okay, you really have to check this thing out. besides the frozen green beans and garden burgers, most items in the frozen food section completely baffle me. but, i know they're convenient so what the hey.

but, man, this thing is just crazy! first of all, breakfast has got to be the quickest, easiest meal to make. say it takes three minutes to heat this thing up in the microwave. for two extra mintues you could have the real deal! and you won't have a heart attack within an hour!

dk might be enjoying going back to school, but i feel like i'm walking around like arnold schwarzenegger in t2 when they're in that crazy molten iron building saying "i need a vacation". i made the mistake of taking an intense mini-semester class over christmas break, so i've been going full steam since last january (that whole gmat thing). between my new duties at work and my professors that teach with a cat o' nine tails ("you didn't amortize for this year's depreciation!" *smack!* "no weekend for you!"), as that lady said in airplane 2, the pilot's turned to jelly.

so, my only break from the land of numbers and economic concepts has been a few head-clearing minutes here and there with super mario sunshine. that's right, mario. i traded in my ps2 for a gamecube, and the half hour i spent at gamestop while they checked everything out was one of my most bizarre shopping experiences ever. kevin smith should do a sequel to clerks, and instead of the two protagonists working in convenience and video stores, they should work at a video game store. the socially inept critters that dwell in these places boggle the mind.

por ejemplo:
-i've been in this particular store twice, both times there was this one guy trying to chat it up with the guys behind the counter. this last time, he sees that i'm going to be there a while and starts chatting with me. he is dressed in full army gear for absolutely no reason. he owns no video game consoles but spends half his time hanging out in this store. dude, you're in new york, there's stuff to do!!
-then, some random teenager comes in off the street:
kid: "did you get any new xbox games in?"
counter guy: "yeah, just (blah blah blah)"
kid: "how is it? have you read the reviews?"
counter guy: no response
kid: "i hear you don't identify with the characters and the tasks become menial and repetitive" (okay, wtf?)
counter guy: no response
kid: "oh... ok, thanks" he then, literally, walks out the door backwards, trying to get some ackowledgement from counter guy.
-3 middle aged women came into the store to buy games for themselves. who knew?

motto: stay away from these stores like the plague!

the village voice's pazz and jop 2002 poll is online now, along with a good article about the neptunes, also known as the guys that made britney and n-sync sound good.

it's also fun to look back at the lists from the past 25 years. it's amazing how many of the top albums were on major labels compared to now. have music freaks gotten that much geekier, or have major labels completely switched focus from artist development to quick flash-in-the-pan moneymakers?

when i first heard johnny cash's cover of depeche mode's "personal jesus" i was like "hmmmm.....this is pretty good"
then i heard his cover of u2's "one" and i was like "that's quite nice as well"
then last week i heard his cover of nine inch nails' "hurt" and i was completely blown away. it's truly amazing.

i believe you can see the video here.

ahh, a site dedicated to old cook books. we have an old chicken cookbook on our shelf that just defies logic. first of all, the photography is horrible. the chicken looks purple no matter what the recipe is. then, the "recipes" are basically "put chicken in oven. serve". for an added twist it's "add three sticks of butter, put chicken in oven, serve over pasta!"

there's odd stuff here too, like jello, the delicacy of the rich and famous or add that extra twist to your "stag" party by serving franks and beans in the most peculiar, suggestive way possible. and what on earth are these?

by the way, lollapalooza is coming back. so far the line-up doesn't look too exciting, but i guess nothing can match the beastie boys at lolla'94. as information society would say, it was "pure energy".

will someone please run over ja rule with a bus? i mean, how do people buy this guy's records? he sounds like he just got his appendix taken out. while you're at it, rub out everyone else on that murder inc label. it's a dumb name for a company and you know it!

nobody beats the wiz? sounds like circuit city and best buy did, and so the place where i bought just about everything electronic in high school is now gone. if they had just gotten biz markie to do their commercials this would never have happened.

this is both a good thing and a bad thing.

it's a good thing because both sound factory and exit were, pretty much, crack houses. these were afterhours clubs where an "early night" was generally considered to be when the last song was played well into sunday afternoon. to look onto a dancefloor of thousands of people cranked out beyond belief, trudging back and forth, speaking complete nonsense, and being bombarded with 140 bpm noise is really depressing. it's a bad thing because, just like when twilo was shut down a couple years ago, the better parties are now going to be bombarded with tweakers. vinyl is finally recovering from the last onslaught, i shudder to think about what it's going to be like for the next couple months.

once again the media completely misses the heart of the problem here, which is the crystal meth epidemic that's taken hold of the afterhours party. designer drugs are not what's fueling the 48 hour partier, or causing an alarming increase in the spread of hiv, or any other completely ludicrous behavior.

grrrrr!!!!

it's always a bit uncomfortable seeing that guy at a party who is obviously gay, i mean like no bones about it gay, richard simmons gay, and then meeting his wife. i generally try to send messages through my spidey sense, like "you're whole life is a lie!" and "dude, it's 2003, nobody's fooled". i suppose that's probably a silly thing to do.