Author’s Note: I know I promised to reveal my pick for “”The One Summer Movie I Dragged My Ass Out to See” – but, sadly, the demands of my so called “real job” have prevented me from doing any real meaningful Seething. That is to say, any meaningful Seething, which I feel comfortable sharing on this blog. Ahem. Cough. Ugh. So instead, I’ve decided to share this classic Califronia Seething, in which I explore the sheer idiocy of my chosen artform with the hope of inspiring young people. Seriously, if just one aspiring theatre professional with stars in his eyes reads this post and decides to go to Law School instead, I’ll consider my work here done. I’m joking, of course! I love what I do, and if you are a young person who is interested in theatre, I encourage you to follow your heart. Hell, the job market is so totally crappy now that you’re hopelessly fucked no matter what field you go into, so you might as well be unemployed from doing something you might love. That way, at least you’ll be excited to interview for the jobs you don’t get. Enjoy!   OK, all kidding aside, it’s very important that all of you come see my show when it opens. Not just because the actors are amazing (which they are), and the director is brilliant (which he is) and the writer is halfway decent (name rhymes with Flakespear- and I don’t mean Blake Steer, renowned Cherokee porn star). You should all come because I’ve been working my ass off on this show for no money or hope of professional advancement and I need as many people as possible to validate this incredibly stupid and self destructive life choice that I’ve made....

New Introduction- April 22, 2013 (you can also just read this part. I won’t be hurt. I swear. You bastard.) This past weekend. the NBA Playoffs started off with a bang! By which I don’t mean that there was a horrible terrorist attack during a playoff game but rather that there were a large number of reasonably exciting games over the weekend. I really need to be more careful when speaking figuratively- have I learned nothing from CNN this week? I mean, come on CNN- did you really think it was a good idea to describe the scene in Watertown with “It’s as though a bomb had dropped some where”?? That’s right up there with:  “This marathon man-hunt just came to a sudden, explosive end” and “The city of Boston is paralyzed today, like someone just blew both it’s legs off.” Congratulations – you win the coveted “WTF Award” from Wildly Inappropriate Metaphor Magazine- which breaks my streak of 20 consecutive weeks. Damn it!  I’m as angry a 19 year old Chechnyan terror suspect bleeding in a boat! By the way, did anyone guess that the Boston bombers were a couple of Chechnyan brothers? They totally busted my Marathon Bomber bracket. Seriously, they’re like the Wichita State of terrorists- I had them losing to Orange Haired Sociopath in the first round. I was positive that Crazy Red Faced White Guy with Camouflage Trucker Hat Who Makes the Word “Liberty” Seem Creepy and Gross was totally going to beat out Radicalized Saudi “Exchange Student” Who’s Taking Flight Lessons for Some Inexplicable Reason in the Finals. And speaking of loathsome scumbags, it was heartening to see just how quickly and decisively Congress responded to this attack by using it to derail Immigration Reform. Exploiting tragedy for...

OK- I’ve got a question for you: Do you watch The Following on Fox, starring Kevin Bacon? If you answered “yes” – then I’ve got a follow up question: What is the absolute worst show that you currently watch on television? If you didn’t answer “Why, The Following on Fox, starring Kevin Bacon, of course.” Then I can only draw three possible conclusions about you: You’re wrong You’re crazy You’re Kevin Bacon Now, if you are Kevin Bacon- then welcome! I hope you’ll enjoy California Seething – please feel free to tweet about it? Do you tweet? Do people follow you? Why???? I mean, no offense, but why would anyone possibly care what you have to say about anything? Are people’s lives that empty and meaningless that they have to be like “Oh my God, North Korea has nuclear weapons. What does the kid from Footloose have to say about that?” or “Oh no. Roger Ebert just died. Maybe Kyra Sedgewick’s squeeze can offer me some solace.” I mean, you know, no offense. I loved you in Flatliners, A Few Good Men and Murder in the First. I mean, I didn’t love your acting ‘cause, come on, that’s terrible. You’re just another second rate 80’s Tiger Beat, James Dean wannabe who does the “I’m kind of a dick ‘cause I’m misunderstood” thing, like a less interesting Kiefer Sutherland or a less dead Corey Haim. But the fact that I knew that you were IN those movies- well, that was fantastic for me. Come on- Kevin Bacon to Debra Winger: Kevin Bacon – Julia Roberts- Richard Gere- Debra Winger. BOOM. Kevin Bacon to Humphrey Bogart: Kevin Bacon – Kevin Pollak – Walter Matthau – Audrey Hepburn- Humphrey Bogart- BRING IT BITCHEZ! Kevin Bacon to Me –...

This past week, Obama took his first ever trip to Israel and, in order to ensure that he never, ever, ever wants to come back, the King David Hotel in Jerusalem made him keep Kosher for Passover even though the holiday doesn’t officially start til today. This was partially because the preparations for Passover are so extensive that the hotel had to have them done before he and all of his staff arrived in order to ensure that the hotel would be ready by the first night of Passover and partially because Israelis are dicks. It’s actually just another example of the long tradition of Israeli presidential-hazing; like in 1974, when they made Richard Nixon fast for Yom Kippur even though he was visiting in June, and in 1992, when they sent George H.W. Bush a jar of expired gefilte fish and told him to save it for his big trip to Japan- and to eat it right before a formal banquet (Best moment in Bush family history. Hands fucking down. God, that’s a terrible family. Why can’t they be more like the Kennedys – you know, all liberal and dead and shit? Come on, Jeb- it’s not too late to learn to fly! I’m sure we can get someone to invite you to a wedding on Martha’s Vineyard during a particularly foggy weekend. #instrumentflyingiseasy #justdontkillyourwifenandhersister #dickmovejohnjohn.) And, of course, who could forget the best Israeli Presidential prank ever in 1993, when they signed the Oslo accords and acted like they cared about peace. Ha! Good one! Boy, you should have seen Clinton’s face when he found out they were kidding. He was deeply saddened and disappointed. And can you blame him? The Second Intifada was like an episode of Punk’d with Ariel Sharon...

Aaah, Downton Abbey and me. A love story no Netflix algorithm could have predicted. For one thing, I hate the rich. From Mitt Romney to Ritchie Rich and every Kardashian in between- they can all go fuck off and die and not leave me anything cause they’re bastards and don’t know me so I hate them. Oh, what’s that you say? I’m not being fair? Oh, I’m, sorry, I didn’t know income inequality was supposed to be FAIR. Tell you what, when they stop squatting on the world’s wealth like a bunch of plutocratic pigeons on a nest of golden eggs, while the rest of us scramble to lick their droppings off cars for a taste of the good life then I’ll stop fantasizing about throwing rocks in their plush, padded nests and poisoning their gluten free bird seed (I also hate birds, btw, so this is a particularly satisfying metaphor. Tee-hee-hee. Dead birds. Tee-hee-hee.) Don’t get me wrong- I’m not saying I’m poor or anything. I’m not a “have” or a “have not”- I’m a “have some” which is a far cry from being a “have enough change on my dresser for subway rides and Ramen til payday” which was me when I lived in New York. Although, because I now “have car” and “have house” and “have 80 year old electrical work in the house which was wired by drunk hobos half-blinded by bathtub gin”, it never feels like I quite “have enough” so I envy and resent those lucky enough to “have more”. At least I “have job” and don’t “have kids”- otherwise I’d “have debt”, but at least I’d “have someone to mooch off of when I’m old” cause I sure as shit won’t “have Social Security” or “have pension”....

Look, we all know the world is a disappointing place. Sure, we wish that we lived in a world where the sun shines all the time (but not because of global warming), our favorite teams always win and Oscar Pistorius doesn’t murder his girlfriend, but that just ain’t the case. The fact is, we live in a world of blizzards and hurricanes (and not just because of global warming); the only thing that our favorite team wins is ESPN’s “Worst of the Worst” every Friday when they show the fucking butt fumble clip on the “Not Top 10”; and Oscar Pistorius became the single most disappointing disabled role model since the now infamous “Is Stephen Hawking gonna have to choke a bitch?” incident of ’97- as chronicled on his hip-hop album A Brief History of My Foot Up Your Ass. While no month has a monopoly on disappointment, February seems to have more than it’s share. The days are short and the weather is cold but the goodwill, glitz and gluttony of December’s merry holidays have long since been replaced by bigger waistlines and broken promises of a better you. Even the laziest, and drunkest, dads have finally emerged from their Two and a Half Men, Bud Lite, Papa John’s coma long enough to throw the desiccated brown corpse of their once proud Christmas tree out on the street like a kid who flunked out of El Camino Community College, where it lies around hoping that if it just looks pathetic enough, someone will take pity on it and haul it away like the goth-chick scowling in the back of math class, who hopes that if she just looks sad enough the quarterback will see the Disney princess hidden behind the black eyeliner and will...

Let’s keep it real- I don’t have any problems. Not really. I’m not a Haitian earthquake survivor still struggling to rebuild or a Somalian child born into a world of famine and strife or the (former) Head Electrician of the New Orleans Superdome who painstakingly rebuilt his life after Hurricane Karina only to lose everything to Hurricane Beyonce- or should I say Hurricane Mrs. Carter (not to be confused with the former First Lady who has her own Mrs. Carter show “Fuck Habitat for Humanity, could you fix the fucking shelf in the kitchen already?”) And don’t tell me that you believe that “electrical relay” Jay-Z cover-up story- it had to be Beyonce who blew the power with her thousands of lights, dozens of video screens and two super-powerful mind control rays aimed at Michelle and Kelly to keep them from pouncing on top of her and stabbing her repeatedly like Ray Lewis in a production of Julius Caesar (“I come to bury Caesar not to praise him. The only person I’m gonna praise is JESUS!”) No- the only conclusion we can draw is that the Superdome was not ready for this jelly. You’re doing a heck of a job, Beyonce. Anyhow, I’ve been thinking a lot about people like Haitian earthquake survivors and all the other millions of poor schmucks around the world who would absolutely LOVE to have problems like mine (Oh. I’m sorry? Did I just manage to work this week’s obligatory Fierce & Nerdy “Love” theme into this post in the second paragraph? BOOM! That’s how it’s done, kid. Ain’t no arbitrary theme that I can’t incorporate in a totally half-assed and gratuitous way. Bring on Book Week, motherfuckas! ) because I’ve been really stressed out about buying a couch....

Baltimore and San Francisco: Two great American cities that ordinarily could give a shit about each other.  Seriously, the only time they ever even get mentioned in the same sentence is when I say “Well, I could go to Baltimore to visit my sister and her family and stay in a house full of rampaging children, but instead I’m going to go to San Francisco cause it’s SO MUCH MORE AWESOME. Does that make me a bad person?” (SPOILER ALERT: uhm, kinda.) The only time San Franciscans ever talk about Baltimore is when they’re waxing nostalgic for The Wire and the only time Baltimorians ever talk about San Francisco is when they’re waxing nostalgic for Rice-a-Roni or making some tasteless gay joke- which is ironic because gay marriage isn’t legal in California but it is legal in Maryland thanks to the efforts of Duff Goldman and John Waters and their SuperPAC “Have Your Cake and Eat Me Too”. Regardless, from now until Sunday, the two cities will joined together in conflict- bound inexorably by the chains of enmity like the Montagues and Capulets, the Hatfields and McCoys, Rocky IV and Ivan Drago, Highlander and That Other Highlander, Me and the Completely Insane Neighbor Lady in my Complex who Can’t Shut the Fuck Up and has Two Little Yappy Dogs Who Also Can’t Shut the Fuck Up and Insists on Having a White Trash Ghetto-Ass Sidewalk Sale Every Saturday Right in Front of My Unit So Everybody Thinks I’m the Freak Selling Used Purple Rayon Blouses with Shoulder Pads from the 90’s and Air Supply Tapes.  I must break her. THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE.  Wait, that makes no sense. Oh well, that whole movie made no sense. I mean, the French guy is Scottish...

The 25th anniversary of Prozac, the 10th anniversary of the Paris Hilton sex tape, the 20th anniversary of Doggystyle– these are just some of the utterly meaningless milestones that we’ll be forced to commemorate in 2013 by media outlets dedicated to churning out as much content as possible and cramming it down the content-holes of an overstuffed nation while always coming up with new and innovative to make me feel like a useless old fart. I mean, hell, 2013 also marks the 20th anniversary of the last time I actually recognized the musical guest on Saturday Night Live (Blind Melon) and the 15th anniversary of the last time I was part of a highly desirable marketing demographic (it’s all for the best. Bastards kept trying to sell me Zima. Seriously, guys, wtf? Was Generation X really so complicated and hard to reach that you thought clear beverages were the answer? No wonder we were so alienated and disaffected – you tried to sell us Crystal Pepsi – how were we supposed to trust anything you said after that? I’m not even going to get in to the Bartles & Jaymes betrayal. When I found out they were actors, why, it broke my little flannel clad heart.) There is one anniversary this year that even the most craven content crammers will probably overlook and it’s a shame, cause it’s an important one. 2013 would be the 20th reunion for the 1993 senior class of West Beverly High School. A class which included Donna Martin, Kelly Taylor, Steve Sanders, David Silver, the Walsh twins, Dylan McKay and some black kid who used to walk back and forth in the background carrying a bookbag – all the young people whose exploits were chronicled in Beverly Hills, 90210....

You probably think I hate the holidays. That I hide myself in my room like Scrooge with a cold bowl of gruel emerging only to scoff at the goodly hearted, sneer at the holly-jolly and pee out the window on orphans. You know, like Scrooge did. Or maybe you’re not familiar with the German version of the story- Das Scrooge Ist Ein Orphanpisher! which also explains why Tiny Tim walks funny “Stop it Mr Scrooge! You’re hurting me! Only Jesus can touch me there.” (Jesus was their gardener). So, sure I know you all think I’m some kind of Christmas hating “Scrooge” or “Grinch” or “Jew” but the fact is I love Christmas! I plan my company’s Christmas party, organize the local Christmas tree lighting, work on a production of A Christmas Carol, buy a Christmas tree, hang Christmas lights, listen to Christmas music, watch Christmas shows and buy Christmas gifts- I’m Rudolph the Hook Nosed Reindeer, I’m Santa Kike, I’m Captain Motherfucking Christmas and I defy you to say otherwise! BTW- on behalf of the Jews of the world, as discussed at last night’s meeting of the International Zionist Banking Conspiracy (I brought cookies! Candy Cane Jo-Jo’s- always a hit) I’d just like to let all the Goyim (Yiddish word meaning “Walmart shoppers”) officially off the hook – you don’t have to say “Holidays” when you mean “Christmas” any more. Seriously, the 90’s are over, Political Correctness is dead (only Bill O’Reilly still thinks that’s a thing) and most of us just don’t care any more. Look, you want to put up a big old decorated tree in the middle of town, that’s fine, just have the balls to call it what it is- a Christmas Tree, not a “Holiday Tree”. Cause Jews...

It’s hard to believe that it’s already been a month since Obama’s re-election. With the bitterness and divisiveness of the election, the past month was a time for coming together in America. After all, Obama is happily ensconced in the White House for four more years and America’s glorious future as a gay, Muslim, socialist welfare state is at long last safe and secure. Phew! That’s right, Fox & Fuckers- all of your batshit, paranoid, Karl Rove, Donald Trump, 2016: Obama’s America, Birth of a Nation fantasies are comin’ true! Can he forcibly convert all the Mega-Churches to Mega-Mosques? YES HE CAN! Can he nationalize all the NASCAR tracks to use for Moonie style mass gay weddings? YES HE CAN! Can he change his name to Oba-MAO Bin Ladin? YES HE CAN! Can he nationalize Wal-Mart so he can use all the stores for his new line of low cost women’s health clinics- Bargain Barry’s ‘Bortions n’ Birth Control? YES HE CAN! Bring in your Kenyan birth certificate and your first service is free- who cares how expensive it is? Big government’s buying! Muahahahahahahahaha!!!! Muahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!!!!!!!! Wait, what was I talking about again. Oh right, coming together. Uhm, yeah. Nice effort, guys. Good game. Way to almost steal the country using voter suppression and fraud. I’m sooooo sorry that your evil misbegotten homophobic, misogynistic, elitist, ignorant, fanatical racist effort to put the White back in the White House fell apart horribly when you found out that contrary to popular belief and 236 years of empirical evidence, you can go broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people- or at least lose an election. Who knew? (Nate Silver, bitchez! Nate Silver- statistical love machine. Nate Silver- recently voted America’s Sexiest Math Nerd by Seriously, that’s a...

EDITOR’S NOTE:  Just in case you think your Thanksgiving is going poorly, here’s a re-run of Eric Sim’s Thanksgiving 2011. Our Thanksgiving dinner this year was supposed to be low maintenance and effortless which, as a card-carrying member of the flannel and apathy generation, I seriously appreciated, man. We decided not to cook anything from scratch but to buy and reheat prepared foods from Whole Foods instead. Mind you, we didn’t do this because I’m too lazy and incompetent to cook Thanksgiving dinner, no sir! We did it because I’m too lazy and incompetent to renovate our kitchen (which is much, much worse) and cooking Thanksgiving dinner in that tiny, dysfunctional kitchen would be like trying to have sex with a horse in an airplane bathroom – or, more to the point, it would be like cooking a full Thanksgiving dinner with all the trimmings in an absurdly small kitchen with an undersized oven and no counter space– which is the hardest fucking thing you could do so it doesn’t need any clever little metaphors to make it seem harder than it is. It’s so hard that, in fact, it makes a really good metaphor for other things that are really hard like- “Damn! Passing that softball sized kidney stone was like cooking Thanksgiving dinner in Eric’s absurdly small kitchen with its undersized oven and no counter space” or “Whew! Fucking that horse in that airplane bathroom sure was tough! As tough as cooking Thanksgiving dinner in Eric’s absurdly small kitchen with its undersized oven and no counter space. Isn’t that right Seabiscuit? Yeah, you like that, boy? That wasn’t no carrot I was feeding you in there, but you sure went to town on it when I dug the spurs in Yee-Haw!” Right,...

Just because I hate all of the things that stupid young people like, you might think I make a pretty good Adult. Well first of all, let me set the record straight, I don’t actually hate all the things that stupid young people like. I mean, hello? Gangnam Style? I love that song HEYYYYY, SEXY LADY! Something something something YOJA something something OPPAN GANGNAM STYLE! I mean, come on, I’m not made of stone. Never before has one video made fake horseback riding and being Korean look SO FUCKING COOL. It’s the best dance craze ever to be inspired by Monty Python and the Holy Grail. I’m surprised that Psy doesn’t have go-go dancers in pink suits of armor banging coconuts together behind him. No, seriously- I’m REALLY surprised by that- I mean, considering everything else in the video- this is where he shows restraint?? It’s like: random, homoerotic sauna bit with fat guy and tattooed musceley guy- yup, Nation of Islam level bow-tie fixation- you got it, Psy with his pants down on the toilet rappin’ while he’s crappin’- hells yeah, girls in pink armor banging coconuts- whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa- easy there- let’s not go nuts here- that’s over the DMZ if you know what I’m saying. Still- it’s impossible to hate this song. Think of all the painfully dull wedding receptions this song has saved by bringing the bride’s bitchy high school friends and groom’s snarky co-workers together into a joyous pile of sweaty kim-chi on the dance floor. Think of the thousands of Bar Mitzvah boys, for whom this song will forever evoke memories of dance parties in synagogue social halls and their first cherry flavored lip-gloss kiss with the too-tall girl in the poofy dress who was lingering in...

Now that I’m officially over 40, it’s easy to blame my age for the fact that I’m totally out of touch with movies, music, television, fashion, food, fragrances, technology, culture, comic books, candy and internet memes (BTW- I love being over the hill. Going downhill is so much easier on the knees.) Look, I’ve long since come to terms with the fact that I’m not part of the super-sexy 18-24 year old Proactiv, Pepsi Max, eSurance demographic with their big budget summer blockbusters based on Hasbro toys and Wendy’s ads starring Spunky Millennial Pseudo-Wendy who has a bizarre obsession with introducing Wendy’s into every conceivable social scenario (“Hey guys, you know what this Holocaust Memorial Service needs? A BACONATOR”). This obsession will someday alienate all of her Spunky Millennial Pals and she’ll end up choking to death on a Frosty alone in her Smart Car. I now have to come to terms with the fact that I’m not part of the big-spending 25-39 Corona Light, Ford truck, State Farm demographic with their feel-good rom-coms starring, oh, let’s say, Reese Witherspoon, and Wendy’s commercials featuring Authentic Real Life Wendy whose matronly curves tell the sad true story of square burgers, non-dairy frozen treats and an ever slowing metabolism (take heed Spunky Millennial Pseudo-Wendy! Beware the Revenge of the Baconator! You skinny bitch.) That’s right- in the last two weeks, I’ve officially been “promoted” to the Hoverround, Disposable Catheter, Colonial Penn Life Insurance demographic with inspiring movies about how Meryl Streep still gets her freak on with Tommy Lee Jones and Clint Eastwood was a shitty dad because he liked baseball and yelled at furniture. Also, my doctor won’t let me eat Wendy’s since my arteries have been Baconated. Seriously, I’ve gone past the Match.com demographic...

In more prosperous times, we watched Antiques Roadshow. We sighed an involuntary “awwww” as a dear, sweet old woman from Peoria with pink cheeks and hair like a fluffy white cloud of cotton candy, showed off the sturdy wooden chair that had been in her family for generations with pride and satisfaction like a well-fed grandchild freshly stuffed with warm blueberry pie and vanilla ice cream. Our hearts went pitter pat as we saw not one but BOTH Keno twins standing tall and erect in their matching black suits gleefully eyeballing the chair, barely able to contain their enthusiasm like a pair of gay cartoon crows at the gym in West Hollywood or inappropriately chipper undertakers with a super-fun celebrity corpse (like that contestant from RuPaul’s Drag Race who just dropped dead- what was his name- Savannah something?  Come on, I can’t watch EVERY bad TV show. I DO have a life, you know). The suspense grew intolerable as the Kenos enthusiastically described every single aspect of the chair when all we wanted them to tell us was how much the damn thing was worth (“look at these terrific glue blocks on the underside of the seat. These are white ash which was not commonly used in Philadelphia between 1763-1790, but was more typical of Baltimore chair makers from 1750- 1780. We know it’s a Philadelphia chair, though, because of the mahogany scrollwork on the cabriole legs, which was typical of Philadelphia makers in the late 1780’s.”) I DON’T CARE. I DON’T CARE. I DON’T CARE. I DON’T CARE. JUST TELL ME HOW MUCH THE FUCKING CHAIR IS WORTH! Then, when they had said every single possible thing that a human being could conceivably say about a chair (“Notice that one of the threads...

Some trips are all about the journey. Other trips are all about the destination. Then, there are those trips that are all about coming home and kissing the floor because you’re so fucking happy to be back that you don’t care how much dog hair sticks to your lips. Last weekend I went to Albany to visit my grandparents in the nursing home, attend Rosh Hashannah services and take in a spontaneous funeral just for fun. Care to guess which type of trip this was? Like stepping over a dead cat on my way in to work, visiting Albany is a depressing and unsettling break in my routine. It’s an inconvenient but unavoidable opportunity to contemplate mortality, the fragility of life and all the other horrible shit that I don’t ever want to fucking think about. In fact, according to AllTheOtherHorribleShitThatIDontEverWantToFuckingThinkAbout.com, “mortality and the fragility of life” was ranked just below “picturing Jan Brewer having sex with her gardener and screaming ‘Ay, papi! punch a hole in that wall, and fill me with your anchor babies! There are 2 week old eggs up there with more civil rights than you could DREAM of!’” (her gardener was born and raised in Phoenix), but less horrible than “Mitt Romney ACTUALLY becoming the next US president” – which has been number one on the Horrible Shit list ever since replacing “Herman Cain ACTUALLY becoming the next US President”, which replaced “Michelle Bachman ACTUALLY becoming the next US President”, which replaced “Rick Perry ACTUALLY becoming the next US President”. Sigh.  I miss the Republican Primary debates. It was like watching the Heat play the Lakers and cheering for gruesome knee injuries (just as long as they’re all right for the next Olympics because I am a shameless Gold...

The crazy thing about Republicans at the RNC is that they look almost like human beings. How weird is that? I mean, sure, with their red ties, stupid hats and piggy little eyes that shine with greed and fear they look like an army of angry Stay Puft Marshmallow Men but still, they’re mostly humanoid in appearance. They have hands which clap, voices which hoot and holler, and legs which hold them up during standing ovations. But that’s where the similarity between “Republicans” and “human beings” ends because the things they are clapping, hooting and standing for are things that would make actual human beings respond with stunned silence and revulsion rather than enthusiastic cheering and applause. Things like “let’s repeal a law that provides affordable health care access to millions, and is actually based on our own ideas, which we now renounce because we’re a bunch of self-serving hypocrites” (HURRAY?) “let’s take away a woman’s right to choose even in cases of rape and incest because they must be a bunch of whores if they got raped in the first place” (YIPPIE???), “Let’s dismantle crucial social programs so that we can continue to give tax incentives to the millionaires who ruined the economy in the first place and should be rotting in jail but instead continue to get rich while regular Americans suffer!” (WHOOP-WHOOP????) Seriously, I haven’t seen this many rich looking people applauding pure evil since I last watched the ballroom scene in They Live. Obama should change his campaign slogan to: “It’s 2012, and I’m all out of bubble-gum”. I usually don’t watch the RNC for the same reason that I don’t go to Laker victory parades. Why would I want to go to a pep rally for a team I...

September is a very exciting month for television. In the coming weeks, the major networks will launch dozens of new comedies, dramas and reality shows to be viewed and dissected by dozens of self-appointed media critics around the country. Since I’m not gonna watch any of that horseshit, though, I’ve decided to write about Quincy. Look, I’ve suffered enough in the name of New Television Programming. I spent two goddamn weeks in an S&M relationship with Bob Costas where he teased me with promises of Platform Diving and Who concerts and then slapped me across the face with a half hour preview of Animal Practice and the late fucking news. Seriously, NBC – when did you become such a top? There used to be so many different colors in the peacock’s tail and now there are only Shades of Grey (say it with me one last time, America- JUST SHOW THE FUCKING SPORTS! Man that feels good. God, I miss the Olympics. I wonder if Bob Costas is thinking about me. I know I’m thinking about him. His smile, his eyes, the way he spoke in wry tones about Rhythmic Gymnastics. I’d love to slather his head in Grecian Formula while he slaps my butt with a badminton racket until it’s as red and swollen as China’s sporting ambitions and we watch Water Polo together. Rio can’t come soon enough, except for the fact that the Brazilians totally aren’t ready. Well, hopefully Mitt Romney will be looking for a job soon and he can help them out.) So, clearly all this exposure to New Television has taken its toll on my fragile psyche (I’m a delicate motherfucking flower) and there were only 2 possible solutions available: 1. Stop watching television completely 2. Watch Quincy...

Individuality. A healthy upbringing with a loving family. A well rounded education. Countless free hours of playing with friends. These are just some of the things that will win you jack shit as an Olympic gymnast. Olympic gymnasts should be raised in a box like veal – separated from their families and confined so tightly they can’t turn around and look at the childhood they left behind. At least veal calves get fed. Plus, veal calves are butchered privately – out of sight of the diners who consume them as delicious PETAschnitzel.  Nobody makes a veal calf put on a purple spangly leotard so that it can be slaughtered in public by a cold-eyed Bulgarian judge in front of millions of people for the unforgiveable sin of taking a half step out of bounds and then served to the public as a national disgrace. Just think, most of us will never have the opportunity to disgrace our nation and gymnasts get to do it before they’ve had their first period! Livin’ the Olympic dream! But if the gymnast is good enough and lucky enough to win the gold then she gets to bask in the adulation of her nation by starring in a Subway commercial with Apolo Anton Ohno and Jared unless her accomplishments are overshadowed by her hair. She might even get to compete on Dancing with the Stars and be mocked by the tabloids for getting fat. Seriously, leave ShawnJohn alone – she starved her whole life to bring four fucking medals to this worthless, ingrate lard-ass nation of ours. Let her eat a fuckin’ doughnut. Some people go into the desert to see god. Others go to find themselves, to make art, to commune with nature, to have visions, or to...

I chose this post because I knew that if I didn’t, Ernessa would murder me with an ice-pick. And then Jessica Fletcher would have to solve the case of who murdered me with an ice pick, and Angela Lansbury is too old for that shit. So here you go- enjoy! Let’s say you killed Guy Fieri and dumped his body in a swamp- accidentally, of course. That is to say, you killed him accidentally- it would be very hard to drop something in a swamp accidentally unless you lived in the Everglades and were a particularly poor juggler in which case you’d be dropping beanbags and kittens in the swamp all the time but, on the plus side, you’d be surrounded by happy, well-fed gators. Anyhow, let’s say hypothetically you did accidentally kill Guy Fieri and drop his body in a swamp- well- that would be something to be really embarrassed about- way more embarrassing than watching Murder, She Wrote on TV Land every night, which is the only thing I’m guilty of- even if I am watching it on DVR, so there’s no possible way I can say that I watched it by accident. After all, DVR implies intent, malice, forethought and cold blooded calculation as was demonstrated in the landmark Supreme Court Case The People of California vs That Dude at Work Who’s Always Talking About the Kardashians Even Though He Swears He’s Only Watched Khloe and Lamar Like, Once And He Only Did That Because He’s a Such A Huge Hoops Fan (Barack Obama). I mean, come on, after the 15th consecutive hour, there’s no way in hell I can say I just happened to watch Murder, She Wrote by accident since I was flipping channels to get away from Guy Fieri (the television love...

There’s nothing particularly happy about the Anaheim train station. It’s a tiny little depot in the parking lot of Angels’ stadium with a couple of tired vending machines, concrete benches and one small ticket window. There’s also a sign on the door that reads “Station may be closed at points throughout the day for 30 minutes or more to accommodate meal breaks.” This is a significant improvement over their previous sign: “Closed whenever I’m hungry, bitch.” Of course, this is a tiny underutilized train station in Southern California, so they could probably close down long enough to roast and consume an entire pig and no one would notice or care. After all, commuting by train is only slightly more popular around here than commuting by yak – which is actually surprising, since you can take the yak in the carpool lane on the 405 – but only if the yak has a sticker. Man, I’d kill for a 2006 yak. Anyhow, after spending eight hours in the bowels of the Happiest Place on Earth, it was pretty jarring to be suddenly spat out by taxi into the joyless Amtrak ennui of the Anaheim station. I sat on the platform in a daze like a wadded up towel on the Penn State locker room floor after a Second Mile event – sopping wet and rumpled and wondering if I really just saw what I thought I saw and how the hell I’m going to tell anyone about it. I’d never been to Disneyland before, because I always just sort of took for granted that I’m the sort of person who would fucking hate Disneyland a lot. I’m not really sure why that is. I guess if I really think about it, it’s because Disneyland represents...

Recently, the Expo Line opened from Downtown LA to Culver City. In the next few years, this new subway line will be extended all the way to the beach in Santa Monica. This is a very exciting development. Finally, 21st Century Los Angeles will have a mass transit system that can compete with 19th Century London’s. Just think of all the thousands of underprivileged Angelinos living in blighted neighborhoods without cars who soon will have affordable and convenient access to upscale, safe and fashionable neighborhoods where they aren’t wanted unless they’re bagging groceries at Whole Foods. And think of all the yoga-matt-and-Prius moms who’ll have to twist themselves up into pretzels trying to explain why they don’t like poor people in their neighborhoods without sounding like a bunch of cross-burning racists (I just looove Lululemon’s new Swastika line.) Look at the bright side moms – the faster your nanny can get to you by subway – the faster you can get out to Breadbar to discuss The Help at book club. Of course, this is a particularly exciting development for me, because I am a non-driver (the technical term is “loser”) and LA is a city meant to be traversed by car. Mind you, this was not always the case. LA History buffs love to bring up the fact that, back in the 40s this city was criss-crossed by street-cars and had one of the finest public transportation systems in the country. This is very helpful information for me to know, since I’m often looking for faster ways commute downtown by using a streetcar and a fucking time-machine. Unfortunately, in the 1950s the streetcar lines were all torn out by GM and Standard Oil so they could force consumers to use cars and buses instead. This...

In the fall of 1980, I was living in Arad, Israel- a very small town in a very small country a world away from Westchester County, New York where I was born. I was there because around the time that Star Wars came out (and it’s not Star Wars Episode IV or Star Wars: A New Hope, it’s just FUCKING STAR WARS. Get it right, millennials. You, too Lucas.) my parents, who have always lived on the corner of Awesome and Crazy Streets, decided to move their 3 bacon loving American children to Israel, a bold move which the prophet Moses referred to as “fucking nuts, y’all- I don’t know what was in the burning bush you guys were smoking.” Anyhow, around that time, I asked my father who was running for president back in the US and he said a “peanut farmer and a cowboy.” When I asked who he liked better, he said “the peanut farmer”. Not only does this story explain my life-long penchant for underdogs, Democrats and losers (and peanut butter- Yum! Anphylastic-tastic!) It also shows just how little I knew about American culture at the dawn of the 80’s. Basically, my only connection to America was my father’s analysis of the presidential election, my NBA team logo bedsheets (I like to think I peed on the Lakers, but I probably soaked the Clippers instead), and, of course, Dallas. Israel in the early 80’s was a great place to live, but it was a country with no space, no money and no oil. Hell, you couldn’t even get a decent burger. When Dallas hit the airwaves, it became a national obsession since it was a glimpse into a world of unimaginable excess. Here was a single family living on a...

Editors Note: Eric broke his computer with a particularly scathing California Seething this week. So, we’re re-running his popular column, from May of 2011, on Laker hating. We strongly believe that they made the play-offs this year primarily as a response to this piece. The rantings of a non-driving theatre professional living in altogether the wrong city One night, early last week, something very important happened. I woke up the next morning to find the world was a better place. The sun shone brighter, my smile came easier, I experienced a level of contentment which made the frustrations of everyday life seem small and inconsequential. I knew the road ahead would be long and difficult, but I had a renewed sense of purpose, of optimism, of hope. The night before, in an exceptional display of courage and grit, the Dallas Mavericks came back from 16 points down to beat the Lakers in Game 1 of the Western Conference Semi-Finals. Truly a happy day for all Americans. Oh, and Osama Bin Laden was killed, which I thought was good news, except Martin Luther King Jr. was whining about it all over Facebook. Blah, blah, blah, rejoice at my enemy’s death, blah, blah, blah cycle of violence and hate. What a buzzkill. As Harry Truman once said “An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind, which is fine be me because blind people can’t hijack planes and fly them into buildings. And get your quotes right before you post online, people.” In the days that followed, the news got better and better. The Mavericks demolished Evil Cartoon Rat King Kobe Bryant (code name: Geronimo) and his soulless band of starfucking jerkwads (plus Derek Fisher, who only joined the team because he was looking for...

NOTE: This post is intended for medicinal purposes only. Even though I know a thing or two about dramatic structure, I don’t consider myself a playwright- just like I don’t consider myself a licensed plumber even though I’ve unclogged hundreds of toilets over the course of my illustrious career as Theatre Manager and Renter of Terrible Apartments (for more on the subject of theatre management, I recommend Stanislavski’s master-work on the subject: An Actor Prepares. Which Is Fine, Whatever, But Then He Goes and Takes Like this Enormous Dump in the Moscow Art Theatre’s Only Working Toilet and I’ve Got to Unclog the Fucking Thing, I Mean Jesus Christ- What Is Wrong with You People? How Is it Possible that You Can Memorize Hamlet But You Can’t Remember that Paper Towels Go in the Motherfucking Garbage Can? Don’t You Think I’ve Got Better Things to Do than Wallowing Around in Thespian Turds All Day? I’m Stanislavski, Bitches! You’re Motivation Better Be to Stop Pissing Me Off or the Only Theatre You’re Gonna Work in Is the Moscow Art Theatre of Kiss My Ass. What can I say? The man loved his book titles.) So, right, like I said, as theatre artists go, I’m far more plumber than playwright (and I’m not even that good a plumber) but I did write one play for a playwriting class in 1995. The name of the play was Dude, and here is a list of the characters: Frank: College student, stoner Bill: College student, stoner Jimmy: College student. HUGE stoner. Always broke. Smokes all your shit. Seriously annoying- like, pretend you’re not even home when he comes to the door annoying. Frank and Bill’s best friend. Sam Spade: Evil German private detective. Possible Nazi war criminal. Stoner. Only smokes kind...

You’ve probably seen the commercial. A pretty young woman wakes up in her young person’s cheaply-decorated apartment bedroom. She smiles, stretches and leaps from the edge of the bed and in one effortless motion she pulls off an unsightly lighting fixture from the ceiling and reveals the stylish ceiling fan hidden underneath. She returns to the room, dressed as a bride, carried over the threshold by a handsome groom. She spins out of his arms, peeling off all the ugly old wallpaper and revealing the attractive yellow paint job underneath. In a graceful cascade of never-ending movement, they flash through their lives- dad lifts the young kids off a dingy, toy-strewn rug, mom pulls up the rug and, with the help of her now-teenage boys, rolls out a new carpet and serves them lemonade without missing a beat. Her gracefully aging husband comes down the stairs and joyfully dances as he pushes the kitchen wall back, opening up the space and revealing French doors.  The scene shifts and the much older couple are hosting a family gathering on the patio. The husband asks the wife to dance, evoking the courtship of their youth, and as they tenderly move around each other, their two grown sons dance around the perfect green lawn with wives and children of their own. The camera pulls back and the sun begins to set on a perfect American day as the Lowe’s logo appears on the screen along with the slogan “Never Stop Improving.”. Throughout it all, that song keeps playing- you know the one cause it sticks in your head like gum under a theatre seat (trust me, I’m an expert): “Don’t stop doing what you do” It’s a great commercial, right? Brilliant and inspiring and a total crock...

OK, so, first, I’d like to apologize to the City of New York, to Rex Ryan, Mark Sanchez and Joe Namath. Most of all, I’d like to apologize to my grandfather. Why? Well, On March 12, 2012 I wrote “Fuck you Karma- Come and get me!” On March 23, 2012 the New York Jets got Tim Tebow from the Denver Broncos. Well played, Karma, well played. You dirty cunt. So to all my fellow long-suffering Jets fans all around the world, I’m sorry. Oh, poor Fireman Ed, I think I hurt you most of all. Then again, maybe I’m not to blame for this whole Tebow thing. Maybe that’s just my Jewish Narcissism* talking (*the belief that the world revolves around me so it’s my fault that everything’s wrong with it- it’s like Self Love married Self Loathing and they had baby Guilt.  We’ll call him Guilt Cohen. It’s very similar to White Liberal Guilt, actually, except that white people really are responsible for everything wrong with the world, they just blame the Jews and the Mexicans. Cracker ass cracker crackers.) Maybe, like most alcoholics, my drunk dad finally found Jesus and now he’s all weepy and prayerful in his short sleeved button down shirt and neatly trimmed Evangelical moustache and he uses icky words like “Fellowship” and hugs beefy men and won’t stop preaching about forgiveness and acceptance so he can make us all feel like shit for not forgiving and accepting him right away because after all those decades of abuse and neglect he’s suddenly decided not to be an abusive drunken asshole anymore and we’re just supposed to forgive him for everything and forget it all like it never fucking happened. Or maybe the Jets just want to run the Wildcat....

When I want to sound cool and mysterious, I say I was raised in the desert. When I want to explain why I’m loud, stubborn, cynical, opinionated, dramatic, charming (in an overbearing sort of way), and obsessed with protecting my territory and feeding everybody hummus, I say I was raised in Israel. And when I’m listening to Californians whine like babies about the weather, I say I was raised in Albany. (Not to mention how I was shaped by all the crazy years spent on the New York theatre scene trying to “make it there” and, ipso facto, “anywhere”  during which time I worked as an Elf at Macy’s, cleaned up vomit at comedy clubs for stage time and tips and gave out sandwiches and fruit on the subway in the South Bronx for $50 a day + “donations” – but I’ll save all these tales of struggle for my motivational seminars: “Reach for the Stars — Fall on your Ass — Get a Real Fucking Job with Some Health Insurance” and “Artists Starve – Arts Administrators Get Fat, So Come to the Break Room of Life Like I Did and Grab Your Piece of the Pie (actually day-old birthday cake)”. Anyhow, the desert. The characters in Hari Kunzru’s Gods Without Men spend an awful lot of time schlepping around the desert looking for aliens. I spent my fair share of time schlepping around the Israeli desert as a young teenager, but I was just looking for snakes, lizards and scorpions to sell to the creepy American zoologist who lived in town. He said he was buying these critters for research, but I think he REALLY didn’t like falafel and hummus, if you catch my drift (He ate them. Fuck subtlety- I’m Israeli!). Anyhow,...

Everything I need to know about Economics I learned flying First Class last week. #1: There was one bathroom at the front of the plane for the exclusive use of the 8 First Class passengers sitting in Rows A & B. #2: There were two bathrooms at the rear of the plane to be shared by the remaining 141 passengers in Rows C – Z. #3: From my vantage point in seat A1, this was just fine. From this experience I learned two vital lessons: #1: Economic inequality is all around us in today’s America #2: It’s only a problem if you’re poor Usually, I’m a proud member of the disgruntled poor. Hell, I work in the theatre — we put the “non” in “non-profit”. In my field, the 1% refers to people earning a living wage or the award-winning playwrights that own dishwashers (Albee sold his for gin). After all, if you work in a building named for a rich person you’re a broke motherfucker yourself. So, on a plane, you’d expect to find me jammed in a middle seat in Broke Motherfucker Class (not even Broke Motherfucker Plus) reading a torn Sky Mall Magazine and dreaming of the massage chairs and air purifiers that I’ll never own, and knowing that while the half-bottle of water and micro-bag of pretzels I was allotted by Cheapskate Air isn’t quite enough sustenance to “keep me alive,” it is exactly enough to make me go to the bathroom, which means I’ll have to shake loose the blood clot forming in my leg, machete my way out of my row, and slog to the back of the plane so I can wait with all the other Broke Motherfuckers for my 30 seconds of solitude pooping into the fluorescent...

The rantings of a non-driving theatre professional living in altogether the wrong city Look, I’ll admit it. This week’s blog post is kicking my ass. Mostly, that’s because the beautiful, intelligent, creative and fabulous editors of Fierce & Nerdy decided they fucking hate me this week so they’re making me write about Love. Okay, so, it’s not just me — they’re forcing all of us to say some shit about love this week. I guess it’s because it’s Valentine’s Day or something and nothing says “Valentine’s Day” like a compulsory and involuntary expression of love, as FTD expressed in their new slogan – “This year, say it with flowers- or eat lead, jive turkey!” (they probably shouldn’t have hired Pam Grier as their spokesperson this year after last year’s disastrous jewelry store campaign “Every Kiss begins with Kill Whitey!”) I mean, don’t get me wrong. I have no problem with love. I love love! Love is patient, love is kind, love will tear you apart, love is a battlefield and all the other good stuff Jesus told the Corinthians (BTW — never mix up the hooker dance from Love is a Battlefield with the Zombie dance from Thriller. Trust me, you’ll just end up with one seriously pissed off Filipino prison camp and a cease and desist order from the Jackson estate, not to mention that Pat Benatar will get all Billie Jean on your ass and nobody wants that. No one can tell her she’s wrong!) Need more proof that I’m all about love — check out my Valentine’s Day shout out from last year’s post: “Valentine’s Day is a cynical, exploitive holiday made up by greeting card companies, stuffed animal manufacturers, jewelers and chocolatiers designed to make people in relationships feel guilty...

The weekend between the NFL Conference Championship games and the Superbowl is a bad one for football but a great one for soul searching. I love football and I fucking hate soul searching. As far as I’m concerned, soul searching is like cleaning out the produce drawer in the fridge; I know that something is creating a god-awful stench in there, but the last thing I want to do is reach into the murky depths and pull out the putrefying bag of brown liquid that used to be bean sprouts which were purchased for a salad that would never get made (I hate salad more than soul searching.) I’d much rather just hold my nose while I grab another beer and close the fridge door as fast as I can so the smell stays inside and I don’t have to wallow in stinky salad failure while I try and watch the game. Sadly, the only game on this past weekend was the Pro-Bowl, the NFL’s annual Make-A-Wish Foundation trip to Hawaii for really good players on terminally bad teams. As football games go, it’s only slightly less exciting than Joe Paterno’s Memorial Service, but still more fun than watching the Jets this past year. DAMN YOU SANCHEZZZZZZ! STOP SUCKING!!!!!! PLEEAAAASE!!! YOU’RE KILLING ME!!!!!!! Anyhoodles, with the Pro-Bowl as my only option for sporting distraction, I decided the time had come to face my stinky demons. So I rolled up my sleeves and got ready to clean out the festering vegetable drawer in my soul. Let’s be clear though, I know that I’m very lucky. I have a wife that I love, a job I enjoy, a dog who puts up with me and a house which I own. In many parts of the world,...

Voting for Obama is 2008 was kind of amazing for me since it was one of the few times in my life I actually voted for someone. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve been voting for over 20 years. I voted against George Bush in ’92 and looked on with glee as he was defeated by Clinton and I voted against his idiot son in 2000 & 2004 and then had to look on despondently for eight years as he single-handedly ruined the letter “W” forever (and America.) Hell, I even voted against Gary Coleman in the California Recall election of 2003 (plus all the other joke candidtates like Angelique and Arnold Schwartzeneger. HA! Can you imagine if that guy had won? We would have totally looked like a bunch of tools! Sigh.) I have to admit- it was a lot of fun voting FOR somebody in 2008– the surging pride I felt when I saw his bumper stickers, the sense of self-satisfaction I felt when I donated an insignificant amount of money to the campagin and got a personalized thank-you email (with another request for money) right away, actually watching the election results come in with eager anticipation that things might get better rather than the usual sickening dread that things are about to get a hell of a lot worse. I do feel a little guilty, though, that all of us wanted him to be president so bad that none of us warned him what an incredibly shitty country we would be when he took over. As a result, he’s like a man who married his dream girl after two long years of courtship only to have her go off her meds the minute they moved into the White House. Now, instead of joining...

This Thursday we will celebrate Thanksgiving, or as the Native Americans call it “I can’t believe we gave those fuckin’ crackers turkey. What a bunch of schnooks we were.”  If you squint a little bit, you know, just enough so that you can’t really see all the truly terrible shit that happened on this continent after white people arrived (the way you have to do whenever you want to think something nice about America’s past), then Thanksgiving can be a wonderful opportunity to gather with family, watch football and eat pie. Especially pie — nothing goes with genocide like pie! Liberal guilt, colonial attrocities and the pastries of oppression aside, Thanksgiving is neat. For one thing, it’s one of the few non-Jewish holidays that actually gives you a totally gratuitious second day off – unless, of course, you work for a bank or a retail store or a total cheapskate asshole or a theatre (Uhm, yeah, sorry about that guys — Go Team! I’ll be at home if you need me—don’t call before ten.). For one thing, Thanksgiving features my absolute favorite art project- the hand turkey. Even a complete art-tard like myself, a man so artistically inept that his four year old niece only allowed him to color with the white crayon so he wouldn’t fuck up a perfectly good Barbie Princess Pony coloring book, can trace his hand, draw a beak and sign his name in scrawling, kindergarten penmanship. It’s a wonderfully creative expression of holiday joy for the developmentally disabled, the hopelessly senile and me! Thanksgiving also features my all-time favorite condiment- Canned Jellied Cranberry Sauce. There are those people out there who believe that Cranberry Sauce should be some type of “sauce” made from “cranberries”. Freaks. Thank god the rest...

If you were to go back in time and tell some poor schmuck schlepping across the country in a covered wagon that in a century’s time he’d be able to make the same journey in a matter of hours in an enormous metal flying machine, he’d probably be shocked and amazed. He’d be even more shocked and amazed when you told him how much it totally sucks to travel that way and that he’s probably better off with the covered wagon. Even though the wagon trip takes many months and he’d probably freeze to death or get scalped along the way, at least he doesn’t have to pay $80 to check a lousy suitcase or wait in line for an hour for the privilege of taking his shoes off and getting his anus x-rayed by moronic TSA agents that shouldn’t be trusted to guard the Monopoly bank, let alone to make sure that no one is trying to blow up the airplane, before being crammed into a seat in Guaranteed Blood Clot Economy Class and spending $6.75 on an ass-and-cheese sandwich on a hard roll every bit as stale as the germ filled and lightly puke scented recycled air on the plane because for $475 the cheap cocksuckers running the airline can’t even throw in a really shitty meal for free or give us something remotely worth breathing. It is, in fact amazing just how effectively the airlines have stripped away any sense of wonder from what is, when you think about it, the rather magical act of flying, as though forcing you to step in huge piles of Pegasus shit before letting you ride the mythical beast or a theme park forcing you to sign a waiver that you’re not gonna sue if...

The trouble with addiction isn’t that it’s expensive. It’s not that addiction is self destructive, all consuming and extremely harmful to family and friends. No, the trouble with addiction is that it’s fun. I mean, don’t get me wrong- it’s not fun watching your teeth rot or selling your parents’ TV or being dead- but, at some point or another, whatever you’re addicted to was lots and lots of fun. After all, no one gets addicted to painful diarrhea or putting together Ikea furniture or watching Andy Rooney- because those things suck and you can’t get hooked on suck. This is something we all learned watching Rachel Leigh Cook smash up her kitchen in the 90’s. Sure, she’s making a point that heroin is bad, but she’s having so much fun doing it, that you just want to stand up and cheer: Smash that glass! Break that plate! Crush that brain! Hurt those friends! Kill that Clock!!!! RUIN THAT LIFE!!!!! WEEEE-HAW!!!! YOU GO GIRL!!!!! HEROIN’S FUCKING AWESOME!!!! (ATTENTION IMPRESSIONABLE YOUNG PEOPLE: Heroin is not fucking awesome. It’s bad. Don’t use it. Be smart and stick to stealing your mothers’ pills. She got those from a doctor!) As much as I enjoyed Trainspotting and Calvin Klein underwear ads, heroin was never my thing. Hell, it takes the doctor 45 minutes just to find a vein so he can check my cholesterol (it’s FINE, Mom) and there’s no way I’ve got the time to do that 8 – 10 times a day just so I can take a nap afterwards. I’m simply much too busy- largely because I inherited my father’s addiction- I’m a Workaholic (“It was you, alright, I learned it by watching YOU” Come on-  it’s a classic!) Of course, he has an MBA from...

The Ancient Greeks didn’t worry about whether God loved them. They didn’t wring their hands over the fact that God allowed evil to thrive in the world and didn’t struggle with the way that God permitted the righteous to suffer while the wicked prospered. That’s because, in Ancient Greece, the Gods were a bunch of dicks. Zeus was particularly nasty- he lorded over the universe like an omnipotent frat boy with lightning bolts. He was far less concerned with the meek inheriting the earth than he was in changing into a swan and fucking the meek’s wife (they had a pretty loose grip of zoology, as well.) The rest of the gods were no better- just a bunch of mean spirited, petty, vindictive, narcissistic, spiteful bastards who absolutely didn’t give a shit about humanity. It must have been wonderfully liberating in a way- like having a Republican president. After all, when Bush and co. were in power, we didn’t wring our hands and wonder WHY they were leading us into one pointless war after another for the sole benefit of their rich cronies or WHY they were making disastrously short-sighted fiscal policy decisions. We knew perfectly well why- they were dicks. They did irresponsible, self-centered, evil, destructive, selfish things because they were irresponsible, self-centered, evil, destructive selfish cocksuckers- plain and simple. All we had to do was fear them, loathe them and mock them. With the advent of Judaism, though and the election of Obama, things became more complicated. Now we have to wrestle with thorny and difficult philosophical questions like WHY does God allow bad things to happen to good people, WHY does God turn his back on his supposedly chosen people as they are persecuted and killed, WHY did Obama extend the...

I left New York City about two weeks after Sept 11, 2001. At the time, I felt like a bit of a heel (for those that don’t speak Noir- a heel is worse than a cad but better than a crum-bum.) After all, the entire nation was weeping and praying and sending their love to New York and I was all “Peace out, bitchez- I’m going to Cali! Good luck with all that healing and shit- Daddy’s getting his beach on!” Of course, there are a couple of reasons why I shouldn’t have felt bad for leaving: 1. I had been planning to move out of NYC for some time before Sept 11 and had quit my job and already secured an apartment in LA. 2. While the entire nation was happy to pour love and affection into NYC, there was no way in hell that any of them were actually about to show up there in person. In fact, I would bet that most of the red-state, pink-cheeked Americans in Oklahoma and Missouri (that’s a place, right? “Missouri”?) who bought shiny new FDNY caps and “We Will Not Forget” t-shirts on Sept 12, 2001, hated New York with a passion on Sept 10. They hated the gays, the Jews, the commies, the Yankees, the Mets, the Knicks, Spike Lee, Woody Allen, Ed Koch, subways, hot dogs, pastrami, homeless people, drug dealers, the smell of urine, high taxes, bad traffic, knishes, theatre, Puerto Ricans, Brooklyn accents, stockbrokers, Port Authority, being yelled at and, yes, probably even the World Trade Center. The only way they could sustain their empathy for New Yorkers after the attacks was if they pretended that the hook-nosed, cross-dressing, book-reading, coke-snorting socialists which they had (quite accurately) believed New Yorkers to...

For a brief period of time in college, I considered becoming a Rabbi. Don’t get me wrong- I’m not particularly religious- I was just fascinated by the role that ritual could play in heightening particular moments in a person’s life and the way in which our collective need for the infinite could cause it to manifest itself on earth. I was also tripping my balls off on two hits of unbelievable liquid acid that I bought from a trio of seedy hippies suspiciously named “Soy”, “Dog” and “Liz” (“Liz” – whatever. Like that’s even a real name.) Later that night, I also briefly considered joining the Animaniacs, not because I wanted to be on television, but because I was fascinated by the idea of living in the water tower at Warner Brother’s studios and writing a whole song about an obscure South American lake just so I could say “Titicaca” over and over again on a children’s show. Living the dream! In the cold light of day, with the drugs out of my system, I abandoned my rabbinical fantasies and made the hard-headed practical choice to stick with theatre (maybe not ALL of the drugs were out my system.) Still- I continue to be fascinated by the trappings of religion and, as a result, even though I don’t really believe in God, I still maintain certain Jewish rituals- like even though I don’t believe in Leprechauns and Democracy, I continue to eat Lucky Charms and vote (FULL DISCLOSURE: I actually do believe in voting, but only as a means to keep things from getting even worse, or at least, to slightly postpone the inevitable slide into Libertarian Theocracy. Speaking of- how sweet is it that Rick Perry cut the fire dep’t by 75% and...

Jerry Garcia died the day I left Albany for good, August 9, 1995. In an apparent murder-suicide, he took my childhood with him. (NOTE TO MILLENNIAL FUCKWADS: I don’t want to hear how old you were in 1995. Whether you were in Middle School, Elementary School or Diapers, I don’t want to know about it. And wipe that patronizing “listening to Grampa Simpson tell his Lollapalooza Mosh-Pit Stories for the 10,000th Time” smirk off your soul-patched, hipster side-burned, weasely little face. As far as I’m concerned, you’re the suckers who showed up too late to the Great Global House Party of cheap gas, music videos and nuclear anxiety that was the 20th Century and arrived just in time to mop up the puke, save the polar bears, and recycle our empties to pay for healthcare. Have fun with that, kids. Hey- if you’re lucky, maybe you can scrape out a little resin ball of Contentment from the huge bowl of Prosperity we smoked last century. That was some gooooood shit.) Anyhow, I always felt like by dying right as I left my hometown for the Big City, that Jerry was looking out for me, protecting me from myself. It’s like he was saying: “Hey man, I know you’re moving to New York to follow your dreams and that’s groovy and all, but it’s going to suck major dog-balls for the first few years, so, if you don’t mind, I’m just going to go ahead and die That way, while you’re telemarketing credit cards to old people who can barely afford the minimum payment, or cleaning toilets in comedy clubs for stage time and tips, or getting turned down for that sweet job at Brookstone (fucking personality test- I was this close before they made...

If you ask me, I blame the Prius. Recently, a big name celebrity came to see a show at the theatre where I work. For security and convenience reasons, we allowed him to park in the loading zone in front of the theatre rather than the slightly farther Peon Lot. Since this isn’t exactly legal, I arranged with his people (He has people. I want people! Even midgets would be fine. Do they work cheap? Can I get two for the price of one? I could stack them on top of each other, put them in a really long trench coat and pretend they are a super-tall publicist named KiKi. That would get me in to Sky Bar) that I would hold on to his car keys and watch his car while he was watching the show- never mind the fact that giving me car keys is about as useful as handing a bone to a monkey and telling it to drive the big black monolith around the block in case the cops come. You’re just going to end up with a smashed cow-skull and a big parking ticket. As I waited for him, I fantasized about the sort of supercar that would soon be at my disposal. Certainly, it would be some kind of Italian Dream Machine- a Maserati or Lamborghini or some other juicy word that sounds like food but isn’t food but still makes you drool like lasagna made out of money. A car designed to look like a spaceship if spaceships were designed to look like naked ladies (NOTE TO NASA: Next time, hire Italian designers. Endeavor is whatever but Endeavero is magnifico!!!) Maybe I would slip inside and sit behind the wheel in the tan leather interior all snug...

The rantings of a non-driving theatre professional living in altogether the wrong city For the second time this year, Southern California dodged the apocalypse. The first time, back in May when the Rapture didn’t come, was kind of a let-down since it would have been a great chance to get rid of all the right-wing, Christian nut-jobs before the debt-ceiling argument started (joke’s on you assholes — heaven has a Single Payer Health Care system- the Single Payer is called God and he loooooves gays and anchor babies.) This past weekend, however, the missed apocalypse was a pleasant relief. In the grand tradition of making things slightly better by first making them infinitely worse (see Folktales, Yiddish- Bringing the Goats Inside), the City of Los Angeles decided to shut down a crucial stretch of the 405 freeway for an entire weekend in order to demolish a bridge so they can rebuild it over the course of a year and, one day in the distant future, make driving to the Valley marginally better (I’d still rather go to the Ikea in Carson.) For those of you in the snow-bound and cousin-fucking states who aren’t sure what the big deal is — closing the 405 is the equivalent of severing the city’s spinal cord — thus reenacting The Diving Bell and the Butterfly on a massive metropolitan scale. In one terrible moment, we would be transformed from a swinging, successful, drive-where-you-want, devil-may-care rakish urban area to a drooling, immobile husk of our former selves, paralyzed on Sepulveda and blinking out “Kill Me” in Morse Code on our collective break lights. If traffic is LA’s weather, this was to be our Blizzard of the Century. In their efforts to prepare us for this catastrophe, the Mayor &...

While reviewing my posts from the past year in an effort to find my favorite, I discovered two important things about myself: I am an angry, hateful and occasionally deeply unpleasant person to be around. I had a great time in Vegas this year! So- here’s my personal favorite post of the past year, chock full of Vegas travel tips for the non-gambling, Cirque-hating, outdoor drinking and bowling enthusiast. Just don’t tell my dog I picked this one. Or my Drunk Dad. Or my new floor. Originally published 03/14/11 We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the urge to make a gratuitous reference to Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas began to take hold. And suddenly there was a terrible roar all around us and the sky was full of what looked like huge bats, all swooping and screeching and diving around the car. So we decided to stop for lunch. We chose The Mad Greek Café, world famous for gyros, date-shakes and pointless statuary. The gyros ranked somewhere between “Daphne’s” and “ass,” but the date shakes were loaded with enough sugary goodness to obliterate any of the unpleasant healthy feeling that goes along with eating fruit. And the statuary — well, suffice it to say that the Mad Greek has the finest reproduction of Michelangelo’s David ever to be placed between a Yield sign and a fire hydrant. Oh, and, by the way, Michelangelo was Italian, morons. I guess “Idiot Greek Who Flunked Art History Café” didn’t have the same ring to it. So, right, uhm Vegas. Here’s the thing, I hate gambling. Well, maybe hate is too strong a word. I don’t understand gambling. Then again, I hate all the things I don’t understand (Cirque de Soleil-...

The rantings of a non-driving theatre professional living in altogether the wrong city Let’s get one thing straight right now, I’m not a Woman trapped in a Man’s body. I’m not even a Particularly Well Groomed Man trapped in the body of a Slovenly Oaf. I am simply as I appear — an oversize sweaty mascot to boorish masculinity. Like Nebraska is to corn, New York City is to roaches and China is to Chinese people so am I to body hair — it’s fucking everywhere. A desegregationist through and through, I make no effort to separate the hair on my head, the hair on my neck and the hair on my back- so my body hair flows like the mighty Yangtzee from the snowy bald spot on top of Mt. Eric down the ravine of my spine to the waterfall of fuzz cresting over the crack of my ass. Don’t misunderstand — I’m quite familiar with the ways of womankind. I have lived with my wife for the last 12+ years and was raised with two older sisters. My preteen years were spent in a pit of femininity held down by scalding hot curling irons and towering canisters of explosive hair product while a razor sharp pendulum of wildly swinging emotions came closer and closer to slicing my head off (both of them) shrieking “I hate mother nature” every time it passed by and the music of ABBA throbbed endlessly on in the background. Sure, AIDS may have been scary to some in the 80s, but I was way more concerned with the perils of Toxic Shock Syndrome and PMS. My household was actually featured in a famous study in the Harvard Review of Medicine – perhaps you heard of it- “PMS: The...

The rantings of a non-driving theatre professional living in altogether the wrong city I try not to be offended when people are surprised when I tell them that I have a dog. Look, I know me. I realize that I’m a big, loud, unpredictable drama queen whose random fits of rage over minutia have spawned such impromptu performances as “King Lear Burns His Toast” and “Godzilla Loses His Glasses.” I realize that this type of behavior puts me on the Mount Rushmore of Unlikely Dog Owners right between Adolf Hitler, Richard Nixon and The Grinch (remarkably- the exact same placement as the “Trust Me, You Don’t Want to Be the One To Have To Wake These Guys Up From A Nap” Wall of Fame.) As a result, it’s understandable that when people hear I have a dog, they aren’t sure whether to be charmed by this lovely humanizing detail or terrified for the poor creature’s life, so they ask me probing questions to try and determine if they should call the ASPCA or give me a hug. My beloved family pet, Lenny doesn’t help my case any. He has perfected the look of profound, wide-eyed pathetic grief normally only seen on the faces of starving children in commercials as they finger the last, precious grains of rice in their bowl and try not to listen to the lip-smacking sounds of Sally Struthers and the crew chowing down on hummus and Skittles at the craft services table just off-camera. His face is an evolutionary masterpiece of sadness. Every wrinkle, contour and skin flap is perfectly designed to suck all the joie de vivre out of the soul of whoever dares gaze upon him and channel it into a puddle of drool and despair on the...

On May 21, 2011, the world once again failed to end. Honestly, I’m fine with that. It’s the kids I feel bad for. This was their first big apocalypse, they’re not used to disappointment. They don’t remember the purple sneakers of Heaven’s Gate (Little known fact: Ishtar was the second choice cult name) and the total let-down of Y2K when we all rushed into the streets at 12:01 AM, only to find that everything was working just fine, and we had to sheepishly drink up all the bottled water and eat all the Progresso soup we’d been hoarding in giddy anticipation of total collapse. Plus, the kids, they’ve got a lot of big challenges ahead of them and they were really counting on the apocalypse to bail them out. For me, things aren’t quite as bleak. All I’ve got to do is scratch out a living for a few more decades; slurp up the last soggy Apple Jacks of Social Security and pink Medicare milk from the bottom of the government cereal bowl; drive around a bit in an RV; and die as expensively as possible. They have to figure out how to find jobs, pay off student loans, clean up this bankrupt shithole of a planet and somehow retire at the end of it. It’s like returning a rental car after a long road trip. I feel a little guilty about the condition, but mostly glad that I don’t have to do anything about the dog hair in the back, the Cheez-Whiz stains in the front and the pervasive stench of Sausage McMuffin and Ass. Of course, all hope is not lost. May 21st wasn’t actually predicted to be the end of the world, just the Rapture. Since I live in Los Angeles,...

The rantings of a non-driving theatre professional living in altogether the wrong city It takes a special kind of asshole to scream on the phone to a total stranger: “Fuck the Air Force, lady- we had a contract.” On April 11, 2011 at 10:45 AM, I became that asshole when I was told that the short-term apartment rental which I had arranged for my Passover trip to Albuquerque for me and several family members was not going to be available after all. Evidently, the Air Force officers occupying the space would not be departing according to the previously established time-frame (insert Iraq joke here.) After a brief, stunned silence, Loretta from Albuquerque Apartments responded: “Sir, here in Albuquerque we honor the Air Force.” The courtesy in her voice was stretched to the breaking point by revulsion and shock, like a waitress explaining to a party of cannibals that human testicles are not on the menu and politely recommending they try the patty melt instead. I felt appropriately sheepish. Here’s the amazing thing, though. Despite my incomprehensible and utterly revolting disrespect for the Boys in Blue (or whatever the fuck color they wear in the Air Force), Loretta was incredibly accommodating. She found a replacement apartment, cut the price and even got me extra toilet paper when I asked. This is because Albuquerque is home to the nicest people in the world. I’m not just talking ordinary nice, I’m talking creepy nice, weird nice, Invasion of the Body Snatchers nice. People who actually take the whole Jesus said to be nice to each other thing REALLY seriously. People in Albuquerque are as nice as people in LA want you to think they are- as you will see below: LA Barista What they say: Have a...

The rantings of a non-driving theatre professional living in altogether the wrong city I think we all know there are plenty of things I hate. At this point, I have a repetitive motion injury from shaking my fist at God (“Rage Elbow”). But, to be fair, there are many things I have nothing bad at all to say about. Like…puppies — I love puppies! They’re adorable! I mean, it’s kind of annoying how they chew up everything and poop all over the place and slobber on you like mental patients with beady little eyes when you walk in the house but still, super-cute. And theatre — I love seeing theatre. I mean, sometimes it’s unbearably bad and hellishly boring, but even then I can amuse myself in the second act by thinking of nice things to say to the people I know in the show like “the choice of shoes was absolutely brilliant. Very Brechtian.” and “I had a simply magnificent Twix bar at intermission. Very Brechtian” or, if I’m really stuck, “I thought you made some really brave choices out there. Congratulations, man.” If I say that to you, well, just remember, it’s never too late to give up on your dreams. Anyhow, yeah, more stuff I like: Combos — not all Combos though — the cracker Combos are worthless and Pizza Flavor frankly makes no sense to me. I mean, how do you distill the flavor of gooey delicious pizza into a tube of yellow cheese. Preposterous. The Cheddar/Pretzel Combos, though — snack-fucking-tastic. Oh yeah, and Peanut Butter Cap’n Crunch. There is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING WRONG with Peanut Butter Cap’n Crunch. I mean, if you eat enough of it, it will totally tear up the roof of your mouth but, ASIDE FROM THAT,...

I have no idea where Butler is. I don’t know how many students there are, what they major in, which frats they rush, how much a turkey club costs in the student union and where they go drinking on the weekends. For a few hours this Saturday, though, I cared more about Butler than any school in the country. I cheered for them, screamed at them, pleaded with them, held my breath as the game went down to the wire and rejoiced with those gritty, dedicated athletes as they gutted out a hard fought victory with heavily-favored Florida. Last weekend, I hated Butler and desperately rooted for those gangly, buck-toothed farm boys to lose as they knocked my then beloved Pitt out of the tournament and hopelessly fucked up my bracket. I am a March Madness fan-whore. For some people, the NCAA Tournament is a chance to re-affirm long term commitments with their favorite schools. They put on the ancient t-shirts, get together with the balding college gang and fan the old spark still burning in their hearts into a white hot flame of crazy-fan-passion. It’s a romantic second honeymoon cruise and every game is a vow-renewal ceremony with their beloved alma mater. Since my alma mater had no real sports, my March Madness is more like MTV Spring Break in South Padre Island. A blur of crazy flings and one-round-stands with schools I barely know from around the country and may never see again. With every game, I fall in love, cheer like crazy, get my heart-broken and fall in love again. Sometimes, I don’t even know the coach’s last name. I’ll go from grinding on Morehead State’s lap in the club as they shock mighty Louisville in the first round of the...

Some of you may remember that in my last post, I embarked on a celebration of all of February’s bullshit secular holidays and got as far as Valentine’s Day. So, it turns out that I pretty much used up all the good holidays, but here’s some stuff I pulled out of my ass for the rest of the month- enjoy! Grammy Awards- Feb 13 A Grammy is one of the greatest honors that a person can receive for excellence from an irrelevant organization in a dying industry which is desperately clinging to an outmoded business model – – right up there with Blacksmith of the Year, the Pulitzer Prize for Journalism and Knighthood. This year the theme was “Come as Your Favorite Protein-Rich Food,” but unfortunately, only Lady Gaga got the email and came as an egg. Several artists later apologized, including Justin Beiber who said that, had he known, he would have come as a peanut butter and jelly sandwich with the crusts cut off; and Katy Perry, who said she would have come as a mouthful of Russell Brand’s spunk. President’s Day- Feb 21 On President’s Day we celebrate our two greatest American presidents: George Washington, who wore false teeth and a wig and is still considered the most honest man in American history, and Abraham Lincoln who freed the slaves (yay!) and won the Civil War sticking us forever with a bunch of inbred, backwards, Red-State, yokels in the Union (boo!) This holiday gives us an opportunity to reflect on the contributions of these great men and all the other brave leaders who’ve guided us through our darkest hours and blah, blah, blah WHO CARES? IT’S NBA ALL STAR MOTHERFUCKING WEEKEND!!!!! All Star Weekend is one of the most exciting spectacles...

The rantings of a non-driving theatre professional living in altogether the wrong city Let’s say you’re someone who really enjoys fasting (bear with me, this is going someplace.) You don’t have an eating disorder and you’re not protesting anything, you just like to find any excuse you can to be really, really hungry. Well, if you’re a Muslim, you’re psyched. You’ve got Ramadan,  a whole glorious month at the all you can’t eat buffet. If you’re Jewish, you may not get a full month, but there are still ample fasting opportunities: you’ve got Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement), Tisha B’Av (commemorating the destruction of the Second Temple), Tzom Gedalia (the fast of, um, Gedaliah?) and other fast days sprinkled throughout the year. But what if you’re a Christian? If you’re Catholic, then you might fast by giving up Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups for Lent. If you’re a Protestant of some sort- well, the closest you’ll get to fasting is running out of Light Miracle Whip so you can’t bring deviled eggs to Bible study or skipping lunch after church because snake handling makes you queasy (I don’t know what you people do.). So, clearly this doesn’t bode well for the Christian or secular fasting enthusiast, but fortunately, there is a totally non-religious solution: the Master Cleanse. This invention gives fans of brutal self depravation a near endless opportunity to consume almost nothing save for a repulsive beverage with the sunny nickname “lemonade,” as in “when life gives you self-loathing, make lemonade!” The Master Cleanse doesn’t care what race you are or what god you worship or whether you bother to worship any at all, it just wants you to starve — a fast even Christopher Hitchens could love. The holidays in February are...

The rantings of a non-driving theatre professional living in altogether the wrong city There are 3 types of Yiddish folktales (bear with me, this is going somewhere): Be nice to smelly beggars when they come to your door — not out of love or compassion, but because God might be testing you, and you could win a free chicken dinner and slammin’ new candlesticks. Look at the wily little Jew trick the big, bad Goy and save his village from certain destruction for at least a week. Life is terrible. Enjoy it before it gets worse. This third category includes stories related to home improvement- of which the best one is: A little Jewish couple live with their many children in a tiny run-down house in a quaint Eastern-European Jewish village that hasn’t yet been burned to the ground by Cossacks. The man, Shmulik is always being hassled by his wife, Tiffany, because the house is so small, loud and crowded. Finally, at his wits’ end he goes to the Rabbi. “Rabbi,” he says “my life is miserable because my house is so small, loud and crowded and I’m afraid if I don’t do something soon, my wife will leave me.” The Rabbi listens and strokes his beard thoughtfully. Finally he says “Bring the goats into the house.” Shmulik does this. A week later, he returns to the Rabbi. “Rabbi, I did what you told me, but now things are worse! What should I do?” The Rabbi listens and thoughtfully sucks herring juice from his moustache. Finally, he says. “Bring the chickens into the house” Shmulik does this, and returns to the Rabbi to complain a week later. This process goes on for several weeks, with Shmulik complaining and the Rabbi giving helpful suggestions...

The rantings of a non-driving theatre professional living in altogether the wrong city Twenty years ago today, President George “Dana Carvey” Bush launched the first air strikes against Iraq to defend the sacred right of the Kuwati people to go skiing while someone else does their dirty work for them (NOTE TO YOUNGER READERS — We were not already at war with Iraq. Weird, I know.). Since the conflict was shorter than a season of Burn Notice, it’s easy to overlook this little warlet as just another short lived 90’s TV show, sandwiched in the canon between Brothers and Cop-Rock, but at the time, it seemed like a big, honking deal, especially for those of us that were 18 and ranked “going to war” on the list of stuff not to do- right between “learn the accordion” and “get caught masturbating by in synagogue bathroom by youth group advisor, rabbi, grandma and hot Orthodox girl with a liberal attitude about boy touching.” Keep in mind that the last war before this one was Vietnam and, as I knew from several deeply informative and thought-provoking Magnum PI episodes, that sucker was no joke (nearly pushed poor TC right over the edge.) Since I purchased a peace sign earring at Claire’s Accessories, sported a Jewfro and aspirational porn-stache and made numerous smudgy tie-dyes at summer camp, I was clearly a hippie and therefore opposed to the war. Along with my comrades, the Teen Troskyists (our colors were red for the blood of the oppressed and black to score with goth chicks.) I attended several protests coordinated by the creepy old guy at the coffee shop who was deeply committed to fighting for social justice whenever he could take a personal day from the DMV. I even...

The rantings of a non-driving theatre professional living in altogether the wrong city The worst thing about not having an NFL team in LA is that I don’t get to hate them. I mean, sure, I can always hate USC, but it’s not really the same. Despite the epic Angeleno douchebaggery that USC football provokes (poseur fans with car flags on their Hummers, media-whore players who like ballroom dancing, Snoop Dogg for some baffling reason) it’s still a college team and therefore not as much fun to hate as a team where the players are paid in actual money rather than free cars, cookouts, and sorority girls who don’t press charges. I realize there are millions of people all across the Confederate States of America who love college football almost as much as they love TWO AND A HALF MEN and incest, and I admit that they have many compelling reasons to love the college game. What other sport provides overfed and illiterate young Samoans with an opportunity to suffer debilitating brain injuries while they get the best education possible without actually learning anything and play their hearts out to prove to a computer that theirs is one of two teams worthy of competing for a meaningless national title? Unlike the NFL, college football isn’t about big contracts or corporate endorsements or compensating athletes for their time and effort. It’s about competing hard and leaving it all on the field for the honor and glory of participating in proud historical traditions like the Meineke Car Care Bowl, the Franklin American Mortgage Music City Bowl, and the San Diego County Credit Union Poinsettia Bowl — games which teach young men that it’s not about whether you win or lose, it’s how you brand the game....

For the record, Chanukah is one of my favorite holidays. Nothing beats the combination of lighting candles, opening presents and making Christians feel like dirt when they accidentally wish me a Merry Christmas (“Merry CHRIST-mas to me. Oh, how nice. You have yourself a very Merry I’m-a-Ignoramus-Who-Assumes-Everybody-Believes Exactly-the-Same-Stuff-I-Do and a truly Happy Funny-You-Don’t-Look-Jewish-Because You-Don’t-Have-Horns, too. Maybe you should ask Santa for a diversity seminar- that is, if he can fit in under the tree between the burning cross and copy of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. And stop ringing that bell at me, I’m sure as hell not giving you a quarter now, I don’t care what Army you’re with.”) I know it sounds like I’m not feeling the holiday spirit — but remember, my holiday isn’t about wussy crap like “Peace on Earth” and “Goodwill to Men” – it’s about eating fried food and jelly doughnuts, getting presents for EIGHT WHOLE NIGHTS and, most importantly, celebrating the crazy-ass bunch of Jewish rebels who kicked the ancient Greeks out of Israel and stretched one day of oil for more than a week. That’s right, ass-kicking, thrift, cholesterol and shopping — throw in the guilt over not calling my mother, and you have all the pillars that the Jewish faith is based on. The only thing more awesome would be a holiday celebrating Israeli Airport Security — and I don’t mean National Opt Out Day. All of this proves that, despite the pervasive stereotype that Jews are wimpy, neurotic, intellectual and un-athletic — a stereotype which, I might add, is continually reinforced by the insidious forces of television, film and reality, Judaism is actually way more hardcore than Christianity. There are many more examples of this, as you can see below: New Child...

The rantings of a non-driving theatre professional living in altogether the wrong city For most of my adult life, I have been an apartment renter. This means that I sent a check each month for about 18 years to a scumbag for the rare privilege of living in a place which Anne Frank would have referred to as cozy and which would have made my great-great grandparents wish they hadn’t tried so hard to elevate the family out of urban squalor in the first place and would have just gone to the beach in those weird one-piece stripey bathing suits instead. Among my many scumbag landlords were Giacomo, who ran a charming little neighborhood mafia front and who’s legitimacy as a businessman was rivaled only by the legitimacy of his orange tan.; Eli, who resembled Mahmoud Ahmadidjad in every way, except that he was way more of a dick.; and Bob who specialized in rehabbing brownstone and rehabbing from heroin. The trouble with Bob was that, if he didn’t finish a project before falling off the wagon, he would end up reallocating his resources to his veins. As a result the outside of the building was painted half fire-engine red and have urban-decay beige and the only way to drain the sink was to use a bucket and dump all the standing water in the bathtub- which, also did not drain, but was much larger, so he would typically sober up and fix it before it was totally full. All these crumbums, however, pale in comparison to the cheap, apathetic and useless bastard who owns my current place — me. Two years ago, my wife and I celebrated the global economic collapse by buying a little condo (she also made cupcakes — peanut butter...

The rantings of a non-driving theatre professional living in altogether the wrong city While mostly regarded as a total crap-fest, the election of 2010 was in fact a bonanza for female conservatives and liberal misogynists.  In the past, I might have been chastised for using terms like “crazy bitch”, “soulless twat” or “batshit Betty”. This election cycle, though, they were essential to any sophisticated political discourse- as in: “Holy shit, did you hear what that crazy bitch said about jerking off??” “Yeah, she’s almost as bad as that soulless twat from HP” “Not to mention the batshit Betty from eBay- you know who I mean, helmet-head.” I should note that my loathing for these she-publicans is due as much to their politics as to the fact that they dare call themselves “Mama Grizzly” which, as everyone knows, is MY goddamn drag queen name (if you haven’t seen “Mama Grizzly Sings Sondheim” – you really owe it to yourself. It’s 100% Sweet on Bitter Lemons). Honestly, I haven’t been this pissed off since those fucking granola makers stole BearNaked.com right out from under me, and screwed up my porn site (lawsuit pending). The one consolation is the theory that the world would be better off if women were in charge has been completely blown out of the water. Sure, over the past few millennia, men may have proved to be a bunch of sexist, egotistical, lying, hypocritical bigots (per Dolly Parton), but it’s heartening to see that as women ascend to power, they are proving to be just as bad. I would, in fact say, that women are much more dangerous. It is a well-documented scientific fact that men think with their penises, while women think with their brains (even Sarah Palin, to some degree.)...

the rantings of a non-driving theatre professional living in altogether the wrong city. Much like a giant turd, California is best appreciated when evacuated. In that spirit I decided to enhance my appreciation of the Golden State by spending some time in my hometown (by default) of Albany, NY.  Albany, recently named “America’s Awesomest City” by “Places That Suck Magazine” is the capital of New York State. Also known as “Sacramento East”, Albany is a fairly small, rather dull and predominantly grey town, which serves less as an urban center than as a curious form of punishment for people who win elections. This makes it the perfect destination for anyone looking to feel homesick for somewhere else (Buffalo and Troy excluded.) Of course, my perspective on Albany may have been a little skewed on this trip since I spent most of the time in my grandparents’ Assisted Living facility, the Jewey Jew Jewelstien Residence for Jews Who Like Jews and The Occasional Goy Who Wandered In To Ask Directions and Was Never Heard From Again (Poor Schmuck), or as Jesse Jackson calls it, Hymietown. As I discussed in my last post, this was supposed to infuse me with a sense of youthful vigor and vitality- which, I suppose it did, in the sense that it made me feel as though I was young and fit to run at top speed back to LA while screaming at the top of my lungs. What I didn’t realize was that Jewey Jewelstien Residence (aka Casa Altacocker) is just like college without the classes (that is to say, exactly like college) except the short term memory loss is caused by senility, “hooking up” involves dialysis, the staff actually brings you drugs, and graduation is a far more somber...

The rantings of a non-driving theatre professional living in altogether the wrong city As Eric Sims awoke on October 10 from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect. The bad news is that he also turned 38. Actually, birthdays don’t really bother me. The nice thing about getting older when you’re already hopelessly out of shape is that there are far fewer major disappointments to confront. After all, it’s not like I’m going to be gnashing my teeth over the fact that I can’t do grab air like  I used to on my snowboard or that I can’t keep up with the younger crab fishermen on the ship. No, my revelations are more mundane like “Hmm, I seem to have more hair on my ears than my forehead.” and “Peanut Butter Cap’n Crunch makes me gassy after midnight. How about that?” Mildly disappointing – but I can always switch to Crunch Berries. Still, it’s important to be vigilant against Creeping Birthday Melancholy Syndrome (especially during CBMS awareness month- Think Bleak!) so here are some gift suggestions to help bolster my morale– and one movie sure to torpedo it.   Morale Boosters: Nemesis- by Philip Roth A lot of people my age (i.e Brett Favre, Barack Obama) think that hanging out with young people will make them seem young and cool. This is a fallacy. The trouble with hanging out with much younger people, aside from the fact that they suck, is that it makes you, by default, the creepy old guy. See, all the younger people you associate with still have hope that when they are as old as you, they will have moved on to bigger and better things (career, family, boat ownership). You, on the other...

FIERCELY ANTICIPATING Top Gear Series 15 As anyone knows who has ever had the misfortune of being within earshot when I need a ride home, I’m a career non-driver. As a result, I tend to view driving as a purely pragmatic activity designed to get one from point A (home, work, winery) to point B (work, home, next winery) quickly and efficiently without having to rub elbows with the human detritus that befouls the Los Angeles public transit system. As with all activities that require sobriety (telemarketing, cat juggling, childbirth), though, I don’t view driving as “fun.” Furthermore, in the era of environmental self-righteousness, my non-driving status is one of the few things a hopeless carnivore like me has to be consistently smug about — “Oh, you drive a Prius, well I’ve got the original hybrid- TWO FEET, BITCH! That’s right- this little piggy SAVED THE PLANET. Now get out my face before I put my carbon footprint straight up your tail pipe. Oh, wait, uhm- can I get a ride home?” So how did it come to pass that one of the highlights of my summer — if not my year was hearing the unmistakable roar of a Bugatti Veyron as it blew by me on the PCH? Why have I recently scoured the manual of our Scion XA to see how big the engine (about a 6th of the Veryon) was and how much horsepower it can generate (about a tenth of the Veyron)? Why do I now have a favorite Ferarri (Daytona), Dodge (Challenger) and Volkswagen (Veyron- duh) Two words – Top Fucking Gear. How to explain the appeal of TOP GEAR? It’s hosted by three badly dressed, middle-aged limeys — and even the handsome one is too short and schlubby...

. another substitute blogumn by Eric Sims Since Ryan is down in Georgia organizing “Free Ben Roethlisberger- She’s a Golddiggin’ Ho” rallies, you’re stuck with me, Eric the raving Jew with the creepy John Barrowman fixation again. So, here goes nothing. FIERCELY ANTICIPATING March Madness Imagine your perfect day at work (or, you know, imagine what it would be like to have a really awesome day if you had a job). What would you be doing? Rescuing kittens from rising flood waters; building a kick-ass pivot table; quelling a riot in a women’s prison with a fire hose; fluffing Ron Jeremy; passing healthcare reform; or maybe, just for once, getting to work the register and not having to put on that goddamn hotdog costume and stand on the corner handing out flyers. Whatever it is, get a clear image in your mind. Got it? Well, here’s my perfect day. I wander in around 9:30, check for doughnuts in the green room, sit down at my computer and WATCH HOUR AFTER HOUR OF LIVE STREAMING COLLEGE BASKETBALL!!!! A non-stop orgy of buzzer beaters and bracket busters; squeaking sneakers and slam dunks, screaming coaches and desperation heaves. It’s a crazy, emotional ride — one minute, I’m yelling at my computer, pleading with BYU to hit some free-throws, the next, I’m dying quietly inside while I fake my way through a conference call and watch one of my Final Four picks wither away in overtime. I see athletes in their prime swarming the court after the most improbable victory — living, maybe, the greatest moment of their lives and stunned young men sitting on the bench watching the clock tick down the last few seconds of the season and maybe their whole basketball careers, burying their faces...

. a guest blogumn by Eric Sims As I’m often known to exclaim with gratitude to the heavens: “I’m not Ryan Dixon!” However, what I am, is this week’s guest blogger (or “blogumnist” if I must use that abysmal term) Eric Sims. Ryan asked me to cover for him while he is on the lam, fleeing from a particularly dangerous stalker ex-girlfriend (sorry- was that a secret?) so, here goes nothing. FIERCELY ANTICIPATING Whisper House at the Old Globe Theatre That’s right bitches, it’s a play (ok, musical)! That’s what you get for letting a theatre guy fill in for the week. Pretty soon, I’ll be pontificating on the sanctity of the communal audience / actor relationship, and the crucial role to be played by The Theatre in the salvation of Western civilization. Then, you can feel free to track me down and beat me to death with a sock filled with dogshit. You’d be doing us all a favor. Anyhow- Whisper House– music & lyrics by Duncan Sheik of Spring Awakening (and the unfortunate “Barely Breathing”) and book & lyrics by Kyle Jarrow of, well, a whole bunch of stuff, but, nearest to my heart- A Very Merry Unauthorized Children’s Scientology Pageant. The action takes place in a lighthouse in 1942 but all the songs are performed by a spectral rock band of ghosts who died at the turn of the century. It’s the kind of random and bizarre juxtaposition that made Spring Awakening so fucking cool and, I’m hoping that Jarrow’s gift for exploring the complex humanity, underlying absurdity, and improbable situations will make for an incredible evening of entertainment. So- how much do I want to see this? So much that I actually bought tickets! Considering that I’ve been kicking around...