NYC was blanketed with the white stuff (the other, less addictive white stuff) this weekend, and my camera phone was on the scene to capture the magic. Mostly from the window, but I did go outside once. For example, I took the above picture of Jimmy wearing his winter sack mere seconds before he slipped and fell down, which was hilarious for everyone who saw it. Anyway, more violent imagery below.
Jimmy and I turned off the teevee and just sat and watched a guy try to parallel park outside.
Mom is awesome and she loves Christmas. Every year she gets a little bit crazier with the decorations, and this year's wonderfully garish gallery of Christmas kookiness provides the long-sought-after answer to the question that generations before us have posed to the Gods for centuries: "Why not dress that duck figurine perched in front of the fireplace in a Santa costume?" The above video is what greets you as you enter the house, a motion-sensor Christmas Moose that IS VERY SENSITIVE TO ANY AIR MOVING IN FRONT OF ITS FACE AND OFTEN SINGS UNTIL YOU THINK YOU'LL LOSE YOUR MIND.
Nativity scene #1, with Mary and Joseph welcoming the newborn baby Jesus and the three wisemen welcoming the birth of that big black plug.
Mrs. Clause and her magical Christmas dildo.
Nativity scene #2, this one on the piano. Mary is played by Patricia Clarkson and Joseph is played by Ryan Gosling's older brother.
This creepy little elf/dwarf/gnome thing also greets you when you enter the house, staring and pointing with both hands. (Both hands!) I think the most unsettling thing is you can't see his mouth. One should never trust an elf whose mouth one cannot see, like it says in the Bible.
Nativity scene #3, this one courtesy of me! Bought this for momma in Buenos Aires.
Why did this Christmas angel steal Mrs. Clause's magic Christmas dildo? Christmas is supposed to be about giving, not taking, Christmas angel!
Nativity scene #4.
Dieter the Christmas duck.
I wonder if Mom has noticed that her lovely tree is being eated by that angel's dress.
Nativity scene #5, about to be eated by that angel's dress.
Obviously, most coherent people of the world want Sarah Palin to be the Republican nominee for president in 2012. Not because most folks think that the one thing missing from presidential campaigning is drag hair and screeching. Mainly because the thought of her debating policy in her drag hair and with her screeching seems like it would mean that Obama rollerskates back to the White House easily and Sasha and Malia get to tell Bristol and Willow to suck it. I myself have kind of wished for this.
But you know who would be even better as a Republican nominee? Jowly downhome racist sack of fat Haley Barbour, the governor of (you guessed it) Mississippi. Barbour is a walking talking caricature of the unreconstructed Southern good ole boy, and he would no doubt cut a fine figure (see above photo) next to smoove, sexxy Barry Obama, our Kenyan president, on a debate stage. Barbour is the type of southern dipshit who finds himself uttering REALLY DUMB claptrap about what the civil rights era was like in his hometown of (you guessed it) Yazoo City. Check it. In the past few days Barbour has been all over the news with his revisionist history of Yazoo City's approach to integration during his youth. Now the media is reminding folks that the groups that Barbour defended, the Citizens Councils, were actually not the angels of mercy Barbour claimed but, rather, were founded in 1954 in response to what they saw as the odious Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court case that found that segregation of public schools was unconstitutional, and Barbour is doing the Backtrack Bolero all over the place. And he ain't a very good dancer.
In conclusion, more dancing from Haley Barbour, please.
Folks, Publishers Weekly, the esteemed publication of the publishing industry that usually displays very good judgment in all things, has done the unthinkable and printed an article about me (with a photo) in their actual print magazine and not just on their website! This is the closest they will ever get to disseminating hard-core pornography, and will surely come back to haunt the PW folks’ dreams once Sarah Palin finds out about it and gets out her Twitter rifle. (This profile is available online here)
Not only did PW do this, but, in the same issue, they also gave my book, Tune in Tokyo: The Gaijin Diaries, a very favorable review (online here), which means they are more likely than ever to experience the flames of unholy hellfire when baby Jesus comes back during Armageddon to decree what books and magazines the saved get to take with them to heaven and which ones will be sent directly to one of Hell’s many mezzanines via Satan’s favorite vehicle, the Toyota Prius.
All of this depravity has been made possible thanks to PW’s first-ever PW Select quarterly self-publishing supplement, which is featured in the December 20 issue of PW. Below is a photo I took of the front page of the supplement, which mentions me and my book and OH MY GOD I CAN’T BELIEVE THIS IT’S A CHRISTMAS MIRACLE SOMEBODY CALL RUDOLPH!
I'm speechless, but at least I can still type, so let's wrap this up: I guess my feelings can be best summed up by Laura Dern in Wild at Heart when she says to Nicholas Cage "You got me hotter than Georgia asphalt." Either that line or the one where Nicholas Cage says he has "a boner with a capital O."
It may just have been that I watched it with my mother, who I'm visiting for an early Christmas in Raleigh, and we were both hopped up on buckets of eggnog. She and dad have watched Larry for years, because how else were they going to get answers to all the important questions percolating around the country, such as how the Dhalai Llama feels about NeNe of The Real Housewives of Atlanta or why Carrie Prejean is such a c*nt. The hour-long celebrity/real television news journalist/anchor circle jerk was kind of ridiculous at times (especially when Regis Philbin awkwardly tried to get Larry to sing with him, a horrifying few seconds of television if there ever was one), but Katie Couric's poem was really sweet! (Sarah Palin hated it.)
Mom was all teary and lip wobbly as Larry said his final "so long" and the camera slowly closed in on Larry's microphone, and I have to admit, my eyeballs were not completely dry. So since I was already halfway there and mom was going to bed, I put on Steel Magnolias, poured some more top-shelf eggnog, and wrapped myself in a blanket mom's friend gave her that says "A friend is someone who knows the song in your heart and can sing it back to you when when you've forgotten the words," which also made me cry.
In conclusion, all gay men are named Mark, Rick, or Steve.
My admiration for very large statues is well documented on the pages of this blog. I love them more than sugar mixed with some melted butter and drizzled over pound cake. They are that important to me. So I was very excited when I received a Facebook message from a friend with the subject line "Um... I know you like big statues and all..." and a link to a picture. That told me I was in for a real treat and perhaps a new holiday destination. So I went all clickety click and was taken to a site displaying the above photo of a giant statue of ... Paul Bunyan? In a mall? At a Christmas display? Taking a huge dump?
There are many mysteries in this confusing world of ours. When will Jesus come back to save all the faithful, like Grover Norquist, Miss Piggy, and Beyonce? What happens when Charlie Sheen runs out of hookers and blow? Why do I always feel dumber after watching The Learning Channel? Many many mysteries, puzzles, enigmas wrapped in secrets rolled in cryptograms. All worth solving! But this? This is just. I don't know the word because I just can't stop thinking of the BIG FUCKING TURD STEAMING UP THE CHRISTMAS DISPLAY AT THIS TERRIBLE MALL AND EVERYBODY'S JUST WALKING AROUND LIKE IT'S TOTALLY NOT WEIRD THAT THERE'S CANDY CANES ON ONE SIDE AND A BIG FUCKING TURD ON THE OTHER. (And who shits all big and neat like that?! This sculptor is lying to you, children.) Also, what is he planning on doing with that candy cane?
All I want for Christmas is to never have seen this picture. Is there an app for that yet?
My lady friend Carla Rea did a commercial for the Carolina Hurricanes—lovingly referred to in NC as (in a gravelly voice) "CANES!!!"—and it's awesome. The CANES!!! play a competitive sport called "hawky" or "hocking" or "hawk king" (?) in which a small disc-shaped piece called a "puck" is placed on a field of ice and then the players, all wearing ice skates (kind of gay, no?), all proceed to beat the shit out of each other. It's apparently really popular.
So I headed on down (up) to Columbus Circle last Thursday because Amy Sedaris was going to be doing craft demonstrations at Borders to promote her new book Simple Times. My goal in going was, of course, to buy a book and get it signed. My real goal in going, though, was to deliver into Amy Sedaris's hands my book, Tune in Tokyo, because you can never have too many celebrities holding your book publicly, and Amy would be the first. She had said during her presentation that she was not interested in receiving crafts from folks because she has too many already and will just strip any crafty things she's given for parts and throw the rest away (in several different trash cans so as not to hurt anyone's feelings). So she was clearly trying to keep to a minimum the number of things she would have to schlep home. What is a desperate, conniving author with a hidden agenda to do?
I waited in line for over an hour, and finally got to the table where she sat. She said hello and I greeted her with my trump card: "Hi! We went to the same high school! And we both had Mr. Armagida!" This would get her to like me, and perhaps trust me. We had a very abbreviated chit-chat about Sanderson High School while I got up the courage to give her my dumb book. Then the time came because the Borders employee was getting antsy to move things along (see the manically gesturing hand in the photo above).
"So," I said, "I know you don't want any crafts, but would you like a funny little book?" I asked, sweaty and panting.
"Sure, absolutely!" she said with what seemed like actual sincerity, but who knows? Anyway, I gave her my book, told her I wrote it, and pointed out that I'd signed it for her already so she didn't need to ask me to. Then the Borders employee tapped me on the shoulder because they were ready to take our picture with my camera phone, which I'd given to them before I stepped up to the table. So I turned to the camera and tried to dislodge my hand from my bag strap or whatever (I was holding her book, my bag, and my bicycle helmet, and I'd just given her my book, so I was a little bit tangled up) so I could give a thumbs up or something, but I was kind of stuck. So it looks like I'm totally gaying it up in the photo below, but I'M NOT GAYING IT UP SO STOP SAYING THAT. The important thing to notice in the picture, though, is that the book she's flipping through is MINE. Mission accomplished.
I took the below videos of her demonstrations, which were great even though I couldn't really see what was going on. The audio is great, so listen and learn.
(Scroll down for actual photo, which is depraved.)
I think I might be late to this party, because I'm late to most parties (if I'm even invited), but I have just returned from a wildly religious out-of-body experience after seeing this thoroughly random photo for the first time. WHO TOOK IT? (Pedro Almodovar?) I just came across it over at the gay-as-hail L.A. Rag Mag site but there's no information about its origins. Obviously, that's Madonna in her pajamas in the foreground, but what's going on back there, by the pool, hmmm?
Well, supposedly that is the naked version of her ex-lovah Jesus Luz (which translates to "Jesus Light," for the religious among you). You might remember him from this post. It doesn't matter that he doesn't have a head, because who cares about that? The important thing is the rippled, aggressive nakedness and the priceless expression on Our Lady of the Immaculate Money Shot's face. Haven't you always dreamed Madonna would look at you that way while a ferociously attractive naked man with no head hovered mysteriously behind her? Of course you have. You're only human.
Like all Americans, I spent my Thanksgiving crippling myself with turkey, carbs, and vodka/diet cherry 7ups. Also, I played Balderdash with friends. For the uninitiated, Balderdash is a game where you must write a fake definition to a real word and fool your fellow players into thinking it's the correct definition. My boyfriend Jimmy is really good at this game, as you can see from the definition of furfur he provided above. Believe it or not, furfur does not mean "with furvor [sic] but more." It is "an epidermal scale, as that associated with dandruff." But I'm going to start using it to mean "with furvor [sic] but more" regardless.
Next up, the word hawhdah. What do you think this means? If you guessed this thing that Jimmy wrote, you are wrong!
I don't remember what hawhdah actually means and can't find it on the Google machine, but use it in a sentence anyway!
Do you happen to know what would make the perfect gift for the pole dancer, parole officer, dognapper, preacher, teabagger, go-go boy, cat lady, or ex-stepmother in your life? I do: My book! Tune in Tokyo: The Gaijin Diaries is available on Amazon, and if you act now a book will be delivered to the recipient of your choice via the U.S. mail. You don't see offers like this every day! So head on over to Amazon and clickety click!
Once again, real Americans get to roll around all day in a shit puddle of happiness because it's officially Sarah Palin book release day, yay! I posted the above video promo a few months ago and got zero respect for it by the lamestream media/random blog commenters, which is unfair because it's terrible! Anyway, to celebrate the further decline of American letters, I offer it unto you again. Enjoy it now, because when Sarah becomes president you'll only be able to watch videos like these via Taiwanese animation.
Sometimes you find yourself hanging out with your friends who will be leaving New York soon, getting some dinner and then going to see a few bands, all the while getting spectacularly wasted. So far so good. But then, then you go get a private room at Sing Sing Karaoke on St. Marks Place, a place that is hella busted, and things take a turn towards danger, or as they say in Japanese, "Sing Singのカラオケはすごいあぶないだよね!"
The danger is this: someone will take your awesomely dependable Droid phone. Yes, after you've spent the evening taking pictures/video of your friends swappin' slop with their lovahs, dancing epileptically to the live music, skinning their knees trying to get into cabs, and then singing "Magic" by Olivia Newton-John relentlessly into the microphone long after the actual song has finished—someone will crash your party and kidnap your phone for selfish, probably disgusting reasons that don't bear thinking about.
Then when you get all the way home to Brooklyn at 3 in the morning and discover you don't have your phone and you use Jimmy's phone to call Sing Sing to ask that they check the room you were in, the criminally unhelpful lady on the phone will tell you that she can't disturb the party that is currently in the room. Now, on the one hand, you understand this uniquely Japanese policy, because karaoke makes people mean and violent. But on the other hand, WTF, asshole, go get my phone from those thieves!
There is a lesson to be learned from this. The lesson is not "Don't get wasted and then expect to be able to keep track of your phone as you take it in and out of your jacket pocket to take dumb photos/video." The lesson is "If you do all that, don't go to Sing Sing Karaoke."
You don't even need to see this local news story from the swamp somewhere. It's all there in the screen grab. The only possible thing that could make this better would be if this screen grab could talk and you could hear this adorable man warble his story. I'm glad his beard is growing back.
Magnificent news out of Poland, folks. (Wow, when was the last time I typed that?) Construction on a new ginormous Jesus statue is complete and, in terms of sheer size (which is all that matters), it beats the holy flippin' bejezus out of the breathtaking Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio. (Which I still haven't seen.) So the question becomes: when are Jimmy and I booking our flight to Swiebodzin? The answer is: gimme some money, Obama, so I can go to Poland.
The good Swiebodzin people are hoping that this new statue will be a draw for Jesus-loving tourists the world over and a new site for Christian pilgrimage, like Paula Dean's restaurant in Savannah or Sarah Palin's swimmin' hole in Wasilla. And why shouldn't it? This Jesus has a golden crown, bitches, just like in the Bible. (It's the crown that makes this Jesus the largest in the world.) In addition, he's handsome and so, so white--also just like in the Bible. Look at that bone structure.
But the key question now is this: are we allowed to go up and inside the Jesus head? This is important, because if not I'll bring my pogo stick and a little parachute with me.
Everyone knows that any author who has self-published a book, even if that book is stupidly award-worthy like mine, faces an uphill struggle in the fight for visibility in the marketplace. People just don't care about your dumb project! That's why it's the author's job to make them care. Force them to care. Dare them to care. If you are successful at this then you will have a world full of people wondering what life was like before they cared about the book you wrote. And the best way to be successful at this is obvious: bookmarks.
People love bookmarks because they can be used for many things: picking your teeth, cleaning your fingernails, scratching your upper back, dusting the dandruff out of your hair. But did you know they can also be used to mark your place in a book so that you can go back to that place easily the next time you are on the toilet? It's true. So the good news for you is that I now have Tune in Tokyo bookmarks available. The first 10 people to email me and ask for one will get one. Just email me and tell me Tune in Tokyo is the book that made you want to be a dancer, and I'll send you several! Because you deserve at least that many.
Tim: You know what I'd like to see? A Michelle Obama-Sarah Palin cage match. Jimmy: That'd be good. Tim: Totally. Poor Michelle sure deserves one. Jimmy: Except Sarah Palin would win. Tim: Nu-uh. Michelle would sling Sarah's ass all over the damn place. She's from the south side of Chicago! And Sarah called her husband a terrorist! Jimmy: Doesn't matter. Michelle's not inherently evil and crazy like Sarah Palin. So Sarah will win. Tim: Interesting world view. Jimmy: Sad but true. Tim: Is it wrong that I really want Michelle to tear Sarah's face off and feed it to Bo the dog? Jimmy: I'd rather see Sasha and Malia do that.
That's right. I was there, bitches. With my friends. And we couldn't hear shit. You know why? Because too many other people were invited. The closest we could get was 7th street/avenue (whatever) and we just couldn't squeeze any closer. But we did see a lot of signs! And we did hear Ozzy singing crazy train! (One curious thing: Cat Stevens was on stage singing "Peace Train" during the same bit, which was a little shocking because isn't he an extremist fundamentalist Muslim who called for the death of Salmon Rushdie back in the day? Has he changed his, er, tune?)
Anyway, you can click the photos for a bigger, better view. (But you still won't be able to hear shit.)
And, lastly, the below photo, shot at the Marriot hotel bar, of a blurry Colbert getting ready to unwind.
