off to boston, bad robber
Jason posted on June 28, 2007

I’m very excited right now, because in less than an hour I’ll be leaving work and getting on a train which will take me to Boston for a long weekend of reminiscing, indulgence, and Anna’s taqueria.  But more immediately, it means I’ll get to enjoy one of my new favorite pastimes: getting drunk on the train.  My buddy Kyle will be joining me on the ride up and we have a lofty goal: to get cut off by the train’s bartender.  If we manage to pull this off, it might be the greatest accomplishment of our lives.

(By the way, I turn 28 next month.)

So have a good weekend and wish me luck.  In the meantime, please enjoy this video clip, which had me crying tears of laughter and snorting at my desk when my buddy Ryan forwarded it to me today.  Just when you think it can’t get any better, it does.  I don’t know how this guy wasn’t seriously, seriously injured, but that’s the power of booze, I guess.  I only hope to find a little of that power this weekend in Beantown.

[Have a good weekend.]

two reasons why I’m not a bright person (fingers edition)
Jason posted on June 27, 2007

I have a little sitting area in my apartment, an alcove that has a comfy chair, a standing lamp, and a small bookshelf.  On top of this two-level bookshelf sit some bar items.  There is an ice bucket, a shaker, a jigger, a bottle of sweet vermouth and a bottle of dry vermouth, and two decanters, one I use for bourbon and one for wine.  It’s a nice little area to go and relax, to enjoy a strong and refreshing Manhattan while reading a large book or The New Yorker.   The only thing missing from my picture of patrician leisure is a pipe and a robe/dinner jacket, but I’m working on that.  

Though I love obviously luxury and refinement, I am still not fully schooled in their ways.  Recently my friend Meredith, professor-to-be but waitress-right-now, was over my apartment and, good host that I am, I offered her a glass of wine.  She accepted, so I poured her a healthy measure of wine from my fine decanter.  She took the glass, put it to her lips, then stopped and asked, "Are you serious?"

Off my puzzled look, Meredith asked how long the wine had been in the decanter.  I told her that I didn’t know, but I guessed a week or two.  It was at this point that my luxurious facade began to crumble.

I had thought that the purpose of the decanter was two-fold: 1) to hold alcohol; 2) to say to visitors, "Look at me - Look at how fine my things are, look how I enjoy pleasure. I belong in places like Monte Carlo and Monaco; you belong in prison."  But Meredith pointed out that wine decanters serve a particular purpose.  I don’t recall the exact purpose because I wasn’t listening, but basically you can’t have wine in a decanter for longer than a few hours, as otherwise it goes bad.  Meredith made me smell the wine, which smelled a little vinegary and was even getting a little yellow.  Whoops.  I had always had wine in the decanter, drank from it, and never really noticed that I was drinking rancid wine.  I guess I’m not quite the oenophile I pretend to be.

Lesson learned.  I immediately dumped the wine from the decanter into the sink, poured her a glass from a freshly opened bottle, and grabbed myself and my other friends cans of PBR from the fridge (I can’t be all luxury, all the time).

Yesterday, while home from work sick, I decided to wash the decanter.  The problem with cleaning the decanter is that it has a small opening/mouth, so it’s impossible to really get in there to clean it up.  Usually, I just fill it with warm water and soap, shake it up, pour the water out, and repeat until I think it’s clean/I get tired.  But this time around it wasn’t so easy.  Because the wine had been in there for some time, there was a stain rimming around the inside of the decanter, only three inches or so off the bottom, which would not wash away.  Crap.

I tried squeezing the sponge in order to slide it into the decanter to reach the stain, but it did not fit.  Even if it did fit, it wouldn’t have reached the stain line; the best case scenario would have been that the sponge popped into the decanter then expanded - I never would have been able to get it out.

Frustrated, and without an ounce of forethought, I stuck my middle finger into the decanter.  I, as I should have known, couldn’t reach the stain.  When I went to pull my finger out, I couldn’t.  My finger was stuck in the decanter.  Completely, 100% stuck.

What followed was arguably the most terrifying two minutes of my life.  I struggled and struggled to get my finger out of the decanter.  As I pulled harder, I felt like I was only getting more stuck; I began sweating, my heart started pounding, my eyes darting, my body and limbs beginning to tremble.  I pulled and pulled and pulled and pulled and my finger was stuck in there.  I was in full panic mode.  

My first and only rational thought came about 90 seconds into the ordeal, when I realized I might have to reach below the sink into the cabinet and grab my hammer in order to destroy the decanter and somehow free myself.  But just as quickly as it started, my finger jolted out of the mouth of the decanter with a plop, sending my body backward for a step.  Immediately, freed from the decanter, my heart rate decelerated back to normal, I stopped sweating, and calm was restored.  Crisis averted.  Deep breaths.  Deep breaths.  

What struck me about the situation was how intense it was.  Those fleeting moments when you’re trapped in a elevator or locked in a bathroom or otherwise stuck in a place or position you don’t want to be in are really, in hindsight, not that big of a deal.  But the rush of terror that overcomes you in these moments is a powerful, powerful force.  My middle finger was stuck in a decanter and I almost started screaming like a wild monkey.  A few more minutes and I would have begun gnawing off my own finger.  There was no limit to my hysteria.

So today, after work, I’m going to Bed, Bath and Beyond to get one of these things.  Because I will never stick my finger in a decanter again.  Promise.

*******************

I wrote on here that about a month ago, I got a banjo (note: not my actual banjo).  It was a love at first sight.  I can play the guitar and the bass and a little bit of the ukulele, so I was able to take the banjo out of the box and make sounds that were at least not painful to the ears.  So happy was I by this development, I played with myself.  Hell, even if I sounded terrible I still would have played with myself, but you get what I mean.

You’re supposed to play the banjo with finger picks, but the banjo didn’t come with any and I didn’t have any lying around (I don’t know how to fingerpick on the guitar; I’ve never had a guitar lesson, so for the past fifteen years I’ve been winging it).  So for my first two weeks of banjo ownership, I played using my fingers but without picks on them, going over so simple fingering (tee-hee!) patterns I found the internet.

I found the patterns were quite easy and came naturally to me.  Even though they were the basic and simplest patterns on the banjo, I dreamt of becoming a world-renowned banjo player, a bluegrass musician so famous I would soon marry the most beautiful girl in all of Appalachia.

I still wanted to learn with the picks though, and enlisted the help of my friend Jeremy to grab me some.  Jeremy lives on the same street as my nearest guitar store, which closes at 6pm everyday.  As I’m usually still working at that time, I asked Jeremy to pop in the store and pick me up some banjo picks, which he could then give me next time we hung out.  He did and he did.  So soon I started practicing with my banjo picks.

Almost immediately, my hopes of marrying the Helen of Harlan County were greatly diminished.  I sucked with the finger picks.  They were cumbersome and made me clumsy.  Each time I hit a string, I had to do so very delicately, lest the pick fly off my finger.  How the hell would I ever be able to fingerpick as quickly as Tony Trischka or Bela Fleck does?

Knowing the my musical virtuosity could not be at fault, I blamed the picks.  Jeremy had gotten me some bad picks, so I’d need to go to the guitar store myself and really get in there, try out different picks, see which ones felt comfortable, and get those.  I mean, c’mon.  Clearly I don’t stink at banjo.  It was totally the picks.  I’m fucking awesome. 

About a week later, I stood in the same local guitar store at which Jeremy originally bought me the picks.  It’s a mom-and-pop type store, small in size, with a staff that is actually friendly, as opposed to the megastores with "associates" who are monster assholes and take every opportunity to remind you that they are not only much better at guitar than you, but also know a lot more about guitars than you do.  Fucking jerks.  Bro, a word of career advice: your band has been touring for 19 years and you haven’t hit it big yet - it might be time to throw in the towel.  Just a thought.

Anyway, there I stood in the nice mom-and-pop music store, trying on finger pick after finger pick and to my dismay, they fit exactly like the ones Jeremy got me.  Sure, I was able to find a few that were a little more comfortable, but still, trying these on, I had no idea how anyone could play the banjo with them.  How the hell could I possibly get used to plucking a string and the pick nearly flying off my finger?

As I grew more frustrated, a gentle hippie salesman appeared before me on the other side of the counter.  He asked if he could help me and without looking up I told him that I had just gotten a banjo and was trying to find finger picks that fit me properly.  I continued to try on different picks as the two of us stood there in silence, me trying on and tossing back various picks, him looking over me.  After a few more seconds of watching me grow frustrated, the gentle hippie said, "Um, you know, you’re putting those on backwards."

Um, oh.  I didn’t know that.

Maybe this was the reason I found it so hard to fingerpick the banjo.  I was putting the fucking things on backwards.

I am generally a stubborn man, but in few areas does this stubbornness manifest itself as in music.  I take so much pride in the fact that I’ve never had a guitar lesson that it has hindered my development; rather than biting the bullet and getting lessons to really get good at the guitar, my playing ability has increased only marginally over the past, say, six or eight years, because I have this "I can do it myself" mentality.  I try to stay away from guitar tab sites on the internet because I like figuring things out by ear, even though doing so usually takes hours and possibly days off my life because I get so frustrated and angry in the process (and though my cholesterol is surprisingly low, I have the blood pressure of a 52 year old professional poker player and former drug mule). 

So when I got the banjo, I ripped open the box and started playing right away.  A friend whose brother played the banjo mentioned to me that banjo-playing was all about fingerpicking patterns, so with no other option I deigned to find some of these on the internet and learned them.  When I got the picks from Jeremy, I immediately put them on my fingers in the way I thought they’d fit: the "pick" portion of the finger pick laid on top of my fingertip, thereby essentially extending my fingernail - it looked like I had a fake, metallic fingernails on my fingers.  I didn’t think twice about whether this was the way the picks were supposed to go on.

When you play the banjo, your index and middle fingers are plucking in an upward motion against the bottom strings of the banjo.  My difficulty arose when each time I struck a sting with my new metallic fingernail, the resistance was so great that the pick would nearly come off my finger.  This got old and frustrating.  Very quickly.

It never occurred to me that a simple google or google image search might clear up this matter for me.  This is the first picture that comes up when you search "finger picks" in google images (this is the correct way to wear the picks - I had them on the opposite way).  This is the third.  This is also on that first page.  It’s pretty much all there.

But because I’m an asshole, I didn’t realize I was going about it all wrong until the gentle hippie showed me the light.  Now, playing the banjo is much easier and much more fun, as the picks are not being ripped off my fingers every thirty seconds.   

I think there’s a lesson here, something like, "Stop being so stubborn," but whatever.  I’ve got to get back to playing the banjo.

(And shut up - I would have figured it out on my own eventually.)    

beer, poo, problems
Jason posted on June 26, 2007

Yesterday (Monday) was a bad day and today (Tuesday) is even worse, because Sunday…Sunday was a glorious day.

Like they always do, it started innocently enough.  I stayed in on Saturday night to "write" (goal: 5000 words; actual word count: 100 words) and because I had a punishing Friday night filled with vodka red bulls and foosball, capping off a week in which I went out and drank every single night.  On Sunday morning, rested and refreshed, I contacted my friends Jeremy and Meredith to see if they wanted to get brunch.  I had a lot of errands to run and things to do on Sunday since Saturday was a lost day because of my crippling hangover, and figured a nice way to kick it off would be with a lovely brunch.

So Jeremy, Meredith and I - along with our friends Chris and Robyn - headed over to the Village to check out a little of the gay pride parade (wonderful parade, by the way) and have brunch at AOC.  AOC is a lil’ French place with a garden and a team of French waiters who act alternatively charming and arrogant.  Because there were five of us, we couldn’t sit in the garden, but that didn’t make the brunch any less lovely.  We sat and talked and laughed among the gays and Europeans and had a grand old time, congratulating ourselves for being so cultured and worldly.  As for the food, I had my standard - omelet with goat cheese, mushrooms and bacon - but it was Meredith who stole the show with her fancy-pants hot dog sandwich, a hot dog on a baguette with swiss cheese and bechamel sauce.  I didn’t know what bechamel sauce was prior to eating this hot dog, but let’s just say that I want to get to know more of this bechamel sauce.  A lot more.

As brunch was ending, the idea of getting a drink was brought up.  It was a lovely, sunny day and in were in the good company of friends, so why not?  Also, none of us had gone out the previous night and were hangover-free.  We wanted to be able to sit in a garden and drink, so after some deliberation we decided to go to Lorely for a quick and enjoyable beer before parting ways.   

Well.

Before all was said and done, our bar tab was $394.  Yes, $394.  On a Sunday.  Between five people, two of them girls who weigh a combined 205 pounds.  We sat in that garden for eight hours, from 3pm until 11pm.  All of us blew off every responsibility we had (for example, Chris and Robyn, who are engaged, planned to spend the day registering; I had to help a friend move an air conditioner; Meredith had to write up a syllabus) and got blind, stinking, stammering and slobbering drunk.

It was awesome.

It’s all the fault of those damn liters of beer, which are the equivalent of about three normal beers.  While the girls drank pints, Chris, Jeremy and I hit the liters pretty hard.  And no one wins when you hit the liters pretty hard, including your bank account and your work productivity the next day.

After having at least five and possibly six liters of beer on Sunday, I spent my workday Monday a complete wreck.  More than the standard hangover, I felt beaten; I was sore, my muscles were tired, my stomach was a mess.

It was the last of these symptoms that distressed me most.  A few months ago, I thought I had a ulcer, a fear which I wrote about on this site.  Over time, my symptoms went away, and I concerned myself with more pressing issues (i.e. exploring the various forms of the Jersey Stranger, which is basically masturbating in the shower with one arm around the shower curtain, but really so, so much more).  All was forgotten.

It was after Friday night’s boozing session that on Saturday afternoon I sat on the toilet and learned that apparently I had been shot in the heinie-hole.  I’ve heard that blood in the stool is a bad thing, but this was more of a stool in the blood situation.  I was so alarmed that I started crying on the toilet, but then went back to the Jersey Stranger and things got better.

I didn’t poop on Sunday, since that would have taken time away from drinking liters of beer and running up an obscene bar tab.  Monday, however, was a true pooping parade.  And each time, it was the same: someone had obviously been sneaking into my office and shooting me in the butt with a BB gun.  One of my near and dear personal mottos is "I usually stop [wiping] when there’s more red than brown," so I’m not unfamiliar dangerous poos.  But these poos…they were downright frightening.

I went to bed last night with stomach pains and anxiety.  I woke up three hours later with the same, only more intense.  Though I did not poo during the night, I convinced myself that I was bleeding internally and slowly (or not so slowly) dying.  I thought about all the things I haven’t done - traveled to Asia, been to a zoo, had sex with four women at once - and all the things I haven’t done but really wanted to do - masturbated in Asia, masturbated at a zoon, masturbated with four women at once - and got sad.  It was not a good night. 

I called in sick this morning and have spent the day wincing and walking gingerly around the apartment, terrified to poo for fear of seeing a kidney or chunk of my heart in the toilet bowl.  I’ve spent most of the day, lying in bed or on the couch, clutching my stomach and saying "Oww."  God, I am such a pussy.

But there is a happy ending to this story.  Just moments ago, I made a good, uneventful poo.  Though not my best, anything that didn’t look like a homicide occurred in the toilet is considered a major, major plus.  Though I only went to medical school for one year, I can say with 100% certainly that this normal poo means I’m on the mend. 

So for the next few days, I will force myself to take it easy.  I’ll eat bland foods (cereal, rice) and binding foods (bananas, painkillers).  I won’t drink and will possibly even exercise.  These next few days, I’m going to the picture of health, as my body heals.

This weekend in Boston, however, is another story. 

hair and love, DUYS, porn names, boycott request, you’d still probably have to keep your normal job, music
Jason posted on June 22, 2007

I feel like I might do well this weekend, because I’m very hairy right now.

Prior to going out for a night on the town, there are a few ways that a man can ensure that he will not meet or get lucky with a woman.  These include:

- Taking great care to clean one’s bedroom
- Bringing a condom out in one’s wallet
- Telling a friend, "You know what? I feel like I might get lucky tonight."
- Hiding all pornography
- Setting up matches and candle on bedroom nightstand

Doing any of these things prior to going out will guarantee that you not get laid.  As a hairy guy, there’s one more: trimming the body hair.

To give you a little bit about where I’m at right now in terms of my grizzly bear-ness, I haven’t gotten a haircut in two months (since my buddy Joe’s wedding in April).  My beard is not mountain man-ish, but is scraggly and hasn’t been trimmed for some time.  My pubis region, usually the one beacon of kemptness among the unruly waves of hair all over my body, resembles not a well-trimmed hedge but a neglected junkyard.  Most damningly, there are settlements being established in the lushest and most life-bearing regions of my back hair; I think I can make out a general store being constructed on the steppes of my left shoulderblade.

By further eschewing all desire to get laid and instead focusing only on getting drunk and eat late-night pizza tonight, this all adds up to one thing: I’m going to meet the woman of my dreams this evening.  It’s been nice knowing you all.  It’s about time for me to settle down. 

(Of course, said woman will be horrified by my excessive hairiness and I will probably accidentally burn her with my pizza, but let’s meet her first and worry about that later.)

*************

I never thought I was a marketing genius or even a very smart man.  But now I know this for sure because, despite this site having hundreds of thousands of visitors and maybe 30 million hits since its inception, I’ve been blown away by how many of you have ordered "Drink Until You Shit!" shirts.  I was expecting to sell anywhere for zero to four shirts to y’all (closer to zero) and we’ve gotten considerably more orders than that.

(I also find endless enjoyment in the fact that people from all over the country and Canada, the UK, Ireland, Germany and the Philippines (!) will be wearing shirts from our pub crawl.  I mean, wow.)

(Speaking of, for those international peeps that have contacted me about ordering shirts or those who I haven’t contacted yet, we need to discuss shipping.  Because I don’t think it’s $2.)

If you haven’t ordered a shirt yet and want one, you should do so asap.  Not just because they’re selling, but because I will probably be bored with this whole thing in the next four days or so.

For those Philly peeps, if you want to pick up a shirt, you can do so at Mick-Daniel’s Saloon at 2nd & Snyder in South Philly Tuesday and Wednesday nights from 7pm to 9pm.  Ask for David - he’s co-founder of the tour and will take care of you.  Have a drink, too - it’s a nice place.  But please, get the shirts as soon as you can, since we will most likely sell out.

But really, you guys who have ordered have made me very happy and warm inside.  Our little drinking tour is all grown up and I’m damn proud.  Also, maybe now I’ll get my ass in gear and offer some other things for sale so as to continue with my expensive habits and fine living.  Or maybe my days as entrepreneur will end when the shirts run out and I’ll go back to begging you guys for money on my birthday (which, mark your calendars, is July 17).

Yeah, the begging sounds right.     

*************

I am notoriously bad at naming characters and am in the process of starting to create something new.  I needed a name for a female character, which is difficult enough for me, but I also didn’t want to give her the name of any girl I’ve slept with or dated, lest these ex-lovers think the character was inspired by her.  But by disqualifying the names of all my ex-lovers, I’m ruling out, like, five different girls names.  Holy crap that puts me in a bind.  
 
So I sent an email to a bunch of friends who know of my naming problems, explaining the situation and the character and asking for suggestions.  My old roommate Brian fired an email back to me immediately that said:

Celeste, chloe, brianna. don’t know why, these just came to mind.

For those of you who are non-perverts, it may seem like Brian was trying to earnestly help by offering some suggestions.  And, in fact, he was earnest in these suggestions.  But do you know why these names just popped into Brian’s mind?  Because they are all the names of adult film stars. 

I called Brian as soon as I read his email and pointed this out to him and he was shocked at its psychological implications.  I asked him for a name of a woman and what he immediately came up with was names of women who get paid to eat semen and get doubly penetrated.

This, dear readers, is why Brian and I are friends.  And yes, this little anecdote will make it into a wedding toast/his eulogy. 

*************

[The following was written not to try to make you laugh but rather to appease my rage.  Thank you.]

A buddy and I went to Swift this week for a couple of after work pops.  It’s an ok place, kinda douchy on the weekends but not bad during the week, and it has an extensive beer list. 

Anyway, I paid for all the beers because I’m a nice guy and we had at least 10 pints between us, probably 12.  And we’re talking fancy beers here, so the pints were $6 or $7 each, adding $1 per pint for tips.  We sat there for about three hours, getting drunk, ordering beer after beer, tipping each time.

Not once did we get a free round.

I know that NYC isn’t a great place for buy-backs, but this was fucking ridiculous.  We were there on a Tuesday night when the place was not crowded in the least.  I spent at least $70, probably more, tipping on every drink.  I even went to the same bartender each time, so it’s not like I was ordering from multiple people.  But this fucking clown, on a slow Tuesday night when I was ordering from him only and tipping each round, did not get us back with one free round.

Please, friends and readers, if you love me at all, boycott Swifts.  I am a nearly professional drinker with many years experience in NYC, and never before did I feel so rebuffed than I did by this bartender.  You’re not missing anything anyway; you can find an equally impressive beer list at a dozen places nearby that don’t have bankers, beer snobs and assholes like me crowding the joint. 

I mean, fuck.  One free beer out of seven is not too much to ask.  Fuck Swift and that bartender.

(I’d better move to something happier before I ruin my weekend.)     

*************

I have not seen this show (The Flight of the Conchords) yet, but it’s waiting in my Tivo to be viewed.  I’ve heard great things and if the following clip is any indication, methinks I will enjoy it.

[youtube]N7vgY0yEs9Y[/youtube]

*************

Six Songs

"You Make My Dreams Come True"  Hall & Oates
In the canon of Hall & Oates hits, this song gets lost. Think about it - if I asked you to name five Hall & Oates songs, you’ll give me some combination of "Maneater," "Private Eyes," "Out of Touch," "Rich Girl" and "Your Kiss Is On My List" (and "I Can’t Go For That" might be in there as well).  But this one is just as beautiful and wonderful as any song they’ve ever created.  Not only that, Daryl Hall is simply going for it in that first verse; how many notes does he hit when he sings the word "flame" the second time? and what about the range he displays when he sings "I can’t explain?"  This verse may, in fact, be Daryl Hall’s finest vocal performance.  And that is saying a lot, my friends.  Let us celebrate.  

"Effect and Cause"  The White Stripes
I gotta say: I’m very, very disappointed with the White Stripes new album, Icky Thump.  Angry, even - I was out with friends this week talking about my disdain for the album and I felt myself on the verge of getting violent.  First, the song "Icky Thump" is one of the worst and stupidest songs I’ve ever heard.  Please, do not think I am using any understatement when I say this.  What the fuck are those lyrics?  "Icky thump, get drunk, you punk, move junk" blah blah blah.  It’s like a bad rap song.  And then these lines - "Well Americans, what, nothing better to do?/Why don’t you kick yourself out - you’re an immigrant too!" - I mean, I cringe when I hear that.  Jesus Christ, Jack.  You’re not Bono.  Leave the political garbage to Neil Young, the rapping to Jay-Z, and focus on rocking the fuck out.  God damn.

[And don't get me started on "Rag and Bone" - I'm not sure if that's a song or an Adam Sandler skit. ("You don't want these things? We can use 'em! Meg and I can use 'em! Just give it to us! We'll give it a home!") Good lord.  And "Conquest?"  Can we get serious here please?  Rock is not a joke, Jack, you big jerk.]

Anyway, [taking deep breath] this is a very good song.  No, it doesn’t rock, but it’s very catchy and very clever.  At after listening to this album, I’ll take catchy and clever over some of the "rockers" on there any day.

I will not give up on this album because this band is dear to me, so let’s hope I get turned.  Because right now, it doesn’t look good.  

"The Bucket"  Kings of Leon
God, this band is fun.  Another great summer song, especially if you’re riding around in the back of a pickup truck drinking cans of PBR.  Or sitting in your apartment with the TV and lights off finishing a post before you go out and drinking PBR.  Either one.

"Rough Gem"  Islands
I still honestly don’t know if I love or hate this song.  When I listen to it, I kinda feel like a pederast.  Read into that what you will. 

"Whiskey River"  Willie Nelson
Speaking of pederasts, I haven’t had whiskey in a while because it was a bit of a bad scene for Uncle Jason.  But really, how can anything be bad that inspires such beautiful lyrics:

Whiskey River take my mind
Don’t let her memory torture me
Whiskey River don’t run dry
You’re all I’ve got – take care of me

God, that makes me proud to be an American.  And a drunk.  Both.  It’s a versatile song. 

"Leave A Light On For Me"  Belinda Carlisle (not on iTunes; their loss)
Yes, I realize that this is the second (or possibly third) Belinda Carlisle song that I’ve recommended on here.  But guess what?  I’m in love with her.

[youtube]qJOjLoOD6i0[/youtube]

There, I said it.  So there’s that.  I bet if the person you were in love with was a musician, you’d recommend his/her songs, too.  Now quit judging.  It’s really starting to piss me off.

[Have a good weekend.]

june dinner: blue smoke
Jason posted on June 21, 2007

Last night, Nicole and I had our monthly dinner at Blue Smoke.  This was my pick.

I had been to Blue Smoke once before a few years back, when an ex-girlfriend, with whom I had a torrid affair after we broke up (and she started dating someone else) that was about fifteen times hotter than our old relationship and possibly even twice as hot as the sun, took me there for my birthday.  That meal blew my fucking doors off and I had been dreaming about Blue Smoke since.  This time, however, possibly because the prospect of birthday/monkey sex was not imminent (no offense to Nicole, of course), I was not as impressed.  That doesn’t mean it wasn’t good, but it was certainly not as terrific as I remember. 

(Likely the same sentiment applies to the post-break up affair between the ex and I; Uncle Jason is a little hard up for a steamy affair right now and may be looking at the past through rose-colored glasses.  Also, he has an erection as he’s typing this.  It’s been a slow summer.  Sorry.)

Blue Smoke is a barbeque place – a classy barbeque place to be sure, but a barbeque place nonetheless.  I feel like barbeque places lend themselves to getting several different kinds of food and making a pig out of diners.  And boy, did Nicole and I get lots of different food, and I ate so much that I thought I blew out a knee when I stood up after the meal.

Nicole and I started with the creamy blue cheese and bacon dip, which came with homemade barbeque chips.  The dip was terrific, almost too much (blue cheese? bacon? barbeque chips? if the waitress had flashed her breasts after delivering the dip or I was allowed to do a j in the restaurant, all of my main vices would have been covered).  I went with the devilled eggs appetizers.  This is a curious choice, I know, but I had not had devilled eggs since my grandmother, God rest her soul, passed away last year.  And, unfortunately, the devilled eggs at Blue Smoke had nothing on my grandmom’s.  They were good, but nothing spectacular; if you order devilled eggs at a restaurant, you expect something spectacular, or at least special.  These were not.  They were plain ol’ devilled eggs.  Good, but just devilled eggs.  Nicole’s appetizer was the barbecued mussels with tomatoes, chilies and smoked pork.  These were pretty good, but I feel like you can only do so much with mussels and again, these were nothing spectacular.  Also, as someone who is admittedly a 100% pussy when it comes to spice, they had a little too much kick for me.   So the appetizers…eh.

The main course is where Blue Smoke – and Nicole and I – kicked it up a notch.  Nicole ordered the pulled pork platter, which both of us had on previous visits to the restaurant.  We agreed that it was easily the best pulled pork either of us had ever had.  Tender, juicy, with the perfect combination of sweet and spicy, it is fucking incredible.  It scores high marks across the board – taste, texture, temperature, smell, appearance – all of which inspire both a sense of awe and also ravenous lust.  It doesn’t hurt that the portion of pulled pork they pile on your plate (alliteration alert!) is roughly the size of a volleyball.

I got the pulled pork as well, but as part of a larger plate.  My entrée was something called "Rhapsody In ’cue" which (hang on to your seats, folks) had St. Louis spareribs, the pulled pork, smoked chicken and (why not?) a sausage link.  Yes, there was a gauntlet.  I was wearing it.  I removed it.  I threw it, with extreme prejudice, down to the ground.  Last night, the barbeque and I, we danced.

And just like what happens when I dance in real life, by the time it was over I was left sweating, sore, tired, and wanting to go home to sit in air conditioning.  And I haven’t even mentioned the sides we got, which were completely ridiculous: creamed spinach, mac and cheese, sweet potato fries with a maple dip, and hush puppies (which are like cornbread fritters) with a jalapeno marmalade.  I mean, this…this was just too much.

And I think this is what made the meal less than spectacular for me.  I was completely overwhelmed and outclassed.  After each bite, I had too many choices – do I go with the pork, ribs, chicken, sausage, mac and cheese, creamed spinach, sweet potato fries, hush puppies, or back to the blue cheese and bacon dip?  That’s nine different options, son.  Total system overload for a fat guy like me.  By the time we got out of there, I actually had a headache from having to think so much. 

Since there were so many options, let’s break them down one by one:

- Pork: I covered this – incredible and a must-have if you go here.

- Ribs: I have a love/hate relationship with ribs.  On the one hand, I think they’re delicious.  On the other, I have a bit of weight problem as well as a beard.  Meaning, I’m a little self-conscious about eating a bone with my hands and gnarling it down until I’ve ripped all the meat off of it.  The platter came with four ribs, but I only had two; I could sense I was making Nicole uncomfortable with all my rib-eating and snorting.  I will eat the remaining two ribs tonight in the privacy of my bathroom with both the shower running and the TV on to drown out my grunting sounds.

- Chicken: Surprisingly delicious.  I try not to order chicken whenever I go out because, well, it’s chicken.  But this is the one example where I was truly impressed with Blue Smoke; the chicken was very juicy, tender, and flavorful.  Again, serious grunting involved here.

- Sausage: Very flavorful with a quite a lil’ wallop of spice that sneaks up on you.  Not bad, but again, me = spice pussy.

- Creamed spinach: A little watery, but solid.  Nothing to write home about.     

- Mac and cheese: Very, very impressive.  Very, very rich.  This mac and cheese could do some serious, serious good for the world.  I think if I put this on my penis before I went to bed, I’d wake up and would have a bigger bird.  This is the only side that Nicole and I ate all of.  No survivors here, but goddamn did they fight valiantly.         

- Sweet potato fries: After trying a fry dipped in the maple dip, I said to Nicole, "You need to try this – it will make you a woman."  I think this is a pretty accurate description.

- Hush puppies: I probably would have preferred plain ol’ cornbread.  I never thought I’d write this, but frying food is not always a good idea and can be a little much.  Cornbread is delicious because it’s soft and a little sweet and lovely – do we really need to drop it in a fryer?  I feel like the people who liked fried cornbread are the same people who strangle themselves while masturbating or during sex to have more powerful orgasms.  Sometimes it’s ok to leave "really great" alone, you know? 

For dessert, Nicole and I got the banana cream pie.  I had not had banana cream pie since I used to get it as a kid at Termini’s in South Philly.  While good, like the devilled eggs, this banana cream pie did not compare with the banana cream pie of yore.  Also, compared with the size of their other serving, the slice of banana cream pie was rather small for the hefty $7.25 price tag.  I can complain about this because, even though I was stuffed, I have a separate stomach for desserts.  

One last thing to note is that while our service wasn’t bad, our waitress was in our face for most of the meal - and not in a helpful way, either.  When we got there, the bar was packed with people waiting for a table, and it was almost equally crowded by the time we left two hours later.  It was obvious that the waitress was trying to move us along as quickly as possible, whereas Nicole and I (especially me) needed some serious time to rest, recuperate, and calculate how how much we raised our respective percentages of arteries clogged (I went from 47% to 51% - hello majority!).

Even though I left feeling a bit disappointed, I would still recommend Blue Smoke, but with the advice that one should definitely try the pulled pork and the mac and cheese, and maybe get the chicken, sweet potato fries, and ribs (in that order).

And maybe, just maybe, I learned something from the meal.  Maybe I learned that nostalgia is a powerful deceiver, that life cannot be lived properly when constantly comparing the past to the present.  Or maybe I learned that there is no limit to the sentimentality I can attach to a memory involving either food or sex. 

Yeah, probably that last one.   

drink until you shit tour page
Jason posted on June 19, 2007

The official "Drink Until You Shit" Tour webpage is up.  You can pre-order tour t-shirts there and get tour information.  Remember, order t-shirts early to make sure that you get one.  We will soon be adding times that t-shirts can be picked up at Mick-Daniel’s (2nd & Snyder) for those in South Philly. 

The page is pretty self-explanatory, but if you have any questions, just drop me a line.

(One note: If you’re ordering multiple shirts, you can continue adding different sizes or quantities by selecting a size and hitting "Add to Cart."  For example, if you want a L and an XL, select L and hit "Add to Cart" and then select XL and hit "Add to Cart."  Dig?)   

my fight against the slow and painful decline of circumcision
Jason posted on June 19, 2007

This is an interesting article from CNN about the decline of circumcision rate in the US.  The article states:

According to a study by the National Health and Social Life Survey, the U.S. circumcision rate peaked at nearly 90 percent in the early 1960s but began dropping in the ’70s. By 2004, the most recent year for which government figures are available, about 57 percent of all male newborns delivered in hospitals were circumcised. In some states, the rate is well below 50 percent.

The article continues:

[Circumcision] is most prevalent in the upper Midwest. In 2004, according to data compiled by the federal Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, more than 79 percent of newborn boys in the Midwest were circumcised before leaving the hospital. Michigan and Kentucky had the highest rates, at 85 percent.

In the fast-growing West, the rate declined dramatically — from 64 percent in 1979 to just under 32 percent in 2004.

In California, the rate of hospital circumcisions among newborns was 21 percent. California — which has more immigrants than any other state — had the lowest circumcision rate in the study, which had comprehensive data on only 27 states.

I mean, crap.

Those who know me know that I am passionate about few things - creamed chipped beef, masturbating in front of a mirror, and, well, that’s about it.  Those and, of course, circumcision.

I am about as pro-circumcision as they come.  While the jury is still out about whether or not I can actually procreate a non-dragon child, if I do have a son, he will certainly be circumcised - even if I have to perform the operation myself or with the aide of a Franciscan monk and doctor named Michel.  This is not because I believe in the health benefits of circumcision but for one simple reason: uncircumcised birds look totally fucking weird.

I, as you might have surmised, am circumcised.  I am sure that when my parents made the decision to have me circumcised, it was based on a simple factor - that’s just what you do.  At the time of my birth in 1979, popularity of circumcision reached a record high in the United States at 85% (see here).  True, since 1979, new shit has come to light about circumcision, namely that all that stuff about it preventing penile cancer and facilitating genital hygiene may not be as true (or at least unassailable) as it was once thought.  And as the CNN article implies, an increasing number of people view circumcision as unnecessary and potentially harmful. 

I readily concede these points.  But then there’s this: uncircumcised birds look like aliens. 

Four of my buddies in college - out of a few dozen - were uncircumcised.  They celebrated this and I admit, I was a little jealous of their exclusive little club and their weekly "Guys With Covered Wagons" poker games.  But still, being a member of an exclusive club - even one that played poker every Wednesday night and got those potato skins from Rogie’s that were covered in sour cream - is not worth walking around with a penis that looks like a sausage.   

Since I am circumcised, I intend for all of my male progeny to be circumcised as well, regardless of potential health benefit (although that’d certainly be a plus) or possible pain (don’t be a pussy - I don’t remember feeling a thing).  The reason why I’d like my sons to be circumcised is that I don’t feel that I could properly relate to them if we had different-looking birds. 

I’ve seen my fair share of uncircumcised birds, both after Billy Joel concerts and in countless hours of pornography, and in short, they terrify me.  Admittedly, my natural inclination is to fear and hate what I don’t understand (dry ice, the Swedish language, love, etc), so when it comes to matters of the penis, a sensitive (get it?) topic to begin with, it should not come as a surprise that I have such a strong opinion in this matter.  And I don’t mean to overly come down on my uncut friends - if your parents were hippies or immigrants or poor or wanted women to recoil at the sight of your penis later in your life, that’s fine, man.  You know what I always say - when you’re judgin’, you’re not lovin’.  But I just don’t see how there’s any way, when the doctor asks my wife/girlfriend/driver whether or not we’d like our son to be circumcised, I’ll say, "Fuck it - let him keep the alien bird.  If he’s anything like his old man, the women he’ll be involved with won’t be able to tell if it’s a penis or a finger or a strong breeze anyway, so I might as well save the $1200." 

(I confess that I have thought about a scenario in which if I had two male children, one of them would be circumcised while the other would not.  This would serve as a real-life science experiment to discover once and for all which is better: to be circumcised or to be uncircumcised.  However, after spending a few weeks thinking about it, I came to the "duh" conclusion that both my theoretical male offspring would be so fucked up anyway (think: bat wings, fangs, etc) that they would not make for an ideal sample of the population and the experiment would be useless.)

Because I will surely have so little to bond over or talk about with my sons, at least I can ensure that our birds look the same.  I can and I must.  Statistics, CNN and the liberal media, and the influx of Asian and Latin American immigrants be damned - my sons are gonna get their birds chopped, just like their Pappy did.  That, my friends, is an example of a true American standing up for what he believes in.  God bless America, God bless me, and, most importantly, God bless my normal-looking bird.        

(Well, it’s kinda normal.  It’s just miniature, more like a toddler’s than a grown man’s.  Which is really a matter we should tackle another day.)

for the father who has everything…
Jason posted on June 18, 2007

There was a big debate among my brother and sister and I about what to get our dad for Father’s Day.  My dad is kind of hard to shop for.  He doesn’t really like many things, and what he does like he already has - or simply can’t have.  For example, he likes Marlboro reds (plenty of those), his big screen TV and shows about nature or murder (check), motorcycles (doesn’t have one and can’t ride one because of his bad back), and tools (has hundreds of them - also one time I tried to buy my dad a tool and got so flustered I wound up buying him an cd and a quart of antifreeze).

So really, what do you get for the father who doesn’t want much but has everything he wants?  Why, a Beretta .380, of course.

Make no mistake: we did not make this decision glibly.  I’ve written before that my dad suffers from chronic back pain leftover from an injury that put him out of work a few years ago.  Since then, he’s been on a steady regimen of painkillers.  Buying a gun for a man who is constantly on painkillers and muscle relaxers is not the brightest idea and should only be approached with caution and after diligent research.  But like I said, my dad is hard to shop for.  And that gun is shiny.  So a gun it is.

My mom got wind of our idea and was vehemently against it.  I asked her why, and the best reason she could come up with was “Because…it’s just not a nice present.”  I pointed out to her that in the South a gun would make an excellent Father’s Day present, but backed off shortly thereafter when I realized that this was the woman who lived with and was married to my dad at the height of his powers back in the early 80’s, and had put up with his numerous nights of jail, his being stabbed, and a few “the gun went off” incidents.  So she had every right to be against the gun gift.  

(You guys will have to pay to read about these “mishaps” in the book.  Sorry.  Uncle Jason’s gotta make some money somehow.)

But also we knew that a gun was what my dad wanted, as he mentioned something to that effect to my brother on one of their recent trips to the firing range.  So a gun he would get.  The only problem was how to actually going about getting the gun.

Simply put, we feared that our father would not pass the background check.  Our dad has had his share of brushes with the law in the past and though there’s been nothing major, we (his children) were not sure what exactly the background check would look for and what offenses would potentially weed him out (pun entirely intended). We decided that if he failed, one of us would go back a few days later and buy the gun ourselves and then give it to him.  I think this is technically illegal, but I’m not a lawyer.

Fortunately, that was unnecessary.  My brother sent me the email below on Friday, the day after he and my dad went and bought the gun.  I tried to summarize for publication on here, but he pretty much nailed it, so here’s the relevant part:

"[T]here was an automatic background check so he got the gun immediately instead of waiting.  Prior to the check he was talking to the dealer and was like, "So, this just checks for felonies, right?"  He then asked the dealer if there would be an issue with the background check because of previous run-ins with the law over child support money.  I thought that would be so many levels of irony there if I couldn’t buy him a gun on Father’s Day because of a previous issue with him not paying for my child support, but it was a non-issue."

So luckily, delinquent twenty-year-old child support payments notwithstanding (time really does heal all wounds), my brother and my father walked out of the gun shop with a brand-new weapon of destruction. 

I called my dad last night to wish him a happy Father’s Day.  He told me that he went around my grandfather’s house were a bunch of relatives gathered to celebrate over pizza and Kentucky Fried Chicken (between the gun and the KFC on Father’s Day, I’m not sure if my family’s still living in Philly or if they’ve moved to Arkansas).  I asked him about the gun and could tell he was thrilled about it.  He hadn’t taken it to the range yet, but I sensed that for once, we finally got him something he really, really wanted.  A gun.  A fucking gun. 

So Happy Father’s Day, Dad.  Just don’t kill yourself or anyone with that gun.  Or else Mom’s going to look pretty smart.

brake light, finals, music, great
Jason posted on June 15, 2007

This past weekend I was down the shore in North Wildwood, New Jersey.  I had my sister’s car for the weekend, which has one busted brake light.  Prior to taking off for the 90 minute drive, my dad warned me that I could get pulled over for this, but the cop would have to be a real dick to do so.  Since I’ve been on a roll lately, I didn’t worry about it and drove on down the shore.  The ride went fine.  As did the whole weekend.

On Sunday, my last day down the shore, I stopped by my aunt’s house to hang out with some family before I made the drive back to Philly (at which point I’d drop the car off and get a train back to NYC).  It was about 1:30pm, and one of my uncles who shall remain nameless (remember, Dad one of ten kids and Mom one of six kids, so lots of aunts and uncles) asked for a ride to the bar on my way out of town.  I said, "Sure, no problem," as it’s not unusual for someone related to me to start drinking at a bar at 1:30pm on a Sunday afternoon.

As we got into the car, me in the driver seat and him in the passenger seat, he asked how the car was running (all the men in my family are very into cars).  As I was backing out of the parking spot, I said, "Well, it’s fine.  It could use some new brake pads, though.  And the right brake light is out."

This spooked my uncle.

Uncle: [scared] "The right brake light is out?"
Me: [confused] "Um, yeah."
Uncle: "Oh - I ain’t riding with you then."

At that point, my uncle got up out of the deep seat and started opening the car door, getting out of the vehicle, now stopped.

Me: "I don’t get it - so what if the brake light is out?"
Uncle: [speaking through closed door/open passenger window] "You could get pulled over for that."
Me: "So what?"
Uncle: "So what?  I got a bench warrant out on me - We get pulled over, we get ID’ed, and I go to jail, homes."

My uncle started walking away from the car.  "Fuck it - I’ll walk," I heard as he strutted away.

I love my family.  I know this for sure because I was completely unphased by this turn of events, shrugged, and drove on back to Philly.  Just another regular day, learning my uncle has a bench warrant out for his arrest.  

[Shrug] 

*****************

A few quick notes on the NBA Finals:

1) It wasn’t as boring as everyone is saying it was.  Seriously.

2) Donyell Marshall is probably the worst basketball player in the NBA.  His incompetence in all matters basketball is astounding.

3) The image of Gregg Popovich on a large plasma TV will haunt my nightmares for the next few years.  I’m no Denzel Washington, but he is not a good-looking man (and he has shark teeth).  However, he is a basketball coaching genius, whereas I’m going to get so drunk and feel so alone tonight that I’m going to suck the marrow out of a T-bone (see below).  So he wins.  

*****************

Six Songs

"The Latest Toughs"  Okkervil River
Driving, catchy and quirky, it grabs you right away.  This song is quickly become one of my anthems of summer.  This is also a mainstay on my "I’m Washing My Balls and Rocking Out – What?" playlist, which I listen to while getting ready for a rousing night out (note: I use the word "rousing" in the broadest possible sense to include "staying in with a cherry vanilla sundae to watch six hours of prison documentaries").

"1-2-3-4"  Feist
Talk about catchy - holy crap.  This is almost too poppy or too girly for me to like, but because it has banjo in it (actually, two banjos if I’m not mistaken), it’s ok.   

"Into the Sun"  The Hiders
This is a very good band recommended to me by Katherine, formerly of Canada but now of the UK (unless she’s lying to me and making up faraway locations so I won’t track her down).  They sound a little like Neil Young before he got all high-horse and soapboxy.  Also, there’s a girl singer, which is cool.  Love the whole "I should have…" element to the song.  After all, the best advice I ever heard and the words I try to live by: "If you ever regret something, regret it because you did it, not because you didn’t do it.  There is no greater regret than lost opportunity."  So yeah, you should’ve. 

(You can check out their MySpace profile here.)

"Have You Forgotten"  Red House Painters
This song gives me the chills.  I don’t like to pick favorites, but if you only download one of these songs, download this one. 

"No Rest For The Weary"  The Blue Scholars
A lot of my friends who are more into hip hop and rap than I am make fun of my inclination toward "soft" rap, and this song only gives them more ammo.  Hey, I like rap about ho’s and guns and niggas trying to git at my shit, but I also like rap that sounds nice on my ears.  Also, these guys are from Seattle, which I find kinda weird, but appealing. 

"Rebel Rebel"  Ricki Lee Jones
Terrific, unique cover of a terrific, unique song.  This has to have been used in a movie or TV show.  It’s so ambient I actually float away - physically and mentally - when I listen to it.  Also I’m on mushrooms right now.

(Just kidding - I wish I was on mushrooms right now.  Speaking of, can someone get me mushrooms?  They’re for, uh, a friend.) 

*****************

I’m going to a barbeque in Hoboken tonight at which there will be so much beer, testosterone and raw meat that the world may explode.  Pray not only for me, but for yourselves.   

This is the start of a very fun stretch for me where every other weekend I have something cool going on: I’m in Boston at the end of this month, then I have "Drink Until You Shit" in July, Milwaukee and LA in August, Boston again in September, and then Knoxville/Nashville in October.  Not sure what’s going on in November (I’d love to go to the Caribbean) but then I’ll be in Seattle in December for the 2nd Annual West Coast Wine Drinking Competition, which, I’d like to point out, I won last year.

Life is good right now, thank you very much. 

[Have a good weekend.] 

the drink until you shit tour reminder
Jason posted on June 14, 2007

[Update: The DUYS tour page is up.  Click here for all the information you need and to order t-shirts.]

This is your official reminder: The 9th Annual Flood-Mulgrew Quasi-Celebrity "Drink Until You Shit!" Drinking Tour will take place in North Wildwood, New Jersey on Saturday, July 14, 2007.  Here comes fucking awesomeness.   

We will meet at 6:30pm at Casey’s on 3rd & New York.  We will be at Casey’s until no later than 8pm, at which point we will continue on the bar crawl through North Wildwood (exact itinerary still to be determined). 

I don’t expect any of y’all to attend, but if you’re in the area, it’s a guaranteed good time - if for no other reason you’ll wear a t-shirt that says "Drink Until You Shit!" on the back.  As I write this, Site Guy Brendan is creating a webpage dedicated to the tour, which will contain information on the tour and will give you the opportunity to buy a shirt (sizes small to XXL).  A few things about t-shirt buying:

- If you are going on the tour, you are strongly advised to buy your shirt ahead of time and as soon as possible.  If you’re from my neighborhood in Philly, we will be posting times that shirts can be purchased (for $15) at Mick-Daniels bar at 2nd & Snyder.  That information will be available in a few days (when the shirts come in).

- If you are going on the tour and not from my neighborhood, you are still strongly encouraged to buy your t-shirt before the tour.  When Site Guy Brendan creates the new page, it will have a paypal link for you to submit payment and provide shipping info (I guess shipping will be about $2 a shirt).  If I don’t know you and you’re coming on the tour, totally cool, but all I ask is that you don’t weird me out.  I embarrass very easily.  Thank you for your understanding.

- If you’re not going on the tour and just want a t-shirt, that’s fine too.  But the moral is, the sooner the better, because these bad boys are so fucking gorgeous they will certainly sell out (pics will be available on the new page).  And David and I are WAY too lazy to get more.   

To stress, we cannot guarantee t-shirt availability on the night of the tour as we have in years past.  Get your t-shirts as soon as I post pick-up/order info, which I will do in the next few days.    

Again, I don’t expect you guys to come from far and wide just for a drinking tour (but really, if you’re going to travel for any drinking tour, this is the one), but you can find info about accommodations in North Wildwood here.  Remember, the pub crawl is in North Wildwood, not Wildwood.  There’s a big difference. 

Personally, I can’t fucking wait.  Last year, my main complaint was that we didn’t have an itinerary, but we will be distributing one to each tour participant the day/night of the tour and will also have an Original Member manning a bullhorn to let everyone know when it’s time to move and where we’re moving.  Problem solved.  The 7th Annual tour featured about 60 participants and the 8th had about 130.  This year, we’re hoping for at least 200.  Giddy up.   

Every year, we have a Captain of the tour, based on who exhibited the worst behavior on the previous year’s tour.  Last year, our Captain was our dear friend Bucky, who, true to the spirit of the tour, actually shit himself in the course of the night on the 7th Annual tour.  This year’s Captain will be Chucky (Eclipse).  Eclipse, unlike Bucky, did not shit himself, but instead sat on a lawn near the bar at the end of the night and puked so violently that he looked like a giant, red-headed drunken sprinkler.  [Though exempted, I made a run at the captaincy by making out with a childhood friend (in front of my mom) and then walking home alone and crawling into bed with my buddy Kyle, who was crashing at my place.  Whoops.]  Chucky’s official duties as captain are merely ceremonial - there will be a presentation of a t-shirt with a "C" on it at the start of the tour - and all tour participants are encouraged to buy Chucky (as well as myself and David as tour founders) drinks all night.   

So that’s it for now.  If you can join us, we’d love to see you on July 14 in North Wildwood, NJ.  If not, you can expect many stories and many pictures shortly thereafter.  Hopefully someone poops himself again.  Because that was totally fucking awesome.

"The Drink Until You Shit Tour - An American Tradition Unlike Any Other" 

the pc stands for piece o’ crap
Jason posted on June 13, 2007

As a half-man/half-bear, I do not do well in the summertime.  Heat hits me hard, makes me sweaty, exhausted, stinky.  I know that you probably think these are the universal effects of heat on human beings, but that’s because you’ve never met me and so have never seen me in the heat.  You know how you feel when you’re getting changed in the moist, humid air of the gym locker room after a long workout?  Well that’s how I feel right now, sitting at my desk.  Because it’s 73 in my office.  And I just had to type the word "moist," whose letters are all over the keyboard.  God, I’m exhausted.

And so I celebrate and enjoy air conditioners in the summer, not just for personal reasons, but for health reasons.  Because it’s literally a matter of life and death, I am not afraid to crank those motherfuckers up to 11 from mid-May to October.  Crank it up, fuckers.  To 11.

(If you get both of those references, let’s get married or at least have a beer.  One’s easy, but the other’s a little harder.)

My apartment, however, presents a problem in the air conditioning department.  There are three rooms in my apartment that require AC: the front room, which was formerly my bedroom when I had a roommate (Brian) but has since been converted into an office; the middle room, formerly Brian’s bedroom but now my bedroom; and the living room, which is only about nine feet wide but is roughly thirty feet long and includes my kitchen and sitting/dining/jerking area.

The middle room (my current bedroom) and the living room both have security bars on their windows, meaning I can’t just slip and AC in there, as the windows are only about 13 inches deep (I know there’s a joke here, but I can’t find it).  I have addressed this problem in the living room by getting an in-room air conditioner, a cast-off from my mom.  It’s big and ugly (it looks kinda like R2D2) and has an exhaust tube that connects to my window, but it works and effectively cools the living room.  Always one willing to compromise looks for comfort (I’m wearing pajamas bottoms in my office right now), this ugly-but-working AC is ok with me.  

I have no such in-room AC for my bedroom.  Last summer, Brian used a small AC unit that was not very deep and fit perfectly in the window.  However, despite my protestations and bribes, when he moved out, he took this AC with him.  I offered to buy it from him, since he was moving to a place that did not have security bars on the windows and so could put any ol’ AC in them, whereas it was a bit difficult to find air conditioners that were short enough to fit in this particular window.  However, he refused.  Dick.

About a month ago, I began shopping for a small AC to fit in this window.  My search took me to several places but I finally found a suitable air conditioner at PC Richard.  For those of you outside of the NYC area, PC Richard is essentially a local Best Buy or Circuit City, but much, much shittier.  They try to pull the "family-owned" and small business cards in the face of competition from giants like Circuit City, but PC Richards proves a point that I have long held: there’s a reason why Best Buy and Circuit City are huge corporate giants - because they are much, much better than stores like PC Richard.  Just like I can take a dump in a box and put a guarantee on it, so can you call a store with crappy service and shittier products "family-owned" to test the intelligence of the consumer.       

But despite all this, I still bought the AC at PC Richard (not a smart consumer, am I).  Like I said, it’s not that easy to find a "short" air conditioner - especially so early in the season.  And again, my health and happiness depends on me being able to sleep in a cool room.  Also, the cold air masks that creepy baby/stale-old-man smell in my bedroom that I can’t seem to get rid of.  I needed the AC immediately.  And PC Richard had it.  Done and done.   

Installation of this air conditioner was, as you can probably guess, I totally fucking joke (I know I cried at least once), but fortunately my buddy Bill was in town that weekend and helped me through it.  Soon the AC was in the window and I was keeping it on full-blast even was it was still dipping into the 50’s at night.  All was right with the world.

But then, slowly, my AC started dying.  I first noticed this when I woke up one morning just before 6am, wet.  Usually when this happens I’ve either peed myself or my cleaning lady/lover Zoila has thrown a pail of water on me, as is customary after missionary-style lovemaking in her homeland (Belize? Guatemala? China?).  In this case I was wet not with urine or the post-sex juices mixed with mop water, but with sweat.  In the course of the night, the AC started blowing warm air; when I went to bed, it was nice and cold, but when I woke up, there was heat coming out of the AC.

I reacted to this with the hysteria reserved not quite for the national tragedy but more for the death of a beloved family pet.  I was nearly inconsolable at the prospect of my brand-new AC dying, and chalked up its poor performance to a freak of nature, a one-time mess up.  And wouldn’t you know it – that night I went to bed cold and woke up cold.  The AC made it through the night without a problem.  Hallelujah.

But alas, this success was short-lived.  Since then, I have been faked and duped with great frequency – one night it’ll work, the next it’ll die; for two nights it’ll work, for two it won’t, etc.  The story of my early summer (or late spring) has been alternatively sleep-filled and sleepless nights, with very little regularity.  Each time I lie down in bed on my cool and crisp sheets, slip my hand down my pants, and prepare myself for slumber, I have no idea if I will get a restful night of cold sleep or will awake in a few hours with my hair matted to my forehead, breathing in my own sweat-fumes.

After an especially nasty and hot last night (even though it was cool out) during which I woke up several times to find my crotch could have been used as a slip and slide for miniature people, I decided to call PC Richard to arrange to replace the AC with a new one.  Though the box was gone, I still had the receipt, had only bought the AC less than a month ago, and fo’ sho’ it did not work.  It wouldn’t be a problem to exchange. I thought; the company’s slogan is "97 years of honesty, integrity, reliability." 

Yeah, um, not really.

I was (extremely) rudely rebuffed by the "customer service" person at PC Richard.  Though I explained my situation in a very calm tone and asked only that I get a replacement AC, I was immediately asked if I had bought a store warranty.  Of course, I did not buy this warranty, since spending $50 on a warranty for a $120 air conditioner did not seem like a smart business decision on my part.  After that, the conversation turned and the customer service woman’s tone went from "unhelpful and disinterested" to "you’re a fucking idiot."  She ended the conversation by saying "Sorry - contact the manufacturer" - twice - and hung up on me (and I hadn’t even cursed). 

There will be a point in my life in the not too distant future at which I stop giving a fuck.  When this happens I will track this woman down.  I will not hit her (I haven’t hit a woman in over three weeks), but I will certainly throw something at her.  Not something huge, but maybe something like a can of Pepsi.  That’ll show her.

So now, in short, my life is in shambles.  My AC is broken and I’m terrified to fall asleep.  I was beat for $120 and will have to buy another $120 air conditioner this week (that is, if I find one short enough).  The stress has so affected me that I’ve been feeling a tingling in my left arm on and off all day long.  All I’ve wanted for the past month was an air conditioner that worked.  And maybe for Zoila to stop throwing water on me after we’ve had sex.  I got neither.  There is truly no justice left in the world.

Please, friends, learn from me.  Buy your cds at Virgin, drink your Starbucks, run in your Nikes, have lunch at McDonald’s.  If you stray away from the giants of corporate America, you will wake up in the middle of night sweating, spend your days exhausted, and the rest of your time plotting revenge on a faceless mean woman who was a dick to you because you weren’t smart enough to buy a warranty.  Learn from me, is all I ask.  If I know that my example has helped at least one of you avoid the troubles I’ve been through, I will sleep easier tonight.

(Though still sweating, of course.)   

sopranos, bleeps, music
Jason posted on June 11, 2007

First (and stop reading if you haven’t seen the last episode of "The Sopranos"), last night, I was furious.  My initial reaction (aside from, "Did the cable go out?") was that the ending of "The Sopranos" was a terrible let-down.  Not only that, I felt it was a slap in the face to the viewer.  I thought that the writers were being manipulative; by not paying off the final scene, they were taking advantage of the viewer, simply because they could.  Though suspenseful, it was not good television because it was so manipulative (and remember, I used to be a TV writer).  I’m not saying that I needed Tony’s brains splattered across the diner countertops, but seeing the guy who walked into the bathroom (who, by the way, looked a lot like Phil Leotardo) walk out with a gun drawn or even just having him walk out and Tony look at him would have offered me more closure.  Instead, the mood at the mini-Sopranos party I had at my place was angry, bitter and unfufilled (the cannolis I picked up at Ferrara’s were a hit, however).

But today, after a good night’s sleep and with time to think it over, I’m ok with the ending.  A lot of loose ends were tied up in the episode, and I was grateful for that.  And any way you cut it, "bad" writing or not, I can’t remember the last time I watched any form of entertainment - tv, movie or otherwise - during which my heart was pounding like it was in that last scene.  We were all completely frozen in place, completely enthralled.  Very gripping stuff. 

So I’m ok with it.  Seriously.  I am.  And God will I miss that show.   

[Here's a great conspiracy theory, courtesy of Deadspin:

"So here is what I found out. The guy at the bar is also credited as Nikki Leotardo. The same actor played him in the first part of season 6 during a brief sit down concerning the future of Vito. That wasn't that long ago. Apparently, he is the nephew of Phil. Phil's brother Nikki Senior was killed in 1976 in a car accident. Absolutely Genius!!!! David Chase is truly rewarding the true fans who pay attention to detail.

So the point would have been that life continues and we may never know the end of the Sopranos. But if you pay attention to the history, you will find that all the answers lie in the characters in the restaurant. The trucker was the brother of the guy who was robbed by Christopher in Season 2. Remember the DVD players? The trucker had to identify the body. The boy scouts were in the train store and the black guys at the end were the ones who tried to kill Tony and only clipped him in the ear (was that season 2 or 3?)."]

Second, this only gives further credence to what I stressed over and over again during my time as a TV writer: nothing is funnier than the bleep.

[youtube]EJJL5dxgVaM[/youtube]

Since I haven’t done this in some time, here’s a special bonus Six Songs.

Six Songs 

"Sweet Thing"  Van Morrison
I recently remade my make-out mix, formerly titled "Mood" (for secrecy’s sake) but now titled "Let’s Make Out or Something" (because I’m finding that secrecy doesn’t really help and/or matter).  The remodeling of the consisted of removing all songs by popular artists and leaving only songs by lesser known artists.  For example, in its previous incarnation, the mix included songs by U2, Phish, Fiona Apple, etc.  Since the goal of the make-out mix has always been to "foster an environment conducive to making out, heavy petting, and, God willing, sexual intercourse, without making the objectives of the mix apparent and thereby raising suspicions of the female present," it is necessary that the mix is subtly suggestive (title notwithstanding) without being aggressive or cheesy.  So gone were songs like "Trying To Throw You Arms Around The World" and the like.  Now, the mix consists exclusively of songs by artists that only more serious music fans would recognize (i.e. Nick Drake, Joseph Arthur, Yo La Tengo, Beulah - maybe not unknown musicians, but remember, most of the women I make out with listen to Chingy and Fergie). 

However, during this purge, I could not remove this song.  Of course, Van Morrison’s voice is instantly recognizable and any unsuspecting woman would quickly become suspecting after hearing the first few notes of that acoustic bass, but I just…couldn’t…do it.  It’s such a beautiful song that should be required on every make-out mix ever created.  The voice, the strings, the acoustic guitar and bass, the high-hat, all work in unison to create not a mood but a movement, a movement that says, "Go ahead and hug for a while. Then maybe kiss for a little bit. Everything is cool. Relax and enjoy the luxury of each other’s company."  It is for this reason that this song is one of my top ten favorite songs and will always be on any make-out mix that I create until the day I die (or am no longer able to make out).   

(This song isn’t on iTunes, but it should be easy to rip this song from Limewire or some other file sharing service.  And don’t feel bad about doing this; I think Van has enough cash.) 

"Here I Am Baby"  The Marvelettes
This song gets me moving - and grooving.  The story goes: I went through a slut phase, then I became a career woman (with real hair, real fingernails, got a job, going to school, and don’t need nobody help me handle my bidness), and then I met you.  For whatever reason, I dig you.  Let’s do this.  So it’s beautiful, really - and it makes me dance.  You can’t beat that.       

"Modern Romance"  Yeah Yeah Yeahs
Confession: this is the first Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ song I ever heard and I heard it for the first time about three weeks ago.  Like every "cool"/hipster-beloved band of the past six years (Strokes, Interpol, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, Arcade Fire, Arctic Monkeys, etc), it took me several months to even consider listening to them, so repulsed was I of the spoogefest that surrounded them.  I am more than a little bit in love with the second part of this song, which I will cut and call "Modern Romance Part Two" and add to my make-out list.  It’s a little scary, sure, but anyone who finds herself listening to my make-out mix in the first place can probably handle it (the weak are usually weeded out around drink two).   

(Also, I still hate Interpol and Arctic Monkeys.  Fuck them for making really bad music.) 

(FYI: The version linked above is a live version which I can’t hear and haven’t heard, whereas I was writing about the studio version, which is not available on iTunes.) 

"Wake Up"  The Arcade Fire
Speaking of hipster-beloved bands, per my explanation above I hated this album when it came out.  Of course, now I love it (and of course, I haven’t gotten the new one yet).  The last minute forty-five of this song always put a smile on my face and a swivel in my hips.  Also, I’ve decided that I want to put together a boy-girl band that will be described as a cross between Fleetwood Mac, Sly & The Family Stone, and The Arcade Fire.   

"Here Comes the Meter Man"  The Meters
I know I just recommended one of their songs a few weeks back, but spring and The Meters go so well together.  Required listening when I’m walking around Soho in the warm weather, staring at women just a little too long, thinking I’m much more cooler than I actually am.  This jam could be 40 minutes long and it’d still be too short.   

"I Wanna Buy You A Ring"  Huffamoose
An endearing and romantic song from a very good (yet very unknown) band from Philly.  I hear so much from my friends about engagement rings that I’m pretty sure that I never want to buy one - and if this means not getting married, well then so be it.  But this song is so sweet and simple that it restores my faith.  In what, I’m not exactly sure.  The second pre-chorus that starts "I wanna be in fifth grade again" makes me especially warm in my belly.      

[I once went on a blind date with a girl who told me, quite off-handedly, that the strongest feelings she'd ever had for anyone was in grade school.  It kinda blew me away, the way she casually mentioned something that made her, in my eyes, so vulnerable.  It also helped that she was extremely attractive (thanks again, Johnny).  Of course, after the date, even though we spoke on the phone like old friends prior to the date and had a great time during the date, she never called me again.  I wonder if this is because she was about a 9.2 and I look like Daniel Baldwin with less hair and after a two week whipped cream binge.  But I will never forget her saying this, and the way she said it.  Oh well.  She's probably now dating a guy who can do more than six push-ups, but he probably doesn't have a 42" plasma or a banjo hanging in his office.  The jerk.] 

[By the way, I got a banjo.  It's blowing my mind.  I might marry it.]