Last night Natalie called me.
She had had a couple drinks in some club with James, Rick, and Rich.
From Finger Eleven.
James said, "Were you in The Robert Cake?"
"Yes! I was!"
"I thought I recognized your face."
Back at their bus she had a couple more beers.
The Robert Cake is in his dvd collection.
He loves movies like that.
His favorite scene was the cake-eating scene.
He fucking loves Adam Wekarski.
He wants to get ahold of a copy of The Bags.

All of this is 100% true.

My favorite band in the whole fat world has not only seen one of my movies, but keeps it in the collection, and- paid enough attention to recognize someone from it.

Sorry Gene Wilder. You were overshadowed.

I think relating to Friends, the way I do, really laughing and crying with it, finding parallels to my life and assigning characters on the show to people I know is like believing that a Coldplay song, or a cut off the Jagged Little Pill record is 100% YOU. And what sucks is I don't know when or even why that became such a bad thing.

I am smart enough to know that being personally affected by something that sends the same shivers up 20 million other spines is frowned upon. I know, I giggle a little when a teenage girl weeps singing a Britney Spears song. Connecting with something so obviously marketed at the masses makes sheep of us. A majority for the pretentious minority to scoff at.

So what though. They took six charming twentysomethings, and filled their heads, hearts and mouths with the same trials and tribulations that twentysomethings have. Granted, they were caricatured conflicts, but that was to make sure we would laugh. And laugh I have. Wonder and hope and wish I have.

Bottom line. Friends is a FUNNY FUCKING SHOW. Friends is a show with a heart the size of a turkey. Bottom line -even below the previous bottom line- when I watch Friends... it makes me think of my friends. In every state in the union there are groups of weird people who have, from different places, somehow ended up close to one another.

And they watch the show.

And one of them is just soooo, Phoebe. And that's just how it is.

And fuck it I'm Ross. That doesn't mean I'm being spoonfed my thoughts or feelings. It doesn't mean I'm a paleontologist or that I'm thrice divorced. It means that there is a character on a really great show that I've become invested in. Because he does things, and says things, and enjoys things, and has to deal with things... that I do. And I don't care that there are a couple million other Rosses out there. Guys who do, and say, and enjoy, and have to deal with, the same. stupid. shit. BAAaaaaaaa goes the sheep.

Which Friend are you?

The beach in Norwalk is sans sand. Replacing 50% of what makes a beach a beach is grass and rocks and crabs. Perfectly camouflaged crabs, twinkletoeing out of the sudden sun when you lift up their roof rock.

You have no idea how happy I was to see an animal that wasn't a dog or cat or bird.

Also there are huge welded steel sculptures.

Christian thought one looked like a dragon with its mouth agape, holding a cell phone.

Christian thinks that kind of art is garbage. Big metal litter.

I think before they start hauling car-sized hunks of metal from some doober's garage out to the beach, they should consider hauling in some fucking

S A N D ! ! !

Every now and again, when Universal decides to drop a Cleveland Steamer onto the Tremors franchise in the form of another straight-to-video shlock-fest, I get an email with a bold subject line that says...

TREMORS FAN PAGE UPDATE!

I got one today. It speaks for itself...

Dear Tremors Fans,

Now that Tremors 4: The Legend Begins has been released in the UK it is time for one more special release; the release of the Tremors 4 bicycle. We have the actual bicycle ridden by Michael Gross in the film and it begins a 10 day eBay auction on Tuesday April 27th. Included is a 5x7 photo of Michael Gross riding the bicycle. This photo has been personally autographed by Michael Gross specifically for this auction.

This is a rare opportunity to own a high profile Tremors item that you would be proud to ride around the neighborhood for years to come.

The word Tremors now officially looks made up. I just stared at it for three minutes like it was ancient Sanskrit.


ps-- There is a Godzilla movie coming on called, Godzilla Vs. Space Godzilla. I swear.

"GUYS love Philly Cheesesteak. GUYS love Domino's Pizza. THAT'S WHY Domino's created the new Philly Cheesesteak Pizza."

translation:

FUCK YOU WOMEN! You are a pizza-eating demographic we could give a fuck about.

Domino's: Thank you for calling Domino's Pizza, how can I help you?
Woman: Yes, do you have the new Philly Cheesesteak Pizza?
Domino's: We sure do, but not for you.
Woman: Excuse me?
Domino's: Look this is not Curves For Women, ma'am, this is not The Cheesecake Factory, this is a pizza place. We do not cater to the tragically dickless. So why don't you just go eat some fucking ice cream and cry about it. Cunt.
::CLICK::

Maybe that is why the Domino's Pizza chain has receded into dollar-store dominated strip malls and bat caves, they neglect nearly half of the pizza-eating country.

My suggestion... Salad Pizza. With a shitload of Ranch dressing-

OKAY -I just looked down, and one of those godforsakenfuckinspiders was hanging from my elbow, it swooped down at my feet on its silken cable and disappeared. Now I have the willies. See, I wasn't afraid when it was dangling from me; only when it vanished.

Spiders don't want to bite me, what they really want is to be my exterminator. They want the dark hollows of my room that attract little bugs. And my insistence on not killing spiders has reached superstitious heights. I believe that the entire arachnid population knows me, knows I'll go out of my way to toss them outside rather than shoe-smash them or send them surfing into the sewer via toilet flush. And my respect has not fallen on deaf spider ears; I don't kill them, they don't bite me.

I do however have acute webophobia. Because when you walk through a spider web, that means there is an unaccounted for spider. I fear the absence of spiders. When you know they are close, but you don't see them. They could dance across my face while I'm asleep -and they probably do- and so long as I don't know, so long as I don't wake up with baby spiders erupting from one of my tear ducts, we're cool. Me and spiders.

One just scuttled across my computer and onto my pocket dinosaur book. I picked it up and hollered for Christian to come with his camera because I wanted to put an eight-eyed face to our eight legged roomies.

That little bugger sat still on the edge of that book through forty clicks of the shutter. Through location changes for better light, through flashes I can only imagine equate to a kaleidoscopic sun exploding in its face. He earned getting tossed out onto the back steps.

Of course I'm sure he slipping back inside as I write this.

I really believe that if anyone reads this, that its just a spill over from Christian's blog. So you'd be surprised how much I battle with what I'm going to write, and how I'm going to write it. For instance, Christian and I get home today and it's unspoken, we both head for our blogs.

I mention nothing of the 60 mile there-and-back trip to Arby's.

He mention's nothing of the book sale.

Funny, since each was more important to the other.

So see if I am to write of the Arby's excursion, it has to be fresh. It has to be... Market Fresh, like their delicious sandwiches, or everyone's just gonna see the word Arby's and go "Bah!, Arby's is old hat."

The long and short of it is, Arby's was a staple of my diet for the last year, for a lot of years actually, but this last year in particular. It was a minute and a half from my bedroom and eleven seconds from my place of work. Now it's over thirty miles away. 30 miles of twisting roads peppered with brooks, and bogs, and Sleepy Hollow-old graveyards.

Today we went. Today I tasted my last year for the first time in two months.

It tasted real good.

I could fucking drink me some Arby's sauce.

So I did see 13 Going on 30. And aside from the fact that I could have written it with my dick, it was cute. Being an Alias fan from episode numero uno I felt I owed it to Jennifer to watch her try and carry her first major motion picture. And she did, carried it around like a purse. Some accessory you don't even notice because you're blinded by her smile.

Every week, that girl kicks ass, gets her ass kicked, sheds some tears, gets bloodied and bruised and emotionally walloped.

And here she is being goofy and thirteen and clumsy and perfect.

Jennifer Garner SPRAYS talent.


ps- Mark Ruffalo is cool.

Nine Stories --J.D. Salinger
Wuthering Heights --Emily Bronte
Les Miserables --Victor Hugo
The Crucible --Arthur Miller
Walden --Henry David Thoreau
Billy Budd --Herman Melville
Moby Dick --Herman Melville
Gulliver's Travels --Jonathon Swift
Pygmalion --Bernard Shaw
Long Day's Journey Into Night -- Eugene O'Neill
Beowulf
Animal Farm --George Orwell
A Tale of Two Cities --Charles Dickens
The Inferno --Dante
Romeo + Juliet --William Shakespeare
Hamlet --William Shakespeare
Justine --Marquis De Sade
Franny and Zooey --J.D. Salinger

Why do I list so many familiar titles from the annals of world literature? Because today was bag day at the Norwalk Public Library's annual book sale. I put every one of those books into a crumpled Wal-Mart bag, and paid an old man two dollars for all of them.

All of them. 2 Bucks.

Now if you'll excuse me, it's bookshelf-space consolidation time.

Day Two: The Kinkage Continues.

I'm dealing with a weird kind of paralyzation. I have lost mobility from my head all the way down to... my shoulders. Which means to look in either direction, I need some fancy footwork. I've got to pivot on the balls of my feet, forty-five-degreeing my way around the world. And I can't dance to save Christmas.

This morning, I had to Frankenstein omelets and burgers out to people, walking like a tree if trees walked. All rigid and wooden. I wish I would have been allowed to act like a robot, making mechanical squeaking sounds when my elbows or knees bent; beeping, "Here. Is. Your. Western. Omelet. Ma'am," in my finest mathematical accent. At least then I could have played off the taut bundle of nerves that have my trapezius muscles scrunched into a perpetual state of shrug.

I was pirouetting around the kitchen all day, waffle-frying this, orange-slice & parsleying that, trying to get around explaining to my Mexican commrades what was wrong with me. Why I had no peripheral vision.

I am the exact opposite of a bobblehead doll.