THE JO-TEL … illegal blog downfield

Pure Being is pure abstraction and consequently absolute negation, which taken in its immediate moment is also non-being.

-Martin Heidegger

#11

Last Saturday was The Quail’s birthday (observed). I was having a good time and getting mightily drunk until about 20 minutes into our sojourn at the Noc Noc Tavern in Lower Haight. After finally finding a place to sit, I proposed an intellectual pursuit that would dome-inate me for about one drunk hour: Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon.

At first Hip and Lisa and I were playing together. And by ‘at first’, I mean for about 15 seconds. Hip and Lisa quickly recognized the game as something that was not proper to play in a highly intoxicated state, so they quickly moved on to “talking” and “having fun.” I, on the other hand, continued to play the game repeatedly in my own head — making up starting actors or actresses and trying to trace them back to Kevin Bacon. My central problem was that I could only remember three Kevin Bacon movies. The first one was Tremors, which was a blind alley because I couldn’t remember the names of any of the other actors in that movie. The second was A River Runs Through It, which was important because it gave me Meryl Streep (sweet, sweet Meryl Streep), my only connection to Kevin Bacon. Finally, I thought of Stir of Echoes, but could not think of anyone else in that otherwise forgettable movie.

So basically I was trying to work out from Streep and then back to Bacon. But the problem was that I would get two movies out and then forget where I had come from: “Streep was in Adaptation with Malkovich, Malkovich was in Con Air with John Cusack, Cusack was in High Fidelity with Jack Black …. and then … wait wait, who was in Con Air with Malkovich?” I just sat clutching my beer and staring straight ahead or trying to snuff everything by putting my hands on my ears and facing the bar’s grimey floor while I contemplated what the hell Diane Weist had to do with drinking at this bar right now. At one point I tenuously connected Susan Sarandon with Susan Sarandon without connecting to Bacon. That one was annoying.

P.S.: Patsy spilled about 4 beers during the course of the evening. Good. Deal.

#12

And now we’ll talk about The Freestyle. Before we went out to Noc Noc for The Quail’s birthday, we went to Rosie’s apartment and chilled, ate mini hamburgers, chilled, drank champagne, tried to fall backwards onto our hands, chilled, and freestyled. The latter activity was unusual, especially for me. But at one point Reid, one of Rosie’s friends, and I started freestyling to some random song. It was weird. Afterward, people kept saying that I did well, but I really think they were lying because I was pretty terrible. Although I do remember spitting some lines about Isaac Brock getting fat after the drugs. Sort of a latter-day Eminem, but more indie. Maybe I am a good freestyler.

#13

Aaah, good old Triumph the Insult Comic Dog. I almost forgot about him. Click here for a clip from one of his latest Hollywood Squares appearances. It’s almost as funny for Triumph as it is for how surreally-pathetic the contestant is and how lame Kathy Griffin must feel that a novelty puppet is 500% more talented as she is.

-Shark (originally posted 1/28/07)