So that my pregnant friend of mine who I said all the wrong things to met us at that same bar this week. I wasn’t expecting to see her because she’s literally nine months pregnant. Come to think of it, I don’t think anyone expects to see a nine months pregnant woman in a bar. 

Weirder still is when she said she was likely to come out again the following week… a day after her due date. That is, she stipulated, if she hadn’t given birth yet. “What if you have the baby on the due date, will you still come out the next night?” “No.” she said. See, this baby is already cutting into our friendship.

Luie said he’d grab towels “just in case.” We tried to get her to agree to name the baby after the bar if her water broke while she was there, but she wouldn’t agree. 

My favorite moment, however, occurred between a married couple who are new friends of mine. After they were introduced to my pregnant friend and stared at her massive belly, they had a brief exchange:

Husband: “That looks awful. I don’t think I could ever do that to you.”

Wife: “That’s good, because I don’t want you to ever do that to me.”

Sounds like we can be friends for a good long while. Three cheers for the non-procreators! 

Just 36 hours after that night in a bar, I received a picture message from my friend: it was her fresh-out-of-the-oven baby. Admittedly, it’s difficult to reconcile the fact that we were hanging out and then soon after she was pushing a new human being out of her body. 

I, again not saying the most appropriate things for the occasion, responded by sending this GIF of an even cuter baby performing CPR. (Seriously, I adore it so much, I watched it loop for fifteen minutes straight.) Accordingly, I asked the new mommy if she had bothered to teach her not-even-one-day-old resuscitation techniques yet.

She gave some lame excuse that the baby having enough difficulty learning to breastfeed, but whatever. This is about potentially saving someone’s life! It’s never too soon. Frankly, I’m not sure I’m willing to hang out with this baby until I know she could rescue me in the event I stop breathing. 

The Eurovision semifinals start tomorrow, culminating in the finals on Saturday (come over to mi case in the afternoon, amigos!), meaning we are currently entering my favorite week of the year.

The Eurovision video I edited got blocked on YouTube due to a copyright claim. I plead ignorant - I wasn’t aware people bothered to copyright songs that awful. But FINE. Two can play this game - I just uploaded it again to DailyMotion instead.

However, YouTube only blocked my vid for the U.S. and a handful of other countries. Europeans (in general the only people who know and care about this music) are still able to watch the video. As a result, I still receive a bunch of pissed off comments from them. How DARE I call their sacred competition “ridiculous”. Here are my 10 favorite angry YouTube comments that show how seriously they take it:

Like, they WATCHED that same compilation and think I’m the one with no taste? Bless their hearts, for they are part of what makes this experience so comical.

Happy Mothers’ Day, Especially to UR MOM

I couldn’t resist purchasing this airbrushed hat for today’s holiday. It just seems like a nice gesture to indicate that I not only appreciate my own mother, but ur mom, as well.

It was a great thrift store find. As was this t-shirt:

My mother will be pleased to learn that I decided against buying a shirt featuring an elephant’s butt, too. I think it’s a sign of maturity that I realize not every article of clothing can’t be a joke?

But if the UR MOM hat wasn’t enough of an indication, I’m still not that mature. For example, I couldn’t resist buying this bejeweled BINGO WINNER shirt. Not sure when I’d ever wear it, but perhaps I can coax one of my friends into it.

In the parking lot, a homeless guy (not the one who peed in my car) asked if he could wash my headlights for a small donation. I gave him a few bucks and he told me that my “mama must have raised me right.” There, Mom, you have something to be proud of… other than that fashion sense that clearly never developed.

Oh, and I also found this shirt:  

On the one hand, it’s pretty stupid to put a greeting card message on a t-shirt, because on what occasion could a dad actually wear this? On the other hand, AT LEAST MY FATHERS’ DAY SHOPPING IS ALREADY DONE. Plus, it was cheap and easy. Almost as cheap and easy as UR MOM.

REAL TALK

Ugh, fuck this millennial-hating and the Time Magazine article it rode in on. It’s a smear campaign to preemptively convince people that the problems people under 30 face are their own doing rather than inherited. What.Ever.

“Lazy”?

Lazy because they don’t have jobs… when jobs don’t exist. Never mind that those who do have jobs are probably working harder because they’re now expected to do the job that two people did not too long ago.

“Entitled”? 

Yeah, fuck those young people who want “health care” and a “living wage” and “unpolluted air.” 

“Narcissistic”?

A legitimate tendency, but also a learned behavior. What does our greedy, capitalist society teach us but to look out for #1 and hoard as much as you can for yourself. The 1% WANTS you to be narcissistic. If more people took the time to see outside of their own worldview, they wouldn’t stand up for the bullshit. 

“Living with Their Parents”?

Want a job? Better go to college. Want to go to college? Take out $100,000+ in student loans. Want to move out? Nah, you now have to live with your parents because you are already super in the red and have a non-salaried job (if that). Good luck finding your way out of this system of debt slavery that we tricked you into.

Look, millennials have a lot of shit to work out, but let’s not pretend it has ever been a fair fight. If we’re ignorant, it’s primarily because we were raised in an underfunded, failing school system, a deliberate attempt to prevent an enlightened population from challenging the status quo. If we’re mindless consumers, it is because our supposed superiors have bred us to be just that, to find fulfillment in spending money and owning crap.

I’m mostly cynical, but as I wrote about recently, I have a shred of hope knowing that millennials are distrustful of American institutions more than ever. Knowing the system is broken is the first step toward overthrowing it. Unfortunately, the enemy is mighty.

First they strip us of our money, homes, jobs, education, power, and autonomy. Then they have the nerve to scapegoat us for it, too? Fuck that noise.

(Source: thedorseyshawexperience)

As I exited a bar in Pasadena, a handicapped homeless man approached me for help. He said he was sick and needed money for a place to stay the night. He sure picked the right mark because not only has my white guilt been working in overdrive lately, I made a promise to myself to start seeing homeless people as people recently and hadn’t had a chance to put that into practice yet. 

You can do only so much research about the criminalization of the homeless before you try to adjust your attitude. We’re trained to look at society’s least fortunate citizens as “lesser.” I can’t remember the last time I went to a comedy show where a homeless man wasn’t the butt of someone’s joke. (Heck, I keep contemplating leaving out the word “homeless” of this post’s title, but I also know it’ll be pivotal in convincing people to read… a homeless man was IN your car?) We purposely try not to see the humanity in homeless people because it is too awful to see a human suffering in that manner. 

While I don’t have the resources to help all of them, I do have the compassion to assist more such people in need rather than my using my standby inclination of avoiding eye contact and saying sorry to all of them. I knew I had exactly three dollars in my wallet, so I opened it and gave it all to him. He saw that I literally emptied my wallet and still asked for more. “There’s an ATM over there,” he told me. “I need $20 to stay overnight at the Y.” My rent comes to just under $20 a day, so that seemed a little steep, and I informed him I would not be giving him any more money. 

“Don’t be scared of me, I need help,” he begged. He then asked me if I could drop him off at a shelter a few blocks down the road. It seemed walkable, but admittedly not for a man who was hobbling slowly on a cane. I was conflicted as to whether I should let a stranger into my car, but I agreed. As we very slowly hobbled toward my parked car, he told me that he was dying from prostate cancer. That, until recently, he had been in jail for twelve years and didn’t want to be released because at least they took care of him. Sadly,a desire/need to stay in prison for free health care/food/lodging is not uncommon and such a despicable commentary about our country. He was having trouble moving and I had parked far away, so I finally offered to come back for him. He didn’t believe I would actually come back for him, so I looked him in the eye and shook his hand promising to give him the ride. 

I shook his hand not only to reassure him, but to reassure myself. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t consider getting in my car and driving away. That would be the easier thing to do. That would be the safer thing to do. But what I saw in this man was someone who needed someone to acknowledge and help him, so I came back for him. I can’t promise if he were a younger, able-bodied man that I would have done the same. Knowing he didn’t have the strength to physically overpower me certainly made it easier to let him in my car. 

As we rode, he kept repeating that he wasn’t going to rob me. I wasn’t that concerned about that previously because he already knew I didn’t have any more money, but the fact that he was bringing it up made me worry. Like, stop trying to make me nervous, dude. “If I thought you were going to rob me, I wouldn’t let you in my car,” I told him. He started talking about how the world is scared of black people. And now gay people, too! “Yeah, society’s pretty fucked up,” I told him matter-of-factly. He liked that. 

Although we weren’t in the car more than a few minutes, he managed to urinate himself during the short trip. He started crying out of embarrassment, explaining he couldn’t control it because of the cancer. I started tear up, too, but I didn’t let him see that. We soon arrived, and as he struggled out of my car, he thanked me. “I know you were scared, I know you ain’t never had a negro in your car before, but you’re a good person.” None of those three statements were entirely true, but I wished him well. 

Driving off is when my tears really kicked in. I wasn’t crying because he peed his pants in my car or because no good deed goes unpunished. I cried because of LIFE, man. The world and reality became were far too intense, and I felt overwhelmed and confused. I left a dying, destitute man no better than I found him… I just moved him a mile closer to temporarily relief.

I know that a lot of my friends and family are going to say I never should have put myself in that situation. I don’t know that I did the right thing, but I’m tired of doing nothing.

In elementary school, I thought I had an amazing rapport with one of my best friend’s mom, mainly because she winked at me all the time. Pretty much anytime we exchanged words she’d give me a wink. It made me feel special because not only did she really seem to like me, but it was like we shared some kind of secret. Occasionally, I would wink back, but mostly I just smiled at her since it seemed a little excessive to wink after each sentence, even though I appreciated her commitment to the gesture.

By the time I reached junior high, I was a little wiser and more critical. I started picking up on the fact that she was not just winking at me, but everyone. It made me a little jealous that I might not be her favorite son’s friend after all. I also found myself questioning the timing of the winking. Was me telling her what I was learning in English class really wink-worthy? 

Then, while she sat at the kitchen table reading the newspaper, I spied on her from the next room. She was just sitting there winking at nothing. It was then - and sadly only then - that it finally dawned on me that she wasn’t winking… she was twitching. And while it’s not to say that she’s not friendly, it was humbling to realize that I had invented a special bond between the two of us based on a chronic facial tic. 

It may be for the best since since our bond was never meant to last. This same mom got herself into soap opera-like drama a few years later. That’s not a story I’m willing to blog about publicly, but that doesn’t mean you couldn’t ask me for that gossip in person. WINK!  ; )  

After watching reality television for well over a decade, I thought I had seen it all, but tonight’s finale of the inaugural season of Big Brother Canada is easily and instantly one of the most memorable moments of all time. In a true clusterfuck, someone literally won the game by accident.

Let’s backtrack. The season (which has been viewable legally via YouTube) has been controversial throughout. Production incorporated a bunch of “twists” at random points that would knock out good competitors due to no fault of their own. If you can say that reality game shows have integrity to begin with, Big Brother Canada’s integrity was seriously compromised by changing its own rules repeatedly. 

With just two weeks left, the show had a vote to bring back a previously eliminated contestant. Gary, a gay black male, won that vote. It’s kind of impressive that the viewers rallied behind a man who would normally not be accepted by society. If I’m being honest, he was all sorts of annoying at first. He seemed a total caricature by hitting unprecedented levels of flamboyance and throwing glitter all over the house. But over time, he endeared himself to me, and the public clearly, by being unapologetically himself. 

That doesn’t change the fact that Gary’s re-entry into the very end of the game was all sorts of unfair because not only was he already voted out, but he got to first learn crucial information from the jury members while befriending them. The show essentially rigged it for him to make (and win) the finals. 

Topaz was Gary’s best friend in the house. Nearly all of her screen time was devoted to her raving about how much she loved Gary and wanted him to win. Her vote for Gary was a given… so much so that she thrice said as she voted, “My vote is 150% secure” - a reference to a broken promise that chronic liar Jillian, the other finalist, made to her. 

But her vote WASN’T secure: she absentmindedly voted for Jillian to win. What should have been a 4-3 vote for Gary to win instead went 4-3 in Jillian’s favor. She accidentally gave her advisory $100,000 instead of her best friend. I mean, everybody makes mistakes, but to have a months-long show culminate in an erroneous winner makes the whole trivial journey seem especially trivial. There would have been an asterisk next to Gary’s name if he won, and now there’s one next to Jillian’s instead, which is pretty lose-lose for the show. 

Watching Topaz realize her error on live TV, only to interrupt the broadcast to try to switch the results had me cringing and laughing simultaneously. So did Jillian’s victory speech, which is generally a moment of celebration for these types of shows: rather than being excited, she was confused and apologetic. 

Anyway, way to go, Canada. This is why you’re usually regulated to watching American reality shows secondhand.

latimes:

Global May Day demonstrations

Today’s May 1, a date traditionally assigned for workers-rights groups and proponents to gather and march for their cause. Whether it be improved working conditions and wages in Asia or protesting austerity measures in Europe, demonstrators are making their grievances heard today across the world.

And that, of course, includes Los Angeles.

Photos: Mario Tama, Aris Messinis, Jalin Jalin, Josep Lago, Martin Bernett / AFP/Getty Images, Sebastiao Moreira / EPA, Luis Hidalgo / Associated Press

May Day! May Day! I love may Day!

It sounds more pathetic than it is… at least I hope that’s the case. In my Spanish class, we had to strike up a correspondence with someone living in a Spanish-speaking country. It was a long-term assignment, and I was so disgruntled with my tragic pen pal experience from elementary school that I didn’t want to do it. That, or more realistically I just procrastinated intensely and found myself days short of a deadline without a pen pal, so I just decided to make one up. 

Her name was Ana and she was from Madrid. I chose both of those proper nouns because they were the first ones I thought of that didn’t have accents in them. Why annoy myself having to find the accent marks on the keyboard to type something like “María” when I didn’t have to? I went about setting up a fake email account for Ana when I discovered a flaw in my plan. How, with just a few years of shaky Spanish, was I going to write an email that seemed plausibly written by a native speaker? 

I approached my profesora after class. Since she wanted us to include all of our emails in our packet, I thought I’d take a moral stance, asking, “What if they’re kind of personal?” This excited her. “Personal? Vicente [my “Spanish” name], do you have a new girlfriend? Are you flirting with your pen pal?” “I dunno…” I stammered, really thrown by her leap. But it worked! My profesora said, as nosy as she was, that it wasn’t her business to read my private emails and that I could just summarize the relevant content in my own Spanish words instead.

Even if it wasn’t my aim, I should have known that just alluding to a love connection would be enough to win my profesora over. She taught us a lot of relationship vocabulary words, had us write love letters in Spanish, and even had us to a video project where we filmed ourselves describing our traits and desires in a “dating profile.” When she found out we had both a competitive hockey player and figure skater (one of whom went on to play in the minor leagues and the other went on to appear as Pocahontas in Disney on Ice) in our class, she had us watch The Cutting Edge in an attempt to make romance blossom. And she shared embarrassing stories (though she didn’t seem to see it that way) about how she would secretly watch her crush by climbing his neighbor’s tree. 

The Ana rouse wasn’t an easy one. I had to invent all sorts of her interests and personality traits to write about, too. Fortunately, her hobbies were things like futbol and fotografia and other vocabulary words that were in our text book. I’m sure it would have been less work if I had just found a real Spanish speaker to correspond with. But then again, nobody said that maintaining a fake Canadian Spanish girlfriend would be easy.

thenewhotness:

popculturebrain:

Watch This: Splitsider Presents ‘The Exquisite Corpse Project’ | Splitsider

Comedy website Splitsider just launched a new digital distribution label ‘Splitsider Presents’ and their first release is the hilarious feature film ‘The Exquisite Corpse Project.’ Available for $5 over at their website.

Director Ben Popik gathered together his former comrades from the legendary sketch group Olde English and tasked them with writing a movie. The catch: each of the five writers wrote 15 pages and only saw the previous five pages of the script. He then shot the movie they wrote, as well as documentary footage of the writing process and all the drama that it entailed, and put them all together into a unique comedy.

I had an opportunity to see the move last night and it is really something special. Besides being extremely funny and charming, it speaks volumes about the creative process, collaboration and friendship. The way the documentary aspect mirrors the narrative they wrote is fascinating. The film becomes much more than a silly project, but rather evolves into a statement about human nature and relationships. You definitely haven’t seen anything like it.

Go get it. For real. You won’t regret spending the $5.

I am so excited to finally watch this

I was invited to a screening of The Exquisite Corpse Project at a festival last year, and if I’m being honest, I was skeptical about the concept. But since I went to high school with the director, Ben, and my friend Leigh was one of the film’s editors, I figured what the hey. I loved it, though. Not, like, “proud of my friends” loved it, but genuinely loved it and would have enjoyed it just as much if I didn’t know anyone involved.

The premise is that five comedians write a movie script “together”… but really separately, because each one can only read the previous five pages before contributing his own section. It’s a funny idea - and an activity I’d love to participate in, I might add - but I had doubts whether a movie that’s humor is derived from inconsistent characters and a disjointed plot could sustain laughter for a full 85 minutes. It’s sort of like when someone’s like “Read this Madlib we did!” Sure it’s amusing enough, but it’s never going to be as funny to an outsider as it was for the group of people who played the game. 

Don’t let that aspect throw you, though. First, I underestimated how funny the movie would be from start to finish. Second, I wasn’t aware that the film would be at least half documentary, and that ended up being its strongest component. Ultimately, the story behind the story is more riveting. Plus, it’s never a bad time to see a bunch of comedians discuss the creative process and snark on each other. 

And while this is going to sound hokey, I feel like The Exquisite Corpse Project taught me something about human nature. Ben’s goal with this project was to reunite old friends who had gone down separate paths in the hopes of rekindling the magic. Alas, it doesn’t quite work out how he expected: people change and so do their relationships. Thematically, it really resonated with me, and that’s not something you find in most comedic films.

The fact that you can purchase it for $5 is a steal, so get on that.

The Bombers Are Going to Get Away with It

Nah, this isn’t some conspiracy theory. I’m not even talking about Boston. I’m actually referring to that OTHER explosion that killed a bunch of people and injured hundreds more last week. 

Oh right. The news pretty quickly forgot about the West, Texas fertilizer plant explosion. I mean, it was reported initially because there was a chance that it was another “terrorist” attack, but then once everyone realized it was just a case of corporate irresponsibility, the mentality was, “Fuck that, we have some dangerous sorta brown men to catch!” 

I’m not about to directly equate a terrorist bombing and an accidental explosion because there is obviously a difference in intentionality. But here is a fertilizer plant with over 1,000 times the legal limit of explosives on site that didn’t pony up for sprinklers or fire safety precautions. Not only were they maximizing profits by exceeding the allowed output, but they were cutting corners on minor expenses that would keep their own employees - and the whole town, as it turns out - safe. 

And then there’s the government’s role in the ordeal. No inspections had been performed on the plant in 6 years. In fact, on that last visit, the company was found to not have safety procedures in place. As a result, the plant was fined $2,300. That’s a laughable business expense, not a punishment, for a company that rakes in millions. 

This is GROSS NEGLIGENCE. Although they weren’t purposely trying to blow up a whole town, they knew they were running that risk for a long time and chose to value extra profits over attempting to prevent a catastrophe. 

For months to come, however, we’re going to hear about what we need to do, who we need to kill, and which Constitutional liberties we need to sacrifice in order to keep us safe. Safe from terrorism, that is. No one is going to try to hold this company accountable or vilify it in the media. No lawmakers are going to cry for sweeping corporate safety reforms in order to protect Americans, even though more people were killed/harmed in West. 

So when the state starts justifying racial profiling/immigration reform, adds even more invasive forms of airport and event security, and decides its in the nation’s best interest to read your emails without a warrant all in the name of “SAFETY”, don’t believe that bullshit. It’s part of a preexisting agenda. If they actually cared about your safety, they’d, you know, pass gun control (which kills an exponential amount of people compared to terrorism) or enact meaningful safety regulations in the workplace. 

For the record, the government’s excuse is that we are in a deficit and because of budget cuts, we can’t afford to conduct safety inspections. Still, they’ll find hundreds of billions to spend on a war against a country to get “revenge” for a terrorist attack it had no part in. (Don’t act like it’s never happened before.) 

Oh, and before I’m done, I also want to say “Fuck a terrorist!” Ugh. Dudes, you got gripes about America? You and me both. But violence is not only reprehensible morally, but also, dare I say, counterproductive. If the intention of the bombing was to somehow undermine the United States, all it did was make its population fall more in love with the state and law enforcement, and that renewed trust and loyalty will ultimately contribute to more corruption. 

In that sense, terrorists are as dumb as they are evil. Corporations, meanwhile, are as smart as they are evil… after all, at least they know they can get away with it.