The Hipsters Are Coming!

There are a lot of things wrong with this country. Domino’s Oreo Pizza (a.k.a. diabetes in a box) comes to mind, along with the 101 highway in Los Angeles, which was recently closed down because a house got trapped under an overpass. Seriously, a fucking house. But I feel it’s my duty as a reporter to alert my readers to the latest plague sweeping the nation, hipsters. Those of you in San Francisco know exactly what I’m talking about, but the rest of the country needs to be adequately prepared for the throngs of skinny white kids that will soon be bombarding their streets, leaving a trail of ironic destruction in their wake. I know you’re probably filled with fear right now but don’t worry, I’m here to answer all your questions.

What are hipsters?
Hipsters are a relatively new phenomenon, only gaining serious traction in the last five years or so. Mostly white, mostly middle class, hipsters have dedicated their lives to invading and subsequently ruining every respectably cool neighborhood, restaurant, and concert you’ve ever been to.

What are hipsters about?
Hipsters operate under the premise that they’re cooler, nay hipper, than you. Whoever you are. These are kids who for the most part grew up in middle class neighborhoods but are determined not to be associated with the privileges they’ve been given. They attempt to distance themselves from their decidedly uncool suburban past by adopting certain elements of lower class culture, while simultaneously maintaining their superiority over people who are actually lower class. Basically they want to have the “authenticity” of poor people without any of the problems, like not being able to use your lawyer dad’s credit card to buy shoes.

How can I recognize a hipster?
Just look for anything that smacks of irony. The most ready example is the trucker hat. Hipsters wore these mesh chapeaus as a nod to perhaps the least hip profession in the country, truckers. Trucker hats were about as uncool as you could get, therefore hipsters thought they were incredibly cool. Then trucker hats become widely popular, meaning hipsters could no longer wear because people who pretend to own John Deere tractors are lame, as opposed to when hipsters first did it as an ironic statement. Confused? You’re not the only one. Let’s keep going. What’s the official beer of the working class? It’s undoubtedly Pabst Blue Ribbon, so hipsters drink it by the gallon, the idea being they can’t afford any “fancier” beers, though they’ve conveniently overlooked the fact the bar they’re in is next to a sushi restaurant and not a Midwest steel factory. And they’re all incredibly skinny. Poor people are the most obese population in America largely because the only nutrition they have access too is fast food. But fat people aren’t particularly cool, so hipsters go to their local Whole Foods, buy organic seaweed, and watch the pounds melt off. If you’ve ever spent $200 on a pair of white jeans designed to look like you bought them at a thrift store, you’re a hipster.

Why should I hate them?
God there are so many reasons. The detached air of superiority drives me insane, I just have a hard time being called a sell-out by someone who’s parents spent $10,000 a year to place them in a private school for kindergarten. But it’s mostly the attempt to live in this netherworld between middle class privilege and lower class hardship. Sorry, you just don’t get to have it both ways. Either use your parents’ credit card and admit your mom drove you to soccer practice in a Dodge Grand Caravan , or actually work for a living and realize being poor sucks. You’ve got to pick one and go with it like the rest of us. Fair warning to any hipsters out there; I’m about ready to snap. If one more of you aviator glasses-wearing motherfuckers asks me for spare change I’m going rip that Virginia is for Lovers t-shirt off your back and strangle you with it.

I don’t care where you live, hipsters are coming for you. I’ve seen them walking around suburban malls; because only cool people go to the mall, which would make people at malls actually uncool, which would in turn make a hipster (who makes the uncool cool through irony) at the mall cool. It’s so mind boggling ridiculous I can’t handle it. So there, you’ve been warned. I’m highly encouraging everyone to band together and fight this threat. Start neighborhood watch groups, send in pictures of hipsters around your neighborhood so we can identify them, do whatever you have to do. Together we can stop hipsterism from spreading.

Still not sure what a hipster is? Watch this video.

Nothing Realy Matters

The world’s spinning so fast I’m nauseous. Today General Petraeus testified to Congress about the situation in Iraq (downgraded from apocalyptic to atrocious), rebels bombed gas lines throughout Mexico, and exiled Pakistani prime-minister Nawaz Sharif was arrested and deported to Saudi Arabia. Big freakin deal, Britney Spears made her public performance return last night. Thinking about the world’s problems make me depressed, the type of depression that only eating frosting straight out the container can cure. So before I get so fat I have to scratch my back with a stick, let’s just focus on all stories out there that don’t really matter. They’re the best kind anyway, beginning with…

The aforementioned Ms. Spears performed last night at the MTV awards and I’m still busy scrubbing my retinas with a toothbrush to try to erase the image. I hoped for the best while preparing for the worst, but sweet jesus on a bicycle that was awful. She looked like a 40 year old stripper in some nightclub in Nebraska; squeezed into a regrettably scandalous outfit and only occasionally remembering she was supposed to look like she was enjoying herself. She was clearly just waiting until it was over so she could go smoke a pack of Newports and down a couple Coors Lights. Fame has chewed her up and spit her out, no one looks good covered in fame-y saliva.

President/dictator/ Hugo Chavez is pushing legislation through the Venezuelan legislature that would make crazy names illegal. The law lists 100 names that parents will no longer be able to name their children, including Hengelberth, Maolenin, Kerbert Krishnamerk, Githanjaly, Yornaichel, and Nixon. Venezuela has an international reputation as the world’s insane name capital and it would be a real shame to see them lose their status. Plus, it seems like a completely unenforceable law, there are simply too many name possibilities to ever eradicate the problem. Sure you can outlaw Hengelberth, but what’s to stop me from naming my son Holmes Air Purifier Slavik? Actually, that’s not only the first thing I saw when I looked around the room, but actually kind of a cool name. I wouldn’t name my first born child that, but if I convert to fundamental Mormonism and have somewhere in the neighborhood of 100 kids, number 101 is gonna be named Holmes Air Purifier Slavik. That’s a promise.

Kanye West and 50 Cent both have albums coming out tomorrow and the kinda-coincidence has been turned into a marketing/media frenzy. The cover of Rolling Stone has them face-to-face like rival boxers. Who’s going to sell more albums? Who’s the biggest name in hip-hop? Who fucking cares, and why does this kind of thing only happen in hip-hop? If Maroon 5 and Nickelback had albums coming out on the same day they’d probably send each other good luck cards and a cheese platter. It’s a sign of how desperate artists and labels have become in the face of lagging sales that they have to resort to this kind of chicanery. For the record lesbian folk heroine Ani DiFranco has an album coming out on the same day too. Hear that 50? Ani’s coming for you homeboy. Oh, it’s on.

Another hilarious moment from the MTV Awards: Justin Timberlake tells MTV to stop running reality show crap and get back to showing music videos while the cast of The Hills stands mere feet away. For those of you who have no idea what I’m talking about let me think of an appropriate analogy. Ok, it would be like a doctor telling an obese man that if he’s doesn’t stop eating fried chicken he’s going to die, only the man is Colonel Sanders. Now replace the doctor with Justin Timberlake, fried chicken with reality shows, and Colonel Sanders with a collection of rich girls from Hollywood that have to wear flip-flops because they get confused by shoelaces. Got it?

Are you sick of talking about Sen. Craig’s arrest for soliciting gay sex in an airport bathroom? I’m not. So far his excuses have been painfully lame, it would appear the man just likes him some airport lovin. If I was doing spin control here’s some excuses I would have written up: Craig is a former Broadway tap dancer who was merely practicing his routine, not tapping out a code asking an undercover cop to take off his pants. Actually, Broadway tap dancer sounds pretty gay too. What if he has a very rhythmic form of Tourettes? Or he was simply out of toilet paper and trying to see if the guy in the next stall had any. Bingo, that’s it. It’s not very dignified, but neither is getting arrested in an airport bathroom. I really feel like “ran out of toilet paper” is the way to go. Someone get Craig on the phone, I think I just found my calling.

San Francisco City Supervisor Ed Jew is currently being investigated for lying about his residency. It turns out he doesn’t live in San Francisco at all, a federal crime for someone who filed candidacy papers attesting otherwise. That’s not funny. What is humorous is the media coverage. It’s newspaper protocol to only refer to a person by their last name, almost never including their first. So the headline would be “Bush says troops will stay in Iraq until Baghdad is as safe as Detroit” not “George Bush says…” Of course it’s a whole different ballgame is your last name happens to be Jew. The San Francisco Chronicle’s editors are understandably uneasy about headlines like “Jew wanted for questioning” and so have decided to only refer to him as Ed Jew. Plus last night a homeless mayoral candidate named Grasshopper Kaplan was arrested for trespassing at Ed Jew’s home, meaning that for the first time in history we could have legitimately read the headline, “Grasshopper arrested for stalking Jew.” Which is all just further proof that San Francisco is indeed the craziest city in America. God I love that place.

What was the point of today’s article? I don’t really know. How’s this: no matter how screwed up your life is, you’ll still look like Mr. Rogers compared to Britney Spears. I should have that embroidered on a pillow. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a tub of frosting waiting for me.

Lost and Found: Hollywood Editon

This is Hollywood baby. Actually, it’s West Hollywood. Hollywood is full of was museums, tourists, and junkies. West Hollywood is the home of exclusive nightclubs, power lunches, and actresses so thin they might as well be junkies. If you’ve ever spent any time in WeHo (as us locals call West Hollywood, much to my amusement) you know it’s only a matter of time before a waiter pushes a movie script into your hands and whispers, “are you in the industry?” Well, exactly such a script has fallen into my hands, seriously. If I was going to make up a fake movie script I would call it If Tomorrow Never Comes, this one is titled The Promethean by Paul Lingas. So for everyone out there who will never have the pleasure of reading a verifiable aspiring movie script, I though I’d give you a little preview. Feel free to come over to my apartment and read it in its entirety, in the meantime you’ll have to settle for my notes. And Paul, if you’re reading this, which you almost certainly aren’t, just stay open to some of the changes I’ve proposed.

*How are you going to pitch this? I would use something along the lines of, “think Minority Report meets Field of Dreams.” Or maybe just, “it’s like The Matrix, only not nearly as well thought out.”
*Let’s brainstorm other title ideas. If I didn’t know anything about the film and someone said to me, “hey, want to go see The Promethean?” I’d say, “no. What the hell is The Promethean?” As a general rule people don’t like movie titles dependant on knowledge of Greek mythology. Here’s my suggestion; Daylight. Think about it. It’s catchy and more subtly appropriate.
*Do you really want to go with the wristwatch communicator? Talking into your watch makes me think of Dick Tracy. Why would people in the future combine watches and cell phones when people now use their cell phones as watches? I’d go with a Bluetooth-esque device.
*I like the use of “organic plants” as a valuable commodity in a place with a potentially poisonous atmosphere. It makes sense that only the powerful would have vegetation.
*Here’s my biggest problem. I know it’s an apocalyptic future but would all art and music really disappear? Isn’t some aspect of music almost innate? I’m of course referring to Carter’s absolute shock when he hears someone hum. Really? I just feel like even in a bleak and barren wasteland people wouldn’t lose the ability or desire to hum/whistle/doodle etc.
*Carter goes too quickly from a snitch to a full-fledged member of the resistance. You need to either show his more gradual transition or include some sort of epiphany. What if he and Penelope have sex on top of the conveyer belt, someone walks in, and in their rush they duck inside one of the crates? Of course they stumble on the smuggled artifacts from the outside world and Carter realizes the resistance is right. Plus you need a sex scene, that’s two birds with one stone right there.
*Marshall seems completely unaffected by Marie’s death. One of his fellow revolutionaries is kidnapped and beaten to death and his reaction is basically, “she had it coming”? If I was considering joining the revolution I wouldn’t want my leader to be a guy who doesn’t give a crap if the overlords are whooping me with night sticks, or what ever future police use to beat future people.
*Leboutillier needs a new name. He’s supposed to be a hated villain but his name sounds like some sort of French pastry, or flower, maybe a combination pastry/flower. It just doesn’t seem at all menacing. What about Vince, or Tony or something? No, that’s too mafia. I can’t think of anything good. Regardless, Leboutillier needs to go.
*[Spoiler alert] So Carter finds out he was born in the outside world and is indeed the prophesied Promethean who has come to lead the people. I know it’s kind of a central point in the plot, but you might as well have Keanu Reeves start kung-fu fighting clones in a black trench coat. Ok, so Hollywood’s not real big on originality but goddamn man, I might as well just go rent The Matrix at this point.
*[even more spoiler alert]When the resistance group finally reaches the outside world and sees the sun for the first time they’re a little nonchalant. What, people don’t swear in the future. If I was locked in a bleak metallic factory my entire life and told by overlords that the Earth was fatally radioactive, and then I open a door and stumbled out into fresh air, I think at the very least an “oh shit” would be in order. Even a “wow.” Come on, something.

There you go people. I can’t go any further without giving the whole thing away, and then why would you pay your hard earned money to watch The Promethean? Or if I have my way, Daylight. Seriously Paul, cut me in. We can make this thing a blockbuster. Thousands of people lined up to watch Norbit, we got at least a fighting chance. And if any NoChancers have any film suggestions for the problems I’ve raised (good villain name for example) I’m sure we can get you a producer credit. Hell, hand out some sandwiches on set and you’ll get a producer credit. It's the least I can do.

The Guide To Tattoos, Part 2

I’ve written about tattooing before, mostly in an attempt to stop people from asking me stupid questions. Well, it didn’t work. And although I am tempted to lash out at the girl who wants to talk about her “ink” with me (a.k.a. a two inch fairy on her ankle) I’m instead going to double my education efforts. Think about it like sex ed in school, only instead of how babies are made we’re going to talk about tattoos, and instead of a mentally challenged gym teacher you get me. Oh, and you won’t throw up in your mouth after watching a video of a baby squeezing through a vagina. Or was that just my sex ed?
I’ll do my best to answer some basic questions, but I’ll probably get sidetracked along the way by random stories. Which reminds me…

If you’re an obese woman getting a portrait of her cat tattooed on your leg, it’s not necessary to explain how you, your husband and your two children spend most of your time naked. First, you and your husband are both wearing sweatpants, which for children is practical and for adults is gross. Second, don’t tell me and everyone else in the shop your ten and eight-year-old kids don’t wear clothes, I think that may be child abuse. It’s one thing to be a hippie family frolicking through a field naked while whittling sea creatures out of bamboo, but I’m picturing your family watching Japanese cartoons and downing whole downing bags of Cool Ranch Doritos naked. And for that picture I will forever be angry. What’s that have to do with tattoos? Not much except I was forced to listen to it in a tattoo shop and I felt the need to share. How about this; don’t get a portrait of your cat tattooed on you, but if you’re even considering it you’ve got bigger problems than I can address here.
I’m always getting warned that when I’m old my tattoos will just be giant ink blobs and I’ll regret it. First that’s not true, you’re thinking about the faded navy tattoos you’ve seen on grizzled old men. Ink quality has come a long way since the 50s. It’s roughly the equivalent of sucking a lime a day because you’re worried about contracting scurvy, it’s just not a legitimate concern anymore. Unless you get your tattoo done by your cousin Rick in his basement, but then you’ll probably be praying it fades. Plus, when I’m 90 not only will it be great to intimidate the other geezers on the shuffleboard court with my ink, but I’ll be more worried about not peeing my pants every hour than how I look.
Wait, this thing is really permanent? Yeah, actually it is. Make sure your tattoo is something you’ll be happy with for as long as you live, or as long as you have that body part. For example, I once knew a guy with a huge tattoo of a crying clown covering his leg. Unless his dad was a clown who died while being suffocated during a “lots of clown in a tiny car” stunt gone horribly wrong, which I doubt, the tattoo will get old quick. Seriously, a crying clown? Was he a clown who was ironically scared of other clowns? Is that why he’s crying? It’s been almost five years since I first saw it and the tattoo still befuddles me. Which brings me to regret. You can now get tattoos lasered off, only it hurts like hell and is pretty expensive, so have fun with that. You can also get it covered up, meaning a skilled artist can, for example, incorporate a crappy tattoo of a panther (a la cousin Rick) into the black flowing hair of a pin-up girl. The only way to cover up a tattoo is with a larger tattoo, so if your entire calf is covered with a crying clown, just to pick something at random, you’re screwed. And they’re tattoo artists, not Jesus (unless maybe if you’re getting tattooed in Mexico), they may not be able to magically turn your tattoo of Calvin peeing on a truck into a Monet painting. To use my favorite Southern saying, you can’t put lipstick on a pig. Well, you can, but the point is it’s still a pig, and someone should call PETA.
Let’s end with a real-life exploration. As I write this there’s a gentleman with a tattoo on the back of his arm that reads Born In Idaho. I can’t decide if it’s a great tattoo or a terrible one. I think it may say more about the state of Idaho than him as a person. People from the Potato State (or whatever their motto is) are so rare its citizens feel compelled to tell the world. And plenty of people get tattoos about where they’re from; a picture of the Golden Gate Bridge means you’re from San Francisco or a Red Sox logo means you’re from Boston. If you’re from Idaho your options are pretty limited, I guess all you can do is write “Born in Idaho.” What else is there to say really? You know what, good for him. Say it loud, I’m Idahoan/Idahoese/an Idahoite and I’m proud! Which proves the ultimate point, as long as it something that truly comes from your heart it can only be good, no matter what malicious bloggers may write.
Hope that made things a little clearer. More likely than not it just enveloped you further in a deep cloud of confusion, you’re welcome. Feel free to write in with any other questions, I’ll answer them all in another article. And just so you can take some shots of me that’s a picture of the back of my right arm, the tattoo is based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead. Why? Because I like Tibet, and books, though I’m not really a big fan of being dead. Hey it could have been worse. It could have been a portrait of my cat, dressed up like a clown, crying. Yeah, that would have definitely been worse.

The New National Pastime

There’s nothing America loves more than a thick cheeseburger…except maybe explosives, or breasts, or reality shows, or reality shows featuring potentially explosively breasts (genius, I know. I’ve got a meeting with Fox next week). No wait, what America really loves is painfully attractive celebrity couples who adopt children from Africa, or electronic fish that sing when you touch them, or perhaps just Cheetos. I got it, what America really loves, what it craves from the depths of its soul, is scandal. Celebrities, politicians, your neighbor’s wife, scandal is our true national pastime. That’s why while this summer will go down on record as a terrible time for sports purists, it’s been unbelievably juicy for the nation as a whole. Sports have always served as a place for America to work through some societal dilemmas (maybe there’s something to this whole “desegregation thing”) and this summer there’s been an avalanche of issues for us to work out.

The Barry Bonds Scandal
What it’s about: Bonds broke Hank Aaron’s hallowed career homerun record, but did he use steroids? Is the record tainted?
What it’s really about: Cyborgs. That’s right, cyborgs. Medicine is advancing at an incredible pace, we’re now able to replace limbs with adequate replacements and implant computer chips into brains to enable the blind to see. People can buy over the counter medicines to keep them artificially alert (energy drinks), artificially attractive (weight-loss shakes) and artificially erect (Viagra). Where’s it all headed? Will that guy in your office who can barely operate a coffee machine someday be able to swallow a pill and become smarter than you? Will an obese woman someday be able to step into a booth and emerge minutes later with a supermodel’s body? America’s a competitive place, driven by money and status, and we need to slow down before someone dumber and uglier starts taking what rightfully belongs to us. Bonds represents oure terrifying cyborg future and Aaron our purely human past. I hate Bonds because he’s a cheat, a liar, and a robot prototype bent on destroying all that is good about humanity.

The Tim Donaghy Scandal
What it’s about: Donaghy is a former NBA ref who bet on games he was officiating, quite possibly throwing games to ensure he won, and thereby calling into question the integrity of games.
What it’s really about?: We love the mafia and all mafia related activities. The Godfather trilogy and Scarface and Goodfellas are all well written and acted movies, but so was The English Patient. There’s a reason mafia related fare can be found nearly any time/any day on cable. America loves to fantasize about being in the mafia, living a life of constant danger and criminal honor. The very thought of Tony Soprano sitting a NBA ref down and threatening to break his kneecaps if the Spurs beat the Nuggets is a guaranteed blockbuster movie. The other story here is that apparently NBA refereeing is so bad no one noticed someone was actively trying to throw games. Donaghy was surrounded by so much incompetence his calculated idiocy was impossible to detect.

The Tour De France Scandal

What it’s about: For the third year in a row the world’s most prestigious cycling race was rocked by the discovery that prominent riders were taking steroids.
What it’s really about: No one in America cares about cycling, unless it involves a trash- talking Texan beating the beejezus out of Europeans at their own sport.

The Michael Vick Scandal
What it’s about: Vick, the most exciting player in football, is allegedly the ringleader of a large scale dog fighting ring, including electrocuting and executing dogs. And I mean allegedly in the same way Seigfried and Roy are allegedly gay.
What it’s really about: Fine, the State of Texas can execute mentally retarded minors, but killing dogs is going too far. We love dogs more than we love people, and I include myself in this category, because they’re symbols of innocence, while people are symbols of greed. If there was a fire and I had to choose between saving a puppy or that fucker at my gym who works out with a bluetooth in his ear…it’d be close, I’m actually leaning towards puppy. But as anyone who lived in San Francisco knows wealthy black athletes aren’t the only people raising vicious dogs; the Bay Area has seen a woman killed by dogs raised by a white couple on behalf of an imprisoned skinhead they had adopted (you can’t make this stuff up), and a young boy killed by a pitbull in his home, despite the fact his mother locked him in the basement while she went shopping because the dog was acting agitated. Remember, dogs don’t kill people, people with dogs kill people (who sometimes breed dogs to kill dogs if they don’t kill the dogs first). Got it?

There’s also news coming out of Japan that the country is in the throes of a sumo scandal. Apparently the Yokozuna (the heavyweight champion) withdrew from a match because of injury, then was caught on tape playing soccer with reckless abandon. Yawn, you call that a scandal Japan? Wake me up when steroid enhanced sumos start fighting dogs to the death to pay off mob debts. Now that’s something America would be interested in.

Senor Spam and the Getty Children

I have met a lot of obscenely wealthy people in my lifetime, essentially because of nothing more than an extended series of coincidences. Every time I’m in some new palatial estate I always look for signs of unhappiness and tragedy. After all, the only thing keeping me from hating these people is the belief that their money has left them empty shells of humans; that my meager existence has some happiness that is walled off to the rich. Well, rejoice my paycheck-to-paycheck brethren, I come offering substantial proof that money is not the key to happiness. In fact, it’s more likely than not to leave you and your children gnarled wastelands of humanity…

The Gettys are one of the most prominent families in San Francisco, Mayor Newsom owes no small part of his success to their money and influence. The young and beautiful jewels of the family are Billy and Vanessa Getty. The razor-sharp cheekboned couple has two young boys but have clearly turned over the bulk of the parenting responsibilities to an English nanny. I happened to be in the kitchen when Vanessa arrived home to spend some quality time with the boys:
Vanessa: “Hello my darlings, come here.”
(The two-year-old waddles over to her, she picks him up. The four-year old is much more interested in playing with his truck out on the back porch. He looks up at her and then continues playing.)
Vanessa: “I said come here, now.”
(The four-year-old is indifferent, continues to play).
Vanessa: “Fine then, Mommy hates you. I’m going to go upstairs and get dressed.”
(He spins around startled and then starts towards his mother, who is already well on her way upstairs. Begins to cry.)
There is absolutely no way that kid is going to have a serious cocaine problem by the time he’s 15. I wish there was a way to gamble on these things, this kid and Nicole Richie’s baby are stone-cold locks to become extraordinarily messed up adults. This is valuable insider information people.

On the other side of mean is crazy, also known in more kind circles as eccentric. Tom Hormel owns an unbelievably large estate in Malibu, the kind of place that takes your breath away, until you realize you’re looking at the guest house. Oh, I’m sorry, let me back up. Who is Tom Hormel? Tom is the heir to the Hormel fortune, as in Hormel Foods, the meatpacking giant. I shook the hand of the man who owns Spam, and that’s a pleasure I will take to my death. I feel a little bad about mentioning him here because he’s a genuinely kind man, but I have to. You see, he’s a strict raw food vegetarian, he won’t allow meat to even enter the property. Let that sink in for a moment, the irony’s almost overpowering. You have to believe he knows exactly what goes into those tins of processed meat and it can’t be pretty. If you ever find yourself with Tom be prepared to drink enormous of his special beet/ginger/macrobiotic enzymes juice. Consider yourself warned.

On a more general note: Two recent newspaper articles have left me rejoicing. The first is about a recent rash of robberies in Bel Air. For those of you who’s only exposure to Bel Air is Fresh Prince re-runs, the real place is enormous, once you turn off Sunset Ave. and go through its exclusive gates it can take as many as twenty or thirty minutes to wind through it’s shaded streets to a house. As it turns out (much to my delight) Bel Air denizens have left themselves only more vulnerable to robberies. Their homes are surrounded by high walls and heavy foliage, a.k.a. perfect cover for robbers, no one can see into the property to notice someone breaking a window. Even if their burglary alarms go off it can take half-an-hour for the police to arrive, and since pool boys and gardeners are constantly coming and going no one thinks twice about a white van parked outside. HA! Suck on that rich people! Turns out being part of a community and regularly interacting with people actually makes you safer, and that’s why I choose to live in an apartment building (let me believe what I want to).
Also, on a parenting note, a new study has concluded that not only do Baby Einstein videos not increase a child’s intelligence, they make them stupider! Children who haven’t watched the videos have almost twice the vocabulary as those who did regularly. It turns out that talking to your kids and interacting with them is more beneficial than sitting them in front of the tv. In other shocking news the key to losing weight is consuming less calories while expending more. Who could have possible known? Oh, that’s right, I did. And not all the blame goes on parents, Baby Fuckin Einstein Inc. (or whatever they’re called) has been preying on parental fears by selling them a product that does the opposite of what they claim. People should be rioting, and I hope they do. Burn Baby burn!

Let me be clear, I need more financial assets. But the key seems to be knowing when to stop. You want money, but not “I only drink ginger/beet juice” money.” You want a large bank account, but not “Mommy hates you,” large. As Americans we’re not particularly good at moderation, in fact I’ve been suddenly inspired to coin the term “obesely wealthy.” That’s trademarked, if you want to use it you’re going to have to pay. Hey, I got to make a living.

The Great Potty Bus Adventure

There are moments when all the forces in the cosmos align, moments in which the unthinkable becomes eminently possible. While it may seem on the surface that these moments are random they are actually the result of an almost infinite series of events coinciding in careful coordination.
All that is an overly complicated way of saying that I was hanging out with legendary rap group Wu-Tang Clan in a Domino’s Pizza a few nights ago. Let’s review the chain of events:

My brother and I went to see the Rock The Bells Festival, a hip-hop festival featuring everyone from Talib Kweli to the aforementioned Wu-Tang Clan (click here for my full coverage). The show was at the Tweeter Center, a stadium about 45 minutes from Boston. Now for those of you not from Mansfield Massachusetts, and I sincerely hope no one is, it’s in one of those towns that rides the thin line between rural and suburban. There aren’t a lot of culinary options after midnight, save for one Domino’s Pizza shining like a beacon of greasy nutrition against a late night sky. This particular Domino’s was staffed entirely by barely conscious high school kids and after ordering we sat back to await our delicious fare. Then…

12:45 – Two enormous tour buses pull up. We figure it has to be someone from the show, and sure enough assorted members of Wu-Tang Clan pour out of the bus. Watching them approach the Domino’s will remain one of the more confusing moments of my life. On one hand it was completely surreal, on the other it made perfect sense that a group infamous for their marijuana smoking ways would be making a late night Domino’s run.

12:55 – A barrage of ordering commences; pizzas, soda, and crazy bread galore, along with endless special requests. The acned staff is completely overwhelmed, and frankly I don’t blame them. Various members of their nebulous entourage keep coming up and placing more orders, bickering over the relatives merits of mushrooms vs. peppers. Method Man announces, “all these white people are pissed these negros took over their Domino’s.” It’s funny because it’s true. It’s safe to say the all-time record for amount of black people in a Mansfield Domino’s is being obliterated. It’s also clear our pizza’s not coming anytime soon. We decide to play it cool.

1:10 – My brother’s sipping on one of those big cans of Arizona Ice Tea, and Method Man wants one, bad. We send him over to 24-hour pharmacy next door, the only problem is he needs to borrow a dollar from me. Mind you he says this was a diamond- encrusted chain hanging from his hand. I give him the requested dollar and he takes off for the pharmacy at full speed. Method Man owes me $1, and I fully intend to collect.

1:15 – We’re in full-fledged debate with their tour manager over whether Boston is a city of a state when a fifteen year old kid walks in the store looking for some pizza. I don’t think he knew who he was looking at, but he did know he was looking at a Clan of black people and he was momentarily stunned. Incredibly he decides to talk to them in his classic Boston accent, leading to one of my favorite exchanges of all time.
White Kid: “Is that your pahty bus outside?” [boston accent note: pahty bus=party bus, a bus frat boys would rent for a trip to the casino for example]
Wu-Tang: What?
White Kid: Is that your pahty bus?
Wu-Tang: Our what?
White Kid (looking intensely uncomfortable): Pahty bus?
Wu-Tang: What the fuck is a potty bus?
White Kid: I don’t know, sorry.

1:30 - Everyone finally has their pizzas and is heading back to the tour bus, detoured significantly by a smoking session in the parking lot. I’m frankly amazed we haven’t seen any police yet, this is by far the most action to happen in a Domino’s parking lot, ever. Only then do we get our pizza and head to the car at full speed to eat. We drive off to assorted head nods of recognition from Wu-Tang, probably just another night in their tour-filled lives, but one of the most surreal of mine. See, there are these nights when the cosmos align just so and an aspiring journalist from Boston and a legendary rap group from Staten Island converge, if only to borrow a dollar for a can of ice tea.