House cleaning, and a few requests

Doing a little cleanup on the ole' Bug-Eyed Blog this week. Out with the trash and in with the, well, new trash. Decided that there was a bunch of stuff on my sidebar that were really unnecessary. So I ditched 'em. Here's what went down:

Gone:

My stat counter - I dunno why I ever had this up in the first place. Vanity? Maybe. But it never really made much sense to me. I mean there is no way the number actually reflected the real people who read this crap. Judging from the people who leave comments, I would think a more accurate number is around 10-15 loyalists. That's just fine with me.

My Excellent Award - I know this blog is far from excellent. I don't even recall who gave it to me, but thanks whoever (whomever?) you are! So let's get rid of that vanity plate. Sensing a theme here?

My Blogger Logo - I honestly don't know why I ever put that up. Who gives a crap if I'm powered by Blogger? Except maybe Blogger. What was I thinking?

New:

Nada. Scratch. Bupkiss. Any ideas?


But there is one thing I would like to do with the old girl. I'd love to have two sidebars. One for my stuff (my profile, archives, etc...) and one for your stuff (Bloglist, recent comments, etc...). Plus I think blogs with two sidebars look kinda nifty. And I'm all about looking nifty. Blogger, of course, doesn't offer a two-sidebar template. But there are plenty of custom templates out there or I can hack the html of my current template using Blogger tricks. But I'm a bit of an e-tard (no...nothing to do with Ecstasy), so that isn't likely.

Any suggestions from the peanut gallery?

It's the first funny thing I saw when I googled GIGO. Source

Big Fat Movie Review Weekend II

Nope...I didn't see The Dark Knight this weekend. After Wednesday, Thursday and Friday of wedding madness we really weren't into much more than lounging in the AC and watching Yankee games on Saturday and Sunday. And ordering in food.

But I did manage to catch some films at home instead. The benevolent Earl now gives you his brief reviews:

nnnnn - Loved it.
nnnnx - Really Liked it.
nnnxx - Liked it.
nnxxx - Didn't Like it.
nxxxx - Hated it.

nnnnx The Kingdom (2007) - I hadn't heard much about this film except for director Peter Berg's use of the "shaky" cam, but I was pleasantly surprised. I usually can't stand Jamie Foxx or Jennifer Garner, but both were pretty decent in this flick. Jason Bateman and Chris Cooper are always good, though. If you haven't seen it, the film is about a small FBI unit sent to Saudi Arabia to assist in the investigation of a terrorist act against a both Saudis and Americans at an oil companies oversees housing project. Wackiness ensues. Including some pretty impressive action scenes.

nnnnn Superbad (2007) - I saw this one when it first came out on DVD, but I had to watch it again when it showed up on cable. Loved it the first time, loved it the second time. Which is surprising because I thought Jonah Hill's act got a little tiring by the end of the film on my initial viewing. But nope. Fat guys are always funny. Just ask everyone who knows me.

nnnnn Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog (2008) - OK, so technically this isn't a movie. It's a series of three short musical webisodes written and directed by the his Buffyness, Joss Whedon. Neil Patrick Harris as the titular (hehe) villain and Nathan Fillion as his arch-nemesis Captain Hammer. I cannot tell you how much I enjoyed this. Too bad you are reading this on Monday, because it was available for free viewing on the above link until midnight on Sunday. Now you will have to purchase each webisode on iTunes. Suckaz!!! I'm probably gonna do that too...but only because Nathan Fillion is one of my dude crushes. He's pretty!

nnnnx Eastern Promises (2007) - Bloglister Limpy wrote about this one and Viggo Mortensen's penis-slinging battle in a bath house last week. That's why I watched it! Wooo-gah! I love me some David Cronenberg films. This one was no slouch either. Bloody...yes. Violent...yes. Gratuitous penis...hell, yes! But no one does any of that better than my man, DC. But speaking of Viggo Mortensen nekkid, isn't his ass a bit weird? He's got a bit of a tail. That's it! He is no longer one of my dude crushes. I can't deal with the tail!

Oh, and I watched LoTR: The Fellowship of the Ring with Gia on Sunday night. She's a trooper. She usually hates that dwarf/elf/orc shit, but she hung in there. Actually liked it. Now I have to break the news that there are over 6 hours left in the trilogy. Eeeks!

Katie Holmes' creepy hands

source: Perez Hilton

I try to get all my hard news from Perez Hilton. No wait...I try to NEVER get my hard news from Perez Hilton. I knew it was one of those. But this story is just way to interesting to pass up. Is Scientology transforming Katie Holmes' hands to something out of a horror film?

You decide!

Friday Auto-Post

I'm hitting a wedding tonight (Thursday) so all you get for Friday is a quickie auto-post. I'm gonna be way too drunk tonight to even see the screen, much less type. Deal with it bitches!

Source: Yahoo

Is it me or is Sarah Jessica Parker looking mighty fine lately? Here she is with some cranky old man at the All-Star Game on Tuesday night.

OK, since she was nice to me (she didn't call the police) maybe I have a special place in my heart for her. I still ain't gonna go see that Sex and the City movie, though. I have some standards.

source: Deadspin

And here is Jason Giambi and his mustache and the bottle of JD that they both love. Ah, it's nice to see Giambi finally become a true Yankee.

PBR

So Downtown Guy inspired me tonight. A little poor boy revolution. Not for anything really impressive. Well, in certain folk's minds. He inspired me to drink a bunch of Pabst Blue Ribbons is all.

I can barely type, but I am sober enough to say....WOOOOOOHOOOOOOO!!!!!!!

And enjoy! - Earl

New All-Star Game Rules

Since everyone looooves my baseball posts, here's another one to brighten your day on this most awful of days (it's one of only two days in the year in which no major sporting events from the NBA, NFL, NHL or MLB take place...the other was Monday. Always the day before and the day after the All-Star Game - Earl).

I thought long and hard about this, well 3 or 4 minutes about this and here is what I would like to see changed about the Mid-Summer Classic:

1. Stop making it count. It's an exhibition and it's supposed to be fun. It shouldn't really matter who wins as long as its the American League. Just kidding. But to give the home field advantage in the World Series to the league that wins the All-Star Game is just ridiculous. Home field advantage means too much! I don't like the alternating year method that was previously used either, but this is worse. I would suggest giving the home field to the league that has the better winning percentage in interleague play. Those games count. Those games matter. And it would probably still be the American League so it works for me!
2. If you are selected for the game, but unable to play because of injury...DON'T FUCKING SHOW UP! Your spot was taken, David Oritz. So was yours, Kerry Wood. You too, Alfonso Soriano. Put on some street clothes and buy a ticket for $500 just like everyone else. No one needs to see you in the dugout. Especially you, David Ortiz!
3. Same thing goes for pitchers who are selected but because they started a game on the Sunday prior to the All-Star Game are ineligible to pitch, or whose managers plead with the All-Star manager not to pitch them. If you don't think you are able to pitch, STAY AT HOME! Give your roster spot to someone else who might actually be willing to help out their league. Listen, it's noble as a grape that Scott Kazmir pitched the 15th inning of the game last night. It really is. But he is a starting pitcher and Terry Francona probably wasn't to get more than another inning out of the guy because of his situation (often hurt and he threw more than 100 pitches* on Sunday). The manager shouldn't be put in that situation. Just stay home and give someone else a chance.
4. If the game is tied after 12 innings (or whatever arbitrary inning you pick) then each team should pick their 3 best sluggers and give them each 10 swings to hit home runs. They can pick the batting practice pitcher of their choice. Whichever league hits the most home runs after 30 swings wins the game. That would be fun, right? And after all, it should be an exhibition that is supposed to be fun. Right?
5. Tim McCarver should not be allowed anywhere near the city that the All-Star Game is being played in on the night of the of the game. Not even in air space. God, he's awful!

*I heard an interesting tidbit on Nolan Ryan and the Texas Ranger's future pitching prospects. He is getting rid of all pitch count stats. He wants to train these young minds and arms into going longer into the game. Building up their arm strength and their mental strength. He wants to rely on the catcher and the coaching staff to determine when a starting pitcher has had enough in the game. I'm real interested to see how this pans out. I've been a long-time debater on the subject of pitch counts and whether or not they are necessary. When you see guys like Kerry Wood and Mark Prior and the injuries they have suffered, it seems to make sense. But then there are guys who get hurt without excessive pitch counts. Or guys who never get hurt who ALWAYS have high pitch counts. I dunno. It should be an interesting experiment.

I would love to see a major league pitching staff that has no set roles. Maybe 9 guys who can go three innings every three days. Go out there and throw balls out for three innings. Whether they are the 1st 3, the middle 3 or the last 3. Every three days you throw three innings. I wonder how that would work?

Josh and the Toe

The summer of 1999 saw the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, now just the Rays, sign two of the best prospects ever to cross their board. Both have had the tag "best to ever play the game" attached to them at one point or another, but where they came from and where they wound up are as different as night and day.

The first player was drafted out of high school and given a $4 million signing bonus. He was a tremendous pitcher who often reached the mid-high 90's on the radar guy. He also played the outfield as well as just about any high schooler in the country. And at bat the kid was Babe Ruth. His name was Josh Hamilton, and by now just about all of America knows his story. Incredible prospect who suffered a bad car accident with his parents. While he and they were recovering, he began to hang out in tattoo parlors in some pretty bad neighborhoods. He was introduced to the world of alcohol, cocaine, heroin and finally crack. He wasted away to a skinny 170 pounds and wound up spending 4 years away from the game while enduring several attempts at rehabilitation.

Monday night he became a baseball hero in New York the likes of which having been seen in a long, long time. 28 home runs in the first round...and it seemed as if the night would never end as he hit bomb after bomb after bomb. Tuesday night he was the starting center fielder for the AL in the very last All-Star game ever to be played at Yankee Stadium. He is also the favorite thus far for MVP of the league, setting the pace with 95 RBI so far. His story of faith, recovery and redemption is something right out of Hollywood.

The second player wasn't drafted. He didn't even attend high school as he had dropped out in the 7th grade because he had trouble keeping up with the workload. He grew up in a single-parent household. No mother and a father who worked around the clock. Some people in his town admitted that he was probably "slow". After a scout from the Devil Rays happened upon one of his games...in the middle of a sugar cane field...he was signed to a $30,000 bonus and a minor league contract. The scout saw an 18 year-old kid who hit 95 on the radar gun with a devastating curveball. But that was the least of his talents. He was a switch-hitter who launched pitch after pitch over the outfield walls. A once in a lifetime kind of talent.

His name was Greg "Toe" Nash and his path toward stardom has been sidetracked to a jail cell. At one point in a one-year period he was arrested six times for a variety of offenses. The last was an arrest for statutory rape. The 15 year-old girl later admitted to consensual sex with the budding star and two of his buddies, but the men also stole some items from the girl's house. She made up the story of the rape to explain the robbery. That was the end of his career with Tampa Bay.

The Cincinnati Reds decided to give him a try and signed him to a minor league contract in 2002. He never got to play for him as he was arrested soon after on charges of domestic violence and violation of his parole. He was finally given a five-year sentence which, I believe, he is still serving today. He is due to get out of jail the year he turns 29.

I don't know if any of the myths surrounding the Toe are true. There are some who say that it was all exaggerated. I don't care. I want the myths to be true even if the dream never came true. It's sad to think that we will never know. But the idea of walking into a sugar cane field or a corn field or an inner-city blacktop and finding the real-life Roy Hobbs is irresistible. A boy with a cannon for an arm and lightning in his bat.

Slyde needs your help

So Slyde made the move from his own Frontpage site to Blogger last night. But he is experiencing some growing pains.

He shut down his old site and then re-directed his Blogger site to that url...but it ain't working right. His new site is not showing up on site feeds.

So go here to read about his issues and see if you can help him out. Thanks! - Earl

UPDATE: Looks like it works fine. Nevermind!

What you need

You know you want it. So here it is. Long post yesterday, so today you get just a few bullets. Ajoojapalooza-style! I kind of like that image there on the left of the bullet and the rose. I may make it my default image for any bullet-themed posts. What's that? You don't really care? Crap!

1. I'm watching the MLB Home Run Derby on ESPN right now. It's the time of the year when you can root for your favorite slugger to absolutely ruin his swing for the second half of the season. I'm glad no Yankees are participating. I picked Grady Sizemore of the Cleveland Indians to win it all. I figured he would hit a bunch of cheap HRs in the short porch of Yankee Stadium's right field. Boy, was I wrong! Not about him winning...the contest just started. But Sizemore is hitting BOMBS! His last HR in the first round hit the Utz sign in the back of the right field bleachers. I've only seen one other guy hit that sign. Darryl Strawberry. Wow! Update: Nevermind. Josh Hamilton is just destroying the ball tonight. What a great story! He wound up losing to Justin Morneau, but what a show he put on in that first round!
2. So you've never seen The Big Lebowski? Check out the entire movie in one glance right here. I'm thinking about this for my next tattoo. But I'm gonna have to find an artist who can draw reeeeeaaaaaaal small! Is my obsession with this film starting to get a little freaky? You betcha!
3. For some reason I've been thinking about The Brady Bunch a lot lately. I've got a long post in mind about the lessons that can be learned by Mike, Carol, Alice and the kids. And the answer is "No". The question is "Do I have a life?" Thank you.
4. I watched The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford last night. It was long...real long, but I loved it. I thought the performances, the cinematography and the pacing were all pretty special. Gia can't stand him, but I think Brad Pitt is a pretty amazing actor when he isn't being a smug prick. This was one of the films that I thought he was really good in.
5. So ya know what album I bought on iTunes the other day? Van Halen II. I honestly have no idea what inspired me to do that. I was cleaning the house and I wanted to hear something loud and from my youth. This satisfied both cravings. I love side two which starts with "Light Up the Sky" and ends with "Beautiful Girls". It's as good as anything the band ever did.

Unpublished

***Long Post Alert***

First, did everyone see the man behind the curtain? OK...now that we've satisfied our narcissistic needs we can move on..

To Violet Blue...my Internet crush. It's okay. Gia knows. She's got a bit of a crush on her too! Nothing wrong with that. If you like your geeks to be sexy and smart or if you like your sexy ladies to be geeky and smart or if you simply prefer your smart women to be geeky and sexy, then Violet Blue is for you. No wait...SHE'S MINE!!! Um, sorry.


For those of you not familiar with the Fabulous Ms. Blue (I don't know her at all, so I won't presume to call her Miss), here's a brief outline. She was born a poor black son of migrant farm workers...um, wait. Strike that. I don't really know much about her background. I believe she grew up homeless for a while. All I do know is that she is one of my favorite bloggers. Has been before I even knew what the term "blog" meant. She's also an author, sex educator and columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle. I've got such a heart-on for her.

To be honest, I only read her blog. I rarely go to her columns at the Chronicle. Not because they aren't well written or sexy (they are), but because of the comments that she gets from so many angry trolls. It just makes me so sick to my stomach. I guess that everyone is entitled to speak their minds. It's a free country, or so they say. And it's not just that these trolls disagree with many of Ms. Blue's comments, that's actually fine with me. It's how they disagree that bothers me. With hatred and bile and misogynistic name-calling. It's really disgusting.

Trolls and trolling have been popular topics here in the blogosphere lately. Check out Avitable's take on it here. It's really something that makes no sense to me. I used to see it on a lot of bulletin boards, but trolls can live anywhere. Especially in the nutrient-rich world of the blogosphere. Sad for us.

But I didn't really intend to talk about trolls today. Sometimes a stray thought can just lead to a couple of paragraphs or pages when you least expect it. No, I wanted to talk about the latest controversy surrounding the lovely Violet Blue. She has been writing about Boing Boing, a website (I hesitate to call it a blog, but I guess it is) that she used to have a healthy relationship with. They loved her. She loved them. It was all good. But then something happened recently. Boing Boing deleted all of their posts that ever mentioned Violet Blue. And they did it without any real explanation.

After some back and forth debate on the topic, mostly in the comments section of the blogs, Boing Boing issued the following statement on the matter:

"Violet behaved in a way that made us reconsider whether we wanted to lend her any credibility or associate with her. It's our blog and so we made an editorial decision, like we do every single day." Source

They went on to say that no one was being censored. That they simply "unpublished" some of their own work for their own reasons.

That's a funny word, isn't it? Unpublished. It's almost like a something you would find in a 60's or 70's piece of dystopian science fiction regarding the systematic erasing of a personality or soul. I don't know. Can you unpublish something? I guess in the realm of the Internets, it's possible. But does anything REALLY go away for good?

There have been all kinds of guesswork as to why Boing Boing has done this. Maybe because Violet Blue famously sued an adult film actress for using the same performance name, and they didn't like that? Maybe because Violet and Xeni Jardin (a co-editor and contributor to Boing Boing) were once an item and have now since broken up.

The controversy over Violet Blue's "unpublished" status at Boing Boing (and it looks like some of the posts mentioning her have been un-unpublished just recently) has caused a few tongues to wag over journalistic ethics and standards. Is this kind of action reasonable for a big-time website like Boing Boing? Or is their explanation sufficient. It's their blog...they can do what they want with it.

Actually Violet has no problems with that last statement. Nor do I. To quote her "Yes, anyone can take down their own posts. But no one has the right to do it and turn it into an act of cruelty, sickeningly “for your own good” while trashing the subject. That’s repulsive." You can read more about what Violet has to say on the subject, including further links and feedback, here. My only problem is that websites like Boing Boing and contributors like Xeni Jardin aspire to be something more than just bloggers. They aspire to be journalists. And you can't have the aspirations without having to be held responsible for your ethics like any other journalist.*

*I've recently "unpublished" a number of my own posts. It had to do with some friends of mine who took issue with some of the things I wrote. I didn't necessarily agree with their assessment of what I wrote, but I never intended to offend anyone...so I took them down. But I've also never aspired to be anything other than what I am. A semi-anonymous blogger with no desire to ever be a journalist.

It feels like one of those grey areas, doesn't it? Like it's something that could be wrong and dangerous, but you aren't really sure. Yet it sits in the back of your mind bothering you while you try to justify their actions because "it's a free world".

I don't know what to make of it all. All I know is people are calling my Internet crush names and I don't like it! Not one bit. I don't hate Boing Boing. I've only read it a few times but I've found it interesting and amusing. I don't hate Xeni Jardin. She looks a little like the white-haired woman from The Matrix, but that's about all I can say about her.

I just don't like anyone calling my girl names.

RIP Bobby Murcer

Bobby Murcer passed away today after a long battle with a brain tumor.

I know that people think that sports and fans, in particular, are stupid, but Bobby Murcer's death has really affected me.

He is one of my all-time favorite players and broadcasters, and from what everyone says just a great all-time guy. Gia's father played minor league ball with him and the Yankees and he says that Bobby was the best. Best teammate. Best friend. Best all-around guy. The guys would bust on him at first because he was a big-time bonus baby and he couldn't hit worth a lick for his first month or so in pinstripes. Couldn't field either. But Bobby would just shrug and give them an aw-shucks grin and say "just wait". And hit and field he did. For some terrible Yankee teams, for the Giants and the Cubs, and then again for the Yankees to finish off his career. He was such a Yankee at heart that he wore number 7 for the Cubs just so he could honor Mickey Mantle.

I'm gonna miss Bobby Murcer. So will a lot of Yankee fans. So will a lot of other people.

The Big Reveal

So my six-month experiment with growing out my hair is finally coming to fruition. It's now long enough to put in a top knot a la The Dude. OK, so I'm a bit more grey. OK...A LOT MORE GREY. White even. Fuck you!

Alright, then how about his buddy The Stranger, but more like Wade Garrett from Roadhouse? Does that work? No...crap!

Well, it should be long enough by the end of October to give The Dude his due for my Halloween costume. The goatee (slightly hidden, but very, very white) too! Just a little brown hair dye should do it. And a roach clip. And a white sleeveless jumpsuit with some tools. And Ray-Bans. And sparkly bowling shoes. Dream Sequence Dude abides!

And all yer gonna get of me is my fat hand over my fat face. I'm too pretty to be on the Internets. Deal with it, bitches!

Please remember, as the semi-hidden t-shirt says...Drink Real Beer.

That's good advice!

Gary Oldman and...um, something to ponder

I don't know if I really have a favorite actor. There sure are lots to choose from. I do know that Gary Oldman would most likely be at the very top of that list. He's excellent in just about every role I've ever seen him in. From Jackie Flannery to Lee Harvey Oswald to Drexl Spivey to Stansfield to Sheldon Runyon to Sirus Black to James Gordon and so on. He disappears into these roles. The only problem is the length of time he is on screen in these movies. They are all supporting characters roles.

Sure, Oldman has had some starring turns. Sid Vicious. Ben Chase in Criminal Law. Dracula. Ludwig van Beethoven. All great roles. The most recent being Beethoven in 1994's Immortal Beloved.

1994.

Really? Did Hollywood just forget about him or did they just never figure out how to get this incredible actor a featured role that would fully make use of his talents? I'm not really complaining. He brings so much to even his smallest roles. He was even decent in the awful remake of Lost in Space. That's a miracle!

I find it hard to believe that not only has he never won an Oscar for his work...HE'S NEVER EVEN BEEN NOMINATED! NOT ONCE! There may not be a more deserving actor alive who has never been nominated. It's an absolute crime. Maybe it's because he picks such offbeat roles in heavy-handed genre flicks. Probably because of that. But he's done some nice mainstream work as well. To me, some of his best work was in The Contender. That was a film that garnered some decent Oscar buzz for Joan Allen, but none for Oldman. And he was a force of nature in it!

But he keeps on keeping on. He still seems willing to take a featured role every once in a while (like the mediocre Dead Fish), but they are usually small movies. Where's the big-time director of a big-time movie who is ready to give Mr. Oldman the role all of his fans have been waiting for all these years? The role that will get him his naked golden statue.

In the meantime...enjoy this clip of Gary Oldman in Leon.

PS - I'm giving great thought to posting the first ever bug-eyed pic of yours truly. Well, I posted my tattoo before. Hey...it's right over there in the sidebar. No...this one will have a lot more Earl. I just haven't decided on whether or not I'm gonna do it. Hmmm.

Movie myths

First, is everyone paying attention?

OK...I was reading an article online just a little while ago. I've moved on and I don't feel like going back and finding it so I can provide the link. Deal with it, fuckers. I'll just describe it to you instead.

So this article was about the most historically inaccurate movies that are based upon true events. Movies like Rudy, The Hurricane and Victory. All decent films, by the way. All come equipped with the tagline "based on true events" and all steer wildly clear of what actually happened in those events.

I came away from reading that article with a question. Do we really care? Are we really caring about this? I mean it's not as if the tagline reads "an exact replica of true events that really happened exactly the way we portray them in this very true-to-life film...swear to God!" It's a movie! If it wasn't much, much more interesting than actual life than we wouldn't pay $11.50 to watch it in a dark room with 350 strangers.

I say that, but then I'm guilty of checking every "based on true events" movie out on IMDB and other sites. Checking to see what was real and what was embellished. Then I tell my friends all about the differences while feeling like a superior sonofabitch. That's how I roll.

I just did it tonight. Right before I read that article, I watched a movie called Heavens Falls. It was based on the re-trial of nine black men who were convicted of raping two white women in Scottsboro, Alabama back in 1931. The trial and re-trials may have been the basis for the book "To Kill a Mockingbird" or so I've read. Harper Lee denies this, by the way.

This one seems to stray closer to the truth than most Hollywood true-tales. Maybe because it doesn't need any embellishment. I'm sure there are folks who are still convinced that these men were guilty. Maybe they were. The facts, however, seem to indicate that they weren't. Most of the men were eventually released or pardoned. The ones that were still alive, anyway. That says a lot. Plus one of the women came forward in the second round of trials and admitted that she wasn't raped by any of the men. Ruby Bates apparently spent the rest of her life working with the men's defense teams to set them free.

It's a sad tale of racism and deep-seated ideology. A tale that doesn't need a Hollywood script.

RW

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See.

Stupid Bullets

Sitting here. Watching the Yankee game. Eating some ice cream. Thinking of stupid stuff. Like this:

J I mentioned the other day how much I love Haagen-Daz ice cream bars, but they aren't my true ice cream love. My true ice cream love is Friendly's Chocolate Marshmallow Ice Cream. The only problem is that Friendly's doesn't make it any more. So I have to settle for Rocky Road. Bleh! I don't want no nutz in my fucking ice cream. So tonight I bought Ben & Jerry's S'mores Ice Cream. Not bad. Just not what I really want. Sigh.

J Bullet points still don't work with this Blogger template. So you get the upper case letter "J" in webdings. Deal with it.

J This is something that really bothers me as a baseball fan. I hate it when announcers call a fair ball that bounces into the stands a "ground rule" double. It's not a ground rule double! It's an automatic double. In every park, a hit that goes out of play (in the stands) after bouncing in fair territory is an automatic double. There are no ground rules for it. It's something that all parks share. A ground rule double would be a ball caught in the ivy at Wrigley or one that somehow goes through the scoreboard at Fenway. THOSE are ground rule doubles. Based on the ground rules of those particular stadiums. What we see every day on the ESPN highlights are automatic doubles. But no one calls them that. I may be the only person who actually cares about this, but get it right people!

J Wow...I'm a tremendous baseball geek, aren't I?

J These guys picked the 10 manliest superheroes. I think they missed out on a few. They meant "manly" as in man-on-man, right?

J Speaking of superheroes, Gia and I watched Ichi the Killer the other night and we both really enjoyed it. It's an over-the-top action/comedy/horror kinda thingy. I thought of the Kill Bill films or Dead Alive right away. It made a lot more sense to me when I found out it was adapted from a Japanese comic-book. Ichi is a severely damaged superhero type. Complete with costume. You gotta love a movie whose title is first shown in a pool of semen. Real semen. Yowza!

J Zombies. I get zombies. I understand them. Their motivation...what makes them scary. I can come up with reasons why they would attack us. The living dead that needs fresh human flesh blah blah blah. That makes sense to me. What doesn't make sense to me are the infected thingies in 28 Days Later... and it's sequel. Ok...so the virus makes them bloodthirsty, right? Why don't they attack each other? I mean zombies might not attack each other because they can tell rotting flesh from live flesh, but the things in these films ARE alive. They just want blood and flesh and brains...so why don't they attack each other? Makes no sense to me. But zombies....zombies I get.

J Yesterday, ajooja pondered whether Maria Sharapova was actually hot or just hot in terms of tennis players. She's not really my type. Too tall and built like a 12 year-old boy up top. But if you are into that kinda thing, I give you this dude's top 10 hot foreign-born female tennis players. You are most welcome.

J If you like your women with a little more meat on them, check out the top 10 Gravure Idol models from Japan. I didn't really know what "Gravure Idol" meant either, but apparently they are bikini models with tremendously (fake?) large boobs. Once again, you are most welcome.

J Let's see...ice cream - check. Baseball - check. Superheroes - check. Zombies - check. Tits - double check! My work here is done. Asta la pasta! - Earl

You can't hiiiiide...

...your Mayan eyes.


Or so claim some folks who have a hard-on for Mayan prophecy. They say that the world is gonna end sometime in December of 2012. I wonder what the gas prices are gonna be like after that?

The craziest thing about this AOL article is the poll that goes along with it. It asks if you/we think that something apocalyptic will occur on that specific day. 15% of the respondents said "Yes". Now I know that most of us here patrolling these Internets are idiots or we would never stoop to answering these polls seriously, but 15%!?!?

What kinda Mayan dope are these people smoking? Even if only 10% of those folks are serious, that's still 1.5% who believe the world will actually end on that very specific date. That's not just crazy, that's Britney Spears crazy!

PS - Oh, and I thought I was the only one who loved the opening scene from The Way of the Gun. Apparently not.

Let the bodies hit the floor...

I wish it were edited a little better, but this is hysterical!

I think I'm going to stop posting anything original and just steal shit from the cool kids over at Gorilla Mask. Kind of like they do. It's what their site is all about. Fun stuff from all over the web.

I wonder if anyone who reads this has had any kind of experience with faith healers before. My father's good friend was an uber-Catholic who turned Evangelical when he moved down to South Carolina. He was diagnosed with a serious heart condition that he claims was cured by a faith healer. Hey...whatever floats yer boat, I always say. Especially if you believe it saved your life.

And it's not faith healing, but my aunt and uncle claim to have seen some pretty miraculous shit in Medjugorje in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Something about a silver crucifix transforming to gold or the like. I dunno. They are pretty grounded people too. So who is to say.

I'd settle on seeing someone perform the miracle of lowering gasoline prices. That would work for me.

I don't really dislike England

But this shit is funny, yo!

America Rules England Sucks - Watch more free videos

Happy 4th

Here's a little something for you to do whilst celebrating 232 years of claiming we are better than everyone else.

Go ahead. Pull my finger.

BFF and shit

I love it when folks get us.

Gia and I, is what I mean. I love it when they see us together and they realize how perfectly we compliment each other. Two halves of the same heart.

We were in NYC last night to see a friend perform at a rock club/bar. We were a little early so we hung out at the bar having a beer with the bartender. She was really cool. A musician herself, guitar I believe. The joint was empty at that point so she sat there talking with us.

We talked about music, her newest tattoo, her boyfriend and her step-father who acted in the movie Cruising back in 1980. That last part was weird because Gia's father was in the movie as an extra. No...not in the gay S&M clubs. Part of the movie took place in the meat-packing district (shaddup) and he was working at one of those meat joints back then. You can see him at one point in his white long jacket somewhere in there, apparently. I'm gonna have to see it again to catch his cameo.

Anyway, we maybe had two beers with this woman before our friend was ready to go on. She shook her head at us and smiled as we were getting ready to leave and she said that she could totally tell why we were a couple. She said that she saw us together like she saw herself and her boyfriend. Best friends in love.

She got us.

Devil, thy name is...

...Haagen-Dazs!


Not the mint ice cream with the dark chocolate as pictured above, but vanilla ice cream with milk chocolate coating. Mmmm!!!

I've always said that I don't have a sweet tooth. I always will choose salty or savory over sweet. But damn if I haven't found myself with a Haagen-Dazs habit in the past few weeks. I'm doing an ice cream bar a day! What's wrong with me? I don't eat one all by myself, though. One of our cats loves them. She sits right next to me and gets her licks in. She doesn't like the chocolate, but the vanilla ice cream makes her nuts!

I generally watch people eat dessert and I don't get it. Wouldn't they rather have some more pasta or an extra burger? Why fill yourself up on the sweets? And the people who specifically DON'T eat something because they are saving room for dessert? What the hell? Live in the now, people! Or don't, frankly. I'll have that last piece of steak that you can't choke down because you want a slice of cheesecake. I'm down with that.

But now...ice cream bars. Let's see how long it lasts.

Mythconceptions

If you are anything like me, then your right pinky toe hurts like hell because you slammed it into a stupid box of crap that sits outside of your bathroom. And you have a huge zit on your cheek that no 40+ year old should ever wake up with. Oh, and you love the show MythBusters.

Well, I don't really love it. I like it a lot. I'm not gonna take it to the prom or anything. But I like the idea of a couple of dudes trying to prove or disprove urban legends and myths. Even if those two dudes sometimes annoy the crap outta me. I like the odd facial hair on the dude that wears the beret, but let me just stress the last part of that statement. HE WEARS A BERET!

Sometimes the show takes too long for my ADD lifestyle. Stop going to commercial break and just let me know if it's possible to shoot someone when they are swimming underwater. I might need to know that shit. Like right now, fuckers!

So it was with great joy that I was pointed to the MythBusters Results site by the cool kids over at Gorilla Mask. It lets you know how each one of their devious experiments turns out. And you don't have to sit through a buttload of commercials for EDD. Unless you're into that kinda thing. Sicko!

Enjoy.

Empire State Oblivion

There a certain pride that goes with being a native New Yorker. I assume the same can be said for natives of Boston or Chicago or San Francisco or pretty much any city, town, village or hamlet that is loved by it's residents. I can only be called a "native New Yorker" in the loosest sense, however. I'm not from New York City nor have I ever lived there. I have, however, spent my entire life living on it's outskirts about a one hour train ride away from the Big Apple. By the way, I do not approve of the term "the Big Apple". I don't know why I just used it. Maybe just to tell y'all that I don't approve. Feh.

Anywho. Besides the pride in your hometown of choice, there also exists a certain oblivousness to what can only be called tourist attractions. Faneiul Hall in Boston. The Sears Tower in Chicago. That really big ball of twine in Darwin, Minnesota. You know what I mean. In New York we have the United Nations, the Statue of Liberty, the hole in the ground that was the site of an unthinkable tragedy and the Empire State Building. But we, the royal we, really don't think twice about those sites. Everyone else comes to our cities to see them, and they can have them. We, once again the royal we, just don't care about them.

Would you believe that in the thousand times or so that I've been to NYC I have never been to any of these sites? Oh, I got about a block and half away from the hole in the ground a couple of years ago, but that memory is still stuck too firmly in my throat so I couldn't force myself to get any closer. And I had a class trip to the Statue of Liberty once, but we never even made it inside.

And I've never been inside the Empire State Building.

In fact, and this is sad, I've never even really cared to find out exactly where it was. I mean I saw it from a distance as I drove into the city or took the train. And I guess I may have seen it from hotel rooms or friend's apartment buildings. But I really just never cared.

So a few years ago I was walking around Midtown with a friend of mine. We were walking by an obviously large building with the rest of the touristy Midtown crowds. That's when I saw a plaque on the building identifying it as the Empire State Building.

I stopped. I may have stepped back and looked up. Then I said "Huh!"

My friend wanted to know what was up, so I told him that it was the Empire State Building. I even went up and patted the side of the building like it was a well-behaved doggie. "So" he said. That's when I told him that I was surprised because I never really knew where it was before. And I started to walk away.

My friend couldn't believe it. He knew how often I am in the city and he just couldn't believe it. But I just never cared. I still don't.

I'll leave it to the tourists.

(Hope all the attendees of BrittCon 2008 had a great time in NYC!!! Did y'all see the Empire State Building? ;)

10 Embarrasssing Moments

Stolen from Slyde, because that's how I roll. I don't know if I can actually rank embarrassing moments. There is no such thing as a Fujita scale for measuring the intensity of my tornadic embarrassment. Something is either embarrassing or it isn't. So here goes:

1. After receiving a new laptop at work, I immediately wanted to check out the keyboard action. So I called up MS Word and started typing just random gobbledygook. I briefly mentioned how much I enjoyed one of my fellow co-workers tits somewhere in there. (Before you ask...no I didn't work with Salma Hayek. But if wishes were fishes...) Then I started working. A few hours later another co-worker came to me with a question on how to do something in Word. I told him, but he wasn't getting it. So I had him sit down at my laptop to do it. He went to Word and saw my paragraph or so of nonsense and turned around with a big shit-eating grin. "Um, dude...you might wanna erase that before someone else sees it." Crap!

2. In a drunken bout of self-expression, I did a pose-down of Playboy centerfold models while fully dressed in a suit at a very-crowded bar. I didn't remember it until the next day when someone mentioned it. Crap!

3. I peed in the corner of a hotel room. I was reasonably aware that I had done it immediately afterwards, but I held on to some hope that it was all just a bad dream. When I awoke the next morning I convinced myself that it was. Too bad that I left behind a witness. And all this occurred while my little sister slept in the living room next door. Crap!

4. I once went into one of those peep show places in Times Square. Back when there were peep shows in Times Square. I had never been in one before and I haven't been to one since. I didn't really understand what you were supposed to do. But I paid my $20, or whatever it was, and I was told to pick a girl out of the lineup. There were about 8 girls working that night, so I picked the least nasty-looking out of them. I had 5 minutes in the booth with her. So I go into something that looks like a confessional booth (wonderful for my latent Catholic guilt), and she goes into the booth next to me. The panel slid away and there she was behind the glass. She started taking off her clothes and posing for me. At this point, for some reason, I didn't think she could see me. So I'm a little shocked when she said "What's the matter baby? You don't like what you see? Why don't you take it out and show it to me?" Huh, what? Is that what you are supposed to do in these places? Not for me, thank you very much. I ain't jacking it in front of a total stranger. Especially a total stranger WHO CAN SEE ME!!! And I told her just that. And then I asked her to turn around so I could high-tailed it outta there. Now I now I didn't actually do anything there that was embarrassing, except for BEING embarrassed, but I find it very embarrassing anyway. I'm shaking my head at myself even now as I write this. Crap!

5. I once farted horrendously...it was both loud and awful-smelling...at work one Saturday afternoon. I thought I was in the office alone at the time. I actually got up out of my chair and walked out of the office to let 'er rip in the hallway. There were cubicles, empty I thought, right next to my office and I didn't check to see if anyone was there. I just let it go. A minute or so later, with the stench of my work still stale in the air, I see two of the women I worked with run past my office laughing so hard they were crying. Or maybe they were crying because of the smell. I dunno. Crap!

6. I had a terrible habit in college of drinking to the point where I blacked out. And then I would start drinking even faster. And I almost always puked at some point. Sometimes in very public and awful places. I woke up one morning feeling semi-alive after a night of legendary drinking. My roommate was already up doing some work at his desk. He asked how I was feeling. I said okay. Then I looked around the room and noticed that two posters were missing on either side of our doorway. I asked what happened to them. He turned around and couldn't believe I didn't remember. He said I woke up in the middle of the night and couldn't figure out how to get out of the room to get to the shared bathroom down the hall. So I just started puking. Everywhere. I tagged both posters and a pair of his shoes. I felt horrible. That's when he told me to look in my laundry basket. Crap!

7. I've already told you about the time that I told Sarah Jessica Parker that I loved her. Haven't I? This one isn't so embarrassing, I mean is it? I mean, it's more like a cute story that you tell people so that they can laugh along WITH you, not laugh AT you. Right? She was/is a big star and I was pretty drunk at the time. I was also still riding the celebrity high from having met Mel Brooks and Anne Bancroft earlier in the evening. That has to count for something. Right? I mean I could have told her that I hated her guts or something. That would have been more embarrassing. Right? No? Crap!

8. Since one particularly harrowing incident (dangerous, not embarrassing) in college, I've only had a handful of experiences where I've blacked out. One of them occurred during my first trip to New Orleans. I drank myself silly the first day there, and the last thing I remember was being so drunk that I lost the ability to speak at a bar on the other end of the French Quarter from where we were staying. So I just left. Without saying a word. The next day I woke up feeling okay, but with a throbbing pain in my ankle. I looked down and saw that my right ankle was about the size of a football. Then I saw my clothes sitting in a heap next to the bed. Tan pants and a yellow button-down shirt. And it looked like a truck ran over them. Several times. I pieced together that I fell down on the cobble-stoned streets at some point, seriously spraining my ankle. I somehow dragged myself back to the hotel and made it safely back to my bed. I must have been a sight walking through the lobby that particular night. Crap!

Phew! Only two more to go!

9. In the sixth grade I knew nothing about weed. I don't know much more today, but I was especially ignorant back then. So a couple of kids were talking about getting high one day, and I thought I would join in. So I listened for a while and then I asked where one would buy a pack of pot. You see, I thought pot came pre-packaged in rolled-up joint form. And you could buy it in a pack. Like cigarettes. I sure made the stoners laugh that day, and they didn't forget it very quickly either. For the rest of the year whenever one of them saw me they would laugh out loud and exclaim "pack of pot!!!" loudly while pointing at me. Crap!

10. I once had crime scene sex while spending the night over at a friend's house after a massive party. The woman I was with at the time (I hesitate to actually call her a girlfriend) was extremely drunk and extremely horny at the end of the night. So drunk that she didn't realize that she just got her monthly visit from Aunt Flo. Not until after she climbed on for two minutes of ecstasy. It looked like we slaughtered a lamb in that bed in the guest room. Expensive sheets too. Crap!

The Paper Bag

I was gonna try to explain the Paper Bag to y'all, but I think these two Youtube videos can do a much, much better job than yours truly. They are a bit dark and grainy, but you should get the idea. You might even see me stumbling around the place somewhere in there (you might, but I checked and you won't - Earl). Or you can just read about it here.

I'm heading out tomorrow night for the show and a certain special someone has her own solo this year. Very nice! Enjoy!

That second one is particularly hard to see. Crap!

Man...I don't know

Note: Teleporting new awfulness over at MovieGrenade for you to ignore.

Don Imus, a man that should never be relevant in discussion regarding either talk radio or race relations, is once again in the news. Yesterday he spoke about the decision of Adam "Pacman" Jones to stop using the Pacman nickname. In talking about who Jones is, he had this to say in a conversation with Warner Wolf:

Wolf: "Defensive back Adam 'Pacman' Jones, recently signed by the Cowboys. Here's a guy suspended all of 2007 following a shooting in a Vegas night club."

Imus: "Well, stuff happens. You're in a nightclub, for God's sake. What do you think's gonna happen in a nightclub? People are drinking and doing drugs, there are women there, and people have guns. So, there, go ahead."

Wolf: "He's also been arrested six times since being drafted by Tennessee in 2005."

Imus: "What color is he?"

Wolf: "He's African-American."

Imus: "Well, there you go. Now we know."

Source: NBC News

Now, I have to say that I immediately thought that Imus was up to his old ways again here when I heard that. A return to his "nappy-headed ho" form. Maybe he was. But today he had a rebuttal. Today he said that he was defending Pacman. He said that he was simply making a sarcastic comment about the state of race relations in this country. He said that he, Pacman, was being picked on BECAUSE he was a black man. Not that he was a bad guy BECAUSE he was black.

Sounds like someone is is doing a lot of back-pedaling there. He continued to say that what people should be outraged about is that black people get arrested in this country for no real reason. Really? Is that what you were saying, Don?

I dunno. I've listened to that first clip a few times now and I just don't buy it. His explanation today sounds rational, but it also sounds like rationalization. He insists that he was just trying to make a sarcastic comment about the state of race relations in this country.

I'm sorry, but a man with the history that Don Imus has in this arena shouldn't be making comments that could possibly be misinterpreted by the masses. If he meant to say that he is is outraged at the racial profiling that goes on in this country, he should have said just that. But instead he asks what color the guy is and then gives us a knowing "Well, there you go". To claim that those who thought he was being racist in the first clip are being ridiculous is equally as ridiculous. It's not like you don't have a past, dude!

Anyway, I'm not in favor of anyone getting fired for something they say. Who cares what this fossil of a man says anyway? I just can't believe that he still has an audience. He should lose his job through attrition. When the American public decides that he truly is irrelevant and they stop listening to him. That would be just fine with me.

Ice Box Man

George Carlin passed away yesterday after struggling with heart disease for many years.. While I was never a huge Carlin fan (I thought he was funny, but not THAT funny), my father was. He loved Carlin! A little weird considering how conservative my father was.

As my father was the ice box man in our family, he knew exactly where George was coming from in the monologue below. This is for him.

Rest in Peace, guys! - Earl

I'm the ice box man at our house. I'm Ice Box Man! I answer the call when there's a need at the ice box. Two very important responsibilities, the first one is: keeping people from standing with the door to the refrigerator open for more than 45 minutes at a time. God, that gets me mad - "YOU WANT TO CLOSE THAT GODDAMN DOOR PLEASE? YOU WANT TO CLOSE THE DOOR?! YOU'RE LETTING OUT ALL OF THE COLDNESS I SAVED OVERNIGHT! COME ON, CLOSE THE DOOR!" - you know, some guy smoked eight joints and he's gonna inventory my refrigerator. "Ummmm...Ummm...Uhhh.... "Here, here's fifty dollars- go down to the Burger King. Willya, God! We'll save more than that on electricity alone. Close the goddamn door, willya?"Look, if you wanna know what's in there, why don't you take a Polaroid picture and go away and look at the picture and then come back and figure out what you want. Years ago, we didn't have Polaroid cameras. We had to make an OIL PAINTING of what was in there!

Aah, I don't let it get me down. 'Cause there's a bigger responsibility. And that is getting into that refrigerator and deciding which things need to be thrown away. Most people will not take that responsibility. Most people will just go and get what they want, leave everything else alone and say, "Well, someone else wants that. Someone else will eat that" Meanwhile, the thing is getting smaller and smaller and smaller and is, in fact stuck to the rack. Well, I've got to go in there and decide when to throw things away. "Chocolate pudding? Does anyone want this last chocolate pudding? I have just one chocolate pudding left. It's only pulled away from the side of the dish about three inches all the way around. And there's a huge fault running through the center of the pudding. Actually, it's nothing but a ball of skin at this point. Does anyone want a ball of fault ridden chocolate pudding skin? I'm only going to throw it away."

Do people do that with you? Offer you some food that if you don't eat it, they're only going to throw it away. Well, doesn't that make you feel dandy? "Here's something to eat, Dave. Hurry up, it's spoiling!" "Something for you, Angela. Eat quickly, that green part is moving!" "Here, Bob. Eat this before I give it to an animal." Y'ever been looking through the refrigerator and you come across an empty plate? Boy, that starts me to wondering. Did something eat something else? Maybe the olives ate the tuna! Maybe that chicken isn't really dead yet. Actually, I picture a little mouse with gloves and a parka on, y'know. Just waiting for the lights to go out.

Perhaps the worst thing that can happen is to reach into the refrigerator and come out with something that you cannot identify at all. You literally do not know what it is. Could be meat, could be cake. Usually, at a time like that, I'll bluff. "Honey, is this good?" "Well, what is it?" "I don't know. I've never seen anything like it. It looks like...meatcake!" "Well, smell it." (snort, sniff) "It has absolutely no smell whatsoever!" "It's good! Put it back! Somebody is saving it. It'll turn up in something." That's what frightens me. That someone will consider it a challenge and use it just because it's in there.

It's a leftover. What a sad word that is. Leftover. How would you like to be...a leftover? Well, it wouldn't be bad if they were taking people out to be shot. I might even volunteer. But, y'know, leftovers make you feel good twice. D'ja ever think about that? When you first put them away, you feel really intelligent- "I'm saving food!" And then, after a month, when hair is growing out of them and you throw them away you feel...really intelligent- "I'm saving my life!"

When you make a sandwich at home, do you reach down past the first three or four pieces of bread to go down and get 'the good bread'? It's kind of a self preservation thing, y'know? What you're really saying is, "Let my family eat the rotten bread! I'll take care of Numero Uno!" And down you go into the loaf. Down, looking for the two that you want, a matching pair. And you have to be careful pulling them out so they don't tear. And then when you get them to the top, the upper eight slices fall the other way. I never straighten them out. I think, screw it, let 'em think a burglar made a sandwich. Not my job, straightening out the bread.

Gotta tell me. In the refrigerator, who is it, please that puts into the refrigerator the half-gallon containers of milk with only that much left in them? I get one of those every time. Hey, here's some milk- fooom! ...God, not enough to drink. Better put that back, huh? I know my responsibilities.

Takin' a break

So this little anonymous blog-thing became a little less anonymous last night, it seems. I was mad with a friend of ours about something and it got back to her.

Right or wrong, that's not what I want THIS to be about.

So I've taken all the posts referencing my friends down and you won't see that shit any more.

I'll still be here, but I'm going to start censoring myself. Maybe I will just drop the whole "anonymous" think. I dunno. Whatever.

All I know is that there are some people I care about in the real world who aren't speaking to me right now, and they claim that it is because of this. Like I said before, right or wrong...that's not what I want THIS to be about.

UPDATE: I'm not closing comments on this one. You can comment if you want, but I won't be talking about it anymore. I don't want anyone to be upset with me over this stuff. So any discussion, on my part, of my friends is now off-limit.

Little Superstar

Thanks to the cats over at Deadspin for this one:

That's it. That right there. That is what the internet was created for. Thanks, Al Gore!

Fair Warning

BIG ASS UPDATE: Okay...I figured out how to do it and it was so simple even a moron like myself couldn't screw it up. All I had to do was turn off my site feed then go an publish all those old posts. After that was done, all I had to do was turn the site feed back on. Easy, peasy, lemon squeezy. So for all of you can't get enough of Earl, you know who you are, feel free to delve into my archives from 2005 thru August of 2006. That's the old shit, fuckers! Most of it is outdated. Movie review and whatnot, but I wanted to add it all just in case Slyde gets rid of the old stuff on his blog. And there's one or two posts in there that I am semi-proud of. And by "semi-proud of", I mean totally ashamed of. - Earl

In anticipation of Slyde eventually moving his blog over to Wordpress or Blogger sometime in the future, I've been in the process of moving my contributing posts from his blog over to this joint here.

They are all sitting in my draft post area right now and I'm gonna try to post them with the datestamp from when they were originally written.

Here's the problem...I would rather not have them show up on the RSS feeds as new posts. Are there any Blogger geniuses out there who can tell me how to do this? I mean, I've spent about 10 seconds looking into it and I'm exhausted.

But if I can't figure it out, be prepared for an onslaught of old Earl posts in your RSS feeds. Sometime tomorrow, maybe.

Like the title says...fair warning.

Edit: Since you are here anyway, read this article about a dude who managed to turn a NYC apartment building into a real-live Da Vinci Code something or other. Must be nice being that rich.

Patsy Cline

"I got a head of full of feelin' higher
And an ear full of Patsy Cline
There is just no one who can touch her
Hell I'll hang on every line
Oh crazy how things happen
It's incredible but true
Oh the longer I'm gone the closer I feel to you."

Jimmy Buffett - "Miss You So Badly"

"There was a lot of hurt in Patsy's voice. A lot of deep love in her voice. And I think she portrayed that." - June Carter Cash

Time to get serious

I know that I've spoken about some pretty important things in my life over the past week or so. The sudden decision to start writing. The search for meaningful co-existence with my professional life. Family matters concerning religion and politics. A bit more thoughtful than the usual fare here on the Bug-Eyed Blog.

Now it's time to bring up something, well...two things, that are even more important than the life issues discussed in the past few days.

Ellen Barkin and Spicy Sweet Chili Doritos.

They both look delicious, don't they?

Now I know that Ellen Barkin and Spicy Sweet Chili Doritos aren't for everyone. Ellen isn't as young as she used to be and there are plenty of other snacks that folks might like other than those Doritos. Some people might not care for either of them. Those people are fucking idiots.

I dunno what it is about Ellen Barkin that makes me love her so. I hadn't seen her in years until I watched the snoozefest that was Oceans Thirteen last night. A snoozefast except for the scenes that Ellen Barkin lit up with cougar-ish ferocity. She may be in her mid-fifties now, but damn she looks good! I wanted to do naughty things to her last night. Naughty things that involved her naughty and crooked mouth. Mmmm...I love women with crooked smiles, especially older, sexy women with crooked smiles. Reminds me of...well, let's just say someone from my past.

So I took it out on a bag of Spicy Sweet Chili Doritos. Mmmm...they tasted good! I wonder how Ellen Barkin would like them? Maybe she could suck the spicy sweet chili crumbs off of my fingers with her naughty and crooked mouth. I wanted to fuck the shit out of that bag of Doritos. Just bend it over and give it a nasty ride.

Um, you guys know what I mean?

Right?

Anyone?

The ABC's of Earl

Cap'n Marrrk did a version of this over at his joint the other day. So I figured I would nick it for the weekend. I tried to stay away from the serious stuff. There's been too much of that going on lately. So I just had a good time with it instead.

A - Alcohol. Like there is anyone who reads this blog who didn't think I was gonna pick alcohol to represent the A's. "Whiskey is a drink so mellow and slow. First you get a taste and you want some mo." - Skavoovie & the Epitones

B - Buffy. Glorious Buffy. Was there ever a better TV show or role model for today's young ladies? Don't make fun of my Buffy obsession!!!

C - Cunt. My absolute favorite curse word that I never say. It sounds awful coming out of the mouth of an American. This one is strictly for the Brits and the Irish. Those fooking cunts!

D - Dave Grohl. One of my man-crushes. I've talked about this before, but I think it's healthy to air it out every once in a while. I wanna be inside of him. Did that sound too gay or just gay enough?

E - Elvira. Poppy just mentioned her over at her digs. A goth chick with a huge rack? What's not to love?

F - Fingernails. I chew 'em. But only two of them. I used to chew all my fingernails and cuticles, but I stopped a few years ago except for the ring finger on my right hand and the middle finger on my left hand. Now all of my finger chewing rage is focused on those two digits alone. I call them my bad fingers.

G - Gia, clearly. She's the love of my life and my bestest friend evah!

H - Hair. It's long and a bit silvery right now. As opposed to short and a bit silvery. Ya know?

I - Ice hotels. I'm obsessed with staying in one of them. I don't know why because I really don't like the cold weather that much. But the whole idea of staying in a hotel made of ice makes me smile. For some reason.

J - Jimmy Buffett. I've been a fan since I was 10 years old. I've seen him perform in stadiums, small charity events and even once on Duval Street in Key West. I'm a bit done with him now, but I still dig the music. Especially when I'm drinking and it's nice out.

K - Speaking of Key West...it's my absolute favorite place in the world. I would rather be listening to the juke box by the bar at the Green Parrot than just about any place on Earth.

L - Lost. How I feel sometimes, but also the name of my favorite non-reality show on television. Just how did Hurley manage to keep on all that weight?

M - Montauk. I wish there was a way for me to get to you without a helicopter and/or driving through the Hamptons. I would be there today if it wasn't a 3 hour drive with traffic. Something that is only 60 miles away shouldn't take you 3 hours to get to. Crap.

N - New Orleans. My second favorite place after Key West. I just read an article about how it has quietly become the murder capital of the U.S. in the past year or so. Not directly after Katrina, but just recently. I think it will be a while before go back. Shame.

O - Old school. That's how I kick it, beeyatches!!!

P - Potato Chips. My snack o' choice. My current favorite is Utz Salt N Vinegar, but I really love them all. No real sweet tooth, I guess I was born with a savory tooth.

Q - Quadrophenia by The Who. Simply the best album ever made. It's my first and last choice for a Desert Island Disc. I would bring 5 copies - lots of backups.

R - Runners. As in joggers. I hate them! I hate their little shorts and their cute socks and their slim physiques. Fuck them for getting off the couch and exercising while I drive to the deli for a breakfast sandwich. Fuck 'em!

S - Shoulder. My right one. It's annoying the crap out of me. I don't know what I did to it, but anytime I try any kind of athletic endeavor it barks at me. Crap.

T - Tits. Another obvious one. I love 'em. All shapes, all sizes, all ages (over 18). Tits are great! Everyone should have a pair they can play with. Either their own or a loved one's pair. Hey...remember that Martian chick with the three boobs in Total Recall? She's now an agent working in Hollywood and she was just featured on Denise Richard's new reality show. Denise called her a cunt. Nice!

U - Unforgiven. One of my all-time favorite movies, one that I would probably list at #1 if I were pressed to say it. There, I said it.

V - Andrew Vachss - my favorite author. They've come and they've gone, but I've stuck with Mr. Vachss for the past 20 years or so. Burke is the man.

W - Water. Sounds simple and stupid, right? But I'm obsessed with it. I wanna live by it. See it. Drink it. Touch it. Hear it. Everything but swim in it outside of a pool. Fuck that noise! There might be sharks and other bitey things in there.

X - XXX. I love the porn. Well, at times. Gia thinks it's weird that I prefer the print medium over DVDs, but that's just how I roll.

Y - The New York Yankees! It's been a tough season thus far, but I have faith. Plus Gia's dad played was signed by them out of high school and played in the minors with them. Once pitched batting practice to Joe D. Very cool!

Z - Zebras. Who doesn't love zebras? They look like pot-bellied little horses and they kinda resemble the decorations from those swingin' single pads in the 1970's. What was that pattern called again? (Z is a stupid letter, isn't it?)

On last thing before I head off for the weekend. This one is brought to you by New Orleans, Cliff Maegden and the letter "N". I've posted it before, but it seems relevant in regards to yesterday's post. Have a great weekend everyone!

What do you want to be when you grow up?

I've been thinking about that a lot lately.

In the past month or so the topic of my career, or lack thereof, has come up time and time again. And when I say it's come up, I mean that it's briefly mentioned and then I change the subject. Because that's how I deal with things that frustrate me. I internalize it.

I was very unhappy in the corporate world. I used to work crazy hours. 70+ hours a week wasn't unheard of. Saturdays. Sundays. I was telling a funny story the other day about how I would occasionally sleep at my desk on a Friday night because I had to be at work early that Saturday. Turns out it wasn't such a funny story.

Six years ago I was offered a job in Florida that I really didn't want to take. When I turned it down, I was told that it was either that or the road. I chose the road. They still needed me so I worked from home for another year or so. And I got used to it.

After a little break I began to consult for a small company that a friend of mine started. I wasn't making much, certainly not as much as I made when I was corporate. But I was happy. Sorta. I still didn't enjoy what I did on a daily/weekly basis, but it was a living. I had to simplify my life a bit, but that was fine.

It's been five years now and things haven't changed. I haven't grown. I need to move on. But its hard. Its damn hard. But I still need to do it. I need to move on. I need to do it for myself. I'm just not sure how to go about it. I'm not sure what I'm qualified to do. I'm not sure what I want to do.

I just want to be happy at work. And besides a short time as I transitioned from the office to the home office, I haven't been. Happy at home. Happy with my family. Happy with my friends. Happy with my Gia.

Just never at work.

Is anyone? I don't know if anyone in my life is happy with their work life. Why is it so hard?

Sorry. Just feelin' a little down about my life tonight.