What I Hate About You

There will come a time when we will rise above our hatred and soar like eagles - sometimes it's just too hard because there's too many destructive fucks out there who live for ripping other people apart. That's when even the proud eagle must bare his claws and tear his enemies apart with his razor-sharp beak, and this is this week's topic:

Reality Shows: Stupid, overly cute trash featuring un-famous nobodies do what un-famous people do: be annoying. If I have to watch one more episode where someone considers a boob job (they're boobs already!) I'll explode. And yes, I have to watch this shit. My wife's addicted to this crap. She even appeared in one of them! (Gene Simmons Incest Parade, or something like that).

Pet Power: Why don't you just come right and admit you hate the human race with a passion that would make Adolf Hitler blush? I'm referring, of course to people that place their kids, pets or even plants over their fellow adult's rights.
Example, the assholes with those 10-foot long leashes so the dogs can tear up the sidewalk and trip you up while you're trying to get out of their way. How about moving your fucking mutt out of my way? It's called common courtesy, learn the motherfucking rules.
And trim your fucking trees and plants from my driveway. If you don't, I'll prune the fucking weeds to my satisfaction!
And Church Moms, if my wife scares your kids, here's a great idea: take them into the house after it gets dark. What kind of parent lets their kids run around after 10 PM anyway? Idiots.

Cell Phone Addicts: Don't you know somebody's having an extremely important phone conversation while you're reaching over for a can of veggies at the market? They can't have a convo in their car anymore, now they have full on discussions in public places, standing in your way and soaking up public space with their private issues. By the way, people are always crying about their privacy - if privacy is so important to these douchebirds why are they having personal phone calls AT THE TOP OF THEIR LUNGS at the laundromat, Trader Joe's or even The Little Boy's Room (aka toilet)? As soon as Mr. Important starts yappin' on the line in the crapper I make a point to flush the potty 100 times over and over again. You're bumming my BM out, brother!

Listen, I'm not one of these trendy misanthropes who says "I hate people" - I hate people only if they deserve it (heh!), so don't piss me off and in return I'll kill anybody who gets in your way. Yeah, that's the way I roll - the psychotic loyal friend. Join me in the winner's circle!

Green Blood

The spirit was willing but the body wasn't able, it was simple as that. It was just a matter of time and the time was now. The day finally came when he couldn't eat anything without getting violently ill, no matter what it was. He felt like his body was shutting down on him because sleep and urination were just distant memories of things past. His body was backed up with some kind of poison, he just knew it, because when he put small cloves of garlic in his dinner he spent the rest of the night throwing up non-stop. His bloodstream was a corrupt file.

His girlfriend came over the next day with a book on herbal healing. She narrowed down his sickness to three or four possible syndromes. They went to the herbalists, a Russian woman in the Jewish district named Svetlana. The store freaked him out: among the herbs and obscure medicines were bottles filled with dried out sea horses. What the hell was a sea horse supposed to cure?

Herbs were purchased, which his girlfriend boiled into various teas: There was Echinacea, there was Barberry, and there was Hawthorn. The teas were strong, and in fact the barberry made him throw up again. The barberry threw out all the poison in his blood stream. His weight started dropping, and he could find himself breathing so much better.

The funny thing about it was the more plant-like the medication, the better he felt. After a week of being shut inside his cold, dark apartment he went for a walk outside in the beautiful summer's day. The sun was beating down on him and he began to sweat. His perspiration made him smell like freshly-cut grass. When he took a breath he felt an icy spearmint rush through his lungs. It was exhilarating. Then came the sensations.

The sun looked yellower than he remembered, the lawns greener than he'd ever seen them. Every drop of moisture on the grass magnified ion his vision. He could see the lawns breathing and moving slowly in his eyes. Trees bent slightly and rocked slowly as he walked by. The oleanders were deeper than he remembered them, poinsettias redder and sunflowers yellower. Every flower and tree breathed slowly as he walked by and his body odor was positively botanical.

As he returned to his home he resigned himself to the reality that he was no longer flesh and blood, but something different. He still had hair and eyes and lips, but the machinery was different. He was a walking plant boy with green blood.

It Happened At The Movies

Sometimes the show at the theater is more interesting than the movies themselves, and that’s the thing that makes going to the movies so memorable.

I could mention the time people walked out on Boogie Nights in droves, including an old woman who screamed at the screen. Someone should have told her it wasn’t a comedy. Oh, well.

I remember seeing Juliet of the Spirits in the West Hollywood district with a hooker named Sondra who was tripping on acid and had to be very gingerly led out the theatre, poor thing. The movie scared her ass. Wonder what she’s doing now?

Art can be pain, though. I remember getting food poisoning at an El Torito buffet in the morning and then going out at night to the Chinese Theatre to see the Mickey Rourke bomb Curse of the Dragon. I don’t know what was more painful, the shit buffet or the shittier flick?

But you can’t beat a weird double-bill at the movies, either. One night I went to see Krush Groove because I like The Fat Boys and Run-D.M.C. It came out when rap was still scary and unappropriated by Whitey (early Eighties), so naturally the second feature was St. Elmo’s Fire, a movie about a bunch of whiny over-privileged white kids in New England.

The creepiest movie going experience is when you pass out during the picture, wake up, pass out again, wake up, and fuck you if you can remember whether you were dreaming or seeing a film. This happened to me when I saw Vertigo, a creepy film as it stands by Alfred Hitchcock. To this day I’m not sure if I saw the whole movie or dreamed it! Another time I saw (and slept through) Kiss Me Deadly with that creepy atomic bomb in the Pandora’s Box finish, the film shot mostly in the Wilshire District. I woke up just in time to see the creepy ending. When we filed out at midnight I had to wait for the bus in front of, get this, MacArthur Park.

Crowded theatres always make me nervous, though. When I was a kid I remember going to see Help! (the second Beatles movie). My older brother stood in line to get the tickets, we got the custom printed tickets with photos of the Fab Four on them, we got souvenir buttons for each ticket sold, and waited patiently for over an hour in the longest line we ever stood in. It took us awhile to find a seat because the place was packed with teenage girls.
As soon as the movie started EVERY FUCKING GIRL ON THE PLANET SCREAMED HER FUCKING HEAD OFF!!!!!!!!!! RINGO!!!!! If you’ve ever seen the movie there’s a scene where Paul McCartney’s stark naked. Holy shit! My right ear’s still feeling it, 100 years later. PAUL!!!!!!!!!!!! To make a long story short it took us three years to understand what anyone said in the movie because the screaming cut through the audio.

This might come as a shock to you but even porn theaters have their weird experiences, too. I won’t mention the guy I walked in on in the Men’s Room who had his joint aimed into the hand dryer, or the theater manager who was pushing the snack bar big time (um, yeah, I need food in my mouth while I’m watching anal sex), etc.
The worst was when I watched a porn star getting salami-slammed and two guys way in the back were hooting boisterously loud and guffawing. It started out sporadically and then wouldn’t shut up, to the point of drowning out the important moans of ecstasy on the screen. I figured maybe if I take a leak these guys will shut up by the time I get back. As I walked up the aisle I realized the two loudmouths making all the noise were two policemen standing by the theater doors. As soon as they saw me approaching they automatically shut up. One even went for his holster and then caught himself after his partner said, “Cool it”. Yeah, movies are still your best entertainment.

The Hip Chicks

Bend me an ear and I'll tell you all about the two coolest chicky babies to ever grace the Village. They had the rattiest hair and the craziest clothes and made the scene wherever they went. These way out sisters were far out > Someone said their real names were Millie and Ellie and they came from a very prosperous family from Cape Cod. They lived off a trust fund and went vacationing in the Hamptons every summer, but not without bundling up and covering their tender skin from the big-bad wicked sun. They envied the way twins would always swing by the same handle, so they went by the same name wherever they went: Skooby Dooby. Either one would answer to the name, so one of them was bound to answer you.

They would get a fucking generous stipend from their parents at the end of every month, which they kept more private from everyone than Allen Ginsburg's sex life. The dough would get spent on tights, pot, bongos and bullfight posters. Some of the coffee cans in their pad held espresso beans and some held endless rolls of hundred dollar bills.

Whenever they'd get bored playing chess and sipping coal-black java, they'd quiz each other about great Presidents.
"So, like, who's a bigger swinger?" the blonde Skooby Dooby asked her sister. "William Henry Harrison or Chester A. Arthur?"
"Ohhh, man", mulled the brunette Skooby Dooby, "William Henry Harrison is the most, like you dig?"
"Crazy!" the blonde Skooby Dooby said.
Some Audrey Hepburn wannabe snob in a little black dress, pearls and little white cotton gloves walked right by them.
"Hey, hey, Godiva, you're stepping on my cat, dig?" the blonde Skooby Dooby pointed at the uptown sister.
"What cat?" the snooty dame whined. "I don't see a cat".
"Hey, like, you're stepping on our invisible cat, Katmandu. Katmandu don't like dig your vibraphonic vibrations. Get on your way, like way out".
"Invisible cat? Chester A. Arthur? You girls are insane".
"Yeah, well", the brunette Skooby Dooby was twitching nervously, her left leg shaking uncontrollably from ingesting too many shots of capuccino, "That's like your, um, like opinion, you know?" Her right eye started twitching in rhythm with her leg. "You like dig, Square Jane?"
The owner, a ringer for Maynard G. Krebs, came up to them in his smelly sweatshirt, given to him by Gregory Corso, and asked, "Ex-squeeze me, is this girl bothering you ladies?"
"Yowzah, Scruffy", Skooby Dooby said, "this, like debutante from Squaresville University is trying to break up our, like, transmission".
"Yeah, um and she stepped on Katmandu!"
Scruffy ushered the rich girl out of the cafe, but she stopped and stared at the blonde Skooby Dooby intnently. "Ellie, is that you? Omigod! Ellie Huntington of the Cape Cod Huntingtons, I don't believe it! The sorority misses you! What are you doing here?"
The brunette's left leg and right eye was twitching faster and harder, "No man, we don't know any El-Seven Humdingertons, Scruffy! Scruffy! Show her the way, way out!"
“No! Seriously! Elzie, don’t you recognize me, Bibzie Hollingsworth! What are you doing in that crazy get up? What did you do to your hair???” she gawked as Scruffy gently gave her like the old heave-ho.

As soon as she was thrown out of the coffee house, Millie looked at Ellie. “Wow, bad scene”.
“Like, purple nightmare”.
“Yeah…….so…..who’s the craziest cat, William McKinley or Millard Fillmore?”

Run, Little Mouse

If you’ve got a halfway decent attention span and can wait two weeks-plus to obtain your stuff, then the internet is your ideal shopping center. Everything’s cheaper and in better quality than the goods you’ll find in stores, because they haven’t been manhandled to death by annoying browsers. So without further ado, here’s a list of some of my favorite places to shop:

Leatherup.com : A great place to buy biker boots (see pictured), leather trousers, chaps, vests, gloves, and even hats. The prices are dirt cheap as leather goods go, and the folks at Leatherup send a 15% off coupon for your next order.

Tripadvisor.com : Tourists review hotels and cut through the hype so you get the real skinny on where the best hotels are. I like it when they post photographs of their favorite rooms and hotel features, like the swimming pools.

Goodreads.com : A mySpace-styled website where bookworms review their favorite books, and no book is too lowbrow for review. Pam Anderson bios are reviewed with the same fervor as a Shakespeare collection, cookbooks are cool, graphic novels, little kids books, teen vampire operas, etc. Started by Otis Chandler of the LA Times Chandlers, this website’s a winner all the way.

Rivithead.com : The best of the Hot Topic-styled websites where cool shoes and rocker clothes can be bought. The prices are not only the lowest I’ve seen, but goods are delivered in three working days at no extra charge (if you live in SoCal). I’ve bought many of my rocker shoes there.

Cooks.com : If you’re looking for a recipe to cook anything, you’ll find it here. This site’s pretty great, I’ve learned how to cook a lot of great dishes thanks to cooks.com. Members of the site contribute their own recipes, and the forums are pretty cool. The only recipe that didn’t work out was some bizarre compote I probably messed up, anyway. Corn starch???

bcdb.com : Big Cartoon Database, sort of the iMDB of cartoons. Every cartoon show ever made is listed, although some of the information is kinda sketchy, it still remains a good resource for finding out that cartoon show you have trouble remembering after all these years.

VitaMaker.com : Not to be confused with VitaPal.com, Supplements-To-Go.com or VitaDigest.com, these companies all sell hard-to-find vitamins and assorted supplements at extremely low prices. I buy several bottles of my favorite supplements at a shot and save a fortune. The price differences between a lot of these companies is pretty slim, so you can’t go wrong with any of them.

Abe.com : Before you get price gouged to death for a book by eBay, come here. They have rare books at excellent prices and are listed by the various bookstores that sell them. I’ve found quite a few rare pulp crime novels here that are out of print. This is a great site for those impossible to find books.

Creepy Classics.com : Every horror, science fiction, lucha libre, film noir, and Baby Boomer cartoon show ever released on DVD can be found here. When you run out of DVDs to buy for your trash culture friends go here and feast on the inexhaustible selection available.

Well, the list of stores you can run to on your little mouse is infinite: Newegg for computer stuff, Lush for sweet soaps, Diviniti for men’s and women’s jewelry and rings, Travelocity for travel, etc. Informational sites are even more out there, like my beloved Yelp, GaragePunk Hideout, Urban Dictionary, Edmunds (for car reviews), Find A Grave (directory of celebrity burial grounds), Home Theater Forum, eHow for instructions on EVERYTHING, Flickr, You Tube, DVD Help for advice on burning DVDs, and my favorite, the Downtown Skylines site. It’s funny reading everyone on the forum complaining about Los Angeles’ puny, underdeveloped skyline. So get on your little mouse and run, baby, run.