Alpha Mail / Whether the Weather be cold...(2 posts for the price of one)

This post is entitled Alpha Mail. I don't know when i agreed with myself that the majority of my titles should be puns. I apologize.

After having lived next to 2 imcompetent post offices here in New York, I believe I have fixed my current situation. Apparently, one of the mailman who delievers to me refused to put my mail in my box because my name wasn't on it. He returned the majority of it to sender. This includes paychecks and bills.

I didn't know this was the problem until recently when I went over to the post office to pick up a package. "No Name, No Mail!" the woman screamed at me. There's no way I could have known this was the problem. Especially since the other mailman had no problem putting my mail in there assuming that since 80% of the mail that he got for that address had my name on it, I must live there. My name is now on the box. So everyone should be happy.

At my old address an envelope with a money order in it was stolen. This was around thanksgiving 2004. I was running low on cash and my grandmother was kind enough to save my ass (as she has done many times) and send me my rent. She sent a blank money order so that I could put my landlord's name on it. I never got it, and we found out it was cashed on my birthday of all days. My grandma called up Western Union and sent in her receipts and such and we never heard about it again. Nobody at the post office could help citing that we should have purchased a tracking number or insurance with a "serves you right" attitude.

Before we found out it was stolen and we thought is was just lost, my roommate joked about the likely probability of mail getting lost. I said "Yeah, except its a guy named Jacob Probability. He goes through all the mail an throws out every 10th letter if it doesn't have insurance or a tracking number."

Post 2:
Its a beautiful warm day. Sounds nice, right? Of course it does. Everyone likes warm days. Thing is, its JANUARY! Its the end of JANURAY!! We should be covered in 3 feet of snow! This weather is scary!! Just more evidence that we're reaching a point of no return with what we've done to the planet. We may have already past it.

Moment of Clarity #24

Sleep with ugly people. The beautiful people have all the STDs.

COMEDY IS FOR HUMANS

HEY HEY HEY HEY HEY!

Time for a new show bitches. Tomorrow, Wednesday, January 25th at 8pm.

Baron and Josh Present
COMEDY IS FOR HUMANS
at Mundial, 12th St. and Ave. A
with
JESS WOOD
CHRISTIAN FINNEGAN
and VICTOR VARNADO

These fantastic comics (google them) will be doing long sets! Watch them work their magic! Seriously, doves will be pulled out of asses tomorrow night!

YOWSAH

I'd like to make a public thank you to the guy on the N train last night that played "It Don't Mean a Thang" on the trumpet. A TRUMPET!! And he was good too.

Couldn't have been more the 22 years old. A TRUMPET.

I think everyone else on the train would agree with the hilarity of the woman next to you being jolted out of her sleep by...A TRUMPET!

Then the guy did a spot on impression of Louis Armstrong and it was good! Then he played the trumpet again with a mute. Nice job. Very nice job indeed. I looked around at the people on the train and I saw the smiling laughing faces and the guy next to me who could not fathom the fact that the combination of his iPod and GameBoy couldn't drown out the sound of a REAL TRUMPET. ITS REAL. NOTHING CAN BLOCK IT!

So thank you whoever you are.

While My Connection Works...

...I'll write something.

I went to see "Capote" yesterday. I've been wanting to see it for a while and i highly recommend it. I mean, come on, Philip Seymour Hoffman = can't go wrong. That man is ridiculously good. And his portrayal of Truman Capote is filled with the nuaunce and subtlety of an old time movie star. Then throw in the bonuses of Catherine Keener and Chris Cooper, a great script, and stunning direction and you got a movie.

Now that i'm done with my impression of a critic who knows what he's talking about i'll assume the role of the ass as i always do. Truman Capote was a great novelist, a interesting public figure and a member of an elite and fashionable circle of New York intellectuals that i don't think exist anymore (outside of comedians of course). Everyone knew who he was. He was a household name. He was an influential writer and thinker whose influence is still felt today.

I sat there watching and thought to myself "Who are we gonna be making these movies about in 10 - 30 years?" There is really no one around like that today not counting people who are already established themselves decades ago. Everyone knows there's been an influx in Biopics lately. From Ray to Walk the Line to Capote. There's a movie about Janis Joplin on the way and apparently Mike Epps is portraying Richard Pryor in the movie about his life. You'll notice, however, that these are people who peaked in the mid to late 70s. Pryor reached into the 80s, but his work in the 70s is very vivid in the minds of those that admire him.

Where are the current influential artists that are evolving the form in which they create? Why aren't they household names? Perhaps they don't exists. Maybe in 10 years we'll end up seeing Haley Joel Osment as Moby in "I Guess You Can Call This Music" Or Lindsey Lohan as Julia Roberts in "Neither Can Act" or Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen both play Paris Hilton in "Bewildered Whore." Only time will tell. All I know is that people like Truman Capote, Johnny Cash, Ray Charles, and Richard Pryor are Artists that more people saw as necessary to our way of life. Now, arts programs are the first thing from which the budget is cut cuz "Gee, we need some oil." Hey, there's an idea. Maybe we could get Michael Clarke Duncan to play the part of oil in "The Fall of the American Empire." I'd go to see that, if we're not all enslaved by then.

The Times are A-Changin'

Is it...? No! I think there just may be might be a cell phone in my near future. We shall see.

I Got a Golden Ticket!!

See you in Aspen.

2 things whilst I dillydally

I stayed up to catch a 3am showing of Saturday Night Live to see one sketch. The sketch ended up being at the end of the show. It was an episode from December 98 with host Vince Vaughn who was then plugging the Gus van Sant shot by shot remake of Hitchcock's "Psycho." The sketch featured Vince, Will Ferrell, Chris Parnell, and Tim Meadows and was called "Delco Cat Toys." I saw this sketch a long time ago and remembered howling. A rough draft of it is featured in Ferrell's audition included on his "Best of.." dvd, but strangely the sketch in full isn't there. Its about over zealous cat toy salesmen who take themselves way too seriously and feel a need to test the products to see if they "can make it move." It was 4:30am, I laughed and it was well worth it. Also, it was worth it to see the early stages of the friendship that spawned between Vince and Will.

Now that I've written that in the style of a 5th grade English paper. Let's move on.

Here's an expression I don't want to hear anymore "It was like a movie..." which is used to describe real moments that are so real, they're realer than real and can only be described by something that isn't real but captures things that are thus making a representation of real that is somehow better than what actually is.

Think of the times you've used that expression. It implies something that is very true: that we've made our everyday lives and experiences so boring and dull that when something good or beautiful happens its out of the ordinary. It can only be described using something that people say they go to "to escape." Like a sunset that looks so good "its like a movie." Or that certain events happened to work out in your favor or your mind was so clear you were clever all day "it was like a movie." That is sad. We've seen more sunsets in movies than in real life.

It also applies to horrible occurences. What did a lot of people say who saw the Towers go down? Especially if they saw it on TV like most people?

"It was so surreal: it was like a movie."

Inspired by Benari

My friend Benari Poulten has a joke about the army commercial with the slogan "Army of One" in which he imagines himself to be the one and the only one sent into battle. There's a new campaign of army commercials meant to show you the validity of the skills you learn in the army and how they can apply to your life when you return from service (assuming you're not part of the 2100 we've been hearing about).

One of these commericals shows a group of firefighters driving in an engine. One is talking to the newbie about how others need to know "they can count on you. You know what I mean?" BOOM! All of a sudden you see the newbie at bootcamp training with his fellow soldiers helping each other through an ostacle course living up to the army adage "You're only as strong as the weakest link in the chain." BOOM! Back to him in the fire engine and he says "Yeah I do."

Another has a guy returning to a group of friends who are excited to see him. They ask what he was doing in the army. "Working with computers." They are a bit shocked. "Computers," they ask, "couldn't you have done that here?" BOOM! He's in a tent surrounded by high tech computers looking at various monitors and shouting directions: he's either in the middle of battle or an intense simulation. BOOM! Back in the room with his friends. He looks at them all and with a sober expression states "No, I don't think so."

So what is the message here? It seems like "Hey, join the army and enjoy constant random flashbacks!" Is one of these guys gonna be with his wife in the kitchen and she'll say "did you take out the trash?" and BOOM he's in a village in Iraq surrounded by children throwing garbage at him yelling in a language he doesn't understand while at the same time he's yelling "I'm here to help you!" and then he fires his machine gun over their heads to scare them away while other soldiers are going "What are you doing? Hold your fire! HOLD YOUR FIRE! You gave away our position!" all of a sudden random machine gun fire is coming at them from rooftops. BOOM! He's back in the kitchen talking to his wife "No I didn't take it out yet."

Go Army