"we gonna get in trouble"

andrea and i are on the phone looking up peoples rap sheets. no good is coming of this night. andrea's cracked open the year book. on the plus side, we've found out why nobody's see Rico in a minute. 7 years in the pen will do it. we also found out:

:our favorite teacher was once married
:our art teacher is an alcoholic
:andrea's family is all over the place
:i'm in there for speeding tickets
:andrea's not...and considering her family, that is quite a feat
:andrea's arch nemesis has a 3 page long rap sheet. all but 3 are criminal infractions...vindication.
:my ex-cousin's a ho

holidays

HAPPY

HANAKWAANAEIDMAS

MABARAK!!!


no one gets left behind. that's my word.

now I'm going to expedite my slippage into Hell by watching retarded people fall in Johnny Knoxville's new movie. I told Denise that she gets my blame if God comes a-callin' asking why. The only thing worse is if I went to watch...well, I'm not sure there as anything worse than laughing at the Special Olympics on Christmas.

obsessed much?

Andrea: I'm serious, commercials are literally driving me insane.
Me: Hey Andrea, TURN OFF THE TV!!
Andrea: I can't! At least not while Law and Order's on.
Me: The sad thing is that it's always on
Andrea: Not Criminal Intent. Not the one that I actually watch. It'll be off in 15 min and it won't be on for the rest of the night...at least not until I put the DVD in.

...a few minutes later I found an online demo of the Law and Order:Criminal Intent PC game and played it. it was (in my best duck voice) "AF-WACK!!"

i'm an idiot.

Madness

dad's still here.
S.S. Heermance still adrift somewhere down Schroon River.
work, NYC, and Philly tomorrow.
6am St. Louis flight.
haven't packed.
life's still crazy.
no signs of slowing.

I, like the Eels, need some sleep.

EMF

Andrea was telling me about this cheese commercial that uses EMF's song Unbelievable. i realize that she and i are now of the age where the songs of our junior high days are being butchered for marketing purposes. i mean, we're only 28, but that's not stopping Modern English's I Melt With You from being in a Burger King commercial or The Cutting Crew from being on the "oldies" station, for that matter.

wait, before i go any further, i emphasize that i hate puns...particularly unoriginal ones. especially in entertainment. if you have a creative team, they should be able to come up with with something better than what my crooked brain dribbles out. however, i like really clever ones, but those are few and far between. puns, on the whole, make me angry.

so, she's telling me about this commercial and they have, ever so cleverly, morphed "unbelievable" into "crumbelievable." Jesus Christ. it's wack, but say that shit outloud and it's hilarious. i'm still laughing about it. to know they did this, academically, is one thing. to sing the substituted word in with the original song is hysterical. "you're crumbelievable....OH!" the bad thing is that you have the guys' voice in your head, and the accompanying music going along to this revised and retarded version of a once cool song.

The things, you say
Your purple prose just gives you away
The things, you say
You're... crumbelievable? it just hurts your feelings a little bit.

we figured they must be really hard up for money to sell their shit off like that. Andrea thinks we should start a charity to send them money. i figure they're somewhere in England selling their plasma and semen to make rent.

then again, maybe it wasn't as hard to part with the song as we think. maybe, just maybe, after 15 years of hearing--and being asked to play-- this one, single, goddamn song, they sold it to this company for fucking peanuts, just to be rid of it.

"What the fuck was that/It's crumbelievable"

favorite quotes

my two favorite things i've said to Andrea lately:

1:
Andrea: Man, it's cold in my apartment.
me: That's because it's cold in your heart.

2.
The set-up:Andrea kept singing Toni Braxton's Unbreak My Heart to me...a song i loathe...because my dad wanted it on a cd. so, i hung up on her a few times and she kept calling me back singing. i finally called her and said,

me: You know, you lack to two things: empathy and a soul.

torture

i'm on the phone with Andrea, listening to Journey, and looking up jewelry so i can send the links to my friend who has to sincerely--and financially--repent for his sins.

Andrea and i talk everyday and pretty much know what the other is going to say. not that there are no surprises, but you get on a roll and know how the other person thinks and you create a list in your head of the possible places their side of the conversation will go. the real fun, since our lives and conversations a riddled with non sequiturs, is what random fucked up thing the other will say.

so, we're on the phone and she was making fun of me. now, what she normally says after getting in a good shot is, "i love torturing you." this time, whoever, she had an unannounced non sequitur and said, "i love tortilla chips." so, me expecting one thing and hearing another combined the two. so what i heard was "i love torturing chips." i started laughing and told her about it. she laughed and called me a dork, and i said, "how do you torture a chip? with your teeth? bite down really slowly... cru-cru-cru-crunch."

to which she responded, "you're such a dumbass."

45s and calm

in much cooler news, i'm about to inherit roughly 200 vinyl records from my dad. most of it is classical music if i remember correctly, there's also a couple of albums by Weird Al Yankovich albums and Twisted Sister, but there's also a grip of old 50's and 60's rock 'n' roll 45s. i'm so stoked.

i don't want much for Christmas. well, nothing i'd feel comfortable asking someone to spend the money on. the top three things i want, but won't ask for: 1) a professional digital camera, 2) a 40GB ipod, and 3) a 200GB external hard drive. i'm just not bold enough--or know anyone wealthy enough-- to ask for those things. actually, that's not true. i do know people who'd come through on those presents and that's the problem. since i do have people in my life that take care of me like that, i don't want to put them out. that shit is fucking expensive.

anyway, the top three things i want for Christmas, and will ask for: 1) a set of good cooking knives and bamboo cutting board, 2) a record player, and 3) the various DVDs, like deluxe DVDs of Sin City and Batman Begins, 2nd season of Arrested Development, shit like that.

papa certainly came through with #2. we were talking tonight and i asked him---in his many travels--to keep an eye out for a record player for me. he said that he nevers listens to music in the house and that he'd bring them up our record player and vinyls for me when he comes to visit. how fucking sweet is that? he's in the middle of changing musical mediums and he had the record player to turn his records into tapes. since he has a cd player in his car he has no need for tapes and, consequently, the record player. he's out of the country a good 2/3 of the year and when he is in the states, he works and play tennis all day, comes home, and lays in his room to watch a game or something. so, all of that shit hasn't been touched in ages. this is going to be so cool. he, needlessly, told me to take care of them. i said the magnitude of the heirloom gift is not lost on me. i think i'm most excited about the 45s. i mean, i'm definitely looking forward to lazy afternoons listening to Bach on my livingroom floor, but to hear the crackle and popping of original recordings of classic rock is just so dope.

when we were little, my dad used to put me and Atief to sleep with classical music. there was a record player at the end of the hallway, next to our rooms, and dad would tuck us in, drag a speaker in each room and play Mozart or Rimsky Korsokov or something. at Halloween, he'd move it to the livingroom and play Mussorgsky's Night On Bald mountain through the open windows.

i really wanted a record player because i need to unplug. all of my music is on my computer, so it feels like i never get a break from it. God knows i love the internet, but i don't want all of my entertainment to involve a screen. i've been moving toward simplicity ever since i gave up my cell phone a year and half ago. anyone who knows me knows that i'm good for a disappearing act or three. i once went "incog-negro" for two years. usually it's a few weeks to two months. sometimes i just need to fall off the face of the earth and get my mind right. cell phones really put a damper on that. i've had one since i was 18. so, muthafuckers have been able to find me for 10 years. i really like not having one because that means that whomever i'm with it's just the two of us; not us and anyone who calls. having that exclusive time with people is very soothing to me. i have to get one again in March, but i'm in no hurry.

anyway, so i've been moving toward simplicity and, really, calm. the time that i've spent up here has largely been in seclusion. i do go out, but usually it's out of town to see my friends. i used to be all over the place. i used to be a regular social butterfly, but the last few years i've been searching for a calm. i haven't totally found it, yet, but i'm getting close.

i think this record player is going to be a very good look.

apology

i'd like to formally apologize to people i keep in contact with on a regular basis and newbies. i've been miserably sick this past week and working everyday. i'm juggling a bunch of different things simultaneously and something had to give. this is not one of my normal "incog-negro" moments. i'm just swamped. Pop Dukes is coming in the spot in next week with my Ukrainian mother, Natasha, and we're doing a lot of shit in a very small amount of time. we're going up to our property in upstate NY for a couple of days, then down to NYC to see my brother and then to Philly -sbratum- to the 76ers/Miami Heat game. the next day i have to go back to work. not to mention i have to really get the plans for my trip to Nepal underway.

i could go on, but you get the point. so, fear not, i will be writing people back soon.