Good iPod Mojo Gets Dr. Ken Through a Tough Morning

I have been sick lately, and I struggled staying up late last night watching my Chicago Blackhawks lose in overtime somewhere around midnight to get eliminated from the playoffs. So, this morning I was hurting, and without drinking coffee until I get to work, I rely solely on my iPod to get me through the morning commute without falling asleep and crashing. Luckily, today I came across bomb songs to keep my head bobbin'.

(Oh, and remember to hit pause on the music player along the right panel if you decide to play any of the vids on this post)

1. "I'm Bad" by L.L. Cool J.:

This is a very underrated song, and while "Momma Said Knock You Out" does make me want to punch something (in a good way), this one makes me want to beat up a bunch of people and run from the cops. "Forget Oreos eat Cool J. Cookies!" I love dumb ass lines that he can somehow he can make sound cool. How about "I crush you like a jelly bean!" Love it. The whole song is essentially him saying why he's the shit, and then at the end he gets on the police radio to tell the po-po's who are on the lookout for that elusive "tall black skinned brotha' with dimples" that they won't catch him because he's "too bad fo' ya'. Understaaaaaaand!"

2. "Do That Stuff" by Parliament:

Without a doubt the chorus of this jam boasts one of the funkiest horn riffs in the history of the world. "Do that stuff, ah, do that stuff" George demands from us, and it's not terribly important what exactly that "stuff" entails. Who cares? This song bumps! "You wouldn't believe how they partied." Oh, I believe. This song sounds like one funky-ass party with grown men in diapers and a big ass spaceship landing on your face.

3. "Boy Named Sue" by Johnny Cash live from San Quentin

This is probably the best male tear jerker of all time because, while my dad is a great guy, there are a lot of guys out there with dads who are pretty awful but they love them anyway. Shel Silverstein wrote a terrific story with this song, but Johnny really seemed to have lived it when he sang it - and you can hear the inmates' reactions to various sections, as I imagine many of them had similar experiences. Try listening to this one and not want to call your dad, or punch him and have him stand up and cut off part of your ear. Either one.

4. "Roll With the Changes" by REO Speedwagon:

This is the one that was blaring as I pulled into work, and yes, it's corny, but fuck it. This is a pump-you-up song, dorky or not. I am tired of the same old story! I'm ready to roll with some changes! Yes! There's some great soloing in this song. Still, I always think of Billy Madison in his REO Speedwagon shirt going back to high school trying to act cool leaning against his sports car. Yeah. It kind of sounds like that, but it still kicks ass.

How about you guys? Any good iPod mojo lately? Any shit bands that always pop up and you have to skip? I know I downloaded a ton of country for a Redneck Party that I'm always having to sift through.

Nerd Rape?

There is a scene in "Revenge of the Nerds" in which Lewis disguises himself with the bad guy jock's Darth Vadar-like costume to trick his girlfriend into thinking he's the jock as she goes into the carnival room, where she brings him into the moon sections and says, "You want to do it on the moon?" Now, it seems to me that Lewis did this for the sole purpose of tricking the pretty girl of his dreams into having sex with him because she'd never knowingly have sex with a nerd, which might be morally wrong, but . . .

The beauty of this scene is that, after refusing to take his mask off, which should have aroused some suspicion, as well as the fact that he's built like a nerd and not a jock, which also should have tipped her off, he gets her off with some oral so good, that when she sees it's not her boyfriend but in fact the nerd - the very nerd who installed cameras in her house to spy on her naked as well as see her naked live in the process as pictured - she doesn't care and wants to be his girlfriend.

Let me just say right now that Lewis is a hero. He didn't compromise his nerdy persona to get his dream girl, and he must flip that nerd tongue like a dyke to have pulled off such a change in world view in that young lady. After all, it was Lewis who said he was good at sex acts because all jocks do is think about sports while all nerds do is think about sex. I think he has a point here because I didn't get laid until I was around 21-years-old, so now every time I'm doing it, there's still a drastically undersexed teenager inside me going, "Yes! We're doing it!" So, I think I bring more enthusiasm to the table, or bed as it were, than the guy who's gotten laid every day since he was 15.

However, is this rape? What's worse, is it nerd rape? And is that worse than regular rape? You be the judge, seven readers. Let's talk . . .

"Fuck Pilsen!"

So, last night I went to see a band called Maritime at The Empty Bottle, and after many a 312 beer, we went to get burritos at The Burrito House. When we walk in, there are people milling around talking to the staff so I asked if they were ordering. They were not, but somehow a heavyset girl in a full soccer outfit felt a need to tell me that the quite beyond heavyset middle aged man with a beard and a sport coat they were with was a Pulitzer Prize winner. I didn't ask if he was, but, hey, that's great. When I'm a famous writer, I will demand that a chick in sports apparel talks me up to everyone within earshot, especially when I'm dining at 2 in the morning.

At first, when I heard how opinionated and annoying this fellow was, I suggested we sit as far away from him as we could, but the more I overheard, I just had to hear more awfulness! He was spouting off things like "Fuck Pilsen!" Pilsen is a neighborhood in Chicago. We never heard the meat of his arguments because we were laughing too hard and quoting lines from "Billy Madison" because he looked just like Principal Anderson, or The Revolting Blob, if you prefer his professional wrestling name.

The guy a table over from The Revolting Blob was sleeping. When we woke him up, he said, in a British accent "Yes, I need to make a left on Paulina." He was out of it. Probably got mugged later.

Then there were two guys perched at the counter, chatting up customers, and it appears as if they had come to the Burrito House to meet women. It's an interesting thought because women at that hour are perhaps drunk and desperate, but at that point they have chosen their stomachs over their vaginas, so it seems like getting to them a hair too late, no?

The thing about Big Business, is he makes me laugh constantly

when I'm around him. This morning my roommate told me that I woke her up when I got home because I was still laughing, and I continued to laugh intermittently through out the next day. I got a text from him this morning that read, "I wanted to explore that soccer girl. I bet her trench smelled like the floor of The Metro after a Pumpkins show." Trench! Okay, he's gross sometimes, but he's literally the funniest guy I know. So, if you want to honor him in your own way, order a Bizznizz Rocks (Vanilla Stoli and Diet Coke), and if you want to do me a favor, follow me around hanging on my every word and tell randoms about the Pulitzer I deserve for writing a shitty blog.

I went to a lesbian bar last night with my friend Syd and a pair of lesbian friends, and those little ladies really party hard, on a damn Sunday, no less. It was karaoke night, and after racking my brain for who the MC looked like, I started laughing my ass off at the realization that with the horrible stringy 80's hair, she looked just like Greg "The Hammer" Valentine. Then I was bummed because nobody around me remembered "The Hammer," or his figure four leg lock, for that matter.

Not only do the "Lez B. Friends" seem to drink a lot on The Sabbath, but they also make out with each other for long stretches of time, which is okay with me. Even when they're not great looking, they're still a couple of girls kissing, and girls are just better and prettier kissers.

After that, Syd, the two lesbian friends, and myself went to the titty bar. Yes, on a Sunday because we had the day off on Monday. The next post will be about the nudey bar adventures, and plan on coming by to read it because it's going to be epic, like my hey day blogging.

A friend of mine told me that when he was in Thailand, he saw a kickboxing match in which there was one guy wearing bells and two blindfolded men. The goal of the blindfolded boxer was to knock out the guy with the bells based on where they hear the sound coming from, while the goal of the guy with the bells is to try to trick the two guys into knocking out one another. Brilliant! And Insane! Both!

I tried like hell to find it, and while I couldn't find this exactly, I did come across a lot of blindfolded fight like this one where the ref gets his ass beat. There is a real nice knockout at 2:20, and there are some annoying American "commentators."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dY0kCLLYwdY&feature=related

Would you rather be a rodeo clown living in Texas or a ref in blindfolded Muay Thai fights in Thailand? Also, has youtube stopped giving links to embed videos?

Sorry I Haven't Been Posting Much Lately . . .

. . . but I've been "playing curling on the old Wii," if you know what I mean.

The Woes of an AD/HD Author

This is an unfinished short story, inspired by this incident, that I'll probably never finish. I just didn't like where it was going, so I abandoned it. I thought this one, this one, and this one came out good, so I'll just go ahead and give you what I got. Enjoy!

It was New Year's Eve in Chicago again, and Gabriel was alone, again, just as he had been the previous three years. It's not that he didn't date; it's that he didn't like anyone. He had spent the evening with friends of friends rather than actual friends, and he thought he could get his mind to a happier place through dry martinis and pills that an acquaintance named Sophia, who dressed and acted like Stevie Nicks, kept popping out of her purse. It had worked for a number of hours, actually, but now he was at a point where the combination of pills and gin that was probably out of a plastic bottle created the perfect formula to make a man hate everything that moved; or maybe he would have been feeling that way completely naturally.

He decided to just go home to spin records alone, getting drunk off a bottle of Grey Goose that he had in his freezer, knowing that dropping that needle on the record, making that static noise, combined with his other favorite noise, the ice cubes clinking around the tumbler glass of Goose, were sure to make him feel comfortable. Not happy but comfortable. However, this level of comfort would not come easy, as getting a cab at this time of night in Chicago on New Year's Eve is next to impossible, and it was cold and windy as anything that night.

Just when he was ready to go back into the warm bar to knock down Irish car bombs until he didn't have to have conscious thoughts anymore, a cab approached, but just as he ducked in, someone darted in through the opposite door. It was a woman in her twenties with long red hair, big brown eyes, dressed in a stylish overcoat, and she was absolutely beautiful. But none of that mattered because this was his cab; not hers.

She just glared at him so he spoke first. "I hope to God you're going north or this is going to get really complicated," he said.

"I'm going south, as a matter of fact, but it's not at all complicated. This is my cab."

Outraged, Gabriel countered, "How do you figure? The cab pulled up on my side of the street! You can't run across the street and snake it like that. But listen, neither one of us is going to get another cab if one of us gives this one up, so I'll just ride south with you, even if you're a little evil, and then ride back solo. Where you going?"

"Pilsen."

"Oh, for the love of fuck!"

Today's Crap Does Not Compare to Yesterday's Crap

I saw a crap episode of "Grey's Anatomy," which is no surprise, seeing as it's a crap show, and they were all breaking character and singing songs, trying to be all serious; but, it was completely laughable. My roommates were looking at me like I was nuts when I likened it to the ill fated, short-lived 1990 TV Series that Steven Bochco on a coke binge somehow talked ABC executives into airing, "Cop Rock," in which cops sang like they were in a Broadway show. Even as a kid, I knew I was watching something truly awful, and it makes me laugh that people watch "Grey's" (people, mostly women, call it "Grey's" for short) talk about this awful show and actually cry during it, even when it's unknowingly paying an homage to "Cop Rock."

So, here at The Gancer, I have decided to watch a few clips of "Cop Rock" to see just how terrible it really was, and I'll share those clips and my analysis with you, My Beloved Seven Readers.

Okay, here's the clip from "Grey's"

Now, wasn't that a steaming pile of dog crap burning brownly on the sidewalk? Yes, but get a load of this:

I really like when the defendant looks around the room when everyone starts singing about his guilt, but then he chimes in with singing of his own to croon, "I was abused as a child." But wait, it gets shittier . . .

Holy mackerel, that's piss poor!! Or is it genius? This is the end of the 80's when coke was super chic for rich people to do, but then the war on drugs hit them hard, right? No, it's a totally dumb song.

This has been an excruciating journey into bad television that never should have been done, but let's do one more clip, shall we?

Was anyone else likening these dancing homeless people to the dancing zombies in Michael Jackson's "Thriller?" Also, do you think some of those actors are actually homeless now? I sure hope not. I mean, this show wasn't their idea; they just needed the work.

Anyone else remember any craptacular shows that they can't believe existed? You know what? I've never seen Xanadu, and I need something to screen at The Gancer that my friends and I can goof on with witty commentary over it. Would that be a good one to use? Another thought was an episode of "Sex and the City:" "Dudes in the City Watching Sex and the City." Any other ideas? Your input could spark an idea from which literally tens of people could benefit.

I'm writing from my desktop computer because I left my laptop at work, and it's like a damn prison! I'm so used to stretching out in front of the television, carrying the laptop with me into the kitchen, among other place, but there was a time when this is how I wrote - and it was fine that way, and I wrote some good stuff.

Well, here I am trying to write something, and all I can do is think about what's on the television in the next room (Top 50 NFL Players in which I've seen most every player) and what's happening on the biggest culprit of time wasting and stifler of creativity: Facebook. Oh, how I hate you, Facebook. I demand to be funny and heard immediately, having my funniness affirmed within seconds, and you provide that for me, leaving Blogger in the dust, like such the Betamax. But, when I used Blogger more, I was more of a writer. Now what am I? A damn schmo like everyone else, updating people on my stupid life like everyone else, and that's just wrong.

The other things getting in the way of the artistic life is work getting increasingly busier and crappier and working out. By the time all of that is done, I don't feel very motivated to write much more than a flipping Facebook update.

So, I'm making some changes. First off, I can get my workout done in the morning, and then when I'm done with work at 2:45, I can go straight to a coffee shop, do my paperwork for the job, and then write for at least one hour every single day.

The only thing worse than an unmotivated writer is reading an unmotivated writer's ramblings about being unmotivated, so God willing, you will soon be reading something really great. Maybe even important.