SWINE FLU

The guy's voice is disturbingly soothing.

BLOODBATH ONE-YEAR ANNIVERSARY

CRIMSON (OPERA)
1650 Shrader Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90028
(310) 406-5905

Free before 11pm with RSVP
INFO@BLOODBATHPROJECT.COM

SWAYZE SPEAKS...

"You just put your pickle on everybody's plate, college boy, and leave the hard stuff to me."
- as Johnny Castle in Dirty Dancing

"Pain don't hurt."
- as Dalton in Road House

"You smoke more than a pack today and I'll skin you. Understood?"
- as Darrel Curtis in The Outsiders

"If you want the ultimate, you've got to be willing to pay the ultimate price. It's not tragic to die doing what you love."
- as Bodhi in Point Break

"Sometime it just takes a fairy."
- as Vida Boheme in To Wong Foo, Thanks For Everything, Julie Newmar

"You are a fear prisoner. Yes, you are a product of fear."
- as Jim Cunningham in Donnie Darko

"It's amazing, Molly. The love inside, you take it with you. See ya."
- as Sam Wheat in Ghost

SWAYZE IS HIP HOP

"Reach for the pistol and you're crazy
Try to blast and I'll be swinging that ass like Patrick Swayze"
- Kool G Rap; The Symphony Part II

"I'm sick, insane crazy, Driving Miss Daisy
Out her fuckin' mind now I got mine I'm Swayze"
- Method Man; Bring the Pain

"You got me strung like I'm young and it's crazy
You're making me nervous, I don't deserve this, I'm Swayze"
- CL Smooth; Searching

"The niggas went wild, the hoes went crazy
We dropped the microphone, then we Swayze"
- E Swift; Can't Tell Me Shit

"I try to stay aware of the drama, it's crazy
Plus, see I got to tell your mama that I'm Swayze"
- Black Sheep; Who's Next?

"Then he was Swayze, the shot must've dazed me
Thug's selling drugs, bustling slugs, but he ain't crazy"
- Big Noyd; Right Back At You

"But now I'm Swayze, ghost, the rap host
Who rip shows, from coast to coast"
- EPMD; It's Going Down

"Lick your toes, bitch? Fuck no, you must be crazy
Squirt in your face and then I'm Swayze"
- Notorious B.I.G.; Big Booty Hoes

"Commitments, I'm Swayze, no time for the ill shit
Rest with the niggas on that real blood-spill shit
- Notorious B.I.G.; Let Me Get Down

"That's why I bust back, it don't phase me
When he drop, take his glock, and I'm Swayze"
- Notorious B.I.G. ; Runnin' and Runnin'

GHOST LIKE SWAYZE

PATRICK WAYNE SWAYZE (AUGUST 18, 1952 - SEPTEMBER 14, 2009)

lay-z / JAY-Z

KOREANS GONE WILD: DOUBLE FEATURE

GATORS, LOBSTERS, AND PIGS

I miss Gatorade. The magical thirst quencher, developed in the 1960's by scientists and University of Florida Gators football coaches (hence the name "GATORade"), has long been touted as the ultimate rehydrator for weary atheletes and other energy-depleted persons. Lemon-Lime, the original green stuff, is my poison of choice. Gatorade is made of water, sugar, salt, carbohydrates, high fructose corn syrup, artificial colors, glucose, fructose, and a bunch of electrolytes like sodium, potassium, and chloride. This combination of fancy chemicals indeed does wonders in replenishing your body of lost energy and hydration. I got a B- in Mr. Bernard's 9th grade chemistry class at Granada Hills High School, so I pretty much have no idea what this chemical process is. But sometimes when I gulp it down I like to imagine all the different molecules, color-coded according to periodic table positioning, marching out of the plastic big-mouthed bottle like Ghostbusters with Proton Packs on, ready to vaporize all the deleterious crap that's bogging me down. They'll work their way out of the bowels of my stomach and through my veins like the halls of the Biltmore Hotel, and finally fight their way up to the roof to zap Slimer who is wringing the shit out of my brain. Let me rephrase my initial statement: I miss needing Gatorade.

Wait, let me rephrase that again. I miss what Gatorade can do for a hangover. But I don't miss the hangover. And wait another second, all this green is confusing me. That's not Slimer playing hopscotch on my cerebral cortex. It's a bottle (or two or three) of Chamisul Fresh Soju, that evil evil oh-so-seductive nectar of the gods.

In not-so-layman's terms, a hangover, or more formally, Veisalgia, basically goes like this: ethanol, the form of alcohol found in the potent potables most of us enjoy regularly, goes into the bloodstream and gets broken down by certain liver enzymes. It is then converted to acetaldehyde by an enzyme called alcohol dehydrogenase. Acetaldehyde is exponentially more toxic to the body than ethanol. Finally, an enzyme called acetaldehyde dehydrogenase converts the acetaldehyde to acetic acid, which is then flushed out of the body by way of nature's magic rubber-gloved hands. Ethanol severely dehydrates the body and depletes it of minerals and electrolytes. This is compounded once the acetaldehyde takes form, exacerbating and prolonging the symptoms of a typical Sunday morning hangover.

We all have Asian friends who turn into a Lobster-Face after half a pint of beer, and wonder what the fuck is wrong with them (in fact, some of us are them). We call them pussies while they adamantly exclaim that it is an allergic reaction that makes their entire head look like Rihanna's left eye. Well, being a pussy or having nerdy allergies do not fully explain the story. It is evolution that is to be blamed. Most Asians, during their evolutionary incubation period, somehow went through a genetic mutation process whereby their alcohol dehyrdogenase enzyme became overly effective at converting ethanol into acetaldehyde, and, conversely, their acetaldehyde dehydrogenase enzyme became less effective at breaking down acetaldehyde into acetic acid. This results in a large accumulation of the highly toxic acetaldehyde in the blood, causing the sufferer to experience immediate and dramatic hangover symptoms such as headaches, nausea, and a very very red face.

I don't miss hangovers.

I'll plainly admit that I'm not really going anywhere with this piece. It sounds like I'm drunk but I'm not. I just wanted to talk about alcohol and hangovers and my feeble attempt at quitting drinking altogether. Yes, in February I took a swing at quitting drinking. Why, you ask? I dunno really. Just thought it was about time to press the reset button on my liver, so to speak. But I have good news for pork, my first love truly so in the form of Sam-Gyub-Sal (SGS), or Korean BBQ: I am back!!! I would never have SGS without the Soj'. That's like jelly without toast. Especially in these hard times for sus domesticus, what with pork cooties killing Mexican babies in Texas oilfields, acetaldehyde in my bloodstream means dollars in your pocket.

Buenos Nachos!

EXCERPTS & MISCELLANY: SPEAK MEXICAN?

He led me to a barn, where a Mexican man stood waiting for his turn at the shower. "Whole-aah, Toe-moss," he shouted.

The man tugged at the towel he wore like a skirt around his waist and nodded his head in greeting, "Hola, Senor Hobbs."

"You speak some Mexican don't you, Daniel?" Hobbs asked. "Well, by God, I'm learning a few words of my own. A person has to in order to get along in the modern world! You get me going, and I'll speak like a regular Topo Gigio, right, Ringo?"

The dog knelt at the base of the tree, doubling over to lick its blistered anus.

"These are different times we're living in, a whole new set of rules. The kids around here, they think they're too good to work. Only choice left is either trash or Mexicans, and I'll take the stupid Mexicans any day." He prodded me in the ribs, "Watch this. 'Buenos Dios, Miguel.'"

A small, dark-eyed man looked up from his wood splitting, alarmed.

"They spook easy," Hobbs said.

Yes, well, people tend to do that when you come up behind them shouting, "Good God." It's just a habit, I guess.


Excerpt from "Naked" by David Sedaris

OLD BONES

To all five of you readers of my blog I apologize for the extended hiatus. I've wanted to keep in touch, believe me, but there has been a myriad of external forces restraining me from the at-times-challenging endeavor of "updating."

All excuses aside, I missed you all. Not being able to talk to you has been like the episode of Small Wonder when Jamie Lawson goes on a summer camp trip and gets claustrophobic because he has no way of communicating with his family.

Amongst the things that have paralyzed my writing is a black and slightly broken pinky. I never realized the demand for accuracy a QWERTY board entailed until I was suddenly left with only nine sausage links; not to mention many other daily, and perhaps even hourly tasks that hinged on the use of my fingers, that were temporarily halted due to this unanticipated injury. Example: that pinky, being my right pinky, was specifically designated for a special mission. If my hands were Navy SEALS, my right pinky would have been the sniper. It was fortified with more refined artillery, designed and specially trained to seek out its enemy and attack with precision and vigor. In some ways, even, I can stretch the shit out of this analogy like I stretch out my boxer briefs from two years ago when I was four waist sizes smaller, and say my pinky was, rather than a Navy SEAL sniper, a CIA operative planted in the bowels of a South American drug cartel.

Armed and at ease my pinky, people would say, looked like a coke-head's pinky. Basically, I would grow out the nail to about an eighth to a quarter of an inch length, and maintain it at that extension perpetually. Many thought it was a yayo-scooper or a tweak-mincer. Some just thought it was dirty. In actuality, behind the menacing guise, my pinky was in fact simply a picker, an orifice maintenance specialist, so to speak. The nail was grown to its obnoxious length so as to reach those hard-to-reach nooks and crannies. Noses, eyes, ears, teeth, belly-buttons, and other bodily grottos devoid of light, there wasn't a hole my right pinky couldn't excavate. Until now.

What happened?! So our group of Swayzians, some of you reading included, have recently been playing softball every weekend in the ungodly San Fernando Valley. In fact, we just came back from a fun but draining game played at Northridge Park under a blazing sun and 97 degree heat blanket. It's great to be out with good friends, all engaged in friendly competition, absorbing the physical and metaphysical nutrients an active day in the sun can offer. Preceding the softball series, however, a group of us guys started by playing football every Sunday. The first game, which of course was flag football, was a blast.....until I got home and looked at my hand. It was purple and pretty much looked exactly like in the picture. I dunno how, but I managed to put a hairline fracture in the tip of my pinky playing FLAG football. Luckily it wasn't a bigger bone that I busted, but at least it would have been somewhat respectable. A broken pinky from flag football: that's not much to brag about, there's not a whole lot of story-tellin' there.

Keeping tab, just on my right hand alone now, I've split my middle knuckle in two, broken my ring finger, ripped the nail off my middle finger, and now, fractured my pinky, all somehow involved with sports. I know I don't look athletic. Maybe sometimes looks aren't that deceiving, and now my pinky looks like Rihanna's left cheek. Maybe I should lay off the balls.

MORRISSEY "THE MORE YOU IGNORE ME, THE CLOSER I GET"

MT x TST in NYC.....TONIGHT!

If you're in the city, you don't wanna miss this one...