The Wide World of Rich, Paralyzed Iraqis, Part II

Before I continue with this thread, I would like to address a comment made on my previous post by a reader/visitor who identifies as "the friend." First,

"Iraqis, as a whole, probably speak/write better English than most Americans."

No. No they do not.

Second,

"Why don't you write something actually worth reading about the Iraqi conflict. Everyone who reads this blog knows you have the intelligence and writing ability. "

This is probably more accurate, although given the scammer's hilariously obvious attempts at deceiving me, we can hardly take his/her nationality as a cold, hard fact. Chances are the person was posing as an Iraqi in an attempt to find a soft spot in some idiot web neophyte who thinks that AOL is the internet. What I'm saying is that the Iraqiness of the person is incidental. Let's all just sit back for a moment, clear our heads, and realize that slipping tasteless puns and obnoxious jokes past non-native Enlglish speakers who are clearly engaged in acts of deception and thievery, while certainly sophomoric, is also kind of fun.

Whatever the case, whoever jumped to my defense could have been a little more polite.

On with the story:

She responded. And I was all,

O.
M.
G.

The response in itself was nothing special. It seemed to me to be a previously written response. It did, however, contain some serious gems:

"Thanks in appreciation of your desire to help me out of this situation, I am ready to accept any aggreement towards this project provided you do not betray me. However you have to assure me of your trusthworthiness as my situation here is critical, my son is just 15 years, not old enough to take decision, so ia relying in you."

Wait... you have a son?

"I think you have built confidence in me that I shall be glad to tell you that i paid the company for the transfer, if any money is to be paid, let me know. The said money is 100 dollar denomination,wraped with foils from Central Bank Badhdad in a 100 x 80 x 100 cm dark coloured formaica box (consignment) with diplomatic sticker attached to it. Toltal amount 22.5 million dollars."

Yes, over our long friendship of one spam email and two replies, we have certainly built confidence in one another. I agree. Let's send each other money!

Then she said some crap about having to move the money to Europe or something. This was probably where the whole transfer fee thing would come into play. There was no doubt about it - I was being expertly scammed.

So I replied:

Hello Fareeza

What a relief! I thought that you had died or something! That would have sucked big time, because I'm so goddamned eager to help!

How is the weather in Iraq? It's cold here, but the winter hasn't been quite as cold as it usually is. I think it's El Nino, but people around here are getting their panties all in a bunch about global warming. What do you think? Is it warmer than usual over there? Can you even tell? Haha if I were you I would use some of that money to get an aboveground pool. They're mad cheap. Once we safely execute this transfer (haha! execute! pun alert!) you should be able to afford that.

Also, I cannot be sure about this transaction unless I see a picture of you. I can tell a lot about a person by the way that they look. You had better be pretty! Haha just kidding but seriously don't be too fat.

I hope to hear from you soon. Peace in the Middle East (haha they used to say that in the 80s, it's kind of funny now, isn't it?)

Johnny

Next: Fareeza starts to get frustrated.

One last thing. How is the formatting for this? Is the text too small, or too gray? I'm trying desperately to distinguish the emails from my own commentary without hundreds of colors and such. Let me know.

The Wide World of Rich, Paralyzed Iraqis, Part I

The title sucks you in. I know it does.

A few weeks ago, our band account received an urgent email from one Ms. Fareeza Hayat, an Iraqi widow in dire need of help. "I feel sorry for bordering you at this time," Ms. Fareeza wrote, "since we have not met orknown each other before, but I beg you in the name of almighty allah, tohave patience and listen to me." I I did, in fact, listen closely to her email, and it turned out that Ms. Fareeza in fact needed very badly to transfer $22.5 million of United States Dollars into someone else's bank account. Could we, this poor hip-hop band from Boston, help her? Maybe, if we were willing to pay a small transfer fee.

She continued:

"Yes America and its allies have enthrone democracy in Iraq, but can wesustain it, the weakness of the Arabic leaderships is shameful and distressing. And they do not feel ashamed of themselves, with their negativity that insulted this nation's dignity, and led it to the lowest level. Anyway I am saying this thing for you to understand the feeling of an average Iraqi on the street and the reason most of us who have the opportunity are doing this kind of thing. Ask an Iraqi boy on the street are you Iraqi?He will say no, I am Sunni, Shi'ite orKurdish, he will not mention Iraq. Worst of this is the obnoxious kurdish tradition which strips the womam of all her husband's wealth and transfer it to the brothers of the man when the man dies, that is my situation here."

Needless to say, my heartstrings had been expertly tugged. However, me being the greedy bastard that I am, I decided that I would create a new email account and answer to this poor woman so as to keep all of the riches to myself. I decided to christen myself Johnny Faux and wrote her the following response:

OMG when I saw your email I was all OMG I need to help this woman. Anything I can do to help the plight of your people I must do. For realz. Don't worry, you weren't bordering me at all. In fact, you border Iran. HAHA! If you don't get it, don't worry, it was just a little English mistake that you made. Or a geography mistake. Nothing serious. I totally understood what you were trying to say, I think.

Anyway, yeah, I have like 4 Swiss bank accounts, so this should work out fine. Which one do you want tosend the money to? I can just give you the access number, or if you like, we can meet up somewhere and I can hand you an envelope full of money. Does that sound good?

I only ask one small favor in return. When I hand over the money to you, I want you to dress like a cheerleader and call me "coach."

Okay, hope to talk to you soon!

Thanks
Johnny

Would Ms. Fareeza reply? Was she all right? Did she or whomever sent out this email really, honestly think that this crap was going to work?

Stay tuned for Part II.

a letter to the weekly dig

I recently wrote a letter to the Weekly Dig in response to this article outlining the conflict over a white Boston-based promoter, Edu Leedz, putting on a Black History Month show at McGann's Pub in the North End. I got a response from a Dig staffer (hooray! I'm relevant!) but I'm not sure if they'll publish the letter on Wednesday, and I need material to get this blog going again, so here is my letter. Don't forget to read the story first.

I am writing this email In response to last week's article, "Devil in the Details," which described the controversy surrounding Edu Leedz' upcoming Black History Month hip-hop show at McGann's: First, full disclosure: I am a white rapper and the lead vocalist in a five piece live hip-hop band and worked with Leedz on a few separate occasions early in my career. We have not worked together on a show in over 18 months and may not ever cross paths again. That said, I consider him a hard worker and a hard-nosed businessperson who takes his responsibility to Boston and to hip-hop culture seriously. I do not know Mr. Crawford.

It seems to me that Mr. Crawford claims an ownership over Black history and culture that not only affords him the right to celebrate it, but the right to deny the act of celebration to others. However, this kind of action neither preserves nor promotes culture; rather, it slowly drowns it under a sea of avarice and provincialism. The reason that we celebrate culture - and the reason that it transcends all materialism and corporate co-opting - is that it cannot be owned. Culture and history are by nature shared objects, because the only way that we experience them is through the free flow of information. We have culture only because we share it. When we refuse to share our culture with others, it becomes a wretched, twisted caricature of itself.

Mr. Crawford's actions seem, at best, woefully misguided. At worst, they are a self-centered attempt to deny people access to aspects of his history that are relevant to all of us. Whether he likes it or not, Black history and Black culture are shared Amerian experiences. Historic figures like Malcolm X arise where cultues clash, not in petri dishes of isolated cultural hegemony. Malcolm X may indeed be Mr.Crawford's "hero," but Mr. Crawford's reverence for Malcolm X makes him no less available to Leedz, no matter how vehemently Mr. Crawford chooses to protest. In fact, the more Mr. Crawford endeavors to deny non-Blacks access to his culture - a culture that has been shaped by both Blacks and non-Blacks - the more he deprives us of the ability to examine who we are as a community.

New Year's Resolutions by The Indefinite Article

Happy 2007!

The year is only two days old and you’re already hearing from The Indefinite Article. Could that mean that big things are on the way? When have big things ever not been on the way? Come on!

Because it is a new year, and because the new year is a time for resolutions, and because we are on break and thus have no shows coming up in January, and because I’m a fool for old, hackneyed traditions, I’m going to give you a list of New Year’s Resolutions for 2007, which I have appropriately titled…

A List of New Year’s Resolutions for 2007
by The Indefinite Article

1. The Website. www.indef-art.com, will be up and running in full force at some goddamned point in the future, with audio, video, stuff, things, and merch. We swear.

2. The Blog. www.indef-art.blogspot.com, will be up and running starting now, with this newsletter. In addition to posting every monthly newsletter, I will resume posting both relevant and irrelevant information to this site at regular intervals. The posts will also be available on our myspace blog.

3. The Rest of the InterWeb. We will be making a full-scale run to have a presence in as many of the interconnected tubes of the interweb as we can. This includes: MySpace (of course), Facebook, YouTube, Google Video, PureVolume, and whatever other crap factories pop up their sloth-like, time-wasting heads this year.

4. The Album. We will write and record an album for you to have and cherish, releasing at least one single for you to behold during 2007.

5. The College Radio. This one is easy. Starting on February 5th, The Indefinite Article will team up with Planetary Group to do a 6-week college and non-commercial radio promotion campaign for The Grand Applause. Please be sure to hound your local college station to play our music starting on February 5th.

6. The Video. We will be teaming up with filmmaker Matt Rutherford to do a video of the song “You Might Wanna“ from our debut album, The Grand Applause.

7. The Kids These Days. We will start actively involving ourselves in playing all-ages shows, starting at Andover Town Hall, whenever Rick gets around to booking us an event there.

8. The Smacking Down of Punk-Ass Bitches. We will begin our master plan to systematically crush all those who hinder the juggernaut of forward progress that is The Indefinite Article. Masses of backward thinking, intellectually bereft clods will whimper in terror as they attempt to wrap their tiny little brains around the simple tautology that we have already processed and internalized: that it is impossible to stop us, for we are impossible to stop.

Okay, now it’s on to the outline. Let’s do it.

I. Indef on Boston Nocturnal!
II. February 2007 and Beyond!
III. Why such a short newsletter?

I. Indef on Boston Nocturnal!

Boston nightlife documentarians Boston Nocturnal dropped by our amazing December 15th show at Bill’s Bar to do a bit on the band. The current episode of the show can be seen here. If you are having trouble finding the episode that features us, it is also up on YouTube. Just click here. The video quality is better on Boston Nocturnal's own site, so try viewing it there first. We will be receiving a cut of the piece and will post the clip on our myspace as soon as we figure out exactly how to do so.

II. February 2007 and Beyond!

Yes, folks, we already do have a ton of gigs booked for our return to action in February. I’ll write you a short list right now. You’ll get the full details in the February newsletter. Here they are:

Thursday, February 1 – The Brick House, Dover, NH
Friday, February 2 – Kitty O’Shea’s, Beverly, MA
Thursday, February 8 – St. Anselm College, Manchester, NH
Saturday, February 10 – The Barley House, Concord, NH
Saturday, February 17 – Middle East Upstairs or Bill’s Bar, Cambridge or Boston, MA. Long Story.
Thursday, February 22 – Nectar’s, Burlington, VT
Friday, February 23 – TBA
Saturday, February 24 – Sugarbush Mountain, Warren, VT
Thursday, March 1 – The Blackburn, Gloucester, MA
Friday, March 9 – The Lion’s Den, New York, NY
Saturday, March 10 – The Santa Fe, College Park, MD
Thursday, March 22 – The Blackburn, Gloucester, MA
Thursday, March 29 – Tammany Hall, Worcester, MA
Friday, March 30 – Harbor House, Gloucester, MA
Thursday, April 19 – Bowdoin College, Brunswick, ME
Thursday, May 4 – Santa Fe, College Park, MD

III. Why such a short newsletter?

Because I’m actually writing this on New Year’s Eve and I’m about to go get drunk.

Later
Abe
Also the rest of the band

If you would like to unsubscribe, email the.indefinite.article@gmail.com and try not to spread your pessimism and anger too heavily so soon. You’ll need it all year!

The Continuing Saga of Sam and Vanessa, Part IV

By his count, Sam hadn't slept in four days, but then again, he wasn't really sure. Four days ago had been a lazy Sunday, and he had gotten up for about 20 minutes early in the morning to eat a bowl of Frosted Flakes and then had gone back to sleep for like five more hours, which was almost a quarter of a day. Whatever the case, he hadn't slept since Sunday, which was four days ago. Maybe that was a better way to put it.

By his count, Sam hadn't slept since Sunday, but then again, who the hell counts things like that? There has to be a number in there somewhere when you say something like "By his count." You couldn't say, "By his count, Sam's last car was green," could you? No. You could say, "By his count, Sam had driven the green car roughly forty thousand miles before it broke down," which would be a better sentence to boot on account of the extra exposition it allowed.

Sam was exhausted and confused. The plot seemed to be moving nowhere, and all because of semantics.

The Continuing Saga of Sam and Vanessa, Part III

Sam smiled at Vanessa. They were finally home.

"We're finally home," he said, unaware that a narrative voice had already explained the situation. He couldn't have been talking to Vanessa; she had her headphones on. Sam had been stating the exposition of the story for some time now, in a vain effort to add some profundity to a journey that had turned out to be quite hackneyed. Vanessa was growing quite tired of him.

As Sam's weary legs brought him to the threshold of the apartment building, he stopped himself. What, really, was home?

"What, really, is home?" Sam asked Vanessa. His act had even begun to grow thin with the narrator.

"What do you mean?" asked Vanessa, lifting her headphones up for a brief moment.

"I mean, we have been gone for seven months now, and this just doesn't feel right."

"You're right," said Vanessa. "That's because you live across the street."

Home, sweet home.

The Continuing Saga of Sam and Vanessa, Part II

"Vanessa!" said Sam, in that way that only Sam could say it - that is, from Sam to Vanessa. "Vanessa!"

"Yes, dear?" The tears welled up in her eyes. Her eyes felt like gigantic wells, wells from which Sam had freed the trapped child of her childhood. "Yes?"

"Vanessa," Sam said again, though not as loudly, since he already had her attention. "Vanessa." Vanessa couldn't help but laugh at how Sam was prone to repeating things. Even at times like these, he had those little idiosyncracies. The kind of idiosyncracies that just made you react in some manner. "Vanessa." He did it again.

"Oh, Sam," said Vanessa, "You didn't have to say it. I'm the one that's Vanessa."

Sam curled the right side of his mouth up in a vain attempt to smile. Vanessa smiled along with him. Perhaps the stroke wasn't as bad as the doctor had said it was. Perhaps they had a fighting chance.

The Continuing Saga of Sam and Vanessa

I am writing a serial novel, to an extent. It's kind of a new concept. I'll be writing dramatic scenes that you, the reader, will be charged with putting in a cohesive and sensible order. Go for it.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sam stared blankly at Vanessa. Her gaze seemed to pierce right into his very insides. Yet once it arrived inside of him, it just bounced around for a while and died. For Sam was empty inside.

"Maybe it's all the drugs," said Vanessa.

"Go fix me a milkshake," said Sam. His voice quivered as his eyes narrowed to return her glare. "A milkshake with drugs."

And just like that, the tables had turned.

We are done mixing the album, yes we are, yes we are

High holy hell. Let me tell you what we finished doing the last night at 2am: mixing the album.

That's not a very interesting story. But guess what's next? Mastering.

Hmmm...

After that? Packaging.

Yawn.

Then? Selling, getting rich, and shooting videos with hordes of scantily clad women.

Boing!

Actually our one, "shake ya ass" song, which was entitled "Shake Ya Ass (Girl, You Know How To Do It Appropriately, Now Let Me See Some of Them Expertly Choreographed Dance Moves, Especially the One Where You Hump the Floor Suggestively)" did not make it onto the album. We're going to have to make do with our avant-garde, unbelievably fast nerd-hop for now.

Which brings me to another thing. I listen to our music, and then I listen to other hip-hop music, and I find that the main distinction between us and everyone else is that we play our music at like 200 bpm faster than anyone on the planet. As it is, the album is around 30 minutes long; it could easily have been 40 minutes long and slower.

For those of you who give a flying swear word, here are the tracks that are going on the album, in no particular order:

Out of Control
Break the Monotone
Gut Feeling
Lives of Bliss
We're All Thugs
Man Down
You Might Wanna

Yes, I know, that leaves out Robin Hood Democracy and Monster, both of which never made it out of the basics session. Not to worry. These seven songs are so good that you will lose control of your bodily functions. In fact, I highly recommend that the first time you listen to these songs, you do so in the bathtub. Or on a tarp.

If you're missing any favorite tracks, please consider the high potential of the second album, tentatively entitled "Carve Me Up a Grammy, Bitch":

Robin Hood Democracy
Monster
Namsing?
Suicide Waltz
You Can't Go Home Again
I Am (maybe)
Reflexive Identity Theft (maybe)
Sitting on the Dock of the Bay
La Marseillaise

Some of these are lies.

We're basically waiting for our album artist, Rachel Maguire, to finish the art, and then we'll be ready to rock and/or roll. Check her stuff out here. She is fantastic.

One more thing: when the album is out, please blog about us. Link to our myspace account and our website (soon to be redesigned), tell your friends, make them buy what we made. It sounds delicious.

adios
Abe

nonsense

A poem about my friend, Charles Wood:

How much wood could a woodchuck, Chuck, if a woodchuck could, Chuck Wood?
As much wood as a wood, Chuck, could, if a woodchuck could, Chuck Wood.

bye
abe

Bruins. Devotion. Something. Something else. Bruins.

Just picked up tickets for a Bruins game that I won at work. This year's motto, as printed on the tickets, is:

"Devotion... it's called Bruins."

Is that even grammatically correct? Does it even mean anything at all?

"Boy, Stan really worked hard on the Thompson account."
"He sure did. That was a whole lot of Bruins he showed."
"Here's to Stan."
[cracks open a beer]
"To Stan."
"To Stan."
"How is Cindy?"
"Oh, all right. We had a big talk about commitment yesterday. Commitment and...
"And what?"
"I forget the word."
"Bruins?
"Yeah, Bruins. Commitment and Bruins."
"Fuck."
"Fuck is right, man."

Bruins.

detox/retox

I always get really down on the days after shows. Something about the confluence of a week of stress leading up to the show, the emotional toll of reciting lyrics that despite their grounding in nonsensical blabberings are actually, cryptically, often quite meaningful to me, and the physical toll of performance always renders me perfectly useless the next day. To wit:

1. Today I woke up at 10.
2. Instead of finishing editing essays for the application essay company I moonlight with, I emailed my boss and took myself off the the project. To be perfectly honest, I should have done it a long time ago, but tried to power through it plus the workweek plus band stuff.
3. Instead of working on tracks for the solo album I wrote three random verses to Kanye's "Golddigger" that I will probably never want to recite to any track but "Golddigger," and any track I make would sound like a "Golddigger" rip-off, so they're completely useless. Good, but useless.
4. Made an oven pizza at 11 am.
5. Did not go to the gym,
6. Nor shower.

On the bright side, 18 days without coffee and substances. Being not jacked up on caffeine is starting to feel like my regular state of being.

But I could use a beer or eight right now.

This entry ceased to be entertaining a long time ago.

New Song - Going To I'm Going To

I like posting lyrics on this thing every once in a while.

Ricky wrote a sick keyboard line a few weeks ago and I have been trying to mold it into a song ever since. I think I got it. Three sort of altered choruses, three well-crafted verses. Now all Rick and I have to do is sell it to the band. Should be like passing pork in Congress.

I'm immensely proud of these lyrics. Lots of fun wordplay within a semi-serious topic. Look for baseball references; sports cliches; names of indie bands next to slightly altered names of bon jovi b-side singles; children's story references; some good religious imagery; political stuff; mike tyson's punch-out references; some halfway decent internal rhyming; some actual words that other people use in rap songs; and whatever else you can find.

These verses are all 16's with a half-line tagged to the top. So if you're at home trying to figure out how the hell they're recited, which might prove somewhat difficult, at least give yourself a shot by starting on 1 with the second line of each verse.

This song is going to kill.

paz.
abe

p.s. The chorus is to be sung, in three part harmony, poorly by me, competently by Evan and Rick.



I don’t know where
I don’t know where
I don’t know the place I’m going
To and I am going to explode if I don’t get to where I’m
Going I don’t know where I am
Going to I’m going to I’m going to my destination

- - - - ready set swing miss!
abraham keep your weight on your back foot
jump at the offspeed pitch and go ka-put
mighty casey up with the game on the line
at the bat, at the last inning of time
you could be, willing of mind
but your spirit is soft
or have the, shot in your sights
but your sights were off
a millimeter to spare and it's a game of inches
from, starting at fullback to riding the benches
riding the fences, siding with henchmen not leaders
shirtless and drunk, picking fights in the bleachers
99 degrees in the shade hot hot heat
bitching bout the rich folks and how they got box seats
knock kneed with a pigeon toe to boot
some people play the field, some belong in the booth
nobody wants the truth, it gets so absurd
talking bout "man i would have gone pro for sure"

You don’t know where
you don’t know where
you don’t know where I am going
to and I am never gonna tell you where I’m going to
end up I might end up nowhere
nowhere can be somewhere and that somewhere is a destination

he’s a fraud in those emperor’s
clothes so I choose to expose his ruse
in a four chord blues cause his flows are used
do you, quote the news or do you know your views
you could turn on the light or simply blow the fuse
abused in the back, man his soul is bruised
what's the world come to man i'm so confused
and you could roll on dubs or just roll them twos
snakes eyes, any way you roll you lose
put your finger on the trigger man and squeeze it twice
or take it on the chin in memory of Jesus Christ
you could read your rights, and dot your i's and t's
on the cross in the breeze with condoleeza rice
you can go out like a martyr be on top of the world
or you can try a little harder make your world understand
I might stumble to the finish but at least I saw the clock when it
Struck my time to shine and now we just

I don’t care where
I don’t care where
I don’t care where I am going
To as long as you are going to be there to hold my hand
No fuck it I can do it on my own if you don’t want to come
I’ll go alone you’re always welcome but I need to go right now

get em up now
wave your hands if you just don’t give a fuck
pot smoking ideologue he’s a sitting duck
yin to the yang man we all need the villain’s touch
safety off hair trigger, keeping all real and such
smoke a dutch smoke a parliament smoke congress
smoke constituencies up in smoke promise
pull a rabbit out of the hat it’s an illusion
smoke screen vote green add to confusion
separate the light from the top of the headpiece
you can, get on the bus, man, it’s practically empty
ride it to the front or do your time as a sentry
drive your daughter to the prom in a dress too skimpy
too limp to stand with a cracked backbone
too far removed to take a cab back home
take out another loan and never press select
when an uppercut would snap his neck

I don’t care where
I don’t care where
I don’t care where I am going

Buy our shirts, bitches!

Indef-Art shirts now available. White with black printing. Logo tees. Nice looking. Classy. Available in S, M, L, XL.

Navigate to our myspace page to buy one of those badboys. They are so much the beautiful!

done
f.a.

Things that are good in ones may not be good in sixes

Example: Long Island Iced Tea

The Anti-Battle Rap

battles in the annals now are wack fucking tournaments
rappers should be writers not smack talking journalists
stop the bleeding of the country, ad hoc tourniquet
scribes writing fables next to a turntablist
the message is the blessing and it's not who's the ablest
keep us on the A list and strike back at those who label us
writing battle rhymes is an extraneous ingredient
sitting next to sybillance and civil disobedience
you feeling it? these beats are so the people can be free again
not so you can lip off as a battle rap comedian
not so you can stand on stage and feign to shut it down
because a man's a man no matter how often you cut him down
the strength is at the roots and at the roots you cannot spray
or spit lyrical venom, fuck it, you choose the cliche
for tyrants rule for 50 years and then thier glory fades
but poets live forever, and forever is today

a brief word on morally unassailable liberal attacks

Let me preface this by saying that I am not in favor of the war. Not at all.

That said, it strikes me as quite stupid that liberal protestors - or any anti-war protestors, for that matter - continue to use the "would you send YOUR son or daughter to Iraq?" tactic to point out the allegedly innate hypocrisy of government officials waging a war against a foreign country. All a politician has to do to fend off such an inane attack is say, "My son/daughter is an adult and capable of making their own decisions. Whether or not they choose to participate in the war effort is their own decision." That's it.

In fact, the most astute thing Dan Quayle probably ever said was similar to this. He was on TV stumping for anti-abortion laws and was asked what he would do if his daughter, then over 18 years of age, was confronted with an unwanted pregnancy. He said something to the effect that he would counsel her to have the child, but that she was an adult and it would ultimately be her decision.

Even when Michael Moore did this, it was kind of stupid. Parents don't sign their children up to go to war. What he should have addressed (and bless his soul - the man needs days of screen time to address the complexity of the situation, but people don't want complexity) was why the military finds most of its recruits primarily among the poor and underprivileged populations of America.

Then he should have asked various congresspeople to sign their children up to be poor.

Air Bud

Do you think that the producers of the Air Bud movies pick the sports that Air Bud plays based on his relative skill in the sport or whether or not they can make a dog-related pun out of the title (i.e., Air Bud: Seventh Inning Fetch)?

There are lots of highly-paid people making these decisions. It would be interesting to know what goes into their thought processes.

I think that given the recent surge of interest in poker, high-stakes gambling, and the like, Air Bud's handlers would be smart to make a movie about Air Bud counting cards at a casino or something. Some sort of Rainman-esque thing.

The title? You guessed it. Air Bud Craps All Over the Casino Floor.

That is all.

Eloquence

from a cnn.com article about the couple (a prison security guard and her felon husband) who escaped from jail a few days ago:

"
Cab driver Mike Wagers, 33, said he didn't realize he had picked up the fugitives until he was alerted to TV reports later that evening.

He said his suspicions weren't aroused by anything the couple said, except that they didn't try to aggressively recruit him after telling him they were Amway salespeople.

"You know, Amway people are all about Amway, and when they didn't -- when they didn't try any conversation further about it, that's when I pretty much thought, well, they're not with Amway," Wagers said.
"

Thanks, Amway. Now get started on the Struggle Against Violent Extremism like we asked you to a week ago.

National Insecurity

Security guards at North Station are working for the terrorists. I'm serious. It's not on purpose; rather, it's more like how the pot smokers in those terrible anti-drug commercials are working for the terrorists, except true. Story:

Sunday morning, 8:30ish. I am sitting in beautiful North Station waiting to take the commuter rail out to Phil's house, where I will eventually nail two tracks destined for my solo album. Around 70 people at the station. No trains on the platforms. I am hung over.

As I sit on a bench in the lobby trying to choke down a dry Dunkin' Donuts bagel bu drowning it in iced coffee, I spot one security guard with a puzzled look on his face talking into his walkie-talkie to another security guard. Let me note here that his badge looked like one of those Junior Police Officer badges that they used to give away in elementary school. Here are the snippets of walkie-talkie conversation to which I am privy:

"We have an unattended bag on the platform..."

"...don't know what is inside."

"...suspicious..."

"Bring it inside."

!

And they do. They bring the goddamned unattended bag inside the station and set it roughly 3 feet in front of my face. More conversation snippets:

"Do you know what it is?"

"...I don't know."

"Open it."

!!

Yes, "Open it." And they do. Right in front of me. There are clothes in it. In accordance with homeland security training techniques, the highly trained security officers POKE THE CLOTHES WITH THEIR WALKIE-TALKIES. I feel safe.

Do I have to comment any more on how ridiculous this is? Moving a potentially hazardous bag from an empty train platform into a lobby? I don't. So I won't.

It's not that I'm scared of terrorists, but if I were one, and I read this, I would die laughing.

Now THAT'S homeland security.

And THAT (above) is a bad punchline.