guttermorality

raising a puppy is easy

2012-01-21T02:58:00.000-08:00

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just so long as you're willing to hold, entertain and/or watch him like a hawk 24/7, of course.

by day three, the invader had pretty much consolidated his complete and utter takeover of the household, and i decided it was time to bring in the enforcer--you know, lay down some rules, establish discipline, show him who's boss.

i'll let you judge for yourself how that went.

the craigslist rule strikes again...and again

2012-01-15T03:11:00.000-08:00

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don't get me wrong--nobody loves craigslist more than me; it's been a reliable source of entertainment (not to mention other things) over the years. that being said, however, it has one significant downside that pops up with such night-follows-day regularity that i've posited a theorem, which goes as follows:

the more perfect the item you find on craigslist, the further
away it will be.

and i don't care what you're looking for--be it used cars, used DVDs or used men--this rule seems to hold true.

case in point: i've decided i'm ready to have a dog in my life once more. after much consideration, i settled on the breed and started looking. it's turned out to be harder than i thought, so i was happy when earlier this week an ad popped up for a very photogenic 7-month-old male whose family reluctantly had to give him up. the fact that this ideal specimen happened to reside in

caused neither surprise nor dismay--hell, an experienced craigslister such as i wasn't gonna let something as minor as a four-hour round trip get between me and the perfect dog.

marcy, his owner, rhapsodized about how great blackie was--quiet, well-behaved, good with children--so we made an appointment for 2:00 this afternoon, and i made the trek out to see him.

i was greeted at the door by marcy herself, who thrust a wide-eyed, trembling little creature into my arms--legs splayed, stiff as a board and refusing even to look at me. when i knelt down, sat him on the floor and tried to pet him, he slunk away under the couch, and there he stayed despite attempts to coax him out with any number of treats. marcy explained, "he's always been a little nervous; i'm not sure why", as her twin four-year-olds came shrieking into the room, knocking over furniture and hurling toys at each other. i said my goodbyes and wished her luck in finding blackie, if not a good home, then at least a good PTSD therapist.

back home--tired, whole day shot--i opened craigslist to see if anything new had popped up, and lo and behold, there he was: eight weeks old and freshly weaned. the owner told me that three other people had called, but none had been willing to make the drive that night to--where, you ask? oh, c'mon, you're not keeping up.

and how does this story end? let's just cut to the chase:

meet sebastian.

what the well-dressed fashionista will be wearing this season

2012-01-11T23:11:00.000-08:00

had a couple of these made up because i'm toying with the idea of a new banner. meantime, looks rather smashing on v, n'est-ce pas?

would you like some dick with that therapy?

2012-01-09T02:09:00.000-08:00

i like to think that if dr. laura had an adam4adam account, we'd be colleagues.

american gigolo

2011-12-31T13:41:00.000-08:00

he hit me up last night with a simple "fuck me".

always an intriguing opening. i clicked on his profile, saw a buffed-out torso, saw "escort", responded with the pertinent question.

he came back with "for you, it's free," and with that, i grabbed my keys.

he answered the door wearing a jockstrap and a baseball cap, shooing away the chihuahua that tried to greet me--a beauty, but i didn't tell him that, wasn't gonna ruin it--looked me up and down, said, "i'll do anything you want."

"well, for starters, lose the damn cap."

he shyly took it off, i said, "look, balding's only a problem for guys with bad bone structure--quit hiding it," and dragged him off to the bedroom, where i proceeded to work him over to our quite mutual satisfaction (he didn't come, of course, nor did i expect him to--gotta save that for the money).

afterwards, i told him, "thanks--you're sweet," and his face got hard and he said, "no, i'm not--i'm only sweet for you because you're my type. for them, it's all about control, showing 'em who's boss. here, i'll show you."

he picked up his phone, which had been buzzing with text messages the whole time i was there, picked one, punched the callback, snapped, "yeah, be here in half an hour, but you won't be fucking me tonight [because i'd pretty much wrecked that option]--i'll be fucking you," and hung up.

"see?"

and indeed, i did. he told me to come back whenever i wanted, but i probably won't--i don't like guys who are mean to their dogs.

ralph lauren, eat your heart out

2011-12-29T02:18:00.000-08:00

here's a bit of authentically authentic western americana for ya: from a recently-discovered cache of photographs, a shot of my grandmother as a young girl in west texas, circa 1915.

it's a short road back to hell

2011-12-27T02:21:00.000-08:00

dear twink from thursday night:

i managed to overlook your insisting i pick you up at the abbey right now, and then making me wait half an hour--i understand it's not your fault you get mobbed by adoring fans who recognize you from your porn films wherever you go.

i tolerated you going on endlessly about your jet-setting lifestyle, your kardashian connection and the trust fund waiting for you when you turn 30, and then hitting me up for ten bucks for cigarettes and juice because you found yourself short.

i was happy to allow you to totally embarrass me at the supermarket where i shop regularly, first by loudly complaining because no one was there at 2 a.m. to fresh-squeeze the orange juice your refined sensibilities demanded, and then by hanging all over me while drunkenly critiquing the fashion choices of everybody else in the slowest-moving checkout line i've ever endured in my life.

when we got to my place, i grudgingly gave you points for consistency when i discovered you were every bit as delightful in bed as you were out of it.

next morning, i indulged you in your "lost keys" drama, and obligingly tore my house and car apart in a futile effort to find them.

upon driving you home, i dutifully waited until you came back out, grabbed your shit, said, "the manager let me in; you can go now", slammed the door and walked away without so much as a backward glance (and i can only hope the elderly asian lady walking her pomeranian past your apartment building at that moment was able to overlook my screaming, "hey, it was nice fucking you too!" out the car window as i screeched away).

in the fullness of time, i can forgive all of the foregoing--hell, i've endured far worse in my time at the hands of far messier twinks than you.

what i will never be able to forgive, twink from thursday night, is your leaving that freshly-opened pack of marlboros for me to find when i got home.

*sigh*

eighteen years of abstinence, down the drain...

one for the birthday boy

2011-12-25T04:27:00.000-08:00

because the only time i ever feel close to Him is when this song comes up on shuffle. give it a listen--i promise al will make a believer outta you, too.

merry christmas, everyone.

can we just cut to the chase already?

2011-12-23T05:00:00.000-08:00

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to the red team:

it's gonna be mitt. it was always gonna be mitt, because that's who the money wants; the others were merely a collective sideshow whose individual stars were programmed to rise and fall in rapid succession leading up to iowa and new hampshire. ron paul's stubborn refusal to go quietly wasn't part of the plan, but he'll be dispatched quickly enough--in fact, his assassination is already well underway.

so, face it--you're stuck with a loser, whether you want him or not.

to the blue team:

unlike the red team, you're blessed with a candidate who inspires fierce passion among the rank and file of your party, and who wins regardless of what the match-up turns out to be.

problem is, she's not about to challenge an incumbent who's willing to hold your party hostage with his automatic lock on 90% of the black vote regardless of how spectacularly unfit for office he's proven himself to be.

so, face it--you're stuck with a loser, whether you want him or not.

to america:

either way, guess what? you lose.
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for those of you who still don't get it

2011-12-22T04:06:00.000-08:00

i know they'll probably unveil an all-new model in june, but i don't care--i had to have me one of these while they still exist.

why would i buy a product so late in its life cycle when there are faster, cheaper competitors available, you might ask?

simple: because, to my mind--i.e., that of an overly-picky depressive who finds fault with everything--the iphone 4/4s comes as close to perfection as any mass-produced object ever made, at any price.

the conventional wisdom among american manufacturers has always been that, in order to achieve mass acceptance, it's necessary to dumb brilliance down--because either the idea itself or the attendant cost to bring it to fruition is more than the masses can bear [you want proof, just look at the difference between any concept car by any company and the lame-ass model that ends up in production].

this, to me, is the true genius of steve jobs: he made brilliance not only acceptable to the masses, but something they'd be willing to trample each other to pay double for.

so screw all you naysayers who dismiss apple products as nothing more than the darlings of the trendy, vapid and pretentious--because if that weren't so, they wouldn't be accessible to

me.

i'll blame this one on george harrison and cheap vodka tomorrow

2011-12-19T05:33:00.000-08:00

autumn 1993 [or thereabouts--noblesavage will know]

he'd summoned his courage, sneaked outta the compound and travelled to weho from venice by bus. he knew it was against the teachings, but could deny the urge no longer.

it wasn't just the shabby clothes and weird hair that set him apart on the boulevard that night--it was the sweet, guileless smile that grew even wider when our eyes met that caused me to drop the twink i was talking to like a bad habit and head in his direction.

and so we met.

after that first night, he'd steal away after evening prayers whenever he could and come see me, usually bearing fruit or flowers from the altar. we'd talk into the night--he loved his life and his deities, and it showed in that smile.

it was a slow seduction. i didn't push; i knew i'd have to be careful with this one.

finally--i think it was a sunday night--

it had to have been sunday because that was their high holy day, and i remember he hung the garland he'd stolen from the statue of krishna around my neck, gave me a long kiss and used it to drag me to the bedroom

i introduced him to the garden of earthly delights. and with each new discovery, his eyes and that smile grew wider, until his joy knew no bounds.

couple nights later, there was a knock at the door. i answered and there he was, arms laden with treasure, eyes dancing with delight at catching me by surprise. until he looked past me and saw the boy on the couch.

that night, i watched his smile die.

because i killed it.

why? because i wanted that goddam playstation

2011-12-16T23:23:00.000-08:00

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so this year, i entered the firm's "describe your most memorable holiday" essay contest. out of ten entrants i came in fourth, behind two secretaries and a word processor.

it's true--blogging success is transferable to real life.

christopher hitchens, 1949 - 2011

2011-12-16T03:35:00.000-08:00

I sympathize afresh with the mighty Voltaire, who, when badgered on his deathbed and urged to renounce the devil, murmured that this was no time to be making enemies.

and what does your generation have to offer that's any better, you smarmy, post-ironic twentysomething loser?

2011-12-13T06:08:00.000-08:00

not that i'm really that worked up about this, but i figure it's never too early to start rehearsing my indignation for the day when the above snot-nosed punk and thirty million of his closest friends try to take away my medicare ten years from now.

a rare populist rant

2011-12-08T04:52:00.000-08:00

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if, like most americans overwhelmed by the complexity of our current financial crisis, you know the banks pulled some really shady shit but can't quite put your finger on what exactly it was they did, allow me to present for your delectation a little bank fraud to which everybody can relate.

consider the situation of one veronica gutierrez:

veronica, like many americans living paycheck-to-paycheck, was watching every penny. yet, as careful as (i'm sure) she was, it was inevitable that one day she'd fuck up.

hey, we've all been there, right? i can easily imagine veronica kicking herself when that check came back, knowing it was gonna cost her $22 she didn't have to spare.

what i can't so easily imagine is how veronica must've felt when she got her statement at the end of that month:

confused? lemme help you out: apparently, the good folks who ran one of the richest, most powerful banks in the country were so desperate for every last penny that they developed an algorithm which re-ordered the transactions of their poorest [and, presumably, dumbest] customers in such a way as to maximize the overdraft fees they could extort from them.

was veronica amused? not in the least; nor were the attorneys who made her the lead plaintiff in their class action.

everything i've ever said on this blog about frivolous lawsuits and/or outsized jury awards aside, screw the $66 wells fargo thought they owed veronica--i hope the bitch got $66 fucking million outta the $203 million the jury awarded in the case. and then punitive damages on top of that.

* * * * *

of course, we all know that's not the way it played out; veronica and her co-plaintiffs probably each got next to nothing, while their attorneys all became multi-millionaires, if they weren't already.

bankers, lawyers--whatever, they're all motherfuckers.

reason #427 why mkf is beloved throughout the blogosphere

2011-12-01T05:26:00.000-08:00

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with all that's going on in the world, there were weighty matters i was intending to address on this, the first night i've permitted myself alcohol in over a week. but, for better or worse, i chose to warm up with a little blog-surfing first.

as for what follows, what can i say--in guttermoralityland, the opportunity for a satisfying drunk-comment trumps current events every time.

and will i be appreciated for saving this kid at least two years of expensive therapy? hell, no--i'm just a lonely voice in the goddam wilderness, goddammit.

[for those who care, the above was provoked by this post and follow-up.]

people keep asking me what i think about OWS

2011-11-26T06:36:00.000-08:00

in 2000 [i could go back further, but whatever], america elevated a guy to the presidency for no better reason than because he was amiably redolent of the guy it had voted out in 1992.

in 2008, america elevated a guy to the presidency for no better reason than because his flashing white teeth promised hope and a change from the last guy america had elevated to the presidency.

in 2010, america allowed its midterm elections to be swayed by a fringe group of conservatives who, sensing something was seriously wrong, screamed for limited government but woulda cut your nuts off had you dared threaten their medicare or social security.

in 2011, sensing even more is wrong than the last guys, this would seem to be the best that our best and brightest can come up with:

* * * * *

in 1776, any sixteen-year-old american entering college was expected to be conversant in latin and greek, and prepared to develop a thorough mastery of logic and argumentation--what we call "critical thinking" today. furthermore, theology was a mainstay of education back then, providing a foundation of [gasp] ethics.

i keep waiting for some modern incarnation of washington, madison and/or jefferson to rise up and lead america outta the wilderness in which it finds itself today.

needless to say, i keep being disappointed.

* * * * *

in 2006, a guy i respect advised me to cash-out everything i own, convert it all to gold in a singapore bank, follow him to chile and renounce my american citizenship before the shit hit the fan.

he's laughing at me now, and i can hardly blame him.

mkf discovers fire

2011-11-18T04:57:00.000-08:00

couple weeks ago in austin, i met up with an old architecture-school buddy who, unlike me, stayed with the profession, and who over the course of a few premium margaritas

whipped up by an equally-premium lil' bartender who couldn't stop talking about how helplessly drunk he got whenever he imbibed tequila, all the while casting significant glances my way (and yeah, he got a big tip)

filled me in on the current state of the art.

while i probably pull down far more coin in my glorified "want fries with that?" job than does said friend in the highly technical and specialized position he's so painstakingly built for himself over the last 20+ years [and for which sorry state of affairs feel free to blame the profession of architecture rather than my lazy, underachieving ass, ok?], our conversation still made me think.

and i mean long and hard--about what i'd walked away from all those years ago, and why.

to the point that when i got home, i set myself to googlin'--and while in my waning twilight years i'll probably never have the time, money, knowledge base and/or attention span necessary to master the current professional standard, i figured i might as well take a shot at google's low-rent alternative.

so i downloaded it.

two weeks ago:

my first model--i was so proud it turned out just like the one in the tutorial that i saved it.

last night:

point of this post: if 3D modeling software had existed back when mkf first contemplated abandoning architecture, the world might be very different today (ok, maybe only mkf's world, but whatever).

as for the half-finished kitchen above (not to mention the rest of the goddam house): more to come.

fuck you, chip

2011-11-13T05:27:00.000-08:00

the cartoon you sent me couldn't be any more off the mark, because as any fool could plainly tellya

my chair is infinitely more stylish
i keep my secondary laptop to my left
i'm not nearly that fat
my tv is way across the room
my cat is long gone
my faggot ass wouldn't be caught dead blogging in a wifebeater

i could keep going, but you get the point, right?

right?

somebody just kill me now

2011-11-12T05:28:00.000-08:00

a rant in three parts (part 2)

2011-11-08T05:02:00.000-08:00

this one may not be ready for prime time, but if it'll push the last one below the fold, it's good enough.

and for the lost, it's part 2 of this one.

the myth: the only reason america is still in this recession is because our leaders don't have the balls to crank up the presses and spend our way out of it.

the basis for the myth: world war II ended the great depression, thus proving forevermore that massive spending solves massive economic crises; ergo, nothing short of another world war II-level stimulus will solve our current economic crisis.

yeah.

ever heard of the broken-window fallacy? it's a staple of austrian economics, and hazlitt's version goes something like this:

A kid throws a rock at a window and breaks it, and everyone standing around regrets the unfortunate state of affairs. But then up walks a man who points out that this is not a bad thing after all. The man fixing the window will get money for doing so. This will then be spent on a new suit, and the tailor too will get money. The tailor will spend money on other items, and the circle of rising prosperity will expand without end.

you can see the problem with this scenario immediately, right? this "circle of rising prosperity" occurs at the expense of the poor guy whose window was broken--the money he might himself have spent on a new suit or other items went instead to something he wouldn't have needed had the window not been broken in the first place.

easy to see the truth when it's just one little window, but apparently not so easy when you scale it up a few orders of magnitude.

consider: between 1940 and 1945, the united states of america spent billions of dollars and employed millions of people to essentially do nothing but build lots and lots of really expensive rocks, and throw 'em through the windows of the world.

did all this destruction solve the depression? not by a long shot--it enriched a handful of bankers and industrialists to be sure, but by the end of world war II, there was nothing left but a world full of broken windows, a huge american workforce and military suddenly left with nothing to do, and an america that was monstrously in debt.

which brings me to my point: it wasn't world war II that ended the depression, people--it was its aftermath.

in august 1945, we were the last man standing, an untouched-by-war industrial powerhouse to which the destroyed countries of the world, allies and former enemies alike, were forced to turn in order to repair their broken windows. and we were all geared up for production, had an enormous skilled workforce and a captive market--how the hell could we lose?

now, compare and contrast the america of 1945 to the america of today.

back then:

america was brimming with wartime factories that could easily be converted to make things the world needed and wanted--and we had virtually no competition.

government was still small, and had infinite room to expand.

the bankers and the corporations hadn't yet leveraged the financial and commodities markets into the bloated, voracious monsters they are today.

there was no medicare, medicaid, welfare or food stamps to drain the national treasury, and social security payouts were barely a blip in the budget.

personal debt among the citizenry was almost non-existent.

almost half of americans lived on farms, and produced their own food.

our underclass was far smaller, far less entitled, and far better behaved.

the veneer of civilization was far thicker.

i could go on, but you get the point, right?

in other words, back in 1945 we were a lean, mean america whose bubble was just beginning to expand; today, we're a fat, soft, bloated america whose bubble has burst, all the stimulus in the world won't reflate us, and the new lean, mean, more productive economies of the world are circling our cooling carcass and licking their chops.

and you think larry summers and his "spend our way to prosperity" cronies don't understand this? of course they do.

so if they already know massive spending isn't gonna work, why is it that they're preaching this fallacious gospel, you ask?

well, if i told you now, there'd be no need for a part 3, would there?

have fun with 498, kid

2011-11-06T03:58:00.000-08:00

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readers of this blog could be forgiven for thinking mkf only has tragic sex, when the truth is it's just the only kind he writes about.

and it's what happened today.

the pictures hadn't lied: young, fresh-faced nordic blond, not my usual type.

takes a minute for my eyes to adjust to the gloom from the bright sunlight outside, and by then he's already halfway to the bedroom, talking in that fast, mumbly sorta way they do--the whole time, i have to make him repeat everything at least once.

as i undress, he starts moving piles of laundry off the bed but keeps getting distracted, wandering off to check messages, but finally clears off enough stuff to make room, drops the bathrobe off his perfect lil' speedo body, kneels with his back to me on the edge of the bed, presents. realizing an opening kiss is probably outta the question, i get down to the business at hand.

i try to pull him towards the center of the bed, but he resists--too far from the laptop, i realize, which pings from time to time with new hits.

eventually i zone it all out, hit my stride and he suddenly groans, pulls away.

"sorry--did i hurt you?"

"no, you almost made me come and another guy's on his way over."

damn, so close.*

after a minute he recouples, determined to get me off. i try, but by now i'm so over this beautiful boy i'm forced to fake it--convincingly, of course--and with that, we're done.

five minutes later i'm hosed off and throwing on clothes, and he says, "you're 497, right?"

"huh?"

"497--isn't that you?" i look up, see the phone in his hand and realize he's talking about the first three digits of my number.

"yeah, 497--that's me."

"cool--turn the bottom lock on your way out, wouldya?"

not a problem.

___________________
*bringing a tweaker to orgasm: (a) almost impossible, and therefore (b) the LA top's holy grail.

the problem with three-part rants

2011-11-06T03:56:00.000-08:00

is that by the time one gets to part two, it's not really a rant anymore--the immediacy has faded, and ~~one has sobered up~~it can be put off for another day.

which is what's happened here--but trust me, that day will come, and i promise it will come this week.

meanwhile...

a rant in three parts (part 1)

2011-10-29T04:25:00.001-07:00

The central irony of financial crisis is that while it is caused by too much confidence, too much borrowing and lending and too much spending, it can only be resolved with more confidence, more borrowing and lending, and more spending.

larry summers, director,
white house economic council

and there you have it, folks--laid out in a reuters opinion piece this week for all the world to see by the economist and former treasury secretary whose opinions have held more sway over two of the last three administrations than any other single individual--the neo-keynesian strategy reduced to its essence.

i want you to go back and re-read the above quote--maybe a couple times--and sit with it a minute, see how it plays in your mind. and then i want you to indulge in a little wordplay with me--imagine just for shits and giggles we take that quote and strip it of its specificity, like this:

The central irony of [a] is that while it is caused by too much [b], it can only be resolved with more [b].

and then substitute for the phrases "financial crisis" "and "too much confidence, too much borrowing and lending and too much spending" the cause-and-effect pairing of your choice. i'll give you a couple to get you started:

the central irony of lung cancer is that while it is caused by too much smoking, it can only be resolved with more smoking.

or how about

the central irony of flash-flooding is that while it is caused by heavy rains, it can only be resolved with more heavy rains.

see where i'm going with this? with the possible exception of a hangover, i defy you to come with any [a] caused by [b] which can be resolved by shoving more [b] at it.

yet these-these economists would have you believe that their dismal science is the exception to the rule, and that fixing the mess for which they themselves are in no small part responsible requires that humanity suspend its critical faculties and blindly believe the above bullshit.

and as much i'd love to deride and dismiss larry summers as nothing more than a common dumbass for not only the above statement but many others as well, i'm afraid i can't--because, far from being stupid, this guy has long enjoyed the well-earned distinction of being the smartest guy in most any room he chooses to enter. in fact, all these guys who espouse this bullshit are smart--krugman, rubin, bernanke, all of 'em.

so how could this legion of geniuses possibly justify something so counter-intuitive as the above, you ask? simple: they learned it in the best schools in the country at the knees of the generation of economists that preceded them. and where did those guys get it? that's simple, too--all this "spend our way to prosperity" nonsense derives from one great, shining, deliberate lie.

[next: debunking the "world war II as the ultimate stimulus" myth]

the frugal gourmet

2011-10-23T03:58:00.000-07:00

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figuring any ol' red would do, i snagged a dusty bottle somebody'd given me years ago, opened it and after dumping most of its contents into the crockpot, took a swig, found it unusually tasty, googled it outta curiosity and found that the cabernet i was cooking with is currently going for $125 a bottle.

made a decent beef bourguignon, what can i tellya.

dah-veed

2011-10-22T06:58:00.000-07:00

there's this boy i fuck sometimes [i use the term "boy" here loosely; while it applied when i met him, he's a little longer in the tooth these days, as are we all].

thing about david: he was, is and always will be his own closed book.

if he was reserved before the meth got him, that's nothing compared to where he is now that he's come out the other side. before, i could usually use his love of languages and music to open him up; now if i can get him to talk at all, it's mostly cryptic twelve-step shit, which i put up with because it seems to be holding him together.

whatever--outta the blue he'll call and i'll drive across town to get him, bring him back to my place, work him over and then take him home. and every time, the drive back is so bleak and silent i think, "that's it--never again."

until the next time he calls, anyway.

what differentiates this boy from all the others, you ask?

nothing really, except for those brief shining moments when his fingers dig into my back and suddenly he's not a thousand miles away anymore--he's right there, in the moment, eyes wide and laser-focused on mine--he's with me, and i have him.

until the moment ends and he pushes me off and heads for the shower.

i told him one night on the way back to his place-i said, "you'll never give it up to me, which is maybe the only reason i keep coming back for your scrawny ass," to which he just smiled--not at me, of course--and looked out the window, which only served to remind me how twisted and unhealthy my priorities have come to be.

it's been two months--should i call him?

a typical carefree, fun-filled mkf vacation

2011-10-18T04:50:00.000-07:00

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saturday: fly to austin, sandwiched between two ~~people fatter than me~~ fat people. pick up the rental, drive to ma's house, commence the packing.

sunday/monday: continue the packing (despite her best efforts to thwart me by insisting on trying on every article of unearthed clothing and looking at every picture). find the $10 gold piece i gave her for christmas 35 years ago that she thought she'd lost.

tuesday: supervise the movers, begin the cleaning, break for dinner with the neighbors. try to tell 'em how much i appreciate their being there for my mother all these years until judy tears up and makes me stop.

wednesday: attend the closing, sign the papers, kick myself one last time for not holding out for more. wait for the thing to fund, then head north to tyler, watching ma closely in the rearview as she follows in her car. spend the night with my cousin mike and his wife kim during which we sit out on their deck until 3am, hand-feed cheese nips to the raccoons while kim and i reminisce about our days at tyler junior college and kill two bottles of really good red wine and i marvel at how easy it is after 18 years of abstinence to smoke half a pack of mike's pall malls without even really trying.

thursday: one last lunch before delivering ma into the clutches of my brother's perfect little world. we drive by my grandmother's little house on fenton street and sit there a minute, each of us lost in our own remembrances of what once was. she says, "i met your dad for the first time on that little stoop," as if she'd never told me that before.

drive the four-and-a-half hours back to austin, turn in the rental, catch the (packed) flight home, arrive at ten pm, bone-weary, debate calling an old friend when my ride flakes on me but [my birthday gift to you, noblesavage] elect instead to take the two buses necessary to reach beverly hills and cab it home from there--end of a perfect trip.

and how was your week?

quote of the week

2011-10-07T05:11:00.000-07:00

We’re trying to figure out how much we should be worried about all of this. Is this going to turn into a personal safety problem?

wall street CEO

three memories

2011-09-21T03:58:00.001-07:00

i don't remember exactly, but i think the barbie got shitcanned when i hit kindergarten.

not because i'd tired of her (i hadn't), or because my friends teased me (they didn't), or because my father disapproved (he no doubt did, but never said a word).

it was none of those things--it was more like one day i opened my eyes, saw what was up, made the safe choice and never looked back.

poor linda hussey and her barbie up the street probably never knew why my barbie and i suddenly stopped returning their calls.

get over it, linda.

* * * * *

his name was mike baxter, i found out by casually asking around after spotting him on the playground that first day of fourth grade.

that afternoon, i got on his bus, got off where he did, trailed him at a safe distance and then walked home (as luck would have it, not too far).

the following saturday, i biked over to his street and rode aimlessly up and down until his sister noticed me.

"have you seen my friends?" she hadn't, but invited me over to play until they showed up.

at the end of that day, the baxter family piled into their car and headed off to dinner somewhere, with mike hanging out the left rear window, waving at his fine new friend and grinning from ear to ear until they disappeared from sight.

and i sat there astride my bicycle, waving back, thinking, "gotcha."

* * * * *

his name was ricky brock and he couldn't have been any more fey if he'd tried; ricky's saving grace was, he didn't seem to care.

we spent hours talking on the phone over the course of that eighth-grade year, although i wouldn't have been caught dead talking to him at school (he didn't seem to care about that either).

he didn't even seem to care the day i sketched that caricature which so perfectly captured his mincing walk and passed it around health class--he laughed along with everybody else.

thank god bullying back then wasn't anything like it is today.

_______________________

this post was inspired by the story of a boy who, like ricky, didn't hide. may his sweet young soul rest in peace.

oh, jackie

2011-09-18T04:51:00.000-07:00

note: whenever reading anything mkf ever writes about any kennedy, please keep in mind it's always a conflicted collaboration between a young idealist who once viewed them as gods, and the world-weary cynic who now knows better.

* * * * *

when i first found out that (a) not only had the new widow sat down with arthur schlesinger back in early '64, sloshed some scotch over the rocks, lit a cigarette and recorded hours and hours of recollections of her white house years, but (b) choice excerpts of same were gonna be featured in their unexpurgated form in a two-hour ABC special years before she had intended their release, i sprung a lil' historical boner in spite of myself.

because this was the woman who had famously dubbed lyndon and ladybird "colonel cornpone and his little porkchop", so i was expecting some good shit.

what i shoulda remembered was, this was also the woman who had not only retroactively invented camelot, but had on very short notice managed to research, script, art direct, choreograph, stage-manage and star in the most spectacularly successful state funeral in recorded history.

in other words, i shoulda known from the get-go the whole thing would be nothing but an artful perpetuation of the kennedy myth--but still, i had high hopes.

so i DVR'd it. and tonight, i watched. my favorite quote [from her fevered account of the cuban missile incident her husband turned into a crisis and which is a subject for another day]:

Please don't send me away to Camp David ... Please don't send me anywhere. If anything happens, we're all going to stay right here with you ... even if there's not room in the bomb shelter in the White House ... I just want to be with you and I want to die with you.

and all i could think was, "really? then hold still instead of crawlin' all over the damn trunk."

what a difference a decade makes

2011-09-12T17:21:00.000-07:00

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presented for (a) all you empiricists out there who insist dollar ~~debasement~~ inflation isn't a problem; and (b) anyone who thinks that anything foisted upon us by anyone in power during the past 10 years was a good idea.

h/t mark mchugh at across the street

what, you were expecting hearts and flowers?

2011-09-11T01:41:00.000-07:00

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every year at this time, as america is manipulated by its government and its media into alternating bouts of patriotic wailing and rending of garments on one hand, and scared-rabbit fear of an anniversary attack on the other, i go back and watch the video i posted on this day last year, and a cold, quiet rage reignites within me.

not, understand, at the ragtag band of allahu akbar-shrieking primitives we're told planned and pulled off all this destruction all by themselves, but at the masterminds, whoever and wherever they might be.

only this year, i find i'm far from the only architecturally-trained skeptic out there. an organization calling itself "architects & engineers for 9/11 truth" has produced a riveting 15-minute video, which, in the three weeks of its existence, has already garnered some serious attention.

i really don't care what your views are on conspiracy theories in general or 9/11 in particular--i invite you to tear yourself away from the ground-zero circus long enough to watch something that might actually matter.

i've been waiting for this for weeks

2011-09-09T06:53:00.000-07:00

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you know, take in some light, escapist fare, get my mind off things.

would you buy a used krugerrand from this man?

2011-09-08T05:40:00.000-07:00

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so today i'm scrolling through my news aggregators when i come across the following:

wait--the great keynesian oracle of the left has, after a decade of dismissive condescension whenever the subject is raised, finally deigned to address the 800-pound bull in the room? "oh, this is gonna be good," i think to myself as i click.

what follows are select quotes from dr. krugman's little treatise, interspersed with my comments.

he opens with the following parenthetical:

(Yes, it’s 4:30 AM where I am. I found myself wide awake, thinking about gold prices. You got a problem with that?)

i have not the slightest problem believing this--the barbarous relic's galling and unfathomable rise against all keynesian reason has no doubt caused the good professor any number of sleepless nights.

In assessing economic prospects since the financial crisis of 2008, there have been two kinds of people: inflationistas and deflationistas.

actually, there's a third kind of people he apparently can't fit into his model: those (like me) who believe that as the crisis progresses, essentials like food, water, fuel and farmland will experience breathtaking inflation, while non-essentials (i.e., ipads and pretty much every other first-world frill one can think of) won't be worth the pound of rice one would rather have. but i digress.

I am, of course, a big deflationista

well, no shit, paul--that's the only way you can claim with a straight face that all that stimulus couldn't possibly cause inflation (in fact, all of the chaos and death that took place over the course of the recent "arab spring" as a partial result of your and your cronies' misguidedly inflationary policies--maybe that's what should be keeping you up at night).

But what about gold? As some readers and correspondents love to point out, you would have made a lot of money if you’d bought gold early in this mess. So doesn’t that vindicate the inflationistas, to some extent?

a good question, i say.

My usual response has been that I have no idea what drives the price of gold

again, i totally believe him.

and then he goes on to take a gratuitous swipe at "glenn beck followers" before taking his readers down a twisting path to his sudden blinding insight: gold is rising because of...wait for it...deflation!

how did he come to this unprecedented conclusion? by a line of reasoning which is so torturous and convoluted--replete with diagrams and arcane references ("hotelling"--really, paul?)--that i won't even attempt to condense it here. seriously, you gotta go take a look for yourself.

anyway, after contorting himself into a rhetorical and logical pretzel in order to make the square peg of reality fit into the round hole of his worldview, he comes to the following conclusion as regards his shiny new model:

And this says that the price of gold should jump in the short run.

really, paul--ya think?

he then goes on to gloat about how "intuitive" his new revelation is (so intuitive it took him ten years to dream it up), and humbly closes with the following:

But suppose this [my theory] is the right story, or at least a good part of the story, of gold prices. If so, just about everything you read about what gold prices mean is wrong.

that's right, doug casey--and jim willie, aubie baltin, peter schiff, doug mcalvany, roger weigand and all the other other clear-eyed analysts i follow who started tracking the rise of gold right after the dotcom bust back at about the same time the good dr. krugman was saying shit like

To fight this recession the Fed needs more than a snapback; it needs soaring household spending to offset moribund business investment. And to do that, as Paul McCulley of Pimco put it, Alan Greenspan needs to create a housing bubble to replace the Nasdaq bubble.

all of you rubes may have been right, but it was totally for the wrong reasons, you got that?

* * * * *

so now that dr. krugman has devised a face-saving way for him and his fellow academicians to climb aboard the gold bandwagon, will their mainstream followers be far behind? is this the push gold needs to enter phase two of its long bull market? stay tuned...

a post-labor day post

2011-09-06T06:10:00.000-07:00

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i used to be such a conscientious blogger--you know, posting semi-regularly, responding to comments, following up on dangling threads, that sorta thing--but all that has pretty much gone by the wayside lately.

all i can offer by way of explanation is that i've become a deer caught in the headlights of world events--events i've long known would come to pass, and from which i've profited handsomely, but which have nonetheless stunned me with their unfolding speed to the point that i can do little but watch in dismay as the world as i've known it disintegrates before my eyes.

one of the things each of my chosen prophets predicted (and the thing which prompted this post) was that the global elites who caused this mess would, when the shit finally hit the fan, set the victims of their crimes against one another, thus effectively deflecting blame from themselves.

and this they've done, brilliantly: first, by making their crimes so complicated that barely a handful of their educationally dumbed-down victims could begin to grasp the enormity of what had been perpetrated upon them; and second, by enlisting their bought-and-paid-for media shills and politicians to fan the flames of (lower) class warfare.

so the tea party's declared war on labor, and labor has just declared war right back, when their collective rage might be more constructively utilized by, say, banding together, rampaging through the streets and hanging investment bankers from every lamppost in lower manhattan.

not that i would ever advocate such a course of action, you understand.

they say it's the first thing to go

2011-09-03T04:49:00.000-07:00

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me: wow, so you're really an art detective?

him (enunciating carefully): no, i'm in architecture--we design buildings.

funny, never heard from him again

2011-08-26T03:55:00.000-07:00

[from the archives]

a corollary to the pomona theorem: it can be wise to refrain from exercising one's scintillating wit until after one has closed the deal.

the parable of the dented fender

2011-08-24T04:41:00.000-07:00

remember back at the end of this post where i proclaimed my love for my new car?

yeah, well, we always hurt the ones we love (or maybe that's just me).

when i went in for the estimate, i pushed the guy to try and keep it at or below $1,000, that magic number being my deductible--that way, i figured, i could just pay for it outta pocket and avoid filing a claim with my insurance company. when he balked, i told him i'd be perfectly happy with a used fender, and the bumper didn't look too bad--it just needed a little touching up.

for a minute, it looked as if it might be possible--until he opened the hood, that is. as he poked around, finding more and more wrong, my heart sank--as the total inched inexorably toward the $1,500 mark, i realized i'd have to file a claim after all.

with that realization, my attitude did a complete one-eighty. screw the used fender and the touched-up bumper--if the insurance company was picking up the tab, we were gonna fix this fucker better than new, goddammit. as he continued to poke around, finding more and more wrong and the total inched inexorably past the $2,000 mark [because by now he knew the insurance company was involved], my satisfaction grew--suddenly, i was all, like, "hey, look at this" and "don't forget about this" and "i know it's on the other side of the car, but can you fix this, too?".

in other words, i displayed the kinda behavior humans can reliably be counted on to lapse into when, as the redoubtable mrs. thatcher so memorably put it, it's "other people's money".

what's the point of this little parable, you ask?

simple: next time you wonder why (a) healthcare and college in this country are so expensive; (b) government spending and future entitlements are orders of magnitude higher than revenues; (c) the welfare classes are rioting in europe; and/or (d) [insert leftist- or corporatist-induced economic distortion of your choice here],

come back, read this post and multiply the above numbers by a few trillion.

look out, here comes tomorrow

2011-08-19T04:51:00.000-07:00

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[i know this blog hasn't been much fun lately. i promise some entertaining shit soon.]

so the market's crashing and everybody's all, like, surprised and shit. or should i say, everybody but my eleven readers, upon each of whose memory is engraved in letters of fire that immortal post i wrote back in april in which i laid out exactly why what's now happening would happen right about now, right?

no?

(sigh) i really wonder why i bother sometimes.

well, lemme start this post with why what's now happening is not happening: it's not happening because, as our "let 'em eat cake" president maintains, the recovery he so splendidly engineered has suddenly hit a patch of bad luck

You had an Arab Spring in the Middle East that promises more democracy and more human rights for people, but it also drove up gas prices -- tough for the economy, a lot of uncertainty. And then you have the situation in Europe, where they’re dealing with all sorts of debt challenges, and that washes up on our shores. And you had a tsunami in Japan, and that broke supply chains and created difficulties for the economy all across the globe.

the irony of blaming the "arab spring" uprisings which were caused in no small part by the inflationary policies of his phony recovery aside, what the president failed to mention in that nice little speech was the fact that, despite each of the incidents he cited, the american stock market had, by the end of june, regained the ground it had lost over the spring and was approaching its two-year highs.

in fact, the stock market has continued the climb it started back in march 2009 (i.e., the beginning of the "obama recovery") through all sorts of bad news that in any sane universe shoulda sent it tumbling to 4,000 long ago.

was this because the american "recovery" was sufficiently strong to weather such storms, as the president, his lackeys and so many in the media maintain? fuck no--it was because, for most of the last two years and four months, at the first sign of faltering, the plunge protection team (aka the fed) was there to pump whatever liquidity was required into the market to keep it buoyant [seriously, i only wish i had a nickel for every late-session turnaround "rally" the market has staged over the last couple years].

but then the quantitative-easing party ended: as of june 30, there were no more liquidity injections courtesy of helicopter ben. the market see-sawed around through most of july like one of those staggering cowboys that had taken a bullet in a bad western, and then it was finally time to drop.

and drop it has, just like back on april 8 i told you it would:

if, as promised, [bernanke] ends QE in order to curb the inflation, our vaunted "economic recovery" that's been running on nothing but this fed-provided life support will promptly collapse, taking with it not only precious metals (temporarily, anyway), but the stock market, job creation, what's left of the housing market and whatever shreds of hope barack obama might still have of re-election.

i.e., what's happening now is a long-delayed continuation of what started back in 2007: the inevitable death spiral of the american economy.

ah, but i was wrong about one thing, wasn't i? see, usually when the market corrects in any serious way, it takes metals with it, if for no other reason than because investors are often forced to liquidate their winners to cover their losers. but boy, not this time--people are starting to catch on.

so where do we go from here? by the time you read this, tomorrow will have come, and i don't expect it to be pretty.

on august 26, ben bernanke will give a speech from the fed's annual economic symposium at jackson hole, wyoming. why is this important, you ask? because he used the occasion of last year's speech to announce QE II, which promised infusion of new liquidity gave the market another year of seemingly vibrant life.

if, as is widely anticipated, mr. bernanke uses the occasion of this year's speech to announce another round of, as governor perry of texas recently put it, "money printing" in an attempt to stem the current market bloodbath and thus kick the can down the road one more time, will it work again? i honestly dunno--the world is waking up awful fast.

here is what i do know: at the time of mr. bernanke's speech in august of 2010, you coulda bought an ounce of gold for a little over $1,200, and an ounce of silver for a little over $17.

august 2012? extrapolate for yourselves, bitches.

i guess it's all in the spin

2011-08-11T06:18:00.000-07:00

so today i got an email from an old friend, the pertinent portion of which i've reproduced below

which depressed me unutterably.

why? because this particular friend (let's call her "babe"), as far from stupid as she happens to be, and despite the screaming evidence all about her to the contrary

still feels the need to self-deprecate and apologize for taking an eminently rational step towards protecting her hard-earned wealth.

as i sat there and thought about why the stigma surrounding gold could still possibly exist in america, i realized that for many it probably all comes down to its association with

see, like so many of my friends, the babe in question happens to be a dyed-in-the-wool liberal. and while in other circumstances i generally consider that condition nothing more than a minor, benign and often amusing derangement, i'm now realizing that it and the knee-jerk prejudices it breeds is probably going to doom many of her ilk to future and unnecessary poverty. many, but thankfully not all.

you did the right thing, babe.

day 36: it was fun while it lasted

2011-08-10T06:26:00.000-07:00

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and no, we're not talking about the failed "one blogpost per day" experiment--we're talking about the number of days since mkf last allowed vodka to pass his parched lips.

i'll (probably) be more specific later--for now, please allow me a minute to bask in the long-denied glow, ok?

day 16: i got nothin

2011-07-16T21:33:00.000-07:00

committing to a blogpost a day for a month is a fine idea. committing to abstinence from alcohol for a month is also a fine idea. doing them both in the same month has turned out to be a really, really bad idea.

day 15: and the world hangs breathless on our fate

2011-07-15T23:49:00.000-07:00

Playing poker is part of politics, as is theatrical posturing. That's fair enough. But what America is currently exhibiting is the worst kind of absurd theatrics. And the whole world is being held hostage.

some german newspaper

it's fascinating to watch as a fat, complacent government grown used to kicking the can down the road is finally forced to deal with the consequences of decades of political expediency and make damned-if-it-does, damned-if-it-doesn't decisions.

and this is just the warm-up round, folks.

day 14: propaganda shot of the week

2011-07-14T22:05:00.000-07:00

this little tableau struck me for a couple different reasons:

(1) its utter absurdity; and

(2) the fact that, while he was one of the early cheerleaders for the full-body scanners the TSA currently employ to keep every innocent man, woman and child in america safe from one another, ol' rummy obviously isn't about to step his wrinkled ass into one.

(and while i could be wrong about this, i'd be willing to bet he's never allowed so much as a sip of diet coke to cross his lips, either.)

day 13: if you only watch one video today

2011-07-13T12:51:00.000-07:00

make it this one, in which the man who singlehandedly dictates U.S. monetary policy reveals his complete and utter misunderstanding of the nature of money.

[and in which representative ron paul reminds us of what the nation will have lost when he's no longer around to speak truth to power come january 2013.]

or if you just want the cliff-notes version,

day 12: why are we over there, again?

2011-07-12T12:26:00.000-07:00

so after ranting on the subject just last night, i wake up to the following headlines:

a decade ago, we committed our military might, the lives of thousands of our soldiers, our treasure and our national prestige to the dubious tasks of waging war and nation-building in afghanistan and iraq.

and for what--so that these countries can descend into chaos as soon as we withdraw, leaving their region far less stable than had we done nothing?

if there's a god up there, may he damn to hell the foolish, arrogant men who foisted these follies upon us.

____________
update: i can be a little cranky when i first get up.

day 11: chart of the day

2011-07-11T23:29:00.000-07:00

so, as the red and blue teams in congress continue their bickering about how best to rearrange the deck chairs on the titanic, i would ask you to take a look at the following chart, courtesy of the st. louis fed--i've put it up before; it's one of my favorites--

and, as you contemplate the more-or-less straight line in which federal spending has increased over the last 10 years--a doubling, from $1.9 trillion when dubya took office to $3.8 trillion today, during a period of relatively low inflation--i ask you, my readers, the following question:

is your life better or easier than it was 10 years ago?

and i'm not asking whether your quality of life has doubled like the federal spending; no, i'm just asking if all this debt creation has benefited you, mr. or ms. average joe or ethel, in any material way.

no? you must not be a banker or a federal employee. how about this question:

do you feel safer than you did 10 years ago?

i remember back when bush and his cronies initially estimated their glorious iraqi adventure to make the world safe for democracy would cost a mere $60 billion, and afghanistan a fraction of that--and scoffed when it was suggested the cost might go as high as $100 billion. today, of course, such numbers seem quaint when compared to the $1.2 trillion we're at today.

but hey, small price to pay to make us safer, right? no? well, something the government's doing has gotta be working, doesn't it? how about this question:

is all the stimulus money at least creating jobs like it's supposed to?

well, yeah, it is. of course, these new jobs are costing us an average of $278,000 apiece--but hey, if it gets people back to work then it's worth it, right?

no? well, here are a few more:

are we a stronger, more powerful or more prestigious nation than we were 10 years ago?

is our industrial/manufacturing base stronger?

is public education better than it was 10 years ago?

is our infrastructure better than it was 10 years ago?

are there fewer poor people?

is social security better funded?

are healthcare or college more affordable?

no, no, no, no, no and no? then, if creating and then spending all those trillions of dollars didn't solve any of the problems mentioned above, i have to ask all you taxpayers out there:

as its catalog of failures and voracious appetite both continue to grow, are you still willing to continue to feed the beast of big government in whatever quantities it demands?

and if the answer to that question is yes, then can somebody please tell me

why?

day 10: an eleventh-hour non-post

2011-07-10T23:59:00.000-07:00

i've been sitting on this video awhile--if you haven't seen it, and you like vintage photos of gay couples as much as i do, you'll enjoy it. you'll have to endure a 30-second ad first (probably, ironically enough, from coors), but it's worth it.

back to regular content tomorrow (maybe), and i'll catch up with the comments. sorry, it's been a lousy weekend.

h/t gaycast

day 9: have you seen this story?

2011-07-09T23:10:00.000-07:00

Across Atlanta Public Schools, staff worked feverishly in secret to transform testing failures into successes.

Teachers and principals erased and corrected mistakes on students’ answer sheets.

Area superintendents silenced whistle-blowers and rewarded subordinates who met academic goals by any means possible.

Superintendent Beverly Hall and her top aides ignored, buried, destroyed or altered complaints about misconduct, claimed ignorance of wrongdoing and accused naysayers of failing to believe in poor children’s ability to learn.

For years — as long as a decade — this was how the Atlanta school district produced gains on state curriculum tests.

in case you're interested, the rest can be found here; if not, i guess i understand--nobody much outside of atlanta seems to care.

i dunno, it seems like every day there's a new story of the sort that, a mere generation ago, would have not only have been generally unthinkable, but would have been met with the sort of national outrage of which we as a nation no longer seem capable.

when the rule of law and the public trust become nothing but meaningless catchphrases, how is a nation expected to find its way?

day 8: just another friday afternoon in LA

2011-07-08T23:38:00.000-07:00

so shortly before 4, the "breaking news" graphic flashes across the screen interrupting oprah, followed by a studio shot of the local anchor duo looking very animated, and then throwing to an apparent live shot of a big gray jet flying low--

what? what the fuck is happening? i grab the remote, turn up the volume, and...

christ, i had completely forgotten that the royal couple are flying in today. i sit down to watch.

not, mind you, because i give a rat's ass about wills and whatsername. or because watching americans scurrying about, scraping and making general gushing fools of themselves around royalty can be entertaining.

no, i'm watching because their first scheduled event upon leaving the airport, as breathlessly announced by the female anchor, will, by my rough calculation, put them at precisely the intersection through which i and tens of thousands of my fellow angelenos will need to pass, at about exactly the same time.

because they always pull this shit on friday afternoon at 4--you know, when nobody in los angeles is on the road.

so the plane lands, taxis a bit and pulls up alongside this straggly-looking line of local luminaries [our idiot mayor, i expected, but the governor?!], the anchors extemporize inanely as the ground crew set up the stairs and futz around with the door--and then, finally, the couple emerge.

they blow through the reception line in about a minute and a half, all smiles and charm. she looks sensational, i gotta admit, and it's fascinating to watch their choreography--how he moves ahead, seemingly oblivious of her presence, and she always and very artfully manages to stay a step or two behind him. they pile into opposite sides of a range rover, and they're off.

and the bloviating anchors lapse back into semi-coherence, because now they're on familiar ground--now it's just another car chase through the streets of LA, only this time with the cops helping.

the cops are on familiar ground, too, and their choreography is even better than the royals'. the motorcade slices through the congested streets like a hot knife through butter, motorcycle patrolmen clearing one intersection and then racing ahead to take positions at another, in a seamless dance that not only moves the whole circus from LAX to the beverly hilton in less than 20 minutes, but does so with minimal disruption of traffic.

and, more importantly, gets them to their destination well ahead of me.

by the time i roll through the intersection of wilshire and santa monica boulevards, there is nary a trace of the hubbub i had seen on television there a mere 15 minutes before. as i pull into my parking space right on time [ok, five minutes late, but for me that's right on time], i think about how different this experience was than the last time a dignitary came to town on a friday afternoon.

and it convinces me even more that if dignitaries can't travel like this, perhaps they shouldn't travel at all.

day 7: since we're talking about pianists

2011-07-07T05:03:00.000-07:00

this one probably never woulda seen the light of day had last night's post not triggered the memory--and even then, probably not if it wasn't for the fact that it's suddenly day 7 and i otherwise got nothin.

picture it: a summer afternoon in waco, texas, 1970

so i'm thirteen and on a trampoline in some strange kid's backyard in a strange city, having been dragged there by the kid of the friend my mother had dragged me along with her to visit [that's clear, right?].

it's hot and we're jumping and hollering and generally having a good time, when suddenly there's the sound of a car out front and then the gate opens, three grownups appear and the action grinds to a halt. one of 'em (the woman, i think) steps forward and calls out, "c'mere, kids, there's someone we want you to meet!"

"my parents," one of the kids who lives there mutters. "c'mon, we have to." obviously, he's done this drill before.

we dutifully dismount and cross the lawn to the grownups. i'm embarrassed as i always am when meeting new grownups, but even more so than usual because they're all impeccably turned out in their church clothes, and we're a fuckin' mess.

the parents proudly introduce their guest and the kids are all like, yeah, whatever, give him a half-hearted wave and head back to the trampoline.

the parents are obviously mortified by their kids' reaction. i'm mortified, too, and more than a little stunned--because, unlike them, i know exactly who this guy is.

see, my grandmother had told me all about him as we watched him perform on television one night. about how he'd gone to the soviet union at the height of the cold war as a callow young kid from the nearby town of kilgore, competed in their fancy piano contest, beaten the russkies at their own game and come home with the prize.

about how america had celebrated his victory with magazine covers and ticker-tape parades.

but more importantly--at least for my grandmother--about how he had vindicated east texas. because suddenly we weren't backwoods hicks anymore--we had produced a prodigy.

so without overthinking it too much, i walk my sweaty and grass-stained ass up to this elegant, imperially-slim gentleman, stick out my hand and say, "nice to meet you, mr. cliburn. my grandmother loved you."

and then feel myself flush as it flashes through my mind--"holy shit, is 'van cliburn' like 'van dyke'? does he have a first name i don't know about and i just made an even bigger a fool of myself?"

no worries--he smiles and takes my grubby little mitt in his without hesitation. his hand is cool and supple, and i marvel at the fact that he'd let anyone touch it, much less me.

we talk for a minute. turns out the kid's parents are real estate agents and are helping him find a house for his mother. he asks me about school and about my grandmother, and seems genuinely interested.

and then he heads into the house to talk business with the parents and i head back to the trampoline to join the others, but i can't get back into it. the afternoon has changed, and i can't put my young finger on why.

alas, the word "surreal" hasn't yet entered my vocabulary.

day 6: how about a classy "it came up on shuffle" for a change?

2011-07-06T04:22:00.000-07:00

this wasn't mere blogfodder--for my money it's the undisputed kick-ass piano composition of all time, presented to you below the way i first heard it.

and i'm glad entremont's chopin was the first chopin i ever experienced. yeah, even to my untrained ear he's a little sloppy sometimes, but the passion he brings to the music he so obviously loves more than makes up for it.

since then, i've heard many interpretations of this piece by many different hands, and even when more technically perfect, they all seem flat and bloodless when compared to this one.

enjoy.

day 5: presenting the mkf unified theory of the evolution of art, part 2

2011-07-05T20:26:00.000-07:00

years ago when i was a lowly second-year architecture student trying (and failing) to re-create a pencil perspective of some baroque building or other, i remember at some point flinging my french curve across the room in disgust and deciding that modern architecture didn't evolve because some early 20th century geniuses had a collective vision--it evolved because the bauhaus crowd were a bunch of lazy motherfuckers who realized it was easier to compose a building using only squares and straight lines and call it a new "style" than take the time to develop the skills necessary to draw--much less artfully employ--all those goddam curves and curlicues.

and i was only half-kidding. the modernists, in a single stroke, threw out about 95% if not more of the architectural vocabulary that had developed over the millennia--i kinda think of modernism as the ebonics of architecture.

and as i started looking around me--at contemporary painting and sculpture and music--i saw much of the same reductivism at work.

is it, i wondered, because, as a civilization evolves, it strips away all the extraneous crap to get to the essence of a particular art form? or is it because, as a civilization becomes corrupted by abundance and everything becomes easy, it relaxes its standards and allows anybody to call themselves an artist?

or maybe it's not that clear-cut; whatever--here's the mkf unified theory of the evolution of art:

to the degree technology advances in a given civilization, artistic technical virtuosity tends to decline.*

if i had to prove the theory? well, i couldn't, but i'd sure postulate the following: take any average renaissance painter, sculptor, musician or architect and plop 'em down in the middle of now, and, once they stopped laughing, they'd be up and running in the modern version of their respective art form in fairly short order. do the reverse, and the modernists would be reduced to panhandling raphael and botticelli on the streets of florence for loose change.

am i right? i dunno--you got a better theory?

________________

*since i first developed this theory, computers have of course changed everything--the technical virtuosity of the scientists has made artistic virtuosity easy.

day 4: presenting the mkf unified theory of the evolution of art

2011-07-04T08:01:00.000-07:00

a. painting

classical:

modern:

b. sculpture

classical:

modern:

c. music

classical:

modern:

d. architecture

classical:

modern:

sober update: actually, this one wasn't quite ready for publication yet, seeing as how it's missing the "theory" that's actually the point of the post, but i've been really good at hitting the wrong button lately. i'll try to finish it tomorrow.

day 3: comida reconfortante

2011-07-03T23:37:00.000-07:00

if you're down, feeling empty, and happen to find yourself in van nuys, may i suggest...

alberto's asada nachos--cheap heaven in a styrofoam clamshell.

and yes i did eat the whole thing--what's your goddam point?

day 2: my last-ever global warming post (unless, of course, it's not)

2011-07-02T04:50:00.000-07:00

believe it or not, i'm not a global-warming denier; rather, i'd call myself a healthy skeptic.

not just because of the recent exposures of shoddy science, cover-ups, conflicts of interest and outright fraud within the movement.

and not just because the movement's disciples keep moving the goalposts as the planet stubbornly refuses to warm on schedule per their vaunted computer models (thus requiring the awkward branding shift from global "warming" to global "climate change").

and not even because of all the high-living fat cats at the top of the movement preaching austerity to the rest of us as they position themselves to reap huge fortunes from the carbon-offset schemes they've devised to save us from ourselves.

no, my skepticism goes beyond all that--in fact, a wall street journal article from back in february summed up my feelings on the subject in a couple well-written paragraphs:

We do know that carbon dioxide and other gases trap and re-radiate heat. We also know that humans have emitted ever-more of these gases since the Industrial Revolution. What we don't know is exactly how sensitive the climate is to increases in these gases versus other possible factors—solar variability, oceanic currents, Pacific heating and cooling cycles, planets' gravitational and magnetic oscillations, and so on.

Given the unknowns, it's possible that even if we spend trillions of dollars, and forgo trillions more in future economic growth, to cut carbon emissions to pre-industrial levels, the climate will continue to change--as it always has.

as it always has.

oh, and speaking of "solar variability", get this: scientists who had up until very recently been convinced we were heading into a period of intense solar activity have--as scientists frequently do-- suddenly changed their tune.

According to three studies released in the United States on Tuesday, experts believe the familiar sunspot cycle may be shutting down and heading toward a pattern of inactivity unseen since the 17th century.

and how did the sun's "inactivity" affect us here on earth back in the 17th century? glad you asked, because i was curious about that too.

Experts are now probing whether this period of inactivity could be a second Maunder Minimum, which was a 70-year period when hardly any sunspots were observed between 1645-1715, a period known as...

wait for it--here it comes...

the "Little Ice Age."

got that, folks? according to the scientists over here, the planet's warming--unless, of course, the scientists over there are right, in which case we're about to get our collective asses frozen off.

see where i'm going with this?

* * * * *

whenever i'm drawn into a discussion with a global-warming fanatic, i always end it with some variation of the following:

"ok, hotshot, i've just appointed you king of the world, given you carte blanche. solve global warming--you've got 5...4...3...2..."

and, of course, they can't.

because what it comes down to is this: the world is not gonna give up its cars, its chemicals and its concrete. no civilization in the history of humanity has ever voluntarily regressed, and we're not going to, either.

and despite all the pie-in-the-sky bullshit to the contrary, there isn't a green option on the horizon with even a snowball's chance in hell of supplanting oil and/or coal in our lifetime.

is mankind a cancer on the planet? are we fouling our own nest to the point of engineering our own extinction? yeah, and yeah.

so let's expend our energies on mitigating our impact where it's practical--like accelerating the development of green technologies, curbing the birth rates of the third-worlders and maybe cleaning up the oceans, for instance--and leave the weather to the gods where it belongs, ok?

day 1: zen and the art of the chopped salad

2011-07-01T06:40:00.000-07:00

.
enough with the current events--let's kick off the month with something truly important.

it seemed like a lot of money--$50 for a few crappy pieces o' plastic with metal teeth--but what can i say, i was desperate.

having tried everything else, including this monstrosity,

great if you need to make coleslaw for the russian army--but otherwise, fahgettaboudit

i'd pretty much given up on my quest to produce the perfect restaurant-quality chopped salad for my quotidian consumption, until somebody turned me onto the borner v.

a mandoline--seriously? another one of those cheap plastic pieces o' crap?

"seriously," she said. "this one's different. but make sure you also order the kevlar gloves, because the holder that comes with the thing is useless--otherwise you're gonna shred your fingers."

and damned if the bitch wasn't right on both counts--you gotta get you one of these things.

[btw: the true zen of the chopped salad is that there is no art to it--this is truly the sausage of vegetarian dishes. trust me, push whatever you've got left over in the vegetable bin through the borner v, and it's instant magic.

today's masterpiece:

a base of equal parts shredded iceberg and romaine lettuce
half a cucumber
one roma tomato
a quarter medium red onion
two stalks celery
one medium carrot
four radishes
half a jonathan apple
a few crumbles of bleu cheese
some chopped-up salami
half a can of garbanzo beans

i'd give you the recipe for the dressing i whipped up to go along with it, but i'm holding that back in case i run short of posts before the month runs out. you understand, right?]

i know i'll regret this later

2011-07-01T04:24:00.000-07:00

.
but in the here and now (i.e., basking in the warm, benevolent glow of my first mkf cocktail in well over a week), the idea of publicly committing to the production of no less than one blogpost a day during the upcoming month of july suddenly seems like a damned fine idea.

and i'm not gonna let the fact that even back in this blog's drunken heyday i never even approached such prolific output deter me from my new goal for even a second.

[having said all that, i totally reserve the right to resort to youtube videos and cute puppy photos if i have to.]

different dance, same ol' song

2011-06-22T04:05:00.000-07:00

.
one of the pleasures of writing guttermorality is the opportunity it affords me to indulge in the occasional random, drunken rant.

unless you've experienced it yourself, you'll just have to trust me--there's little in life more satisfying than getting a hair up your ass about some dumbass thing or other, letting loose in a satisfying blast, hitting "publish" and stumbling all self-satisfied off to bed.

and such was (almost) the case with this post written back in early may. problem was, by the time i was done venting my spleen i was too, let's say, exhausted to perform the elementary photoshoppery necessary to create the below composite image--so i hit "save as draft" instead, stumbled my not-quite self-satisfied ass off to bed and promptly forgot all about it.

until tonight, that is. better late than never, right?

* * * * *

michelle obama is, i'm sure, a very nice lady, and she's handled her duties as first lady--a job that would have to bore the living shit outta someone with her background--with commendable grace.

but one thing michelle obama is not, is stupid--which makes what she's doing right now not only egregiously dishonest, but laughable.

what am i talking about? her dancing around the country telling poor and middle-class people to eat healthy when she knows damn well that one of the main reasons poor people eat unhealthy is because a jumbo jack with cheese can be had for less than a third of what a comparably-filling chinese chicken salad would cost 'em, that's what.

and not for any good reason, either. the cost of producing a bowlful of healthy greens is infinitely less than that of a quarter-pound of hamburger and a slice of cheese (and i'm not just talking dollars and cents--the environmental costs associated with raising, feeding, waste disposal and slaughter of industrially-grown cattle are astronomical).

but you'd never know it when you go to the supermarket, would you? a pound of hamburger and a pound of arugula will cost you about the same. it's madness, and all thanks to the way the people over at michelle's husband's department of agriculture--in fact, every department of agriculture since nixon--dole out the goddam subsidies.

basically what it comes down to is, the corn, beef and dairy lobbies throw a lot of campaign money at politicians in washington in order to ensure that shitloads of your tax dollars will be used to keep their respective industries' genetically-modified, excitotoxin-laced, hormone-adulterated products artificially cheap so that you will eat and drink them in abundance and consequently fatten and develop all kinds of mental and physical diseases, at which point the food industry will happily hand you off to the medical and pharmaceutical industries so that they can drain you of whatever dollars you have left before you die.

think i'm being a little harsh, do you? then consider this: about the same time michelle was kicking off her "let's move" campaign, a division of her husband's department of agriculture euphemistically (and misleadingly) called dairy management, inc. was working with the fast-food industry in an ambitious multi-million-dollar campaign to boost lagging sales by increasing the use of cheap, fat-laden, taxpayer-subsidized cheese in their products by up to 40%.

how did it (and other similar past campaigns) work? admirably, i'd say--according to the above-linked article,

Americans now eat an average of 33 pounds of cheese a year, nearly triple the 1970 rate.

you really want us to eat healthy, michelle? then next time you're in bed with your husband, snuggle up to him real close, nibble his ear a little and, in your sweetest, most seductive voice, whisper to him to quit subsidizing fattening, unhealthy foods with our tax dollars, and throw a little of that money to--

oh wait--there's no arugula lobby, you say? never mind.

fifteen dollars? really?

2011-06-19T04:11:00.000-07:00

if somebody could once and for all please splain me

why the american "high-end" movie experience of today must include having one's eardrums virtually blasted outta one's skull; and

why the makers of the american movies of today can't lend even a fraction of the intelligence, imagination and virtuosity employed in the execution of the special effects to the writing of a script that doesn't have holes you could crash a goddam train through

i would be really grateful.

oh, yeah--happy pride

2011-06-14T05:18:00.000-07:00

completely got away from me this year, but better late than never--right, kelly?

[and since i have nothing prepared to commemorate the occasion this year, i'll leave you with my offering from two years ago. if you haven't read it, do so--it's one of my better efforts, if i do say so myself.]

quote of the month

2011-06-14T05:05:00.000-07:00

One of the conclusions that I try to coax, lead, and/or nudge people towards is acceptance of the fact that the economy can't be fixed.

chris martenson

a couple years back when everything really started going to shit and the red and blue teams and their respective cheerleaders were casting hysterical blame back and forth at one another whilst simultaneously assuring us, the scared sheep, they they and they alone knew how to fix it, i looked around for a few voices of reason who could tell me what was really happening.

while i found several--peter schiff and gerald celente among them--chris martenson turned out to be the guy i was looking for. he's not an ideologue; rather, he's a scientist, and taking his "crash course" was not only among the most productive and eye-opening afternoons i've ever spent, it's also one of the reasons i drink [try it--it's free, it's broken down into easy, doable doses, and i promise once you're done, you won't ever look at the world the same way again].

since then, i've come to depend on his analysis--he strips away all the bullshit like no one else. a case in point would be the recent post from which the above quote was taken. read it here--it won't take long, and in a few paragraphs, and after looking at a couple simple charts, you'll understand for yourself what the paul krugmans of the world simply refuse to see, let alone acknowledge.

it really just comes down to math, folks--it's that simple. the world as we know it is about to change forever, and the sooner you accept that fact, the more time you'll have to prepare for what's coming.

cheerfully submitted,

mkf

guttermorality blogpost #592, in which mkf poses a question

2011-06-08T05:16:00.000-07:00

may i first just say, god save us all from outcast high-school dweebs who obtain power later in life.

everybody knows at least one of these monsters--the fat bitch at work who makes her underlings' lives miserable, or the officious prick on the condo board who writes you a ticket if he catches you with your dog off the leash or your garage door up for more than five minutes, for instance.

and god knows you can't turn on the radio these days without running into pathetic, pencil-dicked overcompensators like rush limbaugh, howard stern or michael savage (who was at least smart enough to change his name from weiner, anyway).

but the really ambitious former dweeb-outcasts? they're the ones who find their true calling in the arena of politics.

congress is replete with these guys, on both sides of the aisle, but there comes to mind no more sterling example of the breed than that flaming, throbbing asshole, anthony weiner.

here you have a guy who finally, after a lifetime of having sand kicked in his face by the jocks while the pretty girls laughed, had his shot at the brass ring of power.

did it go to his head? all i had to do was watch a clip like this (and god knows that's only one of many) to have my answer to that question long ago. all this shit that's come out lately? merely confirmation of what i already knew.

but to the rest of you for whom this past week's developments were a revelation--and whether he resigns or not [and i fully expect him to brazen it out, because democrats caught in shit like this usually do]--i pose the following question:

in this, the darkest hour our country has ever faced, do we really want or need small men of the caliber of anthony weiner scolding us, wagging their fingers in our faces and making the laws the rest of us have to live by?

really?

postcards from the edge (part 2)

2011-06-05T04:53:00.000-07:00

the 382 miles between los angeles and san francisco can be driven any number of ways, but what it basically boils down to is either getting there quick, or taking the scenic route.

that latter road less traveled by--the narrow, meandering pacific coast highway--is the one i've wanted to take for 20 years, and since i finally had the chance, i decided to go for it.

the plan, such as it was

mkf doesn't really plan things, as will soon become clear

was to take the 5 up, spend a few days partying, reminiscing and sightseeing, and then make my leisurely way home down the coast, stopping at notable points along the way.

the trip up was a breeze--i waited until saturday so as to avoid the holiday herd and averaged eighty-five the whole way, with hardly a trooper in sight [thanks, california budget crisis].

trip home goes different--i get off to a late start, cross the san rafael bridge from the east bay into marin, and then south across the golden gate into the city [two bridges, eleven dollars in tolls--thanks again, california budget crisis], fuck around there a little too long, and then finally head south.

in a way, it works out--by the time i stop somewhere south of santa cruz for my first photo op of the day [all of these photos embiggen gorgeously, btw], the light is perfect:

water looks so inviting, doesn't it? shame it's, like, 50 degrees

as i travel further south, the hills begin to rise

hell, even the slums are picturesque

oh, and in case your overloaded senses need a visual break from the ridiculously-beautiful coastline? no problem--big sur's right across the street:

it's at some point south of monterey--as the afternoon is waning and about the time i stopped and took the following picture--that something i had only been peripherally aware of for the last hour or so crystallizes in my mind; namely, that for some reason i've got the whole pacific coast highway pretty much to myself.

the fact of this makes me uneasy in a way i can't put my finger on. maybe i shoulda paid more attention to all those road signs back there indicating some sort of closure up ahead. but what the hell--there's always a detour, right?

whatever--i'd figure it out later. meantime, there's insanely magnificent shit like this to stop and gawk at [and if you're still wondering which pic you should click on, this would be it]:

as the afternoon fades to twilight and the fog rolls in, the setting sun casts a maxfield parrish glow across the landscape

and i come across my final warning: this really harsh road sign informing me and all the other clueless idiots like me who ignored all the prior warnings that, thanks to some buzzkill mudslide last year, there's only 22 more miles of PCH before the party ends, and i'd better quickly get ready to make other arrangements--no mention of a detour anywhere.

fuck--no wonder there's nobody else on the road. my heart sinks at the thought of having to turn around and drive my dumb ass all the way back to fuckin' monterey.

to my relief, i see immediately beyond the above harsh road sign another sign informing me of the town of lucia up ahead--first town i'd come across in many miles. surely someone there could point me to a detour, right?

the town of lucia turns out to be a combination restaurant/general store on the side of the road whose employees have seen more than their share of people like me. i walk in the door and before i can even get the words out, the girl behind the counter rolls her eyes, whips out a xerox'd map and a highlighter and says, "look--you can either do it the easy way and turn around and go back the way you came; or if you're brave, you can drive four miles south and take the nacimiento over the mountains to the 101."

"the nacimiento" of which she speaks turns out, i'd find out later, to be the nacimiento-fergusson road, a legendarily steep, narrow, twisting, one-lane mountain pass featuring numerous treacherous hairpin switchbacks and noted not only for its sheer drop-offs at every turn but also its complete absence of guardrails of any kind.

here's a picture i found of the nacimiento on a good day:

"and should you survive the nacimiento," she continues, "it dumps you into this army base you have to cross to get to the 101, and those bastards'll ticket you if they catch you doing 26 in a 25--and since it's federal, you'll pay $100 for every mile over the speed limit. whole thing'll take you at least two hours if you're lucky. you game?"

here's the nacimiento on a bad day:

as i turn off the PCH in the gathering gloom with the fog rolling in, i pause before beginning my climb to snap this final picture, and reflect on the fact that if i go over the edge up there somewhere, there's no cell phone coverage in this mountain wilderness, and nobody to even know to look for me there. would i make it? should i turn back?

i'll spare you the suspense--bitch back in hooterville didn't realize she was throwing down the gauntlet to the greatest risk-taking scofflaw of all time. federal, my ass--i was over that motherfucker, through the army base and cruising down the 101 in less than an hour.

problem was, by the time the whole thing was over, it had been a long day and i was exhausted. fuck san simeon and all the rest of that scenic shit i had planned for the next day--i needed a drink.

so i got myself an in-n-out burger and went home.

* * * * *

a word about the transportation:

it wasn't a car i was buying, it was a soulless, economical appliance--that's what i, the car guy, told myself a year ago.

that was before i knew this "appliance" could (a) smoothly fly me up the interstate in great comfort at autobahn speeds with power to spare, (b) transport four full-size men and their gear all over san francisco with plenty of elbow room and nobody bitching; (c) stick like glue at insane speeds not only down lombard street and through the serpentine curves of the pacific coast highway but up the nacimiento-fergusson road as well; and (d) do it all averaging 43 mpg.

i feel fairly safe in saying there is no other car in the world that could make all those claims. it took me a year, but i'm finally happy to say

i love you, baby.

postcards from the edge (part 1)

2011-06-03T05:40:00.000-07:00

three things of which i was reminded over the course of this past weekend's reunion of old friends:

(1) if you haul ass down lombard street fast-and-screechy enough, you earn a round of applause from the inevitable herd of camera-clicking japanese tourists at the bottom;

(2) whether from up close, far away or glimpsed unexpectedly over the rooftops, that goddam bridge is still among the most visually thrilling structures on earth;

(3) when compared to the true champions of the sport, my lame incipient ass is, for better or worse, still merely skittering along the bunny slopes of alcoholism.

i wish i could elaborate on that last point, but unfortunately i've managed to fall into that ego trap where all anonymous confessional bloggers end up sooner or later: my old friends are now my readers.

i'll try to make the trip home more interesting.

ok, there was that one dance track

2011-05-27T06:14:00.000-07:00

even i had to admit the nubby orange case was cool--and probably the only reason i allowed him to seduce me into listening to anything by the pet shop boys, much less their dance music.

but noblesavage turned out to be right on that long-ago night in 1993: their version of go west was--and still is--really great.

<p>&amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;dfdf&amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;gt;</p>

[for those who don't understand the context of this post: it's because you're not reading the comments of previous posts.

for those who don't understand why the communist armies of the world are prancing about with gay abandon to the pet shop boys in the above video: eat me--it was the best copy i could find. ]

guttermorality blogpost #588, in which mkf tries to redeem himself for guttermorality blogpost #587

2011-05-25T06:35:00.000-07:00

[i.e., another blast from the past that's been on high rotation lately]

so the other night eric clapton's cocaine comes up on shuffle as it does from time to time, and at some point after i settle in to enjoy its well-worn but eternally-cool groove--but before i allow its seductive strains to completely lull me back to its place and time--i suddenly remember it's really not eric clapton's cocaine at all.

it's actually j.j. cale's cocaine [just like it was j.j. cale's after midnight, but who's counting--right, eric?].

which got me thinking about j.j. cale, and about that day back in 1971 when my young, impressionable 14-year-old ass first heard the song which is the subject of this post and thus became aware of the existence of this guy who made music that was utterly unlike anything else on the radio at that time.

like pretty much everything else he's written, crazy mama has been covered by pretty much everybody under the sun--but unlike all the others, it's his own version of this one that's stood the test of time.

seriously, if you know a cooler song than this, please lemme know.

guttermorality blogpost #587, in which mkf reconnects with his inner teenybopper

2011-05-22T04:12:00.000-07:00

it's no deep, dark secret to regular readers of this blog that i compose my deepest, darkest posts to (a) liberal amounts of vodka, and (b) more often than not, a single bouncy pop song from my misspent youth upon which i fixate and set to "repeat" when it comes up on shuffle at the optimal moment in that particular night's alcoholic cycle.

and while the booze is integral to the creative process, the song selection is probably equally if not more so. because to me, these songs aren't just songs, they're little aural drug pushes that last precisely as long as the music does--i.e., little two-and-a-half minute endorphin-loaded packages of happiness that, in combination with the booze, hold off the darkness long enough for me to actually write something.

songs such as the one that's the subject of this post, for instance.

* * * * *

yeah, she's from way back in the day and her flippy hairdo was tragically wrong for her face, but lesley gore was the britney spears of her day--and even though her signature song never did much for me, this all-but-forgotten follow-up ranks, imho, among the best pop records ever made.

she was all of 18, her voice was sublime, her song selection shrewd, and the impeccable, multi-layered production was, believe it or not, quincy jones at his early best. and if all that's not enough, it turns out that despite all her protestations of boy trouble to the contrary, she was One Of Our People all along--who the fuck knew?

and, half a century later, maybe when lady gaga manages to come up with something even half as hooky as maybe i know, then maybe i'll start to pay attention to her scrawny, desperately-theatrical ass.

unless and until that happens, i'll stay down here in the dinosaur pit, pour myself another one and keep lil' lesley on repeat, thank you very much.

buyer's remorse is a bitch, ain't it?

2011-05-20T05:09:00.000-07:00

state of mkf: sitting here reviewing the fallout from this story, laughing at all the idiots who were surprised (it's either that, or cry), sipping my cocktail and wondering how much liberal-jew money we'll see pouring into the campaign coffers of [insert name of republican presidential candidate here] around this time next year.

quote of the day

2011-05-18T03:56:00.000-07:00

.
actually, two [fine, three--and yeah i know i'm like a broken record with this shit, but this one pretty much says it all].

first, this one:

I am a scientist who was on the carbon gravy train, understands the evidence, was once an alarmist, but am now a skeptic.

and then, (literally) the money shot:

If theory and evidence disagree, real scientists scrap the theory. But official climate science ignored [crucial evidence] and instead clung to their carbon dioxide theory — that just happens to keep them in well-paying jobs with lavish research grants, and gives great political power to their government masters.

i know that posting an article like this has--no matter how credible the source--no more power to sway ~~noblesavage~~the true believers than does waving the long-form certificate under the nose of a birther, but i'm gonna keep plugging away anyway, because it's too important.

why am i like a dog with a bone on this issue, you ask? here--i'll let dr. evans tell you:

Official climate science, which is funded and directed entirely by government, promotes a theory that is based on a guess about moist air that is now a known falsehood. Governments gleefully accept their advice, because the only ways to curb emissions are to impose taxes and extend government control over all energy use. And to curb emissions on a world scale might even lead to world government — how exciting for the political class!

read it--it near-perfectly condenses all the reams of contrarian data i've read over the years into a few riveting paragraphs.

of course, if you're one of the many out there who, in these troubled and uncertain times, take comfort in the fact that our national and global leaders are standing poised and ready to guide us forward into our brave new world with the same selfless integrity and skill that's brought us to this point, i can only say (a) get your head examined; and (b) why the hell are you reading this blog?

how to not succeed in business by really, really trying [part 2]

2011-05-11T03:23:00.000-07:00

so i'm in the car the other day and i flip over to a station where the host is interviewing some pioneer in the food truck craze currently sweeping the nation and as he congratulates the guy on his visionary genius, i shake my head and wonder what these hipster gourmets would think if they knew they'd been beaten to the punch a quarter-century ago.

and then i think, "i really need to get shitfaced and finish that post."

and if you have no idea what i'm talking about, go back and read part 1.

* * * * *

by late may in that fateful year of 1985, the die was cast--the agreements were signed, the money was in place, time was short and we had to move if we wanted to launch by fall.

we found the RV on the first saturday we looked, snatched it cheaply and ruthlessly outta the hands of the new widow whose dead husband had tended it so carefully for us all those years, and had it safely back in the parking lot outside beau's apartment by nightfall.

where we'd work on it all that long, hot summer--from dawn til midnight, all day, every day--until its transformation from common, plebian motorhome to mobile full-service restaurant was complete.

how beau managed to sweet-talk his apartment management (not to mention his neighbors) into enduring all that racket all summer long i'll never know, but then i'll never know how he managed half the shit he pulled off while i knew him.

gutting the thing was easy--we removed everything from the inside we didn't need (i.e., everything but the bathroom), while carefully leaving the exterior shell intact.

i remember as we ripped her apart we scoffed at how flimsy and lightweight the construction was, without taking even a moment to consider why. we'd find out later when we took our twelve-ton, solidly 2x4-reconstructed behemoth out for her first swaying, tire-flattening, zero-to-60-in-two-minutes drive. god, we could be so stupid.

but by god, we did it--into a cramped space scarcely larger than the sorta jail cell that'd make amnesty international blanch, we managed to fit (a) a custom high-heat three-wok cooktop; (b) a prep area; (c) a three-compartment sink [even though we'd never use it--and even now, 25 years later, may i just say fuck you very much for that little space-eating requirement, city of austin health department]; (d) a bathroom; (e) refrigerated undercounter food storage; (f) a huge noise-isolated generator; and, last but not least, (g) room enough for two people to move around each other and cook. that motherfucker was an engineering marvel if i do say so myself--and this, largely thanks to beau.

but she was beautiful, too. unlike the utilitarian food trucks of today, ours was open on three sides, thanks to the huge 3x5 horizontal-sliding windows i picked up at the home-improvement store [safety glass? we dun' need no stinkin' safety glass], and her interior was a masterpiece of artfully illuminated resin-coated butcher-block and stainless steel. we wanted people looking in (hell, i even designed a special ribbed-steel ceiling, knowing our customers would be slightly below us looking up).

and, of course, we pulled it off for next to nothing--whatever our differences, that's the way beau and i both rolled.

i'd give anything to have pictures of the thing; problem was, by the time we were finished, we were too exhausted for such niceties--all i've got to show for the effort are some of the promotional materials.

i don't remember exactly at what point our little walk-up chinese restaurant became "WokUp"--i'm pretty sure it happened early on--but once we had the name, the rest clicked together in my brain pretty quickly (because, for better or worse, i was the advertising and art department for this operation).

hell, our logo couldn't possibly be anything but a walking wok, right?

and yeah i know real woks don't have lids--just go with it, ok?

here's our first flyer (with a dollar-off coupon on the other side):

and the mock-up for our first print ad:

kinda cute, huh? well, considering how bone-weary and brain-dead i was by the time my young, amateurish ass had to conjure all this shit into being, it coulda been a lot worse, trust me.

whatever--by late august and right on schedule, our mobile kitchen was a thing of beauty, our menu perfected and our ad campaign complete. beau and mkf were finally ready to take their show on the road.

and as exhausted as we were, we were also exhilarated--i mean, having survived our summer-long trial by fire, it had to be smooth sailing ahead, right? i mean seriously, how wrong could things go?

stay tuned: in part 3 i'll count the ways.

alvaro update

2011-05-08T04:28:00.000-07:00

you remember alvaro, right? well, since last we visited his haunted ass in february, much has happened.

probate finally closed on dead george's estate in late april, with the entirety of same going, as expected, to dead george's brain-addled mother.

which immediately prompted mean brother #1 to call alvaro and crow to him at the top of his lungs, "pack up, you faggot motherfucker, because we're finally gonna get your ass evicted."

alvaro, seeing the handwriting on the wall, packed his shit and awaited the sheriff's knock.

but a funny thing happened on the way to court: on the day before george's mother [or whoever was gonna guide her hand] was to sign the eviction papers, she very obligingly dropped dead.

whether or not dead george called his mama home at just the right time isn't the point of this post--all alvaro knows is, the probate clock has just reset, and he's been granted at least another year by the people's republic of california before he has to worry about george's mean brothers tryin' to throw him out again.

god, karma's a bitch--don't you love it?

fuck yeah!

2011-05-02T04:01:00.000-07:00

if you came over here today looking for my usual dark, cynical take on the day's events you're gonna be disappointed, because today i'm taking off the tinfoil hat and joining the rest of america in a long-overdue celebration.

that's right, bitches, today i'm proud of my government and i'm proud of my president--hell, i'm even proud of the goddam military-industrial complex.

i'm even happy to say that i, mkf, was wrong. about what, you ask? allow me to explain.

see, bill clinton had several chances to get this motherfucker back in the late 90's, and, fearful of the blowback if things went to shit, cravenly pulled back at the last minute every time. and george bush? had him dead-to-rights in tora bora in 2001, choked, and let him slip through his fingers. and boy, have we paid for their collective indecisiveness and timidity a thousand times over.

which is why i gotta hand it to this president and his team--i honestly didn't think he had it in him.

this was an operation that was fraught with potential peril at every level of execution--anything and everything coulda gone not only wrong, but disastrously wrong, and it would've all landed on his head. and by god, he stepped up--or, in this case, stepped back and had the courage to allow the experts to do what they do best. and that, as often as not, is what good presidentin' is all about.

tomorrow we'll be right back where we were yesterday. but today? today is that rare day in guttermoralityland when mkf is proud to say something he never imagined he'd have cause to say during the course of this administration: "kudos, mr. president--well played".

sober update: i am already embarrassed by this post.

this can only end badly

2011-04-30T04:26:00.000-07:00

h/t clusterstock

"down, boy--he's 80"

2011-04-27T23:04:00.000-07:00

my mother's response last night when she catches me staring at the above snapshot in one of her old junior-college scrapbooks.

the whole rutgers thing

2011-04-21T04:37:00.000-07:00

dharun ravi--wow, this guy just looks like a douchebag, doesn't he? even in two dimensions, he fairly oozes that smug, shiny, well-fed arrogance peculiar to his kind. this is the sorta kid for whom college and life beyond were supposed to be as effortlessly golden as the childhood he'd left behind.

guess not so much anymore, huh?

because, see, this is also the sorta kid who, since time immemorial, has taken it as his god-given right to make a living hell outta the not-so-golden lives of kids like

tyler clementi. even my two-sizes-too-small heart aches every time i look at this picture and imagine his tortured last hours, and think of the promise lost.

but that doesn't stop me from asking whether his tormentor should really be facing a 10-year prison sentence for what seems on its face no more than a malicious, stupid prank--and yeah, i mean no matter how horribly wrong it went.

before i go any further, lemme just say that (a) i'm not a lawyer, legal expert or constitutional scholar; and (b) i don't have all the facts of the case as presented to the grand jury that returned the indictment--when i do, my opinion may change.

but from what i can tell, mr. ravi's being charged with a "hate" crime (whatever that even means), because his victim (a) was gay; and (b) killed himself, presumably as a result of mr. ravi's actions [i'm inferring this last part, because even though the prosecutor denies it, i think it's safe to assume that we wouldn't be talking about a 10-year prison sentence had mr. clementi not jumped off the bridge].

so i have a couple questions:

are mr. ravi's actions criminal only because his victim was gay? in other words, if some future douchebag does this to his nerdy straight roommate--say, a fundamentalist christian kid who hangs himself because, to him, the thought of his fornication being exposed to the world is worse than death--will he be charged with a hate crime, too? and if so, into what protected class does said straight roommate fall? and if not, then why is what happened to the gay kid worse than what happened to the straight kid, and where is equal justice under the law?

or are mr. ravi's actions criminal only because his victim killed himself? in other words, if he'd picked a thicker-skinned gay kid to psychically bash, would we even be talking about this?

what if the doubtless charming mr. ravi, his presumed dream-team of attorneys and an endless string of character witnesses manage to snow a jury into believing mr. ravi doesn't have a homophobic bone in his body, and that he was just goofing on a roommate--is what he did still a crime?

you see where i'm going with this? with the introduction of the "hate crime" concept, all of a sudden it's not about what the perpetrator actually did anymore; we have to bring the thought police in, because it becomes all about what was in his heart, what his intentions were, and whether or not he did it to a member of a special, protected class of people--the actual crime kinda gets lost in the confusion.

and that's where my problem with hate crime legislation and protected classes lies. yeah, when it comes to crime, we're all equal under the law--except, of course, for those of us who are more equal (or more hateful) than others.

* * * * *

having said all that, would i want a guy who gay-bashed me or anybody i care about charged with a hate crime? you bet your sweet ass i would--and not only him, but his mama, daddy, pre-natal nurse, obstetrician and/or anybody else who was responsible for bringing his hateful ass into the world.

which is why you're not supposed to let vengeful victims or their advocates write the laws--but that, in essence, is exactly what's happened with hate crime legislation.

and speaking of things i was right about

2011-04-19T04:08:00.000-07:00

since our deal with the middle east has always involved protecting oppressive dictatorships in exchange for cheap dollar-denominated oil, and since we now seem to be throwing said oppressive dictators under the bus one after another, i'm wondering how long before the saudis wake up and start shopping around for better protectors [like the chinese and/or russians, for example--both of whom abstained from the libya vote]. . .

mkf, a few weeks ago

turns out it didn't take 'em long at all.

as for the second part of the above quote,

. . . and we find ourselves up shit creek, crude-wise.

lemme put it this way: when the saudis talk about "expanded business opportunities" with the russians and chinese, they ain't talking about sending 'em sand.

look, the prospect of $9 gas doesn't bother me much personally--hell, i bought my prius a year ago, and anything that gets the riff-raff off the streets and frees up traffic can't be all bad--but what's coming is gonna hurt america, and it's gonna hurt us bad.

[h/t to john for sending me the above clip]

f is the new n

2011-04-16T04:32:00.000-07:00

so some cretinous, overpaid athlete offhandedly and in the heat of competition calls a referee a fucking fag, at which point america immediately screeches to a halt and said athlete is not only forced to grovel and explain himself and kiss GLAAD's ass for merely screaming what angry males have screamed at each other since time immemorial, but further, is told he'll have to cough up a hundred grand in order to make it right--and even that won't really be enough for his sudden and egregious new sin against humanity.

[a little context: this is the same athlete who was basically given a pass by america when he raped a girl in a colorado hotel, and then later when it was revealed that he and his wife had systematically and over a period of years exploited and abused their maid--but of course in the PC america of today shit like that's small potatoes in comparison to the use of the "f" word, right?]

my first reaction when i heard this story (once i picked my jaw up off the floor) was, "give it up, niggers, because it's now official: the faggots done stole your victim crown."

my second reaction was wondering what most of the rest of the world--you know, the people who spend their lives routinely dodging machetes and bullets and bombs [i.e., folks who understand the true meaning of the words "injury" and "victim"] would think if they knew that some rich american asshole was forced to fork over enough money to feed their entire village for ten years merely because he called some other american asshole a name.

i remember back when the gays co-opted the derogatory slur "queer" and effectively neutralized its power by making it their own, and how smart i thought it was that my own particular oppressed minority had decided not to paint itself into the same semantic victim corner in which african-americans have languished for as long as i've been alive.

i guess somewhere between "queer" and "faggot", the sweet lure of victimhood became too great.

yeah, 40

2011-04-08T00:35:00.000-07:00

tell you the truth, i'm sitting here stunned that the bankers allowed this milestone to be reached so easily. usually there's tons of back-and-forth drama as silver approaches a new high--and at least one good dr. evil-style raid--but not this time. this time, silver breezed its way to the $40 finish line with barely a pause for breath.

maybe it's finally beyond their ability to stop now.

will it hold? who knows--i expect they'll try and smash it back down a few bucks over the next few trading sessions by flooding the market with naked shorts like they always do, but the trend is unmistakable now, and the bankers know it, and they're scared.

why do the bankers care about the price of precious metals, and why should you? simply because, as a smarter man than me recently put it, gold and silver are the barometer of governmental and institutional profligacy and corruption--they always have been, and they always will be. their skyrocketing prices are a rebuke to the whole sorry system--like holding a mirror up to its ugly face, for all the world to see.

[update: i forgot to mention the other reason the bankers are scared--namely, that they're sitting on god knows how many over-leveraged contracts to deliver at prices they in their arrogant stupidity thought were safely out of reach, so they never bothered to, you know, actually buy the physical metal to back 'em up. awkward, wouldn't you say?]

so is it onward and upward to $50 now? well, here's where it gets interesting. our financial savior, mr. bernanke, is finally approaching the crossroads i've been predicting for nearly two years now, and, depending on what he does when this latest round of quantitative easing ends as scheduled in june, precious metals will either really take off, or they'll sharply correct.

see, he's faced with one hell of a dilemma, is our fed chairman. all this new money he's pumped into the system over these last couple years and swore he was in control of has--surprise!--caused a commodity-price explosion that's wreaking havoc and toppling governments worldwide. problem is, if , as promised, he ends QE in order to curb the inflation, our vaunted "economic recovery" that's been running on nothing but this fed-provided life support will promptly collapse, taking with it not only precious metals (temporarily, anyway), but the stock market, job creation, what's left of the housing market and whatever shreds of hope barack obama might still have of re-election.

if instead, he continues as he has been and opts for another round of monetization? well, the stock market will rally another 1,000 points and our imaginary recovery will continue to wheeze along for an unspecified period of borrowed time. oh, and inflation will move into double digits, oil will go to $200, gold and silver will go to the moon, and food prices will continue to climb, sparking further rioting and revolutions abroad.

so, what's it gonna be, benny--QE 3 or no QE 3? the world hangs breathless on its fate.

a totally unauthorized post

2011-04-07T05:01:00.000-07:00

welcome to the world, little ciro--and tell your uncle v not to be mad at my drunk ass for posting your first picture which i can't tear my eyes away from, ok?

because my life was so much simpler when i was sober and queer

2011-04-07T04:11:00.000-07:00

and because seeing laura this past weekend resurrected dormant memories of this talented little trio from my college days in austin.

and finally, because i just realized there's a whole new generation of lesbians out there who have probably never heard this song, and that is a wrong that must be righted immediately goddammit.

experience the genius of two nice girls for yourself and then pass 'em on to your favorite dyke, ok?

the chinchilla dilemma

2011-04-05T03:39:00.000-07:00

Somebody who thinks I'm smart asked me to put the budget squabble currently taking place in Congress into some sorta perspective they could actually understand, and after a couple cocktails I decided why not reduce the United States and all its financial issues to something relatable to the common man--like, say, a married couple living in Toledo. Makes sense, right?

Trust me, it will next time you're drunk; in the meantime, go with it.

Even though Joe and Ethel have been hit hard by the recession, they still spend as irresponsibly as ever and their expenses keep going up. Everybody knows at least one couple like this, right?

Joe and Ethel have it down to a fine art, though--even though their combined annual income is only around $21,000, they'll spend over $38,000 this year, meaning a shortfall of at least $17,000 that's gonna have to come from somewhere.

And it's not like this is the first year this has happened, either; in fact, Joe and Ethel have been living beyond their means for at least ten years, racking up over $150,000 on their credit cards, with no clear means of paying it back.

You might think with all that money Joe and Ethel are living high on the hog, but you'd be wrong. Even as our couple's spending has exponentially increased, their once-spiffy little bungalow has deteriorated noticeably--the plumbing's shot, the roof is sagging, the retaining walls are showing cracks and the driveway needs repaving--all told, probably $15-20,000 worth of work, easy. But none of that's even on the budget radar, because Joe and Ethel have other priorities.

See, I forget to mention that our heroes have a couple hobbies: Joe's a gun nut, and Ethel raises, oh i dunno, chinchillas. And these two all-consuming pasttimes pretty much manage to suck up all of Joe and Ethel's money. How could that be, you ask? Well, allow me to explain.

Joe's not just any gun nut--no, sir. Not content merely to defend his own backyard, Joe's decided it's his mission in life to remake all of Toledo in his own image, and to that end he's committed himself to not only arming half his neighbors, but injecting himself into their squabbles as well, both now and future.

But as expensive as Joe's little gun hobby has become, it pales in comparison to the mess Ethel's got herself in. Seems that since PETA killed the fur business, nobody wants her chinchillas--and, chinchillas being chinchillas, they just keep multiplying and multiplying and multiplying their little high-maintenance asses off to the point that their upkeep is driving our couple to insolvency.

Every year, Joe and Ethel sit down at the kitchen table to hash out their budget, but this year it's especially tense, because they both know things are spiraling outta control.

"You spent $6,700 on guns last year, Joe--that has to stop!" Ethel says with some asperity.

To which Joe replies, "That's nothing--hell, you dropped almost $15 grand for food and shelter and vet bills and medicine for the goddam chinchillas, and every year they get older and fatter and unhealthier and there's more of 'em! How many more years can we keep this up?"

Of course this last question is merely rhetorical, since Joe knows as well as Ethel that by now they're far outnumbered by the chinchillas, and denying them their due at this point would be fatal.

The back-and-forth continues for awhile like it does every year, each party playing their familiar part, until finally they get down to those areas on which they're actually willing to compromise.

Finally and after much drama, Joe reluctantly agrees to give up his Netflix, Ethel her Starbucks. And thus, $330 saved, they shake hands and declare victory--another budget in the can.

And yeah, you read right--outta $17,000 owing this year and $150,000 owed in total, the best Joe and Ethel between 'em can come up with in the way of spending cuts is three hundred and thirty lousy bucks.

All I can say is, thank god Joe and Ethel aren't smart enough to project 20 or so years into their future, because they don't even wanna know how many unfunded chinchillas that's gonna add up to.

And after reading this and shaking your head over the sheer magnitude of Joe and Ethel's delusional denial, take a minute to multiply each and every one of the above dollar figures by 100 million, and that's where we find ourselves today.

And by "we", of course i mean you.

malibu

2011-04-03T23:46:00.000-07:00

yet one more in an endless series of weekend party houses, with the difference that for the first time in years, mkf made an appearance.

it was good to connect with the old gang again [note to noblesavage: stories to come].

a guttermorality news roundup

2011-03-31T06:13:00.000-07:00

1. hey, national priorities are national priorities

wondering why the president's war speech was slotted unusually early on monday night? simple--he and all his downer talk weren't about to be allowed to upstage the night's main event.

2. and speaking of networks

The Daily Show - I Give Up - Pay Anything...
Tags: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

the fun starts at 00:45.

and screw whatever his biases may be--when you live in a "republic" where the top 1% of families control a third of the nation's wealth, a few banks its financial system and a handful of corporations its mainstream media, a guy like jon stewart isn't a mere comedic frill--he's a fuckin' necessity.

3. i've told you and told you and told you it was coming

Except for fuel costs, U.S. consumers haven't seen much in the way of inflation for almost a decade, so [the coming] broad-based increase in prices will be unprecedented in recent memory.

and no, noblesavage, this isn't an alarmist quote from one of my wild-eyed conspiracy newsletters [although it coulda been two years ago]--this is the CEO of walmart, who's gently tryin to prepare us.

when autumn rolls around and your dollar is buying noticeably less, if you bought gold and silver like i told you to, feel free to thank me--and if you didn't, thank ben bernanke.

and finally, just because mkf lives for clueless unintentional irony,

4. quote of the week

It should be harder to be an artist. You shouldn't just be able to put a song on YouTube and go out on tour.

veteran artist miley cyrus, 18,
dissing presumptuous upstart artists
justin bieber, 17, and rebecca black, 13

nine days later

2011-03-28T06:04:00.000-07:00

so, tanned and rested and fresh from rio, it seems barry's finally ready to let the american people [and that includes you, congress] in on why we suddenly find ourselves embroiled in yet a third middle-eastern bottomless clusterfuck.

as indifferent as i usually am to presidential speeches, i'll be on the edge of my seat for this one, secure in the knowledge that our glorious leader's gonna look me straight in the eye and answer all my burning questions, up to and including

how did it feel to launch the first timid invasion in american military history?
why was arab and UN approval of this action more important to you than that of congress?
are you gonna kill the motherfucker or not?
why did you tip your hand to the enemy?
do you find it awkward to be fighting against al-qaeda in iraq and afghanistan, and with them in this new war?
are you gonna launch wars to protect the saudi, yemeni, syrian, iranian and [insert godforsaken middle-eastern hellhole of your choice here] rebels, too? and if not, why not?
what if the new boss turns out to be worse than the old boss?

lay it on us, mr. president--inquiring minds wanna know.

update: did any of you buy that bullshit?

___________________
h/t ace for the pic

the veneer of civilization just got thinner

2011-03-27T02:34:00.000-07:00

you think this was scary, wait'll they're hungry.

gay life lesson #14: the trip to pomona

2011-03-26T06:58:00.000-07:00

[this one i didn't have to learn the hard way--i got to watch. shame it didn't take.]

even 20 years later, i remember it clearly--my roommates and i were at rage with our friend scotty f [you remember him, noblesavage--he's the one who first gave me instruction in gay life lesson #1] and he met this boy and they spent the next three hours glued to each other in various locations around the bar until the lights came up and since scott's current home was somebody else's couch, they settled on the boy's place.

the fact that the boy lived 45 miles away in pomona didn't give either of them even a moment's pause--as we waved goodbye, they were curled up so close the kid practically had to reach between scott's legs to shift gears.

by the time they arrived at their destination, it was a different story--they were squinched into their separate corners as far apart as it was possible for two people in a car to be, they spent an uncomfortable night on opposite edges of a bed, and the trip back, according to scott, was the longest 45 miles of his life.

what happened between points a and b? simple--given an hour to destroy whatever illusions each had built up about the other, our boys made the ultimate trick mistake: they talked before they fucked.

from that day forward, "pomona" became an all-purpose catchphrase at 841, useful for any number of situations, such as (a) describing disillusionment ("honey, as soon as i walked in his bedroom and saw the 'little mermaid' action figures, i knew we were in pomona"), (b) an indication of TMI (waving of hands and shrieking "pomona! pomona!") or (c) a friendly warning (if one of us left the house with lube in our pocket, somebody'd always call out, "stay away from pomona!").

sorta thing you'd think would stick in your head, right?

nah--some of us never learn.

* * * * *

what prompted this post, you ask? tonight i allowed my drunken ass to get drawn into a pre-fuck debate about illegal immigration. with a guy named osvaldo.

excuse me while i go jack off alone.

i'm a fool to do your dirty work, oh yeah

2011-03-24T07:23:00.000-07:00

content removed, but feel free to enjoy the music.

lemme get this one down while the memory's still fresh

2011-03-24T04:51:00.000-07:00

so tonight after work i stop at my neighborhood rite-aid for ~~the evening's booze~~ a few essentials--the usual kid's there behind the counter and as i reach out to swipe my debit card he says, "oh gosh, i rang it up as a cash sale--you don't happen to have cash, do you?"

i tell him i don't, he rolls his eyes and reaches for the phone to call the manager who's god knows where and as soon as i realize it's gonna be complicated i grab a candy bar off the rack and tell him to ring it up and i'll pay for it with my card and get some cash back to pay for my prior purchase and no manager will be necessary.

he's relieved, the line behind me relaxes, we do the deal and as i try to hand him back one of my new twenties to pay for my shit, he holds a hand up and tells me to wait, grabs the receipt from the first sale, flips it over and starts writing on it. i'm thinking maybe he needs to document some irregularity in the transaction after all, so i wait

and wait...and wait...

until after an eternity of brow-furrowed scratching he finally drops his pen, takes my twenty, gives me my change--and then instead of tucking the receipt he'd worked so hard on into his cash drawer as i'd expected, stuffs it into my bag instead.

all becomes clear when i get out to the car, fish it out and observe the work of this young, bright-eyed product of the california educational system first-hand.

it's now official: america is doomed.

the lights are on, but no one's home

2011-03-22T02:49:00.000-07:00

still, after all this time

2011-03-20T03:46:00.000-07:00

since one of the eternal themes of this blog is mkf getting shitfaced and casting what's left of his memory back to that period when he was last happy, and since it's been awhile since i've allowed myself to wallow in that particular trough

and since it came up on shuffle tonight just as i was getting really toasted

i present for your delectation what may well be, with the possible exception of "the green, green grass of home", the ultimate country crying-in-your-beer song of all time.

mostly forgotten today, there was a long stretch back in 1963 when it was pretty much impossible to make even a short trip to the UtoteM in any red state in america without hearing this song on any radio station you picked--and even after its heyday, i personally have seen strong men, including 240-lb former NFL linebackers [ok fine, just one--and yeah, he was drunk] reduced to tears when it came up on the jukebox.

while i can't remember the first time i heard it, "still" conjures up for me so many nights half-asleep in the darkened backseat of the family car on any number of road trips, watching the glowing tips of my parents' cigarettes up front as we travelled cross-texas and countless songs like this faded in and out on the radio.

good times.

potassium iodide is for pussies, and other thoughts

2011-03-18T06:55:00.000-07:00

as i sit here sipping my cocktail, gazing seaward, stoically awaiting the arrival of the radiation cloud our overlords insist is harmless and hoping it'll at least be good for a few photogenic sunsets, my fertile mind ranges far and wide over various and sundry issues of the day.

1. concerning the japan catastrophe: there simply are no words, and i sincerely wish more of you idiots with keyboards out there would realize that.

2. concerning the run on radiation pills in the midwest: the tendency of humans to hysterically inject themselves into crises on the other side of the world which have absolutely nothing to do with them personally whilst simultaneously ignoring the threat in their own backyard, i will never understand. seriously, joe and ethel--you'll get far more radiation from the TSA cancer boxes at o'hare you've passively agreed to step into than you'll ever get from fuckin' fukushima.

3. concerning today's UN security council vote for a de facto libya invasion [and this is really where my thoughts are tonight]: since our deal with the middle east has always involved protecting oppressive dictatorships in exchange for cheap dollar-denominated oil, and since we now seem to be throwing said oppressive dictators under the bus one after another, i'm wondering how long before the saudis wake up and start shopping around for better protectors [like the chinese and/or russians, for example--both of whom abstained from the libya vote] and we find ourselves up shit creek, crude-wise.

4. concerning the weak and waffling barack obama: he's turned out to be precisely the president i expected him to be.

5. concerning possible diversions from all this bullshit: might i suggest battle:LA. while it can't hold a candle to independence day, it's a reasonably decent shit-blowing-up movie, and it'll totally clear your palate if you've recently sat through something that left a bad taste in your mouth.

mkf finally breaks down and watches the best picture

2011-03-10T05:39:00.000-08:00

so lemme get this straight: a tedious, predictable little art film about a privileged, unsympathetic, neurotic anachronism from a bygone era whose big climactic accomplishment is managing to torturously string together a few lines in front of a microphone as the music swells and everybody reacts like his dimwitted inbred ass just singlehandedly won the goddam war or something stole the oscar from the infinitely superior the social network because . . . why?

because passing over the american TV hack for the guys with accents proves how classy and sophisticated the academy and its members are, i suppose.

adventures in watersports

2011-03-06T06:18:00.000-08:00

[yet another from the "back when i was new" file]

at three o'clock on a sunday morning, the boy was as incongruously out-of-place in vaseline alley as a pearl in a pigpen.

young and fresh-faced in his letter jacket, he was the spitting image of tom cruise in all the right moves, and all my drunken mind could think of was whisking this sweet, untouched kid away from that awful place to somewhere safe (like my bed) as quickly as possible.

he had other ideas, however--his parents were gone and he wanted to go back to his place, which turned out to be a mcmansion in westwood.

we headed up the stairs of the darkened house and into his bedroom, stripped down--he was everything i'd hoped for and more--and it was just as i was reminding myself not to push this innocent boy too far too fast that he pulled away, dragged me into the bathroom and the evening took its left turn.

"wait--you want me to do what?" because this was new, but whatever--mkf is nothing if not accommodating, especially when he's drunk.

problem is, even when i'm drunk, i'm shy. and even more so, turns out, when there's a boy crouched wide-eyed and expectant in a bathtub between my legs. talk about performance anxiety--jesus.

but by now i'm on a mission, so i tell him to wait, walk over and flip on the taps full blast and stand in front of the toilet.

as soon as i feel the urge, i stumble over to the tub, but by the time i get there, it's gone. damn.

so i head back to the toilet, determined to wait for the optimal moment this time. when it finally arrives, i whirl around, triumphant--and in so doing, spray a wild, uncontrolled, drunken arc across the boy's bathroom, coating pretty much everything but him in the process.

my take-aways from the evening: (a) never judge a book by its cover; and (2) people who are into that shit have absolutely no sense of humor.

state of the world

2011-03-01T06:39:00.000-08:00

[so on any news channel you turn to today, it's all about how the powers-that-be are circling the wagons and trying to contain the damage before the delusional megalomaniac takes everybody and everything down with him.

and then once the subject of charlie sheen is exhausted, the talk generally turns to qaddafi.]

today the posturing of the western powers vis a vis libya got particularly idiotic--for instance, the british prime minister saying shit like

We must not tolerate this regime using military force against its own people.

and then our own [liberal] secretary of state chiming in with

Nothing is off the table so long as the Libyan government continues to threaten and kill Libyans.

ah yes, the same rationale our previous [conservative] administration trumped up to justify our last great military misadventure (but only as a last resort after the "weapons of mass destruction" and "threat to the region" arguments fell apart, of course).

and as i listen to this latest self-serving bullshit, i wonder if anybody else besides me remembers that these are the self-same western powers that couldn't be bothered to lift a finger when the rwandans and the sudanese and the somalians were all slaughtering each other.

and then i wonder, for maybe the thousandth time, if in my lifetime one of the powers-that-be will ever just finally come out and and say

we're doing it for the goddam oil.

because i, for one, would find the truth a much more compelling argument--hell, i like driving my car.

why i'm not a libertarian (part 1)

2011-02-25T03:42:00.000-08:00

[this post is a continuation of the comments from this post, and thus very 'inside baseball'--feel free to skip]

so silver hit a new 30-year high yesterday, and promptly plunged today--just like it did on the days following the last couple times it hit new 30-year highs--and, as a result, lots of people who weren't prepared for it lost a lot of money. a very smart friend emailed me this morning and said, "looks like dr. evil's reared his ugly head once again."

dr. evil, you ask? allow me to explain.

back in 2004, the british arm of a very big, powerful american investment bank had been given a directive by the mother ship to "increase profits through the development of new strategies."

so a few of their more clever bankers devised a plan to (a) short some eurobonds in which said big, powerful bank held a big, powerful position; (b) then flood the market with all of said eurobonds at once, thus causing the price to plunge precipitously; and (c) in the midst of the ensuing mini-panic, cover their shorts and buy back said newly-devalued eurobonds at a handsome profit. pure genius, right?

and their clever plan (dubbed "dr. evil" in the emails which surfaced later) went off without a hitch--almost.

i say "almost" because the european union--whose various governments lost untold millions as a result of the bank's clever plan--turned out not to have anywhere near the sense of humor that we americans have about such things. see, rather than being allowed to keep their obscene profits resulting from the day's activities, the kill-joy british regulators made the bank give it all back, plus pay a big penalty--and instead of receiving huge year-end bonuses for their cleverness, the traders in question damn near lost their british licenses.

the other consequence of that day's mischief? since its shenanigans were brought to light by said british regulators, said bank (citigroup, if you're curious) lost and has never recovered the confidence of the various european governments that were so badly burned by its actions--its bond business there is still a fraction of what it used to be.

[and not to mention, no american investment bank has dared pull that shit in europe since.]

but the most remarkable thing (to me, anyway) about the incident was the injured incredulity of the clever traders when they were called on the carpet--their attitude was, "hey, this is how we do things in the states--what's the matter with you people?!"

and, of course, they were right--this shit happens routinely here in america and has for years, all under the benign aegis of that joke of a regulatory agency known as the SEC--you know, the guys who couldn't even catch bernie madoff.

which is only one of the reasons why the financial markets of america have become a rigged casino for the big banks, and the laughingstock of the civilized world.

i mean, seriously--where else but modern-day america would a bank able to effectively buy insurance on its neighbor's house and then burn that house down and collect from the government when the guys it bought the insurance from turned out not to have any money to pay off the claim--and then laugh along with the guys who sold the fraudulent insurance as they're given a total walk?

* * * * *

i was 24 years old when ronald reagan became president and started deregulating things.

one of the first things he deregulated (well, finished deregulating, anyway) was the phone industry, which has turned out pretty well.

but one of the other things he deregulated was the savings-and-loan industry, whose members couldn't wait to run with the big boys on wall street--woohoo, right?

yeah--right up until, within just a couple years of being freed from the regulatory shackles which had kept their industry stodgy-but-safe since the depression, they'd blown all their depositors' money on bad investments and run their newly-deregulated asses straight into bankruptcy, thus prompting the taxpayer bailout which started us down the ugly road to where we find ourselves today, that is.

needless to say, i've come to view government deregulation with somewhat of a jaundiced eye.

[part 2 to come, because i'm seriously starting to nod off]

uh oh

2011-02-23T21:37:00.000-08:00

so today i read that the the saudi royal family is frantically and pre-emptively announcing all sortsa coming dispensations of manna from heaven to its happy subjects

...and now i know why

[and to all of my friends and family out there who still can't understand why i traded my beloved truck last year for the dumb, ugly prius: i'm afraid you're about to find out.]

arrested development

2011-02-20T03:32:00.000-08:00

the other day i'm talking to an old friend, for some reason the subject of my brother comes up and he asks, "so do his kids hate him yet?"

based on the stories i've told him, it's a fair question, but my answer surprises him. truth is, while my brother holds little but contempt for the family he came from, he's done pretty well by the one he created: a solid 27-year marriage, and two great kids who adore him.

"holy shit," i realize after hanging up the phone, "my little brother'll probably be a grandfather before long."

and then i thought about my own grandfathers, both of whom died, worn and weary in their mid-fifties, before i was born. i thought about how old and grandfatherly they had always looked to me in the faded snapshots, and that's when it hit me that these stolid, churchgoing men were the same age in those pictures as my drunken irresponsible boy-chasing ass is now.

and then i thought, and not for the first time, about all that these men--my brother, my grandfathers and countless others before and after--had given up in order to create stable homes and provide not only for their families, but for the generations to come. i thought about the commitment, the monogamy, the expense, the diapers, the drudgery, the school plays, the loans for college--you know, all that shit that, in small, sacrificial increments, weaves the fabric of society that the rest of us pretty much take for granted.

and then i asked myself, and not for the first time, if there was ever a point at which the fabulous mkf woulda been capable of such sacrifice--i.e., of living for a sustained period of time for anyone or anything other than himself.

[since the answer to that question is so obviously "no", i won't bother tryin to keep you in suspense.]

* * * * *

i watch the christians as they rage against gay marriage, and i totally feel their pain.

joe and ethel in toledo have trod the straight-and-narrow their entire lives, and now are forced to watch in horror as these promiscuous, hedonistic homosexuals co-opt and crap on their sacred traditions with their folsom street fairs and open relationships and god only knows what else.

homosexuality is an abomination! they cry, as they settle their fat asses onto their designer sofas in their calvin klein outfits to watch desperate housewives.

* * * * *

i watch my fellow gays as they rage against the evil, intolerant christians, and i feel their pain, too.

fuck the breeders! they cry, as they eagerly await the next generation of their offspring.

* * * * *

here's the truth, bitches: gays and straights of civilized societies from time immemorial have always existed in uneasy symbiosis--neither can truly flourish without the other.

i live for the day when joe and ethel wake up and understand how truly gray their world would be without the evil homosexuals.

but far more importantly, i live for the day when my fellow faggots wake up and respect the fact that, without the sacrifices of the joe-and-ethels who comprise the backbone of this country, our collective self-indulgent fabulousness would be impossible.

am i the only one who gets this?

the trouble with george

2011-02-15T03:20:00.000-08:00

one of these days i swear i'm gonna codify all the pillow-talk stories i've collected over the years of all the uniquely gay messes all the gays i've come across in the course of my gay travels have suffered at the hands of their various and sundry gay boyfriends/roommates/hookups, because there's definitely a book there. until that happens...

hadn't seen alvaro in ages, so when he hit me up outta the blue this past week and invited me over, it was a nice surprise.

his new place--a neat little suburban ranch with a pool on a peaceful street in the foothills above pasadena--is also a nice surprise. a far cry from the pico/union hellhole he used to call home, it's a definite step up, and i'm happy for him--at first, anyway.

i note the for-sale sign in the front yard, and, once inside, look around for evidence of roommates. there is none, and the house has a definite empty look.

"how are you swinging this place by yourself?" i ask him. and then he tells me about george.

george, the owner of the house and alvaro's benefactor, was apparently a hale-and-hearty specimen of the genus silverus daddyolus--right up until the day his tanned, pot-bellied ass suddenly dropped dead of a heart attack in some bar in palm springs, that is.

[alvaro found out when the last twink george gave his number to called it, got alvaro and told him, "old dude handed me his card, spread his arms to give me a hug and instead of leaning in, got this look on his face, fell backward, and wham! he was gone."

dunno about you, but that's totally the way i wanna go out.]

anyway, alvaro shed a tear or two for george, who had apparently been a good guy, and started preparing himself for yet another move. he packed his shit and awaited the inevitable call from george's family.

while he waited, he poked around in george's shit, found his will

"weirdest thing--it was right on top of all his papers"

it left everything to george's enfeebled, elderly mother, with the specific stipulation that nothing go to his brothers, who had been mean to him all his life.

alvaro got a taste of what poor george had endured a few days later when mean brother #1 showed up with a u-haul to clean out the house.

"he walked in like he owned the place, and as soon as he did all the lights in the house started flickering--he asked me how long that had been happening, and i told him it had never happened before. he laughed like he didn't believe me and said he'd call an electrician to fix it.

"the whole time they were moving george's stuff out, i kept tryin to talk to him, and he wouldn't listen--just waved me away. and the whole time they were there, the lights were flickering like crazy.

"when they were done, he told me i had five days to clear my faggot ass outta there, or he was gonna call the cops. i didn't say anything--just stood there in shock with my mouth open as they drove away."

and this, gentle readers, is where karma enters the tale.

because, see, the two things alvaro kept tryin to communicate to mean brother #1--but that mean brother #1 apparently didn't wanna hear--were, respectively: (1) alvaro had found the will; and (2) all alvaro was asking was a little time in which to find a new place to live. and if mean brother #1 had merely troubled himself to listen to alvaro with even a modicum of respect on that fateful day, this story would've ended then and there.

what happened instead? alvaro--the sweetest guy in the world, trust me--got righteously pissed, lost the will, called an attorney, got clued into the tenant's paradise that is california, dug in his heels and has been successfully battling poor dead george's mean brothers for the past two years.

yeah, two years--since no will had been filed, probate dragged on forever due to fierce internecine battling between mean brother #1 and mean brother #2 (because by that time mom was half-addled toast), no doubt at great expense to the estate, and every attempt to sell the house once ownership was finally settled has ended badly.

"whenever people look at the house," alvaro tells me, "things just seem to go wrong."

mostly, it's the lights, he says--while they're perfectly fine most of the time, and the wiring has been given a clean bill of health by any number of electricians, they have an uncanny tendency to dim and flicker whenever a prospective buyer (or, for that matter, either of the mean brothers) is on the premises. or sometimes a realtor will show up with a prospect, the place will suddenly "smell funny", and they'll leave quickly.

whatever--sucks for the mean brothers, but good for alvaro, right? well, not exactly--his cheap rent has cost him dearly.

"my car died last year. it's in the garage--it starts, but it won't go, and nobody can figure out what's wrong with it. and without the car, i'm stuck up here in the hills--i'm barely making it."

we're in the master bedroom, admiring a vintage, beautifully framed, signed and numbered tom of finland print that mean brother #1 had found in a closet and contemptuously tossed to alvaro--the only scrap he'd left behind. i'm researching it and i hope it turns out to be worth $15,000.

"sometimes, mike," he continues," i think i should just leave the car, throw some shit in a bag and get the hell outta here."

and with that, the lamp in the corner--which, like all the lights in the house had been burning steadily and true the whole time i'd been there--starts flickering.

he half-laughs, looks at me with those big brown eyes and says, "see? it's like george doesn't want me to leave."

i walk him out to the living room, sit him down on the sofa, and we talk.

before i go further with this story, lemme describe the living room: a large, square space, empty save for that single sofa, its perimeter ringed with track lighting shining perfectly-spaced parabolas of light down onto art which is no longer there.

"look, alvaro," i tell him. "i dunno if dead george is tryin to use you as a foil to keep his mean brothers' hands off his estate or not, and i don't care how cheap your rent is. for whatever reason, this place has become a prison for you, and you need to get out--now."

simple and direct, right?

yeah. it's at this point in time that this transient incident in my life--one of countless such moments i've experienced and have long since forgotten--becomes suddenly memorable.

because the instant those words cross my lips--and i shit you not--every light in the living room goes out.

as my eyes try to adjust to the sudden darkness, i look at alvaro with my mouth open and, in the dim twilight afforded by the shaded windows, i can see him smiling ruefully as he says, "see what i mean?"

as spooked as i am, the hairs on the back of my neck don't come to full attention until i look up and see, amongst all the dead soldiers above me, a single, solitary bulb in the perimeter track pulsing steadily with a dim, yellow glow. because that can't be--either a circuit's dead or it's not; there's no kinda-sorta when it comes to electricity.

"i gotta go, alvaro [because i suddenly really do]. walk me out, ok?"

halfway up the driveway, i quietly tell him, "listen to me, baby: you need to very suddenly and without warning clear the fuck outta here--like, tomorrow. i'll come back and help you if you want."

he nods in half-hearted agreement, but he won't meet my eye, and that's when i realize alvaro's not going anywhere, and george's power over him is far greater than mine.

* * * * *

as for the above picture: i snapped it when i was back in the car with the heater running full-blast.

as for the lights: i called when i was a couple miles away--they were all back on.

as for this post: just like the last story of its kind for which over the years i've taken no end of shit, i stand by every goddam word.

update: if you're interested in the further adventures of alvaro, click here.

a post for adam

2011-02-08T05:54:00.000-08:00

.
i've had a couple screenshots hanging around my desktop for the longest time, and now seems as good a time as any to use 'em.

first, there's this one:

and i particularly like this one:

as any long-time reader of this blog knows, i am an unabashed pigeonholer of people, and one of my favorite ways to pigeonhole people is by their reaction when i bring up the subject of ayn rand.

i remember the day the fountainhead first fell into my young, impressionable hands--i devoured that motherfucker from cover to cover, electrified equally by the story of architect howard roark and the philosophy underpinning the story. i then went on to read atlas shrugged, and by the time i finished it, i was convinced--ayn rand was god.

i then grew up, learned a few things, experienced more of life, and realized it wasn't as always as simple as she made out to be--i.e., when left unregulated and to their own devices, her vaunted captains of industry have proven themselves over the course of my adult life to behave just as badly as the rest of grubby humanity when nobody's watching 'em.

but aside from that and a few other things, much of everything else this shrewd survivor of the bolshevik revolution wrote about, she got right--witness the above quotes if you disagree with me. coming from where she did, she understood far better than the soft, privileged audience to whom she preached what their forefathers had bought for them with their blood, and what was so quickly slipping from their grasp.

bottom line: to the degree you get ayn rand, mkf will figure you can handle hard truth. to the degree you think she's just awful, mkf will tend to dismiss you as a lightweight.

[note to adam: if you can't get her to read the whole post, at least make sure you rub laura's nose in both the above quotes]