A Halloween Message

Happy Trick or Treating, kids. (Watch out for clowns.)

Lullaby of the Damned

TRUE! Sleepy. Very very sleepy I have been and am. But why would you say that I am mad, or whatever? 'Twas me, like a baby, in my loft bed aslumber yesterday morn, dreaming of doves, of cupcakes, and of Abercrombie and Fitch models, when what should steal away from me these pleasant sleepful visions in the dark early morning but the maddening crash of a maniacal organ, carried upon the wisps of a shivering October breeze, from somewhere in the grim outside world and delivered unto me as I struggled to remain behind the veil of sleep in my downy divan.

(Clicketh the clicky below to experience the unChristian sound that thrust me into wakefulness and caused my cat Stella to dig her tender talons into my eyebrows. Then continue reading)



What is this infernal sound mocking my heavy eyelids and sending my cat into convulsions of medieval scratching? It is the soundtrack to a child's nightmare. A particularly unimaginative child, for who has not heard this particular organ racket a million times in television commercials during the All Hallows' Eve season? TRUE! BUT! It is an altogether different sensation when one is resting comfortably in a cotton candy cocoon and one's eardrums are suddenly raped mightily by the dirge of doom.

Now this may be the point where you fancy me mad, or at least way too sensitive to noise, but I tell you I knew once the organ entered its second minute that its source was a place of unspeakable evil.

"That fucking school is fucking obnoxious!" my male companion lamented as he stomped through the dormitory half-naked and seething, opening drawers in the kitchen and closing them violently just to muffle the sound of the dreadful musical monstrosity seeping through our walls and into our dark and bitter souls.

Yes, it was the elementary school right behind us. The devil's own playground.

The vampiric utterings of the undead organ continued, and I submitted to its breathless noise my little silver Kodak machine, for as to capture some of its sinister rambling. Herewith, listen, and foreso:



'Twas a full hour later, and the fiendish death moan of the elementary school organ continued. I ate my toast while covering both ears! And still the diabolical dervish of noise seeped through my frozen fingers to molest my eardrums anew, with a ferocious vigor. TRUE! And NOT COOL!

With a pounding, putrid head and a palpitating heart, I dressed myself as best I could--for a gentleman must not forget to put on his pantaloons and pinafore, no matter how little sleep he's had. I grabbed my manpurse--for that is what it is called--and escaped the maddening dungeon of my dormitory, stumbling down the steps to the street four flights below.

If you still think me mad, you will do well to hear me out: outside my building and on the early morning avenue the infernal organ was louder and even more demonic than it had been previous to this, its meandering melody searching the air for virginal ears to violate with its frenzied harmonics and hellhound screeching. (BOTH!)

Rounding the corner, I finally came face to face with the wicked wreck of humanity that had inspired such a malevolent morning of frenzied phantasmic organ grinding (courtesy of a powerful sound system blasting the obscene noise): yes, it was elementary school children. Dressed in costumes designed by the devil himself. Lining up outside their school to receive candy treats from the PTA or some bullshit. They were diabolically adorable.

Look into their baleful eyes and tell me you do not hear the obscene, depraved hissing of a hideous and poisonous serpent of death.

Disappointment: A One-Photo Photo Essay

Presented without comment.

My Camera Phone Will Not Be Denied: Carrie at the Loew's Jersey Theater

Folks, it's not often that I recommend taking a trip to New Jersey, but the Loew's Jersey Theater certainly makes it worth your while. The Loew's Jersey theater is a classic cinema in Jersey City (where?) currently undergoing refurbishment by a team of cinemaphile volunteers, and it always has a great lineup of classic movies to go see on a rainy weekend. Plus, cheap popcorn, sodas, candy, and a pipe organ. And it's right near the Journal Square Path station, so you don't have to spend too much time in New Jersey.

This weekend they celebrated Halloween early with screenings of Carrie on Friday and Rosemary's Baby on Saturday. Jimmy and I went to see Carrie because we love movies with prominent prom scenes.

As you probably know, Carrie depicts the sad story of poor Sissy Spacek, a young high school girl who is tormented by her bitchy classmates, her terrible fundamentalist mother, and her period (not necessarily in that order). It's sometimes a hard movie to watch, what with all of the emotional agony and gym clothes, but thankfully at the end our hero Carrie gets to kiss Andrew McCarthy while an OMD song plays on the loudspeakers, and then a bucket of blood falls on Duckie (he likes it). Sadly, we never find out what happens to James Spader, but Amy Irving is scarred for life.


The pipe organ is the instrument of choice for New Jersey vampires.


Bunch of zombies in the lobby.


Invisible zombies up top.


Zombie/vampire candy machine.


Don't fucking touch this organ.

Thursday Morning Gymnastics

As you all know, I am dedicated to covering male gymnastics wherever they happen, anywhere in the world. If there are gentlemen writhing around in golden undergear somewhere, I'll spread the word.

Male gymnastics sure do happen in the new video by El Perro del Mar, "Change of Heart." This is exactly the kind of entertainment I was hoping to get for my Sweet 16 Party 20 some-odd years ago. Maybe these guys can perform at my 40th?

Birthday Serenade

Every year on my birthday my parents call me up and sing happy birthday to me. This year I decided not to answer the phone so I could get the recording on my voicemail. It's a show stopper, and inspired me to assemble some photos and put together a short video in celebration of myself. (It only took 4 photos to adequately celebrate myself.)

New Fun Thing: Clownz!

You remember when you were a kid and you spent countless nights awake for hours in a cold sweat, laying in your bed, listening to the approaching footsteps of the maniacal, murderous escaped circus clown who is about to knock lightly on your door before letting himself in and eating you with cutlery that he brought himself? Those were the days, no?

If you were anything like me as an impressionable, spooked child, your mom was constantly giving you terrible clowns as presents--dolls, framed pictures, figurines--because she felt you didn't have enough horrifying neuroses to occupy yourself with and really wanted to give you one that would stick with you. WELL GUESS WHAT, MOM!!! I STILL SHIVER WHEN I SEE A RINGLING BROS. ADVERTISEMENT!!!

Ahem. Anyway, I love clowns, as you all do. And while searching around today for that hot "2 clowns 1 cup" viral video i heard about on Twatter, I came upon clownz.com, a fun site with pages like Clowns in the News, Fun with Clowns (clown-themed humor), Stories from You, and my favorite, Threatening Letters, where I found this week's candidate for Epistle of the Week, in which a certain clown-sympathizer has taken umbrage at the site's celebration of the horrorfication of the once-respected and not-at-all creepy figure of the clown. Here's a taste:

My name is Jim Ray. While searching the internet for links to clowning-related pages, I was confonted with your page, and to say the least, I was extremely offended by your website... Now WAIT--before you go off and take this as a complete complaint, I want you to know that I KNOW you have (1) the right to expression, and (2) the right, frankly, to not like clowns. But literally thousands of children DO like clowns, and search for the word "Clowns" every day. While you do have the right to expression, you do not have the right slanderize the entire clowning industry, nor any particular "clown" therein.

This guy is pissed, and for good reason. Clowns are the last minority it's okay to hate. (Except for fags and fatties.) It's the civil rights issue of our generation. And I think the movement has found its leader.

One day soon the phrase "clown f*cker" will be a compliment.

When Brunch Photography Gets Artsy

You know how brunch on a Sunday sometimes lasts a really long time and you have a few drinks and then a few more and then end up in a hookah bar in the East Village and then someone gets out their camera? The above picture of my friends Mike and Ruth (taken by friend Desiree), is a shining example of the magic that can happen.

Now, I don't know from photography or photography awards, but shouldn't this get Desiree next year's Nobel Peace Prize?

Quote of the Week: Nikki Finke

Nikki Finke, abrasive and temperamental Hollywood journalist stereotype, is profiled in this week's New Yorker, and she does not disappoint. Though she disappointingly doesn't speak in all caps as far as I can tell, she does say things like this (keeping in mind she's a jew!):

"I used to say, and I meant this in a nice way, that my mother should have been a Nazi interrogator."

Finke should charge money for this kind of stuff. She gave it to the New Yorker for free!

Editorial: Speedos and Our Precious Freedoms

People, the killjoy lefty media is at it again, attacking our freedoms for their own ideological satisfaction. The Daily Beast's Sean Macaulay has written the most ridiculous opinion piece in the history of Internet jernalizm and it must be called out for its lies, damn lies, distortions, falsities, misrepresentations, deceit, untruths, and fabrications.

In his hit piece on the world's greatest ever invention, the Speedo, Macauley argues that the time has come for a ban on "offensively small bathing suits". I....I can't even relate to that statement. Is this Macauley character even human? What language is he typing? Where is his birth certificate?

Certainly Macauley has a point about the frightening and dangerous possibilities inherent in allowing someone like Rod Stewart or Carson Kressley access to the mighty weanie-bender, beloved by everyone with a pulse. That is because Speedos are not made for men such as Rod and Carson. They are made for men such as David Beckam, Ricky Martin, and some guy named Justin Gaston that I just found out about by reading this awful article.

If you just ban the Speedo outright, you may be saving yourself from having your eyeballs melt to your face at the sight of Arnold Schwarzenegger or Giorgio Armani or George Hamilton or Jack Nicholson in a sagging pair of colored underwear; but you also face the real, and much more chilling, possibility of never being able to witness this guy, this guy, or these guys in the blissful state of undress God intended them to maintain all day, every day, for eternity. This is not only a loss for us as individuals. It is a loss for us as Americans. A tragic compromising of our very humanity that I, for one, cannot countenance.




If we have to live in a world without the Speedo, the terrorists have already won.

Fashion is Important: Paris Projection

You guys, this is just plain lazy. Manish Arora, a designer from India whose first name is a useful adjective, couldn't even be bothered to put actual patterns on her his new ready-to-wear collection. Instead he just leans back, snorts the last bit of blow off those awesome blow-dipped pretzels they have backstage at all fashion shows, and relies on the Paris fashion people to project something interesting onto the various pieces he has provided them with. So jejune, and I don't use that word lightly. (I've never used that word.)

You know how you're completely devoid of any artistic talent whatsoever and then you go to an art show and you're all like "shit, I could do better than that motherf**king bullshit"? Well, this is kind of the same thing. Just show up at a Paris show with some hobo rags and your best slide projector, find an electrical outlet, and proceed to show the world your best shots of Brazil, Coney Island, or wherever you went last summer, projecting them onto some grandma panties you found in a trash can on the corner of Broadway and Houston. Then voila! You're a designer with vision.

In conclusion, the above photograph is a visual representation of the creative process behind Sarah Palin's new memoir.

The Onion Provides a Glimpse Into the Present of Nonfiction Book Publishing

And boy is it douchey. Now all I need to do is access this guy's friends list, and maybe I can convince HarperCollins to publish this blog in a book!

Feet of Fire: My Midtown Debut

One reason that I'm a famous concert pianist and not just some dumb anonymous blogger is because I can play "Chariots of Fire" on a giant piano with my feet. Why it's taken me so long to get a show in midtown Manhattan doing this is a mystery, but thankfully FAO Shwartz offered me a 20-second slot on their Tuesday afternoon line-up, so suck it, Beethoven.