Articles Archive for January 2005
Sunday is the worst day of the week. It’s not even close. Well, actually, Monday is a pretty bad day. Yeah, come to think of it, Monday is probably worse than Sunday.
Ok, let’s start over.
Sunday is a very bad day. I usually spend my Sundays in various stages of nudity and disrepair, as I move from bed to shower to toilet to couch throughout the day, my body trying to figure out what to do with the several liters of booze slogging through my bloodstream. My head and body aches, so there’s only one thing I can do: eat lots of greasy food.
What’s worse than the physical repercussions of the hangover are the psychological ones. Sundays are the reason I stopped doing (most hard) drugs – I couldn’t deal with the comedown. While flushing out all the alcohol, your body is going through all sort of chemical changes and reactions, and when this is happening my mood swings wildly between crying at a car commercial to chasing the little brown delivery guy down my hall and stabbing him in the leg because they only included ONE packet of ketchup with my sausage, egg, and cheese bagel. Fucking assholes.
Usually, the deleterious effects of Sunday are mitigated by hours upon hours on football, but this was not the case this past Sunday, the first since early September without meaningful football. And boy did I suffer. Left alone without such a wonderful distraction, my troubled-but-not-troubled-in-a-cool-way mind turned to several harmful thoughts, including but not limited to:
- “I’m dying”
- “I can’t keep drinking like this – look what it does to me”
- “What kind of man am I? I’m 25 and look at what I’m doing to myself”
- “Seriously, I’m fucking dying”
- “I am fraud and a failure. I’m not sure how, but I know it’s true and it sounds cool to say.”
- “Why do I always smell like semen?”
- “Ok, that’s it – I’m dying. Ready, 1-2-3. I’m dead. That’s it. Over. Fuck.”
It was a rough weekend. “Rough”, however, means “fun because I got pretty damn f’ed up”. Friday night I went out locally with some buddies, and Saturday night I ventured back to my old ‘hood for a birthday party. I didn’t drink especially hard either night: there was nothing like gratuitous “5 shots of Jaeger in an hour”-type drinking, but there was some long drinking. Do I have a problem if after drinking from 7pm on on Saturday night I got home at around 4am and decided to have some wine to help me sleep? Is this bad? Is something wrong with me?
What’s terrifying to me is that this is a sign of things to come. Come this Sunday night when football season ends, I’m looking at a long string of hungover Sundays trapped in my apartment (too fucking cold to go outside) without football. These are going to be some dark, dark days.
[Sigh]
Anyway, the party on Saturday night was a good time. It was nice to be back in the old neighborhood, and more specifically, near my favorite pizza place EVER – Rosario’s, in the Lower East Side on the corner of Orchard & Stanton. Holy shit it’s fucking good. After leaving the party, my roommate Brian and I quickly hit up a few bars we used to frequent and then ended the night at Rosario’s, with a $16 order. Fucking A, man.
But let me back-track: I was at said party on Saturday night, a birthday party for my friend Maggie, standing in line for the bathroom, when some guy who was about 40 or so who was also in line said to me out of the blue, “It’s a shame that kids nowadays are no longer main-lining heroin.”
I looked at him and thought, “Dude, who are you – me?” I thought it was a pretty funny line, and said something like, “Yeah, they’re too concerned with their looks that they don’t want track marks. When I was young, track marks on your arms from heroin use were a sign that you were not only becoming a man, but also that you were the man.”
So props to that guy, and it got me thinking about some other good/shocking lines. My friends and I would do this thing in college where we’d try to be as obnoxious as possible within earshot of others, usually really hot girls. For example, we’d be getting cash out of an ATM before entering a bar, and at the ATM machine next to us there’d be two gorgeous, way out of our league girls, and we’d play out a scene where we were in mid conversation, talking about something horrible and offensive:
Me: [getting cash, being very animated] “So I said to her, I said, ‘You better shut the fuck up right now before I fucking slap the shit out of you’ and you know what she said to me? Do you know what the bitch said to me?”
My buddy Bill: [enthralled] “What did she say?”
Me: “She said, ‘Fuck you fat ass.’ Can you believe that? Can you believe the balls on her?”
Bill: “What a bitch. What did you do?”
Me: “What do you think I did - I fucking punched her right the fucking nose. Hard too. And I said, ’Mouth off again at me, and I’ll swear I’ll fucking give you brain damage. I will punch, kick, bite and claw you until your brain is permanently damaged.’”
Bill: “Serves her right.”
Me: “God damn right it does. Now let’s go get fucked up.” [me and Bill high five, walk out of ATM to horrified stares of hot girls]
I know what you’re thinking, “Maybe this is why you don’t get laid, asshole”. But there are many other reasons besides being obnoxious that I don’t get laid. Besides, it’s not like these two girls were gonna fuck us in the ATM vestibule anyway, nor would they even have looked at us in the bar, so we might as well have had some fun with them.
Some advice – next time you’re at a bar, standing next to a cute girl, and you want to start up a conversation but don’t know what to say, use one of these numbers. You have my personal guarantee (which means absolutely nothing) that any on of these will get you laid (whether it’s consensual or not is for the courts to decide):
- ”So, are you a religious person?”
- “You know, they should really put a magazine rack here or something. By the way, one of my balls is MUCH bigger than the other.”
- “If we had kids, I promise that I would never touch them. Unless they were really, really hot. Or if I was left alone with them. Otherwise, I wouldn’t lay a hand on them.”
- ”You look like someone who’s on anti-depressants. Which is your favorite SSRI: lexapro, prozac, paxil, or zoloft?”
- “I don’t know…I don’t think I need a test to tell me whether or not I have an STD. I know I don’t have an STD, no matter what the test said. A lot of guys get pus-filled whiteheads on the head of their penis. Not a big deal.”
- “Cool music. So how do you feel about ass-play?”
- ”Seriously, women like the taste of semen, right?”
- “I’ve been clean for a week and a half now and it’s been the worst week and a half of my life.”
- “You haven’t kissed a black guy, have you?”
I know, I know – you’re welcome. Just use them wisely, and if you live in NYC, don’t use them at all. I plan on dropping those little love bombs at various bar bathrooms all over the city, in the hopes that one special little lady will say, “I can’t speak for all women, but I love the taste of semen. Looking at you, I’m thinking yours taste like a mix of burnt popcorn and hepatitis, and I’d like to find out. Care you join me in the bathroom?”
Keep your fingers crossed. Just keep your fingers crossed.
I have gotten an astonishing amount of thought- and discussion-provoking emails from you all recently. Some hilarious, some controversial, some non-sensical, and one with a picture of two guys making out with a deer (I wish I was kidding).
I’ve been wanting to write a post in which I compile a “best of” your emails (as I have done in the past), but unfortunately, I am really, really bad at writing these. This is because I’ll read an interesting email, usually while intoxicated, and think to myself, “I should totally write about this”. Then next time I’ll check I’ll have a lot more emails, and the good one will get buried by emails like, “Dude, are you really that fat?” and “I bet your penis is not that small” and “I’m an editor, and the period goes inside the quotation marks, not after it”. (Yeah, I know, but it just looks better my way)
However, one really struck me and needed immediate publication. Tom Dedman writes:
Just thought you should know that blind accordion players are apparently not uncommon. I hail from Melbourne, Australia, and here we have a blind accordion player called Bernadette who plays in various streets all over the city. No shit, she is practically famous here. You might be onto something with that convention accident theory.
He also provided a link to an article about Bernadette that has a picture of said “blind” accordion player.
However, in this picture, we can clearly see from that Bernadette is not blind, but rather just closing her eyes. I mean, she’s wearing glasses, and not the Ray Charles/Stevie Wonder kind that covers the eyes because blind people’s eyes are scary and look like Werewolf eyes. Why would a “blind” need glasses like that? She’s wearing the same type of glasses I wear when I get too drunk to put my contacts in their case and instead eat them.
I mean, c’mon – look at that fucking picture! She’s just saying she’s blind to get more fame (and as an internet quasi-celebrity, I know a thing or two about fame and eating a lot of fucking french fries)! How is it that no one has realized this before? Maybe I’ll close my eyes when I play guitar and everyone will say, “Holy shit! That blind guy sucks at guitar!” and write an article about me.
And yes, maybe I’m just jealous that she thought of it first. Lucky bitch.
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If you are not watching “American Idol” right now, you really need to be. I don’t give a shit about the competition, but right now it’s at the tryout stage. Three reasons you need to watch:
1) It’s hilarious, uncomfortable, and sad all at once. These poor misguided losers get up there and sign their hearts out, most of them running the gamut from sounding like someone is stepping on their balls to sounding like they are being stabbed in the lung, only to be criticized and crushed in front of millions of people. And then they proceed to cry and make a big stink into the camera afterwards. There is no joy in the joy that a really bad person (i.e. me) can get from the agony of others, so this shit is right up my alley. Also, last time two identical (male) twins sang Boyz II Men’s “I’ll Make Love To You” and got all into it. It was very, very gross and weird.
2) Randy Jackson. Hey Randy, listen – we get it – you’re black. You don’t need to say things like, “Yeah dog yeah!” and “Aight, aight, I’m witch you” all the time.
Actually, the funny thing is that Randy only really talks like this when the black contestants are on. Seriously – watch him speaking to a nerdy white guy, and then see how he transform when some black kid in an oversized NBA jersey walks in. He’s kinda like your buddy who speaks French. You know he speaks French, but you don’t really think about it because in an everyday situation, who is he going to speak French to? And then you, him, and some friends go to Montreal for a weekend of pills and strippers and he’s so excited he finally gets to speak French that he can’t stop speaking it to everyone. It gets so annoying that you ultimately grow to hate him, and kill him in an alley.
That’s kinda like Randy. I’m sure he spends all his time around Simon, Ryan Seacrest, and Paula Abdul and a bunch of stuffy TV people that when he finally sees a black person, he can’t stop speaking, well, black to them.
Or something like that.
3) The guest judges. Last week, it was Mark McGrath, douchebag from Sugar Ray. This week, it was the biggest asshole and leader of the worst band on Earth, Gene Simmons. Next week, it’s Kenny Loggins. I’m just waiting for an appearance from the that lead singer from the Fine Young Cannibals (also, a tip: if you do it right, “She Drives Me Crazy” is an awesome karaoke song).
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When I have a kid (if I don’t have one already – DNA tests are pending in Honduras, but thank god that country’s poor and is scientifically on the level of 1934 Poland), I hope it’s like Dakota Fanning.
I came up from the subway last night and there was an advertisement for her new movie with Robert DeNiro. And there she was on the ad, her face juxtaposed next to DeNiro’s. And she ten fucking years old. Good lord. When I was ten years old, I was going to the beach and eating dead jellyfish because I didn’t know any better. And she’s sharing adspace with Bobby DeNiro.
Her parents are very, very lucky (that is, until she turns 12 and starts blowing dudes for heroin). I hope that when I have a kid, it’s as accomplished at ten as Dakota Fanning is. However, I’m pretty sure that when my kid is ten, he/she will be sitting next to me on the beach eating dead jellyfish right with me, as my estranged wife yells at us to stop.
A boy can dream though…
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I recently met my buddy Griff for lunch, who’s in town from Seattle on business. When I shook his hand, he recoiled and said, “Ugh – I forgot how gross your hands are.”
Yes, in addition to being fat, having poor posture, a tiny bird, bad hair, no money, and no self-esteem, I have the clammiest hands in the world. Not only that, but they are very white and I have very long, crooked fingers. My friends in college used to joke that I have vampire hands. Although I’d imagine that a vampire would have very dry hands. I don’t know why, but I just do.
But if I were a vampire, at least I could use that as an excuse for having disgusting hands. Instead, mine are just plain gross. On my blue mouse-pad at work, there is an area just below where my mouse sits that’s bluer than the rest, because it’s sweat-stained. Yes, I managed to get sweat stains on my mouse pad. I have to take pills immediately, because if I hold them in my hand, they have about three seconds before they completely liquefy. I avoid shaking hands at all costs, especially with women. I don’t mind as much if a guy gets my soaked hand in his, but when a woman gets a handful of sweat, I’m sure she’s not thinking, “Wow - I hope he gets to rub those clammy hands all over my bare breasts later!”
I don’t know where I’m going with this, but I just wanted to get it off my chest. So there.
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Our lovely and talented sitemaster Brendan wanted me to tell you all that we now have a fully functioning RSS feed, which you can get by clicking on the link at the bottom of the index page. He even had a little article explaining what an RSS feed is. Isn’t he the best?
If, like me, you have no idea what this means, don’t worry about it. But apparently it’s pretty cool, and will automatically email you once this site is updated. But again, I know very little about computers, so I’ll just stop talking now before my monitor catches fire.
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Six Songs:
- “The Light” Common
Leave it to me to find the mushiest rap song ever recorded and pimp it on this site. I don’t care, I like it. I told you I’m sensitive, so stop judging.
- “White Light/White Heat” Velvet Underground
What I love most about this song is that it sounds like it was written and recorded in about eight minutes while the entire band was high. I can see Lou Reed telling the band in some small smoky recording studio, “Ok, you guys play this, and sing ‘White Light’ twice, ‘White Heat’ once, and then ‘White Light’ again. And I’ll just make it up as I go along. Are we ready, or should we take more drugs first?”
- “Fat Bottomed Girls” Queen
Think about it: the most flamboyantly homosexual man in history singing about having sex with fat girls (unless I’m missing a hidden meaning or metaphor here, which I kinda hope I am), screaming at the end “Get on your bikes and ride!” A really gay dude and fat chicks riding bicycles: does it get any better? I think not.
- “Timorous Me” Ted Leo & The Pharmacists
I have a very love/hate relationship with this song. For example, I hate the instrumental break which is both smack in the middle of the song and at the end. I think it messes up the rhythm and excitement of the whole song. Otherwise, this song is fucking perfect. Not only because of the awesome guitar work and singing, but when the band comes in with Ted after said instrumental break (about 2:15 in), I jump up and start dancing wherever I am. I think it’s impossible not to (too bad this make-me-dance part lasts only about thirty seconds).
If you haven’t heard of this band, please download this song. It may rock your world.
- “1969″ Iggy Pop & The Stooges
This song reminds me of walking into a party in, well, 1969. One of those slow-motion shots, where I walk in and check out the scene, and everyone’s all hippied out, waving the freak fly high, all fucked up and getting more fucked up. I kinda look like Jimi Hendrix, but much fatter and much more pale. And then I walk into the middle of the room and pull out my bird. Everyone stops what they’re doing and looks at me, and I spit out some tobacco juice on the ground. Then I put my bird back on my pants (remember, it’s all slow-mo), turn around and walk out. Then there’s a scene of me fucking a dog in a van (the dog is on top). End of scene.
- “Police On My Back” The Clash
If “Timorous Me” makes me dance, this song makes me punch shit. “Police On My Back” was a staple in the “Punch Your Balls” playlist, which I listened to while at the gym pumping iron. Also, it spawned a long-lasting private joke among my friends and I: whenever we do something stupid, we’ll scream in an exaggerated and terrible British accent, “What have I done???” As in:
[at grocery store]
Me: “Brian, dude, you just fucking ran over that toddler with the shopping cart!”
Brian: [screaming in British accent] “What have I done???”
[at bar on Saturday night]
Ben: “Christ Jay – you have shit all over your pants! Did you fucking poop yourself?”
Me: [drunk, screaming in British accent] “What have I done???”
You get it.
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Finally, a thank you to all of you who voted for me in the Best of Blog (BoB) awards. Turns out, I actually won. While I still don’t know exactly what “snarky” means and though I’ve been referring to my blog as “award-winning” since its inception, I can finally not be lying when I say it. So thank you again, and I promise to use this award in any capacity that I can, including scoring women and free drugs. If it works, I’ll let you know, but don’t get your hopes up.
[Have a good weekend]
I have a confession: I am on a diet.
Yes, I know, I know. It’s very out of character. I’ve never before limited what I eat, except to say occasionally, “You know what? I don’t want extra cheese on the pizza – it’s just too much. I just had a milkshake and a grilled cheese, so if I have extra cheese on the pie I might go into a dairy seizure or coma or some shit. I saw it happen to some dude once on the Learning Channel and it was fucked up.” And I know that after years of being fat and drawing strength and power from my girth, if I were somehow to lose weight, like some 21st century obese cokehead Sampson who likes to shoot cars with a bb gun when he’s high, I might lose the source of my power and my entire identity.
The good news is that there’s absolutely no way this diet is going to succeed. I have a better chance of going to heaven than I do of slimming down. It just ain’t gonna happen.
That will not stop me from talking about it though, because hey – it’s something to write about. And though I know as much about dieting as I do about pleasing a woman or not masturbating in the corner of my apartment building’s laundry room late at night, I am pleased to announce Jason Mulgrew’s Guide to Dieting.
“Jason Mulgrew’s Guide to Dieting”
by Jason Mulgrew
illustrations by Jason Mulgrew
edited by Jason Mulgrew, with the help of SpellCheck
thought of while pooping by Jason Mulgrew
I figure that after years of get rich quick schemes, I should try creating a diet. People will do and pay just about anything to look and feel good, and I am the right mix of schemer, deviant, and charismatic leader to manipulate a large amount of people with low self-esteem into giving me money. And look at me – I’m fat as shit! All I have to do is take a couple “before” pictures, go on this diet and lose 100 pounds, take a couple of “after” pictures, and then sit back and watch the checks come in. It’s really very simple, you see. Now on with the diet…
You see, dieting is fundamentally simple. Like Communism, witch hunts, and Jim Crow laws, it makes perfect sense on paper and seems easy enough: all one needs to do is make moderate changes in lifestyle to reap countless rewards, like being able to walk up a flight of stairs without collapsing or rising from your chair at your desk without your knees buckling under you so that you fall and hit your fat head on your keyboard. However, it’s the application of dieting that’s difficult. And here’s where I come in to help.
There are three things you need to think about when you diet:
1) Why you want to stop being a fat fuck
2) Why you are currently a fat fuck
3) Stop being a fat fuck already
If you follow these three steps (and eat a lot less and exercise at least one hour a day), you are guaranteed to lose weight. Now in the words of Jesus Christ Himself, “Let’s briga-briga-break it down!” (Editor’s Note: we were not able to confirm if Jesus actually said “Let’s briga-briga-break it down!” by press time, but from what we know of Him personally and from our Bible study groups, we assume that He did in fact say it)
1) Why you want to stop being a fat fuck
There are all sorts of reasons for dieting. Some, like me, want to diet because they fear that they may drop dead at any time, as since they graduated from college they have exclusively eaten from the following food groups: booze (beer, wine, hard alcohol, homemade wine that was actually just vodka mixed with apple juice); the fried family (chicken fingers, french fries, onion rings, nachos dipped in a fryer, sticks of butter dipped in a fryer, your finger dipped in a fryer); the cream family (ice cream, whipped cream, sour cream, cream cheese, hand cream); cheap booze (any liter of alcohol that can be purchased for under $6, very old Pepsi, homemade “sangria” made from $4 tequila, homemade wine [see above], and rubbing alcohol); miscellaneous (a tire, two folding chairs, a couple of pens, and a dog); and of course, methamphetamines.
Others, also like me, want to diet because they are not getting the attention of the opposite sex. They’re tired of going out with their friends and being ignored by the attractive people they lust after, something that bothers them so much that they go home and light their arm on fire or immediately buy a gun. Therefore, they want to make a change so that they too can be viewed with the same lust they view this sexy bitch (both of them). Also (from what I can remember), having sex feels pretty good, so they’d like a piece of that action if possible.
I personally have another reason for dieting, a combination of the two above: I firmly believe that if given the proper tests, my doctor would declare that I am not healthy enough for sexual activity. There is no doubt in my mind about this. I’ve written before how my heart races when I stand up quickly or pee, and how I can’t even look at a flight of stairs without needing to take a nap. I can’t imagine what a round or two of passionate, consensual love-making would do to me, since after masturbating I need at least a week to recuperate, having to stay in bed twenty-two hours a day and stay away from operating any and all heavy machinery.
So the first step is knowing why you want to diet. Not only that, you must focus on these reasons, never allowing yourself to forget the ultimate goal: “One day, when the opportunity presents itself, I would like to have an orgasm without worry whether or not my heart will explode.”
2) Why you currently are a fat fuck
The second step, in case you didn’t notice from the “2)” and the bold text above, is figuring out why you currently are a fat fuck. Is it because you eat unhealthy foods? Is it because you eat a lot? Is it because your whole family is fat? Is it because you don’t move unless you absolutely have to? Is it for all these reasons, in addition to believing that deep down fat really is sexy?
All these reasons apply to me (well, except the whole fat being sexy thing – believe me, that’s the last thing I’m thinking when I’m in the shower whipping the wash cloth onto the vast expanse that is my back, trying to clean areas that I have not been able to touch nor have been exposed to direct sunlight since pre-school).
I think my biggest problem is portions. My doctor and I spoke out this the last time I visited him and tried to score some painkillers, sleeping pills, anti-anxiety meds, laxatives, whatever. He made a great point when he said, “Jason, I don’t believe in the whole ‘low carb’ thing. Think about it – look at all the Orientals. The main staple of their diet is rice, and they’re very skinny – and, might I add, great at math. The problem is portions. How many times have you split a box of spaghetti with a roommate? Do you know that there are eight servings of pasta in a box? It’s portions, not the carbs. And please, put your penis back in your pants. There’s nothing wrong with it, and I know you’re just saying something’s wrong with it so that I’ll touch it. You are a sick man. A sick man with a baby’s penis.”
I just like to eat a lot. For example, a lot of times I’ll order a large pizza with the justification that I can eat some now, and still have enough left over for another meal or two. Sadly, twenty minutes after the pizza arrives, after a lot of screaming and tears, all that’s left is an empty box and half of that little white plastic table they put in the middle of the pizza so the box top doesn’t get crushed onto the cheese (I keep forgetting that this is NOT candy, something I don’t realize until I’m choking on the fucking thing).
Another problem: beer. For all it’s wondrous qualities (giver of strength, wisdom, sexual prowess, an excuse to do/say whatever you want, object of blame when you “accidentally” download three gay porn clips), beer isn’t the best thing for you and your belly. It’s basically a lot of calories and carbs mixed with just the right amount of poison so that when the proper amount is ingested you think, “You know what? It can’t be too hard to fly. I think those who tried to do it before and failed were just pussies. I’m gonna go to the top floor of the parking lot to test this out.”
So if you are seriously trying to lose weight, you’re going to have to cut down on the beer. Fortunately, that doesn’t mean you have to stop getting messed up. Straight alcohol is very low in calories, and will get you much drunker much more quickly. Also, to my knowledge, pills are very low in calories as well (thought I only went to med school for one year – long story).
3) Stop being a fat fuck already.
You have decided why you need to stop being so fat. You have figured out precisely why you are fat. And now the hard part: stop being a fat fuck already.
First, you have to change your eating habits. Cut down on the bad stuff, eat more of the good stuff. Different people have different approaches to this. I’m trying one of those diets in which you eat six small meals a day instead of three giant meals. My daily diet is supposed to consist of:
- Morning: two eggs, oatmeal
- Mid-morning: protein bar
- Lunch: salad with tuna or chicken
- Mid-afternoon: protein bar
- Dinner: piece of chicken, fish, or beef with vegetables
- After dinner (if necessary): protein shake
I thought this would work, first and foremost because the protein bars are delicious and quite filling. There’s one flavor called “double fudge brownie”, and believe it or not, it tastes kinda like a brownie, albeit a stale brownie that looks like a turd. Also, the protein shakes, though I won’t be confusing them with milkshakes anytime soon, aren’t too bad either. And I like eggs, oatmeal, chicken, tuna, and beef! Doesn’t this look so good on paper???
!!!
Sadly, I have not been able to follow this verbatim. I use yesterday’s record of consumption as an example, with the diet prescribed as above and the actual food I ate in parentheses:
- Morning: two eggs (with three types of cheese – monterey jack, american, mozzarella - in a tortilla), oatmeal (two sausage patties)
- Mid-morning: protein bar (protein bar)
- Lunch: salad with tuna or chicken (chicken caesar salad with approximately one cup of caesar dressing and two- to three-hundred croutons, rice pudding)
- Mid-afternoon: protein bar (protein bar)
- Dinner: piece of chicken, fish, or beef with vegetables (cheeseburger (with lettuce), fries, large Nestea, half pint of ice cream)
- After dinner (if necessary): protein shake (Nesquik chocolate milk)
So this really is the hard part. However, I will remain “committed”, especially since I just spent $120 on protein shakes and protein bars, because it’s not like I have over $20,000 in student loans to pay off or anything. Nor a $2600 computer to pay off. Nor a credit card bill that’s so high I’m embarrassed to write the amount. So spending over $100 on protein shit is completely acceptable and fiscally responsible.
But in the battle of losing weight, dieting is only the one half of the equation. The other half is exercising. I can not speak to this at this juncture, as I have been advised by my doctor not to exercise for at least four weeks. This is not because I sustained some glorious injury in a game of sport, but because I have an unglamorous affliction: athlete’s foot. Terrible, terrible athlete’s foot. I mean, this shit is GROSS. My feet are literally rotting, and go from pink to red to purple to blue throughout the day, and smell like a homeless guy’s balls. Not that I’ve ever smelled a homeless guy’s balls (sober). But it’s bad. Really, really bad.
…
So there you have it: my guide to dieting. I know, I know – it’s pretty fucking awesome, and you’re welcome. All I ask for is that when you follow it, for everyone pound you lose you send me $10. I don’t think that’s asking too much. They say you can’t put a price on neither health nor beauty, but I disagree – it’s $10 per pound.
[If you are too poor to send me $10 per pound lost, please contact me and we can agree on something mutually beneficial (and by "mutually beneficial" I mean "you give me a handjob and I don't spooge all over the back seat of your Chevy Lumina but rather into a perfectly positioned soiled pair of boxers")]
Good luck. With the right combination of thinking positively, eating right, and exercising, you can work your way to a new a better you!
(Or just throw up after you eat – you know, whatever really. Who gives a shit.)
I planned something special for you guys today, but shortly after I started working on it this morning, I realized that it was gonna be big. I kept at it, trying to get across what I wanted to say and it got bigger still, but without getting any closer to being finished. And now it’s 3pm, and I’m staring at a giant post that’s only half-way done.
So therefore, knowing that I will not be able to complete what I gots to do to make you all happy, I’m going to use one of my free passes and say that I’ll get back at you tomorrow. I hope this doesn’t adversely affect our relationship; you must realize that I do this not out of spite, hatred, or jealousy because you can remember the last time you stuck your penis in something warm that wasn’t coming out of a microwave (for the male readers) or because you get to wear all sorts of cool skirts and comfy underwear and not get beat up for it (for the female readers). I do it out of love – I want to give you all I have, and if I can’t, then I’m not gonna half ass it.
(And hey – at least I’m telling you this now, so you don’t have to keep checking back)
So have a good day, and a wonderful evening, and we’ll all meet back here tomorrow.
Love,
Jason MJPAE Mulgrew
Jason MJPAE Mulgrew
There is quite a fucking ruckus going on here in New York City right now. And it’s all because a homeless person (isn’t it always the fucking homeless?), trying to keep warm, started a fire in a signal room a subway tunnel. The result was a relatively minor fire with massive consequences: two subways lines – the A and the C – have been crippled and may not be restored to normal service for three to five years.
[You can read the entire article here. If not, it's not necessary to read the article to understand the rest of this post, and I summarize the article below.]
[Christ, I have to do everything for you.]
Before we get too into this, I know that I often write about the subways in NYC, but I spend a lot of time on the subway. This is partially because in a fit of delirium I chose to move and lengthen my commute from 15-17 minutes door to door to 45-65 minutes door to door, and partially because I like to troll the subways at night, preying upon unsuspecting drunks who have passed out on the train - not robbing them of their cash, but rather rubbing my bird on their legs or arms or chins or any exposed skin. Sure, most of the time it’s the drunk hobo types I do this to, but every once in a while I’ll come across a passed out frat boy, and, well, it’s like Christmas.
But I write a lot about the subway because when I’m on it, I do a lot of thinking. I’m either on the subway going to work in the morning, when I’m thinking about things like, “God, I’m tired as fuck” and “I wonder if today is the day that my boss finally breaks down and punches me in the face?” and “Does it make me gay that I had a dream about blowing Justin Timberlake last night and right now I’m the happiest I’ve been in years?” Or I’m on the subway heading home from a stressful day at work, when I think of all kinds of different things like, “I should definitely pick up some wine for tonight” and “What is the actual definition of ’stalking’? What’s the difference between stalking and standing outside a woman’s apartment building drinking cheap gin, crying, and masturbating?” and ”Man, I hope when I go to sleep tonight I have another dream about blowing Justin Timberlake – that was fucking awesome!”
But it’s also because my commute in the morning can completely make or break a day for me. Some days, you’ll be lucky and have a short wait before an empty train comes, allowing you to get a seat, hopefully next to a lovely young Puerto Rican princess who smells like roses and poor. You’ll start the day on a good note, and it’ll carry over to the rest of the day. For example, when your boss asks you in the afternoon about whether you’re finished with the task he assigned to you four days ago, instead of hiding under your desk and saying, “Um, Jason isn’t here – he died, so go away”, you can confidently say, “No sir, I am not finished. As a matter of fact, I wasn’t even listening to what you were saying, because I had had an undercooked Whopper for lunch, and it took every fiber of being to prevent me from shitting myself all over your office. Now what was it again that you wanted?”
On the other hand, there are mornings in which you can wait for several trains, each one more crowded than the next, finally having to force yourself onto one. Then you’re treated to a 50 minute subway ride, your face three inches from some guy’s stank mouth, as he decided to eat some hot garbage for breakfast with this morning coffee. Then the day is much different – when this happens, I usually black out with rage, but from what I pieced together last time this happened, there was a lot of broken glass and a baby crying. But I really don’t remember.
And because some homeless guy (who has not been found by the authorities, probably because he doesn’t have a home), the commute of a whole shit load of people is fucked. Some highlights from the article, in case you didn’t read it:
- the fire was started in a room no bigger than a kitchen, which is unguarded and impossible to fireproof
- this caused “the worst damage to the subway infrastructure since September 11, 2001″, and will take “several millions of dollars and several years” to repair (after 9/11, the four stations that were closed after the attack were opened within one year)
- the A line will run one-third of the normal amount of trains; the C will no longer exist
- the A-C have a combined ridership of 580,000 each weekday
- only two companies in the world can repair the signals: one in Pittsburgh, the other in Paris
- there are dozen of these kitchen-sized signal rooms throughout the NYC subway system
- quote of the day from transit historian Clifton Hood, who has been waiting his whole life for this moment: “It seems astonishing that a single signal room would be so central to the operation of the line that it would take five years to recover from”
Allow me to join in the chorus of New Yorkers when I say, “Are you fucking kidding me???” One little fire caused by a homeless person trying to keep warm has devastated the NYC subway system and made the commute of half a million New Yorkers much, much worse? Good lord.
I feel for these commuters. I wouldn’t wish what they now have to experience on a daily basis on my worst enemy. Well, maybe I would, but what I’m trying to say is that is really sucks. The impact of this subway nightmare can not be understated; this is the kind of shit that lowers property values in the affected areas, because no one will want to move somewhere where the commute will be such a hassle.
But what disturbs me most is that something seemingly so inconsequential has had and will continue to have such a devastating impact on the city. There are “dozens” of these signals rooms located throughout the NYC underground, all not fireproofed and unguarded. Indeed, unless this homeless person was a spymaster or ninja, they are also easy to gain entrance to.
Remember, this is one small fire in a signal room, on a Sunday afternoon, on the lines of one of the lesser-ridden subway lines, and it still will affect the commute of almost 600,000 New Yorkers every day for the next three to five years. What if a bunch of crazies were to plan an organized attack on a few these signal rooms? What if they hit some of the bigger, more important lines, and did so during the weekday? Can you imagine a more efficient, less deadly way to completely shut down the most populous city in America, and financially the most important in the world, for an extended period of time? If we can use this incident to hypothesize further, the city would be in complete and utter chaos for weeks, if not months.
If a homeless guy can do this (again, no offense to the homeless guy - I’m sure he’s very skilled in the art of sabotage), what could someone who’s thought about and planned this do? And who would be able to stop him? Are there any protections currently in place (nope), or will there be (not with the MTA budget the way it is)?
…
Ah, there’s really nothing like living in New York. Greatest fucking city in the world. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to abuse some of my prescription Xanax.
I should not be at work today.
My head is pounding, my complexion is ruddy, and my eyes are bloodshot. I have the shakes, the chills, and the runs. I’m not answering my phone, I can’t focus on work, and I’ve spent half of the day either in the library ”resting my eyes” or on the can reading every article from philly.com.
The source of my current pain is an unbelievable joy: the Philadelphia Eagles are going to the Super Bowl.
I still can’t believe it, so I’ll write it again: the Philadelphia Eagles are going to the Super Bowl.
I hesitate to write such sweeping, grandiose statements like, “This is one of the best things that has ever happened to me” or “My life as I know it will forever be different”, but to be honest, they do apply here. Call me shallow, tell me that I don’t have my priorities straight, say I’m racist for once putting a sign on a public beach that said, “We Don’t Want No Ricans Here”, but it’s true: I am in complete and total rapture, all because of a football game.
These feelings are impossible to understand or to explain to anyone who is not a sports fan. I know that I have done nothing, save for karmic support, to help the Eagles get to the Super Bowl. But yet I have dedicated a large portion of my life and energy rooting for this football team. For years I have followed them, watching every possible game I could and reading everything written about them – from the days of Randall Cunningham and the Gang Green defense (when I knew all the words to the unintentionally hilarious “Buddy’s Watching You”, a song about then-coach Buddy Ryan), to the bleak days of the Rodney Peete-Ty Detmer-Bobby Hoying-Koy Detmer-Doug Pederson QB shit-show. And now finally, for only the second time in the team’s history and the first time since the 1980 season (when I was one), the Eagles are going to the Super Bowl.
The game itself yesterday was tense. During the first half, I remarked to my buddy Greg that I’m not entirely sure why I’m a sports fan, since Eagles games are usually a terrible three hours for me, as I sit on the edge of my seat, fidgeting like a crack baby after a case of Red Bulls, and drinking faster than I can swallow. Fortunately, I was surrounded by a good group of hardcore Eagles fans, and though the game was relatively close throughout, everyone in the bar felt confident (and drunk). My original plan was to stay a little bit sober so I could watch and remember the game, but I guess I forgot how good Bud Light drafts taste. The good news is that I had about fifty wings (though I don’t particularly like wings) and a half-pound burger during the game, so that kept the alcohol at bay and allowed me to have rational thought processes like, “Man, the Falcons are killing us with that off-tackle run” and “We need to stretch the field out a lot more than we’re doing”, rather than drunken observations like, “I wish I was at the stadium so I could get a hot dog” and ”Why do black people have so many tattoos? Don’t they know that you can’t really see them? Why don’t they just get white ink on their tattoos, so they can be more easily seen? I have a boner.”
And as the Eagles pulled to a 27-10 lead with only three minutes left in the game, it took every ounce of my being to hold back the tears of joy. Yes, I almost cried over a football game. I’m not ashamed to admit it; after all, I’m a Cancer, so I’m very sensitive. I usually only cry under three circumstances: 1) every time I hear Elton John’s “The One”; 2) after a really good poo after a really good sandwich; and 3) whenever I notice that the sour cream has gone bad. But yesterday – I think my allergies were acting up, because it was getting a little misty in there.
I thought the partying would continue all through the night, but sadly, shortly after the game my compatriots all left. I too eventually left, when it became apparent that I could no longer fit any more beer or wings into my body (a sad realization that I did not take well) and, oh yeah, when I stumbled into the bathroom and on the way back the bartender offered to call me a cab (I took that as my cue to leave). My recourse was, of course, to go home and drink a bottle of champagne in the shower – I mean, duh. In an alcoholic frenzy, I had drank a bottle of champagne on Friday night, because it was the only thing in the fridge. So on Saturday, while stocking up on goods before the blizzard, I got another bottle (in addition to a ton of meat products, beer, and loads of chocolate syrup) because I had enjoyed the first so much. I had to get sober, because I couldn’t call out of work today, so I sat in the tub, shower head aimed at my feet and the water flowing down the drain so that the rest of my body was dry, drinking champagne. And yes, I realize how weird this is, and how flawed my idea of “getting sober” is. And no, I don’t care, because it was fucking awesome.
And now I’m here at work. The beers, shots, champagne, and greasy foods did quite a number of me, and Vegas currently has the over/under on my heart attack at 4:30pm. It doesn’t help that I was sick all weekend with a fever and the chills, which I completely ignored in order to – surprise surprise – drink and get high with my roommates as a blizzard raged outside, keeping us in all fucking weekend. And while there’s very little worse than having a massive hangover on a Monday, it’s all good, because the fucking Eagles are in the fucking Super Bowl.
And now the hard part: waiting. The Super Bowl isn’t until February 6, so until then I have two weeks to read all sorts of articles from football analysts and experts saying the Eagles don’t have a chance against the mighty Patriots. I’ll save my analysis for later, because I need to bask in the warming glow of being a winner. I don’t get this chance often, so if you’ll excuse me, I have to get back to nursing my hangover, reading about the Iggles, and staring at the giant (well, moderate) erection I have. I don’t know if it’s me, but it looks a little bigger than usual. But, I admit, I am a little high, so that might have something to do with it. Oh well.
[For some reason, the ending of the post below just ain't showing up, so I've added it here. And yes, Brendan, our official sitemaster, is fired. Send him some hate mail at Brendan@jasonmulgrew.com.]
All I ask for is that you think of me this weekend. Know that from 3pm to 6pm (est), I will be living and dying with every minute. Psychically send me some good wishes, and hope that if things don’t turn out the way I want them to, I don’t start punching everyone and everything around me. And hope that if things do turn out the way I want them to, I don’t go one a four-day binge and lose my job. Unless in the course of said binge I get laid. Because then it’d probably be worth it.
So have a good weekend. Go out, have a good time, get messed up, and pray to God that when Monday morning comes I’m not in jail.
[Well, actually, don't pray to God - I don't want Him getting any props until He apologies for stealing my car. Asshole.]
I don’t know how I feel about making NFL predictions, because it’s just too close to home now. For the fourth year in a row, my hometown team, the Philadelphia Eagles, are within one game of going to the Super Bowl – if they win, they’re in. In the previous three years, they have gone 0 for 3 in this game, despite being heavily favored in the last two. After their first loss, I said, “Well, I’m glad that they got there.” After their second loss, I said, ”That blows – big time. But there’s always next year.” After last year’s loss, I said, “Well there’s only one thing to do now: cut my dick off with a plastic butterknife.” Fortunately for my penis, the butterknife was covered in carrot cake and was thus unable to break skin. Also, I couldn’t find my dick, so I just jabbed my lower stomach a few times. And then I went and ate a whole fucking carrot cake. And a meatball sub. And a can of icing. But I digress…
For these reasons, I’m not going to make any NFL predictions for this week’s playoffs games. I conferred with several buddies of mine, also Eagles fans, and we mutually decided that I should not write anything about the games, lest I contribute in any way to a loss. I know what you’re thinking, “I’m sure he can find his penis if he looks hard enough.” But, really, I can’t. You’re welcome to have a look if you so desire, but god I hope you don’t so desire. But if you do venture down there, I think I left an onion ring somewhere down there from a Halloween party I went to in ’99. If you see it, can you grab it for me? Thanks.
You may also be thinking, “How can he contribute to an Eagles’ loss?” I don’t know specifically how I can contribute to an Eagles’ loss, but I do know that anyone or anything associated with me is on the wrong side of karma. God and I have been notoriously feuding for years, and I’m sure that He’ll take this Sunday’s Eagles game as another opportunity to “score one off Mulgrew.” All this because I got drunk once and called Him a card cheat and hit Him with a tree branch, and we’ve been going back and forth for years now.
To be perfectly honest, I really, really need the Eagles to win. Not want, but need. I don’t care if they then get slaughtered in the Super Bowl (lie), but I really, really need them to win. I’ve written this before, but Philadelphia has the longest championship drought of any city in the US with all four professional sports teams – by far. The last championship: 1983, won by the Philadelphia 76ers. I was 4 years old at the time, and though I had just begun experimenting with meth, I didn’t understand the importance of sports and winning championships.
But before I get ahead of myself and start talking about how a championship would personally change my life, I have to get back to this game, which we (the Eagles and I) have to win to even get to the Super Bowl. I don’t have a whole lot going on right now, and an Eagles victory this week would mean the world to me, and fundamentally change me as a person. I might even stop telling everyone that I do not have herpes and tell them the truth (that I have eight different kinds of herpes – Thailand 2001: best. trip. ever.). I’d even possibly stop spreading all those lies about my buddy Kyle, specifically how he masturbates to music (jazz, but Brian McKnight also does the trick) and likes to wear a clown suit when he has sex.
So I have very little for you right now. I’m feeling kinda sick, partially because of the game, but partially because I forgot to put my contacts in this morning, so for lunch I had some frozen yogurt with staples on top, thinking they were sprinkles.
I’m antsy; I don’t know if I wanna go home and go to sleep, or go home and get high, or go home and start boozing. It’ll probably be a mix of all three, especially since we have some amazing weed. Last night, my roommate Brian and I smoked and stayed up until 4am trying to build a sexy robot out of our X-Box, some hair gel, a few raw pieces of chicken breast, aluminum foil, and a turtle, but we found out eventually that we stink at building sexy female robots. Also, Brian killed the turtle because he thought he said something about his mother. Serves him right – that turtle was a dick anyway.
And I’m tired, and needy. I don’t ask for much, but I’d really like to have an Eagles’ win. So bad. So, so bad.
<
Last night after work I was on the subway, going over to my friend Holly’s house for a visit. It was almost 8pm, so the work rush hour had passed and the train was fairly empty. I slumped down in my seat, a hulking mass of shit and vice, and listened to my iPod. And then something amazing happened: a blind accordion player entered the train.
This is not remarkable in and of itself, but what’s remarkable is that it was a different blind accordion player than the one I had the run-in with a few weeks back.
I know NYC is a big city and all, but what are the odds that there’d be two blind accordion players vying for the change of rush hour commuters? Seriously, how many blind people play the accordion? Is that the easiest instrument for the blind to pick up? Or was there some bizarre accident at an accordion players’ convention that left everyone blind, forcing them to roam the subways of major cities for change? What the fuck?
This crossed my mind only for a second before I thought about what would happen if the blind accordion player I saw a few weeks back came on the train and saw (sorry, heard) this new blind accordion guy on his turf. Images of two old blind guys with accordions strapped to their chests whacking each other with their canes and blindly (literally) throwing punches at each other quickly filled my head, and before long I was in hysterics. This blind guy was standing in the middle of the aisle, playing his accordion looking for some change so that he can eat, eliciting pity from every other commuter on the train, while I sat in my chair, my red, tear-streaked face buried in my hands, shaking with laughter as I envisioned the two blind guys clumsily fighting each other, knocking each other down, their accordions making all sorts of weird sounds as they attacked each other, fighting to the death.
Does it make me terrible person that this was the highlight of my week? Probably. But more importantly, do I care? No. Not really.
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Country Crock has introduced a line of side dishes (mashed potatoes, chicken rice, and mac and cheese) that come in their trademark containers and are microwaveable.
One word about these: STAY THE FUCK AWAY (well, that’s four words). I only had the mac and cheese, but good lord it is fucking good. My plan was to eat a third of the 23 oz (that’s 1 pound, 7 ounces) container as a side for some sausages that I had grilled up. Unfortunately, that plan did not come to fruition and I wound up eating the whole fucking container in one sitting – a pound a half of mac and cheese. I think by the end of it I had throw my utensils across the room and was sticking my face in the container, making noises as I scarfed it down like I was simultaneously having sex and getting beat up. When I was finished, I put some mozzarella cheese in the empty container, heated it so the cheese melted ever so slightly, and ate that too. Good lord.
Man it was fucking good. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
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I’ve been noticing that my hangovers have been especially vicious over the past few months, and this is not acceptable. I don’t know if it’s aging or what, but I’d kinda like to lessen the effects of having 30 Bud Lights so that I don’t need a roommate to help me use the bathroom the next day.
To this end, I’ve been training. Before, I usually didn’t drink during the week. If I didn’t go out on Thursday night or any other weekday night (which I’ve been trying to cut down on because I’m so fucking broke), I would maybe have one beer at home if the mood struck me, but that’s it. Come the weekend, I’d have, oh, about 100 alcoholic drinks (beer, mixed drinks, shots, gasoline, etc)
But now, I have a regiment: to lessen the effects of my weekend hangovers and prepare my body for the binge drinking, I’ve been having two beers per night, every night. This is the first week I’ve done this in earnest, and I think it’ll work this weekend. Of course, the problem is that after having two drinks, it’s very, very hard to not have another. But that’s why I think two is good…for me personally, three is the threshold. If I have two beers, I can stop and be ok. If I have three, there’s an 80% chance I’m going to have a fourth. If I have a fourth, there’s a 90% chance I’m going to have a fifth. And if I have a fifth, there’s a 99% chance that someone is going to jail and someone’s life, and genitals, will never be the same.
So wish me luck this weekend. I’ll be sure to report back.
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I have completely lost control of my email inbox. I love your emails, but god DAMN I’m fucking popular. Unfortunately, I can no longer guarantee a response to every email I get. I hope you understand and I hope this doesn’t make it weird between us. I encourage you to keep sending me emails and I’ll do my best to respond, but if I don’t, it doesn’t mean I don’t love you – it just means that I don’t like you as much as those who email me naked pictures. It’s helpful if you appropriately subject your emails (i.e. “music suggestions”, “need some advice”, “come to my apt and touch me in the basement (wink wink)”, etc) and send them to jason@jasonmulgrew.com rather than through the “contact me” page. And for those of you who are going to write an email to me with the subject line, “Pictures of my boobs” and instead not have pictures of your boobs but ask me to put a link to your blog on mine, well, if I ever find you, I will fucking kill you. Simple as that.
I’m sorry, but I can’t spend two hours every night writing emails. I have other more important things to do, most notably comb over my genitals for any abnormalities, then subsequently arouse myself, then slowly bring myself to climax, then, well, just kinda hang out and feel ashamed.
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Six Songs:
- “Alex Chilton” The Replacements
I fucking love this song. Cowbell, an acoustic break-down, clapping, a wicked solo – it’s got everything. Fucking A. That’s really all I can say.
(And yes, I know that rhymes)
- “Skating Away” Jethro Tull
Three things that come to mind about this song: 1) it’s very dainty; 2) it’s very British (not related to being dainty); 3) there is some crazy acoustic guitar playing. Also, Ian Anderson is tied with Lindsay Buckingham for the “Performer Who Makes Me Most Uncomfortable When I See Them Performing Because They Go All Crazy And Act Real Weird And Shit” title.
- “Happy” Bruce Springsteen
When my old college roommate Mike (who I also went to high school with) got married, he and his wife used this song as their wedding song. And with all due respect to every other wedding I’ve been to, this song blows all other wedding songs out of the water. Very original, very appropriate, and very good. Kudos to Mike and Lee on this one – good job.
- “Say You Miss Me” Wilco
Wait - you’re telling me that Wilco existed before Yankee Hotel Foxtrot? What?
This is a nice little ditty that makes me sad. And we all know how much I love making myself sad, and how much help I need doing it. Because when it’s 4:30 in the morning on a Saturday night and I’m lying in bed with a sausage roll and the spins, full of booze and disappointment, trying in vain to beat off to Maxim, I simply can’t get sad. Not at all.
- “Sad And Lonely” The Secret Machines
Whenever I hear this song, I see a red-headed tattooed stripper with incredible fake boobs working the stage and pole as though God had made her for one purpose and one purpose only: to slide her stunning body around the platform like the sexiest fucking snake in the world and drive lonely and/or obese men wild.
Oh wait – I have seen that, in real life. Unfortunately, the lap dance she gave me was surprisingly sub par, but I have to take some of the blame here, because I had such an erection and was so overwhelmed and boneriffic that I was cross-eyed the whole time and I think I had a mild seizure half-way through, so I think that made her a little uncomfortable.
Oh, and it’s not a bad song either. I hadn’t heard it since I was at the strip club that night until it was recommended recently by reader Erik Mazmanian. So thanks Erik, for bringing back a wonderful memory.
- “Falling” Ben Kweller
This song sounds like a pretty, happy love song, but I’m not really sure it is. But whenever I hear it, I see a video montage in my head of me and Elisha Cuthbert being in love. A clip of us laying in a field during spring, eating grapes and laughing - us at a baseball game cheering after a home run – us on a rowboat splashing water on each other – me punching some guy in a wheelchair as she screams in horror – us at a movie as I watch her face when she laughs – she and I slow dancing in a park at night among trees with lights on them – me naked and fucked up on coke, punching myself in the throat over and over again because she won’t have sex with me while she frantically dials 911 - us in a stainless-steel kitchen cooking dinner and starting a playful food fight – the two of us in a church at a friend’s wedding and as the couple exchanges vows she touches my hand and gives me a doe-eyed look – us arguing and me pulling my pants down in the middle of the room and shitting on the floor and then standing up and stomping on the shit, screaming, “This is how you make me feel! This is how you fucking make me feel!” – etc.
I don’t know if this is what Ben Kweller intended when he wrote this song, but that’s the beauty of music I guess.
In exactly one month, I will be arriving in London to start a week of fighting, fucking, and setting shit on fire.
Well, maybe I won’t be doing any of those things, but it will be a week of drinking a ton and spending more money than I could ever possibly afford (thank you, weak US dollar).
I love London. I’ve written before about this, but I’ll do so again because it’s very hard to write something almost every day for eleven months without repeating yourself occasionally, so suck it.
It all started in the fall of 1997, when I fell in love with the Spice Girls. At the time I was in a very strange place, which I really don’t want to get into at this juncture, but the bottom line is that I loved Baby Spice. Not liked, but loved. I’ve probably had stronger feelings for Baby Spice than any woman I’ve been with in real life (and to answer your question, no, I am not currently in therapy). My love of Baby Spice was only borderline sicko though, because at least I kept it to myself and there was no drawing blood or anything like that.
(Well…)
Anyway, when I got to college, I was determined to study abroad. Something about going to a foreign country, seeing all sorts of foreign girls that have no idea that I have a reputation for strangling girls during sex (not to kill them, but only to increase the potency of their “orgasm” – duh), really appealed to me. Since I had no interest in going anywhere where people didn’t speak English, my options were limited. As someone who doesn’t fly well, Australia and New Zealand were out of the question. As was South Africa, but I also disqualified South Africa because they have a lot of sharks there, and, well, it’s fucking Africa. So that left Ireland and the UK.
My Irish-American family encouraged me to go to Ireland, the land of my ancestors, but I didn’t want to. This was because Baby Spice wasn’t Irish, she was British. Also, I get enough talk about “Irish this” and “Irish that” with my family, so if I went to Ireland, I would never hear the end of it. I’d be asked to recount my adventures (sans titties, cocaine, and child kidnapping) to my family at parties and holidays for the rest of my life. I really don’t need that.
And so that’s how I picked London. In January of 2000, I hoped on a Virgin Atlantic plane and landed in Heathrow, and thus began the greatest year of my life.
I have a lot of fond memories of London, most of which I won’t divulge here because I plan on writing an epic “Ode To 2000″ – the greatest year of my life (did I say that already?). But while in London, I was so broke that I had to stop eating, and lost forty pounds. I then went on a womanizing tear the likes of which will not be seen again until I get me some fame. I mean, good GOD. It was incredible. My buddies and I back-packed through Europe for a month, and suddenly we were transformed from nerds with bad hair to ultimate ladies’ men with bad hair, hopping from one European city to the next, taking full advantage of the local peasant women. What a great time. Unfortunately, I think I was back in the US for three hours before I gained back thirty of the forty pounds I had lost. The other ten I gained back later that night while I slept, because I insisted on going to bed with a cheesesteak and a large canister of cheese whiz. When I woke up, both were gone. Also, I had peed the bed, but it wasn’t pee, but rather a sticky, white substance. To this day, this mystery has never been solved.
And now I’m heading back. I went around this time last year and wrote about it on this site, at a time when about fourteen people were reading it (and now we’re up to seventeen! keep spreading the word!). This time, I’m flying solo, but staying with my dear friend Nicole, who’s in London doing grad work at LSE. I figured that if I had a free place to stay, I should take advantage of it, and any of Nicole’s roommates with low self-esteem.
I have three goals for my trip to London:
1) Make me bankrupt until at least August.
Seeing as the exchange rate is murderous right now (£1
2) Don’t do anything illegal (yes, that includes you solicitation).
I’m going to try to keep it clean and not break the law while in London. Note this doesn’t apply to petty crimes like jaywalking or vehicular homicide, but rather buying/taking drugs or trying to pay anyone I see for a handjob. I have very little chance of accomplishing this goal.
3) Ruin my friendship with my friend Nicole.
Like Goal #1, this should also be very, very easy. I spoke to Nicole when she was home over the holidays:
Me: “Did you tell your roommates that I’m coming to visit?”
Nicole: “Of course I did. They’re cool.”
Me: “No, I mean, did you tell your roommates that I was coming to visit? Did you tell them about me?”
Nicole: “Oh stop it.”
Me: “Nicole…”
Nicole: “Look, just try to be a little normal when you come visit.”
Me: “Ok, I will.”
Nicole, you’re probably reading this, so I want to let you know that I lied when I said I would try to be normal. I will most certainly try to be as abnormal as I possibly can, acting so bizarrely that your roommates will ask you to move out, doing weird shit like:
- randomly barking
- telling everyone that I am divorced, and speaking frequently about my ex-wife, looking off into the distance as I do so, with a pained expression on my face
- saying, “I was in the war” so that people will say, “What war?” and I’ll say, “I don’t want to talk about it”, and then it’ll get all uncomfortable as it looks like I’m about to start crying
- saving only a little bit of every beer I drink and putting it back in the fridge for later, so that by mid-week your fridge will be filled with 100 cans of beer only 15% full
- telling everyone that I lost a sister to a snuff film
- saying things like, “I forgot to pack my medication, and I don’t know…I just really want to strangle a prostitute – do you ever get that feeling? I mean, just fucking grab ‘em and choke ‘em – you guys know what I’m talking about, right? Right?”
- constantly talking about how every time I get an erection it really hurts, but at the same time it really gets me hot
- taking food stuffs from your cabinets and hiding them in random areas of the apartment
- telling everyone I’m actually half-man, half-horse, but I look more like my dad (the man) than my mom (the horse)
…
London. One month. Can’t wait.
There’s really nothing better than a long weekend, especially when the day off is Monday. Sure, many will argue that having Friday off is superior to having off on Monday, but I disagree. When you think about it, Friday is the best day of the work week, the day when I say to myself all day long, “C’mon – almost there, you fat bastard. Just a couple more hours until you’re sitting on the couch enjoying a tall cool Budweiser, watching VH1 Classic, and thinking about that Indian girl who lives down the hall who you just wanna get all messed up on gin and Nyquil and touch all over.” Whereas Monday is spent thinking, “Fuck – four more days of this. I wish I had money so I didn’t have to work. Maybe I should give a second thought to robbery or arson-for-hire, because something has to give.” So give me Monday off any day of the week (get it? “any day of the week”? god I am fucking awesome).
A lot of shit happened this weekend, and though I don’t like breaking weekend posts down by days, fuck it – I’m feeling pretty lazy right now.
Friday: Glenn Tilbrook
After work on Friday, I went over to Hoboken, NJ to a lil’ place called Maxwell’s to see Glenn Tilbrook play.
Some background:
1) Hoboken: I don’t like it. It’s basically a college town, filled with people in their mid- to late-20′s all trying to get drunk and have sex. Now on paper, this sounds great, but in reality, it means bars packed with a bunch of gelled up douchebags who all work in banking in NYC hitting on girls who love their sororities and US Weekly.
And yes, maybe I’m jealous because these girls don’t like me, but really, NO girls like me, so I’m not holding their disinterest in me against them. I will, however, hold my penis against them as I wait by the bar to order another drink, and hope they don’t notice. If they do notice, well, I am deceptively speedy when faced with the prospect of a sexual assault charge.
2) Glenn Tilbrook: Glenn Tilbrook was the lead singer of the band Squeeze (“Tempted”, “Pulling Mussels From The Shell”, etc), which is one of my favorite bands of all-time (seriously). What’s more, Glenn’s had a quiet solo career, but he’s put out some pretty marvelous stuff. What’s even more, Glenn is a consummate performer, performing alone with an acoustic guitar, drinking the whole time, and talking to the crowd and taking their requests.
[As a matter of fact, I invite all over you to click through to his website several times and so that he might notice a spike in his traffic coming from my site, in the hope that he might contact me and ask him to follow him around telling dick jokes. Thank you for your help in this.]
3) Maxwell’s: a hip bar-restaurant with a tiny backroom that holds maybe 150 people. This bar regularly puts on some good acts, and is known as the place where indie gods Yo La Tengo got their start. A refuge for Hoboken’s hipster crowd, which is small, but present.
Verdict: very good night. Some friends and I met there and had dinner, which was lovely, but if what I had was “Hoboken’s best quesadilla” then I no longer dislike the people who live in Hoboken, I pity them. Glenn sounded awesome and was entertaining as usual, drinking and going back and forth with the crowd, at one point leaving the stage to walk around among the crowd playing and singing. Good stuff.
The audience was mostly middle-aged people or people in their 30′s, but there were a fair amount of young people like myself. Out of the young people present, my friends and I were the only ones who didn’t rock the “Rockstar” look – vintage clothes, messed up hair that actually isn’t messed up at all, sunglasses, etc.
I hate these people. I don’t know why, but I have a lot of hate to give, and these people seem to be as good as any to be recipients of my hate. They’re one of the things I hated about living in the Lower East Side – all these young people with the rockstar look, walking around with guitars on their back, with an air of superiority because they get it, while others do not.
Well, I certainly do NOT get it. I don’t know how these people can allow themselves to be so affected: their appearance is so contrived, it’s almost laughable. I thought that the number one way to be cool was not to try too hard, but these people…ugh. I’m not saying that you have to go to an 80 year-old Italian barber and start shopping at J. Crew, but when you have the same hair Rod Stewart did in 1977 and your t-shirt looks homemade but costs $80, it’s time to take a step back and get some perspective.
[And yeah, maybe I'm jealous because women eat these guys up, but fuck you. There's something very sexy about being an internet quasi-celebrity. Once I figure it out, I'll be sure to let you all know.]
Saturday: “Sideways”
Speaking of not getting it…this was probably the longest two hours of my life. DEAR. GOD. I can’t stress how bad I thought this movie was. I really, really need a minute here.
…
Ok.
I admit, I expected a lot from this movie. Everyone who’s seen it loves it, and a lot of friends told me that it was right up my alley. I think I should go back and punch these friends in the face for thinking that two hours of slow-moving plot, characters who I never grew to like but never grew to dislike so instead just hoped the damn movie got over as quickly as possible, and a number of very uncomfortable scenes would be right up my alley.
There were funny parts, but they were few and far between and stemmed from Thomas Haden Church acting like a 35 year-old Steve Stiffler. Aside from that, I just don’t get it. Yeah, yeah, yeah…he’s miserable and all that but he’s also got something more than that, but I really didn’t give a shit. I just wanted to go the fuck home. Christ.
I’m sorry that I can’t give a better review of this movie, but I’m fuming right now. I just want to punch something, but there’s nothing around that I can punch except co-workers, and most of them can beat me up. Maybe I should just move on before my head explodes, revealing a giant bowl of macaroni and cheese in lieu of a brain. I mean, fuck.
Sunday: Football
I went 4-for-4 on my predictions this week, but most importantly, my team won. Yes, the Philadelphia Eagles are advancing to their fourth straight NFC Championship game this Sunday against the Atlanta Falcons. I will leave my analysis and a prediction for later, but boy did this make my weekend much better. While I would’ve liked a more convincing victory and I thought there were a few times that the Birds could have put the game away but did not do so, I was happy with their performance nonetheless.
But this was nothing, and totally expected. The Eagles have lost the NFC Championship game for three consecutive years. If they don’t beat the Falcons this weekend, the year is a failure. And I will eat my television. Mark my words.
But let’s talk about something more pleasant…
Monday: Hearing love live
Last night, I was in my room cleaning up. It didn’t get very far in this endeavor, because I kept leaving whatever I was cleaning and going over to my laptop to check the progress of various porn clips I was downloading. Then I would masturbate, then I would lay down, then I’d get up and go down to the laundry room to see some girls in their sultry “laundry day” outfits, etc. So instead I decided to work on cleaning my bathroom, and began the process of cleaning up the pound and a half of hair that I shed every time I dry off after showering, which had accumulated so much that there was about a solid inch of it covering my bathroom floor.
Remember, I live in a “luxury high rise”, which basically means it’s a fancy-pants dorm. There are 35 floors, each identical to each other, so that above my bedroom is another bedroom, above my kitchen is another kitchen, above my bathroom is another bathroom, etc.
As I was cleaning my bathroom, wearing short shorts and a sexy lil’ bandanna, I heard some strange noises coming from the vent above my shower in my bathroom. I turned down my music to get a closer listen, and lo and behold – it was a woman making all kinds of sexy noises!!!
(!!!!!!)
Now, this is probably the greatest thing that’s ever happened to me. It’s been quite a while since I’ve heard noises like that live, without paying for it. So I stopped and had a good listen. And this girl was going NUTS. I’m not talking a few lil’ noises here and there – this was some real porno star shit. And I was absolutely enthralled. I thought about waking my roommate Brian up, but I decided not to – two guys, standing in a small bathroom, listening to a girl get off? Kinda weird.
I assumed that this girl was masturbating in the shower, because I didn’t hear any male voices. I listened it and was just completely freaked out, turning bright red and jumping up and down with happiness. However, after maybe two minutes, the moaning stopped. I fought back the urge to yell “Bravo!” into the vent, because I figured that if I did that, I surely wouldn’t get a repeat showing.
After that, there was no way I was going to get any cleaning done, so I did what any other man in my position would have done: went to the kitchen to heat up some sausages. I watched a little tv while I ate, but soon after I was finished, I felt a lil’ rumble in my belly (probably because the sausages were of indeterminate age). So I went to take a poo.
As I was sitting on the toilet, I heard the woman from the bathroom above me moaning again. I couldn’t believe it – it had been 20 minutes since the moaning had stopped, and she was at it again! Though I had a terrible case of the runs and my bathroom smelled like a garbage fire, I was still turned on, because she was going at it even louder than before. I mean, really, really getting into it, yelling and screaming and the like. So I sat there wiping my ass, captivated.
This went on for a good five minutes, and then I heard a guy moaning and making all sorts of sex noises. Right away I realized that she was obviously not masturbating but getting sexed up.
I couldn’t believe she was having sex the whole time…it had been, without exaggeration, 20 minutes. No way some guy could be having sex with her for that long, especially since she was going crazy. From what I recall from my own sexual experiences (and this admittedly is very, very hazy), I have absolutely zero stamina when a woman starts showing interest in the love-making. In fact, I used to ask my ladies to act disinterested while we made sexy time (i.e. watch some tv, read a magazine, send some text messages, place some bets – you know, whatever they normally would do) in order to make the process last a little longer.
So I dismissed the idea of one guy having sex with her whilst she was going that crazy for 20 minutes, unless they were filming a porno in the bathroom above mine. And then I had a horrible insight: what if some guy heard her masturbating like I did, but instead of taking a monster shit, he went up to her room, suavely knocked on her door, and was invited into her bathroom to F her brains out?
This was crushing to me, and to be honest, I still haven’t fully recovered. I know that that’s probably not the case, but my goodness – what if I blew it? What if I could have been having all sorts of crazy sex, but instead ate some rancid sausage and pooped? These kinds of opportunities don’t present themselves very often, and I blew it.
The lesson: be more aggressive. If you think about it, this is the best way to go about meeting women. If you’re eventually going to get rejected anyway, what’s the harm in going up to a lovely lady at a bar and saying right off the bat, “Hey, I’d like to get you home and stick my fingers in you. Thoughts?” At least you save yourself the hassle of kicking it to her all night long, and don’t have to drop $50 on her drinks. What would have been the harm if I knocked on my upstairs neighbor’s door to offer a hand, or yelled through the vent that I was ready, willing, but probably unable because my blood pressure was very high at that particular time? If she says no, no big deal. If she says yes, I can die a happy, happy man.
I mean, crap and crap again.
And now it’s time for one of my every-once-in-a-while posts that alienate 2/3 of the people who read this site: let’s talk about sports. To my non-sports liking male readers, a large chunk of my female readers, and pretty much all of my international readers, I’m sorry. But really, you know you’re gonna read it anyway, because it’s Friday and you’re super bored at work, so I encourage you to make the best of it, as I try to make it as non-sports specific as possible. Thank you for your time and effort.
Before we get into NFL playoff predictions, let’s talk about two of my favorite three things: baseball and drugs (the other favorite thing being women with really, really big nipples).
Yesterday, Major League Baseball announced its new steroid-testing policy, which features much harsher penalties for those who test positive for performance-enhancing drugs than its previous policy. Embattled Commissioner Bud Selig held a news conference to announce the new plan, practically gizzing (or is it “jizzing”?) in his pants about the ground-breaking agreement and what a good move it is.
Bud, I have a question for you: have you been reading any of your local sports sections in the off-season? Do you see what a beating MLB has been taking with all this talk of “the cream” and “the clear”? While the agreement was ground-breaking in that the MLB and the Players’ Union finally agreed on something (take notice, NHL), it was more of a necessity than anything else, a plan forged by the need to restore the dignity of the game, not borne of the respect and altruism between the league administration and its players. So quit your gloating and put your erect penis back in your pants.
To me, the major issue with the new, tougher steroid policy is how players who have heretofore have denied using steroids but were in fact using them will explain their sudden weight loss and shrinkage. When Jason Giambi reported to spring training last year looking deflated, he told everyone that he had lost only four pounds and had just worked out differently in the off-season. By “worked out differently”, I assume he meant “stopped taking those illegal drugs that made him fucking huge.” He then proceeded to have a variety of health problems, and had statistically the worst year of his career (but still collected a $12 million paycheck).
So what happens when the rest of MLB players report to camp in February? Giambi has already ruined their excuse for being noticeably smaller, so I wonder if when asked point blank by reporters any player will come out and say, “Well, training in the off-season was particularly tough this year, what with me no longer being allowed to take all those steroids I’ve been relying on for the past few years. So I wouldn’t expect any big numbers from me this year. But hey – I’ve had a good run, and I’m rich as a mother fucker, so suck it. Next question please.”
Probably not, but that would be fucking awesome.
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Ah, the NFL Playoffs…really, there’s nothing like them. Sure, baseball playoffs are really great, and hockey is pretty awesome too (NBA – eh), but football is special because it completely transforms Sundays in January into much more than hangover recuperation time.
Honestly, there’s not a lot better than waking up at 12:30pm on a Sunday afternoon, your head spinning from the night before and your breath smelling like a mix of Captain Morgan’s, cigarettes, and gyros, and rolling from you bed onto your couch to watch football. Of course, then there’s the requisite bacon, egg, and cheese bagel to be consumed at the start of the 1pm game, then an order of wings, nachos, poppers, et al to gorge yourself upon for the 4pm game. I mean, if that’s not heaven, I don’t know what is.
But alas the NFL playoffs have been particularly tough for yours truly over the past few years, a proud and long-suffering Philadelphia Eagles fan. The Eagles have advanced to the NFC Championship game in each of the past three years, but have lost each contest, two of which were at home. Not good. Not good at all.
Six weeks ago, I could ejaculate just thinking about this team, not needing to call on my assortment of pornographic films, nor dial any 1-900 numbers, nor creep around my local yeshiva, surreptitiously spying on all those lil’ Jewish boys and their sexy lil’ beards. But then after a poor performance at Washington, the loss of star player Terrell Owens against Dallas, and two horrible (though lame duck) loses to finish the season, I’m scared. Not scared in the “I hate werewolves” way, but in the “keep all things flammable or toxic away from me” kind of scared.
But enough about me, let’s get on with the picks.
AFC
New York Jets at Pittsburgh Steelers
Part of me really wants to pick the Jets. I’m a big believer in running the ball and playing good defense, both of which the Jets do well. Unfortunately for the Jets, the Steelers do both those things too, and they do them better.
I think the Steelers take this game, because:
1) They’re rested and at home.
2) The Jets are coming off a huge win against the Chargers (see diatribe about the Vikings below).
3) The Steelers are better than the Jets nearly across the board.
That being said, I would not be surprised if the Jets take this game (although with the playoffs the way they are this year, that can be said about every game).
Indianapolis Colts at New England Patriots
This will be the most interesting game to watch because there are so many storylines. You’ve got Colts’ kicker Mike Vanderjagt mouthing off, Peyton Manning coming off a monster season but with a history of playing slightly better QB than me when he plays the Pats, the element of bad weather, and of course, the dreamy Tom Brady.
My pick? The Pats. Why? Simple: I can’t see the banged-up Pats secondary containing those wide receivers (give me a minute here). That being said, in the history of football, there’s always been the classic chicken-and-egg argument when it comes to QB/WR combos. I remember being a kid and getting into an argument with one of my friends who said after Steve Young’s ascendancy in San Fran, “Anybody can be Joe Montana when they have Jerry Rice to throw to.”
I don’t think this is the case with Peyton Manning (nor did I with Joe Montana), and I think Bill Belichick knows this. I think he’s smart enough to worry less about containing the trio of Harrison, Wayne, and Stokley and instead focus on getting to Peyton Manning, which they have consistently done in the past, far better than anyone else in the league. I can’t bring myself to take the Colts in hostile environs on a cold, slow field against a team that has owned them in the past. To me, regardless of what happens after this game, this is where we learn if the Pats are a dynasty. If Bill Belichick can stop a quarterback that has had (statistically) the greatest season in the NFL with a patched together secondary in which I might see some snaps in nickel situations, we all owe him and his team a tip of our caps.
NFC
St. Louis Rams at Atlanta Falcons
I have absolutely no idea what to make of this game, or these two teams. This is partially I saw so little of the Falcons during the regular season, but also because the Rams have more personalities than my schizophrenic cousin Will.
So with a flip of the coin I go with the Falcons, for no other reason than their track record. The Rams played in the weakest division that I can ever remember and beat a really bad team in the Seahawks (who lost on a dropped TD pass) to advance. Sure, Bulger is playing very well and Atlanta has a dome, but I still have to go with Atlanta, though I can’t offer a single definitive reason. Can I pick both? Because I really have no idea.
Minnesota Vikings at Philadelphia Eagles
I hate, hate, HATE what the Eagles have done since crushing Green Bay in early December. They played poorly against a surprisingly feisty Redskins team, played poorly and lost TO to a bad Dallas team, and rested just about everybody in their last two games, which was some of the most boring, crappiest displays of football I’ve seen in recent memory.
Having said that, here comes a diatribe…
Football is a game of minutiae. This is played out every week in the league in a variety of “if” scenarios: if only the running back had the extra inch to get the first down, if only that linebacker got to that pass a half-second earlier to deflect it, if only the cornerback hadn’t jumped at the play action fake and lost that half-step on the receiver, etc.
But if we recognize the importance of minutiae when we talk about on-the-field analysis, so must we recognize the importance of subtlety when we hypothetically analyze games. And nowhere is this recognition of subtlety more important than in knowing the difference between a team playing with momentum and a team that has blown its load.
(Are you still with me?)
Last week, the Minnesota Vikings went into Green Bay and dominated from the start. Both their offense and defense were clicking on all cylinders, and they pulled out a victory that many didn’t expect them to achieve, especially so easily. The beat the fuck out of that Packers team, and there’s no question about it.
The question is: do the Vikings take that momentum into their game against the Eagles this weekend, or did they blow their proverbial load against Green Bay?
My take: they blew their load. Two reasons:
1) Brett Favre played some really bad football last week. My dad has a theory (that he’s proud that he thought of on his own, but it’s a sentiment shared by just about every person who knows a good deal about the NFL) that Brett Favre is good for two or three “What the fuck did he do that for?” plays per game. An example is in the divisional playoff last year against the Eagles, when Favre was under pressure and simply threw the football as high as he could in the air, to have it picked off by Brian Dawkins.
Favre had more than two or three of those type plays (albeit not as dramatic) against the Vikings, which I can’t recollect right now because I don’t have the fucking tape in front of me. He played very poorly, and I have no doubt that this was a major factor in the Vikes’ win. I think the moments of Brett Favre being able to put it all together and dominate a team are getting fewer and farther between by the week.
2) Are the Vikings as good as they were last week? I don’t think you’ll find a person outside of Minnesota that says yes. This is an 8-8 team that has consistently played with no heart, dropped 7 of their last 10 games, and has a star that is not only a dick (but pretty fucking funny), but a selfish player.
I know that the Vikes really brought it against the Packers last week, but this week they’re not playing the Packers. They’re playing a well-rested team that has been down this road before, and was 7-1 at home this year (the loss coming in the garbage-time last game of the season against the Bengals). Sure, the Eagles’ offense has sputtered, but their defense has played very well. Throw in the fact that Moss’ ankle leaves him at less than 100%, and I have to take the Birds here (even though it’s much cooler to take the Vikes, because everybody’s doing it).
I know – I’m picking all the home teams, and the odds of that happening are very slim. But hey, I can do and say whatever the hell I want, since it is my website. Jerkoff.
…
So that’s it. Be advised that there will be no post on Monday, because like most of America I will be off (I never thought I’d love a black person more than Jeff Goldblum until I realized that I got off from work on Martin Luther King Day). So have a safe and kick-ass weekend.
I’ve noticed that over the past few days on the site I’ve been overly extolling the virtues of cocaine. Sigh.
Boys and girls, I would like to go on record to say that not everything is good about cocaine, and some things about cocaine are bad, and even horrible.
First and foremost, it’s expensive. Not like “a couple bucks here and there” expensive, but “I just spent and went through $50 worth and I need about $100,000 worth more to make it through the next few hours” expensive. It’s because it’s hard to have just a little, so you often wind up spending more than you bargained for.
Second, it’s illegal. This means that in order to get cocaine, you have to deal with and associate with a bevy of unsavory characters, who may or may not threaten to stab you in the heart if you piss them off or eat all the salsa they have in their fridge, even if you promise that you’ll buy them more right away. Additionally, if you get caught with it, you’re going to go to jail (but I wouldn’t worry about getting caught with it and going to jail unless you are a minority and poor).
As someone who’s had his struggles but has been clean for well over six hours now (ok, forty minutes), seriously, cocaine is bad news. It makes you jittery, irritable, and the comedown is like the worse day of your life times ten. So if you’ve never done it, don’t start. [Most] Drugs aren’t [that] cool, and it’s [sometimes] not worth it. So don’t do it. And if you don’t believe me, just listen to Duran Duran’s “White Lines”. That should scare you straight, but not in the sexuality sense.
And if you’re a hypochondriac who constantly thinks he’s having a heart attack, then you really should stay away from cocaine. Otherwise, it’s gonna be a pretty embarrassing scene when your roommate has to take you to the emergency room at 4am on a Wednesday because you think you’re in cardiac arrest and you have this conversation with the female doctor:
Doctor: “So you think you’re having a heart attack?”
Person Under the Influence of Cocaine: “Yes.”
Person Under the Influence of Cocaine: “Yes.”
Doctor: “First question – take any drugs tonight?”
Person: [pretending to be offended] “No – of course not! No!”
Doctor: “Are you sure?”
Person: [pretending to be even more offended; flailing arms] “Am I sure? Of course I’m sure!”
Person: [pretending to be even more offended; flailing arms] “Am I sure? Of course I’m sure!”
Doctor: “So if I were to give you a drug test right now, it would show that there are no drugs in your system?”
Person: [realizing the charade is over, trying to make light of the situation] “Well, no, there’s no way I would pass at all. Not even close. If 70 were passing, I’d be in the 30′s, maybe 20′s. I don’t know – can I get below a zero?”
Doctor: “That’s what I thought.”
The moral: don’t do drugs.
We now rejoin our regularly scheduled programming already in progress…
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This morning, I was a little hungover, having gone out for some brewskis last night with Ace, Don, and AGU of Slack. Still I managed to get out of bed and start the day, with the promise that when I got to work I’d go to the nearby Burger King and get myself one of those new double croissant sandwiches, which have egg, cheese, bacon, AND sausage, and of course a Yoohoo. Fucking A.
However, when I got to my local 96th Street subway station, I learned that the downtown trains were not running. Hmph. The station was in chaos, as people were scrambling to figure out how they were now going to get to work. I walked up to the NYC Transit employee, a very large black woman in her little glass-encased booth (I know – a super fat black lady working for the MTA? Next you’re gonna tell me that some cab drivers are actually not speaking English into their cell phone headsets as they do 45 up Madison Ave! Crazy!). I asked the MTA employee if the trains were running downtown from the 86th Street station, the next closest station, and she said yes. So I started to walk to 86th Street.
This was an inconvenience, but not a major one. See (give me a moment here), I take the local “6″ from 96th Street every morning. I take this one stop only, to 86th Street, where I switch to the express “4″ or “5″ train. This gets me to work much faster, as the “4″/”5″ express makes stops at only 86th-59th-42nd-14th-etc, whereas the “6″ local stops at 96th-86th-77th-68th-59th-etc all the way down. So instead of taking the train one stop, I had to walk a couple of blocks. No big deal.
[If you're having trouble following this because you too are hungover, click here to see a NYC subway map.]
But when I got to the 86th Street station, it was pure pandemonium. People were flipping out, and there was a lot of pushing and yelling and a lot of anger. Also, there was a homeless guy doing a Michael Jackson impression, and, if he wasn’t crazy and I wasn’t terrified of him, I would have marched right up and told him that it was the worst Michael Jackson impression I had ever seen.
Apparently, there were NO downtown trains running at all, from 96th Street or 86th Street or whatever station. People started yelling, “There’s no service – go to the westside” (meaning cross Central Park to the west side of Manhattan, where one could get subway service downtown).
And now I was pissed off. I was hungover, hungry, and it was cold and wet outside. Fortunately, there was this GORGEOUS woman at the corner, crouching down and tending to her lil’ dog, providing me with an awesome view of her abundant cleavage. I’m serious; I hadn’t seen a cleavage shot that good in a while. It was one of those “Lady, you should thank your lucky stars there’s a police officer standing on the corner because otherwise I’d have you tied up in my buddy’s attic in thirty minutes” moments, because she was just that hot.
I think I need a minute here.
[...]
Ok.
So I began my walk downtown to work, hoping to catch a cab, but things looked bleak. The lines for busses were wrapping around corners, and everyone was trying to hail a cab, yet very few were successful. I called my manager to tell him I would be late, and explained the situation on his voicemail. Then I had an idea: I could call the “Operations” department at work, which always sends out emails about expected delays or street closures or car delays when it’s raining. This was perfect, since I could possibly get some information about the subway closures and at the very least alert them that many people would be in late.
I spoke with some guy in Operations, told him that there are no trains running on Lexington Avenue, and he was surprised. He told me that he hadn’t heard anything about this, and I was the first one to call him about it. I told him that I wanted to give him and the firm a heads up, he was gracious, and we hung up and I continued walking.
When I got to 77th Street (the next subway station), I was very surprised and relived to learn that there were no problems there and everything was running normally. It turns out that there was some sort of police investigation that closed down the 96th & 86th Street Stations momentarily, but things were back to normal. Nice. So I hopped on the train, and made it to work (still 45 minutes late).
I felt silly on the train into work. There I was, freaking out, thinking that the entire east side of Manhattan was paralyzed by the trains not running, information I got from no official source but fellow commuters pissed off and trying to get to work, when really it was an isolated incident at two stations that lasted no more than thirty minutes. I’m such a silly boy.
When I got into work, I opened my email and saw an email from the Operations department sent to everyone in the New York office at 9:18am, saying,
“We have learned of possible delays on the downtown 4-5-6 trains along Lexington Avenue. We are working now to verify this, and will provide additional information as it becomes known to us.”
I checked my cell phone, and saw that I had called Operations at 9:15am.
Then, I noticed another email from Operations, again to everyone in the New York office, this time at 9:34am:
“We have not been able to verify reports of delays on the downtown 4-5-6 trains along Lexington Avenue. All trains are operating normally.”
Um, oops.
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I know I’m pretty late on this, but the Mummers Parade on New Year’s Day was a major success. And by that I mean I got drunk, had a good time, and managed to not poop in my sweatpants, get arrested, or get beat up. That, in my book, is fucking success.
However, I don’t have any stories for you, because I just don’t remember (George Carlin has a great bit in which he says something to the effect of, “You know, everyone always tell these crazy stories about the ’70′s, but I don’t have any, because I was too fucked up and blacked out”).
This is a far cry from last year’s parade, when I returned home in the afternoon and was so drunk I tripped over my mom’s living room coffee table, did a somersault, and then got up a puked all over myself in front of my little sister.
My sister: [looking warily at me convulsing on the couch] “Mom – I think Jason’s gonna throw up!”
Me: [quietly puking all over myself] “No I’m not!
My sister: “EWWWWW!!!”
And we (Froggy Carr) actually came in first, which hasn’t happened in a long, long time (maybe 1988?). Of course, like I mentioned when I wrote about the Parade before, we didn’t win a big prize (I think the club got something like $700), but we have bragging rights. Of course, I’m only home about ten weekends a year, but still, it’s nice.
And now there’s only 352 days until the next one. I don’t think I can make it.
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I am really, really trying to get back to all of your emails. I’m sorry for such delayed responses, but, well, there’s really just too many. But I’ll get back to you, I promise.
And please keep in mind you need not always go through the “Email Me” page to send me an email; you can just send what’s on your mind to jason@jasonmulgrew.com.
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Six Songs:
- “Take the Fifth” Spoon
This is a perfect song to put on when it’s Saturday night, and you and your buddies are standing in your living with your jackets on, ready to go out, finishing your last beers. A staple in our pre-gaming playlist, “Tonight We’re Gonna Touch You In The Basement”.
- “Lover, You Should’ve Come Over” Jeff Buckley
This is the saddest song ever. There is no competition. I’m getting all choked up and sobby just thinking about it. Lines like “It’s never over/My kingdom for a kiss upon her shoulder” remind me of Pablo Neruda (I read poetry because I’m very in touch with myself) and make me feel faint. And no, really, I‘m straight. I’m just really, really sensitive.
- “Nothing Compares 2 U” Prince
If you have not heard the live Prince version, which is a duet with NPG member Rosie Gaines, then you MUST download this. Prince wrote this song, and does a much, much better rendition than Sinead O’Connor (who, by the way, has a greatest hits – can someone tell me how this is possible? Is it her version of “Nothing Compares 2 U” sixteen times?)
- “Let’s Pretend We’re Bunny Rabbits” The Magnetic Fields
Every time I hear this song, I think, “Why the hell am I not in this band?” (“And when we’ve had a couple of beers/We’ll put on bunny suits…”). Hilarious, but not so much that it detracts from the cool sound of the song.
(That doesn’t make any sense at all)
- “Bron-Y-Aur Stomp” Led Zeppelin
I’m gonna say something pretty intense here, but here I go: this is my favorite Led Zeppelin song. “III” was their first album I bought, and this foot-tapping, bass drum-driven acoustic Zep jam blew my fucking mind, when all I really knew about Led Zeppelin were songs like “Heartbreaker”, “Black Dog”, and “Dazed and Confused”. Fucking dynamite.
- “Crown Of Love” Arcade Fire
I tried to resist this band, because the hype around them is way too out of control, and I’m a big fan of disliking anything that’s cool to like. But damn, this is a beautiful song. And all hell breaks loose when there’s about a minute left. Intense.
[Music suggestions are always welcome. To send me some, email me at jason@jasonmulgrew.com and write "Music Suggestions" in the subject line.]
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I owe a big “thank you” to you guys for really answering the call and voting for me in the BoB awards. Not only is it no longer embarassing for me, but as it stands now, I’m actually winning, so good job (but voting closes on Monday, January 17th, and I don’t think I’ll be able to hold onto that lead until then). However if I do win, at least it’ll be something cool to tell my agent, who’s no longer returning my calls since I sent that picture of my scrotum to his cameraphone.
(“Agent”? What?)
To vote (for me hopefully), click here.
Last week, a few friends and I went to see “Mamma Mia”, the Broadway show based on the music of Abba.
Before you get all up in my face, you should know that women were involved in and arranged this. It wasn’t like me and six dudes were at the titty bar and in between sucking down $15 vodka tonics and telling the strippers I’m a writer for “Conan O’Brien” I said, “You know what? I think we should all go see a musical.” Nay, instead it was one of those giant group emails sent by a female friend saying ”Let’s plan this way in advance with a big group of people because we don’t see each other that often” type of thing.
And to be honest, I fucking love Abba. I’m serious. Not in a creepy “I have every album and their posters cover my bedroom walls” way, but I do own both “Greatest Hits” albums, and I’m not ashamed of this. I’m totally ok with the fact that I know way more Abba than any straight 25 year-old guy should, and it doesn’t make me a homosexual. Neither does melting every time I see Kyan from “Queer Eye” or any time I hear his voice or whenever I think of him in a wife-beater doing jumping jacks (which is at least three times a day). I’m 110% straight. Probably.
So I was down for the idea. I’ve been living and working in NYC since I graduated college in 2001, and often times I think I forget where I am. I get so caught up in going to work, getting drunk, and arousing myself that I forget that I live in the entertainment capital of the world, surrounded by all sorts of things to see, places to eat, and women to harass. Another resolution of mine is to take more advantage of living in the greatest city in the world, so I was happy to be going to the show. Besides, it beats my usual weekday night routine, which consists of going home, making four servings of my special chili and eating them all by myself, eating a sundae, watching tv, drinking some beer, masturbating, and going to bed (this is exactly what I do three-four nights a week).
We all met up beforehand in midtown at a bar near the theater for some drinks. I often don’t like to drink at these kinds of things (before plays, before/during concerts, before movies, etc) because I have the smallest bladder in the world, which causes me to have to take a piss every fifteen minutes. I’m not making this up – it’s horrible. Everyone who’s ever been out drinking with me has remarked at some point at the frequency with which I go to the bathroom. Little do they know that half the time I go to use the restroom I don’t actually pee; I instead sit on the toilet to work on some lyrics, so that one day I can fulfill my dream of co-writing a rap song with Ice Cube.
I’ve written before about how I get uncomfortable in situations wherein I’m supposed to act like a cultured young man. I can do this pretty well most of the time, but it still makes me a little…eh. And even though I was surrounded by friends, this was one of those situations: there we were in midtown Manhattan, all of us dressed to the nines having come from work, sipping fancy expensive drinks as we socialized before seeing a Broadway show. Again, little did my companions know that the highlight of my week came the day before, when after eight days of on-and-off downloading, I was able to finally completely download the full ninety minute porn movie, “Trailer Trash Nurses 6″, featuring my new favorite porn star, a Louisiana belle called Stormy (hottest. porn star. ever.).
Anyway, when I get nervous or uncomfortable, even slightly so, I drink very quickly. I was plowing through vodka tonics so quickly that I had to switch to pints of beer, and started to feel pretty good. I then thought of a hilarious joke, which I told people repeatedly throughout the night: “You know, ‘Momma Mia’ is Italian, and, when translated literally, it means ‘My Mom’. I don’t know if you guys know that or not.” Sure, this isn’t funny, but what was funny (to me and me only) was that I said this about 150 times during the course of the evening, each time getting a “You know that’s not even funny, right?” response. Good stuff.
And so we entered the theater, took our seats, and the show began. The premise of the show is that there’s this 20 year-old girl getting married, and she doesn’t know who her father is. She finds an old diary of her mother’s, who was apparently a tremendous slut, which says that twenty years and nine months ago she slept with three different guys in a very short time span while vacationing on a Greek island. The daughter tracks down these men and invites them to her wedding, which is on the same Greek island, where her mother now owns and operates a little hotel/cafe, where the men had visited twenty years and nine months ago. Oh, and one of the men is American, one is British, and one is Australian, so it has lots of international flavor.
Without getting too much into detail or spoiling anything, these three men each show up on the island, and hilarity and a whole fucking lot of singing Abba ensue.
Overall, the show was pretty darn good. I don’t think the actors sang the songs as well as the originals, but that’s kind of expected. Some parts of it were a little slow, and some of it was a little too much for me. For example, some of the song breaks were a bit of a stretch. I can’t remember exactly, but there’d be two actors on stage talking, when one would say, “Can you give me that bag?” and the other would say, “Did you say ‘Gimme’?” and then suddenly they’d break into “Gimme Gimme Gimme” and there’d be thirty people on stage singing and dancing. At that point, I’d look over to my friend Kelly or my buddy Tev and mouth the words, “What the fuck is going on?”
Also (and I know Jerry Seinfeld said this before about Mel Torme), I feel kind of embarrassed for those guys who are soloing. There were a couple of times when a male actor would be standing on the stage, the stage dark except for the spotlight on him, and he’d be singing his heart out to an Abba song. And it just made me…uncomfortable. The guy’s just standing out there, belting one out, and I’m thinking, “Doesn’t he ever think to himself, ‘What the hell am I doing up here? I’m fucking singing an Abba song in the dark in front of 300 people!’”
Of course, I wasn’t able to fully enjoy the show, as I was dealing with a tempestuous bladder that was on the verge of exploding. At one point, Kelly turned to me during a song and said, “I like this song.” My response? “I think I’m going to piss myself.” She started cracking up, which made me start laughing, because of that whole “forbidden laughter” – shit’s funniest and your laughter is most uncontrollable when you’re not supposed to laugh, like in a class or in church or in a crowded theater or right after a car accident. Before long, tears were streaming down our faces, as everyone around us looked at us with disdain. At that point I couldn’t hold it in any longer, and got up to pee (the first of my several trips to the restroom – is there such thing as a bladder transplant?).
As the show came to an end, I thought to myself, “What Broadway show would be complete without someone in the audience having a seizure?” Fortunately, I was not to be disappointed, as someone in the row next to ours started flipping the fuck out. We were far away enough from the stage that it didn’t get the attention of the actors, but this woman started spazzing out, having a real life seizure. Everyone nearby was freaking out as my friends and I watched in disbelief, but the people she was with were very calm. They brought her out into the aisle, only three seats away from me, where she spazzed out some more, but eventually it passed. She didn’t return to her seat (I think they took her out of the theater), but she walked away on her own volition.
For the girls, their night was ruined, because they were so upset by the scene. I didn’t do a very good job explaining the woman’s seizure, not only because I’m lazy, but because it was kinda surreal. We were all sitting there, watching women and homosexuals sing and dance to “Dancing Queen”, and then suddenly there’s a middle aged lady in the middle of the aisle looking like some shit from “The Exorcist”. The girls (and some of the guys) were pretty shaken up, but surprisingly, I was ok. I don’t know why, since the slightest thing can upset me – I can’t even think of Seal’s “Kiss From A Rose” without completely breaking down into a mess of sobs – but I was calm. Probably because I was drunk. And of course I was able to lighten the mood afterwards, when after being asked my favorite part, I said, “It’s close…I really liked ‘Waterloo’, but that seizure was pretty fucking awesome.”
All in all, it was a lovely evening for a group of mildly-successful young people out in NYC. I had a few drinks with some friends and caught up, got to see a wonderful musical with good music and acting and some of the most flamboyant displays of homosexualism that I have ever seen (seriously, some of the singing/dancing of the male actors was so flaming that by the end I think the entire first row of spectators was on fire), and even saw some lady have a seizure.
So the next time you’re in NYC, be sure to go see “Mamma Mia” (which, by the way, is Italian for “my mom” – just so you know).
And for those who wish to learn more about Abba, my top six favorite Abba songs (with three word descriptions):
1) “So Long” – rockin’ and rollin’
2) “Waterloo” – even more rockin’
3) “Angeleyes” – sad but touching
4) “Take A Chance On Me” – so fucking catchy
5) “Honey Honey” – sweet, too sweet
6) “Super Trouper” – an aural assault
I have an assortment of site counters on this site that track how many people are viewing it. They tell me not only raw data (how many “unique visitors”, how many page views, etc), but they also provide me with some interesting peripheral data – what search terms are bringing people to the site, which sites have linked my site and are drawing visitors, which time zones and countries are visiting, etc.
And to be honest, I am completely fucking mesmerized by this. I’m not sure if it’s entirely egotism, but that plays a big part of it. But I don’t care, because it’s just so damn fascinating to me. When I started this little experiment in February of ’04, I sent it to a couple of friends, and now (with last week’s email from Shari in Antarctica) there are people who regularly visit this site from all seven continents (sure, it may be one person in Antarctica and like three in South Africa, but whatever – don’t be a dick).
Where am I going with this? A few weeks ago, I noticed that I got some visitors from this site that was setting up a “Best of Blogs” awards. I saw that someone had nominated me for “Most Humorous Blog” and of course I immediately went on and said something to the effect of, “Fuck you all – my blog is the shit. Suck it. Does anyone have any cheese or cheese-products that they’re not gonna eat?”
I forgot about it, until I noticed some more visitors were coming from it, because I had been officially nominated in “Snarkiest Blog” category, so I posted about it. I thought to myself, “Holy shit – I have to win this award. I could really use a nice prize. I really, really hope it’s a bag of cocaine, because I am hurtin’ something awful. Also, I have never heard the word ‘snarky’ in my life, and have no fucking idea what it means.”
So I did a little more research on the awards, and was bit disappointed, because the prizes are L-A-M-E. They are:
Prize Package – First Place:
- One year FREE blog hosting from WiredHub.net Web Hosting Solutions, plus a FREE upgrade to the next level of service when the free period expires
- FREE porting of your existing blog to WiredHub.net from One by One Media
- FREE blog design from Ciao! My bella
- A copy of Gossip Girl: Because I’m Worth It by Cecily von Ziegesar from Time Warner Book Group and The Zero Boss
Prize Package – Second Place:
- Four months FREE blog hosting from WiredHub.net Web Hosting Solutions, plus 40% off on all hosting plans and a FREE upgrade to the next level of service
- $25 blog design gift certificate from Ciao! My bella
Prize Package – Third Place:
- One month FREE blog hosting from WiredHub.net Web Hosting Solutions, plus 40% off on all hosting plans and a FREE upgrade to the next level of service
So you’re telling me that if I win, I get free porting! I have no idea what the fuck that means, but holy shitballs! I’ve always wanted free porting!
Also, I get free blog hosting! This is perfect, because it’s not like I didn’t just pay for one year of blog hosting up front, which I’m locked into! Fucking sweet!
And a book called Gossip Girl? I will not rest until I win!
[In case you didn't pick up on that, that was sarcasm. I'm really good at it, I know.]
So I figured to hell with it; I would make no effort to try to win this award, aside from my initial post, because it wasn’t worth it. I didn’t put up the little “BoB Nominee” button that would link readers directly to the voting page, because I didn’t want to beg for votes - unless money was involved. If first prize was $1,000 or a trip to Mexico, I’d be knocking on your door right now, ready to offer you the worst beejer you’ve ever gotten in your life in exchange for a vote. Sucks for you that’s not the case (well, not really).
I checked a few days later to see that I was in third place. I had something like 100 or so votes, and was losing to two blogs, one called “Rockstar Mommy” and the other “Bitchalicious”, each with almost 200 votes. I checked out these blogs who were besting me, to see if they were anywhere close to as good as mine. And after further review, I can’t fucking believe I’m losing to these people.
First, the names of these blogs are disturbing enough. The fact that something called “Rockstar Mommy” is getting more props than my site is almost painful. The only way that a blog called “Rockstar Mommy” would be cool is if Courtney Love wrote it, and talked about how she sold little Francis Bean’s penicillin at age 3 for some speed or some cash to pay the clinic for her monthly herpes test. But alas, this blog is not written by Courtney Love, but rather some mom who likes music or something (I didn’t get very far).
By going by the name alone, I thought “Bitchalicious” had potential. Images of some hot, catty 20-something chick being a total asshole to everyone appealed to me, as I am very lonely, and most would call me a “pervert”. However, it turns out this blog is written by a 30 year-old military wife who looks like she’s a pretty into buffalo wings (not that there’s anything wrong with that – 95% of the current pictures of me out there are of me eating buffalo wings, holding buffalo wings, dancing with buffalo wings, or sticking buffalo wings under my armpits).
So I dismissed these awards even moreso than before, deciding to ignore them altogether because c’mon – anything where I can be beaten by blogs called “Rockstar Mommy” and “Bitchalicious” has to have something wrong with it, right? I mean, it can’t be me, because I am pretty fucking awesome, right? Right? Anyone?
[Another reason that I didn't think these awards were legit is that I wasn't getting many referred visitors from them, meaning this particular awards site isn't very high traffic. It'd be one thing if I were getting 300 visitors a day from the BoB site, but it's more like 15. Apparently, there are all different Blog Awards (Wizbang, Diarist, and the Bloggies), and BoB is one of the less popular among these. If I were gay, I'd be able to make a great comparison and say something like, "Think of the Bloggies as the Oscars and the BoB Awards as the Critic's Choice Awards", but I really don't watch many awards show, save for the AVN (Adult Video News) Awards, which is held in Vegas every year in February and is pretty much the sole reason I want to be famous (so I can attend them). But I digress...]
Again, I forgot about it for a couple of days, and checked back again yesterday. Turns out that I’m currently not only losing, but I’m getting killed: I’m still in 3rd (but barely) with 178 votes, while “Bitchalicious” has 417 and “Rockstar Mommy” has 385. I mean, that’s just embarrassing.
Having previously done a cursory review of their blogs, I had to give them a real read now, since, like I said, they’re wiping the floor with my fat ass. I figured I would first check out the current leader, “Bitchalicious”, to see how this site could be (according to the BoB awards) much better than mine.
Not a good idea. Because now I have lost faith in all humanity and firmly believe that literacy should be limited to only a small percentage of the population.
For example, yesterday on “Bitchalicious” we find such witty (and snarky) verbiage as…
I hate Mondays. I hate them so much. Right when I’m spoiled on getting a decent amount of sleep Monday rolls around and I have to get up godawful early to babysit and start the longass day.
I also had to grocery shop today (which I hate too). But I saved $30 in coupons and rolled home with a trunk full for $120. Didn’t get any meat though. The bloody commissary was out of chicken and pork. How the hell they managed that is beyond me but they did so now I have to go BACK in the morning and I hate that place.
I know you guys might get tired of me talking about how I beat off in the shower or how much I love hot dogs (I really do love hot dogs, though – I hope you all realize that), but grocery shopping? Really? I thought it might just have been a bad post, so I continued reading some of her other stuff. Let’s listen in…
I think we’re on week 3 of pretty much no sun. It’s so damn gloomy outside. I’m a miserable bitch as it is right? Gloomy weather just makes it worse.
Intense. S’more:
We went to Lori’s today to get a desk I bought from her in November. (Well mom bought it but anyway) .. it’s more of a desk/cabinet thing… I put it in our bedroom to hold our other tv and other random crap but I love it. It’s HUGE and HEAVY and it was a bitch getting it here but I love it. Thanks Lori!
While I was there she gave me something GrumpyBunny got for me when she was here at Thanksgiving but we kept missing each other. OMFG.. Girl you have NO idea how awsome this is. AND you need to tell me where you found it!
I haven’t been able to find Vanilla Schnapps and had given up until today. She got me a nice big bottle that will taste well with Cranberry juice and grenedine. Girls night indeed!
Thanks so much GB and Hubster!I worked all evening and now its 1:30 and I have to be up at 7:30 to start my babysitting week of fun all over again.
Again ladies and gentlemen, the current score is 417 votes to 178. And some more…
Tomorrow is “try to sleep in day” and “get some work and laundry done day”.
And I would kill for a glass of tea right now so off I go.
Through my tears of failure, I continued reading…
Newport News Virginia – it’s sunny and 70 (ignore the freak 14 inches of snow they got on Christmas that melted the next day)
Las Vegas – it’s 54 and they had snow the other day.
Phoenix – it’s 55 and raining (for the last week)What’s up with this weather? It’s supposed to be SUNNY HERE!
Again, I can not believe that I’m losing to this blog. Who the hell reads this? Really, at what point in your life are you at that you find entertainment in someone talking about grocery shopping or the weather or how their mom bought them a desk? Am I missing something here? Because if I am, please tell me. I don’t care about the prizes, or the “glory”, or, um, whatever else comes with these awards, but this is atrocious.
And these posts aren’t aberrations; I could go on and on citing lame examples, but I’ll stop there and move on to “Rockstar Mommy”.
Ironically or coincidentally enough, “Rockstar Mommy” currently has a post up about all the drama in the LBC surrounding the awards, writing,
…[T]here is just SO MUCH DRAMA going on behind the scenes, it’s disgusting. [If you don't know what I'm talking about, consider yourself lucky.]
Yes. We do consider ourselves lucky to be left out of such a tempest of hatred.
Since I have been nominated, I have been called ridiculous names and had my blog trashed, including the design. Not cool. Especially since it’s from people who I never even knew existed until the BoB awards came along – people I’ve never even talked to. Calling me names? Kinda childish and stupid. But making fun of my blog? I might start swinging. I like my blog, I like my design…leave my blogging skills the hell out of it and I won’t correct your 2nd grade grammar skills…
God her, blogs sux ass real badd.
I’m not the only one that has been unfairly attacked. I’ve heard plenty of stories going around about being trashed, made fun of, cheating, and even stories of people hacking into finalists sites. I mean, WTF people? What is wrong with you?
Is that why my site was down yesterday (and parts of it are down today)? You son of a…
These awards were supposed to be all in good fun, but there seems nothing fun to me about any of this. In fact, they’re just more of a nuisance now. I’m not equipt [sic] for all this jealousy, cattiness, and immaturity – another reason why I shouldn’t be in the snarky category.
Rockstar Mommy probably shouldn’t read my site then, since jealous and immaturity are two of my four best traits (along with disloyalty and obesity).
If you need an award so desperately to feel good about yourself, then maybe you deserve it; you obvioulsy [sic] need the attention. Too bad the prize package doesn’t include some extensive therapy sessions.
Just chill the fuck out people. I’m sick of hearing all the gossip. It’s so stupid. Play nice and leave me and my blog the hell out of it; we never did anything to any one of you – but trust me, we’re not afraid to.
If the prize package came with therapy, I would be VERY interested. Also, if you’re going to call people out on grammar, you gotta spell check. This is not hard people.
To be honest though, “Rockstar Mommy” is eons better than “Bitchalicious”, by virtue of the fact that she does have decent taste in music and thought of an inventive way to help the tsunami victims.
But that’s not to say that she doesn’t have some pretty crappy stuff to say, like:
What the hell is up with the word vaccum? Vacum? Vaccuum? Vacume? Vacuum?
Who decided to spell it so half-assed backwords? It’s always been one of those words for me; no matter how many times I look it up, I still always think it looks wrong.
It’s spelled so stupid. Who decided to put 2 U’s together in the same word? I’d like to smack the taste right out of their mouth.
Vackyoom might look a little silly, but really, no sillier than with the 2 U’s put together – and at least it’s spelled like it sounds my way.
I think I’m going to put in a request with Merriam-Webster. Let’s see what kind of pull the nerds over there have and see if we can get it spelled my way. I mean, hell… if they can put the word noogie in the dictionary….
Also, I’ve never been able to spell the word
kneckneck correctly. I KNOW how to spell it, I just never can seem to do it. I always put a K before it. Like it’s a knob or a knot. Like a Kidiot.
But I guess I’m missing something, since this post got 21 comments.
…
And yet, I’m losing to these two blogs. Losing badly. Losing like it’s not even fucking close.
178 votes? How is it that I’ve had more visitors to this site today in one hour between noon and 1pm (est) than I have total votes? I understand it’s kind of a bitch, because once you vote, you have to confirm your vote via an email sent to you by BoB, but c’mon – let’s try to make this a little less embarrassing and throw me a bone here.
I know that I’m not gonna win, and I am totally ok with that. Another reason why I am skeptical about these awards is that you can vote once per email address per 24 hours, rather than once per email address, so the vote can be easily manipulated. For example, like many people, I have accumulated a lot of email addresses over the years, and I now have seven (!). Sure, I only use two, but the rest are active. Every day, over the fifteen days of voting, I could have used each of those email addresses to vote once per day, tallying 105 votes from just me alone. Breaking it down further, voting closes January 15, so it looks like the winner of this thing will have around 600 votes; I could have personally gotten myself 1/6 of the way there as just one (rather large) person voting. I’m not accusing anyone of doing this, but I’m saying that if you really wanted to win, you and a small group of friends could get together to make it happen, even if no one ever read your blog.
So let’s try to make it a little closer. That’s my pitch, take it or leave it. If you want to vote for me, fine. If not, well I never liked you anyway. Dick.
On Saturday night, I ventured way out into NJ to see a friend’s band, the Mossy Pools. This was a major act of altruism for me, as I don’t like to leave my apartment, let alone the isle of Manhattan, unless I can be guaranteed a fun time to end all fun times.
And I’m not talking Hoboken or Jersey City – I’m talking way out in Maplewood, a town I had never heard of. I had a lot of phone conversations earlier in the day, like:
My buddy Dave (a NJ native): “What are you doing tonight?”
Me: “I’m going to Jersey to see a band.”
Dave: “Hoboken?”
Me: “No, Maplewood.”
Dave: “What? You’re not only going to Jersey, but you’re actually going deep into Jersey?”
Me: “I’m running out of friends, so I have to keep those I have. Also, there’s a girl I really want to sleep with that’ll be there.”
Dave: “Well that explains it.”
Dave: “Well that explains it.”
or
Me: “So I’m going to Maplewood – New Jersey - to see a friend’s band.”
My friend Joe: “You’re joking, right?”
Me: “Nope.”
Joe: “Dude, I don’t think I’ve ever heard you say you’re going to Jersey to go out, unless you’re going down the shore for a weekend. Is this a joke? Or is there some girl you want to get on that’s gonna be there?”
Joe: “Dude, I don’t think I’ve ever heard you say you’re going to Jersey to go out, unless you’re going down the shore for a weekend. Is this a joke? Or is there some girl you want to get on that’s gonna be there?”
Me: “The latter.”
Joe: “Figures.”
[I'll save everyone the suspense and tell you that it didn't work out between us. At the end of the night, she went one way (meaning "home"), and I went the other (meaning "White Castle" - see below.]
But in sooth, it was a good time indeed. The band plays Irish-American music, which is perfect for me, as I am Irish-American. They played at a nice Irish pub in Maplewood, which had cheap and good Guinness and whiskey that got me mighty fucked up. And they didn’t go on until after the playoff games were over, so I got to see both games (3 for 4 on my picks – not too shabby).
[And no, I'm not just saying all this about it being a good time because I know that the people I hung out with and those in the band are reading this. Nor am I saying it because Dan, one of the guys in the band and a close personal friend, gave me $340 to mention his band's name, the Mossy Pools, and talk about how good they were. Which they were. The Mossy Pools, that is. Not that I was talking about another band, but to clear up, I'm talking about the Mossy Pools. So there.]
[Mossy Pools.]
[You should probably check out their website. The Mossy Pools. But then come back here and finish reading.]
Part of the reason I was looking forward to this night (aside for seeing the Mossy Pools play) was that being in NJ means cheaper alcohol prices. While beers in the city might be $6 a pint, they are around $4.50 in NJ. At this bar (aptly named St. James’ Gate), we were drinking pints of Guinness for $4.25. Very nice.
Of course, seeing that the drinks were cheap gave me an epiphany: “My god – it’s so cheap! I’m going to buy everyone drinks, so maybe some woman will say, ‘Who’s that fancy city slicker from NYC spendin’ all that money – I’m gonna go blow him!’”
And spend I did. I was using mostly cash, but I also put up my card (never a good idea to go the whole “throw down the card AND use cash” route). At the end of the night, having spent well over $100 in cash, the bar tab was only $57. I vaguely remember thinking, “$13 is a good tip.” However, when I checked the receipt the next day, I saw that I left the bartender a $28 tip. The lesson: I have no concept of money or whether or not I have an erection when I’m drunk. Whether or not this is the reason I am broke, I can not say for sure.
At any rate, two things of night from the evening:
1) At the end of the night, we went to White Castle to grab some food to bring home (I was staying at a buddy’s house).
Good. Lord.
I have had White Castle very few times in my life; I remember gorging myself on those little slabs of grease they call burgers when I visited friends who were studying at Fordham and waking up after a night of boozing and eating and feeling a raccoon had gotten trapped in my stomach and was trying to punch its way out. Also, the raccoon was wearing brass knuckles.
This time ’round we got to WC at about 3am and ordered 40 burgers, and five orders each of onion rings and fries. Keep in mind this was for five people, and three of them were girls.
I’m not exaggerating when I say that I had at least ten burgers, two boxes of onion rings, and one box of fries – whilst still drinking. We managed to finish 32 of the 40 burgers. I tried to keep going, but by that point my eyes were beginning to roll back into my head and my lips and extremities were turning blue. If you listened closely, you would have heard my heart sobbing to itself, saying, “That’s it – I can’t take it anymore, so I’m just gonna quit.”
The next day I had not only a vicious hangover, but a stomachache with the worst runs I’ve ever had in my life. Today, this afternoon, when I burp I still taste those White Castle burgers and onion rings, and it makes me want to throw up all over my fucking keyboard. What a terrible decision.
And you know what? I’d do it all over again, exactly the same way. Because when I was pounding those little burgers at 4 in the morning, drunk of my ass, dropping pickles all over my shirt, I was in my glory. And I know if given the chance, I would do it again, although I might get some of those chicken rings next time.
2) I can’t stress enough that women should NOT be allowed to operate digital cameras when they are drunk. This is the worst thing to happen to men who have to take/be in pictures with girls everywhere since, well, I don’t know what, but it’s bad. Good lord. I can’t tell you how many times this scene was repeated in the course of the night:
Me: [taking picture] “Ok – 1-2-3 – smile!”
Group of girls: [running over to camera, snatching it out of my hand to see the picture] “Oh no, that’s no good – take it again.”
Me: “Again?”
Girls: “Just take it chubby, and we’ll give you a mozzarella stick.”
This happened easily twenty times. And never once was I given that promised mozzarella stick.
What’s worse is if I’m actually in the picture that has to go through multiple retakes. I don’t like having my picture taken, somewhat because I’m training to be a surly celebrity, but mostly because I’m not very attractive to begin with, and for pictures I have three looks:
- The “I’m Closing My Eyes” Look, wherein I close my eyes. This happens 70% of the time.
- The “Someone Just Stuck A Finger In My Ass” Look, with huge bulging eyes and a wide smile that says at once “I’m kinda uncomfortable, but I’m also kinda digging it.”
- The “Leave Me The Fuck Alone Before I Punch You In the Throat” Look, which usually comes at the end of the evening when all I want to do is sit somewhere close to a bathroom (preferably in a Wendy’s) and keep drinking.
And just the whole stand there and pose, see the picture, have it deemed not good enough, go back and pose, see the picture, have it deemed not good but not great (“My bottom lip looks weird” or “My hands look too big”), go back and pose, see the picture, have it deemed ok, etc. Very exhausting.
But all in all, it was a good night. And now I have to brace for my first five-day work week in a long, long time. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that I come down with the flu or typhoid so I can get a couple of days off. Wish me luck!
Just so I can say “I told you so” on Monday (we don’t pick with spreads here at www.jasonmulgrew.com, because we don’t want to encourage gambling or any games of chance in general):
Jets over Chargers
Colts over Broncos
Rams over Seahawks
Packers over Vikings
So there. I’ll be back with more picks next week, but everyone should get ready for me to go 11-0 in the playoffs baby!
Last night I worked until 9pm, which is the latest I’ve worked since retiring from the legal assistant world. I went out to meet some buddies for a few beers in order to cool off, before going home and beating off.
I’m usually reticent about going out straight from work. This is because I’m a big fat guy who sits in a small hot office all day long sweating like, I don’t know, something that sweats a lot. So by 5:30, I’m usually a little ripe. At the very least, my white undershirt is soaked nearly completely through, and I have some handsome pit stains through my work shirt (the sweating is so bad that if I know I have a big function to attend right after work, I will bring an extra undershirt to change into before I leave for the event – and yes, I am single).
I got to the bar and sat down, and the beers were calming me down after the rough day. However, the bar was overly warm and I continued sweating. I went to the bathroom to get some paper towels to stick under my armpits, to try to stop the massive sweating before it gave me pit stains the size of my head (and yes, I am still single).
However, when I got to the bathroom, I saw it was too late. It was useless to put the paper towels in my pits because they had already soaked through, so that I had plainly visible sweat stains seeping out of my armpits. Fortunately, the bathroom had an air dryer in addition to paper towels, and the dryer had a rotate-able head/nozzle. So I was able to position myself just enough that my nozzle was shooting warm air on my armpits, drying me up but at the same time essentially baking my pit-stained shirt.
And of course, my buddy Scott walked in on this scene. Scott knows all to well about my troubles with sweating, and immediately doubled-over and started cracking up. I tried to play it off like it was nothing, but there’s really nothing you can say when your buddy catches you in a bar bathroom positioned awkwardly over a hand dryer, drying your sweaty armpits.
I mean, fuck.
[And a tangent: it's never good for a guy to go out boozing when wearing khaki pants. I don't know how this happens, but no matter how careful I am, I always wind up with lil' drops of pee all over my crotch, painfully visible on the khaki pants. In addition to the spare undershirt, I should keep a spare pair of dark pants in my office , so that after urinating I can whip my bird around without a care in the world, rather than carefully shaking it dry and placing it slowly back in my pants and still getting pee on myself. Damn it.]
After a few beers, I left the bar. I was tired from a busy day, and I was tired of hearing, “Hey dude – you peed yourself” every time I came back from the bathroom (which was a lot, since it’s widely known I have a bladder like a three year-old girl’s).
One of the perks about my job is that if you work past 8pm, you can call a car to take you home, and do so on the company. Since I had worked past 8, and was close to work, I called one, so that I didn’t have to take the subway all the way from downtown up to the Upper East Side, a journey that would have taken at least 45 minutes and resulted in me pissing myself on the train.
The car came, and the driver was a nice Asian guy, who spoke not a single word of intelligible English.
Well.
I love immigrants. Seriously. Our ancestors were all immigrants at one point (unless you’re Native American, but if you’re Native American you’re not reading this, because the two of you are both drunk in my basement right now). They worked hard and came to America to secure a new life for their families, and generations later, here we are: reading/writing a story about some dude peeing himself on the internet.
So I respect immigrants for coming to America to find a better life. I can’t imagine how difficult it must be to leave your homeland to come to a country like the US, where decent people spend years working sixty-hour weeks in mills so that they can re-do the interior of their trailer, while people like me fall ass-first into high paying jobs, turning their income into vodka money and buying $120 worth porn from videoage.com because they had too much to drink last night and are very, very lonely.
Anyway, back to the driver of my car. I usually talk to the drivers of the car, because I’m bored, and on this night I was feeling a little drunk and talkative. So after getting in and saying, “Hi – 95th & 3rd, please”, I asked him how he was doing. He said something, but I couldn’t understand it because his English was bad. No big deal, I thought, and politely slumped back into my seat.
As we got close to my building, at about 92nd & 3rd I told him, “That’ll be the far right corner on 95th and 3rd.” He looked back and smiled, and I again reclined. As we approached the building, I noticed he wasn’t slowing down. When we were half a block away, I leaned up and said, “Yeah, right up here on the right will be fine” as he zoomed through the green light and past my building.
At this point, I was completely flustered. This guy shot straight past my building and was heading to Harlem, doing 35mph on 3rd Avenue. I was stammering, “Wait…that was where I wanted to get out…hold on…no, just stop the car…” He was looking back and saying something I suppose, but I couldn’t pick it up.
At 101st and 3rd, I finally got him to pull over. I tried explaining that I wanted to get out at 95th & 3rd, but he was simply not getting it. I could have gotten further in this endeavor with a well-trained dog, and definitely a dolphin of moderate intelligence.
After two minutes of pointless conversation between two people who had no idea what the fuck the other was saying, I thanked him, got out of the car, and walked the six blocks back to my place, in the cold, wet weather.
I know that English is a hard language, and I know the guy’s just trying to make a living – but really, how much English do you have to know to be a driver? Sure, you have to know the geography of the city, but we’re talking a minimum number of words here: left, right, straight, stop, Brooklyn, numbers and street names, etc. It’s like someone coming into my office and saying, “Did you get my email?” and me staring back blankly for a solid five seconds before burping. Or having my boss ask, “Jason, did you get that presentation together about the Sarbanes-Oxley Act?” and me looking puzzled and asking, “Nice to meet you?”
At any rate, it was an eventful night, a night like most nights, filled with sweat, piss, and misunderstanding. And thank god it’s Friday. Have a good weekend, and tell someone you love them. Especially me. Because I could really use it.
Well it’s over.
All the holiday fuss, all the time off from work/school, all the drinking too much and overeating – all of it, over. Done. Gone until next year.
And now it’s January and I’ve got nothing to look forward to except it being really fucking cold for the next three months. And the annual Philadelphia Eagles collapse. And my annual trip to the emergency room on Valentine’s Day because I ingested a near-fatal concoction of barbiturates, a liter of Ketel One, two pints of Ben & Jerry’s Oatmeal Cookie Chunk ice cream, some old raisins I found under the stove, and a decent-sized handful of fingernail clippings. Sweet. Fucking sweet.
But it is the New Year, and I feel compelled to make some resolutions that I have as much chance of following through with as I do of winning the Boston Marathon or watching “Growing Up Gotti” without stopping to masturbate (um, to Victoria Gotti, of course).
But before I make some meaningless resolutions for 2005, I’d like to take a moment to look back at the resolutions of 2004 to see how well I fared or how much I completely disregarded them. In the words of William Wallace, “Do it, and let the Anglush see you do it.”
2004 Resolution #1: Save $10,000 by the end of the year.
At the beginning of the year, I was at the height of my richness. I was paying a relatively small amount of rent, did most of my drinking indoors (because both I was afraid of the air and I ran into some trouble with the law that forced me to lay low for a while), and knew of several cheap places to both eat and drink in my old neighborhood, the Lower East Side.
But that all changed in spring when I moved to the Upper East Side, made famous by the theme song of the television show “The Jeffersons”, or what I call “That show about those black people from the ‘70′s who did a lot of dancing and had that catchy theme song”. Things got much more expensive: the cost of laundry doubled, groceries are extremely expensive ($7 for a bottle of shampoo??? Does it come with a free baby???), cheap but cool and not-fratty bars are very hard to find, and cabs to and from my place to where I go out cost around $25 a night, possibly more.
[Also, I've been buying a lot more cocaine. If you should know one thing about cocaine, it's that it's fucking awesome. If you should know two things about cocaine, it's that it's really awesome and you should try to bum it off other people because it's super expensive. And awesome.]
So now I have nothing. I’m the poorest I’ve been since right after graduation, when I was forced to put naked pictures of myself seductively playing with lunchmeat on eBay and spent every Tuesday evening at a gentlemen’s club in Harlem dancing pantsless to Prince songs (“Kiss”, “Pussy Control”, “Gett Off”, etc) for singles and an occasional onion ring from a bunch of middle-aged black men. Not my finest moment. Certainly not my worst, but not my finest either.
Verdict: major failure, even for me.
2004 Resolution #2: Find an awesome place to live.
I don’t think I really need to go into this. Lured by bells and whistles and shiny things like having an elevator (whose constant breaking down has caused me more anguish than my old fifth floor walk-up ever did), having doormen (who never bothered to learn my name but know it now because I didn’t give them a holiday tip and who I recently caught working with the Chinese delivery guy trying to slip dioxin into my General Tso’s chicken), and a gym and a pool (which I’ve not only never used but only looked at three times – twice by accident – after paying the $560 for yearly membership), I agreed to lengthen my commute by thirty minutes each way and increase my rent by $350 per month to live in the Upper East Side.
To quote Ron Burgundy, “Not a good decision.”
Moving on…
2004 Resolution #3: Have sex with eight women at once.
I think we all know how this turned out. Even if I amended it to “See eight boobies in the course of the year without first paying a cover” or “Talk to a woman at a bar for eight seconds before getting an erection that she thinks is only my keys”, I would have failed.
I mean, fuck.
2004 Resolution #4: Be more honest about my feelings with others and keep no secrets.
Finally, much success. I definitely think that I was much more open about how I felt both to my friends and to strangers in 2004. Some examples:
- To my friend Kevin: “To be honest, I never really liked you. Also, everyone talks about how bad your breath is behind your back.”
- To my friend Lauren: “You should know that after you hooked up with Ed he told everyone that you have weird boobs. I propose that you hook up with me so that I can do some field research in the hope of setting the record straight. I have always wanted to have sex with you, and I think this is an opportunity in which both our best interests could be served.”
- To my roommate Brian: “Do you remember when you told me that you beat off at work using a sandwich wrapper that you hot co-worker Kristen had left from her Subway sandwich? Well, I told some people, including your dad. Because that’s just weird, dude. I mean, what the fuck.”
- To my buddy Nick: “It’s a shame you proposed to Vicky, because we all hate her. We’ve actually hated her for years, but I never told you this before because I didn’t have this new New Year’s Resolution. But god, she is a bitch, and me and the guys regularly send emails about how terrible she is behind your back. Such a shame.”
There are countless examples, but these are the first that come to mind off the top of my head.
Verdict: excellent. Of course, I have about one-fourth of the friends I had this time last year, but hey – that’s their loss. Assholes.
2004 Resolution #5: Be more racist.
The jury is still out on this one. Sure, I’ve said my fair share of off-color things at parties like, “What’s the deal with black people and rims? And why were they always stealing my bike when I was a kid?” and “I hear Carla’s new boyfriend is Puerto Rican or Dominican or from one of those Mexico-type countries – maybe I can get him to clean my apartment for a handful of pesetas and an long, oversized white t-shirt” and (to random Asian person) “What do you like better: karate or AP Calculus?” And yes, maybe it wasn’t very PC of me when I got drunk at the Indian restaurant and started calling the waiter “Kumar”, but at heart I just don’t think I have the racism in me.
[And yes, I'm only saying this because I know that there are people of the non-white persuasion reading this, and I'm afraid they'll find me and kick my ass. I never said I was a strong man.]
So those were 2004′s resolutions. Overall, not good (shocking – I know). And now I am proud to present, for the first time ever, my New Year’s Resolutions for 2005.
2005 Resolution #1: Save $15,000 by the end of the year
I know, I know – I couldn’t save $10G’s last year, but this year I’m focused. And by “focused” I mean “talking out my ass.”
I have, however, devised an aggressive savings plan. I have a
But now I’ve added a new element: in addition to collecting the silver coins, I’m going to start throwing in paper money. The amount is based on a variety of factors, and serves two purposes – to get me to save money and to get me to cut back on my vices.
For example, every time I…
- Masturbate: I’ll put in $1
- Masturbate in an exotic location (work, public restroom, middle-school talent show): $5
- Wish death upon an enemy: $3
- Wish death upon my cruel, tiny penis: $7
- Stay in on a Thursday night: $5
- Stay in on a Friday or Saturday night: $20
- Go to the “Erotica” section on craigslist and illicit some company: $50
- Cry when I’m drunk because a girl passed me by and she smelled nice: $20
- Cry when I’m drunk because I punched a moving car and it really hurt: $25
- Pee the bed: $50
- Shit the bed: $100
I should be up to $15G’s by the summer (especially because of that “shit the bed” one).
2005 Resolution #2: Find an awesome place to live.
If any of you know any realtors in NYC, please get them to get in touch with me in May, because I am going to overpay tremendously for any apartment that is not my current one and is somewhere in the East Village/LES area. Good lord. I can see it now:
Realtor: [showing me a 7x9 studio apartment above an Indian restaurant that currently has a large homeless family squatting in it and no roof] “Feel free to look around. Sure, it needs some work, but $2200 a month for your very own place in the East Village is a steal!”
Me: [picking up used syringes from floor and sticking them in my arm] “I’ll take it!”
I’m a simple man. I don’t need a lot of room. I don’t need things like a doorman, an elevator, or a gym. All I want is something that’s close to where I work (way downtown) and close to where I go out (all kinds of places below Union Square). God I hope I can find it. Because otherwise, well, I don’t even want to get into it.
2005 Resolution #3: Have sex.
This should be amended to “Have sex without paying for it directly”. Jerk-off guys pimp the line of thinking that all women are prostitutes, because in order to have sex with them you have to take them out and pay for their stuff, so that the bottom line is that sex with them costs money, and that’s prostitution.
These men have probably never been with a prostitute. Going on a date in which you enjoy some food and booze and steal an occasional cleavage shot while regaling your date with stories about the time you finished 13th in the Philadelphia City Spelling Bee in 7th grade or how you got hit by a car six times as a child is NOT soliciting prostitution. Taking your dad’s truck and driving around the streets of South Philly at 5am after drinking for twelve hours to find some junkie to give $13 for a beejer IS soliciting prostitution. Are we clear on this?
[Where the hell did that come from?]
Anyway, let’s all keep our fingers crossed for this one. Please.
2005 Resolution #4: Rejoin the gym.
It’s getting to the point that it’s becoming very disconcerting that I lose my breath when I stand up quickly, or that I need at least a four hour nap after each time I masturbate.
I have no delusions of grandeur about (re)joining the gym. I know that there will never be at time that I will be able to run through a meadow of daisies on a warm spring day, the sun shining upon my toned and tan body, as I leap and frolic into the arms of my lover, played alternatively by Josie Maran, Adriana Lima, and Kate Beckinsale. No, I know the more likely scenario would be me running into a field with a six-pack of Bud in me, stopping every fifteen feet to catch my breath or take a short nap, before deciding to forego the whole “running” idea altogether and pulling out some macaroni and cheese from my pocket, quietly sitting down to enjoy it.
But I am in terrible shape. As of right now, I can’t even think about a gym without getting tired. Dialing a phone number can put me out of commission for three days. Chewing is exhausting, so I’ve been putting my food in a blender so that all I have to do is swallow it. I’m a few Reubens and carrot cakes away from having to install a pulley system in my bedroom to get me out of bed. I know I have a penis somewhere, but all I’ve seen for the past few years is a yellow stream of urine shooting from under my belly.
So I want to rejoin the gym. This is because when (if?) I do have sex again, I want to be healthy enough for sexual activity. I know that I have a ways to go, but never underestimate my determination.
(Actually, always underestimate my determination and you’ll be better off)
2005 Resolution #5: Get super fucking famous.
I need this one way more than the others. The main reason I want to be famous is that I’d be so good at it. Getting fucked up, being surly, banging women who only want my money, alienating friends and family – I’m already 75% of the way there!
However, I’m not getting my hopes up, only because I don’t think I could stand such a crushing let-down. In the meantime, I’m just going to keep on keepin’ on and hope to god that someday soon I get to have sex with Lindsay Lohan. And there’s NO WAY I’m going to wear a condom, even thought she’s gotta have at least HPV. It’s just not gonna happen.
…
So there you have it: my resolutions for 2005. Be sure to check back in a year to see how I did (if I’m still talking to you, which I doubt I will be, because we will surely have a falling out by the end of the year, probably in the summer).