Archives

March 2002
April 2002
May 2002
June 2002
July 2002
August 2002
September 2002
October 2002
November 2002
December 2002
January 2003
February 2003
March 2003
April 2003
May 2003
June 2003
July 2003
August 2003
September 2003
October 2003
November 2003
December 2003
January 2004
February 2004
March 2004
April 2004
May 2004
June 2004
July 2004
August 2004
September 2004
October 2004
November 2004
December 2004
January 2005
February 2005
March 2005
April 2005
May 2005
June 2005
July 2005
August 2005
September 2005
October 2005
November 2005
December 2005
January 2006
current

Blogs

No one must know my terrible secret...

House of Noh!

Tuesday, February 14, 2006

So yesterday I was riding my sweet new bike, pedalling all gleefully and carefree, when some hipsters who looked like they could be from commercials advertising Taco Bell's new Crunch Wrap Supreme started giving me shit. And, BTW, how I loathe you, crunch-wrap supreme red-headed, hipster spokesperson (defined term: Taco Bell Spokesperson). I spent a lot of time thinking about this today, and if Taco Bell Spokesperson was matched up in a pit-fight with Jared, I would have a really hard time deciding who I'd want all beat up and bruised and uttering the pathetic lamentations of those defeated in honorable pit-style gladiator combat in an oil-changing pit at an old abandoned Uncle Ed's Oilshop franchise. I'm not making up the Uncle Ed's oil-change pit thing - this is how executives at Pepsi Corporation and the one that owns Subway entertain themselves: by matching the fighting skills of their mascots. It's clearly a lowbrow sort of activity, especially when compared to the elegant, classic sports enjoyed by vice presidents. Nothing is so majestic and filled with natural beauty as walking a harvested corn-field in late February behind high-bred and impeccably trained English Pointers, when all of a sudden one dog goes to point and a covey of medical malpractice plaintiff's attorneys stand up out of the corn stubble and run off toward cover. And it probably was a great moment for the VP when he picked a lawyer out of the fleeing covey, followed it, and successfully blasted it in the face with his 28 gauge shotgun. Although what with the Ranch he was hunting at reporting the shooting to the press, and sending the lawyer to the hospital instead of sending the VP home with laywer fillets, all neatly butchered and wrapped up in labeled white butcher paper, I'd be surprised if he ever goes back to THAT ranch again.

So I was riding my sweet new bike, and these hipsters standing out in front of their hipster place watched me pedal by, and I heard one say, "what is that?" to which the other responded, "an abomination!" and I think they were talking about the bike.

Actually, I consider this high praise, but, for effect, I displayed great umbrage, stood up on my old tyme pedals, and sped past the hipsters on squishy balloon tires as if to say, "eat my rust flakes hipsters!!"

Friday, February 10, 2006

And then nobody in the salsa industry will take that salsa company seriously.

My advice to these salsa companies: Don’t worry about what people are going to think. Just be your corporate self, for Chrissakes!

Because imagine this: what if there is a salsa consumer out there who is a wuss (and I imagine there are plenty of salsa wusses out there. For instance, one time I was grilling steaks with an ex-girlfriend, and she mistakenly sprinkled hot pepper on her steak instead of black pepper, and it wasn’t that hot, I checked later, but she spit her first mouthful out into her hand and shouted, “I hate spicy food!” and then hurled the ball of chewed up meat across the back yard and over the fence in back. I should clarify here, however, that when I say “wuss” I am referring to wussness in the salsa / hot / food spiciness sense only and am not using “wuss” in general terms.)

Back to the hypothetical: imagine any salsa wuss. And imagine that the salsa wuss thinks they can handle the Medium Salsa, because, after all, it’s only one step above Mild. But then it turns out that it’s really the hottest salsa that the salsa company sells, and the salsa wuss is totally wrecked and barfs all over the place and craps his or her pants at the fair, and nobody that he or she came with to the fair is ready to go home, so he or she just has to sort of stand around for like an hour, eating an elephant ear, with a load of crap in his or her pants. This is very embarrassing. I don’t want to be any sort of muck raiser here, but wouldn’t that be a good grounds for a lawsuit? Way better than suing for finding what you claim to be a severed penis in a jar of something that turns out only to be a rare penis-shaped fungus.

I also learned this today: although saber-toothed tigers aren't TECHNICALLY considered dinosaurs, they can still be categorized with true dinosaurs for fighting purposes.

Friday, February 03, 2006

The journal entry at hand is about something that Sharon P. tried to talk me out of. What she said made good sense, of course, but I told her that I wouldn't be talked out of it, because it was my dream, that it had been my dream for years, and that if she had ever had a dream in life she would let me do it. My dream was to order, and eat, a pizza with every single topping on it. I imagined a ludicrous, topping-overbalanced pizza that would make my jaws pop with the effort, yet still I would scrape toppings off the pizza with my front teeth on the way in, it would be so jam-packed with deliciousness.

Just a few weeks ago the Domino's Pizza close to my apartment (I can smell their delicious pizzas all night long through my open bedroom window in the summer, for chrissakes) started offering three medium pizzas, seven dollars each, with unlimited toppings on each. That's when I knew: the time to realize my dream was nigh.

I ordered one pizza for Sharon P. Then a back-up pizza for me, in case the pizza with every single topping was too much. When I told the pizza woman what I wanted for my final pizza, I couldn't hold the tremor out of my voice. I was like, "on my third pizza, I want, EVERY SINGLE TOPPING." I expected her to hang up on me, or to hear her mouth drop agape over the line or something like that. But the pizza woman just sounded bored. I guess it's no big deal to get every topping. They even have a name for that kind of pizza. It's called the extrava-fucking-ganza. And it's not preposterous, and it totally fit in my mouth, and I couldn't even tell it from a Supreme.

That is how the Domino's Pizza on Irving Park stole my dream. I think that Nelson Algren, had I told him about my dream before I attempted to realize it, would have had these sobering and sage words for me:

"It's a rusty iron heart that pumps haberdashers and cat photographers bruising Chicago's inner drive in cars slung low and rusty between bumpers on rain-wet bungee cords. A square in a high-crowned hat reaches for a package of six low rise sport briefs and buys a radio alarm clock in a box that has been taped closed after being returned as defective by the Pottawatomies, hustled from their portage between waters and grasses, they too listened to the night. The blue-eyed man touches all the saran-wrapped stacked wedges of aged cheese at the Whole Foods and smells his fingers on the crowded street, index finger and thumb close up against nose-holes sucking hot car exhaust that smells like stinky cheese, standing outside the Let's Pet Puppies in a shower of brake-dust from the El tracks, shaking his fist in through the window because they have many puppies, and he has none."