5 Things You Don't Want to Know about Me

Looking to share in some of Mrs. White's shame, but also in a fuckuva hurry to get All Things New Year's ready, here are five things you don't know about me (or know about me and think less of me for):

1. Dead people terrify me. If I'm sent to the basement or the top floor of a house, and especially if this house is unoccupied, I am convinced that there are malignant forces representing people who lived in said house--not ghosts, per se, but something from the genus of ghosts--exactly half a step behind me, ready to...I don't know what, but I know I wouldn't like it. To keep these forces at bay, I sing. If the house is old and someone who is currently dead used to live in said house (and especially if said dead person slept or otherwise lived on the floor I'm on), I sing loudly and emphatically. I also cannot stand to watch old game shows on the Game Show Network, because the thought of the contestants--especially the elderly ones--being currently dead really freaks me the fuck out. Then I start thinking about the parting gifts these contestants won, and I imagine their daybed/dresser set/fridge/whatever on a specific floor in their particular house, and I get pretty goddamned terrified. In fact, I'm done talking about this now.
2. I test myself for superpowers. Often. If my coffee mug is just out of arm's reach, I make sure, before I lean over to get it, that I can't just move the mug with my mind. I also make sure that I can't fire projectiles from my sleeves, that I can't fly, that I can't change red lights to green lights, that I can't predict what people say are going to say next. I've been doing this since I was a wee lad, but Heroes hasn't retarded these casual attempts at SuperAwesomeness. In fact, it's done quite the opposite.
3. I love backwards words. Not like "racecar is racecar backwards" (though that's a pretty neat thing to think about). More like, "Steve backwards is Evets," or "shoe backwards is ee-ohs." Something's awfully fun about saying words backwards in my mind, fudging the pronounciation if necessary to fit the strictures of the King's English, and again, I've been doing this as long as I can remember. Go ahead, ask me to give you a word backwards, and I bet I can do it (within reason) pretty instantly. It's seriously a joy to come across a word I haven't already reversed and added to my eer-a-solg fo smret--in fact, the other day I read "deign" in a book and realized I hadn't added it yet, and I was all woohoo! I know you care about these things.
4. I tie my shoes like an idiot. I'd try to explain it here, but I can't. There's a lot of heel slapping and lace garroting and double-double knotting, and I generally feel like an idiot when I do it, but I do it anyway. Avert your eyes is my best advice.
5. I love The Upside of Anger. A lot.

All right Carrie, Abs, Jame, Patriot, Kelly, even Liss: jump on in, the water's warm. (Or, I showed you mine, so show me yours.)

Wishing You a Whimsical Christmas!

10 Shut-Ups for 2006

10. Elisabeth Hasslebeck. Every time you opened your mouth this year (and I heard about it), you spewed some right wing red state nonsense about how silly gun control is or how dumb gays are or why there shouldn't be a morning after pill or how all girls need to do to learn their place in the world is to wait for a man to tell her. You're the worst sort of repeat-what-I-hear-at-the-dinner-table sort of rhetor, and if it weren't just housefraus and Rosie fans watching you be so pretty yet so goddamned ugly, I'd probably be more upset. Liss says you should go back to hosting The Look For Less, because Yoanna sucks; I have no idea what that last sentence means. Nonetheless, shut up, stupid.

9. People I Went To High School With Who Are Now My Friends on Myspace. Hey, it's great that you or your cousin or whoever scared up a computer (God knows I never got on the Internets till college), and it's great that you've figured out Myspace, and it's great that you've got some free time on your hands at work. Less great, though: your messages and your blog subscriptions and your comments and your Steelers- and/or death metal-themed pages. There's a reason we haven't seen each other since phys. ed., and it has to do with you shutting up. Damn Accept button...shut up.

8. Michelle Wie. Listen: win some LPGA tournaments before you try to take over the men's side of things. It's great that you want to be famous and all that, but until you show some skills, why should any of us care that you're (a) young, (b) kinda cute, with that ponytail and that visor and that lanky frame and that smile and that oh-so fluid body movement, (c) marginally talented at golf? My brother-in-law could beat you 8/10 times, and he's not even, like, all that good. Get your manager/dad out of your ear and go to college. Also, shut up.

7. Rachel Ray. It'd just be nice to turn on a TV or fire up a computer or to buy groceries or look at a billboard and not have to see your lecherous grin as you hold a plate up something or other at that just-so angle. Your husband, granted, is an interesting cat, but otherwise you're just entirely too far up my ass lately. Shut those lips (I'll wait fifteen minutes for you to shut down the engines). How cool would it be for you to shut up?:)

6. 95% of hip hop today. I've been down for sooo long, hip hop, that I can remember when Ice Cube made fun of Rodney King. When The Fresh Prince got within 30 yards of Mike Tyson. When it almost did take a nation of millions to hold you back. And now...I got nothing for you but contempt. It's great that you can list your material possessions in interesting ways. And it's super that you saw a drug deal once in high school and that buys you Hustler street cred. And it's super duper that women are only for fighting over/ejaculating onto. But as I was wisely told once, there's a whole menu up there; there's a whole world filled with interesting people and injustice and love and hate and So Many Things Worth Pondering. Why not write about one? And seriously, producers: this whole drip-drip minimalism to today's beats is both lazy and dull. Put on the viewfinder and, please, 95% of hip hop, look at what Jay-Z's doing with horns, The Streets's doing with house beats and detailed everyday existence, The Roots's doing with exploratory jamming and top-notch MC'ery, Nas's doing with calls-to-arms and thoughtful contemplation, Ghostface's doing in general. Look hard or shut up.

5. Tony Kornheiser. Let me get this straight: you want to be the new Howard Cosell on Monday Night Football. You want to remain the host of my favorite show (PTI). But you won't fly to the MNF games. You have to ride a bus because...why? Oh, right, you're the exception that proves the rule--you'll die if you set foot on a plane. Hell dude, if I can fly, anyone can fly, dig? Just about every "Tony is on the road" episode of PTI pretty much sucks, and every single episode of PTI without you most definitely sucks. You and MW need to be in the studio together for the magic to happen. You've made making dinner suck. It's obvious Michaels and Theismann hate your face, you're not even that funny on MNF (you're actually somehow MORE work than Dennis Miller), and you're so full of yourself these days that even your combover makes annoyed instead of giggly. Dance with who brung ya; go back to writing your Wash. Post column, go back to PTI full time, and, meantime, shut up.

4. Celebrity blogs. You take up more of my time than I ever dreamed possible. I could give precisely 2 flying fucks what L. Lohan cranks out on her Blackberry in the middle of a coke jag, but there but for the grace of God go I to idontlikeyouinthatway, tmz, Best Week Ever, etc., almost every single day. I get pulled into your vacuum of vapidity, and now I'm in a celebrity-news rut so deep that I could hang up posters (somebody please get that ref). True story: my mother-in-law brought her last few issues of People with her here to Florida, and when I randomly picked up the most recent one, I was appaled at (a) how behind the time print journalism has become w/r/t celebrity activity and (b) myself. I'm hollow like you, Perez/Paris Hilton. Breaking News: shut up.

3. Daily Show correspondents. Sam Bee, Jason Jones, John Oliver, Rob Riggle, Dan Bakkedahl, that Aasif guy, all y'all: you suck. You're not all that funny, your live remotes have no sense of timing, your features are just bitchy and mean-spirited, and you generally suck the life out of every episode you're in. Do you think I enjoy flipping over to SportsCenter or (Christ forbid) the local news when I see your pasty faces come on? Because I do not. Get a little more ethnic (Larry Wilmore, the Senior Black Correspondent, is a hilarious, exempt) maybe, and then call me. In the twain, shut up, group.

2. Librarians. Let's face facts: you've never been all that nice in the first place. In my many many years of library attendance I've come across maybe three of you who have actually been helpful AND nice, and that's a damn shame, because I lurrrrve libraries. I love going back in the stacks and seeing what I can find. I love looking at the books around the books I'm looking for to see what related books I might enjoy reading. I love Indiana Jonesish feeling I get when I finally land a difficult "artifact." I love calling the library the libary. The only thing I don't love about libraries are librarians. You're curt, you're snooty, you're always acting like I'm forcing you to do your job by asking you a question or asking for your advice (which, btw, is your job), and now that there's Wikipedia and online catalogs and automatic renewals Electronic Everything, I have effectively circumvented you from the library-going, information-retrieving process, and that makes me all smiley and moist. Now just one more thing, booksnobs: Shhhh.

1. Steve. Shut up, me. You've been pretty bitchy lately, and there's really no reason for it, is there? Waa, my back hurts. Waa, my fantasy football team's giving handjobs at the rest stop. Waa, I'm gonna take up soccer 'cause the Browns are so bad. Waa, no one uses adverbs correctly anymore. Get over yourself. You've got plenty to be happy about--great job, great family, great friends, lots of pets, many pairs of shoes, some creative facial hair--so turn off Disintegration for five fucking seconds and smell the roses. Shut up, me.

Better Know a Fantasy Football Team While It's Technically Still Alive

waitingroommagazines, my fantasy football team, faces certain elimination tonight. This saddens but doesn't suprise me. Better know them, woncha?

• Carson Palmer: Much like a subscription to Rolling Stone, you wonder what the hell made you take the plunge and take a chance on a known-to-be-hurtin' commodity. Sure, by the time your subscription's run out you've come to look forward to the odd album review, cover story, or ability to find Ocho Cinco open down the sideline, but by then you've gotten either a This is Your Last Issue card or you've drawn Carrie's Frankenteam in the first round of the playoffs and you just know it can't end well.
• Terry Glenn: Much like eating a Raisinette in Kroger and not paying for it, Terry Glenn was ill-gotten and really not all that fun to get away with. Go Buckeyes anyway!
• Antonio Bryant: Much like earning a degree in polymer engineering and then taking a job with Best Buy because you're not interested in passing a drug test just yet, AB was all talent and no gumption. His QB also gives off the vibe of an HH Gregg salesman, which is never good.
• Musin Muhhamad: Much like being the Lisbon girls in The Virgin Suicides, MM was content to garner attention from lesser men and let other, less restrained folks horne in on all the hot junior high post route action. Instead of killing himself, though, he just broke his hand on Friday, said he wasn't going to play on Sunday, but then he did anyway after I benched him, and he scored more points than all my WR's put together. I will do no lament-laden voice-over over his sad tale. Ditto for Kirsten Dunst.
• Larry Johnson: Much like that Native American solider in Predator, LJ was big, stoic, talked to the earth in a slightly racistly stereotypical way. A real brusier with so much potential you can't NOT draft him #1, over, say, Carl Weathers (LT). He performs well enough under durress for the most part, but just when you need him, he kinda snaps under the pressure, cutting himself with a knife and daring San Diego's defense to uncloak, make some clicky noises, and eviscerate him. Pity.
• Rudi Johnson: Much like a shoplifted copy of Pink Floyd's Pulse that you and one of your college girlfriends both lifted from Sam Goody, Rudi Johnson was an exhilarating find and a great way to feel safely naughty. And much like a double live psychadelic album from a bunch of British burnouts, Rudi needs to score 8 TD's tonight (and maybe kick a few extra points).
• Randy McMichael: Much like the Star Wars prequels, you were so excited early on, when anything was possible. You know where it went from there.
• Kevin Jones: Much like that shorter, maybe-half-retarded kid who never got chosen early in pickup basketball games at your local playground but who, it turns out, spends his waking hours working on his post game and who has court vision and hops and despite his personal body odor is really a great addition to the Skins team but who, tragically, gets hurt just when you need him most to show up the high school kids (oh, let's call them bwaremycarebearstare) who called Next and who now sits on the sideline, kinda like Dukie from The Wire, doing nothing but stinking your bench up. Goddamn it.
• Ryan Longwell: Much like you didn't consort with your high school kicker, you don't know a fucking thing about Ryan Longwell except he scored one measly point yesterday.
• San Diego Defense: Much like the inner city football team that Goldie Hawn coaches in Wildcats, SD's D was scrappy when it needed to be, a real bend-don't-break operation who gets by on crude urban humor and Woody Harrelson's good looks. But much UNLIKE that team, these St. Francis of Assisissies decided not to let LJ score one fucking TD last night and therefore deserve to lose their big state game against the preppy white high school, imporbably coached by Goldie's ex-husband.
• Random defensive player: Much like someone you hold a door open for at a Florida resort, you don't know much about random defensive players. You get a hunch about them, and that hunch almost always proves to be wrong. Eat a dick, Will Witherspoon. A big one.

Huzzah, y'all!

Let me apoogize in advance for this post sucking.

• All my students passed! I'll spare you the details of how my dept. does things, but suffice to say I'm proud of the little fuckers. Many of them have the bad, bad luck good, good fortune to have me again next semester, and I look forward to teaching them1 some more chocolatey goodness.
• My back is better! I went to a witch doctor chiropractor yesterday--a young lady of no more than 24 years and no more than 100 pounds--and she put shocker things on my muscles and then popped me all around, and even though I'm sore as hell today, I can tell that I'm more mobile. The fifteen minutes I spent staring (and sweating) through the facehole was the longest I've gone without being keyed into something--a tv, a phone, that series of tubes we call the Interweb, an iPod--and it was kinda creepy nicely serene. All I was missing to make it a totally 1995 moment was some earrings, more and longer and greener hair, a copy of The Fountainhead, a KMFDM t-shirt.
• My climate's going to improve! The kid's packing up the wife and the in-laws and heading to West Palm Beach, FL, for a week. Big Steve and Sheila are watching the cat. There are supposed to be water aerobics, a gym, and a beach at the resort we're staying at, and I'm sure I'll never go near them take full advantage and get my ass in shape. And the rest of me. For reasons pertaining to the even-ing of face tanness, today I'll be taking my beard off. I know you care about these things.
• I have terrific taste in music! My Morning Jacket's--a band I like but don't believe I've ever before mentioned--Cleveland concert is up. Stunning stuff I'm sure you'll ignore and roll your eyes at enjoy during your many and various leisure hours. Thanks the for the link (and the lists), CP. Speaking of which...
• I'll have the time, the laptop, and hopefully the gumption to list stuff I've liked from the past year! I'll do the same old movies/music/tv lists that I've always done, but I'm willing to consider suggestions for funner/more interesting categories if anyone can think of any because I really haven't been able to do so myself. Shameless pandering ahead So leave a comment if the mood strikes. Maybe my favorite blog posts of the year? Or my favorite YouTube clips? (Chuckles K. has a new Esquire column re: YouTube up, by the by.)
• What the hell's the myrrh?! Go here and click on 2 A-Holes at a Live Nativity Scene. Definitely plasma. SNL was actually pretty damn funny last week, which fucking amazes me makes me happy. I don't know, probably Jager? Will Forte (who's a fucking hoot in every sketch he's in) sang an awesome song on Weekend Update, too, about gay marriage. '88 Lakers.

That's all for now. More later. How've you been?

1 From a professor rating site re: yrs. truly: "He's a great guy. The class was useful and mostly pretty interesting. He's got a unique style which may rub some the wrong way. Watch out, he'll give sh!t to slackers.. but it's usually pretty funny." And (and this student also labelled me, um, "hot"): "He always makes himself available to his students. Conferences are productive, but it is a relaxed atmosphere, making it much easier to talk to him. Also, he has awesome taste in music."

The First Blogger Ever...

• to recommend a movie (a year too late). Me and You and Everyone We Know is a spledid little film to whittle away a chunk of an afternoon on your apartment floor. According to my DVR, "A video artist reluctantly enters a prolonged courtship with a recently divorced shoe salesman," and that's a correct synopsis, just like "Parapsychologists hunt New York poltergeists" is. MaYaEWK is downright inspirational at times, richly funny at others, and always (e.g., not never) independent in the best sense of the term. Stars Sol from Deadwood, if that does anything for you. Weirdo. [thx. P and C., and you're welcome for Bad Santa.]
• to bitch about a personal problem. Have I told you that the muscles in my back have staged a prison riot and are now holding my humanlike movements, overall flexibility/dexterity, and inability to grunt when I sit down/up hostage? Bastards aren't even making demands!
• to go on and on about a pet. Stirf was on top of Spike's reptarium this morning (Spike had woken up with a ravenous appetite and more than a little spunk yesterday, to the cat's infinite puzzlement), so I got to use my "outdoor voice" quite early this morning. Go ahead and imagine my halfway crippled ass hobbling "briskly" around the joint, chasing a cat, yelling about fire hazards and no pet clauses in the lease, etc.

Ask Me About Time Weiner!

Since my cable sucks and I don't have a satellite dish (yet) and the game's only on the NFL Network (and Fox 8--so jealous!), I have to go to a bar on a Thursday night (something I know absolutely nothing about) to watch your Cleveland Browns knock the Steelers out of the playoffs tonight. Who's coming with me? I wonder if I can behave myself if they lose...I've been known to scare the cat (and the company) during lower points in Browns history...

Legend: Browns = Bo Jackson, Steelers = every other player on Tecmo Bowl:




On the upside though:




Here we go Brownies, here we go!

Imagine Euthanizing a Beloved Pet. Now, Imagine the Opposite of that. The Second Thing is What a My Morning Jacket Show Feels Like.

Our evening began in the afternoon. We left for Cleveland in ye olde Hyundai around 4, and after 2 hours on the road (including a completely surreal stop at a random McDonald's, a franchise the inside of which I haven't been in in like 15 years; seriously), we arrived at our dinner destination. There were fancy breads, there were hearty steaks, there were pots of seafood. Dabbing the corners of our mouths with napkins, we finished our meals and settled in for a evening of My Morning Jacketry.

There was an opening band, and they were good enough. The Slip. They were kind of avant rock (just let me pretend like I know what that means, ok?), they wore animal helmets, and they played toy xylophones as percussion instruments. Interesting enough, as it was put to me. As I write this, I have received word that The Slip is indeed available on emusic, and I'm happy about that. There hasn't been a lot of new music to get all horny over lately, has there?

Anyway.

The band came out. They began playing their own special brand of ethereal, country-tinged stadium rock. There were strobe lights. There was a smoke machine. They tore into At Dawn (not my favorite song, but a sturdy enough one...), and the crowd was instantly keyed in. Surely we were in for a sonic treat! An especially awesome breakdown during Off the Record was a highlight, as was the solo for Dondante, the sullen-osity of The Way He Sings, the chorus of Wordless Chorus (during which Jim alternately thrust at the crowd and clutched close a plush wooly mammoth; seriously), and the length and breadth of Phone Went West.

An aside: Phone Went West is exactly why I love MMJ's lyricism as much as I adore their sound. The words to PWW are simple enough
(Is there a doctor in the house tonite?
If there's a wrong, he could make it right.
Is there still a lock on your front door?
Is there still a lock on your back door?
Tell me I'm wrong, tell me I'm right.
Tell me there's nobody else in the world.
Tell me I'm wrong. Tell me I'm right.
Tell me there's nobody else in the world)
but it's what you choose to do with these words that make MMJ MMJ and not your crappy favorite band: you can see this song as a lament on emotional unavailability, you can see it as a threat from a controlling old boyfriend, you can see it as a plea to get help, and you can be right each time. Mostly, seems to me, Jim James' lyrics are upbeat, positive, even kinda Christian. But lying just beneath the surface is this fucking awesome sense of menace, but only if you choose to look for it. (George Orwell pulls off this nonsense, too--this ability to allow every person who encounters his work to interpret it differently yet accurately--and I marvel at it.)

Anyway.

For their encore, they busted out Golden, an agreed upon classic played to near-perfection, Steam Engine, Magheeta, and then the best version of Anyime I've ever heard. I wish I could write more intelligently about music, because nothing I come up with can belie the fact that the sound these guys make is so big, so EPIC, yet oh-so personal that I can't hardly take it. I've been to literally dozens and dozens of concerts, seen hundreds of bands, and after watching MMJ do their thing twice now...they're playing a game with which I am unfamiliar.

JJ played approximately 7 different guitars throughout the night (the badass Fender being the best and most effective), he rocked some pretty fucking terrific moonboots for the duration, and to say that dude has some stage presence is to put it lightly. Sliding around the stage, scaring his drummer, leaning out into the crowd, he completely owned a whole House of Blues filled with cooler-than-thou hipsters. This is not easy to do. He is a supremely weird individual (one gets the sense he didn't make many friends in high school, as he was too busy drawing pentagrams on his Trapper Keeper), but he's also a savant virtuoso with grand visions, and I'd say that's working out for him.

Another aside: coming back from the bar to my spot on the floor, I got almost knocked over by a blunt force that struck my knees from behind. I thought maybe I was getting soccer-tackled or something, but when I turned around, I saw that a 20-ish year old girl had passed out and my knee had broken her fall (which pleased me, for her sake). Her friends gathered around her as she lie on her back, eyes open but rolled back in her head. Then she vomited. It shot out of her mouth and...up her face, covering her nose, eyes, forehead, then hair. They rolled her over as she started to wipe her own face off. If I have to see these things, you have to read about them.

I bought a t-shirt and a bumper sticker. I stole a one-sheet from a pillar. My boy Chad got his grubby little hands on the actual set list from the stage (I'd post a picture of it but Blogger is a real dickweed today.) I pretty much plan on seeing this band as many times as I possibly can before one of us dies. TMy Morning Jacket is an almost unimaginable sythesis of nearly all of my musical interests, they're terribly wonderfully awfully pleasing to my ears and the ears of others, and if I were a dictator, I would, without hesitation, kidnap them and make them play twice a night at my palace. Under penalty of torture. I'm 87% kidding.

And, since I know you're curious, here is a list of words that I've had to manually enter into my cell phone's text message vocabulary:

• Abby
• badass
• BG
• blog
• buckeyes
• cased
• damn
• effette
• FF
• fuck
• fucked
• fucker
• fucking
• gracias
• haha
• havent
• horsefaced
• ive
• Liss
• Metallica
• motherfucking
• mortibund
• muddah
• ooh
• pedicure
• pussy
• Saarsgaard
• senorita
• shes
• shitty
• Stirf
• theres
• theyre
• tits
• youve