THE INTERESTING TIMES HERALD

Renter's Remorse II: The Move

2012-02-11T14:50:00.000-08:00

I finally found an apartment. Thanks for asking.

An apartment I had viewed and declined in December was posted again on Craigslist. In light of the toll my apartment hunt was taking on my wellbeing, the reservations I had when I first viewed said apartment suddenly seemed nano-sized. The apartment was also listed by an individual owner, not a property company, allowing me to escape the cabal of vile secretaries and boil-covered middlemen you normally encounter at property “management” firms.

The downside to this new apartment; it was in Midtown Manhattan, which is like Jersey Shore for 90-year-olds. Midtown is a place where the residents are prehistoric, short of breath, and dressed like they’re gonna party like it’s 1929. Where plastic surgery has found a way to create cheeks that are saggy and dog-like, yet wrinkle-free. Where the women wear enough granny perfume to destroy 3 ozone layers. Where Casual Friday means you don’t wear mink underwear.

Oh well, I was happy to have the apartment hunt behind me. And although some fellow comedians (Jhoel Walkowski, Mick Diflo, Kip Potharas, and Dan Goodman) offered to help me move, I decided to book a professional mover off Craigslist.

I didn’t have much to transport; a TV, an office chair, 6 boxes and 3 suitcases…no big deal. As is always the case the night before a move, I was unable to sleep a wink.

The next morning the movers show up (almost on time!). I go downstairs to greet them. It is warm and sunny; a perfect day for a move. Out of nowhere the super of the building appears…

“No no no…this isn’t happening today!”

He tells me that in order to move out, I have to get permission from the property manager. The mover has to fax their info. to the building’s management company, it takes at least 3 days to get approval, and you have to pay a $500 security deposit in case something happens to the building.

I explain that I’m not even moving real furniture. We’re talking about a TV, an office chair, 6 boxes and 3 suitcases…no mattresses, no china cabinets, no Arks of the Covenant. Simple move; in and out in 10 minutes.

He again tells me it’s not going to happen and gives me the building company’s number. Of course they don’t answer.

Now I’m standing with the movers as they look on in disbelief. The clock is running.

I try pleading with the super. He shakes his head like a cartoon sheriff: “This ain’t happening today.”

I couldn’t believe it. In three years I had never had an issue with this super. I also never asked him for anything. I'm the guy who when he talks to supers takes this tone: “Can you just make it so the raw sewage only comes out of the cold side of the faucet?”

Now I can’t move out, I have taken a day off work for nothing, I’m looking at a three-day waiting period to move out (who knew it was easier to buy a handgun than to transport a coffeemaker?), and I have to pay the movers who moved nothing a $60 traveling fee.

Serenity now!

That afternoon I get my landlady on the phone. She freaks out about the obstruction and says that she is going to move me herself. My landlady is probably less than 100 lbs. I ask if she thinks she can physically do it. She insists she can. I tell her the super is going to catch us again and cause problems. She says we’ll do it early before he starts work.

Morning comes. My landlady is running late. The super catches her entering the building and a standoff ensues. Had it been the Old West, they might have drawn pistols…

My super examines my sparse belongings and agrees to let me move out, but insists on going by the moving-out gospel. He puts down cardboard in the hall (so that the suitcase wheels wouldn’t damage the floors?). He makes us go through the basement and up some tricky stone steps. He makes my landlady write him a $500 security check in case of damage (the only way we could have done damage to the stone steps was if I had been moving a jackhammer with no off switch).

My landlady is in such a rage she develops superhuman strength and insists on moving most of the stuff herself! And she did. With ease. And her last name isn’t even Ver Magnússon!

We get the stuff onto the sidewalk. My landlady gets her check back. At least something has gone right.

Now we have to find two cabs to take us to the new building. We wait out in the bleak, blustery morning air. Cabs are seeing us and quickly zipping past. They usually don’t care for moving furniture.

I finally get one minivan cab to stop. We load half my stuff and proceed to the new building. My new building has a long list of rules about moving that now have me quivering with fear. What if I get to the new place and they have some rule about no moving via cab?

I nervously call my new super to let him know I’m on my way and that I'm doing a cab-move. His response: “I’m looking forward to meeting you.”

WOW...didn't see that coming.

I get to the new building and the new super graciously helps me move my stuff from the curb to the freight elevator. Talk about a tale of two supers!

It takes another 30 minutes for my poor landlady to get a cab. This incredible woman used her day off to move my stuff, and had to idle in the freezing cold while being passed by cabs, all because of the absurd obstructions of a city that prides itself on getting things done quickly.

My new super was ultra-helpful getting my junk into my new apartment, and did it all with a smile. And my beleaguered, put-upon landlady uttered not a single complaint. What a stroke of luck that I had them involved.

So anyway, I’m happy to be moved. No so thrilled about where I moved to. Only fossils and folks with the soul of a wet cigar move to Midtown. I’m a little bit fossil, a little bit wet cigar, so I guess I belong.

Renter's Remorse

2012-02-04T11:46:00.000-08:00

For weeks I have been in a tizzy trying to find an apartment. Rent in Manhattan is spiking because sales are slow. No buyers means more renters and fewer vacancies and higher broker fees. Some brokers are now trying to charge 15% of the annual rent as a fee!

Naturally, I have done all I can to avoid brokers. I have stood on line at open houses (only to find that the apartment was 12' x 14'. Not a typo.). I have been stood up by owners who were supposed to show me their apartment (leaving me standing helpless in the piercing cold) I have looked at probably 20 apartments. I have filled out applications and unsuccessfully battled to have them reviewed in a timely manner. I have fielded lots of calls from brokers ("Yeah, you called about an apartment." Nope, never made one call). I have sent at least 150 emails. You get the picture.

A slow motion nervous breakdown was setting in. I was about to drop out of life and move back in with my parents. Suddenly I got a call from a broker...

Broker: I have an alcove studio in your neighborhood that just opened up.

Me: What floor is it on?

Broker: Second floor.

Me: Does it laundry?

Broker: Yes.

Me: How big?

Broker: 600 square feet. A real alcove studio. You're going to love it. I can show it tomorrow during the day. Can't wait until evening. It will go fast.

Everyone always says apartments are going to go fast. However, during this apartment search, I have found that to be true. A few apartments I was scheduled to see after work were gone by the time I was supposed to see them.

I agreed to view this promising alcove studio on my lunch break...

I arrived at the agreed upon spot and stood in the vengeful winter wind. When the broker's lackey appeared, he said we had to take a walk to get the key. So much for the "convenience" of hiring an apartment finder.

We walk a few streets, shivering every step of the way. I stress that I'm on my lunch break and don't have much time. This bounces right off Brokerbot. He has his canned questions, and they're going to be sputtered no matter what:

How many apartments have you seen?

When can you move in?

I told him I could move in Feb. 1st. He said immediate move-in was required.

I wait outside while Brokerbot enters a building to get the key. He comes back out and starts confusedly reciting the address over and over. The address that he can't seem to decipher indicates that the address is actually a few streets north of what the broker originally told me (those few streets make a difference). We start hiking north...

We reach the building. It looks like an ogre's mouth. An ogre who isn't concerned about dental hygiene.

We trudge up the dilapidated, Frankenstein Castle steps to the third floor (not the second like I was told).

We reach the apartment. It is a construction site. Literally. No walls, no doors, nothing. In fact there is a work crew inside gutting and rebuilding the dump from scratch!!!

For the sake of who knows what I asked about laundry. There is no laundry. Another falsehood. It also isn't anywhere near 600 square feet.

Me: I can't do an immediate move-in to an unfinished apartment.

Brokerbot: I've seen them renovate apartments in a day.

After being lied to about every single detail of the apartment, I'm supposed to take Brokerbot's word for it that the apartment will be renovated quickly and presented in acceptable working order. And in the meantime I'm going to be paying rent on this junkyard until the renovation is complete. AND paying a broker's fee for my troubles.

I start storming down the stairs. Brokerbot follows me.

Brokerbot: This is a good price. It will go fast!

I reach the sidewalk. Brokerbot is relentless.

Brokerbot: It will go fast (In fairness, Brokerbot may have just been a wind-up doll programmed to recite three phrases).

Me: I know I didn't speak to you on the phone, but the apartment isn't where I was told it would be. I was told it was on the second floor. It's on the third. I was told there was laundry. There's no laundry. And it's not even finished! You didn't show me an apartment. You showed me a construction site!

Brokerbot: It will go fast.

Maybe it will go fast, but not as fast as a person's faith in humanity when talking to apartment brokers.

To be continued...

Pay it upward

2012-01-17T17:52:00.000-08:00

It was a dark and stormy night, back when I lived in Queens...

I heard a knock on the door in the middle of the night. The knockers were the cops. They were offering me a chance to keep my neighbor out of jail...

Apparently, the woman who lived below me had gotten drunk somewhere and had taken a cab home. When the cab pulled in front of the building, for some reason she refused to pay the cab driver. The cab driver wasn't having it. He called the cops.

When the cops knocked on her door, she again refused to pay the cab fare. Instead, she told the cops that the guy upstairs (ME) would pay it for her.

Important detail: I did not know this woman. AT ALL. Didn't even know her name. I have no idea why she thought I would come to her rescue.

The cops said the fare was $25, and that my neighbor absolutely was not going to pay it. They said that I could pay it for her, or else they were going to haul her to jail. Always fun to be awakened in the middle of the night by a bizarre solicitation for charity...

My theory is that when my neighbor asked them to bill it to “the guy upstairs," she was actually referring to GOD. The cops, being very literal-minded, took it to mean "the guy in 3F."

So thanks to this woman's drunken gropes at the divine, I wound up on the hook for $25. Guy Upstairs, why have you forsaken me..

Airing Our Differences

2012-01-14T12:02:00.000-08:00

Starting with the Clinton administration, you began to hear widespread criticism of conservative talk radio. Conservative talk radio was called "inflammatory," "irresponsible," and "conspiratorial." [Although it is labeled "conservative talk radio," let's call it REPUBLICAN TALK RADIO, AS NEARLY ALL OF IT IS ABOUT PARTY, NOT PHILOSOPHY]

Perhaps not coincidentally, this dovetailed with the media's general talking point about the "divisive" and "polarized" tone of the "national political conversation." You may have noticed that this talking point has been around ever since.

The inference is that something has changed to make Republican rhetoric more rabid. Maybe something has changed. Or maybe it is merely that Bill Clinton was the first Democratic President to hold office once Republican radio had become dominant.

Remember, Republicans held office for 12 years before Clinton, during which time Republican radio became a nationwide force. When Democrats had last held the White House (Carter), Republican radio as we know it today did not exist.

If it had, JUST IMAGINE how inflammatory Republican radio would have been under Carter. Just imagine what they would have accused him of during the hostage crisis. Just imagine what they would have said about his views on energy. Try to picture the surgical deconstruction of Carter’s personal habits (he wore sweaters!). I think it is fair to say the tenor would have been as “extreme” as the Republican radio that is broadcast today.

So really, the "national political conversation" may not have changed that much. It may just be that a change in medium has turned up the volume of that conversation.

Megaditto my tweets: https://twitter.com/#!/greatMikePayne

War is good for the economy, except that it isn't

2012-01-08T12:59:00.000-08:00

You have probably heard the claim that "war is good for the economy." When considering this claim, ask yourself...if war is good for the economy:

Why do investors run from warzones? Why isn't there an ETF called WAR that focuses solely on areas ravaged by combat? Why don't investors line up to place their seed money between the falling bombs? That would certainly give new meaning to the term "angel investor."

It is because war wrecks the economy. Aside from all the property damage (aren't we always hearing that smooth working infrastructure is one of the keys to growth?), war creates the worst kind of uncertainty.

If you've been awake in the last year, you've heard pundits complain that business is being harmed by all the uncertainty being caused by the federal government. The pundits are't wrong; uncertainty is bad for the economy. And nothing causes more uncertainty that war. Ironically, many of those lamenting all the government-created uncertainty are big-time war hawks.

Stability is what attracts investors. This is why emerging markets like Indonesia produce commercials highlighting that they are "politically stable." Countries don't run ads that say, "Bloody. Crumbling. Conflicted. Invest in regrettable Indonesia."

War isn't good for the economy, unless you're talking about the six feet underground economy.

One of the Worst Comedy Bits Ever

2012-01-08T08:55:00.001-08:00

Every comedy bit I do now is a diamond-studded rainbow, so I can confidently reveal bits from my past that were cubic zirconia-scarred rainclouds. Here is a truly bitter lemon from my comedic days of yore:

You're always hearing the term crack whore. How come you never hear about a crack celibate? How do we know crackheads don't practice abstinence? Maybe they save themselves for marriage, we don't know! Because think about it, crack is not exactly a love drug like ecstacy. With ecstacy, you're hugging strangers and giving footrubs. With crack, you're talking to walls and stabbing leprechauns.

If you listen closely, you can hear the logic of this bit collapsing in on itself. This is a prime example of a fake bit; one where the comedian twists a self-explanatory term--EVERYONE KNOWS CRACK WHORES ARE CALLED CRACK WHORES BECAUSE THEY SELL THEIR BODIES FOR CRACK. NOT ONE PERSON IN THE HISTORY OF CRACK HAS EVER TAKEN IT TO MEAN ANYTHING ELSE. YET HERE COMES "COMEDIAN" MIKE TO THROW SOME HACKY SAND INTO THE FACE OF AN OTHERWISE CRYSTAL CLEAR EXPRESSION--so they can contrive a bit based on a clumsy misconstruing of said term. This method of contriving material was huge in the 80s, but it never goes out of style.

Comedy crowds lap up fake bits, which is why the crack whore bit was a solid staple for at least three years. I wrote it during a terrible dry spell, and remember feeling like a proud papa when I brought it to the stage for the first time. As you can see, it was a birth more unfortunate than Rosemary's Baby.

Another Phrase to be Retired

2012-01-07T09:08:00.000-08:00

Age is just a number.

Well so is your bank account. So is your weight. So is your salary. They are all "just" numbers. And they all matter. A LOT.

And unlike age, numbers such as your bank account, your weight, and your salary can improve. Age goes in just one direction; the wrong direction. When someone tells you: "You don't get these years back," HE IS RIGHT.

The next time someone seriously tries to convince you that, "Age is just a number," respond with this far more accurate saying:

An inch of time on the sundial is worth more than a foot of jade.

My tweets are more valuable than youth: https://twitter.com/#!/greatMikePayne

NO COMMENT

2012-01-05T17:39:00.000-08:00

I do not trust democracy. I do not trust the wisdom of "the people."

If you disagree, check the comment section for any Internet article about any topic anywhere in the world. It is the biggest bunch of morons you will ever encounter. There is something about anonymity and "having a voice" that brings out the worst in people.

Far from being a meaningful global exchange, what comment sections amount to is a guy from Sweden competing with a guy from Russia to see who can say "douchebag" the most times.

It is a good thing they didn’t have comment sections during the Renaissance. The Mona Lisa would have been taken out of circulation because Da Vinci would have spent all day reading comments like: “The reason Mona Lisa’s not smiling is because this painting sucks. DISLIKE!”

Your Friendly Madison Avenue Bank

2012-01-02T12:03:00.000-08:00

Occupy Wall Street has really spooked the banks. Have you noticed the way banking commercials have changed? They've gone from being advertisements for banks to desperate pleas for love.

Old bank commercial: "Bank of America: We have the longest hours. We have the most locations."

New bank commercial: "Bank of America: We didn't kill Jesus!"

I trust a banker even less when he is covered in butterflies.

Of course,spending money on cloying commercials is probably cheaper than lending to startups in a sterile economy.

OPF (Original Pompous Fan)

2011-12-11T13:26:00.000-08:00

Bill Hicks famously said: You do a commercial, you’re off the artistic roll call forever.

When I was a young lad, green and pretentious, I seconded that notion. I thought: How dare Pete Townsend sell his songs for use in commercials?

Now that I’m older, I see that it is not so simple. Making money from music is a very rare thing (and getting rarer by the hour). Ever notice how few musicians DON’T have stories of embarrassment and disgrace? Ever wonder why so few bands are able to wear that stamp of so-called “integrity?”

When you’re one of those precious few like Springsteen who crashed the 1% party by selling albums and going on tour, you can pick your spots and “keep it real.” You can say no to commercials, no to scene-ruining cameos in movies, no to inhumane duets with younger, hipper acts. But remember, the Springsteen elite is a very tiny elite. Even lots of popular acts don’t get rich from their music due to unprofitable deals with their managers and labels.

Those acts that aren’t part of that precious elite have to find other ways to make money. The fact that you’ve chosen to be “an artist” doesn’t mean you don’t have to pay your bills. Your landlord doesn’t care about your legacy.

This leaves you with two choices:

1) Try to make a living by touring long after your voice and body has given out, leaving your fans with the memory of the rickety, expired version of you trying to make some coin by flailing through the hits.

2) License your song for a Land Rover commercial.

At least when you let your songs become jingles, you’re not disappointing your fans in a direct, visceral way by subjecting them to a live show that could be mistaken for an open casket wake. Selling your songs for commercials is a much more passive (and dignified) way to disappoint.

Some might say: why don’t they just get a job like the rest of us? C’mon, you know better than that. What kind of job do you suddenly get when you stop being a full-time punk bassist at 38? What special skills do you list on your resume? Faking a British accent? Drilling Frankenstein Monster knobs into your neck? People with real resumes can’t even get jobs these days. I doubt prospective employers are going to be excited about your second stage blowout at Lollapalooza ‘97.

Next time you’re ready to mount your high horse about bands embarrassing themselves with commercials, THINK OF ALL THE EMBARRASSING THINGS YOU DO FOR MONEY IN YOUR JOB. Is selling a song to Suburu any worse than watching an HR sensitivity video and taking a multiple choice test about it afterwards? Is it worse than fetching coffee for a guy who misquotes Office Space without realizing it is about him?

You’re telling me you wouldn’t appear as a chipper chirping chicken in a KFC ad if it meant never having to see your boss again? Of course you would. Pete Townsend doesn’t even have to play a chicken. All he has to do to rake in the cash is let “Happy Jack” play while some thespian bites on a burger in a Jack in the Box ad. If you can’t understand why he might say yes to that…I CAN’T EXPLAIN it you…(yuck, yuck, yuck).

P.S. It probably isn’t a coincidence that the black and white, NO COMMERCIALS MAN! rant usually comes from young people. Young people usually don’t have grown-up bills. They usually don’t have kids. They usually don’t have mortgages (or even rent payments). They usually don’t have a body that cries out for pricey medical attention. When you’re 23, your only medical bill is that once every three years dentist appointment you make to get your girlfriend to shut up. It is easy to be pretentious about the tug-of-war between art and money when your problems fit in an Altoids box.

Heckled by a Prostitute

2011-12-05T21:31:00.001-08:00

Once upon a time I was in Amsterdam, and like any sane man, I found my way to the Red Light District. Any guy who sneers at the Red Light District is a disingenuous sack of novelty dog plop (not even good enough to be the real thing). Even the ones who go there "for a laugh" are clearly being titillated in some way. It's not like they're just there to see another canal.

The Red Light District is a legal sex buffet where a bunch of attractive, half naked chicks stand around waiting to service you. Don't pretend that's not exciting. Next these guys will be telling us they go to Bourbon Street for the hush puppies...

So I journeyed to the RLD, but was undecided about what I was going to do. Of course I wanted to partake, but wasn't sure I could actually go through with it. Also, being a comedian, I identify with prostitutes. An open mic is only a hair away from open legs. Hookers should be asking me how I got trapped in that life.

As soon as I made my first turn down the Red Light, I was given the hard sell by a woman who looked like a slutty Famke Janssen (Bond Girl from Goldeneye). She was all smiles, and as I walked by, she opened the glass door they stand behind and said, "F*ck and suck. 50 euros. All the positions. I f*ck you good."

Much more appealing than the pitches I get from credit card companies.

I desperately wanted to accept, but sadly, couldn't muster the courage. I even tried giving myself a pep talk, which I should have known wouldn't work. If you're about to punch someone, you can always psych yourself up by shadowboxing. But when you're standing in the middle of the road shadowjerking, it typically doesn't end well.

I continued to browse the scene, but didn't find any girls as sexy as the one who cold called me. In fact, I probably passed her seven or eight times while making the rounds.

Two doors down from the Bond Girl (the doors are very close together) was a glamorous looking chick who was tall, dark, and handsome. Hot, but about three inches too tall for my indefensibly diminutive frame. She rapped her window at me a few times, but never said anything.

That is until I made maybe my eighth trip past. Mind you, I hadn't even made eye contact with her since my first glance, so I was quite shocked to hear a sultry, exotic voice say, "Hey, I ask you question."

I turned around and the woman shouted: "You. Come here!"

I am used to hot chicks aggressively soliciting me for sex, but they usually aren't already in their underwear. The Too Tall Chick continued:

Her: I ask you, why you walk by every two minutes? (It wasn't THAT frequently, but yeah, fair question)

Me: I'm a tourist.

Her: But I show you something.

Me: No, I don't think so.

Her: But I show you something.

Me: (Dying to say yes) No, sorry.

Her: But I show you something. (Hopefully where to find my manhood, which had obviously gone missing)

Me: No, just looking.

Her: Then go on back to your hotel, man! If you're tired, go back to your hotel!

As she said that, the slutty Famke Janssen who first approached me banged on her glass and yelled, "Yeah, go back to your hotel!"

And with that, they both threw their heads back in laughter.

Inexplicably, I still couldn't find the strength to have sex with them.

Even more inexplicably, I couldn't find the strength to throw myself in the canal.

Put on the Red Tweet! Put on the Red Tweet: http://twitter.com/#!/greatMikePayne

No PC, No iPhone, No Service

2011-11-25T15:17:00.000-08:00

For a long time, not having a television was seen as a sign of intelligence and sophistication. We’ve all known that scarf-draped prick that can’t wait to tell you he doesn’t own a TV (and he probably says “idiot box” like he invented the term).

In its early days, TV had to battle with the movies for respect. Then, maybe starting with The Sopranos, many shows became more cinematic (a more “respectable” medium), and TV finally seemed to lose some of its stigma...just in time for the Internet to come along and dilute television’s newfound relevance.

In my estimation, the Internet never suffered the kind of smirch that befell television. Why not?

Maybe because the Internet was announced as the important sounding “information superhighway,” whereas television was just another entertainment tool (just consider the tone of the nicknames: “information superhighway” vs. ”boob-tube” and “idiot box”).

Maybe because the Internet was something you had to tinker with to operate (meaning you needed some know-how to experience it), whereas early televisions were just something you plugged in like a radio (in the days before television, did folks without radios fancy themselves superior?)

Which brings us to today. Today, not having a TV is still viewed as a sign of intelligence. Not having the Internet (and its associated devices) is seen as a sign of being backward, even though everyone with the Internet complains it is a cesspool of porn and misinformation (and ironically, pirated shows from the boob-tube). While it has had its detractors, most of them are seen as dinosaurs, and the Internet very quickly shook off any stigma it might have had; unlike television, which took decades to attain any degree of respectability. You might say the rapidity of the ‘net’s rise to respectability is a sign of the frenzied pace of the Internet Age.

I’m Andy Rooney, for The Interesting Times Herald.

Follow me on Twitter, the new idiot box: http://twitter.com/#!/greatMikePayne

The Last Thanksgiving

2011-11-21T17:05:00.000-08:00

It is Thanksgiving week, so people are taking their seasonal interest in the homeless. Despite all the focus the homeless receive this time of year, all they end up receiving is one meal (on Thanksgiving). But the people who serve them that one meal act like it is the answer to all of their problems.

Homeless Guy: I have a big festering wound.

Soup Kitchen Guy: Pour some gravy on it!

Homeless Guy: My baby needs insulin.

Soup Kitchen Guy: Hope she likes taters!

And if one of the homeless should ask for some change while he is being served, suddenly it becomes like any other day of the year...

Homeless: Hey, can I get a dime?

Soup Kitchen Guy: Lazy bum, get a job. More stuffing?

Buck the trend and give some of your Black Friday slush fund to the homeless.

Empty money clips are the new black

2011-11-14T16:40:00.000-08:00

For the last several years, hipsters have been slumming it fashion-wise; dressing like truckers, carpenters...very faux blue collar (ironic given their obsession with "calling out" scary blue-collar hill-people who live nowhere near them. Perhaps this is part of the overall irony package?).

Now that the banks are collapsing, you have to wonder: are hipsters going to start dressing like laid off investment bankers? Are we going to walk in The Gap and see tattered pin-striped suits with the pockets turned inside out?

Coming soon, the perfect accessory for fall…and winter…and spring…and summer: The Skinny Wallet!

I HATE MYSELF FOR BIRTHING YOU

2011-11-12T12:06:00.000-08:00

Self-hate is a big problem for many people; so much so that the topic is now very much out in the open. What I find strange is when someone who struggles with self-hatred tries to remedy it by having children. Because what are your children? They’re just more of you. If you hate yourself, having kids is just expanding the problem.

My self-hatred is the reason I don’t want kids. The last thing I want is another me riding sidecar for 18 years.

If you hate yourself, there is a decent chance you hate your parents too. What better way to show your distaste for mom and dad then to discontinue your lineage. Refusing to procreate is a far deeper criticism of your parents than quitting law school to start a punk band.

Think about it; going childless means you are JUST SAYING NO to your bloodline. Picture all the folks who preceded you in your ancestry…people who battled through war, famine, floods, disease, poverty…all to help make you who you are. Telling them all “thanks for nothing” is more rebellious than an army of middle fingers (Army of Middle Fingers...not a bad name for that punk band).

Don't leave me barren on Twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/greatMikePayne

THINK DIFFERENT, but act the same

2011-11-05T11:38:00.000-07:00

Since Steve Jobs' death, there has been ample talk about his eccentricities and whether he was a "nice" guy.

Why is anyone surprised when someone who thinks in nontraditional ways behaves in nontraditional ways? He didn't get where he was by thinking like everyone else, so why should anyone expect him to act like everyone else?

Did you seriously expect Jobs to do exactly what everyone else does--overpay to attend an fourth-rate out-of-state college (thus gaining the debt of a brand name education without the brand name education), stay too long with his college sweetheart because he'd heard others say they regretted not marrying their college sweethearts, settle into a stultifying administrative job with a long title and a short salary, work to put enough cash away to qualify for a house he couldn't afford in a neighborhood he didn't like because it's "what you do," then one day just choose to start thinking out of the box? I don't think that's how it works. Rare is the individual who makes 30 years of mouse decisions and then one day wakes up a lion. Deep inspiration isn't a 9-to-5 task accomplished with 9-to-5 methods.

The hero-anointing masses often wish to believe their heroes are just like them. This is part of the reason biographies sometimes trigger such outcry. For instance, many sports fans couldn’t fathom that Michael Jordan, a man who maintained his lust for domination long after he’d become hugely rich and dominant, was a fanatical, pitiless competitor. For Jordan, there was an I in team, the same I that is in M-I-chael. That is part of what it takes to still care about winning after you have accomplished enough feats to last 23 lifetimes. Sorry if that makes you feel dirty about wearing his shoes. Ironically, if MJ lacked that unfaltering need for trophies, you wouldn't want to wear his shoes in the first place.

Also, famed innovators like Mr. Jobs are the folks the masses want to know more about, so it is inevitable that every nook and cranny of their personalities ends up under a microscope. The clerks who work in Apple stores have quirks too, but no one cares enough about them to chronicle their oddities.

None of this is to suggest that Mr. Jobs totally ignored the herds. He needed those herds to believe iPhones were in short supply so that they would rush out to buy them at full price. He then needed the rest of the herd to watch that first herd's antics so that they could rush out to copy them. And so on. Innovators and herds play cat-and-mouse. Or maybe it should be called lion-and-mouse.

I know why the married man leers

2011-10-30T14:21:00.000-07:00

There is a common perception that married men are more respectful and respectable than single men. More polite. More courteous towards women. Having been around lots of married guys and having seen a few friends make the switch from bachelorhood to husbanddom, I respectfully disagree (which I wouldn't be able to pull off if I were married).

The most shocking and lecherous comments I have witnessed have come from the mouths of married men. This may seem counterintuitive. Isn’t marriage supposed to civilize the male libido?

I believe married men are more openly perverse because they don’t have to play the role of the merry, non-threatening guy women might like to go home with. Single men on the other hand are still on the prowl, so in order to seduce women they must carry themselves with a little more decorum. If you’re actively trying to pick up a gal, you can’t open by saying, “I want to bang you ‘til your hips break.”

Married men are (usually) out of the hunt, so they don’t have to pretend to be decent chaps, hence their tendency to ogle and grope.

Also, as every married man complains, once you leave the chapel, the sex you and your lady once had stays behind in said chapel. So being lecherous becomes your primary means of sexual expression.

But aren’t a lot of single guys equally celibate? Ja, si, and yes, but when you’re a single man, at least in your head there is always the possibility of sex. You don’t feel so cut off from the world of carnal release. Married guys get married thinking it is the best way to secure consistent sex, only to discover they’ve walled off their sexual options for nothing. I’m sure I don’t have to tell you that sexual claustrophobia seldom leads to gentlemanly behavior.

Single or married, my tweets are golden: http://twitter.com/#!/greatMikePayne

No Prenup, No Peace

2011-10-27T15:40:00.001-07:00

Males, I am about to give you the most important retirement tip you will ever receive. Do not get married without a prenup. Ever. I'll say it again for the guys who like to feel strong and old-fashioned: Do not ever get married without a prenup.

I don't care if you are both on welfare. If you get divorced, she'll walk away with all your government cheese.

Even the male feminists who spend 23 hours a day regretting their testicles are vaguely aware that the alimony system is rigged against them. What they may not understand is why.

Alimony originated before women were routinely part of the workforce, so the system developed to subsidize women who wouldn't otherwise have an income. Of course that has changed, but the courts haven't caught up with the times. In fact, the alimony system has merely worsened as part of the overall American trend toward excessive, predatory litigation.

Now our old-fashioned friend Johnny Broad Shoulders is asking himself: "What does this have to do with me?"

Well Jonathan, you too are likely to end up divorced.

The divorce rate in America for first marriages isn't far from 50%, and statistically, that is your best shot at getting it right. After the first flop, each subsequent knot-tie becomes more and more precarious. Hear that gambling fiends? Next time a friend makes his second stumble down the aisle, blaze a trail to the nearest bookie and bet the farm on a nasty split. It is the surest bet you will ever make.

Now Johnny B. is muttering aloud: "Okay, so divorce is the rule, not the exception, and courts punish men disproportionately, but how does this fit into my retirement portfolio?"

Here's how. The days of traditional retirement are over. Social Security? CANNOT BE FIXED. Private sector pension plans? Might make a comeback about the same time as the Studebaker. Dollar-denominated assets? There’s a reason four of the faces on our currency are also on the side of a cliff.

In other words, the traditional paths to retirement have been pulverized, and there is no turning back the clock. What that means is the only form of retirement you can hope for is one financed by a nest egg of your own device.

Establishing that nest egg is becoming harder, as people are living longer and are therefore in need of a larger cash pool to pull them through their lengthened winter years. So Johnny Broad, when you hit 65 and are thinking it might be nice to cease being an Excel slave, you're going to need a fat pile of completely self-generated capital to undo the spreadsheet shackles. And guess what: if you have to start from scratch at 42 because the former Mrs. Broad Shoulders defoliated your bank account, YOU AREN'T GOING TO MAKE IT. YOU WILL WORK UNTIL YOU DIE. Any tax savings accrued from being married will be more than plundered by the long hard march through divorce.

Now J.B. Shoulders, Jr. thinks it over and says: "But isn't asking her to sign a prenup a signal I don't think it's going to last?"

Her not signing a prenup is a signal she doesn't think it is going to last. If she is so convinced you two are forever, why should she be gun-shy about signing something she'll never have to use? All you are doing is documenting that the marriage is based on love, not money, which is a true sign of romance. Get on one knee and have her sign it with a platinum pen.

Think it through, gentlemen. Is it worth losing most of your assets because some chick hates you for not transforming her into a fairy princess? Is it acceptable to work until you're 110 so your mom can see you in a tux for a few hours? Besides, men only get married for the sex, so what alimony amounts to is a tax on the male sex drive (yet another slap in the face to the Founding Fathers).

Occupy Sallie Mae

2011-10-18T18:32:00.000-07:00

I find it funny that one of the most recited Occupy Wall Street demands is that all student loan debt should be forgiven. So basically, these anti-bailout protesters are demanding a bailout.

I don't want to bail out the banks either, but I also don't want to bail out some guy who majored in Origami History. Oh, you mean that folding paper thing didn't lead to six figures? Guess you focused on the wrong kind of paper shuffling...

Occupy Main Street via my tweets: http://twitter.com/#!/greatMikePayne

The Anti-Bunker Mentality

2011-10-15T19:51:00.000-07:00

We have all seen pictures of those Cold War bomb shelters, the nuclear fallout bunkers Americans were at least tacitly encouraged to have. Back then, bunker-folk were excused (commended?) for preparing intensely for disaster, because the disaster they were trying to protect themselves against was a threat from a foreign, authoritarian government (the Soviet Union).

Today, engaging in bunker-like preparations--stocking up on food, gold, and other supplies—gets you ridiculed as a paranoid kook…despite the fact that previously unthinkable disasters are occurring all around us. Multiple DEVELOPED WORLD governments are on the brink of collapse. Multiple “democratic” countries have people screaming in the streets. And when those "progressive," "economically advanced" governments go, they’re going to take multiple big banks down with them. But wait, there’s more: The US government is killing American citizens in plain view without due process. And with all that madness happening we’re supposed to mock someone for buying canned food?

The main difference between the bunker-folk of yesteryear and those of today: today’s bunker-builders are attempting to shield themselves against the failures and aggressions of supposedly “democratic” governments (including the USA). That is something worshippers of the modern nanny state just can’t stomach.

Stock up on my tweets: http://twitter.com/#!/greatMikePayne

The Fortunate Departed

2011-10-12T17:35:00.000-07:00

Whenever someone dies, observers go to great lengths to assure everyone "He's in a better place." Even the non-religious will offer statements like "Now the pain is over." So in effect they are saying the deceased is better off dead.

AND YET...had that guy killed himself rather than wait for nature to take its course, those same observers would have stood around shaking their heads saying, "Why did he do it? Why did he do it?!"

Even as they acknowledge that the corpse is better off as a corpse, most people still can't fathom the idea of inflicting your own death. They can't fathom that someone would purposefully trigger the pain-relieving oblivion they acknowledge is for the best. If you concede that someone is better off dead, why are you shocked by the thought of that person AGREEING WITH YOU so wholeheartedly that he takes his own life?

I guess this explains why there are so few entrepreneurs in the world. Too few people understand the real value of DIY. They wait around for everything, including death, to come to them.

Why we keep going back to dystopian futures

2011-10-09T11:12:00.000-07:00

Today I read an article in Wired about H.G. Wells and why "we keep coming back" to his dystopian visions. Putting aside the possibility that maybe his dystopian fiction was simply more compelling than his utopian fiction, let's remember why fiction exists in the first place...

Fiction is often called escapism, as in an escape from reality. No one tries to escape a world they like. Contentment doesn't lead to fiction being written or read. And if you hate the world as it is and want to see it wrecked, it isn't hard to see why dystopian fiction would appeal to you.

But couldn't this disposition also drive you to utopian fiction? Of course. But remember, when you're miserable, you don't necessarily want to dream of a better tomorrow. Much more satisfying to see everything destroyed so you can say "I told you so!" (H.G. Wells' epitaph: "I told you so, you damned fools.") Truly miserable people don't want a utopia that is going to deliver the whole human race, morons included. Utopia isn't any fun if your enemies get to enjoy it too.

And as the article points out, the darkest philosophical elements of Wells' visions are left out of the movies. The adaptations allude to these elements in the broadest sense, if at all. So perhaps we just keep "going back" because novels like War of the Worlds (dystopian or not) have become brand names that instantly get our attention. I would bet a big swath of the War of the Worlds film audience found Independence Day similarly entertaining.

The Tweets of the Gods can be found at http://twitter.com/#!/greatMikePayne

If you care about someone, never say "CAN WE STILL BE FRIENDS?"

2011-10-06T16:21:00.000-07:00

The other day a woman gave me the old “Let’s be friends” kiss off. Why do people still bother with the "friendship" alibi? Neither of us got into this looking for a friend. We got into this looking for romance, so why bother pretending either of us actually thinks friendship is a suitable compromise? It's not like we met on okpenpals.com.

Besides, I've already carved her name across my chest. We can't go back to being text buddies.

Instead of wasting time on the "Let's be friends" charade, why can’t people just say: "Nice meeting you, but there are other people I'd rather have sex with while I'm still hot enough to pull it off."

And believe me, she wouldn’t want to be my friend. I treat my friends like donated pillowcases. The only reason I was nice to her is because I wanted her to be my girlfriend. If she had been my friend, all that stuff I consoled her about would have had me rolling on the ground laughing.

Furthermore, she hasn't even met my friends. If she did, she'd quickly understand it isn't a club she'd want to be in.

The Best Part of Waking Up

2011-10-03T19:19:00.000-07:00

Insomnia has been with me from the start. As a kid, I was always the last one awake during sleepovers. [How awkward is that? One minute you're having an exciting conversation in the dark and the next you're alone in the gloom talking to yourself...perfect training for blogging...] I traded youthful rosy cheeks for chilly raccoon eyes.

As someone with insomnia, I detested mornings, and although I didn't go around saying "I'm not a morning person," I sympathized with those who did.

These days I prefer mornings. Morning is better because there is plenty of casual disorder to distract you from your angst. You're jumping out of bed, you're hitting the shower, you're shaving, you're brushing your teeth, you're searching for your iPhone, you're cursing your wife for living to see another day. Hardly a second to reflect on your failures.

"I'm not a morning person" is something people declare proudly. You rarely hear "I'm not an evening person." Puzzling when you consider how many songs, paintings, and stories there are about the oppressive texture of the night (including quite direct ones like "Help Me Make It Through the Night". There aren't many songs pleading, "Help Me Make It Through the Morning".

And you certainly aren't likely to hear a reference to the promise of the morning. As long as there is light there is day, and with that there is still hope of accomplishing something, and morning is where it all begins. Once night settles in, the race is over.

As evening comes the sadness of a day of letdowns wiggles in like a slug. Evening is the end of the light. Morning is the light at the end of the tunnel. I'll raise my morning cup of coffee to that.

Go to sleep reading my Twitter feed: http://twitter.com/#!/greatMikePayne

Pimpin' Ain't Constitutional

2011-09-28T17:32:00.000-07:00

Governments are sometimes compared to prostitutes. I find the pimp analogy more fitting.

Like pimps, governments offer you "protection," yet constantly beat the hell out of you. And like pimps, governments take a giant cut of your income in exchange for this "protection."

Like pimps, governments batter and bruise you into forming a sick love for them, a twisted, Stockholm-syndrome-like sympathy for them that they expect you to demonstrate again and again. And like pimps, if you dare question why you should love your government, you just get hit harder.

I'm not suggesting there aren't similarities between prostitutes and governments. Both sell fantasies. But hiring a prostitute is a voluntary act. Governments force themselves on you. And prostitutes are gone the second the transaction is over. Governments never leave you alone.

If prostitutes took the government approach, instead of "Love you long time" you'd hear:

You are going to have sex with me, and you're going to pay a price that is way above what the market would charge for it. And you're going to pay for everyone else in the neighborhood to have sex with me. And if I want to I'll draft you to go shutdown competing brothels. And those diseases I'm going to give you...they're your problem.

What, you're not happy with this arrangement? Don't you know there are millions of people all over the world who would love to live under a whore as nice as me?

Watch me keep my pimp hand strong: http://twitter.com/#!/greatMikePayne

How to prevent bad suicide prevention

2011-09-25T13:32:00.000-07:00

When an adult expresses depressed or suicidal sentiments, a common reply is: “But look at what you have; a roof over your head, food in the fridge. Millions of people would love to switch places with you.”

This is a sub-useless response. Let’s talk it out:

So SUICIDE GUY has all his material needs met, putting him in a much better position than many others, yet despite this he is still stricken with a sadness profound enough to cancel his self-preservation instinct...soooo how is this an argument for his continuing to live? If having everything he needs to survive in the face of widespread famine and squalor ain’t enough to shock him into life-loving gratitude, what else could he reasonably expect will enter his life to make him feel better? And what happens if SUICIDE GUY loses that roof and well-stocked fridge? And since when does a guilt trip make someone feel better about himself?

When a teen expresses depressed or suicidal sentiments, a common reply is: “C’mon, these are the best years of your life.”

Hard to imagine a more pro-suicide retort. If these are the best years of DEPRESSED TEEN’s life, and these years have left him suicidal, how is that an incentive to keep living? Effectively what you’re saying is: These years that have driven you to consider self-murder are the best you’ll ever have, and when they end in a few short years, according to the stats you’re looking at at least 60 more years that will make you nostalgic for this period that has given you a deathwish.

I’m not a medical professional, but it seems to me that if you encounter someone who is depressed/suicidal, it is best to leave these canned answers on the shelf. They actually strengthen the suicide's case.

All is not lost if you follow me Twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/greatMikePayne

A Monetary History of the European Union

2011-09-24T09:44:00.000-07:00

When the smoke clears, here is what the “World Is Flat” droids will say about the failed European experiment…

It will be said that the European Union fell apart because we didn't have enough "political integration." That is, we had monetary union without fiscal union. In other words, this grand experiment in democracy failed because the individual nations had too much democracy.

They will blame Trichet for not easing soon enough or for not printing enough money. The collective wisdom will be that he made the same "mistakes" (insufficient money printing) the Fed made in the 1930s. They will say he gave in to the inflation hawks. They will blame Germany’s “irrational” memory of the Weimar hyperinflation for preventing Trichet from becoming Helicopter Trichet (should the Reichsbank President who oversaw that hyperinflation be nicknamed Dirigible Havenstein?).

Ireland, one of the darlings of the European experiment, is now among its worst off. That "Celtic Tiger" is now a paper tiger, paper as in debt. It has incurred unconscionable liabilities because it jumped headfirst into the modern blarney of “growth” through skyhigh leverage. Remember, modern economies run on paper shuffling and asset bubbles, and anyone who questions this just doesn’t “get it.” Well, those who expected to be made whole on Irish debt aren’t going to “get it” either.

These experiments never work. For all their worship of progress through psychiatry, one thing these brain trusters don’t do is self-actualize.

The world is round. Greece isn't Germany. Technocratic global democracy is a scam.

Shakespeare: Pompous Scribbler or Badass Editor?

2011-09-22T16:41:00.000-07:00

Shakespeare is sometimes rejected by readers for being too flowery. Ironic, considering that the wide dispersion of his phrases saves us bundles of words whenever we use them.

It is often highlighted how embedded in our language the Bard's writings are. His words have become household words. Even the term "household words" comes from Shakespeare (Henry The Fifth). But using his lines shouldn't make you feel pretentious. His lines are often the shortest distance between two points.

Instead of saying, "Whatever he is feeling is obvious by the way he looks," you can say "He wears his heart on his sleeve" (Othello). 4 words saved.

Instead of: "Just because something looks good doesn't mean it is," you can say, "All that glitters is not gold" (The Merchant of Venice). 6 words saved.

Instead of: "The one guy I thought was on my side...he stabbed me in the back too! " you can say "Et tu, Brute?"(The Tragedy of Julius Caesar). 13 words saved.

You not only save words by quoting Willie Shakes; you do it with a veneer of refinement.

Too bad so many shy away from Shakespeare unabridged. The Bard was the ultimate abridger!

Tweeting is such sweet sorrow: http://twitter.com/#!/greatMikePayne

Atlas the Shrug

2011-09-20T17:58:00.000-07:00

CEO performance is typically judged by the price of his company’s stock. Before the crisis, it was much easier to look capable or even “visionary” thanks to all those incessant (though nominal) new stock market highs. The broader market was papering over A LOT of executives' flaws.

Now with stocks dropping and stock juicing measures failing across the board, many of those “brilliant idea men,” who were praised for overpaying to acquire companies they didn’t understand, are set to be exposed. Turnover is bound to accelerate at the CEO level too.

Too many of these guys carry themselves like Kardashians in suspenders, so it will be nice to see the CEO-celeb bubble burst a bit. I have heard enough of their painfully generic statements about “looking global” while “keeping an eye on local trends.” I don't need to hear about how he learned his most important business lesson when he forget to wear sunblock on his first day selling peanuts at NOSTALGIA-EVOKING BALLPARK THAT NO LONGER EXISTS. Oh, and did you know that although his title says William he makes sure everyone calls him Bill? What else would you expect from this “CEO next door?”

Meanwhile this shareholder value wrecking machine has a mistress for every letter of the alphabet and would be 99% helpless without his Chief Risk Officer, Chief Technology Officer, and Chief Financial Officer (who only get to be famous when they screw up).

A lot of CEO reputations are going to plummet in tandem with their stock price, leaving them to pound the pavement like the rest of us. Regular jobseekers look for jobs on sites like careerbuilder.com. Where do useless “visionaries” with no detectable skill look for work? Companydestroyer.org?

EVERYONE IS MICROMANAGED!!! Or are they?

2011-09-18T10:01:00.000-07:00

Every man, woman, and child complains that his boss is a micromanager. If we were to take this at face value, we would have to believe that every single corporate authority figure is a bitchy Sasquatch with a sawed-off Blackberry. It is not that unambiguous.

As someone who has been micromanaged, I sympathize with the anguish it causes, but listening to people’s huffy homilies about micromanaging bosses is like listening to their huffy homilies about bad drivers. Everyone claims every driver but them is an incompetent maniac. Not true. Driving is an activity that begs for catastrophe, yet accidents are infrequent. It is simply not the case that every driver but you is unable to differentiate between the gas pedal and the brake.

It is more probable that many folks define themselves as great drivers and therefore must claim everyone who isn’t them is so useless behind the wheel they couldn’t even crash a bumper car. Just as it is impossible that every driver but you is a menace, it is impossible for every single boss to be a psychopathic micromanager. I don’t doubt that micromanaging is widespread, but I don’t think it happens to the extent the anecdotal reporting would indicate.

Here are some of what I think are the nuances of the micromanagement phenomenon:

Most people work in close quarters now; offices ("cubicle farms"). This means when you’re ordered to do something, it is right up close, so your sheer proximity to the order-giver makes you feel more micromanaged.

It also used to be much easier to fire people. When it was more of a “My way or the highway” world, you only had to tell someone to do something once, because if he didn’t comply, you could can him. Now that employees have much more leeway, you have to nag them to get them to perform their duties, which of course is interpreted as micromanagement.

And unlike the days when many people worked in factories and fields, today it is less obvious who is in charge. When you’re the team leader of an office as opposed to a factory foreman, it is less apparent what purpose you serve, so you must show yourself to be conspicuously in charge, which leads to constant authority-asserting emails and 386 word mission statements with 2 words of actual meaning.

Also, you can now send someone a command from anywhere. Before smartphones, if you were physically away from your computer, you couldn’t send or receive email. Neither could your boss. So if he went to lunch, no commands were issued for at least 30 minutes. If you went to lunch, no commands were received for at least 30 minutes. What this means is that in the old days, an email sent at 12:02 wasn’t read until you returned to your desk at 12:30. Now that 12:02 email reaches you while you’re on line at Chipotle, prompting you to scream: “Doesn’t he know I’m at lunch?!” Pre-smartphone or post, that email was sent at 12:02, but now that it reaches you wherever you are, it makes you feel he’s all over you.

Leaving aside technology, the old axiom still holds: If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself. Every person thinks his way is the right way. If you’re a boss, your subordinates are never going to be exact clones of you, which means you will never get them to do things exactly as you would, which in your mind is the right way. So because they’re not you, in your mind everything they do is at least a little wrong, causing you to keep trying to correct them (it is after all your job to mold them to do things “right”). Hence micromanaging.

And because you the subordinate also think you know how everything should be done, you resent receiving any instruction on a task, because you believe you innately know the best method for the task (again, if you want something done right...). So any degree of instruction is going to make you feel micromanaged.

What is happening is the mechanisms required to be a boss in the modern white-collar world are colliding with the innate sense people have always had that they know best how to do things. I guess all we can do is update some old worker angst songs: “You load 16 GBs, whadda ya get? Another day older and deeper in debt.”

Send me a pic of your red stapler on Twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/greatMikePayne

More phrases that need to be retired

2011-09-15T16:14:00.000-07:00

Feel free to stop saying the following:

I didn’t ask to be born.

Actually, you kinda did. Who else made that frenzied journey to fertilize the egg? It wasn't your guidance counselor. Perhaps you weren’t classically sentient, but you certainly participated. You begged to be born, struggled for it even. Out of millions of sperm, you were the one that jumpstarted the egg. You succeeded in spite of the odds, something you probably haven’t done since.

And lest you think being a mere sperm lets you off the hook, remember: you were a part of your father before you became your own being, so you were part of the being who choose to engage in the procreationary behavior that originated your counterproductive existence. So at the very least you were an accessory to the crime.

The 70s were the golden age of porn.

This is one instance where the oldies were not goodies. 70s porn featured convoluted plots, bushes thick enough to be chastity belts, and sex so tame it is just a notch above abstinence. Nowadays all you have to do to see anatomic degeneracy is slow down a Disney film. I'll take a pass on "Debbie Sort Of Moans While Pretending To Do Dallas".

If women ran the world…

Recently named most flawed premise of all time by Car and Driver, the statement if women ran the world is usually followed by: “There'd be no war! There'd be no poverty!”

Putting aside the bloodthirsty horseplay of H. Clinton, C. Rice, and M. Albright, why don't we cut to the group most young grrrls cite as their heroes: The Amazons.

The Amazon women were so preoccupied with warmaking they chopped off their right breasts to enable arrow shooting and spear throwing (even Amazons knew that girls throw like girls). Their turn-ons included ritually slaughtering male children. Yet the same grrrls who tout matriarchies as the cure for Earth's troubles cling to these brutes like trophy wives at a Hollywood premiere.

So yes all you difference makers, things would be different if women ran the world...chicks would be barefoot and pregnant in the War Room.

Real Men Talk Behind People's Backs

2011-09-11T10:39:00.000-07:00

Why is it considered a good thing to SAY IT TO SOMEONE'S FACE? People typically applaud non-violent conflict resolution, yet "saying it to someone's face," an action that greatly increases the odds of the conflict/disagreement becoming violent, is commended.

Talking behind people's backs is something we all do. We dislike many of the sorry bipeds we’re forced to compete with for attention and sustenance, and practical living doesn’t permit us to freely voice our thoughts on everyone else to everyone else. But the thoughts remain. So sometimes we engage in gossip. Sometimes that gossip evolves into outright badmouthing. We all say we hate it, but we always listen in (guiltily or not). What else is fiction but gossip about imaginary people? What else is reality TV but gossip with fancy editing?

Talking behind people’s backs releases steam and actually prevents a lot of simmering grudges from becoming five alarm fistfights. But we're told it is better to say it to someone's face. We're fed the message that it is wrong to engage in violence, but that it is right to behave in ways that lead to violence.

The behind-the-back smearers are usually not the ones who provoke altercations. It’s the bull in a China shop, I’LL SAY IT TO HIS FACE!-types who bring matters to a head. Every office, every medical staff, every platoon is loaded with covert mudslinging, yet most of these entities function in spite of it. Relations typically only break down when someone makes the “laudable” decision to say something to someone’s face.

And saying it to someone's face doesn't have to lead to violence to cause incurable damage. Verbal confrontations can permanently alter the chemistry of a team. Worse, actually hearing what someone else thinks of you can corrupt your confidence in ways from which it can't recover. On the whole, it is far more considerate to badmouth someone behind his back. If you can't say anything nice, say it when your target is out of the room.

Say really nice things to my face on Twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/greatMikePayne

Backhands and Compliments

2011-09-06T19:27:00.000-07:00

Whenever a player is interviewed on-court at the U.S. Open tennis tournament, the first sentence usually goes a little like this:

So great to be here in New York!

or

Really love it here in New York!

or

So happy to have the support of the fans here in New York!

And in the stands those big city cattle cowpie themselves each time New York is mentioned. Those jaded New Yorkers who have seen it all. Those wile New Yorkers you can't put anything past. Each time they fall for the oldest trick in the book; referencing the hometown.

No one does this kind of pandering at the other Grand Slams, which is weird when you consider that those tournaments also take place in grand locations.

The French Open is in Paris. The city of love. The city of lights. The city where newlyweds go to put a bow on their marriage. The city where oldieweds go looking for a way to tolerate each other for a few more years. The city where gals with terminal illness go to regret not running off with that waiter they thought loved them but who in reality forget their junk-riddled cabooses the second they left the cafe.

Paris is perhaps the most written about city on Earth, yet you never hear players say:

I really love playing on the red clay here is Paris! Red like my heart, 'cause I love this city!

Wimbledon--the most coveted Grand Slam--is in London. The home of the Crown. The nerve center of what not so long ago was the most far-reaching empire in human history. Sam Johnson once remarked that, "When a man is tired of London he is tired of life." Can you imagine a Wimbledon player saying:

So happy to be here under these grimy gray skies in front of you sour snot fans. But hey, that's London for ya! (raises pint glass)

You may laugh at these examples, but are they that much more ridiculous than the spectacle of watching players who travel the world beg for the approval of fans in New York, many of whom are from out of town?

The Australian Open is held in Melbourne. Melbourne, the city of...well, three out of four ain't bad.

If players at the Australian Open bothered to reference Melbourne, it would be something like:

I hate Melbourne. You hate Melbourne. And if it weren't so far away from everywhere else we all know you'd leave.

Watch me hit groundstrokes over on Twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/greatMikePayne

Pandora's Box

2011-09-05T19:42:00.001-07:00

I was sitting in a hotel lobby, resting uncomfortably, when my eyes fell on a discarded newspaper. The article in view discussed the increasing popularity of surgical techniques aimed at “labia beautification.” You read that right. Labia beautification. Labiaplasty if you’re nasty.

These procedures were previously unknown to me, mainly because the caliber of woman I pull has no need for such improvements.

How did we reach a point where lacking labias became enough of an issue to spawn a labia-makeover racket? Excuse me while I put on my detective hat:

Before shaving/waxing became widespread, most women, and certainly most men, were unaware of how the female nether regions were supposed to look. I doubt even the randiest salon discussions delved into much detail. Then shaving became the norm for female porn stars, causing men to expect well-trimmed women, causing many women to start shaving; leaving them more exposed and more likely to evaluate themselves more closely; causing them to start fretting about the appearance of their naughty bits.

Say goodbye to sex-positivism and hello to gyno-irony! Turns out something designed to make you feel sexier can also give you something new to feel self-conscious about.

So-called repression is not necessarily a patriarchal-Christian-bourgeois-capitalist conspiracy to keep everyone unfulfilled. In fact, “repression” sometimes saves us from ourselves. No one ever achieves fulfillment or completion or contentment. They’re just carrots we dangle in front of ourselves; words to describe the unattainable state we’re all chasing. So the more things we leave unrepressed and out in the open, the more things there are for us to feel unfulfilled about. I doubt labia aesthetics were a major concern in the bad old days of repression. Now there are people paying shrinks and plastic surgeons thousands to help them with their labia dysmorphia (if that isn’t already a widely used term, it will be soon).

Given current trends, I see no reason why this should change. Repression doesn’t seem positioned to remerge, and better technology and smaller families (childbirth now exists mainly to provide edible afterbirth to drooling foodies) means Western women have more free time than ever to scrutinize every inch of themselves. Soon fallopian beautification will be just an app away.

A little bit of repression can go a long way. Just as some stones are best left unturned, perhaps some hairs are best left unplucked.

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Goodnight Irene

2011-08-28T07:39:00.000-07:00

Two quick predictions: The media will be accused of overhyping Hurricane Irene (at least in NYC), and any soft patch in consumer spending/back-to-school sales will be blamed on Irene (overhyped or not).

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Why This Economic Dip Will Be Even Worse

2011-08-19T17:34:00.000-07:00

Many financial commentators are assuring me that despite all the bad economic news, the US economy should not double-dip, and that we will not see a replay of 2008. I agree that it won't be a replay, because I think it is going to be worse.

A few reasons:

Last time the crisis was in the banks, who ultimately wound up getting backstopped by governments. Now those government "safe havens" are the cause of the crisis. Who is going to backstop the backstops?

Going into 2008, the decoupling story was still a bright spot for the bulls. Many thought that while the developed world might slow down, emerging markets like India, China, and Brazil were going to boom enough to keep the rest of the world sputtering along. Now India and China are dealing with serious inflation hazards, and EM stock markets like Brazil's are performing much worse than those in the developed world. Unless "To the moon, Alice" suddenly becomes a viable export model, there aren't going to be any markets frothy enough to tug the rest of the world into prosperity.

In 2008 there was still room for interest rate cuts, and central banks all sliced with abandon. Have you seen today's interest rates? There ain't much to cut.

What about "quantitative easing?" There may be less appetite for it now, but that doesn't mean central bankers are suddenly going to abandon their diet of counterproductive actions. We probably will see more QE measures, but all they will do is further stoke the corosive inflation that already has people wincing. That extra inflation will leave folks with even less money to spend on, well, anything.

And let's not ignore the psychological component. In 2008, many were caught flat-footed because events they had previously thought to be impossible (US home prices falling, major banks going under) happened again and again. 2008 wasn't that long ago, so those "impossible" shocks are still fresh in people's minds. Consequently, they will act much more urgently to avoid getting buried in the collateral damage of the impossible. This means capital will flee more rapidly at early signs of trouble, making the shockwaves even worse. This might explain why European stock markets have sold off so brutally at every fresh bearish peep out of Greece, Spain, and the like.

Perhaps it is time to coin a new investment phrase: The end is your friend!

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Gag me with a stress ball

2011-08-16T15:50:00.000-07:00

I don’t know about you, but I have absolutely no interest in S&M. The way I see it: isn’t everyday life already painful enough? I don’t need bondage to be uncomfortable.

After I’m done going to work, doing my job, coming home from work, cooking dinner, doing the dishes, running errands, answering email…man, I just don’t have the energy to get whipped.

If I were to go to a dominatrix, I’d be like, “Please Madame, may I have a nap?”

Ironically, you have to be a go-getter to enjoy being put in restraints.

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Why Obama Will Be Reelected

2011-08-13T13:14:00.000-07:00

Things are looking woeful for Mr. Obama. The economy has people gagging. The country’s credit rating was just reduced to AA. Jimmy Carter references are in the air. So why don’t I think the President is vulnerable?

All a Republican candidate can bring to the table is the promise of fiscal austerity. Couldn’t be a worse time for such a platform. Unemployment is high. Do you really think a majority of voters is going to get psyched about someone they think might snip their unemployment benefits?

The insolvency of Social Security/Medicare is finally being examined openly. Seniors are a serious voting bloc. Do you honestly expect those cash-strapped seniors, who don’t have a job market to fall back on, to come out in force for someone promising to “make the tough choices” on entitlements?

Sure, the recent Republican momentum has been built on the promise of smaller government. Trying to make that translate at the Executive level is a quick campaign bus ride to defeat. It wasn’t even effective enough to lock up the Senate.

Yes you say, but the debt downgrade has made everyone aware that we need fiscal austerity. Won't that be attractive to voters? No. Since when are voters rational? These adjustments have been needed for decades, yet Americans have continued voting for promises that can't be kept. What is going to make them forward-thinking now? Nothing. It is not "different this time."

Of course government is out of control. It always is. That doesn’t mean small government is going to capture voters’ imaginations. The average voter has never heard of Henry Hazlitt. He isn’t familiar with the idea of the public sector crowding out the private one. Even if he is and is concerned about it, if he thinks he is one missed unemployment check away from the Grapes of Wrath, he isn’t going to buckle down and vote for the long term. In the worst job market since World War II, talk of “boot straps” and “rugged individualism” is going to nudge more than enough people to the blue side of the aisle.

The other usual Republican plank is foreign policy. The country isn’t too excited about war these days. Even the attempts to incite people against Iran are being drowned out by the horrible economic headlines. And now that America's banana republic budgets are being discussed around dinner tables across the nation, highlighting the cost of war is no longer taboo, so if it becomes a choice between someone promising to spend on war or someone promising to spend on Medicare, war guy loses. The only foreign bogeyman that might be suitable for tricking voters is China, because the China bogeyman would be easy to scapegoat for America's rotting economy. I don’t see the Republican nominee pushing that one too far however, because unlike Afghanistan or Iran, China can actually fight back.

You ask: Why couldn’t a Republican just run on a more “moderate” platform? Because if he did, then he would be too similar to Obama, so who would rally behind him? No one. “Moderate” Republicans fail every time. Romney, who inspires no one, is being groomed for the nomination. The American electoral system is a zero sum game where turnout is king, and no one stampedes to vote for centrists. Someone like Michele Bachmann might alienate more people, but she would at least generate a high turnout. The same can’t be said of Romney (am I the only one who thinks Mitt is doing a Frank Drebin impression?).

Speaking of turnout, in '08 the young went for Obama in a big way. They might be less gaga for him this time, but c'mon, are they suddenly going to become zealots for Romney?

Obviously, not one promise made by either candidate is going to be kept. That has nothing to do with this discussion. We’re talking about whose lies are going to be the most persuasive.

Someone might ask me, “Okay then, who are you going to vote for?”

I don’t believe in voting.

Oh no, don’t tell me you’re one of those people!

I feel the same way about you.

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Blind dating with my eyes open

2011-08-10T18:11:00.000-07:00

I have started Internet dating again (back by popular demand). It continues to be a misadventure, mainly because the women I like spend the whole date planning their exit and the ones I don’t care about come back for more.

When it comes to first dates, it has reached the point where as soon as I start to like a woman, I have to repress grim chuckles, because I know in a few weeks I’m going to be walking down the street, my head tilted slightly, wondering how I bungled it…

Right now I am nursing one of those glum bits of reflection.

Recently I arranged a date I had a good feeling about, and by good I actually mean bad, because I kept thinking if I like this woman and it goes poorly…how am I going to pick myself up for the 10 millionth time?

Day-to-day I’m a sour, saggy guy, so perking up for first dates is a full cardio workout. First dates demand even more pizzazz than job interviews. You can't be a grouchy vegetable and expect another shot. This puts overwhelming pressure on a killjoy like me. Normally, if I smile more than five times in an evening, I have to go home and ice my cheeks.

When my date entered the bar, I couldn't keep from blurt laughing. I knew I was going to like her. I think I even muttered, “Not gonna go well.”

But it did go well, and I wound up liking her even more than I expected to. I could have spoken to her all night. And for my part, I was absolutely on fire. No crabbiness, no ill-timed sighs. Somehow I kept matching her crackling energy. I was fighting above my weight class, but I never clinched. I was like Billy Conn in his first 12 rounds against Joe Louis.

When we said goodnight, my first thought was, "That is as well as I will ever be able to sell myself. If that wasn’t enough, it just ain't gonna happen.”

Of course it wasn’t enough. She didn’t buy what I was selling. Not even the unusually upbeat and spicy version of me she was treated to was sufficiently intoxicating.

If I were younger, I could reassure myself by saying: "At least I know I gave it my best." Too bad I'm old enough to know better. It is far more comforting to fail when you didn't rise to the occasion, because then you have this trusty excuse: "If only I'd given it my best...it would have worked out."

When you deliver the goods and still flop, you are forced to endure the cruel fact that your best still wasn't good enough.

Another youthful rationalization is the classic line: "Hey, it's a learning experience!" Sorry, but after a while your failures stop bringing you new wisdom. No one ever erred their way into Mensa. “You mean I made exactly the wrong decision yet again? Cool, now I can take that job teaching particle physics.”

At some point you need some victories to round out your knowledge base.

Just as nothing succeeds like success, nothing fails like failure. Eventually compound interest takes over and every little misfire wounds you down to your marrow.

I have no further need for “learning experiences.” I have learned quite enough from failure. I have fallen on my face more times than a drunken kangaroo. I need some wins, because I am all out of rationalization juice.

I'm still here though, so I must have rationalized it somehow, right? Would you like to read that rationalization? You just did.

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The Funnyman in the Mirror

2011-08-05T16:14:00.000-07:00

One sign of intelligence is being able to recognize your own image in a mirror. Dolphins' ability to recognize their own reflections is one reason they are considered one of the smarter human-inferiors.

On the Homo sapien front, having a sense of humor about yourself requires a certain knowledge of your own mannerisms, inflections, behaviors. Humorless people lack this knowledge. When a mirror (of sorts) is held up to them in the form of a joke, they do not recognize their own image.

So while having a sense of humor about yourself may not be associated with how intelligence is traditionally measured, if there is anything to "emotional intelligence," perhaps it has implications there. We'll get Oprah on the case.

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Taking the hard line

2011-08-04T14:37:00.000-07:00

I don't have to tell you that in recent years pharmaceutical companies have blessed the market with impotence drugs; Viagra, Cialis. In response to this, some have tried to sound smart by saying, "They cured impotence before they cured cancer? Definitely a world run by men!"

You know what else they cured before cancer? Polio. Yet I don't hear these "socially aware" suckers whining: "They cured polio before they cured cancer? Definitely a world run by people who want to keep walking."

Most importantly: men also get cancer. Most old guys wish their tumors were less erect.

How far are they going to take this? "They cured impotence before they cured death. Definitely a world run by people who don't want to live forever."

Will the Express Lanes Run Red?

2011-08-03T17:41:00.001-07:00

I recently watched this clip of stampeding Black Friday shoppers. Its Armageddonish voiceover warns of the "complete madness of the populace of our lost society." The voiceover also laments the "wanton lustful commercialism" on display.

Timing is everything. Had the clip circulated pre-credit bust, the shoppers' madness would have been blamed on the fake wealth effect caused by easy credit. Because it circulated post-credit bust, the madness can instead be blamed on the hardship created by the bust and on the change in mentality--consumers' presumption of entitlement--created by the preceding credit boom. Not the first time such patterns have been dissected. Economic thinkers like Mises were analyzing them long before there were Black Fridays, Cyber Mondays, or Buyer's Remorse Saturdays.

The voiceover says the avarice-adorned shoppers exhibit "No outrage over the bankers raping them."

Outrage abounded over the bailouts. There was a noisy campaign against them as they were occuring. Not surprisingly, that outrage made all the difference of earmuffs in a nuclear winter. The outraged were ignored and the bailouts prevailed. But the outrage was widespread and widely broadcast. Maybe some were too busy reading the Mayan calendar to notice.

People like to riot, in good times and bad. They riot at sporting events. They riot at concerts. They riot because they have no bread. They riot because they have too much bread. There were riots at the beginning of America, when government was slimmer. There will be riots at the end of America, when government gulps us whole. And with each riot in our history, there have been commentators warning us that the end is near. In a sense, they're right. The time period in which these commentators commentate and the sensibilities they define as "the present" are always nearing an end. Every era is fleeting. This is one of the inevitabilities of the Human Predicament, whether there are Festivus Day sales or not.

Greatest Misses of the '80s...

2011-07-27T16:20:00.000-07:00

All over America, people are going to '80s nights. Every restaurant and bar seems to have one. Surprisingly, people show up without having to be drafted.

They don't even play the good music from the '80s. Because that would mean playing the same three songs over and over. Let's be serious: Flock of Seagulls, Duran Duran...these were dark days.

When you ask '80s nights fans why they go, they often say, "I grew up on that music, it's the music of my childhood...I grew up on it!"

You know what else you did growing up? You ate bugs and played in traffic. You stopped doing these things for a reason. No need to celebrate bad memories.

'80s nights should be more like group therapy sessions. Each night the DJ should stand up and say, "All right everyone, show us where Cyndi Lauper touched you!"

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Look what the shrink dragged in

2011-07-23T18:52:00.000-07:00

I have a lot to say about the psychiatry industry, but today I just don’t have the juice to say much of it (pass the Adderall). In the interests of conserving energy, I will say a little:

As traditional religion has been crowded out by self-help and psychotherapy, deep personal introspection is probably more talked about and accepted than ever. Many view this as a sign of progress. They think that more people asking themselves more questions will solve many of the problems of the past. Instead of seeking counsel from some superstitious religious figure, modern man will instead find long lasting peace through the cool, rational science of the psychiatrist.

All of this assumes that self-reflection is an unmitigated good. It isn’t. Not everyone has the constitution for reflection. Why? is the most remorseless question of them all. Asking why doesn’t always lead to progress and breakthroughs. Why? can just as easily lead one down the path to unrelenting nihilism.

Many just don’t have what it takes to be “self-aware” in the modern sense. Remember, Wile E. Coyote didn't plunge until he looked down. Many of us are better off running in mid-air for as long as we can.

Hedging about hedges

2011-07-22T18:18:00.001-07:00

When the press writes about gold buyers, they often include a subtle jab like, "Investors buy gold as a hedge against inflation and the collapse of civilization."

WTF?

Civilization doesn't have to collapse for an investor to make money in gold, any more than a country has to collapse for an investor to make money in credit default swaps. The direction of your bet just has to go in your favor. No one says you have to ride your investment all the way to Armageddon.

Example: If you bought gold at $800 and sold at $1,6000, you made a nice gain. Yet there is still food on the shelves, judges in the courts, and gasoline at the pumps. There are also no roving bandits motorcyling about.

Plenty of investors buy 30-year Treasuries. No one expects them all to actually hold them for the full 30 years. Not even close. It's a trade, not a buy and hold to infinity.

Gold is like insurance, and buying insurance is seen as prudent. Yet gold, man's longest running form of insurance, is often viewed as a foolhardy investment (in fairness to gold's critics, insurance buyers are rarely the harebrained Quasimodos you sometimes see buying gold).

CANON FODDER

2011-07-15T17:22:00.000-07:00

Remember when you were in math class and would complain, "When are we ever going to use this?" Remember how adults would spaz out like you were asking a stupid question? Remember the last time you used any of that math? It was in math class. You were right to complain. Outside a few highly specialized professions, most of the math you learned never surfaces again at any point in your life. Your teenage gripes were spot on.

Do you feel guilty that you havén't used it since? No, you don't. You don't even think about it.

So it is curious to me that so many adults express guilt over not having read much classic literature, the type of stuff that like trigonometry, they were forced to study in high school and college. They will even struggle repeatedly to endure classic works of literature they don't understand or enjoy. Why?

You don't force yourself to read the great math books. You don't make a New Year's resolution to finally finish that stack of peer-reviewed scientific journals that has been sitting on your shelf for ages. So why sweat War and Peace?

My guess is that it is because verbal intellectualism is so much easier to fake than mathematical intellectualism. Most folks can't fake math smarts, and don't want to accept or admit they are average, so they try to immerse themselves in the trappings of word nerddom, which means reading lots of Russian tomes that mean nothing to them.

OBVIOUSLY there are people, myself included, who derive great joy from reading the BIG IMPORTANT BOOKS. Some people actually enjoy Naked Lunch. Some people also like having diarrhea. There is no accounting for taste. I on the other hand wish Mr. Burroughs had used that cut-up method to cut up his own work and throw it in the garbage. To each his own.

Quick piece of non-fiction: A friend recommended Melville's Bartelby, the Scrivener. I'd never read Melville, and Bartleby was a hoot, so I felt compelled to work through a bundle of Melville's other short works. They should have come with alarm clocks, because they were all whale-sized snores. I cannot believe I resisted the quite logical urge to stop causing myself the boredom sparked by reading them. Thankfully I stopped after the short works. I will get through life just fine without having read Moby Dick. So will you (I am not discouraging those who enjoy Melville). If you don't like a classic, it is impractical to force feed it to yourself.

Some will protest: Being a good conversationalist has all kinds of practical applications, and being able to discuss literature is part of being a good conversationalist.

Yes, being able to credibly reference classic literature can help you posture as worldly during job interviews. And yes, you can often gain a sense of someone's worldview from whether he prefers Ayn Rand or Upton Sinclair, so it is useful to have an idea of what those authors were about. But none of this means you have to scorch your eyes with endless dreary reading.

Unless you plan to be a writing/English teacher (in which case, get in line and don't delete that temp agency from your cell phone contacts), having actually read the classics will probably not assist you much in your career. If you work in a field in which classic literature often appears in conversation--law, for instance--, read the Wikipedia synopsis for whichever classic works are mentioned most often, Google a few of the related keywords (Naturalism, Existentialism) and work them into your sentences in a vague enough way so that there is really nothing for anyone to challenge. Don't worry; the person you are talking to probably hasn't read War and Peace either and therefore is in no danger of exposing you.

As for having enough knowledge to be able to debate literature, this seldom happens at work. These arguments are much more likely to occur on dates or at parties, so the stakes are much lower. And certainly these debates can bring zest to a dull evening. But you should try to find your way to the people who have read what you like so you can have an actual discussion. This isn't as hard as it sounds. Dating profiles and Facebook pages provide long lists of people's favorite authors. And don't feel bad if you're at a party and someone smirks at you for not having read some entry from THE CANON. If all that person is looking for is a literature stand-off (WHAT??!! YOU HAVEN'T READ FILL IN THE BLANK?!?!?!?), chances are he is the kind of zero you shouldn't be wasting your time on anyway.

There is also no reason to feel ashamed about reading a novel again. You're not competing with anyone and there are no term papers to write (remember, you are reading for pleasure), so it does not matter if you have made it through a large chunk of THE CANON or not (nothing matters, haven't you read Sartre?!?!?!?!?). Part of what makes novels such a great form of entertainment is that almost no one can remember an entire novel, so a few years later you can return to it and find "new" surprises; not to mention the nuances you'll only notice the second, third, fourth time around. I just went through a phase of rereading Kafka and was delighted by how "new" much of it seemed. Better to revisit entertaining works as opposed to burying myself in the tedium of some jackass Beat writer.

It is perfectly fine as well to only read an author's slimmer works. I enjoy Dostoyevsky, but will probably never attempt Crime and Punishment. I'm pleased to say I think I have finally parted with the idiotic guilt I used to feel when I wasn't constantly seeking out new classic authors or assigning myself their longest volumes.

Once you're an adult you have very, very little time for personal leisure. You wake up early and spend time getting ready for work. Then you spend time getting to work. Then you work at least 8 or 9 hours. Then you spend time getting home from work. Then you spend time in the evening running errands. And because you have to get up early, you can't be up too late, so once you're settled in for the night, there isn't much time left for recreation (this assumes you don't have kids or more work to do at home, in which case forget about it). And while you're trying to engage in recreation you still think about work, so even that time isn't entirely yours. With that as a backdrop, to do something as insane as giving yourself homework probably means that syphilis you thought was cured is now eating through your brain like Pac-Man. You are going to die one day. There is no such thing as spare time. Don't read the classics unless you enjoy them.

Speaking of, thank you very, very much for devoting some of your priceless time to reading this.

The Flavor Country Nursing Home. Welcome!

2011-07-14T19:24:00.000-07:00

Young tobacco smokers often justify their habit with comments like, “Who cares if it kills me? Old age sucks anyway!”

You do not have to become old. You can commit hara-kiri well before the descent into antiquing and baby food begins. In the meantime, all smoking does is ensure that you feel elderly and withered long before you actually should. It is like a role-playing game you can’t turn off:

Here’s what it’s like to climb stairs when you’re 70…only you’re 25.

Here’s what food tastes like when your taste buds are deactivated. How sad. This is the one time in your life when desserts won’t make you instantly gain 20 pounds.

Here’s what it’s like to have yellow skin…before your liver calls it a day.

Smokers are simply guaranteeing that they spend their entire lives feeling elderly, rather than just their actual elderly years. You’re not ducking old age. You’re accelerating it. I don’t plan on wearing adult diapers either. But until I start browsing that euthanasia gift shop, I try to avoid activities that permanently dull my sensations and vigor.

So if you’re smoking because it makes you seem older, you’re on the right track. Smoking gives you grown up problems when you’re still just a kid.

The Scabby Underbelly of Comforting Phrases

2011-07-11T18:14:00.000-07:00

1) Virtue is its own reward.

Everything we do in this life we do to get noticed, and real virtue is seldom noticed, so we soothe ourselves by saying virtue is intrinsically good because it usually fails to deliver the recognition we crave.

Even more depressing is watching someone vulgarly draw attention to their virtue, which contaminates that virtue with the vice of pride. The squeaky wheel gets the grease, so if you aren’t a virtue whore, your virtue will be overlooked and your only recourse will be the sour delusion that your virtue is rewarding in and of itself (it isn’t).

2) Living well is the best revenge.

Actually, the best revenge is direct, immediate retaliation. In cases of infidelity, the best revenge is immediately shacking up with someone hotter and rubbing it in the face of the villain who cheated on you. Seducing someone hotter doesn’t bring nearly as much satisfaction if the person you are trying to hurt never knows about it.

Alas, anti-assault laws and the universe’s lack of benevolence keep us from attaining the honey-soaked bliss of physical/romantic vengeance, so we search for relief in the notion of avenging our wounds by “living well.” But living well is a crappy consolation prize. It is the dinette set on “The Price is Right.”

Moving on to a better job doesn’t unlaugh all the fake chuckles you coughed up when your former boss tried to be funny. It doesn’t restore the enamel you lost from grinding your teeth each time he forced "vis-à-vis" into a sentence in a poor attempt to sound smart. Those humiliations are forever, and leave your soul hunchbacked long before old age turns your spine into a krazy straw.

As for romantic vengeance, while it is nice to think that finding someone hotter will ease the pain of being cheated on, if it takes 5 years to find that person, those lips can’t help but taste like sour grapes. Why would it take so long? Because the devastation of being cheated on leaves you looking so haggard not even reunited hair bands will throw you a bone.

Living well is a poor stand-in for real revenge, but as it is the only realistic form of vengeance available, we call it "the best." The honest among you would do well to start saying: Living well is the only revenge.

3 The grass is always greener.

As we age (decay), life brings us diminishing returns. We get less and less of a kick from the pleasure-seeking rituals we once counted on, so we need to spin our wheels in new directions to divert our focus from the familiar agonies of existence. This means pining for new cities, new jobs, new wives, new kids...

But there is no escape. Your lawn could look like it was imported from the Emerald City and it still wouldn’t be as green as your eyes when you gaze upon your neighbor’s glistening, dew-weighted blades. And perfection is no solution either. The proof? Someone cheated on the perfect looking Elizabeth Hurley (but I'm sure she was content to know she was living well).

We are the lone inhabitants of an otherwise barren galaxy, and it still isn't enough to fill us up. What makes you think a move across the county is going to help?

A short trip to nowhere

2011-07-10T18:30:00.000-07:00

A lot of people say they do drugs to "expand their mind." They say things like, "Doing drugs shows you there is more than one way to see reality."

Fine. But all you had to do to figure out that there is more than one way to see reality is read about another culture. Example: in some cultures, cows are sacred. In America, they're hamburgers. All you had to do was Google it. No need to kill brain cells. If you're going to do drugs to expand your mind, you should at least consider cutting up your coke with a library card.

The main thing you learn from doing drugs is not to do drugs.

How I could just kill a man

2011-07-06T18:03:00.000-07:00

I began stand-up comedy before I could legally drink, so there were occasions when comedy clubs kept me out. Being underage also hindered me when I was allowed in comedy rooms, as most of my joke-telling mates wanted to hit bars when the show ended. One night I was allowed inside a comedy club and a bar, and it was in that bar I came close to killing a man.

My friends and I were seated by the bar, discussing our favorite songs. I wasn’t drinking.

I was in the middle of a sentence--probably giving all within earshot the business on “Riders on the Storm”--when a stranger to my right sprayed me in the face with a squirt gun. I quickly turned and saw the Shooter scrambling to put the squirt gun away. He was at the corner of the bar, with two friends beside him. All three were staring off in the distance, trying not to laugh. None was doing a good job.

I had consumed no alcohol, and nothing unusual had occurred that night. Yet this minor offense, being sprayed by a squirt gun, completely scrubbed off my tendencies toward reason. I immediately puffed up with homicide-strength rage.

A little backstory: In addition to the regular angry young man testosterone one has at that age, I think I was a bit obsessed with the way frat-boy-types behaved in public. I literally could not understand their impulses to yell out during comedy shows, randomly accelerate in parking lots, stampede at concerts, bully waiters, etc. My friends and I spent HOURS analyzing the possible motivations behind these sick behaviors.

Some people are adept at drowning out meatheads. I'm not. I more or less swore off concerts at 19 because I couldn’t enjoy live music while surrounded by the scrapple of humanity.

I was also working in a deli at the time, and each day was shocked anew by the kind of aggressive and demeaning things people would say right to my face, as though I was a robot servant rather than a fellow human with feelings. It never seemed to dawn on them that I could retaliate. After all, I was holding A KNIFE. What did they think I was cutting their bread with? The idea that it might not be safe to shriek at a knife-wielding minimum wage earner over the number of olives on their turkey club didn’t appear to cross their mind. I was only a few feet away with blade in hand. I could have easily wounded them (or worse) before anyone realized what was happening.

I believe it was these factors, as well as the culprits’ poor attempt to hide themselves, that triggered something barbarous in me. My lateral orbitofrontal cortex professed that not only could I and the Shooter not share the same bar; we couldn’t share the same planet.

I believe I spent a few seconds growling to myself and staring at the Shooter before walking outside.

The weather was warm, so the bar had been opened out onto the sidewalk. This meant the only barrier between my enemies and I was my desire to remain a card-carrying non-murderer.

The Shooter and his friends had their backs to me, so I figured the element of surprise was on my side.

I kept pacing and muttering like a zombie looking for his car keys. How was I going to attack?

Then, like a scene from a bad western, I spotted an empty liquor bottle on the ground. Eureka. I would smash the bottle against a tree (I should have mentioned the bottle was under a tree), creep into the bar, and use the broken bottle to slash the Shooter’s jugular.

One of my friends, we'll call him Mr. Pseudonym, came outside and asked what I was doing. I calmly explained my plans. My recollection is that he just kept saying, “What are you doing? You’re not gonna do that. What are you doing?”

Some of my other pals came outside and watched my little war with myself. They also conveyed how senseless my intentions were, but I feel it was the rapid fire questions of Mr. Pseudonym that pulled me from my fog of fury. I also remember having visions of the great future in comedy I would be destroying if I cut up the Shooter. I dropped the bottle and returned to reality.

I’m not sure that is the angriest I have ever been, but it is certainly as close as I have come to primal, no turning back violence. Every so often my mind revisits that night, and at times I have been ambivalent about my decision not to attack. I often return to the notion that seeing their friend mauled would have traumatized the Shooter’s pals into behaving more civilly.

I am also reminded of that evening when I read about crimes of passion that actually have been carried out. Not even counting road rage, I would guess a sizable number of otherwise lucid individuals have a near-homicide in their past. I am not violent or tough, so I have to imagine that folks who are violent and tough have multiple near-homicides in their closet.

In 2008 I became severely ill, and multiple doctors speculated that my condition might be terminal. When it hit me that I might be facing the Big Adios, I had an unusual list of regrets. I didn’t dwell much on the women I wasn’t cool enough for or the countries I failed to visit. I did think A LOT about my decision not to slice the Shooter’s neck. The main reason for not attacking was my belief that I was headed for great things in comedy. By the time I became sick, that idea had been soundly debunked. So there I was, infirm and despondent, nursing a regret about an act of vengeance not taken.

The Shooter is lucky I had delusions of grandeur when I was a young man. Had I had any inkling that my future would turn out to be a big wet firecracker, it is quite possible he wouldn’t have heard me coming until it was too late.

Civilization is thinner than the frosting on a Pop-Tart. Every time you raise your voice to another person (let alone physically challenge them in some way, even if it is with a squirt gun), you are taking your life in your hands. The fact that the person you are humiliating is a waiter, cab driver, or hotel clerk changes nothing. Telling yourself you’re "fighting the good fight” is also 100% irrelevant to your potential safety. Unless you are attacked IN A POLICE STATION, the cops won’t get there in time. Chances are, no one will be able to save you. You could very well spend the rest of your righteous life in a coma, dreaming of the extra ketchup packets you felt entitled to scream about.

Follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/greatmikepayne

40C-Love

2011-06-24T19:31:00.000-07:00

At every tennis Major (save the still chaste Wimbledon), at some point some female player wears an outfit so skimpy it gets commentators asking: "Is this outfit too skimpy?"

But are today's skimpy outfits really any more revealing than the tighty-whitey short-shorts the men used to wear? If Connors's and McEnroe's shorts had been any more revealing they would have qualified as x-rays.

I'm sure those questioning today's outfits would argue that the revealing attire of the Williams sisters and Maria Sharapova are made to pique the "prurient interest," whereas Connors and McEnroe were just wearing utilitarian garb (as though men can't play up sex appeal). From there the complaints would fall along familiar battle lines; conservatives griping about the women no longer being ladies and progressives griping about the women being objectifed.

For the conversatives who say these outfits are a sign of modern decay, remember that in ancient Greece, the Olympians competed naked.

For the progressives; sex appeal is the only edge female athletes have on men. Sports are about competition, and sex is the only way women can compete with male athletes for attention. Forget about retiring jerseys. Start retiring sports bras.

What the controversy comes down to is that these scantilly clad players are women, and women showing skin always brings out the Keystone Skin Cops. The men could string their rackets with their small intestines and no one would blink.

At least the women wearing the least clothing are among the most dominant. If the critics had their way, these heroines would dress more demurely and risk being overshadowed by the Anna Kournikovas of the world. Progressives especially should champion the minimal clothing, because the outfits of the Williams and Sharapova increase their star power; meaning they will be seen by more little girls who will then be inspired to pick up tennis rackets themselves. You want fewer girls playing with Barbie? Let Serena, Venus, and Maria compete tennis-wise and looks-wise and living Barbies who can't hit with the big girls (Kournikova) won't steal the entire spotlight (when Kournikova played, they may as well have hung the net between two stripper poles).

Tattoo Who

2011-06-17T16:09:00.000-07:00

I do not have tattoos. They're not a turn-on, and more importantly, I don't like the evidence they leave behind. Because when you get a tattoo, what you're doing is timestamping your body with a statement of who you were at a certain period in your life.

Craziness.

When I'm 40, I don't want people to know what I was like when I was 20, because then I won't be able to lie about how cool I was. I want to be able to tell whoppers like:

When I was 20, I was making money in stocks, I was making money in real estate...I was so loaded the government labeled me too big to fail.

Meanwhile my forearm will say "Food $tamps 4 Life!"

Cave Rain Man?

2011-06-05T07:03:00.000-07:00

I just watched my first full length 3-D film: Werner Herzog’s Cave of Forgotten Dreams, a documentary about the Chauvet Cave, which is a cave in France containing the oldest cave paintings yet discovered. Far from sloppy blobs, the drawings offer quite detailed portraits of horses, birds, bears, etc.

Some of these drawings are estimated to be 32,000 years old, more than twice as old as any previously known drawings. Some are quite detailed. For instance, there is a striking portrait of a rhino that seems to be running, as evidenced by the flipbook-like style of the artwork.

When these drawings were produced (and they weren’t produced all at once; there is speculation that some were done 5,000 years apart), daily life was torturous enough to make waterboarding seem like an episode of Double Dare. Europe was covered in glaciers. Freezing to death was a constant threat. Bows and arrows weren’t around, so in order to eat, man had to grapple with formidable beasts at fairly close range. Yet despite these hardships, MAN still felt the need to express himself. Procuring meals that were only modestly rancid and minimizing his frostbite wasn’t enough. He had to contextualize his existence through art. He had to say something about being here.

Mostly, these expressions were just straightforward depictions of what he observed; realistic treatments of the animals he encountered. The artists apparently felt no need to identify themselves. We see no signatures on the artwork. We see no cigarette holders left behind by snooty cave art critics. It is kind of refreshing.

And we see no drawings of humans. Not exactly. There does appear to one humanoid-animal drawing with religious overtones, one that seems to chime with the ancient fertility cults. And most significant to me, there are lots of handprints, all evidently done by one guy. We know it was one guy, because this gentleman had a crooked little finger that seems to recur in all of the handprints. He of the Crooked Pinky made several impressions of his hand on different walls.

So at a time when simply remaining alive from dawn until dusk was a grand achievement, when obtaining even the most basic components of sustenance was a risky and complicated endeavor, The Crooked Pinkied Artiste still thought it was worth his time to record his handprint again and again and again. As Cave of Forgotten Dreams makes clear, the Chauvet Cave offers us MAN’S oldest known attempts to capture his surroundings, as well as some of his early gropes at religion. And in the handprints of this single crooked-fingered doodler, I see the world’s oldest recorded neurotic.

My handprints can be found all over Twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/greatMikePayne

Um waiter, the fly in my soup isn't a tsetse!

2011-06-04T07:19:00.000-07:00

I have decided that food snobs are the most obnoxious snobs of all. Food snobs—FOODIES—are fast becoming the new metrosexuals.

When did food snobbery become a national pastime? People used to bond over awful food experiences, like eating Ramen Noodles in college. Now they bond over their hatred of people who don’t “get” flatbread.

And foodies always become the giddiest over the silliest dishes, like toast. "Okay, my perfect recipe for toast? Here goes: pita bread, with pesto, butternut squash, vegan bacon, and horseradish made from Secretariat!"

Yeah, that's no longer toast...

Foodies also won't just accept that you don't like what they like. If you tell them you don't like falafel, get ready to hear: "You don't like falafel?! Oh, that's because you just don’t know how to fix it!" or "You're just not going to the right restaurants!"

What are you, the hummus whisperer?

The Savage Truth

2011-06-01T17:03:00.000-07:00

Famed pro wrestler Randy "Macho Man" Savage just died. This week I watched comedian Mike Lawrence do a bit about how all of the Super Bowl QBs were still alive, while pro wrestlers die quite frequently. Given that both professions frequently result in serious injury and have massive drug/steroid cultures, it is interesting that pro football seems to prove far less fatal.

Could it be that football is much more of a meritocracy, whereas pro wrestling, like the rest of showbusiness, is random and maddening, and thus more likely to trigger self-destructive meltdowns? I would also guess that like every other sector of showbiz, pro wrestling attracts troubled misfits who need exaggerated praise to fill some void in their souls. Unfortunately, no set of tights will ever be tight enough to hold back the sadness.

The Emails of Ernest Hemingway

2011-05-26T15:33:00.000-07:00

It is a longstanding tradition to publish the letters of famous authors. But now that no one writes letters, how will we overanalyze the correspondences of great writers to pad our dissertations? I know...we’ll publish the emails of famous authors.

I recently worked with a stable of Ernest Hemingway scholars to sort through the late novelist’s emails, and am currently shopping the collection to big name publishers. A small sampling:

To enabler123@___

Let's grab a drink after dinner. Doesn't matter where.

Sent from my iPhone

To enbabler123@___

Sorry about last night. That bartender was so ugly I had flashbacks to the Italian Front. Let's get a breakfast drink.

Sent from the bartender’s bathtub

To enabler123@____

Remind me never to drink waffle daiquiris again.

Sent from a medic’s iPhone

To otherlostexpat@___

I got so drunk last night I dreamt that Detective Comics was going to do a Nick Adams vs. Batman comic book series. Guess I should stop drinking wry. [LOL!]

Sent from Mall of Mojitos, South Havana location

To great.gatsbeer@___

I bet I could take Jack Dempsey.

Sent from a bipolar high

To great.gatsbeer@___

Dempsey’s punches hurt more than trying to write sober.

Sent from a bipolar low

To publishyourrubbish@___

I think Fitzgerald has a mancrush on me. Will anyone still be reading my books in a world where people say things like “mancrush?”

Sent from a safari undertaken in mounting desperation

To Mother_Earth@___

Please unsubscribe me from your planet.

Sent from Ketchum, Idaho

Hot Women who Never Hit the Wall

2011-05-22T12:51:00.000-07:00

Beauty doesn’t last forever, and sometimes, it barely lasts at all. At some point, most women seem to undergo an abrupt change for the worse. Even beautiful women. One minute they’re hot enough to power Satan’s tanning bed and the next minute they’re just another face in the crowd. It isn’t easy to explain, and isn’t always a function of age. And once that special something vanishes, it never seems to reappear. My friends and I call it “hitting the wall.”

Occasionally there are stunners who dodge Father Time’s cruel machinations and retain the freshness that made them stand out from the other standouts. Some that come to mind:

Chris Evert: Tennis champ, girl next door, and the reason white skirts were invented. The fact that she has aged so well is even more remarkable when you consider how much time she spent in the sun. Ms. Evert played her best tennis at the French Open, where she even managed to appear ladylike while covered in red clay. There is a mud wrestling joke to be made here, but we’ll swerve around it out of respect for this classy specimen.

Alyssa Milano: Definite contender for most attractive Alyssa of all time. A woman whose looks remained top floor even as her career hid in the basement. Usually when the resume gets spotty, the face follows suit. Not in this case. A woman who looks dirty and sweet with her sex drive on repeat. And being a vegetarian, you know the wet spot wouldn’t smell like nitrates.

Marisa Tomei: This perennial knockout might even be getting better with age. And allegedly, she has a lust for uncool sitcom characters. Given my resemblance to Bud Bundy, it is virtually impossible for me not to be in there.

Salma Hayek: In the truly elite stratum of cartoonish sex appeal. Still going strong at 44, motherhood and all. So smokin’ that a source close to the U.N. tells me they are considering a bill that would change the expression to “Gentlemen prefer brunettes.”

Faye Dunaway: So hot in Bonnie and Clyde she should have been preserved in amber and used to create a Jurassic Park full of hot chicks. So hot in Chinatown she made an already tragic story more tragic. You have heard of cheekbones that could cut diamonds. Unlike diamonds, Ms. Dunaway’s cheekbones truly are priceless. It has been said that Helen of Troy had “a face that launched a thousand ships.” If Helen had gone clubbing with Dunaway, she would have spent the first half of the night buying her own drinks and the second half alone at home, wearing sweatpants and reading The Bell Jar for the 75th time.

My Twitter feed is as gorgeous as ever: http://twitter.com/#!/greatMikePayne

IT'S ALL TRUE!!!

2011-05-04T16:42:00.000-07:00

I hate it when someone tries to get me to see a movie, and when I tell them I have no interest, they say, “But it’s based on a true story!”

So what? Not all true stories are interesting. Hollywood must agree with me; otherwise they wouldn’t make their “true stories” 98% false.

So you like true stories, do ya? GREAT, check this one out: Today I woke up and had a sandwich. What, not entertaining? That sweet anecdote came straight from the headlines. Only way it could be truer is if I dropped the sandwich crumbs on your plate.

The Plight of the Short Man

2011-04-16T14:40:00.000-07:00

Having spent every breath of my existence as a man of below average height, I'm well positioned to give a macro view of being micro. It is a tough life, and the worst part is that it is the one cosmetic defect no one has sympathy for.

You think fat people have it worse. Think again. Fat people have a buffet of folks taking up their cause. Books, magazines, support groups, after school specials, and all the daytime talk shows are constantly drawing attention to the way society treats the larden; especially those “big girls.” In school we had it drilled in our heads: "Don't make fun of big girls, or they'll end up with eating disorders!" I don't recall many counselors warning: "Make fun of short men, and we'll have a society full of Mustangs with 20-foot spoilers!”

Fat women do have it very rough. Slim chicks are worshipped in every way imaginable. Free drinks, undeserved job promotions, and lucrative scam marriages are just a few of the perks of being a size zero. And without a doubt, the fat chick zinger is a constant in our national chatter.

However, because any woman of any shape can always walk into any bar in the world at any hour and find a suitor, large women still have plenty of options (at least relative to short men). A sizable portion of males even prefer big women, so if the large lass lands a guy craving "more to love," she can eat her cake and be shaped like it too.

[Note there is no equivalent term of affection for short men. We aren't said to have "less to hate."]

What about fat men? While it might not be a picnic to be a fat gent, they are at least assumed to be jolly. This is why fat guys get to play Santa Claus; the bringer of joy to children everywhere. Meanwhile short men are left to play the tragic, wandering elves.

When it comes to judging appearance, one of society's quirks is the nonchalance with which women are free to admit they find short men unappealing. Consider how many commercials, magazine articles, and sitcom episodes you have seen unapologetically articulate the notion of women dismissing short men. If I'd grown a millimeter for every slam of this kind, I’d be chronicling the perils of being 40-feet tall.

[Note how the media is harangued for "making women hate their bodies" and compare it to the silence about the media's bluntly negative take on short men.]

It isn’t just isolated to the media. Repeatedly I have had women I'd known for all of ten minutes casually volunteer that they would never go for a short man…without my soliciting their opinion on the subject. A few even used me as an example, as in, "I would never date a short guy. You know, someone like you."

These weren't women I was trying to pick up. They were strangers I just happened to be around. Apparently, they assumed their total lack of interest in short men was essential to introductory conversation.

NOW...just imagine if I were sitting at a table with a big girl I had just met, and I said I found fat women less than luscious while using the big girl as a king-sized prop…the room would freeze and everyone within a 50-mile radius would despise me for the rest of my life. A few schemers would even use my comment as a opportunity to hook up. "Can you believe that guy? What year is it? Guys like him make me embarrassed to be a man. Did I mention I drive a hybrid? Sure it has a backseat..."

But when a short guy is the target, not only does no one notice, but if the short man protests even slightly, he gets bashed for not being a "good sport.” "Where's your sense of humor?" the hypocrites chant. Predictably, they always end up claiming the short man's supposed inability to laugh at himself is symptomatic of his lack of height.

The reasons chicks don't dig short men aren't cryptic. It is more nature than nurture, and has to do with concern about the next generation. The pomp and circumstance of courtship is just a scenic route towards potential reproduction, and no woman wants short kids. This means that at 5'5", I have to undo 200,000 years of evolutionary training to ignite her loins. For those wondering why I look so tired after dates, there’s your answer.

So what is a 5'5" bloke to do? Do I target women hovering around the 5'0" mark? Not unless I want to be a monk the rest of my life. Really short women are even more conscious of height, because they know if they don't breed with some Paul Bunyan clone they're bound to crank out a litter of hobbits.

That is why I defer to Payne's Law. Payne's Law posits that there is an exact correlation between how many inches below 5'8" you are and how many inches above 5'0" your potential woman may be. Example: A 5'7" man can prowl for women as short as 5'1".

Being 5'5", this limits me to the 5'5"-5'3" range, and let me tell ya, there ain't exactly a bounty out there. My best hope is with women exactly my height, and if I am wearing a sharkskin suit with a dry martini sewn into the pocket, I can maybe pull a girl as short as 5' 3". But once a woman dips into the 5'2" range, I am magically transformed into the Accidental Celibate. Charming and virile though I am, one look at my stature and her womb starts running filmstrips of her offspring getting tossed in lockers.

This is yet another area where the fat man has it over the short man. A petite chick will take a fat tall guy over an athletic short guy 365 days a year. Sure the sultan of sweat isn't her ideal choice, but she will settle for him. Besides, if she's homely enough, she is going to have limited choices anyway. And because women's rules about weight aren't as stringent as their rules about height, a woman will go for someone fatter than she, but almost never someone shorter. She will stay single first. She will have plump kids before short ones. So the short man can spend 6 days a week at the gym and still lose out to the 6' 2" chap who spends Monday through Friday giving the ice cream man post-traumatic stress disorder.

This means the short man cannot even rely on his female counterpart for companionship. The short girls he has no choice but to chase want to get as far from him as their stubby legs will take them. Again, the edge goes to the overweight. When the going gets tough, plus sized people can always fall back on each other. A desperate obese man can usually at least link up with a similarly obese woman (and vice versa). An obese tall man may even be fortunate enough to pull a petite chick. Likewise, the big girl may be able to pull a normal guy, provided her target has the appropriate fat fetish.

Are you feeling the plight of the SBM (small beautiful man) yet? Fat women have decent options. Short women have lots of options. Fat men have, well, options. Only the short man is excluded from this love rectangle.

But somehow, fat people are the ones mourned by society as victims of cosmetic circumstance. Allow me to point out the 800 lb. human in the room by reminding everyone that being fat and being short aren't even comparable physiologically, because fat people can at least do something about their weight. They can diet. They can exercise. They can even have their stomach stapled. They might not become thin, but they can at least slim down. But there is no remedy for being underheight. You can't comb over a foot of skeleton from another part of your body. Your freakdom is a life sentence. The only doctor that can help a short man is Kevorkian.

Use your microscope to find me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/greatMikePayne

Playing to the Back of the Odds

2011-04-01T16:34:00.000-07:00

Recently I tried explaining to a non-comic why comedy is such an irrational, unsatisfying pursuit. Making it to a respectable level in comedy is about as probable as winning the lottery. Now, think of the kind of people you see playing the lottery regularly; babbling, unclean, unhinged freaks you would never want to spend time with. Now give that guy a scuffed up psyche and a need to "get back" at some girl or high school clique that rejected him and you have a portrait of most comics.

Would you want to spend time in a cramped green room with such duds? Worse yet, would you want to watch duds like that pass you in the business? The madness of it ends up tipping the few sane comics toward insanity.

Society mocks lotto regulars (the odds usually crush you), society condemns gamblers (the odds usually crush you), but society applauds people who pursue a dream in the arts, where the odds usually crush you. Something is wrong with this picture.

You're going to ask why I keep doing it, so I'll answer: because breaking up with comedy is hard to do.

Phrases that Need to be Retired

2011-03-26T10:51:00.000-07:00

Second place is the first loser.

As we go to print, there is still not one documented case of an actual winner using this phrase. In reality, those who say it are ironclad losers trying to sound like their life is one big trophy case.

Size matters.

You will find this sentence in every commercial and magazine article, yet writers and advertisers present it like they're breaking a taboo. Even worse is the way they act like there is still some debate raging about whether size matters. I should capitalize by selling bumper stickers that say: "Size matters…and I vote!"

Palin is dumb.

I'm not sure who is dumber; Palin, or the people who say this like it is an original thought. When I hear this line, I reply with the equally insightful, "Wrestling is fake."

I like real women.

A guy usually states this at high volume in the presence of a girl who is self-conscious about her weight (i.e., every girl). And if he's really feeling it, he adds the old "emaciated women are disgusting" chestnut, followed by a shot at a "disgusting" chick like Heather Graham. Of course Heather Graham would actually be his first choice, but Ms. Graham would never settle for this pandering rube. So to score points with the human fish bowl he might have a prayer with, he pretends he is not "shallow" by saying he prefers the look of a “real” woman. Somehow everyone misses the fact that a preference for the "real" look is still a judgment based on looks. Wake up and smell the coffee ice cream.

Pavlov and the Plus Sized

2011-03-21T15:18:00.000-07:00

If you don’t have a crazy comedic pressure point, you’re probably not a real boy. It may not be a coincidence that your daddy’s name is Gepeto. Those of us without strings have certain situations, objects, and words that for some reason trigger outbursts of laughter that can’t be controlled.

One of my comedic pressure points is the sight of a really fat man in a suit. I don’t mean a mainstream overweight guy. I’m talking about a full-on, tanker-sized porkheap sporting his Sunday best. I see the buttons straining, I hear the pockets begging for mercy, I watch the tie hanging on him like a used condom, and my manners just evacuate.

One time I was headed to a meeting, and as I got in the elevator, I was joined by a well-dressed chap who was larger than life and most other things. And like this man’s belt buckle, I immediately started to come undone. I could feel the laughter rising, climbing, rising, and knew I would erupt if emergency measures weren’t taken.

I tried making myself sad by going to one of the dark places in my head, starting with the classics:

Chicks don’t like you.

People who could help your career don’t like you.

You don’t like you.

No effect. Not even the chains of self-hate could tie down this laughter revolt.

Making a bad situation worse [pregnant pause] I was headed for one of the top floors, so I had a long way to go. Plus it was mid-day--lunchtime--so the elevator was packed and stopping on almost every floor. The stars were against me.

I started bursting. Cheeks fluttering, ears popping like an airline passenger during takeoff. I’m not just shaking with suppressed laughter; I’m palseying with it. And there is nowhere to run. A few more seconds and I am going to unleash enough inappropriate giggles to get me kicked out of civilization forever.

Whatever crumbs of my brain weren’t busy indulging the spectacle kicked in just enough to give me an idea. I grabbed my cell phone and pretended I’d just gotten a hilarious text, then threw my head back in the well known “This is so funny I need to give my skull a headstart” fashion, and right as the guffaws started flowing, the elevator doors opened. It was my floor.

I jumped through the doors and lost it. It was the kind of laughter not usually heard outside asylums.

A lot of trembling. A lot of panting. More mucus than I would have liked.

Suddenly I remembered where I was and why I was there. I was there for a meeting, and needed to be on-point, or at the very least, not laughing at things no one else could see. Knowing this did not calm me at all. I'd held the laughter so long the tension of suppressing it had created a monster.

I’m not sure exactly how long it took, but the laughter eventually stopped. I looked up, and through the transparent security door, I could see I was being gawked at by the receptionist for the firm I was supposed to visit.

Awkward.

I now had to approach the security door and hope that a woman who had just watched me stand alone in a corridor laughing myself spastic didn’t deem me a security risk. I think it would have been better if I had just hit the intercom and said, “You’re not going to believe this, but I just saw a really fat guy in the elevator who was wearing a suit.”

Better to be labeled crass than a mentally unsound curiosity.

Now you’re all wondering: did she let me in?

Did Oswald shoot Kennedy?

Practical Love Songs 3

2011-03-15T19:05:00.000-07:00

Stephen Stills’s “Love the One You’re With” has many flaws. A forgettable melody and some ill-placed “do do dos” are just two of the things it doesn’t have going for it. However, “Love the One You’re With” packs a critical message you ignore at your peril.

If you're down and confused
And you can't remember who you're talkin' to
Concentration slips away
'Cuz your baby is so far away

And if you can't be with the one you love
Honey love the one you're with

No one ends up with the companion they want. Instead, they eventually crunch the numbers, evaluate the mate they’ve hoodwinked, and figure: ”Well this one doesn’t seem to be dumping me, and I’m not getting any younger, so why the hell not?”

And though part of their brain may recognize they are settling, most folks never seem to fully reconcile this, which is what keeps marriage counselors in Courvoisier.

This inability to accept that they have settled is why so many idealize their high school sweetheart as some magical “one that got away.” For those still attending the Church of the High School Sweetheart, listen up: You were in high school, a time when what little free will we have is sublimated by tectonic hormonal shifts. Back then, you didn’t even grasp that the prom was just another dance. You didn’t even like dancing. You hated dressing up. You couldn’t wait for the bell to ring so you could get the hell out of school. Yet you allowed yourself to be convinced that that DANCE, which involved DRESSING UP, and was held AT SCHOOL, was a life and death crisis. And in the midst of all that confusion, you think you somehow had clarity about LOVE, the most esoteric facet of human existence?

SURE YOU DID.

Don't be angry, don't be sad
Don't sit cryin' of about the good times you had
There's a girl right next to you
And she's just waiting for something to do

Something to do. That’s marriage in a nutshell. Marriage is primarily a way of avoiding spinsterdom. Being lonely is awful. Being lonely and old drives many seniors to literal insanity. When couples glorify growing old together, it isn’t because growing old together is romantic. It is because it is a relief to know you won’t grow old alone: “Whew, at least I’ll have a sidekick as I creep toward oblivion!”

Probably the biggest reason to settle down is to be saved from the embarrassment of dating in your forties. The 40-something bar scene gives new meaning to the term “last call,” and 40-something office romances either end with a lawsuit or with someone getting chased by a jilted, shotgun-wielding spouse. That leaves Internet dating, which involves the use of a technology that didn’t even exist when you were learning the ropes of courtship. Nothing says old and desperate like two grizzled singles pronouncing LOL as “lull.”

Settle down has the word settle in it for a reason. 99% of you aren’t going to be with the one you love, so devote your energy to loving the one you’re with. Life sucks. May as well have some company.

Dust Off that Business Casebook

2011-02-24T16:57:00.000-08:00

Borders Files Bankruptcy, Closing Up to 275 Stores

I can't help but wonder what the failure of Borders implies for other mediums. The store specialized in making you feel at home, creating a place where you could spend a quiet afternoon reading and drinking coffee. Problem is, coffee aside (and sometimes not even that), no one ever bought anything...just as though they had stayed home. It practically invited folks to use the cow indefinitely without ever ponying up for the milk. The "give all your content away and eventually maybe someone will reimburse you somehow" model may end up being another case of unsustainable groupthink. If shoppers' consciences could always be relied on to generate revenue, we wouldn't have security devices in stores.

Remember, during the tech bubble, people thought Internet companies didn't need profits. Weren't price-to-earnings supposed to be replaced by something like price-to-clicks? I don't recall that craze ending well. Eventually, potential consumers must be transformed into actual consumers, as in willing to shell out actual money for content.

My personal business model can be found at http://twitter.com/#!/greatMikePayne

The Doors of Misperception

2011-02-15T18:24:00.001-08:00

Cultural pressure and government fiat can’t hide this uncomfortable fact any longer: “Riders on the Storm” is not a good song. Longtime Doors' producer Paul Rothchild is said to have denounced early versions as “bad cocktail jazz.” Far too kind an assessment. Upgrading “Riders” to bad cocktail jazz would require full reconstructive surgery. When I think bad cocktail jazz, I think harmless background noise that at least offers some relief from the suffocating silence of our inner doubts. “Riders” can’t even give us that much.

The song tries to set an eerie mood using rain and thunder sound effects and cinematicish lyrics:

There’s a killer on the road
His brain is squirming like a toad

These lines might be acceptable if they weren’t riding the same bus with headscratchers like:

Like a dog without a bone
An actor out alone

and

Girl you gotta love your man
Take him by the hand
Make him understand

Surely you can’t be serious, Mr. Morrison?

Now contrast the words of "Riders" with the beguiling pop verite found in earlier songs like “Soul Kitchen:”

The cars crawl past all stuffed with eyes
Street lights share their hollow glow
Your brain seems bruised with numb surprise

Those are lyrics that stick to your memory like an old flame; the type that makes you grin mischievously whenever you think of her. "Riders" is more like that one night stand that was so bad it reaffirmed your atheism.

I am not a Morrison hater. When I was an adolescent, I was an obnoxious junior Lizard King. I bought Jim’s poetry books. Read the poems. Resisted the nagging suspicion that they were as tedious as the bad teen poems I was writing.

Each year when The Doors rolled out their annual FINAL BEST OF NEW UNDISCOVERED OUTTAKE DEMOS LIVE FROM MORRISON'S CRYPT!(MONEYGRAB REMIX), I was the moron who actually bought it. I didn’t stop there. I even owned An American Prayer; the posthumous album featuring Mr. Morrison reading his poems over a score played by the surviving Doors. I had it on CD and cassette. True story.

Would you still be my friend if I confessed to once hanging a Doors poster in my room?

The first two Doors albums are so good that if aliens ever land here, they should be presented as peace offerings. That being the case, maybe it's unfair to use their early work as a watermark for judging the rest of their career. Still, I wouldn't call “Riders” one of their finer hours. The song was once used in an English tire commercial, and as far as I’m concerned, it should spend the rest of its days providing the soundtrack for flattened squirrels.

Break on through with me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/greatMikePayne

Practical Love Songs Part 2

2011-02-07T16:04:00.000-08:00

When people think about songs of hardship, a name that comes to mind is John Mellencamp. He was born in a small town, he’s going to die in that small town, and along the way, he’s going to chronicle every loose lug nut that befalls the forsaken folk who inhabit that small town.

But many neglect to learn from John Cougar’s ultimate hard luck anthem: “I Need A Lover.” I’ll let Mr. Mellencamp tell it:

I need a lover that won't drive me crazy
Some girl to thrill me and then go away
I need a lover that won't drive me crazy
Some girl that knows the meaning of a
Hey hit the highway

A very biting and perceptive lyric. One reason so many couples are a mess is because they have obscene expectations of each other. When describing what their future mate MUST BE LIKE, it seems no whim is too absurd. Tell me this doesn’t sound familiar:

I want someone who knows when I’m happy. I want someone who knows when I’m sad. I want someone who knows when I need to be hugged and when I need to be bear-hugged. I want someone who knows when the muffins are done without having to look at the timer. Someone who can whittle a chair with one hand while massaging my back with the other. Someone who knows I like to be bitten on that little bump of skin behind my right earlobe that I’ve never bothered telling him is an erogenous zone and that not even my dermatologist can find…

Gee, with such simple requests, hard to imagine why the divorce rate is so high.

Mellencamp knows that all you need and all you should dare to expect is someone to thrill you…and then go away. You have heard that distance makes the heart grow fonder. You have heard that familiarity breeds contempt. John Cougar subtly reminds us of the accuracy of these sayings and throws in a pop hook for good measure.

What I’m proposing friends is that you manage your expectations. If you expect everything from a lover, you’ll be left with nothing. That is something both Jack and Diane can agree on.

Frequently Answered Questions

2011-02-06T11:32:00.000-08:00

Those who electrify millions frequently find themselves stomped by a ceaseless march of questions. I have found the same thing happens when you electrify two people. The fans never stop sniffling about how you owe them your innermost thoughts. Like Tom and Jerry, the public and private sides of me are forever sparring for rank. Cosmo says vulnerability is a turn-on, so I’m going to answer some of the common ones:

Are you really only 5’5”?

Yes, but when you’re under 5’8”, it is best to go with centimeters, so I prefer to say I’m 165.1 cm. Fee fi fo fum. With just a slight adjustment of the measurement terms, I make Yao Ming look like a snapped dandelion. Height is in the eye of the rulerholder.

Is your height the reason you are so bitter?

“Bitter” or not, I’ve been this way all my life, even when I was 5-years-old and everyone around me was short too. Then they grew and I didn’t. Through it all, my “bitterness” never fluctuated. I never changed. I’m pretty sure there was a Springsteen song about this.

Why do you hate everything?

I have a very wide range of interests. If I wrote about them all, no one would care. Especially not me. Plus my life contains only three or four tales of triumph and they are boring enough to be comedy chloroform. Seriously, almost all triumph is boring. I admit to hating everything about triumph.

Why aren’t you famous?

Fame is mostly random, and the roulette wheel hasn’t stopped on my number. It never will. Sure, actions I could have taken to tempt that randomness, like constantly network with bookers/comics, I have not pursued with enough vigor. I couldn’t network my way into headlining a brown paper bag. I also don’t have a face that inspires long term investment.

Okay, you’re not famous, so when are you going to quit?

I’m held hostage by the psychology of previous investment. I’ll give up when it is time. Hopefully “time” is this year.

Why aren’t you writing for a show like Letterman?

Because he wanted to pay me in soiled million dollar bills and I have a thing about germs. Writing jobs like Letterman are hyper-coveted and a wee tricky to come by. You don’t just find them on Monster.com. People often spend years bouncing around with titles like “contributing writer” before they land a steady gig on a solid show. A better question would be, given all the crap on television, shouldn’t some of these guys be called “subtracting writers?”

Have you ever won any awards?

No, but I was recently nominated for the “Distinguished Achievement in Not Trying to Be Bill Hicks, Jim Norton, or Mitch Hedberg” award. It was an honor just to be nominated.

After a show I saw you standing near me and you didn’t say hi. What did that mean?

It meant you weren’t a hot chick I was trying to have sex with.

Do you get lots of chicks after shows?

No. And my chances are only slightly better before the show.

He's Only Human...

2011-01-31T18:31:00.000-08:00

The Human Torch extinguished

In the latest issue of Marvel Comics' the 'Fantastic Four,' Johnny Storm - aka the Human Torch - is doused for the last time.

Every couple years a superhero "dies" to much to-do and just a few years later...KA-POW!...the dead crime fighter is brought back to life. And each time, comic book fans wonder; will we ever see him again?!?!?! Apparently, they’re not all superstar brainiacs.

The characters in question are superheroes, as in superhuman, so why all the shock when they rise from the dead? You accept that Above Average Man can leap above average buildings in a single bound, but you expect him to say “uncle” over six feet of graveyard mulch?

They Shun Pulp Writers, Don't They?

2011-01-11T19:36:00.000-08:00

People know They Shoot Horses, Don't They? as a classic 60s film. Few know it was based on a book by Horace McCoy, which has been called America's first work of existential fiction.

The book came out in 1935, before existential fiction was a widespread topic. And the book had a murder, so it was called a crime novel, making it a candidate for genrecide. Of course, were it not for the "classic crime novel" stamp, it might have drifted offscreen altogether. Being lumped in with the high end of the crime fiction world at least allowed They Shoot Horses to find its way into esteemed compilations like Library of America's Crime Novels: American Noir of the 30s and 40s.

I just finished reading this bleak and very entertaining book, and can’t help but think if Mr. McCoy had been from Toulouse rather than Tennessee, his novel would be given more attention by the snootier Guardians of Taste. They Shoot Horses would have Sartre-obsessed hipsters poring over it, plumbing its depths for the meaning of its lack of meaning. Ironically, had McCoy been from Toulouse, he probably wouldn’t have found such a warm reception in France.

Practical Love Songs

2011-01-05T16:21:00.000-08:00

You don’t have to wait for Valentine’s Day to hear your radio upchuck a mushy mix of musical malarkey. As you flip from station to station, you’ll recognize one dominant theme; love. Money is an obsession on country and hip-hop radio (country about lacking it, hip-hop about rolling in it), but coinage jingles seldom journey beyond these two formats. Hard to imagine a soft rock single with a chorus about cash: “This dollar in my pocket says ‘In God We Trust,’ like I trust in you-U-U (cue artificial horn section).”

Not only do all stations pump love themes, they tend to be the same types of love themes; new love, dying love, unrequited love, loveboat. You rarely hear a song about practical love. I’m still waiting for a track that sings, “I hate ya girl, but I can’t pay both halves of the rent.“

A practical love song wouldn’t have to be that cynical, though. It could just describe authentic love encounters; the pointy logistics of real relationships rather than the Shakespearean, pie-in-the-sky portraits standard love songs paint for us.

Men with bruised egos often come to me seeking advice. Rather than give them rubber-stamped sympathy about “plenty of fish in the sea” or “those cankles portended bad things down the road,” I prescribe practical romance songs to help them through their troubles. A particularly educative tune is “B.B.D. (I Thought It Was Me)?” by Bell Biv Devoe:

I went out, last night
See, that's when I met a sexy girl
She was lookin' so right
She said, "I wanna take you for a trip around the world"

(I thought it was me) - I thought it was me who makes the girl this way
(I thought it was me) - I came to find out she's like that every day
(I thought it was me) - I thought it was me that makes that girl so wild
(I thought it was me) – I found out she's like that with all the guys

This New Jack fable says it all. Too many young men believe they possess a unique ability to ignite “the crazy” in women. They strut around convinced that each girl they seduce is normally a specimen of immovable frigidity. But when this godsend touches her, blind instinct takes over and l-o-o-k o-u-t…she can’t help but do crazy things! He then confidently reports back to his idiot pals about how he magically transformed her from “I don’t think so” to “Ay Papi!” You occasionally catch 40-year-olds spewing similar garbage, but their tone is transparent. It is the same wounded inflection they use when pretending to like coaching their daughter’s soccer team. They only recite the lie because they know if they don’t try to believe it, they’ll retreat to the shed with a fifth of Jack and a barrel of sleeping pills.

The vast majority of men cannot comprehend that it is every girl’s M.O. to convince you she doesn’t do “this” all the time. Why might that be? So she won’t seem like a whore who does “this” all the time. Of course she wants to downplay her experience. Of course she wants to make it seem like she is usually hyper-inhibited. And the best way to make her story stick is to wrap it up in effusive praise of her lover’s supposed one of a kind prowess.

When I was 19 and 20, I probably had similar delusions, and probably believed the delusions of my friends. I have now tiptoed past 30, but because 28 is the new 19, I am still hearing guys my age share sex tales with that same chunkhead bravado they should have outgrown long ago.

Gentlemen: You are embarrassing yourselves, your friends, the sex acts you are describing, and the ancient tradition of storytelling. Remember:

(I thought it was me) - I thought it was me that makes that girl so wild
(I thought it was me) – I found out she's like that with all the guys

Too bad post-sex chats aren’t conducive to speaking plainly. This is the one time a man might actually learn something from hearing a woman say, “It’s not you, it’s me.”

Bemis and the Buttheads

2011-01-03T19:10:00.000-08:00

One of the first "Twilight Zone" episodes I ever saw was the renowned “Time Enough At Last.” It is the one where Burgess Meredith plays Henry Bemis, a time-constrained bank teller who is always being “conspired against” by his wife and boss in his quest to find time for reading. Bemis survives an H-bomb blast (because he is sneaking in some book time in the bank’s vault), and in the resulting solitude finally finds enough time to read, read, read. That is, until his glasses break. “Time Enough” is one of the show’s best remembered episodes, and whenever there is a TZ marathon, I try to catch it.

For some viewers, one takeaway from “Time Enough” seems to be that it is a condemnation of anti-intellectualism; the tyranny of the anti-book rabble. After all, poor Burgess is callously denounced by his wife and boss for reading. Sounds like an open-and-shut moral.

The tirades of Mrs. Bemis are one thing (women live to corrode what little joy can be mined on this accursed rock). But as far as work goes, remember, Henry Bemis is a bank teller who reads on-the-job. An early scene shows how this on-the-job reading causes him to miscount change. Bemis’s hammy ogre of a boss summarily roasts him for being “a reader.” Bemis’s boss is right. Bemis works as a bank teller. That means cashing checks and taking deposits. It does not mean assailing short-changed patrons with lines from David Copperfield.

Calling Mr. Bemis on this dereliction of duty does not make Bemis’s boss an anti-intellectual or any other brand of villain. It makes him a guy who does his job, which is to supervise bank employees to ensure they perform their tasks and provide adequate customer service. A bank supervisor’s sole literary focus should be reading the riot act to bums like Bemis.

Had Henry Bemis been reading on his lunch break, and been accosted for being a reader, then yes, you could make the case that he is surrounded by anti-intellectuals. But being kept from reading the classics while being paid for work that has nothing to do with reading the classics hardly makes you a victim of those "illiterate," "unwashed" whatevers. Not in the 5th dimension or anywhere else.

Scrooge Reconsidered

2010-12-24T11:51:00.001-08:00

When scrunching up your face at Ebenezer Scrooge this Christmas (I'll assume you're saving yourself for the George C. Scott version), have a second thought about ES's position. Consider that he is the major revenue source (TAXES) for what social services do exist in his gloomy, fog laden town. The charity collectors who solicit donations from Scrooge famously reference these institutions in horror:

Collector: At this festive time of year, Mr. Scrooge, it is more than usually desirable that we should make some slight provision for the poor and destitute.
Ebenezer: Are there no prisons?
Collector: Plenty of prisons.
Ebenezer: And the union workhouses - are they still in operation?
Collector: They are. I wish I could say they were not.
Ebenezer: Oh, from what you said at first I was afraid that something had happened to stop them in their useful course. I'm very glad to hear it.
Collector: I don't think you quite understand us, sir. A few of us are endeavoring to buy the poor some meat and drink, and means of warmth.
Ebenezer: Why?
Collector: Because it is at Christmastime that want is most keenly felt, and abundance rejoices. Now what can I put you down for?
Ebenezer: Huh! Nothing!
Collector: You wish to be anonymous?
Ebenezer: I wish to be left alone. Since you ask me what I wish sir, that is my answer. I help to support the establishments I have named; those who are badly off must go there.

Though his contributions are involuntary, thanks to taxes Scrooge has contributed far more to the poor than his cadre of naysayers. Does anyone acknowledge this, much less thank him? No. They deride him for not being a bigger cash cow. No wonder Marley's better half is so grumpy.

Where do his critics think the money for public services comes from? It comes from workaholics like Ebenezer, not cheery well-wishers. But of course!

If men like Scrooge didn't chase every shilling, there would be even less taxable lucre for the already blighted social services from which the charity collectors recoil. Good thing ES's raison d'être is creating wealth!

Scrooge's real miscue is his brusque demeanor. Picture how much differently he'd be viewed if instead of "Bah humbug" he said "Teach a man to fish." His image would replace Reagan on the bibs of Republican lobotomees everywhere.

Worth noting too that in spite of the taxation of moneyhounds like Scrooge, the public provisions for the poor remain terrible. As the charity collectors seem to indicate, private donations are the only way to truly provide comfort and assistance to those in need. Goes to show that even then, the welfare state didn't work.

As Bob Cratchit might say, "To Mr. Scrooge!"

A Pro-Bono Defense of Michael Vick

2010-12-18T09:22:00.001-08:00

The notion of a crimewave led by athletes who always "get away with it" has been present since I was young. To hear some tell it, your average police lineup could be assembled into a Pro-Bowl offensive line.

This "athlete crimewave" script is more padded than Rocky Balboa's record. Wide receivers are not weapons of mass destruction. Their crimes are often victimless acts like drug possession, which shouldn't be illegal in the first place.

What most outrages the "athlete crimewave" faithful is the belief that courts treat athletes differently. I'm outraged this surprises anyone. Rich people always have the upper hand in court; doubly so for rich people who also represent major investments made by even richer people (team owners, the leagues themselves). And if the tables were turned, the "crimewave" soapboxers would surely use every resource at their disposal to conjure the words: "Not guilty." Even Dr. Phil could deduce that given a choice between prison and freedom, most folks prefer freedom.

Michael Vick is a screaming exception to the "getting away with it" rule. The man did time. Our society purports to believe that those who have done time have "paid their debt." So Vick's debt is settled. His credit is restored. He doesn't belong in sweeping rants about athletes "getting away with it."

It's the sports fans themselves--the same guys who can't discuss athletes without using the word "thug"--who have become so unhinged that some NFL stadiums now have on-site jails. Eagles fans were such hellions that Veterans Stadium had its own courtroom. If these sport fans--often middle-aged 9-to-5ers--can't be trusted to behave after a few beers at a ball game, just imagine how they'd act if they were 23-year-old millionaires with the world on a string.

Today's sports fan is a greater threat to the public's perception of sports than the athletes who play them. When debating whether to buy tickets to a game, who is more likely to keep you from pulling the trigger: The quarterback who sins off the field, or the drunken inbred who would sit behind you barking "YOU SUCK!!!" until your eardrums were mousse?

Remember superfans, when you point one of those giant WE'RE NUMBER ONE fingers at someone, there are three puffy fingers pointing back at you.

An Incurable Case of Consumption

2010-12-14T16:11:00.000-08:00

Any prole who has worked retail will swear on the King James that customers enter stores with a one-two punch of entitlement and victim's indignation. On the one hand, they believe they are entitled to anything, ANYTHING they request. On the other, they believe that if this hypothetical ANYTHING cannot be procured, they have been sentenced to suffer in ways that would have the Dalai Lama dressing like a goth. Despite living in a land with more consumer choice than any in history, an oinking slab of Americans act like they had no role in choosing the store in which to buy their new can opener, and no alternatives should that store not meet their piggish demands.

Upset that Target's can openers don't come with Immortal Secrets of the East? Try your luck at Wal-Mart. Or Sam's Club. Or Costco. Or Amazon.com. Or Craigslist.

Or you could brush up on an Immortal Secret of the West: can openers open cans, not Immortal Secrets of the East.

Conspicuously consume my tweets: http://twitter.com/#!/greatMikePayne

Overrated Songs by Otherwise Reliable Bands

2010-12-04T12:42:00.000-08:00

D'yer Mak'er by Led Zeppelin

You probably don't know it by its title, but rather as the "OH...oh, oh, oh, oh, ohhh, you don't have to go" song.

When I hear "D'yer Mak'er" I can't help but think it's one of those sugary tunes they threw together FOR THE LADIES. As if Zeppelin needed such a song. When you're so deep in dames you're using them as aquariums, you probably don't need help on the wooing front.

Black Hole Sun by Soundgarden

Anyone who thinks they want their music to be nihilism with a beat...here ya go. You wanted nothingness? You got nothingness. Nothingness ain't so appetizing when it's resting on your dinner plate, is it?

I can't see what function "Black Hole Sun" serves. It isn't soothing when you're down. It brings no crescendo when you're up. Like a stillborn bug in a cocoon, "Black Hole Sun" just sits there waiting to become something it will never be.

If you like Soundgarden but prefer slower tracks, stick to the classics: "Like Suicide," "Boot Camp," or "Fell on Black Days."

Nothing Else Matters by Metallica

I love Metallica so much I feel dirty nit-picking them. But no one ever said the pursuit of truth was a clean business.

To me, "Nothing Else Matters" just isn't that special. Not terrible, but like a woman who thinks her stories are funny, it gets old quickly. I understand that Mr. Hetfield was feeling lonely while touring, and composed this after a phone call with his ladyfriend.

Had clearer heads prevailed, he could have instead called a radio station and dedicated someone else's song to his amore; perhaps a little Al Green.

Or he could have used an alias and requested Barry Manilow. He wouldn't have been the first. No one in Manilow circles uses his real name. Ticket tracking agencies have repeatedly found that 8 out of every 10 Manilow tickets are purchased with stolen credit cards. Better to risk larceny than be outed as a BM fan.

Rapture by Blondie

I get that it's historic. I get that it was the first #1 song with a rap verse. But just because "Rapture" is historic doesn't mean it is great. It may have broken the mold and helped usher in what followed, but that doesn't make it shine as a standalone.

"Rapture" was a germinal work, a precursor to greater things. And that's what it feels like; a scrimmage. Scrimmages are important forerunners to the Super Bowl, but there's a reason no one scalps tickets to them. I have yet to see an episode of "NFL Films" called "Great Snaps of the Pre-Season."

Everybody Hurts by REM

Apparently this song helps people. Glad to hear it. But even if "Everybody Hurts" kept the sawblade off your wrist, you must admit the lyrics have issues:

When you're sure you've had enough of this life, well hang on

Don't let yourself go
'cause everybody cries
and everybody hurts
sometimes

Sometimes everything is wrong. Now it's time to sing along...

'Cause everybody hurts. Take comfort in your friends...

Either this song is a high budget gag or REM applied the cut-up method to a bunch of Hallmark Cards.

Is anything smellier than earnestness without subtlety? Isn't the whole point of song to contextualize moods through symbolism and metaphor? If all a song offers is a sappy check list of your problems, what the hell good is it? If I stub my toe, I want a song that provides a poetic framework for my pain. I don't want lyrics that say, "Oww, I stubbed my toe."

'Cause everybody stubs their toe. Sometimes. So hold on.

An Unsolicited Review of NEVER LET ME GO

2010-11-22T15:58:00.001-08:00

You didn't ask, but I recently saw the film Never Let Me Go, and being the Pauline Kael of blogs that go unread, I thought I'd share a review.

***MILD SPOILERS (can't be too careful)***

Like The Road, Never Let Me Go has an ambiguous, science fiction backdrop that is referenced but never mapped out.

The film centers around an English boarding school deemed "special." We follow a small group of children as they tackle the travails of pre-teen, adolescent, and young adult angst; jealously, loneliness, crises of identity. It is as young adults that the characters watch these travails accelerate in messy directions.

What is so refreshing is how these travails are depicted. Unlike those much loved teen flicks from the 80s, Never Let Me Go showcases real adolescent jealousy; real pre-teen insolence. It is an adult look at the road to adulthood.

I suppose you could say those cartoonish 80s opuses are adolescent movies intended for adolescents, but then why on God's red Mars do so many adults lap them up? And not merely for nostalgia's sake. I've had sober grown-ups tell me all that Trapper Keeper pathos is "the way it was." Really? I was a runt in a high school that wasn't a utopia, yet I never witnessed or experienced anything like the POW-style trauma those movies present as endemic to every pre-college learning institution in the country.

Never Let Me Go reminded me of an even better film that gets adolescence right: Let the Right One In. Let the Right One In showcases teenage bullying without the tired and contradictory motifs normally ascribed to silver screen bullies. Cinema bullies are usually thickheaded, soft-brained, and more vicious than a torturer with a hearing problem ("No really, I CAN'T HEAR YOU!!!"). Yet despite being so, so, so very stupid (which is why they're soooo jealous of those big-hearted nerds who brim with inner-beauty!), these bullies are nearly omniscient in the way they always know exactly when to strike and precisely what everyone's innermost weaknesses are...

In reality, a good bully has to be fairly clever, or else he won't manage to keep his bullying from being detected. And bullies don't always play football. They don't all come from the wrong side of the tracks or the biggest mansion in town. Let the Right One In recreates the terror bullies inflict without portraying them as idiot gods.

While we're on the subject, if so many adults remember high school as being Lord of the Flies, why all the disbelief each time there is a school shooting? If 9th grade homeroom taught Alcatraz everything it knows, then bloody, unfocused retaliation should not continually catch the nation off guard.

Anyway, go see Never Let Me Go and Let The Right One In (the books also seem worth exploring). And keep things in perspective. What you experienced in high school was a bad year of gym class, not the Rape of Nanking.

The Still Ugly Duckling

2010-11-08T12:21:00.000-08:00

Recently went on another Internet-begotten blind date, and must say I have never been on a date where it was so clear so quickly the woman didn't want to be there.

We met for a movie (first time I've tried a movie blind date. I'm sure there are warehouses of books advising against this), so we didn't have much time to feel each other out. Judging from her greeting, it wouldn't have helped if we'd had a lifetime.

Got off the train and strolled to the theater. The two of us arrived and recognized each other simultaneously. When she saw me, she didn't ask, "Are you Mike?" She asked, "Are you Mike?!"

This wasn't an inquiry. It was a confession of instant disgratification.

I don't know what she was expecting. As I've discussed before, my dating profile has an unimpeachably accurate photo, and fully discloses my unsightly stature. Who knows, maybe she was hoping I'd made a typo. What I'm saying here is my conscience is clean. This wasn't a bait and switch. I am not the Bernie Madoff of Internet dating.

Like I said, it was a movie date, so we had about ten minutes to chat before it started. Don't know about you, but I find it hard to get romantic traction going at a concession stand. It's a safe bet that the discussion of Twix vs. M&Ms has lead to no more than zero unplanned pregnancies.

The movie, a weighty number about preparing for premature death, also wound up being a poor choice. Never plan a date without doing plenty of research, gentlemen. Haste makes chaste.

After we'd hit the sidewalk and clumsily shared our thoughts on becoming maggot-chow, I said, "So, you want to grab a beer?"

Her response: "Welllllllll, oooo-kay."

Sure sounds like chemistry to me.

At that point I really should have intervened and said, "Look, it's okay if you go home. I won't cut myself."

But I didn't. My instinct is to always try and push through.

She lead us to an extremely happening bar. We ordered a round, and miraculously, started having a decent conversation. She had a wide range of interests and interesting things to say about them. The date seemed to be turning around. The Titanic was going to miss the icebergs after all.

The bartender queried about a second round:

Me: "Yes-"

Her: "NOOO, just this!"

Never have I seen a second beer so firmly rejected. If nothing else, she probably discovered she could launch a second career as an AA sponsor.

We left the bar and plodded to the nearby train station. We talked over each others' awkward goodbyes and insincere pledges to do it again sometime.

I remain confounded as to what this woman thought she was getting into. My dating profile contains no fine print, and she was old enough to know that frogs don't turn into princes. Maybe it's time I uploaded an audio file of me saying, "Ribbit, ribbit."

Thinking Inside the Big Box

2010-11-07T16:23:00.001-08:00

The dismal consensus among the dismal scientists is that we have nothing to deflate but deflation itself; deflation being the great evil that must be avoided at all costs!

Riddle me this: In this deflation hypothetical, the input costs of manufacturers would continually drop (thanks to forces like plunging commodity prices...a force we aren't seeing), allowing volume-driven juggernauts like Wal-Mart--the same juggernauts heralded by many of these anti-deflation hawks--to increase volume/potentially improve profits. So if the big box, "make it up on volume" approach is indeed the wisest business discovery of the last 30 years, why wouldn't an environment favorable to this approach be just what the doctor ordered?

For all the deflationist panic about falling prices sparking a "globalized Japan," where no one shops because constantly falling prices induce them to await the next price drop, we might consider that as of 2010, the world's most expensive city is Tokyo.

Unheralded Songs by Heralded Bands

2010-11-01T16:17:00.000-07:00

"Hyacinth House" by The Doors

Not only is this song catchy and then some, it contains rock's only reference to vacant lavatories. That's right, the Lizard King actually sings "I feel the bathroom is clear." Spoken like a true late stage alcoholic.

"Across the Universe" by The Beatles

Even many Beatles aficionados seem to overlook this one. Can't imagine why. More haunting than "In My Life." More chilling than "Golden Slumbers." Yeah, I said it. You wanna make something of it, little doggie?! Well I don't, so pour yourself an absinthe martini and give peace a chance.

"(Nothing But) Flowers" by Talking Heads

Not just an underrated TH song; one of the most underrated tunes in rock history. It was pushed as a single, but probably suffered from its association with Naked, their breakup album. Kind of like getting a threesome from your wife the night before she files the divorce papers.

"Not Now John" by Pink Floyd

The one highlight on their last album with Waters; the anti-Thatcher clunker The Final Cut. Should you ever find yourself stuck in a band you need to get fired from, you can't go wrong writing an album like TFC. Works better than a two week notice. Oh well, I still say "Not Now John" is a diamond in the rough. But not a blood diamond, mind you. Mr. Waters wouldn't stand for such a thing.

"2000 Man" by The Rolling Stones

Used memorably in the classic film Bottle Rocket, yet it has failed to incite the passions of rock fans. I don't have anything witty to say about this, so if you need a laugh, just picture Keith Richards trying to speak Chinese.

"A Quick One, While He's Away" by The Who

Talk about a song succeeding in spite of itself; wacky lyrics, hasty tempo shifts...all the makings of a prog rock Hindenburg. Yet I don't know of another tune in The Who's catalogue where each member shines so equally. The version I've linked is so thrilling you'll even forgive Daltrey for dressing like Pocahontas: The Burlesque Years.

Dishing on DOG DAY AFTERNOON

2010-10-30T14:33:00.000-07:00

If you haven't seen Dog Day Afternoon, quit procrastinating. I won't unleash any spoilers, but before you read further, understand it is a film about a bank robbery.

Watching it, I was struck by changes we've seen since 1975, the year of its release (the events depicted went down in '72).

Mr. Pacino and Fredo try holding up a small Brooklyn bank. Although the bank is mom-and-pop-sized, it is stacked with employees. Nowadays, thanks to innovations like ATMs and online banking, even major Manhattan banks don't carry such top-heavy staffs.

Yet when the camera shows the street in front of the bank, you notice the parking meters they had then are like the ones you see now; nearly four decades later. There has been no inventiveness on the parking meter front. Steve Jobs stubbornly refuses to release an iPark.

The reason for this stagnation? Banks compete, parking meters are government enterprises. Government enterprises mean no price mechanism, no market feedback, no competition. The closest thing to a parking innovation a municipality seems capable of is making parking harder and less legal with barnacles like school zones. Hence, parking remains a constant migraine, while banking keeps getting simpler. Thankfully, parking in front of a bank is far less necessary, thanks to improvements like online banking.

Keep Louisville Boring

2010-10-25T17:43:00.000-07:00

Louisville, KY is a hard town to pronounce, and an even harder town to visit. Appropriately, it brings to mind another hard to pronounce word; ennui.

Louisville is a desperate, colorless misuse of pavement. It's a gas station that doesn't know it. A place that just kinda happened.

An unhealthy mist hangs over the city. I suspect it's a fog created by the nitrate-heavy sweat the locals produce after feasting on the local grub. Before visiting Louisville, I'd never heard of a major sandwich shop running out of wheat. I have now. I guess in some cities, there is a last call for wheat bread. In a place where the grass is all blue, not even the horses can eat green.

And should you want to escape across the Ohio River, you're escaping to...Indiana. I hear Phillip K. Dick was going to work this into one of his novels, but was afraid no one would believe it.

One night I was directed to an area called FOURTH STREET LIVE. Basically, it's a dismal food court made super dismal by the blare of droning peasant music. You might say it's a meat market where both the food and women are rancid.

Although Halloween was still a ways off, a number of ladies were dressed as trampy devils. This failed to improve FOURTH STREET LIVE. How can a college town herd half-drunk, half-dressed college chicks into a central locale and still manage to be boring? Louisville makes it possible.

Of course, there is no accounting for taste. I'm sure some guys enjoy spending their Saturdays being sized-up for a brawl outside a Taipei Express.

After the disorienting brush with FOURTH STREET LIVE, I browsed the city's hipster section. Like all hipsters, the ones in Louisville come off as apathetic; only there, they really mean it. Not much use for irony in a town where the joke is on you. So I guess if you're looking for something different, Louisville's hipster sincerity is a rare attribute, though I don't see that as a fetching chapter in a tourism guide.

On the flipside, at least you can be sure that what happens in Louisville stays in...oh wait, nothing happens in Louisville.

The real promised land is my Twitter feed: http://twitter.com/#!/greatMikePayne

The New Karaoke?

2010-09-28T17:54:00.000-07:00

Ever since Napster, those embracing the Internet music revolution have always said musicians should just worry about concerts. Forget albums; share your music, because the new business model for music is about selling concert tickets.

This recent article gives us a taste of how the Internet music revolution may be eating some of its children:

In the audience at a recent Natalie Merchant concert at an 880-seat theater in Los Angeles, Adam Miles couldn't focus. The man to his left was holding up his cell phone, shooting video. "Please," Mr. Miles asked his neighbor, "turn it off." A few songs later, the phone lit up again, and the San Diego harbor police officer got more commanding: "Hey, dude. You're going to have to put that away. You're ruining the show for me."

A generation raised on instant, effortless access to all kinds of "live" performance (MP3, Napster, YouTube, iPod) is probably less likely to appreciate and TAKE IN a live performance, as they've never really had to wait for one. Today's young concertgoer hasn't had the same experience of marking the calendar for a new single or album, and I believe part of what makes people salivate and focus is anticipation; anticipation partly spurred by limited access to that which you are anticipating. Distance makes the eardrum grow fond...

More importantly, because every new tool--Facebook, Blackberries, iTelepathy--quickly becomes another enabler of today's cult of self-expression, recording a concert (formerly known as bootlegging) is now more of a: "Look at what I LIKE, look at what I'M EXPERIENCING" maneuver, rather than an attempt to create a collective, Grateful Dead-type vibe.

Maybe we're discovering you can't be a gearhead and a Deadhead.

Sometimes a Buffet is Just a Buffet

2010-09-27T16:38:00.001-07:00

It is in the news again: Americans are enormously fat. The grapevine is telling us a recent pro-veggie marketing campaign didn't take, and that our "national obesity goals" (?) aren't likely to be met.

In between shovelfuls of bacon, various pundits are asking WHY? Some of the usual explanations:

We gorge because we're spiritually empty.

We expand because we're hooked on high-fructose corn syrup.

Our bellies runneth over our belts because we no longer eat local.

E-T-C. (NOW SERVING BREAKFAST ALL DAY)

Instead of turning the obesity "debate" into a Rorschach for his respective cause, for once I'd like to see one of these worriers take a deep breath, tie-up his hobby horse, and say: "Maybe Americans are fat because we're lazy and like eating. A country where every day is Thanksgiving ain't likely to be svelte."

You know, Occam's Scale...

IS THERE INTELLIGENT LIFE ON EARTH?

2010-09-22T17:19:00.000-07:00

According to AOLNEWS:

UFOs have monitored and possibly tampered with American nuclear weapons, according to a group of former Air Force officers who will make their claims public next week at a Washington, D.C., news conference.

Ignore the headlines. Unidentified doesn't automatically mean extraterrestrial. It means exactly what it says; a flying object yet to be identified. Could be a meteor shard. Could be a weather balloon. Could be an unidentified aircraft from a foreign--yet still earth-based--land. Popular usage has confused the term UFO so much the conversation can't help but veer into paranormal territory.

Think of it this way: John Does aren't automatically identified either. Doesn't mean they're from the 5th dimension.

I'm guessing many of these UFOs were foreign spy planes, and yes, it would make perfect sense for foreign spy planes to monitor US nuclear facilities, considering such activities are the very reason spy planes are built in the first place.

As for the US military not going public with the information...not the biggest surprise I've heard today. OF COURSE the government wouldn't go public with real-time info. about their nuclear facilities being compromised. And NATURALLY they'd be even less likely to do so if they couldn't readily identify the crafts in question (particularly if said UFOs were suspected of being Soviet), as it would be a public admission of the vulnerability and perhaps inferiority of US anti-spy technology.

Back then, the US had a credible superpower to scare the rubes with. They didn't need to justify the defense budget using pulp fiction motifs about machete-wielding Bedouins half a globe away.

Uncertain? You Bet!

2010-09-15T17:37:00.000-07:00

Eavesdrop on an interview with a CEO or business commentator nowadays, and the buzzword you'll hear most often is uncertainty. Can't get away from it (not even in the hot new Chevy Volt). Doesn't matter if the person is selling real estate, maternity clothing, or moose lips, whenever they're pressed to give a bird's-eye view of today's challenging business climate, they file everything in a generic folder marked "uncertainty."

The exchanges go something like this:

Talking Head: "So what's the biggest challenge facing your industry today?

CEO: "Uncertainty."

Talking Head: "We all know that small business does most of the hiring in this country. What would you say is the biggest challenge facing small businesses today?"

Small Business Owner: "Uncertainty."

Talking Head: "Having successfully managed not to foresee a single aspect of the recent credit crisis, what do you think is driving the market today?

Business Commentator: "Uncertainty."

You get the picture.

Depending on the political persuasion of the talking head interviewing them (hack Republican or hack Democrat), it may get slightly more specific; meaning the hack will editorialize about taxes or regulation (pro or con), then cleverly "hide" the editorial by ending his tirade with a questioning lilt in his voice. Usually, it is only then the CEO/business commentator will reference Washington and its proposals.

For those unfamiliar with the work of economist Robert Higgs, one of his key concepts is regime uncertainty. Abridged version: Extensive government intrusion into the economy creates an atmosphere where businesses become prudish about hiring, purchasing capital equipment, and other important decisions, because they don't know how these decisions might be affected by whatever tax or regulation the government brews next.

So why aren't more businesspeople saying this outright?

Part of this reluctance exists because being a CEO is a lot like being a politician. One "scandalous" comment can singe you (remember Whole Foodsgate?), so canned platitudes and stiff upper lips come with the job.

But also, given how much of the economy has already been ambushed these last few years, it could just be these guys are so uncertain about Washington they've even become uncertain about speaking its name. Washington has become their Candyman; don't say his name and maybe he won't come for you!

Truthfully, things really AREN'T that uncertain. Taxes ARE going up. Obamacare WILL happen in some form. The milquetoast "uncertainty" line is a fuzzy way of admitting the government is handicapping business without offending Obamamaniac customers or running the risk of becoming a certain target of that epicenter of uncertainty; Washington, D.C.

Scenes from a New York Barber Shop

2010-09-10T16:31:00.000-07:00

I need a haircut. I need a lot of other things too; complete facial reconstruction or a decent Brad Pitt mask, but there are only so many shopping hours in the day.

On my way home this afternoon I passed a hot Eastern European woman who was distributing flyers for a neighborhood barber shop offering $10.00 haircuts. I asked her if she came with the haircut. She said yes, but only if I multiplied the price of the haircut by 1,000,000. There are only so many zeroes in my bank account.

The barber shop was nearby, and one of the barbers was idling out front, so I assumed they were hungry for business. Maybe I'd even be a miser and talk them down to $9.00.

I asked the guy if the flyer was for his barber shop. He said no. I looked around and didn't notice any other hair-clipping establishments on the street. I looked up at his awning. Indeed, it was the same address as the one on the flyer.

"This coupon isn't for your barber shop?"

"No, that's not here."

"So this isn't for your shop?"

"No, not here."

I appealed to the awning. His reaction told me the appeal isn't a form of jurisprudence that has reached the barber community.

Classic New York. You get an offer for a discount, and the whole thing turns out to be fine print. It's not even a "bait and switch." It's a "bait and deny all knowledge of the bait." And the baiter acts like you're the idiot.

I gave up haggling with the guy. Whether the coupon was "real" or not, it definitely was for his shop. How this "misunderstanding" came about is for the reader to decide. I'm all for conspiracy theories, but I rather doubt one of the barber's enemies from the Old Country took the time to print fake flyers for his shop and then hired a hot chick to hand them out. True, she may not exactly have been "hired." I have heard of Eastern European hotties being used for sex trafficking. What I haven't heard of is them being used for dandruff trafficking.

I still need a haircut.

What Happens When the Quicksand Isn't Quick?

2010-09-03T14:08:00.000-07:00

I have recently become acquainted with a man who is his own genre of stupid. He's smart enough to be executed in Texas, but just barely. This man is also the world's leading Captain Obvious, but I'll refrain from using that insult, as it is so hackneyed it actually insults the plaintiff more than the defendant.

This man is dense in such a way that he wouldn't even make it as a useful idiot. Useful idiots come in handy when you need cannon fodder, sweatshop labor, or someone to test your latest "vaccine." This man's worthlessness is so singular I can't even picture him qualifying as a guinea pig, which is probably why he has survived so long. Not even Sun Tzu had a strategy for defeating the alpha of the betas.

His thickness is difficult to describe, but here goes. Plenty of people are clueless. Plenty of people are clueless AND socially awkward. The reason this man transcends the class of the cognitively downtrodden is that he's clueless, socially awkward, billboard obvious and constantly jumping three steps ahead or three steps behind in the conversation; the conversation he's already made clear he doesn't understand. I'm convinced it is this final trait that protects him from the abuse duds of his caliber typically invite. Taking advantage of him would require too much direct exposure for the abuser to escape unscathed. He's like a porcupine, except I'm not confident he could match the dynamism of your average porcupine. We'll call him a cactus instead.

Perhaps a dramatization is needed. Let's say Cactus Jackass found his way to a shoe store. The salesman would approach:

Shoe Guy: "Hello, sir. Are you looking for anything in particular today?"
Cactus Jackass (eyes bulge, forehead reddens, lips moisten): "I-I gotta have something with laces!"

The Shoe Guy is attempting to at least narrow the conversation to a shoe style: a running shoe, a dress shoe. CJ sabotaged this endeavour by transferring the conversation back in time to one that might occur on the floor of a shoe factory, not a shoe store.

But Shoe Guy wants to make a sale. Things are tough all over. So he spends the three hours it takes to get Cactus Jackass into a new pair of Reeboks (thank God they already come with laces).

Having been together 2 hours and 59 minutes longer than Shoe Guy would have liked, the two men approach the register. Shoe Guy has the pain of a million ruptured appendixes burning in his side. His blood pressure is up. His head is down. But at last they've reached the payment stage. Shoe Guy, Jr., is going to eat this month.

Shoe Guy: "Now how would you like to pay for this?"
Cactus Jackass (ears twitch, nostrils flare, pupils dilate): "I-I want to take out a second mortgage on my house!"

The Reeboks cost 89 bucks. Cactus Jackass has 600 dollars in his wallet (being stupid to the point of invincibility keeps one from being mugged). But instead of taking the reasonable step of paying with cash, Cactus Jackass has fast-forwarded the conversation to a payment method that only applies in a high priced worst case scenario.

At this point, even the most determined shoe-shyster would fold. He has already wasted three hours trying to attain an $89 sale. He has already taken four score and seven years off his life rationalizing the opportunity cost of devoting three hours to the pursuit of a commission that wouldn't even keep him in ham hock, let alone steak. Now he is faced with another 3-4 hours of trying to steer Cactus Jackass through the choppy waters of placing nine ten-dollar bills on the counter. An ubercommittee stacked with Foot Locker Employees of the Month couldn't handle this, so we mustn't fault Shoe Guy for succumbing. As for Shoe Guy, Jr., well, it looks like he'll once again be dining on Shoe Polish Surprise.

A laceless, shoeless, and clueless Cactus Jackass walks out of the store and into the sunset. The sun cries uncle and lets the moon take over for a while.

SLOW COOKED FOR THE SLOW-WITTED

2010-08-24T16:41:00.000-07:00

If someone tells you he knows a great BBQ spot in New York, severe ties with that person. There is no such thing. In a city crawling with scams, the illusion of "quality BBQ" is one of the hardest to tolerate (you thought I was going to say "hardest to swallow" didn't you, you cynical skank).

Most NYC barbecue destinations are wickedly overpriced. Leave it to Manhattanites to pay a premium for blue-collar cuisine. To those not held captive by Zagatspeak, barbecue should be synonymous with bargain. You will see a humble backwoods church scraping together funds for a summer barbecue. You won't see that church holding a Palm Sunday Beluga Bake.

NYC barbecue isn't so much a parody of the South as it is New York self-parody. What could be more New York than overpaying for a third-rate version of po' folks' grub? Instead of blogging, I should open a rib shack called "3-Course Monte."

Before you know it, these conned-mopolitans will be paying top shekel for "gourmet military rations."

Speaking of "down home" food in NYC, I'm seeing sweet potatoes on more and more menus, and I'm not liking what I see. Most restaurants don't realize or don't care that sweet potatoes contain more water and therefore must be prepared differently. Now that SP fries are everywhere, a generation of suckers is being raised to believe that soggy, orangish salt sticks are a cherished delicacy. How will we know when we've lost sweet potatoes for good? When Ronald McDonald has toxic "McSweeties" falling out of his McFro.

You Lost Me at Hello

2010-08-17T16:49:00.000-07:00

So I've been going on a lot of Internet dates lately (yeah, I'm judging me too). What's strange is that my profile has generated a lot more traffic and response than I expected.

I say it's strange because my profile is well, honest. The picture is a full-on face shot (not a pretty picture). My true and typically dealbreaking height is spelled out in plain view. Everything else is honest as well. No allusions to bulging Swiss bank accounts or reference lists of sexually sated ex-conquests.

Yet a goodly number of chicks have come out to meet me. Some from as far away as Brooklyn. Many with decent pedigrees and lots to offer. The fact that my looks, height, and absence of achievements didn't scare them off is almost enough to make me question why I need Internet dating in the first place.

But here's the rub...very few second dates. No urgency for return engagements. One dose of Mike Payne and all further investigation is off. Seems these women can look past the ghostly face, the Hobbitish height, the lack of accomplishment. What they can't look past is my losing personality. They're like: "Yeah, I was all set to give a 5' 5" failure a shot, but after meeting you in person...well, let's just say you give charity a bad name."

All Print is Fine Print

2010-08-13T16:42:00.000-07:00

In Wall Street parlance, when someone is pumping a stock mainly because he owns it himself, he is said to be "talking his book." In other words, he isn't objectively analyzing the stock's merits; he is promoting it so its value (and his wealth) will rise. Naturally, all humans "talk their book" in some form, but today we’ll highlight how a certain form of book talking corrupts actual books (i.e., the press).

Those who complain about the press usually gripe that the outlets parrot the views of their sponsors. Not a crazy supposition. But something less talked about--and more insidious--is that in the media, there is no working balance between honesty and profitability. The closer you get to the truth, the farther you get from the black. And the audience is the problem.

Take Cosmo, or as I call it, Hymen Times. That rag is basically Weekly World News without the hard-hitting Elvis coverage. I'm sure Cosmo's staff has some true believers, but I suspect more than a few know they're just accomplices in a campaign of mi$information.

Each issue of Cosmo features cutting edge scholarship like, "Ten Ways to Please Him" or "What your man wants to say but can't." These at least sound informative, if you can escape the "Chocolate Chip Cookies: Are They Making Him Distant?" section. Unfortunately, once you reach "Ten Ways," you're treated to advice bearing no resemblance to any desire held by any hetero, non-institutionalized male since the fall of homo erectus. I can state with categorical certainty that doing Sudoku together using only your toes tickles no man's fancy.

Let me show you a Cosmo advice list for women reflecting men’s actual desires:

Page 1: Be a monogamous, round the clock nympho.
Page 2: See page 1.

What men want is rapt devotion in the bedroom and laissez-faire everywhere else. Basically, Hong Kong compressed into a cute, compact female. But you won't catch Cosmo admitting that, because if they did their readership would dry up faster than a reference at a figure of speech. So to keep readers from collapsing in despair, Cosmo instead caters to the most infantile dreams of its most infantile readers. And because average women have never heard such dreck, many end up mistaking Cosmo’s witchcraft for "inside scoops."

Unfortunately, what ails Cosmo also ails the "higher" forms of media. No media outlet can show us The Wizard and remain solvent.

CNBC, "America's business channel," can't tell its viewers that America's "dynamic" economy is built on borrowed money and reserve currency shenanigans, or that day traders (their core audience) rarely make money, or that literally almost every mutual fund underperforms the market. BORING! CNBC has to keep the witless watchers watching, and that means telling them this market is red, white, and blue hot! Take off your pom-poms and get in the game! BUY BUY BUY!!!

When it comes to cynical, full throttle book talking, Rolling Stone is practically a handbook. Rolling Stone has long postured as contrarian, even though it gives slobbery grandma kisses to every trend that comes along. When hair metal died in the early 90's, they began speaking of it in the kind of somber, unbelieving tones you'd expect from a medical journal discussing the days of leech treatments. Never mind that RS had spent the 80's hyping bands like Cinderella. They now wanted it understood that the days of hair metal were dark and unenlightened. Never forget.

But the second hair metal returned, what did this pillar of integrity have to say about it? "Dust off those mullets, kids! REAL ROCK is back!!!"

Naturally, Rolling Stone was just talking its book, and I don’t blame them. You can't turn a profit reporting that every band since Radiohead has been a disgrace. If they copped to that, no one would buy the issue featuring Taylor Swift’s strategy for exiting Iraq. And I'm sure any day now they'll have an article telling us Fergie Ferg is not a butta face, but rather an example of the new "Marmaduke chic."

The Trench Connection

2010-07-31T11:18:00.000-07:00

Like the happy trail on a Greek belly dancer, the numbers can get a little fuzzy, but this year the US Federal government is fixing to discharge almost enough new debt to surpass all the new debt dropped by all other governments combined. Uncle Sam, official babysitter of Earth's reserve currency, is once again far and away its most profligate debtor.

Simultaneously, 2009 US military spending accounted for nearly half of Earth's total military spending. According to the SIPRI, even after combining the bomb budgets of the other power brokers; Russia, China, the UK, and France, with the next 10 "big spenders," the rest of Earth's military tab only totaled 38.8% of earthly defense spending (remind you of anything?), leaving America with a 7.7% edge.

OKAY...so the US is blowing w-a-y more on military expenses than everyone else. Got it. And we're also issuing w-a-y government debt than everyone else. Right, still listening...

Do ya think there might be a link?

It's not the Heat, It's the Commentary

2010-07-19T16:34:00.000-07:00

Finding loopholes in anti-torture law is a full-time job. Most people don't have time for two full-time jobs, so in place of lawful genital-tasering, they resort to small talk about the weather. It scratches the torture itch while keeping them out of jail.

Summer is when the serious INQUISITORS come out. You won't read this in your New York City guidebook, but congregating around street vendors this time of year is the surest way to experience the weather-talk version of the rack. Here's the torment you'll encounter each time two strangers meet:

Meathead-eorologist #1: "Phew, another hot one!"

Meathead-eorologist #2: "Yeah, humid too."

Meathead-eorologist #1: "Phew, what's it supposed to be like tomorrow?"

Meathead-eorologist #2: "I hear it's going to be even hotter."

Meathead-eorologist #1: "Will it be humid too?"

Meathead-eorologist #2: (Eyes bulge) "Gee, I don't know! This looks like a job for Weatherman!"

[Meathead-eorologist #2 steadies his trembling hands just long enough to flick on the Weatherman-Signal; flooding the muggy sky with a W-shaped distress sign. Will our hero respond in time?]

Weatherman heroically answers the call.

Weatherman: "YES, IT WILL BE HUMID TOMORROW."

Repeat after me: It's summer. In New York City. It's going to be hot. What's that, you're feeling the heat? So is everyone else. No need to mention it. If it were 95 in January, we'd have something to talk about.

Do you spend every December 23rd telling strangers how Christmasy it is?

Meathead-eorologist #1: "Phew, it's really Christmasy out here!"

Meathead-eorologist #2: "Yeah, tomorrow's gonna be even merrier."

My Twitter feed is partly funny with a chance of haze: http://twitter.com/#!/greatMikePayne

Coming to a Half-Empty Stadium Near You

2010-07-18T11:40:00.000-07:00

Like David Beckham before him, Thierry Henry becomes soccer’s latest star striker to be plucked from Europe in hopes of spurring Americans to care about MLS:

Thierry Henry's move to the New York Red Bulls will help Major League Soccer in its goal to become one of the "world's elite soccer leagues'', according to the organisation's vice-president of marketing and communications.

As it was with Beckham, the Henry experiment will fail.

Beckham had far more fame and visibility ahead of his coming to the LA Galaxy, and that still wasn’t enough to attract anything beyond a short term buzz for the team and league. Henry is much less known in America, so the idea of turning him into a “star” ambassador for the game is fantasy.

Beckham hailed from the UK, a country most Americans are still relatively well-disposed to. Thierry was born near Paris, and is bound to trigger the usual slap-dick antics Americans heap on anything French-related (brace yourself for hacky French accents and deafeningly unfunny surrender jokes).

And like Beckham by the time he reached MLS, Thierry is past his prime, so it is doubtful we are about to be treated to a one-man exhibition of soccer at its finest that will inspire a generation of Americans to ditch LeBron, cast off the Air Jordans of their forefathers, and demand a pair of soccer cleats.

A similar “ambassadorship” was tried with Pelé, who in 1975 was recruited to the New York Cosmos of the now defunct NASL. Pelé was a more accomplished and more US visible player than Henry. Pelé also had some political cache, and was playing in the era of Muhammad Ali; probably the golden age of politicized sport (Henry lacks these advantages). And despite all that, and despite playing in a media-saturated glamour town, Pelé’s presence failed to reap the lasting dividends US soccer believers were banking on.

Can New York soccer lightning fail to strike twice? Yes it can.

Henry will spark some sizzle early on, but that sizzle won’t even reach the levels ignited by Beckham’s arrival. Then we’ll be barraged with the familiar round of tired, soul-searching columns wondering why Americans don’t get soccer. The proposed solutions will be the usual calls for “better coaching” and “better promotion at the youth level.” Maybe the conversation should instead begin with the fact that the rest of Earth calls it football, and we already have a sport called football, thanks very much, whose popularity and stature towers over all other US athletics.

Hilarity aside, maybe it’s as simple as Americans just preferring high scoring sports. Hockey scores are similar to soccer’s, and in terms of visibility, hockey has long been a distant fourth among the four major US team sports. Coincidence?

Miami Vice?

2010-07-10T13:26:00.000-07:00

The backlash against LeBron’s announcement-o-thon has gotten a little overdone. Well, lest anyone think this sports fixation is an American phenomenon, bear in mind that David Beckham’s 2003 physical exam aired on 39 channels across the globe, and included a pay-per-view broadcast. Yeah, we do have bread and circuses, but don’t let your reaction to them turn you into a sideshow.

Don't Fret on Me

2010-07-04T17:46:00.000-07:00

How times change. When Jimi Hendrix strummed his famous Star-Spangled Banner, it was considered high treason. Straying from tradition on any incarnation of any American symbol was secular blasphemy (fortunately, Jimi's antics predated Gitmo, though he might have enjoyed being waterboarded).

Nowadays, even the curmudgeonly jingoistic Fox News, famous for displaying an American flag on the screen during newscasts, nonchalantly boasts a July 4th American flag bikini slideshow on its homepage.

My, oh my. Old Glory will just have to accept that in 2010, not even Fox is a no-thong zone.

Footloose Officiating

2010-06-29T15:49:00.000-07:00

I am pleased Germany and Argentina won their recent World Cup matches. I am displeased by the widely broadcast assumption that the faulty goal gifted to Argentina and the authentic one stolen from England “didn’t matter” because the final scores were lopsided anyway.

So this means the disputed goals weren't relevant? Really?

What we don’t know is how much differently the teams would have performed had the disputed goals been officiated correctly. Would a Mexico still tied at 0-0 pressed as recklessly, allowing Argentina to control the ball and put corresponding pressure on the Mexicans' already stretched defense?

How much differently might England have tackled the second half if not for the burdensome knowledge that they had to score A THIRD GOAL just to be credited for the two needed to even up with Germany? Might this partly explain their deflated, dispirited play? We don’t know.

It's not as though the blown calls came at insignificant times either, like in the 89th minute of a 3-0 blowout. In the case of Argentina, it was the first goal of the match, and with England, it came at 2-1, so stand-up refereeing would have meant a tie game. All the more reason these botched calls shouldn't get the "all's well that ends well" treatment. To excuse them as "mere lessons for the future" even though they occurred with the outcomes still very much in doubt ignores the precious concept of MOMENTUM that sports commentators spend so much time prattling about.

If we're going to pretend each moment of each match happens in a vacuum, why have rules at all? Coming to a field near you: Anarcho-footie! You thought soccer riots resembled Valhalla before...

In the end, this all winds up sounding like bad string theory. No, we can't go back and magically replay the games to see exactly what would have unfolded had the goals been judged properly. Of course, we wouldn’t even be discussing magic replays if FIFA had instant replay.

Red Wine and Long Walks on the Ledge

2010-06-28T17:43:00.000-07:00

Enabling hopeless romantics never goes out of style. As we sit here, someone, somewhere is confessing to being a hopeless romantic, and some enabler is gushing: "Aw, it's so nice in this world of cynics to see someone searching for true love."

First of all, any term with the word "hopeless" in it is not a term of endearment. If someone told you, "Oh my uncle Bill, he's a hopeless drunk," you wouldn't say, "Aw, it's so nice in this world of detox to see someone pickling his liver!"

When you admit to being a hopeless romantic, you’re admitting to the world you're an eager victim. You're saying when you enter a relationship, you're like an old coot with Alzheimer's wandering on to a user car lot. You're letting us know that one day, you and your romantic hijacks will be part of a '60 Minutes' exposé. You're making a promise to be as naïve and helpless as you were before the relationship. What you should be saying is: "Hi, I'm Fred. Experience teaches me nothing."

The reason hopeless romantics don't get the public ridicule they deserve is because countless industries feed on their vice; greeting card companies, florists, divorce lawyers, guard dogs, morning-after pill manufacturers…all the essentials.

It is time to dispense with this "true love" superstition. Love, like everything else in the universe, is largely random. If you were born in Afghanistan, you would find "true love" in Afghanistan. If you took a job in Idaho, you'd find someone to complete you in Boise. Love didn't bring you together. The credit crunch did.

In some cultures, the cause and effect relationhip between intercourse and pregnancy is a relatively new discovery. So was all that previous mating based on celestial romance? Was it star-crossed love? Or were folks just f*cking what was available?

Now look at your own romantic past and consider how different it really is.

IMPERIO DO MAL

2010-06-22T17:52:00.000-07:00

Having overheard many fellow countrymen heap generic praise on Brazil’s soccer team, I sense that for Americans who don’t get soccer but feel the need to have “a stake” in the World Cup, Brazil is like the Yankees. In other words, the perfect team for “fans” who want to root for a team liable to make a good run (allowing them to keep “supporting” “their team” late into the tournament and feel like a winner), but who are too lazy to do the homework needed to pick a squad other than the most bleedingly obvious one.

World Cup Drinking Game

2010-06-12T09:30:00.000-07:00

Eager to play John Bonham? Try doing a shot each time a commentator makes reference to one of the currently crumbling EU countries (Portugal, Spain, etc.) “needing this win more than ever" thanks to their dire financial straits. Other heavy-handed phrases to listen for; “right now it’s about more than soccer” and “giving people with little to cheer for something to celebrate.”

By the way, I'm surprised Greece lost, as they have so many strikers...

Crying Over Spilled Oil

2010-06-06T14:45:00.000-07:00

Since Obama took office, partisan, faux conservative hacks have complained (justifiably) about his micromanagement of the economy and well, everything else. The script has been simple. The Obama Administration says jump, and the hack opposition shouts: “I’ll let the private sector tell me how high, thank you very much!”

Despite loving Bush's centralizations, under Obama, these zombies have gotten states' rights religion.

But when Obama adopts a more decentralized, private sector-heavy approach to the BP spill, these same hacks scream: “What’s taking him so long?! When's he gonna roll up his sleeves and FIX IT? You call this leadership?!”

You can’t claim everything the government does is DMV-caliber while also demanding it CENTRALIZE and outdo the world’s top oil industry minds in MICROMANAGING a disaster of historic proportion and complexity. Or at least you can’t credibly do it. You can however go on TV and sell books and coffee mugs by shrieking this cognitive dissonance and clutching your chest Fred Sanford-style...which is why there’s no hope for humanity.