Put on ya wig woman!!!

A Side Civilians Do Not See..........

I just ran across this Australian news story, a history lesson on the many methods WWI and WWII soldiers from various nations tried to weasel their way out of the front lines, or the military altogether. Nothing in the piece shocked or surprised me. In my short time in the military, I have seen so-called "heroes" turn into cowards on a level I could never imagine before.

I've seen grown men purposely piss their beds in boot camp multiple times in order to get "stress discharges".

I've seen marines and sailors, in attempts to get "failure to adjust" discharges, stop taking showers for literally weeks at a time until they are sure you can smell them from another room.

I watched a kid in boot camp, after sneaking a lighter into the compartment, burn into his hand a prison-style mexican gang tattoo hoping it would be enough to get him discharged. His skin will forever be marked with a gang he isn't even affiliated or familiar with.

Another kid in a separate division managed to start a small fire in the head, hoping that being a pyromaniac would be enough to get discharged.

I've seen countless people purposely do drugs to pop on random piss tests.

I've seen countless people threaten suicide, or cut themselves.

A girl in my boot camp division was secretly married to another woman but never disclosed it to the Navy............she waited a couple weeks, saw that boot camp was "too hard" for her, and when the time was right she pulled out her marriage certificate to the RDC's. One way ticket home.

At A-school, I've watched one particular sailor try to eat his way out of the Navy. He broke his leg early in his time here, but over the months has healed up and should have been back to regular weekly PT (physical training) a long time ago. But somewhere in between the time he decided he no longer wanted to be in the Navy. Perhaps the prospect of getting back in shape was too much for him. He's still on crutches in public, but when he turns a corner he walks without them. He gets fatter and fatter by the day. He is in the process of being discharged for it.

In that same vein, another sailor (very much in-shape, unlike the one above) confessed to me that his plan to get out of the Navy is to wait until he arrives at his next duty station, and simply fail 3 PRT's in a row. The PRT is the Navy "Physical Readiness Test". Max pushups in 2 minutes, max situps in 2 minutes, and a mile-and-a-half run. You have to reach certain minima for your age to get passing scores. If you fail 3 in a row, you can be discharged from the Navy.

Maybe the most disgusting of all, I've seen women purposely get pregnant to get out of military service.

It's a side of the military most civilians don't see, but this is just a small sample of the things I've seen, and would be 10 times longer if I included the stories I've heard from others. Military life is definitely not for everyone, but you still have to fulfill your committment and be a man/woman. For some people, this is too much to ask.

A Mind is a Terrible Thing..............

I'm a writer. Not in the sense that I sit brooding in front of a typewriter with a glass of bourbon in my shaky hand staring at a leaning stack of unpublished manuscripts for my next alternative history novel.................but in the sense that I write purely as a hobby, almost as much as I write rhymes these days. Just for myself. Maybe one day I'll write something good enough to show someone else or even get published, but for the time being I'm just at that wierdo obsessive stage of gettin' random shit stuck in my head, floating phrases and ideas that I have to get out before they leak out of my ears and ruin my dinner. The way I normally do that is either by texting myself a note on my cell phone, or when that's not available, believe it or not I achieve the same thing by taking a wood and lead device and scratching words on what ancient civilizations called "paper". It's ridiculous, I know, but it's a last resort.

In any form, these notes are almost immediately forgotten and stay that way for months. Then I find them and maybe 10% of them will make any kind of sense. The other 90% make me second guess if maybe I'm really a scizophrenic whose other personality is Animal from the Muppet Show on peyote. Because they're insane, and they're never complete thoughts, just shards of scenes I saw or heard or imagined to remind me later that it's worth formulating into a story or something. To give you an example, here's LITERALLY what was written on a wal-mart reciept I found in my desk drawer today................

"Realistic dream pill two farms papa japan rick-a-shaw"

WHAT??!

And yes, I wrote "rick-a-shaw" spelled exactly like that. You're guess is as good as mine, cuz I have no fuckin' idea what it means. I feel like a guy in a movie who just woke up on a rooftop with amnesia and a business card. It's all a mystery.

But you know what...............maybe life is a mystery, and we are all the leading men and ladies.

See how I took a post that was going nowhere fast, and turned it into something heartwarming??! That one's for free, sports fans.

Things that are Incredibly Underrated............

R.L. Burnside's musical recordings
Mushrooms (non-magical)
Typewriters
Metalocalypse
Telepathy as a superpower
Zines
Being the new guy
The color brown
Milton Nasciemento's musical recordings
Fantasia's lips
Ol' fashioned fistfights
Professional actress Tilda Swinton
35mm film cameras
Deja vu
The motion picture The Life Aquatic
Descendents musical recordings
Comedy porn
The desert
Standup Comedian Doug Stanhope
Armchair phrenology
The old Hanna Barbara cartoon "Top Cat"
Libertarianism
The motion picture Straw Dogs


That is all.

Move over, Thriller.............

Youtube is still the best website ever. When you're sittin' all alone and it's raining outside, and you're reminiscing to past years, and by chance you catch a little piece of something..............just a little flash memory of something you saw or heard decades ago, something that had a big impression on you as a young kid but you thought was forgotten and lost forever. THAT thing is on youtube, I swear to god. Just look for it, it's there.

I'm one of those people that almost obssessively searches for all my many "THAT things" on youtube for hours and hours on end, and sometime it just really pays off. Today I found this, a music video for the song "Bewitched" by 80's metal gods Candlemass, which I saw in the early 90's while my metalhead uncle and his friends were watching a public access video program. I never remembered who sang it, so I could never find the video. The funny thing is, I have Candlemass albums. They're on my Ipod and all the "Sabbath-ish" playlists, next to Saint Vitus and Kenny Rogers (I might've put him on the wrong playlist)..........but I never connected the two.

Here's my question, though, before you watch it. What's the best music video of all time? Is it really all subjective?

No. The answer is nay, because after your eyes take in this smorgasbord of awesome, you will literally be incapable of disagreeing with me that no better music video has ever been made in human history. The big budget special effects, the cinematography, the acting.......halfway through, you might ask yourself, "Wait a minute, is this a music video or a lost Coppola masterpiece, because I can't tell the difference!" You might even cry, the level of artistry is that high.

So grab a loved one, put it on full screen, this is BEWITCHED!!!

Something I had to write down............

We found a small restaurant named after a woman, and sat as the sun found shape over the reddish highland mesas, stacked like stone idols from early evolution. Inside my young mind it raised grand and violent scenes of cowboys and raiders clashing and dying on the new mexico desert sandscape, the sky twisting with electric pink so brilliant it burnt the senses.

Nobody puts baby in a coffin!

My friend: "Man I can't believe Patrick Swayze is dead."

Me: "RIP to the best damn cooler in the business."

My friend: "Roadhouse! Awesome. Honestly that was the only thing I liked him in."

Me: "Wow. So you don't like your mom?"

My friend: *look of disgust and hatred*

Me: "I'm just sayin'. That's kinda messed up man. She's still your mother, no matter what she did in the past."

My friend: "You're an idiot."

Me: "You're just mad cuz Uncle Pat is gone and he never took you to the park like he promised. It's ok man, work all those emotions out, I'm here for you. This is good. This is good."

My friend: "This joke is going on way too long."

Me: "DON'T YOU THINK I'M AWARE OF THAT!"

Diggin In The Crates...........

Me and two friends from the barracks were bored today and decided to take a field trip to one of the 3 amazing flea markets here in Pensacola. I should clarify that I judge whether a flea market is amazing or not solely based on how many pit bull fights I see in between booths of fake Jordans and throwing stars.

Anytime I go to a flea market, I play a game. I call it the "let's see how much goofy shit we can buy for under $3". I should probably shorten that name if I want the game to get popular. Nonetheless, I spent a grand total of 50 US cents today, and bought two great items.

The first one isn't that goofy, actually. It was a copy of The Federalist Papers. Because when I think of Florida swamp-swimmin' rednecks renting booths in a dirt lot to sell things they think their peers will enjoy, I usually expect to walk out with at least one classic of political theory. At the very least.



So that was one quarter down. We walked around for a while. Some guy tried to sell me a homemade paddle for $2, telling me "trust me man it works", which to me implies that you're tryin' to sell me somethin' that touched your ass. No thanks.

The next booth that caught our eyes was owned by a guy who kinda looked like Newman from Seinfeld, if he was even fatter and wrapped in an indian blanket. He was basically selling comic books, but many other things were up for grabs as well, ranging from samurai swords to homemade aloe vera to decades-old trading cards. We're talkin' Alf cards, Garbage Pail Kids, etc. While the date on some of these cards alone would have been enough to make me throw down some change, I was lookin' for something a little more...........rare. And ridiculously cheesy. Didn't take long for me to find that. My next quarter went to these bad boys, circa 1990...............



Where to start. I'd like to think these were unpopular cards even for their time, but who knows the level of douchbaggery the culture was allowing to thrive 20 years ago. I was only 5, and not a very rad 5 year old at that, so you can't blame me. The cards are structured similar to Garbage Pail Kids, with only a fraction of the artistic value and none of the humor. Each one features a different "totally gnarly" character with a rhyming and/or alliterated name, usually performing some extreme sport or anti-social behavior, ie: radness. There's Messy Marty, the Bicep Brothers, and of course everyone's favorite..........Piggin' Out Owen. They didn't even try with that one.

Here's my favorite two, though, starting with..............


At first glance, it looks like two excited crackheads flaming up in a TigerMart bathroom. But no.........these are the "Cherry Bomb Dudes", and they're about to blow up a toilet. You'd think they would get tired of doing the same thing everyday, but when you name your gang after such a specific activity, your options are kinda limited. Little known fact: the guy on the right later became known as Congressman Ron Paul.

Without further ado, my favorite one by far.............Teasin' Toby.



Now, there's really only two possible scenarios here. Either some marketing guys at Pacific Trading Cards Inc thought, in their pursuit of radical activities with the most mass appeal, that kids loved teasing babies almost as much as half-pipe skateboarding. Or scenario two, possibly even more disturbing..............kids in 1990 really were teasin' the fuck outta babies, often enough for it to enter the world of stereotype. I have no idea which one is true, but I can't stop laughing everytime I look at Toby's face. Kids of all ages could just walk in and buy this over the counter with their blowpops and big league chew. I doubt they they were mentally equipped or prepared at all to understand even the more normal run-of-the-mill sexual fetishes, much less baby teasing. No wonder they all grew up and filmed themselves wearing diapers on "Porntube".

All in all, the day was a huge success. One of the guys who came with me found a comic book called "Red Son", which apparently is the story of what would happen if baby Superman had landed in Russia instead of America. On the cover, the S on his chest is replaced by a hammer and sickle. He paid $1 for this, mint condition. I was pretty jealous. The other guy didn't buy anything, and mostly was just confused at why we would "waste good money on bad things".

Yeah.............he has no idea what life is all about.

Roger f**king THAT

Dedicated, hooyah,
Motivated, hooyah,
GRADUATED HOOYAH!!!

Disclaimer: Pink Card does not = Air Traffic Controller. I still haven't talked to one real aircraft yet. That will happen about 3 weeks from now. Oh shit.

But it is a huge panty dropper. Why else would they call it a "pink" card? Because of the actual color of the card? I THINK NOT.

Wilde at heart..........

"Over the low roofs and jagged chimney stacks of the houses rose the black masts of ships. Wreaths of white mist clung like ghostly sails to the yards."

- Oscar Wilde, from the book The Picture of Dorian Gray


WOW! I've read these two lines so many times in the last week I've memorized them like song lyrics. Shoutout to Yudy, my lil' sister from Columbia, we went through boot camp together and she told me about this book I should read. She didn't remember the title or author, only the plot, and it really interested me. Going through the base library............which by the way doesn't even deserve to be called a library, it's more like a shelf warehouse that happens to have 13 random scattered books apparently for the sole purpose of holding the shelves steady............and by chance I came across this book, read the back and immediately checked it out. Wilde's style was hard to get into at first, so deep into british high society and all the effeminate males*, but the prose is amazing. And the story ended up being great too. The detriment to the soul a lifetime of a man giving into his own darkest pleasures and passions and seeking new ones for the sake of corruption itself, the dehumanization of making beauty your golden calf............hell, it'd be the great american novel if it was american. When I was done I wanted to read every single one of Wilde's novels. And I would have, if he had written any more after this one. Apparently he was a famous playwright or something, not a novelist. WHO KNEW?!! Hey, don't look down your noses at me, with your fancy english degrees and Ikea english degree holders made in Sweden that match your hardwood floors! You think you know everything?!? Go FUCK YOURSELF!

Speaking of books, now I'm reading God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater by Vonnegut. No effeminate males in his books, I'll tell ya that damn much, sports fans. Just a lotta real men, doing real men things.........like killing eachother over greed and power and generally acting like under-evolved homo-sapiens. I have no idea what point I just made.

*Being such a huge fan of music, literature, and film, I found out a long time ago that the first step to opening yourself up to ALL of the great stuff out there, is to get over your own hangups with masculinity/femininity. I know I had to. Just because you teared up at the end of The Times of Harvey Milk or think The Smiths make beautiful music, doesn't mean you like cock. It means you're an adult who can appreciate good art. The cock part is optional. Before Night Falls is, in my opinion, one of the best movies ever made, and that shit is gayer than your Uncle Tootie.

(Famous Dublin statue of Oscar Wilde "puttin' the vibe out")

I am secretly Alain Delon

It's raining outside and I'm listening to Charlie Parker. Somethin' about rain and jazz music makes me feel like I'm in a French new wave film, smoking a short cigarette outside a nightclub with Filipe who just got out of prison for smuggling diamonds. Sometimes I seriously wish I could go all out and dress like a character in a Jean Pierre Melville movie, and I swear to god I would if it was even a little bit acceptable. The problem is I would probably get my ass kicked by my own family and friends. I already left the hood to go to the Navy...........I mean, don't get me wrong, salty fleet sailors are some of the hardest knucklehead motherfuckers I've ever met, but if I go back home showin' my friends how to tie a neckerchief, they'd probably take my lunch money. They don't respect that. So I probably shouldn't add any more conflict onto that by goin' to Meadowbrooks projects in a grey inspector gadget raincoat, a brown tweed suit and a fedora. There wouldn't be enough croussants in the world to plug the bulletholes in my chest.

(Recent picture of Sandman outside of a Home Depot)

To Kill a Mockingperson............

SouthBound theater presents...........

My Saturday with Daniel McDaniel,

or

"The Lion, The Witch, and the sociopathic hill-dweller hiding in the wardrobe with a scope rifle"

A one act play

Cast:
Sandman as The Hero
Daniel McDaniel as Himself

The curtains open to a scene of two young sailors, roommates, sitting on their respective racks on a rainy saturday morning. They both pulled duty section all weekend, and are unable to leave the barracks, so they are forced to spend their time in the room with eachother. Our hero is browsing dead hip hop forums on his tiny, almost laughable laptop, while Daniel McDaniel is sitting in front of his own laptop, simultaneously playing a violent GTA-ish crime-spree video game and listening to 1950's country music. Let's join them now........

Sandman: "It's cold in here, right?"

Daniel: "Muuuuh"

*Daniel coldly shoots an old lady, her dying sreams make him smile*

Sandman: "You know, I have no problem with the music you like, or video games where you murder innocent people, but when you put them together............I'm not gonna lie, it's disturbing. Horrific actually. Nobody wants to be part of a mass murder with a Johnny Cash ballad background."

Daniel: "Gaaah. Sumbitch got away."

*Daniel pulls out a zippo and starts lighting his own thumb on fire*

Sandman: "You're gonna kill me one day, aren't you."

*Daniel comes across a helpless man, and mocks his cowardly cries for mercy*

Daniel: "Waaaah, I have a wife and kids! waaaah! Not anymore ya don't! BAM!! Huh? You were sayin' somethin' man?"

Sandman: "Yeah, actually I was gonna tell you I have a wife and kids, but obviously that doesn't work."

Daniel: "You're funny."

Sandman: ".............funny enough to live?"

Daniel: "Wha the hail r you ramblin' bout, brother?"

Sandman: "Dying. Death. You know I never went to Disneyland or had sex with an asian girl or submitted that short story to a contest like I always said I would? Never."

Daniel: "Wale shiat, ever body gotta die some sunny day."

Sandman: "Yeah..........yeah, I know. I don't really have a problem dealing with the fact that I'm gonna die one day, I just don't particularly like knowing who's gonna do it."

Daniel: "I 'member back when, way back me n Charlie had this horse."

Sandman: "Who's Charlie?"

Daniel: "Charlie got behind the horse to pet it, 'n the mean ol' bastard kicked 'im in the jaw. Charlie died. He dead still to this day, if you kin believe it. Won't be no more Charlie. So you know what I did? I took me up a tree stick and jabbed it in that ol' horse's eyeball. I surely did. It fell, and when it did I stomped on 'is head til he was like Charlie. Just like Charlie."

Sandman: "................."

Daniel: "Ya get what am tryin' to say?"

Sandman: "If that's what you would like, then yes. I completely understand and also agree."

Daniel: "You wanna see me burn somethin'?"

Sandman: "Are the walls getting closer to you?.......*pulls at collar*...........it's hard to breath in here. Why is it so hard to breath!?"

Daniel: "Sweeeeeet home A-la-Tucky"

Sandman: "That's definitely not how that song goes. But that's OK. It's a good song you made, Daniel. A good song."

*Daniel blushes and chews on an alfalfa leaf*

Daniel: "Aww it weren't nothin."


It certainly weren't, young Daniel..............it certainly weren't.

*close curtain*

Im a buy me a gun as big as my arm..............

A hat should be taken off when you greet a lady and left off for the rest of your life. Nothing looks more stuid than a hat.
- P.J. O'Rourke

So.................I haven't updated this blog in a while. Mostly because every waking hour of mine is spent on a navy base, completely isolated from the civilian ("real") world, and so any story I tell no matter how hilarious to me and my fellow sailors and marines will probably take about 8 pages worth of explanation, general military training, and a multiple choice test just to be halfway coherent to a civilian, much less funny in any way. So as a solution...........I just don't post at all.

But, I have readers. People actually read this piece of shit. And they asked that I update it. With stories from the Navy. Then I realized that pretty much everything that happens here is ridiculous and worth telling SOMEbody. I don't know if some of the old readers/fans of this blog will stick around, but you know what all the old folks say, if you love something, you gotta let it go. If it comes back to you................then that shit was just unnecessary. A complete waste of time. I think that's how the old saying goes. Ah the wisdom of the elderly.

So hey, let's start with this.

I live in a Navy barracks. They're all named after real ships. I live in the "USS Theodore Roosevelt", a.k.a. "The Big Stick", which makes it pretty uncomfortable when you're on watch and someone requests to "hop on the big stick".

My roommate is a backwoods redneck runaway from Kentucky named Daniel McDaniel. That's his real name. The dude literally joined the Navy cuz he was homeless. He's single and has no family or bills, his whole paycheck is play money. He has no idea what to do with it. Nevermind starting a savings plan, he's spent hundreds of dollars on Conway Twitty box sets. One time I came back to the room and he was sitting in the middle of the floor with hundreds of dollars worth of gold dollar coins in front of him, and he goes "Look man! You go to the candy machine and put a dollar bill in, and it gives ya one a these! Isn't it great?" He bankrupted the change machine, you put a $10 bill in and it gives you all quarters now. Another time I came back from school and he was sleeping curled up fetal position on top of his desk. Two inches from his bed. Even when he does sleep on his bed, he doesn't use a pillow. I happen to have two pillows cuz they gave me an extra one when I came from boot camp, but I only use one so I constantly offer to give him the other one. He always refuses.........but then complains to people that they won't give him a pillow to sleep with. We had room inspections today, and while standing at attention with the inspectors right next door about to come to our room, I smell something burning. Daniel McDaniel has a lighter and he's burning the inside of his trouser pockets. A couple weeks ago he ordered a $500 laptop on Ebay, just "to see what it all the fuss is about with this internet junk." This is a kid who has never had a computer or access to one. It came in the mail today. He's spent the last 5 hours straight looking at porn. Lesbian porn, piss fetish, big black cocks in little white milfs............it's like the scene in 2001 where the neanderthals find the bone. Doors are opening for young Daniel McDaniel. I just found out today that his middle name is Wayne. Daniel Wayne McDaniel. Like all budding young serial killers, he'll probably start with small animals, work his way up to hobos and hookers, and then eventually..............roommates. This is basically my goodbye letter. Print this out and send it to the police if I stop posting for a while.

Leave behind some green-eyed look-a-likes..........

My daughter goes crazy anytime "Single Ladies" comes on. Literally crazy. She can't even walk yet but she clearly tries to copy dance moves from that video. We have it on tape. She cries if someone changes the channel, and I've seen the great abyss of eternal darkness in her eyes if you're so rude as to talk during her theme song. It's like living in that twilight episode where the kid with magic powers controls the whole town. She just turned 1 last week. When I get mad at her for doing something bad, she kisses me. She's a lot like her mother.

My son on the other hand loves the Fleet Foxes album, probably because I forced it on him and everyone else in my life in 2008, but regardless........he legitimately loves it, and has commented many times on the empyrean CrosbyStillsNash-ian (his word) harmonies and poetic lyricism. I might have made that last part up. He's just 2 years old, but either way I have a feeling we'll still be talkin' about "blue ridge mountains" when he's 42. It's one of those. He also can count to 10 and wakes me up at 5 in the morning to take walks for no apparent reason. Earlier today I pointed out a bird in a tree and he said "Get down here bird, I'm gonna eat you!" I'm very proud of him.

When I run miles on the track everyday to get ready for boot camp and I feel like I can't go any farther, I just say their names over and over until I'm done. In 7 days, I'm leaving both of them for 6 months.

Anybody got a gun? Anybody? No? Thanks anyway. I'll be fine. Probably not.

Blow thru ya hair, seabreeze, sticks and shit..........

I've had a fade haircut of one kind or another since I was 12. Bald, razor, southside, and of course as I got older and wiser, tapered. One way or another, for as long as I can remember my hair has never been longer than maybe an inch-and-a-half, which by the way has helped me out many times in the past because it turns out it's way less than what a drunk person would need to grab in a fight (or as I like to call it, "hate handles"). So when I moved out to Florida for these two months before Navy boot camp, my wife says, she says to me one day she says, "Why don't you just grow your hair out? They're gonna cut it for you when you go to boot camp anyway. And besides, it ain't like you have anybody to look cool for out here, nobody knows you." I nodded in agreement and said, "Yes, you're right baby, I AM the coolest person out here."

She said that's not what she meant.......but I know she was just being polite because all her uncool relatives were in the room at the time. She's such a kind soul.

So now it's 2 months later, and my hair looks like a cross between Corey Feldman in the Goonies, and Ian Curtis around the 5th hour of swinging from the noose. It's pretty sweet. And by sweet, I mean chaotic and embarrassing for everyone involved. It's the MTV music awards of haircuts. It's the Nick Nolte's haircut of haircuts. They say you only get one chance to make a first impression, and if that's true then I'm pretty sure there's at least 10 people down here whose first impression of me is that I live in a trailer with my shut-in "big mama" who only cuts my hair on the two most important holidays: Easter, and the anniversary of Ronnie Van Zant's plane crash.

Point being: I look ridiculous. If I wasn't me I'd tell myself, hey..........knock it off. You look ridiculous. But somehow still unbelievably attractive. I wish I was you.

The only question left is what to do with all the hair once they cut it off. They usually just throw it away, but seeing as how I'm a famous local rapper and philanthropist, they obviously won't be mixing my hair with all the "normals". In all likelihood they'll gently place it in a box with bubble wrap and hide it in a combination safe of some kind. But what next? I'm way too humble to be so selfish as to keep it to myself, so what lucky soul will be the new owner of my thinkin' cap jacket?

I'm thinking the only fair way is to set up some sort of nationwide lottery system. What do ya'll think?


Here's this too................between this Sia performance, and the TV on the Radio "Wolf Like Me" fiasco from a couple years ago, I'm beginning to think they slip the artists somethin' in the water in the green room there at the Letterman show. Just wow.

Maple syrup. Grows on trees.

10 William H. Macy films with titles that also sound like bad Cinemax midnight skin flicks:

Lip Service
Roommates
The Maiden Heist
The Client
Foolin' Around
Hit Me
Bart Got a Room
Keep Coming Back
Twenty Bucks
The Boy Who Loved Trolls

(Mr. Macy after reading my list. I think he liked it.)

Point and shoot..........

A lot of people been askin' me for pictures of the kids since we've been down in Florida. So here's a couple while I upload the rest and send 'em to various family members with equally busy bodies.

Also, these should serve just fine as photographic evidence that both my children are alive and well. Take THAT, Greta Van Susteren!

Amani eating the usual breakfast we give her.

"As your accountant, Daddy.....I strongly advise
you to buy more appey juice"

Christmas present #1

Christmas present #2

"I need a break......and by break, I mean drink."

The last picture taken of the pilot before the horrific crash.

It gets foggy in Florida

That's it for now. Maybe next time someone will take a picture of me.

"Probably not" (c) Reggie Coby

My Top Ten movies of 2008 (*revised)........

EDIT: List has been revised after goin' to the movies last night and seeing my new #1 pick.

I didn't see shit this year, so this is really a top 7 list with 3 good films latched onto the end to round it off. The last 3 are all great films that I loved and are all lightyears ahead of the rest of the stuff I saw this year (Appaloosa, Indiana Jones, Dark Knight, Pinapple Express, etc) but I have a feeling if I saw more stuff that was on the critic's lists they wouldn't even be in my top 20, let alone my top 10. But here's the list anyway.......


1. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
2. Slumdog Millionaire
3. In Bruges
4. Man on Wire
5. Frost/Nixon
6. The Fall
7. Encounters at the End of the World
8. Religulous
9. Cadillac Records
10. Seven Pounds

Liam, you sneaky bastard........Or, the best dream ever

I've only had like 3 dreams in the last 5 years. Or I should say, it ain't that I don't HAVE them, I just don't remember 'em. They happen, I'm sure...........but when I wake up it's all blank. So imagine my surprise when I woke up this morning and remembered perfectly the dream I just had. I was beginning to think I just didn't have a soul anymore. Or that my brain was going rogue and being an asshole by rationing out my dreams for his own sick entertainment, maybe to get me back for all those years of filling my skull up with smoke. Apparently I can still dream, though.

I don't know what was different last night from any other night, but I wish it would happen more often because my dreams are hilarious. I'm really missing out. Maybe it was the fact that I killed a whole bottle of champagne last night. Why? Because my father-in-law couldn't get the cork back on. He didn't want to waste it, but also didn't want to help finish it off, a combination that put me in a tough spot since everyone knows I'm morally opposed to people wasting perfectly good alcohol, with the obvious exception of the time me and my brother stood on a rooftop by a major street in the middle of the night, shook full beer cans and threw them in front of cars and watched the people swerve in horror from the mini-explosions of Lone Star. Those were simpler times.

I really hope that's not the actual solution to my problem, though. Champagne. How embarrassing would it be to explain THAT shit on A&E Intervention? The bald guy is giving his little speech, "I just see a whole bunch of people who love ya to death, and they feel like they're losing ya, and they wanna fight to get ya back. So what's gonna happen is they're gonna talk and then you're gonna talk and then we're all gonna watch it back on my forehead. So Sandman, why did you become an alcoholic?"

"To make dreams come back for make feel good."

"...........This is the alcoholic kid, right? I thought we were doing the paint huffer next week? Can somebody get this kid outta my face, why is he climbing on my back?!"

"Happy New Years! Happy New Years, Dr Phil!!!"


Anyway..........the dream.

So it starts with me walking through my old middle school, only it's some 17-story hyper-realized grand ballroom version of my old middle school, which for some reason is always the way I dream about old schools I went to. It's probably better that way, since my middle school was a certified shithole with more cops than teachers and a daycare center. So I'm winding my way up the spiral staircase going to computer class (which we all know shoulda just been called Oregon Trail 101) and I pass by this room with some old asian guy standing alone dancing back and forth with himself. It's extremely creepy, so logically I go in to get a better look, which is what we all do when we see a mentally ill person dancing with an imaginary partner. He immediately stops dancing, swings around, and it's George Takei. The asian guy who played Dr. Sulu on the original Star Trek. Now........that's a strange thing for anyone to dream about, but I happen to be a 23 year old who's never watched one episode of Star Trek in his life, much less the 1960's version that was hot when my pops was a pre-teen. I literally only know who George Takei is because of one Simpsons episode, and the William Shatner Roast on comedy central. That's it. I had to use wikipedia just to spell his name right. So now he's two feet in front of me in my dream, and he's giving me a real uncomfortable stare, and finally he says, "Do you want to hear a song?" How can I say no? He proceeds to sing "What's the Story, Morning Glory" by Oasis, which I assume was only in the dream because I had heard it on the radio yesterday afternoon. He sung the whole song, and then I woke up. The End.

If you don't know who George Takei is, you're probably wondering why I even wasted the time to type that out. But if you know who George Takei is, and you've heard him speak, then you know why I've been laughing nonstop about this all day. In the car, laughing. On the toilet, laughing. At the mall, crackin' the fuck up. It's a funny ass visual. "All your dreams are maaaaaaaade..........." I'm laughing right now writing this sentence.

So now I've decided that if I ever get rich, I'm gonna get George Takei to sing "What's the Story" to a camera and sell me the tape. He can name the price. Whenever I'm having a bad day, I'll just pop that hoe in and all will be right in the world. Religions are built around less.

Hope everyone got through hangover day in one piece.