Pick up these balls

You'll be sitting around the house, perhaps a beer in hand watching those housewife programs (Nanny, Roseanne or worse, The View) and that loathsome commercial will come on. At the time, seeing a vacuum cleaner pick up a 16 pound bowling ball yields only a slight chuckle.

Only later the sheer idiocy or rather, the essence of the commercial makes me re-think my TV programming. Granted, perhaps, should I ever be in a situation that will involve me trying to pick up my Woody Harrelson Kingpin bowling ball out of a bowling pin system and the power goes out, I must say I would yell "Get the Oreck!"

Since we're on the topic of absurdity, does it have to be a bowling ball? Can it be, say a 16 pound severed human head? What about a case of Moosehead, the beer, not the actual head (unless you saw off the antlers with a rusty saw)?

Yeah everybody bitches about the stupidity of commercials, so here are some things to have fun with.

If the commercial starts with a question, always say No. It defeats the WHOLE purpose of what follows. They assume you say "Yes" to shit like are you hungry or would you like to suck her tits? Shit, now that I think of it that might be a yes.

This one is from my pops who is a balding man. When he sees commercials about those fucking get your hair back commercials he switches that shit off real quick. Not cause he's bald, but because apparently he doesn't want THOSE assholes selling him this shit.

Luxury cars that apparently make you a better person. ONLY $49,999. Because when I AM crunching through a bag of Doritos, I look at the $0.99 on the bag and think "Fuck my life sucks, I'm eating Doritos, I could be driving one of these new babies." I'd like to drive one of those pussy-mobiles (read: Chick magnet), but not to a strip club but INTO a strip club. Just to see what happens.

My ideal car is from the 70s. Big two-door gas guzzling mother that peels out and has racing tires and those dual dices hanging off the mirror like a pair of cojones.

No wait a minute. I'll have an Oreck hanging off the mirror sucking one of those 16 pound bowling balls. These days you have to make a statement.

Jet Lag

Here's an interesting news item:

Apr 27, 2006: PRESS: Mexico's Navy plans to buy Russian SU-27 fighter aircraft


"The Mexican Navy plans to set up an air defense unit using SU-27 aircraft," the article says.

Here's the Flanker.



In fact, Mexico is actually ready to get these bad boys in order to form "the first strategic air control element in the country." Translation: Pinche Gringos.

I found this bit of news a bit interesting consideringg that Bush plans to build a fence around America. I guess world politics are always in the state of upheaval. What the hell does Mexico need air cavalry for? In the same vein we do, to protect their shit. They got oil fields too. Oh and you can party in Mexico. Cocaine is OK, to a certain extent.

That's my next vacation spot.

Oh YEAH!

"No man, this is grass."

This is what lazy people do.

Sleep. Lots and lots of sleep, all fueled by lots and lots of irresponsible behavior. Sure we can all get jobs, work a cocksucker shift and then go home and bitch to our loved ones about “how hard work was.” But the asshole thing to do is to stay home. Lazy people, the people who just finished their semesters, awaiting bigger and better things, somehow just spend their lives living in some sort of a bullshit infused fantasy.

But if there is anyone to talk about being lazy, especially since as Alice Copper said, school is out for summer, then it would have to be me. And I’m not the first one to claim that those couple of weeks after school lets out belongs to entirely to me. Many have said it to me. Some say they will major in “taking it easy.” Others say that the first two weeks will be dedicated entirely to the consumption of bourbon and other unmentionables. While those two are very noble exercises in the important, albeit health costly, search for the inner self, there is one more area that lazy people usually excel in. The topic of course is watching movies. And lots of them, I’m talking about 12 hour blocks of Blockbuster sponsored movie marathons, where the only exhaustion possible is a) eye exhaustion and b) the necessary function of going to take a piss, smoke, and sometimes shit.

So I went to that evil movie whorehouse known as Blockbuster and rented a few things. You know you have a problem with laziness when you call ahead to book a copy of Johnny Knoxville’s latest opus, The Ringer.

I do that. I call ahead. Because countless times I went to the video store and came out with the likes of Chronicles of Narnia or Rob Schneider’s Deuce Bigelow part 2. I’m lying; I would never succumb to Deuce Bigelow part 2. Now Jenny McCarthy in Got Dumped—pure gold—that’s a different story. I’m kidding of course, but the nights when you borrow shit turn out to be shit as well.

Jesus, let me tell you, I hate bad movies. That’s because you pay to watch them and they are unbelievable shit.

So I rented The Ringer.



You know, Johnny Knoxville was enjoyable when he was being, well, Johnny fucking Knoxville. Shit—I will come out and say that I enjoyed Jackass to its fullest stupidity. I loved those guys. Fuck, I bought CKY videos staring Bam Margera and Jackass season 2, but The Ringer is bad. Not entirely bad, seeing Knoxville act like a retard gets some chuckles, but in the end, I felt I was better off with watching re-runs of Jackass on MTV.

I admire Knoxville for one reason and one reason only. He was able to turn downright stupid shit into a paycheck. I respect him for that. I would love to hangout with the Jackass crew. Are you serious? Those fuckers are crazy and they know how to party.

On to round two. Hostel.

Now Hostel is the type of a movie that signals your mental imbalance just because you rented it. Granted it’s gory, twisted and it’s fucking sick, but it’s a well made movie. It’s a good movie, considering that Eli Roth, the writer and director, is in production of Hostel 2 right as we speak. Hostel is nice.

There is a surprise in my little lazy bundle and it is called Grandma’s Boy. Now hear me out. Happy Madison, Adam Sandler’s company, produced this little title for a miniscule box office success, but the movie is funny. It stars Allen Covert, the same guy you can see in virtually every Sandler movie. He was the caddie in Happy Gilmore and was featured in most of Sandler’s work.

Now he has his movie. And a lot of faces make cameos. Rob Schneider, no surprise there, makes it as well as Kevin Nealon.

But I liked it because it spoke to my generation. It’s a movie about game designers, no wait, stoner geeks who are game designers. It’s fucking hilarious. Comedian Nick Swardson steals every scene he is in. You gotta love the guy. Go get stoned with your buds and watch it. It’s a stoner movie.

And Munich will make you shit your pants. If you haven’t seen Spielberg’s Munich then you are missing out.

Munich is such a good movie that it makes Capote stumble on its speech patterns. The movie works and hits your “thinking caps” about the way Israeli Mossad has been taking revenge after the Munich massacre. It will knock your cocks off. Eric Bana is now a major actor. Daniel Craig proves why he should be the next Bond, that blue-eyed fuck.

In the end though, lazy people get to do what others don’t do. Jerk off to “Taboo,” watch stoner movies and drink large quantities of liquor. It’s not a lively life, but all lazy motherfuckers can relate to just chilling in front of the TV.

Why is IT talking?

“Jesus Christ,” I said. “This isn’t going to work.”

I mutter something vulgar under my breath and realize that my clothes are still on. I try to free myself from the plethora of crumbled up bed sheets but it’s all useless. I am helpless and this fucking headache is not helping. Remnants of a night gone by flash behind my eyelids like a dream that went nowhere. The phone is ringing and the machine gets it since I’m in no shape to walk, let alone talk.

Something awful is happening to me. How long has this nightmare been going on? A week? A couple of years? I sit up on the bed and fish my glasses from under the pillow. Perfect place, now that I think of it.

Reality is beginning to slowly hit me and The Bottle starts talking in gibberish, making rude gestures and flimsy accusations.

“Geez, what the hell do you want!” I scream.

Great work, keep talking to The Bottle, I’m sure it will answer. The Bottle in question is Wild Turkey and I realize at that point that maybe things are getting a little too hectic. Hey it started it.

“Maybe it’s time to start giving a shit,” The Bottle says. “Maybe enough is enough.”

“What’s it to you?”

“Nothing man, just trying to say that you’re lousy company.”

“I’m lousy company? Fuck you Bottle! I’m hanging out with you!”

“Why are you screaming, am I screaming?” The Bottle says.

So what’s the drunkard wisdom today, I ask, almost sure that the thought of me having a conversation with an almost empty bottle of bourbon, in some states, is certified mental illness.

“Nobody likes a quitter unless they’re a sperm eater,” The Bottle says.

“What?”

“Nothing, just trying to get you out of bed to read the newspaper,” it says.

You know, waking up used to be good. The birds would chirp, the sun would shine through the blinds, right on your eyelids most of the time, and you would be happy. It was always fun having a warm body next to you. It’s the flip side when it’s a cold body.



I scratch my head and check messages. Then check e-mail. Then MySpace. Then visit CNN.com. Then turn on the news. Then take a piss. Then shake. Then watch Looney Tunes. Yosemite Sam is on. Sam was always the most stressed out of all the WB characters. Some would argue that Wiley E. Coyote was, but Wiley knew his position in life. Whenever he would take a plunge down a canyon he would have that “so what else is new” shrug, or a sign. Not Sam, you could see pure agony in that man (if you can call him that) as he was tricked into falling down or getting blown up. That’s because Sam is a human character, he knows what will happen. Varmints.

“Don’t eat the eggs,” The Bottle says.

I must be sleeping. If I would be a cartoon I’d be me.

I eat the eggs and I puke.

“Told you. I don’t go well with eggs in the morning,” The Bottle says.

I make coffee. I watch porn and comment on the bad acting. I actually try to dispute what they are saying. “I want you to cum in my mouth,” is blaring on the TV and I’m screaming “LIAR!” as I skim over the newspaper.

“You know you should be jerking off,” The Bottle says. And at that point I had enough. I pour a shot and like Wiley Coyote I shrug. The post semester celebrations will eventually turn to pure inbred alcoholism. I should have woken up quoting Thompson. “The possibility of a total mental collapse is very real now.”

I go back to sleep, playing it safe. This never really happened. But if it did, it would be something out of a cartoon. Anvil drops on my head.

“I don’t go well with anvil’s either,” The Bottle says.

Just because

A mind is a terrible thing to waste, unless you're wasted and you don't mind.

Brings back bad memories

So I could ramble on about the various parties I went to last week. Beginning with Monday at a bar called Monday's in Chicago, or Tuesday's decadence of my own, Wednesday at Spin, which unbeknownst to me at the time was a gay nightclub, or shit the culmination of events on Thursday which was the end of the semester party at the Billy Goat. Who knows—that Goat party was so crazy it deserves a post of its own.

But on a more somber note, a Chronicle photographer and I went to see United 93. Now before we get at the heart of this matter, the weather was in the 60s in Chicago that day. The sun was shining, kids were running into traffic (as kids do) and me and the photographer hailed a cab to catch a showing of this flick. From this day, he will always ask me why we went there. It's not that anything bad happened at the screening. No booze was involved and nobody got punched in the face. It was the sheer power of the movie that turned the rest of the afternoon into a farce, something Eugene Ionesco would call absurd.

United 93, the documentary style big budget drama, is the type of a movie that can suck the beauty out of everyday things—things like the playoffs or chasing skirt, or fuck, even chasing the story. And I say that and I mean that as a compliment because United 93 is such a powerful film that everyday things mar in comparison to the memory of that day. Prada Shoes, Virgin record stores, Millennium Park and Chipotle can all go fuck themselves when compared to something that actually means something. Granted, we all know the story of that flight. But the way that the film is made, with hand-held camera angles and real people who experienced it acting out what happened that day, mixed in with the confusion, despair and the harrowing climax is what will probably make this the best 9/11 film out there.

Originally when United 93 came out, I wanted to see it. That was it and that being three weeks ago; I faulted on that promise, hence the Billy Goat and the debauchery. But somehow I got a copy of the television drama Flight 93 and my 9/11 curiosity was sparked again. But I won't go into the details and I can say that both have its merits and high points, Flight 93 playing the emotional cues (read me crying like a bitch) and United 93—well that's a different story.

United 93 is disturbing.

Having seen it I must say that the movie resonates far after you leave the theater. I won't spoil it, but the ending serves as no payoff; it just makes you sit there, as the lights come on, forcing you to deal with the reality of what fucking happened that day.

Too Early? That whole argument that it is too early to have movies about 9/11 is horseshit. We have to watch, despite what a USA Today poll says. Families of those who lost their loved ones will obviously not be happy with big budget portrayals of those tragedies and they deserve all the respect they can get. But it's the public that needs to be reminded.

Even though we say "We will never forget" I have a hankering suspicion that a lot of us did. I have a hard time believing that a movie such as United 93 is being used as a way to make money. Sure it will. But it's probably Oliver Stone's WTC that will take that honor. United 93 is meant to show you the horrors on that plane that movies made for television can't. That's the point. You pay to get disturbed.

Sure even the cynics will say that 9/11 is so five years ago and we should get over it. Bullshit. Letting time heal wounds is one thing—a privilege reserved for the families who suffered—but for the rest of us, we need this.

There is no glory in watching this film. As my cohort put it, this movie makes you feel like shit. Indeed. And it's not what you see on the screen that does so, it's what you see when you leave the theaters, on the street that does.

People are living this weird safety laden life now, some even sick of thinking about 9/11. Does the movie reinforce our hate of terrorists? Possibly it does, but not in its portrayal, since the film does a good job in not dehumanizing the hijackers, but in reinvigorating our previous hatreds—mainly we hated being attacked then and we would hate to be attacked now. I have no sympathy for the devil as much as I have no sympathy for the fuckers who crashed planes into our buildings. But the movie suggests that they had their religious agenda, albeit faulty by some of our religious standards (by my standards is another story, a story filled with violence and no remorse), and the heroes of the flight had theirs: Survival. That's what makes the movie powerful. We can listen to the phone calls over and over again. We know they, as one passenger puts it, did not want to be there, but it's the experience that counts.

The movie makes you feel like shit because you see yourself in others on the street. You yourself have forgotten. You did. Life goes on as usual on the streets. It's not like that for the families of the tragedy. Life is not the same. But I'm getting preachy.

Walking past yuppie stores and fancy diners down Michigan Ave. helped to reinforce that idea. We have no clue where we are, we read what's on the news with a grain of salt and then talk about it over drinks. We are far away from the day that changed everything. We are so far away that we ourselves have been changed, blinded by technology and gadgets, we are just sort of there, experiencing it all like a fly on the wall—not a good shape to be as citizens—that's a journalist's job.

My 9/11 experience lacked any drama but all tears and rage. I was on a subway train when some commuters talked of a plane hitting the WTC. Then more commuters came in, talking the same shit. Then a bum came on begging for change. And when you saw it live on TV, that second plane smashing into the second tower you were like: WHAT THE FUCK! And then there was silence. Complete silence. Nobody said a word. You knew this was different.

Everybody knows where they were and what they did. 9/11 is my generation's Kennedy Assassination. No shit we can't forget it. Our futures are based on this single event and the political mess that spawned on from it . Was it revenge that made the administration do what it did? Perhaps. Was it the sudden need to act? Who knows?

Politics are different issues though. We can skewer and squander, talk and compromise, issue rebuttals and commentaries and so what? What happened afterward—a giant political mess, a war, and no hopes for the future?

But we, as Americans, are still collecting on the chain of events that started it all on that faithless morning in September. Is it too early to be reminded? No. Listen; if we are keeping count of Mickey fucking Mouse's birthday, then we deserve to be reminded of 9/11 from time to time. And I live in Chicago, the home of the Cubs, so don't talk to me about hope. Hope is all we have here. Let's stop talking and bullshit and God, as silly as it sounds try to fix something. Next stop immigration debate. Then the bus veers of the turnpike into the unknown.

We're a long way off from the moment where Will Smith lights up a cigar and calls it a "Victory Dance" as he did in Independence Day. We're doomed.

Hotline

Disorder Hotline

Brother Grim

Sometimes sitting there in the Bunker, beating away at the old Royal, brings weird questions into your head. You wonder why we’re slaves to technology. You think about writing on an old typewriter. But most of the time you’re thinking about getting head from some cutie you met in a nightclub last night.

Besides, the reason why I was pulled to the typewriter like a carriage horse is because the computer ate shit and died, in my head at least. It’s not that computers can’t be fixed, but because I always try to do the fixing myself. I’m sure there is a way to resuscitate this broken beast. Fix it up. Do something that yields a Beavis and Butt-Head style “Ugh.” I fuck around with the computer registry. Big mistake. But eventually you learn what is what and thanks to geeky advice that you pilfer from your friend’s internet connection you manage to get it working.

And then you think about death and how fragile life is. Then you die. No matter what career we will eventually embark on, there is a definite end to all of this. Cheerful, isn’t it. Death, that grim brother is always waiting in the shadows. Which is funny to think about because that means Death hangs around with everybody. On the toilet, at a party, in the bathroom, on the couch watching Real Time—Death is always there. You’ll be eating cereal on a Saturday and you’ll feel a tingle on the back of your spine and it’s just Death farting.

Plus you know Death, yes the Grim Reaper, parties. I once saw Death do a beer bong. And not just a regular beer bong. I’m talking about a big plastic contraption, PVC tube, dual carburetors—lots of fun.

Because what is there to do for Death but to wait for your sorry ass to get to “that time.” But while she/he waits, I say quit staring it in the face and have dinner with it. Why not? Could you imagine? Try eating a steak dinner with Death.

“That’s not beef, Bob. It’s actually Steve.”

You could be roomies with Death. Of course, you would have to have rules.

“How many times did I tell you to keep your scythe away from the razor blades?”

“You know if you weren’t such a motherfucking Chewbacca lookin’ nigga then you would learn something,” Death would say. “I have a scythe to work with. It needs to be cleaned and sharpened often. Your ass will fall thanks to this scythe. I’m Death motherfucker! Wash my cloak you bastard. Always bitching about razor blades.”

Living with Death, come on now, could be fun. You know rent is covered. Insurance? Death has no liabilities.

Now does Death take syrup on her/his pancakes? Like Travis Bickle perhaps?

That would be the irony; you chewing on a bloody stake while Death is eating croutons telling you might die from a clogged artery or that your cholesterol is way up.

Remember Wisconsin Dells? That Noah’s Ark Theme park? White water rafting with Death would be a hairy experience. Him and his scythe, that hood. Here’s a ride…plunge to your death. Come to think of it there was a ride called The Plunge. It works for the kids.

Must be this tall to smoke cigarettes. This tall to drink beer. This tall to sleep with a supermodel. This tall to get midget benefits.

Hanging with Death could be fun.

Drinking with Death would be a trip. He’d tell you, eventually, when you will die. And then you would begin to live.

Down with CC

Tuesday night at the Chronicle.

Dead silence. No real surprise there since there is no more paper to put out this semester. The place feels like a cold dead morgue. Complete with cadavers and white sheet. No more drunken talk over martinis, which if we really think about it, were pints of Steel Reserve High Gravity Lagers. No more worry about deadlines. Oh yes the deadline is a crucial part of any journalist. Without it not many are able to function. With it many go crazy trying to get by. But it is a necessary part of any journalists’ genetic make up. It’s so crucial, really, that many of my colleagues would not be able to put their socks on without it—which is why some leave a clean pair at the office, preferably on the window sill.

The deadline is what made old school journalists have a bottle of rye in their wooden desks. Now it would be Zima and gladly that's not the case. It's still Rye.

I was done with deadlines also. An event that made me cream my pants, lose all control of other bodily functions and crave large quantities of cheap malt liquor—not necessarily in that order.

Much will be missed about this particular brand of journalists that The Chronicle has produced. For one these people are maniacs. Not one of them can be certified as sane. Mostly everyone is crazy in their own way—which is the way it should be.

More needs to be said on this matter. But I need to save up for booze.

PS. Bulls lost. Chicago still is the same.