Goddammit, Motherf-ing X-mas!

Goddammit.

So I *DO* care enough not to leave my blog with a shitfest of non-linking links for **THE ELEVEN DAYS I AM OFF FROM WORK**. That's just wrong. So I fixed it. You demanding readers!

I also just finished eating every single piece of a medium-sized bowl of chocolates given to me for X-mas. That is also wrong. And yet so so right at the same time.

But anyways, happy holidays. Toot toot fart fart and all that. Try not to weep too much over the **NEXT ELEVEN DAYS I'M OFF FROM WORK** during which this blog won't be updated. (Remember what yo mama--and Cinderella--always says: You don't know what you've got 'til it's gone.)

I promise to woo you and wow you and making your netherregions tingle upon my return.

Mr. Pickles deems it so.

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Christmas Schizophrenia

I have had the song "Do You Hear What I Hear" stuck in my head since 7 am this morning. And not the WHOLE song--oh no. Just the "Do you hear what I hear" part.* Over. And over. And over.

Save me, O Jesus.


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*Sidenote: Having wanted to at least stop singing the same 6 words over and over, I've tried allowing the beginning lyrics to get stuck in my head as well. Problem is, I don't know what the lyrics are. So my brain has started singing it as: "Said the German Shepherd to the Son of Sam... Do you hear what I hear?" Weird Al, you're going down.

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Name Game

...And I apparently have one extremely long nose-hair that likes to make me feel all self-conscious, like I have boogers all hanging out my nose.

I am accepting suggestions as to what to name it.

That is your holiday duty.

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Ove' Glove! Ove' Glove! You've Gotta Love! The Ove' Glove!

I have been absolutely useless in the writing department this week.

However, I didn't want to leave on such a sour George W-note before I head home for vacation (tomorrow's my last day of work for 11... count it: 11... days), so I will instead impart upon you my new guilty television pleasure of the month:

You ever see the commercial for "The Ove' Glove"? If you've watched any tv at ALL this X-mas season, I'm sure you have.

Well, goddamit if this commercial doesn't make me laugh every time I see the stupid thing.

The "Ove' Glove" is a glove you can wear in order to handle really hot objects when cooking. But the commercial also boasts that it has tons of other household uses as well, and in order to demonstrate, they show someone using the glove to replace a lightbulb.

First time I saw the commercial, like every other sucker, I was like SWEET! THAT *IS* ONE HANDY MOTHERF-ING CONTRAPTION!

The second time, I laughed because I realized what a big 'tard I was the first time.

For those of you who haven't SEEN the commercial, the Ove' Glove wearer is replacing a lightbulb that is LIT.

#1--Has no one ever heard of turning OFF the light before changing a lightbulb: doing so is beneficial in keeping you from electrocuting yourself and also nixing any need to PURCHASE an Ove' Glove.

and

#2--The person is replacing a lightbulb that is on. If the lightbulb is on, it is functioning and not dead yet. Therefore, why exactly would you NEED to change it?

Ah commercials.

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Ah, Bushy McBusherston

The Gospel According to Bush:

Apparently in the next week, "Americans will be celebrating Christmas and Hanukkah."*

F- you, Kwanza-celebrators, atheists, and the rest of you heathens!




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*Last night's stomach-churning Presidential Address. Yip yip!

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Every Once in a While I'm Really Happy Spam Exists...

From:

To:

CC:

Subject: that's one nice dildo =) butterball

barbarous you gastrointestinal me, revolutionary . beau you iran me, imperishable blink . entirety you electress me, deodorant ebony scour stalactite . pullman you colossi me, conjugal .
skiff you speedup me, seventeen . aspen you bacterium me, notoriety tibia peripatetic . boris you aniline me, gascony dial cavitate .

* * * * * *

I actually doublechecked this one to make sure it wasn't from someone I know, given the subject line. Man, what I wouldn't pay to be gastrointestinaled, iraned, and bacteriumed. *wistful sigh*

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Must-Sees for the X-mas Season

1. Burbank Video's Christmas Toys

Sometimes the $1 bins at Big Lots yield the best treasures of them all. Includes "Dolls of Many Lands," "The Elf and Mr. Little," and "Santa Claus Story." My siblings and I watch this disaster ever X-mas and laugh our asses off.


Remember back in the good ol' days when Santa looked like he crawled right out of hell to torture children? Remember all those pictures of you as a child, screaming bloody murder in his lap? Now you'll remember why. "Santa Claus Story" consists of the world's creepiest Santa who appears to be drunk enough that he must read his lines from cue-cards. Welcome to the bizarre metaphysical realm where Santa is forced to defend the fact that he DOES, in fact, exist. Listen to him butcher the "Yes, Virginia, There is a Santa Claus" letter and speak to two young and confused children about such things as "a veil covering the unseen world" and the "supernal beauty and glory beyond." Watch as Santa tries to explain to the children about how people are just like bad little monkeys in a lengthy non-sequitur that allows the producers to insert a variety of glorious monkey stock-footage for our entertainment. Watch the monkeys eat mortar! Oh wait, it's just whipped cream! And remember, "A thousand years from now, nay, ten times ten thousand years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood."



(Watch a clip HERE)


Once you've been touched by Santa. Er. You know what I mean. Then check out "The Elf and Mr Little" for a look at the shittiest marionettes ever made. Chunks of hair fall off their heads throughout the short film, Mrs. Little's eyes are painted shut. All the marionettes have hands 3x the size of their heads. And the puppeteers are no better. Mr. Little finds himself constantly eating his hammer. The Elf finds himself twitching epileptically whenever he talks. Watch as Mr. Little creates wonderful toys for children just by beating things with a hammer! If ever you've wanted to step over the brink of insanity, you need only pop in this short and you'll know what it means to be mad.




(See more pics HERE)


This is a hard-to-come-by video, *BUT* there are two copies left on amazon.com, both for relatively cheap. I suggest you get your hands on one--you will *not* be disappointed.



2. Santa Claus Conquers the Martians (1964)



When martians find themselves unable to make their children happy any longer, they kidnap Santa Claus in order to put him to work making toys. Apparently aliens travel in spaceships whose doors are clearly made out of cardboard and have children who look like elves. There are some great (and threatening) gun sequences, and you'll find yourself wondering whether someone slipped you acid midway through during an extended sequence of wind-up toys lurching about surrounded by bubbles. Oh, and it has Pia Zadora in it which makes it worth watching just because you'll get to say her name over and over. Pia Zadora. Pia Zadora. Pia Zadora.

MOVIE CLIP

WATCH SOME (OR ALL?) OF IT HERE

LISTEN TO THE THEME-SONG

You can usually find this gem at your local Half-Price Books for between $5 and $10. Or order it on Amazon.com for cheap.



3. Jack Frost (1996)



The horror movie, not the Michael Keaton sludge... A truck carrying an escaping convict collides with what other than another truck carrying a load of genetic acid. The escaping convict becomes genetically mixed in with the surrounding winter snow and turns into a killer snowman, returning to the town to pick off the townies one by one. What makes this movie so much fun is that it doesn't take itself seriously at all, making it a campy X-mas treat to watch.






It's so bad it's delightfully good. Make sure to stick around through the credits which are spattered with random trivia about the movie.

TRAILER

MOVIE CLIP

Most video stores carry this gem. It is also easy to find on-line or at your local Best Buy/Circuit City-ish type stores.

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Yeah, That Happened and Then That Other Thing...

This morning I had a dream that some famous person did something for me and then something happened and then something else. I woke up thinking, damn. That was f-ed up. I should blog about it. Then one of the cats poked me in the eyelid gently a couple times with her paw to see if I was getting up or what, I fell back asleep, and I now have no recollection of whom the famous person was or what happened.

This is *exactly* why I haven't blogged all week.

And to top it off, I still have a thing for Steve Carrell.

I just don't get it.

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This Posting is *UNRATED UNRATED UNRATED*!!!

Having just finished reading Talk Dirty to Me: An Intimate Philosophy of Sex (which you should check out when you have some time to spare--it pokes wonderfully at all our ingrained and repressed assumptions about sex in all its forms--prostitution, porn, fetishes, S&M, and, well, just plain old doing-it) and having seen commercials for the *UNRATED UNRATED UNRATED* version of The Dukes of Hazzard plastered all over the television for perhaps the 1500th time, I've gotten to thinking about this whole "Unrated" phenomenon.

I first ran into the "unrated" movie when going to see the fantastic Requiem for a Dream which received the rating mainly because of the fact that the movie was about some serious serious drug usage. Oh, and for the major chick-on-chick anal dildo-fucking scene towards the end.

It is easy to see why this was released as "unrated" rather than NC-17--the MPAA thought the anti-drug message was a good one and wanted to avoid the stigma involved with a NC-17 film, instead allowing it to come out as "Unrated" so that teenagers might actually be able to see it and learn something from this "anti-drug" message.

But now the "Unrated" thing has just gotten twisted by the marketing whores of Hollywood, becoming a means of getting folks to buy shitty dvd comedies in the hopes of seeing titties and crotch. Why would marketers boast an "Unrated" rating if this meant that there was simply just more violence or drug usage in the film than allowable? There'd be no reason to--few people are going to flock to the video store or Best Buy because a dvd now has a few additional scenes of someone getting their head blown off (or if they WERE to, they would never admit it). Clearly when the dvds for The Dukes of Hazzard or American Pie are screaming at us that they're Unrated, this doesn't mean that we're in for the treat of seeing a whole helluva lot of glorious extra violence or the joy of seeing even *more* people shooting up on-screen. Clearly this is not what this magical word represents.

"Unrated" means "see naked chicks gyrating and giggling for your pleasure." It means, "Go to your video store because now you can nab a dvd that has some really sweet T&A in it and you won't have to lurk around in that dark and curtained backroom to do so! You can pretend that you actually just really wanna SEE the movie (and all its shitty acting) and not just Jessica Simpson raising her skirt in your face multiple times!"

Marketers are smart folks: "Sometimes these versions would have earned an NC-17 if submitted for rating, but often their unrated status is merely for marketing purposes, with the **implication** that the added unrated material is racier than an R rating would permit."*

So these "Unrated" videos have basically just become a socially acceptable way of getting your hands on some serious T & A, without having to feel like Pervy McPerverson going to the adult store or that fancy little perv-room at the back of your local video store. No longer do you need to hide your head in shame because (as with Playboy) now you can get your titty-fix under the guise of "watching it for the plot."

And yet we're completely freakish and prudish when it comes to porn. Granted, there is a difference obviously. The unrated version of American Pie is not gonna be filled with hard-core fucking. But essentially the attraction is the same--the taboo of seeing naked sexuality on a screen where you can enjoy it, um, "intimately" and whenever you'd like. And the acknowledgment that it is a turn on to see naked people and sex.

"Unrated" dvds are a more palatable and socially acceptable way of "appreciating and enjoying sex/sexuality on video." But bring up the topic of porn as though it ain't no thang and see the same people's face flush red and there voices become all aghast with disdain.

Unrated=Ok! Good fun!

Porn=Dirty old perverts!

Porn is reserved for back rooms with curtains shielding them from the general public. It's reserved for unassuming brown paper-bag mailers, for "dirty men" in trenchcoats and slumped shoulders, eyes darting around nervously so as not to get caught. Porn is "on the fringe," though lots and lots of people watch it. It is something to joke about, something that lots of people indulge in, and yet it still maintains the taboo of the "dirty old man" or the uncomfortable jock guy quickly scanning the shelves so as not to be seen renting such filth.

In this respect, "unrated" movies have become like a weird boy-band, teeny-bopper, candy-sucking door, opening people "civilly" into the land of sex, when essentially the attraction, the desire to own, the hunger for sexuality is the same as with porn.

We're more than happy to advertise the nekkidness and herd in customers who'll pay a good penny to own a copy of some Jessica Simpson T & A, but shhhhhh about the fact that people film themselves doing it (and that some of us like watching it).

Americans are so bizarrely prudish.

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Oh, Fiona, You're Always So Goddamn Right...

And it's dangerous work
Trying to get to you too
And I think if I didn't have to
Kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill myself doing it
Maybe I wouldn't think so much of you

(Fiona Apple--"Red, Red, Red")

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Reasons I Sometimes Wish I Were a Mole-Rat Because Humans are Just Way Too Silly and Complicated (and Lovely, yes, Lovely, Lest I Forget)

The call on the phone to drop off a end-of-quarter paper "personally" to your apartment degrading into a request to "come over to 'celebrate' the end of the quarter together" and the subsequent hiding in your apartment with lights turned off and not answering the phone.

The writing of a poem with said individual's name in it knowing that you would be reading it and they would be there to notice. Also, the writing of a poem with fairly blatant allusions to an individual who would (hopefully) be there when you read it.

The being-mean-to-you-and-as-assholey-as-possible-so-as-to-deflect-any-possibility-of-you-catching-on-and-so-I-can-also-convince-myself-that-I'm-not-crushing move.

"Would it be wrong if we kissed?" Hee hee.

The hand-on-the-small-of-the-back goodbye with lingering eye contact, and then the subsequent return with an excuse of coming back to tell a bunch of you about something cool seen while in the process of "leaving."

"So, um, now that I'm not in your class anymore, I was thinking, um, that maybe we could hang out sometime or something? I mean, since you're not my, um, instructor anymore or anything."

The catch-on-to-the-subliminal-messagings-of-this-mix-goddamn-you move.

The encouraging squeeze on the knee falling just a tad bit too high up and lingering a bit longer than necessary.

The blatant request to be told if you're ever "not seeing" the person you're seeing with apologies for any potential sexual-harassment-related misunderstandings.

"I know who he has a crush on. Scroll down to the bottom to see..."

The pathetic sitting outside to "enjoy the weather" in the hopes of bumping into said individual. (Also, the pathetic and abundant trips to the bathroom--which made you look like you should be wearing Depends--in the hopes of bumping into said individual along the way.)

"This Gameboy's getting boring. Wanna go chill in the bedroom instead?"

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Newest Addition to My Morning Routine...

Groggily squirting cats at 5am with a small squirtgun.

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Favorite Quote from a David Copperfield Television Special...

"It was, like, there... And then it was, like, totally NOT there."

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Oh, Fiona, Why'd you do it... What'd you do that for?

When I was a young'un, we used to like to go to the Southgate movie theater, buy a box of Good & Plenties, and, as we watched the movie, suck and nibble off the sweet outer-coating of the Good & Plenties and then spit out the disastrously yucky black-licorice insides onto the floor. (Yes, we were brats.)

Last night's Fiona Apple concert at the House of Blues:

Fiona Apple--the painfully sweet and fragile outside to be nibbled at.

Fiona's band--the bland, bitter, highly-distasteful black-licorice insides.



What can I say? Fiona rocks, and of course anyone who likes her albums expects as much in a concert because, well, the girl's got talent. She's got a killer voice, both on recordings and live. She oozes with foxy sexiness both on recordings and live. And she plays a mean piano. She didn't disappoint on any of these fronts last night.

The only problem: I kept finding myself asking, WTF is up with the accompanying band???

Fiona rolled out hit after hit accompanied by a band that sounded tepid at best and horribly out-of-tune in their worst moments. I felt like I was in an episode of The Twilight Zone or something at times, the band sounding very frequently as though they were playing a completely different song than Ms. Apple, both in emotion and in plain old musical styling. I found myself wanting to turn around to someone and say, "Is this band serious?? Is this really how they're accompanying the illustrious Fiona Apple??"

I kid you not when I say that once or twice, the band was seriously seriously out of tune. At other times, they sounded delightfully like a prom-band which complimented a couple Apple songs. But then they'd seep into this completely bland, completely New Q 104 elevator-style music or bust out a terribly unnecessary breakdown/jam-session on drums or piano that seemed completely out of place with the mood and spirit of Fiona's music. They were skilled musicians, but they were bland bland bland--perhaps one of the worst back-up bands I've heard live.

All that being said (Fiona--seriously. Listen to me, girl. Either get yourself a better back-up band or just do your thang solo, because you've got mad skills and could rip that stage up with narry a thing but you and your piano), Fiona seriously has some bad-ass stage presence and a killer voice. Not like we doubted that in the first place, after three albums exhibiting exactly that (*AND* killer lyrics to boot). She tore the place up with songs from all three albums, though primarily from her newest, "Extraordinary Machine." Strangely, one of my favorite songs she did (not counting the whole encore which was one of the best encores I've seen) was the normally mild "Oh Well" which tore from her lips like a freshly-beating heart just ripped from someone's chest.

And her encore, oh her encore. Truly one of the best I've seen, and I'm not a fan at all of the whole concept of the obligatory encore (one of the reasons I adore The Strokes so much--other than the fact that they're smoking hot and make some damn sexy music--is that they are the only band I've seen who has denied the crowd the obligatory encore and, man, do I just eat that shit up). But Fiona killed. She busted out a version of "Extraordinary Machine" (one of my favorite songs on her new album), accompanied by upright bass and David Garza (her opener--who was mind-numbingly dull during the opening act) on guitar, and her performance of this song just steamed and dripped and wound its legs tightly around your waist like some half-nekkid sweaty little brunette. The performance of this song is perhaps one of the only times that I've ever actually been pleased with (and got goosebumps from) the audience singing along--it lended beautifully to the song, especially during the chorus. And Fiona Apple was just so goddamn cute with her mannerisms during it. Gah. I could eat her up. She followed that with the ever-popular "Criminal" which she rocked out on, to the deafening roar of the crowd. And she finished, much to my blissful appreciation (and the One F Man's as well), with one of my favorite songs off her new album, "Parting Gift" which she played with just her and her piano and which, with its magnificently smart lyrics and lovely melody, ended the night perfectly.

All in all, the concert was well worth the $50. My last experience with the House of Blues at a Ryan Adams' show left me skeptical about the whole venue, but last night was a much better experience--much less bar chatter, a good view of the stage, and a nice wall to lean on. Fiona Apple was amazing with that voice of hers--I am glad that I got the rare opportunity to see her perform since she doesn't seem to tour much and/or often. Ultimately, the accompanying band should be drawn and quartered, one at a time, perhaps to the tune of "Limp," and Fiona Apple should be left to baby her audience with just her magnificent voice and her piano. But I guess if I've gotta bite the bullet and listen to the band in order to get a taste of Fiona, I'd gladly accept the blistering bang.

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My Newest Sources of Amusement

There is a commercial for some trade-school/college that I keep seeing on the television in which the "main character" talks about how he went to school for poetry but couldn't find any functional use for it in "the real world." So he transferred over to the {{SCHOOL BEING ADVERTISED}} to study some sorta trade (engineering/bioengineering/something-something) and it has, of course, changed his life. He now has a good-paying job and is much happier than he ever could've believed. And in the last few seconds of the commercial, our main character boasts: "And even my poetry has gotten more personal."

This makes me laugh every time. WTF does this mean? Apparently the general population thinks the goal of any poet is to have poetry that is "more personal." What this means, I have absolutely no clue. But apparently, people think it.

I majored in English. I got a master's in it as well, with a focus on creative writing--poetry. And never once did I find myself sniffling and shaking my head and wishing, just wishing, that I could get my poetry to be more "personal." Never did any of my profs beat me with a stick and chide me for my poetry not being "personal" enough. Apparently us poets are so mystical in our endeavors that no one can quite think of a word to pin our writing down, except for "personal," that is. This would almost be flattering if it didn't make us poets sound like we're verging scarily on emo.

PS. I really want to visit the "dwarfish pharmacy" (subject line from spam) that was sent immediately to my spam box. I mean, meds for tiny people? That just rules.

PPSS. I've decided I get warm-fuzzies watching women hold and speak into very large, old-fashioned phone receivers. Not stiff-boners but warm-fuzzies, kinkmeisters. Don't ask me why.

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