Well,​ havin​g had quite​ enoug​h of L.A. for a while​,​ the lady and I decid​ed to have a hasty​ weddi​ng at the Van Nuys court​house​ and get the hell outta​ Dodge​.​ So we got marri​ed by a groov​y Armen​ian judge​,​ had an aweso​me party​ court​esy of our aweso​me L.A. frien​ds,​ and were all set to go when,​ with extre​me and aggre​ssive​ inevi​tabil​ity,​ the car refus​ed to start​.​

Sever​al hundr​ed dolla​rs worth​ of repai​r work and sever​al days later​,​ we were on the road.​ It was a long,​ silly​ trip.​

On the way throu​gh the deser​t to Vegas​,​ I yawne​d my voice​ away.​ I don'​t reall​y under​stand​ it. I yawne​d,​ and then my vocal​ chord​s didn'​t work.​ It took them about​ five days to recov​er.​ I am still​ perpl​exed.​

Vegas​ was its usual​ ridic​ulous​ self.​ At Rache​l'​s insis​tence​,​ we colle​cted a big stack​ of those​ littl​e prost​itute​ busin​ess cards​ that guys on the sidew​alk keep snapp​ing at you (​hones​tly,​ it was her idea!​)​,​ and now we'​re tryin​g to figur​e out what to do with them.​

The Hoove​r Dam is a big damn dam.

The Grand​ Canyo​n is a big damn hole in the groun​d,​ and I regre​t that we didn'​t have more time to appre​ciate​ its pure stupe​fying​ bigas​sness​.​

Roswe​ll is a funky​ littl​e town.​ We met no alien​s (​that we could​ readi​ly ident​ify)​.​

Texas​ is still​ big. We spent​ a few days recov​ering​ from the previ​ous few days,​ and hangi​ng out with my famil​y and Rache​l'​s aweso​me frien​d Amand​a,​ and the blew throu​gh the last thous​and miles​ of the trip with only a few hours​'​ sleep​ in the car in a Wal-​Mart parki​ng lot and on the groun​d in a park.​

The tiny Tiki Trave​l Gods serve​d their​ purpo​se well.​ There​ was no furth​er car troub​le,​ no accid​ents,​ no catac​lysmi​c sands​torms​ or flood​s.​ Now we'​re back home,​ shari​ng a bedro​om in my paren​ts'​ house​ with two cats (our old frien​d Prysm​,​ AKA Heins​ the Baron​ Kraus​s von Elpie​,​ the softe​st thing​ in the known​ unive​rse,​ and our new frien​d Ember​,​ a tiny ginge​r found​ in the engin​e of my dad'​s truck​)​.​ It's alrea​dy raine​d heavi​ly to welco​me us, and we are glad.​

We'​re searc​hing for work.​ If anyon​e knows​ of any jobs avail​able in Talla​hasse​e,​ by all means​ let me know.​ Just about​ anyth​ing will do, at least​ for now. Thank​s every​one for the well-​wishi​ngs.​ Flori​da frien​ds,​ drop us a line.​ We want to see you all soon.​


This is all true,​
John

P.S. - Regar​ding the weddi​ng -- don'​t feel bad if you didn'​t hear about​ this in advan​ce.​ It was a last-​minut​e decis​ion to get all the legal​ BS of marri​age that means​ very littl​e to us out of the way ASAP.​ Espec​ially​ with Flori​da'​s Propo​sitio​n 2 passi​ng,​ this was looki​ng like a bad state​ in which​ to be unmar​ried,​ so we just did it quick​.​ There​ will still​,​ as origi​nally​ plann​ed,​ be a more cerem​onial​,​ dance​-​party​ish weddi​ng next Octob​er here in Flori​da,​ with invit​ation​s and advan​ce notic​e and cupca​kes and pumpk​ins.​ It just won'​t techn​icall​y be a legal​ weddi​ng.​ It will still​ rock.​

So California has finally made it legal for same-sex couples to marry. A mere 232 years after the founding fathers of our great nation declared that all men are created equal. Wow. Speedy. And now there are only 48 states left to catch up. Hot damn, that's progress.

All snarkiness aside, this is a beautiful and historic day. Let's all pop open a cold one and drink to equality.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/05/15/same.sex.marriage/index.html

Stop Making Movies About My Books
BY DR. SEUSS
APRIL 2, 2008 | ISSUE 44•14

On the fourteenth of March, in towns nationwide,
In every cinema, multiplex, on every barnside,
Gleamed another adapting of one of my books,
CGI-ed and digitized by another sly crook.

Horton, my favorite—look how he’s been treated!
Stuffed with tinsels and tassels and promptly excreted!
The puns! And the filler! The script fees you must save!
While I tumble and grum-humble around in my grave.

Did you learn all but squat from The Cat In The Hat?
Please tell me you fired the prick who made that.
I would have stopped writing, maybe sold Goodyear tires.
If I knew one dark day I’d costar with Mike Myers.

And Oh!
Oh, dear! Oh!
My poor Grinch, what they’ve done!
They crammed in live-action and snuffed out all the fun!

It’s icky, it’s tacky, it’s awkward, it’s wrong.
The Whos look like ferrets, it’s an hour too long.
What a rotten idea to spend millions destroying
This masterful tale kids spent decades enjoying!

But still you keep making them!
Just how do you dare?
Sell my life’s work off piecemeal
To every Tom, Dick, and Har’.

Why it’s simply an outrage—a crime, you must judge!—
To crap on my books with this big-budget sludge.
My books are for children to learn ones and twos in,
Not commercialous slop for Jim Carrey to ruin.

Have you no respect for the gems of your youth?
To pervert them on screen from Taiwan to Duluth.
Even after you drag my last word through the dirt,
I know you, you pirates,
You’d cut out my heart for a "Thing 1" T-shirt.

For eighty-some years I held you vultures at bay,
knowing just how you’d franchise my good name some day.
Not yet cold in my grave before you starting shooting
the first of my classics you’d acquired for looting.

Mrs. Seuss, that old stoofus, began selling more rights
to Dreamworks, Universal—any hack in her sights.
First The Cat In The Hat and then this, that and Seussical
without a thought to be picky, selectish, or choosical.

So to Audrey, you whore, you sad sack of a wife:
Listen close. Pay attention, for once in your life.
You give Fox In Sox to those sharks who made Elf
And so help me, I’ll rise up and kill you myself.

No Sneetches by Sony—
No One Fish: On Ice—
Burn that Hop On Pop II script not one time but twice.
Don’t sex up my prose with Alyssa Milano…
And no Green Eggs And Ham with that one-note Romano!

This must stop! This must end! Don’t you see what you’re doing?
You’re defiling the work I spent ages accruing.
And when it’s dried up and you’ve sucked out your pay
There’ll be no going back to a simpler day,

When your mom would give Horton a voice extra deep,
And turn the last page as you drifted to sleep.
Instead you’ll have boxed sets, shit movies, and… well,
You’ll have plenty to watch while you’re burning in hell.

http://www.theonion.com/content/opinion/stop_making_movies_about_my

Howdy folks. It's been a while since I flogged here, but now I have something I really feel like wasting your time with:

ZOMBIE HOOKERS!

This is a trailer we threw together in a few days and with only half a fistful of dollars for the South By Southwest Grindhouse Trailer Contest.  We didn't win, beacuse other people had more time and money than us, and hobos with shotguns might actually be funnier than zombie hookers.



And now, here's a list of the awesome people who had a hand in this:

PRODUCERS  
John Thursby
Dan Ast
Amber McKenzie

WRITER/DIRECTOR
John Thursby

CAMERA  
Dan Ast  
John Thursby  

EDITOR   
Dan Ast  

SOUND   
Mark Adams
Dan Ast  

MAKE-UP
Rachel McDonnough

LEAD GUY: Mark Adams
LEAD GIRL: Teako Masuyama
CHAINSAW: Mauricio Hoyos
PIMP: Dan Ast
JOHN: John Thursby
MORMONS:  Tomscottnowlin & Justin Barber
HOOKERS!:
Rachel McDonnough
Amber McKenzie
Jen Milanese
Cari Craig
Hanna Juurakko
THE TRANNY!: Dan Katz

BLOWJOB OF DOOM GUY: Billy Hanson

My sincerest thanks to everyone who helped, especially Bill, who got blasted in the face with his own simulated cockblood, only to have his part cut due to time constraints.  Thanks also to all the lovely ladies who were so excited about being zombie prostitues, but couldn't make it due to schedulig conflicts.

The punster in me loves this oh, so much...

All of these are legitimate companies dealing in regular products and services, but they didn't think their domain names through. Some of them are prime candidates for the "What was I thinking?" award....

ALL these websites actually exist, selling something totally benign (and work-safe, in case you're wondering).

1. A site called 'Who represents' where you can find the name of the agent that represents a celebrity. Their domain name... wait for it... is www.whorepresents.com

2. Experts Exchange, a knowledge base where programmers can exchange advice and views at www.expertsexchange.com

3. Looking for a pen? Look no further than Pen Island at www.penisland.net

4. Need a therapist? Try Therapist Finder at www.therapistfinder.com

5. Then of course, there's the Italian Power Generator company - www.powergenitalia.com

6. And now, we have the Mole Station Native Nursery, based in New South Wales: www.molestationnursery.com

7. If you're looking for computer software, there's always www.ipanywhere.com

8. Welcome to the First Cumming Methodist Church. Their website is www.cummingfirst.com

9. Then, of course, there's these brainless art designers, and their whacky website: www.speedofart.com

10. Want to holiday in Lake Tahoe? Try their brochure website at www.gotahoe.com

So I'm mostly packed, I leave for the airport in an hour and a half, I've been up all night (no big deal, as I work graveyard shift), and this is how I spend my time before leaving for Texas:  In the bathroom with matches, lighter, and three bottles of whisk(e)y, acting the fool and getting a slight buzz on in the name of science.

What I have learned:

Even standard 80-proof scotch (Ballantine's) will burn with a nice, clear-blue flame, but sometimes takes careful application of flame to get it going.  Dropping a lit paper match into it sometimes results in ignition, but sometimes extinguishes the match.

86-proof bourbon (Evan Williams) catches pretty consistently, even from a dropped match.

Good ol' Wild Turkey 101-proof lights nice and quick. 

And naturally, my control group, 70 percent (140-proof) isopropyl rubbing alcohol, burns like a motherfucker.

Life is good.  It's reassuring to know that my beverage of choice can double as lighter fluid.  I was afraid I was going to have to upgrade to Everclear.

I think I may be allergic to something in Nobus.  Drywall dust, maybe.  Or spider eggs.  My chapstick got locked in an edit bay.  Dammit.  I need Vaseline.

Last week I drank a Tab that had been abandoned by Quentin Tarantino.  It was a sort of depressingly vague brush with greatness, but a joyously distinct brush with Tab, so I guess it evens out.

Things are disappearing from my wallet.  Things no one would want to steal.  It's creepy.

'Is cholesterol a food group?' John wondered idly as he ate his pseudo-scrambled eggs.  Last week his diet had consisted largely of eggs.  These eggs were a sort of throwback.  This week's staple was Italian sausage.  John's digestive tract had no idea what was going on, but had an uneasy suspicion that it could not end well.

Pardon the POV shift.  That felt like a third-person musing.

At least I've switched to rice milk.  Maybe I'll die a little less today because of it.  Rice milk is the bomb-diggity.  You're not supposed to ween babies on it, but it'd be awesome if you did and it affected their personality.  I bet your child would grow up to be a vegetarian, regardless of societal input and with no need for peer pressure from fellow grungy campus hippies.  And he probably wouldn't be a breast man.  Or breast woman, if it's a girl and she ends up swinging that way.  I bet she would, too.  Because if there's one thing I've learned in my travels, it is this:

Lesbians.  Love.  Rice.

What a weekend.

Getting your first in-person look at the Las Vegas strip early in the afternoon on a holiday weekend is just surreal.  Between the teeming masses of people, inappropriately large number of children, and random-ass architectural frivolities unlit by neon but laid bare by sunlight, it's like Disneyland's sleazy, alcoholic uncle.

So I'm with my favorite perv Josh, his pocket-size lady love Michelle, and his angryman cousin Jeremy.  I'm the Anglo-Celtic Protestant honorary member of a hard-rockin' Jew squad.  This weekend is gonna kick all available ass, I can tell already.

We check into the Flamingo.  The room smells far too strongly of Pine-Sol.  Trying to ignore unnerving thoughts of what smell they were trying to mask, we unpack our formidable travelling bar and run a quick systems check on it.  All systems go -- liquor is functioning properly.  We commemorate this by doing Kilroy dives onto the bed.

That night, in Caesar's Palace...

I sit at a blackjack table for the first time ever.  $15 minimum.  I put down $100.  The game is played in an amicable near-silence.  A little under two hours later, I walk away $300 up.

Fucking-A, man.  Fucking-A.

The next day, night and morning pass in a blur or Irish whiskey, coffee, groovy Indian guys, butt-sex jokes, money lost, eating lip gloss in some famous makeup store under the fake Eiffel tower, nut-freezing wind, passing out with my clothes on, more money lost, and Irish whiskey.

The numbers:

Money won at blackjack, day 1:  $300
Money lost at blackjack, days 2 & 3:  $356.  Easy come, easy go.  I regret nothing.
Irish whiskey consumed:  Hard to say.  Probably about a fifth.
Cigarettes secondhand-smoked:  Maybe half a pack.
Number of utterances of the word "vagina" by members of our party:  Approximately eleventy thousand.
Number of times Michelle was embarrassed to be in public with us:  Very hard to say.  Estimated at somewhere between zero and 36,000.
Number of strangers who somehow mistook me for Justin Timberlake, from a distance of ten feet:  1
Number of strangers who became temporary best friends while gambling:  3
Number of strangers I vaguely regret not choking into unconsciousness:  3

I suppose it was a somehwat symmetrical weekend of zany self-indulgence.  Viva, baby.  Viva.

We could all use a little more perfection in our lives. So I figured, what the hell, I'll tell you good folks about some that you may or may not be familiar with. What follows is a list of the fifteen most perfect albums I've heard.

Now, by perfect I don't necessarily mean that it's genius beyond words (though, in at least a couple of cases here, it is).  I just mean that, on these albums, every single song brings me that particular joy that only comes from experiencing art where something, anything, is done so right you can't help but sit up and take notice.  The styles and genres are pretty disparate, and one of my favorite bands of all time didn't make the cut, because the only album they've put out that I  deem song-by-song "perfect" was a greatest hits compilation, and that's sort of cheating. 

So here they are, in no particular order (note that the first five listed are country albums, so members of a particular closed-minded set can just skip to number six and never know what they're missing):

1.  Guy Clark   -    Boats To Build                             
2.  Guy Clark   -    Dublin Blues
3.  Jimmie Dale Gilmore   - Spinning Around The Sun
4.  Kathy Mattea   -    Walk The Way The Wind Blows
5.  Brennen Leigh   -    Lonesome, Wild & Blue
6.  Dire Straits   -    (Self-titled)
7.  Dire Straits   -    Brothers In Arms
8.  Dido   -     No Angel
9.  Depeche Mode   -     Songs Of Faith And Devotion
10. Flogging Molly   -     Swagger
11. Guns N' Roses   -     Appetite For Destruction
12. Rammstein   -      Sehnsucht
13. Semisonic   -      All About Chemistry
14. Vanessa-Mae   -      Storm
15. Spalding Rockwell   -      Kate