I Think You Know What Time It Is

This morning I was browsing through lists on Cracked when I landed on this one, and like fucking clockwork "Lux Aeterna" sneaks onto my Pandora and ten seconds later I read on FB that MCA is dead, and a little bit of my heart fell off.

Aside from being a sexy, sexy man, MCA was easily the stoickest, assholest, most sensitive Beastie Boy, a role I think he shrugged into by default because he had the manliest voice of the three.  And really, calling someone the "stoickest Beastie Boy" really doesn't mean stoic at all. Ad-Rock is an adorable little jackal-man who steals pies off of windowsills, Mike D has Mojave-dry sarcasm and a dark horse sharpness, but MCA is--was--an upright bass wearing fluffy slippers, aviators, and haughty reluctance. 

He doesn't--didn't--want to be that guy because of all the Buddhism, but he is totally that guy. He's the guy who gets impatient when people don't understand that "the difference between an emcee and a rapper is like the difference between a barista and some jackass making coffee" or blah blah MCA interview I saw on youtube once.  Because lesser rappers reuse Beastie Boys lyrics like Hollywood does screams (re: I'll steal your honey like I stole your bike), so it's no wonder he gets all gassy and hornblowy about it. 

He's the guy who was an asshole of a teenager and grew up to be thoughtful and aware of his past, and not only owned up to it but apologized for it  with utmost sincerity.  He fought for justice and what he believed and he did it with EVERTYHING.

And then some fuckhead was all, "it's time to get ill, here's cancer" and he was like, "FREE TIBET" in that voice--like smoke over cool mountaintops--once, I think I called it a rich, virile purl--and then he saved a puppy from drowning and dropped mad beats. I'll bet he was a mean drunk and he didn't want to be, I'll bet he was tender and sincere behind closed doors, I'll bet he secretly wished he was a cowboy--or a samurai--I'll bet he was an encyclopedia of movie knowledge, I'll bet he knew a lot about astronomy but never told anyone, I'll bet his power animal was an antelope and I'll bet he was fucking stellar at Yahtzee and I'll bet he was a regular cut-up, but he's cooler about it than the other boys.


Oh, this makes me so sad. My thoughts are all up in a fuckjumble. 

...

EDIT: omg, this makes no sense, and I didn't even talk about how hilarious he is. As if I know him.  This celebrity death is really affecting me.

no wall

I wrote this last night and found it just now.  I had been drinking.  I love it. 

day 18 - a song that you wish you heard on the radio 


Originally I couldn't think of what song I should put here, because I don't listen to the radio so I never know what's on there.  Fact is, it's a school night and I've been drinking because I cut six or seven inches off of my hair and I haven't gotten the chance to show it off yet and all I want to do is listen to the Beastie Boys because let's face it:  they're my favorite.

I don't listen to the radio is because it's annoying.  Just is.  Sure, sometimes it's fun to blast B96, but only when I'm driving and only when Gyna is in the car, and she lives in Germany now so fuck that.  Gyna?  Move back here.  You have to see my haircut. Then sometimes I'll flip on NPR, but everything on NPR is loaded with seriously brainwashed entitled smuggery (people who listen to NPR think that people who don't listen to NPR are automatically uneducated for not using alternate news sources but they never stray from NPR themselves, ergo, people who listen to NPR are fucking idiots.  Plus, I like Fox News.  Geraldo is like a South Park character), so that usually lasts about three minutes. 

Anyway, I'd rather write or philosophize than listen to other people talk about things I don't care about.

I wish I heard every song from this album on the radio:



because Funhouse is about fucking.

I know what you're thinking:  Rassles, what would you know about fucking? Okay, so, not much jerkface.  Thanks.  But we've met.  I'd recognize that sound anywhere, and this album is just a whole bunch of instruments having dirty-ass sex with each other and it should be on the radio all the time.  Just to make things interesting. If I were a stripper, I'd dance to this. I bet MCA is a huge fan of this.  Poor MCA.  Man, fuck you, cancer.

...

Who them girls you be with when you be ridin through?

Day 13, a song that is a guilty pleasure

First things first. I love Ludacris. I don't feel guilty about this at all, so does it count? Let's say yes, because someone is always surprised. I'm really not embarrassed by my love for Luda, but I'm not embarrassed by anything I love so fuck it. He's in a movie, I watch it. He does a song, I get it. Did you know if you go low enough, Ludacris will appear in your mirror? True story. I got lower than I ever really thought I could. Yeah, I practiced in front of that mirror. Just in case.

I have no story, no background, no explanation. Only joy and love.



I wish I could post the "dirty" version. How asinine is life when you can only watch a fucking Luda video with all those words glocked out? Also, I'm about 500% sure Luda and the Beastie Boys have better music videos than basically everyone ever, just for sheer ridiculousness.

...

I'm about to ruin Sucker Punch for EVERYONE and I don't even care because I sympathized with the dragons

Days 11 and 12, a song from your favorite band and a song from a band you hate and I'm sorry for reviewing a movie but I'm very angry because this movie was horrible

You know, whenever I want to escape my horrible real life where John Hamm is hammering an icepick into my heavily lined-eye, I like to escape to a magical Sailor Moony realm in my head where I'm a whore in a whorehouse where the whores aren't even proper whores with sexual providence and snappy comebacks and drug addictions, they're all weepy angelic ballet dancers who are blondely baffled that one keeps knives in kitchens (they are women, and whores at that, so illogical stupidity is forgivable), because kitchens are mysterious and vile just like potatoes and fat people. Apparently no one keeps knives in drawers or in wooden countertop knife holsters but everyone has shimmery tactical shotguns and thigh-highs and soldiers bleed steam (PUNK!) and it's totally okay to go around slitting the throats of adorable baby dragons napping on beds of bones hidden in the bowels of Mordor, and then the whores all kill terminators with their samurai swords on the train that's going to contaminate all of the water in Gotham and throw Molotov cocktail tantrums elbow-first like sex pansydolls with ginormous blinky-eyes. And then Don Draper is all, "I'm starting to think lobotomies are old hat, this is my last one I swear, and then I'm going into advertising" and all the rapey people simultaneously arrive at the enlightening realization that rape is wrong, and hey guys, I don't think this is a good idea because she has the golden sacrificial face of an ANGEL and that urinal hasn't been cleaned since the first time we raped someone in here back in the good ole days o' rapin' but lately they bitches been gettin' stabby.

So there were pretty okay fight scenes sometimes, although I never got the impression that these girls were kicking ass so much as they had really easy targets (you trained your men to fight in 300, do us a favor and make your women do the same, asshole), and I'm glad Zack Snyder at least tried, embarrassingly so, but you know what Snyder? Shut the fuck up. The best part of your movie was when you started killing whores because you couldn't think of anything else to do with them. It was hilarious.

Back to the meme.

So I couldn't decide if I should post the hand-painted original video, which is awesome, but a little too ADD and seizury for me right now after a night of Sucker Punch.



And I'm not going to post a video from a band I hate, because right now the thing I hate most is the soundtrack of Sucker Punch and its literal lyrical narration with grrrrl power covers of songs that were perfect to begin with.  So I'm going to post a Beastie Boys video because they make me happy.

...

Apparently it's Emily Browning singing the covers, and she's the main actress. That makes things a little bit okay-er since she utters two sentences in total. You should have just made it a battle musical escapist world and nixed the whorehouse. Poorly done, Snyder. Call me next time and I will Tim Gunn things for you.

...

Like A Dream I'm Flowin' Without No Stoppin'

Yesterday morning I woke up with the Mighty Mighty fucking Bosstones in my head, which is obnoxious because I have never, ever, ever in my life enjoyed their music because it all sounds like blaring Kraft singles and growly, chain-smoking hamsters. That's the impression that I get.

But for thirty five seconds I had this lyrical couplet skittering through my brain--I'm not a coward, I've just never been tested, I'd like to think that if I was I would pass--and for thirty-five seconds I found them lyrical geniuses. Genii. Every single time I think of the plural of geniuses, I wish it were genii. Is this the appropriate spelling? Confer and report.

Then I showered singing Tom Jones (because you gotta sing Tom Jones in the shower, people. I been really feelin' Tom Jones, lately, because his voice is as bright and bombastic as the fucking sun). Went through my usual morning routine of creaking across the hallway in my towel seven hundred times to retrieve forgotten bathroom items, got dressed, made my hair look a little bit pretty, missed the bus, drove halfway to work, missed another bus, sweated through the hot wind, pulled my hair up because it didn't look pretty no more, got on the next bus, became absorbed in my book, missed my bus stop, walked two blocks back to work, entered the office half an hour late and all the morning sweat froze directly to my trembling body because it is fucking freezing in my office.

Someday I will live in a world where this every morning scenario will result in a meet-cute between me and my future not-husband (marriage is a gimmicky trick), who will hopefully have the rich, virile purl of either (a) Tom Jones or (b) MCA.

So was sitting at my desk, imagining myself traipsing around the heat-sensitive Predator-vision forest with lumberjack gangsta MCA (this is a go-to personal fantasy - if you try to knock me you'll get mocked), when it started storming outside and everyone in the office freaked out.

My phone rang. I answered. "So what'cha want?"

Co-worker Amy hyperventilated into her end of the reciever, "It is like thunder and lightning out there."

"Whoa. Superscary."

"It is. You need to come back here and see this."

"Gimme a few."

"Okay." She hangs up.

Phone rings again.

"Dude, are you looking out the window right now?" Co-worker Natalie rushed out before I can even come up with a interesting greeting.

"What window? I have no window."

"It is like thunder and lightning."

"Thunder and lightning, huh?"

"Yeah, it's like Thunder! Lightning!"

"The way you love me is frightening. Shit, what song is that?"

"What song?"

"You know. It's like thunder (thundah!) lightning (lightning!)...the way you love me is frightening!"

"I have no idea."

"Yes you do. Like a million people sing it. Goddammit."

"Whatever, just come look out the window."

"Fine." We hang up. The phone rings again, and I just pick it up and sing, "It's like thunder (boom!) lightning (crash!)."

"How'd you know from all the way over there?" my boss asked, laughing.

"This storm is all the rage."

"Yes it is. I need you in here in five seconds, JJO's got a question about the Floyds' Patron gift."

"Yessir." I hung up the phone and booked over to the corner office, watching the dark wind through the windows on the way, trying to remember that fucking song on the way, recalling details about the Floyds on the way.

Action Man has JJO on speaker, who's saying, "We need to get the Advisory Board to approve of that funding, knock on wood."

AND THEN I FREAKED THE HELL OUT.

...

Explanatory Links:

"The Impression That I Get" by Mighty Mighty Bosstones (check out the microphone that guy is rockin - it looks like he's singing into a giant fucking Smith & Wesson)

"Knock on Wood" by Eddie Floyd

...

LATER EDIT: Just so you know, we have thunder and lightning. We have it in spades. But this was thunder and lightning with limited rain and a cloudless, yellow sky and 40 mph winds - where lightning spidered across the sky - the entire sky - and thunder lasted for twenty seconds at a time. This was some near tornado weather shit.

...

Rock My Adidas, Never Rock Fila

"Rossi! Donation from Sieman, huh?" My boss, The Action Man, calls from down the hall. (Is there a word for like, powering up so you can properly snap into action? I might have to invent one. Actually, I think it's ackshinackshinackshinackshinackshin.)

I snicker. "Khkhkhkhkh - semen." (Okay, so khkhkhkhkh is my weak attempt at properly spelling out a snicker. In live oration, I am a professional Snickerer, and one never mistakes my snickering for anything, but on the internet it just looks like the call of Cthulhu. Also, I am twelve.)

Sure enough, Action Man steams around the corner like fucking turbine and points at me with a ferocious grin. "Rossi! Are you kickin' the new K-knowledge?"

I stop my snickering to gasp as he chugs past. "Sir! Did you just drop the science like Galileo dropped the orange?"

He turns at the door and winks. "I believe I just did."

"I can't believe you're all up in the Beastie Boys."

"Saw 'em in '88!" he yells from outside, and as the elevator dings onto our floor I can hear hammering out, "Right up to your face and diss you..."

My boss is excellent.

...

The Heart Wants What It Wants

About five minutes ago I needed a candy bar. I mean needed, like my heart had two Twix-sized stab wounds and they desperately ached to be clogged back up with chocolatepeanutbuttery goodness.

So I pay a visit to Rahm, the convenience store guy in the lobby of our office building. He asks why I never get Cherry 7up anymore. I tell him he needs to get rid of that bullshit antioxidant crap that he ordered. He says he ordered it for me. I ask if I look like I need antioxidants. He says no, they delivered the wrong kind. I tell him he should get a refund, and some real goddamn Cherry 7up with as many oxidants as they can fit in the goddamn can.

It is a thrilling conversation.

So I hop back on the elevator, dreaming of the Twix I'm about to shove down my throat, when a very handsome young gentleman with an armful of paperwork runs in there with me just before the doors close.

"Thanks," he breathes, as if I held the doors open for him with my mind or something.

"Y'welcome."

He smiles and looks away quickly, leaning his body towards the elevator buttons, but he can't properly reach them.

I jump. "Oh, sorry--what floor?"

"Thirteen. Thanks."

"Welcome." I don't know any other words, apparently.

Several seconds go by before he breaks the silence. "Nice," he says, eyeing my candy bar. "A candy bar seems like an excellent idea right now."  Holy hell, he's got that cool, rippled, rusted (oxidized?) twilight MCA voice.  I can feel myself shifting.

"I know, right?" I nod wisely, and lock my eyes onto his.  My voice drops low and smokey. "The heart wants what it wants."

He looks uncomfortable.

Shit.

Oh holy fuck and a half, am I coming onto him? Via candy bar, no less? He totally thinks...he thinks I'm disgusting. Break eye contact. Laugh.

We chuckle.  Awkward. Shifting.

Simultaneous sighs.

The elevator doors ding open.

I exit the elevator, stop, and smack myself on the forehead with my candy bar.

Before the doors close.

...

Inevitable Gibberish

"You guys are so lucky to be working for [where I work]. You have a great boss, a cause," he shakes his giant head. Light refects off of his teeth when he smiles, "You get to meet important people from all over. It's like a dream job."

I raise my eyebrows at him. "You say that again after you get one of my paychecks, and we'll talk."

"No, I'm being honest here. In fact, if Droz ever leaves, I would seriously consider vying for her position."

He smiles like an insurance salesman. Well, he is an insurance salesman, and he's been coming here every other week for two years trying to work his way onto the good side of like, all the rich guys that give us money. Right now he looks like he's about to go boating, sitting there doing the Guy Leg Cross, where one ankle carves around the opposite knee. All pseudo-authentic in his fucking pastel sweater and khakis. Who wears yellow pastel?

It's a shame that he's so good looking, even with that fat head, and he's such an obvious doucheba--

"What're you listening to?"

Shitfuckdamn and I downsize this page because son of a whore, he snuck up behind me while I was so captivated with writing about his fiberglass-osity. "It's ummm...hold on." I have to pull up the Pandora, because sometimes I can never tell what I'm listening to anymore. "The Eels. Nope, wait, wait...aaaaannnnnd now it's Barry White."

Wait, are you...don't put your hand on the back of my chair, Whiteteeth.

"You've always got sweet tunes on up here."

Sweet tunes, really? Did you just say that out loud? Jackass. I mean, sure, my friends say shit like that, but as Nautical Boy, you are not allowed to. It sounds wrong coming from a pastel sweater.

So I am confused, now. "Thanks. It's all kind of irregular."

"Do you do that thing where you've got like, a bunch of different stations and you click 'Quick Mix'?"

"No, I didn't even realize..." I look at my Pandora page. Sure enough, right there. Quick Mix. My lips pout because he knows more than me. Bastard. "I just kind of thumbs up and down as I go along."

"So what kind of feeds do you have on there?"

"Well," I feel like a bird, the way I'm cocking my head to the side. I refuse to look at him. "I guess, it started when I really wanted to hear Harry Nilsson, and then I added the Clash and Foreigner and it sort of like, spiraled from there."

"Nice. My stations are, uh, Willie Nelson, Van Halen, Beastie Boys, and uh..." he glances around, and blushes as he hushes, "and uh, Justin Timberlake." I want to make fun of him for being so white, but then I remember my own extremely ethnically diverse feeds and restrain myself, especially since MCA lives in my heart.

Yeah, and so then my spine goes a little wonky as he starts singing softly along with Barry. I'm starting to feel like I'm in a Time Life Classics Soft-Core Soul infomercial.

"Yeah, buddy."

No, you did not just say that. I turn my head, slowly, and glance at him out of the corner of my eye, which is really hard to do because I have glasses and everything goes all split-focus, so now he has two giant heads.

"Ha!" He smiles. Jesus, his teeth are whiter than fuck. He turns to walk back over to the chair. "No, I really would love to have a job like Droz. People seem to think you're prepping yourself for it, though, if she ever leaves." He sits, assuming the position of douchebaggery once again.

"Pffff, fuck no, there's now way I could do that. Droz is like, 20% modesty, 20% ambition. Logic, likability, organization, all equal parts. She is absolutely perfect for this shit. I'm like, 10% modesty, ambition, and logic, like 7% psychic, 15% misunderstood. And you know, like, 30% satire, 30% ridicule, 12% lazy and 9% stupid."

"Pyschic?"

"And misunderstood." I shrug my shoulders. "Bad joke. And I think I got too many percentage points."

"I think you're right."

"Extra credit, you know. Fuck you, standard distribution, bell curves and bullshit," I turn and look at him, eyebrows raised, "I've never been good at statistics."

He just looks wide-eyed and bewildered, and his head is slowly, ever so slowly, moving from side to side, in complete disbelief.

"So this could just be a nonsensical correlation. But I claimed stupidity to make up for it things like that in advance," I grin and nod, tap my temple and point my finger, "so I covered my tracks for the inevitable gibberish."

Now he's smiling a little, but I know he's still confused, not so much at what I'm saying, but the fact that I'm still speaking at all.

"Stop talking? Okay."

No, I'm not socially awkward. Not at all.

...

I'm about as good at washing dishes as Buddah was at nonattachment.

the facts:

Fact 1: I have always wanted to build a clock. And I have all the supplies, gears, cogs, whatnot, even a pendulum. Unfortunately, they are all made out of paper, and I don't have time. Because it takes time to make time.

Fact 2: Once, I ran over someone's digital camera with my car. On purpose. I aimed and everything.

Fact 3: I can't stop listening to Warren Zevon lately.

Fact 4: Tonight, I shall join the throngs of prats waiting in line to purchase HP7, although I will not be in costume. MoLinder might be.

Fact 5: I've developed a phone crush on one of the principals of a school we work with here at BSF. Swear to god, he has the sexiest voice ever, because he's not trying to be hot, I mean he's a principal of a Catholic high school, but he always sounds so casual and guyish, and he snickers. He recognizes the songs on my radio over the phone. "You listenin to 'Never Been To Spain?' That song's awesome." And then I swoon slightly once he starts singing along. It's not that he has an extraordinary voice, it's just always enjoyable. Like, he has the vocal equivalent of cheese fries.

Fact 6: I am awesome at washing dishes. I'm about as good at washing dishes as Bruce Willis is at playing John McLane, or as good as MCA is at having a sexy voice, or as good as Buddah was at nonattachment.

Fact 7: I am not, however, good at nonattachment.

Fact 8: I haven't remembered a dream in like a month, which sucks, because I usually remember about four a week. I think it's because of this new job. Waking up early always hinders my ability to remember a dream.

...