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Thanks to Bec for her delish post yesterday. In the spirit of reliving my boyhood, I immediately went and smashed three six-year-olds in the face with water balloons. And let me tell you something, those fuckers can run! The Summer of Love continues on tomorrow with none other than Kyra of the newly-designed Shaping My Way. Kyra is looking more lovely than ever and I’m waiting for her husband to catch the ebola virus or something so I have a shot with her. What? I can be very consoling!
It was inevitable. A meeting of the minds can only happen so many times before it must be documented on video for all the world to see. You wonder what the Karl and Hillary dynamic is like in person? Well, here you go, all you can eat, baby!
We talk about everything from social networking to Facebook applications to oral sex to - yes - Jack’s World. Don’t think of it as a little video blog, think of it more as a, show.
Hilly and Karl discuss Blog Accessories from Karl Erikson on Vimeo.
And if you can’t view the video here for whatever reason, here’s a link to the page on Vimeo.
Oh, it’s long. 25 minutes‘ worth of long. But I think you’ll like it. If you get half the laughs that Hilly and I had while making it, it’ll be well worth your time.
Will Jack’s World survive? Will Karl STOP with the fucking Jack’s World twats? Tune in and find out on the first episode of a most likely series of SecondHand Snackiepoo shows. At least a mini-series.
If anyone has any topics they’d like to see Hilly and I feature in a future episode, let me know. Leave a comment with whatever ideas you have.
Filed under Blogging, Humor, Local Goings On, Rants, TequilaCon, Video, Web/Tech | Comments (9)
So yeah, this is late. I’m in Karlifornia now. Everything happens later here. It’s a fact.
I woke up yesterday (well, still today for me) at 5am so I could shave and shower. Avitable was awake and in his Batcave when I got out of the bathroom. I quickly shoved the laptop into its bag, closed up the suitcase, and away we went in the Avitamobile.
I apologize profusely to Adam and Amy for leaving my white trash Mitsubishi in their driveway for three weeks. Right now the rear passenger window is off the track and the window won’t close all the way. So there’s a black garbage bag stuck down over the top of the door to keep the rain out. Yeah, I’m a high-class bitch like that.
In fact, when I suggested to my mom on Friday that I REALLY wanted an iPhone RIGHT NOW and that it would make for an excellent early birthday present, she said, “I think you’d be better served to get your car windows fixed.” Fuck. Nothing good ever comes from a sentence that starts with “I think you’d be better served…”
As we drove to Orlando Airport, we talked about Adam’s top-secret Halloween party plans - I can’t tell you or I’ll be executed and hung in the tree in front of his house, and not in a good way. But they’re very cool plans, of that you can be sure.
My flight was set to depart Orlando at 7:45am, so we got there around 6:30′ish and everything was peachy. Checked my bag - for which US Airways now wants $15 for the first bag and $25 for a second bag - but didn’t have to pay the ridiculous fee because I bought my plane tickets before July 9 (thank God). Then went through security, hit the tram to the terminal, got out into a much smaller terminal than I’ve ever been in at Orlando. Had breakfast and as I was eating got a call from Orbitz saying that my flight was delayed.
Uh oh. Not this shit again. But it was only delayed around 20 minutes. And the pilot made up all the time in the air, so we got to Phoenix on time. I had an hour before the next plane left for Santa Ana, so what did I do? Walk straight to the next gate? No.
I went outside to go make out. Hell, it was a four-hour flight, people. I was needing the nicotine.
Phoenix, by the way? HOT. Not FLORIDA hot, mind you, but hot nonetheless. Had a couple of cigs and was pleased to see an 8-year-old boy walking up to a van with his mom in front of the terminal. He opened her car door for her, then opened the sliding back door and got in. Ladies, keep an eye out for this kid in 10 years. He’s a keeper.
Went back in through security…really FAST security, too. Phoenix airport has their shit together. Walked to the gate and they were already boarding. Perfect. Flight to Santa Ana was uneventful. In fact, we got there 10 minutes ahead.
Down to the baggage claim after texting Hilly that I was arriven (shut up, it IS a word!), straight outside for the making out. Hilly texted me back. “Where are you? I’m outside?”
“I’m outside, too.” Fuck this. Why am I still texting? Dialed her and she was a few hundred feet away at another door.
Got my bag, to the car, and away we went.
Karlifornia had begun! We weren’t driving for two minutes before the first “Nice move, cocklick!” emanated from Hilly’s lips as someone cut her off in traffic. Ah, there’s nothing like driving with Hilly, really. You MUST try it.
We drove along the PCH (Pacific Coast Highway) in search of food. Went through Laguna Beach, where Hilary decided she might want to get some gas (after the 20th DING! came from the dashboard). And Mom, I know you’re not checking out my Flickr or Twitter during this, but the gas prices in Orange County? $4.57 a gallon for regular.
USELESS DIGRESSION: Remember how in the 70’s you had Regular gasoline and Unleaded? And now Regular IS unleaded. Weird.
We got the gas and drove along a ways and parked the car. Walked along the street, looking at the various shops and people (LOVE all the hot women in California) and decided to stop at BJ’s for lunch. No, BJ’s does not stand for what you THINK it stands for. It’s a pizza place.
After lunch, we walked back along the avenue and stopped at the Candy Baron, which has barrels and buckets of candy from one end of the store to the other. Everything you can imagine.
They also have a pretty extensive selection of sugar-free candy, which is very cool. I got a bunch of goodies, including sugar-free Tootsie Rolls and sugar-free Bazooka gum! I skipped out on the Jesus Saves mints, though, AND the Statue of Liberty mints (DOESN’T COUNT!).
They had hundreds of flavors of taffy, too, which I used to love as a child. (And yeah, they had a big variety of sugar-free taffy, too.) What I do NOT love now, though, is how fucking sticky that shit is. Especially if it’s hot out. There’s a boatload of sugar-free taffy sitting in Hilly’s fridge right now, actually, in hopes that it’ll cure that meltiness.
Back we went to Hilly’s place. Every time I visit Hilly, her and her husband are in new digs. And the one common element to them all (save one) is ALL. OF. THE. FUCKING. STAIRS. Having to drag my heavy-ass suitcase up her stairs is a chore and a half. We laugh about it, but I’m pretty sure she picks out her apartments solely based on how much she’ll be able to laugh at me groaning up the stairs.
Spent a little one-on-one time with the infamous FC (her cat) and then we just vegged on the sofa (which is doubling as my bed. Y’know, once I finish this post.)
OK, I’m gonna speed this along now. I’m whipped. I took a nap, we dragged Hilly’s computer downstairs so we can pair up and do our online thing at the same table. Hilly hid because “there will be NO more pictures of me today, motherfucker!”
That picture was allowed. Rather than going out to get dinner or go out to the store to get toilet paper (we’re currently using Kleenex, thanks very much), we stayed in. Ordered pizza, sat at our computers, watched Big Brother 10 (holy shit was it great last night!) and then back to the computers.
I contemplated a blog post, realizing that - oops! - I wasn’t going to make my midnight deadline since it was already past midnight on the east coast. Then I got a text message from Motley and Winter over something we had talked about previously, and we decided to get together. I can’t really talk about the secret mission we were on because, jinkies! The cops!
We picked up Motley and Winter and then headed over to Norm’s (a restaurant) for coffee with our special guest star, Dave’s tiara!
Left Norm’s, unable to complete our secret mission, then drove Winter and Motley back to their place. Just as we were leaving their place, I got a text from Motley.
“Did you remember to grab the tiara?”
Oh SHIT! Dave’s tiara was back at Norm’s!
“Are we really going to drive all the way back down there for a cheap tiara?” Hilly asked.
“I think we must,” I replied. And so we did. Winter called Norm’s and told us we’d be there to grab the tiara. 10 minutes later, I had the tiara in my hot little hands and we came home.
And now it’s 2:30 in the morning. Pacific Time, which is 5:30 in the morning MY time. I’m off to bed as soon as I stick myself with a needle.
Day 2 of Karlifornia can only get better. Hard to imagine, but it will.
And tomorrow? My guest blogger here for the Summer of Love is none other than the NYC Watchdog. He’s the Man.
For those of you wanting the FULL deal while I’m in California, you should subscribe to:
Course, if you follow me on Twitter, you’ll see many of the Flickr photos I post from my cellphone, as well as the Utterz I mutterz.
Filed under Local Goings On, Travel | Comments (33)
Well, I will.
Not the blog, silly. I can’t see ever quitting that. I’m talking about one of my few remaining vices.
Cigarettes.
Cigarettes have owned my ass for a while now…um, 14 years? And that’s really strange because (1) I didn’t start smoking until I was in my 20s and (2) I HATED cigarette smoke all throughout my childhood.
My parents both smoked like chimneys when I was a kid. This was before the term “secondhand smoke” came to be coined, before anyone knew that such a thing was harmful to anyone. I mean, sure there was a nagging suspicion that SMOKING caused cancer (not that the tobacco companies would admit to it, mind you). But being AROUND smoke? Nah.
But I hated it. Everything in my house reeked of cigarette smoke. The furniture, the curtains, all of my clothes, my hair, the WALLS even. And my parents weren’t the type that rolled the car windows down when they were smoking, either. I’m not bitching…that was the culture of the time. Courtesy and smoking just weren’t seen as compatible, really.
People still smoked in restaurants and even though there was a non-smoking section in some eateries, the smoke from the SMOKING section always wafted over. Smoke knows no boundaries.
People still smoked in airplanes! And again, there were smoking and non-smoking sections. But guess how successful that shit was? Yeah, you’re in a confined environment for hours. Rows 1-15, no smoking. Rows 16-32, smoking. And if you’re in row 15, guess what? You certainly couldn’t tell you were in a no smoking section. It was moronic. But hey, there was also a time when we felt slavery was not such a bad idea. Humans, we’re really not the brightest of God’s creatures.
Growing up, I had asthma so it really sucked having smoking parents. My sister had it, too, even worse than I did. Never connected the dots that cigarette smoke might make the asthma worse.
So if I went all through childhood and into adulthood without picking up a cigarette, you ask, then why the fuck did I ever start to begin with? That’s a very good question.
And the answer is the same as it is for every smoker on the planet.
Because I’m an idiot.
The best way to quit smoking is never to start. And yet, I did start. And I blame it on my ex-girlfriend in Dallas. Because, you know, it couldn’t have been my fault. No sir.
Back then I was getting high on a regular basis. I smoked copious amounts of weed. And I was also doing crystal meth. (SEE: I’m an idiot, above.)
My girlfriend smoked cigarettes. So we’re sitting in a friend’s house one night, getting high and playing Dr. Mario on the Super Nintendo (still one of my favorite all-time video games) and she lights up a smoke.
“Can I ask you something?” I asked her.
“Sure.”
“What do you get out of smoking cigarettes? I just don’t understand it. They stink, they make your breath stink…what’s the point?”
And she said the magic words - possibly the only words - that would make me start smoking. “They accentuate the high from the marijuana.”
It wasn’t 15 seconds that passed before I said, “Can I try one?”
And WOW! What a buzz I got! Knocked me on my freaking ass. And I was hooked.
Soon I was buying my own packs and enjoying the slight buzz I still got, even when I wasn’t stoned. That buzz, though? Doesn’t last. But somehow the addiction does.
I’ve quit several times over the years. Sometimes for six months, sometimes for a couple of years. When my mom came to Dallas to help me move to Florida, I was stressed to the fucking max. Money problems to the nth degree, stress over the packing and moving, stress over leaving all of my friends behind, you name it. So I snuck a few smokes out of her purse when she slept at night. Damn, that shit was good.
And again I was hooked.
It’s been 4-1/2 years now since my stepfather died. Yeah, he smoked, too. In fact, my parents and stepparents all still smoked until fairly recently. I digress. My stepfather died a slow and painful death. Cancer. I was with him a lot in his final months, a good portion of which were spent in the very room I’m writing this from…in a hospital bed in the living room. In fact, he died in this room.
It took another year for my mom and I to say, “That’s enough.” We both went to a hypnotist to quit. But before we did that, we cleaned the whole house, we vacuumed, we Febreezed the SHIT out of everything…furniture, carpets, walls…all of it. And we did the same in our cars. THEN we went to the hypnotist.
It worked for me, but the fucker pissed me off. He told my mom that because she’d been smoking since she was a teenager, she probably was better off to TAPER her smoking off. Asshat. Well, that never happened. Every time I’ve quit (successfully) it’s been cold turkey.
I quit for a couple of years. She still smoked (and continues to do so), but only in her bedroom.
Then I went to BlogHer 2006. I bummed some smokes off of some friends and BAM! Hooked again. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
And now it’s time to quit again, before I really start feeling the effects of this shit that is killing me ever so slowly. Britt and I have talked about quitting together for months now. She wanted to quit on July 1, right after we got back from BrittCon.
“I can’t do that,” I said. “I have BlogHer coming up and that stresses me out.” Social anxiety and all that jazz. Big crowds of people, me having to actually interact…*shivers*.
So I emailed her the other day with a new quit date. And that leads us to this:
That’s right, ladies and gentlemen. Friday, August 15, Karl and Britt QUIT.
It’s helpful to have a quit date picked out in advance. Especially since I just bought several cartons of smokes for my California trip. When those are gone, I’ll be buying individual packs. And come midnight on Friday the 15th, I’ll be done.
Hopefully, for good.
And if any of you bitches get up in my grill for the next 30 days after that, may the Lord have mercy upon your soul. Because I’ll rip your face to shreds with a cheese grater, and then I’ll REALLY go to work on you.
Don’t forget, this afternoon at 5:00pm Eastern time, it’s another episode of SecondHand Radio. My guest will be author Carly Milne, who wrote (among other books) Sexography.
Please join us in the chatroom while you listen to the show. You’ll be able to call in and ask anything you like, or just interject your own viewpoint on something. Sex, and lots of it, baby. Today at 5pm Eastern, 2pm Pacific.
Filed under 2HT Radio, BlogHer, Blogging, Local Goings On | Comments (53)
