Some of my friends are sickos

I got this video on an unmarked DVD in the mail back in January, but had trouble posting it then to YouTube, and just now when someone commented on it (illiterately of course) I realized it had posted after all.



Now, I am really disturbed by the Saw movies. I actually cried a little during parts of Saw II because I was so freaked out. For my own mental health, I refused to see Saw III. I'm a lifelong scary movie fan, but not a gore fan; I don't need that kind of torture.

I knew exactly which friends were responsible for this stunt, just like I did when they mailed me a similar Saw-themed message on a cassette along with an old key about a year before that. Knowing the pranksters' identities didn't make it any less creepy, but in case this isn't also clear, I love 'em for it, too.

On the Radar

This is exciting: I'm quoted in a review of Naked Man Magazine™®©®©™ on the website of the very cool pop/politics/scandal/style mag Radar. And they didn't even make fun of NMM™®©! Sort of.

Saying Something Nice About Celebs Wednesdays™

Readers, it's not easy finding nice things to say about celebrities, let me tell you. But I'm not going to stop being the Only Blog on the Internets to Not Take Pleasure in Celebrities' Tragedies Weekly. And so, I have a new plan. Remember my totally radical collection of early '90s RockCards and MusiCards? I've still got 'em. And on those (many) weeks when a celebrity does not suggest him or herself, I shall dip into my supply to find a candidate.

Here's some tidbits I dig about Alice: If you could go back in time to an Alice Cooper concert in the '70s, who wouldn't do it? That would be a show!

He's shown up several memoir books I've read lately (Lonn Friend's Planet Rock and Pamela Des Barres' I'm With the Band and Let's Spend the Night Together) and in every case he came off as a nice, normal Midwestern guy.

I once had a pink 8-track tape of an Alice Cooper album (when I had the 8-track player in my '83 Mustang) and in some fit of insanity must have gotten rid of it. This shall remain one of the top regrets of my life until I replace the item. Did I mention the cartridge itself was PINK?

Until then, I have this record:
1978's From the Inside, one of those (vinyl) albums that turns music-owning into a visceral pleasure. The album cover, Alice's face, splits open in half to reveal a Cuckoo's Nest-style mental hospital scene, complete with models resembling Christopher Lloyd and Andy Kaufman, and our main man is of course in a straightjacket in a corner. If that wasn't enough fun, on the back of the record cover, smaller-size double doors open up, showing all the inmates being released, running out of the hospital. The album's not even very good, but I have never once kept a mediocre CD just for its cover. And forget getting this enjoyment with downloaded music--where all you have is the music to speak for itself. Here, once again, you have a show.

In 1992 two of my main interests (hard rock and horror) combined when Alice played Freddy Krueger's drunken dad in Nightmare on Elm St. VI! That movie was 3-D! Obvs, it ruled (to me, back then).

Alice is also a born-again Christian & philanthopist but hasn't renounced the horror schtick.

Someday I hope to say hello at Alice Cooperstown, Alice's restaurant in Phoenix, while eating some overpriced curly fries.

The least I could do

So I'm on all these lefty liberal mailing & emailing lists, and because I am lazy and poor, I typically comply with the appeals that require the least effort and no donations. The other day, off went this email, and the immediate response is beneath that.

From: cokane@
To: info@exxonmobil.com, kenneth.p.cohen@exxonmobil.com
Subject: Exxon Valdez Oil Spill
Date: Fri, 23 Mar 2007 13:01:07 -0500
Dear Mr. Rex Tillerson,

For more than 18 years, the victims of the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill have waited for ExxonMobil to make their community whole again as Exxon promised within the first four days of that fateful and devastating oil spill. Since 1992, 6,000 people have died waiting for compensation from ExxonMobil.
As you know the oil spill destroyed the livelihoods of thousands of Alaskan fisherman and their families and decimated the ecosystem. The multi-million dollar herring fish industry, upon which the local economy and ecosystem depended, was wiped out by the Exxon Valdez oil spill and remains closed indefinitely.
ExxonMobil has dragged this case and the lives of some 30,000 people and their families through the courts since 1994--thirteen years.
I urge you to pay the punitive damages owed to the plaintiffs for what the courts deemed was reckless devastation.

Colleen Kane


From: Postmaster@exxonmobil.com
To: cokane
Subject: DELIVERY FAILURE: User None Delivery Reports/ExxonMobil (None Delivery Reports/ExxonMobil@na.xom.com) not listed in Domino Directory
Date: Fri, 23 Mar 2007 13:01:07 -0500

Your message

Subject: Exxon Valdez Oil Spill

was not delivered to:

None_Delivery_Reports/ExxonMobil@exxonmobil.com

because:

User None Delivery Reports/ExxonMobil (None Delivery Reports/ExxonMobil@na.xom.com) not listed in Domino Directory


Ahh, the old "User None Delivery Reports" story. My message and presumably many more were never received.
C O I N C I D E N C E ?
Ah well, I tried. Kind of. Not really.

A Bronx cheer

My fams and I went to The Orchid Show at the NYC Botanical Garden in the Bronx on Saturday.





Just being surrounded by gorgeous flowers and other botanical delights jacked my spirits as I wandered around smiling. It underscored that I'm not meant to live in a city, at least not full time, which I've known for awhile.





So just don't be surprised when this blog is one day transmitted from somewhere way prettier than my current fuggo street in Brooklyn, where you are guaranteed to see a trucker toilet (bottle filled with urine) every time you walk down the block.



I'm just sayin'. But I promise that after defecting to nature, I won't become one of those Stepford-moms-by-way-of-NPR who blogs photos of the different perfect vegan lunches she packs for her child every day. First of all, I would never do that to a kid. (I thought I was practically abused as a youth for having wheat germ in my yogurt and getting fruit as my lunch snack.) Secondly, I hope to never have that much time on my hands to waste on someone who's probably selling his soul for Twinkies in the lunchroom.

But I digress. So then we went in search of Arthur Ave., aka the Little Italy of the Bronx, for lunch. Two nice kids helped us find it. On the way, my brother and I, both veteran garbage pickers, stopped short at the same item in someone's trash: a black square case with a handle on it. I frantically opened the latch, hoping it would be a typewriter: IT WAS! Yoink! And quick as that, I became the proud owner of an antique typewriter. 100% off, Buy zero, get them all free! Yessssss. The 'rents, by now quite used to their offspring toting home ridiculous curbside finds (I learned it from watching you!), took this in stride and even helped carry it.



Then we all had an amazing Italian lunch. It looked a little bit like this:



Three cheers for the Bronx.

Extra casual Friday

There was another wacky Playgirl party last night, and I intended to stick to my usual four-drink-on-full-stomach-over-several-hours plan, but party enforcer Jess got me that one last Jamesons, and who was I to refuse? So this morning, departing from chateau my beau, I couldn't bear putting heels on again and went with the only other option, flops, plus his shirt and sweater which are way too big for me. Now I look like a hobo lady* but not in a "fashionable" Olsen-twin way, and I'm all lastnightsmakeup.com. And yet I still think I had a few fellers checking me out, though they might have been considering offering me some change, which I would not have refused either. Today's ensemble is also remarkably similar to how I dressed in college. (The coat, a faux-fur '70s number that should have been retired several winters ago, I did wear in college.) I wonder why I never had a boyfriend back then?

*Remember when a popular default boys' Halloween costume was "hobo"? That's kind of messed up.

There goes the neighborhood

It's been awhile since I've remarked on the soul-crushing experience of working in Midtown, and that's because I've been busy trying not to let the man bring me down. When walking about the area, I try to focus on the least fuggo parts of the landscape, some of which for me are low-rise, mostly-residential buildings like these on Third Avenue in the low 40s.



These holdouts are dwarfed on almost all sides by high-rises that make a stroll through much of Midtown feel like you're in a windy, oppressive, manmade canyon.

My grandparents used to live in this general area in the '30s and '40s, and when I went to where their former address should have been, I found a soulless wall of glass and steel stretching up to the sky. [sad horn sound] But I like to think it probably looked like those buildings above. Additional character of this kind (actually much more quaint) remains on Second Avenue in the high 40s through the 50s, for now.

I'd just noticed the other day that this building, which stands catty corner to the ones in the first photo, had not only had an empty storefront for months, but that the whole building had been empty.



Then yesterday, up went scaffolding and a demolition sign on the side. But at least Midtown will have some more offices, and another bank, right? Yaaaaay Midtown. I can't wait to spend more of my life there.

SSNACW™® spesh edish

Who's that guy with the stammery voice?
Ganglin' down the street?
Who's that geek with the blonde on his arm
Who everyone wants to meet?

Most mothers want him in their bedroom,
Because everybody* loooves Jeff Goldblum!

Charming and disarming and oh so sly
Remember that time he turned into a fly?

He's courteous to me and he's witty to you
He is my favorite tall lanky Jew**

Nerdy women wanna zooma zooma zoom zoom,
Because everybody* loooves Jeeeeff Goldblum!


* Not everybody
** Other than Howard Stern

Do it for JOHNNY!

I got nothin' today, you guys. CoKane is a bit stressed.
Anyhoo I just watched part of The Outsiders the other night. Did you ever notice that Tom Waits is in that movie?
EVERYBODY is in that movie: [l to r:] Swayz, 'Stav, Mach, Dill, CTH, unidentified greaser, and Cruiseazy.

Weekend table talk

("Table talk" is a lame catchall phrase for this food-themed post, but I also know Table Talk from my cashiering days as the Official Affordably Priced Personal-Sized Pie of Sad Old Bachelors™!)



On Friday I rustled up a dinner of roasted red potatoes and a tofu-spinach pie (pictured here in leftover format). "So this is like an eggless quiche?" the BF confirmed. Yes: a complete lack of animal products had rendered the meal even less manly than quiche.

We decided this meal (and similar testosterone-depleting meals) would be known as "a ticket to the Lilith Fair."

Then for SP day, I went over to my pal Jess' & she, Reilly, & I drank whiskey and obnoxiously tried to sing along to Clancy Brothers songs, not to mention a few Air Karaoke chestnuts you can call up from In Demand from the Oh! network. We were later joined by other humans and almost as many dogs (totaling four punt-size yipyips, and one actual dog). I brought homemade vegan soda bread and Jess made green mac cheese, or as she called it, Mick Cheese.
















I think this is the native food of Ireland. If not, it should be. BTW It's totally OK to shun green beer in one post and celebrate Mick Cheese in the next.

In the final food development of the weekend, a recently observed decline in my love affair with fake meats continued, as I was again unappetized by and dissatisfied with my order from vegan fast food joint Foodswings. This phenomenon coincides with a re-embrace of cheese into my diet. I don't think there's any danger of turning back into a cheeseatarian since I actually enjoy vegetables now. So don't worry--I intend to maintain my girlish figure and continue to impoverish myself by trying to buy organic cheeses.

Get it right on St. Patrick's Day Amateur Night

There's a lot to be embarrassed about on St. Patrick's Day if you consider it from the point of view of a real Irish person from Ireland. It's like Ignorant Drunkfest Plus Green (and dont' forget that ancestor we might have had from Ireland). Just imagine if they had George Washington Day in like Spain or Finland and the celebrants got everything totally wrong and took one of our country's known vices and went insane with it, like if everybody ran around in Uncle Sam hats and murdered each other for oil on that day.

Just a few examps that (from what I can tell) we get wrong:

Booze: No one drinks green beer in Ireland, although they might now since I've heard that St. Patrick's Day, once more of an American celebration, has gotten big over there. I'm pretty sure they wouldn't be too big on a drink called an "Irish car bomb," either. Drink whiskey, dammit.

Accents: Apparently no one in America can do an accurate Irish accent, so it is common practice to get any slob off the street who has never heard an actual Irish person speak and put them in a Lucky Charms commercial or whatever the gig is.

"Top o' the mornin'": As far as I can tell, no one has ever said this in Ireland or here in the past several decades, except when imitating an imaginary Irish person in a fluttery bad accent. Maybe like, Magillicuddy the Friendly Cop used to say it here in NYC in the '40s while twirling his nightstick.

Oh, and Irish-Americans who want to give your kid a really Irish name? No one names their daughter Colleen in Ireland, in my experience. I've encountered people over there who didn't believe it was my name. As my brother's Irish priest pointed out to me, it's what they call the girl dogs back home. (I was like, "Thanks a lot, I'll be sure to come to church real soon!") The original Gaelic form, "cailin," means "girl"--so I think it's equivalent to us calling a dog Lassie. So it's a robo-Irish-American name, but it's not like calling your kid Sinead or Siobhan. I have no problems with my name, mind you. Just sayin'.

I plan to celebrate by hiding inside, making some soda bread, and possibly drinking some whiskey.

Wait--they airbrush magazine cover images?

I had to do a double take at what at first glance appeared to be a beautiful teen on the cover of the latest Allure magazine. Did Michelle Pfeiffer even look this young when she was that young?

Just think: Many of these bozos bred

And their offspring are old enough to do this now.
And, did I just spy a Nazi salute?
Annnd, was that an old blues man in the crowd?

Their offspring should peep this, courtesy of a posting on feministing today:

Saying Something Nice About Celebs Wednesdays!™

Today's SSNACW™®©© is by demand of SSNACW chum, reader, and fan julepandme. I suspect she has some pertinent info on deck to comment with. But I wouldn'ta done it if I didn't agree this person was worthy of praise: Drew Barrymore.



I can't say I agree with Drew's taste in goofy men, and I'm not a fan of her Valley Girl vocal intonations, nor am I a fan of the rom coms she so often stars in. All that being said, here is one of the few women in Hollywood who actually wields some power--flower power that is! AHHAHAHA (Her production company is called Flower Films, and she is a producer on many of her latest movies.)

As everyone knows, Drew was a drinkin' and druggin' wreck at a very young age but turned it around, and now appears healthy with an unapologetic twist of California ding-a-ling. She also just seems like a fun, positive, real person. And (all together now), she is a longtime vegetarian, a philanthropist, and just a general hippie. Which we all know I love.

Somewhat disturbingly, when you do a Google image search for her, almost the entire first page of results are nude or semi- nude, and a lot of them are obvious Photoshop fakes. (As everybody now goes off to Google...) You would think this now relatively wholesome lady spent most of her time prancing around in the altogether rather than being a savvy businesswoman. That's the Internets for ya.

Sound machine

After recently experiencing my apartment's trippy midcentury light box affectionately known as The Relaxer, Awesome Flight Attendant Amanda presented me with a Buddha Machine. It's like a lightweight transistor radio that plays a choice of nine ridonkulously relaxing ambient sound loops. (Batteries included!) You can download the sounds from the website, but it's not the same as having this music box. Use it for chillaxing, meditating, blocking out street sound, and mindfully consuming low-protein foods while becoming highly suggestible. I'm not clear on what I've been brainwashed to believe yet, but I quite enjoy the process.

And Helloooo, McFly.

I'll post about my action-packed New York weekend prob tomorrow once I get ahold of some of the 8000 photos my guest took. Meanwhile:

Two jokes which have been around like my whole life but which I never got until 2007:

* Eighties icon "Max Headroom"...a warning sign somewhere with a low ceiling clearance would have this phrase! I just thought it was a weird name, and was confused in general when it came to this guy.

* Infamously sparring comic strip couple "The Lockhornes"...like, they're locking horns! All the time! This was one of many things I'd see as a kid that made me dread being a grownup.

Mail call

Why does the post office spend our money on promotional mailers like the above? I don't know anybody who has ever liked or wanted to be like Cathy. Were Momma or Funky Winkerbean not available?

Deep thoughts

A recent posting by Ms. NFS really tickled my fancy, as she linked to a story reporting the discovery of 20 new shark and ray species in Indonesia (a country which has been having quite a time of it lately--check their disaster timeline here).

Which reminded me that I love, love, love the story of the coelacanth discovery: in 1938 professor Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer found among a local fish catch a huge prehistoric fish long thought extinct. After many years and much investigation, scientists found this fish not only still existing, but doing OK for themselves! (And one was spotted in a market in rare-fish hotspot Indonesia.) Of course they had been lurking all along in the deepest parts of the oceans, which are some of the only not-fully-explored frontiers left on our planet. We still might not know half of what's going on down there. That's awesome! Who knows what tentacled beasts are still undiscovered? I also find those prehistoric-style horseshoe crabs repulsive and fascinating at once. (The BF pointed out at the Museum of Natural History last weekend that I would regularly go, "EW!" and then run up to whatever disgusting critter I'd seen, like a giant hairy mosquito, or what have you, press my face up to the glass and analyze it closely.)

The following recurring nightmare popped up throughout childhood until sometime in my 20s:
I approach my family's covered pool during the wintertime, and peer under the cover, revealing a horrendous, teeming mass of prehistoric fish and water creatures, all swimming, crawling and winding around each other.

The armchair psycholgist in me thinks it probably says a lot about yours truly harboring unaddressed unpleasant issues. Good thing I've solved them all since then! Ahhhh. Now I'm just kicking back enjoying perfect mental health. I kid, but have to say I feel a lot more together in my 30s. Here's to less mental creepy crawlies and more physical ones (as long as there's glass between us).

Saying Something Nice About Celebs Wednesdays!™

I must say, coming up with subjects for Saying Something Nice About Celebrities Wednesdays™, which began at the dawn of 2007, is proving troublesome already, and it's only March. Oh, celebrities! With their everything!

So today I've added a favorite Internet activity to the mix: Google experiments. I did an image search for "celebrities" to choose this week's subject. All the usual suspects came up for the first four pages of results, your Parises and your LiLos. I didn't find any reasonable candidates until this:





















Yaaaaaaay. It was all the more welcome and refreshing to find her after all the douchers who preceded.

Do I even need to get into why this person rules? No. This photo is like comedy porn to me:








Hooray for celebs who aren't jerks.

NWA day

It may be SSNACWednesday™, but it's also NWA day. This coincidentallly came to my attensh right after I had a most enjoyable walk from the subway exit in the Chrysler building to work, in the snow, listening to NWA's "Express Yourself."

Butterflies were free

I received a copy of Modern Bride as part of a themed bday present from a comedian lady friend, and it has taken its proper place in the magazine reading room (where we also wash ourselves and deposit wastes into the toilet). I imagine I have only just begun to sample its horrors delights and that there's a larger posting to be derived from its nearly-700 pages, but for now, I'll just opine that the term "modern" in the magazine title is loosely interpreted. Today I simply bring you a discovery nestled between small ads in the back:

There is a company that sells butterflies for wedding guests to release after your ceremony. Nothing says "we are the only species on Earth" quite like this magazine, but especially like this service.

This ad stirred memories of a sad anecdote I had long blocked out, involving wedding guests opening boxes to release their butterflies, but instead getting nothing but butterfly corpses fluttering to the ground.

But no--it's OK everybody, because it's practically endorsed by American Indians!™®©

American Indian Legend [from the company website]
According to an American Indian Legend -
If anyone desires a wish to come true they must first
capture a butterfly and whisper that wish to it.
Since a butterfly can make no sound, the butterfly can not reveal
the wish to anyone but the Great Spirit who hears and sees all.
In gratitude for giving the beautiful butterfly its freedom,
the Great Spirit always grants the wish.

So, according to legend, by making a wish and giving the butterfly its freedom, the wish will be taken to the heavens and be granted. Unlike Amazing Butterflies™, I don't have any legends to speak for the Great Spirit, but I have a feeling that ole GS would not be too down with trafficking butterflies for profit. And there's something wrong with the logic of using this legend for this purpose, since they're essentially claiming, Hey, buy these creatures that we've stuck in boxes, in bulk, then free them, then nature will be happy! See? Indians tell us so! Those Indians, they are so in touch with nature!

Monday TCB

1. I found out what I want for Christmas this year: a pocket-size mouse lemur, pictured here in stuffed format for viewing at the American Museum of Natural History. I will love him and pet him and call him Lemmy.

2. The new Fox show The Winner is about a thirtysomething loser still living with his parents in the '90s. Hjinks ensue, and so on. I very much enjoyed this show when it was called Get a Life.

3. Black Snake Moan: Oh goody, another "hooker with a heart of gold" movie! I tell you, one thing I have learned over and over and over and overandoverandover from Hollywood is that sluts have the biggest va hearts! It's encouraging that in 2007, there are so many varied roles for women to play. (Especially once they become Women of a Certain Age!)

4. Big thumbs up on the Reno 911 movie and the East Village's incredible all mac-n-cheese, all the time restaurant, S'mac.

5. Obligatory creepo spotlight of the day: this vintage toy, available for purchase at FAO Schwartz. Or, if you like, any vintage monkey toy. Especially if cymbals are involved.

Peas in a 'Pod

I'm just sharing a pair of pairs.






The old man & I compare (MUSICAL!!!)notes on the train. (That "vintage" iPod is mine, of course.)






A visiting birdie couple on my fire escape today. One of 'em (male?) had vibrant red coloring. They were way cuter than my disgraceful neighbors.

Pigeons are such dirtbags

I'm just sayin'. Here we have one of my building's resident red-eyed pigeons, just hangin' out in the rain, scraggely feathers pointing in every direction. It's like, Get it together, man. How hard is it to be a pigeon?

New York is a jerk

It's hard enough getting going when it's rainy, but this morning due to no fault of my own, it took me about an hour and 20 minutes to get to work. It should take about 30, but lately the commute has been getting longer and longer due to packed and/or delayed and slow trains. I'll spare you the boring deets, but do you know what they finally announced the cause of the holdup was? The rain. You know, because it has never rained in NYC before, and water apparently is a wrench that sends into the whole infrastructure into chaos.

Never mind that New Yorkers were all forced to give the MTA a raise from $1.50 per ride to $2, which is an increase of, uh, a large percentage, and the surly workers who you're not even sure are speaking language over the announcement system are most likely making more money than I do for hanging out in a booth or train.

And just for fun, here's a quick list of unlikely examples that offer higher sound fidelity than the subway PA system: the first phone call ever from Alexander Graham Bell to his assistant Watson; my old '81 Mustang's sound system, which consisted of an 8-track deck with blown-out speakers, which I had an adapter for that would play cassettes, which I further had an adapter for that would attach to a CD player; and the game my brother and I used to play while swimming where you both go underwater and one kid says something and the other kid has to guess what they said.

OK, now back to being awesome.

These here are crazy times

As wrapped up as I can get with texting, MySpace, blogs, email, etc., when I stop and think about how much new technology is stepping all over real experience (and privacy), it gets creepy. Yesterday my friend Amanda, who is a flight attendant for Jet Blue, posted a MySpace bulletin telling people to go to YouTube and do a search for awesome flight attendant. You come up with this:



It's HER. Some stranger surreptitiously took this video and posted it. Apparently a fellow flight attendant came upon it by doing a vanity search. But...? Imagine finding video footage of yourself, that you didn't know existed, on the Internet?

Also, the guy who posted the video posted a comment saying he wishes he was there. Meaning, maybe he wasn't even the one to take the footage? Now one of Amanda's other friends posted a comment giving him what-for, and the guy who posted the video responded. Go check it out!

A smashing performance by Arcade Fire

So, you know how the guy from Arcade Fire smashed his guitar at the end of their recent SNL performance?



Word on the NY street, from audience members who were told to stand further away from the band than they'd normally be, and then urged to move an additional number of feet back toward the end of the song, is that the act wasn't spontaneous.