January 2012
8 posts
blankest year
Tomorrow morning, when I am still the same person, there will be no clean slate; just breakfast specials. Scrambled eggs for this grump here.. and keep the coffee coming, darling.
December 2011
20 posts
2 tags
let's take a ride
There was a time in my life when I viewed Justin Timberlake as being one of the most threatening human beings alive. It was more than being subjected to his bland, manufactured pop music, or knowing he was getting blow-jobs from Britney Spears; both I could get over. Instead, it was the awareness of that strange hold he had over my female companions. I viewed him as this contagion that was causing...
5 tags
roasting on an open fire
Last year, I reminisced about the Dunn family Christmas in 1995. Well, now it’s 1996, and the saga continues. My voice grew a little deeper and the teenage angst was at its apex:
I shuffled down the stairs, pissed off that I had to wake up this early for unwrapping gifts - Christmas is fucking gay. I walked across the sea of gifts that littered my living room floor and collapsed onto the...
19 tags
lisztomania
As another year circles the drain, I brace myself for that week between Christmas and New Year’s Eve when all the highly opinionated folks with internet access publish their pretentious lists of the year’s best. Well, I’m no different. Best Album: The Kills, “Blood Pressures” The Kills have spent the last few years on my radar, but 2011 solidified them a spot in the “Best Rock Duos” wing of the...
3 tags
el mañana
It’s late Sunday afternoon. A familiar feeling begins to grow over me - that one where I realize the weekend will soon abruptly end. Tomorrow, there will be rats racing, keyboards clacking, and break-room coffee aromas. I close my eyes and think of that long dead cat dangling from a tree branch. Hang in there, baby.
2 tags
pony up
Reviews are in for Steven Spielberg’s War Horse. They say it’san emotionally wrenching tale about a boy and his horse set against the backdrop of World War I.
I say, that horse better talk or else I’m walking out of the theater. I’ll even give the film bonus points if it’s voiced by Gilbert Gottfried.
4 tags
half awake in a fake empire
“The projects were a boon for the Bulger family. Jim Bulger was fifty-two, and jobs for a one armed man weren’t easy to come by.”
- Howie Carr, on the Old Harbor Housing Projects of South Boston, which is best known as the neighborhood where Whitey Bulger grew up.
2 tags
survey says
I have this habit of hoarding television series on my DVR for months. I imagine no other human being would ever sit down to watch an eight hour marathon of Family Feud in one sitting, but I consider my quirk akin to that of a squirrel storing nuts for the harsh winter months. It is inevitable that I will get sick one day and the unfailingly suave Steve Harvey will be the chicken soup that warms...
2 tags
at least it was here
I can’t think of a better way to spend my day off than with a marathon of NBC’s Community. I always felt a personal connection to the series because it always reminded me of my own foray at a junior college. It was nearly ten years ago that I first stepped foot onto my alma mater (can I call it that if I never even graduated). I was fresh off the high school assembly line, which I often...
2 tags
everlasting everything
“A man who orders up murder like you and I order coffee.”
With the curtain falling on the second season of Boardwalk Empire, Sunday nights are going to be lonely, at least for a while. No more Steve Buscemi standing behind those suits that make him look like a ten year old at a wedding, no more mother fucking, overdone Irish accents, or wild dogs running off with Richard Harrow’s tin...
3 tags
i'm a realist
This past Thanksgiving, while shoving hoards of mashed potatoes down my gullet, my mother interrupted the annual festive binge to announce that she had recently created a profile on Facebook. To start, I simply asked her, “Why?” Then proceeded to tell her in a long-winded rant that Facebook was nothing but a vapid world of dick-skinned human beings. Her blank, expressionless eyes...
4 tags
burning of the midnight lamp
The television spots for New Year’s Eve have been haunting me for days now. From what I’ve seen, the only way to a remotely interesting narrative would be for Katherine Heigl to reprise the role of the teenager from My Father the Hero. If you thought it was borderline questionable watching a teenage girl pretending to romance her father in 1994, imagine those hijinks recreated 17 years...
2 tags
mind eraser, no chaser
It was a mixed crowd, composed of mostly strangers. One of the men there raised his glass and prepared us for a group toast, “To our mid-20s!” he shouted aloud. I glanced the room and all I witnessed were smiling faces. In the split second before the toast, I broke the silence, “But I just turned 30!” A look of horror quickly fell over my new friend’s face. However, he quickly rebutted,...
3 tags
beyond the sea
December 7th, 1982. Huntsville, Texas.
Time to unplug the electric chair. On this day, Charles Brooks, Jr., became the first human soul to receive a lethal injection as a form of capital punishment. Brooks received an intravenous of sodium pentathol, which is often used as a “truth serum” in lower doses. Years later, execution authorities would adopt an injection procedure that...
3 tags
hitchin' a ride
The 53-year-old actor [Alec Baldwin] joins a growing list of celebs who have been kicked off flights this year, including Green Day’s Billie Joe Armstrong and Green Card’s Gerard Depardieu.
- Games Blog - Yahoo! Games
And now, over 50,000 web browsers just set sail for the Internet Movie Database. Oh yeah, Green Card! The 1990 film that has not been referenced since, well, 1990.
5 tags
mother, may i sleep with danger?
Nucky Thompson may have footed the bill for Jimmy Darmody; but let’s face it, Jimmy never really fit in with the other Princeton boys. They were born and bred with their futures outlined for them by their elders. Conversely, Jimmy was raised by his teenage mother with the help of her showgirl friends. His interpretation of the John Webster play they were studying in class that day was...
5 tags
setting fire to sleeping giants
December 4th, 1928. St Paul, Minnesota:
“Dapper” Dan Hogan, a saloon keeper and mob boss, became the first known human being to be killed as a result of a car bomb. At approximately 11:30am, Hogan hopped behind the wheel of his Paige coupe and a bomb hidden beneath the floorboards exploded when he started the car’s ignition. The blast nearly tore off his right leg and he was...
4 tags
the man who would speak true
The frozen pizza reviews by Leonard from NBC’s Community are reminiscent of any food-related critique I have ever made. Whenever it comes to food, especially pizza, it’s always simple; like, “the cheese is good.” Often times I won’t even use words. I’ve been asked how an entrée was by a food server and just nodded my head in the yes position. To paraphrase the...
5 tags
so far from your weapon
The discovery of a 1.8 ton World War II era bomb in the German city of Koblenz has caused officials to call for the evacuation of around 45,000 residents — nearly half of the city’s total population of 106,000 — while emergency crews work to defuse the British aerial mine.
The mandatory evacuation, which includes two hospitals, seven elderly care homes and a local prison,...
3 tags
shrinking universe
The thing about early American UFO sightings is that the technology always seemed to be just slightly ahead of what humans were almost capable of. For example, the airship sightings of 1896. Hundreds of eyewitnesses claimed to have seen a slow moving airship floating across northern California skies on a November night in 1896. Eyewitnesses described the ship as being cigar shaped, over 150 feet...