Me and the Farm Bureau = Broken Up

Check out this email that my farm manager forwarded me, with the note “Here is an example of it being nice to get Farm Bureau alerts so you can contact your legislator, but for the opposite reason that Farm Bureau want you to…”

From: New_York_Farm_Bureau@nyfb.org
Date: Mon, 3 Aug 2009 15:52:05 -0400
Subject: FB Alert: Omnibus Farmworker Labor Bill
To:

Calls Needed Now To Keep Labor Bill Off Agenda

Members,

…We need you to call your Senator now to strongly express your opposition to this legislation (S. 2247) and ask that the bill not be voted upon in the Senate….

Call the Senate Switchboard number at (518) 455-2800 and ask for your Senator to discuss this issue before Thursday. Thank you in advance for your help—it is Farm Bureau’s grassroots action that will give us our best chance to defeat this bill!

The Omnibus Farmworker Labor Bill would hurt all family farms, by:

· Mandating that farmers pay their workers overtime for time worked over 8 hours a day, ignoring the seasonality of the farm industry.

· Mandating that farmers would be required to pay for unemployment insurance for all workers, even part-time or seasonal employees.

· Allowing workers to collectively bargain.

Duh, of course many farmers cannot afford to pay their workers overtime. But they need to AFFIRM that they WANT to, and tell the government to get its shit together and figure out how to grow some food without the blood of slave labor. Many other countries have figured out how to do it. For reals.

Happy Birthday American Jesus

                                            Happy Fourth Ya’ll.

The Search for an Apartment in New York – Tales From My Travels Into Hell

My lease is up on July 1st. It’s June 22nd. Do I have a place to live? No. No I don’t. Is it from a lack of trying? Good lord no.

Myself and my roommate (Brooklyn Skeptic contributor ChezJJP) are two employed twenty-six-year olds. We live in a nice place in Park Slope in Brooklyn. Our landlady likes us, and sweetly told us that she didn’t want us to leave because we were such good tenants. We pay our rent on time. We have a combined income of over $80,000 a year. We’re handsome and polite. We give great massages. We floss. So why the fuck is it so hard for us to find an apartment?

Because New York is a cruel, overpopulated den of deception and chaos located several floors below the seventh layer of hell.

This is not the New York from the show Friends, where the characters live in huge, beautifully decorated apartments in lower Manhattan, paying the rent with the money they make being failed actors, waitresses and whatever the hell the weird one did. This is the New York where you have trouble getting an apartment in Red Hook (twenty minutes from a shitty subway which won’t even be running soon!) when you are the first person to see it and immediately ask to fill out an application. This is the New York where you see an apartment you like in Williamsburg and are so desperate to move in that you agree to give the landlord an $1800 deposit despite the fact that none of the light fixtures work and half of the apartment is flooded. This is the New York that turns you into a desperate, whorish shadow of the man you once saw in the mirror.

And apparently, this is the New York that makes you state the obvious in an effort to vent your frustrations. Clearly, if you live in New York, you’ve probably been through apartment searching hell (or you haven’t, in which case, you’re a jerk) and none of this is particularly eye-opening to you. But Jesus Christ! Who do you have to blow to pay too much to live in a cramped apartment in an already over-priced city???

Anyway, you’d better solve this problem for me, reader. Find me an apartment, pronto. Or else, you never know, I might move in with you and we’ll have a little You, Me and Dupree situation going on. And you don’t want that. Because that movie sucked.

Don't make me be the Owen Wilson to your Matt Dillon and Kate Hudson. Nobody wins in that equation.

Your Eyeballs Are Psychic

In the movie Daredevil, there’s a scene where the titular blind daredevil is able to “see” in a way that is not explained, but is illustrated (in an ironic fuck you to the blind movie goer) using rain and the water-in-the-shape-of-people technology from TLC’s “Waterfalls” music video.  At the time, I assumed it had something to do with whale sonar. 

It appears I was wrong.  It has recently been discovered that in certain types of blindness that result from damage to the main image-processing part of your brain, you can retain a form of subconcious vision called blindsight.  When this happens, some visual info travels to non-busted parts of your brain, so that you are able to detect emotions in people’s facial expressions, navigate obstacle courses, and wage a vigilante war against injustice. 

So Mr. Daredevil, T-boz, Chilli, and Left-Eye were wrong.  Do go chasing waterfalls, and please don’t stick to the rivers and lakes that you’re used to, because you cut a dashing figure in your poorly tailored costume that looks like a reclaimed red leather couch. 

Does Aquaman’s theme song suck because he can’t hear underwater?  Think about it. 

Jaws is the Least of Your Concerns

In the movie Caddyshack, there’s a scene in which Carl Spackler eats a candy bar swimmers mistook for a piece of shit, a moment that has turned into a prophetic piece of cinema.   According to “Nightmarish Scenarios That Routinely Ruin Summer,” there’s a bacterial parasite, Cryptosporidium,  that lurks in pools, and arrives there by way of turds.  And in a poetic cycle of doom and destruction, the symptom of infection is well, lots more poop.  I’m just saying, there’s a kiddie pool for a reason, folks.  I don’t care if one of your litter is a “very mature three;”  if he’s wearing swimmies, stick him in the kiddie pool and put up a fence.  But aren’t bacteria tiny indefensible beasties who need hosts to survive?  Not this little fucker, who has his own person Deathstar made of an “egglike shell” to keep him going for 10 fucking days in chlorinated water.  Christian fundamentalists are onto something, because if this is its byproduct, evolution can suck it.

And if you choose to not heed my warning, you should at least follow the advice of the CDC, and “never use the pool as a toilet.”  And if you see a Mars bar, call Bill Murray.   

 

                           I have one lethal peanut allergy, and zero regrets.

True Blood – Season 2

Last night marked the premiere of Brooklyn Skeptic’s favorite vampire show about completely stupid, stupid idiot jerks. Oh my goodness, so stupid. I think this show is written by a fourteen-year-old assistant manager at Hot Topic and the re-animated corpse of Grandpa Munster. But yes, we still watch it. Because we love Grandpa Munster. And recklesley used to work at Hot Topic.

Anyway. Last season saw Sookie Stackhouse fall in love with vampire Bill, who killed a fellow vampire to save her life. As punishment, he was forced to turn a 17-year-old choir girl into the most annoying vampire of all time. Meanwhile, Jason Stackhouse was starting to find God, Tara was living with a woman who likes to be naked with pigs and shake a lot, Sam turns into a dog and Lafayette, the only beacon of light on this otherwise mostly black abyss of suckage, seemed dead. Oh and there is a legion of really creepy blond-haired vampires who want to continue killing humans.

This season started off with Sookie and Tara screaming with a drunk Andy Bellefleur as they find a body in his car. It doesn’t end up being Lafayette, but that weird voodoo lady that made Tara drink peyote (they remind you in a flashback for the memory impaired, or those that tried hard enough to forget how utterly stupid that plot line was). Tara has to answer questions in jail, and then her mom bursts in and acts all ridiculous (but still sober, ridiculous).

Then we see Bill trying to domesticate Jessica (the newly-turned vampire), giving her a bed time (no later than 4am – haha oh my goodness – my vampire sides hurt!) and having a taste test with different kinds of True Blood. Jason is getting into the Fellowship of the Sun, an anti-vampire group that is taking advantage of his stupidity. Lafayette ends up in a creepy basement where people have to move a wheel to take a shit and Eric (grown-up Draco Malfoy) comes down every so often to kill someone. Why is Lafayette down here? I guess because he was selling vampire blood last season or something.

Meanwhile Sam knows the freaky vibrating pig lady because they boned when he was seventeen. He got freaked out while they were boning because she started vibrating a lot, which doesn’t make sense. Wouldn’t that be kind of awesome? And compared to him being half man/half labradoodle, isn’t that pretty normal?

And Sookie and Bill fight about stupid things before having the weirdest sex ever ya’ll. It involves Bill biting Sookie and then kissing her and smearing her own blood all over her face. Uh…hot? I miss the dirt sex, personally. It took a while for Sookie to appear naked in the last season (what, it’s not like we were all waiting for that or anything), but I’m going to go ahead and bet that she’ll be naked in almost every episode of this season. This show is too bad to not do that. Or too good to not do that. Whichever. Grandpa Munster wants to see Anna Paquin’s boobs.

More Outdoor Movies – McCarren Park Ballfields

Hey Team,

So there are more summer movies. If you’ve been following, we’ve already got:

• Bryant Park Series 
• Movies With a View
• Purple Rain sing-a-long in Prospect Park
• Movies Under the Stars
• Rooftop Film Festival

And now they’re releasing the schedule to the relocated Summer Screen series. It’s been moved from McCarren Pool to the McCarren Ballfields. They’re playing six films: Reality Bites, Evil Dead 2, 24 Hour Party People, Wild at Heart, Fame and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. See the schedule here. If you play your cards right, you can see a movie outside every day this summer and never spend any money.

I'm being postmodern, before it's fashionable.

Zach Galifianakis: Movie Star

As you are probably aware, a movie called The Hangover came out last weekend. It was met with pretty decent reviews and the number one spot at the box office. The film stars three principle actors, the most famous of which is Ed Helms, who plays Andy Bernard on The Office and used to be an anchor on the Daily Show. Then there’s Bradley Cooper, most well know as the douchey bad guy in the movie Wedding Crashers, but also was the star of a great but never-watched show called Kitchen Confidential. And finally, there’s Zach Galifianakis.

Now for those of you who actually read this blog from time to time (the 4 of you who didn’t get routed here when you typed in “horse-fucking” on Google or still (still!) think that this is a Mary Kate and Ashley and fan site) know that we here at Brooklyn Skeptic have serious penis boners for Zach Galifianakis. Many of us Skeptics have had the pleasure of seeing him perform in the New York area, usually in smaller venues or basement bars. Some of us have even seen him walking down the street. But now, he’s everywhere. His posters for The Hangover are on every street corner. One of my coworkers saw The Hangover a couple of days ago and came up to me saying “there’s this fat guy in the movie who is so funny – he’s going to be huge!” Well you know what coworker? That “fat guy” has a name. And I bet you can’t pronounce it.

I’m not trying to be a dick. I think Zach Galifianakis is getting his big break now, and that’s fantastic. I saw The Hangover, and he deserves all the praise in the world for his performance. He plays a mentally challenged character who may or may not be a pedophile of some kind, and yet you still laugh when he mock-masturbates a baby in public. That takes talent.

The fame has been a long time coming too. Over the past couple of years, he has become an internet sensation of sorts, with dubbed music videos, his own talk show and his audience interviews have become youtube legend (I just threw up in my mouth writing that). He has a DVD out of a show of his called Live at the Purple Onion. He went on tour with Will Ferrell’s Funny or Die group. He’s got an HBO show coming up. He was even profiled in the New York Times. He’s been working hard, and now it has certainly paid off. He was probably the most talked about comedian in America last weekend.

All the movie reviews highlight his performance. Roger Ebert even goes so far to compare him to John Belushi, saying “Well, Zach Galifianakis’ performance is the kind of breakout performance that made John Belushi a star.” Nice move Roger. Let’s compare the two comedians because they’re both portly. And better yet, let’s highlight John Belushi’s rise to stardom. You know, the one he couldn’t handle so he overdosed on heroin and cocaine? I’m sure every rising comedian likes to hear that comparison.

Anyway, I’m getting off topic. Here’s to Zach Galifianakis starring in a blockbuster film. There’s already a sequel being planned, and I have a feeling that he’s going to be appearing in a lot more films. I’ll go ahead and make sure my coworker learns how to pronounce his name.

Some More Summer Shows

FREEWilliamsburg just posted the schedule for the Williamsburg Waterfront Show Series, which has replaced the McCarren Park series. It’s a shame that we’ve lost the venue for outdoor movies, but at least there will still be some concerts including Dan Deacon, Grizzly Bear, Beach House and Girl Talk. Check out the schedule here.

Ritual Sacrifice at Williamsburg Block Party

If My Life Story Was Turned Into a Movie, I’d Want This To Be The Poster

All I’m saying is that my biopic would be in Russian and involve Judd Nelson.