Can You Believe This Photo?

Legendary, Freaky Fashion Designer Valentino Garavani
(aka Valentino)

I sure can't!!!

_

Stop--Hummer Time!

At some point last night, this beast showed up outside the Governors' Global Climate Summit at the Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills.

Not sure how exactly it is street legal--or if it is. Maybe it was helicoptered in?

Whose is it? Where did it come from? Why does it have treads? What the hell is in the back...or whom? Aliens?

So many questions, no answers...but one thing is certain--this baby is biodiesel. So stop freakin' out and learn to love it!

Mo-town Pirates Back Again...

(Photo courtesy New York Times)

Boy, those pirates are just endearingly incorrigible, aren't they?

This time, they hijacked a Saudi oil tanker THREE TIMES the size of an aircraft carrier. The crude oil onboard has a street value of $100 million.

How the hell can a ship be that big? I mean, I understand the physics of flotation, but where the fuck does that thing park? Where did they build it? And how can a crew of only 25 men run that beast? Amazing. I hope they have 25 more rooms in the hostage village... (FYI, the ship full of tanks, and the crew onboard, are STILL being held by the pirates. Do we need to send Arnold and his elite team in to solve this pesky problem, or what?)

Here is the full article, by the way, for those who still like to read the newspaper:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/18/world/africa/18pirates.html?th&emc=th


I hope some useless-as-a-bag-o-dicks Hollywood scribe is hurriedly writing a really overwrought movie about them.

"Sunset in Somalia"
A thinking-man's thriller, starring James Spader as a disenchanted former missionary gone mad (!) and Leonardo DiCaprio as the FBI agent who decides to shut him down--at any cost.


Paul Haggis doing anything these days? He could TOTALLY murder this one!
Oh, wait--he's too busy cashing paychecks.

How about John Grisham? That guy's GOTTA have some free time...

One Great Leap...

It struck me the other day--and not for the first time, I might add, since I'm so ahead of the game it would blow your mind--that terrorism is not that surprising an offspring of more 'conventional warfare'. For all its detractors, terrorism is but another notch carved into the scarce virgin territory of mankind's belt, a further honing of skill in that most loathsome of crafts--murder.


For your consideration:


476 A.D. -- The Roman Empire Falls. Long ago, before even unicorns were invented, the almighty Roman Empire was decimated* by hordes of barbarians from the Germanic tribal regions of Europe. The highly-organized, efficient, top-of-class Roman Army was no match for the raw, brutal tactics of the barbarians--kill/rape, pillage, burn, move on. No sharp uniforms, no fancy swordplay, no philosophers--yet.



1775 -- The American Revolutionary War. The finely-tuned war machinery of the then-alpha-male British Empire simply could not compete with the ill-trained, ill-equipped rapscallions hiding behind trees in the Colonies. Whatever happened to gentlemanliness in warfare? I mean, tut-tut--how can you have a good war if you don't all simply line up and walk towards each other--slowly--shooting at each other, in a match of 'which nation of pillagers can afford to have the most soldiers with guns?' It's clearly the only way to do battle...or, more properly, was.



1945 -- The Atomic Bomb. Who needs a fucking army? We'll just spend millions of dollars, rape the world's greatest scientific minds, and drop a goddamn instant-apocalypse on you. Easy. Done. We're smarter than you, so we win.




2001 -- September 11th. "Tell ya what--we're smart enough to know you're dumb enough to let us use your own icons of technological advancement against you. All we need are a handful of dudes with fucking box cutters and we will cripple your nation for the rest of its life. Better still, you will never be able to fight back--enemies have never been so clearly undefined. We are not a nation--we are a merely a people with a common interest. We are everywhere. We are dedicated. We win. Eat that."

Shit, man--what's next?

New York Times Enters the Storied Realm of the Obvious

Apparently, and the evidence is--I must stress--technically unreliable at this point:

"A new study finds striking evidence that children who are obese or have high cholesterol show early warning signs of heart disease."

Fat kids with high cholesterol have an increased risk for heart disease? No shit...

For more fascinating facts, please read the article.

_

What is the Better Question?

Welcome to this year's edition of the annual contest--What is the Better Question?
Please study the photo below and then carefully examine the questions that follow:


a) Why is this boy sitting in the toilet with his pants on?
b) Why is his parents' bath tub filled with garbage?

The Profit Crunch

As one of the nation's newest--and foremost--economic experts, I would like to inform you all of the main problem with the corporate structure as it exists:

Profits from boom years are not retained to cover losses during bust years. They are instead distributed to investors and spent on ridiculous executive salaries, increased advertising budgets, corporate retreats, useless conferences, and dubious R & D, which mostly just concerns a redesign of packaging and a cheaper, more-dangerous ingredient list.


Therefore, unless the boom continues without end, there will always be a decline in profits, which decreases the stock price--since the stock price was already based on certain unmet sales expectations--and leaves the company scrambling for cash.

What are the first things that a company does in such a situation?

1. Raises the price of their product slightly, yet again, so that only penny-pinchers and super-observant people notice.

2. Cuts the salaries of all non-management employees.

3. Cuts benefits of all non-management employees--especially pricey things like health care and retirement payments--despite previous promises of lifelong care.

4. Replace all real-world ingredients with cheaper, similarly-flavored chemicals.

5. If this doesn't work, appeal to the government for help, since your industry is 'crucial' to the existence of the world as we know it.


Now, let's think of a few real-world examples:

1. Hostess. How long have the good people at Hostess been making, as David Foster Wallace once called them, "shadow snacks*?" Forever. Have the ingredients stayed the same over the years? No way! You know how expensive real sugar is? Real butter? Shit--if they can save $0.001 per cupcake by using some sort of experimental cancer-causing 'butter-like agent,' they will. They have. Had a cupcake recently? They taste like SHIT. So, as the price of their ingredients plummets, as the real wages of their employees likewise plummet, as benefits for said employees disappear...the price has gone steadily UP--outpacing inflation, outpacing increasing fuel costs. Why has it gone up? Because they need to feed the monkey, man! God forbid they were content with selling 50 billion cupcakes a year and making a mint. They had to get greedy--"what if we can find a way to sell 100 billion cupcakes a year! Yes! Let's do it! Let's sell ourself off to Interstate Baking Corporation (share price $0.04, btw) and turn our bakery into a money machine! Oink! Oink!"

2. General Motors. Formerly the World's Largest Automaker (title now belongs to Toyota, as of 2007, fyi), they have famously been hit by 'hard times' every single year of my life. Or so it seems. Laying off employees, eliminating health benefits, spending the pension fund...all to strip down, become leaner and meaner, to more-agilely continue the pursuit of their long-term goal--total self-destruction by an INCREASED reliance on gas-guzzling trucks and SUVs. So let's see...a dinosaur has no idea what it takes to compete in the marketplace, can't even see into the past, much less one year into the future...we can't let this company go under! We must bail it out with taxpayer money! What would we do without its lack of foresight and gross inefficiency? It is America! If we all have to start driving around in Toyotas and Hondas and BMWs it would just be so...nice...


3. AIG. The biggest insurance company in the world--by far. Imagine if AIG had in its bank accounts the $5000 trillion dollars it has probably collected in insurance payments over the last...15 years. Now, being an insurance company that, like them all, thrives on the small print, they probably only paid out...$5 trillion dollars over the same period. Where, then, is the other $4995 trillion? Is it in the bank? Can they use it to bail themselves out of this 'disastrous predicament' that they brought on themselves by being greedy, short-sighted, and stupid? No. It has already been paid out to wealthy stockholders and executives. It has been spent on lavish executive washrooms with marble toilets and single-use silk toilet paper. It has been spent on pointless annual conferences in Las Vegas, Thailand, the Cayman Islands, Dubai--anywhere there's gambling, booze, and a bottomless supply of hookers. It has been spent to hire friends of friends to redundant positions, just to keep management fun, to spread around the bottomless money, to have enough guys onboard to play polo against Morgan Stanley over the weekend. It has been spent on mailing every house and apartment in America an unwanted pile of steaming junk mail every week. It has been spent on hiring expensive consultants to do the jobs of people on-staff who would rather not actually do their jobs. It has been spent buying up enormous amounts of questionable, risky, derivative securities that they didn't even fully understand. The list could go on indefinitely...

Don't even get me started on the banks--if they have proven to be incapable of managing money...why are we giving them more of it?

Which brings me to my main point:

Whatever happened to the beautiful, self-refining, social-Darwinistic side of market capitalism? Why are we not just letting the firms that did not make mistakes fill the void left by those that did? Isn't deregulation what they all wanted in the first place? Careful what you wish for, assholes!



*A 'shadow snack' is a food product that is desirable not because it is healthy, but because it is delightfully bad for you, an indulgence, which runs counter to the recent, general trend toward healthy foods.

_

Notes on a Scandal

Does anybody else find it disturbing that we are now seeking advice as to how to solve our current financial crisis from the very same people who are so clueless they didn't even see it coming? Smart moves, Warshington--smart moves.

Notes from Tanzania: Kilimanjaro

9/23/08 - Uhuru Hostel, Moshi, Tanzania

My legs still ache from the climb. Or was it the descent? Probably both. Max and I are sitting at a table in the courtyard here, watching a 4.5'-tall maribou stork strut his stuff for the other birds as we write; when he landed, it sounded like a small airplane. A crazy man rants nearby.

Kakasii (our guide) dropped us off here yesterday afternoon, after picking us up from the Marangu Gate at Mt. Kilimanjaro--with three ice-cold Kilimanjaro beers standing by, as promised. It was our first drink in over a week. Not quite as impressive as Adolpho's streak (2 years, broken when we offered him one in Uswaa village), but probably a personal record for the three of us.

As usual, we all had to cram into a small vehicle--me, Max, and Clemence, six days overdue for a shower, wedged into the backseat--but at least all the windows were down and some charming Tanzanian music was blasting. Talk delightfully impossible, we all just enjoyed the scenery and tunes as Kakasii attempted to break his own land speed record.

It was hard not to think back on our recent trek. Day 5--Summit Day--which occurred on Sep.21, was one hell of a test, a true emotional yo-yo of a day, during which we experienced both the high and low points of our six-day trek.


Kibo Hut. 4750 meters. Our day began at midnight. After a few hours of sleep and a few hours of watching time pass in the moonlit darkness, without a clock, thinking about the day to come, breakfast arrived.

The porter with a red bandana--whose name we never got, since we were not allowed to mingle with the porters--brought in a plate of cookies. That was it. That was our sustenance for the longest, most intense leg of our climb. Cookies.

We suited up for the bitter cold (-15 Celsius?), filled Ralph's daypack with our self-purified bottles of water and some trail mix I had on hand, and waited outside for our guide.

Clemence was nowhere to be found--other groups were already departing for the summit, a string of headlamps in the distance, and our guide was AWOL.

Clemence finally showed up, we took a few photos, and headed out. Spirits were high for the first couple hours. As we plodded zig-zag up the endless gravel slope, passing all the players in this comedy, one by one, each briefly illuminated in the moonlit semi-darkness, I could not shake the feeling that we were in some sort of Fellini dream sequence.

First, there was the Spanish couple. She wasn't feeling ‘well in the head’ when we woke up, and the expression on her face now implied matters had only gotten worse. I said "Hola" and we chugged past. I hoped they would make it to the top, since I actually like them--which I couldn't say for most of the other climbers--but I didn't think it likely. [He made it; she didn't - Ed]

We passed the three annoying Polish people I thought were Russian, who kept us awake our first night on the mountain until I pounded on the wall of our hut and shouted “Shut the fuck up!” with conviction, the large group of Austrians...and others I can't remember. Our methodical, 'pole, pole,' style, with only a few short breaks, was proving successful. I was getting excited about being the first ones on top, owning the fabulous view for at least a few exhilarating minutes.

Then the sickness started. Nausea, accompanied by the nearly-overwhelming need to shit, followed by alternating cold/hot sweats, dogged me the rest of the way up. When it got unbearable, I would stop for a quick rest, then press on despite my desire to shoot myself in the face.

I took off my hood and the handkerchief covering my nose/mouth, and tried to breathe in the fresh cold air in giant gusts. I worried about frostbite, especially when my toes went numb and my hands seemed irretrievably frozen in my gloves, but wasn't sure what I could really do about it. I had to press on and I just hoped everything would turn out okay. I hoped I wouldn’t become the next Beck Weathers.

The endless gravel zig-zag finally ended and we were met by a similarly-endless, nearly-vertical pile of boulders. I couldn't believe it--this, too? Clemence started up, choosing his path as he went, and we followed. Slowly.

Our breaks became more frequent, our bodies completely exhausted, barren of energy. I staggered around like a drunk, only my desire to not fail keeping me upright. How do all these old people do this? How do all these overweight people do this? How the hell did Jimmy Carter do this in 2000, at age 76? Why are we struggling so much? When will this end? Should we give up? How can we give up? How can we not do this? We can do this!


By the time we got to Gilman’s Point--5685 meters, atop the crater rim--I was ready to fall over and die. Luckily, the view saved me. An eternity of red, ethereal clouds spread in every direction. As cheesy as it sounds, it really did seem as though all of Africa lay before us, that we were gods looking down on the human comedy. We watched the sun break the horizon. A vast bowl of volcanic dust and snow, topped by the striking profile of a glacier wrapping around the other side of the mountain, awaited us in the other direction. Stunning.


All the hard work, the misery, was redeemed. We sat down for a few minutes to soak it all in, then Clemence said we had to press on--it was still an hour and a half to the actual summit, along the crater rim. Ralph asked me if I thought we should stay there to watch the sun rise, and I said we’d probably be able to see it periodically along the way. I regret not staying there.

The slog from Gilman’s Point to Uhuru (the summit) was murder. Slow, painful, roasted-on-a-spit MURDER. Barely able to breathe in the thin air at 19,000 feet, our muscles in surrender mode, our heads swimming in oxygen-deprivation, our stomachs dangerously empty, teetering precipitously over the edge of the crater rim, the 1.5 hours felt like forever.

In the distance, we saw (and heard) countless people in matching orange jackets prancing around jubilantly. They must have come up a different route, since we were the first people up ours, and, from the looks of it, their route was a lot easier. Some of them were even running up and down the outside slope, burning off excess energy. Everybody was smiling, laughing, exuberant; we were miserable and, therefore, immediately hated them. There was no way I could have smiled; no way I could have run.

In fact, ever since we hit Gilman’s Point, I had become unable to stop sobbing uncontrollably. Happy, sad, exhausted, proud, whatever--I couldn’t stop crying. I couldn’t speak, since my voice would immediately crack into a sob, so I remained silent as much as possible. I thought about shooting a video when I got to the top, a simple one where I would tell Melissa I loved her, and the thought made me cry again. I didn’t think I would even be able to say “I love you” without crying. 'What is wrong with me?' I wondered...and cried...

The last stretch dragged on. I could occasionally see groups of climbers in the distance and their location destroyed me all over again each time. How could it still be that much farther? When will this end? I finally saw the top from a distance; an agonizing distance. I turned to Ralph:

“Don’t fucking tell me we have to go all the way over there. What the fuck?!”

We did have to go all the way over there. Extremely slowly. The incline was minimal, but unrelenting. Ralph seemed to be dealing with it okay, but Max and I could only go 20 meters or so before we would need to rest. We didn’t understand what the hell the rush was, but Clemence kept pushing us along.

People on their way down--full of life, energy, smiles, springs in their feet--made me sick, unfairly filled me with hatred for them. How could they have done this and not be on their deathbeds, as I felt. How?!

By the time we made it to the official summit (5,895 meters)-- a circus of activity dominated by middle-aged American assholes whining about lack of cell reception--I was so pissed off that I didn’t even care. Five days of hiking, five days of eager anticipation, months of planning, much money spent...and I didn’t even care that I was standing atop the roof of Africa.


We three sat on some rocks and rested, totally spaced out. It was 7:30am. Clemence pushed us to hurry over and take our pictures by the summit sign before more people arrived. I didn’t see the point of hurrying--there were already like a hundred people on top, a steady flow on the way up, so what did it matter? There would always be a line, so why couldn’t we just chill the fuck out for twenty minutes?

But we gave into our guide-cum-slave-driver, once again, and posed for two or three photos. Max held out the Terry Plumbing flag in all of them, which annoyed me when I realized it later. In all the commotion--picture bitchy suburban parents fighting about how long somebody’s kid has been sitting on Santa’s lap at a shopping mall, actually saying lines like this: “Oh, so now we’re taking two shots? Hmmph!”--Max and I both totally forgot to pose with the leopard he had been toting around since Zanzibar, expressly for this purpose, so we could give our niece and nephew a toy leopard that had climbed Kilimanjaro with us, along with photos taken along the way to prove it.


I also would have liked a solo photo, but didn’t feel like fighting to make it happen. All I wanted to do was leave this madness behind and sit down somewhere for a while, eat some trail mix, catch my breath, rest, improve my emotional state a bit before the inevitable, grueling descent to Kibo Hut.

But Clemence would have none of it. “We need to go now--the sun is too strong here.” All I could think was: 'What the fuck does it matter? It’s so damn cold I don’t even have any skin exposed!!! Does it burn through down jackets, you asshole?!'

But, once again, we pressed on as instructed. I think we were just too beaten down to argue. The trek back to Gilman’s Point was like a Trail of Tears. We demanded to stop there for a while to rest and eat something. By this point, Ralph, who earlier complained that he was falling asleep while walking, was so devoid of energy that he fell down TWICE while trying to sit on a large boulder.

Gilman’s Point was super crowded at this point, and everybody was in high spirits. They must have had more than a handful of cookies before/during the 20,000-calorie climb/descent. After a brief rest, we continued down, hoping to simply put all this behind us.

Down-climbing the boulder wall was difficult and time-consuming. Our legs were still weak from the climb up, our stamina waning due to continued lack of sustenance. Descending the eternity of gravel beyond the boulders was agonizing.

I literally skied down on my boots, using the walking poles like ski poles, slaloming around large boulders. It easily took over an hour or two--a hell of a ski run, and hell for the knees. After a slow start, Ralph took off and flew down the mountain, passing me at some point and not stopping until he got to Kibo Hut, where we were to rest and eat lunch before continuing another 12km down to Horombo Hut for the night.

What was it that filled his sails so suddenly, so vigorously? The overwhelming need to take a shit.

By the time I got down, Ralph was in bed. I borrowed his packet of diaper wipes and raced off to the pit toilets myself, having had to shit since we started the climb 13 hours ago...

Now, I have to tell you these pit toilets were disgusting. As I dirt-skied my way around the final bend, the scent riding the robust wind could have wilted a rainforest. It's no wonder there’s an alpine desert up here...


The unthinkable--using these pit toilets, which were literally just a hole in the ground, surrounded by piss, shit, dirt, and altitude-induced vomit--became reality out of pure, unadulterated necessity.

Nothing lowers standards quite like the need to go to the bathroom. When your choice is between filling your pants or using a disgusting bathroom, it is no longer even a choice. How many days does it take before a new prisoner shits on a filthy, seat-less toilet in the middle of his cell, in full view of his creepy, violent cellmate(s)? Well...how many days can the human body hold it in? It is but a matter of time--eventually, everyone gives in and performs.

In case you were wondering, it’s not easy to squat over a hole in the ground, trying to keep your pants clean, after a grueling 12-hour ascent/descent. My legs were quivering, ready to acquiesce to gravity at any second. My lungs frantically huffed and puffed, searching the polluted air for precious oxygen.

All went well, luckily, and I crashed out in my bed after changing into some dry clothes.

A couple hours later, I think--we never had any real concept of time--the porter with the red bandana woke us up for lunch. What do you give three starved mountain climbers after a soul-destroying, energy-sapping, 12-hour climb on a nearly-empty stomach?


Easy one--a plate of cold toast, old fruit, cold fried-eggplant patties, and horrible onion soup. That’s it. That’s the lunch our crew slaved over as we climbed. That was the fuel they thought we needed. I took a few bites and walked away; Max didn’t even touch it.

Clemence walked in shortly after lunch arrived, alarmed that we weren’t ready to leave for Horombo Hut yet. I wanted to punch him in the face so badly. Not only because of the slave-driving climb and the shitty food, but because he never even told us to be ready at a specific time, yet here he was yelling at us for being late.

We took our sweet time packing up and resumed our descent. Surprisingly, I was in a pretty good mood--partly because I had slept a bit, partly because Clemence decided to carry my pack, partly because the hike was relatively flat. I had some good conversation with my brother, as well as with Ralph. It was hard to believe we had stood atop Kilimanjaro not long ago--much like the machete mugging in Arusha, I felt a surreal detachment from the reality of the moment. Was I up there? Really? What did it feel like? I don’t really know...

But what I did know was that we were heading down, down, down--and that was a good thing. Off the mountain. Finish camping, ditch Clemence, move on.


After a shitty dinner of banana stew at Horombo Hut, crammed onto the end of a table full of Japanese climbers bitching in broken English about not having any boiling water, we hit the sack hard.

The next morning, we hiked 12km to Mandara Hut, most of which I did by myself, at a breakneck pace, rocking out to 24 LCD Soundsystem tracks, dodging porters going up and down, staring out into the crazy extraterrestrial landscapes.

At Mandara, we waited easily 45 minutes for our lunch--french-fry omelettes and steamed vegetables. Huh? I wolfed it down. We pumped some water from a nearby faucet and hit the trail again.

Clemence told us he would catch up. We couldn’t tell what he was doing when he said this--it looked like he was either shitting in a ditch or washing his ass or something. As it turned out, we think he was changing his clothes, awkwardly, in semi-public, since he was wearing different clothes when we saw him later on down the trail.

We flew down the last stretch--partly to stay ahead of/away from Clemence, partly to just finish this thing already.

Clemence tried to stop us occasionally to point out things, to make us think he deserved a better tip, due to his bottomless knowledge, and it reminded me of how he had seemed super intense during our first meeting, surprised that we had not prepared any questions about the local plants, as if he was some kind of insane nature expert. I don’t think he pointed out one fucking thing on the way up. We might as well have been led up the mountain by an auto mechanic. Yet, here he was:

“See that thing on that tree?”

Where? What tree? What thing? We’re in a fucking rainforest, Clemence! You can’t be that vague! Can you give me a color? A shape? An adjective? There is a veritable smorgasbord of vegetation here, for Christ’s sake... Oh? The bee’s nest made out of a log? Yeah, already know all about it, Clemence. They’re all over the place. Thanks for filling us in on some insider-secret. There’s an extra five cents in your tip jar, now leave me alone!

Even if his intentions were more innocent, we just didn’t care. We kept going, sweating our way toward those three ice-cold Kilimanjaro beers and a one-way ticket off the mountain.

Do I regret the adventure? No. It was an irreplaceable experience and the highs, if not more abundant than the lows, made it all worthwhile. Would I have done it differently? Hell yeah. Will I ever do it again? Hell no.

An Open Letter to the Writers of 'The Office (U.S.)'

Your show is a comedy.
Those are the ones with jokes.

Please adjust future scripts accordingly.

--Goodtime Charlie

It certainly seems that way...

But maybe there'll be a devastating failure of the annual carb crop, followed by a government-mandated, one-year-long 'Run for Your Life...for Cancer' and we'll all be saved?

_

Weirdo At Play in the Fields of the Lord

Earlier today, in Los Angeles, my friend and I went to Griffith Park to lay in the sun/shade and read through a script we've been writing.


Despite the fact that we were two guys reading aloud to each other in a park, things were going well. Then we got swarmed by ten-year-olds on their lunch-break, riding out the back-end of a sugar-filled field trip to the nearby Griffith Observatory.

(photo courtesy LA Times)

Whoa! Don't worry--we survived. It didn't get that hairy.
It's amazing how far a box of Nerds can take you, when scattered 'at random' by a professional...

Anyway, after all that hullaballoo ran its course and the bambinos were herded back onto their school buses, emaciated teenagers of both sexes began trotting around in strange matching uniforms, oddly tolerating the unreasonable barks of some overweight, Napoleanic coach sitting in a low-rent camping chair. I overheard him telling those kids the following, as they diligently set up an obscurely-branded 10' x 20' pop-up tent under a tree:

"Alright, alright--let's move this into the shade. Come on! Okay...let's get those waters out there, and the Gatorade. Make sure you put the Gatorade next to the water--no--ON TOP OF the water--but make sure you drink BOTH today, guys. Seriously..."

It was quite distracting--and not in the good way you might be thinking (none of them were hot). By the time we were back in the zone, my buddy had to head off to an inconvenient job assignment. I say that like it was court-mandated or something, but it wasn't. Well...no--it wasn't. That's all I can say. Legally.

Our semi-productive day cut short, we trudged through several feet of sunshine, back to my glistening Lamborghini Countach.

On the way, I couldn't help but notice this:


A totally creepy guy hanging outside his serial-killer-issue van, dancing drunkenly to deafening, shitty country music, in broad daylight, at a high-school cross-country meet, just after a four-bus-load junior-high field trip finished eating their lunch.

ROCK ON, MAN!!!!!!!!

Right?

Wait--or is pedophilia not cool anymore?

__

Who Knew Richard Marx Was So Revered?

I was singing a Richard Marx song in the shower yesterday--Now and Forever, the #1 wedding song of the early '90s--and found myself almost immediately at a loss for lyrics.

Oddly, there was a time when I knew every word to every track on his album Paid Vacation. As hard as that is to admit to people right now, I take solace in the fact that I was merely the victim of a sadly-limited musical exposure.

Despite the fact that my parents came of age in the 1960s-70s, the only CDs in our house were the following:

1. Aretha Franklin's Greatest Hits
2. Cristopher Cross -- self-titled
3. Huey Lewis and the News - Sports
4. Huey Lewis and the News - Fore!
5. Huey Lewis and the News - Small World
6. The Back to the Future soundtrack (with 2 tracks by Huey Lewis)
7. The Beverly Hills Cop II soundtrack
8. Bonnie Raitt - Luck of the Draw
9. A dozen or so classical piano and Christmas CDs my dad would listen to

Notice the lack of even the Beatles and Rolling Stones, much less funk and soul records...

Anyway, I digress. As I searched my memory bank for more lyrics to Now and Forever, I was instead reminded of a story that one of my bosses told me once, at a sushi restaurant in St. Charles, IL (don't worry--I had the beef teriyaki). To protect my boss' identity, let's call him Reinhold.

Reinhold and I, along with maybe a dozen other crew members, were crammed into monastic dorm rooms on the grounds of a former convent, working on some awful Accenture conference for a week and a half, so it was nice to get out on the town, even if that town was St. Charles. After a few tall bottles of Kirin, Reinhold told me that before he got into producing boring conferences, he was a touring lighting designer for various musicians throughout the late '80s and '90s.

I asked him if he had any good stories and he told me one of his favorites.

Reinhold was the head lighting designer on a Richard Marx World Tour when his popularity was at its peak (early '90s?), and their last stop before returning to the United States was in Taipei, at some sort of large arena.

Richard Marx had been a prima donna the whole time, so nobody on the crew was surprised when he didn't turn up on time for the show. As more time passed, however, the packed house started to get riled up, shouting, chanting, screaming, stomping.

"We want Richard! We want Richard!"

The crew all gathered backstage, fearing things might soon turn ugly, to discuss their options if it did. Then Richard Marx's tour manager turned up to inform the crew and the local promoter that Richard was not going to perform because he had a cold.

"But what are we gonna do with this crowd? They're gonna tear this place apart if you go out there right now and say that?!"

The local promoter took to the stage, grabbed the microphone and said to the throng of rabid Richard Marx fans, "Richard Marx will not be performing tonight because he hates the people of Taiwan."

You can imagine their reaction. Ape-shit NUTS.

Reinhold followed some other crew members through a hole in the fence behind the stage, left the madness behind, and headed back to their hotel as the mob no-doubt tore the stadium apart.

The crew members all went to their rooms, hurriedly packed their things, and headed down to the lobby in the elevator. When the doors opened, an angry mob filled the lobby and they found themselves staring down the barrels of a half-dozen AK-47s.

They were all taken hostage and led into a room to be interrogated.

According to Reinhold:
"Luckily, I was able to talk my way out of it and we all headed to the airport. As soon as the plane landed at LAX, we said goodbye and headed our separate ways, since we all lived somewhere in California anyway. Richard had to find a whole new crew to staff his last few tour dates stateside."

Who would have thought a Richard Marx tour could involve such adventure, eh?

I wish I knew what Reinhold said to the guys with the machine guns, but he wouldn't tell me. Said it was a long story--a long story I never got to hear. Hopefully he didn't give away any state secrets...

Jimmy Kimmel is a Talent-Less Hack

As if I didn't already despise Jimmy Kimmel enough--for being a comedian who is not funny, yet broadcast over the airwaves five times a week to millions of zombies across our once-great nation--this just arrived in my email inbox:



Why exactly is he interviewing the cartoon mascot of an insurance company? Has product placement really become so blatant? Have we fallen this far?

Or is it all a dream? Punch me in the face and maybe it'll wake me up.
Or knock me out and I can forget about all this...


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Reason #146 That I Love Italy

Love Berlusconi or hate him, you gotta love a country with a President that would say this:

“If I sleep for three hours, I still have enough energy to make love for another three,” the newspaper La Repubblica quoted him as telling the younger crowd. “I hope that when you hit 70, you’re in as good shape as I am.”

(source: NYTimes)
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Amazing What You Can Find Out There...

All I was looking for was a photogenic picture of shit!
(Never found one, by the way...)

120 Days of Sodom

Okay. So I finally watched Pier Paolo Pasolini's Salo, or 120 Days of Sodom, an uber-controversial 1975 film adapted from the Marquis de Sade's equally controversial 18th-century book, The 120 Days of Sodom, or the School of Licentiousness.

How controversial was Salo when it came out? Well, 20 days before the movie was to premiere at the Paris Film Festival, Pasolini was repeatedly run over--with his own automobile--on a beach outside Rome. A 17-year-old hustler confessed to the crime, then recanted 30 years later, saying the safety of his family had been threatened unless he did as he was told.

Although most countries eventually allowed the film to screen--after rating it X and/or cutting footage--Salo is still banned in Australia.

Gotta love the Criterion Collection for putting this out there; it was the 17th film they chose to release (this is the second issue--much improved from the first, I hear, and full of extras).

As in the book--which remained unpublished for 150 years--most of the action in the movie involved homosexuality and shit eating, which is pretty unfortunate when you consider there were nine beautiful young girls (virgins, of course) they could have been having their way with instead. But hey, when it's my 120-day orgy, I guess I can start making the rules...

Overall, I enjoyed the experience--probably more than most people would, since my sensibilities have been continually worn down to nothing over the last...30 years...of action movies, horror movies, porn, Ultimate Fighting Championship, and my own perversely inventive imagination--but it is not without its problems.


From an ideological standpoint, I respect the movie. The transposition from pre-revolution France to the waning days of Fascist Italy definitely adds an interesting political dynamic to a story already rife with social commentary and philosophy generations ahead of Freud, Nietzsche, and the Surrealists. Through his depiction of the victims in the film, Pasolini seems to be saying that the public will always be forced to endure whatever they will tolerate--and that we should feel no sympathy for those people, as they chose their fate by allowing it to happen--is certainly heartless, but not exactly untrue, either. Methinks the scrolls of history seem to agree...

Additionally, the structure of the story is admirable--it ends in the middle of things, leaving the audience wondering how long the cruelties will continue, leaving the fate of the participants unknown, leaving us hanging, making us feel less like an audience watching a story unfold and more like voyeurs watching a sickening reality, and wondering if we should tell somebody about it or just keep watching and see how bad things get.

Will we do anything? Do we ever do anything? Oh, every few hundred years or so, when things get really bad...wait--are we at that point again? Shall we storm the Bastille like old times?

My main complaint about Salo is that I would have liked a little more set-up in the beginning. Who are these guys? Why are they doing this? Why exactly did others lend a hand in capturing beautiful young boys and girls for them? Even something as simple as showing some money change hands would have been enough for me... I think the movie's comment on Fascist Italy, the class system, and consumerism would be much more powerful if the audience were given a little more information at the outset, a little something to chew on while the perversions unfold.

All in all, I would say it is most important that this movie is watched as a work of art, as a philosophical treatise, as a political statement, and not as entertainment. It is not a popcorn movie; it is not a clever, cool art film that makes you want to move to Europe; nor is it pornography, for that matter, if you were so inclined, as the nudity is frequent, but decidedly un-erotic.

So if you've got a head on your shoulders and a stomach for filth, pop it in your VCR and see what you think...

Notes from the Rijksmuseum

"In fact, by the late seventeenth century, piss prophets were no longer considered reliable."

"As the old sing, so the young shall peep."

Best Pitcher Ever goes to Johannes Lencker, for a gilt-silver Merman blowing a conch while balancing on a dolphin's tail, a foxy female hanging around his neck.

During the Golden Age in Holland (1600s), rich people ATE peacocks.

* "For those who are on a diet but who really want to eat something meaty, peacocks are the answer. The fat content of peacock meat is very low, only 0.8 to 1 per cent, while the levels of protein, vitamins, calcium and other microelements are high. The nutritional value of a peacock is much higher than that of fish or snake." --China Star

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I Wonder What Happened to that Little Ugly Duckling...

www.uglychic.blogspot.com

maybe she turned into a swan?
and has a new job doing red-carpet interviews for E!?

or maybe she died from an overdose of Chunky Monkey

dare to dream, America!

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Cubs v Sox

I must say tis a shame both the Cubs and Sox had to exit the playoffs this year. A crosstown series would have been a splendid manner by which to end the Cubs' 100-year World Series drought!

I say this not as a baseball fan, but as a sportsman.

Sportsman

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