Laughed until I cried

Thank Drudge Report for this. Someday soon we well see cartilage sticking out of that nose. Cartilage covered by a thin layer of plastic. Upon a second look, maybe that is cartilage sticking out the tip of Michael's honker already. This guy just needs to throw himself off a sufficiently tall building.

Bob Newhart

Last night on PBS television I was very fortunate to come across the presentation of the annual presentation of the Mark Twain prize for American Humor. It was being presented to Bob Newhart who really is a brilliant and influential comedian. Trust me, he is. Ever hear his telephone call bits? The best part of the show last night was the appearance by the Smothers Brothers. Not many people know this but I LOVE the Smothers Brothers. Few things make me laugh harder than Tommy Smothers stammering excuses for his tom-foolery. Like seeing Bill Cosby on Letterman a couple of months ago, it was heartening to see these guys onstage just being funny.

A New Superstore

To know me is to know that I love blasphemy in all its forms. Whether you are a comedian like George Carlin or Bill Hicks, skewering sacred cows with their unmatched wit or you are the purposely offensive cartoonist Callahan, you have my attention.

Naturally I was thrilled when I recieved an email from David whick linked me to Jesus Christ Superstore. Ahhhhhhhh, as Bill Hicks would say, let's go surf on that lake of fire.

The Human Clock

Have you heard of the human clock? It's a clever time-waster website that publishes pictures submitted by average joes that cleverly show what time it is. We at telref decided that the human clock should not exist without a couple of pictures from us. At 9:26 and 9:28 am there are pics of Walt Short and Michael Engelbrecht, respectively. If you do check it out at those times and you do not see those pics hit reload a few times and our pics will cycle through.

This weekend in Durham while visiting Lee I hope Chris, Lee and I can come up with a few worthwhile photographs. I will have to take photos with my boring old SLR and then scan the pictures once I get them developed. I don't know how I am able to live without a digital camera. I really don't.

Fun with the homeless

Yesterday while walking to Johnny Burrito #2 during lunch I passed in front of the CVS. The CVS is a favorite lurking spot for bums either because of the cheap snacks that are readily available or the convenient doorway they can hide in that can't be seen from inside the store. Right in front of CVS this very dark and squat woman, as she is stumbling past me, says Tourettely, "Yougotacigarette?" I said no. She looked at my like I was lying. I wasn't. Honest.

After eating too much at JB #2 I was passing the CVS on my way back to the library. Once again I saw my nicotine jonesing friend. Now she is standing in that doorway next to CVS holding a brand new pack of Newports. She saw me glancing at her and she called out in another spastic burst, "gotanychange!?" I shook my head. I could tell she thought I was lying again and this time she was right.

2nd Floor bathroom aroma

Todays aroma reminded me a pair of soiled underwear sitting on a flat rock that had been pooped on by a lizard the evening before and is now being roasted in a 110 degree desert sun.

A walk in the woods

Two of the nicest people in the world are Marysia and Bill Walpole. Marysia and Wendell share the same exact birthdate. They figured out that there is a good chance they were born within the same hour. Every year around their birthday, Wendell and Marysia have a big happry birthday to us love fest. It's all very touching.

On a couple of occasions over the last few years Bill and Marysia have invited Wendell and I to go for a walk in a 80-acre wood that borders their property. The woods are called Evergreen Forest and Marysia played a big role in a recent campaign to keep the woods from being turned into softball fields and such. The gray area north of Sheffield Dr in this map shows you the location of these woods. If it wasn't for the sounds of vehicles on nearby Independence Death Race 2000 then you wouldn't even know you were in the big city.

Saturday Wendell took a phone call from the Walpoles inviting us to go for a stroll through the woods. We gladly accepted their invitation and got there about 3 pm. You can get to the woods from their back yard by climbing over s step ladder that they prop up against their five-foot-high chain link fence. There is a small glade opposite their yard before you get into the forest proper. There are trails all over the place and we took one heading northeast. Bill wanted to show us the Geo cache he had found a few months ago. The cache was under under a dead tree and covered over with sticks and leaves and near what is known as 'the big hole'. I found it by kicking stuff after Bill and Wendell had given up. Don't uderestimate the effectiveness of destruction when searching for treasure.

We then meandered over to the big hole which is just what the name implies, a big hole in the middle of the woods. According to Bill the hole was there when he was a kid and Bill is in his forties. No one seems to know how the hole got there but from what I have gathered from Bill he would rather not know how it got there. It is a childhood mystery that he doesn't need solved.

Saturday really was about the perfect day for a walk. It was slightly overcast with fast moving clouds which took turns covering and revealing the sun. As this went on during our walk the colors inside the forest changed constantly from a subdued murkiness to a slanting autumn gold. Walking with Bill and Marysia is nice because they both are very familiar with the plant life of the woods.

We spent about an hour strolling casually through the woods, often leaving the paths. I enjoyed leaving the paths the most. It had been a very long time since I had walked through a wooded area with no path. It felt good to push through tangled sapplings, to feel felled and rotting trees break apart beneath your feet and to just have to pay attention so you wouldn't get your eye poked out by a branch. If you live in Charlotte you ought to check the woods out someday soon before all the leaves are gone. You can park at Evergreen Cemetery which you can enter from Central Ave.

Oh no!

Bill Moyers scared the crap out of me with this essay.

Read on the bus: A story and essay out of 'Expanded Universe' by Robert Heinlein. I have been reading 'From here to Eternity' but it's too damn heavy to carry every day.
Listened to on duh bus: Waco Brothers, 'New Deal.'

Best movie ever?

Could this possibly have a shot at being the best movie ever made or the best movie ever?

Conspiracy?

When you buy a frozen pizza it comes with a piece of cardboard beneath that conforms perfectly to the shape of the pizza. Naturally the instructions for preparing the pizza always remind you to remove the cardboard before sitcking the pizza in the goddamn oven. What purpose does the cardboard serve? The fwiggin' pizza in frozen! A frozen pizza doesn't need this superfluous piece of cardboard in order to stay flat. It's frozen! Ever kick a frozen dog turd? it doens't need cardboard to retain its form. I think they just get a kick out the knowledge that their useless piece of cardboard is starting housefires all over the world.

Please note that I did not start a fire tonight but I have stuck more than one frozen pizza in the oven without detatching it from the cardboard bottom. I have never had a fire start from this oversight but it is a bitch to seperate a completely cooked pizza from an equally toasted piece of goddamn cardboard.

This bullshit is blogging at its finest. Eat your heart out Gary Trudeau.

Remember to always cook frozen food completely. It's the only way to be sure that you have fully sterilized the mouse feces on your food.

Top ten

Top ten things I heard in my dreams this week.

10. Crocogators taste like lemon toenails.
9. Let's eat our way out of the quicksand!
8. Hey, you girls, stop spanking Mr. Spock, he's got calculations to finish.
7. If Jesus can run a garter snake through both his nostrils then I can definately fuck a spitting cobra.
6. I want an inside-out pizza.
5. The best way to get Wendell off the ceiling is with a high-pressure hose.
4. Can you drown in birds?
3. I think Teddy was much sexier than FDR.
2. Does picking a dollar off a stage with your butt cheeks make you a tool user?
1. Go home and find your pants and then come back and do your live national TV spot over until you get it right.

Bob Crane gets it on and on and on and on...

Wendell and I went and saw Auto Focus last night. I grew up watching Hogan's Heroes on syndication and I learned about the wild sex life of Bob Crane in just the last few years. I had to see this movie after I had read a few reviews and heard about the debate surrounding it.

First of all, Greg Kinnear does a great job portraying Bob Crane. I don't know if it was make or just good acting but he was eerily similar to Crane at times. William Dafoe played Crane's porno-fuck buddy Bob Carpenter with just the right amount of sleaziness and passive-aggression necessary to set him up as Crane's obvious but unconvicted murderer.

The movie critic for the Charlotte Creative Loafing had an excellent review of Auto Focus. He mentions how the film distances itself from Bob Crane and through this distancing we are able to objectively watch his slide into addiction. The fact that it is sexual addiction is secondary, it's his plight that is the focus.

Auto Focus is one of those movies that I am glad I saw. It's probably the most interesting and thought provoking film I have seen since Ghost World which the whole world should have to see.

A Marine Corps Memory

Right now I am reading 'From here to Eternity' by James Jones. It is a novel that is about the army on Hawaii in the year before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. I have not read it before nor have I seen the movie so I don't know how much of the book takes place after the attack. I'll let you know if you are interested.

Anyway, the strength of the book so far has been about the minutiae of military life. Small boring activities like cleaning weapons, mopping floors, waxing those same floors, sweeping sidewalks, picking up litter, empyting garbage, washing dishes and saluting officers.

It's not all about the mundane activities that take place during a workday, it also covers the personal time you do get afterhours. It seems that soldiers in 1940 spent a lot of time gambling which seems to have been a lost art when I was in the service. We probably were paid better so we didn't have the need to gamble for drinking money.

There is a scene where a few fellas are playing a game of poker in the latrine while using a blanket for their table. There is a lot of good-natured ribbing and a sharing of resources. It reminded me of the times my friend Mike and I spent drinking Budweiser at the Sunabe
Seawall which is located on the western coast of Okinawa. You can see the location on this map. The seawall is just to the left of the letter 'E' on the map which is the Air Force based called Kadena.

This was in 1988 and I had a 500 dollar Toyota Corolla. We would drive out to the seawall on Sunday evenings and drink Bud longnecks. The seawall was a great place to hang out on a Sunday evening. Okinawas and military personal would cruise around the narrow road and hang out and meet people. On Sundays it was not as chaotic as it could be on a Friday and or Saturday night so that was my favorite time to go.

We bought the bottled Budweiser longnecks because when we finished a beer we would throw the bottle onto the cement formations that looked like jacks that were used to break the waves coming in. This became a major form of amusement. We would rate each bottles impact on the jacks. The jacks were stacked on top of each other so there were gaps the bottles could bounce down into. The longer it bounced and the more dramatic the shattering would cause the rating of the throw to improve. We did this enough so that are rating system became quite sophisticated.

A hard throw that didn't bounce but allowed the shattering of the bottle to supply a good report could push a rating of '7.' One bounce with a good smash really couldn't get beyond a '7.' It was excting but lacked pizzazz. I don't remember there ever being a '10.'
Mike would often declare a long bouncing bottle that pinged deep into the jacks a '10' but I could never allow it. I never rated a bottle's destruction over '9.5' and we both were allowed to judge each other's throws.

I hearkened back to my high school baseball experience when rating a throw. I remembered my baseball coach was driving a van back home after a baseball trip to the Detroit area. He was a big guy and we had stopped at a White Castle before we embarked. About an hour into the trip he started ripping the worst farts I have ever been forced to breathe yet. As he gassed us and we gagged he laughed devilishly and rated each fart. The highest he ever went was '9.5.' After one particularly nasty release I asked him what a ten would be and he answered, 'Oh, you can see a 10.' That experience is what held me back when rating our bottle smashes. I guess I figured a '10' would have to either cause the bottle to explode like a stick of dynamite or one of the glass shards would have to injure one of us. That never happened.

I have done some internet searches on the Sunabe Seawall and I see now that it is a gathering place for scuba divers. There may be a remote chance that one of our Budweiser bottle shards may have cut a foot of one of those divers. There may be a '10' out there that we will never know about.

Fun with the homeless

I was working the reference desk yesterday and this angry homeless guy walks by the desk and I glance up at him. He gives me an absolutely nasty look like he is ready to jump across the desk and attack. He tells me I need to stop staring at him and look elsewhere. I answer a couple of his orders with comments like, "Oooookay" and "all right, then." He doesn't actually threaten me but as he heads into the magazine stacks I can tell it's only going to get more interesting when he comes back out. He comes out from the magazine stacks and comes by the desk. I stare at him because there is no way I am going to be intimidated by some drugged up homeless fuck. He tells me again to stop staring at him etc. etc. etc. As he walks toward the elevator he calls me a "homo queer boy." He gets into the elevator giving me his best evil look as he gets in. Before I can call security a patron comes up with a question which I answer. I then call downstairs and the cop on duty tells me the guy has already left.

He came in today and security escorted him outta. Bye bye, fuckface.

Let's go see a play

Last evening Jessica took me to the school play put on by the students at the school she works at. The evening's entertainment consisted of two one-act plays, one by the middle schoolers and one by the high schoolers. The middle school kids came out first and did a play called 'The Miser' which, according to the playbill, was adapted from Moliere by Roland Reed. They did a good job considering how young they all are and that the middle school drama class is doing the play twice with two completely different casts. A difficult task. The children should be commended for doing such a good job under such obvious stress.

The high school class did the play "The Poet and the Rent" by David Mamet. They were superb. These young people were very professional in their presentation of this screwball comedy. In fact, their performance was better than the script which, in it's attempt to explore the nature of art, was too self conscious. I like it when a drama breaks down the barrier between the performers and the audience but Mamet took it too far for my tastes. Since I am unfamiliar with the play I don't know how much liberty was taken with the text. But the actors were fabulous. They threw something into the play which I thought was very clever. In the middle of a scene a cell phone was heard to ring off stage right. Someone answers it and over the laughter of the crowd you hear a voice say "He's onstage." The person who answered the phone then calls out to one of the actors onstage who then stalks offstage and has a angry conversation with "mom." While he is doing that the actors who are left onstage pretend to be emabarrased. After the call ended the actor came back out and the scene picked up where it left off.

The play took place in a building in Concord called Old Courthouse Theater which is not actually in the old courthouse as the previous link explains. It is a grand old building nonetheless and had the same lighting fixtures as hung from the ceiling of Holy Rosary Catholic church where I was indoctrinated as a child.

It had been a very long time since I had been to play before last night. Each time I go to a play I thoroughly enjoy it. I then remind myself to support local theaters like the Charlotte Repertory Theater and the Children's Theater of Charlotte. I did go see a performance at the Charlotte Children's Theater a few years ago when I was a student at UNC-Charlotte. A classmate of mine was performing in a play about the Nazi war crimes trials. This classmate was 16 years old and going to a university. He took an assload of classes, acted in two plays in one semester and was one stressed out little monkey. I remember one of my instructers, Malin Pereira, said of him that it was intimidating to instruct someone 'innately more intelligent than you are.'

I saw in Lee's blog that he published a poem. Here's one:

My Indecision

I saw him on the race track
sticking his car beside two,
should have let off the gas
let them stay ahead for a lap.
Instead his left front in the grass,
he shoots up the track
like a puck across the ice.
Chaos, bruises, tears, regret.
"I know they're going to blame me"
says the driver to the interviewer,
"but if you look at the replay closely,
I had no choice but to do nothing."

A website you waste your time and god's

What does google think of shit? Try googlism and see! They claim it's zany and madcap comedy. The Marx Brothers were zany and madcap. This is merely amusing and good for a chuckle or two.