emails (pool, office); scatological; travels (boston, philly, seattle, la); mustaches; comparison; music
9 November 2006
To quote Dave Attell, the whores have spoken: I got about two dozen emails from ladies after Tuesday’s post telling me that sex in a pool is not all it’s cracked up to be. Some of them went into very graphic detail, explaining lube issues and such, which alternatively turned me on and made me feel a little gross. But all of them had the same point: pool sex is not enjoyable to ladies.
The key phrase there is "to ladies." I did not get a single email from a guy saying that pool sex was bad (I didn’t get any emails from dudes about the subject either way). Which means that the male readers of this site either:
a) are having sex in pools but do not care whether or not their lady partner is enjoying it;
b) are not having sex in pools;
c) are not having sex at all.
If hope it’s a or b. Because some dudes reading this site have to be having sex. Otherwise, I’ll just be sad.
(To clarify, some dudes reading this site have to be having sex - but not with each other. Not that that’s not cool, but I felt like I left that a little open and wanted to clear it up.)
Also, speaking of emails received from Tuesday’s post, I got a, um, lovely email from the ex whose office we had sex in. That was unexpected; I’ve been used to writing personal things on this site for a while now and not getting called out on them. But I deserved it, and I just want to say, Honey, it was only a joke. It’s all in good fun and it was truly a lovely evening. And my bird was not comparable to a wet dish rag that night. That is a device we writers use called hyperbole, which is not, I learned recently, pronounced hyper-bowl. At any rate, I hope all is well and again I’m sorry about the whole you-not-having-an-orgasm-in-five-months thing. But you know how I fear what I don’t understand, and the whole women and orgasms thing both confounds and scares the hell out of me. So it’s really not my fault; it’s more yours and God’s. I’m glad we’ve settled this. And if you want to get a cup of coffee or something, let me know. I’m a little lonely right now. But not any better at giving orgasms. Just so you know.
***************
I was in a meeting this week in which I’m pretty sure I heard someone use the phrase "scatological development", as in a "scatological development in the M&A landscape of Europe" or some similar boring work talk. I did a double take.
When I got back to my office, I went to dictionary.com to make sure my understanding of what "scatological" meant was correct. And it was. The word "scatological" means one of three things: of or relating to the study of excrement; marked by an interest in excrement or obscenity; or of or relating to excrement or excremental functions. Hmmm…
Not be a vocabulary snob, but methinks the person speaking did not mean to refer to the M&A landscape of Europe as marked by an interest in excrement or obscenity. I’ll admit that I’m not 100% sure that the word scatological was used, but as a connoisseur of poop-related words, my ears certainly perked up after it (or something like it) was said. I looked around the room and no one batted an eye, but that’s not unusual – no one really bats an eye in these meetings.
So while it is awesome someone may have accidentally referred to mergers and acquisitions as poopy, this is a sad story, since I will go to my grave never knowing the truth and always wondering what really was said.
Trouble. Scatological trouble.
(And if I’m wrong and there’s another interpretation of the word or a word that sounds similar to scatological could have been used more appropriately, please let me know.)
***************
I will be taking this show on the road over the next few weeks. I’m heading to Boston this weekend to hang out with friends and get drunk in a field during a BC football game, which I will not watch one second of. The good news is that it’s a night game, meaning we tailgate from 4 to 7, then once the game starts, I go to a bar with my other buddies who don’t care about BC football, and we get housed. It’ll be great.
(Then of course there’s the matter of me arriving in Boston via the Acela at 9:30pm on Friday night and starting the drinking somewhere around Stamford, CT so I can hit the ground running. I love Fridays like those.)
Over Thanksgiving, I’ll be in Philly and I face one of more difficult stretches of drinking in recent memory. I have the second annual "Whacked on Wheels" drinking tour on Wednesday night, Thanksgiving on Thursday (duh), the third annual "Black Out Friday" pub crawl on Friday night, and then my friends Jimmy the Muppet and Danielle’s wedding on Saturday. Woof. What’s the over/under on pounds I can regain and points I can add to my blood pressure? Right now I’m at 195 and 120/90. I wouldn’t be surprised if at the end of that bender I’m 208 and 140/110. Mark it down.
Then, the first weekend of December, I’m making my triumphant return to Seattle, where I’ll be from Thursday, 11/30 to Tuesday, 12/5. My old roommate Brian and I are flying out to hang out with our old roommate Ben, who now lives in Seattle and may never come back to NYC again. Originally, my friends Jeremy and Brendan were to come as well, but Jeremy, who is from the West Coast, will be out there the week before and Brendan is too grown up to take a day off from work to have fun with his old friends. So it’ll just be the three roommates, getting drunk and saying weird things to each other and complaining about the weather.
Finally, from Tuesday, 12/5 until Sunday, 12/10, I’ll be in my third favorite city: Los Angeles. God, I love LA. This is a partial business trip, but the good news is that I’m much funnier when I’m hungover. Therefore, my plan is to have meetings and do work during the day and then get shitcanned at night and tell every woman within earshot that I have a development deal. Because, this time, I’m not leaving LA without a wife, or at least an aspiring actress girlfriend with fake boobs.
There you have it. Wish me luck, because I’ll need it. This is going to be a true test.
***************
If you live in the NYC area, are thinking of growing a mustache, and would like to hang out with some cool guys (and gals) and help kids in the process, I urge you to check out Mustaches for Kids. All the info in on the website, but November 16 is clean shaven day, so check it out fast. All you have to do is grow a mustache for four weeks (the rules clearly stipulate no Hitler mustaches) and get your friends to support you with a couple of bucks for the Children’s Hospital of New Orleans.
I was asked to participate last year but was already growing a mustache for a different project. I have to say that I don’t think I will participate this year, only because I’m growing my beard out and have been for some months. However, I hope that by pimping the charity on here my karma balances out. So check it out.
***************
I don’t really have a fifth item here, and I need six (including music below), so let’s hand it over to a guy who’s a pretty good writer, Vladimir Nabakov. Here is one of my favorite passages not only of his, but of anyone’s:
There are some beloved women whose eyes, by a chance blend of brilliancy and shape, affect us not directly, not at the moment of shy perception, but in a delayed and cumulative burst of light when the heartless person is absent, and the magic agony abides, and its lenses and lamps are installed in the dark. Whatever eyes Liza Pnin, now Wind, had, they seemed to reveal their essence, their precious-stone water, only when you evoked them in thought, and then a blank, blind, moist aquamarine blaze shivered and stared as if a spatter of sun and sea had got between your own eyelids. Actually her eyes were of a light transparent blue with contrasting black lashes and bright pink canthus, and they slightly stretched up templeward, where a set of feline little lines fanned out from each. She had a sweep of dark brown hair above a lustrous forehead and a snow-and-rose complexion, and she used a very light red lipstick, and save for a certain thickness of ankle and wrist, there was hardly a flaw to her full-blown, animated, elemental, not particularly well-groomed beauty.
If you’re saying "Wow" to yourself right now, there is a chance we may marry. If you’re saying, "What the fuck?" but are hot and willing to sleep with me, there is a chance we may marry.
Alternatively, if I had to describe the fictional Liza Pnin, now Wind, I might write something like:
She was hot, with a corpulent bosom that set ablaze the hearth of my loins. Chubby ankles notwithstanding, I longed to look deep into her eyes of blue, blue like a bottle of Bombay Sapphire gin, while I laid on top of her during love making, my chest hair steel wool, her breasts two mounds of mashed potatoes caked on a old dinner plate I was destined to clean. After I had ejaculated and removed myself from her skin, she would pull her brown hair back into a tail of pony, shake her head, and look at me with those Bombay Sapphire eyes, full of sadness and murder and softness. Often when I was high, I thought she was a cat.
Eerily similar, right?
(This passage is from Pnin, by the way.)
(That is, Nabakov’s passage is from Pnin. In case you couldn’t tell, I just made mine up. Surprisingly, it’s not published anywhere – yet.)
***************
Six Songs
"Someday Some Morning Sometime" Wilco and Billy Bragg
Wow.
(That’s really all I can say, aside from we may have a new favorite – yes, favorite – song. Find this now.)
"Goods" Mates of State
Whoa – oh! I have to admit, I hate the ending of this song, but that’s probably only because the first half is so awesome. I’m becoming a big fan of the boy-girl singer groups (Mates of State, New Pornographers, Stars, etc). If you know of any more, send them on over.
"Rise Up With Fists!!" Jenny Lewis and the Watson Twins
There is no other way to say this: I think I’m in love with Jenny Lewis. I’ve been in love before and I know what it’s like and I’m pretty sure this is it. I mean, she is, just…spectacular. I just want to, I don’t know, be around her. Isn’t that what stalkers say just before they get serious?
(I’m a little concerned that one of the most popular Google image searches bringing people to this site is "jenny lewis tits", since I wrote about how hot she was here. I hope that doesn’t hurt my chances with her. And yes, I realize I’m delusional. But I’m harmless. I think.)
(And by the way, I didn’t mean to ruin this song by being creepy. It’s a really beautiful song. The first word that comes to mind to describe it is "rich," even though I’m not sure why.)
"Shining Star" Earth, Wind & Fire
If you listen to this song while you get ready in the morning, your day will be at least 61% better. My goodness, does this get me going. Why aren’t there more bands like Earth, Wind & Fire, the Jackson 5, and Sly and the Family Stone these days? Seriously, can a bunch of black people, preferably related, get together and start making some dance-friendly funk? I mean, I would buy that and a lot of other people would, too. This kind of music never goes out of style.
Christ. I should work in the music industry.
"You Part the Waters" Cake
If I had to make a list of my top ten albums, Cake’s first album, Motorcade of Generosity, would be on that list. There are some real gems on that album, and this probably isn’t even my favorite song on there. Still, this gets my hips shaking and I love the lines, "You’ve got your grand piano/You don’t even play piano!/I’m the one who plays piano!" Nothing sums up a spoiled bitch of a lady quite like that (aside from maybe the title, that is).
"Sweet Leaf" Black Sabbath
Fuck yeah. This is especially appropriate since I heard this week that Christopher Walken has agreed to play Ozzy Osbourne in the film adaptation of Motley Crue’s (kind of) autobiography, The Dirt. The thought of Walken as Ozzy nearly gives me fits – especially having read the book – so I don’t think I’ll be able to seriously offer any insight on this for the next two or three months. Right now, let’s just rock out. And imagine Christopher Walken singing this song. Wow.
The key phrase there is "to ladies." I did not get a single email from a guy saying that pool sex was bad (I didn’t get any emails from dudes about the subject either way). Which means that the male readers of this site either:
a) are having sex in pools but do not care whether or not their lady partner is enjoying it;
b) are not having sex in pools;
c) are not having sex at all.
If hope it’s a or b. Because some dudes reading this site have to be having sex. Otherwise, I’ll just be sad.
(To clarify, some dudes reading this site have to be having sex - but not with each other. Not that that’s not cool, but I felt like I left that a little open and wanted to clear it up.)
Also, speaking of emails received from Tuesday’s post, I got a, um, lovely email from the ex whose office we had sex in. That was unexpected; I’ve been used to writing personal things on this site for a while now and not getting called out on them. But I deserved it, and I just want to say, Honey, it was only a joke. It’s all in good fun and it was truly a lovely evening. And my bird was not comparable to a wet dish rag that night. That is a device we writers use called hyperbole, which is not, I learned recently, pronounced hyper-bowl. At any rate, I hope all is well and again I’m sorry about the whole you-not-having-an-orgasm-in-five-months thing. But you know how I fear what I don’t understand, and the whole women and orgasms thing both confounds and scares the hell out of me. So it’s really not my fault; it’s more yours and God’s. I’m glad we’ve settled this. And if you want to get a cup of coffee or something, let me know. I’m a little lonely right now. But not any better at giving orgasms. Just so you know.
***************
I was in a meeting this week in which I’m pretty sure I heard someone use the phrase "scatological development", as in a "scatological development in the M&A landscape of Europe" or some similar boring work talk. I did a double take.
When I got back to my office, I went to dictionary.com to make sure my understanding of what "scatological" meant was correct. And it was. The word "scatological" means one of three things: of or relating to the study of excrement; marked by an interest in excrement or obscenity; or of or relating to excrement or excremental functions. Hmmm…
Not be a vocabulary snob, but methinks the person speaking did not mean to refer to the M&A landscape of Europe as marked by an interest in excrement or obscenity. I’ll admit that I’m not 100% sure that the word scatological was used, but as a connoisseur of poop-related words, my ears certainly perked up after it (or something like it) was said. I looked around the room and no one batted an eye, but that’s not unusual – no one really bats an eye in these meetings.
So while it is awesome someone may have accidentally referred to mergers and acquisitions as poopy, this is a sad story, since I will go to my grave never knowing the truth and always wondering what really was said.
Trouble. Scatological trouble.
(And if I’m wrong and there’s another interpretation of the word or a word that sounds similar to scatological could have been used more appropriately, please let me know.)
***************
I will be taking this show on the road over the next few weeks. I’m heading to Boston this weekend to hang out with friends and get drunk in a field during a BC football game, which I will not watch one second of. The good news is that it’s a night game, meaning we tailgate from 4 to 7, then once the game starts, I go to a bar with my other buddies who don’t care about BC football, and we get housed. It’ll be great.
(Then of course there’s the matter of me arriving in Boston via the Acela at 9:30pm on Friday night and starting the drinking somewhere around Stamford, CT so I can hit the ground running. I love Fridays like those.)
Over Thanksgiving, I’ll be in Philly and I face one of more difficult stretches of drinking in recent memory. I have the second annual "Whacked on Wheels" drinking tour on Wednesday night, Thanksgiving on Thursday (duh), the third annual "Black Out Friday" pub crawl on Friday night, and then my friends Jimmy the Muppet and Danielle’s wedding on Saturday. Woof. What’s the over/under on pounds I can regain and points I can add to my blood pressure? Right now I’m at 195 and 120/90. I wouldn’t be surprised if at the end of that bender I’m 208 and 140/110. Mark it down.
Then, the first weekend of December, I’m making my triumphant return to Seattle, where I’ll be from Thursday, 11/30 to Tuesday, 12/5. My old roommate Brian and I are flying out to hang out with our old roommate Ben, who now lives in Seattle and may never come back to NYC again. Originally, my friends Jeremy and Brendan were to come as well, but Jeremy, who is from the West Coast, will be out there the week before and Brendan is too grown up to take a day off from work to have fun with his old friends. So it’ll just be the three roommates, getting drunk and saying weird things to each other and complaining about the weather.
Finally, from Tuesday, 12/5 until Sunday, 12/10, I’ll be in my third favorite city: Los Angeles. God, I love LA. This is a partial business trip, but the good news is that I’m much funnier when I’m hungover. Therefore, my plan is to have meetings and do work during the day and then get shitcanned at night and tell every woman within earshot that I have a development deal. Because, this time, I’m not leaving LA without a wife, or at least an aspiring actress girlfriend with fake boobs.
There you have it. Wish me luck, because I’ll need it. This is going to be a true test.
***************
If you live in the NYC area, are thinking of growing a mustache, and would like to hang out with some cool guys (and gals) and help kids in the process, I urge you to check out Mustaches for Kids. All the info in on the website, but November 16 is clean shaven day, so check it out fast. All you have to do is grow a mustache for four weeks (the rules clearly stipulate no Hitler mustaches) and get your friends to support you with a couple of bucks for the Children’s Hospital of New Orleans.
I was asked to participate last year but was already growing a mustache for a different project. I have to say that I don’t think I will participate this year, only because I’m growing my beard out and have been for some months. However, I hope that by pimping the charity on here my karma balances out. So check it out.
***************
I don’t really have a fifth item here, and I need six (including music below), so let’s hand it over to a guy who’s a pretty good writer, Vladimir Nabakov. Here is one of my favorite passages not only of his, but of anyone’s:
There are some beloved women whose eyes, by a chance blend of brilliancy and shape, affect us not directly, not at the moment of shy perception, but in a delayed and cumulative burst of light when the heartless person is absent, and the magic agony abides, and its lenses and lamps are installed in the dark. Whatever eyes Liza Pnin, now Wind, had, they seemed to reveal their essence, their precious-stone water, only when you evoked them in thought, and then a blank, blind, moist aquamarine blaze shivered and stared as if a spatter of sun and sea had got between your own eyelids. Actually her eyes were of a light transparent blue with contrasting black lashes and bright pink canthus, and they slightly stretched up templeward, where a set of feline little lines fanned out from each. She had a sweep of dark brown hair above a lustrous forehead and a snow-and-rose complexion, and she used a very light red lipstick, and save for a certain thickness of ankle and wrist, there was hardly a flaw to her full-blown, animated, elemental, not particularly well-groomed beauty.
If you’re saying "Wow" to yourself right now, there is a chance we may marry. If you’re saying, "What the fuck?" but are hot and willing to sleep with me, there is a chance we may marry.
Alternatively, if I had to describe the fictional Liza Pnin, now Wind, I might write something like:
She was hot, with a corpulent bosom that set ablaze the hearth of my loins. Chubby ankles notwithstanding, I longed to look deep into her eyes of blue, blue like a bottle of Bombay Sapphire gin, while I laid on top of her during love making, my chest hair steel wool, her breasts two mounds of mashed potatoes caked on a old dinner plate I was destined to clean. After I had ejaculated and removed myself from her skin, she would pull her brown hair back into a tail of pony, shake her head, and look at me with those Bombay Sapphire eyes, full of sadness and murder and softness. Often when I was high, I thought she was a cat.
Eerily similar, right?
(This passage is from Pnin, by the way.)
(That is, Nabakov’s passage is from Pnin. In case you couldn’t tell, I just made mine up. Surprisingly, it’s not published anywhere – yet.)
***************
Six Songs
"Someday Some Morning Sometime" Wilco and Billy Bragg
Wow.
(That’s really all I can say, aside from we may have a new favorite – yes, favorite – song. Find this now.)
"Goods" Mates of State
Whoa – oh! I have to admit, I hate the ending of this song, but that’s probably only because the first half is so awesome. I’m becoming a big fan of the boy-girl singer groups (Mates of State, New Pornographers, Stars, etc). If you know of any more, send them on over.
"Rise Up With Fists!!" Jenny Lewis and the Watson Twins
There is no other way to say this: I think I’m in love with Jenny Lewis. I’ve been in love before and I know what it’s like and I’m pretty sure this is it. I mean, she is, just…spectacular. I just want to, I don’t know, be around her. Isn’t that what stalkers say just before they get serious?
(I’m a little concerned that one of the most popular Google image searches bringing people to this site is "jenny lewis tits", since I wrote about how hot she was here. I hope that doesn’t hurt my chances with her. And yes, I realize I’m delusional. But I’m harmless. I think.)
(And by the way, I didn’t mean to ruin this song by being creepy. It’s a really beautiful song. The first word that comes to mind to describe it is "rich," even though I’m not sure why.)
"Shining Star" Earth, Wind & Fire
If you listen to this song while you get ready in the morning, your day will be at least 61% better. My goodness, does this get me going. Why aren’t there more bands like Earth, Wind & Fire, the Jackson 5, and Sly and the Family Stone these days? Seriously, can a bunch of black people, preferably related, get together and start making some dance-friendly funk? I mean, I would buy that and a lot of other people would, too. This kind of music never goes out of style.
Christ. I should work in the music industry.
"You Part the Waters" Cake
If I had to make a list of my top ten albums, Cake’s first album, Motorcade of Generosity, would be on that list. There are some real gems on that album, and this probably isn’t even my favorite song on there. Still, this gets my hips shaking and I love the lines, "You’ve got your grand piano/You don’t even play piano!/I’m the one who plays piano!" Nothing sums up a spoiled bitch of a lady quite like that (aside from maybe the title, that is).
"Sweet Leaf" Black Sabbath
Fuck yeah. This is especially appropriate since I heard this week that Christopher Walken has agreed to play Ozzy Osbourne in the film adaptation of Motley Crue’s (kind of) autobiography, The Dirt. The thought of Walken as Ozzy nearly gives me fits – especially having read the book – so I don’t think I’ll be able to seriously offer any insight on this for the next two or three months. Right now, let’s just rock out. And imagine Christopher Walken singing this song. Wow.
