No Happy Fun Time.

Toxins are seeping from my pores. I left work a little early, walked to Chinatown for an hour massage, then had an alternately teary/angry walk home. Blood sugar. Should have eaten something immediately. Of course the large groups of fun-seekers were out in hordes, it being still the holiday season. Of course they like to amble at .000000002 miles per hour in lazy packs of four or more. It's frustrating to live in New York because you can so often feel it is not yours. It gets hijacked by everybody all the time.

Then I come home and my cats start screaming at me. I screamed back. I realized some time ago that I would probably not manufacture babies, in part because the world is a sack of shit and I wouldn't present it to someone I loved, but also because I screamed at Ichabod, one day when he was especially whiny, "Shut the fuck up, you fucking asshole!!!"















Frankie. My longest-term relationship thus far.





























Ichabod. I called him a "fucking asshole."


Frankie is soooo needy lately. Of course she is. She's an elderly lady of 17 with many ailments. In addition to the physical care she needs, she needs my love and affection for reassurance. I am mostly more than happy to give it to her. When I came home tonight, I was needy. The massage and the end of year-ness made me realize how stressful this year has been for me. I wanted one moment when my ears weren't assaulted by some bleating unbidden noise.

Why does Gerald Ford deserve five days of national mourning? And why the hell didn't he come out with his criticisms of Bush before dropping dead? Out of personal or party loyalty? I would have more respect for him now if he had piped up sooner. Was he afraid maybe he would have had zero influence? Wouldn't it have been worth a try? What did he have to lose at age 90 by coming clean? What was the matter with him? Why sit on it?

Speaking of the unevolved, the super in the adjacent building is a hose-aholic. Every day, usually when I am coming home in the evening, he goes to town on the sidewalk with the hose. But not just the sidewalk. Today I saw him spraying the stacked garbage bags. Oh yeah, those bags of trash really need to be gunned down with 20-gallon jet streams.

When I just now looked out my window he was spraying a flattened cardboard box! To make it flatter! A water jet as a trash-smoothing device? How stupid do you have to be? He is wasting so much water, not to mention the entire area is sopping. You can tell he gets really into it too because he won't even stop to let you by. Standing there glaring doesn't do it. One time I said, "Please?! New boots." One morning I was trapped in my lobby while he sprayed my front doorway! I thought it was raining at first and turned around to get my umbrella. This guy is psychotic. I'm calling 311.

Crappy Mood, Don't Care Who Knows It.

I've had a shitty year, and not only that, it seems like I say that every year. I.e., I might be having a shitty life. Yes, lots of people's lives are shittier, but that is certainly not going to cheer me up.

I'm not celebrating the new year. I already know that. I could care less that it switches from Sunday to Monday. Seen that switch thousands of times already.

Not much good happened this year.

I'm skipping the celebration and getting straight to work.

Dodge City Sunday.

What a sexy line-up for Dodge City tomorrow:

Ann Carr is a bottomless well of multi-faceted nutjob characters. Don't tell them I said that. Will it be Hickory? Paloma? Carol?

Mike Dobbins is a genius. Like if Einstein and the Violent Femmes merged and did comedy.

Astrology-addicted Rachael Parenta, host of I Love Jack, is an always funny downtown favorite.

Joey Gay returns to the site of his former long-running Train Wreck. Maybe you saw him around town or on Last Comic Standing?

Greg Walloch really gets around. He globetrots, is a Moth and NYC comedy regular, and still has time to make a lot of movies where he looks really sexy and makes out with people.

And me. I don't have anything to say about myself right now.

The weather's gorgeous this weekend. Take a stroll on over to the Parkside. No cover, and there's free karaoke after the show.

Dodge City
Sunday, Dec. 17, 9 pm
Parkside Lounge
317 E. Houston St. @ Attorney
Between Aves. B & C
F/V to Second Ave.
JMZ to Delancey
No cover

I Go To Staten Island So You Don't Have To.

I went to Staten Island recently to go to a thrift store that had been mega-hyped.

But first. Memories.

I worked on Staten Island for a few months in 1996, as a PA and locations assistant on a low-budge indie film that was my own personal Living In Oblivion. I wrote a production diary for it that I never published anywhere. I will dig it up and post it soon.

I think it was a couple years before that that Giuliani was elected mayor. In the same election, there was a referendum about whether to allow Staten Island to secede from New York City. The outcome: Staten Islanders were largely responsible for electing Rudy, but they failed to get enough votes to leave NYC. I remember wishing that if they elected him, they could also leave and take him with them.

And BTW I just heard that SI is that fastest growing New York City borough.

No offense to Staten Islanders, but I hate it there. It makes me feel unclean. Strange because it's probably cleaner than Manhattan. It's certainly more rural. I think it's the ferry ride that does it. I always think it's going to be fun, taking a ferry across the river to the island, but it isn't. Everyone waits behind the vast glass doors. It's a holding pen that gets more and more crowded until the large digital clock turns to the half hour. When the doors open there is a stampede. You have to carefully calibrate your pace or else trample or get trampled.

When I worked in legal publishing, I knew a nice fellow who lived on SI, who brewed his own beer, and I attended a Halloween party of his once (as Divine*). And at my current job there is a very nice SIer. Please save me from anti-SI bias.

I did hear my very favorite overheard line of all time on the Staten Island ferry, however. A girl told her her girlfriend, in an SI accent, "I would neva, evah, wear leathah in this weathah."

The thrift store, Everything Goes, should be called Everything Blows. It's at 140 Bay St., a few blocks from the ferry terminal. They don't appear to have a web site. Yes, everything is pretty inexpensive. Everything is also pretty ugly. In addition, you have to factor in, in your risk/benefit analysis, that not only is it an expedition, it's one you might resent having gone on. They might have to have mint Puccis for ten dollars or something for me to go back.

There is also an Everything Goes bookstore nearby, which I visited to use the restroom, and it seemed nice, a cozy hippie joint with an open mike, and an Everything Goes furniture store, also nearby, that I did not visit.

The most interesting thing about Everything Goes is that it is run by the members of nearby Ganas, "NYC's most exclusive commune."

How many communes does NYC have?!


*Not just Divine, but Female Trouble-era, post-facial acid scar Divine.












I wish I could say that's me. But I have no photos, sadly.

Referrers.

Jeff Mac, they're looking for you.

They're also looking for Truman Bean.

Please Print And Distribute.

Howsa 'bout that drawing by Sarah Fisch? Nice, ayuh?

I May Have Lost The Will To Blog.

I need a new template.

I'm at odds with my blog.

My blog and I are in talks.

SHUT UP, BLOG!!!

Talks over.

I can't imagine why I never posted this before. It's been in draft mode for months. Now published for your repugnance. SHUT UP, BLOG, don't tell them how to feel!

I'm cleaning out my drafts folder for you guys, maybe Jeff Mac and maybe some others. That's how much I may have lost the will to blog. Maybe I lost your attention when I disappeared. I don't care, alright?! I was happy to blog in obscurity in draft mode while I figured out a new template and other matters.

So take a gander at Soviet movie star Timofei Spivak:

Announcing Dodge City.

I've got my own show! It starts tomorrow. It's going to have me, working out all my material, old and new, and my favorite standups, storytellers, musical comedians, and alter egos. Please come!

The first show features:
Liam McEneaney (Tell Your Friends, writer for Greg Giraldo)
Debbie Shea (Premium Blend)
Alt-country crooners The Manson Family Singers
& Mark Sam Rosenthal as Hurricane Katrina victim Blanche DuBois!

Dodge City
Sundays at 9 pm
Parkside Lounge
317 E. Houston St. @ Attorney (between Aves B & C)
FREE!

See myspace to be a Dodge City friend and see future show lineups.

Mail From One Of My Many Suitors.

Truman Bean writes:

Moment, and it had been on the juice from the ship's cybernetics. Zaphod Beeblebrox is no good, so had in fact that bowl of Gold. Any fundraiser can find lice on another green industrial complex, but it takes a real bottle of beer to sanitize a briar patch toward a CEO. Some turkey can be kind to a shabby wedding dress. Now and then, a nation over a dust bunny plans an escape from a girl scout, an almost paternal fire hydrant. A tornado can be kind to the turkey for the hole puncher. A hole puncher toward a fire hydrant competes with the paper napkin, a nonchalantly fat turkey.

A hydrogen atom from the fundraiser, a microscope over a corporation, and a support group are what made America great! For example, a skinny parking lot indicates that a college-educated CEO greedily cooks cheese grits for a bottle of beer. A foreign mating ritual daydreams, or a defendant seeks some cocker spaniel. Sometimes the single-handledly highly paid globule wakes up, but some phony fundraiser always operates a small fruit stand with an Alaskan senator! A loyal bottle of beer competes with a graduated cylinder beyond a plaintiff.

He's a little wordy. But I do see his point.

He Completes Me.

Oh my god guy(s), allow me to talk like a teenager for a bit, Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan opens on my BIRTHDAY, TOMORROW, which is the most divine slice of coincidental, made-in-chocolate-cupcakes-'n-kittens heaven, it's too perfect, I'm going to die.

Actually I'm not, I'm going to go see it asap. The first time I'll've seen a movie during the day in the theatre the day it comes out in like a decade. When I was four-ish.

For a while I kept all my movie tickets. In the 80s. I wrote on them what I saw and with whom I saw them. I wish fervently that I still possessed these artifacts. They would read something like "Damien, Out of Africa," which was a total snore, "Lynne, Tootsie," (hey! Happy birthday, Lynne!) (hers is the day before mine) (I don't think she reads this) (I should call her tomorrow) and so on, but I had like thirty of them, and I know they would be way better than I can remember.

There was an arcade attached to the theatre and for some reason we always went in there, I guess waiting for the movie to start, after our parents dropped us off, even though whenever I entered an arcade I just stood around like I was on Mars, having philosophical internal queries with myself about why such things as arcades existed and what was the point. I played Pacman halfheartedly a couple times. Maybe I was there to scope. An arcade has to be the worst place to scope. All the guys are completely immersed in this stupid game, facing away from any human contact. And who was I scoping anyway? Mulletted, peach fuzzed arcade-game dorks in Metallica t-shirts?

Whatever, anyway.

So, I know, without having seen it yet, that it will be the best movie ever made. The trailer alone made me cringe, howl, pee, want to cut myself, and despise yet perversely adore Amurrika. As well as adore Sacha Baron Cohen, and former Soviet republics. Which I already did. The last part anyway.

Substantiating Photos.

It's nice to know that things arrive, if late. I sent both photos at the same time. I wonder what the errant one was doing, out there, somewhere between my phone and my email account, to make it tardy.

American Apparel ad at Houston & Allen. Just over Economy Foam on the corner.


If I were fancy with the Photoshop, you know there'd be something hilaireeous on that crotch.

This is a tiny storefront carved out of Economy Foam, just south and below the American Apparel sign.


It's only two or three feet deep, and contains only a small desk, some insulation bled from the scabied walls, and bad lighting.

I want there to really be a live animal in there, if they are going to advertise it like that.

And finally, the jewel on the curiosity: American Apparel maintains a lease on tiny "Live Animal" (if Economy Foam is to be believed), solely in order to preserve its right to leave up that crotch billboard.

My Post-Work Afternoon.

My post-work errands were fraught with stumbling blocks, but I had a good time anyway.

I got off the M9 bus at Delancey and walked north on Allen. Just below Houston St., I was marveling at this curiosity, but you'll have to find out more about that when I can get a substantiating photo up. I took a picture with my phone but it hasn't shown up in my email and I deleted it from my phone already. I am trying to delete immediately so things don't pile up "in" my phone, but I guess I jumped the gun this time. It's a good curiosity though, and it involves American Apparel, Economy Foam, and a live art installation.

When I was marveling at the curiosity, I heard a loud crash and turned around to see a car rearend another, with glass shattering results. No one was hurt, and I'm not necessarily counting this as part of my "good time," exactly, but the noise did accentuate my marveling of the curiosity in an interesting way.

I proceeded to American Apparel, where I intended to buy two boatnecked 3/4 sleeve shirts, one in red and one in black, and a long purple sleeveless boatneck top that they market as a "dress." BTW the founder/owner of American Apparel was my college boyfriend's freshman roommate. He was an industrious perv then and he's an industrious perv now.

They didn't have the tops in my colors. The saleswoman went on about maybe they are phasing these out, we have like, almost no colors, in almost no sizes, and I said, "Well, THAT FIGURES!" And I started tearing down all the merchandise off the racks, all the flimsy cotton items, in sweeping swoops, five double-tiered rows of them--you know how easily those things fall off the hangers when you're not intending them to? Just imagine how effortlessly they tumbled to the floor en masse when meant to. Like they had been just waiting to do that. Like they were dominoes waiting to be played. Fuck you, AA shirts. I want you but I can't have you, and you're not all that anyway.

Next I headed to Kinko's. On the way I was stopped by a man with a plate of free hummus, felafel, and pita samples. I took one. He launched into an inarticulate, self-published novel about how they had opened a new restaurant, the one right behind us, how they just opened and they serve this and that, you can buy it and eat it, at this new place, despite my just trying to thank him for the sample and move on my way. So I said, "IT FIGURES! You mean this sample ISN'T free? The cost is listening to your interminable blather?" And I took the Middle Eastern food sample out of my mouth. I said, well, getting the sample back isn't free, either! And I shoved it into his gaping maw. That shut him up good.

So I got to Kinko's, and instantly remembered how bad the feng shui is there. It's a FedEx and copy center, but it has the feel of an off-track betting establishment. I waited in line and watched the motionless blue tropical fish in the small tank on the counter. "Is your fish dead?" No answer. People ignore you all the time in this city. My neighbors ignore me when I pointedly say hello. I hope they don't meet up with me late at night getting out of the elevator. Will I have a surprise for them.

"This fish doesn't look so good." I tapped the glass of the tank lightly and waited. Eventually the privilege of asking the guy if they copy DVDs and how much it costs was mine. Silly me, I ask a specific question that's perfectly within the purview of the whole Kinko's operation, how can I expect any kind of information in return? "I can take your order, but we send it to the graphics department, which is at Astor place, so you have to go there to find out how much." So you'll take my DVD, and make me however many copies I want, for a price you are not able to disclose to me at this time?"

"IT FIGURES!"

On my way out, I pushed over a copy machine, really just to see if I could do it (I can!). But no subsequent copy machines, because it was work, and I'm not going to work that hard for Kinko's. As I left I said, "Just so you know, someone was brutally murdered in this space once, I can feel it, and furthermore, that fish is watching you and you better watch out. The fish knows everything."

Oh Wow!

So I was Googling myself, like I do constantly, and I found this! I thought you couldn't read the article for free anymore. It's Rev Jen's original I Did It For Science article that led to our Priestess fandom. It's miserably copy edited, but excellently written and so funny.

I just had another follow up with my doctor. I am sad to say I won't see him again for months--unless maybe I call him up and ask him out! Is this just transference, or is he smokin' hot and did we just flirt?!

I love your clogs-n'-scrubs combo and your indeterminate ethnic heritage, doctor. Take a load off. Get on the 'net. Come on, Google me. Even doctors need to waste some time here and there. See post. Call me. Call me. Call me. Can you feel the Internet vibes, doctor?

If You Do Something Revolting In Public, You Might Find Yourself Here.

Call it a coping mechanism.

From now on, if I discover you being brazenly, casually, repulsively inappropriate around me, inside, I will be filled with the silent scream of stifled rage, but outside, I will appear composed as I stealthily snap your likeness.

Call it a bargain compared with strangulation.

The gentlewoman pictured below BLEATS into her cell phone at lunchtime in a busy office district, while repeatedly picking with her fingernails and discarding tiny pieces of something off her legs. With violent concentration, oblivious to the world beyond her loud, inane conversation, and her leg-picking.





My guess is she just went in for a lunchtime wax. At a cheap place that leaves your legs waxy.

OMG, Shannen Doherty Is Back!!!

You know, Brenda of 90210?!

She has a show on Oxygen where she'll end a relationship for you.

Wow, I can tell it's going to be juicy, judging by these preview posters I've seen around town (click to enlarge):

My New Veterinary Clinic?

I've been shopping around for a new vet. This one's really close by. And, though it's not among my usual criteria for choosing a vet, this one requires a very unusual system of entry:

Gramercy Cat.

Sometimes the cheap phone cameras surprise you.

I Realize That I'm Very Solipsistic.

And I don't care.

Who Has A Vacation Home I Can Visit?

Dodge needs to get the hell out.

If you have a cottage, cabin, villa, manse, chateau, or dacha I may invade for a brief time, I would like to hear from you.

My credentials:

1. I clean up after myself.
   
2. I will walk, hold, feed, and pet animals.
   
3. I will not encourage you to eat those iffy fungi on our nature walks.
   
4. I make the meanest, baddest guacamole you will have ever tasted (with or without cilantro, out of respect for those for whom cilantro = soap)...
   
5. And the most perfect margarita to go with it. (My fruit-garnish preparation skills are top-notch.)
   
6. I can haul out the wit if a moveable salon is what you are looking for.

Or I can completely ignore you all weekend, if that is what you are into.

What Have I Been Doing This Summer?

Watching it bake on by. I just went to the flea market for my allotted 30 minutes of cancer-baiting.

Belatedly falling in love with Black Sabbath. The pioneers. The best. Forever. SABBATH!

Learning drums. Listening to Priestess and Black Sabbath with my ginormous headphones on and picking out the drum part, over and over. Going to the studio with Ivan to rehearse. (Okay that's only happened once so far but it's going to continue.)

Some other things that I can't tell you because It's Not That Kind Of Blog. (But it's probably not what you think. It's most likely not as good as you think. Unless you think I murdered someone. It's better than that.)

And I baked a cake.

Some thrifting. There is no thrill to compare with getting some cheap t-shirt for close to what it actually should be worth. But even Beacon's Closet is too expensive for me now. Yesterday I got a skirt, dress, and two t-shirts for $48, but minus the $16 credit for some stuff I got that I maybe paid two dollars for (a one-piece Budweiser swimsuit that was too small for me (and too big for the other person I know who would really like it) and some gold sandals this woman at work gave me). So I paid around $34, really. Which isn't bad. I can and sometimes do pay Beacon's prices, but it is less of a thrill. The same haul would have been about $12 at M***. So the bargain aspect is definitely a draw. I can't tell you about the really cheap places because then all three of you might go there and ruin them for me.

I guess just tell me if you want to go thrifting with me. If you want to go with me, it's a different story.

The Groupie Bra-Fling Was So Wrong, In So Many Ways.

I chose an unwearable, a black lacy number from my current "collection." That's kind of sexy, right? That I'd worn it? And that I am now too fat to wear it? (You know you've gained weight when...(you gain a cup size)?) And that I am groupie-gifting an item that is useless to me and taking up space? All really hot groupie behavior, n'est ce pas?

The tag was frayed. It was a worn bra. See above. (But only the tag showed signs of wear.)

I wrote my phone number on the frayed tag with a Sharpie.

There was no room on the frayed tag for any information besides my phone number. No "to Vince," no "for a good time call." No "umm, yeah, so, this is Dodge."

The band was punctual. They were the first band of the day to play, at 1:30 pm, on the small stage. We arrived 1:33-ish and they were already playing. It was the middle of a heat wave and the sun was baking. It was yet another odd set of circumstances under which to see my favorite band: Wake n' Roll, on the beach. The early start time and the hour commute to Coney Island meant that all I had time for before departing my home to Rock Out was shower, dress, caffeinate, meet Rev and hop on the subway.

It kind of goes without saying that Priestess "brought it." Hirsute and black-clad, they sweat through their jeans as I worried whether they were properly hydrated in the intense heat. Their passion was not diminished by Coney Island's X-treme weather conditions. Vince was sitting at an angle that allowed some kind of air blower to pouf his voluminous locks into a constantly swirling halo around him at all times, giving his extended drum solo under the blistering sun an extra-hallucinatory effect.

Well, I "brought it" too, and I flung it as well. When they had played nearly all the hits, I got a pang in my stomach, thinking about the bra stuffed in my bag (another faux pas: I think any underwear you throw at a band is supposed to be ripped off your body in the frenzy of the moment, not judiciously plucked in advance from the "will I ever wear this again?" drawer) and the mission that still lay before me.

Which involved tapping the dude in front of me on the shoulder, and yelling "Excuse me, I have to throw my bra at them now" toward the vicinity of his ear. He politely shuffled to the left and I pressed myself against the barricade.

It was a far and high fling I was required to execute. The band was high up on this sheltered stage, and the barricade kept the thin but loyal crowd from getting closer than 30 or so feet away.

It was so hot, and I wasn't properly warmed up. I think I pulled a muscle in my side. The bra sailed into the barricaded-off area in front of the stage, where some guy batted it just as it was about to hit the ground, to give it the extra push it needed to make it to the stage. Where it sat, for the remainder of the show.

I had a nice time eating and drinking and going on the Tilt-a-Whirl with friends after, wondering, but at the same time actually understanding perfectly, why my phone did not light up that afternoon with a call from a member of Priestess.


The guy in the headband is the one I had to tell to shove over.

If Any Band Deserves To Have Lingerie Thrown At Them, It's Priestess.

And on July 15, this pleasure will be mine.

Found Spam Poetry Du Jour.

explain dark social love horses,
completely number fill pleasure.
filled perhaps short?

CLICKHTML

love being near evil perhaps,
talked immediate sandwich cousin met.
disappoint development happened spot.
telling talked wine gray necessary met?
chance free god how?
quickly book considered.

Oh my god, this is the most beautiful poem ever.

And it so resonates with me! I mean, I've totally talked immediate sandwich cousin met! And don't get me started on love being near evil perhaps.

There's Someone I'd Like You To Meet.

This is Lubka Bubkova.


This is Lubka Bubkova's next scheduled event (click to enlarge photo).


This is Lubka's personal message to you:

Everybody on Dodge-Blog, we know you must be prodigious in number, what is up?! It is world-reknowned, cosmetologist among many other hats I wear, LUBKA BUBKOVA. Be saving date, beehutchez, cuz rare chance to be recipient of mad science droppings, and marvel at my plausibility-defied outfits, is right around corner! Gonna be Klassic Lubka, you don't wanna miss!

See below, is website.

Lubka is out now.

yougotcharacter.com

Riff-Raff.

Oh dear. This is a google ad I'm attracting.

POAB = Priestess On A Boat = A Unique Happiness.

I'm really honored to have had the opportunity to see my favorite metal band, Priestess, perform on a boat last night in New York Harbor. I thought I had experienced some adventures in life but this was a strange, unique thrill I never could have anticipated.

The vessel, The Half Moon, was so much smaller than I expected. They should call it the Quarter Moon. There's no such thing though, is there? It took us about 10 minutes to make our way around it, which we did early on to scope out the joint, but it only took that long because it was so crowded and wobbly. I still feel like things are wobbly. Not once did I hurl, although I saw another woman hurl. It seemed ok though, not like, "I feel gross, if I don't spew I may die of alcohol poisoning," more like, "Oops, seasick, let me just get rid of something discreetly." She should get a medal for most elegant vomiting.

My computer is rocking in front of me.

It was a great time because it was such a simple pleasure, really, and yet kinda bizarre, and it all happened by walking north from my apartment along the river for about 15 minutes. In just a few steps I was transported to another world. I know this probably sounds overdramatic, but I live in Manhattan and this was the closest I got to leaving it since last summer (not counting Brooklyn or Jersey City. Hell, Jersey City was last weekend and even that seemed exotic).

Let me put it this way: I was BOATING (there was a CAPTAIN) with a METAL BAND from Montreal.

But as I said, it was a compact vessel. It gave the show a very intimate feel. I did not get to know every other Priestess fan in attendance, but I definitely could have in the time allotted. So it ended up feeling not at all like a concert, but a party with three bands at someone's house. As the house moves down the river and into the harbor under a full moon.

The vessel was nearly dwarfed by the bowl of potato chips, the only thing to eat on the Half Moon, but free of charge. Mike of Priestess came out with it, all excited, and said, "This is just until the big bowl gets here!" Whose crazy idea was it to find the largest stainless steel bowl in existence and serve up chips in it to metal fans on a boat? I don't know, but I do like knowing that handsome Priestess drummer Vince Nudo and I both ate from it. I am sad I didn't get to hang with the band more. I'm a really bad groupie. I guess I'm a fan, not a groupie. This band really delivers. I love them all but I must note that Vince is DEMONIC on the drums. Unfortunately he was too far away and his drumming too frenetically demonic to be captured by my camera, so I captured none of those crazy expressions he makes when he is shredding on the skins. Drum surfaces probably aren't skins but I'm trying to use lingo. I don't know enough drummer lingo. I wish I didn't get so tongue-tied around him. What a teenager I sound like! (My friend Jen was present for the awkward simultaneous chip-eating, and she later said the charge between Vince and me was "palpable.")

So I don't know when I'll be able to see Priestess again live. But I will rest up for it and not get too intoxicated so that by the end of the night maybe I can actually talk to them. Besides being great as a band, they are four sweet, smart, funny dudes.

I'm going to ask Vince out now on my blog:

Vince, the next time you're in New York (or maybe Los Angeles or Montreal, both of which I'm planning on visiting soon), let's get a bite to eat before the show. I mean, you have to eat. What do you like to eat? So it's a date? It can be a group thing if you prefer. That might take some pressure off me. I get so nervous around you. You really are incredibly handsome not to mention the most radical drummer ever in the coolest band ever. I'd like to get to know you better, take a walk around the city with you. Doesn't that sound fun? We could go to the dog park without a dog. I've done it, it's fun. Or I see us in Montreal at a cafe, it's so European there. It looks like the touring has been good for your muscles. Okay, so let me know!

Now that I think about it, I should probably be glad I haven't said more to Vince.



Mikey Heppner of Priestess, beer can owner unknown



Dan Watchorn of Priestess



Priestess. Mikey Heppner, Mike Dyball, Dan Watchorn, Vince Nudo.


This one was on myspace. Someone commented, "Jesus called. He wants his look back."

Dear "Amateur Swinger" Who Failed To Spam Bloggystyle.

Just because you succeeded in finding bloggystyle by searching for "wife swap" doesn’t mean I’m going to publish your comment. I’m not into giving amateur swingers free advertising. Frankly, I’m not into giving the pro ones ad space either.

Wait, there is such a thing as a pro swinger?

This all just doesn't make sense.

First of all, swingers have to be multiple. Swinging by definition requires a certain number of personnel, no? Just try and swing all by yourself.

Okay, well, it’s possible, but I think it’s rare.

And professional swinging would require pro swingers and their swingees, presumably also professional, because why would the pros hang with the amateurs? But if you are all pros, swinging together, who is paying you? What is anybody going to hire a bunch of swingers for? Swinging is supposed to be recreational, right? Like tennis?

Don't corrupt it by selling it.

Oh. I forgot. You're not selling it, you're an amateur.

I think amateur in this case must mean "bad."

At any rate, your comment is flabby with redundancy, which gives me a not pretty window into your swinging.

I’m tempted to link to your page. Your grammar and punctuation alone would make my reader(s) lose bladder control.

I'll consider it.

Sorry, I've Been Busy Becoming A Metal Groupie.

I suppose it would have been better to post this when the article was still free of charge. But hey, becoming a metal groupie has kind of cut into my posting. But maybe you have a nerve premium account or want to get one and and then you can read about my metal rock-groupie exploits with the Saint Reverend Jen Miller.

Otherwise, subscribe to Toxic Pop and read about our next Priestess groupie outing.

Or visit and listen to Priestess on myspace! They're from Montreal and they ROCK and I never use "rock" as a verb!

Dear Russian Girl Whose Blog I've Been Reading.

Boy my Russian is rusty, and boy, your posts are long.

Cyrillic sure is pretty, though.

Wow, I've been reading your posts for a while, and yet the sense I have of you is so vague, it's as if you are a glimmer of a person, swathed in thick textiles, hidden in a snowbank, and me without my contact lenses.

Except you're not really in cloth in a snowbank, you're just...out there.

It sounds like I had you buried alive in my mind, and that's really not what I was getting at. Sorry about that.

The things I can say about you for certain are indeed few.

1) You are female.

2) You live in Russia.

3) You are a student.

4) You take photographs of the outdoors and post them.

5) You are a young adult.

6) You listen to music.

7) You have moods.

8) You use the emoticon feature for listing your moods and the music you are listening to (and these are in English).

Everything else is a maybe. Some people were walking somewhere, and after class something happened, and something about religious literature on the subway. You are maybe making yourself some jewelry out of something blue and black, and it appears you can relax until Monday.

I'm going to go laboriously translate one of your posts now.

Top Ten Reasons To Live.

10) No library fines until March 4

9) I still have to watch The 40 Year Old Virgin about 20 more times

8) I found out that I can extend my haircut past six weeks by switching the "part" (not really a part, just a...direction)

7) I always like to see how things turn out?

6) The bag of money might be about to drop out of the sky

5) The power of language, which can filibuster us through to the next reason

4) I want to read the Wu-Tang article in the old issue of the Voice I got from my neighbor

3) The Bee Gees (feels like a cop-out, only because it's so a given, but there you go, if it's a given, it might be the most solid reason on my list)

2) Well, since there's two of them left... Hi Barry, Hi Robin! You're my numbers 2 & 3!

1) To continue being the awesomely optimistic type of person who makes future-greeting lists like this

If Anyone Deserves To Be Purchased For $50,000, It's Me.

It's not like we didn't already know Vincent Gallo is a performance artist.

However.

If you have a publicist.

If you have some celebrity to sell.

Or if you have some celebrity to upgrade with sudden exposure, you don't need the $50,000.

I (also an artist), on the other hand, am one who could use a grant of $50, 000 to release me from service to the day job that only yesterday produced in me (once again) suicidal feelings. In order to more completely perform my other job, which includes, but is not limited to, telling jokes about ridiculous things like Vincent Gallo.

Not that I don't enjoy your antics, Vincent Gallo. But come on. I need one of your endowments a lot more than I need the other. You give me the cash, and I'll take you out for fish and braised vegetables (and we can talk about whether I'm interested in your other endowment), then I'll quit my job. If you want, my "performance" could be not even calling in to quit, or going there and making a scene, of your devising if you wish. Your choice.

The only thing that really bothers me is the "avowed Republican" part. Not even so much the Republican part (although that is always jarring to hear), but the "avowed." I wouldn't expect Vincent Gallo to be claiming to be an avowed anything, so I bet it's a carefully chosen part of the act.

Look, I said on myspace that I wanted to meet him, and that was before all this mess. Maybe Vincent Gallo sits around in his underwear Googling himself and will find this, and consider doing something truly good for humanity, and take me up on my offer.

Stay tuned for my web site with the donate button.

And now, before this blog becomes the Vincent Gallo Watch...

Vincent Gallo's Knob-Polishing Scene Can't Make Me Not Love Him & My Peculiar Brand Of Movie Review.

Just a few things, Jeff Mac and the rest of you:

It may seem that my movie reviews are stale, because I tend to write them long after the movies in question have been released. This is because I feel I can really dig in and explore my feelings about them only after the hubbub has died down. Also, perhaps laziness.

It may also seem that my movie reviews are b.s. because sometimes I like to review movies I haven't seen yet, or movies that I saw only long ago and maybe didn't even pay much attention to. This is my peculiar brand of review. Let's just say that sometimes what you have to say can be more pertinent when you don't know what you're talking about. If you believe that, I love you, don't ever leave me. For more on this, see the footnote to my Rauschenberg review.

I have not yet seen The Brown Bunny, but I have seen its x-rated knob-polishing scene on the Internet. (Sorry, no links to p*rn on my blog. Google it yourself. I'm already worried about the cretins I'll attract from having typed "x-rated" and "knob-polishing.") The movie is currently jockeying for a top-three spot on my netflix queue, and I look forward to watching it. I loved Buffalo '66.

I consider Ye Olde Knobbe Scene to have been an artistic misstep for Vincent Gallo. I don't have to see the whole movie to know that if you are going to have a scene like that, you can expect viewers to be violently ripped away from whatever narrative you have established, to be dragged down instead into prurient wonder about what the actors, not the characters, are doing, about whether it is a prosthesis, whether he really finished his bidness, whether she swallowed, et cetera and ad infinitum. This kind of brouhaha should be beneath Vincent Gallo (instead of Chloë Sevigny's head). His prodigious talent suddenly gets demoted to prodigious endowment.

The fact that Chloë Sevigny is his ex-girlfriend makes it slightly less icky, but it was still a mistake.

However, this faux pas cannot make me not love the man who cycles around the city, practically singlehandedly made Buffalo '66, and said this:

I don't trust or love anyone. Because people are so creepy. Creepy creepy creeps. Creeping around. Creeping here and creeping there. Creeping everywhere. Crippity crappity creepies.

Forgiveness is very satisfying. I can get on with my life now. I adore you, Vincent Gallo.

It's Time You And I Had A Little Sit-Down.

I'm a little disappointed in you. I had hoped for something more from you. Not much more, but yes, I expected just a little bit more from you.

Yes, YOU! Stop glancing over your shoulder! If you have any doubt about who I am talking to in here, it's YOU! Oh, did you think nothing was ever going to be expected of you? Are you like this with everybody? Mute, nonparticipatory, and quasi-anonymous?

Are you even there? I know you are, but I only know that through a third party.

You're just so quiet. So opaque. It feels chilly in here, and one-sided. I don't even get spammed in here.

Who are you?

Look, don't worry. I swear I won't be clingy. This isn't one of those confessional blogs where if within 24 hours no one responds with two of my best characteristics I will have to be peeled off the floor and deposited in Bellevue. If I wanted a blog like that, I'd be on livejournal doling out friend access like it was my last handful of Vicodins.

But absolutely, by all means, if you are stopping by here and you wish to tell me anything at all about yourself, about your hopes, dreams, fears, as they relate to bloggystyle, please do so.

It appears that I've been a fool for thinking it could have been different. I'm listening to Patsy Cline now until somebody says something, and stops teasing and torturing me.

"'Art' 'Review'": Rauschenberg: Pretentious Failure Or Heroic Nutjob?

I just caught the show at the Met, Richard Rauschenberg: Combines, a series of hybrid paintings/sculptures. It's like stuff glued on stuff with paint. "Combines" not only describes the type of works but is also a good title because it vaguely evokes farm equipment.*

There were recurring objects. There were precipitous wooden planks, there were birds or parts of birds, shirt cuffs, and things dead or incarcerated. Mostly, there was junk.

So much junk, glued this way and that. It made me think my grandmother could have done it! What a way that could have been for her to pass the time! She was a depressed packrat living in Maine with the tv on all the time. She had loads and loads of junk, in the house, in the shed that she built out of the other junk. She could have glued it on canvas with paint to make herself feel better!

But I don't know if that's what was going on with Rauschenberg. I haven't bothered to research him yet, so I have no idea. And that is what is tricky about needing to know more about art before evaluating it. Because now it seems to matter. I didn't really like it much. It seemed to me to be awkwardly arranged, ungainly junk clusters. But someone else could see it entirely differently.

Verdict: If Rauschenberg was some hick doing it for therapy, I support him. If he was a pretentious fuck trying to do something new, he failed. Except now I'm thinking I like him just for making me think of my grandmother.

My date said that it seemed to be aiming for the macabre, but missed. He gets five points, for using "macabre"; Rauschenberg zero, for not achieving it.

*I don't know anything about visual art, and I kind of like it that way. I can invent reasons why it happened, and I can go with my gut. This in turn creates an art form blending ignorance with pedantry, which I'm told equals bullshitting.

Two Kinds Of People In This World.

We can each be classified as one of the following:

Those who think Amelie is just the most enchanting French flick.

Or those who think it is a shockingly vomitaceous bile-pile.

I'm sorry, Friends Who Like Amelie. I know who you are. I've read your Myspace and Friendster profiles. When I read that you liked Amelie, I froze, caught as I often am between disbelief and disdain. I briefly wondered if you might be a cyborg and I hadn't known it all this time.

Please let me know if you're just a cyborg.

Amelie is an insult to life itself. Life is dirty, you saucer-eyed kewpie! Not polished to a fairy-tale glimmer, with you skipping around Paris like a benovolent scheming imp. Paris wasn't meant to be used that way!

Amelie, you are vacuum-packed and sexless!

This is a movie en Paris? What a long, sad road we've traveled from Brando's backdoor butter.