Your Wildly Vacillating Quizo Update

I have railed against the weather numerous times in this space - previous instances of summer cold or winter heat or snow in April or whatever - and despite the fact that it is dark, cold, and raining in mid-August, the weather specifically is not what I'm shaking my fist at today. No, the problem is that for the last weekend life in general has taken this strange sort of erratic turn and, well, I tend to think my life was interesting enough beforehand.

One of the underlying causes of all of this is that the constant stress of obsessing about the horror show that my job has become is beginning to cause noticeable cracks in my psyche. This wouldn't be so bad were it not for the fact that it was pretty well cracked to begin with.

Things started well enough on Thursday night when I went to a book signing by William Gibson at the library. This was quite the big deal for me, bringing to 40% my completion rate for Meeting My Top Five Literary Idols - which is close to as impressive as it's going to get when one considers that meeting F. Scott Fitzgerald or William Shakespeare would require, respectively, some serious necromancy and some really, REALLY serious necromancy, and the fact David Mamet scares the shit out of me. (For the record, the other 20% that I successfully met was Neil Gaiman.)

The reading/signing thing was cool - he has aged an awful lot recently, but he's still sharp and funny, and when he signed my books he commented happily on how well-traveled my copy of Neuromancer was.

Then on the way home from the signing my car blew up.

This is only slightly an exaggeration. My car overheated fairly dramatically - the temperature gauge swinging back and forth over the redline, steam occasionally, but not constantly, billowing out from under the hood - and the next morning when I went to open the hood (it being too dark to see the engine at the time being, you know, night and all) there was coolant fluid pretty much everywhere, so it's a safe bet that SOMETHING with coolant in it, a hose of some sort I'm guessing, failed rather catastrophically while I was driving to the comic shop from the signing. I figure I was lucky to limp the car home. After consulting my finances and my personal feelings on the matter I determined that I am sick and fucking tired of spending money keeping this goddamn 16-year-old whoring sonofabitch car running. So, after my show is over I will be out and about on the market for a car.

Show, you say? Why yes! A show. Perhaps you've heard I produce shows. It's called Dealer's Choice. It is by Patrick Marber and it will be playing in the Restaurant at the pub opening on September 18. Originally we were going to be part of the Philly Fringe, but that is a gigantic pain in the ass to say the least, so we're not. Someone in my ridiculously talented cast - and here I do not exaggerate even the slightest little bit, this bunch is the most talented single group of actors I think I've ever seen in a show in this city, I don't know how in the HELL they're working for me - came up with the idea of calling our show the headliner of the "Philadelphia Binge Festival," and I liked it so much I decided to steal it. Tickets for the show are a scant $10, and if you get there early enough you also get to have dinner. So it's like going out for dinner and a show, only you're going to one place. Ask me for details. Website is up and ticket sales begin shortly.

Everyone remember the Medea references? Oh, that was nothing. Prepare to be besieged.

Anyway, a rental car later, me and some of my boys (and their moms and sisters, which was a little odd) were on our way to the Meadowlands on Saturday night to see the Los Angeles David Beckhams (nee Galaxy) play the New York Red Bulls. I wasn't sure what to expect from the experience necessarily, but two tailgates (totalling some 7 hours, both before and after the game), being pressganged into cooking for more than a hundred people at said tailgates, 66,000 fans in the stadium, spending the game next to several hundred Red Bulls supporters who can be charitably described as "completely insane" and NINE FUCKING GOALS! was certainly not it.

Sunday morning saw a big-time shock in the Manchester derby, and then something less of a shock as Chelsea and Liverpool played another spiteful, mean-spirited game that ended, mercifully, in a 1-1 draw, though I'm still convinced Chelsea left 2 points on the table there and could have won. The combination of the beginnings of cold and rain, the knowledge that I'd have to go to work 18 hours after, and the fact that we didn't beat the filthy Scouse put me in quite the pissy mood. Until I got home, at least, where after weeks of prodding I finally convinced my father to watch Hot Fuzz which - as I predicted - he loved, thus once again proving the age-old axiom "I am always right."

Then, just before bed, I pulled out my new William Gibson book to read before sleeping, and I noticed that one of my Top Five Literary Idols apparently inscribed all of my books "To Joan."

I don't even smoke anymore, but there aren't enough cigarettes in the goddamn world for this.

JLK

Your Maturity Arrives Quizo Update

It's nice to know that I have finally advanced to a state where I can still hate Los Angeles - I mean seriously, deeply, intensely hate, like fondly remember the end of Transformers not just because it had giant robots but because they DESTROYED FUCKING LOS ANGELES YEAH! - but that I am now able to at least set that aside for a few days and have a good time out there. The sense that I essentially spent four days pillaging every remotely enjoyable thing in Los Angeles County helps. It makes me feel kinda like a pirate. Because, you know, they pillage stuff. Or is that Vikings? Eh, I'm fine with that too.

Of course, Chelsea beating the LA David Beckhams (nee Galaxy), Joe Cole autographing my jersey, sunny, 75 degrees, 10MPH breeze and no humidity every second of every day, getting kicked out of at least two bars, being interviewed on Australian television, and a free, private Paul Oakenfold show helped.

Pictures and video are here: http://picasaweb.google.com/john.kozempel/LosAngeles2007

I hope everyone is looking forward to hearing about this trip for the next five to six months, since it was so awesome it seems unlikely I'll talk about anything else.

JLK

Your "One Shall Stand, One Shall Fall" Quizo Update

Let's spend a minute or two talking about the Transformers movie, which I saw last week.

Transformers is the greatest movie in the history of ever. It is the crowning achievement of all human endeavor and is the single most important piece of entertainment since the dawn of human civilization, if not before.

Deviations from or disagreements with these statements will not be tolerated. Freedom may be the right of all sentient beings, but if you bitch on Transformers in my presence I will kick your ass right off this planet.

And that's all we need to say about Transformers.

The movie was far and away the highlight of the last week, since the only thing that even could have competed with it (before I saw the movie, at least) was my trip to New York this past weekend to hang out with the New York Blues (the official East Coast Chelsea supporters' club), and that ended with me watching my friend Tim, who was at the time the single drunkest being in not only this universe but through several layers of parallel dimensions on either side of it, asking a prostitute if she knew where the Kwik-E-Mart was. You haven't been mortified until you've watched someone ask a hooker for directions to a fictional convenience store.

You'd think that the only single woman at the party leaving with you and your friend is a good thing, even when said friend's blood has enough alcohol in it to successfully clean your sparkplugs, but trust me - said friend spending a 30-block cab ride threatening to throw up all over you and said single woman and then, after said cab ride, walking up to said prostitute and saying, "hey, do you know where the fucking Kwik-E-Mart is? Come on! I know you do! Where - is - the FUCKING! - Kwik-E-Mart?!" is not repeat NOT a good thing.

This is my life, and it's ending one minute at a time.

Finally, if anyone would like to see the New York Red Bulls play the Los Angeles David Beckhams on August 18 for $25, please let me know by noon tomorrow - the aforementioned New York Blues are getting a group ticket thingy and this is, to my knowledge, the only way to buy tickets to only that game (and not, as they normally make you do, also buy tickets to three others).

That's soccer I'm talking about there, by the way, for those of us who haven't been paying attention.

JLK

It's a beautiful game. No, really.

A discussion came up today on one of the Chelsea e-mail groups that somehow got around to the subject of the MLS and Alexi Lalas' comments about the... shall we say... "disparities" between the American and English leagues. I said something that was a tepid defense of part of his inanity, but was then inspired to write the following

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By the way, lest anyone think me some sort of apologist, let's make one thing clear: while I do not think the MLS is a "rec league" necessarily saying that it is on par with the big leagues in Europe is folly. It is absolute, unabashed folly. The MLS might be the talent equivalent of the Championship, but I honestly haven't seen enough Championship football to make an accurate guess.

I'm sorry, MLS. I've tried to watch you. Screw you. You're boring. If there is nothing else on and I need background noise while I'm working on something else I will watch your substandard product, but even reruns of Mythbusters (ones that I've already seen) counts as "something else on." The one article I read made the oh-so-witty comment that "the concept of marking" does not appear to have reached the MLS. Fuck that. The concept of RUNNING does not appear to have reached the MLS. The vast majority of the players seem to have no desire to win whatsoever, which is not surprising when one considers I make more in 6 hours at a poker table on Saturday night than 90% of MLS players make in a week.

You want me to watch you, MLS? Here's an idea. PUT A FUCKING TEAM NEAR MY HOUSE. I live in the fifth-largest city in the United States where you can't swing a dead cat without hitting some 10-year-old playing soccer. I live 4 miles from the BIGGEST YOUTH SOCCER CENTER IN THE UNITED STATES but the nearest MLS team plays at the Meadowlands. Ten years on and there are teams in Columbus (15th biggest city in the US), Kansas City (40th) and Salt Lake City (122nd) but not in what is, at worst, the second- or third-biggest soccer city in the country.

You bring in David Beckham and then you stick him in LOS ANGELES, which may be the most sports-apathetic city in the world. You're the LaSalle University of professional sports: you try to do the right thing, and then you colossally fuck it up. At least my fair alma mater has the good grace to feel bad about it afterwards and apologize; you completely fuck everything up and then ask me why I have the nerve to not love it. Fuck you, MLS.

JLK