April Fools Day, by and large, passed me by without any fooling, given that I didn't wake up until about three in the afternoon for a short shift at work. Following a fantastically boring night in the Tarzhay Photo Lab, also known as The Pen, I changed into more appropriate clothes and set out for Plainfield to see the official opening gig for Small Shiny Things, which is three-quarters of the old Five Year Jacket, which gives you some idea of how much credence I give to the current Five Year Jacket, in which everything that was old is new again, like the Ford Mustang, but using the mid-Eighties body style and a four-cylinder engine.
I hate Kevin Trudo, and I don't say that often enough. He makes it all look so damn easy, and I spent most of my early Five Year Jacket shows watching his hands to see if I could pick up someof his guitar skills through osmosis or convection or something. Over the course of a show, I would inevitably get drunk enough to think, yes, I think I got that, and then go home to my guitar that's desperately in need of some work and, lo and behold, nothing. And that's when I'm sober; drunk, I'm totally clueless, half a beat behind even when playing rhythm on songs that only have three chords and require little coordination. But Kevin just does it: Plays guitar, sings, actually remembers the words to songs -which is a skill that always eludes me- and I hate him for it. Yes, my sin of the day is Envy.
I walk into O'Sullivan's on Route 30, and the band -Kevin on guitar or mandolin; Ron Donovan on guitar; and Jay Olazcek on an upright bass, his picking fingers wrapped in enough medical tape to suffice an entire football team- is on their second set. I get a beer and hang out with former classmate and auxiliary guitarist Chris Bauler, and the band begins playing "Drivin' My Life Away." I turn to Bauler and say, "Eddie Fucking Rabbitt?"
I'm not certain what Eddie Rabbitt means to Bauler, but to me it's representative of two things: Endless cross-country trips with my family in either a station wagon or a Volkswagen Rabbit, and the fact that Eddie Rabbitt represents the last time country music was good, back when all of the songs were about either being a cowboy or driving your big rig. It strikes a huge contrast against today's country music, which is full of overly sentimental drek, pro-establishment songs of "let's kick their ass" ultrapatriotism, and whatever the fuck "Who's Your Daddy" qualifies as. How is it that in twenty years we've gone from "I Love A Rainy Night" to "Who's Your Daddy," a phrase that is only at home in porno and as the subject title of an episode of The Maury Povich Show.
But I digress. The upright bass is amplified, but all the rest (vocals, guitars) is being routed through what is probably the hottest microphone I've ever heard, picking up the mandolin, guitar, and vocals, and routing it all through a terribly nifty piece of hardware which functions both as amplifier and speaker system. Whereas setup and takedown each used to be an hour-long chore, I'm told this takes all of about five minutes. I suppose I'll miss the Sovtek amp, Jay's bass stack, and Ron's Telecaster, but this is the price of progress.
Is it progress? Or is this a Back To The Egg kind of thing? Stripping everything down to the boys, a handful of stringed instruments, and the songs, the show plays like more of a good time than the twice-weekly shows of the last couple of years. There's no more Beatles medley, no more drum solo, no more Chumbawumba, none of which I particularly miss. But at the same time, there's no "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" surreptitiously inserted into the "Sweet Jane" guitar solo, making the uninitiated members of the audience question their own sobriety.
Given the venue, its patrons, and the approximately sixteen square feet (4' by 4') of real estate for the band to set up shop in, the new bluegrass vibe fits the establishment and -more importantly- the audience digs it. The band has a good time, the audience has a good time, is there really more to it than that? Probably not, and yet it seems to be the simple answer to a simple equation that's been eluding those involved until now.
So I need better bootlegging equipment. (Is it really bootlegging if it's sanctioned by the band?) The last two times I did this, I taped Five Year Jacket using a Canon MiniDV camcorder with mixed results due to acoustic issues of the two venues. Note to self: Don't record a loud band in a room the size of the Denny's A.M. smoking section. Fat Daddy'z, the bizarre biker bar in Seneca, worked out extremely well, though I still had to re-balance the stereo separation and had some equalization issues (and I still want to re-work that recording for the third time) to contend with, but in the end the results were good enough to earn most of the bootleg a number of permanent slots on my iPod. The camcorder idea, which is probably more of a viable option than ever, given the current setup and sound output, should still work quite well because it's digital from beginning to end, going through FireWire rather than an analog and back-to-digital conversion. The file sizes initially end up pretty huge, but I'd been looking for a reason to get a 120 GB hard drive. */end technical crap
At one point during the night, the band plays "Sweet Georgia Brown," also known as the Harlem Globetrotters Theme, and it works, which would have shocked me had it been playing when I walked in, given that the last time I saw these guys they were a rock band. Instead, I chuckle to myself as I light my cigarette, hating Kevin Trudo as he plays the vocal/whistle part on his mandolin. And then there's A-Ha's "Take On Me" which just works. I don't know why or how, but that Eighties new-wave song seems to translate quite well to the new vibe.
It's not until the drive home that I realize how fundamentally different the band is, summing it up in three words: No broken strings. Here, everything old is new again, like the 2005 Mustang with the classic Sixties body style and an engine under the hood that isn't being pushed to its limit, but, damn, it's still nice to just cruise down the road next to it.
Tonight's In-Class Work
Prompt: Write a scene between two people, using only set directions. I have to wonder what drugs they put in the meatball sub I had for dinner.
Bob and Jane are having a beautiful moonlit stroll on the beach. Jane kicks water at Bob. Bob kicks water at Jane. They embrace and fall to the sand From Here to Eternity style, the waves crashing against them. Bob, on bottom, looks over and sees a crab crawling toward him, so he rolls over with Jane. She sees the crab crawling toward her and looks to scream, but can't, given her severe case of laryngitis. She knees Bob in the crotch, precluding him from speaking in anything but a voice only dogs can hear, and Jane gets out from under him. She then kicks sand in his face and Charles Atlas makes his appearance. Exit Charles Atlas. Bob staggers to his feet in the manner that only a man who's recently been kicked in the crotch can, and shambles half-blind toward Jane. She backs away as he slowly walks toward her, his arms forward like Frankenstein. Jane looks around, still backing away. Just then, a group of rogue zombie-hunters from Pittsburgh drive by in their pickup truck. They spot Jane in distress, mortified by this stumbling corpse that appears to have just risen from its sandy grave.
And then time ran out. I'm sure you can imagine what bloodshed came afterward, and give yourself a point if you got the Charles Atlas reference.
AIM: therbmcc71
Wednesday, April 06, 2005
Thursday, March 31, 2005
Gimme Shelter
I'm downloading the new Weezer song off of iTunes right now, with "Teach Your Children" by Crosby, Stills & Nash in the queue, mainly because I can't seem to find my copy of the new Billy Idol CD, which I desperately want to listen to, but I fear that it's out in my truck, all of fifty feet away, outside in the fifty-five degree heat of an Illinois spring. It's also two in the morning, and I'm simply not going to go outside at this hour. It's balmy outside, the sort of climate-controlled environment you'd expect lab technicians to culture massive amounts of life-threatening bacteria in. Which is to say that I think it's downright anthraxy outside right now.
The Weezer song has concluded its downloading. "Beverly Hills" isn't much of a song. Maybe it'll grow on me, but it's certainly not as catchy or fun as "Keep Fishin'," which is -for my money- probably the catchiest song of all time. Yeah, that was the one with the video with the Muppets. Suddenly I notice that Glen Phillips (of Toad the Wet Sprocket fame) has a new song out, so I add that to the queue, which takes five minutes because of my stupid dialup connection.
On a side-note, I should add that I just barely missed seeing Glen Phillips play in Chicago several months ago at some small venue or another. A couple of weeks ago, I was informed by one of my friends that who was playing bass for Glen Phillips but John Paul Jones. If it wasn't bad enough several months ago, it was now much, much worse, having missed not only Glen Phillips in concert, but also the bass player for Led Zeppelin.
Back to bitching about dialup, with any luck this will be the last time I have to do it, because I'm informed that a cable modem will be installed sometime tomorrow, which means a trip out to ... someplace that sells 802.11G wireless setups. After that, it's a matter of praying to god that it works, then locking down the system so that others can't access it while wardriving, let alone gain access to my collection of pornography, which is quite staggering in size considering I've been living on dialup all these years.
I like the Live-Aid version of "Teach Your Children" better. Damn. I consider for a moment downloading "I Don't Like Mondays" by the Boomtown Rats, but I'm almost positive that I'd like the Live-Aid version of that better, too, and so maybe I should teach myself how to rip DVD's again, seeing how I've got the software lying around on my computer somewhere.
Trying to think of what movie to watch tonight, and I can't come up with anything. There's a ton of movies sitting on and around my desk, around because I've run out of desk space and they have a tendency to fall, and it was going to be Fight Club, but then I thought that was entirely too reactionary, given that I got shut down yesterday by the girl from my class and then again tonight by the Bozo Bucket ex-girlfriend, though she did so in passing, as though it were a standard part of every conversation she and I have. I consider for a moment Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, but then I realize, what does that say about me? That I'm watching a movie that's essentially about a couple's attempts to erase each other from their memories, which makes it even worse. That's right, even if I wasn't writing this, I'd still be concerned about what others think of my DVD-watching habits. "I've watched three discs of Evangelion today, does that mean that someone might think I'm obsessed with anime and try to strike up a conversation with me about La Blue Girl? God, I hope not."
With my thumb, I scrape a layer of dust off of Rocky and think to myself that the layer of dust is probably there for a reason, and that I don't want to watch the movie so often that it loses its appeal. Dances With Wolves is always tempting, but then I have to switch discs halfway through, and I probably will have fallen asleep by then. That's the whole point of this, to put in a movie that I'll fall asleep watching, and it's as I type this that I realize that no movie in this world makes me fall asleep faster than Alien: Resurrection, which reminds me that one of these days I'm going to have to get the Alien Quadrilogy box set. I can do this because the extra money that I was budgeting just in case I was going to go out on dates with a certain girl is now recycled back into my entertainment budget.
I break out my now-underwhelming Alien Legacy box set, furious at Fox for double-dipping me on a box set. Okay, individual movies I can handle, but making me buy a whole new box set is simply unacceptable, and then I realize that I really want some of the ancillary materials from the Matrix box set, but not the movies. Lord, no, not the movies. I put the DVD into my DVD-ROM drive just as Glen Phillips's ... Phillips', Phillips's? I wonder what's proper in that case, and I know that the Bozo Bucket ex-girlfriend knows, but I'm not talking to her because I'm fantastically single and she calls me because she has nothing else to do on her hour-long commute home but talk about James Spader and how she wouldn't ever date me again.
But I digress. Glen's (yes, I know him that well now) song finishes downloading, and I realize that it sounds like Toad the Wet Sprocket, but not one of the songs off of Pale or Fear, which are really the only two Toad albums worth listening to, and Pale is only worth listening to selectively. Dulcinea is all right, and it's more like what this new song sounds like, but that album also has "Fall Down" on it, which was the only genuinely good song off of that whole album, which goes to say how much I'm liking this new song, and I wonder how it is that Paul Westerberg stayed good after the Replacements broke up, but Glen Phillips sucks in the post-Toad the Wet Sprocket world.
So that's three Pepsi bottle caps gone that I wish I could have back, and I think that I would have been just as well off if I would have gone and picked something off of that newly-added album by Chingy. Who the fuck is Chingy? I don't know, but I'm really fucking disappointed in Glen Phillips right now.
I considered yesterday getting the new Bruce Springsteen track, and it started out sounding like Bruce recorded the song with just him and an acoustic guitar in a run-down hotel somewhere off of the interstate (read: it sounded like Nebraska), and then came the string section and various other things that made me go, "Aw, why did Brendan O'Brien have to come in and fuck up another Springsteen album?" But I know that I'm going to buy the album anyway, and I'll say, "Wow, these songs sure are powerful, but goddamn I just don't like it," and then I'll start listening to Tunnel of Love, and I'll feel better. Or worse, but I'll like the music better.
AIM: therbmcc71
The Weezer song has concluded its downloading. "Beverly Hills" isn't much of a song. Maybe it'll grow on me, but it's certainly not as catchy or fun as "Keep Fishin'," which is -for my money- probably the catchiest song of all time. Yeah, that was the one with the video with the Muppets. Suddenly I notice that Glen Phillips (of Toad the Wet Sprocket fame) has a new song out, so I add that to the queue, which takes five minutes because of my stupid dialup connection.
On a side-note, I should add that I just barely missed seeing Glen Phillips play in Chicago several months ago at some small venue or another. A couple of weeks ago, I was informed by one of my friends that who was playing bass for Glen Phillips but John Paul Jones. If it wasn't bad enough several months ago, it was now much, much worse, having missed not only Glen Phillips in concert, but also the bass player for Led Zeppelin.
Back to bitching about dialup, with any luck this will be the last time I have to do it, because I'm informed that a cable modem will be installed sometime tomorrow, which means a trip out to ... someplace that sells 802.11G wireless setups. After that, it's a matter of praying to god that it works, then locking down the system so that others can't access it while wardriving, let alone gain access to my collection of pornography, which is quite staggering in size considering I've been living on dialup all these years.
I like the Live-Aid version of "Teach Your Children" better. Damn. I consider for a moment downloading "I Don't Like Mondays" by the Boomtown Rats, but I'm almost positive that I'd like the Live-Aid version of that better, too, and so maybe I should teach myself how to rip DVD's again, seeing how I've got the software lying around on my computer somewhere.
Trying to think of what movie to watch tonight, and I can't come up with anything. There's a ton of movies sitting on and around my desk, around because I've run out of desk space and they have a tendency to fall, and it was going to be Fight Club, but then I thought that was entirely too reactionary, given that I got shut down yesterday by the girl from my class and then again tonight by the Bozo Bucket ex-girlfriend, though she did so in passing, as though it were a standard part of every conversation she and I have. I consider for a moment Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, but then I realize, what does that say about me? That I'm watching a movie that's essentially about a couple's attempts to erase each other from their memories, which makes it even worse. That's right, even if I wasn't writing this, I'd still be concerned about what others think of my DVD-watching habits. "I've watched three discs of Evangelion today, does that mean that someone might think I'm obsessed with anime and try to strike up a conversation with me about La Blue Girl? God, I hope not."
With my thumb, I scrape a layer of dust off of Rocky and think to myself that the layer of dust is probably there for a reason, and that I don't want to watch the movie so often that it loses its appeal. Dances With Wolves is always tempting, but then I have to switch discs halfway through, and I probably will have fallen asleep by then. That's the whole point of this, to put in a movie that I'll fall asleep watching, and it's as I type this that I realize that no movie in this world makes me fall asleep faster than Alien: Resurrection, which reminds me that one of these days I'm going to have to get the Alien Quadrilogy box set. I can do this because the extra money that I was budgeting just in case I was going to go out on dates with a certain girl is now recycled back into my entertainment budget.
I break out my now-underwhelming Alien Legacy box set, furious at Fox for double-dipping me on a box set. Okay, individual movies I can handle, but making me buy a whole new box set is simply unacceptable, and then I realize that I really want some of the ancillary materials from the Matrix box set, but not the movies. Lord, no, not the movies. I put the DVD into my DVD-ROM drive just as Glen Phillips's ... Phillips', Phillips's? I wonder what's proper in that case, and I know that the Bozo Bucket ex-girlfriend knows, but I'm not talking to her because I'm fantastically single and she calls me because she has nothing else to do on her hour-long commute home but talk about James Spader and how she wouldn't ever date me again.
But I digress. Glen's (yes, I know him that well now) song finishes downloading, and I realize that it sounds like Toad the Wet Sprocket, but not one of the songs off of Pale or Fear, which are really the only two Toad albums worth listening to, and Pale is only worth listening to selectively. Dulcinea is all right, and it's more like what this new song sounds like, but that album also has "Fall Down" on it, which was the only genuinely good song off of that whole album, which goes to say how much I'm liking this new song, and I wonder how it is that Paul Westerberg stayed good after the Replacements broke up, but Glen Phillips sucks in the post-Toad the Wet Sprocket world.
So that's three Pepsi bottle caps gone that I wish I could have back, and I think that I would have been just as well off if I would have gone and picked something off of that newly-added album by Chingy. Who the fuck is Chingy? I don't know, but I'm really fucking disappointed in Glen Phillips right now.
I considered yesterday getting the new Bruce Springsteen track, and it started out sounding like Bruce recorded the song with just him and an acoustic guitar in a run-down hotel somewhere off of the interstate (read: it sounded like Nebraska), and then came the string section and various other things that made me go, "Aw, why did Brendan O'Brien have to come in and fuck up another Springsteen album?" But I know that I'm going to buy the album anyway, and I'll say, "Wow, these songs sure are powerful, but goddamn I just don't like it," and then I'll start listening to Tunnel of Love, and I'll feel better. Or worse, but I'll like the music better.
AIM: therbmcc71
Wednesday, March 30, 2005
A Murder of One
Before I dispense with this evening's post -and I'm quite aware that it's been two weeks since the last one- I'm going to relate a story about my niece, Frodo, who happens to be the funniest person I know, including myself, which is kind of sad, given that I'm in a comedy-writing class. The other day, she was writing on a piece of paper with a crayon words that were not even comprised of letters, except for perhaps the occasional accidental stumbling upon a sanskrit letter or a Japanese kanji symbol. In any case, after an extensive period of writing all of this down, she hands the piece of paper to my mother and says, "It's Spanish. Read it to me." Precocious four year-old, she is.
In any case, tonight's class delved into character and motivation. I wasn't feeling particularly funny, given my day at work, but I can't say that I wasn't able to produce at the drop of a hat. Half of the people in class are virtually incapable of spontaneous writing, which makes sense, because it's not an improv program. Good writing takes time, and editing takes a lot longer. However, in class, we have to produce immediately, given a random prompt, no matter how absurd or bland it might be. The following pieces of writing came from tonight's class, with the prompt in boldface. Basically, given the prompt, you have to write for ten minutes.
Jumping off a tall building
Bob's mother was never a firm believer in the notion of peer pressure. She never went for the "but all the other kids are doing it" excuse, stopping just shy of bein gthe mother from Carrie and saying that all the other kids were going to laugh at Bob. Bob, on the other hand, was one of those societal followers who French-rolled his blue jeans in seventh grade and touted the Pixies as the leaders of the alternative-rock revolution, despite having never heard any of their albums. Today, he watches television every night and abandons his cubicle whenever possible to talk to others by the water cooler about whatever series won the Nielsen ratings contest the night before. He has an iPod despite not owning a computer, and thinks that Microsoft is evil, though he can't elaborate on why.
Two days ago, the company Bob works for was raided by SEC agents, with regard to some sort of stock fraud in the billions of dollars range. Mister Staley, the guy over in accounting who Bob believes himself to be the good friend of, having discussed the niceties of fine dining -such as foie gras, which Bob thinks is actually finely chopped lettuce, having never seen it except written on menus- and how great herbal supplements are, though Bob doesn't even take a daily vitamin, though he does take an aspirin every day because the television says it could save his life.
Anyway, Mister Staley, Bob's good friend who forgot the last two years to invite Bob to the summer barbeque, has taken stock of his life and came to the conclusion that prison isn't for him, even for a Martha Stewart sentence, and went up tot he roof to end his life in the dramatic fashion that no one ever really does anymore, since open-casket funerals are the in-thing. But Staley doesn't care, because he's a leader, not a follower.
After lunch, Bob gets word of Staley's high-flying demise, and -despite having nothing to do with any fraud- goes up to the roof to do the same, remembering his mother's rhetorical question of if all of his friends jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge, would he?
A Man Needs a McDonald's Hamburger - An exercise in motivation
Bob, seated currently in his living room, wants a McDonald's hamburger. Craves it, needs it, will die without it, because his bad cholesterol is entirely too low. He thinks, god, if not for this ankle-bracelet and detection system, I could just go out and get one. Bob decides, damn the law, which is not an outlandish thought, given his temporary incarceration and current house arrest, and he goes on the lam for that tasty bun, all-beef patty, pickles, onions, et cetera.
Once he gets out of the detection system's range, he's on the run, literally, hauling ass down the street like something out of a Will Smith film. He gets two blocks before running past a police car at a full sprint, wearing nothing but his Adidas, a t-shirt, his boxers, and the ankle bracelet. Now, all things considered, this piques the cop's interest and the spotlight is on Bob before his mind even registered that was a police car, though his attire is something he's still totally oblivious to.
He turns down an alleyway, knocks over a few garbage cans, and keeps moving, trying to slow the police car down enough to escape to the Garden of the Golden Arches. He tears his shirt on something along the way, exacerbating an earlier rip in the shirt, causing it to rip completely, so Bob pulls the shirt off.
Adidas, bracelet, boxers. Three blocks now. He can make it because the streets are virtually empty. Two blocks, what the hell time is it? One block, Bob looks at his wrist which has no watch on it, or I would have spelled that out earlier. He arrives at the door to find all of the chairs up on the tables and not even a cleaning crew to be seen. He screams in anguish, then sees a drainpipe which he believes he can shimmy up, given that he needs that hamburger and the police car's spotlight is on him again.
Up the drainpipe, but the only roof access he can find is a vent over the grill. He kicks it open and drops onto the grill, which was inadverdently left on the night before, melting his Adidas, causing him to slip to the floor and sprain his back. No shirt. No shoes. ... No service.
Back to Non-Class Writing
So during the mid-class break, I'm having a cigarette with the girl whose number I got two weeks ago, and she blurts out that she doesn't want to go out on a "date-date" with me. At this point, Marv Albert drives by in his convertible and yells, "REJECTED!" before turning down the exit-ramp of the Piper's Alley parking garage. To summarize what followed, any social outing between her and myself would now be termed as "a scam" in the Say Anything dictionary of social terms, essentially placing me only slightly higher than Timmy the Annoying Red-Haired Boy. Furthermore, the date which had been scheduled for this Thursday, which has since been reduced to being a scam, has been placed on indefinite hold, pending her finishing up some papers she has to write for her other classes.
I'm not holding my breath.
I had something else worth writing about earlier, but now it's gone. One of these days I'm going to have to sit down and write about the persistence of memory, both with and without regard to Dali. This is to say that it'll never get done, but it was a good idea at the time.
AIM: therbmcc71
In any case, tonight's class delved into character and motivation. I wasn't feeling particularly funny, given my day at work, but I can't say that I wasn't able to produce at the drop of a hat. Half of the people in class are virtually incapable of spontaneous writing, which makes sense, because it's not an improv program. Good writing takes time, and editing takes a lot longer. However, in class, we have to produce immediately, given a random prompt, no matter how absurd or bland it might be. The following pieces of writing came from tonight's class, with the prompt in boldface. Basically, given the prompt, you have to write for ten minutes.
Jumping off a tall building
Bob's mother was never a firm believer in the notion of peer pressure. She never went for the "but all the other kids are doing it" excuse, stopping just shy of bein gthe mother from Carrie and saying that all the other kids were going to laugh at Bob. Bob, on the other hand, was one of those societal followers who French-rolled his blue jeans in seventh grade and touted the Pixies as the leaders of the alternative-rock revolution, despite having never heard any of their albums. Today, he watches television every night and abandons his cubicle whenever possible to talk to others by the water cooler about whatever series won the Nielsen ratings contest the night before. He has an iPod despite not owning a computer, and thinks that Microsoft is evil, though he can't elaborate on why.
Two days ago, the company Bob works for was raided by SEC agents, with regard to some sort of stock fraud in the billions of dollars range. Mister Staley, the guy over in accounting who Bob believes himself to be the good friend of, having discussed the niceties of fine dining -such as foie gras, which Bob thinks is actually finely chopped lettuce, having never seen it except written on menus- and how great herbal supplements are, though Bob doesn't even take a daily vitamin, though he does take an aspirin every day because the television says it could save his life.
Anyway, Mister Staley, Bob's good friend who forgot the last two years to invite Bob to the summer barbeque, has taken stock of his life and came to the conclusion that prison isn't for him, even for a Martha Stewart sentence, and went up tot he roof to end his life in the dramatic fashion that no one ever really does anymore, since open-casket funerals are the in-thing. But Staley doesn't care, because he's a leader, not a follower.
After lunch, Bob gets word of Staley's high-flying demise, and -despite having nothing to do with any fraud- goes up to the roof to do the same, remembering his mother's rhetorical question of if all of his friends jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge, would he?
A Man Needs a McDonald's Hamburger - An exercise in motivation
Bob, seated currently in his living room, wants a McDonald's hamburger. Craves it, needs it, will die without it, because his bad cholesterol is entirely too low. He thinks, god, if not for this ankle-bracelet and detection system, I could just go out and get one. Bob decides, damn the law, which is not an outlandish thought, given his temporary incarceration and current house arrest, and he goes on the lam for that tasty bun, all-beef patty, pickles, onions, et cetera.
Once he gets out of the detection system's range, he's on the run, literally, hauling ass down the street like something out of a Will Smith film. He gets two blocks before running past a police car at a full sprint, wearing nothing but his Adidas, a t-shirt, his boxers, and the ankle bracelet. Now, all things considered, this piques the cop's interest and the spotlight is on Bob before his mind even registered that was a police car, though his attire is something he's still totally oblivious to.
He turns down an alleyway, knocks over a few garbage cans, and keeps moving, trying to slow the police car down enough to escape to the Garden of the Golden Arches. He tears his shirt on something along the way, exacerbating an earlier rip in the shirt, causing it to rip completely, so Bob pulls the shirt off.
Adidas, bracelet, boxers. Three blocks now. He can make it because the streets are virtually empty. Two blocks, what the hell time is it? One block, Bob looks at his wrist which has no watch on it, or I would have spelled that out earlier. He arrives at the door to find all of the chairs up on the tables and not even a cleaning crew to be seen. He screams in anguish, then sees a drainpipe which he believes he can shimmy up, given that he needs that hamburger and the police car's spotlight is on him again.
Up the drainpipe, but the only roof access he can find is a vent over the grill. He kicks it open and drops onto the grill, which was inadverdently left on the night before, melting his Adidas, causing him to slip to the floor and sprain his back. No shirt. No shoes. ... No service.
Back to Non-Class Writing
So during the mid-class break, I'm having a cigarette with the girl whose number I got two weeks ago, and she blurts out that she doesn't want to go out on a "date-date" with me. At this point, Marv Albert drives by in his convertible and yells, "REJECTED!" before turning down the exit-ramp of the Piper's Alley parking garage. To summarize what followed, any social outing between her and myself would now be termed as "a scam" in the Say Anything dictionary of social terms, essentially placing me only slightly higher than Timmy the Annoying Red-Haired Boy. Furthermore, the date which had been scheduled for this Thursday, which has since been reduced to being a scam, has been placed on indefinite hold, pending her finishing up some papers she has to write for her other classes.
I'm not holding my breath.
I had something else worth writing about earlier, but now it's gone. One of these days I'm going to have to sit down and write about the persistence of memory, both with and without regard to Dali. This is to say that it'll never get done, but it was a good idea at the time.
AIM: therbmcc71
Wednesday, March 16, 2005
Monday, March 14, 2005
I'm Goin' Down
Today's song comes from Bruce Springsteen's Born in the U.S.A. album, and kicked on just as I started writing the bulk of today's post. I just love it when my Shuffle tries to be funny.
Chicago doctor Richard Phillips is suing his former lover, Sharon Irons, in civil court for emotional distress. This is after she sued him for child-support for their five-year old child, during which he filed a countersuit alleging that she stole his sperm during oral sex and used it to impregnate herself. The criminal court dismissed his charge of theft, stating that he gave it to her willingly and without expectation of return at any point, meeting the legal definition of a gift. In the civil suit, he will have to prove that he was the victim of Irons' sordid semen-stealing strategy in order to receive damages.
Also in Illinois legal news, the state House Judiciary Committee voted unanimously to send the Predator Accountability Act to the House floor for a vote; the act is written specifically to allow prostitutes the right to sue their pimps, which led me to ask what kind of a world we live in where hookers have a better lobby in state government than the environment or public transportation. Of course, getting a bill out of committee probably doesn't take that much work, though the prostitutes may very well have to seek "alternative means" of lobbying the hundred-plus members of the House in order to get the bill passed.
By the way, if you didn't understand the significance and sheer humor of the previous post, think of the movie Heathers. If you still don't get it, I don't want to know you.
AIM: therbmcc71
Chicago doctor Richard Phillips is suing his former lover, Sharon Irons, in civil court for emotional distress. This is after she sued him for child-support for their five-year old child, during which he filed a countersuit alleging that she stole his sperm during oral sex and used it to impregnate herself. The criminal court dismissed his charge of theft, stating that he gave it to her willingly and without expectation of return at any point, meeting the legal definition of a gift. In the civil suit, he will have to prove that he was the victim of Irons' sordid semen-stealing strategy in order to receive damages.
Also in Illinois legal news, the state House Judiciary Committee voted unanimously to send the Predator Accountability Act to the House floor for a vote; the act is written specifically to allow prostitutes the right to sue their pimps, which led me to ask what kind of a world we live in where hookers have a better lobby in state government than the environment or public transportation. Of course, getting a bill out of committee probably doesn't take that much work, though the prostitutes may very well have to seek "alternative means" of lobbying the hundred-plus members of the House in order to get the bill passed.
By the way, if you didn't understand the significance and sheer humor of the previous post, think of the movie Heathers. If you still don't get it, I don't want to know you.
AIM: therbmcc71
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