A couple of changes to the B&J Podcast. Firstly, as you will notice in this episode, there are no more musical breaks. Just a song at the beginning, a song to close and that’s it. Secondly, this podcast will become a weekly podcast. We’re trying to get this to a more manageable length, so if the podcast is more frequent then maybe it will help? Don’t worry. We have our doubts about this, too.
The songs we played were Failure’s “Stuck On You” and “The Nurse Who Loved Me” to celebrate their concert at the Henry Fonda Theater on June 18.
What we talk about:
* The first ever Hello Kitty Convention
* Stockroom’s kink classes and why they’re important
* Fisting
* Brendan’s new computer
* My trip to the Watts Towers including being called “eccentric” at Hawkins House of Burgers
* Final thoughts on the IV shooter and hashtag activism
* LA Pride
* Folsom Street and Dore Alley Fairs
* Former MLB catcher Matt Treanor’s experience at Folsom
None of this was as bad as I’d feared. But what I hadn’t expected to hit even a quarter so hard was what Mya called the mental stuff,” which was unendurable, a sopping black curtain of horror. Mya, Jerome, my fashion intern—most of my drug friends had been at it longer than I had; and when they sat around high and talking about what it was like to quit (which was apparently the only time they could stand to talk about quitting), everyone had warned me repeatedly that the physical symptoms weren’t the rough part, that even with a baby habit like mine the depression would be like “nothing I’d ever dreamed” and I’d smiled politely as I leaned to the mirror and thought: wanna bet?
But depression wasn’t the word. This was a plunge encompassing sorrow and revulsion far beyond the personal: a sick, drenching nausea at all humanity and human endeavor from the dawn of time. The writhing loathsomeness of the biological anyone. Even the beautiful ones were like soft fruit about to spoil.
The Goldfinch Ch. 9 Sec. xi, Donna Tartt, 2013
when i quit smoking, i really did feel like this but to a lesser extent. there was the depression, the regression to my adolescent mood swings. when people would ask me how i was doing, i replied with a smile, “i’m too broke to afford the rope to hang myself with, but other than that i’m doing all right.” i still find that greeting to be funny.
i don’t know why it took me this long to read donna tartt’s latest novel, but i’m glad i finally got to it. i loved her first novel the secret history, and for some reason i never read the second novel. but this one has been tons of fun.
met a new friend todd yesterday at watts towers. in that i mean that we had been corresponding online and decided to meet up at watts towers. i didn’t just troll the towers and say, “hey, you’re my new friend,” or anything like that. that would presume i’m an outgoing person which i definitely am not.
the towers are actually very underwhelming at first. they’re not as big as i expected. they’re not as tall as i expected. but once you get closer and looking into the details, they’re actually pretty fascinating.
we then headed off to hawkins house of burgers because, of course you have to, and i’m still feeling the acid trying to escape from my esophagus and trying to burn a hole through walls and such.
as we were eating, a man on a bicycle walks by and greets us. he looks at me and tells me to go on and be eccentric and don’t let anybody tell me otherwise. obviously i’m summarizing for the sake of brevity. is it that obvious that i’m a fucking weirdo to a black man as i was sitting eating a bacon cheeseburger, chili fries and a diet coke across the street from the nickerson gardens project?
among the topics todd and i broached was laziness for sex. kissing, groping and oral is fine, but lately i’ve been too lazy to douche for anal. it’s such a production, so when i’m on a hookup site and people message me i almost always try and schedule for later since i can’t muster the desire to douche. but i guess i’m missing the point of these sites and apps so whatever.
then we started reminiscing about the days before the internet and such when you would have to have public sex and that threat of being hacked up was always there like a comfort blanket of sorts. do the kids still have public sex or is it all negotiated on apps now?
i had a dream that a big burly guy was crazy enough to be my boyfriend. we got into an argument, and he kept screaming at me in his deep baritone voice. what exactly was said and what exactly we were arguing about i don’t know.
he threw me on our bed, ripped my pants off and without and lube or rimming or anything just entered me in one fell swoop. there was a sinister grin on his face, a smug satisfaction on giving me what i deserved. but hidden from view was my inner grin, that for the first time he fucked me the way i wanted to be fucked. because what’s the point in having a boyfriend with tons of muscles if he’s going to a mere shrinking violet in bed?
i woke up and realized i had only masturbated twice since i twisted my ankle a couple of weeks ago, which really explains the dream. so i watched some marc dylan porn and jerked a load out. calling it a catharsis is a great understatement.
i’m contemplating importing all of the entries from livejournal that date back from 2001 here just for the sake of posterity and completion. well not really completion since there are entries on websites i made way in the past dating back to 1998 that are lost into the ether. i’ve gone through most of the lj entries a year or so back, and they are embarrassing. but i’m sure i’m going to regret posting this entry in about 15 minutes, so what’s the difference, right?
brendan posted this picture on facebook this morning which didn’t help my morning hardon at all. i guess there’s a “game of thrones” tie in with this, but since i don’t watch the show i wouldn’t know. all i know is that if “game of thrones” is a mere front for colt studios, i would have started to pay attention to this show much sooner.
and speaking of porn, here are some of the highlights of search terms for this site over the last month:
jimmy hand job
handjob in the stadium
fuck time warner dodgers
fuck spirit day
adrian cardenas no hitter
my brother balls
i guess i’ll have to do a better job of bringing sexy to this blog.
The puck just moments before getting past Corey Crawford to end the Western Conference Final. (Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
“I couldn’t be prouder of our guys the way we competed in some tough situations, down 3‑1. One shot away from going to try to do it again.”
Chicago Blackhawks head coach Joel Quenneville looked a bit shell shocked as he said those words in his postgame press conference last night after Game 7. Minutes before, Alec Martinez had taken a pass from Justin Williams and shot it from the left point. A bounce here, a bounce there, and the Kings ended what has perhaps been the best Stanley Cup Playoffs series in recent memory.
I didn’t think the Kings had it in them. Sure they overcame the 0-3 deficit against the San Jose Sharks. Sure they got past Anaheim. But this was the Chicago Blackhawks. This was a team that had the speed, the precision passing, the goaltending, the big bodies and, most importantly, the Cup. Although the Kings were healthier coming into this year’s rematch, I still didn’t like them getting past the champs.
But Game 2 happened when they overcame a 2-0 deficit to win 6-2 in Chicago. Everything changed from that moment. The Kings had a chance.
Their first chance to close out the series in Game 5 in Chicago was unsuccessful, but it brought us the Perfect Period: the first overtime period that saw hockey at its best, a 20-minute period played in 26 minutes including seven minutes, 56 seconds of uninterrupted play.
Of course this series was going to have a Game 7. Even when the Kings trailed 2-0 in the opening period, they were going to come back. I knew better than to count these guys out especially when they had Mr. Game 7 on their side. Of course Justin Williams tied the game in the first period 2-2 and got the assist on the overtime game winner.
Today the Hawks are starting their summer vacations, but they were one shot away from winning the damn thing. That’s what made this series so compelling. Like the 2002 NBA Western Conference Finals between the Sacramento Kings and Lakers, this was tightly fought and had its moments of heroics and answered prayers. It’s a shame this couldn’t have been a best-of-nine series or the Stanley Cup Final itself. So it’s no surprise that it set a ratings record for NBC Sports Net according to Puck Daddy. With a 3.17 overnight national rating, it was the most-watched game in the network’s history including the Stanley Cup Final.
The talk of the Final is now the King versus the Kings. Apart from Kings fans and Rangers fans, the Cup Final is going to pale in comparison to the Western Conference Final. Hopefully it’s not like the 2002 NBA Finals where the Lakers swept the New Jersey Nets in an anticlimactic fashion.
But does anyone see the Rangers winning? Does anyone see the Kings winning in less than five games? But a note of warning: I’ve been wrong at every point of these playoffs. I said San Jose in 7, Kings in 6, Blackhawks in 6. Sure the Kings could win in 5, but then again…
“You’re such a good housewife,” my mom told me last night as I showed her where I cleared some kitchen clutter away. My mom and grandmother do not believe in putting dishes, cups, whatever away in cabinets. Just leave it to dry on the dish rack, we’ll probably need to access it easier. But our cups and mugs situation were way out of control, I had to do something about it.
I haven’t said anything this week since there hasn’t been much to say, really. Being laid up with my sprained ankle has been a bitch. A boring bitch, that is. It’s still swollen, but it has gone down considerably. I can walk around with some discomfort but not a whole lot of pain.
On Thursday I helped my cousin put her things in storage as she has finished her first year of pharmacy school in Pomona. She hadn’t heard the extent of my injury since she shuns Facebook and never reads my site. So when she saw me limping, she told me to suck it up. Then she saw the extent of my injury and she shut up.
In the course of loading her things into the moving truck, I tweaked my back. Again, my cousin and my aunt thought it was an effort for me to get out of helping her. It wasn’t. I felt an impingement that could develop into another sciatica outbreak. My last period of sciatica caused me to be completely immobile X-mas 2012 and left parts of my left leg and foot numb to this day.
And here’s the part that I get resentful towards my family. <angsty bullshit>I’m told to suck it up because I’m supposed to be a man. Fine. But when I get injured to such an extent that I can’t move, I’m told to know my limits and be very careful.
So the two choices: be a faggy pussy, or be an immobile man.
Of course, when my family sees how injured I end up being they realize that I was usually right. That I’m not complaining for the sake of complaining. That I usually try and suck it up until I have to say something. </angsty bullshit>
Regardless I finished loading her shit into the truck. When we got to the storage unit, the moving truck driver took a look at me with my fucked up ankle and hunched over a bit from my back and determined there was no way I could move the stuff from the truck to the unit. So that was that.
Fortunately my back hasn’t flared up to a full-blown sciatica episode, so I am mobile thankfully albeit a bit hunched over. Thank the heavens for acupuncture.
Brendan IS NOT DEAD! So rather that wait two weeks for a podcast, here is another one just one week later.
This podcast features the music of Kim and Kelley Deal: The Amps’ “Bragging Party”, The Breeders’ “Doe”, Kelley Deal’s cover of Pantera’s “Fucking Hostile” and Kim Deal’s new single “The Root”.
In this one we talk about where Brendan was last week, how I fucked up my ankle, that kid who went on a killing spree in IV, Barbra Streisand, how I’ve never watched a Star Wars movie, Pat Sajak’s denying science, Miguel Olivo biting off Alex Guerrero’s ear, Willow Smith taking a picture with a 20-year old and other nonsense.
This podcast even features guests: incestual lesbian dogs!
I suppose I should know better than to doubt the Kings. I wrote them off after the lost their first three games to the San Jose Sharks in the first round. Of course, we all saw them storm back to win the final four games of the series to advance.
The question is how many times does a team get to come back from the brink of death? I thought the Kings used up their one get-out-of-jail-free card. And then seeing how they were thoroughly outplayed by the Blackhawks in Game 2 last night for the first two periods, I responded by turning to the Spurs-Thunder game.
So I didn’t see this spectacular save by Jonathan Quick that many are pointing to as the genesis of the Kings turnaround:
I didn’t see Justin Williams greasy goal at the end of the second period to cut the deficit to 2-1.
But as the basketball game went to halftime, I switched over to the hockey game as the third period got underway. And holy shit. For the first time since the Wayne Gretzky era, the Kings scored five goals in a period. Jeff Carter scored a hat trick and got an assist. For 38 minutes the Blackhawks were making the Western Conference Finals a mere formality. Then the Kings seemingly woke up and had a few things to say about that.
Here’s all of this in slo-mo:
For the first time since the Kings hoisted the Cup in 2012, I believe the Kings can actually win it again. I know the Kings probably won’t score five goals in a period again this postseason. Hell, the Blackhawks can still win this series.
But last night’s game left me with the first hope that the Kings can get back to the top, that it’s not merely a far-fetched prayer muttered by zombie-eyed fans. They can actually do it.
I went to the Portuguese Bend Preserve for a hike. I’ve been down here many times and didn’t think anything out of the ordinary would happen. Of course as I was heading down Burma Road, I decided to go down the Water Tank Trail, connect with the Garden Trail, up the Landside Scarp Trail to the Ishibashi Trail back up to Burma Road.
One problem: it is really steep going down the Water Tank Trail for about several hundred meters. Normally I would take one step, make sure I had traction, take another step and so on and so forth. For some reason I started jogging. I knew I was fucked. The jogging thanks to gravity turned into a full run. “Fuck me,” I said out loud resigned to my fate of falling. And I fell, slid for a couple of meters and stopped.
My first fear was that my glasses were broken. Fortunately they were only dirty from all the crap I kicked up. So at least I could drive.
As I was sliding, I felt my gimp foot in pain. As I stood up, what is normally a slightly numb leg was in pain right at the ankle. Fortunately I didn’t hear any popping and I could actually walk, so I figured I sprained the damn thing.
Walking more than a mile back up to my car with my sprained ankle was a bit funny. I was laughing most of the way back up. Not funny was twisting my ankle twice more, but I kept on going.
After washing off, I noticed my ankle the size of a tennis ball. I ate lunch then went to my acupuncturist where along with the normal needles:
I got the bleeding and cupping you see above. And just for kicks you can see the trail rash on my left leg that happened when I slid to a stop:
I have a couple of scrapes on my arm, but other than that and the sprained ankle I’m okay. But at least it was a pretty day.