Happy.

Aaah, shaddup. So it's a new year. Yo yo ma, don't call ME about it. Shaddup. New, blue, scmoo, who

Cares?

'Cept me. Okay, what did you do today? Huh? What did you eat for breakfast? Huh?

What did you have for lunch, ya shnook? Huh? Huh?

WHAT DID YOU HAVE FOR DINNER? HUH? HUHHHH?

Well, there's one thing I'll bet. YOU DIDN'T HAVE A HOT DOG MADE BY BRIGITTE.

You lousy, lying, posturing HOUND.

YOU  did NOT have the absolute BEST HOT DOG ever CREATED by humankind. No, you nasty pretending little sneak, you DID NOT have a BRIGITTE hot dog. Lie, lie, lie, liar.

Okay so no one was ever ready made for brains. In case you didn't know, shnook, a BRIGITTE hot dog blows EVERY OTHER FUCKING DOG OFF THE PLANET. Excuse me for the little bit of Hebrew, there, but I'm allowed.

Imagine this very carefully: a grilled dog -- not just a dog, but a FRANKFURTER, hey, no shit, NOT FROM SEVEN ELEVEN, oh-so slowly char-broiled and served baking hot on a moist submarine bun with an insane combination of condiments . . . okay, okay, you're halfway there.

Sometimes you just have to ditch everything. Just give it up. Fuggedabout it. Because there's always going to be SOMEONE BETTER THAN YOU.

Jaysus Chris'. Me and my lip. Me and my food lip. Me and my goddamn pretentious gorgonzola lip.

How someone can escalate a hot dog to something floating 100,000 feet above your head and FURTHERMORE paint it in a shining gold colour you've never seen before . . . well, all I can say is HAPPY GODDAMN NEW YEAR.

Ouch! I Become a Film Critic

Not a site you wants to see.

But occasionally, something gets my dander up when I'm watching our little flickering motion pictures.

Let me start at Quentin Tarantino: I hate the fucking guy. I have no IDEA how he started making films.

So let's just start at that. Then, narrow the field to people making serious films. Already, Quentin Tarantino is several times removed. The guy is a clown and would be the absolute first to admit it.

Now take Serious People making films about Nazis. You're getting down to a really, really small pool here. A pool that Quentin Tarantino has come up to his over-sized ears in. Uhh . . . how can I put it . . . Quite Likely to Drown.

And drown he does.

They're All Dead

How dare they be all dead . . . John Lennon, Joe Zawinul, Jaco Pastorius . . .

HOW DARE YOU ALL DIE BEFORE US.

Oh, Hell!

Ahhh, those sultry -20º days 'twixt Christmas and New Years'.

Last night we were in characteristic loll mode (the real word, not the crude Internet-ready acronym) so we ordered Indian food from the folks at Maison India (who comes up with these unique names?)

Brigitte ordered her usual butter chicken, and since I've been deprived of spice of late, I ordered the hottest thing available (of course!): the Chicken Bangalore Phal (cue ominous chorus of swarthy demons) (I count a modest 40 chilies in this recipe).

Now before you get up on your horses and exclaim that I just do it to be "macho" let me tell you that I spent 10 years at the beginning of my life being "macho" in Calcutta, India. Yep, if I wanted, tomorrow I could go down to the Indian embassy and order me up a citizenship.

And Bangalore Phal was invented in England, anyway, for the drunken louts who'd come in to the local Indian place and brag in front of their friends "Gimme the 'ottest fing on va menu."

Oh, it's hot. I must admit that in my earlier days (some would call it youth, but I reserve that for the period I'm going through now) I used to AUTOMATICALLY tell the friendly waiter "Make it as hot as the chef can make it -- I was born in Calcutta!" but now I exercise a little more self-restraint. A LITTLE more. I realize from my own cooking adventures that all you have to do is chop a few habaneros -- the closest things to radioactive vegetables that I know, since I have yet to obtain the truly dreaded Naga Jolokia -- and dump them in anything and immediately 99.98% of people on the planet will probably have to check in to their friendly ER for a barium enema and a week-long bath in seltzer.

So I don't do that any more with my cooking. It's a cheap trick.

But back to last night.

My son, Taishi, nicknamed Tai-chan ("chan" is a diminutive or an endearment in Japanese) is here from Japan for three weeks or so. Japanese food is the blandest on the planet, even behind British food. Most Japanese have seen a pepper only in their dreams and real wasabi is like a mild taste of a babbling mountain brook rather than a rolling gout of lava. Christ, most Japanese think onions are spicy.

But I happily digress! Food arrives, Brigitte unpacks, I try to unglue my eyeballs from some dreck on the 500-channel Universe and soon I'm happily munching away on some naan, basmati and Chicken Bangalore Phal.

All of a sudden, as I'm watching Rachel Ray wrestling Giada di Laurentiis in a pit for "Top Chef: Mud-wrestling edition" (and winning, the little skank!) I hear the most ungodly scream from the back room, where I thought Tai-chan was watching the marathon of "Transformers."

Turns out Brigitte thought what goes on in the family, runs in the family.

Tai-chan came running out into the living room in one of those Chuck Jones cartoon moments -- you could swear he was leaving a trail of smoke behind.

"Oh no," I said to Brigitte between happy chomps, "you didn't give him the Bangalore Phal, by any chance?"

Dumb, de Dumb Dumb DUUUUMMMMB

God, looking back on the oh-so-many years of technology promises and punditry . . . in my case, starting right about ‘round 1957, the year I was born,  it all just seems to get old. Sure, there’s stuff — the Internet is one — that actually lives up to the hype — but there’s far more stuff that ends up just being snake oil.

I put it thus: yes, there ARE 17,808 titles at the video store, but how many of them do you actually want to watch? Okay, sorry, now if they were all FREE how many would you actually want to watch?

Thought so. Subtract eight from 17,808 and you have the nutshell of human stupidity.

Thus we have this: yet another reminder that we just should all go back to bed and watch the sun rise tomorrow (or not, when we listen to these people).

The Genius . . .

 . . . at the Genesis of his craft.

It's amazing. You don't see that childish gap-toothed grin here when he realizes he's just been photographed. You just see the true portrait of a craftsman.

The Uselessness of Nothingness

Consider Nothingness. No, really. The "there" before you were born.

Got it, Amateur Einshteen? NOTHINGNESS. The Absence of Something. I bet that in the entirety of your poor, sorry, hungry life, you have NEVER EXPERIENCED NOTHINGNESS.

So leave it to your Dear Leader to explain it to you:

NOTHINGNESS is someone who thinks they can cook, but in a perverse paradox, cannot. They, by all the powers available to them, which we all share in abundance, lest I appear above The Flock, are CONVINCED that THEIR WAY to cook something is THE ONLY WAY to cook something (Sorry to repeat myself, but I have to get through to THEM and this seems the only way).

But if all that is past; all that is present; all that IS TO BE is considered, NOTHINGNESS IS STILL NOTHINGNESS. YOU CAN

NOT

MAKE

SOMETHING

OUT

OF

NOTHINGNESS.

Yet, Flock,

Nothingness fills their brain. Nothingness delights in its freedom and flies like a million butterflies in a newly-mown hay field; NOTHINGNESS IS KING.

I, of all people, my dearest, dearest flock, in this, our Kwanzaa-enriched season, appreciate the Nothingness which is within EACH and EVERY ONE of us. NO MISTAKES FROM NOTHINGNESS.

Excpet me, of course.

'Tis the Season to Shut the Fuck Up

Every year, during that slow news period between Christmas and New Years', when the Taliban are busy roasting small animals and presidents are having lewd sex with diplomats, the news media trots out the "The Year in Review."

FUCK The Year in Review.

I know what The Year in Review was like because DUHHHH, I WAS THERE. What is this, History Blind Lemon Chitlin 101?

GET A FUCKING OTHER JOB.

Yes.

Well said, if I may say so myself.

Seeing as how this room is empty, I can SHOUT ANYTHING I WANT.

In' SHALLLLAAAAAHHHH!

See? I'm feeling better already.

Kwanzaa Testament 2010

Flock. My flock. How I have failed you! In recent days, nay, weeks, nay, months! how I have neglected my adoring flock. Nary an update, no, nary a nary. Not a hair off a horse’s hoof, not a bleat of a lamb’s breath.

No, I have said shit for about three weeks.

But I return not harmed, nor perturbed, nor even hungered.

Just fucking pissed off!

I joketh, of course, my adoring pilgrims of The PoxLips. Thy Father never sayeth a word in verity, be it under thine bovine oath.

(Aaaaaah, KEE-RIST. What a goddamn last few weeks. Let Me Not Get Into Grand Detail. LET ME NOT UTTER PROFANITIES AGAINST THE LORDS OF GI JOE).

Uhh . . how to summarise. Trip to Japan: uhh, how to summarise. Uhh, trip to Japan: Uhh, how to summarise. Uhh . . .

Words. Planes. Nice people. Okay people. Late planes. run. Run. Run. Bag slamming against calf. Run. Gate 34 C. Gate 123B, Terminal B. Run. Run, bag slapping against thigh. Pain. Run. Hunger. Gate A9, Terminal H, West wing, Run. Seat 34B, annoying seatmate. Sleeping pill, double bloody mary. Wake up. WAKE UP! Run. RUN! Gate 54H, seat 46C. Where sunglasses? WHERE $200 sunglasses? Call home. Wait hotel! Destination. Shuttle! Can chu-hai. Hot bath! HOT BATH! HOOOOTTTT BATH!

Wake up. Unhappy. UN. HAPPY.

Sleep again.

DO ALL OVER AGAIN AT 6 O’CLOCK IN REVERSE.

D O  I T  A L L  O V E R  A G A I N 

AGAINAGAINAGAINAGAINAGAINAGAINAGAINAGAINAGAINAGAINAGAINAGAINAGAINAGAINAGAINAGAINAGAINAGAINAGAINAGAINAGAINAGAINAGAINAGAINAGAINA

Home.

Merry Anything!

Major Konig says "Gott fürgives alles!" (The lying bastard, I will burn him first)

Sorry, no quote due to Stolichnitis

He grows an angel every single moment I see him

Off to the Wild Blue Yonder

It's another wild trek to Japan starting at 5:30 a.m. on Friday, flock. Wish me luck. Wish that I don't lose my latest $200 pair of glasses, misplace my credit card or have to land the plane when the pilot eats some poisoned chickenorbeef. (I've been busy on my flight simulator, taking off from Dorval airport and aiming the plane into St. Joseph's Oratory, then buzzing downtown and clipping the Big O before turning around and landing on Runway 24L, in 747s, 707s, 737s, Phantom F4s, A380s and my favorite, the Concorde).

All you have to do is follow my progress. 5:30 a.m. at Dorval on Comair to Detroit. Detroit to Seattle. Seattle to Osaka (11 hours and 45 minutes!)

Two nights at the airport hotel. Back on Monday via Seattle and Minneapolis with the Tiny Tornado in tow.

We are going to rock the world of aviation (Tai-chan's almost as good as me on the flight simulator, and he's only nine!) and I can pretend to be an Air Marshall the whole way, staring down all swarthy-looking types in First Class who are nervously fingering their prayer beads while pretending to read "Oregon Fishing Almanac."

So keep checking in with Breaking News and follow my trail of mayhem and derring-do and I'll be sure to give you a full report, with pics, on my return.

Uh, on my projected return.

Here's one of our adventures from about 2005.

Tai-chan Malmsteen

Found this snippet of Tai-chan playing the electric guitar I bought for him this summer. Whaddya think? He'll be shredding in no time.

The Boxes

I hijacked this old post to post these photos of my boxes.

The Jude Law figure