25 October 2005

SO MUCH TO SAY

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Alright, so look, I have been a busy little beaver lately. Lots of work, little else, which is annoying at times but also profitable, so you're not going to hear me complain. However, it leaves me little time to write - though a lot of time to think about writing - so there are, like, literally thousands of things (I've never exaggerated ever) that I've thought of to talk about that I haven't made a comment on. That's going to change this afternoon. Here are some things that I have pondered that I would now like you to ponder:

--Why is Lou Holtz allowed on television? Three or four times a week I'm subjected to his mush-mouthed, incoherent rambling on ESPNNews and it drives me insane. Look, it's fine to have an old coach sit there and try to pump up his old program, but there's only so much Notre Dame d*ck-sucking I'll tolerate. Instead of contributing some kind of insight that might be valuable from a former head coach's perspective he talks incessantly about Jesus's Team, most of the time unintelligibly, and then adds something crazy like, "Tony Fisher may have been the best college football running back in history." And yeah, maybe he didn't actually say that, but would anyone be surprised?

Today was my last straw with Lou, as he openly mocked the South Carolina football program just because he wasn't a good enough coach to do well there. You stay classy, Mr. Holtz. The worst part of this fiasco is that he's literally little more than a senile old man at this point. Putting him on TV is something ESPN should be ashamed of. Similarly, if I ever take a Down's kid, put a calculus book in front of him, tape the resulting primal struggle and broadcast it for millions, I expect someone to flog me relentlessly.

--Speaking of football...I mean, just try being a Penn St. fan AND a Cleveland Browns fan at the same time. Excrutiating on several levels.

The Nittany Lions are doing well this year, but what in the blue blazes of f*cking hell was the deal with the Michigan game? Between the phantom penalties, the referee's absolute refusal to give PSU an accurate first down spot, a similar refusal to review a play that clearly saw a Michigan receiver touch a heel out of bounds on a 15-yard pass play on the final drive and the collective balls to allow Lloyd Carr to pull an extra two seconds out of a hidden time bank in the outer cosmos...well, let's just say that I experienced several decades of heartbreak in less than ten minutes and probably shaved a good 5-6 years off my life. I will forever hate you, Lloyd Carr, and if you think I'll forget about this you're wrong.

Somehow the Browns, who are 2-4 and basically out of any postseason contention already, have made me happy this year. First of all they've been WAY more competitive than anyone expected, and aside from the first bomb against the much-improved Bengals there's no reason they couldn't be 5-1 if some key plays went a different way. Whatever happens the rest of the way the new management is taking this team in the right direction, Romeo Crennel is a genius, and even though I yell and try to skewer my eyes out with toothpicks every Sunday I'm confident in the future.

--Does anyone else here visit Ain't It Cool News? I do quite frequently - they've got a lot of spies that get information on upcoming films WAY before it gets filtered down to me through the studio - but I've just come to a point of exhaustion with all of these talkbackers.

I mean...what an absolutely, pathetic bunch of d*uchebags. Go read any of the posts on the website and then look at what thankless losers these people are that respond to them. Apparently there's some kind of d*uchebag honor in being the first to respond to a post, and as such there's always a rash of basement-dwelling morons in a rush to throw up their "FIRST!" exclamation with absolutely nothing else to offer. It's so sad that I actually feel bad making fun of these people for a millisecond.

But the worst part is how these people pick apart every film, script, idea and rumor that comes across the wire. Do you jackasses realize that, much as you complain and whine and let the snot bubbles form in your nose...you'll never get anywhere near the entertainment industry? Newsflash: you couldn't make a decent film if you had Kubrick on tap, so please, PLEASE shut the f*ck up. In fact, you're the same mental midgets - and I know this for a fact in several cases - that submit 100 pages of nothing to producers and then cry when you get bad notes. Hey, you're talentless, and that's no one's fault but your own. Please stop the blabbering.

These people have literally driven me up the wall on several occasions. Remember before when I talked about how much I hate music snobs? These people are of the same ilk but on a whole different level for me because I'm smarter than they are and I know more. I really hope they all die, because I can't take the stupidity anymore. There's always that old joke that's like, "Hey, move out of your parent's basement and get a life!" It's cliched, it's old, it's redundant, and it couldn't be more true.

On another note but still related, if I see one more music reviewer analyze guitar on a particular album as "crunchy" or describe the melodies as "luscious" I'm going to dig my testes out with a tuning fork. Music critics are bigger idiots than film critics.

--I can't believe no one has ever brought this up before, but I had this thought a few weeks ago and I can't shake it: did anyone ever consider Morgan Freeman's last name? Is there a more possibly-racist last name in existence for a black man? Does anyone know if there's a Kelvin Usedtobeaslave? Because I think that's the only way to eclipse this. Jesus, no wonder everyone hates white people.

--If you're on MySpace, join me in trying to get them to take away this whole Top 8 deal, because it's really going to ruin some friendships. If you don't know what I'm talking about it goes like this: on your MySpace profile (here's mine, just as an example) it shows eight people out of however many Friends you've accepted. It used to just be generated randomly for you, but now you get to pick the eight people, which as I see it - and based on the way some people have been acting - might lead to the destruction of all relationships as we know them.

People are freaking out. I won't name names, but I've - yes, we're talking about ME - been getting Messages from people losing their minds: "How come I'm not on your Top 8? You're on my Top 8!" Is there anything dumber than getting worked up about this? Anything? First of all, no one in their right mind should have me as one of their Top 8 friends, MySpace or no. Second of all, they should be even less concerned about being in MY Top 8...and frankly, let's be honest here, maybe you want to worry about the implications of Social Suicide (TM) if you are.

Please get a grip. I can no longer tolerate the lunacy.

In other MySpace news, there's this trend I've noticed recently of getting emails from porn fronts. They take a picture of a scantily-clad lady, send you a message saying that she's new in town and likes to get to know people, and that she doesn't check her MySpace Messages a lot but can be reached at hotcuntforu00985tnvdexzzzz@hotmail.com. Oh, and she has a webcam. Now I can't imagine that even the most novice Internet user might fall for this ruse, but apparently I am a very stupid idiot because I get like two per day.

Is there some chapter in the Porn Webmaster's Bible (TM) that denotes something about fat bearded guys being easy targets for poorly disguised adult-related spam? If there is, I'd like to protest it and possibly get it changed, because the next time a girl sends me a picture of her ass I'd just rather that she be a regular old whore from whom I can pick up syphilis the old-fashioned way.

--A lot of people have been writing to me asking for the significance of the I'M FOREVER BLOWING BUBBLES lyrics and where they came from. Well, the significance is that it's the team anthem for the West Ham football club in the English Premier League and was featured prominently in GREEN STREET HOOLIGANS, probably my favorite film this year. It can be found online by searching for the song's title and if you live in England you can even download it as a ringtone for your cell phone. For myself personally, it's the mantra I repeat every time I want to punch someone in the face, which has been quite often of late.

--Go here and scroll down to the post from 19 October 2005 about karaoke types. You al know my love for karaoke, and this guy has the featured players down to a science. It's f*cking funny and, fortunately or unfortunately, I can't tell, all so very true. Brandy swears this guy, Jason Mulgrew, is my brother, and if that's the case he's the successful talented brother that people pay attention to because his site is getting WAY more traffic than mine.

Incidentally, I bet he actually has to worry about his MySpace Top 8.

--This thing scares the absolute BeJesus out of me, but if they actually build I am going to have to go and experience it, because how could you not? I might need a therapist and some smelling salts on hand, but for me this will be the equivalent of a normal person who's not a complete p*ssy going skydiving.

--A big shoutout to my good friend Jen M., who I fully plan on sleeping with once I get back to Pennsylvania, finally ending my impossibly long tango with celibacy.

--This might be a little bit of a tease, but I'm planning big things for GooseTown's Blogspot location. And those big things are going to be a systematic cataloguing and reviewing of the finest softcore porn titles that Pay Cable (Showtime, The Movie Channel, and Skinemax) has to offer.

We've started watching a lot of softcore porn in this apartment, and there's several reasons for that:

1) We're drunk a lot.

2) There's nothing erotic or even remotely arousing about it, so it's not like watching porn with actual hot chicks where there's a good chance you'll drop some wood and embarrass yourself in front of your buddies.

3) The simulated sex is so poorly...well, simulated, I guess...that it's the highest of high comedy.

I'm thinking of several categories I'd like to cover in each analysis, but the one I'm most excited about is tracking the ratio of fake breasts to real breasts in each "film". Look, we've all talked about the fact that, in general, I hate implants. You have to agree with me that at LEAST 9 out of every 10 boob jobs end in complete failure, with the female looking like a Cereal Bowl Bug crawled underneath her skin and gave birth to two massive, frightening babies. However, it appears that there's no shortage of girls with distracted doctors auditioning for these things, and man I have I seen some doozies. The worst is when the scars around the nipples are still fresh enough that they puff out and look like rivers on a roadmap. And the really frustrating notion is that there was likely nothing wrong with their breasts before they went and got them done. I'm going to do you all a favor and clue you in to a secret here: while some guys really dig big, goofy implants (we like to refer to them as "Southern Rednecks") most guys are much happier with a smaller, perkier breast as opposed to something that appears swelled with anger and looks like it will try to beat you up if you don't attempt to float on it.

On the converse, a good implant done right (You females know that you can get the teardrop-shaped implant now, right? They tell you this kind of thing and give you a choice, yes?) can be a really, really wonderful thing and is worth noting. Especially since the balance of natural-breasted "beauties" in these films seem to have nipples the size of large puppies, and that's pretty much a disaster for everyone.

Anyway, this new section of GooseTown Blogspot is now in the works and, when the flow of scripts slows down, I'm going to get on it. For you. The reader.

--Before I go, my good friend Staci came back into town this past weekend, and at one point, drunk in her hotel room, we decided that what we needed were the vestiges of an awkward high school ritual: the Prom. The picture below is what followed. Minutes later, Staci offered me money and various sexual favors to get rid of the beard. I stood my ground. It lives on, and though one Ryan Quick may attempt to sully my reputation by claiming that he somehow has a more manly beard...that is folly, my friends.

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13 October 2005

IT'S NOT THAT EASY GUYS...EHHH, IT'S NOT THAT EASY...

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Well this is pretty friggin' trite if you ask me.

I have just had...and I don't want to overstate this, so I'm not going to...the Week from Hell. And not because it was all bad, just because my brain and my emotions were so all over the board. There were so many rapid swings between "King of LA" and "Disgruntled Mental Basement Dweller" that I feel like a human home run derby. If I'm being honest the last 2-3 months have been like that, but this week was just magnified for some reason. That being said, I'd like to get a few things off my chest.

First, let's take a look at this word...

relationship
Pronunciation: sh&n-"ship
Function: noun
1) the state of being related or interrelated (studied the relationship between the variables)
2) the relation connecting or binding participants in a relationship: a) as KINSHIP: b) a specific instance or type of kinship
3) a state of affairs existing between those having relations or dealings (had a relationship with his family): a) a romantic or passionate attachment

This word came up (and was a major theme of, though in very different ways) in no less than three very serious dealings I've had in the last week - two on the phone and one in an absolutely catastrophically ridiculous email exchange. Now I'm not going to get into the specifics of those dealings, but I do want to focus on one specific part of the definition:

a state of affairs existing between those having relations or dealings

Can we just, as humans, all agree that this leaves the word open to a wide variety of meanings? I don't ask for much...just tell me that we're all on the same page here. Make an old man happy.

Man, I am f*cking tired of dealing with people. I really am. Actually that's not true - most people are fine. I'm tired of dealing with people that try to talk to me and then don't listen to what I say. Moreover, I'm tired of talking to people who listen to what I have to say but hear something else entirely - something they want or need to hear rather than the point I'm trying to convey. I'm tired of dealing with cocky, ignorant motherf*ckers who think they know something about everything and try to speak on said everything. I'm tired of dealing with people who ask me for advice and then complain when I'm honest with them. I'm probably tired of you. It's come to that point.

But you know what's great about this? See, I'm giving you the impression that I'm really upset now. I'm not at all - in fact, I couldn't be further from it. I'm rather content. Why? That's what's great about this. I just entered a previously-visited phase of my life where I get to apply my favorite phrase in the Universe to everything I do.

Fuck it.

Did you notice that I left the little asterisk out? Yeah, I did that on purpose. For effect. Because seriously...fuck it.

I'm sure I've written about this on here before, but a few years back I was in the hospital for a month or so, paralyzed from the chest down after a spinal infection. I never got scared, I never worried, I never stressed myself out because of one thing my father told me. It is, honest to God, the greatest thing I've ever heard in my life and it's something so liberating that I'm going to share it with all of you:

"Attempt to control only the things in life that you can control; if something is out of your control, you can't do anything about it...so why worry?"

It sounds simple, and we've all heard it before, but have you ever really HEARD it? Man, when you hear it...it's loud. I swear it frees you - not to a negligent degree, mind you - to let that which does not matter truly slide. Just one sentence. I hadn't thought about that at all in the past few weeks; it became one of my life's most important lessons that I forgot. I've had sh*t swirling up in my head for three months now that has been bothering me and eating at me and tearing me up and making me think and just generally filling my skull with doubt and worry. I haven't slept more than 4 hours in a night in 75 days...and yes, I've been counting.

But in one pure EUREKA! moment tonight...well, I just remembered that which I had forgotten and the world makes sense again.

There are two ways to stop caring. One is a conscious effort where you tell yourself, "Hey, I'm going to set this crap aside and not dwell on it; it's messing me up." You actually force yourself not to care. I've done that before. This is not the same thing. This is, "Hey...everything that I was just worried about is gone." It's like a switch is flipped and you don't care anymore, not because you think you don't have to but because your mind has washed all its windows. Holy sh*t, I just read back over all of that and man, does it sound like a copout. It's not - I know some of you can back me up on this. It's just that snap feeling you get when you realize everything that was holding you back mentally just isn't relevant anymore.

So perhaps my earlier incantation of "Fuck it" was only partially applicable in this situation. This is not me saying "piss off" to all the things in my life that bother me - that's not a healthy way to deal with your surroundings. I guess it's just more of a way of giving the finger to all of the things you thought you needed to control...but which you were just letting control you. That's my second veiled reference to FIGHT CLUB in this post, and I swear to you, my three readers, I did neither on purpose. I guess it's that period for me to sit down and deconstruct, and let everyone else unfold their own masterplan as they may.

My excess baggage my have kept me up tonight - again - but I bet you tomorrow I sleep like a f*cking rock. It's a fantastic, wonderful, slightly filthy feeling when you know your only emotional investment in the foreseeable future is a weekend of football. It's slightly more soothing, more relaxing than my previous idea: buy a pirated copy of GREEN STREET HOOLIGANS, watch it on a continuous loop for 48 hours, don a track jacket, and walk the streets of LA haphazardly knocking out the teeth of innocent pedestrians.

Should any of you need me, then, you can find me sitting around my living room, perhaps a frosty Country Club Malt Liquor (the Half Quart) in my hand, PSU or the Browns on the tube, and a big goddamn smile on my face.

I'm dreaming dreams,
I'm scheming schemes, I'm building castles high.

They're born anew, their days are few,

Just like a sweet butterfly.

And as the daylight is dawning,

They come again in the morning!


I'm forever blowing bubbles,

Pretty bubbles in the air,

They fly so high,

Nearly reach the sky,

Then like my dreams

They fade and die.

Fortune's always hiding,

I've looked everywhere,

I'm forever blowing bubbles,

Pretty bubbles in the air.

When shadows creep,

When I'm asleep,

To lands of hope I stray...

UPDATE (13 October 2005, 16:45): I was having the best day ever until my accountant decided that he wanted to ruin my life. I can now be found at the corner of Pico and Robertson throwing myself in front of one of those blue LA buses.

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03 October 2005

By a Show of Hands, How Glad Are You to See Me Again?

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Holy sh*t, has it really been almost two months since I wrote anything? If the three of you out there who read this pile of junk are still with me…what the f*ck is wrong with you? You should have found something else! Don’t look at me, I’m HIDEOUS!!!

Now that I’ve curled up in the fetal position and wept softly and quietly…damn, do I have a lot to talk about.

The past two months have been on a Special Olympics level of retarded, hence my elongated absence from writing. I don’t know how to explain it other than this: when there’s too much going on – as has been the case – I get exasperated thinking about all the stuff I want to write about…and then I sort of implode. So that’s what I did; I just checked out for a while, but unlike Dave Chappelle I don’t have the luxury of going to detox in Africa. I took some time to think about the most important things on my mind, and here I present them for you. Or some of them, anyway.

--My buddy Kyle got married last month on September 3rd. I was dreading this day – not because of who he was marrying or where it was, but just because I hate weddings. Creepy relatives. Watered-down drinks. Bad DJs. Desperate chicks. Ties. Suits. Blech – blech it all, that’s what I say. But Kyle’s a great friend and I figured I should be there on what would be the best day of his life.

I didn’t expect it to be one of the best days of mine. And none of the above nuisances reared their ugly head.

First of all, let me tell you that I am not using the appropriate words by just saying that this wedding was f*cking amazing looking. Think of the best wedding you’ve ever been to and multiply it by Long Island – this was mind-boggling. If you ever want to do a wedding right, do it this way: have drinks with the groom before the wedding at Hooters while he nearly throws up his steak and cheese thanks to nerves, sit around in a scalding hot church but have the Best Man’s Father (more on him in a second) get up right before the service starts and direct the massive fan right at your pew, kiss the bride, hug the groom, make the parental rounds, go for a pre-cocktail hour cocktail hour, go to cocktail hour, hit the reception. Because that’s what we did.

I couldn’t possibly hit all the highlights so I’m going to try to hand you the most salient ones in the order that I remember them:

1) A member of the wedding party – the kid’s name is Gugo (Googo? Guugo? I have no clue.) – dives off the inside hotel balcony three stories up into the pool the night before the wedding. THAT’S how you begin the ceremonies, folks, so I recommend you have someone named “Gugo” on hand for your next set of nuptials.

2) Direct quote: “Kyle and Karyn, when you were single, you went for it. To all the single people out there, I say to go for it yourselves. Find a nice young man or young lady and go for it – maybe tonight.” – The Minister during the actual marriage. C’mon, c’mon…the Minister TOLD US TO GO GET LAID! That man…he wins, that’s what he does, and we won just by being within fifty feet of him.

3) The Best Man’s father gets into a verbal sparring match with the Bride’s Crazy Cousin (who called him sexist for quoting a line from AS GOOD AS IT GETS) minutes into the pre-cocktail hour cocktail hour. Later, he proceeds to tip back a few glasses of fine champagne, don a fake afro that was being passed around, tie a glowing neon band to his belt strap so as to accentuate his crotch region, throw down some crazy dance moves, and dive into the splits on the dancefloor at the reception. I have known Mr. Krausz for seven years now, and not only had I previously heard him say less than six words in that entire timespan…I wasn’t even sure he was totally alive. But Mr. Krausz…you’re my new hero, and I have not stopped talking about your antics since that day. Again, sir…you win.

4) My good buddy QB Blake and I revert to being seventh graders towards the end of the reception. One of my good friends – and I don’t want to drop any names, so we’ll just call him Chris “Can’t Close the Deal” Loftus – is the guy in our group whom the girls fall all over but who makes a conscious decision never to capitalize on it. I could shoot an entire issue of PLAYBOY based just on the chicks I hooked up with in college that he cast off – we’re not talking Busch League skanks here. Anyway, as expected, he draws the attention of the hottest girl at the wedding, hangs with her all night, and then ditches her to go back to the hotel to drink crappy beers with the rest of us idiots. Said ditching was incredible, and if it had been done as part of a Shakespearean play, it might have gone something like this:

HOT GIRL: Willest thou accompany me back to my sleeping quarters?

LOFTUS: Nay, lady; f*ckest thou off so that I might rolleth with mine boys.

But that’s not the part of the story I want to tell. After about an hour and a half of cutting a rug with this young lady on the dancefloor, Loftus proceeds outside with her; no one sees him for a half hour. Meanwhile Blake and I are pasted out of our heads and decide to take a walk to the gazebo (stop there, because I know what you’re thinking…and yes, I was hoping he would try to kiss me, but I got nervous and left before anything happened) out on this little lake that surrounded the building. We see Loftus way on the other end of the lawn, sitting at a table with this girl, she perched firmly upon his lap. It was far away so I can’t say that I know EXACTLY what was going on, but one might describe it as “necking” or, if you’re British, “snogging”.

I point this out to Blake, Blake notices the rock in his hand, I encourage him to do what we’re both thinking…and Blake chucks the rock at them. It’s at least a fifty-yard throw, and MAN did it come close. Of course we’re giddy like schoolgirls, tittering all the way back into the reception, and then we tell everyone what happened like we just found the cure for Asian Bird Flu.

There’s something about being around your college buddies, watching one of your good men go down…I don’t know, it was just a blast. Kyle and Karyn, best wishes and enjoy the Dremel. And to my friends…what can I say? You guys are the best, and one of the few drawbacks to living on the West Coast is that I don’t have more access to you all. Can’t wait to see you all again at Louie’s first intervention.

--Had a birthday. Twenty-six. I thought it was going to be strange – four years from thirty – but it wasn’t nearly as disheartening as turning twenty-five. I think that’s partly due to the maturation process and partly due to the fact that I don’t remember 75% of the evening. I do know we went to Amagi. I do know that Steve “The Karaoke Ninja” T., by request from Brandy, sang WONDERWALL in my honor, a tribute the likes of which makes me weepy to think about.

The picture at the top of this post is from that un(forgettable) evening. I post it for a few reasons:

1) I don’t remember it being taken, what song we were singing, or what I was thinking.

2) Aviators.

3) With my beard at this level…well, I’ll just never look that f*cking cool again.

But seriously…one of the best birthdays ever. It’s the greatest feeling to have your friends call you the next day and say, “Dude, that was the most fun I ever had at a birthday party,” as you reply, “You f*cking showed up?”

Enjoy the picture. I know you did.

A few more random things that I have thought about in one way or another over the past two months that I could elaborate on but choose not to:

--Emmanuelle Chriqui: my new obsession. If you watch ENTOURAGE (all the cool kids do) she played Sloane, Malcolm McDowell’s daughter. I don’t have words for her past , so when you see her do your best to form something on your own.

--Go see both A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE and GREEN STREET HOOLIGANS. The former is one of the best films of the year (even though I’m paid to say that, it’s true) and the second…well, once you’ve seen it you’re welcome to join our firm. That’s all I have to say.

--Top Five NFL QBs ever, in order from Best to Almost the Best: John Elway, Dan Marino, Johnny Unitas, Otto Graham, Joe Montana (and yes, I still want to expound on this).

--I am not nearly as ashamed of my man crush on track jackets as I am of the fact that you’re fat and ugly.

--Everyone needs to give Ryan Gray, JMU Alumnus, a warm welcome to the Bedford Street Mansion. Tonight I watched him – with nary a hint of insecurity or self-awareness – sit in the leather chair in the living room, pull a sock off of one of his feet that he walked on all day, and smell it.

Stephanie, you can’t move back in fast enough. SAVE US. One Lung now has a key – this place is going to hell. You think I’m kidding? I’m walking around in circles, confused out of my mind, and Nathan has started peeing on his floor in strict defiance of natural instinct. Do you understand I watched our little RyRy smell his own sock? It can’t go on like this.

--Rob has a better beard than me, and this pisses me off because he’s been growing it for like two weeks, and f*ck you Rob.

--There’s someone I want to write about but don’t yet have the words for. I’m afraid I’ll say too much or not enough or something wrong or something right…so for now I’ll just say this:

When your (figurative) Head and your (figurative) Heart get into a war, you generally assume they’re going to set the field of battle somewhere deep inside your Mind, a place you don’t tell people about, to which even you have only the tiniest window to observe the fight. There they’ll head and duke it out, Head wielding sticks of You’re Not Thinking Clearly Logic and Heart countering with little more than the giddy smile of Potential Love at First Sight…but then the battlefield shifts. It’s a shock to find out that the war moves, like lightning, to your stomach – where it proceeds from sticks and stones to nuclear weaponry.

It’s an even bigger shock when you find out that, much to the chagrin of your Head…this means your Heart is winning.

--Last but not least, if you pray or meditate or think deeply or get Zen or whatever, think a good thought for my Uncle Marshall. Late last week he was diagnosed with kidney cancer and, though the prognosis is sunny…it never hurts to keep good people in mind. This guy’s got that rare gift of being able to light up a whole room with his laugh, always the man whose perpetual happiness is so contagious you can’t escape it.

We’re with ya, Uncle Moose.

Be back for more writing soon.

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