Encounterculture

Ugh; I can feel the tentacles of sickness coiling around me like some sex monster from one of those incredibly distressing anime pornos (er, um). Thus, en lieu of presenting some whiny diatribe about why I like This or That (read: something about Me) or some pretentious and portentious piece of poncemanship about philosophy or movies or musi (read: something about me, but in the third person), here's some stuff that needs to be preserved.

1. PUTZFUCK~! Holy God, who'd'a ever expected the best review of any album ever to come from THEM?!?!

2. Everyone needs to go read the thing Brendan wrote about the Replacements. I probably should have linked to it before it got buried under the morass of Yankeedom (booooooourns), but quality is quality. The best compliment I can pay to a piece of music criticism is that I can understand the critic's ideas without liking the music, and speaking as someone who responds to four, maybe five Replacements songs (and who only knows that as a result of reading the article in question), I can definitely say that this is one of those.

3. The urge to catalogue useless information is like dorkboy version of the archetypal female biological clock: it's stupid
bullshit that can only get you into trouble, but damned if it's something you can repress. As such, here's a list of the music that's been pounding away in my car, on my headphones, and throughout my speakers:

- The Sounds, "Seven Days A Week" and "Dance With Me"
- The Delphonics, "Didn't I Blow Your Mind This Time"
- Lili Hayden, "Anything" (Gabriel & Dresden E-String remix)
- David Guetta, "Just A Little More Love" (Wally Lopez remix)
- Machine, "There But For the Grace of God"
- The Ramones, "Baby I Love You"
- Eddie Holman, "This Will Be A Night To Remember" and Linda Clifford, "If My Friends Could See Me Now" (and boy howdy, is this some miserably embarassing music to admit to the world that you like.)
- Mercedes Sosa, "Mi Unicornio Azul" (actually, I like the version that was actually in the Wong Kar-Wai BMWFilm more, but I can't remember the name and it's impossible to find on SoulSeek anyway. This one's plenty good anyway)
- Jackson Browne, "For A Dancer"
- Puccini/Maria Callas, "O Mio Babbino Caro" (yes, Grand Theft Auto made me a Puccini fan)
- Punjabi MC, "Jogi"

There is more, and I'm sure I'll remember all of it as soon as I press "Post & Publish", but that'll do for now. Needless to say, get all this, I guess.

4. Yes, yes, yes, the Governator. I don't really care all that much; Arnold's actually pretty socially liberal (for a mainstream politician, that is), he just likes to keep his money. Of course, I'm a big ol' red (well, technically I'm more of an anarchist, but voting socialist is kind of a vote for the destruction of at least one social structure), so God knows I wouldn't have voted for him, but since I'm still a resident of North Carolina I didn't vote either way. I will, however, say that I would much rather have to choose between Liddy Dole and James Carville (i.e. the last NC elections) rather than between Gary Coleman and Mary Carey.

That being said, I will do a 180-degree turn on the whole recall issue the moment I see the first "Don't blame me, I voted for the Bumfights guy" bumper sticker.

5. Speaking of the recall: Seeing as how I'm like the only person anyone from back in NC knows in California, I naturally got calls from people from back home who all wanted to do their "governator" thing and profess surprise at the prevalence of the references to Arnold's movies in his campaign (as if you could expect anything else from someone whose acting resume includes both The Running Man and Total Recall. If he'd made it through the first two days without making a reference, I think I'd be dead right now from a massive cardiac episode). Of course, since it's not like anyone expects him to do anything but fuck up anyway, we quickly moved onto other, more interesting and funny topics. Like the following.

My friend Cesar has worked at Domino's for like six years, and in those six years, every single other fucking person on the planet has followed him there. (The place is seriously turning into a bad Chaucer scenario; I've known well over ten people from school who've gone on to work there, and that's a very conservative estimate.. It's getting to the point where if I meet someone in Durham, I should just wish them luck in advance for when they start work at Domino's.) In that time, Cesar's had manager after manager, some of whom are cool (Bundy, for one), some of whom just kind of slip into the ether.

But I don't think the guy they have managing the store there right now is really in much danger of being forgotten any time soon. He is, according to the description of Cesar and the confirmation of my other friend Ryan, the single least respectable person ever to trod the sod (or, to quote Bundy: "He just commands disrespect"). Consider, if you will, the following scenario, which came to me via Cesar, who just does not lie, who heard it from Bundy, who lies even less, so I have absolute faith in its veracity. That's important to remember, because my immediate reaction was to call Cesar and Bundy both liars because this just confounded me. Apparently this manager has a 17-year-old daughter, who doesn't have a car, probably because of the unrelenting forcefulness of her father's refusal to buy one. I guess he must have caved to some extent, because he finally promised to buy her one if she could go six months - six months! - without calling her father a "gay faggot", end quote.

Let me repeat that: she could have a car if she could keep herself from calling her father a "gay faggot".

Cesar's reaction: "When I was seventee, if I didn't have a car, and my dad said he'd buy me a car if I did something, I'd fucking do it. I mean, if he said he'd buy me a car if I could go six months without saying the word 'is', I'd find a way."
My reaction: "WHO THE FUCK GOES AROUND CALLING THEIR DAD A GAY FAGGOT, much less doing it so often that the only way to make it stop is to promise them a car?"

I cannot understate how excited I am to be going home in December. It should be an interesting barometer of my willpower to see if I can avoid calling him a Gay Faggot within four seconds of meeting him. Place your bets now, and put me down for a hundred bucks on "There's no way he'll make it."

(Oh, and for the record, I felt much less sorry for him after Cesar told me how much he makes. Apparently the Domino's managing racket is a lucrative gig.)

(Oh, and also for the record, Bundy asked the guy how the deal was going no less than three days later, and the guy replied, "Oh, she couldn't do it. I knew she wouldn't be able to do it.")

Ladies and gentlemen, that is fucking funny.