Bastard of art and commerce

To the residents of Abu Dhabi, Iran, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Kuwait, et al.

2009-08-11T16:57:00.000-07:00

You really want to see naked ladies. I know you do, and I really hope that some day you may have that option (as long as the naked ladies are consenting, competent adults with full agency). But you aren't going to find naked ladies here. Every day, my traffic log tells the tale of hard-up folks needing some huggin' and kissin' in your part of the world, and it saddens me.

It also creeps me out.

Sorry.

Songs I hummed today

2009-08-03T21:59:00.001-07:00

I am an inveterate hummer and whistler, this in spite of having a horrible memory for melodies and being tone-deaf. I am also a terrible whistler.

But no matter. It's not my problem; it's everyone else's.

Anyway, I kept a running tally of the melodies I heard in my head today that came out in a tuneless rush (out of my mouth). These are they.

Who'll Be the Next In Line? (The Kinks)

Thelahujinjeet (sp?) (King Crimson)

The Common People (Pulp)

Let There Be Rock (AC/DC) (I think with this one I may have managed a quick vocalization of LETTHEREBEROCK out the side of my mouth. I probably sounded more like Brian Johnson than Bonn Scott, and that causes me a lot of heartache.)

The Primo Vere section from Carmina Burana (That's not the scary part. It's the light and airy part afterwards that sounds like an Alpine pagan mating ritual)

Is it Really So Strange? (The Smiths) ("I left the South. I travelled north. I got confused – I killed a horse. I can't help the way I feel.")

White Man in Hammersmith Palais (The Clash)

Happy Talk, from "South Pacific"

That's it.

Lothar's Floating Morsel

2009-07-07T11:16:00.001-07:00

Another goddamn thing wrong about advertising.

2009-06-18T11:32:00.000-07:00

TARGETS.

That is demographic targets, the low hanging fruit, that poor bastard abstraction that is being profiled and dissected and talked about in dark rooms in hushed tones.

The mythic user that uses things following the exact prescribed CORRECT method, the moron who smiles because her kids have fucking stars radiating from their eyes because they picked up some 39 cent stuffed toy made by political prisoners play skeeball at Chuckie Cheese's.

They are the people that you see on TV that makes you yell "fuck you, asshole! Nobody loves room deodorizer that much!"

Bad companies build castles on these sandy foundations, and are fucking ANGRY when the whole of humanity fails to produce one of these automatons.

Good brands, the best brands, don't presume to know what the consumer is going to do with their product.

Post-it notes?

Yes, I'm talking about Post-it Notes.

This is a terrible entry.

How are you?

My Golden Treasury of Eyestrain!

2009-06-10T11:23:00.000-07:00

Because I'm turning forty this year and I'm not about to take up physical activity, I have set out to read 75 books in 2009.

I've tried to read books that "count", thorny books I've been meaning to read but were intimidated by.

I'm at around 54 right now, and I'm working on two right now, Fooled by Randomness and The Trouble with Testosterone.

Here's everything I've knocked down to date:

A Few Seconds of Panic (A journalist attempts to be a professional placekicker in the NFL)

Polyphemus (Creepy short stories)

Alan's War The Memories of G.I. Alan Cope (Lovely Biographic Graphic Novel)

Burma Chronicles (Graphic Novel the author's experiences living in Burma)

Why Is There Something Rather Than Nothing?: 23 Questions from Great Philosophers
(Leszek Kolakowski)

The Wasp Factory (Disturbing novel)

The Beautiful Struggle (Lyrical autobiography of an African American guy who blogs for the Atlantic)

The Spiritual Tourist (British journalist investigates various Gurus)

The Politics of Chaos in the Middle East (Book about the various factions within Middle Eastern politics)

Understanding Comics (Nice meditation on the art of Comics)

City of Glass The Graphic Novel (Graphic Novel version of Paul Auster's crazy novel)

Cults In Our Midst (Book about scary cults!!)

Rum, Sodomy & the Lash (33 1/3) (Slim little book about the Pogues album)

The Borscht Belt (History and anecdotes from the Borscht Belt from Joey Adams, old school Jewish stand-up comedian and tummler)

Science, Politics and Gnosticism (Cranky rant from a conservative German political scientist)

Myth and Reality (Mythic vs. reality-based temporal experiences. The author, Mircea Eliade, makes a roman a clefy appearance in Saul Bellows' Ravelstein as a pro-fascist crank)

Every Force Evolves a Form (Really, really good collection of essay written by Guy Davenport. Amazing stylist.)

Feet of Clay (Pathology of Gurus. I was on a cult jag.)

The structure of scientific revolutions (Many people talk about this book. I decided to read it. Painful.)

Wabi-Sabi: for Artists, Designers, Poets & Philosophers (Airy Fairy book about Japanese aesthetics. Probably a good bathroom books for homes with an abundance of potpourri and smelly candles)

Nixonland (A doorstop of a book about the rise of Nixon)

Truth About the Irish (Terry Eagleton. Pretty slight but funny)

The Ayatollah Begs to Differ (Really good book about internal Iranian politics by an Iranian American guy)

Moonshine (OH MY GOD. Great book. Author hangs out with a revenue agent, busting moonshiners. Alec Wilkinson is the author)

Noodling for flatheads (Author examines various curiosities of Southern American culture, such as eating squirrel brains. Funny book.)

Something Wonderful Right Away (Oral history of the Compass Players, the forerunner to Second City and various improv comedy troops)

catapult: harry and I build a siege weapon (Two guys build a catapult. Better than it sounds)

The Devil We Know (More Iran. Not as fun to read as the Ayatollah book above)

Your Name Here (POEMTRY, John Ashbury.)

A Childhood: A Biography of Place (Hair raising memoir of a Georgia childhood)

The Wisdom of Doubt (Exhaustive philosophical apologia of religious doubt)

Moral Minority (The Founding Father were children of the Enlightenment and skeptics.)

Patriotism and Other Mistakes (Various essays by George Taleb about various aspects of public life)

Imagined Communities (Benedict Anderson's look at the invention of nationalism)

Marriage, a History (See title)

Boys on the Bus (Journalists are bored and drink a lot during the McGovern campaign in '72)

Jesus Interrupted (Book about inconsistencies in the New Testament)

Being Good: An Introduction to Ethics (See title)

Creationists (Forgettable collection of essays by by E.L. Doctorow)

TWELVE YEARS An American Boyhood in East Germany (Great book by James Agee's son, who grew up in East Germany)

Veeps (Funny survey of American Vice Presidents)

On Being Certain (Neurologist and physician posits that the feeling of certainty has nothing to do with outward reality)

The Devil's Candy (Book about the film version of Tom Wolfe's "Bonfire of the Vanities")

The Corpse Walker: Real Life Stories: China from the Bottom Up (Great book about misfits in modern CHina. Sort of like a studs terkel book)

Politics of the Governed (Partha Chattergee's rejoinder to the Benedict Anderson book referred to above. Newly emergent post-colonial democracies are missing an opportunity when they attempt to emulate the institutions of former colonial powers.)

Losing My Religion: How I Lost My Faith Reporting on Religion in America-and Found Unexpected Peace (Believing LA TImes reporter covers religion, and is subsequently grossed out.)

Inventing American History (Boston Review Books) (Three slender essays about how popular history is tweaked and glossed over in order to serve national mythologies)

The Occult in Russian and Soviet Culture
(Okay, I sort of ended up with this one in a roundabout way.

At my last on-site freelance assignment, there is a pretty good little bookstore nearby where'd I'd peruse the shelves during my lunch break.

I was poking around in the philosophy section, looking at shelf after shelf of books whose titles I couldn't understand when I came across something called Slavoj Zizek presents Mao: On Practice and Contradiction. I'm a begrudging fan of Zizek, mainly because he can be funny and he's as pragmatic as a crazed Marxist can get, and I'd imagine he'd have an interesting take on Mao.

I pick up the volume, and I see that all Zizek did was write an introductory essay to Mao's On Practice and Contradiction. And who the hell wants to read Mao?

So I note the title of Zizek's essay "Mao Zedong: The Marxist Lord of Misrule" and decide to Google it when I get back to the office. Sure enough, it's there in it's entirety. I print up for the train ride home.

Interesting essay. Lays the foundation for an expensive future visit to Amazon. But one strange little passage sticks with me (Read it. It's long but weird):

"Mao's speculations closely echo the so-called "bio-cosmism," the strange combination of vulgar materialism and Gnostic spirituality which formed occult shadow-ideology, the obscene secret teaching, of the Soviet Marxism. Repressed out of the public sight in the central period of the Soviet state, bio-cosmism was openly propagated only in the first and in the last two decades of the Soviet rule; its main theses are: the goals of religion (collective paradise, overcoming of all suffering, full individual immortality, resurrection of the dead, victory over time and death, conquest of space far beyond the solar system) can be realized in terrestrial life through the development of modern science and technology. In the future, not only will sexual difference be abolished, with the rise of chaste post-humans reproducing themselves through direct bio-technical reproduction; it will also be possible to resurrect all the dead of the past (establishing their biological formula through their remains and then re-engendering them - at that time, DNA was not yet known...), thus even erasing all past injustices, "undoing" past suffering and destruction."

WHAT. THE. FONZI.?

COSMISM! Sound like a worthy candidate for my book buying dollars! Red zombies!

Now, it just so happens about a year ago I went through a Stalinism phase, because who hasn't, right? (Note: I was not an actual Stalinist. I was just interested in that period in Russian history, okay?) One of the books I picked up was a strange, very interesting book called New Myth, New World From Nietzsche to Stalinism, which made that case that Soviet ideology in the twenties and thirties ripped off a lot of ideas from Nietzsche, while at the same time holding him up as reactionary boogie man. (In the same order I also picked up the excellent Everyday Stalinism. If you're interested in Russian or Soviet history, this is a good 'un.)

Amazon very thoughtfully recommended The Occult in Russian and Soviet Culture when I was purchasing my crazy Nietzche book (same author!), and the name stuck with me (I didn't buy it at the time because it seemed creepy and I had yet to stumble across the madness that is Cosmicism).

So I Googled The Occult in Russian and Soviet Culture and did a search of the index, and yep, you got your dang Cosmicism right 'chair. So I bought it.

And it's good! It's a multi-disciplinary collection of essays by various scholars and it traces different aspects of Soviet ideology, philosophy of science, and aesthetics to different strains of pre-revolutionary Russian folk mysticism, Theosophy, masonry, Mysticism, etc.

Funny how the mind wanders, isn't it?)

Cultural Amnesia (Exhaustive book of biographical essays about various folks, which, in sum, prove that the author Clive JAmes is way smarter than me.)

Occidentalism (The "Occident" in this case being liberal democracy and Enlightenment values. The authors trace the history of anti-liberalism through Imperial Japan, Germany, Russia, Zionism and various strains of Islamism. Interesting book.)

Diaries 1969-1979: The Python Years (Michael Palin. Duller than one would think)

The Waste Books (Many, many aphorisms written by 18th century German person, Georg Lichtenberg)

In Praise of Barbarians (Disappointing collection of shrill essays written by Mike Davis, who wrote the excellent City of Quartz.

Who Hates Whom (Breezy book about ethnic hatred and modern warfare)

After January 1st, I think I'm never, ever going to read ever again.

I don't know what the hell is going on anymore

2009-06-08T22:22:00.000-07:00

Hello. Yes, I haven't blog because I'm an out of work spaz, and my time is better spent staring into the abyss that participating in human society.

Joke.

I've been freelancing. It's been mindless fun. I forgot how mindless advertising really is. The pressure of keeping up with the douchebags is less urgent when you're paying for your own health insurance.

The reason I started up blogging again is I started up on the vile and idiotic Twitter, and then realized I already have a perfectly outlet for vapidity and hideousness in this, my black hearted ol' blog.

I am turning 40 on Friday, by the way.

I am a bad blogger. Bad.

2009-04-11T11:12:00.001-07:00

I've been scrambling for freelance work and I've finally hit my stride, so that's good.

Now, blog:

Ruby was playing dress up today with... a crutch.

She was putting on scarves, underwear and old baby clothes on this crutch.

Here's her monologue: "Yes, don't worry Mrs. Jones... our clothes will cover your boobies AND your vagina. Our clothes are very good."

Also:
I am working on an animated short, starring none other than our good friend the Nude Fat Man Eating Cookie Dough. A commercial producer friend of mine forwarded Mr. Nude's entry on to an animator, and he's a fan. So we developed a six minute script, and it looks like it's happening.

Which terrifies me. I don't know why. But it does.

America's Tug Boats in Crisis

2009-03-11T22:20:00.000-07:00

This is a cross-post from Best Recession Ever.

Friend of the blog Matt is a San Francisco Bay Area tugboat engineer, and he reports that: “When the economy or market was doing well, we would do five to six ship jobs a day. That`s four tractor tugboats doing five to six jobs a day. Right now each boat is doing two or maybe three on a busy day. “

We aren’t entirely sure what this indicates, because we are not actually economists but unpaid, under employeed bloggers who barely can make it out of the house to buy milk for our flocks of mewling children (hush, little ones. Daddy is blogging), but our guts find it alarming that even people in cool, tough guy professions are feeling it.

Are the rodeo clowns next?

It’s also our way to talk about tugboats and the fact that we know a real life tugboat guy, which blows our minds.

How many tugboat guys do YOU know?

How many can you even name, besides Hal Lindsey and Sterling Morrison?

Tugboats are AWESOME!

Nude Fat Man Eating Cookie Dough VIII: I Am The Lizard King

2009-03-11T22:19:00.001-07:00

Cookie dough, as you may have gleaned, dear attentive reader, is my ambrosia and nectar, my soma and my score. Raw, uncut cookie is the stuff that pumps through the chambers of my dreamer’s heart.

Specifically Sam’s EZ Riser Chunk o’ Chips Cookie Dough in the Slap n’ Serve Tube.

The crack of a new tube splitting open on the dark mahogany-colored arm of the barcalounger (Is it wood? A polymer of Midwestern origins? Pressed offal? Will ask Mother. Do not expect a coherent answer, as she is Mother.) is enough to send me deep into À la recherche du temps perdu-type revelry (note: I have not read that particular book, though I sat through a dreary documentary on it hosted by the bald man from Star Trek on my public television station, waiting for an Are You Being Served marathon. By the way, the marathon was a satisfying omnibus, though it’s flow would have been greatly enhanced if that moist-eyed public television man didn’t plead for cash in such an excruciating inauthentic manner) crystallizing that exact moment I last cracked a tube, usually twenty minutes prior to opening the new one.

There were at one point entire DYNASTIES of spent tubes scatter’d throughout the room, a veritable core sample of my ever more fine-tuned taste. From my perch, I could observe in sharp relief my progress of a connoisseur of this glorious stuff. That is until mother, operating under the influence of stars not of our galaxy, “cleaned” (destroyed, pillaged, etc.) my room. But that holocaust I cover elsewhere.

Now, from time to time, I am forced to shift out of my domain, if only to attend to needs best left unspoken (Note: regarding toilet use). On the days I might have to LEAVE THE HOUSE (sending correspondence to world leaders, visiting the hobby shop that I might educate the feeble Corey on the dazzling range of Dragon Lance collectible fantasy figures. Like explaining a Faberge egg to a chicken) I pack a few dozen tubes in my shoulder sack.

If I plan to dart about inside the house (for a man of girth I am surprisingly catlike. As a self-trained dancer and exhibitor of Sensual Though Not Dirty Beauty I have developed an uncanny grace and economy in movement), I have cached dough in clever hidey holes throughout -- sometimes too clever, as will soon be clear.

On the day in question, I was making my way through the hall to the den, a wraith in a white sheet (sheets are required in areas shared with Mother, due to a cosmically inane series of misunderstandings). I was making my way to the den to see if I could muster up some old Sear’s catalogs that I might study the girdle pages more closely, when I felt the Plunge. The fading was pronounced and I felt the spectacular dread of being caught out. No dough, no dough, no dough. Blackness. Detuned violins.

I clawed at the telephone table in the hall. I must have.... hid… YES! YES! I DID! But, hullo, what is this? It wasn’t Sam’s EZ Riser Chunk o’ Chips Cookie Dough, this was… MRS. TAFFETY’S COOKIE FUN PASTE?

This tube was Jurassic. This was the stuff I cut my teeth on, my first score. And this tube would have to do.

I gobbled it. And then the bats.

Some sort of diabolical chemical process had twisted this tube into a paisley broth of hippy bathwater, lysergic to a degree that would crumble the skulls of lesser souls.

I was soon swatting at a panoply of shrieking Mother-headed bats with wings of cat fur. They plunged at me like Stukas, shrieking “CLEAN YOUR ROOM! CLEAN YOUR ROOM! CLEAN YOUR ROOM!”.

I roared, I pleaded, I cajoled, I laughed like goddamn fiend. They raised up then formed into one giant monolith of cookie dough, bible black and as strange and new as the morning of creation. It was Me, I was It. It was God. It was Wife. It blurbled in an atavistic tongue only we shared…. EAT ME! EAT ME! JOIN ME AS ONE! FAAAAT MAAAAAN!

And I could feel my mouth unhinge like a great primordial snake and I devoured it, there in the hall by the telephone table. I was It. We were enjoined.

And into that murk, Reason made its advance.

A small voice, my voice, made a plea. “The show…. The show is starting…. The show.”

The Lost Season! They’d been advertising that in the Arts and Entertainment Section for months! The lost season of “Are You Being Served?”

I marshaled every quark of my superiorly trained soul and chipped at the dark forces grip on my will. Steely iron determination and the unabashed power of PURE NUDITY conquered and banished the demons. I was free, standing in the hall, sweating, nude and ALIVE! ALIVE DAMN YOU!

Psychotropics be damned. I had a damn show to catch.

Me, doing more blogging, because what the hell else am I going to do?

2009-03-10T18:37:00.000-07:00

I'm going to be blogging on occasion at Best Recession Ever, a blog that whistles cheerfully amid the collapse of the West.

I'll be cross-posting here, so, while you should be support Mac, Aaron and Jeremy, if you're in a hurry, you can just read my stuff over here.

I don't know how to say the above without sounding like an asshole.

I'm sorry.

You see civilizational collapse. Quaker Oats see GOLD!

2009-03-10T13:41:00.001-07:00

If this ad specimen is any indication, Quaker Oats is putting their chips against our current economic system collapsing to the point where the gainfully employed are forced to commute by jetpacks, high above the churning, ultraviolent CHUD-populated exburb favelas of our nation’s near-future.

Fast, cheap, fuel packed foodstuffs are going to be big come the Collapse, so if you’ve got any cash, put on the Quaker.

If only there were a way they could augment their oatmeal with some sort of protein supplement; a “soylent” if you will.

West Elm sells Legos.

2009-03-07T20:42:00.000-08:00

Our new bed is made of Legos. Large and tasteful (well, a catalogue marketer's idea of tasteful) Legos.

Today was my second Saturday of economically induced leisure (laid off like so many burnt kitchen matches, in other words) and the parental hut, the master bedroom-cum-sushi bar that has been under construction since October is nearing completion. The general contractor has been amazing -- attentive, flexible, and agreeable. He's also anxious; after this job, well, there isn't. Work has dried up, so he's going to lay off his guys.

Anyways, enough. Yes, we all know. On to beds.

Specifically the bed that has sat under my wife's desk for two months, in pieces in a 7 foot long cardboard box that my kids have been using a mural surface. It's from West Elm. You no doubt have received the catalog: vague, unmemorably tasteful furniture.

I pulled that crap out today, wondering if I'm going to have get the scary yellow DeWalt drill out.

Nope. I was assured in the directions (the English directions. The French directions came out first, and I was alarmed) that all I would need for the Chunky Dark Wood Bed Frame was a Phillips screwdriver.

And it was true. I put together this bastard in forty-five minutes, as I'm sure that thousands of other bloated suburbites were doing this Saturday afternoon with various IKEA, West Elm, Pottery Barn SKUs. Mass produced esoterica, gauranteed to spark a vague racial memory of Tuscan Danish Shaker Basque Provencal Kenyan Dorset Balinese workmanship and a warm afternoon in cotton sheets drinking tea and reading the Herald Tribune printed on the local linty foolscrap.

Only you don't drink tea and you read the Onion online. And all you have is a screwdriver.

West Elm and their ilk sell efficient shipping and clever modularity. The aesthetics don't happen until the copywriter sits down to write the catalogue, to build the narrative that make these allen-wrenched, machine painted monstrosities be something more than what they are.

I'm not saying anything new, I know. That's just what I was thinking in my pajama pants and t-shirt this morning, swearing at each new batch of plastic wrapped bolts, each matte black and slightly oily to the touch, waiting to be allen-wrenched into place.

Nude Fat Man Eating Cookie Dough VII: My uneasy relationship with the local demimonde.

2009-03-05T11:42:00.000-08:00

Truth and Beauty. Beauty and Truth. Truth, Beauty, Beauty, Truth in endless variation. Beauty.

Truth.

These are my various milieus.

My pillowy length is a delight of colors and textures of supreme luxury and delicacy (though I have been assured by the jackbooted bluenose bumpkins that run this bowel of a fetid pig wallow of a septic tank that is this rotten specimen of town that distributing TASTEFUL images of my Beauty (NOTE: WITHOUT SEEKING COMPENSATION) to the suffering cohabitants of my street will be met with the full force of their “laws”.

I don’t recognize their “laws” of course.

Vicious, risk adverse, unimaginative gray patches of civil code AUTHORED BY TROG BURGERMEISTERS is a term better suited to describe ‘em.

My laws are transcendent. But you knew that, because your sensitivity, while crude, holds a flicker of understanding.

(Through my tutelage you can open your aperture to let in the Light a bit more, if you get my meaning. I do offer instructional tapes for a reasonable cost. Contact me through the FACEBOOK to discuss if you are interested.)

But while the various Burgermeisters cannot share in the transcendent laws of Truth and Beauty, they DO have the truncheons on their side, and the berserker that is Officer Penske. His WILLFUL ABILITY TO NOT LISTEN TO REASON was rendered starkly on the day that my sheet slipped as I was enjoying walking bare foot through the grass on the parking strip last April.

Owning a taser is not license to use it indiscriminately against citizens, Officer Penske, if you are reading this (assuming you have that capacity), especially ones that are clad only in sky.

Anyhoo, communication is distribution, and it turns out that the mailboxes of feebs and ninnies aren’t the ideal medium to share (FREE, WITH ALL COSTS AND BURDENS SHOULDERED BY ME, A MONK WITHOUT DENOMINATION) Beauty.

My charity for humanity never fails to stun me. My munificence may in fact be my downfall. The fact that my mother still freely walks abroad in the land despite being demonstrably insane (evidence: she switched the Glade Air Dazzler to a horrible cloying Jasmine Breeze from the pleasant and sensuality-positive Coconut Accents), and if that isn’t evidence with goddamn pretty bow on it that I have the patience and charity of Nature Herself, I’m at a loss.

I also have a problem with the tiny holes of the rotary dial of the phone, but that’s neither here nor there for our purposes here.

Anyway, I realized that the Art For the Undeserving Community distribution strategy was a dead-end. So, despite resisting the call of the High Art Establishment my entire career, and I decided to submit. Moloch honey, Nude Fat Man is a-comin’ home.

In this sad affair, the gatekeeper to the Teat of the Demimonde was none other than Maggie Oxford, culture affairs editor for the Valley Penny Shopper. I have been following her work for years, and I particularly enjoyed her ENVISICERATION of the Lamplighters’ staging of Driving Miss Daisy. Ms. Oxford is “blessed” with what I thought was a Dark Mirror of Truth that she held up to the wreckage of San Guano’s cultural collapse. It turns out all that vituperative ink was spilled in service to a mere subcortial amphibian rage against Truth and Newness. Everything will be clear soon.

(The fact that she is a friend with Mother I took as a McGuffin. I was wrong.)

So, charity bites again. Operating under a bunch of romantic moonshine, I assumed that Ms. Oxford and I were as one in our sensitivity to phoniness. So I picked out a few choice snaps, shot with the Polaroid. They were innocence itself, mere indications and shadows, tone poems on Biological Texture and Beauty. The was even one that for the life of me looked EXACTLY like a satellite photo of the Nile Delta I had seen in a textbook during my school days.

Nothing explicit. True, it skated on the Erotic, but we are adults (Ms. Oxford is more than that. She is very, very old).

I included a note, a bit of pith, something to the effect “What ya think, doll?” with contact information. I also THOUGHT I had included an artist’s statement, but I later found it woven into one of the cats’ pelts. (I think art should explain itself, but remember I was trying fake the role of rule-player)

Ms. Oxford took it the wrong way. The SWAT team frightened Mother a bit. I had hid in the junipers as is my habit on hearing sirens (the State is fragile myth, my Pollyannas. They will come for the Beautiful first). I now itch in the nethers.

Mother, in a prolonged fit of lucidity, seemed to manage to piece a coherent story together from the snatches of evidence the detective put to her attention. After fifteen hours, she was back home. I was famished, too. The kitchen is a low and chthonic place, not suited for a conduit to the Bright and Divine, such as myself. I also caused an INSIGNIFICENT fire when I put some bologna in the toaster in order to fry it. Heat is heat.

Mother is angry. Ms. Oxford has told her that their friendship was over, and I guess Mother treasures her vulgar dealings (MAH JONG) with that sentient piece of leather.

Mother walks in spiritual blindness. How else can her mourning over this loss of a deficit be explained?

That’s it for now. Be well.

Here's my new portfolio site.

2009-03-02T15:52:00.000-08:00

I think some stuff is going to come out:

Greg Mills Copywriter

So I got shit-canned.

2009-02-28T14:51:00.000-08:00

Meh.

It happend Thursday. My spidey-senses had been tingling for a while (not exactly an amazing feat of prescience in the wretched whore shitbag of an economy we are living under, I know), so I was packed and was gathering work examples for my portfolio for a few days before the I was touched inapproriately by the Invisible Hand.

I had sent an email to the person who manages assignments, a "what the fuck, woman. Give me some work" email on Wednesday (I was pleasanter than that. I am not a barbarian, after all). I didn't hear back, and me being a genius, thought that didn't bode well. Then Thursday I received a suspicious meeting maker to "catch up" and I packed the last of my shit.

Sure enough, the HR hachet woman was milling around outside, and the creative services manager was crying.

Jesus.

As reported to me by my boss and creative services manager, It was:

-- A numbers thing
-- Nothing personal
-- heartbreaking
-- VERY hard on them

And that I was:

-- so very talented
-- and so very funny

Well, gee. Thanks. So I guess funny and talented is not part of the new vision. Interesting. Keep 'em guessing. I like that.

People have been coming out of the woodwork with leads, encouragement, contacts, ideas. I'm not worried about finding a job, but it's still insanely stressful.

Poor Paula is cranking on my portfolio like a trooper (Mary a web designer if you want a portfolio site fast). I am fretting and pacing. That's my job. Last night some friends came over and I got a little stink-eyed on red wine. That is also my job.

And truth be told, my nerd futurist side is sort of excited. I'm a few month shy of forty; I'm old enough to have some sort of appreciation of what the world has been and I'm young enough that I still have enough flexiabilty to be in the thick of the changes the world is going through. Ten years from now is not something I can imagine. That's cool.

I dunno. In the next couple of days I'll be posting my sure-to-be-awesome portfolio (Paula is the greatest of all time), and the hunt begins.

I've already picked up a little freelance assignment, basically writing gags for a series of web videos. I'm going to try to experiment with cautious optimism and realistic positivity.

In the meantime, I'm going to the plasma clinic.

That would explain his breath.

2009-02-24T08:01:00.000-08:00

Owen this morning: "I want brush my teeth with JIZZ!"

"Wait... WHAT?"

Owen: "I named my new toothbrush Jizz."

"Yeah, let's work on a new name. Jizz is kind of silly."

Owen: "I like Jizz."

Goddamn. Uncle Walt is kind of a badass.

2009-02-14T20:55:00.001-08:00

I had lunch with Uncle Walt today. He's a man of 72, still built like Gibraltar, with a face like the love child of Van Morrison and Rip Torn. He wears his work clothes eveywhere and he has hands that look like gargoyles. He has retained a slight Texas panhandle twang despite years of living in California.

Here's what he told me:

-- He spent his teenage years in Bakersfield ("the worst place on earth"), where he built rot gut hot rods and had dance parties out on the "band shell" (basically a concrete slab). Three girls in his school died in girl-on-girl knife fights. The pachucos wore large gauge chains hanging from their belts like watch fobs.

-- Bakersfield in the '50s was de facto segregated. Blacks knew that being off the streets at ten was more or less a good idea, and busses wouldn't pick you at night if you were black. Uncle Walt's best friend was a black kid who he played baseball with. The kid use to stay with Walt's family on the nights he didn't get home in time. There was one night when Walt and his friend got to scrapping with some redneck on the blacktop after a game. Walt's friend jammed a finger on his right hand pretty bad and Walt took him home to have his nurse mother tape up the finger. The kid stayed for dinner and Walt's dad, a west Texas rancher turned Bakersfield rancher, was staying at this kid's head. "How do you comb your hair?" looking at the kid's kinky hair. The kid held up his injured right hand and replied "With my left hand."

-- On one occasion, the local sheriff got complaints for the neighbors that the Jones' were harboring a black kid. How unseemly!

The cop showed up and said to something to the effect of you need to get that N-word out of here. Walt's dad replied: "Next time you come round to peddle that shit your gun better be loaded."

Damn! I bust a sweat when I jay walk. But then again, I'm not from Texas.

-- Walt's then-wife got sucked up into the People's Temple, and Walt sort of followed along but was suspicious. (He eventually met his current wife, who is amazing, in the People's Temple). There was a loss with associated tragedy, but this isn't the place, you know?

-- Walt has a sunny, aw-shucks disposition, with a broad smile. He calls women "darlin'" and men "buddy". But if the conversation wanders into religion, he will turn as sober and correct as a existential philosophy and tell you with great earnestness "There is no god." Get him in the right mood and he will wax long (and occasionally repetitively) about the mystery and beauty of creation.

Walt is a great guy. I'm glad I know him.

The Parental Hut, nearly complete.

2009-02-14T10:10:00.000-08:00

The Parental Hut, aka the new master bedroom, aka the former backyard, is nearly complete. Ha! Two more weeks of bullshit and air compressors and listening to conversations in halting english between native spanish and mandarin speakers as I make my coffee in the morning (Jaime and Jin are two very skilled and hard working men).

We've doing the wretched hippy piece of patchoulie cluster fuck that is the "family bed" for too goddamn long. THE PARENTS NEED THEIR OWN ROOM, GODDAMIT.

We are the cusp of new era of orby pendant lamps and slightly gay bathroom sconces.

In other news, Paula had a hysterectomy last week to address some "lady problem". She is doing fine. Apparently she has, or had, a freakishly long cervix. Neat!

Advertising occaisonally manages to create something beautiful

2009-02-10T17:54:00.000-08:00

This is a promotional video created for my friend Randy's little ad agency, The Great Society. Love, love, love it.

It's like a fruity European art comic, in the best sense.

He also did this great documentary series on the Finnish village of Fiskars, home of the scissors.

See? Advertising doesn't have to be talking toilets.

Facebook/blogger synergy. Neat.

2009-02-09T15:59:00.000-08:00

This is some horseshit thing from Facebook. Actually, it's pretty okay. You get "tagged" and you are supposed to write a note with 25 random things, facts, habits, or goals about you. Only thing is more than one person tagged me, and because I enjoy needless guilt and anxiety over trivial things so darn more, I add more facts when more people tagged me -- BECAUSE I WANTED EVERYONE TO HAVE FRESH FACTS.

So I ended up with 50 facts. And, what the fuck, I'll make a blog entry. Hurray internet!

1. My wife was annoyed with me when we first met, then decided she liked me. Which is exactly the opposite of how my previous relationships worked.

2. My left hand can't rotate into a "slap me five" position. Makes it difficult to collect change at drive-thrus.

3. I won a ancient, feeble pony named Billy Blazer in a raffle when I was four. We kept him for all of two weeks. I was mostly scared of him.

4. I have auditioned for both Junior Tic-Tac-Dough and Jeopardy. I was too old for Junior Tic-Tac-Dough and I froze and smiled idiotically during the screen test portion of Jeopardy.

5. Christopher Guest once told me that I am a good straight man.

6. I am totally indifferent to the supposed charms of watching professional sports.

7. I was an exchange student in Japan in the summer of '87. I was in awe of the beer vending machines.

8. I got my driver's license at age 30. Funny story about that I'll tell you sometime.

9. I once miscalculated the distance between a conference center in Denver with the bus stop and ended up walking for about six hours.

10. I have been stung by a very wimpy jellyfish.

11. Got my wallet stolen in Heathrow, and as I was reporting it a kind and efficient Bobby, Stephen Hawking rode by.

12. I shook Gerald Ford's hand once.

13. I don't like having things draped over my face.

14. I once cut a tendon in my foot vacuuming.

15. In sixth grade, I got food poisoning and ended up vomiting at the crossing guard roller skating party. I handed in my badge that monday.

16. I wasn't entirely sure how my oldest sister was related to me until I was about six.

17. I recently found out that I'm part Swedish.

18. I used to wear karate pants to High School.

19. I inherited a huge and fabulous post card collection, which I subsequently tossed when I became old and respectable. I regret this act every day, though I suspect my wife is thankful it happened before we met.

20. My son invented a great joke: "Why did the turd cross the road? He wanted to go to the TURD sanctuary."

21. I can do a pretty good imitation of a water drop. (Sound imitation, just to be clear.)

22. I was very briefly a child star, doing impersonations at Sun Valley mall. I don't think I was that good, but I was paid, so who cares really?

23. It bothers me that I can read music only with great difficulty. And that I can't play guitar because of my gimp wrist.

24. I can't grow sideburns

25. I was once rolled by a mugger who jumped while I was barfing after drinking too much. Outside of Slim's. My friend Mark was befriended by skinheads who took us back to their apartment. That was a weird night.

26. If the stars are aligned just right, I am morbidly shy

27. I drink alcohol infrequently. It just doesn't come up that often.

28. Potted trees bum me out.

29. I like being near the ocean, because I always have a means of escaping in case giant ants come.

30. The best job I ever had was working in a bookstore.

31. I am a materialist, an empiricist, and a skeptic, though I try not to be an ass about it.

32. That said, I know that as a species we necessarily have a limited spectrum of things we CAN know about, so life is still mysterious and weird.

33. I wish I cooked more.

34. As crazy and f-upped as reality is, I like this world pretty okay.

35. My wife is having surgery soon, and I'm freaked out about it.

36. I am an orphan.

37. As a child, my family was possibly going to move to Saudi Arabia for my dad's work. It is hard to tell with my parents what was true vs. what was wishful thinking.

38. I saw Mao's Tomb, The Hermitage in St. Petersburg, ice bergs in Newfoundland, the Lake District, and the Berlin Wall all on someone else's dime.

39. I have distant cousins in Chile. (Not Nazis)

40. The more I think about, the more the notion of one generalized model of human belief and conduct being correct for everyone seems bizarre

41. Parenthood should be the most banal thing in the world, but man, it's not.

42. I'm comfortable with not talking to anyone for long stretches of time.

43. Marriage should be the most banal thing in the world, but man, it's not.

44. I liked Coraline more than I liked Slumdog Millionaire. There, I said it.

45. I have À la recherche du temps perdu-like prompting from very hoppy cheap beer. A can of Olympia beer I sprayed on the apple tree on the Fourth of July, 1976. I was 7.

46. Pickled herring is something I bought a lot of when I was a bachelor living on my own, and I would eat it with Akmak crackers and beer.

47. My wife, whom I love, once bought me a t-shirt featuring two unicorns making love, which I have never in public.

48. I once sat transfixed as John Doe performed "See You Later, Alligator" in a recording studio, while a small platoon of oblivious clients typed on their laptops the entire time. What is the goddamn point of existence people?

49. When I was 16, I went and saw Tom Wolfe talk and churlishly I asked him about Hunter S. Thompson, because I was 16.

50. I once interrupted an Alan Ginsburg poetry reading, and I don't really feel bad about it.

In which the boy urinates on me.

2009-02-04T14:25:00.000-08:00

c. 6:00 am

Owen, sleeping next to me: "Could you open the window, please?"

I chuckle to myself: "Meh, talking in his sleep. Meh. Wait a sec? Why am I all wet?"

"Christina's World", or: Greg is going to Hell for this post

2009-01-18T16:46:00.001-08:00

The painter Andrew Wyeth croaked the other day. I was listening to NPR and they were going through his bio, and they started talking about the painting Christina's World (example above).

Until hearing Wyeth's bio on the radio the other day, I love/hated Christina's World, because I assumed the girl in the painting was just wistful ol' Christina, a romantic and sensitive farm girl dreaming her dreamy little dreams, longing for something more than that old farm house. Ahhh, Christinas's World. We're all a little Christina, yeah?

Well, turns out we aren't. Because I found out from that NPR piece that our Christina is parapalegic who had to drag herself across the farm everyday.

And that's fucked up. That's a crazy fucked up painting. Thank you Andrew Wyeth, you sick bastard.

The title ruin everything! Here's some alternate titles (this the part that sends me to Hell):

Coyotes Have Long Memories

Too Many Bran Muffins

Are You Done Yet, Mr. Wyeth?

Pissed Off at God

Why'd I Put the House So Damn Far From The Road?

My idea that I posted to President Elect Obama's "There are no bad ideas" site

2009-01-15T18:36:00.000-08:00

I dunno. It's kind of a good idea. I think.

A Federal science academy -- a "West Point" for the sciences

I think we should start a research and education institution that would attract the best and brightest science-focused young people. Each state would refer their best qualified and interested students to receive a fully funded science education with a feeder program into higher degree institutions. As well a vigorous academic program in fields that serve our national interests, Students could serve over the summer in one of the national labs or in Federally funded programs at private or state institutions.

I am giving Ruby the gift of knowledge about primordial dwarves and giant creme brulees

2008-12-13T09:56:00.000-08:00

The lucky, undeserving little brat is getting the finest reference known to man: The Full Color Guinness Book of World Records (16 pages in 3D!).

I don't know how it was for you as a snubbin, but when I was a grade schooler, the Guinness Book of World Records was the pinnacle of Western thought.

Dwarves! The World's Fattest Twins (The McCrarys. See above.)! Longest beard on a woman! Most supernumery nipples!

The full rich physiognomic pageant was right there, in tiny type on cheap Earl Grey-tinted paper. It was a platonic freakshow, with only the most superlative aberrations. And unlike previous generations, I didn't have to wait for the circus to wheel into town with it's icky carnies and scary clowns. I just had to head to the school library at lunch, grab a matt and relish the horror of those seedy little black and white smudged photographs.

There was also an aspirational, Horatio Alger aspect to it: if I work hard, someday I'll be able to avail myself of the sublime comfort of a mink-lined golf shoes with ruby tipped cleats (The Most Expensive Golf Shoes In the World), or the complete Canon system (Most Extensive Photographic System In The World).

I would own the Bugatti, Hearst Castle, a case of 1945 Mouton. Yep, Guinness was teaching me how to be a huge douche.

I walked away from Guinness when I discovered The People's Almanac, a foot-thick doorstop filled with articles about ghosts, strange weapons of WWII, strange political and religious screeds, and the sexual practices of dead celebrities. In other words, it was the Internet in book form.

All this came flooding back when Ruby started expounding this new book she had found in her school library, full of bearded ladies and tiny people.

This year, I am initiating her into the temple of corn dog wisdom that is Guinness. And it's in 3-D, so it's even more classy than it was when I was a kid.

Awesome!

Owen's amazingly well crafted joke.

2008-12-13T00:19:00.000-08:00

Owen, 5, made up this cracker today:

Q: Why did the turd cross the road?

A: To go to the TURD sanctuary.

Pure gold.

My grandmother's religion, as reimagined by Millions of Dead Cops

2008-12-04T14:50:00.000-08:00

I came across a truly awe inspiring religious website, Death to the World. It's a the site of a Russian Orthodox Hardcore 'zine based here in Cali, and it is blowing my poor cracked little mind.

I was raised Russian Orthodox, and the church I attended was more Russian than Orthodox. The joke was Russian Orthodox Christian, in that order.

The Russian Orthodox Church I grew up in was full of pinched faced little old ladies (one of whom spit on the exposed toes of my then-sister-in-law, who had the satanic-inspired chutzpah to wear sandals in church, driving the men to distraction with her ingrown toenail). It was sighing about a Russia that never existed by people who had never been there, or were last there when there was a Tzar and St. Petersburg was called Petrograd.

The kids were pale, puffy kids from the Avenues in black derby jackets, -- the official jacket of Bay Area rockers/stoners/low rider/cholos, c. 1982 -- with discreet AC/DC patches. They spoke with Russian accents, despite being born in California.

We suffered through lent, through liturgies and vespers chanted in Slavonic, through weird feast days on which you weren't allowed to eat anything. It was old, old, old, not American, not fun, kind of seedy and tired.

It was not punk rock.

That's why this site is so jarring.

Interestingly enough, two members of the best Stoner Metal band in the universe, San Jose's very own Sleep were Orthodox monks at different times.

Now, the monastic aspect of the Orthodox faith IS deeply profound and aspects of the theology (which I didn't pick up on until after I stopped going to church) emphasize a break with the world. It's sort of Augustine, but more Russian -- the world of human is damaged and broken, so human institutions are naturally corrupt. We are all sinners, no getting around it, but we can indirectly experience the holy through reflection. That's why Russian churches tend to be so otherworldly; to force a conceptual break with the world.

I've met a few monks growing up, mostly at a church camp run by a more liberal branch of the Church (more liberal? Hard to believe, I know) and they were the real deal: beatific guys with ZZ Top beards leading simple lives. I remember one was actually a Romanov and a wicked first base man in softball. He played in his hassock.

It's interesting that someone Orthodox had the idea to draw the in the teen angst rejection of the world (I'm being flip. I'm sure the kids that are involved are smart and earnest) into an ancient spiritual traditional.

Who knows how it would have affected me if someone had made that connection when I was listening to hardcore. I might be sporting a ZZ Top beard right now.

Here's what you should do.

2008-12-04T13:41:00.000-08:00

Take one of your most cherished, "well, duh!" beliefs and go deep into enemy territory with it. Read the counter-evidence, sit through the screeds, bombard it with neutrinos. See what happens.

I'm not going to tell you what happens, because I don't know.

My ideas about the world are correct and fundamentally sound.

Anyway, see if you can do it. I've tried it and it's more existentially harrowing than I initially thought it would be.

Drink more red wine, too.

Ruby and Owen discuss the Sexual Practices of the Human Grown Up

2008-12-04T11:38:00.000-08:00

(Note: I've always been weary of simply quoting my kids here. It seems lazy. But, goddamn it, they say some funny ass crap.)

Owen: What do grown up do when they're in love?

Ruby: They are in sex with each other.

Owen: What's that?

Ruby: That's when they show each other their butts.

Innocence, enemy of Tact

2008-11-29T16:11:00.000-08:00

Kids are watching Shrek.

Ruby: "Dad, you remind me of Shrek."

Me: "Oh, yeah? Why?"

Ruby: "Well, Shrek is fat... but you're not fat."

Me: "I'm sorta fat."

Ruby: "No! No, you're not!"

Owen: "You're the best!"

Ruby: "Anyway, Shrek is ugly. But you're not ugly."

Me: "So, if I'm not fat and not ugly, what qualities do I have that reminds of Shrek?"

Ruby: "Other... things... that are part of his character."

Oh, come on now. This is ridiculous.

2008-11-29T12:59:00.000-08:00

I agree with aromatherapy insofar as smelling violets is usually more pleasant that smelling, say, solvent or the leavings of a cat who has eaten a lot of blue cheese. But beyond that, I'm not sure pleasant smells are effective as psilocybin or a gallon of red wine in enhancing a feller or gal's mood.

Anyway, put in me in the pleasant smell camp (though I like the smell of rubbing alcohol and gasoline (I LOVE rubbing alcohol. It's my favorite solvent. I clean the bathroom with it, soak my feet in it. Rubbing alcohol = the best ever).

Today I was cleaning the toilet and I used some fancy-yet-simple toilet cleaning product -- Mrs. Meyer's Lavender Scent Toilet Bowl Cleaner -- and, jesus, it was flogging it's AROMATHERAPY PROPERTIES.

The label reads: "For generations, the LAVENDER herb has been valued for its wonderful relaxing scent that's soothing, tranquilizing (!) and is believed to RELIEVE FATIGUE."

Does Mrs. Meyer know what people DO in toilets?

And how can it be TRANQUILIZING and RELIEVE FATIGUE?

"Zzzzzz... wha?....WHAT?... Oh, I'm sorry, dear. I dozed off crapping again. The powerful lavender aroma cuts right through my own piquant gassings and I was soon carried off by Somnus. I feel great though! "

Here's some web-video-viral-ad thingies I made at work.

2008-11-21T11:06:00.000-08:00

These are the product of a very funny day listening to very funny people improvise under the able direction of the very funny Michael Blieden and Matt Price.

Admonishments for young and old

2008-11-08T21:06:00.000-08:00

Don't ever promise the neighbors you're going to stop your little welding project. You're not, so why lie?

Don't be offended when you find yourself seated by yourself at an otherwise empty table at a wedding. You probably have a problem too hideous to discuss. Enjoy the fact that you have friends that are willing to spare your feelings.

Don't stand up at work and shout "Eleven! Eleven is the winner!" unless you are croupier.

Don't bake crude reliefs of sexual organs into any meat loaf you plan to serve at any sort of function where pornographers might be attending. They like to get away from work just like anyone else.

If you have any children in your care, give them access to clean air and earth-like gravity.

If you have a supernumerary nipple, don't brag about it. No one likes a braggart.

If have a guest in your home that is ugly, affect a limp. That way they won't feel so bad about their rotten pig face.

FUCKING GODDAMN FUCKING SHIT

2008-11-04T20:21:00.000-08:00

FUCK! Fuckin' AMERICA, MOTHERFUCKER! FUCK! FUCKIN' GODDAMN!!

FUCK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

GODDAMN!!!! GODDAMN!!!!!!! FUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK!!!!!!!!!!!!!

YOU ELECT A RETARD LIKE BUSH, THEN YOU TURN AROUND AND FUCKIN' PULL THIS AWESOME SHIT OFF!!!!

FUCK!!!!!!!

SHIT!!!!!!!

Not to be a dick...

2008-11-04T14:59:00.000-08:00

... but McCain's physiogamy gives me the willies. I know he can't help it, and I'm no looker, but he looks faded and tight, like a tired golem.

That's why I hate him.

Just kidding. I don't him. Didn't vote for him, but I don't hate him.

Not like that swine Stephen Hawking.

Strange and alarming ads on CNN

2008-11-04T10:36:00.001-08:00

I don't watch the news on the Televisionic device, though when I travel for work, I turn it on in the morning to simulate humans in my lonely, pitiable hotel room.

And today especially, since today we are voting for a new King or Shogun or something here in the American Republic, and it is very exciting to hear blonde people talk about our soon-to-be enthroned Moon Emperor as I scrape gum off my jeans.

Anyway, I was in the bathroom, halfway listening to the large teethed chattering people. It was at this point I heard THIS LINE coming in from the other room, an ad of some kind:

"Don't you hate empty oxygen tanks?"

Yes I do.

Live blogging a sitcom I've never seen before, with the sound off, on an airplane.

2008-11-02T16:19:00.000-08:00

*Neil Patrick Harris, the "At Band Camp" lady, the guy from that Sarah Marshall movie, and two swarthy guys are in a bar (one looks like johnny depp, the other guy has a moustache)
*Neil Patrick seems to be a douche bag
*Band Camp raises her eyebrows as Neil Patrick laughs at anecdote
*Flashback: Sarah Marhall guy is getting... electrolysis? Doctor/practitioner is attractive blond. Some sort of flirting is happening
*Cut back to bar. Sarah Marshall guy is talking. Is this a Regal Beagle/Central Perk-type hangout?
*Cut back to Doctor's office. Swarthy non-moustache guy is now there, wearing sun glasses. So is doctor.I have no idea why
*Cut back to bar. Swarthy non-moustache guy is telling story. Neil Patrick raises his eyebrow suggestively. Band camp girl laugh toothily.
*Now non-moustache guy is on.. date? w/ doctor. Is carrying patently fake flowers. Not sure if the fake flowers are a gag or just a poor choice by the prop guy
*They are on the stoop of a brownstone, laughing toothily. It is daylight. A cab pulls up, and they run down the stairs laughing hand in hand. Date is going well, from the looks of it.
*Cut back to bar. Non-moustache is gesturing wildly. Sarah Marshall guy is shaking his head with a smirky look on his face. What gives Sarah Marshall guy? Can't be happy for your newly depilitated chum?
*Cut back to the stoop. Non-moustache guy leaves the building with a wistful grin on his face. Flowers are gone. With the doctor no doubt. (Seriously, the flowers were bad. Like magician flowers)
*Now on the sidewalk, Non-moustache guy's smile fades and he looks up. A blond lady, not unattractive, walks up to him, smiling toothily. He looks dumbstruck. The girl talks to him.
*The credits roll.

Disappointed that Moustache guy didn't have a bigger role.

A boring "thoughtful" entry about my stupid job

2008-10-31T13:53:00.000-07:00

Here's what gripes me about my job, or, I guess I should say field:

Triumphalist Modernity

Every ad is about the with-it present, the omega point of transcendent bitchin'ness that is this moment. We were dopes in the past, the future is nerdy, or perversely, the future is the object of sentimentality in advertising.

"Your most cherished old people-type feelings will come to fruition in the future. Feel good and warm about THAT version of you. The old version of you when you had sideburns and 501s is hopelessly retarded and we join you in mocking your hopes and innocence. You were such a pathetic asshole back then. But now, best beloved, you are in your tent pole-tent, the one you've been scratching toward. You've made it. And soon you'll descend into a weakened, though wiser version of yourself, and you'll look back at this moment of consumption with a twinkly fondness, for this moment is when your life began. Forget the person you were two years ago. You and we both know what a wretched creep you were -- hell, we ALL were. Nope, this is it -- right here, right now as the song you used to like goes."

That's what I hate about my field.

Thank you.

Karen's Blog

2008-10-30T21:26:00.000-07:00

Karen is this gal I've know for 20 odd years (!) but I've lost touch with. We recently became Facebook friends, and I was reminded how I went to her 21st birthday party at a gay hamburger joint (a gay hamburger joint is a diner that features hamburger and photos of nude men with large weenuses). I threw up that night.

And funny enough, she currently works at Lonely Planet where I used to work back in the early nineties. What a coinkydink!

Anyway, here's her blog. 97 Things to do Before I Turn 97.

Rock!

Tell me, how does it feel.

2008-10-30T20:50:00.000-07:00

Schmaka, Schamka, Schmaka, Schmaka-schmaka-schmaka. DOOT DOOT DOOT

That's Blue Monday.

It's in my head. I have been switching between Blue Monday, Jet Fighter Man, and Supernaut (1,000 Homo DJs version AND the Black Sabbath version) all day.

And thinking burritos. I was in a meeting today switch between those three songs and thinking about burritos, because I was hungry.

Blue Monday ----> Jet Fighter Man -----> Supernaut #1------> Burrito ------> Supernaut#2. Ping ponging for close to an hour and a half.

These are desperate times that try men's souls.

Owen and Chewie: Makin' friends

2008-10-28T11:55:00.000-07:00

You are all Jet Pack people.

2008-10-16T14:22:00.000-07:00

You are a Jet Pack person, because you're tolerant of pointlessly rad things, otherwise you wouldn't be here.

You see, at least on a theoretical level, the inherent joy, value, greatness of strapping on a box of a highly unstable liquid and letting in blow up in such a way that you can sort of control the trajectory and flip the bird at the surly bonds of the Earth and not die, or if you do die, it will be amazing and everybody will say that, while it's sad you died horribly, you died the most awesomest way.

I know, know, know in my heart of hearts that is true about you, you amazing sociopathic genius.

My friend Mac is a Jet Pack person to a fault. Like, he HAS WRITTEN A BOOK ABOUT HIS QUEST TO STRAP THAT SHIT ON FOR REALS.

And he's written a book on his descent (Joke! You ascend in a Jet Pack. Heh. God, I'm sorry) into the world of the Jet Pack, or more properly, rocket belts. Mac spent a year or so hanging in this weird subculture made up of human being who refuse to accept that future that promised to us on The Jetsons isn't coming. They are making their own future. Neat.

Mac interviewed me for the book, and I think I gave long, boring answers, so I might not have made the final cut.

But still, pick up a copy. You're the type.

The book is called Jetpack Dreams: One Man's Up and Down (But Mostly Down) Search for the Greatest Invention That Never Was. You can also read about the book here.

I interviewed Hank, Mac's lunatic liberal gun freak father, here.

I wanted a bed. You gave me air quotes.

2008-10-16T08:51:00.000-07:00

Irony is sublime. It can be anyway. In film, in visual art, in fiction – in all those places, irony deftly applied can’t be beat. I EAT that shit up.

But in a hotel, at 10:00, when you’re checking in after six hours sitting in coach next to a chatty three year old, Irony is a big fat asshole maneuver. Upon reaching my room, I am not looking for an opportunity to begrudgingly say "Ah, hotel. You win. Well done. Yes, ha, the room is mismatched and wittily uncomfortable. I see what you did there. I get it, funny hotel. The price per night itself is ever so jolly, but the crappy mismatched bullshit you are peddling really brings it home. Wasn't expecting jejune, you scoundrel. I get it. Heh. You magnificent self-indulgent bastard of a hotel. And I can tell that it's just going to get funnier every time I walk in."

It's not even irony, though. That’s more like mean-spirited, hair trigger sarcasm.

I am staying at a sarcastic hotel.

(I’m also really, really tired today.)

**
Kid on the plane story:

Kid: Do you have any kids?
Me: I have a daughter and a son.
Kid: Do you like your daughter?
Me: Yeah, I love my daughter.
Kid: That nasty.

A bug I have spotted in Facebook

2008-10-15T09:45:00.000-07:00

My friend Anushka recently sent me some litte Facebook digital tschotke thingie, "Good Karma" or some such.

This is how the delivery of Good Karma was announced to me

"You have received Good Karma from Anus"

Which immediately got me thinking about this book.

This is why I pace.

2008-10-14T21:38:00.000-07:00

I'm in LA today. I'm in LA, and not at home, where I should be.

I mean, I should be in LA, because me being in LA is directly related to me bringing home some money every two week.

But I don't like it, none the less. It's been a long trip. And at home, contractors have started: they've ripped out the water heater, torn up the back yard (dug a pit actually) start tearing things up and chopping things down. Cleverly, I'm sure.

And I'm in LA while Paula deals with all this. This makes me anxious.

I am ESPECIALLY anxious, my beloved reader, ESPECIALLY anxious because of the phone call.

The phone rings, and I waddle out the studio and it's Paula.

PAULA: "Um, I need to talk to someone RIGHT now because I am going to explode if I don't. I just talked to the contractor, and he found... he found out that...."

ME: "...."

PAULA: "He said that the surveyor said OUR LOT HANGS THREE FEET OVER INTO THE NEIGHBOR'S THE ENTIRE LENGTH".

This is math and money. This a work stoppage, with a starting from scratch sort of vibe to it. Like new plans, new money, new ways of acquiring money, woe, pain, suffering and no hot water for a long time.

PAULA: "We going to have get new drawing, new permits, we're going to have to pay for the work done, we're going to have to live under a tarp. We're not going to get a new bathroom. We're going to lose our side garden. We're...." (YOU SEE WHAT I WAS UP AGAINST YES? YES?)

ME (LAMELY): "Could we get... a new surveyor? Like a second opinion?"

PAULA: "Maybe. Maybe we do that. That could be something we do."

We're doing something. So, good. We are affecting our destiny.

We aren't doing shit.

I wander the hallway of the production company stunned at the instantaneous total claim on my life this data had (okay, I'm being a baby. But it had just happened, okay?)

FUCKFUCKFUCK

I looked at a fake lizard attached to the wall (for whatever reason this production company has a Mexican village interior design scheme) for a minute to gather myself and get back to work, when my phone rang:

PAULA: "Nevermind. The Contractor misunderstood. We're fine."

Oh, what the fuck????

That's a bad magic trick, Mr. Contractor Man.

Take it away, Senator Davis:

Some answers for Tim

2008-10-11T09:55:00.000-07:00

Work chum Tim has been puzzling over some knotty issues as of late, and has asked to me to weigh in on this blog. Here’s the result. I’m not saying my answers are good, but I am saying I am at least trying and that should count for something.

What the f@#ck happened to Ice Cube?

O'Shea Jackson, also known as “Ice Cube” and “Frasier” is primarily famous for wearing baseball caps with aplomb, though he also is a movie actor and was evidently a singer (or whatever the talking guy is in a ska band, sort of like Rankin’ Roger is in General Public) in some sort of ska band or something. His cousin, who is better than him, is Del the Funkee Homosapien, who provided the voice of Barney Rubble in Gorillaz, a Hannah Barbera project.

His turn in the film Anaconda got him a lot of notice, and that launched the Ice Cube media juggernaut, ultimately leading to Ice Cube landing the eponymous role in “That’s So Raven”.

Actually I really don’t know anything about Ice Cube. He seems like he was secretly not all gang guy, but a nerd, like one of the kids in “Fame” or something.

I think the Disney ride that is Ice Cube is closer to the true O’Shea Jackson.

I didn’t answer this one very good.

What manner of guy actually uses those paper toilet-seat covers?

Fussy men in $300 jeans and faux-hawks, creative directors mostly (and we know who I’m talking about).

It has to do with an idiotic denial of one’s own mortality, and the fact that one has a bum-bum that makes boom-booms. These creeps irreconcilably straddle the life-denying stasis of a particularly non-reflective consumer aestheticism and fact that one lives in on the material plane where time is cyclic and we die and are reborn a little bit every sticnking minute of our mortal existence, and the abyss is as a close as the breath of your lover, or splash back from a toilet.

That’s why these people are assholes. BECAUSE THEY PRETEND THEY DON’T OWN THEM.

Also: men who have shingles on their buttocks. But I’m not as annoyed with them, 'cause dudes got painful shingles on they asses.

What are some items one could put Wing Pepper sauce on?

Despite it’s exciting and exotic name Wing Pepper sauce is a watery bland sauce with cloying cheese notes.
Because it’s barely registers, you could dump it gallons of this shit of most things and not improve the flavor.

It is very expensive.

Wing Pepper can be added to the following foods/item, and not even make a goddamn difference:

 Watermelon
 Salsa
 Rice and Milk
 Beef Wellington
 Pad Thai
 Wasabröd ™
 Kugel
 Dry breakfast cereal
 Dried sinew
 Ambrosia
 Beer caddies
 Powdered sports drink
 Chaw-type tabacco snuff
 Eggs
 Tofutti Cuties ™ Vegan Dessert Novelties
 American paper the currency
 Hushpuppies (fried fish)
 Hushpuppies (shoes)
 Shrimp Etuoffe

My Taglines

2008-10-10T09:12:00.000-07:00

Greg Mills: Because Mediocrity Doesn’t Sleep
Greg Mills: America’s Energy Future
Greg Mills: The Man Kids Love to Stare At
Greg Mills: Sweating for America, Today
Greg Mills: Manly enough
Greg Mills: Greg Makes Life Bearable
Greg Mills: Smell Different
Greg Mills: Untouched by Human Hands
Greg Mills: Wonder, Made From Lint!
Greg Mills: New Complexion, Everyday.
Greg Mills: For Your Home
Greg Mills: Sealed Against the Elements
Greg Mills: The Best Kind of Left Overs
Greg Mills: Humanity Version 2
Greg Mills: Mothers Ask For Him By Name. Especially Yours.
Greg Mills: Rubber Reimagined
Greg Mills: The Best Parts Are Liquid
Greg Mills: Crunchy. Satisfying.
Greg Mills: Greg Mills stays on your mind.
Greg Mills: Your coffee table, his feet
Greg Mills: Pets Are Meat Too
Greg Mills: California Grown. Look for the seal!

Today's palette

2008-10-08T12:29:00.000-07:00

Grey. Non-existent Beige. High school guidance counselor earthtones. Old lady plum Plum. Spun polyester Carbon. Cheesy fake cherry-wood. Nursing home oatmeal. Diabetic-pee yellow. Scorch mark poo brown. Inky stencil black.

I need to get the hell outside.

The no-sleep silent irrational passive aggression blues

2008-10-06T15:20:00.000-07:00

I am in New York right now. Just checked into my hotel and I have a fucking bastard eyeball headache.

I got up at 5 am to walk to BART to catch the train to get me to my 8 am flight.

I was in coach, and foolishly gave up my aisle seat so a pair of young Quebecois in love could sit next together and coo about poutine.

I was now plopped in the center seat and to my left is a surly hunking flat-nosed bastard. Actually I know nothing about him, other than he dropped his newspaper under the seat and did NOT give up his seat to the Quebecois couple. So he is obviously Hitler in hell. And I was so, so tired. I can't sleep on planes.

So, I've had five hours of sleep deprived resentment fester in my core by the time the plane lands.

And this is an actual thought I had when I noticed the bastard to my right not craning his neck to see the Manhattan skyline like everyone else on the plane:

"You're not looking out the window to see Manhattan so you can read USA Today? What a goddamn asshole."

I didn't say it out loud, and I'm glad I didn't. I'd look sort of insane.

Ruby's last words before night-night.

2008-10-02T10:07:00.000-07:00

The other night, I was hanging out with Ruby waiting for her to go to sleep so I could go watch some swearing TV.

Her eyes were fluttering at half mast and she began to talk in a sweet, sleepy voice:

"Daaaaad.... today at school...."

"Yes? What happened?"

"... I farted during circle time and didn't say anything so everyone would think someone else did it."

And with that, she slept.

Owen annoys medical professionals.

2008-09-26T11:13:00.000-07:00

My long suffering wife is fighting some sort of cold or something. She had a pretty bad sore throat for a couple of days, and so went to the doctor to get swabbed for strep. The only appointment she could get was after the kids got out of school, so she had to take the little animals with her to her appointment.

Owen, 5, for reasons of his own, decided to call the doctor "Old Man Jenkins" repeatedly. "Hey, Old Man Jenkins! You're Old Man Jenkins! Haha! Old MAN JENKINS!!!"

The doctor took it in stride.

She got her results back today:

One more political post. God DAMN it.

2008-09-25T15:41:00.000-07:00

Fuck, Sarah Palin is colossally dumb. Like, not dumb for national office, but dumb, for say, my neighbor. She would be my dumbest neighbor. I miss Republican elitism.

HOW IS THIS EVEN LUCID? JESUS CHRIST, REPUBLICANS! DEMAND SOMETHING BETTER! I MIGHT HAVE TO LIVE WITH THIS COW FOR EIGHT YEARS!

Our new corporatist state!! Warning: might be dull.

2008-09-24T20:09:00.000-07:00

First of all, I don't know what I'm talking about. It's just a bunch of half understood concepts jumbled together at 11:00 pm.

And I don't make many political posts, because they're usually pretty shrill and they aren't interesting after a week or so (and I am writing for the generations to come to show them what it meant to be fuckin' classy), but dang, the 700 billion is some crazy ass shit.

It's just so bonkers that we're on the edge of becoming a corporatist socialist state, and it's not really being discussed in those terms. And just so we all know what I mean by corporatist, I DON'T mean it in the sense of the folk "EXXON BLOOD FOR AMERIKKKA PIGS" neologism that a hippie can paint on a large puppet.

No, I mean historic corporatism, the economic system of Fascist Italy, and an way of organizing capital that exists in some lesser form in more or less every modern economy. In corporatism, the state might become the main client or minority partner in firms that serve a crucial role in the functioning of the state (this vastly simplified). In pure corporatism, industries are organized into cartels called corporations, and firms, while still owned privately or by shareholders, act as much as agents of government planning as they do as independent actors pursuing their own interests. Firms are guaranteed a certain share of government business, and the capitalists are allowed profit, while risk is absorbed. The government controls capital through licenses, patronage and in some cases, direct partnership.

It's interesting, because we have under Bush seen a social form of corporatism, in the form of Faith Based Initiatives. In pure corporatism, the state, through a process of licensing and deputization of social, religious, or popular organizations as actors of state policy, effectively co-opts their leadership by establishing the state as the source of their legitimacy.

So: profit and "good" risk stays private, while real risk is assumed by the collective. It's socialism for rich people. And like any economic system where the government attempt to fill in the gaps, reliable economic data gets smothered and we end up a lot more blind about about the state of the economy, local capital needs, even sociological trends. A bubble forms, it pops, everyone is screwed. An extreme example of this is the U.S.S.R. A more mild example was is the current Japanese economy, which has never really recovered from the 90s doldrums.

Now, outside garage sales, there are no pure free markets in the world. There are no pure socialist states. The people of Earth all must follow some degree of regulation, just as they all pay taxes and receive some benefit, whether simple capital improvement, or services, or full cradle-to-grave social benefit. Good, bad, what the hell, it's the modern state and it's here.

And while we throw around a lot of rhetoric about being the freest market in the world, we've been, de facto, a mildly corporatist state since the advent of modern capitalism.

So, here's what I'm thinking: let's stop pretending, Republicans, that your party represents borderline anarchism, and Democrats, that your party has anything to do with Jeffersonian anything. Let's drag our corporatism out into the open, and see where it leads us.

Vive Il Corporativismo!

Crap, that was long and boring.

Chewie's destiny, forever altered by Frankie Muniz!

2008-09-23T22:28:00.000-07:00

As you may recall,Chewie had a nasty tangle with a little boy recently.

Things were looking grim for the plump little turd, and all last week Paula and I dragged our feet. Whenever we'd look at Chewie, and his stupid little tail would flick, we would shutter. He was probably thinking "As sure as hell did something RIGHT, because the humans are all into me this week, petting me, feeding the good scraps. Yep, you got it Chewie. You are right up on top now, like goddamn Freddy Mercury."

Anyway, it was like an episode of "Murder She Wrote", the way stuff went down. This past weekend, the kid that was bitten by Chewie was also bitten by his own dog, because he was teasing the much bigger and sort of scarier looking dog (who is really very sweet) much like he had teased Chewie. (Just to be clear, Chewie IS sort of an asshole, and he shouldn't be biting kids. But that's what his crate is for.)

AND, when I tried to take Chewie to the SPCA, they were full up with other child biting dogs and couldn't take him in.

"So let's see how he does this week, and maybe we'll keep him" was the consensus.

Now, here is were the Gods of Justice pull out the stops. On Sunday, I took the brats to the shitty ass video store (as opposed to the good one) and we rented a raft full of trashy kids movies. Out of pangs of quality control, I grab My Dog Skip, which has a decent cast and has a funny picture of a terrier looking at toilet.

So of course we watch all the crappy kids movies first -- sub-muppets, shitty product tie-in franchises, even a stealth Christian parable that looks like it was made with pirated North Korean animation software. Tonight, Ruby suggested we watch "My Dog Skip".

It was then Chewie was bared on the wings of eagles to Eschaton, which is an entirely horrible metaphor, because it sounds like he died, but I don't recall you laying down any money to read this thing, so maybe you should calm your ass down, Roger Ebert.

Anyway, in "My Dog Skip", Malcolm in the Middle's own Frankie Muniz plays a sensitive young egghead in the South during WWII, and he gets a dog called Skip, and along the way he learns about love, and racism, and honor, and justice, and dignity, and gas, and feminine itching, and syphilis, and he gets his first pair of Caprezios and meets a rough handed Corsican roustabout named Nunzio who teaches him how to wrestle (made that up), and bleh, and bleh, and bleh, and you're read the short story and you've seen the Hallmark Special and you've watched the Waltons Episode, and FEH!!!

Anyway, some moonshiners club Skip at the cemetery, and the alcoholic Army deserter redeems himself by rescuing Skip. The final scenes are the now college age narrator leaving Mississippi to go to FUCKING OXFORD, and Skip passing on quietly, with great dignity on his beloved master's now childish bed.

Of course, the kids are eating this shit up, and pretty soon I have a mini Pieta on my hands, with Owen rocking the supine, ham-like toneless body of a very much alive and bewildered Chewie, bawling "Cheeewieeeeeee! Oh, Cheeeewieeeeeee! I (SOB) LOVE (HUP) MY (SNURK) DOG!!!!!"

So, it looks like Chewie is staying. I may have to track down some Malcolm in the Middle dvds. Very effective actor, that Frankie.

PS -- Owen's goddamn feet reek like summertime abattoir. I have washing them with RUBBING ALCOHOL, and all that does is make his feet stick like a chemistry set found in a recently abandoned abattoir.

Mouthy Canadian Broads

2008-09-23T16:54:00.000-07:00

There's so many of them.

That's a gross generalization, actually. I know all of two in the real world, one is currently not blogging and one never even had a blog...AND SHE LIVES IN OAKLAND. (And there is a Canadian blogger I know who lives in the U.K. who is currently not blogging and she's not mouthy.)

In the blog world I know of two: The inimitable Jay of Kill the Goat, this new Kim person, proprietess (which is a sexist word) of the insanely named Repliderium, which is a Canadian term that refers to your mom.

Neat. Up Canada! Huh!

The problems with being a hopelessly obscure m.f.er

2008-09-22T14:02:00.000-07:00

I get a lot of visitors looking for information on the Russian Orthodox diaconate.

Why? Because of this: Igor, the Retarded Russian Orthodox Deacon.

I'm even offended by it at this point, and I can't imagine most folks searching for information on Russian deacons share the same sense of humor I do.

I also get a lot of referrals from the search terms "Kim Jong Il" and, curiously, "Nude Fat Man".

I do love the goddamn internet so.

(PS -- 500th post.)

Looking in the mirror

2008-09-20T22:15:00.000-07:00

It's a weird thing. I like to look at my pores. I'm not too keen on my looks in general, but I do enjoy to scan across my face and examine bumps and anomalies -- wild hairs, etc. I'm removed from it, like a satellite in low orbit over a blackhead planet.

When I was more of a drinker, a smoker, a tab dropper, I'd spend what seemed like hours staring at my own pupils dance, occasionally dipping my forehead to transfer my chemically driven body heat to the cool of the mirror. Psychedelics and mirrors is a hell ride of course, but sometimes I found it to be a ball full of jollies.

It had a Bloody Mary thrill to it. There was this shivery nag that because you've given yourself over to psychotropics, you might see something completely batshit eyeball exploding insane. I never did actually. Just oscillating pupils and Sea of Tranquility-sized pores. The only pleasure I had the one miserable time I dropped X (many, many years ago), was riding the Sunday morning 7 am train and watching my face stretch and warp in the window in time to the metronomic splatter of the track below.

The most sublime pleasure Vaclav Havel enjoyed in the years he spent waiting in a Czechoslovakian cell was staring at himself in the mirror while he smoked. I would have been right there with him.

Och, Chewie, we hardly knew ye. But then you bit a kid like a dumbass.

2008-09-16T20:37:00.001-07:00

Chewie is going back to the Daisy Hill Puppy Farm, because while he's perfectly lovely to Paula and me, he is an asshole to every other living being on the planet.

Not entirely true. He is tolerant of our kids, other than growling at them from time and time and nipping at Owen.

So, wait. Maybe he isn't good to have around the house, since he views our still smallish children as growl-at-able.

The incident that led to his banishment wasn't even entirely his fault. Owen and his little friend were antagonizing him with potato chips or cheese puffs or something, basically baiting him with treats and snapping them away at the last minute. Owen's friend put his face up to Chewie's, put a puff on his own nose, and said -- haha -- get the treat. Now, if you are attuned to the rhythms of small boys and small dogs, you know what happened next, and you are rubbing your nose right now. The kid was okay, but it was a little too close to disaster.

My heart is heavy, because I do love that little dog. If we had a barn, I'm sure he'd be a champion ratter. But our kids are too prone to casual scientific enquiry for a dog like Chewie. He's not up to the task of being a constant experimental subject.

Sigh.

Goddamn it! I LOVE MUSIC!

2008-09-15T10:37:00.000-07:00

It's the craziest damn thing, but I love that shit!

I was all in a mood this morning, grumbling about the twilight of the west, the brattiness of my kids and dog. Then, dear hearts, I got into my car, set the ipod to shuffle, and WAS SLAPPED INTO A METABOLIC HYPER-EXPLOSION. And this is before coffee, you creep.

Boom! Boom! Boom! Wave after wave of just the right modal tension, tempo goes up, tempo go down, and next thing you know I'm on the freeway and I AM APOLLO.

I mean, goddamn it, I could bare knuckle any and every mope that wants to put a foot down to me. HA! I mean, figuratively. I'm sort of sissy. But still. Music.

Listen you some.

Listening to San Francisco

2008-09-13T21:14:00.001-07:00

I spent the day with Paula's extended family, and it hit me: these people talk crazy!

It's the "Mission" accent. It exists in ever decreasing pockets of the city (most folks aren't even aware it exists), and it's the old Irish/Italian working class accent of San Francisco.

It's like a mild Brooklyn accent with broad midwestern vowels. For example, Paula's grandfather Mario says "sure" as "shor". Paula's mom has a very mild one, while Paula's (or Pawl-uh) recently deceased grandma Tilly had the thickest expression of it.

In the San Francisco I operate in day-to-day, the dominate accent is the flat American Midland accent, the voice of CNN. It's a transitory city, North of the Slot (the slot is the cable car track that bisects the length of Market Street, separating Downtown and the business district from the residential districts)... people commute in from Marin and the East Bay, or live Gentrified enclaves, but South of the Slot, where I spent today is San Francisco. I was a little bit sad that less and less of that old San Francisco will be heard.

Idiotic anecdote from the edge of the consciousness!!!

2008-09-09T16:11:00.000-07:00

I am flying/levitating above a house.

It is a moonless night, and the house is sitting on top of a butte.

It has no roof, and I can see the walls that delineate the floor area of each room.

Every room is lit up, and I can see the residents of the house going about their business. They don't know I'm up there, spying on them.

(And yes, this is going somewhere.)

I decide to get up to some mischief and scare the habitants of the house.

"Boooooooooooooo.....

***Greg... GREG!***

...oooooooooo....

**WAKE UP!**

"ooooo. A-booooooooo....WHAT! WHAT!"

"What are you doing?"

"What? What was that sound?"

"It was YOU. You were making ghost sounds. What the hell are you doing?"

"Scaring people."

"I'm going back to sleep... jesus."

My GOD this a great podcast

2008-09-08T12:22:00.001-07:00

The Cold Bath

This is really good. My friend Michael (who I really don’t know all that well, to tell you the truth. But he’s a nice chap) has another friend, a mysterious Luciferian gent who is a former political consultant. Michael has convinced this man, a man I guessing is in his sixties, to sit down a spiel about anything and everything. And it’s stunning.

Your parents may have had friend like this, a charming bastard who corners you at a dinner party and terrifies you by showing you the abyss before you even realized there was such a thing.

Mr. Anonymous is a hell of a storyteller, completely infuriating and hilarious.
It’s not probably for everyone, but if you’re a This American Life-loving sort of person, you’ll enjoy this.

It’s like This American Life crossed with Nietzsche.

I ordered three books about Stalinism today.

2008-09-08T00:28:00.000-07:00

I hope to improve my parenting skills.

I saw a man eat pancakes today.

2008-09-08T00:24:00.000-07:00

It was former Labor Secretary Robert Reich. Just being all cabinet member-y, eating pancakes with his lady on a Sunday.

Berkeley is like that. You see people.

THE MUMMY!!!!

2008-09-05T12:18:00.000-07:00

Paula's dad can and will fall asleep anywhere. Here he is on our floor. Ruby, always enterprising, piled a bunch of shit around him, and then went around asking if anyone wanted to "tour the mummy's tomb".

(All those boxes in back are our attempt at storage before construction starts on our house)

I think I'm done for now.

2008-08-21T09:36:00.000-07:00

This is post #491. That's a good place to take a break.

I can't even fantasize correctly.

2008-08-04T10:52:00.000-07:00

I was walking Chewie (who attacked a man yesterday) up in the highlands of Berkeley yesterday, past the massive Arts and Crafts redwood "cottages" that house world renowned experts in various disciplines I've never heard of, when I entered a gentle revelry, something like "I want a big fucking house like that shit right there."

Because I am a wooly headed ninny, I started going through scenarios of things I could do that wouldn't require any work, yet could cause me to be insanely wealthy. So, you know, the California lottery featured pretty big there. That and getting gout or shingles from some product, then suing the company that produced. But the Lottery would require a lot less work, so I stuck to the lottery.

Here's how I broke out the winnings ($15,000,000, after tax)

2.5 for a big ass house.

1m each for the kids in accounts they won't know about until they turn 25.

1,000,000 for gifts for various family members.

1,000,000 for charities

So that leaves 9.5 million to live on, which I think with the right investment strategy, one could live comfortably on.

It was right about here that anxiety started to intrude on the fantasy.

What do I do with my time?

I could continue working, but I'd be taking a job from some schmuck (ie, me in the real world) that needs it.

I could donate my time, but that seems patronizing.

I could shut myself in and putter, which is what I do now when I'm not at work.

So basically, it turned into a game of trying to figure out what it means to be a good person with a good life.

I'd like to say I had some flash of deep insight, but Chewie went poo and we went home.

Hammer and Sickle, si! Swastika, non!

2008-07-31T12:25:00.000-07:00

I was grabbing lunch in Safeway, never something easy to do at twelve noon mid-week. (Grapes, sushi, green tea, if you must know).

I saw a guy, sort of an ironic hipster guy, wearing a red t-shirt with a giant gold Hammer and Sickle. And maybe because I am in the midst dealing with some minor credit card fraud, was hungry, and generally annoyed, this struck me as sort of glib. I mean, why is the swastika off-limits, but a man can walk abroad in the land with a giant hammer and sickle on his chest?

Why are the Soviets ironic, and the Nazis universally despised? I guess the Nazis sort of wore their evil on the outside, whereas the Soviets had cosmonauts and hosted international youth festivals, but is the line that thin?

Here's some more.

2008-06-30T20:07:00.000-07:00

There's fifteen of these, so I won't post all them, because YAWN. But here are the first two, to give some context:

There are two future episodes that are fairly fucked up and weird, but I'm under a self-embargo until they run in public.

Some sort of funny work stuff.

2008-06-30T19:35:00.000-07:00

One of a series of web videos that I talked about here.

I'll post more.

Want to hear what my house is like?

2008-06-29T21:18:00.001-07:00

The Many Moods of Vladimir Nabokov

2008-06-21T22:39:00.000-07:00

“That… is… a … what is it? Oh! Whachacallit... FILBERT...It’s a filbert.”

“See this butterfly? Pretty, right? You know what it’s called? Nabakovia faga. Did you get that? No, you can’t hold it! Look with your eyes.”

“I told you not to touch my train set. I went into the den, turned on the light, and the goddamn coal car is backwards. Now I’ve got to lock the den. I don’t want to, but I have to. Don’t touch my trains. Don’t. They aren’t toys. They’re collectibles. Don’t touch. Don’t touch. Don’t touch.”

“I was here, I don’t see why you couldn’t have waited to find out what I wanted before you went rushing out. I would have loved a diet root beer. No, I don’t want your coke. No, I like coke fine. That’s not the point. I just wish you would have taken half a moment to reflect that there are more people in this office than your little clique that’s all. And I would have liked a diet root beer.”

“I told you that second Sloppy Joe wasn’t going to do you any good. In the meantime, take off that sweater. Why? Because it’s mine, and I don’t want you getting your bile or whatever all over it. Do you want some soda water or saltines or anything? Anyway, try to finish up. We’ve got a long drive.”

“What’s the problem? I told we were going to lunch. It’s 11:20, and you’re in sweatpants and a Motorhead t-shirt. Snap to it, buddy. And shave, would you? You look like a purse snatcher.”

“I once had a delightful plum outside of Brest, or Spokane. Or Brest. Anyway, it was a hell of a plum. Might have been a nectarine.”

“This is all we’re going to do? Eat eggs? No, no. The eggs are fine (hollandaise is lumpy)… it’s just, you know, I’m 75 today. That’s old. I guess I assumed that other people would have figured that out without me dropping too many hints. I don’t know… brunch? I seem to remember working my ass off getting theater tickets for your… (Oh Jesus, don’t look now, but that guy crossing the street? He’s wearing huaraches with socks. What the hell is wrong with people?)”

So, here's a work thing.

2008-06-20T23:09:00.000-07:00

The (relatively) fun lifestyle wing of my Brobdingnagian client has a kind of cool charity program where they give a portion of the advertising revenue generated from any email or text message you send via their web mail and messaging client to a charity you choose (of their ten charity partners).

We've done a strange marketing program for it, and it might be kind of cool once the momentum builds. The conceit is there is this guy who worked at some vaguely evil company, and he's making up for it by sending lots and lots of emails and text messages.

So there's a blog, with video entries and canned email responses and general silliness. The video entries follow a story arc, one with love, sex tapes, doppelgangers and transcendent redemption. It gets progressively weirder as the month progresses. I'll try to post the weirder episodes here when they go live.

Just warning you.

The thing that killed typesetters.

2008-06-15T15:37:00.000-07:00

There used to be guys that hung out in ad agencies. They were the guys from the type house and they smoked Camels and drank Scotch, bought with rush job money.

They dragged bluies – big marked up proof sheets of ads-to-be – in portfolios to ad agencies around town. “Here’s yer ad, sunshine,” he’d say to the art director “Gimme yer changes and I’ll have the camera readies over to you in 48 hours.”

They also had big sample books of type they’d haul out and set before the art director, like the art director was a dowager and the type guy was a shoe salesman. The art director would pick out the Bodoni or Garamond, and the type guy would write it up in his little book, and take the layout back to the type warren, load up the typeface and set the bastard. This happened on a something like an IBM Selectric crossed with a pipe organ.

The print guys had a good line.

Then Quark came out and -- get this -- you could set type in a circle. In a circle, you, the art director, could. And you could do it on your screen.

Now, the type guys could set type in a circle, but they’d have to warm up some machine that filled half a room, and they’d need an extra day, maybe have to take it across town to the Latvian brothers. Or something.

Anyway, suddenly any doofus could set type in a circle on their desktop, and the entire industry was completely dead, like, in two months or something.

That’s interesting. The giant killer was something that stupid.

How Chuy suffers.

2008-06-15T15:11:00.000-07:00

I am not MArk Hausmann

2008-06-15T10:25:00.000-07:00

At Safeway, they issue these little discount cards to customers. You save a few cents here and there.

My card has long since gone the way of my library card, gym membership card and social security card, folded into some eldritch aperture of space/time. Or my sock drawer.

Anyway, I don't NEED my card, because I can punch in my phone number, the same phone number I've had for ten years.

Here's the problem: I have Mark Hausmann's phone number, or he has mine. And so I face a cheery, "Have a nice day, Mr. Hausmann" every time I use cash to buy something at Safeway.

If I use my cash card, my name shows up in larger letters at the bottom of the receipt in purple dot matrix glory, so I get a cheery "Have a nice day, Mr. Miles!" (Miles, Mills. Close enough.)

The thing about Safeway is that there are lots of folks working there who have a hard time with Germanic names, specifically the "au" dipthong. So, I find myself correcting the pronunciation of another man's name. (I feel an profound connection with Hausmann because of this. I am joined in his battle, and I feel I know him through carrying his burden.)

The couple of times I've brought this up to the clerk, I've been met with the sort of calm, scan of my eyes that tells me "You're kidding me, right? Do you know if I leave my station I am breaking several Union rules and the paperwork involved...I'm not even sure that paperwork exists. This is some marketing voodoo from corporate, and down here, where we sell groceries and sundries, that sort of backend database wizardry is just so out of my ken and job description that I can only stare at you like this, like I know that you know that I know you should know better, Mr. Hausmann."

So, at Safeway, I'm Mr. Hausmann. Unless I use my cash card. Then I'm Mr. Miles.

39 years of this shit, and I still don't have no goddamn Bentley.

2008-06-13T00:40:00.000-07:00

Where is that shit? I'm 39. THIRTY NINE. Christ was dead and resurrected by this age and me? Today I was looking at D&D dice online, because it would be funny to get some. THIRTY NINE.

I was thinking about renting Heavy Metal the movie. THIRTY NINE.

I couldn't read my notes from a meeting at work, because I had drawn pictures all over them. THIRTY NINE.

I'm staying up late because I'll all like... no one tells BABY when he's going to bed. THIRTY NINE.

Thirty nine.

That's like fifty.

Oh, fuck OFF with your goddamn composer bust.

2008-06-10T10:30:00.000-07:00

Unless you are a piano playing motherfucker, why have a goddamn composer bust in your house? Really?
As I was walking to work this morning, I passed this crappy office furniture store and in one of their displays they had the giant bronze bust of Beethoven. What the fuck? What. The. Fuck.

Busts like that are good if you are Roman or a Howard Hawks-style forties wise guy that keeps a bust of Longfellow around the office to toss your fedora on in a gently mocking fashion.

Of course, in my belief systems Fedora = MASSIVE douche, so yeah, we’re back to zero on the Mills Douchebag Scale.

I think part of my problem with the composer bust thing is there like seven guys that appear over and over again: Beethoven, Mozart, Bach, Chopin (for your piano playing types), Tchaikovsky, and I dunno, Brahms or something. Never someone like Schumann or Rachimaninoff. Probaby because they lack bitching locks.

Who knows, I might be into a Satie, or Debussey, or Ravel, or a nice Varese. Someone weird. Stravinsky! That'd be a cool bust, if only because people might confuse him for Groucho Marx.

When I was a kid we had a lumpy Beethoven and a tiny Chopin. (Sister was a piano player.) The Chopin was the perfect size for jamming the marzipan eyes of chocolate rabbits into. We may have a had a Tchaikovsky with a broken nose, though I may be confused.

I guess what bothered me most about the Beethoven statue was it was in an office furniture store. What is that supposed to say about you, oh mid-level sales manager, that you have a Beethoven head? What Beethoven brought to symphonic expression, I hope to emulate in my spreadsheets. When I look upon Ludwig Von, I find the power within to crunch numbers with nuance and power. Dude was motherfucking DEAF.

"Hey, Bob. Before we dive into the Q4 numbers, how about we spin the Eroica Symphony, just to set the mood."

I'm an ass.

My home life.

2008-06-09T17:00:00.000-07:00

My boss accidentally sums up everything that's venal and toxic about my profession

2008-06-08T23:00:00.000-07:00

"The client will think I'm smoking crack if I show her this campaign. It's too...intelligent."

The web is a powerful collaboration tool for spazzes

2008-06-08T20:50:00.000-07:00

A couple of years ago, blog chum Jack P. Toerson linked to the singular Mr. Baldo Has A Blog Now, a blog marketing the wonderful and spurious Mr. Baldo's Shiny Wax For Balds -- Now with Phlogiston®.

Well, Jack P. and I were possibly the only readers of this blog, and we both contributed a few jingles does in the style of various popular tunes. I visited the blog today, and it seems that sadly, Mr Baldo's blog has not updated since 2006.

Since it doesn't seem like a working concern, I thought I'd better grab my "work" before it disintegrated into dead photons. The web is filled with the ephemeral crap! Yay, the Web!

Here are the songs:

(To the tune of Back in Black)

Baldo Bald™, I hit the wax,
With Phlogiston®, I’ll share the facts!
Yes, I'm gleaming my dome,
Like Cadillac chrome!
I keep a-lookin' at my scalp 'cause it's gettin' me high,
Forget the wig 'cause I’m never shy!
I got Phlogiston®, like bomb,
That’s why my scalp is looking so fly!

'Cause I'm Bald! Yes, I'm Bald!
Well, I'm Bald! Yes, I'm Bald!
Well, I'm Ba-a-a-ald!Ba-a-a-ald!
Well, I'm Baldo Bald™!
Yes, I'm Baldo Bald™!

Ow!

Baldo Bald™, give my scalp a smack,
Going to go get a Baldo’s Family-Pac™!
Yes, I'm polished good, like I should
Going catch the next bus to Hollywood!
'Cause I'm back on the shine and my dome is so fine,
Perhaps one evening we go out and dine!
As a gentleman, you can be certain I’ll pay,
And I’ll be buffed the Phlogiston® way!

'Cause I'm Bald! Yes, I'm Bald!
Well, I'm Bald! Yeah, I'm Bald!
Well, I'm Ba-a-a-ald!
Ba-a-a-ald!
Well, I'm Baldo Bald™!
Yes, I'm Baldo Bald™!

Well, I'm Ba-a-a-ald! (I'm Bald!)
Ba-a-a-ald! (Well, I'm Bald!)
Ba-a-a-ald! (I'm Bald!)
Ba-a-a-ald! (I'm Bald!)
Ba-a-a-ald! (I'm Bald!)
Ba-a-a-ald!
Baldo Bald™!
Yes, I'm Baldo Bald™!

Remember: There’s Bald, and then there’s Baldo Bald.
Now with Phlogiston®‼
Baldo’s Shiny Wax™ for Balds. Available at your friendly neighborhood drugstore.

**

(To the "tune" of Baby Got Back)

[Intro]
Oh, my, god. Maurice, look at his BALD. It is so shiny. He looks like,someone who avails himself of Mr. Baldo’s Shiny Wax™ For Balds. But, y'know, who can’t help but admire shiny Balds? Woman only talk to him, because his gleaming dome exudes confidence, 'kay? I mean, his Bald, is just so polished. I can't believe it's just so burnished,, it's like,out there, I mean – my god. He's just so ... Bald!

[Sir Bald-o-Lot]

♪ I like Mr.Baldo’s and I cannot lie
♪ You other Baldie's can't deny
♪ That when Phlogiston® is applied as directed,
♪ Your scalp starts to get respected,
♪ And you GLEAM, wanna take off you cap
♪ And show that ra-di-ant dome
♪ And with the incandescent glow your wearing
♪ The masses can't stop staring
♪ Tia Carrera wants to get wit'cha
♪ And take your picture
♪ Before your dull pate made ya feel mourny…
♪ But with that Bald suddenly it’s pleasant to be so shorny
♪ Ooh, Baldo'-smooth-skin
♪ Now you admired by colleagues and friends
♪ Truly, Phlogiston® is meant
♪ To be an above average sol-vent
♪ I've seen them coruscate!
♪ Drop some science on that pate!
♪ It gleam with sheens,
♪ Like a Monet landscape scene
♪ I'm tired of magazines
♪ Sayin' soporific scalps are the thing
♪ Take the average Baldman and ask him
♪ The dome gotta pack much vim
♪ So, Baldos! (Yeah!) Baldos! (Yeah!)
♪ Has your Bald got Phlogiston®? (Hell yeah!)
♪ Tell 'em to buff it! (Buff it!) Buff it! (Buff it!)
♪ BUFF that healthy Bald!
♪ Baldo’s got scalp!(My Baldo’s Shiny Wax, with Phlogiston®)
♪ Baldo’s got scalp!
♪ (Apply just a drop to bust a gleam on top)
♪ (Apply just a drop to bust a gleam on top)
♪ (Apply just a drop to bust a gleam on top)
♪ (Apply just a drop to bust a gleam on top)

Now with Phlogiston®‼
Baldo's Shiny Wax™ for Balds. Available at your friendly neighborhood drugstore.

**

(To the tune of Satisfaction)
♪ I can't get no Phlogiston®
♪ I can't get no Phlogiston®.
♪ 'Cause I try and I try and I try and I try.
♪ I can't get no, I can't get no.

♪ When I go to the grocery store
♪ And the idiot clerk in Aisle 6 (Bald care)
♪ Is tellin' me they don’t got no more
♪ Baldo's Shiny Wax™ for Balds
♪ As he snickers at my occluded scalp,
♪ I can't get no Phlogiston®
♪ Hey hey hey, that's what I say.

♪ I need to get some Phlogiston®
♪ I need to get some Phlogiston®
♪ 'Cause I’m Bald and I’m Bald and I’m Bald and I’m Bald.
♪ I can't get no, I can't get no.

♪ When I'm tending to dome care
♪ And the tin bottom is shining through
♪ The leavings of Mr. Baldo’s magic goo
♪ And I’ve reached the end – my heart may rend
♪ At this cranial tragedy!
♪ I scream no, no oh Christ no!
♪ Hey hey hey, my scalp is dull.

♪ I can't get no Phlogiston®
♪ I need a tin, but I don’t got one.
♪ 'Cause I’m Bald and I’m Bald and I’m Bald and I’m Bald.
♪ I can't get no, I can't get no.

♪ When I'm walkin' round the block
♪ And I'm scrapin’ here and I'm beggin’ there
♪ Just tryin' to score some wax.
♪ The clerk tells me better come back later next week
♪ Seems you hit us at Bald season’s peak

♪ I can't get no, I can't get no,
♪ I can't get no Mr. Baldo’s® Shiny Wax™!
(Try our new Mentho-Phlog, No Tears wax. For children's tender Balds.)

Now with Phlogiston®‼
Baldo's Shiny Wax™ for Balds. Available at your friendly neighborhood drugstore.

**

(To the Tune of Iron Man)

I. AM. BALD-O!

♪Has he lost his sheen?
♪What can he do to make it gleam?
♪Can he shine his dome?
♪With a dollop of Phlogiston® foam?
♪The la-bel has he read?
♪Will he apply to his head?
♪Just five minutes there
♪Is a priceless aid in Bald-o care.

♪He is polished now
♪The La-dies all shout out WOW!
♪Battling scalpie brine
♪For the future of mankind

♪Nobody mocks him
♪They just stare at his head
♪With Baldo’s Shiny Wax™
♪Any woman he can bed.

♪Now the time is here
♪To travel to your drugstore near
♪Pull it from the shelf
♪An essential tool for Bald-o health!

♪Nobody mocks him
♪They just stare at his head
♪With Baldo’s Shiny Wax™
♪Any woman he can bed.

♪Phlogiston® contains no lead
♪It’s a perfect balm for the Bald-o Head!
♪Run to the store as fast as you can
♪Baldo's Shiny Wax™ for Balds lives again!

As advertised on the Shorn Hannity Radio Hour.
Now with Phlogiston®‼
Baldo's Shiny Wax™ for Balds. Available at your friendly neighborhood drugstore.

**

(The Tune of "Blake's Jerusalem")

♪ And did this wax in ancient time
♪ Polish England's Baldies a-gleam?
♪ And did the waxie wax of Phlogiston®
♪ Giveth England's pleasant Baldie sheen?

♪ And did the Shiny Wax Divine
♪ Shine forth upon our smooth-ed domes?
♪ And was a Healthy Brill-i-ance buff-ed here
♪ Among these dark Satanic liver spots?

♪ Bring me my tub of wax!
♪ Bring me my lambswool shammy!
♪ Bring me my sealant!
♪ O clouds of Phlogiston®‼ Bring me my Baldo's Shiny Wax™!

♪ I will not cease from my buffing,
♪ Nor shall my shammy sleep in my hand
♪ Till Baldo's Shiny Wax™ for Balds,
♪ Has smoothed and polish-ed my pate.

Now with Phlogiston®‼
Baldo's Shiny Wax™ for Balds. Available at your friendly neighborhood drugstore.

SO, uh, neat.

Uh, I think I fixed the music link. True, I'm not sure it was broken in the first place..

2008-06-08T12:02:00.000-07:00

Long story. Anyway, here it is:

Spotting fake air

2008-06-07T10:58:00.000-07:00

1). Does it go fiz-fiz-fiz when you walk? This is not air, it is corduroy. You're choking! Spit it out!

2). Is it a cheery, vaguely Danish primary color, and does it have eight nubbins on top? It's a Lego! Another close one.

3). Was it at one time married to Valerie Betanelli? Good lord, it's Eddie Van Halen! Another second, and oblivion!

4). Is it depicted as a blindfolded woman carry scales? That's Justice. It is an abstract concept. Can't beath it, and Justice also applies to fish, who breathe the pee of other fish.

5). Is your wife complaining that it's too cold, and she needs another damn comforter on the bed? That's air. Breathe deep and enjoy your life. Go in peace.

Musica!

2008-06-06T22:47:00.000-07:00

My friend Kelly has dreamed up a delicious project called The Three Minute Miracle Project, basically a group of music listening fools sharing music. Each week, a member of the group uploads an MP3 playlist via Pando and everybody else gets to enjoy it.

(If you're looking for an exceptional graphic designer, check out Kelly's professional site here. And here's her freakin' insane house.

Below you'll find my playlist. It's hitting the boards this Monday, but as my BFF, I'll let you have a sneak peek. I'm a giddy fool. It's pretty good, if a bit sixties. The Bee Gees even make a turn in their early Beatles rip-off period. Enjoy, eared friend! (You'll have to download the aforementioned Pando, but it's free.)

A blog by this guy.

2008-06-05T14:38:00.000-07:00

Dotson Salutes the blog of a funny bloke who is starring in the project I'm currently working on.

He (as the other folks working on this) has been doing bit after bit of wonderful ad libs and it's been a pleasure to watch. A good day for working my idiotic job. The director, Michael Blieden, is a funny and nice man.

Goddamn, I am a cheery butterfly today.

Seriously, I can't wait to post this stuff. It's going to be fuggin rad.

Okay, back to being a sweating chump.

Things to do on set

2008-06-05T08:16:00.000-07:00

1). Wonder if directors chairs fulfill a need, other than historic continuity.

2). Roam for wireless coverage.

3). Pretend you are on a stakeout, a stakeout that requires a staff of 30, including a caterer.

4). Work out bathroom strategies (30 people. One bathroom. One is forced to be thoughtful in such situations.)

5). Enthusiastically eat things that you'd never eat in real life, like chili-and-corn-chip surprise.

6). Wonder aloud why you've eaten more 3-star hotel breakfasts with your coworker than your wife.

7). Observe beard growth patterns of coworkers (male)

8). Work

9). Get the heebie-jeebies

10). Wonder how you can feel glazed and pasty 30 minutes after taking a shower

11). Giggle like a schoolboy when the toilet goes on the fritz

12). Fall in love with Facebook all over again.

13). Awkward acknowledge the wonderfulness of the actors on the way to the bathroom

14). Talk shit about people who aren't there

15). Silently assign snide nicknames to people who are guile-less and kind, and feel bad about it, and continue doing it

16). Eat

17). Wonder if the stains you feel are stains you can see

18). Compare notes on hotel rooms

19). Try to understand where in Los Angeles you are

20). Agree passionately about the desirability of neighborhoods you've never heard of

21). Wonder why Los Angeles has no points of reference that stick for you, other than the Hanna Barbera studios.

22). Marvel at the studied tightly undone insouciance of the fashionably dressed crew people, and realize that Berkeley is sort of far away

23). Marvel that the catering lady has the foresight to have celery on set. She knows, man, she knows.

24). Observe yourself in horror as you say something is funny without actually laughing. Has it come to this?

Interlude: Talkin' nature with Owen

2008-06-02T20:47:00.000-07:00

Me: Owen, where d'you think rocks come from?

Owen: Trees crap them.

5 ways to spot a fake potato

2008-06-02T15:08:00.000-07:00

1). Is it made of plaster? Yes? Fake potato.

2). The potato plays backgammon. Potatoes are tubers, cannot play backgammon. Thus, a fake potato. QED, asshole.

3). Does have a gills? Potatoes are land-based. Not a potato.

4). Does it take 50 seconds to microwave it? Ahhh, hell no. That's no potato for sures.

5). Does it taste good with chives and sour cream? Yes? Well, that's a true potato. Or a yam.

The Last Moments of Yves St. Laurent

2008-06-02T10:05:00.000-07:00

Bo Diddley: If I can't have you Yves, no one can.

Yves: Mon Dieu!

Nothing makes me feel more like garbage than looking at casting tapes

2008-05-29T14:27:00.000-07:00

I'm working on a project for work -- a series of comedy shorts -- that required the watching of casting tapes.

I hate casting. I hate casting because the miles of mildly okay actors thrown before a cheap video camera in a cheesy, over-bright little room without any preparation. There are 120,000,000 actors in LA, and more are coming everyday and they end up in these abattoirs, reading lines out of context to some imaginary polar bear off camera. They came to the call at 10:00 am, it's 4:00 pm, and everyone in the building is pissed off and sour, the kind of pissed off and sour that can only come from being in a shitty office building somewhere in Hollywood in the late afternoon.

That tape or digital file that makes up to San Francisco not only contains the images of the actors, but also does a too-good job of transmitting the cumulative fail stink that is permeating the audition room.

The schedule is always fucked and four agency sweat-hogs stewing in their own juices in a shabby and dark conference room just want to get through the 25,000 potential "Woman #3"s so they can get back to their desk to write and art direct all the other components of the campaign, which were due at 10:00 that morning. The casting person, eager to please, does a dragnet of Hollywood, packing the casting tape with anyone with two functioning kidneys and one functioning eye.

What happens, sadly, is we the agency scum pass on people in an instant, because they have dumb hair, or were looking to the left, or they remind us of someone we hate (or at least THINK we hate in that fetid haze of blue conference room funk). We want to be done with these hopeful, earnest people. So we cast to type, we cast in shorthand, we cast without consideration for subtle performances or wild-assed improvisation.

Now, that doesn't happen every time. Sometimes the stars align in such a way that it's easy to square the right thing with the prudent thing. We found a bushel full of excellent, excellent people this go around, for example.

But it does happen more that I'd like. And that sucks.

Actors work their asses off.

The Backpack Strap Tipping Point

2008-05-28T10:11:00.001-07:00

In the early part of my high school career, people wore their backpacks using only one strap, with a slow rolling gait. It was all about cool detachment, a Northern Californian’s idea of Southern California.
Then Dave Fraholi started duel-strapping and all hell broke loose. A renaissance of backpack expression, duel-straps, single straps and, in the case of Al, TWO BACKPACKS. (Granted, one was given over entirely to Al’s blueprints of his Dome-ed City).
So here’s to Dave Fraholi: backpack Prometheus!

My idea for a totally awesome Nazi comedy short

2008-05-27T22:44:00.000-07:00

SCENE: NUREMBURG RALLIES

(A montage of found BW footage from the Triumph of the Will and other historic sources, featuring line upon line of standard bearers.)

Two standard bearers are listen to the Archfiend's (that'd be Hitler) speech and one is starting looking around furtively with an exasperated look on his face.

He leans over to the guy to his right, and says out of the corner of his mouth:

"Dude, this is fucking GAY."

-fin-

Kim and I have a laugh at my stupid name

2008-05-26T16:42:00.000-07:00

Kim, a English person, was referencing the William Blake poem "And did those feet in ancient times... (more popularly known as the hymn "Jerusalem") at work today, a poem that mentions "Dark Satanic Mills", as in industrial mills.

He mentioned "Dark Satanic Mills" as I walked into his cube.

Kim: "And here he is now!"

Heh.

Because my name is Mills. And I'm Dark Satanic.

Funny, that.

Here's a chappie with a well tempered blog

2008-05-26T14:54:00.000-07:00

Citizen of the Month. He's a good writer.

Shopping in Twin Peaks

2008-05-26T14:19:00.000-07:00

I just remembered this incident...

About three years ago, I was at shopping for browsing in a music store, looking at the classical CDs. I guess nothing appealed to me, because I made it all the way to "X" before I found anything I wanted to get.

I picked up an Iannis Xenakis cd, and while I'd read about him (very, very difficult music, math based, crazy, harsh) I'd never heard any of his music. The price was right, and I was on this completist kick (what I was completing is debatable. I guess I figured I'd know when it was complete.), so I took the plunge and took it to the front counter.

The guy working the counter that dad had a pretty significant limp and what looked like a slight curvature of the spine. I had chatted with him before about weird music, so I was EVEN MORE BUBBLY than usual (I think I may have even looked him in the eye).

He lit up when he saw my purchase-to-be: "Ahhh... Xenakis!"

Me, fumbling for levity: "Yeah, I'm going to have a dance party this weekend."

He: "A Xenakis dance party! Wow... it'd probably look like this!"

At this point, he comes out from behind the register and does this painful little dance, fluttering his hands, sort of pogoing in place.

Awkward.

Thing is, that exactly the sort of dance you'd do at a Xenakis dance party.

Children. Dog.

2008-05-24T15:18:00.001-07:00

These are Children.

This a Dog.

They all live at my house.

Two of the strangest things I have ever produced in a professional capacity.

2008-05-21T16:35:00.000-07:00

The Rise of Chuy: Scourge of the Undead

2008-05-21T11:34:00.000-07:00

Chuy, the dog, HATES squirrels. Hates them with the fire of a thousand suns.

He especially hates squirrels of the UNDEAD variety.

This is what happened:

Paula, Owen, and Chuy were boulevarding one afternoon last week, taking in the air and observe the civic heart of our city in the midday bustle.

Chuy, being small and curious, regularly peels off his sidewalk skim to dive into the warrens you’d observe under bushes if you were as short as he was. For a small dog, the world is a series of small hutches filled with goblins.

On this afternoon, he growled, then barked (something he never does), then dove into a bush on a busy sidewalk. After a few minutes of the bush shaking violently, Chuy bounded out of the bush with the still-moist carcass of a disemboweled squirrel.
(He wasn’t the disemboweller and I’m sure that irked him)

He shook that squirrel corpse like a money maker, and the resultant offal spray caused Paula, Owen and two teenagers skateboarding nearby to start screaming.

Owen (a animal lover) was screeching “Chuy! Stop killing nature!”

Paula managed to still Chuy’s bloodlust long enough to convince him to drop the desiccated romper toy. He was flecked with gore however, so needed a bath at home.

Owen told Paula: “I hate Chuy. He kills nature.”

Since that day, Owen has made peace with Chuy's nature. He knows the squirrel was already demised and Chuy was merely having a lark.

And all the while Chuy dreamt on, imagine a mountain of squirrel skulls, with Chuy himself tucked into a pile of warm laundry at the top.

Chuy is not to be trifled with.

I would like to work at your firm.

2008-05-20T16:17:00.000-07:00

Offer me a job. At your work.

I will take it, by gum. I will bring my own lunch. I'll sit quietly, and cheerfully.

I could tidy, collate, bring in the elephants.

Got a waxing need? I'll wax it. Canvas need stretching? I'll get my gloves.

Can I plan an invasion for you? Please? I won't be any trouble. I have my own maps and a pen.

Will wear a tie. Or pasties.

Let me reheat the morning soup for you. I will punish your enemies, roll your oats, call the faithful to prayer.

All I need is a honest fair, salary and four weeks off.

You have reached the limits of your effectiveness, but I can extend for you. "Milk the cats! Ring the bells! Calculate the rate of decay! I'm busy, Mills!"

And I'm on it, my name tag a glisten and my hassock freshly pressed.

I will not complain when I am cut by paper, exposed to pathogens, or put next to the boring client in the Lear Jet.

I won't alphabetize, so don't ask. And I am leery of deep-fryers, since the accident.

But I will dress your windows like the fabled window dresser I know deep down that I am.

So, what do you say? Are we jake?

Hire me.

I am forced to go to the Ruby Mills content well once more

2008-05-18T21:20:00.001-07:00

Lately Ruby has been bringing glass marbles into her bath for god knows what reason.

Tonight, I asked her about it.

Me: Ruby, why do you bring marbles into the bath?

Ruby: I like the way they look when they're wet.

Me: Well, don't bring them in, because they might go down the drain or you could slip on them or something.

Ruby: They get sucked up or YOU get fucked up.

That's gold right there. 24 karat.

Ruby's complicated theology

2008-05-17T11:05:00.000-07:00

(Note: we have a silly little garden buddha is our semi-wild planter)

Ruby: Dad, I was praying.

Not being a particularly religious family, I am perplexed.

Me: Who were you praying to?

Ruby: Buddha! And the fairies.

Me: Ah. Is Buddha a friend of the fairies?

Ruby: Yes. The fairies do Buddha good works in the spirit world.

Me: I had no idea.

Ruby: Remember that cat that disappeared in the bushes?

(We have a neighbor cat that likes to lurk behind a giant fern we have.)

Me: Yes.

Ruby: Buddha ordered the fairies to carry the cat to the spirit world.

Me: He's dead?

Ruby: Who?

Me: The cat.

Ruby: No, he's alive! He's living in paradise as a living cat.

Me: Like Elijah.

Ruby: I don't know. I gave Buddha money.

Me: I don't think Buddha really needs any money.

Ruby: He uses it buy treats for his fairy servants. Buddha also asked me to show him THIS flower once a year, every year.

(Shows me a strange orange flower that she found growing in some ground cover succulents we have in front)

At this point, Ruby wanders off, singing "Iko Iko" to the tune of "La Cucucaracha".

She's a prophet.