balding angrily

Yesterday I started listening to John Hodgman’s audiobook while drawing an apartment unit for Miami people; I laughed. I continued on the elliptical trainer at the gym. I further continued bent over the control panel of said elliptical trainer while banging my head on said panel from said laughter. My elliptical neighbor looked on. She was not shaped elliptically; she was shaped normally- well, as normal as a person in nude-colored leggings and over-sized glasses can look. She may have been looking at the television on the other side of me, but it makes me happier to think she was looking at me with bemusement and a little fear.

Please buy this book. And if you’ve already read it, please listen to the audio recording of it. Hodgman’s delivery of his own material is spot-on. He delivers passages like

Perhaps the most famous secret of Yale: that Yale was built by Elihu Yale with his own hands out of mud. The reality: somewhat true. Yale was not built by Elihu Yale, but the institution that would eventually become the university was founded in 1701 as The Friends of Elihu Yale. This was a social club of prominent Southern Connecticutions that was devoted to drinking and the display of friendship to Elihu Yale, a Boston-born merchant living in England whom they had chosen at random. The Friends of Elihu Yale would secretly meet every Thursday evening to plan out lavish new gifts for Elihu Yale: teams of horses, some carved out of gold, chests of tobacco and guns, magic cotton gins, a wise prostitute who would remind Yale of the brevity of life and its beauty, etc., all shipped at great expense to Elihu Yale who did not want them and did not know why he was receiving them.

‘Unknown gentlemen,’ he wrote in 1718, ‘Whither it is your aim to display great charity or great malice cannot be clear, but I urge you to please stop. I have already married the prostitute, and I cannot by law take another chest of nutmeg.’ He instead urged them to accept money to establish ’such a school that shall be useful to the local youths of quality, to teach them the principles of Godliness and secret world government.’ And thus Yale was born.

One possible explanation of the rumor stated above is the fact that while Yale was not made of mud, the entire campus was indeed buried under the earth for ten years to make it appear older.

like a straight-man playing off his own material, as if his own words were Jerry Lewis, and Dean Martin somehow spoke Lewis into being. Scratch that. Lewis wasn’t half as funny as Hodgman’s words, and Lewis never had a fascination with the surprisingly complicated hierarchy of hobo society. When Hodgman has to narrate a graphic from the book he asks a friend to help him out. These skits turn the disadvantage of not being able to see the image to the advantage of hearing their riffing.

I never understood the Justin Long-haters that praise Hodgman at the expense of Long in the Mac v. PC ads because I’m a Justin Long fan. After hearing only half of this book, I get it.

Before Netflix fixes this, please check out the cover art for Fast Food Nation. I prey there is a hacker out there in the world with an awesome sense of humor, not that the Netflix computers just have a case of the hiccups.

-Update-

If Netflix fixes their boo-boo, this clever fella or fellete took a screenshot.

-Update-

Netflix fixed it, but the clever fella with the screenshot still has his up.

A list of ideas for a personal blog via Defective Yeti.

Yeah? Well, fuck you. I had vegetable fajitas from Uncle Julio’s. And they fucking rocked.

I love being alone, probably to my discredit. I really, really, really got off on sitting at the bar and reading the Dallas Observer. So peaceful. No one to have to make small-talk with. No one asking you your opinion on the food they should order. No obnoxious child in the next table screaming their head off. Pure me-time.

And I think I’ll go ahead and buy the book.

I work with a guy that I hate for no other reason than I don’t like the way he walks and talks. When we pass each other as I’m going back to my cube after taking a leak and he’s going to get some coffee, in my head I see in his head that he thinks he’s better than me. This could be because he looks right through me while I try to give the obligatory one-sided smile/smirk that says, “I acknowledge that we work in the same office while not actually working together…and I know nothing about you…please let’s keep it that way.”

Today, as I was working on a floor plan that took about thirty percent of my conscious mind, I imagined getting into a fight with him and calling him an asshole, then getting fired. I would say loud enough, “Good! This project is shit! I’ve been wasting away my time on it for too long. This is exactly the kind of kick-in-the-butt I needed to get to doing what I really want to be doing.” (That thing that “I really want to be doing” is of course a mystery.) I imagined punching the dismissive asshole in the nose, making it bleed and stain his blue shirt and tie. I imagined grabbing every guy in the office that I think is good-looking in the crotch and kissing them full on the lips.

I think this is the same kind of fantasy I used to have about purposefully yanking the steering wheel to the left to crash into the living room of an innocent house in my driving instructor’s neighborhood. I pictured me sitting in his car in the living room, the wall of the house coming down around me like I was Jack Tripper and some blonde, feathered, roller-skate-wearing bimbo was giving me a blowjob. There’s a name for this kind of fantasy (not the blowjob part…the self-destructive part) in a psychology textbook. If you know it, please let me know.

About four or five times over the past month my mind has wandered with less violent images. I would be driving to work and notice that I missed the last minute of the podcast I was listening to. Last night it happened while watching a movie. It’s kind of scary because I’m usually a very conscientious driver/movie-watcher. I get on Jerry’s case all the time because he looks at the pretty birdies while he should be watching the road. Yesterday, my dad told me that, as opposed to when he was younger, he comes out of a movie knowing whether he liked it or not, but not being able to recall what the movie was about. I really hope I’m not getting senile early.

We invited a friend-couple to Oscar Night explaining that we aren’t the type of gays to throw a blow-out, gold lamé gown-required celebration of pomp. We’ve read about those. We have people over, eat Frito Pie, and make fun of the celebrities. The guy part of the friend-couple wrote back.

i have never, ever, ever gone thru the pain of watching an ‘oscars.’ it simply does not seem to be a very manly thing to do.

and like at t’giving, where ‘the girls’ played house while ‘the boy’ watched sports, will there be anything else for me to do?

damn, this sounds wimpy. so i will need to consult ‘the ticket’ before i can commit. they have a segment called ‘gay or not gay’ where they offer advice on perplexing dilemmas of this sort

i will post you accordingly…

He has an aversion to capitalization. I asked him why, and he didn’t give me a satisfactory answer. He also writes, “thru.” He’s not a smart person.

I wrote back.

If you do come, I suggest you brush up on your stars and starlets in the tabs. A lot of the time will be spent deconstructing the fashion choices of said stars and starlets. Look at it as a new kind of sport. The Superbowl and Oscar night share some of the same things: behind-the-scenes drama, disappointment, loss, tears, triumph, Cinderella stories, a mad fascination by the media, the chance that you might see a nipple-slip, if you’re at our house maybe some yelling at the television for a bad call, and unfortunately LONG stretches of very little happening.

Last year I yelled at the TV because Brokeback Mountain lost. Jerry also responded to him.

I can’t wait to hear the advice offered up by the enlightened brotherhood of The Ticket listeners. I’m certain it will be profound!

You can bring all of your back issues of Sports Illustrated to flip through. And, while we drink cosmopolitans we will serve you a very dark and heavy lager (out of a bottle - no glass). Oh, and you can scratch and burp and fart at your leisure.

He answered today.

based on your two very persuasive responses, how could i possibly say no to such well-meaning individuals.

by the way, i’ve checked with the guys at “the ticket” and they have told me i can go. but i cannot breathe a word of this to anyone!

and yes alex, you can quote me if you wish…

Gay panic.

I write too-long pieces of ridiculousness. Since most of the readers of this site come from the Filmspotting Boards, I don’t really have to explain the in-jokes. For my few friends who don’t come from the boards, ask me over dinner; I’ll explain. Otherwise just read and enjoy a look into my creepy mind.

Filmspotting: The Musical

Apparently the viagra and tramadol ferries have found my website and have been spamming the hell out of my comments. I had to switch to moderating every comment. So, if I have any readers after my long absense and you try to comment, you will not see the comment immediately. I now have to approve each one. Sorry for the inconvenience, but I don’t want to be indirectly responsible for another loss like that of Ol’ Dirty Bastard.

Edited to add

I just noticed that now when prompted to comment it says among other things “no profanity.”  As the title of this post indicates, I appreciate a really good swear word.  Please use as much profanity as you deem appropriate. Ignore the Wordpress/K2 sprites that tell you otherwise.

“That’s Candace,” said Lisa.

Griffin wanted to hit himself on the head to adjust the picture. You see actresses you love, movie stars, powerfully talented, panicked by the injustice of the punishment for age lines, who go to the wrong plastic surgeon and destroy their careers more completely than death by making themselves look like female impersonators of who they used to be, their lips puffed as though attacked by swarms of bees from an organic hive, eyelids stapled deep into the sockets, beach-ball bosoms, and forehead frozen with Botox into an emotional unintelligibility useful for the championship of the World Series of Power. No, what happened to Candace Netter Ginsberg, or what she had chosen to have happen, this was way, way On Beyond Zebra, this was supermarket tabloid-cover kidnappers from outer space meet Egyptian cat god, an Egyptian goddess made in their own image by the aliens from Close Encounters of the Third Kind, the squared chin and high cheeks and broad nose of a cat, with the tilted ovoid eye sockets an enlarged forehead of a true believer’s idea of wise beings from ancient galaxies. The reconstruction had severed every nerve in her face, so that nothing moved, or even twitched, except her eyes and her jaw. She spoke as though her teeth were wired shut. This was everything that’s wrong with everything. But…but…but…this creature was Candace Netter Ginsberg, and Griffin knew her and loved her from her book. She suffered and the stunning, clear, and forgiving eyes of a dying sacrificial victim whose endurance of suffering would bring her torturers to repentance, if torturers have souls.

[Griffin] wanted to tell her that her freakishness challenged all who looked at-well, upon, yes, who looked upon her-who looked upon her to see, instead of punished vanity and its scars, yes, to see within the lifted horrifying face an icon of the risen Christ, even if it was a little like the face of crucified Christ on a Mexican-restaurant bleeding-Jesus-crown-of-thorns hologram, with the three dimensional eyes that follow you around the room.