Out with the Old, in with the Old! And Older... And Older...

Ah so it's New Year's Eve. What to say? Hmmm... Hmmm??? Uh... Sorry, I got nothin'...

I could tell you what my resolutions are gonna be, but the only 1 I've been able to come up w/ so far is to avoid making resolutions. Oh yeah... and to refrain from end-of-the-year list making. It's just as well. They're already starting to pile up out there, on the airwaves in print and all over the internet. There'll be about a million of 'em bombarding you from every direction by tomorrow morning. So why should I add to your boredom and suspicions that you are just one more unit of surplus humanity, headed for the big landfill some time pretty soon? Ah waste! It's just pilin' up everywhere...

But that's not what we're here to talk about. We're here to talk about New Year's Eve. Speaking of depressing, the truly grim & truly depressing realities of the World Out There kinda make yr. typical “Best Of” lists seem a bit superfluous, don't they? But I hope you'll forgive a moment's weakness, as I step aside from our usual program of Celebrity Death, Sodomy & Humiliation fantasies to be momentarily earnest. (Seriously, I apologize & promise it will never happen again, if I can control it.)

I mean, what are we gonna list here, Best Geopolitical Failure of the Year? Too many choices. I guess if you put a gun to my head, (please, please, please! someone! do it!) I'd hafta go w/ the he continuing elephant in the room, (which, by the way, I'm ready to shoot w/ my, uh, elephant gun, thereby making my contribution to the extinction of these noble, but politically suspect beasts. Fuckin' Republicans!) That little matter that nooonnne of us wants to look at... The winner is... Africa!!!! That's right: continuing its unbroken streak, the entire continent of Africa wins again! Armed militias rapin' and killin', rampant HIV infections!!! Ha ha! It's pretty kooky over there!

Screw all that social responsibility shit 'tho. It's pointless—nothing’s gonna change no matter how much effort you put into it. At least, that's what I hear—and from wiser beings than myself. So I'm pretty comfortable spending my time looking for the Best Entertainments.

But wait, and this is another reason why I'm giving up on the list-making thing. Even in terms of popular culture, it's difficult to make a "Best Of" list for 2005, because nothing was the best! Nothing can be the best, when nothing is worth mentioning. Unfortunately, thanks to the goddamn dictionary, we're stuck w/ the depressing premise that things have to be good in order to be "The Best." (Gimme clemency & a wood-chipper, and there'd be a lotta pulped dictionaries gettin' heaped on that landfill I spoke of earlier—not to mention the exhumed n' diced remains of one Noah Webster.)

When I tried to come up w/ a Best New Movie of 2005, I realized there were no good movies released in 2005. Well, no new ones anyway. Best Restoration of the Year goes to... Vertigo!!! It was pretty great, but it's kinda disheartening when the only movie that makes you wanna crawl into a theater or glance at the "New Releases" section of yr. local video parlor, is 50 years old & you've seen it around 2005 times already.

What else? Oh, I know! Best Baseball Team of the Year... Hmmm... The Chicago White Sox? HAHAHAHA!!! Stop! My stomach hurts!!! I'm gonna piss my pants!!! Ahuh...hooo...

But seriously, what was the Best Baseball Team of the Year?

Speaking of baseball, I can definitely tell you who gave the Best Impersonation of Judas by a Major Athlete in 2005... Johnny Damon!!! It's a distinction that would seem more appropriate to the Easter season—but Xmas, Easter—whassa difference?

Best Musical Album of the Year? I'm sure all my guitar-n-drum loving fellow garage/punk travelers will be really disappointed in me for choosing the chilly synth-pop of Ladytron's new one Witching Hour, but I'd maintain that you're missing out if you write off everything w/ a synthesizer in it. Most of the time, they get saddled w/ the uber-hip Euro-trash label, which is not entirely inaccurate. But as much as any band out there right now, they nail how emotionally impacted a lot of us have become in the good ol' post-millennial West. And what else is goin' on in these parts these days anyway? Paranoia? That's so 5 years ago!

P.S. Don't worry, my rawk friends! I still love the garage n' the fritzed out amp, but I ask you: Was there one decent new rock release this year? Huh? And no fair countin' remastered Iggy albums. (Last time I checked, The Stooges records were good because they sounded like shit, not in spite of it!) And if you say something about the White Stripes being "garage rock," I'm either gonna kill you or me. (I'm not sure which. Maybe we could do one of those double suicide things?)

Hate to be shallow, but about the only thing The White Stripes got goin' for 'em is Meg's rack. (Jack's gonna burn out the good will of his celebrity friends annnny minute now. Just you wait & see.)

And here's a thought: if the White Stripes are so "garage," why don't they prove it by going into the garage and sitting in a running car, letting the exhaust fumes accumulate till they expire in a mass of SPF 2005 sunscreen and black hair dye? Works for me! I might have to reassess them then, thus putting them in the running for Best Musical Artists of 2006!

Best book of the year? Can I count my own, recently finished novel The Dildo Force Does The Chick with Braided Pubic Hair? It's an adult erotic adventure, (not pornographic,) shot through w/ romance & suspense, that touches on important contemporary issues like domestic spying (well, voyeurism anyway) & the search for George Clooney's ass. In bookstores now!!! (Remember, it's only a month & a half till Valentines Day, This year, give that Special Someone a really classy gift!)

But hey, Happy New Year! Statistically you are 95% likely to have completed your own Best Of 2005 List already, so now you're free to party!!! But one more thought before I release you to yr. own festivities... Don't worry, it's not from me. Like I said, (& I stole it from Iggy,) I got nothin'. Nope, I'll leave it to good ol’ Lester Bangs:

"Have you ever had a New Year's Eve you enjoyed? Of course not! Why? Because you've persisted in this insane delusion that somehow things are supposed to keep getting better, or that the cyclical nature of the ying-yang means that the earth is supposed to replenish itself or some such horseshit! Horseshit doesn't even replenish itself."

See you in '06...

Thing-Fish Update

Thing-Fish Update:

Betcha thought I'd forgotten all about the presumable raison d'eteat of our recent excursions.

I would still maintain that a record of my trip to Hawaii will be useful, if not essential, to these questions about Thing-Fish and my relationship to it. Thing-Fish aside, I'd like to get my memories of the trip down anyway, before they fade. But I don't mean to give up on my consideration of Thing-Fish. I still can't reconcile my enjoyment of the thing to my misgivings about some of its content.

The happy scenario would have me dispelling these misgivings by showing that they're based on a misunderstanding of them. I mean, as I said before, if I could be sure that Zappa's apparently gratuitous ridicule of African Americans, gay men, feminists and HIV/AIDS wasn't really gratuitous-- well, that'd topple all my feelings of complicity in something that's, for want of a better word, "irresponsible."

Maybe you're laughing at my remorse. I've quoted this before, but Lester Bangs: "If there's nothing more poisonous than bigotry, there's nothing more pathetic than white liberal guilt." And maybe my need to justify my reaction to Thing-Fish is just that. Maybe as I've said before, I'm just taking things too seriously.

Maybe. Still, I can't help wondering how funny Thing-Fish would be to someone who's, say, been personally threatened or ridiculed by a buncha white assholes. Wonder how it'd play to somebody who lost someone they cared about to AIDS.


But I've already gone over all this shit about how far can you go w/ a joke or satire or whatever till you've crossed The Line. I'm also aware of the childlike absurdity of the idea that anyone could locate The Line, and of the arbitrariness of myself as the guy who can lead you to it.

See, I'm embarrassed to even put this shit out there. But I guess that's what blogs are for, right? Personal hand-wringing-- not to mention whining & jerking off.

I am having this problem lately w/ authorial intent and responsibility, not to mention the responsibility, if any, of the audience. I finished Infinite Jest earlier this year and have ever since been reading all kindsa shit about the book-- most of it laughably inept-- to try and figure out if David Foster Wallace is challenging his audience, as everyone sez, or if he's just cynical, sloppy and filled with contempt for a readership that, if it criticizes him, he can claim is too stupid to understand his work.

I've fumbled around w/ my recent discovery that reggae is, in fact, cool, and that all of it's American fans aren't laughable hippies... (Unless I've become 1 myself, which given the way this is going, may be the case...) I've tried to reconcile my new enthusiasm to the virulent strain of homophobia that runs through a lot of the music.

And then I've had this problem w/ Thing-Fish.

So have I somehow become a pathetic wuss? Ida know.


I still see the evolution of my feelings about Thing-Fish to be linked to my experience of Hawaii, which is why I wanted to work through the 2 things together, chronologically. Problem is, it was a day or two into the trip when I really began dealing w/ Thing-Fish, and it's taking me forever to get to that point. Hawaii's necessary tho.

(And grotesque phantasmagoria is a personal addiction. Maybe it's just a phase, because it hasn't always been this way, but try as I might, I just can't seem to write anything these days w/o, uh, inserting that sorta stuff.)

So, I'm sorry to say that I still think this chronological cross-referencing is the way to go. For those of you who read this-- mostly a handful of lameass friends, as far as I know—I’ll get to all of it in time. But mostly I'm gonna proceed the way I have been. And as I may not get to Thing-Fish's role in the Hawaii trip soon, I thought I'd at least offer an update on where I'm at w/ the "musical" at the moment.

I've been reading Zappa's quasi-auto-bio The Real Frank Zappa Book, which unfortunately plays toward a lot of the annoying hypotheses you mighta about Zappa, e.g. that he was self-involved and a little too concerned w/ making you think he was sooooo much weirder and therefore more interesting than you could possibly hope to be.

But so OK, that's only so important. "Artists" (or whatever you want to call 'em) being human, tend to have human flaws. In fact, their flaws are often more profound than average. You can extrapolate some shit about their flaws being part of what makes 'em so creative, if you wanna, but again, I'm not sure that matters here.

What matters here is that when you have questions like I do about Thing-Fish, it's usually a good idea to go to the source, if you can. So I did. And it sucks, and not just because Zappa doesn't mention Thing-Fish at all, which given the size of his body of work, is not surprising. It sucks because the book doesn't do much of anything to reveal Zappa's attitudes re: race, sex, sexuality, etc.

I did get something about that artistic responsibility claptrap outta it. Here's a quote:

"Project/Object is a term I have used to describe the overall concept of my work in various mediums... In the case of the Project/Object, you may find a little poodle over here, a little blow job over there, etc., etc. I am not obsessed by poodles or blow jobs, however; these words (and others of equal insignificance, along with pictorial images and melodic themes, recur throughout the albums, interviews, films, videos, (and this book) for no other reason than to unify the 'collection.'"

Doesn't make a good case for the idea that Thing-Fish is saying anything, does he? But then the book is obnoxiously sketchy about anything that Zappa doesn't wanna talk about. What he tends to want to talk about is how cool he is—and occasionally, to offer some insights into musical composition, politics, etc.

(One of Thing-Fish's conceits does come up in the book: the possibility that the HIV virus was introduced into an unsuspecting populace either intentionally or through incompetence. In this case, the culprits are missionaries working in Africa and Haiti. It appears that he's serious. Seems a little sci-fi to me, but maybe I'm just not paranoid enough.)

This is always the problem w/ going to the source: the source is usually committed to mythologizing him or herself. Try pairing up Miles Davis' auto-bio w/ any other bio on the man, and you tend to find that he's exaggerating a lotta shit and leaving other very significant shit out.

So I guess my next stop will be one of the dozens of Zappa bio's out there. (Not sure which one.) If I find anything in 'em, I'll post it, but in the meantime, it's business as usual: more stuff about Hawaii, which eventually will lead to Thing-Fish anyway, as I said. Forceman out...

Fear n’ Loathing n’ Hunger in Las Vegas: A Tale of Two Dawbers

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So there I was, stumbling through airports, trying to make various connecting flights to Hilo, Hawaii. There, supposedly, my quarry awaited me—a missing person who went by the name of Wendell. And there was a big payroll to be had if I could find him. But first I had to get there.

I was extremely, extremely hungry. Aside from airline peanuts and such, I’d eaten exactly once—in Vegas. I think. It’s all a blur. All I remember is lukewarm Burger King patties, plain, glopped with ketchup, just the way I like ‘em. (Well, I could’ve done without the lukewarm part.) I carried them over to the neighboring bar, where the fat but cheerful but stupid bartender—like a friendly but insensitive former linebacker in a stereotypical TV type way—was. (Though he was way too short to be a linebacker.)

Sorta like reminiscent of Dawber from Coach, except he was shorter and had a rounder face and body. He also had darker, thicker hair. It was all poofed up and gelled or moussed or something. Sorta like an evening news guy or a used car salesman. Oh yeah, and his complexion was somewhere between muddy and ruddy, and he was actually wearing one of those ugly red vests that bartenders wear in the movies sometimes.

But wait, back to that Dawber comparison for jussa second. ‘Member how even tho’ Dawber had a Cro-Magnon type brow, he also had squinty little non-eyes, (which were actually a little creepy when you look back on it, ‘cuz they were so empty and fathomless,) and how Dawber also has a fine little girl nose and skinny little lips? Huh? Do ya?

Don’t tryta front like you didn’t ever watch Coach. Probably on some late insomniac night when the shit was in syndication, and you’d seen all the movies on Porn Per-View and also on HBO’s 1-15, where you’d also already seen all the episodes of the “more respectable” Sopranos, (being as they only make, like, 1 per geologic era. Like in the last one, Tony Soprano was one of those fish from 500 million years ago that they thought was extinct, but then somebody just found one swimmin’ around in the pond in their backyard or something recently. And how on the episode before that he was a trilobite. And some episode way back there Big Pussy was under water ‘cuz that’s where life began. Underwater. And Pussy is the Giver of Life. And then he was a fish, I think, but he could talk. Sorta like that singing fish everybody had hangin’ on her/his wall for a while.)

(And but you know you only watch The Sopranos ‘cuz you wanna whack off over that tone-deaf skank Meadow. But haha you’re pathetic! I might actually get ta boink her pretty soon when I get paid for this missing persons case. Y’know, like I’ll take it out in trade.) And so you were stuck watchin’ Coach, ‘cuz to not watch something would’ve left you up late, alone and looking into the void yr. life has become. Huh? ‘Member that?

Well, the reason I ask is because this bartender had larger, rounder features than Dawber, and had better breath than I imagine Dawber havin’ too for some reason. P.S., ever notice that Dawber is Mindy from Mork & Mindy’s last name? Well, I mean the actress who played Mindy, Pam Dawber—who’s hardly seen these days. I wonder why, given the magnificent, ever-broadening vistas of former star reality TV show humiliation. Pam oughta be amassing wealth and face time—as they say in “The Business”—if not dignity.

Ah well, if I were an agent, I’d try to be the best agent I could be for god, (or however that thing goes—the poem, I mean, not that song,) even if my clients were Dawber & Dawber, and hey! There’s my first brilliant idea as an agent: Dawber & Dawber? Meet Dawber & Dawber!!!! You guessed it, the reality buddy show w/ Pam and, uh, Dawber—don’t know that fucker’s real name, though he was in the made-for-TV movie of The Stand.

I watched that piece of shit adaptation once w/ this beloved female acquaintance of mine. She said she kept expecting Craig T. Nelson to pop out from behind some of the scenery and shriek: "Dawber! What the hell are you doing here in Nebraska? We've got a game in 2 days!!!!"

And then Dawber would kick the dirt sheepishly and say, "Gosh, Coach, I forgot!" And Craig T. Nelson would indignantly scream, "You forgot!!!!???!!" And he'd drag Dawber all the way back to Minneapolis, which, although devastated by the Superflu, is the home of the Screaming Eagles or whatever they were called. And where Jerry Van Dyke is waitin’ to plant a “welcome home” kiss on ‘em both w/ those big, wet, meaty lipsa his.

But that adaptation of The Stand. Boy did that suck, but then not as much as it might’ve, given the bloated sucky, (but nowhere near as sucky as this piece of shit made-for-TV adaptation) source material. The first part of the book, with the plague, is way more frightening, compelling, etc. than anything that comes in the later sections. (I mean, frightening & compelling for a Steven King book, which is to say only somewhat, at best.) And it’s not just the collapse of society or the grisly physical visions, both pre- and post- societal breakdown—it’s those nightmares everyone has in which something evil is stalking ‘em in a distressingly familiar, personal—to him or her type—way.

So like, Steve-O (as any true fan of that guy’s work knows he likes to be called) has dangled both anti-Christ and Armageddon in front of you, but guess what???? As soon as the ol’ Imp's base of operations is set up, he immediately loses his power for no apparent reason, and the entirely passive, voyeuristic good guys watch ol’ J-Hove give him a nuclear bitch-slapping (literally) that eliminates his map, as literary stunt man DF Wallace likes to say in his sprawling but deeply flawed but not quite sucky opus Infinite Jest.

And well, the expression’s pretty apt here, since Las Vegas gets blown off the map in the bitch-slappin’ process, and good and bad guys get blown away w/ it, cuz like I hear that god works in strange and inexplicable ways. And I think god oughta write mystery novels—you’d never know what was gonna happen. 'Course, strange and inex-whatever aside, god’s like the best at everything, I guess, so I reckon whatever she/it/he/we/they/you (both singular and plural)/thou wanted to write would be the most effective piece of literature of its kind that anyone would ever read—better than the real thing, no doubt.

Which is why I hope god gets right on both porn and self-help books at the same time, cuz I really like depersonalized sex and achieving my maximum potential and happiness and like that. (And isn’t that what god’s supposed to want you to do?)

And I’ll even be her/his/their agent if he/she/it/etc. wants, ‘cuz remember how I said I wanna be a good agent for god? Well, what better way to do so then to be god’s agent? (Not in a religious capacity, but more in terms of A&R.) And as an agent, I can think of some pretty good ways to move god’s products.

And please allow me to digress here, but I’d really like to say that I’m glad said nuclear spankdown of Vegas didn’t happen during my layovers (both to and from Hawaii) in that fine Amsterdam-cum-Disney Land heckuva place cuz it woulda sucked to get my map eliminated like that

So. But. Back to the matter at hand, which is… The Stand!!! That’s right! Almost lost it in there somewhere. Aside from all its other failings, (choosing just one at random—why does every single character in Steve-O’s books talk and, apparently, (as they all do so in a running monologue sorta way) think exactly the same way? (Regardless of variations in race, age, social class, gender, height, politics, and just plain ol’ individual weirdness.) A way that I’m guessing is similar, to the way that Steve-O himself thinks.

Could get at least one PhD dissertation outta this question, but I don’t have time, since I have to get back to The Stand, and eventually, Thing-Fish, as well as my trip to Hawaii.

Well aside from that and forgetting the annoying passivity of most of the book’s characters… (And like is anyone who lives on the west coast good, & do they get summoned eastward? ‘Cuz it seems like that would screw up the binary logic of the book…)

Well, OK, we’ll forget all those failings plus the one’s we’re not mentioning. Back to how easy it is to defeat Satan: To paraphrase The X-Files’ Fox Mulder in the very enjoyable second season episode Die Hand die Verletzt, Did Steve-O think he could conjure up his reader’s expectations of the devil and then expect them to not be pissed off when he gives ‘em some immediately bitchslappable Walkin’ Dude? (I walk a lot. What’s so scary about that?) Well, I guess he was right to not worry, cause the book continues to sell oodles of copies around the world. But maybe once word-of mouth kicks in, (c’mon, sometimes it takes a while,) you’ll see there are a lotta people like me who feel the book is a rip-off. (Hey! I know you’re out there somewhere! Hello?) And then his sales’ll drop & I’ll be vindicated.

And maybe monkeys will fly outta my butt…

OK. So enough about The Stand. Like Russell Banks or Liz Phair, (but not that utterly foxy, if egomaniacal Liz Elmore—Liz, if you’re reading this, call me, please. I’m begging,) it makes me kinda queasy to even talk about it.


But so where were we? Oh yeah! Dawber & Dawber!!! Well, like it could be a reality buddy show, in which we alternate who humiliates whom each week. Like there’d be this one where Pam Dawber dresses up as a dominatrix. Then she ties Dawber down and does what Dr. Benway of William S. Burroughs’s Naked Lunch does did to one of his young “subjects”: she performs a regiment of Pavlovian-Skinnerian emotional conditioning on him…

(And by “Skinnerian,” I don’t mean A.D. Skinner from The X-Files. He’s pretty cool, and if it’s not too late, I really think they oughta give him a spin-off, where, like he’s quit the FBI because his brother, an undercover NYPD detective, gets killed by Colombian gangstas, and now he’s frustrated by the distance between Bureau operations and the day-to-day criminal monstrosities that are devouring the average Joe or Jo on the street.

And when special guest star David Duchovny shows up in the first episode, Skinner asks him why he’s chasing UFOs, which even if you believe in ‘em, only really affect, like, 0.0000000000000000000001347% of the world population. And Mulder yells a lot (cause that’s how people on The X-Files show they are acting) about some abstract shit re: The Truth.

And Skinner says, no Mulder, The Truth isn’t out there Mulder, it’s up my ass, wanna look? (Cause isn’t Skinner always telling people to do something with their and/or his ass(es)?) And Mulder says, sure, let me look, and then he pulls out one of those big, impossibly bright flashlights he and Scully used to flash all over in the dark, making for, like, really cool visual effects. (Not unlike the ones at yr. local planetarium’s Pink Floyd Lazer Light show). And then he not only shoves that prodigious flashlight up Skinner’s ass, but also begins climbing into his ass after it.

(Oh wait, Skinner was wearing pants, probably, but let’s just assume that either he or Mulder quickly removed them and his tightie whities too. ‘Cuz as any loyal fan of The X-Files knows Skinner wears tightie whities, unlike Speedo fetishist Mulder. (God help us if Duchovny reprises that Speedo thing nowadays when he’s a bit more, uh, filled out.)

So anyway, Skinner says uhuhuhuh ogod and farts. And Mulder disappears. He’s been abducted by Skinner’s ass!!!! And the screen says TO BE CONTINUED.

And we can only hope that the next episode will get the actual show (I mean the Skinner show) moving forward, (at least a little,) but also answer the question of what happened to Mulder. Except for that of course it won’t because X-Files creator and hair feathering revivalist Chris Carter hates to resolve anything that fast. Or ever. Still, we gotta do things sorta his way, as he's the presumable exec prod of this new show, which, by the way, is gonna be called Skinner, at least in the pitch that I will present to the Fox Network.

And I’m gonna definitely include that last scene in my pitch, because it’s not only visual, but visceral, and that’s exactly how I’m gonna put it to them: “visual but visceral.”

And then they will give me a billion dollars and I’ll give a little to charity and a lot to Uncle Sam, but mostly I’ll just quit being a P.I. and instead smoke lots and lots of doobie (do the kids call it that anymore? I’m hip, you know) and eat ice cream. Except I’m lactose intolerant so it’ll have to be rice cream (or maybe lice cream, if such a thing exists). And I can’t smoke Mary Jane, (I bet that’s what the kids call it now,) because it induces psychotic paranoia in me. So I guess I’ll just chew really good gum and eat rice cream. Maybe on a beach.

But we can only hope that the second epi of Skinner will get a little farther into setting up the story of the show. ‘Cause, I mean, come on, that Mulder ass-spelunking thing, while cool, is really kind of a digression, and viewers don’t really like digressions. And by that rationale, maybe I should take it out of my pitch after all. But I’ll leave it in the script, and I still plan to use that “visual and visceral” line to refer to something else in the script, ‘cuz it sounds really smart and euphonic.

Anyway, Skinner quits the FBI and sets up his own crack team of private eyes, (like me, which I hope will get me an ongoing special consultant credit,) (and maybe a recurring guest part too). And they go around righting everyday wrongs like Colombian gangstas with drugs and white-collar corporate crime. Except you can’t really do white collar crime on TV because networks, and governments and things are all for this white collar hocus pocus spunk (huhhuh spunk). (Plus it’s boring.)

But maybe they could start an animal shelter and a soup kitchen and a mission in Ethiopia or Gary, Indiana and make the world better like that except while still being P.I.’s, because I want my credit, and it’ll allow for more suspense and action. But they’re like P.I.’s with hearts, (also like me,) sort of like Mother Theresa with a .44 or Gandhi with a machete or MLK with a water balloon or Richard Dawson with a mithryl battle-axe.

Anyway, so I’m not talking about that Skinner, but rather asshole Skinnerian behavioralist psychiatrist BF Skinner. (Which may, in case you’re wondering, very well stand for Butt Fuck or Butt Fucker. Ida know because I’m too lazy and filled with contempt for that particular bungsnotlicker to look it up. You go do it if you care so much. Me? I’m gonna go watch some euro-porn. It’s so chic and dirty. Yumyumyummmmm.)

But so um, where were we? Oh yeah… Dawber & Dawber!!!! So, like Dr. Benway, Pam Dawber conditions the subject (here, Dawber) to shit at the sight of her. Then she washes him off and fucks him up the ass. And it is, as Doc Benway suggests, "real tasty."

But so how is Pam Dawber fucking Dawber up the ass? I’m glad you asked that question. Pam Dawber, I am authorized to reveal, is a fully functional hermaphrodite. So she’s gotta dick and a pussy, but they’re not arrayed in such a way that she can fuck herself, sadly, unlike Ben Stiller who supposedly has a cunt in the palm of his left hand. (It’s a birth defect, though it doesn’t sound like one to me.) And he fucks himself all the time. Kinda like masturbation, but better for everyone involved.

(Adam Sandler, by the way, is a fully functional male, but with a long, prehensile tail, like a monkey's, that he hides under his clothes. And he’s gotten so smooth with it that he can fuck himself up the ass within his clothes while talking to you, and you won’t even know because it’ll just look like he’s making one of those stupid faces he makes—like especially that one where he opens his mouth really wide and stares at you in a way that you imagine a walleye might open its mouth really wide and stare at you, Which is not so much funny, but more like gross and vaguely creepy. Like that singing fish wasn’t really funny, but grosser and kinda creepy. Except the singing fish really was funny.)

So Pam Dawber conditions Dawber to do this, and then the really humiliating part happens. She takes him to Grant Park, (because I live in Chicago and am sick of every big crowd scene occurring in Times Square,) and he’s like blindfolded the whole time, so he can’t see her and shit. She takes him to Grant Park that way and unties the blindfold, and Dawber shits at the sight of her, and she washes him off and then fucks up the ass. And it’s "real tasty." And around 100 people watch. (It woulda been more in Times Square, probably, but who cares?) And that’s the really humiliating part.

But don’t feel too bad for Dawber, cause maybe that’s what he’s into. Don’t go projecting your prudish sexuality onto him. And besides, he’ll get Pam back next week when he makes her wear a stupid spaceman helmet and a red boiler suit with silver gloves and boots and a silver triangle on the front, and say nanoo nanoo to everyone she passes on the street. Now that’s humiliating.


Well, so my point is that the bartender looked vaguely, but not exactly like Dawber. (I refer the lazy, inattentive reader to the differences I described above.) And he was trying to get people to get shots with their beer for only $2 extra. (Holy fuck! Airport food may be overpriced, but airport liquor??? That’s a deal? I mean, when one glass of domestic beer already ran you, like, $9 ferchrissake!!??!?!?!)

And he was esp. trying to get this sort of pretty girl who walked into the bar to get the shot for free, but she didn’t want it and besides she was with a guy, who seemed to be taking the whole thing in stride, and you could understand why, because only the most burntout alcoholic chicks would’ve taken the shot if it meant even talking to this pig for 1 more instant. He was pathetic.

But now I’m being a bastard, as much to pigs as to the guy. (Whatever that means.) So I guess I’ll shut my crass, bastardly mouth.

Next time, it’s back to my aerial odyssey. I’ll mesmerize you with my recollections of the flights themselves—particularly memories of my fellow passengers who ranged from boring to quirky to possibly psychotic. On we go!

Journey: Departure

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As the Brady kids once intoned: “Hawaii!!!!!” And while they weren’t on a missing persons case, like me, I wouldn’t mind tailin' that Marcia… Mmm mmm…




There’s nothing like the long, straight shot up the blue line to its very end: O’Hare International Airport. Despite countless departures and arrivals, the trains never seem to be full. Even at rush hour, the crowds thin out quickly between the Loop and the airport. The people who remain go inward, lulled by the quiet and the darkness. You’re isolated.

The train picks up speed. Soon you're moving through the city’s northwest side, where the stops become more spaced out, and then, into the airport terminal.

Yep. Into. The first time I took the train up there, that sort of freaked me out. You find yourself in this dim, cool cavern. The light in front of you is cut off sharply by glass doors. And behind you, the shade falls off into the tunnel’s blackness. You can’t call this place gloomy. It’s too soothing somehow-- a moment of rest before you enter the sensory overload of Terminal 2.

Masses of computer screens, listing departures and arrivals in either bluish white or bright, multi-colored characters. The flow of people is not continuous, but jerk-stopping, like the movements of organic cells. Combinations of luggage, and clothes and hairstyles and faces and postures and bodies—the integrity of any one individual begins atrophying in your mind: you remember the hairstyle of one on the head of another, who is wearing the clothes of somebody else. It's sort of a Color Forms set of humanity.

Until I'm acclimated to airport space, the competing broadcast announcements really are loud enough to make me cringe. By the time I've adjusted to it all, I'm usually standing in that very slowly moving line, periodically dragging my carry-on shit about 6 inches forward every so often, till I reach the ticketing counter.

Anyone but me get paranoid during these post-911 airport security checks, even though you’ve done nothing wrong? (Must be the Kafka I ate.) There’s this small army scrutinizing you and your shit. If you're unlucky, you are selected for a random baggage search. Security guards paw your silky underthings, prescription anti-psychotic medications, anti-fungal sprays, colostomy bags, teddy bears you use to dispel the night terrors, and whatever other personal unmentionables you've lovingly folded and then stuffed into your carry-on.

I was selected for these hijinks once. Whatta hoot! I laughed so hard I pissed myself! Good thing they didn’t give me a full body search!

Speaking of piss, I was so pissed off by that experience that the next time I flew, I went out of my way to fill my carry-on past the bursting point and on toward the infinite density one might find at the heart of a black hole. There were no quantum singularities, but I had the pleasure of seeing all my shit leap into the face of the hapless luggage inspector who drew my bag. Ha! There's your explosive device!

Underwear and "Archie" comics and porno mags and women’s deodorant (‘cuz I like to smell nice) flew through the air like shrapnel! I woulda been embarrassed if I hadn'ta been laughing so hard. (And this time, I really was laughing.) For once, a gag went off exactly the way I’d planned!

But in the end, the joke was on me, ‘cuz I had to sit there in the terminal for half an hour, repacking my fucking bag.

Anyway, then there are the X-ray machines, looking, for all the world like miniaturized car washes. There's the metal detectors that some poor asshole repeatedly sets a-squeal, no matter how many belt buckles, watches, gold chains, gold teeth, or steel head plates he removes from his person.

There’s the awkwardness (both social and logistical) of peeling off your shoes. (I’d almost worn sandals for this scene alone, but considering the amount of walking and standing air travel entails, I’d reluctantly gone with an old pair of tennis shoes.) I love watching the security people scrunch up their noses, as the occasional person with really foul foot odor walks by. That’s always a lotta fun. And after the security check, I love watching all the disgruntled people leaning over in chairs to re-don their shoes—esp. the ones who, like me in this case, were dumb enough to wear shoes w/ laces that they must now re-tie.

I ask you: what’s not to love about the whole experience?

Oh yeah... a public service announcement for those of you who’ve never traveled w/ yr. laptop (I hadn’t): You have to remove your computer from any case or piece of luggage in which it’s packed. Stupidly unaware of this, I placed my Powerbook between several layers of clothing in my carry-on. Man, was I one disillusioned fuck when I got halfway up in the checkpoint line and found that I had to unpack my bloated backpack. And of course I had to repeat this performance at every single stop on the way to Hawaii. Once in Hilo, I made a point of buying a case for the thing, since you are allowed to bring your laptop on board as a personal item. What’s more, I found I could fit a few other things in the case, thereby taking some of the strain off my other bags.

Finally you're done w/ all that security jazz, and it's on to that long walk and stumble in search of your gate. With as many connecting flights as I had, I got used to that shit pretty quickly. The worst thing about it was lugging that fuck-knocking elephantine carry-on, filled almost, but not quite, this time, to the bursting point. By the time I got to Hawaii, I’d inherited a nifty set of calluses from the blisters that preceded them. My shoulders had moved beyond stiff to downright numb, which I guess was sorta a blessing. And holy shit, were the arches of my feet sore! Waaah, I scraped my poopy! Can you apply some ointment?


In our next installment I will continue to piss & moan about my various exciting adventures whilst in transit to Hawaii!!! Boyoboy! I can’t wait!!!!!!!!

Grazin' in the Meadow

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My boyfriend googled "felching," and all I got was this stupid blog...

.

Hello. I'm Steve Forceman, P.I.

This is not a proper blog entry. This is a public apology.

To those of you who found this blog by googling "braided pubic hair," "dildo force," "George Clooney's ass," and the like, I would like to express my deepest regrets. You account for most of my hits these days, and I suspect you're not finding what you're looking for here.

I am truly, deeply sorry.

('Course now that I've repeated some of the above phrases, I may have increased the likelihood of drawing more of you here. Ah fuck. Like Johnny Thunders said, it doesn't pay to try...)

What's more, I do not mean to suggest that such visitors are not well-rounded human beings. Who knows? Maybe you enjoyed the earnest but murky consideration of the death penalty offered in the recent entry below. (It was also boring. Man, I hate it when I get earnest.)

I have almost finished a "proper" entry. In it, I vow to avoid subjects like gerbling or necrophilia unless I have something constructive to say about them. Mother always said, if you can't say something sexy, don't say anything at all...

Again, please accept my sincerest apologies.

Thank you.

Steve Forceman, P.I.



P.S. If you're Elizabeth Elmore, whatever drew you here, please, drop me a line...

P.P.S. I also resolve to avoid using "google" as a verb. I hate that.

Full Frontal Stupidity

Speaking of saving things, (cf. that Aileen business below,) I almost lost my laptop on Wednesday. It was really fucking nice out. Being as the long Norse-mythology-type winter is about to descend on Chicago for like the next 6 months, (or maybe not, because it's usually in full swing by, like, Sept. 15. Global warming?) I figured I'd take ye Olde Laptope out and do some writing. So on my way to Grant Park, very suddenly, a freakin' wave of black clouds rolls in.

Immediately, a rainstorm of biblical proportions began. (Probably drawn by the comments I often make re: the suckiness of S. Kubrick's ouevre.) Idiot that I am, I have no waterproof case for my laptop. So I ran into Harold Washington. The library, I mean, not the guy. That woulda been pretty fucked up.

I mean, the dude's been dead for, like, over 18 years. He'd be, like, "Hi, I'm Harold Wash- ington. I was Chicago's first black mayor." And I'd be all like, "Yeeaaagh!!!" 'cuz, like, he'd be all rotted.

And he'd lay his scantily fleshed fingers on my shoulders--exposed bone clutching living, beautiful, living tissue.


(And I know where you think this is going. A beloved female acquaintance sez I can't relate an anecdote without, uh, inserting sodomy into it. Apparently she missed my recent consideration of Jeff Foxworthy's Celebrity Roast, which stuck strictly to cannibalism, but you'll see--no sodomy occurred here.)


And still clutching my living tissue and all that, Harold Washington would be like, "Lemme buy you lunch. I'm Harold Washington, (who as stated previously, is/was/whatever, Chicago's first black mayor,) and I am lonely.

"And more than that, I am hungry. But we gotta find mushy, sticky food 'cuz my esophageal region is pretty fucked up, and food might not make it to my gas-bloated belly. (Just what state of decay am I in after 18 years anyway? I mean, how fucked up are my internal organs, etc.?)

"So c'mon, dude, let's eat. I just smoked a bowl w/ the crumbling shade of Jimmy Stewart. Boy, does that guy know how to party! Who knew? He can get ya dead hookers, and all types of drugs, and unregistered firearms, which, while they won't kill yr. dead enemies, can fuck with their structural integrity.

"Wo, dude! I said 'structural integrity!' Isn't that cool? They're always talking about 'structural integrity' in TV shows, like Star Trek. I think they mentioned it a lot there--and on other sci-fi shows that are mostly inferior to Trek.

"I love Star Trek, dude, though, (and I know every Trek fan sez this, but I really mean it,) I don't go so far w/ it as to become a trekkie. They're pretty fucked up, dude, trekkies.

"What I really love best-- 'tho I'm fond of the women's short uniforms, of course-- hubba hubba--and high-tek action--are the characters. Esp. Spock and Bones. They were sorta like David and Maddie. (Though I fuckin' hated Moonlighting, dude and would love to haunt the shit out of both Bruce Willis and Cybill Shepherd.)


[Ha! See, you thought there was gonna be sodomy there, didn't you? With all that Bones and Spock/ David and Maddie stuff? Feel pretty stupid, dontcha?]


"But first I'd have to get a Class A Fearful Revanant rating added to my Walking Dead License. Right now, I do have a Class D Portentious Phantom thingy to go w/ my Class C Standard Zombie rating, but, you know, it's good to be versatile in this ever-changing job market. Did you know that 80% of cadavers will change jobs five times before their structural integrity fails (Wo, dude! I said it again! Isn't that cool?) and they crumble into a pile of dessicated bones? Whatta bummer, dude.

"Except for vampires--like Christopher Lee, who has everyone fooled into thinking he's still alive, but he really is a vamp since some pissed off vamps came and vamped him. The reason they were pissed, these real vamps, (dude, I mean, the other vamps, not Christopher Lee, who is also a real vamp, but wasn't yet at that point. Am I, like, making sense?) Oh yeah-- the reason these real vamps were pissed... (Do you think real vamps piss blood, I mean from all that blood they drink? Dude, that is so sick! I should ask one of 'em.)
"Oh yeah... well these real vamps, (not including Christopher Lee, who wasn't a real vamp yet. Did I already say that?) These real vamps were pissed about the way that Chris, in those old Hammer movies, (man, those things are so cheesy, but you know, kinda cool,) was trivializing vamps in the eyes of the living and thereby setting the cause of Undead rights back, like, 50 years.

"And, dude? I think that's being a little extreme. A movie, however offensive, can't do that. But, like, oh yeah, the reason I brought up vamps, dude? Was because they can repeatedly crumble and reassemble themselves, which has up- and downsides, actually. (Like reassembling yourself after a really lame party's started where you were disassembled before, and so like then being stuck at this fucking lame party, because you don't wanna be rude and leave right away.)


"And I'd really like to see Spock shove his enor- mous green- headed organ up Bones's puckered asshole. Not that I'm gay or anything. I'm just, you know, curious."



Ah fuck! There was sodomy right at the end there. I forgot he said that till now.

Anyway, I was just glad the fucker shut up. I kept hoping that maybe his rotted jaw would fall off his head from all that wagging. I hate dealing with people who are high when I'm not.

But so I turned down his offer of lunch-- even tho it woulda been free, and even though he was coming on all pathetic, trying to win my sympathy with all that shit about being lonely. Yep. I turned him down, 'cuz as you can see, he isn't just dead and gross and all that, he's fuckin' boring.





Still working on that Thing-Fish (and Hawaii) thing. Really. And it's damned interesting and incisive. I promise. But my analysis has now topped (wow I even worked sodomy into that) 50 pp. (huhuhuh "pp") and needs to be cut down and clarified a little. I gotta learn to quit digressing so much.

Ah well...