Dancing scenes in teen dramas

If it were not already obvious I watched (the new) 90210 tonight. I made the conscious choice to follow this TV show - I have not followed a show since the first season of "White Rapper" and TV is slowly creeping back into my life thanks to Darcy from Degrassi and her black adopted brother.

At the homecoming dance tonight, Adriana and the other main character girl whose name I forgot had a heated discussion in the middle of the dancefloor, mostly in whispers, while the music played quietly in the background. I have serious suspension of belief issues during any teen dance scene, mostly because I can never hear people at a bar or a danceflor and I'm always too aware that those extras bumping-and-grinding in the background are so clearly dancing to nothing but dialogue, and who the fuck whispers at a dance? Which reminds me of that great scene from Naked Gun where the bad guy had Priscilla Presley hostage and is shooting at Frank Drebin while making demands, and Drebin's response is "I can't hear you over the shooting!"

I went to a movie theatre tonight.

It was called "Nobel Son," and the main character looked a lot like my junior year English teacher, Mr. Goldstein. Mr. Goldstein's dad won the Nobel Prize so then this other dude kidnapped Mr. Goldstein. And then oh yeah Mr. Goldstein is a PhD student studying cannibalism. In the end of the movie he is on a beach and he is a millionaire. He walks by some babes and the movie's monologue, which he narrates, says "I just finished my thesis" and then he nods at some babes, one of whom is wearing a camo thong. This movie also features Bill Pullman and I can't look at Bill Pullman without thinking of Independence Day, so when he starts talking seductively to the female protagonist (i.e., Mr. Goldstein's mom) about how good he is at making scrambled eggs, I got this monologue conflated with "Today is your independence day" and I started laughing out loud, thus deflating the romantic tension for everyone else in the theatre.

My childhood pizzeria has a website

Check the vintage internet gifs

I found this while trying to scope an e-mail address. I then found one and decided to spend half an hour baring my soul in the form a heartfelt pizza testimonial only to have that shit bounce back at me.

So here you go. The pizza diaries:




Hi.

So I could write an e-mail about how I've been eating your guys' food since I was 2 or I could write about how I remember Adam Kopala's birthday party and throwing shaken soda cans we bought from Thrift Drug for 25 cents a six-pack at eachother in the parking lot behind your place and thinking it was so nice that guys didn't get pissed at us, or how my friends and I sat in the same seat in Scotto's (where the ATM is now) everyday after school, until Scotto's closed, and on the last day of Scotto's we stayed from afterschool until the place closed for good around 10 and you guys fed us free pizza and cheesesteaks and even were nice enough to not disassemble our table until we left. I could write about how loud it was in Coppola before you installed soundproofing tiles or I could write about going to Coppola on my 17th birthday and letting down all my younger friends by telling them I didn't have my license yet, or how when we got open lunch senior year it only meant that I ate at your place twice a day rather than once, or how after graduation my best friend Dana and I walked to your place in our graduation robes and ordered cheeseteaks.

But this is not an e-mail for all that.

I am writing to tell you this story:

Last Friday my housemates and I weren't in the mood for Thanksgiving leftovers so we ordered pizza. We ordered from Sam's Pizza and they deliver and we paid 25 dollars for a large spinach, garlic, and tomato pie. The cheese tasted like salted cottage cheese and the tomato sauce tasted like ketchup on which someone had farted. I swear there was no more than single clove's worth of garlic spread over the whole large pie. The crust was dense and too doughy. And I am not kidding when I tell you that Sam Pizza is hands down the best pizza in Iowa City, Iowa, which is where I currently reside. It's not terrible pizza (and trust me there is plenty of opportunity to taste terrible pizza in Iowa) but, you see, I have high standards.

I'll let you take a guess why.

I swear I've read dozens of "BEST PIZZA PLACES IN NYC!!!" articles where writers who probably grew up in Oklahoma start flapping their lips about NYC pizza. And every time someone writes a gushing review of some "classic New York Pizza joint," I think "hey I've eaten at that place, and Coppola's is just as good, if not better."

So just think how you guys compare to Iowa.

Sincerely,
Steve Sherman

I GOTTA SERVE A SUBPOENA FOR CHILD SUPPORT HA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0M5vFwaJoBo

That's you with that shot calling clique ha.

I chopped off a slice of my index finger this Thanksgiving. I had nothing to do but walk around town and pretend I was the survivor of a nuclear siege. There was an East African dude who asked me if any place was open and I thought about the spirit of the holiday and then I remembered that there were no East Africans at the first Thanksgiving so I told him that the Bread Garden was open and that they were having a buffet. What's more American than a buffet and an empty store packed with non-unionized workers on a holiday?

I am thankful for fake fingernails and Thomas Hardy Night at the local sports bar.

One of my coworkers has a Ph D

In Exercise Science.

Thing on the news right now about young people in Cedar Rapids

Cedar Rapids is a good place if you enjoy nu metal and sadness. The locals are trying to recruit YOUNG PEOPLE to enjoy the many job opportunities, like at Rockwell Collins, which recently laid off 200 people. YOUNG PEOPLE can inject new energies into Cedar Rapids by like working at the art museum and going to bars. Whenever the news story showed pictures of the Rockwell Collins building you could overhear the cacophany from the nearby highway. They will smell the massive quaker oats plant and it will smell like sexy young people money.

Cedar Rapids' official motto is "City of Five Seasons." There are two jokes you can say about this, one being that it's the "City of Five Smells." They are:

1. Quaker Oats
2. Industrial Wastewater
3. Airport
4. Abject Poverty
5. Slipknot

The other joke you can tell is that the fifth season is "A time to enjoy life." Except that's not a joke.

Chicago

I went to Chicago yesterday for a wine tasting and they have glorious greasy meats in that town. Just look at this shit:



Then look at this shit:



Now look at this shit:



Now clean up your keyboards, you philistines.

Chicago feels like a city in which the monopoly man would live - the streets are wide and all the neo-gothic and art deco architecture just reeks of rich dudes in snazzy wintercoats living the high life. Just look at this handsome motherfucker.



He just got off the phone with Treasury Secretary Paulson and won a slice of the bailout pie. Take that, shoe.

Wine tastings are bizarre because you need to be on your fucking game - your mouth feels like a wound by the end of the three hours and all you have around to help the cause is a platter of blue cheese, which as anyone who has ever tasted blue cheese knows, is far from crisp and refreshing. Thankfully this was a trade tasting. Monday I went to one that was ostensibly a trade tasting but somehow turned into this one sloppy girl using the word "mulatto" in mixed company and someone else urging me to "throw the fuck down."



Those dudes have a ridiculous cover of "Baby Got Back."

Wearing a suit makes it a lot easier to walk into random businesses to use the restroom. Herein I will rate the restrooms of the following fine retail and commercial establishments that let my suspender-and-pinstripes cracker ass use the facilities as I schlepped around town for 5 hours:

Neiman-Marcus on Michigan Avenue: quiet and sequestered into an obscure corner on the third fucking floor, and the escalators were too thin to let my piss-logged self pass the lollygagging Indo-Chine tourists. Gawkers must've wondered why a fine-threaded white dude was dancing behind the wealthy asiatic financiers. At least my job is recession proof. Fuck your recondite pissholes, Needless Markup. C-

Potbelly's in the Financial district: The one on 7th avenue NW in DC has some dude singing white boy blues during lunch break. I was looking forward to being serenaded by some Jack Johnson covers as I urinated. There were none but the bowl was rather clean by fast-food establishment standards, and also highly visible and right across from the main entrance, which allows beelining towards the door without awkward contact with employees. Decor was lacking. A-

W Hotel in the Financial District: Who thinks it's a good idea to blare deep house music during a Nurse Practitioner Convention. These dudes do. Thankfully gender stratification in the workplace meant no line for the men's room. I even snuck a peak at the presentation, which was about helping patients across the language barrier. All the world is peachy, but I can do without associating my toilet business with a Moscow discotheque. B-

Boda Putin's harem of dour Slavic goddesses gives the world a big fucking thumbs up.

On Election Night 2004

I had a short story due for a class on the next day, and I stopped progress to check the YahooNews electoral map and watch state by state any hope for the future be shot in the fucking face. It sucked, and that story ended up sucking. It was about a dude with no hands who thought he was Eddie Van Halen. Those were some strange times in my life I suppose.

It was 1:30 when I had a completed draft, and my walk home took me past the bar in which the College Republicans were celebrating. They were screaming, shouting, shooting off air horns, and I took a seat on the curb. I was too broke to afford cigarettes, so I paid a homeless man the change in my pocket in order to score an Old Gold Ultra Light. He said "sucks, don't it," and walked away and I took a seat on the curb and smoked hard.

These two kids wearing fleece sweatervests ran towards me from around the corner, and over the shouts of the drunk Republicans they started screaming "FUCK THE BUSH GIRLS." They pull out two crude, homemade dolls with buttons for eyes and yarn hair. "These are the Bush twins," they yell. And they throw the dolls on the ground, right in front of the Jimmy John's, and pee on them.

After hearing Obama had clinched Ohio and Florida I went home, drank a fifth of 8% beer and blasted some Impressions records and danced alone. It felt good. Then I remembered those republicans, and that shitty Old Gold Ultra Light, and I went to a bar to find some friends and John McCain giving a concession speech on the television. People in the bar were politely clapping to the televised McCain. I was yelling, "Hey where are the college republicans." I told television John McCain that he could talk all he wants to crowds of crying white people but he had lost, so fuck him. I wanted to start a fight with the college republicans. I'm not in college anymore but whatever.

Today my coworker told me it is bad to gloat. But I found the bar they were at. They were upstairs at the Airliner. I ran to the top of the steps, started clapping, and asked everyone why they were so quiet. I asked them how they were feeling and they called me a prick. I asked again and again they called me a prick. I yelled "Go Obama" and they called me a prick. I was gonna say "Hey what's up white people" but then I noticed one Asian guy.

Dude tried to break into my house.

He was convinced my name is Roy. My name is not Roy. It was his 21st birthday. The breaker-inner's, not Roy's.

I've been fortunate never to have had my home broken into. When I was a senior some guy came up to my apartment thinking Carlos lived there. There was no one named Carlos in the house, but that's alright I guess.

I broke into someone's house my junior year of high school in order to watch Pink Flamingos. No one wanted their parents to know they were watching the movie so we broke into our friend's place because his parents were out of town. He wasn't home either. When he came home he rushed downstairs to find us watching chickens being fucked.

My girlfriend had her home broken into when she lived on the Reservation. This was before I lived with her. They threw her bras around the bed and wrote gang symbols on her walls and stole all the batteries and battery chargers from the house. That battery schtick is from a Dane Cook routine. I want to write Dane Cook a letter letting him know that he has fans on the Rosebud Rez. I wonder if he will be happy to know that.

"This ain't no fucking Blink 182 show"

I decline to accept the end of man. It is easy enough to say that man is immortal because he will endure: that when the last ding-dong of doom has clanged and faded from the last worthless rock hanging tideless in the last red and dying evening, that even then there will still be one more sound: that of his puny inexhaustible voice, still talking. I refuse to accept this. I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. The poet's, the writer's, duty is to write about these things. It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past. The poet's voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail.

The cows got out

After not even being there for five minutes, my grandpa's cows somehow ended up in the soybean field. From there they got into the corn. I've never had to chase cows before, let alone out of a cornfield in October when the corn is at full height. You can't see the cows in the field but they're all trampling over the corn and it sounds like a waterfall. So you go into the cornfield, trying to find where the waterfall is, and then you turn around and the cow is there.

Cows are massive fucking animals, but all you need to do is make yourself big and shout "HEY" and they spit out what they're chewing and run. If you tried to pull that crap on a pig the pig would be all "what the fuck" and then charge at you. Pigs are not that fucking dumb.

After the cows got back in we ate pizza.

Five years ago I spent the night at grandpas. I woke up to a shadow moving across my wall. It was early in the morning. I opened the shades and there was a llama looking at me. A fucking llama. I opened the door and Grandpa's wife was there. She told me they had a llama - its name was Tony and he was a sheep-guarding llama. I just went back to sleep at that point. Then I was woken up to shouting - grandpa's wife was shouting something about the bulls fighting. I went down to the kitchen and I saw that Grandpa, who is 73, was running full sprint towards the sink. He opened the cabinet beneath the sink and pulled out a bullwhip. Why my grandpa kept a bullwhip underneath the sink I will never know. Then he ran outside, jumped over the fence into the pasture, and started whipping two bulls. My Dad, my little brother and I watched grandpa, who is 73 and about 5'6'', whip the fucking shit out of two bulls. We looked at each other and decided it was time to leave.

"Do you have any oil balls?"

On Sunday night someone tried to sell me a washing machine. The line was about 4 people deep and he announced to everyone that he had a washing machine. Then later he tried to sell me an aquarium. He was wearing a slipknot shirt and a starter jacket. T

A coworker of mine from Fairfield (which is a story in of itself) told me that a lot of the houses in the countryside around him are routinely robbed of copper. Give some methheads two hours and there won't be a single copper penny left in the joint - they'll even neglect to rob cash and jewels like traditional burglars. No, only copper. The same coworker from Fairfield had a friend who built a life-size, fully-operational Roman ballista for a 4-H project.

Sometime a few years back someone came into the wine department asking if we sold any "oil balls." When asked what that was, he said that "it was like an oil pipe, except it was a ball."

People sometimes slam a thirty pack of Lacrosse Light onto the counter, and then immediately say "I'M SO EMBARRASSED TO BUY THIS," or, "I SWEAR IT'S NOT FOR ME," or "DON'T JUDGE ME." No, there is no reason to be embarrassed. You are buying beer. We work in a liquor store and are not judging you. We will judge you when you ask to buy an "oil ball;" we will judge you when you come into the store scratching your arm asking if we sell cigars in glass tubes; we will judge you when you defecate in front of a steak display; we will judge you if you get a blowjob on a dirty used kig sitting the alley; we will judge you if you pee on the dumbwaiter; we will judge you if you bleed hepatitis-c tainted blood onto a bag of potato chips, but we will not judge you for liking Lacrosse Light. Seriously dude, you're cool. Have a great evening bro.

The doctors'

The doctor's office was in a postwar brick turd on the corner of Jefferson and Governor. They were called "Medical Associates" and were wholly friendly and midwestern and the receptionist talked like Sarah Palin. I went home sick today for the first time in about two years.

I haven't been to a doctor's office for a long time because I haven't had insurance for a long time. Or rather I did have insurance, but it was Aetna, so in other words I had no health insurance since Aetna doesn't cover shit in Iowa. I would need to drive to Ohio in order to see a physician.

The last time I had extended run-ins with doctors was during my hernia surgery period of 2002. I like to refer to it as a "phase." The hernia phase. About a week after surgery I went the doctor's office. The stitches on the wound had dissolved, but the surgeon needed to check on the wound, which at this point was swollen and oozing brown stuff. It was covered by a transparent adhesive bandage. When I walked into the office the doctor told me to drop my pants and remove the bandage. I was peeling it off slowly. He got impatient, slapped my hand away, and ripped it off. RRRRIIIPPP. The wound swelled more. Than he shoved a large syringe into the wound, and extracted about a half cup of brown ooze from my surgery scar. From the table he shot the syringe's brown contents about 6 feet away, straight into the sink like a stream of brown viscous urine. The whole time he was yelling "looks like we struck gold." Apparently it's normal to swell up with brown stuff after a hernia operation. I also had an oxycontin prescription.

GET OUT THE WAY LET CASPER DRIVE

I need to share this. You notice at the 1 minute mark there is a fire in the background from which the hummer is driving away.

Here's how I plan to prepare for the 2nd Holocaust

I plan to pose as a trappist monk. And then I will shoot wolves from an airplane. I will be a monk who shoots wolves from an airplane and I will skin those wolves and sell them to other wolf-hunters.

When I was living in South Dakota, working at the paper, these guys came into the office looking for plat maps. Their RV, which they parked in front of the office, was almost as long as a city block and blocked any sun from getting into the office. They had thick southern accents. "We wonna hunt some prairie dawgs," they said. And they were wearing head-to-toe forest camo, which is weird because 1) South Dakota isn't forested, and 2) they are hunting fucking prairie dogs. Prairie dawgs. It's glorified target practice. Those little fuckers are teeming with weird ass viruses, so you can't eat the meat (all the 1/2 pound of it), or even touch the fur, and if you do you will vomit so hard your asshole will shoot out your mouth. You can hunt prairie dogs from your front porch in SoDak. Prairie Dog hunting makes farting look like a sport. Even after I showed these hunters that we had no plat maps which denoted prairie-dog-hunting safe grounds, they lingered. They had hunted for years here. "We been coming to South Dakota all these years to shoot prairie dawgs," they told me. They recalled their favorite times of shooting, which I can't recall the specifics of, because I was waiting to leave so I could get some damn natural light back in the office.

Sometimes I think this country deserves a President McCain.

Chuck Berry

I had to miss seeing Chuck Berry play a free concert in Iowa City on Friday night, on cause of Brewnost.

My parents saw Chuck a few years back at a theatre in Morristown, New Jersey. Apparently Chuck doesn't tour with a band, or any gear except his guitar, so he shows up to every show to a different backing band. The issue is that they have only a vague setlist, and that his songs don't employ your everyday simple blues chords, so the first 20 minutes of his sets are total fucking disasters - my mom used the word "avant garde."

My mom's employer is a patron of the theatre where the event was held, and there was supposed to be a meet and greet with Chuck post-performance. My parents showed up, but Chuck never did. After waiting for an hour they left, and as my Dad was in the car talking to me on his cellphone, I heard him scream, "HEY LOOK THERE'S CHUCK," and apparently there was Chuck Berry, ditching his ritzy meet and greet in order to pound some down at some scummy bar in Morristown. I heard my Dad yell "great show Chuck" and some muttering from Chuck's end, something like "hghhbhghhh." The dude films girls pooping, so I doubt he gives a fuck.

I'm sick (fuck you)

A coworker of mine testified in court the other day against this guy. Apparently he was also on trial for stealing a Children's Miracle Network box from a countertop.

What this has to do with anything I know not, but what I do know is that tomorrow is Brewnost, a charity event which involves me pouring beer for the gentry of Cedar Rapids, Iowa. And being hit on by the bored wives of Cedar Rapids industrialists. Last year, when conversing with this crow-footed yet glamorous volunteer, it came out in conversation that I was Jewish, to which she responded "My ex-husband told me I could become Jewish via injection." I wanted to make some joke about Jewish doctors but was too stunned.

Not too many Jews in Eastern Iowa. I have been at least half a dozen peoples' "first Jew." One of those people was a girl from some four-corners town in Northern Iowa. When I told her I was a part of the tribe she screamed, hugged me, and shouted I was her "first Jew." She said that her father said there would be Jews in Iowa City, and that "they all had big noses and drove really nice cars," but I didn't have a big nose and "that was like so weird." Then I told her I drove a Ford Windstar.

For a few reasons:

1) I'm not writing anymore. I know this is a fucking blog and whatever but I'm not. Straight up reason # 1

2) Reason #2. So I was back in DC last week and I talked to some good people - old coworkers - to whom I haven't spoken in like a quarter of a decade or some shit. The last time I wrote them I wrote them an e-mail. If I remember correctly signed the STEPHEN MOTHERFUCKING SHERMAN. The e-mail was from when I was living on a reservation in South Dakota. I had no job and I was putzing around my girlfriend's one bedroom apartment, watching one of her cats be in heat. The other one was spade. Anyhow my coworkers suggested I start a blog. So thanks for the suggestion Elizabeth and Wendy. Yeah I'm starting a blog. Fuck you.

3) I miss it. I did this before - it was a means to communicate with old friends with whom I'd parted ways since high school. We all shared a blogging interface, linked to eachothers' blogs, and so I would know important info, like that Dan at St. Thomas Acquinas had a roommate from Long Island named Tiny who was 7 feet tall and had flip flops the size of a surfboard. I remember these things. I remember Tiny. Never forget.

So to start things off here is a story.

I am a manager of a liquor store in Iowa City. It's also a grocery store. One day a drunk CHUDly-guy shoved a ribeye down his pants and walked out the door. I remember when I went out the door to chase him I said to my coworker, "yo, that dude has steak in his pants."

...

That's not a very good story.

Any that's the guy who tried to shoplift steaks, using his pants. We did get the steaks back, for what it's worth. "What it's worth" is whatever the going rate for ribeyes which marinated in bum crotch.

This is going to be good.