Thank You Based Sheen.
Science has recently proven what men throughout the world have known for years: when girls cry, boners die. Nothing makes me want to run from the scene faster than a girl turning on the water works. I always thought there was something wrong with me, perhaps I was a cold-hearted emotionless bastard with no feminine side to get in touch with. Nope…I’m just a guy, and the hormones in female tears cause our testosterone levels to drop faster than panties on a prom night.
There’s a reason we men shutter at the thought of watching “The Notebook” with you. It’s not just because it’s sappy horse shit; it’s because you’re going to cry. We know in our heads that seeing you cry makes as uncomfortable as watching porn with our moms, we just never knew why. Turns out the chemicals in your tears are the equivalent of pepper spray to an erection. The subconscious scent of “don’t touch me right now, asshole.” Eau de “fuck off.”
I’ve had some experience with girls actually crying during sex. Thankfully it has been a rare occasion, but I will never forget or understand the experiences. There is an instant moment of confusion as to what is happening. Am I doing something wrong? Did I just break something inside her? Is it really that bad? OH FUCK, AM I RAPING SOMEONE RIGHT NOW!?!?!?
The last time it happened was with an older woman, who was somehow still very inexperienced. She had been in an extremely long relationship with the guy she gave her V-card to and apparently he wasn’t great at handling business of the carnal matter. One night her passionate moans transformed into sniffles, and before I knew it she was balling. Cue the sound of a slide whistle heading downwards. At that moment I wanted to get my Forrest Gump on and run until i grew a beard beard that hit my balls. She tried to explain that a huge mix of emotions hit her…sadness that she had spent so much time with a bad lover, happiness that she met someone she had so much chemistry with, and of course excitement provided by my diddle stick. Unfortunately those tears had enough anti-boner hormones in them for me to never quite feel the same around her, and I broke it off a few weeks later.
The first time it ever happened to me shook me to the core. I was just a wee lad of 21 and dating a girl I had been trying to get with for a looooooong time. She was another girl who had limited sexual experience (1 dude 1 time before me), and our first night of really going at it was like a marathon. But then all of a sudden, on round 4 - like I said, I was still young at the time - she started wailing. We were already being loud enough that my roommates at the time made fun of me for weeks after that, but the crying was far louder than any of the sex screams. I was scared shitless. This was my first time experiencing such a phenomenon. I felt like my dick crawled inside my stomach and died. I never found out what made that happen, and I’m not sure I want to.
In both of these situations I had no idea what to say or do. I panicked, I backpedaled, I tried to comfort them by spewing bullshit I had learned from movies. In all actuality, I was trying to hide my disappointment in them for turning my full salute into a spaghetti noodle. I felt like a really bad guy for that at the time, but now I know my Catholic guilt was misguided. Thank you science, once again you’ve made me feel like a better person!
Shopping for jeans sucks. Yesterday was my mom’s last day in town before hopping on a plane back to Alaska. After dropping off my aunt and uncle at the airport, she had a few hours to blow. She asked me if there was anything else I needed before she left. I informed her that I was in desperate need of a new pair of jeans. It’s become somewhat of a yearly tradition to hunt for jeans with my mother because it’s a chore that I would never be able to handle without a support system.
When I was a kid, I can’t lie, I kind of loved shopping for clothes. I’m sure my dad probably thought there was something fishy about that. It was just so easy before age 12. Everything was a simple S, M, L. There were no waist sizes, inseam lengths, fits, washes, material choices, finishes, or other various douchities to worry about. Plus, before age 12, my wardrobe consisted mostly of Zubaz pants and various athletic team tees and sweatshirts.
By the time I was old enough to give up on zebra striped trailer rapist attire and move onto jeans, jeans were extremely easy to shop for. The first pair of jeans I distinctly remember shopping for were made by Cross Colours. Cross Colours, as far as I remember, had jeans that came in S, M, L, XL. The pair I got were black with a red back pocket, a green black pocket, and two big ass yellow patches on the knee, and they were way too big for me. At age 12 I had no idea that these were Afro-centric colors, and didn’t realize how unintentionally ironic I looked wearing them. I also didn’t know I looked like Snow, dressed as Bozo the clown, as an extra in an Another Bad Creation video. I just thought that I kinda looked like the rappers I loved.
After Cross Colours came the JNCO craze. This was when my generation began dressing just to piss their parents off. There was truly no benefit to wearing pants that used the fact they had “27” cuffs” as a selling point. I’ll be honest, I had a ton of JNCO’s between the 7th and 9th grade. I was an early adopter with them even, pretty sure I was among the first kids at my school with them. I remember actually being somewhat distraught when I realized that they were becoming pants made strictly for burnouts, juggalos, hackey sackers, and future burning man attendees. I just thought they made me look rebellious, like the dirty guys that Cher hates in Clueless.
When I had finally developed enough of my own personal style to start worrying about all the variables that go along with shopping for jeans I realized I hated shopping for them. First you have to figure out a brand. Lee’s? Too obvious. Carhart? Too working class. Wranglers? Too hick. Arizona’s? Too generic. Calvin Klein? Too fem. Obscure Japanese streetwear denim? Too expensive. Ed Hardy? Yeah fucking right. My choice? Levi’s. They are classic, and they have a lot of different fits. You’re bound to find something right? Sometimes right.
Yesterday my trip to find jeans consisted of me hitting up three different stores that sell Levi’s, only to find each one with less stock than the last store. Apparently the holidays raped the Levi’s supply of Southern California. I’m a pretty average sized guy (sample size in most clothing companies even). I’m 6’ even, weigh anywhere between 190 and 210 lbs depending on my degree of laziness at the time. I have roughly a 34” waist. Logic would say I would be easy to shop for. Problem is I have stringent tastes and a very strong anti-douche pant instinct.
My current fit of choice with Levi’s is the 511 skinny jean. In my opinion, they fit how adult jeans should fit without looking as painted on as the name would suggest. The problem with Levi’s is every pair fits a little different. I can be anywhere from a 33x30 to a 34x32” depending on the pants (sometimes I won’t be able to get a 33” buttoned, other times a 33” will be falling off my ass). I have an order of criteria that jeans must fit for me to try them on. It goes in this order: cut (511), wash (preferably dark with little to no fading, as close to raw looking as possible….but definitely no holes, purposeful wrinkling, pre fades in certain areas, or other assorted bits of douchery), then comes size. If I can get that far (cut, wash, size), I then eliminate other stragglers by traits like excessive pocketry, extraneous stitching color, inclusion of spandex, etc. Simply put: I’m picky.
Yesterday was tough. I could find my cut, I could find tolerable washes, but every other person my size in West LA had already gotten the jump on me size wise. It’s frustrating as fuck to find a pair of jeans you would wear only to find out the store only has them in 26x40.” Who the fuck are those pants made for? Manute Bol? Not to mention no one at department stores ever puts things back in their place. There was a pile of jeans on a rolling rack that probably had about 60 pairs of unfolded jeans on it. No way am I digging through that shit. I get cold sweats and swass/swalls trying on clothes as is, I’m not trying to do someone else’s job and work up more of a sweat at the same time.
Long story short, I ended up buying a pair of jeans. They do not fit my “excessive pocketry” criteria, but I’ll deal with it. It took me a lot of painstaking digging and elimination, and trying on the same pair in multiple sizes until they were acceptable. I will wear them the fuck out until they have a cigarette pack outline in one pocket and a cell phone outline in the other, and then it’ll be back to Macy’s. Fight the good fight my average sized brethren, and good shopping to all.
Sidenote: fuck all you rap dudes that say “fuck skinny jeans.” Grow up and realize that your 569’s don’t make you look “hip hop,” they make you look homeless. Your inability to adapt to changes in denim styles directly correlates to your inability to adapt and sell records.
I hate New Year’s Eve. It is clearly the most overrated holiday. Everyone expects to have a blast on NYE but, ask around, no one ever does. NYE always turns into a clusterfuck of mixed up plans, too many options, and everyone in the country clogging the roadways trying to get somewhere “special” for the countdown. 95% of us fail every year.
I have a theory about fun. You can’t force fun. One of the most fun days of my adult life happened completely on accident. On my 25th birthday my mom was in town visiting. I was still living in Santa Barbara and we decided to make a 2 hour stop at the beach because it was really nice out. Going to the beach with your mom…sounds kind of lame right? Well, I decided to call one of my friends, who called up some of his family and a few friends. Before I knew it we had a whole party of people there. Somebody brought booze and, before you knew it, I’m watching my mom fly 7 feet into the air after a wave tossed her off of kayak. It was awesome. We stayed at the beach for 9 hours and I didn’t even get sunburnt. It was an accidental good time. It was fucking magical.
NYE is the exact opposite. Everyone (and their mother) feels like they are required to have a good time on the last day of the calendar year. This is why you pay $40 to get into a bar that usually has no cover. This is why Affliction adorned douche bags and their over dressed bro hoes swarm Hollywood and pay $300 at a club that promises a champagne toast at midnight. This is why the Los Angeles freeways are at a complete standstill at 11:45. This is why your date is already puking by 11:30. This is why you feel like you’re a failure if you don’t get laid by 1:30AM on January 1st. This is why, most of the time, I wish I would’ve just stayed home.
My childhood memories of NYE are bleak at best. They generally consisted of my mom and dad going out to have a good time while we were babysat by whichever friend they could find that was too sick to go out that night. Said babysitters never had Nintendo, or old Wrestlemania events on VHS, so we were left to watch Dick Clark (the equivalent of Ryan Seacrest for the baby boomers) host a television show that led up to a ball dropping while our supervision hacked their lungs up. I will never understand the ball dropping thing. It was not cool to me then, it is not cool to me now. I actually feel horrible for tourists in New York that stand in the freezing cold in a sea of strangers and scream at a fucking ball dropping.
When I was finally old enough to feel like I should be going out for NYE I was generally stuck in the house anyway. In Alaska, December through February are the coldest months. But it’s not cold like most of you are used to. It’s cold that you can’t grasp if you’ve never been in it. It can hit -60˚ for 10 days straight during that time of year. It gets so cold that the moisture in the air freezes into tiny ice crystals and form ice fog that can lead to not being able to see 5 feet in front of you. I remember one year when I was around 13, we were in a deep freeze for so long that I didn’t leave the house (or shower) for 7 days straight during our Christmas break. I didn’t realize how disgusting that was until a buddy of mine came over with his folks and informed me of how bad I stunk. My hair was matted and oily and the old ratty OR scrub pants I had on smelled like an NFL offensive lineman’s jock strap after superstitiously not washing it during a four game winning streak. If I were smarter back then I would’ve just kept it going and been the first white kid in AK to embrace impostafarian dreadlocks.
When I finally got a drivers license and by some miracle I was able to convince my folks to let me drive in the -40˚ weather (HEAT WAVE!!!), I realized that there really wasn’t shit to do on NYE if you weren’t able to get into a bar. The best NYE of my high school years involved me hanging out at one of my snowboarding buddy’s house with about 6 other people. We drank gin that came in what looked like a mouthwash bottle, smoked weed out of dirty metal pipes, and the skanky girl that used to let me feel her up on the chair lift allowed me to advance to what I thought was 3rd base at the time: sucking on her nipple while she clumsily gave me a handjob. Happy New Year motherfucker.
When I was finally old enough to hit the bars, I realized that NYE was no better for adults. It’s just a bunch of people as lost as I am, hungrily searching for someone to exchange cold sores with at 12AM. New Years is like the Super Bowl for me: every year I partake and try to enjoy the festivities, but it’s generally so forgettable I can’t remember who won. Last year I was at a rap battle event filled with rap dudes. Not the best place to try and get laid. Thankfully some drunk latina girl who looked “good enough” walked by right at midnight. She was a “Rap Battle 8,” meaning she was a real life 6, but as she stumbled by half drunk and we met eyes, I looked at her in a Guinness laden haze and yelled over the music, “YEAH…WE’RE GONNA KISS NOW.” She obliged and I went in for a polite peck when she opened her mouth and shoved her tongue to where my tonsils used to be. I never did catch her name, but I probably could’ve gotten a tugger in the bathroom if I had tried.
My point to all this is that fun can’t be forced. This New Year’s Eve don’t try so goddamned hard. If something happens, that’s great. If you don’t have fun it’s not the end of the world, it’s just the beginning of the year.
Sidenote: Please remember, if you drink and drive, be sure to drive as fast as you can and get off the road quickly so you’re only a danger to others for the least possible amount of time. HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!
My Uncle Bob is a good guy. He’s a real man’s man born and bred in Easton, PA. He married my mom’s sister. He was a high school football coach for 30 years, and still teaches high school. He’s a half-Italian, half-Irish/Englishman with a thick Pennsylvania accent. Bob’s a great story teller. His stories about being raised in Easton are like opening a time capsule. He’s able to paint a clear picture of a type of community that doesn’t seem to exist anymore in this country.
Easton was a real blue collar city with a lot of grit. One of those places where you could walk everywhere, yet everyone drove. A town where “ethnically diverse” meant a whole lot of different kinds of white folks, and all the nationalities lived in defined neighborhoods. There were plenty of factory jobs to find employment, and there were plenty of bars to grab a drink at after work. Chances were if the cops had to drive you home they probably knew at least someone in your family. It was a small city where everyone left their doors unlocked. Bob was raised in a Lebonese neighborhood and, as a kid, if he got hungry while out playing, he might just walk into a neighbors house and make a mayonaise and onion sandwhich and no one would bat an eyelash.
Bob seems like he was a popular guy. He can talk for hours about the “characters” he grew up with. But my favorite character that Bob talks about has to be Eddy “Go Down” Canone.
Eddy Go Down was a WWII vet. He earned a bronze medal over there for rescuing some fellows during a big gunfire exchange. One day, after he got back from the war, he and some friends were standing on a street corner in Easton when a local boxing promoter approached them. The promoter told them he had a fighter that was getting prepared to fight for a world championship and they were going to have an exhibition in which he would fight as many local guys that would step in the ring with him. The deal was, you put on some gloves, stay in the ring with him as many rounds as you can and you earn $3 every round you made it through.
None of Eddy’s friends accepted the offer, but Eddy said “Sure, I’ll do it, can I get these guys some free tickets?” The day of the fight, it seemed like everyone in town was there to watch the exhibition. A lot of local guys accepted the offer, and most of them were getting knocked out in the 1st round. When it got to be Eddy’s turn, he got in the ring and started getting the shit beaten out of him but he didn’t fall. He stood there and took his beating and kept trying to dance and defend himself. By the 3rd round, his face was getting so swolen and bloody his friends start yelling “EDDY…GO DOWN, GOOOO DOOOOOWN!!! EDDY GO DOWN!!!” He still didn’t go down, he made it through the round, but he didn’t go back for a 4th round. He earned $9 for lasting three rounds. His doctor bill after the fight was $28, but this was the origination of a nickname that stuck so hard, when Eddy died they, listed his obituary as “Eddy Go Down (Canone).”
Bob tells a great story about Eddy getting a Chevy Corvaire and painting it bright orange with a paint roller. His house was about 150 feet from a bar he used to frequent, yet he would always drive his bright orange Corvaire to park right out front. One day he walked out of the bar and couldn’t find his car or his keys. He figured he must’ve lent the car to someone at the bar and spaced out about it, so he walked home. The next day he can’t find his car and still can’t remember what he did with it. A week goes by, still no car. A month goes by, still nothing. At this point he figures he just has to take the L and find a new car.
Eddy started asking local folks if they knew anyone that had a good deal on a beater he’d be able to afford. A few people mentioned that down at the Pep Boys sometimes folks would just leave their cars when they couldn’t afford to get them fixed and the owner would sell the cars for bottom of the barrel prices. Eddy realized what a great idea that was and went down to the Pep Boys. He asked if they had any cars laying around they wanted to get off for cheap. The owner said to him, “Well…sure we do Eddy, but when are you going to pick up your damn Corvaire that you wanted us to fix the headlight on a month ago?” He had gotten so drunk before he even got to the bar that he drove the car to get repaired and forgot all about it.
My favorite story about Eddy might be one that’s not quite as funny, but has a good lesson hidden in it. Eddy used to run numbers for some local bookies. Every day he’d end up in the same bar with a raggedy brown paper lunch bag. He would toss the thing down on the bar, grab some beers and start getting loaded. The bag would stay on the bar the whole night. He’d go to the bathroom, or go talk to folks across the bar, or pick songs on the jukebox, never thinking to take the bag with him, and never concerned that anyone would fuck with his bag. Why would they? It was just assumed that it must be the remnants of his lunch from earlier, even though no one ever noticed him opening the bag to eat out of it.
One day my future uncle, a much younger fellow than Eddy, goes over to him and says “Eddy, what is it about that raggedy old bag you bring in here every day? Is it your lunch or something?” Eddy says to him, “The bag? Oh, go ahead Bobby, take a look in there, it’s no big deal.” My Uncle Bob opens the bag and sees what must be at least $1,000 cash in the bag. It was all the money he was going around and collecting for bookies on the sly. Bob was flabbergasted, “You just leave all that sitting on the table? What’s wrong with you man? What if someone steals it?” Eddy just shrugged him off and said, “Meh…you know Bobby, I just don’t make a big deal about it. I’m dumb with it. If you’re dumb with it nobody’ll bother to think anything of it.”
Sometimes it’s just best to be dumb with it. Remember that shit next time you’re listening to someone brag about all the big shit they have been up to. If they were really getting anywhere, they’d be acting dumb about it.
(i apologize for the lack of CAPS in this post. i’m at my grandmother’s house. she has dial up internet and no wireless router so i’m posting from her archaic computer. her left shift button barely works, and i don’t want to bother with it.)
i’m from alaska. i moved there when i 5. i moved away from there as when i was 19. i spent all my formative years there and escaped the first moment i was able to. i’ve lived in california for 10 years now, and people are always amazed to find out that i am originally from the land of the midnight sun.
there was always a definitive top 5 questions i used to get asked about the state of alaska. they were as follows:
1) is it cold? (yes numbnuts, it gets really cold…it’s fucking alaska.)
2) is it always light/dark? (yes dickhole, in the summer it stays light and in the winter it’s dark most of the day.)
3) do you get paid to live there? (not enough to live on you broke asshole, every october you receive a check from the state called a dividend but only about $1200.)
4) what are the northern lights like? (they are as if god were a mongoloid that loved to grab a handful of colored chalk and scribble on a darkboard.)
5) do you ever see penguins? (if you ask me this i will walk away from you, unless you are a pretty girl with a lowcut shirt. either way, go read a book.)
now those five questions have all been replaced by the new ultimate alaska quandary: what do you think of sarah palin?
to put it briefly, when sarah palin entered the political radar a couple of years ago my mother once abruptly hung up the phone on me after i called the ol’ “mama grizzly” a “dumb cunt.” so yeah…i don’t like her. oops.
first and foremost, sarah palin was not a factor in alaska whatsoever when i left the state. our governor at the time was the gawd tony knowles, who once shouted me out in a speech. keep it gangsta tony, i know you always will. palin didn’t become the governor of the state until 2006. alaska is the 3rd least populated state in the country, so there ain’t too much to govern, yet she was still managing to fuck things up by the time she was clearly cherry picked by the illuminati to bring forth a new era of (even more) politically retarded figureheads.
the folks behind sarah palin are geniuses. they knew they found the absolute perfect puppet to turn into a powerhouse. “oh you democrats have a black man?…well fuck THAT…WE HAVE A WOMAN!!!” it’s the most out-of-left-field move that a group of old money billionaire white men that still attend clubs where women are not allowed on the premises could’ve made. they pulled an intense reverse psychology mindfuck on america.
the republicans and tea party folks have managed to hypnotize a shit ton of poor, working class, middle americans into believing that their candidates are “shaking up the good ol’ boys” (direct palin quote). a good portion of these folks are living off of the benefits of medicare, welfare, and unemplyment insurance, yet palin and her keepers have them reciting mantra’s about “government being the problem, not the solution.” none of them think they are the “folks on welfare that don’t deserve it” (i.e. “we’re white). all the while, palin and the tea party are backed by some of the largest, richest corporations and good ol’ boys around, who want nothing more than to cut taxes to the wealthiest 2% of the population so the gap between the haves and have nots can continue to widen.
republicans have been the best marketers in the game for quite some time now. if karl rove owned a record label every artist would go platinum. don’t like how the media is portraying you? well then buy a news network. studies have recently shown that folks that watch the extremely right leaning FOXnews are the most misinformed viewers of all the news networks. don’t like how your candidate is coming off in traditional media interviews? well then get her a reality tv show.
palin’s reality show, that takes place in alaska, may as well just be a travel channel show about alaska hosted by palin. it couldn’t be any less loyal to the alaskan “reality” if they filmed it in vancouver for christ’s sake. i watched 3 episodes of it, and she did more touristy shit in those three episodes than i got to do in my 15 years of living there. people up there don’t just walk out there back door and hop on a floater plane to see what it’s like to fish for halibut for the day. people there work to save up enough vacation time to be able to afford 1 chartered fishing trip per year. she was on the show telling a guy on a cannery line that guts fish all day how cool his job was. HE FUCKING GUTS FISH FOR A LIVING, HE HATES THAT SHIT!!!
sarah palin and her handlers are succeeding in their quest to make her a viable political candidate. that’s because they have an amazing strategy. they get her in front of a crowd, they have her spew a bunch of empty rhetoric (“you know the difference between a hockey mom and a pitbull? lipstick” “i see a lot of mama grizzlies in this room” “buck up, or stay in the truck”), and they have her relate to these people on a genuine level. that genuine level is cluelessness and idiocy. “hey look, i’m just as dumb as you about all this shit, we need people like us running the government for us!!!” people eat it up. she’s not george bush, who was born with a silver spoon in his hand and needed to pretend to relate to the working man. she will actually get out there and tinker on your snow machine with you.
don’t get me wrong, there are a few things i like about sarah palin. i love her forrest gump-like journey into the spotlight. i like that she’s good looking, and looks great in yoga pants. most of all, i like the fact that i think my brother, who still lives in AK, could probably realistically bang either of her daughters (the one that’s almost 18 is a certified dime). either way, i’m tired of you guys asking me about her. so please stop.
my mom does not approve of this message.
I rap. I’ve been making rap music for a long time. I’ve called myself a rapper for at least 10 years now, but I was rapping long before that even. Some people mistakenly think I’m an “established” rapper. Most people correctly think that I’m a nobody still or, better yet, have no idea I exist. I have not yet hit critical mass. I have never gone viral. I don’t yet live off of making music. I’ve got a few songs that I like, and some other people like them too, but it’s not enough. Yet.
In my time considering myself a “rapper,” I’ve met dozens of friends that I thought would “make it” only to see them completely disappear from the scene within a year’s time. I’ve seen rappers with 1 degree of separation from me have huge #1 hit singles. I’ve seen venues go from burgeoning hot spots, to scenester havens, to eventually turning into strip malls. I’ve watched groups start organic movements, hit critical mass, watched their fan base grow, seen them not be able to keep up with their fan base, and watched their backlash begin. I’ve seen fans the same age as me go from loving Cash Money Records in 1997, to shunning it by 2000 when they discovered Anticon, to shunning Anticon by 2004 when they discovered Dipset, to forgetting about Dipset and coming full circle back to Cash (Young) Money by 2008.
I’ve seen trends come and go.
The worst thing an artist can possibly to do to themselves is worry about trends. I think every artist is guilty of it at some point. I know I’ve been guilty of it in the past. I’ve compared myself to other artists. I’ve pondered whether I’ve kept up with other artists timelines (“Hmmm so-and-so did this by age 25 and by age 30 was here…I guess I’m on schedule). I’ve called myself “a student of the game” when really I’m just nosy. I’ve belittled other artist’s movements. I’ve been critical out of sheer negativity. I’ve been jealous. I’ve been bitter. I’ve waited for things to happen for me. I’ve been discouraged. I’m done with that shit.
Albert Einstein was quoted saying “Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” He was a smart motherfucker. I’ve been doing the same things for years now. Nothing has happened. I make a bunch of songs I like, I put them out for people to hear, I wait for my big break, and nothing happens. I’m just now realizing the err of my ways. Here I was waiting for the world to change for me, when all I had to do was change myself. It’s a hell of a lot easier to change yourself than to change the world.
Talent isn’t enough. It never was. No one owes you, me, or the next guy a goddamned thing. While you’re sitting here reading this, someone that wants the same thing as you is out there working ten times harder than you for it. If you want to stop chasing money, or recognition, or exposure, start using that thing between your ears and figure out how to make it come to you. Stop making excuses. Start coming up with solutions.
Lately, in conversations with friends, things get asked like “why won’t this artist put us on at his show?” My new response is: “Fuck it, let’s make ourselves bigger than that artist.” Why won’t this website cover us? Fuck it, let’s make our website get more hits than theirs. Why won’t this media outlet review our records? Fuck it, let’s make our opinions more important than theirs. A cosign don’t mean shit. An interview don’t mean shit. A review don’t mean shit. The bottom line is all that matters, and the bottom line is we can do this without them. We can do for self.
I’m ready to stop asking myself why things aren’t happening, and start figuring out how to make them happen.
It’s hard to get into the Christmas spirit when you live alone in a studio apartment and most of your family lives an 11 hour flight away. I haven’t heard any Christmas songs all month because I only listen to NPR. I haven’t been caught in any Black Friday stampedes because I’m gainfully unemployed and my family and friends understand that I don’t expect any gifts and they shouldn’t either. I haven’t even seen any Christmas commercials because I got my cable turned off. I am officially a Holiday Hermit.
My mom asked me what I wanted for stocking stuffers this year. I told her I wanted a carton of Camel Lights.
On Friday I’ll be picking up my aunt and uncle from LAX, which I’m sure will be a miserable clusterfuck of last minute traveler traffic. I will probably get a ticket in the LAX roundabout, I almost always do. If you have Facebook or Twitter, which I assume you do since you’re reading this, then I’m sure you’re timeline has been inundated with the fact that it is the second coming of the story of Noah’s Arc in Los Angeles right now. Not very Christmasy weather, but hopefully it will keep the ticket jockeys wanting to stay in their car.
After picking them up we’ll be driving to my grandmother’s house in Ojai for the Holiday festivities. This will undoubtedly include my mother panicking all weekend about what I’m going to do about money now that I’m unemployed, my uncle showing us new polka dances he and my aunt have made in their spare time, my aunt asking me my thoughts on “Return of the Mack” vs. “This Is How We Do It,” my grandmother mistaking my offhand statement that “I like applesauce” as her new life mission to go to the grocery store and buy every variation of the concoction that the market has to offer just to make sure she got the right kind, and my step-grandfather drinking a bit too much vino with our lasagna and reciting dirty limericks all night (sometimes he’ll do the really dirty ones twice).
This probably all sounds horrible to the average reader, and at one point it sounded horrible to me as well, but as I get older I appreciate the time I can spend with my nutty family as much as I can. By “as much as I can,” I mean three days tops. On the bright side, being that I am the oldest son of the oldest daughter, meaning the first (and favorite) grandson, I will probably get the shit spoiled out of me for those three days. The fact that I got canned right before the holidays will probably also lead to better revenue streams in my Christmas cards. Life has a means of checks and balances…during Christmas it’s mainly checks (sometimes cash).
As we get older Christmas loses that mysticism it had when we were kids. Sheeeeyit…looking back, Christmas was never really that mystical to begin with. Did I really want those stamp, nutcracker, or rock collections started for me? How come I never got a goddamn Power Wheel? How come when everyone else got the NES we only got an Atari? Why was I the one that alway had to put up the fake tree and take the fake tree down? Do you know how many blisters I used to get on my hands from that fucking tree?
I think when I finally find the woman of my dreams she won’t give a shit about Christmas trees. I know I don’t. But my mom does, and at this point the tables have turned for you and your parents. Christmas used to be a time for them to make you happy by pretending that there was magic in the air during the Christmas season. Now it’s your turn to do it for them. Go be a good son/daughter/nephew/bastard child for the weekend and pretend there is some magic in the air so that your family gets to remember that you were actually a cute kid at one point.
Happy Festivus.
“Girl…we are the same, we are basically soul mates, this is meant for us to happen, there’s really no use in us trying to fight it.”
This used to just be a load of bullshit I would feed women but, after reading about the new scientific discovery that some of us are genetically predisposed to be dirty man-whores, I’m completely excited to be able to say this to my next one night stand without even a twinkle of irony in my eye. Leave it to science to make my promiscuity somewhat morally acceptable. It’s not my fault I want a new woman in my bed as often as possible, it’s my parents fault for having two recessive slut genes that combined to create a handsome, charming, and sex-craved monster.
The same gene has been linked to alcoholism, gambling addictions, and now the tendency towards infidelity and uncommitted one-night stands. This gene is the reason I don’t feel guilt when I cheat on someone I love. This gene is the reason that I am prone to believe that humans are not inherently monogamous creatures. This gene is the reason I can’t stop staring down your blouse. This gene is American as apple pie.
Here in America, we love these sort of excuses, I’ve just been waiting for mine. I’m a fairly liberal individual (which, it turns out, is also related to this same gene), so i tend to agree with genetic predisposition and I give people the benefit of the doubt. In this new era of genetic technology, we’ve established that morbidly obese fat asses aren’t lazy, it’s their genes. We’ve established that drug addicts aren’t low life degenerate fucks that want to steal their mom’s television, it’s their genes. And now we’ve established that I’m not a fucked up pervert that enjoys talking innocent fans between the ages of 19 and 24 into the sack for a night of naked WWE title fights because he’s secretly seeking the affection he never got from his mother…IT’S IN MY GENES!!!
God is a funny son of a bitch. Turns out he (she? it?) didn’t actually make any of us obese, junkies, alcoholics, gamblers, rapists or perverts. He made us fiends for his own natural little baby batter spooge juice…dopamine. That conceited motherfucker. This silly little gene, that causes me to seek out bar-sluts with a similar inclination, works on a system of pleasure and reward that causes what is essentially an addiction to my own natural God-given drug. And here I thought I just liked boobs.
So what does this discovery mean to a gentleman like me? It means that now, next time I have a girl down to her chonies and we’re playing “Just The Tip,” I can look her in the eye with every bit of conviction and say: “Girl, every moment in the history of human evolution has led us to this very moment. You and I are the same, we are one, it wasn’t just your jeans, it’s in our genes.”
Inspired by this article: http://www.livescience.com/culture/gene-linked-to-promiscuity-infidelity-101201.html
After three long years of working a job that was gradually making me dumber, I finally got laid off. Here in Los Angeles, this is every aspiring-so-and-so’s dream. Now I will have 18 months time to write more, time to record more videos, time to pursue my dreams, and the whole time I will collect small weekly checks from the government. It’s just their little way of telling me “We’re sorry that the economy is so shitty that the unemployment rates for college graduates are officially the highest they’ve ever been. Oops, our bad.”
Awesome right? I would tend to agree, but it turns out the government can never really make anything too simple for the hard (non) working folks out here.
After an awkward encounter with my former boss while I stumbled in hungover to receive my severance check, I sat with the PR lady at my old job and filled out the unemployment application. Seemed easy enough: check a few boxes here, put your SSN there, check a few more boxes there, and then checks should magically pour into your mailbox once a week.
That hasn’t been the case so far. After sending out 3 claim forms, only to have them all returned, I decided it was time to call the dreaded EDD 800 number. What a bad idea. The EDD hotline is like a labyrinth that you’ll never escape from minus David Bowie in tights or any awesome animatronics. They design this automated menu knowing that the people who are calling it are broke, low on anytime minutes, and that they will never even be able to make it the point where you can press numbers for an option. I was near panic attack by the time it even got to the point of asking me if I’d like to proceed in English or Espanol. The menu is long. Longer than the strange white hair that consistently grows on my left love-handle.
After wasting 16 minutes and 42 seconds of anytime minutes on my phone, calling 3 different 800 numbers to establish a PIN, returning to the original menu, and finally navigating through to the “Talk to A Real Person” option, I find out that the line of other saps in my same situation is too long to get through today. It tells me to try calling back tomorrow. Great, thanks assholes, that was 17 anytime minutes I could’ve used to prank call your mother’s house with.
I still don’t have a solution to why my claims keep getting sent back. After the 800 number debacle, I called a local EDD office that I found out only helps with job placement, not actual unemployment check problems. They still managed to transfer me to three different operators before telling me that fact and finally sending me to the voicemail of someone who has yet to call me back.
Let’s get it together America. It’s the holidays, and your boy got laid off right in time to miss his two biggest checks and a Christmas bonus. I’m running out of the dry freezed coffee and off brand Cheerios I’ve been surviving on, why can’t I Just have my goddamn unemployment check?
