From the “I can’t make this shit up” files:

Michael Jackson is even crazier than before! It would seem that he is no longer in the Middle East. No, Jackson has left those burka’d shores for Ireland. Yes. Ireland.

He is looking into buying an estate or castle, currently but that isn’t where the crazy comes in.

No, Jackson wants to open a theme park that is leprechaun based.

“Michael is deadly serious about this idea,” a source told Ireland’s Daily Mirror. “He loves the whole idea of leprechauns and the magic and myths of Ireland. It would cost around 500 million Euros [about $635 million] to do. He’s always wanted to open his own theme park and he thinks Ireland is the perfect place and it will all be built around the leprechaun theme.”

Oh jeebus. Can you imagine this place? Jackson in a green suit and green hat, skipping along, grabbing his crotch and yelping out “OoooHOOO! Faith and Begorrah, she’s not my lova’!”

Then he’d go up to a small boy and ask if the kid wants to see Jackson’s “pot of gold”. *shudder*

In other news, Tito Jackson was… just kidding, there isn’t any Tito news. But you knew that already.

My own special brand of Extra Stupid part the first:

For some reason this year I keep mixing up seasons. when I mean spring I say fall and when I mean fall I say spring. As I just told someone: Shut up, I have the dumbs.

I don’t know why I do it. They’re both transitional, sure, but they are also different things. And not that hard to keep straight. Yet, this year (I haven’t done this in the past that I am aware of) I can not say the one I mean. Pretty much ever.

Eventually my friends will simply smack me upside the head until I learn, all Pavlovian-like.

My own special brand of Extra Stupid part the second:

Everywhere from where I am is “down”. Which, actually, sounds far more condescending than I mean to imply. Still. I am in NY. If I am going to Florida I say “I’m going down to Florida.” and if I am going to Boston I say “I am going down to Boston.”

I go “down the block” no matter where I am going, everything is down the street, every direction is just, pretty much, down.

“Hey man, how do I get to Figaro’s?”

“You go down 6th till you hit Bleeker than you turn and head down Bleeker till you pass it, like MacDougal I think.”

See the lack of east, west, north or south there? Those directions were actually given to someone a few years back. Took them over an hour to find the place. Not ’cause they were dumb, but because all I told them was “down, down, down!”

I know I’m doing it, but somehow I can’t seem to stop it.

My own special brand of Extra Stupid part the third:

I can not tell distance. Everything is ten feet from where I am, or it’s fifty, or one hundred. I just pick one and guess and run with it. I wish I were kidding.

One day, outside the Empire State Building (33rd and 5th, actually right outside the Starbucks there) I was standing around with a friend, let’s call him Vinnie because his name is Vinnie. While we were standing there a blind man walked up to us and asked us to direct him to the White Castle that was nearby.

This thing was across the street and like, so I’m told, fifty or sixty feet from the corner. So I, without hesitating, say, “Cross this street and then turn right and it’s like ten feet from the corner.”

Vinnie found himself laughing too hard to correct me. I didn’t see why until I watched the guy cross and try to find a door in the side of a building. Luckily someone else noticed him there and helped him.

Learn from this!

If you’re blind, don’t ask me for directions. If I name a season, think and reason out if I might be stupid. If I give you directions, demand more nouns than “down” as descriptors.

I really wish I could help it, but I’ve got the dumbs.

So I notice the default AIM icon is that little yellow guy and a speech balloon. The balloon says “You there?” and then changes to “YT?” as if YT was supposed to mean “You there?”

And well, I wonder now.

YT as an abbreviation: Does it mean –

A) You There?
B) Yours Truly
C) Something else

Are you ready for this? Are you sitting down somewhere comfy? All right. Get ready. Here it comes:

SHOWGIRLS! The musical
Dear lord I wish I was kidding. It seems that Joe Eszterhas, the script writer of Showgirls, is working to produce a musical of the movie.

He told NY Metro: “It’s a movie that I wish I’d have written differently, and I wish would have been cast differently.” Still, he adds, “I never agreed with the notion that this movie was accidentally funny. I think it defies the imagination to think that a line like ‘How does it feel not to have anybody comin’ on you anymore?’ isn’t purposely funny. If you have a character named Henrietta Bazoom walking around poppin’ her tits out every 30 seconds, that’s a darkly humorous moment.”

Darkly humorous? ‘Cause her tits pop out? What? What the fuck is wrong with this guy? He suddenly understands that he wrote crap and that it’s funny and we’re all supposed to go “Oooh, we see now, you meant it all along, we’re with you, genius man!”

No. No. I do not believe that the line “How does it feel not to have anybody comin’ on you anymore?” was purposefully funny, no matter what he might claim right now. Now, I think the movie is a standard for satire. Unintentional script satire. Paul Verhoeven, I thin, made a wonderful piece of satire out of it, but come on. That script is so bad it couldn’t have been done on purpose. Purpose smells different. It doesn’t stink of Cinemax desperation the way Showgirls always has.

So anyway. Eszterhas is working with, no lie, the folks who produced Urinetown to get Showgirls: the musical done. Just stop and read that line again. Isn’t that priceless? Yup. Showgirls: the musical will happen. It will open in Vegas and, supposedly “embrace the campiness of the original”. This time, he’ll mean the joke, and they won’t be half as good.

First up, The Capital talked to Malfi about The Nature of Monsters.

And, actually, a favor to ask about tNoM. If you ordered it and read it and all that good stuff, would you consider going to Amazon and reviewing it? Review it honestly, mind you. You can click here to review the book. If you liked it, tell the world why. If you didn’t tell them why. Either way, make yourself heard.

+++++++++++

So anyway. I’m sick. Not, like, end of the world sick, or stay home sick but sick enough that I’m spacey and kinda loopy and generally slower than normal.

Go on, make your jokes. Please.

But I’ve been sucking back these honey and tea cough drops with some minty thing, you know cough drops. And they’re really shitty. I mean the honey bit is so subtle it shouldn’t even be there and tea flavor? In a cough drop? Ick.

But I am not a frequenter of cough drops so I am using what I had in my medicine cabinet. See, this is why you have to pay attention to these things before you get sick. Otherwise you run the risk of being stuck with crappy cough drops that taste like butt.

Mentholated butt, mind you. Butt, nonetheless.

All right, this is too cool for school. I want to introduce you to the USBCELL. What is it? Well. It’s a NiMH battery that can be recharged via a USB port.

Here are some stats:

Rechargeable AA NiMH Battery 1.2v 1300mah

90%+ Charged after 5 Hours by powered USB

Also rechargeable by approved NiMH charger at 250ma for 7 Hours

How amazingly great is that?

The ones I show you in this post are, of course, AA batteries. They also come in C, D AAA and 9V and eventually cellular phone batteries. Those are all pending. The AA size are for sale in the UK (only, for right now) and dispatch in 5-12 days.

If you missed the link to their page above, here’s another one for you.

£12.99 (Free delivery, price includes VAT) for a set of two batteries. These things, if they work as advertised could change a lot of shit. I mean, what doesn’t have a USB port these days? Game consoles have them, all computers do, does anyone here have no access to a powered USB port?

Just wow. We live in teh futures.

Thai army seizes Bangkok
Tue Sep 19, 2006 6:54 PM BST

By Pracha Hariraksapitak

BANGKOK (Reuters) – The Thai army took control of Bangkok on Tuesday without a shot being fired and announced a commission to reform the constitution, despite the prime minister’s declaration of a state of emergency from New York.

A government spokesman with Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra at the United Nations said the coup could not succeed and “we’re in control”.

Tanks and soldiers took over Government House in Thailand’s first coup in 15 years and a coup spokesman said on television the army and police were in control of the capital and surrounding provinces.

The seizure would be temporary and power “returned to the people” soon, retired Lieutenant-General Prapart Sakuntanak said on all Thai television channels.

The army declared martial law, told all soldiers to report to base and banned unauthorised troop movements, suggesting the military leadership was worried that Thaksin loyalists in the armed forces might attempt a counter-coup.

Prapart said the armed forces and police had set up a body to decide on political reforms, ousting billionaire telecoms tycoon Thaksin in the midst of a political crisis stemming from accusations he had subverted Thailand’s 74-year-old democracy.

“Never in Thai history have the people been so divided,” Prapart said.

“The majority of people had become suspicious of this administration, which is running the country through rampant corruption,” he added.

“Independent bodies have been interfered with so much they could not perform in line within the spirit of the constitution.”

Weerasak Kohsurat, a deputy minister in a previous government, told Reuters he believed royal adviser Sumate Tantivejakul would head the reform commission and an interim government would be formed while political reforms were agreed.

Elections would be called soon and Thaksin would be allowed to take part, he said.
…More here…

So someone had this cake for their wedding:

click for the full set
Which is cool, if bizarre enough. Well it turns out that Gateaux Inc. made the cake.

From their site: Cakes have always denoted special occasions. The tradition of serving cake at weddings has its origins in ancient Rome.

In the 1600’s, France refined the tradition by adding a sweet icing to the pastry. Today, Gateaux, Inc. further refines the traditional wedding cake into an individualized art form, matching the tastes, traditions, and styles of the wedding party, incorporating them into a wedding cake of distinction.

Whatever the occasion, Gateaux, Inc. creates cakes that turn distinctive events into memorable ones.

They do some amazing custom cakes.

My problem is that I would never want to eat one, they simply look too cool to ruin. I wonder how many people never eat the cakes.

Back in the day Soul Coughing did two commercials for GAP Kids. I happen to have them. Tried to upload to YouTube and one says it worked and is in process but the other didn’t work although it plays for me just dandyfine.

So I thought I’d upload ‘em myself and share ‘em here, instead.

http://www.hellblazer.net/nyc/kidstv1hires.mov (right click and save-as, roughly 3mg) – This is the first. Doughty just repeats “Fall into the GAP” over and over at full Doughty-like speeds. It will, of course, get stuck in your head.

http://www.hellblazer.net/nyc/kidstv2hires.mov (right click and save-as, roughly 3mg) – This is the second one and sounds far more like a Soul Coughing song.

And yes I know the sound is fairly low, not my choice – that’s how I found them. So, you know, turn the volume up when listening if you need to.

Enjoy!

Do you enjoy Red Bull at all? I’m not a drinker of the stuff but I know some folks who are. It’s fairly popular and they have that stupid slogan: Red Bull gives you wings.

Harmless, strange little drink company that sells things in expensive tiny cans with good colors. So the hell what.

Well this little drink company hired Jump Studios to design their headquarters. With what result?

See on the left there? That isn’t an escalator. It’s a slide. That’s how they get from one floor to another. Down at least. They have slides. Next to it you can see some private offices. How great would it be to have that office?

They also have things like:

Really cool stair cases.

Interesting layouts and small conference areas.

Really cool slide/stair layouts

This just might be the coolest looking office ever invented.