BOO!

I had planned to do a much more elaborate post than this... I was gonna upload pictures of all of my wonderful costumes from past years and this one... but the fact is, it's been a really shitty week (ugh... and it's only Tuesday) so I'm just not in the mood.
What I will say is that Leigh and I did a collaborative costume, and it was one of my favorite costumes ever. Maybe I'll post pictures next week if I'm in a better mood.
I love Halloween... it's a holiday that lets people be creative without being pretentious.
I must say, I feel fortunate to have a bunch of incredibly creative friends... one of the things I look forward to every year is seeing what everyone else cooks up.
Anyway... here's a drawing of a zombie. It's the first and only zombie I've ever drawn (okay, that's not true... I did a bunch of zombie character designs for "Invader Zim" a million years ago, but I don't consider those 'mine' if you get my drift).
Sorry this post sucks. Hope you all have a fun Halloween... remember: eating too much candy can make you bleed out of your rectum.

CRETINS CRETINS CRETINS!!!

So... ya think I'm just a misanthrope crank, eh? You think I'm just cynical and grumpy?
Get this...
Some genuis(es) decided it would be lark to take a Pasadena RALPHS shopping cart and raise it up the supermarket's flagpole (don't ask me how)... well, apparently when one of the store's employees went out to take down the flag (which they quite reasonably could have assumed was still up on the flagpole), the shopping cart fell and hit them going full force breaking their neck. The employee is now paralyzed from the neck down. For life. Forever.
I swear, if you took some of the stories like this one (which seem to happen every day... at least in Los Angeles) and strung them into a "MAD MAX" style post-apocolyptic movie and went back in time and showed it to people in the 1930's or 40's, they'd say "Well, that's compelling science fiction, but America will NEVER become that barbaric!"
Welcome to Thunderdome, folks!

YOU WIN, CRETINS!

Congratulations to all of you cretins, slobs, assholes, hillbillies, dickheads and morons... YOU WIN!

I give up... you will NEVER AGAIN have to put up with me 'shush'-ing you at the movies... 'cause I just can't take your loud, inane, grating commentary any more. The movie theaters belong to YOU now. I give up. There are more of you than there are of me (by 'me' I mean anyone who's not interested in hearing your sub-retarded play-by-play during a movie)... your army of stupidity has overwhelmed all the forces of decency, so in the interest of survival, I am retreating.
Consider all public movie theaters 'Asshole Territory'.

Let me point out, I do not blame the movie theaters for this... in fact, I pity them greatly... but it seems that no matter how many clever little announcements they run before the film BEGGING you to shut your trap, you just don't give a damn.

Which is why I am surrendering... any time you're dealing with two foes - one of whom is civilized and one of whom is barbaric - the barbarian will ALWAYS win.

In case you haven't guessed, Leigh and I actually made an attempt to go to the movies this past weekend and found ourselves surrounded by douchebags (pictured above).
Now, I'm relatively forgiving when it comes to talking during things like previews or those horrible commercials that movie theaters run these days, but once the movie starts - call me crazy - I expect people to shut the hell up.

Obviously, this doesn't include laughter, gasps or appropriately volumed reactions... indeed, that USED to be part of the moviegoing experience I actually enjoyed.
In fact, I don't even mind a certain amount of WHISPERING... but for the most part, every single member of the audience was talking in their normal speaking tones... NON-STOP!

I do take a certain amount of responsibility... we usually make a point of seeing movies that have either been out for so long that the general populace has lost interest, or we go to 10AM shows when most L.A. residents are still fast asleep.

We saw 'The Grudge 2' which - make no mistake - was not very good. It really was just more of the same. Nonetheless, there has never been a movie made in all of history that is as bad as hearing people talk during a film.

The fat (and by 'fat' I really mean obese peice of shit) guy above started talking as loud as he possible could DURING THE VERY FIRST SCENE IN THE MOVIE. It was clear that he was just getting started, so Leigh and I turned around and Leigh said "Shut UP!"
Now, get this... this is great, he looks at us and says (again, at a level just below a shout) "SHEESH! YOU DON'T HAVE TO SAY 'SHUT UP'! YOU COULD JUST SAY 'BE QUIET'!"

I swear to you, I was ready to leap on him and rip out his jugular with my teeth... fortunately, Leigh stopped me.

I wanted to say to him "Do you need someone to tell you to wipe your ass after you take a dump as well? Do you need someone to tell you how to chew your food? (a silly question I know)... WE SHOULDN'T HAVE TO TELL YOU TO BE QUIET YOU PILE OF MEAT!"

Anyway...

The rest of the folks (and by 'folks' I mean 'insects disguised as teenagers') depicted above were the types to give a slightly quieter but no less annoying 'running commentary' on what was happening. When a character picks up a glass of wine, they say "She picked up that glass"... when a character gets hit over the head with a lead pipe they say "That hurt".

And here's the punchline... when the movie was over, the girl on the far right said "That was stoopit". Meanwhile, she sceeched at every scary moment.

Anyway, that was the last straw.

I'm not going to the movies any more, so all of you idiots out there have my permission to talk as loudly and as extensively as you want. Only one out of every fifty movies to come out of this town are even remotely worth seeing anyway, and I've got a huge TV... so I can wait for everything to come out on DVD.

Movie execs wonder why no one is paying $85 for a typical night at the movies (and let's face it, that's what it winds up costing). Well, there's your answer: Your movies are horrible and people are scumbags. I can put up with one or the other, but not both.

Thank you - and enjoy the film.

WHITE AND NERDY

For those of you who have been waiting for me to post again - PREPARE TO REGRET IT!

So a coupla weeks ago, one of my favorite performing artists - "Weird Al" Yankovic - put out a new album called "Straight Outta Lynwood". And that, my readers, is today's topic...

It's funny, but ever since 'nerd culture' really started becoming trendy, I've wondered - what's the test of a REAL nerd? I mean, it's pretty hard to find anyone from my generation who didn't like Star Wars, and thanks to its mainstream popularity, Star Wars paved the way for everyone to 'come out of the nerd closet'.

But how many of these people are REALLY nerds? I mean, when you've got hot actresses going on Jay Leno and saying "Oh, I'm a total nerd... I love sci-fi and video games" how nerdy can sci-fi and video games be? It's not that YOU, little miss "IT-girl" are nerdy, it's that sci-fi, fantasy and video games simply ceased to BE nerdy. So 'admitting' that you like these things is no big deal.

Don't get me wrong (oh - who am I kidding... you're probably going to get me wrong no matter how many friggin' disclaimers I write, so go ahead and get me wrong... I hope you choke on your getting-John-wrongness)... I don't begrudge beautiful and popular people for embracing nerd culture... I WANT nerd culture to thrive and grow so that I always have an abundant array of media to choose from. I LOVE the way the wind is blowing... I feel like a kid in a candy store! I used to watch 'Buck Rogers" because there simply WASN'T a source of sci-fi television when I was a kid (none of our local syndicates picked up 'Star Trek' reruns and that show was too brainy for me at the time anyway... I wanted to see space battles, dammit - not get lectured about treating everyone with equality). But NOW? Holy CRAP! There's like fifty billion sci-fi shows on, and a few of them are even GOOD! But even if that weren't the case, every DVD store has an absolute abundant array of selections to choose from including stuff from Japan and around the world!
My point is, with nerd culture becoming so trendy, even if 95% of it sucks, 5% is plenty to keep me occupied. So I have no problem with this trend growing and growing ad infinitum.

BUT, the trend DOES take away some of the 'punch' that the word 'nerd' once had... so what is the NEW litmus for whether or not you're a nerd?
My friends, the answer is Weird Al Yankovic.

I love Al. I love his music. And not just his parodies like 'Eat it' or 'Like A Surgeon'... he does TONS of original songs that are just plain funny (songs that tell stories of Santa Claus going postal and killing a bunch of people, songs about hating your ex-girlfriend, and - yes - songs about food).
On his last album - 'Poodle Hat' - he did a song called 'Bob' in the style of Bob Dylan - but the whole song was a panendrome... how brilliant is that?

Al, to me, proves that you can be silly, childlike, juvenile and dorky while still exhibiting nuggets of brilliance. ANY humorist can exhibit their intellect by being pithy and sardonic, but Al SNIPES at you with his brilliance... he says "Yeah... I like farts too... but here's a dash of academia just to throw off your balance!"

I can attest to this with firsthand experience... when I was in college I wrote for the school newspaper and got to do a phone interview with Al (and got to meet him in person after his Kalamazoo Koncert). I was expecting him to be schticky through the whole conversation and be all goofy and - well - weird... but he was very thoughtful and poingnant.

Having said all of this, I must confess that "Lynwood" is not his best album...it's still VERY good listening, and there are at least 3 songs that I can never live without, but pound for pound it doesn't have the same punch as his previous work.

Nonetheless, the first track on the album - which I think is the number 2 song in America right now - "White and Nerdy" is an absolute scream.
The funny thing is, I have absolutely NO idea what song it's parodying. I know it's a parody of SOMEthing, but it's definitely a parody of just another friggin' gangsta-hiphop thing and - as frequent readers already know - I've grown really tired of that whole sound.
But, while I'm sure the original song probably talks about all kinds of things I can't possibly relate to (the 'hood, drive-bys, etc.), "White and Nerdy" is practically a musical catalogue of my entire existence!

To quote one of my favorite lines: "...the only question I ever thought was hard, was do I like Kirk or do I like Picard?"

One of the things that turns me off when it comes to music in general is when it takes itself too seriously... you'd think rock stars were curing cancer when you hear them talk about themselves.

Why SHOULDN'T music be funny? And not just "Frank Zappa" funny, but OTHER kinds of funny too?
I just think people do themselves a disservice by limiting their musical tastes to one genre. And, oftentimes, it's the fear of being nerdy that keeps them from appreciating the brilliance of someone like Al.

Call me a goofball (and I'll say "thanks!") but I still dig this kind of humor... and I hope I never outgrow it.

Anyway, that's my Weird Al rant - misspellings and all - take it for what it's worth.

(don't you just wish I had posted a painting of a Gazelle or something now?)