During the time that I was in Royal Quiet Deluxe (chicken band), I was invited to a large dinner with the Reverend Al Sharpton. Everyone had to go around the table and describe who they were and what they did. I was neither an accomplished member of the community in Norfolk, nor was I African-American. Everyone else at the table was both. I just kinda ran with a description of the band.

It did not go well. At all. In fact, the evening rippled throughout my life for about ten years, causing tremendous embarassment in a comic book store this summer.

Here’s a video of me telling the story on stage at The Moth:

I think I’ve just about milked this chicken band thing for all it’s worth now …

You can see the companion to this story here:

Royal Quiet Deluxe, Chicken Band

A story by The Moth’s Jim O’Grady here:

Jim O’Grady on “Respect”

And a story by The Moth’s Juliet Wayne here:

Juliet Tells the Tale of ‘Mannequin Dan’

I don’t make a single dime off this blog, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t pay off big-time. I don’t have ads or a large readership, but apparently my influence is enough that people are imitating things they see on here … something that might get them hurt or killed slowly through sheer fat absorption.

Take Bret Wallin, for example. He and literally hundreds of thousands of other people saw the post a little whole back about that ridiculous Franken-fast food pizza. And while some folks thought “yeah, I’d taste that,” Bret said “who’s got a Boboli crust” and MADE one. Actually, he made several:

My friends and I definitely tried our hand at making a couple McDonald’s pizzas. The first was exactly like the pictures you posted - each fast food kept to it’s own kind. The second, though, we chopped up the fries, nuggets, and burgers to spread out the toppings more traditionally.

A really fun time, for sure. We felt that the pickle was surprisingly one of the emergent tastes (as well as the ketchup and mustard to some degree). I first saw a link to your post (I think) on the site Kissing Suzy Kolber. I was visiting some old college friends and I knew right then - “we have to make that… we have to make it TONIGHT!”

And we did. Like I said, a great time. Most everybody felt fine except a couple guys had three slices. That sort of knocked them out for a little bit.

Understandably.

So wait. They made one of these things, ate it, then turned right around and made ANOTHER one. You know, to get it right.

This is why I use my fingers and eyes to make love to the Internet all day long.

You think you know what’s right and what’s wrong, think you got it all figured out when it comes to video game etiquette and music and style, and then one night winds everything up like a tangled nest of clock springs and throws all your tools right off the bench.

I was teaching some friends the finer points of Big Buck Hunter II at the East River on Saturday night. The bar was packed and the game was old and fast, blurry deer rocketing around the screen which would’ve been hard enough except we’d been impairing our hand-eye coordination around the corner for a few hours, too.

You’ve got to stand back a bit from the machine just to give it a fair go, and it was right as I was trying to explain that the bucks usually hide behind the does and sometimes you’ve gotta give a blast into the air to get things moving that this dude tried to walk between the machine and the little neon plastic shotgun.

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This is from my notebook, written on the subway this morning:

There is a man standing next to me reading a paperback. One of his hands is gripping a pole and the other is holding the book with the cover and pages folded back, the front and back covers mashed together in a horrific forced kiss.

This constitutes abuse in my book. It’s the book equivalent of a mother yanking a child’s arm outside a bus station bathroom.

It is all that I can do not to snatch the book out of this guy’s hands and show him the correct way to hold it: With one cover and chunk of pages per hand, the subway pole crooked in an elbow. Alternately, he could hold the book with ring, middle and index fingers along the spine for support, his thumb and pinkie holding the pages open.

But instead he does neither. He is a fat man riding a gasping sway-backed pony towards a great Golden Corral on the horizon, blindly bending the tool that takes him where he wants to be and screw the consequences.

Now he’s sitting next to me, this intellectual barbarian, still bending his book without even needing a free hand for the pole. What an asshole. This is a man who wipes his hands on the curtains, who hawks and spits into empty lockers and plucks roses made of frosting off uncut wedding cakes with his bare and grubby fingers.

Books are not to be treated this way. It’s an abuse. Some of you out there may be closet book-benders — and you may be thinking “Simmer down, Simmermon, paperbacks are meant to be folded. They can take it.”

You people better stay in your grotty little closet around me, is all I have to say. Is it right throw a cat across the room repeatedly just because he’ll probably land on his feet? Is it right to repeatedly tie an octopus’s arms in knots just because they’re soft and flexible?

A book is more than a content delivery mechanism. It’s not a single-use syringe that you just uncork, squeeze once and ditch. It’s more than a CD, more than the plastic fork that carries your lunch to your mouth. Maybe it’s just me, but I have fixations on certain editions, certain printings of my favorite books. And while I’m far from a book collector — I’m really, really hard on physical objects, actually — I think that books ought to be treated with a little dignity, regardless of how many hands you have free.

It was beautiful today, one of a handful of truly beautiful days in 2007. Me and my man Martin got on the bikes and ate up the trails, winding 30 miles or so out into suburban Virginia.

There’s nothing like having the sun on your arms and the wind in your face for a workout. Being in the gym is okay and all, but it always makes me kind of feel like I’m on a space station somewhere.

The ride itself was pretty uneventful, apart from this completely typical incident on the Key Bridge on the way home. I was riding over the bridge, slowly, on the wide pedestrian/bike lane. I was going slow enough to avoid freaking people out, and calling out to people before I passed, letting them know what was going on.

Then, all of a sudden, this woman on the opposite side of the path(walking back towards Arlington) took a hard right and jumped right in front of me. I yelled out as I braked — she jumped out of the way a split second before I would have plowed into her. She shouted “fuck you, man!”

“No, actually, fuck YOU,” I said. “You jumped in front of me!”

“Well SLOW DOWN,” she shouted, loud. “There ought to be a sign up that says ‘no bikes allowed!’”

Really. I think one that says “Watch Where You’re Going,” might be a better idea, or, simply, “No Bitches.”

At that point, some kid in those stupid shoes with wheels in the heels could have dusted me. Speed was not the issue. The real issue at hand was that because I was on a bike, I was in the wrong.

This interaction is completely typical for cyclists in D.C. I’m not sure how it is in other cities, but here, you can’t win. If that woman were driving when I was riding in the road, she’d be mad at me too. Drivers honk and shout at you to get on the sidewalk, and it’s not like it’s friendly or safe up there either.

There’s one solution that keeps D.C. cyclists and Sunday pedestrians both happy though: when cranks like that lady stay in the suburbs where they fucking belong.