Everybody thinks Southerners sound like rednecks, Californians sound like burn-outs, and Northeasterners* sound like criminals. The proof? Whenever somebody with one of those accents wants to make fun of somebody for being uneducated, burnt, or shifty, they do their own accent but more so.


*I meant urban Northeasterners. Boston, Philly, Noo Yawk.

Since realizing I'm probably clinically depressed I've had a little insight into why it is that I act so pissy and negative all the time. I've also realized that not ranting constantly seems to help my state of mind. But there are some things that cannot be loved, and some hatreds cannot be ignored. I'm speaking, of course, of Roland Emmerich, the genius that makes fire-breathing lizards, revolutionary war guerrilla fighting, and at least three different types of apocalypses unwatchable. He directed the upcoming CGI disaster suckfest 2012, so, those of you with even a drop of taste*, prepare to sharpen you tongues for this one.




It's as if he said "You know that ridiculous scene in Day After Tomorrow when Jakey-boy Gyllenhaal has to run from cold like it's a pack of velociraptors? Let's do that again, but, like, for two and a half hours!"





*This may seem ironic, even appalling, coming from a guy who actually had fun watching Transformers 2. In my defense, imagine the above clip if, a minute in, the limo turned into a plucky underdog robot who wrestled and drop-kicked all the cars on the freeway as they turned into spiky, insect-faced evil robots. Giant robots make everything better, and it's been that way since at least 1984.

There was a great article in Time magazine a few weeks ago that basically seemed to be based on the fact that an enormous amount of people gain weight after they begin an exercise program. Long story short, building muscle and engaging in cardiovascular exercise burns more calories than sitting on your duff, but not more than a few hundred extra per day. The extra exercise also has the unfortunate effect of increasing one's appetite exponentially. Armed with this knowledge, I've been working out really hard for nearly a week! and telling myself "Self, it's cool, you don't have to eat more than you normally do." I have a history of low willpower and broken promises, but I've slowly been getting my shit together over the course of this summer. I figured I could handle this one small guideline and help myself get back in shape.

And then today I ate about eight pieces of fried chicken.

Decided that I'm sick of having love handles. I probably say this all the time, but I had about two years of my life with the serious six pack abs and, besides being a ridiculous pain in the hole to maintain, it was pretty fantastic to be able to wear a tank top or take my shirt off inappropriately and have people only sorta hate me for it.

Anyways, stage one of OPERATION: LOOK GOOD NAKED AGAIN began when I went jogging on my messed up right leg for the first time in months. I've discovered the healing power of the knee brace. It smells bad, it cuts into my skin, but I took it aside and said "You know I don't like you, and I know you don't like me, but we're in this thing together now." I only went about a mile and a half. I'm gonna try that distance for a week or two and up it if the leg doesn't snap clean off like that field goal kicker in the sub par college homecoming Simpsons I just watched.

I've been semi-hermetic* for more than three years since Meg left LA. She was the catalyst, but I don't think she's the cause for all this alternating sitting around inside and ignoring the outside world and going out and wishing I were back inside. I keep coming out of my shell for a week, a month, seeing girls, going out, but I end up drawing back in like one of those disappointing hermit crabs everybody's nerdy childhood friend had that never did anything cool. I'm on a socialization kick again, this time my mantra is something my friend Buzz always tells me: I'd rather regret the things I have done than the things I haven't. He drills it into my head at least once a week. And I have to say, it works. At 33 I can think of dozens of things I've never done and now fear I've gotten too old or complacent to ever get going.

As I've repeated ad nauseum in this blog, I work on Hollywood Boulevard. I was reminded this weekend of how far apart the general impression of this street and the reality fall: one of my friends moved here from West Hollywood and sent out a mass email with her new address. One of her hometown friends who's obviously never been here sent a mass reply saying something like "Right on Hollywood Blvd? OMG gots to come out there sometime LOL!!!" I almost wrote back to her advising her to come in the fall because that's when the tweakers were at their most exhausted. Just in case you've never been here, Hollywood Boulevard is pretty much lacking in movie stars or glamor of any kind, but it makes up for it with a varied bouquet of potholes, cheap lingerie, uncurbed dogs, and palpable desperation.

I've been more social lately, talking to a lot of what my co-workers term "the boulevard freaks" because, even though every instinct says I should steer clear, I don't want to regret missing out on the local color. There's a guy who goes to the convenience store where I buy a lot of burritos and vitamin water who struck up a conversation with me. He's a big dude, dresses like a regular joe but has gigantic full-color tattoos that peek out from under his button down shirts. The first time we talked we were on line to the register together, he said that all us tour guides passed by his place and he was always amused that the tourists loved every moment, even if he flipped them off. He asked how business was, I asked what he did, he said he ran an adult film company and things were booming. That was pretty much it.

Some time later he started another conversation saying, basically, that one of his actresses saw me and thought I was cute, asked if I'd be interested in doing a threesome scene. He said he'd told her probably not since I was a nice Jewish boy but, you know, ha ha, what if I was into it? I kinda stuttered my way out of that. Actually, now I remember that I said she wouldn't be too happy with me once the clothes came off, and I meant that I was out of shape but, of course, it came out in a way that implied a more embarrassing shortcoming. I just gotta be me. Anyhoo, I came up with lots of justifications for bowing out of it (personal fav: "if I'm going to get herpes, I want it to come from someone I love") but secretly kept kinda wishing I'd taken the plunge. I'm kinda lonely, it seems very daunting to try and meet anyone considering my work hours and threadbare adolescent mode of living, and, come on, it's another regret for something I didn't do, even just once.

Until this week, when porn star Stormy Daniels tested positive for HIV. According to the story, there's at least six other people who may have been infected by her or her partners in the past few days. There's a lot of pretty bleak articles about STDs and the lack of condoms in adult film ( this is the most epic one I found ).

So I guess the point of this blog is that one of the things that I would rather regret not having done is contracting an incurable sexually transmitted disease.



*I will defend my right to misuse or create words from whole cloth to the death, sir. If that drunken asshole William F. Buckley can change the whole definition of oxymoron just because he didn't bother to crack the OED then I can misappropriate** hermetic.


**And I can misuse that word, too. Mofo.

I found this Atlantic Monthly article incredibly interesting. I read it over the last two days and immediately started scheming as to how I could spread it around to the rest of the world, then I remembered that there's this obscure service called the internet. Anyhoo, Harvard has been doing a six decade in-depth study on the lives of alumni, what has worked and what hasn't for them over the past 60+ years.

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200906/happiness

I fail to recall posting the lyrics to "The Minstrel Boy" on my LJ, and I also fail to discern why I would do such a thing.

Sometimes I wish I had serious mental problems or a drug habit so I could explain my behavior.

The minstrel boy to the war is gone,
In the ranks of death you'll find him;
His father's sword he hath girded on,
And his wild harp slung behind him;
"Land of Song!" cried the warrior bard,
"Tho' all the world betrays thee,
One sword, at least, thy right shall guard,
One faithful harp shall praise thee!"

The Minstrel fell! But the foeman's chain
Could not bring that proud soul under;
The harp he lov'd ne'er spoke again,
For he tore its chords asunder;
And said "No chains shall sully thee,
Thou soul of love and brav'ry!
Thy songs were made for the pure and free
They shall never sound in slavery!

Marble Hill is an area that I've only experienced in college, when Brian discovered that we could be total cheapasses and save about $3 transferring from Metro North's commuter rail to the New York Subway system at 225th Street for the low, low cost of angry glares from South Bronx kids in hoodies and crooked hats. Or so I thought. You see, Marble Hill, though part of the US mainland, is not part of the Bronx. It's part of Manhattan.

In the 1895 the Army Corps of Engineers decided that a canal was needed to take commercial boats between the Hudson and the Harlem rivers. They dug straight through just South of the little nub of land that was Marble Hill, creating Spuyten Duyvil Creek*. 19 years later, the river's original path was filled in, physically connecting Marble Hill to the Bronx and leading to such hijinks as Bronx borough president James J. Lyons attempting to annex it and using the term "Bronx Sudetenland" with unflinching jocularity. Ah, 1939. Has National Socialism ever been so amusing? The residents fought to keep their neighborhood in the 212 area code when the Bronx joined the 718 in 1992 and failed, yet are still required to go way the hell down to Foley Square for jury duty.



*"Spuyten Duyvil" is my personal favorite ridiculous Dutch NYC holdover name. It sounds like a cartoon weevil, probably a comic foil for said cartoon's hero, a plucky roach.

Thanks to Christina, who pointed this out to me, and Colin, who already posted it.

A few more here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/77828472@N00/sets/72157614701083557/

This is safe for work, except maybe for the language. Put your headphones on, April!

You Try to Live on 500K in This Town
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/08/fashion/08halfmill.html
By ALLEN SALKIN

PRIVATE school: $32,000 a year per student.

Mortgage: $96,000 a year.

Co-op maintenance fee: $96,000 a year.

Nanny: $45,000 a year.

We are already at $269,000, and we haven’t even gotten to taxes yet.

Five hundred thousand dollars — the amount President Obama wants to set as the top pay for banking executives whose firms accept government bailout money — seems like a lot, and it is a lot. To many people in many places, it is a princely sum to live on. But in the neighborhoods of New York City and its suburban enclaves where successful bankers live, half a million a year can go very fast.

“As hard as it is to believe, bankers who are living on the Upper East Side making $2 or $3 million a year have set up a life for themselves in which they are also at zero at the end of the year with credit cards and mortgage bills that are inescapable,” said Holly Peterson, the author of an Upper East Side novel of manners, “The Manny,” and the daughter of Peter G. Peterson, a founder of the equity firm the Blackstone Group. “Five hundred thousand dollars means taking their kids out of private school and selling their home in a fire sale.”

Sure, the solution may seem simple: move to Brooklyn or Hoboken, put the children in public schools and buy a MetroCard. But more than a few of the New York-based financial executives who would have their pay limited are men (and they are almost invariably men) whose identities are entwined with living a certain way in a certain neighborhood west of Third Avenue: a life of private schools, summer houses and charity galas that only a seven-figure income can stretch to cover.

Few are playing sad cellos over the fate of such folk, especially since the collapse of the institutions they run has yielded untold financial pain. But in New York, where a new study from the Center for an Urban Future, a nonprofit research group in Manhattan, estimates it takes $123,322 to enjoy the same middle-class life as someone earning $50,000 in Houston, extricating oneself from steep bills can be difficult.

Therefore, even if it is not for sympathy but for sport, consider the numbers.

The cold hard math can be cruel.

Like those taxes. If a person is married with two children, the weekly deductions on a $500,000 salary are: federal taxes, $2,645; Social Security, $596; Medicare, $139; state taxes, $682; and city, $372, bringing the weekly take-home to $5,180, or about $269,000 a year, said Martin Cohen, a Manhattan accountant.

Now move to living expenses.

Barbara Corcoran, a real estate executive, said that most well-to-do families take at least two vacations a year, a winter trip to the sun and a spring trip to the ski slopes.

Total minimum cost: $16,000.

A modest three-bedroom apartment, she said, which was purchased for $1.5 million, not the top of the market at all, carries a monthly mortgage of about $8,000 and a co-op maintenance fee of $8,000 a month. Total cost: $192,000. A summer house in Southampton that cost $4 million, again not the top of the market, carries annual mortgage payments of $240,000.

Many top executives have cars and drivers. A chauffeur’s pay is between $75,000 and $125,000 a year, the higher end for former police officers who can double as bodyguards, said a limousine driver who spoke anonymously because he does not want to alienate his society customers.

“Some of them want their drivers to have guns,” the driver said. “You get a cop and you have a driver.” To garage that car is about $700 a month.

A personal trainer at $80 an hour three times a week comes to about $12,000 a year.

The work in the gym pays off when one must don a formal gown for a charity gala. “Going to those parties,” said David Patrick Columbia, who is the editor of the New York Social Diary (newyorksocialdiary.com), “a woman can spend $10,000 or $15,000 on a dress. If she goes to three or four of those a year, she’s not going to wear the same dress.”

Total cost for three gowns: about $35,000.

Not every bank executive has school-age children, but for those who do, offspring can be expensive. In addition to paying tuition, “You’re not going to get through private school without tutoring a kid,” said Sandy Bass, the editor of Private School Insider, a newsletter that covers private schools in the New York City area. One hour of tutoring once a week is $125. “That’s the low end,” she said. “The higher end is 150, 175.” SAT tutors are about $250 an hour. Total cost for 30 weeks of regular tutoring: $3,750.

Two children in private school: $64,000.

Nanny: $45,000.

Ms. Bass, whose husband is an accountant with many high-end clients, said she spends about $425 every 10 days on groceries for her family. Annual cost: about $15,000.

More? Restaurants. Dry cleaning. Each Brooks Brothers suit costs about $1,000. If you run a bank, you can’t look like a slob.

The total costs here, which do not include a lot of things, like kennels for the dog when the family is away, summer camp, spas and other grooming for the human members of the family, donations to charity, and frozen hot chocolates at Serendipity, are $790,750, which would require about a $1.6-million salary to compensate for taxes. Give or take a few score thousand of dollars.

Does this money buy a chief executive stockholders might prize, a well-to-do man with a certain sureness of stride, something that might be lost if the executive were crowding onto the PATH train every morning at Journal Square, his newspaper splayed against the back of a stranger’s head?

The man would certainly not feel like himself on that train, said Candace Bushnell, the author of “Sex and the City” and other books chronicling New York social mores.

“People inherently understand that if they are going to get ahead in whatever corporate culture they are involved in, they need to take on the appurtenances of what defines that culture,” she said. “So if you are in a culture where spending a lot of money is a sign of success, it’s like the same thing that goes back to high school peer pressure. It’s about fitting in.”

By the way, the frozen hot chocolate costs $8.50.

I can admit it now: I am a geek. I may have stopped reading comics books early in high school, but in my heyday I was collecting more than a dozen series at once and even now in my 30's I have several Transformers, reservations about the upcoming Watchmen movie adaptation, and a ridiculous amount of pieces from the Star Wars Miniatures game in my spacious and totally wasted walk-in closet.

But with all this geekitude I missed one rite of passage: the nerd idol showdown. I never thought to myself "I wonder what would happen if Unicron* tried to eat the Death Star? But now, thanks to the fact that I frittered yesterday away on internet videos, I have an idea how it would go.











You can find the other videos, along with a totally unfunny Bob Guccione impression that Bina made me watch like two years ago, here and some who what where info here.




*This comes from Teletraan 1, which is one of the greatest web sites I've ever read. If you need evidence, I present to you the image captions about Soundwave's hip hop career and a dead dog.

I have trouble believing that this was actually meant to be a superbowl ad, but whatever. It's funny.

Everyone on Facebook is doing this, so what the hey. No matter how I try it just seems to come off as acidic and bitter instead of wry. Maybe that's my personality at work. I swear, I'm trying to be lighter and friendlier! Old habits don't die hard. They don't even die.

1. I am half Jewish and half Catholic. We were pretty much raised kike (I can still sing the Torah portion from my bar mitzvah) but we got presents at Christmas and candy at Easter. And the only downside was crushing guilt from both sides of the family!

2. I weigh 180 pounds right now, the heaviest I've ever been, but most of it's muscle. Most of it.

3. I may not have been the biggest geek in my junior high, but I was in the top 3. I have trouble watching Napolean Dynamite or Freaks & Geeks cause all that stuff happened to me. Random ass-kickings, stuffed into lockers, books knocked out of hands, human spit in my hair on more than one occasion. I secretly thought about taking revenge on the people who tortured me. Then about six years ago I ran into all of them at a bar in my hometown and their lives sucked in a Clifford Odets/Joyce Carol Oates kind of way. I think I bought them each two beers.

4. Big surprise: I've been through psychotherapy. It was great but I'm done with it now.

5. Maybe it's a result of all the junior high crap, but I have trouble trusting people, women in particular. I haven't had a serious girlfriend in three years. The thought of trusting someone like that is equally compelling and terrifying. Right now the longing is overwhelming the neurosis. Fingers crossed.

6. I was ridiculously self conscious about my looks until the last few years. Like, seeing pictures or video of myself would make me so angry that I'd go into the woods and destroy a tree.

7. I might be done with therapy, but maybe it's time for anger management?

8. I have never told anyone this before: About ten years ago this girl broke my heart (she actually got sick of throwing herself at my befuddled, fear-paralyzed ass for two months and hooked up with my roommate). I decided my looks were my problem and got a butcher knife out of the kitchen to cut up one side of my face and give myself scars. I figured if I couldn't be handsome at least I'd look tough. I put the knife's edge to my face but couldn't do it.

9. Don't worry, I've been through 3 1/2 years of therapy since then.

10. I'd say I have no ambition but I totally have big dreams. It's just the years of hard work leading up to it that I have trouble with.

11. Guilty pleasure: full fat $0.13 ramen. I remember the first time I had it at my friend Josh Kutz' house. It smelled so good. Josh, in an unrelated story, was another dear friend who hooked up with another girl that broke my heart after she threw herself at me and read my bowel-shaking fear of failure as non-interest. I ain't mad at him.

12. I love fried chicken too, but I'd like to live to see 35 so I try to make it a special treat a few times a year.

13. I moved to California to be a screenwriter. Disregarded my two other dream jobs because I thought being an actor required either being incredibly handsome or strange-looking enough to fit a niche and being a comedian meant you spend your life traveling between assfuck backwater motels trying to bang maids and waitresses for a whiff of companionship.

14. After I moved out here I ended up writing with a friend I knew from NYC for three years. It was great, but it ended when he stole a bunch of money and possessions from me & some other friends. He had been homeless for a year and was lying to everyone, saying he still had his old job & apartment. I made him move back to New York, where I hope he's getting help.

15. I think he had anti-social personality disorder, which is one of these mind-blowing things called major personality disorders. Look 'em up. They're not as cut and dry as the DSM IV says, they mix together in mind-bending and horrible ways. And also note that 15% of the general population has one of them. Some good has come from this knowledge: whenever I'm at a party, meeting, or restaurant with 20 poeple I like to bet on which three are incurably fucked up for life. Join the fun!

16. I think my dad might have one of them, obsessive compulsive personality disorder. He's the only psychologist I know who think psychotherapy is bullshit, so he probably won't be getting help for it anytime soon. He's still an incredibly generous person who will support his slacker-ass son through every harebrained life choice, he just drives us all insane with his control freak ways.

17. My mom, on the other hand, is completely fantastic. She had a pretty bad temper when I was kid (broke a soup ladle over my head once), but she did a solid decade of therapy and now might be the most amazing person I know. She's smart, funny, creative, and supportive. I mean, she puts up with me. All she needs is for her palms to start bleeding and I can get her canonized. The paperwork's all ready to go. I'm cashing in that little Hitler Youth credit, Benedict. Take care of this and you'll never have to hear about it again.

18. I am an adult but I can honestly say I have a BFF. LOL OMG, a BFF! Anyhoo...I've known Brian for 14 years and we're maybe a little too close. We plan a lot of things out together, movies, parties, hikes. It's like a marriage. And I'm the nagging wife.

19. Remember how I haven't had a real girlfriend in three years? Doesn't make sense with all this stuff I have going for me, does it?

20. I'm really attracted to gothy/punky/emo girls, but I'm also mostly attracted to women old enough to buy tobacco products or vote in these United States so that cuts most of them out.

21. You know how people say the most important thing in a mate is a sense of humor and you want to punch them? I hate that crap, but I have probably half a dozen phone numbers from the last three months and the only reason I never called these chicks is because they couldn't throw a punchline after the setups I gave them. I speak the international language of shtick.

22. I have trouble distinguishing between what I think is good and things that are objectively smart/beneficial. The reverse is true as well, and I'm really having a hard time being respectful of things that I think are bullshit such as other people's religious views. But I decided I should do it, so I'm trying.

23. Religion is bullshit. Goddamn, I'm sorry! This is really hard.

24. I used to be one of those hipster douches who brought up how he didn't own a TV every five sentences. I started counting up the number of shows I watch now and stopped, forlorn, when I ran out of fingers.

25. I've been very, very anti-social for the last few years. Mostly out of laziness. Nowadays I'm working on it. If you're tagged it's because I like you and want to be your friend, even if it's in this weird limited Facebook way. Give yourself a pat on the back for making it through all this crap and rest assured that the twisted outcast who wrote about scarring himself with a butcher knife and having a soup ladle broken over his head at age seven thinks you're all right.