Will this thing post?

I’m experiencing technical difficulties with the old website. I hate technology.

Say what you want about yuppified, rarified, too expensive, or whatever Apple computers, but right now, I’m thinking Apple fucking ROCKS.

My laptop shit the bed, and since it’s my primary computer, it had the look of wear and tear. I brought it into the Apple store, and they sent it in to the fixing department with dire warnings that it would likely set me back a few hundred pesos to repair. That was on Monday, as in four days ago. Today, Thursday, a delivery truck pulls up right when I’m grabbing my mail out of the box, and the guy is looking for me.

It’s my goddamn laptop, and it’s working. No muss, no fuss and NO CASH changing hands, because it’s merely 11.5 months old.

I would so blow Steve Jobs right now, if he came to my house.

One of my brothers got married again and had a big party this weekend. I’m probably going to throw some pictures into a gallery to share with the fam’ and all. Meanwhile, this picture pretty much sums up the immediate branches of the old family tree. The red circle is around the groom. However, I circled it because of our oldest brother’s need to hew to tradition and throw the old two-fingered rabbit ears behind his brother (which is actually preferable to the nose-picking pose the groom has past sported).

The picture was taken by my oldest nephew, a senior in college and son to the “victim” of the prank, the happy groom. (Later the same oldest brother egged on his two sons and another nephew (also son to the groom) suggesting they place their spare walkie talkie in the bathroom, rather than the bushes, for hilarious voice throwing surprises.)

In the second picture below, taken moments later, we all almost look like a regular family not possessed by sarcastic pranksterism.

Oh and the other reason I’m putting these pictures here — in little sister response to the “Oh god, will this end up on the web?” taunting. Since mom’s not around to tell on you anymore, I guess an “Oh yeah, it’ll be on the web,” will have to do.

While searching the Internet for whether there is a battery charger out there for my Powerbook, whose power source has shit the bed, I discovered a kind of porn I vaguely knew existed but not really. That porn? ‘Toon porn, as in cartoons and comics and various sick fucked up drawings.

For a period of time of which I am not proud, I looked at various pics of America’s favorite cartoon family that I am sure Matt Groenig would never have inked. (Don’t worry that link is to the actual, official Simpsons site not the pornalized versions.)

Besides learning that many cartoon pornography artists are not evidently native English speakers or quite the cartoonists that Groenig is, I also learned that apparently a section of the human race imagines them in incestuous activities. I’m sorry, but I don’t really believe that Lisa would allow Bart to cum all over her. In some weird evidence of porn restraint, I didn’t see anything involving baby Maggie. That omission provides me some comfort.

I almost added one of the pics here that was basically a comic book multi-panel layout with dialogue. What made it interesting to me, since Homer doing Lisa ain’t really my thang, was the completely butchered English. It was kind of, sort of Simpsonesque, if translated by the same people who make fortune cookies, and cartoony, sophomorically dirty.

Meanwhile, the other thing I learned is that there are an incalculable number (OK, maybe that’s hyberbolic), anyway a great honking load of sites, with drawings of rape fantasies. I guess carefully drawn, detailed art work depicting blood dripping from tied up women’s orifices is a marked improvement over the real deal. Still and all, more than a bit creepy to me, even if I struggle to maintain an open mind.

First about Boston — I watched the season premier of Crossing Jordan, which purports to take place in this little Beantown. I have lived here well before and since the “new tunnel,” aka the Ted Williams Tunnel, was built. Aside from the bigdig.com link I have here, is there anyone in town calling it the TWT?

They said it like six times on the show, and I couldn’t figure out what they were talking about at first. ‘Course, that could be because I was feeling tired and stupid given that the image on the screen was folks trapped in a tunnel, and someone mentioned going to the airport. Still, it could have been the old tunnel.

Back to my point, though, I have never heard family, friends, acquaintances, colleagues or any mere mortal with whom I regularly speak say, “I’m in the TWT.” Oh right, that’s also because in real life, I’ve never heard a cell phone work from the “TWT.” Fucking TV.

Now, back to me — had a comedy fantasy come true tonight. A guy introducing himself to me after a show, telling me I’m funny and saying how he runs some shows and would like to use me, yada yada. All very “kid, I’m going to make you a star” kind of showbusiness-y. Of course, in the real world, plodding on terra firma, it’ll probably be on par with a dozen other shows I’ve done and not very star-making at all. Still and all, nice to be asked.

Meanwhile, watching my brother get married far more dramatically than his first, hanging with my family, watching another friend turn 40 and missing my escort to these social functions has me thinking. I think you can never underestimate the pleasure of just being comfortable with folks and living life easy.

If nothing else binds me to the legendary M. it’s that I’m almost always comfortable talking with him, and generally I look forward to bitching and moaning about or happily relating the minutia of the day. (I’ll have to remind myself of that the next time I’m yeah, yeah, yeah-ing him and not really listening. What can I say? I’m no fucking saint, especially as far as girlfriends go.)

I got this in the mail today (my apologies if it doesn’t reproduce well).

It begs the question — Why do cemeteries have to direct market?

Also, right now, since I don’t have a spouse or children, my “loved ones” would be my brothers and sister. I’m not really looking to spare them any hassle over my corpse. In fact, I would say I would want them to have some kind of hassle to make up for all the times I had to sit on the hump in the backseat or not get to watch my show on TV.

My favorite part of the mailing was the envelope (I’ve highlighted the hilarity so you can’t miss it).

Wouldn’t that suck if you were like me, but currently sitting at someone’s deathbed or dying. I would be too curious not to open something like that, but I might not be in such a hurry to chuck whoever’s vigil I was sitting under the earth.

I went to the first comedy show I’ve been to in a while. Been busy with life and all, don’t you know. I ended up “performing,” if you would call it that. A few random quips, a very quick attempt at a story, and a few of the real jokes I actually perform.

It felt alright. Now that I’ve finally achieved a mental state of not giving that much of a shit (which is actually a very desirable zen-state to be in if you are publicly speaking), I don’t get quite the rush I used to get. It’s more just fun and relaxing.

For lack of a better metaphor I think it’s the difference between very inebriated but thrilling random fucking without caution, care or inhibition versus warm and comfortable, far less random fucking in a stable relationship. Ain’t nothing like the roller coaster ride for thrills, but you know someone might die tonight. As opposed to “Fuck, yeah, this is why love songs are written, I don’t want this feeling to ever end.”

Whatever, I enjoy them both (I’m back to referring to stage performance).

Other than that, hanging out with the boys in the basement arguing whether Kerry has what it takes to pull this evil motherfucker out of office. I’m hoping (and near as I can get to praying) that he can.

Pretty much this picture sums up the evening for me. If you know anyone who hangs out at the ImprovBoston Theater in Inman Square, Cambridge, maybe they can explain it to you.

Just a couple of quick notes. One is I’m moving to France. I spent a bit of time this morning reading some local ‘blogs of folks slammed by the Bank America merger with Fleet and saw the link above. There really is more bullshit than product no matter what you tell yourself in the average office.

I hope the brilliant minds with whom I used to work are truly enjoying their little experiment in the “Peter Principle.”

Meanwhile, I should write a bit on why I currently hate eBay. The short version is — what the fuck is up with the apparently rampant, entitled personality shared by eBayers?

I tried to sell a unicycle, the single stipulation was I was not shipping it anywhere, so only people in the Boston area need bid, thanks. I got better things to do than try to get a unicycle in a box and schlep it to UPS.

Well, sho’nuff I’m inundated with emails from various demanding freakazoids explaining why I needed to make an exception and ship to them. Ahh, fuck you, no, OK?

So I yanked the auction and get some whiny shit from some guy ‘splaining why I was under obligation to sell the damn unicycle, because I said I would, and I wasn’t following eBay policy, yada, yada, yada.

Geez, fuckhead, I emailed the people bidding from North Dakota, Canada and Finland explaining that I wouldn’t ship. I posted in the description this time in bold that I wouldn’t ship, AND I posted that I would be pulling the auction to let people know.

Afterall that, you decide to bid. Because why, exactly? ‘Cause you are special, no doubt.

I don’t really care if you report me to the eBay police, dude, because posting shit on a website doesn’t really mean I am bound to do business with you.

Since I have the time and the inclination, I decided to join the masochist ranks of paid extras for Fever Pitch directed by the Farrelly Brothers. Yesterday (at least I think it was yesterday), I reported for duty at 4:40 p.m. in Kenmore Square, and then I spent the next ~14 hours at Fenway Park pretending to be an excited fan watching a game and reacting to stuff in the story.

I haven’t seen dawn in Kenmore Square since I was a kid and had a whole lot of explaining to do to my mother about where I was all night.

Here’s what I have learned so far.

Spent the night in Fenway Park (more later when I’ve slept a bit), and I came home to this announcement in my email inbox.

WATCH AND ENJOY!

Everything the Bush administration has tried, they’ve gotten away with… but how far can they push their luck? They’ve hired a market-research firm to find out.

Bush Focus Group is a new political comedy from Castparty Productions, starring Chance Langton from Adam Sandler’s Eight Crazy Nights.  See it today at: www.bushfocusgroup.com!

Castparty Productions is an independent video-production team, founded by Justin Fielding, Kelly Hardebeck, and Matthew Walczak.  For more information, contact kelly@castparty.com or see www.castparty.com.