HE: And I found out that Green Day was playing a secret show at the club to practice for their upcoming tour, so I grabbed my videocamera, went there, and totally caught them playing their new single.  Then I uploaded it to YouTube.

ME: Wow.  Really?  You did that? I’ve always wondered who films those things and uploads them. And here I am, talking to one of them. You’re one of them. You’re one of those guys.

HE: Yeah! It’s great!  It’s already got 150,000 views and, like, over 100 comments by people saying how cool it is!

ME: Don’t you worried about getting sued?

HE: Oh no, the record company and the band don’t care. It’s, like, free publicity for them.

ME: Okay, cool. So can I find this masterpiece by doing a search on YouTube for your name?

HE: Well, no, you need to do the search for my alias, Biff Barton.

As I was getting a haircut just now, I was subjected to a Muzak version of Sting’s “Fields of Gold.”

Did someone really stop and say “You know, ‘Fields of Gold’ would be a perfect song to play to people getting a haircut, except that it’s just a bit too noisy. Can we tone it down and make it less intrusive?”

“Fields of Gold” is already played coast to coast in elevators everywhere.  Making a Muzak version of it is like putting Heidi Klum on a diet plan.

I’d like to make a Muzak version of a Muzak version of a Sting song.  It would sound like a low, barely discernible hum. You could do a bunch of them and release them as an album: “Sting Proudly Presents: Inside the Mind of a Coma Patient.”

Having recently completed finalizing a Mission, Vision, and Value statement for my company, I’m pretty sensitive to how these things work.  And I can safely say that the ones for the Transportation Security Administration pretty much suck:

Really?  Innovation, Integrity, Intensity, and Imagination?

I’m okay with Integrity. But don’t the rest of these pretty much scare the hell out of you?

Innovation: “The x-ray machine is broken. Rather than have all of us wait around until it’s fixed, can you please come over here and dump out your bag and also take off all your clothes?  Don’t worry, it’s completely okay to do this--one of the TSAs values is ‘Innovation.’”

Intensity: “Sir, can you please open your bag for me? And do it RIGHT NOW?  BEFORE I FRICKIN’ RAM YOUR HEAD OPEN WITH THIS STEEL BAR?”

Imagination: Just to provide some more color around this one, the actual value statement reads: ‘I am the frontline of defense, drawing on my imagination to creatively protect America from harm.’ So how would this work, exactly? “Don’t worry as you go through the x-ray, my friends--I stand at the ready with Neal, my trusty unicorn, to protect us from terrorists!”

Remind me to take the bus.

25 things about me:

1. In junior high I sent a fan letter to Missy Gold, the child star of the sit-com Benson. It was heartfelt and sincere. In return, I received an 8x10 glossy from her publicist.  I considered this a pretty good deal.

2. I like the word “apoplexy,” but I am not very fond of “uvula.”

3. I have a really good beginning and ending for a novel, and I wish someone would write the middle for me.

4. I feel very at peace with the fact that Tony Danza has finally fallen off the pop culture radar.

5. I am terrible dancer for someone who loves music so much.

6. I think that garbanzo beans are criminally underrated in terms of their overall contribution to salad excellence.

7. I sealed my record at age 18.  It contained two crimes.  The first: a speeding ticket.  The second: being arrested at age 16 for getting drunk in public with two friends.

8. It wasn’t really in public; it was behind a supermarket. But the cops apparently patrolled there.  It was a small town and they had nothing better to do.  Ingrates.

9. I am almost guaranteed to like any song in a minor key.  It’s not that I’m a sad person; I just think minor key music sounds more beautiful.

10. I type around 120 words a minute, mostly because I learned on a computer when I was around 11.

11. If I had to choose, I’d rather be a zombie than a vampire, because vampires are all with the faux aura of sophistication and lame accents, whereas zombies are more straightforward and direct about their needs.

12. I don’t care whether the medium is a novel, a movie, a comic book, or a company brochure--I love great stories in any form.

13. I like spending time with my niece, although when she crawls on top of me for several hours, I end up with “niecehead"--a condition that resembles hathead.

14. My friend Meredith told me to say in this list that I furrow my eyebrows a lot.

15. I probably wouldn’t do this if the world would wise up and agree with me a lot more than it does.

16. I picked up my love of science-fiction from my father, my appreciation of a good bowl of oatmeal topped with raisins and nuts from my mother, and my fondness for The Doors from my brother. They are all great people.

17. However, I also picked up their habit of going to bed relatively early, which has annoyed various friends of mine for years.

18. I average three cups of coffee a day.  Any fewer makes me sluggish; any more makes me as a hair-trigger as an rookie cop in Oakland.

19. I usually listen to Talking Heads’s “Stop Making Sense” CD on or around my birthday every year.

20. If I wasn’t doing what I’m doing for a living, I’d like to be the guy who names all those paint colors, like “Crimson Millennium” and “Custard Magnificence.”

21. I have a real weakness for hot dogs.

22. In fact, I’ve eaten so many that they won’t need to embalm me when I die.  My loved ones will peer into my open casket and say “Yeah, that’s pretty much what he looked like.”

23. I am prepared to watch an episode or two of Buffy with you so you can understand why it is the apex of quality television.

24. I’m trying to be a better listener.

25. What did you say again?

“Your reading comprehension is improving, but you need to use a dictionary if you’re not sure how to spell a word like ‘comprehensiveness.’”
-- Mrs. Van Dusen, Fifth Grade Teacher

“Strong thesis statement, but I think you’ve misunderstood the primary motivation behind Dickens’s use of the first-person narrator in regards to the key themes in chapters 47 and 48.”
-- Professor Byrd, UC Davis

“Dear Mr. Howard: We appreciate the chance to review your manuscript.  We found it very interesting.  Unfortunately, it does not meet our needs at the present time.”
-- Editor

”I like your site.  If I link to you, will you link to me?
-- Private email sent in regards to GeeseAplenty.com

“Great press release. But you need to use a dictionary if you’re not sure how to spell a word like ‘comprehensiveness.’”
-- Former Boss

ME: Yeah, lately I’ve been feeling my age.

HE: Oh, you’re starting to get some aches and pains?

ME: Nah, physically I feel great.  Best I’ve ever been.

HE: Then you’re starting to forget things?

ME: I’ve always forgotten things.  Now is no different.

HE: Then why do you feel your age?

ME: Because I realized that in a few years, if you were to travel back in time and attend the world premiere of Back to the Future, you’d be traversing the same span of years that Marty McFly did when he visited his parents in the ‘50s.

HE: ...

ME: My ‘80s is like the ‘50s to the kids of today, see.

HE: ....

ME: ....

HE: ...maybe you should be very selective about the people you make that analogy to.

ME: I know!  I don’t want to just randomly depress people.

My parents both joined Facebook recently. It was kind of a strange experience being “friended” by them. I thought, hey, my parents could be my friends, that could work.

But in attempting to work the system, my mother ended up de-friending me, and I suddenly recognized a whole world of untapped trauma facing today’s millenials and pre-teens:

PSYCHOLOGIST: “What seems to be the problem, young lady?”

YOUNG GIRL: “My Mom de-friended me on Facebook.  I feel that I am worthless in this world.”

PSYCHOLOGIST: “You can’t place your sense of self worth in whether your mother is part of your Facebook network. You must self-actualize.”

YOUNG GIRL: “But she not only did she friend my brother--they also exchange Superpokes on a daily basis.”

PSYCHOLOGIST: “Oh. Then you’re completely f@#*(&.”

However, my mother figured it out the system and friended me again, which I found very empowering.

Then she put up a photo:

Whoa!

My father, impressed with her choice of photo, offered this background to me and my brother:

“Your mom was cleaning the refrigerator. It was just before we were married or just after. She was 22 or 23. She was hot, tired and annoyed I was taking pictures. She was wearing old cut-off jeans, so far as I recall, that don’t show in this picture. I thought she was the prettiest and sexiest thing I had ever seen at that moment, so I got the camera, a plastic box brownie as I recall that used 120 film, and took several pictures.  It is still my favorite picture of her.”

I’m glad that it’s my father’s favorite picture of her.  I, however, am a bit more ambivalent.  Because, frankly, I’m forced to admit she’s a stone fox (by way of Elvis Costello’s eyewear), and admitting that aligns me a lot more to backwater Kentucky families than I’d care to admit.

Confound societal expectations; wear both boxers and briefs.

Slap hard anyone who utters the phrases “at the end of the day,” “it is what it is,” or “chillaxes.”

Never ever give you up, let you down, or run around.  And definitely don’t desert you.

Keep eating vegetables; it’s not impossible that I could have another growth spurt before I turn 40.

It’s against California law to talk on a blackberry or send texts while driving--so restrict driving activities to web surfing, downloading ringtones, and playing “Brickbreaker.”

For karaoke? It’s either The Cheetah Girls or stay home.

Spend more time with George W. now that his schedule has finally cleared up; suggest going back to frequent Paintball & Cocaine weekends.

Pedicures, pedicures, pedicures.

The joke is getting old, so stop referring to my penis as my “land line.”

This year, finally and categorically, once and for all--no parking on the dance floor.

In my day, we went to a music show and we listened to the music.  Okay, sure, you could often see flashbulbs popping around the club or stadium as people attempted to capture a visual souvenir.  But it’s become completely out of control these days with people’s digital cameras and blackberries, clicking away during the show at all times as they try to snag an image or a video clip.  I’ve seen people practically watch the show through the lens of their mobile devices, recording away instead of losing themselves to the music.

Why do they do this? Is it so necessary that your YouTube page get tons of hits?  Are you bragging to your friends that you’re at a show, when they, in fact, probably had something better to do--like see a band and actually listen to the music? 

Don’t you understand that the few weeks have been terrible, like a brick bat slamming against the back of your head?  And that next week could very well be like a wheelbarrow of granite rocks being dumped on your face? And that this is potentially your only chance to escape it all as LoveFoxx, lead singer of Brazilian indie dance outfit CSS, launches into an awesome version of “Let’s Make Love (And Listen to Death From Above)”?  And that you really need to detach yourselves from your material objects and dance? And that if you don’t, there’s a very good chance that I’m going to punch you in the back of the head?

And that I’m not just saying all this because I failed to catch a single good shot of LoveFoxx?

I like cover songs because I often feel as though most of what we do is like enacting a cover song.  You think you’re raising your child the way you want? You’re just doing a version of a song that your parents taught you. You think you’re handling your various challenges on your own terms, using your best instincts and judgment?  You’re just rearranging an old tune.  Even you decide to go in the direction of zydeco and eschew death metal, everything you’re doing is still completely recognizable--all you can do is switch up the rhythm, the pacing, and the syncopation.

Here’s a song that’s generally considered to be ‘80s camp, but this fantastic cover teases out its power and makes you hear it for the first time.  I won’t even tell you the title just in case you’re old enough to be familiar with the song; it’ll be more interesting when it creeps up on you and you suddenly recognize it.  Good work, Harvey Girls.

The Harvey Girls mp3

Grouse.

Do the Conga.

Do the Locomotion.

Do the Crazy Frog.

Vamonos.

Rack up exes.

Enjoy lifetime usage of my current TIVO player.

Hypothesize.

Moralize.

Teetotal (never used).

Doodle.

Snooze.

My cousin Anne is visiting this weekend. At one point, she asked about the longevity of this blog, and I admitted to her that my posting schedule has continued to dwindle as I’ve both lost interest and been sucked further into work and my personal life.  However, I also told her that I intended to keep the site open indefinitely, even if there’s not a single person reading, just to have an electronic “post-it” note upon which to scrawl whatever thoughts I feel like putting somewhere.

For example, Anne is currently sleeping on my couch while I sit across from her and catch up on work and email.  It is no surprise that she’s taking a snooze at 1:10 pm; yesterday we did a walking tour of San Francisco that started on Market Street and ended at the very end of the Wharf, and punctuated with a ride in a cable car that was so overcrowded that we dangled off the sides while we went speeding down hills.  “PLEASE PULL INTO THE CAR” the conductor shouted whenever another cable car came at us from the opposite direction, and we pressed up against a sitting British couple and tried to avoid being grazed, nicked, or squashed by the oncoming traffic.  All of this was topped off by watching The Faint at the Warfield (as well as their very perky opening act, Natalie Portman’s Shaved Head).

Anyway, the point is, Anne is now taking a nap over a copy of Junot Diaz’s The Brief, Wonderful Life of Oscar Wao that I let her borrow, and I notice a few things:

On my commute to work there’s a huge, Victorian stagecoach smack in the middle of someone’s lawn.  A dead person appears to sleep inside of it, his skeletal hands dangling out the window. At night it glows with blue lights.  A few blocks down there’s a shambling haunted house made out of cardboard and splattered with fake blood.  Many other houses have sickly orange lights strung across them, as though they were Christmas lights that came down with malaria.

This has to stop.  Christmas decorations have become increasingly more elaborate over the years--large chemistry sets recreating the eucharist ("blood goes here, wine exits here") and whatnot--but is it really necessary that Halloween follow suit?

These displays aren’t scary; they’re garish. And Halloween needs to be about the scary. It needs to be a quiet, creepy pulse tapping in your veins--not elaborate sets and lightshows.

What I find particularly disturbing is that their creators are the same people who get crazy in December as well.  So they spend tons of time on the Halloween decorations, pull them down, and then spend tons of time on the Christmas decorations.  I would like to visit these people door to door and suggest a variety of hobbies for them, including scrapbooking.  Perhaps they could volunteer at a soup kitchen.  Perhaps they could travel to interesting and exotic parts of the globe, and perhaps not come back.

I live in a condo, but if I owned a house, I would not go to these extremes. I would hang up a few choice decorations designed to elicit sharp feelings of terror--such as paper mache skeletons, the last few Supreme Court opinions authored by Antonin Scalia, and some of my recent attempts at cooking. That’s it. No need to drop three hundred at Home Depot.

Aside from Christmas, I can only think of two holidays that truly deserve this kind of in-depth decoration and design. The first is Arbor Day, because really, who doesn’t want more trees?  The second is Valentine’s Day.  I would greatly enjoy a world where suburban families tried to outdo each other in terms of increasingly romantic, and then erotic, lawn displays: “Honey, you’ll simply have to do better next year. The ‘Honeymoon Night’ scene was impressive last year, but the Parkers have just built recreations of the first seven chapters of the Kama Sutra. I won’t be able to face Phyllis at the PTA meeting if we can’t up our game.”

Much like a salmon swimming upstream, every five years or so I find myself returning to a particular point on the map--Disneyland.  It calls out to me and I must answer.

There is always learning in store at Disneyland. For example--how much will the little clam-chowder-in-a-bread-bowl thingie cost this year? Shouldn’t the “Princess Fantasy Faire” be relocated to a more adult park, based on the name alone? If you speak to the actress playing Jasmine in Arabic, will she be able to answer?

This time, my friend and I found ourselves talking a lot about kids and how one should treat them while at Disneyland. My first rant was about taking very, very young kids in the first place. My niece is four, and she hasn’t gone yet--because, according to my brother, she’ll be too young to remember anything. I agree with this wholeheartedly. What’s up with all the strollers?  Why not stay in your living room, put your babies in a stroller, and spin them around until they’re dizzy? That’s about the equivalent of going to Disneyland as far as they’re concerned.

Also, if you do bring young children, don’t put them in Woody’s Halloween Roundup, which is an arts and crafts tutorial:

You want your kids to compete in the real world. Make them toughen up and ride Space Mountain, not make little crummy arts and crafts.  Disneyland is not a goddamn kindergarten class.

On the flip side, though, don’t scare the hell out of your kids. We were riding Pirates, and my friend overheard the parents telling their four year old: “See over there? It’s a dead person!  See that? They’re shooting at each other?  Oooh, scary!” And then afterward they said “Did you like the ride?” “NO,” screamed the boy and burst into tears. It’s okay to help your children separate fantasy from reality, people. That’s actually part of the parental job description.

Otherwise, kids won’t know whether this sort of image is fantasy or reality:

(Hint: it’s reality.)

My friend and I split on the subject of leashes. Is it okay to keep your kid on one?

She says “no.” Even if the kid doesn’t seem to mind at the time, she feels he will grow up tainted by the experience and feel diminished as a person.  “And become a furry,” I suggested, although she did not think that was inevitable.

However, I am sympathetic to the idea of leashes.  If I ever became a parent, I would be worried that I would lose or misplace my child. I mean, my luggage gets lost half the time; what might happen if I carted a kid around? That said, I do think the leashes are distasteful.  I regard them the same way I regard reality TV show contestants--I wouldn’t want to legislate them out of existence, but I can’t imagine becoming one myself.

And in regards to how old a kid can be before hanging out at Disneyland just becomes weird?

Your mileage may vary, but my vote is 108.