It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia

I pretty much take Matthew Timmons' advice on everything, probably because we had the same PE class in seventh grade and he had a Metallica t-shirt. In recent years, Matt's been all, "You should move up to Seattle," and "You should buy that guitar," and "Dude, that TV! It's just like mine!" He's also been, like, "You totally need to call that girl," and "Eh, probably shouldn't call her again," and "It's Always Sunny is incredible, Booth. What am I, an asshole?"

So far it's all worked out pretty goddamn well.

Bad Biology

I like RA the Rugged Man because he's a tough white dude who raps about offensive things and I listen to a lot of Necro. But I also like boxing because of a Larry Sanders extra and I decided to go to Prague after I saw some Polish animation, so my logic isn't always the most sound.

Jonathan Richman -- Take Me to the Plaza

I'm kinda tired of the story where I went to see ArnoCorps and got blackout drunk on a few PBRs and one whisky sour and I vomited all over a girl I liked in the back seat of her car. But the story I'm not yet tired of is the one where I got home the next day reeking of of hangover and remorse and I put on Take Me to the Plaza just so I could watch Jonathan Richman sing about how beautiful it was to live in a world where the sad sun stared at you through the trees and men sat in the cafe crying in vain and your heart hurt so bad you can't eat, you can't sleep, you just wandered around. After that, I knew everything was going to be okay.

The Door in the Floor

I'm halfway certain that my ninth grade English teacher wanted me to read A Prayer for Owen Meany because of how pleased he was that he looked like John Irving's dust jacket photo. I knew this at the time, but that didn't stop younger me from really really digging this book, so much so that during the year I read as many Irving pieces as I could.

But then, once I got out of high school I found myself at the community college, and I all but stopped reading entirely. Sometimes I would sit there in pretend-class and start feeling bad about myself and think, "Man, didn't I used to read all sorts of real books all the time? Didn't I do more than scroll through the GWAR FUQ while eating Taco Bell and drinking Dr. Pepper?"

Finally, one afternoon I decided I had to do something about this, and I drove down to the used book store and bought the first copy of Son of the Circus I saw. With all sorts of good intentions I got home and plowed through the opening thirty-five pages, but before I knew what had happened, I found myself bored, I'd slid a bookmark between the pages, and I'd slipped this New York Times bestseller right back onto the shelf, right back into the spot that'd been recently vacated by the X-Cops CD I'd picked up a few weeks before and which had almost as recently taken up permanent residence in the bedroom stereo. As I pushed play, I silently pledged to myself that I'd give John Irving a shot in just a few days, once I got over the momentary thrill of loud, offensive music and was back in the right frame of mind. Yep. In just a few days.

I still haven't made it to page 36.