My Experience on "Check, Please!" was Most Unsavory

By Jad-Marc Tailor

Reposted from Jad-Marc's Blog, "The Finer, Diner and Winer Things in this Crazy Beautiful Thing I call, 'LIFE.'"

It was showtime. The lights... no wait, it was, like, a minute before showtime, because we were commencing taping at 4 pm, I believe, or thereabouts, and it was 3:59, for I distinctly remember glancing at my watch at that moment, when Alpana raised her spotless wine glass, quarter-filled with Cabernet Sauvignon (2004, hint of mint, splash of oak: superb), and said, "To new friends, good food, delectable wine, a fine crew," grunts of approval from behind cameras and lights, "and an amazing show! Cheers!" Glasses clink, held by Alpana herself, Joseph Pettibon (Elementary School Principal - Albany Park), Stephanie Yang (Bartendress - Wicker Park), and me, Jad-Marc Tailor (Investment Banker - Lincoln Park). And it was all downhill from there.

Truth be told, I knew it would be all downhill from there, because the restaurants my two co-stars (or perhaps "adversaries" would be more appropriate) chose were patently abysmal; pedestrian, at best. What I didn't know was how much of a disaster the actual taping would turn out to be. But first, in case you missed the episode, the restaurants:

Joseph Pettibon chose Stephen's Tex-Mex Building in Albany Park. I went there with my girlfriend on a Friday night after drinks and dancing and Karaoke (I completely nailed Staind's "It's Been a While") at Starbar. We took a cab and got to Stephen's Tex-Mex Building at around 3 am and it was CLOSED. My girlfriend and I were both deeply perturbed and after she threw up on Stephen's restaurant's front stoop we got in another cab and went home and had sex.

Flash-forward to the show:

"Wait, Jad," says Alpana, in her delightfully cute squeak of a voice which I vividly imagine enveloping my cock as she gags on it.
"Jad-Marc," says I.
"You mean to tell me that you didn't even go to Stephen's Tex-Mex Building?"
"I did go. It was closed."
"What time did you go?"
"3 am."
"3 am?"
"Christ, Jad-Marc," says Joseph, bent-out-of-shapely. "It's a family restaurant."
"But it was a Friday," says I. "On weekends, sir, with all due respect, I don't, nay, can't eat dinner until I'm drunk."

And we moved on:

Stephanie Yang chose Restaurant of Chinese Fair Delicacies Within (big surprise) in Chinatown. When I received the notice in the mail from the "Check, Please!" producers, I exclaimed to my girlfriend, "Fuck, babe. We have to go to Chinatown for this shit," to which she responded, "You're on your own then, hun. I'll go out with my other boyfriend." So I called up my other girlfriend and we headed down to Restaurant of Chinese Fair Delicacies Within last Saturday. We got there at 2 am after a night of drinks and dancing and Karaoke (I completely nailed that one Journey song that was the White Sox theme song when they won the World Series that one time) and, luckily, it was still open, and would be for the next several hours, and the next several hours after that, and so on until the end of time because the restaurant is open 24 hours and the Chinese are pagans who don't celebrate holidays.

The show:

"So," says Alpana, reluctantly turning to me, "Jad-Marc. Dare I ask what you thought about Restaurant of Chinese Fair Delicacies Within?"
"Well," says I, composed, collected: the essence of amateur restaurant criticism, "The service was fantastic and felt like good old Chinese hospitality. A very noble people, and their conduct reflected as such," insightfully. "The food was fast, but it sure wasn't fast food!" I, intelligent, clearly, yet down to earth, jocular with the folk, as shown by laughter erupting from mouths of adversaries.
"Sounds like you liked it," Alpana says, composing herself, wiping tears from her eyes.
"It was delicious. I got the Egg Foo Yong, and I had to scarf it all up before my date stole it!" Again jocular, again laughs, again Jad-Marc: capturing hearts. "I said to my date, my girlfriend: 'Oh, don't you worry, sweetums, you'll get plenty of egg in your mouth later, but just the whites.'" That's right, Jad-Marc, reel 'em in. The money shot. Don't stop now. "And my girlfriend just laughed. People were staring at us. 'Or maybe you want those egg whites now, baby, huh?' And I forced her under the table and she sucked me off right there in the middle of Restaurant of Chinese Fair Delicacies Within, me alternating between slapping the table and her ass, exposed now due to my ripping of her skirt, and cooks out from the kitchen, three of them, standing not ten feet away from us, laughing and jerking, jerking and laughing." Silence in the studio, aside from my seemingly resonating and reverberating disappointment in my adversaries' attitudes, as we all slowly sipped our wine.

I chose The World Diner in Lincoln park, housed in which is every single taste you can ever imagine. Every single delicacy from every single corner and nook and cranny of this crazy spinning rock orbiting this crazy solar system can be found here. And you can mix and match and create your own tastes, too! Want a curry-fried-green-chile rice pizza? Will be ready in 3 hours. Want a Yakburger with Filipino eel-fries? Will be ready next week. Want a Jaegerbomb? Have three while you wait for your strawberry-gyro-pie! It is located underneath Lincoln Park, in a sort of multi-level cave dwelling, a la Gangs of New York. To enter, you must rub the Goethe statue's marble genitals not once, not twice, but thrice. After doing so, the earth itself opens up, and the World Diner awaits one hundred feet below. Unfortunately, neither Alpana nor Stephanie nor Joseph could find the elusive restaurant, and after the taping I was immediately and hastily escorted out of the WTTW studio.

On Novel Writing.

Sir Terry Toynbee Windus, gent.

Veni, Vidi, Dormivi

Surprise be it to me that, upon reaching jolly Londontown againe, after the customary pause and rest of a fortnight anon three days in Willy-Wompus-Whole-Upon-Hamptonshire, I was celebrated, besmitten, and dined by the gentle LORDS and LADIES of that noble CITIE, and for nothing more, it seem’d to me, then my latest, SAUCY WORDS regarding Prime Ministers, CHURLS and CHARLATONS—sine cume patrium. Aye, I report, supple goose-legs dunked in a-goat’s milk! wrapped in rabbitsbutter’d liverwinkle and DELICIOUS London SAUCE! And, oh by Mount Parnassus, the welcoming I received in Heathsbridge! A gentle masque, produced for my HONOUR, with forty and a hundred boys in feathers, caste unto the air, a’covered with colored tunics of parrot hues a million, twisting and turning and twisting so as to herald God’s own GLORIE, and not that of their own soft NETHER-PARTS. But, Hark! I thought, in a flashe—not un-alike the jowly beard and glinting eye of ZEUS himself. What be this? What do these city gentles know of my WORDS and OPINONES? How have they a’read them, scanned them and weighted them for their WORTH? It appeared, they explain’d, a noble, rich, ambitious PAMPHLETEER had acquired them, without my knowing, and published them in a pamphlet—City Town Opiniones of noble worth and KNOWING, and of Noblisse and Towing, concerning the Body-Health a’Politick of London and its Surrounding Regions, of the North, the West, but not of the East etc. A wonderous title, me thought. But what scourge! What betrayel! I left the masque inflammed and marched across towne to this word-thief’s home. Bloated with ale, dripping with LAGER, I demanded an answer and REBUFF, for all his many INDECENCIES. Aye, but his wit was stronge, his purse was deep, and he knew how best to TAME me, and now I write to you, with happy hand and full, the new SERIAL writer for TOBIAS TRUNKET’S WONDER PAMPHLET, of GOODE SIZE and SHAPE, NOT THIRTY PAGES or MORE, DELIVERED EVER’Y THURSDAY ON MID-DAY, THE WEATHER, TRAFFIK, AND OUR LORD GOD PERMITTING.

Now my station is secured, I wonder, what to write? I scanned my brain for topics of wholly pamphlet worth. These new LOCOMOTIVES, perhaps—vile, black, dusty things that tear across the earth with the speed of Hermes’ winged brain, blowing and gushing with black-headed smoke and low, lonesome wails. But what does a country gentle know of traines? I am a sporting man, of the muddy earth and natural oak brambles. Of the horse’s flexing LOINS, his powerful chest, and sweaty FLANKS. I eat supper at home, in the glinting care of Margarate, my wife, Joseph, my son, and Ishmael, his barrel-chested Island Topangan friend. Eat well I do with leek and potato belly stew, pine cone pie, and macaroons. Nothing of blackened steel do I know. Away with you, low trains. Of you I have no use!

But, lo, I think: what of novel writing? This new fashione to sweep the gay parties of Londone, Oxenford, and Cambridge? Not a once have attended a masque or curtain party and not heard of the latest release from the jolly publishers on Cranklin Street. Words, ah yes words! My downy bedfellows! My companions, deepest friends and confidants. The happy vessels of my thoughts! The lusty hoppers of my brain! Of words I know and trust. Of words I shall write! The novel--Away! 

The history of this most peculiar of art forms is most peculiar of its own. It is whispered, in St. John’s wood and beyond, that a Sarah Horon Billingsdick wrote the first English novel, all of her own, the duration of her imprisonment atop Billingsdick tower, near Bristol, which she was serving for the humble crime of knocking clam pails with a Welshman. Her father was of Norman blood and proud, and had no use for the clam sucking Wester, locking his daughter away for nigh twelve years, though much the lady did protest! But a prudent mind the Welsh-leaning Billingsdick possessed, writing forty two novels in those long years. Not of a horses turd are any a one of them worth, though every Englishwoman, from Hastings to York, now emulates Lady Billingsdick in drawing pen to paper and letting their bouncy chests burst free with eager thought and emotion. Fathers be damned! Try and draw your young daughter away from a Billingsdick serial and face certainly being bitten, clawed at, struck— the ravenous screams of your prim rose of the most startling and unsavory STOCK. Some NOBLE English minds agree, the novel is a SCANDAL, and not for the nation builder, the clophopper, the tree chopper, the English Man, to participate in.

Aye, but bouncy chests aside, the novel can be a lusty ship for the haughty Englishman to board as well. Jarvis Jellybutton, Marvin Baumer, and Soothy Hall Summerton—three of the most broad shouldered, long-bearded, well be-sausaged Englishman this modest island has at once produced all a three write novels. But, their sterling packages not forgotten, these three craftsmen have seemed to begotten dull blades in recent years. Their cutting humor, shimmering wit and musky prose have seemed to wither on the page. If these three outdoors men, fine riders all, cannot satisfy the burning need, the heaving chest, the eager crotch of an entire nation and its literary tastes, what hope is there for us mortal Albions?

End of Part 1...

Lost Chapters Un-Lost: Ernest Hemingway

The following is the first in a series of lost writings from famous American wordsmiths. Composed early in his career, when his bold, muscular prose was first coalescing into a unique style, this newly discovered chapter is an alternative opening to Hemingway’s first enduring work, The Sun Also Rises. The Funion Institute of Angry Writers and Their Lost Work is both honored and excited to bring you fresh writing from this embattled American icon.

Harold T. Schnobb, Director of the Funion Institute of Angry Writers and Their Lost Work

The Sun Also Rises, an alternative opening.

Jews are good at boxing. I went to Princeton. I met a Jew there. He was good at boxing. I think he was good at boxing because he was so small. And because he was a Jew. He liked to punch people in the face because they made fun of him. That’s why he got so good at boxing. People made fun of him and he had to punch them. Right on the nose.
This good-boxing Jew got married right after college. I did not get married right after college. I drove ambulances in the war. What a bite that was. I suffered. But my Jew friend did not get to go. He had jaundice at the time, and webbed toes. The doctor took one look at him: “No.” He said, “You cannot be in this war.” So my Jew friend did not suffer. He had a rich mother. She died, he got a little cash, and he left for Europe with his wife. They didn’t work. They just lived off this cash, see.
This wife of his was jealous. She was not a Jew. I think she was Anglican. She was jealous of my Jew-friend-boxer because he was dark, and small, and he boxed. “What girl would not love that?” She thought. She thought too much. After a few years, when I was working in Paris, my Jew friend got a mistress. She was young. She was a student. My Jew friend got real scared. “What if his wife found out?” He thought. He thought too much. He decided to leave his wife. He wanted to go to South America.
“Come to South America, Jake.” He said, sitting in my office. He looked up at the ceiling.
“Why would I do that?” I said. I had work to do. I did a lot of work.
“There are beautiful women there.”
“There are beautiful women here.”
“That is true. But there are truly beautiful women in Brazil. Everyone is beautiful, in fact. You walk down the street and think, ‘My God. What is going on with these people? They are so beautiful. Where have I gone?’”
“That sounds nice.” I lied. I had work to do. At least that’s what I told him. Why would my friend want to leave Paris, I thought. “All places are the same.” I said. “You’ll go to South America and then you will want to leave. Maybe you will want to go to China. Who knows?”
My Jew friend got sad. He left, tipping his hat to me. “See you at dinner.”
At dinner we ate rolls and fish and we drank wine. It was my friend, his wife, and I. I wanted to cheer my friend up.
“Maybe we can go to Genoa.” I said.
“Really?” He asked.
“Why not? I know a girl there. A real swell girl. American, I think. She’ll show us around. Great legs.”
His wife got mad. She looked at me. She looked like she was going to hurt me. She stepped on my foot under the table. “Really great legs.” She stepped on my foot again.
Later on I was sitting on the Rue de Saint Mart, watching people walk by. A girl walked by on the street and she smiled at me. I smiled back, sipping some absinthe. She walked up to my table and sat down.
“The river looks beautiful.” She said.
“Yes it does.” I lied. I sipped some absinthe.
“Is that absinthe?” She said.
“Yes.” I said.
“May I have some?”
“Of course.” I said.
“Have sex with me.” She said.
“No.” I said.
We looked out at the river.
One time I was in Michigan with my father. He had a long rifle. I wasn’t old enough to have one. My uncle was with us. He was drunk. We were walking through tall grass. We were hunting duck. We came to the edge of the grass and the water popped out. The smooth-shouldered lake was so bright my uncle and father stopped. The ducks flew up. They could not see them. The ducks got away. The lake was beautiful and we looked at it. Later on my uncle shot his foot cleaning his gun.
I sat watching the river with the French girl. She may have been Corsican. She was ugly when she smiled and I was getting sick of her. I wanted to leave Paris.
"Sweet sweet darling lips," Brett said to me. "Leave Paris with me." So I did. 

THE END

Disgruntled Onion Reporter Leaks Next Week’s Headlines

In the interests of brevity, anonymity, and eroticism, here is a little taste—a flash of the brassiere, as it were—without any ado:


Stimulus Package Stimulates Area Man’s Package

Amtrak Customer Approaches Ticket Counter, Requests “Three-Way” Ticket

George Clooney: Does Anyone Want to Hang Out in Milan for a Few Weeks?

Married Actor Really Looking Forward to Using On-Screen Romance as Springboard for Real-Life Adultery

Using the Word “Awesome” in Office Memo Costs Intern His Job, Life

Salman Rushdie on Fatwa Drought: “Blasphemy Just Isn’t What it Used to Be”

Unfinished Album Cover That Will Never be Finished

By Kevin

Tyler Perry Single-Handedly Disproves Basis of Capitalism

HOLLYWOOD—With the impending release of the latest installment in the Madea franchise, Madea Goes to Jail, writer/director Tyler Perry has irrevocably cast doubt on the conceptual and practical undergirding of the capitalist system. According to the once-thought immutable laws of supply and demand, consumer demand for a particular good or service accounts for the very existence of that good or service, while determining its widespread or limited availability. The ubiquity—in a glut of maudlin, unfunny movies over the last few years—of Perry’s favorite character, Madea, without any corresponding public affinity for her, completely contradicts the aforementioned laws.

“What we’re seeing here is a contravention of hundreds of years of capitalism,” says Gerhard Mortimer, a professor of economics at the University of Chicago. “Every once in a while an independently-wealthy maverick will bypass supply-demand strictures and force his product or half-baked vision on the public. But the system always rights itself; consumer demand will respond to those efforts by either embracing or crushing them. What we have here, however, is utterly perplexing.”

Other economists have moved beyond trying to explain what has come to be known as “The Perry Phenomenon” and are making predictions—mostly apocalyptic—for the future. “It’s not a matter of quality,” says Boston University economist Humphrey Lee. “You knew those step-dancing movies Hollywood kept making were awful, but you also knew that an equally awful part of our population was seeing those movies. There is no indication that anyone, anywhere has any desire to see these Madea movies.

“The capitalist system as we know it, based on supply and demand, has collapsed. The doors have opened for the production of unbelievably asinine products for phantom consumers. We’re not far away from some, I don’t know, reverse bathrobe being produced and marketed to us as some sort of new age blanket. Just watch. What? Are you serious???”

By a Sporting Benediction, Mine Super Bowl Prediction

By Lord Taylor Percy Keatsridge

Funion Poet Laureate











In summer, spirits are highest as
The audience, soused and silly, cheer on their crews.
The kickoff of the leather orb commences,
Sent into the outstretched arms of the Cardinal,
And the bowl, of most superior importance,
Is underway.

Come autumn the challenge remains deadlocked,
As summer proves unfruitful for each battalion.
Winter is fast approaching, the death of beauty looms,
As the mighty Roethlisberger, built like Ajax,
Fleet of foot like Achilles, humbly bows and takes
A knee.

The autumnal harvest offers no sustenance
To each family, as neither touches softly down.
Yet they rest, while The Bruce of Springsteen
Rings in the solstice with a swinging song.
The players are rested and ready, to take on the
Winter months.

The Steelers, that Pittsburgh Proletariat,
Receive the leather and swiftly steal away,
Scoring immediately, and put on extra.
The deadly sins, the days of creation,
The points by which they lead the Westerners:
Seven.

And so ends winter, and so starts spring.
The men are rejuvenated, like blossoms in bloom,
And proceed down the cavernous stretch. The
Cardinals enter enemy territory, but are stopped
Short of paradise, suspended in purgatory, and settle for
Field Goal.

And nothing further, as the mighty Roethlisberger,
On humble knee once more, liquidates the remaining
Ticks, and the Champions of the Bowl are named:
The Proletariat has risen, the Cardinal theocracy
Thwarted. Steelers score seven, Arizona only
Three.

Interview with a Cowpoke Riding in a Posse (Excerpt)

….Funion: Now, Mr. Johnson, I just finished your book, which I love by the way. I have to ask: what are the major influences behind your writing style? Where did you pick up such a succinct, individual second-person voice?

Cowpoke: OOOoooo WEE boys! We got ‘em on the slide now, yes we do! Bobby! Bobby. Where in the hell’s bells is that bo—oh Bobby, there you are. Good. Now listen, hear? You ride on back to Hadleyville and get Pepper Joe and Sam Waters and the marshal, don’t forget the marshal, too. I want to see you fly boy. I want you riding faster than a jackrabbit’s pecker at high moon. Go on now, get! What’s that? I told you what to do boy and you better get on and do it. Right as my left elbow. You ain’t but sixteen, son, they’ll be plenty a’more posses for ya. Sure as I’m breathin’. I’m going to send Frank and Jimmy around that steppe there and me and the rest will circle ‘em down at the pass. We need that marshal’s big-balled Peacemaker all right—cut those turd cows in half. And we need Pepper Joe’s rope. Now get!

Funion: Interesting. I take it that wasn’t something you acquired, it was just a natural voice for you?

Cowpoke: [Sound of hoofbeats]

Funion. That’s what I thought. Fascinating. Well, what struck me most about your book was the use of light imagery. Very subtle, very controlled. Especially in the jailbreak scene—the figures coming out of light, moving into dark, moving into shadow. There is a sense there, I guess, of imprisonment in life. Life in general, in its totality. The jail is lit, the night is moonless. Very profound, I thought. Any comments?

Cowpoke: Will you look at that! Sonuvasteer’sdick! Look at those rustlers move! Riding for keeps, they is. Keep those six-shooters smokin’ boys, we don’t ketch ‘em at the opening there we’ll lose ‘em for the night. That’s for sure. Where is that cabbage-headed boy, Bobby? GAAAAWD-damn! That boy's a turkey gullet. Looks like we’re by our lonesome’s boys, keep those sixers loaded, keep ‘em hot. Lordy, my crotch is burnin'--like a limestone on the sierra at noon. It's baking all-right. But I ain't lettin' Frank Miller get us beat. No sir. That lowdown rustlin', high brow cussin', ankle-bitting, shoulder scrappin', head boppin', steer's ass wrapped in butterscotch cream son of a snakeskin ain't makin' it out of Hadleyville again! Did you get a sight of Cap Johnson's face? Did ya see what the man did to it? Made it look like a baby's bottom after a hot springs soak! No sir. He and his boys ain't a goin' to make it now, no way.

Funion: Oh, my. That's right! I had never seen that connection before-- between the jail break sequence and the final scene...truly fascinating. Well, I'm a huge fan, as you can probably tell. Thank you so much for sitting down with me Mr. Johnson. 

Cowpoke: Mary Lincoln Todd and the Pope's Nose! We've been had boys! That ain't Frank Miller a'tal just came out of the pass. By the holy ghost's yellow belly, where'd that rustler go? There ain't but two ways outta there and we just as well took the one. That is daring, boys. I'll give him that. No two ways around it. Daring for sure. Sure as I'm plum drunk. Let's make it back, this posse ain't a going to make no purchase tonite, riding in the black. Better go on and tell the Marshal we been--what in hell? Frank Miller is that yo---

What I Think: Obama Working Too Much From Home

What I Think! is a Kenneth Albright bi-weekly editorial. Albright is Senior Funion Politico and Television Watcher.

As some of you may or may not know, this Barack Obama has been under a lot of scrutiny lately. Oh, for at least a month or so, maybe more. I've seen it myself: on CNN, FOX News, Des Moines' own News Chat with Ricky--night after night panelists, newspapermen, District 203 teachers all come on and discuss everything about the man-sized man, from his economic stimulus package to just his package, straight and simple. It drives me absolutely bonkers. Eight hours a day of Wolf Blitzer, John King, Lou Dobbs, King Blitzer, Ricky Richards can be exhausting. What did Barack eat for breakfast? Is he getting enough vitamins? Will he close Gitmo today or tomorrow? Bonkers! If I had senior journalists looking over my shoulder at the East Iowa Recycling Center like that I'd be in trouble, boy, let me tell you! No three lunches a day for me! Ho, ho! But I have to admit: something has been troubling me. I've got subscriptions to the Des Moines Star, the Des Moines Shield, The 'Moiner, the East Iowa Review of Words--all the biggies. Not a single one has mentioned this problem. Nobody else has seemed to notice: Just how lazy is Barack Obama exactly? And why is he working so much from home? 

I realize it is some sort of American political tradition for US presidents to live in this, "White House." Apparently, US presidents have been living there with their broods for something like 300 years or so. You see, it was built in 1603 by Dutch-Indian settlers who wanted a gentleman's club on the Potottototomac River. They disappeared, for a reason lost hundreds of years ago, and left us the house as a gift. My son, Robert, also told me they have spaceships underneath in case things get hairy here on the surface of the planet. And that 400 pastry chefs live in the basement. Smart thinking. I have a little confession: I always thought when you got elected president you just had to paint your house white, hence the aforementioned "white house" I told you about. Boy was I wrong. I guess this thing is HUGE! right smack dab in the middle of the capital. Geez, what will they think of next? 

Anyways, here's something you probably didn't know. Barack Obama has, in the THREE days he's been in office, built a thing called an "Oval Office." A home office, basically, right in the middle of this house! Try to picture it! The first president in US history to actually build his very own home office. I tried to clear out the garage last summer to make a little office for myself and I never got it done. The whole summer it took me, and I failed. It took this guy three days! And he succeeded! Don't get me wrong: I think home offices are great. A fine idea. But should the "leader of the free world" be working out of his home? I think it looks tacky. A little cheap, if you ask me. I talked to Charlotte Robins next door. She agreed with me. Just a little, you  know, unrefined. I mean, how are political leaders from around the world going to take it when they see a US president in sweat-pants and a v-neck signing bills from his own him. Geez! 

And know one is on his back about it, either! Last month I took three days off to "work from home" and I was getting calls everyday: "Ken, when you comin' back?" "Harumph! When you comin' back, buddy?" "Get your ass back here or your fired, asshole!" Stuff like that. It might be a good idea of somebody politely told Mr. Obama that this home office idea is not a good idea. He might get fired if they don't. But that's just what I think!

10-Game Beer Pong Win Streak Ends, Appropriately, With Gladiator Reference

ATHENS, OH-- OU Senior Paulie Schultz finished last night's solid ten-game win streak in beer pong with yet another reference to Gladiator. Witnesses at the beer pong tournament reported Schultz, immediately after watching an opposing ping pong rim his final solo cup and funnel downwards to the bottom, whispered, almost inaudibly, "Shadows and dust. Shadows and dust..." before downing the alloted quantity of beer and squeezing his girlfriend's ass. Schultz had been making both friends and enemies at the Mill Street party all night with a near-constant bombardment of references to the Ridley Scott film, particularly while enjoying his major ten-game streak. Mark Johnson, subletter of the Mill Street home and host of the party called Schultz "a trip" and "really toasted": "Paulie is definitely a polarizing personality. You either love him or hate him. It seems to have gotten worse recently, too, given his near incessant need to bring Gladiator into every situation," adding, while collapsing his fourth beer pong table, "But I love that fucker." 

According to Caitlin Richards, the Gladiator references began at approximately 11:45 EST, directly after Schultz's fourth straight victory. Numerous witnesses corroborate that, after beating a duo of squat freshman and having had to drink only two of the customary twelve cups of beer, Schultz spun around, his hands in the air, addressing the bulk of the party in a roar: "ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED!?!? ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED!?!?!" While half the party seems to have either ignored, missed, or erased the incident from their minds, a few periphery fans of the beer pong action remember it well, to varying responses: "I guess it was pretty hilarious. I mean, he did kick the crap out of those kids. He had, like, ten cups left on the table or something. So yeah, we were entertained," Mark Johnson said. However, some party-goers less familiar with the acadamy-award winning block buster film were not impressed, and more puzzled than they were ever entertained: "That guy was such an asshole! What was he even talking about?" 5'5'' sophomore Karen Karen reported, who, several upperclassman agree, was completely toasted last night and a "total cocktease." 

As the victories piled up, Schultz's references continued on with less and less effectiveness. At one point, Schultz cornered a future adversary on the tournament list, slowly guiding him away from the party as he recited, word for word: "My name is Maxiumus Decimus Meridius, commander of the Armies of the North, General of the Felix Legions, loyal servant to the true emperor, Marcus Aurelius. Father to a murdered son, husband to a murdered wife. And I will have my vengeance, in this life or the next." John-John Crabtree, the aforementioned adversary, was perplexed if not impressed by the verbatim reference: "I didn't really understand what he was talking about....I did end his five-streak win last week. Maybe that was it. But it was impressive, yeah. I can never remember all those, those names and stuff. He really loves that fucking movie." 

When Schultz's long-time partner dropped out after the eighth game, retiring to the back corridor to "get some trim," Schultz remained steadfast at the beer pong table, enlisting the first person he could find, a relative novice with a backwards cap, assuring: "You can help me," gesturing to the opposite end of the table, "whatever comes out of these gates, we've got a better chance of survival if we work together. Do you understand? If we stay together we survive." Then, apparently confusing his battle-scenes and Russell Crowe monologues together, Schultz added, "What we do in life echos in eternity." Partyers were either way too smashed or oblivious to correct him at the moment, choosing rather to continue on ignoring Schultz like they had for a majority of the night. 

Despite the glaring slip-up, however, Schultz's references were sound, as he dazzled a group of two people with his amazing ability to apply almost every Gladiator quote to beer pong competition. The celebrated Mill Street, known both locally and beyond for its talented beer pong competitors, has never seen a player like Schultz before. A beer-ponger with the remarkable ability to both win games and lose friends at the same time. While there have clearly been polarizing players like Schultz before, the rich forty-five year beer pong tradition on the Athens campus has rarely enjoyed someone with such a versatile command of the Gladiator quote-book. Schultz promptly left the party after losing his first game of the night, "exhausted" and "really in the mood to watch A Good Year." 

Local Student Discovers He Likes Matt Dillon

ATHENS, OH-- Ohio University sophomore Corey Phillips discovered Monday, to his dismay, that he is a Matt Dillon fan. Friends close to the Bio-Chemistry major reported that in the evening, at approximately 8:10 EST, Phillips was hanging out with his girlfriend, checking his DVD's, and generally chilling when the revelation suddenly hit him. "I don't know how he hadn't figured it out, already," former roommate Dewey Dewey said, claiming he suspected Phillips was a Dillon-o-phile from the first week of school. "I mean, the guy brought an Outsiders poster to school and hung it up in our room. It was embarrassing." Most friends and relatives were shocked, though, upon hearing the news, from none other than Phillips himself. Many of his oldest, less-important high school friends were clueless, having known Phillips for close to ten years and living totally ignorant of his secret life as a Matt Dillon fan. Dewey, however, was totally unphased, adding: "I knew it all along."

It was an abrupt occurrence for Phillips himself, who told the Associated Press he was "taken aback" by the discovery and "totally off guard."

"I was looking at my DVD's, trying to pick out a movie to watch with my girl. I was reading the titles outloud to her when it just hit me, with a sudden crystalline clarity: Holy shit. I like Matt Dillon. I had to read them to myself over and over: Deuces Wild; One Night at McCool's; You, Me, and Dupree; Wild things. I can't believe I hadn't seen it all before."

Phillips' girlfriend was unavailable for comment. 

Now, almost five days after the initial discovery, friends close to Phillips claim things are starting to make sense: the desktop head shot of Dillon on his computer, the conspicuous DVD collection, the nights spent waxing rhapsodically on Dillon's 'hidden talent,' the button-up, business-casual style of dress. Years spent musing on Phillips' preference for male actors has finally come to a conclusion. "You know, he would always flippantly talk about how undervalued the guy is. How great he was in this and that movie, how he should have gotten the Oscar-nod for Crash. We would all be drinking, looking at each other, like: 'Okay, Corey, whatever. Whatever you say man...'" Best friend and fellow Clippinger hall intern Joey Joey recalled. "It could get kind of awkward," adding, whilst gazing wistfully out the large, lab window: "How could I have missed this. It is so obvious." 

As of press time Friday, it is unclear how Phillips is coping with the life-changing discovery, whether or not he'll remain with his girlfriend, or maintain any relationships with the same group of friends. "It is a pretty big deal, yeah," Phillips said, while calculating the amino-acid content of Wrigley's chewing gum in his lab, "It was a hard thing to admit to myself, and I've been coming to terms with it, slowly. Karen [Hocking College art history major, Karen Walsh] and I have been taking about it every night and I've had to sit down with some friends," Phillips continued, suddenly dropping a beaker, "Holy shit, has anyone told my parents???" 

On Subway Footlong's

On Loneliness

By Dr. Lowell Howard Roby, Professor of Solitarianism Studies and Alcohology at Oxfordshire Community College in Oxfordshire, Indiana, North Campus.

Solitarianism Studies 100: Loneliness - MWF 12:00-12:51
Office Hours - MWF 8:00-11:50, 1:00-6:00; TR 8:00-6:00

Good morning, class. Or afternoon, that is, at the present moment. Time, as in days and hours, has meant little to me over the past several years, or perhaps more than several, as years hold little meaning as well. I realize you are all in the prime of your respective lives, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, as it were. Nothing can stop you. Nothing can hold you down. The upcoming years for you all mean everything to you, as they are the years that you assume will bear the most fruit. And I wish you those most fruitful of years. Anywho, let us begin. Loneliness. It is a feeling, obviously. A feeling of intense pain, a pain that far exceeds any of the physical variety. The lonely feel isolated, as if they are inhabiting an uninhabitable ice planet, Hoth, perhaps, without even a loyal Tawn-Tawn with which to snuggle up. Everyday is a struggle to simply exist. Fellow human beings seem like alien creatures - like Jawas, if you will. Forging relationships is an exercise in futility - a hopeless, awkward dance. Conversations are circular rigmaroles. The lonely get nothing done. It is all they can do to wake up in the morning and shower, shave, brew coffee, get the damn paper with its multitudes of inane, depressing world news, repeating itself day in and day out like history. But we all feel it sometimes. We all get lonely. It is a universal feeling. Which is a bit paradoxical, innit? How can one feel lonely if he knows that there are thousands, millions of others who feel as he does? Chew on that one while I take roll.

Aardvark? Is Mr. Aardvark here? Ah, there you be... Abbadabba? Ms. Abbadabba? Oh, Mrs.? Mrs. Abbadabba hyphen Dabbababba? I wasn't invited? Congrats, anyway... Ace? Ms. Ace? Got you. Raise those hands high, children... Mr. Adler? Adler? No Adler?... Aeon? Mr. Aeon? Uh huh... Mr. Afterwitz? Afterwitz? Indeed... Ms. Aggee? Got it... Ms. Ah? Su Pak Ah? Nice haircut... Mr. Aingh? Aingh? No Aingh?... Ajoo? Ms. Ajoo? Perfect... Akira? Lee Akira? Okay... Allen? Noelle Allen? I see you, dear... Ms. Amway? Got it... Anatole? Where is young Anatole? Anyone know? He's yet to show... Mr. Aok. Yes... And... Oh, I saw Ms. Applebee. I'd know you from those tanned, shiny gams alone, deary. Good to see you, Ms. Applebee.

Now, loneliness. Who here is lonely? Nobody? Well, children, you just proved my next point: the social stigma carried by the lonely. It is taboo. Nobody wants to admit to their loneliness, yet we know that everyone feels it at least once in a while. Another paradox. But aren't all taboos paradoxical? Inherent in the definition of a taboo is the fact of its existence. How can something that exists be taboo?! Don't you see? It exists for a reason, yet we choose to deny its existence! It's like if I were to say: "Ms. Applebee isn't post-adolescent sexiness incarnate. She isn't the epitome of all that is simultaneously good, raw and unholy in this unforgiving world. She isn't currently occupying the caverns of my heart and the filthiest recesses of my middle-aged mind." We all know that those statements are false, yet we choose to believe them for the sake of propriety.

Now, how does loneliness come about? The easy answer is a lack of meaningful relationships. But how does one achieve a lack of meaningful relationships? This is the crux of Solitarianism Studies. To learn how it is achieved is to learn how to avoid it. Essentially, it comes down to interests. The more interests one has, the lonelier he is. For example, uh, Mr. Akira: what are your interests? Hm? You don't know? Okay. This young man, ladies and gents, is a veritable Party God. He has sex with multiple partners every night, sucks down/on immense quantities of alcohol/titties, respectively, whenever he so chooses, all the while never feeling lonely. Is this fair to say, Mr. Akira? See? And, conversely... hm... Ms. Ah. What are your interests? Uh huh. I see. Piano, violin, and cello? And reading and butterfly collecting? Wow. Behold, my students, your old-fashioned American prude. A lonely virgin I presume, Ms. Ah? Of course. And how do I know all of this? Simply due to Mr. Akira's complete lack and Ms. Ah's wealth of interests. A lack of interests is inversely proportional to a lack of meaningful relationships. The more interests you have, the less meaningful relationships you have. The less interests you have, the more meaningful relationships you have. It's called the Loneliness Curve. A man and a woman, empty-souled, devoid of thoughts and unburdened by the information related to interests are free to get down to nuts and tits; to fuck, if you will. Whereas Ms. Ah needs a partner who shares her specialized interests, a person whom it is difficult to find. You may be thinking, "But Professor Roby, can you really count sex partners and titty-suckees as meaningful relationships?" To which I would respond: "Kid, once you get to my age, those relationships are the only ones that matter."

Now, why does a lack of interests translate to more abundant meaningful relationships? It's all related to time. Time spent accruing and harvesting interests is time spent not talking up a leggy redhead in the back booth of O'Shenanigan's. Time spent jogging is time spent not fucking. It's as simple as that. Like to write, Afterwitz? So did I, once upon a time. But I wised up. It's a lonely endeavor, a deeply personal activity. My wife, Beatrice, God rest her soul, used to say to me every night: "Lowell, sweetie, stop writing that multi-volume magnum opus of yours that will never be published and come to bed so that we can have intercourse." I should've listened to her, Afterwitz. Now she's dead, I'm alone, and I've got thousands of pages of unpublishable horseshit on my hands (the bulk of which, by the by, class, is the textbook for this course and is available at the Kinko's on Buckingham Ave., across from the Quizno's).

Are we out of time? Okay. On Friday we'll talk about self-medication. Read the first several dozen pages or so of my book by then. And I don't want any of you pointing out my typos. Ms. Applebee, could I see you for a moment?

Singer-Guitarist Refuses to Conform to Potbelly Classic Rock Ethos

Chicago—Mike Adamsick, 26, yesterday stunned and offended sandwich eaters at a Lincoln Park Potbelly with the sheer eclecticism of his solo musical performance. A member of a number of local rock bands in Chicago, Adamsick recently decided to supplement his fledgling music career by booking solo daytime gigs.

“I was eating lunch at a Potbelly one day and some guy was playing classic rock covers on a little raised platform,” says Adamsick. “He was really getting through to the people there. I realized that day that when people open their mouths to voraciously consume warm sandwiches, they open their ears as well.” Adamsick scheduled a tryout, which he would eventually pass playing languid versions of songs by The Doors and The Rolling Stones. “Mike wowed us with his rendition of ‘Soul Kitchen,’” says Morgan Fay, the Potbelly manager who scheduled Adamsick to play on his location’s claustrophobia-inducing stage. “We booked him thinking that he would pay homage to the classic rock genre. Boy, were we wrong.”

Adamsick’s live performance, far from extolling one specific genre of music, was rather a meandering appraisal of them all. According to Stephanie Pontius, who was eating lunch with her friends at the time, “He [Adamsick] started his set with ‘Old Man’ [by Neil Young] and ‘House of the Rising Sun’ [by The Animals]. I was like, ‘Oh yeah, this is what Potbelly music is all about.’ His next song was one I recognized, although I don't know the artist or the title. 'She's a Bad Mamma Jamma' or something." The solo performer then went into Prince’s “Purple Rain.”

The audience responded to the jump in pitch and chronology with a mixture of perplexity and disappointment. “I didn’t even know it was possible to play Prince on a single acoustic guitar,” says Pontius. “Nothing short of betrayal,” says Potbelly employee Rick Salisbury. “The guy billed himself as a champion of classic rock, and then all of a sudden he starts bringing the funk and all this other crap.” According to sources, after Adamsick finished his first set with Earth, Wind and Fire’s “Boogie Wonderland” and approached the lunch counter for a cup of water, Salisbury refused, telling Adamsick he had to play “some fucking Crosby, Stills and Nash” before receiving refreshment.

Potbelly has long been a bastion of the ‘60’s and ‘70’s classic rock zeitgeist. Its inviting wooden walls, warm sandwiches, and intrusive employees are redolent of a time in our nation’s history when free love, baked brains, and abrasive personal and political rock and roll reigned supreme. And so Adamsick’s seemingly random impersonation of Everlast front man Erik Schrody’s gruff voice for his loyal cover of “What it’s Like,” was considered an exercise in deliberate grotesqueness by many in attendance.

“I come to Potbelly for three reasons,” says Mitchell Hunt, who was around for half of Adamsick’s second set. “To eat warm sandwiches and chili with Kraft singles on top, to deal with employees who ask me too many personal questions, and to listen to classic rock music. If you’re not going to play classic rock music, I just don’t get it. You’ve got to be nihilistic, or something. I mean, what’s the point?”

Adamsick, meanwhile, firmly opposes the charges of false advertisement, perfidy, and nihilism. “I simply wanted to represent a variety of musical styles and to showcase my talents,” he says. “For an apparently laid back place, Potbelly turned out to be pretty fascistic. I don’t think I’ll be back to perform, but I simply can’t quit their tuna salad sandwiches.”

Friends Suggest New 'Topless Tapas' Bar, Quickly Forget About It

"It all started with Mikey," Gerald Swerner reported, Friday, from his dimly lit Alhambra home, "He was telling us about these stuffed mushrooms or something. This dish he got with his girlfriend's mom and his girlfriend."

"They are called 'Spanish Stuffed Mushrooms,'" Mikey D confirmed, nodding his head, sitting in his equally muddled den.

"Anyways," Gerald continued, "We were sitting around, doing some brew, when Gerald started talking about these mushrooms. It was Riley, Harshank, Meatstick and I. Anyways, he asked us if we'd ever been to a topless bar before. So, naturally, we started cracking up. Whaaaaaaa-tt? We asked." 

The best friends are, of course, frequent strip club attendees and had, incidentally, just gotten back from Cat Land on Atlantic Boulevard-- where they saw, "serious bush." Mickey D shook his head, red-faced and laughing, correcting himself: "Tapas bar! Tapas bar!" 

A few residual chuckles sounded, as well as some whistles and a moment of pro-longed, pure silence. It was then, Gerald reported, Meatstick put his beer down on the coffee table, looked up at his friends soberly, and asked: "What about that? What do you guys think about a topless tapas bar?" 

Nervous laughter followed, as well as a few sideways glances, when Harshank finally broke in: "I think it sounds tits, man." 

A flurry of brainstorming started then as the moderately smashed group of friends began outlining their corporate business model and sales pitch. "We all got to, you know, own it. All of us...like, what's it called, a 'co...co-comune," Meatstick motioned, standing up and pacing the room. "No one is boss. I hate bosses, man." 

A series of "yeah's" and "hell yeah's" followed, as the group continually raised their glasses to their lips and consumed more alcohol. The exotic, vibrant flavors of Spanish cuisine combined with vibrant, exotic dancers and large breasts were a perfect, natural combination, Gerald reported, "at the time." Lovers of Spanish tapas like the famous Spanish omelette and goat cheese in marinara sauce could at once tap in to the vast and, the friends agreed, talented Alhambra topless culture while feeling right at home with a potato wedge in hand. Lovers of big boobs, girating buttocks, and coquettish 18+ girls could open themselves up to a new cultural experience through delicious, Spanish foodstuffs. In both instances, the combination would be, in theory, a "sensory experience second to none." They would be bringing two disparate yet similar-sounding worlds together. 

"And then Mickey had this crazy idea that we could serve the food on the dancers. And that, that was like gangbusters at the time. We went nuts," Gerald shook his head, with a cluck of the tongue, "That was some pretty crazy shit." 

The friends also outlined plans for renovating Old Man Benson's recently condemned ranch house on the edge of town, giving the friends a prime real estate location apart from the densely cluttered Atlantic Blvd. bars, as well as pondering the possibility of enlisting Harshank's sister, Karen, "a ten," as lead dance instructor. 

All brainstorming suddenly ended for the night as Mickey D popped in Sublime's Forty Ounces to Freedom album and proceeded to mouth the lyrics to "Waiting for My Ruca" in its entire. Meatstick, Harshank, and Gerald woke up on the floor. As of the next morning and following day, none of the friends has mentioned it to the other. 

"Fuck it," said Mikey D. 

Can Someone Pitch Me a Movie That Doesn't Require Special Effects?

By Brendan Fraser

I'm an actor who believes in symmetry. So, for instance, I've balanced my role in Encino Man with my role in George of the Jungle; Blast from the Past with Bedazzled; Dudley Do Right with that Looney Tunes movie. After playing a sometimes bumbling yet overall competent and heroic adventurer in The Mummy movies, however, I decided to throw everyone off by taking on the much more complicated role of Alden Pyle in The Quiet American. I played opposite Michael Caine in that movie. Did you know that? But alas, my need for balance and symmetry eventually got the better of me, and I would play another heroic adventurer in Journey to the Center of the Earth. I don't know where this urge for order, this preference for cosmos over chaos, comes from. Perhaps a desultory childhood spent moving from one place to another with my traveling cosmetics salesman of a father is responsible. In any event, I am caught in a special effects-ridden spiral. It's horrible. And I don't know how to extricate myself from this cyclone of CGI-dependent madness. How did this happen? Remember how great I was in a special effects-less movie like School Ties? Can someone pitch me a movie that doesn't require special effects? It can have special effects, just as long as one scene doesn't. One scene. That's all I'm asking for. Can someone just write a fucking sequel to School Ties?

Tell-uh-vision Purview: The Beest! on AandE, Thursdays, 10 pm e.s.t.

By Chucky Waka of T.V. Guide, Host of "You Heard it Here Either Second or Not at All: An American Roundtable of America's Tabloid Scriveners," on TV Land (Mondays at 3 am e.s.t., Wednesdays at 3:15 am e.s.t., every other Friday at noon, e.s.t., and Sundays at 7 am, e.s.t., 11:30 am, e.s.t., 5:15 pm e.s.t., and 11 pm, e.s.t.)

Last nite premiered The Beest! on the Arts and Entertainment Channel on the Tee Vee, starring Patrick Dempzee as, I believe, a man named Butch, and a slew of orbiting peripheral secondary characters whose names I can't match with their tele-visages at this moment. A man named Seizer played an important role in the narrative, as well as a buxom dirty-blond female new to the city proper, trying to make her way in either the business world, a high-profile law office or an architectural firm, who has to wake up earlier and earlier each morning in order to further anticipate her proclivity to become lost, unaware of her surroundings, encircled by structures that literally scrape the sky and provide mammoth memories of a bygone Gothic era in which Gargoyles were still en vogue and less expensive, due to inflation being at an all time low, so that even a humble hut, like Harry's Sandwich Shop on Dearborn, could afford a Gargoylet to spook away wayward pigeons and, consequently, their accompanying, unsightly, dirty-pearly shit stains. Because this is the metallic village in which The Beest! lies waiting: Chicago.

I am tempted, as other Tee Vee-nalists have been in recent days, to name the township of Chicago - established in 1837 by Indian Canoe-ists, come from Michigan by way of the eponymous Lake due to the scarcity of the wolverine, their primary source of sustenance, tired from their multi-mile journey, arms weak from paddling carved-down Oak Branches, who dragged themselves ashore, proclaimed the vast inland as theirs, vowed to reform their savage ways upon envisioning the austere beauty of the virgin prairie and build an Indian-heaven never before seen on Earth: steel horses galloping along the edge of the immense Lake, sandwiched by parks of greenery and brown-gray buildings of infinite strength housing the unseen faces of elders and the otherwise forgotten bearers of their past and the prematurely remembered artisans of their future, along with a successful marketplace in which fur and fish and figs from faraway lands freely exchange hands, and many more advancements they could not then foresee - as the main character of this tell-uh-vision program, but I will refrain from doing so. Because a setting is not a character. Characters engage with the setting, typically, and The Beest! is no different: quasi-dirty dealings transpire within the majestic, futuristic cosmic architecture of Willenium Park, Butch firearm-threatens a mouthy, mumbling maiden on a park bench overlooking Montel Harbor, a down-on-his-luck husband smokes himself through the fleshy underside of his mandible with an unregistered six-shooter underneath the sizzling tracks of the fat Blue Line, and Gorky meets at a Wickerman Park spot with the young urban professional of his night visions, dreams fueled by blue balls, the loss of his religion, and Rapid Eye Movement.

Gorky Gonzales, I believe to be his show-name, played by former model Shel Silvershell, is not one of the aforementioned peripheral secondary characters. He is second in command of The Beest!, the most superior planet orbiting Dempzee's star. He is the ne'er-do-well novice, the bane of Butch's being, a theme to which we are introduced in the opening scene: "Thwack! Thwoomp!" say two bullets in a terminal call-and-response, the bronze ejaculate of a government-issued Glock held by Butch's thorn-impaled paw, stopped just short of their gory climax by the lead-laced microfibers of Gorky's surreptitiously-donned Flak Jacket. A brilliant display of the duo's commitment to the case file-prescribed charade. The two Undercover Federales afterward make up, but, like that made by the Needle, the damage is done.

Gorky seeks stress-relief in meetings with the Yup. The romance between the young agent and the fabled long-lost blond swallowed by the city, too far gone yet still so close (the apartment directly above his, specifically), is titillating and wondrously executed. Two citizens, lost in two different ways, struggling valiantly against herd-thinning forces that seek to destroy, find each other over coffee, cocktails, and through mutual indifference to orthodox dating procedures. Will they fall in love or simply submit to the hot carnality of that deadliest of sins? They are, ostensibly, the Ross and the Rachel of this post-9/11, Blagojevich era, Butch being equal parts Chandler and Joey.

Patrick Dempzee is perfectly cast as Butch: gaunt, whiskey-faced (aided and enhanced by the war being waged on his pancreas), a sparsely-whiskered jaw-line. He is faux-criminality incarnate with the pipes to back it up, his voice intermittently loud and hoarse, a subtle drawl that fades inversely proportional to the rising of his rage, culminating in a wrathful, crass, sinister crescendo, an upward sound slope that starts with one of Gorky's many fuck-ups and ends with him cursing both Butch and the day he enlisted in the Academy. It's a tell-uh-vision dream, a conflict worth following.

To watch The Beest! is to attempt to decipher the indecipherable, to become acquainted with the arrogant Undercover Federale, a wholly unknowable being, while privy to a fact which he is not: that he is merely a dirty-work-pawn, a Federal Cipher. How does the viewer invest in such a stereotype, a man renowned for his ability to take on the persona of any scum-dwelling villain, be it arms-dealer, drug-distributor or corrupt cop, with his practiced slipperiness and hardened exterior and manic-depressive interior? Who knows? But I sure had one helluva wild time trying!

MAN ON FIRE

Following the Indie-smash office success of Darren Aronofsky's The Wrestler, and after twenty years of having "left Hollywood for good," Mickey Rourke Signs on to Star in the New Fox Searchlight Picture: The Actor, Once Wildly Famous in the 80's, Who, Upon Shunning Hollywood For Athletic Fame, Destroys his Face, Gets Drunk, Cleans Up, and Bursts Back with Oscar-Worthy Performance. Experts be Damned. Ladies and Gentlemen, Mickey is Back.

Story by Joan T. Chadham                     Photos by Carol King-Kingsley

As Previously Featured in Elle Magazine. 

I'm sitting on the Lower East Side, in the famous Kat's Delicatessen, watching debris swirl in cones outside the front window when Mickey Rourke walks in. There is a shock in seeing him, a shock you try to hide at once, then ponder on for minutes talking to him. His face, a pale Scots-Irish complexion, is worn in like a 1940's catcher's mitt, one played through by a leagure lifer and stoic, made of 100% US horsehide. It is beaten now, yes, but there is a softness left in it, at once feminine and bold, reticent of the shocking good looks he once possessed travailing the streets and films of 1980's Hollywood. The slick beautiful sheen of that once new glove. It is the same face, with the same sharp contours in cheek and nose, but different all the same, a shadow of its former self and dotted with two full blue eyes, like pools of sorrow and sharp with reptilian experience. Staring right at me, as if to say: this is a man who has seen things. 

He is relaxed, wearing a slouchy cabana button-down (Hugo Boss $76) unfurled at the top with torn, acid-wash jeans (Levi's $55), and bottomed off with Bruno Magli Taccola slip-ons ($395). His hair is long and pristine blonde, pulled back in some Eastern guru's ponytail, with wild ends poking out over his ears. 

"Doing The Wrestler was great, yeah," Mickey Rourke chuckles, his puckered hands absolutely manhandling his pastrami-on-rye, "It's like, Hollywood finally is letting me back in--opening up its arms actually. I did a few films people noticed, like Sin City, but this is the big one. And now," Rourke pauses for effect, "I'm ready to really do something different." 

That "something" is the much whispered about Fox Searchlight feature, The Actor, Once Wildly Famous in the 80's, Who, Upon Shunning Hollywood For Athletic Fame, Destroys His Face, Gets Drunk, Cleans UP, and Bursts Back with Oscar-Worthy Performance, written by some guy and tentatively slotted for Steven Spielberg's directorial service. But Mickey Rourke isn't phased by all the heavy star power and, well, that's the special thing about Rourke. He is a man who has made some powerful mistakes, mistakes he has had to live with. An Everyman who has been through hell and back. The scarred-but-humble anti-hero who has "really been put through the wringer, sometimes." And the result is an actor unflappable, ready to take on serious challenges in both his life and craft. 

Which is also why he is perfect for this new movie. It is impossible not to see a few parallels between Rourke and his newest role. Mickey has led a life similar to the walk-the-line protagonist of The Actor, Once Wildly Famous in the 80's, Who, Upon Shunning Hollywood For Athletic Fame, Destroys His Face, Gets Drunk, Cleans Up, and Bursts Back with Oscar-Worthy Performance. He was big in the 80's, with his famous catering service based in Hollywood, and in which all the famous Hollywood celebs ate at. He enjoys strippers, just like his film counterpart. He has blue eyes. He is white. And, like the protagonist who leaves acting to become an equestrian polo rider, left Hollywood to be a hot air balloon driver, thus leading industry experts to call him finished in California catering: kaput, no-more, zilched, officially out of the rat race. He also really enjoys cheese, a major part of his down-and-out character. 

Rourke gives another one of those husky chuckles, putting down his sandwich, "I hadn't thought of that. That's interesting. I guess there are a few similarities, here and there, between me and the character. But, you know, this is acting and, uh," There's another one of those big shot smiles, "I've had to do some serious research. Not to mention the hours and hours of make-up to create the effect my face was totally, not mostly, destroyed by hard living."

"There were some hard times, yeah," And Mickey dabs his mouth, taking my sandwich off its place and eating half of it in a yawning bite. He chews, "Women, drugs, booze, priests, guns, samurai swords, roller coasters, Ottonian silver dubloons, and some Dutch investors. Man, it was a crazy time, but I'm serious now." 

And when I leave Kat's I know it is true. Mickey has really turned this thing around, on the upswing of some Boethian wheel rotation, the man in black given a second chance. The word America echoes in my ear, over and over and over. He's got more movies coming out, too, at least four more come-backs in the coming years, before this American hero is through. I walk down Houston Street, shaking my head. Long live Mickey Rourke. 

Israel Proposes Second, Alternative Zion in Ft. Lauderdale, FL

Israeli Vice-Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs, Tzipi Livni, shocked the international community Monday, announcing that the Israeli government was preparing to open a second, alternate “zion” in the “luscious, lively, and verdant city” of Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. The project comes directly on the heels of a two-week old Israel offensive in Gaza, a military operation that has sparked outrage and protest across Europe, the Middle East, Northwest Asia, Southeast Asia, Africa, Australia, and generally every place, we suppose, but North America. “We think it will be for the benefit of the Israeli people and international Jews everywhere to have a back-up plan in case, you know, this “holy land” thing doesn’t work out,” Livni said in the ministry’s global press conference, quickly adding, “Because, let’s face it: shit is pretty fucked up right now.”

While the exact zion-zoning has yet to be determined, US and Israel officials have begun outlining this newfangled, “Zion Jr.” to replicate the exact size, shape, and demographic of the current Jewish zion, Israel. Tentative plans include a significant chunk of Boca Raton, Ft. Lauderdale, and metropolitan Miami under the scope and limits of this new, mini-nation. “We don’t know much about Ft. Lauderdale, or Miami for that matter. But my cousin, Jacob, assures me there are a ton of Jews there,” Acting Prime Minster Ehud Olmert told reporters, “He just opened this all-you-can-eat buffet in downtown ‘Lauderdale, Jacob did. Try the blintzes. Try them.”

Since its inception in 1948, the Israeli nation has fit into a precarious position there, way out there, somewhere in the Middle East. Surrounded by hostile Arab countries, Israel has, since “day fucking one,” needed to defend itself from invaders and combatants, both foreign and domestic: “Let me tell you. It is just exhausting. All these bombings, and airplanes, and guns. I just talked to my mother in Miami on the telephone: ‘come over’ she tells me, ‘I’m sitting on the beach. What are you doing all that fighting for, anyways? Think you are such a big shot. Big, Mrs. Israeli Foreign Minister. Why don’t you call your mother anymore?’ I think it is just time to hang it up, maybe,” Livni rambled, holding up a postcard her mother sent her from the US: “I really want to see an alligator, too.”

Junior Israeli officials whose names we can’t pronounce or spell displayed images of the coast of Israel and the Eastern coast of Florida, assuring journalists that the second zion will look just like Israel, “only flipped around, you know this?” Theoretically, “Zion Two” will be a respite from the constant pressures of belligerent nations and disgruntled citizens who want to wipe Israelis from the planet, or at the very least take their land back from them (we’re not sure). Jews coming to this proposed “Jewland” will be able to soak up the sights and sounds of southern Florida, sitting on the beach for multiple days on end and eating chimichangas for the first time. But, “to make them feel more at home” and to prevent culture shock, Israeli’s moving to Florida will be obligated to take one Palestinian with them, so as to “make the transition smoother” and only until they “find out where all the good movie theatres are and where to get fresh groceries.”

Israel will begin conducting birth-right trips to Ft. Lauderdale during the Summer, in conjunction with the current birth-right trips they finance to Israel, so American and European Jews can better understand and immerse themselves within authentic Jewish culture, society, and the origins of the Jewish people. Agreeing to move there permanently scores you prime, beach-front property and two free tickets to see The Reader.  

So Says the Shaman

By Ray Manzarek

Ok, so intellectually speaking, I have come to terms with the idea of the linear passage of time. After all, I don’t play with The Doors anymore, but The Doors of the 21st Century. I do believe, however, that once an art form reaches its apotheosis, the moment is crystallized... figuratively, I guess: an immortal winged creature is born which day after day eviscerates a placid society, rips out its quivering liver, cleanses, purifies, intensifies. So says the shaman. What shaman, you ask? Shh, relax. You’re so tense. Like a short haircut and a dry-cleaned suit. Asking questions will only prevent your breaking through (to the other side). Just listen, man. All will be made clear shortly.

The shaman is (was, I should say) the spiritual guide for his community. All spiritual feats—moonlight drives, breaking through (to the other side)—were effected through the shaman. He’d speak in secret alphabets and light another cigarette, on the smoky wisps of which would be borne his avian avatar. Magic happens, man, where the elements intersect, where land meets air, water. And so he would fly to the mountains, where earth reaches for heaven, in order to answer the pressing spiritual questions on behalf of his community: what does Narkush, god of the lima bean, have in store for me? When will Oliver Stone make a movie about my life?

Mountains are not only sites of revelation, but of prophecy as well. Take Ummchak for example. Ummchak was a shaman who received a prophesy from Narkush. According to the prophesy, one day a shaman would be born who would start a rock band, write “Shaman’s Blues,” and make esoteric spiritual knowledge available to millions. The prophesy came true; the shaman it spoke of was Jim Morrison and the rock band was The Doors, man. This gave hope to millions, but it meant the end of an ancient profession…and the end of shaman Morrison’s life.


So begins my latest book, The Poet and the Prophesy, an exploration of the possibility that the murderous ghost of the shaman Ummchak was responsible for the death of Jim Morrison. Buy my book. It’s far out.

Ben Roethlisberger: "Training Camp Used to Be Soooooo Much Better!"

LATROBE, PA-- "It used to be the best" Pittsburgh quarterback Ben Roethlisberger announced Monday, sitting with friends and teammates in the St. Vincent's College cafeteria. "Right over there. They used to have these great big 'ole juice machines," gesturing size with his arms stretched out, "Sooo many different colors. So many flavors. And they used to have these little juice fountains inside you could watch shooting juice. And they were taaaaast-yyyyyy!" Roethlisberger added, as Round-eyed Steelers rookies Dan Sepulveda and Limas Sweed leaned in, sitting across from him at the table. "Man oh man, I used to love coming to training camp." 

The Steelers training camp, once heralded as the league's best, has gone down hill in recent years, according to Roethlisberger, due to roster changes, canceled "free swim" sessions, a lack of those "awesome beef sandwiches" he used to love, and a newly imposed "lights-out" nightly reading period which the QB quickly added, "really stinks." 

"I remember when we used to have a motorboat that was sooooo fast!" Roethlisberger told his  teammates. 

"Really?" Sweed asked, leaning even further over the table's edge. 

"Uh huh," Roethlisberger nodded his head, "And [former Steeler's Quarterback's Coach] Mr. Whipple would do these huge turns in it, and the waves would be gi-normous, and you'd go flying off the tube and into the water. One time, Jerome [Bettis] skidded so fast his swim trunks fell off!" 

Sepulveda proceeded to spit 2% milk through his nose and Sweed giggled, tapping his feet under the table and clapping, "That is HI-larious!" 

"I have good friends at home, but there is something special about camp friends, you know? Well, you guys don't know yet, but you will." 

Recent, dramatic staff changes are also a concern for Roethlisberger, who bemoaned the addition of Mike Tomlin, but only after the stern head-coach had past the player's table, telling Sweed to "eat his greens" in the process. 

"That's not even the best part. You guys don't know him, he was before your time, but Coach Cowher was the best! He told these stories...ooooo man! They would scaaaaaaare. You. Silly. Sometimes he even had Heinz [Ward] wait inside the equipment locker with plastic fangs on to scare us! It was so scary!" 

Added Roethlisberger, upon watching Sepulveda pour out the communal remnants of fruit punch into his glass, "Hey man. You kill it, you fill it!" Poking Sweed in the side with his elbow, "This guy has got a lot to learn!" 

Roethlisberger's concerns mirror an increasingly shared sentiment across the league. Many young players, Adam "Pacman" Jones and Reggie Bush the most vocal among them, complain the NFL is too "mean" and that its corps of top head-coaches should generally be "a lot more fun." Terrorizing strip clubs, wearing over-sized chains, and toking the occasional doobie was the glue that held player relations and the NFL at large together. Now that they are being suppressed, training camp is "a real drag." Supporting the younger players' discontent are renowned veterans, like Marvin Harrison, who share Roethlisberger's opinion that NFL training camps were just "sooo much better" than they are now. "He's right," said 9-time pro-bowler Peyton Manning, responding to Roethlisberger quotes, "Training camps were a blast. I remember when my doctors told me I couldn't go one year, I was so frea-gin' mad! So I stayed home instead and worked at my dad's toyota warehouse answering phones. I hope they suck an egg one day!"

But even seasoned veterans, like Roethlisberger, find something special in training camps long past: " I heard back at Three Rivers stadium they used to have a bowling alley underneath the field, in a secret basement," Roethlisberger tossed his Sloppy-Joe back on his lunch plate, "Man I wish they didn't implode that thing!" Also warning, "But that place is haunted now. If you go there past midnight and say "three-rivers" six times fast the Iron Curtain comes and steals you away! Never go there alone, I'm serious." 

Steelers Coach Mike Tomlin, though, doesn't seem to get it: "I wish these guys would grow up some. They are not in mini-camp anymore. Sometimes we have to say 'no' to these guys, which is hard, but we really think it's for the best." 

When asked about his coach's comments Roethlisberger promptly exclaimed, "That's just a bunch of foo-ey!" 

For the Last Time, I'll Tell You What a "Synecdoche" Is

by Charlie Kaufman 

A lot of you probably saw my new film, Synecdoche, New York, and were blown away. It is a quiet movie, very paced and plotted, smartly telling about redemption, hope, and the fantastic stretches of the mind. Kind of like my mind. But, I'll tell you what--there was a time when Synecdoche had its doubters. Its nay-sayers. Its nervous Nelly-thons. Not my nuanced, layered, and meticulously worded movie script so much as the word, "Synecdoche", itself. Producers had the darndest time just saying the word, let alone spelling it. Usually I just write movies, Being John Malkovich, Human Nature, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, Adaptation, and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, just to name them all. When I started writing Synecdoche and blowing my own dangerous mind I thought, I should really direct this thing: you can't trust those actors-turned-movie-directors, like George Clooney. The bastard. You really need to get a guy who's directed music videos. The two of them were busy so I said to myself, I'm going to adapt my own movie script into a movie. I don't think anyone has ever done that before, adapted their own script into a movie. So, I sat down to dinner with Harvey Weinstein thinking, he probably doesn't want me to direct! He probably thinks I'm crazy! But the little jerk just couldn't get over the title and I ended up explaining it to him for an hour.

We went somewhere swanky, like Melisse or Spago. I can't remember where exactly, I've gone through four layers of dimension-fabric-space-time since then, writing thirty-two more scripts on invisible dimension paper. BUT, the place was nice, with candles, and I ordered French duck with anjou sauce, Harvey's favorite. He had the script with him, sitting on the table, so I asked him: 

"So, you read the script?"

"Well, yes and no."

"Yes and no? What does that mean?"

"Yes, I read the title."

"And?"

He held the script up and its pages flapped like an accordion in some Croatian midget freak show. A revue of sorts. Very old-timey...... And maybe the midget freakshow jugglers don't want to be jugglers at all. They want to be midget farmers, instead. And, and they find portals to the Croation PM's brain in the soil of their beat patches. And they grab the reigns of government to liberate all Croation midget freakshow shows! Hold on a second, let me write that down...

"I don't know, Charlie. What is this? What's this 'Synecdoche' thing?"

"It's a literary device. A linguistic term."

"I don't know, Charlie. It's an awfully arty word--and it kind of sounds like Schenectady but it's not Schenectady. And here, the second part of the title, I see you've added "New York." What's going on here? Am I missing something?"

He began to flip through the script, his eyes narrowing, like he was in pain...The pain that comes when you've read too much. Too much...too much...Tolstoy! Tolstoy. And you actually think you are a Russian viscount in Votkinsk. And, and, and you walk around your suburban Connecticut mall talking to people in Russian and writing on long stips of parchment, living in your own dangerous, Russian Votkinsky, literate mind! Hold on, let me write that down. 

"A synecdoche, Harvey Weinstein, is when one part of an object, body or form comes to denote the entirety of that object, body, or form."

"Example." He said, holding up his finger. 

"Field hands. When you say you have three field hands you really mean you have three workers."

"I don't know, Charlie. I'm not into migrant work culture. What else?"

"Well," I said. "A 'Crown' is a synecdoche for a king. Wait," I dropped my fork, "I think that is actually a metonym...maybe a crown is a synecdoche for a head, or a face. I forget."

Harvey was beginning to sweat and I could feel the nervous tapping of his leg under the table. He looked side to side at the other tables, "Chaaaaar-lie." He held his head, "Synecdoche, metonym, crown...all these, these WORDS. Don't you have a movie example?"

I stood up, my napkin dropping to the floor, "All right goddamit. I'll make it really simple: A lens is a synecdoche for a camera. Okay?"

"Okay."

"Hollywood is a synecdoche for the entire film industry. A roll of film is a synecdoche for film. You know how you never see Liam Neeson's legs in a movie?"

"Of course." 

"Well, Liam Neeson's torso is a synecdoche for his legs. A computer is a synecdoche for a table. A table a synecdoche for a chair. A chair a synecdoche for the floor. The floor a synecdoche for the earth. The earth a synecdoche for the universe. The universe a synecdoche for more universes and so on and so forth forever and ever. Goddamit, synecdoche's are everywhere!!!"

I collapsed back in my chair. I hadn't felt so drained of energy since I last wrote a deeply moving script. Harvey just looked at me for a good long while. He took a few more bites of duck and dabbed the corners of his mouth, standing up slowly. 

He stuck out his hand, "Goddamit, son. You've got yourself a picture deal!"

"For how much?" I asked, hopeful, standing up to meet him. 

"A billion dollars!" He laughed, deeply, as deep and low as the black recesses of my mind. "You crazy sonuvabitch. You've done it again!"

And that's the story of the first, and last, time I've ever had to explain "synecdoche" to someone.