"I'll be alone, dancing you know it baby"

Whenever "Don't You Forget About Me" by Simple Minds comes on the radio, I'm forced to make a choice. Should I change the channel and find something else? Or should I turn it up, avoid eye contact with others, and have myself a good Lifetime Original Movie-esque sob session?

For some reason, a lot of 80s music makes me feel depressed. It's not so much the Guns 'N' Roses and Motley Crue-type stuff (since those 80s rockers are so shitty I rarely get through the first few bars before changing the channel) but the Depeche Mode / Morrissey kind of ballads. You know the kind.

I'm not entirely sure why they have this effect on me, but here are some possibilities:

1. The hair - Not only did the excessive use of CFC-laden hairsprays almost destroy civilization, but they also forced me to skip most of the decade when searching for masturbation material.

2. The synthesizers - I don't know why, but those haunting electronic chords always get to me. I'm sure I could go into a whole rant about how this music feels empty, completely void of any feeling, but I'll just chalk it up to being part-vampire. Those electronic organs remind me of home.

3. The fashion of a lost civilization - Just think of all those tight leather pants and flamboyant currently rotting away in landfills. Or the tapes sitting in cardboard boxes in their basements. Or the Tiffany posters rolled up and stuck in the back of closets. Or, even scarier, the people who owned all of those, once young, now nearing middle age! Nothing scares me more than aging, which is why I bathe in wrinkle cream.

4. Never getting laid in the 80s - Sure, I was between the ages of 0 and 9 during that decade, but that didn't stop this guy.

5. Cyndi Lauper - Never trust anyone who doesn't shed a tear during "Time After Time". They have a heart of stone.

6. The lyrics - Take Corey Hart's "Sunglasses at Night" for example. On the surface it seems like a fairly benign statement by Hart proclaiming his love of this new fashion trend. But look a little closer. Among the reasons he wears his sunglasses at night: so he can, so he can (1) watch you weave, (2) keep track of visions in his eyes, and (3) forget his name while you collect your claim.

I get the first two: using sunglasses for their reflective properties and to hide people from seeing your perverted ways make sense. But how do they make someone forget your name, especially while they're collecting their claim? How, goddamnit!?!?!

Nothing makes me more depressed than my own confusion.

One of these days, I compose a book-length examination on this, something that this subject truly deserves. If it's a hit I already have a sequel planned: Why dance music makes me cry, with a full chapter on Tatu.

Bumthropology

During our recent trip to Denver "the city built on jaywalking", my girlfriend told me an interesting "fact"(1). She said that Denver's population has the highest percentage of residents who are college graduates in the entire U.S. Something like 40% of people living there have completed a four-year course.

At first, I was skeptical, seeing as Bush got Colorado's popular vote in 2004.(2) Plus, there's a ton of homeless people walking the streets. But I noticed something different about these bums: They were all carrying signs.

And not just simple signs like "I need money" or "Please help me", but long-winded explanations of what they will do with the money they receive. One bum wrote, "I will not use the money for drinking or drugs, only food." Another listed off his various honors as a Vietnam vet before his plea for money. And, best of all, they all used perfect grammar!

But what came as the biggest shock were, when there weren't any cars around, most of the bums would bide their time waiting for the next car by cracking open a paperback and getting some reading it.

In LA, meanwhile, I have yet to see one bum read anything more than a Jack In The Box burger wrapper. You can tell a lot about a city by their bums.

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(1) The word is in quotation marks because she has been known to listen to Bill O'Reilly, planting seeds of doubt in anything she says. Also the city isn't 1st, but it's close.
(2) And yes, I know that Denver isn't ALL of Colorado. But the Denver metropolitan area still contains roughly half of the state's population.

Who were the ad wizards behind that one!?!?

Touchstone Pictures is doing an interesting thing marketing Mel Gibson's new movie Apocalypto. Instead of shying away from mentioning Gibson's name - a move that would seem inevitable with the recent drunken admission of his anti-Jew, pro-sugar tits stance - he's actually more front-and-center in the ads than any other director I can recall.

Just take a look at the top part of the one-sheet:

Not only do they list the credits of the director above the film's title (a practice that is relatively common with big-name directors), but then they go ahead and spell it out for you one more time who directed it, in font letters nearing the size of the movie.

Along with that are the new television adverts that show clips of the movie intercut with clips from a Mel Gibson sit-down interview, where he gives quick soundbites (in an eerily manipulated higher-pitched voice than usual) referring to the general theme and intent behind the movie. Nowhere is there any mention of the actual story of the movie, since they're basically just selling Mel Gibson.

Don't get me wrong, the movie's trailer (which thankfully doesn't include the staged Gibson interview) looks good enough that I want to see it in the theater, but this ad campaign is an odd move by Tombstone.

Do you think they where going with this idea all along, and are just hoping that enough news cycles have passed by since Gibson's drunken rant so that now people are more focused on Kramer's racism and Britney Spears flashing her vagina? Or is this a shrewd move to milk some more publicity out of the Gibson rant, hoping people will see it, curious to how many Jews his lead character kills?

If only Kramer's rants would have happened a few weeks ago, not so near the Seinfeld - Season 7 DVD release. They could add blurbs like "Banned by Jesse Jackson!!!" or "As seen on TMZ.com!!!" or "Endorsed by the KKK!!!"

I'll take a hemp condom, please.

When hippies have sex, how long does it take to untangle the enormous mound of fluff that is their combined mass of unshorn genital hair?

Why Wikipedia is Great, Reason #102

The complete lack of opinion in their definitions:

(Click for larger image)

To be fair, Vick has the better rushing average-per-attempt (RAA) and genital herpe average-per-pubic-square-inch (GHAPSI).

The Illustrious Relaunch of Men-Flat!

That's right, boys and girls, I'm back. "What has he been doing during his long hiatus?" you wonder aloud to your mostly Hispanic choir of pool boys.

How about working in [fill in African country here] to find a cure for [insert strange-sounding disease here]? Does that do anything for you?

Or maybe the fact that I've been busy trying to edit the daily updated(!) comedish magazine Duct Tape & Rouge? That alright with ya?

Or composing my book-length essay on why Byron Allen is the Anti-Christ, to be given away for free as a public service so more folks can see through this smug entertainment reporter's lies? Think that's worthy enough to explain my extended absence?

But with all of those life-changing events out of the way, it's time to get back to the business that God(1) put me on this Earth for: random blogging!

In the upcoming days, weeks, months, and years I will be typing sentences (and sometimes paragraphs) about a variety of subjects, using common grammatical devices such as words, periods, commas and, occasionally, the semi-colon. These subjects will include the emergence of the forward pass in professional football, the surprising unattractiveness of Evanescence's lead singer Amy Lee, and the odd parallels between the words "pens" and "penis".

So prepare yourselves, ladies and gents(2) for a blog like no other(3).

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(1) or alternately, Joe Pesci
(2) mostly ladies, I'm guessing, because of my general cocksmansitude
(3) not technically true