Flying Rabbit x Blaxsploitation

Not much to say about this, other than I wish I had shot it in better quality with my camera phone. At least I'm sort of learning video editing.


The Bearded Lady Flies Again from chris barry on Vimeo.

Enjoy.

Smells Like Tween Spirit

It all started on Monday. I bought a rug for my bedroom as somewhere nice for my feet to fall when I step out of bed. Martina Van Buren, my lionhead rabbit/devil's advocate/beloved roommate/perpetual antagonist/~8-year-life-partner, took to the rug immediately by pancake-ing herself down, stretching into lounge mode and laying down a few "this is my rug now" poos.

It's like diss:

clearly i am not in control of this situation

And like dat:

The thing is, she has her own rug in her pen. It's a $5.99 dollar store treasure, and she seems to be confusing my rug for hers when I thought that I had clearly indicated the difference. I need to show I'm boss. But if I retaliate in a way she'll understand — by pooping on her rug, for instance — I still lose, because she will just stonewall me into cleaning up the mess myself. She's very persuasive. So I don't have a solution yet.

But as the week progressed, things got weirder than the battle over rug ownership. She was racing in circles around my feet, honking at me like a little goose baby and demanding constant an immediate attention. Wherever I went, she followed, circling my feet and standing on her hind legs to stare at me. At first cute, last night the behavior became insane.

Martina would not leave me alone. Usually when I am working in my lounge chair, she will leap into my lap and sit for a few minutes, and I will move my laptop, put my work on hold and torture her with love and affection. Then she'll get restless and hop down, go eat some hay or my shoes or a wire or plot my untimely death or whatever it is that she does when I'm not looking. But not last night: She hopped into my lap probably ten times over the course of a couple hours and just stayed put, getting herself comfortable and buzzing at me, demanding affection. I also began to notice a smell in my room, not unlike the cloud of body odor wafting around Bonnaroo this time of year, but a little sweeter, and probably more beneficial to our society. After determining that the smell wasn't from my armpit or my dirty laundry, I started to ponder the bunny connection. The smell was wild and strange and mildly intoxicating, kind of like in that gasoline/turpentine way. It was then that I gave my shirt the sniff test, where she'd been nestled all night, and the odor was all over it. Perplexed, I turned to my Savior, the omnipotent omnipresent omni-sexual Internet, for advice, and came across this:

It was then that I realized what I had suspected: My baby has become a little lady, and it was time to release her into the wild. I opened the door and let her run out onto the patio, where she was swiftly dispatched by a large hawk that had been ominously circling overhead. I exclaimed, "that's nature for you" and spent the rest of the evening in a leather wing-back chair, smoking a brier pipe and reading Darwin, content in my actions. and she was flirting with the "man of the house." I then set out to find the corniest version of a certain Neil Diamond song to play over and over for her (and me), and I think I found it:



I am not unfamiliar with female advances, but 96-percent of them come in the form of doe-eyed flirtations from overweight black women in the Duane Reade check-out line, where I'm patiently waiting to buy blueberry yogurt pretzels. It happens often. Back home in Atlanta, I'm the WASPy love interest for the cashiers at Kroger — and the sketchier the neighborhood the better. But this was my first inter-species flirtation, and it kinda stunk.

I started reading more. Too much, actually. I saw things I can't unsee. I read things I shouldn't have read. Nature is weird and so is the Internet and so are people, so the trifecta was intense.

not all trix are for kids

This was seriously on a rabbit owner discussion board in a spay/neuter thread. It is terrifying.

I was going to say that things have calmed down, but for the last 30 minutes she's been in my lap. Every time I reach forward to the keyboard, she nuzzles my wrist up over her head to be petted. I am still not the boss.

Besides finding the above pornographic cereal mascot, I've found lots of useful information. Apparently this behavior is a good indication that it is time for her to be spayed. I don't really want to spay her, but it is in her best interest in terms of health and longevity. Hopefully she'll stop flirting with me once the spaying is complete; besides, even though I love my now-grown-woman bunny, my heart belongs to someone else. FREE DELILAH!!! I'm waitin' for ya baby.

 

Bad Dweams and Double-Trouble With Asian Massage Parlours: A Tuesday in May

So I have this kind of active imagination.

Since I have a picture, I know I did not imagine this:

Lionhead Rabbit Convention: let the judging begin

No, I'm not going to explain this photo. You have to interpret it on your own. Just know that it took a few moments to get the perfect shot and I got it.

One downside to my infantile brain is that sometimes, usually when overheated and sleeping, I have weird, not-so-happy dreams. It happened to me last night. And to make matters worse, I woke up from my urine-soaked nightmare right as my alarm went off, meaning that I couldn't just pull the rubber sheets off my bed, throw them in the washer, and go back to sleep and forget the whole thing and pretend like mom and dad won't have one of those hushed talks when they think you're in your room doing your homework, one of those talks when they ask each other "when is he going to stop doing that? Surely he should have outgrown it by now" and then they notice you are standing there but try to pretend like they're not talking about you, and you wonder the same thing and don't have an answer and you're 17 years old now go back to sleep and forget it. It was one of those dreams where you feel helpless, and it put me in this weird funk, a spacey, unsettled mood for the following six hours or so.


Cue relaxing Asian massage number one: I left work at about noon to go across the street to one of those Qi-Gong massage places that are basically everywhere in New York City, offering massages for roughly $9 for every ten minutes of rub. I have been pretty loyal to Ma's Body Work in Greenpoint for a number of reasons:

1. it is across the street
2. they offer a stamp card, and theoretically I will someday acquire enough Chinese characters for a free massage (or an edgy yet Zen-inspirational tattoo)
3. it is the only one I've ever been to
4. both of my kidneys are still (theoretically) in my body, which, after 7 visits, makes it seem like they're trustworthy enough
5. even though its batteries are now dead, it used to have this cool gold waving cat in the window that was quite welcoming (he's still there, just not as friendly anymore, now that he no longer waves but instead gives kind of an eerie Nazi salute)
6. and probably the most important point here, being an ignorant Southerner by birth and therefore uneducated xenophobe, I thought "Ma's" must be a family business — the strong matriarch a cornerstone of their family trade and therefore providing the massage parlor's name — and always assumed that the oldest woman on the premises must be "Ma" and therefore the most skilled masseuse, going so far as to request her by name or offer to wait for her, not realizing until recently that "Ma" is a pretty common name for Asian people and that it's probably their last name and I am, as suspected, a total jackass.

Needless to say, the massage totally pulled me out of my funk, gave me 20 minutes of deep, uninterrupted thought that resolved my dream-related depression, and released lots of tension from my shoulders. (There is really no way to make this "relaxation" not sound like I was given a handjob, but I promise, I don't like handjobs from strangers. Anymore.)

But there's a new kid on the block, so to speak, in the form of another massage parlor about 200 feet away that I've heard from a couple of people is "better" than Ma (the old woman at Ma's). So I figure, what better way to find out than a little head-to-head comparison?

Now I don't know the name of this place but it's on the same side of the street, it has white curtains and a VHS tape of a gooey-looking back massage playing on loop on a 13" TV/VCR combo in the window. I appreciate their no-nonsense approach to deterring funny business:

I have to deduct a point for the narrow stalls, as disrobing was cramped. But what happened once I was on the table can only be described by the following series of noises and tactile descriptions:

The staccato sound of flip-flops flipping and flopping into the chamber. How long? Twenty minutes, please. Inner monologue: Ouch, damn, she's strong. I'm having a hard time breathing, but in a good way. Don't fight back, don't resist, absorb. Breathe. Exhale during pressure. Wait, did she just? Yep, she's up on the table. What a little spider woman! What a ninja! Ugh, don't be so predictable. Ninja. Yeah, you're real creative. Raccoon? Very sneaky, eyes shielded in disguise. Cat burglar? Ooh, that's a bad knot there. How did Ma not find that one? Her name isn't really even Ma, dummy. Maybe you are racist. Shit, she's on the table again, this time perched on the side so she can work the left side of the back. How does she know to favor the left side? She's very intuitive, this one. Ugh, 'this one'? Really? Okay you need to take it down a notch. I wonder if Film Noir video has "White Dog" (Ed Note: CLICK THIS LINK!!!) on DVD? They have all the Criterion Collection stuff, they've probably got it. Okay, now she's on my right side. Damn, I've never had anyone really get into that... what are those muscles called? "Traps"? "Delts"? It feels good though. Time's up. I wonder if they do a little extra after the... ahhhh... buzzer, they, DO! Flip-flop-flip-flop very fast, hot towel, all finished.

It's better than Ma's; I admit it. And I took the Pepsi Challenge this afternoon to prove it.

On my way home, I ran into this girl who has a blog called "Babe City Babes", which is a blog of photos and commentary about guys she and her friend think are hot. I learned about her blog when I ran into her at an Easter party a few weeks ago (or whenever Easter was...) and she took my picture. I found out today, however, that they had already featured me on their blog a couple of months ago, and they don't like to do duplicates... so I went looking on the site for me. What I found made me laugh for roughly 10 minutes:

If this isn't the most quintessential, perfect, amazing photo of me, I don't know what is. Apparently I look hot when I have a confused look on my face, a four-pound bag of rabbit hay in my hand, and I'm standing on the corner in front of McDonald's, probably going to the bodega to buy a kombucha or vitacoco. Should you want to read the full commentary (which is hilarious), it's here.

Yo, much love Mina, you sneaky devil you. It's hard work being this much of a babe.

Just When We Were All Feeling Bad For Japan

I'm not what you might consider one of those "current events" type people, those types that are always in the know about the latest catastrophes/natural disasters/presidential elections/Lindberg baby abductions. So I didn't know that the "Sing-A-Ma-Jig" is a toy from Christmas season 2010, I just thought it was a Japanese sex toy gone horribly wrong that had been incorrectly labeled and imported into the United States under erroneous falsified documents and somehow wound up in a Rite Aid in Brooklyn and subsequently found its way into my clammy masturbatory hands after I stood in line to pay $13.97 for it while wondering if I'd be less embarrassed to be buying the Trojan Vibrating Ring that was going for roughly the same price in the "impulse buy" section near candy and gum and playing cards and Abreva. I bought it solely to make the worst video ever, which I think I have done. Enjoy.



I want to make it into a "Feature Length Film" so please donate to the project on Kickstarter so your money will go to a good cause which will be me buying several more plants for my apartment, probably air plants to put in the eyes of my new cow skull hanging on my bedroom wall, or to fund some of the other meaningless whims and temporary obsessions that govern my so called life.

In other news, I have a big weekend coming up: I will be attending the North American Lionhead Rabbit Club's 2011 National Show in Columbus, Ohio. It's only a 9-hour drive from Brooklyn through Pennsylvania and Ohio; or, if you're going to be in the area, you should come too! I don't think there is any entry fee if you're just an average rabbit-loving obese person (like me) and don't have a bunny to show ($7.50 if you do), so you can just come in and walk around and judge rabbits on your own and drink Tab and eat olive loaf bologna sandwiches (snacks unconfirmed). Maybe you'll bid on a show-winning lionhead like one of these, all up for auction! Maybe you're just going for the $20 all-you-can-eat "Italian-American" banquet at Spaghetti Warehouse (15-layer lasagna) and the cheap hotel room with a vibrating bed (unconfirmed) and pool (unconfirmed) to escape New York for a weekend.

Maybe you want to see pictures from a recent Easter photoshoot starring my rabbit and Carlen's shiny rapist rabbit who, thankfully, has been neutered.

like a virgin

touched

for the very first time

(No rabbits were harmed during the taking of these photos, although I was hit with a tsunami of rabbit urine on my lap which, for the second time recently that I have been peed on, I thought was just the animal getting cozy and warming my body with its undying love...)

Speaking of "undying", Happy Easter everybody! Hopefully Zombie Jesus's cannibalistic search for human flesh didn't have him walking across water to eat your brains. Because I think that's the true meaning of John Carpenter's classic 1977 film "The Resurrection", a powerful film in the Catholic educational movie canon, although I haven't been to Sunday School in quite some time and my knowledge of Christian theology is shaky at best and tinged with disbelief and Hollywood and insanity.

Whoa, Maybe I Should Start a Heady New Brooklyn Music Blahg Brah

conduct breast cancer screenings every year on your friends

Or maybe not. But with the amount of time I have been wasting spending listening to music lately — both live and, er, dead? — I thought I would share a couple of recent thoughts and finds. In recent posts I have talked about rappers with interesting voices and the fact that listening to late-50s era Hawaiian records on cold gray rainy days could theoretically make you happier and more productive, but I caught a show last week (does that phrase sound like a euphemism for getting a venereal disease?) that revitalized my love of live music, especially "catching a show" that doesn't cost a ridiculous amount of money to see (or cure).

When I lived in Athens, GA, there was always so much music to be seen, and covers/tickets were always pretty cheap, otherwise I wouldn't have gone because I was a broke college student whose monthly budget — and how I spent my time — was usually broken down as follows:

~ 35-55% finding "things" with names like "Hawaiian Sativa", "Princess", "Grape-le", "Outdoor Indo"

~ 25-35% eating, trying to eat, driving somewhere to eat, grilling on the front patio, buying food

~ whatever % is left was for drinking, girls, drinking with girls, reading, drawing, listening to music and school (and school was always last)

But you could go out on a random Tuesday, plop down a $5 cover and see a great performance from a band you'd never heard of before (this link also shows the beautiful Georgia Theatre before it burned down). I even saw Kings of Leon (when they were good, around 2004, which was coincidentally when they could barely play their instruments other than make a bunch of noise and howl) and My Morning Jacket play at the 40 Watt Club, a small standing room only venue that only fits about 300 people. The MMJ show was a "costume required" show they called the Under The Sea Prom — everyone was required to wear prom or "under the sea" attire and they threatened to deny entrance unless you conformed to the dress code. They wore pastel tuxes and rubber Elvis hair, played songs like "Dancin' In The Moonlight" and "Johnny B. Goode" and even elected a King and Queen for the night: it was a three-hour dance party and the most fun I've ever had at a concert.

Pre-show dance party at my brother's apartment, listening to The Rolling Stones' Beggar's Banquet, the best pre-show album of all time:

At the show, random blond stickin' her finger in my nose, probably because I was groping her all night.

lookin' for love in all the wrong places

All that being said, (probably unnecessarily) I went and saw Morning Teleportation at Brooklyn Bowl last Friday for $5, and it reminded me just how great SOME of the music here in Brooklyn can be: Just like Athens, there is a ton of flotsam, basically the result of the ratio of available time slots at bars, lazy club bookers and underemployed twenty-somethings wanting to have a band and skateboard.

This was one of my favorite songs of the night, because I think it best represents the band's rootsy, picking guitar playing that doesn't come across as folksy, but instead modern and splashy.



The whole performance is up on the band's YouTube channel and is worth watching if only to look for the guy wearing the neon green suit; I think the "hit song" that you may have heard is Expanding Anyway.

An upcoming show that isn't crazy expensive and worth checking out if you're in New York is my friend Kurt's band, Country Mice, at The Knitting Factory on Friday. If you don't like the song "Ghost" (streaming from the link above), I probably won't like you. It's a damn-near perfect rock song, just like Kurt's mustache is damn-near perfect.

Also, my token African friend Jasper's band, North Highlands, is fresh out tha studio and is playing later this month at the Mercury Ballroom. Go see them immediately (later this month). I will be in Ohio filming a documentary about Lionhead Rabbits, but you should go and dance and twirl and go to Nice Guy Eddie's afterward to eat cheap hot wings, drink shitty beer and play Naked Photo Hunt and just have an all-around classy night out on New York's hip and trendy Lower East Side. (That is the grossest sentence I have ever written.) Here's their amazing video that features Jasper's amazing van.



Finally, for a band that I have no ties to but has come onto my radar (which sounds vaguely dirty porno sexual if you change the spelling a little) is a band with a relatively awful name, Apache Dropout, but with a lo-fi anthemic sound that I'm diggin' on right now. I want to listen to them while dancing with girls dressed all in black with bleach-blond hair, drinking whiskey and cheap beer from cans and making out while waiting in line for the single bathroom with a broken lock. You can download the first side of their LP at the link above: Listen to "Sam Phillips Rising" over and over and support your bad habits and theirs by buying the album.

Love the cover art, courtesy of Bull City Records:

Also, I think my rabbit's tail is getting too long? Does anyone have any information about this? How long is too long for a bunny tail?

Oh, three more things then I promise I'm done. One: You should save up your allowance and get cultured and smart by seeing my dear friend Cat on Broadway in War Horse, which officially opens today! It had a huge run in London and it is Steven Spielberg's next film, which is slated to come out in December. Congrats to Cat who is the hardest working woman in show-biz that I know, and here's to a long, multi-season run! While you're in that area of town gettin' some culture, don't be fooled by thinking you'll take a break from being smart if you follow this sign:

It is NOT a midtown location for the Insane Clown Posse but instead a bunch of artsy photographs, if you're into that kinda thing, so don't be fooled.

Two, I want to once again issue a formal apology to my friend Stephanie for missing my call to be in Abel Ferrera's new film and get yelled at by Willem Dafoe. That was a mistake I'll never live down and I'm sorry.

Three, I am now going to start editing/programming my friend Matt's great website, Staccato, featuring the best micro-fiction available on the webz. What began as a literary mag in Athens is being reborn once again in Brooklyn and soon in paper form! But for now, check out the website where we will be publishing submitted stories twice weekly. Submit! Read!

Final non-sequitur, this disturbs me: What is corn up to? And what is Korn up to?

 

A Fruitful Use of My Time

I made this today. I don't know why. I rarely find memes funny, but somehow I stumbled upon a picture of a chayote squash or, as it's called in the South, a mirliton, and thought of how it looked like the face of a grumpy grandma with her dentures soaking in a glass on the nightstand.

Chayote squash are very delicious, I have had them pickled and also fried, which makes them taste very similar to fried green tomatoes. There is even a Mirliton Festival in the Bywater neighborhood of New Orleans every year, because people in New Orleans love frying things and hosting festivals.

While making this, I have been listening to some amazing old Hawaiian music, Leo Addeo & His Orchestra, Hawaii in Hi-Fi, that I found at that record store.

It's wonderfully calming and soothing, and although I can't find this album online, Stax-O-Wax has the follow-up album for download and it's great, too.

A rabbit is sitting on my feet right now.

Warning: This Post Took No Effort

Without my sitemeter showing it, I think some of the Greenpoint street residents are catching onto the fact that I am not indeed lost, staring at Google Maps on my phone and wondering out loud "Where is Oak Street?" but, in fact, desperately trying to get my phone to autofocus so I can capture their soul in a photograph because I am a mean sour-turd who half-believes he can sell trading cards of homeless people and then donate that money to charity.

For example, one woman who was particularly insane yelled at me that "there are no trees in Hollywood", perhaps an allusion to the fact that I was wearing wayfarers at the time and my hair looks like a blind person styled James Dean with leftover grease from Jimmy Dean sausage.

she was once a famous southern californian arborist

Another woman must have sensed that I was paying some sort of attention to her and actually started talking to me as we waited for the light to change on the corner. Apparently she had been at the church all morning, because (and this is verbatim; I wrote it down immediately) she said:

I've been praying all morning for my leg to heal. It's no good. Might be broken. Praying not working today. I might change to Orthodox. Not Jewish. I mean Roman.

I was taken aback and struggled for the right words — and also a little weirded out how quickly she was to say she wasn't Jewish — which came out as "I hope your leg feels better" as I smiled and crossed the street. Anyway, it made me feel kind of crappy so I really want to get these things made. It's been so horrible outside and no one should have to sleep on the street. I figure 15 cards, maybe 12, will be enough for a pack. I'll probably have to sell them online with a FAQ page that looks like this:

Q: Do you have blood and/or a heart with which to pump blood?
A: Yes.

Q: How can I help (expedite your death)?
A: You can help by purchasing these cards, as all proceeds will benefit the Greenpoint homeless community.

Q: Where do you live, I want to burn your house down?
A: Please don't hurt me. I'm trying to help (in a funny way).

OK, and now for something really interesting else:

This is an amazing video from a couple of weeks ago. DO NOT BE DECEIVED! Even though this bunny is very young and cute, he has a rap sheet a mile long and is known by the street moniker "HawkEye", because of this:

oh, the things this eye has seen

My magically talented Jewish Female SoulBrotha Carlen does a great job of telling HawkEye the business, and I do a tremendous job of looking like a gay pirate and dropping in some sort of dim-witted reference to the Lionhead Breed Standard.

Also, what the hell does this mean?

We need to get lionheads recognized as a "real breed" by the American Rabbit Breeders Association, and there is discussion of Carlen and I leading the charge quite literally by driving to Ohio and whining and maybe getting a VHS camcorder and taping it.

Also, my final non-sequitur of the day, this:

The reason the line at the bathroom is always so long...

Tiny Twin: Kinda Sounds Like a Dickens Character With a Speech Impediment

I was just looking at the "stats" section of this blog that tracks who reads this embarrassment of mine. Basically, it tells me your Social Security number and how much porn you watch daily (it hovers around maximum security prisoner levels), which is just barely more than me, but you probably cry during the act just slightly less than I do. (Thanks Southern religious upbringing!) While it doesn't actually tell me about how you are just like James Franco (he's everywhere), it does tell me what search terms in Google currently bring up my blog. "Pooping With The Door Open" was an obvious one, but my favorite was "Are Lionhead Rabbits Insane?". My boring blog is result number six in Google, which has me proudly telling girls about my "huge Web presence."

My newfound confidence is all thanks to my tiny twin, a dwarf lionhead rabbit named Martina Van Buren. She is insane, at least a little bit, but she also lets me degrade her in photographs and is pretty fun to have around. I haven't had a pet of my own since I was in high school, when I rocked a 20-gallon fish tank and was convinced I would become a marine biologist solely based upon the idea of living in a warm ocean environment, eating seafood, scuba diving, riding in boats, stumbling upon swimsuit photoshoots and not upon the reality of having to pass college-level science and math courses (which, like most things, I suck at). My family dog died about an hour before I landed in Atlanta this past Christmas, and I didn't get to see her because my flight was delayed two hours on the runway because they "had problems getting one of the engines to start." (also the tagline for my other website, MaleSexualDysfunction.com) Since the engine eventually did start and I didn't die that night, too, I'm currently drafting up a lawsuit about how Delta killed my dog. But until I'm a hundred-aire from the punitive damages, I have found companionship from this little monster:

what the hell?

she looks kind of like Nicholas Cage here

These two photos are the rabbit bad cop good cop routine: In the first, she stares you down with a steely gaze and malignant non-verbal threats; in the second, she's going to cuddle the confession out of you.

Martina is chill, she's litterbox trained (already) and she sat on my shoulder the other night while I was wrapped in my Snuggie drinking bourbon and watched back to back Jack Nicholson movies, "Easy Rider" and "The Last Detail", without bitching at me once, something no other girl has ever done.

P.S. If you want to play an '80s-style video game to learn proper condom use, go here. And by "proper condom use", I mean the goal is to catch three falling hearts and hit the space bar to shoot a condom bubble onto people at the club, which is a pretty accurate description of all my past condom use.

P.P.S. I was feeling totally uncreative today but when I decided to just sit down and write something a bunch of good ideas came to me (none of which are documented here). It proves that if you sit down and decide to just work no matter how you're feeling, you can get something done. Read "The War of Art" by Steven Pressfield. Everyone. NOW.

Corndogs: My Rock in Uncertain Times (Has Been Postponed By An Internet Bunny Fight)

Corndogs and me, holding hands on a beach, just tryin' to make it through these hard times: This was going to be the topic of my little writing exercise today. I was going to describe my view of life as cyclical, masterfully conjuring the corndog to illustrate my theory about how those who triumph at overcoming the bad and capitalizing on the good cycles in life likely hold the magical secret to success. I was going to talk about how I am currently in a corndog cycle — or more like back in my corndog cycle; how it hits me roughly once every few years. Approaching my ten-year high school reunion — which, unless I happen to find myself roofied up and 900 miles south of here, I won't be attending — I realized that right around now, ten years ago, I was deep in a corndog cycle that stemmed from driving two sisters to school. I planned on waxing poetic, reminiscing that everyday I'd go back to their house, watch about 30 minutes of Dumb and Dumber and have a corndog for an after-school snack. I could get introspective about how ten years have passed in a blur of processed and fried meats: How have I changed since then? What have I learned? Where will I go from here?

I was going to describe my youthful error of heating them in a toaster oven. It's too easy to burn them on the outside and leave them cold and raw inside. Gross. They must be fried. In college, I bought a deep fryer from Walmart and a family size bag of corndogs. I could have talked about how a SuperWalmart is a magical, fluorescent wonderland, a place I have visited many times with the sole purpose of wandering the aisles stacked high with stuff made in Chinese toy-bestos factories.

But do you really want to read an unhealthy person's opinions on corndogs? How insightful could it be? Can't I find a better metaphor? Is this a spec-piece I'm trying to shop to High Times? Who really wants to know anything more than they already do about corndogs? Most corndog knowledge is too much knowledge. They're kinda gross and so am I.

My point is, take unhealthy meat, add cornbread, deep fry and you're basically eating the equivalent of a bald eagle soaring over purple mountains majesty to take a big, star-spangled piss on Communist Russia. I had a corndog at the original Nathan's at Coney Island on the 3rd of July last year, one day before all those phony patriots wearing flag hats show up on the Fourth like heathens (me) flocking to church on Christmas. I also rode the Wonder Wheel. So I guess it's safe to say that I'm a real American who "supports our troops" (even though I'd move to Mexico if there was a draft) and always* votes. We Americans have to take our culture's good with the bad, but at least we know which side corndogs are on.

*never even bothered to register to vote because when I turned 18 I had missed the presidential election by one month so I figured I had plenty of time before the next election but then one thing led to another and I don't think I'm registered at all or at least not in New York... (this explanation is basically an Afro Man song, which I'm listening to now thinking of high school)

Anyway, go to Crif Dogs if you're around Driggs and N. 7th and get a corndog or any of the restaurant's other unhealthy delights (and don't forget to bus your own table or else a boyish art school undergrad will come out from behind the counter and politely shame you in the street).

Now for more important things: Insane Bunny Posse. There is an Internet debate currently raging as to who has the greatest dwarf lionhead rabbit in Greenpoint/Williamsburg/the entire Universe, and this requires all of my current attention.

Check out this poster I made to show how my new bunny, Martina Van Buren, looks just like an old-timey President.

Wait, no, that isn't it. That's a woman who looks just like her pet goat, right down to the beard and the toothless, trashy grin.

This is it. That's my baby-girl there on the right. She's a Patriot. She has a hotdog chew toy (no joke).

My opponent claims that her bun is still currently un-nameable, his essence not so easily captured as mine, even though several great options have been suggested. I thusly enter Martina Van Buren into the "Greatest/Weirdest Bunny in Northern Brooklyn" campaign, and the contest is just beginning. Vote or Die.

P.S. This is cool, and I love the Massimo Vignelli 1972 New York Subway Guide.