Funniest... cartoon... ever

http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail109.html

 

One-legged puppy? Ouch. Still funny, nonetheless.

 

 

 

This is New York City

(As written in Friday's New York Times)

THE CITY LIFE

Alfresco

By VERLYN KLINKENBORG

Published: July 30, 2004

Summer in the city usually means a chance to do outdoors many of the things we normally do indoors. And somehow taking the indoors outdoors exposes the rules we live by. It turns civilization into a kind of play-acting, as if we were children once again, trying out the rituals of adults and holding a tea party underwater at the public pool.

Consider the sidewalk cafe. New Yorkers generally respect the invisible wall that separates pedestrians from sidewalk diners. We rarely snatch a French fry as we walk past or pocket the tip or lean over to see how the food looks. We're careful curators of our own boundaries, no matter how insubstantial they seem. I was walking along Broadway one evening recently - on the Upper West Side - and I caught a look from a woman seated at a sidewalk table. I can only explain the extra amperage in her eye by noting that she was glancing from a private space, where she sat, into a public one. I believe that she was merely guarding her kill.

On hot summer nights - rare enough in this cool, wet midsummer - the stoops are full, and neighborhoods swell with the murmur of people going about their business in the open air. Sounds fall from the buildings overhead like wilted geranium petals from a window box. Friends hesitate on street corners, reluctant to cross in either direction. No one gets anywhere fast because the place you end up, inevitably, is inside.

On nights like that it's as if we all found ourselves seated at Shakespeare in the Park. The play's the same, and yet the absence of theater walls and the worldliness of the plein-air staging change everything. Real sky overhead, real grass underfoot, a darkness nearly visible with the artificial twilight of the city's glow - these things make the metaphors onstage seem incandescent, truer than true.

And yet everyone in the audience swoons back and forth, caught up in the play one minute and then suddenly dislodged by the night itself, knowing that the real play is all around us, in the cast of New Yorkers on the immense stage of this city. After the applause, the crowd dissolves into the park and walks out from under the night-shade of the trees and into the streetlights again. Headed home, you eventually become aware, as always, of that curious moment when your membership in the audience lapses and your own private personality resumes.

VERLYN KLINKENBORG

myPod rocks

Look. The way cool Altec Lansing speakers I bought with myPod are no bigger than said hard drive container. I covet music. This baby booms.

(No one would have centered and staged this pic better than Jeffery Hicken. This is a writer concept shot at best.)

There is a woman who's proximity is near, she is unwittingly nurturing a crush with eye contact and a gorgeous smile.

That is all for now.

 

myPod

The eerie light of a new toy deep in the dark of night. iRock myPod. Cassette thin, hefty as a good rock, this machine redefines all that we can posess and all that we can appropriate. This machine has memory. This machine is a wonder.

The Boston faithful.

To be truthful, these are the kind of people who I am friends with. These who, in spite of the bleakness, posess an enthusiasm without bounds. And once they are rewarded with the grail they pursue, there will be a quiet beyond all silence you have known. And a yelp beyond all barn animals you have heard. And a mass of NorthEastern bartenders who will not dare call last call until Sports Center gives way to an infomercial. And a grace begotten upon the human race that will make all seem all right again.

Let's Dance

I got one. iRock.

Actually, I ordered one. It will take three (3) business days. That means one week in English.

iPK

 

 

I'm all about getting ready to buy one. I want the 500 CD's I have to serve an ultimate function.

Can thet invent an iBook for my 1,000 books?

 

 

Lefty/Bubba

Pals like this don't come along every day. Especially ones who find solace in the not-so-soothing western view. 20 lbs. of feline takes up alot of space in this place. He earns his keep by eating crickets and purring me to sleep.

Invert JellySun

Another simplistic notion.

Of earth.

Wow. Looks kind of cool all opposite and all.

Star boy. I can tell time by the shadow of the stars. Or the moon. Or the High or low hanging sun. Yes it is 16"47"4:47. Yes it is <st1:time Hour="18" Minute="33">6:33. This was a talent before the influence of clocks upon us. But I would grade it to the fine second on a good day. It is "11" Minute="32">11:32</st1:time> right now. But that means nothing this day and age.

 

I can tell you what time it is on the second by the angle of shadows.

Jelly Sun

Another simplistic notion.

Of earth.

I work with pastels and suns turn into animals turn into eyeballs turn into fish. I wanted to paint a sunset. I end up with a bad frame from the Discovery Channel.

I don't know about y'all, but I see the face of Jesus in the fuzzy halo above my team's logo.

Either that, or it's Ted Williams' frozen beard. Or a Wade Boggs chicken wing.

Tool

I'm old school. I know how to work one of these things. But I know enough to know better.

I kinda pine for the day of the snap alphabet commitment of strike to paper via ribbon. Damn. I'm only 37. I think I may have straddled an era.

 

What I Crave

I seem to be in a craving mood lately.

     ...I long for my grail

     ...I yearn for an iPod

     ...I pine for sweet luvin'

     ...I hunger for a specific hamburger.

That being said, my friend Ed and I went to White Castle for lunch today. Six cheeseburgers and 12 onion rings later (Lord knows how many of each on his side), I have only begun to scrape the surface of satiation.

 

 

Holy Grail, Redux

 

I want one. Now.

Holy Grail

The Story of the Fisher King

It begins with the king as a boy, having to spend the night alone in the forest to prove his courage so he can become king.

Now while he is spending the night alone he's visited by a sacred vision. Out of the fire appears the holy grail, symbol of God's divine grace. And a voice said to the boy,

"You shall be keeper of the grail so that it may heal the hearts of men."

But the boy was blinded by greater visions of a life filled with power and glory and beauty.

And in this state of radical amazement he felt for a brief moment not like a boy, but invincible, like God,

... so he reached into the fire to take the grail,
... and the grail vanished,
... leaving him with his hand in the fire to be terribly wounded.

Now as this boy grew older, his wound grew deeper.

Until one day, life for him lost its reason.

... He had no faith in any man, not even himself.
... He couldn't love or feel loved.
... He was sick with experience.

He began to die.

One day a fool wandered into the castle and found the king alone. And being a fool, he was simple minded, he didn't see a king. He only saw a man alone and in pain. And he asked the king,

"What ails you friend?"

The king replied,

"I'm thirsty. I need some water to cool my throat".

So the fool took a cup from beside his bed, filled it with water and handed it to the king.

As the king began to drink, he realized his wound was healed. He looked in his hands and there was the holy grail, that which he sought all of his life. And he turned to the fool and said with amazement,

"How can you find that which my brightest and bravest could not?"

And the fool replied,

"I don't know. I only knew that you were thirsty."

Nothin' but fog ahead

"Challenges are what make life interesting; overcoming them is what makes life meaningful."

  - Joshua J. Marine

Zombie

I'm sorry. I forgot about the difficulty you endured. I just found your poem on my hard drive. But 5 days confined in a hospital being spoon fed drugs is not a picnic, either. There is something disproportionate going on that may never be resolved.

A call to arms for AOL experts

Why does AOL make it so difficult to insert a pic into the "About me" section? What's all this http crap? It ain't 1994, dorks. Make your code friendly. Great marketing, great people, crappy software. I'm one of the millions about ready to defect for friendlier catering.

Make it like this: 2 words, Click and drag.

These are Days

My reputation apparantly preceeds me.

Therapy is fun

I've come to realize something. If Dr. K yawns during one of our appointments, it's only because I'm not telling him anything juicy. He totally gets into it when I bring up something vivid, racy and/or sexual. The dude craves controversy. He responds to the moment much the way I do. He interrupted our last appointment because his wife stopped by to see if he wanted a lick of her ice cream cone. Talk about your epiphanies...By the way, the picture above is obviously a vagina with breasts.

What spurs thought?

Wearing razor spurs when writing, forever fraying the edges of my saddled brain.

"Owl" Meat You Later (assignment #15)

 

The Hooters Roast Beef Sandwich

 

This assignment is about the most disgusting food /drink you’ve ever had in your mouth. This story is all about that, and more. I’m taking this drama from mouth to stomach and back again, without losing the sinuous thread of intrigue. Literally.

 

Back in the mid-90’s, there was a rash of Hooter’s openings in NJ. Fate would have one set up shop in Eatontown (aptly named in spite of this exercise, I know), the town where I worked. My friend Nick and I, hungry for the, ahem, Hooter’s experience, decided to check it out on our lunch break.

 

After a small line, we were greeted and seated and prepped to be treated. Our well teated waitress presented our menus with the flourish of a certain curtain opening. In unspoken words, Nick and I made eye contact acknowledging why they call the place Hooters. Only it was in an uh-oh kind of way, rather than a high-five kind of way.

 

Nick went chicken. I went beef. As in roast. Beef. Bar-B-Q. Sandwich. Yum. With fries. What better combination of the food pyramid essentials could there be? Meat, bread, sodium and deep fried potatoes. Salt of the earth food, filling and nourishing. Food arrived soon.

 

At first bite I hit a string of fat that unfurled with the recklessness of an unanchored kite string, but only bouncing downward. Instantaneously it obeyed the laws of gravity yet defied with vengeance the laws of digestion.

 

One end of the bite was in my stomach, but still connected to teeth. The other end was connected to my teeth yet on the hot sled to my stomach. Mind and body in total disarray.

 

The hunk of fat hung like a pariah on a tooth, yearning for his brother beef held hostage in a guttural stream. Cellular brothers, connected in an organic sense by mammalian tissue, yet separated by the twisted pipes and the mighty unsightly peristaltic fight of digestion.

 

I felt like I had pecked on the forbidden fruit of some eternal shoelace. I was a mix of shame and overwhelming physical discomfort. It was like I was sutured from the clavicle to the belly button and being pulled forward by an invisible force.

 

Gag is not the word. Swallowing one’s own revulsion comes close.

 

I couldn’t decide whether a plant was growing or dying within me. I might be tempted to compare it to post nasal drip, yet not in the least post and decidedly not nasal. And way more towards the front of the throat. Kind of like the heart to brain connection, except mouth to stomach. Totally emetic.

 

I instinctively stabbed at the stuck piece of sandwich stuck in my teeth with my keys. One chew suffering the indignity of an improvised toothpick, the other dropping down to the hungry sizzle of my stomach. It was ungodly awful. But yet, I was still hungry.

 

Let me ‘splain.

 

After the initial repulsion, after the ensuing gag, after the totally revolting sensation, after the analysis and evaluation, I took another bite. Of the same sandwich. Then a fry or five. Then another bite. Then, a chuckle after a Nick comment about the hairy chef’s boobs vs. those of our waitress, yet another bite.

 

Next thing I know, I’m in the clean plate club. With a shoelace of cow hung up on a tooth and rappelling into my body. Paid the check and left.

 

Not sure exactly when the string sprang loose and descended. It was sometime later that afternoon. Barely felt it. But afterwards there was a renewed lilt in my step. A response, a reevaluation, regeneration. A return. A response. A religion.

 

That glory lasted but mere moments. One cannot dispel the idea—let alone the sensation—of a Siamese piece of roast beef connected, yet somehow separate, in singular spaces within one’s body. It was truly disgusting.

 

(By the way, what’s with the Hooter’s logo? Are we supposed to believe those are a pair of owl eyes? Why don’t they cut the pretext and just have the damn signs in front of their restaurants lactate? They could use the same technology that made smoke come out of the Marlboro man’s mouth on those old billboards. But I’m getting a little off track…)

 

OK. I’ll stop now. Thanks for your time.

 

Never dis a catcher

Here comes the deuce, Pudge. When you speak of me, speak well.

OK, background story...the way the American League teed off on Clemens had me laughing out loud remembering a scene from the movie, Bull Durham. The scene goes something like this: catcher puts down sign, pitcher shakes him off, catcher gets mad, tells hitter exactly what the next pitch is going to be. Hitter puts the next pitch into orbit. Pitcher is perplexed. 

Now, let's consider the history of the National League's starting battery and pretend for a moment that Clemens is LaLoosh and Piazza is Crash....

Crash Davis: Anything traveling that far ought to have a stewardess on it, don't you think?

Ebby Calvin LaLoosh: God, that sucker teed off on that like he knew I was gonna throw a fastball!

Crash Davis: He did know.

Ebby Calvin LaLoosh: How?

Crash Davis: I told him.

Seems a bit funnier in my head than it does here. If you don't already own it (I have it on DVD and VHS), rent it. If for no other reason than just to get my stupid reference. 
 

 

Rocket

Ahhhh, the glory days...a far cry from the first inning of today's All-Star game.

I almost named this journal Boston21 in his memory. I can tell my grandkids I saw him pitch three times in person-- all in the uniform of what will most surely be their favorite team, my beloved Red Sox.

For now, however, all I have to offer is this intriguing link:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5433699

 

 

Alaska

Web

Just passed link 5150. Isn't that LAPD code for crazy? I have Van Halen to thank for that bit of trivia. Stumbled across this link today that made me laugh. Doesn't take much to get snagged in the web...

http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/editorial/outlook/2660471

 

Yes, I know this requires a back story as well (for those of you who haven't been there from day 1). Not today, OK? Read The Trial in the mean time, as well as the above link. I'll get to the barebone backbone soon enough again.

Let us pause for a moment to celebrate baseball.

I'm into this home run derby thing. Is there any greater spectacle of skills competition in all of sports? Not since Friday's frisbee golf game have I seen such majesty.

Smooch

Kinda miss this.

Write your best caption.

After you eat a moose, I bet that hurts a little.

Monkey Cat DNA

This is ala Lefty, before I leave the house.

A haiku for today

Haikus suck to write

I hate writing them a lot

Blah, blah blah, four, five

Picnic

Post isolation

Brevity is a lost art

Friends, sun, kick butt day

1979

I love this pic. It could have been taken in 1979, but it was snapped with my cell on 7-3-04. Right in front of my fave book store. My family used to have a car like this. We drove to Wildwood once for a vacation. Then, suddenly, it was gone. My dad traded it in for another Plymouth Duster.

Cafe Girl

I missed seeing the fireworks with Nancy tonight. I fell asleep. There are few people on the planet with whom I'd like to watch explosions in the sky. She's one of them.

 

 

Jersey Shore

Mr. Springsteen's song

4th of July Asbury Park (Sandy)

(7 miles from my house)

If I urged y'all to sprint out to hear the X song, I fervently urge y'all to find the means possible to hear this song with your lover some hot summer night. The pacing is perfect.

 

Sandy the fireworks are hailin' over Little Eden tonight
Forcin' a light into all those stoned-out faces left stranded on this Fourth of July
Down in town the circuit's full with switchblade lovers so fast so shiny so sharp
And the wizards play down on Pinball Way on the boardwalk way past dark
And the boys from the casino dance with their shirts open like Latin lovers along the shore
Chasin' all them silly New York girls

Sandy the aurora is risin' behind us
The pier lights our carnival life forever
Love me tonight for I may never see you again
Hey Sandy girl

Bliss

 

One of my top 10 fave songs of all time. I urge you to seek this song by any means possible.

Band: X

Disc: See How We Are

Outlook from the day it was recorded: Prophetic.

Mood: Desparingly delghtful.

 

She gives me her cheek
when I want her lips
but I don't have the strength to go
On the lost side of town
in a dark apartment
we gave up trying so long ago

On the stairs I smoke a
cigarette alone
Mexican kids are shootin'
fireworks below
Hey baby, it's the Fourth of July
Hey baby, it's the Fourth of July

What ever happened I
apologize
so dry your tears and baby
walk outside, it's the Fourth of July

A destination if there ever was one

Nothing better than having the best pub in the tri-state area within three blocks of the house. I don’t grace the premises as much as I once did, but it’s still a damn good place to enjoy a pint and to dispel the myth of bangers and mash.

Mr. Blue Sky

Went on an adventure in Red Bank today. The weather is so beautiful here - reminds me of Santa Monica for some reason. Perhaps because I'm mad at myself for not going to the beach. Took this pic at the corner of Broad and White St. I was immobile, agape at the color of the sky today. An astonishing shade of blue. I was just looking at it, transfixed like a mental patient, so I decided to look productful and took some pics with my cell. Then a gaggle of teenie babes told me my sneakers were "phat" (profile pic #9 as of today). So I moved on.

Historically, a good month for me

July’s Hazy Motives

 

So, on one white hot day

shelled by enduring haze

I elicit one last coherent breath

A sweet peace breeze duels my lungs

as I fall deep into simmering apathy

On the quiet night of a white hot day

cool tension flies with the wind

Hazy convincing glances offer clues of  a place to seek

And we secretly dash through another day

 

Notes from a fervid Red Sox fan

NOTE TO ALL: If you're at a Yankee/Red Sox game, and if something tragic happens to the Red Sox, there is no longer a need to call me from Yankee Stadium, unless your name is Nancy. This rule applies especially if I'm in the stadium and slumped over a railing in utter despair. Thank you, Nance, for the "We will rock you" chant. I consider myself officially rocked.

NOTE TO ALL: After any and all tragic Yankee/Red Sox series, there is no longer a need to call me about any games thus following said Yankee/Red Sox series when and if the Red Sox choke in extra innings. (Re: Friday night)

NOTE TO ALL: If you don't know who people like Chris Chambliss and Mickey Rivers are, and if you’re over the age of 30, you are not a Yankee fan. A google search at this point is futile. Your conscious has already convicted you.

NOTE TO ALL: I am addicted to the smack of a line drive into leather. I am captivated by the whip of the pitch, the whack if the bat, the adrenalin-fueled preamble of shuffling spikes, the spinning white streak of baseball and the inevitable confluence of human body and speeding projectile. I surrender to the vast green grass expanse. I surrender to the dirt-orange accents that stain my knees for days and to the tracks trodden by men in motion. I crave the silence between the crack of the bat and the consequent fixation of landing spinning sphere into pocket. I am enslaved to this specific one second process of violence. I live for the hard palm sting and the rotator cuff bull’s eye fire to first base.

 

 

Inside the third baseman’s mind at every pitch: (3rd Baseman’s Prayer)

 

Beat the hitter at his game.

Pitch him inside and low.

He’ll bite and uppercut.

I will hoover that line shot.

I will sacrifice my body to stop the bullet.

I will guide my glove to the spinning laser white line and beam the ball to whomever is playing first base.

Thank God I’m wearing a cup.

 

...and again...

 

What the...How...No. Jeezus. You gotta be kidding me.

Just when you think the dagger's too deep.....

 

I must have some serious good karma coming my way. I have to. Nothing else can explain this.