March 21 2004, a Sunday

A word of explanation:

While I am, at least in the same ironic sense intended by this blog’s original writer, a Brown Eyed Handsome Man, I am not, in fact, the signature Brown Eyed Handsome Man. While that fine fellow is on sabbatical, he has asked me, Saban Andreavic-Charles, resident of Croatoan-on-the-Hudson, to take up his journalistic slack and plug in what I can, what I may, what I will, wot wot.

I must humbly notate, it’s a good choice on Mssr. Madigan’s part. Like him, I am something of a social maladroit, like him, I am more pear shaped than mesomorphic, like him, I toil in a customer service center devoted to the chillingly corporate and Mammon worshipping proclivities of an international telecommunications giant, like him, I often know the disapprobation of the unworthy, and treasure it as the finest accolade that anyone who aspires to even occasional bursts of original thought can call their own.

Yeah, you got me… my name isn’t really Saban Andreavic-Charles, resident of Croatoan-on-the-Hudson. That’s a pseud. It was, in fact, suggested by the Master Of Many Nom De Cybre’s himself, ol’ Doc Nebula, and as he’s explained it to me, it’s an old psued of his, used only once, on a letter published back in 1980 (or thereabouts) in an issue of RAMPAGING HULK magazine.

Real names, as they say, are such treacherous things.

As I talk here about my own experiences, and my own life, like and yet unlike the experiences of the original Brown Eyed Handsome Man, you should understand I’ll be hanging pseuds with some regularity. Darren was foolish enough to own up to his real name, and the name of the town where he lives, the company where he works, and the telecommunications giant he worked for, and it got him little but sneers… well, and a lot of HeroClix from some of his more deranged fans (and I hope there are a few left for me, although I’ll just take my share in cash, please), but mostly sneers, and cruel japery at the hands of foolish, sad little piglets with tiny little holes where most of us keep souls. Not being foolish, Darren has learned from his mistake, and being a fine, fine friend, he’s urged me to learn from it, too. Thus, No Real Names, please.

Bear it in mind.

Having said all that, I live in a smallish city called St. Carmichael in the Spottiswode Parish of mostly rural Louisiana. St. Carmichael is mostly famous as a place that both John F. Kennedy and Barry Goldwater avoided like an enclave of Satan worshippers during the fevered Presidential campaign season of 1960; both of them crisscrossed my hideously misshapen and fervidly overgrown adopted territory like increasingly ravenous ticks rampaging back and forth across the carcass of a recently deceased dog, but went out of their ways to miss this miserable little hamlet, and well they should have. St. Carmichael excels at nothing but (strangely) the nurturing of bowling alleys and their various wretched supporting industries; if you don’t bowl, there’s little to spend money on in St. Carmichael, and if you don’t make some sort of bowling accessory, there’s little to earn money doing… other than at Pridemark, the call center where I work.

Pridemark, well, prides itself, I suppose, on being the best paying job in not only St. Carmichael, but in the entire Greater Jetersberg Area, a vast teeming rural hub sprawling forty or so square miles from the nearly infamous intersection of County Route 17 (known locally for a stretch of some seven and a half miles as Great Confederacy Highway because down here Some Things Are Never Forgotten Boy And Best You Don’t Forget It Neither, Suh) and State Road 401 (known locally as State Road 401 or, occasionally, The Jig Highway because it eventually wends its way to larger cities and from those cities often come folks of darker pigmentation seeking gladder horizons but for some insane reason nonetheless settling for St. Carmichael, Bowling Capital of The World, assuming The World is forty or so miles across, and ends precipitously at Bayonne Terraine, about which decent folks do not speak.

Ah, I’ve digressed. Pridemark is indeed the finest paying job in the entire Greater Jetersburg Area, and I, as a beloved employee of Pridemark who has been enshrined within its corporate bowels for nearly two years now (making me a Hallowed Old Man of Pridemark, whose employee turnover rate is only comparable to, say, the death rate in Old London at the height of the Great Plague), am one of the wealthiest working men in all of St. Carmichael. And since I do not take drugs, rarely whore, and only imbibe of alcohol at weddings, funerals, and during any football game in which the christless Saints are getting the asswhipping they always so richly deserve, this means I’m pretty fucking flush, yes, it does.

But it’s all comparative. Pretty fucking flush for St. Carmichael wouldn’t buy me half a tin cup of corned beef hash and a rat with a string to swing it on in Mark Twain’s Hannibal, Missouri… or maybe it would, I don’t know. As Doc’s been known to intone (but I think he stole it from Harold Ramis in STRIPES) “I just wish I hadn’t drank all that cough syrup this morning”.

Leave it, reave it, scoff at and disbelieve it. It matters not. Now let’s, as Doc so often did, talk about foolish consumption:

Yesterday was payday at the Pride (yes, upper level management encourages us to call ourselves ‘lions’ and ‘lionesses’; I myself tend to think of the professional community there, en masse, as The Lyin’, and just move on) and (to unintentionally continue the feline theme) as Cat Stevens once put it, “Another Saturday night and I ain’t got nobody… I got some money cuz I just got paid”. So what did I do? Why, I hied myself up the road to Jetersberg itself (a mere 4 miles windward, assuming the wind is blowing that way, if not, it’s in another direction entirely) so I could buy something OTHER than fucking bowling accessories, and plonked down a hundred and fifty oysters (that’s me being puckish; I could have said clams, but I like to occasionally try to be original in my own miserably derivative fashion) on some mundane household items -- a new dishrack, as the old one is spotted and covered with fungus and was, I believe, originally manufactured in Boise, Idaho back in 1954 and it was just Plain Damn Time For A Change, Roscoe; a canister of salt (I think I’d had my last Morton’s canister for going on a decade, but eventually, you DO run out), and, I don’t know, something else… some of those horrible boxed dinners that you open a can and pour some already prepared stewlike susbstance into a pan and mix up some instant biscuit dough and spoon it over the crap and put it all in the oven and kid yourself you’ve cooked… plus, Season Two of The Shield and Season 1 of Roswell along with what turns out to be (maddeningly) the Full Screen Version of Schindler’s List and what also turns out to be a not very good recent Coen Brothers movie named Intolerable Cruelty, and isn’t it always the way when you buy a movie you haven’t seen yet, hoping it’s good? Don’t they ALWAYS disappoint you?

I admit it, I’ve been on a Coen jag lately, somewhat inspired by email with the Doc, who ordered a copy of Miller’s Crossing from Amazon.com on DVD lately. He also, bravely enough, got a copy of The Man Who Wasn’t There, the Coen’s recent attempt at a noir film. I warned him not to; it’s a wretchedly boring and tedious film, filled with really annoying and dislikable characters doing horribly boring things to each other, and far too many of those characters are portrayed by Frances McDormand, who always makes me yearn to wear someone else’s necessary prescription eyeglasses whenever she’s on a screen I’m somehow being coerced into looking at. In fact, the only interesting moments of The Man Who Wasn’t There come when Scarlet Johannsen tries to perform fellatio on Billy Bob Thornton in a vintage 1949 Chevrolet, and it only lasts about twenty seconds, because Billy Bob, being an idiot, stops her, and not only that, wrecks the car doing it. It’s a dreadful movie leading up to that moment, and an appalling one afterward.

I suppose Doc’s courage, though, inspired mine. I’d enjoyed what I’d seen of Intolerable Cruelty in its TV ad campaign, and yes, I know full well you can’t trust the commercials, but still. The Coen Brothers have been churning out whimsical, offbeat, tragically boring and nearly unwatchable swill since… well… since Barton Fink, which was only about half decent anyway… but I keep giving them a chance, and they keep disappointing me, but I keep giving them a chance, and then, only recently, there was O Brother Where Art Thou, which was just amazing… like the sudden return of the Coen Brothers who had given me Raising Arizona and Miller’s Crossing, two of the most unutterably brilliant and totally unique films ever made.

So, as Handsome himself might note, I was hopin’.

No such luck. Oh, there are funny moments in Cruelty and a pretty good reversal halfway through, but it’s overall a hollow reed. Joel and Ethan returned for one brief shining moment to their brilliant creatorial zenith with O Brother, but I must now accept (and caution the rest of you to, as well) that it was a fluke. The team that brought us Raising Arizona is no more. As the old joke once said about turtles, “It’s Fargo all the way down”.

Anyone who liked Fargo is free to never ever comment on this blog at all, by the way. Dreadful, dreadful film. Dissension will not be tolerated.

So, now, I’ve got some appalling boxed dinners, a couple of hopefully good seasons of TV, a lousy Full Screen Edition of one of the better movies ever made, and yet another in a seemingly endless chain of utterly wretched and disappointing Coen Brothers movies.

As I said, one of the wealthier working class sorts in all of St. Carmichael.

What else do I have? More books than Doc Nebula, apparently, and is he ever jealous, although, as he’s noted rather petulantly in past emails, he doesn’t envy me all the lousy British mysteries. I, personally, think he at least envies me my nearly complete Dick Francis collection, but I could be wrong, as even as avid a Francis aficionado as I must admit that ol’ Richard gets a bit repetitive after the fifteenth reprise of the same basic plot. Still, something in me loves plodding along in those familiar footsteps. And I know Doc is jealous as hell of my Alistair MacLean collection. I just know it.

I have fewer comic books than Doc, but more Modesty Blaise comic strips and novels, which he is also horribly envious of, but on the other hand, he has a complete set of John D. MacDonald’s Travis McGee novels, and I cannot track down either A TAN AND SANDY SILENCE or A DEADLY SHADE OF GOLD, while my copy of BRIGHT ORANGE FOR THE SHROUD is so horribly worn that if I take it off the shelf it’s just going to collapse into dust. So I envy him, too.

I, like Doc, play HeroClix when I can, but I play most often online. I, like Doc, have a very old computer, but I think mine is just a wee bit more up to date than his, or perhaps not. I, like Doc, only seem to be attracted to women who think I’m a great big fat droll pudding, which wouldn’t be bad if they found great big fat droll puddings sexually exciting, but, well, they don’t.

Unlike Doc, I am an enormous and devoted STAR WARS fan, although we both share an utter contempt for STAR TREK that doubtless covers a furtive geekish devotion, at least, to the classic characters. (Doc has told me why he loathes STAR WARS and I can’t disagree with him; Lucas is a hack and STAR WARS is simply a compendium of mostly witless utterly unoriginal cliches… but it’s one that, to me, lives and breathes regardless of its stupidity.)

Like Doc, I have little interest in dissecting current events, especially politics; while I’m guest writing at his blog, I’ll mostly talk, as he did, about matters personal to me… the only things I can really write about with any assurance, leave alone expertise. From time to time, I may pass on tidbits from Doc as he shares them with me via email, or I may not, or I may just make a lot of silly shit up and attribute it to him, because I am, ultimately, unpredictable.

Any of you doing Google searches for any of the proper nouns I have used here… places of work, names of cities, etc, etc… should remember what I said about the employment of pseuds, and also remember that a Great Man once noted that “all writers are liars”.

All non writers are liars, as well. I think Heinlein once noted there are approximately as many liars as there are mouths… or, I suppose, active keyboards, in the modern age.

We’re off on an odd journey.

I suggest, with a friendly touch to my eyebrow and a kind, if wry, half smile, that you be gentle with me (in its original meaning, i.e., non-vulgar, again, in its original meaning) in any comments you post. Unlike Doc, I do not treasure untrammeled freedom of expression. Freedoms belong to those who do not abuse them; all civil social dwellers know that at some level. Abuse your freedoms on this blog and you shall lose them forthwith.

And now, I think I’ll go watch Vic Mackey beat the living christ out of some worthless dregs of humanity, and picture said dregs as cyber trolls one and all.

Until next time, good sleep, good dreams, and little lower back pain to you all.

---

RULES OF THE ROAD

In one of his many invaluable essays on life in Hollywood, Mark Evanier described his first meeting with legendary TV comic and icon Milton Berle. Upon being introduced to Uncle Miltie and shaking hands with him, Mark, who is a pretty witty guy, blurted out without even thinking about it, “Wow, I didn’t recognize you in men’s clothing”. According to Mark, this soured Uncle Miltie on him from that point forward, because Mark had broken Rule Number One When Hanging With Milton Berle, namely, Never Be Funnier Than Milton Berle.

I’m reminded of that anecdote now.

Recent experiences at Electrolite being pretty much entirely similar if not completely identical to my previous experiences at Uppity-Negro.com and TampaTantrum.com, I thought I’d take the time to extrapolate whatever wisdom there is to find in the whole mess. Here’s The Deal, as far as I can see:

If you want to make friends and influence people when you head out onto the blogging trail, at least, as regards your posting comments on other people’s blogs, you MUST NOT:

(a) seem smarter than the person writing the blog you are posting comments to

(b) be funnier than the person writing the blog you are posting comments to

(c) be a better writer than the person writing the blog you are posting comments to

(d) be correct when you point out some manner in which the person writing the blog you are posting comments to was wrong, and/or

(e) Upset The Wimmenfolk On The Blog.

Rule E comes mostly out of my experiences with Aaron Hawkin’s Uppity-Negro blog. He gets a lot of female posters and like any of us male geeks would be in that admirable position, he is thoroughly whipped by them. If a new reader comes along and does anything whatsoever to offend the babes on Aaron’s blog, that new reader can expect a cold shoulder from Aaron roughly the size of the Greenland glacier. I don’t really blame Aaron for this; for a male geek, positive female attention is a jewel beyond price, and if I ever had any women posting to my blog who weren’t related to me by marriage, I’d most likely dance and sing like a puppet on a string when they cracked the lash, too.

I should add to this that I’ve learned, from Electrolite, that one Must Not Be Whimsical, Oblique, or Overly Geeky When Posting To A Big Important Political Marketplace of Ideas Type Blog, because those guys just have no time for Theodore Marley Brooks or Cornelus van Lunt references, regardless of how amusing or entertaining you and some others may find them.

Now, I am posting this to point out that while these may be the universal Rules of the Road on other blogs (and as far as I can see, they are, indeed, pretty much universal) you can ignore them here. I don’t care if you:

(a) seem smarter than I am, I like people who are smarter than I am, as long as they’re not jerks about it;

(b) are funnier than I am, then I get to laugh at your witty remarks, and hey, that’s all good;

(c) are a better writer than I am. Although I’m in a peculiar place as regards writing skills; good enough to be better than nearly all the amateurs out there, not good or lucky enough to be a professional at it. So if you are a better writer than I am, you are probably a professional writer and therefore do not have time to post comments on other people’s blogs, so this probably doesn’t matter, as relates to this blog;

(d) correct my mistakes; unlike apparently 95% of the remainder of the human race, I am under no illusions as to my own infallibility and simply don’t care if someone points out that I am wrong about something. Being wrong about things does not strike me as either a character flaw or a shameful embarrassment; we are all wrong about a lot of things every day of our lives, and that’s just how that works;

(e) Upset My Wimmenfolk. Well, actually, I shouldn’t say I don’t care if you upset my wimmenfolk, I do, the very thought deeply offends me. However, it’s just that the wimmenfolk at this point on this blog are my mom, my cuz in law, and my sister in law, and if you do something to upset them, I strongly doubt the authorities finding what’s left of you will be able to identify you without a DNA comparison. My mom, and any woman who marries any of the males in this family and stays married to him for any length of time, are perfectly capable of taking care of themselves. So offend them all you want; it’s a self correcting problem.

Oh, and I like geeky references and would just adore whimsical, cleverly elliptical posts to my comment threads, although I suspect I’d get annoyed if someone started posting a whole lot of Harry Potter-speak here, just for one example.

If there is a universal rule on this blog, it is quite simply, Do Not Be A Bigger Asshole Than The Blogger. In fact, if you can avoid it (and most of my small number of regular posters avoid it with style and panache) Don’t Be An Asshole At All. I am quite a big enough asshole myself to supply all the assholiness necessary for any blog, and I will continue to keep this blog well furnished with stupid remarks, doltish mistakes, whiney rationalizations, and defensive recriminations by the ton lot, there can be no doubt. You need bring none of your own asshole nature with you, I have plenty and am always willing to share.

---

THE INEVITABLE DISCLAIMER

By generally accepted social standards, I'm not a likable guy. I'm not saying that to get cheap reassurances. It's simply the truth. I regard many social conventions in radically different ways than most people do, I have many many controversial opinions, and I tend to state them pretty forthrightly. This is not a formula for popularity in any social continuum I've ever experienced.

In my prior blogs, I took the fairly standard attitude: if you don't like my opinions or my blog, don't read the fucking thing.

Having given that some more thought, though, I'm not going to say that this time around, because I've realized that what this is basically saying is, 'if you don't like what I have to say, tough, I don't want to hear it, don't even bother to tell me, just go away'.

And that's actually a pretty worthless attitude. It's basically saying, 'I don't want to hear anything except unconditional agreement and approval'. And that's nonsense. This is still a free country... for a little while longer, anyway... and if you really feel you just gotta send me a flame, or post one on my comment threads (assuming they actually work, which I cannot in any way guarantee) then by all means, knock yourself out.

Unless your flame is exceptionally cogent, witty, or stylish, though, I will most likely ignore it. You do have a right to say anything you want (although I'm not sure that's a right when you're doing it in my comment threads, but hey, you can certainly send all the emails you want). However, I have an equal right not to read anything I don't feel like reading... and I'm really quick with the delete key... as various angry folks have found in the past, when they decided they just had to do their absolute level best to make me as miserable as possible.

So, if you don't like my opinions, feel free to say so. However, if I find absolutely nothing worthwhile in your commentary, I will almost certainly not respond to it in any way.

Stupidity, ignorance, intolerance... these things are only worth my time and attention if they're entertaining. So unless you can be stupid, ignorant, and/or intolerant with enough wit, style, and/or panache to amuse me... try to be smart, informed, and broad minded when you write me.

---