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So, a while back someone remixed those Jesus pictures I put in my blog. Here's the whole set of them. Heeee-larious.

There is, of course, only one university in Britain, and that is Oxford. Many other cities and towns claim that they also have similar establishments, but a true chap would blush from spending three of their formative years in some concrete monstrosity of the Midlands, or the dark satanic mills of the North. One is not to be fooled either by members of the royal family who opt to join the arts-and-craft communities of our Caledonian cousins. Intelligent homosexuals are permitted to attend the University of Cambridge, which offers a variety of courses on espionage leading to worthy careers working for the KGB in mysterious buildings south of the Thames.

The Chap magazine. Live it, love it.

Anita Mui is dead.

Go rent The Heroic Trio or My Father Is A Hero or Drunken Master 2 or Miracles or even A Better Tomorrow III and get to know her if you don't already.

(I normally don't care about celebrity deaths, but she was a gem.)

You know, morning is a little bit better when Thelonious Monk is playing you to your desk at the office. I used a gift certificate provided by Kristin's lovely (and very nice) family to procure a nice chunk of jazz recordings yesterday, including two recordings by Monk, Solo Monk and Genius Of Modern Music Volume 1, Sonny Rollins's Way Out West, an album of Count Basie's orchestra doing James Bond film music, and Karma by Pharoah Sanders. The last one has "The Creator Has A Master Plan," which I discovered in reverse form - there was a drum and bass remix of a cover of the track by Brooklyn Funk Essentials on a mixtape that Bobble made for me during his "ambient jungle" phase in 96. This tape is, of course, either lost forever or buried in a box in our spare room and I don't even have a tape deck anymore, period. Last year while digging through some $1 CDs at a local used CD chain, I found the single by BFE, featuring the remix I liked so much.

In another $1 bin at Cheapo Records (Central Square, Cambridge), I found this CD, which has an edited version of Sanders's original track, along with some other gems (Archie Shepp's take on "Girl From Ipanema" goes down a treat, I tell you what.) It was love at first listen. (At this point, I'll note the criminal injustice that is this CD getting only two stars from the Giant Allmusic Computer, as it has tracks from Trane and Mingus among others.)

Seek out this song. You won't be disappointed.

I have discovered it. The secret. The secret that will make you happy, my friends.

And I will share it with you.

First, go to your local pub. I hope you have a decent one, not some seedy juke joint blaring David Lee Roth while a guy who's been unsuccessfully been trying to grow out his mullet tells you about this amazing opportunity with Amway. Bring a book, go by yourself - this is critical.

Order the special. In my case, tonight, it was the steak tips (medium rare) with salad. No starch, as it impedes my desire to get buzzed as quickly as possible. Get a Guinness with it. This is a very critical portion of the whole secret-obtaining process.

I hope you get a server like Lisa. Lisa and Teresa take care of me at my pub. Fine, Irish lasses with a twinkle in their eyes and a gentle lilt that you wonder at in the wee small hours. She brings you your drink and you read your book and all is good. Then, remarkably, as you're halfway through your Guinness, Lisa drops off another.

"I poured one too many." She says. There's a wink. You do not acknowledge the wink. Don't. This spoils the secret.

Eat your meal. Read your book. (In this case, it was You Shall Know Our Velocity by Eggers.) Lisa takes your plate away. Asks if you want anything else. Say you want a Scotch. 12 year.

It gets brought to you, along with the check. You are charged for the steak tips and the first Guinness. You tip Lisa $15 and walk out. If you are very lucky, there's a coffee shop next door where you can read some more of your book and have a coffee to shake off the lethargic buzz. I daresay this was the point at which the secret became something I felt like I must share with you.

In short: Guinness, meal, Guinness, scotch, coffee. Write this down. Carry it with you.

Good night, god bless.

STUPID INTARNET QUIZ FOLLOWS

THREE THINGS THAT SCARE ME

Bush.

Republicans (in general.)

Strident liberals who are as bad as Ann Coulter in their own way. (Hi, Michael Moore? You scare me sometimes, even if I liked your movies, except for Canadian Bacon.)

THREE THINGS I DON'T UNDERSTAND

Quantum physics.

How the people put up with media manipulation.

The Current State of Pop Music.

THREE THINGS I'D LIKE TO LEARN

Javascript.

How to make the perfect Maker's Mark Infusion.

How to teleport.

THREE THINGS I AM WEARING RIGHT NOW

Doc Martens dress shoes.

Dockers.

Green t-shirt.

THREE THINGS ON MY DESK

CD player.

CDs (Cowboy Bebop soundtracks, Thelonius Monk's Chris-Cross and the latest 9 Lazy 9 release.)

Big Water Bottle.

THREE THINGS I WANT TO DO BEFORE I DIE

Watch every Kurosawa film.

Visit space.

Make it with Angelina Jolie.

THREE GOOD WAYS TO DESCRIBE MY PERSONALITY

Witty.

Somewhat intelligent, when I feel like it.

Laconic.

THREE BAD THINGS ABOUT MY PERSONALITY

Lazy. (See #3 on previous list.)

Overly critical.

Sarcastic.

THREE PARTS OF YOUR HERITAGE

British.

English.

Some Scotch, but we don't talk about it.

THREE THINGS I LIKE ABOUT MY BODY

Nose.

Grey hairs.

Fingers. (Even if I never see 'em fing.)

THREE THINGS I DON'T LIKE ABOUT MY BODY

Asthma.

Allergies.

My beer / chinese food gut.

THREE THINGS MOST PEOPLE DON'T KNOW ABOUT ME

I cry at the drop of a hat in a movie, but rarely at real-life events.

I'm quite a good dancer, in my own way.

I'm dead good in bed. (No, really. I didn't believe it myself until recently.)

THREE THINGS I SAY THE MOST

"Fuck's sake!"

"Great Caesar's Ghost!"

"Thank you for calling Merchant Warehouse, this is Kevin."

THREE PLACES I WANT TO GO

Portland, OR. (Again. It's nice there and the people are keen.)

NYC, but only when it's emptied of the teeming hordes.

London. ("Let's do it. Let's break the law!")

THREE NAMES THAT I GO BY

Churchy.

BeaucoupKevvy.

Kevin.

THREE SCREEN NAMES I HAVE OR HAD

Perfecto.

BeaucoupKevin.

c0.

Pictures from the Cape Christmas Trip.

When I got back, I got to meet my man D. Kasak and his lovely girlfriend. I only got one usable picture out of that night. This is it. Clicking makes it big. That's Kasak back to the left, Laura in the foreground (here's where I mention that the girl is hot and far too good for his lame ass) and TV's Spatch back to the right.

So, my cellphone didn't actually charge last night and I left the camera at home to deep-charge the LiIon batteries before our trip to beautiful Cape Cod on this festive holiday season. I am remarkably free of digital technology, excluding my discman, but that's so ubiquitous that it might as well be an extra hand or something. It's a balmy 53 degrees out there, which means the whole "Christmas Spirit" thing is eluding me even more than usual.

Last night, I came up with what would be the most politically incorrect holiday special ever. Little Hitler's Worst Christmas. Upon hearing the name, longtime associate Josh Krach stated that it should be like the prologue in Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade and show the origin of the haircut, the moustache, and his hatred of the Jewish people. The only line I came up with is "But mummy, vhy does Mister Goldstein get eight days of der holiday und I get only vun?" The BBC had the balls to do a sitcom about der furher, but even their site admits it wasn't very good. Of course, I'm curious about this. If you are disgusted by the idea of a cute, lovable Hitler, send your hatemail to the usual location.

Some of these did turn out pretty dark, but I have to say the photo of Kristin looking out the window made the entire set worthwhile. I suppose I need to sit down with a good photography book and get cracking.

Something I wrote on the Dirty boards about Underworld and me.

"Hey, dude." Ryan always called me 'dude.' I have no idea why, as I'm not a very 'dude' sort of guy. "Next time you're at Tower, get this single by this new band Underworld. It's called 'Dirty Epic' and you get 70 minutes of remixes and shit for like 6 bones."

This was on my answering machine.

It was all downhill after that.

I got Dubnobasswithmyhead and was enthralled. It was the gestalt I'd been seeking - rich, layered textures, lyrics that were mostly gibberish yet made perfect sense, and an unerring sense of rhythm. Suddenly, acid house seemed a dim memory and the way was pointed by three guys from Essex, two of whom had been in a previous band of the same name that I outright dismissed as sub-Prince white funk.

I still get the chills, sometimes. I have a CD of MP3s from various CD releases by the band that's abused pretty constantly by my Discman and there some moments where it's so crystal, so clear why I love their music so much. "Spikee" hits like crank the first time around, but the high only gets better. "Jumbo" is bliss - face against the bus window on a sunny day music. Then there's "Born Slippy (.nuxx)" - sure, the lager louts had it for a while, but we got it back, didn't we?

Yeah, ten years in a couple of months and I think the honeymoon's still going on. Thanks, lads.

As noted in the comments of the previous post, it looks like my pictures look a lot better on some machines / monitors than others. Looks like Macs and LCD monitors win right now with Dell (my work monitor) and Sony (Aaron's) tube-based jobbies falling far behind.

I watched Kurosawa's last collaboration with Mifune over the weekend. Red Beard was one of the fastest-moving three-hours movies I've ever seen. (Considering it's a black and white foreign film, that's saying something.) Very episodic storytelling with one of my favorite performances that Mifune's ever put to film. He plays a doctor in charge of a hospital in rural Japan in the 19th century where Yuzo Kayama's character has come to visit and then finds he's working there, against his wishes. Of course, he learns to cope with the environment and eventually turns around, but the insight into class structure at the time made it a lot more than Yet Another Feel Good Movie. There's only one slide into maudlin hysterics near the very end and it's so unexpected caught the lump in my throat barely in time. Recommended very highly.

I also watched the first of the Shintaro Katsu Zatoichi movies. Good, but not the mind-blowing experience I had expected. Honestly, there wasn't much action for the first 3/4 of the movie, with the pace exploding in the last half of the third act. Nice performances, and the final swordfight was enthralling.

Clicking makes these big. (Jeremy razzed me a while back about my images being big and making the blog go slow. It's only because I love him so much that I did this.)

More photos.

I think I'm in love with my new camera.

I giveth thou a historic tale!

Click!

Liz pointed this out to me - American Brandstand. Funny look at music and branding.

I watched Castle In The Sky last night and it's very good. I don't think I adore it as much as Spirited Away, but it had me hooked very effectively. Followed it up with The Way Home, which left me tear-riddled. It walks that fine line between sentiment and being cornball. I don't think it would work in America, actually, because an American director would have gone for the obvious buttons.

An orangutan raises his arm after knocking out his fellow primate during a kickboxing match at a theme park in Bangkok on Saturday. The privately owned theme park bills the event as ``the world's first and only orangutan boxing show.''
PHOTO: REUTERS

"KENNEWICK -- Forced to clean up an increasing number of jugs and bags of human waste along highways, the Adams County Waste Reduction & Recycling office took out a full-page newspaper advertisement to combat the problem.

The ad features a photo of a plastic milk jug filled with urine, and the message, 'Okay, One last time: This is not a urinal.'

From March 4 to Nov. 27, 2002, one Adams County highway cleanup crew picked up 2,666 jugs of urine and 67 bags with human excrement in them."

At this point, I have nothing nice to say about my fellow man. (From BoingBoing.)

Saw The Cooler at a preview screening last night. Man, William H Macy can motherfucking ACT. I know his sort of nervous energy doesn't play well for some people (Hi, Aaron,) but if you stick him and the brute force that is Alec Baldwin With A Decent Script in the same room, magic just seems to happen. The plot is simple enough: Macy plays a "Cooler," someone who brings bad luck to people and is employed by a casino to end someone's winning run. This works wonderfully until he falls in love and starts bringing good luck to everyone on the floor. Baldwin is the casino boss, who's being pressured to change the place into one of the Disney Monstrosities that plague the city and suddenly starts losing money because of Macy's change. There's some brutal bits of violence in this flick, which sort of underscores the emotional change that Macy's character, a lifelong loser, has by serving as a counterpoint.

Enjoyable, and it features Maria Bello, who was hot on ER. She's hotter in this. There was also free scotch provided by Glenfidditch, so Lynn and I were pretty much set.

My parents sent me some "sleep pants" and "sleep shoes" (AKA slippers) for Christmas. I'm always about getting some more loungewear - I've had a pair of Fubu flannels that have lasted me two years with near-constant around-the-house-wear. The disturbing thing about the slippers is the packaging. I need to get a photo of this up, but one panel features the Handsome Man Who Wears These Things with a trumpet in his hand and a smile on his face and another features the same Handsome Man cuddling with a Beautiful Lady.

The conclusion is obvious.

These slippers will make me Miles Davis.

So, it was Danielle's 25th birthday. The office celebrated.

Looks like Queer Eye For The "Terrorist" Guy gave him the same makeover they did for Osama.

Fear the kittens. Lynn sent me this. Lynn is trying to make me cry at work.

Now playing. Good stuff.

Click here to see one of the dopest scenes ever committed to film. "Man, you biting!"

A monkey named Arong wears a Santa Claus outfit while waving a bell in front of a donation box in Seoul December 9, 2003. Arong is one of two monkeys the Salvation Army is using to entice donations during a charity campaign to help orphans and other needy people. REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon

So, we had some snow.

I got a bug, which I think might have been the flu, despite having a flu shot administered by a very attractive nurse. Kari tells me "Oh, they gave you last year's flu," which means I caught this year's new, improved, and snottier model. I still feel a bit run down, but I came into the office with 31 voice mail messages, four customer accounts pended, and a pile of email, so into the breach I go.

I did watch a pile of movies. Sanjuro (fun, not too deep samurai action), High And Low (tense kidnapping story, wonderfully told), Branded to Kill (eh....a bit too camp), Arsenic And Old Lace (It still makes me howl. You couldn't make the movie today, as old ladies who kill is a bit John Walsh Show, innit?), and Adam's Rib. God bless the new, well-stocked video store.

DAN
Eli's coming.

CASEY
Eli?

DAN
From the Three Dog Night song.

CASEY
Yes.

DAN
Eli's something bad. A darkness.

CASEY
"Eli's coming, hide your heart girl."
Eli's an inveterate womanizer. I think
you're getting the song wrong.

DAVE
In ten--

DAN
I know I'm getting the song wrong, but
when I first heard it, that's what I
always thought it meant, and things
stick with you that way.

DAVE
In three, two--

CASEY
Good afternoon, from New York City I'm
Casey McCall alongside Dan Rydell.
Lions and Tigers and Bearcats, oh my!
We've got expanded coverage of the NC
Double-A Men's Basketball Tournament,
a/k/a March Madness.

DAN
We'll be taking you to Knoxville, East
Rutherford and St. Louis, where the
Jayhawks are about to tip off, and we
want to bring you up to date on some
developments out in Phoenix, so we're
gonna take you to the America West
Arena right after this. You're
watching a special Saturday edition of
Sports Night on CSC. We're just
getting' started, so stick around.

DAVE
We're out.

KIM
Two minutes back.

DAN
They say it's always calmest before
the storm. That's not true. I'm a
serious sailor. It isn't calm before
the storm. Stuff happens.

You know those days? Days wherein nothing seems to go right? Work's been one of those. The morning meeting went well - I found out I'm going to a Celtics game because I beat a goal in a contest, which was nice. Immediately, though, it went to hell. Customers acting strange (including trying to go around other salespeople to get "better" deals), including one of them showing up and paying cash for equipment. Nobody pays cash in this business. The same guy is insisting that another company is not trying to make sweet love to his rectum, despite the fact that I sat there with an inkboard and drew out a chart saying "THIS IS HOW THE COMPETITION WILL FUCK YOU HARD."

At least [NAME DELETED]'s showing a bit of skin today. I swear, I see more of her flesh than I do Kristin's.

My lung capacity has almost doubled since I started with Ventolin. We're now adding Seravent to my asthma regimen so I'll be able to go longer between puffs. This makes me v v happy.

Watched Topper last night. After seeing Lubitsch's The Shop Around The Corner and Trouble In Paradise in quick succession, it's obvious that very few have his touch when it comes to comedy in that era.

And can I just mention how great My Man Godfrey is? It's really really great.

(This all started when I asked Aaron "Hey, what's a good old comedy?" - I've been woefully deficient in my viewing in this arena, and he more than obliged. Later this week, it's Talk Of The Town and then Sanjuro, which is one of the few Kurosawa Samurai flicks I've not seen yet.)

You know, I'm not a huge fan of Slick Rick, but what a tune "All Alone (No One To Be With)" is.

As a youth, each Sunday, Dawn went to Church and
Paid her respects and not to mention was a virgin.
Kid pushed up, Dawn lettin' him
Since he made her laugh and all the other girls was sweatin' him.
Then things started to move without cause
And a couple o'months later kid's pushin' for the drawers.
Under pressure while exchangin' glances
Dawn finally gives in to the sexual advances.
Although it was a mad high cost for her
Cuz' after the thrill was gone, so was the lust for her.
Eventually he left her for another.
Now feeling alone and betrayed by her lover
She cried--for no longer knew which way she headed.
Once dreamed of actually wearing white at her wedding
And really being pure, now she thought she'd die without.
Still she finds strength to continue with her life without
Love...
Without love...
Without love...
Without love...

Verse two of Dawn's life--the second segment.
What could be worse than to now find out you're pregnant?
Poor Dawn couldn't sleep--laid awake
Not ready for a child and plus her mother's gonna break.
As she doesn't know how she's gonna bring up the subject,
Consequences of being used as an object.
In church though time's runnin' thin
She decides to have the child because the doesn't want to sin.
Props to the girl although it hit hard times;
It was Hell finishin' school and working part-time.
Yet Dawn did it though her youth went to waste.
Little help from the government, she got her own place.
HARD for an indepentant woman and a kid
And as soon as she could get off the assistance, she did.
Without no man who she once thought she'd die without
Still she finds the strength to continue with her life without
Love...
Life without love...
Life without love...
Continue with her life without love...

While Dawn worked two jobs tryin' to meet ends,
Her son was busy cuttin' school and hangin' with his friends.
So when she got words she tried to slap out the taste in his mouth
And explain how important education is.
Under stress, she takes two Bufferin.
Son now tired of seein' his poor mother sufferin'.
Starts to sell drugs though the cops did a raid.
Guess who's in the mix, and being legal age
Could do time, please call her employer
To inform her that her son is gonna' need a lawyer.
Never no good news, just more strife.
Dawn barely havin' enough time to live her own life.
Here's the judge's sentence, beggin' and pleadin'.
Now spends nine hours on the bus to go and see him.
Here's the judge's sentence, beggin' and pleadin'.
Now spends nine hours on the bus to goa nd see him.
Without no man who she once thought she'd die without
Still she finds the strength to continue with her life without
Love...
Life without love...
Life without love...
Life without love...
Continues life without love.

(Thanks to the excellent Original Hip Hop Lyrics Archive site.)

So, A Charlie Brown Christmas was on ABC last night. Oh, boy, the waterworks that happened. Kristin and I were bawling like three-year olds who'd lost their candy. I know I cried more than her - I'm much more attached to Schulz's worldview and sympathize with Charlie Brown more than is possibly healthy.

We'd only been dating for a little more than a year when he died. She first saw me cry over Schulz and his work. I remember sitting on the couch at her mother's place, watching Schulz give his last interview with Al Roker (who was much fatter, then.) When Sparky started to get weepy while talking about the kids, I realized that they were as real to him as they were to me when I was seven or eight and reading stacks of the reprint books in the back seat of my parent's car. It bothers me that so many people just associate him with Snoopy and the holiday special (as wonderful as it is) when the strip itself was so innovative. If you've not read it, I can't recommend Peanuts: The Art Of Charles M Schulz enough. To this day, nothing gives me the feeling that his work does.