Tuesday, July 31, 2007

Super-Duper Hot Dogs a la Brian

White bread and pig anus never tasted so good! Serve when you're just kicking back or when that special someone comes over for a romantic rendez-vous. Substitute salsa for relish if you're feeling ethnic.

1 pack of wieners
1 1/2 packs of WonderBread (tm) hot dog buns
3 tbsp of mustard
12 packets of ketchup (or catsup)
3 tbsp of relish
6 slices of processed cheese


In a saucepan, heat one litre of water until bubbling and steaming. Add wieners and cook for five minutes. Remove saucepan from heat.

Slice cheese in half and place on twelve open WonderBread (tm) buns. With tongs (not fingers!) place wieners on buns. Garnish with mustard, ketchup and relish to taste. Enjoy!


serves two

Saturday, July 28, 2007

A Review Of The Jason Isbell Concert at The El Mocombo...

...that doesn't really contain any artistic insights. Or whether you would have liked it. Or anything other than calling George a PUSSY and bragging about our heroic intake of cocktails.

8:50 pm : Neal and I decide we should phone George and remind him I made a special trip to Toronto to see this show -- all the while having drinks.

8:51 pm : Drinks are had.

8:54 pm : George is phoned. He says he will phone back.

8:57 pm : More drinks are had.

9:16 pm : George shows up while drinks are being had. He says he can not attend the show, but will join us in drinks. He brings no drinks of his own.

9:18 pm 'til 10:56 pm : Neal makes George overly elaborate, two-assed drinks while I hold court in the back yard; speaking of literature and cinema and other things I pretend to know about.

10:57 pm : I mention we should head to the club. I think I also tell them that 'women never really faint and villians always blink their eyes and children are the only ones that blush and that life is just to die'. I, unfortunately, sometimes think that I am Lou Reed when I am in the grip of the grape.

10:58 pm : More drinks are had. George is once again called a PUSSY.

11:19 pm : Neal and I head out for the show, George heads home as the chant of "Georgie, Georgie, he is gay ... not in the sexual but informal way" ring through Neal's street. Neal's neighbours, save one surprising exception, are not amused.

11:27 pm - 12:14 am : We arrive at the show at half-time. We make our way in -- cover chargeless -- and order drinks. They are not of the stregnth we require. We try again, hoping it was just a bad pour. It was not. We order wine as it is harder to short-pour.

12:01 am - 1:03 am : Here the time line grows fuzzy. Two or three glasses of wine are consumed. The show commenced at some point. I enjoyed it. I bought the album 'Sirens Of The Ditch". You should buy it too.

1:04 am - The show ends and Neal suggests heading for stronger drink.

1:09 am - Sometime Before 2:00 am - My God! They serve ridiculously strong whiskey-based drinks at this bar. The bartender has huge tits and shows them off as a tip-gathering tool. It works. I'm pretty sure I left 14 extra bucks on the table.

Around 2:00 am - We call a cab and return home. Here it grows hazy. Drinks may have been had when we got home. I found half a 7-11 chicken pita thing in the fridge the next day. Due to Neal's dietary restrictions, it must have been mine. I think I listened to a book on Neal's computer that told me Romanian gypsies often name their children Engmarlen in honour of Engels, Marx and Lenin.
I hope, for the gypsy childrens' sake, it was a dream.

Haiku

a starving turtle
will it eat a butter tart?
don't know...not likely.

Monday, July 23, 2007

Then I Woke Up and It Was Only A Dream...


A dream Barb had sometime between 7:OO and 9:30 pm, Sunday, July 22, 2007 - as related by Barb... pretty much verbatim...no kidding.

"So I dreamed Johhny Cash was still alive - which wasn't news 'cuz in my dream he never died - but he got lost. He was wandering around and somehow found his way into my bedroom. So I slept with him while my sister-wife watched. Then I dreamed there was a mouldy patch in my bedroom carpet and I looked under it and there were turtles living there. For some reason I thought my brother would like some turtles so I called him. He was supposed to be in the area, but he didn't show up fast enough. Then Tony Bennett got lost and wandered into my room. I asked him if he wanted the turtles but he wasn't very interested. Then I slept with him while my sister-wife watched. I asked my sister-wife if this bothered her because she was a Christian. She said 'no' but I didn't believe her. Oh yeah, then one of the turtles got stuck to my face."

Friday, July 13, 2007

Brian Vs. God: The Debate Continues...


... and please understand I'm talking about the traditional Christian God, not Allah or any of his prophets or underlings. They're all swell people/deities -- stand-up guys, each and every one -- and not a fit subject for mockery. All praise be to Allah.

ACTS
Acts of Brian usually involve the smoke detector going off at 3 in the morning. Once, he put his head through the drywall while sleepwalking. Pretty tame stuff.
Acts of God, on the other hand, usually end in someone's shit getting seriously fucked up.

Edge: Brian

ACHIEVEMENTS
God created the heavens and the earth, coming in under budget and earlier than his seven-day deadline. A pretty good trick, really.
Brian has created a couple of little remote control cars from a kit and a blasphemous blog.

Edge: God


INSECURITY
God requires your constant and eternal devotion and fear.
As does Brian.

Edge: Draw

JUDGINESS
God has a bunch of rules that he put into a Letterman-style top ten list. He also has bunch of people and lifestyles he strongly dislikes, most of which he didn't even bother to mention in his book.
With Brian ... anything goes. He encourages you to break any of the Big-Ten rules if the situation calls for it. Brian doesn't care about your lifestyle as long as you don't diddle kids. He does encourage you to stay in school and not smoke crack, though.

Verdict: ...depends on your point of view

EXISTENCE
Brian wasn't created from a ancient need to expain the world around us and terrify the masses into behaving themselves.
God ... well ...err... ahem ... yeah.

Edge: Brian

Verdict: Despite the fact that Brian hasn't accomplished nearly as much as God, he nudges out The Supreme Being by destroying much less and by actually existing.

Monday, July 9, 2007

Has Anyone Ever Seen George Bush & Cartman In The Same Room?




They Both Hate Hippies and Poor People

They Both Get Upset If You Don't Respect Their Authority

They Have Both Pretended To Be Robots For About A Week

Their Secret Ninja/Presidential Powers Are Both To Have All The Powers They Want

They Are Both Oblivious To How Much Normal People Hate Them

Their Moms Both Starred in German Schiezen Videos

The Nine Best Songs You Likely Haven't Heard ...

...but maybe you have. I'm kind of an arrogant prick who assumes the public-at-large aren't listening to anything that isn't Fergalicious.
When it comes to art, the concept of the NINE-BEST-ANYTHING!!! is silly. If your nine favourite songs are all contained on Snowbird: Anne Murray's Greatest Hits or The Best of Grand Funk Railroad, well, good for you! (I will admit, with the right combination of qualludes and beer, Grand Funk kinda rock.)
Music is meant to be enjoyed, not dissected. This realization lead me to pack in my rock-critic career. Well, that, and the fact that I was no longer allowed to interview Sony artists after the ... unpleasantness. Oh, and it didn't pay very well. When it did pay, the cheques usually bounced.
Okay, you got me...I'd still be doing it if I weren't an ill-behaved wino who needs some money.
That said, and with all due contempt for my reading public (who must number four or five, by now) I present the Nine Best Songs You May Not Have Heard, Assuming You Live In Canada and Really Like That James Blunt Song They Just Can't Play Enough On The Radio:

Colin Hay - I Just Don't Think I'll Ever Get Over You
The guy who used to be the face of Men At Work. We aging hipsters only hate Men At Work because they were popular and originated in the 1980's. The songs were actually pretty good. This song is very good. I hate emotion -- I think it's a sign of weakness -- but it kinda makes me wanna cry.
You may have heard this song in that mostly-unwatchable movie the guy from Scrubs wrote, starred in, catered and directed. The one that proclaimed 'I'm more than just a sitcom actor with impeccable comic timing - I'm an ARTIST!'.
It was either called The Peter Principle or Garden State.



The Coup - Laugh/Love/Fuck
"I'm here to laugh, love, fuck and drink liquor/and help the revolution come quicker"
The best political hip-hop conglomerate since Public Enemy.


Mojo Nixon & Skid Roper - This Land Is Your Land
It starts out as a straight-forward Woody Guthrie homage and veers into Mojo World, where there are go-kart tracks going through the loop-de-loops in the waterslides and liquor stores open 24 hours a day. How do you get to Mojo World? "Turn right at the light, go past the trailer parks and stand naked, singing in the blazing sunlight of liberty".

Dan Bern - Jerusalem
Imagine Bob Dylan has a sense of humour he let the rest of us in on.

Menthol - Dry Heaves (of the Well Adorned)
Signed to Capitol Records during the mid-90s' frenzy of snapping up bands that didn't sound like Winger, Menthol deserved commercial success more than ... well ... every other band from that period other than Nirvana. It didn't happen. Better luck next time, boys.


The Frames - Pavement Tune
As advertised, a fine driving song. I don't drive, mind you, so take that with a grain of salt. Definitely the best song for driving little remote controlled cars around your living room ... ever.


NOFX - Drugs Are Good
... and if you do them people think that you're cool.

The Drive By Truckers - Shut Up and Get On The Plane
"We've been this close to death before, we were just too drunk to know it. I guess the price of being sober is being scared out of your mind." My Favourite Band, I think.

The Rolling Stones - Satisfaction
Just kidding. Whatever happened to those guys, anyway?

Friday, July 6, 2007

Go Ahead ... Sue Me Goodwill!


I worked at Goodwill for almost eight years. I rose from a spoiled, unionized employee to a manager, caught in the crossfire between upper management fuckwits who don't really understand the meaning of charity and spoiled, unionized employees. I eventually quit but at least I got to, ummm, confiscate, a lot of inappropriate donations while working there. All for the public good, of course.
Oh, Fuck Off. At least I was only ripping off the stuff we couldn't sell. Such as:

A Mace (or is it a Flail?)

While trying it out, I discovered why mace-flaillers in the Middle Ages wore gauntlets -- spiky ball bounceback. Ouch.
I was told it's worth about $300 because of some weird casting process used in making the ouchy part. I wasn't really listening. I was thinking "Cool...I have a flail (or is it a mace?)".


Asian Pornography

Lots of porn really, not just asian. Big tit porn, vanilla porn, erotica, big ass porn, clown fetish porn, pornography in jigsaw puzzle form and auto-felatio porn innocuouslly tiled Postion Impossible (I'm not kidding, it still gives me nightmares).
The Asian porn is the porn I remember most. I was having a cigarette by the donation bin outside when this dirty-old-man ... a caricature of a dirty-old-man really ... handed me a plastic bag, said, "You'll enjoy this." and winked. Three graphic dvds chock-full of Asian female debasement.
As the boss, it was within my rights to keep all three but, at the end of the day, I called my two male co-workers into the office and distributed it evenly. That's what being a leader is all about.


Many Airplane Bottles of Liquor

How desperate do you have to be to get drunk on a plastic bag full of bottles of raspberry vodka and coconut rum?
Not very. Free booze is free booze.
I should warn those so inclined not to drink any touristy bottles of tequilla from Mexico with a sombrero for a cap that are glued to a slab of wood next to a fake cactus. It made me break out in a rash.


Pellet Guns

Also -- Hunting Knives, Slingshots, a Sword and one Crossbow Pistol (which is illegal to own in Ontario so I didn't keep it and can't find any ammunition for, anyway).

Old Prescription Drugs

Codeine, Percocet, Valium, several non-fun drugs and Methadone.
Yes...Methadone.
I didn't take the Methadone.
Marijuana wasn't uncommon (mostly left in purses and pockets) and also many bongs. Plus, something that might be ecstasy, but, I'm afraid to take because it might be estrogen.
I'm afraid to throw it out because it might be ecstasy.
There's never a club kid around when you need one.

Thursday, July 5, 2007

Common words and phrases that have been ruined for me by pornography . . .

This entry would carry more weight being read aloud. If you are at work or are too shy, imagine James Earl Jones or Don Knotts reading the following list:

Tube-Steak
Flag Pole
Mound
Outdoor Water Fun
Gash
Adult
Knob
Rear Entry
Hedgehog
Pearl Necklace
Wet
Amateur
Wang (Both the Computer and Vera)
Hose
Button Hole
Finger
Back Door
Pie (especially Cream)
Sausage
Bush (Bonus Points for Protest Signs Saying "Fuck Bush!")
Glaze
Fudge
Edward Scissor Hands
Busty Blonde Teen Gets Fucked Up The Ass And Loves It


If I've left any off the list -- which I'm sure I have -- feel free to post them.