Ryan Seacrest Dreams of the Blue Dolphins

why are emo kids so annoying? and why do they all dress alike? don't they know that non-conformity means not looking all the same? i mean, if you're going for that look, at least TRY a little, right?

First, I don't think we call kids "Emo" anymore. I mean, I admit, I still use it too. Because I am an aging bitter Cake fan. But I don't think we're supposed to. I think it dates us. Also, when I think about the music out there currently, I think Emotional Hardcore has been replaced by Stoic Plastic Nonsense. Emotions are determined by your shoe size.

But even if this trend still really does exist, in the closets of North Ridgeville and Euclid, I don't think the real issue is if they're annoying. The truth is EVERYONE IS ANNOYING. Everyone who actually thinks about non-conformity, thinks they are being a non-conformist. Nobody sits around strategizing how they can be more of a conformist. I mean, maybe a few really socially inept kids whose mothers home schooled them are doing that. And in that situation, not a bad idea. Survival is survival. But most people think they are unique and weird and wonder how anybody could really love them if only they knew the depths of depravity that erode the inner workings of their blue hole souls? Most people equal non-conformity with whatever social/artistic/musical group they ascribe to. Which is the funny part, being different because you're part of a group, no matter how small that group. It takes more of a toll to not belong to a group. And it's not as much fun on Saturday nights.

I don't think belonging to subcultures is a bad thing. We need community, ways to make friends and meet lovers, buy drugs, get free kittens, have dance parties in kitchens, define our social impacts. We need to have fun. Even fugly seventeen year olds who haven't learned the photogenic effects of black lipstick. Even they need to create memories of shame and sexual humiliation, that's what seventeen is about right?

I'm confused by the last part of your question? Logically, it should be impossible to create a "non-conformist look", right? And if you TRY to create that look, you're conforming to the 90s idea that we should all be individuals. So you fail automatically.

Leave the kids alone. The kids are alright. It's the fucking adults who can't get over it that need to be put down.

If you found yourself suddenly in possession of 10 extra cats, what would you name them?

Why do you hate me, do you think?

What nightmare scenario are you creating to torture me in your head, where I'm suddenly in a house with 12 cats?
Because it might work, I might actually want to kill myself. Or marry you, just to get the hell out of there. Are you an evil land baron? Or a wizard? Or a serial killer? It just seems like something those people might do.

This is all assuming those cats don't chew open my organs the first night I pass out drunk forgetting to feed them.

Olivia. I would name them all Olivia

What would you do if you had the chance to spend an evening with the ghost of JD Salinger?

I would hire a witch doctor to work a spell that sucks all the poison from his soul, so he could go to heaven. Then I would distill that poison into a liquid, a rarefied liquor to mix with champagne and cigarettes, and I would drink it all slowly over the course of nine months, so that in the end I might give birth to a thing, an unknown form, to keep me warm at night and give me reasons to smile in the morning, and add complexity to the taste of someone's mouth.

Masturbating out a window, funniest?

What exactly is the tier of humor we're working with here?

Is it like, what's funnier? A dog running in circles, a Miley Cyrus video, or masturbating out a window?

I don't really find masturbation all that funny, first off. Ha, get it? First off?
And windows are not inherently funny.
I think what you're missing is some set up. Who's masturbating? What kind of window are they masturbating out of? And why would you say masturbation, and not like, jacking off? Beating the weasel? Cleaning the pipes? I agree, I hate all those things. But your way sounds so medical correct. Or Catholic.

I submit for your approval: Ryan Seacrest masturbating out a moving limo window as he passes the Gucci store, remembering his childhood bedroom closet, where he sat for hours clipping ads out of his mother's magazines, vowing to escape the sprinkler wet streets of Dunwoody, to be fabulous and well clad, to smile with the intensity of 20,000 pearls farmed by 20,000 island boys in rags who dive to the bottom holding their breath for hours, like inhuman seals, creatures of life and dark shiny skin.

Ask me anything

We Are All Bullies

I appreciate animals that are selfish. Probably it makes me relate to them more as humans, and therefore as children. The dog that steals the other dogs' ball and then stalk around the yard with the ball in its mouth, daring anyone to come fight her for it? That's the dog who knows whats what.

I was faced with the eternal Sunday question of 30 yr olds everywhere yesterday. Where to go eat brunch, and also get a shitload of espresso in my weakened veins? I'm sick of brunch options in this town. Yes, I know, Taphouse, Flying Fig, Touch, Beachland, Luckys, omelets and chorizo and tater tots and skirt steak, mimosas and weak bloody marys and imported beers. I want to go back to that bar in Milwaukee with the corned beef sandwiches and Mary's with pickles and jerky, and off duty cops watching football. I want a place with hot chocolate, coffee, and croissants from that morning the size of my forearm. I want a hotel room with leftover vodka and two cigarettes left.

Saturday night and Sunday morning I played the "know someone in every place you go" game. I did my valiant best to not remember their names and blush and apologize for not remembering I was facebook friends with them, and keep the conversations short but well spoken. Ate at the Market Cafe finally, after scoping out the Sunday crowds. Took the animal to the Dog Park of Gravel, where everyone stood around in their scarfs while behind us the chemical plant belched and blanched. Then we watched the beginning of True Blood. Best opening theme song ever. Otherwise pretty much about Anna Paquin's lips. Drank my servings of vegetables in V8 Splash mixed with a dose of Russian restorative, then got sucked in District 9 and forced back to sober appreciative reality. Some movies are actually too good to be drunk for, it turns out. Woke up this morning, and the Boy and I had dreamed the same thing, the movie, all over again. Aliens that stick to your ribs, really. One eye blue, the other large and yellow. Eggs exploding. Terribleness and best emotional CGI ever, like isn't there an award for most meaningful alien encounter?

Between Alien refugee camps, Dollhouse, Caprica, Dune, and Lost tomorrow night, I'm living in a sci-fi daze. Beyonce's weird performance on the Grammy's last night did little to relieve that. Riot police and an Alanis cover? Too soon, B, too soon. Vowed to someday wear little gold booties though.

Dear Mr. Salinger:

So first of all, I think if you hadn't been such a hermit, you might have really appreciated the phenomenon of Twitter, and everything it had to say about your death today. But I might just be projecting my own curiousity onto you, because I think that's what people do with your books, they identify with them so much that they think you were just like them and are all up in their head/heart/adolescent bullshit. I wonder if that's the real reason you didn't talk to anyone, because you got tired of hearing how much they "related" to you. Or maybe you were secretly repulsed that you were in fact so much like the general populace, they got you. Maybe Catcher In The Rye took away your sense of specialness. And if so, even that would lift you up in my eyes, because most famous pop authors would just deny it and embrace the adoration instead of running away. But I did hear you were kind of a real asshole. Mabye that's why people related to you. The real lesson of your books is that everyone is an asshole.

If I ever become a famous writer like you, I don't think I'll be hermitting away any time soon. But it's nice that you were famous enough to have that choice. I mean, I don't see any point in my life where I'll have the choice to not ever have to be around people, never have to have a job, and can stay in my house all day independently wealthy. Lots of people saw that as a waste of your talent, but whatever. Everybody wants to make a million for their own private reasons. I'm extremely jealous you got that choice at all. You are an inspiration to young writers like me, that someday, if I work really hard at writing a book for teenagers that isn't about vampires, I won't have to talk to anyone ever again.

So I'm not really sad you died. I mean, you were ninety fucking one. Are you kidding me? I probably won't make it to eighty. Also, I probably won't write famous books. Or have NYT critics salivate over every rumour about my continued existence. So really, when everyone gets all weepy about your extremely timely demise, I kinda of want to tell them to fuck off. You lucky fucking bastard.

Also, open invitation to haunt me.

No seriously, sometimes I pretend it's Athena. It could happen.

Do you think nostalgia is a handy tool or a bane on artistic expression or option C because people usually list three things?

First of all, fair warning. I recently discovered I am allergic to all over the counter pain medications, and I got a killer headache today, so I self medicated with a large amount of Irish coffee. This did not make my headache go away, but it did form the magical trifecta which is 1.drunk 2.in pain 3.overly caffeinated. Also I may or may not be in the throes of a new relationship (answer: I am), so add nostalgia into the mix and I think we're gonna get a Crazy Cake. Crazy Brownies at the very least. Mmmm, brownies...

My first thought when I read this question was "isn't all artistic expression a form of memory, and therefore wouldn't nostalgia be a potent ingredient in that?" But I understand where you're coming from. You're posing that perhaps the predisposition we have to gild the past taints our ability to appreciate the present? And by gild, I actually mean positively and negatively, even though I know gild is supposed to be a good word right? Gold, precious, pretty ect. Maybe the right word is simplify. We simplify our past into easily defined images. Hippies. WWII. Hair Bands. Pioneers. Abraham Lincoln. Mad Men.

I think the easiest example of this is musical. Musicians and listeners can easily fall into the trap of being in love with a past style and giving it precedence over anything modern. I think some of us actively fight aging by trying to be the opposite, to be as with it as possible. But the other army, the army of vinyl classic, definitely exists.

Whatever. My answer is that every form of artistic expression draws from your memory, and nostalgia is your relationship with the past. It can be a bad relationship, or the one that got away, but until you make peace with it, you can't utilize it properly. If you ignore it, you will make the same mistakes. If you spend too much time thinking about it, you will freeze yourself in time.

I recently saw two movies that relate. The first one was Book of Eli, that apocalyptic Denzel vehicle that was, hello, secretly about God. I say secretly, because there was no clue in the trailer that this was a Christians Are Awesome movie. Otherwise, I probably would have waited until it was on DVD. So this is a End of the World movie, which means it was basically all about nostalgia. Look how great everything was before we fucked it up, and we didn't even realize it, and now we have to rebuild it by treasuring everything from our past. Here is an example of nostalgia (because what is religion except nostalgia for the time when we knew God?) gone wrong. The message of the movie was that the Bible was integral to rebuilding civilization and common decency. What the movie was advocating was a return to the appreciation of the old things, and their necessity. But I think people had the right idea to burn the book that caused the Wars, and I kind of liked the ending for the obscurity it implied. But I won't tell you more. Cause I think that would be a legitimate spoiler. As if I haven't already. Point it, too much nostalgia blinds you to the opportunities of the present.

Second was Inglorious Basterds. This was an example of nostalgia being taken lightly and fucked with as wished. Various dopes who actually believed the storyline was real aside, this movie was as playful an act of fiction as you could make it. And that's the role I think nostalgia should play for artists. It should be an inspiration, but not a dictation.

I'm sorry. It's hard to be clear when you have monster trucks fighting inside your skull. It might be Athena struggling against my bone, but usually headaches are real creative killers.

What is the Wasteland?

The Wasteland is the epitome of nostalgia, but also abandonment of all structural and societal decency.

Ask me anything

I think Party of Five meets Facts of Life is more like it.

I got sucked into watching "Life Unexpected" yesterday and now I'm afraid the fetus I miscarried in high school is going to show up on my doorstep demanding that I sign its emancipation papers. How should I proceed when and if that happens?

I totally got sucked into watching that shit too. It's because whoever came up with that "Juno meets Gilmore Girls" line is a fucking genius. Here's how your head processes that line: "This doesn't look like a show I would ever watch in a Million Years, but yet I watch Gilmore Girls reruns every time they're on, because frankly Rory has the cutest clothes ever, and even though I didn't think Juno was the best movie ever and Diablo Cody can kinda of suck it, it was cute enough to watch on a weekday night. SO I'll watch this. Also that lead guy kind of looks like the guy from General Hospital." Genius.

Back to your question. First, I did not realize that girl was actually her miscarriage. I thought they just gave her up for adoption. Knowing she's a dead fetus makes me like the show a whole lot more. I had sorta vowed to never watch it again because Lux is not really a name. However, Lux can totally be the name of a reincarnated miscarried fetus who's potential spirit was cast into the body of an android and sent to the Pacific Northwest as part of a complicated plot to sabotage the American Family.

In light of this, I think the only appropriate response when your fetus shows up would be to pin it to a wall with a nine iron. Because otherwise you hate America.

Here's my question, B: Why are mustaches so creepy? All other forms of facial hair are kinda hot, but seeing a dude with a thick mustache is uber ewe! Even those pencil thin ones, ugh. ~D

I am not a huge fan of facial hair, but I recognize that on some guys, its an improvement. A mustache by itself though is never an improvement. Unless you are Cary Ewes, in which case you should not only flaunt the mustache but also Facebook me and we'll totally go hang out. You're probably not though.

I think it's funny that you put thick mustaches ahead of thin ones in the "EW" category. I think it's far worse to be trying and failing to grow a mustache, than it is to simply have a successful one. I mean, a mustache is bad enough. You don't really need to also show the world you never hit puberty. Also, I associate pencil thin mustaches with villains who are trying to tie people to trains and can't even do that right. Emasculating all around, people.

Mustaches creep people out because they are not in fashion anymore, which means only old and lame people wear them. And nobody wants to have sex with someone who is not only elderly, but can't keep up on style. Which probably also means they are old and poor too. People with money have other people to tell them what's up. It's also possible that they have a fantasy where they are secretly a wrestling hero battling addiction and struggling to let God, joy, and true love into his life. Ew.

Ask me anything

A Slice of Humanity's Eating Disorder

This morning, driving back from a friends house, I stopped at Dunkin Donuts for coffee. In front of me in the drive thru line was this white crossover car. Like, an older one. It had a bumper sticker that said "I love Greyhounds" with this extremely old illustration of a greyhound head. It looked like an illustration out of Nancy Drew.

This car was sitting there ordering for like five minutes. I was rediscovering The Beta Band, so I didn't mind. I hate when people get impatient in the drive thru line. You're fat, I'm fat, just slow the fuck down asshole. But then we drove up to the window and the only thing this person got was a very large sundae. Like, a huge sundae.

I am all about ice cream, but it was 9am on a Friday morning. So ice cream really means that someone in the car was very upset. Sad but true, I would bet money on it. I couldn't see who was in the car, so I don't know if there was a passenger in there. Maybe some girl who just got dumped. Or found out he was cheating. Or just had a really bad hospital stay and was just getting out. Or preparing to go in. It could have been some kids birthday. Maybe the kid's grandmother just died. It could have been a guy too. I suspect there are lots of guys out there who emotionally eat and they probably always do it alone too.

But what I'm most afraid of is that her dog died.

Okay, no, but seriously, I need to go to sleep

Oh YouTube. You have a stupid name. You suggest stupid shit for me all the time (I swear I only watched those Jesus Christ Superstar clips once!). Embedding disabled by request makes me want to BURN THE WORLD DOWN.

But you still keep me up to 1am reminding how much my taste in music really sucks. I mean, rocks. Rocks a lot.



1. This song has been stuck in my head for the last two years. I love the "when we met I should have said you're like a sister to me" and the drop there.



2. Stuck in my head since BIRTH. Go ahead, DON'T SING. DON'T THINK ABOUT THE ROLLER SKATING RINK. Do think about how much you wish you had that lip gloss.



3. Remember? Rhianna used to have hair? And flesh on her face? And was still not human but hadn't been separated from the Continuum completely? I like to think this was her final cry for help. But robots don't need help.



4. This video is painful to watch and yet this song is SO fucking good. Fuck you Biz Markie.



5. True Story: If I start listening to Bill Withers, I will continue to listen to him for at least an hour. I will play this song at least 5 times in that hour. I will sing in a different pitch every time, and sometimes I sing it to my cats. I wonder if he ever sang it to his cats?



6. God, this was such a good show. This was one of the best shows. This was one of the best albums. I miss you Stellastarr*. Come back and be hot and small again.



7. Oh. Remember when we used to go to parties? And Much Music was Canadian? And I got really fucked up and made you watch this song every time it came one, because it made me happier than anything in 1996 could hope to do? And my favorite time of day for like two weeks was the Countdown, where this, and Prozac, and Soul Division would all be right around the same place. Which was like thirtieth. But still.

Oh the places we'll go! Oh the people we'll know!

I kept telling myself I didn't need to worry about shoveling the driveway, because January was coming, and in the second or third week of January it would thaw and melt all the snow away. I had better things to do, like visit swamps with boys. Nobody believed me. "But it's January! In Cleveland!" Yes, I know. And it's thawed at this time every year I can remember. Then I realized that my plan for this year should be to get a Farmers Almanac and track how often it is right. I should schedule my days off from work according to the Almanac, which is what, the collective wisdom of the ancient farming industry right? Don't they have prophets and oracles, deep inside a mountain in Wyoming, predicting these things for me? I have no idea where to even get an Almanac. I probably have to sacrifice a goat and three sheaves of barley, then reach into a black dimension with a special glove to pull one out. Or go to Wooster. Which is basically the same thing.


I want to live here, between the two empires. That is not a house, it's a covered bridge, but I would make it seem like home. I would hang paintings and doilies, and have a pot of something nice and suspect boiling on the stove. I would spend all day creating riddles to stump supplicants and gathering cattails for soap. See, I guess what I'm saying is, I want to be the nice ogre who lives under the bridge. Or the giant creepy nanny goat, whichever story you prefer.


This is a museum of the future. Meaning, it will be a museum, in the future, when train trestles and sewer lines seem as anachronous as the huge stone furnaces they built to make steel, or the canals that created state lines. Children will come here on field trips with parents, and stare at the rusting girders and think of pioneers with dirty hands and bad teeth and terrorizing steam engines and the dirty dirty waste disposal system at the beginning of the century. Then they will throw rocks at the frozen creek, to break the ice, and toss their gum at sleeping fishes and carve little pictures in rocks. They will get bored and cry to go back to their warm dormitories. Cause kids are ungrateful little shitheads.

Sewer mint green will someday again be a very fashionable color.

That electric pole is either about to, or never going to, fall down.

I am Available for Parties

I love when people tell me what to write. I also love shameless self-promotion. That said, the lovely Ms. Serendipitist from Twitter let me write a guest post on her blog, so you should go read it there. Also, if you want me to write a post on your blog? Ask me. Cause I will do anything with my name on it. But you have to give me a topic, otherwise you have to fill out a waiver.

Go read this thing about the End of the World.

Last Night Akron Tried to Kill Me, Like Always

My friend Todd is a bassoonist. I don't know if you're supposed to put "classical" bassoonist, cause I don't know if there's any other kind? But that's what he is. He plays in orchestras around the country, jets off to exciting places like Wisconsin and Florida. He's got dark curly hair and a gorgeous poised "I look like a ballerina" girlfriend. He brews beer. He's living the dream. Anyway. Bassoonist. We love Todd.

So last night, he got me a ticket to one of his performances with the Akron Symphony. I was going to meet up with some of my other friends before the show, but I ended up running out of my house late, big surprise. I'd never been to EJ Thomas Hall before, because in general I try to keep my time in Akron succinct and to the point. Akron tries to trap you with one way streets and despite having had to drive there for my birth certificate multiple times*, and various forays out to college dance bars, I have yet to learn anything about the layout of downtown Akron. At all. I'm convinced the damn streets move like that MC Escher picture of the stairs, floating back and forth like buoys on the rough waves of fucking Summit County. Maybe it's the leftover fumes of Goodyear that turn me around, but every experience I've had in Akron can be boiled down to this: "how the fuck do I get off the Akron U campus? Why does this building look exactly like the four buildings I just passed where I also couldn't turn left? Is Exchange street in fact an alternate dimension with no beginning or end point?"

I finally got to the Hall, but couldn't find the parking lot, so I walked in the lobby 5 minutes late (after the valets finally just let me take one of their spaces since I looked like I was about to cry after curbing my car pulling into the damn garage), and had to wait until the first pause before I could go in and find my seat. The performance was beautiful, Todd's principal piece was wonderful. I actually learned what a bassoon sounds like, which sounds ignorant**, but really, it's not an instrument I see a lot separate from the whole orchestra, right? So it was like a good class field trip, one in which we went out to drink later. I did find the bar much easier. Hung out with my friends for a little, told Todd he was wonderful ect., admired Todd's girlfriends ability to look French all the time. The risotto balls at Bricco are great, the fried pickles are good but not spectacular. Then we all got up to go home, and went outside.

Into the deepest fog ever. Like, if ever there was a fog that made you think there was an alien attack or that something evil this way comes, this was it. It was all over the city in thick grey soupiness, which was fine and fitting for flitting my way back the highway, cause Akron matches that abandoned train line feel. But once on 77 and headed home, it became a problem. You couldn't see more than ten feet in front of you. Worse, a large stretch of the Bop back to Coney is street light less deer farm country. I had to turn my brights on for literally the first time in my entire time owning this car. Which meant I had to find the brights. The lone car in front of me kept disappearing into wormholes and reappearing randomly, so I went fifty the whole 45 minutes back, convinced I would hit a deer, run off the road, have to hitch a ride in the fog, and end up a news story, or wrapped in duct tape in a Fairlawn basement.

According to my friend, this is what happens when the lake isn't frozen over yet, the Blind Fog creeps over the valley and throws you back into the Country Primeval.

Eventually I crawled out of the muck into the Cleveland lights. I picked up my friend, who was biking back from a bar, so I parked on his street and waited for ten minutes, during which I saw 1 drug deal and 2 gay prostitutes. Oh Ohio City. Oh Akron. Oh Ohio how hard you try to remind us we are only settlers here, and that your weather patterns, your underground rivers, your glacial history and wet future all still exist despite our best attempts at infrastructure.




*This is why Akron tries to kill me, because I was born there, and it is my Achilles Heel Zone and I become powerless and weak when in it's grip.
** I am not in fact saying the bassoon sounds ignorant, even though that's what the sentence structure implies. Bassoons sounds very smart.