A shockingly shitty cartoon for the ages.

I don't expect any of you to do as i do. In fact, i can almost reccomend you ignore whatever it is i'm doing. Chances are it won't make sense unless you're me at that moment. However, because i often take the difficult way to a goal, and preciesly due to the fact that i am willing to suffer through some things to gain a better scope of the world and what makes it tick, i can sometimes offer to my friends and readers a window in to the horrors of life, without having to immerse yourself in the raw sewage of our collective mind.

I am pleased and embarassed to present to you BUCKY AND PEPITO. A cartoon that has been described by animators as having set "a standard for awfulness that no contemporary TV cartoon has managed to surpass.”

Let it load, skip the Live action intro, and go straight to the astoundingly bad cartoon. As far as i could figure out, an asshole rabbit, fucks with a cowboy kid and his Mexican Stereotype friend, and ultimately seduces a bull. The Mexican stereotype might be offensive, it it wasn't so incredibly retarded, and the John Waters rabbit with "His Boys" and the southern accent, is the stuff nightmares are made of. The Europa moment at the end is so confounding that you almost want to watch again to reassure yourself that you actually witnessed such incompehensible awfulness.

Enjoy: BUCKY and PEPITO

The Worst Bar in LA

Last night, against my better judgement, i accompanied some well intentioned but deeply misguided people to a place i have avoided like the plague for the last four years.

Allow me to preface my claim, by pointing out that like most major metropolis... What's the plural of metropolis? Metropolii?

Most major cities, Los Angeles has its fair share of absolute shitholes. Everything from a backroom Soju bar in Koreatown where they serve live octopus appetizers and have a rating of "D" posted on the window. Or hostess bars in little Tokyo where they serve you overpriced drinks that you can buy for yourself or any of the young ladies kindly provided for you by the management. But the place of which i speak puts all shitholes to shame. The most worthless and tacky waste of space, the most generic excuse for a "good time" the most brazenly consumerist and awful drinking and eating establishment. A place so bad, that it makes Cabo Cantina, Baja Cantina, and El Guapo Cantinas look genuinely exotic. Even Pulquerias run out of garages in East LA, and homemade Tej in little Ethiopia, despite the worrisome health aspects of their distilling process, make you feel less rotten on the inside than this place. A place that makes Hooters look classy, and Bennigans look elegant.

If you google it, the pictures you get in return look like this:


And despite the fun that bad dye jobs, kabuki makeup, and ill fitting clothes connote, this place manages to suck harder than Tom Cruise at a scout sleepover. I am talking about the world (?) famous Saddle Ranch Chop House.


You walk in to this warehouse of cliches, and your immediate thought is "Oh shit. I'm going to get raped." Not because of the amount of douchebags that seem to never leave the place, not because of the somewhat scant clothes of the staff, no you look to your immediate left, and you see a gift shop, to the right is a mechanical bull, you look all around you, and you see gimmicky drinks. They are going to bleed me.

"Hey there guys! is this your first time here?"

What the fuck is this? Evidently the hosting crew dudes (Who also serve as the pep squad and handlers for the Mechanical Bull) are chosen very selectively. They must have a "look". Like Abercrombie has a look, like people on TV have a look. I have never in my life seen two guys try so hard and work so diligently at looking like they don't try hard at all.. And of course ... Personality. The overly agressive personaliy that only people who are shameless about working for tips can really pull off.

Once you're sat down, then the upseling gets started.

'So what can i get you to drink?"

Not one to back down from gimmicky drinks, i take a look at their specialty menu.

Specialty Drinks
Lasso up one of these in our "Giant" Specialty Glass (See: Cheap Plastic Carafe)
Make it "Extra Special" or "Premium" for an additional charge. (See: Popov or Smirnoff)

S.R.A.M.F.
If you want to know what it means ... Order it!!! Vodka, gin, rum, tequila, triple sec, sweet & sour and blue caracao.

Texas Tea Party
Cattlemen's classic long island - made with vodka, gin, rum, tequila, sweet & sour, triple sec and Coke.

Gold Rush
Gold miners dig this one! Saddle Ranch's own Margarita - made with pure gold tequila.

Saddle Ranch Mai Tai
Cowgirl's favorite - made with coconut rum, light rum, orange juice, pineapple juice, dark rum and grenadine.


Haha! You get it? These are exactly the same as well drinks, but in a carafe! THAT's what i call SPECIALTY. Fine, give me a long island. I need to numb myself to this. "Would you like the super special bubbles?"

So they bring me a Long Island that looks like this.

Oh yeah, and it has chunks of dry ice at the bottom to give it a festive smokey feel.

"You guys going to order some food? Because this IS a chop house, and we have some GREAT Steak"

You will all note that the prices have been omitted from the Saddle Ranch menu on the website, but i think we can safely surmise what dishes tend to get pricy..

Ok, so i don't have to recount every grueling step for you, suffice to say that the electronic bull and all the drunk ladies who ride it, is one of the most bullshit (Ha), contrived, forced upon , notions of "fun" that one could imagine. Drenched in a fine mist of corporate drunkeness, the dead eyes and vacant smiles of the people there give you the feeling that this place hasn't seen any real fun in years.

I'm talking real fun. Not a South beach metrosexual sort of fun. The fun, when you wake up the next morning and your friends look at each other and laugh. The kind of fun, of sneaking off for a snog iduring a concert, or drinking with locals, or of laughing a lot, or of gettinng kicked out (Not for fighting). A good bar is a facilitator for good times. A GREAT bar is an enhacer, it heightens your state good or bad. The best bars are often the ones where you can drink your sorrows as well as your joys, but that's a high goal. What makes the Saddle Ranch so unforgivable is the the imitation of good times. The cohersion of fun. HEY! Have fun! Drink! Want booze? We have it! And its in carafes! AND it fucking SMOKES!! You want tits? We got em, and we'll make them straddle a machine and bounce up and down. I hate sounding like an old fuck, or Holden Caufield calling everyone a phoney or belittling people for having a good time. However if you find yourself on the Sunset strip,do yourself a favor. tourist, local, whomever. Take yourself and your money, and enjoy one of the world class hotel bars, or if that's too fancy, cabo Cantina, Red Rocks, or any of the dozens of bars that line the area,.
.
This place may at once have been tolerable (My guess is that the mid nineties saw this place BOOMING. However, if you don't happen to be in the pooka shell, waxed eyebrow, stiped shirt and shiny hair crew, who exude a slight whiff of date rape wherever they go, or if ladies, you might enjoy meeting a guy before having to resort to lifting your drink and going "whoooohooo!" to show everyone just how drunk and horny you are, you may want to give Knott's Douchey Farm here, a miss.

Thank you for being a friend (NSFW)

We all know that the whoriest of the golden girls was Blanche, right?


Then the second whoriest was probably Sofia, who was always talking about getting dicked by the river in the old country. Just what she meant by "old country" is anybody's guess. Then came Dorothy and her 12 " strap-on, and finally cute little Rose.
Who was so innocent, she barely could tell in what hole to take it.

Right?

Riiiight?


Riiiiiiiight?


WRONG!

Betty White was a whorish harlot! Which makes me love her even more.


Don't forget to spay and neuder your pets.

What was it Randy Newman said?

Mr. K speaks truth to the country whith this wee love letter.

I love L.A.

Everyone knows the comedy version of Los Angeles. Imagine my surprise when I found myself speaking up for the despised city.

By Garrison Keillor

Jun. 13, 2007 | It used to be that Los Angelenos were much too cool to express outright pride in their city, feeling that boosterism is for yahoos from the Midwest, but when I was there last week I got an earful about what a good place it is from friends who never said anything like that to me before. They always talked about choking traffic, the unreality of real estate prices, the sprawl, smog, blah blah blah, and now they were saying, "I couldn't live anyplace else."

The bright burst of civic feeling might have been due to the bad brush fires -- it had been a very dry winter and spring -- with a major blaze a month ago right in Griffith Park in the heart of the city. Eight hundred firefighters put that fire down and immediately became heroes to everybody, and it showed people how much they loved L.A., just like your mother's colon operation jolts you into reality.

Everybody knows the comedy version of L.A. -- the celebrity-crazed city of skinny tanned women, cellphones in hand, driving Suburbans the size of personnel carriers at 80 mph taking a tiny child to the therapist's to address self-esteem issues. Those jokes play well out in the flat parts of the country. A Midwesterner goes to L.A. and feels a certain sense of moral disapproval. The squalor, the opulence, the expense of natural resources to support middle-class life in an arid place, the fascination with the misshapen lives of young celebs. It isn't the Canaan it was for our grandparents. We look at it and see a run-down bungalow selling for a half-million and cars inching along the 405 and say, "No thanks."

But it's good to know there's another point of view. The sun does shine there, and people enjoy their lives -- the spirit of "la pura vida," or the love of life for its own sake, the opposite of Calvinist America, as Randy Newman sings:

From the South Bay to the Valley
From the West Side to the East Side
Everybody's very happy
'Cause the sun is shining all the time
Looks like another perfect day
I love L.A.

And then you run into extraordinary young people there who typify California, bright, motivated, disciplined, idealistic women and men who climb the slopes of academe and also surf and swim and play beach volleyball and who love the climate and nature and culture. It is more than ever a city of immigrants, the Europeans diminishing, the Rodriguezes and Jimenezes and Marquezes burgeoning. (Check out the phone book.) Immigrant culture isn't so pretty -- you rent a cheap storefront, work 16-hour days, scrimp on landscaping, make your kids toe the mark -- but there is dignity to it.

Unrestricted immigration is a dangerous thing -- look at what happened to the Iroquois. They failed to impose border controls and before they knew it, they were dying of infectious diseases they had no names for. In the case of California, however, it was Spanish before it was English and now it's simply tending back that way.

I met up with a niece from Boston for dinner in L.A. who told me she was there for the first time in her life, so I did my uncle duty, got a car and took her for a spin as the sun was setting. We headed out on the Santa Monica Freeway toward the ocean and some faintly disparaging remark she made ("It goes on forever") inspired me to wind up and give her a pitch for Los Angeles, its gentle winters, its writers and musicians, its cosmopolitanism, its easygoing energies.

We walked along the beach in the dark, the Santa Monica pier glittering in the distance, and then we cruised some lush streets around UCLA, and headed east on Sunset Boulevard, the sunroof open, traffic juking and bopping around us, through a long canyon of bright lights, and then, looking for Melrose Avenue and the Paramount Studios with the classic front gate from "Sunset Boulevard," I lost my bearings and circled for a while in the dark, but it felt good to promote L.A. to an Easterner.

We live in a growly snarky time, heavy irony clacking everywhere like people walking around in tap shoes, and it's a privilege to speak up for a despised city. Seattle, sit down. New York, shut up. Vermont, this is not about you. You want to hear about New Jersey or North Dakota or Nebraska, just ask.

TO HEAR THE BROADCAST OF THIS ESSAY CLICK HERE

Flibbidy Floo

I did something kind of crazy today.

I helped an old lady cross the street. I was crossing Wilshire on what may be the cuntiest intersection in LA, Wilshire and Beverly Drive. With Endeavour, Paradigm, Gersh, and a gazillion management and production companies, along with Banks, upscale boutiques, Neiman Marcus, Barneys and all the natural assholes bred by SUV and BMW ownership. You may argue that along this intersection you find some of the most self centered bits of humanity in a town already laden with Sapien-guano. I was at the crosswalk at the intersection of Asshole and Cellphone, and this lady with a cane is less than halfway across when the light began to flash. I walked by her at first, and then i looked around and saw all the botox and Hummers, and made the decision to go back. The light turned green, and i stared down everyone at the intersection and everyone stopped. For a moment, everyone felt like a fucking Norman Rockwell painting in the middle of Beverly Hills. It was nuts! She was thankful and i felt like a friggin hero, and everyone around was geberally pleased. But i wonder, how much and how often do we even notice old old people? Especially here in LA? I mean this town is obsessed by youth. I saw these videos, and instead of getting pissed at the old people, i was kind of agreeing. Am I getting old? Or are kids these days an interesting mixture of retardation and selfishness that we haven't seen before?

Vice becomes Renaissance

Both of the loyal readers of this blog may have noticed some not so subtle changes to the look of the ol' page. Gone is the flying pig of yesterblog, replaced with a much more contemplative and i hope, meaningful pilfered image. The old line about "swagger and emmys" is also gone, replaced with an Alforism (1) of meaningless depth that nonetheless holds truth for liars and intellectual thieves like me. YES, this blog entry does have footnotes, so fucking deal. The sidebar too, contains some interesting additions including a Barack Obama link for those of you who are realistic enough to know that he won't win the nomination, but ideallistic enough to believe he should, and a link to the world of dorky wonders that is DIGG. I've also done something almost unthinkable in days past and included a quote by Hoffstadter who i have always considered the Christopher Hitchens of his day (Correct, but kind of a dick).

"Why?" i can hear the ADD afflicted begin to holler internally. Fingers twitching at the mouse, ready to check out the Swedish chick who yarfed on YOU TUBE. Friends, i am experienceing one of those moments where i feel i have rediscovered my basic me-ness. Often i get mired in self-loathing (2) and indulgent mopiness about career and life, and forget what a great gift it is to be me, here and now.

I have many people to thank for this, but the whole damn thing can be traced to three things.



My friend Amanda Barnes and her superb musical taste.

I can't begin to express how fantastic it is to be friends with someone who is not a pain in the ass about being a musical genius. Mere mortals (Myself included) are rather retarded when it comes to music. When they discover something , they become covetous and snotty. Keeping their new musical finds to themselves, trying to one-up each other in obscurity and devoting themselves to a band who may or may not be a flash in the pan, or worse a big hit. Immediately I think of the pain in the ass Radiohead and Dave Matthews fans. Remember Dave matthews? Yeah, he had some sucky college band that stoners and frat boys thought was deeply musical when it was in fact, only incessant. Radiohead? Oh yeah! You take something that sounds like a computer belching, and add to it a whiny and misanthropic fetus, and again use the ol' Greatful Dead/ Phish technique of making your songs enternal, and you get a slightly more snobbish group of self congratulating stoners and former frat-types.

What makes Mandy so absolutely brilliant is her ability to find the ONE. There are sucky bands out there who by the grace of god manage to fart out one song that epitomizes a moment in time (3). Mandy will find them, fuck them (Musically of course, not literally) and not call back the next day. Musical one night stands. On the other hand, she can recognize musicality. You know, complex chord progressions and shit we don't understand but gives us goosebumps. Like a timpany in the middle of an orchestral swell, or a choral peice during a particularly bad/good moment. Mix this with the ability to visually connect the possible longevity of a band, and you have a music machine (4). In my world, these people are called either misanthropes, because they live lonely lives filled with new dicoveries and lack the skills to share them, or Record executives who aren't people in the strictest sense of the word. When you have such a person and they happen to be a wonderful and devoted long-time friend with some basic people skills, you thank the universe for it, beg for mixes and suggestions, and pray to god you don't fuck it up. More than ever my life is full of fun, creative sounds that aren't brutalized by mass taste, electronic enhancement, or kitsch, and I have Amanda Barnes to thank for continually pointing me in the right direction.



VICE MAGAZINE

Disgusting, wrong, snobby, filthy, sexy, deviant, no concept of advanced algebra. No, i'm not quoting my high school teachers, I'm referring to my new online guilty pleasure. Oddly enough, i have found a friend in a magazine that dwells on some of the beautifully grotesque and harsh moments in life. The closest i've read in any sort of Hip-Lit to a reality that i enjoy, this may be the only widely read lifestyle mag that i look forward to, like all the girls i wanted to fuck in high school looked forward to teen beat, and people magazine. I swear, looking at the Afghani opium trade and sweaty chicks in 80's clothes makes me remember life's worth living, and keeps me from snapping an Actor's Demo DVD and using it as a shiv on the rest of Beverly Hills.


MY PAD

Yeah i have an awesome pad. I own a bar, my room is sweet, i have adult fucking furniture, and three 8 foot Oudry paintings that will adorn my far wall. You know what? After moving from shithole to shithole all around LA, living with a cunty girlfriend and innumerable roomates with fucking issues about how i shouldn't piss in the bathtub, or leave my underwear in the living room, i finally have a place that they all wish they had the taste to adorn, the money to afford and the fuckwithal to trash and clean at their leisure.

In short, my life rules, and my blog will shows it.


1. An Alforism (literally distinction or definition, from Greek αφοριζειν "to define") expresses a general truth in a pithy sentence repeated by Alf because he finds himself clever.

2. When I draw comparisons to Hunter Thompson (See Blog Postings Feb. 2005)

3.THE BLOW,THE MOUNTAIN GOATS, MIKA

4. CLAP YOUR HANDS SAY YEAH, LILY ALLEN

Best breakdown EVER

I found this role description for a Character on ER while i was working. The final line took the air out of all my possible submissions.

Score one for Casting.


This 17 year old Caucasian rural Illinois boy is also at the party. He takes an interest in Sarah and invites her outside for some air. The air is tinged with marijuana smoke, and he then invites her to go for a ride in his truck. Their encounter goes from bad, to predictable worse. 8 lines 2 scenes. Please submit actors who don't look like hip LA waiters

Cutting to the chase.

After discussing things with the lady, and seeing that neither of us are prepared to take the plunge, but nonetheless feeling the pull of Marital Bliss, to a woman who will be subservient to my needs, and of strong Christian background, I have chosen Alyssa T. as the next Mrs. L.



Buy your own bride of high moral fiber HERE

Arrivederci Luciano!

1935-2007


With Barry White


With James brown

Nothing But Net

And some Birthday Props to Sara

Brainercize

When my brain doesn't look like this,



I like to keep it active. You know- critical thinking, reading, etc.

The LA Times just completed a wonderful 4-part series on how learning and memory work. The NYT re-emphasized the importance of physical exercise for neurogenesis (the creation of new neurons). To put this news in better perspective, let's review some good lifestyle options we can follow to maintain, and improve, our vibrant brains.

1. Learn what is the "It" in "Use It or Lose It". A basic understanding will serve you well to appreciate your brain's beauty as a living and constantly-developing dense forest with billions of neurons and synapses.


2.Practice positive, future-oriented thoughts until they become your default mindset and you look forward to every new day in a constructive way. Stress and anxiety, no matter whether induced by external events or by your own thoughts, actually kills neurons and prevent the creation of new ones. You can think of chronic stress as the opposite of exercise: it prevents the creation of new neurons.

3. Thrive on Learning and Mental Challenges. The point of having a brain is precisely to learn and to adapt to challenging new environments. Once new neurons appear in your brain, where they stay in your brain and how long they survive depends on how you use them. "Use It or Lose It" does not mean "do crossword puzzle number 1,234,567". It means, "challenge your brain often with fundamentally new activities".
We are (as far as we know) the only self-directed organisms in this planet. Aim high. Once you graduate from college, keep learning. The brain keeps developing, no matter your age, and it reflects what you do with it.

4.Explore, travel. Adapting to new locations forces you to pay more attention to your environment. Make new decisions, use your brain.

5.Don't Outsource Your Brain. Not to media personalities, not to politicians, not to your smart neighbour... Make your own decisions, and mistakes. And learn from them. That way, you are training your brain, not your neighbour's.

6.Develop and maintain stimulating friendships. We are "social animals", and need social interaction. Which, by the way, is why 'Baby Einstein' has been shown not to be the panacea for children development.

7.Laugh. Often. Especially to cognitively complex humor, full of twists and surprises. Better, try to become the next Jon Stewart

8. Don't expect advice to come in tens. Ok?

A Flow Chart

Someday, even YOU ....

Direct quote from the just published REAGAN DIARIES.

The entry is dated May 17, 1986.

'A moment I've been dreading. George brought his ne're-do-well son around this morning and asked me to find the kid a job. Not the political one who lives in Florida. The one who hangs around here all the time looking shiftless. This so-called kid is already almost 40 and has never had a real job. Maybe I'll call Kinsley over at The New Republic and see if they'll hire him as a contributing editor or something. That looks like easy work.'

Comic-Con 2007!

At last i got the three pictures i took uploaded. Unlike last year, this year i went for quality over quantity.


After Jabba's experience with his slave, Ted the Hutt kept out of shape fanboys as his servants.


Marian! Don't look directly at the camera!


After taking pot-shots at Kevin Smith during a Q&A, this Tusken Raider and i celebrated.

Woooaah Wooah Wooah Wah wah!

Mervyn Edward "Merv" Griffin, Jr. (July 6, 1925 – August 12, 2007)

It is a rare moment when someone passes, it makes the news, and I can say i had opportunity to work with them.

He was as "Old School" Hollywood as it gets. Benevolent, charming, and into horse racing. A class act.

Friday Hotness!

Something i found disturbingly attractive....



For Red and Johnny's entire collection of oddly artistic and vaguely sensual Stormtrooper photographs, click HERE

Disbelief: Explaining Morality in Atheism to The Religious

Now I've done it.

I was posting a chat on facebook (Yeah, that's what i get), lamenting the loss of my hometown's innocence to the right wing evangelical groups that hijacked it. I got some varied banter agreeing or disagreeing but one kid was very keen on exposing me as a "Trendy Atheist". He replied a few times to different comments i made arguing that facts are different things to different people, and then tying his logic into very silly knots. Eventually however, he asked a question I hear from a lot of people of faith:

"If I am here solely because my ancestors evolved and crawled out of the water, why does it matter if I go walk up to some homeless dude and kick him in the nuts? I'm not accountable to a set moral or virtuous code because who is to say what is really good? "

This comment astounds me, and I figured I might address it, and perhaps give a little insight to my own total fall from religion.

The rejection of my Catholicism is somewhat recent, and it was prompted by a Homily given during mass. The priest was explaining some paintings he saw while in Rome that depicted Christ ascendant with bones at his feet. The priest recounts that he as he researched further, he realized the bones were representation of Adam and Eve who Christ rescued from hell and brought to heaven thereby redeeming original sin.

All was well.

That is, until Spiderman went after the ring of power in the land of Oz and had to defeat a Sith Lord named Pikachu.

After hearing that, i asked myself," Do I really believe that? In my heart, even as a child i've felt they were all stories. Now as an adult, do I have a place for this? Do I need to continue pretending?" Looking into my heart, i knew the answer was "no". I understand world religions and the need for answers well enough to know that the answers to life's questions do not rest in a single source of divine knowledge.

So how could i, as immediately as I rejected my faith and ultimately all faiths, possibly defend the question of my own moral compass? The answer, interestingly enough, has always been there for me.

Here is what I replied to the kid's question:

"The notion that we don't kick people in the nuts only because of a religion or an established set of morals is a fiction that belies the fact that we have human experience and the finest qualities of mankind to look to. In fact it is easy argualble that more immoral and in fact, violent acts are committed by beleivers than non-believers.

For me, and i feel for most non believers, we tend to negate the Absolutism of religion and bring it to its most primal level, In short , it is basic humanitarian grounding that is the basis for religious rationale. The true moral center rests with the recognition of the other, not in the belief of a higher authority. In laymen's terms I see the face of "God" in myself or and "The other".

A respect for mankind and its achievements (Humanism), allows you to work for the betterment of yourself and the world, because of its inherent benefits, not for fear of a vengeful deity or some sort of prize at the end of life. It forces you to deal with things now and enjoy and respect and truly appreciate the value of human life and the journey we all share.

Positing an agnostic or atheisitc universe, even the creation of the Christ story itself shows the redemptive force inherent in mankind. A force that is more elegant or beautiful than any ficticious parables about virgin births, or resurrections."

I think that covers it.

Tom Snyder 1936-2007

Nothing quite like this anymore, is there?

*** Oh yeah, and also the treacherous Bill Walsh passed away.

1931-2007

Go Broncos.

Let the nerdery begin!

Tomorrow morning I leave for San Diego ComicCon. The biggest gathering of dorks in this side of the Federation of Planets, and Above Middle Earth. As always I will be bringing along my camera to highlight the more horrific moments.

Please, oh please check back in on Monday.

Boozy Boozy Weekend

Ah, the weekend is nigh. Here in Sunny southern California many entertainment companies adhere to the "Gentlemanly tradition" established long ago by the bankers and Madison Avenue execs of half-day fridays durring the boiling summer months. Now, my company does not allow such extravagances, however the companies that do have a ripple effect which slows the breakneck speed of the biz to a crawl, for half the day. And lo there was the promise of drunkeness. So to that ends I present to you.. Mappy Hour! It's Google maps meets..
It's Mappy Hour!

And to get you in the mood here are a few lovely spots for KNOT IRISH WHISKY: