The SoCal Byte

Are you violently happy, irritable, excited, restless, sad, ecstatic, calm, crying uncontrollably, sated, binge eating, horny, completely satisfied, hyperactive or just plain not sure? Of course, you are. You live on a bipolar planet.

This is a tale of two questionable gentleman. One, Andy Dick, is an adopted South Carolina boy who embraced his name which such enthusiasm that by high school he called himself “Super Dick.” The other, David Evans, is a Welsh born music loving son raised in Ireland who dropped his given name to become “The Edge.”

Outside of sports, games shows and the Academy Awards, people who call them themselves winners are predominantly deluded. No doubt, winning can be positive and exhilarating. Losing can be fucked. But let’s step outside of score-keeping and be honest. First of all losing isn’t necessarily the opposite of winning. To be sure, winning is a plus on some scale. Looking at it from the tail end: I don’t want to lose my life. But winning my life is nonsense. The opposite of winning may simply be taking the day off.

I was raised in a superstitious home. Black cats, walking under ladders, Friday the 13th — my family taught me that these things posed a serious threat to my well-being. But rather than adding magic to my life, my belief in these delusions made for a paranoiac early childhood. “Step on a crack, break your mother’s back” taken literally can produce panic and ulcers. Fortunately, by the time I was seven, I was questioning the legitimacy of bad luck and good.

I don’t laugh at jokes. I don’t mind jokes and I do laugh. But I laugh at other things: attitudes, sounds, references, situations, timing. Laughing is my signal of playful intent and since for me play is best unstructured, try as I may, damned if I don’t laugh at jokes.

As a member of Reverend Billy’s Church of Stop Shopping, I recognize the Devil in corporate commercialism where I see it; how this devil inhabits nearly every aspect of our 21st century lives; how the sign of the brand has replaced the holy spirit; how we are christened consumers rather than citizens; how our public spaces, our information, our history, our laws are all subjugated to the forces of the money market, where the endless treadmill of consumption defines human progress. Money may not be the root of all evil, but it’s a good place to start looking.

Suppose, at birth, your parents named you Carlos Irwin. Born in New York City, you had a setup that a majority of Americans would sacrifice their spleen for on the altar of envy. You were the youngest son of a famous actor and a famous artist. Like all enviable families, yours moved to Malibu, California. There you, the young Carlos, with your family’s help, became famous, too.

In 2004, UCLA officials discovered that dead bodies willed for medical research to the university were being sold out the back door in a very black market. The sales took place between Henry Reid, the willed-body program’s director, and Ernest Nelson, a body broker, who harvested the corpses from UCLA’s cold storage room. Nelson then sawed the cadavers into suitable cuts of meat, packed them in igloos and hauled them off making more than $1 million selling the body parts to pharmaceutical and medical firms for research.

Yesterday, my friend Mark walked into my office and started sneezing. He wiped his nose with his hand. Then he did the thumb lick and paper turn — you know lick your thumb turn the page. The pages were in my copy of Mark Twain’s autobiography.

The other day, my cousin Wayne — who, by his own admission, is a very religious man — told me I’d go to hell because of the language I use. He was half serious and half right. I do use language that could get me in trouble. Let me explain. The podcast broadcast you’re listening to is designated as “explicit” on iTunes. One definition for the word “explicit” is “precisely and clearly expressed.” Explicit also means “leaving little to the imagination (especially, as far as iTunes is concerned) regarding sex.” The only explicit thing I do on-air, besides being precise and clear, is use the words “fuck” and “shit” — as in “What the fuck” and “Holy shit.” Neither of which regards sex.