At some point on Saturday night a BMW SUV decided to park illegally in front of our building. No big deal. Until the bastard’s car alarm went off every five minutes, and proceeded to go off every five minutes the rest of the weekend. As you can imagine, it was beyond annoying.

I woke up this morning (after being awoken by the damn car alarm), went downstairs and wrote our friend a little note. It said (and I’m quoting):

ENVELOPE:

Dear Genius

LETTER:

1. Turn off your fucking car alarm. No one wants to steal your Small Dick Mobile.

2. Learn how to park.

3. Next time I see your car in the neighborhood I’m going to let the air out of the tires.

4. Fuck you.

Love,
A Friend

On my way to go workout this morning, I placed the sealed envelope under the driver’s side windshield wiper, setting the car alarm off (me slapping my hand on the hood of the car might’ve had something to do with that) and I walked away.

I came back from working out about an hour later and my wife called to say that she saw someone had left a note on the aforementioned car. I told her it was me, and she started laughing.  I then read her the contents of the letter, and she laughed some more.

At this point (9:00 AM, Monday morning) the car alarm was still going off, so my wife jokingly said:

“You should call the cops.”

So, I did.

I informed the police of the illegally parked car, but more importantly that the car alarm had been going off for two days now. The friendly dispatcher said they’d send someone over, so – with nothing else to do – I waited by the window until the cop showed up.

Less than five minutes later (slow day?) the police officer pulled up behind the BMW and sat there for a few minutes. The cop then got out of the car with a ticket in his hand. When he went to put the ticket under the windshield wiper, he saw my letter sitting there.

He OPENED the letter and READ it.

For a brief second I worried about DNA testing, handwriting analysis, and lifting finger prints from the letter. Then I realized: I don’t care! At least a court date would give me something to do.

I then started to laugh my ass off as I watched the cop read my finely-crafted prose. The cop then folded the letter, placed it back in the envelope and stuck it underneath the car’s windshield wiper with the ticket and drove away.

The BMW is still there. I’m hoping to catch a glimpse of the owner when he returns to the car (let’s face it, what the Hell else am I going to do today?).

Rest assured, dear readers, if I witness the owner’s return, it will be documented on this very site.

And if I don’t witness the owner’s return, I’ll make something up.

Love,
A Friend

UPDATE: The car sat there all day with the alarm going off every five minutes.  Around 6:00 PM I heard a truck with a diesel engine idling outside my window.  Hoping it was a tow truck, I ran upstairs to see what was going on.

It wasn’t a tow truck – it was a friend of Mr. BMW SUV’s… jump starting the BMW, which now had a dead battery.  Excellent!

I had to go get the mail, and since I could now see the owner of the BMW, I decided to go outside and say hello.  I didn’t want to start a fight or anything like that, I just wanted to walk by – like I was a casual spectator – and say something along the lines of, “Gee, I wonder why your battery is dead, moron.”  Then walk away.

Unfortunately (for me), a train had just stopped at the station and let everyone out, so there were a lot of people on the sidewalk. So, rather than make a scene, I decided to keep walking.

An hour earlier we’d gotten a freak snowstorm that covered all of the cars, and I was concerned that he wouldn’t see my letter sitting on his windshield and that it would just get brushed away with the snow.  Thankfully, that wasn’t the case.  I walked by his car, and saw him sitting in the driver seat READING MY LETTER! He had just gotten done reading it when I walked by and he was folding it up and putting it back in the envelope.

Even though it was too dark for me to see his reaction, I like to think he went home and cried himself to sleep.

MISSION: Accomplished

If you go to enough concerts in Chicago, you’re bound to see this clown reading one of his rambling poems before the main act hits the stage. In the last eight years, I estimate that I’ve seen Thax read a poem at least 50 times at various concerts. Even when Thax isn’t reading his poems, he finds a way to find me and my friend. He stood next to us in the crowd at not one, but TWO Lollapaloozas, and in a crowd of 75,000 people, that’s hard to do. Thax used to open up every Wilco show with his stupid poems, until they grew tired of his act and told him to piss off. Hopefully the rest of the world will catch on soon.

But I digress.

Girl Talk (Gregg Gillis) took the stage and announced that this Chicago show was the biggest headlining (i.e., non-festival) crowd that he’s ever played for.  I believe it.  The Congress Theater holds 2,890 people, but that’s when the venue abides by the city’s fire code, and trust me, they weren’t abiding by shit this night.

3,000 people may not seem like a lot, but let me remind you that this is a guy standing on stage pushing buttons on a laptop computer. I couldn’t get 3,000 people to show up to one of my shows if I promised to do the Macarena in the nude while singing Spice Girls songs.

Believe me, I’ve tried.

I’ve been to plenty of crowded shows before, and I’ve also been to CROWDED shows. This show was CROWDED. Like, if you raise your hands above your head you won’t be able to put them back down because the crowd just took up the space your arms used to occupy. Being the tall freak of nature that I am, crowds like this don’t bother me, but I can see how normal people could easily get lost forever in the sea of people.

This is what the Congress Theater looks like when it’s empty:

This is what the Congress Theater looked liked at the Girl Talk show:

The crowd was already buzzing, but when the music started, things got insane.  The bouncing started at the front of the floor then worked it’s way all the way to the back until all 3,000 people were jumping up and down.  Not to mention all of the people on stage, some of whom had already reached 3rd base and were on their way towards home plate with their dance partners.  The beat was infectious and you had no choice but to dance.  Even if you shouldn’t can’t dance (like me) the movement of the crowd automatically turns you into fucking John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever.

At shows like this you experience what I like to call “Crowd Churn.” This basically means that the people standing next to you at one moment most likely won’t be anywhere near you the next moment.  The pushing, bouncing and booty-shaking make it impossible to stand in one place for too long.  Again, being tall, this didn’t bother me, but it wasn’t long before I saw dozens of people – overwhelmed by the crowd – fighting their way through the people towards the back of the venue.

I tried to resist the urge to dance, starting at first with a simple head-bob, but the head-bob turned into a head-bob and sway, then the head-bob and sway turned into a head-boy and sway and ass-shaking, and then it turned into a full on head-bob, pogo-sticking, I-hope-no-one-I-know-ever-sees-me-doing-this (except my friend standing next to me, doing the same damn thing) dance.

In a two hour span we heard Outkast coupled with Spencer Davis Group, Ace of Base with Cat Stevens, even Busta Rhymes with Phil Collins. 

Girl Talk shows start off with a bang and gradually build momentum until the crowd is in a near frenzied state, leading to the hands-swaying, confetti-flying, hundreds-of-balloons-falling-from-the-ceiling finale featuring Journey’s “Faithfully” (you can see a very shaky/annoying video of it here).

Whether or not 3/4 of the crowd even knew that “Faithfully” was a song before Girl Talk got his hands on it is irrelevant.  For that moment, we were all one, basking in the glow of Steve Perry (surprisingly, I didn’t laugh when I typed that).

As the outro of “Faithfully” played on a loop, Girl Talk jumped into the crowd and surfed over the top of everyone’s outreached hands – all the way to the back of the Congress Theater, right over my head, 100 feet away from the stage.

It took a few minutes for him to make it across the crowd, but when he finally ended up at the soundboard, he grabbed a mic, lead us in a few more WOAH-OH-OH-OH-OH! hand-swaying sing-alongs from “Faithfully,” and said goodnight.

I was sweaty, I was tired, but I held my own against those glow-stick-waving whipper snappers in the crowd who were half my age.

Take that, bitches!

Play your part…

The Death Set, that’s who.

Here’s a picture of The Death Set playing at one of their packed concerts:

If I had to say one good thing about The Death Set, it would be this:

At least they weren’t another rap group.

How does one describe the music of The Death Set and do so with a straight face?  Well, you can’t – it’s impossible – so I’ll attempt to describe their fan base:

They’re young, most likely tone deaf, enjoy skateboarding, and survive on a steady diet of Taco Bell and Red Bull.

Yeah, I think that about covers it.

The Death Set hail from… somewhere, and I’m sure the people from that place The Death Set are from hold a special place in their hearts for them, but we big city folk have an issue with guys standing up on stage, mindlessly banging away at their instruments and shouting nonsense into microphones.

Except when Kidtronik and Hollywood Holt do it.  Those dudes fucking ROCK!

When The Death Set walked out on stage, nobody really knew what to expect.  Rap music was playing in the background, but we saw two guitars and a drum set, and we all know neither of those things have anything to do with rap.  Then the drummer sat down and started playing samples of the most random songs you’ve ever heard.  There was something from the Jackson 5, something from Salt n Pepa, and something from some rapper who – let me tell you – was no Hollywood Holt.  But things got weirder when the drummer (and nobody else) would play along to the sample.  The crowd would go wild, and I would think to myself:

Wait a second… is the crowd actually cheering the drummer as he plays along to a prerecorded song?

Yes… yes they were.

So, The Death Set drummer would bang away at some stupid song – that wasn’t theirs – for thirty seconds, then the rest of the band would break into one of their own songs (and I use the term “songs” very loosely here).  The average length of a Death Set song was 1 minute, 49 seconds, and while I couldn’t understand the lyrics, I’m certain each song was about the $700 billion Government bailout and the Mensa meetings the band members attend each week.  At the end of the song, the drummer would play another random sample, (“Look, he’s playing along to ‘New Sensation’ by INXS!”), and then the band would play another one of their songs.

The only conclusion I can come to as to why they play other people’s songs in between their own songs is this:

People can’t boo you if you never stop playing.

My favorite Death Set song of the evening was the one with the droning one-note guitar played at blinding speeds, the screaming, unintelligible lyrics, and the abrupt, senseless ending.

In other words: every one of their songs.

And just in case you think I’m giving these guys a bum rap because I’m a grumpy old bastard, see for yourself…

It was hard to tell from where I was standing at the concert, but it looked like the lead singer was 5-feet 1-inch tall. Nobody said that height is a requirement for full-on, balls-in-your-face rocking (right, Maroon 5?), but this guy is way too short to be fronting a… whatever kind of band this is.

It was now 9:45 – over two hours since Hollywood Holt took the stage – and our test of endurance sanity patience was now over.

It was time for the fun to begin.

(PART 5, The Conclusion… Friday)

After an unforgettable and inspired set by Hollywood Holt, it was now time for the fun to really stop start.  My friend and I wondered how anyone could follow such an epic performance, but we were about to get the answer.

Like before, a DJ came out and spun some records.  I’ll call him George.  George told us how much he “fucking loves Chicago” and that the next act was going to “blow your fucking minds.” We’d been promised the same thing with Hollywood Holt, and don’t get me wrong – my mind was sufficiently blown -  so I was anxious for the next group to take the stage.

That group was Kidtronik.

Much like Hollywood Holt, Kidtronik was made up of a DJ and a rapper (from the streets?).  I didn’t think it was possible to trump Hollywood Holt, but Kidtronik took the theatrics much further, proving who the true professionals were on this night of music.

Not willing to rely solely on their powerful music, Kidtronik utilized the giant projection screen behind them to its greatest potential.  With this image…

Do you want to hear something really crazy? My grandmother has this exact same painting hanging above her couch.

Anyway, Krak Attack was not just a cleverly designed graphic and catch phrase.  Oh no, it was also the cornerstone of Kidtronik’s message:

Kidtronik loves krak!

Before you get all judgmental and start to accuse Kidtronik of promoting drug use, realize that they’re not referring to crack rock, they’re referring to the crack you see when girls bend over while wearing low-cut jeans.

See?  You were all ready to criticize the group for sending a negative message, weren’t you?  I bet you feel stupid now.

The songs of Kidtronik stressed the importance of “fucking” and “balling,” and what it’s like to live on the streets (who knew it was so hard?).  A few songs into the set, after teasing us for almost half an hour with the Krak Attack poster and not telling us why it was so important to them, the time came for Kidtronik to explain it to the crowd.

But this was not something Kidtronik could handle.  No, this was a job for the Krak Monster (aka Kidtronik wearing a mask)!

Krak Monster is the alter ego of the lead singer of Kidtronik, and Krak Monster loves krak. To demonstrate just how much Krak Monster loves krak, he brought out two low-cut-jeans-wearing girls to dance while he sang a song about how much loves krak.

Maybe it was an accident, or maybe it was planned, but as these girls dance I actually saw their crack krak.  It suddenly made sense to me.  There Krak Monster was singing about krak, and before my very eyes was the krak that Krak Monster loves so much.  At that moment I felt an inner peace that I had never felt before.

The Krak Monster hath spoken, and this man doth listen.

I couldn’t wait to get home and call my grandma to tell her that I’d learned the origin of that painting she loves so much.  But it was late, so I ran to the merchandise stand instead, picked up a copy of the new Kidtronik CD, Krak Attack, and sent it to my grandma using overnight delivery.

It’s weird, I thought she would’ve called me by now, thanking me for the CD, but she must be busy.  You know how grandmas can be sometimes.

(PART 4… Thursday)

Most of the concerts I go to have one or two opening acts – some forgettable, some memorable (for various reasons). Girl Talk had three opening acts. I had heard of none of them.

It’s hard to categorize Girl Talk, but based on the number of hip hop/rap samples he uses in his songs, it’s understandable why the majority of Girl Talk fans are also hip hop fans. Even though some of those samples are backed by Sinead O’Conner music.

I’m by no means a fan of hip hop, but I am able to appreciate and identify when hip hop is done right (on those rare occasions). Unfortunately, none of the three opening acts I saw on Saturday night could do anything right.

Let’s start with Hollywood Holt (not to be confused with Des Moines Holt).

I don’t know much about the guy, but I’m going to go out on a limb and say he’s from the streets.

Hollywood Holt, if that assumption is incorrect, please feel free to correct me.

Before Hollywood Holt came out, the crowd was “warmed up” by a DJ. I’ll call him Frank. Frank – also from the streets, I presume – spun a few records and repeatedly asked the crowd if we were ready for Hollywood Holt. Every time he said this I cheered loudly, but only because I couldn’t understand a damn word he was saying and was hoping he was saying, “This is our last song.”

The records continued to spin (and spin), and after repeated promises that Hollywood Holt was going to “blow your fucking minds” because he is “so fucking insane,” the man of the hour finally took the stage.

Within the first two minutes he was on the stage, Hollywood Holt had already removed his shirt, turned his baseball cap sideways, and said the word “fuck” (or a variation of) 327 times.  He rapped about being from the streets, shooting cops, and “fucking the bitches” (I prefer to call it, “slappin’ that ass,” but that’s just me).

For almost five seconds during his performance I actually forgot where I was, but thankfully Hollywood Holt would yell, “What’s up, Chicago?!” in between every lyric and remind me.  Oh, that’s right! I’m in Chicago!  Sometimes he would mix it up by yelling, “What’s up, Chi-Town?” I’m so used to not being pandered to at a concert I’d almost forgotten how refreshing it is when it actually happens.

There was a long period of time where I was standing there, watching this brilliance up on stage, and I had no idea what to do with my hands.  Do I fold my arms like a disapproving old bastard?  Do I place them behind my back like a waiter at a fancy restaurant?  Do I put them in my pockets to keep them warm?  Thankfully, Hollywood Holt told us to, “get your motherfucking hands in the air” at least every other second, so I never had to make the decision myself.

And lest we forget who is up on stage, Hollywood Holt came up with the completely original, never heard before chant of:

“When I say ‘Holly’ you say ‘Wood!’”

“Holly!”

“Wood!’

“Holly!”

“Wood!”

Nothing beats a good call and response.

But Hollywood Holt saved his most valuable lesson for the end of his thirty minute (!!!) set.  In between songs he asked the crowd if we knew what ________ was.  If I could tell you what word he was saying, I would tell you, but I have no idea what he said, so we’ll just call it ________.  Judging by the fact that only seven people responded to his question, I’m guessing I wasn’t the only one who didn’t understand what he said.

Anyway, Hollywood Holt went on to school the crowd about what ________ was all about.  He said, “fellas, you know how when you’re dancin’ with a chick and she rubs her ass against your dick?” (don’t we all…)  Well, according to Hollywood Holt, ________ takes that further.  Instead of just letting the chick rub her ass against your dick, you need to pound that ass while you’re dancing with her (I’m paraphrasing here because this part of the lesson was more visual than verbal).

I texted my wife and told her how excited I was to demonstrate ________ on her when I got home.  She didn’t respond.

I will never forget the lesson and profound words Hollywood Holt shared with me on that cold November night.  Never.

(PART 3… Wednesday)

These days, I rarely need a reminder that I am no longer a kid.  By the age of 31-years-old I had already had back surgery, and all I need to do is look at a picture of the back of my head to know that my days of flowing locks of Fabio-like hair are gone.

Usually, Lollapalooza serves as my annual reminder test of endurance to show that I can still keep up with the youth of America.  I put on a brave face while at the show, but what the kids don’t see is my wife carrying me into our home over her shoulders each night. Eventually, I recover, and throughout the year I continue to put my body (and sanity) to the test by attending multiple concerts and events.

This week started off like most weeks – standing in Grant Park on Tuesday night with a crowd of 250,000+ people for six hours, watching the first African American man be elected President of the United States.

But I can do that any day.

Friday night was spent with a couple of good friends/former coworkers, drinking beer at a bar where Paul Newman and Tom Cruise once walked.

Then there was Saturday.  Saturday would be the true test.

Let’s flashback to August for a moment. Lollapalooza was a long weekend filled with many, many bands that I was excited to see, but one act I was most excited about was Girl Talk.

Girl Talk isn’t a band, it’s a person – but even more than that – Girl Talk is an event. His set was on one of the side stages, usually meant for crowds of a few hundred people. The band playing before Girl Talk hadn’t even finished their set yet and the crowd had already swelled to easily a few thousand people. By the time Girl Talk hit the stage, the crowd was whipped into a frenzy from the first note, and not a single person wasn’t dancing.

Even I was dancing.  Keep in mind that I only danced twice at my own wedding – once with my wife, and once with my mother.

My friend and I had to leave the Girl Talk set a little early to make our way to another band, which was a painful decision at the time. Fortunately, the band we left to go see (The National) put on the best show at Lollapalooza. But the damage had been done – we had drank from the Girl Talk Kool-Aid, and we knew we had to experience one of his shows again.

Which brings me to last night.

The Congress Theater in Chicago isn’t one of my favorite places to see a show, but I’ve been to worse venues. Back in August, while I was in England, I learned that Girl Talk would be performing there in November, and I knew I couldn’t miss this, so I bought two tickets (one for me, one for my wife), and so did my friend.

My wife ended up getting sick yesteday, so I met my friend at the Congress Theater about 30 minutes before the concert started. He had gotten there before me and had already staked out a claim on the floor. As I was walking down the street towards the venue I got a text message from him that would paint a picture of things to come. His text said:

“Dude, we are fucking old!”

I’ve been to enough concerts to know that I am usually one of the older people in the crowd (what that says about my taste in music, I’ll leave that for you to decide). Anyway, it’s not unusual to be surrounded by college-age kids, but I was not prepared for what I was about to see.

The Congress Theater is similar to most mid-size concert venues in that there is a stage, a big open floor, and a small balcony with seats. Thirty minutes before the first opening act was to take the stage, the floor was only 1/4 full. The average age of the people on the floor was 13 years old.

Let me take another step back and explain what Girl Talk is all about.

Girl Talk is essentially Pittsburgh native Gregg Gillis and a laptop computer. Gillis takes samples from literally hundreds of songs and uses them to create new songs (think: the chorus of Kelly Clarkson’s “Since U Been Gone” set to the guitars of Nine Inch Nails’ “Wish).

I believe the kids call it a “mash up.”

Now, this isn’t Tone Loc using Van Halen’s “Jamie’s Cryin’” to make “Wild Thing” – what Gillis does is truly impressive.  There are a number of “mash up” artists out there, but none are as creative and entertaining as Girl Talk.  He wasn’t the first person to use this technique, although he is, in my opinion, the best.

Since Girl Talk is just one man on stage with a laptop, that visual probably wouldn’t make for the most compelling concert experience. So, he invites hundreds of people on the stage to dance while he performs.

Did I mention the guys that run around the stage with guns that shoot rolls of toilet paper into the crowd? What about the part about how Girl Talk performs in his boxer shorts and nothing else? How could I forget that?

Back to the crowd.

It’s not a requirement, but the more bizarre your outfit, the more likely you will be called up on stage to dance.  I saw everything from Green Man, to a guy wearing a construction helmet with a spinning orange light on the top, to a girl dressed as Roller Girl.

Here is where we start to run into some problems. Let’s take Roller Girl, for instance. It’s hard not to check out a girl when she’s dressed like that (just watch Boogie Nights if you don’t know what I’m talking about), but things get dicey when that girl turns around and you find out that she’s 13-years-old.

My friend even joked that we shouldn’t take pictures during the concert because then we’d be in possession of kiddie porn.

We both laughed nervously, acting like neither of us had anything like that on our computers already.

I realize that every generation complains about the youth of the generation that follows them. And I realize that most people swear they’re never going to be the type of people that criticizes the youth of today (Hell, I was one of those people), but…

HAVE YOU FUCKING SEEN WHAT THESE GIRLS ARE WEARING THESE DAYS?

I went to high school.  Granted it wasn’t a very big high school, but the girls I went to high school with DID NOT dress like this.  Girls I went to high school with wore baggy sweatshirts that went down to their knees, and acid washed jeans.

And that’s when they were trying to get laid.

Girls these days are wearing dresses so short that I can tell you what brand of underwear they’re wearing (Victoria’s Secret… or nothing).  A girl would walk by last night and I’d think, “Heeeeey…!”  Then she’d turn around and she’d have braces on. I saw sequined mini-dresses, hot pants, shirts so tight I could count how many ribs the girl had, and enough makeup to cause Miley Cyrus to blush.

I mean, these girls were YOUNG.  Like, standing-in-the-same-room-with-these-girls-makes-me-a-candidate-for-that-”To Catch a Predator“- show young.

This would be the first rock concert in the history of rock concerts to not have any bras thrown up on stage…

Because the girls in the crowd weren’t old enough to wear bras!

I told my friend that the only time I felt more uncomfortable was when I was the only person in the movie theater watching “300.”  Two hours of shirtless, sweaty men – and me sitting in the theater by myself.

(Let’s never talk about that again, okay?)

And don’t get me started on the dancing.  When I was in middle school and grade school, guys dancing during fast songs was, well… let’s face it: a little gay.  When I was these kids’ age I would stand in the corner of the cafeteria with my friends waiting for the DJ to play a slow song so I could ask a girl to dance.  Then, when we did dance, you could fit a Volkswagen between us.  That probably had something to do with my constant drooling and heavy breathing while I stared at the girl’s breasts, but… hindsight, it’s a bitch.

Today, kids dance so close to each other that I’m fairly certain I saw 47 girls get impregnated with their clothes on last night.  Good for the guys I guess, but Christ I hope I never have a daughter.  The guy I went to the concert with has a young daughter, which would probably explain the sweat I saw pouring down his face while he watched what I was watching.

This all happened before the show even began.

(PART 2… Tuesday)

First there was this.

Then there was this.

And then there was the greatest hits montage.

Just when you thought Cincinnati had done everything possible to convince me to never move back there, this happened:

Michelle Allen was… wait a second! That’s a woman?! I was almost certain that was Rerun dressed as a cow. Guess not.

Anyway, Michelle Allen was arrested for “disorderly conduct” and “chasing children in her cow suit.” If that’s not enough, Allen also took a leak on her neighbor’s porch.  Which is no easy task while wearing a cow suit.  Trust me, I know.

When Allen appeared in court the following day…

SHE WAS WEARING THE COW SUIT!

It’s moments like this that embody the tag line of the Greater Cincinnati Convention & Tourism Board:

Stay With Us, And We’ll Stay With You.™

So true. So true.

Schadenfreude

Etymology: German, from Schaden (damage) + Freude (joy):
Enjoyment obtained from the troubles of others.

Welcome (back) to The Last Dog & Pony Show.

I’ve been told by more than a few people that I may not be spending my unemployed-time as constructively as I could be.

Those assholes are dead to me.

So, I haven’t updated this blog since, what, April?  Get over it.  The reason why I haven’t updated it is because I have ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO SAY.

But I’m going to try to change that.

Over the course of the last five six seven eight nine ten months my days have been a maddening routine of the same shit, day-in and day-out.

I wake up at the same time every day, go workout for an hour, I come home and take a shower, then I plop down in front of the computer for the better part of four or five hours. Much of this time is spent (fruitlessly) searching for jobs, following up with people, and responding to rejection-letters with profanity-laced e-mails and shallow threats.

Suddenly the Unabomber’s manifesto is making a lot of sense.

(I learned that a good way to increase site traffic is to mention the Unabomber in posts, so…)

In some ways those people complaining about my lack of “updates” are right (but mostly they’re wrong).  What people fail to realize is that it’s hard to be productive/creative when I spend most of the day searching for jobs.  It’s also hard to be productive when I’m being kicked in the nuts every day by companies not interested in hiring me.

Believe me, if I could spend more time sniffing glue I would, but it’s just not possible right now.

Whatever.

The truth is that there is a finite amount of time that one can search for a job in a given week.  Job postings are updated every day, but the bulk of them appear on Mondays.  Every subsequent day sees fewer and fewer postings.  So, on Mondays I’m pretty motivated, but by the time Thursday rolls around I wonder if dropping the computer monitor on my head would end it all.

Then I realize that I need the computer monitor to see the job postings, so I put it back on the desk and hope for things to get better.

Because I’m an anal-retentive freak I keep a list of all the jobs/places I apply to.  The list contains the name of the company, a link to their website, the job title, and how and when I applied.  I also paste the job description into the document so I know what job I’m talking about when somebody calls.

(Nobody calls)

I keep this list because if (and I do mean IF) a company calls me back, sometimes they call me weeks after I applied to a job, and by that point I have no idea who the company is, let alone remember what the job details were.

For months I’ve been blindly adding to this document each day, not really paying attention to its size.  It wasn’t until a few weeks ago that I realized this document is now 60 pages long and contains over 185 jobs.

Of those 185 jobs, seven (7) of them have called me back for interviews.

(But the economy is fine… nothing to see here… move along…)

If I was a baseball player I’d have a .040 batting average (and would probably be the starting centerfielder for the Cincinnati Reds).

For the last ten months my wife and I have survived on the severance package from my previous employer, unemployment checks, and loads of sex.  The severance is long gone, and the unemployment is about to run out (although the Government has $700 billion lying around to rescue struggling businesses).

Unless I choose to sell my penis to science, at least my wife and I will always have the sex.  But truthfully, I’m considering selling my penis to science.

I could go on bitching forever (and I probably will), but I don’t want this blog to turn into all doom & gloom.  I’ll try to keep it to no more than 87% doom & gloom.

So, after much encouragement and complaining from friends and family, I give you the “new” Last Dog & Pony Show. I figured now would be a good time to relaunch the site so you could actually watch a human being crumble before your very eyes.

The first thing you’ll notice about the new LD&PS is that it’s now housed on WordPress (where it will stay).  I have two other blogs on WordPress (the internationally acclaimed Chris Sabo’s Goggles and the sub-par Suds on the Roof), so it’s easier to manage this when I can access all three sites from the same dashboard.  But you don’t care about that nonsense.

The second thing you’ll notice is that the much-maligned white-text-on-black format is GONE! I could explain the reasons why I went back to the more traditional black-text-on-white, but why do that when this link proves my point.

All of the content from the Blogger version of The Last Dog & Pony Show has been carried over to this new site, but you’ll find some things missing (and a few formatting issues) that I’m just too lazy to go back and correct.

I’ve also resumed posting fake product reviews* on Amazon.com, if you care.

*If you’re an Amazon.com employee I assure you that all of my reviews are genuine, so please don’t take them down (again).