almost okay

2008-12-30T10:49:00.008-05:00

Man! What next? A plague of locusts?

We've been hit hard by bad weather over the past week here in Detroit, and we didn't even see the worst of it. First, a dumping of heavy snow, then freezing rain, then dense fog as the temperatures rose to record highs, then flooding and high winds that took down power lines. More snow is predicted for tonight.

The economic news gets worse every fucking day, Santa Claus shot an eight-year-old girl in the face, and Israel and Palestine are doing their best to annihilate each other again.

To top it all off, the only Christmas card I got this year was from my insurance agent. And that bitch never even met me. Hell, it's no wonder that I'm depressed.

One good thing about all this economic trouble, though: When was the last time you heard somebody talk about being afraid of catching bird flu?

* * * * * * * * * * *

Hey, speaking of that murderous Santa Claus... I was sitting on the couch watching the local news last weekend, just to see when the weather was going to break (and check out what fine young Ama Daetz was wearing), and the next thing I know I'm listening to the goddamned 9-1-1 call that went out when the bastard went on his bloody rampage.

What the fuck?!

How can the authorities release the actual tape of that? Isn't it some sort of invasion of the victims' privacy? If not, then what about my privacy? I didn't ask to hear the fucking thing. Don't get me wrong, people. I understand that it was a terrible, frightening situation that ended up in tragedy, but do we really need to hear the fear in the person's voice who called the cops while the deranged Kris Kringle mowed down his ex-wife and his in-laws? I think not, and was, therefore, duly horrified.

At least I had enough beer to outlast the ice storm and Ama was wearing that sweet little red number that fits her like a second skin.

* * * * * * * * * * *

The death of jazz trumpeter Freddie Hubbard marks the most recent celebrity passing this December. Hubbard's heart gave out just yesterday at age 70, as did the heart of pinup queen Bettie Page (85), who died earlier in the month. Joining them were Famous Monsters of Filmland founder Forrest J. Ackerman (92), and the talented Eartha Kitt (81), who died of colon cancer. Known far and wide as the most feline of the actresses to play the part of Batman's sexiest nemesis Catwoman, Kitt, who was also a singer, recorded the definitive version of 'Santa Baby' and, appropriately enough, passed on Christmas Day.

So, in closing, along with saying a heartfelt 'good riddance' to 2008, a special Almost Okay farewell goes out to everybody who left us this past year - famous or otherwise. Congratulations, you lucky pricks. You got the fuck off this rock before everything goes completely to Hell in 2009.

See you on the other side!

coolhandmarty@gmail.com

2008-12-29T09:22:00.000-05:00

2008-12-25T08:05:00.002-05:00

2008-12-22T08:29:00.001-05:00

2008-12-21T08:29:00.000-05:00

2008-12-20T09:59:00.000-05:00

2008-12-19T14:33:00.006-05:00

Dear Lyzako,

The same record-breaking storm that dumped snow on the Vegas strip has finally made its way to southern lower Michigan as predicted, tracking slowly along the I-94 corridor and across Detroit as I write this. I just now came inside, sweat-soaked from shoveling eight inches or so from the sidewalk and from in front of my Ranger, which I backed in and parked as close to the street as possible.

It's barely noon now and the forecast calls for the snow to taper off gradually throughout the rest of the day, with maybe a couple more inches of accumulation before it's all over.

There's wind on top of it, my friend, so it's blowing and drifting, too. You remember the term blowing and drifting, right? Of course you do. After all, you live in San Francisco now and I'm sure they must use the expression out there, but the kind to which I refer has nothing to do with what Jon Voight was doing in 'Midnight Cowboy'. Although in both cases, I suppose one of the hazards is getting the white stuff in your eyes.

Anyway, being at home in the middle of a winter storm on a lazy Friday with nothing better to do than make a pot of soup and listen to records isn't all bad. Gil Scott-Heron's on the turntable at the moment, singing about 'changing the world' and helping to drown out the low and steady hum of the snow blowers as the neighbors continue to frantically dig themselves out.

If the snow-blowing in the driveway next door goes the way it did last year, every north-facing window in my basement will be covered by now, producing a cozy, darkened space not unlike a comfortable underground cave. So comfortable, in fact, that I'm torn between getting some work done upstairs - sweep and mop the kitchen floor (long overdue), maybe shelve some records - and descending into that soft darkness for an afternoon double feature of 'Coffy' and 'Foxy Brown' while the snow continues to pile up and I pretend that it's 1977.

I think I'll put on some Hank Snow (in honor of the storm), make myself a sandwich and mull it over. But knowing my lazy nature, I'm guessing the double feature's going to win.

Holiday Greetings to You and Yours,
Marty Sherman

2008-12-18T10:12:00.008-05:00

What better artist to feature here this holiday season than the man who passed away on Christmas day just two short years ago?

That's right, I'm talking about James Brown.

Born James Joseph Brown, Jr. in the tiny South Carolina town of Barnwell during the Great Depression (soon to be known as the 'Not-So-Bad Depression' thanks to George W. Bush), the young Brown got the first of his many nicknames as a toddler. 'Junior' grew up dirt poor, and after his parents separated he lived with various family members before his father sent him to live with an aunt in Augusta, Georgia, where she worked as a whorehouse madame.

Seriously. You think I'd make something like that up?

Anyway, the young Brown soon found himself hustling to make whatever money he could get, shining shoes, washing dishes and dancing for dollars on the street. By the time he was a teenager he'd had his first brush with the law and wound up in reform school, where he acquired another nickname: 'Music Box'.

While behind bars, Brown honed his performing skills as part of a gospel quartet, and after he was released even tried his hand at boxing and semi-pro baseball before turning to music full-time. By the end of the fifties Brown and his group the Famous Flames were scorching the R&B charts with hits like 'Try Me' and 'Please, Please, Please'.

But it was during the decade of the sixties when Brown's fame and talent peaked. In 1963 Brown recorded what is still one of the best live albums of all time at Harlem's Apollo Theater, financing the entire operation himself and catapulting himself and his group to international stardom. By the middle of the decade, Brown's sound was also beginning to evolve into the groove-driven funky style for which he would forever be remembered, culminating in what many believe to be the first actual funk masterpiece, 'Cold Sweat' in 1967.

And the rest, as they say, is musical history.

Today's LP, 'A Soulful Christmas' came out in 1968, and along with James' not-so-usual Christmas fare, you also get his ground-breaking (and Caucasian-frightening) single 'Say it Loud, I'm Black and I'm Proud' - Parts 1 and 2. (For all you youngsters out there: the reason some songs had two parts was because back then, the singles were released on 7” vinyl records and you could only get so much song on one side, therefore it was necessary to split longer songs into two parts. These records also spun at a faster speed than LPs and were therefore often referred to as '45s'.)

I have to tell you that my copy is not in very good shape, but I only paid four bits for it, so what's the big deal if it skips and pops a little? (Again, for you youngsters: a 'bit' is a quarter, as in a quarter of a dollar. Remember that old high school cheer 'Two bits, four bits, six bits, a dollar'? No? Never mind then. Coincidentally, though, 45s often sold for four bits in the sixties. Plus tax, of course.)

When I ran a quick check on Ebay I was astonished to find clean copies listed for anywhere from seventy to a hundred bucks! I felt pretty smart listening to my fifty-center last night, even though I had to get up twice to move the needle after it got stuck on side one.

As to the music... well, it's vintage funk and the tunes are some of the best Christmas-themed music you could hope to hear. Several songs are just dirty, organ-driven funk grinds with a few bars of recognizable Christmas melodies thrown in, and the opener 'Santa Claus Go Straight to the Ghetto' continues to get seasonal radio play to this day.

'Say It Loud' became a mainstay for Brown's live shows as well, with the 'Hardest Working Godfather of Soul in Show Business' calling out the 'Say it loud' part and the audience chanting back 'I'm black and I'm proud!'

It seems like Brown released hundreds of LPs, and this one, like most of his King releases, is a truly nice package. In addition to depicting Brown on the cover as the skinniest Santa of all time, the back shows James posing in several photos 'With His People' as though he were a minister and not just an entertainer. Gospel and funk singer Marva Whitney (who was performing with James at the time) is shown in one photo with the caption 'Dedicated Soul Sister' below it.

Now see, this is another argument for why LPs are better than CDs. When I bought this one I didn't even know if it would play. In fact, the price tag had 'skips' written right on it next to the price. But I bought it anyway, taped cover, scratches and all. Simply because it was a cool thing. Just the cover was cool enough to justify what I paid; hell I would have gone four bits if that's what they wanted.

Now, when was the last time you saw somebody buy a CD that had scratches all over it just so they could look at the booklet?

I'll tell you when: Never.

And don't even get me started on the mp3s!

So, in closing I'd like to wish a very Merry Christmas to all of you out there, and a special R.I.P. to the 'King of Funk'... 'Soul Brother #1'... the fabulous Jaaaaames BROOWWWNNNN!!!!!

2008-12-17T16:14:00.000-05:00

2008-12-17T12:51:00.001-05:00

2008-12-17T08:05:00.000-05:00

2008-12-16T10:16:00.005-05:00

Okay, so this guy probably should have been Ass of the Week last week, but his steadfast refusal to step down or admit any wrongdoing has earned him a spot this fine Tuesday. Not to mention he's sporting the worst haircut on a public figure since Donald Trump.

After being arrested and accused of trying to sell Barack Obama's vacant Senate seat, Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich has boldly continued forward, arrogantly claiming that he has done nothing wrong, despite the fact that federal wiretaps document him using language with some of his cohorts to suggest that the vacant seat wasn't going to be given away 'for free'. Of course, under law, the Governor is responsible for appointing a replacement to the post.

Is this a Republican scheme to taint the image of our new President, or just another example of the widespread corruption that permeates our government at every level? I'm inclined to believe that it's a little of both, but then again I live here in Detroit, where our former mayor is doing jail time and several City Council members are under investigation for taking bribes.

I also hate the Republicans, so I'm conflicted.

It's disheartening, isn't it folks? Here we are on the brink of catastrophic financial failure right at the height of the Holiday season, due in large part to the past eight years of Republican economic and foreign policy, and what do we have to look forward to as our new Democratic President takes office? Constant news coverage of this ridiculous scandal over his vacated Senate seat and an attempt to link him by association with Blagojevich, mostly because they were members of the same political party in the same state at the same time in history.

And believe me, it's a plus that Blagojevich has a name that makes him sound like a member-in-good-standing of the K.G.B. It scares all those people who were stupid enough to think Obama is 'Arab'.

No, this is just too juicy a news tidbit for it to die anytime soon, so we'll be stuck with it until it's all over, whatever the outcome. Legal analysts are now reporting that the evidence they've gathered pertaining to this particular charge against the Illinois Governor (Blagojevich has been an ongoing target of a number of investigations since taking office in 1997) may be too flimsy to stand up in court.

Ah, but it sure do play well on Fox News, do it not?

Today's Craig's List girl Candy is running a Holiday special between now and New Year's Day. Buy one get one free! I'm talking BBBJ, CIM, trips to Greece, France and the Swiss Alps... you name it! Also offering nude massage and erotic dancing, as well as full-service escorts for upscale gentlemen. Check Candy out on the Chicago page and tell her Sherman sent you!

2008-12-15T13:01:00.004-05:00

My Dear Lyzako,

I find myself somewhat at a loss for words today, the subject of this missive a difficult one for me to broach even under the best and funniest of circumstances. So, rather than easing you into it, I'll just say it plainly right up front: A friend of mine died last week.

Not someone you know, mind you, and someone I looked to mainly as a business associate, for sure. But our relationship wasn't based solely on business; Rick was also a person with whom I had shared many humorous moments over coffee or lunch during the course of the past four years while we helped each other limp forward as self-employed individuals in this increasingly hostile economic climate.

In fact, just the week prior to his passing Rick had been here at the house, where we brainstormed over one of his new schemes and drank a pot of strong coffee before he treated me to a lunch of grape leaves and hummus at the new Anita's Kitchen in Ferndalia. I had never seen him more upbeat and positive.

Last Tuesday afternoon, after having just spoken to him via phone several times the day before, I retrieved the voice mail from my cell phone containing the bad news. It was as if a door had closed and locked tight, suddenly knowing that I would never have another conversation with Rick - about work or otherwise. No more coffee, and not even one more lunch.

It's the way of all flesh, I know. And to make too much of it would be as wrong as ignoring his passing altogether. But because of circumstances (he was a mere fifty-five years old) and the suddenness, it has left me stunned and contemplating my own life even after a full week of easing back to reality.

I think you would have liked Rick. I know you would have loved his memorial.

It was standing room only while family and friends each took turns telling wonderfully comical stories about Rick's past, each anecdote funnier than the previous one. Two hours passed while the crowded room swelled alternately with tears and belly laughs and we all got to know Rick a little better. Especially me.

I had only known Rick for a relatively short period of time, and when I began to hear the tales of his crazed partying as a young man, his deep love of sports that included an insane allegiance to the University of Michigan football program among other things - well, I was almost jealous of all the others for having known him for so many years.

We heard from his sister, his brother, his niece (Rick had no children of his own), his wife and several devoted friends. A member of the current line-up of the Four Tops (also a friend of the family) dedicated a song to Rick, sang it a cappella as he stood at the podium, his voice breaking on occasion, tears streaming down the cheeks of every last person in the room by the time the final note had reverberated to silence.

It was the best funeral I have ever attended.

Which brings me to my point: I'm counting on a similarly upbeat eulogy from you, my friend, when my time comes. I know, I know. It's a lot of pressure and there's no guaranteeing that you will outlast me. But should you, I am hoping you have enough stories at the ready to crack up the people in attendance at my service as often as they did at Rick's.

You see, I want mine to be at least the second best funeral I ever attend. You can even sing if you like.

Cheers and Warm Regards,
Marty Sherman

PS: If there's any saving grace to all of this, the man passed about as sweetly as anyone can hope for. After hitting the sack early last Monday, his heart gave out in the middle of the night. He was home. In his own bed. No hospitals, no tubes, no sad ebbing of life over days or weeks or months or years. Who could ask for better?

2008-12-14T10:02:00.000-05:00

2008-12-10T10:21:00.002-05:00

Two days passed. I didn't sleep much. Mostly I drank and I wept. I wept until the tears stopped flowing, then I drank some more.

While it was true that Jackie had been a a real ball-busting bitch since the first two years of our marriage, I still felt bad about having killed her, even if it had been in self-defense. And the fact that her hacked up body was now anonymously composting in landfills two thousand miles from her home and what little family she had left in the world was causing me even more remorse.

But somehow I was completely at ease with the idea of having several bags of flesh that I'd personally stripped from her skeleton sitting in my basement freezer. It was an odd feeling. I can only compare the anticipation of our first meal together since she'd left this earth with the feeling I used to get as a child on Christmas Eve. I was a little giddy.

The simplest solution for preparing the meat was the dehydrator. I pulled it out of its box, dusted it off and plugged it in to see if it worked. A little red light on the side came on so I unplugged it and put it on the counter to the left of the stove. Then I flipped through the instruction booklet until I found the recipe for turkey jerky, checked to make sure I had all the ingredients, put on my apron and got to work.

The recipe said that the meat should be thinly sliced and that it was easier to handle when it was frozen. Good. Finally I'd done something right. I pulled one of the gallon bags from the freezer and put it in the sink. After a few minutes of thawing, I dumped the contents, maybe two or three pounds of what looked to be thigh meat, onto a plastic cutting board and used a serrated carving knife to slice it as best I could into eighth-inch thick strips.

The marinade called for Worcestershire and soy sauce, some onion powder, garlic powder and lots of cracked black pepper. I decided to toss in some honey. Just to sweeten it up a little, I thought, and suddenly I was struck by the memory of the first time I'd met Jackie ten years before.

Jackie was a struggling actress back then. Between failed auditions, she made ends meet by waitressing at Angelo's, a small diner in LA where I used to stop on my way to work for a coffee to go. “You take cream and sugar, Sugar?” Jackie had said to me that first time, a slightly wicked grin working one corner of her mouth. Her eyes caught the sunshine bouncing off the lunch counter and sparkled like chestnut-colored gems as she looked at me.

“Just dip your pinkie in there.” I said. “That should sweeten it just about right.” I knew right then that I was in love.

With the memory of Jackie's smiling young face still fresh in my mind, I put the meat back in the freezer bag, poured the marinade over, zipped up the bag and squished it all together with my hands to make sure all sides of the flesh were exposed to the seasoning. A few slow tears leaked and ran down my cheeks.

The recipe recommended an overnight soak in the marinade, so I popped the bag into the fridge and grabbed a beer. I was sobbing aloud by then, and could taste the salt of my tears as they began to run freely past my trembling lips. The early autumn sun had just begun to set, a beautiful orange glow settling over the trees in the back yard, warm yellow light slanting into the kitchen and across the scarred top of the pine table where I sat. I could hear birds.

My favorite time of year, I thought. Autumn. Jackie never liked it, though. Said she knew autumn just meant winter was coming, and that girl hated the cold weather.

I poured a shot of bourbon and knocked it back. Then I poured another one.

* * * * * * * * * * *

Hours later I woke up with my arms outstretched on the table and my head face down on top, drool running out of my mouth. Several empty beer cans stood on the table in front of me and the bottle of Jim Beam lay on its side, less than a shot's worth left inside. The room was pitch black and I had the sense that something, some sound maybe, had awakened me.

Pain shot through my neck and shoulders as I pushed myself upright. I picked up the fifth and drained what was left, squinted at the clock on the microwave. It read 11:17. I realized then that I could hear the sound of my cell phone ringing from the living room. “Who could be calling this late?” I said aloud before stumbling towards it.

As I reached the coffee table I looked down to check who it was, saw that the screen displayed the words 'Private Number'. I make it a rule to never answer calls from people I don't know, but this one felt strange, so I picked up.

“Hello?”

“Hey, Marty. What's happenin'?” A man's voice, vaguely familiar but I couldn't put a name to it.

“Who is this?”

“I'm hurt that you don't recognize my voice.”

“Who... is... this?” I repeated with measured emphasis on each word, small fear and anger beginning to rise within me.

“It's your cousin-in-law, bro'.”

Suddenly, a face in my memory matched the voice. It was Andy.

1... 2... 3... 4... 5... 6... 7...

2008-12-09T10:53:00.000-05:00

2008-12-08T12:05:00.008-05:00

Happy Birthday, Angel Kelly!

According to various Internet sources, Angel was born on December 7, 1962, which makes her a gently aging forty-six years old. Don't tell anybody, though, because according to her MySpace page she's trying to pass for a decade younger.

Born Pamela Moore in Lansing, Michigan, Angel made her mark on the adult film industry right at the end of the golden era of porn and at the very beginning of the video age. Most people don't realize this, but Angel Kelly was actually the first female black porn star to have scripts (yeah, they used to write scripts for these things) written for her as the lead.

During the course of her adult film career, Angel appeared in nearly two-hundred videos, starring in dozens of them and even directing a couple herself. She appeared in many all-black films, of course, but Angel made a name for herself doing interracially-themed movies (see my earlier review of 'Guess Who Came at Dinner?') starring opposite well-known white performers of the time, including John Holmes and the infamous 'Hedgehog' himself, Ron Jeremy.

Today's featured movie 'Alice in Whiteland' was shot in 1988, smack dab in the middle of her six-years in the industry. A follow-up to the all-black 'Alice in Blackland' (go figure) from the same year, this movie is a perfect example of Angel at the height of her popularity being matched with a mostly-white cast.

Based very, very, VERY loosely on the children's story by Lewis Carroll, 'Whiteland' gets right to the point when Angel, slumbering nude in her bed, is awakened by a tall white man who appears out of thin air and makes the hands disappear from her alarm clock by snapping his magical fingers. Within seconds the dude is on top of her and Angel gets her first 'taste' of 'Whiteland'.

But fucking isn't the only thing they do in 'Whiteland'. Oh, no. For some unexplained reason Angel is forced to endure golf and tennis lessons (her second scene is a hot girl-on-girl with her tennis instructor), before she's allowed to relax by the pool and work on her tan. Let me tell you, folks, a Williams sister she ain't. When she finally throws down her racquet in frustration, she actually misses the ground!

As a bonus, fans of 80's bombshell Keisha will be treated to a pair of scenes featuring the latina starlet, neither of them including Angel, however. The ubiquitous and tightly-toned Nina Hartley also appears in one scene.

My copy was purchased from the 'Adults Only' section of Ebay for a mere six bucks plus shipping. The box is a little beat up, but the tape played fine. My only gripe is that the screen went straight to snow the minute Angel delivered her final line, almost like the tape had snapped and been repaired. It was a little jarring, especially since Li'l Marty (still standing straight up and drooling) and myself were hoping Angel would put out one more time. Oh well.

Angel tried a brief modeling comeback some ten years ago and currently resides in Memphis, Tennessee where she runs Angel Kelly Enterprises, a booking agency that specializes in promoting local rap performers. Rumor has it she's working on an autobiography, which yours truly simply can't wait to read. Right on, Angel! Write on!

Seriously, I would be more than a little interested in her take on the adult film industry and her fellow performers. Semi-famous leading man Jerry Butler (in his own book 'Raw Talent'), compared Angel's looks to Sammy Davis, Jr. and claimed that she had to be told early in her career that she needed to douche so that folks could stand to go down on her.

I just can't believe it. Angel... Baby... Say it isn't so!

2008-12-07T08:10:00.001-05:00

2008-12-05T12:46:00.001-05:00

2008-12-04T08:06:00.001-05:00

2008-12-03T16:27:00.000-05:00

2008-12-02T12:50:00.015-05:00

Folks, I apologize. I was wrong when I said I thought I was almost back to normal. I'm not.

First off, I suppose most people who know me will tell you flat out that I've never been anywhere near normal to start with. Whatever 'normal' actually means. But hey, at the time I said that I was talking about 'normal' for me. And I really thought I had gotten over the hump.

But like I said earlier, I couldn't have been wronger.

I've been nursing a sore shoulder for a month now and it makes me feel like I'm a hundred years old, no shit. Everything I do, from wiping my ass to picking my nose to jerking off, causes me pain and I can't exactly stop doing all those things, now can I?

And trust me, I'm not very clever with the left hand. The other morning I got up and plopped on the stool for my morning bowel movement. My right shoulder was still paining me after a night of fitful sleep, so I groggily decided to use my left hand for the clean up. Well, long story short, it was a messy one, folks. I couldn't keep the tissue bunched properly in my left hand, and before it was all over I wound up sticking my middle finger right through the toilet paper and up my dung-smeared bunghole.

All before I'd even brushed my teeth! And how about flossing afterward? Believe me when I say this, there isn't enough hot water and soap in the world to get a shit-covered digit clean enough to stick in your mouth!

I've tried to just suck it up and keep going, but it gets hard. It's not easy to enjoy a good hearty laugh when a mere chuckle causes pain to shoot down from my neck to my shoulder. At night, after a day's worth of use, it feels like somebody has an ice pick that they've heated in an open flame stuck right into the tender spot.

Oh, well. After six beers the pain almost goes away. Unfortunately, after three decades of that kind of 'pain control', so has a lot of my liver function.

* * * * * * * * * * *

This past Friday, 'Black Friday' as the day after Thanksgiving has become known, we witnessed a pair of shootings and a trampling to death, all perpetrated by impatient shoppers trying to buy the newest, cheapest crap that God knows everybody needs in order to make their holiday right. Retailers in their infinite wisdom have sprung this hoax on the unsuspecting herd to ratchet up the old bait-and-switch scam in order to double sales.

How does that work, you ask? I'll tell you: First, they get a limited number of 'special' items in each store location and advertise the hell out of them... let's say a laptop computer for example. They put an astonishingly low price on the damn thing, tell everybody that there's only a certain number of said items available, and then decide that they'll open on Black Friday at five in the goddamn A.M.

This produces a long line of mindless retards - no wait, retarded people are too smart for this... hmm... Anyway, people line up like sheep starting right after Thanksgiving dinner waiting for their chance to take advantage of this unbelievable deal. After standing around all night in the cold, it's no wonder that the anxious and frustrated herd gets a tad dangerous.

Shit, I can't even stand in line for ten minutes at the CVS without wanting to kill somebody.

So then the doors open and whooooooosh! The crowd rushes in and tramples the poor bastard who unlocked the place. To DEATH! Or a gun battle breaks out over who's going to get the last fucking Playstation!

Hell, I wouldn't stand in line overnight with the likes of folks like that if Jesus Christ himself was handing out gold bars!

The end result of all this madness is that the vast majority of that throng of impatient shoppers won't even come close to getting the item that they went there for in the first place. A crew of well-schooled pitchmen will immediately substitute another, similar item for the one that has just sold out, the catch being that this other laptop that they happen to have plenty of, costs twice as much as the bargain one that they advertised.

And if they're out of Playstations, you might as well just forget it. Not only will they not be getting any more of those in until after the first of the year, but you can't even settle on an XBox. Trust me on this, kids are so spoiled these days that if you got an XBox for some brat who's specifically asked for a Playstation, he'll look at you like you gave him a dog turd when he opens that gift come Christmas morning.

So from here on out, I put forth that 'Black Friday' shall be known for the deaths it has caused through senseless greed and ugly capitalism, not by the fact that one fucking shopping day a year is expected to keep our retail industry from losing money.

* * * * * * * * * * *

Finally, some long overdue shout-outs to my loyal readers... all fifteen of you...

Helloooo California! North AND South! And Florida... Hey Nancy, whussup? How's the knee healing? A nod to all my loyal Michigander readers, too. And hey, I can't forget about those bastards out in the state of Washington... How's it going, you Mountlake Terrace motherfuckers?!

Of course I'd be remiss if I didn't acknowledge all the international readers as well... most of them being Kiwis, Aussies or Brits. For some reason, I don't get many readers from non-English speaking countries.

I guess 'dung-smeared bunghole' doesn't translate all that well into French.

coolhandmarty@gmail.com

2008-11-30T07:27:00.000-05:00

2008-11-28T17:40:00.000-05:00

2008-11-28T16:54:00.000-05:00

2008-11-24T19:49:00.003-05:00

Muh-hy Duh-hear Luh-ly-zhacko,

Whudayizhdish?

Muh-hunday? Noshid! Sshiiiiiiiddt! H'itbarely shuh-heemslyg Shuh-hunday...hic...ta me! H'I dunnowherethuh wuh-wuh-wheekennwenn, muhann! Budizzgone! Jushlikethad! Luh-luh-l'hoooongone!

HEY, Duh-hid h'I tellya? H'I hurdmyharm! NoSHIDT! N'ho, n'hot the h'wone h'I buh-buhroke. Thuh H'OTHER h'wone! Thuh... lemmesheee... thuh ruh-right hwone!

Huh?

N'ho, h'I buh-buh-buhroke muh-mhy lefff hwone. A cubbleyearzhago... Y'hoodrovemearounn... ruh-ruh- memmer? Tothuhbangk! Memmer?

W'hell, ish a luh-luhooong shtory, buhut, h'I buhroke muh-muh-my ruhight h'wone, doo! W'hennIw'huzhinnasixssshgrade.

Muh-man, thadfirshdime... wooo, waddabitzh! HurdlikeaMUHTH'RFUGG'R...hic!

Thuh-thuh... sheckundime... noddzhomush...

'Cuz h'I wazzh druh-druh-druhunck! Thuh sheckundime! Hah!

Sheers'n'Wuh-hormregardzhhh!
Fuh-hoster Broogsh Sherman

P Esh: H'it h'ain't buh-buh-broke thishdime! H'it'sh jush shprain'd! BuddidHUUURRTZZZZ....!!!

2008-11-23T09:34:00.000-05:00

2008-11-21T10:50:00.005-05:00

I think I'm finally getting back to normal, folks.

That election took a lot out of me, you know? And after the election, all this bullshit with the stock market and the auto companies going bankrupt... well, it's enough to kill anyone's sense of humor. I can't even look at my IRA anymore. And if I hear one more so-called 'news report' that is predicting a dire retail season for Christmas this year, I think I'm gonna scream. Hey! It's not news until it's happened! You can report about your horrible sales AFTER Christmas is over!

I firmly believe that a huge part of what's wrong with all of this crap - the stock market, the auto companies, and on and on - is our instant access to information coupled with so-called 'expert' commentators telling us what things are going to be like NEXT quarter. And with a half-dozen twenty-four hour news channels like CNN and MSNBC repeating the 'news' over and over and over (not to mention all the completely-biased talk radio shows that are constantly tweaking our fears) it's no wonder we panic when the shit starts to hit the fan.

Well, I'm ready. Let the fucking shit fly, for crying out loud! I can't take it any more!

* * * * * * * * * * *

Tell me this: when did they start welding the goddamned tops onto the shampoo bottles? Huh? Used to be I could unscrew the cap and run some water into the bottle to make sure I'd used all the precious soap inside before dutifully tossing it into the recycling bin. No more! I sprained my wrist the other day trying to get the top off the last nearly-empty bottle I had and I never got all the shampoo out! Why on earth would they do that?! Who decides these things? The Republicans?

I tried to picture myself in the meeting at the shampoo company where some genius says: “Hey, why don't we just make it so the top doesn't come off? That way, people will have a tough time using up all the shampoo and we can force them to buy another bottle since they can't get those last two washes out of what's left inside?”

“Why, that's a stupendous idea, Goodman, my good man! It will add pennies to our bottom line and frustrate the bejeezus out of the old folks at the same time! I think this calls for a promotion. How does Regional Vice-President of Tom-Foolery sound to you?”

Personally, I've just about decided to stop washing my hair altogether.

Remember, these are the same evil shampoo people who came up with 'Lather, rinse, repeat' thinking we were dumb enough to wash our hair TWICE every time we took a shower.

* * * * * * * * * * *

I was up until two o'clock last night cleaning my room. I think I've finally got to the point after my failed marriage where I can get back into the dating scene, so I wanted my bedroom to be nice, just in case I can convince some poor woman to come home and 'do' me.

After I had swept up four year's worth of dust (I swear the vacuum bag felt like it was a pound heavier when I was done), I carefully organized my porn magazines by category and date, placing them in cardboard boxes instead of the haphazard stacks that had been sitting on the floor along one wall next to the bed. That way, should whoever the lucky girl be want to get right to the classic, older porn, she'll be able to find it more easily because now it's in its very own box which is cleverly marked 'VINTAGE PORN'.

See how thoughtful I am?

Wish me luck!

Oh, and T.G.I.F., you bastards!

coolhandmarty@gmail.com

2008-11-20T10:15:00.000-05:00

2008-11-16T08:51:00.000-05:00

2008-11-14T08:07:00.020-05:00

Since the old lady moved out I've been trying to get things back the way I like them. It's taken three plus years but I finally rescued a bunch of records from temporary banishment in the basement back to their rightful spot on the first floor. So far I've moved about 2400 LPs and several boxes of 45s, so this time around I thought I'd spotlight a couple of my favorite picture sleeves. Enjoy!

Steve Martin used to be the funniest comedian out there way back in the 70's. I first remember him from early appearances on the 'Mike Douglas Show' where he played banjo with a trick arrow through his head while spouting non sequiturs. Even though his act left Mike and his audience more baffled than tickled, Martin persevered, and by the time I got to college he was playing university campuses across the country and selling more records than Elvis.

Born in Waco, Texas and raised in southern California, Martin studied philosophy in college before dropping out to pursue comedy full time. He worked as a writer on the 'Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour' (the staff of writers there won an Emmy in 1969), Glen Campbell's show and on Sonny and Cher's show, where he also appeared occasionally in skits.

After polishing his own routine in local comedy clubs, Martin moved up to opening for musical acts like The Carpenters and The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. (Ironically, when I saw him at EMU in the late seventies, Lovin' Spoonful founder John Sebastian was opening for him and the audience could barely sit through the music, shouting 'We want Steve!' until the poor bastard finally sang the theme from 'Welcome Back Kotter' and exited stage right.)

Steve worked his way up to an appearance on the 'Tonight Show', and, along with appearances on SNL and 'The Gong Show', picked up enough steam to get a record deal. His first album 'Let's Get Small' garnered Martin a national audience and the punchline from one of his bits, 'Excuuuu-uuuse me!' became a catch phrase that swept the nation.

The single 'King Tut' came from Martin's second LP, 'A Wild and Crazy Guy' (which also became a basis for a recurring bit on SNL featuring himself and Dan Aykroyd). Both of his first two albums won Grammys for Best Comedy Record and 'Wild and Crazy Guy' shot to the #2 position on the Billboard charts, propelled by 'King Tut' , which went all the way to #17 on the Hot 100 in 1978.

After conquering the recording industry and stand up comedy, Martin set his sights on Hollywood, writing and starring in his first film, a short called 'The Absent-Minded Waiter', which won an Oscar nomination in 1977. From there he went on to be directed by Carl Reiner in 'The Jerk', Martin's first starring vehicle and probably still the funniest of all his movies.Since then, Martin has appeared in and/or written and/or served as executive producer for dozens of films, including 'Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid' (1982), 'The Man With Two Brains' (1983), 'Little Shop of Horrors' (1986) and 'Dirty Rotten Scoundrels' (1988). He even made it to mainstream pictures, playing straight roles in tamer stuff like 'Parenthood' (1989), 'Father of the Bride' (1991) and 'Bringing Down the House' (2003) - which also featured Queen Latifah, and recently starred alongside Beyonce as Inspector Clousseau in the 2006 'Pink Panther' remake.

An accomplished banjo player, Martin shares a Grammy for Best Country Instrumental Performance (along with several other banjo players, including the legendary Earl Scruggs) for their 2001 recording of 'Foggy Mountain Breakdown'.

Steve's also authored several books, ranging from his 1979 comedy release 'Cruel Shoes' to last year's autobiography 'Born Standing Up'.

To this day, Martin remains a regular host of 'Saturday Night Live', and is running neck-and-neck with Alec Baldwin for most appearances as host of the popular late night comedy show, and rumor has it there will be a second 'Pink Panther' movie some time next year.

I have to be honest, though, I think Steve 'jumped the shark' with 'Parenthood', and I couldn't bring myself to even watch 'Pink Panther' (even with Beyonce in almost every frame) because the trailer for it made him look so bad compared to the late, great Peter Sellers. But you gotta love this guy! He just keeps plugging away!

Speaking of plugging away, my comedy records (including copies of Martin's LPs) are still in boxes sitting on the kitchen floor while my back recovers from moving my 78s, my jazz vocals, my country and western, my R & B and several hundred miscellaneous records last weekend. Unfortunately, all the first floor shelves are full and the comedy records have to go up one more flight of stairs.

I figure I should have everything where it belongs by the time Barack Obama starts his second term. What's that you say? I'm lazy? YOU think I'M lazy?

Well, excuuuuuuu-uuuse ME!

2008-11-11T08:10:00.003-05:00

My Dear Lyzako,

Our first snowfall of the season came just before the morning rush yesterday, and although it wasn't significant in terms of being measurable, it certainly caused some problems on the west side, where many ramps were closed due to icy conditions. Several spin-out accidents were reported.

I managed to get where I needed to be without a fuss, though, the snow affecting things far less the further east I traveled across the metro area.

During the course of the day, as I toiled away, every muscle in my body aching and burning from the strain of the past week's labor, I couldn't help but feel the effects of Father Time, who suddenly seems to be pushing me along at breakneck speed. By the time Happy Hour arrived, I was exhausted, and two tall Blue at BW3 was all I could handle before coming home and collapsing across my bed.

I slept more than ten hours last night, the first time I've had more than six straight in I can't remember when.

Incidentally, thanks to Daylight Savings Time, much of Happy Hour now occurs after sunset and will continue to do so until well into February, the icy hand of Winter finally gripping this part of the globe and robbing us of sunshine.

Speaking of being robbed, I feel as though the past few months have truly robbed me of my sense of humour. (I use the English spelling of the word here to emphasize the gravity of the situation.) Between the slumping economy and the fears of another great depression, the War in Iraq and worries over the new Administration's ability to solve all our problems in time for me to enjoy a prosperous retirement one day (I can't even look at my IRA statement without cringing), I have little time to laugh.

It used to be that I could make a joke of whatever happened on any given day, but my ability to do so has been severely hampered and I begin to fear that it may well have deserted me for good. For example, based on yesterday's events:

“Did you hear the one about the man and his wife who both got fired on the same day six weeks prior to Christmas? No? Well, looks like they aren't going to be helping the retail numbers any time soon. And speaking of retail, did you hear that Circuit City just filed for bankruptcy? Yeah, they did. Industry analysts are saying that if the economy keeps going the way it is, you may actually have to travel TO China to get your new flat screen television. By boat.”

See what I mean? Pathetic, is it not?

And although I'm anxious to get beyond the Bush years and into the Obama era, there is no shortage of folks who will volunteer their opinions of our President-elect to dampen my enthusiasm. I've heard that Rush Limbaugh has already begun blaming the worsening economic climate on the Democrats, calling this the beginning of the 'Obama recession'. It's difficult to laugh at comments like that, especially knowing that so many people believe them. So many stupid, stupid unfunny people.

So here I sit, my friend in dire need of a joke or humourous observation that would conjure up a belly laugh and, at least momentarily, make me forget all the troubles of the modern world. All my troubles, to be selfishly exact.

Which brings me back to you. At one point in the not-so-distant past, I could count on your wry observations and steady wit to get me past my day-to-day woes. Happy Hour was spent in your company at least twice a week, if not more like five times, and I now understand what a luxury that truly was to have someone with an arsenal of fresh jokes at the ready and the skill to administer them at just the right moments. To say that I miss it would be an understatement.

But alas, life moves on and things change.

Not always for the better.

Still (Barely) Getting By on My Wit and Charm,
Sad Sack Sherman

2008-11-10T07:42:00.000-05:00

2008-11-09T07:41:00.000-05:00

2008-11-05T21:31:00.001-05:00

2008-11-05T21:13:00.007-05:00

The Nightmare

“Whuh, where am I? Hello?”

“Yes?”

“Who are you?”

“Never mind who I am. What do you remember?”

“Hmmm... The last thing I remember was... was watching television.”

“And...?”

“I wanna say I was watching something about church. No, wait! It was something about politics! The election! That's right! The goddamned election! Who's the President? And WHERE in the fuck AM I?”

“Hell.”

“Hell?!”

“Yes, Hell.”

“Well, if I'm in Hell, then who the Hell won the election?!!”

“Excuse me?”

“WHO THE FUCK IS THE GODDAMNED MOTHERFUCKING PRESIDENT?!!”

“You mean of the United States?”

“FOR CHRIST'S SAKE YES! THE UNITED FUCKING STATES!!”

“John McCain.”

“AAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGAAAAAAHHHHAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHG GGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHGGGGGGGHHHHHHAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAHHHHHHHHGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

- Ye Olde Blowharde

2008-11-03T14:43:00.000-05:00

2008-11-03T10:59:00.001-05:00

2008-11-02T08:45:00.000-05:00

2008-10-31T11:01:00.001-04:00

2008-10-31T09:34:00.000-04:00

2008-10-30T10:25:00.000-04:00

2008-10-29T12:51:00.004-04:00

Sleep didn't come easily that first night. I lay in bed and stared at the ceiling while I planned my next move.

Getting rid of what was left of Jackie's body would require some risk and I wasn't looking forward to it. It had to be done, though; no body, no evidence, no crime. By four o'clock I had made a decision and I could feel some calm ease into me. Between that calm and the fatigue brought on from dismembering Jackie I had reason enough to sleep, and I did. Luckily, I didn't dream.

When I woke up I made a pot of coffee, filled a travel mug and drove to the suburbs. I scoped out the bottle returns at several grocery stores, finding a half-dozen likely candidates with automated counters that were in the lobby and away from easy view of the cashiers. My plan was to hide Jackie's remains amongst my beer cans and then toss them in the trash bit by bit as I cashed in a portion of the returnables at each store, spreading what was left of Jackie from West Bloomfield to Sterling Heights.

The garbage man would take care of the rest.

With any luck at all, the bones would be compacted and buried in a landfill before the cops even discovered she was missing.

I drove back home, dumped all my empties into several large trash bags and loaded them, along with the smaller bags containing Jackie's remains, into the back of the Ranger.

By the time I got to the first store, there was a line at the Kan-Smacker and the light on top was flashing to indicate one of the bins was full. A disinterested bagger dressed in a red smock with the store's logo on the pocket came out and emptied the bin, reset the machine. The guy in front of me continued feeding his empties while I started to sweat.

When it was my turn, I rolled my shopping cart up to the machine and started pushing the cans in. In the bottom of the trash bag I'd put roughly one-fifth of the smaller bags containing Jackie's bones, and once I'd fed the last can in, I punched the button for my receipt, wadded up the bag and pushed it into the trash right next to the machine. In case somebody was watching, I did my best to make it look as though the bag had no weight by gathering it up in both arms before stuffing it into the can. If anybody did notice that something was inside, I figured they'd just think it was bottles that the machine wouldn't take.

Somewhat relieved that I'd got off to a good start, I went inside and picked up a few things.

Everything went according to plan at each location until I got to the last store. As I'd done at the four previous stops, I patiently waited my turn and carefully ran my empties through the machine, but this time once I'd finished I realized that the trash can was nearly overflowing and I didn't want to put my bag right on top. I couldn't take the chance that whoever emptied it wouldn't reach in and pull some of the trash off the top or push down on it and discover that my bag had something besides non-returnable bottles inside.

Even though I knew it might look suspicious, I'd have to dump the bag somewhere else, so I wheeled the cart around and headed out towards the parking lot.

“Hey, don't forget your receipt.” I turned back towards the machine and saw an elderly woman pointing an arthritic finger at the curl of paper hanging from the Kan-Smacker. I went back and grabbed the receipt, then turned towards the parking lot again. “Aren't you going to cash it in?” she asked.

“I just remembered I have some more cans in the car,” I told her. My heart was racing by the time I got back to the Ranger. I tossed the bag into the back, jumped inside and sat down.

Once I'd calmed down, I fished around under and behind the seats until I found a handful of pop bottles, gathered them up and put them in the trash bag. By the time I had rolled back up to the machine, a worker wearing plastic gloves was emptying the trash and the old woman was gone.

I took a deep breath, fed my pop bottles in, listened as they dropped and broke. Then I thumbed the button for the receipt and dumped the last of Jackie's remains into the newly-emptied trash can.

I took my receipts inside the store and bought some pistachios, a case of Blue and a fifth of Jim Beam.

It was going to be a long night and after what I'd been through the past two days, I figured I deserved a drink. Or three.

1... 2... 3... 4... 5... 6...

2008-10-28T20:41:00.000-04:00

2008-10-28T11:53:00.014-04:00

You know, the closer it gets to the all-digital switch, the more I find myself watching no television at all. Except for midnight Sunday broadcasts of remastered 'Star Trek' episodes, occasional snippets of the 'Tyra' show while I eat my lunch and regular checks of the local news, I watch almost nothing.

Oh, and porn... I watch porn.

Last Sunday night, after I'd watched my porn and just prior to viewing 'Star Trek', I turned to Channel 7 to check the headlines and the upcoming week's weather. To my surprise, there was Glenda Lewis anchoring the eleven o'clock broadcast while wearing a purple top that looked like it was frigging painted on! I couldn't take my eyes away from her perfectly-shaped bosom, and even though I'd just, ahem... sat through several sex scenes featuring my favorite porn girl Angel Kelly, Li'l Marty reared his horny head again!

By the time the weather came on I was collapsed across the futon, my pants around my ankles, completely spent. And I couldn't remember a word she'd said.

The funny part is, when I checked the numbers here on Almost Okay yesterday morning, I noticed there were several hits from search engines, and guess what... I wasn't the only one turned on by Glenda's mouth-watering mammary glands. Right there on the list, along with a handful of similarly-bizarre, fetish-fueled searches, were the keywords “glenda lewis breasts” and “glenda lewis boobs”! Big as day!

Take a look for yourself! Don't be shy... go ahead and stare! They're absolutely perfect, am I right?

* * * * * * * * * * *

Earlier Sunday evening I'd been watching one of my favorite pornos from the past, “Guess Who Came At Dinner?”, which stars the lovely and talented Angel Kelly. Doesn't she make a beautiful bride?

Written and directed by veteran porn star Paul Thomas (who even wrote and warbled the theme song - 'She's black and beautiful...'), this one's a send up of the Spencer Tracy/Kate Hepburn/ Sidney Poitier flick from the sixties where a white girl brings her black boyfriend home to meet the folks. Only in the porn version, the girlfriend (Angel, of course) is black.

After meeting at Club Med and falling in love, Angel and her beau (played by Joey Silvera) head back home to introduce his new fiancée to the family. The kicker? Joey's family is filthy rich, which he coincidentally reveals to Angel right after she's finished him off orally, causing her to choke and sputter on his man juice.

Despite the fact that he's supposed to be worth over a hundred million dollars, Silvera drives them back to his brother's place in a Volkswagen convertible with a noisy muffler. Every single person who meets Angel stutters some version of the line '...but she's bluh... blah... she's bluh... bluh... she's beautiful!' Even the jack-booted neo-Nazi sister-in-law, played by Angela Baron (who was actually born in Dusseldorf), delivers it with a thick but natural German accent.

Jeannie Pepper plays the maid and Billy Dee is the butler, while John Leslie plays the part of Joey's big brother, who's none too pleased that Joey's planning on marrying a black chick. Until the black chick seduces him, that is. John gets Angel, Billy gets Jeannie and Angela gets a Tegrin bottle in her solo shower scene, before they all end up taking turns with each other during the climactic orgy finale when dinner breaks down into a no-holds-barred sexual free-for-all.

I remember seeing this one when it was newly-released in 1987, and it instantly cemented Angel Kelly's status as a star in my eyes. Another great Ebay find, I paid only twelve bucks including shipping for it and it came with the original oversized box in near-mint condition.

They simply don't make 'em like this anymore, folks!

2008-10-26T09:04:00.002-04:00

2008-10-23T09:10:00.004-04:00

I have to tell you, folks, I've never liked this Rush Limbaugh. Look at him. Tell me he's not an asshole.

I'm sure a lot of you out there don't particularly care for the guy either, but you have to hand it to him, he gets paid pretty handsomely for spewing his right-wing bullshit over the airwaves every day. I wish I could draw a quarter of his paycheck for saying stupid shit. Hell, I'd say stupid shit for even less than that. Most of the time I say it for nothing. Like today.

His latest diatribe against Colin Powell's endorsement of Barack Obama is a prime example of Limbaugh at his best, though, because at the heart of his argument that Powell's pick for President was based solely on race, there is a shred of truth. I'm sure that when the former Secretary of State and retired General (who George W. famously hung out to dry when he sent Powell into the United Nations after the 9/11 attacks to announce U.S. intentions of going after what ultimately turned out to be phantom weapons of mass destruction in Iraq) publicly endorsed his candidate for the first time this past weekend, Obama's race was a part of the equation.

Come on, Colin Powell has to be happy that there's finally going to be a black man in the White House, even if it's somebody else. It means that if he lives long enough he might get his own turn.

But Powell said all the right things when it came to the more important reasons for thinking the Illinois Senator should become our next President, using facts to make his argument while speaking from his heart about Obama's gifts as a natural leader and statesman, as well as his having the potential to become a 'transformational figure' in history.

Of course, John McPain blew the whole thing off with a nod and a wink saying that it 'wasn't a surprise', implying with that sickening yellow grin of his that he, too, believed the endorsement had racial overtones. Sure, he didn't say it, but his weasel eyes did.

However, Rush spewed it out loudly and plainly for all of America to hear, and he did it in his famous phlegmy bellow, the one that gets the rifle-toting, bible-thumping crowd so riled up. Which is what bothers me.

Hell, I don't have a problem with an African-American endorsing another African-American for President based on his race. But let me ask you this: Do you think Colin Powell would have tossed his support behind somebody like Jesse Jackson? The answer is no fucking way.

We're not talking about just any African-American when we talk about Barack Obama. The man is intelligent, accomplished and noble, by any definition of those terms. Don't you think that after eight years of the stupidest President in U.S. history we should maybe try a smart one? With some character? Well, perhaps Colin Powell thinks so, too.

Shit, just look at the choice. Any thinking person in the world can see who would make the better President, and don't get me started on this Vice President thing again. I still don't know what the Republicans were thinking on that one.

So, to sum it all up... Rush Limbaugh is a gigantic ass, and it sickens me that he thinks (as does a large portion of the American population, by the way) that voting for Barack Obama simply because he's African-American is wrong, but that it's perfectly acceptable to NOT vote for him for the exact same reason.

Leelee works the Boston page on Craig's List and specializes in 'true G.F.E., professional gentlemen preferred. Role playing, fetish and fantasy. Dom/sub. No email responses, please.' Hey, her ad is dull but check out that ass... MAJOR league sweetness, my friends.

2008-10-20T08:37:00.000-04:00

2008-10-19T20:24:00.001-04:00

2008-10-19T09:35:00.001-04:00

2008-10-17T12:30:00.000-04:00

2008-10-17T08:16:00.001-04:00

2008-10-16T13:15:00.001-04:00

2008-10-16T11:17:00.006-04:00

My Dear Lyzako,

It's beautiful here today. We've just come off a stretch of incredible summer-like weather this past week with highs around eighty and comfortable lows in the sixties. After rain much of the day yesterday, a cold front has brought cooler air, lots of sunshine and a stiff breeze blowing the clouds quickly through the morning sky. A refreshing high of sixty is expected for today, and I'm digging it, my friend.

How's the weather in your neck of the woods? Predictably idyllic, I'm sure.

Recently I've noticed some real slippage in the old gearbox of my mind. At times I am so overwhelmed with ideas, notions and whims that I can barely function as a normal, workaday person, the mental confusion even creeping into and encroaching upon my precious weekend reading sessions, preventing me from being able to concentrate on the words I see before me on the page.

As evidence, I've enclosed a photo of my kitchen table, haphazardly covered with a month or two's worth of accumulated stuff (for lack of a more descriptive term). Bear in mind that the photo and its contents were not arranged in any conscious way, the items you see on and around it simply dropped onto the nearest convenient open spot until there were no more convenient open spots, as you can see. I think the table is a living snapshot, if you will, of what is going on in my brain.

I've developed a tenderness for old technology, which explains the projector. I'm a little more at a loss to explain Sonny Bono's autobiography, other than it was half-off hardcover books at Value Village.

As to the rest of the junk, most of it pertains to what I've come to call my 'reawakening creative spirit', which I'm beginning to believe is what's causing the aforementioned 'gearbox slippage'. I can't be sure, mind you, but it does seem as though simple things that I used to remember to do, simply fly away, while, for the sake of encouraging creativity, I allow my confused mind to meander whatever path it decides to take.

That's great when one is selecting the color of the next pastel, or dragging a brush loaded with paint across a crusty surface. It helps to keep the work fresh and lessens the chance of a predictable outcome, which of course, adds excitement and discovery to the process.

But for keeping the dishes clean, the laundry washed and food in the refrigerator, the meandering mind is a hindrance. For example, I've 'forgotten' to do the dishes three times this week, run the sink half full of hot water and soap only to add another day's worth of dishes on top of the stack.

I've also 'forgotten' to cook some hot Italian sausages that I thawed on Sunday, and if I 'forget' again today, it will be four days in a row. Should I just toss them back in the freezer and 'forget' it altogether?

Speaking of food, simple trips to the grocery store with only a mental list of needed staples have become a chore because I always seem to return home having 'forgotten' one or more crucial items needed for preparation of the day's meal, which then necessitates a return trip.

Last weekend's excursion to Ferndalia Foods was well-planned, though, a long list of items carefully penned onto several post-it notes, from wax paper to oregano to canned tomatoes. I felt confident I would 'forget' nothing when I loaded up the purple Ranger with four cases of empty beer cans, hopped in and drove into town.

After standing in line for ten minutes behind somebody with a trash bag full of miscellaneous bottles and cans, many of which were refused by the machine, I pushed my returnables through the 'Kan-Smacker' (reg. U.S. Pat. Off.), grabbed a cart and made my way through the produce section.

Did I need apples? I couldn't remember, and a quick but thorough search of my pockets, wallet, behind my ears and up my ass pointed to what I should have known would happen from the start.

I forgot the list!

Warmest Regards,
Rembrandt Van Sherman-Winkle

2008-10-14T21:51:00.011-04:00

I have to admit that I don't remember too much about this flick. I saw it in 1982 while I was attending college at Western Michigan. One of the fraternities there sponsored a weekly Friday night movie that was held in one of the bigger lecture halls on east campus, and Andy's 'Dracula' was the second end of a double-header that also featured his 'Flesh For Frankenstein' as the opener. I'm sure I must have nodded at some point.

I do remember it being very slow.

I also kind of remember the premise: Andy's version of Dracula is sickly and can only drink 'wirgin' blood, so he sets his vampire sights on the three beautiful daughters of his landlord, played by celebrated neorealist Italian director and actor Vittorio De Sica in one of his last film appearances. Dracula (Udo Kier) finds out one by one that the sisters aren't as 'pure' as his health requires, vomiting up the results of his first two tainted meals.

Somehow, handyman Joe Dellasandro (a Greenwich Village street hustler who got his fifteen minutes appearing in a number of Warhol films) catches on to Dracula's plan and takes immediate action, bravely charging in to save the third sister - the youngest and the only one who truly is a 'wirgin', by ably nailing her before the big bad vampire can get there, all the while woodenly delivering his lines in a thick Bronx accent.

Roman Polanski has a cameo.

Directed by Paul Morrissey in 1974 right after he directed 'Flesh For Frankenstein', 'Andy Warhol's Dracula' (a.k.a. 'Blood For Dracula' and 'Young Dracula') features a fine soundtrack by a practically unknown Italian composer named Claudio Gizzi, who also cranked out the score for 'Frankenstein'.

The Main Title sequence has a haunting quality, almost Satie-like in its mathematical simplicity, and the balance of the music is a satisfying listen whether you know anything about the movie or not. Oddly, though, other than these two Warhol flicks, Gizzi's only listed film work was for Roman Polanski's 'Che?' from 1973.

I don't know how rare this LP is, but I have a ten-year old price guide that lists both 'Dracula' and 'Frankenstein' for around ten bucks each in mint condition (which my copies are - so there). It also looks like both soundtracks were released in 1982 (on the incredible Varese Sarabande label), which was the same year these two flicks were making the rounds again with the theater re-release of 'Flesh For Frankenstein' when I saw them in Kalamazoo.

A quick Ebay search turned up just a 1995 import CD that included both scores and when I checked the seller's price I couldn't believe my eyes. Some fool thinks he's going to get a 'Buy It Now' price of $229.99 for it! One CD! And he's going to charge fifteen bucks to ship it! Ha! I love the Internet!

Anyway, I know it's still two weeks early, but Happy Halloween!

I got invited to a Halloween party a number of years ago and spent a lot of time and thought on my costume. I went to Value Village and bought a blue lab coat and a wig. I pinned a bunch of random buttons on the lab coat, punched a lens out of an old pair of sunglasses, trimmed my beard and waxed it to make it look like my goatee was really a fake one, and I'm telling you I looked exactly like the Ghoul. But guess what. When it was time to count the votes for best costume, I came in second to a woman dressed like a Christmas tree!

SPECIAL BONUS RECOMMENDATION SECTION!!!
I've never done this before, folks, but I got turned on to this CD over the weekend and it hasn't been out of my player ever since, so I'm using the Five Star to hip you to a brand new release out there that just hit the streets.

Last Saturday I was browsing the used LPs at my favorite local record shop, Street Corner Music, and they were playing what I thought was a compilation disc of some recently unearthed forgotten soul gems from the sixties. It turned out to be the new album by Raphael Saadiq.

The print is so small on the damned booklet that I had a hard time reading it, but it looked like Mr. Saadiq pretty much did the whole shebang - writing, producing and performing. One minute he's channeling Sam Cooke and the next it's Smokey Robinson... What? You say Smokey's not dead? Whew, that's a relief! One minute he's channeling Sam Cooke and the next it's... it's... Marvin Gaye. He's dead, right?

It's brand new, but it's as comfortable as an old shoe, as familiar as your mama's face, and I guarantee you that you will love it. At least until Jay-Z starts rapping on the last song. But hey, it's the last song. You can always just skip it, right? I'd give it a few listens, though. I got used to it.

2008-10-14T09:33:00.001-04:00

2008-10-12T09:16:00.000-04:00

2008-10-09T09:42:00.003-04:00

Did you happen to watch this fool a couple of nights ago during the second presidential debate? In case you missed it, John McPain didn't exactly shine in his so-called favorite town hall meeting-style event.

And the moderator, Tom Brokaw, didn't exactly come off as fair and impartial, either, selecting the questions and allowing the Republican candidate as much time as he needed to remember his answers, while chastising Barack Obama and even interrupting the Democrat at one point when he attempted to go beyond the time limits of the format.

One glaring example of Brokaw's favoritism was a question directed to McPain by an audience member who just happened to be seated in the front row and also just happened to be a former Chief Petty Officer in the Navy. McPain couldn't waddle over to the guy fast enough, eager for yet another opportunity to remind Americans that he'd served his country in Vietnam. Big John extended his flipper to the guy while saying he learned “most of what he knew” about military service from a Chief Petty Officer.

Brokaw nearly swallowed his tongue he was so happy.

I guess it must have been a Chief Petty Officer who showed McPain how to fly his combat jet into the ground - four times.

During the course of the 'debate', McPain insisted on referring to his opponent as “that one”, pointing towards Obama with his crooked little arm to make sure the audience knew who he was lying about, and for the most part was again so intimidated by Obama's presence and command of the facts that he couldn't even face the Democrat as he spoke to him.

I didn't catch the final blow as it happened because I'd nearly fallen asleep, but apparently afterwards when Barack Obama attempted to shake the crusty old bastard's hand, McPain turned away, forcing the Democrat to accept the clammy claw of his wife Cindy instead.

By then, Brokaw was already back stage drinking champagne and playing with himself.

A couple more lowlights... When they were asked who they would appoint as Treasury Secretary in light of recent economic problems, McPain offered a pair of choices which culminated in his more likely pick of Meg Whitman, a keynote speaker at the Republican Convention and former C.E.O. of Ebay. That would be perfect. Why shouldn't we put the person who was in charge of the world's largest flea market in charge of all of our money? It sure seems like the next logical step to me.

In another clear example of his thinking, when asked about whether health care in America was a right, a responsibility or an obligation, McPain said that he thought it was a “responsibility”, before going on to once again explain his plan for deregulation and a phantom tax credit that will be swallowed up by insurance companies.

Obama's answer was the correct one, though: health care is our “right”, and we shouldn't be forced into bankruptcy if we develop a tumor that our insurance company suddenly decides not to cover because we screwed up a question on our application.

Honestly, by ten-thirty I was glad the whole thing was over, and I certainly don't see how the Republicans could in any way spin this one as a triumph for McPain. If he wasn't such a stupid, angry, bigoted old bastard, I would have almost felt sorry for him.

But I didn't.

Hey, did you hear that Buffalo Wild Wings is going to start having a John McCain night? Yeah, all the broken chicken wings are half off, and instead of frying them they're going to be half-baked!

Today's Craig's List girl, Yolanda works out of the Memphis area and considers herself a 'sexpert' in pleasing a man. You can decide for yourself if this 'Superwoman' has the goods for as little as forty roses. For two-hundred Yolanda goes 'around the world, including trips to France, Greece and the Balkans'.

2008-10-07T13:32:00.001-04:00

2008-10-06T10:19:00.013-04:00

Hey, folks! Welcome to another fucking Monday morning!

Here in Detroit it's overcast with drizzle and temps in the fifties. A beautiful October day!

Once again, I'd like to share a couple of letters from our readers and encourage the rest of you out there to write as the urge strikes you. Jokes! I could use some jokes!

First off, from Anonymous: “What's up with all the political bullshit lately? And why the bleeding-heart liberal point of view? Republicans aren't evil and George W. Bush didn't cause all these bank collapses. Bill Clinton signed the deregulation bill way back in 1999 that allowed banks to merge with insurance companies and other financial institutions. Shouldn't he be held responsible? I suppose you voted for him, too, didn't you? You fag!”

I'd like to point out that the bill to which you refer, Anonymous, called the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, was proposed by Republicans and forced through the Republican-controlled Senate and House with such overwhelming numbers that Bill Clinton had no choice but to sign it. This 'veto-proof' law was aimed ostensibly at increasing competition, but the resulting corporate mergers (along with relaxed lending laws) have been cited by some economists as contributing to the current sub-prime lending crisis. I'm no economist, Anonymous, and I certainly wouldn't blame George W. for all of our problems. In my view, simple greed was the main engine that fueled this economic collapse. Rampant, irresponsible speculation by real estate developers (including short-sighted investors and large construction companies eager for juicy contracts) who hoped to double and triple their money in less time than it takes to say 'interest only loan' was the real culprit. Why do you suppose John McCain has more homes than he can count? Because he wants to live in more places than he can count?

The conservatives point to organizations such as ACORN for relaxing their mortgage approval criteria in order to get minorities into homes of their own, but the reality is that those loans, however unsound, account for a relatively small segment of the real estate market and for the most part involve homes of relatively low value compared to all the 'bigfoot' homes built in recent years under new construction and the unfinished high-rises that stand along the shore of the Atlantic Ocean in Miami. Greed is caused by the people who have money wanting more of it, not by some poor bastard who's just barely getting by.

There is ample evidence along the way that politicians, Democrats and Republicans alike, have benefited personally from campaign contributions and easy loans from our large lending institutions, which is another good reason for us to stop the lobbying of outside interests in Washington. The math is simple: the bigger the corporation, the bigger the campaign contribution.

And yes, I voted for Bill Clinton. Twice. Also, for the record, I do think that Republicans are evil.

From one of our female readers, pearlygirl09: “I am completely tired of 'Spooged'! Why must you continue this disgusting feature? Do you hate women that much? What are you, a fag?”

Hmm, I sense some hostility from you, pearlygirl09. Do you hate men? I suppose it's difficult for me to defend the 'Spooged' feature, but I'll give it a shot.

Number One: It's easy. That's right, in case you couldn't tell by reading my frequent confessions on the subject, I am one lazy bastard. 'Spooged', on average, takes less than ten minutes to do, and when my back is up against the daily deadline wall, that's a pretty appealing number.

Number Two: It's a parody of all those 'celebrity fakes' you see on the Internet. You know what I'm talking about... like where some geeky, introverted Photoshop whiz takes Jennifer Aniston's clothes off by using software to slickly fuse her head onto some anonymous naked female body, while rubbing one out with his free hand the entire time.

Number Three: It gives me a chance to recognize the female form in all its beauty (and ugliness sometimes), acknowledge favorites of mine from long ago (check out the 'Retro Spooged') as well as the present day, while cleverly poking fun at the whole 'celebrity' phenomenon.

Number Four: There are actual physical laws governing any semi-gelatinous liquid that spills openly onto anything. In the case of 'Spooged' one must take into account not only the trajectory of the spill, but gravity and the various complex curves and planes that together make up the solid human form in all its god-given glory. It's a matter of physics, pearlygirl09, which makes it educational. That's right. I said it. It's educational.

Well, I hope that both of those explanations were satisfactory, and that the rest of you out there with questions or comments (or especially jokes) will get off your hands and write me at: coolhandmarty@gmail.com.

Oh, and by the way, I'm not a fag.

2008-10-05T06:44:00.001-04:00

2008-10-04T09:36:00.007-04:00

Oh my God! There IS a God! Finally something to rave about!

John McPain is folding up tent here in Michigan! Local GOP leaders, among them the outspoken and bigoted Oakland County Executive L. Brooks (Brothers) Patterson are mystified at the sudden withdrawal of McPain's campaign team, and many fear that the decision may shift the advantage in a number of close local races to the Democrats. Patterson was quoted as saying: “I feel like I woke up this morning and there was a note on my pillow.”

I sure hope he kissed you on the cheek before he left, L. Brooks.

On the down side, this move may open the floodgates for a flurry of anti-Obama ads sponsored by any number of independent bigoted groups dead set on not having a black man in the White House. Stay tuned for more details as they become available.

* * * * * * * * * * *

Another cause for rejoicing! O.J. Simpson is found guilty of armed robbery and kidnapping and now faces a minimum of five years in prison! He could even get a LIFE SENTENCE!

After just thirteen hours of deliberation on the thirteenth anniversary of his acquittal on murder charges in 1995, a jury of nine women and three men returned a unanimous vote of “GUILTY, YOUR HONOR!”, sending the former Pro-Bowler and Heisman Trophy winner to jail.

O.J.'s lawyers asked if he could please "pass GO and collect his $200 first" (Simpson had been planning a celebratory trip to a Vegas strip club figuring he would be acquitted once again), but the judge responded with a resounding “NO WAY! GO DIRECTLY TO JAIL!”

If only it could have been Friday the 13th! Now THAT, my friends, would have been POETIC JUSTICE!

I'm so excited that I'm quivering... and it feels like... like... like I'm about to SPEAK in TONGUES! YES!

Oops, no... Sorry, I think I shit my pants...

2008-10-02T13:27:00.007-04:00

My Dear Lyzako,

I can remember no other vice-presidential debate in my lifetime to which I looked forward with such anticipation as the one taking place in Missouri tonight between Sarah Palin and Joe Biden. My hope is that the proceedings will shine a much-needed spotlight on the long list of egregious shortcomings attached to the Republican ticket.

I picture that segment of America who has been championing Palin's pioneering 'maverick' spirit and her hockey mom status as qualities that make her worthy of the presidency watching in stunned disbelief, slack jaws hanging even wider agape as her pathetic grasp of the issues and her obvious lack of insight into solutions becomes glaringly apparent while she babbles on in that nervous, beauty queen pseudo-babble-sound-byte-speak of hers. The sudden realization that their beloved Republican-Super-Mom-Vice-Presidential hopeful has no business in the White House will make them drop their weapons and bibles in haste while they swiftly administer a series of solid slaps to their collective foreheads, thereby once and for all causing them to 'see the light' and consequently pull the Democratic lever come November.

Alas, though, it's just a fantasy.

I continue to be surprised at the number of people who always buy into the complete line of Republican bullshit every four years, including the ridiculous notion this time that Sarah Palin can simply roll up her sleeves and 'git 'er done' once she's in the Oval Office. Both you and I would normally consider these folks intelligent. They are hard working, often creatively entrepreneurial and solid citizens in most every way.

Unfortunately, many of them also believe that an enormous man dressed in white robes with a flowing beard is sitting at a desk counting how many times they take his name in vain. To each his own.

Almost as much as another four years with the Republicans at the helm of our economic and foreign policy, I fear their misguided choices to replace retiring members of the Supreme Court. Do we really want Sarah Palin, yet another born-again Christian, who attends a church where the notion of speaking in tongues is considered some sort of primitive communication with our 'Higher Power' deciding who should sit behind the bench of the highest court in our land?

I can tell you with absolute conviction that I, for one, do not.

Among the deficiencies in logic promulgated by Governor Palin (ideas also held in high regard by the far right and much of the Republican Party) is the conflicting notions that abortion is wrong because it takes human life but the war in Iraq is right because it is our 'mission from God'. Killing is killing by any stroke of the sword, and I have to believe that any 'God' would see little difference between collateral damage and terminating an unwanted pregnancy.

I'd also like to point out that in the vast majority of human history, tribal economics and survival instincts have caused many a child birthed without a penis to be either eaten or casually tossed into the river because of her perceived weaknesses and lack of ability to contribute to the welfare of the society as a whole.

But I digress.

In the long run, I predict that this debate will make little difference in the decision-making of the Red States once those folks get into the election booths in a month. Just as they have blind faith in a Christian 'God' that tells them it is permissible to kill Muslims in 'His' name while making it a sin to terminate an embryo during the early stages of pregnancy, they have faith in the Republican Party to do no wrong, and no matter how ignorant Sarah Palin comes off tonight, they will smile, believe and confidently vote her in.

Because 'God' says it's right.

The rest of us here in America, though, the incredulous ones who can't believe that anybody, anywhere at any time, would ever take this Republican ticket seriously, will have a hearty chortle or two. Right along with the rest of the world, who happen to be laughing at us and not with us.

Warm Regards,
Marty Sherman

PS By the way, I'm getting pretty tired of hearing what a brave POW John McCain was. Sure he served his country in Vietnam. Yes, he got shot down and spent years in an enemy prison camp where they tortured him in every way imaginable, both mentally and physically. Does that really make him courageous? More courageous say than his opponent? For all of you who think so, why don't you put yourself in Barack Obama's shoes for a day. The number of death threats he has received and incidents of stolen and defaced Obama campaign signs are too numerous to mention here, but if you ask me, the fact that he's continuing to go forward with barely a public acknowledgment of the deep-seated racial hatred he experiences every single day on a first-hand basis here in the United States as he campaigns for one of the most difficult and thankless jobs in the world is a great measure of his courage, not only as a candidate, but as a man. If you don't believe me, just Google his name plus 'swastika' and you will see ample evidence of the KKK rearing its ugly head.

2008-10-01T14:40:00.000-04:00

2008-09-30T17:07:00.001-04:00

2008-09-30T11:22:00.001-04:00

2008-09-30T08:11:00.001-04:00

2008-09-29T07:54:00.006-04:00

My back was aching from the effort of dismembering the body and my ribs and arm were still sore from the beating I had taken the night before, but I was fairly sure by then that nothing was broken and I’d be able to heal without a trip to the doctor. Things were definitely looking up.

After a half-hour break and a couple of beers, I dove back into my work with renewed gusto. I hacked through the head with a pruning saw, scooped out Jackie’s brains and flushed them, too. I then got to work cutting up all the bones as small as possible. The bolt cutter saved lots of time and worked wonders on everything from fingers and toes to the forearm and some of the spine, but I had to saw through everything else and it took a while.

I used the pliers to pull her teeth and flushed them down the toilet. The channel locks were also useful for breaking up the skull along suture joints, so that it was eventually just a bunch of bone chips.

By 9 p.m. I had it licked. I randomly put the pile of bone pieces into a couple dozen trash bags, being careful to keep them very light, maybe only two or three pounds in weight each. I then double-bagged the lot and put them into two cardboard boxes. The pile of flesh was divided into quart- and gallon-sized freezer bags, most of which I dropped into the dirty and dented chest freezer that had been left in the basement by previous tenants.

Once I had finished, I took a long hot shower and cleaned the bathroom thoroughly. I was surprised by how little blood I had got on surfaces outside the tub, just a smear or two on the tile and nothing in the grout. Even if the cops eventually did search the place, it would be hard to detect anything out of the ordinary. I then swept up the glass from the living room floor, put my books back on shelves and made sure that there were no tell-tale Jackie fingerprints by wiping down everything that she could possibly have touched. The last step was to fetch the shop vac from the garage, and I carefully covered every square inch of the sofa, the rug and the rest of the furniture with it to pick up any stray hairs that Jackie might have lost during our tussle.

It was the cleanest the house had been since I'd moved in.

The remainder of her flesh I put in the refrigerator while I read the manual for that food dehydrator. You see, once I had made up my mind that Jackie was at least as much responsible for this mess as I was, if not more so, I was determined that she should share in my guilt and my punishment. Did I come looking for her? No. Did I attack her with a bat? Hell no. So in order to make things right, make Jackie go on paying for what she had done, make her pay for the torture of memory she had saddled me with for the rest of my life, my fevered brain had reasoned that she would have to become a part of me. And I could only think of one way to do that.

I would eat her.

1... 2... 3... 4... 5...

2008-09-28T08:29:00.001-04:00

2008-09-27T09:12:00.000-04:00

2008-09-26T12:44:00.010-04:00

As of this morning we still don't know if there's going to be a Presidential debate tonight thanks to John McCain's last minute stall tactics. He claims that he's suddenly more interested in this country than in running for President. Does that even make sense? Because I thought being interested in this country was WHY he was running for President.

The real reason is that neither he, nor his brilliantly-educated running mate Sarah Palin (nor any of the fucking Republicans for that matter) have a clue as to what to do about the economic mess we're in, and as usual, their answer is to do absolutely nothing. No, check that. McCain wanted to fire the Chairman of the SEC until he found out that he couldn't do that.

After spending the past umpteen months campaigning for the highest office in the land, suddenly Big John wants to work as a Senator again. Since he freely admits to knowing very little about how the economy works, how the hell does he think he's going to help at this point? Is he going to be the cheerleader? I think his buddy George W. has that end covered.

A long-time champion of deregulation (as are all of the Republicans) McCain has a lengthy voting record to prove that he's had an enormous hand in getting us to this point in the first place. Do you know why the Republicans don't want to regulate big business? Because that would mean they would have to feel guilty about taking all that money from corporate lobbyists who have been paying them to vote for deregulation all these years.

The crux of the problem is that greed is what fuels capitalism and if you start telling people that they can't be greedy anymore, then they get upset. “You mean I can't have a seventh vacation home? Fuck that! I'm the C.E. Motherfucking O.!” they say.

Greed needs oversight, which means that businesses need oversight, especially businesses that loan money to people. It's been generally acknowledged that loaning money at exorbitantly high interest rates and unreasonable terms backed by a threat of blackmail is wrong. It's called 'loan sharking' or 'predatory lending' and it's been illegal in the U.S. for a long time. That is, until the sub-prime lending crisis.

Oddly enough, when those same institutions that didn't want our government to interfere while they raped and pillaged the middle class start to have trouble and face the prospect of going belly up, guess who they want to 'bail them out'? That's right, the GOVERNMENT.

So it's time to make some decisions, people, and my guess is that instead of McCain and Bush and Obama and the rest hunkering down behind close doors while they try to hammer out a solution to keep the entire house of cards from falling down, maybe it would be a good idea if the two guys who want to be President just sit down together in front of the American people and try to answer a few questions. I know it would put my mind at ease. How about you?

So on with the fucking debate already!

By the way, I'm getting pretty tired of 'McCain/Palin' this and 'McCain/Palin' that... It doesn't exactly roll off the tongue, does it? How about just 'McPain'... I think that says it all right there, and if they get elected you can expect at least four more years of the same old shit. If we don't all die out in the cold this winter after being evicted from our foreclosed homes.

Jenna is this week's Craig's List girl and in addition to working as an escort in the Richmond, VA area, Jenna is a lifelong, card-carrying Democrat who attended this year's Nominating Convention in Denver as a Super Delegate. After proudly casting her vote for Obama, word is she made a small fortune working the parking lot with her 'Blo and Go' special at only fifty buck a 'pop'!

2008-09-25T07:10:00.000-04:00

2008-09-24T23:43:00.001-04:00

2008-09-23T21:46:00.000-04:00

2008-09-22T21:38:00.004-04:00

My Dear Lyzako,

As much as I'd like to pretend that things are different, these days I find myself completely tapped out emotionally, my senses cruelly drained and my soul suddenly a black hole of absolute horrible nothingness.

Each day I witness the absurdity of life in modern-day America that is presently magnified by the glaring spotlight of a Presidential election which promises to be even more disappointing than when I stood in line for nearly an hour to vote for John Kerry four long years ago. I remember at the time being so sure that all of America was just as sick to death of that evil idiot George W. Bush as I was and that any clear-thinking individual would make the right decision to help us all move forward towards a brighter future, that I was foolish enough to have had real hope.

You see, despite my ongoing cynicism, I would truly like to feel good about being an American, feel proud of our American ideals and believe in our claim that we are on an ongoing mission to bring freedom and peace to the entire world. Most of all (and with considerable selfish concern, I'm afraid) I'd like to be able to earn a decent living, be left alone and feel positive about the direction in which Old Mother Earth is heading.

But I cannot.

I am no fortune teller, but I don't really need to be one in order to know that our next President will be John McCain. (Ironically, yours truly actually predicted that result two years ago.) In the likely event that the stupid old geezer doesn't survive his first term, that would make the 45th President of these United States none other than Sarah 'The Barracuda' Palin.

It's a difficult pill to swallow, but I've now resigned myself to the fact. And here is the reason why: If Barack Obama were Hillary Clinton, if he were John Edwards or even if he were Al Franken, he'd stand a better chance of being our next President than he does now. But Barack Obama is black. Yes, I know, African-American is the preferred term, but all over the south and in far too much of the north, east AND west, he is simply 'black', which to the vast majority of white America makes him unqualified.

And, to at least one Republican Congressman from Georgia - Rep. Lynn Westmoreland, it also makes him “uppity”. We all know what term follows that word, and it's not "Senator from Illinois".

So I've given up hope. There simply are not enough blue states to get the job done, and here in Michigan, where Kerry and Gore both resoundingly thumped George W., Obama is currently running neck-and-neck with John McCain.

If Barack Obama were white, preaching the same message of change as he is now, if his wife were blond and blue-eyed, his children freckled and rosy-cheeked, I dare say he'd be up fifteen points right now and the Republicans wouldn't even be close enough come November to have a snowball's chance in Hell of stealing this election like they have the past two.

But he's not.

And no matter what he says, no matter how sincere he is, no matter how good his ideas are, how inspirational a leader he may very well be... at the end of the day, he is simply 'black'.

I'm more than a little sad to report that in 2008, in America - in 'The Land of the Fucking FREE' for CRYIN' OUT LOUD!, the color of Barack Obama's skin STILL prevents him from being thought of as being 'qualified' to run for President by most white Americans while at the same time branding him as being 'uppity' for thinking that he is.

Morosely Yours,
Marty Sherman

2008-09-21T06:40:00.001-04:00

2008-09-18T09:18:00.001-04:00

2008-09-17T10:04:00.000-04:00

2008-09-17T08:15:00.001-04:00

2008-09-15T19:05:00.011-04:00

As I made my way towards home numbly striding over cracked and crumbling sidewalks, I replayed over and over in my mind what I could remember of our fight the night before, and each time it seemed to me that Jackie was just as much to blame as I was for how things had turned out.

Jackie and I had no kids - not together, not from previous relationships. Both of her parents had died in a boating accident while vacationing in Hawaii years ago, and she and her sister weren’t particularly close. Except for one or two cousins like Andy, she rarely spoke to the rest of her family, and Jackie had few close friends. All-in-all she wasn’t very well liked. I wasn't just rationalizing, I told myself; it was simply the way things were. She wouldn’t really be missed all that much.

Sure, I felt bad for her. Who wouldn’t? But I couldn’t see how confessing and going to jail was going to do either of us any good. Odds are I’d never come out alive, and if I did I’d be a broken man. So, by the two-wrongs-don’t-make-a-right rationale, I decided to get rid of her body. No body, no murder. End of story.

Once inside the house, I carried Jackie into the bathroom, took off her clothes and carefully laid her in the tub with her head near the drain and her feet propped up. A quarter turn of the hot water tap produced a slow, steady stream of water. I went to the kitchen, put on a fresh set of gloves, started a pot of coffee and grabbed my chef’s knife. It was already pushing nine o’clock.

Once back in the bathroom, I took a deep breath, closed my eyes and made a slow, sure stroke across Jackie’s throat with the knife, being careful to keep the cut side away from my body in case any blood squirted out. I was surprised at how easily it sliced the flesh. All my knives had stayed much sharper since I started storing them on that magnetic strip I had installed on the back splash by the stove. Thirty bucks at Crate & Barrel sounded like a lot when I bought it, but it seemed like a pretty wise investment under the present circumstances.

Again, to my surprise, the blood didn’t squirt, but oozed towards the drain, mixing with the water. Before long I realized that hot water wasn’t such a good idea. The odor of the draining blood was intensified by the steam that began to rise from the tub after several minutes and I choked and gagged as I hovered over Jackie, struggling to turn off the hot tap and replace the stream with cold water. But once that was done, it was just a matter of waiting.

While Jackie drained, I poured a cup of coffee and headed to the garage for tools.

I found a pair of large bolt cutters, some channel locks, two or three types of hand saws and an old food dehydrator that I had bought at a garage sale just two weeks prior for two bucks. The chef’s knife and a boning knife that I rarely used would round out the implements I’d need to finish the job. By the time I got back inside, she was pretty much dry and I spent a few minutes trying to figure out the best way to cut her up before diving in.

Jackie was in good shape for her age...about five-five, one-thirty or so. And a lot leaner than two years ago, thanks to all of that liposuction I paid for prior to the divorce. It really didn’t seem like it would be all that much work once I got started.

I stripped naked to keep from getting blood on any of my clothes, straddled Jackie’s body and began cutting strips of flesh away from the bone. When joints were exposed, I sawed carefully through them and slowly began assembling two piles of remains on either side of the tub...one, a stack of naked, grisly bones and the other, a limp, wet heap of flesh.

It was sweaty work and it took some time, but by mid-afternoon I pretty much had the arms, legs and head removed and, along with the torso, stripped of flesh. I carefully cut into the stomach, trying not to puncture any of the internal organs, but a nick of the colon produced horrific odors to the point I thought I would have to stop.

After wiping the sweat from my eyes, I steeled myself and went back to work, eventually getting used to the stench. It occurred to me that I hadn’t had to be so careful anyway, since I was planning on chopping the organs into pieces that were small enough to flush down the toilet. It took another hour or so, but eventually liver, lungs, heart and kidneys had all been cut into flushable chunks.

I grabbed a pan from the kitchen, piled in some of the organ bits and dumped them into the toilet, bumping the handle down with my elbow. The water swirled crimson clouds and the level rose in the bowl. My heart nearly stopped when I realized that the chunks had clogged on the way out and an overflow was imminent. I quickly put the pan back in the tub, stripped off the plastic gloves as the water neared the top of the bowl. Just in time I managed to remove the lid from the tank and lift the mechanism to kill the flow of the water. When the tank had refilled, I reached into the bowl, scooping back through the pile of Jackie's guts and let the water drain. Then I flushed again.

From then on I carefully measured tiny portions into the bowl making sure that they would flush easier. It took longer than I had hoped, but an hour later the organ chunks had all been sent straight to the Detroit River.

I checked the time. It was half-past five and I had never been more in need of a drink in my life.

1... 2... 3... 4...

2008-09-12T11:10:00.008-04:00

Remember when we used to celebrate Christmas between Thanksgiving and the ACTUAL HOLIDAY ITSELF?

Yesterday while I was eating my lunch I switched on Channel 7's Noon News, mostly just to see what Carolyn Clifford was wearing. Well, she was looking pretty fantastic in a powder blue pant suit, as you can see for yourself, and I got lucky enough to catch her doing a quick interview promotion with the Radio City Rockettes, who were in town to plug - ta DAAAAAHHH!!... their Christmas show at the Joe Louis Arena! Yesterday was September the frigging 11th! NINE-ELEVEN!

Shit, they haven't even really started pushing the plastic Chinese Halloween crap yet!

And once they do get going, the Halloween promos will get shoved down our throats for a good five weeks before October 31st, so that by the time it actually gets here I'll be so sick of the idea that I'll hide in the basement again with all the freaking lights off just counting the minutes until it's over!They don't even put the good monster movies on broadcast television anymore. You have to have CABLE or a SATELLITE DISH. Whatever happened to Karloff's 'Frankenstein' and Lugosi's 'Dracula'? Two of the creepiest movies of all time! Oh, and the 'Wolf Man'! Lon Chaney, Jr.! MOTHERFUCKING GREAT! Maria Ouspenskaya as the gypsy! Now THAT'S what I call ACTING!

It seems as though each year the holiday seasons grow longer and longer in an effort to get us to spend more and more money on useless garbage and gifts nobody really wants. Halloween has become the second biggest retail event next to Christmas in the United States and they expect us to start decorating and planning for it NOW. RIGHT NOW!

Christ, when I was a kid we improvised a costume on Halloween afternoon, grabbed a pillowcase and made the rounds. That's it. The next day, sick with a sugar-buzz hangover, we took our skinny asses back to school and forgot about the whole thing. We didn't even BEGIN to think about Christmas until two weeks after Thanksgiving.

Now? The Rockettes are in town right after Labor Day to make sure we all get our tickets to the freaking Christmas show!I'm not really complaining. Carolyn stepped up like a trouper and high-kicked with the girls for a couple of minutes while I finished my lunch, mouth agape, my shorts getting tighter with each turn and kick. By the time Carolyn's dancing lesson was over, my pants were around my ankles and I was spent.

Don't forget: There's just ONE-HUNDRED-AND-FIVE SHOPPING DAYS left until Christmas!

A Pet Rock is at the top of my list and if I get it, I'm gonna throw it right through the motherfucking window at Nieman Marcus!

2008-09-11T10:20:00.002-04:00

2008-09-10T08:10:00.013-04:00

This year's Detroit Jazz Festival was amazing. We had exceptionally good weather for Labor Day weekend and a long list of talented players, young and old, the acts themed around the idea of a 'Philly/Detroit Summit'.

Tucked away on the Waterfront Stage on a beautiful Sunday afternoon was a lineup of young trumpet stars playing a tribute to Lee Morgan, a Philadelphia native and one of the best jazz artists to ever pick up the instrument this side of Miles Davis. Dominick Farinacci, Jeremy Pelt and Brandon Lee dazzled the crowd trading fiery solos on Morgan originals causing heads to bob, hands to clap and feet to tap. I sat in the shade and drank a six-dollar Bud, marveling at how fresh and alive Lee's music still seemed after forty years of technology and progress.

For some reason Lee Morgan's story is little known. Born in Philadelphia in 1938, the young Morgan first picked up a trumpet as a teenager, and by the time he had reached the ripe old age of eighteen found himself touring with Dizzy Gillespie's big band. From there he went on to work with some of the best names in the business, his brashly inventive solo work on Coltrane's epic 1957 Blue Note LP 'Blue Train' scorching the grooves unlike anything before (and he was only nineteen at the time!).

An off-and-on member of Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers, Lee also recorded a number of LPs for Blue Note as a leader, including his best-selling 'Sidewinder' album, the title track of which was used as theme music for a Chrysler television commercial during the 1963 World Series. Unfortunately, the success of 'Sidewinder' forced a pattern onto Morgan's later sessions, including 'Cornbread', which was recorded in 1965.

Despite the fact that 'Cornbread' (along with many of Morgan's subsequent recordings) is somewhat formulaic in its approach, there's plenty of strong blowing from a stellar lineup that features not only Lee, but Jackie McLean, Hank Mobley and Herbie Hancock. I had forgotten how catchy the title tune was until I heard it played again that recent Sunday in the park overlooking the riverfront, each of the young trumpeters trying to top the others in a memorable finish to an incredible set.

Most critics agree that Morgan didn't recapture his early fire and creativity until shortly before his tragic death, his 'Live at the Lighthouse' LP from 1970 featuring some superb extended solos that could have signaled better things to come. Unfortunately, Morgan's life was cut short by a bullet while playing a gig at (ironically) Slug's in NYC, the gun in the hands of his common-law wife, who had reportedly brought it to him at his request so that he could settle an argument with his coke dealer.

In just a span of sixteen years, the former prodigy had stamped his indelible mark on the history of jazz and helped lay the framework for the Hard Bop movement, which survives to this day thanks to youngsters like Farinacci, Pelt and Lee.

My copy is a reissue from 1988 and is in stone mint condition. According to the price guides, an original mint copy might set you back upwards of thirty bucks, and reissues are trading for $15 - $20 on Ebay. I only saw one original copy up for auction and it had a beat-to-death cover and a so-so disc. They wanted ten bucks, which didn't seem like such a bad deal considering what you might shell out for the CD.

And while 'Cornbread' may not get a five-star rating from most critics, it definitely gets the A-Okay in the design department with another incredibly tight cover by the great Reid Miles featuring a photo by Francis Wolf. Plus, the whole shebang was recorded by Rudy Van Gelder. Natch.

Oh, and by the way, speaking of prodigies... Saturday afternoon's spotlight set at this year's festival was performed by the incredibly talented and beautiful songstress/bassist Esperanza Spalding. She didn't 'play' the bass so much as she made love to it, danced with it, tickled it. Crushed my foolish heart with it.

2008-09-08T11:14:00.000-04:00

2008-09-08T09:45:00.002-04:00

Dear Lyzako,

As you well know, Labor Day in Michigan signals the end of summertime, the festivities ranging from outdoor music festivals to baseball games to the State Fair, the aroma of charcoal filling the air nearly everywhere you go as the curtain falls on another growing season. The weekend following the holiday is just as rich in tradition locally with our annual Dally in the Alley, this year's event marking thirty-one years since its inception. Can that be right? Thirty-one years?

Indeed it is, and I did my part to support the Dally by imbibing in local brew and generously contributing 'tips' to the coffee cans marked for proceeds to benefit the North Cass Community Union.

It was a beautiful day with highs in the mid-seventies and a fresh breath of cool air after the sun dropped. We watched some DJ who's name I don't recall spin deep house grooves on the stage at the corner of Hancock and Second, the Fisher Building framed perfectly in the background while several folks in the crowd danced awkwardly to the rhythm. One older woman herky jerked in circles with her eyes closed, slow stepping and placing alternating feet into an invisible bucket while balancing on one leg and making swimming motions with her hands.

I ran into Carl, Walt and Jerry, who casually handed me a printed card calling for entries to the next Dirty Show while mugging for Walt's camera phone, the resulting wave of his hand placed perfectly in the shot as though he were Tom Cruise avoiding the paparazzi. Walt gave out with his usual quackquackquack of a laugh when he saw it, his eyes closing to slits behind his glasses as his cheeks swelled with smile.

At some point during the evening, a friend and regular attendee herself told me that she had seen a photo of yours truly on the Dally website. “What was I doing?” I asked her. “You were standing right over there, with a beer in your hand, just like you are right now.”

Yesterday morning, remembering what she had said (in actuality I had scrawled a barely-legible note on a post-it the night before to remind me), I logged onto the Dally home page and searched through the pictures myself. It took a while, but I finally located the shot she had described in the photo album from 2003 and have included it here so you can see for yourself just how damned handsome, young and slim I looked a mere five years ago.

Of course, the fact that I was surrounded by Raging Grannies may have had something to do with that.

As Always, Looking Forward to the Fall,
Marty Sherman

2008-09-07T09:41:00.000-04:00

2008-09-03T07:47:00.001-04:00

2008-09-02T13:28:00.011-04:00

Okay, folks, let me sum it up for you: The Republicans think that we are all so dumb (especially you women out there) that we will accept John McCain's surprise pick for Vice President, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, as a thoughtful choice that takes into consideration her many skills as a leader and her vast (two years) experience as a governor. Since Hillary didn't get the nod from Barack, they think a certain percentage of us (again, you women out there) will vote the Republican ticket just because Palin is a woman and it's about goddamned time someone without a penis made it to the White House.

I ask you... Is that a good enough reason?

This pathetic ploy to make the Republican Party look more 'progressive' than the Democrats is just that. Selecting Palin to be next-in-line to run the world's largest democracy in the somewhat likely event that John McCain dies during his first term is an example of the kind of shallow political tactic that should immediately tell all of you who are on the fence as to which way to vote in November to run like hell for the other side!

By the way, I hope I don't piss anybody off, but if you are still undecided between McCain and Obama at this point, you are either a BIGOT or an IDIOT, and you shouldn't even be ALLOWED to vote!

Imagine...

A seventy-two-year-old John McCain becomes President and develops terminal brain cancer three years into his first term. Then recently-divorced, forty-five-year-old Sarah Palin, mother of six and three months pregnant with her seventh 'gift from God' (courtesy of John Edwards this time) takes over. Does that sound alright to you?

I know, I know... I'm exaggerating. I admit it. It's what I do. They told me in AA that we alcoholics all tend to play out the 'worst case scenario' in our heads. It helps us rationalize our drinking. But believe me there won't be enough beer in the world if anything close to what I've described above takes place. And even if you're a teetotaler, you'll need a drink. Trust me.

And trust is exactly what John McCain expects us to do, only this time we're supposed to trust his judgment. You decide. Here's a short list of Sarah Palin's 'accomplishments'...

-They had to go all they way back to high school basketball to prove that she's a go-getter. Palin was nicknamed 'Sarah Barracuda' because of not only her fiery on-court play, but because of her rabid enthusiasm in leading the team prayer prior to the games. She's a 'Barracuda of Prayer' as it turns out. Whatever happened to the separation between church and state?

-The former 'Miss Congeniality' and 'Miss Wasilla' was runner-up in the 1984 'Miss Alaska' beauty pageant, where she won a scholarship that allowed her to study at the prestigious institutions of Hawaii Pacific College and North Idaho College before earning her B.S. in Communications/Journalism from the University of Idaho in 1987. Sure, her creds are a little stronger than my B.F.A. from Western Michigan via Jackson Community College, but not all that much. At least I got my scholarship by passing a test that proved I was smart.

-She began her 'career' as a sports reporter in Anchorage before becoming mayor of Wasilla, garnering a whopping 909 votes.

-A former member of the Alaskan Independence Party (whose platform calls for Alaska to secede from the rest of the U.S.), Palin supported blowhard Pat Buchanan for president in 1996.

-Palin is against: legalizing marijuana, same-sex marriages, explicit sex education in public schools and abortion.

-Palin is for: Alaska oil drilling, the right to bear arms and capital punishment.

-Palin doesn't believe that global warming is caused by man.

-Palin is also under investigation for improper behavior in her firing of the Alaska Public Safety Commissioner for refusing under her orders to fire an Alaska state trooper (who also just happened to be Palin's former brother-in-law) after he tasered his ten-year-old stepson during the course of a messy divorce from Palin's sister Molly.

-The latest news is that Palin's seventeen-year-old daughter is pregnant out of wedlock, but plans to marry the child's eighteen-year-old father. How long do you give that marriage, folks? A year? Maybe two?

The whole thing sounds like it would make a good David Lynch movie, doesn't it?

And what really ground my ass was seeing former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich (who doggedly pursued Bill Clinton's impeachment for purely political reasons while himself being found guilty of a number of House ethics violations) discuss Palin's relative experience on television this past weekend. That moron claimed she had more experience with the military than either Obama or Biden because she had run the National Guard in Alaska for the past two years! Gingrich also claimed she would be good because as governor of Alaska, Palin had to balance a state budget, unlike Senators Obama and Biden. Did the dumb bastard forget that George W. Bush has had a little trouble with the accounting during his eight years in office?

To end his little Q&A session, Gingrich opined with a smile that Palin's journalism background was interesting because it was the first time a former sports reporter had ever been on the ticket for the White House. There's a reason for that, Newt. Sports reporters AREN'T QUALIFIED TO BE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES!

I don't want to sound bigoted myself, but if the 'Geezer and the Bimbo' triumph in November over Obama's promise of hope and progressive change... well, I just might move my dumb ass to Canada. I hear the beer is stronger over there.

This week's Craig's List Girl, Dannie claims no political affiliation, although she always thought former President Clinton was 'hot'. Working the Anchorage page, Dannie does top-notch GFE, MIA, DOA but no CIM or BBBJ. Check her ad for rates.

2008-09-01T08:44:00.017-04:00

Without help from a forensic pathologist, I couldn’t really be sure how Jackie had died. Other than some faint bruises on either side of her throat she didn't have a mark on her and there was no blood anywhere. I guessed that she had either hit her head during our struggle or that I had choked her...maybe a combination of both. As I saw it, it didn’t really matter at that point. She was dead and my goose would be cooked either way.

Even though the tape demonstrated evidence that I had acted in self-defense, they'd be able to pin a manslaughter charge on me at the very least, and probably more like murder-two. I would be found guilty and I'd do some serious time. What good would that do? I kept asking myself. Would it bring Jackie back? No. And I was no killer, in spite of the fact that my ex-wife was lying dead on my sofa.

I looked at the clock again: 7:05. I needed to get moving.

I went to the kitchen and put on some disposable vinyl gloves that I use when I’m cooking, then I went back to the living room and did a quick visual survey.

Jackie's hand bag was on the floor near her body and I popped open the clasp hoping to find a rental car key. If she had come by cab, I was sunk. The key was right on top and I let out a sigh of relief.

I dumped the entire contents of her purse on the dining room table: sunglasses, a wallet with over $300 cash and a hefty stack of credit cards in it, lipsticks, eye makeup, house keys, gum, mints, a couple of ink pens, a pair of wrinkled boarding passes and her cell phone. I picked up the phone, unlocked the keypad and checked her call log. It looked like the last call she had made was to her sister in L.A. around 11:30 the night before. A quick check of the boarding passes indicated that would have been around the time of her scheduled arrival at Detroit Metro. Probably just to let Sis know that her flight arrived okay, I thought. The call log also showed no received or missed calls since she landed, and none of the rest of the dialed numbers had local area codes. More good news. Unless she had spoken to somebody in person between the airport and my place, nobody should have known she made it this far.

First, I had to get rid of the car before she was reported missing and the police got involved. After that, I’d worry about the body. I figured that if I dumped the car somewhere, it would be at least a day before the cops started nosing around and a couple more days before they actually figured anything out. Plenty of time, I thought.

I looked out the kitchen window and saw a white Mustang parked across the street in front of the house next door. The car key in her purse was from a Ford so the Mustang had to be Jackie's rental. My luck was holding. She hadn't pulled into the driveway, so the car wouldn't be immediately associated with me unless somebody saw her park it then walk up to my door. Since I lived right across from a water treatment plant and the house next door was vacant, I was pretty sure that nobody would have seen anything. It had been late. A forty-minute drive from the airport put her here well past midnight on a weeknight. I crossed my fingers and rolled the dice.

After making sure the place was locked up, I went out the side door, slid into the rental car and started it up. Nice car, that Mustang. Jackie always did have good taste in cars.

With the disposable gloves still on, I drove the car several blocks away to a particularly desolate area just off Van Dyke. It looked more like a war zone than a neighborhood, with burned out homes and empty lots filled with rubbish and piles of tires as high as your head. I parked the car in a driveway next to one of the shabbier abandoned houses on the block, pulled it as far off the street as possible and left it, keys still in the ignition. Candy to a baby.

It wouldn’t be hard to imagine a woman from out of town getting lost in this area and being car-jacked, robbed and killed. Happened all the time in Detroit, I told myself. All the time.

I took half of the money from her wallet, then dropped her purse near a rusted out 55 gallon drum around which a group of crack-heads could often be seen socializing. My hope was that somebody would find the money and credit cards, try to use them, get caught and be arrested. With any luck, they’d get a quick conviction on something even if the cops couldn’t turn up a body. Case closed and I’m home free.

I pocketed the gloves then strolled back to my house as nonchalantly as possible while my gut churned and I worried about being seen. A dog yelped in the distance. I could feel the humidity already in the morning air, sweat soaking through my shirt at the arm pits. Except for the dog and the chatter of birds, there were no other signs of life on my way back. I still hadn't seen a soul by the time the house came into view.

This thing is far from over, though, I thought. Now what in the hell am I going to do with Jackie’s body?

1... 2... 3...

2008-08-31T09:18:00.000-04:00

2008-08-29T08:33:00.005-04:00

Most of you out there probably don't even know who our 'Ass' is this week, even after looking at her photo. Well, allow me to enlighten you. She's Monica Conyers, wife of Congressman John Conyers and a member of the hilariously dysfunctional Detroit City Council. Believe me though, had you been staying at the Magnolia Hotel in Denver during the Democratic National Convention this past week, you'd damn well know who she is because she would have damn well made sure you knew.

According to police reports, Mrs. Conyers was upset with her accommodations and threw a very public fit in the hotel lobby. Expecting a suite instead of a room for four with two beds (so that she and her husband could sleep in one room while their teenage sons masturbated in another), Conyers actually called the cops herself, protesting to them that the lone Denver police officer assigned to the hotel for security during the Convention was 'rude'.

Eventually the staff was able to make Queen Conyers comfortable, but the funny part of the whole incident is this: she has denied that any of it ever even happened, claiming to be asleep in her room at the time of the disturbance, despite the fact that police records show a call to them from her very own cell phone.

I'm not sure what kind of coverage this story got on a national level, but it was all over the radio and television for the past three days here in Motown. And, along with the ongoing scandal surrounding Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, it was absolutely the last thing beleaguered Detroiters needed to hear. We thought we'd managed to avoid the national spotlight when that judge ordered Kwame to stay in town and remain electronically tethered because of his recent probation violations.

Did I mention that Conyers is also under investigation by the FBI for allegedly taking bribes in exchange for voting to award city contracts, and that an indictment is almost certainly forthcoming? To make matters worse, she's also in line to become City Council President if current President Ken Cockrel Jr. has to take over the Mayor's office once Kilpatrick is forced off the throne.

Is it any wonder that Barack Obama is a little worried about coming to Michigan, a state which he desperately needs if he has any hope (audacious or otherwise) of beating John McCain in November? How's this for a photo op?... the first African-American presidential nominee from a major political party standing between Mayor Kwame and Councilwoman Conyers on the stage at Hart Plaza for this weekend's Jazz Festival!

The Republican election machine would have a freaking field day with that one.

Speaking of the Jazz Festival, there's another great lineup this year. I'm planning on attending a couple of days, Saturday's highlights being an afternoon performance by bassist/vocalist Esperanza Spalding, a set by legendary sax player Sonny Fortune and Lalah Hathaway on the Main Stage to close the evening.

Let's see, that's five hours at two 12 oz. beers per hour... ten beers at $7.50 each... of course you have to buy tickets so I'll probably go home with a few but I'll figure $75.00 just to make the math easy. Add in another $15 for snacks and miscellaneous and for just under a hundred bucks, the whole show is free!

One last thing about Conyers... Don't look directly in her eyes for too long or you risk turning into stone.

Today's Craig's List girl is a hometown favorite here in Detroit. Rose is available for early meetings, lunch quickies and full evenings on the town. Her services are for 'companionship' only and any other arrangements that may be agreed upon will be between consenting adults. And get this, she accepts all major credit cards and has a few girlfriends she can call if you're up for more than one at a time. By the way, that's not a tan line; she's wearing a pale flesh-colored bikini.

2008-08-25T11:04:00.001-04:00

2008-08-25T08:16:00.001-04:00

2008-08-24T08:53:00.000-04:00

2008-08-23T10:52:00.005-04:00

It was brought to my attention recently that this column never actually 'raves' about anything. “It's supposed to be rants AND raves,” one reader wrote. “Don't you like anything?” The simple answer to that would be 'not really'.

After checking the definition of 'rave' at Mirriam-Webster's Online Dictionary, I understood her point, though. In the context of 'ranting and raving' it is implied that the 'rants' are lengthy tirades from a negative point of view, and conversely the 'raves' are usually boisterously enthusiastic positive opinions about something, as in 'I rave about the beauty of Pam Grier'.

However, depending on the usage of the word, 'rave' can also mean 'to talk irrationally in or as if in delirium', which isn't altogether wrong as it pertains to the content of this column. You've read a few. I do rave.

Anyway, long story short, I've decided to rename the column in the spirit of keeping things simple. I think you'll agree that BITCH BITCH BITCH is more in line with my personality, but I reserve the right to occasionally spew forth enthusiastic praise whenever I deem it appropriate.

* * * * * * * * * * *

Now that the Olympics are drawing to a close I have a few things to get off my chest...

I'm sick and tired of nicknames for the USA basketball team. You know what I'm talking about: 'The Real Dream Team'...'The Redeem Team'... Who cares? The Olympic basketball finals have turned into the American NBA All Stars versus the Spanish NBA All Stars. And if we send our best starting five, we will win EVERY SINGLE TIME!

Nation against nation? Christ! Pau Gasol and Kobe Bryant are frigging teammates during the rest of the year and one of the best guys on the Russian team is J.R. Holden! He's from Pittsburgh, people! Pittsburgh, PA, USA!

And even though the USA women's basketball team has run the table for four straight Olympics, they should stop comparing themselves to the men. A good high school men's team could beat the best women's team in the world! It's not even the same sport! That being said, I have to say that Candace Parker is a hottie and I'd root for her even if I was watching her compete in a potato chip eating contest.

Talk about fun to watch, when did beach volleyball become an Olympic sport? I'm not gonna lie, I like the bouncing up and down and the near nakedness of the women, but come on! Beach volleyball is about as much of a sport as mud wrestling is! Say, that's not a bad idea. Olympic mud wrestling... it has a nice ring to it.

You know I watched a lot of the swimming and I must say that the so-called 'expert' commentators completely ruined each and every race I saw, especially the relay race where the US passed the French in that miraculous finish. The dumb bastard that was supposed to be the 'expert' opined non-stop about how the French were unbeatable and he just couldn't see the United States winning. Right up until they won, that is. I almost turned the channel just from listening to his constant negativity.

And the commercials... Shit! During one heat of the women's 800 meter freestyle they went to an ad break right in the middle of the race! Damn! The race itself was barely eight minutes long! You mean to tell me they can't go eight minutes without showing a goddamn car commercial?

No more synchronized diving! Diving one at a time is plenty! Who came up with this? A bunch of gay guys who wanted to see two young lithe male bodies twisting in unison during endless slow motion replays of each and every dive, that's who. And it has to stop.

Speaking of stopping... Stop counting the medals! The Chinese have declared themselves 'winners' because as of this writing they have an insurmountable lead in gold medals. Who gives a shit? They have the most populated country in the world, which means they should have a pretty good crop of athletes to select from, especially since they've started growing them to genetic perfection from the time they were unfertilized eggs! Plus, everybody knows that the total medal count is the true measure of which country 'wins' this thing, and it looks like the good ol' US of A has that pretty much sewn up. Again.

Finally, in a world faced with global warming and constantly shrinking resources, why in the hell do we have to move this thing around every four years and erect billions of dollars worth of fancy arenas that will ultimately end up being underutilized and eventually torn down? Let's do the Summer games in Athens every single time. They can move the Winter Olympics around to wherever they have snow.

And I don't mean in Dubai, where those idiots have built an indoor ski resort right in the middle of the Arabian Desert!

* * * * * * * * * * *

Oh, and I almost forgot... Kudos to MSNBC for selecting the hotter than hot Tamron Hall to host their Olympic updates from New York. Since I don't have cable myself I've been forced to watch her at my local sports bar on the big screen with the sound off. Last night she was wearing this low-cut red dress and her smiling cleavage kept Li'l Marty at attention even after four tall Blue!

Check out Tamron crossing her beautiful legs on YouTube and you'll see exactly what I mean!

2008-08-23T09:15:00.002-04:00

2008-08-22T14:41:00.005-04:00

Dear Lyzako,

Looking at the calendar I realize that not even a week has passed since my previous letter, but I feel the need to update you on my status as a soon-to-be ex-husband (finally!).

The soon-to-be ex-Mrs. stopped by last night with a form for me to sign acknowledging the divorce complaint. After carefully checking to be sure that it was as simple as she had described and that the box next to 'No property to be divided' was clearly marked, I signed. Now we wait six weeks and voila!... my marriage is no more!

She came by on short notice and I wasn't in the best of moods. I'd been out in the garage for an hour, just getting into the swing of forgetting about another bad work day, toiling away at one of my personal projects and humming along to the new Erykah Badu CD when she arrived and marched straight into the house without knocking, despite my calls to her that I wasn't even in there.

We eventually made our way into the kitchen together where I cleared some space on one end of the table and sat down to read the thing over, doing my best to imitate Ed Norton's armflap show prior to putting my signature down in ballpoint.

“Where do I sign?” She flipped the double-sided document over and pointed towards the bottom.

“Here.”

As I read the line just above the space where I was supposed to make my mark, I saw another blank line with the word 'Attachments' next to it. “What's this?” I asked.

“Oh, I don't know. Dat's nothing,” she decided. I read a little more.

“Oh, I see,” I said. “I'm just acknowledging that I've received a copy of these papers and instead of you suing me and the court sending someone over, you're doing that part.”

“Yes,” she said, drawing out the 's' at the end like the hiss of a snake. “I'm just servicing you with papers.” I'd forgotten how cute I once thought her Portuguese accent was and how funny some of her grammatical mistakes were when she spoke English.

“Just for the record,” I said, “You're not 'servicing' me. You're 'serving' me with papers.”

“Oh, yah,” she said with a smile and a hint of shy giggle once she'd realized the implication of what 'servicing' me actually meant.

She looked good, better than when we were together. Since running afoul of the credit card company she'd lost the resources for her weekly manicures so her fingernails were natural and short, just as they had been when I met her and just as I'd always preferred. And her hair, though still adorned with unnatural extensions tied in, was short and easier to believe than the lengthy braids which she wore at the time of our parting.

I had pulled what was left of the pan of chicken wings I'd smoked on Sunday from the fridge and was planning on having a few for dinner. There were four left so I asked her if she wanted to try them. She shook her head. “Are you sure? They're really good, but I've been eating them all week. Help me out and take a couple with you.”

“Well,” she said as she eyed them. “I guess I'll take one.”

“Once you eat one you're going to be mad at yourself for not taking two.”

“Den I'll take the two big ones.”

And that, my friend, in a nutshell, was how the whole shebang went sour in the first place.

To Life!
Marty Sherman

2008-08-21T06:22:00.000-04:00

2008-08-18T11:24:00.004-04:00

My Dear Lyzako,

Life. It sure is a funny thing. And by funny, I do mean strange. It can be downright hilarious, too, of course, but sometimes in order to laugh at life, one must cultivate a particularly twisted sense of humor as pertains to it. As luck would have it, this past weekend provided me with several contrasting experiences that illustrated life's strangeness, both laughable and otherwise, which have left me wondering if I have enough of a sense of humor to make it through to the end.

It also gave me something to write about.

First off, we had a glorious summer day here in Michigan on Saturday. My morning walk took me towards the city offices and through the park, where several groups were planning picnics for later in the afternoon. Even though it was before nine o'clock, the early birds had already begun staking their claims to shady areas by covering the picnic tables with colorful paper tablecloths and posting signs to identify the groups. One inventive person had even used some of that yellow 'CAUTION' tape, wrapping it around the trunks of a stand of trees that surrounded a handful of tables on the far west side of the park.

As the cicadas trilled high in the oaks, smooth jazz played on portable stereos and charcoal was being lit in preparation for a low and slow fire for the ribs that would be served for lunch. Upon passing a pair of fifty-five gallon drum smokers trucked in for one church group's picnic, I encountered an older gentleman power-walking towards me and perspiring profusely. “I think I'll just go over there and sit down until that stuff is ready,” he said after catching a whiff of the charcoal.

I chuckled and said: “You'll probably be waiting a while, but it's a perfect day for it.” And it was.

Saturday evening I attended the Tigers/Orioles game at Comerica Park with an old buddy from high school. Our perfect summer day had slowly evolved into a perfect night for baseball - eighty degrees and sunny at game time with a cool breeze blowing in out of the west.

We sat twelve rows up behind the Tigers' on-deck circle surrounded by families with annoying children. Still they were the best seats I'd ever had and I enjoyed the game immensely, despite the fact that several of the fidgety young ones behind me kicked at the seat backs and one very cute but evil six-year-old girl sitting in front of me held up a tiny 'Go Tigers!' sign made from a sheet of typing paper being sure to completely block my view of the batter as she did so. I know it was intentional because prior to holding the sign up she looked right at me with that glint in her eye that let me know if I were a turtle, she'd turn me on my back and see how long it took me to die.

Four beers helped me forget the evil little girl and the Tigers won 5-3. As we crossed Woodward heading back to the car, fireworks shot up over the stadium against the night sky, a full moon hanging like a silver disk in the background. Suddenly I remembered a scene on the way in as we approached the ball park, one that had made me wince upon seeing it.

We were trailing a group of jersey- and ball-cap-clad couples up the crowded sidewalk before the game, one woman with astonishingly flawless legs, her bronzed flesh on display from instep to crotch thanks to a pair of heeled sandals and some extremely short shorts. Back in the day we called them 'hot pants', and hers truly were. I couldn't take my eyes off of her until I heard one obnoxious member of their group drunkenly yell: “Take my picture with the bum!”

The next thing I knew my buddy and I had overtaken the group as they all stopped to pose, their arms draped over the shoulders of a toothless, unshaven black man who laughed and smiled right along with the white suburbanites, hoping to panhandle a couple of bucks out of them in exchange for his humiliation. I heard the photographer say something like, “You're bad” to the guy who had originally suggested the photo-op, but other than that they all just laughed as though bums were put on this earth for their personal amusement.

Sunday was a good day, too. Prior to coming home and grilling some chicken wings and sausages, I had stopped at BW3 for my usual. They had the front open to the street and passersby were soaking up the final hours of the Dream Cruise which had taken place the day before. The room was comfortably uncrowded and I took some pleasure in watching the end of the Tigers' afternoon game on the big screen in between glimpses outside.

I had just become pleasantly fuzzy when a handful of loud folks crossed Nine Mile and caught my attention. There were three adults, two men and a pear-shaped woman, along with a chubby pre-teen girl with straight red hair. The woman was pushing a modified stroller containing one of the adults, his body twisted and robbed of control by what appeared to be cerebral palsy.

The pear-shaped woman had got the stroller stuck on the curb and was yelling at the other man to help her with it as the handicapped guy wriggled and waved soundlessly in front of her. Her companion (I assumed it was her husband) seemed perturbed at having to deal with the situation, and instead of just helping her push, he reached in and casually lifted the guy with palsy up until the woman was able to get the stroller off the curb, then callously dumped the guy with a bounce back into the stroller, complaining the entire time as they passed out of sight.

From beginning to end the event took no more than two seconds, but witnessing that man casually treat another human being like he was a sack of groceries made me think of the bum and the suburbanites from the previous night and it was all I could do to get my thoughts back to the positive side. I suppose I could have found some humor in both scenes had I allowed it, but I just couldn't. It took three more tall Blues plus quite a few more here at home to forget about the cold, cruel world and how truly funny life can be.

By the way, the Tigers lost the afternoon game 16-8. At least we picked the right one to attend.

All My Best to You and Yours,
Marty Sherman

2008-08-17T09:16:00.000-04:00