Everybody Gets a Blog

You know what we need more of? We need more stuff telling us how awesome New York is.

I know, it might seem a little bit strange to set out specifically to make a movie about one city out of all the places in the world, but I'm worried that New Yorkers will start going through withdrawal if somebody doesn't bring out a completely pointless film to spooge all over them every five minutes. With Woody Allen in semi-retirement, we might be set upon by under-spooged Manhattanites at any minute.

Seriously, I don't understand what everybody's fixation is with the place. I mean, I can understand how it would look really cool if you were some immigrant from a third-world country (like Italy), but it's not just immigrants.

Just think about it. San Diego is a great place to live, but can you imagine any San Diegan saying — without irony — "I am proud to live in the greatest city in the world"? No. That's because they have some perspective and realize that a city is pretty much just a city.

I actually went to New York once, expecting to find a magical Utopia where everybody shits gold. You know what I found? A CITY.

And if you ask people to back up their claims about what makes this city so much better than the other 500 million in the world, after they get done gushing about how it's a "melting pot" (Wow! You mean they have blacks AND whites there? TOGETHER?) and how there are "things to do" (It's about time somebody invented those), the best they can come up with is how they came back from the 9/11 attacks.

Yeah, wonderful. They did a great job during those ensuing months of not having any attacks on them at all. No other city would have the bravery to do pretty much the only thing it could possibly do. Why, if Chicago had been attacked, the entire state of Illinois would have just jumped on their backs like possums. (Possible state motto: "New York — We're not like possums!") And shouldn't Washington be getting the same attention, then?

But the worst part isn't even all the talk about New York. It's how it turns seemingly worthwhile human beings into simpering panders.

"Dear New York," the Beastie Boys write, "this is a love letter."

A love letter? How much of an estrogen junkie does a rapper have to be to write a love letter? While 50 Cent is off singing about his magic stick, all they can come up with is, "New York, you can make it happen!" Way to write a Hallmark card, guys.

A friendly heads-up to all the rappers of the world: If you find that your latest creation has the same theme as a Mary-Kate and Ashley movie, you might want to consider another career. Hey, you've already got all the skills needed for the world's oldest profession.

Dear RPG players of the world:



Please hit yourself for me.



Love,

Chuck

Happy New Year, y'all! Did everybody make sure to keep stocked up on mistletoe? Here was my New Year's Eve:

1. Order Papa John's pizza.


2. Watch old episodes of The Tribe, which my sister just got on DVD. Laugh all you want — that's the best goddamn Kiwi ripoff of an old Star Trek episode ever.


3. Switch to MTV at midnight to catch Green Day playing "Longview" on the New Year's Eve thing. Green Day is the only thing capable of curing the musical illness inflicted upon us by Simple Plan, who have somehow made MTV even less goddamn watchable than Jackass did.


4. Post on a blog that nobody reads, but which has an awesome AP Stylebook-inspired design.

So, I heard somewhere from somebody that some people apparently died recently. Did you guys hear anything about that? Boy, I sure wish the media didn't try to cover this stuff up.

No, seriously, I'm about ready to go and punch every individual involved in broadcast journalism. It's only natural that they leapt in like a bunch of greedy sharks at the recent disaster in Asia, but their desperation to create a gripping, gut-wrenching story out of this gripping, gut-wrenching story is just plain pissing in the Sri Lankans' watery grave.

I saw at least three separate reports on the aftermath of the disaster tonight — and I only watched one news program. What's worse, the last report revealed that the death toll has climbed as high as 34,000 — meaning that this urgent third report on the same goddamn story was a mere 12 hours old. And of course, that count of three reports isn't including all the stories about old Thai men whose barbers may have visited Del Mar once in the 1930s (possibly) who died in the catastrophe. Taking those into account, on this one program, it was closer to 80 billion stories about southeast Asia.

Bear in mind, they don't want to waste our time with things that don't matter to us — like boring old organizations that will accept donations to deliver aid to the victims. Screw that. I really need to know if there were any supermodels vacationing over there. And those people who lost family members — how do they feel, anyway?

And the Worst Interview Skills Ever award goes to Larry King. He was interviewing some guy who didn't seem like much of an expert but at least knew what he was talking about. King, of course, was sliding by, asking all the obvious (i.e. dumb) questions that reporters will ask when such a random act of God happens. Apparently he had allotted too much time to the interview (maybe he thought there was more than meets the eye to a city getting knocked the shit out of by a tidal wave), so after he was done with the standard barrage, he stopped for a minute and then asked It.

His question: "How far back can we say these tsunamis have been occurring, Biblically speaking?"

Surprise, Larry — the Bible doesn't have any tsunamis. This is because it doesn't take place anywhere near the ocean, which is kind of required in order to get hit by a wave. However, tsunamis are caused by natural forces within the Earth interacting with the ocean, so it's pretty safe to say that tsunamis have been occurring as long as the oceans have existed. Not that we should expect a highly paid interviewer to possess this sort of basic knowledge about his subject matter.

I ask my one (and occasionally two) reader(s) to please join me in turning off this endless parade of bloated Sri Lankans floating on the water — and also to join me in punching Larry King in the head. Where it can cause the least real damage, you know.

Redbook magazine this month features the cover story Life as Mrs. Britney Spears. Just to cut it off at the bud, I don't want to hear anybody else saying that. She is Mrs. Kevin Federline. The title "Mrs." is equivalent to "the wife of." In order to be Mrs. Britney Spears, she would have to have found a husband who, by some strange coincidence, was also named Britney Spears.

Of course, given her apparent taste in men, that wouldn't have been too surprising, would it?

Went to a bar, had fun, watched chicks grope each other. Why do I not do this more often?

According to crack journalist Katie Couric, kids nowadays may be having "casual sex." On "The Daily Show" today, she told Jon Stewart that she's doing an investigative piece about a new phenomenon called "friends with benefits."

Okay, I know the bimbo is old enough to be a grandmother, but can she really be so thick as to stumble upon a story 20 years late and think she's going to shock the world?

Then — just to prove she wasn't joking, I guess — she went on to reveal that blowjobs are widely considered to be less emotionally intimate than proper sex.

Considering how hot she is for someone very likely on the other side of menopause, I have to believe she's just pulling that "Oh, I'm an innocent little flower who has never heard of this 'secks' thing" shit that women like to put on in public. That's annoying enough on its own (seriously, chicks — cut it out), but can she please not make us journalists look like dipshits in the process?