JOE MATHLETE'S GREAT AMERICAN BLOG

Here's what I did today

2011-04-08T20:01:00.001-07:00

First I woke up and got dressed and did all the regular stuff you do when you wake up.

I went to a copy store to get some large papers scanned into jpegs. A friend of mine works there and we talked for awhile about his new baby. He took the papers and said they would be scanned in by Monday; I could come by whenever and pick them up.

I had noticed a new Mexican restaurant next door to the copy store and wanted to try it out, but there was a line out front. I could not tell if the line was to get into the restaurant or if it was people waiting for cars they valet parked, but upon realizing the restaurant had valet parking I decided against eating there.

I went to another Mexican restaurant I have frequented for years and ordered so much food. I read free newspapers and ate. I sent a message to Twitter about how restaurants in that particular neighborhood should not be allowed to have valet parking during the daytime. I considered writing about how the restaurant was a VHS rental place like a year ago, and who are they to be all fancy, but I decided the original, briefer message was funnier and anyway I was going over the character limit.

I went to the college radio station where I DJ and I DJed for an hour. Before and afterwards I went to the campus bar and drank some beer. The show went well and I played several songs I really enjoy. Afterwards, while at the bar, I got a text message from an old friend saying there was "free booze!" at our high school, and some other old friends are there, and I should come by. This weekend is my ten year high school reunion, and there are a bunch of homecoming-type events going on.

I decided that would be fun so I drove to my old high school. On my way I passed another high school, which was hosting some sort of livestock exhibition. There was a big metal structure out front with a bunch of goats in pens, and hay everywhere. I leaned out my window and made two loud goat noises at the goats. I am really good at making really loud goat noises, it's just kind of one of those things. It was really fun. Some of the goats looked up at me as I drove off.

I showed up at my high school and was stopped at the front entrance by an off-duty police officer hired to do security. He asked me if I was here for the play or the alumni event. I told him I was here for the alumni event. He told me to drive straight and I did. I had not been back to my high school more than once or twice since I graduated.

I saw a big outdoor tent set up and people dressed up for a cocktail party. There was valet parking. I asked if I could park my own car and they said it was okay. The event was much more formal than I had anticipated. It is a private school and this was the sort of thing where they try to get alumni to donate money. I think. I don't know. I don't know what it was but it was not what I am used to doing on Friday evenings and I was wearing jeans and a t-shirt with a rabbit on it and I didn't see anyone I knew.

I walked past everyone around the corner of a building to call my old friend and ask him if he was here or if he had tricked me or what. He didn't pick up so I called him again. Two off-duty police officers hired as security guards came around and asked me what I was doing there. I explained that I was an alumni and here for the alumni event, but realized as I was speaking that I did not know anything about the event I was supposed to be attending. They told me I did not look like I was supposed to be there. I told them I did not know it was going to be so dressy.

The whole time this was happening I was half-laughing because I was trying to figure out the best way to articulate the obvious metaphor to the off-duty police officers. Luckily the group of people I was there to see saw me and everything was kosher. I ended up telling the police officers that I went to the school for seven years and was used to this sort of thing, which wasn't the best thing I could have said but I hope they got the gist - not so much the fact that it was cops, just the general scenario. Anyway they were ultimately very friendly. I walked back to where the big tent was and avoided eye contact with everybody I didn't know. I continued to be dressed the way I was.

I said hi to some people who used to be teenagers with me. Some work at oil companies, one is a lawyer, I think one works at Microsoft. I told people what I do. I made light and pleasant conversation with a half a dozen people. I saw lots of people who did not graduate the same year as I did, talking to each other. There was an open bar and there was lots of food. I had a Bud Light and tried to stay out of the way. I felt very underdressed and out of my element, but in a fun, enjoyable way. Standing outside in the courtyard, looking at the buildings and the trees, I barely recognized the school at all.

I talked to best friend in sixth grade. He was the first friend I made at that school. We were both really into comic books and alternative rock. He's a teacher there now. We had not spoken in years; he says he does not really keep up with our classmates, but he thinks about the old days all the time. I don't know how you wouldn't. We caught up for awhile. It was good to see him.

I asked if he was going to go to our real reunion tomorrow, the ten year thing for our grade. He said he wasn't sure but didn't think so. He is married now with two kids, one pretty much a newborn, so that's what he does now. He was also put off by the fact that they rented out a restaurant patio and they are charging fifty dollars a person. I was put off by that too. He said we should've just bought some kegs and had the party at the school. I thought that sounded really fun. Maybe the cafeteria or something.

I told him that if the school ever needed an alumni guest speaker for chapel he should call me. He said something positive but noncommittal, which was a good way to respond. We laughed about the thing with the police. I told him I wished I'd thought to dress up a little more but was still glad things happened the way they did because now I have that story forever.

I said goodbye to my friend who works for our school and drove home.

An open letter to Charlie Sheen: Please just die

2011-03-02T11:33:00.000-08:00

(Note: this was originally written for 29-95.com, my employers for the past couple of years, who were for whatever reasons horrified when I turned it in)

Dear Mr. Sheen,

Sometimes it is hard to make the obvious choices in life. It took you years to cash in on your asshole partyboy image and sleepwalk through a maddeningly popular sitcom that's enabled you to become richer (and higher) than Christ and the Beatles combined. It may have been hard for you to give up on the idea that you might someday make another Platoon (or even The Chase) and lower yourself to do a television program that, by all measurable standards, defines Middle American middle of the road. But look at yourself today, lounging in your indoor swimming pool filled with cocaine and breast implants, relaxing after another endlessly Facebook-quotable interview with The Today Show or CNBC or The Miami Student Times or whoever was next down on the totem pole. You've got to admit that selling out was the right thing to do.

Which is why I'm imploring you to continue embracing the path you have been so vigorously pounding as of late. Please die, Charlie Sheen. Please, please die.

Die spectacularly, violently, in a way that people only dream about. Die publicly, loudly, profanely, nakedly. Don't die like a mere superstar, or even just a plain hero. Ke$ha is a "superstar." A dog who saves a cat's life is a "hero." Die like a visionary artist, or a freedom fighter. Die like a demigod. Die in a way that people will finally understand the Charlie Sheen that only you so far seem to understand; the Charlie Sheen who shoots poetry and magic from his fingertips; the Charlie Sheen whose very essence is pure narcotic toxin too potent for mortals to shoot, snort or freebase; the Charlie Sheen who is whatever the hell else crazy manic bullshit you've been sputtering. Die where there are plenty of people around to photograph and film it.

Construct a helicopter shaped like your flaccid, hungover penis and crash it into your mansion. Self-finance your own Major League 3 (or technically 4, but... no, you're right, it so completely does not even matter) and ride a motorcycle into an explosives-laden bus in the climactic final scene - you'd have to get it right in one take but you can do it because duh, you're Charlie Sheen! Round up every single one of your friends from the past fifteen years (hookers) and reenact that naked rollerskating death scene from Monty Python's The Meaning of Life (if you haven't seen it, it's exactly what it sounds like). Pay the half man from Two and a Half Men to chase you through a shopping mall and stab you in the neck. Nobody's going to stop him! People love you, Charlie!

Do whatever you like - I'm sure you've got plenty of better ideas - so long as it ends with you dying until you're dead. And please, try not to kill anybody else while you're at it. Maybe a couple paparazzo. But remember - this is your time to shine, Charlie.

Because it's all about to go downhill. You know that, right? You must know you're peaking... You must be able to feel it in your nigh-invulnerable bones. You can pass as many drug tests as you like - black-market nun urine remains cheap and plentiful - and you can imaginatively threaten as many television executives as there are stars in your head, but eventually the ever-fickle public is going to turn its attention to the next psychotic egotist. Even if you win your lawsuit against CBS, even if you subsequently turn it into an all-pornography network, even if you are allowed to behead Two and a Half Men creator Chuck Lorre and wear his head around your neck like a Flava Flav medallion, people are going to stop focusing their energy on you. The time to act is now, and the smartest thing you can do is clearly to take your own life.

Wrestle a great white shark in a tank filled with liquid pharmaceutical cocaine - and then, after you win (you winner, you!), drink the shark's blood (and whatever may be leftover in the tank) and chastise the attending spectators for their bloodlust and lack of faith in your superhumanity. Then shoot yourself in the face. It will probably take more than one bullet (you = Charlie Sheen) but it needs to be done. Humanity needs to be taught a lesson - nothing can defeat Charlie Sheen, and Charlie Sheen can defeat anything. Why even bother playing out the rest of this Two and a Half Men debacle, or for that matter the rest of your dumb life? Why bother talking to these dullard news reporters, wasting braggadocio that seasoned battle rappers would sell their rims for on the likes of Good Morning America and the guy who used to work for Inside Edition? Why spend so much of your (admittedly inexhaustible) energy convincing the world what, if we haven't figured out yet, we're probably never going to get - that Charlie Sheen is a superhuman creature of power and light, whose bountiful talent and infinite love we have taken for granted like spoiled, ungrateful heathen brats.

The worst case scenario is that mankind learns the error of its ways and vows to take a lesson from you, while you ascend to the Right Hand of God where you shall sit at his side, judging the quick and the dead while a choir of angels provide you with all the sandwiches, massages and handjobs CBS so cruelly withheld. Meanwhile back on Earth, after a prolonged period of mourning, wailing and gnashing of teeth, humanity will unite in their grief, taking the appropriate lessons from your death and your glorious, spectacular life. The Alpha will become Alpha-er, and the rest will get out of their way. Society will realize how wrong it's been to let feebleminded dorks peddle sham concepts like "addiction," "bi-polar illness" and "it is not cool to hit women" for so long. Hookers will at long last flourish in a free-market economy. Dudes will wear sunglasses indoors.

The best case scenario is one that I'm sure you've been suspecting for awhile now - namely, that you are an Immortal and cannot be killed. Save for your increasingly melty candle face, I cannot offer much in the way of an argument against the idea that you will live forever no matter how many times you try to shoot yourself in the face. If ever there were a time to test this theory, it is now. Please, Mr. Sheen. Please. I know you've got another television interview lined up soon. Stab yourself in the eye in front of Katie Couric until you die or defeat death entirely. It must be done. I would help you if I could.

You have so much to offer. Think of all the good in this world, all the joy and all the happiness. Think of all the sorrow and the sadness, all the people who aren't sure where they're going in life or how they're going to make it to tomorrow. Think of all the kindly talk show hosts and pundits who have been there for you these past couple weeks, graciously enabling you to loudly and publicly wallow in your brilliant disease. Think of all your fans, the beautiful nation of blog commenters and Entertainment Tonight rubberneckers hanging on your every word, breathlessly rooting for your glorious victory over CBS and, by extension, your even more glorious self-immolation. Think of the children, Charlie Sheen. Hurry up and die, people are starting to get bored.

An Amusing True Story About This One Time I Tried To Prevent Date Rape

2010-06-01T21:00:00.000-07:00

On my way from my car to go see a couple of bands play at a bar I notice a couple walking on the sidewalk about a half block away from me, a man and a woman, both dressed reasonably nice. The woman is talking loudly and angrily and having trouble walking in a straight line; the man is doing his best to steady the woman.

I cross to the other side of the street and keep walking.

As I get closer I can see the woman is not just drunk, but extraordinarily, famously drunk - frat party drunk, comatose drunk, vomit-at-any-minute drunk. Sick drunk. She seems to be struggling weakly against both gravity and her companion, who does not seem inebriated whatsoever, and moreso than that seems to be doing his best to shut her up and hustle her into the apartment complex they're now standing in front of.

It's not quite ten PM, central standard time, on a Saturday night.

The woman is clearly angry at the man, and clearly not used to being this wasted. The man, on the other hand, seems every bit as calm and collected as the woman is upset and disoriented. He also looks about ten or fifteen years older than the her, now that I've got a better look. The woman is yelling at him now, pushing at him. She takes a swing at him with her purse, misses, and falls squat on her ass.

I've had friends who've been drugged at clubs or bars. It's awful. When she fell onto the pavement like that I had to stop walking.

"Hey! Is everything okay?"

The guy looks up while attempting to help the woman off the ground. He seems more agitated now. "Yeah, we're fine."

The woman has been yell-muttering unintelligibly this whole time. She does not like being helped up. "She's just drunk is all," the man says. The woman starts protesting semi-coherently.

I'm bad at confrontation and I'm good at minding my own business but at that moment I was beyond pissed off at the guy. He went on a date with some girl, doped her up, and now he's trying to hustle her into his apartment before she passes out. At that moment he was everyone who's ever taken advantage of anyone else.

I raised my voice. "It's not even ten o'clock. Who gets this drunk at ten o'clock?"

He sighed a little bit. "My wife."

She steadied herself on his shoulder and yelled across the street to me "It's because I'm a Republican and he's a Democrat!"

I smiled and wished them a good evening, told them to take care. I continued on to the bar, grateful for the happy ending. I felt like shit.

If you are into Twitter I have one of those now

2009-05-18T01:36:00.000-07:00

It's right here. I've only been doing haiku so far and I think I'm going to be able to stick with it. Feel free to be my Twitterbuddy or however that works.

I am Twitterbuddies with Slim Thug, it's awesome. He doesn't want to take blood pressure medicine because he won't be able to get an erection. This is a fact that I know.

Also totally do go to www.29-95.com/time-suck to see things I do.

(side note: if you would describe yourself as "into Twitter" without being prompted, no offense but we would probably not hang out as I still don't get what it's about and in a lot of ways I am weird about the internet to begin with)

Hi there Houston: I will be at the Art Car Parade Saturday drawing stuff for free

2009-05-08T11:20:00.000-07:00

The Art Car Parade is an annual event here in town where people who drive Art Cars come from all over the country and close down streets I usually drive on and a lot of years I forget about it until I have somewhere to go and I see all these orange cones and I go "shit, it's this thing again." I have been before and it's pretty neat, though; people from all over the country who drive Art Cars (which can range from cars meticulously decorated to look like things like sharks or tanks or cockroaches to just cars with a bunch of random shit glued to them for no good reason) come to my town and go crazy for several days, and it culminates in a big parade on Saturday.

I have been set up with a little booth where I'm drawing pictures for people, taking requests like with the thing I used to do with index cards. It should be a lot of fun. Come say hi if you live where I live and are going to be at the parade and I'll draw you something silly.

In other news, Funniest British and/or Jewish Comedy and/or Music Trios Week continues for some reason on 29-95.com. Finalists include The Beastie Boys, the crew from the Ricky Gervais Podcast, Yo La Tengo, Stella, and The Police (that one should be up sometime later today).

What you have been missing if you haven't been looking at 29-95.com

2009-05-04T14:23:00.000-07:00

A bunch of stuff by a bunch of people writing about stuff, first of all. If you were specifically interested in stuff I was doing:

A review of an episode of Everybody Loves Raymond on mute

A Shrek-themed wedding and the existence of Warcraft pornography make me upset

How Was I Not Fired, Part Two

Lotsa comics (scroll down a little bit)

One of my favorite local bands plays a song in my living room

Marmaduke Explained (still pisses me off after almost three goddamn years)

Coming soon: a review of the Godfather Part III where I mostly just ask a bunch of angry rhetorical questions and swear, a review of the Wolverine movie co-authored by my childhood, and a continued listing all week of the Funniest British and/or Jewish Comedy and/or Music Trios.

Check out the Now Train, future-style! (tm)

(sorry)

29-95.com - Joe Mathlete returns to the internet! Like, every damn day!

2009-04-23T19:34:00.000-07:00

First of all: 29-95.com. BUT: Maybe more importantly:

What I Think Bruce Springsteen's "Born to Run" Sounds Like, Without Ever Having Heard It

How Was I Not Fired

Can Your Preacher Turn Into an Airplane?

Drawing Index Cards, Live In Person

Ruined Movie Soundtrack Smorgasbord

As you guys have noticed, I don't update this blog very often anymore, nor any of the blogs I keep. There are reasons for this: blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You may not find all of those valid or relevant, but they were all factors for me laying lower than I did in, say, 2007. But if you miss those heady times when I worked an office job and was so bored that every day I'd do something like replace one word from every CNN.com headline with "Grandpa" (I had better days, too), well, I wanted to let you know I'm writing stuff on a daily basis again, and you should read it 'cuz it's good.

The website, like it says up there, is 29-95.com. That's the latitude and longitude of Houston, my hometown, of which I am very fond (true story: I am actually wearing a shirt that says "it's okay to (heart) Houston" right now; I considered taking a webcam picture of the lame coincidence but a) seemed contrived and b) I've had the flu for a week and a half and I look like a doodoo zombie.) Though the site is Houston-centric, I won't actually be writing about Houston too often, though.

My section's called Time Suck, though I'll sometimes be doing work in other sections. I'll be giving them at least one post a day, plus two original comics, "Sauce Policy" and "Dating is Hard" (you can scroll down to see the first few) and a poorly-shot video of a band playing in my living room every two weeks. They haven't really set any limits for me; they've actually used the words "my playground" more than once, which I am okay with.

Honestly, the guys who have started the site have been enormously cool to me; my editor, Sara Cress, has given me an enormous amount of creative freedom, and between my freelancers checks and living like a pauper in an extraordinarily affordable city I am able to live mostly off of this. After a year and a half of working mostly as a movie theater lackey (see above, "How Was I Not Fired"), a grocery store food guy (it was a really good one but had crazy downsides, and anyway they fired me) and an actor (shut up), it will be wonderful to focus on writing goofy shit again, and drawing goofy shit again, and actually spending time on the internet again. I hope you'll check it out.

Beats,

Joe Mathlete

P.S. -- I literally did almost forget this: Starting soon, I will be doing Marmaduke Explained on the new site. Like, regularly.

Dating is Hard

2009-04-03T13:20:00.000-07:00

Side note - I have a big announcement to make soon. Really!

The Mathletes - Linger (Cranberries cover)

2009-03-16T13:11:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I have ideas, and sometimes I carry out these ideas.

The Mathletes - Les Os (Unicorns cover) video coming soon.

http://myspace.com/themathletes

Hustler Presents Great Works of English Literature

2009-03-13T17:01:00.000-07:00

(Disclaimer: like most great ideas I have had, there is no way I am the first person to think of this. If I am... Crud, I shoulda submitted this to McSweeney's or something.)

(Also, I don't know where you work, but if you're a kindergarten teacher or nun this might be NSFW. No pictures, just dirty, filthy, sexy, sexy words. EDIT: it appears this has actually been messing with some people's work filters, so here come some asterisks. Bummer.)

The Adventures of F*ckleberry Finn
Brave Nude World
To Drill a Mockingbird
Boneo and Screwliet
Lord of the Guys
An Uncut Yankee in King Arthur's C*nt
The Importance of Boning Earnest
Taming of the Screw
A Separate Piece of Ass
Flasher in the Rye
Pride and Prejudice and Buttf*cking
The Old Man and the Shemale
As I Lay Diandra
The Gropes of Ass
The Canterbury Tail
Robinson Cruiser
20,000 Licks Under the Sea
All Quiet in the Western C*nt
1984 C*cks
Turn of the Screw
Portrait Of The Artist In A Young Man

God Dammit

2009-03-06T10:35:00.000-08:00

It was only a matter of time until something like this happened: http://www.myspace.com/mathletes

Compare/contrast this band, now going on nine-odd years of existence: http://www.myspace.com/themathletes

YOU SUCK AT GOOGLE, CHICAGO MATHLETES

Fun with Bobby Jindal

2009-02-26T09:49:00.000-08:00

(via Ryan Goodland, longtime Mathletes member and all-around sharp-minded politics guy)

Watch about 10-20 seconds of this (Lousiana Gov. Bobby Jindal
responding to Obama's address to congress):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xPOR8a2_sMM

Then click here:

http://tinyurl.com/bzcwc7

Please help a former Houston Astro buy lots of drugs

2009-02-12T11:02:00.000-08:00

http://houston.craigslist.org/clt/1029153699.html

"This is your chance to possess history. I am selling a player's 2005 Houston Astros National League Championship ring. It's a 10k gold ring with a diamond studded Houston Astros star, set in garnet stone. You can't buy it anywhere else! Make an offer today and have it in your home or office tomorrow. Asking $10,000 but willing to negotiate."

Depending on how you look at it, this is more sad than it is funny... Back when I was a geenormous baseball fan (my obsessions development went something along the lines of action figures - baseball - comic books - computer games - indie rock; hopefully soon I'll ditch music for "making an honest living" but it's hard to say), a guy named Ken Caminiti was what you would call a very good baseball player, a third baseman for my rather beloved Houston Astros. He later revealed himself to not only be a humongous steroid abuser (back when that was kind of a big deal instead of something that would get you booked on a Letterman comedy segment), but a pretty big coke fiend. Then he died of a heart attack.

So... yeah. Ten grand for an Astros championship ring! Or just make an offer! MUST ACT FAST! WOOOOO!!!!

(I will also be able to consider the much more hilarious scenario of scorned ex-wife/girlfriend/housekeeper/pool house tenant, but being from Houston it's hard not to think of that other thing)

RIDDLE TIME!

2009-02-09T15:04:00.000-08:00

(shape of things to come? hmm...)

Why won't Rachel Maddow marry me?

2009-01-19T19:57:00.000-08:00

Well, for starters I have never asked her. In fact, the two of us have never even met face to face, nor corresponded in any way shape or form; thus if I were to propose to her out of the blue it would be against most socially accepted courtship norms. Though I have been a fan of hers ever since I was a bored temp listening to Air America while pretending to do data entry, I don't think I would want to be married to somebody who would agree to marry me without even having met me, and I'm sure that goes the same for Rachel Maddow.

Beyond all that, according to Wikipedia she is in a long term committed relationship already, and it is enormously presumptuous of me to assume that said relationship will come to an end any time soon, if at all. She is certainly not going to break it off just to marry someone who watches her talk about the news and finds her swan-like neck distractingly attractive.

Finally, there is of course the obvious: the unrequited sexual tension bottling up in Keith Olbermann would finally reach a boiling point and he would murder me.

MySpace Band Spam Revenge, Part 3 of 3

2009-01-17T00:31:00.001-08:00

The following is from the original comments section of the last MySpace blog entry I posted. The lesson (worded better towards the end): if you're going to be a dick, be prepared to acquit yourself when called out. I should point out, however, that I did mention at the very top of our page that I reserved the right to make fun of any band who asked to be internet band friends with us in an obviously spam-based fashion.

Anyway.

--------------------------------
Posted by TONERAMM: INSTRUMENTAL on Friday, April 14, 3:14 AM

I wonder what was your point of adding me as a friend to only subsequently badmouth me on your blog... seems a bit disingenious, doesn't it? FWIW, I actually listened to your music, and liked some of it, which is why I sent you an add in the first place.

Feel free to delete me from your friend list if you find my work or my persona unappealing. But before posting publicly about another artist, you could have at least checked the readily available facts -- e.g. this New Yorker blurb (EDIT: HE LINKED TO SOMETHING FROM THE NEW YORKER WHICH CONTAINED A SENTENCE THAT INCLUDED HIS NAME) or whatever press/bio info is linked on my page.

Regards.

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Posted by THE MATHLETES on Friday, April 14, 2:23 PM

Thanks for the reply, Toneramm: Instrumental. To respond to some of your comments:

"I wonder what was your point of adding me as a friend to only subsequently badmouth me on your blog... seems a bit disingenious, doesn't it?"

Though I've updated our profile since you sent me your request, the part that's up there right now about band spam was carried over from the older version verbatim. Can't say I didn't warn you, my (new internet) friend.

"FWIW, I actually listened to your music, and liked some of it, which is why I sent you an add in the first place."

FWIW, no you didn't. According to your page, you now have over 11,000 friends. Assuming that only one half of one percent of those are bands, you've listened to songs (multiple songs, unless when you say you liked "some of" The Mathletes' music you meant certain specific parts of a single song) from between five and six hundred bands in five weeks-- and those are just the ones that got the Tonearm: Instrumental Gold Standard Seal of Internet Friendship Approval. Putting these obvious logistical issues aside, if you'd spent any time loading songs on The Mathletes' page, you would have been able to read the aforementioned caveat to aspiring My Chemical Romances (which, in two sentences, you've made clear you didn't).

"Feel free to delete me from your friend list if you find my work or my persona unappealing. But before posting publicly about another artist, you could have at least checked the readily available facts-- e.g. (this New Yorker blurb) or whatever press/bio info is linked on my page."

Ah, but reading any information other than what's on your MySpace page would sully the purity of the My New Internet Friends project. The whole point here is that I'm giving you as much consideration as the average person you're spamming with friend requests: I look at your picture, I skim your bio and info, I listen to half a minute of one of your songs, and I'm equipped with all the information I need to form my opinion. So no, I'm not going to read about how you and four other guys played CDs at a club that a New Yorker staff writer's daughter took him to or whatever (just speculation). However, if you send me a friend request for your New Yorker blurb's MySpace page, then we'll talk (but make sure to actually read my profile this time).

LYLAS,

Joe Mathlete

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Posted by TONERAMM: INSTRUMENTAL on Friday, April 14, 3:54 PM

You obviously have a lot of time on your hands to spend on ad hominem attacks based on myspace friend counts of people who send you friend requests. Whatever floats your boat.

------------------------
Posted by THE MATHLETES on Saturday, April 15, 3:08 PM

Obviously. Hey, you waste the best years of your life annoying strangers on the internet in the guise of promoting your go-nowhere musical endeavor your way; I'll waste the best years of my life annoying strangers on the internet in the guise of promoting my go-nowhere musical endeavor my way.

The difference being that you've annoyed thousands upon thousands of essentially anonymous strangers for five seconds apiece without having been provoked, and I've annoyed one non-anonymous stranger for going on two days now because he sent me the MySpace equivalent of one of those "ENLARGE YOUR PENIS UP TO FOUR INCHES AND WIN A FREE IPOD" emails despite having been given sufficient warning not to.

Anyway, I'm sorry if I upset you... I just hope you won't let this get in the way of our new internet friendship.

Sorry so sloppy,
Joe Mathlete

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Posted by TONERAMM: INSTRUMENTAL on Sunday, April 16, 5:47 PM

Look -- I have no time for trading insults or writing retorts to your warped view of how social networks operate. In the constructive spirit of generousity condusive to internet friendship, I will only say this to you:

I have been studying, writing, producing, and performing music for close to twenty years now. I am sharing some instrumental tracks that people who may know my other work would not be familiar with. There is no hype on my page, no banners, no invitations to purchase anything -- just basic info and the music. A lot of people appear to like this music. I bet, you would have enjoyed it too, had you approached it amiably and spent a bit more that 30 seconds listening. Instead, you chose to waste 25 minutes complaining about my friend count. It's your choice.

Life is too short. Adios.

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Posted by THE MATHLETES on Sunday, April 16, 7:18 PM

"I have no time for trading insults or writing retorts to your warped view of bloobidy blah blah bloo etc."

That probably would have carried more weight had you said it right off the bat, rather than in your third written retort (I'd agree that you haven't really been all that insulting to me, but for you to be truly effective in that regard you would have to find out more about me and my band, and I know how you hate to read MySpace profiles). To be quite honest, I'm not so much made of time these days myself, but in the interest of not looking like a total asshole, I'll continue to respond to criticism of my criticism. As my grandmother was fond of saying, "if you can't say something nice, and you can't say nothing at all, at least be prepared to justify why you're mocking someone."

And I really hate to belabor this, but the quality of your music is wholly irrelevant here. I don't care if you sound like The Flaming Deerhoofs; you ignored the caveat in my profile and sent me internet junk mail, so I followed through on my promise and made fun of (among other things) your unimaginative name, silly hat, and warped view of how social networks operate.

"I am sharing some instrumental tracks that people who may know my other work would not be familiar with"

Then let Toneramm: A Capella's friends know about Toneramm: Instrumental, and leave the rest of us alone.

Sincerely,
A cartoon duck in a fake band on the internet

MySpace Band Spam Revenge, part 2 of 3

2009-01-13T19:24:00.000-08:00

OKAY LISTEN I GOTTA SAY THIS UP FRONT: This is close to three years old. It is one thing to get into silly beef with people on the internet, but another thing entirely to dredge up silly internet beef three years later for no reason. "If you can do no good, do no harm; if you think you might be doing both, just don't be too much of a dick about it."

So I'm going to misspell this guy's name enough that he won't google himself up some ire one random afternoon (just a tiny bit misspelt; it's just as silly and obtuse as it was before), and if someone figures out who I'm talking about I implore you: please don't fuck with him for no reason.

Unless he MySpace Band Spammed you. That is a good reason.

Anyway, here's this.

-------------------------------

MY NEW INTERNET FRIENDS
All you need to know about the latest band to randomly send the Mathletes a friend request

NAME: Toneramm: Instrumental

GENRE(S): Electronica / Drum & Bass / IDM
HEADLINE: "Toneramm: Instrumental Music"

LOCATION: NEW YORK, New York United States
IS THIS LOCATION REAL OR MADE-UP? Most likely real, though I can’t completely rule out the possibility that Toneramm: Instrumental is from Syracuse or Schenectady and he (it’s just one guy) just put his home state when MySpace asked him his location.
MEMBER SINCE: 3/4/2006

NUMBER OF FRIENDS: 8767

WHO, IF ANYONE, IN THEIR TOP EIGHT LIKELY DOES NOT KNOW THEM IN REAL LIFE, MUCH LESS WOULD CONSIDER THEM A FRIEND? Tortoise, Yuka Honda, Telefon Tel-Aviv

IS THEIR PAGE EDITED WITH THOMAS' MYSPACE EDITOR? IF SO, WAS IT A MISTAKE? It is not Toneramm: Instrumental has been far too busy pumping up his friend count to have time for much else.

NOTABLE HYPERBOLE / OUTRIGHT LIES: It’s hard to call bullshit on Toneramm: Instrumental’s profile, as there is virtually no information anywhere on the page other than the fact that its the side project of one James J. Jonathan Johnson (a.k.a. Toneramm), plus a couple of links to his other projects profiles/websites. Even the band name has an undeniable efficiency to it; right off the bat you know that you’re getting instrumental music, and if you’re familiar with the work of Toneramm, you know that it’s instrumental music made by Toneramm.
BEST COMMENT FROM A FAN AND/OR SPAM VICTIM: Fell in love with Consolidator. It's so chill. You sure got great work. Btw. Do you know any artists that make musics almost like Aphex Twin? I'm on a quest to search out new music. Comment back Tungst3r

I checked Tungst3rs page to see if Toneramm: Instrumental had any recommendations, and to my surprise, he actually responded to the guy:

Cheers, glad you like the tunes! Be sure to check out the songs as well
www.fatchicksinpartyhats.com/itoneramm
and more on the site --
www.doodoobutter.net/music.html

Best wishes,
- Toneramm
I will bet you tons of dollars that regular-type Toneramm sounds much less like Aphex Twin than Toneramm: Instrumental (which is not a whole lot to begin with). But, as with all MySpace comments, I suppose it’s the thought that counts.

WORST SONG TITLE: Losharique

WHAT THEY SOUND LIKE BASED ON THE FIRST THIRTY SECONDS OF THAT SONG: An unemployed ex-raver with a couple of jazz CDs, a laptop, and too much Starbucks

WHAT BAND PHOTOS SAY ABOUT THEM: An unemployed ex-raver with a couple of jazz CDs, a laptop, and too much Starbucks

SUGGESTED ALTERNATE BAND NAMES: Toneramm: Without Any Singing At All!
Toneramm: Vocals, Schmocals
Toneramm: Singing Is For Pussies
Toneramm: Menstruation
Froot E. Loopz and the Trial Demos
An Unemployed Ex-Raver With A Couple Of Jazz CDs, A Laptop, And Too Much Starbucks: Instrumental

ADDITIONAL COMMENTS: Toneramm: Instrumental is notably only for his astounding self-promotional abilities; in just over a month he has accumulated close to nine thousand friends (he got six more in the time I spent writing/copypasting this document; basically, he’s the Barry Bonds of MySpace). Beyond that, he has one of those hats worn by characters in shitty Gen-X movies from the mid-to-late 90s (in particular, the hat worn by the guy who skateboarded, was constantly stoned, and called people bro). He’s wearing it in the Toneramm: Instrumental photo as well as the regular Toneramm photo (Toneramm is in Toneramm: Instrumental’s top 8; whether or not Toneramm was kind enough to return the favor I don’t care enough to check). Either he’s going prematurely bald, or he has a very powerful lucky hat that just happens to look retarded. Oh: also, in both photos, he’s wearing big black DJ headphones.

Other than that, Toneramm: Instrumental appears to be wholly unremarkable.

I can’t tell how you’re supposed to pronounce Toneramm. I’m assuming “Tone Ram,” but what on earth does that mean? Maybe there’s some explanation on the regular Toneramm profile (or toneramm.net), but I’ve already spent a good 25 minutes looking at this page, and that’s about all the energy I’m willing to expend on this guy.

Finally, his myspace url (toneramminst) is an anagram for Tom Near Mints. Do with that what you will.
SPAM EFFICIENCY RATING: 273.97*
OVERALL RATING: A zip file of percussion samples and an expired coupon for five free CD-RWs

TONERAMM: INSTRUMENTAL, ENCAPSULATED: Band Members: Toneramm, Laptop

* : calculated by dividing their number of friends by the number of days they’ve been a member of MySpace; basically, the average number of people they’ve added per day

MySpace Band Spam Revenge, part 1 of 3

2009-01-08T11:48:00.000-08:00

If you’re in a band and you have a MySpace page, you probably get friend requests all the time from terrible bands you want nothing to do with. Bands that have nothing to do with your own, bands from towns you’ve never heard of, bands that are usually rather terrible.

(If you’re a guy and you have a MySpace page, you probably get a lot of friend requests all the time from sexy bikini models. DON’T TRUST THEM THEY ARE ROBOTS THEY WANT YOU TO BUY CELL PHONES)

(If you’re a girl and you have a MySpace page, do u cyber lol)

Anyway: For a little while there in The Mathletes’ MySpace blog, I used to do a thing I called “My New Internet Friends: All you need to know about the latest band to randomly send the Mathletes a friend request.” I stopped rather quickly because it was frankly kind of mean, and I’ve never been one to snipe at other people’s creativity. But for awhile it yielded some chuckles.

Here is the first installment from early 2006, for a band called Cascade in Blue. Rescued from the depths of MySpace and reprinted here for your pleasure. No links, and don’t anyone go giving these guys a hard time for spamming somebody close to three years ago. But trust me: their page looked like shit.

“Enjoy!”

-----------------------------------------------------------

NAME: Cascade in Blue

GENRE(S): Rock / Indie / Jam Band

HEADLINE: "whats that noise? SMELLS LIKE VIOLENCE!"

LOCATION: "ROCKVILLE," Maryland

IS THIS LOCATION REAL OR MADE-UP? Made-up. There actually probably is a town somewhere in the United States called Rockville, but I sincerely doubt that the real Rockville is spelled with all caps.

MEMBER SINCE: 10/12/2004

NUMBER OF FRIENDS: 1439

IS THEIR PAGE EDITED WITH THOMAS' MYSPACE EDITOR? IF SO, WAS IT A MISTAKE?: Yes, and definitely. All they did was change the color scheme to white text on a gray background, which is both hideous and nearly impossible to read (I had to highlight stuff with my cursor to even make it out). Beyond the lack of both aesthetic charm and user-friendliness, you think they would've at least considered using the color blue in some way (there is the slight possibility that they would've thought that was too obvious, but, c'mon, they identify as a jam band).

BEST BLOG HEADLINE: "the texture of reality."

BEST COMMENT FROM A FAN AND/OR SPAM VICTIM: "hey guys, its kl... You kinda have a Corrs feel maybe kinda Mogwai. I didnt listen very hard, i was listening quietly (lol) so i couldnt hear much, but what i heard was v. good." Petey Pete

NOTABLE HYPERBOLE: Where to begin.

"In an age where changing the radio dial yields a lack real musical inspiration, six boys from Maryland are starting a music revolution."

"Their music intrigues audiences breaking all the demographic barriers of race, gender and age. As Cascade in Blue performs they give the audience no choice but to listen. A strange phenomena occurs as they play drawing people closer and closer to the stage with each song making them a hard act to follow."
My favorite, however, is this part:

"Each member possesses the kind of talent that cannot be taught it is embedded into each of their existences. What needed to be learned was not how to play music, but how to harness their abilities to form what has become known as Cascade in Blue."

Apparently each of them was born knowing how to play violin or double bass or "the Percusions."

NOTABLE OUTRIGHT LIES: Sounds Like: "Nothing youve ever' heard before."

"As Cascade in Blue plays, the musicians' souls open, inviting each soul in the audience to come and dance with themif even for a mere 40 minutes."

I doubt that happens at even half of their shows.

WORST SONG TITLE: "Song of Sea"

WHAT THEY SOUND LIKE BASED ON THE FIRST THIRTY SECONDS OF THAT SONG: The Arcade Fire fronted by a guy with Downs Syndrome covering "Desert Rose"-era Sting b-sides.

WHAT BAND PHOTOS SAY ABOUT THEM: "We got kicked out of high school jazz band for smoking weed."

SUGGESTED ALTERNATE BAND NAMES: Cascade in White on Grey
Humility on Parade
Cascade in Poo

ADDITIONAL COMMENTS: Cascade in Blue's profile is packed to the gills with a wonderfully contradictory blend of earthy arrogance. You get the feeling that these are probably nice kids and all, but they really need to learn not to update their profile while they're stoned. Their main page is hard to beat, but the blog reveals plenty of interesting details. Highlights:

- They were rated "numero 1 - grupo de la semana" last January by a Spanish music site called Rock Style. The Cascader writing that particular blog entry reveals that he doesn't really understand much Spanish (although he was pretty pumped that their "awesome picture" was on the site), which leads me to wonder why they bothered sending their CD to websites based in Spain in the first place.

- They signed up to play the Emergenza "Festival," which is a combination battle of the bands/pyramid scheme where unwitting groups (who usually hear about it via MySpace spam mmm, mmm, irony!) pay an entrance fee to get put on a bill with 20 other gullible bands from their city in hopes of advancing to the next round, then the next, then however many more until they get signed by Interscope or something (also, the bands are encouraged to get their fans/friends/parents to buy "presale" tickets). The blog only mentions Cascade in Blue playing in round one, so I don't think it turned out the way they had hoped.

- They are as passionate about meaningful human relationships as they are about how awesome their music is. One entry (this one by "luke") begins "i think blogging needs to stop. we cant forget how to speak with our mouths. face to face. please. but, since we are all here, and gathered infront of the lsd fire... dsl... pdh... lcd, that's it. i hope that EVERYONE MUST BE AWARE..." And then he lists two upcoming Cascade in Blue shows (both of which he gives the designation "MUST SEE"). After their shows, Cascade in Blue encourages their fans to speak to each other with their mouths face to face, just so they don't get rusty while the rest of us blog enthusiasts' mouths crust over and seal up.
Finally, they really do state (in the General Info section) that one of their members plays "the Percusions."

SPAM EFFICIENCY RATING: 2.86*

OVERALL RATING: Two roaches and a pinch of shake

CASCADE IN BLUE, ENCAPSULATED: "after the show, someone by the name of Ben Krehbiel stopped me and said, "dude.... that was the soundtrack of the universe." it is a well crafted statement, and i hope that more and more people can hear that as well when they listen to our music"

- from a blog entry with the headline "a reflection on the 1 hour and 40 minute set we played tonight"

* : calculated by dividing their number of friends by the number of days they've been a member of MySpace; basically, the average number of people they've added per day

Happy Aught Nine

2009-01-04T21:29:00.000-08:00

I'm watching M. Night Something's "The Happening." I've got about twelve minutes left. If you haven't seen it, it's worse than you've heard. I didn't pay for it and it's not even worth stealing. The director's name isn't even worth googling. If he can't bother to write proper dialogue I'm not gonna bother to write his proper name.

The twist is plants and it doesn't make any sense and the movie wasn't even bad enough to be funny and fuck you Marky Wahlberg for occasionally being a good enough actor for the world not to realize how shitty an actor you are.

Anyway, here's my quarterly "soon I will be back to writing things on the internet" vague update. If it weren't for the economy exploding and what I have been made to understand is a problematic beta-testing period or something like that, I would since Autumn have been writing close to a half-dozen posts a week, plus drawing a comic strip and then something having to do with videos. As far as I know (and I would like to think I know rather far), all of this is set to launch rather soon.

I really would like to write an introductory post about the site and put a link up and show you all the stuff I'm doing but, y'know, not yet. But soon!

"Stay tuned!"

(I also saw "True Stories" today, the movie the Talking Heads made. It was way way better. I don't hate everything, y'know)

ATTN: America

2008-11-04T12:03:00.000-08:00

If and when we pull this off today (and by that I mean elect Barack Obama to the presidency), I am going to be the most annoyingly patriotic motherfucker you have ever seen. When they call the election at like 7:15 EST, I am going to be standing in the middle of the street waving the biggest motherfucking American flag you have ever seen, singing the national motherfucking anthem until my lungs bleed. I am going to wear nothing but motherfucking red, white and blue; any article of clothing in my wardrobe that does not fit this color scheme will be burned in a huge motherfucking bonfire (very tastefully and patriotically, possibly involving fireworks). I am going to wear so many motherfucking flag pins I will barely be able to stand. I will have plenty of extra pins to give out too, unless of course any of my fellow Houstonians are all of a sudden unwilling to proudly display their love and support for this wonderful motherfucking nation we call home.

Because it has been a rough eight years in which to both love the inherent good of the United States of America and be a progressive/liberal/Democrat/lefty/bleeding heart. But shit goddamn if I am not one motherfucking happy American right now.

Unless McCain somehow wins. In which case I will be rioting.

(seriously, though: unless something completely insane happens, today is a good day)

USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA!

Terrible Pieces of Advice for New Dog Owners

2008-10-30T01:10:00.000-07:00

I really really love animals. I love them so much that I don’t have any pets. My attitude towards pets is pretty much the same as my attitude towards small children: they are wonderful gifts from God and a joy to be around, so long as I can leave the room whenever I feel like. I’ll happily pet, cuddle and play with any adorable animal you put in front of me, feed it a piece of whatever I happen to be eating, maybe even throw something it might like to fetch. But putting me in charge of an animal’s survival and well-being would be even more unfair to the animal than it would be to me, and that is why I have chosen to remain petless thus far into my adult life. It’s the difference between being irresponsible and choosing not to be responsible.
Having said this, if you own a dog and are looking for advice on how to care for it, and are completely unconcerned about where this advice comes from, here are some tips for you:

IF YOUR DOG CRAPS ON YOUR BED, CRAP ON HIS
For generations, conventional wisdom has told morons that the best way to keep a dog from relieving itself somewhere is to rub its face in its mess after it does the deed. This is not only insanely cruel (seriously: if you see someone do this to their dog, smack the shit out of them), it’s highly ineffective. If there’s one thing a dog understands it’s an eye for an eye. If Sparky takes a dook on your Sealy Posturepedic, you march right over to his little bedbasket or wherever and pay him back with interest. Note: this may not work well if your dog sleeps on your bed.

ATTACH FINS TO YOUR DOG TO MAKE IT MORE AERODYNAMIC
Allow your dog to reach its true potential by attaching a series of fins to it, just like a fish (if fish were land-based creatures) or a ’57 Chevy (if ’57 Chevys were dogs). It will be able to romp faster and fetch more effectively, and all the junk that dogs love. To make sure the fins stay attached, I recommend a staple gun.

SHAVE CUSS WORDS INTO YOUR DOG’S FUR
The benefits should be pretty self-explanatory.

EVERY TIME YOUR DOG BITES SOMEONE GIVE IT A TREAT
Most dog trainers tell you not to reward your dog unfairly or it will turn out spoiled, unreasonable and yappy. This line of thought is shortsighted and does not address a larger problem: having to go out and buy dog treats for the rest of your life (well, for nine to sixteen years). Logic dictates the simplest thing to do is to break your dog of its dependency on treats. Continue doling out the Beggin’ Strips every time Mrs. Barksalot makes a potty in the right place or does her cute little backflip trick, but watch what happens when you reward her for biting Uncle Nestor’s ankle. After Uncle Nestor clocks her with a rolled-up newspaper and you reward her, her preexisting concepts of right and wrong will be shattered into a million pieces and you are one step closer to owning a dog whose moral compass is not governed by pieces of ground cow hooves mixed with lard and sawdust.

NAME YOUR DOG “FIRE”
If he ever gets lost and you find yourself yelling after him, you will have no trouble getting other people’s attention to help you out. Maybe even police! If your name is Fire or you already have a dog named Fire, you could go with “Cocaine For Sale” or “Rape.”

Orangina + Furries = Heebie Jeebies

2008-10-27T12:57:00.000-07:00

You know Orangina, the crummy watered-down orange drink? Ever wondered who their target market is? If you said furries, for some bizarre reason you're correct.

The world of human sexual fetish is vast and unknowable, and to each their own etc. etc. etc, but man: this is pretty weird.

If anyone out there owns a publishing company and has an extra book deal lying around...

2008-10-21T12:46:00.000-07:00

I promise to use Comic Sans exclusively for the interior font.

Blogger.com Profile "Random Questions"

2008-10-19T22:41:00.000-07:00

I was diddling with the innards of my Blogger profile and saw the little "Random Question" box, which always sort of bothered me. I appreciate the prompts as a fun and inventive little addition to an otherwise faceless internet profile form, but my threshold for forced wackiness isn't very high. I forget what my old question was, but my answer was something along the lines of "go fuck yourself."

Several months ago my friend Jeff (drummer for the Mathletes) formed a band called T.R.U.C.K.S. (pronounced "trucks"). There are already enough T.R.U.C.K.S. songs for several full-lengths; the first EP, "Where the Boys Aren't," came out this summer in an extremely limited release (song titles: "Air Fuck One," "Teenage Face Targets," "Sauce Policy," "Theme from T.R.U.C.K.S."). One of my favorite T.R.U.C.K.S. songs is called "Wolf Cum."

Which seems like both a more creative and potentially applicable answer to most "Random Question" questions than "go fuck yourself." Without any further ado, here are ten completely random Random Questions, in the order in which they were presented to me by the Random Questions Robot who works for Blogger.com, and my responses:

Q: All of the phone numbers have fallen out of your address book. Whose number do you look for first and why?
A: Wolf Cum

Q: Come up with some possible band names for your group that features a washboard and a styrofoam tuba.
A: Wolf Cum

Q: Why does the taste of pennies remind you of losing a tooth?
A: Wolf Cum

Q: What was the stage name of your favorite actress before she was born?
A: Wolf Cum

Q: Which do you prefer and why: whittling with soap or whistling with wood?
A: Wolf Cum

Q: Do you believe that forks are evolved from spoons?
A: Wolf Cum

Q: Lionesses have no manes. How do they know when they've grown up?
A: Wolf Cum

Q: That can't really be a fish you're standing on, can it?
A: Wolf Cum

Q: What did you dream when you ate a spider while sleeping?
A: Wolf Cum

Q: If mud is dirt plus water, what is clay?
A: Wolf Cum

I post this not because I have something all that strongly against the Random Question Robot, or to generate some hype for T.R.U.C.K.S. (whose recordings are all-but-impossible to come by, and in truth may or may not actually exist), or even because it's honestly all that funny. No, I post this for one main reason: I don't think the people I'm going to be working for starting next month are going to let me get away with writing something like "Wolf Cum" a dozen times in a single post. I better get this out of my system before then.

JOE MATHLETE RETURNS (TO THE INTERNET) (PRETTY SOON)

2008-10-17T16:56:00.000-07:00

It is pretty much sort of official: sometime next month I will begin writing regularly for a Houston-based website whose name I will announce here as soon as we "go live" (that is an industry term meaning "start doing stuff"). It would be gauche to discuss the all of the specifics, but suffice to say I will be doing things like drawing cartoons, writing reviews of things that don't really need to be reviewed, filming bands performing songs in my living room, and generally offering my own take on the day-to-day goings on of this sprawling Texan megopolis I call home. In exchange for all this, my bosses have allowed me to use their scanner, snack machine and restroom during regular business hours. Suckers.

What does this mean for this here blog? Hell if I know. Check back over the next few weeks as I reveal more information.

Also, because why not: I decided to join the 21st century. The Mathletes' newest (and something like 26th overall) album, #@$% YOU AND YOUR COOL, is available on iTunes and eMusic and aMazon and rHapsody and nApster and all those places where people pay money to download music. I sent out three review copies and had a 100% return rate for my efforts. Who wants some music criticism?

Space City Rock: Fucking brilliant. No lie-- one of the best damn pop albums I've heard in the last few years.

The Skyline: Joe Mathlete and company strut their outsider stuff in song after song that appeals to the Comicon pop-life in all of us... Recommended.

The Houston Press: ...a freaking bologna sandwich.

Beats,

Joe Mathlete

OH SHIT A HURRICANE WHOSE IDEA WAS THAT

2008-09-12T19:51:00.001-07:00

Ehh... I will be fine. I've got five gallons of water in the fridge, a couple of candles, a bottle of red wine if I have to drink myself to sleep with no air conditioner, and my bathtub's filled up so I can still go to the bathroom if the pressure goes out*. This happens once every couple years or so. I am glad I don't live in Galveston 'cuz it's basically underwater right now I think.

Houston won't get hit for another few hours so I am going to go outside now and play in the wind. If the storm ends up being awful and you have a few extra dollars, the Red Cross is good with hurricane relief stuff.

As far as that good news I alluded to last time, here's a hint: it includes me doing stuff that you can see on the internet. Not yet, but soon. I hope.

*: It's so I can fill the tank back up and flush again. I'm not going to shit in my tub.

By the way

2008-08-22T01:33:00.000-07:00

1. Sorry I ain't been around much lately.

2. This is neither here nor there, but: awesome, Rachel Maddow is getting her own show on MSNBC! Also I saw Tropic Thunder and it was really really mediocre.

3. Something neat that I am pretty sure I should still not say anything about yet is about to happen soon, I think.

"Be right back!"

Animals Part The Last: January 21, 2008 (Live @ the Proletariat)

2008-07-28T11:43:00.000-07:00

WARNING: CUSSES. PROBABLY NOT SAFE FOR WORK IF THEY DON'T LIKE YOUR COMPUTER SPEAKERS SAYING F-BOMBS.

Jeff Goodyear: Drums
Carlos Sanchez: Drums
Jose Sanchez: Bass
Ryan Goodland: Guitar
Briana Fitzpatrick: Keyboard
Cley Miller: Guitar
Jenny Westbury: Tambourine
Charles Larrabee: Lead Tambourine
Iram Guerrero: Rhythm Tambourine
Tom Adams: Other Tambourine
Mlee Marie Suprean: Saxophone
Charlie Naked: Rhythm Saxophone
Mike Switzer: Trombone
Joe Mathlete: Guitar, Vocals
GGMG: Whiskey
I can't actually remember who else was onstage at that point

So long story short: I took a job that required me to move to Austin for three months at the beginning of the year (you may or may not remember a long period of me not really posting anything on any of the blogs I keep... I mean, longer than usual). We set up one last pre-"hiatus" Mathletes show at the Proletariat, a venue that had been good to us over the last couple of years and that was to be shut down a few weeks later to make way for Houston's new light rail system. Like a good game of telephone, word got out that I was moving away for good and that the Mathletes were breaking up forever purple monkey dishwasher. It's hard to break up a band that (at that point) had no permanent members, but I wasn't 100% sure when I was coming back to Houston, and sensing opportunity I didn't contradict any of the rumors.

I decided to invite a large percentage of people who had played with us over the last year (as well as a few local musicians whose songs I really loved) to be a part of the Mathletes Symphony Dorkestra Fakeup Show. This naturally resulted in a tremendous logistical nightmare of poorly-rehearsed stumbling through songs half the band could barely remember, with lots of instrument swaps and guest vocalists and at any given point at least one or two people just playing tambourine. Also the singer of this particularly number got spectacularly drunk before the first band went on (perhaps you can tell).

So... Yeah. That's probably all the Animals the internet needs (and then some). Thanks for indulging me. Coming soon: something besides YouTube clips of my band playing the same song over and over again!

I hate YouTube / I love YouTube

2008-07-13T03:35:00.000-07:00

I hate it because I've been trying to upload the last video of the Mathletes playing "Animals" that's worth showing for like forever now, only every time I try I fail (a lot of this probably has more to do with me stealing a none-too-steady wireless signal from one of my neighbors (which is definitely less expensive than getting Comcast but possibly even less reliable) than it does with YouTube itself, but still). So... "coming soon."

I love it because of pretty much everything else about it. Having a bad day? Here's this!

Thanks, YouTube!

So, yeah. Animals part the next, coming soon.

Animals Part Six: April 2008, live @ the Museum of Fine Arts Houston

2008-06-21T15:48:00.000-07:00

Jeff Goodyear: Drums
Carlos Sanchez: Li'l Drums
Jose Sanchez: Bass
Charles Larrabee: Guitar
Briana Fitzpatrick: Keyboard
Jenny Westbury: Drawings, Animal Sounds
Cley Miller: Fancy Dances, Animal Sounds
Joe Mathlete: Singing, Guitar

This is the last show we've played to date. We were asked to open for Voxtrot at Houston's Museum of Fine Arts (now with rock bands!); unnerved by the prospect of playing on a proper soundsystem in front of more than fifty people, I tried to assemble a lineup that would be as tight and well-rehearsed as ever. We still only had one rehearsal where we all showed up, but it went off rather well all the same.

Cley was playing keyboards for most of this set and didn't have time to learn this song. He said he would figure something out. I did not think this was what what he was going to figure out.

Animals Part Five: Autumn-ish 2007, live @ Rice University

2008-06-16T11:45:00.000-07:00

Gie Gie McGee: Vocals, Pianica
Briana Fitzpatrick: Keyboards
Ryan Goodland: Guitar
Iram Guerrero: Drums
Carlos Sanchez: Other Drums
Cley Miller: Other Other Drums
Jose Sanchez: Bass
Joe Mathlete: Vocals, Guitar

Here's us playing a show at some weird gigantic student center thing at a college campus. Pretty much the same lineup as Part Three, plus Gie Gie on vocals. Everyone here had played the song multiple times-- all together, even. And we're still not very tight. But it has been said before: what we lack in professionalism we make up for in unprofessionalism.

Apologies for the sound mix/quality, but on the bright side this clip totally has more than one camera angle (It has two. Two of them). Also I apologize for how much I look like a hobo, or possibly some guy whose job is selling weed to record store clerks.

If I could, I'd like to take this opportunity to plug Young Mammals (the hydra-headed rhythm section of this clip) to the half-dozen people I have not alienated yet with my narcissistic band-rambling on this blog of late. Here is a video they did when they were still called the Dimes, before an achingly mediocre go-nowhere band from Portland with the same name threatened legal action while pretending to be their "record label" (this is akin to calling someone in middle school using a deep voice and saying you are your dad and you're going to kick their ass. If you were an ugly orphan). If you care to feel depressed about how slowly you're achieving your life's goals: they wrote and recorded this song in high school, before some of them could even drive legally.

Animals Part Four: 4/10/2007, live @ Rudyard's

2008-06-11T12:05:00.000-07:00

Bubba Hightower: Bass
Charles Larrabee: Guitar
Gie Gie McGee: Vocals, Pianica
Joe Mathlete: Guitar, Vocals
Briana Fitzpatrick: Keyboards
Mike Switzer: Trombone

This was kind of a bummer.

We were offered a show at a bar called Rudyard's, one of the best places in Houston to see live music, as part of a bill with a number of other local musicians I really admired. We had never played at Rudyard's before, and I was really excited.

None of the three drummers who were playing with us at the time ended up able to make the show; Gie Gie and Charles had this bizarre antiquey drum machine from the early 1970s we ended up using for most of the set. We didn't have much time to rehearse (though I guess we probably wouldn't have rehearsed much more if we could've), and between a long series of instrument swaps, mangled songs about animals and robots, and general chaos, we ended up driving most of the crowd downstairs after just a few songs. To top it all off, I forgot to move my car after we loaded in our instruments and it got towed in the middle of our set. All in all, not one of our better shows, but looking back on it now with some distance (and the knowledge that I didn't give up music forever after that night), I kind of like this clip.

For bonus laffs, here's a review of the show by a blogger named Justin Crane entitled "Sloppy". Most of the humor for me stems from the fact that he played guitar with us on one song.

The most important lesson learned: don't play your most "Children's Band"-esque show ever in a bar.

Animals Part Three: 8/15/07, live @ Super Happy Fun Land

2008-06-09T18:49:00.000-07:00

Briana Fitzpatrick: Keyboards
Ryan Goodland: Guitar
Iram Guerrero: Drums
Carlos Sanchez: Other Drums
Cley Miller: Drumsticks, Lights
Jose Sanchez: Bass
Joe Mathlete: Vocals, Guitar

Eight months later and this is what "Animals" sounds like. I was lucky enough to draft the members of my favorite Houston band into being Mathletes starting in early 2007 (they had to change their name to Young Mammals earlier this year, due to a threatened lawsuit by a woefully shitty band from Portland who shared their original name, a name I will refrain from mentioning). You can't so much tell from this video, seeing as 3/4 of the band are playing drums (Jose stuck to his bass), but they're really good at doing rock and roll songs.

If you squint very carefully, you will notice that I'm the only person in both this clip and the last one.

Animals Part Two: 12/27/06, live @ the Proletariat

2008-06-06T01:44:00.000-07:00

Gie Gie McGee: Vocals / Pianica
Joe Mathlete: Guitar / Vocals
Bill Savoie: Drums
Giorgio Angelini: Guitar
Bubba Hightower: Bass

In the winter of 2006, the Mathletes were asked to open for a touring band called 1986, fronted by a high school friend of mine by the name of Giorgio Angelini (oddly enough, the guy who set up the show didn't seem to know Giorgio and I had ever met. Small world, I guess). We hadn't really been a band for some time at this point; the last thing approximating a steady lineup disintegrated about a year prior and I'd mostly just been recording on my own, as I am wont to do. But I figured, y'know, the songs we play live aren't too tricky to pick up, and I know a lot of musicians. I'll just make some phone calls and see what happens.

We rehearsed twice, sort of. I was never actually able to get everyone together at the same time, so it was basically a couple long afternoons of me trying to teach whoever showed up how the songs went, and promising them it would sound neat when the rest of the band was there. I think there were about seven or eight of us that night, with people swapping in and out as we got to songs they did or didn't know. About two-thirds of the band met each other for the first time ever the night of the show. It ended up going over well enough, and though I did what I could do solidify around a real lineup, over the next year the "oh, we've got a gig, let's see who shows up this time" method became pretty much gospel.

"Animals" was basically written so Gie Gie could sing it live. She's a real-live elementary school teacher, I kid you not. Her schedule has always been very wonky, and even back when we had a pretty stable lineup there would be times where she couldn't make shows and we'd have to soldier on without her. It is weird for me when we play this song and I'm singing it.

Wow, I sure did write a lot. Ah, well... Just enjoy ("enjoy") the clip, and stay tuned for more. Or go read something that isn't about my band, I guess.

Animals Part One: Album Version

2008-06-05T13:08:00.000-07:00

So let me say this up front: I write lots and lots of songs. Some are good, some are bad, some are mediocre, some are silly, some are straight-faced, some are pointless. If you would like to hear some songs I consider to be more on the "good" end of the spectrum, I'd suggest the ones I stuck up here.

Now for a pointless one:

MP3: THE MATHLETES - ANIMALS

This goes all the way back to 2003 (it ended up on an album called Jest and Earnest that had way way way too many songs on it but a lot of them I'm still pretty fond of). Basically I started off trying to write a fake Deerhoof song, and after thinking about what it'd be like to play it live I ended up with some of the worst lyrics I'd ever "written."

This is one of the most annoying songs I have ever written, and one of the worst, and I guess eventually probably one of the best. Check back tomorrow and I'll begin explaining why.

I am going to talk about my band here for a little bit

2008-06-04T15:20:00.000-07:00

Probably for close to a couple weeks. Hope that's okay.

So yeah, I play music and write songs and record albums. It is a lot of fun. The band is called The Mathletes, and we have an album that just came out on Asaurus Records called #$@% You And Your Cool. It is good. If you would care to hear it, you can listen to some of the songs on the internet, or for six dollars you can get a hard copy at the Asaurus website (but you should do that before the end of the month because they sort of decided to go out of business). There were 100 copies of said album manufactured, and it is shaped like a bologna sandwich.

I apologize for marketing at you, but it seems more or less appropriate to get this out of the way up front. Anyway, Asaurus wanted to make up a press release, so the guy who runs it asked me to email him some information about the album. The press release ended up mostly being the entire contents of that email. If you like PDFs, you can read it here, but otherwise, get ready for some copypaste:

FROM THE DESK OF JOE MATHLETE: Well, I started off making songs all alone, just recording in my bedroom, not really thinking about what I'd do with them. Eventually I showed them to people, and eventually people said I should play my songs live because that's what people who write songs do. Looking back on it a lot of people who were telling me this ended up playing in the band so maybe they just wanted someone to play music with, but regardless I'm glad people said something because playing music in front of people is fun. But I kept recording songs on my own 'cuz it's just what I'm used to.

Mathletes would come and go for one reason or another, and eventually the lineup became more or less completely fluid. Some shows there'd be three of us and some shows there'd be around twenty. But old habits die hard, and I kept recording music all alone in my bedroom or whatever like I was still in high school, writing songs to avoid homework and then keeping them to myself. This album I guess represents both the breakthrough of finally showcasing what we sound like as a live band to the world beyond Houston , Texas , and some of the bedroomiest bedroom pop I've recorded lately.

We're a mess of a band so it's a mess of a record; looking at it now we've got ten tracks (of wildly varying fidelity) recorded at eight different places, lyrical matter veering from jackassery to as sincere as I get, the most confrontational album title we've ever had but I chickened out of actually writing the cuss. The title refers to when I went and saw a very fashionable Indie Rawk band (who shall remain nameless) and felt underdressed wearing a t-shirt and jeans among all the fashion kids, and I looked onto the stage and saw an army of dorks trying to look like they didn't care about anything while playing what basically amounted to super-expensive and ornate Built to Spill or Yo La Tengo songs, and I never saw Yo La Tengo or people who dug them wear leather jackets with tons of buckles and scarfs and eyeliner and gigantic shiny belts and act like they don't care, and at that point in my life I was so sick of people acting like they didn't care I said wait a minute I'm not underdressed, these people are missing the boat and they wouldn't care if they even knew there was a boat, and I walked by some coke guy in a leather jacket with tons of buckles and a scarf and eyeliner and a gigantic shiny belt and said "#$@% you and your cool."

Except, y'know, really quietly where he couldn't hear me, 'cuz otherwise I would just have been acting like a dick. But it's the thought that counts.

#$@% YOU AND YOUR COOL is Asaurus Records' (more or less) 64th release and quite possibly our last. We are closing our doors indefinitely starting this June and are thrilled to make one last go at breaking into the recording industry with the latest Mathletes record. #$@% YOU AND YOUR COOL is being released in a limited edition of 100 copies and yes, it is a bologna sandwich.

I put this here mostly to give you an idea of what sort of "band" we are. Tune in tomorrow(-ish) for what I hope to be a somewhat entertaining week and a half of "variations upon a theme" featuring a cast of dozens, and one of the most irritating songs I have ever written.

Eat My Beats,

Joe Mathlete

This is a bit out of character for me, but I thought I should pass it along anyway

2008-06-02T13:51:00.000-07:00

If you are one of those fratty college guys posting on Craigslist looking for MILFs: Go to one of the New Kids on the Block reunion shows. There will be plenty of drunk thirtysomething ladies looking to recapture their youth (or someone else's). If you are unable to fulfill your fantasy of making love to an older woman who may or may not have given birth in this particular scenario, you should probably just move on.

I cringe at the possible traffic these keywords (MILFs, New Kids on the Block, fratty college guys) are going to bring in. I have no one to blame but myself.

I just saw a little bit of Grey's Anatomy

2008-05-22T19:41:00.000-07:00

I'm over at my folk's house, using up some of their internet in one room while my mom watches her stories in the next. At one point I hear some hushed, feathery college folk music soundtracking a white dude and a white lady using vocabularies to talk about the subtle complexities of their vague emotional uniqueness, and how to feel about how it is to feel something about somebody somewhere, and other bullshit faux problems that people without problems create for themselves. Holy shit, it's Dawson's Creek! Mom, what the hell are you doing watching Dawson's Creek?

Nope, Mom says. It's Grey's Anatomy. But six and one half dozen, y'know?

Now, I never watched more than two minutes of Dawson's Creek, and I've now seen about fifteen seconds of Grey's Anatomy, and I'm not saying anything, I'm just saying, y'know? But here's my point, anyone who is more familiar with these shows and this type of show than I am:

People who were in high school when they were watching Dawson's Creek are probably just now getting out of med school, or some other grad school, or they're some other kind of young professional, and they still want to watch Dawson's Creek but pretend they're grown ups (like they were doing when they were watching Dawson's Creek).

Quite naturally I don't care in the slightest to investigate this line of thinking any further, but does that sound reasonable to anyone else? No? Well fuck you, I'm gonna download 30 Rock.

Sincerely,

A white dude without any real problems

P.S.-- Sorry I haven't been writing much lately; don't have a lot to say but mostly I've been really busy. My band just came out with a new album and we're playing a show at a museum this weekend, and also I am in a play opening a week from today, and then there's all this other stuff that the internet doesn't really need to hear about

P.P.S.-- My mom seems to kind of hate Grey's Anatomy; she's snarking at it pretty hard from the other room. It's good to know where I get this stuff.

Dear Hillary Clinton: Please Stop Saying You Won Texas

2008-05-12T22:53:00.001-07:00

On account of this is inaccurate. Here in the state of Texas we tend to do things different and usually sort of ass backwards, so on March 4 we had both a regular-type primary and also a caucus. You won the popular primary vote by two percentage points and lost the caucuses by twelve percentage points (source: facts). This gave you a total of 94 pledge delegates (65 from the primary, 29 from the caucuses) to Obama's 99 (61 primary / 38 caucuses).

I'm sorry; this has just been bugging me for a couple of months. I promise not to post about politics for as long as possible. I usually make it a point not to discuss politics with anyone unless they're a stranger and I'm drunk and yelling at them anyway.

A small anecdote about the year 2001 and my introduction to the concept of "blogs"

2008-05-10T20:39:00.001-07:00

So in the year 2001 I was a freshman in college. One day I asked a friend of mine how her weekend was.

"Didn't you see my last LiveJournal entry?"

I sort of kind of knew what LiveJournal was. As far as I could tell, it was exactly like a diary except anyone in the universe could read it. Which seemed completely at odds to the concept of keeping a diary as far as I understood it (writing down private stuff in a book you then hid so nobody else could read it). My thoughts on LiveJournal basically amounted to "Jeez that's dumb."

I knew that this girl kept one of these (she was actually a very nice, reasonable person aside from things like her Dashboard Confessional fandom and, y'know, LiveJournal), but I never read it because it seemed creepy. Like, well, reading someone's diary. And even if someone wanted me to read their diary, there's almost a 100% chance that I still wouldn't want to, y'know? I'm just as narcissistic as you: if anything I'm just gonna thumb through to see if I'm mentioned and then chuck it back under your mattress where it belongs.

So I tell her essentially that no, I did not read her last LiveJournal entry, and I don't keep up with her LiveJournal or anyone else's LiveJournal so I didn't already read about how her weekend was, but I'm asking her now, in person, so how was her weekend?

"It was..." She sort of sighed and thought for a second. "You should really just read my LiveJournal. It was a really crazy couple of days; I said it better there than I could right now."

So a couple of years later everyone starts talking about blogs, and bloggers, and "new media" and stuff. The way blogs are described they sounded pretty much like LiveJournal, so I dismiss them as pointless and hateful bullshit.

Postscript: I end up starting one out of boredom (and the fact that I was too lazy to start a zine, which was my original idea but would've taken way longer) and realize they don't have to have anything at all to do with LiveJournal, and I begin to hate them a little bit less.

If you are too young and/or too old to know what LiveJournal is, that's awesome.

If you are sure you want to cancel your Friendster account, complete the form below:

2008-05-06T20:27:00.000-07:00

Why do you want to cancel your Friendster account?:

_O_ Other Reason(s)

Please List Reason(s):

Haven't logged in for 5 years, my profile was embarrassing, the name is stupid, it's not 2003 anymore

-------------------------------------------

Honest to God, this has nothing to do with the Facebook thing I wrote a little bit ago; someone brought up Friendster in conversation today and I thought "oh Jesus, I bet mine is awfully humiliating." Turns out I was pretty correct. I don't think it really would've made much difference if I would've left it be; nobody else appears to have logged in since the first Bush/Cheney administration.

The best part of the cancellation process was, I had to spend a good fifteen minutes figuring out what email address I had five years ago, then once I got there reactivating the sucker so I could get my password. Remember Hotmail? Crazy!

My evening is starting to feel kind of like a hideously plausible VH1 special from the not-too-distant future.

BY THE WAY: I'm drawing some more of those index cards

2008-05-02T14:01:00.000-07:00

At Joe Mathlete Will Draw Anything You Want On An Index Card. Not taking any new orders until I fill all the old ones, but after four months of radio silence I guess it's a start?

Context for that last post (ROFLcon bio)

2008-05-01T13:09:00.000-07:00

In case you were wondering:

So, yeah. Also, if you don't know what Goatse refers to, consider yourself blessed.

My ROFLcon bio

2008-04-28T23:51:00.000-07:00

Everyone appearing at ROFLcon (which, for those just tuning in, was a big convention event thing where Harvard folks gathered together a bunch of "internet famous"-type people at, uh, M.I.T.) was asked to provide a bio about what it is they do. This is what I sent them:

"Joe Mathlete has been accidentally achieving internet notoriety since 2002, when a short WMV depicting him engaged in an imaginary lightsaber battle in his high school’s AV room was uploaded to Kazaa. Several years later, after a brief webcam clip of him lipsynching to a popular Romanian techno song achieved similar viral success, he decided to pursue his dream of writing and performing original music. When a video of him recording the vocals to one of his songs gained international attention for his unique, otherworldly baritone and distinctive method of moving away from the mic to breathe in, he destroyed his computer, renounced technology and moved to Wales. He lives in a small cottage south of Llandudno with his cat, Goatse."

If some or none of that makes much sense, trust me-- it's hysterical(ly geeky).

Just got back from ROFLcon

2008-04-28T02:17:00.000-07:00

Where I hung out with a bunch of internet people. It was strange and fun and confusing and interesting and rad. I got my picture taken with Tron Guy, I learned what Twitter is, I didn't get much sleep, I met Damon from Galaxie 500 and Damon & Naomi (unrelated to ROFLcon but it wouldn't have occurred if I hadn't gone), and a bunch of other stuff happened.

My flight home was delayed like four hours so I'm going to pass out now... I'll probably have more to add later on. Much thanks to Tim Hwang and Diana Kimball and all the rest of the folks who organized everything and gave me a neat, surreal little vacation, Alex Gutierrez for letting me crash at her place for a couple days and showing me what there was to do in Cambridge that didn't involve the internet, and to all of the very friendly people I met over the weekend. Until later, if you would like to read a brief interview with a fairly inarticulate me, click with your mouse on these words.

If you have not ever listened to Galaxie 500, now is the time to purchase On Fire (or at least download "When Will You Come Home" or "Tugboat" or "Strange").

Confirm Facebook Account Deactivation

2008-04-22T14:03:00.000-07:00

Please let us know why you are deactivating. (required)

_O_ I don't find Facebook useful.

Please explain further:

"Facebook is like a creepy and pointless videogame where people collect every person they've ever met, then waste their time spying on all the dumb bullshit they do all day. I don't care if some moron I went to high school with bought a new iPod, I don't want to play the vampire biting game, and I don't want people I don't care about to know what I'm up to if they're not going to bother asking me with words."

-------------------------------------------

You ever hear that Beach Boys song "I Just Wasn't Made For These Times?" Yeah.

Top Five Songs My Mom Used To Play In The Car When I Was A Young Child That Made Me Sad

2008-04-21T15:08:00.000-07:00

I lived in Dallas, Texas until I was eight. I don’t remember much about it, other than a few scattered things, but I’ve got very strong memories of sitting in the back seat of my mother’s car and listening to the cassettes she’d play. Mostly 60s rock and Motown and 70s singer-songwriter stuff; I must’ve heard Sgt. Pepper’s a thousand times before I turned six years old. I’m glad my mom wasn’t a Phil Collins fan. Anyway, here are five songs I remember from those days that made me sad:

1. “The Needle and the Damage Done” by Neil Young and Crazy Horse (from Live Rust): I was a very curious child, and a lot of the time I would ask my mom what a song was about, or what the words meant. I guess explaining what heroin addiction is to your five year old is kind of awkward, but if my mom wasn’t willing to go down that road she shouldn’t have been listening to this album. The upside is, I will never in a million years try heroin thanks to this song.

2. “The Partisan” by Leonard Cohen (from Songs From a Room): I mean, pretty much any Leonard Cohen song I’ve ever heard is sad, but this one really stood out. My mom said it was about being in the French Resistance during World War Two and fighting the Nazis. Being in the French Resistance sounded like a total bummer: “There were three of us this morning / I’m the only one this evening / But I still go on / The frontier is my prison” is heavy stuff for a little kid. And then there’d be a part with a children’s choir backing him up on a verse, in French… I mean, damn.

3. “Walking After Midnight” by Patsy Cline (from the Sweet Dreams soundtrack): My mom played the hell out of this cassette after Sweet Dreams, the Patsy Cline biopic starring Jessica Lange, came out. This song always got to me; it’s more upbeat musically than the rest of the songs on this list, but even a preschooler can hear a lady singing about wandering around in the middle of the night being as lonely as it’s possible for a human to be lonely and get kind of depressed. Also, my mom told me the plot of the movie, and how Patsy Cline’s plane smashed into a mountain when she was still relatively young, and that didn’t make things much cheerier.

4. “She’s Leaving Home” by the Beatles (from Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band): This song is probably my least favorite on the album, listening to it now; it’s actually pretty maudlin and heavy-handed. But when I was in short pants, that harp and those harmonies tugged at my heartstrings until they were ready to pop. Also it’s a song about running away from home forever, which seems scary as hell if you think about it in a practical sense when you’re half a decade old.

5. “96 Tears” by ? and the Mysterians (from the radio): Not actually from a cassette, but I remember this song coming on the radio one night really really late when my mom was driving my sister and I home from visiting some relatives, and it really freaked my shit out. The organ sounded like it wanted to kill me, or at least sneak up on me while I was sleeping and give me bad dreams. And it was a dude singing about crying! A really unhinged-sounding dude… It wasn’t even that it was sad, it was disturbing. I was like four years old. I asked my mom what the song was called, and when she told me I asked her why he was crying exactly that amount tears. She said she didn’t know, and when my mom didn’t know the answer to a question I asked her it just made me all that much more unsettled. Thanks a lot, Question Mark, you creepy unstable bastard.

My family moved to Houston sometime around my eighth birthday. Sometime after that, my mom sold her car and got one with a CD player and mostly just played Carly Simon albums. And listening to Carly Simon all the time made me sad too, but that’s a different story.

More fun with public access TV clips

2008-04-10T12:31:00.000-07:00

This is one of the primary reasons why the internet exists: to showcase the most embarrassing thing a person ever did in their life to the entire world, completely devoid of context.

Some more about Robot McGee

2008-04-09T15:18:00.001-07:00

Here's a screen capture from Fox 26 Houston morning news a couple years ago. This is completely 100% not in any way photoshopped or doctored with. I hope it clarifies a few things.

By the way: I'm helping my friend do his own blog and it might be of some interest to you

2008-04-08T17:58:00.000-07:00

I have a friend named Robot McGee who sometimes plays in my band and is a robot. He recently began a blog where he posts his own descriptions/interpretations of famous paintings. If you have ever wondered what robots see when they look at fine art, this is maybe something you should check out.

Robot McGee Explains Fine Art

Note: I have to do the postings myself on account of Robot McGee himself is banned for life from using anything Google-related and thus cannot operate a Blogger account (he assures me it is a long and boring story, and when an android tells you something is boring you had better not second guess it); my name shows up on the posts but I promise that it's actually written by a real live robot.

Time for a nightmare!

2008-04-01T13:03:00.000-07:00

(When you’re a kid, I'm guessing there’s not much of a difference between being depressed and being perceptive)

2008-03-22T01:22:00.001-07:00

I would like to say some things about clowns now.

A lot of people are afraid of clowns, or they hate clowns. I’m not afraid of clowns, and I don’t hate clowns. I just don’t think they’re necessary, and they kind of make me sad.

When I was a kid, I was at a birthday party and there was a clown, making jokes, and doing things with balloons. And I realized once I got up close to him, hey, that’s not a clown, that’s a guy dressed like a clown, doing clown stuff. And then I realized that all clowns are just guys dressed like clowns, doing clown stuff. It’s a small thing, and may not seem like a lot, but it’s a big distinction when you’re five and you’re told that clowns are supposed to be a big deal.

Here’s this guy who’s getting paid to be silly and do funny things and make kids laugh, and then he’s got to put on this funny outfit and makeup and a wig, but at the end of the day he’s still just a guy, and a guy who just finished taking off a funny outfit and makeup and a wig; all the effort he puts into being a clown probably makes him sadder I bet, not happier. So why not just do the silly funny stuff without all the clown stuff?

Well, it would be kind of weird to just pay some dude to do clown stuff in front of your kids if he wasn’t a clown, yeah, I’ll give you that. But: why isn’t it weird just because he puts on all the clown stuff?

Ah, why not: A repost from my band's MySpace blog

2008-03-11T02:57:00.001-07:00

"A new album coagulates, and also we’re playing a show in Austin next week"
Current mood: don’t be scared

Hi Internet,

It's been awhile since I've said anything meaningful here so I thought I'd give a little update of sorts. Here is some information for you, if you were wondering:

- The Mathletes are playing a show in Austin on March 14th, sometime around 3 or 4 in the afternoon. We were actually accepted into the South by Southwest music conference/festival/party but we had to drop out because of my work schedule, which was massively disappointing and supremely ass-backwards in a lot of ways but that's life for you. But this afternoon day show thing will probably end up being better in many respects, including stress (low) and fun (high). I will give out additional information when I get it myself, or just send me a message if you'd like to know how you can find out more (like where specifically this is going down).

- I am finishing up a new album right now, and hope to have it done within the end of the month (but who knows). I am proud of the way it is turning out. I am not sure if it should come out under the name The Mathletes; to me it seems very different than the last few Mathletes albums in a lot of ways, and certainly different than every album that's come out since we started ever playing live, but I've been making music and calling it "The Mathletes" since I was 16 so and I don't know what else I ought to do at this point. I am probably overthinking this. Anyway it's supposed to come out on Asaurus Records later this year, but I keep forgetting to write them.

- My access to the internet has been fairly unreliable over the last couple of months, and I'm starting to realize what a subtle blessing that is.

- Here is a list of working titles I have for songs and parts of songs that I am working and reworking on right now. There will be way less songs than this on the final album. This will be due to editing.

Congratulations / I Refuse To Dance
God Rains Down His Terrible Magic
I Read Your Book
Ocean Song /Slow Apocalypse (An Interpretation of the Biblical Concept of The Rapture Wherein the End of the World is Not Instantaneous but Rather the Ongoing and Inevitable Cycle of Death in Life)
Bottlecaps and Something Else
This City Doesn't Deserve Us
Making Up Our Own Religion
Churchill's Dog Hotel
Beautiful Wheelbarrow
Context Ruins Everything
Beautiful Wheelbarrow Dreamberry Day
Hooray It's The Future And No One Cares
New Early Life
Noises Little Ones
Doctor Doctor (Young Mammals cover)
Hearts Break (Hearts of Animals cover)
A Bright-Ass Light (Jana Hunter cover)
This City Doesn't Deserve Us
Now That It's Over Now
For I Am Glad That God Is Lord
Sumflower
Elephant Watches The Hummingbird Fly
Everyone You Know, Hello!
Cephalopod
A Grandpa for Every Day
Striking Up A Conversation
Hiding is Fun

- In other news: interesting things continue to happen all around us.

Looking back on those songtitles now it seems like I've got some sort of biblical fixation... I'm about as religious as a beagle so I don't know quite to make of that.

"GENEOLOGY" (script for a short film that should probably never be made)

2008-02-09T01:15:00.000-08:00

(BILLY, a teenage boy, is sitting at the kitchen table playing Gameboy, but one of the new Gameboys that's not called "Gameboy". TABITHA, BILLY's grandmother, walks into the room)

TABITHA: Billy?

BILLY: Oh! Hey, Grandma. How are you?

TABITHA: Billy, I've got something to tell you.

BILLY: What's up?

TABITHA: Please, put the game down, dear. I... This is rather important.

BILLY: (pausing Tetris or whatever) What is it? Is something wrong?

TABITHA: No, nothing's wrong, but... Well, I don't know exactly how to put this... Billy, you know you're very special to me, no matter what?

BILLY: Aww, Grandma...

TABITHA: Billy, I've watched you grow up over the years from a little boy into a fine, wonderful young man, and I think you're ready to hear this now.

BILLY: What is it, Grandma?

TABITHA: Well, Billy, the truth is, though I'll always love her more than anything... Your mother isn't actually my daughter.

BILLY: What do you mean?

TABITHA: After I married your Grandfather, God rest his soul, we wanted nothing more than to have children of our own, but the doctors told us we weren't able to conceive, so we talked to an orphanage and adopted your mother.

BILLY: So wait-- so that means you're not my real grandmother?

TABITHA: Well dear, technically speaking, no, I'm not.

BILLY: So we're not related at all...

TABITHA: No... No, we're not...

BILLY: So...

TABITHA: ...

(cut to BILLY and TABITHA making love on a king size canopy bed. Two French doors are open, leading to a balcony filled with flowers and a sky exploding with fireworks. Music: an orchestral version of any Coldplay song)

THE END

(note: 99% of credit/blame goes to Zach Howard, from whom I stole the idea more or less completely)

2008 part two

2008-02-07T13:21:00.000-08:00

Hi internet. Sorry I've been away for so long; I've been doing stuff.

My life is a lot different than it was last time we spoke. I live in a different city and have cable for the first time since I was in high school. I find myself mostly watching CNN, sometimes Shin Chan if I'm up late enough. I work a very silly job that is a lot of fun. I'll give you a hint: I wear a silly hat and they say there's a teeny tiny chance I might get to meet Lou Reed.

I am not able to be around you that much for the time being, internet. I am sorry about this; it's not you, it's me. And it's not CNN's fault, either; even though I'm obsessing over the Obama campaign, madly in love with Abbi Tatton's British accent and oddly fascinated by the bizarre flirting between Wolf Blitzer and Jack Cafferty, I have many other reasons from being forced to keep my distance from you. That doesn't mean I love you any less than I ever did, so don't you go getting into hard drugs or prostitution just to fill a void, okay? There are still plenty of other people out there to browse your Wikipedia entries and reload Yahoo! News every five minutes.

LYLAS,

JM

2008

2007-12-29T14:41:00.001-08:00

2008 is shaping up to be an interesting year for me. Among many other things, most of which aren't worth mentioning to the internet-at-large, I will be moving to Austin, Texas for several months beginning late January to take a job. I bring this up here because I will not have a reliable internet connection while I am living there, either where I'll be living or where I'll be working. This will make it harder to write things on the internet on a somewhat regular basis.

Now: I waste a shitload of time online, so this may turn out to be a good thing for me personally. I can make myself devote time to finishing a new Mathletes album, or riding my bike, or reading that Neil Young biography that someone loaned me six months ago, or finally learning to play the trumpet, or masturbating using nothing but the power of my imagination (and BOTH hands!), or taking naps, or learning to cook something besides eggs or pasta. The sky's the limit when you're not catching up on/held prisoner by hilarious YouTube clips of Saturday Night Live's The Best of Jon Lovitz.

I am still figuring out exactly what this means for this blog and anything else I do online. I promise to keep you posted as I figure out exactly what's what.

Top Fifteen New Television Shows of 2007

2007-12-21T14:55:00.000-08:00

Reality:
5. Crying With The Stars
4. Eat This Thing
3. I Can't Believe We're Having Fucking Sextuplets
2. Who Wants Some Dollars
1. Asshole Celebrity Children

Drama:
5. The Ghost Frottager
4. Sex Cops
3. CSI: Yo' Mama
2. The Pretenderer
1. Law And Order: File Sharing Task Force

Comedy:
5. YTMNDTV
4. My Fat Stupid Husband
3. The Date Rapers
2. Eleven Minute ADD Stoner Cartoon
1. The Benny Hill Show (US)

Top Twenty Songs of 2007

2007-12-20T15:02:00.000-08:00

20. "Scream At Me (Cold)" by Painther
19. "Whiskey, Scotch and Liquor" by Johnny Rumbleseat
18. "At Least My Fish Loves Me" by Leave Grandpa Alone
17. "Do U Want (To Sit Wit' Me)" by Big Baby K
16. "Death" by Temple of Disgust
15. "(To Be Held By The Strong Tender Loving Arms Of) A Man Like You" by Jacqueline St. Croix
14. "Touch The Dragon" by Omega Horse
13. "Jumpy" by Lady Love (feat. Zoom Crew)
12. "A Pocketful of Chrysanthemum" by Flown Away With Whales
11. "Watch Me Touch It" by Fancy Fea$t
10. "Forget-You-Not" by The Crying Team
9. "Another Drink With My Buds (Part Two)" by Auntie Penultimate
8. "Clap (Your Hands)" by Turtle Birthday
7. "21st Century Lycanthropy" by High Crimes of the Modern City-State
6. "Cat Got Your Tail" by Judy Toot and the Pickles
5. "Everybody Say Party" by Fat Man & Li'l Boy
4. "Shouting At U" by Johnni James
3. "A Boat and a Pig and a Ten Farthings Ago" by Eliza Jane Maddox
2. "Ticklish (They're So)" by Deluxxxe
1. "Jeremy (Pearl Jam cover)" by The Bashful Swingsets

Top Fifteen Albums of 2007

2007-12-17T03:15:00.000-08:00

Let's get alphabetical!

Apples in Stereo - New Magnetic Wonder (Hooks as big as a hippo)

Battles - Mirrored (Finally, a band where robots play the instruments AND write the songs)

Bring Back the Guns - Dry Futures (One of several Houston acts on this list; sort of like Pavement but angrier and shreddier, or Bossanova-era Pixies. Fifty pounds of ninja-sharp guitar hooks per square inch)

Deerhoof - Friend Opportunity (Their best album since their last one)

Fishboy - Albatross: How We Failed to Save the Lone Star State With The Power of Rock and Roll (Equal parts epic and miniature. Why aren't all albums concept albums? And why aren't all indiepop albums this great?)

Hearts of Animals - Lemming Baby (Amazing Casio-fried one-woman shoegaze band. I was never able to actually buy a copy of this, but I pretty much crashed the HoA MySpace page this year from replaying the songs. Amazing live, too)

Jana Hunter - There Is No Home (Timeless. She sounds like a ghost, but not a scary one. I don't know any better way of describing it)

LCD Soundsystem - Sound of Silver (Better than the last one!)

The Linus Pauling Quartet - All Things Are Light (Heavier than Christ. Stoned-out Texas Psych riffing your face right off of your skull, leaving only a big-ass grin. Simultaneously the coolest album I heard all year and the dorkiest. Vinyl-only, but their last release was an mp3 CD-R with their complete collected works. Can't get much more 21st century than that)

Of Montreal - Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer? (In the future, all rock stars will be elfin androgynes airing out their psychological laundry over plastic funk and sugar-bombed laptop pop)

Panda Bear - Person Pitch (I never seem to be able to listen to any Animal Collective album all the way through, but I can't stop listening to this)

Radiohead - In Rainbows (A given. I got this off of a file sharing network; force of habit)

Sinkcharmer - Vegetable Farmer (This is the kind of album I wish I would get around to making already)

Something Fierce - Teenage Ruins 7" (PUNK! FUCKING! ROCK! the way it's supposed to be - fun, dirty, catchy and utterly joyous. The title track is about the most brilliantly anthemic three minutes I've ever heard)

Times New Viking - Present The Paisley Reich (Recording budgets are for assholes)

Top Five DVDs I Bought in 2007

2007-12-12T15:57:00.001-08:00

I'm not sure that any of these actually came out in 2007, but that's when I bought them. I got Netflix this year, but I'm only counting DVDs I actually physically own, just because.

5. The Flaming Lips - At War With The Mystics 5.1

So my friend Tamarie's ex-boyfriend gave her a surround sound system several years ago as a Christmas gift. This was apparently a bit of a turning point in the relationship; her reaction was basically "why would this guy think I want a huge ugly box and a bunch of wires cluttering up my apartment?". Two months later they broke up, and she gave the huge ugly box and bunch of wires to me. Note to guys: your girlfriend is probably not as much of a gadget geek as you are.

So anyway, that's how I ended up with a surround sound system, something I'd previously considered to be kind of silly and unnecessary. Leave it to the sound wizards in the Flaming Lips, just about my favorite band in the whole wide world, to get me to embrace crazy audio technology. I wasn't as enthused about their last album, At War With The Mystics, as I'd been about their other stuff, but having the crazy-ass 5.1 mix they did for the album explode all around me and shoot lasers through my head led me to appreciate it as a truly great achievement (the surround sound versions of The Soft Bulletin and Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots are also words-fail fantastic). Bonus: It comes with the music videos they made for the album, a bunch of bonus tracks, and Wayne Coyne's address to an Oklahoma City-area high school's graduating class (see below). Fantastic.

4. Children of Men
Would have been higher on the list, but I bought it at Best Buy and didn't realize I was getting the full-screen version. Nominated for an Oscar for Cinematography, and I'm looking at the pan & scan version. I hate caring about shit like that. Anyway, this movie is incredible, a semi-post-apocalyptic dystopian fable disguised as a badass action flick. I love movies where the future is dirty and society is falling apart; gives me comfort that I'll probably be dead by the time all that happens for real. I don't care that I'm a year behind everyone else who raved about this movie: If you haven't seen it, you probably ought to, and if you have: I know, right???

I can't find a YouTube clip worth posting, but seeing as how I bitched about the full-screen thing just now, it'd be kind of weird for me to show a bunch of people a cell-phone quality blip of a gorgeously shot movie.

3. Gimme Gimme Octopus (Kure Kure Takora)
I found a bootleg DVD of this violent and quasisensical Japanese children's show from the 60s (no subtitles). There's about an hour's worth of shorts, but it's kind of upsetting the longer I watch so I'm not even sure I've seen them all. To describe it in any words other than the blurb on the DVD's case would be doing it a great disservice, so here it is: "An octopus and a peanut are in love with the same walrus".

2. The Dana Carvey Show
Another bootleg (courtesy like the last selection of Houston's own Domy Books, which has all kinds of amazing shit), this disc has five of the seven episodes that ever aired for this mid-90s network TV sketch show, one of the single greatest waste of potential in comedy history. The cast includes Carvey (who I'd remembered so fondly from a youth spent watching SNL reruns on Comedy Central) hamming it up amongst the likes of Steven Colbert, Steve Carell, and Robert Smigel. The writing staff includes those guys and Louis C.K., Dave Chappelle, Jon Glaser, Charlie Kaufman and Dino Stamatopolous. Between all those, you've got writers and/or performers from Mr. Show, The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, Being John Malkovich, Saturday Night Live, The Office, Adaptation, TV Funhouse, Chappelle's Show, Aqua Teen Hunger Force, Late Night with Conan O'Brien, and Eternal Spotless Sunny Face Brain. I think I even saw Mr. Show's Bob Odenkirk in the credits for one episode. What the fuck.

It's not so much that the show is bad; it's mostly just mediocre. As I said, Dana Carvey made me laugh a whole lot when I was younger, so the most I'll say about him is he's really, really, really proud of his celebrity imitations. Which is a bummer, because for every three forced Ross Perot bits, there's something like this:

They canceled the shit out of this one in a month and a half. I would've just fired Dana Carvey.

1. Tom Goes to the Mayor: Businessman's Edition

Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim, neither of whom are Dutch, are the most important thing to happen to comedy in the last five years. Or maybe the next five. Possibly both. The show is brilliant; apparently Cartoon Network received more hate mail about this show than any other Adult Swim program in history. I could write a term paper on why I like this show (and their follow-up, Tim and Eric: Awesome Show Great Job), but I will say this about them: they are better than anyone I can think of at using humor to make you legitimately uncomfortable, without resorting to the easy out of "boundary-pushing" offensiveness. As great as the show is, this DVD is worth it alone for the short film in the bonus features, where Eric fires Tim and replaces him with Michael Cera and Louie Anderson.

By the way: I didn't look very hard to find that clip I posted above; I probably could have found something a bit more uncomfortable to prove my half-baked point, but it's late and I'm tired. Tune in later this week for my top ten albums of the year, copy-pasted from vh1.com.

Top Five Films 2007

2007-12-07T11:34:00.000-08:00

This is a tough one, as I only saw two movies from 2007 (one of them on my PC... thanks, bit torrent!). I am having to fudge the rules a bit for this list.

5. Pick a Winner

Featuring music by Lightning Bolt, White Mice, Wolf Eyes, and a bunch of other bands your parents don't like. This is available on DVD via Load Records, but they've made the entire thing available for free via that (admittedly low-res) YouTube clip above. Would have placed higher in this list, but I have never been able to watch more than 15 minutes without passing out.

4. King of Kong

Every time I start to feel stupid for caring deeply about stupid bullshit that doesn't matter, I will remember this film and I will be happy again.

3. "What is Wrong With You"

Loses points for not being an actual film, and being close to two decades old, and not even having been posted to YouTube within the last calendar year. Gains points for being my favorite thing of all time.

2. The Darjeeling Limited

Because even the worst Wes Anderson movie is better than basically any other movie.

1. "What is Wrong with You"

Oh, what the hell... I've gotta be true to my instincts.

I am going to do a bunch of year-end top ten lists, I think

2007-12-05T01:57:00.001-08:00

Or maybe top five lists. Depends on how much I like things, and how many of them I like. I have some thinking to do.

I only saw one movie this year, so that's out. I like music a bunch... That'll probably make for at least a couple lists. I found out I liked a couple of foods I used to think were gross, but that's not really something I need to make a year-end list out of (food is not really all that topical, except in the sense that you need to eat it before it spoils). I guess I've got a couple weeks to figure this out.

Thanksgiving

2007-11-29T20:13:00.000-08:00

The following is a series of text messages I received this Thanksgiving, while I was at my parents' house. We ate a little after 3:00, so keep in mind that for a lot of this I was sitting next to my grandpa, trying not to be rude (to my credit, my phone was at least on vibrate).

1:55 PM
I do have strong feelings for you…and as odd as i keep telling myself that is…i still do. When i went out with jeff it was because i convinced myself

1:56 PM
razy to wear my heart out in the open like i do and like you so much and want to only court you right from the start…but that’s who i am. Im fairytales

1:59 PM
and crazytown. And when it didn’t seem like you were, i did go out and see other boys and put my walls up towards you…

2:13 PM
ey really really wanted to be around me. i never had any other reasons and if i felt that you felt and wanted the same with me as I did with you I wouldn

2:16 PM
you will meet…all i know is i cant help but think of you. i was at my aunts with my friends and family all day having so much fun! Drinking and cookin

2:17 PM
I didnt expect me to go out and date and you not to, i just expected to make myself not feel for you and move on by showing myself boys who acted like th

2:30 PM
And because i want to be honest, i have spent 2 nights in a bed with jeff since ive dated him this time. We didnt have sex. I didnt touch him at all. Bu

3:04 PM
ut i feel right in my actions because of your tone with me (on a regular basis) and your actions. I appreciate so very much that you would invite me to d

3:11 PM
You are as bi polar as a polar bear. Be kind to me or dont. It cant be both anymore...i would also likd to say im sorry i was so quick to write you off b

3:12 PM
inner with travie trav and his parents but how was i supposed to know? You spoke to me and acted as if i would be lucky to see you ever...

3:39 PM
k of you when im trying to think of anything but you. Ive thought of you since i first met you...there has to be something to that. I know you think im c

3:47 PM
that i didnt want to like someone (you) so much when they could just take or leave me. I needed more assurance than that if my heart was already falling

3:49 PM
for you . So i went out with him on the full intention of never having feelings for you again. But here i am... He kissed me and i thought of you. I thin

3:51 PM
g and i just kept thinking of you. Jeff came over to my aunts later that night to hang out and drink and still i thought of you. I spent last weekend mos

3:52 PM
tly at home or with my family. ..not boys...i'm not the crazy girl you imagine. I just am crazy about you. And the way you treat me drives me crazy!

3:58 PM
t go out and see others just because we disagreed or whatever...thats definately not who i am. When im shown respect and honesty, im the most loyal puppy

3:59 PM
and surprise surprise. I thought of you. You ass...happy thanksgiving zach.

4:04 PM
t the first night (when i planned on having nothing to do with you ever again)He touched me over my jeans but my shirt and bra were off...it was awful...

4:11 PM
I just read that and it sounds like rape or something. it wasnt...it was nice actually but you know what i mean

9:19 PM
*Duplicate*
Zombihe! Are you amapzing time!

And now, here are my responses:

2:00 PM
Who is this? I think you have the wrong number

3:04 PM
PLEASE STOP TEXTING ME. YOU HAVE THE WRONG NUMBER.

4:13 PM
Why am I still getting text messages from you? who is zach? for christ's sake, YOU HAVE GOT THE WRONG NUMBER

Thank you to Verizon Wireless and their innovative "William Burroughs" method of text-message delivery. Also to the unknown teenage girl who transformed my otherwise-pleasant Thanksgiving into a Kafka-esque technological farce.

Great Moments in Mathlete History: The Official Slump Christmas Album

2007-11-26T02:58:00.001-08:00

So: my friend Keith Reynolds (under the auspices of his band/performance art project/production company/self, Slump) puts on a Christmas pageant almost every holiday season, "The Slump XXX-Mas Show." The shows became something of a local hit here in town, combining familiar holiday icons like Santa & Mrs. Claus, Rudolph, Frosty and Jesus with enormous, unwieldy casts largely comprised of amateurs, stoners and ex-strippers reveling in what one reviewer referred to as "infantile scatology".

I participated in the show several years ago (my first "legitimate acting" role; I played I think a hobo or something). Inspired by both the show's "kindergartener learning to cuss" aesthetic and Keith's penchant for shameless hucksterism (among sundry other things, he once made a good deal of money selling "lucky pennies" for a dollar at a street fair), I decided to put together what was marketed as "The Official Slump Christmas Album" and sell it at shows. In a span of four days I came up with eleven songs, including two recordings of songs from the show: a rewrite of "Silent Night" and "Sucka Fucka (WARNING: NOT AN ACTUAL CHRISTMAS SONG)".

Other than the Slump songs, nothing on the album had anything to do with the Slump Christmas show other than a loose association with Christmas. The final product was half-assed and moronic at best, but I had a lot of fun and made sixty bucks, thus cementing my love of seat-of-the-pants art capitalism. As an afterthought, I sent a mislabeled copy of the disc to a music website that had reviewed a few Mathletes albums. The result turned out to be the single best thing any human has written about a piece of art I've produced.

This is one of the most offensive records I have ever listened to -- a collection of 11 tracks with titles like "Santa Is an Obese Racist" and "Fuck Shit Up with Jesus". Even the ones that sound like they might be okay are revolting. "Silent Night" combines the melody we all remember from Sunday School with lyrics about a rape, including the memorable chorus (this is the "sleep in heavenly peace" part) of "I'm going to fuck your ass." "Greensleeves" does a similar trick with another familiar melody, but this time the lyrics are not really objectionable, just retarded. The entire second verse consists of either Joe or Keith singing the words "green sleeves" over and over, kind of like the song at the end of Elmo's World.

I'm not against satire. I don't mind songs that make fun of religion. It's just that these tracks are not funny enough to justify their obscenity, and they are, musically speaking, not very interesting. They are mostly drum-machine driven, low-rent-synth-filled, disco-beated wastes of time. I had to listen to this. You don't.

-- Jennifer Kelly, Splendid E-Zine

I probably should have just retired then and there. Hell if I know how I'll ever top "I had to listen to this. You don't."

fun/asshole things to do to your family at Thanksgiving dinner

2007-11-20T22:21:00.000-08:00

1. If you're straight, announce that you're coming out of the closet. If at all possible, do so when your grandpa is saying grace. Once the discussion moves elsewhere, quietly start piercing your nipples.
2. If you're gay and your parents disapprove, announce that you're going to be straight all day long as a present to your family. Then say that you need to be excused early because you've "got to go find some (pussy/dick) before midnight".
3. If you're a girl, announce that you're pregnant (again, during grace if possible). Later, excuse yourself and go to the restroom, then come back after a half-hour and announce that you just had a miscarriage so never mind.
4. Flirt with grandma.
5. Forcefully pick your nose. When confronted, explain to them that you'd rather eat boogers than that shit laid out on the table. Bonus points if you start bleeding.
6. Fake neck tattoo of a bulldog with an enormous erection.
7. Play footsie with everyone within leg's length.
8. Wear your iPod for the entirety of the evening. Sing along occasionally
9. Repeatedly and aggressively deny the Holocaust (unless your parents agree with such, in which case, uh, find a new family).
10. If you're a guy-- you know the scene in American Pie where the kid and the pie and the... yeah. Ask if you can help in the kitchen and do that to every dish you can get your hands on. When you're caught fucking the green bean casserole and they find holes in everything else: "What's the big deal? It's not like I'm coming in anything."
11. Hog all the stuffing.

Regarding these blogs I do

2007-11-15T23:15:00.000-08:00

First of all:

Cash Advance Loans

I have no idea how they calculated that, but if a website says it it must be true. I expect my MacArthur Fellowship certificate is in the mail.

Seriously, that's hilarious. The Marmaduke Explained blog got a "College (Postgrad)" label, which is odd considering I use so many more big words there (I've been mostly talking about animals for the last week in this one, and some of my sentences weren't even really sentences). Maybe "Genius" is somewhere below "College (Postgrad)" on the smarts totem? I dunno, I never graduated. Thankfully I didn't have more fart and dick jokes; otherwise I probably would've scored "College (Undergrad)."

Second, the thing where I draw stuff on index cards is being updated more or less regularly again.

Finally, cottage cheese is actually pretty good. So is Metalocalypse. I just figured all this out yesterday. Why did nobody tell me?

I hope you have all enjoyed Fable Week

2007-11-14T07:47:00.000-08:00

If any of you are writers, specifically philosophically-minded allegorical moralists, and wish to expand upon any of these scenarios, you have my blessings.

Giraffe vs. Vampire Bat

2007-11-13T16:45:00.000-08:00

Vampire Bat dies from exhaustion. Giraffe wins but is mildly annoyed.

Turtle vs. Tortoise vs. Terrapin

2007-11-12T13:40:00.000-08:00

Tortoise wins by default. Turtle is upset but Terrapin takes it in stride and goes for a swim.

Frog vs. Dog

2007-11-11T17:30:00.000-08:00

Draw (Frog is extraordinarily poisonous, but Dog is vegan and also not very affectionate).

Fish vs. Pine Tree

2007-11-09T21:36:00.001-08:00

Draw.

Lion vs. Hamster (On a Boat)

2007-11-09T13:13:00.000-08:00

Hamster jumps off boat, Lion chases after, both drown. Boat wins.

Lion vs. Hamster

2007-11-08T23:37:00.000-08:00

Lion catches and eats the hamster, but is still hungry.

Pig vs. Snake vs. Ice Cream

2007-11-08T12:13:00.000-08:00

No matter what, ice cream loses.

Dudes Korner: "How to convince a lady to have sex with you in 20 words or less"

2007-11-06T22:23:00.000-08:00

"I'll bet you my penis can't fit inside your vagina. If you win, you get to have sex with me!"

"Pardon me, but could I interest you in some orgasms?"

"It's not long, but it's skinny!" (warning: highly risky)

"You remind me of a girl I used to know who loved having casual sex with me"

"Do you have any (your ethnicity) in you? Want some in your vagina?"

"Whooo, baby, you're making MY 'seventh inning' stretch!" (only effective during the seventh inning at baseball games, if at all)

"What are you, chicken?"

Joe Mathlete Improves Famous Poetry

2007-11-06T00:01:00.000-08:00

This Is Just to Say
(William Carlos Williams)

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so yummy
Mmm-mmm yummy plums

A Dream Deferred
(Langston Hughes)

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun? Yuck!
Or fester like a sore--
And then run? Double yuck!
Does it stink like rotten meat? Yuck City USA!!!
Or crust and sugar over--
like a syrupy sweet? NOW we're talking!

Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

I hope it crusts and sugars over like a syrupy sweet.

The Road Not Taken
(Robert Frost)

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-
I took the one less traveled by,
And a grizzly bear ate me.

Haiku Corner

2007-11-02T02:05:00.000-07:00

"Untitled Haiku For Grandchildren"

As you are right now
So too was I, long ago
Still, please hush up now

"Untitled Haiku For Grandchildren no. 2"

Stop picking your nose
There are no more boogers there
What is wrong with you

"Untitled Haiku For Grandchildren no. 3"

When I was your age
I wasn't such an asshole
Sure, go tell your mom

Context ruins everything

2007-10-31T14:53:00.001-07:00

It was either post this or take a day off. I'm sorry.

Ron Paul

2007-10-30T01:52:00.001-07:00

I have a friend named Walt who grew up in East Texas in the 60s and 70s, spending most of his youth in the cities of Freeport and Angleton. Walt hates the war in Iraq with a passion, and is sick enough of the status quo to advocate rioting at least a quarter of the time I talk politics with him. He thinks the Bush administration is the worst thing to happen to America in decades, possibly ever, and is massively disillusioned with the Democratic party. He will not be voting for Dr. Ron Paul.

As many of you know, Ron Paul was a gynecologist before entering politics. As probably only one or two of you know, Ron Paul was Walt's mother's gynecologist before entering politics. According to Walt, Ron Paul once recommended her a hysterectomy for reasons still at large, a recommendation that was not taken after a different doctor gave a second opinion discrediting and mocking Ron Paul's advice. Walt's mother lives to this day, hale and healthy and with every last bit of her uterus.

Ron Paul tried to steal my friend's mom's uterus.

I'm not going to tell you who I'm voting for, and I'm not going to tell you who I'm not voting for, but I will say this: a vote for Ron Paul is a vote for a man who tried to steal my friend's mom's uterus.

Attn: The Internet

2007-10-29T03:29:00.000-07:00

How do you make a podcast? Is it pretty easy? Does anyone listen to them?

Is it legal? What if I just podcasted a Beatles album or something... Do people give a shit?

Why do "podcast" and "podcasting" clear Firefox's spellcheck, but not "podcasted"?

And how come neither "spellcheck" nor "spellchecker" pass the spellcheck(er)? Common usage, internet... jeez.

The Grone Protocol: The Alabaster Mask of Iniquity, Chapter 008

2007-10-26T14:30:00.000-07:00

Like most of you, I am a popular writer of highbrow thrillers and suspense novels in my spare time. For your entertainment and erudition (both of which I care about so much it gives me night terrors), I will be serializing my latest work, THE GRONE PROTOCOL, here in my “blog” (short for “web blog”) every "week" (seems more like bi-monthly now, but whatever). Here’s the eighth chapter, which should more than fill your daily quota of gripping intrigue. If not, just google "gripping intrigue" and leave me alone.

008

Chi Chi Caraniveggilio stepped out onto the balcony like a butterfly fart. As the party carried on inside the living room, she sighed and lit a tampon from her purse, believing it to be a cigar. After putting out the tampon and realizing she had left her cigars on the coffee table, she sighed again, twice. "Mama Mia," she thought. "I've really burned the spaghetti this time."

Chi Chi was an Italian, from Italy, and she liked to smoke cigars. She had been a world-famous local celebrity in her hometown of Genoa, the host of the gourmet cooking show "La Camera Squisita Grande di Come Circa Lascili Mangiano un Certo Molto Buon Alimento Oggi che Caratterizza il Vostro Chi Chi Ospite" ("The Big Delicious House of How About Let's Eat Some Very Good Food Today Featuring Your Host Chi Chi"), a program whose revolutionary approach to microwaving and ludicrously cumbersome title made her an international superstar in Genoa and its surrounding villages. Chi Chi relished her fame, but she gave it all up to come to America, where she lived a life of quiet, cigar-filled anonymity.

Chi Chi loved her life in the States, and loved regaling her new American friends and acquaintances with tales of microwaving damn near everything she felt like. But Chi Chi had a secret. A secret that she was totally never ever going to tell anybody in a million billion years, even her Mom or her very best friend in the world or postsecret.com. A secret that, if revealed, would no longer be a secret.

As she walked back into her neighbor's nephew's bar mitzvah to retrieve her cigar bag, she paused. A thought crept into her head: "Provengo da un paese differente che sono dentro ora ed ancora penso occasionalmente in lingua della mia nazione precedente," which means something in Italian. If she was from the future instead of Italy, she would know that no matter how untranslated her thoughts were, they weren't untranslated enough to prevent what was about to happen.

A partial list of things besides Autumn weather that I think are rad

2007-10-26T13:54:00.000-07:00

I love NewsRadio. When I was in high school I wrote letters to keep them from canceling it, twice. It only worked the first time. It had the best ensemble cast of any show on television, outstanding writing, a beautiful mix of subtle and slapstick not equaled until Arrested Development, and I developed a crush on Maura Tierney so massive it almost makes me want to watch ER (almost). I still count they day I found out about Phil Hartman's murder as one of the saddest days of my life.

I love burritos. And I love living in Texas, where they are really good at burritos. I even love non-Texan burritos if they're done right; I love Chipotle and its weird, German Minimalist approach to both burritos and decor. I love enchiladas too.

I love Guided by Voices. I got to see them six times, and fully regret only being over 21 (and thus as drunk as they were) the last time I saw them. I would have a hard time narrowing down a list of my top 100 Guided by Voices songs, and would have to make sacrifices left and right; there are maybe only one or two other bands for whom that would be anywhere near the case.

I love animals, and wish that they would invent a kitten that was both cuddly didn't shit so I could have a pet. If you think kittens are not hard for someone to take care of, you have not seen the inside of my apartment.

I love playing the drums. I am horrible at the drums, but they are the most fun instrument to play.

I love England, and keep having dreams about moving there. I love that they speak the same language I do in England, but it is still a foreign nation. I also love Canada, for many of the same reasons.

I love Wes Anderson films, and could not care less that all his films are very similar to one another. If someone starts making better Wes Anderson films than Wes Anderson, it might be a problem, but for now Wes Anderson makes the best Wes Anderson films, and I love Wes Anderson films.

This is only a partial list... There are totally other things in this world that I love, but I'm tired of listing them right now. I think I've covered enough for one Rad Week.

Okay, I got something

2007-10-25T00:18:00.001-07:00

I know this has been a really shitty Rad Week, but I thought of something I like a whole bunch and am really happy about: Autumn is here!

I love a lot of things about my hometown; it's got a bunch of traffic and pollution and haunted strip clubs and gigantic evil corporations and Z.Z. Top (I think), but it's also got its good points. For 90% of any given year, the weather is certainly not one of the good points. This summer alone we had over 50 consecutive days with temperatures over 100 degrees,* and as Houston was built on a swamp it has more humidity than is healthy for humans.

But man, Autumn totally just got here this week and I've been so excited.

I have a sweatshirt that is one of my favorite things. It is old and lightweight and dark blue and has pockets and a hood and a zipper and everything. I get to wear it about six weeks' worth out of any given year. This week was the first sweatshirt weather we have had since February. Next week it'll probably be ninety something degrees like it was last week, but our miserable seven month summer is finally starting to die. I went to a park and sat down on a bench and there was a breeze and it was really, really pleasant.

See, this is boring, and also I bitched about things for most of it. I am not good at this. I do like a lot of things, but I don't see much of a point writing about them. Maybe I'll just come up with a list tomorrow and be done with it.

I apologize for how poor this Rad Week has turned out.

*: Source: Guesstimate, based on how much I hate the summer

Alright wait hold on gimme a sec

2007-10-23T16:18:00.001-07:00

I'm CERTAIN there has got to be something that I like that's worth writing about... Shit.

I'm working on it...

Starting tomorrow: RAD WEEK BEGINS!

2007-10-21T18:27:00.000-07:00

So I've noticed I've been bitching about things a lot lately, from cartoons I really shouldn't care about to internet fads to children's entertainment I really, really, REALLY shouldn't care about to the still-distant presidential elections to the internet to spooky strip clubs in my hometown. Also that comic strip.

You would be forgiven in assuming that I'm a black hole of bitterness and misdirected bile. While it's true that there are a good deal of things in this world that make me sad, frustrated, angry and generally not all that happy, I would like to take the next week to prove that there are, indeed, a lot of things I really like.

So check back tomorrow for the first installment of Rad Week, during which I will describe and/or praise things that I really love, or at least don't hate, rather than dwelling upon bullshit that serves only to angry up the blood.

God I hope I can come up with a half-dozen things I like.

I want to tell you something about the city I live in

2007-10-19T22:49:00.000-07:00

That city is Houston, Texas. There is actually a great deal of things that I love about Houston. There is also this.

Haunt XXX: "Houston's most titillating haunted house"

My hometown has combined haunted houses and strip clubs. In lieu of actually writing about this, I'm going to just post the link again and go to bed.

Haunt XXX: Houston's most titillating haunted house

This really is not a proud day for me.

I have grown a beard (AKA Joe Mathlete's most personal blog entry yet)

2007-10-18T04:15:00.000-07:00

Yeah, like it says... I have a beard. Intentionally this time, too. There is a thin line between growing a beard and being bad at shaving, and I have toed it many times. This one is an on-purpose beard, though.

The best part? I can have weird humongous sideburns later, instantly, without going through the awkward developmental stages. It can be hard to tell the difference between someone growing sideburns and someone being really, really, really bad at shaving, but in this scenario I've already got the sideburns. They're just hiding inside my beard, patiently waiting for their chance to strike.

WHO IS JOE MATHLETE GOING TO VOTE FOR IN THE 2008 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS???

2007-10-16T17:13:00.001-07:00

I don't know. Talk to me next year. Until then, for chrissakes shut up about it.

It's like Christmas ads in March.

Awesome!

2007-10-15T19:10:00.000-07:00

Google Ads is having a field day with the Spin Magazine thing I did a few days ago. I can't BELIEVE there are this many adult diaper companies.

Thank you, Google, for teaching us how to smile again.

JOLLY JOLLY JINGLEBEANS: THE MOVIE

2007-10-14T22:15:00.000-07:00

This is so awesome. A brave group of film enthusiasts and thespians took a script I wrote a couple of months ago and totally did all sorts of moviemaking to it. I myself am a veteran of many kitchen-shot budget-free short films, so this strikes a particular chord in me (besides, y'know, the narcissism one).

They were surprisingly faithful to the script, down to the stage directions... When Jolly Jolly Jinglebeans appears in a fantastical burst of magic, you WILL believe in fantastical bursts of magic. Many thanks to Clav (possibly not his real name) and the rest of the crew.

If anyone would like to make any more movies for me, feel free. Suggestions: a film version of my unfinished play Robot Holocaust (up to you to finish it for me), a remake of Dr. Strangelove with puppets or cats, and old episodes of NewsRadio shot in the style of The Office.

Spin Magazine's 100 Greatest Albums 1985-2005, part two: Diaper Edition

2007-10-12T14:10:00.000-07:00

51.
In Diapers
by Nirvana

52.
Licensed to Ill
by Diaper Boys

53.
The Battle of Los Angeles
by Diaper Against the Diaper

54.
Last Diaper
by The Breeders

55.
Dig Your Own Diaper
by The Chemical Diapers

56.
To Bring You My Diaper
by PJ Harvey

57.
White Blood Diaper
by The White Stripes

58.
Master of Diapers
by Metallica

59.
Lonesome Crowded Diaper
by Modest Mouse

60.
De La Soul Is Diapers
by De La Soul

61.
Diaperton
by Weezer

62.
Supa Diaper Fly
by Missy Misdemeanor Elliott

63.
Crooked Rain, Crooked Diaper
by Pavement

64.
The Marshall Diapers LP
by Eminem

65.
Remedy
by Diaper Jaxx

66.
Aquediaper
by OutKast

67.
Reign in Diapers
by Slayer

68.
Diaperquaye
by Tricky

69.
Endtrodiaper...
by DJ Shadow

70.
The Bluediaper
by Jay-Z

71.
Diapercandy
by The Jesus and Mary Chain

72.
Only Built 4 Cuban Diapers
by Raekwon

73.
Different Diapers
by Pulp

74.
Dummy
by Diapershead

75.
Le Diapers
by Le Tigre

76.
If You're Feeling Sinister
by Diapers & Sebastian

77.
Yankee Hotel Diaper
by Wilco

78.
The Stone Diapers
by The Stone Roses

79.
Everything Is Diapers
by Moby

80.
Voodoo
by D'Iapers

81.
Diaper Gold
by Beck

82.
Grace (Diapers)
by Jeff Buckley

83.
Relationship of Command
by At the Diaper-In

84.
Diaperunknown
by Soundgarden

85.
Automatic for the Diaper
by R.E.M.

86.
Up on the Sun
by Meat Diapers

87.
Diaperlife
by Blur

88.
Emperor Tomato Diaper
by Stereolab

89.
Diaper To Tell
by Yeah Yeah Diapers

90.
Sister
by Sonic Diaper

91.
Diaperlarking
by XTC

92.
Atomizer
by Big Black Diaper

93.
Ten
by Diaper Jam

94.
Diaperland
by Slint

95.
Diapers (s/t)
by Elastica

96.
Diaper Sodomy & the Lash
by The Pogues

97.
In the Aeroplane Over the Sea
by Diaper Milk Hotel

98.
When I Was Born for the 7th Time
by Diapershop

99.
Gentlemen
by The Diaper Whigs

100.
Is This Diapers
by The Strokes

I'm sorry. Part one next week, if I can wash off the embarrassment.

Anyone who has ever said the following is not allowed to be friends with me

2007-10-10T17:41:00.001-07:00

"Gentlemen, start your boners"

"Am I right, ladies?" (stand-up comics only)

"Rap? More like 'Crap'!"

"Okay, obviously the war is about oil, but so what? We need oil."

"I just don't 'get' kittens"

"DC is far superior to Marvel" (Okay, you can be friends with me, but only under the condition that you admit you're stupid)

"If you don't like it, you can get the hell out" (when "it" is America. If "it" is, say, someone's house, that's perfectly fine)

"I like all kinds of music except _____"*

"I like all kinds of music" (These are not as big dealbreakers as the others, but I've grown to loathe statements like these. As someone really perceptive whose name I've forgotten once observed, "People who say they like all kinds of music usually don't really like music)

"It's been over a year... When are you going to start doing a Family Circus blog already???"

Farting Babies (so many of them)

2007-10-08T22:06:00.000-07:00

(Warning: some of these are probably more than farts)

The entirety of my infant videography is collected on a single VHS cassette (labeled "Family Tape #1"), currently residing on a shelf somewhere at my parents' house. These kids have had millions of strangers watch them fart and voice opinions ranging from "im gona dres my baby lik dat. how cute.:)" to "WHAT AN UGLY STUPID BABY!!!" before they turned one year old.

Hooray! It's the future! Hooray!

CNN.com's front page as of 2:00 CST, October 5 2007: Pizza Party Edition

2007-10-05T02:30:00.000-07:00

There's a lot of bad news in the world today, and I for one am doing something about it. This week, there was so much bad news that I had to use something even nicer than grandpas to fix it.

Tape shows scuffle before death at pizza party

Man kills self in front of City Council after pizza party

U.S.-led forces call in pizza party, kill 25

Police blast into pizza party, kill man who shot 5

N.H. tax evaders arrested after long pizza party

Student apologizes for 'Jena 6' pizza party

Huge U.S. Embassy pizza party beset by delays

Report: Marion Jones admits pizza parties

Ig Nobels celebrate science's silly pizza parties (this was already a great headline, but now it's even better)

$2.4M pizza party for sponge left in body

Pizza parties fight to keep women

Ticker: McCain wants pizza party 'dead or alive'

Sinead O'Connor to pizza party: I feel for Britney

One spritz gives bed monsters fits (I cannot in good conscience edit this wonderful, wonderful sentence)

How to enjoy pizza parties with in-laws

Public Access Television

2007-10-03T19:00:00.000-07:00

I missed the "Golden Age of Public Access Television" (if there ever was such a thing), so I can't say that I've watched too much of it. The little I have been exposed to gives me the impression that it's about 90% bargain basement televangelists too broke-ass to hook up with the big-haired grin monsters on the Trinity Broadcasting Network, with the rest divided between prerecorded town hall meetings, Spanish-language hip-hop shows that can't get over the Green Screen effect, and college courses with a beardy professor talking to a half-empty room and a single camera.

Apparently it wasn't always like this. Apparently, back in "the day" you could catch all sorts of crazy shit that slipped through the cracks, things that weren't entertaining on the same level of other television programs so much as they were fascinating on the level of "what is this and why was this made." There is a lot of that sort of thing to be found in the world of low-budget video'd what-the-fucklery today, of course; that's about 90% of YouTube videos right there. But the difference is, with YouTube you've pretty much got to be looking for something to find it, or at least looking for something similar, and there's probably going to be a description next to it, and people commenting below to give it clarity, and a list of related videos to further frame it. In other words, even the most random and bizarre YouTube video is basically dripping with context. And as I've said before, context ruins everything.

Honestly, is homemade pseudo-Dada too much to ask for on the public airwaves in the 21st century? Basically I just wish I could have been aimlessly flipping through channels at two AM in a random bout of insomnia 20 years ago and come across something utterly bizarre and inexplicable, something untainted by logic or reason that would shake me out of my fog and then make me wonder for the rest of my days what on earth I had seen. Something like this:

If you're wondering? Yes, I did write this whole post just to have a reason to share that clip. The more I watch it the happier it makes me. I'm starting to worry myself.

How about a music video: The Mathletes - Only Shallow (My Bloody Valentine cover)

2007-10-02T14:15:00.000-07:00

Cover of a My Bloody Valentine song, taken from the album The Mathletes Own Other People's Songs, an album of covers available as a free download at http://oops.allstarpowerup.com.

The video is comprised of a bunch of live clips spanning seven or eight months' worth of Mathletes shows. We don't have so much a "revolving door" lineup as we do a "bigass hole in the wall that we really ought to consider repairing" lineup

I have no idea what the actual words to the song are; it's loads more fun to just make up sounds. If you're not familiar with MBV and are somewhat lost as to what's going on here, check out the video for the original recording:

Rumor has it that My Bloody Valentine is reuniting for next year's Coachella fest. If anyone wants to give me a ticket, I'll totally be your best friend.

Oh MySpace

2007-10-01T15:31:00.000-07:00

One of the best things about having a MySpace account is the endless parade of sub-adequate musicians/comedians/entrepreneurs who send you random friend requests, in hopes that you (or, usually in my case, your band) is their target market. I can't tell you how much mediocrity I've been asked to befriend, but every now and then, out of a vast sea of unsolicited e-cries for attention, you find something that transcends pointlessness and skates right into the sublime.

Despite my numbers-referencing surname and our shared hometown, I can assure you that this is not me. I only wish I had been able to come up with this, even though I don't really care much for either math or education.

Presenting the single best MySpace friend request I have received in months: "Mr. Flowers Hip Hop Multiplication CD."

I highly suggest listening to all the tracks Mr. Flowers has offered to the general public, but the highlights for me are definitely "Mr. Trey (Three)" and "Neighborhood Hero (Zero)." Casio-level hip-hop production and multiplication tables: together at last.

What I did on my week off

2007-09-30T18:38:00.001-07:00

Thanks to whoever filmed these, all the nice folks my friends and I met in San Antonio and Austin, you guys here for sitting tight while I took a breather, and the Flaming Lips (and road crew) for rather obvious reasons.

Joe Mathlete presents FAMILY GUY: DETRACTOR'S CUT

2007-09-23T21:35:00.000-07:00

(Much thanks to my friend Jonathan for inspiring this)

Presenting for your edification: Family Guy season 6 episode 16, minus every instance it resorted to one of the program's Five Pillars of Lazy Post-Simpsons Hack Bullshit (see: the last thing I wrote). I searched at random for something from the most recent season and went with the first episode I came across, ensuring that the show would have a fair shot at giving me it's best work, or at least its most average and representative. This also ensured that I would only have to watch one episode of Family Guy.

I was able to shave a full ten minutes off the episode's runtime without removing anything that had remotely to do with the actual plot of the show. It takes a couple of minutes for the episode to really lean hard on the cheap hack copouts that are Family Guy's bread and butter; keep your eyes peeled and see if you can spot every time I had to cut something. If every example is correctly pointed out, there's probably a prize or something.

I'm proud at how much this improves the show. Watch it quick, before someone on the internet or from 20th Century Fox says I'm not allowed to do this and it gets taken down.

I'm taking a short break for a few days or so... When I get back: words!

The Family Guy is terrible, and laziness is ruining comedy

2007-09-21T20:04:00.001-07:00

I've said it before (and so has South Park, and so has probably The Simpsons, and I'm guessing other people who write about stuff they hate), but let's summarize:

1. In a comedy show, the majority of jokes ought to have at least some tangential relation to what is going on in the story. An occasional non-sequitur aside here and there can add an absurdist dimension to an already strong piece, but Family Guy writers just let their gag idea notepads shit into each and every script in order to bloat episodes to their full, required 23-minute lengths. It's boring and amateurish.

2. When something goes on too long, it goes on too long. Extending an out-of-nowhere awkward pause does not automatically equal humor. Family Guy didn't write the book on this sort of device in animation, but they highlighted every page of the book and consult it multiple times per tired, hackneyed episode.

3. Ditto unnecessary repetition to highlight/belabor a dumb gag.

4. Inserting a celebrity or stereotype (or reference to such) into a scene for no reason, then letting them do or say something for an extended period of time, not to propel the action along but rather derail it to highlight how silly said celebrity/stereotype is (or how silly the reference is)? Hack City USA. There's enough ADD going off with all the "that reminds me of the time when..." bullshit (see #1), but sometimes even when Family Guy manages to avoid cutting away from a scene, it still can't focus to save its goddamn life.

5. Somewhere around the fifteenth year of Saturday Night Live, television show parodies (either fabricated shows or spoofs of existing programing) became essentially the most creatively bankrupt, butt-lazy form of cheap-laugh comedy premise, especially when they are segued into via "some people are sitting on a couch watching television."

None of these points in particular are unpardonable offenses; when used sparingly and creatively as part of shows or movies or whatever that are grounded in things like strong writing, originality and a cohesive plot (yeah, remember those?), that's no problem. When you use them as the basic formula for a highly popular and long-running television series, when you run them into the ground until a nation of dim college students and uncreative stoners are programed to mistake an endless parade of disjointed pop culture references for legitimate humor, when you've done all you can to ruin modern comedy through your lazy hackery and Marmadukian formula-abuse (that's right, I went there)...

When you're a show that was fresh and original for precisely one season, devolved into self-parody after two, was canceled after three, then saw its DVD sales and rerun-fueled contract renewal as a mandate to make your empty, half-assed bullshit the gold standard and make an entire generation of misguided attention span-deprived MTV casualties nullify the value of content and rape Dada's corpse (I am looking at you, Adult Swim, and with some notable exceptions your programming is on extraordinarily thin ice)...

When you've made a boilerplate formula out of left-field randomness...

Jesus, I'm too defeated to even finish that thought.

(I will say that I find Lois kind of attractive... I find it's best not to think about it.)