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

"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.

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

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.

Great Moments in Mathlete History: The Official Slump Christmas Album

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."

Regarding these blogs I do

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

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.

What I did on my week off

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.

Birthday clarification

(see: that last thing I wrote)

Early 20s: 20-23
Mid 20s: 23-26
Late 20s: 26-29

Those years where there's overlap are where distinctions like "early-mid" and "mid-late" come into play; their usage is wholly optional, but I prefer sticking with it to be slightly more accurate while maintaining slight ambiguity.

Obviously I'm making most of this up right at this moment.

Fun Faqt: I was born at 3:33 AM, so I'm pretty much required by birthright to have some amount of 3s as my lucky number.

I'm in my mid-20s

I used to be in my early-mid 20s, but as of now I'm in my mid-20s. No new post today while I'm figuring this out.

I am not sure whether or not I ought to post that script I wrote

First of all, it's really long. Not so much long for a play, necessarily, but way too long to fit here comfortably; it's about seven pages according to Microsoft Word, and that seems kind of extravagant for a blog.

Second, it's not really all that great, taken out of context. I was assigned the first and last lines I was to use ("I didn't mean to hurt you... really. But it felt so goddamned good" and "I figured it should be less than 3,000 pages... All the best books have less than 3,000 pages," respectively) and had roughly five hours to write the whole thing (not counting the time I spent fighting with my computer, or getting sidetracked by KIDS director Larry Clark's endearingly clumsy 2005 film Wassup Rockers, which despite the absence of Lou Barlow or Daniel Johnston songs was pretty interesting). So the best you can say about it is "for something produced under considerable constraints, it succeeds on its own terms!"

Third, it's called "Jolly Jolly Jinglebeans." Probably because I hate theatre.

Fourth, I don't have the script on the computer I'm on now so the issue's moot at the moment anyway. God I'm sick to death of not having internet access at home... Comcast is supposed to come a week from tomorrow and end my exile in 1995, and not a moment too soon; I'm really fed up with having to check my email at work, like the frigging Pilgrims did.

On a 170% unrelated note, that movie Superbad opens tomorrow. For one reason or another, I haven't seen a movie in theaters in close to a year, but I might see this one. Michael Cera is going to own Hollywood within five years... You heard it here fifth.

The play thing happened

I'll put the script up later.

TOMORROW NIGHT: Come see a play I wrote (if you live in or around the city where I live)

LIVE THEATRE: NOT JUST FOR DUMBFUCKS AND ELDERLIES ANYMORE!


I was asked to participate in something called MADCAP 24 ("an avant-garde multi-theatrical event involving a collaboration on the production of 8 original one-act plays," according to some of the first words on the website I just linked you to). Technically I haven't written it yet, because the whole deal is everything has to be written, rehearsed and performed within 24 hours (and they're gonna give me some parameters so I don't cheat and just show up with a pre-written script), but I'm already fairly confident that it's going to be the best short play ever written ever so you should come and see it is what you should do.

If you can't, I'll post the script next week and you can print a few copies out to put on your own independent production / staged reading with your friends, family, or stuffed animals. If you do so, make sure to film the results and put them on YouTube, especially if it's the stuffed animals thing.

Oh crud I was supposed to come back yesterday

Uh, sorry about that, internet. To be fair, returning to your side wasn't the only promise I failed to keep yesterday; I also neglected to make it into work, which meant I didn't have access to the internet save for a brief jaunt over to a friend's house (which mostly involved checking a couple email and MySpace accounts and searching YouTube for that video of the guy who programmed Showbiz Pizza robots to sing a Fergie song).

That's right. I don't have internet access at home. I also don't have cable TV, or even rabbit ears. Or a radio, now that I think about it... I'm actually starting to see a pattern emerge, but it's not like I live in a lean-to on Walden Pond or just make dolls out of corn cobs after I get off work; I'm terribly used to having the internet where I live, so much so that it has completely and totally taken the place of both television and radio as a form of passive entertainment in my life (and anyway if I wanted either one, I've got youtube, last.fm, bittorrent, and like a hundred kajillion other things). Or it had, until I moved a couple months ago and neglected to call Time Warner or Comcast or a third, theoretically/hopefully cheaper provider.

Anyway it's worked out alright so far, seeing as I work with a computer in a tiny room at a company where most people really don't seem to realize I do anything, or at least pay attention to it. But I will not be working here forever; I'm what you refer to as a "contract employee," and plus I don't seem to show up to work every day (see: yesterday) so it might even be shorter than I'm expecting.

So: sorry I balked on returning to writing on you, internet. I like you loads more than I like doing my job. Here's that Showbiz Pizza video... Someone emailed the link to me; I have yet to watch it a hundred times since YouTube videos won't play on my work computer (other things I can't do here: access MySpace; use AIM, AIM express, Yahoo Messenger or Meebo; look at pornography; not wear shoes; hit people; urinate OR defecate anywhere except a men's or unisex bathroom; make out with the cute girl in the room down the hall without probably at least asking her first*), but as far as I could tell it's the best thing that's ever happened anywhere ever.


*: I guess these last few things are pretty much true of most of society and not just where I work

Due to technical difficulties, I am going on vacation

I mean, not in real life or anything fun like that; I'm just not going to write anything here for a week or so. It's because of a reason.

Tune in next Friday for another installment of my genre-defying genre exercise The Grone Protocol; something really exciting is maybe going to happen. Or is it?

Hey, guess who got interviewed? Me! I did. I got interviewed!

It was me.

The Skip Raid, which I was able to correctly identify as a website on the internet with computers, saw fit to ask me a few things, and did so with aplomb and vigor. I'd like to think I don't come off as too much of a moron.

MARVEL! as I reveal which humorist's work I enjoy more: Kurt Vonnegut or Carlos Mencia

GASP! as I briefly discuss my hypocritical patriotism

SWOON! as I alienate fans of Dane Cook and The Family Guy

SHUDDER! as I reference a couple of bands I enjoy listening to

FREAK OUT! as I say at least one and as many as several cuss words

When you're done with that, check out their strange obsession with/crusade against people who have red hair. It's oddly compelling.

Arrested Development

Like hopefully every single one of you who ever watched it, I am an enormous fan of the late, lamented Arrested Development. Much has been written about the show's brilliance and the criminality of its cancellation(s), so I'll just say that it was a neat show that I wish they were still making.

Thanks to the wonderful technological advancement that is the DVD (which stands for Digital Viewable Dvd), I've watched the show over and over again since its untimely demise, sometimes with a good friend of mine whose enthusiasm for television (especially television on Digital Viewable Dvds) dwarfs mine exponentially. This friend (let's call him "Chester") is a man of strong opinions, opinions which often run somewhat counter to mine. Over time, Chester and I have engaged in a number of arguments over the show: which season was the best, which cast member was the most talented, would they really have been able to keep the momentum going through a fourth season and beyond, would Jason Bateman ever find work again, etc.

One such argument revolved around the actress Alia Shawkat, who played Maeby Funke (main character Michael Bluth's jaded and machiavellian niece). Essentially, we both found her attractive, but I thought she looked too young and too close to the age of the character she was portraying until season three. Chester disagreed, saying that she was hot from the get-go. Either way, we both felt a little bit weird that we were attracted to someone who was supposed to be in high school, and on top of that highly discouraged that we found it so weird that we were attracted to someone who was supposed to be in high school, those days seeming not all that long behind us. It was our first encounter with feeling like dirty old men, and the true sadness came from the fact that we knew it would not be the last.

Then, several months ago, Chester and I had the idea to look Alia Shawkat up on IMDB and see if that would make us feel better (Linda Cardellini, who played Lindsay Weir on Freaks and Geeks, was like 25 or something when that show came out).

It was a very bad idea. Turns out she was, at that time, 17 and a half.

Which meant she was around 13 when Arrested Development started filming.

Which meant that both Chester and myself were thought sex criminals.

Moral: IMDB is terrible.

I'm sick

It sucks. I'm covered in fevers and sweat. On the plus side I'm not going to work, but I could not go to work and not have to throw up everywhere. I don't know where the throw up is coming from. I haven't eaten real food in a long time. My stomach's probably subtracting it from future meals.

Anyway it occurred to me I should probably say something to the internet about things. I'm going to go back to bed. I'm starting to feel better, so maybe tomorrow I'll do one of the dog things again.

Also, MAKE SURE YOUR CHINESE SEA FOOD IS FROM A REPUTABLE SOURCE.

Happy Fourth of July

My ass. First Monday of July would've been a lot better. Wednesday holidays are like making out with your grandpa.

I'm considering it my patriotic duty to go into work drunk for the rest of the week.

If you are a straight guy who has never been to a Gay Pride Parade before, I will tell you this much:

It is a terrible, terrible, TERRIBLE place to try to pick up girls.

I don't want to talk about it, other than to say I have never had the sentiment "what on earth is wrong with you" so strongly conveyed to me via blank stares.

Also, on a semi-related note: Erasure is a severely underrated band.

Things I can't say to the Loud Talkative Guy I work with on account of politeness

- As long as I have worked here I have engaged you in conversation three times. Twice it was something along the lines of "how do you use the copier." The first time I asked you what your name was. Every other interaction we have ever had has been you coming into this fileroom and making copies while talking very long and very fast and very loudly about something that has caught your interest in the past few hours. Our relationship is one-sided at best.

- I don't know anything about sports. I saw a picture of Roger Clemens last year and he was fat. That is basically the extent of my knowledge of Roger Clemens, and more than I care to know. You have no reason to talk at me about Roger Clemens, or sports in general.

- If you're going to quote scenes from the movie you saw over the weekend at me, common courtesy dictates you tell me the name of the movie first, or that you are quoting a scene from a movie, rather than just talking. Beyond that, don't quote scenes from the movie you saw over the weekend at me. I don't care.

- While I am grateful for your years of service stationed on a Navy base in South Korea, it does not make you an expert on foreign policy. Neither does watching Jay Leno's monologue from last night (and I appreciate you telling me where you're taking your jokes from, but that does not change the fact that you're telling me about something you saw on TV without me ever implying curiosity). Neither does being very loud and talking very fast.

- Speaking of Korea, I know several Koreans and I have never heard any of them say "ching chong wing wong." Not once, not even in jest.

- You are so loud.

- If I were allowed to make up rules about professional wrestling, one of them would be "grown men are not allowed to voice strong opinions about professional wrestling," unless that opinion is "I hate professional wrestling." The opinion you (loudly, frequently) voice is not "I hate professional wrestling." I'm just saying.

- If I were allowed to be drunk at work, I imagine things would be much different between the two of us. As it stands, I don't think it's fair that you can apparently be drunk at work and I can't.

I had jury duty yesterday

Man oh man it sucked. I'd never actually been called before for various reasons (too young, pretending to go to college, serving as U.S. congressman), but this time I got the notice in the mail and there was nothing I could do to get out of showing up to the courtroom at Early O'Clock yesterday.

As happy as I was to miss a day of work, and as competitive as jury duty's tax-free $6 a day is with my current employment, my job has one thing going for it that jury duty does not: internet access coupled with relatively low levels of supervision (I did not get hired to write this blog entry, but I got paid while I wrote it all the same). I love the American justice system as much as the next douchebag, but I'd rather get paid to listen to internet radio and google "monkeys doing it" than decide whether a fellow citizen stole a tire. No way in hell I'm getting picked to serve on a damn jury.

I knew I had to get out of my civic duty, and I knew exactly how. My Grandpa Nestor once told me that if I ever get called for jury duty I should prove to them I'm crazy. If at all possible, beat someone up with a mop bucket or something, but any way you get the job done is fine as long as you can convince everyone you're a total lunatic. If there's one thing I'm good at, it's shirking responsibility. And if there are two things I'm good at, it's shirking responsibility and beating people up with mop buckets.

Unfortunately, there weren't any mop buckets to be found at the courthouse. Also unfortunately, my backup method of displaying mental instability was less than ideal (I panicked and smeared a poop on the guy standing next to me, who turned out to be a courthouse officer); while it did help to prove I was nuts, more importantly it helped get my ass kicked (plus I got some of my own poop on my clothes and hands, and any day that happens is never a good day). Also also unfortunately, I realized after it was far too late that I confused Grandpa Nestor's advice on dealing with jury duty with Grandpa Nestor's advice on dealing with a prison sentence. His jury duty advice had to do with bringing a book, staring at the defendent, and casually tossing around racial slurs.

Anyway, long story short, yesterday sucked a lot. I didn't get picked to serve on a jury, but I'm due back to that goddamn courthouse in a month and a half, and my attorney says that with all the surveilence cameras and eyewitnesses I'm probably going to have to plead no contest.

Sometimes you get the bear and sometimes you don't get the bear.