The Masque of the Red Death, 2006

If you type “Chronic Cantina” into Google and hit “I”m feeling lucky” you get a man-boy: http://www.myspace.com/newportbeach

This man-boy likes PUNK!! music, and he likes Governor Arnold, and he likes executions, a lot. Let ’em fry! He owns a drug abuse theme restaurant.

The man-boy wants to start a war with China. He loves our President and says that Michael Moore should not criticize the man. The man-boy would like to meet open-minded girls.

The man-boy says: “If you are a fun person and like to have respectful fun no matter what the circumstances we will get along great. ”

The man-boy owns a business selling stripper poles. The man-boy is an attorney and a real estate investor. Often the man-boy is surrounded by sad skinny bikini girls and grinning ape-boys on boats, on beaches, in bars, in nightclubs.

The man-boy was born Keith Scheinberg and calls himself MAXIMILLIAN on myspace. But I have a secret to tell you; I know his real name. His real name is Marie Antoinette.

QOTD, public safety radio

Someone backhoed a natural gas main around here today and there was the usual excitement. Quote from OC Fire Authority on scene:

“Appears that a backhoe severed a gas main here. Area is cleared, and we’re just going to stand by until the Gas Company pinches this one off.”

The Fall of the House of Steinberg

Mold sends homeowners packing

Super extra famous sports agent Leigh Steinberg had to move and then got screwed again in his second 5 million dollar house. Oh no! Why? Well, the mold showed up again.

The Ambe family blew 3.5 mil on a house only have their 18 month old baby covered in a rash and “listless” due to the same mold.

Oddly, the same building company didn’t seem to have the problem when giving away their services for a TV show in which they fixed up a house to save a mold-threatened child.

Best quote in the article:

“My poor husband — he’s a plastic surgeon — he’s having to do five surgeries a day … where typically it would be three,” she said.

I wonder if a Tulpa can take the form of mold?

HONK HONK HONK THE BIG WHALE-SAVING TRUCK IS HERE

FOLKS I’M SHOWING MY SUPPORT FOR THE OCEAN AND THE BEACH AND THE FISH AND THE WHALES AND THE SEA ANEMONES AND THE SURFERS AND THE LAUGHING, RUNNING CHILDREN IN THE WAVES AND OUR FUTURE ON THE PLANET BY PUTTING THIS ORNAMENTAL LICENSE PLATE ON MY PIECE OF SHIT TRUCK THAT GETS 14 MILES PER GALLON AND IS ENTIRELY EMPTY BUT EXTREMELY SHINY BECAUSE THAT’S HOW I ROLL!!!

CHECK MY SHIT OUT!

Scéan at Kéan

Fulla churchians as usual. Very loud International Coffees/No Sex in the City women near me churchin’ it up. Youth group inside meeting.

The women are alternating hymn singing and laughing about relationships and being high on life.

The youth group noisily disbands outside near me. A guy hands me a CD. “Want this CD? It’s about Jesus.”

“No thanks.”

…pause…

“I hear there’s a book, too.”

There is a five second silence.

“Uhh… Umm… Yeah! It’s a er… Good Book.”

What Would Amos Say?

Cheap grace means grace sold on the market like cheapjacks’ wares. […] The essence of grace, we suppose, is that the account has been paid in advance; and, because it has been paid, everything can be had for nothing. Since the cost was infinite, the possibilities of using and spending it are infinite. What would grace be if it were not cheap? — Diedrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship

apostle to the dudes

From the Register article I cited yesterday about the “SWAT Team” kids preaching on the beach. Photo credit to Andy Templeton for this excellent piece of photojournalism. The other pics with the article are good also.

The perfectly scrubbed whiteness of these people — even when they’re not white — is alarming. They exist in a perfect bubble of privilege and cultural isolation. Their friends and family are all like them. Their ideal world is a kind of 1903 Tennesse where everyone is inexplicably 2006 “cool”: chastity, whiteness, conservative politics, extreme sports, rock ‘n’ roll music, TV, great new snacks, and women in their place, obediently following behind their husbands even while surfing some massive waves.

The place where dogmatic evangelical religion and cluelessly neotenized teenage privilege meet is the best-gilded turd you’ll ever see. But you’ll smell it, too. Smell is pretty strong around these parts.

Sociopathic Soccer Moms Kill 3

http://www.ocregister.com/ocregister/homepage/abox/article_1237890.php

1. Drunk driving mom in her big fast Lexus passes on the right at 90, hits guardrail, kills her 6 year old son by hitting it so hard that the seatbelt is ripped out of the car and he’s ejected.

2. Hapless hamburglars running from botched auto theft get run over on freeway. Woman calls cops from a bar some time later to say that there was clothing and human remains stuck to the bottom of her minivan and she “may have been involved in an accident” earlier.

I’m not including the other news story about the woman whose tire blew up and her 12 year old kid was ejected due to no seat belt, even though three other occupants of that car had no seatbelt either, because for all I know she could have been yelling at them to buckle up when it happened.

Who needs money when you’re soaked in steaming hot infected brain tissue?

I am at a Starbucks and there are morons talking about blogs, demographics, and “making or breaking bands.” The guy are talking about shit like “Yeah if someone looks for a band like Yo La Tengo then I get a list of that” and “Most of the blogs are just advertising stuff but some of those kids get, like, credentialed.” I think one of them just said that a band had a “web tour.” also: “THERE’S ACTUALLY SOME REALLY GOOD CELEBRITY SITES!!!”

One of them has Hippie Hair that he saw on a TV movie repeat from 1981 in 2003, clearly, complete with headband. I think they’ve mentioned Seattle about 8 times in the last 5 minutes.

I never remember to bring the kukri or the short-barrel 10-gauge when it’s really, really needed.

TLÉÉ’

An email from Kazakhkstan leads to coffee in Newport

Tom at Kéan Coffee

Saw Tom today, for the first time in more than 20 years. I went to high school with him and I think saw him once after that. In the meantime he’s had a few careers and is currently fully employed saving the world. This is a damned good thing in that the world is in need of saving and Tom is both smart and on the side of the angels.

I tried to explain some of the more recent features of our locale including Mortgage Bro ‘n’ Ho Culture, the Vanguard Nice Christian Kid Death Star Attack, and the deadly affluenza of drugs and alcohol among the Kids These Days. Not sure if I was sufficiently descriptive.

I went away with the happy feeling of having reconnected, some good stories from both of us, and a sticker that says COALITION CONVOY / STAY BACK 50 METERS / DEADLY FORCE IS AUTHORIZED in English and Arabic. I think that is going to go on the laptop. I’ll leave the rest of the storytelling to him, if he chooses to tell the stories.

On the way over there I was listening to Indie 103 (which I’m liking more and more) and it was Steve Jones’ show. It was a crazy reunion show at that because Jonesy had John Lydon on the show and they were bullshitting and laughing about the Sex Pistols days. Best quote was from Lydon: “And we were very confused, as one ought to be.”

Anyway they wrapped up the show as I was driving from the shrink’s office to meet Tom at Kéan. Just as I drove past my alma mater, all decorated with happy cheerleader girls doing the splits, the radio spat out “God Save the Queen” and I realized that this was something like my 25th anniversary of driving past that high school blasting that song on my car radio.

As Tom said, “that still works.”