Royal Flush

So one night Pamie and Dan and I were watching TV, and just finishing up dinner. I took my plate and disappeared out of the living room, then came back and put my plate in the sink, now empty.

"What did you just do?" asked Pamie, a disturbed look on her face.

I thought for a second and realized what I'd just done. Mechanically. Automatically. Without thinking.

"I put the rest of my pasta in the toilet and flushed it down."

"Ew!" said Dan. "No!"

"Dan! Not you, too," I yelled. "You're from New York. You're supposed to understand."

"My friend used to do that all the time," Dan said. "She'd finish a meal and flush the rest down the toilet. I begged her to never do that while I was around or I'd leave."

"I don't understand what the big deal is," I protested. "We're battling ants right now. It's best not to attract them. And anyway, putting food in the toilet is just like-"

"Don't say it!" shouted Dan, covering his ears.

Pamie jumped in. "He once flushed a sausage. And I saw it."

"That's it. I'm leaving!" squealed Dan.

Honestly, I'd never thought too hard about it one way or the other. When I lived in New York, I had a tiny 3-bedroom on the first floor of an old half-commercial block in the West Village. And we had roaches. Tiny ones, but they were always there -- in the kitchen only, thank God. Whenever I'd come into the dark kitchen, I'd turn on the light and keep my eyes shut for a few seconds to give the fuckers time to skitter under the sink or into the rice or wherever they lived. Honestly, for all my love of New York, roaches are the one thing I can't deal with. A month ago I was being considered to write for a new midseason TV show. The catch was I'd have to move to New York for a few months at least. And aside from missing all my friends and my wife like crazy, the one thing that gave me serious pause was the knowledge that I'd once again be living in Roachland. So anyway, in that 3-bedroom, we had roaches and no disposal. That's living in a left-over food quandary.

Let's say you're eating something like soup. Chunky soup. And there's a bit left. What do you do with it, I ask you? Throw it in the garbage, only to have it leak everywhere? Try to shove it down the sink, only to get stuck in the pipes? Take it out to the curb? Dolphins don't like Chunky soup. No, there is only one obvious choice. The toilet. Right?

Once I moved to Los Angeles, I had a disposal in the first apartment I shared in the Valley. But then once I found my little one-bedroom in the last block of the Hollywood Hills (where I would live for seven years!) I was thrust back into the same left-over quandary. Roaches weren't a problem, but ants were. And they liked left out food just as much as roaches. So I was back to putting unwanted food down the toilet. Mostly soup-ish things that wouldn't fare well in a paper garbage bag under the sink, or, yes, I guess the occasional meat product. Seven years. It became second nature. Until I started dating Pamie.

And the sausage incident happened. And I was informed that it was disgusting. We debated the point, but I couldn't make her understand my side. So I stopped doing it. For the sake of the woman I loved. Cold turkey. (Which, incidentally, is something else I might have flushed down the toilet.)

Anyway. When we moved in together, the house we rented thankfully had a garbage disposal. As does the house we bought last year. And so until that one night, during Six Feet Under, a few nights after we'd learned the hard way just to what insane degree ants are fans of scrambled eggs, Food Down The Toilet hadn't been an issue for a few years. Until that night.

So help me out here. Pamie and Dan think it's the grossest thing in the world. I don't see anything wrong with it.

So, people: To flush, or not to flush? That is the question.

Separated At Xenu

Aw. I think there's something cute about teenage diva Tom Cruise looking like teenage diva Nellie McKay. I'm just not sure what it is.

...i think of your mother

Searching for something about "Jack Kerouac" I ended up coming across my own entry from six years ago.

The Most Desperate and Successfully Ass-Kissingest Song Lyric Of All Time Without Question

"DJ's the man we love the most!"

Kanye West Calls for End to Gay Bashing

What a gaywad.

It Must Have Been A Very Sad Day

When the makers of Magic Markers realized the generic term for "thick black pen" had finally began to switch from "Magic Marker" to "Sharpie." That shit is hard to reverse.

A Fun Game For You!

Pick which of these are from descriptions of DVDs from a porn website, and which are checkmark boxes for the barista on the sleeve of the cup of coffee I just bought.

A) size
B) easy sweet
C) hard
D) black
E) no top
F) x-hot
G) wet
H) whip & topping
I) filled
J) cream
K) dirty slut co-eds' study session turns into all-night finger-bang party

And Anyway, You Have To Spell Out The 'Twenty' Now, You Jerks!

"Hey. HEY! Listen up, Pomona. I will stop the show right now if any of you mother-effers calls me 'matchbox twenty' again! I'll do it. I'll walk off this stage right now and I'll leave the Fairplex altogether, and you jerks can go get a candy apple or throw Ping Pong balls at goldfish for all I care, because Rob Thomas is not the bitch you want to try to play. I don't need this, crap. I'm an innovator, people. Look at my wristband. Look at it. Ain't no fools wearing their wristbands on their forearms! I'm the first guy to do that. That's mine. It's my thing. Ask me what time it is. Ask me! 'What time is it, Rob?' Well, I can answer that question... because I got FOUR WATCHES! That's right!-- OW! Who threw that? WHO THREW THIS CAN OF MOUNTAIN DEW!!! That's it. I'm gone. Too bad, you dicks just wasted seventeen-fifty plus two dollars for parking. See ya, bitches!... ...But first, here's 'Smooth' with special guest guitarist, blind phenom Jeff Healey!"

Bullock Works Counter at Sister's Bakery

It's so nice to see someone gave her a job. I was getting worried about her.

He Won't Back Down

This is particularly heartening in a world increasingly full of disheartening things (like the goddamn bee who keeps trying to sting me on my front porch; what is this world coming to?):


Tom Petty's bucking the big-bucks trend

By Randy Lewis
Los Angeles Times

The Eagles come home to roost next month for concerts at Staples Center and the Arrowhead Pond, and Ticketmaster's prices are $25 to $175. For U2 at Staples Center in November, tickets are going for $51 to $171. When Paul McCartney returns to the Southland the same month, the asking price ranges from $49.50 to $250.

And when the Stones arrive in November, seats for performances at the Hollywood Bowl and Anaheim Stadium are running from $60 to $454.50.

So how come Rock and Roll Hall of Fame member Tom Petty, whose core audience is the same disposable-income-laden baby boomers these other veteran acts depend on, is getting only $30 to $70 a ticket when his current tour enters California this week?

"I would feel embarrassed charging 200 bucks," the 51-year-old rocker told Rolling Stone magazine recently. "Even as far back as 1980, I was in fear of the tickets getting priced out of the ordinary person's pocketbook."

The strategy appears to be paying off, says Ray Waddell, the Billboard magazine senior writer who covers the concert industry.

"His shows are averaging about 17,000 people a night, and he'll end up playing to about 730,000 people by the time the tour ends," Waddell says. "He's not working a new album, he just wanted to get out and play.

"He's a rock 'n' roll player and the Heartbreakers is a rock 'n' roll band — their whole thing is to play in front of a lot of people," he says, noting that Petty historically has priced his concert tours lower than what the market might bear.

"He's going about this in the right way, like he wants to do this again someday."

He says it's also significant that rather than booking this tour nationally through one of the giant promoters who operates venues around the country, Petty's camp has booked shows in each city separately — including the Aug. 14 show at Verizon Wireless Amphitheater — mostly using longtime promoters it has done business with throughout Petty's three-decade career.

"He very conceivably could have gotten bigger offers" from the national promoters, says Waddell, who interviewed Petty for a story slated to appear in this week's Billboard. "He could have played fewer dates, only played in major markets or stayed indoors and jacked up the price, but that's not the way he's wanting to do it. There are a lot of things about this tour to admire."