This Just In: I have issues

My doctor is frighteningly thorough. In the 3 years since I moved into Manhattan proper and was forced to find someone to annually check my cholesterol and weigh me, I've had an echocardiogram, an ultrasound, and multiple blood tests for diseases I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be exposed to even if I were licking the seats on the A train.

The first time I had a consultation with Dr. Thorough, she sat down at her desk, looked at me and said, "Has anyone ever mentioned to you that your thyroid is enlarged?"

Now I could see where that's a catchy opener at a bar: "Whoa! That's a pretty impressive thyroid you've got there!" But no - up until that point in my experience of being medically assessed, no one had ever seen fit to make me self-conscious about the size of my thyroid. But thanks for that, Dr. T. Nice to meet you, too.

As a matter of fact, I had always been secure in the fact that I was relatively healthy. I take my vitamins, I'm reasonably fit, and I'm still in possession of my tonsils and appendix. After that unpleasant little episode with the boils 10 years ago, I was just trucking along, biding my time until I got whatever brand of cancer the genetic lottery was going to throw my way sometime in my 60s.

Not so, it seems. Sufficiently troubled by my massive killer thyroid (stop! don't look at it!), Dr. T referred me to an endocrinologist up the street. He had been in New York magazine's Best Doctors in New York issue, so I felt like I was in reasonably good hands. It turns out that I have what's elegantly referred in the medical culture to as Hashimoto's thyroiditis (I know, it sounds like it should come with fried rice). Oh, and a goiter. Who knew? Thanks to Dr. T's keen eye, I now have to visit New York's finest gland shaman every three months so he can draw blood, poke me in the throat and tell me that "Let's just keep an eye on that." Yeah, let's, because paying $25 for privilege of hanging out with your creepy man-nurse Gary rocks my world.

On a different occasion, Dr. T mentioned in passing that my posture was not the greatest. Yeah, well, I'm carrying a lot of extra weight up front, thanks. Like an idiot, I said that, as a matter of fact, my upper back does bother me when I try and sit up straight for long periods of time. The next day I'm sitting in the office of a holistic physical therapist who's telling me that I need to undergo 6 weeks of weird bending and possibly be medicated with anti-inflammatory drugs.

So mostly for that reason, I avoid going to see Dr. T unless it becomes absolutely necessary. I might end up having a prostate exam or losing my gallbladder, and who needs that?

For the last week, I've been having headaches. Not your standard issue headaches that one would expect from regularly being subjected to bad unsigned bands at high volumes or drinking large amounts of brown liquor. Every morning, there would be a dull ache behind my left eye. It was annoying, but I didn't think much of it. It felt more like bad eye strain than anything else, but I'd just had the prescription checked on my glasses a few months ago. I still can't see for shit, but not any differently than last year. So I'd just been self-medicating with a daily dose of Tylenol and going about my business of general bad assery.

Then on Tuesday, someone unseen started stabbing me in the eye with an icepick. I couldn't concentrate and was reduced to sitting at my desk with my head in my hands for about a half hour. I took some Advil, which sort of took the edge off. But I was officially concerned. Maybe I had a tumor. Maybe some residual nastiness from the sinus infection had leaked into my brain. Unable to think of a better option, I called Dr. T.

She shined a light in my eyes and up my nose. She looked at my chart. "This is what I think," she said. I was fully prepared to be sent off for a CAT scan or possibly an exploratory lobotomy.
"I think it's one of two things: the weather or stress."

This was kind of a relief since it wasn't going to cost me money in co-pays or hours of my life in a specialist's office wearing a paper dress. Or so I thought.

"But it sounds from what you're telling me that it's probably caused by stress," she said, giving me a look that I'd seen many times before. "Is something going on recently that's particularly stressful for you? Maybe at work?"

"I work in the music industry," I reminded her.

"Oh. Well. That sounds like it's fun."

"It's not."

She wrote something on a piece of paper and handed it to me. "This is the name of someone that you might want to see. I think it might help."

"Is it an eye doctor?"

"No, he's a psychiatrist."

Holy shit, did I just get referred for therapy?

"I told you last week you needed therapy," Mark said last night when he called me. "You just thought I was being mean. Why don't you ever listen to me?"

I'm hugging you, but I'm hitting you!

I thought very seriously about going to see Reign Over Me this weekend. I even went so far as to check show times at Battery Park City and rope Leslie into going with me, even though I knew she would rather endure a continuous loop of babies crying for two hours. I spend a lot of time fully intending to do things, like when I convinced myself that I was going to learn to play the guitar. I bought a guitar. I bought Guitar For Dummies. Maybe it would have helped to instead buy Guitar For Lazy People Who Will Never Get Beyond The Three Chords Needed To Play "Kumbaya": An Inspirational Guide.

Needless to say, I ended up not seeing the movie. Instead I went out to dinner at a restaurant in Tribeca that considers Asia's "In The Heat of The Moment" an appropriate soundtrack for partaking of chicken scarpariello. Part of my decision to bail was the fact that I had read mixed reviews: it's a 9/11 movie that never actually addresses 9/11, Adam Sandler looks like Bob Dylan (surprisingly a dealbreaker in some critical circles!), its resolution is trite, and so forth. The cost of movie-going being what it is these days, I figured that I could safely wait until Reign Over Me made its way to On Demand - only $3.95 and I can bring my own snacks.

In truth, my interest in seeing it in the first place was based almost entirely on two things. Some of the TV trailers used Embrace's "Ashes," which gave my inner music supervisor a big, honking boner. My other motivation was even more perverted.

I have a man-friendship fetish.

Maybe this sort of thing goes both ways, I have no idea. Maybe there's a contingent of men who watch Thelma & Louise, hoping to glean some insight into female bonding. These are no doubt the same men who read Glamour in order to understand women and simply can't fathom why their girlfriends aren't vapid, passive-aggressive and wearing the season's hottest trend - bold prints! On the other hand, they probably are because men make bad choices.

When I was in high school, I was mildly obsessed with The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - initially because I enjoyed all things BBC and Jeremy Brett was tremendous. But eventually I became utterly fascinated with the dynamics of Holmes and Watson's relationship. Watson got shit on a lot because, to be honest, Holmes is arguably a malignant narcissist and definitely a drug addict. But for some reason Watson stuck around and dealt with Holmes' crazy because he knew that Holmes needed him, even if the he would never admit it. Very occasionally, when he wasn't busy using $3 words and wantonly casting withering disdain in everyone's general direction, Holmes would give Watson some backhanded props for deciphering a clue or scoring some good dope (because, let's remember, Watson was a doctor and probably had access to quality shit). In those moments, it becomes evident that Holmes and Watson love each other in the glorious, non-sexual way that two men in Victorian England can without every having to say it out loud. Man friendship at its co-dependent finest!

Friendships among women, for the most part, are relatively uncomplicated. And not only because we just sit around drinking Appletinis, discussing our birth control side effects, or comparing vibrators. Right before we have a pillow fight in our underwear and make out in front of a webcam. Women are pretty emotionally articulate, in the grand scheme. We travel in packs. We will talk to each other incessantly about whatever random thing happens to come into our head. We can hug each other without doing that back-thumping move - one step above the fist bump, by most calculations, on the hierarchy of social interactions - to feel secure in our sexuality. There is little challenge in sussing out the subtext in the behavior of women friends. And even if there were, we would happily explain it to you because we've already had a discussion about it amongst ourselves complete with a Powerpoint presentation.

This is precisely why I find the dynamics of male friendship utterly fascinating. Men, having a chromosomal aversion to Appletinis and emotional forthrightness, somehow manage to forge intense, platonic relationships with each other based on the most indirect communication. They can cultivate some innate understanding with each other, expressed only through talking about hockey or watching Clint Eastwood movies. It's a completely alien way of relating to other people, and I'm always suckered into any fictionalization of the whole process.

The funny thing is that the majority of my friends have always been male. I remember once complaining to my mother that I wished I had an older brother. That turned out to be rather ironic, since when I grew up I suddenly found myself with about 10 of them. Considering that I'm pretty much for shit when it comes to lots of the standard man pastimes - drinking beer, watching sports, calling each other gay - it amazes me how much I enjoy hanging out with my man friends. And while I'm quite certain I've become gender-neutral to them in many ways, I'm simply too willing to say things like "You're really awesome, I'm glad we got to hang out." At which point they remember that I possess fallopian tubes, and any chance I may have had to see true man friendship in its natural habitat is gone.

No matter. Eventually someone will make a movie where Daniel Craig and Clive Owen form an deep, outwardly dysfunctional bond that goes largely unexpressed until one of them has some sort of personal tragedy. At which point they get drunk together and give each other shit about who's better at pool. Like Beaches, only with dudes. That would be worth $11.

Better to receive

Alex Dezen keeps a blog that's vastly superior to mine. His band is also better than mine, mainly because I have much more fun naming my band with nonsensical word combinations - Vintage Twix and Equine Ambulance were early front runners - than I ever would writing songs or performing. And because his band actually exists.

After spending an evening with an old friend, he made the following observation:

She tried to refuse my money but I insisted. That's what we do sometimes. We insist on giving our things away to other people because we can't give them the world.

Two years ago, my grandmother suggested that, in lieu of the rampant, overindulgent gift giving we generally engage in for Christmas, we all draw names and only buy one or two things for our assigned recipient. This went over slightly less well than the time we tried to establish family Scrabble night. My grandfather spent 30 minutes arguing that "thusly" was so a word, and he didn't care what the goddamn dictionary said since he speaks goddamn English just fine. We hid the wine in the vacuum box and put a temporary ban on board games.

It's worth pointing out that I don't have a particularly large family - in fact, my genus is likely to be extinct in roughly one generation. It's not as though there's an abundance of small children that we must placate with large quantities of disposable plastic. We may not be breeders, but we're all givers. Christmas in particular is our license to run wild like fat kids at McDonald's. We gorge on shopping, demanding to know each other's wish lists. The problem, though, with a family of givers is that none of us is especially good with receiving. "You bought too much!" someone always mutters, shifting awkwardly beside their mountain of packages. Every year we sit around the living room and stare uncomfortably at each other, unwilling to make the first move.

"Open your gifts, Mom, " I urge.

"I just want to watch you," she says.

Maybe the idea was to save as us all some money, but it was more like being told that we weren't allowed to eat for a week. Unacceptable. In the end, there was an ugly argument between my grandmother and my mom, Christmas was cancelled, and I nevertheless bought more gifts for everyone than I was fiscally able, as I always do. We've all since resumed our wallet-crippling spending for the holidays, and my mother clucked disapprovingly over the TiVo I bought her.

Being a giver is a mixed bag. On the one hand, it's a self-sustaining industry. It needs no willing audience, unlike attention-whoring. It becomes a code of sorts in how we deal with the people we care about the most. We get the next round of drinks to say we know you'd have our back if someone was talking shit. We loan you $5 for a cab to say thanks for listening to our sad story over dinner. We buy your lunch because it seems more socially palatable than actually saying "I'm glad we're friends." Sometimes that upsets people. It's easier to pick them up a coffee since you're going out anyway. No, it's cool, whatever.

Every year that I've been at my current job, I've bought a gift for everyone in my office before we all disperse for the holidays. I do it because I enjoy it, but also because I would feel remiss in not doing it. These people are, for better or worse, very much an extension of my family. And like my family, the $10-limit Secret Santa feels insufficient. "People like you just make everyone else feel bad," Leslie told me this past year. She had received a rather generic bath set from a secretary in her office that she didn't know very well.

You can talk yourself into a certain noble victimhood, if so inclined. But the truth of it is, being a giver is as much a pathology as being anything else. We feel like we're getting away with something. Not because we expect returns - we'd prefer there weren't any, actually - but because we're scratching an itch, secretly feeding our own need. We're the one drinking Wild Turkey out of a Pepsi can at the family picnic - who's it going to hurt? No one needs to know. But in our heart of hearts, it feels selfish, which is ultimately at odds with our very nature. Walking paradoxes, all of us.

Sometimes we come face to face with the fact that what we're offering isn't so tangible after all. There's really no limit to what we can give away, contrary to how it might seem. We always find more. There is no bottom, and there is definitely a point where we start to wish for one, if only to save ourselves.

"I wish I wasn't this way," I complained recently, realizing that I had been yet again throwing good money after bad - among other things, like time and patience - toward something that was a essentially a black hole. "The alternative doesn't hurt as much."

"It hurts differently" was the reply.

The position has been filled

Once you realize that there exists a strapping 6'2" Scotsman who fronted a band while getting his legal degree, anything less is pretty much settling, no?

Thanks for your interest.

How (Not) To Pre-Pay A Rental Car

As far as my job is concerned, the SXSW Music Festival in Austin is arguably the least important thing that happens every year. But it happens every year, and every year we scramble to have our bands accepted, get good slots at showcases that involve free beer and pulled meat, and someone usually takes his pants off in an airport. I don't know that we've ever gotten a band signed as a result of SXSW. Or that anyone from my office who goes actually remembers anything that happens. And every year something - often more than one thing - goes wrong. This year was no exception.

I should mention: I've been awake since 5:30AM this morning. So was Leslie. She had to organize a rally against the governor's proposed health care cuts. I had to go to the doctor. Leslie has a real job. I burn CDs and make sure the drummer will show up on time to his meet & greet at the go-cart track. Perspective is everything.

There were 4 missed calls on my cell phone when I finally got to work around 11:00AM. One of my bands was flying out to Austin this morning, and I had a suspicion that all would not be well. Because, well, I have travelled before. And because putting any band on a plane unattended by a tour manager, mother or other supervisory figure of some sort generally guarantees that it will be delayed, hijacked, diverted or run out of kosher vegan meals. No one in a band is equipped for these kind of crises, except maybe Henry Rollins. He seems resourceful.

Three of the missed calls were from Mark, my lead singer - he never leaves a message, which I find both irritating and a general indication that whatever he wants isn't that important. One was from Jenny, our online coordinator, who happened to be on the same flight as the band. She did leave the following message: "Hey, we're in San Antonio. They might be letting us off the plane. Call me back."

San Antonio was not on the itinerary. The flight was supposed to connect in Houston before going on to Austin. Simple. Mark's band had a gig tonight, which was why I put them on an ungodly early flight in the first place. But nevertheless, ATA had made the executive decision to divert the flight into San Antonio. Due to "low cloud cover." This sounds suspect, even to me, and I've had flights delayed for everything from "broken plane" to "missing flight attendant" to the Continental Airlines specialty "You're going to board like everything is fine and then sit on the tarmac for 3 hours."

"They might be letting us off here," Jenny told me. "Can you book us a rental car? I guess we can just drive to Austin."

Not a bad solution, considering. It's only about a 90 minute drive. The band would still make their 5:00PM gig, assuming they managed to collect all their gear off the flight in one piece and in a relatively timely manner. Yeah, I know, I said I'd travelled before, but bear with me. It was still early in the day. I reserved a mini-van on Expedia and emailed Jenny the confirmation.

Jenny called me back 15 minutes later. "Never mind. They say they can't let us off the plane. It would be illegal." Oh, ATA! You kidders! You certainly had us going there for a second! So it seemed they were all doomed to linger in the purgatory of San Antonio until the vicious assault of cumulus clouds abated. However long that might take.

Still holding out hope they might make their connecting Southwest flight in Houston, I called ATA Customer Service, which routed me (naturally) to India. India did not help me. India put me on hold for 3 to 5 minutes every time I asked a question. India was really not the right way to go at this point. Both India and Texas were slowly working their way off my list of places near and dear to my heart.

Next I called Southwest Customer Service, which connected me to a very nice woman who probably wasn't working in a windowless room in Asia Minor. I explained the situation and asked what was up with the weather in Texas. "That's really strange," she said. "I mean, we had some fog issues around 7:00AM this morning, but everything should be fine now." But Southwest wasn't going to hold the connecting flight. Clearly they're well aware of the general importance of SXSW to any of our bands' careers.

It was just after lunch. Jenny called. They had made it to Houston, but there were no flights available to Austin until 8:00PM that night. If they rented a car and hauled major ass, there was still a chance that Mark would make his gig. That is, if the band could find their gear. Which wasn't happening at that precise moment. ATA had apparently eaten some guitars and possibly a set of cymbals. It seemed par for the course. Maybe India has a racket going on "misplaced" band equipment. I made the reservation on Expedia for another mini-van, not thinking that someone who was physically in Houston was going to have to pay for it. This became an issue rather quickly.

At this point, it had become a little hard to contain that something is wrong and that I was having trouble fixing it. I have a corporate American Express card with an insane credit limit that is essentially useless to anyone in this situation. People in the office are yelling at me. The fundamental lesson that I learned from this entire episode is this: you cannot pre-pay a rental car as a third party. No way, no how. Unless your ass is physically sitting in the motherfucker in some capacity, you cannot pay for it. I tried. I almost cursed out the woman at Alamo. I even called our trusty travel agent to see if she knew any super-secret backdoor trickery that could be used (she didn't). It became clear that my only option was to somehow get money from me to Jenny, so she could pay for the rental car. This meant going to Gina.

Gina never wants to hear that you need money. Especially not emergency money.

"I need to transfer $850 into Jenny's bank account, right now," I explained, which - to the already beleaguered CFO of a small company - sounds sort of like "I want to set fire to your dog." She reacted accordingly.

The next thing I know, I am RUNNING IN THE RAIN up 6th Avenue to the closest Bank of America. It's very cinematic. Someone somewhere ought to be playing "Chariots of Fire." After barreling 2 blocks at full speed, I had an uncontrollable coughing fit during which I'm fairly certain I lost control of my bladder. Yes, I have pissed myself in the line of duty. I have had better days, to be sure. Bank of America, fortunately, was deserted and the very nice teller very pleasantly took $850 in cash off my hands without commenting on the fact that I looked quite deranged and couldn't breathe. I suppose had the transaction been reversed, it probably wouldn't have gone as smoothly.

Jenny called me 5 minutes after I got back to the office.

"Please tell me that you're in the car," I said.

"...can I get a strawberry margarita...?" she said to someone other than me. "Hey, hi. So let me start at the beginning and just tell you the whole thing." The beginning, as far as I was concerned at this point, was not a very good place to start. And yet. Previously on...Hipsters In Houston:

As it turns out, they missed their connection in Houston by all of 13 minutes, which is enough For the love of Christ! to be irritating but a long enough time not to conjure images a la Home Alone of a rag-tag bunch of New Yorkers tearing through the Houston Hobby airport on their way to the gate, only to left behind, dejected.

"And then Mark left his boarding pass and luggage claim stub on the plane," Jenny continued. Oh, of course. Mark is a lot of things. Excellent front man. Undercover metrosexual. Armenian. And not least of all sort of useless in times of stress. Which, I suppose, is where I come in. Or where I would come in, if I wasn't saddled with the black death and 1500 miles away.

As it turned out, Alamo didn't have any mini-vans at all, despite letting me make a reservation online. Oh, ha ha! Joke's on me! They did, however, have an SUV that Mark was able to rent and get the band on the road. Immediately after he found out that his gig was cancelled anyway. Jenny managed to negotiate her way onto another Southwest flight into Austin.

"So I'm just going to sit here and get drunk and wait for my flight at 6:00PM," Jenny concluded. "I'll get the car receipts from Mark tomorrow and give him cash for the car."

I would very much like to get very drunk as well - in triumph as well as in solidarity with my wards, who I doubt are going to know their own names in a few hours. But I'm still heavily medicated for another few days.

For the moment, though, all seems well on the SXSW front. Or at least as good as it's going to get.

As for me, I'm going to go home and change my pants.

Getting down with the sickness

I have been sick, in one capacity or another, for roughly 3 weeks now. It started out as what I thought was a just cold, then bronchitis, then a lung infection (complete with hacking up slimy yellow chunks while making a noise not dissimilar to a gagging dog), and has now morphed into an ungodly sinus infection. I was also sick two weeks prior to Christmas, and before that, I was sick in September during my vacation in Las Vegas. Someone must have signed me up for the Disease of the Month Club. I think malaria will be in season soon. Looking forward to it.

Once I was past the requisite tangle with chicken pox, I almost never got sick when I was growing up. On the rare occasion that I did catch a cold, it would kick my ass for about 3 days and then I'd be fine. None of this low-level symptomatic shit, fucking with me for weeks on end, while still allowing me to be functional enough to go to work. It seems like the warranty on my immune system has finally run out.

I'm becoming well acquainted with the following process:

Denial: "I am not sick. I'm just tired. I am going to willfully ignore this sore throat. I mean, really, what are the odds that it will morph into a full-blown chest cold in 15 hours? If I don't actually take any cold medication, I don't have a cold, right? Besides...I feel fine. Just a little phlemgy is all. I'll go to bed early. Or have another scotch. I'm fine."

Anger: "Why am I fucking sick AGAIN? Jesus Christ on a motherfucking crutch! And could everyone stop telling me I sound congested? I'm sick, not deaf. I know I sound like Joan Rivers in a gas mask. But thanks for bringing it up, asshat."

Bargaining: "Okay. If it gets really bad, like I start coughing up blood or passing out, I'll call the doctor. Okay, well, maybe I won't have to. If Mucinex is on sale at Duane Reade, I'll get some. But only if I don't feel better by tomorrow. I think it's getting better."

Depression: "I feel terrible. My head feels like it's in a wet blanket. I can't even bring myself to enjoy this episode of Law & Order: Criminal Intent. And it's even a Vincent D'Onofrio one. And I've only seen it three times, so I forget how it ends. Damn, man. I think I'm out of cough medicine. I've been through 2 bottles since this started. I'm going to be sick forver. The terrorists have won."

Acceptance: "Hey, Mom? Can you send me those antibiotics you offered to send me two weeks ago? I know I said it was going away. Yes, you were right. Thanks. What? Yes. I know I sound congested."

The best band you almost heard of

Great Moments In Music Licensing

Every time I watch the Oscars, I'm reminded of the fact that even had I not strayed away from the ordained path of film production after college, my chances of having the opportunity to thank God, the Academy, the Russian woman who does my waxing and the teachers of America were pretty slim. Not only was I was an outstandingly terrible director, but I wanted more than anything in the whole world to be a music supervisor. In the world of film school, that's like aspiring to be a key grip. No one thinks it's a real job and, even if it is, no one has any idea what it means other than it probably won't get you invited to Harvey Weinstein's after-party.

The argument could be made that giving out Oscars for music supervision is akin to giving Grammys to DJs. Although, to be fair, P. Diddy won a Grammy for essentially re-purposing The Police. So let's not get on our high horse, entertainment industry. On the other hand, I can understand the backlash. Movie soundtracks have largely become marketing tools that are littered with throwaway tracks from the distributing label's roster or exercises in bargain bin licensing, having nothing to do with the movie at all (maybe some current single gets a shout-out in the closing credits). And then "The O.C." slinks into popular consciousness, plays a different Spoon song over every Important Scene, and huzzah! Music supervision is the cool with the kids! (Don't get me started on Garden State because I might roll my eyes so hard that I'll do permanent damage.)

When I was 14 and largely unconcerned with my future beyond the next issue of TV Guide, I remember watching the mini-series adaptation of Stephen King's The Stand and being deeply effected by a single scene involving the music of Crowded House. I made the decision right then that if picking music that went in movies was an actual job, then that was the job for me. My parents thought this was as viable a career choice as when I had announced I was going to join the Thundercats when I grew up.

And still, despite awards for Best Assistant Director (retired in 1937, to the outrage of coffee-fetchers everywhere) and Best Original Song By Randy Newman, the Academy is still unwilling to recognize that music supervision done right is an art. Maybe it will happen someday, through lobbying or Graeme Ravell holding a member of the Academy hostage. Maybe they'll call it the Zach Braff Memorial Award For Excellence In Making An iMix For A Motion Picture. Who knows. But in the meantime I’d like to share a few of my favorite moments in music supervision, since these strokes of genius are unlikely to receive any formal recognition anytime soon. Naturally, I'll begin at the beginning.

"Don't Dream It's Over" / The Stand


I had just finished plowing through all 1000+ pages of the novel a month or so before this aired. For those unaware, The Stand asks what would happen if all but 5% of the world's population were wiped out in a matter of days by a highly contagious disease. And then Satan showed up. I'm disappointed that I couldn't find the clip of the way the song was actually used in the movie - underscoring a montage of shots of empty streets, bodies left where they fell, the few survivors mourning their loves ones while fleeing The Evil. A haunting portrait of a realistic apocalypse. I challenge you to find anything half as effective involving any combination of Mischa Barton and Death Cab For Cutie.


"Down With The Sickness" / Dawn of the Dead


Pure genius, especially given that it's a movie about zombies. When I saw this in the theater, I actually clapped. And no one does that anymore, except maybe if Jeremy Piven gets punched in the face because who doesn't want to punch Jeremy Piven? At this point in the film, Ving Rhames, et al have set up shop quite comfortably in a suburban mall and are making the best of it, despite the frenzied mob of brain-eating undead that's amassed in the parking lot. It's an excellent exercise in irony on several levels, not least of which is using Richard Cheese's version of a laughably over dramatic Disturbed song. I’d like to point out that I spent some time on IMDB, trying to find and credit the music supervisor (who also had the stroke of good taste to use the Stereophonics’ “Have A Nice Day” during the opening credits), but no such luck. They have a credit for the “third assistant accountant,” though. Just saying.


"Wise Up" / Magnolia


Generally I dislike Magnolia for being an overlong, indulgent, meandering mess (although it did paint a believable portrait of Tom Cruise as an insane cult leader - synergy!). However, I have to give Paul Thomas Anderson credit for the following: writing a screenplay inspired largely by the Aimee Mann songs he went on to use in the film and having the insane vision to employ this much-maligned technique of breaking the 4th wall. Just enough to emphasize the spectacularly relevant lyrics and connect each of the characters at a similar point in their individual downward spirals. I remember very few specifics from the film, but I've always thought of this scene as groundbreaking and a less than subtle example of what good supervision is supposed to achieve.


Opening Credits / Inside Man


I have an affection for Inside Man for two simple reasons: Clive Owen (who is hot) and the fact that it was both set and filmed two blocks from my apartment. The building that was used as Manhattan Trust Bank is now something called "Beaver Bar" - I don't even want to know - with a large yellow banner and a wry-looking cartoon beaver, enticing passers-by to "Come on in." I'll take a pass, thanks. But, really, one of the most excellent moments in the film happens in the first few frames: the remixed version of "Chaiyya Chaiyya" that plays over the opening credits captures both the uneasy multiculturalism of New York City as well as the impending cat-and-mouse between crook and cop. I half expected Spike to trot out some tired jam by Public Enemy. Happy surprises all around. And Clive Owen? Hot.

We should have that framed

Tracy is an only child. We commiserate about many things.

One day when I was in her living room, she pointed out, "We have a lot of pictures. Of me." This would prove to be an understatement akin to "Men In Black II is not a good movie" or "hot tar roofing is a bit messy." There are pictures of Tracy everywhere in her parents' house. I had never noticed it before, but of course as soon as she said it, it was all I saw. Tracy as a baby. Tracy at gymnastics. Tracy at the prom. Tracy at graduation. Tracy and the dog. If she wasn't standing next to me, I would have thought that Tracy had died in a tragic accident and her parents, overcome with grief, had turned their home into a shrine. It was a little JonBenet, to be honest.

I mean, I guess it makes sense. OK, well, maybe "sense" is overstating. But there's an expected amount of parental crazy that you put up with when you don't have any siblings to whom you can delegate it. You are simultaneously the most wonderful, special child in the whole word and the biggest fuck up. There is no little brother doing meth or older sister getting knocked up by her teaching assistant to which you can point and say, "Well, I might have cut 3rd period chem lab once or twice, but at least I'm not that bad." And there's no one else to distract them when they keep taking pictures of you. Some people have kitchens that are chicken-themed (this is true, I've been in one). The parents of one kid can have entire interior design schemes that are child-themed. It happens.

Except in my house. We had pictures of the cats (past and present), pictures of my aunt and uncle, and lots of ceramic animals on display. No one would ever come over and think that I had died in a terrible scooter accident and that my mother could only assuage her grief by surrounding herself with my image. Or that, you know, she had kids.

My living room only ever contained one picture of me. It was the 8x10 that came in package with my senior pictures. All of the packages of any school picture I've ever had included an 8x10. Why is that? At the time it was taken, my hair was too long, and I had recently been initiated into the cult of blond highlights, in the grand tradition of the Evans women. I am hugging a tree (not my idea), sort of smiling, and I look a little dazed. Dead in the eyes. You never look in pictures like you think you do in real life. So we framed it and put it in the living room, next to the ceramic fish. When I got my prom pictures back, I tried to frame the inevitable 8x10 and put it in the living room. Mom's response: "Jesus Christ, do we need to put the big one in a frame? Why do you keep getting the 8x10s?"

The last time I had a professional picture taken (not including the DMV) it was for my college graduation. I remember thinking precisely that at the time - this was the last time I would ever have a professional picture taken, unless I ever made Employee of the Month at the Costco I was sure I would end up working at. It was relief, really, since I never know what to wear for those things. They always tell you not to wear white, which isn't too hard when pretty much everything I've owned since 1994 has been in varying shades of black and brown. For picture day in my sophomore year of high school, I wore a Co-Ed Naked Volleyball t-shirt. It wasn't white, but I think they still ought to put that on the What Not To Wear list. Some people just don't know any better. Honestly, I have no idea what happened to my graduation pictures. I certainly don't have them, and I've never seen them hanging anywhere in Mom's house. It's probably for the best, since I look like a Stepford wife with the way they made me tilt my head.

A few months ago, I was standing in my mother's kitchen while we were cleaning up Christmas dinner. On the side of the fridge, there was a large picture of me leaning over a pool table, lining up a shot. Not a particularly flattering angle. Cooper had taken a bunch of shots at Crash Mansion one night, as he's wont to do, and I had forwarded some of them to Mom. Not thinking, of course, that she was going to print them out and decorate the kitchen.

"Mom, why the hell do you have this hanging up?"

"Well," she said, handing me a dish towel, "you never send me any pictures."

Then I noticed something on the bulletin board. It was a picture of Tracy.

Just Saying: Geek Rock Edition

The new Fall Out Boy video was on VH1 this morning.

Hey, guys?

Barenaked Ladies called. They want their schtick back.

But you can keep the eyeliner.

The song remains the same

There are two things that keep me sane when it all seems to have gone wrong (again): Annie Lennox and writing it all down. The latter isn't terribly practical, at least not in a public forum. Who wants to be one of those people of dubious mental stability on the subway, scribbling in a little notebooks and looking balefully at their fellow passengers? I try to keep my level of overt instability down to a shout when possible. So in addition to being the more discreet and portable option for sanity maintenance, Annie Lennox is more eloquent than I am in matters of emotional exposition. And Scottish, which also counts for a lot.

Last night, as I was shuffling along yet another street on another night, surfing another wave of familiar melancholy, "Cold" came up on the playlist, the one I specifically engineered for walks such as this. Not exactly the Walk of Shame, more the Dramatic Stride of Pretending This Is Your Montage Sequence. It is very cold and I am sick and I felt well entitled to my flagrant wallowing.

This playlist which has so often gloriously exacerbated my dark moods has its genesis in a mix CD that I first made during my last year of high school. At first it was one volume and then two. I wore it out, I had to remake it. Sometimes a few of the selections changed, most made the transition. When I got my first iPod - the one that weighed 4 lbs and only had 15 minutes of battery life on a good day - the first playlist I made was comprised of those songs I felt were in it for the long haul. It even kept the same title as it's predecessor.

Quite obviously, the main advantage of a playlist over the mixtapes of yore is that playlists are infinitely fluid, adaptable. You can add and delete at your leisure without sacrificing $20 worth of blank CDs. Your number of tracks is limitless. Gone are the limitations of physical media! Nevertheless, this was one playlist to which I gave strict guidelines. It would be serving a highly specialized purpose, as it had in its original incarnation. It was the Navy SEALs of playlists. I've added things to it, but only after careful consideration - "How much this really make me want to cry deep, wrenching sobs of despair?" In reality, though, the same songs that I painstakingly burned on that mix CD almost a decade ago have served me well all this time.

But last night a strange thing happened as I began my shuffle of impending montage. Instead of settling into the comforting sit bath of self-imposed depression, I had a startling jolt of clarity. I had walked down a different street on a different night, surfing a different wave of righteous self-pity over a different mess. I listen to this same playlist each time that I go screeching into the brick wall of reality and begin to think that my best option is to hurl myself in front of the M6 bus, hope that reincarnation is real, and start over again. Hopefully not as a spider monkey or an Arquette.

Last night, the playlist got a little fed up with me.

"Don't be a silly twat," said Annie Lennox in her dulcet tones. "This too shall pass."

I'm not going to mess with Annie Lennox. She hasn't done me wrong yet.

Things that happened, Part 2

... from Friday, October 23, 1998

Barbara called this afternoon around 3pm. I guess I was in lecture; I certainly wasn't home. She told my mother that she hadn't called sooner because she was having "family problems" (i.e. she's fighting with her mother again - like no one else does this) even though I would "probably think that's crap." She knows me too well. Apparently she wasn't having family problems last weekend when she went out with Alyssa and Colleen. Or when she called James on Monday. Jesus Christ, at least try and think of a decent excuse. I was mauled by wolves, for instance.

I wonder sometimes about these people I call my friends. But why dwell on it?

Today was probably the first I can remember in a long while where I didn't work on my film. I guess I decided to give myself a break after finishing the visual aspect of it. On Monday I need to get the voice over in there as soon as I can sneak into the multimedia lab.

It was an absolutely beautiful day. I think Fridays should always entail nice weather. There should be some kind of mandate. There's something about fresh, warm sunshine and a cloudless sky that makes you feel like that whole week was worth it. Because of that I think the painfully overcrowded subway (due to the victory parade for the Yankees) didn't make me as homicidal as it might have.

This is something I'm going to work at from now on. I'll do some existential housecleaning and try focusing on the positive things in my life. Dare I say that I'm giving optimism a chance? Maybe. You never know you don't like it until you try it.

On the other hand, since I seem to be doing pretty well in my liberal arts-centered classes, I can't help but think that I'm only kidding myself with this film major. As much as I kept telling everyone that, if it didn't work out, I wouldn't feel as though I failed - yeah, that's a lie. I could never admit that I had not only made a bad choice but that I was also unable to live with it. I have this thing about permanence. If I'm going to wrangle enough courage to do something drastic, it's going to damn well be a lasting arrangement. I could never see myself switching majors (much less changing schools - I did that enough in grammar school), getting a new job, admitting that I was wrong. If I make a bad choice, I'm going to stick with it. That's probably not a terribly productive way of thinking, but, hey - tenacity has got to be worth something, right?

Although, at the moment, I'm enjoying myself well enough in my film classes. Whether I like it enough to make a living at it is still up for debate. Maybe I'm trying to convince myself that I do just to save face. Nah. I wouldn't sit through my hellish Language of Film recitation on sheer principle alone.

The only other notable thing today was that I fainted during my blood test. I'm not at all ashamed of this. To the contrary, I seem to find these kinds of weak moments as possessing their own brand of glory. I'm not totally sure why it happened; I've had these sort of tests for more than five years and never had a problem. It's certainly not my favorite thing, but it's nothing worth passing out over. Regina, the nurse, asked me if it was "my first faint" (like when people talk about your first period or your first date - some kind of initiation into adulthood?). No, actually, it was my second faint. There was that little incident in the emergency room two years ago. I'm quite the veteran when it comes to unceremoniously collapsing after needles are involved. So Regina actually pronounced me "a fainter," brought me a Coke, and told me to have my blood taken lying down from now on. Oh, indeed, I sure will.

After that I went to McDonald's and ordered myself a Deluxe Big Breakfast. I'm such a medical hypocrite.

Just Saying: Tuesday Edition

I thought of this last night: When the people who bought my grandparents' house decide to landscape the backyard, I hope they're prepared for the assortment of dead pets they're going to find.

There are at least 3 cats, a skunk and a couple of hamsters. Although one of the cats had a headstone. Maybe that will tip them off.

Am I the only one who finds it a little strange that after you've had your pet put down, the vet actually gives it back to you in a shopping bag? Kind of a weak consolation prize, in the grand scheme of things.

Hopefully the new owners won't give us our cats back in a shopping bag after they finish putting in their pool. I'm sure they smell quite bad by now.

Dear eBay Customers:

First of all, I'd like to thank you for providing me with a fairly healthy source of extra income these last few years. I really appreciate it, since I doubt I would be able to fund my wine habit without you. However, some of you are really causing me to question whether you really ought to be a) using the Internet or b) committing any acts of retail whatsoever. So let's go over a few simple guidelines which will hopefully make any further transactions less irritating for me.

Stop asking me if the J. Crew skirt I was good enough to fully document with actual photos of the actual item with the actual tag attached is "authentic." Seriously, people. Please don't even tell me there exists a place to get knock-off J. Crew because that's just really sad. I know there's a place to buy knock-off Louis Vuitton, Chanel and (God help me) Juicy Couture - it's called Canal Street. I also know there's a place to buy knock-off Banana Republic - it's called The Gap. However, if there is a place where one can obtain J. Crue, I have no idea where that is - nor do I want to find out because I'm sure that it's a sign of the collapse of modern society. If you're really that concerned about the authenticity of your argyle sweaters or hideous horse-print satin skirts, I suggest you purchase them at full price from your local J. Crew retailer.

Another note on authenticity: the fact that you're getting on your moral high horse in the first place is a little laughable, no? I'm well aware that eBay perpetuates a culture whereby anyone who's selling anything is automatically assumed to be an unscrupulous child rapist who robs graves when not ripping off any wide-eyed innocent foolish enough to bid on his or her items. But let's be real and admit that both sides of the transaction are inherently shady. You buyers are certainly not without your own coating of sleaze. If it matters that much to you, just bid on those pants, then take them over to your nearest Club Monaco and ask a friendly salesperson to verify that they're genuine Club Monaco sweatshop product. Oh, right, because then you'd have to admit that you bought them off eBay in the first place, you stinking hypocrite. So shut up.

Hey. You see that section that says "shipping costs"? Cool, ok. You see where it says "Worldwide shipping cost: $15.00"? Right, right. I'm not sure if you're aware of this, but The World pretty much encompasses the whole planet. All of it. Not just the nice parts where we go on vacation. So that probably answers your question as to how much I charge to ship to Uzbekistan or Taiwan or wherever the hell you live that's not America without you having to email me, right? Oh. I guess not.

No, I don't have it in another size. Because I'm not one of those people who buys things in 4 different sizes with the intention of eventually getting started on that diet of organic swiss chard and Xantrex 3 so I can fit into them. And then selling them on eBay when I realize I'm still never going to be a size 6. Just because you do that doesn't mean I do.

Asking for the measurement of the waistband, cuff or other completely ludicrious part of the garment is only going to piss me off. I'm giving you all the measurements you need, folks. And, really, let's be frank: you know whether a size Large is going to fit you or not. So don't waste my time. I would say don't waste yours, but I don't think your time is all that valuable to begin with.

Be aware of what a cheap, nitpicking assclown you look like when you try to haggle over shipping. I'm only charging you $8.00 for overnight shipping within these United States, unlike most of my fellow sellers who will gouge you $25.00 to send your stuff via presorted standard mail. And I don't care if you'd rather me drop it off in an unmarked plastic bag next to the service entrance at Burger King so your mentally challenged brother can pick it up on his Razor scooter, or whatever other ridiculous "alternate method" of goods exchange you would prefer. Do you call up customer service at Victoria's Secret and try to negotiate with them or do you just happily bend over and pay $13.50 for them to mail you the ill-fitting bras you ordered? Yeah, that's what I thought.

Once we've completed a sale - I have my money, you have whatever piece of shit that I didn't want anymore - don't email me and ask me to leave you feedback. That pretty much ensures that I won't. Or, even less pleasant, I will leave negative feedback which states that you came to my house, stole the item, pistol-whipped my grandmother and pissed in my houseplants. So don't push it. Increasing your feedback rating isn't going to make you any less of a waste of space.

So I hope that going forward we can avoid these annoying little bumps in the road on our way to a successful transaction.

Oh, before I forget: I'd also like to send a special hello out to that lying bitch who bought two pairs of shoes, broke the heel off one of them, filed a bogus complaint with Pay Pal and ripped me off for $157. Don't forget that I have your home address.

Hi, I'm Paul Weller

Are you in a band? You might as well quit now.

No, I mean it. Just give it up, you're embarrassing yourself. I'm telling you this for your own good.

By the way, anyone got a fag?

The lost years

I'm missing one of my journals.

This is a little horrifying.

I've been trying to kid myself that I'd only misplaced it. But as I was on my hands and knees, reaching under the bed in a last ditch effort to convince myself that I was hiding it in my guitar case, reality finally came crashing down. Somewhere during the course of my last move, the written record of three years of my life has been lost to circumstance.

I probably wouldn't have even noticed had I not decided to take a trip down memory lane. Over the last week or so, I've been reading through all of my journals piecemeal, bits here and there throughout the years. After spending several nights revisiting countless unfortunate crushes, over dramatized school worries, and lots of transcribed song lyrics, I was more than a little over myself. But more than anything, I hadn't been able to glean the perspective that I'd hoped from analyzing my past self. I'm looking into those corrective lenses for hindsight that I keep hearing so much about. For every meaningful turn of phrase or happy memory that would have otherwise been forgotten, there was a noticeable cringing. Is it really such a good idea to keep these things? Not only saving the old ones but persisting in scrawling out book after book, year after year?

My motivations in keeping a journal have shifted over time. When I first felt the urge to have a diary, I was about 12. My parents' divorce was getting uglier by the minute, and what better way was there to immortalize your court-appointed therapy? I existed under the delusion that someone, someday might uncover it, like a lost Hemingway manuscript, and publish it. Considering that at that time I was chiefly concerned with Star Trek and collecting those furry animal stickers, it's probably for the best that my early work avoided commercial distribution. After high school, there was more of a focus on pure documentation - I recounted conversations verbatim, described events neutrally. Then I was writing out of habit, feeling that it was more an obligation than anything else. Aw, shit, I might as well write something since The X-Files is a repeat.

Then something changed. In the last few years, my journals got uglier, less structured. I found that the only time I felt the urge to write anything was when it was weak or self-hating or a fist shaken at the sky at the unfairness of things. It became an fetid swamp for me to unload all of the things that I worried would taint my real life with The Crazy. Rather than meticulously documenting events, it was a litany of heartbreak, neediness and open letters to people I despised for what I deemed casual cruelty. I go back and read things that concern me sometimes, pieces of thoughts that I know I've had before and swore that I wouldn't have again. On the other hand, it could be that personal progress isn't so much not having the thoughts as not indulging them by sobbing on the phone in a hotel room to someone who really didn't need to talk to you about this at 1:00AM on a Tuesday. Progress is keeping your crazy off the street.

If you tell a lie long enough, everyone around you will believe it. Contrary what people say, you yourself never do. It just gets less and less hard to tell. In making the effort to keep my less attractive impulses contained in blank books provided by Barnes & Noble, it's almost as though I've managed to spread a whitewash over all my scars. I know they're there, although I might kid myself otherwise. As a result, I've come to realize that I seem simple and well-adjusted. Overconfident, suggested someone who I thought knew me pretty well. I find it both funny and frustrating, I guess. Having been the unhappy misfit for so much of my life, it's strange to realize no one believes you can appreciate their damage.

And that's the thing. Damage is compelling and charismatic. For a long time, I always wore my dysfunction on my sleeve; I was unapologetic of its manifestations. What better way to make sure that everyone likes you because you're a hot mess with too much baggage? Fuck them if they can't deal with it! I'm a twitching bundle of emotional tics! It's the curse of the self-awareness. But after too many emails that should have never been sent, too many people alienated, too much time offered up to the seductive cult of self-pity, I was simply unwilling to work that hard. Being in love with your own pain gets tiresome. Get cable. Read a book. Mock others - most of them deserve it. By all means, be fucked up but temper it with a larger perspective. To borrow a phrase*, "Life is short, and then you die with a bad CD collection."

I'm trying not to mourn my missing journal too much. Those years are gone from the collection, so there's no opportunity to revisit the mistakes, poor word choices and probably not as many lessons as I might hope. Although, to be honest, this week I've been looking back on my past self with more generosity than I'll allow my current incarnation. Isn't that always the way?

Maybe the value is less in the actual record and more in the writing. And so it goes.

* Thanks, Mark

Smash! Hit!

A couple of people asked me if I've watched American Idol while it's still wallowing in its audition stage. Apparently there was a guy who sang several songs, spanning diverse genres, in the classical style of one, Brett Scallion. I'm sure it was painful and embarrassing for all parties involved, but no more so than your mom insisting on telling your friends that one joke about
the rabbi and the parakeet that she can't ever really remember. But that's at least a private shame. The point-and-look fascination that people have with this spectacle of the untalented year after year is a little beyond me.

Do they not have a karaoke bar in your town where you can witness this kind of thing first hand? Because let me tell you, after a few red devils at Tracy J's, coercing someone with an outrageously bad voice into singing isn't all that difficult. Not only will the previously reluctant decide that belting out "Sweet Child O' Mine" in that time-honored tuneless, shouty fashion is an excellent idea, but they "will totally kill it, dude." Certain people approach karaoke (often stumbling) with the unwavering confidence of the musically ignorant. More often than not, you have no idea how hard certain songs, not matter how hackneyed, are to sing until you try to do it even passably well - it took 12 takes and an act of God for me to even hit the correct notes on the first line of "Do They Know It's Christmas?"

Maybe I'm in an uniquely qualified position to appreciate this, but there's a lot of untalented people out there. Music is harder than it looks, my friends. Even thunderously average music requires a certain level of Neanderthal brilliance. (So easy even Chad Kroeger can do it!) It's not like just anyone can sit down and bang out a trite, derivative yet commercially viable radio hook. That kind of highly-valued mediocrity is created in labs from call-out research and survey groups and probably some kind of ancient voodoo ritual. Nevertheless there's a lot of average floating around - some halfway decent average, some bad average, some boring average. Some average that sells millions, some average that couldn't get its mom to come to a gig.

However.

When the needle slips below the very generous purgatory of the average or even of "not horrible," we enter the murky water of things that are bad. Lots of things are bad, but certain things are so overwhelming, spectacularly terrible that they take on a certain aura that can best be described as "Oh my fucking God - seriously?"

It takes a magical blend of sheer ineptitude and lack of shame to create what's I've come to be term The Smash Hit. Let's be clear: there's a razor thin line of difference between bad and awesomely bad. Often what sets the awesomely bad apart is the pure, clear-eyed belief in their talent. Come to think of it, this is probably the ultimate appeal of the American Idol train wrecks: being truly, blissfully unaware of how terrible you are really is a thing of beauty. Even in the face of cold hard reality, they persist. Even to the point of putting themselves on national television. Or, in my particular experience, asking to be signed to a major record label. My friends Rob, Kodi and Nick took it upon themselves, toiling mightily in the A&R department and slogging through the dirge known as "unsolicited submissions," to put together several compilations of Smash Hits. It became legendary in our office. We even held release parties of sorts, each one more eagerly anticipated than the last. Each Smash Hit had that sublime quality of not only being unequivocally bad but also hilariously unaware of how bad it really was. It was beautiful.

So if nothing else, maybe we should celebrate the American Idol auditions for keeping the well of potential Smash Hits deep and dark and full of fresh horrors. Because as long as there is someone out there willing to record an off-key cover of "The Rose" or actually pen the lyrics "Evelyn / You are very small / You hold the ball," there will always be a little bit of magic in this world.

Elucidate

How many $3 words have you used today?

Gay boyfriend!

I was on my way back from the post office this afternoon - not my favorite place, but I needed to mail something, and they do a better job than me throwing it out the window and hoping for the best - when I thought to myself, "That looks like Ted Allen." Oh, that's because it is Ted Allen. Squee!

Probably because he practices a decidedly low-level brand of faggotry and a high level of withering disdain, I used to have a delightful crush on Ted Allen. And there he was on the corner of 23rd St and 7th Ave - right in front of the hot dog place. Make of that what you will.

This was sort of funny, only in that I had seen Clinton Kelly on the 1 train on my way to work a few months ago. I also adore Clinton Kelly, despite the fact that the American version of "What Not To Wear" is a crime against popular culture. And, really, it's just wrong because that man is something like 6'4" and looks as though could bench press me. Must you mock me, fates? Wither the tremendously sturdy straight men?

Although, to be honest, neither Clinton nor Ted can be my true gay boyfriend - my heart already belongs to Andrew, the manager of my local Chipotle. He is faaabulous and gives me free burritos, evidently just for showing up. Unless he thinks I'm packing something that I'm not, and that would be highly embarrassing for both of us.

Johnnie and Ella

If you ever have one of those nights where you decide the best thing you can do is snuggle up with some jazz and a bottle of scotch (the whole bottle), let me elaborate on the necessary precautions that you should take:

• Turn off your cell phone: people that you haven't spoken to in five years will not call you back. They don't even remember who you are. Or, if they do, they will not accept the charges.
• You will sing: loudly and enough to annoy the gay guys next door, despite the fact that it's basically payback since you've had to listen to more than your share of Kylie Minogue at high volumes. But be aware that you're not in the key you think you are. And that song is harder to sing than you think it is. But go on, girlfriend.
• Make the drinks stronger: who cares if the soda is flat? And don't worry about how late the deli across the street is open. Drinking it straight will seem less unsavory in a little while, trust me.
• Pretend: go ahead and think you're tragically romantic. You are drunk by yourself and cursing iTunes because they don't have the painfully sad, live version of "One More For My Baby" that you wanted. Just listen to something by AC/DC and get over yourself.

And the important thing to remember is that tomorrow? Yeah. It's going to hurt.