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Posted by Eugene Mirman at 4:57 PM, February 2, 2006
Currently I am traveling our fairly great nation as part of the Unlimited Sunshine Tour, with Cake, Tegan and Sara, and Gogol Bordello. A few days ago we did a show in Las Vegas. I'd only been to Vegas once before. Quick fact—Vegas is short for Las Vegas (just a little FYI. I wouldn't want to be caught droppin' slang like boom-boom. WHAT?!)
Like three or four years ago I was briefly almost working with an awful agency. (They were sort of sleazy in a 1930s bar room hoodlum way. When I first met them, one of them pointed at a waitress at a comedy club and said something like, "Check out the skirt.") I was going to L.A. for a showcase for them and also to maybe meet with random industry people about something crappy. The showcase was on a Wednesday and the meetings were the following week. So to kill some time, my maybe-to-be agents booked me eight shows in a room they ran in Vegas.
The room, which was off the main strip in a sad hotel, was filled with mostly old people and sprinkled with tough-looking families. It was an incredible mismatching of audience to performer. I was supposed to do two twenty minute sets a night for four days. Things went poorly and I only did the first two shows. After my first set, the host, trying to be helpful, asked me if I had any Jewish jokes or fart jokes—he was in luck—I have a joke about a farting Jew! It's about a lawyer-accountant who goes to Mexico in 1860 and finds himself locked inside a bean!!! Guess how he gets out?!?!?! Sadly, I actually don't have a joke about a farting Jew. (I do have a few jokes about being Jewish, but they aren't about over-feeding grandmothers, but cynical attacks on the status-quo. That's also not true, but that sounded very "Smart-Gressive," which is a new brand of comedy that Dennis Miller would like to have made up for himself, but couldn't—because he is limited by his obsession to compare things inaccurately.)
...read on
Posted by Eugene Mirman at 6:16 PM, January 23, 2006
For the last few days (and the next few weeks) I have been on the Unlimited Sunshine Tour, headlined by Cake and featuring the bands Tegan and Sara, and Gogol Bordello. I'm not sure how much time you've spent on the road, but she is a sneaky lady (but good sneaky—like when she does something in a relationship that makes the man realize he wants to get married.)
The first date of the tour was in Worcester, MA. Worcester is a sad place probably. I only know it from driving through it, never stopping to enjoy the now empty factories and weeping metal-heads (who are still mad at Grunge for ushering in women's lib.) Later I found out that Worcester's slogan (one that the town elders probably dislike) is "the armpit of the world." I do not believe it is called that because it connects the world's upper torso (Boston) to the world's arm (Belchertown.) I believe it's more of a metaphor.
I've now done four shows, and Worcester was by far the WORSEster (I think that is a joke, but I may be wrong, sorry.) People were unruly, and if I wasn't a sensitive, politically correct man, I would even call them Retarded. In fact, being from Massachusetts myself, I would even say they were Wicked Retarded. But I won't. I'll just write it and hide behind a Veil of Irony (which is how so many people can secretly remain racist—on a side note—watch out Schopenhauer, because my "Veil of Irony" may just replace your "Veil of Maya" as the most talked about "Veil"-based concept.) Bam! I just changed our culture! Bam! I just re-appropriated Emeril's signature phrase (much like gays took the word "queer" back, and African-Americans took the word "Vaganitor" for themselves in the mid-'80s—pretty selfish, if you ask me, African-Americans.)
That was quite a long aside. Back to bad show story. Actually, it's pretty much done. People yelled, it was hard to talk, someone threw a pineapple top at John, the lead singer of Cake's head. I'm sure many of the people were wonderful, but some jerk-holes ruined it for everyone.
The rest of the shows were great (aside from my second set in New York, where some people booed during a video I played.) Normally, people don't yell at videos, because videos can't hear people (science has been pretty bullshit about fixing that.) I'm not sure if it was the content (my Sexpert video) or people were antsy for the next band (Tegan and Sara). Either way, it has been remedied. I now go on earlier, in the middle of the set change between Gogol Bordello and Tegan and Sara, and instead of a video with sex jokes, I play a video with pot/ sex jokes. That seems to work out much better. And here is that video. It is a half-parody/half-weird take on those menacing pot ads that make children believe that if they smoke pot they will 1) either die 2) drown a baby or 3) cause people at a party to sexually assault them.
Also, while home for the New York show, I got a call from Banana Republic, a clothing store, with which I have a credit card, asking for money, because I was late paying my bill. I paid them. But I also recorded the call for you. Here it is as well.
Posted by Eugene Mirman at 4:48 PM, January 10, 2006
A little while ago I had the pleasure of taking a trip to an arena in New Jersey. Why? To go as a correspondent for ESPN Classics' show Cheap Seats and meet a new kind of sport—Motorcycle/ Fourwheeler Ice Racing. It turns out that for the past decade (probably) people have been putting spikes into the tires of vehicles and racing in circles on ice skating rinks. Who knew? New Jersey knew. That's who. (Feel free to turn those last few sentences into a pretty good song.) Who else? Probably many other people in many other states. (I bet the French have no idea, however, that we do this.)
It was pretty fun to go, and as a kid I never went to see stuff like monster trucks or wrestling (you may know it as "Fight Theater" because you went to a fancy up-north liberal arts college that gave you new words for already existing words—for instance—History becomes HERstory, Filmmaker becomes Broke-Face-Oops-Guy, and French Kissing becomes Freedom Kissing.) Still, I had a nice time at the race and learned about race bikes and American fun. And I got to meet some of the biggest names in Motorcycle Ice Racing—from the head of the organization to the man in the black leather suit, who is very good at it.
Because there was a camera crew with me, you can see how it went. Here is the video. It is sort of ridiculous. And my energy in it may at times feel false, but energetic.
Posted by Eugene Mirman at 12:02 PM, December 23, 2005
Not long ago, I was at a dinner party in Borum Hill with some friends. Afterwards, we went to a bar in Park Slope. A friend of mine, we'll call him "Miles" (that's what people call him anyway), was very drunk. There were three guys outside the bar, and before we went in, Miles all of a sudden crouched down, pumped his fists in the air and went, "jerrrrks!" He was about seven feet from them.
The reason he did this was 1) he was very drunk and 2) he thought it would be funny to randomly yell "jerks." He was right. It was very funny. He's not a very threatening looking person—a sort of scrawny, red-haired 30 something hooligan (however he has a second head—a sixty year old black ex-marine—tough as nails.) We were standing far enough away from the three guys that it wasn't clearly hostile, but close enough that what Miles did seemed weird. So my friend Brian and I tried to explain to three random guys 1) that Miles was drunk 2) what he said, because they didn't clearly hear it and 3) why it was funny and not hostile.
Ultimately, the three guys were pretty confused. Brian and I explained that Miles was joking: he didn't think they were jerks, because they're nice people who he's never met, and he's drunk. Two of the guys, who seemed nice, got it, or didn't care. It's probably not the first time a drunk guy did something silly that made sense to him, but not many others. But one of the three guys wanted to get to the bottom of it—"What's the punchline?" (Apparently, he had a rudimentary knowledge of comedy structure.) And we tried to explain what we thought Miles meant. Getting a little angrier, the guy was like, "If it's a joke, what's the punchline?" (For those who don't know, the punchline is a conflict between a conventional and unconventional reality—but Mr. Angry had no interest in theory.) We kind of tried to explain it again. Then the guy gave it to us—BAM!—"Well, work on your Punchlines!" WHOA! After the smoke cleared—we all went in and began to frantically tighten all our jokes.
The funniest part was that Mr. Angry wanted to get worked up, but his friends didn't care, we didn't care, nobody else was invested. For me, one kind of punishment would be figuring out the point a drunk person was making. "A Toyota Corolla is better than Mulligatawny Soup? How? Explain yourself!" For Mr. Angry, it was sport.
If the guy had attacked Miles, or yelled, it would have sort of made sense—but to try to zing a drunk guy with a riddle seems ridiculous.
In the end, it turned out that the guy did seem like a bit of—a jerk.
In fairness to that guy, though, here is the same story from his point of view:
I was outside of a bar with two of my good friends—reminiscing about the Peace Corps—we saved a lot of babies (you're welcome Nepal.)
All of a sudden three 30 something douchebags roll up—walking, not in a car, sorry. One guy looked straight out of Wet Hot American Summer—he crouched down, waved his fist and mumbled something. I think it was "jerk." I have not devoted most of my life to public policy to be called a "jerk" at 1 AM by some Waspy jackass. The one who looked like a Jew (not a big deal) tried to pawn it off as a joke. A joke? Jokes have a structure. (Plus I just finished reading Freud's Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious—so I couldn't be fooled.)
"What's the punchline?" I asked.
These "comedians" (I don't know what they did for a living, but they looked like homeless business men) couldn't tell me. They didn't know that I knew that to make a joke you need two elements—a setup—and then—a punchline—or "punchword"—something that lets the audience know to laugh. I didn't care about this red-haired charlatan's setup—but I needed to know the punchline.
I asked again, this time, with my wit on red alert, "If it's a joke, what's the punchline?"
—Nothing. I waited a few seconds, took out my mind's gun, and fired—"Well, work on your punchlines!"
Bullseye. Now to go home and beat my wife—in Boggle (I'm very smart!)
Hi. It's me again! Eugene. I would like to say that I know that the guy who was angry really just didn't hear Miles, probably thought some guys were making fun of him, and got upset, which is very reasonable. Still, it's always funny to see how different people react to perceived aggression—and this guy happens to put on an arrogant thinking cap and get Zinging. Now, here is a video I made called Scotch and Soda in which I share drinks with a kid at a bar. The video was shot at the same bar where this happened.
Watch the video.
Posted by Eugene Mirman at 5:51 PM, December 12, 2005
I understand that advertising has to make it seem like buying a product will give you two things: the product itself (it has to, legally) and all of your fantasies coming true.
That's the price we pay for finding happiness from a cereal or car. Sometimes though, ads can be so overbearingly aggressive and sexual that it's a bit much. There's a number of Budweiser ads on the subway that give the impression that hot multi-racial couples are going to put beers in each others asses. But the ad does it's job—it makes me want chill out at a bar with a Bud, partially for the taste, but mostly to send the signal that if you hang with me, I'll put a beer in your ass.
Still, the ad that I recently saw (on TV) that I really hate was for Axe body spray. (Not to be mistaken with some new copy-cat body spray where foreign exchange students sex-attack a teenager because he smells like Thunder or whatever.) In this Axe commercial, some guy sprays his arm down to his penis. Cut to—that guy on a date in a car. (Maybe at Inspiration Point?!) His date begins to kiss (or sniff?) his arm (it smells soooooo good) and then moves down towards his penis. I think the tag line is "Show them the way."
I'm not exactly sure why I hate the ad so much. Clearly, in the world of this ad, women don't know where the penis is. Which is a real problem (if you want to have a healthy relationship.) They need a guide. And a giant blinking sign is expensive (not to mention tacky.) And smell is the most powerful sense (in terms of memory.) So if you use Axe three, maybe four times, women would eventually associate the penis with the delicious, intoxicating smell of Axe body spray (creating something akin to a scent-based Pavlovian Dick Bell.)
It's possible the makers may think the ad is a parody of sexual advertising, because it's so preposterous, I don't know. I doubt it since it seems geared at 16 year olds. Either way, the whole campaign is extremely annoying. (However, though spraying Axe on your penis is a ridiculous way to seduce women, using room temperature hot fudge really does work.)
A few years ago Axe started with ads of women tearing at men in an elevator, then did ads where people have sex in various small, public spaces (airplane bathrooms, boats, lockers, etc), and now they've turned Axe into some sort of blowjob spray. They are in danger of running out of ways to say Axe = Sex.
Unless they have the BALLS to make the ultimate commercial—open on a beautiful woman in a bikini, giggling, high on cocaine; she's disoriented, but happy (she doesn't need college, she's either rich, or a disposable object—probably both!) Either way, this HOT woman is fucking the shit out of a huge can of Axe (maybe two! Go Axe! Go Axe! Yes!) Sometimes she throws up a little, keeps laughing, and fucking the can(s). Just a few feet away a guy (with his pants down) is sitting and crying. (In the background, a wolf is running away with beer.) The guy is really, really sad—no beer, no girl. Then—back to the euphoric woman/can love scene. The tag line? "This can could've been your dick."
Posted by Eugene Mirman at 2:12 PM, December 2, 2005
A friend of mine recently shot a pilot. The idea for it was that he would go to Weehawken, NJ and find a stranger to spend the day with him. He had various activities planned for himself and the stranger. One of them was to show the stranger a video where a Rabbi explained Judaism. Another was to show a video about Canada, by his friend, who was an expert on Canada. That friend was me. And I am not a Canada expert. I don't really know much about Canada. (Other than what we all know—it's north of here, people in Quebec are silly, no one can get pregnant, etc.) But I did make the video. And here it is.
Posted by Eugene Mirman at 7:30 PM, November 23, 2005
Television news is amazing. How is it that so many channels fill their day with half-information that is simultaneously vague, terrifying, or very both is impressive. I saw a story on MSNBC (maybe CNN?) recently about a fertility clinic from the '80s that tried to create brilliant offspring by having genius donors. (No relation to the band Offspring, who I assume simply like the word.) This clinic wanted Nobel Prize winners to donate their fruit (I think they got three winners—which beats me by two—that is if in fact I do one day win the Nobel Prize for Awesomeness, a category I intend to eventually pitch) but ended up with just a lot of affluent doctors and businessmen, I believe. The story was mostly about a 21-year-old girl, who was conceived through this clinic, and was now a world-class opera singer. The story touched lightly upon issues involving genetically engineering "smarter" people, but was mostly a vague feel-good piece about a girl opera singer and a doctor that wanted to breed geniuses.
The best part? When the piece was done it came back to the anchor desk. Two attractive middle-aged anchor ladies (one was Asian, relax) waited to chime in with a witty comment before going on to sort of talk about the war or maybe government. That's when one of the women said, "Some people compare this doctor's methods to the Nazis." And then they went on. Wait. What?
"Some people compare this doctor's methods to the Nazis."
You don't want to explore that further? You're done? It felt like the story went, "This girl has a pretty singing voice. A doctor made her. Or her likeable, wealthy parents. These are some of the things robots would wonder about genetic manipulation. Also, Nazis. Bye!"
People love comparing things to Nazis. It's a reference point that everyone (except Nazis) agrees is awful. Some people compare Bush to Nazis. Anyway, I guess comparing something to Nazis and not elaborating is a weird way to end a story (but can have an amusing effect if done in the middle of a blog—META ALERT!!!!)
On an unrelated, but still news-based event, I saw Al Roker (possibly high on Dust, definitely acting super weird) on the Tony Danza Show (please watch it.) Al was furious at print media's criticism about him falling down on a barefoot man propping him up on a hotel balcony during a hurricane. He railed against print media (who referred to his balcony escapade as grandstanding.) He jabbed his turkey carving fork into the stomach of print media (which wounded it terribly, but gave it enough time to get the hospital.) How? He pointed out that Television News beats Print News to the Story. (He kept repeating it. Like five, ten times.) And he's right. If the story is about wind. Then television is a much better way to accurately show wind stories. Some may disagree with Al, but those people 1) don't have the guts to climb down a building on Halloween dressed as Batman and Robin, something Al and someone else famous did on the Today Show and 2) probably work in print news—or what TV anchors simply call "SloFo"—short for Slow Information. (I made up a pretty good term. Let's get that shit into mainstream media.)
HOLY SHIT! Because I changed my cable provider I now have Fox News. I never had it before. (I'd seen it a handful of times.) It's probably the only truly bad-ass news station. My favorite thing, and something they air all the time, is a commercial for The O'Reilly Factor. In it, Bill O'Reilly is yelling at some bewildered guy, "I know you! That's not what you think!" (Bill O'Reilly would definitely be my favorite person to be secretly gay.) The commercial gives the impression that O'Reilly doesn't know the person, and couldn't accurately convey this person's side of whatever the story is. Still, he does get Reillyed up. And it is adorable.
(On a side note, here are some nicknames for Gay Bill O'Reilly—Gay 'Reilly, Kissy Yells, The Factor, and Cuddles O'Yelly.)
To end all this, last winter I caught a bunch of ads on ABC news about something (in a very menacing tone) "hidden in the snow that could hurt your dog!" The ad was so scary and so funny. I missed the actual story, though. But I then called ABC news to find out what was HIDDEN IN THE SNOW THAT COULD HURT/KILL MY DOG. I investigated the investigators! Here's the phone call. The man I talk to is so incredibly annoyed (which I feel slightly bad about) at having to find the information for me. I guess that's the trade off for having extremely stupid news. As Spiderman said, "With great lack of responsibility comes annoyance."
P.S. I think comparing Bush to Nazis is very inaccurate. However, comparing his policies to a semi-successful '80s band that had a few hits and then ended certain social programs makes sense. Maybe Karate Kid Three (fuck! That's a movie, sorry.) How about Jefferson Starship? No. Maybe Skid Row? Sebastian Bach did wear an offensive t-shirt on MTV and threw a bottle at someone in an audience. That's sort of similar to Bush.
I'll leave you with some Skid Row lyrics (from darklyrics.com) and let you decide:
18 and Life
Tequila in his heartbeat, His veins burned gasoline./It kept his motor running but it never kept him clean./They say he loved adventure, "Ricky's the wild one."/He married trouble and had a courtship with a gun./Bang Bang Shoot 'em up, The party never ends./You can't think of dying when the bottle's your best friend/And now it's
18 and Life, you got it/18 and Life, you know/Your crime is time, and it's/18 and life to go
Youth Gone Wild
Since I was born they couldn't hold me down/Another misfit kid, another burned-out town
Never played by the rules I never really cared/My nasty reputation takes me everywhere
I look and see it's not only me/So many others have stood where I stand/We are the young so raise your hands
They call us problem child/We spend our lives on trial/We walk an endless mile/We are the youth gone wild
Posted by Eugene Mirman at 6:28 PM, November 18, 2005
I have been trying to switch from Dish Network to Time Warner Cable for a while. I can get digital phone and so many other great things (the package that has over 160 channel also comes with a wife that really listens.) The Time Warner people have come three times. The first two times they said they needed to get to my downstairs neighbor's garden and also my neighbor in the building next door to install cable. No matter how much I wanted 12 channels of aggressive, uninformed news beamed straight into my house, I was not going to be able to convince two neighbors to stay home from work— unless I offered to make my special casserole! (A great plot for a sitcom, especially if I accidentally use hallucinogenic 'shrooms — but, in real life, totally ineffective.)
So I had essentially given up. Sure, I booked an appointment for Saturday. Maybe my neighbors would be home? 4:30 p.m. The Cable Man arrived. Unlike the other two, he had a giant drill and all his cable installation things with him. I start explaining to him that the other two cable people said you need to go to my neighbors . . . He's not listening. He's just looking around. He points to the window by my kitchen.
"Can you move that stuff?"
"Yes."
"I'll just jump to the roof."
"I'm sorry?"
"I'm going to jump to that roof. I can install it if I get to that pole."
"Okay."
It wasn't insanely dangerous, but if he fell, he'd fall one story. And it was cable. It wasn't that important. Except to him. This cable man would not be stopped. He did it. He jumped to the roof and now I have cable television, a cable modem, and soon, digital phone. Thanks super-tough-ass-kicking-cable-man. Below are some photos to give you an idea of the perils involved.
Also, here is the phone call of me canceling Dish Network. I'm sure many cable companies charge fees for weird crap, but I always found it annoying whenever I would cancel some programming Dish would charge me for it. They'd call me with some promotion and I'd get Showtime for a few months, decide I didn't want it, and they'd charge me $5 to get rid of it. I always felt that they just wanted in a sort of passive aggressive way to squeeze money out of you. Anyway, I think this phone call demonstrates that they do in fact want to do that.
Listen to the phone call.
Posted by Eugene Mirman at 4:15 PM, November 11, 2005
My mom recently told me a story about our first Halloween in America. It turns out we didn't know about Halloween (though in Russia there is a similar holiday, except instead of costumes and candy, people hide in their apartments, afraid to make a noise.) Still, we didn't know that you had to be home and went somewhere. When we got back, someone had written "fuck" on our house with shaving cream or something. We were confused, until a neighbor explained it—in America there is a holiday where children dress as monsters and go door to door to get candy. If you're not there, they destroy something of yours. Oh! Of course! It's like a child version of The Secret Police, but instead of searching for people who question the actions of the State, they want candy. No prob. We'll be around next year.
This year, I had a fun Halloween. I often don't have a costume (I'm not counting the mask I wear to hide my feelings.) It seemed like this Halloween there were less girls dressed like magical hookers. So that's good. (A recent statistic I wrote says that boys will try to have sex with girls 97 percent as much regardless of whether they wear a pretty blouse or dress as a witch in thongs who got surprised by a fire alarm. And the three perecent that won't would make terrible dad's, even for an hour.)
Last year I dressed as a mish-mash of super hero-esque things (I had a utility-belt filled with airplane size liquor bottles I'd hand out) and a mask I bought in Chinatown with strawberries or something on it. I also wore a speaker attached to my iPod and played sweet music plus recordings of me (in a pitched, deep voice) saying, "Don't ask me what I'm dressed as," or "Hey, Mr. Downtown, I think you overdosed on cool pills." If I had to give this hero a name I would call him Captain Fun, or more accurately, Dr. Captain Weird and Confusing.
This year I was made a beautiful Robin (like Batman and Robin) outfit by someone (who was very cute, so if you know her, please have her e-mail me, unless she's married, then just a fax, and maybe we'll go on an awkward date; example—we go to fill out the paperwork to adopt a highway.) The Robin outfit was for a bit (Treat! You just learned a comedy term! You can throw out the word "skit") for an 826-NYC benefit—a non-profit org (that's short for "organization," though now longer, sorry) that tutors kids in writing and also sells superhero gear. (If you'd like to help a child write a novel or memoir visit 826nyc.org.)
After the benefit I got to keep my beautiful, hand made costume. I wore it to several parties, and at each party, people asked me different things. "Where's Batman?" I got a lot. (I now know not go as one half of a team; a lesson anyone who dressed up as Rumsfeld or Charlie Watts could tell you, too.) My favorite thing someone said to me was on my way to Bowery Bar, two guys, somewhat drunk and tough, yelled, "Nobody cares about Robin."
"Nobody cares about Robin."
Really? Who do they care about? Batman? Yes. People are heartbroken over the death of his imaginary parents in a made-up city. Or Superman. He is the only survivor from his planet. He's alone. And when you wear a superman costume people get that depth of pain.
I guess what I'm really saying is, the next time you see someone in a Robin outfit, just yell, "Fag" or "You suck!" Don't go into the pseudo-psychology of it. It'll be flawed.
Above is a picture of me and Leo Allen (who was Captain Guess Your Weight) at the 826-nyc benefit, with somewhat surprised onlookers. I was his crappy side kick (Robyn with a y.)
I'd like to end this by recounting a Halloween story that William Shatner once told on Conan. It's the reason he may be a brilliant man. For Halloween one year, William Shatner went out in two William Shatner masks. He would get to a house, take off a mask, and underneath, would be another William Shanter mask. Then he would take the second mask off, to reveal the real William Shatner. I have always loved that story. Thank you, Mr. Shatner.
Posted by Eugene Mirman at 8:03 AM, November 4, 2005
I am somewhat obsessed with The Tony Danza Show. The show is amazing. Mr. Danza is a truly unique soul. Recently, after mentioning a charity he was involved in, for either soldiers, children, or both, and right before launching into Extrava-Danza (his daily quiz game), Tony tossed off a throwaway line. He does it all the time. With his trademarked charm (I know you can't trademark charm, but Tony's laws are based on his own Danza-tution), he went—"We really gotta get that Osama guy."
"We really gotta get that Osama guy."
Tony's right. We do. For those not in the know (if you haven't heard of Clap Your Hands Say Yeah or The Hold Steady—that's you), this "Osama guy" that Tony Danza is talking about is Osama bin Laden. Who is he? He's only America's numero uno enemy-o! What'd he do? Is he a bullshit artist? Yes! But it's way bigger than that! He's not at the tippy-top of America's shit list for just trash-talking. I won't go into it, but let me just give you an idea of how bad this guy is—if you google "Osama country music"—you will find a lot of songs and flash games that take this motherfucker on. You will find a parody of Rick Nelson's Garden Patry called Osama Party. (Sample lyrics: I went to Osma's party to find out about his friends/ A chance to show the world who we are up against. Chorus: But it's all right now/ We learned our lesson well/ You see, we can't let Sadaam go unless he kills himself.) U.S. intelligence couldn't make a connection between Osama and Sadaam, but parody songwriter Rudy Ramirez had no problem. The trick—poetic license. It would be much simpler for investigators if they replaced investigation with poetic license to solve crimes.)
Still, thanks to the relentlessness of celebrities like Tony Danza to "get that Osama guy," it keeps a fire underneath President Bush (the first openly gay president in over 25 years—25 dog years—so only about 3 1/2 human—which means W. is the first openly gay president since himself! I just double-called the President gay—once directly and once using roundabout logic!)
I kid. The truth is, and some of you already know this, President Bush actually opposes same-sex marriage (he thinks homosexuality is a sin, like stealing or a neighbor/wife coveting party with a bowl of keys and a two boxes of wine.) Others (like John Kerry and Ayman al- Zawahiri, Osama's right hand man, ironically) don't oppose the idea of same-sex unions, but would hate to change the meaning of the word "marriage" to include them. John and Ayman should be worried. Words change all the time, and not always for the best. Remember what happened to the word "gay?" Everybody lost when a few decades ago some rogue tweens took it upon themselves to twist "gay" into a slur that could be applied to anything from Bon Jovi to the color of a wall. I'd hate to see the word marriage have the same fate as the word gay. Do we really want kids running around schools going, "You're so marriage!" or worse, a parade of religious zealots, marching on Washington with signs that read, "God hates marriages!"
It's always sad to see a word's meaning change—a little or a lot. Could you imagine a world where "nurse" meant "college." I can't. Wait, I just did. But it's very confusing. I don't recommend it. Watch—"Where did you go to nurse?" "Western Mass." See, confusing. Please, America, don't slightly change a word's meaning. It will destroy what that word meant before. And what's more important than that? Only one thing—getting that Osama guy.
And in keeping with the multimedia spirit, here is a phone call from the anti-gay phone company that periodically calls me to switch. This call is from the first time they contacted me.
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