In my previous post I discussed four criteria which make up the ideal romantic partner. Of course, because I was describing an ideal, I was also describing an impossibility. In my eyes a dream girl/guy would be very funny, extremely attractive, have genius-level intelligence and be as loyal as a lark. In reality, candidates are bound to fall short in at least one of those categories, usually at least two. I fall short in all four.

But hold the phone! My goal is not to discourage people! As Built to Spill’s first album’s title told us: There Is Nothing Wrong With Love! What is wrong is having ridiculous expectations. In this second part, I am going to reveal my second system of romantic qualification: S.A.F.E. (again, this took about 4 minutes of development and is undoubtedly flawed). The S.A.F.E system outlines my qualifications for what constitutes an appropriate partner to pursue romantically. While the F.A.I.L standards will only end in disaster, the S.A.F.E criteria should lead you to a happy and healthy relationship. Let’s begin:

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What do you do on a Friday night when all the money in your bank account is in default because your stupid cell phone company decides to debit your account twice for no reason, and all you have is two dollars and a poodle full pennies?

Let me tell you- You get drunk! You grab everything in sight and you get your ass to the corner store immediately. When I got to the Saba Grocery Store on Castle Hill Ave I had two objectives.

1. Find the cheapest beer in the refrigerator.
2. Haggle the guy at the counter for a cheaper price because all I had was 2 dollars and a thousand cents.

Objective one was a slice A pie. I found this piece of shit…

… and since it had something growing on the top of the can, was half crushed, ready to explode at any given second and without an expiration date I decided- “hey, this can’t be too bad.” So I grabbed two of them shits!

Ah, but what about all those pennies!?

Fuck yeah. How responsible and Badass can a person look?

Luckily, the guy at the counter was great. He pretty much let me name the price for all the garbage I was buying.

Ghetto Greatness Achieved.

Frequently, I find myself envying the relatively talentless people talking to me on TV. Instead of coming to grips with the fact that the bullshit I mindlessly peruse during timeouts passes as legitimate entertainment, I usually just assume the clown spewing pure garbage and nonentertainment into my brain lucked into the gig, held the producer’s family hostage in exchange for the gig, or must have been a bona fide celebrity in a no longer relevant distant past. One person who actually doesn’t bother me so much is Guy Fieri. His show is pretty decent and he seems like a good enough dude. All in all, Guy Fieri probably doesn’t deserve the mockery I’m about to make of his appearance and personality.

Maybe he does.

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Missed Connections are the most desperate, pathetic form of making contact with a potential sexual partner. “I saw you on the L train last Monday around 10 AM. I know you noticed me too, but I was too shy chickenshit to go up to you and strike up a conversation. So, here I am writing, more or less, to the idea of you, hoping that you’re as pathetic as I am. If you’re interested in meeting up reply to this anonymous email.”

There’s no way these ever work. MAYBE on a campus newspaper, but certainly not on the craigslist from a major city. I’m sure none of you remember Joel C. Marquette or even knew who he was to begin with. Click this link to refresh your memory and then follow me while I explore his trials and tribulations through the world of Missed Connections.

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Hello again, Smartass radio’s Michael Jackson correspondent Megan Riebesell here, just checking in to follow up on the status of our dearly beloved.  As we all could have predicted, not even MJ’s passage into eternity could ease the controversy that besieged him all his life.  Back here on earth, we are still picking away at every morsel of flesh that our ugly beaks can scrape off his bones.  People are still making  careers out of revealing any kind of sensitive information they can dig up in his wake, so-called “artists” are  still depending on his legacy for their own shot at celebrity or capital, and the fat, greedy vultures of the world are still milking his hard-earned masterpieces for every pathetic cent they can steal.  However, do not fret, I am here to remind everyone that Michael’s pure soul, which was always too powerful to be contained by a simple human body, has finally reached its proper ranking among the gods, as an immortal presence.  Of course, Michael’s kingdom in the great beyond is immune to the commotion of silly, frantic scavengers still chirping his name down here.  Rest in assurance, MJ smiles down on all of his children still, giggling at our antics.

That being said, skimming through Jacko’s most recent controversy was actually a pretty hilarious and  of course bizarre venture. Where do I even begin?

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As much as it pains me to say, time travel is fucking impossible. I came to this conclusion at Roy’s parents house recently. I realized that if time travel ever existed, it always existed. Trippy, right? Anyway, the thing that made me realize this is that no one has completely dominated music (or really anything other art) 100%. If I could go back in time, I’d write and record every classic album like three weeks before the artist who actually wrote it.

Then I got to thinking about other things that would be different. Like how someone (probably me) would have shown up in 2005 to beat the living shit out of me before I ever had the chance to write the following LiveJournal update…

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4 Things I Want To Do By 2011

Apparently New Year’s Eve has come and gone. From all accounts I was in New Paltz for two nights celebrating, but there is absolutely no way I could confirm or deny those statements. My calendar, on the other hand, is about as reliable as any other calendar and it tells me we’re now in the year 2010, which is pretty sweet. Only a few more years till hoverboards, Mastodon is probably gearing up to write another album which will leave my brains all over Roy’s walls, and from what I can gather, we still have two whole years before the planet implodes.

So, I felt it was appropriate to wait until about a week in to make my resolutions. I decided to whittle down the thousands and thousands of character flaws and gimmicks which have been holding me back from achieving massive amounts of success, fame and fortune and focus on five key things I want to be able to accomplish by the end of this year. Let’s get started!

1. I want to be able to play the ukulele better then this kid:

I’ve been putting some serious hours in on the ole’ six string recently, but if I’m going to complete resolution 2, I need to sharpen my uke skillz. This kid has the right idea – just sittin’ around laughin’ and bustin’ out some chords and singing whatever he’s singing. If you double click and read the info, apparently he slipped a “Surfin’ USA” in there somewhere. That’s what ukulele is all about.

2. I want to record an album at least as labor intensive as The Wolf by Andrew W.K.

I was just alerted this morning that every track on Andrew W.K.’s incredibly underrated second album, The Wolf, has between 90 and 200 tracks all recorded by Andrew W.K. That is fucking impressive. Can I write the anthems of a generation as poignantly as Mr. W.K.? Probably not. But can I throw a bunch of shit at the wall and see what sticks? Definitely. Then can I take said sticky shit and overwork it like an even more obsessive Axl Rose? Absolutely.

3. I don’t want to look like this at any point in 2010:

Unless Ralph Macchio just thrashed me in a tournament, there is no reason I should be asleep at a party. Especially if I went so far out of my way to dress up and look presentable. If I were smoking bongs at Roy’s place all night, it’s one thing. But to show up to a kegger dressed to the nine’s just to fall asleep – that’s simply unjustifiable.

4. I want to somehow be able to make whoever accidentally lands on this site a) actually want to read some of the bullshit on it and b) get the jokes.

A lot of people visit the site via random Google Image searches. That rocks. The problem is that once they right click and save their image as (I know Mac users, a two buttoned mouse is so 1998, AMIRITE? Trendy douchebags.). Where was I? These parenthetical asides always knock me for a loop – maybe my fifth resolution should be to make them shorter and funnier. Oh right, no one visits the site or seems to get the jokes. Well I honestly don’t see how I can change either of those things, so let me link you to two comments from 2009 that really really missed the boat. Numer 1. Number 2.