Local Boy Makes Good

So, as skeptical and deeply bitter I am whenever a new Russo-American author is spit out of the literary hype-machine, I must say, The Russian Debutante's Handbook delivers. Taut, funny, and confidently vivid, it achieves the highly sought-after blurb status of being "eminently readable." Is it the great Russian-American novel? No, but it is a huge step in the right direction. Of course, I am biased.

Captain, Wherefore Art Thou?

With the recent assassination of Captain America, we are left to wonder? Who will reconciliate the stars and the stripes, the reds and the blues? Time to spring Hitler from his tomb and resuscitate that comic!

Cinematic Subsidies

I get the feeling that without state-financed films (read: British film industry) and, more importantly, any ole' historical film or show (most recently, Rome) requiring a faux-foreign accent, British actors would be out of work or defecting to the States in droves. This is in no way an original observation, but what up wit da all-purpose English accent, yo? And if American twang is considered ever so crude for mass consumption, be we playing Romans, Egyptians, or Armenians, will there ever come a time that levee's gonna break? Kudos to Mel Gibson for his earnest stabs at lingustic authenticity--whatever their enabler's subtext!

What's That Name Again?

Hat tip to Duke Nobbins on this misnomered YouTube video title. It's Bernie Mac meets Fat Joe.

Bigger Man

What's up with assholes at the gym cutting the cardio machine line from the opposite flank and then pretending to have been waiting? OK, the dumbshit kids will give me a retarded stare and then yield the stairmaster. It's really sad when a middle-aged, Russian (inevitably) FOB pretends to have been waiting for the machine and not seen me (ah, the scheming fucking Russians)--always the same, lame excuse. "Vat is your point?" he asks, and I really wanted to knock my point in his wily little mug. But the heavily accented chick next to us kindly informed us the machine wasn't working. Fighting over broken equipment. Aye, there's the rub.

The Sudden Jerk

We read our books and Polish newspapers, stare at our PDAs, fix our eyeliner, lips, and blush, enjoy frivolous phone calls on the mobile, snap voyeur photos of camel toes, expose ourselves, talk into our lapels, run scams for money, perform mariachi music and minstrel acrobatics, lament our workaday anomie, marinade in our apathy, grunt passive-aggressively when lightly brushed by others...and then...the B train takea a sharp turn for the Manhattan Bridge, sending us all flying into each other, if only for a measly second; molecules spontaneously colliding in a container sealed by resignation and routine. And then, like a momentary power interruption, we return to our previously staked positions, acting as cool as humanly possible.

mandom.

friends, would you like to smell like charles bronson?

Worse Than a JetBlue Delay

Airline service just keeps floundering.

How Far Will a Monkey Go?

Ah, the infamous bathroom monkey. At this time, there is no word as to the illness of the monkey's tongue.

East Meets West

With my copious bags of fruits and veggies covering the express check-out counter, two jolly dudes behind me shared the following exchange:

"...M&Ms man, you know?
"Yeah, what about them?"
"Rememeber that promotion a few years back? Find the--"
"--Find the gray M&M and you win a million dollars. Yeah, yeah, nice scam."
"You know what?"
"What?"
"I found the gray M&M, man."
"Sure you did."
"I swear man, I found it. Gray--no mistake, I remember it. All the others were red and yellow...Not that one, man, gray."
"So what'd you do?"
"I ate it."
"No shit."
"Can you believe it? I ate the damn thing, the million-dollar M&M. I only read about the prize later."

I looked over my shoulder as the demure, acned Turkish girl bagged the last of my groceries. I couldn't tell which of the two was the M&M gobbler. They both looked pretty damn well content.

Le Bureau

Both of us are fans of THE office.
here's the french version. their pam/dawn is pretty hot, and their michael/brent is more alcoholic father looking.

http://www.fanpop.com/spots/the-office-%2528us%2529/links/18598

Pachydermal Porn

This is ever so cute.

PBF

In honor of my re-acquaintance with Perry Bible, fellowship, I will illegally reprint this classic strip:

The Lookout

“Ma, he’s from the company, I’m sure he’s straight.”

“I don’t care. Your father is God knows where; there is a stranger in the house, in our bedroom, right now.”

“It’s the middle of the day. He wouldn’t.”

“Get up there now.”

“It’s embarrassing—you always say—”

“You want to leave our house exposed to the whole neighborhood? Leave your mother defenseless here?”

Basketball would have to wait. A good guilt-trip is more potent than a well-aimed threat from a well-aimed gun.

The gentle morning sunlight peeked through the shutters, seeping hints of mild April splendor through our second-floor windows. Finches chirped in the backyard, luring my second parakeet, Ricky, to mutiny and join them in unfettered freedom. Poor African Ricky was deaf to their American-tweeting inveiglements.

And there was I, a 6-year resident of the United States of America, an enlightened teenage soul steeped in liberal democratic thought and egalitarian ethos. There was I, directed by my progressive, open-minded mother to mind her bedroom while the black cable guy uninstalled the wires and hardware (unbeknownst to him soon to be replaced by an unauthorized cable box reprogrammed by a former dental hygienist from Azerbaijan to give us coveted access to HBO and pornography).

The awkwardness set in immediately. “Would you like something to drink?”

His back turned, he wiped the sweat off his forehead with an elbow. “No thanks.”

I needed a pretext to stay. Pretending to look for something (I quickly caught myself—must stay away from Mom’s jewelry box—too obvious), I foolishly picked up the first thing I saw—a feather duster. Only one thing to do with a feather duster unless you’re a French maid. He turned, reaching for the pliers, and I quickly dropped the easy giveaway.

What else?—The TV! There’s a Yankees game on…Oh, right. It was then that he solved the problem for me.

“Know what? That drink offer still good?”

“Uh, sure. Juice, soda?”

“Cold water’s fine.”

Shit. I realized the fatal flaw of my innocently proffered beverage. Mom was in the basement doing laundry and the parakeet wasn’t trained for racist surveillance. A good half-decade away from the cellular revolution that swept our family, I was unable to hatch a devious text-messaging scheme. I had to chance it.

“You want ice?” Of course he did.

The sprint downstairs must have been record-setting—if Guinness ever recorded such dubious numbers. Races motivated by antediluvian attitudes and fear-mongering were almost certainly unofficiated. I almost tripped on the way up, but not a drop of water lost—a feat worthy of Eddie Murphy’s Golden Child obstacle course. It seemed I, too, had what it takes to be The One.

I looked around the room anxiously with my parents’ eyes. I always preferred not to know. Drawers intact. Correspondence in place. What am I forgetting?

“That it?”

“Oh, yeah, sorry. There you go, Sir.” Absently, I handed him the cup with my eyes fixed on Mom’s hand-painted lacquer jewelry box, on which a frisky troika was pulling a rose-cheeked maiden through a frozen riverbed. He took the cup from my hand without turning, the stepladder wilting under his bulky frame and steady legs. We were both in our own worlds.

“You should be all set. There a bathroom here?”

Perfect—he’d be gone for 2, 3 minutes at least!

Elated, I gave him directions to the downstairs bathroom. Like a drowning man barely beating suffocation for that sweet, nourishing gasp of oxygen, I snatched the lid off the box. Looks good. Relieved, I started for the stairs, to graciously welcome our guest from the bathroom with the candy bin and a $5 note. But before I could fete my operation’s success, or grasp there was no way for me to verify the contents of the box came a loud thud and the jarring crack of skull meeting thick wood drowned out by an agonizing “Jesus Christ, my fucking head!”

It was too late to look away. The man was sprawled out on the stairway, taking the first hard-earned break of the day. With heavy hand and breath I went back inside the room and took the cordless. Somewhere in the distance, my grandma’s voice carried from her upstairs cloister.

“Did he put in the TV yet? All day without the TV!”

Clericus for the Restofus

Since when is soccer about fruitful sharing, friendship, and promoting pastoral values? I thought sport was a modern replacement for casual warfare, to keep men's bellicose instincts from incurring true carnage.

Dancing the Night Away

I wonder what Tim Hardaway had to say about this. Thanks to the Velvet Mafia, we may never know.

Confabulations

It's been a big week for two of this blog's most avid readers. Congratulations are in order for:

DukeNobbins (of Why Duck Media) for his prestigious operations research fellowship nomination.

Schwam, Ph.D. for successfully defending his microbiology candidacy.

And a belated congrats to M.J. from the Hawkeye state for her acceptance to historic Columbia U. graduate school, and her impending move to the East Coast with a Jewish leptosome.

New Socialism

I suggest our government hand out free mass-market copies of The Fountainhead to the good citizens of Venezuela. Interesting how demagogues lack in any originality--they just keep repackaging tired old gospels. This definitely IS your daddy's socialism.

Found Art.

I find it, amuuuuuuuuusing.
Here's one from the 23rd street F train station. It's from a new Fox morning news show. Starring one of their famous blonde hoes.