The City of Boston Must Be Stopped

As I write this, the Patriots are 7-0, Boston College is undefeated & ranked #2 in the nation, the Red Sox just won game 1 of the World Series by 12 runs and the Celtics are about to begin the NBA season after signing Ray Allen & Kevin Garnett and giving up nothing much in exchange for them, making them the pre-season favorites to represent the East in the NBA finals next spring.  Apparently Boston also has a professional ice-hockey team, but I don’t know what’s going on with them. Probably something annoying.

So, allow me to add my voice to the growing chorus of people on the web lamenting this state of affairs and demanding that someone do something.  My initial thoughts involved Tom Brady getting run over by a car, but then I realized I was thinking small.  What this situation calls for is Tom Brady to be driving in one direction, at like 50 m.p.h., and then running head on into another car being driven by Paul Pierce in the opposite direction.  Also, they’re both giving a lift to Manny Rodriguez & David Ortiz, respectively.   Finally, just as every Boston sports fan on Earth arrives at the scene of the crash to see if anyone survived, the gas tanks explode.  Alright, the concepting phase is officially done - now someone make that happen.

Men are different than women

In talking with the missus the other night, I made an offhanded comment about the perpetual horniness of teenage boys, and when the comment was greeted with mild skepticism, I responded “oh please, when I was 14 I would have tried to fuck an apple if I could find an apple corer with roughly the same diameter as my penis.” 

Now, we’re pretty close, the missus and I.  We’ve been together for nearly 10 years, married over 7 of those, and we’ve seen a lot of each other during that time.  But she literally has no idea if I’m exaggerating for comic effect or if my fetish for older women extended to include Granny Smith.  And that’s really as it should be. 

All I can say is, I’m glad the LBC is not a little boy, I don’t want to have to gaze around the kitchen suspiciously in 12 years.

Fate vs Chance

I’ll always remember the night I proposed to my wife.  May 31st, 2000.  Earlier today I watched Near Dark, mostly notable for starring the actor Adrian Pasdar (”Nathan Patrelli” on Heroes) in an early role.  On May 31st, 2000 my friend Jason asked me and a couple friends out to drinks at Q’s, a pool hall on Wilshire in West L.A., but I couldn’t attend, because I had plans to take out my girlfriend & ask her to marry me.  That night Eric Red, the guy who wrote the movie Near Dark (and also the Rutger Hauer/C. Thomas Howell movie “The Hitcher”) tried to commit suicide by driving his car through the front window of Q’s, killing two people.  One of the victims had their skull crushed against Jason’s hip, shattering it & earning him months in traction & a lifelong fear of dining at the window table of any restaurant. 

I think it’s human nature to focus on the times when things don’t go right for us; why did I choose one route home over another & thus get caught in a speed trap? if only I had stayed later or left earlier or said this or gone there things would be different and my troubles would be less.  But of all the universe of possibilities out there, it’s rare we get a direct glimpse into a “there but for the grace of God go I” situation.  I’m not sure I would have been killed or even injured if I’d been at Q’s that evening, but all things considered, I’m glad I wasn’t.

Amusingly enough, when I mentioned this story to a friend who doesn’t live here, their reaction was “Wow. Los Angeles is so full of celebrities that you can’t sit at a bar without having one come crashing through the window in their car.”

Things I Learned At The Newsstand

There are enough professional bull riders to support a magazine dedicated to them.

The market for magazines targeted at men who want near porn but not actual porn is not satiated by Maxim, Stuff, FHM, etc:

If you are a dude who likes masturbating to photos of men but you can’t bring yourself to buy full-on gay porn, there is a magazine for you:

If you are retired from the high-stakes world of international espionage but would like to keep up on the industry news, there is a magazine for you:

If you are a serious cheerleader or merely a cheerleader enthusiast/pedophile, there is a magazine for you:

Missing from this collection are two of my favorite obscure magazines, “Varmint Hunter Magazine” (click here to see a selection of the funniest cartoons taken from the magazine) and “Women & Guns Magazine,” which is just awesome.  Women & Guns magazine is very similar to American Cheerleader in that the publication serves both the genuinely interested & the skulking masturbator crowd in one edition.  As a proponent of reduced consumption, it’s delightful to me when one print edition can appeal to two audiences so efficiently.

Concert Setlists At Flickr

Maybe I’m alone in this, but whenever I go see a band, I wonder what songs they’ll play, hoping it’s the ones I like, etc, and I usually end up Googling around to see if anyone has posted a setlist online.  Recently I realized that the best place to find these setlists is actually on Flickr.  Every concert I’ve been to over the the last few months (five so far, with The Hold Steady at the Wiltern closing things out next month) had a setlist posted on Flickr.  Just search for the name of the band, sort the results by ”Most Recent” and you’ll find a fan who took a shot of the printed/hand scribbled setlist on the stage & posted it on their Flickr account.  God Bless a critical mass of users.

Excellent News for My Fake Business

I got a letter today from Chase Bank, preferred credit card issuer for My Fake Business.  Although my plan to sue ESPN for seed capital to get my business up & running fell through, by using my “corporate” card for all my actual legitimate work bills (which get reimbursed by my actual employer) My Fake Business has been given an even ludicrously higher credit limit (just under $20,000) & the opportunity to add multiple employees to my card. 

Although I do have a series of employees (LBC’s nanny/bi-weekly housekeeper/gardeners) I believe that none of them are documented workers, and thus are not to be trusted with the keys to the MFB credit empire.  From what I hear on the right-wing radio, they would probably just charge $20,000 in cash advances & then mail the money back to Guatemala, although the exact financial details of their schemes are a little confusing to me.  Ever since I started listening to the world’s greatest sports radio show, my right-wing radio listening is way down.  On the plus side, I’m much less suspicious of my wife & daughter all the time.  Back when I listened to John & Ken on 640 AM in the afternoon (show motto: Lookout! Mexicans!!) I was always keeping an eye on the missus (and half an eye on the LBC) to see if they were stealing money from me or My Fake Business & sending back to their home country. 

By the way, if you live in L.A. & drive in the afternoon, you really should trust me about the Petros & Money Show, it’s the funniest, most entertaining radio show I’ve ever heard.  For a sample, earlier this year back when the NFL draft was being simulcast ad nauseum on every sportsradio show, PMS ran the Ultimate Draft of Everything Ever, in which the hosts took turns randomly drafting people, places, concepts, theories & other nouns to see who would end up with the more powerful team:

Petros: With the 19th pick in the draft, I take the Hello Kitty Franchise & all the assorted wealth and influence that accompanies it.

Money: Man, I can’t believe Jesus is still on the board.

Sports Betting Is Hard (part 3)

Sigh… CURSE YOU HOUSTON TEXANS.  And with that, my 2007 NFL online gambling experiment comes to an end.  The money ended up being a wash, despite the fact that I bet $55 to win $50, and only won the first of my two bets, because the online casino bonuses new accounts, so the $5 discrepancy between the amount won vs the amount lost is covered by the bonus.  So I took my $100 and went back to betting random people around the office carnival style wagers like “knock over the empty soda can & win CASH PRIZES,” which is far more lucrative for me. The highlight of the short-lived online gambling experiment for this year was the lengths online casinos have gone to in order to circumvent the anti-online gaming laws passed by the US Government.  The one company I ended up placing the money with used a middle-man who essentially was a “sports stock photography dealer” called “great-sporting-moments.com” that created an account in my name with $100 of value (after charging my credit card) that I could use to purchase sporting images like pictures of the baseball players or whatever.  It was, of course, a front.  I don’t know if they even actually sold the photos, but what they DID do is create a proxy account with the sports book & tied the value of my account at the sports photo place to the sportsbook.  Crazy. Oh, and when I cleared out the account at the sportsbook, they refund my $100 by either crediting back my credit card (if possible) or by cutting a cashier’s check and physically mailing it to me.  Damn U.S. Government, making it harder for me to make foolish wagers.  I don’t know who I hate more, the U.S. Government or the Houston Texans.  No wait, I do.  It’s the Houston Texans.

The Day I Walked Into Mexico For Some Tacos

Patrick & I wanted to go on another roadtrip, but we couldn’t think of anywhere new to go, so we went back and visited the Salton Sea again, this time on the Western shoreline.  It was much more organized & civilized than the wild Eastern shores, although the place smelled much much worse than the previous trip.  Worst of all, some developer was building homes like crazy just North of Salton City, which made me think of young families just starting out in life, with kids or kids on the way soon, all mortgaging their futures to buy homes next to the Salton Sea, which is a depressing thought.

By the time the afternoon rolled around, the temperature was nearly 110 degrees, and we were hungry so we ended up just taking the shoreline south, and when the Salton Sea stopped we didn’t.  We arrived in Calexico (the border town, not the indie band) in time for a late lunch, and we wandered on foot into Mexico (Calexico’s sister city, a town called Mexicali) & got some tacos for lunch.  When we were done we stood in line for the great Northern exodus & drove home.  As always, there were many pictures taken, and annotations provided.

There Are More Pigeons Than You Think

Yesterday the missus & I took the LBC out for a walk to the corner bakery, and while we were sitting outside, I threw a piece of bread down on the ground to feed the lone pigeon hungry enough to approach.  The missus reprimanded me, and pointed a sign above my head that said “Please Don’t Feed The Pigeons.”  I scoffed, which is my default reprimand response, and said “why the hell not?”

In the photo above, you can see the one pigeon, and a swiftly approaching second pigeon in the background.  Seconds later…

….there were three pigeons, with a swiftly approaching fourth pigeon in the background.  Seconds later…

…there were FIVE pigeons, with a swiftly approaching sixth pigeon in the background.  Eventually even more than six showed up, some landed on our table & dive bombed my wife’s head as they took off, many wandered immediately under our feet making me realize that I have a phobia of pigeons pecking out my achilles tendon that I never even knew about.  The weirdest part was, there really was only one pigeon when this all started.  It was like they were fucking ninjas, all of them dropping out of the sky thanks to some ultrasonic frequency emitted by the lone tiny piece of bread I threw out hitting the ground.  Hyper agressive ninjas, too.

God Bless The Internet

In addition to allowing me to wager on sports, the internet keeps putting me in touch with my favorite authors. Roger Bradfield is one of the icons of mid-century advertising, having worked on the design for the Trix rabbit & Mr Bubble, among others, but it’s through his work as a children’s author that I first heard of him. The Flying Hockey Stick was a favorite of mine, and my brothers before me, and now it’s a favorite of the LBC. I read it to her at least two or three times a day, at her insistence, and when I’m not around, she grabs it off the shelf and reads it to herself.

Note the growling for the lions, as well as the “eat!” exclamation. Also note that she has the main character say bye to his mommy. She’s really capturing the key details. So, I found Roger Bradfield’s website, and he’s still alive (having just turned 83). I took the opportunity to write him & thank him for the many hours of enjoyment I got first as a young child reading his books, and now as a parent sharing them with my own daughter, and he wrote back telling me I had made his day & that he was delighted that I wrote him, which put a huge smile on my face. It was like the 9 billionth time I paused to reflect on ways in which the internet has made stuff possible that just wouldn’t have happened when I was a kid.

P.S. unlike with the sports wagering, the missus was consulted & approval was granted for this rare video appearance of the LBC. Don’t get too used to it, legend has it if she sees her shadow online it’s six more weeks of winter.