Oh boy, oh boy

This is encouraging as I prepare for my journalism job search in a few months. All the little pins in the map represent newspapers around the country that have been laying off employees.

Awesome.

I think I'll take Chris' advice and open up a bottle of whiskey now.

Delaying the inevitable

Looking for a way to act like you're rolling in the dough and live luxuriously when in reality you're just a terribly poor college student? Join the University of North Carolina marching band. Or, more importantly, be in the band that gets to follow the basketball team.

You'll get to fly into Memphis on a private jet, get a police escort all the way to your very expensive hotel and, on top of it all, you get $30 a day to do whatever the hell you want. All because you can blow a few notes. Can't beat it, if you ask me.

Let me break this down for you. Our hotel is the Peabody, a hotel so ritzy and desperate for something to spend money on that they have a procession of ducks -- yes, ducks -- that march from the elevator to the fountain, where they hang out all day.


I apologize for the crappiness of this video. It was taken with my little digital camera. The poor thing tries hard.

Then I got a delicious burger on the bands tab. Then I got a NCAA Sweet Sixteen shirt on the bands tab. Then I got to sit on the second row and watch the basketball open practice.



And to top off the day, I got to eat this, on the bands tab.



That's a full rack of ribs from Rendezvous Ribs, some of the best ribs in the town. Then we went down to Beale Street to B.B. King's club to hear a great house band and watch Memphis and dook lose. The night can't get much better than that.

So I may be dirt poor and borderline homeless in a few months. But right now, I'm living the life. Tomorrow, I'm going to Graceland.

A little Freddie

Take two people who each have a strong connection to a third but don't really like or understand each other. Then take those three people and put them in a studio apartment the size of an ATM vestibule for two weeks. Snoring, snarky comments, weird sleep and smoking habits. A holocaust, it seemed, was closing in fast. In dreams I envisioned my brother putting knives in his shoes while Becca chiseled the sides of her laptop to create a decapitating frisby (Wifi enabled).

But fun prevailed. The potential risks of allowing booze and video equipment to collide are similar to mixing Paris Hilton with MTV (or, for that matter, Paris Hilton, video equipment, and a hotel room); It could be a fucking catastrophe. But Apple technology--which can border on cheap hey-Im-an-individual gimmicks--ensured that we had some medium in which to direct our psychotic energies. And to answer the inevitable question: Because Becca and clothes are like Mike Tyson and virgin sheep. They just don't get along. That bra, after all, is just a prop.



When we weren't discrediting ourselves from future job offers, we moseyed on down to The Clash on a night when the name of the place actually did itself justice. It was a Saturday and Becca and I were ready for a decent night on the town after using and abusing Macbook gizmos. Apparently, Saturday night at The Clash is Gothfest, replete of any normativity. The DJ must have played two full CDs of Joy Division, but the dance floor remained empty for most of the evening, with a guy in his 40s who crept around the the square like a predator stalking invisible prey as the lone exception. Besides our uninformed garb, every person in the bar was dressed fully in black. Marylin Mansons and Courtney Loves flooded the place. I don't have a picture but this city is swarming with shit like that. There's little doubt I'll run into it again.



Well, now that I'm a rock star, it's time to go off and trudge around Paris and Amsterdam for a week. Shroomed out of my gourde and recovering from the wallet-fuck that encompasses Parisian culture, zany thoughts will ensue.

New Goal

Change this photo to something more up to date and less Ben looking like Master Mushroom Top, a spacey pederast who mistakenly showed up to the ball without his pants.