Blog

  • The Girlfriend Weekend

    The Girlfriend Weekend

    I ended a recent blog with “It may be time to cut the bullshit and get a girlfriend. Being single is getting old.” This past month I decided to take the plunge and become an unofficial member of the couple’s world–for a day or two.

    I met Kenzie–engaged at the time–three years ago at a bar in Hollywood. After sporadic episodes Facebooking and texting, we finally started dating last month. I was stoked on her. She had a feisty energy, and though blonde and ditzy, she wasn’t one of those mindless bimbos with a mind the size of an almond, whose sole aspiration in life was being as sexy as Halle Berry by age forty. Kenzie worked hard, communicated well, and had long-term goals. She’d made over 70K last summer from sales alone.

    We’d fooled around some, but after two dates I still hadn’t pressure-washed the quiver bone in the squish mitten, which meant I was still interested. Some friends had planned a fifteen-person ski trip to Park City, Utah, for New Year’s Eve. Since Kenzie’s family was from Salt Lake City, she was there for the holidays and down to party with us for her final two nights in Utah. Her family was Mormon, but since Kenzie had boozed it up with me on both dates and done some serious pre-marital kissing, she was obviously a bad Mormon, and normal.

    I had tingles as our van pulled up to her mom’s pad on the outskirts of Salt Lake City. Kenzie was attractive, fun, down to party, and I’ll be honest–I was looking forward to having a couple girlfriendy nights with her. She was wearing a black and white top with black leggings to outline her toned body. She introduced me to her mom as we stood in the doorway to say her goodbyes. To strategically evade any unnecessary small talk, after shaking hands with mom, I quickly asked to help Kenzie with her bags, which were already outside. A breakdown of Kenzie’s “things.”:

    -Journey’s bag containing one pair of leather boots

    -Giant Macy’s bag containing what appeared to be laundry

    -Giant white canvas bag with more clothes

    -Snowboard boots (unpacked)

    -Snowboard

    Apparently Kenzie had never heard of a suitcase. Not to mention she’d brought enough clothes to last her a month. As it was, I tossed all her crap in the backseat as everyone in the van gloated at me in hilarity.

    Kenzie had revealed to me on our second date that she had A.D.H.D. and didn’t like taking Adderall despite the protests of her mom. Having worked as a camp counselor in my high school and college years, I’d always had my doubts about “A.D.D.” and “A.D.H.D.” and any medicine that went with it. The diagnosed campers required pills everyday at the same time, yet their volatile behavior never changed in the hours following pill poppage. Since then, I’ve been convinced that all those “conditions” were the parents’ fault for spoiling their kids and treating them like puppies. A.D.D. was simply created by doctors so the parents wouldn’t feel like failures. If my kids ever whine about not buying them that toy at the supermarket, I’m sending them to their room to make them think for an hour.

    Since Kenzie had contributed an acceptable 60% to our conversations, I figured she was fine, with maybe a mild chatting disorder. The forty-minute van ride, however, was a different story. Other than a five-minute texting period, Kenzie blabbered on like the Facebook founder on speed, while the rest of the van sat quietly, occasionally nodding and saying, “Yeah.” She’s just excited, I thought–way too early to freak out.

    Situated on a bluff overlooking a lake, the three-story cabin was epic. We got greedy on the first-come-first serve room situation and ended up settling for the TV room with its rickety foldout couch after all the good rooms were snagged.

    After a few games of flip-cup and a failed rager in the spa (the house manager threatened to kick us out for disturbing the peace), Kenzie and I returned to our room and fucked. Since I’d built up a monstrous amount of horniness from rubbing up on her ass all night, I only lasted about five minutes. Her butt was so bootylicious that I made her do the work while fucking her doggie. Overall however, Kenzie was average in bed. She blew me, but I could tell she was one of those girls who hated giving head, but only did it because it was expected. Girls wonder all the time about what men want in bed. It’s quite simple really: WORSHIP OUR PENISES. Or at least act like it. Tell us things like “I want your cock in my mouth…NOW” or “I love your schlong. OH YES!” or “Mmmm Yummy!” And this isn’t a fetish; it’s Male Sexuality 101. I’ll take the dick-worshipping 6 over the starfish 8 any day.

    Sadly, after sex I thought back on the happenings on the last few hours and realized I was already growing sick of Kenzie. Over the course of dinner, flip-cup, and jacuzzi time, her conversation hogging had risen to an unprecedented 90%. I had simply hallucinated myself into tolerating it because I wanted to get laid. Often I just phased her out and answered each blathering pause with a robotic “Uh huh.” In addition, Kenzie was super clingy, insisting on holding hands and spooning at every damn opportunity. While I’m a fan of hand-holding, there’s a time, place, and mood for it. If I’m taking a dump, I do not want to be holding anyone’s hand (long story).

    She wanted me to spoon her to sleep, but it’s impossible for me to ever fall asleep spoon-sleeping; I need my freedom. I tactically evaded her demands by insisting that I could only sleep facing the other direction, which was partly true. By the way, I was joking about the dump thing, but I bet she would have been down for a blumpkin. As it was, I eventually drifted off to sleep, untouched.

    I awoke in the middle of the night because I had to pee. Before I was able to realize I was completely awake, I felt it. My right ass check and most of my leg was resting in cold wetness. The bed was soaked. I didn’t want to turn on the lights because Kenzie might have woken up and started talking. So I went to the bathroom, placed my palm on my damp ass, and sniffed my hand. It was urine.

    Had it not been our first time fucking, I would have ditched the bed and crashed on the couch. But I had to spend the entire next day with Kenzie–and night–and I didn’t want to make her feel insecure, which would have surely amplified her jabbering another six percent. Plus, I’ve slept in worse human waste than urine, so this was nothing for me. I found a dry spot on the bed and passed out.

    Kenzie didn’t wake up with a whimper like most chicks. She awoke in a flurry, tossing sheets boisterously aside. Then her sense of touch must have registered as she began to shriek. “What the fuck! Why is everything soaking?”

    As I lay on my sliver of dryness, I looked at her. “You tell me.”

    She got up and lowered her head to sniff our raft of a bed. “I can’t smell anything. Is it pee?”

    “Yep.”

    She laughed nervously. “Well it’s not mine! I’ve never wet the bed.”

    “Uh. I’m pretty sure it’s yours. You slept in it.”

    “Oh my God! I never do that! I promise.” She hesitated a moment, then scurried over to her pile of shit and threw on some clothes. As she retreated past me to make her way to the bathroom, she said again, “I swear this has never happened before.”

    We didn’t talk about the incident the rest of the morning. After a quick breakfast, our whole crew got dressed and took the van to the ski resort. Kenzie held my hand for the entire hour-long journey, but I think her bed-wetting had shut her up some; her yappage simmered.

    As expected, all my friends ditched us before we even got on the first ski lift. It took us nearly an hour to get on the mountain because I had to take a mammoth-sized shit, and during that time Kenzie had run into an old high school buddy working the resort quickie mart. I was polite at first and lingered around the two acting entertained by their Ohmigod-saturated conversation, but after about three minutes, I ended my act and retreated to a nearby bench to play Angry Birds on my phone.

    At this point, Kenzie had lost any mystique she’d ever had. She was more clingy than an eighth grader at the movies, couldn’t shut up, had wet the bed, and was already trying to make plans with me for her trip to Big Bear at the end of February. I’d already started the mental countdown until my freedom–twenty more hours. Boarding with her was fun, except for when we took the lifts up because I had to sit next to her and do more listening. I’d provide examples of her mindless chatter, but I wasn’t paying attention half the time, so it all blends together into one giant blob of “I know, right.”

    We left the mountain around four and returned to the cabin. I demanded alone time in the room, so I could nap in peace. Though before doing so, I swindled a twenty-minute back massage out of Kenzie. At first I though it was her thing considering how touchy-feely she was, but ten minutes in she deflated my tranquility by saying, “My turn next.” Crap. Back in Elementary School, every year for Valentine’s Day I was one of those kids who got angry when an envelope wasn’t bulging with heart candies, even though I never gave my classmates anything. Same goes for massages–I’m a huge moocher.

    After my massage was over, I wanted nothing but to sleep in peace, so I promised to return the favor “later” (which she predictably forgot about). Kenzie left the room to shower and throw the yellowed sheets in the washer. I slept.

    An hour later, everyone decided to bombard our room to utilize the movie theatre. Some of the other girls were curious as to why we were already washing the sheets after one measly night, but Kenzie laughed it off and made up some fib about them smelling.

    I was starving at this point, and I whined to Kenzie about my hunger. If she was willing to give me a massage, surely she’d make me food. I was right. There was next to nothing left in the pantry after our carnage from the previous night, but Kenzie was still able to whip me up a quesadilla.

    Movie night was a major bust. Us eight men couldn’t even get the system to work, so we tried to watch it in the main living room, but the DVD froze after twenty minutes. To make matters worse, Kenzie had serious gas, unleashing three or four bombs. After each one she’d whiff the air away with her arm and say, “Woo!” At least she owned up to it. One of my peeves is when chicks clearly were the peef culprits but try and pin it on the guys. At least Kenzie had proper fart etiquette.

    As I trudged through the stink, I realized the eight Utah beers I’d consumed hadn’t given me even the slightest buzz (Beer in Utah is a pathetic 3.2% because it supposedly helps suppress drunken orgies.). It was approaching midnight, and I was trying to desperately work up some horniness so I could bone again. But I was doomed. After the DVD/farting debacle, we retreated to the room and got ready for bed. When we lay down Kenzie tried to spoon me, and because I’m such a nice guy, I permitted it for a couple minutes. Then I used my sleep-the-other-way lifeline and passed out.

    We dropped off Kenzie the next morning on the way to another ski resort. As I sat next to her on that final ride, I was seriously baffled at how in the hell this girl still had any attraction for me. I hadn’t cracked a single joke; I was boring, emitting no energy whatsoever; and I’d acted more needy than Ochocinco at a press conference. Come to think of it, in the last twenty hours I’d barely even said a full sentence to her. I was almost trying to repel Kenzie. Yet there she sat, still holding my hand, busting out her cell phone calendar to discuss future ski trips.

    Her uncle lived nearby, so we dropped her off at a 7-11. Her uncle was running late, but Kenzie was cool with us taking off anyway. We left her at the 7-11 curb with her five bags piled up in a titanic heap. I noticed all my friends laughing at us in our picturesque farewell. I gave her a kiss goodbye, made fake plans for kicking it next week, and I drove off.

    The rest of the trip was a blast. I took the ski lifts in freedom, partied with my friends, and embraced my last few days of winter break. Maybe Kenzie was a freakish outlier or something, but I’ve decided to retract any statement I made about “needing a girlfriend.”

    I really think I’m cursed or something. There’s no other way to explain how every time I get even the slightest aspiration to date a girl, she mutates into a blabbering bed-wetter. Or a psycho cokehead who chases me through streets. Or a needy texter with a fishy past. Or a Vegas girl who puts on fifty pounds in eight months. And on. And on.

    Yet the scary part is that in all this mess, there’s always been one common denominator: me. Clearly I’m doing something wrong. Bars, clubs, online dating. I’ve put in hours upon hours into this, and though fun and educational, nothing ever pans out. It might be time to head to the Mojave for a meditation course. Anything to rattle my funk. Back to the drawing board.

  • To Those Who Will Wonder Why I Murdered That Puppy

    To Those Who Will Wonder Why I Murdered That Puppy

    Stokowski – A Night On Bald Mountain

    Mrs. Miller gave my penmanship a "Needs Improvement" on my 1st grade report card. She also classified me as "easily distracted."
  • Blackjack Cougar

    There are nights when I expect to get laid. There are nights when I hope to get laid. And there are nights when I’d rather lose all my money to a gaudy casino than think about women. On this night, boners were for jackpots and free Coronas.

    I drove to Vegas for the weekend to attend a Saturday morning writer’s workshop and hang out with Baba and McBride. McBride already had plans for Friday night, so Baba and I hit the strip alone. Since Baba had two cousins staying at the Bellagio for the night, we met them there around midnight. Both of them had grown up in Jordan, so the FOB factor was blatant. One of the cousins wore extra short orange Euro shorts, a small, tight shirt, and had a giant black camera dangling around his neck, yet he still did not think it odd or wrong to approach women in his get-up. Despite having John Stockton-like leg hair as well as poofy, uncombed hair that made it look like he’d just gotten out of a pool–which may have been true–he was all smiles, so we let him be. Since it was Baba’s cousins’ first time in Vegas (obviously), they decided on the agenda. Gambling was the choice. First it was craps, then roulette, and blackjack. Before long, we had been at the tables for over three hours. Gambling has a funny way of eliminating the concept of time.

    A little after two, the blackjack table was becoming stagnant. The dealer was depressed; the bozo next to me hit on a 15 when the dealer was showing 16; and there was a grumpy fellow three seats over who looked like Newman from Seinfeld.  I needed a change.

    A couple tables down, I heard a group of women making up words and cheering uproariously. Curious, I examined the commotion. Jackpot. Four milfs had an entire table to themselves, and, as if destiny was calling, there was one open seat. I grabbed my chips and quickly walked over to their table, smiling mischievously at them as I sat down in first position.

    The table:

    Dealer: A smiley, quiet Asian guy.

    First seat: Me, Captain Rimjob.

    Second seat: A freckly forty-something blonde wearing a sky blue sundress that seemed two sizes too big. At least four more beers until she was up for consideration.

    Third seat: A hot, busty, blonde forty-year-old birthday girl with a white top, nipples protruding through the material. Primary target.

    Fourth seat: A cute brunette with ugly, short acrylic nails and facial features that disclosed that she hadn’t done much smiling in her lifetime. Two more beers until consideration.

    Fifth seat: A mediocre brunette with plain features, a flat, pancakey chest, and untoned arms that led to my immediate assumption that she had dumpy written all over her. She was the only one focused on her chip count. Sex appeal: N/A.

     I was bombarded with questions immediately. I found out they were all in the medical field. Two were gynecologists; one was a nurse; and the hot one was a surgeon. When they discovered I was a teacher, they all complained to the dealer, “Teachers don’t make enough money; give this guy a blackjack.” It helped, and I began winning.

    The busty one in Seat Three was stealing looks at me. I could sense it. When we made eye contact, I smiled. When we’d win, we’d all high five each other. Beneath the high ceilings of the Bellagio Casino, my expectations for the night took a sinister turn for the dark side. Sex was suddenly on the table.

    The two gynecologists became concerned about me when I started getting up every twenty minutes to pee. “You may want to get your prostate checked out. Peeing that often could mean you have an enlarged prostate,” one said. They all watched me get up.

                “Don’t worry. I’m only twenty-eight. I pee because I never puke,” I said. Without another word, I walked to the bathroom, leaving them to wonder about the correlation between peeing and vomiting. I wish I were there to hear the probable discussion they had about my prostate/pee frequency/vomit factor/hotness/mysteriousness. If anyone is looking to become a millionaire, I recommend inventing a miniature-recording device that can be easily stuck underneath tables to record after-you-leave conversations. I would invent it myself, but I wouldn’t know where to find the Guy Who Approves of All New Inventions.

    Update: I heard Skymall already invented my idea. Never mind.

    Baba and his two cousins came over, but after two mediocre hookers snatched his cousins away, it was just Baba and me. The cousins would eventually wind up throwing the hookers out of their room for charging $1,000 for sex.

    Good wingmen are plentiful, but great wingmen are rare. Two come to mind. The first is Pico. During spring break in Havasu, Pico walked around with me telling girls that I had a nine-inch cock (a lie), which resulted in me making out with over forty girls in a three-day period. The second is Baba. Girls see Baba’s soft features and sincere smile, and they are willing to tell him anything. So when Tera, the busty blonde in Seat Three, took a pee break, I sensed an opportunity.

              “Uh, dude, tell Tera that you’re going to take me away. See what she says,” I told Baba. It was a test to see how she’d react. Baba walked toward the bathroom to intercept Tera on the way out.

    A few minutes later, I saw the two of them walking together, smiling in the wake of their apparent conversation. Baba walked up to me. “‘You are not taking Dave away from me.’ That’s what she said.” Perfect. Now all I had to do was wait this out.

    Half an hour later, Tera’s friends abruptly got up and retreated to their room. I looked at Tera. “You’re staying, right?” I asked. Seized by my rapist wit, she sat down next to me.

              “Yeah, I’ll play a little more,” she said.

    The following fifteen minutes was filled with mindless chatter and a shitty string of twenties for the dealer. I watched my winnings hopelessly dwindle away. I got up, stuffed the remaining chips in my pocket, and waited to observe Tera’s post-blackjack body language. The signs were good–all smiles, and she stayed at my side, keeping the slightest bodily contact. When our faces were close we briefly kissed, but no tongue. “Not in public. I’m kind of old-fashioned,” she said.

              I smiled. “That’s cool. Let’s walk.”
              We walked toward the lobby. I felt bad for Baba, who had been ready to go and had stayed up an extra hour just to see if things would play out for me. It was now 5:30 a.m. I had to act.

              Baba lingered around the fringe waiting for us to figure things out. So I acted. “We need to party. Can we party in your room?” I asked Tera.

              “No. My roommates are there.” She smiled.

              “Hmm. Well, we need to get a room then.”

              “We do?”

              “Yes. We need to get some beer, too.”

              “Okay.” She was still smiling.

    I motioned to Baba. “Alright dude, we’re going to party h–“

              “–Alright, cool…have a fun night. I’ll see you tomorrow, dude,” Baba interrupted, not wanting to spoil my chances with any unnecessary awkwardness. Baba gave me quick directions to the morning workshop and left. I was in Tera’s hands now, and she knew this. 

    For whatever reason, there was an inexplicable fifteen-person line at the check-in. Sensing it as a threat to her patience, I slyly led her to the front, cutting in the process. Champions find a way to win. Two guys, whom I had already judged as the non-confrontational type, noticed but didn’t say anything. Tera and I walked up to the desk.

             “We only have smoking available,” said the desk lady.

              Tera frowned. “How much is that?”

             “$150.”

              Tera hesitated. I took out my wallet, prepared to split the cost. Tera had other ideas. “Is there anything else available just for tonight?” Tera asked.

             “That’s it, unless you want to get a suite. That would be $450.”

             “Whoa,” I said. There was no way I was splitting that. 
              Tera ignored me. “That’s fine.” She handed the lady her credit card.

             “Four hundred and fifty dollars? Are you sure? Let’s just get the smoking room,” I said, feeling a pang of guilt.

             “No. I hate smoke. And besides, it’s my birthday. This is my gift to myself.” 

    The lady handed her back her card. “Check out is at noon.” The room was booked for a whopping six hours. Tera had just paid $450 to fuck me in a room that had a rate of $1.25 per minute. If I couldn’t deliver, I’d go down as the biggest rip-off of her life. The fourteen Coronas I’d had maybe weren’t such a good idea.

    The “suite” was a major disappointment. The room had maybe twenty more square feet than a standard room. There was a half living room and a large bathroom. Other than that, I didn’t see how this room cost $300 more than a regular room. Nevertheless, we got down to business immediately.

    Mid-make-out she stopped me and said, “Okay, you have no idea. I’ve never done this before.”

              “You’ve never been with a guy?”

              She laughed. “No, I’ve never had a one-night stand.” She brought her hand up to her forehead, smiling.

              “That’s hard to believe, but okay,” I said, kissing her neck, not believing her. “Why am I so special?”

              “I don’t know. I feel comfortable around you. Well, that and you’re fucking hot.”

    We laughed. Then we got naked. Her blowjob skills were well-refined, not a single tooth. And after another twenty minutes of foreplay, we fucked. Unfortunately, the mandatory $450-suite foreplay action, combined with my fourteen Coronas, had withered my hard-on down to 75%. To top things off, she was abominable at sex. She lay there like a starfish, eliminating any opportunity at developing a rhythm. After five minutes of cadaver sex, she said, “I don’t know. This feels so impersonal.”

              “Okay.” Sick of trying so hard for so little, I got off her and lay down.

              “Whoa. I didn’t expect you to give up so easy.”

              I forced a smile. I was drunk and tired. But I was still horny. “Let’s take a shower,” I said, insistent on milking whatever we could out of this ritzy occasion.

    She blew me in the shower. After the shower, she blew me on the bed, finishing things in her mouth. I could sense her disappointment. After lying down for a few minutes, she whined about how she regretted taking a shower because her hair was “all curly” now. I said, “Oh,” and then I rolled over and passed out.

    My alarm went off three hours later. I awoke to find her wide-awake, naked, lying next to me. She was still attractive. Upon seeing me rustle awake, she said, “I didn’t sleep at all last night.”

              “Really? That sucks.” I got up to go pee. “How come?”

              She waited until I got back. “I don’t know. I just…never do this.”

              “It was fun, right?”

              “Yeah.” She brought her hand up to her forehead again. She wasn’t smiling this time. 
               

    I took a $12 cab to the workshop, just making it in time. I was, by far, the biggest dirtbag in the building. I was unshaven; my hair was unkempt; and my shirt was all wrinkly from accidentally sleeping on top of it. I found the hottest girl in the workshop and sat one seat over from her, but after a five-minute break, she was mysteriously sitting on the other side of the room.

    I dozed off frequently, my mind often drifting back to poor Tera. After our pathetic attempt at $450 fortieth-birthday sex, I highly doubted she’d be having any one-night stands for a while. I felt like the #1 draft pick who got paid millions of dollars, only to be a catastrophic bust, disappointing an entire city of hopeful fans. But that’s the good thing about one-night stands; they’re only for one night. I don’t have to hear her whine the next day for making the experience “impersonal.” I don’t have to hear her gripe about not going down on her enough. I don’t have to absorb glares from her judgmental friends. And most of all, no one ever finds out if I disappoint in bed. Well, except all of you.

  • Steelers Sunday: Searching for Meaning in a Sea of Urine

    It was the end of most people’s evening.  3AM in the ShoreTide Café, a 24 hour diner for lost and weary bar patrons.  The Steelers game had come and gone.  But there was still an electricity in the air.  Things were happening.  Some master truth was being held just millimeters from my tongue.  I could feel the pattern moving us, all of us, to its perverted rhythm.

    What was tying it all together?

    Whatever it was, it had to do with urine.

    Eager to eat a chicken-fried steak and eggs, I walked by the bathrooms on my way to our booth.  A small female who resembled a cute puppy leaned in, grabbed my arm, stopped me.  Her eyes were wide… her lip considered trembling… and she told me, in a hushed voice, to be on the lookout for “a sea of urine.”

    I offered my condolences and moved on.  There were things to do, notes to record, chicken fried steaks to eat.  But that small girl turned out to be a Shakespearean prophet.

    And the tragedy belonged to all of us.

    Just 14 hours earlier, we were prime candidates for citizenship.  Shirts tucked in, metaphorically.  Freshly bathed.  Sober, kinda.

    It was the first day of what would eventually be called the January Heat Wave of 2011.  It was 80 degrees Fahrenheit by 11am.  Not a cloud in the sky.  I spent the sunny morning walking Jimothy (a dog) through Belmont Shore.  I spotted three women in bikinis.  I watched the waves crest.  I felt uncharacteristically content.   This is why we fight.

    Jimothy’s walk was uneventful except for a skirmish which was the result of a brief run-in with a surly Pomeranian.  The small dog caught him off-guard at first, but once Jimothy had his footing, a simple growl was all it took to send the impish puppy running.  I took it as an omen.  The Steelers were going to win the AFC semi-final that afternoon.

    My claim of Steelers fandom has usually been countered by fevered chants of bandwagon, but as an Orange County resident who grew up in the 90s, I was allowed to pick whatever team I wanted.  Chargers were an awful pick then and they are a painful pick now.  Raiders and Rams were traitors.  I wanted a team that represented my personality.  So in 1999 (pre-dating both Super Bowl wins by 7 years) I picked the Kordell Stewart and Jerome Bettis-led Steelers.  I have witnesses.

    This game against Baltimore was huge — either a win or a loss would affect my mood, severely.

    I am a strange man.  I’ve never denied that, on the record.  I have my quirks.  I see poetry and omens in the most banal places.  And this lets boring things take on massive importance.  There’s a very large magnifying glass in my brain — and it does not have an off switch.

    So this was more than a game for me.  If my team beat the rivals in a game this big… it could mean I’ve done something right.  It could mean I’m winning too.  But if we lost…

    I realize all this would, absolutely, result in a classification of INSANE (probably with one of those giant rubber stamps they push into red ink before they slam it on your paperwork) if I were to ever explain it to a medical professional.  But I think it’s healthy.  It makes my days more interesting.  I put it on par with the man whose only quirk is that he turns the deadbolt three times before he leaves.  Everything’s fine unless (until) he chops his wife up with an axe for stopping him after the second deadbolt turn.  Sure, both our ticks have horrendous psychological implications for the future, but that’s later.  After the game, at least.

    Sports fandom is mysterious, I do not claim to understand it.  I simply know that I am under its spell.  It fits my talent for loving things which have no direct connection to me.

    So I set out with Doc, Jeeps, and PJ to “cover” the event for Our Thursday — the scoreline and top plays would be well recorded by our competitors, but the real story would go unnoticed by the mainstream media:

    What strange forces cause us to stare at a box while drinking 6 dollar beers in the middle of a perfectly good day?  What is all this nonsense?  What’s it about?

    Unfortunately, moments after the ball was kicked off, everything began to unravel.

    Typical.

    It all started very innocently.  A bet was made in order to keep the non-sportsfans interested.  Four players, four picks.  Everyone held a card:  Baltimore TD, Baltimore FG, Pittsburgh TD, Pittsburgh FG.  Whoever’s card scored got immunity and the power to name the next round’s drink.  The remaining three losers played evens and odds to determine the Ultimate Loser.  The Ultimate Loser bought the round.  Rinse, Repeat.

    It was a very wholesome thing to do.  Very grown-up.  And in a game most pundits thought would be low scoring, we might as well have cracked out Trivial Pursuit: Pop Culture Edition.  But then…

    May we have some chips and guacamole?  Oh there’s a Bloody Mary bar, isn’t that quaint.  We should get some while we wait for this game to pick up…Hey look it’s 6$ for a pint of beer, but only 8$ for a pitcher — one of each for everyone just to be safe.  We’d like some tequila, the cheapest you have… okay but do you have anything cheaper than Albertson’s brand? Man these limes are good we should get more tequila so we can get more limes!

    And all that was well and good, but every time another one of our degenerate good-for-nothing friends came, they would buy us a round out of charity, and somewhere in between the 2nd Fuzzy Navel and the 3rd order of guacamole, everything disintegrated.

    Here are the notes in my phone:

    We know the motives, quirks, and histories of our favorite fictional characters better than most of our friends.  Should we do something about this?  Special Agent Dale Cooper would never stand for such a thing.

    Women who wear ROETHLISBERGER jerseys these days send an entirely different message than they did three years ago.

    The bar has push faucets?!  What are they gonna offer us next, VHS tapes?  Motion sensors or nothing!

    Obliviated — Obliterated mixed with Oblivious.  Is this catchy?

    This bar has too much hoity-toity in it.  Someone else needs to barf on the floor like PJ did.

    Remember Janet and the Nacho station!

    As you can see, horrendously inadequate.

    Opaque.

    The degradation was clear.

    I looked up at the TV.  Nothing.  I closed one eye.  Steelers win.  An incredible come from behind victory!

    Well that’s good news.

    I looked down at my phone.  Still nothing but gibberish.

    Inexplicably, I had lost.

    How could this be?

    A new plan was put forth to “ride the wave”.  This involved watching the second game while cooking tri-tip, bathing (again), drinking, meeting the Laker cheerleaders at some terrible bar, and more drinking.  I went along in the name of solidarity, and with the quickly-flickering hope that I could uncover something at the last minute and get my metaphorical term paper in on time.

    Nothing yielded anything.

    Sigh.

    So there we were at the ShoreTide.  PJ had stumbled home hours ago.  Jeeps was snoring softly, her face mooshed against the plastic covered booth.  Doc was catatonic, but his eyes were open a real soldier.  And I was disheartened, chicken fried steak in front of me, those ominous words echoing in my ears a sea of urine, and I needed the damn story — otherwise what had been the point of it all?

    It was time to muster whatever observational strength I had left.  It was time to squeegee my 3rd eye and find the heart of the matter.  I investigated my surroundings.  My fingers blitzkrieg’d my phone’s wordpad.  I recorded every detail… for insight.

    A five year old Chinese boy plays with a YoYo with a furious intensity… what does he know?

    In the far booth, a legal-midget lady is tickling her tattooed beau, fingers dashing over his potbelly with no remorse… teardrops are falling and the entire booth is convulsing — tiny jelly containers and maple syrup pitchers are rattling up and down in the tickle-quake… the victim attempts to escape, but there is nowhere to go, all exits blocked by plexiglass, wheat toast, and midget fingers… his yelps for help are drowned out by pain-ridden giggles… and she screams at him with furious anger, “IT’S GONE TOO FAR, YOU MUST BE STOPPED, THIS IS THE END, YOU WON’T SEE TOMORROW YOU FAT BASTARD, IT’S REALLY COME TO THIS, BLAME NO ONE BUT YOURSELF!”

    And one booth over, the zombie drunks are eating plates of hashbrowns with their bare hands, some even eschewing that and actually burying their face in the plate, natural desire overcoming any patience for silverware.

    The waitress walks by, and we nickname her Dead.

    Dead, bring us a glass of water.

    Dead, I asked for jelly, not jam.

    Dead, I like your tattoos.

    She’s handling it remarkably well — which is to say she doesn’t react at all.  There’s nothing inside.  Not even a spark.  She notices nothing.

    She’s basically the owner of a porno-flick-cinema, unfazed by the substances she’s been forced to mop for years, natural tolerance developed to the point of sensory deprivation.

    Who can blame her?

    A mob of people are waiting outside, getting restless.  They bang on the door, even attempt to bum-rush the tiny Phillipino hostess who is forced to swat them with menus until they are corralled back behind the “white line”…

    Our table is dangerously close to the entrance, and I arm myself with a butterknife, jabbing it in the air wildly any time a native makes a move towards my seat.

    But we are outnumbered.

    Dead, bring us more butterknives.

    The chicken fried steak glances up at me, but it might be too late.  The Phillipino hostess has given up, retreated to the kitchen and started flashing the light switch up and down in morse code.  Dead hands us the check and asks if we have any cigarettes.

    I glance to Doc, hoping he has something to offer, but his face was a strange portrait, bordering Claymation:

    Country gravy dribbling down his chin, hashbrowns delicately stuck in his beard like burrs on cotton socks, eyes glassy and supported by bags of tired skin, a slackjaw with the tiniest amount of drool, there seemed to be an answer there… and then he spoke:

    “I’m peeing right now.”

    The urine-prophet scampers past our table and out the door.

    And we follow as quick as we can.  Confronted with himself, Doc has gone hysterical, the stain on his pants melting his confidence and mind altogether.  I’m shoving him through the packed and hungry crowd outside, sheltering him from abuse like a teen leaving a controversial abortion clinic, brandishing the butterknife whenever someone gets too close.

    Leave him alone!  This man just urinated all over himself!  Let us through you savages!

    We make our way to the residential area, where we have to move quickly… we’ll be even more poorly received there.  But Doc stops in his tracks.  He leans against a Ford Explorer, 2008.  And then he unbuttons his fly and releases what’s been waiting, impatiently, since the diner.  He begins to urinate again.  Erratically.  His balance all wobbly from beer, gravy, and chicken steak.  I inform him that he’s peeing on a quality American automobile — and that it’s already a dying industry.  He grumbles something about wanting to “desecrate it”.  But I can see where it’s all headed, nothing either of us can do to stop it, a sad tragedy paralleling the twin towers… the horror, the horror … His knees are bending, losing integrity.  He places both hands on the Explorer and starts waving his pelvis in a desperate attempt to place no more urine on his jeans… but this does not work, it makes things worse, and the hose has no controller now.  His knees buckle, he collapses, a sea of urine slowly creeping towards the gutter…  He sobs, and laughs, and sobs some more, and when a group of drunks from the diner walk by, they jump on the opportunity to judge another instead of themselves:

    Hey bro, why’d you pee yourself?

    And Doc looked up, squinted one eye, and yelled at the top of his lungs:

    It was a diversion!

    And there it was.

    I saw it.

    We were all diverting.  From what?  From the ShoreTide, from the tattoos, from our midget girlfriends, from the hashbrown troughs, from the hangover, from the madness, from the school, from the loss, from the floods of waste, from our jobs, from our Pomeranians, from the sunrise, from all of it.  We were trying to run ahead of ourselves and do our dirty deeds before the Present Version of ourselves caught up and judged us for our stains.

    And we hoped to do all of this while desecrating a small piece of our father’s America [via the Ford Explorer].

    It was beautiful.  Human.  Truthful.  Tragic.  I typed this down in my phone and confirmed my psychosis, apologized for doubting it earlier… oh man I thought we’d lost it completely there… an incredible come from behind victory.

    I helped Doc walk back to the apartment with a strong posture and a sober aura.  My discovery had implications of introspective-irony, but I didn’t dwell on them.  Later.  This was the pattern I was looking for.  I could taste it on my tongue… it was Gold urine and Black asphalt.

    Go Steelers.

  • Electronic Music Festivals: Medusa Was A Raver

    Disclaimer

    The flash-bang-explosion of Electronic Music Festivals in America, from their seedy underworld start to their mainstream juggernaut status, is an expansive tale of futility, excess, love, and death.  I started taking detailed notes back in mid 2007.  The events of the last three and a half years have filled numerous moleskin notebooks and Word documents.  It cannot be summed up succinctly.  But here I have stitched together some of the more naked moments to help define MY experience with the era.  Names and events at times have been altered out of respect for the dead.  The morals have not been changed in any way.  If that troubles you, read the body of this post as fiction.

    The Good – Generational Unity

    Our decades have always been well expressed by their soundtracks.  And once it became clear that electronic music wasn’t going anywhere but toward the mainstream, those in the know saw it as a mirror for our not-as-yet-defined generation.   If the electronic music genre was the new model of our generation, then its festivals were the trade shows – and everyone came out to play.

    The electronic music festival circuit is different than those of rock or rap or grunge or funk for the simple fact that it’s firmly rooted in the drug scene – all drugs, not just one – and that sort of dedication to total perversion hasn’t been seen since the 60s.  Fringe elements formed it, and defined it.  And with a strong drug anchor, there is something tying it all together no matter the growth/change the genre itself experiences.  The architects of contemporary festivals took whatever instructional guide the Hippies left us… and rolled it up and smoked it.

    We’re filming a re-make of the 60s, but it’s an amphetamine’d Xerox of a blurry-eyed Xerox.  The tenants of our parents are vaguely present: empathy, self-expression, counter-culture, love, and drugs.  But even though there is no logic or reason to it, and no political cause whatsoever, the defining doctrine of each festival is clear:  we are all in this together.

    So each electro rave, festival, and carnival is a big family reunion, backrubs and all.

    You get to meet that distant third cousin twice removed… and she’s a 36 year old woman with a potbelly wearing a Tinkerbell outfit, smacking gum in her mouth, sweat bleeding awful makeup, a disgusting mole on her left cheek you want a lightshow honey?

    Now that’s entertainment.  There’s a sort of amusement I get from feeling emotionally connected to someone like that you bet your sweet ass I want a light show, and also, afterward, I want to hug you and tell you how beautiful your aura is –  do you like peppermint?

    When raves became big-ticket events in the US, entry level participants ranging in age from 18 to 24 [this number would expand in both directions over the years], flocked through the security checkpoints and were greeted with open arms and fists full of love pills which provided any empathy that was not already forthcoming.

    One look around at the crowd of alarmingly-wide eyes was all it took to see that this was Good, and worth sharing.  As the crowd danced to modem-sounds and computer-bleeps, minds were made up long before we determined how far the rabbit hole went.

    The Bad – The Rabbit Hole

    On Halloween 2007, my friend Chef and I went to a rave in Los Angeles with a group of friends.  What once belonged to Europe had now made it across the pond, where capitalism’s finest were waiting to turn up the volume and jack up the prices.  Over 50,000 people had amassed to worship speakers and give each other backrubs.  Beautiful women danced with us, and asked for no money in return.  Smiles were brought back in a retro-fashion.  Liberty: everywhere.  And drifting along with the current… LSD, mushrooms, marijuana, ecstasy, alcohol, cocaine, DMT, and a whole host of chemical cutting agents were floating around the crowd like a beach ball at a Dave Matthews concert.

    Chef and I stepped aside, took our thinking minds and tried to hit pause.  Were we dancing with girls, or were we dancing with drug-robots?  Does the drug make the scene or does the scene make the drug?  Who, exactly, was driving this vehicle? This sort of too-good-to-be-true love needs checkpoints, and no one else seemed concerned.

    And then we saw a giant bunny, who most likely had good intentions — he had a giant E painted on his chest — but also had a devilish laugh.  And the bunny saw us.  The E-bunny moved towards us.

    “I don’t want to hurt you!” the E-bunny yelled.

    We ran away.  The E-bunny found us.

    “Everything is okay!  Trust what you feel!” the E-bunny yelled.

    We ran away again.  Our hearts beat faster than the bass.

    “I just want to love you!” the E-bunny yelled.

    It was a strange parody of the Bugs Bunny cartoons.  Or perhaps he was Peppy LaPeu, and we were the feline of his desire.  Either way it was Loony Tunes.  His only crime was love.  But this love was not taking no for an answer.  That’s Not Okay.  I can still hear Chef’s weeping yelps echoing up to the ceiling and back down to the cooling carpet yard we were laying on: The irony!  The irony!

    The Weird — The Knife

    A massive outdoor festival, Electric Zoo, took place in New York at the end of summer 2010.  By this time, organizers had given up hope of controlling the madness.  Fittingly, the event took place less than a half mile from a mental institution.  No age limit was enacted.  Security was non existent.  As I arrived with my group, it struck me that perhaps this was the plan all along — lure us in with promises of “A Good Time” and then let us wipe ourselves out with our own indiscretion, and hopefully have us do this close enough to a mental institution where the open arms would be covered in white coats and the fists would hold sedatives instead of party drugs.

    It was one of those festivals that starts in the day — when all behavior appears terrifying — and continues into the night, which feels safe.

    I had been taking notes, but finding little good news.  The crowds were getting younger, the drug use was getting more reckless, and the essential core of the movement — whatever it was — was getting lost in banality and cliché.  The average overheard comment, which has always been my favorite note to take, had drifted from epiphany to brain-fried-meme: “We’re all energy, bro!”

    Even the shirts in the crowd were making fun of their wearers.  Tank Tops everywhere said, in bold neon colors, WAKE THE FUCK UP.

    And despite all my research and notes up until that point, there I was, right in the thick of it, no better or worse than my fellow Zoo-creatures.

    We never take our own advice.

    The sun went down, along with a few beers to ease the pain, and I took my friend John to go see Flying Lotus, a relative of the great Coltrane jazz family.  The man is one of the few geniuses left on the circuit, his mathematically-rhythmic mind is capable of ripping apart and deftly reconstructing melodies in a manner that invokes some combination of humor and arrogance – if he’d been born a few centuries earlier, he’d have learned the piano or cello.  In his tent (depressingly sponsored by Red Bull), the music was refreshing and the comments were decent, if not gimmicky:

    “This song is filthier than a dumpster coathanger abortion!”

    “I feel like my whole body is covered in clitorises, and I’m sliding down a tunnel of wet tongues!”

    Eloquence — our generation has gobs of it.

    And drowning in a sea of flesh, I felt swallowed up, for a moment, by the exact feeling that started this whole mess.  There was no separation between anything, anymore.  Vibrations sync’d in full — our minds were emptied, then filled with one-thought unification.  I was an atom in a smoke cloud, strobe light illuminating our spiral dance.  Overtop of the younger patrons heads, I could see the other tents in the distance, tiny explosions of colored light and a bouncing blanket of skin spilling from each one.  John was gone, but I was sure he was a part of the atom somewhere.  It encompassed many.

    I saw a girl collapse as she had a miraculous, bass-infused orgasm.  The crowd cheered.  And then everything parted in front of me, revealing two gorgeous and young girls with clothes that barely hung off of them.

    The two girls curled their fingers at me — I stood still.  They moved right up to me sweat and glitter and the hint of fruit smell.  “Now,” they said.  They kissed each other three dimensional television on demand.  “Now,” they said again.  Their warm hands pulled on me, clawed at me, but I kept thinking so young, so young.  In their eyes, nothing but black.  I asked their age, and they moved their mouths as if to laugh but no sound came out.  The lights were on, and someone was home – but that someone was on a whole lot of drugs and couldn’t navigate the doorknob.

    The girls swayed not in time to the music, but to a cacophony of drugs.  I didn’t so much give in as I did nothing.  And then something occurred.

    Here are the notes in my phone, recorded soon afterward on top of a grassy hill:

    “Liquid partner switching.  Reckless start and stop.  Dance or pass out?  Lips and hands and one body with three extensions.  Girl One asks if I am God.  I do not know.  Girl Two takes my RayBans, eats them.  Chemicals have stripped the girls to their barest animal selves.  I feel myself slip away.  Possibility that this is a dream.  Phrase repeating:  ‘Why not?  Why not?’  These two girls are one.  ‘Now.’  Suddenly, I’m there.  The Shes want all of me, whole.  EVIL.”

    And here is what happened right before I ran to that grassy hill to shiveringly record the experience:

    A man came up behind the girls with a neon shirt wake the fuck up and a visor.  He appeared to be the girls’ friend/owner/escort.  He nodded his head at me.

    “They’re 15,” he said.

    I snapped back to reality.  He laughed and grinned wide.  I stumbled backwards, against a wall of flesh that did not let me pass.  The word statutory swam by, only to replaced by drugs and suddenly I didn’t know what to be afraid of.  The man solved this problem for me, kind of, when he pulled out an eight inch silver blade, which looked as if it were intended to fillet fish, and then asked me:

    “Wanna have some fun?”

    I do not know what that question meant.  I do know that for a split second, my mind said Sure I mean let’s see where this is going, but then the knife glimmered in the strobe light and the logic center of my brain rebooted.  So I ran.  I escaped the atom smoke cloud.  I trampled at least three people in the process hey man take it easy bro it’s all good.  When I arrived on the hill, my shirt torn to shreds, my belt and sunglasses gone, John nowhere in sight, each tent crackling as a different molecule… there was only one thought in my mind:

    Where are those girls gonna be in 20 years?

    The Ugly (Truth)

    I had sworn off all raves and electronic festivals after that, but I was lured back to the scene on New Years Eve, 2010, in San Francisco.  The City of Love promised an interesting look at the equation.  The area fostered the original Hippies, and now it was hosting their children’s impersonation.  I’d hoped it would remove the sour taste the 15 year-olds’ chapstick left in my mouth.

    The promoters of this festival were the same as those who put on Burning Man, so authenticity was the name of the game.  Everything was much more relaxed.  Good space.  Responsible people.  Older crowd.  Sophisticated DJs — mostly.  It felt like the way things used to be, or how they could be.

    And it was so schematically predictable, it could almost be called boring.

    But then sometime right before the midnight countdown, a young man scaled the walls and climbed up into the rafters, some 30 yards in the air.  Like one of those skyscraper construction workers, one wrong move on his part would give the game to gravity.

    One person looked up at him, and then another.  He was the headlining act within minutes.

    Sober people yelling — What the hell is wrong with that guy?

    The ecstasy babies, real entry-levelers, can barely let out a whisper through the hands cupped over their mouths –  Oh my God, be careful!

    The veterans coming up on their veteran substances yelling — Right on man!

    The cokeheads — Hey, I could do that…

    Those peaking on psychotropic hallucinogens are unable to speak words out loud, their internal monologue too catastrophically complex to transcribe.

    The sick fucks on alcohol — Jump!  Jump!  Jump!

    Those coming off their drugs, those that have been burned with bunk counterfeits, and the few old souls who have been there before now find themselves as the voices of reason — Do something or get down you bastard!

    Then, a moment of calm — it’s always like that in the beginning of a complete disaster.

    Everyone stopped and turned to look.  Even the DJs.  I swear I saw a fucking dove flutter through the building.  Tiesto’s “Adagio for Strings” hit a particularly grand chord, and he let go.

    He looked so graceful.  I could see the whites of his teeth, that giggling retard.  No one reading this has been as happy as that man was at his absolute dumbest.

    In the eerie quiet, I felt I could hear his internal monologue:  This is all I’ll ever need… thank you, Tomorrow, but you won’t be necessary because Tonight is good enough.

    As he fell, I thought to myself, as I’m sure several irresponsible young adults there did, you know, maybe this moron’s got the right idea – but only for a heartbeat until the splat.  There’s nothing graceful or romantic about a heap of popped and lumpy flesh oozing blood onto a dance floor covered in sticky alcohol, cigarette butts, Dixie cups, a training bra, and someone’s vomit.

    What happened after that was significant only in its insignificance.  That dancefloor closed, and then another.  Decisions were made over walkie-talkies by sober squares.  The 95$ entry-ticket-holding-druggies were left out of it — once again, taxation without representation — and one by one, the music stopped.

    It was a sobering walk out of the gates.

    And completely, forehead-slapplingly ludicrous.

    The smile on that man’s face — do you think he wanted the party to stop on his behalf?  Fuck no!  He would have wanted us to crowd surf his corpse and then burn it at a stake in some sort of fertility ritual.  That kid had the best night of anyone.

    And the rest of us patrons were treated to a good old fashioned finger wagging from our municipal grandparents:  Maybe that’ll teach you kids a lesson — if only your fried-brain-cells could learn!

    Some lesson.  Everyone woke up the next morning, and all they had was a hazy recollection of feeling wronged — and the venue (and promoters) paid dearly.  Ticket refunds, bad publicity, poor word of mouth.

    How was Sea of Dreams?

    Someone partied themselves to death.

    That’s fucking sweet!

    When the promoters heard how much fun that kid had, they shut the whole thing down.

    Oh.

    A lot of people won’t be going to the next Sea of Dreams.  They’ll be going somewhere else, and doing all of the same things… The drug problem cannot be solved by one lunatic alone — Reagan proved that.

    But there was a lesson there in that leap of faith, I saw it printed in blood, flesh, chemicals, cigarettes, vomit, training bras, vomit, glitter, 8 inch platform boots, vomit, knives, and glowsticks:

    We want to know the self by knowing others, we want to love and be loved, we want to dance until our bodies overheat… and most importantly, we are willing to die for these things.  Let us know, love, live, and die as we please.

    So the real sadness was in the fact that our point was displayed, and we all turned away in collective horror when we realized it came in the form of a splattered corpse.  That’s not what I ordered, is it?

    The man loved his drug, his delusion.  He loved it with more passion than a televangelist.  He broke his addiction to life, and now life-junkies everywhere are up in arms:

    He flushed his life-stash down the toilet!

    What?!

    Kid’s tryin’ to go straight — cold turkey.

    That greedy motherfucker!

    The final score was a grim tally:  a lot of sour faces, a lot of wasted drugs, a lot of burned wallets, a few hundred dumber human beings, and one happy but dead individual who even though he left the planet still managed to get badmouthed.

    I mean, what more do you want from the guy?

    The Answer (In a Question?)

    As I left a festival one night, completely sober in both mind and body, I felt I could see the direction the whole thing would take.  It was tragic in the romantic kind of way.  But I wasn’t sure how to put it.

    I was with Mack in a sea of drug-fried lunatics waiting to board the next bus away from the venue.  Mack and I overheard a kid who was peaking on a large dose of psycosiblin mushrooms.  The kid was going nuts, so Mack decided to play along — and in doing so, they delivered my prognosis in better terms than I ever could.

    Here is the conversation, which is adulterated only in that I was transcribing it in my phone as it was going on — and the drugged loonies talk fast — so here’s what I caught:

    [Someone screams something about the world being filled with robot computers who work for The Man.]

    Kid:  We are all magnets, fighting against black holes.  We got to grab a hold of as many magnets as we can!  We got to stick together!  We don’t want to be robot computers!

    Mack:  I’m not a magnet or a robot computer.

    Kid:  What are you then?

    Mack:  I’m an idea.  I throw my magnets into black holes on purpose.

    Kid:  What?!  Why?!

    Mack:  Because it’s fun.  I actually ran out of magnets one time.

    Kid:  Holy shit.

    Mack:  What if there was a magnet so big, it ate a black hole?

    Kid:  Holy shit.  That barely makes sense.

    Mack:  Oh, it makes sense.  Magnets and black holes are pretty much the same thing.  They both pull things in.

    Kid:  What do we do then?!

    Mack:  You can do whatever.

    Kid:  What do you do?

    Mack:  I surf black holes.  I glide over magnets.  I lasso a black hole and then throw it away.  I collect magnets and then throw them in a black hole.  I’m like a skipping stone, man, and I’m not ready to sink.

    Kid:  Are you God?

    Mack:  Probably.  But that sounds like a black hole to me.

    Kid:  Or a magnet!

    Mack:  Now you’re getting it.  I just magnetized you.

    Kid:  Holy shit!  Thanks man!  I don’t want to be one of those robot computers!

    Mack:  Can I ask something that might freak you out?

    [Kid gives nervous nod]

    Mack:  What do magnets do to (robot) computers?

    The End…?

    As of now, the molasses-paced government is involving itself in the electronic music festival scene.  Lawsuits have been filed by the parents of dead-patrons.  Moratoriums have been placed on venues.  Police are showing up and shutting down sold-out events due to “Fire Codes” that mysteriously have gone unenforced until now.  And mainstream pop idols like Kanye West and Beyonce and M.I.A. have hired electronic DJs to produce their top-selling records.

    The whole image is taking shape, coming into focus like a Magic Eye picture, and that inevitably means it’s on its way out.  The Iron Curtain is closing.  Those who stay behind are one of two categories:  the brave souls who got in early, and decided this was all they needed… and those sad sacks who signed up for the cult moments before the Kool-Aid was administered.   Both archetypes have been seen before, and they found themselves trapped on the badside of the ‘99 tech bubble, the housing crisis, the awful Indie Pop Punk scene, or a lethal vacation in Jonesboro.

    They stuck to their guns.

    And there’s honor in that.  Gobs of it.

    But it’s not for me.  I enjoyed the ride, but I plan on taking many others, because Tonight was good but Tomorrow may be better – I want to join as many cults as possible, surf black holes, dodging magnets and knives on my way to the Big One that finally swallows me whole.

  • The Great Masturbation Debate

    I am convinced that I am superior to all male beings on the art of masturbating. Even though my convictions are obviously true, I am also certain that every guy thinks their masturbating artistry/methods/techniques are better. Though I am a shitty listener, I have been an active contributor in over thirty different masturbation discussions and arguments over the past decade to claim “expert status” on the topic. Trust me, I’ve listened to all the different perspectives, methodologies, and stories. I’ve heard it all, and I’m the best. This blog is dedicated to all the hotties out there to whom I’ve spanked it.

    Unless I’m having sex, I’ll make time to masturbate every day. The only instances where I’ll skip it is if I’m at my parents’ house or on a computer-deprived vacation. My routine is very simple. Since I’m a horny bastard, just one glance at a sexy face or body can stimulate the chemicals in my mind to scream down to my genitals, “Time to whack!” In which case, I’ll retreat to my room, shut the door, turn on the computer, sit down, and pull up my favorite websites–either youjizz.com or tube8.com. I rarely lock my door because my roommates know of my raging sex drive and can infer that if my door is closed, it’s party time.

     

    The Lotion Dispute

     

    I never use lotion. I’ve tried it, but the messiness factor outweighs the enhancement it’s supposed to create, so I always go raw. Plus, it eliminates my right-hand mouse usage, and I’ve found that trying to operate a mouse left-handed is just as irritating as trying to whack lefty. I’ll break it down…

    Lotion pros:

    -Actually feels like a vagina.

    -Elimination of shaftburn.

    Lotion cons:

    -It costs five bucks for a solid bottle, no longer making masturbating a free activity–unless all your lotion comes from hotel bathrooms, like my friend Axe’s.

    -The mouse debacle.

    -The constant forgetfulness to put the bottle away, thus exposing your sleaziness when people enter your room and see a mysterious thing of Lubriderm chilling beside your keyboard. 

    Raw pros:

    -No cost. It’s free!

    -Easier access in public/emergency situations.

    -Cleaner, more convenient mouse usage.

    -Quicker rinse-offs.

    Raw cons:

    -Reminiscent of 60-year-old parched pussy.

    -Occasional chaffage–though uncircumcised men are exempt due to the extra skin glide-with-hand factor.

    -Less sensitivity and poorer quality whacks.

    Urban Myths

     

    There are guys out there who will try anything to get an edge. Some guys claim jerking with the “off” hand is awesome because it “feels like someone else’s hand,” which is a false statement. All it does is waste time in trying something new when you could otherwise be taking care of business in an orderly fashion so you can move on with your life. Also, after trying the left-hand jerk a couple times, I’ve found myself feeling like a retard because my right hand begins involuntarily mimicking the motions of the jerk even though it’s on the sidelines. I did, however, interview a friend who believes in the occasional off-hand whack. It went like this:

    Me: “So, McBride, tell me about your experiences.”

    McBride: “First of all, I’m better at masturbating than you, and I should be writing this blog.”

    Me: “Not true. But continue.”

    McBride: “Well, as a professional right-hander, I do try out my left hand from time to time.”

    Me: “Why?”

    McBride: “Because it feels like someone else’s hand.”

    Me: “Pfff. Uh, continue.”

    McBride: “Don’t gawk at me. Your problem is that you don’t use lotion. Lotion actually fixes the off-hand jerk because the left hand feels more foreign. Also, this frees up the right hand for premium mouse usage.”

    Me: [Long pause] “You’re an idiot.”

    McBride: “I’m better than you.”

    Another urban myth is “The Stranger,” a curiously stupid act that involves sitting on one’s jerk hand to make it numb. Once the hand is purple and throbbing with tingly needles, they’ll then furiously start jerking with what feels like “another hand.” Then the blood circulates after ten seconds, and it’s over. I’ve never tried this because I’m not a moron. And any bozo who claims they have is probably also addicted to “Booger Sugar.” They’ll try anything with a cool title.

    As far as jerk form goes, it’s always the standard wrap-and-pump, like a Shake Weight. In all my discussions, I’ve never heard of any other methods. Except in the case of my friend Bildo, who consistently defies the laws of physics and is somehow able to whack using the backsides of his hands, chiseling his penis in between them in a sweltering flurry, as if he were trying to start a fire. I do not recommend this method. In fact, I’m convinced he’s the only person on Earth who can even pull this off. After explaining his bizarre technique, however, Bildo had this to say, “What? Don’t you guys do it like that too?” Like I said, I am superior to other men.

     

    Porno Procedures

     

    The top porn sites will usually upload eight to ten new videos every 24 hours. On average, I’ll only check out a couple of the new ones. Most of the time, the fresh stuff is of undesirable porn stars or trashy amateur chicks with acne. Or worst of all, lesbians. No guy jerks off to lesbian porn. We need penetration. We need dick. Though sometimes I’ll hit a jackpot and get four or five good vids, in which case I’ll hover my mouse over them to get a brief flash-through of the porn sequence. Then I make instantaneous assessments based on a few factors:

    -Porn star hotness: Is she one of my favs, or a fresh newbie?

    -Is she a squirter?

    -Is there a facial? (Note: Creampies don’t turn me on.)

    -Is there a variety of sex positions, or solely lame-ass missionary or on-top?

    -Is the male pornstar anyone but Nick Manning? (This guy’s vicious sex talk is so gross that it turns an otherwise decent video into a comedy show.)

    My video selection is much more complex than these five factors. Depending on the sexual season of my mind, sometimes I’ll go strictly for a good blowjob or cumshot scene. Sometimes for the butt sex, and occasionally the steamy rimjob scene. The only problem with jerking it to the extreme shit like girl-on-guy rimjobs is that when I have sex with a chick, I find myself needing to reenact that scene in order to get off. As one might guess, anytime I start dating a girl, I’ll revert to jerking it to boring missionary sex scenes so I’m better prepared when the occasion arises. This sucks, because I hate missionary, but I’ll endure shittier whack sessions to enhance my sex with these unadventurous chicks. I’m a total sell-out, I know. 

    I’ll also make it a point to check all the good new vids before settling on a particular scene to bust my load. One must always be wary, however, of a premature-splooge, which is the terrifying act of jerking too fast, feeling the orgasm muscles contract, and then frantically running to one’s cum rag–err shirt in my case–and trying to dump one’s tartar sauce into its dispenser. I’ve had about fifteen premies in my lifetime–all ended chaotically. Sometimes, however, I’ll reach the edge of ejaculation, and then my body will hit the reset button like back in the Nintendo days, and I’ll stave off a shitty fate. This can’t be healthy.

    Sometimes during a session, I’ll get a sudden craving for a certain pornstar. I have about ten go-to pornstars, where if all else fails, I find one of these chicks. Though I prefer adventure, I don’t mind jerking it to the same video if the scene is good. There are some scenes out there I’ve stroked it to over twenty times. They’re not book-marked or anything, but I pretty much know the name of the scene by heart. I call these my “Num-Num clips.” If I need to bust it to one of these, however, the whack session was basically like settling for a 7-11 hot dog when there’s a sign for a Steakhouse fifteen miles away. I cut my losses and take the safe bet.

     

    Situational Whacks

     

    Each scenario has its own set-up. Some days I look forward to a mid-day whack. Other days I randomly decide for a quickie. Sometimes I get butt naked and sprawl out for a long session with my laptop. Other times it’s pants barely even down for an urgent session–usually only in public situations. Some public places I’ve jerked off in: My high school locker room after soccer practice when my dad couldn’t pick me up until nine; a train bathroom in Italy; several airplane bathrooms; airport bathrooms; the Venetian casino bathroom; the University student center bathrooms; my fraternity computer room (infinity); a camping trail on Catalina island; a Port-O-Potty (huge emergency); and in a random field in Australia.

    Sometimes I’ll whack just because I’m bored. Oftentimes, however, these non-horny sessions are the sneakiest of all, and somehow end up taking the longest. The quickest ones usually occur when I’m most looking forward to it, in which case I’m so fucking horny that I’m done by the second video. “She’s perfect,” I’ll think to myself as I erupt to a 7 with sexy hipbones.

    In the extreme case that I am without porn access for a long period of time (two days), I’ll sometimes do an emergency whack. In such unpleasant circumstances, I’ll go to the bathroom, hover over the toilet, and rub one out to sexual memories, which I call “My Sex Files.” They consist of one to two-second images/screams/poundings of my experiences with past women, though I’ll usually only jerk to a select few. I’ll aim my cumshot in the direction of the ceiling so the cum forms a perfect parabola and lands safely in the toilet. While aiming for distance is fun, it gets all over the toilet seat, floor, and wall, which I don’t feel like wiping up with an insufficient wad of toilet paper.  

    An Interesting Case Study

     

    Just like at the craps table, when you get a good roll going, it’s impossible to leave. It’s the same for whacking. When you’re hitting a run of explosive video after explosive video, you just want to keep going. It’s hard to throw in the towel and decide it’s time to finish. Back in college, I used to go sometimes for hours at a time (my record is five hours). These days, I don’t have that kind of time. I try and keep every session under thirty minutes. Sometimes, however, I get greedy and go a couple minutes over, which have caused me to be late to semi-important events.

    I’ve only seen two guys ever masturbate as if no one was watching: Myself and an old college buddy I’ll call Afroman. A team of four of us planted a video camera in the fraternity computer room late one night. Because I ruled that domain, it was probably me who should have gotten caught. But Afroman fell into the wrong place at the wrong time. The following week, the video was broadcasted to everyone during Monday meeting. A breakdown of Afroman’s session:

    First ten seconds- Unbuckle pants and remove penis.

    Next five seconds- Begin stroking with right hand, standard wrap-and-pump style.

    Next thirty seconds- Place right hand on mouse and locate acceptable porn site. (Keep in mind, this occurred back in 2002, when everyone still jerked off to pictures instead of videos because all the Internet vids were only ten-second clips, and they weren’t worth the hassle to download.)

    Next fifteen minutes- Stroking for ten seconds, then mouse usage–hit the back button and on to next picture. Note: Afroman had a peculiar way of leaning way back in his chair and tilting his head back during his dick strokes. From what I’ve heard, most guys lean or hunch forward–I know I do.

    Last twenty seconds- Tilt head extra far back and cum into stomach area.

    Next ten seconds- Wipe cum onto his sock that he was wearing.

    Next hour- Pass out.

    That video gave us all a fresh perspective on other guys’ jerk methods, except for poor Afroman, who still has only seen himself.

    Ejaculation

     

    When it’s time to fling the sour cream, I’ll grab my cum receptacle–an old yellow shirt with a turkey on it–and place it on my computer chair, which would be facing me. This all occurring after I’ve selected the exact place in the video I’m going to bust to. There is a five to ten-second window of the video I’ve pre-selected as “the moment of copulation”–either the look on a chick’s face, a pussy squirt, the position of her body, or the way a vein bulges on a penis (kidding). Then I’ll stand and brace myself at a seventy-degree angle with the ground, and, eyes locked on the computer screen, start erupting onto my cum rag. After I’m done, I’ll look down at the rag to check my load size and look for any stray globs that missed the target.

    I don’t know of many guys who actually use a cum “rag.” Some use dirty boxers from their hamper; others an old faded shirt; and there are guys who actually use a sock, which perplexes me because then they’d have to worry about aiming carefully because socks are so damn small. The bigger the target, the better the cum dispenser–unless it’s a chick. Sadly, the cum rag must be replaced every few weeks because it starts turning orange and begins smelling like Captain Crunch.

    Happy New Year :)

  • Burner vs. Glenn: OMG This Cannot Be Forgotten

    Burner vs. Glenn: OMG This Cannot Be Forgotten

    Prompt

    You are in a high speed train leaving Paris for Amsterdam. You just had the most intense night of your life and feel lucky to be sitting where you are. You pull out a single piece of paper and a golf pencil, and decide to make a quick note of what happened last night before you arrive at your next destination in ten minutes. This response must be submitted as a scanned/photographed image with hand written text on an actual piece of paper.

    Challengers

    In an OurThursday battle of spontaneous wits, the sleazy Dave Glenn and coy Danielle Burner, will demonstrate how valuable the actual written word can really be.

    ————————————————–

    Danielle Burner’s Response

    Download Image Here

    ————————————————–

    Dave Glenn’s Response

    Download Image Here

    [poll id=”3″]

  • Craig’s List: Bite the Apple, Eve

    If the 21st century has taught me anything, it’s that we’re amazing at inventing technology that sounds perfect… until we get our paws on it.

    Remember MySpace ohmygod she requested me before it was all spam, promoters, and piss-poor bands?  Now it’s that party in high school that too many people found out about.

    And who didn’t light up with species-pride when hearing about ChatRoulette that’s so cool until they figured out it was 90% filled with dudes beating off?  The end result was a hell of an introduction and an up-close look at true humanity.

    Technology has always been a way to see ourselves more clearly.  With enough years and dollars, we finally managed to create the Internet – a complex and advanced mirror.  And when we looked into it, we saw ourselves masturbating.

    Oh the humanity!

    It was a surreal and recursive loop of embarrassment.  What happens now?  An awkward silence?  A shake of the head?  A frightened shout:  close the door!

    We had such high hopes…

    But hold on a second.

    Don’t go blind from all that masturbation.

    The days of Internet Innocence can seem as far away and fictional as Leave it to Beaver or Lassie.  But they’re not.  They’re still there, if you look hard enough.

    Craig’s List, for example, is still as good an avenue as any other for human connection.  It’s a cesspool, and unashamedly so.  I’ve only used it to purchase material items, nothing carnal not yet anyway but it’s always been good to me.  It’s shopping online and getting your stuff the same day.  It’s ludicrously cheap.  From Craig’s List, I have a 10 foot wooden desk (free), a record player in near mint condition with speakers (20$), a full size female mannequin (5$) and a few other things that have utility, luxury, and character.

    The total amount of times I have been raped or molested as a result of these purchases is negligible.  My small interactions with the sellers have been at least as valuable as the goods they’ve provided.  Each cousin of Craig has been very real and very alive and very human.  These people were the good apples, full of enough lush detail to fill an entire book.  But why listen to a man talk about apples when you can pluck one off the tree?

    Whether you’re buying a chair, selling a lamp, or swapping concert tickets, don’t leave the real prize on the table.  Grab some humanity.  Go on, it’s free.

    Here are some tips for successfully using Craig’s List:

    1. A bizarre opening message will endear you to the poster.  Days can get boring once you land your first 9-5.  Empathize with the poor soul.  Introduce some flavor.  You’ll stand out.  I’ve had people hold items for me and sell at a lower price just because I made them laugh or raise an eyebrow via text message or voicemail.
    2. Pretend the person you’re contacting is a close friend.  Don’t be rigid and formal.  These aren’t your grandparents.  The average poster, in my experience, is somewhere between college-aged and early 30s.  They were raised on the same televised garbage as you.  You practically have the same father.
    3. You are about to touch someones life.  That’s becoming increasingly rare in a digitized age.  Be fucking nice.
    4. Don’t live in fear, but don’t be caught off guard by hostility.  Acting relaxed and normal with the average stranger is like waking a sleeping person.  They may react in a disoriented and grumpy manner.  Don’t take this personally.  They were out cold.
    5. The goal is to play and have fun together with someone else — but some people are real party poopers.  Rattle these people’s cages.  They’ll thank you later.

    These are tips, but the real fruit comes from personal expression.  There’s no way to teach it.  You just know if when you come across it.  Here’s an example of a man who might “get it”, taken from a post I came across yesterday:

    http://orangecounty.craigslist.org/ele/2140259816.html

    IPOD CLASSIC 60GB $120 (SANTA ANA)

    JUS DONT NEED IT NO MORE.. NEDD DINERO FOR COLLEGE.. 120 CASH… IT HAS MUSIK IN IT.. NO LOW BALLERS..
    HABLO ESPANOL TXT ME AT 17145973012

    ALSO SELLING RABBIT .. WITHOUT THE CAGE.. HES BLACK AND VERY INTELLEGENT SELLING IT FOR 55 CASH OR TRADE FOR GAMES OR SUMTHING

    OR BUNDLE IT IN WITH THE IPOD CLASSIC . MAKE OFFER

    NOTE:  The fact that he gives a “rear view” of the rabbit (to display the lack of defects) bumps his chances up significantly in regards to selling both it and the Ipod.

    Here’s the e-mail I sent him:

    *****    <*******@gmail.com> Wed, Jan 4, 2011 at 3:58 PM
    To: [email protected]
    Hello,

    I would very much like to trade for your animal.  What sort of games
    do you like?  I have board games (Risk — but it’s one of those weird
    versions that supplants some other story/theme onto the old rules…
    this one is about the future and robots).  I also have an extra copy
    of Fifa 08 for ps2 (some scratches).  And on top of this, my roommate
    has a whole library of N64 games and leaves his door unlocked.

    I see you speak Spanish.  Well I want to talk turkey.

    I’m not trying to “lowball” you on the rabbit here but I definitely
    need some more details on the little guy if I’m going to pay Blue Book
    prices.

    How did you come to the realization that he was “intelligent”?  Be specific.

    What are his dimensions?  Does he know any commands?  Is the fur soft?

    Sorry for all the questions.  I’ve been burned before.

    Regards,
    Matt

    No response has been received.

    Here is a different, more successful example taken from last Saturday afternoon.  This woman took 3 days to contact me about a chair, one which I had already found for cheaper (from a different poster, a man named Ray who loves Roger Waters and has a stripper girlfriend named Candy).  Due to this woman’s tardiness and lameness, I took a harsher stance.  I did it for her.

    The following exchange took place via SMS text message:

    Me: Saw your Craig’s List ad.  I am a sitting enthusiast.  Looking to accessorize.  Would be happy to negotiate a transaction.

    Her: If you mean the chair, I still have it.  $50.

    Me: Can you tell me more?  How does it sit?  Are there options?

    Her: It’s leather.  Brand new.

    Me: I know that already.  Are there options?  How does it sit?

    Her: ??  It can go up and down to adjust height ??

    Me: But how does it sit?

    Her: I don’t understand.  It’s a normal chair.  It’s really great.

    Me: Generalities are for used car salesmen.  Deal is off.

    Her: What?  It’s a leather executive chair.  Never used.  Pics online.  What else you need to know?

    Me: HOW DOES IT SIT?  HOW DOES IT SIT?  HOW DOES IT SIT?  HOW DOES IT SIT?  HOW DOES IT SIT?

    Her: IT SITS LIKE A DREAM I’M ON IT RIGHT NOW AND IT’S LIKE A CLOUD OKAY?

    Me: That sounds amazing.

    Her: It is amazing.

    [5 minutes pass, no messages sent]

    Her: So does tonight work for you?

    Me: No you’ve sat in it now so I don’t want it anymore have a nice day.

    Her: Go fuck yourself.

    Again with the masturbation.

    No tangible transaction occurred, but I got a taste of her soul in the end and I offered her a slice of mine.  It was worth the 8 minute investment.

    So when you go out there, don’t be afraid to show a little soul.  If you’re not prepared to do that, you may as well stay home and play with yourself… but please leave the camera off.

  • 10 Things I Hate About Being an Artist

    10 Things I Hate About Being an Artist

    1. The Donated Art Supplies

    I appreciate the gesture, but I don’t need the two and a half sticks of compressed charcoal you found while cleaning out your grandma’s closet after she passed away. For $8, I can go down to Michaels and buy all the charcoal I need without worrying about the ghost of Beatrice haunting me in my life drawing class.

    (more…)

  • Sophie vs. Jay: Relevant Capitalism

    Sophie vs. Jay: Relevant Capitalism

    On Christmas Eve, two eccentric minds met for the first time and among many other things, this Challenge Blog was birthed. This Challenge Blog also rings in the new year with the first one of it’s kind that does not involve any of the OurThursday authors. So any readers that feel the need to challenge me, their mother, their three legged cat, or neighbor… please send your requests to [email protected] and I will let you know how this goes down.

    The Prompt

    In 300 words or less, explain why the  traditional concept of capitalism is no longer relevant or indeed, is relevant.

    The Challengers

    Sophie – Cantankerous genius who has lived several more lives than the rest of us.

    Jay – Intense philosopher of life, finance, and spatial worm holes who is not afraid to shoot someone with a crossbow.

    (more…)