I had a very curious experience this morning; something that rocked the very foundations of my intellectual being. I went to the gym to spend some time on the exercise bike, as this is Seattle, and it was raining. As I was walking up the steps to the aerobics room I could hear the televisions blaring. Then I heard that voice.
To my horror I discovered that all three of the TV’s were tuned to HBO and the Whoopee Goldberg classic Sister Act. I’ve never actually seen the movie but I could only imagine that it was completely terrible and unfit for adult male viewers. There were a lot of people in the room cranking on the fitness machines so I felt too self-conscious to change the channel on any of the sets. I had a book to read so I thought I could just tune out the unpleasantness.
And then something odd happened, something wonderful. I started actually watching the movie, really watching it. It is truly a damn good film in every aspect. I was mesmerized by the acting and the terrific musical numbers. Two thumbs up for Sister Act. I decided then and there that immediately after I finished my work-out I would walk, hell, I would run to the video rental joint and pick-up Sister Act II. Sure, I loved Sister Act but I wanted more. A more eagerly anticipated sequel hasn’t been on the horizon since The Godfather. I’ve been humming the songs all day long.
April Fools. If you believed me let’s go watch Police Academy IV together. As I tried to tune out the movie I looked around the gym. I seriously thought that I had died because I have always imagined that the flight to hell would show this movie. Pre-flight on this trip would mean a cavity search by a Catholic preist. What would the in-flight meal be on the Hell shuttle? The nutritional equivalent to Sister Act wouldn’t be a small foil bag of peanuts but a small foil bag of peanut shells. I would imagine a very long holding pattern on that flight. You would be seated next to a woman with two screaming infants. A kid behind you kicks the seat the entire trip. The only thing to drink is warm white zinfandel.
I don't think that I like hell any more. It always sounded glamorous because all the hip people went there. A couple viewings of Sister Act and Jean Paul Sartre would have the cool kicked out of him. He would renounce his godless beliefs before the opening credits had ended.
Wednesday, April 10, 2002
You're Busted
That’s right, folks. The gig is up. Les jeux sont fait. No more slacking off, no more cutting class. With the assistance of a team of experts from the National Security Agency I have installed a super-sophisticated counting and tracking device on this website. Reading this website is now mandatory and I can keep track of who is visiting and who isn’t.
The NSA guys are actually living in my apartment until all of the work on my site is finished. There are five of them. Nerdy looking guys who all wear Dockers, boat shoes, and pocket protectors. From what I can tell they live entirely on Pringles and Spaghetti-O's. There is another guy with a big moustache and a sombrero who keeps shooting holes in the ceiling with his pistols. I don’t think he is from NSA but he brought enough tequila for everybody so he stays. He also has a wonderful singing voice.
The NSA people have been able to track every single website that you people have visited. No wonder this country is going down the drain. Look at how you are wasting your time:
67% www.theonion.com
13% www.thesimpsons.com
10% www.mlb.com
10% www.naughtybritneypictures.com
Is this all you losers can find to do with your time? I find it shocking that with the vast resources available on the internet people waste their time browsing this sort of garbage. Wait a minute. What’s that? Those are the sites I’ve looked at? I thought they sounded vaguely familiar. Carry on.
file name:
SHIT I THINK IS FUNNY BUT DON’T KNOW WHAT TO DO WITH
Posted on the door of the sauna at my gym is a list of rules. The last one states adamantly NO PETS! I went to the front desk to ask a few questions concerning this rather Draconian measure. Was this rule in response to a particular incident? Perhaps we are finally getting closer to the root of the apocryphal “gerbil” affair. It seemed preposterous that simply because a group of sweaty men had taken "liberties" with an unspecified rodent the gym management was now forbiding sauna access to all domesticated animals kept for companionship. No one had any answers, at least none they were willing to make public. Surely a well-behaved ferret would be allowed inside. How about a goldfish in its bowl? Their tyranny couldn’t face up to my inquiry and I was asked to leave.
The NSA guys are actually living in my apartment until all of the work on my site is finished. There are five of them. Nerdy looking guys who all wear Dockers, boat shoes, and pocket protectors. From what I can tell they live entirely on Pringles and Spaghetti-O's. There is another guy with a big moustache and a sombrero who keeps shooting holes in the ceiling with his pistols. I don’t think he is from NSA but he brought enough tequila for everybody so he stays. He also has a wonderful singing voice.
The NSA people have been able to track every single website that you people have visited. No wonder this country is going down the drain. Look at how you are wasting your time:
67% www.theonion.com
13% www.thesimpsons.com
10% www.mlb.com
10% www.naughtybritneypictures.com
Is this all you losers can find to do with your time? I find it shocking that with the vast resources available on the internet people waste their time browsing this sort of garbage. Wait a minute. What’s that? Those are the sites I’ve looked at? I thought they sounded vaguely familiar. Carry on.
file name:
SHIT I THINK IS FUNNY BUT DON’T KNOW WHAT TO DO WITH
Posted on the door of the sauna at my gym is a list of rules. The last one states adamantly NO PETS! I went to the front desk to ask a few questions concerning this rather Draconian measure. Was this rule in response to a particular incident? Perhaps we are finally getting closer to the root of the apocryphal “gerbil” affair. It seemed preposterous that simply because a group of sweaty men had taken "liberties" with an unspecified rodent the gym management was now forbiding sauna access to all domesticated animals kept for companionship. No one had any answers, at least none they were willing to make public. Surely a well-behaved ferret would be allowed inside. How about a goldfish in its bowl? Their tyranny couldn’t face up to my inquiry and I was asked to leave.
Sunday, April 07, 2002
How to be Funny
For the very low price of $99.95 I can make you funny, the life of the party, the class clown. Yes, before you know it you’ll be headlining in the Catskills, you’ll be bigger than Gallagher, getting more laughs than that “Hey Vern” guy, funnier than ‘Friends,’ Jerry Seinfeld will be opening for YOU.
Guys, allow me to let you in on something: chicks dig funny guys. Trust me on this one. I get so much action I have had to take drastic measures to avoid women when I go out in public. I actually have to dress in disguise. I wear a Lord of the Rings t-shirt that repels even the most sex-starved females. Sometimes I just have to wait until the throng outside my door loses hope and heads for the Back Street Boys concert as a desperate consolation.
I know what you’re saying to yourself. You’re saying, “I can’t ever be funny. I’m the most tedious fucking human being that has ever spent an entire weekend watching televised golf. I think that kid on the Dell commercials is funny. How could I ever get a sense of humor?” I didn’t say it was going to be easy in your case but if you buy my series of books and tapes, and follow the simple instructions, I guarantee that you will have your friends peeing themselves with laughter.
My instructional series for the humor-impaired has helped thousands of people just like you. People who wouldn’t know a punch line from a clothes line. People who wouldn’t recognize irony if it moved into the spare bedroom and used the last of the toilet paper without replacing it. If you suffer from this crippling ailment don’t hesitate; send a check today. Here is a preview of what you will learn.
What is the secret to comedy you ask? Ronald Reagan knew the secret. Walt Disney knew it. Do you want to know what the secret is, do you? The secret to comedy: monkeys. Monkeys are just plain funny. The expression “more fun than a barrel of monkeys” comes from the 17th century. The intrepid English explorer, Sir Francis Drake, brought a barrel of monkeys back to England as a present for Queen Elizabeth I. By the time he finished his circumnavigation of the globe most of the monkeys were dead from scurvy but that just made it funnier. The Virgin Queen really got a kick out of that one. The actual expression is “more fun than a barrel of dead monkeys” but the people from PETA lobbied to have the word ‘dead’ removed.
Take something that you think is funny, like the time your friend Abe wore a dress and sang Over the Rainbow at the office Christmas party two years ago. Yeah, that was pretty funny. We all laughed about that one for weeks. Now just imagine a monkey doing that. Now it’s at least twice as funny. Conan O’Brien has a big fat monkey as a sidekick and look at him. Conan is bigger than the Pope. Johnny Carson had a fat ape sidekick and he ruled late night TV for a quarter century.
It isn’t always convenient to have a chimpanzee at your beck and call 24 hours a day. If it were that easy every dork in boat shoes and a pager clipped to his belt would be knocking the ladies dead at the local bar. The truth is that you can’t always have a monkey around to do the work for you. They are filthy little creatures that shit everywhere and sometimes they can become excedingly violent. Don’t despair; I have other things to teach you.
Another key to being funny is this: DO NOT, under any circumstances, tell a joke. Jokes are generally devoid of all humor. If the joke was funny that is because someone else came up with it. If you repeat it that doesn’t make you funny. I can read Shakespeare but that doesn’t mean I can write plays. If you absolutely must tell a joke make sure that it is completely tasteless and sick. Example: any joke that starts out like this “This pedophile serial killer is walking into the woods at night with this little boy…”* If you can’t make people laugh, at least you can offend them, which is almost as good. Most humor is completely tasteles and offensive. Why do you think fart jokes have been the bread and butter of comedians since Aristophanes?
*Thoroughly tasteless punch line available upon e-mail request
City Life Bliss
This section of Seattle is referred to, rather prosaically, as lower Queen Anne. Queen Anne is a big hill overlooking downtown Seattle. We live at the bottom of that hill. A couple of businesses in my neighborhood use the name uptown in their titles but that designation has never really caught on and we remain lower Queen Anne. There is nothing to distinguish this area; it is just a lot of commerce, a bunch of apartment buildings, and a few free-standing homes--which they can’t tear down fast enough, as far as I am concerned. Most of the houses are complete eyesores and the real estate could be better used—like for a bar or something.
The one architectural distinction of this area is the Space Needle, which looms over the Seattle Center. Cool people are supposed to hate the Space Needle but I don’t know why because I'm not cool and they won't tell me. To me, it gives Seattle’s skyline a defining stamp. When you look at pictures of Seattle it looks unlike other places( of copurse, Mt. Raineer helps), which is more than you can say about most American cities. I have never actually been to the top of the needle but that is only because I don’t want to pay the $11 fee. I had never been to the top of the Eiffel Tower in Paris until my last trip and that turned out to be a minor disaster. I wrote about that painful episode somewhere else. Now I have this thing about not going to the top of the needle. I like looking at it, though.
The surrounding Seattle Center is a big park fringed by the opera, the repertory theater, the science center, the basketball arena, and the Center House. The Center House is a big open building that is like a mall food court without the annoying mall part. Several of my posts have been inspired by what appears onstage at the Center House. It is a block or so from my apartment so I go there quite often to get a cup of coffee but mostly just to get out of my apartment.
My apartment is in one of the more charming buildings in the area, a five story brick affair constructed in 1926. From my kitchen window I can see the snow-capped peaks of the Olympic Mountains and from my living room I have a nice view of the Puget Sound. I can sit on my couch and watch the inter-island ferries running back and forth—it’s better than TV. On the down side there is a night club behind my building and late at night I am often rocked out of bed by car alarms and the teeth-loosening bass of kids blaring rap on their car stereos. Note to self: purchase sniper rifle.
The greatest thing about this neighborhood is its total self-containment. Here is a very partial list of the things within a four block radius of my front door: an art house movie theater, three live theater houses, two (soon to be three) grocery stores, a post office and postal center, two copy places, a drug store, five coffee shops, a video rental joint, an office supply store, a used bookstore, two record stores, and at least 20 restaurants of every make and ethnicity.
What my neighborhood lacks are strip malls, malls, 4 lane highways with median strips, franchise places (there is a KFC and a Mac’ on the fringe—unavoidable I suppose) and other charmless landmarks that make up so much of the American landscape.
All of this is in the modest enclave of lower Queen Anne. If I walk south one block from my apartment I enter the more trendy and urbane neighborhood known as Belltown. The boundaries are pretty arbitrary and I don’t need a passport or anything to go to Belltown but there isn’t much reason for me to go there for anything other than entertainment (the bars and restaurants are better there). Almost all of my day-to-day needs can be met without venturing out of my neighborhood. My car is parked on the street in front of my building; a veneer of dust so thoroughly covers the windows that I’ll have to wash them before I drive it. That won’t be today as there is nothing calling me away from this four block sanctuary.
If I do leave this area my car isn’t my first choice of transportation. To go downtown I usually take the monorail—a curiosity from the 1962 World’s Fair that actually works as mass transit if you live where I do. For lots of other trips I ride one of my bikes. I have paid enough in traffic tickets to pay for a trip to Paris so I avoid driving at all costs.
Very few people in the USA know what it is to live in a city, to live without the automobile. I don’t get road rage, I don’t get stuck in rush hour traffic, I don’t have a car payment, I buy gas once every two months or so. This sort of lifestyle is possible because I live in an area of relatively high population density. What I give up to live this way I give up without regret. My apartment is small but big enough for my needs, everyone I know goes out almost every night, anyway. Privacy is sometimes an issue if you live in an apartment (see my post of Feb 23 when the cops raided my place) but this sort of living beats the suburbs all to hell.
Check out the blog of the day.
The one architectural distinction of this area is the Space Needle, which looms over the Seattle Center. Cool people are supposed to hate the Space Needle but I don’t know why because I'm not cool and they won't tell me. To me, it gives Seattle’s skyline a defining stamp. When you look at pictures of Seattle it looks unlike other places( of copurse, Mt. Raineer helps), which is more than you can say about most American cities. I have never actually been to the top of the needle but that is only because I don’t want to pay the $11 fee. I had never been to the top of the Eiffel Tower in Paris until my last trip and that turned out to be a minor disaster. I wrote about that painful episode somewhere else. Now I have this thing about not going to the top of the needle. I like looking at it, though.
The surrounding Seattle Center is a big park fringed by the opera, the repertory theater, the science center, the basketball arena, and the Center House. The Center House is a big open building that is like a mall food court without the annoying mall part. Several of my posts have been inspired by what appears onstage at the Center House. It is a block or so from my apartment so I go there quite often to get a cup of coffee but mostly just to get out of my apartment.
My apartment is in one of the more charming buildings in the area, a five story brick affair constructed in 1926. From my kitchen window I can see the snow-capped peaks of the Olympic Mountains and from my living room I have a nice view of the Puget Sound. I can sit on my couch and watch the inter-island ferries running back and forth—it’s better than TV. On the down side there is a night club behind my building and late at night I am often rocked out of bed by car alarms and the teeth-loosening bass of kids blaring rap on their car stereos. Note to self: purchase sniper rifle.
The greatest thing about this neighborhood is its total self-containment. Here is a very partial list of the things within a four block radius of my front door: an art house movie theater, three live theater houses, two (soon to be three) grocery stores, a post office and postal center, two copy places, a drug store, five coffee shops, a video rental joint, an office supply store, a used bookstore, two record stores, and at least 20 restaurants of every make and ethnicity.
What my neighborhood lacks are strip malls, malls, 4 lane highways with median strips, franchise places (there is a KFC and a Mac’ on the fringe—unavoidable I suppose) and other charmless landmarks that make up so much of the American landscape.
All of this is in the modest enclave of lower Queen Anne. If I walk south one block from my apartment I enter the more trendy and urbane neighborhood known as Belltown. The boundaries are pretty arbitrary and I don’t need a passport or anything to go to Belltown but there isn’t much reason for me to go there for anything other than entertainment (the bars and restaurants are better there). Almost all of my day-to-day needs can be met without venturing out of my neighborhood. My car is parked on the street in front of my building; a veneer of dust so thoroughly covers the windows that I’ll have to wash them before I drive it. That won’t be today as there is nothing calling me away from this four block sanctuary.
If I do leave this area my car isn’t my first choice of transportation. To go downtown I usually take the monorail—a curiosity from the 1962 World’s Fair that actually works as mass transit if you live where I do. For lots of other trips I ride one of my bikes. I have paid enough in traffic tickets to pay for a trip to Paris so I avoid driving at all costs.
Very few people in the USA know what it is to live in a city, to live without the automobile. I don’t get road rage, I don’t get stuck in rush hour traffic, I don’t have a car payment, I buy gas once every two months or so. This sort of lifestyle is possible because I live in an area of relatively high population density. What I give up to live this way I give up without regret. My apartment is small but big enough for my needs, everyone I know goes out almost every night, anyway. Privacy is sometimes an issue if you live in an apartment (see my post of Feb 23 when the cops raided my place) but this sort of living beats the suburbs all to hell.
Check out the blog of the day.
Wednesday, April 03, 2002
Technology = Democracy
Cassius: And why should Caesar be a tyrant then?
Poor man! I know he would not be a wolf
But that he sees the Romans as sheep.
-Julius Caesar
As long as a populace has access to the internet, government is unable to completely control the press. Web publishing, although underutilized now in its infancy, is a powerful tool in the hands of the people. Weblogs, as we know them, are generally a waste of time but there is a booming backlash to the standard press in the opinions posted daily on the web. The need for a truly alternative press seems to be a low priority in this American sea of affluence that washes in the 21rst century. Let’s hope that the web will be around when we need it.
Not many people know this, and fewer people care, but the airwaves are owned by the public in the USA. The networks are allowed to use them. This is all in theory, and in fact, nothing could be further from the truth. Even public TV and NPR rely heavily on corporate funding that dictates content. The closest thing we have to democracy on the airwaves is public access TV, if you call cable the airwaves, and nobody does. This medium remains extremely marginalized and poses no threat to the corporate status quo.
For too long consumers have been sheep, willing to be sheared. We’ve been paying $17 for cd’s and $8 and upwards for movie tickets. Blockbuster has monopolized the video rental industry. These producers dictate not only how much we will pay but, more importantly, the content of what we purchase. They edit movies for content, sap TV of any true controversy, and basically rule over us like some sort of benevolent dictatorship. This wasn’t the democracy I signed up for.
Thanks to Napster, and now its progeny (kazaa.com, sharebear.com etc.), the metaphor is changing. Instead of the sheep we are becoming the fox that raids the chicken coop of ‘intellectual property.’ File sharing, or internet piracy—depending on who you talk to—has not affected sales in any meaningful way. The music industry reported that sales were down 3% last year. They blame file sharing for their woes. They don’t consider that they have simply put out a bad product. What have they put on the market for anyone too old for Britney, rap, and boy bands? The truth is that studies on the subject suggest that people who use file sharing are the ones buying the most cd’s. Blaming file sharing for revenue loss will be the argument industry will use to limit the freedoms of the internet.
I hate to use such a monolithic label but 'Corporate America' would sell our 1rst Amendment rights to the highest bidder faster than you can say 1984. It looks to me like the cat is out of the bag as far as file sharing sites go. They have sprouted up like mushrooms. The record companies should be looking for a means to cash in on this and stop trying to fight it. They make us believe that they are only looking out for the interests of the artists when in fact artists see very little of total cd sales. Only the top names in the industry make anything more than pennies on the sale of a $17 cd. They are looking to preserve their own feudal duchies they have ruled for decades.
The initial promise of Napster was the democratization of the music industry. They were offering a distribution vehicle for musicians who had been denied access to the hallowed chambers of the recording industry. This never really panned out because Napster was immediately besieged by lawsuits by an industry that feared they would soon be irrelevant.
With the leaps digital video technology has made in recent years, along with its growing popularity in the file sharing domain, the movie industry will also be joining the fight against internet freedom. It is hard to think of an industry as incestual and monopolistic as Hollywood. Hollywood will undoubtedly remain the only manufacturer of the big scale movies but, as people are slowly beginning to realize, big does not mean good.
The idea that small, character driven films, shot on digital video, and distributed world-wide via the web must scare the living hell out of the schlockmeisters of Hollywood who try to tell us that a piece of shit like A Beautiful Mind was the ‘best’ movie last year. I was tricked into seeing that turd and my money was much better spent on the digital Italian for Beginners which probably cost less to make than one day’s catering on Ron Howard’s dud.
As this controversy over file sharing gains momentum just remember that the argument isn’t about big business maintaining the integrity of its ‘intellectual property.’
The issue at stake is whether or not we maintain the status quo in which we are the sheep and they remain the wolf.
Blog of the day comes to us from Jerusalem. I wish that this guy would write ten times as much from his vantage point on the front lines. Good war reporting is a lost art.
P.S. I volunteered to review a blog. I can't even remember what this review thing was all about but here is a link to it. Make your own opinion.
Poor man! I know he would not be a wolf
But that he sees the Romans as sheep.
-Julius Caesar
As long as a populace has access to the internet, government is unable to completely control the press. Web publishing, although underutilized now in its infancy, is a powerful tool in the hands of the people. Weblogs, as we know them, are generally a waste of time but there is a booming backlash to the standard press in the opinions posted daily on the web. The need for a truly alternative press seems to be a low priority in this American sea of affluence that washes in the 21rst century. Let’s hope that the web will be around when we need it.
Not many people know this, and fewer people care, but the airwaves are owned by the public in the USA. The networks are allowed to use them. This is all in theory, and in fact, nothing could be further from the truth. Even public TV and NPR rely heavily on corporate funding that dictates content. The closest thing we have to democracy on the airwaves is public access TV, if you call cable the airwaves, and nobody does. This medium remains extremely marginalized and poses no threat to the corporate status quo.
For too long consumers have been sheep, willing to be sheared. We’ve been paying $17 for cd’s and $8 and upwards for movie tickets. Blockbuster has monopolized the video rental industry. These producers dictate not only how much we will pay but, more importantly, the content of what we purchase. They edit movies for content, sap TV of any true controversy, and basically rule over us like some sort of benevolent dictatorship. This wasn’t the democracy I signed up for.
Thanks to Napster, and now its progeny (kazaa.com, sharebear.com etc.), the metaphor is changing. Instead of the sheep we are becoming the fox that raids the chicken coop of ‘intellectual property.’ File sharing, or internet piracy—depending on who you talk to—has not affected sales in any meaningful way. The music industry reported that sales were down 3% last year. They blame file sharing for their woes. They don’t consider that they have simply put out a bad product. What have they put on the market for anyone too old for Britney, rap, and boy bands? The truth is that studies on the subject suggest that people who use file sharing are the ones buying the most cd’s. Blaming file sharing for revenue loss will be the argument industry will use to limit the freedoms of the internet.
I hate to use such a monolithic label but 'Corporate America' would sell our 1rst Amendment rights to the highest bidder faster than you can say 1984. It looks to me like the cat is out of the bag as far as file sharing sites go. They have sprouted up like mushrooms. The record companies should be looking for a means to cash in on this and stop trying to fight it. They make us believe that they are only looking out for the interests of the artists when in fact artists see very little of total cd sales. Only the top names in the industry make anything more than pennies on the sale of a $17 cd. They are looking to preserve their own feudal duchies they have ruled for decades.
The initial promise of Napster was the democratization of the music industry. They were offering a distribution vehicle for musicians who had been denied access to the hallowed chambers of the recording industry. This never really panned out because Napster was immediately besieged by lawsuits by an industry that feared they would soon be irrelevant.
With the leaps digital video technology has made in recent years, along with its growing popularity in the file sharing domain, the movie industry will also be joining the fight against internet freedom. It is hard to think of an industry as incestual and monopolistic as Hollywood. Hollywood will undoubtedly remain the only manufacturer of the big scale movies but, as people are slowly beginning to realize, big does not mean good.
The idea that small, character driven films, shot on digital video, and distributed world-wide via the web must scare the living hell out of the schlockmeisters of Hollywood who try to tell us that a piece of shit like A Beautiful Mind was the ‘best’ movie last year. I was tricked into seeing that turd and my money was much better spent on the digital Italian for Beginners which probably cost less to make than one day’s catering on Ron Howard’s dud.
As this controversy over file sharing gains momentum just remember that the argument isn’t about big business maintaining the integrity of its ‘intellectual property.’
The issue at stake is whether or not we maintain the status quo in which we are the sheep and they remain the wolf.
Blog of the day comes to us from Jerusalem. I wish that this guy would write ten times as much from his vantage point on the front lines. Good war reporting is a lost art.
P.S. I volunteered to review a blog. I can't even remember what this review thing was all about but here is a link to it. Make your own opinion.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)