Your End of the Line Quizo Update

We now join our regularly-scheduled Quizo update, already in progress.

- is freaking ridiculous,” I say. I told my father over and over again that I don’t like going to Caesar’s, that bad bad things happen at Caesars, but now I find myself not only at Caesar’s, but in a walkway suspended several stories ABOVE Caesar’s, blindingly turning my head to and fro trying to find my father so I can a) give him his stupid Koffee Kake, and b) get the fuck out of Caesar’s.

When’s he going to start talking about it?

“I’m on the walkway,” my father says.

“Dad, there’s like five walkways,” I say. “Telling me you’re on ‘the walkway’ is about as helpful as the traffic report on NPR.”

“Huh?”

“Never mind,” I say. The problem now is that not only am I at Caesars where bad bad things happen, which is enough to start giving me a panic attack in and of itself. I am also trapped in a glass walkway hanging over Pacific Avenue, which brings with it fears of heights, enclosed spaces, crowds, plexiglass, strangers, unsafe construction, gravity, and having cars driving under your feet. By now all of my neuroses are fighting each other for supremacy. I start to think it will be like Highlander. They will compete for The Prize, and there can be only one. I’m rooting for fear of unsafe construction.

He has to mention it eventually.

As I can feel what is most definitely a panic attack coming on I realize that given how often I go to Atlantic City a well-developed fear of unsafe construction will actually end up being quite

Come on, he can’t ignore it forever.

debilitating…

I’m sorry, can I help you?

We were just wondering when you were going to say something about the game.

Game? What game?

You know. Yesterday.

Game yesterday? Oh! You mean the MLS Cup Final. Oh. That was a great game. Really fantastic. I mean, I know I’ve knocked the MLS in the past but that was actually quite something. It wasn’t the Liverpool-West Ham FA Cup final or anything, but it was definitely the most entertaining MLS game I’ve ever seen. You gotta give up the love for Hey-Dude. Fantastic game. Loved it.

No, er, we don’t even know what sport that is you’re talking about there. We mean the Eagles game.

The what?

The Eagles game.

I’m sorry, I don’t know what that is.

Yesterday? The Eagles played the Ravens?

Ee-gulls? Is that some kind of sports team? I really don’t know what you’re referring to here.

The Eagles!

Was it on at the same time as 24 last night? Because that was pretty good too. Not great, I mean, not like season 5 great, but it was better than the end of last year.

The Philadelphia Eagles! Our football team! They got embarrassed by the Ravens yesterday! You had to watch at least part of it!

I’m really sorry, but I honestly don’t have the slightest idea what you’re talking about. Football? We don’t have a football team yet. It doesn’t start until 2010. I’m already signed up for season tickets.

AMERICAN football!

Sorry, I got nothing. “Eagles?” Never heard of them. Unless you mean the band that they mention in The Big Lebowski. “Man, I really hate the fucking Eagles!” Heh. Classic.

Ed Reed had the longest inter -

YES! FINE! ARE YOU FUCKING HAPPY? I admit it. I watched it. At least, I watched it until the end of Kevin Kolb’s second series. By then the MLS final was about to start and I couldn’t stand to watch anymore. It was like the end of a Lifetime movie, sitting by my young wife’s hospital bed as she died of Congolese Cattle Influenza or some other disease that Could Happen To Your Family, doing my best not to cry as she bravely tries and fails to cling to her last breath. Because the days of enjoying football are over. Oh, they’re over.

We have entered a new era, people, and let me be the first to say to all the Eagles fans/racist fucks in this city: congratulations. You got what you wanted. Welcome to life after Donovan McNabb. It is a dire, fetid swamp full of poisonous lichen and vengeful mediocrity. The sign over the gates of hell reads “abandon all hope, ye who enter here.” If there were a gate to this place it would read “be careful what you wish for,” though I suppose at the end of the day the underlying sentiments are largely the same.

Come on, now, that’s very negative.

Eagles fans are about to learn that the difference between not winning everything and not winning anything is like the difference between having robot-assisted micro-laser brain surgery and having a drunken veterinary assistant perform your appendectomy with a tuning fork. The next few years of Eagles football will be the latter. This isn’t so bad, though, since with the tuning fork around you’ll be able to keep your screams of agony from watching the Eagles on perfect pitch.

Okay, that’s some awfully unpleasant imagery, don’t you think?

The future, people, is bleak.

You’re very pessimistic, you know that?

Well, all right, not all of the future. There is one good thing to look forward to.

Oh, thank God! What is this impending ray of sunshine?

It’s next year. The first Sunday in February, 2010. Super Bowl Sunday.

I’ll be sitting there in front of the TV in my Chicago Bears #5 jersey. With my feet propped up in a recliner I’ll be popping some (non-alcoholic) champagne, smoking an expensive cigar, calling every single person who ever said they wanted Kevin Kolb or Jeff Garcia or AJ Feeley or whoever to start for the Eagles. I’ll be calling every one of them and laughing my ass off.

You are such a horrible person.

And then the next year, I’ll be doing it again.

single gunshot

THUMP

Remember – the price of getting what you want is having what you once wanted.

JLK

Your "Take the Good, Take the Bad" Quizo Update

Well, we’re here at the beginning of yet another attempt on my part to stop smoking, a little more than a year after my previous, forced attempt. As it stands I have been awake for several hours now without a cigarette and feel like I would probably need to kill only one or two people to feel good again, so I figure that’s a decent start. It’s not that I particularly want to stop smoking – in fact I do not – but I very much want to stop PAYING for cigarettes, so unless someone can come up with a foolproof way for me to mooch a pack of cigarettes every weekday (two packs a day on the weekends) it looks like this is the only way out for me.

Because – as I mentioned previous – I have an exam tomorrow night I have held off on picking up Grand Theft Auto IV, since I am fully aware that were I to get it when the game was released last week not a single moment of my free time would have been spent studying. Instead, I made myself into a paragon of academic virtue, bravely resisting the triple siren songs of virtual darts, virtual prostitutes, and a virtual Times Square (all of which are in the game) and devoted myself once again to the all-encompassing study of higher mathematics.

Okay, that isn’t necessarily 100% true. I took some time off this Saturday for what was originally billed as “POKER, STEAK, and IRON MAN.” I said beforehand, if you are a carnivorous heterosexual male that is a Saturday and a half right there. POKER, STEAK, and IRON MAN. Unfortunately, the gods of chance were once again on the side of the chowderhead fuckwits that now clog Atlantic City poker rooms (thus denying me 700-some dollars that were rightfully mine) and when we went out for steaks, I dunno, the cook decided he didn’t like the cut of our jib or something and EVERYONE at my table got their meat cooked dreadfully far less than their order – my medium well was medium rare at best, and other people’s medium rare steaks kept asking if they could go outside and chew on some grass.

Plus, between these two events there was an excursion that, at the time, I summed up as, “so, we’re heading back into AC, even though we don’t know how to get there from here, to find a bookstore, even though we don’t know where it is, to buy a book, even though we’re not sure the book actually exists?”

My friend Joe looked at me and said, “that’s the plan,” and then, after starting up his car, related to me the story of how he had just that week been notified that the people suing him had announced that they would not be pursuing the judgment they got against him for totaling his previous car on them.

Nervously eyeing the handle over the passenger window I replied, “this plan is sub-optimal.”

So, robbed at the poker table, disheartened on the book hunt – turns out the book did NOT, in fact, exist, though I did have to dodge a whole lot of non-virtual prostitutes up and down a very long and very windy stretch of Pacific Avenue to learn that – and sickened (almost literally) at the steakhouse, my hopes for a study break that would not leave me weeping and broken rested solely on the shoulders of Iron Man.

I was not disappointed.

The movie is amazingly, ridiculously, stupidly awesome.

I can’t wait to see it again.

If you do not love it you do not have a soul.

That is all.

JLK

Your Insomnia-Fueled Quizo Update

I've spent significant parts of the last couple days watching the first season of Friday Night Lights on DVD. I watched the first episode last year and thought it was decent enough and remember reading bushels of stellar reviews, but as I recall I concluded that I didn't really have time to watch it and planned to pick up the inevitable DVD when it became available.

I saw said DVD at Best Buy for a stunning 25 bucks - a remarkably excellent price for a season of television - when I was there to pick up my copy of Transformers. I finally sat down to start watching it Friday afternoon and let me tell you, folks - I am AMAZED at how good this show is. Amazed. I am so amazed, in fact, that I keep staying up until truly ungodly hours of the night in an attempt to burn through the entire season as quickly as possible. We're talking, like, "crap, it's going to be light out soon" staying up late. Wow. If you have a spare 25 dollars I cannot recommend this show enough.

I have also, Dan of Das Boot's earlier ignorant comments notwithstanding, managed to get in four (count them, four) viewings of Transformers this week (well, three of the movie and one of the commentary track). This includes catching the Imax version at the Trop, which I will get to shortly. My admiration for the film continues to grow, especially now that I know that aside from the giant robots very, very little of the effects work was digital; they really blew up all that shit (my friend Ken says the title could have been just "Debris"). Wild.

My big break from all this exhausting tv-and-movie watching was Saturday, when I spent a near-record 16 hours in Atlantic City. Normally I don't actually spend that much time there in one go; I'm usually in and out in a couple hours, save for the actual record from a couple years ago when, after finishing presents and dinner with the family and everything, I went down late on Christmas night and proceeded to play poker for seventeen hours straight. I would have actually stayed longer than I did; I had to leave so as to get home before a gigantic snowstorm came in and trapped me there (or worse, on the road). That session was also notable for the fact that after 17 consecutive hours of play I finished down 8 dollars, which greatly pissed me off at the time. I'd rather go home broke than lose 8 bucks over 17 freaking hours.

But, anyway, this past Saturday my plans were: 1) Watch Chelsea game at the Irish up at the Tropicana and check for suitability of future viewings there, 2) watch Transformers in Imax, and 3) play poker. The pub was nice enough - the place was practically deserted that early in the morning, but the staff accommodated me very graciously (nothing like having the cook let you in through the back door of the bar so you can be the only guy there drinking coffee and watching a football game) - but already being at the Trop at noon and having the movie showing at the Trop at 6 meant I would, unfortunately, have to actually PLAY at the Trop, which is an experience I had never enjoyed previously and still haven't. What a dump. Even in the miserable, desperate world of casinos the Trop is miles more miserable and desperate than any other. I do not plan to return, at least to the casino.

Transformers in Imax was pretty amazing - there's a couple added extra minutes to the film, and the Imax experience, especially for a movie like that, is pretty intense. I also just learned that the lamps in Imax projectors are made of quartz crystal filled with highly pressurized xenon gas and that projectionists have to wear BODY ARMOR to change the bulbs lest they explode and julienne the poor bastards. You know an entertainment experience is awesome when it's actually dangerous to the people who provide it.

After the film I was playing poker (at the Borgata this time, which has far and away the most comfortable chairs in Atlantic City) with Nick of Oprah's Book Club. He and I got involved in a fairly large pot (which I won) and this exchange took place afterward:

Nick: You were faking it.

Me: I was not!

Nick: You bought it! Admit it!

Me: I didn't! I had five-deuce [giving me three fives]. Swear to God.

Nick: That doesn't mean anything coming from you.

Me: Fine, I swear to Captain America.

Nick: Okay, that I believe.

About an hour later Nick would pull himself a Royal Flush and take a good chunk of my cash with it (and a much larger chunk of the rest of the table's). Figures.

It was after all these events that things took the odd turn I have sadly become more and more used to anymore. Nick drove me back to my car, which was at the Trop. If you've never been there the Tropicana has this thing called The Quarter, which is kind of like a shopping mall stuck to the casino, only it's a shopping mall full of lousy restaurants, dance clubs, and stores that sell stupid useless crap. I got there at about 1:30AM and it was obscenely loud - music blaring out of three clubs at once, yay - and ridiculously crowded. My stomach was bothering me from drinking terrible casino coffee all day and all night and I needed to find a bathroom (always an adventure in a casino) before I hit the road back home.

While wandering around this misbegotten retail hellhole I came across something I frankly never expected to see in a casino: a supermarket.

Tucked in one of the back corners of this Quarter place is a little (actually, really, not that little) supermarket. I'm not kidding. They sell bread and milk and groceries and shit. It's so weird. You never expect to be able to buy anything that is actually useful in a casino and here is a whole store full of normal things (and some abnormal things like Turkish taffy, which for some reason my father has drilled into my brain is the most disgusting thing on earth). I found myself a chocolate milk (an excellent late night curative for an upset stomach) and got in line behind this freakishly tall woman in a flower-patterned miniskirt. In addition to being abnormally tall she had calves that were about the size of mine. Perhaps she is a basketball player or something. I thought idly that it was awfully chilly outside for a skirt that short.

I paid an obscene (but not surprising, given the location) 4 bucks for my chocolate milk, and after heading out of the store I noticed that the bathrooms were right next door. How convenient!

After utilizing the facilities I go to wash my hands, and after I turn around I see the woman in the miniskirt at one of the urinals.

I got a good look at the now-revealed "woman" and "her" Adam's Apple when "she" came over to the sinks - I was still standing there, mildly shellshocked - and realized that this was not a case of "oh, it's Saturday night in Atlantic City and we're at an early Halloween party and I went dressed as a chick," but more like a case of "hey, if you need some cheap Depo-Provera I know a guy."

A pre-op transsexual using the urinal in the men's room. Wearing a miniskirt.

I have said before and I will say again, this kind of surreal, psychotic weirdness only exists in Atlantic City.

If it's all the same I think I'll go back to watching Friday Night Lights...

JLK

Your Misbegotten Adventures Quizo Update

Firstly, an important safety tip: if you burn the roof of your mouth - say, on a piece of pizza at dinner some August Tuesday - do not repeat not use mouthwash when you brush your teeth that night. I cannot stress this enough. If given a choice between using mouthwash after burning the roof of my mouth or having blind 8-year-olds whack me about the head and heck with baseball bats, I would have to seriously consider the question of just HOW blind the 8-year-olds are and whether the bats are wood or metal. It is the worst pain ever. Avoid it if you possibly can.

Secondly, an important travel tip: if you are traveling to or from Atlantic City and you need gas, do not get off the AC Expressway at the Hammonton exit. There isn't any gas there. There is not, in fact, gas anywhere NEAR there. Exit 28 is, as near as I can figure, the only exit on the entirety of the Atlantic City Expressway that does not have a gas station within, say, 40 miles of the exit ramp. Driving (my father's car, as mine is still busted and he is on vacation) down yesterday, the "Check Gauge" light came on at about exit 31and for some reason I determined that I would not make it all the way to Farley to fill up and - in what was surprisingly NOT my biggest mistake of the day - decided to get off the Expressway at the Hammonton exit.

Understand that my sphere of geographic knowledge - within which I am basically infallible when it comes to finding/knowing the location of/getting to places - does not extend south of the White Horse Pike until you get fairly fair east, basically until you get to the Parkway, though it does have a sort of peninsula connecting the Hamilton Mall to Somers Point (me and my crew down there like to go to the Borders in Mays Landing, so I need to know how to get to and from it and people's houses). So I was essentially flying blind once I hit the bottom of the exit ramp, and the only thing I had to guide me to a filling station was my keen intellect and an educated guess. Now, at the bottom of the ramp there was a sign saying that I should turn right to go to Vineland and left to go to Hammonton.

Here's my thinking at this point:

1) I remembered from my short time working at the Death Star that there was a Best Buy in Vineland.

2) I figured a Best Buy was a reasonable barometer of civilization so there would probably be a gas station near one.

3) I knew that Hammonton was about 2 miles north of my position (aka "left").

4) I knew that Hammonton did not, in fact, have a gas station once I got to it, and for some distance thereafter, at least not on the White Horse Pike.

From this knowledge I concluded:

5) If I turn right here, I will hit a gas station in Vineland after about 2 miles.

It turns out that from that spot it is, in fact, twenty-one miles to Vineland. Putting a sign at the bottom of that exit ramp saying "Vineland ----->>" is the equivalent - quite literally - of putting a sign out in front of the Dark Horse reading "King of Prussia Mall ----->> ."

That is one deceptive goddamn sign.

(That comparison, believe it or not, is actually accurate to about 900 feet.)

So I turned right at the bottom of the ramp. After five or six minutes of passing vast swaths of farmland, farmhouses, and other farm-related geography I realized that not only was I probably not getting gas any time soon I had no fucking clue where I was. I flipped a quick u-turn and started burning rubber northbound, remembering my old football coach's advice of "when you're lost, drive fast, because that way you aren't lost as long." (Note: actual advice. I am not making this up.) I passed back under the Expressway and started to see the rudiments of civilization - pizza places, a shopping center, and something called "El Rodeo Musical," but no gas station for several agonizing minutes.

Finally, as I start to feel the car shudder and buck at the pedal and realize that for the first time in my life I am going to run out of gas on the road and shit I don't know where I am there's nothing here but farms where the hell am I OH MY GOD I KNEW I WAS GOING TO DIE IN NEW JERSEY I see glowing red letters ahead on my right. A Citgo. Salvation!

All the dashboard lights flared on and the car finally sputtered it's last and shut itself off as I was pulling into the station. I literally coasted the last 30 feet up to the pump. Once I was there the attendant walked up to my window and actually smiled at me and laughed a little.

"Cut that one pretty close, didn't you?" he said.

I just said, "brother, you got no idea."

As I said, though, that was not even my biggest mistake of the day.

That would come later at the casino where the Little League World Series was showing on the TV over my table. At the moment in question I was fairly pissy - actually I was exceptionally pissy, as angry as I can remember being for quite some time - about something that had happened the hand before. One of the other players pointed at the screen and said "hey, at least we tied it up," to which I replied, fairly spitting venom, "yeah, you know, you'd think the Japanese would know not to fuck with us by now."

This is already the most offensive thing I have ever said. However, I continued, and at this point I turn around and start pointing at the screen. "Yeah, you oughta fucking know better! God dammit! You wanna mess with us? Fucking dumbasses! Remember what happened the last time? Huh? Huh?" I cap off this stream of invective with the unfortunate coup de grace of a muttered "BOOM!" while making a mushroom-cloud-motion with my hands.

This is when I turn back around to find that an elderly Japanese gentlemen is being seated at the table.

I have never wanted to crawl into a hole and die more than I did in that moment, and thus was my humiliation complete.

You have to admit, folks, I don't do anything small.

Thirdly, an important shopping tip: if you are of the comic book persuasion and you are in the Olde City/Penns Landing/Liberties/down that way area, the guys who run the store I shop at out in Willow Grove have opened up a new location on 2nd Street across from the Arden (45 N. 2nd Street, to be exact). It's quite nice. The folks who run it are good friends of mine and are outstanding people who run a hell of a store. If you go and tell Rob you heard about the place from me he'll probably laugh at you, but you never know. The importance of the comic store I shop at opening a location a scant five blocks from the pub cannot be overstated. The ability to make one trip on Saturday mornings to both watch Chelsea and get comics not only saves me the weekly jaunt out to Willow Grove but also gives me another conveniently-located place to waste time at and insures that I will basically never be productive on a Saturday again in any remote way.

Finally, on a personal, more positive note, today, August 27, marks eight years to the day since I stopped drinking, and I can't think of a better bunch of people to spend such a milestone with. The irony of spending such a milestone in a bar is of course not lost on me, but no one ever said my life didn't labor under an excess of irony.

JLK

Your Sonic Death Monkey Quizo Update

For someone who does not meet the clinical definition of a "sadist" necessarily, I do take an awful lot of joy in tormenting my friends. My one buddy, let's call him... say... "Ken Turner of Linwood, NJ," we had this conversation in his car on the way to dinner on Saturday night.

Ken: What are you doing?

Me: I'm plugging my iPod into your radio.

Ken: What? No! No! Don't.... oh, no.

Me: (searching for a song to play) What? What's the problem?

Ken: Oh, god, this is going to be horrible.

[music begins]

Ken: This isn't too bad...

[a few seconds pass]

Me: (singing) SHE'S ONLY SEVENTEEEEEEEEEEN!

Ken: Oh, god.

Me: (singing) DADDY SAYS SHE'S TOOOOOO YOUUUUNG BUT SHE'S OLD ENOUGH FOR MEEEEEEEE!

Ken: This is the most awful thing I've ever heard.

Me: Fine, I'll put something else on.

Ken: Why do you even have these songs on your iPod?

Me: (searching) I ask myself that all the time... ah, here we go.

Me: (singing) You've got style that's what all the GIIIIIIIIRLS SAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY!

Ken: Why are you doing this to me? Please, god, stop!

Me: (singing) All your suits are custom made in LOOOOOOOOOONNNNDOOOOOOOOON!

Ken: You're killing me. I can feel my brain dying.

Me: (searching iPod) Fine, fine...

Ken: Don't you have any music I won't hate?

Me: Probably not... ah! Found it.

[music plays]

Me : (singing): I NEVER MEANT TO BEEEE SO BAAAAAAD TO YOUUUUUUUU!

Ken: God you're annoying.

Me: (searching iPod) I'm not annoying, I'm charming.

Ken: Uh, yeah, here's the thing about that -

Me: LIDO MISSED THE BOAT THAT DAAAAAY HE LEFT THE SHACK!

Ken: Just... please, stop.

Me: (searching iPod) You love Coldplay, right?

Ken: AAAAAAGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHH!

[bangs head on steering wheel]

Who needs to go out on a Saturday night when you can have that much fun just driving to dinner?

JLK

Your Good for Business Quizo Update

Aaaaaaaaand... we're back.

You know, once I quit smoking I figured that I would experience a cold like a normal person; instead of every little head cold being a two-week ordeal I'd be stuffy for three days and then get over it. (If you weren't aware, smoking while you have a cold makes your cold last a looooooong time.) This, however, does not appear to be the case, as I was sick for the better part of a week straight, though in fairness somewhat less so than was normal in the past. My cold, thankfully, never made it to the "hacking cough" phase, and for that I'm sure we're all eternally grateful.

After my recovery I made it down to Somers Point to hang out with my crew down there and for the first time in my life I went to a Japanese restaurant. Japanese restaurants can be somewhat difficult if, like me, you for the most part do not eat seafood. (For the record, I don't eat seafood unless I or someone I know and trust caught and cleaned it. You know how many things there are in a fish that can kill you?) So we're at the restaurant and I appear to have found the one thing on the menu that breathed gaseous oxygen before it decided to be food - Hibachi steak. I figure that even with all the other things that will be piled around the steak - rice, vegetables, etc - steak is, at its heart, pretty hard to screw up. It's steak, for god's sake.

Of our large group I'm the last one to order, and everyone else, being suicidal nutcases, is ordering vast quantities of exotic-sounding Mercury and Other Fish-Based Toxin Delivery Systems. They and the waitress/geisha are tossing back and forth all these Japanese (or at least Japanese-sounding) words, and after I order the waitress/geisha looks at me and very clearly says, "and how would you like that cooked?" like I'm at Nick's Roast Beef and the moment was totally ruined.

The food was great though, and my friends? The ones who ate sushi and eel and that water-dwelling shit? All dead. Ha ha, suckers!

Also, I am now totally down with the whole eating in a restaurant without shoes thing.

Driving back at 2:30 in the morning I was listening to the BBC World Service on NPR - I get twitchy if I don't hear an English accent at least once every 24 hours or so - the big story was that the UK is now entirely smoke-free in all public places (except the main terminal of Glasgow International, ba-dump-bump!) and how no one in England really gives a shit.

Except, of course, Joe Jackson.

You may or may not recall Joe Jackson. If you don't, that's okay, because he sucks. Imagine if, instead of being Elvis Costello, i.e. a vastly talented songwriter and performer who is, to put it charitably, not exactly the best-looking guy in the universe, you were an incredibly, horrifyingly untalented songwriter and performer and were, in fact, so hideously, mind-blowingly ugly that the subatomic structure of the very universe itself would recoil in horror at your approach and that all matter in your path would shunt itself into a parallel dimension when you were near to avoid your Medusa-like countenance. That's Joe Jackson. He's like Elvis Costello, only he sucks and is uglier. He had one semi-major hit in the US, "Is She Really Going Out With Him." He blows.

Anyway, this dickrag was so incensed at the smoking ban in New York in 2003 that he actually fled the city and the country and moved to England (where, it should be noted, he is fucking well from in the first place). He in fact wrote a song about the great injustice of having to go outside to smoke. No one, by any reputable accounting of the incident, cared. Now that a smoking ban has been enacted in England, he is so incensed that he is fleeing THAT country and moving to Germany.

Now understand, I do not say this as some kind of ex-smoker zealot, crusading against the evils of public smoking. If you want to smoke, go ahead. If you want to smoke near me, go ahead. I don't care. And when I did smoke I always tried to accommodate people I was with or near who did not appreciate it. I never once (I don't think) refused a polite request to please take my cigarette outside or flaunted someone's "no smoking in the house" rule. I don't especially care if people smoke or where they do it, nor do I care whether it is banned in public places (and similarly did not care when I did smoke). I care more about the fact that Joe Jackson is an obnoxious asshole whose songs suck and is so ugly that, if you are not properly shielded, his face could actually permanently sterilize you if you walked past him on the street.

Joe Jackson claims that a smoking ban is the first step towards a nanny or fascist state. Here's a hint, Joe: you are in England. You ALREADY live in a fascist state. The difference between our Colobus monkey of a president's attempt at secretly creating a fascist state and your government's long-since-successful implementation of one is that the English are much more pleasant and upbeat about it than we are. Here the government tries to curtail your rights and install a fascist architecture in secret and then acts like nothing happened (or, alternatively, like you're a terrorist for asking questions) when they get found out. In England, the situation is more like a nice gentleman in a top hat who says, "yes, well, here's a very short list of the rights you do have, here's a rather long list of the rights you DON'T have, and the tube will be here in precisely 94 seconds. Cheerio!"

And you know, Joe, a word of advice: if you're worried about living in a fascist state, Germany may not be the country for you.

JLK

Your Misinterpreted Symbolism Quizo Update

This morning we have a few random snippets from the last few days around the horn in an effort to bring some vague semblance of meaning to a random, chaotic universe.

- At work on Thursday in one of the many useless, interminable meetings I am forced to sit through I actually had to utter, totally seriously, the phrase, "I'm sorry, but I don't see our choice of software platform as a moral issue." This is the kind of crap I have to deal with during the day. And you wonder why I get crabby.

- Standing in the rear lobby of the Borgata (which is kind of like the Endor Shield Generator Back Door of the casino) at 4AM on Saturday a dealer friend of mine uttered, totally seriously, the phrase, "Frankie the Hat just cashed at the fifteen hundred stud, made thirty-six hundred, he woulda done better but that fuckface Darden outboated him on 7th Street," and not only am I vaguely horrified that I'm having this conversation at such an ungodly hour, but I briefly wonder where my life went wrong that at said hour I'm talking about SOMEONE I KNOW who is actually called "Frankie the Hat."

- I was still at the Borgata at 4AM on Saturday because, simultaneously, the bridge on the White Horse Pike was stuck in the "up" position, there was a gigantic accident at the Atlantic City toll plaza on the expressway, and there was - I am not making this up - a tattoo convention totally gridlocking traffic throughout the city, all of which combined to make it essentially impossible to leave Atlantic City before that ungodly hour. On another note, I have come to the conclusion that island living is probably not for me.

- I do not have any specific comments on the final episode of the Sopranos, but I did get a fairly complete recap of it from a friend of mine who did watch it and based on what I was told I agree with him that it does not sound exactly riveting.

- I did successfully vacation at the shore this weekend, and in between Jeeves and Wooster DVDs - FUNNIEST. SHIT. EVER. - managed to catch the back-to-back basic-cable airings of The Silence of the Lambs and Hannibal which, shall we say, lose something in their edited versions. (For the record, I think Hannibal is a fascinating movie.)

- On the way home from the shore last night, I was stopped at a light in Pemberton when a car pulled up next to mine. Well, next to and just slightly forward of. While I was fiddling the radio between the Philadelphia and North Jersey NPR stations I heard some music coming from this car that made my head jerk up very quickly. Coming from this car was a song by a ridiculously obscure Swedish band called The Sounds that, to this date, I have never met a single other person who has heard of them. They're so obscure that I'm not even mentioning them as a clue to a question tonight as that would be unfair. To hear this band coming from another car in the middle of nowhere in Central New Jersey at 10 o'clock on a Sunday night is completely unreasonable. I looked to see who the other person in New Jersey to find - gasp! - a beautiful woman. Well, I assume she was beautiful. The combination of darkness and my viewing angle meant that all I could see was that she had blond hair and wore glasses. Suffice it to say that from the shoulders-up rear-three-quarter view she was quite attractive. And she had Pennsylvania plates! She was on her way home from the shore, just like me!

I was certain at this point that I had finally found the girl of my dreams.

This feeling lasted approximately 0.85 seconds until I realized that a) I still knew absolutely nothing about this woman other than the fact that she liked a band I liked and had her car registered in the same state as me, b) the last couple women I thought were the girl of my dreams turned out to be closer to Hannibal Lecter than Helen of Troy, and c) I refused to meet the girl of my dreams in a car in New Jersey, and especially not on the Pemberton end of 38.

Still, I was vaguely wistful when she peeled out of the light at about 400 miles an hour with "Queen of Apology" blaring out of the car windows.

- During a Rite Aid trip over my shore weekend I saw an endcap display for an actual item called "ear lobe tape." Now, the fact that "ear lobe tape" exists is frightening enough. The truly scary thing is that THERE WAS ONLY ONE LEFT. In a weekend full of frightening adventures, the fact that multiple people are walking around Ocean Gate, NJ with their earlobes taped to their skulls is the most frightening thing of all.

JLK