Once In A While, I “Like” Something Of Hers, Just To Be Nice.

I’m out of town, visiting friends. I’m kind of obsessed with a barbeque restaurant not far from their neighborhood; they take it for granted, and are always surprised when I mention it. This place has a secret extra-hot sauce that they keep behind the bar. On the menu, it says “We advise trying ‘Hot’ before seeing the bartender about ‘Extra Hot’.” It’s good advice, because the sauce is painfully hot, but I always go get some anyway.

We’re right at the entrance when I hear “Hey you!” behind me. I don’t recognize the girl who says it. “You don’t know who I am, do you?” she asks me. I don’t. Because I don’t, I say, “Oh hey, yeah! Sure! Hi!” I turn with my friends to go get some extra-hot. She stops me.

“How have you been? It’s been forever!” It has been forever. As in, we’ve never met. Come to think of it, “How have you been? It’s been forever!” is kind of a fun thing to say to someone the first time you meet. I turn back, and she says, “Missy! I knew you didn’t recognize me. We were talking about you just the other night! How are you?”

I didn’t recognize her. “I’m all right.” That’s what I say when I’m not all right, but we’re not close enough for you to get the whole scoop. It’s my version of “Fine, and you?”

“Kids? Do you have kids?” I tell her that I don’t, and I don’t ask if she does. She asks me, “None?” Yes, none. What, like she thought maybe I misheard her and would say, “Oh, KIDS. Yes. I have seven, duh.” It’s not change. I don’t have to check my pockets to make sure I have it. “Do you have kids” is a concrete question with one answer per person. Missy says, “I have three, but you knew that. Ugh! Always hanging all over me! But I love them. I do love them.” Keep telling yourself that, Missy. She says, “Stacy and I were just talking about you. We wondered what you were up to.”

This is the only move I’ve got: “Just out, getting barbeque. Extra-hot!” I make a little gesture, kind of like air-drumming, that I think, in the moment, looks like fire. My friends turn and walk into the restaurant.

“So are you coming?” Oh Missy, I just don’t know who you are. I’m trying to figure out if you’re someone maybe periphery in my life, a friend of a friend? Someone from a wedding? A play? School? I make a face that says, “Coming to what?” even though I’m otherwise mute, and probably still making my “extra-hot barbeque drum solo” gesture.

Missy wins. I exhale, “Coming to what?” I’m starving, by the way.

“The reunion! Not so far away, really. Getting close! Creeping up on us!” She thinks we went to school together, I guess. We didn’t. I can’t ask her who she thinks I am, since she has a clear idea of that already. Is it rude to ask someone “Who am I supposed to think you are? What memories of you should I have?” I run through my mental lists of friends. Scanning the yearbooks, address books and Facebooks of my mind, and coming up zero. She keeps on. “Stacy and I were trying to piece together what had ever happened to you, and neither of us knew! What’s new?”

“Just, you know, just the uh, the same. More of the same.” I’m holding the restaurant door open. Two different parties have thanked me and entered.

Missy says again, “I have three kids.” She names them, and with each name, holds her hand out to indicate their heights.

“Oh, cool. Yeah.” This is my response to kids I have not met. I promise I’m a nice guy otherwise. I can read stories, play Legos, rock babies, you name it. But give me the benefit of the doubt if I don’t ooh and ahh over a kid who only exists invisibly under a three-foot indicator hand.

“Won’t be long, [she’ll] be taller than me!” When Missy says this, she names the tallest kid, and holds her hand level with her own head.

“Yeah, that’s what happens.” I’m shaking my head, as in, Oh these kids of ours, growing up so fast. Inside, I hear one of my friends say, “Three. We’re still waiting on someone.” I need to settle this in the parking lot, or else Missy will come to my table. Might even want to sit with us. I don’t know Missy at all, but I can tell that’s her style, all Hey, let’s push these tables together! Just like old times! I think this is smart way out: “Yeah, so I guess I’ll see you there!” I turn to go.

“Where do you think we should have it?” Oh Jesus Christ.

“I’m cool with wherever. You guys can get my contact info from my mom, and I’ll show up wherever is best for everybody else.”

“Your mom?” This was not a smart way out.

“Or just online. Find me online. We’re all online now. Probably the best way to plan something.”  I’m sorry, how do we know each other? That’s what a person says, in a society. I’ve chosen to live my life outside of society, like Larry David, or John Connor, and now I’m paying for it. Missy is one of the machines, and she has risen.

“Just give it to me now.” Missy is digging into her purse for a pen. I always have a pen inside my right front pocket. You need a pen, I’ve got one. Always. Missy doesn’t have one, and needs one, and reaches out to take mine. From my pocket. My jeans pocket. Front pocket. Is it just me? A little inappropriate, right? You guys, that’s pretty much where I keep my genitalia. It’s also right around the height of Missy’s middle kid. I forget his name. Missy takes my pen, and flips over a greeting card. The outside says, “WOW! YOU DID IT!” She sure did. “Okay, so what is it?”

I take the card and my pen, and I write down my actual email address. That’s not what you would have done. Everyone I’ve told this to has told me, No. That was a mistake. I never would have done that. I give back the card, put my pen in my pocket, and say, “I have to...I’m having dinner with my friends, so I should. Inside. I’m supposed to go inside.  My friends are probably thinking I’ve been murdered.” Seriously. I’m the weirdest person you know. Murdered. Out loud, in public, in a conversation. Murdered. I toss the door open more (my arm is all flexed and sweaty inside my elbow), and pivot on one foot. I’m almost to the bar, shaking my head at my friends, when I hear behind me, “Nice seeing you, Ryan!”

She’s emailed me three times. We’re friends now, on Facebook, where we don’t have a single mutual acquaintance.

It's Weird That They Didn't Order Dessert.

I was taking the train to Chicago. I bought some magazines. Both of those things are true. Also true: one of the magazines was the June/July 2011 Esquire, with “HOW TO BE A MAN” and “NEW RULES FOR LIVING” and “EVERYBODY WANTS BRADLEY COOPER RIGHT NOW” on the cover.

The last statement is false, or at least contains a specific reading of the definition of “everybody”. The article is by someone called Lisa Taddeo.

Taddeo opens her article with the following paraphrased anecdote: Two guys in their early twenties are sharing dinner in a Szechuan restaurant. According to Taddeo, they have five plates of food and a bottle of good wine. She describes them: “One man is curly-headed, wearing plaid flannel, and might invent a social network. The other is overweight in a panama hat with the long singular brow of a samurai.”

You see where I’m going with this already, right? You guys always get me. They’re pretend. Taddeo made them up. Did she see two guys in a restaurant? Maybe. The hipster clothes and “good” wine? Losing me. How close to them did she sit? The bigger guy can’t stop eating something crispy and spicy in his meal. He says, “Fuck. Americans have no clue, dude. Lay’s potato chips—you can’t have just one? This is the shit you can’t stop eating.” Quick, find a guy in his twenties. Ask him for the Lay’s potato chip slogan.

Taddeo continues to eavesdrop on their conversation. One of them says the documentary Inside Job was a “mindfuck”, prompting the other to say, “You took the words right out of my mouth.” You’ve never said that, I’ve never said that. We aren’t in commercials or old sitcoms, so why would we? Why would we talk like that? Why would anyone talk the way no one talks, ever? But these two guys, stuck in the beer commercial Taddeo imagines them living, talk that way. One of them also saw Limitless. Take it away, Taddeo: “DeNiro,” says the boy, “was fucktastic.”

That never happened. It never fucking happened. No one said “fucktastic”. And about DeNiro? Someone in his twenties said that Robert DeNiro was any kind of “tastic”, let alone “fucktastic” in anything since Casino? Never happened. The main reason it never happened? No one has ever said “fucktastic” in conversation. It’s a construct of this magazine article. She saw it on a message board somewhere, like Ain’t It Cool News, or imdb. She didn’t hear it at the next table over a bottle of “good wine.” There’s more. The guys—I’m sorry, boys—go on to debate whether Bradley Cooper has “staying power.”

The fat guy says, “I don’t know man. But I bet he gets seriously laid.”

No they fucking didn’t. If you’re a hipster guy (and wearing flannel on a bra-date to a nice restaurant certainly qualifies you as hipster), and the subject of Bradley Cooper comes up, you’ve no doubt seen him in The Hangover and The A-Team. Right there, you consider he’s made it. Staying power? He’s just like you, he’s going to be young, always. You think DeNiro is…fantastic? Is that what “fucktastic” supposedly means? You think DeNiro is fantastic in Limitless, then the standard is loose. If he saw Limitless in the first place, in a theater, he’s already cast his vote. But sure, they debated it, if you say so, Taddeo.

Let’s say it’s all true: the guys, the expensive dinner, the conversation, “fucktastic”. It all happened, and Lisa Taddeo just observed and reported. That’s her job, after all. But she included it in the article about Bradley Cooper. She showed it to him, and it was published, along with professional photographs and deep questions about his career and life in the spotlight. Oh hey, congratulations on the career. Yesterday I heard two douchebags questioning how long it’s going to last. How was your flight?

So even if the story is true (it’s not), it’s fucking rude (it’s rude regardless). If those bros were bro-speaking over some Szechuan, and I guess ultimately I’m not saying they weren’t, then fine. Tell the story. But in a story that’s not about bros with bad taste in movies (Limitless is awful), why even include it? If the point of the story is Bradley Cooper, and you want to take a moment to speculate about his staying power in the industry, then bro up and ask it yourself. But before you do, think about that cover, with “HOW TO BE A MAN” in giant letters. Recalling (or making up) those guys in the restaurant doesn’t demonstrate to me how to be a man. It shows me how to be a guy, or a bro, or a sitcom puppet. Don’t we have enough of that already? Fist bump if you feel me.

I rolled my eyes and tossed the magazine aside. Across the aisle were two girls.  One was in a sock cap and large-framed glasses, her over-sized accessories belying her model-thin physique. You can see her writing a YA novel someday. Her friend, rounder, louder, with a flower in her hair, was in last year’s American Apparel Le Sac Dress. If their life is a movie, she’s the sidekick, the one who says, “Honest to blog” or “Girl, you need to get laid”. They’re laughing and ripping on someone in a magazine. It’s Emma Stone. Glasses asks, “Did you see Easy A?” Sac Dress says, “Loved it. Patricia Clarkson in that was the shizznit! She brought epic lols!”

“But what about Emma Stone? Staying power?”

“It’s hard to say. One thing’s for sure: girlfriend is getting serious cock.”

I turned away from them, and dipped back into my can of Pringles. Once I pop, I can’t stop. You know how it is.

God Luh'Me, I Like What I Like

A couple weekends ago, on Record Store Day, Wade, Robin and I went down to our best local vinyl shop—rainy, early—to add to our collections and do a little hipster-watching. One of the cooler items, from a purely aesthetic standpoint, was a Lady Gaga picture 12-inch, with her big thorny face covering the grooves. It’s a nice move on her part; Lady Gaga isn’t exactly the kind of music most people would think of on Record Store Day, which leans toward alternative and classic rock. But, in the current pop landscape, the most visual of artists should put her stamp on the most visual of formats, and there was nothing more striking for sale that day. Lady Gaga currently sports horns that protrude through her skin, near her temples and cheekbones. She looks like that Giger image of Debbie Harry,

with screws holding her head together (or splitting it apart). Lady Gaga always looks like someone’s image of something. I didn’t buy it. None of us did, and for only one reason: We don’t listen to her music. Robin claims to never have heard a Lady Gaga song at all (without being asked, Your Honor). Wade always says, “Is this Lady Gaga?” whenever a female voice is playing at the wings place. It’s always, every single time, Fergie. I recognize Lady Gaga’s voice by now (she does the “er/ah” switch so many pop singers do, which has them revealing how much they lerve you), even though I don’t know a few of her big songs because I’ve watched the videos, but with the sound down. I figure it’s my duty to keep up with pop culture. The Pope and Bill O’Reilly are pissed about something new in pop culture every other day; trust me, there’s a curve for this sort of thing, and you want those two behind you. Besides, if I saw Avatar, Terminator 4 and Sherlock Holmes on opening weekend, then setting aside three YouTube minutes for the latest in sacrilegious dance music bucktoothery is no big deal. There was a guy a few people ahead of us in line. Your typical younger Record Store Day attendee: hoodie, Chucks, stack of vinyl under one arm. He rushed back and asked if he could reach between us to grab one more thing. Robin and I parted, as he slipped in, grabbed Gaga, and added her to his stash. He turned to me, and said, “This is for my wife. She likes this crap. Not me. I don’t even know what this sounds like.” Obviously, we made fun of that guy for about an hour. We get it. You want to buy something you find shameful, so you make excuses. It’s why there are batteries and gum at the checkout in a drug store. It’s why they bring you carrots and celery with Buffalo wings. It’s why he bought most of the other things he bought. It’s why he separated from his friends in line. It’s the origin of his pretend wife. It’s why hipster indie bands do slowed-down covers of pop hits. His guilty pleasure was the main attraction, and he loaded up on stuff the rest of us approved of so he could feel not just accepted by us, but better than Lady Gaga, who he thinks is stupid, and who no one listens to, especially not that guy, that’s for sure. You know it’s the thing he wanted the most, right? And that he probably ended up spending around a hundred dollars, just to get the awesome Lady Gaga picture record that only had one song on each side. If he’d said nothing, I’d have forgotten him a few seconds later. But he made dumb excuses, and now he’s somebody: an idiot cautionary tale, who’s also, it should be said, good for the economy. Get over yourself. Listen to your pop music, watch Jackass, read a comic book. Don’t make me say “Keep it real”. I’d hate to change things between us, and nothing changes a friendship faster than someone saying “Keep it real”.

I’ve learned to appreciate pop music. You really only need three or four chords, a computer, a pretty girl (or even not that pretty. Pop music, from its earliest days, is littered with girls who are more cute than hot, and only in the short term), or a guy who can dance (and not even that well. Like the just-cute girls, a guy who can sort of dance is always looked at as gifted simply because he’s trying at all. The test? A good pop dancer gets up from splits without using his hands. Rule I just made up.)  My favorite album from 2010 was Brothers, by the Black Keys, which is bluesy, tough, badass music that is also bursting with pop hooks I might not recognize were I too cool to check out music others might deem too easily digestible. That guy who bought the Gaga vinyl? Minus his barricade of guilty pleasure bullshit, he probably has pretty good taste in music. He’d have some insight into the more alternative stuff he listens to, because he can counter it with pop. It’s like how you know when you’re having a really good burger, because you’ve also had a McDonald’s burger. (Which makes you, somehow, appreciate both more). That guy fucked up. He could have made some friends! Come on, we’re awesome. We got beers and talked about music all day. Dude is missing out. Besides, what else is there to talk about? My friend Jeff pleads ignorance at anything occurring in the pop realm. One time I showed him a magazine cover featuring Britney Spears, Paris Hilton and Jessica Simpson, and asked “Hey, who’s your favorite?” Obviously it was meant in jest, and I figured he’d have a funny comeback. His response: “Am I supposed to know these people?” When I named them, he said “I got nothing.” There’s nothing to be gained from that. I knew he didn’t like any of them. No one does. I took away not a feeling that Jeff was smart and witty, but that he’s not participating in his culture in a fun or valuable way. How does he know the good things if he doesn’t know the bad things too? It wouldn’t suck so much that Nicolas Cage makes shitty movies now if he hadn’t been in Adaptation and Raising Arizona, right?

If someone tells me a movie is “so bad it’s good” or “just for fun” I hear: “This is a movie I liked, and I’m gauging your reaction before continuing the conversation.” That sounds awful. A bad movie you didn’t like is a bad movie. A bad movie you liked? That’s a good movie! You’re killing me with that shit. I’ve been trying to work my way through the Criterion Collection, which is of course full of foreign, art-house, experimental, influential films. Even the ones I don’t quite like or understand still resonate with me, showing me influences on modern directors I love and thought I knew completely. Anyone looking for a glimpse into the true nature of the struggles and celebrations of the past hundred years, who has more than a pop song’s length to spare, should check out those movies. It’s a lesson in film as history and vice versa. They’re all brilliant, but I haven’t seen a single one that I wouldn’t turn off if I found out My Cousin Vinny was on the opposite channel. Because that shit is fantastic and I’ll admit it in any mix of company you can drop me in. I could talk about Marisa Tomei in My Cousin Vinny for days. All the criticism of her Oscar win is just snobbery against comedy. I love it, and her, and if there was a Criterion edition of My Cousin Vinny (there never will be. Ever. Never ever.), I’d buy it at midnight the day of release, and I’d reach between Will Forte and Kristin Wiig* to get it off the shelf.

*Odd choices of hipster snobs to hypothetically judge me for loving My Cousin Vinny, I realize. But, I listened to these two deliver an Itunes Celebrity Playlist Podcast, and it was such a self-apologetic, we-want-you-to-find-us-cool display, I could barely make it through the entire thing. Each song was introduced with either a mea culpa over getting into a favorite band so long after other people had heard of them, or an over-compensating life-defining testament of like, the time Pavement was heard in that hallway and what if, WHAT IF, it hadn’t been? What band would you be into then? “I came into Band of Horses late in the game.” So? I still think they’re funny, and I’m sure they’re lovely people, but if the stars of McGruber are cautiously revealing their taste, then I think it’s safe to say we all need to relax the fuck up.

The Criterion Collection? That esteemed group of auteur cinema? I’ve watched about fifty so far. You know what else I’ve watched during the same time period? Every episode of Jersey Shore. I made fun of it before I’d ever seen an episode, and still do. It’s impossible not to mock, but until I’d seen the actual show, I had no context. It was just my usual, incredulous superiority about Reality TV (incredulous superiority is maybe my true guilty pleasure). Once I’d seen Jersey Shore, however, my mocking became more playful, more gentle-spirited. The plot of Jersey Shore is this: Half a dozen people live in this big house together. They’re questionably in their twenties (a few of them have eternally youthful paintings of themselves hidden in closets, while they suffer the human wear and tear outside). They talk in thick, stereotypical New York/New Jersey accents. They’re too tan. They like to party, drink, fight and hook up. It’s basically Entourage, at a discount. I watched Entourage for four seasons, the height of drama being events like Turtle having to take a driving test, or Vinnie choosing between dozens of black t-shirts. Jersey Shore is Entourage for people who wish Turtle got punched in the face more often. People like me. The old me, and some of you, would deny watching Jersey Shore, or would defend that activity as camp or ridicule, even though watching Entourage was never anything anyone had to defend. I genuinely like Jersey Shore. I think the characters are funny, and their celebration of life is undeniable. They dance every chance they get, eat huge meals together like a family, and are somehow simultaneously self-deprecating and over-confident. My friends constantly recommend sitcoms to me that fill their scripts with lazy, retro, pop culture references. Jersey Shore is its own retro pop culture reference, shown in real time. It would give Andy Warhol a happiness-induced stress nosebleed. But, the best, most important thing about Jersey Shore is this: It’s killing Paris Hilton.

All this time we’ve been complaining that Paris Hilton’s fame is owed to nothing more than being born rich. She started with that base and got herself on red carpets, movie sets, talk show couches and even the mike in a recording studio. She’s awful at all of it; even her poses in photographs are poorly-executed, and she can’t seem to decide on a speaking voice. Paris has the ultimate sense of entitlement, comparing herself to Marilyn Monroe, Princess Diana, and I dunno, whatever racist home-porn model inspired the other reason she’s famous. I can usually be counted on to defend celebrities when my friends point out physical flaws, but I’m quiet when Paris Hilton comes up, because she is ugly where it counts (the outside. It’s the only thing that matters to Paris Hilton, so I figure hit her where it hurts). I bet it blows her mind that Jersey Shore’s Snooki and JWoww get into the good clubs now, that Snooki made the cover of Rolling Stone, that she’s distinctive enough to be parodied on SNL, and that she’s already famous enough to go by one name. Paris Hilton is such a bland blank slate, like a Vanna White we’ve seen give a night-vision blowjob, that she’s virtually unmemorable. Once she’s gone for good, off being terrible to the help or whatever, off camera, you’ll have a hard time giving an accurate description of her. And Paris Hilton will never be known by just one name; the phrase “Paris Hilton is a cunt” has already caught on.  Snooki doesn’t have that problem.  My favorite comedies are 30 Rock and Parks and Recreation, but the funniest thing I’ve heard on TV the past couple years was DJ Pauly D on Jersey Shore, lamenting the tension in his house, “I’m young, I just wanna go ride some rides. God luh-me, it’s summah.” For a week last month, my desktop was a photo of Pauly D at a basketball game sitting by Chloe Sevigny. Of the two, Sevigny is way more likely to buy a bunch of records she doesn’t want, to conceal the one she does. Maybe Pauly D can teach her for me, and then she’ll speak to the ironic masses? My hope is that their friendship is genuine, because it proves my fantasy of the high and low worlds coexisting.  I hope it isn’t out of sarcasm, like PBR, or white sunglasses or a thrifted t-shirt. Plus, Sevigny being friends with Pauly D increases her chances of being punched by JWoww. On that day, a breach will open between cultures, and having lived on both sides, I’ll be the one with all the power. On that day, I’ll be king.

And you’ll all be sorry. At least on trivia night.

Something Out There Wants To Kill Us

I keep it quiet. I have to. I’m so easily distracted that anything I’m listening to becomes something I’m doing. If I’m writing or cleaning my room or paying bills, and there’s music or TV on, I’ll just sit there. Some of you work and write and everything else with movies or music on. Robin shops with earbuds in. Wade works to music turned up, has a second monitor playing movie trailers, plus whatever techie vidcast bullshit interests him on his iPad, while he does his job, for real, on an unrelated computer. Three backlit rectangles, two with audio, plus music, to do his job. Not me. I use music for proofreading. If what I’ve written—beautiful shit like this, just for you—doesn’t go with a soundtrack (lately of Kanye West or Black Keys), then I start again, in silence. TV and movies are my reward. Write for an hour, break for Parks and Recreation.

What I’m saying is: if I’m home alone, it’s mostly quiet. Which means if the shit goes down, I know right away.

Everyone thinks I’m lying about the squirrel that runs across the ceiling periodically. No one else has ever been here in silence, so no one else has heard him. He’s there though, scratching, scritch-scritching, rolling an acorn, tapping, texting, making lunch. I’m not scared of him; he’s mainly there in cold weather, and most of the sounds he makes are identifiable. I see him from time to time, outside, his head sticking out of a hole by the roof, above the gutter. I give him a head shake, “Oh, you”, like he’s part of the opening credits of my sitcom.

One night last week, I worked out for an hour to Metropolitan. I cannot abide the audio on P90x, so I mute it, and watch a movie on another screen. Yes, I had P90x on one screen, and Metropolitan on another. I am two kinds of douchebag, simultaneously. Then, I ate dinner watching 30 Rock. Roughly two hours of my evening soundtracked, and then I shut it down, to spend the rest of the night writing. No scratch, no scritch. I sat still for a second, listening for my squirrel. Nothing but the sound of my fingers on the keyboard, as it is in heaven.

And then, something fell, fell through the entire house, slid down the length of a two-story wall, and hit the floor with a metallic THOOM.

THOOM, everybody.

I walked to the corner, to the never-used fireplace, and put my hands against the wall. I leaned in, for a second, but fell, hard, skin-off-elbow hard, when I was greeted from the other side by growling. I backed away, back up on my feet, a mouthed “the fuck?” propelling me out of the room. I paced the hall for a second, weighing the options: monster, alien, rabies, claws, body-heat-detection, night vision. The options weren’t good. What is it, where is it, how do I get it out, how do I keep it in, I should have taken more risks, I never met Jay-Z and Beyonce.

It started climbing. Claws against metal. Up and up. The sound everyone hates, followed by one worse: sliding back down, against its will. Freddy Kruger’s glove skimming a pipe. The National Weather Service alert. That one Bjork song. When it settled back to the ground, it growled again, more, louder, until the growling transitioned into screaming. It began knocking? Head-butting? It wanted my attention. Under most other circumstances, say, spotted from a safe distance in my car, or in a cute picture on the internet, I would have made him my buddy. I would have called him Buddy. One time I saw a cat under a car on my street. By the time I realized it was a soccer ball, I had already pulled over, gotten on my hands and knees, and greeted it with “Hullo dere.” What I’m saying is, I was ready to make that little guy my new good friend, without considering that it might as easily have been a rat as a cat, or even a possum. And honestly, it took will power for me not to Wilson up the soccer ball and take it home too. I want them all to be my own little wildlife posse, laying out my polos and sneakers every day, helping me get used to the new Radiohead album, finding rumors for me online about the next Batman movie. The monster in the fireplace had other ideas.

This motherfucker. Jeez. Screaming, growling, clawing. People have gone crazy over less. People dedicate their lives to hunting serial killers over nights like this. After another round of climbing the walls, I was climbing them myself. Not to mention: a little scared. Whatever it was, skunk, raccoon, that eight-legged Na’vi rhino, it wanted in. I did what you would do: wedged the recycling bin into the fireplace, and then stacked weights inside it. Then braced it with a barstool. Even if it got the damper open (raccoons have hands!) it wouldn’t be able to get into the room. Although, if the damper opened even a little, he’d be able to see me. So I left the room.

Once I was in my bedroom, with no computer, with insomnia, with just, what, three thousand comics and a couple dozen books, gah, nothing! Bored! I sat on the edge of my bed. As my visitor would climb his way up the wall, I found, to my panic, that the sound filled my bedroom. In between his now normal routine (scratch, scream, growl) I found that I could also hear him breathing. Panting. Wheezing. 3 a.m., in case you were wondering. I had established a routine of my own by this point: pacing, swearing, making that “Oh shit, we almost had a car wreck” noise. One time I was at lunch outdoors with a group of coworkers. The wind toppled the umbrella from a nearby table, toward one of my friends, with me as the only witness. My call to action was “Uhhhhhhh” while pointing as it hit him in the back of the head. I had been making that sound for over an hour. As our breathing synched, I stepped into the hall, closing my door behind me as gently as possible, and tried to stay silent. Maybe if the thing that wanted in didn’t hear anything on my side of the wall, it would fight in the other direction.

When I was a kid, we had a wood-burning stove in our basement. In other words, we had a flue and a chimney, but no fireplace. The only evidence of this, besides in the basement, was in my brother’s room. The cinderblock column of the flue jutted up into his closet, dividing it in two. I was the only one small enough to shimmy between the blocks and the wall. It’s a wonder I never got stuck, playing Han Solo in Carbonite; Batcave; or just Hide in This Little Spot (I was a kid.). I gave it a moment’s thought, identifying with my intruder. It didn’t last long. It’s difficult to sympathize with something once you’ve decided to be terrified of the sound of its breathing, which was easily audible through the door. And of course, it was nothing compared to: growl, scream, scratch, kill.

I was feeling pretty crazed (I live only a couple inches from madness on a good day), watching my life in split screen. I was on one side, distorted, sweaty, bumping into the lens, seeing my own breath; my beastly visitor on the other, climbing the walls, his siblings stretching up from goo-laden pods. Just because I have insomnia doesn’t mean I’m clear-headed. By 3:30 a.m., I might have been wide awake, but I wasn’t alert. Scream, growl, claw, pant? Was starting to mess with my brain a little. Another hour, and I would cross the line between just annoyed, and running into my mother’s room and tearing down the pictures of me she’d drawn, because they’d come to life and started mocking me. Joaquin Phoenix watched footage of my thoughts, clasped his hand to his mouth, and backed away from the TV.

4 a.m., having to be at work in three hours, starving, caffeine-headached, I finally got proactive. With my fireplace fort, I was confident the thing couldn’t get to me, but I also knew I’d never sleep. I’m not a pregnant lady or in a war-torn country, so I didn’t have a bag packed. You guys: have a bag packed. I snuck back into my room as quickly and quietly as I could, and tossed my suitcase and clothes into the hallway. I got dressed for work—no shower—and packed my bag.

I’m aware how dramatic this all sounds. To be clear: this wasn’t the equivalent of, say, a noisy upstairs neighbor, or someone with heavy bass driving down your street, or fireworks on the Fourth. It was those things, plus a car alarm, and the sound your phone makes when you dialed 1 and didn’t have to, translated to snarling, turned up to eleven, and echoing through every room of your house (and head). Which is why I got in my car and drove away.

I got a few blocks away, deathgrip on the wheel, when it hit me: Where the hell was I going? No hotel would check me in at 4 a.m., and even if I was able to get comfortable, I had to be at work in about three hours. I pulled over at a convenience store. No one was there besides me and a cop. I made myself a deal: I’d buy gas, and if the cop was still there when the tank was full, I’d ask for advice. What happens if I call 911 because of a scary animal, for example. Maybe he’d follow me home, and taser it through the wall. I topped off the tank, got in my car, and drove away. The cop was still there.

I went back home and parked out front. I’d left all the lights on. Every time I started to doze off, I’d see the house burning down, or an alien bursting from the wall, or a bullet hitting a balloon in slow-mo (the weirdest shit wakes me up), and bolt upright. I’d scan each window for shadows. Every half hour or so, I’d turn on the car for a bit, listening to the radio and warming up. At 7:30, having not slept since the previous morning at 5:45, I put the car in reverse and left for work. I brushed my teeth in the parking lot (dry, spitting into an empty Redbull can. Ke$ha, call me.). Why didn’t I brush my teeth inside? I’m not brushing my teeth at work; what am I, a sociopath? I told my story to each of my coworkers, careful not to exaggerate in case they compared notes, and careful to keep it funny, lest they think I’m living in some kind of Fisher King/Grey Gardens/Bindi Irwin nightmare. I forgot about not framing my story so that I was the only one receiving sympathy. One of my coworkers said, “That poor thing!” in a way that implied “Oh, spiders are as afraid of you as you are of them!” Yeah, and full of poison. I was worthless at work, contemplating each and every hideous thing that might be happening at home in my absence. For the first time, I was glad Bandit was gone. I couldn’t have brought him to work, and there’s no way I would have left him at home.

By the time I got home, I had reached that dizzy hangover stage of the day after a sleepless night. I was groggy, mush-mouthed and, of course, wide awake. Wade was inside; he’d been at his girlfriend’s the night before. I sent him a text at the height of my panic, but he’d returned to a silent house. “It’s something nocturnal,” I said, reasoning that it would be quiet during the day, and violent if we woke it. Too many years as friends, too few survival instincts, and too many episodes of Jackass resulted in the following: Wade lied down with his head in the fireplace, looking up. He had a flashlight and a poker. I stood out front, holding a blanket. He was going to open the damper. I was going to throw the blanket on whatever jumped out, presumably before it ripped Wade’s face off. The missing element, was, obviously, a flame-thrower. Aliens, The Thing, Whatever Went Down At My Place, all the good movie monsters go down in flames. Wade opened the damper, the end.

Nothing fell out.

Before I got there, Wade had explored outside. It was dark when I was there, okay? It’s not that my friend is more brave. It’s that I was there under different terrifying circumstances. He found a space at the bottom of a wall, near the flue, right outside the spot I’d first heard the noises. I told him about a calling my dad (I don’t remember most of our conversation. I blacked out after, “It’s probably a skunk.”). Wade put a cinderblock in front of the hole, we had a laugh, and that was that. What probably happened: it climbed in, got turned around, confused, couldn’t get back out, started climbing the walls. Since it was in between the siding and the flue, the sounds echoed throughout the house, instead of just in the fireplace. In the morning, it saw sunlight through the hole, and found its original path out. See? It was just as scared as me.

Fuck that.

I finally got some sleep around 1 a.m. (around 44 hours awake, for those of you counting), on the couch, yes, showered. I never slept long. My REM cycle was about as long as it takes to shake a Polaroid into clarity. I was asleep and awake again, just in time to see the image of myself, an alien behind me, ready to stab me in the back with its tailspear. I was hearing things I’d never heard before, and convinced myself that they weren’t my imaginings, but rather things I’d just not been sharp enough to notice before.

I pulled onto my street the next afternoon, and saw that fucker. I pulled over and jumped out of my car, grabbing rocks and chucking them up at the roof. A squirrel—my funny ceiling scratcher—leapt out of the gutter and onto the garage roof. He faced me, his feet spread and his tail spinning. I threw the rest of my rocks, none making contact, and he ran away.

I went around to the hole in the wall. The cinderblock had moved about six inches, and there was—hang on, I have to go puke and then cry—a claw-marked hole dug out, straight back to the wall. So, raccoon? Wolverine? Badger? Person? I banged on the wall all around the hole, and as high as I could reach, periodically jumping back into my karate battle stance (you know the one). Nothing. I pushed the cinderblock back into place, and down, and added a couple bricks and rocks into all the open spaces. I scanned the backyard, walking backwards back into the house.

I had all the time I wanted to write, but didn’t want to risk being in silence. How to know if you’re possibly becoming even more of a pussy? 1. You’re afraid to be home by yourself when it’s quiet. 2. Throwing a rock at a squirrel makes you feel like a hard-ass. I tried to write to loud music, which was hit and miss. Half the time I was just looking for more music. Around ten, I decided to grab some food.

When I got back, a few beers in me, I went straight to the back yard, waving a flashlight. The barricade I’d built was intact, but there were claw marks all around it. I bolted back inside, grabbed another beer, and got online.

Hey, wanna be terrified? Check out how to get rid of wildlife trapped in your home. Basically it’s this: If you don’t live in the country, but a wild animal has found its way into your house anyway? It’s not leaving. It wants to live there, and you have to get a professional to remove it, because it might have rabies, or babies, or both. One of the guides I read suggested having a pet to deter wild animals. A dog in the house, for example. That had never occurred to me. When Bandit died, I was struck mainly by the selfish, emotional implications. I was sad, I was lonely, my feet were cold. Last summer, if you were considering getting a dog, I could have given you a sturdy list of pros and cons. Last fall, the cons vanished. Not having Bandit sucked, completely. Not much has been said about it, but I wish at one point someone would have sat me down and said, “Oh, and you know what else? I bet Bandit was keeping monsters away from the house. You should probably buy a big-ass gun.” The raccoon, or skunk or gremlin that wanted in the house probably wanted in the house last year too. But, it was scared away by the smell of a dog, by barking, and by the tags of ownership Bandit left around the yard and perimeter of the house. Not ready for another dog, and definitely not ready for a gun, I started thinking about things I could spray around the house that might deter pests. My internet searches told me ammonia. Is that in shower cleaner? I have a variety of salsas and hot sauces, but what if forest creatures like things spicy? Vodka? Mouthwash? Red Bull? So many options, but no guarantees. Finally, I just manned the hell up, went outside, and pissed on everything myself. Gotta send these guys a message: just because it’s quiet, doesn’t mean someone isn’t living in here already.

And you can bet it won’t be that quiet from now on.

Don't Hate

The best part of Facebook, since you asked, is the “Like” feature. Do you like Like? I don’t know, I like liking. Maybe I would like Like. After you’ve “Liked” something, Facebook reminds you, “You like this.” Later, more assuringly, if you’re lucky, validation arrives: “You and 14 others like this.” The other day, a friend posted “Dill pickles!” and got 33 Likes. What if she’d said “Head lice!”? If I always told the truth, Facebook would have to include alerts like “No one likes that but you,” or “You’re the only person not currently hating that.”

I have a few. Anyone who’s spent any time with me has probably had to endure my passionate defenses of James Frey, or Courtney Love, or black jelly beans. Usually, believe it or not, I keep my opinions to myself when it comes to my unpopular tastes. I refuse to call them guilty pleasures; I think that’s a copout. Would I want to talk about many of these Likes outside of this environment? Not if I don’t have to. But that doesn’t mean we have to bring shame into it.

I like, guilt free:

Hannibal

The last time I visited my parents, I was up late watching TV, and stumbled upon Hannibal. I watched for about twenty minutes before I realized that Clarice Starling wasn’t undercover speaking Spanish, but that I was watching the Spanish language channel, and Hannibal had been dubbed. So the answer is: yes. Hannibal is so incomprehensible it makes equal sense in a language you don’t speak as in one you do. It’s also ludicrous, perverse, stupid and not scary. It’s probably officially a Bad Movie, but I can tell you unreservedly, with no qualifiers, that I think Hannibal is pretty amazing. It’s barely a sequel to The Silence of the Lambs. There are no callbacks to the Buffalo Bill killings, no Scott Glen, no references to the phobias that populate The Silence of the Lambs (watch that one again, and count how many popular fears you see illustrated throughout). But, Lecter and Clarice (Anthony Hopkins and Julianne Moore) reunite, which I suppose is what most viewers thought they wanted from a sequel anyway. Jodie Foster turned down Hannibal because it sullied the legacy of The Silence of the Lambs, and in doing so, she saved it. Because someone had already stood up for dignity and art, no one else had to. You should see the shit Gary Oldman does in this movie. He’s basically just a mouth and an eye (I can’t remember if he has two eyes or not), and he’s a trip. The climax—Clarice, paralyzed by drugs, witnesses Dr. Lecter making Ray Liotta EAT HIS OWN BRAINS—should be shown to every acting class in the country. It’s seemingly unplayable, unfilmable, but Hopkins, Moore and Liotta act the hell out of it. Ray Liotta, sir, not only did you make me believe you were eating your own brain, but I would watch that ridiculousness again right this second. I would be alone.

See also: In the Cut, Alien 3, Point of No Return

Monster

Automatic For The People is probably REM’s best album. It’s certainly the one that got them the most attention, hits, and love from MTV. It’s full of haunting lyrics, old string instruments, and in Michael Stipe, a lead-singer prototype for sensitive (or annoying, whatever) alternative and emo bands for the subsequent twenty years. I think Automatic For The People is great, and its loss of Album of the Year to the soundtrack to The Bodyguard was the last time I put any stock into the meaningfulness of the Grammys.

Their next album was Monster, which sounded unlike anything REM had ever done before (or would again). Monster was the first release from REM after they signed one of those crazy, bloated 1990s contracts for millions. It’s so easy to blame piracy on the decline of the recording industry, but you know what else you might consider? Someone gave REM $80 million dollars to record Monster, New Adventures in Hi-Fi, Up and Reveal. And maybe the one after that. Was there one more? A super-boring one I’m forgetting?

When Monster came out, the buzz was instantly that REM had abandoned the lush, organic sounds of Automatic for the People (and much of what came before that) in exchange for the thudding drums and fuzzy guitars of the grunge era, along with accompanying stacks of cash (the last part is true). As song after song hit MTV and radio (remember those?), everyone said REM had sold out, trying to be Pearl Jam and Nirvana.

But Kurt Cobain was already dead when Monster came out. So was River Phoenix. So was grunge. The aesthetic—less is more, flaws are benefits, ugly is pretty—had already played out. Pearl Jam survived because they rocked in ways that existed before grunge. REM, who was so minimalist prior to 1990 you couldn’t understand a word they were saying, leap-frogged over grunge, over their previous self, and into something so smart and fun very few of us considered it at the time: Glam Rock. Well, a more glam version of rock than they’d tried before, anyway.  We’re talking about a band that built their previous album around mandolins and cellos, so any added glitz probably seemed more extreme than it was. More eyeliner. More noise. Neon lights. Hunka-hunka vocal inflections. Fun times. When every other band of any cred was either avoiding style altogether or in a gang war over it, REM put out the most stylish, colorful, noisy album of the year. The songs are all about the usual REM stuff like death, religion and loneliness, but with the addition of drag queens, movie stars, technology and drugs. Much of it is static-filled and atmospheric, like Strange Currencies, and the Phoenix tribute Let Me In (or is it the Cobain tribute? Stipe’s friendships with both are all over the album), but then there are pop hooks throughout, something I’m thinking REM hadn’t avoided so much before as hadn’t mastered. Crush With Eyeliner is their big Bowie moment, and is either about Courtney Love, actual eyeliner, or Bowie himself.  Scott Weiland would kill for it. We all accused REM of ripping off In Utero, but they were aiming more for Field Trip to Studio 54. When Kurt Cobain died he had been writing with Michael Stipe. I like to think Monster is an approximation of what they might have settled upon, and maybe a look at where Nirvana might have been headed as well. Now THAT’s an album that would have pissed people off. And it’s one I’d like to hear.

See also: Kanye West, 808s and Heartbreaks; Ryan Adams, Rock n Roll

January Jones

Mad Men is the best. It’s one of those rare things, like The Dark Knight or chocolate milk, that’s exactly as good as everyone says. I wouldn’t change anything about it. Ask other viewers, though, and you’ll likely get, “Nothing. Well, except January Jones.” It’s the same thing every time. She’s emotionless. Wooden. Monotone. A bitch. Cold. Too unapproachably beautiful. I have a friend who uses “pretty” as a pejorative. To her, January Jones isn’t cute or beautiful or hot; she’s pretty, which comes with an implied façade of strained niceness. What’s the word? Brittle.

But there’s a problem. Everything in the above paragraph could also be said about the character played by January Jones: Betty Draper. Betty’s life is one of (decreasing) privilege, but she’s largely unhappy. Before marriage, Betty was a model, but she’s no dumb blonde. She’s educated and refined. Don, her first husband, often used Betty to charm dinner guests, especially if they were male potential clients. In Italy, she dressed like a movie star and impressed everyone by speaking Italian. Betty is a trophy wife now, but in her first marriage, she was a partner. And of course, the eyelashes and suits and white gloves are a mask. Betty smokes too much, and is judgmental, and has a quick temper. She slaps her kids. She’s rude to the housekeeper.

I’ve never seen January Jones play another character. I keep hearing that she sucked on Saturday Night Live, but shit, is that the criteria for who can act and who can’t? There are actual cast members of SNL who are terrible actors; calling out the hosts seems kind of harsh. The list of great, respected actors who biffed an appearance on SNL is long. I’m more surprised when someone really nails it than when they don’t.

I think the animosity towards Jones is really resentment about the kind of woman Betty represents in comparison to the other female characters on Mad Men. She’s the only major female character without a job, which automatically puts her in the “spoiled” category for some viewers. And she’s not warm and flirty like Joan, who’s so casually industrious while also being jaw-droppingly gorgeous it’s like her parents are MacGuyver and Jessica Rabbit. Betty isn’t struggling with getting her creativity recognized, and, you know, inventing feminism, like Peggy. Viewers see Betty and don’t sympathize, and end up blaming the actress who plays her.

Betty isn’t icy. She’s lonely. She’s bad with her kids because she resents the responsibility having them brought her, especially since the glamour and social life her marriage originally afforded her has vanished. Her second husband doesn’t cheat on her, not out of loyalty, but because he’s not smooth or rebellious enough to score like Don Draper. And Betty knows that this means that, ultimately, her new husband isn’t smooth or rebellious enough…to be married to her, and it’s too late to do anything about it. A woman in the 1960s, who isn’t Elizabeth Taylor, with two marriages under her belt, better choose that third husband carefully. January Jones plays all of this, in increasingly limited amounts of screen time. You can hear it in her voice, see it on her face, and interestingly, in her hands. Betty Draper’s way with props (cigarettes, drinks, telephones) is one of the tiny, fascinating things about Mad Men. January Jones makes me believe that Betty is real, and that her shallow, dismissive behavior is not a reason for her to go unloved. Without a doubt, this is in part because Mad Men, in general, is fucking awesome. Could it be that, maybe, just maybe, the same can be said about January Jones?

See also: Meg White on drums, Evangeline Lily on Lost

Terry Richardson

This one is dicey. Sorry you guys. If you Google “Terry Richardson”, make sure you turn the safe search on. Otherwise, you will see something you cannot unsee. (His peen. A lot.). Richardson is a photographer. He does many of the modern Rolling Stone covers, album artwork, fashion spreads, and his own photo collections of friends and landmarks around his studio in New York. He’s not a nice guy, apparently. Inappropriate with models. Lecherous. I only mention his name to certain friends, lest I get a lecture about sexual harassment and the patriarchy of the fashion industry. Yes, I have friends like that, don’t you? You should get some, they’re great, and I agree with them 99% of the time. Listen, I get it, but I don’t want to be Terry Richardson’s friend. I just like to look at his work. I can’t help it: I like Terry Richardson’s photos.

My introduction to Terry Richardson came with his book, Terryworld. It’s full of voyeuristic shots of celebrities and real people in varying states of undress. The “real people” pictures are the most explicit. We’re all adults here, so I don’t see any reason to mince words: it’s basically porn. One guy bought it at the bookstore and was never called anything else, for years, besides Terry World. For a long time, most of my interest in Richardson was as the butt of a joke. I’d see a sleazy magazine cover (the Gossip Girls sharing an ice cream, or spraying themselves with milk from a cow’s udder), and take pride in knowing it was a Terry Richardson creation, showing friends that I knew cheesy and tacky when I saw it. And then something else began to happen: I realized that all the other magazine covers were nondescript, owing more to computer tricks than the work of any particular photographer’s vision. Terry Richardson having any eye at all, even if it was the eye of a perv, gave him a tiny bit of credibility.

He did the disco-ball stomping Justin Timberlake album cover, the machine-gun-bra Lady Gaga Rolling Stone cover, and the cover of N.E.R.D.’s new album, which is one of my favorite photos of the past year.

On his blog, his photos are mainly test-shots of models he’s photographing for magazines, but also friends of his like Justin Theroux and Jared Leto, making dumb faces. He makes his subjects pose for at least one picture wearing his trademark eighties giant-framed glasses and giving thumbs-up. It’s his version of the Warhol sitting. A few decades back, Richardson would have fit nicely into the Warhol Factory. Warhol would have found Richardson repulsive and annoying, and would have loved doing so, and would have made him a star.

Richardson’s style is so straightforward it’s like he doesn’t have a style at all, which of course is a style, and isn’t, which is even more of one (and isn’t one at all, but is, in a big way, and of course, isn’t.). It’s rare for one of his subjects not to be standing against a plain white wall, facing forward. There’s never any Photoshop or retouching, rarely any special lighting, no bullshit. If I saw Richardson walking towards me, I’d cross the street. I’d do the opposite for one of his pictures.

Neckties

Wears a necktie every day: Elvis Costello, Billy Joe Armstrong, Stephen Colbert, badass dudes going to court because they broke up a fight outside their tattoo parlor, and me. Okay, I don’t wear one every day. I don’t have enough shirts for that. Most people I know have a dozen shirts and a couple ties. For me it’s the opposite (but more than a dozen). I never had to wear one as a kid. (Also never had a curfew, watched what I wanted on TV, and learned to play cards before I could read. Hate me yet?) Maybe not having the private school/Sunday best necktie requirement gave me a more relaxed attitude about it. Or maybe I just wanna look like I’m in the Hives or Blondie. A little secret: If you wear a tie to work, when you’re home, you get to take it off. If you don’t wear a tie to work, when you get home, nothing happens. You never feel like you’re not at work. And if you’re not wearing a tie at work, you might not ever feel like you’re at work, either. Work is killing you? That choking tie is a metaphor. Get home and loosen up, literally. The only thing better than wearing a tie is taking one off.

Hot Weather

It’s irrational, I know. And I know you all think I have that disorder that makes me depressed in winter. I probably do. But there is nothing I’d like more than to get into my car this afternoon and burn my arm on the seatbelt latch. When the weather heats up so much your local news warns you to give your dogs cold treats and make sure elderly relatives have working fans? That’s my dream.

Superman Returns

I would not have cast Kate Bosworth. (I had to look up her name. I typed “Kate” and then just sat there. Holmes? No, that’s not it. Hudson? Hm.) And there should probably have been a villain for Superman to fight, or at least interact with directly, besides that spiky island. And under no circumstances should “Superman and Lois have an asthmatic kid” have survived the first draft of the script. Yes, there are problems.

But even with those problems, Superman Returns absolutely swings, man. It adds an Art Deco visual scheme that wasn’t present in the previous Superman movies. It’s like Tim Burton drank half a Vitamin Water. And the scenes of Clark Kent in the Daily Planet offices are effortless and charming. Witty banter, double-takes, rat-a-tat. Say what you will about the probably-superior Christopher Reeve Superman movies: they don’t bounce along like Superman Returns, and they have no design point-of-view worth mentioning. Pair it with The Hudsucker Proxy, instead of other superhero movies, and you’ll see what I mean. This one even has a funny Jimmy Olsen. It’s a charming screwball adventure comedy…with a guy whose eyes are bulletproof. And Superman’s flying scenes in Superman Returns are the best of their kind. I know Brandon Routh was geared up into some kind of contraption, but he flies horizontally, vertically, diagonally, you name it. Parallel to the street, on his back, shooting heat-vision at falling glass?  You got it. Straight up and down, rising into the yellow sun’s powerful heat? Check. Little kid throwing a piano because he’s secretly Superman’s son?

Shut up.

See also: Hulk, X3: X-Men United

Second Hand Smoke

Light up. I don’t mind a bit. I think it smells good, like something tasty in the oven. Yum, who’s baking a pie? Oh, it’s just you, smoking a Camel! A few years back, I was surrounded by people who smoked Marlboro Reds (I have an intense two-second memory of my hand out the window of a car, the wind not strong enough to knock the butt of the cigarette I was not strong enough to finish). If I’m in a bar, or at a concert, or in a parking lot, and I smell one (yep, know them by smell), I stop in my tracks, having the feeling you have when you hear that song from your prom, or the summer that changed your life through beach-fucking, or the birth of your child. Second hand smoke is special to me, is what I’m saying. Oh, and the next day, when my shirt and pillow smell like your cigarettes, even though I only saw you for a second, and you only had like one drag left? That is different. It’s repellant, and you and your habit are disgusting.

Assholes

What was it Russell Crowe did again? Got drunk and threw a phone? Was he even drunk? I think officially he lost his temper and threw a phone. Oh, and the whole Meg Ryan’s marriage business. He did that too, I suppose. But also: is The Insider. Is Gladiator. Is awesome. I am okay with Russell Crowe not being a nice guy. I just need him to be a good actor, and possibly, in a perfect world, a high-fiveable badass. Whenever he has a new movie, I hear a new round of “He’s an asshole with a false sense of entitlement.” I don’t think Russell Crowe’s problem is a false sense of entitlement. Paris Hilton, expecting adoration and compensation without achievement; that’s a false sense of entitlement. Russell Crowe? He’s entitled. And I mean that from the bottom of my heart. That guy who got the phone thrown at him? I’m not saying he deserved it, but I am saying that a. He survived, and b. “The lead in Cinderella Man chucked a phone at me” is a pretty good work story. The second lead from Virtuosity wanted something and didn’t get it. You’d throw a phone too. Hell, some of you have thrown shit at me, and you weren’t even the fourth lead in The Quick and the Dead. Am I saying famous people are better than me? Of course not*. I’m a generally nice guy, and I like to think that if I’m ever accomplished and famous, that I’ll continue to be. But if I’m not? And I’m not like, abusing my wife** or dodging my tax responsibilities, and once in a while I man the phones at a George Clooney benefit, and I was in goddamn L.A. Confidential, but also maybe I’m a dick to paparazzi? Eh, I’m guessing you’ll get over it.

*Of course they are.

**That’s the distinction. It’s a fine line, but Kiefer Sutherland is on one side of it, and Charlie Sheen is on the other.

See also: Sean Penn, Kiefer Sutherland

Cookies

You guys don’t like chocolate chip cookies. It’s the weirdest thing I’ve ever heard. Seriously, try them again. Remember puppies? When I said you guys would like puppies and you were so stubborn to even look at one? Come on, give delicious cookies a second chance!