Tag: Genuine Sarcasm

I had just finished reading several articles on the popular link dump site reddit.com (a process I consider just slightly less productive than, say, masturbation), when I realized… I’m more afraid of Homeland Security, the FBI, the RIAA, extraordinary rendition, being Tazered by cops, having my computer seized, my possessions confiscated, or my person indefinitely detained by airport security than I am about any terrorist.

Better late than never I discover John Cooper Clarke. I went to see the new Joy Division movie Control at the Nuart theater in Santa Monica with some friends this weekend. Now I have a fairly self-evident shallow taste in music, and had originally written off singer/songwriter Ian Curtis as a morose, proto-emo spaz, but if I was trapped in a loveless marriage, had a kid, and was fighting grand mal seizures while trying to get my band going at age 23, yeah, I might not be able to hold it together, either.

Anyway, that’s enough of a pity party for a man who achieved more than I ever will by his early 20s.

In addition to hearing more Joy Division than I ever had in one sitting (“…you mean there’s more besides ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’?”), I also got to hear the dry monotone of a Manc poet barreling through a poem about “Chicken Town.”

I’m not going to front. As anyone who’s read the Music section of my MySpace page can attest, these rap songs are my hip-hop bread and butter. White bread, that is.

The Top 10 Rap Songs White People Love

Given that, it will surprise exactly no one that I performed “It Takes Two” at karaoke a few nights ago, or that I wrote some quote-unquote erotic fanfic about “Bust A Move” on Weak Nights.

As spot-on as some of these selections (and honorable mentions) are, I would gladly trade “Whoomp (There It Is)” — a song I knew barely qualified as music even when I was in high school — and “Hip Hop Hooray” for Neneh Cherry and her Buffalo Stance. Where is the love, white rap enthusiasts?

And I would love to listen to “Hey Ya”, but it’s just a little too …you know.

“You need to smile more.” she said, walking up to me.

I was staring at my hands, weathered from a day of manual labor to which they were unaccustomed, as independently-owned gasoline pumped into my car.

I looked up, nonplussed. This unreasonably gregarious stranger’s opening volley reminded me of the Bill Hicks routine:

“You know it takes more energy to frown than it does to smile!”
“You know it takes more energy for you to point that out than it does to leave me alone?”

But since I’ve been trying to appear less misanthropic lately, I conceded and flashed her a wan smile. She smiled back.

I’m not saying it’s true, just that some people are saying it. Hmm… what else was I going to say?

Oh yes, my commercial got bumped from the Heinz Top This TV contest. The form letter I received listed some of the possible reasons:

• The commercial isn’t 30 seconds, and nothing ticks off the TV network guys like an ad that’s too long or too short.
• The commercial contains “copyrighted material”—stuff like music or video that somebody else created and/or owns.
• The commercial contains inappropriate content that your mother may not like and we can’t show on TV.
• The commercial contains another company’s name, trademark or logo.

Well I’m not an idiot, if you look at the timeline you’ll see the clip is 30 seconds, so that’s ruled out. And although it’s a pretty good imitation of the Saw movies, I didn’t use any copyrighted material from them, so that’s the second one. Finally I took care to cover up the Sharp logo on the TV (maker of quality sets owned by people such as Hollywood actor Harrison Ford), so it wouldn’t interfere with my creative vision. The only possibility is the third one about content your mother wouldn’t like. I actually thought this would exclude 90% of the other videos because my mom doesn’t like mawkish, saccharine pabulum.

Oh well, maybe Heinz just didn’t want their product associated with people who kidnap and enslave young girls. You say tomato, I say strychnine (hint). Whatever. Anyway, here’s the video again; and of course, thank you to all my friends who helped out!

Anyway, look for the video on the comedy website Weak Nights!

Also Chiller TV is having a video contest, so maybe I can throw together a light-hearted musing on a talking ketchup bottle for them.

But before I can tell you that story, I need to tell you about Gallagher and Andy Kaufman. The watermelon smashing prop comic, well known as Gallagher, has a less-well known brother. A twin brother in fact. And so when Gallagher’s comedy career began to take off, there were plenty of places for him to wield his Sledge-O-Matic and similarly cudgel-like wit. In fact, there were so many places for Gallagher to perform, it turned out to be more than one man could do alone….

I was programming for the internet and editing video in my spare time. I was eating a lot of junk food. I wasn’t working out.

So my first day at a gym was a chance to turn things around.

The problem with working out more in an afternoon than you had in June, May and April combined isn’t just that your muscles are incredibly ill-suited to the task. After my exhaustive first workout, my trainer explained the importance of strengthening one’s core muscles to the gaunt, sweating corpse seated across from him.

“Your body is like a sausage casing. And no matter how much you force into one end, if the other isn’t strong, whatever you put in will just come out the other.”

“Please don’t mention food.”

He stopped in the middle of his routine to notice my glassy stare. “…do you feel a little nauseated?”

I slowly inhaled through my mouth and completed half a nod. He told me to sit there while he went to get me something to drink.

And then I did something stupid.

I said to myself, “Just don’t think about throwing up.”

At that point, it was all over. It’s been so long since I vomited in public, in front of chinese girls getting in shape to be trophy wives, trainers trying to sell new signups on their premium fitness package and everybody, that I forgot what it sounded like. That stifled staccato. That gurgling, unending blaaaarrrggg. It sounds just like what people pretend it sounds like. And I was experiencing it in technicolor and sensurround.

Having successfully wrapped up my first day at the gym, I felt just awful. I was working out.

While poring through my own overlong posts pontificating on concepts I do not fully understand, I came to realize why most writing on the web sucks. It reminds me of the quote from Blaise Pascal (or maybe Mark Twain) that goes something like: “I sent you this longer letter only because I did not have the time to make it shorter.”

Consider brevity and you’ll make a stronger point. Either that, or write for Wikipedia.

(That diminishing return of useful knowledge mentioned above is the effect of what’s known as the bike shed problem.)