It’s that time of year again, when the entire blogosphere comes to a halt. Every summer it happens; Maybe everyone’s tired from having fun outdoors all day. Maybe the heat has baked the goddamn sense out of everyone’s head. Or maybe an entire summer vacation spent with the kids has left everyone hiding in the closet, weeping and drinking vodka in bulk. Me? I’m busy with my charity work, serving as a spokesperson for Tequila Para Los Perros. We do good work at TPLP. Every summer we round up stray dogs, get them ripped to the tits on tequila, then turn them loose in nursing homes. Why? Well… Uh… Wow. That’s a really good fucking question. Hmmm. I may have to rethink this whole thing. … Dammit. Continue reading

Gee, I hope our friends in Magic Land are doing ok!

I try to eat a sensible lunch when I’m at work during the week. Back when I was in my 20’s and immortal, I used to eat all kinds of crap because I was only eating it to soak up the alcohol anyway, and besides, burritos with pork, sour cream, and guacamole wrapped in a flour tortilla have damn near all the food groups in them, right? Unfortunately, when I got a little older, eating from this bastardized food pyramid made me start to look like a pyramid, and I knew I needed to change things up a bit. I remember that eating spicy Italian sandwiches at Subways made be blow up like a goddamn balloon, causing me to think to myself, “Jared, you dogfucker, you are a lying sack of shit.” Continue reading

It was 109 degrees out today. That’s in Fahrenheit, incidentally. 109 degrees Fahrenheit is… I dunno, a hectare or something? I don’t know shit about the metric system because I’m American, and unless we’re talking about kilos or 9 millimeter ammo we don’t know a meter from a 3.28 foot wide hole in the ground. Suffice it to say that 109 degrees is ball-scorching hot. But then again, I live in Phoenix and it’s July, so that should go without saying, right? Continue reading

I’ve pretty much been exposed to rock music from the moment I was born. Well not the exact moment I was born, obviously. I mean, there weren’t any drum solos going on, or laser shows, and no one was holding up a lit cigarette lighter in the maternity ward when I made my debut. Babies don’t really belong at a rock show, really, except maybe when Courtney Love is in town because you take one look at her and you know damn well that she’s aborted a few behind a stack of Marshalls with a syringe full of heroin and a Dustbuster. (I’m going to just go ahead and apologize for that line right now.) Continue reading

I was watching an episode of The Wire the other day, because that’s exactly the kind of with-it, up-to-date guy I am. My middle name is Zeitgeist. I have my finger so firmly on the pulse of this nation that I’m about to steal the nation’s watch. I am hep to the jive, even though I’m not sure what the word “hep” means, and up until a week ago, I thought that “the jive” was something that you treated with hydrocortisone. I am up to fucking date is what I’m saying, just as long as that date is June 2nd, 2002. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go dance the Charleston on top of a flagpole. Continue reading

My life is a lot like the show Mad Men: I lounge around in a suit all day, quaffing gin and chain-smoking while ad men try to convince me that they hold the key to untold riches. And when I get bored, I head out to the Savoy for a twelve martini lunch and then wind down by maybe chasing a little tail. Ring-a-ding-ding, it rules to be me! Then I wake up from this pleasant dream to find vagrants pawing at me while a man in an ill-fitting blue suit informs me that I’m no longer welcome at the Amtrak terminal. So, I guess my life isn’t like Mad Men at all, which is a bummer because those guys really know how to party. Continue reading

I recently rearranged my office because I bought a new reading chair, and frankly the feng shui was all wrong. Did I get that right? Feng shui is that thing that the Chinese use to make sure their bedrooms don’t piss off spirits or something, right? Frankly, I’m not convinced. Look, China, you had one shot to win me over with fortune cookies, and you fucking blew it. “Today would be a good day to make a new friend”? Thanks a lot, China. That guy gut-stabbed me and took my watch. Fortune cookies are bullshit and so is feng shui. Continue reading

More than one person asked me if I had really placed the Boz Scaggs Tested – Boz Scaggs Approved logo on a gas pump yesterday, or if I just Photoshopped it on there. No, I really put it on a gas pump, and to prove to myself that it wasn’t another one of my Robitussin and paint thinner-based hallucinations, I drove by to see if it was still there today. Twice. In the morning it was right where I’d left it, but when I came home from work it had been thoughtfully realigned and moved to a corner of the display, where it works a lot better, stylistically speaking. It is one classy looking gas pump. Continue reading

My daughter and I were looking at upcoming concerts the other night, in a vain attempt to find a show worth seeing that we would both enjoy. My daughter’s tastes run to boy bands and pop music, whereas my taste in music is primarily centered around bands that actually know the difference a quarter note and an asshole. But I exposed my daughter to an awful lot of classic rock when she was younger, and it has definitely had an impact on her. If the Beatles tour any time soon, for instance, she is fucking there. Continue reading