This Week in Nelson, volume 4, numbers 15-20

Damn it! Another long, long absence without a TWiN. You have my sincerest apologies. Let’s try not to waste time and just go about righting the ship with TWiNny goodness. Here goes:

Birthday shout-out to my uncle Ned, Ethan, Jake, Brad, Trish, Emily and my cats (3 years old!), all belatedly. Also, a happy wedding anniversary shout-out to my parents, and a happy Mother’s Day shout-out to all you moms out there, also belatedly. And, for my one timely shout-out, happy birthday this coming weekend to Margaret! Happy everything to everybody! Whoooooo! To anyone I missed, I apologize. And if I ever miss one of you in my shout-outs, please do let me know. I’m operating off a list I have of birthdays which is likely incomplete, and cannot be fixed without your help. To quote the immortal Sgt. Slaughter, “We all go home or nobody goes home.” Yo Joe!

Books read this week:
-Finished reading I Drink For a Reason by, David Cross (Holy shit! Finally!)
-Still reading Chronic City by, Jonathan Lethem (still haven’t really started, but it’ll be any day now and I’m really looking forward to it!)

I really like David Cross. I think he’s a funny motherfucker. I liked his book of essays, and some of them I really liked especially well, but I feel like it’s not the same caliber as his stand up and sketch writing. It also follows a consistently similar kind of a pissed off tone and formula, which is: what about this thing? This thing is fucked up. Fuck this thing. So, I felt like I could only read so much at a time without getting a little depressed or angry, despite all the jokes. So, anyway, that’s my take on the David Cross book. I recommend it if you like David Cross, but I warn that it may take a while to get through. Though, probably not as long as it took me.

Random out-of-context quotes of the week:
--“It was just a glass of pee. Don’t worry. I was probably going to spill it on myself anyway.”
--“She’s the one who made a move on me.”
“You coulda stopped me.”
“Naw. You the one who kept on kept on.”
--“It’s not a vagina-themed restaurant. If it was, there’d be vaginas all over the walls. Yep. That smells like a taco explosion.”
--“You ladies know that now. You don’t go out with that type. Soldier-types with cute hair.”
--“I don’t like any of the puppet things that have been happening recently.”
--“YES! The wind is coming out of the northwest today!”
--“My uncle was struck by lightning. You’d think it would give you superpowers, but now he just masturbates in theaters.”
--“I don’t care if you’re Michael Jackson or Jesus Christ himself, you do NOT molest children.”
--“I don’t taste the beer at all, and I sprayed that puppy DOWN!”
--“When you go skinny-dipping with a girl and she takes her panties off and leaves her bra on, she’s hiding something.”
--“There’s nothing good about the ham game. There’s nothing funny about the ham game. There’s nothing responsible about the ham game.”

My Emails to Bill O’Reilly this week:
-“Dear Mr. O’Reilly,
I think it’s dangerous to refer to people as pinheads. Did Hellraiser teach us nothing? What about Hellbound: Hellraiser 2? Or Hellraiser 3: Hell on Earth? Or Hellraiser: Bloodline? Or Hellraiser: Inferno? Or Hellraiser: Resurrection? Or Hellraiser: Hellseeker? Or Hellraiser: Deader? Or Hellraiser: Hellworld? Or Hellraiser: Prophecy?
My point is, Pinheads are meant to be feared and respected, not mocked. Your constant invocation of the mighty Cenobite Pinhead will undoubtedly only expand his power until he can open a new doorway to hell and unleash an army of his brother pain demons, and who’s anus do you think they will choose to be the first to be repeatedly violated by sharp metal instruments? Yours? No, you will be second. First they will come for me! They’re demons! They’ll come for your best friend first and make you watch the torture I endure at their cruel hands, the whole time blaming you for my torment before they turn their malevolent devices on you.
I treasure my anus, Bill. I want it to be left unmolested by the ferocity of pain demons. Please, for me, for my anus, find a less dangerous word to use when putting the uninformed and ill-intentioned in their place. My anus will thank you! And, as you’re already well aware, my anus can be a valuable ally, or, if need be, a ruthless enemy. Don’t push it!
Sincerely,
Roboman
11 May 2010"

Interesting news articles of the week:
-“A group of female students organized ‘Boobquake Day,’ in which women wore revealing outfits to mock an Iranian cleric’s claim that earthquakes were a divine punishment for immodest dress. A 6.5 magnitude earthquake struck Taiwan on the day of the protest.”

This Week in Answers to Your This Week in Questions This Week!
-No questions. Which I suppose isn’t surprising, considering my sporadic record with answering lately. Anyone have any questions? I’ll try not to take a month to answer them. Probably.

Nelson recommends:
-Iron Man 2. I dug it. I feel like the criticisms I’ve seen that it lost some of the attitude and humanity of the first one in exchange for more explosions and robots is a valid one, but I still feel like it’s a good, fun movie and well better than plenty of other superhero movies. I’m also interested in this movement in the Marvel comics movies toward a unified world is a cool move. I just wonder if the X-Men and Spider-man will get to play, too. It seems like the X-Men franchise was run into the ground and the Spider-man one took a stumble, so maybe it would be good to find a complete balance, but I don’t know. Anyway, it’s cool. Check it out.
-Lost. Loving the last season so much. I’m really gonna hate to see it go, but I doubt I would be loving it so much if it wasn’t rolling like a freight train into the endgame.
-True Crime with Aphrodite Jones. Saira and I love the crime shows. We watch them a lot. And this one is fucking ridiculous. There’s this heavy-handed voiceover that seems to see Aphrodite Jones as the Jesus Christ of crime literature and reporting, and her interviews have more concerned nodding than any hackneyed morning show person could dream of. There was a point where the camera kept cutting back and forth between Jones and her interviewee as they nodded knowingly at each other about a particular fact of a case. One, then the other, then back, then forth, then back. No words. Just nodding. It’s like a comedy sketch. Hilarious.

I realize I’ve been gone a month again, but I’m not going to go on and on about what I’ve been up to. I want to get this in the books and start from scratch next time. Again.

I’ll close, though, with some notices/reminders:
-The Victor Continental Show! We’ve begun writing and production meetings. It’s coming. Prepare yourselves. It’ll be July 23rd and 24th (Friday and Saturday). And again this year we’ll have a final dress open to friends and family on Thursday, July 22nd. If you can’t make it to the actual show, let me know if you can make the Thursday and we can figure something out. Tickets go on sale in late June. Get ready.
-My birthday. I turn 31 on June 1st. It’s a Tuesday. I’ll probably do something that night, which I’ll figure out later, but Tuesdays aren’t really optimal for partying. So, I’ll be doing something on Saturday night, June 5th. Save the date. Details to come later.

That’s it. See you next week!

–> N.