Just kidding, sort of.
So Hillary Clinton was campaigning in Indiana a few days ago, pretending to be a beer-swillin', gun-totin', working-class Midwestern Christian with a pickup truck, and she arranged this great photo-op at a bar... she's campaigning with a real mug of beer in her hands!
As a former bartender, I only vote for candidates who can do serious damage to a bottle of Jack or a keg of Milwaukee's Best. (And that's exactly why I voted for Bush early and often. I'm lying.) I had decided to vote for Obama a long time ago, but then I saw Hillary on TV, with a beer in her hand. Time to reconsider my support?
Of course, she doesn't touch the beer. But the bartender--who is clearly a Republican--decides to mess with her by slapping a shot of Crown Royal on the bar. (Real beer-swillin', gun-totin', working-class Midwestern Christians with old pickup trucks don't drink Crown very often, incidentally--it's way too expensive. It's a yuppie whiskey, wildly popular in San Francisco... tasty, though.)
Not much happens in the first 40 seconds of this video, and Amber and I decided that we'd both turn into Hillary supporters if she pounded the shot like a real Midwestern man. If you want to see what happens, here's the clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1V4fffzU1wA&feature=related
Hint: the term "sorority sip" comes to mind.
And while you're on youtube, check out this hilarious clip of Andrew Bogut, an NBA player who is apparently a real jerk. His teammates hate him or something, and they didn't come over to give him high-fives after he made a free throw, so he just high-fived his imaginary friends instead: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zc11PUnFgkQ
Monday, April 21, 2008
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
DC's best awning
Hey, that's the first time I think I've ever typed the word "awning."
I gave up on the blog, thinking that nobody was actually reading it, anyway. Actually, I was spending 60+ hours a week writing/editing TOEFL books, and was no longer in the mood for recreational writing. It's not like I ever wrote this crap because I really though that anybody (besides Norm?) was reading it...
Then I've gotten a couple of "where the hell are you, there's nothing on your blog" emails in the past week or so... which suggests that maybe four of you might be reading this. Because all four of you are sooooooo special, I'm back to writing.
Well, unemployment also helps. Starting in a week or two, I won't be writing any more TOEFL books, at least not for awhile. Some financial issues at the TOEFL mothership. Not a pretty sight.
Somehow, I now live in Washington, DC. I have the same zip code as the president. Not sure if I'm proud of that or not. (In case you're wondering, the DC thing was entirely Amber's idea. I just follow her, since she's prettier than I am and speaks in complete sentences.)
I figured that DC would sort of feel like a smaller, more government-y version of New York. It's the east coast, so I thought that nobody would pay any attention to anybody else on the street... unless, of course, they want money from you. Not mean or rude, just indifferent.
I was wrong, or at least it seems that way so far. I've only been here for a grand total of about four weeks--came from Korea via San Francisco in early March, spent two weeks apartment-hunting and furniture-shopping and TOEFL-writing, then left for Asia again... I've been back for two weeks now. So I can't claim to be a DC expert. I'm still basically a tourist here. Okay, a tourist with an overpriced apartment lease.
Surprisingly, people in DC really don't suck. Thanks to the random kindness of DC strangers, I installed my first Washingtonian hangover last weekend. Amber and I were wandering home from dinner on Friday night, and it started raining. It turned into a really ugly, hard, slanting thundershower... far worse than anything the California weather gods ever unleashed on us. We're dumb, so we walked a few blocks in the worst of it. By the time we ducked under an awning, our asses were soaked.
Not interesting, huh?
But wait. Two random guys walked by, and invited us into their apartment. Our asses were soaked, how could we say no? They offered us beer. Beer is good... We played with their golden retriever. Dogs are usually good, though this dog was named Molson. That should have been a warning to us.
After a beer in their apartment, they invited us out to a club across the street (which I'd walked past a few dozen times--from the outside, it looks like a lame steakhouse for Midwestern grandmothers, but it's actually a three-story Eurotrashy nightclub with a rooftop deck). They bought us more beer. When they suggested another club, we couldn't say no--we still had to reciprocate and buy a few rounds.
It gets pretty blurry from there. At least three more nightclubs, a few rounds of shots (my dumb f**king idea), some greasy pizza, probably some barf, maybe some transvestites (I don't remember)...
Anyhoo, the point is this: people in DC are friendly, maybe even more friendly than your average Midwesterners. These dudes weren't trying to get into our pants or anything, as one might suspect in, say, our former home of San Francisco. Just friendly. Same seems to apply to the neighbors--I get into random conversations all the time around here.
Who knew? I'm pretty much amazed that DC doesn't suck. I haven't visited any of the memorials or the capitol or anything like that yet, but I can tell you this: the awnings in DC are awesome.
I gave up on the blog, thinking that nobody was actually reading it, anyway. Actually, I was spending 60+ hours a week writing/editing TOEFL books, and was no longer in the mood for recreational writing. It's not like I ever wrote this crap because I really though that anybody (besides Norm?) was reading it...
Then I've gotten a couple of "where the hell are you, there's nothing on your blog" emails in the past week or so... which suggests that maybe four of you might be reading this. Because all four of you are sooooooo special, I'm back to writing.
Well, unemployment also helps. Starting in a week or two, I won't be writing any more TOEFL books, at least not for awhile. Some financial issues at the TOEFL mothership. Not a pretty sight.
Somehow, I now live in Washington, DC. I have the same zip code as the president. Not sure if I'm proud of that or not. (In case you're wondering, the DC thing was entirely Amber's idea. I just follow her, since she's prettier than I am and speaks in complete sentences.)
I figured that DC would sort of feel like a smaller, more government-y version of New York. It's the east coast, so I thought that nobody would pay any attention to anybody else on the street... unless, of course, they want money from you. Not mean or rude, just indifferent.
I was wrong, or at least it seems that way so far. I've only been here for a grand total of about four weeks--came from Korea via San Francisco in early March, spent two weeks apartment-hunting and furniture-shopping and TOEFL-writing, then left for Asia again... I've been back for two weeks now. So I can't claim to be a DC expert. I'm still basically a tourist here. Okay, a tourist with an overpriced apartment lease.
Surprisingly, people in DC really don't suck. Thanks to the random kindness of DC strangers, I installed my first Washingtonian hangover last weekend. Amber and I were wandering home from dinner on Friday night, and it started raining. It turned into a really ugly, hard, slanting thundershower... far worse than anything the California weather gods ever unleashed on us. We're dumb, so we walked a few blocks in the worst of it. By the time we ducked under an awning, our asses were soaked.
Not interesting, huh?
But wait. Two random guys walked by, and invited us into their apartment. Our asses were soaked, how could we say no? They offered us beer. Beer is good... We played with their golden retriever. Dogs are usually good, though this dog was named Molson. That should have been a warning to us.
After a beer in their apartment, they invited us out to a club across the street (which I'd walked past a few dozen times--from the outside, it looks like a lame steakhouse for Midwestern grandmothers, but it's actually a three-story Eurotrashy nightclub with a rooftop deck). They bought us more beer. When they suggested another club, we couldn't say no--we still had to reciprocate and buy a few rounds.
It gets pretty blurry from there. At least three more nightclubs, a few rounds of shots (my dumb f**king idea), some greasy pizza, probably some barf, maybe some transvestites (I don't remember)...
Anyhoo, the point is this: people in DC are friendly, maybe even more friendly than your average Midwesterners. These dudes weren't trying to get into our pants or anything, as one might suspect in, say, our former home of San Francisco. Just friendly. Same seems to apply to the neighbors--I get into random conversations all the time around here.
Who knew? I'm pretty much amazed that DC doesn't suck. I haven't visited any of the memorials or the capitol or anything like that yet, but I can tell you this: the awnings in DC are awesome.
Monday, January 7, 2008
correction(s)
I finally met somebody who recognized John Edwards' accent. And no, it is not fake--it is a genuine drawl from the mountains of North Carolina. I was absolutely wrong.
For a much more depressing editorial mistake, check out the Sunday, January 6 edition of Parade magazine, that glossy thing that is always wedged between the comics and the coupons in your Sunday newspaper. The idiots published a photo of Benazir Bhutto on the cover, with the following headline: "Is Benazir Bhutto America's best hope against Al-Qaeda? 'I am what the terrorists most fear.'"
The buttholes at Parade published that article 10 days after Al-Qaeda killed Bhutto. Brilliant.
If you're curious to read this piece of hard-hitting journalism: http://www.parade.com/contents.jsp?edition=/articles/editions/2008/edition_01-06-2008/
It's followed by an article about why dogs chase cats.
For a much more depressing editorial mistake, check out the Sunday, January 6 edition of Parade magazine, that glossy thing that is always wedged between the comics and the coupons in your Sunday newspaper. The idiots published a photo of Benazir Bhutto on the cover, with the following headline: "Is Benazir Bhutto America's best hope against Al-Qaeda? 'I am what the terrorists most fear.'"
The buttholes at Parade published that article 10 days after Al-Qaeda killed Bhutto. Brilliant.
If you're curious to read this piece of hard-hitting journalism: http://www.parade.com/contents.jsp?edition=/articles/editions/2008/edition_01-06-2008/
It's followed by an article about why dogs chase cats.
Friday, January 4, 2008
south of the Waffle House line
The Mason-Dixon line is dead. Nobody remembers who Mason or Dixon were, if anybody ever knew to begin with.
You know when you've entered the South when you start to see Waffle Houses. They don't exist anywhere in the North, unless you count Missouri or Arizona. Most New Yorkers would never accept either of those states as being Northern. Hell, most New Yorkers have no idea where those states are.
But this isn't about Waffle Houses or their 1700 greasy yellow roadside huts, or New Yorkers' epic ignorance of "flyover" states. I'm in the South. And I've finally had some real Southern moments.
I've been staying in Wilmington, North Carolina for the last couple of weeks. In a way, it feels just like any other smallish (150,000 people, maybe?) American city--strip malls, department stores, Home Depots, coffeehouses, gas stations, check-cashing ripoff joints, etc. Most people have a little twang in their speech, but you would otherwise have no idea that you're not somewhere in suburban Illinois or Oregon or Colorado.
But hang out here for a bit, and you start to hear interesting things.
Right now, I'm in a coffeehouse, trying hard not to listen to a racist old fuck who keeps trying to draw people into a conversation about the Iowa caucuses. He keeps saying (loudly), "Jefferson Davis must be turning over in his grave today"--a reference to the apparently-terrifying fact that we might end up with (gasp!) some colored guy as our next president. The stupid bastard repeated that Jefferson Davis line to me twice. I ignored him, and pretended to be deeply engrossed in my work. If he didn't have a gun rack on his truck, I'd have said something about how I no hablo ingles.
I heard a great story about a Midwesterner who relocated to North Carolina. As soon as he moved into his new home, a neighbor came knocking. Welcome wagon? Not quite. Without saying hello, the neighbor asked, "what's your church, and who's your driver?" The Northerner (an atheist with no interest in NASCAR) wisely anwered, "six car, first Baptist." He was apparently allowed to stay in the neighborhood.
I don't want to rip on the South too hard--most people are incredibly friendly, and I get the impression that people like that Confederate assmunch are fairly rare here. But I can't imagine that too many of you heard anything racist about Obama in coffeehouses above the Waffle House line today.
Last night, we drank a toast to Iowa. Whatever you think of Obama as a candidate, his victory was a serious milestone in American race relations--a lily-white state voted for him, apparently without giving a flying fuck about his race or his funny name. South of the Waffle House line, I'm not sure that white minds are quite so advanced.
You know when you've entered the South when you start to see Waffle Houses. They don't exist anywhere in the North, unless you count Missouri or Arizona. Most New Yorkers would never accept either of those states as being Northern. Hell, most New Yorkers have no idea where those states are.
But this isn't about Waffle Houses or their 1700 greasy yellow roadside huts, or New Yorkers' epic ignorance of "flyover" states. I'm in the South. And I've finally had some real Southern moments.
I've been staying in Wilmington, North Carolina for the last couple of weeks. In a way, it feels just like any other smallish (150,000 people, maybe?) American city--strip malls, department stores, Home Depots, coffeehouses, gas stations, check-cashing ripoff joints, etc. Most people have a little twang in their speech, but you would otherwise have no idea that you're not somewhere in suburban Illinois or Oregon or Colorado.
But hang out here for a bit, and you start to hear interesting things.
Right now, I'm in a coffeehouse, trying hard not to listen to a racist old fuck who keeps trying to draw people into a conversation about the Iowa caucuses. He keeps saying (loudly), "Jefferson Davis must be turning over in his grave today"--a reference to the apparently-terrifying fact that we might end up with (gasp!) some colored guy as our next president. The stupid bastard repeated that Jefferson Davis line to me twice. I ignored him, and pretended to be deeply engrossed in my work. If he didn't have a gun rack on his truck, I'd have said something about how I no hablo ingles.
I heard a great story about a Midwesterner who relocated to North Carolina. As soon as he moved into his new home, a neighbor came knocking. Welcome wagon? Not quite. Without saying hello, the neighbor asked, "what's your church, and who's your driver?" The Northerner (an atheist with no interest in NASCAR) wisely anwered, "six car, first Baptist." He was apparently allowed to stay in the neighborhood.
I don't want to rip on the South too hard--most people are incredibly friendly, and I get the impression that people like that Confederate assmunch are fairly rare here. But I can't imagine that too many of you heard anything racist about Obama in coffeehouses above the Waffle House line today.
Last night, we drank a toast to Iowa. Whatever you think of Obama as a candidate, his victory was a serious milestone in American race relations--a lily-white state voted for him, apparently without giving a flying fuck about his race or his funny name. South of the Waffle House line, I'm not sure that white minds are quite so advanced.
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