November 2008 - Team Last Call’s dirty, sexy secret

Posted by Jeff on 11/01/2008 12:41:00 AM
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First of all, I didn't stay up TO watch Sex and the City, I stayed up AND watched Sex and the City. Two totally different things.

But the fact is that I watched it, and that was wrong. In my defense, I was up late working, and a rerun just happened to come on one of the three channels I get, because I'm the one guy in North America still using rabbit ears. "Going down with the ship" is a noble way to put it. Plus, the remote control was totally at the other end of the couch.

At first, I just let the show play in the background, glancing up from my laptop every now and then whenever someone said a word like "orgasm" or "boobs," which happened approximately 200 times a minute.

Sample dialogue:

Woman 1: "Your boobs look great. Did you orgasm last night? Men are dumb."

Woman 2: "My orgasm was great. Men are dumb. Boobs."

But then, subconsciously at first, I started getting caught up in the storyline – something about Sarah Jessica Parker hooking up with an old boyfriend, and then Kim Cattrall hooking up with an old boyfriend, and then someone else hooking up with an old boyfriend, and then the girls getting together to drink cosmos and say "orgasm" and "boobs" some more.

I could actually feel myself getting dumber as I watched, but was able to justify it as the price you sometimes have to pay for escapism, ranking it somewhere on the brain damage scale between sniffing glue and shouting "Drill, baby, drill." And it was just one episode, so I figured there was no harm done. I did worry for a moment about what kind of affect the show was having on my dog, but he was busy licking his tender parts, so I figured he was fine. Or was he doing it BECAUSE of the show? I wasn't sure.

Sex and the City is the kind of show that you can hate on principal, whether you've seen it or not; it's self-indulgent, silly and, like Sarah Palin, unapologetically aimed at the lowest common denominator of viewers – the kind that would brainlessly lap up an over-romanticized version of female empowerment in which a gaggle of 40-something ladies are morphed from sex objects into catty, high heel-wearing predators. Fierce! To make it worse, these ladies spend their time prowling a fictional world in which all men are portrayed as little more than pathetically unaware slabs of dudeness who can be lured into any bed with a can of Bud. But the joke's on them – some of us don't even need the Bud. So you just wasted, like, a couple bucks.

As I continued to watch the show, however, I realized how this portrayal of reality was actually viable, how the characters, in between their many, many orgasms, actually had some thoughtful things to say. I caught myself thinking things like, "I've seen worse," and, "Wow, this actually isn't a total disaster. Not bad." My expectations were set so low that, just by virtue of that fact that it wasn't a complete train wreck, Sex and the City seemed like a success. So there's another link to Sarah Palin.

A few nights later, by which I mean the very next night, I was doing some more late-night writing on the couch when, to my complete surprise, the clock struck 12:30 a.m. and Sex and the City came on again. Naturally, what with me being a dude and all, I wanted to turn it off as quickly as possible. The problem was, the remote was under my dog, who, when not licking his tenders, had spent his evening expelling gas at an alarming rate thanks to a doughnut left too close to the edge of the table. I decided to just call it a wash and watch the show.

Next night, same thing. There I was, sitting in front of the TV, no longer bothering to pretend I was working, watching Sex and the City and nudging the volume down notch by notch so my sleeping wife wouldn't learn my dark secret. I was hooked. It felt dirty, like I was sneaking out to my garage with a flashlight and a box full of gay porn. Only, despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary, I wasn't gay. I just sort of kind of didn't totally hate watching this show. What did that mean? Oh, I was confused.

They say that a habit only becomes a problem when you start doing it alone. That's how I knew I was in trouble. Night after night, I sat there on my couch waiting for Sex and the City to come on with a sickening mixture of guilt and titillation, like a Republican lurking in a men's room stall.

But I wasn't totally alone. There in the dark, with my dog softly tooting in his sleep, I had Carrie, Miranda, Samantha and Charlotte, laughing, crying, constantly orgasming and doggedly working their way through life's important questions, one boob at a time. Questions like: When Jack broke up with Carrie on a Post-it Note (of all things!), was it really because of her hair scrunchie?

I had to see that episode twice before I could really decide. Which means, of course, that I had indulged in my disgusting habit long enough for the reruns to become re-reruns. It was a terrible period in my life, full of self-loathing, sleep deprivation and denial. And it might still be going on today had my wife, who apparently wasn't fooled for a second, not finally confronted me about it. And by "confronted" I mean "totally made fun of me and threatened to tell our friends that I stayed up to watch Sex and the City." But I only stayed up AND watched it, I argued. She didn't buy it.

As Carrie once wrote in her column, "Maybe our mistakes are what make our fate." I'm not really sure what that means – not even the show's scriptwriters know – but it sounds neat. And sometimes neat-sounding nonsense is exactly what you want to hear. Just ask Joe Six-Pack.

But in a weird way, my mistake really did make my fate. If I hadn't made my dark descent into the world of Sex and the City, I would never have been able to write this column, which hopefully brought some joy to your life. And like I've always said, "Joy is the snowy mountain that life skis down."

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October 2008 - (The forbidden column) Team Last Call’s Guide to Not Screwing Up The Election

Posted by Jeff on 10/01/2008 12:40:00 AM
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It's October, which means that Halloween is just around the corner, and we here at Team Last Call couldn't be more excited. Candy, costumes, an excuse for Young Republicans to wear drag in public – it's the best!

This year, we couldn't decide if we should dress up as a zombie or George W. Bush, so we decided to do both and buy a John McCain mask. It came with a complimentary trophy wife and a bottle of old-man smell. Unfortunately, it was almost 20 years past its expiration date. The trophy wife, I mean.

We know what you're thinking. "Here goes Team Last Call with yet another politically slanted column full of unfair – albeit borderline genius – jabs at the Republican Party, which I support because I am uninformed, out of touch and incontinent, and probably overweight."

Well, you're waaaaay off. This column isn't about swaying your opinion one way or the other. All we want to do today is to present the facts in a "fair and balanced" way, like Bill O'Reilly, but without the blotchy red face and compulsive lying.

We are not here to support Barack Obama, even if he can stabilize our economy, make our country safer, establish universal health care, reverse global warming, turn water into wine, raise the dead and give every American his own private mansion made of gingerbread and lollipops. Neither are we here to support John McCain – that's what his walker is for. We're just here to call it like it is.

You're not going to see us spreading any vicious rumors or lies, like the ones the Republicans have been spreading about Obama – how he is a terrorist, how he won't salute the flag, how he was sworn into the senate on the Koran instead of the Bible. I think my personal favorite is the McCain ad implying that Barack Obama is the antichrist. Totally. He totally is. Nice work. You nailed it. Oh, and he also co-authored the communist manifesto, eats kittens for breakfast and sneezes unicorns. So watch out for that.

There's also a good Republican line about how Barack Obama is going to raise your taxes. The part they don't mention is that your taxes will only be raised if you make more than $250,000 a year. If you make that much money and still can't deal with paying your taxes, you could always consider selling one of your Hummers. Or, in John McCain's case, one of your seven houses. If you can remember where you left them.

But you won't see us feeding you lies like that. Or lies like how McCain's attack dog running mate, Sarah Palin, wants to prohibit abortions even in the case of rape or incest – the kind of self-righteous stance people usually adopt until someone close to them is, you know, raped.

Other lies we won't feed you:

Palin wants to solve our oil addiction by drilling for more oil in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Palin has supported the Alaskan Independence Party, whose primary goal is to secede from the United States.

Palin has referred to the war in Iraq as "a task from God."

Palin doesn't think humans are responsible for global warming.

Palin's state leads the country in per-capita pork barrel spending.

Palin's gubernatorial inauguration was sponsored by oil giant BP.

And the reason we won't invent those lies is because they're actually all true. And here everyone thought her biggest problem was going to be her knocked-up daughter. Bonus irony: Palin supports abstinence-only sex-education. Oops.

But not everything the Republicans have been saying is a lie. They've made some really valid points about Obama, including the fact that he's entirely too good at public speaking (always a red flag) and the fact that he's simply way too popular to ever win the popular vote.

Clearly, Obama has faults. He's made mistakes. On the other side of the fairness coin, so has McCain. Like how he accidentally ran an attack ad that included a split-second frame showing Obama with the letters "H-A-N-G" above his head. Whoops! And there was the day in August when he defined the middle class as people who make less than $5 million a year. Zoinks!

But McCain's got his strengths, too, like how he's such a zany maverick. He's not afraid to rebel against the establishment, even when he is the establishment. Sure, he's voted with Bush over 90 percent of the time, but for the other less-than-10 percent of the time, whoo! He's crazy! He's a lone ranger! A loose cannon!

He's also, if elected President, about one french fry away from making Sarah Palin the leader of the free world. If you want to fixate on terror, as is the Republicans' wont, this one's a doozey. The self-dubbed "barracuda" proved in her acceptance speech that she can throw out bloody chum by the bucket-full to Republican sharks, but it's questionable what she has to offer beyond the rhetorical nuggets written for her by Bush speechwriter Matthew Scully. Once the teleprompter disappears, will her round-faced cuteness and her state's "proximity to Russia" really guide her through sticky foreign policy snafus? For her recently deployed son's sake, let's hope so. If nothing else, I guess she could always mock our enemies to death.

The upcoming presidential election is the most important one of our time. We Americans have a very big job to do on November 4, and that job is to not screw it up. For the third time in a row.

Like we said before, we at Team Last Call aren't here to "choose sides." Far be it from us to declare who's right and who's Republican. All we want to do is to present the objective truth, which just happens to be that Barack Obama should and must be the next President of the United States.

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Jucifer interview

Posted by Jeff on 10/01/2008 12:10:00 AM
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As one half of Georgia-based noise terrorists Jucifer, Amber Valentine plays a lot of rolls: singer, guitarist, diminutive hell-fairy, pixie-faced crooner, wailing banshee. But contrary to popular perception, for as oppressively loud and heavy as her band gets with its pitch-black sludge rock, one thing Valentine and her husband/drummer, Edgar Livengood, are not is demonic – which, should you ever find yourself face-to-face with the duo’s wall of amps and apocalyptic incantations, you’ll be glad to know.
“Yeah, we’re totally Satanists. We drink blood,” Valentine quips during an interview from her RV, which doubles as the couple’s permanent home and tour bus.
“We do tend to get inspired by darker stuff, but we’re not out there burning churches and stuff,” she laughs. “We get up there and spew some really intense, fairly negative emotions, and when it’s over we’re free to be these fairly positive people that can have a normal conversation.”
Jucifer’s music is the kind that forces music journalists to make up entirely new adjectives, like “demonolithic.” (All rights reserved.) But for every bowel-battering nut-cruncher of a metal song, the band’s got a delicate, melodious ballad or orchestral swell that feels lonelier than a princess locked in a tower. It’s a confounding dichotomy, one that’s earned the band comparisons to everyone from Slayer to The Carpenters.
“I would just assume that most people who write music and don’t explore such extremes are actively suffocating part of their personality,” Valentine shrugs. “For me, personally, and for Edgar, it would be a very conscientious effort to keep [our music] in the same area all the time.”
Self-restraint was quite apparently not on the agenda when it came to the writing of the band’s latest release, L’autrichienne, a double album that, track by track, trudges unflinchingly through every agonizing story arch of the French Revolution, with an empathetic focus on the doomed Marie Antoinette. The album is, as King Louis XVI might have put it, a tour de force, both lyrically and musically, snaking its way from fortress-smashing metal riffs to whispy, despairing laments. Track one, “Blackpowder,” sets the stage with a furious re-telling of the Revolution’s beginnings. “Fleur De Lis,” the album’s 18th track, renders the heart as the soon-to-be-beheaded Antoinette is bid a plaintive adieu by her even-sooner-to-be-beheaded husband.
But heads don’t really start rolling until Jucifer takes the stage and plugs in the amps – all 15 of them. The band has gained notoriety for its ear-splitting blasts of white noise and relentless feedback, something that fans, understandably, either love or loathe.
“It takes a lot of balls to go up there and play that loud,” Valentine muses. “The people that come into our shows not knowing that sometimes run screaming with their hands over their ears. But that’s alright, because in the end, making art is about making the art that you want to make, and not about doing anything else, really.
“At that volume, sound almost becomes a physical thing,” she continues. “We feel like we’re almost making sculptures out of sound. And sound becomes sort of a different medium depending on the size and shape of the room and the placement of the amplifiers. It’s kind of like an endless experiment.”
Valentine and Livengood have been spreading hearing loss since first uniting in Athens, GA, in 1993. With the decision to forfeit a permanent residence in favor of their RV, the couple more or less relegated themselves to the touring life – an existence Valentine will be more than happy to live out for the rest of her days.
“At some point, are you going to be 60 years old and screaming your head off in front of a wall of amplifiers? I can’t really say no to that vision,” she laughs. “I’m even going to hope for 70 or 80. We’ll be headbanging in our wheelchairs and having bands like Jucifer touring the nursing homes. As long as we still get to bang our heads, it’s alright.”
*Reprinted from Fly Magazine

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September 2008 – A brief explanation of why I should receive free Cowboy Crunch burritos every day for the rest of my life

Posted by Jeff on 9/01/2008 12:38:00 AM
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As the editor in chief of a powerful and influential magazine, I feel that I am entitled to certain things in life, and those things are Cowboy Crunch burritos.

I discovered Cowboy Crunch burritos a few years ago at a certain eatery whose name, Neato Burrito, I'll omit out of deference to this magazine's advertisers. But I will say this: while the anonymous burrito chain in question doesn't contribute directly to my paycheck, it does make an insanely good burrito – life-changing, even, depending on whether or not, like Carrot Top, your life is so sad that it could be improved by a single burrito.

If you were to ask me to describe the Cowboy Crunch burrito in four words, and then to translate those words into Croatian using a free online translator, and then to change them back to English using the same online translator, the answer would be "total zest plus large," which is as good or better than my original answer.

The Cowboy Crunch burrito consists of barbecue rice, refried beans, Cajun chicken, ranch dressing, lettuce, tomatoes and – the secret weapon – crushed nacho chips, which give it an unexpected crunchiness, or as the Croatians say, "does surprise into a crisp." But once combined, those seven ingredients create something that, like Michael Moore's ass, is so much larder. Larger.

What first struck me about the Cowboy Crunch burrito were its compact design and stackability, the perfect conditions under which to ship large quantities free of charge to various editors of powerful and influential magazines. Which brings us full circle to my sense of entitlement. There is a grand old tradition in the publication industry, and that tradition is called bribery. It goes like this: you give me lots of free stuff, and I'll totally write about you. What I'm doing now is simply taking bribery one step further by writing about stuff first, with the assumption that I'll receive my "payment" after the fact. This is probably also a good time to mention that Tröegs makes really great beer and that Angelina Jolie, a fine actress, has been looking very pretty lately.

Bribery is a universal practice in journalism, embraced by everyone from columnists in your local daily paper to network TV anchors. Why else would anyone ever write an article? It's hard to do and it takes a lot of time, time that could be spent drinking – I don't know – a delicious and refreshing Tröegs Sunshine Pils. We just need the extra bit of "motivation" to put down our beers, sit down at our computers, log onto Wikipedia and copy and paste the text into a word doc. Bam – article. Anyone who says otherwise is being bribed by someone to lie about it.

I've tried reverse bribery before, to varying degrees of success. My column praising pineapple chicken wraps got me a free platter of them delivered to my door. On the other hand, my column pledging my undying devotion to Diet Dr. Pepper Berries & Cream Soda got me nothing. As a side note, Diet Dr. Pepper Berries & Cream isn't around anymore. I'll let you make your own assumptions about how those two facts are connected. I'm talking to you, Neato Burrito.

On a related note, I recently found a pretty hilarious document on Wikipedia called the "Ethics Code of the Society of Professional Journalists." Whatever that means. People say that English majors have no sense of humor, but check out this doozey: According to the "code," all professional journalists are to "refuse gifts, favors, fees, free travel and special treatment, and shun secondary employment, political involvement, public office and service in community organizations if they compromise journalistic integrity."

Hilarious! "Integrity."

I vaguely remember reading something about this code on the syllabus of my "journalism ethics" course in college, which I signed up for because I thought they were making a joke, like "serial killer ethics" or "republican ethics." But I had to cut class that day so that I could photocopy my older sister's term paper to submit it as my own. I'm kidding, of course. I was photocopying my own term paper to sell to underclassmen.

It's that kind of ingenuity that makes for a successful journalist, and that gets people elected President of the United States. Sure, it might make you a "bad person" with "complete moral bankruptcy" who is probably going to get a lot of e-mail from youvebeenleftbehind.com. But it also gets you burritos. Hopefully. And that's what really matters.

It's your move, Neato Burrito. I'm calling you out like a sheriff in a Western. Either fork 'em over, or face the very, very small possibility that I won't ever write about your delicious, miraculous Cowboy Crunch burrito ever again. It's your call.

Or as the Croatians say, "the case is call of you."

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Interview with Counting Crows frontman Adam Duritz

Posted by Jeff on 8/08/2008 12:12:00 AM
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It’s a mid-summer’s day in Paris. The windows are flung wide open. The sun is shining. The birds are chirping. And Adam Duritz is complaining.
Whining, of course, is nothing new for the Counting Crows frontman, who has worn uncertainty and despair like a sheriff’s badge for the better part of two decades, even while living the supposed good life in the beds of various Friends stars.
Today, however, he’s got some honest-to-god reasons for being unhappy. Beyond being locked in his hotel room for an hour-and-a-half interview while his bandmates explore the Louvre, Duritz is reeling from his recent days’ activities, which have included three festival shows, one of them in 120-degree heat, and a severe case of food poisoning after an evening shucking clams.
“It’s been a hell of a few days,” he moans as he shifts around under the sheets. But even in his misery, it’s apparent that this is a new Adam Duritz, bathed and baptized in the waters of his own music.
On Counting Crows’ fifth studio album, the wonderfully jarring Saturday Nights and Sunday Mornings, Duritz not only shows his scars, but reveals the knife that formed them – a scythe of depression and mental illness that’s had him wandering through a half-life for the past 15 years. On the album’s two halves – the fierce and flailing Saturday Nights and the plaintive Sunday Mornings – Duritz, now 43, explores both his slow disintegration and the painful, floundering attempts at rebirth that followed.
Team Last Call talked to Duritz about his disease, how he almost lost those famous dreadlocks and why his long December might finally be coming to an end.

Team Last Call: You’ve described the Saturday Nights half of the album as the binge and Sunday Mornings as the hangover.
Adam Duritz: I was trying to point out to people that Sunday Mornings was not about redemption. So I said to think of it more like a binge and a hangover. But that brought up a lot of misconception that the Saturday Nights part was about partying, which it’s not. Saturday Nights, there’s nothing celebratory. It’s a record about disintegration and falling apart. It’s about, your life is going to hell. Some of it’s done drunken and on drugs, but basically, that’s just about disintegration.

TLC: The hangover seems very different from recovery, which is something you’ve explored before. “There’s reason to believe maybe this year will be better than the last …”
AD: I think recovery is a hangover. When you’re hung over, your body’s putting itself back together. It just hurts like hell. If you wreck your life, you may decide to put it back together, but you don’t have the skill to do that in any way that does anything but hurt. You don’t know how to do any of it right. You screw it up over and over again.
So most of Sunday Mornings is about failure. It’s about trying to do the right sort of stuff, but it’s all about failure. That’s how my friend put it when we were listening to the record. She said, “Boy, the healthier you get, the sadder this record gets.”

TLC: You made this record during a weird span of time when everyone was busy hating your band and you as an individual. Did that have any affect on the writing or the approach?
AD: I think I decided to talk honestly about what has been going on in my head for the last 15 years because of it. It’s understandable – I write these albums about having a difficult time in life, and meanwhile, from the outside, you look at me and you say, “Well, I don’t get it. He’s traveling the world. He’s got a band. He’s selling a lot of records. He’s screwing all these girls.” – by the way, all of which is fiction. Seriously. It never occurred to me that the press was so fake.
If I had the love life I’ve read about, I wouldn’t complain half as much as I have. Although that’s not really true, because if you think heaven on earth is dating a movie star, then you’ve never met one.

TLC: So people read this stuff about you, and then you lose your right to be unhappy because you have this glamorous life.
AD: It seems so stupid to me. They’re basically saying, “Look, you’re rich and famous, so you should be fine.” God, I was like 6 years old the first time my parents told me that being popular in school and having money isn’t the be-all, end-all of life. Isn’t that the first lesson your parents taught you? Money doesn’t bring you happiness. Popularity isn’t everything. Prom queen doesn’t mean shit. I was probably 6 when I heard that. And now at the age of 43 I’m reading some moron writer who actually uses that as a basis for writing a review of the record. All I could think of is, “What a fucking mouth-breather, man! What the hell is going on in your brain?”
Nobody around me wanted me to talk about the mental illness [on this record]. And I said, “Look, it’s gone on for long enough.” I felt like the band was starting to suffer from my reluctance to be honest about things. You’re looking at someone who looks like they have a dream life, and they’re complaining about it. Well, I have a problem. I have a serious mental illness that makes the world seem like a hallucination all day long. And this is the truth that you’ve been shitting on me about all these years.
I didn’t want to become a public spectacle while I was falling apart. But I’m a lot healthier these days, and I feel like I can sustain whatever embarrassment will come from talking about having a serious mental illness. I’ll deal with it. But you just can’t take a free shot at me anymore for being, like, a fat pig who whines. I mean, you can, but the deal is, I have a serious mental illness and I gained a lot of weight on medication. I weigh 60 pounds less now. I’m on my two feet and I made another record. You just don’t get the free shot anymore.
All I wanted to make people do is review the record. You’re still allowed to not like the record. I have utter respect for people who don’t like my record. But review the record, not me.

TLC: A lot of younger bands have started naming Counting Crows as a big influence.
AD: That is where our fan base is. It’s not the people who bought August and Everything After and are now 40. It’s 17- to 22-year-old kids whose older brothers or whatever played it for them. So our fan base has never gotten old. It turns over every year. The “Shrek” thing dropped it right down to the age of 6. [laughs] But you know, those guys, Chris [Carrabba from Dashboard Confessional] and Ryan Ross and Brendan Urie from Panic [at the Disco], at a time when we were maybe a very un-cool band, they went to journalists who interviewed them and they said, “No, no. You’ve got it all wrong. Counting Crows is our favorite band. We get everything from Counting Crows.” And the first few journalists must have shit on them for it. They took a hell of a risk doing that.

TLC: I heard that your publicist wanted you to shave your head for this album.
AD: She said to me one day, “Look, I know this is going to seem really weird to you. Just don’t dismiss it out of hand. I think this might be a really good time for you to think about changing your hair. Make it clear to everyone that you’re a different person.”
I went home and I thought about it. But the truth of the matter is, my whole life I looked in the mirror and I didn’t get it. What I would see in the mirror did not feel like me. And the first time that ever really changed for me was the day I first put those dread extensions in. It’s funny, because it’s a fake thing. They’re not real. But I walked downstairs and down the street … and I saw my reflection and I stopped and turned and looked at myself, and for the first time in my life I felt like, “Oh my god, it’s me!” All the sudden in the mirror there was this crazy thing on my head that seemed like me. It was free and it was insane and it was mad, like me.

TLC: When you think back to moments like that, does that even seem like the same lifetime?
AD: It feels exactly the same. I think that’s one of the things that’s good about me, actually, is that I have not changed very much.
The truth is, you didn’t have anything to do with [your success]. You just made your record, and other people bought it. I always say that fame isn’t something you do to yourself. Fame is something other people do to you.

TLC: You’ve said that your goal is to simply leave behind a legacy that you’re proud of. What else is there for you to do in order to accomplish that?
AD: Children and art – that’s what Sondheim says. There are only two things anyone can really leave behind in this world: children and art.
I’m very different now. There are things I can have in my life like my parents have, like my friends have, that I couldn’t have had back then. I could have children, I could have a family, I could be in love, I could get married. In fact, I met someone, and she makes every day feel like it’s OK. Whether I’m a thousand miles away from her or not, I feel good.

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August 2008 – You’ve got mail … from heaven!

Posted by Jeff on 8/01/2008 12:37:00 AM
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The website youvebeenleftbehind.com is one of those things that, like Cindy McCain's eyebrows, is at once hilarious and terrifying.

I first heard about the website on Wait Wait … Don't Tell Me, NPR's weekly quiz show. I almost broke my neck diving for the laptop to check it out, eager to get in on the joke. Only, it wasn't a joke. This website is as serious as the apocalypse. Literally.

Youvebeenleftbehind.com is a service that enables customers to send e-mails to friends and family, just like Hotmail or Yahoo – only these e-mails will be sent after the Rapture.

Specifically, the website is designed to enable individuals who believe they will be physically swept up to heaven after the Rapture (aka the Second Coming of Christ) to contact loved ones who have been "left behind" on earth.

By sending your recently damned friends a quick note, you can "snatch them from the flames" by convincing them to stop doing things that will make them go to hell, like listening to Nickelback. With any luck, your friends will repent and will be able to catch the proverbial second bus up to heaven, where post-grunge is definitely not allowed.

For just $40 a year, you can store e-mails to up to 62 of your closest friends whom you believe are going to hell, which is great news if you know a lot of Bush supporters. The website holds onto the e-mails until the Rapture occurs, at which point they will be sent automatically. You have the option of writing your own original letters or using one of the website's templates, including the popular "Nanny nanny boo boo, I'm in heaven, how 'bout you?"

According to the UK's Daily Telegraph, youvebeenleftbehind.com was created by Mark Heard, a "49-year-old supermarket shelf-stacker from Cape Cod, Massachusetts."

"He said he got the idea in 1999 while trading in shares online," the article explains. "It suddenly occurred to him that he would not be able to send his trading password to his wife if the Rapture suddenly took him."

This statement has some curious implications. One is that, while Heard believes he will be in heaven after the Rapture, he also thinks his wife isn't going to make the cut. He also seems to believe that, once she is left behind, in the middle of the Antichrist's rain of hail, fire and blood, his wife plans on doing some serious online trading.

"Surely," I thought while reading the article, "there must be some kind of misunderstanding." So I decided to ask Heard about it.

"Yes, unfortunately at this point in time, my wife of 17 years will not be making the trip to heaven," Heard tells me during a rather colorful e-mail exchange. "How can I say that? She is vocally not a Christian and has no relationship with God, nor does she desire one."

And you thought your dinner conversations were awkward.

According to Heard, the e-mails stored at youvebeenleftbehind.com will be sent out precisely six days after the Rapture, in what is known as the "tribulation period," during which those left behind will experience great horrors like pestilence, famine, disease and Fox News, which will be the only fully functional news team still on earth.

"I have a team of Christian couples scattered around the U.S. – four active couples and one alternate," Heard explains. "They are scattered to protect us from having the team wiped out by attack, natural disaster or epidemic. They are couples in case one is sick, injured [or] killed. If three out of four fail to log in [to the website] for three days, the system figures the Rapture has taken place.

"Also," he adds, "one team member is located near the server bank with access in case the net goes down or malfunctions."

This brings up an interesting question: Will the Internet even work after the Rapture? Does Verizon Wireless have an apocalypse contingency plan?

"I do believe that the Internet will be up and running," Heard reassures.

"Eventually, God will take it down, as he destroys the world system," he says. "That won't be until the second half of the tribulation, though."

So that's a relief.

All of the e-mails stored on youvebeenleftbehind.com are specially encrypted so that you can safely send login information and passwords for your bank account, investments, retirement fund, etc. to your doomed loved ones. Because if nobody claims your money, says Heard, "the Antichrist gets your stuff." And that's a bummer no matter how you spin it.

Heard says he will definitely not steal your private information and use it to buy himself a new car, so that's one less thing to worry about.

The idea for youvebeenleftbehind.com is, of course, genius, albeit in a potentially soulless, "exploiting the fears of others" kind of way. With a clientele "between one and 1,000" people, Heard is raking in up to 40 grand a year to do little more than provide an e-mail account with storage space the size of Bill O'Reilly's tiny black heart.

And the best part is that – if it somehow turned out to be a hoax – no one could prove it until, you know, the end of the world.

But I will give Heard this: He talks a good game, and if he sincerely believes in what he is peddling, it's hard to bash him.

"[There] are those that think we only set this thing up as an elaborate ruse to get personal information," Heard says. "Most of those calling it a scam are only repeating what someone else said. They didn't look into it for themselves.

"It has been interesting just how much this thing has turned into a ministry," he adds. "Since I launched You've Been Left Behind, the secular media attention has been insane. Over 125,000 unique visitors from 160 countries have hit the site. You've Been Left Behind has been on every Internet site, blog and newspage. It's been on National Public Radio, ABC News, Fox News, hundreds of news.coms, The London Times, The London U.K.Gardian, the front page of the Irish national newspaper …

"I must say that God has used this site to get up in people's face again."

Here's hoping there are no spam filters after the apocalypse.

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July 2008 – Hand Off My Shrubbery

Posted by Jeff on 7/01/2008 12:35:00 AM
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Last month, I devoted an entire column to a cultural phenomenon known as TruckNutz, which are pairs of fake testicles designed to dangle from the bumper of vehicles so as to let everyone know that the owner of that car is an idiot.

As per usual, prior to writing my column, I conducted hours of extensive research on the Internet in order to ensure that I wouldn't have to come up with any of my own jokes. While conducting this research, I made many startling discoveries, including the fact that I can fit upwards of three Krispy Kremes in my mouth at a time.

Another profound discovery was how very many slang words there are for "testicles." For your reading pleasure, and also for my word count's pleasure, here are several of my favorite testicle euphemisms: balls, nuts, berries, jewels, danglies, plums, stones, rocks, bobbles, love apples, teabags, cajones, huevos, Rocky Mountain oysters, Montana tendergroin, hairy grapes and Dick Cheney.

Sample sentence: "The next TruckNutz owner who sends me an angry e-mail is getting kicked right in the Dick Cheney."

Euphemisms like those have existed for thousands of years, ever since the invention of the first dirty word, which was "glockenspiel." Some of these terms were created for the sake of political correctness, like "special needs" and "nail technician." Others were invented as replacements for swear words ("dog mess"). And others were developed in order to sugarcoat, "spin" or otherwise misrepresent the truth of a matter ("mission accomplished").

Some of the earliest euphemisms were what are now called "minced oaths," or words used to avoid profanity – "Gosh" instead of "God," "darn" instead of "damn," "heck" instead of "hell," etc. Many of these words date back to biblical times, making them some of the oldest words in the history of language, along with "apple," "serpent," "Israel," "begat," "camel," "Joseph" and "Technicolor dreamcoat."

Over time, however, many great euphemisms have been phased out of common language, much like punctuation and grammar. For example, no one uses the popular Elizabethan exclamations like "zounds" (a shortening of "God's wounds!") and "gadzooks" ("God's hooks!" – referring to the nails on Jesus' cross) anymore, except for people who are actually from the Elizabethan era, like John McCain.

Some euphemisms became so commonplace over time that they eventually were deemed to be just as offensive as the original term. For example, the word "crippled," once thought to be demeaning, was replaced by the less severe "handicapped." That, in turn, became offensive, and was replaced by "disabled," which was replaced by "physically challenged," which was replaced by "differently abled," which hasn't been replaced yet because nobody knows what it means.

Other euphemisms are so politically correct that they're offensive again. Like saying "vertically challenged" instead of "short" – how patronizing is that? I mean, really! Don't these people face enough tiny little challenges in their day, what with their stumpy little arms and beady little eyes? The last thing they need is to be insulted, no matter how adorable it is when they get "angry." Bless their little hearts.

Don't say "vertically challenged" – say "short," or even "impish" or "itty-bitty." Just don't condescend. Don't waste your breath on "gravitationally challenged" – say "fat." Don't mince your words with "morally challenged" – just say "republican." And don't beat around the bush with "intellectually challenged" – again, just say "republican."

Sometimes a word has so many different euphemisms that it's hard to keep track of which is OK to use. Take "fat," for example. There's "overweight," "obese," "big-boned," "curvy," "chunky," "plus-size," "great personality," "Dick Cheney" …

Who's to say which is right? It really gets confusing after a while. For instance, you could literally have a sentence that goes, "Dick Cheney has a really Dick Cheney Dick Cheney." What does that even mean? You tell me. And while you're at it, maybe you'd like to explain what you were doing looking at Dick Cheney's Dick Cheney in the first place.

Clearly, all of these euphemisms are getting out of hand. And the situation's only going to get more kerfluffled from here.

The younger generation has started cutting out words altogether in favor of text-message acronyms like OMG ("Oh my god!"), LMAO ("Laughing my ass off!") and BILLOREILLY ("Dog mess!"). The main problem with acronyms is that if you're over the age of 13, you can't really use them without looking totally republican. Plus, if you have to explain what the acronyms mean every time you use them, it sort of defeats the point. KWIM?

I think we should just wipe the slate clean and create a new batch of euphemisms so that people can successfully not swear in a way that everybody else can understand. Or better yet, let's create a whole new set of swear words that won't offend anyone, like shrubbery, doily and kitchenette.

Sample sentence: "Bill O'Reilly is a idiotic piece of shrubbery who should be repeatedly smacked in his doily until he stops talking such complete and utter dog mess. Kitchenette!"

That way, the swearer is able to vent, and can do so without upsetting anyone, like, for example, my mother.

And if you've got a problem with that, you can go Google yourself.

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