I saw in some publication, I forget which, a segment in which celebrities let their ipods play a few songs at random, and they comment upon each one. So, I'm going to steal this idea, because I don't have a worthwhile topic, which is partly due to not having any new life experiences, since I have been holed up in my apartment with some God awful, bubonic plague-style virus that 4 of the 5 roommates have suffered through. The fifth would have contracted it too, but he was out of town. There's nothing like barfing and hearing your roomie downstairs barfing right along with you in stereo. If only we had adjoining toilets in which to yack, and that way we could have held hands. If I didn't see that the first roommate to contract this beast lived through it, I really would have thought I was giving up the ghost.

ANYWAY, I'm ready to hit the skip button on my itunes and see what comes up. There are 5,956 songs, and if it played from A to Z it would take SIXTEEN days. So, anything can pop up, and I promise to report on each one, no matter how embarrasing . . .

1. Holy crap! This is embarrassing. I Just Died in Your Arms Tonight by Cutting Crew. This song came on a Totally 80's compilation that I bought when I worked at a used CD store. I also have the Awesome 80's. There are 40 songs on each, for a total of 80 songs, some of which are essential, must-haves, and many are piss-poor, like this one. Apparently these 'Brits' reached number one in the United States with this little slice of pop-Hell in 1986. They opened for bands like Huey Lewis and the News, The Bangles, and Starship. Yikes. Cutting Crew could only make an evening with any one of those shitty bands that much shittier. I TOLD you I would report on any craptastic song that surfaced during this process. Let's just move on, and forget about Cutting Crew for a moment.

2. Luna - Smashing Pumpkins. This is a cool song, but it kind of works on the album as a good winding down, record finisher, and doesn't stand on its own all that well. I tried to look on songlyrics.com, a great site by the way, but the lyrics are kind of ambiguous, and didn't give me much to go on. You know what I don't like 9 times of ten? Strings in my rock. It works in this song okay, since it's fairly understated, but when it's too high in the mix it just sounds pretentious and self-important. I can deal with some horns, like with Neutral Milk Hotel, but for the most part, keep those strings out of my rock, damnit! You know, after my third listen just now, this is a pretty damn good song. Let's see what track three has in store for us . . .

3. Chains of Love by Erasure! Is it really gay that I LOVE this song and A Little Respect by the same band? Both of them make me so damn happy. You know what's really scary? Songs that are a lot of fun, that make me want to dance, or gance in this case, make me want a cocktail. I've been classically conditioned to associate dancing and drinking. Good thing for me I have this stomach flu, or this song would make me have a few and gance the night away.

4. She's Not There - Toadsuck Symphony. This is a cool bluegrass version of the oldie originally recorded by The Zombies, which I believe was also covered by Santana. My friend and former roommate's mother was born in Toadsuck, Arkansas. I wonder if this band hails from Toadsuck? Toadsuck!?!? What an unfortunate name for a town! Do you think the founders of the city caught a buzz off of sucking on toads? In any event, these guys really jam at the end of this cut! There are a lot of bluegrass versions of songs that gain interest merely because of the campiness and novely factor, but these cats can play and sing really well, and they record some very original interpretations.

5. She Took a Long Cold Look at Me - Syd Barrett. Syd's my boy. I'd tell you all about how much I love his music, and how I'm fascinated by his tragic tale, but I already wrote all about it in a blog I wrote when he passed away earlier this year; You'll just have to go to the July section and scroll down, because the flipping link isn't working. I'm listening to She Took a Long Cold Look At Me on head phones right now, and I really dig how you can hear him turn pages while he plays and sings. I'm getting sad thinking about his insanity, public breakdowns, and the tole that the heartless music industry took on such an innocent genius, so let's move on.

Well, I hope you enjoyed this, and I encourage you blog your own experiences delving into the depths of your music collection, and no cheating! I shared some Cutting Crew, so you have to share something equally shitty should it pop up.

The Course of Events on the Night Before the Night Before Christmas

I woke up yesterday and immediately put on music. I do this most every day, but for some reason on this morning I needed to hear Ain't Nobody by Rufus and Chaka Khan, with a reasonable amount of volume. I think I got carried away, because I woke up one of my roommates, one of my INSANE roommates, and he proceeded to blast his OWN music super loud so that now he and I weren't just awake, but all 5 roomies, and perhaps the tenants below us were now awake. If they didn't wake up from the music, and bad music in my estimation, and not bad meaning good like Chaka, they were surely given a rude awakening by the ensuing ferocious door slamming. He has a hair trigger temper and seems to have a revenge philosophy similar to that of Sean Connery's character in The Untouchables ("They send one of yours' to the hospital, you send one of theirs to the morgue, etc"). If the door slamming and music blasting doesn't convince you that he has the philosophy, then you have to believe me when I say that when I went into the bathroom which we share to shower I saw that the shower was running, left on hot. I had reason to believe that he did this intentionally to run me out of hot water, so I was slamming my fists on the tile walls of the shower in a fit of rage, which is totally out of character for me. Dead-on in character for him, but not me.

So, after my cold shower that left me feeling like pneumonia's wet dream, I was off to take pictures of Santa!! I was ecstatic to see that I had a GREAT crew when I got there. I've worked on and off with photography company employees "C" and "W" for over a year, and both know what they are doing, are a lot of fun, and I consider them friends. W brings a lot of energy to his job, like me, he may be a roommate real soon (see last paragraph) and both of us were amazing and jingling the sleigh bells to get the babies looking at the camera, and then snapping the picture with expert timing. All in all it was a pretty fun gig, and I think we did really well. It's a stupid, weekend job, but as I've said in previous posts, I take pride in my work and like when everything goes to plan, and the customers are satisfied.

That evening I went out for a few cocktails with two of my buds. Together we made up 3 of the 4 Horsemen. The fourth had to close the restaurant he manages. I know it sounds nerdy, but we have always called ourselves the 4 Horsemen, because we hit it off so much when we go out, and it has a nice ring to it. It seems that it's tough to get all of us together, and even tougher to get all of us together AND single. Currently, the guy that didn't make it is engaged, one guy is headed that way, one of them is really excited about a girl he's been talking to, and one of them is me. Our favorite bar, The Liar's Club, had a small crowd on the day before Christmas Eve, since many Chicagoans had already packed up and went home to their families. This enabled us to get the table that is elevated five feet in the air, which we found to be a lot of fun, if you can endure the heightened smokiness. With our bird's eye view, oldness, and wise-cracking ability, we likened ourselves to Waldorf and Statler from The Muppet Show.

Our one friend was having a lot of doubt about the idea of marriage. He loves his girl, but he has had A LOT of marriages around him crumble. Through the course of our conversation, it became evident that all 3 of us want kids, but are unsure about wives. Anyway, we decided we will start a Four Horsemen Commune, where the 4 of us will live and help each other raise our children, which we will adopt, etc. It would almost be like a TV's Full House situation, only with one additional uncle, and less vomit-inducing corniness.

Okay, I'm off to see my non-commune family for Christmas. Hope you all have a super holiday!

Sincerely,

The Gancer

These Dreams Go On When I Close My Eyes (A Flipping, 80's, Heart Reference???!!!!)

Don't you hate when someone tells you about a dream he/she had? It's never as interesting to the listener as it is to the dreamer, right? They're always like, "I was at work, but it WASN'T work." Yeah . . . That's fucking creepy! Let me free up my schedule so you can regail with all the boring-ass dreams you've had all WEEK! It's not like they're recommending a movie, and you can go out and rent this dream and see it for yourself. More accurately, it just sucks up a little time of your life you've now had to devote to listening to some meat head talk about crap going on in his subconscious mind, which is stuff HE/SHE needs to figure out, not you.

So . . . I had this dream the other night in which I was working on a campaign for a Black Republican running for a political position of some kind. Let me tell you right now that I HATE most everything Republicans stand for, and I don't think I'll lose any of my seven readers by saying that, and if I do, so be it. Actually, don't go Republican reader! I can get past the fact that you like Republicans, so long as you like what's important: ME.

Anyway, I find myself saying to this politician hopeful, who looks EXACTLY like Lovie Smith, current head coach of the Chicago Bears, "You barely won last election, but this time you're going to win by a LAND SLIDE!" All the while in the dream I'm thinking, 'What in the blazes am I doing here? I don't support anything these people stand for,' yet at no point in the dream did I get up and leave.

IMPLICATIONS: I tend to coast and flounder through life bitching about things, but rarely take an active role in changing matters, especially when it comes to making changes in my OWN life.

Now that I've sufficiently wasted your time, I feel I should make a recommendation, so that you've gotten something for your time.

LISTEN TO: The Misfits - I've been loving Danzig era Misfits stuff so much lately that I wore a Misfits shirt to a Christmas party, just because I got in the mail and was excited to wear it.
WATCH: Best Week Ever on VH1 - It catches you up to speed on all the shows, movies, celebrity gossip, and funny internet stuff for the week.
DRINK: 7 and 7 - I'm having a resurgence in this cocktail.
EAT: Pequod's Pizza in Chicago - They recently classed it up a little with some remodeling, which lost them some favor in my book, but they do still serve up one helluva slice of 'za.

Please read this link and come back for the related half-assed analysis:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16157113/


Evidently Asian Indian men as a whole aren't as well hung as their counterparts in varying other parts of the globe. What cracked me up about the article is the high incidences of AIDS in the country being partly due to these Indian fellas being ashamed of buying the snug-fitters, and the proposed solution? Vending machines. Man, sometimes I think you're better off hittin' it raw (did I just say that?) than using one of those jimmies. I didn't mean that, seven readers. Don't hit it raw (Good Lord! I've said it again).

So, these guys KNOW that AIDS is spreading across their fine nation like I Can't Believe It's Not Butter spreads across a puff pastry, but when faced with the choice of AIDS or the embarrassment of buying a snug-fitter, they're like, "Eh, she looks clean."

Come on, Indian Men! Too much is at stake to be this shy about your manhood. Besides, it's not the size of the boat; it's the motion of the ocean. Secondly, it doesn't take a big hose to put out a fire. Furthermore, it's not the size of the ax; it's how you SWING it!

* Doesn't the guy in this picture look pleased as punch buying his body bag???
** A big, "Proper!" in honor of Cherry Ride to the first of my seven readers to know from what song I got the term body bag . . .

Death Cab for Kenny

I had one of those awful nights on Saturday night in which I had too many places to be, so I ended up spending more money on cabs than I did on drinks. As I was cold and standing outside of my third location, looking for a cab home, I was excited to see an available cabbie finally approaching. I walked towards it, but a group consisting of two girls and a guy tried to run in front of me, somehow claiming that it was their cab. The Gancer did not see it that way . . .

The two girls darted into the cab, one in front and one in back, and and I tried to do the same, but the dude grabbed me by the waist. I kept my legs moving and was able to skirt him and dive into the cab, saying, "I guess we're splitting this thing, cause I'm not going anywhere."

They were going to a location WAY out of the way for me, and I'm sure I could have gotten out at a busy intersection and got my own cab, but these people rubbed me the wrong way, so I wanted to give them some shit back. The dude called me a yuppie, to which I responded, "Look at your sweater! Plus you probably make double what I make." Then the girl in the back seat pulled up my shirt and gave me titty twisters! Then the guy in the back got into an argument with the girl in the front, and guy in the back storms out of the cab before reaching the destination!

I need to be more careful with who I piss off. I could have came out of that situation with more severe injuries than sore nips.