Super! Madonna! Pop!

Today is the day!!!!

Such a Good Cat!

MEOW!



I was thinking about Toni the Cat today. I've heard lots of stories about him. He's such a good cat!

(Toni belongs to Bull Roar's favorite reader. Thumbs up to Gert!)

Found at Sea!

Wow!

Last March when Pam was visiting New York we found a bottle in the surf on Coney Island. Alas, there were no desperate pleas from someone stranded on a tropical island or from some victims of pirates (arrr!), but we decided to put in a message ourselves. We came up with a little "Lost At Sea" statement and made up a hotmail address, wrote it up on a scrap piece of paper, stuck it in the bottle, and cast it off the pier into the briny sea!

We weren't sure if anybody would ever find our bottle, let alone the message. The bottle was quite worn and seemed less than satisfactory at keeping out water. As soon as we threw it in, we thought water would seep in, sinking the bottle to oceanfloor and ruining the piece of paper with our message on it. But we did it anyway. We filmed the launch and soon thereafter Pam went back home and created the hotmail account just in case.

June.

Pam calls me leaving me a voicemail. What she tells me makes me jump up and down. Someone found our bottle and the message inside and responded back to us! Here's what he said:

"Hello,

I am from Muncie, Indiana and was visiting New York City in May when I
found
your message. I was very excited to say the least. Is this part of a
big
project? How many bottles did you send? Where did you send them from?

Please reply!

Dylan W."


How exciting!

I Don't Exist

The United States Postal Service has randomly decided to wipe me out of existence. My incoming mail, all of a sudden, has been finding its way back to its senders. I am now no one. You are not reading this blog.

SLUDGE!

Lesson learned: Don't EVER drink out of NYC public drinking fountains!

Last night I was strolling along the Hudson River Park Walkway and I got thirsty. Conveniently, I found a drinking fountain ("bubbler" in Wisconsinese) and let it run for quite a long time to run out the impurities and such. I waited a bit more, satisfied with the water's coldness and clarity, I bent down and took a few gulps. All of a sudden, I was choking on some horrible sludge! Yack! This slimy mysterious grey-brown goo that must have released its hold from the linings of the plumbing just in time for me to take a drink. Luckily I instantly gagged and spit it out, but it scares me to think what this glop really was!

Beware the SLUDGE!

I Think I Just Got "Love-Shacked!"

Yesterday, while I was thrifting on 17th St., I really think I got the once-over by Fred Schneider from the B-52's! I'm pretty sure it was him! I was in one of those overpriced thrift-shops of Manhattan, where the proprietors are able to charge $50 for an old pair of dog-chewed sneakers only because they are in Manhattan, and I realized that the guy wearing grandma cherry-red knit pants over at the cash register checking out kept checking ME out. I was like, ohmygod, that's Fred Schneider. I ohmygodded this because I haven't seen one single celebrity out on the streets of New York since I moved here, I expected to spot many many famous folks, and I just haven't. Anyways, it could have been him. I am totally sure of it because I heard a verbal exchange between him an the lady charging him for his finds. It was an overtly annoying, yet infectiously gay, southern man's voice that only could be his.

"LOVESHACK, BABY!!!!"

I didn't buy anything at that shop.

Hot Dog!

Today was my first day at my new job here in Brooklyn (in the heart of Williamsburg). I'm serving weiners! So much better than my last job. Free food, cool co-workers, and easy-going atmosphere. I bonded with the girl who trained me today over the fact that we both have worked for the adult entertainment industry (dirty bookstores) in the past. When you can comfortably let your guard down enough on the first day, enough to bring up entertaining edible panties and dildo-buying pervert stories while putting together hot dog orders, you know you have an alright job!

WTF Moment

Last week after meeting my friends Brian and Todd out at the Beauty Bar where we caught a listening party for the newly remixed version of Herb Alpert's classic "Whipped Cream and Other Delights" we walked on down to the East Village. First Todd had to buy a bucket of chicken. While Brian and I patiently waited outside on the corner for him, along came this major WTF moment: someone was moving one of those prefab-houses down 2nd Ave.!!!!

Really, WTF!!!!

Questions were raised immediately. First of all, who would have the guts, or be stupid enough to drive this oversize, wide-load through the middle of Manhattan? Pure insanity!!! Then we wondered where this house was going to be planted. Could it have been someone's construction office? I thought, highly unlikely. It had a porch! Construction offices are usually one of those mobile homes up on blocks, never anything fancy. This was definitely a house, someone's new home!

Just as we thought we had digested the thought of this unusual sight, what happens? There amongst all the swarms of taxi-cabs and delivery trucks comes another prefab!!! Could there be a new mobile home park here in NYC? I was trying to picture one being created in Battery Park. All the tourists coming back from the Statue of Liberty will be on Manhattan-bound ferries and the first thing they'll see will be rows and rows of prefab houses.

I'm Soooo Gay

It's true! I'm watching and laughing uproariously at Kathy Griffin's new show on Bravo, "My Life on the D-List." She auctioned off a chance to hang out with her for a weekend on the Ebay. The high bid ended up being $28,000, but the winner declined - as did the next 40 bidders in line. Some 20 year old kid, who didn't even seem to care, ended up with the prize. Poor Kathy!

PS: I really want to become some obscure celebrity - though, known well enough that everyone still makes fun of me. It's my new goal. Gotta start making connections!

Some Good News (Yay!)

Found an inexpensive quality scanner on Craigslist today! (Commence: the happy dance!) I took a little train trip all the way to the 30th Ave. stop in Queens to get it. It was the first time that I stepped foot in any part of that bourough that wasn't part of an airport. Very lovely neighborhood! If you like to hang out at open-air Greek cafes/restaurants whose televisions all play the same European Football game you have quite a selection to choose from.

Guess, it's time to get funky with my scanner!

Memo to Everyone: Quit "F"-ing Up!!!

Frustration has taken a relentless super-overwhelming hold of me. I've spent most of my waking day on the goddam phone trying to clear up multiple fuck-ups. ARGH!!!!!

1. Carol from MATC in Madison called this morning to inform me that since I didn't show up to yesterday's orientation session for my registration to its architecture program that I would be dropped from the roster. Last week, I got the okay from their department that, since I'm out of state, it was alright for me to call them on June 16th to register my classes over the phone. "Oh, I must have forgot to pass that note on."

2. Discover Card charged me an "over-the-phone" fee last month when I payed my bill. However, they decided to charge me for it this month and added a nice little extra finance charge to it. Money-sucking weasels.

3. Guess what? I checked my mailbox again today for important mail my mother forwarded my way from Wisconsin. Not there. The last letter she mailed me got sent back to her because she forgot to put my apartment number in the address. The postal service couldn't figure out which box of the THREE obviously labeled mailboxes for my building was mine and it got sent back to my mom. She corrected the problem and, with another letter, remailed it - over two weeks ago. Where is my mail????

4. I got hired by this cafe in Williamsburg (Yay! A new job!) but the two owners forgot which one of them was supposed to call me with my new work schedule. I finally got a hold of them to see if I was even hired. "Oh, yeah!"


Gee-whiz, what's next?!?

New Blog!

I've started a new blog, The Quarter Bin as I promised all you Bull Roar fans earlier here in a prior post. It'll be a forum where I can review and rant about new and old comics alike. I'll be able to compile lots of geeky lists of my favorite super heroes, super villians, and super pets! If you're at all interested in reading about my obsession, you're welcome to join me.

However, beware!!!! Nerdness is right around the corner!

An Audrey-English Dictionary

My little niece Audrey is learning how to talk! At the moment she seems to be eschewing proper English vernacular for a more toddler-based lexicon. Here's a listing of her vocabulary with translation in the event you cross paths with her:

woof-woofs =dogs

quack-quacks =ducks

hello =telephone

jew =orange juice (no pulp)

baba =bottle

cheese =any brand of digital camera, 5 mega-pixels or more

beebee =Big Bird!

Preparations for Madonna's Confessions Tour

My roommate lent me two dvd productions of some Madonna concerts of the past: The Girlie Show and the Drowned World Tour.

Madonna's 1993 Girlie Show was hard to watch. I felt like fast-forwarding through most of it. This was the time when Madonna was a self-obsessed mega-whore (more so than usual) and her infatuation didn't affect this purile romp kindly at all.

After suffering through this self-important debacle, I was reconsidering the Drowned World Tour of 2001 thinking I may see more of the same. As soon as it started though, a different type of Madonna showed up. A self-assured rock chick who was fun to watch and who made the music the priority. So much so, the dvd replayed itself several times as I listened along.

From what I hear, Madonna rocks out a bit on the newest tour she's out on now. I have an extra ticket available to sell if any of you knows of anyone who'd like to go with me...

Redrum! Redrum!

I am 33 years old and I just, finally, watched Stanley Kubrick's "The Shining!"

It was incredible and horrifying on so many levels. I loved the tracking shots and the way Kubrick implemented the soundtrack and musical score to heighten the scariness of it all. I'd go more into it, but I don't want to spoil it for others who have waited just as long, and now indeed longer, than me to watch it.

I do want to mention though:

God, Shelley Duvall is sooooo ugly that she clearly suffers from what I call the Ramona Syndrome: so ugly, she's beautiful. It's rather obvious that nobody in the seventies gave a hoot about looking good. The uglier the better! I watched it with my Puerto Rican roommate who kept screeching about her big ugly eyes and teeth whenever Shelley was on screen. I'm going to join her fanclub.

As I watched the movie, I kept thinking about the parody of it that appeared on one of the Simpson's Halloween specials. It's funny when spoofs can be so educational and informing. Bravo, Simpsons!

Question: Is every building that is supposedly haunted here in America built over an Indian burial ground??? And if so, when we run out of Indian burial grounds, will new hauntings be associated with homes constructed over Catholic, Baptist, or Scientologist burial grounds / cemetaries?

The Grey Cat

Sometimes when I look out my kitchen I can see an easy-going grey cat strolling through the unkempt maze of overgrown rose bushes and broken sidewalk squares in the yard next door. I think she actually lives a couple buildings down, but I've noticed she has a Benji-style array of fence-holes, abandoned lumber, and construction buckets to implement in her comings and goings to this yard. Sometimes when I see her sunning herself I beckon down to her, "Hello, Grey Cat!" and she turns around, finds me peering out my third story window and gives me a chirp back. She reminds me a lot of my first cat Skeeter, who I also called "the Grey Cat."

In Memory of Kleisty

It's been about a week now that I found out that my good friend Pat Kleist passed away. I have been in shock about it this whole time, and up to now, I didn't really know what to say. Pat's been a friend of mine for a long time. We go way back to my first days as a freshman at the UW in Madison. Then there were the infectuously fun years where a group of us lived and operated the Madison Museum of Bathroom Tissue and the Down Below Lounge out of adjoining tenement-hole apartments. Since then, time and distance have separated our groups to an extant, but not our friendships and memories. Pat Kleist, you were a great friend and person. You will definitely be missed.

Taboos Are a Regional, Cultural Thing

Guess there isn't a taboo on public nose-picking here in NYC. You could be sitting on a train and someone sitting across from you could be digging for gold and look you right in the eyes while doing it. Gross!

I see this almost everyday. If you come visit me here in NYC and you want to fit in, just thrust your finger up your nose! No one will know you're from anywhere else.

Comic Book Signing

Yesterday there was a huge DC Comics writer signing session at the Times Square Midtown Comics location. Geoff Johns was there. As were Mark Waid, Greg Rucka, and J.B. Jones. Grant Morrison was to be there too, but he cancelled. No matter, I didn't go.

First of all, I think autographs are really retarded. "Hey! I saw you on the teevee or something! Can you put your name on this here piece of paper? Gawrsh!" What does that prove? Especially nowadays when you can just go on the internet and buy them off of eBay. Stupid.

Secondly, and more importantly, I don't know how I feel about these big-time DC writers right now. Sure, they all write some interesting stories and I'm sure they're all wonderful people, but...I'm afraid my love of new comic books is being slowly strangled. It's a situation that's been building up for years, the continuity of the DC universe and it's characters (such as Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, Shazam, Plastic Man, Flash, etc.) is morphing into a tightly interwoven mess. In order to follow any character's adventures you have to know what happened in issue number this or issue number that. It's been that way for awhile and we comic-nerds love it, but it's become increasingly so, to the point now, where even now there is a weekly series called "52." Along with this series, which by the way all five of the writers above are working on, you have to know what's going on in every other super-hero comic they put out. You end up having to buy about five million comics a month! Then it doesn't help when all this continuity you've been reading and collecting into is all of a sudden wiped clean and started all over. It's like, "Um, we don't like this new origin of Dr. Fate any more than the last couple Dr. Fate origins we had, so, um, let's start it over! But instead of having this character be Dr. Fate we're going to kill him off and start off with another version. Yeah! Screw the guys who've been reading this for years. Woo-hoo!" You see, I'm a comic-geek and I've been able to follow a lot of the comings and goings of characters. I could tell you the origins of Hawkman or Wonder Woman or Krypto the Superdog. But things have gotten so rewritten and revamped so many times and all the stories depend on the happenings of other stories that even I am totally confused.

There are three things I've come to the conclusion I must do:

1. Keep reading some of these comics because I am truly addicted and could never give them up completely.

2. Start creating my own stories. Ones that I will enjoy and treasure and not feel ripped off by.

3. Start a comic-book blog about all the comics I have read. There I can go off about what I love and hate about the medium without boring my Bull Roar fans who couldn't give a rat's ass about Aquaman and Mera getting back together or who the new Wonder Woman is. (Personally, I think it could be Sue Dibny, the dead wife of Elongated Man, who rumor has it, is about to be resurrected. Hmmm!) Any motions to second this idea?

Cruel Dreams

Another dream to report:

I was an audience participant of "The Price Is Right" which was being taped on a dirty subway platform here in NYC. When someone was called to "come on down" that person had to jump over the highly-electrified tracks to the other side of the platform.

Then I found myself in some small southeastern Wisconsin town like Mayville or Oconomowoc where I was admiring the architecture of a transplanted German castle that rose to splendid heights in the midst of the town's business district. There was a dated education center in the basement that showed documentaries on old televisions and tested visitors with a punch-card system.

In both parts of this dream I was actively and voraciously using my now-broken digital camera. My dream seemed to be edited in a collage-montage of pictures I was framing up with my view-screen. I can still recall some amazing shots I took of some of the castle's towers and turets. There was some incredible perspective. Kind of a bummer it was only a dream!

mobilis in mobili

Earlier this week I finished reading Jules Verne's "20000 Leagues Under the Sea." It is a book, that, strangely, I've never read before. A few years ago when Verne's lost manuscript "Paris in the Twentieth Century" was found and published it became one of my favorite books. I think how natural it would have been to move on to other Verne material, but I never did. Also, being the huge Aquaman dork that I am, one would think that I would have read up on other famous underwater tales, but once again, I didn't.

Anyway, I started reading it and I was soon aware of the similarities of the three protagonists stuck on Nemo's Nautilus and me riding the train everyday to work in the dark deep file-basements of the evil law office in Mineola. While the Professor Aronnax and his aide Conseil were busy classifying aquatic life into animal species, subspecies, classes, and orders; I was slaving away looking for boxes within stacks by room searching for files and sub-documents within them. They had more fun than I ever did though. Luckily, my "adventure" only lasted two short (but emotionally-scarring) weeks while they were trapped onboard Nemo's vessel for approxiamately a year. Whew!

As for my next book I'm trying to decide between finding what happens to Nemo by reading Verne's "Mysterious Island" or moving onto another great seafaring tale, "Moby-Dick." I've heard through the great internet grapevine that the stories of the two Captains, Nemo and Ahab, are often researched in comparitive lit classes. I could pretend that I'm back in college!

Backup Plan

Thanks to posting my resume on Craigslist it looks like I might have a new job! Guess I'm going to be waiting tables at some hipster diner that serves organic hot-dogs. It's a place called Sparky's and it has two locations set up in New York: one in Williamsburg, the part of Brooklyn that reminds me of Milwaukee, but populated by a bunch of scenesters; and one in Soho. The owners had me come in yesterday in order to get acquainted with their setup. Seems pretty cool. It's one of those places where none of the chairs and tables match.

Points about this job that will make me happy:

1. I can wear whatever I want (although... they will smell of yummy, yummy hot-dogs and french fries at the ends of my shifts).

2. The shifts are only 6 hours long.

3. Free food!

4. I will be in control of the music. Got to start thinking of playlists!

5. I won't be spending $12 and three hours a day on a train to and from stupid Long Island anymore.

6. It's part-time. That's not the best news for my wallet; however, I'm just not full-time material at the moment.


Crap. I probably just jinxed my chances of getting this job. I should have blogged about this after I actually get assigned work-shifts!

Sweet Freedom

I quit my hellacious temp job! Yay!

Here's an excerpt from an email I sent out to a friend, I know I'm repeating myself a bit here from an earlier post, but one does that when they get really miffed:

"I had a job and then I quit that job! It was the worst I ever had (and I had some clunkers in my time)! It was a temp position assigned to me at some insurance company (which really was a personal injury law firm, not sure how that happened) an hour's train-ride into the hell of Long Island. It was my job, I assumed since I got no training, to retrieve and put away files all day. The files were in the basement. The basement had five rooms, in which some, the lights worked. In those rooms were a total of about 2000 boxes stacked about seven high in no particular order. It was in those boxes that a file I was sent down to get could possibly be. If it wasn't, I had to go back up and say, "It wasn't there." Then someone would tell me that I had to find it anyway. I would spend hours searching all the offices and cubicles.

The girls there all talked like Amy Fisher and had really big butts. They liked to enhance their asses by wearing see-thru slacks which high-lited their underwear of choice: the itty-bitty thong. Gross. (I didn't know thongs were made in XXXXL, now I know.) They also liked to exclaim absolutely out of nowhere that they needed their pussies laid.

I had to ask permission any and every time I had use the restroom!

Nobody would ever give me a pen or pencil or anything to write with. I found a pen on the sidewalk one day and that became my work pen.

I knew it was my WORST job when, the last time I couldn't find a file, this woman threw the file-order back at me swearing and demanding me to find it and I looked at her and in front of ten people I uttered, "JESUS FUCKING CHRIST" and no one even cared! (Maybe because that was THE MOST NEGATIVE workplace ever. I heard exclamations like, "I'm gonna fucking leave this fucking place if that goddamn bitch shows her ugly goddamn face in here one more time. I've had it with her fucking shit!!!" and "I'm gonna kill that know-it-all bastard!!!" almost every ten minutes. So about 48 times a day.)

Yesterday (Monday morning) when I woke up I called my job agent in Manhattan and told her I wasn't ever going there again. She yelled at me, "Oh SHIT!" and told me that she had someone waiting for an interview and would call me right back. I knew that she wouldn't call, and - she didn't."

That's the last of I've heard from the AppleOne Experience. Good riddance!