i see you've got the blues in your alligator shoes. but me, i'm all smiles. i've got my crocodiles

One of the sad things about my new place of work is that I can't share jokes with people. First off, I'm the new guy and I don't really get a sense of camaraderie. Secondly, I'm the only white kid from middle class upbringing, so my cultural background is different. There's the Spaniards, and then the rest of the kitchen staff is African-American. We had different childhood experiences. Different musical tastes and different cultural icons.
An example of a joke I used to love to tell people. Okay, not so much a "joke" as something that I think is bizarre and funny. It involves an object found in every restaurant kitchen, and something that you may well have in your home. If you have a box of Argo brand corn starch, I encourage you to go get it. It's very important that you have this brand name. Clabber Girl won't work. Generic corn starch won't work. If you don't have it or you aren't at home, I suggest you click on the above link for a picture of the box. For hilarity's sake, you may have to enlarge the picture or whatever. Anyway, here goes......

Take a look at the cover star of the Argo box. It looks like the love child of a corn cob and the drummer from Def Leppard.

(queue rim shot)
(queue sparse laughter)

You know, .... because of the arm.

(queue crickets chirping)

And then I found five dollars.

See, I can't really tell that joke because the Spaniards don't know who Def Leppard is and the other guys probably don't either.

However, my egg jokes span all cultural bounds:
Eggs.... They're all they're cracked up to be
Oops,.... looks like the yolks on you!

I have more, but I get the feeling that you want me to stop.


That's all I have for you

when i called last night i wasn't high. i had not been drinking

More fun with StatCounter---

A while back, I had a post with the title "Kissing just for practice", from the Belle and Sebastian song Seeing other People. Like most posts, the content had nothing to do with the title. As I've said before, most of the post titles are completely gratuitous. It's just that I can't come up with titles on my own.

The point is, somebody in England found my blog by doing a search for "how to practice kissing". I'm picturing some young 12-year-old lad who has just secured his first date, or is about to go to a dance with some cuties from his school. He's all excited and nervous, and then it hits him --- he doesn't know how to kiss. He says "HOLY CRAP!!!! I need to start practicing, but I don't know how." I hope for his sake that things worked out with or without practicing.

I also recently got a few hits from folks in Canada who did a search for "Jenn Hanna wedding". Jenn Hanna is the skip of the Ottowa Curling Club. I made brief mention of her in my one post about women's curling, and specifically that improbable shot made by Manitoba's Jennifer Jones to defeat Hanna in the Tournament of Hearts.

I get lots of other hits from searches like "black or red leather sofa", but that doesn't make for a funny post. Actually, neither does this, but at least I'm trying.

Now playing:

Chris Bell I Am the Cosmos

i say you can do what you want, you say you don't care what i do.

I noticed that the National Spelling Bee has entered the final rounds, which means that today we will see some of America's best spellers right there on ESPN. Live and in color. And it will be replayed lots of times. This brings the question that many of you have expressed before. Okay, lots of questions. But really the one that I want to write about is "These kids aren't athletes? What the F are they doing on ESPN?".
No, they're not performing athletic feats. We can all agree on that. And I'm sure we can all also agree that these kids practice and prepare at least as much as athletes do. It's a very serious competition that means as much to them as the sporting event means to the sports star.

Are they performing under pressure? Hell yes. Are they displaying physical skill, strength and stamina? No. I think even if you grant them the most generous benefits of doubt, you couldn't call them athletes, and you can't call their competition a "sport". However, I don't have a problem with ESPN covering it live. No problem at all. It resembles a sporting event, and it's entertaining. There's a winner, a bunch of "non-winners", there's heartbreak, agony, thrills, spills, anguish and many other emotions commonplace in sports.
It isn't as if this event takes place at 8:00 pm and is shoving something else off the table. At 11:00 in the morning, at 2:00 in the afternoon there isn't really any live sports to speak of that would otherwise be on. We've all seen the "1978 World's Strongest Man" competition hundreds of times by now. Maybe there's a lumberjack competition we haven't seen or a ping-pong doubles tournament, but the point is, it fills a programming slot with a live competition.
You will also wonder the same thing when ESPN airs the National Scrabble Championship. Again (and I have a lot more vested interest here) I'll say that it loosely resembles an athletic competition and it really is exciting to watch. You'll be impressed by skill and speed, even if it isn't physical skill and speed.
Speaking of which, if anyone wants to help me finance the trip, I'd really like to play in the Nationals (August 19-24). Including airfare, lodging for 6 nights, tournament registration, and meals, I estimate the total to be about $1250. I don't have that kind of dough laying around, but I'll graciously accept any and all donations. Or if you know someone who lives in the Reno area, and will let me stay there for a week, that price tag drops dramatically. I wouldn't expect to win any prize, so you'll get no return on your investment, but you'll have the satisfaction of making me happy. Or you can come along and hang out with a bunch of scrabble dorks for a week. Sounds like fun, right?

For a related discussion about "are these people really athletes?" please visit areseven.

Now playing:

Portistatic Autumn Was a Lark

pleased to meet you, and thanks for making my bed

I've just become the latest member of the areseven Bad Haircuts for Men club. I don't know what happened. I'm sure that the girl who cut my hair isn't the nonpareil "Jean-from-Scranton", but she managed to mess it up nonetheless. I mean, for fook's sake. My hair isn't complex. I just go in there and say "Yeah, do it like you guys did it last time. No, nothing special." The good thing about being a guy is you can go to GreatClips and get a good haircut, and they'll use the same equipment every time even if it's a different girl. They know which setting was used on the clippers the last time, and it's easy. Guy hair isn't complex. Just make it shorter.
Anyway, she says, "Oooooh. I don't have the #5 on my clippers. Will the 4-and-a-half be okay?" I think (and say), "Yeah, sure". I mean what could be the difference? Turns out, it's a lot. She went right at it with the clippers the way the barbers do when you enlist for the fucking Marines. I mean, no foreplay, no combing, no prevaricating about the proverbial bush with the scissors. Nothing. Just went right at it. I immediately knew it was too much, but there's nothing that could be done once that first swath was cut. I just have to deal with a haircut that's notably shorter than I'd like it to be. It doesn't look all that bad, but it doesn't look all that good either. Next time I know that if the 5 isn't available, I should go for the half-step in the other direction.
I also went over to the Gate City Noise to purchase my Mark Kozelek tickets. Yeah, he's gonna be doing an in-store there. He's going on a very, very limited engagement tour, which only includes four dates in the US. And one of them is right here in my home town. At my favorite record store. The other gigs are at clubs, and apparently Mr. Kozelek really wanted to play this in-store. Kick ass! Andrew went to the trouble of hand-making the tickets, and every one of the 150 tickets has a unique screenprinted design on hand-made paper. Very nice. I'm pressed for time, so I cannot include a photo of the ticket, but you'll have to take my word for it. It's very nice.


Now playing:

Belle and Sebastian Push Barman to Open Old Wounds

he's related to you, he's related to you... he is dying to meet you

WARNING!!!!
Portions of this blog post may contain content or language that is indecent, obscene, insensitive, or irrational. Reader Discretion is advised.

I went to a wedding with Karen yesterday. It was kind of unusual because it was in a theatre rather than a church or an outdoor setting. I actually thought for a second that I had misunderstood the invitation, and I was being taken to a play about a wedding. Or that it was an elaborate ruse on all of us, and it wasn't a wedding at all. The reception was in the same building, so we didn't even have to take ten steps to get to the beer. Dinner followed. It was pretty good. It didn't even occur to me until I ate all of it that all of it was vegetarian. Except for the grouper. I enjoyed it.
This was one of those situations where I didn't know anyone involved with the wedding, and I only knew a few of the guests. I had plenty of people I could talk to, so is wasn't overly uncomfortable or anything like that, but it's just strange to be there as someone outside that circle. I had a good time, though. Except for one thing. As many of you dear and loyal readers know, I don't do the "dancing" thing. I just don't. It isn't that I'm morally or ethically opposed to it, or anything like that. I just don't dance. Not at weddings, not at bat mitzvahs, not when I'm a contestant on Solid Gold, not in a box, not with a fox. I do not like dancing. Somehow, though, at functions like that, you may has well say that you like to strangle puppies and drown kitty cats as say that you don't like dancing. You get treated like a fucking apple pie, baseball and mom-hater. Added to that, everyone tries to force you to do something you've repeatedly said you don't like. Why is this? If you're a vegetarian, your meat-eating friends don't tie you down and force raw meat down your gullet. If you know that your friend doesn't do drugs, you don't force him to do blow with you. You just accept their "no" as an answer. Dancing, though, is different. I don't understand why. Help me understand this. People refuse to take "no I prefer not to" as an answer.
Anyway, I was tricked into slow dancing, which I still have a dislike for, but I did it anyway.
When I headed into this wedding, I opted not to tote my camera along. Frankly, I knew only a small handful of the people there, and I've only known them a few weeks. It sounds harsh, but the reality of it is that they're not my friends. I only bring this up because even when I go to weddings of people I've been friends with for 10 or more years, I take very few pictures. So I thought it would just be a bit of a burden, carrying it around all night and not using it at all. HOWEVER, I really wished that I had brought it for the sake of making this post funnier. There were four celebrity look-alikes at the wedding. One was Erik Cole of the Carolina Hurricanes. One was Chan "Cat Power" Marshall, and then there was this married couple. Both of them (yes, even the lady) looked like Russell Crowe. You don't need a photo to know who he is. Then, actually, the more I thought of it, the more I decided that the woman looked like a lovechild of Russell Crowe and Joan Cusack. And now that I think of it, Joan Cusack does look kinda like Russell Crowe with boobs. You be the judge.


Crowe ........ Cusack


Today as I was heading home, I nearly forgot that I told Amanda I would help her with some moving. So I went to help her shove some crud in the storage facility she's renting, then over to her boyfriend's apartment. Sorry..... THEIR apartment. I didn't stay long, though. Just long enough to catch up for a few minutes, then home.

It turned out to be a really good thing that I didn't stay at Karen's an extra night. When I got home, I couldn't find Marty. I looked high and I looked low. No sign of her. I knew she didn't get out, so she had to be somewhere. Then I heard some muffled crying. Turns out, she had gotten into one of my closets unbeknownst to me on Sunday morning. I guess when I was getting my suit and other stuff out. I just shut the closet door like always, but she was freakin' IN there. For almost two days. No food, no water, no litter box. I feel like a bad daddy. I don't know how it happened, but it did, and it's nobody's fault but mine. Scared the crap out of me, but she seems to be okay. And surprisingly, the closet doesn't reek of cat urine. I suppose since she didn't have anything to eat or drink, she didn't need to use the bathroom. Weird thing is, she doesn't even seem mad.

I'm sure there's more stuff that I wanted/meant to post about, but I'm kinda tired for now.

Now playing:

Sigur Ros ( )

look around, around...the second drummer drowned

The other day, I watched Moonlight Mile. That day that I was so freakin tired. After my little nap.
Anyway, I really liked this movie. I don't remember hearing a thing about it when it came out in 2002, but I kept threatening to rent it from the Netflix. I did, and it finally hit the top of my queue. Jake Gyllenhaal, Dustin Hoffman, Susan Sarandon deliver fine performances, but I think the best comes from Ellen Pompeo, who is a relative newcomer.
Without giving away too much, I'll just say that it's really about dealing with loss, and finding one's self in the process. I know that sounds kinda cheesy, but it's a damn fine movie. If you haven't seen it, you should. One sort of strange thing is that although Gyllenhaal's character is the focal point of the story (it's loosely based on an event in the writer/director's life), he has very little dialog compared to the other characters.

Last night I went out to a neighborhood bar with Dr. Awesome. I haven't seen him in a couple of weeks, and he freakin' lives right across the street from me. That's kinda sad. I'm not seeing much of anyone these days. Not even Amanda. I think I've seen her maybe twice in the last three months. I did stop by her house the other day, but it was the day that I was all cranky and tired. She was in the midst of packing her crud so she can move again. I was Mr. Anti-social, so not a whole lot was said that day. But I did get some bread from her. When I went with her to Buffalo and Niagara, she took me to this bakery she loves, and she stocked up on loaves of bread. Now, y'all just don't understand. This isn't just bread. It's really really good. Apparently, the thing to do whenever she goes up there is to buy like forty million loaves and freeze them for later use. So she bought a ton when she just went back up there. I now have two one and a half loaves of Di Camillo bread. You don't even have to make a sandwich, or put anything on it. It's really tasty straight out of the sack. If you find yourself in the town of Niagara Falls NY, you should stop by there and get some tasty fresh baked bread.

I guess working nights sort of takes away from the ability to hang out with people. Not that I dislike my workplace. I'm just pointing out one of the downfalls. Eventually, I'll get myself in a different situation, but I'm gonna hang for a while.

I apologize for the scatterbrain-edness of this post.
Now playing:

The Shins Chutes Too Narrow

another moment of silence

It is with deep sorrow that the staff of Red and black is the new black and red request a moment of silence for yet another fallen friend. Thurl Ravenscroft, the longtime voice of Tony the Tiger has died of prostate cancer at the age of 91. Ravenscroft was also the voice of many Disney characters and sung the famous "You're a mean one, Mr. Grinch" song.
Cereal bowls across America will never be the same without him.

if gwen stefani was a rich girl

That damned StatCounter is a strange and beautiful thing.
Somebody in Uruguay found this site by doing a Google search for "I hate Jeff Buckley". I know I used these exact words, but I was doing it to make a point.
We would like to reiterate the official Red and black is the new black and red stance. It is that Jeff Buckley is god.
More later.

just say if i'm way out of line. i don't need telling twice

The management of Red and black is the new black and red would like to apologize for the inconvenience caused its readers. Our staff has been especially lazy these days, and hasn't come up with any good material. Those responsible for the lack of material have been sacked. Again, we apologize for the lack of recent posts and the resultant inconvenience it has caused. We now return to our regularly scheduled post, which will be aired in its entirety.


Okay. I'm confused about a couple of things, and I need some help from you, dear loyal readers.

1. One of the Spaniards at work does something really strange. At first I thought I was jumping to a wrong conclusion, but I made a conscious effort to observe him in the act of doing this thing. I asked him about it, but I think he was confused by my question. Anyway... He puts his Coca-Cola in a pint glass, and goes into the microwave with it. For about a minute. All the time. Every day, a couple of times a day. Some of you might be familiar with this practice and may be able to shed some light on it. Please help if you can.
2. There's this commercial on the television. A Sony commercial. For some super high-tech digital video/still hybrid camera. In the commercial, there's a young couple who are showing off their new house to a woman who is presumably the mother of the girl. The place is a hell-hole. Apparently, there's a horrible stench coming from somewhere, and there's a big ass raccoon roaming around inside the house. They're all non-chalant about the whole thing, because the crème de la crème is a fantastically decorated nursery for the baby they evidently haven't told the mother about. The mother says "So, who's the father?". A little joke, yes. But what I don't get is .... What is Sony trying to tell us? I guess the point is that it's okay to have a fucking dive of a house with a giant rabid rodent and unbelievable stench, and a mother who more or less calls you a whore (even if it is a joke) as long as the baby's room is nice, and you have their new product to document the whole thing.

Today was a fun day. I was surprised by Karen, who drove from Durham to bring me lunch. It wasn't a complete surprise, like when she pleasantly surprised me by being at my house when I got off work last Tuesday, but I only knew about it a few minutes before she would get there. For those of you joining us late, or not scoring along at home, Karen lives a good 45 minutes away, so it takes a lot of effort to pull the surprise visit. We ate lunch and hung out for a couple of hours before I had to take off for work. Work was a damn joke. Really dead.
I felt kind of bad because I feel like I let Karen down the other day. I stayed with her on Sunday night, and although we didn't really talk about it, she figured I would stay Monday night as well, which is what I've done a couple of times. I didn't do it though, because I was really cranky and anti-social, so I decided to go home. I had slept really poorly the night before, and I was really really out of it. As soon as I got home, I sat down and actually fell asleep for a few hours. Early in the evening. I usually try to avoid naps because they make me feel horrible and throw off my sleeping, but I really needed it. Exactly what I needed. I felt better, and I was able to sleep normally at my normal sleep time.
Today, we were watching Sylvia, but we weren't able to watch the end of it. I know it got some unfavorable reviews, and it got an especially bad review from a friend of mine who is a big fan of Sylvia Plath. However, I was kind of liking it, so TiVo-ed the hell out of it for later viewing. I'm not even a Gwyneth Paltrow fan. Actually, I usually abhor her, but I thought she was doing a fine job. I'm anxious to see the remainder of the movie, but it'll have to wait.

Now playing:

Sonna We Sing LoudSing Soft Tonight

so i got drunk and looked at the empire state building. it was no bigger than a nickel

I realize that what I'm about to say is tantamount to saying "I ♥ Adolf Hitler and Satan" or "I hate Jeff Buckley"¹, but I'll go ahead and say it anyway. I would suggest that you sit down first, and that you think of the things you like about me. Here goes...

I don't give a flying monkey's ass about Star Wars, and I'm happy with that.


Okay. The needle just scratched across the record, and the room has gone dead silent. Except for the crickets.
It's true, though. I really don't like Star Wars. When I was young, I liked them (Episodes 4-6), but when I watched "Star Wars" again before the release of Episode 1, I realized that I just didn't like it. I did, by the way, go see Episode 1, and I was not in heaven. I had no interest in seeing Episode 2, nor the highly anticipated Episode 3. I found myself in the Tajmah Teeter Wednesday night close to midnight. Adjacent to the Teeter is the freakin' multiplex where they were doing the midnight opening. When I saw the scores of people, the line wrapped around the building and meandering through the parking lot, I felt damn good about not being into that. Surprisingly, I didn't see a single person dressed in costume, but they were still out there jockeying for position. I was glad that I didn't have any interest in sitting in the crowded theater until 3 in the morning, breathing in the stench of nerd funk©. Aside from all that not wanting to be in discomfort, it still remains true that I just don't like Star Wars. So I won't just wait until later, as many of you will happily be doing.

Now playing:

henry's dress bust 'em green

¹ It should be made clear that the management of Red and Black is The New Black and Red generally does not give merit to the Hitler-Satan duo, but that it gives its unwavering support of the late Jeff Buckley.