Thursday, December 29, 2011

Oh, Internet!

I've spent a terrible amount of time in the depths of the Internet, and today I return to the surface with the following two sparkling gems.


Monday, August 22, 2011

2011 Cleveland Indians Review

They've been one of the surprising success stories of the MLB season, but are the Cleveland Indians any good?

No.


Let's take a look at their current roster's ideal lineup.

1. Michael Brantley, CF — "Who the hell is Michael Brantley?" you might ask. And you should. I've been assured by many people that he's "going to develop" but I've never seen him do anything but ground out.

2. Jason Kipnis, 2B — This guy is good, or he had a really hot month before his recent injuries. "Injuries?" you ask, and you should, because this is the point where I should mention that every one of these guys is a huge pussy who somehow gets injured playing baseball.

3. Asdrubal Cabrera, SS — This guy is also good. I like everything about Asdrubal Cabrera, a little too much. After this brief Kipnis/Cabrera respite, the nightmare continues.

4. Grady Sizemore, LF — I put Sizemore in left field because he has the knees, back, ribs, wrists, and vagina of a sour old grandwoman. He rose to prominence as a daredevil speedster, and now he's a power hitter for some reason. It makes no sense, except for the fact that he's the guy the Indians stuck with, so why shouldn't he completely fuck up everything that made him good?

5. Shin-Soo Choo, RF — Has one of those weird Asian swings.

6. Carlos Santana, C — Can't catch, and bats .215. Supposedly he has good sabermetrics stats, but you know what else (it looks like) he has? A bad attitude. He's either super chill or a totally dismissive dick.

7. Travis Hafner, DH — A big, brittle man who hits doubles and then gets thrown out later at third or home. Usually injured.

8. Matt LaPorta, 1B — This guy fucking sucks.

9. Lonnie Chisenhall, 3B — Average defender with a beautiful swing, which he uses to slap the first available pitch to a middle infielder.


Pitching Staff

Ubaldo Jimenez, SP — Terrible mechanics, location, ERA, and regressing abilities. Ace of the staff.

Justin Masterson, SP — A very good pitcher who has a shitty record because the above lineup becomes especially pathetic when he's on the mound. Probably because he's a bald white guy, and everybody hates us.

Fausto Carmona, SP — He's the farm-system version of Ubaldo Jimenez.

Josh Tomlin, SP — Crafty lefty. This guy's a real pitcher, but he doesn't have a real pitcher's size, so fuck him.

David Huff, SP — I heard this guy's good, but he's in the minors most of the time.

Who cares about middle relievers?

Chris Perez, Closer — This guy is going to get exposed one of these days. I can't figure out how he's not getting shelled repeatedly. Chubby white guy with long hair—not exactly intimidating.

Manny Acta, Manager — Gotta give him credit for keeping this collection of jerkoffs competitive, but despite that he also seems like kind of a shitty manager.

In summation, it's amazing that this team is competing for a division title, but that's probably more an indication of a rancid division than a worthwhile lineup.

Go Tribe!

Wednesday, June 15, 2011

RIP This Blog

I've been working on a bunch of shit lately. I almost moved, but now I'm not moving, or something. This blog has gone neglected because of my rootlessness. 

I'm homeless for now. A California couch-surfer.

Homeless Depression 2.0.

My Jeep Cherokee is my bindle.

Gotta make it happen. For real this time.

Until then, my friends.

Friday, May 13, 2011

Are Things Really This Bad?

This might end up being a double post. Fittingly, Blogger had some sort of meltdown recently that deleted this post the first time I put it up. By the headline alone I'm sure you can start to see why it's fitting that it got messed up.

Here's the rest.




My quiet friend Brian was once asked by a frustrated fellow high-school student, "How come you never talk?!"

Brian replied, "What's there to say?"

I've been described as negative by a tremendous number of people.

I reply, "What's there to be positive about?"

Am I alone in the feeling that things have been going from bad to worse in just about every way in the world? Are things as bad as they seem to me, or is it my ugly negativity?

There are no heroes in government right now, and barely a handful of people even worth talking about. Most of my heroes are from the private sector, and they're dead.

There are heroes, though: SEAL Team Six, and the people who helped them find Osama bin Laden, right?

The SEALs, certainly; but the CIA? How much could a semi-knowledgeable person celebrate that sinister organization? Does this victory nullify its many tremendous defeats and injustices?

But am I alone in being troubled by just how jubilantly people were celebrating bin Laden's death? Didn't it reek of overcompensation, like when Bill Murray was disturbingly overdoing it during the snowball fight in Groundhog Day

I live in a country that was so starved to celebrate anything at all that some of its citizens took to the streets, chanting and repeating that three-lyric wonder, "U.S.A.!" upon the news that some SEALs had killed the man behind the attack that pierced the hull of the nation. 

I would loudly join them in the streets if I knew his death also meant the death of his ideas. But it doesn't, so I am only satisfied that there is one less murderous animal out there, and I am particularly glad it is this one. 

Which is where I join the chorus of those who are frustrated to find our military fighting wars in three countries except the one that was housing the man who had actually attacked America.

Things appear to be so absurdly Orwellian right now that it's almost something you can't talking about—like the question, "Why do you think we're really here?" It's so big that you can't bring it up without looking stupid.

But it's right where we appear to find ourselves. Our Congress is generating profound debt, and clapping themselves on the back over it, and yet my idiotic fellow Americans continue this ugly cycle: "Ninety percent of Americans want all of Congress fired and replaced—except, of course, for their district's representative."

War. Debt. Security over Liberty.

 

Two trillion dollars were created and distributed, and we're not allowed to know where a lot of it went. The biggest robbery in the history of civilization, and it's another thing that's so big we're not allowed to talk about it, because we know it's there but we don't have a handle on it.

I mean, I know they didn't steal my money. All they did was make my money worth a lot less, while they compensated for the devaluation by sheer quantity rewarded.

Too big to talk about. Why are we really here?

Are things really this bad?

What's the difference between President Obama and President Bush? That's not the setup to a joke; that's a legitimate question, and the answer appears to be, and I'm putting this in quotes because that's where it belongs, "ObamaCare."

Our country is underwater, and we're dying of thirst. We've got millions of homeless people and millions of empty homes.

If the differences between George W. Bush and Barack Obama are as marginal as they appear, then does the President really make any decisions at all, or was Bill Hicks right?

Am I being negative, or am I reacting to what's out there?

And yet here is a bolt of positivity:

I am starting a company. I am bringing stories and ideas to the world.

Why can't negativity be a fuel?

Another Great Depression

My friend Jaime Long recently tweeted:
 
"Study up kids, you don't want to miss out on one of those jobs where you pretend to work & waste your life in front of a computer all day."
 
I could look it up, or you could, but either way there's not going to be any research presented here, so you'll just have to trust me that I've both heard and read about studies that found that college students barely learn anything in their first two years at university.
 
The results of those studies led to my looking back on my own experiences in those two years of my life, and my results were the same: I did learn a few key things, but nothing that was so massive it could not have been absorbed in the much more illuminating subsequent two years.
 
And by "much more illuminating" I mean the difference between a pitch-black basketball arena and a lit candle on center court.
 
That candlelight cost me and my parents approximately $50,000.
 
There is such a strong emphasis on getting a college education in this country, and I think that is misguided. America needs more people with tangible skills, like the ability to build or farm or somehow Create Value. A college degree does not Value create. Mine was a huge waste of time, actually, where I learned important academic and life lessons, but what made it a waste of time was that it was one or two years' worth of life and academic lessons that were stretched over four or five years, with the huge gaps filled in by a confusing orgy of partying.
 
What were we celebrating?
 
We were filling time in the funnest way available.
 
Can we afford to fill time anymore? Can we afford to continue to squander money and minds on sociology degrees? Isn't every human on earth already a sociologist by virtue of the necessity of paying attention to what people around them are doing? And that's just one of the expensive programs that leads to nothing.
 
I studied journalism at what I was told was one of the better journalism programs in America. When I graduated, I got as far away from journalism as possible.
 
It cost me and my parents $50,000 for me to realize I didn't want to be a journalist—that I'd only signed up for the program because I wanted to learn the disciplines involved: editing, proofreading, interviewing, layout/design, concision writing, etc.
 
I could have learned all those things within two years, even with partying on the weekends, as opposed to Wednesday through Sunday. There is a tremendous bulk built into most schools' requirements, and I have to think it's a money-generating thing for the schools, and again I have to defer to the marketplace: if the price in time and money continues to rise past the point where it makes economic sense for most Americans, then we need to stop feeding the leviathan, because the government is all too happy to have us owe them bigger and bigger debts. Those debts come with interest, and they're trying to make money, too. Plus, it's easier to control our lives, if necessary, that way—by having us indebted to them.
 
If I had a child who only had a marginal interest in going to college, I would encourage him or her to seek any career path in the world—not just the ones for which a college degree is necessary. My friend is a plumber, and he makes a good living in Cleveland, Ohio, in one of the worst places in one of the worst economies in world history. He didn't go to college, but people always need help with their plumbing.
 
That's actual value. That's tangible and useful.
 
We are pointlessly generating debt. Our employers need to start looking past degrees and into what really matters: the functioning of the individual's mind. Having gone to college, I am not impresed by college graduates. It's easier than high school, and seemingly the only graduation requirement is that you don't drink yourself to death.
 
And then at the end you get one of those jobs where you pretend to work and waste your life in front of a computer all day.
 
Another Great Depression, indeed.

Tuesday, May 3, 2011

Email to Bill Simmons

I just submitted this email to Bill Simmons' contact page on ESPN.com. I'm posting it here because I wholeheartedly agree with me.





Sports Guy,

Follow my logic.

The playoffs—NBA, MLB, NFL, NHL—are the best because they're elimination tournaments, which create drama, which make everyone try harder (play defense).

Count me among those who would prefer to turn baseball, basketball, and hockey "regular seasons" into a large number of short, seeded, sponsored tournaments.

Each player in the league would get some sort of acceptable minimum wage, and the incentives would be in the accumulation of tournament wins and rankings. (The top-ranked players would have higher-paying incentives.)

You could still have an ultimate playoff at the end of the year, but this way it's not just a marathon of drinking and looking at people play a sport like they're sawing wood.

I don't think you'd need to mess with NFL seasons, though. That whole system is perfect for that sport.

But college football needs the closure of an elimination tournament.

If you think about it, a tournament is an automatic three-act structure, where victory always wins.

It's also a sort of inverted bowel movement, where the pooh is champions.

It's life, man!

Andohbytheway, doesn't the NFL lockout kind of remind you of the WGA strike? In seemingly arbitrarily looking for more money, owners and writers decided to throw a tantrum because they couldn't have it the way they wanted.

Speaking of The Wire, I get anxious sometimes, and I ask myself what Marlo would do.

Danimal
@gonefiction

Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Update!

I haven't updated this blog in a while! Hard to keep posting regularly when you fans keep demanding to give me blowjobs and aggressive handjobs!

Thursday, April 21, 2011

The Entramulance of a Throwistic Innovation

Lately I have been experimenting with a possible innovation in the field of my specialization: Throwistics.

All my life, I have thrown baseballs a certain way, but after teaching myself how to drive golf balls using an unconventional, often unsuccessful, but occasionally Armageddon-inducing swing, which drives the ball much farther than my limited stature would normally suggest, I might have come up with a way to combine the two approaches . . . and turn my arm up to 11.

In which case I might have to think about trying to walk on to a minor-league team, after ten years of skateboarding.

"My arm's fresh, Coach!"

Wednesday, April 20, 2011

4/20

[the *schck* of a lighter's igniter, and a puffing, and a faint crackling, and a rush of air]


An honest question/thought one of my friends once asked himself, which he later relayed to me—something I could relate to and have chewed over many times since:

"How can I love myself one moment and completely hate myself the next?"


He's truly the person with the greatest combination of talent and wisdom I have ever known, and it was initially quite shocking to me to hear him say that. I have been told I am a person of significant talent, and for as long as I can remember I have battled with exactly what he said.

I loved and hated him, too.

Haha jp I was talking about myself of course (this is a blog).

So, the safe assumption would be that we're both possibly talented, bipolar people. But at this point, with this many people on this many pills, I propose that we need to start looking for philosophical rather than medical answers to what the fuck is going on here. The human body and brain are built to survive, but I think we're ruining our brains with ideas rather than the idea that somehow our brains, after 4 billion years of evolution, have suddenly turned against us and require chemical boosters and suppressors.

And actually, after these great many years, I have come up with an answer to my friend's question, but it as an answer worthy of more than a blog post.

It is an answer—a series of answers—that might one day sit on your bookshelf, unread, haha.

Until then, I leave you with this, which was told to me by another friend, and which also felt to me like the clear clanging of the bell of a quiet many people's worldview:

"Anyone who doesn't think about killing themselves every day, should kill themselves."

Hey, fuckin' Baby Boomers, these are the things your children are thinking about. Besides giving us the Internet, and our lives, you have been shit. Thanks for so many things that are completely fucked, I won't even begin to count them all—lest I end this post with a call for your blood!

[loud exhale, coughing]

Saturday, April 9, 2011

It's Better to Have Loved and Lost

ESPN national sports columnist and Boston native Bill Simmons has argued in the past that he believes it's preferable to be a fan of a team that has never won anything than to be a fan of a team that won a championship recently but is now on the way back down into oblivion. You could argue that he only says that because Boston people always need something to bitch about, but besides that, as a Cleveland native and a fan of Cleveland sports, I find his argument to be nauseatingly stupid, and I have this counterpoint: if it's indeed true that it's worse to have won and lost than to have never won at all, then are you saying, Mr. Simmons, that as both the world and American economies are going down the tank it would be better to be a Serbian right now, where things never got any better, than to be an American, where we had once thrived?

Fuck Boston with a dick full of AIDS.

Go Browns.

Tuesday, April 5, 2011

Podcast Reviews: A Review of Podcasts

Ever feel like you haven't heard enough people's opinions?


Well, podcasts might be the thing for you.


My personal thoughts are a haunting nightmare of regret and frustrated sexuality; thus, I am a fan podcasts and podcasting.


So I thought I would share a short review of the podcasts that are currently "subscribed" to in my iTunes account. The following list is in alphabetical order, because I did not feel comfortable ranking them given their wide variation and the spectrum of qualities they can deliver. They are alike in that they all comprise the podcastic umbrella I use to protect myself from the acidic raindrops of my thunder-brain-storm.



The Adam Carolla Show
Type: Comedy
Rated: NC-17
Quick Review: Adam Carolla is funny and opinionated as fuck. Radio is his medium, and podcasting is the perfect subgenre for him, because he can fire the word "cunt" from any direction and hit the target. He has two major sidekicks: newswoman Alison Rosen, who does a fine job, and sound-effects-guy Bald Bryan, who too does a fine job. Obviously, Carolla's extremely dirty mouth might be offensive or NSFW for some, but if you're not easily offended this show can be as funny as it gets. One of my favorite Carolla jokes: "You know why I don't have any tattoos? Because I have a fucking PERSONALITY."

Common Sense with Dan Carlin
Type: Politics
Rated: PG
Quick Review: A political-commentary show by a host who, like your humble reviewer, reserves the right to change or adjust his opinions as more information becomes available—and thus can't or should't be pigeonholed in any one political camp. In this podcast, Dan Carlin earnestly endeavors to find useful lessons in or solutions to the problems of the nation and our world.

Dan Carlin's Hardcore History
Type: History
Rated: PG-13
Quick Review: Dan Carlin brings history to life in a series of verbal explorations of important past events. This show is like a series of beautiful, gripping, thought-provoking movies being broadcast into your brain.

PTI
Type: Sports
Rated: PG
Quick Review: The only good sports-talk show on television—in podcast form.

The B.S. Report with Bill Simmons
Type: Sports
Rated: PG-13
Quick Review: Bill Simmons, a columnist for ESPN, is the Family Guy of sports writers, but, because or in spite of that, he is a very good interviewer of sports and entertainment personalities. 

The Fort Podcast
Type: Comedy
Rated: R
Quick Review: Hosted by three guys I know—Ed Galvez, Kevin Ford, and Mike Costantini—The Fort is a sketch-comedy podcast that also features interviews, ruminations, and wild-west wrap-ups. It is not refined, but the guys have potential.

Hollywood Babble-On
Type: Comedy
Rated: NC-17
Quick Review: A live podcast hosted by Kevin Smith and Ralph Garman. Smith, of funny-shitty movies fame, is definitely a "love him or hate him" kind of guy. Ralph Garman does some of the funniest impressions I've ever heard. The show mainly consists of them kvetching about show business, but they got comedy chops. "Babble the fuck on!"

KCRW's Left, Right & Center
Type: Politics
Rated: G
Quick Review: An enjoyably levelheaded political debate between an old-guard liberal, an old-guard conservative, a "blogosphere" Arianna Huffington, and someone who claims to be whatever a centrist is. It's an NPR/KCRW presentation, so of course it's well done. Although I seldom agree with any of them, I enjoy hearing the best arguments from any side, rather than the loudest.

Science Magazine Podcast
Type: Science
Rated: G
Quick Review: Although I've never had a "talent" for any of the sciences, I love reading and hearing about advancements in science and scientific methodologies; thus, I am a huge advocate of the Science Magazine Podcast, which features stories from every branch of that beautiful universe of exploration. The special bonus of the show comes in the form of Science Magazine Letters Editor Jennifer Sills, who has an enchantingly mellifluous voice. The main host, Robert Frederick (firsty firsty!), does a great job, too, but Ms. Sills' voice, for some reason, is sweeter to me than the big rock-candy mountain.

The Second Column Podcast
Type: Comedy/Interview
Rated: R
Quick Review: My eldest brother, Joe, hosts a weekly comedic-interview show featuring a guest of the week and a bevy of co-hosts. In toto, there is my brother, who is a former reporter who performs most of the interviewing responsibilities; then there is the show's producer, Mike Costantini, who is a non-sequitur machine; then there is Carlos Jaime, who certainly does his thing; then there is the show's young sound-effects guy, Sean Kearney, who consistently undermines his co-hosts' efforts; finally, there is the guest, who provides a fine feast for these vultures. Always entertaining.

SModcast
Type: Comedy
Rated: NC-17
Quick Review: Kevin Smith again, this time with his longtime producer Scott Mosier on the mothership of the Kevin Smith podcast universe. The two work incredibly well off each other, and I can honestly say that this show has provided some of the heaviest laughs of my podcast-listening life. Each episode is like a magical adventure rife with drugs, boobies, and offering oral sex to get out of tough situations.

WTF with Marc Maron
Type: Comedy/Interview
Rated: R
Quick Review: Marc Maron is a funny and thought-provoking guy. I almost never agree with anything he has to say, but when I do agree, it "feels" like he's touching on a truth that is very powerful and undeniable. He does a great job interviewing other comedians, which is primarily what this show is about. As Maron himself has pointed out, "WTF" really seems to strike a nerve with fellow smart-depressed people.




You should be able to find all of those shows on iTunes. If you like them, please let me know of any others you think I might enjoy—anything not to have to think my own thoughts in the bitter plains of my desperate, stormy life.

Monday, April 4, 2011

A Controversial Advertisement

I had an idea for a commercial that I know the company could never make, so I'm going to make it for them. 

Please don't kill me; some people are capable of being respectful and mournful about something while also being able to joke about it.

Anyway, tell me this wouldn't be an effective advertisement.


The first tower has already been hit, and a man standing on a New York City street looks up and sees the second plane flying toward the second tower.


The second plane hits, and people really start to panic. Then the disturbing thunderous sound as the towers fall to the ground.


The towers crumble, and, on the street, the commercial's final moment freezes and holds on the screen.




Monday, March 28, 2011

Battle: L.A. Vs. Cleveland

I lived in Cleveland and elsewhere in Ohio until I was 22 years old. Then, after I graduated from college (Beer University '04), I found several issues with the screening test given by Cleveland's only employer—Progressive Insurance—and I moved to Los Angeles, California, where they had a more freewheeling economy, where I could get a job (at least as a proofreader), and where I hoped to one day write jokes for South Park (or some blossoming equivalent).

A few months ago, I quit my job and moved—at least temporarily—back to Ohio.

I've been back here for a few months, and I've been surprised to reach the possible conclusion that I like and respect the people in Ohio a lot more than I like and respect the people in Los Angeles.


(The funny thing about that line is that it's somehow both factual and satirical.)

"But, Dan," you might object, "you're a relatively intelligent person, so wouldn't you prefer to live in a city full of other ambitious, intelligent people? Clearly that's not Cleveland's greatest feature, so what's up?"

I really should take a moment here and thank "you" for asking such a timely and thoughtful duet of questions.

It was my experience that the average Angeleno is no more intelligent or ambitious than the average Clevelander, and that's actually a big part of what I'll call "my problem," because the Angelenos believe that they are fundamentally smarter and better-off than other people. But I believe they are not "more ambitious" as much as they have ambitions that are regionally specific—like my abortion-and-unclefucking joke-writing pipe dream, which I could not rightly fulfill in Ketchum, Idaho (that I know of).

In my opinion, if you try to look at it with a fair amount of objectivity, Ohioans are easier to appreciate because they have overcome more adversity. They find, create, and keep jobs in one of the worst economies since the invention of pants, which requires a real mental fortitude, while Angelenos find and sometimes keep jobs in the fifth-largest economy in the world, which requires a heartbeat.

In short, I found that the majority of people in Los Angeles have a much higher valuation of their self-worth than people in Ohio, in the wrong way, for the wrong reason (which struck me as being the cultural equivalent of those piss-poor Republicans in the shit-sticks who demand tax breaks for the rich because they themselves plan on being billionaires one day, but in this case it's people who demand undue respect for the occasional brilliant things that have come out of the city where they now live). I can't tell you how many conversations I had in Los Angeles where I could see that the person I was talking to was simply going through the motions for my behalf, which is one of the most irritating things in the world for someone who enjoys vibrant conversation.

You almost never get that in Ohio. Sure, you might have a beefed-up swarthy Italian drunken fightmare come up to you, slap the drink out of your hand, and ask you, "What the fuck are you looking at, faggot?", which would almost never happen in LA (almost everyone in LA is a pussy, which is why they shoot guns rather than fight with fists), but at least that spittle-faced Italian aggression is being done with a sort of personal earnestness. Indeed, what the fuck ARE you looking at, faggot?

The conflicts in Ohio are real (even if they're "real dumb"); the "conflicts" in LA consist of a person of relative earnestness (myself) being tempted to violence by the intangible, unchokeable nature of his peers' half-listening condescension.

Basically, most of the people in LA are as bad as, if not worse than, the way they are depicted in the movies, but it's just not quite as obvious as it's made in cinema. In the movies, LA cunts and dickheads have the balls to make it obvious that they don't like you; in real LA, it's never obvious, but it's everywhere. And it's not like all the people I'm talking about are movie stars, rock stars, or Hollywood writers, either; they're aspiring movie stars, rock stars, and Hollywood writers who've completely chugged the pernicious logic of "Fake it 'til you make it."

In Ohio, and the Midwest, the philosophy used to be, "Work your ass off 'til you make it," but that was back when America would actually produce goods and services, which is a bygone era, so despite the fact that hard work doesn't pay off at all anymore, there's still the underlying ethic that says our self-esteem should at least be partly based on the objective facts of reality.

Consider this: I was voted "Easiest To Get Along With" and "Best Personality" in high school, and yet in six years in LA I made only a small handful of friends. I got along with almost everyone in high school and college, and, despite never having been in a fight in my life, I could barely make it through a party in Los Angeles without wanting to crack open the smug faces of half the people around me.

I understand the need to have ambition and self-confidence, but not when it manifests a self-worth that flies in the face of reality. (I am reminded of some truly wise words I read recently: "Funny how the Age of Positive Thinking coincides exactly with the age of the apocalypse.") I much more readily trust an honestly derived source of confidence, which is often quite difficult to come by, rather than the illusory, defense-mechanism self-confidence of the average trying-to-make-it Angeleno.

Women in Los Angeles are incredibly guarded. I understand that that's necessary, because so many of them moved out there and are alone in a very big and sometimes scary city, but that doesn't change the fact that it's not fun at all to talk to them, to have to slowly unwrap their ninety layers of defense before you can get to who they really are. In Ohio, most women are their earnest selves, and if they aren't attracted to you, you'll know it. In LA, who the fuck knows? If you're not Vincent Chase, you've probably got miles to go before you can sleep.

Or at least that's what way it was for me, and that could be because I have no game, but I have gotten laid in Ohio, so . . . there's that. Which I admit is not much. 

"So everyone was a big douchebag? You didn't meet anyone worth knowing?" you might ask. "Maybe everyone in high school was fucking with you. Ever think of that?"

Of course. Certainly. I met some wonderfully kind and talented people in Los Angeles—omnigenius Stephen Frick (who gave me the above "Age of Positive Thinking" observation), proofreader DeLane McDuffie, writer Peter Dirksen, musician Mike Costantini, and others—but that's a handful of people versus a region containing probably 20 million head of humans. I'm absolutely sure there are others as wonderful and bright and not-irrationally-full-of-themselves as Stephen, DeLane, Peter, Michael, and a few others, but what I'm saying is that the percentages are way off, and for some reason my blood turns into a justice wolf whenever it's around the faketry of confidence-undeserving metroids.

I used to think that people were the same no matter where you went, but unfortunately that's just not true. It's probably true of 90% of places, but not Los Angeles, and I think I know why.

I have friends in Ohio who've never left the state/city where they grew up, and they tell me that they wish they'd tried living somewhere else for a while, like LA. I can usually tell by the way they say this that they feel like there is some missing piece of enlightenment from their lives—that they're not "complete" people yet because they've never lived somewhere that was foreign to them.

I tell all those people the same thing—a quotation from Robert Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: "The only enlightenment you find at the top of a mountain is the enlightenment you bring with you."

And that's the biggest problem with the "LA people" I met: they're the kind of people who moved from their hometown and expected to find enlightenment in a new city, despite the fact that all their demons followed them there like they follow everyone everywhere. And no matter how obnoxious they might appear, they're going to fake it until they make it.

I could have stomached all of that if the people at South Park had ever gotten back to me—if I were funnier—but they didn't (I'm not). 

I'm a joke-writing failure, and there's already enough of those in Los Angeles, so I'm back in Ohio now, where I am enjoying the company of people who have enough backbone to say what they really mean.

I returned to Cleveland in early November, and as I have endured another autumn and winter here, I have found a fresh observation, which I have been chewing thoughtfully for a few weeks.

When it comes to weather, Cleveland is a wildly "moody" place. In the same week, you might see a thunderstorm, a snowstorm, a tornado, and a vividly blue sky with towering monoliths of shifting white puffs of cloud. For better or worse, Los Angeles is the opposite of that—there are two seasons: Summer, and Not Summer.

The fresh piece of observation in the jaws of my mind concerns this idea: Cleveland is actually four different cities—Cleveland In Spring, Cleveland In Summer, Cleveland In Fall, Cleveland In Winter. And Los Angeles is only two cities: L.A. In Summer, L.A. In Not Summer.

L.A. In Summer is one of the best places in the world: ubiquitous clear skies, a natural cooling breeze off the cold Pacific, an ocean of pavement to be hiked or run or biked or skated or driven. And even L.A. In Not Summer is a very nice place, where the most you'll ever need to wear is a hooded sweatshirt.

But to see the leafless fingers of white-bark trees piercing the gray skies of Cleveland winter, and then to see those branches bud with colorful and aromatic flowers in the spring before popping open large green leaves that quietly cheer whenever the wind blows in the summer, only to be burnt to orange and brown by the cold fires of autumn—it is to walk through a vast spectrum of Life, a symphony of natural vicissitudes.

The only Life in Los Angeles is the ugly pattern of millions of human decisions. The skies and the buildings and the air are always the same.

Which is probably why fashion is so important there. It's the human-world's version of "seasons" in the desert.

I have such a disdain for fashion that one day in LA I decided to throw away all of my clothes and buy several Jedi robes and just wear those for the rest of my life. 

I didn't do it, but if I move back, I probably will.

Finally, I'm aware that in this post I'm coming off like exactly the type of LA person I was/am complaining about, but here are the two key differences: 1. I'm completely aware that I'm a reprehensible piece of shit (I did, after all, move to Los Angeles), and 2. I wrote this for your possible entertainment; I did not take over a conversation at a party and blast all this shit out to people who obviously don't care.

If I could give any advice to both groups of people, it would be almost the same advice, but on different ends of the spectrum. LA People: Quit being proud of things you didn't accomplish yet. Ohio People: Quit being ashamed of things you haven't accomplished yet.

The most troubling part of all of this is that I probably have to move back to Los Angeles soon. I'm starting a small publishing company with a lawyer-friend of mine, and it would benefit the business for me to be somewhere with a larger and younger population.

The way I see it, if our books can make it there—in that concrete stew of human vomit—they can make it anywhere.

Plus, my brothers live there, and I enjoy skateboarding.

Thursday, March 17, 2011

Burt Reynolds' Dreadful Summer Party

The following is a real movie review—of Cannonball Run 2—and it's one of the best pieces of writing I've ever read. Enjoy it, my dear friends.




BURT REYNOLDS' DREADFUL SUMMER PARTY
by Burl Burlingame
Tuesday, July 10, 1984
Honolulu Star-Bulletin

     A minimum effort from all concerned, "Cannonball Run II" is this summer's effort by Burt Reynolds and Hal Needham to get the public to subsidize a month-long party for Burt and his pals. The home movies taken during the party are edited into something resembling a feature film, at least in length.
     They're asking $4 for admission, and that doesn't include even one canape.
     Burt's friends are musty, dusty attractions at the Hollywood Wax Museum. They include Dean Martin, whose skin has the texture and unhealthy pallor of a cantaloupe rind and who says things like "When I make a dry martini, I make a dry martini,"—a sure-fire Rat Pack knee-slapper—and Sammy Davis Jr., who looks like a cockroach. Director Needham also never bothered to make sure Davis' glass eye was pointing in the proper direction. It rolls wildly, independent of the other orb.
     Other couch potatoes direct from "The Tonight Show" are the insufferable Charles Nelson Reilly; wheeze-monger Foster Brooks; Jim Nabors, who has swell-looking artificial teeth; and Don Knotts, who looks like a chimp recently released from Dachau.
     Dom DeLuise is aboard doing his annoying thweet-but-thilly fat man routine.
     Frank Sinatra, in a pseudo-Mafia don role that must have been a hoot in Warner Bros.' boardrooms, is on-screen for a flash. In the cutaway shots, the other actors pretend they're talking to Sinatra's stand-in, who's about two feet taller than ol' Pink Eyes.
     Susan Anton and Catharine Bach try to fill the jumpsuited bimbo role created Adrienne Barbeau, but Bach and Anton are two women who look best from a distance. When she smiles, Anton's lips slide up mechanically over teeth that resemble the grill of a '57 Chevy; her face has the hatchety directness of a Roman bireme at ramming speed. Bach looks hard, hard, hard; she could crack walnuts with her forehead.
     Both women spend much of the film coyly playing with the zippers on their jumpsuits. When they pull them down, the effect is less playfully sexy than revoltingly cheap.
     Burt's love interest in the last film, the quite-apropos Farrah Fawcett, is replaced by Shirley MacLaine, whose crinkly forearms contrast nicely with Burt's gassy, recently embalmed appearance. MacLaine does provide the only real laugh in the film, during a credit sequence that features otherwise endless, dull outtakes.
     There are other performers who manage not to humilate themselves. They include Jackie Chan the martial-arts whiz, Joe Theismann the football whiz and an orangutan wearing an unfortunate amount of pancake makeup.
     There's a plot of sorts; it reprises the last movie note for note.
     The theme song is in Spanish for some reason. "Cannooonbowel!" suggests the singer.
     The stunts are perfunctory.
     The cars are not exciting.
     The stars seem stuffed.
     The movie is a genuine cultural artifact, a relic given to us by a band of entertainers from long ago, who live in self-imposed exile in the dusty, neon hellhole of Las Vegas.
     They seem to have no trouble amusing each other.
     It's not contagious.

Tuesday, March 15, 2011

The STD After The Rape

I have noticed/"coined" a phenomenon that I keep seeing everywhere, and while I fully subscribe to the idea that "if you want to find a pattern, you will," I still have to think that this sort of thing seems to be occurring more and more frequently.


In the board game The Settlers of Catan (best game ever, man), there is a sequence of events where you can automatically lose up to half of your valuable resources, and beyond that, you can then also have an additional resource stolen from you by one of your rivals. Whenever this happens, I mutter to myself, "...the STD after the rape."


It usually gets a laugh, which means there has to be some truth to it.


On a larger scale, I was thinking that a tremendous earthquake is a rape, and the subsequent massive tsunami is the STD after the rape.


On a fiduciary scale, the usurious practices of our major financial institutions were the rape, and the bailouts they received were the STD after the rape.


And whenever I rape someone, they get an STD.

Saturday, March 12, 2011

"All Kinds Of Music"

Music is a drug, and we're all addicted. Consequently, I'm always on a search for a new high, because no matter how much I might love a song or a group, I always start to build up resistances, and I need to find new music to keep me alive. There are quality songs in every genre, so I really mean it when I tell people that I listen to all kinds of music—the only problem is the process of wading through all the utter garbage to find the good stuff. Anyway, this post serves two purposes: 1. as a possibly helpful list for others to find new music they might like; and 2. as an existing source I can send people to when they ask me to qualify what I mean when I say that I listen to all kinds of music.


Rock
Alternative

Rap/Hip-Hop

Jazz

Funk

Singer-Songwriter

Instrumental

Country

Folk
Jam

Punk

International

Classical

Misc.

Friday, March 11, 2011

Breaking The Record For Broken Records

From the undiluted wit-perfection of my Twitter account—in the future, children will study Twitter as The Most Important And Permanent Phenomenon Ever—comes this philosophical, annotated quotation by myself. I was thinking about the state of world affairs, and I could not help but get the impression that:


"It appears as though the flow of Nietzsche's eternal recurrence has popped out of its groove and keeps repeating the same two notes."


I'm, like, so deep, man.


Past Friedrich Nietzsche

Future Friedrich Nietzsche