Fuck you, you stupid hippie dickbag.

Fuck you! Fuck You! Fuck You!

Fuck you, Prius owners.

Fuck you, Democrats! Fuck you. You want to keep claiming that the conservatives are the thugs after shit like this?

And brother the youngest returns!  Both to the website and to the great state of Maryland.  After eight long weeks, I finally finished what was probably the most questionable internship I have ever been a part of.  Let’s just say, they came up with the idea to have an internship a week before they put up the application, and it showed!  Disorganization, last minute changes, and everyone bending to the PI’s whims, which often changed on the daily.  And the people, my fellow interns, were all generally great.  Many of them were not my kind of people, but I grew to like them despite.  There was some drama that went down, but let’s not get into that, I am trying to put that experience behind me.

So, what has happened in the last seven weeks since my last post, brother the eldest finally started posting, brother the middle has gotten a car, and 3BNP plans on going cross-country this September — Three Brothers No Pizza “From Sea to Shining Sea!”  While many adventures and misadventures will be had and numerous schemes and quagmires will be hatched on this trip, it won’t be cheap — and what better way to finance our voyage than by selling out!  Unfortunately, none of the companies we have contacted thus far agree.  A certain red, bulls-eye company from Minnesota, a certain, golden-arched fast food franchise, and a certain U.Fla.-inspired sports drink have all said no already.  But at least they replied to us!  A slew of others have yet to reply, and may just be ignoring us.  We have tried food, retail vendors, car companies (who probably want to ask us for money), and hotel chains, next, rental cars and RVs!  We toyed with the idea of contacting television stations, but we don’t know if our show would survive on network television, for more than one reason.

Anyway, I am glad to be back, and ready to restart my pizza no-havingness!

Today, on his 85th birthday, George Herbert Walker Bush – the 41st president of these United States of America – decided to celebrate by leaping out out of an airplane. Seriously:

Fucking. Awesome.

Of course, this only brings to mind one question…what the hell is George W Bush gonna do to try and one-up his father on HIS 85th…scary…

Stranger things have happened...

Okay, so Classless made me laugh my ass off by posting a list of the freaky folk in her apartment complex, and it immediately made me think of my old apartment in Galesburg, my favorite place that I ever lived pre-Catherine. 

It was a former YMCA building, complete with haunted rumors and all, and it was perfect.  The old gym was still in the basement, with elevated tracks running along the walls of the second and third floors.  (You know that caged arena thing in the AC/DC video for “Thunderstruck”?  Picture that, but just not so…jail-yard looking.)  The lobby had a commons room, and the whole place hadn’t been decorated since about 1963.  Paneling, carpeting, apartments themselves…and, it was across the street from the best damn coffee shop in the entire Midwest, Innkeeper’s Coffee.  The two years I lived there were really great, made even greater by the fact that, for the last five months, Catherine lived there with me after I spirited her out of her dorm two weeks after meeting.    That’s luuuuuuuuuuvvvv, baby.

But even the most perfect apartment is not complete without a few screwballs sharing your communal space.  I will recite these in order of crazy:

Smelly Man (least crazy)
Smelly Man wasn’t really crazy, he was just odd.  Skeleton thin with a scruffy red beard and Coke-bottle glasses, he also lived on my floor, so I was able to smell his pungent aroma on more than a few occasions.  SM was self-explanatory – take a pair of the sweatiest, nastiest gym socks you’ve ever smelled, lock them up in a tiny box for about twenty-five years, then open it.  Roll around inside said box until this smell is so deep in your pores that you radiate almost visible waves of stink (like in cartoons, when someone falls into a junkyard or something).  Then, you, too, will be like Smelly Man.  He was truly gag-inducing.  If you saw him coming, you held your breath or you suffered the consequences.  A delight for all the senses, if you enjoyed huffing corpses or burning trash as a hobby.

Pizza Joe (moderately crazy)
This man weighed about 300 pounds, had a crazed, vacant stare and walked around giggling to himself like John Wayne fucking Gacy.  Truly, all he was missing was the clown makeup.  He was a pizza delivery guy in Galesburg and had been for as long as I could remember – in fact, he used to deliver pizzas to me and my friends when we were in high school.  So, we’re talking a good decade later, here he was, two floors below me.  There was a rumor corroborated by several reputable sources that he was more than a little interested in child porn, and once, he was discovered by my best friend pissing in the elevator lobby behind the building.   Yeah.  What do you say about that, really?  Make the sign of the cross and shout, Back, Pogo?

And, finally…

RUTH.

Ruth was, without question, balls-out fucking nuts.   I first encountered this wizened little eighty-year-old with the squinty, suspicious eyes the day I moved in. 

“You moving in?” She asked on the elevator.  (Of course, she lived on my floor.)

“Sure am - nice to meet you!”  I held out my hand, which she didn’t shake.  “I’m Chris.”

She stared at me like a weird little kid, all squinty-like.   “Ohhhh, yeahh…you’re the mystery writer, huh?” 

At this point in my life, I was writing screenplays.  “Well, yeah, I guess I am.”

“I don’t like mystery stories.”  Not convinced that I wasn’t evil or something, she then tried her damnedest to get into my apartment and  look around, and mistook my mother for my girlfriend.  I was sickened and disturbed by Ruth on Day One.

Things went downhill from there.

About six months after I moved in, my best friend, who lived across the hall, noted that he’d seen Ruth wandering around the building, looking disoriented.   We both took her for a little daffy, maybe even a bit senile, even though she would still converse normally.  Then, one fateful Sunday, I decided to do laundry.

There was a small laundry room on each floor, and the floors were U-shaped, so mine was on the opposite side of the floor from my apartment.  Now, the laundry room was little more than a converted pantry, with one washer and one dryer, and a marble top counter that was only about four feet wide next to the dryer.  This was the width of the room itself, so when you walked in, the dryer obscured part of the counter and the space below it. 

I walked in, unloaded my clothes from the washer, opened the dryer door, and began stuffing them inside…when I noticed a body, tucked underneath the hidden half of the counter.

To say that my blood went cold would be an understatement.  When I realized that A) it was Ruth, B) she wasn’t dead, and C) she was crawling out to greet me, I was calculating how long it would actually take me to run to my apartment and board the door.  This is it, I thought.  This is the first wave.  Ruth is officially the first zombie.  TO THE ROOF!

“Uh, Ruth?” I said, backing up a bit as she emerged and dusted herself off.  She looked like she hadn’t slept in days, and she had a Big Gulp.  It was a David Lynch movie come to life, right in front of me.  If she’d opened her mouth to reveal a tiny man tapdancing on her tongue or something, I don’t know how surprised I really would have been.  “Are you okay?”

“Oh, yeah,” she said.  “They can’t get me down here, I don’t think.  They can’t see me.”

“Who?”

“Well,” she said, “[the landlord] hired them, you know.  To get me out of here.  They’re up on the roof, and they shoot those lasers through the ceiling at me.  They aim for my head, you know.  But they can’t get through this.”  She banged her knuckles against the faux-marble counter.  

“Who are you talking about, Ruth?”  It was starting to make some degree of sense – the building owner had hired roofers to re-tar the whole building, and they’d been up there for about a week, banging away. 

“The TOM CAT KILLERS!  On the ROOF!”  She was getting impatient with me.  What did I have on me that could deliver the necessary head wound in the event that she lunged and tried to bite my arm?  Detergent bottle?  Should I flip backward and hope that she misses me, nailing herself on the doorknob instead?  Where the fuck was Ken Foree when I needed him?  “I know you don’t believe me!  I know it sounds crazy!”

“Oh, no!” I said quickly.  “I don’t think it’s crazy.  I know what you’re saying.”  I figured I should play along or suffer some further manifestation of her lunacy.  I didn’t want to see what tricks of her crazy trade she had tucked away under that counter.  ”Do you need me to…call someone or anything?”

“No, no,” she said.  “My apartment isn’t safe, all I have is my car…I’m on my own for this one.”  Then, she started whispering and muttering to herself, and I backed up and got the hell out of there.  I went straight down to the building office, where I found out that Ruth had been exhibiting signs of dementia for a while. 

In the coming weeks, Ruth’s estranged daughter was called, and they entered her apartment to find the entire thing covered in tin foil.  Furniture, windows, counters, everything.  Lasers, you know.  Tom Cat Killers have verrrrrry high-quality lasers.  Or something.   :/  After the landlord insisted that she move out, Ruth found another apartment with some supervision.  But not before my best friend and I returned to the building one night after a Taco Bell run to find Ruth in her parked car, face and hands plastered to the glass, staring at everything that moved past the window.  Nearly shitting ourselves, we beat a hasty path to the building, and we never saw Ruth again. 

Man.  What a cool building.  I still miss it. 

(Note: I wrote a screenplay about this building and my experiences there, a horror film called “The Tombs” that features the batshit-crazy greatest hits of my fellow residents.  Let us pray that one day I can unleash it upon the world.  Galesburg’s tourism will skyrocket, my friends.) 

There’s nothing like seeing grandpa trying on a new pair of “come f*ck me pumps.”

This was taken while I was at the opening of A Touch of Romance in Sherman Oaks, CA last year. I’d forgotten about it and came across it on my computer the other day. A Touch of Romance is a great little adult shop with the look and feel of a mainstream department store.

New Yorkers no longer like to get drunk.  Just ask Susan Cheever.  In her essay on the New York Times “Proof” blog, Cheever regales readers with a story of an old lush who got so drunk at a party that someone took the bottle of Cognac away from her.  For shame!

But what this 600-something literary doyenne most wants to impress upon readers is that this happened ten years ago and has not happened since.  In fact, since that time, drinking to the point of inebriation, drinking at all, in fact, has fallen out of style.

For us sober people there is a kind of drunkenfreude to watching others embarrass themselves, mangle their words and do things they will regret in the morning — if they even remember them in the morning.

Drunkenfreude to New Yorkers, is the highest level of Nirvana that can be achieved.  But it is not an easy one.  Perhaps it’s her age, perhaps it’s her social circle, but now, more than ever, simple drunk is the order of the day for “New York society.”

“Going out,” is no longer a social affair, unless you count proximity to other human bodies as social. By that standard, the packed 4-5-6 trains on any weekday morning would surpass your best night out at most bars in this City.  What is trendy now in both bars and clubs is being drunk.  Loud music, bad music, bad loud music, blaring over a poor sound systems: trendy. People packed from wall to wall generating a din that is the bad loud music’s only decibel rival: trendy.  Unable to carry on any semblance of a conversation: trendy.  New York has cabaret laws that prohibit dancing without a special license.  Bar owners seem to understand the “no dancing” provision, yet they continue to design their watering holes like dance clubs which prevents the very social interaction and conversation venue that is their purpose.

But perhaps your “going out” goal is not interaction.  Maybe you want to lose yourself in a sublime moment.  Being in the middle of a phalanx of dancers can be sublime, as you all let go of your inhibitions and let the music take control of you.  Or being in a room with a group on the cutting edge of fashion might be your motivation.  Both are noble goals.  But in New York, both are exceptions, not the rule to the dance scene.  Most dance clubs play uninteresting music.  Most patrons cannot dance (many do not even make an effort).  These are usually the males of the group who are simply looking for two warm buttocks against which to grind in prologue (they hope) to the rest of the night.  Most of the people have zero fashion sense unless the “ill-fitting jeans paired with a baggy button-down not tucked in” trend somehow missed my haute couture radar.  Consequently, these evenings, too, become about getting drunk.

These problems are not endemic to New York but are epidemic to going out in the whole country.

I live in and love New York because (cliché alert!) it contains some of the most interesting people in the world.  These are the people I want to meet, I want to talk to, and I want to see. I want places where I can talk to my friends over drinks and meet their friends or intriguing strangers.  And it can be done.  There are art and fashion parties, charity events and fundraisers, and apartment parties. There are places like Milk & Honey and Employees Only. There are also places so un-Trendy that they are instant gems.

Earlier this week I spent an amazing evening with four people, one of whom I knew before I sat down, at Cleopatra’s Needle.  On the Upper West Side: not trendy.  Relatively empty: not trendy.  But we were able to sit there over a course of several hours and order a few drinks and a little food.  We were never pressured to order more.  We were never pressured to leave.  I was able to get to know three new people and have a conversation that spanned ancient Greece, Renoir and impressionism, high school glory stories, George W. Bush, middle school horror stories, New Orleans, two-degree of separation gossip, and criminal law.  There was no glamor but there was also an implicit repudiation of the faux glamor that permeates what is popular in going out in our fair city.

When that becomes the rule and not the exception, then Susan can write all she wants about how the drunk in the red dress went out of style in 1998.

Especially being found in his situation.

Apparently “plump boobs and hot thighs” were too much for the 54-year-old pornography customer’s heart, who died while watching porn in one of the video-booths at the sex-shop on Bischofsplatz, the paper said.

A staff member became suspicious when there was no sign of movement in the cabin long after the man’s time was up. She reportedly knocked on the door and unlocked the booth from the outside and was shocked to find the “porn fan” dead in the chair, the paper reported.

A call to emergency services came too late to help the man. Though authorities suspect he died of a heart attack, the doctor on the scene could not determine the cause of death at the time, and the corpse was handed over to police.

“Investigations so far have not brought up any evidence that a third party might have been involved,” police spokesperson Christian Gräßler told the paper.

Here is your opportunity.

You might want to get them some professional help.

“She said her daughter was the daughter of Satan,” he said.

The girl told police her mother also tried to choke her with her hands, bit her finger and grabbed her breast as though she were trying to tear it off, O’Connell said.

“The daughter managed to defend herself by hitting her mother over the head with a vase,” he said.

Both the mother and daughter were treated at Boston hospitals, O’Connell said.

Casanova was arraigned Thursday after her release from the hospital and returned to court yesterday so that a hearing could be scheduled to determine whether she is dangerous enough to be held without bail, pending her trial. But that hearing was never scheduled because of her outburst, O’Connell said. She is due back in court Nov. 12.

This time, they are attacking beer.

The idea was mooted by the British Beer and Pubs Association, which believes that it is the ideal glass for a high-strength beer or lager.

Rob Hayward, its chief executive, said: “I don’t know what we’ll call a two-thirds pint but we see it as a way of increasing consumer choice, especially for speciality beers. Some of these beers are higher strength in alcohol and it may be more appropriate to drink less than a pint.

“The new measure is also aimed at women who think a half is too small and a pint too big. Some popular fruit and wheat beers also leave a slight aftertaste and many people prefer a smaller volume.”

Others in the trade disagree. Jonathan Mail, spokesman for the Campaign for Real Ale, said that he could see no advantage for consumers.

“I am not aware of any demand for this extra measure. We think the Government would do better to tackle the problem of drinkers who are getting short pints. There are still many pubs who serve pints 10 per cent short. The head should be on the top of the pint but the rule is so vague trading standards won’t bring prosecutions.”

He also suggested that drinkers would find it difficult to keep track of the number of alcoholic units they had consumed.

JD Wetherspoon, which operates 700 pubs, could also see no reason for a two-thirds pint glass.

Eddie Gershon, a representative of the company, said that Wetherspoon pubs already offered third pints, but most customers still preferred a pint.

“If the purpose is to combat the issue of binge drinking then we believe, as responsible pub operators, that this change would be unnecessary.”

Just hope it isn’t a Munchkin.

The police chief in Bel-Nor has resigned amid questions into what he did with money from a Munchkin.

The former is Matthew Lauer, 38, longtime top cop in the north St. Louis County village, who says he’s simply moving on to something else. He stepped down Oct. 10.

The latter is Mickey Carroll, 89, one of a handful of the surviving diminutive denizens of Munchkinland from the 1939 MGM classic “The Wizard of Oz.” His caretaker says the chief took advantage of him.

Carroll has lived in Bel-Nor for nearly seven decades. Carroll’s caretaker, Linda Dodge, said the actor often gave Lauer money at the chief’s request, believing he was supporting the police by buying gear

OK. What happened?

In June, Carroll sought a restraining order against Lauer, claiming the chief had pocketed a $2,000 donation intended for the village. Carroll claimed Lauer then threatened him, in phone calls and visits to his home, to change his story to make it appear as if the donation had been a gift. Lauer returned the money.

The $2,000 “was a donation for police department,” Carroll wrote in his request for the restraining order. “Not a personal gift to the police chief.” A judge dismissed the case when Carroll failed to appear in court.

Lauer, reached Friday, dismissed Carroll’s accusations as “rumors.” He did not respond to requests for further comment.

Is this the end times? The Dallas Cowboys and New York Yankees have joined in a business venture

Courtesy Business Wire

Legends will manage regular concessions, suite catering and team stores at the new Yankees and Cowboys stadiums, which are set to open next year at a cost of more than $1 billion each. Legends also will pursue accounts in the major leagues, college sports and abroad, the sources said.

The first-of-its-kind initiative between two of pro sports’ star teams is the idea of Gerry Cardinale, the Goldman managing director who helped create the Yankees’ regional sports channel, the YES Network, and brokered the return of Alex Rodriguez to the team last year.

Be prepared for the consequences.

The boy’s mother, Kelly Tanis, said Mrs Jester had taken balls from her five children before, so she called the police.

She said: “This time it was a ball that my son had just bought with his own money. He works and he makes his own money, and he bought that ball, and six days later she took it.”

Police said they didn’t want to arrest Mrs Jester, but were left with no option when she refused to give the ball back.

Mrs Jester said: “I was giving it back sooner or later, but not right now so they could make a laughing stock out of me”.

The incident was caught on tape by neighbours who support Mrs Jester’s plight.

One, Kevin Pike, said: “Taken down and interrogated, a (near) 90 year-old lady. This can’t happen and this is absolutely ridiculous”.

Mrs Jester was offered a chance by police to sign a ticket promising to appear in court, but she refused.

She said: “I said go ahead and arrest me. Handcuff me if you’d like, because I said I’m not guilty of anything”.

Well, it is when you add SEX to the story.

[CEO of Zimbabwe Soccer Henrietta]Rushwaya and the player have left the senior team in a state of shock. When he comes home especially on a siesta from his overseas club, he camps at Rushwaya’s residence where they live literary like husband and wife…
Nice.

Diving a little bit deeper into the article, one can find this gem as well:

Rushwaya herself is known for being generous with her body and numerous scribes have had a go. She is a very kind boss whose generosity has won her friends especially in the media as most of her scandals are deliberately swept under the carpet
According to an anonymous source. Nice reporting standards there, Zimbabwe media.

Finally, there is one more piece of information that just cannot be ignored. It seems that Rushwaya trysts take place in one of Harare’s swankiest hotels, a Holiday Inn. Now, I’m no tastemaker when it comes to which hotels to use for sex, but I’ve always been more of a Red Roof Inn man myself. Perhaps Ms. Rushwaya is just reaching a little too high in expecting the front desk manager at a Holiday Inn to keep her secrets for her.

Today is your lucky day.

Twelve-year-old Fat Boy stumbled across the garden, and fell into the outdoor swimming pool which was covered by tarpaulin.

Sarah Penhaligon, 28, owner of the bungalow in Newquay, Cornwall, was woken at night by a “huge” splash and found the Moorland Pony in the shallow end.

She said: “I looked outside, saw this massive animal in the dark, and thought the Beast of Bodmin was in the pool. I was terrified, but when I took a closer look I realised it was a horse.

“I didn’t have a clue what to do next – who do you call when there’s a horse stuck in your swimming pool?

“I dialled 999 and they asked which service I wanted and I said I didn’t know, I just had a horse in my pool and needed help.”

Fire crews spent two hours building a set of hay steps in the pool, and hoisted the animal out of the water at 5am with the help of several harnesses.

The pony had escaped from the nearby Trenance riding stables. A spokesman said horses were known to get ‘punch drunk’ from eating too many apples.

She said: “It looks like he was scrounging for apples in the garden and fell in when he trod on the tarpaulin over the pool.

“It’s a good job he’s got a lot of bulk, as it kept him warm while he was stuck in the water.

Try to be more gracious than this guy.

After taking to the stage amid loud applause, the 88-year-old said he had watched clips of other shows up for awards during the evening, and it was all rubbish.

The humiliation of being rubbished by their honoured guest was taken constructively by ZDF bosses, who said on Sunday they were offering Reich-Ranicki a new programme.

ZDF had broadcast the critic’s ‘The Literary Quartet’, for which he was being honoured, in his work of bringing high-brow literary conversation to the masses.

The broadcaster also said it would show the snub in full as part of the awards ceremony due to be shown on television on Sunday evening.

Reich-Ranicki left presenter Thomas Gottschalk, who had just delivered a lengthy introduction, lost for words when he rejected the prize, saying, “To be absolutely honest, I am not accepting the prize. I do not belong in this company.”

The 88-year-old, the public face of literary criticism and debate in Germany, initially refused to take the prize in his hands. It was reported on Sunday that after being offered the new show, he did in fact accept the prize.

Saturday night’s invited audience of German television’s great and good were shocked into silence, reports the Tagesspiegel newspaper.

Reich-Ranicki admitted later that he should have said in advance that he was not going to accept the award at the glittering gala evening in Cologne, but said, “I did not realise what was waiting here for me.”

Make sure you really are stealing gasoline and not something else.

“I like it. It’s a good one,” said DeLand police Sgt. John Anderson of the incident.

According to a police report, 225 gallons of gasoline used to operate maintenance equipment was reported stolen in July from DeLand Memorial Gardens, 600 E. Beresford Ave.

Maintenance supervisor Howard Shepard told police after the theft he stopped storing gasoline in the tank and used it instead to hold water.

On Thursday night, police suspect the same thief returned and siphoned out the water, worth about $50, probably thinking it was gasoline.

And guess what type he was trying to smuggle across the border.

Quoth this guy:

It is drug commonly used during and after steroid cycles to maintain and restore testicular size as well as produce testosterone. When I reached Canseco’s attorney, Greg Emerson he had “No Comment” and the U.S. Attorney in San Diego told me that it was an ongoing investigation and no comment either. Canseco is due in Federal Court on Tuesday, October 14th to deal with this. Canseco was not arrested, just detained.

Expect jail time.

When police arrived, Spencer answered the door wearing combat gear and a gas mask and told police she would not come out and was wearing the mask so she would be killed by the flames rather than fumes.

Firefighters dragged her from the house and she was detained undeer the Mental Health Act.

But on July 4, she went back to the flat on Thornbury Road, Thornes, to collect some of her possessions.

When she was disturbed, she fled to a nearby taxi. When the driver refused to take her she brandished a hunting knife, racially abused him and threatened to kill the terrified driver, swinging the blade at head height.

Police were called and had to use a stun gun to bring Spencer in.

Sentencing her, Mr Collier acknowledged that she had had a “tragic” life.