EXTRA SECOND!

Happy New Year! Don't forget, they're adding an extra second to the atomic clock (ostensibly just before 6pm tonight) but I think it'll be much more fun if we all collectively shout, "Fuck you, Dick Clark!" and do it like this:
10
9
8
7
6
5
4
3
2
2
1
Happy New Year!

VH1 ALL ACCESS: BAD HABITS (series) premieres Monday, 1/02 at 9p

Official blurb:


VH1 ALL ACCESS: BAD HABITS premieres Monday, 1/02 at 9p
"Ahh, celebrities. Since the beginning of time, these paragons of humanity have been renowned for beauty, poise, sophistication, and nose-picking. Nose-picking. Stop the press and alert Miss Manners, the rich and famous have nasty habits, just like the rest of the world. The only difference is, when they flip the bird or sneak a peek at somebody's rack, there's a swarm of photographers' right there to take a picture - and that's where All Access: Celebrity Bad Habits comes in. Celebrity Bad Habits will chronicle every A-list breach of good etiquette, from terrible table manners, to over-the-top displays of affection, to the public exhibition of private parts. Featured bastions of poor taste will include: Cameron Diaz, Nicole Richie, Ben Affleck, Bill Gates, Hilary Swank, Anna Nicole Smith, Steve-O, John Travolta, Charlize Theron, Drew Barrymore, Jenna Jameson, the Queen of England, and more."

featuring: me!

Santa Claus, the Anti-Semite

Could it be that Santa Claus doesn't bring presents to the Jews because he hates us?

After all, according to Saint Lenny Bruce, we killed Jesus, because Lenny found a note in his basement that said:
"We did it, signed Morty."
Ostensibly because he wouldn't be a doctor.

And so Santa's just getting back at us?

But possibly because we knew this Christmas thing was going to happen, and we were prophetically trying to prevent little jewish children from the heartbreak of Santa not coming to visit.

HAPPY WINTER HOLIDAY STUFF!

Best Overheard-in-New-York post EVER!

From OverheardInNY:
December 15, 2005
Oregon Trail Should Come with a Warning Label
Guy #1: You're useless...you keep getting dysentery.
Guy #2: Maybe you're just a lousy trail leader.
Girl: At least he doesn't drown every time we cross a river.
Guy #1: Hey, you caulk the wagon, you take some chances.

--79th Street 1 station

I SO want to meet these people. Guys #1 and #2 and Girl, rock my cel. We should hang. I'll bring an extra axel.

io, Saturnalia!

Oh boy! It's solstice today at 1:35pm! ... which means it's time for some Saturnalianess! Let us make like the Pagans do!

And what Solstice can be complete without Dar Williams (my teenage idol!) singing "The Christians and The Pagans"? (Listen to it here!. )

I've been far, far away from my hippie-wonder days for a long time, but it feels a little bit like my internal tides are perhaps starting to think about shifting, and I particularly enjoy this line from the song explaining why the Pagan lesbian is not a Christian:
"But we love trees, we love the snow, the friends we have, the world we share / And you find magic from your God, and we find magic everywhere".

Anyhoo! Speaking of songs, here is the song I wrote in my head as I was once again walking to work. It's vaguely to the tune of "Hooray for Hollywood," which I know mostly from that episode of the Simpsons when Mark Hamill was in "Guys and Dolls" and they sang, "Guys and dolls, we're just a bunch of crazy guys and dolls" to the tune of "Hooray for Hollywood."

Ahem. Without further ado:
Transit Strike!
T-t-t t-t-t-t Transit Strike!
You'll have to walk or maybe ride your bike!
Transit Strike!
Transit Strike!
And you can't even take a cab alone!
And then you'll have to pay for every zone!
And walking in the cold is not much fun!
And I can't get my Christmas shopping done!
Transit Strike!
Transit Strike!
I sure don't much like
the Transit Strike!


And, just for gits and shiggles: R. Kelly does the national anthem!

Dylan! (The musical)

Oh dear.

Live Blogging the Transit Strike, Part III

C'mon, MTA. Have a fucking heart, why don't you.

Live Blogging the Transit Strike, Part II

Strike watch! Strike watch! Such a great title! With a splashy graphic, reminiscent, perhaps, of Batman.

12:00 This is FUCKING CRAZY This strike could actually happen! This is mindboggling. This is like watching "Twister" except it's not a tornado and I'm not Bill Paxton, but it's that same level of energy. The energy of a tornado, not the energy of Bill Paxton, because he doesn't seem to have any energy, bless his limpid soul.

12:02 Will walking to work be like walking home during the blackout? Will we sing Christmas carols? Because I think widespread caroling would really boost spirits. And spirits! Spirits will boost spirits. Let us all carry flasks of whiskey. Like a human Saint Bernard, but for yourself.

12:05 I think it would be fun if everyone stuck his or her head out of her or her window and yelled, "Panic!" but in a slightly joking tone, a self-deprecatorily sheepish cry of mocking humor. And then we'll all laugh. But just for a brief second, because then we will be sad.

How long would this thing last, if this thing happens?

STRIKE WATCH! STIKE WATCH
Now that I live within walking distance of my office, I am not even listening to the contingency plan. Smuggity Mc Smug! No, wait, I am paying attention - because this shiznit is going to be CRIZAZY!

Live Blogging the Transit Strike

11:50 OH BOY! This is so exciting. This is better, even, than watching King Kong! Because the stakes are so high but's happening right now! To us! Because, goodness gracious, if this strike happens, shit's gonna be CRIZAZY. i mean, it's cold! So NY1 is calling this Strike Watch, and I tell you, this is the greatest movie ever. The tension is so high -- how will I finish Christmas shopping? Does all of Brooklyn stay home? And, wait! How does the infrastructure of NY function? Where will the Dunkin' Donut employees be -- perhaps they don't live in Manhattan and won't be able to get to work, and then who will pour me coffee? OH NOOOOOOOOOOO!

11:56 And so. It seems the transit strike might actually happen. And they've threatened to fine any transit worker who strikes because there's a law in place that they enacted after the last transit strike that says that striking transit workers get slapped with a ginormous fine. but can't the union take 'em to court over that -- isn't that downright unconstitutional? to deny a group the right to protest? SWEET JEBUS! Ain't that what this country was founded on???

11:58 OH NO, HOLIDAY SHOPPING IS GONNA BE A BITCH.
11:58:30 And what if they can't even open the stores because all the employees are stranded in Queens???

11:59 Oh, a speech.

SO JEWTASTIC! Tonight at 9/8c on VH1!

So Jewtastic premieres tonight at 9 on VH1, although there's a sneak peek of it on right now. Even the New York Post likes it.

Revel in the Jewness!

It's so Jewcy!

Nay, almost Jewlicious!

Happy Jew Year!

Please, Sir, Fetch me A Wombat

bexwombat, originally uploaded by starbexxx.

My friend James is about to return to Australia to renew his visa. I sent him this as a perma-reminder of the souvenir I would like.

A Whole New Category

And that category is "Amazingly, Astoundingly Horribly Awesome."

my boy jim over at Stereogum has unearthed the worst/best, most horribly awesome thing i've ever heard: "Hump My Tunnel."
it's one of the year's best songs mashed up with the WORST SONG IN THE ENTIRE WORLD.
arcade fire + b.e.p. = MY EARDRUMS ARE MELTING. and yet, they're melting in the worst/best way. It's so awesomely bad, it's almost awesomely amazing. because it's soooooooooo godawful. because I'm amazed at how something composed half-ly of something awesome could be this drecky. DAMN YOU, FERGIE, and your stupid lady lumps. For the record, if anyone EVER refers to any part of me as a lump or a hump, I shall slap that person silly, preferably with a large, stinky-rotten fish.

Jim's post also includes the phrase "audible question mark," which comes from our mutual friend Josh, who's the mastermind behind all creative turns of phrase, such as "I never meta postmodernist..." and my all-time fave, "kickawesome."

But anyway. About this mashup. It's so confusing.
Because your brain goes:
THIS IS SO BAD
BUT YET I AM SO CONFUSED
BECAUSE I AM ACTUALLY STIMULATED BY ITS HORRIBLENESS
BRAIN KINDA LIKES THE PAIN
BECAUSE NOW BRAIN UNDERSTANDS
"ULTIMATE BAD."

Moral Laws

Hey kids - I'm swamped at work and I'm struggling through yet another bout of sinus hell so forgive the lack of new stuff up here. It feels alternately like my brain is melting out my nose or else like there are 9 inch nails shoved up my nostrils (and not of the Trent Reznor variety. More like the Mr. Mike bit about Tony Orlando and Dawn shoving knitting needles into their eyes). (or Ed Sullivan) (shoving needles into his own eyes, not into the eyes of Tony Orlando and Dawn.) (btdub, for all things Mr. Mike, read "MR. MIKE: The Life and Work of Michael O'Donoghue, The Man Who Made Comedy Dangerous" by my e-friend, Dennis Perrin).

So just a quick thought for everyone: I was thinking about moral law and searching for definite black and white instances of one way of life triumphing over another, and here's what I came up with:
If there are two people living together, let's say in an Odd Couple type of way, and one is neat and one is messy, then the neat person is always in the right. As in, the messy person is always wrong and must both acknowledge his wrongness and defer to the neat person by attempting to be clean. For example, let's say in one's household, the spices are alphabetized on the rack. And Messy Guy always leaves the salt on the counter -- not back on the rack, between Sage and Savory. And the Neat Guy totally has the moral right to say, "Messy Guy, you are wrong. You know Salt belongs on the spice rack in betwixt Sage and Savory and yet you continuously leave it out on the counter. Or you leave your magazines on the coffee table when you know they belong in the magazine rack. Or worse, you didn't take off your shoes when you walked in the door and you left messy tracks all through the house and that is wrong, wrong, wrong." And, truly, the Messy Person is wrong and the Neat Person is right, because the Messy person ought to know that just he because he is messy, Neatness is the righteous ruler of the land and the Messy Person must curb his or her messy tendencies in deference to the reigning morality of cleanliness being next to godliness.

I can't think of any other Ultimate Binary Moral Relativity constructs such as this. Young doesn't always defer to Old, nor vice versa. Short doesn't defer morally to Tall, nor vice versa. Neither does Fat to Thin, Conservative to Liberal, Faith-based to Empirical, nor Coke to Pepsi. It just seems that Neat is always right and Messy is always wrong, and, as a lifelong messy person, this dichotomy fascinates me.

Note: I'm not messy like pizza boxes on the floor, I'm just messy in a I-know-where-everything-is-right-now although-to-you-it-looks-like-a-tornado-hit-my-room/office/desk/cubby. I don't put things away in the physical world because I put them away in my brain, like, duh.

Greetings, Intergalactic Interplanetary Internets Visitors!

Checkity check check it on out! Blog in Space has decided that my little speck of the internets is today's most-likely-to-be-contacted by interstellar internerds!

So, greetings and salutations, interplanetary visitors! I hope you have a Babelfish in your ear so you can understand English. Aussi, je parle francais mais je ne croix pas que vous le comprenez. V'gam, ani midaberet ivreet but I can't type in it.

Anyhoozinskis! On behalf of our humble little planet, I'm so sorry that we continously seem to use the power for evil instead of good. I'm sure you've been using nuclear fission and/or fusion for inter- and intra-galactic travel and curing disease and interesting ways to warp the time-space continuum to correct any horrible natural catastrophes, and we just haven't wrapped our feeble little minds around using the power for good. Yet. There's still hope. I live in a country called America, which is part of that big landmass with the little doohickey hanging off the south east coast (do you use directions the same way we do?) called Florida and the other little doohickey hanging off the south west coast called Baja California. America is theoretically a pretty swell place to live because we theoretically enjoy many freedoms, although practically shit is fucked up, yo. My country is currently involved in a war (you probably don't have those) based on false pretenses and selfish motivation. It's like if Mars attacked Venus because Mars wanted Venus' natural gases, and Mars lied about why it was attacking Venus, and then the Martians found out that there were more nefarious reasons for the attack on Venus but the Martian leader thought that he was right because of his Imaginary Friend named "God." It's kindasorta just like that. Right. So there's lots of similarly bad stuff happening all over this humble little planet, and people kill other people because they somehow believe that their specific Imaginary Friends named "God" are more real than other people's particular Imaginary Friends (who are also named "God," although in different languages), and there are wars and suicide bombings and hateful graffiti and physical assaults all because people on this planet seem compelled to assert the righteousness of their own Imaginary Friends. And we have poverty and hunger and disease and hate and some people are starving while some other people are paid to destroy their crops and still other people throw away millions of pounds of food each day because they're on diets. But we also have some fantastic things, like music. And sex. And diet coke. Wonder abounds! Please come visit us and teach us how to eradicate AIDS and cancer and heart disease. Or at least come and visit and indulge in a really great slice of pizza (with a diet coke). I'm quite sure that's worth the journey.

Shrimp Gumbo, Shrimp Casserole. Shrimp got your Facts Fucking WRONG

bubba-gump, originally uploaded by starbexxx.

This sign is in the window of the Bubba Gump restaurant that's right across the street from my office and it just kills me.

See -- MTV was born in 1981.

And when I was a senior in high school and had a whopping bout of mono, I watched "Forrest Gump" about a million times on HBO, because it was always on and I lacked the energy even to pick up the remote and change the channel. (Once I was able to make it downstairs to the tv room, that was it, as far as energy expenditure went).

And, call me stupid, but doesn't Bubba die in Forrest's arms over there in 'Nam? So he bought the farm sometime during the Vietnam War (1954 - 1975). And we know he was looooong dead and worm food before Hurricane Carmen, the storm in 1974 that wiped out all the other shrimping boats, leaving Forrest and Lt. Dan the only shrimpers around, and thus launching the Bubba Gump shrimp company into its lucrative state.

And Forrest started the shrimp company with his winnings from being a Ping Pong champion, at least a year or so after he returned from 'Nam. So let's assume Bubba bit the big one at the latest in the early 70s, but probably in the late 60s. So Bubba's favorite was never ever MTV, could never have been MTV, no way, no how, no shit. Because Bubba kicked it probably 15 years or so before MTV graced the earth with its somethingness.

That's me, kids. Fighting for the facts.

All Access: Awesomely Bad Freakouts

Did I promote this one yet? Awesomely Bad Freakouts airs tonight (Monday 12/5) at 6pm. And evermore. You know how we roll.


And get your Tivo ready because So Jewtastic airs Monday, 12/19 at 9/8c. It's me and a bunch of other heebs, discussing what it's like to be neurotic, nose-y and nasal.

My Fabulously Fantastic Cast

glam cast, originally uploaded by starbexxx.

Coming soon to a tv near you ... you're so not ready for their jelly. Or the magnificence that is to be our celebreality campaign.

Glam

... just in from shooting a mega glam rock musical theme park surreal production number campaign for Celebreality. it's going to kick major ass. i can no longer see straight, but i am happy and satiated and overstimulated, albeit exhausted.

i love shooting. love love love.
shooting of the film variety (And often of the electronic deer variety) but not of the violent variety.

love and kisses,
bex