Ramones Mania

Now I remember why baseball sucks -- it takes a perfectly good network, like Fox, and replaces all the good programming with fucking... baseball. So I'm finally (sorry!) watching this Ramones Raw DVD that Devin bought me as a birthday present the year before last, and you know what? It's totally fucking engrossing. It's basically a compilation of home movies the band made while touring in the U.S. and abroad, along with some totally sweet live footage for songs I think they didn't do live that much (including one of my personal favorites, I Can't Make It On Time). I think the best part is how dumb it at all is -- literally a double-digit percentage of the footage is of members of the band posing in front of some local edifice or pointing at a funny sign and waiting nervously to have their picture taken, starting to smile, not sure if the picture's been taken yet, glancing back and forth awkwardly, etc. And then there's the fucking terrifying footage from inside their car of them getting mobbed by fans in South America and Europe. My only complaint is that most of the stuff is from the post-Dee Dee era, so it's got C.J. in it instead, and that guy... he's not, you know, a Ramone.

Some other highlights:

• Gilbert Ramone
• Joey and Marky's appearance on Steampipe Alley, hosted by Mario Cantone
• Dee Dee's perverse insistence on taking a detour to go shopping for a Rolex in Valencia
• Holy shit, Joey wearing a fucking Dickies t-shirt!

Because I'm A Fucking Caveman

So yesterday, The Friends and I drove up to this place called Wright's Farm in Gardiner, NY, and went apple-picking. Katharine and I had devised the idea the previous weekend, and during a boring Monday or Tuesday at work I googled a bit and got some people on board. The weather ended up being completely perfect for our plans -- there'd be pretty much non-stop rain up in tha Tri-State for the past two weeks or so, but it cleared up completely and the temperature rose to 70 degrees during the afternoon. I'd never gone appling before (at least, not that I can remember), and it turned out to be a whole goddamn lot of fun. I took some pictures with the dij:

Tom's so happy he just doesn't know what the fuck to do.

The donut-making machine, as seen through the window of the store. The donuts get sort of squirted out fully-formed from this mechanical mixing bowl and then slowly floated down this stream of simmering oil, which cooks them along the way.

The ground was kind of marshy from it having rained the past 2 weeks straight, and lots of apples had already fallen off the trees. Alternately gross and pretty.

A ladder going nowhere; has Farmer Wright been raptured?

Sadly, on the last day Ted became feral.

Here's how it works: You pay like $5 and they give you a bag and send you up to the orchard, which is like a square mile of rows of apple trees, and you just fill the fuck out of your bag. I can't tell for sure, but I think they had about three types of trees -- there were yellowy-green apples, shiny red ones, and then these sort of dusty-looking pinkish-red ones. Maybe those last two are the same kind, I dunno. There were also a whole crapload of apples that had fallen off the tree, and which I guess they recommended you not pick up, so we whipped 'em at each other. Some of them were all mushy and rotten. After we filled up our bags (and took an embarrassing number of vanity photos), we headed back to the store area to drink cider and eat cider donuts, which taste about as much like cider as Apple Jacks do, but are also just as tasty as Apple Jacks. I snagged a jar of raspberry applesauce and we got a couple of jugs of fresh-pressed cider to mull with rum back in Brooklyn, and then we hit the road again. So, in closing, I've told you about picking apples in upstate New York, and if you like apples and picking apples, I hope you will consider picking apples in upstate New York the next time you go on a weekend trip to Gardiner, NY.

When we got back, some people took naps; I played X-Men Legends on Tom's old new X-Box. Then we went over to Katharine's to make the cider. There was some confusion over how to add the mulling spices we'd bought -- it comes in these nice looking little pouches that almost look like teabags, but it turns out that you're supposed to untie them and just empty that shit into the pot. The cider was really good, and we all drank some while we watched the first two episodes of Extras, which is reasonably funny. Then everybody went to a bar, except me -- I went home, because fuck that.

M-Biddy pulled the ill drop-in on Wednesday and we hit up the 12th St. B&G for some type good meat dishes. Tom came over and Luisa comped us Stripes at his behest, which turned out to be... not so good, though it did feature this choice bit of dialogue (from the "bonus" material, approx.):

Harold Ramis: I don't want to shoot anybody, I'm a pacifist!
Bill Murray: So you're saying even if some guy's raping your sister and you've got a gun, you don't do anything about it?
HR: This is my sister we're talking about; you practically raped her yourself one night.

Friday I went out with my boss and some co-workers to this really great New Orleansian restaurant called Stan's Place over on Atlantic and Bond -- they snagged their chef a month or so ago from Louisiana after he was left homeless by Hurricane Katrina, and apparently he's still sleeping on one of the owners' couches. Whatever the story, that guy can cook. I ate a whole goddamn Cornish Game Hen stuffed with some kind of oyster-mushroom compote. Jesus. Everyone should go to that place because they just started serving dinner and it's been pretty empty so far, according to my boss, who is a repeat customer.

I gotta get a new digital camera, I'm telling you. This old Olympus 360DL from 1998 homphs down batteries like nobody's business, plus the pictures it takes, while fairly high-res, have his weird prismatic washed-out quality to them, like the lense is covered in a thin layer of dirty soap. It would be nice to have something a little bit better, maybe that could focus itself and do some of that digital zoom shit.

The apartment is full of flies. It's really weird. I've emptied the cat box and taken out the garbage and done the dishes, and they keep showing up. The fly-swatter's been doing overtime -- I killed like 4 yesterday and twice that many this afternoon, even a couple of them fucking on the side of the fridge. I wonder if my downstairs neighbor is dead.

The Public Gets What The Public Wants

...but I want nothing this society’s got
I’m going underground

Apparently this song, which they use as the lead-in to the first hour of the terrible, terrible Majority Report on Air America, is by The Jam. This is a great song; I've been listening to it and others on my own personal 'The Jam' radio station on Pandora.com. I wouldn't have known who it was by if if I hadn't come to Emma's friend Khalil's DJ debut on Saturday at the Laila Lounge in Williamsburg, no easy task, considering it was the gorram end of the world out there. I aimed to hop the G at Smith & 9th, 'cept the F was skipping to Jay, and... fuck it, it's a boring story. But here's a thing that happened on the F train I was on that got it stuck in the station for an extra 15 minutes:

A bunch of what I can only describe as Brooklyn townies -- chubby white kids in backwards baseball caps and sports jerseys, their faces so squished by cheek fat that they squinted -- were horsing around in the last car of the train, where I was, and one of them gives another a shove that sends him stumbling up against the smoked glass window in the door to the conductor's booth. To everyone's surprise, the plate of glass just falls out of the frame, revealing that the booth is empty. After recovering from the shock ("Yo, I think my ribs is broken! This kid broke my ribs, son!"), they begin to hatch a plan:

"Does the intercom work? Get on the intercom and say some shit!"
"Say 'This is a soul train to Queens.'"
"Hahaha soul train!"

So yeah, one of the little creepuses turned on the intercom and muttered something about that train being, in fact, The Soul Train, amid much tittering and gibbering. When the train pulled into Jay St., the doors opened briefly and the perps ducked out, carrying the glass from the window with them ("I'm'a hang this up in my room, son!"). So did I, and after the doors closed a second later, I saw a pathetic-looking MTA official wearing orthopedic shoes and those goggle-style coke-bottle glasses hobbling frantically towards that last car.

Fuck, it's cold outside. Am I right?

I gotta get a new toaster oven. The one I've got now is the one my dad bought me as a graduation present, and about which he said something like, "This is the Rolls-Royce of toaster ovens, Julian" -- typical dad B.S. It's a fine toaster-oven, though, except that ever since I moved into this place, the goddamn door won't stay shut. Something about the spring and the expansion of the frame when the toaster gets hot, I don't know; you can force the door closed at the beginning -- it makes a terrible cracking noise -- but then it bursts open like half way through the toasting cycle.

The Rase and I have now watched the whole of Firefly. I'm a little depressed that there's no more of it, because the more I watched, the more I loved it. Creepy synchronicity: Both The Rase and I loved Jayne Cobb, hated all the women on the show. Well, that's not true; that Saffron chick was kind of cute, if a pain in the ass.

Here's a thing that happened to a friend of mine (name redacted to protect the guilty): We were walking around my neighborhood, shopping for an ashtray for this friend's apartment, and at this friend's request, we stopped at this little tchotchke boutique on 10th and 7th called Toto, that was obviously not going to have anything like an ashtray. Nonetheless, my friend asks for one, and the shopkeeper manages to locate a very nice cheap little bowl that really didn't deserve to be used as an ashtray. As she's ringing us out, she says, "...no, I'm not going to say anything; you know what I'm going to tell you." My friend turns to me and says, perhaps a little more snottily than necessary, "What'd I tell you? Everybody does this: 'I'm not going to say anything, but you know you're not supposed to smoke.'" The shopkeeper becomes visibly flustered and says, "Well, it's a little different for me... you see, my father and brother died from smoking-related illnesses." And with that, she begins to cry a little bit. Jesus Christ. Deep inside, you know you're him.

You Foodies Make Me Sick

Last night I dreamed that I'd traveled to Mars as part of a photojournalist expedition to locate and photograph what life forms there were that could be found. In the dream, Mars was really lush and cool, and a bunch of humans -- holdovers from previous expeditions -- had set up apartments there, so there were comfy accomodations for all of us. We did manage to find one apparently indigenous life form, a practically naked woman not disimilar to Pris, who took a bit of shine to me. Unfortunately, like Pris, she turned out to have a bit of a murderous side, so I had to high-tail it out of there before consumating our relationship. But I remember thinking, in the dream, that I'd have a lot of sweet pictures to post in my 'blog. But I don't.

A couple of restaurants:

• Melt (not Milt, which would be pretty funny), over on Bergen and 5th was supposed to be great, according to my boss, who is an incorrigible "foodie," but the pistachio-encrusted cod drizzled with minty pea puree that I ordered kind of made me want to puke on Friday.
• Bogota, on the other hand, on 5th and Degraw, is pretty goddamn great. My entree came with a side of cilantro-garlic mashed potatoes, which I'm pretty sure I want to eat every day.

Last week, K-Flo got me and some others into this movie premiere party for Jenny McCarthy's new movie, Dirty Love. The movie is apparently loathsome, but the party was fun and the drinks were free. And the venerable Gawker photog, Nikola Tamindzic, was there to take these pictures! We are not in any of them, but basically everyone who was sitting near us got snapped. Insider info: Jenny McCarthy is shorter in real life.

Yeah, so in my ongoing efforts to be more spontaneous, yesterday I was walking by the Prospect Park Green Market, and decided to take a stroll through the baked goods section. All of the stuff was pretty warm -- I'm thinking it was baked that morning -- and this peach pie with a cool vine-and-leaf dough filigree caught my eye, so I bought it. Well, Tom et. al. didn't seem that interested, so I brought it home to Sophie, and we had some with our evening tea. It fuckin' sucked! Very bitter and un-peachy and swarming with cloves and cinnamon. Sophie reckons whoever baked it used an apple pie recipe and just swapped in the peaches, and I reckon she's right.

I played a bunch of Sid Meier's Pirates! over at T's place -- Captain Jerk Jenkins managed to rescue his long-lost sister and uncle who'd been sold into slavery by the Marquis de Montalban, but then he got bored.

The Five Points

So yesterday I went to -- or attempted to make it to -- five fuckin' parties. The schedule, in brief:

• 2:00 PM: Chrissy Rodney's going off to UCLA for grad school, so his dad threw a goodbye / birthday party for him
• 4:00 PM: My boss's engagement / housewarming party
• 6:00 PM Dinner party at my friend Asta's house
• Later: BBQ at Degraw St.
• Later: Gabi's birthday party, more or less around the corner from the Degraw St. residence

Here's what actually happened: Got up to Chris' at around 3:00. There was a nice spread from Fairway, including that ketchup-and-mayo macaroni salad that Chris fell in love with on the trip to Newport. I had a whole bunch of that stuff. I left Chris' at 4:30ish, intending to take the 2/3 down to Borough Hall to walk to my boss's house. Unfortunately, the U.N. assembly had basically ruined all downtown train service in Manhattan, so I hitched the 1 to Chambers and then took a cab the rest of the way. When I got to my boss's place, I started feeling like that macaroni salad was going to come up on me. I pinched a startlingly large loaf, but it didn't seem to help. Around 6:30, I excused myself and left for Asta's in Astoria. By a stroke of good fortune, the G was just pulling in at Bergen St., and I took it to the end of the line, which, as bad luck would have it on the weekends, was three stops short of 36th St., where I needed to go. I waited for about 20 minutes for the V, which should have gotten me the rest of the way, except that there is no V service on the weekends at all. So I left the station, still feeling like I was going to puke, and wandered around the vicinity of Court Sq. looking for a car service in the rain. That place is a fucking wasteland! I pretty much gave up after about 10 minutes, since I was already practically 2 hours late, and turned right around and took the G all the way back to Smith and 9th, and walked from there to The Friends' place. I walked over the Gowanus Canal, which stinks, even in the rain. Got there at around 9:00 and called Razor to get Gabi's address. He was still at Pizza Box, but gave me her number, which I promptly forgot. I did have a great time at Degraw St., until Drunk Ted showed up. Jesus.

The Rase is here to stay! She moved in the weekend before last and promptly left for a week. But we are having a fun time, and she is a great roommate -- cleans, cooks, etc. -- except that she is replacing all of my comfy (but, yes, ugly) furniture with stuff she buys at IKEA. We watch a lot of movies, free rentals of which are provided by Luisa, a friend Tom made for me at the video store with the simple donation of a Rockstar Warriors t-shirt. Hook-up for life, she says. I'm married, but can I give you a hug, she also says.

So last weekend Katharine, Tom, Ted, Emma, Don, and I went on a pretty spontaneous road trip up to this cabin that Katharine's dad owns in Cape Cod, and I had a totally wonderful time. I ate a whole bunch of fried seafood, bacon and delicious grilled hamburgers; drank beers and blender drinks; and actually swam a fair amount. Even the drives up and down were fun (granted, Ted had to do literally all of the driving, everywhere -- we all just got to look out the window and sing along with the stereo). I think some photos are in order:

The cabin, starring Katharine and Tom

This is the first beach we went to; the water was stultifyingly frigid, but Tom and Ted managed to get themselves submerged for a few seconds

Out by the bay, found this dead horseshoe crab that, by some miracle, had not been picked clean of its legs and insides and stuff. So of course I had to lick it.

Another one of the crab, because you really care.

Most of the actual beach beaches on the Cape have these huge sand dunes (not sure if they're man-made or not) leading down to them

The beach we went to on the last day (Monday -- I took a long weekend) had a bit of a red tide problem, which I think you should be able to see here. Stank. I maintain that you're not supposed to get that seaweed on you, seeing as how it, oh, I don't know, exterminates all life, but Tom was chugging it down by the bucket

Sadly, on the last day, Ted died.

Ouch, the pizza I was eating burned my mouth. So what happened on the cape... there was some barfing, a little moaning; a big fat toothless dude with the demeanor of a 5-year-old came up to us while we were waiting for some clam chowder at P.J.'s and said that he'd driven 10,000 miles for their lobster rolls and couldn't believe the prices were so high this year. He'd have gotten two, he said, but now he'd just have to settle for one. Oh yeah, and I also went running in my new ASICS running shoes that I bought. T, T, and I ran about 5 miles up and back this lakeside road, the most I've ever run before, though I did have to stop a few times. The shoes are great -- they totally put a spring in my step, but the left one is still pinching the fuck out of my ankle.

The Weekend Web

Inspired by Maggles, here's what was going on on my 'blog a year ago (though this fucker is way more than a year old):

• I was still doing "quality assurance."
• I had just marched in the NYC protest of the 2004 RNC.
• I had a girlfriend.
• The Distillers were still together.
• I still talked about boring computer shit all the time.

So.

I've been talking less political shit up on this piece over this last year. Mostly this is because the news is all so bad that it just makes me upset to write about it, but: Am I alone in feeling indignant about being asked to give money to a relief effort that should be shouldered primarily by the fucking government to which we pay our tax money? And furthermore to a relief effort that gives comfort to a gaggle of red states that voted in this government and thus deserve nothing but contempt as far as I'm concerned? It's time their citizens learned what it means to vote Republican in this day and age -- it's death, man. Politics is life and death. (And that's why I don't write about it in my 'blog.)

The Rase is moving in tomorrow, she says, around 1:30 PM. The apartment is not 100% ready, but nearly so -- I just have to finish cleaning grease off of some of the more grease-absorbent surfaces in the kitchen. I've put a lot of work into tidying this place up over the last few weeks. It's going to be weird sharing this space with another person again. Hopefully I can be a grown-up and not freak out about it.

Had a relatively crappy run tonight. My chest is still sort of tight from being sick earlier this week.

Last night I went up to visit Bill in his new apartment up on 105th St. The place is definitely nice, and they're getting a good deal on it, I can't remember how much. But he made me a delicious dinner and we played some Crash Bandicoot on the X-Box, which was awful. Billy kept saying he was impressed with the production, given that it had obviously been developed by some kind of bargain-bin company who'd acquired the rights to the character at a police auction or something, but maybe he's got a different definition of the word than I do, 'cuz every level looked like a gay disco with a particle effect infection. Lizards and wizards, don't you know. Saturday The Abyss play possibly their last show, as Chris is heading off to UCLA to run scam on their PhD program.

Prefontaine

That's right, I'm like fucking Prefontaine or some shit.

But right now I've got a fucking cold and I feel like crap. I think it's mroe or less my own fault, since I went out to see The Gaping Abyss on Friday and stayed out 'til 4:00 AM. And there was a lot of hooting and hollering on my part while they played a sloppy, punky set. But I could tell by the end of the night that my throat was gonna be fucked up. And it is.

Did a shitty job of it, but finished painting the trim around the window. I may have to get some titanium white (or whatever the ceiling's color is) to do some touch-ups. I also played a bunch of Halo 2, which is really fun. I never got too far in Halo 1, maybe because of some extreme frustration in that initial level where you're trying to dodge the Convenant on that moutainside where you touch down. But it's gonna be different this time. Maybe.

I also cleaned the fuck out of the bathroom, which was getting fairly disgusting, dust-wise. You can't really tell so much, but the dark, dank nooks are significantly less dark and dank. Plus, I found this neat little hand-decorated Mexican-looking matchbox under the radiator. It's got sequins all over it and a picture of a skull ("La Calavera") but no matches. Horror!

Tom lent me Kung Fu Hustle, which is delightful; I picked up Mer's copy of Ulysses and am trying to get into it.

Scary Face-u

So this was on CNN's front page for a while on the day that BTK guy got put away. How fucking creepy is this? This weekend is going pretty good so far, after a pretty stressed-out lousy week. I had my first non-California roll sushi last night at my boss's house and then spent some time at a bar with the friends. Then I had brunch with the friends this morning at this place in Carroll Gardens called Banania, which was, you know, pretty good. On the way home I ran into Sam Frizzank, who told me he'd invited me to a party over at his place a block away from mine (his e-mail had gotten routed to my HotMail junk folder), so I think I'll do that after I get back from yet another work-related BBQ that I'm leaving for in just a second. The best part, though, is that the fucking kitten is finally gone. "Big Kitty" is obviously a lot more relaxed already. We had what Tom calls a nice long "love-up" this morning, with the result that my eyes and nose were streaming all day. That's right. Me and kitty.

I wanted to paint the living room this afternoon -- I even traded in the white semi-gloss I'd bought last week at Pintchik for a white eggshell plus primer at the urging of my co-workers -- but I was so beat after carrying it over from Flatbush and doing the laundry that I think maybe I'll just do it tomorrow.

Sometimes when I'm taking a leak at work and just sort of staring down into the urinal I kind of zone out a little, thinking about some problem I'm working on or whatever, and when I snap back to reality I have this millisecond fear that I've pissing into the wrong thing. Like, pissing into a wastebasket or something.

Update: Now it's Tuesday -- I meant to finish this sooner. Holy shit, though! I just finished my first full run around Prospect Park. 3.7 miles or some shit, and no stopping, not even on that widowmaker of a hill at the end. I just sort of kept on goin', and I was sort of thinking, "well, I'm just gonna keep on goin'." And I did. It didn't even feel like anything, just like a normal run. The thing is, though, the burrito I'd eaten for lunch was sort of, shall we say, propelling me along. So when, in the shower, I reached for my customary washcloth general, John Ass-cloth II (selected, like John Ass-cloth I, from an ignominious cardboard box in the back of the Yale merch place on that main street in New Haven), I knew there'd be some terror in the tumbleweeds. And there was. And I couldn't, shockingly enough, seem to get clean with the washcloth. So eventually I had to just sit down on the toilet and have what my co-workers refer to as an "assplosion," which took some time. But now I'm feeling good, and I'm making some pasta.

At The Enchilada today, I bought a bottle of that really good spicy habanero hot-sauce, El Yucateca, to keep at my desk for when I buy lunch there. That shit is hot, brah.

I ended up going to Sam's party, where this girl filled me in on what happens in season 2 of Carnivale. It's probably not coming out on DVD, right? I don't think so.

So I did paint on Sunday, and it took a real long time -- don't know how Mer managed to do the whole room (plus trim) in a single afternoon. I've still got the trim around the window left to do, which looks to be at least an hour and change if I use the primer. Maybe I'll do it tomorrow. Then Tombone called and he and I and some assorted others went to go see The 40-Year-Old Virgin, which was totally delightful -- sweet-natured, very funny, very accurate -- they certain captured the "virgin" mindset as I recall it having been a 21-year-old virgin. I was really really sore and stiff on Monday and this morning, but the room looks good. I accidentally broke the glass plate on this Picasso print that I kind of liked as I was rehanging it, but, you know, it happens. The problem is, it broke into two big sharp pieces, kind of too big to just throw away.

On Monday I went to go see Jaws at Bryant Park with my friend Karen from work. We picked up a couple of cheap bottles of wine and met her roommate and friends right smack in front of the screen where they'd secured like 10 square feet of precious blanket real estate and provided some crackers and cheeses. It was great; the weather was great, Bryant Park is just great, right in the middle of all those tall buildings. I'd forgotten how gory that movie is -- that kid on the raft basically explodes when "Jaws" gets him.

So it's been good.

The Nine Billion Names Of God

I had the scariest, most vivid dream last night! I dreamed that the world was ending, but it was happening in this gradual, awful way, such that I (and my dream-girlfriend) were stuck in a part of the world that hadn't yet been completely destroyed (I think it was Connecticut) and realized that something was terribly wrong but couldn't find out the details. In the dream I was frantically searching the Internet for information, and all the news sites were either unreachable or had posted "Technical Difficulties" messages. From the little news we'd been able to get, a good portion of the world / universe had dissolved into this white mist, and the dissolution was proceeding towards the Eastern seaboard of the USA. We'd already observed the effects of the "winding down" process where we were, in that "entropy had ceased to function" (this is how I phrased it in the dream, although now that I think of it, it doesn't make much sense). This meant that plants no longer grew, there was no wind, and human beings couldn't make any changes in their lives -- my dream-girlfriend had wanted to take this clerical job at the sheriff's office, but had to turn it down after the "entropy" phenomenon had taken effect. Additionally, my dream-self kept getting these mental flashes of what I identified in the dream as the Hindu god Shiva rising out of the ground and turning all the surrounding organic matter into this sort of particle slurry. Since I happened to be near the Yale campus, I ran over to visit my old Indian CS professor. to ask him what it meant, but he said he wasn't a Hindu and didn't know.

Also, to make matters worse, there was a mosquito in my room in real life, and it would whine in my ear every so often. I ended up sleeping with the sheet over my head, which was okay because it was such a nice night.

On the plus side, I did probably my best run ever around the Park last night, even though I've got this little cough thing.

Year Of Living... Grudely?!

When I was running Friday night around 8:00, I noticed an unusually strong police presence in the park. There was even a helicopter, criss-crossing the northern part of the park near that last killer hill, flying low enough to the ground that its searchlight could actually like... be on you. When I got to the Grand Army Plaza entrance, there were even more cars, including some unmarked black sedans with sirens on the dash that I'm pretty sure were detectives' cars. Anyway, a whole bunch of cops and cop-like people who poking around in some bushes near the head of the big meadow with flashlights and batons. I didn't see a body, but... you know.

On Sunday I went to go see Lee Papa's Year of Living Rudely, as part of the NYC Fringe Theater Festival. It was so gross and hot on the way there, but when I got out of the subway station, it was fucking pouring. I was totally soaked by the time I got to Dixon Place -- which turned out not to be air conditioned, which was actually pretty fortunate, considering. So, the show. It was okay. It wasn't great. Prof. Papa is not much of a monologuist, which is ironic considering he's a Drama Professor. He basically oversold every line, and he's got this weird fruity voice that sounds like he's trying to cover up a southern accent or something. On the plus side, some of the new material (the show was 50% stuff from the 'blog), especially the audience participation stuff, was pretty funny, and apparently there were supposed to be blow-up dolls and sex toys on stage with him, but the director said something about them being damaged / stolen, so. You know.

I'm gonna get flak for saying this, I know, but I do feel like I'm getting sick. At least I'm doing better than kitty.

Reading some David Eddings that I borrowed from Razor; I remember all my friends getting real into these books when we were in 8th grade. I'm finally leveling the playing field, by Aldur!

The Meat Circus

It is a fucking house of horrors up in this piece. I swear. Three things:

• My feet are bloody from at least two glass splinters I got this morning walking around the kitchen.
• About 15 minutes after feeding the cats, I noticed the kitten nosing around outside Mimi's designated litter box. I thought maybe he'd trapped a mouse or a bug or something, or that he'd gotten real excited about the smell of her piss, which he is wont to do. No. She'd fucking puked right outside her litter box, like an invalid or old person, and he was fucking eating it. And not just tasting it, he was eating all of it, licking it into the cracks in the hardwood. And there were little crystals of litter in it, and, you know, just... ugh. By the time I got a wad of paper towels to clean it up, he'd basically eaten all of it.

...and this one takes the cake:

• I thought the coffee I'd brewed yesterday tasted a bit funny, but I'm not really a pro with the coffee-maker, and I buy the cheap shit anyway, so I'd just kind of chalked it up to, you know, the hand of an angry God. Well, when I was dumping the filter and grounds out last night I chanced to look into the little filter-holder part of the machine, and what did I see? Glommed into the bottom were a few choice pieces of kibble that'd likely fallen in the day before during the affair of the champagne glass. I'd just put the filter and coffee in on top of them without looking and then brewed a 10-cup pot of Purina. Jesus.

The Strandman

Ugh, so it's Saturday evening and I have absofuckinglutely nothing lined up to do, though not for lack of trying. Chris is sleeping something off, Billy's characteristically unreachable, and I can't get ahold of any of my camp friends, neither. The Abyss and I had made informal plans to have a BBQ today (though it could still happen tomorrow) and I wanted to peep on The Aristocrats with T-Bone. It's not too late... something could still happen! I feel fussy and dehydrated. You guys know what I mean, right? Grrr. Maybe I'll go for a run.

Tom came over, I think it was Tuesday, and we watched Meet The Feebles, which he'd sold to me as "like The Muppet Show, man, but if all the Muppets were taking drugs and having sex and stuff." Well, it is sort of like that, but also really really awful.

Update: Yeah, so Tom came through and I went to go see The Aristocraps with a whole bunch of people at 11:00 on Saturday night. The movie was delightful -- I'd been worried that, having been produced by Penn Jillette, it'd be full of pedantic B.S., and it had a little of that, but for the most part it was a joy. Sarah Silverman is a naughty little minx. I would've stayed out later, but I've got this cough, you see, and...

I bought some new cotton sheets for my bed, since the flannel ones that Mer'd bought in college were just a tad bit too warm for year-round (not to mention pretty filthed, no matter how many times we washed 'em). I'm thinking I might also buy a new blanket to match.

Last night I went over to Bill's place and we all (Chris was there, too) sat around drinking and watching TV. It was nice. When I got home, though, I discovered that the kitties had knocked over a very nice champagn flute that was on one of the higher shelves in the cupboard as part of their never-ending quest for food. There was broken glass everywhere (think I got most of it, though I was still picking the odd shard out of my feet this morning), but they both seemed very contrite, which was kind of weird, so I didn't, you know, punish 'em or anything.

My stuff from Amazon came. The Op Ivy album is a bit tamer than I remember but a bit better, too. The Sandman book I bought was less interesting than I'd hoped but also significantly darker. It was also one of those books that didn't really benefit much from being colored; I wonder if there are some editions that are just black and white.

That Thing In The Wheelchair

On Friday I went to go see The Gaping Abyss over at Arlene's Grocery, a club that had foolishly turned down The Headliners when we sent them a demo tape several years ago on account of us not being popular enough. Sophie P. and her friend Connor were there, and so were a lot of lame friends of some of the non-principals in the band, all dancing pretentiously and obliviously right near the stage. It was a good show, though. The mean old lady taking money for the tickets kept pronouncing the name of the band as The Gaping Abbess, which kept making me think of the alternate name Alec and I had discussed a few weeks earlier. Anyway, after the show, I asked Razor if he wanted to eat some hamburgers in the park on Saturday, and he said they'd been invited up to Rhode Island to play a show for The Strines, who'd lost their original opening act to a break up (The Pink Slips had all given each other the pink slip). Did I want to tag along? You bet.

Got to Sarah J's house (the rectory up at St. Mary's) around 2:30 and we left for Newport in the church van at around 4:00. Sarah's dad is a dead ringer for Father Damien, FYI. On the way we stopped at a Fairway and bought a whole bunch of cold cuts and bread and sandwich-makings and made delicious and filling sandwiches in the van. It took about three and half hours to get up to Newport and another 15 just driving around to find the club, which turned out to literally be in an alley behind a fish restaurant. After dropping the shit off, we walked around Newport for a while looking for a place to eat. It turns out that Newport is a real shitty little town and you can't find goddamn food anywhere! The only stuff we found in our price range was a sushi place that proudly advertised that they'd make you sushi without any raw fish (presumably because "you" think that's icky) and a panini sandwich place that was filled with nauseating smoke.

It was around this time that I found out that the Abyss wasn't gonna go on until 10:30. Bill had originally thought they'd go on at 9:00, and since the band was planning on staying over in a hotel room, I'd planned to go back that evening on an Amtrak train so that I'd be able to feed the cats that night and the next morning, and, you know, have a day to get things done on Sunday. I'd bought the ticket and everything. Ultimately it ended up that the ticket was refundable, and I couldn't get in touch with a car service to take me to Kingston anyway, so, like I said to Bill, I decided to stop being a neurotic creep (for at least a few hours) and just hang out, kitties be damned. So I stuck around, and it was fun, even though practically no one came (despite a puff-piece about The Strines that they'd put in the local paper days before).

Near the beginning of The Strines' set, this guy in a motorized wheelchair came into the club and started 'dancing' by turning his wheelchair around on the dance floor and sort of puttering around in time to the music. I don't know what his particular affliction was, but aside from being wheelchair-bound, he also had these skinny little T-Rex arms that weren't good for too much except clicking little buttons in his chair. I think we were all glad he was enjoying himself, but his appearance was a bit off-putting. Mario correctly observed that it added a Lynchian element to the atmosphere. After The Strines finished up, everyone headed outside for a smoke and the guy in the wheelchair came out and was telling The Strines and the guys in Abyss that he liked the show, and he even ended up offering a cigarette to Billy.

Well, Billy and the wheelchair guy (whose name turned out to be Bob) got to talking, and it turned out that one thing they had in common was that they both wished they'd smoked some weed before the show. Billy said he'd called his guy but that he hadn't been able to score in time before getting in the van, and that he wished he could've rolled a joint or two. "Fuck that," said Bob. "I'd like to smoke a blunt up in that piece."

"I bet you would," said Billy, and began exhorting him to describe further scenarios, much like one would do, say, with a girl who might be persuaded to disrobe with enough coaxing.

"Next time I fly," said Bob, "I should smoke a blunt on the plane -- fill the whole cabin with smoke!"

"Yeah," continued Bill, his imagination firing on all four cylinders, "but only the passengers in first class get to smoke it. Everyone else just gets a contact high!" On that note, they went off to a little cul-de-sac and rolled and smoked a joint. Or maybe Billy just sucked him off. At any rate, after some fretting about where to stay, an Amherst guy who is now a Brown guy offered his house. On the way there, perhaps as a reaction to me and Billy making noise about wanting to get back to NYC, Chris started going off about how he didn't even care, he was goin' to the beach in Providence the next day. I took that as a hint that I wasn't going to get to call the shots, so I'd need to make my own plans. I also hit him a few times, but only because he was screaming the lyrics to Big Shot into my ear.

Yes, yes, you had to be a big shot, didn't you
You had to prove it to the crowd
You had to be a big shot, didn't you
All your friends were so knocked out
You had to have the last word, last night
You're so much fun to be around
You had to have the front page, bold type
You had to be a big shot last night

Mario snored, predictably. I woke up at six (having gone to bed at three) and called a car service to get to the train station, then hopped the 7:20 to Penn Station. And the kitties. were. okay.

Finished Forever, which had a weak middle but an okay last 100 pages; also finished Leisure Suit Larry for the PS2, which was delightful -- raunchy and funny. I popped a few boners, I'm not gonna lie. M-Biddy came through with a couple of books, in addition to the t-shirt: The Pirates and The Mouse and The Collected Letters of George Orwell. Sick.

Kitty Won't Take Her Shot

I'm sitting in the Lay-Z-Boy, which is now in the living room, waiting for her to calm down a bit so I can give her her allergy shot. She's really dead set against it tonight, which is weird, since you'd think this sort of thing would get easier. The thing is, she's also a lot stronger than she used to be, maybe from struggling with the kitten. The last shot she got, she bent the needle on the syringe with all her wriggling and squirming. She's like the fucking hulk or something.

Last Saturday I was feeling pretty down, but then my sister called me to ask me if I wanted to go to Coney Island with her and her friend, and it pretty much turned my day around. I watched them go on the Wonder Wheel (they insisted on riding in one of the sliding cars; you won't catch me in one of those) and then we read our respective books on the beach for a while, trying to get a tan. The girls went down to the water's edge briefly, but according to my sister, the people down there were "so disgusting; they all weigh like 500 lbs!" She told me I should come with her and my parents to this island they go to in Maine every year. I've avoided it for the past however many years (not least of all because there's no electricity and plumbing is scarce), but this time I'm thinking I'd welcome a change of scenery.

Oh, for those of you who live in Manhattan and can thus peep on the ol' MNN, Mike the Bum has a show on that he'd like you all to watch. I can't remember what it's called, but it's got a pretty sweet timeslot (for MNN, relatively speaking), like Fridays at midnight or something. Jump on it.

I bought some stuff for myself on Amazon, using the gift certificate my 'rents gave me. I tried to get each item from a different category of stuff, so here's what I bought:

• A wireless PCI card for the ol' desktop, which is no longer in the study within cabling distance of the router
• Book One of The Sandman
• Op Ivy's Energy
• The Ring

M-Biddy also got me this sweet Air America "Fire Rove" t-shirt. I want to wear it to work tomorrow, but I don't know how well it would go down with the office idiots; yea, them what pulls the cart. Started reading Forever, which is larnin' me things about Irish history if not blowing me away with its prose.

Alright, I'm giving up on the shot. Maybe I'll try again tomorrow if Mer's around to pin kitty down.

It's Wednesday night now. I just got back from this company "outing" where they chartered this yacht and took a 4-hour spin around tip of lower Manhattan. I was kind of dreading it because, you know, four hours on a boat with business jerks and you can't get off, but one of the other developers slipped me some Dramamine and I actually had a really great time. Story of my life, I guess.

Jesus that fucking kitten has got to go.

Worst Place On Urf

Well, I had a pretty great birthday, celebrating my entrance to mid-twenty-dom over the course of three days. Let me fill y'all in.

On Friday I went to go see Razor and Chrissy play this place called Pete's Candy Store in Williamsburg. The place is pretty sweet -- all sort of decaying wood and lots of twisty little passages, not unlike the venerable and long-deceased Coney Island High. Unfortunately, I got there a little bit late and thus had to stand in the back of the room (which, as Bill pointed out, looks a fuck of a lot like a converted subway car) with a bunch of sweaty hipster dorkuses. They played a good set, though, and we hung out afterwards in this nice little courtyard out back. Chris and Bill were supposed to come to the Dickies show with me at 12:15, but they punked out, so to speak, so I left with Sarah J. and hooked the L to the 6 to the Continental.

The Dickies were fantastic! By the time I got to the Continental, they were already on stage playing their first song, and the ATM next to the club was out of cash, so I had to make a run around the block to get some cash to get in. The club was packed -- kind of a surprise -- and there was no way I was getting anywhere near the stage, especially carrying my backpack, so I wedged myself in about halfway down, and I think I got a pretty good view of things. Maybe it was just that I'd forgotten to bring my earplugs, but the band sounded tighter and better than I think I've ever seen them. Leonard looked worse than when I saw them at the Ramones thing at Irving Plaza, but he seemed to be a bit more tuned in. The on-stage banter was in top (or worst, depending on one's taste) form. An excerpt, presented here for your enjoyment:

Leonard: You know, Stan here has got to be the best Hispanic guitarist in all of punk rock. No kidding. Hell, he might just be the best bisexual Hispanic guitarist in all of punk rock. No, no, no, Stan's gotta be the best bisexual Hispanic muslim guitarist in all of punk rock.

(You might remember this lead-in from an earlier 'blog entry, but this time it was different:)

Stan: Alright, let me tell you people something. You guys know that band Red Hot Chili Peppers? Well, back in 1981, Leonard sucked that guy Anthony Keatis' dick! Plus, he lives with his momma, and he voted for Bush!

Leonard: I got three things to say to you. One, sounds like someone's got a problem accepting a compliment. Two, [can't remember]. And three -- Bush won, people! (Cackling, he throws up the sig heil amid boos and catcalls.) Alright, this next song is so old... [How old is it?] I said, this song is so old... [How old is it?!] This song is so old, this dirty old liberal Jew (points at Stan) wrote it! (The song is 'Give It Back')

Here's their set list, or at least as close an approximation as I can muster:

• See My Way
• Nights in White Satin
• Tricia Toyota
• Waterslide
• Give It Back
• I've Got a Splitting Hedachi
• Got It At The Store
• Paranoid
• Doggie Doo
• Going Homo
• You Drive Me Ape
• My Pop The Cop
• Curb Job
• Gigantor
• Eve of Destruction
• Banana Splits

Note that some of these songs don't get played live very often -- case in point: I've Got A Splitting Hedachi. So that was neat.

Then on Saturday I threw a little barbecue party in the park. I guess I figured it was going to be easier than it ended up being, 'cuz I planned the party for 4:00 but didn't start buying shit for it 'til 3:00, and I also ended up having to shop frantically for a grill, since the gloom-and-doom weather reports didn't seem to keep anybody away, and all the public grills were taken. So I was pretty beat by the time people actually started showing up, but I got a lot of help actually making the food, and people brought drinks, and it was a lot of fun. Ultimately around twelve people showed up, which was more than I expected, and it would have been fourteen had Razor and C-Lo not gotten lost in the wilds of Brooklyn.

On the way home with Tom from the park, this bartender from the 12th St. B & G popped out the door and asked Tom if he'd sell him the whiffleball set he was carrying, which was a little weird. Tom ended up agreeing to rent it to him in return for a round of drinks. We got some G&Ts and then ate some pizza at Smiling, which was real tasty but gave me weird dreams because I hit the sack as soon as I got back from hooking T up with a car service car.

For brunch on Sunday my parents and I went over to the Carroll Gardens apartment of this girl who's the daughter of an old co-worker of my mom's and whom I've known practically forever. Former Headliners may remember her as the hot 'n' sarcastic girl who came to our Continental show in '01. Anyway, she basically made this entire brunch on her own for us and it was delicious -- we ate in the little patio area of her apartment that had a really nice little vegetable garden in one half of it, and talked about a number of fascinating things. Apparently Carroll Gardens is full of dirty racist dagos.

When I got back to home base, Mer'd moved most of her stuff out, which was pretty sad to see. I was planning to rock out with Applebeast / Bloodweiser, but apparently Ted broke some crucial part of his axe, so that's on hold. I moved a bunch of furniture around and converted our old bedroom into my new personal zone with the desk from the study.

I went to Manhattan in the evening and my parents took me out to this great Indian place called Banjara, but my appetite just wasn't there and every muscle in my body was killing me from carrying all the shit to the barbecue, so I didn't eat much (though I've got the leftovers at work today). The 'rents got me a new frying pan, a water pic, and my sister's remaindered copy of Harry Potter and the Artist Formerly Known as Voldermort, which I'm actually kind of looking forward to reading.

The kitten got picked up today by my boss's wife to go get his nards detached. Hopefully he won't be such a dick by the time he gets back.

The Cave of Montesinos

Yeah, so we broke up about a week ago, which was, as she says, scary and sad. I'm still struggling with it a bit -- some days I'm up, some days I'm down -- but like my dad said, you don't get over a three-and-a-half year relationship in a week. Apparently she's moving out on Sunday, which will give me plenty of time to re-organize the house and get used to bachelor life before The Rase moves in in September (she's still in Sierra Leone). Yeah, you heard me -- I'm living with The Rase. Here's a funny thing though: While I was at home on Thursday feeling sorry for myself, I got an IM from someone who'd never IM'd me before. It turned out it was my best friend from pre-school, whom I hadn't talked to in literally, like, I don't know, 10 years? He's living near Tampa and managing a record label. He asked how I was doing, and on a whim I told him the whole thing about breaking up, and he said that he, no joke, had just separated from his wife of 6 years. So we talked about that for a while, which felt good. He even invited me down to FL to go fishing with him on his boss's yacht, which sounded pretty good to me, especially considering I haven't taken any vacation at all this year, except to take Mimi to the allergist. But then the whole hurricane thing happened, and Tom rightly pointed out that the proposal sounded like the premise for a thriller, so I'm gonna think it over a bit more.

In case I neglected to e-mail the invite to any of you, I'm having a little birthday party on Saturday at the grill area in Prospect Park near the entrance at 11th St. near my house -- you are literally all invited.

What else is new?

Been watching some movies. All The President's Men was quite good, though it (or maybe the day-old hamburger from Bonnie's Grill I ate while watching it) gave me weird dreams -- I kept telling myself I needed to some way to evaluate the mutually recursive functions

Woodward(mission) {
  Bernstein(mission);
}

Bernstein(mission) {
  Woodward(mission);
}

Weird, right? I also rented Team America: World Police, which was less "offensive" and less funny than I'd heard, although the filmmakers' actual premise, which I'm pretty sure was that bullshit about dicks and pussies at the end, was just flat-out incorrect. I did laugh at the puppet sex. Tomorrow's my birthday, creepuses. Gonna go to the Dickies show (which is pay-at-the-door, so if any of you want to tag along...), plus the Gaping Abyss show tomorrow night. I might even check out Morning Sedition at Restaurant Florent tomorrow morning, God willing. Tonight maybe me and the recently blog-less Devstar will get our hang out on.

Go Berserk... No Dessert?!

Like Mer, I had a totally killer weekend, though I didn't have to go all the way up to Long Dong Lake or whatever to have it.

Friday afternoon I was feeling pretty down and getting sort of freaked out about it, so when my boss let us off at 4:30, I made an appointment at Ultrasound Studios and drummed for an hour, which made me feel a bit better. I was actually getting pretty good at what I think people call "beat independence," something I've always had a hard time with. I was working some awesome contrapuntal flams into the mix as well. Fuck it, I don't know what the shit it's is all called. Point is, it was a pretty good work out, and I'm still pretty sort of okay at the whole thing. Then I met T-Bone to go see Land of the Dead, which ended up being wholly entertaining, if a bit ham-fisted. Tom Savini's cameo as Hatchet Zombie is alone worth the price of admission. No it's not. Yes it is.

Then on Saturday I went over the friends' place to peep on the housewarming party they were having for their new roommates. The Wy-Man almost kicked the ass of this guy who writes for The Onion A.V. Club for allegedly being rude to his girlfriend, which was... a little awkward. I also talked to these two awful immature girls who had gone to Amherst and knew Razor Lopez down to the littlest detail, including something I didn't know -- that he was in the fraternity Chi Psi!

...Which he fervently denied when I saw him on Sunday at his place over on Water St. He lives right next to this block that houses both a tract-printing press for Watchtower and the DLX Novelty Company. Go figure. And that shit he tells you about the bakery across the street? No lie, dawg. That shit smells choice. I wish I could say that I liked his puppy, but I just... don't. It's got kind of a brutal face like a bear and these very scared eyes whose whites you can always see. The effect is rather unsettling, if you ask me. Chris was there, too. That guy has read Blood Meridian. I could see that one coming, though; that guy's ready everything. So we went up to the roof of the building and were having a pretty good time until all of a sudden this awful woman (who looked like a younger blonde version of the Runaway Bride) shows up and starts trying to strike up a conversation with us. Chris hit the nail on the head when he said afterward that she was ape-shit for volunteering information about herself. Among the non-sequitur gems:

• "I'm so drunk. Can you tell how drunk I am? I'm so sorry." She didn't look or sound drunk at all.
• "Morrissey ruined my life. Morrissey... do you know The Smiths? He ruined my life." Oh, did you know him or something? "No, just a fan."
• "I work with really fucked up people, like meth addicts and stuff? And this woman I'm counseling on the phone, I say to her 'Hey, do you want to talk to my wonderful husband who I just got married to?' And she just hangs up on me!"
• "The projects, man. Those places are dangerous! They'll kill you just for walking in there!" Chris suggests that the projects are not as quite bad as she might think. "I'll drive you right down there and drop you off; we'll see how long you last! I've been living in this city long enough to know how bad it is. Those people will kill you!" How long have you been living here? "About three months now. I keep a carton of eggs and a head of lettuce in the back seat of my car in case anyone tries to mess with me."

Eventually we managed to shake her and her effeminate husband who was a dead ringer for Alan Cumming. Chris threw a chair at me and then pissed on it. Then, as we were leaving, he threw some beer cans off the roof, in spite of Bill begging him not to, and as we were on our way downstairs, this other woman, who must have seen the cans go by her window, came into the stairwell and started giving us what-for. "We're trying to create a living community here," she said. Chris pointed out that the cans had most certainly not hit her porch, but she said he was an asshole. After she went back inside, Billy said, "You don't understand, Chris. I have to deal with that woman every... day."

On Monday, I checked out Kevin Wasserman's BBQ, which is always delightful, though my stomach was kind of upset, and then I headed over to K-Flo's, to check out the fireworks. Unfortunately, I left Kevin's a bit late, so by the time I got to Katherine's everyone was up on the roof and couldn't hear the buzzer. So I went to go find a pay phone so I could call someone's cell and have them let me in, but the nearest pay phone was 3 looong blocks away and fucking broken to boot. The next one I found was in the foyer of this stinky bar and was always broken or turned off; the third one ate all my money and kept asking for 55 cents more. Finally this guy at a deli let me use his phone for free, so I left Tom a message to come down and let me in. By that time, of course, it had all started, so I headed back to Katherine's and watched the fireworks on her stoop. I gotta say, I get less and less impressed with the whole thing every year. I like the fireworks that are bright and have lots of glittery sparks / effluvia / etc., but the most popular ones always seem to be the ones that just go "pop" and spread chintzy-colored dots all over the sky. Uck.

The Boca Burgers I just made were cold inside and floppy, but that doesn't stop the cats from fiendin' for a taste.

I bought this book Forever, upon Emma's official B&N recommendation, to read when I'm done with DQ.

Taking The Bull By The Horns

The kitten is licking the fuck out of his nuts.

So Morning Sedition @ the Tea Lounge was fucking great! I showed up too late to see Jim Earl do any of his bits, but I got to see Kent Jones (who looks nothing like I'd imagined) do his Lawton Smalls report from Planet Bush -- plus, of course, Mark and Marc doing they thing. They also had Chuck D and DMC from Run DMC on as guests. DMC's voice was really weird, though -- it was really high and shaky, like he was going to burst into tears at any second. Maybe he was sick or something; maybe he just always sounds like that. At the end of the broadcast I waited in line to meet the hosts and told Mark Riley, lamely enough, that Morning Sedition was "the best morning show on the radio. Period." Ahem. It's true, though.

During a break about halfway through, as I was coming back from putting my name in a raffle for tickets to see Maron at Bananas, I ran into a friend of mine from Wesleyan, this girl who'd been in No Exit with me. Thing is, I totally didn't remember her name (it's Deanna), but she remembered mine, and I didn't want to ask her because I'm usually pretty good with names and I was just hoping it would come to me. But it didn't, and she sort of slipped in "I'm Deanna, by the way" part way through our conversation. I was like, "I... I know. I mean, thank you." Awk-ward. Anyway, it turns out that she actually works for Air America, which is sweet. I asked her about the financial status of the network, since the neo-con death cult is constantly predicting their demise and none of the on-air people ever really discuss it. Naturally she said they were doing fine, but who knows? You can't trust anyone these days.

Okay, time to pick up my laundry.

Java in a Nutshell

I just found out that the Morning Sedition Tea Lounge broadcast is gonna be at the Tea Lounge at 7th and Union, not the Tea Lounge at 7th and 10th. This is the worst day of my entire goddamn life.

Now it's Thursday.

Yesterday I was feeling kind of down, so I decided to go for a run after work. I was doing pretty well, but after about 2 miles the burrito I'd had for lunch started sloshing around in my stomach so I cut across the park and went home. But I felt a whole hell of a lot better.

I'd bought some mussels at C-Town on my way home, so when I got back from my run I sauteed some garlic and onions and steamed the mussels to put over some pasta. Then Mer and I hunkered down to watch the last 2 episodes of the second season of The Sopranos. The season finale was great -- Tony gets food poisoning from, what else, a bad plate of mussels (though Artie fuckin' Bucco tries to blame it on some chicken vindaloo from a different restaurant), and, in between trips to the bathroom, has a bunch of really weird dreams that kind of guide him through what he has to do to get his ducks in a row. Can't wait to start the third season.

And as luck (or slightly over/undercooked seafood) would have it, Mer and I both had some crazy dreams of our own last night. She can tell you what hers was about; here's what happened to me: Mer was having some irritating friends stay with us while they were in town. They'd brought us a gift of a boxed DVD set of some episodes of a TV show, possibly Buffy the Vampire Slayer (I'm not sure -- I think Bill Nighy was in it) and wanted to watch it with us, but they were still so aggravating that we decided to get out of the house on our own for a while. We wound up on a suburban high school football field -- it was dark out except for the stadium lights lighting up the grass -- and a friend of mine, possibly Chrissy Rodney, was chasing us around in a friendly way carrying a barrel of wine above his head and spraying wine into our mouths and all over our faces as we ran up and down the field. We ended up getting very drunk and the three of us went to the nearby restroom / locker room to clean ourselves up. You know how when you're drunk, sometimes you look in the mirror and you're like, "Echhhh! I look terrible!" Well, in the dream, I literally looked awful -- my eyes were really close together and my nose was all bulbous. For some reason I started spitting in the sink, trying to clear my throat, but I kept bringing up these thick strands of saliva and hair (!) that I had to pull out of my mouth with my fingers. So that was gross. And then I woke up.

As promised, pictures of the kitten:

The kitten looking	A girl and her kitten
Kitties in context

What else was I going to talk about. Oh yeah -- reading Don Quixote. One thing you guys may not know is that the book is basically vomit porn:

Sancho came so near as almost to thrust his eyes into his master's mouth; and that was the very moment when the balsam began to work in Don Quixote's stomach; so that just as Sancho drew close to peer into his mouth the knight threw up what was in him more violently than the shot from a gun and sent it all over the beard of his compassionate squire.

"Holy Mary!" cried Sancho. "What has happened to me? Sure, this poor sinner is mortally wounded, since he is vomiting blood."

But on examining things a little more closely, he realized, from its colour, taste, and smell, that it was not blood but the balsam from the can, which he had seen him drinking; and this so turned his stomach that he threw up his very guts over his master; and the pair of them were then in the same pickle.

Dicks Get Licked

I've already been carping about this to various people, but at around 3:30 today, CNN pulled its top story, that Terry Schiavo was fucking braindead the whole goddamn time, and replaced it with this, which, as far as I can tell, is not news at all. It is a portrait piece; the name of the potrait is "Trash in Hell." Is this some kind of conspiracy or what?

Okay, I started this entry last week and just didn't get around to finishing it. That's just how it goes sometimes. But there's some really big news about things, and I'm a little surprised that Meriwether hasn't posted yet: We got a kitten! I'll post some pictures as soon as we have them, but the story is thus. The wife of one of my bosses has gotten herself into the business of "fostering" cats, which means taking them off the hands of non-"No Kill" shelters until they can be officially adopted by other people. So she fostered this mother cat that came with three kittens, and the kittens were beginning to drive my boss crazy. We were at a brunch party at one of the sysadmins' house and I think I'm overhearing her ask if anyone can cat-sit for her, so I remind her that I live across the street from them, which is true. Turns out she was actually asking people about adopting the kittens, so I'd just volunteered us. But it's actually okay -- we went over to meet the one she'd said she had in mind for us, and then last Tuesday she just dropped him off.

He's what's called a "classic tabby," which means he's got very well-defined black stripes that kind of make him look like a tiger. Mer's christened him "Mikey," which is a sound-alike for "M.K.," which, according to her, is short for his real name, which is "Male Kitten." Weird. Anyway, he's been sequestered in the study for the past week because he's got a mild eye infection and because Mimi really doesn't like him much at all. We're going to let him out tonight, though, and that's just going to have to be that. (In part because when he's alone in the study, he cries non-stop, which is something that I didn't think would bother me, but I find it pretty upsetting. It's been fucking up my sleep and making me all wound up.)

Other stuff, other stuff... I read Jonathan Lethem's Motherless Brooklyn, which is pretty good -- a lot better than Gun, With Occasional Music. I read practically the whole thing in a single afternoon; I went up to the roof of our building, something I just realized we can do, and drank a gin and tonic in the hot sun while reading. It was really fun -- there was a nice breeze and I could see the trees blowing around in the park -- but I'd made the G&T way to strong and after about 30 minutes I nearly puked. But, you know.

I'm finally buckling down and trying to give Don Quixote a serious read; it's a fat one, that book.

Oh yeah, here's a fun thing: Morning Sedition on Air America has been doing their show from different places around NYC -- last month they did it from City Bakery, which is the place the staff buys food in the morning, I guess, and a few weeks ago, they did it at Snotty Dick Inc., The Strand bookstore. This Friday, though, they're doing the show from the Tea Lounge, which is literally like 2 block from my house. I could totally just wake up at 5:30 and go over there and hang out until 9:00 and yea, be earyl, even, for work. It's going to be awesome.

I just found out that not only are my old favorite bunch of ironic Republicans coming to play their first show in NYC in about 2 years, but they'll be playing at The Continental on my fucking birthday! How sick is that. Tickets aren't on sale yet, but who wants to go?

Kid, there are two kinds of bears in this world -- bears that dance, and bears that do not dance.