Bro to Dude: Chill!

Dude, whatever, I am fucking done taking to you tonight.

Dude, we go back a long time. All the way back to Highschool to when those kids were throwing rocks at me and you said: "Hey you fuckin' dicks quit it!" So you gotta believe that this does not come easily when I say you gotta chill.

But you do. Just take a step back and look at the situation. Look at yourself. Look at me. I'm your bro, dude. We don't act like this. This is not us.

Now,  I know that I might have been being a bit of a dick but dude, this is the very definition of an incommensurate  response.

Let me explain:

First you were a whiny little bitch when we got to the theater ten minutes late for The Social Network. I know it sucks when you're in the mood for something and you miss it but dude, we're human beings, we adapt to changing situations and it's no reason for you to have been a whiny little bitch

Furthermore, for the record,  I am not the sort of guy who likes walking into a movie ten minutes late. It just ruins it for me. I know we probably only would have missed previews but honestly -and I don't want to sound uncultured or anything- but those are usually my favorite part. That's why I'm not such a jerk about what movie we go and see: I just like laying back, takin' in some previews with my Bro and just chillaxing.

But, if we miss the previews, that's like half the fun for me so I hope you understand why we didn't go see The Social Network and went, instead, to see the Expendables which started 20 minutes later and which I thought was actually a pretty fucking awesome movie and I know you secretly did too.

Secondly,  dude, you ate like all the fucking popcorn. I asked if you wanted to get some and you said no. And so I thought like you didn't actually want any and so I bought a medium one instead of a large thinking I'd be eating the whole thing myself.

Surprise: no.

You decided you were actually very  hungry during the  OPENING CREDITS and started taking big fucking handfuls. I thought you were just having a taste but the popcorn was 2/3 of the way empty by the time Arnold Schwarzenegger showed up.

That is such bullshit and even Chris would agree and you better believe I'm going to tell him about this next time we hang.

Yeah, I know I sound pissed off now. Guess what? I am. Because you totally ruined what should have been a really nice evening by being a dick. And now I feel like a dick because I'm having to tell you to chill out.

Oh and P.S. you remember the reason we were ten minutes late? 'Cuz you had to show me that fucking thing on Youtube about the guy who sees two rainbows and freaks out. That video is 9:38 seconds long. Guess how late we were to the fucking Social Network, genius? Coincidence? Think again.

Man Eats Batteries, Shits Lightning

Thor?

PADFOOT ARIZONA- Harvey Brikkle is your normal everyday Joe. He goes to work at 8, gets home at 6 and is sipping a cold one by 6:30. He's got a wife, two kids, a dog named Gus and an old beat up Chevy named Clementine.

Oh, did we mention that he eats batteries and shits lightning?

Brikkle possesses a rare disorder called Levitas Plasmatoriosis from the Latin meaning "lightning maker".

For an as yet unknown reason Brikkle's body produces an enzyme which allows him to actually store the electrons in regular household batteries and then, using his digestive track,  channel them outwards in a powerful static discharge.

Standing a modest 5'8" and possessing the soft and gentle features of a child, Brikkle, 45, is not an imposing man. Still, the constant dim crackle of electricity emanating  from somewhere deep within his mid-section lends  him a nearly other-worldly aspect.

According to Brikkle it all started when he was 8 years old.

"Dad'd be in the fields," he says "Ma would be in the kitchen and I'd  have my run of the house, and I'd just eat things. You know, whatever I found: pieces of rock, tiny black things, stuff the cat didn't like."

It wasn't long before Brikkle discovered the food that would later make him (in)famous throughout Padfoot.

"My Dad used to collect flashlights," says Brikkle, "at one point he had the second largest personal collection of consumer level flashlights in all of Padfoot. Well, one day he sort of left one out..."

According to Brikkle, he unscrewed the casing of the flashlight and out slid four shiny AA Duracell batteries.

"I 'member thinkin' they was the most beautiful things I ever seen...so I just...you know...ate 'em."

Five hours later the house was on fire and Brikkle's younger brother was dead, his bones turned to glass from a blast of potent electricity seemingly directed from the top-most bunk.

"We was all sad 'bout that o'course," says Brikkle's father Earl, "But also excited because of Harvey's miraculous gift."

As soon as word got out about his unusual ability Brikkle became a local celebrity, touring the radio talk-show circuit, appearing at various State Fairs and even performing,  albeit briefly, in a traveling Circus under the name "Lil' Shock Ass".

Unfortunately, like the polarizing quality of electricity itself,  Brikkle's strange power soon divided the towns people of Padfoot.

"Harvey is THE most off the hook son of a bitch I've ever met," says Angus Mingus, one of the many local butchers, "I seen him blow up a dog once 'cuz it looked at him, or didn't look at him. Don't know which."

"Harvey is the nicest boy I've ever met" says Edwina Sinclair, retired housewife, "He's always so caring and kind.  I don't care at all that he possesses a terrible power."

Brikkle, trying to stem the tide of negative sentiment,  cut back on his performances, relegating himself to dinner theater a few nights a week at various local venues. 

Sadly, following a few minor incidents at Pete's Egg Dog and Steak House, public sentiment began to drift inexorably towards distrust and finally to fear.

Brikkle was soon forced to abandon his life as an entertainer altogether.

"Them was good times," says Brikkle with a tinge of remorse, "but I couldn't do it forever. Gotta grow up you know. Earn an honest living."

Now-a-days Brikkle works full time at the rock quarry and keeps his special talent under wraps so to speak.

"I bring it out at parties sometimes, or you know, special occasions." Brikkle chuckles then goes quiet for a moment. "And every once in a while," He adds, "When it's real quiet and the night's real still. No wind, not a cloud in the sky. I hike up Padfoot Peak, swallow a handful of 9 volts, grab my knees and give 'em one hell of a storm."

WEEKLY LIMERICK!!

HESSIAN OBSESSION

There was a filthy old whore from Dubai,
who more than once thought she would die,
from a spirited session,
with a bearded young hessian,
said she: "it's better'n takin' it in yer eye!"

How To: Cure Cancer!

Heard a rumor, you had a tumor

Uh-oh! Got the lumps?

Don't worry, it happens to the best of us and with this easy do-it-yourself guide you'll be in remission in no time!*

WHAT YOU'LL NEED:

1 tissue culture flask filled with trypticase soy agar

Several syringes ranging in size from 60ml-120ml capacity

1 Tourniquet (a regular ol' belt will do!)

Several blood separation tubes lined with a gel possessing a specific gravity of between 1.060-1.065 g/cm3

A healthy friend with the same blood type as you (no cancer!)

A centrifuge

Rubber gloves

A Celestron 44340 LCD Digital LDM Biological Microscope

A sample of a human retrovirus that has become activated via the removal of the protein ESAT (Ask your local hospital or go on EBAY)


___________________________________________________________________

THE PROCEDURE

1. First take some blood from your healthy friend using the tourniquet and syringe. (120 ml should do).
2. Place blood in separation tubes (split sample among three tubes)
3. Place two of the tubes in centrifuge and set on speed 2 for one hour. Place the other tube in cold storage.
4. Turn off centrifuge.
5. By now the lymphocytes (white blood cells) should have separated from the rest of the blood. They will appear as a white layer almost like congealed bacon fat.
6. Put one of the tubes in cold storage.
7. Harvest a sample of the healthy lymphocytes from the remaining tube.
8. Next take the sample and place in one of the blood culture tanks lined with trypticase soy agar.
9. Administer a small amount (just eyeball it) of the prepared retrovirus to the lymphocytes.
10. Cover and place in a nutrient bath and monitor for several hours.
11. Take a sample and observe under electron microscope. The lymphocytes should now be "infected" with the retrovirus and should appear like this:

Not all retroviruses are bad

(notice the uniform size and color. This is a sign of infection.)

12. Take the tube of un-separated blood out of cold storage.
13. Bring the blood up to body temperature and then combine the retrovirus infected lymphocytes to the healthy blood.
14. Now comes the fun part. Inject yourself with this retro-cocktail! The vein in the arm is fine.
15. If all goes correctly, the retrovirus should act as a blood-hound (pun intended!) sniffing throughout your system for a certain protein which grows on the outsides of tumor walls.
16. The retrovirus delivers genes that allow for the production of T Cell Receptors. These receptors work much like packets of plastic explosive and when they get attached to tumor walls they blow them up! Take that cancer!
17. Obviously this treatment must be repeated under a strict regiment (three times a day in fact) for several months. But if all goes well your cancer may very well go into remission!
18. Congratulations!

Check back Next Week for: How to Kill Your Target!

*For the love of god, don't try this at home folks.

Weekly Limerick!!

PORK

There's a peculiar young lady from Cork,
Who confesses a fondness for pork,
but she gets quite unnerved,
when at dinner it's served,
And she won't let it come near her fork.

We're All Figments of Your Imagination, Kevin

A recent study at the Harvard Center for cognitive theory has conclusively proven  that we are all figments of your imagination, Kevin.

It's true. The numbers don't lie. Nor do the voices in your head that have no doubt been telling you the same thing for years.

The study, conducted by Dr. Philip Stark (who incidentally, is also a figment of your imagination) has generated astounding evidence intimately linking everybody in the world to you, Kevin.

Just as you've always suspected, as soon as you leave a room, that room ceases to exist

Kevin, Kevin, Kevin

until you return to it.

Places like China that you've never been to don't actually exist and won't actually exist until you go there at which point they will be spontaneously generated by your own thoughts and feelings at that moment. 

That movie you saw last week on Netflix, the one with Meg Ryan that you thought was so funny? Guess what. It was a figment of your imagination. So was Netflix.

And that girl you met at the bar who ended up dancing with your friend Chris instead of you? Both of them were figments of your imagination. So was the bar for that matter. So was the ABBA they were dancing to.

Furthermore, as backwards as it sounds,  your parents didn't exist until You were born Kevin. Nothing did.

Does this mean that you're some sort of God Kevin? Some sort of fundamental aspect of the universe and all creation is just a passing whim of yours? Are whole planetary systems built and destroyed in  some grand cosmic dance orchestrated by you and you alone? Can you temper the very fabric of space and time and bend matter to your will using nothing but the power of your magnificent mind, Kevin?

We don't know, you'll have to tell us because we're figments of your imagination too.

Weekly Limerick!!

IN THE NAVY

In the 101st battalion of the Navy,
there's a well known ship's cook named Davy,
All day he peels tates,
for his salty sea mates,
but will not reveal how he makes gravy.

Theater Review: The Ballad of Secular Jesus

Clarence Needley as the eponymous Secular Jesus

By Wade Crevasse


The Funtime Players are a small theater Troupe out of Long Island.

Their previous original production "My Father: My Hero" was a bloated saccharine canker about the war in Iraq that inadvertently  had me siding with Bin Laden by the end.

So it was with a considerable amount of trepidation that I went to see The Funtime Players latest original piece, a musical entitled "The Ballad of Secular Jesus".

To say that "The Ballad of Secular Jesus" is bad would be incorrect or at the very least, insufficient from a linguistic standpoint. Doing so would be like calling the planet Jupiter "large" or the great, frigid vacuum of infinite space "cold".

In fact, "The Ballad of Secular Jesus" is, without a doubt, the single worst piece of art I have ever seen.

Keep in mind that I have been reviewing art performances and gallery openings for over 20 years. I have written literally hundreds of reviews for every form of art imaginable.

I have watched a man eat a jar of caviar while reading Lenin's "April Thesis" only to shit into his own palm nine hours later in order to symbolize how the Bourgeousie and the proletariate unite within the body of the middle class.

I have watched a twenty hour video of a man watching a 20 hour video of himself watching a 20 hour video of himself.

I had thought these incidents to be new lows for the art world but after watching "The Ballad of Secular Jesus" I can see how wrong I was:

"The Ballad of Secular Jesus" is literally worse than watching a man shit into his own hand.

This observation alone should be review enough for many, but for those who are somehow still unconvinced, by all means read on.

As the title implies, "The Ballad of Secular Jesus" is essentially the story of Jesus Christ told in modern times but without any of the religious trappings.

What we are left with is the incredibly bland and morally vapid tale of a 33 year old bearded carpenter who is essentially just a nice guy but: "not the greatest carpenter!" as J.C. himself exclaims every five minutes or so in an on-going song and dance number entitled "Hammer and Nails, it never fails!"

Through the production's alarmingly self-indulgent 242 minute run time we follow Jesus from childhood to adulthood.

A single actor plays the parts of both child Jesus and adult Jesus and the actor, a Mr. Clarence Needley would be well advised to not only not quit his day job, but to never act in anything ever again.

There's a Mary character (played with ear-ringing shrillness by Mandy Draper), a Judas character (Kevin Saint) and an ethereal father character who may or may not be the head of the carpenter's union and is played with all the bravado of a handful of gypsum by Roger Dodds.

There's a whole lot of other useless crap that basically exists only as an excuse to knock-up the already swollen run time with as many song and dance numbers as possible.

By the end of the show the audience was understandably exhausted and visibly angry.

I personally felt violated, poisoned from somewhere deep within my soul in a way I haven't since watching my father die slowly from cancer.

In both cases I was forced to witness something awful that I was powerless to stop. In both cases I raised my eyes to God to beg for mercy and received nothing but silence.

And perhaps this is the point of "The Ballad of Secular Jesus": if there is no god, it follows that there is no soul and if there is no soul then all the horrors in all the world are illusions made by man for the sake of tormenting himself during his brief tenure on earth.

If that's the case then the Funtime Players have certainly succeeded in their mission.

I humbly suggest therefore that we take advantage of what little moral authority we do have by arresting those responsible for this horror and hanging them by their necks until dead.

The Ballad of Secular Jesus is playing at the New Town Theater located at 344 Skillman Ave.
Brooklyn
Tickets are $15 at the door, $10 in advance.