Jump to the jam boogy woogy jam slam...

...bust the dialect I'm the man in command.

Sorry I haven't posted in some time, but I've come over all queer. I got myself involved with a li'l play. If you like New York in June, how about me? What the fuck am I even talking about?



The play is:

Carlo Goldoni's "The Liar" (a commedia dell'arte farce)

Where: SEA (Society for the Educational Arts), 107 Suffolk Street (bet. Delancey and Rivington), 2nd Floor

When: Thursdays and Fridays 8pm, June 7th through June 29th
Contact: 212-591-0358 for reservations

I'm told there are additional matinees on Saturdays at 1pm. I'd call, because I have my head way up my ass.

I like the melody but you can't dance to it

Insane, hate-mongering religious fanatics are hilarious. So is bashing Canada. So is co-opting a popular benefit song from the eighties in order to spread paranoid, delusional notions of shit-eating ignorance and Armageddon. I give you "God Hates the World:"

I'd hate to point out the more glaring contradictions in this chart-topper, but the biggest question I have is, if God in fact hates the world and it's "too late to change His mind," (in re: the hellish and violent destruction of said world), then why do these vicious sinners, who are from what I can tell limited to homosexuals (and BELIEVE me, I live in constant and sweaty fear of homosexuals, ESPECIALLY in Washington Heights. They'll steal your sneakers, man), need to repent at all? Isn't their ship pretty much already sunk? And if it is, don't they essentially win because they've brought the Apocalypse to your door with their actions? If I were one of the "sinners" mentioned, I'd be laughing in the streets. Sure, I'd be going to Hell, but I'd take a little pride in the fact that I had a hand (or a penis in a man's ass) in ending the ridiculous bullshit the mortal world has in it by the truckloads. And you know what I'm talking about. Football, Hot Pockets, Axe Body Spray, obesity treated as a disease, the word "resilient," Tyra Banks, parent/teacher conferences, competitive consumerism, Tucker Carlson, guys named "Chad," the FCC, morally irresponsible spiritualists who post superstitious garbage on Youtube. It would all go away in a giant ball of fire. And let me tell you, if heaven had some of the earthly delights of this world waiting for its true believers, like heavenly Starbucks or heavenly McDonalds, I'd opt for Hell any day. Especially if Dane Cook's going to heaven.

Also, check out how they're flying the Canadian flag upside down in the background. Nothing worse than CANADIAN homos.

I don't know much about art, but I know what I like

My familiarity with Glenn Beck is limited, but his opening monologue here about the freedom of speech and its endangerment is one of the more concise digests of the subject I've seen. This is important. Believe me, I understand the fight against bigotry and hatred, but taking away one's ability to TALK about that bigotry and hatred doesn't make it go away. In fact, the less bigots are able to opine on ideas prejudicial, the more likely they'll strap a crude collection of M-80s and newspaper to a Baptist church. Like it or not, certain groups will ALWAYS hate other groups. However, those groups should be allowed to speak their minds.

Humor, however, is a different story. Humor, for some, is the only thing that makes life remotely livable. To mistakenly observe that our modern humor has become crass and insensitive is to ignore thousands of years of comedy. You're different, I'm different, we laugh about it. That's the way it's been for centuries. It's these very observations of how different we are that bring us together, whether it be flaws, quirks, generalizations, idiosycrosies, trends, desires, dreams. Jesus Christ, even those nauseating videos about the comedic power of pets are only funny because animals AREN'T humans. Are we going to have a fucking special interest group protecting the defamation of cats now?

Anyway, here's the clip. It's the first few minutes that are worth the viewing. After that, we get analysis. And we all know how shitty analysis can be.

In Kalamazoo zoo zoo zoo zoo

In lieu of recording my popular travelogue series in which I ridicule the Midwest in my own particularly embittered way, I will be ridiculing the Midwest in a simple, angry prose because I forgot my microphone.

My trip to Kalamazoo started with my arrival at LaGuardia in a gypsy cab that I'm still convinced was the automobile equivalent of a ghost ship. It had all the charm of my grandmother's living room, each pleather seat protected by an additional plastic covering that looked as if they'd been applied with a tape gun. After Spooky Cabberson and I parted ways, I proceeded to check-in. Now, there's something wonderfully horrifying about learning your driver's license has expired by way of an airport security guard telling you so. Airport security guards have similar senses of humor as former concentration camp prisoners, so my easy charm and lopsided smile only seemed to have an inverse effect on her increasingly sagging face. I'm not sure if it's possible for someone to achieve a "gravelly" face, an adjective usually reserved for a person's vocal tone, but our special guard gave me the ol' Stonepuss. After producing a health care card (apparently this is a suitable alternative, though it doesn't have a picture on it), I was allowed to proceed to the x-ray zone where one is required to take all his clothes off.

It only occurred to me once seated in a hulking mass of plastic and metal several thousand feet in the air that because I had an expired driver's license, I am an expired driver, and I would not be able to rent a car as was arranged by the gods of Pfizer. My initial panic was followed by heart palpitations and imagined cardiac arrest.

The most poignant difference between Kalamazoo and New York City is not how hilarious the name Kalamazoo is (just say "York" over and over again and bask in its silliness). What sets the people of Kalamazoo apart from New Yorkers is that they're all robots. Robots programmed to be pleasant, regardless of how rude or dismissive a guest to their fair town is behaving. An actual exchange:

ME (exhausted and irritable): I'd like to get a wake-up call tomorrow morning.

DESK WOMAN: I'm sorry, sir?

ME (semi-sarcastically): I would love a wake-up call tomorrow morning. 6:30 AM.

DESK WOMAN (no sense of sarcasm whatsoever): Well, I'd love to set that up for ya!

This happened at the coffee bodega the next morning as well:

COFFEE GIRL: That'll be $3.20. Would you like a receipt?

ME: I would love one.

COFFEE GIRL: Well, I'd love to give you one!

I bet you would. What the fuck is going on here? And speaking of "fuck," no one swears in Michigan. Well, at least on a normal day. It turns out that, under stressful circumstances, Midwesterners lose their cool and go batshit insane. While awaiting the flight back to Detroit, a certain nuclear family was a little late for their plane. The father was a little uptight:

WIFE: Dale, we don't have a lot of time.

DALE (face red and enraged): NO SHIT!

Huh. Now, the Kalamazoo airport isn't big. They have two gates. But, I couldn't help but laugh at the father who, following his family's somewhat awkward passage through security, yelled "RUN!" at his children. Now, I'm no sociologist, but I'm pretty sure screaming "RUN" in an airport (that kept playing a terror alert announcement over the intercom, by the by) isn't the best tactic to ensure one's seat on a plane. Who knows what happened to that family. I'd like to think they made their place. I'd also like to think they were shot execution style in a pasture adjacent to the airfield.

What I'm trying to say here is that it isn't all that shocking that most serial killers come out of the Midwest, frothing at the mouth and carrying a sack full of baby torsos. They put a lot of time into being affable, however, for the most part, it's all an elaborate hoax. In New York, sure, we have a great deal of crime and murder, but it's pretty straightforward crime and murder. We wear our hearts on our sleeves. Midwesterners let that shit seep into the very deepest crevasses of their souls and after awhile, whattya know, they have to meticulously peel the skin off of a seventh grader. It's nature's law.

Anyway, I'm glad to be back. This weekend, I'll be going home to Pennsylvania and its subtle racism. God bless the USA.

Now go getcha shine box!

Notice the slightly eerie sense of enlightenment at the end: