I know what you're thinking.

Where's A.P. been?
He's been motherfucking busy, that's where he's been.
I ain't forgot about you.
Don't you forget about me.


That's all I'm gonna say about that.

I'm so thirsty...

When I lived in Bed-Stuy Brooklyn, I always drank 40 ounce bottles of Colt .45 malt liquor. Either that, or Steel Reserve. Why? Becuase that was what was available. That's what they sell in the stores in poor, predominately black neighborhoods like Bed-Stuy.
But what is malt liquor? Why do they call it, "liquid crack"?
And why is it always available in impoverished neighborhoods? And, perhaps most importantly, why is Seattle, WA trying to outlaw the sale of such malt liquor?
There's a simple explaination for this consumer anomaly.
Poor consumers want and need to get the most for their money. And booze is no exception. So, they reach for malt liquor with the highest alcohol content (one 24-ounce can of Steel Reserve costs $1.39, and has the alcohol content of four shots of whiskey), so what do the producers of these malt liquors do? They target poor minorities through advertisments like the one above. Or this one. But it wasn't always like that.
However, these days, in places like Seattle, the government is creating legislation to ban the sale of malt liquor in certain neighborhoods in an attempt to rid the streets of drunks and... well, the type of people that drink malt liquor. How much malt liquor advertisements influence their target demographic or are merely resultant is up for debate.
What isn't debatable is that this legislature is descriminatory, aimed at a specific consumer: poor minorities.
Quite simply, the mind of the government thinks: "How do we get rid of the people we don't want? Oh, we'll just ban the sale of what they drink!"
And worse yet, it will definately put hard-working shop owners who rely on their malt liquor sales out of business.

Sink or Swim? Float! ...down the Mississippi that is.

“Now and then we had a hope that if we lived and were good, God would permit us to be pirates.” –Mark Twain

They’re setting out any day now. For two weeks now they’ve been stationed in Minneapolis, Minnesota building and constructing and preparing. And they’re almost ready. Ready to do what?
“We want to meet people who aren’t like us. We want to meet ourselves at age 16. We want to be a living, kicking model of an entirely different world — one that in this case happens to float. Plus we suspect that there is something wildish about seeing the stars night after night from the grand old Mississippi.”
They are called The Miss Rockaway Armada. About two dozen artists, performers, and renegades from Brooklyn, Seattle, San Francisco, and a few places in between aiming to float from Minneapolis to St. Louis, stopping along the way to spread music, art, and everything they hold dear.
Their vessels, three 20-foot barges constructed with found Styrofoam and salvaged wood, run on two Volkswagen Rabbit engines converted to biodiesel and capable of running on vegetable oil.
Part snake oil medicine show, part punk band tour, part nomadic tribe...
Will they make it to New Orleans, or even St. Louis? Perhaps. And perhaps that's the best part.
For me, the core of this mission, like any adventure, lies not in the destination but the journey. In these modern times, when air-travel is as easy as a mouse click and summering tourists clog the highways, it’s absolutely beautiful to see something like Miss Rockaway: young Americans, living frugally, enacting a vision, and taking it all the way down the throat of the Mississippi River.



photo by: Tod Seelie. See morehere

Threat Level: Critical Threat.

Great. More terrorists.
Really though, two days before I’m suppose to fly into London there’s some messy terrorist plot thwarted by the police. Apparently the plan was to use carry-on luggage chock full of dynamite* to blow up the planes mid-flight from the UK to the USA. Authorities claim the “significant” plot involved up to ten airplanes.
But we foiled them again!
After 25 arrests in London, 21 remain in custody. And now, according to England’s super-secret domestic spy agency, MI5 007, the country is at the highest threat level: critical threat!
Critical Threat: “An attack is expected imminently and indicates an extremely high level of threat to the UK.”
Meanwhile, I’m searching google for “hip London bars” and “strip clubs London.”
I should be searching “London Bridges falling down” or “Survival tips at 60,000 feet.”
Damn terrorists. Always one step ahead, always fucking up my travel plans.
It’s not enough that I get ass-searched every time I fly but now I’m gonna get the random selection latex double-dip!
Yes!



*That’s not true. Terrorists don’t use dynamite. It was probably some sort of liquid explosive in an Avian bottle.

Working for The Man.

That's a photo of my boss and me. Her name is Sara.
Last night we had a few drinks at a restaurant where my buddy Ries was having a going-away shindig before his two-week jaunt in Morocco.
The last time I hung out with my boss was at a similar dinner party at her apartment for our co-worker Amel who was leaving Fabrica. We got drunk that night too. But last night, unlike the time before, we didn't go for a walk down to the river and I didn't get naked and I didn't jump into the river and bare-hand wrestle a swan.*
The time before that, if my memory serves me right, we went to the circus and watched like wide-eyed children as the ringmaster paraded camels and horses and hippos in front of us.
Sara loved that shit.



*True story. No photos.

Just because you're paranoid, doesn't mean they're not out to get you.

Finally, someone said it!
John Mueller recently wrote an essay titled “A False Sense of Insecurity?” in which he espouses, with great evidence, that we are far more scared of terrorists than we should be.
Did you know that since the late 1960s (when the US State Department began counting) the number of Americans killed by international terrorism is the same for the time period as the number killed by lightning, accident-causing deer, or allergic reactions to peanuts.
And that includes the 3,000 killed in the September 11th tragedy.
Even in Israel, four times as many people die from car accidents than from terrorism.
So where does this intense fear come from?
Terrorism expert Brian Jenkins says, “terrorists want a lot of people watching, not a lot of people dead.” And that’s exactly what they’re getting.
In 1982, Tylenol capsules filled with cyanide killed seven people, yet it generated 125,000 stories in print media. Suddenly, the country was terrified of Tylenol and this attention cost the manufacturer $1 billion.
Of this ubiquitous fear, Senator John McCain wrote, “Get on the damn elevator! Fly on the damn plane! Calculate the odds of being harmed by a terrorist! It’s still about as likely as being swept out to sea by a tidal wave. Suck it up, for crying out loud.”

Word o' the day: Lickable

What happened to advertising? Really. They just don't do it like they used to. Looking at this ad makes me want a fucking creamsicle. I want a creamsicle like I've never wanted anything before in my entire life. If you were sitting next to me holding a creamsicle right now, I would kill you for it. I would choke you with my bare hands.
Because creamsicles are so damn lickable.
Just like child gymnasts.
It's OK.
Don’t feel bad. There’s nothing wrong with your confusion, that disturbed, guilty feeling in your loins. It’s natural.
You can look. Just don't touch.
Lickable.


National Creamsicle Day is August 14.
Go lick something.

Bank robbers are much sexier than sceenplay writers

Last night I watched the latest Spike Lee joint, "Inside Man." It's a movie about a robbery, what the ringleader and mastermind calls "the perfect robbery." And in the opening scene, during a Five Ws monologue by said robber, he states that the "why" of the robbery was "because I can."
OK. Let's think about this for a moment.
We got this guy named Russell Gewirtz. And he's a writer. He's in the shower one morning and slips and hits his head on the sink and when he comes to he has this idea, an idea for the "perfect robbery."
He spends the next few weeks writing a screenplay about the idea, calls it "Inside Man," and eventually Spike Lee directs it.
My question is, Why the fuck didn't he just rob the damn bank?
I mean, he probably got a few hundred thousand, maybe a million dollars for the script, certainly advanced his career, but he didn't get away with a truck full of cash.
Screenplay writer: stuck in traffic on Sunset Blvd. arguing on his cell phone with his agent.
Successful bank robber: sipping cocktails on a remote beach next to his napping supermodel lover.
Or better yet...
Maybe he could have sold the robbery plan to a high-paying crime network. I'm no Hollywood buff but I think crime-networks have as much if not more money than film producers. But I think they have the same amount of cocaine.
It's just so boring when art imitates life. What happened to life imitating art?
We've all seen "Dog Day Afternoon," now that was based on a true story, a bank robbery gone horribly wrong one August day in New York. But wouldn't it have been better if they filmed "Dog Day" on that hot afternoon?
Imagine this: "Inside Inside Man: A Documentary."
Russell Gewirtz should have implemented his robbery and filmed the whole damn thing. That's what's up.
Rob the bank and make the film.
No one thinks outside the box anymore.

The Hansi & Andy Band Band!

We've been practicing like maniacs. Hansi on the drums, me on the xylophone, Hansi on the synth, me on the drums, Hansi on the cowbell, me on the synth, both of us on the xylophone, and we even do a couple a cappella numbers.
And we fucking rock!
We head for the studio next week to cut our first album, tentatively titled "The Return of The Hansi & Andy Band Band."
And the album is slated to drop in October because our producer thinks it would be best not to compete with all the other summer albums.
Besides, our style, our genre is more for the Autumn listeners. We don't do summer jams. Our cuts are deep and thoughtful. Especially numbers like "We Eat You," and "Put Your Finger In My Penis," and, everyone's favorite, "I Hate Hating You."

Out last practice session ended in a naked cake fight with our upstairs neighbors. They came down to complain, we threw cake, got naked, and eventually won them over with our lively music and unabashed “Bake Rock.”

And there’s plenty more where that came from.
Stay tuned!

God made you in his own image.

I don't care if this is photoshop or not. A chimp face tattooed on your snatch is the best goddamn thing the internet has ever given me. Just imagine those little chimpanzee eyes gazing up at you as it swallows your shaft. It's the best of both worlds: you get sex and the illusion of beastly fellatio without the guilty feeling that comes with primate oral!

I have the strength of one thousand men.

On Friday night I got a little drunk
Then I ripped the phonebook in half.
I didn't think I could do it. No one thought I could do it.
But I did. It.

Then we went online and watched other people rip it up: Old Toothless Rip, Superman Rip, Dorm Room Rip, Talent Show Rip, Crackhead Rip, Way Too Serious Rip.

It's not a game, or a science.
It's an art.

And only when you achieve a technique that transcends technique will you be able to rip a phone book.
There is no opponent because there is no you.

There is only the phone book.