Sad But TRUE!

Be yee fairly warned... An Doof Ass Speaks!

A radical departure!

Like all great literature, this blog has gone through many transformations, reformulations, amalgamations and many other “ations.” But one thing has remained constant: We’ve never ever told the truth about anything. Our goal has always been to make people dislike An Doof Ass, and hopefully themselves along the way. We hope we’ve succeeded on both accounts to some degree. If you’ve ever read an entry here and thought: “I wish I had the life of a NoononSat contributor instead of my own and An Doof Ass is a real bum loser” we’ve done our job. I guess you could say this has been our raison d’etre, our c’est le vie, our E pluribus unum, over the years. And if we’ve actually entertained a few people along the way so much the better. But today marks a new beginning. Like Jonah or Paul, and unlike An Doof Ass, we’ve done some growing up over the years and have put such childish self-aggrandizement, immature jokery and slanderization behind us. We’ve cast out our nets of self-betterment and brotherly love, and are now unhooking the fish of friendliness, breading and battering them in a made from scratch recipe of tolerance, and frying them in the hot iron pan of compassion.

Why the sudden the change? Well, we don’t know if you know this, but we are living in times of great social, economic and political upheaval. We’ve also recently learned that we live in a Culture of Death - which apparently is a bad thing. Nothing is sacred anymore, not even olive oil. And maybe, just maybe, we here at NoononSaturdayCigarrettBreathe.blogspot.com haven’t helped us shake some of our cynicism, laziness and apathy. Sure. Telling stories about scoring, dro’ and hippies have their place. But is that place really the Internet? I mean, this medium is capable of so much more.

Well, in an effort to improve the quality of this blog and the quality of Internet stuff everywhere, NoononSat is now a theologically minded website that will act twice to three times its age. We’re going to expose the Enlightenment assumptions of our political system and lament a now bygone time we were never even a part of. That’s right, no more stories about An Doof Ass (who by the way called me last night to ask if he could survive on protein shakes and scotch) or drinking or hippies. From now on we're comitted to showing you the otherside of the story: the lost people groups, the malaise of mega church attendees, how stupid Protestant neo-evangelicals are, and all the other really important stuff.

So now without further adieu I give you our first serious link, a link which has 'spoken to our hearts.' We hope it helps you wake up(!) to the reality of the troubling world in which we live. How many more have to die before we're willing to stand up and say: No more!

links-of-chain-mail

The politicization of contemporary journalists surely has a lot to do with the fact that almost all of them today are university-trained. In Newspaper Days, H.L. Mencken recounts that in 1898, at the age of eighteen, he had a choice of going to college, there to be taught by German professors and on weekends to sit in a raccoon coat watching football games, or of getting a job on a newspaper, which would allow him to zip off to fires, whorehouse raids, executions, and other such festivities. As Mencken observes, it was no contest.

AN DOOF ASS: MEMORIES!

In other news, this weekend is the Chinese New Year. This means I have a wonderful opportunity to stand in the freezing cold watching short men under a papier-mâché head dance around like they have Schezuan sauce in their shoes. It wasn't always this way. Back in the day An Doof Ass and I really got into the Chinese New Year celebration. Of course for almost completely different reasons.

An Doof Ass went to defend his “Roman Heritage” that was passed on to the Anglo-Saxons and brought to the States by the Pilgrims. He had a big chart in his room explaining it all. It had all kinds of lines emanating from a stick figure he called the Roman Spirit. Each line had a phrase like “superior bloodline” or “elegant sufficiency of mass” written above it. The lines would swirl about and then land on a picture of Michelangelo’s David he had taped to the otherside of the wall. The picture had “Abam” written on it with green Crayon. Every night he would go into his room with a big glass of milk and a box of Oreos and study that diagram for hours, occasionally adding a new connecting line like: “Gin fizzes” or “no receding hairline.” It was creepy. After about 2 months of this he became really concerned about immigration and the “Growing Threat On Wentworth."

As for me, I was really into early Jackie Chan: Drunken Master, Half a Loaf of Kung Fu, all the greats. The storyline in these tales was always the same, a loser beats up people and gets previously unavailable girls. It was clear what I shoud, nay, had to do. While An Doof Ass dunked his Oreos and studied away, I was in my room making a chart. Basically it was the same as An Doof Ass's except the stick figure at the center represented me and instead of David I had a picture of Ziyi Zhang and lines with phrases such as “passionate hand holding” and “Too Short? Legitimate Concern? No! No!”

When the day came, An Doof Ass packed his bag full of “Anglo Firecracker," and I put a pair of foam nun chucks in my shoulder bag. Then we went looking for trouble and were consequentially up to no good. Adam scanned the crowds for opportunities to insurrect. I for the frailest old man to beat up.

Oh the adventures we had in Chinatown! I’ll never forget the time we drank a bottle of Goldslagger in celebration of our impending trip to defend heritage and score chicks. So many sweet toasts were made that morning.

An Doof Ass: To the glorious Republic!
Working Boy: To hot chicks with swords!
(slug)
A.D.A.: To Abam, righteous inheritor of the straight path!
W.B: To hot chicks with swords … and kung fu!
(slug)

This continues for about 5 minutes and 10 more shots.

A.D.A: (has hiccups) We should get going. These pamphlets won’t pass themselves out.
W.B.: (cotton mouth) Yeah okay. Wait. Which one am I again? The racist or the perv?
A.D.A: You’re the perv. I’m the defender of purity.
W.B.: Oh yeah. Hey which way to the bathroom?
A.D.A: It's over there noble savage.

12 hours later…W.B. stumbles out of bathroom…

W.B.: My head hurts and my tongue feels like it’s been licking a lamppost. Now I’ll never score whatever I was trying to score. An Doof Ass, did you make it down to defend your heritage?

An Doof Ass is laying down in the living room smoking Earl Grey tea from his pipe.

A.D.A: Almost. I fell down the stairs on the way out of the apartment and smashed my head against the door. I was pretty much out till about 2 minutes ago.

.....

W.B: We rule.
A.D.A: Sweet heaven I love my culture.

Boozeday at the Skylark

Sometimes a pony gets depressed. Depressed because it has no stylish saddle, no wholegrain oats, no universal acclaim. This pony stops the dark tiger by seeking out love and support –from my bartender. This occasionally causes problems at “home:”

Wife: What’s wrong.
Working Boy: Well I (cut off)
W: Shut up and make me dinner.
W.B.: I already did, it’s on the table.
W: There’s half a Wheat Thin on the table.
W.B.: I can’t take your accusations anymore! I’m going to my watering hole.

W.B. goes to waterhole (Wife doesn’t clean the apartment while he is away.) At the bar he is greeted by staff: “Hey Buddy, how’s life?” W.B. suspects they don’t remember his name and decides to spend lots of money to earn their trust and friendship back. Does a standup job on both accounts and return home a new, more confident man.

W: Welcome back you lazy drunk.
W.B.: Why do you have to kill my buzz like that?
W: Since when does slugging Rumplemints until you pass out count as a buzz? The only reason you’re home right now is because you ran out of money. That, or they kicked you out.
W.B.: They're my friends, they would never kick me out.
W: They don’t even know your name.
W.B: That a lie! A dirty terrible lie!
W: Is it Buddy? Is it really Buddy?
W.B: Shut up! Shut up! Shut up! Argh! I can’t take it anymore. I’m suffocating in this middle-class WASP mediocrity.
W: Oh please. Were you suffocating yesterday when you spent 300 dollars on “men’s” skincare products?
W.B: I told you. I bought them to make a statement about the unjust social structures that allow such a thing to happen! It’s all very highbrow so I’m not surprised you don't understand. No one understands an artist in her own time.
W: You’re an artist now?
W.B: A gender sensitive artist, yes.
W: I thought you wanted to be a cartoonist/novelist/social commentator.
W.B. That was last week. Today I want to be a performance artist/journalist/marine biologist.
W: Yeah ok. Hey, here’s an idea. How about you try to be...not an alcoholic.
W.B: Alcoholic?! That’s a dirty rumor started by some jerk whose name I can’t remember.
W: That jerk was you –yesterday- when you wanted to be a straightedge counselor/poet/organic farmer.
W.B: I hate organic farmers so much.

multiculturalismismbpli

Sometimes you have to make your own fun. Most of the time the superfluous gambling, the extravagant tableware, the dro’ is enough to truly satisfy. Because I know this. From experience. Lots of experience. Some. A couple times. Once. Okay, fine: I don’t gamble superfluously (cough) and extravagant tableware makes little sense when your table sits at a 45 degree angle and always feels sticky. And the dro’? Well, let’s just say I haven’t kissed the sky in a while.

That said: Sometimes/all the time I have to make my own fun. And that’s not always easy. Sometimes its hard to see what’s fun about cleaning a small, smelly apartment and cooking meals for an evil taskmaster (not cough). Luckily however sometimes its not impossible to have fun. Take yesterday for example...

It all began like any other Sunday; I feigned sickness to get out of church and began a day long marathon of television viewing and chocolate milk drinking. When I used to live in Fargo, North Dakota this wasn’t a very good scene because we had only 3 channels and they only showed programs like: “Scowl while You Smile,” “Terrible Food and Quintessential Boredom” “The World is Scary Therefore Stay Here and Bash Your Head” “Trust Us” and “How to Make a Cool yet Sensitive Kid on 12th Street Hate Life for like 2 1/2 Years.” In fact the terrible TV programs -and the evil evil evil people- was a major catalyst for the blood oath I took with my reflection in 6th grade that I would be a legless hobo in Juneau (easy enough to live up to) than ever live in that godforsaken place again.

So you can imagine my eternal surprise and joy upon moving to Chicago and discovering all kinds of wonderful TV stations: Korean, Mexican, Indian, Another station possibly not Korean. All of these wonders fill my crooked and cramped living room/bathroom with their soft, soothing glow(there’s even a Christian station that shows reruns of Diagnosis Murder.) But none of those stations even comes close to to my recent Sunday discovery of P-TV.

What is P-TV? Quite simply, it’s girls in bikinis sitting in cars, caressing the steering column and eating sausages. Yup, it’s Chicago’s Polish Station. So much unnecessary seduction. In an ad for a deli on Milwaukee 7 girls just ran through the isles shedding layer after layer of thick fury clothing while eating large onions. And according to one for a restaurant called ##@%%& (rough translation) the correct way to eat Borsch is to take a big bowl of it and pour it slowly all over yourself and then roll around on the floor to the soothing sounds of discoteque music. Then you have stand up, look really poutty and have a couple friends slowly lick it off of you. I thought it a bit strange but who am I to judge other cultures? I guess it's like I always say: When in Rome let them lick Borsch off of you, slowly.

Any hoo, if you’re looking for me I’ll be STOCHSKI’s buying the most passionate produce in town.

Lush

My neighborhood is like super indie and cool ghetto. Except of course for the uber-fancy boutique wine shop that just opened across the tracks on 14th street (since it’s on the other side of the tracks I wouldn’t have even known it existed if not for an article I read about all the stuff on the other side of the tracks.) So I stopped in there yesterday to check out the scene. I had it all planned out. I would open the door and strut around critiquing the obvious Californian cabs, pretentiously pedestrian French Bordeauxs and embarrassingly brazen Australian …um… whatevers. I would pick up bottles, chuckle at the labels and, when feeling extra sinister, pretend to drop one. I would close by saying: “I give this embarrassment to oenophiliation two weeks before it’s closed for bad taste!” Then I would grab a bottle of Malbec and run for the door.

So that was the plan. But, like a stick of butter left out in the rain, the plan turned slippery and stuck to the soles of on coming foot traffic. Looking back over it now I really only have myself to blame - myself and everyone else and the booze. Oh the booze. You see, I went in there without knowing three very important facts. Fact #1: They give you wine “to sample” while you “browse.” Browsing wine is tricky because there’s really nothing to browse through. All you can really do is pick up a bottle, pat the bottle and then say something like: “Do you have anything in Oak overtones with a hint of blackberry and mint jelly?” Obviously this causes a lot of stress. So you have to drink as much wine as possible as fast as possible. This sounds nice except they keep filling the glass and telling you are sexy until you are drunk and passing out credit cards to complete strangers. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Fact #2: The people telling you are sexy and pushing wine down your gullet are two very sexy 20-something ladies. Near as I can figure these wine sirens spend all day inside the store -probably making out- until some completely innocent guys stumbles in looking for a bathroom. Then it starts: The smiling, the laughing at everything this completely innocent and not unattractive guy says, the tossing of the hair. I ask you now: How do you say “No” when the curly haired brunette puts her poofy red lips up to your ear and whispers “are you sure you don’t want it? Because I want it. I want it bad.”? You can’t. Because you get all confused about what you’re talking about, and you vision starts to blur and you mind begins to wander and then you say something like “Oh baby. I want it bad as well.” And then woosh! You’re at the register and she’s wringing you up with a 65-dollar Riesling! Now Fact #1 and #2 make is pretty obvious that I wasn’t going to make out very good on the whole affair, but #3 makes it pretty much a guarantee I would not only blow all my money but would also get arrested on some kind of sexually related miscommunication charge. The store didn’t just sell wine as I was brought to believe.

Fact #3: Small batch specialty bourbons were also available for sampling and, as luck would have it, purchase. In the past I’ve been accused of not being able to even look at a bottle of brown liquid without offering to buy it. So when the blonde opened up 3 different bottles of bourbon with long obviously fake southern names like “James Whittaker the XVI” and “Hillcrest Family of Opulence Number 2” for us to sip on “together” I was pretty much screwed. Did you know you can buy a 90 dollar bottle of bourbon? Did you know you can drink half of that bottle at the store you bought it at? Did you know you see signals “that aren’t there” after drinking from that bottle? I know all of this, now.

=(

Well, I’m back from Fargo, my old stomping grounds. I was there attending to some family business. It turns out my grandfather, who recently passed away, left me over 7 million dollars - but there’s a catch. The inheritance is conditioned on me using the money to find the jade scorpion. You see during WWII my old man’s old man was a jazzman in a Parisian nightclub called The Elitist. During that time he had lots of exciting adventures with female lounge singers, Nazis, cheetahs etc., but nothing was so precious or valuable to him as the jade scorpion given to him by his old friend Boris Yelstin who was in town to playing a gig with his acid free jazz all tuba quartet, Tubaphonica. My grandpa treasured that jade scorpion and if it wasn’t for his uncontrollable addictions to gambling, vodka margaritas and California rolls, he would have been buried with it last week. You see he lost the jade scorpion while betting on how many California rolls he could fit in his mouth while drinking a pitcher of vodka maragaritas. He predicted he could fit 7, but it turns out he fit in 9. Some say he should have stopped at 7 but my family ain’t quitters or half-ass doers. So he lost the bet and the jade scorpion to a Parisian nazi sympathizer named Jean Picard; who gave it as a gift to the beautiful countess Anika Rovamon in an attempt to gain her favor. It didn’t work, and she left Paris shortly after. So I’ve been given the task to find the priceless family heirloom at any cost. So far I’ve spent the money on night vision goggles, a new car, six personal assistants and one of those handheld tape recorders.

All in all then it was a typical long weekend. But there were a few things that stick out in my brain. For one, the bars in Fargo are 10 times dirtier than any bar I’ve ever been in before (this includes the bar in Caruthersville Missouri where you threw your empty Keystone Lights on the floor and there was a 3 foot long phallus laying on the pool table.) I ordered a Jameson Irish Whiskey at a place called Shot-n-Punched that was served in a rusty tuna fish can with an skewered olive. I would have drank it anyway except for the fact that I had to arm wrestle the bartender in order to “earn it.” I lost and had to watch her throw down the smelly liquid right in front of me. She then threw her cigarette in my eyes and told me to go wait for her in the storage room which turned out to be an outhouse. I don’t know what I would have done if Heather hadn’t stumbled upon me while looking for more free shots of Rum and bought me from the bartender for half a pack of Virginia Slims and a meat pie thinking I was Pete Yorn. I tried to explain the situation but she just kept telling me to shut up and buy her Alabhama Slammers with my ‘rockstar money.’

ouchers

Yesterday I had the most yuppy exchange of my life. It was pleasant and fulfilling.

Wife: Did you hear Trio is closing.
W.B.: Yes. It’s a shame. Along with French Laundry, Trio was really one of the first truly Contemporary restaurants.
Wife: It’s where Grant Achatz worked after leaving Trotters.
W.B.: We really should go to Alinea at some point soon, but I think it’s booked through February. Though I am a bit apprehensive that the taste menu veers toward whimsy.
Wife: That is a concern.

Luckily the conversation ended here because we had to go out and mingle for a while over highballs.

An Update

I have just learned Fat Tire Beer will be arriving at the crime inducing neighborhood liquor stores of Chicago in February. With this revelation comes another new year's prediction: An Doof Ass will die of alcohol poisoning after returning to Chicago this summer.

New Year Predilections

10 New Years predictions.
1.) I’ll have a gloriously short lived celebrity through some sucker punch like a plane hijacking or selling my skin on e-bay.
2.) I’ll get new, cool friends.
3.) I’ll divorce Heather and return to the unrestrained awesome bachelor bliss.
4.) I’ll become embarrassingly wealthy because of something: a book, cream, what have you.
5.) I’ll acquire an English accent.
6.) I’ll start drinking black label scotch.
7.) My awesomeness will increase.
8.) Heather will remarry my former business partner, Stephen Blackburry. I will attend the wedding with some kind of supermodel, preferably an attractive female. I will lie about our level of intimacy.
9.) I will become an equestrian, trencherman and courtier to establish relations with landed gentry.
10.) I will gain 5 to 10 pounds of fat and claim it as muscle.

Fast track success

It wasn’t a glorious weekend. Nor was it entirely terrible. In a now two yearlong tradition I spent the day before New Year’s Eve with An Doof Ass and Tad Lindsay. Like last year this one ended with headaches, memory reconstruction and a completely terrible New Year’s Celebration. Here’s what I learned from the experience as a whole:

Number one, if you drink a bottle of champagne to celebrate the impending arrival of friends, you will fall asleep on the couch and you will already have a hangover when they arrive.

Number two, if you’ve got some left over cooking sherry from holiday you can put it in a decanter and tell An Doof Ass it’s a fine liqueur and he will drink a handle of the stuff under the impression his palette distinguishes a fine cognac or brandy, possibly even Courvoisier.

Number three, while everyone knows Cuerrenevca is a crappy restaurant. You really don’t want to be there when a drunk An Doof Ass begins espousing his opinions on “ethnics.”

Number four, you can bring the An Doof Ass to his old neighborhood watering hole, but you can’t keep the An Doof Ass from leaving the watering hole to go get into fistfights on Cermak.

Number five, upon arriving back at the apartment, An Doof Ass didn’t get tossed from the second story of the box factory construction site into a very large mud hole; he fell from the second story into that very large mud hole.

All in all, An Doof Ass lived up to his glorious reputation and even cleaned the bathroom after taking a shower to clean off the accumulated sludge. In typical fashion, he awoke the next morning aghast at the appearance of his mud caked clothes and demanded to know who was responsible for such an act of tomfoolery. He also asked why he had a black eye, various knots on his head and a dislocted hip.

I can't say I miss him. But I do miss seeing him constantly ruining and debasing himself for no other reason than his inability to stop after 3 glasses of cooking sherry.