the japanese are weird

so back in april, i pointed out to you the incredibly awesome manage-to-go-to-the-toilet-pants-man potty-training acid freakout, a post which dutch subsequently outdid me on.

but now! the good peeps at boing boing have directed my attention to the wildly popular (in japan) BUTT BITING SONG!!!!!!

watch this. this is for children -- it's a video about a bug that bites butts and all the hilarity that ensues, which makes one wonder: is an incredibly catchy song about the joys of ass-biting strangers something you want to expose your children to repeatedly? is this really the message we want to disseminate, japan? probably not. but i kinda want the mp3.



the big city butts are bitter! don't i know it.

anyone got any contacts at time warner they can grease?

hey. computer at home still dead. can't blog much of substance from the orifice. hence, i am angry. are you?

if you're in new york, make yourself feel better and go to the bloggy good after the jump music fest. your ears will thank you.

hi, hat!

hello i am back. my home computer is dead. maybe because i haven't paid my broadband bills in about 35 months. hopefully i will get it up and running soon so i can post photos and tell you all about my (mildly surprisingly) excellent summer vacation.

meanwhiles ... watch max roach get busy on this hi-hat. may he rest in peace:

didn't it rain?

oh yes it did rain. our basement flooded. again. we were lucky. at least we don't live in the part of brooklyn that had a ... what's the word? ... TORNADO. oh yes.

anyway. it rained and thundered and the kid's room looked like Studio 54 on Free Blow Nite -- lightning-induced strobe galore. and she woke up at 5:30, which is actually a good thing becuase otherwise we wouldn't have known that it was the Second Coming of the FLOOD in our wee yellow home and that our basement was, as we said before, flooded.

this is all neither here nor there. the main point is that i have precisely 12 minutes to write the remainder of this post. we are boarding a plane that will take us to germany. it will take 7.5 hours. we have a toddler who DOES NOT FLY WELL. so. we commissioned a study. we bought an OTC generic brand benedryl and dosed La Fille on thursday to see if she would A) sleep or B) not sleep. the verdict: inconclusive. we have no idea what effect benadryl had on our child. and that's too bad because we're giving her the FULL DOSAGE TIMES EIGHTEEN as soon as we board our red-eye to germany in three hours (the car comes in T-minus 11 minutes)(ok i just got a call from the car service telling me they'll be here ON TIME so i'd better wrap this up)

we're going to be out of town for the next 11 days or so. don't expect updates. i will try, but i am not optimistic. i hear the internets in chermany comprise a series of tubes, which could be problematic. will see what i can do. in the interim ... watch some nice stax video footage, have a mani-pedi, treat yourself to a few cosmos and then come back to see the ...

HORROR THAT WAS MY SUMMER VACATION!!!!!!

speaking of anniversaries ...

this is my 500th post

honey, baby, i been told: you know how to shake your butter roll ... BREAKDOWN, CHILDREN!!!

hi there and hello. and thank you for the kind comments and e-mails congratulating us nice guys on our anniversary. let me be clear here. for all of our five glorious years, i am hardly looking to hog the spotlight. it has not gone unnoticed by yourn truly that there are other occasions currently occurring that bear celebratin'. indeed i would be remiss as a nice guy not to point out to you that a family very near and dear to my heart of hearts is currently celebrating a very special benchmark as i type this sentence.

that's right. stax is turning the big five-oh, peoples! stax--the label that brought you otis redding, booker t. and the MGs, isaac hayes, carla and rufus thomas, the staple singers, sam and dave, the bar kays, the mar keys, eddie floyd, william bell, mabel john and MANY, MANY MORE--is 50! can i get an amen? failing that ... can i get, maybe perhaps, a witness?

here is where you come in, perspective putative witnesses: my four ventricles are currently bursting with love and admiration (and O-positive blood) for the peoples of stax, past and present. so my gift to them is a feeble gift to you. for your edification, entertainment, enjoyment, enlightenment, education and general good-groovy getdown butt-buckling benefit, i have compiled a tiny collection of video clips. these will make you deeply saddened by the fact that a certain independent record label from memphis will probably never be eligible for the Presidential Medal of Freedom nor the Nobel Peace Prize. be that as it may, let us be frank: the only person you are cheating by not watching these is yourself:

here is sam & dave telling you, live, to "hold on." why? because they're comin' ... and dammit if they don't sound sincere. this performance is SERIOUS--i am talking about world DOMINATION in eight minutes. this is check and mate. "i'm coming," indeed:

From Crackle: Sam and Dave - Hold On, I'm Coming (1967)

(sadly, even as you are still recovering from your groove-induced grand mal seizure, the above player automatically will go on to the next, less awesome video. ignore it and move on to the rest of my stax-related post of goodness!)


remember when otis redding showed up at the monterey pop festival exactly 40 years ago this summer and showed all those dirty hippies how it's really done? how it's all about the SHAKE?! no? well, watch ... and, bless my heart, isn't that a Smother Brother introducing him?



(can you believe otis was only 26 when he died? take a moment to absorb that.)

green onions--stax house band Booker T and the MGs live! this is what the monster that ate you was listening to as he was eating you. because people-eating monsters only listen to people-eating monster music. and this is a monster. ooooooof. let it eat you whole.




the staple singers want to know: "when will we be paid" (and i am pretty sure this question isn't directed at stax management)




rufus thomas asks "AIN'T I'M CLEEEEAN?" lord, yes you are--and, come on dude, you kinda know it. this chunk of Wattstax, by the way, is how i learned to dance. don't believe me? come to the next wedding/bar mitzvah/irish wake i'm invited to. then stand back and watch me conquer the dancefloor with one knee tied behind my back.



(incidentally, i don't care if you're man, woman or fowl ... if you watched that entire clip and DIDN'T fall head over heels in hopeless love with that girl in the wee red dress, well, you probably aren't human and i probably don't want to know you anyway.)

the best laid plans of mice and men ( ... to, uh, get laid best)

hello hale and hardy hoodlums! what news with you? i will tell you what news with us nice peoples: last friday we entered into our sixth year of marriage, marking with due diligence our fifth anniversary.

oh such crafty schemes i cooked up for my spouse mouse. we went out to dinner on friday, the actual day of our anniversary, quite pleased with ourselves for having made it out of the house. then we called it a night because i had work in the morning. and that was it.

OR SO SHE THOUGHT!!!

on saturday morning i kissed my wife and child goodbye said "i am going to my office now because, as you know, i work on saturdays, so i should leave the house now and go directly to the office, where i work on saturdays, in order to work."

OR SO I LED HER TO BELIEVE!!!

for then i walked over to brooklyn's enterprise rent-a-car and rented-a-car. then i hid it near my house and went to the office to kill a couple hours while my in-laws, mrs nice guy's parents, drove down from vermont. when they arrived, at around 2 pm, i met them and all together we went to nice guy world headquarters to surprise my wee bride. the plan: to whisk her out of town for a weekend of incredibly fine dining and obscenely restful luxuriating, devoid of two-year-old as the grandparents hover at the homestead.

oh, the month of planning was worth it just for the expression on my baby mama's face. i walked in the door with her parents and she looked up from her lunch and said "hi. hi! hi? wha?"

nice in-laws: hellllloooooo.
mrs nice guy: hi. wow! what are you doing here?!
mr nice guy: happy anniversary. i'm taking you out of town for the weekend.
mrs nice guy: wow! i ... ok. wow. um, all my clothes are dirty.
mr nice guy: start packing! by the way, you don't have an all-day meeting on monday. i set that up with your colleagues so you could have the day off.
mrs nice guy: ok. wow. really?
mr nice guy: and your playdate tomorrow was a decoy as well. you don't really have a playdate tomorrow. we're going to the hudson river valley. WITHOUT OUR CHILD.
mrs nice guy: wow.

and then i whisked her away!

[editor's note -- i wrote everything preceding this note last tuesday. i should have just posted it then because i foolishly thought i would be able to fill in the remaining details. BUT I DID NOT. so instead i will basically leave it at that]

[ok, fine, i might be persuaded to add the following, incomplete, rundown of what we did next]

into the rental car we hopped. onto the brooklyn-queens expressway we skedaddled. up to the hudson river valley we put-putted. the main thing to bear in mind here is that the important fact of this getaway was that it was a GET AWAY. it was not really necessarily a destination vacation. for example: we stayed at a B&B in white plains. as in white plains, new york. as in westchester comuterville suburbia--you know, where people who work in new york city live when they have money and lots of pleated khakis. but here's what i figured: the important thing was that we could SLEEP IN for two days and maybe, if we weren't sleeping, drive around the resplendent hudson river valley.

we got to our B&B, an elegant circa-1920 victorian manse on 4 acres of verdant spread. it was, upon first impression, imposing, slightly decomposing and an intriguing mixture of lovely and creepily menacing. we walked inside and a little old lady walked up to us. she greeted us. she made small talk. she offered us water and had us fill out a form. she chatted a bit. talked us up. then she chewed the fat a little. and then, maybe because she hadn't had any visitors in a while, she talked some more. and then she showed us our room. but first she talked some more. and also she did a little yammering. and ... just when the wife and i were sure she was going to kill us and serve us for dinner to the SSOLGTSEYEUYT (you know, the Secret Society of Old Ladies who Get Their Strength for Endless Yapping by Eating Unsuspecting Young Tourists) ... she left left us alone.

ten minutes later--just as my wife and i were wondering if it would ever be possible to have surprise-anniversary-trip coitus in this place even if we were the last people alive--the proprietress called me from downstairs on my cell phone to see if everything was to our liking. i told her i was too busy receiving fellatio to formulate an articulate answer but if she would be so kind as to call back in about 27 seconds, i would give her a full report. actually, no, i told her everything was fine except for the fact that we were so scared of her we may never sleep again.

the highlights of the trip!:

• dinner at blue hill at stone barns. sweet jesus! people, promise me one thing: promise me you'll eat here before you die. the restaurant is on a large chunk of old Rockefeller estate. it's still a functional farm: they grow and raise just about everything they serve. the food is so juicy-fresh it practically slaps your face for drooling on it when it arrives. (and slaps you again after you've eaten it ... when the bill arrives.) think of it as Alice Waters-on-Hudson. probably in my top-five dining experiences.
• speaking of rockefellers, we went to Kykuit, John D.'s hudson retreat, which he handed on to Junior who in turn left it for Nelson. nice digs. take the hugely-long walking tour--otherwise, you'll never fully realize exactly how bad your taste is and how depressed you really are about not being the richest person in the world.
• we took a lovely drive all the way up the valley, stopping here and there. had a little brunch in Cold Spring. went to some excellent antique shops--i bought me a beaten-up old rickety washboard! the real deal, a gorgeous thing. now all i need is a few thimbles and i can join me an old-timey string band. then i'll never be depressed again!
• an afternoon at Dia:Beacon, a whack-job of a sprawling contemporary art museum in a gutted Nabisco box factory on 31 acres of jaw-dropping riverfront land. my tolerance for some of the work exhibited here runs alarmingly low (plywood boxes placed inside slightly larger plywood boxes; an artfully arranged pile of broken glass), but even so the surreal location and serene vibe conspire to make the museum a lovely, otherworldly trip--especially if you're playing hooky. the really interesting thing was a quick drive through the town of Beacon itself. a fun game to play is this: cruise down Main Street and guess which stores opened after the museum plunked itself in town, and which storefronts predate the fancy cityfolk interlopers and their high-falutin' broken glass.

as perhaps befitting the celebration of a work-in-progress marriage, there were a few setbacks, a couple of unexpected obstacles. for example:

• Big W's Roadside Bar-B-Q is apparently closed on mondays. i had thought it would be the perfect thing to do--go to Dia:Beacon, then take our appetites out for some delicious "slow chicken." mrs nice guy, a true bbq enthusiast, enthusiastically agreed. so our plans were set! alas. Big W had other plans ... plans that involved not serving us mind-confoundingly delicious bbq! plans that resulted in my wife's ferociously giving me the silent treatment for about 100 miles because i should have "called in advance" and because "we could have gone there on saturday instead of traipsing around Cold Spring and buying that ridiculous fucking washboard." [URGENT UPDATE: mrs nice guy wants me to inform you that she never actually uttered the preceding sentence out loud and that my grave editorial misjudgment will be punished with involuntary abstinence until i de-sully her name. she's all good with the washboard! and she only gave me the silent treatment for about 50 miles! sorry for misleading you all!]

all in all, though, i have only this to say: happy anniversary mrs nice guy! my love runs deeper than the hudson river valley and higher than the rockefellers' tallest mountain estate!

(and the next time i do something catastrophically stupid and possibly life-threatening, please remember my lovely five-year surprise to you!)