Post is Prologue

The word "party" is a minefield. It can never be used as a verb, unless the usage is ironic, condescending or disapproving. Any time anyone says they're going to be "partying," what they're really saying is "stay away, unless you get off on some real depressing shit."

Also, adults of a certain age and mindset use it in troubling ways. They throw words like "dinner" and "tupperware" in front of it, which confuses the purpose of what we mean when we say the word party. Really, there are a very limited number of words that should ever proceed party: birthday, anniversary, wedding, drug, hooker, wild, frat, private and a couple others.

But how about "going away"? Should there be going away parties? Perhaps we should we call them something other than parties. Maybe frivolous dirges. Corpseless Funerals. Proper sendoffs. Bon voyagers. Long Goodbyes. Fuck you and the horse you rode in ons. Good Ri-Dances.

Eh, I guess it doesn't matter.

A Mysterious Appearance

There was a new tiny comic book on my desk today. Or maybe an old one I hadn't noticed before. While science may never be able to solve this mystery, one thing is clear. It was definitely there.

In a way, he will always be behind me...

And I behind him.

Godspeed and good luck, you son of a bitch!

Checking in

Will has asked me if I'm OK at least four times today. So I decided to lie down and take a picture of myself. I look alright, right?

There Will Be Posts

I was out yesterday. When I got in this morning, a copy of this baseball-card-sized comic book was on my chair. It's not the first piece of spider-man ephemera that has mysteriously appeared on my desk (hint: it's leaning on the Centerfolds stationary) but I fear it may be the last.

Four More Years!

Will just slapped a W'04 sticker on the back of my chair. I caught him in mid slap, as I turned around during the moment he was trying to sneaky-stick it on.

Of course, I have no problem with the sticker. Well, I'm worried the adhesive will stay on the cloth chair, but politically or culturally I have zero problem with it.

My only regret is that I probably won't have time to make my t-shirt idea before the election. I want a picture of McCain and the words "POWs are Pussies" on the front, and "What, he got captured and we're supposed to applaud" on the back. I think it could really turn the tide for Bob Barr.

Dialogue

W: That's why I'm gonna miss your sparkling-wine like personality.

A: Are you saying my personality is something you give to 15-year-old girls so they get drunk enough to make out with you?

W: What I'm saying is that you're like champagne, and that means there is sex in the champagne room. Wait. Is that a compliment?

A: Honestly, there was so much bizarre imagery zooming through my head I don't even want to try making sense of it.

Exit, stage right

As you may or may not know, Will is snagglepussing out of CT. So, right now, there's a good chance this blog may either be mothballed soon or maybe repurposed.

just so ya know.

(However, just because Will won't be directly behind me doesn't mean that we could still be sitting behind each other, with a lot more distance. So, that's a consideration.)

Talkin' Politics with Barberganoush

Last night's email from Joe:

Hi Adam,

Subject line: Our Man DK

I don’t know if you’ve seen this yet, but if only our serious candidates could talk this way--provides link to the Kucinich convention speech CNN only showed 30 seconds of.

Hope you’re well.

Joe

Adam responds while watching the video:

I haven't seen it. Thanks for sending it over. Just started it. Why are they playing "Roller Coaster of Love" when he comes out? He's on fire, though. It is kind of a weird self destructive thing that America couldn't allow a man like this to be president. What's wrong with a genius Mr Rogers in charge of the country? Wake up, indeed.

Joe's Response:
You should put your comments below on your blog. They’re great!

Will's So Crazy

But he ain't as crazy as this.

Special delivery to Will: this is the thing that I said would take too long to explain.

Dynamite with a laser beam...

First, a semi-shameful admission. I started a conversation with Will yesterday specifically in order to be able to blog about it. The cart, ladies and gentlemen, has begun to lead the horse. In other words, civilization is spiraling out of control. And, like my buddy Tommy Stearns said, the end comes not with a whimper, but with a blog.

Now let's forget that paragraph ever happened, and resume.

The other day I told Will I heard that Queen guitar player Brian May recently received his PhD after taking a 20-plus year sabbatical to be a rock star.
According to an LA Times interview, May recently dusted off his incomplete thesis paper and, with encouragement from an old teacher, got back to work.

I took my old thesis notes [on the velocities of dust particles in the solar system] out on tour with me and I mentioned on my website that I was looking at my thesis again. Who should read the website but the head of the astronomy department at Imperial College, Michael Robinson. He wrote to me and said, “If you’re serious about this, I will be your supervisor.”

Some notes. First, that means that Brian May is now "Dr. May." If he's ever referred to as such in the company of Austin Powers and a sexy nurse, I have little doubt the phrase "I'm no doctor, but yes, you may, baby" will be uttered (I'm not proud of writing that, but I think Barberganoush will appreciate it). Secondly, I hope this is a new rock star trend, as Mick Jagger was an accounting student before joining the Stones, and the world needs hip shaking Keynesian economic theories now more than ever.

Nas: Definitely an Astute Media Critic. But Gangsta?

Both my blog partner and I are big fans of the beautiful music called "hip hop." We agree that Old Dirty Bastard was a singular American stylist, and that "Fuck the Police" by NWA is an appropriate soundtrack for any occasion. We have diverging opinions about some things, like whether Notorious B.I.G. was the best rapper ever (I'm for, Will's against) and other topics.

This morning, a new division arose, with the question of whether Nas, of Ill-matic fame, is a gangsta rapper. I told Will about Nas's new song, "Sly Fox," which in addition to being a thumping jam, is a broadswipe at the Rupert Murdoch owned Fox Broadcasting Company. (Nas's beef stems from a Fox News broadcast critizing the inclusion of Nas, who Fox claims glorifies violence, at a free concert at Virginia Tech following last year's shooting).

Message-wise, the song is a little muddled. Nas calls Fox hypocritical for criticizing his so-called violent lyrics, and suggests that Fox is hypocritical because they create their own lurid and violent entertainment. That's all true, but he fucks up his argument by citing examples that have nothing to do with Fox, namely Kill Bill and Grindhouse. Those films were produced, respectively, through Miramax and the Weinstein company, neither of which were ever affiliated with Fox or Rupert Murdoch, as far as I can tell. And while Nas is long on specifics about how Fox has done him wrong personally, he's frustratingly vague about what Fox is doing wrong in general. Yesterday, Nas took part in a protest of Fox where people accused the 24-hour news channel of race-baiting and Obama-smearing. I don't think those gripes are mentioned in the song.

But I guess I shouldn't expect Noam Chomsky-like astuteness of media criticism from a rapper, no matter how astute of a wordsmith.

As I told Will this morning, I think Fox inaccurately portrays Nas as a Gangsta rapper when he's really just rapping about honest observations about his urban experience. Will contends that he is a gangsta rapper, saying that because Nas is not a rapper in the mode of Common, Mos Def or Talib Kweli, and uses violent imagery, he is therefore a gangsta rapper.

This afternoon, I asked Nas if he could answer this question, and he got into a time machine, and appeared on the Colbert Report last night (looking more than a little stoned, I think) he weighed in at about the 3:06 mark here.

Disturbing Inquisitions

So, not more than two minutes ago, Will asked me if it would be possible for Derek Jeter to perform the sexual act known colloquially as "the shocker" on a dude. I said no, that the act requires the participation of a lady.

I'd recommend our prim, church-going readers who may be unaware of what a "shocker" either check out this or this. Oh, no, wait. I'm sorry. I'd recommend our readers NOT do that.

Why would Will need to know such a thing? He claims there's a perfectly good explanation, and it's on the beat bike blog. I'm calling bullshit on that, even though it gave me a chance to throw in a site link. I think the real explanation is that it's way too hot outside for anybody to think rationally.

Even Will, who's no jive turkey.

Gutters and Strikes

OK, so I whiffed on the riddle. Big deal. I'm a smart guy. People value my opinion. I'm no dummy. I can do long division in my head. I can recite the Magna Carta (OK, not really, but I can totally make a pun on it about japanese comic books, and call it the manga carta).

Anyways, Will and I just got back from the great Polish National Home in downtown Hartford. The food, as always, was delicious. I got the usual; a polish plate (kielbasa, sauerkraut, perogis) plus two extra perogis. The only issue I have is how much of a bonehead food coma I've been in all afternoon.

Which is another way of saying I'm refusing to work on the riddle again today.

Something, something, with Cheese

I'm a pop culture junkie cursed with the ability to retain detailed knowledge of disgusting amounts of the movies, TV and music I voraciously consume. Sometimes it stresses me out over things that shouldn't stress me out. Like not being able to get six degrees of Bacon (a game almost everybody in the world has forgotten about) in less than two movies on someone like Bud Cort (Cort's in M*A*S*H with Donald Sutherland who's in JFK with Bacon. Only took two minutes and didn't consult IMDB. Nice.) Or when people act like something that's totally obvious is obscure.

The other day, two of the paper's production guys were talking about the burger scene in Pulp Fiction. You know, "Le Big Mac," etc. I shouldn't have been annoyed by that. I like the movie and not everyone has my movie OCD. But I muttered under my breath "Yeah, but what do they call the whopper?"

Will, in an impeccably timed moment, said "How should I know? I didn't go to Burger King."

That was, in my opinion, pretty much right on.

News on the March!

Will made the paper the other day -- twice actually.

But more importantly, I found out that Will made the paper a long time ago.

Samuel F. Pickering Jr., a professor of English at the University of Connecticut, also found much to praise in the work of his student, William Griggs, a 16-year-old junior at Hartford Public High. "He wrote a story about how the food in the school cafeteria turns into a food monster, and this chap goes out and kills the monster," said Mr. Pickering...

The young writer "has a very nice style, with good crisp sentences," said Mr. Pickering, who teaches several writing courses at UConn and is the author of seven books. "And he told the story with taste, which in such a story can be hard to do. I took out some excess wordage, but told him, 'Look, we all get edited and rewritten, no matter how long we've been around.' " 'Will, Willie, Bill, Billy'

Mr. Griggs, whose family moved back to Hartford two years ago after living in Lubbock, Tex., for eight years, said he was thrilled at having Mr. Pickering as his mentor. "It's great," the young man said. "My English teacher told me about him."

On entering the program, each student wrote a brief biographical sketch. Mr. Pickering said he got a kick out of Mr. Griggs's, which began, "Greetings, I am William Griggs (A.K.A. Will, Willie, Bill, Billy, Billy the Kid, Tex, Texas, Texano and Texan Ice of Hartford Public High School.)"

Mr. Griggs described his writing as "an exciting mix of cemented yet creative imagination and bombastic language." He added, "Stories of strange creatures or parodies of great documents often find themselves being written and rewritten on a computer in my school."

Ha-ha. I might change the name of the blog to "Sitting Behind Texan Ice."

A Tale of Two Weekends

I think that for the most part, Will and I run neck and neck in terms of being cool. (I mean cool in the sense of "being like Fonzie.") I've got his thing, he's got his. It's not a competition, but if it were, it would probably be a tie.

At least most of the time. This weekend, for example, Will dunked over me in terms of doing cool shit. This weekend I watched a couple of movies just mostly because I wanted to send them back to Netflix and partially because I actually wanted to see them, read a paperback horror novel and got some writing done.

Meanwhile, Will got all "Into the Wild," kayaking down two Connecticut rivers in a thunderstorm.

So, right now, I = Richie Cunningham. Will = Arthur Fonzerelli.

You know where you are?

Today, Will came into work wearing this kick-ass GNR t-shirt. Will's kind of a touchy-feely techno hippy music-wise, but we share a love of old school hip hop and GNR. Any, the shirt combined a bunch of things that are awesome about old concert shirts. It had that almost shiny washed too many times quality to it. Plus the design was so lovely and minimal it was timeless (see dope logo above).

The GNR logo is so perfect, you never actually have to spell out what it is. I guess it's easier for them, as they're named after two recognizable objects, then it would be for like The Human League or Fugazi or Foghat or somebody. Speaking of which, what the fuck is a foghat? Feels like it's a seafaring term somehow. Do any of our zero readers know?

He tried to interest me in another GNR shirt he had from their Use Your Illusion tour, but that record sucks like a broken window on an airplane and Axl was all cookoo nuts for the tour.

Agony of Da Feet

Will habitually rides his bike to work, which means that his carbon footprint is no problem. His real footprint, however, is another matter altogether.

Case in point. I come back from stepping outside for a minute, and found Will at his desk, barefoot and pulling a pair of socks over his bare feet. I didn’t think it was a big deal, but he made a show of acting embarrassed for some reason. It was like I caught him masturbating.

Anyway, for an inaugural post, I guess that's sort of inauspicious. Nowhere to go but up!