Can't Sleep. Clowns Will Eat Me

Pop quiz, hot shot: What is Coulrophobia?
A. An irrational fear of colors
B. An irrational fear crazy-as-a-bedbug anorexic shemale Ann Coulter
C. An irrational fear of clowns
D. A new fragrance from Calvin Klein

If you said an irrational fear of clowns, you're wrong! There's no such thing as an irrational fear of clowns, because clowns are inherently evil. Some of them are even really giant killer spiders.



Pennywise the dancing clown. The Joker. That little fat guy from Spawn. Killer Klowns from Outer Space. The new Ronald McDonald (he's not like the one they had when I was growing up, this new guy is...creepy.) Sure, you could say those aren't real clowns. And you'd be right, except for Ronald, anyway. But if clowns are so non-scary, then why are there so many evil clowns in pop culture? Why is there a website called ihateclowns.com? And let's not forget real-life serial killer clown, John Wayne Gacy.

I'm not saying all clowns drink the blood of the innocent from hollowed-out skulls or anything. I'm sure some clowns are nice people, but I'll bet even they still smile and say "I've still got it!" whenever a kid runs screaming in terror at the sight of them. Still, most people like clowns. They think they're funny. Choloric pallor and blood-red lips don't exactly scream "comedy" to me. More like, "I will devour your bones and dance naked on your grave." Actually, I guess that is kind of funny.

My friends laugh about my aversion of clowns. A few years ago, Glenn kept hiding clown-head cake toppers all over my room. Every time I'd open my sock drawer, there'd be a disembodied clown head grinning maniacally at me. Even Brianna thinks it's funny.



It's not like I wet myself every time I see a balloon animal. I just get kind of uncomfortable around clowns and try to avoid them at all costs. But I wouldn't say I was afraid. I even went into the clown-themed haunted house at Spookyworld a few years ago. Against my will, but I still went in. Okay, so I was literally dragged, but it wasn't really that bad. The Insane Clown Posse were in there goofing around with the tourists. That might have been the same time Nick and Hedie got their picture taken with TV's Lou Ferrigno. Those were some good times. Nick wants me to go to an ICP concert with him. Clowns rapping about killing people. It'd be like paying to see my nighmares acted out on stage. With a mosh pit. I just don't see that happening anytime soon. But if it does, I guess I'd write about it here.

Read more »

Wait Till Next Year

On the Blogger home page there was an article about the Bloggies. No, not those milk creatures that used to torment Cap'n Crunch. The Bloggies are awards for weblogs. Aside from the heeps of prestige that comes with such an honor, winners also recieve $20.05. With a crisp new twenty in my money clip, the ladies would surely be all up ons. And if they weren't, I could use the nickel to hypnotize them.

But it's not to be. Mostly because my swinging single days are over. Okay, they were really more like my hiding in the shadows while I mope and lament about my string of painfully unrequited infatuations days. But more importantly, the nominations have already been announced. From Saturday, January 1, through Monday, January 10, anyone was able to nominate their favorite weblogs. That would have been nice to know before, say anytime between January 1-10.

With it's diarrhea green color-scheme, my site probably wouldn't be winning any awards for design, but it could have had a chance in the humor and writing categories. Or at least the "best-kept-secret" award. I think it's safe to say the collective readers of this site could all fit in an elevator together, unless one of you is one of those morbidly obese shut-ins that make Richard Simmons cry. If you are, sorry about that last statement. I'll have my people send your people a glazed ham.

I wonder if they have a televised awards show? It would be interesting to see the mummified remains of Joan Rivers and her daughter (otherwise known as an embarrassing reminder of her drunken tryst with Mr. Ed) interviewing the nominees on the red carpet, desperately clinging to what little relevance they ever had. It would probably end in tragedy, as the glut of fashion-impaired web masters would cause Joan to spew her acid-tonged barbs at such a lightning-fast pace that her head explodes.

Of course they'd have to have the inexplicable choreographed dance number for each nominee. Like the New Jersey Firefighter's Dance Troop salute to fark.com. And of course the solemn tribute to the weblogs that we have lost in the past year. We'll miss you, Bookblog. Actually, I never heard of you until I Googled "discontinued blogs," but now I feel bad that I didn't get to know you better.

I don't think I would be able to handle the pressure of being nominated anyway. You get all excited, call all your friends and tell them about it. You work on an acceptance speech, practice it in front of the mirror, and when the day finally comes, you have to sit there and try not to show the spite and contempt bubbling over inside you when defective yeti wins instead of you.

I'll be ready next year, you'll see. I'll show them. I'll show them all. Plus I could really use twenty dollars.

Read more »

Bummer, Dude

What better time than in the middle of a huge freaking snowstorm than to forget about what's going on outside the window and reminisce about the good old days? Or the old days, anyway. Today, let's look back at sophomore year of high school.

Ah, 1995. The Year of the Dancing Itos. It was my first year of high school, even though I was a sophomore. The way I understand it, there wasn't enough room for all the students, so they shipped the freshman off to the junior high. It was my first year in the graphic arts program. I didn't know it at the time, but it turned out that by taking vocational classes, my junior high friends had no choice but to invoke the time-honored high school caste system. Thus began my three year stint as a social leper. Eh, you know what they say: whatever doesn't kill you, leaves you socially and emotionally crippled. On the plus side, we didn't have to take gym.

There were twenty or so students that signed up for graphic arts, but only two ended up staying with the program through graduation. I was one of them, the other was a girl named Valerie. Valerie eventually started dating one of the juniors that helped us through that first year. They dated and broke up on alternating weeks. On one of the weeks they were dating, he must have felt that I was getting a little too close to her. Valerie was in all my classes, and we talked all the time, but nothing was going on, I swear. And it's not because of her uncanny resemblance to Steve Perry.



First of all, I'm not the type of guy that would try to get in the way of a relationship. And anyway, it seemed like we had too much in common. (Except for the smoking, and that's another red flag right there.) You don't want to go out with someone that's so similar it's like you're dating yourself. Not to mention I was still so wrapped up in that Danielle girl that any other girl could have ripped their shirt off and threw herself at me and I wouldn't have noticed.

But her boyfriend wasn't privy to any of this information. He just saw us talking on a regular basis and that was all he needed. So one day he walked into class, and without saying a word, kneed me in the man parts and walked away. I stood there for a few seconds before collapsing sideways to the floor. I could taste blood in my mouth. That was a new kind of pain.

The rest of the juniors were generally much more easy-going. They were a cool bunch of people, and we all got along really well, but they weren't exactly the best influences impressionable young minds could have.

Near the end of the year, the fire alarm went off every day. This went on for over a week, around lunchtime every day. Probably a senior prank. It got so bad that the school held an assembly to address the situation. They said it's serious buisness; every time the alarm is pulled the fire department has to come to the school. They warned that if it happened again, the person who did it would face expulsion.

The next week a new kid came to town. He moved here from Nebraska. I don't think anyone even knew his name, everyone simply called him Nebraska. The weird thing about Nebraska was that he dressed, spoke and generally acted like a surfer dude. I'll have to go check my fifth grade project on the fifty states, but I don't remember reading anything about Nebraska having a coastline. What was he surfing? The amber waves of grain?



Maybe it was the whole displaced surfer in the heartland thing, but the juniors got a kick out of him. He started to hang out with them. I don't know what it was that they said, but they somehow convinced him to pull the fire alarm. He must have thought it was some kind of rite of passage or something, so he did.

The school, In order to catch it's wolf-cryer, had little paint packets installed in each of the alarms that were rigged to go off when pulled. So when he pulled the alarm, he was sprayed with blue paint. Obviously, the kid that's walking around looking like a smurf exploded on his face is the culprit. They caught him and he got expelled on the spot.

Poor Nebraska. He wasn't even in school for a week. No one ever saw him again. Bogus.

Read more »

Phantom Deli Meat

A few weeks ago I found out that the soul-hungry phantasm residing in my bedroom was nothing more than a symptom of sleep paralasis. OR WAS IT?! Yeah, it probably was, but some questions remain unanswered.

Saturday we invited my family over for dinner. I put their coats in the bedroom. When it was time for them to go home, I went into the room to get the coats and...the whole room smelled like meat.Uncooked meat.

What smells like meat in here?

I held each coat up to my nose, trying to find the source of the meaty stench. It wasn't coming from any of the coats, although Glenn's had that musty basement smell. What the hell smelled like meat? The room didn't smell like that earlier.

So I just went around, smelling everyone and everything. I couldn't find where it was coming from. I checked the trash can. Nope, not in there. The sheets for some reason? Not that either. It was the weirdest thing: unexplained meat smell. We sprayed some air freshener and it went away, which is good, but i kind of feel cheated now because I have no idea what it was that smelled like that. Maybe it was the evil ghost thing. It could have been making a sandwich.

Oh yeah, and it snowed. A lot. I'm not blaming a ghost for that, but I'm not ruling it out, either. About two feet of snow (or 72,000 kilometers, if you went to public schools like me and have no freaking clue how to convert things to metric) accumulated in the front lawn last weekend. Because of the nature of snow drifts, there's a weird semi-circle area in front of the house where you can actually still see grass, then a six foot wall of snow.

Our road was closed for a day or so. The governer declared a state of emergency. Some coastal areas were experiencing flooding at high tide. Even though we live on the ocean, we didn't have to worry about that, because the ocean was frozen. I thought for a moment that this storm might actually be worse that that Blizzard of '78 everyone brings up at even the hint of a snowflake. It was pretty bad for a while, but today the road was opened and people were getting ready for work. I felt...cheated. For all this hype and buildup, everything should be closed for at least two days.

Brianna's school is closed for two days. I stayed home today to watch her. I've got my laptop, so I can still do work. But a few hours ago I started to feel sick. My head is pounding. I felt so dizzy I could barely stand up. Heavy doses of Nick Jr. didn't help. I know kids learn from repetiton and it helps them, but I was sitting at my computer and all I could hear was a Blue's Clues song about stacking things coming from the other room. Michele said the problem is that I'm dehydrated, so she gave me a keg of water and told me I had to drink the whole thing. I felt fine this morning, and now it feels like my head is going to explode. Is it really from dehydration? Or repetitive kids' songs? Or could the evil spirit thing, when it's not making sandwiches or tampering with the weather, somehow be involved?

Dear God, that was a terrible paragraph. I'm going to go lie down now.

Read more »

Christmas All Over Again

One of these days, I'm going to get a decent digital camera, but unless a sack of money falls out of the sky, I won't be getting one anytime soon. Until then, the good people at CVS are there for all my picture-developing needs. I just got some film developed the other day. So here for your enjoyment, I present Christmas...again...for the first time.


Okay, so this is the view from my new office, overlooking Newbury Street. We finally moved there in mid-December. I share an office with another guy, but we have the biggest office and it has the best view. Joe has his own office around the corner.



Here is a Christmas tree in Downtown Crossing, above Filene's. Across the street is the famed animated window display at Macy's. They do a different theme every year. Last year that had the Muppets. This year it was A Christmas Story. They had windows depicting all the classic scenes in the movie, from Flick getting his tongue stuck to the flagpole to the Bumpass' dogs eating the Christmas turkey.



This was Brianna's first Christmas in Massachusetts. We got her a stocking and bought a tree. This was also my first time buying a tree, as well as doing a whole bunch of other stuff that I'd grown accustomed to my parent's doing. I think I did a pretty good job. Didn't burn the apartment down or anything.



For the past few years, my family has gone over to my cousin Andrea's house on Christmas Eve for holdiay cheer and also Chinese food. It's good for Brianna, because my cousins' kids are around her age. Granted, she's the only girl, except for youngest, Sofia.



Here's my brother Glenn, with that "I'm going to kill you for taking my picture" look in his eyes. That's nothing, buddy. I put it online, too! Bwa-hahahaha! And finally, the hottest toy of the year, Rockin' Vampire Ernie. Comes with his own blood-soaked rubber ducky!

Okay, so that's not a real toy. It was just something I did to try to keep half a dozen little kids entertained. It worked for a few seconds, but they seemed to be a lot more entertained by jumping all over me. It was like a contest to see who could do the most damage to my spinal coard. I don't have any pictures of that, but I'll leave you with these pictures from back in November when Brianna went out in the snow for the first time ever.

Read more »

I Gotta Have More Cowbell!

So I'm flipping through the channels and I come to VH1 Classic. Lynn Hoffman, formerly of Boston's MIX 98.5 is hosting the Request Hour. How about that. The first video is Blue Oyster Cult's Don't Fear the Reaper. It's a live version. It sounds...different. Why? No cowbell. None. That's just not right. Guess what, I've got a fever...and the only prescription...is more cowbell!

Press play to watch the SNL Behind the Music: Blue Oyster Cult skit


The second video is Robert Plant with Queen doing Crazy Little Thing Called Love at the Freddy Mercury Tribute concert. Plant does a good enough job, I guess, but he's wearing this blue blousy thing. He looks like a coked-up Barbara Streisand.

At this point I realize that I'm going to spend the rest of the night writing about music videos, so up next is Phil Collins' In the Air Tonight. This is actually the first time I've seen this video. I know, I know. Between this and the fact that I'd never seen Footloose, you'd think I spent most of the eighties locked in a cage. But I remember that Cyndi Lauper video with Lou Albano. And the one from The Goonies, with the giant squid that wasn't actually in the movie. And I remember David Lee Roth's California Girls. I guess if it didn't feature a Professional Wrestler or shiny, bikini-clad women, I wasn't interested. Anyway, I have to say that this video kinda disappointed me. Isn't this song supposed to be about watching some guy drown? The video is mostly Phil Collins sitting in what looks like Ted Kaczynski's summer cottage intercut with images of his disturbingly giant bald head. Later, there's a hallway with a bunch of colored doors, and behind one of them is Phil's creepy giant head again, but this time it's in heat-vision. Maybe behind one of the other doors was that drowning guy. He should have opened that one. It would have made the video a lot better.

The fourth video is for Ringo Starr's Photograph. I'm not going to bother with this one for two reasons; one, the only Ringo song I know is It Don't Come Easy; and two, the video is from VH1 Storytellers. That came out, what, five years ago? That's not a classic video! C'mon, Lynn.

Next we have The Tubes' video Talk To Ya Later. For the first thirty seconds I could swear the singer was TV's Paul Reiser. That reminds me of a letter I read a few weeks ago on Bill Simmons' page at ESPN.com:

Can you think of a better sitcom idea than "My Two Dads"? Your mom's dead and she was such a slut, we don't know who your real father is.
Charlie Triemert, St. Paul, MN

The camera moves in closer and it's clearly not Paul Reiser. The guy that's not Paul Reiser is giving a press conference...in song! That's the whole video. No futher questions, please.

Coming in at number six is Poison with Nothin' But A Good Time. It starts off with a long-haired guy working the kitchen at a diner, listening to KISS, or "that...that rock 'n roll!" as the angry guy that burst in called it. The radio is the least of that guy's problems. He's got long-haired employees with no hairnets handling food. Someone's going to get a two foot long blond hair in their turkey sub. Gross. But the long-hair guy doesn't care about that, he just wants to get away from The Man. So he kicks open the door and finds...every single Poison video ever. It's the guys from Poison, on stage, trying to look as tough as guys wearing women's clothes possibly can. It may seem weird to most people, but Poison will always remind me of bowling. A few years back, my friends and I used to go Cosmic Bowling. If you don't know, Cosmic Bowling is like regular bowling, but with flashing strobe lights, smoke machines and the cheesiest videos eighties hair bands had to offer. Unskinny Bop was a Cosmic Bowling staple. As was that dance song about people riding the train.

Next is The B-52s. Channel Z. Even as I watch this, all I can think of is the song UHF by Weird Al. Now I can't get the movie out of my head. Supplies!



Okay, now we have Sacrifice, by Elton John. This is the type of song you hear when you're waiting at the dentist's office. They pump that place full of adult contemporary soft rock to give you a false sense of security. Then they scrape pointy metal torture sticks across your gums for twenty minutes. Therefore, songs like this give me a creepy feeling. The fact that Elton John is inexplicably dressed like a matador as he's singing doesn't help.

Beverly from Gainsville, TX wanted to see Madonna's Papa Don't Preach. She must have some clout, because that's what's playing now. So Madonna's standing around in a t-shirt that says "Italian's do it better" and spots a virile young buck admiring her keen fashion sense. The two hit it off, maybe a little too well. Now she has to tell her old man Danny Aiello that she's all knocked up and stuff. I guess she's lucky her dad isn't Lou Albano. But in the end, he's okay with it. He thinks to himself, "At least she's not speaking in a fake British accent."

Next is Luther Vandross. I don't know what he's singing. It doesn't matter. It's another dentist song and I'm changing the channel now.

Read more »

Burn Out

And now an ode to Bill Belichick...

a hooded sweatshirt
pacing the sidelines all day
does he ever smile?

What? I'm supposed to write 500 words every time? See you Wednesday.

Read more »

Requiem for Star Dude

You know what really cheeses me off? When you're reading something, usually a newspaper or magazine article, and the writer uses phrases like "call it..." or "file under..." Not only does it sound trite, but it's telling you what to do. Who do these people think they are? If I'm reading a story about a cat that tore up a room full of furniture, I am not going to call it a "CAT-astrophe." It's not going to happen. Nor will I file it under "bad kitty." I'm just not that organized.

I guess they're trying to be...ugh...cute. But really all they're doing is ordering people to go along with their puns and lame jokes. Forget bad writing, that's just rude. File under: Learn to write.

On the subject of bad writing, I've seen some of the worst imaginable at Nick's house. Hedie teaches fifth and eighth grade English, and she's usually correcting papers when I'm at the house. She showed me one paper called "Star Dude."

The assignment was to write a one page paper about Halloween. This kid filled a page and a half, but only because he put one or two words on each line. I wish I could remember how it went, all I can remember is it started off about someone named Star Dude who came from space, most of the words were spelled wrong, and it had nothing to do with Halloween. Oh yeah, and it didn't end. It just...stopped. We never find out what happened to Star Dude. Does he finally find love? Does he become a real boy? Does he ever do whatever the hell it is that the story was even about? We'll never know. Poor Star Dude. We hardly knew ye.

That's not to say that there are no future poet laureates in the class. Last week, she confiscated a note containing the following ballad:

Baby Girl,
I love you.
Are you wearing a thong?

Classy.

Read more »

Hypnagogic Hags

Every Tuesday night, the movies at the theater behind the Hanover Mall are only five dollars. There's a revolving cast of regulars that show up each week as part of our Tuesday Night Movie crew. Sometimes there's only four. Sometimes there's twelve. I hadn't gone in a long time, but last night marked my triumphant return. The movie this week was White Noise.

The general consensus after the movie ranged everywhere from "it was okay" to "I hated it." I was a little creeped out going into the movie, since I'd been to a few websites about EVP (Electronic Voice Phenomena) before I ever even heard of the movie, and also I'm giant chicken.



The movie wasn't really scary, and the EVP stuff sounded crystal clear, as oppossed to the ones you hear online that barely sound like anything. Like that one they used in the preview, "I will see you no more." Who talks like that? Come on.

Jose didn't like it at all. He said it wasn't scary. But there was one part that freaked me out, because it happened to me before. Near the end, these black misty figures pass through Michael Keaton, and it looked like it must have felt exactly like that thing that's happened to me about a half dozen times since I moved to Quincy last May. It never happened before that, and it's only when I'm in that room.

It was always the same thing; as soon as I close my eyes, I feel enormous pressure on my chest and I can't move. Usually I see something; a black or white faceless figure made of mist. Sometimes I hear it screaming, but I can't scream myself, no matter how hard I try. It happened again a few nights ago, only this time there was no horrifying cloaked figures. I was having a dream that I was in some little kid's room. It wasn't Brianna, I think it was a little boy. I fell on him or something and he was trapped under me, but I couldn't move. I tried to call for help, but I couldn't speak. I was unintentionally killing this kid and there was nothing I could do about it. That's a pretty terrifying thought.

But I can sleep a little better now knowing that this weird feeling has a name, isolated sleep paralysis. Basically, what happens is your body freezes up, either just as your going to sleep or right before you wake up. Sometimes hypnagogic (my new favorite word) hallucinations occur with it, like a feeling that something is sitting on your chest trying to suffocate you to death. That part's called the "Hag Phenomena." Really! You wake up when someone touches you or makes a loud noise, but it's kind of hard to get someone to do that when you can't speak.

So it's a common thing, and it's not harmful, but I'd still be quite happy if that never happened again.

Read more »

1280 x 854

Happy tenth day of 2005! Okay, so I'm a little late. But that's going to change. No, really. This year's resolution will be to update the site more often. Like once a week. Or bi-weekly. I'm pretty sure that means twice a week and not once every two weeks. What do you think? Should there be weekly features, like on Tuesdays I complain about stuff, or Wednesday I talk about stuff that happened when I was eight? I don't know. Maybe there should be a mascot, like Professor Phosphorescent or Gasbot.


Anyway, we were at Nick's house yesterday watching Denver forget they were in the playoffs. After that, we decided to watch a movie.

Deciding on a movie should be a relatively stress-free endevor, but with us, deciding on a DVD to watch is like trying to decide which wire to cut on a time bomb. No one ever wants to be the one to pick the movie. And there's always one person that doesn't want to watch whatever is picked. We need a Wheel-O-Movies or something that we can just spin and whatever the Wheel says, goes.

Last night's movie was picked because my friends were shocked-SHOCKED!-to discover that I'd never seen it. Apparently, I'm the only person on Earth who hasn't. So last night, we watched Footloose.

I'd spend the past twenty-plus years completely devoid of any desire to watch Kevin Bacon dance around. I only found out a few months ago on one of those VH-1 shows that it was about a town where dancing is against the law. And now that I've seen it, I guess I finally feel like I've really lived.

I also have a few questions. First off, did Kenny Loggins do anything but write movie themes? Footloose, Top Gun, Caddyshack...was that his whole career? What ever happened to that guy anyway? When I was in college, there was this kid Duane that didn't know what kind of music I listened to, so he tried to insult me by saying "You probably like Kenny Loggins." Except sometimes he said Kenny G, and sometimes it was Kenny Rogers. I don't think he realized they're three different people. That's pretty funny.

Second, what the hell happened to Chris Penn?!! He was skinny in this movie. Now he's a big fat guy. I think the earliest movie I saw him in was Reservoir Dogs. Seeing Nice Guy Eddie all skinny and prancing around is reason enough alone to watch this movie.

I never knew that "I Need a Hero" song came from this movie. It always reminded me Short Circuit 2 when Johnny Five fixes himself at Radio Shack and goes after Oscar for betraying him. I guess when the rest of the world hears that song, they think of two guys on tractors playing chicken. I think it fits better with the angry robot, though. Somewhere out there, I'm sure there's a song that really says two guys on tractors playing chicken. Rain on the Scarecrow, maybe. Or Sweet Home Alabama.

We went back and watched a few scenes with Kevin Bacon commentary. That was great. For the afore mentioned tractor chicken, he said "Oh no, I hope I don't get my foot stuck to the pedal." Later when he's dancing, he says "Now, this wasn't me" and it cuts to a closeup shot of his face, and he says "Well, that's me, but this next part isn't." Good stuff; I'll have to watch the whole thing with commentary at some point.

The best part of the movie was when the guy with antlers mounted on the roof of his truck throws a brick through the uncle's window. "Burn in Hell? This brick says 'Burn in Hell'!" That and Chris Penn('s stunt double) doing flips in a field. Maybe next week we'll watch another eighties movie I've never seen.

Read more »