Subway Poster 092907

Originally uploaded by chinese_fashion

I started this blog back in 2005. At the time I figured that if I just kept banging on my laptop, eventually someone would recognize my nascent brilliance and offer me a sack of money. That person would also be able to reach through a hole in time and pull out a finished copy of a book, by me, and drop it on the desk next to the money.

Then I’d never have to work pouring concrete driveways or slinging pizzas ever again. While it’s true that I stopped working in both the concrete and pizza industries shortly after starting this blog, the rest turned out a little differently. I haven’t seen a fricking dime of profit from this thing, and nobody’s offered to turn this into a book. Apparently, to write a book you have to do something more than just type whenever you feel like it.

Here’s the thing: while I’ve always wanted to be a writer, I’ve also always wanted to be in a rock band. My early efforts in that regard were similarly misguided. But if there’s one thing I’ve learned from storytelling, it’s that making a crowd feel something I’ve written — like a whole, big, crowded rock club — that ‘s pretty much the best feeling in the world. If you could chop up the laughter of several hundred strangers and line it up on a mirror, cocaine would go out of business and the would be no more killing in Mexico.

I was reading “Our Band Could Be Your Life” on the subway a few weeks ago and it hit me like Galileo’s apple. I’ve got the Internet platform and the storytelling skills – and now we’ve got Brad and Cyndi on board, two hilarious, exciting and weird burlesque performers AND storytellers, as well as D.Billy’s peerless art, design, and production abilities.

We’re turning this blog into a live show and we’re going on tour. I don’t know how and I don’t know when exactly, but I’d expect to see some of you people outside New York City by spring 2011.

That’s where we need your help.
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Congratulations! You have successfully built a time machine and are back in 1890′s.

You’re conversing at the local pub, when the guy next to you says:

“So I there was with my bags of mystery, feeding my potato trap, when a blatherskite asks me to change a wild cat. I said, “bad scran to you!”

How do you understand what he had just told you?

Luckily, you have downloaded this free American Slang Dictionary written in 1891 from Archive.org.

The American Slang Dictionary

Blatherskite: (Irish), a wild and foolish talker and boaster, a cheap orator.

Wild-cat (Am.), Country bank-notes of more than doubtful reputation. Also known as Red Dog and Stumptail.

Potato Trap (Eng.), The Mouth.

Bags of Mystery, Sausages.

Bad Scran To You: (Irish), May you have bad food.

As far as I’m concerned, Tumblr’s purpose on this Earth is to provide us with weird celebrity Photoshop memes.
(See Selleck Waterfall Sandwich, or its cousin Bea Arthur Mountains Pizza.)
Here now are selections from the most recent herd of pixel-mashings making their way across the internet landscape, leaving cognitive dissonance and sexual confusion in their wake… Pinup RDJ:

By way of explanation, their creator offers:
“Vintage pinups are the pinnacle of art. Robert Downey Jr is the pinnacle of sexy. It’s not rocket science.”

Previously in WTF imagery:
Chihuahua on Cheeseburgers
Doctored Science Fair Photos
Sci-Fi Fans at Home
Captain America Brushes His Teeth With Whiskey

So, our current show is Standard Issues, but before that, we had Stories At The Creek. The final Stories At The Creek had the theme superheroes. So we couldn’t have chosen a better person to close out that show. Mild mannered, then he gets on the stage, takes off his glasses and transforms. That is Steve Zimmer. That is why he wins so many MothSLAMS and brings so many people out to our shows when we book him. Anyway, here he is.

Oh, and check out my other blog. It is early in the morning and I am arranging a coffee driven spiral of pop culture fixations.

Now, Steve Zimmer.

Since seeing the Episode of the Six Million Dollar man in which Steve Austen battled Bigfoot (Played by Ted Cassidy), I have been fascinated with the Legend of Bigfoot.

As a kid I was intrigued by the fact that a monster COULD exist, and so I went to my Jr High School library and took out a book called The Search for Bigfoot. Written by Peter Byrne – whose bragged in his introduction that he was “…the only man alive who has made a profession out of this extraodinary search and through the support  of many dedicated associates and sponsors, continues that profession on a full time basis twelve months of the year.”

I found that just as fascinating as the monster. What kind of person decides “I am going to hunt Bigfoot for a living!” And my family thought I was plotting a life of silly risks wanting to be an actress!

Since age 12, I have watched hundreds of hours of cryptozoology programming in which Bigfoot is never ever found. If I am stressed, the thing that will distract me more than anything is Bigfoot stuff. This mild obsession has been my solace during many a dark sleepless nights. But again, it is not just the monster that makes me smile…it is the folks who claim to have seen him.
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Eddie Van Halen Solo Antics 1982

Originally uploaded by Taylor Player

A few weeks ago, I got myself into a little pissing contest in the comments section of this here blog.

Here’s most of what I said:

I’d encourage you to take a long look at your own life. Whatever chain of decisions you’ve made in your life has led you to this very moment, a moment of your making.

So at some point along the way you decided something, perhaps subconsciously, that resulted in you sitting in a room in front of a computer, leaving a nasty little hateful notes on other people’s expressions of joy and passion.

That’s the kind of person that you have become.

It’s totally normal to have lonely moments where you feel unloved — it’s part of the human experience. The next time you feel lonely and unloved, just try to remember that you deserve it. The person you’ve decided to be when nobody else is looking is a total cunt.

There’s an inherent irony in using the Internet to write a nasty note in public to chastise someone for writing nasty notes in public. I’m aware of that now. But in the moment, I just couldn’t help myself. It’s something about the human condition that just disgusts me, casually revealing such hateful awful stuff when we don’t think anyone else is looking. You’d think that children would grow out of pointing the finger and howling at somebody that’s different than themselves, but they don’t. They just hide it better.

During the great coffee debacle of 2008, a man emailed me directly — at my personal e-mail address — to inform me that if there were any justice in the world, I would be raped to death in prison. Or by a goat, if they were maybe allowed into the prison yard.
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So about a month ago, Cyndi and I debuted our new storytelling show The Standard Issues at Pacific Standard. The second edition will be tomorrow night, Tuesday the 24th, at 8 o’clock and it features Ophira Eisenberg, Adam Wade, Andy Christy, Ben Lillie, and our very own Jeff Simmermon and Cyndi Freeman. If you are into the storytelling thing, you know that is a ridiculously brilliant line-up, if you are not into the storytelling thing, this is the show you will want to start with.

In the meantime, here is a video of me from our first show. As I say, first show in the space and I was the first one on, so that is why we had not figured out the lighting situation yet. Which is why I look kind of strangely muscle bound when I am actually 177 pounds soaking wet. Though I did have a pretty bad haircut at that show. Can’t blame the lighting for that.

I’m prone to exaggeration for damn sure, but I am not lying at all when I tell you that the story presented below is one of my favorite stories I’ve ever seen at The Moth. For real.

Brett Pederson is from Minnesota, and happened to be in New York on business. He told me that he’s a big fan of the Moth podcast and was pretty stoked to go to a story slam in person. And he figured “what the hell,” and just kinda went ahead and winged it, threw his name in the hat and told this story.

I don’t usually recommend that folks wing a story. It usually goes really, really badly. But man, am I ever glad to be wrong here. Brett’s story has kind of a Wells Tower/Cormac McCarthy thing to it — stoic, manly dudes working out their feelings by setting stuff on fire.

Enjoy:

For me, looking at these retouched photos from Ashkan Honarvar‘s fifth “Faces” series is like choking on a really tasty hot fudge sundae. The pleasure centers and the gag reflex are both firing at about equal rates. (More images after the jump.)

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I was walking down Bedford Avenue to Five Leaves with a couple of my tight bros from way back in Norfolk for brunch, right. That god-awful heat like Galactus-sized dog breath had broken, we hadn’t seen each other in way too long, things were pretty much perfect, really.

Then this guy came around the corner and topped that sundae with a shiny red cherry:

He was on his way to brunch, too. For real.
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