the quiet before the storm

while the imposium will officially resume posting this coming monday, september fourteen, the mime continues to update the world via twitter.

have a wonderful weekend or, as the mime so eloquently put it…

ben is high on potassium

who: william lamson

what: um, it’s “a moment of zen” which happens to be a video of a guy in an impossibly creepy-looking, homemade firecracker-stuffed banana mask.  forreals.

when: sometime between the advent of morons and now.

where: thankfully not here and, presumably, in a dark basement next to a soundproof bondage chamber.

why: because even sure-shot psychopaths like to unwind with some moderately danger-laden zaniness.

this video, unsurprisingly, came courtesy of ben, who’s knack for coming across demented self-promotion featuring topless men is rivaling only ronye’s ability for delivering delightful ghetto-nonsense.  the main difference, of course, being that ronye’s recommendations make me want to give him a great big thanks-for-the-content hug and i am becoming increasingly why-is-he-laughing-like-that terrified of ben.

oh, and by the way, ben is still on notice.  ronye is still not.

happy thursday.

(don’t) watch these videos!

let me begin by saying that i endorse neither of these videos.  they’re both a little too, well, unsettling.  and yet each one manages its unsettling-ness in a completely different way, representing opposite poles in youtubeland’s spectrum of delightful unwatchability.

the first video is simply punch-you-in-the-nose-grotesque with enough animated perversion to make the wonder showzen folk dismiss it as “ew gross”  and the other, with its benign g-rating, science experiment pretense and backstreet boys music bed, includes enough good-for-grandma animal shtick to keep a bulimic ‘s hands free for text messaging.  i wish i’d watched neither, yet i’ve now watched both.  thrice.  this post is my electronic version of “i think this milk is sour, try some” and i apologize in advance.

this first video is of chad vangaalen’s “molten light” and was delivered to me by taylor, who is the most charming kind of insane i’ve ever had the pleasure of being just a little bit terrified of being alone with.  sorry…

this next video is patel, iversen, bregman & shulz’s “cockatoo dances to the beat” and came to me from josh who i’m not sure even thinks this is remotely funny.  then again, josh listens to david archuleta on his evening commutes and i often suspect him of maintaining myriad inside jokes with himself.  so who knows.    anyway, again, sorry…

happy tuesday!

as delicious as a heart attack

you know that friend who tends to be a bit more courageous than the average bear when it comes to food?  and i’m not talking about the moron who is happy to drink a concoction of condiments or swallow a healthy mound of wasabi or do his best andrew zimmern impression on a flavored, cooked insect.  i’m talking about the guy/girl who wants to stop at the grease truck on 11th avenue at two am, the sausage & pepper cart on landsdowne street after the – barf – redsox game or the oaxacan taco truck on lincoln.  the guy/girl who can’t go back to his/her hotel room in phuket without a few sticks of street meat or spends thirty-minutes enjoying a duck soup on the curb of some random soi in bangkok.  i’m talking about the guy/girl who isn’t turned off, but conversely excited by a restaurant that is described as “okay, seriously, i know this place looks like it’s more elephant shower than eatery, but trust me the food rules” or food explained as “definitely greasy, but completely worth the clogged arteries and shiny, bad skin.”

yeah, so if you have that friend, you know what i’m talking about.  and if you don’t, well, you’re about two run-on sentences beyond the point of no return so there isn’t much point in stopping now.  in any case, i know what i’m talking about.  i have those friends.  i am also that friend.  that’s why, regardless of the way i know it would make me feel, look and smell, i have – on four consecutive morning communites (still well within breakfast time) – been distracted by the following food items, proundly displayed on the west wall of the jack in the box on lincoln and pico:

dear jack in the box:  go f*ck yourself with your delicious looking mini donut-sized burgers – mmmm donuts – which i suppose i’d have to consume with a side of your gross (also delicious) buttermilk ranch and a diet coke big enough for one of those retarded-looking goldfish with the tumor-heads to swim in.  and seriously, taco nachos?  there is no way that this dish tastes good, but i swear to the gods of adolescent obesity that if i wasn’t on a fast-food hiatus for the year of two-thousand and nine i would know for damn sure.  and then i would try a few more times, you know, just to make sure i was committing to an appropriate  sample size.

also, a quick word to the ultimate breakfast sandwich:  you are a delectably greasy mound of saturated fat, empty calories and cholesterol.  you are the unhealthiest of breakfasts that i’ve only eaten after midnight and digesting you is so hard that it sends my system into shock and induces night-terrors and hot flashes.  i miss you.

like, totally noteworthy

you know what i miss about highschool?  notes.  i miss notes.  cheesy, girly notes.  long-winded, emotionally charged notes.  feelings-filled, poetic notes.  not little, insubstantial “wanna go to prom” notes, but notes of the “i really have something important/profound to tell you and i’m going to write it down on paper, in ditzy-girl cursive and off-colored ink from the hello kitty color swatch so that in five years your mom can find it in your childhood desk drawer and ask you what you did to the poor girl to make her believe that writing such a note was essential to her well-being” variety.  whew.  deep breath.  okay.  so…

last friday night my friend tessa found the following lying on the floor at a bar in santa monica.  how this note found its way to a bar – dear lord, please don’t tell me someone of age is writing things like this (or has handwriting like this)  – is  beyond me.  but one look at the color, handwring, etc… and, well, you’d have taken it too.  what a glorious find!  this is me paying it forward:

good luck to this couple.  seriously.  they will need luck, at the very least as a collective unit, if not also as individuals and/or people who are trying to file restraining orders against one another.  the notion that this girl has been fixed is almost as preposterous as the notion that she has been fixed by this guy.  and yet i thank them for being young and misguided and in love and on adderrall and writing and losing notes at bars that i may or may not frequent.

ah, stupid, stupid love.

ham porter flies coach

so the catcher from the sandlot was on my plane this afternoon.  very exciting stuff.  very, very exciting stuff.  and i want to be able to tell you that he’s grown up well, leaving only a subtle reminder of the chubby, freckled backstop that co-starred in the great baseball flick.  but no, i will not tell you as much.  i am not a liar.  he looks the way you might imagine he would look.  insomuch as you can sit one row behind him on a full american airlines flight, one seat to the right and catch a sliver of his freckly cheek and think – no, KNOW – that you’re looking at this picture, only puberty and fifteen or so years in the future.

and as much as i wished to have a picture from today, one that says “see, here, here he is, as i saw him” i would have preferred, more than anything, to have been able to tell you that i called out “you’re killing me smalls” after the flight attendant told me i would have to wait a few minutes for the rest of my can of diet coke.  but alas, sadly, i did neither.

pee ess: despite what you may have heard, especially if you sat next to chris lee at lunch or study from ninety-three through ninety-seven, i have never once in my life looked like this.  never.  okay, maybe a little.

a WTF coffee table trilogy: item three

i thought this was a book about spas.  i mean, i assumed this was a book about spas.  i didn’t REALLY look at it.  i just kinda glanced over the swooping, cursive lettering and bleached white linens and thought, “okay.  spa book.  maybe mom bought this the last time she went to canyon ranch.”  i really didn’t expect to be wrong.  and certainly not this wrong.  wow was i very, very wrong.  yeah, so this is very much not a book about spas.

and as fitting as the phrase may seem, this is not an example of simply misjudging a book by its cover.  there really is no way to approach this thing that would offer much predictability.  i tried opening the book at random to see what kind of squalor/sadness existed between these pages.  that’s when i came across this gentleman’s photo, sitting comfortably atop a quote about wisdom by confucious:

this man is part of the palm beach no one talks about?  really?  why the heck not?  does palm beach have a problem with awesomeness? this dude looks like he went on a shopping spree in silverlake before the bottom fell out.  so what if he’s got a little bit o’ crack smile?  he could be a mannequin at fred segal’s mumbai branch.  this picture doesn’t make me sad.  or scared.  it kinda makes me want to find out where this underbelly is and make a few friends.  hell, i could probably learn some things from this guy.  things about life.  things about wisdom.  hell, he probably DOES quote confucious.  maybe THAT’s why they used that quote.  maybe he actually said it.  and suddenly optimistic about this collective underbelly, its characters, its book, i turn the page to find a quote about compassion by the dalai lama and, if my theory holds true, the man who recited it.  and then i found this guy…

okay, this guy does not quote the dalai lama.  and this guy does not get to go to fred segal.  in fact, i’m pretty sure that there are people who go to fred segal to not see this guy.  and yet he celebrates life.  or perpetually tries to catch a giant, invisible beach ball.  one or the other.  too soon?  i never know.  anyway, this picture, above its dalai lama quote, following a picture of presumably the most fashion forward of the palm beach county homeless, trapped inside high-quality hardcover, in a household that subscribes to magazines that showcase fallen or forgotten child actors of the late eighties/early nineties and proudly displays its affinity for brooches, helps communicate the following:

there is no rhyme or reason behind the purchase of any of the coffee table items in my parents’ house.  they’re all either purchased or ordered during some kind of impulse purchase blackout/torneado and, eventually, appear on a flat surface where they sit, undetected, unread, unnoticed, as if this was a starter home.  but, alas, this is not a starter home.  this is boca raton.  and i’ve run out of things to say about coffee table books.

a WTF coffee table trilogy: item two

last night i walked into the guest room and caught the february issue of the boca observer in my periphery.  “what’s jamie from top chef doing on the cover of the boca observer?” i wondered, after i’d decided that despite my initial suspicions the boca observer is likely a real magazine.  i assumed jamie had a restaurant in boca or one of its neighboring geriatric playgrounds.  curious, i walked over to the magazine and picked it up for a quick skim and, well, it turns out jamie from top chef is not actually on the cover of the boca observer.  it’s friggin dj tanner.  seriously.  on a magazine cover.  and it’s not nineteen ninety-two.

what was the deal with candice cameron again?  i can’t remember.  is she batshit crazy or is that completely something i made up?  someone needs to put a chart together that points candice and kirk cameron, tracey gold and jodie sweetin to their respective less-than-stellar post-sitcom presents.  just for moments like these.

pee ess: dj kinda looks like my friend sandypants.  and yes, i have a friend named sandypants.  and yes, she only drinks alcohol if it’s chilled patron silver.  that’s how sandypants rolls.  what of it?

a WTF coffee table trilogy: item one

begging the questions “is that how you spell brooches?” and “who cares about brooches?” i bring you the first item from my mother’s collection of things on coffee tables that seem like they where here when my parents moved in and for one reason or another never thrown away.

no, my mother is not eighty and she has not traveled to the present day from victorian-era great britian.  she just likes brooches.  so back off.

i hate red eyes

the following dozen or so sentences are brought to you by american airlines, a to-be-written mission statement, entitled “f*ck you, red eye” and the nonexistent committee for the protection of the people’s right to complain:

i hate the red eye.  not the red eye starring cillian murphy and the lady from the notebook, although that movie looks a fantastic sort of rubbish as well.  and not the red eye the dominator used to get at starbucks – this, by the way, is where the barista foolishly adds espresso to your already caffeinated coffee because the geniuses at starbucks haven’t quite figured out that between three and five dollars a cup you’re already addicted to caffeine and don’t need their help.  i’m talking about the red eye that departs late at night, flies through the midnight hours, devours the time change and drops you off in the morning.  the red eye that encourages you to purchase a flight that leaves you cranky for forty-eight hours, despite your intention of sacrificing bed-sleep for additional wake-time at your destination.  this is the red eye of which i speak.

i hate them (and i take them all the time)…

anyway, this latest red eye has safely delivered me to sunny florida for a few days of full-throttle slow-motion, scattered sunburn and, conervatively, thirty-two thousand questions (including repeats).

viva la boca!