That Real-Life Wall

It has been suggested that I utilize this method of communication and break the third wall (fourth? I don't know, I'm not good at counting and equally bad at construction), and actually discuss the massive personal and professional changes occurring in my life at the moment.

My initial response to that: "Pshaw, what, is this LiveJournal?"

While, thankfully, it isn't (though I can't and won't front-I <3 LJ like whoa, always have, always will), there's some validity to the assertion that, if I'm going to keep this blog, and have it basically use my name and nothing else, then I really should talk about things other than how awful the Atlanta paper is, particularly given the whirlwind I find myself in. While this turmoil is both positive and negative AND pretty much entirely self-inflicted, I find that, in order to do this properly I need to actually attend to a few things first.

All of this is a long way of saying: there's some serious real shizz coming. Soon-ish. In the meantime?



'Nuff said.

(Also, I really will figure out how to disable the "read more" links being on every post. I promise.)
Continued...

It was sunrise when we started

Over at Resonator, I had the sad task today of posting about the death of Charlie Cooper, of the New Orleans/Chicago-based electronic pop group Telefon Tel Aviv. If you're not familiar with TTA under that name, you've heard their work: they've had their hands all over stuff by Nine Inch Nails, just to cherrypick one name.

The official announcement is over there. For those that care, I had the good fortune to cover *two* Telefon records, both 2004's Map Of What Is Effortless and this year's Immolate Yourself. If you like gorgeous, dark electronic pop compositions, with seriously intense production work, both of these albums are pretty much perfect. In 2004 I spent a day with the two guys in Telefon, Josh Eustis and Charlie Cooper, for a now-defunct electronic music magazine, and ended up writing a rather large piece on the sheer brilliance of Map Of What Is Effortless's chopped, spliced R&B vocals and micro-processed drums for a now-defunct electronic music magazine. For my efforts, they sent me a signed, one-sided, hand-stamped 12" record of their song "My Week Beats Your Year". I played the hell out of it when I had turntables. That version, the exact same recording as the one on the album, always sounded better to me.

I've already declared Immolate Yourself as one of my top albums of 2009. It came out really recently, possibly today even, on one of my favorite record labels in the world-Ellen Allien's Bpitch Control, a home, a haven really, for smart, forward-thinking electronic pop compositions.

I had hoped to see them tour again.

The brilliance of Josh and Charlie, together, as Telefon Tel Aviv, was a weird sort of brother/lover interplay that the two had, where they would, within the course of a live set or a studio album, fight and curse and smile and cry and fall apart and rebuild and pour their souls into what they were crafting, and that's exactly what their music sounds like.

I encourage you to scroll through the Res Mag stuff posted on TTA, and have a listen. My interview with Josh Eustis (the surviving half of TTA) from late last year is up (it was because of this interview, solely from Josh's recommendation therein, that I picked up the Grouper album that I've grown to fall oh-so in love with), and there are a bunch of individual TTA songs, including my favorite Telefon song ever: "I Lied".

I've done, here, an awful job at eulogizing a person I really didn't know, and so instead I choose to let their music, beautiful and pensive and dark and at-times-frustrating and always-heady and also pretty much nearly always perfect, do the talking.


Continued...

Rovepocalypse Now.

I tend to take following/friending folks on Twitter a little more seriously and selectively than I do on Facebook (where, like, anyone I could have ever possibly met allowed in to be privy to tasty, juicy, personal fact-gossip like...how I dreamed of Indigo Girls songs last night. What, you got a problem with "Least Complicated"?) or Livejournal (on which the migration away from, like birds from...something that birds migrate away from rapidly, and demise of, I fully intend on writing about at some point). Mostly that's because with every social network I invest myself in I tend to censor myself a little less, to the point where I can pretty much assure everyone that whatever comes three steps after Twitter will find me basically screaming drunken obscenities about how fucking awful The Catcher In The Rye is and how Salinger can bite me, yes, bite me, if he genuinely thinks that I couldn't capture the essence of teenage angst better than he and that, in fact, his fucking face is the fucking problem, is what it is.

So that's why when Jill told me that the Dark Lord of the Bush administration himself, Karl Rove, has a Twitter account that basically seems pretty much authentic, I had to add him.

This has nothing to do with the fact that I will add any celebrity who maintains their own Twitter feed (see: the brilliant, zen-koan awesome nuggets, which are like McNuggets only with more real meat, that are Shaquille O'Neal's Twitter updates).Or maybe it does. Or maybe I'm just a fan of Rove's now-legendary rap skills (which, debatably, just may surpass Shaq's. Don't tell Shaq I said that).



Also, like many sick, twisted, masochistic Americans, I've been morbidly obsessed with the inner workings of the Bush administration for quite some time now.

(Before I go off on the evils of Bu$h,a brief detour into little-known facts about me , volume XIVVV: I was raised a flag-waving, card-carrying Rush Limbaugh fanatic, and actually called into his show several times to applaud his use of the word "feminazi" and his detraction of the damn "bleeding heart liberals". I was like ten, I had no idea what he was saying and was basically mouthing "mega-dittos" phonetically because it made my Grandfather proud. I can't decide which is worse, that period in my life or the time I was a Parrothead.)

Upon being pointed to Rove's Tweets, which sounds like the worst and most-poisoned-ever-with-the-blood-of-trees candy shoppe ever to exist, I immediately posted a little something and began following Rove. The next morning, I had a flock, a gaggle, a bevvy, a what-do-you-call-a-massive-grouping-of Conservative Twitter Pundits who had suddenly added me. I could understand that, and can now even more after spending the day yesterday watching Fox News' snarky, jilted-lover coverage of the inauguration of President Obama (damn that feels good to type). Sample quip: "we're hoping to get a cameraman over to that route soon. Since hope is all that's required these days."

What I don't understand is what I woke up to this morning, in my gmail inbox:





OH. MY. GOD. Like Rockwell said, somebody's watching me. And that somebody is Karl Effing Rove.

A sure sign of the apocalypse, or just an indication that, um...crap, I really don't know. I can assure you that if, as of this moment, I fall off the face of the earth, Rove, having begun his plan to monitor my every move so as to re-indoctrinate me into the First Church Of Latter-Day Limbaugh (my thoughts: the term "feminazi"? No thanks, especially not with my minor in gender theory. The painkillers? YES PLEASE!) will tie me up in a secret lair somewhere underneath a waterfall and force me to listen to those god-awful offensive song parodies from Rush's program, or Klaus Nomi, ohwaitsamething, so watch the skies: if I get in trouble I'll shine the Rachel Maddow symbol in the air.



There really should be a Maddow hand-signal, akin to Jay-Z's "Rock-a-fella" sign, so that one could, feasibly, "throw they Maddows in tha sky". And then Rachel Maddow can best MC Rove in a rap-battle and finally put out an album with Jean Grae and then they'll tour as Maddow-Grae and then...and then...and then...

Whoops. I think I just wrote Politi-Hop fan-fiction.

Let me also note that, in a tweet-vs-tweet contest, Maddow wins hands-down. Her commentary on the inauguration? All it needed to be. Two words. Short, simple, poetically stated and brilliant, a majestic summary of all that America as a country has come through over the past 8 years and the sweeping changes needed by Barack Obama to turn it all around, encapsulating the hope, tears and emotions of all Americans united for a moment as one:

"Holy mackerel!"

You couldn't have said it better yourself.

As a minor foot-note, I'd like to encourage everyone to check out Jill's downloadable Jock-Jams compilation, just because it's both awesome and has nothing at all to do with the republican party or Rush Limbaugh.
Continued...

My Fellow 'Mericans

Today was a historic day.



The day I became a fan of croutons on Facebook.


(Thx Lauter)
Continued...

This one's called 'Outlaw'

For me, there's something about waking up to a new U2 song that is kind of unfortunately like Christmas morning. I say "unfortunately" because, where I come from, Christmas morning is always a serious coin-flip as to if what's under the tree reeks of whiskey or Wal-Mart lay-away. The former would indicate something last-minute, thrown together and ultimately far more expensive (guilt may be a useless emotion but, in terms of gifts from my family it has proven to be both a powerful force and a wonderful thing), whereas the latter would indicate something planned and sensible-like a blanket, socks, or a bag of cheese-puffs. Not crunchy Cheetos, no-to wake up on Christmas morning to a bag of the slender, thin, snap-crackle-pop-in-your-mouth with neon-orange-cheeze-ee-goodness wrapped ever-so-haphazardly would indicate that one or both of my parents actually had any idea what my preferences for super-fattening fake cheese snack products were. Instead, I'd wake up to either a $20 Target gift card smelling like pot smoke and cheap booze or a bag of thrift-store-brand Cheesy Puffs. You know, the super-rotund air-puffed kind that spread their Crayola "Orange Peel"-colored jizzm over fingers and counter tops and clothing without any taste ever actually being imparted into the mouth of the consumer.

The. Worst. Kind. Of. Cheese. Puffs.



A new U2 song, particularly the first song released from an as-yet-unheard new album, falls exactly into that dichotomy of afore-stated Christmas potential: it's either going to be quick and useful or...or, well, gift-wrapped 99-cent Cheese Puffs.

I'm not the world's biggest U2 fan. I'm not going to write a Matthew Perpetua-esque dissertation on "Joshing The Joshua Tree: Bono's Myriad Voices Throughout The Ages". I don't know art but I know what sort of bombastic grandiosity I like, and I don't know much but I know I love Bono and I tend to let that be all there is to know. That said? Achtung, Baby, with the impeccable Brian Eno production, the lush musical textures and Bono's wry, cutting, sarcastic, sadistic love-lorn lyrics, is one of my favorite albums ever. The rest of U2's output I can take or leave, and I tend to cherrypick through all of it. For instance, the pretty-much-universally-hated POP album has its moments, and for my musical dollar (aka free, downloaded via Soulseek...erm, um, I mean I SUPPORTMUSICIBUYWHATILIKE or something like that)they are more plentiful then the obligatory millennium "Return To Form" record that was All That You Can't Leave Behind. What both of those albums have in common, though, is that their first singles were these giant, massive, explosive, world-affirming (well, ok, "This-Is-Bono's-World" affirming) statements of shapeless, boundless, formless platitudes like Hope and Trust and Faith and Woo-Hoo and Hey-Yeah and Change and Love and All Right All Right and other similar big ideas.

That's why this new U2 single, "Strap Your Momma To Ireland" or whatever it's called, is such an insane disappointment. It's not just that the guitar riff unfortunately conjures thoughts of lost 90's flannel-rockers Collective Soul (and let's be honest there, there is no way to conjure thoughts of Collective Soul that can be deemed "fortunate"), or that Bono's vocal pacing pretty much splits the embarrassing difference between Madonna's rap about shopping at Fresh Market and using non-dairy creamer on "American Life" and, well, and the ENTIRETY of Escape Club's "Wild Wild West". It's the fact that there is not a moment in this song in which Bono reminds us-you, me, the world, HIS world long live the King may his name be praised and worshiped and glorified-reminds us of, ya know, Hope. Faith. Love. Art. Any of those big-ticket items.

It's like that moment in American Psycho when Pat Bateman finds religion via Bono at a U2 concert, and immediately shuts down and rejects everything he's been filled with. U2 is meant to be stupidly uplifting, unjustifiably inspiring, full of platitudes unfettered by longitude or latitude. U2, the musical collective hivemind of the Edge, Bono, and those other two dudes with the glasses who did the song for that Tom Cruise movie, are supposed to function as a mirror to the world's collective souls, not sound LIKE Collective Soul (oh, schnap! Yes! HIGH FIVE, RUSS, HIGH FIVE!). If the first single can be said to operate as a new album's harbinger, the Silver Surfer to the Galactus that is the forthcoming U2 record, which will inevitably be titled Bono Sings! For You or Segways In The Garden Of Allah , then this...this...this new song indicates that any following album certainly will not rattle, and it most assuredly will not hum. This is going to be less a booze-scented gift card to somewhere and more a hastily-wrapped bag of convenience store junkfood.

If only one good thing comes from the release of a new CD from Bono & Co (which sounds like the best Sunday morning political talk-show ever, co-starring Rachel Maddow, yes please), it will be the fact that my friend Jill, the originator and maintainer of the Bono Photoshop blog, will be forced into further creative action. She is truly an artist of the highest caliber.


(from Jill's Bono Photoshop blog)

Frankly, I'm kind of pulling for a photoshop of Bono in a bag of Cheese Puffs. The big, fat, air-filled kind. Gift-wrapped. Under a Christmas Tree. Because frankly that's what this sounds like.
Continued...

Still on that Microcastle tish

It isn't often in conversation that I mention the fact that I'm one of the co-owners of the music blog Resonator Magazine (or, if you're one of the cool kids, which I most certainly am not, it's "Res Mag", because abbreviations are so hip for 2009, particularly if they're three letters long and, um, if there are two of them). This is for a few reasons. One is the fact that my writing there is done under the pseudonym of Shaun Bateman-an homage to a recurrent character in the fiction writing of Bret Easton Ellis, who, yes, I am always talking about.

The other is that, um...it's RESONATOR. It's not exactly like we're talking Superfamous IndieRock Review of Ye Musicks That Is For The Listenings, or anything like that. I mean, Resonator has had some mentions here or there...mentions which, if given the proper opportunity, or a few vodka tonics (which basically ends up equaling "the proper opportunity" when all's said and done), we will trot out and trump up again. And again. And again.

Ask me about the time NY Magazine mentioned us. Do it. And then ask me again, because I'll repeat it.

So that's why, when last night at Bookhouse, which has become my new favorite little Atlanta spot to nurse something which, when imbibed, will cause me to lose all fear of the police, I distinctly heard, in a booth across from my friends and I, discussion involving Res Mag. So distinctly, in fact, that my friends all perked up to listen.

I mean, one would assume that, were one to operate a music blog, that there's like one billionth of a hundredth of a chance that one person might read it, and that an operator of said blog could, potentially, be in the exact same room as said blog's one reader at some point. However, chances are exponentially better that you'd die in a fiery plane crash, and as a result I'm now I'm never, ever, flying again.

I use all of this as an overly-wordy intro to the fact that, though I feel that my writing on Res has gotten away from waxing intellisophical on whatever I'm currently listening to and moved more towards a "this is new. here you go. form an opinion" mindset, which I fault squarely on the fact that most blog-based music writing is awful, artless and has absolutely no grounds to call itself "criticism". This isn't to say that my music writing is, or has ever been, artful or well-done, but hell, at least I try. Tried. Try. Still try, honestly, just not as often as I should.

And that's why I wanted to point a little link to some musings I did over on Res recently regarding the album that was, and still is, tops of the year for me: Deerhunter's Microcastle.



I began thinking both of how totally Proustian (read as: bedroom-ridden and bedroom-written) most of the album's lyrics are, and how my favorite song on the album (and my favorite song of al of last year), "Nothing Ever Happened", is totally the first forward-motion on the album, conjuring, for me, thoughts of my childhood hometown of Marietta, Georgia, and my need/desire to escape it.

In fact, I actually wrote, over on Res, something akin to:

The lyrics, like “focus on the depths that were never there/eliminate what you can’t repair”, take the rest of Microcastle’s Proustian qualities of bedroom stasis and actually force it into a sort of hesitant motion, in which you get the feeling that the song is pulling Bradford, rather than operating under his direction.

Pretentious? Oh god yes I am. And I don't deny it. But, to me, that's a better analysis of a piece of music than 'HEY D00DZ CHECK DIS", which is what I'm seeing so much of in terms of blog music writing these days. I don't know, maybe that doesn't bother you. But also, maybe, you're really a damn LOLcat...in which case, AWWWWWWWW!

You can read the rest of it, if you so desire, and also hear "Nothing Ever Happened" and a few more Deerhunter songs, at Resonator. Res Mag. Res.

We really need to figure out what abbreviation we're going to use and stick with it.
Continued...

Fiction Contest...correction

Ok so I was super-wrong. Or "premature". Hey, I'm told it happens to everyone sometimes.

The Creative Loafing 2009 Fiction Issue is online RIGHT NOW. And you NEED TO READ "Medicine". And you need to do so immediately, if not sooner.

And you need to avoid the silliest photo of me ever.

I am going somewhere to learn how to teach myself to begin learning to not talk with my hands like that. I was discussing Bret Easton Ellis, probably. Since apparently that's all I ever do.
Continued...

The fiction contest

I'm not sure if Creative Loafing Atlanta has any intent on making the 2009 Fiction Contest winners available online (and if that happens, I'll update this), but I did want to say that the winning essay, Laurah Raines' "Medicine", was seriously heads-and-feet-and-tails above anything else I was given to read for the contest this year. If you are a publisher, and, um, you still have anyone working in your offices (too soon? too soon.), Raines, undoubtedly, has a collection of short stories in her that I'll go ahead and call "emotionally taut and moving, with more than hint of bite". You can blurb me on that now.

(I am going to avoid encountering, at all costs, the photo of my next to my bio in the Fiction Issue, which is out today and can't disappear fast enough, because, um, I think I'm supposed to look "wacky". I was sick, and I don't do wacky.)

As I've already said, there's a party for this whole thing going down tomorrow (Thursday, Jan 8th). I may or may not sign baby pictures.
Continued...

Simple Truths

On the left, me. On the right, miss Amanda waxmuseum Lauter.


Simple iChat truths.

originally posted over yonder.
Continued...

Best Books of 2008

So, I finally finished my "Best Books of 2008" list. And you can read that over here.

Rather than simply syndicate the whole damn thing, I figured...linkage is good. Linkage works. Tie all the projects together. All that jazz-hot-baby stuff.

However, I did want to throw up my top fiction and non-fiction for '08...which I, of course, am pulling directly from the aforementioned blog post elsewhere.

Favorite Fiction of 2008:

James Collins, Beginners Greek



This is the sort of book that's instantly a classic, both intellectually and emotionally, from the first word. Collins, a 49-year-old first novelist, writes the sort of inspiring, "love conquers all" story that parts the clouds on stormy days and reinvigorates the English language. This story, of executive-of-something (even he's unsure what he does) Peter Russell as he fumbles through his life and loves, chasing the realization that the girl in his head and heart isn't the girl he's married to, unfolds with the most jaw-dropping, breath-stopping prose you've read in ages. Everyone in Beginner's Greek is in love with someone else, and everyone's someone else is, also. A massive, glorious literary update of the black-and-white film romance, Beginner's Greek fills sloppy hearts with love of language, love of reading, love of celebration, love of love. Sheer brilliance.

Favorite Non-Fiction (or as close as anything comes to non-fiction these days) of 2008:

Dan Kennedy, Rock On



There are myriad books written on the music industry. This is one of them. This one, however, doesn’t stink -- in fact, as the title explains, it does, indeed, rock. What causes the aforementioned and proclaimed “rocking,” you ask? Former major music label marketing exec Dan Kennedy’s hilarious, self-effacing, and ALWAYS tongue-in-cheek observations on the crumbling insanity that is a 9-5 in the music biz. “Biz,” see, that’s an industry-type term. You learn those from perusing these pages. You also learn, for instance, that Fat Joe doesn’t consider crudités “food” when filming a video, that The Darkness should never be called a “joke” (to their faces, at least), and that Phil Collins, while overblown, isn’t a bad guy. All of these observations, and more, can be assimilated by you, the reader, and thusly you, too, can Rock On.


Ask me nicely and I'll tell you about the worst book I read in 2008. Both tact and my desire to never again be punched in the face by a book publicist forbid me from posting such things here.

Ok, I lie about one of those two above. I have no tact.
Continued...

POP.

So, I really should have posted something on this before (because if there's one thing I don't do nearly enough it's, erm, toot my own horn? That just sounds vulgar and like something I should in fact be doing far more often), but I've been pulled into (quite honorable) duty as a judge for this year's Creative Loafing Atlanta Fiction Contest, which is having the celebratory party at the Eyedrum in Atlanta this Thursday, Jan 8th, at 7 P.M. It is free and I will be there doing something that probably won't amount to much other than looking awkward in public, but I can tell you that I know who won and the winning stories are pretty much works of that magical short-story genius that results from being able to not be overly verbose and conjure words that have emotional punch and resonance.

No, really, these stories are good. I will tell you my favorite later (because I have a favorite and it was gooder than good. It was better.)

I've been waiting to see what sorts of horrendous lies that I've added to my bio actually get reprinted before I said anything on here, but, in the sake of timeliness, I'll link to the Facebook event page and just re-post whatever ends up in print and online about yours truly.

Since it is writ-and-thus-mote-be that I'll be "signing books", which, um, I haven't written yet, (I'm the only one of the three judges, the other two being Carmen Deedy and Phillip DePoy, both published authors, so that's one thing they both have over me, and Phillip has multiple last-name capitalizations and therefore TWO things over me), it has been suggested that I make print-outs of a childhood photograph of myself for autographing. This would, apparently, make me both feel more a part of the whole "the famous people are going to sign things for those in attendance" facet of the evening and also allow for the fact that I don't think Carmen Deedy will let me sign copies of Martina The Beautiful Cockroach. Specifically, it has been suggested I autograph prints of this photo:


There is a very, very sad, tragic and almost-kinda-halfway-funny-if-you-like-tortured-upbringing-tales story behind that photo, so I will probably just inscribe copies of Less Than Zero with "If I'd written this I would be even more into how awesome I am than I already am" or something else equally self-referential and partially true. Or maybe I will just pass out copies of favorite blog entries of mine. Or maybe I'll just sign my hand, lick it and rub it onto the hands of others as though it was a club-entry stamp and everyone was underage (see also: that Blues Traveler video).

Or maybe I will sign baby pictures of myself.
Continued...

So this is the new year....

Resolution for 2009: Finish best of 2008 list.

Yeah, I can start that tomorrow, right? The FIRST day of the new year doesn't actually count for anything.

I am sad, though, that I didn't miss the slutty hot mess that must have been Anderson Cooper and Kathy Griffin on CNN.

I'm going back to bed, with coffee, an awful book that both tact and my career forbid me from naming but that I am going to pretend was written by Meg Cabot because, though it was not written by Meg Cabot, not only is the cover done in the same super-cute quirky chick-lit-esque-but-with-brains-because-everyone-knows-it's-forward-thinking-to-assume-girls-can-do-math-and-don't-need-princes color scheme, and not only is the premise kinda the same (hey quirky kinda-screwed-in-the-head chick, you can find love too and then you'll be a-ok, even if you are a size 14 because that's not fat unless you're trying to size jeans at Forever21), but, for some reason, the thought of reading a Meg Cabot book right now in secret kinda intellectually gets me off a little similar to the way you put little chocolate pieces on your pizza when you think no one's looking and then scarf the damn thing down, and hunker down and probably listen to that Death Cab For Cutie album that I keep thinking about and pseudo-referencing but not actually wanting to re-download until now and just letting today pass by.

Don't assume my lack of super-enthusiastic "there's no 'I' in 'team' but there is an 'I' in 'all of these are my accomplIshments' " motivational calendar self-help-speaker-who-adds-everyone-on-Twitter 'whether you think you can, or you think you can't, you're right as long as you remember to always be closing' espousing is indicative of any lack of enthusiasm for 2009 on my part.

I just tend to think it's both unrealistic and, um, almost kinda slightly pagan, really (seriously...a drunken orgiastic gathering to celebrate...an almost arbitrary changing of numbers in increments of one?), to confine the potentials of life to a set grouped number of days. Honestly, something awesome could have happened at 11:59 pm yesterday evening and then it would have been 2008 and then wouldn't all the potential positivity of 09 have been wasted on one splurt and then oh god what's the point of living, etc? It's like resolutions-why only give yourself 365 days to do something good for yourself or others? The whole thing feels, to me, like the concept of "yes we DID" vs "yes we CAN". "Did" implies that all requisite accomplishments have been reached, whereas the potential of "can" is both powerful and infinite.

Can>Did.

But, whatever, I didn't major in math.

Or, to put it in the words of Kate Bush: "I just know that something good is gonna happen. I don't know when. But saying it could even make it happen."

Ok, granted, the song was about crazy-as-fuck Wilhelm Reich thinking that if he buried glowing objects in his yard the government wouldn't lock him away from his family, but the sentiment remains the same.

The sentiment. And the outcome.

As I wrote this, I received an email from Pizza Hut informing me that the "best way" to "spend" my "New Years Day" would be to order a pizza from (natch) Pizza Hut now-featuring "all-natural pepperoni".






















As you can clearly see, you know the processed fakeymeaty porky fattystuffs are now "all-natural" because there is WHEAT in the "all natural" logo.







Of course. Fifteen points to Oglivy or Wieden & Kennedy or whoever it was that makes like 100k more a year than I do to focus-group concepts like "Ok so if we attach a piece of wheat to the logo will it be immediately evident to you, Mr and Mrs Joe Pizzabuyer, that our pepperoni is now all-natural? Peeerrrrefect."

Actually, make that 20 points for the additional suggestion that I rush out right now, on New Years Day Morning or whatever it's called, to procure said pizza. Apparently, if one is to believe both Pizza Hut and Bono, all is quiet on New Years Day...other than the ringing of phones placing orders for the new all-natural super-awesome Jesus-cured-pepperoni pizza. Yes, Jesus is actually IN the back room of every single Pizza Hut, simultaneously (he can bi-locate, after all), curing the all-natural pepperoni. Jesus AND Bono. Same person. But only today. Only on New Years Day can one acquire said holiest of holy pork product. Again: you know it's holy because there's iconography of wheat in the logo.

If that's how I am supposed to spend my new years day? Then, yes, in fact, I am going back to bed. Me and Meg Cabot.

Not actually Meg Cabot. But I can pretend.
Continued...