show show pre show mullets

it's on mutha grabbers. the hotel doesn't want to house me at this very moment, so the bastard is all about the blogging until i can get my room.

mexi-mullet-icious

country rooooooooooad. take me hooooooooome. to the plaaaaaaaaaace. ah belonnnnnnnnng. west virginyaaaaaaaaaaa. mountain mama. take me hoooooooome.

i'm the old man of the mountains and i dropped mad weight to come here this year. more tomorrow. unless i jump out a window.

—the bastard

... on paydirt

...fucking paydirt jerks! right out the BAG!

...or shot show mullets preview

so the bastard lucked out and didn't crash.

or was i unlucky?

so our fair president closed the airport up for a few minutes as he was flying out. apparently he heard that the circus circus has the loosest slots in town and all the free nitrus oxide you could POSSIBLY want.

but ho what do the roadie and i see.

but the best pre cursor to my week long mullet hunt.



and it was gold my lovelys. fucking GOLD. the bastard thought to himself that things were looking up. more to come. this show hasn't even started yet.

—the bastard

the bastard has got to tell you...

...patriots fans are drunken fratboy jackasses.

so i'm talking to the roadie while waiting for go time and like ten jock types of various ages get on i'm their pats gear.

OK QUICK SIDEBAR: the bastard has no team affiliation when it comes to the gridiron so, i didn't start this from some boring loyalty to the war between the polises (we all know that the giants are i'm jersey no matter what logo they wear on the side of their helmet.

so the roadie and i look at each other and agree that this is a bad thing which i think has nothing to do with him being a cowboys fan.

OK FLASH FORWARD: the steward shoos the bastard to take a crap in the back of the plane because the captain was in the front doing just that and the bastard has to run the gauntlet past four guys trying to charge some booze and it ain't working only to find the rest of their party
of cocksuckery in my way "pounding sum brewskis brah, and it wahs wicked ahsum".

getting out, i open my door at the same time as the other door opens and one of the jockestra yells, "whu-oh, beep beep beep", and the bastard looks his unfortunate guy with me look at each other with much disdain (i really don't envy the tail-ees). i turn to the nearest jock and
ask him, "so, is that the clever one?".

he concurs that this meathead in fact is. It's gonna be a long flight.

—the bastard

...on retiring

...not me, some other guy


ah got it!

ah got tha winnin' tickut.

ahm retirin'

thas me.

ahm retiring raht now.

here's the ticket.

the bastard collects his dry goods in the narrow store and tries to make his way past this "rich guy"

the asian proprietor eyes the bastard suspiciously, like i just got one over on him. i suppose he does that to everyone.

he kind of looks like the kind of guy who got lucky and instead of living in a cardboard box under a bridge in the shibuya district (you should really read all idoru and all tomorrow's parties by gibson. which reminds the bastard, i need to finish virtual light one of these days), he ended up running a yellow windowed smoke shop/convenient store on 33rd street. his nails are like wooden claws and like i said, he looks like he's suspicious of being found out for whatever it is he's really doing there.

cha ching.

click click.

cha ching.

"three dollar sir."

"ah'll take it here. ahm retiring."

i turn to the man and smile and say, "three bucks? hell pal, you must have some low standard of living"

the store erupts with laughter. the bastard walks out. fade to street. roll credits.

—the bastard

...on the posh life

the bastard woke up like he was shot out of a cannon.

last night, the bastard met up with his ladyfriend and her brother for some cans of porkslap (which is pretty goddam good),

and,

needless to say,

5:30 in the morning is an early tip off time for 4 beers and many ribs (which were pretty goddam good. have i mentioned this? pay attention).

anyway, the company sent a cr for me and it was much fancier than i expected. not quite the kind of car that woud be considered foreign dignitary posh but, it sure didn't suck. so far the only thing the bastard sees as the advantage to getting here this early is that the traffic was virtually not there and i was here in 20 minutes.

i thought about texting the elder since i was here early, and he's currently doing a job at the jet blue terminal but, i think i only have his wife's cell number.

too bad the coffee here tastes like someone took a dump in it. oh well, can't live like a king all the time.

—the bastard

6th shot...

...last call


so, the bastard is packing it in kids.

now granted,

i had to burn the same disk,

like,

20 times.

just to get it right.

but,

we're ready to get the hell out of dodge.

and head to the one city in america that i NEVER banked on knowing as much as i know my hometown.

so it's 5:30 tee off time for the bastard.

get it together.

pack the toothbrush.

and get in the company car. yeah, apparently there's a company car service. killing stuff's copy chief who we can call, the singer, lives here, on the rock and she didn't want to have to put up with time wasting logistics like taking the subway to the air train or paying 500 bucks to take a cab from manhattan to jfk.

fuck that grief.

so the singer found out that our evil ant overlords, have a car service on retainer. and they take you places.

places no man should ever have to go.

like the airport.

so i can get in a nice town car instead of a local cab service that smells like 5 day old cigarette butts and smoked salmon. good times.

no.

great times. it's the bastard's sixth gun show and i say mullets ahoy muthagrabbers!

mullets ahoy!

—the bastard

doing a solid

so there's this sales monkey that has been put across from left hand rob at the beginning of this month.

and he's been pissing rob off.

because he speaks in sales-isms.

and the only time he shuts the fuck up is only to answer another phone call.

and he looks like a creepy used car salesman.

and he's annoying.

so, since i am kind of hanging out in the office this evening.

and i wanted a break from his incessant "hey guy, how's it going", "working hard or hardly working", "hey buddy, is that the secrete sauce?" schtick, i did what any bastard would do for a break.

i put on some music.

some loud music.

mostly parliament.

he lost it during aqua boogie.

he came in and asked me if i could turn it down. he was on a sales call and the guy thought he was in a phone booth.

i agreed and turned it down...a little.

the point is this, if you'd shut the fuck up for five minutes a day,

every day,

this exercise would be avoidable.

yeah yeah yeah, i know that karma is a boomerang and one day, there is going to be some dick who is annoyed enough at me to do a little counterbalance but the bastard can't resist fucking with salesmen. even though he's only across from lobster for 4 more, no wait, 3 more days.

oh well.

—the bastard

feet up...

...vegas next.


so this is a little piece i like to call still life with feet up and men holding big fish.

the bastard is done with the pre builds and on with the packing for vegas.

hot damn!

woke up trucked.

came to work that way.

and i'm going to take 5 minutes to catch my breath.

follwed by a healthy serving of the devils work and back into the shit.

fantastic.

—the bastard

today in bobble history

10:00 walking in late with the president of the company at his tail, look of disguist on his face... Mummering to himself, is it only Monday? How will i make it thru the week without suicide?

chairman (1:33:05 PM): sorry

chairman (1:33:14 PM): its real bad

bobble (1:38:24 PM): i know chairman

bobble (1:38:26 PM): its very bad

bobble (2:14:56 PM): is it ok to go to a broadway show on mon night w sales monkey from mmg?




bobble (4:20:12 PM): very weak right now

bobble (4:28:17 PM): fuck chairman

bobble (4:28:20 PM): u know fuck

so there you have it. a day in the life of bobble.

—the bastard

atlas shrugged, the smoker's pole...

...and other dumb shit the bastard did this weekend

"hey bastard, whatcha eatin'?"

"i dunno, what are we eating'?"

"let's got to the california pizza kitchen at the atlas park mall."

"ok"

so this was the beginning of some of the bastard's most idiotic feats of driving for saturday.

now let me preface this by saying, no, the bastard is not a very good driver. the mofo has built an entire comedic routine around this which also consists of the bastard being gay, a yuppy, even though i lack the two out of three of that tryptic, (hint: the bastard is neither young, nor is he professional but, he sure as shit is urban), or annoying or whatever else is built into the routine at the time for maximum "my brother is a jack off because..." effect.

oh yeah, i also used to throw my combat boots around the bedroom we shared growing up along with throwing my laundry over his head while he slept too (i was drunk and that was where the dirty clothing went) but, i digress,

i'm not a good driver.

and i had been huffing paint fumes since i got home on friday night. the landlord finally finished repairing and painting the flooded remains of the bastard's apartment so i was a little hopped up on goofballs at the time when he decided to take the long way to the atlas shoppes. figger it was a 40 minute drive to get to a place that was essentially 10 minutes away.

oh yeah and i almosr hit a kid blowing through a stop sign that the chairman pointed out afdter i decided to stop listening to him.

oh, and i clipped my mirror getting into the parking lot because i decided that i was too mad at blowing the stop sign and killing kids to read any of the parking signage that the chairman had taken the liberty of reading but i digress, i almost killed a kid.


and i killed a teenager with a trident on my way to the california pizza kitchen.

but more importantly, the bastard had never been to the atlas park shoppes. it kind of looks like godzilla had eaten part of this art museum up in the berkshires called massMOCA and then ate part of the woodbury commons outlet mall upstate and then proceeded to vomit it all up in an empty lot in glendale, queens.

oh well, the pizza was good. then i went to a party where everyone had an iphone. it was kind of creepy, but fun.

—the bastard

this just in from the chairman...

apparently, former black flag front man henry rollins has dropped out of the pop culture game


and opted for the suit and tie set. it's SMUGTASTIC!

—the bastard

...on accessorizing

the bastard is hard on wallets.

and the bastard is hard ON the wallet.

that's not to say i don't try to get a good buy now and again.

but seriously, the bastard is really hard on wallets.

i destroy them.

they fall apart pretty quickly, which always prompts me to wonder why i even try to spend decent money on a wallet.

buy one of them 5 dollar specials and use it until it falls apart.

problem is this.

they fall apart faster.

so while shopping on the internet i caught myself a bargain and decided to pick up a wallet while i was on the site. quickest delivery i ever got. once i took it out of the box, the bastard realized that he had gone too far.


yeah, it's pretty bad. but it's mine. so go to hell. now every time i go to pay for something, i'm going to wish that they would figure out a way to bring the invisibles to television. maybe the guys who did the matrix could do it but, then again, they stole whole pages from the invisibles to make the matrix look as dope as it was.

oh well.

go to hell.

—the bastard

you know what the bastard likes about humanity...

...not a damn thing.

the bastard's ceiling is getting painte, so he runs out of the house to avoid explaining to the house painter why i can't cram everything i own into the boy's room.

didn't work. he is impeccably on time.

station is crowded with people doing the hokey pokey on the fucking platform.

"this is v train"; you put your left foot in

"we're running express"; you take your left foot out

"we're being held in the station"; you put your left foot in

"but we're running express to woodhaven blvd"; and you bash the bastard in the knuckles with your big ass handbag that you should be paying attention to asshole!!!

and that's what it's all about.

the bright spot was that my favorite breakfast crack dealer was there at the end of all of this to give the bastard his bacon, egg, and cheese on a roll and i listened to some guy order coffee with 4 equals.

sounded like someone should have ordered some coffee with his formaldehyde.

oh well, i guess you gotta die of something and the bastard doesn't want to go to jail until he gets to vegas.

—the bastard

apparently, this isn't the bastard's fault...

...nope.

it isn't his fault.

it isn't your fault either.

it's not the little people's fault.

it's the government's fault.

the bastard isn't going to mention any government organizations but he will say the initials c.a.s. and if that means anything to you, you'll know what the homeless man on the train was talking about this morning on the train. because i sure as hell don't know what the hell he was talking about.

so you see, we're off the hook.

—the bastard

...this is why i love this business

now the bastard and left hand rob have been collecting and joking and re-joking about our great love for the inadvertent off color phrasing in the hunting business. but this week has found us our grand daddy of them all.

and lobster and i hope to the big baby jesus that this company has t-shirts.

because we gotta get some.

lobster and i first came across sporting wood creations, in the convention floor plan of the gun show we're going to next week but apparently the prince of sales had seen this in the snow man's cube while talking to him and immediately had to show us. it's gold kids.

fucking gold.

i am a new man.

—the bastard

...on star spotting

so the bastard is coming upstairs with his lunch and he's stuck behind some character who looked an awful lot like christian bale and was wearing the latest in velvet collared jacket goodness to i don't know:

a: it's the style among business types b: he works at a hotel as a bellhop and he forgot his bellhop hat c: he's a dick and i hate him

anyway, as we pulled up to the bastard noticed rather than getting out of my way he was
texting on his crackberry.

texting on his crackberry.

texting on his crackberry.

so i ahem

asked him to move in the most gravelly voice possible.

in passing i noticed that he looked way too much like christian bale.

so i told him, "hey, i loved you in american psycho" (because why the fuck would i like him in batman returns).

then the doors closed.

and i went somewhere to eat my sammich.

and he went somewhere,

to rot.

—the bastard

...on the texting

i don't know if it's because the bastard just bought himself an iphone over the weekend but all i see on the train are:

people texting on their crackberry.

people texting on their crackberry.

people texting on their crackberry.

people texting on their crackberry.

it's been epidemic. now the bastard likes hid tech as much as the next geek but, it seems a little epidemic. every time i walk out of the subway, i inevitably end up stopping short because someone hits ground level and starts texting. out the way asshole!

—the bastard

special weekend car crash edition

got a text from the chairman.

there was a car accident under his window.

he decided to send pictures.

too bad people feel the need to tear ass up metro.

—the bastard

the bastard wins

the bastard wins!

you lose!

fuck you publishing!

daily is done.

feb march is done.

tequila is mine.

—the bastard

i knew it couldn't last

yup.

i knew it couldn't last.

the prince of sales came by to tell the bastard that the last third of feb/march will be in limbo until this afternoon.

so lobster and i cannot get everything out the door today.

defeat has been snatched from the jaws of victory.

now i feel like this again.

so now i wait.

wait for the long slog to come.

fucking publishing

—the bastard

UPDATE:

"we have a map."

"a what?"

"we have a map."

"nice".

so all is not lost for this friday. victory is mine!

...on immortality

you know.

every year, while working on the daily and all the prep for the gun show, i pend most of the time feeling like this:


but today.

it's a little different.

you see i came in today and page one was on my chair.

well.

rather the proof of page one. of day one.

i am a new man.

seeing page one, or the cover especially that cover i get to do once a year with the silver ink, is when i feel like it's all worthwhile. now the bastard knows that in the long view, this stuff doesn't matter to the ages but, on days today, i feel like part of me will live forever.

and one day, part of me just might.

—the bastard

things the bastard has done in the past 24 hours

almost stabbed at least 3 people at 59th street for fucking up my shit.

but i didn't.

too bad.

wish i did.

then again maybe not.

i heard the food in the joint is notsomuch with the good.

dropped my bag on an old asian woman on the r train who probably should have thought better about the idea of sitting next to me

oh yeah, have i mentioned the part where i haven't slept much?

i read several chapters of the comic book adaptation of i am legend and found that instead of a wise cracking black man, the hero is a whiny drinkey blond guy who would rather bitch about how he had to close the damn peep hole in his house because he can't stand to see naked hot vampire chicks. dude, your wife is dead, i'm sure she wouldn't mind if you masterbate once in a while instead of getting pissed off and drunk because all the women left on earth are the living dead. jeez

also, least proactive vampires....EVER!

oh yeah, jimmy 3000 started writing shit again. my ass has been laughed off.

and i've spent more time here in this office than i would have liked to in the last 24-48. hell.....month.

oh yeah, day one is out. 3 more issues to go. then the bastard packs. then burns vegas to the ground. always leave things the way you found them.

—the bastard

...on wherewithal

10 hours of sleep.

that's what the bastard's gotten in the last 48 hours.

10 hours of sleep.

i just don't have it in me today.

10 hours of sleep.

i need a vacation.

10 hours of sleep.

maybe i can get some more tonight. but, i doubt it.

—the bastard

dear new york city...

hi,

i was wondering that while you were in the midst of jacking up the price to take a subway train as well as mulling over the 4 bright ideas you had in mind to make congestion pricing fuck the outer boroughs, i mean work in the city, could you maybe get the trains to maybe, ida know,

run on time?

i know it's a little detail but, some of us actually work here. that's not to say that the thugs in the transportation workers union don't work but, come on kids.

thanks,

—the bastard

...the haul

today, the bastard set up the last of his pages.

the pages from his monolith.

his albatross.

his yearly herculean labor.

and it was no more.

and when the bastard had saw the breadth of his domain, he wept for there were no more worlds to conquer.

and truth to tell,

all poetry aside, every time i finish this fucking mountain of work, i feel like weeping a little bit. it's hard. and i still have a pile to do. i owe the devil his due. i still have to finish the february/march issue. and the end isn't in site but for a minute, the bastard feels like he won a little today.

i'll lose some more tomorrow.

but on to bigger and better. the end of the road. it leads to vegas. we booked some dinner. we'll throw some dice. we'll fuck some shit up. but most of all. we'll lay the live half of what i finished today. maybe i won more than i bargained for.

—the bastard

...on secretes

the secret is some touchy feely new age self help book that oprah winfrey is a big fan of. the bastard on the other hand, is not a fan of the secret or of oprah which should not come as any frikkin surprise to you.

anyway, the bastard is also an elitist snob as well as, well, you know, a bastard and so when i was in target with my ladyfriend last night (yeah i shop in target), when i saw a woman clutching a copy of this selfsame book. she looked incredibly intense and the whole feel of the situation had an air of quiet desperation so i asked my ladyfriend,

"am i a bad person if i thumb my nose at someone clutching tenaciously to a copy of the secret?"

"come on", she replies, "some people are interested in improving themselves. allthough she did look a little intense"

so point taken, i reflected otherwise on this poor woman's predicament. and then i thought, "what would the peanut gallery think?" and like any other rotten human being, i decided to repeat my question via text message to some friends and coworkers of mine. the answers went something like this:

"no, you're a bad person because you kick puppies"

"no but what's the secret. self help?"

"depends. what the hell is the secret?"

"not at all"

"no worries, pertwee will get her"

"sorry. who is this?"

"yes u are"

"no you r a hero sir"

"gay"

"eat it"

"oh, hey bastard. and no you r not for laughing at sad women"

so there you have it. societal cross section in nutshell. i tried to text message in order of varying people different friends from differnt walks of life for different answers but some of them more interesting to me.

—the bastard