Hot Chicks Beating the Shit Out of Each Other

Now, I’m home during the day with the baby. I know that first sentence doesn’t really match the blog entry title, but stay with me. It will. Like I said, I’m home with the baby. In order to pass the time during bottle feedings I put the TV on and browse through Time Warner Cable’s lame and random on-demand programming selections. This one fateful day, I stumbled upon the music section which had videos of bands I had never heard of. Granted it’s been a while since I’ve been up on the latest bands, but what the hell. I’ll check it out. Choose Rock, Metal, got it.

I stumbled on a video by Rev Theory called “Light it Up.” I was like a deer caught in headlights. The band was playing in some kind of basement but it was like some kind of fight club, but with hot chicks. You heard me. Hot chicks drinking bottles of vodka and then beating the shit out of each other. Scantily clad, of course. And the band was old school metal.

All the staples were there: screaming, long hair, tattoos, partying, implied alcohol and drug use. Okay, maybe not so much implied as overt. And they were clearly having the time of their lives. I realized that I had just seen the first almost anti-post modern heavy metal testosterone drenched video fantasy. Sex AND violence at the exact same time! Like video peanut butter and chocolate for guys. Of course if they could have added actual peanut butter and chocolate… OK, maybe the sequel.

I couldn’t tell you what the song was about. I couldn’t even really make out or remember one word of it. Al I know is that the video was… viscerally absurd... and it reached in and grabbed my brain through the eyeballs.

Just one note to the director: When you’re shooting fight sequences, even fake girl on girl pugilism, film your “actresses” from an angle where we can’t see the near misses during punch fests, OK? Quit making it harder for me to suspend disbelief!

At one point one the well endowed chicks gets knocked down. She gets back up, grabs her large breasts in defiance and comes back swinging. Damn! I felt a warm glow inside. What could be more patriotic than a hot blonde chick with big tits who won't stay down?

I watched the video multiple times, for various reasons. It was mesmerizing every time. I think I learned something at the end. I’m not sure what, but I think it has something to do with the fact that while I just saw the perfect music video, if I ever saw my daughter in one like this I would probably hang myself.

I Did My First National Radio Show...

I did my first national radio show last week. I’ll cut to the chase: It was a disaster. Being a comic, I’m no stranger to radio. I’ve done a fair amount of it over the years and I’ve been doing some to promote the book. But this was a big national one and I was really excited about it.
I got up crazy early, did a Baltimore station which you can hear here:

http://wbal.com/apps/news/templates/story.aspx?articleid=29525&zoneid=9

Which was fun.

Then I did another one. I’m not even going to name it because I don’t want you to try and find an archive to hear how awful it was. But I was excited, and I had even taken a class about “Impact in Media” and I had my notes with me. I was in the garage by the phone ready to go.

So I was ready. Or so I thought. So my segment began and the host talked over me the whole time. I thought the whole point of having a guest on was to let him talk. So I was a little off guard and the few sentences I did get through sounded nervous and disjointed. Needless to say my message did NOT get out. I would be surprised if one person bought the book from that “interview.” It lasted less than two minutes.

But that wasn’t all. I wanted to know why the whole interview felt so off so I got an archive of the show from the website. Maybe it sounded better than I thought. Nope. It didn’t sound like anything at all. When I listened to my segment from the archive, I realized something even worse. I wasn’t being talked over. I was still on hold half the time I was talking. I wasn’t talking to an audience, I was talking to the equivalent of a very attentive dial tone. I had gotten up at 3:30 am to talk to myself which I could have and often do anyway in the privacy of my own bedroom. Quietly of course, as to not wake up the wife.

The thing is, as horrible as it was, would I do it again? Yes. It’s so hard to get your message out that even if you have less than 30 seconds MAYBE you can get it through. Advertisers do it all the time. And it’s difficult to get air time if you’re not a celebrity or a politician in the middle of a scandal. So you take what you can get and try and make the best of it.

So lesson learned. I think. It may have something to do with learning to talk faster or trying to psychically determine if you are on hold or not. Actually, I’m not really sure I learned anything. You know, I often think I’m learning a lesson even when I’m not. I think it’s some type of defense mechanism for being slightly detached from reality. I don’t know how useful it is, but it’s like having cool refreshing rationalization always on tap. Bartender…

Rebel Girl

I’ve wanted to buy the video game Rock Band for a while but it was kinda pricey, like over $180! So when I saw that the Hollywood Virgin Megastore was going out of business I jumped in like a vulture eyeing an overturned stagecoach. There is was, Rock Band 2 for the Playstation 3 discounted to around $90. Score! Audge gave me “the look” but then also realized it looked like fun and approved the purchase.

So we got it home and it took forever to setup the guitar, drums, and microphone and figure out how to work everything. But then we were off! I played guitar, Audge played the drums, and Bella sang (even though she can’t read yet) and Griffin bounced happily in the jumparoo.

Bella’s favorite song was Eye of the Tiger by Survivor, the most ironically named band ever. At first she liked the song because they played it so much at pre-school. OK, it was cheesy when it first came out (we all knew it back then) and I have to say it works perfectly in a pre-school environment. “Music for little ears” as the annoying Baby-Einstein sales pitch goes.

But then, Bella discovered another song by Bikini Kill called Rebel Girl. Then all of a sudden something clicked in her four year old brain. She had never heard music like this before. Between The Wiggles and 80’s Pop at pre-school, Rise Against and Coldplay from me and Michael Jackson and Chaka Khan from my wife, there really wasn’t any screeching Grrrrl (I’m never sure how many “R”s to put) power punk anthems that had reached her little girl being. Until now.

She wanted to do the song again over and over and over and over. She got good at it. I didn’t even have to use the guitar save at all. She was even learning all the words. Thankfully, Rock Band omits certain words and phrases that would cause some uncomfortable conversations, so she doesn’t need to know about them just yet. Let her learn cursing and derogatory slang in school, the way we did.

Through music and a video game, I think I got a glimpse of what was to come. It was a weird moment, and you never know when those moments are going to occur. At that moment I knew our daughter would grow up to be powerful, willful and strong. She would be her own woman and follow her own path. I also knew the teen years were going to be a real pain in the ass. Thankfully I still have almost 10 years to prepare. By then we should have brain-chip tracking systems installed, right? Whatever the future holds, I know it will be a blast and I’ll always be there for my little Rebel Girl.

Two Comedians and a Baby Running an Internet Company in the Garage.

I did a guest blog over at Our Milk Money. Enjoy!

http://ourmilkmoney.blogspot.com/2009/06/two-comedians-and-baby-running-internet.html

Pacify Me Book Update

First off, I'd like to thank all the Bloggers for their support and help getting the word out. You guys all rock.

http://wheelsonthebus.wordpress.com/
http://www.babyonbored.blogspot.com/
http://www.mommywantsvodka.com/
http://notnani.blogspot.com/
http://ourmilkmoney.com/

With more to come! Want to get in on the action? Have a blog or a website with (ahem) some modest traffic and want to review the book? Let me know. E-mail me (click the Monty Python image on the right) and I'll see if I can make some arrangements.

Also, if you want a book SIGNED AND PERSONALIZED you can buy it from Comedy Film Nerds.

www.comedyfilmnerds.com/mancini_pacifyme

You can have it made out to whoever you want, and whatever you come up with it won't be weirder than anything that's already been submitted from "World's Best Dad", "Worst Dad Ever" to "The Lone Horseman of the Apocalypse" Be creative!

Thank you, Internet.

PS The Blogger Spellcheck didn't recognize the word "Bloggers". Nice.

Hey Moronic Nosy Person: Go Away.

I went out to lunch with my Mom and we took my 11 month old son, Griffin. My son likes to eat. He just really does. A few months ago he refused baby food and wants anything that even closely resembles food, like strands of carpet and paper. He even actually scrapes the carpet with his hand to make new pulls that he can separate from the pack and eat. Like some kind on diapered lion-like predator on the carpet-covered Serengeti, he tried to separate one of those juicy carpet pulls from the rest of the pack to eat it.

So we were eating at the restaurant and Griffin was shoveling bits of French toast and fruit into his mouth. At his normal pace, which is fast and with a fair amount of volume. God bless him, he’s gotten the eating part down.

But then out of nowhere this nosy, annoying woman appears and get right near my son and goes “He’s choking!” WHAT?! I looked at my son. He wasn’t choking. He was fine. What the hell was this woman’s problem? All my son did was open his mouth and let out a tiny little gag. He had shoved a bit too much food in his mouth but it was all soft and moved easily. We gave him some water and it was fine. Is that what this woman does all day?! Go to restaurants and look for choking people?! This idiotic member of the food police really pissed me off.

Hey, retard, don’t you think I would fucking know if my child was choking? I was sitting right across from him and he was facing me. Keep away from my child and your big fat nose out of my business.

Now if Griffin couldn’t breathe and was turning beet red while I sipped a Margarita, that’s a different story. But all he did was gag a little. Believe it or not, babies do that from time to time. Then this moronic woman tried to cover up her egregious stupidity just by waving and saying hi to my lovely child. I was getting angrier and maybe she noticed because she then quickly walked away. I was so irritated I ALMOST said something. But I didn’t and it wasn’t necessary. But then where to vent? Hey, that’s what the internet is for. Man, I feel better.