A Guy Knocks On This Door

Celebs and Media

I’m not one for Podcasts. They’re quaint, like blogs, and only a certain kind of person can pull them off – usually someone with a good microphone and the ability to edit out people talking over each other.

I tried to get into Hey Ash What You Playin’? showbecause their videos were uber-gamer geek funny but their podcasts were overwrought with analyzing the mechanics of creating comedy video game gags. I swear the two episodes I listened two was like discussing early Woody Allen movies with current day Woody Allen. Yarg. I’ll stick with the videos, thanks.

I have to start listening to WDWRadio.com for reasons I will not offer. Yet. I will say that I am reading “Walt Disney – An American Original” and even though it has more schmaltz than a barber shop quartet singing around a kid’s $0.05 lemonade stand on a hot southern afternoon, it does give a fair account of Uncle Walt. It just makes me want to go back to “The World”.

But my current fave is The Nerdist (site link / iTunes link), starring the host of Web Soup, Chris Hardwick. Unlike his show, the podcasts aren’t structured and the conversation flows naturally. Mostly the discussion revolves around stand up comedy industry talk (he managed to weave that in his episode with Mad Men’s John Hamm) but he does bring out the inner nerd in all his guests. I’m going back in the library and just finished the Drew Carrey episode where they shoot off some pretty funny Carson-style jokes. When I heard this next one I was trying not to laugh in the middle of a subway car:

A guy knocks on this door and a 12 year old kid answers. He’s wearing his mother’s panties and bra, has a martini in one hand and is smoking a big cigar in the other.

The man say, “Excuse me little boy, are your parents home?”

The kid says, “What the fuck do you think?”

Something Personally Hateful

Personal Bits, You Tell Me

In response to yesterday’s Poll.

I thought long and hard about this because SharkBoy expresses his hate so much better than I. I like to think I’m a patient, understanding and kind person and Hate doesn’t live in my heart.

Read: I’m a passive aggressive pussy that doesn’t have a spine to stand up to things that piss me off.

I relaxed my brain and let the first thing I hated come to mind. When it came, I rejected it because it was too easy. Like doing a Seinfeld accent while complaining about airline food. But after my walk to work this morning and having to endure yet another onslaught of the thing I hate the most, I decided that yes, I cannot deny my anger towards-

Smokers.

You people are the lowest form of humanity, if you can consider yourselves human. If I could encompass you into a race, I’d be the leader of the KKK for anti-smokers. I’d be burning Nicorette crosses on your fucking butt-covered lawns. You people literally suck… the life from the rest of us.

photo by pheyblom

I get behind you when I’m out doors and watch you litter without remorse by throwing your butts into the street. “But they’re biodegradable!” I hear you wheeze through stained teeth. Unless they disappear within 12 hours then they’re “biodegradable” – which they’re not. I’d love to dump every single butt you dirty slags ever put carelessly onto the streets and magically transport them to just under your sheets in your bed. Maybe then you’ll get the message as to how dirty collectively you’re making the city. As I suffer through your clouds of stinky, carcinogenic breath, I walk fast to get past your thoughtless mass, I’m usually met with another one of your kind, blissfully unaware that you’re being dirty, ugly, repugnant.

Despite the city putting up millions of OUR dollars worth of new garbage cans that assist in the problem of YOUR waylaid butts, you still manage to carelessly dirty these costly cans. I watched yesterday as a trio of smokers butted out by jabbing out their sticks on the shiny new plastic top of a fresh can instead of the metal plate provided. Yay black burns on plastic! This is why we can’t have New Things.

As an example of how utterly clueless you lazy, thoughtless smokers are, let’s look at the successive laws being generated around saving our government billions of dollars in health costs. Actually I mean “making Ontario healthier” when internally I’m thinking “saving you from yourselves while protecting me from your patulous cloud of dirty, uncontrollable self destructive behaviour”. Toronto, in it’s infinite wisdom has regulated smokers to the sidewalks – no smoking in any enclosed space. Ta Da! Now we find Mad Men quaint! Enclosed dwellings are now free of yellowy stains and lingering ass smell!

What? You say these gaseous Chimairas are hanging around the front doors too much, leaving their butts on the ground around a doorway and subsequent foot traffic transporting butts/smoke into the building? Let’s make a law! No standing around a door and smoking! Ta da! Problem solved. Stop your child-like whining.

Speaking of kids…oh my goodness! Now they’re smoking in their cars! With KIDS! The swift hammer of justice comes down and faboom, we now have a law. The children are safe! Here, let me text that while your lungs clear.

Can’t you dumb assed idiots see you’re being regulated out of existence? For a reason?

“But I can’t stop,” I hear you whine as you haul your ass into a convenience store to point at a binder that legally has to stay closed for the sake of the children, so you can purchase cigarettes from behind a blackened wall. And yet you complain about this like we’re treating you like porn deviants?

Fuck. You. You. Lazy. Fuck. If my mom can stop after close to 65 years of smoking, then you can too. Here’s the reason why.

Look, if you want to kill yourself, please, go right ahead. But do us all a favour and don’t involve me or inconvenience me at all in your deathwish. Clean up after yourself and stop being such slobs.

Thank you and goodnight!

Interpolation

Personal Bits

The sun falls on our already sun-burnt skin as SharkBoy and I leave yet another overly AC-ed jewelry store in some Caribbean port, disappointed with the selection and prices. Our search for new rings isn’t like our first time selecting jewelry in the sunny islands (images missing. Sorry!). We’re coming across $1000 gold rings (whoa) or $10 cheap Le Chateau knock offs that some nightclubbing twink would wear. No middle ground.

Our original rings of Medical Grade Titanium have become tarnished and no longer have that bright shiny look they had years ago, however, make no mistake, their meaning hasn’t. We both agreed that fresh rings would be nice and an update was in order. Sometimes SharkBoy surprises me with his ability not to attach too much meaning to inanimate objects. Just the things that count to us, like our 50″ plasma TV.

After 6 sunny island ports and a brief nosey around NYC, we found nothing. Although I’m very confident that if we put much more effort into it, NYC would have yielded some fine rings, but time restraints held us back.

Last weekend we’re wandering through an underground mall and out of the corner of my eye I see a row of masculine rings: brushed metal and silver, the two elements we were looking for. Brushed, to hide any scrapes and shiny because we’re magpies at heart. The second thing I noticed was a sign proclaiming “40%” which didn’t hurt at all.

Not that I’m cheap but I don’t put a lot of money into things that I know I have a good chance of losing, like sunglasses, bikes or hats. Jewelry has a tendency to leave me like my hair did when I was 21.

I reiterate: the meaning is no less important.

We silently look at the display for a style we like. As we’re looking, the clerk, offered us a 2 for 1 if we were getting two, possibly noticing we had matching rings on, or just eager to talk to someone – the store wasn’t busy. After a few minutes of debating we choose the ring we like and start picking out our sizes.

The new rings might be considered a bit of a downgrade: from Titanium to 18/10 Stainless Steel. As I removed my wedding ring I did feel a twang of remorse for swapping out the old ring for the new. Wasn’t I suppose to have a symbol of permanency that has “No Do-Overs” stamped all over it? A forever binding reminder of my promise to SharkBoy? Does purchasing these rings weeks after our vacation in a nameless hole-in-the-wall jewelry kiosk erode the symbolism of these rings? Does it erode our love?

As the cash register rings I notice that the Pet Shop Boys are playing. Our favorite band was on the radio playing their first big hit, West End Girls. I take it as a sign and gladly stab the new bling on my finger.

I reiterate: the meaning is no less important.

Tell Me Tuesday

You Tell Me

I’m making this a weekly thing.You tell me the next thing I will write about. I promise it will be 99.999% true (embellished only for interest/safety sake) and always something personal in nature…

[poll id=”6″]

Poll closed! Personal Hate rant coming up, for you bitter fucks!

Immortal, If Only in Pulp

Celebs and Media, Distractions

I’m digging through my box of comics, downsizing, removing the non-valuable ones and I come across this – Issue #1 of Lethargic Lad:

Lethargic Lad Issue #1

It was created by a group of animators and one teacher within my class at Sheridan College. These were the “cool guys” that sat at the back of the studio who were tight and occasionally monopolized the facetime of the Layout teacher, Brian LaMay. Every so often they would produce a original ‘zines that were 5×7 in size and were filled with sight gags and artwork that would make our life drawing teacher faint, but you could tell the stories (sometimes broad, sometimes laser accurate parodies of current comic/movie/TV happenings) that they loved the medium. And that they didn’t have any girlfriends.

The day their full colour (cover) issue in proper comic book format came out, I was sitting at my desk in third year animation class. Greg Hyland entered the lofty classroom and slammed a pile of them down on his desk. Like something out of a Disney movie, the class crowded around and shucked out the $2 for a copy. As I got mine. Greg smiled and said “Check out page 5.”

LLad - Page 5

That’s me, and my roommate at the time, Ray Larabie (who is now in Japan hawking fonts, lucky bastard). We’re being accosted by Greg’s creation: Guy With A Gun, a ripoff parody of The Punisher. I was happy I got two lines over Ray’s one. Suck it!

I see that Greg has kept Lethargic Lad going all these years and is working as a storyboard artist. Good to see!

Bye Bye Bonneville!

Personal Bits

Post-holiday, we’re scouring over kitchen cupboards in hopes of finding something to eat, both of us still caught up in the dreamy world of vacation where food is magically brought to us. Something is wrong… it’s well after noon and still no food! The phone rings.

It’s Da and he asks if we want to go to Costco one last time.

Huh?

The Bonneville is on its last legs. He doesn’t think he will renew the plates. This will be our last bulk shopping tirp.

That Bonneville. That 18 year old monster of a car that seats 5 with real leather interior. Da’s most luxurious car purchase (most luxurious if you don’t count the Starsky and Hutch style two tone, two door silver Ford LTD back in the late 70s) has ever so slowly become a nuisance instead of a convenience.

The Bonnie is a massive car. It runs 199.5 inches (16.5 feet – the 70s station wagon version got up to 19ft!) from nose to spoiler, 75 inches wide, where the average car length today runs about 10-13 feet. You could fit a couple of bodies back there and still have room for skis (the centre divider armrest in the back seat opened into the trunk so you could do just that). Da’s car is a deep green with fog lamps (the switch for these located cockpit style, just over your head on the roof), dual seat controls in the hump (see video), steering wheel audio controls (cassette tape deck!) and a curious HUD with speedometer/compass.

Yes. A Heads Up Display right on the windscreen that constantly reminds you how much you’re speeding. The single most coolest car gimmick I have ever encountered since the talking door alarm.

Despite the ginormous size of the car and the oomph of the engine, I was never caught speeding in it. Lord knows I had it up around 140-150kph a few trips, but don’t tell Da.

When Da tells me that he’s setting the old girl out to pasture, I recall all the times I borrowed the car for so many trips/tours/hauls. Numerous house moves where I packed my meager stuff into the trunk/back seat – I estimate 9 apartment moves. Is that too much in 17 years? So many Ikea runs with flimsy pressboard furniture strung to the roof. So many campground set ups and tear downs in all sorts of weather. And subsequent car cleanings because of it. So many trips to Brockvegas and back.

I recall picking up SharkBoy with it in our budding relationship for a few dates, just after he gave up his monster Toyota SUV. I think the fact that we had access to a big car, post-SUV, helped him ease the pain of being without car. I also recall a few good night kisses.

In the last year the poor girl’s deterioration was fast and furious: the coolant levels sensor blew out just as SharkBoy and I started out on a trip to Montreal, even though we could see the jug under the hood was full. It stayed that way until Da had his mechanic tear out the sensor. The “area” on the steering column where the horn mysteriously hides suddenly died. My last trip in the old girl wasn’t anything eventful except noticing the exhaust is running a bit loud. The cost of repair and re-certification well exceeds the cost of convenience.

I would love to do a farewell video where shot for shot, we recreate the “out behind the barn” scene from Old Yeller.

Goodbye Bonneville. You’ve been a good friend.

Something Achingly Personal And Sexual In Nature

Personal Bits, Queer stuff

I tend not to deliver in bed.

I can hear SharkBoy’s spine compress and extend simultaneously as he reads that so I better explain myself.

On many occasion during my formative youth I had a tendency to attract guys who thought I would be something I completely wasn’t. I would often find myself stupefied at suggestion that would fall from my various date’s lips as the night progressed into the boozy, flirty time. Suggestions of violence or odd behaviour that would kill my desire just to cuddle or have plain, vanilla sex, of which, I’m utterly satisfied to have 90% of the time.

I’ve always dressed a bit rough. I’ve been told I have expressive eyes and combined with a shaved head and goatee since I was 21, I would often have to suggest to my date that discussing my next attack on their genitals while actually clothespinning various flaps of skin, probably wasn’t going to be as much fun for me as it would be for them.

While living in Ottawa, I purchased a motorcycle jacket at Costco. Yes. A full on, Marlon Brando bad ass motorcycle jacket that despite it’s purchasing origins, suggested that I rode a steel horse around town. I didn’t – In fact I was driving a 3 year old rusted out K car for the company I worked for. To add to this image of manlyman testosterone, I purchased a pair of engineer boots on sale at Filene’s Basement in Boston ($60!). Coupled with a tight tee and jeans, I looked pretty bad ass. One night I met a guy dressed similarly, but he was 6 foot, 2 inches, Germanic handsome, blond shock hair and muscular. When we got back to my place (I guess I looked good because he was blinded to the fact that we drove home in a K car) we discovered that we were essentially both wanting each other to do stuff to each other that we wanted each other to do to us each.

In short: we were both bottoms.

Discovering that you’re something you’re not while a god of a man stands before you is pretty tough on the self esteem. I did try, but I couldn’t be the guy he wanted me to be. We had a great friendship after that but I was still very attracted to him, which killed the whole friend thing eventually. I did learn about Bette Davis and Joan Crawford from him, for which I will be eternally thankful.

While working at a leather bar during Media School, these kinds of encounters were commonplace – I recall taking home one guy I thought was tall and handsome and clever but after we messed around a bit he stopped what we were doing (I thought it was going fine…) and said that we weren’t going to be compatible in bed and that the reason why was over in the corner of the room, in an old steamer trunk. I left shortly after that not knowing what was in that trunk. It haunts me to this day. Was I suppose to go open it? Was it full of dresses? Of knives? Weasels?

The weirdest was meeting someone who wanted me to physically abuse him (no surprise there, considering where we met. I was pretty open minded at that time and thought it wasn’t outside my realm of comfort) while talking about the sexiness of another bartender that I worked with (okay, first warning sign) and then crossing the conversation over to a fantasy where he is introduced to my actor brother in a professional, career building manner.

Seriously. He wanted me to twist his nipples off while fantasizing about my brother advancing his acting career.

After this incident I’ve come to believe that S&M and all that sub-culture paradigm was extremely reliant on damaging egos and breaking down self esteem. This was just weird. So as I lay there considering what he just told me I decided that one kidney punch wouldn’t hurt (me) and we were done.

Thing is, in this experience (and others) I’ve drawn from the experiences and molded myself. No, I’m not a bottom exclusively. No I can’t imagine inflicting extended amounts of pain on someone during sex. No I’m not going to introduce you to my brother. Or his agent.