Dudecake #1: Jane Russell Had It Pretty Wired

I'm just numbering the pin-ups from now on. And I'm lifting this month's installment in its entirety from this Jackie Collins fan site made by an artist named Sarah Baker. I'm barely aware of Jane Russell, let alone Jackie Collins. But maybe I should look into all of these ladies's work.

The clip is from Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, which I have never seen because it has no motorcycles or cyborgs in it.

AND THEN HE KISSED ME!!

Just so you all know, the beginning of the movie Adventures in Babysitting is basically how I start each and every day of my life. FYI, ETC ... The Crystals, a bitching tartan poufy skirt, leaping through my eau de toilette ... everything except the douchey bro. (I am currently douchey bro-less, but feel free to fill out an application and start the line to my left, fellas)



Hey Williamsburg-ites  ... Williamsburgians? Williamsburgonians? Whatever you call yourself, check it:

Off of Metropolitan and Grand, there is a street named Betty "Moe" Trezza Way. The other night, on my way with some friends to a rooftop BBQ, we walked by this street and I was all "Lolz, What girl gets the nickname Moe???!! Bahahaha." My friend Sara suggested I look up this unfortunate lady, and as it turns out I am psyched we accidentally walked past at all.

Betty "Moe" Trezza played for the Racine Belles All-American Girls Professional Baseball League. She was born and raised, then later died in Williamsburg, on the very street now named for her. Betty Spaghetti!!!! The woman, the myth, REALIZED on the streets of the east 'Burg.



I hope everyone has a good weekend. If you need something fun to do on Friday that involves musical treats and dancing until wee hours with Master Jonathan Toubin and his pal from SF Primo, please hit this party up proper:

Vote for Your Bracket of Evil

March Mayhem

Best Dream Ever

There's a general consensus that listening to other people describe their dreams is boring and confusing. There are exceptions. For instance, if you are Marco from Las Vegas then you should tell everyone about your dreams. Hell, you should post them on Facebook. This one really deserved a wider audience. It is quickly becoming the most critically acclaimed dream on the Web. Below is the complete text of his post.

Pau Gasol: Now with Leather Chaps and Road Warrior Boots

Pau Gasol finally entered the realm of my dreams last night and what a grand entrance it was! I managed to write down what I could remember when I woke up - no shit.

The dream started out with me interviewing him, Ahmad Rashad style, in his boyhood home somewhere in Spain. His mom happened to have a gigantic washtub of beans cooking over a huge stove, as the Spanish are known for.

During the interview we hit it off so well, that I brought him back to the states to hang out with me and all of my friends. In anticipation of the sesh, we went to Costco to buy much needed party supplies. Pau ended up buying a Sick Of It All box set. This dude clearly knows how to party!

Soon enough we arrived at the party, which was actually a punk show in an old Franciscan mission. I definitely remember thinking at some point, "Whoa, I'm totally hanging out with Pau Gasol at a punk show in a mission! What the fuck!?"

Eventually the bands ended and Pau and I perused some of the exhibits the mission happened to have in a side room somewhere. Among these exhibits was a micro sculpture of a velociraptor, displayed next to a specimen of a flea with a pin holding it down. Upon viewing these, Pau knocked the entire display off the table with one sweep of his arm in some kind of primal gesture of dumbfounded frustration. I promptly laughed and shared the incident with Sean Grossman, who happened to be nearby. He was stoked.

Finally, it was time to get onto the drinking and partying. Pau had apparently slipped away to change into party clothes. He pulled me aside to ask my opinion of his wardrobe. Dude was dressed in classic tan leather cowboy chaps, complete with stamped cowboy designs. He lifted those up from his shin to reveal his Mad Max style "road warrior" boots, complete with metal shin plates. Apparently he had bought these while we were shopping earlier and wanted to surprise everyone.

The party was fun, we listened to Sick Of It All, and I made Pau laugh a lot. Everyone showed up, including Roxie, with Christian Bale at her side. When I asked her why he was there, she told me he was her new boyfriend. I remember my specific reply being, "Well, at least now you have someone to beat up the cops!"

Eventually I blacked out, of course, only to be woken up by Roxie, Jessie and their son, who was now 7 years old for some reason. They were yelling some inane question at me and their son's eyes had all kinds of electric currents running through them, like Raiden in Mortal Kombat. Upon answering, I got up to realize that everyone was still up, still high on BEERS and had just heard our conversation. All of a sudden, Pau bursts into the room, dressed in his jammies, which boasted a ridiculously loud pattern of some sort, and drinking a glass of champagne. Without hesitation, he put the Sex Pistols on the stereo and drunkenly shouted, "SEEEX PISTOOOLSSS! PUUUUNK ROCK! YEEEEAH," while triumphantly holding his glass of champagne in the air.

Clearly, I was pretty stoked on how the party was turning out. I got up and surveyed the room. The floor was littered with drunken buffoons, which made me burst into laughter. Bobby Franks, amongst the drunken buffoons, asked me why I was laughing. "Dude! This room looks like a freakin emergency shelter after a natural disaster more than it does a party," I exclaimed while still laughing. Soon enough, the laughing fit devolved into a wrestling/pillow fight amongst the drunken buffoons. Pau wanted to join in but I wouldn't let him due to his hamstring injury that he was still nursing, an allusion to the true state of affairs in the non-dream world.

Next thing I know, I had woken up and thought to myself, "Did I just dream about hanging out and partying with Pau Gasol!?" All of a sudden I looked up and saw that we were still in the party room and Pau was situating his sleeping area on the couch! It wasn't a dream after all!

Then I really woke up and realized that it was a dream. Slightly disappointed, I decided to write all this nonsense down because it was just too good to forget.

Soccer Goal Urinal Mat

That's what you're looking at. After this, we are getting our minds out of the gutter, I swear. But for today, I would like to introduce you to Urinals.net. The link will take you to their Top Ten Urinals list, but you can view urinals on the site from the Taj Majal to the Downer's Grove Public Library in Downer's Grove, Illinois.

I am informed by this unique website that the soccer goal urinal mats are popular in bars in Europe and South America.

Put down the lip gloss. Step away from the mirror.

I don't know why, but I wasn't expecting much from Whip It. What I got was a great funny sports movie with coming-of-age themes that didn't make me grit my teeth and cringe. The roller derby action made me cringe and grind my teeth. But that was in a fun "I can't watch" kind of way that I enjoyed. And it's set in Austin, Texas. You could almost call it a star vehicle for the city. No one appraises me of these things.

I'm a real soft touch for "be your own hero" sentiments so I should have realized I'd get sucked in directly. I was getting misty eyed moments into the film but once the real derby action started I got my head in the game. The fine soundtrack featuring gems from The Ettes and Jens Lekman helped with that. So did the breakneck camera work and accurate portrayals of both roller derby and Austin. All the people in the movie looked, or were cleverly made to look, like real Austinites who had been binging on Lone Star beer since middle school. I especially appreciated the way they got the derby girl look down for the likes of Drew Barrymore, Eve and Juliette Lewis: kinda busted but murderously glamorous.

It's too early to tell, but Whip It might meet my criteria for a favorite movie. I have to be able to watch the film over and over again at any time no matter how cranky or cynical I'm feeling. This might be one of those. It has corny/hilarious dialog, lots of thrills and eye snacks and a (subtly presented) moral I can't remind myself of often enough: It's totally okay to get hurt.

Beatup.com

As I lay convalescing, single, and stony broke, my attentions are forced wincingly outward, and to the world beyond the walls of my flat.


Life in New York City comes with a free subscription to the nagging sensation that, somehow, you're constantly missing out. (I'll grant that the feeling is probably not unique to Ewe Nork.) Clearly, there's always some event on somewhere, or some social engagement that will be the answer to your plaintive mutterings for a better scene than the one you're at. Friends you haven't seen in a while or people you'd like to meet are all there, gathered around your framed, sepia tone portrait perched wistfully atop a bedoilied brandy stand. Remarks are passed about your supposed whereabouts, and, shrugging their perfect bare shoulders, elegant beauties in backless formalwear pour out your portion of potent potables onto the parquet.

Of course, this is a janked, grass-is-always-greener, knee-jerk reaction to the apparently ceaseless hustle and bustle. Yet, even those of us not prone to acute egomania will, invariably, hear that they've missed a favorite band playing the nearby venue enough times to begin perceiving the raw tonnage of cultural opportunities slipping through their fingers.

With practice, you can dismiss the notion handily-- even to the point of feigning disdain for the social trappings of a city to whom you pay through the nose for rent. For me, it's gotten to the point where I can luxuriate in my gotham-given freedom-not-to-attend with a certain literary flourish and a mantra lifted from the immortal Ford Prefect: "Fuck (the geese), you can't care about every damn thing."

However, when you are truly stuck at home, or bedridden, or trapped under a file cabinet, the notion that you're a non-participant is no longer a quaint and irrational inkling, it's an inescapable fact. The city is going on out there you're missing it. The end.

To my rescue comes a host of social appliances. (Not the kind you're thinking of, you deviant. Come see me after class.) For better or worse, I can keep tabs on my compatriots by incessantly perusing their profile pages on social networking sites. Anyone will tell you that this is a crap way to make anyone feel better about anything. At the very least, it's an iron-clad confirmation that everyone else is having a better time. I had might as well stare listlessly out of a ground-floor window, pressing the fingers of one hand lightly against the glass. Certainly, I'd disturb some flâneurs and a postal worker or two and come away with a sense of accomplishment for the day.

A conversation with the immortal Bev (she's a highlander) prompted me to consider meetup sites. Sure, I'd have to wait until I was healed up enough to go meet anybody anywhere, but to pass the time I could sign up and start making plans with what like-minded and similarly-interested folks I might encounter. She even told me about a prospective meetup she had in the works with someone who was nearly her equal in terms of cultural composition. "How nice," I thought. The thought lasted for all of ten seconds. "Actually, be careful," is what I said. But, I wasn't attempting to warn Bev against all the classic dangers of meeting someone from the æther in person.

There is, of course, the nigh-obvious peril that any two persons with similar interests, leanings, quirks, etc., will, despite their commonalities, make BITTER ADVERSARIES. Who hasn't witnessed a pair of workplace rivals tearing each others' throats out and wondered at their staggering congruencies? The observation is usually followed with the whispered benediction, "Why don't they just fuck and get it over with?" My memory is pockmarked with instances of personalities that should've gotten along and utterly didn't. Surely, the meetup sites must conceal hotbeds of noxious hepatic air-- in the form of potential interpersonal rancor, that is-- lurking tantalizingly underfoot.

Why not encourage this?

If dynamics such as these are the ineluctable conditions of congregation, why not afford them a venue for their further development and study? I propose Beatup.com. The site would mirror other meetup sites in so much as groups would be allowed to coalesce based on mutual interests, shared passions, political inclinations, etc. However, participation would be predicated on the acknowledgment of a baseline likelihood for encountering acrimony, and quite possibly, violence. This is where the character of the sites would diverge sharply, because I foresee no direct corollary between the implied dynamism of the unifying hobby or interest, and the level of vitriol to which it's members may aspire. For example: I could easily envision a klatsch of monster truck enthusiasts having a tough time working themselves into a lather over anything. The associated activities are largely spectator-driven, and inherently cathartic. Meanwhile, it does not take much effort for me conjure up the image of a parliament of postgraduate-degree-seeking fibers majors overcome with bloodlust, and putting each others' eyes out with finest rosewood knitting needles.


Some might mistake the premise of beatup for that of any fight club, or otherwise pugilistic social entity. This is a misconception to be avoided. While the fight club might emphasize actualization through combat and confrontation, it gives a short shrift to the notion of loathing-- or as I like to call it: the sweet science. And, rather than emphasizing technique garnered over extended tutelage, Beatup.com would, by reflecting a larger, if not universal social dynamic, encourage its denizens to let slip into guano loco nearly immediately. In so doing, Beatup.com might foster an environment of improvisation and innovation unhindered by the fetters of "traditional" combat.

Thankfully, I have neither the inclination nor the wherewithal to play founder to this seedling invention. Several seconds of investigation have revealed that the domain is probably available, for a price, as there seems to be some kind of placeholder site hanging out at Beatup.com, not doing anybody any favors. Furthermore, I won’t be up for a throwdown for at least a few weeks yet. Perhaps I’ll troll the comparatively namby-pamby meetup sites looking for easy prey, an arch-nemesis, or someone with whom I may simply fuck and get it over with.

Best Bad Idea Blog

Every Day Should be Saturday makes me want to hang up my guns. The Digital Viking installments dealing with food, beer, explosives and other such primal topics set the bar pretty high for me as far as bad idea writing goes. It's also where we got the bar stool below.

www.everydayshouldbesaturday.com

Cheetos Baseball

Cheetos baseball is only possible, so far as I know, with giant Cheetos. They are round-ish, cylindrical, really, and very hard and dense. They are actually edible too; at least in comparison to regular Cheetos.
I was at a party recently where I started pitching them to a young woman with a baseball bat. It was quickly discovered that this was fun. You can throw them and you can hit them. Try it.
Someone recently observed that it's sort of striking/maybe a little disturbing that this food is so structurally sound you can hit it with a bat several times. I didn't think about this at the time.

Wizard Staff

This outdoor drinking game is a new one on me but I like the arts-and-crafts-meets-LARPing aspect of it. The men demonstrating it in this instructive video are connected to the band Death By Stereo. The Emotron posted this on Myspace.com. He referred to their game as the "West Coast version." The wisest wizard is the one who can tell me how the East Coast version goes.

If you really want to, you can watch The Emotron play a non-alcoholic version. Again, with the spewing of the Yoo-Hoo:

HERE Urban Dictionary has helped me out again. Perhaps, the jousting part is a burly Western addition.