life yo

I can’t believe the king and queen of my prom went on to be king and queen of the EARTH.

May 16th, 2011
by John.
3 comments

I’m getting old as fuck, and I’m going to assume that you are too. God, remember when life used to be fun? The sense of discovery and wonderment? When every day gave birth to a fresh experience, and yes, I’ll have another serving of mac-and-cheese, Mommy, you’re the best. Man, it seems like it all went downhill the day after you learned to walk. No more getting carried around, no more feedings, no more gentle ass wipings. Ah life, what a stupid pile of bullshit. But deep down inside you knew that your entire life was leading up to one single defining moment. A chance for greatness. A reason to wake up every morning. Your dreams were filled with visions of this event: you’d see yourself walking into a large room, and look! All of your friends are waiting for you and cheering! Hoorah! You’ve done it! You’re HERE! Visions of your parents clutching themselves, standing on the front porch, waving. They’ve never been more proud of you – you are their beautiful daughter or handsome son. Look at you, in your rented clothes. Your ill-fitting shoes. Your awkward-faced date. A corsage in a perspiring plastic box, but don’t pin it to her skin, son! Ah ha ha ha! I love you Dad, and I will be safe tonight. Because this is the most special night of my life. This is my senior prom.

But, what if you’re one of the dozens of folks whose proms didn’t go exactly as planned? What if your date was murdered the day before the prom? Or if Becky Smigelhouse wore the same dress as you even though she KNEW you had to special order your dress from a Sears in New Mexico? Can you believe her cousin actually worked at that exact same Sears in New Mexico and sent her the dress via FedEx? We live in Piscataway! Arrrghhhh, this is the worst prom ever. But now, you can do it all over, because – ADULT PROM, YOU GUYS!

“Prom the way you always wanted it,” the advertisement in Green Bay called out, an attempt to attract would-be revelers whose high school days have come and long gone. “Where the punch is spiked, you don’t have to hide the booze and the band plays loud.”

These are not reunions of former high school classmates eager to relive the prom night they had together. A vast majority of revelers are in their 20s and 30s, although a few are in their early 60s and are simply excited at the prospect of getting decked out and dancing — and voting for the night’s king and queen.
— http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/12/us/12prom.htm

My mom chaperoned my at-home adult prom and crowned me king of the rumpus room.

I’m not going to lie, my senior prom was pretty terrible. My date spent most of the night crying and fighting with all of our friends. I, being a strong and supportive teenage boyfriend, tried to think of the best way to kill myself without anyone noticing. Is it possible to overdose on lemon sorbet? Could I “C’Mon ‘N Ride It (The Train)” out the front door and into traffic (choo choo)? This was the same year as Columbine… someone in this godforsaken hall has to have an automatic weapon, I thought. Unfortunately my survival instincts kicked in and I was forced to live with my embarrassment instead of die from embarrassment. By the end of the night, the limo that once held four happy couples on their way to a blissful night of dancing and chintzy party favors now housed one couple – me and my insane girlfriend. Both of us tired, miserable, and hated by all of our friends. LOVE YOU GUYS! We had, the time of our liiiiiives.

Now that adult proms are a thing, I have a twice-in-a-lifetime chance to do it all over again! If your first prom experience as a senior was good enough that you’d want to experience it all over again, chances are pretty good that nearly ALL of your happiest memories occurred during your four to eight years of high school. And hey, that’s great man. What are you 40? And you still remember the names of your high school teachers and classmates? That’s awesome brah, those were some crazy times! I know you’re super stoked for the adult prom, but maybe I can interest in you in some other adultified experiences that won’t involve renting a tux or dry humping a disinterested co-worker that you begged to go to the adult prom with you.

  • Duck Duck Goose for Gen X’ers
  • Skip-It Championships (50+)
  • Pants Shitting for Gents and Gals in their 30’s
  • Holding Your Breath Until You Get What You Want (Octogenarians only)
  • Lose Your Virginity at 55!
  • Tell Your 90+ Dad to Fuck Off (picture of your dad acceptable)
  • Adult Bra Unhooking
  • Old Oldsing for Olding Olds (OLD JOKE PLUS SIGN)

The C.O.B.R.A. Retrieval System

Mar 28th, 2011
by John.
No comments yet
A deadly cobra is missing from the Bronx Zoo and you’re the only one who can find it! This is not a choose your own adventure book, but if it was, here are your options – on page 72 you find the cobra, battle it, and the cobra rues the day it ever attempted to escape. On page 153 it kills you and cobras take over the fucking world. That’s it! It’s a pretty lengthy book considering there are only two possible outcomes, but these are the stakes when fighting deadly snakes. Thankfully, there is a foolproof system in place to ensure your victory over the snake kingdom phylum class subgenre, outlined by this simple acrostic: 

The C.O.B.R.A. Retrieval System
C – Consider your options.
O – Observe the area.
B – Bite back.
R – Repeat the previous step.
A – (call an) Ambulance.

Let’s “break it down” ala Stop, Hammer Times:

GOOD MORNING!

C – Consider your options. Look, maybe the snake isn’t really missing ok? I swear to god he was here a minute ago… no, you know what, he’s right ther- no, shit that’s a leaf. OK OK OK, think think think, he doesn’t have any legs so he probably didn’t get very far, right? I am so screwed. I am SO SCREWED. Let me retrace my steps – ok I was in the closet getting the snake chow, then I opened the tank to drop in the snake chow, then my phone rang, and I dropped it into the tank and then… oh shit my phone’s gone too! Are you kidding me? Are you fucking serious right now? If that snake took my phone I am going to be so pissed. DO YOU HEAR ME SNAKE?! SO. PISSED.

O – Observe the area. By this point, you’re fairly certain that the cobra is on the loose, possibly with an iPhone 3GS. You’re like 60% positive it didn’t leave the reptile house because it’s unseasonably cold in the Bronx right now, so you round up some of your buddies to secure the perimeter. Because that sounds pretty awesome, and what friend wouldn’t be like HELL YEAH if you asked them to secure a perimeter? No friend wouldn’t do that. At this point, we’re going to make a fairly huge assumption for the sake of the acrostic – you found the snake, and armed with a butterfly net and a hammer, you’ve got that sonofabitch cornered.

B – Bite back. And of course the thing bites you. You tell your friends to abandon their perimeter posts and run for their lives and then you assess the situation. You’ve got about ten minutes before you lose sensation in your limbs, so it’s time to act with your most important limb – your mouth. BITE IT BACK! You’ve got the venom inside you now, and cobras are deathly allergic to cobra venom. The venom is going to be dripping out of your canine teeth, but just to be safe, just get as much of the cobra into your mouth as possible and with a chewing motion, chew the shit out of the snake’s head. Really get in there like RARRRGHHHH. The venom in your system will act as an anti-venom in case the thing gets smart and tries to bite you again while it’s inside your mouth.

R- Repeat the previous step. Things are going to stop making sense around the sixth minute of your attack. The skin around the bite will be reaching an advanced stage of necrosis, and while your lungs will still be functioning, they’re going to feel both on fire and flooded with a cold inexplicable liquid. The earth will be spinning faster than ever before and the faces of your loved ones will pass before your lifeless, vacant eyes, all hissing and flicking their tongues at you. Embracing death’s warm embrace will feel like your number one priority right now. This is totally normal, but NOT an excuse to stop. Continue biting until you reach bone.

A – (call an) Ambulance. If you’ve followed the C.O.B.R.A. Retrieval System to the letter, the escaped cobra will be subdued and looking groggy. You’ve saved the day and, wait a second, your phone was in your pocket this whole time! You mistook it for a tin of Altoids. With your last remaining seconds of consciousness, it’s time to call an ambulance. When they ask for your name, reply (your name), Cobra Commander. They’ll handle the rest. The cobra, embarrassed and stupid, will crawl back into its tank, close the lid and rue the day it ever attempted to escape in the first place. Rue the day, sweet cobra. Rue the day. Sweet cobra.

Other sites would use this final paragraph to drop a disclaimer, like, this information is for entertainment purposes only, and any living, fictional or dead cobras will probably kill you if you perform any of the actions above. But not here. I stand by the C.O.B.R.A. Retrieval System 100%, and I guarantee that you’ll successfully find, fight and fucking decimate any cobra that you see by following this scientifically proven system. Did you know that if you pay a snake wrangler enough money, they’ll say literally anything you put in front of them? Just ask snake wrangler and world’s leading cobra puncher Jeffrey Trombonés, who says, “C.O.B.R.A. R.O.C.K.S. (Readily Obliterates Cobra King of Snakes) dude!” Seriously ask yourself, why would Jeffrey put his exceedingly awesome name and reputation on the line?

sporesmoldsfungus

Mar 16th, 2011
by John.
No comments yet

Blogs are dead.

Working hard or wardly horking?

Feb 17th, 2011
by John.
2 comments

This is a test to see how painful it is to update the site from my iDevice. I’ve never read a single issue of Spawn.

CRIMEWATCH: Port of Call: Jersey City: New Jersey: United States: of America

Feb 15th, 2011
by John.
No comments yet

PATH train. Port Authority Trans-Hudson or Pimpin' Ain't That Hard?

People are murdered in the vicinity of my Jersey City apartment fairly regularly. I won’t say daily because even if it’s true, it just sounds excessive. Maybe bi-weekly? Is that twice a week, or every two weeks? I’ll say quarterly. Like, four times a day. Four times a day, people are murdered in the lobby of my apartment building. And it’s a nice building! Everyone seems pretty friendly, they all have interesting-looking babies and all that, it’s just that occasionally you find yellow police tape and chunks of brain on your Pottery Barn delivery in the mail room. Look, it happens when you live in a sprawling metropolis – you’re gonna get some shattered skull bits on your Oversize Moss Basket every once in a while.

Now I know what you’re thinking. John, you probably live in the yuppified white part of Jersey City, where crime is synonymous with the tapas restuarant getting stingy with their truffle oil, or the dogs in the dog park looking too adorable. OK, maybe a slight truth. Sure, the walls in the building swelled when Arcade Fire won an album of the year Grammy last night, and then nearly crumbled when Radiohead announced they were releasing a new perfect album this week, but we’re still a melting pot! We still have a cartoon pimp that lives down the street (pictured)! People still get murdered! No one shovels their walk! SHUT UP IT WAS ETHNIC WHEN I GOT HERE!

So yeah, crime. Here’s a look at some of the local flavor that explodes out of our melting pot and lands all over the goddamn gutter I call home.

Teens Beat, Rob Bayonne Man. See? SEE! We have rowdy teens that ask to borrow your phone and then punch you in the fucking face. Oh, who was I calling? Why, my knuckle specialist, because my knuckles smart like the dickens. Not sure what Bayonne Man should have done in this situation. Your first instinct is to assume that one in eight teens has a working cell phone, and relay that information to the teen gang. Second instinct is to lie through your teeth. No, I don’t have a cell phone! Isn’t that crazy, there are nine people walking down Montgomery Street and not a single one of us has a phone? TTFN, that’s slang for Ta-Ta-Fone-Needer! Then you duck into the vegan bakery/antique birdcage shoppe and call the police from your cellphone which was hidden in your pocket this whole time. Get a gluten-free muffin and then soar home on a wheat grass rainbow.

Man Attacked By Fellow Bowler. This is a pretty interesting article because I didn’t know we had a bowling alley in Jersey City. And “Everything is perfect except for the amount of bowling balls, they really need more bowling balls because they be taken and I am always stuck with the wrong sizes and then I look like I s*ck when I really don’t,” according to bowling2u.com, the Yelp of bowling alley review sites. Everything is perfect except sometimes you get a bottle smashed over your head in the parking lot for stepping over the line, but for real guys, I give it a B-. More balls, less bottles, we’re talking A+ bowling alley material here.

Car Completely Buried By Snow Mound in Jersey City. If I was a newscaster, I’d introduce this story by saying, “And on the WHITER side of the news,” but the story is about snow, not white people. Allow me to continue my local news anchor audition: “And on the whiter side of the news tonight, take a look at this picture. No, you’re not seeing things, that’s an actual CAR buried under a mound of snow on Williams Avenue, photographed by local freelance news photographer Richard J. McCormack. Public service workers are unsure of how to free the car from its icy coffin, but you know what they say… ‘there’s snow business like snow business.’ They also say ‘Snow your belongings under your seat,’ ‘Snow snow snow your boat’ and ‘Quid pro snow, Clarice.’ Back to you (other anchor’s name, and if his or her name rhymes with snow, call them Snow, then chuckle).”

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