for those about to rock

see, this is what i mean

normally, this kind of expression would really irritate the hell out of me. morris knows what he's doing though.

posted by jomilkman @ 9:58 AM 1 comments

ok, i nominate morris day for immediate induction into the regulars/the awesome team

based entirely on the video for "the bird' (though leading a band called 'the time' is pretty fucking ballsy and incredible in its own right)

first of all, the squawks and the accompanying dance move/shock facial expression

second of all, the approximately 900 awesome little scenes where you stink of vanity in front of a mirror/popping your collar

there's also a lot of great funk going on in the music, which is, well, the best

posted by jomilkman @ 7:59 PM 1 comments

the road less traveled

there's times when i wish i could say that i've been all across the country and to all kinds of exciting foreign destinations around the globe, as though the story of jon was so large in scope that it needed to sprawl out beyond staid landscapes in order to write itself out organically in broad strokes, and that i could flash a knowing grin in conversations and intimate with my eyes this great epic and with it the deep, innate and certain knowledge and understanding of life and the world that must necessarily follow.

i guess i wish my existence didn't appear so bland and insular on paper, and that i'd done lots and lots of things in my life that scream "interesting" and suggest a rich and imaginative inner soul swimming around within this bag of bones and organ tissue.

i also wish it didn't upset or anger or inconvenience people when i reflected frankly on my life.

ho-hum. check back tomorrow for my gut-busting and whimsical slice-of-life moment regarding what the cat did as i tied my shoes this morning.

posted by jomilkman @ 11:00 AM 4 comments

create your own surreal life

a little off-topic, before i dig into the matter at hand: my favorite line from reality tv as of late comes from 'flavor of love''s resident nutjob, new york, who showed up at a competitor's door and said "i did a little research. you're a whore."

anyways, i'm a little disappointed with this season's cast on 'the surreal life'. no matter how you match them up, nowhere is there potential for a combustible chemistry even approaching the likes of janice dickinson and omarosa's simmering bitch-upsmanship epic from last season, nor does it appear this time around that a cupid high off the suffocating kitsch fumes will be fomenting any unholy unions with haphazard arrows, as he did with peter brady and america's last top model the season before that. there's just not enough spunk/instability in this bunch: rehab has smoothed the substance-amplified edges of nice-guy-at-heart c.c. deville, playgirl andrea lowell is a superfluous dope, transgendered alexis arquette isn't laying it on thick or doing anything to make her male castmates uncomfortable, smashmouth's steve harwell is a colossal bore and sherman helmsley goes through the motions with a sleepy detachment (this is admittedly awesome, though). the lone flashpoint hope here is conniving tawny kitaen, but she seems to have JUST tight enough a grip on the reins of reality (as in, actual, non-celebrealitied reality) not to succumb to a frothing meltdown.

ah well, there's always next season.

on that note, i threw together a hurried wish list for who i think i'd like to see sequestered to the surreal life nut house:

'kris' from 'kris kross'
paul 'pee-wee' rubens
rae dawn chong
christie hemme
marlon wayans
elvira
ed mcmahon

that creep pee-wee would be enough to make it a volatile season, though insane/maximum volume christie hemme and frankenstein sycophant ed mcmahon would certainly help matters along.

posted by jomilkman @ 7:44 AM 2 comments

hey, i really like this guy!

around the time that i first met him about 4 years ago, jesse was the guy who had a tom waits poster in the kitchen his easthampton apartment and about a thousand good stories in his brain that he'd gladly tap and convey anytime you'd swing by to sit a spell and drink a coupl'a hundred beers with him. jesse is now the guy who has a resuscitated blog, taking its name from a tom waits lyric, where he shares some of those stories. check it out via the link on the right and stay a while.

posted by jomilkman @ 1:26 PM 1 comments

with regards to the phoenix's '100 unsexiest men' feature,

might i HUMBLY suggest that if a similar list were to be rendered on the opposite sex, it would be a big problem. * **

*unless, that is, said list exclusively comprised jessica simpson, lindsay lohan, angelina jolie, halle berry and the rest of their tabloid cover girl ilk.

** before the firestorm hits, allow me to add that i'm not sure whether the double-standard really rankles me or not. i'm just pointing out that the double-standard exists.

posted by jomilkman @ 8:13 AM 1 comments

YES.

guitar hero 2.

posted by jomilkman @ 9:40 AM 2 comments

oh my god, they shot uncle carlo!

well, someone pretending to be one of the british regulars pretended to shoot him at yesterday's reenactment, anyways.

that's him in the foreground in his death throes. from the look of things, it would appear that he went with a prolonged, agonizing, gulp-of-the-last-breath-before-expiring-with-a-thud style of death.

naturally, to me at least, my imagining of this is surreal, ridiculous and mind-blowingly hilarious. the only thing that would've been better, as justin suggested, would be if he performed that cartoon-style of death where the dying guy lays flat on his back and kicks both legs straight up in the air before his final collapse.

i need to find a tape of this.

posted by jomilkman @ 9:00 AM 2 comments

file under 'saturday night live musical performances / seizures; losing control (and liking it)'

posted by jomilkman @ 1:38 PM 0 comments

carry it softly

carry it softly
kick it into midnight's corner raptures
drown it in a sea of a thousand smiles

carry it softly
steam up windows with words and
trace false meanings in the fog

in a temple of flesh
in a prison of bone
sirened cat calls
whispered, prayers for home

carry it softly
jack will pry this black hole open
or maybe we can smoke this heart out

carry it softly
we want a glimpse of the grotesque
in handshakes, we paid for the show

in a temple of flesh
in a prison of bone
the sirens blaring now
screaming, prayers for home

do you really want to know?
do you really want to see?

a soul to be shared
is a soul to be judged

posted by jomilkman @ 9:55 AM 1 comments

the triumverate of wholesome

it would consist of the pepperidge farm country gentleman, the voice-over guy from smucker's jam commericials and the voice-over guy from country time lemonade commercials. the quenched, satiated voices; it's implied that there's a homespun purity to savoring life's little pleasures. there's a certain discernable complacence in this, and that bugs me

posted by jomilkman @ 12:34 PM 0 comments

page 109 of the april 5-18 issue of the improper bostonian (beloved bartenders)

look closely at the ad for centerfolds, and see if you don't notice something a little bit out of whack about the girl in the picture

i'd mail this to the tonight show for the "headlines" segment, but i don't think this would ever get on the air, not even if leno was on cinemax

the funny thing is that the cover girl from last year's bartenders issue -- she works at the sidebar near downtown crossing -- is the one who pointed this out as she served beers to my friend shennan, who in turn marched into our office gleefully bearing two armload's worth of IBs and told everyone to check out page 109 as he passed copies around

posted by jomilkman @ 12:37 PM 2 comments

you guys are my friends

in pursuit of perfecting my pulled pork recipe for a big party next week, i've been picking the brains of some awesome purveyors of bbq from across the country on this forum. everyone is so nice. the atmosphere here is convivial, and one gets the feeling from the community that making others happy is a means to its own end, a reward in and of itself.

this all hedges a tad on why i'm so into the food network, but i'll save that subject for another post.

posted by jomilkman @ 10:07 AM 0 comments

today, i celebrate my love for me. again.

here i am at 200 posts. you'll notice a couple more bells and whistles on the right, but i've got no big changes in layout or modus operandi to commemorate this occasion, as i did on my 100th.

in general, i will do my best to bring a renewed verve to this undertaking, and will tinker with some things as need be to maintain ftatr as a well-oiled blog machine.

oh, and contrary to what some recent posts might have you think, i won't be restructuring this site as a lame poetry slam outpost. my forays into verse are just that: experiments. i've been playing some original songs with jamie over the past couple of weeks (the whole experience has been awesome, by the way), and floated some rough lyric ideas out there as a means of stretching out my atrophied poetic muscles (poetic is used liberally here) and getting some creative juices flowing; i've got too many tunes kicking around in my head, and i absolutely have to start thinking seriously about what needs to happen in the vocals department. you might see some more stabs at verse here, but these won't signal any major content shift. i'm still the same milkman.

hope to see you at 300 and beyond.

-jk
editor-in-chief

posted by jomilkman @ 9:00 AM 0 comments

subway car confessions, vol. 2

sorry, this isn't a juicy revelation (not that i really set the bar for candor high with vol. 1 as it is), but i was talking with my neighbor, jill, on the way to work the other day about whether we'll be renewing our leases come this fall, and she ended up being the first person to know that i intend to pull up the stakes and settle elsewhere before the end of the year.

i find myself getting progressively worn out by my surroundings as time goes on. for one thing, there's something fairly numbing about the aesthetics of brighton, and of my neighborhood in particular. color, mood and texture combine as static atmosphere, with all the drab, gray, brick and rusty brown conmingling as an energy-sapping whole. the other part of the equation comes down to the people. granted, we've got some nice kids on our street, and the times i get woken up by cat calls and bottles breaking are few and far between, but i know that i'd feel much better situated living somewhere that has a higher concentration of people in their mid-20's - mid-30's, like, say, somerville or cambridge. i know that i don't have all that many years on the college kids living around me, but having the distinction of being a college grad among so many people that are still living up their undergrad days can put one in a lonely place.

though i'm pretty well-satisfied with our current apartment itself, especially when it comes to space, i do think i'd also prefer to live somewhere that has carpeting. i never really understood the appeal of hardwood floors -- apparently, they're enough of a selling point to warrant mention in apartment classifieds, whereas you never seem to hear about carpeting -- and as a guy who prefers to go without shoes indoors, i've always hated how even the cleanest can still manage to cake grime all over your socks.

it's a little early for me to speculate much on the details of exactly what i'll be in the market for, but i'd like to hear from you if you care to chime in with any of your own living experiences from the different burbs and regions of this fine city.

posted by jomilkman @ 8:55 AM 5 comments