If you ain't spent your last $4.63 on a $3.50 sixer of "American Lager" and a box of generic expired spaghetti at C-Town above 122nd, you ain't really lived in New York.

I have no time and a lot of half-formed blog ideas in my head (e.g. the awesomeness of the Mariano Rivera farewell season / victory lap, the badass righteousness of Stevie Wonder refusing to play in any state with a Stand Your Ground law from here on out and how I wish everyone would jump on that bandwagon, WENDY DAVIS FTW, etc.) but like I said: no time. 

So -- how about this: 

There's a line in the NYT Mag piece on Gaby Hoffmann which all by itself convinces me NYC is not the place for me anymore no matter how terribly awfully I miss it (which I do): 

The Palladium is an N.Y.U. dorm called the Palladium.

I never, to my recall, went to the Palladium back in the day (unless we got in with one of those Baird Jones guest list things? which was how we went to any club, ever) -- but fuuuuuuuuuhhh. That was a total Power Down moment, reading that line. I can't even. 

This desk set ... wants to fly.

Isn't it sad how much of a total fucking dickbag Ethan Hawke turned out to be? God, remember how hot he was, and like, sensitive and shit (onscreen anyway), and how really really good an actor he was? And but then the cheating on Uma thing, and the random whoring around, and the general dickbaggery, and you start to think he was like that all along, and getting famous just gave him license to let it out, and he thought we'd ignore the dickbaggery and just love him anyway, and now he's just horrible? Daaamn.

The warmth of Cray

“I’m kind of a dick about books.”

Sarah Brown, me too (as ever, ad infinitum). Rules include but are not limited to:

1) DO NOT CRACK THE SPINE.
2) Dog-earing is OK for your own books, but not a borrowed one.
3) Ditto underlining or making notes in the margin – it’s charming if I find that stuff in a hand-me-down or used-bookstore-purchased book, but decidedly less so if you borrowed it from me and that’s how I get it back.
4) No food crumbs, coffee-cup rings, bathwater-dunkings, chocolate thumbprints, etc. Come on. REALLY. I read while eating/drinking, too (it’s one of my greatest and most enduring pleasures), but what are we, swine?
5) I keep records of who’s got what, damn fucking skippy I do. Return it in a timely manner (or replace it, if you love it so much you want to marry it and have like ten thousand of its babies). I will get all up in your business about it after a certain amount of time – please spare us both that embarrassment.
6) As regards violations: One strike and you’re out – especially if that strike involves spine-cracking. Do that and you’re permanently on my general-purpose Shit List.

Because, seriously.

I’m not sure if you can really claim the right to call yourself a musician if, by way of explaining my position in the group of drunken jackasses I like to call a band, I tell you, “Basically I’m Stu Sutcliffe, minus the head injuries and the German girlfriend,” and you look at me with the total blankness.

We asked for Mojo Nixon, they said HE DON'T WORK HERE

Internets, I bought a very pricy Nicole Miller dress the other day (for about $130 from Bluefly.com, heh! only suckers pay full designer price) to wear out to a schmancy dinner with Mr. Gleemonex for our 10th wedding anniversary. The dress was great, but there was this snotty little tag in it with a line drawing and the words:

OUR ZIPPERS ARE INVISIBLE
NOT INDESTRUCTIBLE
PLEASE BE GENTLE
AND TRY ON YOUR
CORRECT SIZE

Well well well, Missus Miller. Do you find there's often a problem with fatties busting the seams of your precious wee creations, causing you to weep hot acid tears onto your concave stinking bosom? Croissant-fondling Shatner, bitch.

You’re so vain, you prob’ly think this post is about you

Here’s the thing: There are plenty of reasons I don’t watch Gossip Girl (note the returns of BSG! Lost! Friday Night Lights! Big Love! 24! [shut up it’s awesome]! The Office! 30 Rock! Monk! Psych! Burn Notice!), but the biggest reason of all – besides a general aversion to the “rich young assholes prancing around like they matter” genre – is this one episode of it that I saw once.

This brunette, one of the leads, had carefully arranged a meeting at the skating rink at Rockefeller Plaza, involving herself, her dad, some other guy, and a couple of other people – don’t know, don’t care who – and had all the timing, and words, and outfits all set up just so. Needless to say, someone failed to perform according to script, and the whole thing fell apart and waaaah.

GodDAMN, did that push my buttons.

See, there is a person from my past – won’t say who, or even what gender or when in my past this was, because I don’t know if this person might be a Damn Kids reader, and if so, he/she would probably be flattered by my writing about him/her in any capacity – but this person saw the entire world and everybody in it as set dressing on the stage that was his/her Fabulous Life. I cannot count the number of times I was drafted into his/her schemes, or was the beneficiary/intended audience of one, or an unwitting player, whether bit, walk-on, or major supporting role (needless to say, he/she was always the STAR). Each actor in a given scheme was usually only handed their own pages of the script, as it were, so that this person alone knew the whole setup – he/she was writer, director, producer, publicist, agent, etc. – and everyone else was supposed to know nothing of the production at all. We – the other five billion Earthlings -- were supposed to think it was entirely organic, when in reality, nothing about this person ever was if he/she could help it.

Goddamn motherfucking tiresome. So, no, I don't wanna watch a teevee show about that.

You're OLD OATS, Spencer.

Potpourri Sunday!


SHE WILL ROCK YOU
Here's another singin' Swede for you all -- Theresa Andersson, lately of New Orleans, whose new CD Hummingbird, Go! you should all buy right this minute (my favorite song is called "Hi-Low," fwiw). I happen to know Theresa personally, because she is married to my friend Weird Arthur from kollege, and we went to see her one-woman show at Amnesia last weekend in SF. Lemme tellya -- the girl's got pipes! She goes all Johnny Greenwood with this massive pedalboard and all this live looping (her violin, drums, her own backing vocals, a dulcimer), and it's just amazing -- so much fun to watch & hear.



LANGUAGE POLICE
Listen up, fools: You can't just throw the word "fetish" around. It doesn't mean "something you're, like, into." It means:

1 a: an object (as a small stone carving of an animal) believed to have magical power to protect or aid its owner ; broadly : a material object regarded with superstitious or extravagant trust or reverence b: an object of irrational reverence or obsessive devotion : prepossession c: an object or bodily part whose real or fantasied presence is psychologically necessary for sexual gratification and that is an object of fixation to the extent that it may interfere with complete sexual expression.

So, in other words, something you worship in a religious way, something you're really, REALLY into, or something you need in order to get off. Choose carefully, people -- using words that have religious or sexual baggage when you don't mean it that way makes the baby Shatner cry.


THEENKS, BAHT NO THEENKS.
As a known Lost obsessive, I get asked fairly often whether I'm watching Fringe or not. Answer: no. Reason: Twofold. One, I've already seen enough stupid damn X-Files, and the first ep of Fringe was all-cliche all the time; two, in the second goddamn episode, we're already introducing surgical torture. Now, Shatner knows how many vile sociopaths are going to get to this fine blog via searching for that exact term (if they can spell it), but SERIOUSLY. This has to stop, people. What the fuck is wrong with us, as a nation, as a species, that this is now a thing, a thing which we accept as entertainment? I can't do much about it in the global sense, but I can enforce my rule of instant total disqualification of any alleged entertainment featuring the aforementioned act, and so I shall. Suck me sideways, Abrams.


THE MAGICAL FRUIT
So I poured some coffee beans into the grinder yesterday, and neglected to shut the lid before moving on to something else. Mr. Gleemonex grimaced and shut it for me, informing me of my crime against humanity as I came back into the kitchen -- he hates coffee, hates the smell of it, always calls it "yucky" when I'm drinking it. I ask you. So I reached in, grabbed a bean, and ate it -- just crunched it up, right there in front of him -- while he twitched with disgust and I laaaaughed and laughed. You'd'a thought I just ate a giant cock-a-roach, the way he was carrying on. It was hilare. I might do it again in a minute, just to make him howl.

Say. What. AGAIN, mothafucka.

Because as fucked up and enraging as the situation with “carry-on” bags and the struggle for overhead bin space already is, American Airlines has decided it could use a little more fuckin with. Fifteen bucks to check a single bag? I get that your operating costs have gone up because the price of oil has doubled somewhat recently (thank your good buddies in the Bush Assministration for that, you bonus-receiving shitmonkeys!) – but why not just increase the fucking ticket price by $15? Why prod even more idiots to bring their full-size suitcases onboard, blocking the aisles with their full-size asses while they try to cram their every earthly belonging into the goddamn bins, causing EVEN MORE AND LONGER DELAYS? I gotcher fifteen bucks RIGHT HERE.

Goin to New York City / I do believe I’ve had e-nough

Internets, I’ve taken my last trip on Continental Airlines.

The Gleemonex family got back Monday night from a trip to the East Coast for the wedding of our most beloved Jew, who is one of the world’s true good guys and possibly the most irreverent person I’ve ever met (in college, proofreading an assignment for him for a Core class, I had to insist, repeatedly, that one cannot refer to Luciano Pavarotti as “a talentless, washed-up old gasbag” in a formal paper critiquing a live performance, even if it was in fact true – we have to use different words to convey the same meaning, son). The wedding was fab, the Berkshires lovely, etc. etc. etc.

However. Continental Motherfucking Airlines.

They beat other airlines’ prices by a good $150 per ticket into Newark -- their hub -- so, stupidly, I booked the flights through them. And I’ve learned an important lesson: You get what you pay for.

--Delays: 1:45 outbound on the redeye, 2:30 inbound on a weekday midafternoon. Unacceptable generally, but with a baby, you feel every single minute of the delay. Made me acutely aware of the shoddiness of their management.

--Bass-ackward boarding: no “travelers with children” pre-boarding (and listen, non-parents: this isn’t an unfair perk for the childed – trust me, you want me to pre-board with my kid and all our shit and get settled before you get on, you freewheeling magazine-reading iPod-listening son of a bitch); no back-to-front boarding (on the way out, it was a total free-for all with no rows called, period), with the consequent clusterfuck in re: overhead bin space that that implies; flight attendants who just stood there and watched the whole bovine struggle (and one who actively encouraged TWO different people to park their shit so that it was blocking emergency equipment, then acted surprised and innocent when another attendant nixed that and made them gate-check the goddamn bags like they should’ve done in the first fucking place, which gate-checking delayed us further); etc.

--“Unscheduled maintenance issues” causing delays both ways, which could have been minimized if Continental didn’t have their heads up their asses (and by the way: listen, Mister Chatty-Panties Pilot, I can’t take Ativan because I’m breastfeeding – could you shut your cakehole about “unscheduled maintenance issues, more serious than we thought”?? Lie, motherfucker, lie. I don’t care what you say, just don’t say THAT).

--Bragging about “the youngest fleet in the industry,” when I can plainly see a sealed-up ashtray in the outside of the lavatory door – haven’t flights been smoke-free since like nineteen-eighty-fucking-two?

--Both flights waaay overbooked, causing more delay while they tried to entice people with $400 vouchers for a future flight … on Continental.

So: fuck ‘em. Goodbye, shitheads.

Parting thoughts:

1) The 6’2” Mr. Gleemonex would like me to point out the crazymaking asshattedness of reclining one’s seat in fucking coach class (done), and I think it worth noting that whoever’s in the seat in front of him always, ALWAYS reclines, while the one in front of 5’5” me almost never does. Shatner’s First Law of Aerodynamics.

2) Who knew so many people would line up to take dumps in an airplane lavatory? People must love it a real lot. We kept thinking the baby needed a diaper change, but no. It was the lav. Dump after dump after dump. Shatner’s Second Law of Aerodynamics.

Now, DRINKING outdoors -- THAT'S something I can get behind.

Internets, I went for a quick run on my lunch break along SF’s famous Embarcadero (which used to be a hellhole under an elevated freeway [see Dirty Harry] before the 1989 earthquake fucked the freeway up real good and thank the merciful Shatner, the people of this city said now let’s wait a minnit here – do we HAVE to rebuild an elevated freeway? and answered themselves: no. no we don’t.).

Lots of outdoor eating places along the Embarcadero. Some moderately priced, most hi-toned. And because it was the kind of day that makes me want to run outdoors (86 and sunny), everybody and their co-workers and their sister visiting from Yonkers was sitting outside to eat.

Let me state this for the record: EATING OUTSIDE IN SAN FRANCISCO TOTALLY BLOWS.

No, shut up, it does. It always SOUNDS like such a great idea -- the town is sunny and not prone to temperature extremes. It always LOOKS like a nice day to eat outside. People always want to eat outside on the 7th-floor terrace of my office building. The outdoor parts of restaurants are always full up. People always believe the lie.

But goddammit, one day in about seven hundred is actually the type of mild, windless day that it looks like it is, and meanwhile the other 699 of 700, you’re either roasting or freezing (or both, simultaneously), the wind is whipping your fucking hair across your face so you keep getting mouthfuls of it with your lunch, hot food gets cold while the sun melts the ice in your drink, the fucking pigeons know no fear (nor do the homeless people), little tornados of used paper napkins and sand and cigarette butts dance around between the tables, and meanwhile you’re getting burned by the deceptive-ass sun shining fully down on your un-sunscreened face as you try to keep your goddamned plate from sailing into the bay and taking your fucking fifteen-dollar sandwich with it.

Exercising the franchise

People, it's time for a DK Declaration of True Fact:

IF YOU DO NOT VOTE, YOU ARE NOT ENTITLED TO AN OPINION ABOUT POLITICS, GOVERNANCE, PUBLIC POLICY OR ANY PERSON HOLDING OR RUNNING FOR ELECTED OFFICE IN THIS COUNTRY.

There are only two exceptions: 1)you are legally denied the franchise, or 2)you suffer some medical calamity to your own physical body which prevents your going to a polling place on the day of the election or mailing in your ballot in advance of the election.

That's it.

Vote or die.

Don't let the door hit ya in the ass on the way out!

On second thought -- DO let the door hit ya in the ass on the way out.

La la la la laaaaaaaa! Commence double-barreled bird-flippin insane happy dance! A-Rod is gooooooooone! Some other unlucky car-chasing bastards are gonna pay all their lunch money for this useless choking motherscratcher and we are RID OF HIM!

Good luck peddling this second-rate piece of ass around the league, Scott Boras, you fucking douchebag. You two deserve each other. And may he never win a World Series ring as long as you both shall live.

CELEBRAMOS!

Mourning in America

The Cleve is dead to me. Do you hear me, Internets? Dead.

Why, the Yankees could've pulled a choke-job like that (and, in fact, they have, recently, and more than once, the bastards) -- gaaaaah.

Guinness, congrats and all for keeping the faith, but I know you'll understand when I say: Go Rockies. [Shakes fist weakly at sky, wanders off to find out when NCAA basketball starts.]