What do Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett have in common?

Uh, they both died on the same day and also something about buttholes. Okay, that one definitely needs some polish.

Unless you've just awoken from a coma or returned from a spelunking expedition and you decided to come to this website before turning on a television or a radio, or looking at the front page of a newspaper while waiting in line to buy a coffee, or talking to the people in that line, than you already know that Michael Jackson died yesterday due to complications from being a fucking weirdo. He is survived by Tito and LaToya Jackson, Lisa Marie Presley, the Elephant Man's bones, Macaulay Culkin, Bubbles, a half dozen llamas, that woman who used to be his nurse but then had a bunch of kids for him, three kids that he claims are his, and Webster.

I was born way back in 1977, so it really shouldn't come as much of a surprise that I grew up a huge Michael Jackson fan. The very first concert I ever saw -- a full eight years before my dad took me to see They Might Be Giants at the Trocadeo, effectively blowing my twelve year old mind (it was the first time I had ever been to a smaller venue or witnessed pogoing and all of that shit) -- was 1984's Jackson 5 Victory Tour at JFK Stadium in Philadelphia. My aunt and grandmother managed to not only score me tickets to one of the multiple, sold-out shows, but they also searched high and low for (and eventually found) a red, leather Beat It jacket that would fit a particularly small seven year old. Despite being out of my mind psyched to see Michael Jackson live, I spent most of the show dancing in my seat, paying little-to-no attention to what was going on on stage. Yeah, I was a little gaylord.

Anyway, it was the Jackson 5 that really ignited my love of music, and I remember giving a radio interview back in 2001 or so when we were asked who our influences were. While my bandmates struggled to name the most obscure and respectable metal acts they could, I KEPT THAT SHIT REAL and told the host it was the Jackson 5 who originally caused me to pressure my mother and grandmother into getting me guitar lessons.

Of course the Michael Jackson that died yesterday wasn't the same Michael Jackson who tore shit up with "I Want You Back" or "Rock With You," which is my fucking jam. He probably could have lived for a thousand more years and he never would have been able to even come close to doing anything half as awesome as "Off the Wall" or "Thriller" (or, to a lesser extent, "Captain Eo" or "Moonwalker: The Video Game"), but don't front you haven't enjoyed all of the crazy rumors and even crazier pictures that would pop up in the news every four to six months. Remember when he was going to auction off all of his shit and we got to see his arcade setup and all of his creepy statues and shit? Of course you couldn't dance to it, but it still managed to unite everyone much in the same way that "Billie Jean" did. Remember when that motherfucker stood on the hood of his SUV and danced while holding a black umbrella like he was Mary Poppins or some shit? That was definitely more awesome than anything that came out after "Bad."

Vice Guide to Travel: Guide to North Korea

As boring as Vice can be, this video series awesome. Of course it helps that nothing is more fascinating than North Korea, the land that time and sanity forgot.

Part one

Part two

Part three

Being 31, white, and on Facebook

means that I'm subjected to embarrassing, very Caucasian status updates like this from my Internet acquaintances:

booked her honeymoon today! YAY. disney for a few days and jamaica for rest. :)

Iran

With all of this insanity going on in Iran in regards to the alleged election, I was reminded of the absolute most stupid thing ever said to me by a girl that I was dating -- and I've dated a couple of real idiots. The kind of girl that you walk to their door after a night; not because you're a gentleman (because you're not), but because they're so stupid that you're worried they may get lost.

So this girl and I spent our first date playing miniature golf. I know that it sounds cheesy -- and I guess that it is -- but a girl would be lucky to get a night of mini golf out of me now as drinking beers and playing Rock Band is about as romantic as I get these days. Anyway, of course this girl was talking about herself at length when she says, "I'm Iranian. Both of my parents were born in Iran and then moved here. Have you ever heard of Iran?"

Wait -- seriously? I was born in 1977, and this girl was well aware of that fact. That would make me about ten years old when the Iran-Contra affair was kind of a big deal here in the United States, which I'm from. Have you ever heard of the United States?

I eventually broke up with this girl for a far better looking Italian girl. I've also heard of Italy. Thanks to the Internet, I received an e-mail from the Iran girl many, many years later after she had disappeared to New York City (there's a shocker). Mainly due to a lethal mixture of boredom and curiosity, I accepted her offer to meet up with her at a diner to "catch up," which is something that girls say when they want to tell you all about what they've been up to since the last time you saw them. At the diner, I was treated to a much better looking version of the girl I dated, but I was also subjected to hours worth of mind-numbing color-by-numbers "feminist" horseshit which unironically included the phrase "white Anglo-Saxon males." I called her a "faggot," finished my beer, and left. I've thankfully never heard from her again.

And now for the obvious:

The most awesome thing I ever saw:

This barely qualifies as a post, but I was thinking about the most awesome thing I ever saw on my way into work this morning, and I couldn't stop laughing about it. And now I'm sharing.

It was a few years ago and I had just moved into my house. I took the day off of work so I could unpack and generally make the place livable. High on my list of priorities was putting actual shades in the windows as opposed to old newspapers like some sort of hobo. I was measuring the living room window which faces the road that runs by my house when I noticed the mailman approaching my house from across the street. It's absolutely essential to point out that this particular mailman -- I have a few -- is alarmingly obese for a guy whose job it is to walk. In addition, he's a bit oddly proportioned, with a surprising amount of his bulk residing below his waistline.

As he crossed the street, he shuffled through two packed armfulls of mail, grouping letters by address. Hard at work and completely mentally invested in his organization, this behemoth public worker failed to account for the curb a few feet in front of him and he walked directly into it, dropping forward like a domino and eating shit harder and faster than any America's Funniest Videos all-star; so fast, in fact, that he didn't have enough time to bring his hands up in order to protect his fat, greasy face.

While the fall was fast and violent enough to secure itself permanent residence in my mind's video vault, it was the bundles of mail in his arms that shot high up into the air and then rained down on him like confetti that really took this to the next level. It seemed like the mail didn't fully stop for an minute; bills and postcards falling back to Earth like giant snowflakes. The scene was so hilarious and he was so closed that I ducked down below my windowsill to laugh so that he couldn't see me.

Oh yeah, and he was wearing shorts.

Fuck, that was so awesome.

Last night I had a dream in which I had sex with Kate Gosselin

There are two things in particular that trouble me about this: Number one, I generally have no more than two scandalous dreams a year, and now one of those has been wasted on a frumpy reality TV whore with an embarrassingly out-of-date lesbian 'do that more closely resembles a duck's ass than a human's head. And two, I've never watched a single episode of Jon and Kate Plus Eight in my entire life, swear to God. I've seen a few seconds of the show, but filtered through E!'s Talk Soup. It would have made much more sense if it had involved one of the meth skanks from VH1, but I guess that's how pervasive the tabloid drama surrounding these two has become: it's invaded the subconscious of a guy who only turns on his television to watch ancient reruns of COPS on G4. So many moustaches.

Speaking of sleep -- sort of -- I've continued to step my sleep game up tremendously these last couple of weeks. It all started with a new mattress. Just like I do with any potential purchase over $5, I scoured the Internet for days compiling information on mattresses and specifically mattress salesmen. I learned that almost all mattress springs, regardless of what brand mattress they're crammed into, are made by the same company, so buying a mattress based on the assumption that the more expensive mattresses have better springs is like deciding which jeans to buy based on the zipper. Furthermore, I learned that mattress salesmen are total sleazeballs on par with the slimiest of used car salesmen. But I still managed to underestimate just how damn good they were at their jobs, and every feeble attempt I made at haggling (did you know you can haggle mattress prices? Because apparently you can) was quickly shot down and I walked out with an "overstocked" mattress model that I particularly enjoyed. There's still a very real possibility that I was ripped off. But I half feel like if that's the case, I kind of deserve it for putting on such an amateur performance, made all the more inexcusable by my intensive pre-purchase studies.

I topped the mattress off (literally, I guess) with a memory foam pillow designed especially for side sleepers. As I get older and more fragile, even easy shit like sleeping hurts, so I needed to find something that would relieve some of the pressure on my one good (or slightly less busted) shoulder. It cost $140 after taxes. I paid $140 for a pillow; that's how stupid I am.

Anyway...

The entry in which I continue to gush over Joy Formidable

It's been a couple of weeks now and I haven't stopped listening to Joy Formidable's "A Balloon Called Moaning." I feel like my appreciation for this band and this record is the apex of my recent troubling love of female vocalists. Does aging cause testosterone levels to drop and/or estrogen levels to rise? Because there's really no other reason I should download a Bat To Lashes record. Oh and I've also grown tits.

Anyway, it turns out that five of the eight tracks on "A Balloon Called Moaning" are available for free download -- legally -- over here on a site called Music Glue. So go ahead and listen to them, because now you have no excuse.

As far as other media that's passed through this lovely, slightly misshapened head of mine; "X-Men Origins: Wolverine" was fucking stupid and I actually enjoyed this version much better.

Thankfully I had Cormac McCarthy's "The Road" to read afterwards, sort of as a palate cleanser. It was also a huge step up from the last book I read, which was that dreadful Chuck Klosterman turd about shitty music nobody really cares about. "The Road" was actually lent to me by my Uncle about a year or so ago, and I've avoided it since due to the big fat "Oprah's Book Club" sticker on the cover. I embarrassingly changed my mind after seeing the trailer for the movie adaptation, which I'm now even more curious about. The bulk of the book follows two people not doing much of anything, which has the potential to make for a pretty boring movie. Viggo Mortensen is in it, and he's kind of awesome, but if he starts running around and fighting dudes with his dick out like he did in "Eastern Promises," I swear to God I'm never watching another movie again.

So, yup.