Death Be Not Death

We used to play a game called Heroes, or Champions or something like that in high school. It was a role playing game, and I don't mean someones the chamber maid and someones the tired pilot coming home early and for some reason there's a monkey who is also a lube salesman and it all takes place in a locker room at Penn State in 1998. It was a bunch of "Theater" geeks pretending to save the world by creating characters they wish they were while being nerds they wish they weren't. My superhero was a guy called Voicebox who could mimic any noise and throw his voice anywhere, Useful if a vaudeville show broke out, but not so much when downtown Capital City was being over run with Death Robots from the planet DeathRobotia, ( we tried) SHOULD BE A PARAGRAPH BREAK HERE< BUT THERE WONT BE FOR SOME REASON< SO EVERY TIME I WANT A NEW PARAGRAPH I WILL PUT THE NAME OF A CANDY BAR...KIT KAT There have been so many shootings lately its been overwhelming. I know, people get shot every day (half of them are ex NY Giants players) and so much happens that we only see a small fraction of the shit that goes down. But its like my old exterminator friend used to say who never really existed "If you see one cockroach in your house, that means there's hundreds more hiding in the walls." We had flying cockroaches in Texas growing up, and they looked like the regular ones, until you tried to kill it with a boot and it sprouted wings and flew straight at you, sometimes grazing your face and that was it. You were ruined for the rest of the day. Creepy. We also had scorpions who could jump straight up the length of a house, and once, a Jehovah witness. SNICKERS. Texas had guns. Lots of them. On gun racks in the back of trucks, behind the bars of the Steak N Ales ( a great place to eat steak and also ale, but is no longer around. They introduced escargots to the public and that was its downfall. Not because Dallas wouldn't eat snails, but because fuck the French, am I right?) and at every bar that stayed open past 8pm. I remember on my 21st birthday party we celebrated at a pub and an older lady not with our party grabbed me and asked me to dance by showing me her piece clipped to her belt buckle. Who was I to say no, and also who was I not to get shot? I live in NYC now. More specifically, New York City, and yes, there are shootings. But lately, it seems to be getting closer. And not just shooting. Death. In General. A shooting in a theater in Colorado, to a shooting at the Empire State Building, to a death of a comic I used to play with here in New York. Then there was a shooting in New Jersey recently, so I'm hoping what usually happens happens and all the bad shit stays in Jersey. WHATCHAMACALLIT Oh, my point.No point. Like everything, just no...point. Don't misunderstand me, I'm not one of these guys in Williamsburg Brooklyn brooding about the world situation by eating only what he can find in his couch, and writing songs that rhyme oppression with depression, and defiant with Kobe Bryant all the while working my temp job as a receptionist for an ad agency using the computer to find cheap love seats and old cameras on Craigslist cause I have so much to say about everything and this world just doesn't know...it's just damn, there seems to be more reminders that we're all gonna die than ever before. Is it because I'm not only knocking on 40's door, but because in a mere 2 months I will be answering that door in a coffee stained robe missing the belt, and mad because whoever knocked interrupted my stories? 40's not old, but its a hell of a lot closer to 60 then 21 was. THREE MUSKETEERS. That's an odd name for candy bar by the way. Is the candy packed with French history, or swords? Why isn't there a Joan of Arc Bar that you use to make S'mores? Anywho...death be not proud...that's cool death...just don't be so humble you don't take credit for your work. Make it decided. A German teenager with a T shirt that read "Life Is Beautiful and I No Longer Am Afraid Of Death" stopped to ask me directions to Ground Zero. He was unaware that construction had begun, and in fact, is ready to open soon. He pointed to the skyline at Liberty and Church where we happened to be and asked if this was the place where the buildings were...how you say...fucked? Yes. Yes this is where they were fucked. But, this is also where we are unfucking them. Death be be not proud...death be not ignored or interrupted I'm hoping the afterlife is like your favorite Youtube clips. If they involve Russell Brand though, you go straight to hell...MILKY WAY Death will be a great relief. No more interviews. KATHARINE HEPBURN

Celebrating Chinese New Year with My Adopted Daughter

I googled my first name and the word Days to find my blog as I never remember how to get to it without doing that, and I was surprised that I wasn't the first entry. It was an article entitled Celebrating Chinese New Year with my Adopted Daughter. So, that's the name of my post and story this time. In the real story, Rory is a tiny Asian girl. Much like me, she also enjoys making dumplings, dressing in silk, and drinking sake till shes blind drunk. I know sake's Japanese, but I'm sure they drink it in China too. So, here's my version of the story. A lot of people don't give an assistant manager of a Blimpies with a shady past a break, let alone Asian twins in need of a stable home. But that's just what happened to me OK, I think that's enough to confuse search engines. This blogspot thing isn't recognizing paragraphs, so I have to ramble in one big thing. Seriously. I am spacing each of these words out on their own line and the preview shows one huge glob of words. Recently, I met up with my good friend Doug. Now, a good friendship is like a fine wine. It gets better and stronger with age. Its value increases. Sometimes it has nice legs. A friendship with Doug (last name withheld, although I could add his address, birthday, and work history and if he read this he still wouldn't know it was about him.)however, is like drinking an old zookeepers boot full of kiwi flavored Mad Dog 20/20 and getting punched in the stomach by a paint churner. He is as with it as the last Post It that doesn't realize what has come before it, and as sharp as a GI JOE action figure knife that was dipped in the chocolate river of Wonka: He has longhair like a bass player for 38 Special, missing at least 2 teeth, and you wouldn't feel weird asking him for directions to the Boat Show in ANY CITY...even Phoenix...and now, in short story form, My Adventure Near Death Experience at the Airport From outside of the Delta terminal, Gate E7, I called Doug. He was nice enough to take time out from his daily routines of laughing at cats, and adding Certs to vodka and calling it a Mojito to pick me up form the airport. "Its 6:40 Doug, I'm outside Gate E7," I said. "Ill be there in 30 buddy," came the drawl from the other end. "Thirty minutes?", I said? Alright there must have been traffic. Thirty minutes come and go. My cell phone goes off. "Hey man, what gate? Have you ever driven around this airport?" I had. And so had he for over 22 years. "Gate E7. Delta," I said again. Twenty minutes later I called Doug. He told me he got lost in the airport driving around for the past hour and he ran out of gas. "Remember when you said this airport was like the Death Star?", said Doug. "Yup. Come get me," I said. Twenty minutes later, I call again and get his voicemail. Ten minutes later he calls me to ask what gate and wants to know if Ive tried to drive around this airport. This happen a few more times. I contemplate suicide taking the bus. At 8:40 Sir Doug of Dallas pulls up...at Gate 22. "Im here," he says on the phone. As I guide him into the proper gate, I see a sun burnt face with his tongue out greet me as I throw my suitcase in the back. An overwhelming scent hits me as I slump into the passenger seat. CK1? Drake Noir? Canoe? Some outdated high school cologne Doug seems to be bathing in. "Damn dude, you smell like an 80's prom," I told him. "Of course I do, I'm drunk," he laughed and pulled away. Doug proved his point that it is very difficult navigating thru an airport drinking Jack Daniels out of a Burger King to go cup. After pulling into several parking lots, long term parking lots, employee only parking lots, and once back to gate E7, we arrived at the exit. Doug did not keep his ticket, so its perfectly understandable for him to make a comment about our Indian gate keepers involvement in 9/11 and speed thru the gate without paying yelling I got away with it, I got away with it. The picture of his license plate they took I'm sure was not on his mind at all. Going 90 mph down the highways in all the lanes, I should have jumped. I should have not gotten in the car with him to begin with, but now I was trapped like James Bond, only there was nothing to outsmart here. "You're coming home to meet my cat," Doug exclaimed. Nope,I'm running late and he was taking me to my theater. He insisted I meet his two cats and his dog. Why anyone lets him take care of anything is a mystery. Sarah McLaughlin is going to come to his apartment and take those animals. We sped past a cop who had pulled another car over. I told Doug to look out and he told me a little known Dallas law I wasn't familiar with: Those motherfuckers cant do two stops at the same time. Doug knew physics! Ah, but they can call another cop down the highway and tell them to look out for you I told him. "Let em try, I got this," he yelled reaching under my seat and pulling out a 35. After much screaming and another dose of CK1, I finally convinced Doug to drop me off at the theater. I gave him $20 thru the window and told him to go fuck himself and went to a bar nearby. He texted me 10 minutes later saying he was tired and was staying in. I wondered if he even remembered picking me up, and then I thought he was a phantom, who died long ago and is the stuff of local legend. Should I even mention that I saw him. or would i be branded crazy? Either way, the shepherds pie at this pub was amazing. "Have you ever driven around this airport?" -- Doug Richardson

Things we lost in the Shire

If I were a Mayan right now Id be nervous. 2012 is here, and you are going to look like a dick if the planet doesn't implode like the house in Poltergeist or Angelina Jolie's stomach. TOPICAL! Here are my predictions for 2012. Meet back here in a year to see if I was right.

CRAIGSLIST There will be new listings, such as Assholes Renting Rooms, Very Formal Encounters, Pissed Connections and Mayans seeking Trannys. People will still advertise stoop sales in neighborhoods in Brooklyn that take 4 trains and a bus to get to.

New York New York will add a sixth borough that houses Homeless Hipsters who make their own cheese and shorten their already slanged za for pizza to a sound that is one click of their tongue. It will be on a floating garbage barge in the Hudson called Deathcab and will never touch another piece of land. It will still rank above Staten Island in popularity.

LOST Ill re watch the whole run thinking I might enjoy the ending better and wind up throwing my 4D television out my studio apartment window in Deathcab crushing a girl in dreadlocks playing a mandolin singing a song she wrote about her pet turtle who doesn't have the right to vote.

THE BTK BAND My improvised storytelling band will tour abroad, going to Germany, and lose 9 members in an Oktoberfest accident. They will be replaced by 18 midgets with a drinking problem.

Here are some things I learned, so use my advice next time you're in 2011.

Floods Put things you love and want to keep under your bed. That way, when a pipe bursts in the middle of the night, it ruins them, and you can keep warm with the memories when you're looking for a new place after your landlord told you your alcoholic room mate you found on Craigslist hasn't paid rent in three months even though you paid him, and now he wants to evict you. Stupid floods

Money Sometimes I have money and sometimes I don't. Sometimes I pretend Pez dispensers are money and I have the most coveted one,and I get my food free from Seamless Web...or it seems like its free since it goes on my card and I forget that when I'm chemically enhanced, just like the one time I got a message from EBAY saying I didn't win the Jukebox I bid on....what jukebox?

Evangeline I shriek like a wounded ferret when I see any pics involving her and Lord of the Rings.

May the new year find you before the cops do!


From New Year's on the outlook brightens; good humor lost in a mood of failure returns. I resolve to stop complaining---Leonard Bernstein

My Law and Order SVU script

INT: Law and Order SVU Headquarters. One Police Plaza. The whole squad is watching a group of pictures pinned to a chalkboard. Colored strings are attached...and its, um...say...3:30pm I guess.

Captain: So, we have a three time serial rapist on our hands. He has a fetish for young college girls and he strikes around Gramercy Park.

Detective: Yeah. That bastard. Two blocks from my daughters nannies other family. But that witness in the taxi is long gone

Detective 2: Maybe not. We have camera surveillance from the corner light. theres her licence plate

Detective: Good. But its blurry, getting that number is impossible

Smart Guy: Maybe not. Ive isolated the image using camera enhancement cop stuff we happen to have for stuff like this. There. Clear as day

Detective 2: Maybe not. That could be anyones car.

Detective: No. That's why we pass those out. But it looks like our suspect has no priors.

Counselor: Maybe not. I tried him in Boston once for sexual misconduct. I'd recognize him anywhere. But I have no way of getting his real name.

Ex Wife: Maybe not. I was married to him and I know his real name

Priest: Maybe not. I wasn't certified when I married you two, and the marriage was a sham

Rapist: Maybe not. We got married in a private ceremony two weeks before the real marriage, so I guess its legal.

Lunch Guy: Who had the Chinese food?

Clerk: Maybe not. Lets have pizza


Thank you

Crazy Train

I wish we were in the age where one could start a post "Dear Reader", without looking like a pompous Mud coffee drinking, tiny glasses, Band of Horses listening,my dogs name means "Beautiful Angel" in Italian, occasionally glancing up and watching CNN and shaking your head back and forth with a pained look on your face even though you don't know whats happening, douche. Cause its fun: Dear Reader, oh dear reader...or Deer Reader...a deer who reads? one who reads bout deers? A porn star from the 70's?
Where was I? Oh yes...on the D train once again. I think there has been a huge influx of crazy people. The last 5 out of 6 times I was on the D train, I have encountered the following characters. Tell me if you know them:

Mr. "Ill blare my 80's boombox to a radio station that barely comes in as loud as I can, and if anyone looks at me Ill shout 'How you like me now, Melvin?'"

Mr "Eating lamb and rice out of his lap...no plate, or container...just his lap"

Ms. "Earbuds in and singing Alicia Keys so loud they can hear it above ground"

Mr. "I know every stop this train makes and will shout as loud as I can when we arrive at them"

Mr "Fuck me? No fuck you. Fuck the hospital! Thats why I left"

Oh my point. My point is I think I just may turn into one of them. I catch myself talking to myself all the time. I know when I feel hungry, I dont have to say out loud that I am. But I do.

Sometimes you get the funhouse mirror effect in the reflections on the trains, and I start making faces, and stretching my arms to see how odd I can look. And sometimes, I do that on the platforms.

If Im sitting, the reflection from my bald spot looks like a halo...its not..not even close...but dare to dream...

I give voices to the rats on the tracks, and pretend they're in a 1920's melodrama about to be run over so the villians can run off with their girlfriends. You know who likes that one? The churro people...the people that sell thousands of churros underground. Where do they get these churros? And who is buying them in bulk?

I may or may not have urinated on someones SUV in Sunset Park last night...but I probably may'd

Sometimes Ill make my bed, and then walk out of the room and try to picture my bed when it wasnt made, then walk back in and get pleasantly surprised. I do the same thing with dishes in the sink, trash in the kitchen, and bodies in the basement.

Heres a recipe: Take the leftover coffee from your coffee maker in the morning and pour it over ice. Add a little milk, vanilla extract, half a packet of hot chocolate mix, and a sweet and low. Stir for a minute, pour it into a cold glass, and throw it down the sink and go buy an ice mochachino you cheap bastard.

"How you like me now Melvin?"

"I have $9m left. It's a decent amount and I'm not looking for sympathy, but it isn't an awful lot for someone who has been at the top of his profession for 40 years." -- Comedian John Cleese after paying his third ex-wife $16m.

Music, Man!

As Ive said before, technology knows whats it doing, and its ready to attack, make us obsolete, and turn the whole damn Earth into Cybertron. If I was a Transformer, I would turn into a limousine, my name would be Stretch, and my powers would enable me to shoot champagne out of twin guns mounted on my hood, and let drunk teenage girls hang out of me screaming "I'm in a limo"...also mounted. Today, my laptop got a virus. From where, I have a few ideas, but that's not important right now. $65 later after a visit to a Korean specialist in Brooklyn who doesn't judge, I find my entire Itunes collection has been erased. Like, everything. The Duran Duran best of...Tegan and Sara do Each Other...Eddie Murphy's My Girl Wants to Party All The Time Redux...even Snow Patrols less whiny shit. Now, while this is indeed a reason to panic, I did find I can buy back everything I lost in my Itunes account for 33 cents a pop. So, going thru all my music I purchased in the last 7 years is bringing back wanted, unwanted, dark, disturbing, fun, and fuzzy memories. Allow me to share.

Winning Days by The Vines: Ah, I remember listening to this as I packed to move out of my first place in Brooklyn where my paranoid Craigslist roommate had taken the doors off of my room in retaliation for me going into his room and stealing some of his fire from his lighter. Not the lighter, juuuuuust the fire.

Fake Empire by the National: Woke up to this one at 7am blaring from my Ipod on the steps of the library on 42nd. I was late for a mascot gig for PBS....sorry kids.

I am Always the One who Calls by Pedro the Lion: Would listen to this and pretend I was in a bad indie movie about poets or something and emerge out of a subway entrance in slow motion.

All Night Long by Peter Murphy: One of a dozen 80's songs I purchased when I first moved to New York when I was feeling far from home and missed the high school days when there were really no responsibilities or worries and you could just listen to music and enjoy it I think Ill throw that on as I finish this.

Chocolate by Snow Patrol: Reminds me of waiting on the Queensbourogh Plaza platform for the 7 train to take me to a girl...looking at the NY skyline...thinking I had it all figured out...and I did! Should of written it down...ah well...

Don't let it Fade by Sundays Best: Hanging flyer's in Times Square for the first standup show I hosted. Pop-Pops Comedy Show in honor of my recently deceased grandfather. My grandmother is still alive, but I have the flyer's ready....

Yo ho ho, A Pirates Life for me by the Toucan Pirates: I..have no idea

Sold as Seen by I Am Kloot: Used to listen to this as I sold old printers and monitors out of the lobby of an old reception job I had in SOHO...anywho

Wonder if the Snow Will Settle by The Cedars: Id put it on as I pretended to shovel my porch in Queens...it would frustrate my roommate cause I took too long so he would just shovel and never ask me to again...sucker...Id totally pinch his weed when he did this.

The Recluse by Cursive: This song is awesome. I cant pinpoint a specific era when I was into it, but I know I would air guitar the rifts to impress ladies as I strolled through Central Park looking for a good place to smoke pinched weed.

Wow. Music. it sure is....it sure is.

my cell phone is dying, my tv shifts from color to black and white, my toaster wont cook bagels, my playstation 3 acts like dvd's put into it are some form of rape, and my Ipods battery needs to be charged 23 hours a day....look out..we will all be at the mercy of machines before you know it. Transform and roll out..



"Technological progress is like an axe in the hands of a pathological criminal"--Einstein

"Do we not sail on this ship of fools?" -- Erasure

So I googled my age...

When thespian Corey Haim was 38, he was found dead in his house in Burbank California denying the world of License to Drive Two: Still Licensed...38 Special was probably one of the worst things about music in the 80's. "Hold on loosely, but don't let go?" That is bad advice...Mikki Moore of the Atlanta Hawks wears number 38 and no one knows who the fuck that is...There is no answer to the equation φ(x) = 38, making 38 a nontotient, so that sucks...The 38th parallel north is on the border of paradise on Earth: N and S Korea... Egyptian pharaohs were often buried with 38 statues of cat guardians, and their sarcophagi were adorned with 38 ankhs, so if I die this year, that's what I want too...thanks...The gate of the sci-fi TV series Stargate SG-1 can stay open a maximum of 38 minutes, but you already knew that didn't you..(Shannon Im looking at you)...In Taiwan, "38" is slang for stupid/idiot. It also comes with a spring roll...You may begin to feel electrical buzzes down your legs and inside your vagina in your thirty eighth week of pregnancy. This is caused from the baby hitting nerves as s/he settles into your pelvis. So that's what that is...About 38 percent of the 100,000 people registered to vote in Monroe County in the Poconos showed up at the polls Tuesday which is good cause thats a political hotbed...Steve Ditko's last issue as penciler and inker for Spider-Man was issue 38. Thwipp...The Patriots won SuperBowl 38. I lost $100...Best Picture winner at the Oscars in 1938 was You Cant Take it With You, so I wont...In the thirty-eighth year of Azariah king of Judah, Zechariah son of Jeroboam became king of Israel in Samaria, and he reigned six months. I don't even own any land... Chapter 38 of Great Expectations and Pride and Prejudice both deal with the death of a pet from what I gather...38 years ago Atari kicks off the first generation of video games with the release of their seminal arcade version of Pong. I thought it was later too...38 pounds of pot was seized from a Henry County home in Atlanta. That reminds me. I have to go to Atlanta. Sesame Street has never been brought to us by the number 38. I will be 38 on Nov 9...