Michael Malice title

I'm much happier with Tanked than I thought I would be. I'm revising at a rate of @11 pages a day. I should be done within three weeks. The faster it gets into the hands of editors the later I have to think about going back to work to pay rent.

For some reason I wanted to include a guest list of all the fun people who made their way to our Style Court viewing party, braving record cold temperatures that sounded much scarier on TV than they actually were. Damn you, liberal media!

Thanks to: Todd Factsandfears, Comrade Stephie, Pal Janet, Count Vertigo, Charis Hilton, Pieces of Meredith, The General, Tibbie X, Lefty Leibowitz, West Egg, Our Hapless Protagonist, Vickers Bastard Gringo, Agent Duncan, Jon of Moops and a couple of other people that I am sure I am forgetting. (And Todd's crew, of course.)

Special award goes to the bartender who, upon hearing Jon shatter a glass, thanked him and bellowed that she loved cleaning up after other people. Bitch you be trippin'.

Michael Malice and the Radical Homosexual Agenda

This past Wednesday I went to see Case 150. "Easy Mark" gave me an old Rubber Rodeo poster, which I didn't know they made and which aren't in the archives (i.e., two cardboard boxes at Bob's office.)

The question went out from the band to the crowd. "What did Merle Haggard got to jail for?" Many answers are yelled out. None correct. I feed Our Hapless Protagonist a line. "Sodomy!" he shouts, a word that sounds much classier through a British accent.

The guess is wrong. "I'm moving my chair," says the man in front of us.

"Closer or further away?" I ask him.

"Further away," he replies, as if I had just given him AIDS.

After the show we get up to shake hands with the band. We pass by the man. "I'll see you later," OHP says, shooting him a wink.

Dear You-Know-Who,

Thanks for e-mailing me the secret wink-wink about the forthcoming you-know-what. I certainly am popular now that I'm a Stonecutter!

Randroid.com is taken, and has been for 3(!) years. Damn you, Glenn Gomez of Dallas!

But it will be available on 1/20.

I read Ayn Rand, Objectivists and the History of Philosophy. The book is poor. Basically the author picks a minor aspect of a philosopher's POV (Plato on eros, Hume on economics), shows how the popular view is incorrect, and shows how St. Ayn disagrees with the correct stance.

E-mail of the Day

"I was worried that conservatives in government were't doing their part to curb creeping socialism, but now that we'll have a moonbase, men on Mars, and $1.5 billion spent to promote marriage, it looks like everything's going to be a-OK."

Perhaps I'm destined to be a millionaire.

Donald Trump was on Howard Stern and was asked his list of the 3 most beautiful women in the world. Amazingly, we had the same list: dark horse Keira Knightley and Paris Hilton. His third choice was his repulsive daughter Ivanka.

Others I would add to the list would be Nelly Furtado and Courteney Cock, although the latter has gone downhill in recent years.

It Keeps Happening
Out sitting on a bench with a friend. We are arguing over whether a character should be evoke empathy or sympathy. He raises his voice. Thereupon comes the darkest of exclamation points: a cab slams into a van. A woman within starts screaming, though whether it is pain or horror is unclear.

It took me two weeks to realize that my Freezy Freakies scarf is too short because it was made for children. 160 IQ indeed.

I can't wait to have a reading of Tanked and have someone in the audience ask me what my follow-up to it is going to be. "I'm going in order," I'll say. "Next I'm going to be ripping off About a Boy."

Today was the birthday of my idol Alexander Hamilton. The year is unknown, though whether he lied or was unsure is not clear. I read A Collection of Facts and Documents Relative to his death, a contemporary clippings book. Most of the text consists of simple notices of mourning or purple prosed eulogies. One line within made me smile ("The honour of New-Jersey demands that its shores should no longer be made places of butchery for the inhabitants of New-York and Pennsylvania"), but there was a quote that I found extremely thought-provoking: "Such is the infirmity of human nature, it is very difficult for a man, who is greatly the superior of his associates, to preserve their friendship without abatement." This quote is going to be the subtext of Infidel and a running theme in my planned Lucifer series. I can't read about the boy genius of the Revolution and picture him discussing economics with his lessers (i.e., everyone) without feeling for the man. Hearing them spouting their dimwitted nonsense for him must have been akin to seeing a dog walking on its hind legs and remarking, "Look. It thinks it's people." As he himself said, two years before his passing, "Every day proves to me more and more, that this American world was not made for me."

"It is as Hercules, treacherously slain, in the midst of his unfinished labors, leaving the world overrun with monsters, that we most deeply deplore him."

"The most substantial glory of a country is in its virtuous great men."

I watched my appearance on Style Court last night. I am very saddened to report that they cut 75% of the segment, including anything that is humorous or dramatic. Thursday, after the viewing, I will be sure to recite all the insanity that was swept into the Memory Hole.

Went out to party at Le Souk, a North African club on Ave. B. Amazing what having a cover will do for quality control. No annoying dumb chicks. The chicks were dumb, of course, but they knew to keep their mouths shut.

In contrast to that was the night before, when eyes were rolled when I insisted that The Thompson Twins did not sing "Don't You Want Me"--it was, in fact, The Human League. Or when I was blithely informed that anyone who supports President Bush is "profoundly immoral." This from a winner who works 12 hour days for little pay to convince the City to build more public housing for "Black people." I must confess that I did find her cute at first, before noticing her thin hair and low rent demeanor (which is apt). Fortunately for her I did not want a scene, so I bit my tongue rather than asking her if her pubic hair was balding, too. Though I suppose I won't get credit for my restraint.

Le Souk was absolutely wild, like scene-in-a-movie wild. The hookah, though full of only tobacco, still managed to kick my ass.At the restaurant part of the bar sat a famous gentleman whom it took me an hour to place, realizing that it was Rep. Jim Leach (although it seems very strange if it were really him). There was no misidentifying the 7'7" Gheorghe Muresan, who I only knew as the star of My Giant but who is apprently also a prominent NBA player. So perhaps there is some irony in my ignorance here. My friend asked his wife how big his penis was, and she smiled as she assured him that her husband was in proportion. My friend called her a liar and he was probably right, for if his member was proportional to his frame she would not be grinning but hemorrhaging.

The Surreal Life returns to TV tonight. This season features the former Tammy Faye Bakker, et al. The one thing I wanted to mention is that Traci Bingham is in the cast. She is probably the most disturbing good-looking woman I have ever seen. She looks as if her eyes were literally drawn on her face, like she's some sort of doll or mannequin. Most disturbing.

Leaving the movie theater. The husband lurks in the aisle leading outside. The wife is on her way out. He jumps up and startles her, one of my favorite tricks. I start laughing and applauding.

"He's always doing that," she complains.

"Then you should be expecting that by now," I tell her.

"Exactly!" he yells.

"I have a cold," she says. "I'm not feeling great."

"So? You're just making excuses for yourself. It's not his fault that you haven't learned by now."

The husband laughs. The woman grins, defeated.

So I shoved her down the escalator. Hi-larious.

I went to see Bad Santa (5+) last night. There is nothing for me to say except this is the 3rd best movie I have ever seen, after Fast Times at Ridgemont High and Amelie.

UPDATE: "You saw Amelie? Assuming that you weren't being sarcastic in the context with which you brought it up, I liked the movie a lot too." Looking at it now I can see how it's hard to believe that Ridgemont and Amelie are my favorite films. But they are, followed by Commandments (which no one besides me likes), Splash and Fight Club.

I'm at a diner with Comrade Stephie on the (shudder) UES. In comes a fellow former Bucknellian with two of his boys. Said young man was one of those people who was a friendly and nice pledge, but as soon as the frat initiated him he became an utter douchebag. Too big for his britches.

Time to burst his balloon.

I feed her her lines and leave the establishment. She approaches the table. They all smile, for a pretty young thing has come up to talk to them. She points at the Mark. "Kappa Sig, right?"

"Yeah," he smiles. A big dopey grin. "But that's not telling me a lot. I spent four years in a blackout."

"You don't remember me?"

"No, sorry. Should I?"

"We had sex once," she informs. She is bitter.

His jaw literally drops. The friends giggle. "Are you fucking with me?" he whispers. He cannot recollect this girl for his life. Worse, his list of Bucknellian paramours was a short one. He is busted, in two senses of the word.

"You really don't remember? Wow. Whatever." She dismisses him with a gesture and walks out.

She never had a chance to deliver the coup de grace; she couldn't make eye contact with any of them as she was leaving. If she could, she would have held her fingers two inches apart and mouthed the words, "Really small."