A couple of totally unfunny things that I need your help with:

1) Please sign up for the “monthly” email list. I know you’ve heard this a thousand times, but I’m going to start relying on this list and using it a lot more going forward (which is to say, just plain using it). Obviously, now that I live in LA and have essentially lost two hours of my day (LA commute: 2.5 hours a day; NYC commute: 30 minutes a day), I’m not posting as much as I have in the past. Also, I hardly ever go out here and am miserable, which sort of doesn’t give me a lot of material. But at any rate, one of my New Year’s Resolutions for 2009 is to send out those monthly emails, which will contain posts that will not otherwise be found on the site. So sign up, please.

(One of my other big resolutions: Travel. Once I get a full slate of vacation days in the new year, my goal is to take a bunch of long weekend trips here out west that I couldn’t normally take from NYC. So Seattle, San Fran, Austin, Denver, and others are all in my plans for 2009, as is another cross-country drive, this time through the middle of the country. So look out.)

2) Because I spend so much time in the car, I am always looking for new music. Please please please send me any music suggestions to the same old address (jason_at_jasonmulgrew.com) and I will be your best friend. I’m a rut musically and need some guidance.

3) For those who live in the South Bay (Manhattan, Hermosa, Redondo and the surrounding area), my roommates and I need a cleaning lady. If you can recommend one that won’t rob us while we’re out and/or kill us in our sleep, we’d be grateful.

4) Site Guy Brendan is getting married in a week, so I’ve been unable to ask him for anything for the past, oh, three months. You’ll see above that it says I’m “28, bipolar and hungry.” I’ve been 29 since July 17. If you can send me and updated banner with “29″ in it to make SGB’s life easier, I’ll give you a link to whatever you want. Otherwise, please don’t email me saying “Dude, you’re 29 now.” We’ll fix it at some point.

Now that the begging is out of the way, let’s move on.

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Just two thoughts about the election and I promise I won’t speak again about politics until 2012:

1) I, like most reasonable people, was saddened that Prop 8, the ban on same-sex marriage in California, passed here in California, by a 52.5% to 47.5% margin. People here in LA are up in arms about this, demonstrating all over the place, and their anger is justified. The country is at war, my 401K is in the drain, and I probably won’t be able to get a mortgage if I wanted – but I’m really go to prevent two people who are in love from getting married, just because their gennies match? Really? If for no other reason, gay marriage should have passed here in CA because, I mean, do you know what kind of parties gay people throw? Are you kidding me? The residents of Cali were just robbed of some fabulous wedding parties featuring a lot of Madonna and Duran Duran and cute little cupcakes and people with great hair and impeccable taste in clothes. This is a travesty in and of itself.

However, I can’t say I’m entirely surprised that Prop 8 failed because of – you guessed it – Mexicans and Mexico-type people. You see, for every gay-loving liberal person in California, there is one Catholic Latino who cleans his/her house, one Catholic Latino who does his/her dry cleaning, one Catholic Latino who takes his/her order at Jack in the Box, one Catholic Latino hanging outside of Home Depot hoping to help install new shower doors at his/her house, one Catholic Latino to change his/her oil, etc. Even if only half of those Catholic Latinos are registered voters, there’s still a lot more Catholic Hispanic people in California then there are those who love gays and hope they can marry. Combine these Catholic Latinos with a propaganda campaign that stressed the “Your kids will be taught about gay marriage in school!!!!” and the fact that those many people opposed to Prop 8 – young people – are not as well-registered (poor phrase) as they should be, and you get 52.5% Yes, 47.5% No.

The only silver lining – if we can even say there are any – is that gay marriage will pass in California – and not just eventually, but soon. Mixed-race marriages were only approved in Cali in 1948, so the state is a little slow to respond, but gay people will be able to marry (and have wedding parties with little cupcakes and such). Why, you ask? Because for gay marriage not to become legal would be retarded. Just 100% retarded.

(How’s that for political analysis?)

2) There was a tremendous response to my “election eve” post on Monday, both from Democrats (theme: “Preach, brother!”) and Republicans (theme: “Ur an asshol”) alike. However, there is one thing I regret writing in that post, inasmuch as a person can regret writing anything in an internet diary: When I wrote that I had probably out-earned the ex’s dad who said his taxes went it “dishwashers” and their families. One reader, in an email titled “farewell to your blog”, called me out on it: “There is nothing more douchy and Manhattany than a guy who has to prove himself better than another by comparing salaries.”

This is absolutely true and I admit, a d-bag move on my part. BUT, though I could have articulated it better, I still stand by my point. This guy was equating success with monetary value, i.e. my success has made me wealthy; now, I pay a lot of taxes in order to finance the existence of poor, unsuccessful people, who strive only to be dishwashers. I was turning around his logic and saying that I was someone who was on welfare (for a short time) growing up and aspired to be more than a dishwasher and, to some extent, have succeeded. As such, I have probably paid a similar amount in taxes as this ex’s dad because of my earnings recently (maybe not last year, but likely in 2006 – what a glorious, magical year, thanks to NBC, DreamWorks, and DK Publishing). If you want to throw down and say your wealth subsidizes bums, I’ll point out that as a former bum, I probably paid more in taxes than you did last year. Me = HNIC. You = Not HNIC.

One last point: I think that there are two misconceptions about the welfare system:

a) That every tax dollar goes directly to the welfare system. I can’t find any firm numbers on this, but it simply ain’t true. We live in the greatest country in the world and it costs money to keep us at Number #1. Things like infrastructure (everything from roads and bridges to police and fire), defense and education don’t come cheap and they, like welfare, are also paid for by you, John Q. Taxpayer. So every last penny of your tax dollars does not go straight from your paycheck into the crack pipe of the project dweller.

Which brings us to the second misconception:

b) That every person on welfare is either living in an inner city project eating KFC or living in the middle of nowhere and building a meth lab. Look guys – I watch just as much “Cops” as the rest of you. Of course, someone is paying for crack with their welfare money. Of course, someone is buying cough medicine to make meth with their welfare money. But c’mon – this isn’t always the case. Not to get all Oprah on you guys, but in the case of my family, we were doing just fine – we took vacations down the shore, I got lots of He-Man stuff for Christmas, and things were great. Then my dad got laid off, and boy, did that change some things: my parents divorced, my athletic career ended before it began, I picked up both a sense of humor and a weight problem, etc. The point is that there are a lot of hard-working people who are or were once on government assistance. Just please keep that in mind.

And now that’s it. No more politics until 2012. Promise.

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Six Songs

(Many songs can be heard on mixwit)

“Poke” Frightened Rabbits
Gorgeous song, an immediate addition to the “Let’s Make Out or Something” playlist. So pretty and sad and complex and haunting that you probably won’t catch the line “Or should we kick its cunt in and watch as it dies from bleeding.” But it’s there. Oh, it’s there. And that, my friends, is romance.

(Note however that these guys are Scottish – they used the word “cunt” like we would say “thanks” or “awesome.” I think they even name dogs “Cunt” over there. So it’s not a big deal to them at all.)

“The Company I Keep” Drive By Truckers
Because sometimes I feel like shit, too.

God, I wish it got cold out here (in Southern California). One of my favorite things about winter is that it’s whiskey-drinking season. How the fuck am I going to drink whiskey when it’s only 68 degrees at night? The other night it was a little chilly and we have a fire pit in our backyard, so I poured myself some bourbon and went to sit out by the fire. However, we were out of lighter fluid and I couldn’t get the log to catch, so I grabbed some junk mail and lit that on fire and threw it in the pit. Not a good idea. I was sitting there with my bourbon for maybe two minutes before I was coughing on the smoke – apparently, lighting mail on fire causes a LOT of smoke – and was back in the house in under five minutes, filling pint glasses with water to throw on the fire to put it out. Total, total disaster. I guess I’ll just have to get my fill of whiskey this winter when I’m back on the east coast. But man, do I miss a nice glass of whiskey on a cold night.

“Red Satin Dress” Cherryholmes
Three things about this song:

1) Bluegrass is awesome. Really, anytime I have my iPod on “shuffle” and a solid bluegrass tune comes on, a) I can’t turn it off; and b) I immediately feel better hearing it.

2) “The Sweet Princess” is a great name for a frontier tavern.

3) So the girl in the red satin dress is the devil, right? Am I getting that right?

“Dandy” The Kinks
So the guy in this song is gay but playing straight, right? Am I getting that right?

“Lily and Parrots” Sun Kil Moon
I had to have recommended this before, but it’s worth nothing that few songs make me want to rock harder than this. That’s really saying something.

(And it’s only one of 102 five-star songs out of 8500+ on my iTunes. Actually, about 550 of the 8500 are still unrated, so there still may be more five-stars lurking out there, but I think I’ve caught them all.)

“How Can I Tell You” Liz Durrett
This week, because of daylight savings, it’s now dark when I leave work. This means that my commute home, which before was “juuuust bearable” (about an hour-fifteen to go 17.6 miles), is now firmly entrenched in “completely unbearable and homicide-inducing” – apparently LA people don’t know how to drive in the dark. I wrote before that when I moved to LA and started doing this commute, I learned how and why parents beat their children, why couples get divorced, and why so many kids grow up hating their parents – because few things can ruin a person’s mood than a long, bad commute home, and this mood is then in turn taken out on those around the bad commute person.

(The good thing: When I move back to NYC next year, I will never again say, “Oh, I don’t ever go above 23rd Street.” Christ, at this point I think I could live in Rhode Island and be ok with commuting to NYC.)

So when I have a bad commute, I try to mitigate its effects on myself, my roommates and my friends (for some reason, Friday evening is always the worst drive, even though Friday morning is the easiest). After a long, slow, blood pressure-raising drive home, I will pull into my driveway, turn off my car, and sit in the car, listening to this song. I know, I know – it makes me sound like a crazy person, just sitting there in the dark car, head back, eyes often closed, listening to this chick cover Cat Stevens – but I need a few minutes to decompress, to take deep breaths, and to calm down, lest I go straight into my house, put my fist throw a wall, grab a beer, and lock myself away in my room.

These are good moments, in the car listening to this song, completely shutting off my anger and letting the calm flow over me. And now, whenever I’m at work or on a plane or cleaning my room and listening to the iPod, when this song comes on, I completely shut down – it’s like someone is putting nitrous through the vents: I hear it and get calm, sleepy and quietly content. See you later, stress.

I’m not sure it’ll have the same effect on you, but if you’re looking for a chill-out/stress-reducing song, try it out.

[Have a good weekend.]