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The Foggy Odyssey.


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PITF is back on the air after the regular Christmas foray to the Great White North. My mother, sister and I made it to the Toronto area in record time Friday – about 8 hours. I slept the entire time due to heavy imbibing the night before at the Bruins game. Needless to say I was not popular in that little Outback, but the only person I really hurt was myself. Trust me.

That disgrace of an evening was followed quickly by Friday spent at the Rude Native with Puppa, Billy, Janet, JJV, and Mark. Pictures and more details will follow when Janet dumps her camera – but to be perfectly honest, I may keep it pretty vague. Between trying to encourage a snowball induced donnybrook with kids young enough to be my offspring after the bars closed, and then conking out on Gary’s couch while a party carried on around me, I’m not too proud of that whole pm. But you guys made my trip coming out to Burlington last minute like that, and Gaz was a great host. Seriously, thank you all and you’re still my boys.

Saturday and Sunday were spent with various groups of family and my always adorable little cousins. Seth schooled me at Monopoly and Thomas massacred me at Madden 2006. I showed up at the Yankee Swap with a Curb Your Enthusiasm DVD box set, and left with some small skinny candles. And what makes all of this even more embarassing is that I can’t continue to blame alcohol – as my crippled self happily accepted to be the driver that night.

Today was a nightmare, but it was far worse for a few others. Probably the worst Toronto to Boston drive in memory. And there has been probably 50 of them over the course of my lifetime so far. A late start. 2 hour wait at the border. Stopped at the border and questioned due to Janet’s recent greencard replacement. Snowstorm. Really crowded highways full of Steve McQueen clones, appartently. One more load of wash and I can finally sleep. Happy belated holidays to us, everyone. And by happy holidays, I mean someone please come over to the North End immediately and euthanize me.

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Christmas Comes Early For David.


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Q: What’s the status of the Pixies? Still enjoying the reunion?
A: We just got back from Japan. That was the last gig on the books. At one point during the last show, I was teasing Kim [Deal] about something, and she flipped me off. She was just fooling around, but I thought she was serious. It was the first time that’d happened the whole time, and I thought, ”Oh, man, she’s mad at me. It’s over.”

Q: You recording a new album?
A: Yeah, but I need to write some good songs. These Pixies have gotten a little uppity. They’re like, ”What if it’s not as good as the old records?”

Very happy to read this Globe interview with Frank Black today. But I’ll believe it when I see it, as will we all. And then, of course, some of you have lives.

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Wednesday Wadio: The Pogues "Fairytale Of New York".


in Wednesday Wadio

“…it’s a gorgeous song no matter why you observe Christmas or even if you celebrate something else… is not only the most beautiful, but the best Christmas song humanity has ever made. May it endure.” – Stylus

I am really slammed today but wanted to get this out there. This entire Wadio entry will be comprised completely of quotes and links, and you can enjoy my snide remarks again tomorrow.

“The Pogues re-released their classic Christmas hit ‘Fairytale of New York’ on Warners on 19th December 2005. The song, featuring the late Kirsty McColl was voted the best Christmas song ever in a poll by TV station VH1 last year, beating Band Aid, Wham and Slade to the top spot.”

“The band will be donating proceeds from the record to the homeless charity Crisis At Christmas and the Justice For Kirsty Campaign. Set up by the late singer’s mother Jean, the fund has enabled the family to fight the long legal battle for justice following the tragic death of their daughter, killed by a powerboat whilst on holiday with her children. Almost five years on from her untimely death on 18th December 2000, no person has been made accountable to the satisfaction of her family and friends.”

“MacGowan and the sadly departed MacColl sing all over each other, slurring words and tossing insults (she’s an “old slut on junk”, he’s a “cheap lousy faggot”). You could easily dismiss it as merely dysfunctional and assume I’m saying it is the greatest Christmas song of all time because I am a cynical bastard and I think Christmas sucks and is all about squabbling with the family and getting loaded. But you’d be wrong.”

“This is a couple clearly more comfortable slinging profanity than admitting sentiment. And then they sing “The boys of the NYPD Choir are singing ‘Galway Bay’ / And the bells are ringing out on Christmas Day” again, and it’s still oddly uplifting when you consider how little those two things mean to most of us (but not to them, of course), and then the song goes off into the air.”

And I got tickets to the Boston show, bitches.

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Painful, Painful Nerdery.


in Movies

When people want to know about certain things, they talk to me. As if I were Mad Max and they were a desperate villager who needed to find a truck to haul gasoline. But it’s not quite as cool as post-apocolyptic gang warfare-related advice – when all they’re asking you is to tell them what movies you recently went to by yourself before masturbating yourself to sleep whilst crying.

“I’m greatly looking forward to King Kong and A Scanner Darkly, which is an animated version of a Philip K. Dick book,” said Dave Pye, senior account manager with a Boston-based search engine marketing firm. “Blade Runner, Total Recall and Minority Report are all great geek movies based on Dick’s work, and I hope the trend continues.”

Still, it’s very nice to be an authority on something. Maybe I can work my way up to Advanced Dungeons and Dragons.

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Fumigating Neverland.


in Reminiscent

When I moved in to my current apartment, it was September 2000 and I was 26 years old. I had a sweet job, a building which was always full of young girls, a fraternity-esque social life and the interior decorating to match. It was cheesy, but it was OK to be cheesy. It was expected – and I was in good, cheesy company. But as Seamus left in September for new horizons in Hartford, I am now the very last of the old guard.

The years have flown past, and I’ve never updated my decor. Sitting in my room now, I see the signed flag of St. George I received when I left the Hinds Head in 1998. An original operational 1977 Han Solo blaster. A remote controlled R2D2 which is even older. A map of Northern Ireland printed on Irish linen I got in Belfast in 2001. Goldfinger, Casino, Die Hard 3 and A Bronx Tale (way to go Lillo by the way,) posters. My skydiving certificate. Multiple DeNiro, Sinatra and Frank Black 8x10s. Unframed photographs that are taped to the walls including my football team group shots that are all curled up at the edges and need to be preserved as they may still impress girls. A creative writing award I won in 1991 that definitely never will. A boomerrang I got in Australia and a wooden machete I got in South Africa. And there’s a few shitloads more.

Let me just say what you’re all thinking – My bedroom looks like the Chinese curio shop in Gremlins, if it were managed by a 12-year-old homosexual.

My Canadian houseguests have been delayed, and I’ve spent the evening boxing up the majority of this juvenile crap and moving it into the basement. I won’t part with it – some of it is actually pretty cool, but it’s time to move my epicenter, my bedroom, into 2006. I’m not a pack-ratting hermit by nature, and it’s just been a matter of getting to a tipping point to send me over the edge towards serious redecoration. And, dare I say it, adulthood. Thankfully, it just happened.

Yesterday Kyle and I went to a lovely annual Christmas party up in Marblehead that I have not attended in 4 years. Several of the guests were induviduals from the aforementioned job with their little children, and subsequent lives, in tow. Towards the end we met a 63-year-old mortgage broker who proceeded to tell me how nice I was and that she wanted to set me up with a young girl she knows in Beacon Hill. She asked for my business card. On the way home, Kyle told me that the woman was just going to try and sell me property. I realized he was right – because if you didn’t know me, all gussied up and being extremely polite at a posh Christmas party, you’d think I really fucking had it together.

The scene switches, and my latest hypothetical lady love is staring up at a magazine cutout of Al Pacino in Serpico as I whisper sweet nothings in her ear. And… scene. I’m framing the autographed Trailer Park Boys glossy and leaving it where it is, and the football photos are also getting framed and can stay, but look out world – Peter Pan is growing up and redecorating.

Incidentally, the Bob and Doug Mackenzie action figures are also staying. And here you thought I’d completely lost my shit.

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Friday’s Fairytale: Essential Christmas Croonings.


in Monday's Quotelet

The usual source of the quizzlets is once again sucking hind tit, self-admittedly using “leftover” questions this week – all of which I’ve answered before here on PITF. So I’m thinking up my own. It’s relevant, it’s hep, it’s seasonal and it’s interactive. Although it is late in the day, and many have you have already mentally checked out for the weekend, play along if you please. And if not, go pork a wreath.

Top Five Holiday Songs EVAH.

5. The Chipmunk Song – The Chipmunks: Human counterpart “Dave” encourages Alvin and the rest of his little rodent gang to wish for more peace and love, and less hula hoops, during the holiday season. It’s catchy, and ever so frigging creepy at the same time. Here’s a Flash parody that will immediately make you want to bathe.

4. Little Drummer Boy – David Bowie and Bing Crosby: On his yearly Christmas special in 1977, Bing asked Bowie, whom he’d never heard of but had been advised was big with ‘the kids’, to join him for this classic duet. Crosby died a month later, and nobody saw this until after his death which added to the already oozing sentimentality. Personally, I’m glad that Bing got one last chance to prove that he could entertain children just as well as he could beat them. I kid Bing. He was awesome.

3. Christmas in Hollis – Run DMC: During their 80s heyday, the guys put together this yuletide hip-hop single that was the first and last of its kind. Here’s the thing – it’s surprisingly a very, very good tune. I loved it as a kid, and it holds up well over time. I buy into the fact that Santa visits the hood as regularly as he does any other neighborhood. I don’t buy into the fact that collard greens should be served with Christmas dinner or that the pre-religious Run would have returned Santa’s wallet.

2. Baby, It’s Cold Outside – Dean Martin: If you know me, you know of my eternal love of Dino. That having been prefaced, this song could have easily been called I Know you Don’t Want to Fuck me, but it’s Really Frigging Cold Outside. Listen to Dean coax his ladyfriend into staying for “one cigarette more” due to the raging elements that await her outside. The raging erection is most definitely inside, and Dean’s going to be dammed if he lets his folly leave before there’s egg nog all over her green sweater. In all seriousness, this is a cute classic that I always pull out this time of year.

1. Fairytale of New York – The Pogues: I’ll say it – This is hands down the best Christmas song that has ever been written. Shane MacGowan and the late Kirsty MacColl trade sentiments and then jabs in a booze-soaked yuletide slugfest. Any song that can bring me to tears every year, which also rhymes ‘maggot’ with ‘faggot‘, has something just a little special going on. This year marks the 5th anniversary of Kirsty’s tragic death, and the single is being re-released with all proceeds going to her charity. There is also a documentary about the strange story behind the song airing on the BBC next week. The best of the best, this song will be featured on Radio Pye next week for the uninitiated.

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It’s High Time I Found My Building On Google Earth.


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Open the bomb bay doors, Mr. Oppenheimer. We’ve finally found him.

Without a couple of famous North End landmarks in the vicinity, this satellite photo of my neighborhood would be little more than a messy mess and the get mess crew. on the right you can clearly see the Old North Church. “One if by land…” and all that revolutionary jazz. On the top left, the old Brinks Building, now a hotly contested yuppie parking garage, is in effect.

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Wednesday Wadio: Edo G’s ‘I Got To Have It’.


in Wednesday Wadio

“I’m from Roxbury the ‘Bury but not the fruit y’all – Don’t make me act like where I come from cause it’s bru-tal.” – Ed OG.

In honor of this senseless scene of local studio slaughter, I was inspired to feature a legendary Boston rap artist on Radio Pye today. As an aside, how many rappers have been shot or otherwise died in their recording studios at this point? 2Pac, Jam Master Jay, ODB… You hit the studio with the intention of laying down a few bizzangin’ tracks – and just end up laying down. Update: Here is an MP3 by the now permanently defunct, murdered Boston rap group, Graveside.

Ed OG and da Bulldogs’ seminal 1991 release “The Life of a Kid in the Ghetto” is beloved by any hip hop fan who attended high school in the Boston area that year. There’s your “Bugaboo”, your “I’m Different”, but the track everyone remembers, and which made it onto Yo! MTV Raps for a couple of weeks in March of that year, is the classic “I Got to Have it“.

Edo’s work was a great combination of social commentary, sexual adventure and bootie-shakin ‘ party jams. There isn’t a weak song on “Ghetto”, and the rough beats and heavy sampling are a time capsule of early 90s rap – or ‘the golden age’ as I like to call it. “There were no drug raids and driveby’s on “Life of a Kid in the Ghetto,” just episodes in the life of a young man who knew his calling.”

Edo is still kickin’, having recently and quietly released a great album with Pete Rock, and I recently read in a Boston music magazine that he’s hard at work recording with another Boston crew. He plays regularly at the Middle East and is even thinking about getting into politics in the future. Perhaps as a member of the Skinny Dip party. Time will tell – but this is a great song that I remember fondly and wanted to reintroduce to my small world.

“These days you have to look long and hard for such a charismatic and original freshman. In 1991, “Life of a Kid in the Ghetto” proved that between NY and LA, there were many places who had their own story to tell. In that regard, Ed repped the ‘Bury and Boston to the fullest.”

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Happy Birthday, You Filthy Pornography-Ridden Cesspool.


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HTTP Protocol was introduced in 1990, making the internet as we know it officially 15 years old. A recent article on CNN lists their personal top ten internet moments – including WiFi, Google, Live8, Skype, Napster and others. There are some glaring omissions, however. Namely, the black sheep of the internet. That of which major media will not speak the name. You know, the good stuff. Like Catster.

In the interests of not making my subversive surfing habits public record, I invite you, the reader, to share some of your more disturbing WWW discoveries in the comments below. I just think that if we’re going to mark such an important anniversary, some light should be shone on where the real money is made, and where the real traffic ebbs and flows. Sure, NeoPets is a lot of fun, and has become an enormous success, but it does me absolutely no good when I’m drinking by myself on a Saturday night with a greasy container of coconut oil.

I’ll get the ball rolling with a few of my guilty favorites:

– Ogrish.com: People who work in law enforcement in China, Pakistan, Iraq and Brazil send in ridiculous crime scene photographs. Not for the faint of heart.

– RatherGood.com: I hope someone eventually gets this guy the mental help that he so desperately needs. But his Flash movies are absolutely hilarious.

– YouAintNoPicasso.com: Courtesy of Nate, this site is an amazing resource for getting obscure MP3s of ‘alternative’ bands. The webmaster will be locked away in a dank prison cell at any moment, so enjoy this copyright treachery while you can.

I will add some more later. Have to get going. Please contribute your own, and happy thwapping.

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Not Only Do I Hate Mondays, I’m Having Them Killed.


in

Not even the Park Street Jesus freaks could cheer me up this morning. After a weekend full of horrible movies, a Saturday afternoon at the office, a Christmas Party at which I got intimately acquainted with Mrs. Claus and a bout of insomnia that would have made Rip Van Winkle perky – it was Monday yet again. And I felt like I’d been drinking absinthe and snorting No-Doz for 72 hours. And you know full well you can’t get absinthe in this country. Dance with the green fairy, indeed.

I have to break this vicious cycle. It stems from staying up too late and then sleeping in the next day. My homeostasis gets thrown out of whack to the point where I’m as effictive and original on Monday morning as Jayson Blair on sodium pentathol. I’m not sure where I’m going with this. Maybe I do. Bed. For 12 hours.

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Friday’s Quizzlet: Tales From The Boiler Room.


in Monday's Quotelet

Appetizer: Name something you’ll miss about 2005.
I’ll really miss the way the number 5 looks like a little testicle at the end of the two zeros. I look forward to 2007, when I’ll get emails and letters sent to me with dates at the top and I’ll wonder – is this really a bill from Keyspan, or is James Bond sending me a secret code? Is my gas about to be shut off, or has Blofeld escaped from the underground MI6 volcano prison. It will be exciting to try and figure that out every day.

Salad: What is one thought that went through your mind today?
Sweet Charity am I ever late for work! I got all the way to the Haymarket T stop and had waited for the train a good 10 minutes before I realized I left my laptop in my living room. I had to go all the way back to get it and bounded into the office 10 minutes before a conference call. So I was wicked prepared, covered in snow and still nailed it.

Soup: On a scale of 1-10 how compassionate would you say you are?
If I can quote Duran Duran for a second – City living, heavy trouble. City living rough. We are given angry hearts, but angers’ not enough. I think what Simon leBon is saying here is along the lines of living in the city for an extended period of time can make you apathetic, please get me another young cock.

Main Course: If you could invent something, what would it be?
I’m not telling you, you sneaky patent-collecting quizzlet. My supersonic peanut machine gun vibrator will be ready when it’s ready. And I’ve already invented whatever the lifeform is that inhabits the boilers in my building and keeps blowing out the pilots. Not to be confused with criteria for joining the Mile-High Club.

Dessert: Do you prefer salty snacks or sweet treats?
Salty snacks I’d have to say. My friend Mike once pointed out the error in calling someone a saltoholic. And alcoholic is called that because they are addicted to alcohol. So by the same logic, someone addicted to salt should be called a saltlic. So you’ll frequently find me hanging out in meadows being tongued by dairy cows. You haven’t lived…

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It’s All Greek To Me. And My Ass Hurts.


in

Many thanks to everyone who attended my last minute birthday dinner last night, and to Janet for pulling it all together. The Greek food was great, and the retsina was definitely flowing. I knew a few folks were coming, but I had no idea we’d have a big table of about 10 or so. Well done, everyone. I was allowed to tell inappropriate jokes and speak too loudly with the people I love. And what the hell do those sexually deviant Greeks care anyway? Malakas.

Also, what is it about fried cheese that has me so very fascinated? Take a hunk of sharp aged fromage, soak it in brandy, light it for a few seconds, put the whole thing out with a big hunk of lemon and watch Dave’s pants get a little tighter. And not due to a weight gain, if you get my drift. I long for the day when scientists deem Saganaki good for your health. I won’t hold my breath. But then – I won’t need to as I’ll be long since dead from blocked arteries. Opa!

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