Monday, May 31, 2004

Shrek 2

My wife and I recently took my daughter to watch Shrek 2. I figured it would be a nice movie to watch with the FAMILY. Amazingly, I was actually able to sit through the entire film without me spilling my popcorn on top of someone's head. Anyway, after the movie was over, I found myself very confused. I had just realized that Antonio Banderas' charater Puss N Boots was a closet homosexual. I found this completely appalling, considering that this was my daughter's favorite movie. My daughter is too young for me to speak to her about sexuality, but she is old enough to ask questions about why Puss is hitting on Shrek. This is my moral dilemma. What can I do? What should I do?

Stupid things you do when you're drunk.

I recently returned from a convention at the jersey shore. It was a beautiful weekend full of barbecues, horseshoes, and alot of liquor. But what compelled me to write about my weekend was what happened during one of the nights we stayed. After a brief stroll down the boardwalk, my wife and I and another couple decidedto go back to the hotel for some drinks. I figured that I could get my wife drunk enough to have sex with me. But, when we arrived back at the hotel, we found the wives of the other members drunk in front of our door trying to pry open our door. They had found out that we were storing several bottles of liquor in our room for which they felt compelled to relieve us of. Well, after beating them off with a stick, I reluctantly gave them a bottle of Hennessey to leave us alone. After about five minutes, the women were back wanting more. I tried to fight off as many women as I could, but I was severely outnumbered. They were able to take a bottle of Hypnotic. I was crushed!! Fortunately, the women left us alone and proceeded to bang on everyone else's door the rest of the night. Unfortunately for me, my wife felt it unwise to drink that night and I ended up relieving myself in the bathroom. What a waste of a weekend!!!

Evil

Random thoughts for the day...

(1) It was raining but Kentaro and I played golf anyway. Showing some toughness. Until I got home and immediately hit the sack for a nap. Then woke up. Head hurting. Is this why moms don't let their kids play in the rain?

(2) Some words are clearly underused in popular culture. At the top of that list is Gringo. I mean, how great is that word. It's one of those words that sounds funny even if you don't know what it means. Everyone should make an effort to incorporate Gringo into daily conversation. Once a day is fine (to start).

(3) Back to Kentaro. He is a bad person. Let me ask you... who goes and seeks out the video of an American dude getting his head sawed off by some Iraqi dudes? Who has interest in watching something like this? Anyway, if you're interested in that, check this out. It's a video of a black kid beating up a white kid. Hilarity ensues.

Outdated Movie Review
TROY

WOW! Was this movie a questionable choice! Let's start by saying that I loved the Illiad. Tough book (epic poem) to get thru? Sure, especially with a blind minstrel singing it to you. But the story rocks hard. I liked the fact that the whole thing took 10 years. I liked the fact that no one seemed to have any redeeming qualities. Here is where this movie went wrong:

The whole thing seemed to take about 3 weeks, if you include the 12 days for Hector's burial ceremony.

Odysseus was played up like a hero, wasn't he somewhat greyer in the real story. Here they play it like he has some sway over Achilles, whereas I always had the impression he just duped him.

What is up with Achilles? Brad Pitt played him like a primadonna sports athlete, and he was too F***ing whiney, toughen up yo!

Anyway, no real love for the movie!

I do think that any summer movie watching list should include the following two films:

Saved

Garden State

Sunday, May 30, 2004

Evil

I don't know what to make of this photo:



I also don't know what to make of the site where I found it: Jewsweek. Whoa. Hah!

Friday, May 28, 2004

A man ahead of his time

I find it surprising that no one has mentioned the death of David Dellinger. A true hero of the American people. His views may have been a bit socialist, or maybe even a bit communist. But they were pure; they were honest; and more importantly, they were very accurate. Capitalism has corrupted this society. It has made us believe that we are free while it strips every fabric of individuality from our souls. Is that what we want our lives to become? Take it from me, I envy where David is right now.

Fidel in 2004!

Evil

HITTING THE WALL

Yo, has anyone seen John Elway lately? That guy is not looking good at all. Check out his pic here.

Evil

DEATH TRAIN

From my new apartment, it takes me 12 minutes to get to work. (Woo hoo!) But I also run the risk of dying at any given point during the ride. (Boooo!) I take the 2/3 and you've probably never noticed, but check out the huge, uninterrupted stretch between 110th Street and 96th Street:



What this means is that the 2/3 is barreling down the tunnel with all of the speed of a Japanese bullet train, but with none of the technology. Every morning I find myself clutching onto the pole for dear life. You'd think this would be a sensible thing to do, except when the train hits one of those 90 degree turns (see map above) and slams my balls right into the pole.

I am still alive today. Enjoy me while you can.

Thursday, May 27, 2004

Evil

My new apartment is randomly smelly. I can't figure it out. Like, in the bedroom, the corner where the dresser is smells like very ripe papaya. It actually smells sort of nice for a second, but you can tell the papaya is 5 minutes away from rottenness. Except that there's no papaya. Where's that smell coming from?!

My kitchen in general smells like feet. Not my feet. But it's a generic feet smell. I bet no one's feet actually smells like that. But if someone engineered a Scratch-N-Sniff sticker of feet, it would smell like my kitchen. Not very appetizing, I know. I didn't invite you over for dinner though, so leave me alone.

The area near the stove smells like smoke and ash. Oh wait, that makes sense.

When I lie on my bed, the scent of dryer sheets lingers on the half of the bed that's empty. I think there's a laundry room right outside my window. It must be in the next building. There's no laundry room in this building. There's no drop off laundromat in a 5 block radius. I really have no idea what the laundry situation is. I've started wearing suits to work. That's the only thing that's still clean. At some point, I might start wearing suits to bed. At least my bed smells laundry fresh.

Enter the Dragon!

Hey Hoseheads,the monster has arrived! Spitting fire about life, politics, entertainment, sports, and many childhood memories(mostly about x-tian). Stay tuned, because things are about to heat up!

Wednesday, May 26, 2004

Evil

The cleaning lady set my apartment on fire, leaving me with a dusting of ash and a moral dilemma.





These pictures are just a re-creation of the scene... notice the cleaned up stovetop and the wipe marks on the cabinet.

Here's how things went down:

I get this cleaning lady from craigslist because I was moving into a new apartment and I had a feeling that the crackwhore who used to live there wasn't so clean. So the cleaning lady comes, I let her in, and I tell here I'll be back in 3 hours. Off I went to finish packing my old apartment for the move.

I come back 3 hours later, open the door, and the cleaning lady stands there startled. Black smudges are all over her face. She tells me there was a fire. I go, What? She explains. Her story seems implausible. I have never in my life seen fire appear out of nowhere, with no warning.

Here is my dilemma: the cleaning lady said she would take responsibility... pay for the replacement parts to the fridge, the stove burner, clean up the walls. That sounded good, but now I feel bad about it. The replacement parts come out to about $150. Is that a lot of money to a cleaning lady? Was it really her fault to begin with, or just dumb luck? Should I offer to pay half?

I have her address. She lives in the East Village. There's a good chance she pays more rent than me, considering that I live in a crackden in Harlem. Every other building up here is boarded up.

What should I do? Weigh in!

Evil

Sometimes I feel like this guy:

Monday, May 24, 2004

The Hustle endth

So The Hustle got shut down when I got serious about my job search. After all was said and done it was a better use of my time to actually go out and get a job rather than writing occasionally funny columns about failing to get one.

Here is how the Hustle ended .

The Complete (and unedited Hustle) can be found here.

Wednesday, May 12, 2004

Happy Birthday!

Today, The Hose turns 1 years old! That's pretty exciting no? No, I guess its not. What had initially started as me talking about what was going on last summer in Brazil is now a completely different thing. I can't even describe it. I know for about 3 months all anyone did was talk NBA Playoffs (btw, NETS!) then that ended. We tried a B School thing, but I was the only tool in B School. Then no one knew what to do. At various points we had a number of random contributors show up but none had the interest or humoric (not a word) consistency to deliver on a day to day basis. Even the guys who did stick around lack those traits, but, what are you gonna do, right? It looks like its just going to be me, Evil, and Sleeve moving forward.

Thanks to everyone who has written or read. which i think sums up to 4 people total!

Here's what to look out for in the year ahead:
X-Tian moves back to NY, sells out to the man and fails to get a girlfriend
Evil fresh off the biggest IPO of the century somehow still fails to translate it into getting any ass.
Sleeve manages to keep lots of random ass around just in case

Tuesday, May 11, 2004

Smarter than its target Audience


Ok, I love Tina Fey. I love her wit, I love "Weekend Update" I love her geek cool style, and I love the scar on her left cheek. ANYWAY, the point was I was going to give Mean Girls a chance no matter what.

And let me tell you, I loved it. It was clearly smarter than its target audience. They took the idea of a Heathers took the campiness and darkness out of it and made it a little snarkier. Its really hard to think Lindsay Lohan could ever be a dork, so its cool they acknowledged that and made her a product of her upbringing. The metaphor of High School as a jungle though old felt fun here as Lohan's character tried to find analogues for her new world in her old one.

Tina Fey rocks!

Also, the thing was basically a celebration of overdeveloped 16 year old boobs! Its a winner for everyone.

Monday, May 10, 2004

Guess who's the clown?
Poor Social Skills


It's a new feature!

Everyone involved in this conversation has poor social skills:

"i put in a request for one at the apple store...the guy was less then helpful..first he made me guess which one was in stock(i guessed pink, then silver, then he pulls it out from behind his back and says..."c'mon be more observant" angered by his faggetry i proclaimed, "all i want is the gay powder blue one" in as commanding and masculine a voice as i could muster and he says okay and allows me to put in a request..i then asked how long the wait would be and he sighs "i dont know, could be weeks"...the proper action in such a situation would've been to beat the crap out of him..but exhausted from the ordeal i went home and ate a bag of french onion sun chips in my underwear while watching last week's episode of one tree hill"

The only question that remains is:
Who wrote this?
(a) Manolo
(b) Evil
(c) The Bumpasarus
(d) Sleeve
(e) Xtian
(f) Charles
(g) Cheo

Thursday, May 06, 2004

Sunday, May 02, 2004

Evil

CAMP X-RAY, UPPER EAST SIDE

We live in tumultuous and uncertain times. People used to laugh at others who constantly crane their heads upward to check that the sky is indeed not falling. But now you never know, whether it's the bigness of planes above your head or the smallness of microbes before your face. So you might well imagine my consternation when the peace of my apartment was invaded by a big ass bumblebee.

When I first saw him I leapt to my feet. I swatted at him. He evaded. I swatted again. He dashed. He dodged. I decided to put on some pants seeing as the window shades were wide open.

With pants on, I got serious. Swat. Swat. Flailing. Failing. But wait. The wind from my swatting just pushed the bee into the ceiling lights. The heat stunned it. It fell to the ground. I dumped out my metal mesh garbage can and used it to cover him. YES!



Hour 1 of captivity: He buzzes around wildly, sometimes smashing against the metal mesh. I ignore him.

Hour 2 of captivity: He has calmed down. I walk over and ask rhetorically, "Who's tough now?" I walk away.

Hour 3 of captivity: I rap viciously against the side of the metal mesh and he falls off. He climbs back on. I lift the garbage can slightly and thump it hard on the ground. He falls off again. I laugh. I tell him I'm going to H&M to buy some linen shirts for spring. I go.

Hour 6 of captivity: I consider spraying him with some chemicals stashed beneath the sink. I decide not to, because doing so would be cruel.

Hour 9 of captivity: He is now on the floor. I lift his cage. Is he still alive? Yes, he's moving, but sluggish. I snap a few photos (above).

Hour 18 of captivity: The next morning. I check on him. He's dead.