Jul 25, 2007

Random Crap - July

As the title says, just some random crap folks.

  • Finished the latest (and *sniff* final) Harry Potter book yesterday at lunchtime. I had about 50 pages or so to go on Monday night when Mr. Sandman came for a visit, so I decided to save it for when I was wide awake. Very, very good ending to the series. Turns out that Vader really was Luke's father. I was shocked!
  • The Yankees continue to roll over the worst that the American League has to offer. Unfortunately, Boston keeps winning so the Yankees are no better off than they were last week with respect to the AL East. They are, however, moving on up in the Wild Card chase. Just like George and Weezy Jefferson.
  • Gia and a girlfriend of hers went to see a Poison concert last night. Thanks God she has friends who support her 80's hair band fetish! I can't even imagine going to that show with her. It would be like me dragging her to a comic book convention. Oooh, did I mention that Ratt opened up for them? Round and round...
  • I can't get enough of Lindsay Lohan and her recent troubles. Britney Spears makes me sad because there are kids involved, but I love the Lohan! Maybe because she grew up two towns away. Maybe because her dad was having drinks in my friend's bar the night he got his DWI. Maybe, just maybe because she was chasing down her assistant's mother while drunk and coked out down the streets of LA. Someone needs to make a movie about this she-Terminator. Now!
  • Baseball Geek Alert - Curtis Granderson of the Detroit Tigers is having a season for the ages. He is on pace to hit 47 doubles, 26 triples and 24 home runs. If he stays on pace he would be only the 6th MLer with 20+ in each category. EVER. The other five are George Brett, Willie Mays, Jeff Heath, Jim Bottomley and the immortal Frank Schulte. It feels so good to let my inner baseball geek out to feed sometimes. Rowr!
  • Did anyone out there even bother reading this? I'm not doing this for my health people!

Jul 23, 2007

Holy Fucking Shit!

Is this real? Did the inmates of some Filipino prison really get together and perform "Thriller" by Michael Jackson.

I can't seem to find anything to dispute those facts, but c'mon...is this what they really do in those prisons to rehabilitate these guys.

I'm also probably the last person to post this YouTube video on his blog. I see, via a simple Google search, that it already is everywhere. Oh well.

By the way, that chick in the tube top is hot! Right, Slyde?


Jul 17, 2007

I am secretly an important man

I have a copy of an old CD from the late 80's from Sub-Pop records. Don't have it in front of me , so I forget what it was called (I think it is called Sub-Pop 2000, but I can't be sure), but it was a compilation thingy that had early stuff from the likes of Soundgarden and Nirvana.

It also contained a spoken-word gem from a screaming maniac named Steven Bernstein. It was easily my favorite track on the CD. So weird and wonderful that I got many a friend to listen to his nearly incoherent ramblings.

My favorite parts are when he yells "Silly Girl!" after stating that Jackie-O received fresh oranges from JFK and the delightful "the picture of Marilyn Monroe flutters across the roof, steaming, shaped like me, shaped like my ass!"

I have no idea what any of it means but I love it. Here it is in print form, but believe you me it loses a ton from the audio version of it. I won't even try to put it in any kind of standard poetry/song format because it's meant to be rambling. Enjoy!

Come Out Tonight
by Steven Jesse Bernstein

Forecast in chrome and plastic, tyrants breathing out oil, slavery, planet hunger versions of Jackie-O. Sherry, Sherry baby, won't you come out tonight. And the stars whisper like old blood at the edges of the body of night. She stood with one hand on the phone for four hours, poised as only a few seconds had passed. I watched her through the crack between the shade and the sill. She waited for a forecast in human trembling, together with other important women. Come, come, come out tonight. The world suffers for her. The clock hurries like a terrified animal and stops, dribbling saliva. She is eating chicken pie and bubble gum. For a month the Luftewaffe lived on raisins, same with the French after the war. Jackie-O received fresh oranges from John Kennedy. Silly girl! She can not put down the telephone receiver. She is waiting to receive my body of work. She wants to take it into her ear. A modeled flush builds under her cheeks. She eats Christmas candy while she waits. The telephone rings and rings. I am not at home. I am with Jackie-O. We are eating oranges from the President. We are alone on the roof of a Park Avenue penthouse. Picture of Marylin Monroe in my back pocket, molded by heat and sweat to the shape of my buttocks. You are gripping the phone, smiling, eating candy, crying, "I am with the important women now." I am secretly an important man. Hang up the phone, I can't dance with you anymore. Go to your freezer and get a Popsicle. Go to your TV. Turn on your TV. You will see me and Jackie-O. Sh e will be taking it in the ear, my body of work. In the planetarium, you will receive a forecast: I will always be more important than you. You will never be important enough. You will never be on the repent end of slavery, never be the one to wield hunger against humanity. Heaven will never be an extension of your body. Your body will always belong to someone else. The picture of Marylin Monroe flutters across the roof, steaming, shaped like me, shaped like my ass. The sky is filled with oranges during t he war. We eat them. The President is alone in a room. He is unimportant. As we eat his oranges the sky grows blacker. The moon ripens and turns red. It rots and is swallowed by the darkness. You are still by the phone. It is ringing and ringing, dead. Sherry, Sherry baby, won't you come out tonight. It is completely dark. The earth freezes. You put down the receiver and go to the window. Come, come, come out tonight.

Jul 15, 2007

Jaan Pehechaan Ho

This may be my favorite thing in the world. It's from a Bollywood movie called Gumnaam that Thora Birch's character is watching in the film Ghost World.

It makes me smile. Every. Time. I. Watch. It.

What cracks me up is the plot outline on IMDB for "Gumnaam":

"After dancing together in a night club, seven young people (five men and two women) are told they have won the night's dance contest and are instructed to board a small plane that will take them to their prize holiday. Instead, they end up stranded on a small island with one of the plane's co-pilots. In search of shelter, the eight go to a mansion where they meet a sinister-looking butler who announces that he knows all them and has been expecting their arrival. After a few musical numbers, castaways begin dropping dead one by one. Who could the killer be, and will any of them escape his grasp?"

Yeah...that's what I thought the film would be about.

The woman in gold is into expressing herself through dance more than anyone else I have ever seen. Either that or it is an epileptic fit. I can't be sure.

I also love that the name of the band is "Ted Lyons and his Cubs". And why is that in English?

All superb examples of why Bollywood fucking rocks the house!

Jul 10, 2007

Old Crap

Ran into a little something that I had written way back in 2000. It was merely intended to make my friends Peter and Mary (sorry, didn't hang with any Pauls back then) laugh, and it is incredibly stupid. So I figured, why not post it on my blog? Sure.

Anyhow, this was right after the film Grosse Pointe Blank came out. There was a quote in it that sounded really familiar, like I had heard it in some other film. I did some research and I found that there was a similar quote in the film Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory.

After a night of drinking tequila, I must have started thinking of some absurd similarities between the two films and I jotted them down. It turned into the mess below. I would say enjoy, but it's really not that funny.

Grosse Pointe Wonka

Basic Plotlines:
Wonka - Man attempts to find something noble and good in the children of the world by spending some time with a chosen handful of them.
Blank - Man attempts to find something noble and good in himself by spending some time with his childhood sweetheart.

The Actors:
Wonka - Gene Wilder is a gifted, comedic actor who worked in many a film with his friend Richard Pryor.
Blank - John Cusack is a gifted, comedic actor who worked in many a film with his friend Jeremy Piven.

Main Characters:
Wonka - Weirdo loner
Blank - Weirdo loner

Dr. Frankenstein:
Wonka - Wilder played him in "Young Frankenstein"
Blank - Cusack played him in "Better Off Dead" - ok that was a reach.

Their professions:
Wonka - Works with wacky assistants (Oompa Loompas) in a job no one would really believe he has.
Blank - Works with a wacky assistant (Marcella) in a job no one actually believes he has. And he tells 'em straight out what he does.

Good Music:
Wonka - All of the Oompa Loompa songs (especially the one after Mike TV gets shrunk…creepy)
Blank - All the greatest 80's songs in one movie (The Clash, The Pogues, Siouxsie and the Banshees, The Specials…very cool)

Good Poetry:
Wonka - "There's no earthly way of knowing / Which direction we are going / There's no knowing where we're rowing / Or which way the river's flowing / Is it raining? / Is it snowing? / Is a hurricane a-blowing? / Not a speck of light is showing / So the danger must be growing / Are the fires of hell a-glowing? / Is the grisly reaper mowing? / Yes, the danger must be growing / 'Cause the rowers keep on rowing / And they're certainly not showing / Any signs that they are slowing!" - Wonka
Blank - "I'll be comin' around the mountain when I come / I'll be comin' around the mountain when I come / I'll be blowing your fucking head off / I'll be blowing your fucking head off / I'll be whacking your fucking mind out when I come" - Grocer

Rejection:
Wonka - "You stole fizzy lifting drinks! You bumped into the ceiling, which now has to be washed, and sterilized, so you get nothing! You lose! Good day sir!" - Wonka
Blank - "Hey Jenny Slater. Hey Jenny Slater. Hey Jenny Slater. " - Paul

Cool New Words:
Wonka - "Hsawaknow" is Wonkawash spelled backwards.
Blank - "Shakabuku" is a swift, spiritual kick to the head that alters your reality forever.

Sanity Checks:
Wonka - "What is this, some kind of freak out?" - Violet
Blank - "You're a handsome devil. What's your name?" - Mary Blank to Martin

Vicious Name Calling:
Wonka - "You're an inhuman monster!" - Grandpa Joe to Wonka, although technically he was wrong...it was just a test for Charlie.
Blank - "You're a psychopath!" - Debi to Martin, although technically she was wrong because, as we all know, psychopaths kill for no reason. Martin kills for money. It's a job.

The Quotes That Started it All:
Wonka - "Where, oh where is fancy bred, in the heart or in the head?" - Wonka
Blank - "Where are all the good men dead, in the heart or in the head?" - Debi

Note - See...told you it was pretty silly - Earl

Jul 9, 2007

Fun in the sun.

Had a weird and wonderful time in Montauk this past weekend. Went a little something like this:

After a 3 hour and 15 minute drive (fuck!), we finally arrived in Montauk last Thursday at around 3:30PM. We checked into our hotel quickly, then popped over to another hotel where a bunch of family and friends were staying to say hello. Then we headed over to a place called Dave's Grill to make reservations for dinner.

We headed over there because they have a funky reservation policy. You can call or stop by the restaurant anytime after 4:30 for same-day reservations. Getting through is sometimes tough, so many of the locals line up around 3:30-4:00ish to make sure they get one. That's what we did.

There were maybe 6 people ahead of us in line, and one of them had this great looking black dog. Gia, as she is apt to do, immediately went over to play with the doggie. She was surprised when she looked up and say that the owner was Aida Turturro, of "The Sopranos" fame. This led to us running into her, and her dog, 2 more times over the next few days. We never acknowledged her celebrity, and she never acknowledged our raw sexual magnetism. Must have been tough for her. She, and her doggie, were super, super nice.

The next day was Gia's birthday. We went out for an early breakfast at Mr. John's Pancake House with some of my family. After a brief interlude with Ms. Turturro (she must have been stalking us) we headed to the beach for the day with the rest of the crazies. Gia had such a good time getting knocked around in the surf. At one point, my niece came up to tell me that "your girlbriend id geddin' knocked down and she gonna dwown". I looked into it, but decided she was fine. Tough love, I always say.

Then dinner at The Shagwong for all the adults in the group. All 10 of us. There are better restaurants in Montauk, for sure, but we couldn't find any to accommodate our group. We had a blast anyway. I'm not sure my mother has recovered from the conversation yet. Shocking stuff.

Saturday, we spent most of the morning and early afternoon on the beach with my family before they headed back home. Then G and I took a drive to a place called Duryea's Lobster Deck for lunch. It's a casual eating joint overlooking the Long Island Sound with great views.

The table next to us had a couple of little terriers, and at one point the little one got away. I boldly rescued the doggie and returned it to the table triumphantly. Gia, as she is apt to do, started playing with the dog and talking to her owner who turned out to be Louise Lasser. Don't know if you remember her, but she was the titular star of "Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman" in the 70's and she was married to Woody Allen for a brief time in the late 60's. She was real sweet.

The rest of the evening was filled with karaoke (Gia sang "Right Hand Man" and blew the doors off the joint), decent drinks and bad food. I won't mention the joint we had bad food, but we should have known better..

Good times. And I'm actually a little tanned. Slyde can attest to the fact that me getting tan is something that never happens. Too Irish, I guess.

Jul 3, 2007

Rough day

It was a tough one.

Went out last night, almost as an afterthought. Wound up drinking way too much and not eating anything. So some of the salient details of the night are a bit fuzzy.

Wasn't feeling so good this A.M., but I had to wake up early for a conference call (yeah, that's right Slyde). I think I still may have been a bit drunk from the night before. Oops.

Then I went with Gia to drop Syd off at the cat groomer, and then to the hospital for a mammogram appointment for her.

The mammogram went great, the cat groomer....well, not so much.

They were barely into it when Syd freaked out. Big time. He is so gentle all the time, it's easy to forget that he is huge and really, really strong.

He bit the groomer in the thumb after breaking free while he was being combed. He took a small chunk of flesh off of her thumb on one side and bit through her nail on the other side.

HE BIT THROUGH HER NAIL.

Ouch! She was not in a good mood when she called us so that we could pick him up. I don't blame her. She was in better spirits by the time we got there, but not by much. We offered to pay for any medical expenses she might incur, but she wasn't even sure she was going to go to the doctor and she said it was an inherent danger in her job.

Still we felt bad. So did Syd. He appears to be over it, though. He's sleeping on my foot as I type this.

I hope he doesn't have a hankerin' for human blood now. He's could be dangerous!