Cool: Getting a bad ass new video game for your PS3
Uncool: Thinking that you texted your roommate about it only to realize you in fact texted a very attractive girl who’s name happens to be very similar to his and thus came up when you tried to key in his and said very attractive girl has no appreciation for pixelated violence or the joys contained therein.
A little while ago it came to my attention that someone very close to me has Alzheimer’s.
People went to great lengths to tell me how difficult she is and how aggressive she can get when she loses her bearings and demands the type of independence that she’s been used to her entire life.
I was to ferry her from New York to my grandmother’s memorial and I’m ashamed to say that I looked towards that day as an unwanted chore. I huffed and puffed like a child told to take out the garbage during his favorite television show.
I hadn’t seen great aunt in a few years. When I picked her up she looked older than anything I’d ever seen, her skin like crumpled wax paper. I was afraid she wouldn’t know who I was.
Giving my vanity a boot in the ass, she did.
She repeated questions, forgetting that I live in Brooklyn and wondering over and over how I could bear the two hour train ride north every night. I could feel myself losing my patience. Was I actually annoyed? Or was I bothered that I was bothered?
Every so often she’d remember something from twenty years ago. When we stayed in the past, things ran smoothly. She’d taught me how to play poker when I was barely five. She taught me how to see truth in someone’s smile, or a lie in their eyes. We talked about the first time I visited the city, the circus, the fire truck and those novelty glasses.
Those small moments of nostalgic bliss were short and seldom. To be taken out of time like that is a cruel fate. I felt as though people blamed her for it, like it was her fault she couldn’t remember and not that silent disease building walls in her brain.
I read recently that none of Estelle Getty’s cast members from Golden Girls attended her funeral. Some saying that she’d already died when the dementia took her over, that she wasn’t the same person. What a load of shit. People so afflicted are simply walking reminders of an end we’re more scared of than death, and we avoid them because it’s the easy, cowardly thing to do.
I’m earnestly hoping I’ll develop a brave streak.
Did you see that?
200,000 (probably more) non-Americans cheering for a man who may or may not become the president of the United States. Amazing.
Detractors will say the regular detractorish jibber jabber, but whatever man, that’s fucking awesome. That any American representative of ANY level of government could attract that kind of support anywhere is a feat, and extremely telling about how the world views the importance of this November.
I’ve got this weird feeling that I haven’t had in a really long time and that means that either Freddy Mercury’s zombie has risen and Queen’s back on tour, or I’m actually a little proud of a presidential candidate.
Hopefully it’s the latter, could you imagine those gigantic teeth with no lips? Scary.
In my typical fashion of being at least a year late on movies and television shows I’ve been marathon watching season one of Mad Men. I’m sure you’ve heard all about the sixteen Emmy’s and the Golden Globe and yadda yadda yadda, but goddamnit if this show isn’t real neat, or swell or whatever they called cool shit back then.
Each episode is basically an hour long reaffirmation of my life style, only minus the guilt because I’m not married. I actually filled the decanter I’ve had in my office for the last three years. I’ve been greasing up my hair (to extremely mixed reviews). I’ve made a conscious effort to smoke more. I even bought a pack of Lucky Strikes and smoked them (and then coughed up blood for a day).
I need a briefcase, a mistress, a Cadillac and twenty thousand cartons of Old Golds, the new season starts on Sunday.
A little while back I was all kinds of happy because I’d found out that a former favorite bar of mine was reopened. Don’t believe that I could be that happy?
Well this past week, my best friend was in town and we were all kinds of excited to check out this new, improved version of our little slice of burned out and destitute heaven.
So, on Thursday night we sauntered over to first and sixth expecting the good times to come roaring back like nausea after seeing Mama Mia. There was plenty of nausea, let me assure you.
There were people there! Like, a ton of them. None of them looked like the mid sixties alcoholics that we’d come to know and love. The bartender didn’t look anything like a militant lesbian. The bar itself was made out of real wood, not chipped and peeling particle board. The once quiet cement courtyard with its drainage gutter clogged with decades of stray cat hair was closed off. I’m assuming the bathroom could now accommodate a seated position. It actually looked like we had zero risk of contracting any type of hepatitis.
There was even a door guy.
It’s sad, this constant need for people to make things “better” or “less of a health risk.”
Fortunately there happens to be about six hundred bars that fit our required levels of shabbiness… but I will miss that place in all of its remembered lack of quality.
I also think it’s appropriate to use this here: 
Explain this to me: At what point did people go fucking insane and decide that this was a good look for men?
Seriously. How is that attractive? Perhaps someone more fashion conscious could explain it to me. Did frailty somehow become sexy? Should I cancel my gym membership and take up a crippling heroin addiction? I think we can all say that cankles are not sexy on anyone… but has a borderline male fascination with ankles now migrated to the female sex?
This is all the fault of that goddamned Rock N Roll music and those evil motherfucking Rock N Roll musicians. They’ve taken NO responsibility for the heinous fashion trends they’ve created. Leather pants are almost never worn by the right people. You see them on chubby housewives gripping to their last shred of perceived sexuality and chubby Persian club rats, but almost never on hot back up singer types.
Shit, have you seen the shirts that Steven Tyler wears? Next thing you know, accountants are going to be wearing floral print, diaphanous silk blouses too!
There needs to be a Rock Legend Consortium on what looks can be legally coopted by the common public. They could meet bi-monthly (which I’m still not sure if it means twice a month or every other month, but either would work) and pass legally binding fashion rules. David Bowie could lead the Council on Guyliner. Slash could be the Chairman of the Committee on Silly Hats. The guys from ZZ Top could head up the Special Task Force on Ironic Facial Hair.
I have no doubt that they would vote to make it a requirement that in order to wear such skinny pants one would have to have sold at least a million records.
Such draconian measures would be well worth it to keep the rock star look where it belongs, on the stage and off of skinny little douchebags with murses and bad haircuts.
My roommate just got back from nearly a one month long business trip/vacation combo.
I have to start wearing fucking pants again. Ugh.
I love my place of inhabitance but damnit if I didn’t love it more when I was the sole occupant. Which is not to say I don’t love my roommate. He’s a fantastic guy and we’ve gotten along perfectly for five years of close quarter living, late night after parties and uncomfortable hello’s to strange women scurrying to the bathroom wrapped in wrinkled too big tee shirts.
One month is the longest I’ve ever lived on my own, and it proved to be eye opening. I’ve come to find that all my joking about hanging out naked or in my underwear is simply not joking at all. I really do prefer to the birthday suit. Everything except cooking is better naked.
It’s a tough decision when you realize that you’d be better off living by yourself. The insane monetary requirement of doing so in New York is the best crutch for not making that jump. Most people I know go from living with platonic roommates to living with romantic roommates to making babies and never knowing what it’s like to handle shit on their own.
As of right now, it looks like 2009 ought to be the year I finally move into my fortress of solitude, Superman briefs and all.
Saw that movie Wanted tonight.
It was fucking bad ass.
Guns. Explosions. Car chases. Angelina Jolie’s naked behind. More guns. If that doesn’t add up to the perfect movie then I don’t know what does.
There needs to be a new way to rate movies. Thumbs simply aren’t sufficient. I haven’t agreed wholly with a critic since… well… ever. How can a simple amount of stars, or a letter grade or thumbs really explain anything? Thumbs are the worst body part to describe a movie. Sure they can vaguely insinuate that you thought the movie was good or bad… but how was it bad? Would you really give the same kind of thumbs up to Terminator that you’d give to Fried Green Tomatoes? Might one be slightly more flaccid than the other? Maybe you’d tape a little red LED to the end of one and shove it through a car window while an explosion was set off in the back ground.
No, we need a much more comprehensive system involving a wide range of body parts.
Here are some examples:
Three Exploding Brains Up: For Memento, because no matter how many times you watch it, it’s still going to make your head hurt, but in a good way. Like the hangover you have after drinking absinthe, yes it fucking kills, but you’re pretty sure you had a good time, even if there is a half eaten deer leg at the foot of your bed.
Two Shriveled, Oxygen Deprived Brains Up: This is for movies like Wanted, where the movie isn’t really a cinematic masterpiece, but it’s entertaining. Not to make another drug reference so callously but you know how after clearing out the nitrous from an entire can of whipped cream everything just gets fuzzy and awesome? You can’t really understand anything anyone’s saying, but what you do know is that it’s awesome. That’s what Wanted was like, fuzzy and awesome.
Four Shriveled Dried Up Vaginas Down: This would be for a movie like Waiting to Exhale where the simple act of watching it will cause a withered and battered moose knuckle to sprout from between your legs like the little screeching head in the Aliens movies. Men need to know this information.
One Nose Turned Upward Down: This would be for 85% of all art house schlock that I’m positive is produced for the sole reason of making people sound like douchebags at parties. This would also cover the entirety of French cinema, save the works of Luc Besson.
I guess you could still use the thumbs for big summer blockbuster fare because they’re the closest you can get to printing an erection without having anyone get all pissed off and nothing pumps more blood to the American male’s member than four hundred million dollar budget action movie starring Will Smith. I mean seriously.
Enough of all this mushy introspective crap.
I’m going out.
I’m going to get drunk.
In fact, I’m going to get so drunk that my kids will be hungover until they hit puberty.
I’ve got a one size too small shirt, a couple Andrew Jacksons that are just begging to lose the cold war and get traded in for vodka and pant load of fuck fuck.
Cross your fingers for me, I may not come home alive.
Had a rare moment of personal strength today. Kept on track with some very personal goals that I’d set for myself and for one of the only times in my life, took the hard, but correct path.
I’ve always been very much of the school of “Know Thyself,” which is really a blessing and a curse. We people are exceedingly imperfect, like nickel socks at a discount store, so getting to know oneself can be a wholly distasteful affair.
Some time ago I set out to fix something very wrong with me by NOT doing something very enjoyable but ultimately wrong for me. No, I’m not morbidly obese and no, eating chocolate wasn’t the activity I’ve abstained from. I won’t go into detail, because I’ve always refused to get into detail about such topics, and people tend to read far too deep into things written on the Internet, perhaps simply because the Verdana font evokes such mysticism.
It’s hard to toot your own horn for something that was so hard to do and ended up sucking so much, but *toot* anyway.
