julie hesitantly moves closer to a dark figure sitting at a card table in the center of this pitch black room.

Julie:
Gavin, I can barely see you.

The front door of Marauders slams shut, locking them in the coffee shop. It is totally blacked out inside.

Gavin:
I got you a coffee.

Julie:
You did? How did you know what I wanted?

Gavin:
It said your preference in the About Me section of your Facebook page.

Julie:
Oh. Ok.

Gavin:
Take it.

He slides the coffee mug towards her right hand. She tentatively picks it up, taking a deliberate sip.

Julie:
Wow, this is really good coffee. Thank you.

Gavin:
What's on your mind?

We see a pool of what must be a thousand Scandinavia brown rats swimming around Julie's ankles, and slowly climbing up her legs.

FADE OUT.

2008-07-01T09:05:00.000-07:00

Adam and I met at a showing of "High School Musical" in Conyers. He was wearing an Abercrombie shirt, pre-faded cargo shorts, and sandals. We had both just come off of ultra-stressful relationships. Just two weeks before, I had finally split with Shell, a Gold's Gym trainer with an aspiring acting career. Adam's split with his ex was eerily similar - trainer, aspiring singer, etc. "Hey Sweetie" he said with wide eyes, his "bugger-blues" (as I'd later call them). Even though my woo-woo was as dry as ever, I felt a sensuality inside that I'd never felt with Shell. There was just something about him -- the strength of his skull, the way his wang-dang doodle peaked underneath his khaki and zipper. It was a done deal -- no more words were needed.

Void Where Prohibitted

2008-06-16T15:06:00.000-07:00

Zed here. I know it seems strange that I just travelled the country on the back of a gleaming silver Harley Davidson chopper, a wet leather seat trembling between my cowhide-covered thighs, but believe me, it's been done. I scrambled through thick wilderness and thinner ice on my way down Route 67, cop sirens screaming down all three other lines of the American Autobahn. Drugs as the pick of the litter holding court in my gasoline tank, a wizard attorney in a camoflauge summer suit blessing the rode with a wand he kept folded in his briefcase. I knew it was a "kitty-kombatti", but he stuck to the story - it was a chalkboard pointer with no eraser (he made one mistake in his lifetime, investing in Sega) he picked up at Woodstock '99 when he scrambled outwards towards the friendliest grassy knoll he could find in an insane frenzy. A head full of mushrooms, a belly full of wine, and the least intolerant one could possibly be to hearing a past-their-prime Metallica riffing through "Fuel" on repeat.

I saw him out of the corner of my eye and offered a helping hand in the way of two earplugs I fashioned from an ol' "Curtis" comic strip and a piece of turkey bacon. We got the fuck out of there the second I heard the distinctly awkward pop of a white thumb slapping an electric jazz bass. That was a sure sign of a rape riot if there ever was one. He hopped on the back of my hog and we drilled through middle America like two bats out of Hell, blowing straight through Missoura's antiques graveyard and back to Los Angeles where people could be normal again.

After a few days of sleep, I scraped the last bit of psychedelics from my system and felt able to come up for air. My lawyer guest had been hustling down time part-time at a J. Scumbag's private practice, clearing all sorts of blue movie stars from their misdemeanor dope and public fucking charges. He had made enough coin by the end of the week to surprise me with a 24 pack of Miller High Life and a 1/2 soup & sandwich from British Petroleum. It wasn't enough, but I thanked him anyways and kept fishin'.

Oxygen Tents

2008-04-14T22:38:00.000-07:00

The following is a shitty short story I was going to submit to "The New Yorker" before realizing what a brain-dump turd it is. But, in the interest of full disclosure, you can read it for free here, on Hows We Met:

We were getting up earlier than usual that Friday. Mom didn't have any sick days, but she got Sandra to cover her shift and work a double without too much of a fight. I guess when you know what it is to be a mother, you tend not to question another mother's commitment to her child. It had been a particularly brittle winter that elbowed its way in around mid-September and had now only just started to leave town towards the end of April, though not without a fight - yesterday was one of the coldest days I think I've ever lived through. It was on account of this nasty weather that my mother had been laid up in bed on-and-off with pneumonia, the flu, arthritis, and whatever other unfortunate bolts of lightning God saw fit to throw her way. She worked at an antique junk shop that sold second-hand clothes as well. People mostly came through to drop off a bag of sweatshirts they could write off on their tax returns, but you could get a player piano, a Little Feat record or buy back a toy you got for Christmas twenty years ago if the spirit moved you.

I had a third or a fourth job just keeping my mother company at work during the lean times when there would be less than a handful of customers in the store, pushing their carts through the scuffed aisles at a pace so slow, you would think they were competing over a three-way tie for last. I worked a couple of other odd jobs around town at late, late hours of the night. I used to help carry in the salmon haul from the harbor at four o' clock in the morning until I had to quit because if I got up that early, I would just drink all day. If I woke at 2:30 in the afternoon, I was less inclined to. I also used to sell pot and chocolate-covered mushrooms to high school (and some middle school) kids. It was pretty good money, but I started to feel guilty about doing it after awhile so I quit that job too. This morning was the last morning of the last day in the town where I had been born, been moved out of in favor of Memphis, Tennessee, and returned in a bindle a mere three & 1/2 years later, and I'd be damned if I wasted it.

After our telephone alarm clock started screaming (we had a pink telephone used for regular phone calls and a blue telephone that was our alarm; we thought color-coding would help us differentiate, but my Mother and I were often picking up alarms where there was no person on the other end and vice versa), I hit the air decompression switch, which put my oxygen tent on stand-by. My sainted Mother was in her camo dungarees and fly fishing vest, a slide of magnesium rubbed all over the top half of her face, clumped especially well on both sides of her nostrils, which gave the impression of four total. She was praying to a televangelist based out of Vermont named Admiral Nelson; I could only assume he was so named for the cost inhibitive spiced rum, and not for the fact that he had earned any stripes in our nation's Naval services, as he was a frail man of only about 53, who poached his shag-carpeted pulpit in a pair of bear feet house slippers and a titanium walker covered in stickers of long broken-up "grunge" bands one could only assume he culled at a Lollapalooza tour stop sometime in the mid-90s. My Mother's arms were outstretched to receive the Sacrament. A pan of bacon-wrapped shrimp sizzled under her divine gaze. I could've sworn the stove was off.

Our turntable puttered through a reggae version of "King Kong", while I packed my tackle box full of fresh worms from my Mother's garden. We both felt the void my absence would leave on our happy home. As of early last week, I had taken a job in software engineering at a mid-size company in Tacoma, Washington, and while I was relieved to be walking through the gates of My Life: Phase Two, I was immensely distraught at the thought of moving out of the house I had lived in practically all of my life, and leaving my sainted Mother to fend for herself in an asphalt and wrought-iron forest of used Toyotas, polling places and basic cable. I had to take a month long training course in Haryana, India; they had overtaken our chess-playing computer prowess sometime during the first Clinton administration, and now those bastards were outsourcing backwards: plucking luckless males out of the ether six months after they had graduated from college, still jobless and absolutely mortified by what their parents and ex-girlfriends must think of them. It reminded me of a story my hairdresser told me about a Bald Eagle plucking a cat straight off the balcony of his seventh story apartment and flying away into the evening with it, but I digress.

I made it a point to tell my Mother the news about my job after we had both had a couple of glasses of syrah after dinner last night. She took a long gulp, a drag on her lady finger cigarette, and looked me directly in the eyes, tears forming in the creases of the place where cheekbones might have once been. She said "Son, I'm proud of you," and let out a deflated sigh as she sunk back into the floral print garden of her living chair. We talked more about the job, and what it entails. I told her I hoped I'd meet a beautiful girl there, and I was planning on starting at the bars, moving to the indoor malls, the outdoor malls, and finally, the local churches, and if applicable, synagouges - she agreed. "I have a gift for you" she said. "A suitcase. It's nice leather, you'll love it." "Thank you" I said. Strange that I had never noticed this suitcase before.

We lived in a small apartment above a pediatrician's office. His name was Dr. Shine, which I always thought was probably the best name a pediatrician could have. I never got his first name, but it was probably something either extremely pleasant like Dana, or extremely negative like Feral - there could not have been a middleground. Dr. Shine worked from 8am to 8pm every day during the week, and took in what I had to assume were patients with severe mental health issues on the weekends, usually from 12pm to 6pm. Those are beach hours, as they should be. You can't expect schizophrenics to be checking their watches in angst as they ride the subway into the city, briefcase in hand. Starting at about 1:37 on Saturday, the first deranged soul would stagger up to the royal blue oak door that separated Dr. Shine's office from the street. It would put it's eye up to the peephole, an evenly painted yellow crescent moon and say the code word: "Candy Corn".

My Mother led me up our staircase by the tips of my right hand's fingers, through what must be the World's shortest stairwell, numbering seven. You had to duck your head under a piece of rotting drywall, long since Crayoned over by the monsters that served in the preschool my Mother used to run in the mid 1990s. "A gift" was about as much as I could get out of here, as she yanked a leather traveling suitcase from under the floorboards, it's turnbuckles playing the ground like a steel drum on its way out. "Mom, where in the Hell did this come from?" "It was your father's" she said. "He bought it exactly one year before he left me. One year to the day". "How do you know it was exactly one year?" I asked her. "He kept the receipt taped to the fridge with a Barely's Pizza magnet" she said. "Everytime I went to get a glass of chardonnay from the fridge, that date was staring me in the face. I felt like a damn fool when he walked out exactly one year to the day of this purchase". "Why didn't he keep the suitcase?" I asked her. "I got him on a technicality," she said. "Since he left me, I was entitled to half of his possesions, and I chose the suitcase as one of my four things, just to spite him. He had to ship it back to me, which must have cost him twice as much as the actual suitcase". This was in the pirate days of 1977, before divorce lawyers who had passed the Bar Exam began filling up the nation's office spaces, and shipping was done via barge.

The next morning, it was abundantly clear that I had pissed the bottom of my oxygen tent. Not only was the steel "mattress" colder than usual, and wet, but its electronic anti-aging sensors were on the fritz. In fact, I think they may have added some crow's feet all around my face. This was my final morning in an oxygen tent. One last night of fitful sleep and urine and I was done forever with this damned device. It was a fitting coda too. I couldn't wait to sleep on a cot in India, no central air, no purifying mist blowing all over my face. Just sweat and spiderwebs. There's not a man alive who'd look forward to that, but I did.

I toweled myself off over the sink, as I adjusted my trout tie and camoflauge vest.

Fuzzy Dice, Bongos in the Back

2008-04-13T16:01:00.000-07:00

Ended up sleeping in a tarp under the bed like bugs with a saran wrap cover laced with rubber bands, holes poked all in it for air that was rapidly escaping from our canvas a-hole. Sticks set up at each end of the tent. You tried to crawl out to escape, they come down on you, no joke. We were in there together. My friend Chaz introduced me to her, and the three of us were splitting a joint we called "Disintegration", held together by a roach clip made out of a Gore for President button.

The lawn's green glint seemed pleasant as we came under heavy fire from the natives. The whole sun turned on and the tanned hides came out from their caves to get down with one another on the sand, outside a bon fire pitched from the scene of a teenage movie. There was an ocean that crept back from the shore, as everyone's feet bathed under the foam of tide. We saw a Presidential moon and shot it down like the face of It in the second act, a tear across Brian's finger bled halfway and cried the rest of the way down, smearing her makeup. Lunch was catered.

Outdoor Minor

2008-04-02T15:58:00.000-07:00

I went through one of the roughest diabetic comas in history in '91, round the same time as the Oakland earthquakes shook the A's and their borderline championship ball club's pennant race to its molten core. Rickey Henderson used to keep a jar of speed underneath the first base bag to help facilitate his breakage of the stolen base(age?) record. Shit, cops and umps couldn't do nothing about it, lest they meddle with a stadium full of fans who had proved they knew how to riot like hell a mere year earlier. First base coach used to just lift the bag when Rickey would touch primo, and inject him in the glutes with a horse needle some say was coated with Seabiscuit's blood and the semen that would go on to produce countless Kentucky Derby favorites.

Rickey would wind up and touch second so fast, you wouldn't even get a chance to take one sip of your Alamo. The thing with love is that sometimes it comes at you so fast, you don't get a chance to sip the Olympia inside each other's hearts - that is unless you're in cahoots with a hummingbird, and don't laugh because I've seen it happen one too many times to cry false. On the fateful day of my diabetic coma, I lost a foot, but I won a hand (in eventual marriage -- we went through a horrendous divorce that involved her winning full custody of my yearly bachelor weekend that included fully stocked bar inside a Hummer limo, six lanes of Cosmic Bowling, and a Denny's breakfast paid for by my best friend Zack, who it predictably turns out, she was fucking). Now the script for this sitcom fairy tale (and I know, having unsuccessfully submitted 25 sitcom pilots to various talent agencies in both New York and Los Angeles) might lead you to believe that I fell in love with the concession stand woman, but naw, that's not the case. I actually fell in love with the clerk at Amoeba Records in San Francisco. She guided my hand towards a 16-sided copy of "Yessongs". It was an Atlantic overrun that was, legend has it, found at the bottom of a basement...

KKKomplete KKKontrol

2008-03-27T21:40:00.000-07:00

Bars:
The first Wire LP "Pink Flag", which is for real a classic of the genre and a record that absolutely split my brain in half -- I remember making a mix CD for the ride up to Formal my Junior year ('05). I was in Richard's SUV with him, his date, Brian, Liz, me and my date Kazlex. This mix I made wasn't exactly getting rave reviews, but when the Wire song "Dot Dash" (from Pink Flag) came on, Beezer yanked the CD out and tossed it aside, unable to take any more torture. Thinking about that still makes me laugh. The Formal was OK - I spent most of the weekend trying to win a stuffed alligator for Levon's date on one of those carnival games where you squirt a beam of pink light through an archery board, though this one was cast in the shape of Horselover Fat's head. I finally got it for but she was too focused on doing time-saving flips on Cruisin' World to care. I fell asleep right before the big dance, woke up on a raft in another hotel's pool, drenched in someone else's piss. I took a cab all the way back from Gatlinburg because I had a huge group meeting for our Marketing project. I let Richard drive Keltaz back to the Kappa Grouch House; they had a big beer blast to welcome the White Knights back. There was a Klan rally on the tennis courts, fruit punch everywhere, candied pinatas filled with confetti and not a racket in sight.

London's Burning,

Salad Days II

Probably Come to Die in This Town

2008-01-24T15:36:00.001-08:00

I got nobbed out of some bleak water wheels. There was blood everywhere. Cats were praying to dogs. Gods were bowing to glass coffee tables. Ikea racked up huge debt after all their furniture got returned the third day of Genesis 2.0. That whole week was nuts. Our college had a battle of the bands -- nobody showed up to play. There was an angry mob demanding music. Some A/V Club kid plugged in a boombox, stereo receiver. He put on "Ice Cream for Crow" since he was 99% socially inept. That kicked the riot off. Bodies piled up everywhere. The campanile never had it this bad. The shaft shone bright in the afternoon sun. Tequiza poured out of the sky because Mexican God was furiously pissing on us. The bookstore got over-ran. Everybody looted next year's textbooks and didn't leave a tip. The elevators were frozen solid. The escalators were on fire and the stairs were doused with gasoline - a cheerleader stood there with a cigarette and lighter, ready to smoke. A computer got drug out into the hallway and the saints beat it to death with their pencils and toothbrushes. The professors demanded a paycut; they hadn't taken the requisite training course that year. Linkin Park was playing a free concert in Sunset Park. It all comes full circle.

Meta-Ties That Bind

2008-01-22T16:46:00.000-08:00

The back of my mach Air Force One jacket was stuck to the leather booth at Shakey's. Our pretzel pizza with extra nacho dipping sauce hadn't even arrived yet. If you tip one of the corpse-like skanks that pass for waitresses at this particular pizza joint, they doll the pie up like a wedding cake. "Groom On Groom" isn't frowned upon, but I usually toss one of them a ketchup-filled Lincoln in order to bilk a Bride & Groom topping with some of those chocolate letters you used to pick offa cookie cakes at birthday parties and the last day of Fourth Grade.

I let my friend Snail fumble with the scissors he had taken to using to peel the slices off the steel pan and skated over to the makeshift arcade to play a little Donkey Kong, Jr. and swig from my cruiser cup of Sprite and generic Bacardi O. I saw a shrieking woman outside caught in a pitch black rainstorm. She was dressed like Eraserhead. Her haircut was a bringdown, but I could feel her heartbeat through the walls of the restaurant. That usually means I have to have her. Someone in the bus stop was posting topical messages so spot on and, more importantly, timely, that I think they might've been updated on the second -- describing his or her boring life in the most minute detail. People tell me I can get a little long winded when doing these things. The drinking helps me edit it down. I used to block my own shots when we did "Untitled Stand Up Comedy" pilot in 1988. That turned into "Seinfeld" and all those assholes became millionaires. I got a little cut of the first season, but I spent it all on Russian jeans and Nikes. I don't blame myself though -- I had a helluva time in college. I was the fishbowl middleweight champion. An ex-girlfriend took me out to shoot geese one day. The weather was scorching hot. I had these ripped shorts on, etc. etc.

Iced Glasses for King Corn

2007-12-14T12:22:00.000-08:00

We continued the songs we sang with the people that we wrote
And a gentleman sat me down today to convey an ammusing anecdote
There was a gay couple in Paramus, New Jersey
The pitcher a novelist, the catcher an attorney
On weekends and Wednesdays on canvases they'd paint
Slabs of psychedelia but Yippies they sure ain't
They would ring in the New Year with Christmas cheer
Inviting their friends & neighbors to pop in for light beer
There were some Japanese firecrackers and a couple joints of shake
A dirty cop named Booker and a bookie on the take
That came to the party in leather rags - BJ and The Bear
One used to be on a 24-hour community theatre tear
And settled down since, some Princes in rancid robes
Chemists working around the clock in 2008 to find the antidote
So your kids will quote "The Raven" to smug up their classes
And your best friend taped over your Wedding video with a cable airing of "Cruising"
And your Dad's out with his golf instructor in Sandy Springs boozing
I know some of you might find this amusing
But I knew a great mountain goat that tore into a lion
While a hack reggae band played a dub-y "Bottled Violence"
And thee girls on the street where nothing more than file-ins
But I've been shooting condors in the sky for a week
And that's why I'm smiling

HAVE YOU HEARD THIS?

2007-12-13T15:39:00.000-08:00

My fiance and I went crib shopping today. The sky was apocalypse grey. I think it might've been the last afternoon on Earth, but then again, I just saw I Am Legend. The store was called Gerald Ford's. There was a picture of Nixon smiling in his casket on the window -- a decal that gave extra attention to his wakeup. None of the cribs had babies in them except for one, but boy, did this crib have a girl, no, woman inside of it.

She was about 7 months but she looked like Nastassja Kinski did in Inland Empire. I couldn't believe that her grasp of English wasn't fully fleshed out yet. The only phrase she knew was "Mussolini Headkick"; that got old quick. She drew a dagger on the side of the wooden barricade that prevented her from gettin' free. It went inside a heart with our initials added inside just like a regal tree. The carving played the Paramount theme and the leaves turned from Brown to Green. I couldn't believe that this pen in my hand could write the final scene (cue: orchestral build-up)!

I took a rachet and a silver lantern from the 14th century
Got in basement with a bat and an icepick to build that time machine
And when it was ready
I left my wife, and searched the seraphic seas
For a forty year old baby I saw that looked like Natassja Kinski

She knew me now like she knew me then
She said: "I waited for you all along"
I said: "I knew you did, please find this parchment with my song"
She read the tune and sang it back to me
There were horns on our children here
And what became of my wife? You might ask me...
(sotto)
She died in her 93rd yearrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

The Big D'oh! Rehab

2007-12-06T12:08:00.000-08:00

If you've seen anything newsworthy recent, puh-leeze let me now. I usually try to take in about 3 or 4 hours of Fox News, CNN, Local News on Channel 2 (with the Zoo Crew) and if I've been particularly down on my luck (drinking, gambling, watching my forbidden Beavis & Butthead DVDs), I might scope out the 700 Club with that living, breathing pumpkin Pat "Pet Magic" Roberston. One thing I refuse to watch anymore is "Mad Money" with Jim Cramer. I used to see a girl, a beautiful day trader named Cindy. Her hair smelled of Chrysanthemums and her nose was surgically sculpted to look like Jennifer Lopez's did in her 1998 b.o. draw "Out of Sight".

I was on rough hinges with my broker at the time, and my compulsive gambling habit (a remnant of my Sigma Chi poker days at Waterloo U) had matured insofar as that I was addicted to the finance section of the Daily Weekly. Cindy swooped in during a speed-dating session that left my hopelessly in love (and hungover) after five gin fizzes and a pound and a half of Coronas with limes. What started as a professional relationship with sex on the side, escalated much like the Bull Market of 1996 until we were practically planning our Italian wedding in the pejoratively Italian section of Manhattan, where we oft dared to dine during those candlelight Winter months.

I dare say that Cindy bobbled my finances. I had also relinquished my Kike accountant's privaleges to her in a gift basket that also contained the keys to my Pontiac Firebird and my four story flat in the upper breadbasket. She had taken a couple of night classes at Manhattan City College, and while that wasn't nearly enough to handle my six figure per annum salary, I figured the rest would carry us across the finish line; it didn't. Before I knew it, all my well-heeled Campbell's soup stock, which I had made a killing with round the time they introduced their seminal "Chunky" line, had plummeted to F.F. Coppola-esque lows -- partly due to their new CEO's plan to roll out a "Watery" line marketed to Internet-based anorexics. My finances were knee-deep in muck as well; the threat of an IRS audit proved all too real after I mistakenly punched one of their mid-tier employees after he polished off the last crueller at my AA meeting. Had I none he was an agent, I would've let him have it. However, was he in the public sector, I may have killed him.

After the U.S. Government took everything including the kitchen sink and the H.R. Geiger "Alien" head my ex-wife Luciano purchase for me off of electronic Bay department store, I had no choice but to let Cindy go. However, she informed me that she was not actually wearing a prosthetic belly, as Elaine so hilariously did in "Arrested Development", and that she was, in fact pregnant. Taking it in stride, I decided to decamp with her to the deserts of New Mexico, where her plans to capitalize on the tail-end of the fruit smoothie craze I can only hope come to "fruit"ion.

I shall commit suicide if we fail.

Cordially,

Sir William Regal, WWF

A Carrot Is As Close As A Rabbit Gets To A Diamond

2007-12-03T11:10:00.000-08:00

My boy Monty and I were curled up at the Santa Monica beach with some "fried" friends (read: Sonic Drive-In's fried Mac & Cheese Blasters), with work-a-day plans to carbo-load, take a vigorous swim in the turbulent waters immediately after eating and barring either one of us began to drown, perform CPR on the other which would effectively enable us to have a passionate kiss without the prying eyes of our co-workers or family (we both live in duplos with at least 7 hungry mouths and 14 eyes glued to the TV of our lives at ALL times). In my mind's eye, the kiss would start slow as I always imagine it, increasing in intensity with each dollop of breaded, searing fat that refused to climb the minty walls of my lungs and eso"fag"us.

I dreamt late last night of an episode of "Martin" where I played Tommy. We went to the local gaming hall and I played a perfect game of pool. My new negro friends were shouting salutations and proffering high-fives without even an afterthought of how it would affect their public image. I woke up and I was on a mattress on my friend Casey's floor, there was a Phish set from '97 (cow-funk) playing on repeat on his JVC box and I was sleeping in a t-shirt my Mom got for me from Champ's. I woke up from that dream and I was lying face down in the Santa Monica sand, vomitting aquafoam into the tress of a sandcastle while a team of EMTs loaded Monty into a bodybag.

Some divine force named Jefferson loaded me into his lifeguard's Dodge Ram (wistful thinking) and drove me to the police station so I could prep the death certificate for Monty's family. His touch, while forced, was clammy in all my favorite ways, caressing my surprisingly unworried earlobes and eye sockets in all the nightmarish ways, prepping me for my interview with the chieves of police. I don't think I'll forget about Monty for at least a month, but I think I might need to throw logic to the wind and photoshop a picture of me fingering Jefferson with a Terminator glove in order to blackmail his family and make him pretend to fall in love with me to protect his children's future and his consitent 1st place ranking as "Yard of the Month" in Quibley Forest.

Aquarian Symphony/Penetration

2007-11-14T16:36:00.000-08:00

My college chum...p James and I did some deep-sea diving in our state school's Olympic-sized pool back in'r halcyon university days. Man, I used to get laid once a month back then; I didn't even have to think or work to do it either. I'd lure 'em in with a game of billiards or Rubel (modified version of Chopsticks, where I'd eat an entire tube of chapstick and vomit it up in the girl's bathroom's handicapped stall while she watched. Named after the Studio 54 founder -- ed.), and before I knew it, we were going to second base in my frat studio while my roommate pretended to be fading asleep to the F# pitch of his white noise receiver. Pretty soon, I was doubling down on 'er Texas Hold Them style.

I won a collegiate sport poker tournament my Junior year. Some Sigma Dave bigwigs were trying to pull the wool over my Ray Bans on a bluff that I called, River card, shotgunned a Tequiza and hash candy strained through a well-worn Polo hat and still hit 'em up (oop style) on a 21/12 call. Boo yah!

What was really fucked though was late Homecoming weekend: our team was cohoggin' out of a gutter that season, far as I could remember, and I broke in through the glass ceiling (as only a man can) of our rec center to take a little late night skinny dip when I was stoned on some pot I bummed from Ball when he was on the roof painting Aquarius on our shingles. I had the faint sounds of either Sarah McLaughlin or drowning from a beautiful blonde wetnymph trying to set a breaststroke record in the deep-end or something. I had to take one last ride down a greased water slide before I would allow myself to be a hero and pull ('er) out of the water, but I finally got around to it about by the time her lungs were playing a Bittersweet Symphony. She was grateful as hell, a little miffed that I cut into her zebra racing singlet with my 99Z Miller Draft bottle opener, but I had to put my jaws close to her ribcage underwater on account of me and my friend Rusty diggin' up an old Jaws Atari game and getting so baked on this batch of chili weed his cousin sent him from El Paso that we stayed up for a day and a half playing that and E.T.

Regardless, I dragged Vivica (her license said Diane J. but she told me to call her that) into our fold. We did a couple of triathalons together with our dogs Rosco and Biter following us into the wilderness before I had to break it off with her to take up with a pre-natal yoga instructor who pitched a can of Goya at my nuts when I was drunk at Kroger with my friend Dean-o. I appreciated her spugunk/gunktion and that's all I need to convince me to switch up to a more aggressive woman, even though I'll never forget Vivica. Not only for her incredibly personalized blowjobs (she said my name 29 times when she was doin' it once -- I submitted it to Guiness, but all I got was another coaster to add to my collection), but for the way I used to study her freestyle stroke. It was so fluid! It looked like a silver knife you coated with boiling water before cutting in to a Baskin-Robbins ice cream cake. The way the layers melted away until you were down to the copasthetic cardboard reminded me of the way her manicured hands and charred left arm cut through the stormy lap pool waters. Her mind was a kickboard and her heart was like perfect triceps -- detailed insouciance, nevermind the candlelight dinners, here's the bongos. Maybe I should look her up again...Wait, phone call on the other line.

"Hey, Steve...Steve?
Bionic Commando?
Now?
Are you on bud duty?
Yeah...well, alright...be right over.
Is Boots there?
Well you know I'm allergic so put 'er outside.
Oki dog then. See you in an hour or so."

We Demand: Newer Fads Sooner

2007-11-09T15:15:00.001-08:00

Dear Readers, Wired Peeple:

I come to you today with a little something different. Maybe in advance of the weekened, but you could well be reciting this little gem well into next week. Even when u r on yr third attempt to suffocate in yr Tercel while carbon monoxide fills yr garage with several tears of joy and a few droplets of sadness -- you might still be reciting this little poem. Even when yr boyfriend has locked you out of his room and you're asleep on top of several Domino's olives that have been crushed into the carpet, breeding little olive children for nigh on a quarter of a year; even then, you'd like to laugh with a loved one over the poem I'm about to write and recite for you. Well.......enough talking, let's hear it!

(To the tune of "Rhymney's Wharf" by Fairport Convention):
Muddle about with a shoe laced and one other one untied
Riddle, rhyme, riddle, rhyme while the singing girls sigh
It's all in the way that you feel, that you feel, that you feel
You fell from the sky (big voices)
Most of us asprin, variety tasked-in, plants in Erasmus
Walnuts in clasps but
Your parents are dining with you at Chili's
And all of your friends are dying to get silly
At a trivia spot where the plants in the pots
Have got grants producing microdots, blood clots and magic shots
A hourglass horrrrrrrrrrrrse
It's all your recourse.

Rotter's Nation

2007-10-24T18:35:00.000-07:00

I did a little bitta bin diving back home in Manhattan and subsequently got hooked. It wasn't really about the food my flatmates and I got for free. It wasn't even about the taste, although a caved-in watermelon and a soup made from Fruit Roll-Up wrappers and cleaned bones from a Bradley's apron autographed by Ra Ra tasted just as good in practice as it did in theory. It was the excitement of the find. I treated food like I treated women, and I was a lover of women, boy, let me tell you. There was a melted erotic zone around my heart, like the box of Whitman's I found outside of the Hallmark store on the morning of July 5th (I had the Hangover from Hell after drinking this fermented Boone's Farm I found inside a hollowed-out Ms. Pac-Man at Brunswick Cedar Lanes).

Like I was saying, I reached for this Whitman's box ever so tenderly, sweat filing the pores of my eyes, heat bearing down on me like the Ghost of Media Play's Security (I got snapped for playing Tony Hawk 2 for 3 hrs straight on the demo machine with my buddy Case-man once), but when I grabbed one warm coil of yellow lace, I felt another hand reach out and touch mine. I thought it might've been a rat head because there was a Subway dumpster adjacent that even the fiends knew to stay away from (know when to fold 'em...), but it wasn't, it was a human hand. I stared down at that purple and black nail polish, cracked in the right places, and felt the deepest, coursing ejaculate I've ever known flow from my prostate straight through to the tip of my Dockers. Gretel and I stared ravenously at each other, hands over our distended stomachs and beaks, like the See No Evil apes trying to calm each others' cravings, but we couldn't even help it if we tried. Like a flash of lightning from a GE 60 watt you thought wouldn't exist again in a squat with cold water faucets you couldn't bring yourself to turn off, we kissed. Six minutes of passion gave way to a devoured box of chocolates I just knew would take a stolen bottle of Excedrin to drain from my headache; three minutes later I was "making love" with my girlfriend in the Hallmark dumpster, cr00shed 4th of July greetings tromboning Hendrix's godlike version of "Star Spangled" out of their tin speakers providing our pillow of winds.

Gret and I unfortunatly lost track after she got dysentery (sp?) from a bottle of Smucker's Super Spreaders where G.W. Carver's Peanut Butter experiment went sadly array after being mixed with the Devil's sunlight, a moth's children and a dollop of Miracle Whip left over from a Nathan's Famous wazza. I quit using normal language for awhile and left it all up to a mutant sign language I created coupled with a picture of Michael Dukakis in that fuggin' tank to get my point across, but got drafted to work at an Internet startup that tracked stamp & Denver "Green Ass" Mint coin trading on the 'net. I make about $56K a year and my days of dumpster diving have gone the way of Webvan, but I still pull produce from the bottom of the crisper when I make a mandat. min. purchase at Gelson's (only way they let you use the shitters, sink's busted though).

http://www.ukcultivator.biz/showthread.php?t=7704

Riposte with "The Rooster"

2007-10-22T17:59:00.000-07:00

I can't believe my fucking three-legged bitch of a wife left me right before GrungeCon 2007. The 'vention's pretty much a 3rd honeymoon for us (our 2nd was the liftoff we acheived when I double-dosed her labor epidural with a little bit of liquid Owsley I scored from some Jane's roadies backstage at Lollapalooza '93), and even thinking about lacing up my Doc Martens alone was enough to make me want to go "In Search Of" Layne Staley in those Afghani caves myself.

Luckily, I dangled a few dollars in front of my cousin Boomer and he took the plunge. He's pretty much a regular joe corporate drone clone who took a job handling the books for QuikTrip's Charleston office sometime after he (foolishly) quit his job at the Piercing Pagoda in North Forks Mall in '98. They upped him to southeast regional manager of business affairs sometime around the Foo Fighters' "One by One" record coming out, and he quit going to concerts and started buying a bunch of Bob Dylan DVDs and digital cable -- pathetic.

D.O.S. Boomer shows up in a fucking yellow polo shirt like some stupid fucking frat boy. And no I don't mean DOS like the prompt you stare into before cringing and choosing Nightmare on the Doom II start-up screen, I'm talking Day of the Motherfucking Show, baby. You're GD right I was flying the flannel (big time), with my old Slayer Undisputed Attitude buckle and black and blue Docs steel toes, no socks, a few joints I made with some stray shake I found in my Chrono Trigger case, an Ecto Cooler filled with Beam, half a Vicodin, half a pack of Sudafed, a pouch of Big League Chew, my valuable hunting knife and that's about it.

We get there, cool buzz and all, and what the fuck do I find? My black-eyelashed bitch of an ex-wife playing grab-ass with the bass player for none other than the mighty Chains itself. I won't begrudge Mikey (Ibanez) Inez for his meaty bottom-end four stringin', and I won't bust his lip open for the coda solo he took on "Man In the Box", but I will kick the shit out of him for fucking my girlfriend. I just had to wait until after the show since I don't want some roadie botching the cello-matching part on "I Stay Away".

The first part of the show was a blur cuz I ate that Vicodin and downed the whole box of Beam, but after I had a couple Renaissance-sized turkey legs, I started to sober up in time to catch two consecutive Nirvana tribute bands, Heaven and The Overall Wholesome Conscious of Well-Being, who sucked shit. Heaven wasn't bad; they played a 9 1/2 minute version of "School" that almost rivalled the 8 1/2 minute version on "Wishkah" before fading out with their Lennon cover, "Man Who Sold the World". Finally, the fucking almost original lineup of Alice In Chains stormed the stage and Boom and I started shotgunning so many beers, we felt like the Dylan Kleibold & Eric Harris of Coors Silver Bullets. In fact, I totally forgot about Tawny blowing the bass player for the greatest band of the past decade and a half, and just enjoyed the music, which was uniformally awesome and stellar. I even met a little betty named Courtney right as they kicked into "Rooster", which Tawny knows is my favorite song ever. We started cleaning each others' teeth with our tongues from the opening choral chant/badass riff from fucking Hell's naptime hour, and I know Tawny caught more than a jealous eyeful of the two of us animals goin' at it. I haven't felt this fucking good since I caught Vedder's left ankle after he jumped off the lighting rig at the Tahomadome during "Once".

God did give rock 'n' roll to us and I just wish that fuckstick Bush and Mr. Osama B.L. himself would understand that. I'm off to buy a couple used CDs at Wherehouse. We'll talk later for sure.

2007-10-22T09:24:00.000-07:00

I was placing the finishing touches on another post to my blog "The Species Chronicles" (a collection of short stories exploring events in the Species universe that were not contained in the official theatrical trilogy) when a woman (who I later would know as Marilyn) approached and asked "Can you tell me the password for the wireless here?" (You had to buy a large, cotton-candy blizzard to be given wireless internet access -- and I could tell from the cup she held that she hadn't).
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I entered the passphrase onto her laptop computer making extra sure that the keyboard was positioned as to conceal the bulge protruding from my jeans. Unfortunately, her laptop was one of the late 90s compaq models notorious for extreme overheating. As I entered the last keystroke of the 7-character password ("dmenace"), I began to smell the unmistakable stench of burning foreskin. Even though I would never be able to wear cotton briefs again, it was a small price to pay for true love.

How? Why? When?

2007-10-21T10:16:00.000-07:00

I got a harrowing fone call from the old coach of my kid's basketball time around 7 o' clock last night informing me that he had cut my kid from basketball tryouts. First of all, I'd like to give Coach a big 'fuck-you' for calling me during Entertainment Tonight. Anybody who knows me or would consider me a friend or person of influence on them (I run a major post at a commercials agency--you might've seen some of my work on the Campbell's "Chunky" campaign) would know not to bother me during ET. I don't care if you're Claudia Schiffer offering to give me a Vaseline-coated handjob while my wife watches, you're not getting in my brainspace.

But, to save myself from having to know that my little pussy of a son cried in front of the other boys, I quickly hit the TiVo button on my VCR, got in my BMW 305-i and hightailed it over to the middle school to get Jeremy before he made a faggot out of himself. I was pacing neck and neck up Johnson Ferry Rd. with a little hardbody Mother I'd Looooove to Fuck in one of those new silver Nissan 300ZXs (not as good as my Beam, but not bad nonetheless). She threw a couple of waywards my way (swish! -- try doing that once, son), before she tried to speed off. But like my idol Chevy Chase in the Vacation movies, I had to keep pace with this hot little mamacita.

We raced neck & neck all the way to the middle school, and when we got to the drive-up spot, I saw my little toad of a son listening to rap on his iPod and reading a Wolverine comic book. Ignoring him, the mom and I exploded out of our cars to the nature trail, where I gave her what was, undoubtedly, the fingering of her life. I never cheat on my wife, so any dalliance I may have ends there usually, but I had to let her jerk me off near a plot of Cicadias, especially since I could be on mop up duty with the hooded No Fear ('3 seconds left...you choose' on the back in case you're curious) sweatshirt. We said our goodbyes, promised to meet each other at the bar at Houck's next time Time Machine played, and got our respective, pathetic children. Glad I taped the rest of ET since I was running long (and hard);)

Machine Gun Etiquette

2007-08-25T19:15:00.000-07:00

I didn't think you had even notice me at first. I was walking around your booth at Comic Con like a vulture on acid, bumping into the outer limits of your pewter displays and sailing high as a kite off of Doxycyclene & Dewar's, a lethal combination for any nerd.

I pushed a stack of comic books for you to sign and you rebuffed the lot of them, pausing to only sign two. I asked you to make them out to "Ronnie" & "Bill". You addressed both of them to "Mark Size" and finished your Jack in the Box ciabatta burger (kvlt), a slight twinkle in your eye. I just want you to know that I'm taking this as an indication that you do want me back at your room, 314, at the Howard Johnson later tonight. I know you're going to be exhausted due to a day full of Q & A's from obsessive fans like me, but I don't think anybody feels the way about you that I feel. I need you. I need to keep you and collect you. So see you soon, my love. I may or may not be waiting for you. Wait, I mean I will be waiting for you. I just may or may not be waiting for you with rope and a knife.

Blood Brothers Break Up!!!

2007-08-25T15:02:00.001-07:00

I don't want to bring everyone's day to a grinding halt, but I can't get it up (but I can get it). I played coy with her for an hour or so, but the vodka & diet Josta began spinning through my arteries and I couldn't be on my own anymore. I got a bad case of the Mississippi Blues that didn't get any better with my usual regimen of three Mississippi Black & Tan jugs and two shots of Dimetap & Aunt Jemima every morning. Something about the "hardening" of the arteries that takes it out of your garbage, no matter how many Big Johnson shirts you might buy to fool your wife during Spring (Back)Break(out). Something about the prevalent sands and brutally hot pavement of Orange Beach, Alabama that always used to bring the spark back to Wendy and I's marriage, but we drifted apart like two inflatable dragons in a Howard Johnson pool (sedan delivery) sometime between March 24th, 2006 and March 28th, 2006, and the breach was never repatriated.

It wasn't until the 29th of that fabled month of March that things started to clear up. It might've been because Wendy shanghai'd me stool-bound at Florabama after serving herself three Siamese Triangles whilst pregnant and taking off with a barback named Stacy and a half rack of saran-wrapped ribs in a styrofoam box, but I think I finally saw the light, and it came in the form of a speed-divorcee box named Michelle who worked on consignemt for Maybelline, had a couple of three pound vices I couldn't shake out of her and could bench press the world in my eyes with little more than a ripped Detroit Shock jersey and a pump dispenser of steak sauce autographed by former Cowboys figurehead James "Jimmy" Johnson. She caught the corner of my tired eye after downing another Moosehead and letting the chaffe of my chin hit the bartop, standing there with my back against the record machine, she wasn't the worst that I'd seen.

I got jolted out of my bookworm sleep by a sharp slap to the side of my sunburned cheek by this fucking broad, Michelle, hair red in front, even redder in the back. It knocked me square off my stool, and the vaseline and Jager I spilled all over my wedding band caused it slide right off and into her hand, which was fishing in one of the gutters built into the floor for a clump of someone else's hair to give to her mother, who was more than likely going through chemo for some STRANGE ailment. I let her play fair, pummelling me a bit with a fresh pair of Pumas on but for some odd reason, we never parted ways. 7 years later today, I woke up with a ball gag in my mouth and a crossbow pointed at my lower intestine, trembling with sweat. But one look into my loving wife Michelin's eyes and I see our children building lumps of clay out of dirt in no time flat. Viva vida!

Things Have Been Tough...

2007-08-09T20:38:00.000-07:00

...Without the Dum Dum Boys...Passing columns on some sort of drive full of 'em...Heard one of the patients here won the lottery a few years back and accidentally spent all of the money on Carnival cruises, Dodge Vipers and Masters tickets. If it were me, I would've taken the cash cut, made a pile in my backyard and roasted a cow over the money pit. I wouldn't have any use for a fire, but I would like to see a live cow being turned slowly over a few million dollars worth of Washingtons.

I got fucked out of this drum circle at Burning Man because I was filming this documentary on The War and I guess the dreadlocked idiots thought I was goofing on them because I had a head full of STP and I was shaking my dick around, screaming that there was still piss left inside of me, it just needed to be coaxed out by an Indian with a clarinet. I burned this dumb bitch named Beth inside of her tent after she lemme in without a shield. I lit her tent on fire and sprayed Elvis beer ("all shook up") on the flames like Boston had three-peated in '08. I think they might've cuz I saw the future in a dream after cheating on my girlfriend with a Miller Lite girl at Bradley's. I made a carped reference about her Bift's, something along the lines of "I guess you fell short" since her surgery bulbs were getting ready to split her already V-necked mock ref 41N, 93W's jersey (bust I'm guesstimating based on fattening experiences). She was all outta Miller Lite's, so I ended up with a troll doll chapstick, a pack of Scott's tissue travellers and a condom with her number written on it. And guess what? I only used the troll doll and the tissues for protection!!!

I think my girlfriend caught on to this one, even though I've cheated on her a score of times because that dumb bitch left her jerz at my crib and Sheila knows that I keep a closet full of jerzees (officially licensed, mind you), but they're all hockey rags, including an autographed Knights jersey from Mannon Rehume. Where was I? So, I go to Burning Man with Tropical and Chey, ten cases of Chill with a few stray Tequizas smooshed in the handholders, a bag of some browning grass we bought offa couple skateboarders at the Grove and a couple doses we stored in Lenscrafters to make our own electric chili beers. I had a set of needle nosed pliers Mystery told me to fake pulling splinters out of girls' fingers with. There was a Sir Douglas fir in the foreground that was winking at me................................................................................................making me move on....roll on....Southern Pacific. I used to have a lotta friends back home/I fake mental illness/To stay worthlessly alone/Their was an alcove over which I would dangle my legs/And swear to the stars I'd jump off the edge of it someday.

Staying up for days in a Residence Inn, writing "1,2,3 Marlenas" for you

2007-08-06T14:31:00.000-07:00

My bowels began to turn senile; I knew that I didn't have much time to make my move. I walked up to her and asked for her email address. "Nervous?", she said inquisitive of the sweat beading around my face and forehead. "Nnnn-o", I said as a tablespoon of the brownest and most acidic liquid imaginable seeped out into my cargos. I began to mutter, "Do you, uh...", but before I could finish the sentence, she flashed her glance at me in such a way that I knew, without a doubt in my mind, that that was the last baby shower I was ever going to have to crash.

The Lights, The Sound, The Sound, The Rhythm, The Noise

2007-07-28T14:06:00.000-07:00

I saw you "on" at The Sapphire last night in a white Louis Vuitton knock-off dress--the LV's had I's & E's between them. I think you were trying to tell me something, but everytime you spoke, all I could think about were spiders with thousands of red eyes like the jewels of some sub-Saharan cave.

I know this space is specifically reserved for stories of the joy & lush life of love, but agony and misery are my two & only companions and I need help from somewhere. My grandfather always used to tell me that the Internet was a life vest made of 1's & 0's, and in some ways, he's right. That being said, he spent his last week on this Earth attached to a respirator watching Jed Clampett shoot holes in the ground as The Beverly Hillbillies intro played on perpetual loop for seven days & seven nights. The parallels to Exodus are too astounding to put in words, but I did try to illustrate it to my apartment complex my gutting this black cat I found digging around in the garbage and dangling him like a pinata from two guide wires above our mail hut. I'm not sure if it worked, but if we never get Creative Loafing again, it'll be too soon.

Prix Frie

2007-06-10T23:07:00.000-07:00

If I hadn’t met Marcus, I swear to God I may have killed myself when I got home that night. At the urging of my mother, I signed up for this Jewish dating service online. She thinks I’m still interested in girls, but luckily, this site had a matchmaking service for gay men in L.A. County. I’m not some egomaniac so I actually posted a real picture of myself unlike the rest of the fuckwads on there who had obviously been pilfering their profile pics from old American Eagle catalogs. I’m a little bit overweight, to be honest, and I have a really patchy beard that I’ve been growing for about four years to cover a deep scar I got from our Doberman that I was trying to practice kissing on. But whatever, if I was going to fall in love with someone on the Internet, they had better be ready to fall in love with the real me and not some Abercrombie hologram.

Despite my shortcomings, I got a few nibbles in my inbox and whittled down the selection to a nice anesthesiologist named Steven. He too had included a real picture of himself: short, a little too skinny and from what I could see of his top half, he wasn’t the best dresser in Los Angeles, which is hard to do because everyone in this town dresses like they’re trying to qualify for the X-Games rollerblading competition. He seemed sincere enough over the phone and we set up a date at Fishy’s after we both got off work on Friday night. However, the day before the date I had a severe panic attack after I couldn’t even do ten minutes on the elliptical machine. I called out of work Friday and spent the whole day throwing up and texting my travel agent. After a few Xanax, I managed to get it together enough to put on my best polo and head out to Fishy’s.

When I had made reservations, I went ahead and put us down for the three-course prix frie dinner because I thought that I was going to have a good workout week and Steven looked like he could use the calories. After sitting there like alone for thirty minutes like a fucking idiot while Steven’s braised salmon ceased its simmer, I started losing it again. I had been stood up on a blind date by a fucking short, pale Jewish faggot. I ran into the bathroom and started crying my eyes out. I thought the night couldn’t get any worse, but when I came back to the table our, or should I say my waiter, a young black man whose named tag said Marcus was sitting in Steven’s would-be seat eating his salmon. I was about to call the dogs on him but he looked up at me with these knowing, sympathetic eyes and I sat back down and finished my meal with him. The restaurant was beginning to empty out anyways and Steven had been making trips to the bar in between chatting with me and helping out the rest of the stragglers and had supplied me with more than enough glasses of port to render me incapable of getting home alone that night.

He walked me out to his Isuzu Rodeo and kissed me hard on the mouth before taking me back to his disheveled flat and for lack of a nicer term, pounding my asshole. I dated Marcus seriously for four wonderful years until he decided that he wasn’t gay anymore after attending a Mariah Carey concert during her “Charmbracelet” tour. He flew to Miami to find her and make her his wife and while I was devastated, I grew to understand why he left me. I actually straightened up a bit too. In fact, I’m dating a black pre-op (once you go black…) who came into quite a bit of money after she successfully sued the WNBA’s Phoenix Pyrite franchise for not letting her dunk in tryouts.

Love Cums Quickly

2007-06-10T21:05:00.000-07:00

I got dragged to a fucking Pet Shop Boys concert by my gay friends’ Taylor and Bruce, and God, did I come up with every excuse in the book to try and get out of it. I even said that I think I may have won tickets to a Boney M concert from an Arby’s cup. They asked me to show them the winning cup and all I could find was a Baltic Avenue game piece from McDonald’s successful Monopoly campaign.

It wasn’t so much that these two fags wanted me to queen out with them; no, it was more that they couldn’t understand why I didn’t like the “Boys”. Sure, I had more than my fair share of 80s synth-pop and disco in my brutal record collection, but that was safer, straighter shit like New Order, Depeche Mode and shit, even Tones on Tail. I had been doing Nautilus for about a year and a month, and I could already see the lingering stares of made-up drunk queens as their eyes sucked my cock to the pneumatic beat in the background. I didn’t even expect to meet any girls there unless they had dicks tucked away between their legs, but the startling sight of my bride-to-be in the hot dog line spraying spicy mustard over a foot-long frank while “It’s a Sin” wafted through the stage doors was enough to turn any of the fruits playing grab-ass in the aisles back to the way their fathers’ wished they were.

She had a blonde bob dip, banging her head to the beat as I bumped into her with an extra Beck’s I scooped from the beer line. She couldn’t believe I wasn’t gay and asked me to prove it to her. Sensing that her buzz might wear off any minute, I forced my tongue into her mouth and seductively bit her lower lip. Not sensing that I bit off more than I could chew, I stepped back to examine my handiwork, but instead gasping in horror as the cut on her lower lip dripped blood down her chin like Gene Simmons at Cobo. Drinking it back into her mouth and laughing it off, Laurie followed me to my seat, then to the finest Howard Johnson in Michigan and finally, to the altar. All our gay friends were there, and yes, our spotlight dance was to “Always on My Mind”…it was heaven.

Great Dane

2007-06-10T21:00:00.000-07:00

It was during the unbearably balmy summer of 1985 and I was doing a bike tour of Europe with my cousin Chris. We would’ve done one of those Belgian trappist tours where you sample all the Belgian beer, but we had a few water bottles full of Ronrico and we were on kind of a tight budget. We rode through some proto-Oktoberfest summer festival where all the townsfolk are out in the middle of a garden roasting like lobsters on a grill. The lobsters they did have out on the centerfold spread table were redder than blood, flies telegraphing them with microscopic shit and jissom while the chubby German fraus and fraulines dug their digits into the thorax of these red bugs and sucked the bacteria out, the juices coating their already bright smiles into something more.

Chris and I sat around stewing with these drunken Germans for an hour or two before I started getting restless straddling an uncomfortable wooden bench while these sunburned Nazis jabbered on about their extended families and their golf handicaps. I don’t care for much of that family talk and I’m Jewish, so naturally the paranoia began swirling around my head (it might’ve been the horseflies weaving a loom through my Pert Plus so take the prior statement for the chips it’s worth), so I got up to piss in a trashcan and scope the rest of the fairgrounds out.

Annika hit me from a brick away jerking off a broom handle into a butter churn while the Scorpions blared out of her Aiwa. She shot a flirtatious gaze my way and even though in no way did I need any dairy (I’m lactose intolerant), I decided to follow through on my instincts. I struck up a conversation with her and before I knew it, I was running my hands over our one month old son and drinking every last drop of milk that pours fresh from the udder of our sow Meredith that I paid for from the money I saved canceling the rest of my trip to Europe to fly home with Anni. My cousin Chris never speaks to me, but fuck it, I think I caught him jerking off to a picture of the sun and I never really liked riding bikes anyways.

Hung 'Em High

2007-05-15T14:09:00.001-07:00

When: February 2002
Where: "All Six" Dude Ranch - Jackson Hole, WY

I had just gotten my heart trampled on by un diablo. My hairdresser (bless her heart!) bought me an all-inclusive 5-day romp at All Six. Aran's skin-tight chaps caught my eye. Trying (poorly) to saddle his ranch-assigned pinto, "Fresh Legs", I asked "need some mounting practice?" ;)

Adriana's gift

2007-05-15T13:30:00.000-07:00

When I met Adriana, she told me to change the name of my company from "Chef Puberty's Poison Rice" to "Uncle Ben's". For that, I'll always be grateful.