I have a raft of crap to share.

When I was a kid, my father had an amazing vegetable garden. He grew tomatoes the size of cantaloupe, and cucumbers the size of baseball bats. Our garden was awesome, and it was also stolen, but I'll get to that. I didn't mind going down there at dusk to gather vegetables, but I hated it during the day. I hated it because it was full of wasps, bees, and yellowjackets, and I was deathly afraid of them. It was the same reason I hated playing centerfield in baseball. Everyone else was concerned about fly balls, and I was concerned about the fact that they stuck me in a clover-filled, continually buzzing, bee-infested hell. It's no wonder I sucked.

Here's why I hate bees. When I was about 6 or 7 years old, we embarked on our annual trip to Markie's grandmother's camp on Lake St. Catherine in Vermont. The camp was right down by the water, and the road ran behind the camps, about a hundred feet up the hill. Since they frequently had multiple guests which usually meant multiple cars, they had built a retaining wall and leveled out a fairly large parking area up by the road.

When we got there, Markie was already up by the road waiting for us. The second the car stopped moving, The Snitch and I jumped out.

"Hey you guys! Wanna go fishing?" Markie said, not wasting any time.

My mother interjected. "Life jackets," she said. "And no standing up in the boat."

"Yeah!" The Snitch said. "Let's go!" We couldn't wait. We were so excited to finally be there, that we just leaped off the top of the retaining wall instead of taking the steps. The second we hit the ground we were in trouble for two reasons. One, because we knew were weren't supposed to jump off the wall, and two, because unbeknownst to us, this wall provided the living quarters for half the world's population of white-faced hornets. If you know anything about these things, I don't have to tell you what vile little bastards they are. If you don't, this sums it up nicely:

Bald-faced hornets are protective of their nests and will sting repeatedly if the nest is physically disturbed. They are more aggressive than both the wasps normally called yellowjackets and members of the Vespa genus, and it is not considered safe to approach the nest for observation purposes. The bald-faced hornet will aggressively attack with little provocation.

They are the Sean Penn's of the insect world, and they were all over us. We ran down the hill screaming, slapping wildly at our heads, necks and faces as the hornets stung us repeatedly. If we were smart, we would have immediately run to the dock and jumped into the lake, but we were kids so we did the dumb thing, which was to run inside the camp. The kitchen was thrown into complete chaos as Markie's mom, sister and grandmother were suddenly surrounded by screaming kids and a cloud of seriously pissed off hornets. By the time we got everything under control, we had all been stung about a dozen times each, and everyone else in the kitchen had been stung at least once or twice. It was a great first ten minutes at camp. We never did get out fishing that day, mostly because venom and Benadryl takes a lot out of you.

So now you know why I hate bees.

Back to the garden. Our backyard was bordered by a body of water that you could refer to as a bog if you wanted to be kind, and a disgusting swamp if you wanted to be accurate. We all called it the swamp because were were nothing if not honest. It was the kind of water that looked like iced tea, but if you stirred up the mud at the bottom it smelled like rotten eggs. As a result of this swamp being where it was, we had a chain link fence all along the border to our backyard, and just past the fence, there was a steep hill down to this crystal clear water. My father was loathe to give up this sloping land as a lost cause, so he put a gate in the fence to allow access to his beautiful waterfront.

Markie, The Snitch and I played along the shoreline of this cesspool constantly when we were kids. We caught frogs, pollywogs (our name for tadpoles), salamanders and probably a few random diseases, but we had fun. There was a narrow channel behind our house that led out to a larger body of water we called "The Pond." We ice skated on it every winter, and even tried fishing in it once or twice, since we knew there were bullheads living there. We knew this because one extremely hot summer, the pond dried up almost completely and the entire population of bullheads was concentrated in a writhing black puddle about four feet square. It was disgusting, but that didn't stop us from walking out there and grabbing a half dozen in a bucket and bringing them home and putting them in my mother's ornamental water feature in front of the house.

One day, when we were bored, I looked at Markie and The Snitch and said, "You guys wanna build a raft?" I thought it would be cool to build a raft like the ones I always saw on TV. It didn't look that hard, and we had access to everything we needed. It didn't take much to convince them, and they both signed on to the project since it beat fighting over who was going to grab the next leopard frog.

Obviously, all you need to build a raft are a few good-sized logs, and a bunch of boards to nail across them. It took us about two hours to go out to where they had started logging, and find two 24" wide, four-foot-long white pine logs, then roll them all the way from the woods to our back yard. We also "found" a pile of pressure-treated 2x4's in the woods and brought those home too. When we had the logs evenly spaced, we nailed the boards to the top. Boom. Instant raft. It weighed so much the three of us could barely move it. "You think it'll float?" asked Markie. "Yeah, I think once we get it in the water it'll be lighter," I said.

As you can see, my vast, encyclopedic knowledge of watercraft design was learned entirely from watching Saturday morning cartoons. We thought that once it hit the water, we'd all be bobbing around like Huck and Tom on the Mississippi.

We moved it by flipping it end over end. By luck, the last flip placed it upside down at the water's edge. One more flip would place the entire raft in the water, and then we'd be on our way. When we were ready, we all lined up behind it. "OK, ready?" Markie said. "FLIP IT!"

We heaved it up on end, then shoved it over hard. It hit the water and made a sound like "SPLUT!" which was clearly not a floaty sound. It obviously needed to be farther out. We all got behind it again and shoved as hard as we could, and instead of floating free, it plowed mud like that was its job. As we strained our puny, pre-teen muscles, the raft sunk down to the level of its top boards and got completely hung up on the swampy bottom. It had moved a total of about three feet from shore and was floating about as well as a bridge abutment.

Markie hopped from shore onto the raft and it sunk a little more, the tea-stained water lapping at his sneakers. He walked to the far edge, and rocked it a bit. It wasn't budging. "Go get the skimmer pole," I said to The Snitch. He ran back to the garage and got the aluminum pole from the pool skimmer. We handed it to Markie, thinking maybe he could push off with it. No such luck. It wasn't moving. At this point we realized that our cartoon physics had failed us miserably.

"I don't think this is gonna work," I said. "I think it's too heavy."

"At least we can use it for a platform to catch pollywogs," The Snitch said. He always was a "half-full" kind of guy.

We tried to pull it back out, but that wasn't any more successful than pushing it farther in. This problem required some additional thought. We didn't want to abandon it completely, since we figured we could use the wood for something else, but we also didn't want to stand in disgusting swamp water in order to dismantle it. We all remembered the story about the kid from Broderick Street who had gone swimming in the pond on a dare and came out covered in leeches. That wasn't going to happen to us. We weren't going to end up with leech feet. No way. We weren't going in there without some kind of protection.

We pondered the problem, and thought maybe we could use garbage bags, or even just wear a pair of old sneakers and socks. It would still be gross and disgusting work, but it would get our boards back. Our other option was to wait until late August when the swamp dried up a little, which might allow us to walk out there on relatively solid ground and pry the good wood off the top.

Meanwhile, my father was hatching his own unrelated plan. He didn't have room for a garden in our backyard, and that fact sorely pained him. What he did have, however, was about 30 feet of sloping shoreline that he didn't particularly care for. His plan was to expand his back yard into the swamp, thereby creating an area he could use to plant vegetables that would no doubt flourish from all of the disgusting fertilizer they would be able to suck up from the bottom. Roughly, this would involve cutting into the hill, building a retaining wall, then pushing the excess dirt out into the water until it created a new shoreline, which, while technically not his, was not likely to be contested by the actual owner of the swampy mess.

We were only peripherally aware of this civil engineering exercise, and didn't give it much thought. As long as we didn't have to do any of the work, we didn't care. We were preoccupied with getting the raft out of the muck without ending up with leech-covered ankles.

Unfortunately, this is where our two separate plans butted heads. One day we came home from school, changed out of our school clothes and went down to the raft, which we had taken to calling our "dock" since calling it a raft was kind of a misnomer since rafts generally float and move about freely, whereas docks do not.

In the meantime, my father had gotten himself some telephone poles from somewhere. I have no idea where they came from, but I can only assume he must have had lineman connections. Apparently, just chopping off the hill wasn't enough. He figured it would be hard to level the newly created ground, since he was originally planning to just push the dirt out into the water. In his new plan, he decided to use the telephone poles to actually box in an area of the swamp, and then get a few extra truck loads of dirt to fill it in, basically creating a giant raised bed for his garden that extended out into the swamp.

This was all fine and dandy, except for one thing: when The Snitch and I went to check on the progress, we realized that the far corner of the new garden plot was now entirely supported by our raft, which had apparently become an integral part of his design. We complained indignantly to our father, but it did no good. We watched as wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow of dirt finally covered our outstanding workmanship, turning it into the abutment it was always fated to be.

We went across the street and broke the news to Markie. He was bummed and a little miffed that my father had the unmitigated gall to use our raft without asking us first, but he also realized that there wasn't much we could do about it. Later that summer, we discovered an old styrofoam sailboat that someone had dragged to the pond, and that was infinitely better since it actually floated. We used a long pole and pushed ourselves around the pond and down through all the feeder channels and it was amazing, like the time Scooby Doo and Shaggy had to rescue the rest of the gang from the swamp witch, only in our version there were way more mosquitoes and (we think) one less swamp witch.

Over the ensuing years, we never really forgot about the raft, and always joked about how our kid logic told us it would actually float. Even today, we give my father crap about using it without our permission.

I can still remember being down in the garden years later, studiously avoiding bees while gathering vegetables for my mother. Sometimes I'd take an extra second to walk over to the water's edge and look down, where I could just barely see the edge of our raft sticking out from under the stacked telephone poles, just to see how it was holding up.

We moved out of that particular house when I was a junior in high school, but even now, in my mind's eye, our raft is still there, solidly supporting my dad's old garden just like it was meant to.

[edit: Holy crap! Thank you, Google Earth.]

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PS - we have a winner! Actually two winners. While there were quite a few good ones, (and some that made me a little scared to piss you guys off) my favorite was written by ArtistMommy because I didn't expect it. I also liked Magic27's "Didn't see that truck" entry (even though there was an extraneous word in there), so I'm going to call that one a winner too.

Congrats! E-mail me your mailing addresses and I'll get the books right out to you. Also let me know if you want me to sign it. Thanks for playing everyone. I enjoyed it and I hope you did too! You guys are more twisted than I am.

A little contest

I took this photo today.

I guess someone's apology didn't go as well as expected.

There's a story here, and I want you to write it.

For a free copy of my book, leave me a funny haiku about the circumstances behind this picture.

I'll pick my favorite and declare them the winner. Deal? Deal.

(Yes, I'm stalling because I haven't finished my next post yet.)

Have fun!

Find me Lil' Scrappy, beotch.

Good old Travis got me hankerin' to do one of these, and since I haven't done one in forever, and I have another post that I'm still working on, I figured it was time. So thanks to the modern wonders of search engine tracking, allow me to present:

Fantastic Google Searches That Somehow Led People To My Site.

Your tits rotated -- I know you can't be talking about *my* tits, so I'm assuming you're talking about someone else you know. My first thought is that you have to be more specific if you want my help. You can't just walk up to your friend and be all nonchalant like, "Oh hey, by the way, your tits rotated. Just thought you might want to know." My guess is she'd probably already know, because that shit hurts. You are going to need to be prepared to give her some solid advice. For instance, did they just do a 360 in place? (That's considered the most painful of the tit rotations.) Or did the end up on her back? These are important questions, and before I give you any advice, I really need more info. For instance, if she's old, and starting to sag, I hope she got the 180. They are rare, but they're also the best of all possible tit rotations. That way they stay perky for a few more years. Kind of like flipping over your mattress.

Biggie Gibb - Being very knowledgeable about music, I think I can help you in your search for this rare information. Ah, Biggie. I remember him well. The one Gibb brother who went his own way. While Robin, Maurice and Barry formed the BeeGees and subsequently became huge stars along with their brother Andy, Biggie chose to blaze his own trail after he was asked to leave the band due to severe anger management issues and his desire to take the band in another direction. The final straw was an altercation with Maurice in the recording studio, over the elder Gibbs' refusal to use the original title of Biggie's soon-to-be-hit song, "How Deep is Your Love now, Motherfucker?"

Here's a very rare early promo picture:

May I see a real picture of drackila? - No you may not.

What kind of fungus smells like burning? - I am pretty sure it's this kind:

They say a blast of Tinactin will fix everything.

Do guys need to wash their ass? - For fuck's sake, YES. FECES COMES OUT OF IT ON A (hopefully) REGULAR BASIS. I get like 20 of these a month. Who the hell started this rumor, anyway? Some dirty-assed son of a whore, I know that much. It's ridiculous. Why wouldn't you wash the one thing on your body that has the most potential to smell the absolute worst?

Dremel sex - I'm not sure I'm your guy on this one. To me, this just sounds painful. The only time I've used a dremel tool is to carve - coincidentally - wood. As a general rule, I don't think "sex" and "carving things" go well together, if you really want the relationship to last. If you are ending a relationship abruptly, however, I think sometimes carving is involved. That and super-gluing seem to be pretty popular options. I'll take the superglue if I have to pick one.

google get me information on lil scrappy -- OK, first of all, Google is not a person. It's also not a genie, or a leprechaun or anything else that grants you wishes. You don't have to address it by its first name, because it really doesn't have one. Nor does it have a last name. It's not like some guy in an orange apron who comes up to you in Home Depot and says, "Hi, I'm Google Lewbowski. Can I help you find anything?" It's a search engine running on a server. You don't have to be polite. Second of all -- lil' scrappy? Google should just tell you no. Is that some rap guy or Scooby Doo's nephew? I always get them confused.

OK, there's more, but I'm out of steam, so I'm going to bed. I'm still not quite over this cold, which has been kicking my ass since Monday. Have a great weekend, everyone!

p.s. -- Just one more small reminder. I know I'm a pain in the ass, but if you actually bought my book, please try to leave a review on Amazon or B&N's website. I really appreciate it!

Happy Valen....zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

Last night, I could NOT fall asleep. My mind was full of ideas; stupid stuff I didn't have to worry about at all, and other stuff that was slightly more important, although truth be told, there wasn't much I was going to do about any of it at two in the morning. I had a head full of random bits of information, all whirling around in my brain like it was one of those clear plastic cages that they pump full of money and you have to stand in the windstorm and grab whatever you can. I usually drop into a snooze the second my head hits the pillow, however last night, that didn't happen. I basically pulled an all-nighter, for no good reason. In fact, the reason I'm writing this now is so I don't fall asleep -- because if I do, I'll be up late again, thereby perpetuating my misery. So I'm here to say this post will suck, and you can blame it on the sleep deprivation.

Here's an example of my thought processes last night that, in real time, took about 20 seconds: Man, I wonder when those 20 books I ordered are going to get here... I knew I should have paid extra for fast shipping. They probably didn't even start making them yet, then after that I have to wait for UPS. I'll bet the UPS truck is probably going to get stuck in our driveway. This snow sucks. Good for snowboarding, though. I have to get the rack back on the car before we go with Doug and Colleen at the end of the month. Hope Gore's not icy. The ice on our roof is brutal. Has to be four inches thick. How the hell am I going to melt all that? I really don't want it raining in the living room again. That sucked. I should have planned on being home tomorrow -- I could turn on the heat cables. I don't need water dripping from the basement rafters again, either. I wonder when the contractor is going to call with the pricing on finishing the basement? It's been like two weeks. Shit, I have to go to sleep. I'm going to be a zombie tomorrow. I could get a solid 4 hours of sleep if I just fell asleep NOW....no NOW.....OK, NOW... relax and think about nothing... deep breaths, breathe in, breathe out...Whose brilliant idea was it to put nipples on George Clooney's Batman costume? It clearly didn't need nipples. Wow, that was a screwed up movie. I have to remember to update my netflix queue...

Now picture 6 more hours of that.

I finally fell asleep a little after 3am. For those of you keeping score at home, I have to get up at 4:30 for work. I must have been crushing some last minute dreaming, because when I woke up I remembered about four different discrete yet seemingly simultaneous dreams. I wasn't even sure the human mind could do that, but I think I was probably delirious. When my alarm went off, I was flying and sailing a boat. At the same time. I mean like it was a big sailing ship, and I was sailing it myself, however I was also flitting around the ship like some sort of faerie pirate. I have no idea.

At work today I was fine until after I ate lunch. My morning coffee wore off and I was so tired that I actually almost fell asleep installing the new Microsoft Office 2010. Damn that is a pig of an install. It had to take 30 minutes, easy. During the install, I closed my eyes for a second at 20% and a split-second later, I opened them again and it was at 15%, which confused me and made me think of this cartoon:

So I'll be skipping my workout tonight, and heading directly to bed and I plan to be asleep by nine. Added bonus, I'm coming down with a cold. I love winter. Hey, here's a random fact for you -- this month, 67 searches for some variation of "Why do I shiver when I Pee?" landed people on my page. I am the new pee shiver expert of the internet, you guys.

Lastly, before I fall asleep, there's a new little link over there on the upper right -- if you want to buy a book and have me deface it for you, that's how you go about getting it done.

So anyway, Happy Valentine's Day, everyone. Speaking of that, here's one I got from my buddy Mike in second grade:

P.S. - How the hell does Joan Cusack keep getting work? Her voice was made for silent film and her face was made for radio.

It's raining Wrens.

The other day I stumbled on a story related to all those birds dropping dead last month and it turned out that apparently, some of them were killed intentionally.

Here's an excerpt:

"Not all the mysterious bird die-offs that have been witnessed around the globe recently are due to unexplained causes. A recent mass die-off event witnessed in Yankton, South Dakota was traced back to the USDA which admitted to carrying out a mass poisoning of the birds.

After hundreds of starlings were found dead in the Yankton Riverside Park, concerned citizens began to investigate. Before long, a USDA official called the local police and admitted they had poisoned the birds. "They say that they had poisoned the birds about ten miles south of Yankton and they were surprised they came to Yankton like they did and died in our park," says Yankton Animal Control Officer Lisa Brasel, as reported by KTIV.

The USDA then confirmed the story and explained it was all "part of a large killing" in Nebraska. Some of the birds that ate the poison apparently flew all the way to Yankton before succumbing to the poison.

According to the report, the USDA has killed more than four million birds over the last several years. There's even an official spreadsheet here from 2009.

Here's a few examples on the spreadsheet that caught my eye:

96,000 feral pigeons. Feral pigeons? Holy shit, those sound pretty dangerous. It's probably good that they are taking those things out.

1,259,714 european starlings. That right there is a whole lot of birds. The USDA must really hate europeans for some reason. The really odd part is that each animal has a few different categories, and two of them are Intentional and Unintentional. For instance, the starling breakdown looks like this:

Intentional Unintentional

1,259,714 2

So somewhere a conversation like this took place:

"Hey, how many starlings did we kill? Was it 1,259,714? "

"Yeah. Oh, and those two that Steve ran over with his SUV. Don't forget those."

I'd also like to know how they got such specific numbers. Who's the poor bastard who gets the job of counting up all the dead birds? "One... two... three... four...wow, this job really sucks... five... six... seven..."

Then like 14 hour later, "8,764...no wait...765? Crap, now I have to start over."

In other news, there's a group of feminist activists in Kiev, Ukraine. Femen's leader, 26-year-old Anna Gutsol, explains: "Our goal is active Ukrainian women who want to be involved in society and politics."

To me, that doesn't really sound like a traditional goal, per se, because saying your goal is "active Ukrainian women" makes you sound like someone who posts personal ads on Craigslist. But lack of effective mission statement aside, their main claim to fame is that they apparently do all their protesting topless.

Their official slogan is "Our God is woman, our mission is protest, our weapons are bare breasts."

Far be it from me to question their choice of weapons, but here is a short list of things bare breasts cannot generally do:

1. Shoot holes in stuff.

2. Protect your home.

3. Kill from a distance.

4. Kill.

You'll note that I said generally do, and that's only because I'm aware of this.

Do you like boxes of shit in your house? Get a cat.

We have three cats, one of which is an incredibly spoiled Siamese named Jesse:

He's pretty awesome, and he jumps up and drapes himself over my shoulders and rides around. We also have two other "lesser cats" that were here long before him. Unfortunately, he hates the idea that they even exist, and we're constantly breaking up fights.

Periodically, my wife will talk about getting another Siamese kitten, and my usual response to that is, "Three cats is my absolute limit. When we're down to two, we'll think about it."

So the other night, we were sitting on the couch and she started talking about it again...so I just sat there and stared at the other two cats sleeping in front of the wood stove. Finally, she said, "What are you doing?"

"Oh nothing," I said, distractedly. "Just trying to figure out which one of the other cats I'm going to have to kill."

Fast forward to the next day. I'm working from home, and sitting on the couch with the computer on my lap, and my wife is at work. Maggie, one of the two 14-year-old cats, is standing behind the wood stove and suddenly starts hacking on a hairball. She finally coughs it up, and then just... falls over. Like someone tipped over a statue of a cat. She's lying there, not moving. I run over and drag her out into the open and try to stand her up. She falls over again. I feel like I'm trying to balance a bike that doesn't have a kickstand. All I can think is, "Shit! This fucking cat is going to die, and my wife's going to think I killed it." I immediately call her at work, to throw off any suspicion, should worst come to worst.

"Hey, um...I think something's wrong with Maggie," I said.

"What do you mean?" she replied.

"She just... kind of... fell over," I said, warily.

"What do you mean, she fell over?" she asked, alarmed.

"Hang on," I said, and put the phone down.

I tried again to stand the cat up, and this time she stayed up. She was shaking like a leaf, but she wasn't falling over and that was a decided improvement.

I picking up the phone again. "I thought she was gonna die, but now I don't think so," I said. "Maybe. It could go either way. She looks a little weird. Stoned. Shaking a lot."

I started to feel like I was constructing a shitty alibi or something, so I wrapped it up.

"I'm not sure why I called," I said. "Don't worry about it, she's probably fine."

I could tell she didn't believe me, but she hung up anyway, since she was at work.

I turned my attention back to Maggie, who was now lying down in one of the cat beds, looking a little tired, but pretty much normal.

"You just have to last until she gets home from work," I said, pointing my finger at her. "Don't fuck me over."

It turned out she was fine, and still is.

I'm pretty sure I got punk'd by my cat.

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ps - if you get a chance, check out my buddy Glen's blog here. He's trying to convince me to do a book reading with him at a local bookstore. I'm a little apprehensive about it, but if I did do it, which story or stories from my book do you guys think I should read?

Don't Fear the Scraper.

Yesterday, I got this e-mail at work from the company that handles our travel. I think either they're sensationalizing things just a little, or... we're all dead.

Brace For Travel Delays As Multi-Day Dangerous, Destructive Winter Storm To Hit Monday - Wednesday

A multi-day, multi-region potentially historic and destructive winter storm will unleash its fury beginning Monday and will last through Wednesday. When everything is said and done, the storm may very well impact a third of the population of the United States; approximately 100 million people. Its reach will be felt from the Front Range of the Colorado Rockies to the Ohio Valley to the coast of New England.

Accompanied with the winter storm will be a severe thunderstorm threat across the South capable of producing damaging winds, hail and a few tornadoes.

Incredible ice accumulation with some towns/cities experiencing as much as an inch of ice. This is a destructive and crippling amount of ice which could knock out power to potentially hundreds of thousands of customers for days or even weeks.

I especially like "Unleash its fury." It's better if you read it in the voice of that guy who does all the movie preview voice-overs.

New York Idiot.

On Sunday, I did two things I've never done before. One, I went to New York City of my own free will, and had a ton of fun. Yes, every other time I've ever been there has been because some company that I worked for, or wanted to work for, made me go there. Two, I saw a Broadway show.

I am definitely not a city person. It's just not for me. You can talk to me about "culture" until you expel the last of the smog-tainted air from your lungs, and I may even agree to a point, but my rebuttal to you is that they should move that shit somewhere else.

Suppose someone told you that their dog just swallowed a handful of two-carat diamonds, and if you get them back you can keep them. You just resign yourself to the fact that (a) you're going to be up to your elbows in crap sometime in the next couple of days, and (b) it'll be totally worth it. New York City is sort of like that for me. I dig the idea of museums and art galleries and the theaters, but there is no way I could live there. I think if I had to listen to that noise and deal with the people and smell those horrible, disgusting smells for more than a day or two I would climb to the top of some building (no doubt garishly lit with scrolling LEDs) and jump to my blinking, wildly illuminated death.

There is one good thing about going to NYC in the winter and here it is: Frozen garbage juice doesn't smell. Neither does frozen urine when it comes down to it. In contrast, I've been there in July when it rained, and the reconstituted garbage juice stench was enough to make me gag.

Our friends were taking us to see American Idiot, so we took the train down and they met us at Penn Station. They are much more familiar with the city than we are, which is a good thing. We grabbed lunch, and stopped at B&H Photo for a bit, mostly just because it was bitterly cold out and we needed to duck in somewhere to thaw out, but it was a huge place and pretty cool inside.

I do have a question for all you city-folk, though. WTF is up with all the loogies on the sidewalk? Who spits on the sidewalk? I haven't seen that much mucus since I had the flu. I was constantly dodging small piles of slimy green stuff. I looked like Fred Astaire, and I seriously wanted to burn my boots. At least the loogies were frozen. Every time I inadvertently stepped on one, I kept telling myself that. It didn't really help.

The show itself was interesting. I walked in not at all knowing what to expect. I think a lot of other people didn't know what to expect either, since there were quite a few young kids in the audience. For instance, I don't think the mother of the two pre-teen girls sitting next to us was really prepared for the rampant heroin use. I'm betting she was probably not too pleased with the four-minute simulated hump-fest on the dirty mattress either, but as the saying goes, when you're in for a penny, you're in for a simulated pound.

The music was great and some of the performers had awesome voices. The reason we wanted to go when we did is because the lead singer of Green Day, Billie Joe Armstrong, was playing the part of St. Jimmy for a limited number of dates. Of course, he sang the shit out of his own songs.

The building was ridiculously old, and the seats were ridiculously small. When I say small, I mean small even for me, and I weigh about 145 lbs soaking wet. Have you ever sat in one of those student desks from grade school? That's what this was like. If you were over 5' 11" and weighed more than 200 lbs, you were going to be watching this show standing up. Either that, or after ten minutes of sitting, you'd never stand up again.

It was cool to hear all the tunes in the context of a "play" but from what I could see, it was a pretty loose interpretation of anything that involved an actual plot. Maybe that's normal for a stage musical, I don't know. I'm still not really sure what the hell it was that I watched, or what it was supposed to mean. Basically, the premise seemed to be that a group of fucked-up friends take vastly different paths in life but eventually manage to not die and end up, if not exactly normal, at least relatively ok. Of course, it could be I'm missing something, since I'm new at this. I've had the CD for a while, and I've listened to it on and off since it came out, but I've never really noticed an over-arching theme or anything.

At any rate, it was an interesting experience, and I'm glad I went. I really enjoyed it. The company was great and I'd do it again in a heartbeat. After the show we had some time to kill before dinner, so we sat at a bar overlooking times square and had a few drinks. I had a giant grey goose martini, and it was glorious.

Where else could a self-proclaimed anti-establishment punk have a show on Broadway? You don't see that sort of thing every day. And this?

A giant "Catch VD" advertisement right next to a high definition Disney screen. Turns out it's for Vampire Diaries, but still, a great juxtaposition.

The train ride home? Sucked. It had to be 95 degrees in the train, which I guess is better than it being too cold, but it was like a sauna. I fell asleep and only woke up when I noticed that the train was no longer moving. At first I thought, "Oh, no big deal, we're letting people on or off," but then after waking up a second time to the same sense of non-motion, I figured something was up. Turns out it was so cold out that the air brakes on the train froze. So we were stranded while they tried to thaw them out, and there really wasn't much I could bitch about, because while I wanted the train to reach Albany as soon as possible, I also wanted it to stop in Albany.

We were only about 20 miles out but it might as well have been 200. Finally, they did something that I am pretty sure involved a mob of villagers with torches and the brakes were free. We started moving, but only at about 30 miles per hour, just in case the brakes decided to freeze open instead of closed. About a half hour later, we limped into Albany and probably coasted to a stop.

At least our car started when we got to the station. An hour later, we were home. The next day, all the trains were canceled, so our luck wasn't too bad, considering.

So yeah. I saw a Broadway show. Yay, me. Any other suggestions on what I should see down there? I'm all ears.

Dinocroc vs. Supergator: A live blogging review

I've got a camera, the remote, three drinks and my laptop. This will be long, probably longer than most people will want to read, but keep in mind that I actually watched this movie. You guys have it easy.

So in the immortal words of my good buddy, Ash:

Yo. She-bitch. Let's go.

A female scientist straight from a porn set looks at what appears to be a voltage meter on a rack of uninterruptible power supplies in a mainframe data center somewhere, and yells through her lip-liner, "Everybody out now! It's escaped!" Thus begins the exceptionally poignant dialogue and amazing special effects of "Dinocroc vs. SuperGator."

The first scene is just a bunch of whitecoats running away from something, and when it finally comes around the corner, the monster looks like a giant alligator with spikes on his back. I'm not sure at this point whether I'm looking at Dinocroc or SuperGator. I don't see a cape, or an S on its chest, so I'm guessing it's Dinocroc.

He eats a handful of scientist mcnuggets, but amazingly, there's no blood. Either he's a meticulous eater, or blood is hard to do in CGI. The creature that I assume (until otherwise notified) is Dinocroc, runs across some sandy-looking dirt, leaving no tracks even though it appears to weigh about the same as a city bus, and eases itself into the water without a single ripple. It also seems to be made of styrofoam since it floats way too high up in the water. Come to think of it, that may explain the lack of tracks. On the plus side, that should make it easier to kill.

Doc Hottie stops running for a few seconds to make a phone call. We cut to the phone ringing on the other end. Who picks it up? A very old and frail looking David Carradine, who is having his blood pressure taken. I'm not sure if that is supposed to be part of the scene, or if it’s just bad editing.

She breathlessly tells him that "Primeval One" has escaped. He tells her to fill a tranquilizer gun with 500cc’s of Cetacolin, which I don’t think is a real drug. It’s probably why she then says that Primeval One has developed an immunity to it.

David Carridine asks about the other specimen (Primeval Two?), and she says that one of the other scientists is trying to sedate it. I hope they’re not using Cetacolin again. Based on my experiences thus far, that stuff doesn’t work for shit.

My hopes are shattered as a CGI monster bashes a hole into the wall, flattens a scientist and escapes its confines. Damn Cetacolin. I think the monster is extra-pissed because he just looked down at himself and realized that he has the resolution of a first-gen Xbox game. Also, I guess this must be Dinocroc since he looks more like a dinosaur than the other monster. He runs down a trail, eats one of those dudes that has no blood, and then the title credits start.

This should be good.

First we’re circling some tropical island with white sand beaches and gorgeous mountains. Then we cut two people on a beach. Unfortunately the beach looks like it’s in Jersey somewhere. The chick, who is apparently named "Baby" because that’s what her boyfriend Bruce keeps calling her, runs into the jungle and finds a waterfall. They strip down to their bathing suits and wander into the pool. The water is up to their knees. You can clearly see the bottom. No danger here, right?

Bruce tells Baby to get him a beer, and Baby complies, and walks to the cooler. Before she can turn around again, SuperGator swallows him from below, like Jaws:

How this happens in two feet of water is beyond me, but I am thinking that one of SuperGator’s powers is the ability to swim through rock, which is an awesome power to have, especially if you are a SuperGator.

Then when Baby turns around to look for Bruce he’s gone. She’s squatting on a rock, looking into the knee deep water for him. But you know who isn’t gone? Wrong! You thought I was going to say SuperGator, didn't you? It’s Dinocroc, and he sneaks up on her:



I am assuming that she is very distraught because it’s not like he actually "sneaks" in that the camera work would lead you to believe that the ground is shaking with each step. She finally turns around, and sees Dinocroc scant inches from her face. She screams. She makes no effort to run, or move or even stand up straight and take it like a trooper. No, instead, she just does this:

Next we cut to an investigator talking to his boss on the phone. They talk about the cages, and the people at the lab, who have all disappeared. Apparently, David Carradine is "using growth hormone on living creatures," and these government types don’t seem to like it one bit. Although I’m not sure what else you’d use growth hormone on. I don’t think it would work on inanimate objects. I think it would probably just make a wet spot.

So about these missing people — the boss man wants his agent to go take a look "up close and personal" because they are so worried about what’s going on up there at the lab. So, as you’d expect, the agent says "OK, but not today, I’m taking a well-earned day off and going fishing." What? Your boss just told you to do something, and you say "Bullshit, I’m going fishing?" I find that harder to believe in than Dinocroc.

Enter hottie number two, in an inflatable pontoon boat named "Wild Angel." She looks a little like a stripper. Now I think I know why secret agent boy is going fishing. Because they both read the script and I bet they're supposed to meet up. She looks like she’s some sort of cop or forest ranger or something. Her dad is also a cop, and they discuss the weird stuff some nature photographer found in the stream. Some clothes, a backpack, a severed arm. No, I’m kidding about the arm. She tells him there’s nothing big enough to eat humans up there, and she has a very sexy voice. Also, the sound track to this movie is awesome. Picture the theme music from the A-Team meets the Munsters with a hint of 60’s Bond films, and then put the whole thing underwater so it warbles a little bit.

I’m not sure exactly why, but now there’s two choppers full of dudes with guns. They look like mercenaries. I'll bet that David Carradine sent them to kill the animals and also kill the scientists so there are no loose ends. There’s a scientist running through the woods and he’s intercepted by the mercenaries. Holy shit, the bad-ass soldier in charge sounds like he either has a speech impediment or he’s over-enunciating. "Tell me where those lizards are," he lisps. So now I know that David Carradine did send them. The scientist says, "I don't know. I’m just glad I made it out." Commander Impediment says "Yew dint int" and shoots him in the heart. He sounds a little like Tracy Morgan. He also has a lazy eye, so I’m not sure which one to look at. Then he radios to some other guys on his team who are walking through a different part of the jungle.

Did you ever notice that strange coincidence in movies like this where there always just happens to be a walkie-talkie or cell phone conversation going on when the monster attacks? I think there may be a law that says you have to hear monster attacks over a radio for them to be scary.

The other guys hear Dinocroc crashing through the woods, so they're ready. When Dinocroc is bearing down on them, they do what any superbly-trained mercenaries with high-powered automatic rifles would do - they fall backwards on their asses without firing a shot and totally get eaten. Turns out it might not have mattered, because when Dinocroc finds Captain Impediment and his team, they dump about 300 rounds of automatic fire right into its mouth, with no apparent adverse effect. They then throw a grenade at it, and figure out that it’s a little too tough for what they have on hand so they decide to run away and call in the extraction chopper. Of course, they stop near a pond or something to use their walkie talkies so I assume that they’ll be eaten, if not by Dinocroc then by Supergator, who I haven’t seen much of lately. I miss Supergator. We had some good times.

Enter hottie number 3. This is getting too confusing. Her name is Victoria and she sounds like an Aussie. She stops in to see David Carradine and kicks the shit out of his body guard for absolutely no reason at all. I will call her Victoria Kickass. She says there’s a problem and the mercenaries got themselves perished, so he tells her to call...."THE CAJUN." Holy shit, not The Cajun.

The Cajun looks like Matthew Mcconaughey dressed up like Crocodile Dundee, except less greasy than either. He looks way too clean to be "THE CAJUN" and he looks more like "THE AMBERCROMBIE." I will call him Ambercrombie Dundee, for short. He asks her what David Carradine wants him to kill….this time. (Cue ominous music)

Back to the agents. Fuck. I can’t keep track. Robinson wants secret agent boy to stay put and build a case. He also says that they can see from the satellite that someone demolished the lab.

Now we’re back to the Wild Angel cruising in her inflatable and looking at the shoreline. She has an amazing boat. Twin 50 horsepower engines, hard bottom, pontoon sides. Looks brand new. So of course, she stalls…I think that’s supposed to be some kind of foreshadowing, but then she starts it back up again. She meets up with secret agent boy just like the script told her to, and he's just fishing off the dock, wearing his ridiculous Hawaiian shirt. They talk.

Hey, his name is Paul and she’s Cassidy. She even has a stripper name. He offers to take a look at why her boat stalled, and for some reason finds out her prop is flattened. I'm not sure, since I'm not an outboard motor mechanic, but I don't think that automatically stalls your engine. He offers her a ride home. Turns out she’s a conservation officer with the fish and game department. She’s kind of cute. Maybe not so much stripper like. More like a surfer girl, only in a cop’s uniform. Like someone ordered a really fucked up strip-o-gram. He gives her the "what’s a pretty girl like you doing in a place like this" line and she says she’ll handcuff him and he says "Really. Is that a promise or a threat?" That’s the kind of stuff we’re dealing with here, but at least neither of them sounds like they’re gargling marbles like the dead mercenary with the lazy eye.

OK, now new hotties #4 and 5 are at the hotel pool talking about their upcoming helicopter ride to a hidden waterfall and you just know they are reptile food the instant you see them. I feel bad for them because neither of them can read. I know this because they are having a hell of a time reading their cue cards. I think if I turned the volume on the TV way up, I'd hear someone whispering their lines to them. Some skeevy guy starts hitting on hottie 5. She tells him to get lost but it’s not working. Just in time, Ambercrombie Dundee strolls up and pushes him in the pool with the sheer force of his awesomeness. OK, I’m kidding. He used his arm. He then tips his hat to hottie #5 and says "You have a nice day, ma’am." I shit you not. They only show her from the waist up, but judging from her eyes as she watches him walk away, I’m pretty sure her bikini bottoms exploded off of her in pleasure. He walks up to the Jerry the activities guy at the hotel and gets the info he needs for David Carradine's hunt.

Jesus, another character from central casting. This one’s in a limo and his name is Chaz Kingsley. He has sunglasses like Roy Orbison, and he’s on his cell to Jerry. I guess Chaz is taking the studio jet to the island. The activities guy says the fishing is "to die for." Har har. Chaz says "You know how I love my Tilapia." Which is a fresh water fish, so either bad writing or a little joke there. Chaz orders up a lot of stuff in advance for his regular Villa…cheeses and wines and food, and says, "Oh and Jer? Make sure you bring enough for three…if you catch my drift." Jer replies, "THAT I do, sir." Just in case you guys miss the subtlety, he’s planning on having a threesome. i didn't want you to miss that because it's pretty hard to pick up on it.

Now we’re back to Humpalong Cassidy and secret agent boy, who decided to break into David Carradine’s game preserve because the road is blocked by rocks and they can’t get the jeep through. Good plan.

Now we cut to new hotties 4 and 5 at the same waterfall/shallow pool in which Bruce and his girlfriend were chomped. I hate to see them go. We had so little time together. Right when you think they are SuperGator chow, they are surprised by the nature photographer, who explains that he thought they might be the sheriff. They freak a little, and ask him why anyone would need a sheriff out here, and Nature Photographer gets all creepy and he actually says, "No need to worry your pretty little heads."

Also, the girls decide that the best thing to do when surprised in the jungle by a strange, creepy man with greasy hair and a huge camera is to strip down and and have him take some sexy pictures of them. See? That's just bad decision-making right there.

Also a bad decision - He stands by the water to take his pictures. Note to self: I wonder what giant telephoto lenses taste like. I'll have to remember to ask SuperGator because he just had one. Then there’s lots of bikini running. If it were in slow motion, I’d think I was watching an old episode of Baywatch.

They stop running after a few seconds, and squat down looking at the water, because that’s what you do when you’re being chased by a giant carnivorous creature that lives in the fucking water. One of the says, "I can’t believe it. That poor guy. He was so cute."

I can’t make this up. It’s all true.

You know, on second thought, I think they might actually be fine standing by the water while trying to catch their breath.

OK, maybe not.

Now Humpalong Cassidy’s dad is visiting a farm. Something has been eating cows. I wonder what it could be? The farmer who looks like Jimmy Carter thinks it’s aliens, but I bet not.

Humpalong’s dad says, "Well if E.T. did it, he’s got one hell of an overbite." I freakin’ love the dialogue in this movie.

He tries to call Hump, but she’s flirting with secret agent boy who has been telling her up until this point that he’s an engineer. She says she doesn’t believe him so he folds under her brutal interrogation and says ok, you’re right, I’m a federal agent. "Sort of a spy, but for the good guys." He tells her that David Carradine is supposed to be doing crop research, but he’s been doing stuff he’s not supposed to. To prove it to her, he drives her out into a field that is full of giant…um….mushrooms. I shit you not. Mushrooms. That are two stories tall. I think they are the same mushrooms that the scriptwriter was on when he wrote this.

Victoria Kickass makes a phone call to David Carradine and then Amercrombie Dundee pulls up. In a mustang convertible. He jumps in a boat and Victoria Kickass decides to go with him, and he’s having none of it. He actually says, "I work alone. Listen, sister. There’s no way you’re gettin’ on this boat, and that’s final." So yeah, you know she’s going. She calls him a hillbilly and tells him he stinks, and he says, "You don’t have to flirt so hard." I almost shed a tear, it was so sweet.

He’s not doing it for the money, he says. He’s doing it for the challenge. I assume he is going to try to kill the creatures.

Cut back to Secret Agent Boy and Humpalong — he tells her that the government stumbled on a way to accelerate plant growth by using animal DNA, and they hired David Carradine to develop it.

Oh wait! The original Doc Hottie is running/limping down the dirt road yelling "Help me! Help me please!" They can tell she’s a scientist because it’s like a thousand degrees in the tropics and she’s still wearing her long white lab coat.

They all run to the jeep and pile in, then take off but…

Here comes Dinocroc,

Here comes Dinocroc,

Right down Dincroc Lane

Then Doc Hottie pulls a 6-shot revolver out of her purse and fires no less than 16 shots out of it. But apparently imaginary bullets make imaginary holes because it doesn’t even slow him down. Also, it just so happens that the dirt road the Jeep and Dinocroc are on runs right next to a river that Ambercrombie Dundee and Victoria Kickass are riding down in their boat, and so Vicky takes the wheel while Ambercrombie Dundee attempts to fire exploding crossbow bolts at Dinocroc, and misses completely.

"Well that took care of him for now," says Ambercrombie Dundee. "So?" Victoria Kickass says. "So I guess," replies Ambercrombie Dundee, with dramatic pause, "play-time is over." Yes, I hate when my play time is interrupted by explosive crossbow bolts.

Now we’re back at the hospital, where Doc Hottie wakes up in bed with perfect hair and exquisitely applied makeup, surrounded by X people, where X=(everyone who hasn’t been eaten) - (David Carradine + Jerry, the hotel guy). It's like the closing scene in The Wizard of Oz up in here.

Then Doc Hottie gives her long drawn-out explanation of the science behind the giant mushrooms and how she and her brother did all sorts of cool things until David Carradine said he'd triple their funding if they do one thing for him…do a little testing on some live animals. He picks out crocodiles because they aren't susceptible to human diseases.

She and her brother get into a fight and he convinces her to go for it in order to get the funding.

She's conflicted, because all she wants to do is feed the world with giant mushrooms. I think she's probably done a better job of feeding Dinocroc and SuperGator so far.

Then she explains to everyone how at feeding time something bad happened and then, just in case we forgot, we’re given a three-minute, sepia-toned, slow motion montage of the open scenes of the movie, where all the scientist mcnuggets get eaten. Then everyone leaves the hospital room to "give the little lady a chance to rest." Whereupon Victori Kickass gives Doc Hottie the stink eye on the way out.

Oh my god the acting in this movie is horrible. HORRIBLE. Where the fuck is Supergator? He probably made scale for this movie. He's like an extra.

OH LOOK, it’s that dick CHAZ with his two hotties. I will call them Hotties #6 and 7.

They are drinking champagne in the hot tub. He’s telling them there might be a "part" for them in his next movie, but they have to be able to scream convincingly. I have a funny feeling they’ll be doing that shortly. He tells Hottie #7 that she has to give it her all. He’s coaching her. Telling her to imagine the worst nightmare imaginable. To feel the fear in her soul.

Fuck, what was that noise? Oh, that’s just Dinocroc stopping by for a steaming bowl of scream soup.

I just stopped fast-forwarding through the commercials because I saw something that looked like we were back at Chaz’s pool, but it was just a 7UP commercial with David Spade. Where’s Dinocroc when you really need him?

Uh oh. Victoria Kickass is skulking around Doc Hottie’s room again. She picks up the phone and calls the nurse up to ICU and then sneaks into Doc Hottie’s room with a syringe of something that she injects into her. I was hoping it was growth hormone, but it I think it’s just poison. Just then secret agent boy comes back and catches her in the act..but remember when she kicked the shit out of David Carradine's body guard for fun? Yeah, that skill comes in handy again. She kicks his ass and runs. Just then, Ambercrombie Dundee shows up and is in pursuit!

Now Secret Agent Boy is calling his boss. Spilling the beans.

Ambercrombie Dundee is back, but empty-handed. His plan is to go after the monsters. Secret Agent Boy wants to call in the military, but Ambercrombie Dundee isn’t down with that. He says, "I know lizards. They’re pretty smart. They know when they’re being hunted."

His proposal: Alligators and Crocodiles are mortal enemies. He wants to bring them together, then take out the winner when it’s most vulnerable.

How? Well first they get a chopper and load it up with equipment. Their main ace in the hole: A forward looking infra-red unit. They plan to track the lizards by their heat signature. Apparently, when Ambercrombie Dundee says he knows lizards, what he means by that is he has no fucking clue about lizards, since last time I checked they were cold blooded and have the heat signature of a parked car.

They’re off! Flying through the air with the greatest of 80’s synth music.

Now there's an inexplicable cut to a movie tour bus full of old people looking at the ruins of an old hotel. I am sensing that this might be their last tour.

Our guys in the chopper see SuperGator, and then they fly back to the base for explosives. They’re going to run it through a tunnel and then trap it. But Ambercrombie Dundee says they have to hurry, because the lizards hunt during the hottest part of the day. When secret agent boy says, "Where do the hunt?" the answer is, "Wherever there’s people," which, in this case, means "wherever there’s a movie tour bus" which we cut back to now.

Blonde hottie #8 is the tour guide, and she and a gaggle of dried up beef jerky tourists start walking around the hotel, and they leave the bus driver alone for a little nap.

Warning: Objects in mirror are larger than they appear:

Secret Agent Boy’s boss is waiting at David Carradine’s for Victoria Kickass. FREEZE! FBI! yells the boss.

They don't freeze, and Vicky gets a bullet, while David Carradine fakes a heart attack. Or David Carradine actually has a heart attack -- I can’t tell. He doesn’t look good, but then he started out that way. His eyes are still open. Alive? Nope. Dead.

Now we cut back to the tour, where all the tour attendees are apparently deaf because they didn’t hear a thing when SuperGator jumped up on top of the tour bus and squashed it flat about 50 feet behind them.

Hey! It’s the classic "Standing with your back to the water" pose! Someone take our pic—

Nom nom nom...

(Hey, did someone lose a camera? There's a really nice one in here.)

Then the rest of the tour crowd is terrified and all like, "HOLY SHIT! RUN!" except for the one asian girl in the middle. She’s like "HI MOM! I’M IN A MOVIE!"

Humpalong and her dad pull up at the hotel as people are running away screaming into the woods. "The gator must be around here somewhere," he says. He's has one of those brilliantly deductive detective minds.

He radios in for backup, and then this dialogue happens:

He dramaticlly peels off his shades and says, "Are you ready for this?"

"I’m your daughter, aren’t I?"

"Damn right you are. I’m lucky to have you. I should tell you more often, but I’m a cranky son of a bitch."

"Dad…"

"Save it Cass. We got work to do."

Awesome.

Their shooting has no absolutely no effect, so they formulate a logical plan which involves her running for the jeep while he stays behind to sacrifice himself.

He says to SuperGator, "Here’s lookin’ at you, kid." And then kills it. No, I’m kidding. He gets eaten. SuperGator then chases Humpalong's jeep down the road. I did not know that alligators could gallop, but clearly they can.

She’s luring SuperGator to where Ambercrombie Dundee and secret agent boy are waiting with Dinocroc, who is picking the last bit of Chaz from between his teeth.

It’s time for the showdown. Dinocroc and SuperGator see each other, and start to fight.

Dinocroc clearly has the upper hand here. He jumps up and face kicks SuperGator like a fucking ninja turtle. Now’s he’s dragging SuperGator around. SuperGator finally gets a shot in and tosses Dinocroc into something that starts conveniently spewing massive quantities of CGI dust.

Ambercrombie Dundee has a single explosive charge left, because they are so well-prepared. Secret agent boy's theory is that sometimes dust explodes, so someone will have to run up to the bin that is spewing dust and throw the explosive in. That will explode the dust and along with it, both creatures. Before the charge explodes, he will jump in a conveniently placed tub of water to protect himself. This plan sounds flawless.

Ambercrombie Dundee is about 6’5" tall, and a clear athlete. Secret agent boy is about 5’6" tall, and looks like he sits at a desk all day and gets short of breath walking up the stairs. So you can guess who gets the explosive. Yep, secret agent boy.

"Make sure you hit the deck when I throw this."

"What about you?"

"You see that trough out there? I'm hoping there's enough rainwater in there to keep me safe."

"What if there isn’t?"

"Well… just make sure they bury me in this shirt."

KABOOM! Both monsters are toast. It reminded me a little of this clip.

You can almost hear the director yell, "OK People! That's a wrap! We're out of money!"

Afterwards, as Ambercrombie Dundee, secret agent boy and Humpalong Cassidy walk away, three abreast, into the sunset, the movie ends with Humpalong's immortal words, "I’m glad that’s over with."

Cut to the basement of the old hotel where (you guessed it) we hear the pathetic mewling sounds of...

LITTLE BABY SUPERGATORS.

They sound like newborn kittens. Who knew?

Do you guys just like me? Or do you *like me* like me?

I created a new Facebook page for my book. If you get a chance to hit the little "Like" button, I'd be forever grateful. I'm not sure what I'm doing, exactly, but I'm trying to do a little "grass roots" marketing, and unfortunately for you all, you're the only grass I have. Thanks!

Sex and Acid. These two things don't mix. Except on my blog.

I was perusing CNN today while I was waiting for my computer to finish getting boned by Radia, and after I read about the horrible shooting in Arizona, I stumbled upon an article with the title "Despite Claiming Abstinence, Young Adults Test Positive for STDs."

My first thought was of Inigo Montoya. "You keep using that word - abstinence. I do not think it means what you think it means."

To give you the gist of it, the study involved 14,000 young people who were tested for chlamydia, gonorrhea and trichomoniasis. I don't even know what that last one is, but it sounds like something you get from eating undercooked pork.

The funniest reason the researchers gave for their odd results was that the survey respondents "may have simply forgotten that they had sex."

What?

I suppose it's technically possible to be so drunk or wasted that you don't remember having sex, but when I was a young adult, I got laid so infrequently that wasn't something that really slipped my mind, regardless of my level of intoxication. When I actually succeeded in having sex, I walked around for weeks afterward, remembering it with amazing clarity and detail. I always managed to remain STD-free so I guess I led a pretty sheltered life.

When I first saw the headline on this next one, I thought, "Big Deal. Some people like to do that kind of shit when they're on spring break."

But no, he really tripped and fell. In actual acid. The kind that eats flesh and bone. Two hundred gallons of sulfuric acid spilled because a "pipe broke during delivery to the casino."

First of all, WTF? Why is the casino having vats of acid delivered? Is that how the get rid of people who can't cover their gambling debts? Maybe it's how they keep people from swimming in the fountains. I have no idea. Second of all, I can't believe the story just sort of glossed over that bit. They write the story like, "Oh yeah, everyone knows about the tanker truck acid deliveries. That's not news."

OK, I'm off to Google it so I can sleep tonight.

p.s. - if you are one of the wonderful people who bought my book, I'd love it if you could post a review on Amazon, Barnes & Noble or GoodReads. Thanks!

I've got gas and first gear for two cars.

I am totally getting a set of these for my Honda next winter.

Stay out of my way. I'm warning you now.

Doin' it all for the Nookie.

I figured there might be one or two of you out there with Nooks, so I put The Snitch, Houdini and Me up on the Barnes & Noble e-book site for your downloading pleasure. (If you're in the market for one, you might want to see if there are Barnes & Noble coupons you can use to get a deal.)

I haven't tested it on a real live Nook yet, so if anything looks off, please let me know. Thanks!

Mom, something smells like burning.

Hot metal. Melting plastic. Chemicals. Poisonous fumes. Everything a mother could want for her child. I realize it sounds as if I'm talking about some Chinese sweat factory full of ten-year-olds working 14 hours a day, but I'm not. I'm talking about me, when I was a kid.

Let me give you an example. Say you're living alone in a shitty room at a boarding house, and all you have to cook on is a hot plate. One day, you get a hankering for some squeeze cheese for your crackers, but all you have is a block of american. You figure you can melt some, but you don't have a pan or cups or anything else since you just moved in and mostly use the hot plate to heat a teapot full of water for your ramen noodles.

You rummage through some old crap a previous tenant left in the closet, and since she was a crazy old lady with six cats, you stumble on a couple of cat-shaped candy molds underneath a stack of newspapers from 1975.

"Hmmm," you think to yourself, "I'll just melt up the cheese in these things. You rinse the mouse turds out of the molds, stick a piece of wire hanger through the holes, lay them on the hot plate and drop a few blocks of cheese in. A few minutes later, right before you get to dippin' your Ritz, the phone rings and it's your parole officer wanting to know where you were last Tuesday night. You get all flustered trying to remember, and you don't want your cheese to burn so you pull the candy mold off the plate, burning your fingers in the process because you forgot to use the coat hanger.

"Fucker!" you yell, forgetting who you're talking to. By the time you convince your parole officer that you weren't talking to him, and that last Tuesday you didn't answer the phone because you went down to the adult video store and rented The DaVinci Load and Forrest Hump, the cheese has cooled in your mold and you've just re-invented a best-selling children's toy from the 60's and 70's called Creepy Crawlers:

Granted, you've got congealed cheese cats instead of rubbery bugs, so technically you've invented the toy my brother Snitch had -- Incredible Edibles:

Incredible Edibles was basically the same idea -- heat up goop in molds -- but since The Snitch's life revolved around food, it was only fitting that he wanted toys he could eat. I think if someone told him about edible underwear, he would have gone crazy with excitement for all the wrong reasons.

The main problem with the Incredible Edibles toy was the cost of the consumables. My brother would bake bugs like most people bake brownies. My mother could give him an entire set of new flavor packs and they'd be cooked up and eaten by the end of the day. He's the only kid I knew who could ruin his appetite manufacturing edible bugs. He would have been better off just eating the raw goop right from the foil pack. I don't even know what the ingredients were, but when you're eating something called "goop" that's the color of antifreeze, it's probably not great for you.

Another one of my toys that could give you third degree burns was the Strange Change machine. The basic premise was that you'd take these little colored rectangular-shaped pieces of plastic and heat them in the "Time Chamber," and they would expand into dinosaurs and bugs and all sorts of other things, depending upon the sets you purchased. You never knew what was going to appear since all the cubes looked alike. I can still distinctly remember the thrill of watching the pterodactyl claw pop free of the cube, my face inches from the dome as I inhaled the toxic fumes of melted plastic. To this day when I smell burning wire insulation or overheated electronics, I instantly think, "I wonder who left their Strange Change machine plugged in?"

After the creatures reached their full potential, you could take them out of the oven and let them harden, or you could put them in the integral vise and squash them back down to a cube again. Of course this never really worked well, so instead of a featureless colored cube, you ended up with what looked like a pterodactyl that had pissed off the Russian Mafia and ended up in a car crusher. Eventually the creatures became brittle and burnt and would hardly crush at all. You'd release them from the vise and they'd just sort of expand slowly and then harden into some weird shape. My grandmother would see my pterodactyl and be like, "What do you have there? Is that a bird doing yoga?" and then I'd realize the mystery was gone and I'd throw the burnt ones out.

After a while you couldn't get new refills for it, and since a Strange Change machine without refills is nothing but a space heater, we decided to see what would happen if we tried using other stuff. Most stuff either didn't melt, or melted too much. I think the wax lips finally killed it.

I guess it really was magic.