KingLou Drops Science 2.0

Just rang in the new year & decided it was time to share my awesome resolutions begin now! In 2006 I will: 1) Take a class at Columbia. The fucking shit it like $150 for a $4000 class. Why have I passed up until now? Because I am retarded. 2) I will rape a bear. Pretty self explanatory. 3) Look for a better job. If bear raping doesn't pay as much as I am thinking. 4) Finally learn one of the stupid computer programs I bought the instructional books for. I'm looking at you Photoshop, DVD Studio Pro & something else I bought the book for. Probably After Effects (we know that ain't happening.) No, wait, it was Motion. Again, probably not happening. 5) Take another improv class. 6) Revamp my website to be less shitty. I haven't touched the front page of my website in like 4 years. So sad. 7) Learn how to fix more shit around the house. It's pathetic that I don't know how to fix a door knob. Last year we spent way too much $ on having someone come to fix shit around here. NO MORE! Figure out a secondary income stream... Start with bodily products and move outward. Once I start sending out the pictures of Ace people will line up for that baby batter. Fool Proof! 9) Go for more family bike rides. This one relies on other people, too but I want to go for some nice long rides in 2006. I put close to 2000 miles on my legs last year. I want that to happen again. 10) Make more videos. I have some more ideas in the pipeline and I need to get them out faster than one every other year. 11) Work better. I know I can streamline my job even more! HOW!?! HOW DAMN YOU!!! 12) All other resolutions will fit under the #12 provision also known as the "Ain't gonna happen so why bother clause." Happy New Year

I got this new Linksys router to help allieviate some of the gayness of router incompatibility with xBox live and the think crapped out on me mid-config the first time I fired it up. I was pretty fucking angry. First of all the box comes with zero Mac support info. Just a CD for PC-tards to auto config the thing for them. Now I know something about configing the wifi routers because I have had to do it before. I probably whined to one of my many trusted mac dudes who told me the missing step in my path and then I was off. If you were just a regular mac schlub trying to make it in this cold mans world and opened this box with dreams of wireless internet in your pretty noggin then you'd have been pissed. As it is I got it working but not with a password. I couldn't get the WEP working. I thought to myself, maybe I need to reboot the router. So I un-plugged it and start it again and viola! Now it doesn't work. I went to the Linksys website and started looking for tech support. I started trying to get their Live Chat to work. I was using the work iBook to do it and it totally wouldn't work. Safari just waited and waited for the process to start and nothing happened. So I tried a different browser and Camino worked and so did Mozilla. But while waiting in the cue to talk to someone my place in line would re-set. So I would get all the way down to 3 and then suddenly it would say "you are #77 in line." and start counting down again. Finally after an hour, AN HOUR, I got through to a typical numbskull who knew nothing about Macs and after trying some shit I knew wouldn't work advised me to ship the fucking thing back to Amazon. WEAK! Maybe I should have called the Geek Squad? Well now I am looking into a D-Link modem. I have friends who have had luck with them. Phew, sorry for the rant.... just as an experience overall, it sucked. In other news today Jodi and I went to lunch at Gravy on Smith street. I had read some negative reviews of the food and service but we decided to give it a shot. The reviews were not too far off the mark. The attention by the waitress was spotty and the food was okay but not great. The people behind us waited forever for their food and got testy. We barely enjoyed the meal anyway because we were so burnt from all the holiday travels. Still not unwound. The new year is nigh and I feel totally un-rested. So much for a vacation.... In good news I made a very simple mexican shredded chicken soup from my new xmas gift cookbook and it was really delicious. Jodi made some guac and we did it up south of the border style. Orale' Vatos!

Christmas has come and gone. It was a good day. Jodi and I made a deal to cap our gifts to each other at $150 and suprisingly we were both happy with what we got. As you might imagine Ace was pretty bonkers all day. We didn't buy him all that much stuff but he madeout anyway. As usual we spent the early part of the day here in Brooklyn. Jodi and Ace & I opened our gifts and then my mom & bro came over. I made a frittata and we had a nice little breakfast. I did well in the cycling clothes department which is key for the cold months. Have put some of the weight I lost back on since it got cold and I want to get back on the bike. Now I have no excuses! Who am I kidding. I have excuses for everything. Then we headed over to the Bronx to party it up with the Fernandez clan over there. It was pretty typical. Dinner was classically late. We arrived kind of tardy and no one was even close to ready for the fun to begin. People were still desperately wrapping presents up until the last possible moment. At the bronx xmas we do a not so secret santa thing. I keep getting people in my own family. I got my brother mike and I was really trying to figure out what he wanted since he hadn't been forthcoming with what he wanted. In the end I got him some pajamas and then I had these awesome coasters made. He liked it all. I was pleased. Cousin Rick had me and he bought me a bunch of biking gear and the DVD of the film Bachelor Party (starring a future oscar winner TOM HANKS!). I love that movie. It's pretty fucking funny. The dinner started classically late in the Bronx and we finally mde our way home at around 9pm It was a VERY full day. Even more tiring was the fact that we knew we had to catch a flight to Milwaukee the next day at 11am. So we came home, tossed all our booty on the floor and packed and slept. Milwaukee was crazy. We landed and promptly went to the Organ Piper which is a amazing pizza place that features a live guy masterfully playing the organ. The pizza is decent, the beer is nice and the organ music is fucking fantastic. almist as entertaining as the music is just how children get totally turned on by this music and how incredibly stiff the organ guys is. He's a young guy who is an organ master but he must be going insane after his 10,000th request of the chicken dance or edelweiss. After that we put ace down and headed out to an engagement party for our friend Mike. It was in the basement of his superduper duplex that he bought with his brother. I guess he's done a ton of work on it and it shows. It was a jaw dropper how cool he'd made it inside. Just damn pretty. The party itself was totally bizarre. It featured so many people I haven't seen in anywhere from 5-10 years that I felt locked in a timewarp. I got to reconnect with a bunch of freaks from my past so it was a fun time. Most odd was seeing Eva Treiffiessen who I hadn't even thought about since I randomly gave her a ride to her job a few months before I moved from Milwaukee to New York. She looks exactly the same. I didn't really talk to her too much but she apparently she was married at one point, was walking with a cane due to some major hip issues and all manner of issues. Other people at the party were Chris Robles, Mark Cherek, Barb & Dave Schnieder, DJ Brooks, Dan Vernon & his bride, Nate & Shacey Gubin and a few other people whose names elude me. It was a fun time. The next day we did Xmas with Jodi's family. It was just the grandparents and the siblings so it was a mellow time. The kids totally made out as usual. Ace scored HUGE with a fisher-price shopping cart and all these pieces of fake fruit and bread and stuff for the shopping cart. I will post pictures to truely show the magnificence of this thing. Milwaukee bars still allow smoking. If you ever want to figure out why smoking was banned then smell youd clothes after a night of drinking in Milwaukee bars. Holy stench. There has been a veritable explosin of bars in Milwaukee. Everytime we go there a new crop of bars have sprung forth. This time we visited The Palm Bar which had a really cool regular bar and then where there should have been a mirror there was a hole in the wall revealing a second stack of boozxe bottles and a million different types of beer. The actual bar looked like it had been there a million years and was crazy dark. A great dive. The 2nd bar we went to was The Comet. Comet used to be a coffee joint. There was a chinese place that had been there forever next to it. I should have frequented that chinese place more when I lived in milwaukee since it was one of the only non-revolting chinese restaurants I have encountered there. So taht chinese place went under and Comet expanded into it and now sevres a whole diner-y menu and turned into a bar at night. It was beard night when we went there which meant you got some kind of discount on some shitty beer if you look like a bearded asshole. I am just bitter because I only had stubble. Anyway, it was a different vibe but still not one I was particularly enjoying. The final bar we went to was called The Wicked Hop and has a much more modern and boring feel. I can't really say much about it other than it was a nice bar in the third ward. Nothing very exciting. I did notice that when I left they had the same bland rock playing out speakers in the awning outside. I hope thats just left over from the summer when they have outdoor seating. Otherwise it's just outside noise and boring outside music at that. On top of this the east side of city seems to be going through this interesting reclaimation of land from the previous 50 years of highway dominant thinking. They have knocked down all these highway overpasses that used to be odd and underused ways to get to the east side from the highway. At first I thought it was crazy but now I think that they just clearing the land for even more condos. It makes sense but we'll see how long it takes to happen. Finally we took our plane home tonight. It was a pretty uneventful flight. Midwest Express. Free cookies. The usual. The final 45 minutes of the flight were through what can only be catagorized as "Pea Soup" fog. it was the same grey nothing out the window forever. The landing was exciting in that it was one of those plane-listing-to-the-side-hard-bounce-and-insanely-fierce-breaking landings. We got off the plane and the line for a cab was about 80 people long. We've learned that there are more than one place to catch a cab. We walked about 300 feet to the next cab stand and caught one in about 4 minutes. Ridiculous. Finally I received "Brothers in Arms: Earned in Blood" the video game for xmas. It's pretty fucking hard and very much like Full Spectrum Warrior in that it's all whole lot of surpression fire and then out flanking the enemy to kill'em. Pretty damn hard I say. I am going to publish this now because I stayed up WAY too late writing it and it it's WAY too long.

I had today off so I didn't get to experience the magnificence of the transit workers being back on the job. Jodi did manage to make it into work so that she could do all the work that had backed up. She claims she had 350 emails waiting for her. I just looked at the columbia website for video related jobs. There was one hit. It was senior video technician at the Columbia Medical Center. Salary? $36k. That is well below what I am making now and really just a retardedly low sum for the skill set that they are seeking. It's sad to see what the world thinks you're worth. Tonight as I returned a microphone to a friend who'd lent it to me for the Chef shoot a pizza delivery guy rode by in a Texas A&M jacket. I was baffled as to why someone who obviously has zero connection to the college school system would buy a jacket like that. I know the answer is probably because it's a knock off or was in a bin at Salvation Army for a dollar. I was wondering if you made jackets that said "Words" or "Generic College" or "Empty Phrase" or whatever would you see if on these guys? It was funnier when I was walking to drop off the microphone.

I was just reading my last entry. D'OH! I said they wouldn't strike. Shows you what I know about city politics. The transit strike is still in full effect. I haven't been to work in 3 days. I took monday off and I am glad I did. I was sick and I managed to get some xmas shopping done. I was pretty positive they wouldn't strike but boy was I wrong. I read some shit in the times that made me understand why they rejected the last proposal from the MTA. It was a nice change to hear something other than what the TV channels are churning out. Basically each channel just keeps showing how the city is suffering. The Times article showed how the MTA had a good deal on the table and then at the last minute added a deal buster condition that the Union couldn't go along with. Both sides of this whole thing are being fuckers. They should be in the fucking debate room with no food or water until they figure it out. Anyway, I haven't made the 10 mile bike ride to work since the strike hit. Luckily I have lots of vacation saved up soi it ain't hurting the pocket book. I am not looking forward to walking across the Brooklyn bridge tomorrow but I have to head in because the school is closed friday and I need to pick up some shit I left there last week. So tomorrow morning I'll don the old winter biking gear and head into forbidden city. Ace and I both got sick this weekend. Ace's diagnosis was "Bronchiolitis" which is probably what I got, too. But when kids contract it the symptoms are much worse. Nasty egg-white-like snot blowing out of both nostrils and then when that is over a barking cough. I went from sore throat to harsh cough. We're both on the path to recovery but it made for a shitty weekend. Ace actually coughed himself into barfing up his evening milk. He managed to hold it down until Jodi was holding him so she got covered in stomach cheese. The vomit-o-philes amoung you may now service yourselves. It was pretty gross. I managed to get a good nights sleep due to my own self-medicating with codiene cough syrup. It's awesome. I'll say it again. If you are in Maine then go to a pharmacy and get some of the stuff. It's available OTC and it works wonders. to quote my old blog 2001-10-01 - 8:38 a.m. I just got back from what should have been a delightful vacation with my wife in New Hampshire. Unfortunately about a day before we were supposed to leave I came down with some kind of fucking bronchitis. I coughed all the way during the 5 hour drive up from New York to Rye, NH. And let me tell you it sucked and then some. I tried to enjoy myself in the beautiful surroundings and clean fresh air but every breath I took ended in a wheezy death rattle of a cough. I tried to sleep thought the night but this cough was just laughing at Nyquil and all other Dextomethorphan based cough syrups. My mouth as raw from constantly sucking lozenges. After almost going to the emergency room from desperation I was informed that the lovely state of maine sells cough syrup w/ CODINE in it over the counter without a perscription! Needless to say we drove right across the border and bought a delihtful bottle of cough syrup. The only question asked was "have you bought a bottle of this in the last 2 hours?" Awesome. I took it and soon felt the urge to cough melt away. I ask you why isn't it available over the counter here in NYC? The stuff is great. It should be an over the counter thing. Supposedly there's an addiction possibility but I think that'd be pretty hard to do with a bottle of cough syrup. Of course if you're determined to choke down bottle after bottle in order to become adddicted then more power to you. But that shouldn't stop the rest of us from buying cough medicine that is way more effective than DM. I spent about $30 on cough syrup that didn't seem to so shit that this one $8 bottle of codine cough syrup did and I'm still waiting for my mouth to heal from all the damn cough drops. DAMN! So here's to Maine and it's progessive over the counter medicine practices!" xmas shopping is pretty much locked up. This year Jodi and I made a little deal to cap spending at a reasonable and very low #. We're retardedly broke these days. Since it's been so cold and heating prices are so fucking insanely high we keep getting slammed with increases here at the co-op. Well I hit that mxas max$# early and I just wrapped the presents... It is the shittiest, smallest pile of gifts ever. I am feeling my knee jerk reaction to need to go out and buy more presents but I am going to resist. Last year I really over did it so this is the converse solution. Ace is going to make out to a silly level. Stupid even. We moved all his toys into his room and now he always wants us to be in there with him. It's adorable and highly irriatating at the same time. I am like "Lets play in the living room" and he is like "No, daddy. Come with me!" and then he takes me by the hand and commands me to sit with him in his room while he does a series of books readings or other fun games. Johnny Damon is a Yankee. I hate pro athletes. They always say they want to stay but they really want the most money they can get. Fucking whores. I guess the Yankees gave him $12 Million more than the Sox offered. Babylon System. George Steinbrenner should be punched in the wallet until it's in his chest cavity. I leave you with this delightful message from my acquaintance Daniel Ames. My (Son) has gone ripshit about Christmas and insists on adding more decorations to the tree every day. I've never seen a tree gagging so hard for the fucking tree bag and a quiet century of decomposition in a landfill. I love the idea of a spiteful Xmas tree. "Hang shit on me will you?! Have some needles on your floor, fag!" Sigh....

Classically this fucking transit strike is just more over blown blah blah blah from the press. Total hype nightmare bullshit. The deadline has passed and nothing. There isn't going to be a strike. I wish there was going to be a strike. Also its supposed to be snowing here. It sleeted for an hour and turned into the classic OMG SNOW IS COMING = rain and zero new snow. The weather service is fucked. Wrong constantly this year. All they do is sound the alarm so everyone knee jerk over prepares. I am as angry as a guy getting this done to him. NOT WORK SAFE! I went to the Edgeworx Christmas party tonight. It was a nice little shindig. Open bar @ Floyd is never a bad thing. I had a couple of delicious 6 Point's. They even gave my brother a wrist band so I he could partake. I went to the party soI could give Ryan & Trent some lapel pins that I got from a guy from something awful. Really cool little SA emoticon pins. They had special meaning because they are related to the Fugitive Chef. I was glad they both liked them. I have to go to bed now. Will there be a transit strike in the morning? I am betting no but I am hoping yes. Those pussies won't strike. The whole $ damages thing is too scary for those broke worker bums. I wouldn't mind if there was a strike just for the interesting affect on the city. Do I want a long strike? No. But still, they should be allowed to strike. It's a negotiation tactic. i mean you don't want them to use it to hold the city hostage but it's still a tool they have. Word. UPDATE. Only the non-union workers are striking. I knew they'd puss-out.

Friday night I went to Monkeytown in Williamsburg. Still a weird place despite being so overrun with hipsters and development. I mean everywhere yo look things are changing but the main character of the area, desolate, weird, neighborhoody and more are still the same. The only difference is where there used to be an abandoned store for 3 decades there is now a boutique and no one nearby to shop there. I shouldn't really talk about it since I don't really go there but a few times a year. Anyhow, We went to Monkeytown to see a program of Chilean video art. It was better than you might imagine. As in any bunch of arty videos there were a few where I was like "What the fuck?" but there some decent pieces. One good one was a video of Chilean public transit performers. These people were on the buses and doing their thing as if they were on the train in NYC. Rapping and playing guitar. The only difference is that it's on a bus and the bus driver has to deal with the people constantly getting on and addressing the people and selling razors and shit on the bus. Really crazy. One sucky one was just a guy playing a cheesy recording of a laser sound effect while pointing a homemade laser gun at weird chilean architecture. I guess the big deal is that it's illegal to videotape the buildings? It sucked. Another was this video incorporating the Hitchcock film Vertigo. Well actually it was 90% Vertigo with some bad greenscreen work to replace th ebeautiful woman with some big lipped beast thing. It looked like a lot of work but still not enough because the piece was pretty retarded. While we watched the videos we also ate dinner. It had some bizarre but tasty lasagna in a giant bowl. Afterwards we went to a bar called Lahla (I think.) There was some Bluegrass band from Virginia there whipping up a knee-slapping good time. Well they might have if there were more than 8 people there. the music was pretty good despite the fact that no one was really paying attention. I was too busy playing pool for the first time in years. I did really awesome for the first three games and then I sucked hardcore and basically lost the game for us. I didn't mind because Jodi was able to win that game. Something she doesn't do very often in the world of bar sports. Saturday was whirlwind of craziness. We woke up and whipped up some cookies for Meg and Frank's 1 year birthday party / cookie exchange for their daughter, Fiona. It was a kind of neat idea for a party. I ate a ton of cookies. Hestoft made an appearance with his trademark bacon cookies. Everyone makes the same face when he emphatically says "Would you like a cookie? Be-careful, you might get a bit of BACON in there. They're bacon cookies. I made them with BACON!" The face everyone makes is one of mixed disbelief and horror. They just tasted like i think toffee or something with a hint of something heavier than butter? I thought they were pretty good actually. There was also bacon brittle. Again the bacon claim made everyone cringe and then their mouths water. Jodi even tried one. After that party we went up to my moms house. Cousin Margarita was in town with her husband so the local Fernandez clan got together for a feast at Rosa Mexicana. It was a good time. Lots of awesome food and margaritas. I didn't get too wasted because I wasn't going to be getting any down time on Sunday. Sunday I did my second stint writing for Saturday Night Rewritten. My first stint went pretty well. I was kind of expecting to slump on this one. No reason in particular. Just kind of anxious. I was told to show up at 1pm. I showed up at 12:30 and they were already doing the read from the previous nights SNL. Hooray. I showed up late. I never got into the swing of things in the idea jam. As a result I never really got assigned a sketch. Somehow as I was talking to the guy who runs it he decided I should right a sketch on a topic that was basically ruled "off-limits." I was really struggling wit the sketch because I could just tell people were going to hate it. The people who were against it kept coming by and saying "You aren't really writing that sketch are you?" and I would say "yep" and then they would boo. I kept writing anyway. It was a pretty harsh feeling. When it came time to do the read through with the actors I was totally dreading it. We ran through some other sketches first. There was one or two really good sketches and some barely so-so ones. Then the got to mine. When they announced it there was actually boo'ing . We read through it and I was pleasantly surprised. It went over really well. Like WAY better than I expected. Then immediately after I was disheartened to hear the people who didn't like it before still suggesting that it be killed. I was given some notes and re-wrote it and it passed muster and was scheduled to be in the show. I had to leave the show to come home and get a Christmas tree so I couldn't be sure to shepherd it through the final show. I don't know if the sketch made the final cut but I hope it did. You can read it for yourself here. Came home and bought a tree at the deli down the street. It's the first deli tree that we've bought since we moved here. We usually buy from these people from Vermont on Montague but this year we just had to make the tree buying a lightening strike. We bought one and I carried it home on my own. It wasn't even that heavy. I will post fancy xmas pictures and bitch about how Neighborhoodies has fucked me over for Xmas later. Going to bed now. PEACE!

Last night Gunshow had our last show of the year. We were invited to play at the final Ash Wednesday in their current spot. Ash Wednesday is a variety show that is hosted by the improv trio "Evel Cathredral" and they've had their Weds show there for a whole year. Well I guess they got invited to move the show over to The Magnet Theater to continue it. That's pretty damn cool. Seems like variety shows have really taken over in the alt comedy scene. Well thats an understatement. Variety shows have been really big for the last few years and thats just since I started noticing them which means that it's probably already dead as a fad and I just don't know it yet. Anyway, we had a show and it was pretty fun. Better than any show we've had in the last couple months anyway. The audience was really ready to laugh and so they did. I didn't the show was amazing or anything but we got the usual "I love watching you guys" which is really nice to hear. I know some of it is just empty gladhanding but I try not to dismiss all the praise off hand. Thats quite an improvement for me, let me tell you. I have started my xmas shopping earnest. I am buying a lot of stuff from the goons at SomethingAwful.com There is a section there called SA-Mart where people can buy and sell goods and services and I decided to bite the bullet on some of these things. I have faith in the goons and their products. Lets just hope they can get the stuff here by xMas. Jodi and I are also carving out huge blocks of time to shop thanks to our various babysitting slaves. I can't recall the last time December was so busy for me. It's wacky. I have baby parties, adult parties, minor comedy stuff and travelling into the new year. I don't know if I mentioned before but I am in this new improv show at the Magnent Theater called The Project. It's teams formed by lottery and I was invited to be in the pool. Quite an honor. The teams get picked in a couple weeks so we'll see who I end up with. I'm all nervousy and what not. I haven't been on stage with strangers in quite a while! The action starts in the new year. I will be performing 2x a month for 6 months I think. We'll see. So what do you want for XMAS?

I was perusing the multiverse of threads and forums that I check everyday and I came across this gem. Could it be? My very own adult entertainment company for a mere $100k. I shared the link with a few friends. No one was willing to go 50/50 with me on my dream of video taping and then selling said videos of vaginas and penises fighting. This evening I shot tyhe idea past Jodi. Much to my surprise she said she wouldn't mind if I owned a porn company. I was like "WHA WHA WHAT!?!?!" She claims that although she personally won't watch porn and doesn't enjoy it at all she understands that it's a big business and doens't look down on the people who make it. Again... WHAT?! I broke it to her that I had trouble in shooting my short film asking a farmers market guy if we could film near his stand. Imagine the difficulty I would have asking a girl to do an ass to mouth. Plus I don't think I could be involved in the kind of porn thats out there now. Especially the bizarro deep throat fucking and cock gagging I have had the misforrtune of stumbling upon. I have termed this kind of porn "Blork Glork" because that is the horrid sound that you hear in them. Serious boner buster! Any takers on an exciting business deal?

Apparently last night I woke Jodi up while still sleeping to say "Lyle Lyle Crocodille" in a slow and deliberate way. Then, according to jodi, I went into a critique of the beloved watermellon sashing comedian Gallagher. Apparently I tore his apart in my sleep with some mean statements of how it was all too easy to read and predictable. I guess in our dreams we can say whatever we like. Of course I am too terrified to speak harshly of Gallagher during my waking hours. His eyes are everywhere.... But now that I have discovered the Big G's website I am so angry at myself for never learning how to play an instrument. Crueler words have never crossed my eyes... "Wanna be the GALLAGHER band! Gallagher is looking for musical talent to write music for his comedic song lyrics. If you think you've got the stuff to smash it with Gallagher contact him at gallaghers-gay-email-address.com" Note it doesn't ask if you want to be IN the bad. Do you want to BE the band? Band song ideas are met with a sledge-o-matic to the dome. But really, working for Gallagher you are asking for the o'Matic to the dome. It's an inevitability. Working for Gallagher = Death Wish. And then there are his copycat fans. New link to the Fugitive Chef video. Now with production stills.