sailors fighting in the dancehall...

let the bastard start off like this...

the life aquatic is one of my favorite films...

it has one of the single best cigarette smoking sequences ever filmed...

wes anderson has a gift for making me want to smoke cigarettes...

what can i say?

but the bastard was at an art exhibition at the park avenue armory and he's come to a conclusion.

white people need to stop rocking the team zissou red wool hat.

just cut it out.

it's no longer hip or ironic and i'm going to punch you in the neck.

that is all

—the bastard

…on horned gods

once upon a time…

a bastard learned a thing about the birth of Christ…

and he learned that the day in question was in march…

and like a smug jackass…

he told his grandmother this nugget of historical shite.

long story short…

which it never is here…

gramma had something to say about it to me…

and we hada phone conversation about it.

upon hanging up with her I received a good talking to from my dad about belief…

and not letting history mess with that sometimes.

so I clammed up about my minor in history.

it was better this way because I could keep going back to the house of usher for the gingers snap gravy and know that grandma wasn't shooting little daggers at me.

she was a good lady.

that said, as the day approaches I realize that the burden of history is better spent keeping your mouth shut.

god is in his his heaven and and I?

I am on my couch drinking whiskey…

and all is right with the world.

happy saturnalia, ya frikkin pagans

—the bastard

...on muckraking

the bastard would like to talk about his hood for a minute...

i live in a spaceship in long island city 3 blocks away from the east river...

and while it didn't garner as much press as what's happened down by the rock...

we took it on the chin when sandy came through...

we took on some water...

which wrecked our electric.

my neighbors and i were homeless-ish for two weeks...

and fortunately, we're all getting back to normal.

we were lucky.

but here's the rub.

there is this local blog that i USED to go to for my local info that went to my building during the post storm mayhem to "get the scoop" on the extent of my building's damages.

we're a new building...

we're not all sold...

we'd like the rest of the building get sold...

but this sort of thing sets us back as a community, so our people politely said no...

the muckraker who writes this blog presses harder, saying he's providing a "service to the community" by providing  photos that are fit for disaster tourists of all stripes and those of the kind of carnage that would definitely hinder other new buildings in the area from EVER becoming profitable anytime soon.

i'm sure the powerhouse and the yard are real fucking grateful for that.

so after this bit of leverage from the muckraker, our people respond with a sterner "no comment" which hurt his widdle feelings.

so in what the bastard can only imagine was in a crying fit of babylike proportions, he wrote an angry post about our building...

you know...

as a service to the community.

a service...

you know?

muckraker.

this prompted the ire of both residents and local who felt that this "service" was unwarranted...

perhaps uncalled for...

trolls responded to the counter...

and i'm convince those trolls were the very author of the post as they all centered around how the blog provides a service to the community and we should all move on.

i mused to myself, does the muckraker hav e a thesaurus in which to alter his constant refrain regardless of what the name of the troll who posted in response.

i eventually, commented an invitation to lunch to the author of one unkind cut.

said we should meet up...

have some lunch...

chat about the local issues...

like muckraking...

and local bloggers who flew through a storefront window as a service to the community.

muckraker.

but i digress, when the bastard moved back into the building, he decided to let it go,  glad to be home again.

this post garned the most comments in the pitiful history of the blog so it was not surprising that when my building was mentioned in a post on curbed that he felt the need to repost it as his own content.

or at least as a "i'm neither good at writing nor am i good at generating my own content but, i sure did like all of that attention i got the last time i slagged off on that building that hurt my feelings so left me just repost it"

muckraker.

so to the blog, i linked to today but won't bother mentioning...

please go directly to die...

you won't be missed i assure you.

now i have work in the publishing world to finish up now...

so run along now to your amateur photography and your bitchy posts.

—the bastard

the horror…the…hor…ror

this morning on the slow barge to Rome…

and mind you it was slow…

how's does one figure on leaving for work 50 minutes early…

only to arrive 15 minutes early…

only the lirr's awful awful math knows…

but I digress.

the whole time I was transfixed…

by this woman who was making a meal of her cuticles…

only stopping to respond with two fisted (non cuticled) tales of how her family has survived these past two weeks without power out there in the hinterlands…

then it was back to hand snacking

I couldn't take my eyes off of it, I was so disgusted by it…

here's a protip…

get your fucking hands out of your gaping maw…

and have a nutritious breakfast…

they have fruity pebbles out there in the sticks don't they?

shudder

—the bastard

The bastard wants to go on record...

I just had to say that this woman who rode the f train with me almost all te way to 179th street ne'er stopped smiling once during the whole ride...

Perhaps some creepy guy told her a really good jokes dishes been smiling since queens bridge...

Or perhaps she's one of those folks who didn't believe their mom when they said that if you keep making a face like that, your face will freeze up like that...

Ida know...

Botox.

Either way, it was really creeping me out...

Thanks creepy lady, I'm glad that you're happy... Now I need to drink your visage out of my head

—the bastard

supply side sugarnomics

so...

this happened on my phone yesterday

—the bastard

the craft…

it goes without saying that a pretty big chunk of the bastard's audience is family

so every now and again, I get the occasional all caps email from uncle acid

which I haven't gotten in a while

I miss those from time to time, they're enriching.

but my dad usually calls for the bastard to English dictionary when I mention people by pseudonym

sometimes he sends me helpful reading material.

case

meet

point

there is an article in the ny times website (all the slant that's fit to print) about the rules to writing which was actually quite humorous.

and it reminded me of a story that sam fuller told me once via the electric fireplace.

Balzac is walking down a street in paris when walking down the opposite way is Alexander Dumas.

they greet each other warmly kissing each other on the cheek like the French do and exchanging pleasantries and then they bid each other adieu.

when he is a safe distance from Dumas, Balzac mutters to himself, "that rat bastard son of a bitch, if only I had money like him".

at the same time, from the same safe distance Dumas mutters to himself, "that rat bastard son of a bitch, if only I could WRITE like him"

that's all I got. whadda ya want a frikkin medal?

—the bastard

ruckus…

there was a bit of a ruckus the other night upon returning from the chairman's den of iniquity.

can you describe the ruckus?

why yes.

the ruckus was the last 10 minutes of the beer bar's cask beer fest… the PM shift.

I wasn't worried about this as they legally can't have anyone out back past 10pm…

and it was 10 minutes to 10…

and I was already drunk.

so I let my wife do the heavy lifting on that knowing full well that she would get the empowerment that comes with calling 10 minutes before the beer bar fulfills it's legal obligations to the neighborhood.

but the wasn't the ruckus.

the ruckus came 40 minutes later when the people who paid upwards of 120 dollars to drink all the cask conditioned local brew they could drink spilled out onto the streets to hump all of the traffic cones to their hearts content.

yes

traffic cones.

now to be fair, the bar did state on their build out blog that they would never be a cheap drinks special kind of place.

this was an expensive drink special kind of place.

but also to their build out blog's point, their staff was supposedly train to spot people who have had too much to drink and shut that shit down.

which they clearly didn't.

which didn't matter to me in the long run because it went out the front door to the hood.

where the people who have been living here for longer than any of us people in the fancy glass buildings have.

the people who don't want drunken rich kids humping traffic cones on their block on a Saturday night.

and may kick their asses.

and that is something the bastard can get on board with.

—the bastard

you know what sucks…

the bastard has ideas all of the time.

and when he's sitting at the dealership for an hour and a half with nothing but time on his hands…

he's got nothing.

nothing but an oil change I guess.

— the bastard

this may be the worst thing the bastard saw on saturday night

the bastard went to a wedding reception of some good friends who are truly happy together and i wish them all the luck in the world.

i say NONE of this in airquotes as a truly mean it.

it was a nice afternoon affair on the planet of brooklyn and good times were had by all. 

and that's where i should have left it. because i also wanted to see my friends band later that evening. and this is what opened.

sun ra is rolling in his grave. so will less claypool when i leave him face down in a ditch.

—the bastard

bleed

THEN

on fathers day in 1999…

the bastard was galloping on horseback through forest park…

into a turn…

lost a stirrup…

and did a face plant into a tree.

the bastard shattered his nose into eleven pieces.

I got up and kicked the tree until the nice lady found me put me on the back of an animal and trotted me back to the barn while I deliriously warbled "Christian sands" by tricky.

or…

…a devil in Helsinki

NOW

I work in a cube in a high traffic area.

it's private enough.

but if you're looking for me, you'll find my ass.

and everytime I low my nose the wrong way…

I bleed like a stuck pig.

and then I have to make my way to a stall and stop the bleeding…

hiding out like some fucking coke head in the 1980's…

until the bleeding stops.

I'm kind of sick of it these days.

but it could be worse.

all those pieces could still be rattling around in there instead of being fused together in some shitty jigsaw way.

so glad I wore a helmet that day.

—the bastard

the horror...the...hor..ror

there are some things that the bastard can never wash out of his brain.

and now you cannot wash it out of your brain as well.

some call him heavenly in his brilliance. others mean and ruthful of the western dream. i love the friends i have gathered together on this thin raft. we have constructed pyramids in honor of our escaping. this is the land where the pharaoh died.

your welcome.

—the bastard

the mean season…

as the bastard was wolfing down his brekky the other day, he was watching the effing chris Matthew's show.

I frikkin hate that guy

that sanctimonious blowhard shill gets my ire up every Sunday, which is why the wife tries to keep caillou on for the babby.

but what she doesn't know is…

I frikkin HATE caillou, that sanctimonious whiny prick.

always with the whining and the self discovery and the fucking overall wearing teacher.

frikkin bald jerk. go mine me some oil sand you asshole.

but the bastard is getting off track here.

chris Matthews.

on his show on Sunday, his panel of left wing bobble heads are talking about the upcoming Iowa cockus tomorrow

so…

they rock out a sizzle reel of the last 500,000 Iowa cockuses so that I can break my flatscreen with a hammer when the voices tell me that Walter Mondale is in my living room.

I guess the baby isn't going to be able to wash THAT. memory out of her brain.

fucking Walter Mondale.

anyway, with that mess of glass and plasma on my floor, I realize,

A: the bastard bought some fly ass bar stools at ikea

and

B: we are standing on the precipice of what will be the single filthiest presidential election in American history.

FILTHY

and the bastard isn't so sure he can stand it.

but he does have a Des Moines t-shirt.

Des Moines: hell yeah

—the bastard

you see me rollin'… and you're doing it wrong

the bastard likes himself some chain BBQ every now and again.

and I like to go out the the burbs for it as the only evidence of chain restaurants in the liquid city is subway and dunkin.

so it was out to famous Dave's

Fay…

muss…

Dave's

so I roll into the lot with the fan and there it is.

this hummer.

not the old one, the bulky puffy ugly one that looks like the stay puff marshmallow man of automobiles

with faux gun turrets.

faux…

gun…

turrets…

so I excused myself from the fan for a second because I felt the need to pop off a few shots and to inform us all that somewhere in long island…

someone is driving wrongs…

all kinds of wrongs

—the bastard

bad scene…

the bastard is finally coming out of his coma by the good graces of a bottle of kombucha and some noodles.

but he has to tell you that he felt like hell this morning.

the recipe for a bad scene is as follows:

take and afternoon celebratory beer or two because your big kampf is through

add some early evening whiskey to keep in the "thank god this awful production is at an end."

finish bottle with left hand rob.

deposit dead soldier in garbage.

go home.

have a beer or three with wife and brother in law.

after wife goes to bed, have comparison taste test between white whiskey and bourbon.

mix it all together in a big jug and sleep on it.

and in a mere 7 hours, you have something very bad.

enjoythanxbai.

—the bastard

what the bastard has been waiting for

so the bastard is doing the weekly trader joes run.

yeah I go to trader joes. wanna fight about it?

and an ad comes on the radio advertising a broadway show and one critic was quoted as saying,

"this is the play we've all been waiting for"

this is the play we've all been waiting for

what does that even mean?!

we, the collective we have been waiting for this play?

was the OWS crowd waiting for this play?

have the homeless been waiting for this play?

have the fat cats?

the devout?

your moms? has your moms been waiting for this steaming pile of shit?

I know I haven't.

so I beg to differ.

this is NOT play the bastard has been waiting for.

not by a long shot.

I've been waiting for some quiet and four fingers of whiskey

and some piece of mind. that's what the bastard has been waiting for.

so up yours play that we've all been waiting for.

because we haven't. kthanxbai

—the bastard

…on q's and a's

recently, I was editing video for a friend from comic con

and

I started filming sidebars for things I felt like explaining.

"hey, I saw 25 doctor who's at the show and they all wore fez's"

stuff like that.

so that said, if anyone has a decent question,

and if I've had enough whiskey that day,

I will answer your questions.

because I do shit like that now.

—the bastard

…on materials

beep

beep

beep

the bastard frisks himself a 10th time.

don't worry jerk.

you've been randomly selected to be searched for hazardous materials.

all they found was grease on my hands from dinner.

there's your tax dollars at work.

making the world safe from fat guys in gundam t-shirts.

—the bastard

this weak in anime...

Steins;Gate is rapidly becoming my favorite time travel show

at least until Doctor Who comes back this fall.

then all bets are off.

—the bastard

best use of action figures...

...EVER

the beastie boys are old but, they are clever.

watch this now.

—the bastard