I was sifting through the internet to find if the Domino’s 80’s mascot ‘The Noid’ really happened, or if it was just something I just made up in my head. Turns out ‘The Noid’ was a real thing, as well as this story I found on wikipedia:

In 1989, Kenneth Lamar Noid, a mentaly ill customer who thought the (Noid) ads were a personal attack on him, held two employees of an Atlanta, GA Domino’s restaurant hostage for over five hours. After forcing them to make him a pizza and making demands for $100,000, getaway transportation, and a copy of The Widow’s Sun, Noid surrendered to the police. After the incident had ended, police Chief Reed Miller offered a memorable assessment to reporters: “He’s paranoid.”

Do you take yourself?

Chen Wei-yih, a 30 year old woman in Taiwan who was tired of answering questions about being single, not to mention an overall social pressure to get married, has decided to marry herself.

I don’t think I could marry me. Especially cause if it didn’t work out, I’d never be able to live with myself.

MYMAN

Mark Raterman and Tim Robinson in a chapter from the show MYMAN. Go to www.mymanscomedy.com to check out the whole pilot.

This is an old piece that is now another…

Excerpt from the book ‘How Not To Buy A Volkswagen Bus’

By Nick Vatterott

A guy pulled up to the urinal next to me and proudly proclaimed that he had to pee like a racehorse. First of all, I don’t care how bad anybody, let alone a complete stranger, has to pee. Second, why is ‘peeing like a racehorse’ the only metaphor we have to inform those around us how dire our need is to urinate? What does that even mean? I would be a lot more okay with it if after saying that, the person got down on all fours and started running circles around the bathroom while a small man on his back whipped his ass and people started placing bets on him. That’s the only case where I would walk out of the bathroom saying, “Wow, that guy really had to pee.”

I left the peeing racehorse and ponied up to the bar. I looked over a drink list of some of the local beers in the area, before asking the bartender to get me a pint of whatever his favorite was. He served me some dark brew and I settled in. I took a sip and then thought the same thing that I always think after ordering whatever the bartender’s favorite beer is, “Not bad. I wouldn’t order it again. But it’s not bad.” I then took advantage of being able to watch muted sports highlights in a bar that I had never before watched muted sports highlights in. At this point I realized that this wasn’t so great. I mean, I was enjoying myself. I get a kick out of downing alcohol and staring at a different wall or sports highlights on a TV that I’ve never stared at before. But I realized that this is pretty much it as far as the bar world goes. It used to excite me to go to bars in cities that I had never been to before. But with the exception of a small minority, all the bars are pretty much the same thing.

Irish Bars

All Irish bars have that green tint with wood and brass over the entire interior. Nostalgic Guinness signs mixed with zingers towards people who don’t drink Jameson line the walls in between pictures of Ireland that were probably purchased from some irish bar start up kit. If you order a Guinness, a shit head stranger sitting at the bar may begin talking your ear off about how Guinness is actually suppose to be poured. He’s usually wearing some douche bag hat, like the kind an old man would wear fifty years ago. He’s usually by himself. There are two types of people in this world; those who purposely go to an Irish bar, and those who wind up at an Irish bar. If you wind up at an irish bar, you’re probably a descent human being. Conversely; if you’re someone who earlier in the day said, ”Let’s go to an irish bar tonight,” then you’re the reason I don’t like going to Irish bars. If another patron at an Irish bar asks you if you’ve ever been to Ireland, that’s their way of telling you that they’ve been to Ireland and that you’re about to spend the next three U2 songs hearing about it.

Sports Bars

Every sports bar has a stench that is a combination of old miller lite, stale french fries and shattered dreams of athletic achievement lived vicariously through one of seventy seven televisions scattered all over the establishment. The size of the T.V.’s range from tiny plasmas located over the urinal, all the way to jumbo screens as big as the void in the regulars’ lives that they are trying to fill with sports. The inside is wallpapered with any type of sports memorabilia from banners to jerseys. They’re the same banners and jerseys any typical sports fan possesses with the exception that these have frames. Photographs consist of a local sports celeb, posing next to some random dude that nobody knows, wearing a hawaiian shirt. Autographs often consist of people that the average person has never heard of. If it is someone famous, the legitimacy is often in question. For instance; the glass case that holds an old football that looks more like a half deflated basketball with shoe strings glued to it, signed by Secretariat. Forget any variety in your drink selection. Your choices are beer, beer in a bottle or beer bottles in a bucket. Your waitress is either the girl who asks how you are doing nine times before you’ve even sat down. Or the girl you see once and that’s about it for the rest of the night. Once you give up on her ever coming back, you go to the bar to find some cheese ball bartender who either looks like, or actually is, Styles from Teen Wolf. He also takes his sweet time cause he’s too busy talking to another waitress at the cherries and olives part of the bar that your not allowed to go to. (It’s the part of the bar where instead of a bar stool there are two swimming pool rails like someone’s getting out of the deep end.) When he eventually turns around it’s either to fix the pen behind his ear or it’s his turn on the megatouch machine. You see that the girl he’s talking to is your waitress that never came back. She gives you that look like she knows you from some where but can’t put her finger on it. Above the bar is a huge banner that proudly states that wings are obnoxiously cheap on some day that is never the day you are there. Most important of any sports bar, the Golden Tee machine. Three to four guys spinning a ball, slapping their hands against a screen. Every once in a while a loud scream because some guy was “too aggressive” and hurt himself on the machine. He’s the guy who yells “You bum” at the seventy seven T.V.’s every five minutes, and brings up on a daily basis how he would be in the majors if he didn’t tear his ACL in high school. Tomorrow ACL boy will have to explain to his coworkers how he didn’t just hurt himself playing golf; he hurt himself playing video game golf.

The Dive

Every dive is filled with the most important aspect of the dive; people who don’t think it’s a dive. Every song on the juke box starts out with a holler, a fiddle (the poor drunk man’s violin) or a gunshot. No specials. Don’t even ask. There’s probably not a door to the bathroom, or a seat for the toilet, let alone specials. Your choices to drink are beer in a can, and some lableless bottle of whisky. Half of the regulars are sleeping on the bar. The other half work at the bar. Sometimes you can’t order a drink until the bartender’s turn at the lopsided pool table is over. Mismatched chairs. Mismatched tables. Mismatched faces. There is nothing in the establishment that doesn’t have a sign of the attempted carving of initials or misspelled profanity. The kitchen consists of a microwave and a chip rack. If it’s a really good dive there will be a dog running around that doesn’t seem to belong to anyone. The bartender could be any number of types of people, but 9 out of 10 times it’s an old lady who thinks a poorly angled black and white television adds to the atmosphere. Behind the bar there’s always something weird, like decorated plates you would buy at a small town gas station or dolls. After looking at each ID, intensely, for a good minute each as if it was the most bizarre thing they’ve ever seen, the bartender reluctantly asks what everyone wants, with a disappointed tone that says, “This place will never run out of business if you all keep spending money here.”

The Club

From the minute one enters the club, all conversations are held at the volume level of discourse held inside a helicopter landing at a jack hammer convention. It’s pitch black with the exception of purple and aqua blue lights on the outskirts of the bar area. That’s how you can tell how cool a club is. The more purple and aqua blue lights and things made out of metal, the bigger the headset on the big bald guy in the black t-shirt carding people behind the unnecessary velvet rope at the door. The same guy who puts needless blue paper wrist bands on everyone as if he’s tagging canadian geese that are migrating south for warming climate and stickier floors. The ten dollar cover will ensure that your watered down, over iced drinks are served in the flimsiest of ‘Solo’ plastic cups. Specials consist of a bottle of budweiser for six dollars, or a vodka tonic that was the recipient of a wrongly dropped roofie. The main party area has a light show that’s the equivalent to if someone ate a police car, the mall store Spencer’s, and every piece of entertainment technology from the 1970’s and puked them up from the ceiling, to the dance floor continuously till three in the morning. “Music” consists of a twelve track rotation of hip hop hits sprinkled in with ambulance sirens, strung together by a d.j. who mixes and samples together songs that by themselves were already the result of other songs being mix and sampled together. Every guy in the club is trying to get laid. How a guy dances, dictates his chances on getting laid or not. There are those who can’t dance. They won’t get laid. The only reason they’re at the club is because they couldn’t find that Irish bar that they wanted to go to. There are those who can dance. They got a shot at getting laid; if their spiky hair and unbuttoned shiny shirt have anything to say about it. Then there are those who dance, as if they’re getting laid at that moment. This is the guy who thinks everyone’s staring at him because he’s practically knocking up a girl on the dance floor. When in reality if anyone is looking at him, it’s only because they’re trying to figure out what a grown man is doing wearing a shell necklace. The girls dance in a big crowd with other girls to make it harder for the gyrating guys to hit on them. Even though meeting a guy is why the girls came to the bar, and whyat the end of the night they’ll complain the whole way home that no guys hit on them. The guys who dance in a big crowd with other guys do it to hit on the other guys dancing in the big crowd with other guys. At the end of the evening, all the lights in this warehouse of a bar go on at the same time, revealing just how ugly the person you’ve dancing with all night really is. Once the club goers spill out into the street you’ll find that one in four girls are crying, one in three dudes are ready to fight, one in two girls are calling Kelly a bitch, and one out of every one group of guys is explaining to the bouncer that the reason the bouncer shouldn’t beat the shit out of their buddy who threw up all over the bar because “Dude, it’s my buddies birthday”.

Preception Perception

Before a wedding, women will get together and give the bride gifts that will be conducive to their marriage; sex toys and tupperware. Guys get together and give things that could ruin a marriage; strippers and advice from other guys

This was my self introduction to the live monthly stand-up show Anecdotal Evidence in Brooklyn, NYC.

My thanks to everyone’s support and to Jimmy Fallon and his entire staff to let me be really weird in front of Bobby Brown.

What up yo, just Chilean like Bob Dilean

The Chilean Miners are finally being rescued. Which is good news. Except for Yonni Barrios whose wife and mistress who met each other during the ordeal are both waiting for him to surface. I’m not sure what his first words will be if he gets to the surface and sees those two standing there, but probably will along the lines of, “Okay…. thanks everyone…. you can lower me back down now.”

Doritos in Japanese is Doritos

This is a Japanese bag of Doritos. You have to wonder, at some point, is Japan just trying to be weird on purpose? They have to know, right? Japan is what you would get, if ‘hipsters’ ran everything.

Or maybe I’m wrong. Maybe it makes perfect sense. Maybe these Doritos taste just like holding a guy upside down by his legs with your foot in his crotch.

On bags of Doritos, like many packaged foods, it lists the website for Doritos. And this next thing is kind of an interesting fact; if you go to www, dot doritos, dot com, you can actually feel God’s disappointment of how you’re spending your time on earth.

THE GREATEST PARTY NIGHT EVER!!!

 It’s 1 a.m.. I’ve already muscled my way through the biggest headache of the evening which consists of coordinating a group of completely drunk people to leave a parking lot and agree on a singular place to meet up. We walk into the trendy club; hip looking cat behind the bar, a half dozen rocker looking patrons on over-plush amenities strewn through the art-deco establishment, DJ mixing together two different esoteric melodies together. I would have hated the place if I was in New York, but since I was in Kansas City I found the place incredibly charming. It was the end of a long weekend. I was super beat and with an early flight the next morning I wanted nothing more than to chill for about an hour with some buddies in the purple lit ambiance before turning in. After about a half an hour of hanging out in the basically empty, chill environment, some friend of a friend I met only an hour prior says, “Dude, we’re getting out of here and heading to some place more HAPPEN’N!”
“I beg your pardon”, I royally retorted.
“Dude, I an SO SORRY that we brought you here, we’re going to head some where that is straight up JUMP’N!”
This is what I don’t understand. I have a drink. I’m hanging with the people that I want to hang with. There is for the most part nobody else in the bar. I asked him, “What makes this other place so ‘happening’?”
He says, “There’s tons of people there!”
Why is that an attractive attribute? I say, “But I’m not going to talk to any of those people. I can not talk to those people here and not have to go anywhere.”
“But there are TONS of PEOPLE DUDE!!!!”
REALLY?!?! Tons of fucking people that I don’t give a shit about?!?!? This is what I don’t understand; in the past I’ve gone out with friends of mine, with their wives, and their wives want to go to some place that is packed and hard to get into. WHY?!
WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
What is the FUCKING POINT? You don’t know any of those people. You don’t even like any of those people. All you do when you get there is make fun of what the other people look like, and bitch about the weird interaction that you have in the bathroom, complain about how it’s impossible to get a beer, not shut up about how sweaty everyone is, the vomit that you stepped in on the dance floor, the cigarette burn that you got on your “going out clothes”, the “date rape cheer” that emits every time the “shots” song comes on, and how every guy in there hits on you even though that’s exactly what you wanted to have happen when you dressed like you did. You’re married. You are there with the person that you married, so you’re not there to hook up. A couple; given the choice between an empty bar and one that’s full, want to go to the full one, even though they won’t interact with one single person in that bar if they don’t have to. What’s the fucking point of being drawn to a place where you have no intention of interacting with the people there? The answer: To make yourself feel like you’re really making the most of the night. You know what makes me want to see what a high velocity bullet tastes like? When that Black Eyed Piss song comes on about how “Tonight’s going to be a good night”. And everyone starts singing the song like they actually believe what the lyrics are saying. Ima be Ima be Ima be tell'n you sump'n: It’s not going to be a good night. Tonight’s going to be like every other night. In fact those should be the lyrics:

Tonight’s the night
we sit around
And watch the game
Till about ten
Then we go out
It’s kinda lame
We’re at some bar
Watching the game

I know I’ll spill beer on my jeans
Throw up in my mouth; lose my cell phone and keys
Kelly is mad at debra and won’t let it go
I ask the cabby to stop by white castle on the way home

I walk in to a plate glass door
And then I do it again

I will say though that no matter how lame the night gets, at least the people that you are partying with are not the people in this video by 'The Sweet'. I've never seen a more awkward group assmebled in my life. They all look like people trying to figure out how their bodies work, the ol' aliens pretending to be human game, not one person in this music video can dance. Not even the black people that they seemed to have stuck in the corner with the front man for AC/DC. One fun thing to do is to try to figure out who is the most awkward and who has the deadest stare in their eyes. Mozoltov Black Eyed Peas, Mozoltov indeed!

The Salem Witch Trials, The Red Scare, and now...

This is a pretty amazing commentary on not just the “ground zero mosque” debate, but on our country’s perception of Muslims in general. I feel the overall point is that so much of our country of made up of Americans who have incredibly strong opinions about things they have not taken the time to inform themselves about. Media and politicians manipulate people’s perception of issues. The term ‘Ground Zero Mosque’ paints the image of an Aladdin looking building that would cast a shadow on what used to be the World Trade Center. The reality is that there are two blocks of buildings that are more than six stories tall separating the proposed Islamic center from the site of the twin towers and the World Trade Center Memorial. The “mosque” itself is a normal, Manhattan building over ten stories tall. It will primarly be a community center open to the public, with facilitates such as cooking school, a basketball court; only the top two stories will be used for prayer. But these points are just facts that those adamantly against the “ground zero mosque” haven’t taken the time to learn about. Perhaps my favorite point that Keith made above is that the whole reason we were supposedly in Iraq, is too protect the citizens of Iraq; who are Muslim. We will risk our lives to save Muslims, but don’t want them building a cooking school in lower Manhattan.

The minds of Americans are being manipulated by those who can gain from it. What’s there to gain? Politicians need the votes of Americans to have a career/celeberty/moneyforstrippers. What’s a better/easier campaign strategy? To tell voters to change how they think, or to inflame what they already perceive to breed success on election day. Sarah Palin said in a tweet regarding the building of the Islamic Center:
“We all know that they have the right to do it, but should they?”

Vast amounts of Americans already have a stigma towards Muslims, and she is perpetuating that. Polititions know that stating things like, “I will not let them build them build a mosque at ground zero; NOT IN MY AMERICA!!!” will resonate with voters. Voters will say, YES, I agree with how you think, you got my vote!” Politicians use fear and American pride to work up a frenzy on issues that aren’t even real.

And what does the media have to gain? Well what sells more papers, “Controversy on Ground Zero Mosque Continues!” or “Islamic Recreational Center Gets Permit”

Donald Trump pointed out that it’s insensitive for Muslims to put a community center that close to a tragedy caused by other Muslims. What an incredibly racist statement. If a black guy shot some kid on a playground, and six months later another black guy was playing basketball on a nearby basketball court. It would be outrageous if someone said, “Hey, I know that you have the right to play here, but there are a dozen other courts you could play at. Why do you have to play right here? I know that YOU specifically didn’t have ANYTHING to do with the tragedy, but people around here don’t really want a black person being a part of this area because of what that another black person did. In fact, I think you playing basketball here is incredibly insensitive”, that would obviously be an offensive racist outlook. We have a new racism in our country. Ignorance and anger cause Americans to be so blind to the new racism, they don’t even realize that themselves are being racist.

Don’t be manipulated. Inform yourself. Then decide who to hate.

HOW NOT TO BUY A VOLKESWAGON BUS

An excerpt from the book

'How Not To Buy A Volkswagen Bus' by Nick Vatterott

Apparently Tracy had taken off just before I had gotten to the garage the first time. I swear, if I was born ten minutes earlier, I would have never missed, or be late for anything in my life. Tracy was on a “short little errand”, to probably the only store in town. The only task now was to kill time. I grabbed my bike and decided to do a little riding inside the state park. I turned down an old path, long since overgrown with weeds and grass. The trail ended near what seemed to be a recreation area of some sort, some time ago. A relic of a picnic table was surrounding by weeds measuring in height taller than the table itself. A swing set whose swings had long since abandoned the area, now shifted it’s duties from supplying fond childhood memories, to rusting and collecting bird shit. A giant corroded crowbar leaned against the remains of a slide that looked like it had been beaten with a corroded crowbar. I leaned my bike against a tree that was used as post for a now faded sign. As the need for whatever information was on that sign dissipated so had the sign itself. I waded through the grasses, stepped up on the picnic table’s seat, plopped down on it’s top and just waited. There were five or six of these big weird ass bugs flying around the area. One of the smaller ones landed on my arm. I looked at it and thought, “Aww look, a baby weird ass bug.” The thing then bit me, and I swatted it down. It landed on the table next to a dirt caked glass jar. I looked at my enemy and pondered: do I let it live or take it’s life? Action movies have taught me that either he will one day return the favor by saving my life, or be my demise while uttering the phrase, "You should have killed me when you had the chance!" I placed the jar over him while I decided his fate. I noticed a weedless area just past the slide. I stood on top of the picnic table to see a giant round rusted disk, seemingly the main cog of a merry-go-round. Except it was upside down, and had many of its hand rails (the tiny banisters that four years hold on to for dear life) lying in a pile next to the round disk. Next to that were four bar-b-q pits. Except they were in pieces as well, four grills sat on top of each other right next to four posts in a pile next to four of the actual ‘pits’ themselves, clumsily stacked, all rusting into one solid object. It was as if merry-go-round and bar-b-q pits had all been neatly disassembled at one point. I hopped down from the table and took a step through the tall grass. My foot crashed into a pile of rusted chains. I looked down and to the right of the chains were several seats perfect for riding a swing set. Maybe these rides were never assembled at all. Perhaps this was a work in process, an idea started with gusto, and abandoned when the project became inconvenient. Not sure why, I bet at the time this would have been one of the main attractions of Veneta, Oregon. This could have been the thing that really put this town on the map.

COME VISIT VENETA,
NOW WITH SWING SET!

I wondered if the construction of the play area had been finished, if this place would have turned into something so forgotten. Ideas are common to everyone, but fewer have what it takes to see an idea through to it’s completion. Anyone can have inspiration, it’s what we do with that inspiration that separates us from what we are, from what we could be. I stepped back to the table and turned the glass prison over to let my infant attacker go. Its just too disheartening to see things meet their demise before ever getting a chance to exist.

What is our generation's stairway to heaven? I say 'Plush'. Others may say 'Smells like Teen Spirit'. Still other presume it's Hanson's (before they sold out) 'Mmmbop'. What do YOU think America?