I joined Facebook two weeks ago, at the behest of a bunch of people who wanted (probably) to keep tabs on me, lest I start exhibiting more disturbing behavior. I have gone somewhat underground and I’m growing a beard, looking like a huskier version of James Brolin from “The Amityville Horror.” And now that you mention it, it is getting pretty fucking cold around here. That joke’s for the adults out there.

But anyway, Facebook: my friend Larry told me “Don’t join Facebook. It’s a giant time suckage.” I usually think he is right, so the fact that he is right yet again should come as no surprise. It sucks time like (insert your metaphor here…no, not that one….don’t be crass…go with the parking meter one…good).

I have spent too much time collecting friends like charms on a bracelet and only some of them I like. And late nights are spent peering at people’s pages, wondering how in the eff that douchbag friend of a friend has 571 friends, while I have like 57. And why, on earth, would someone want to post 300-odd photos of themselves. But, it’s how I spend my late nights. No really. And I do not think I am alone in that regard.

On a related not, my friend came over and surreptitiously screwed with my profile last week and made me look stupid. Let me tell you something, folks, he’s coming over tonight, and when he gets over I am going to…..oh, never mind.

Seriously, it’s getting cold in here isn’t it?

I have this friend, who I used to work with. I’ll call her Jenny. Because that’s her name. She’s a really cool individual—musician, photographer, football fan. Basically someone who doesn’t try very hard to impress people, which makes her all the more impressive. At least to me. And, for entirely different reasons, to many of our male co-workers who would sweat her, like, every day.

We sat in adjoining offices so I bore witness unfortunately. It was kind of like—and please forgive this poor choice of a metaphor—watching your neutered dog dry hump a bag of laundry. Sad, futile, but in some ways, also a little entertaining. She wouldn’t so much as swat them away, as ignore their lame advances. Like “do you like comedy shows?” On the daily. (She would totally call bullshit on me, but it is true. I swear to Ba’al. )

Anyway, for the longest time she was a vegan. Ugh. Going out to dinner with a vegan is like dragging a hundred pound boulder everywhere with you: inconvenient and burdensome. I mean, we would go out for dinner and I would behave like a death row prisoner taking down a strip steak and she would eat like those adopted Jolie-Pitt kids before they won the adoption mega-millions: rice, grains, you know, seven helping of potatoes. I felt like her half of the table was like the set of Oliver.

But she was turned back to normalcy about a year ago, and began eating cheese. And that’s when I knew we had her. So we made a dinner plan for next week and her email asked me to choose a place, before adding, “I eat everything nowadays.”

I have to admit, just then I got a little choked up. I did.

I’m left unsatisfied by the current choice of religions and so I have been shopping my faith around. (Cross yourself, KV, this is going to be a rough one.) Catholicism leaves me cold and I find much of the rest of Christianity too haphazardly constructed to hold my attention. Scientology seems silly and Kabbalah is technically Judaism, which means that I will have to study. Talk about a non-starter.

I don’t like studying for anything other than my fantasy football draft. (Guess what? I’m kidding.) My lesbian sister is a member of a Unitarian Church, which was actually very nice, I thought, when I visited with her last summer. It was like religion without the guilt. And also without the men, other than me on that day. Just kidding, yet again.

My only two criteria for a new worship were that I didn’t want to have to touch people “in a sign of peace” and I didn’t want to stop having so much fun it is scary. So, after months of intensive searching, I decided to go with old school stalwart and Canaan fixture, the incomparable Ba’al.

Ba’al’s platform was all about fertilization and natural growth and stuff, but he had a funny way of encouraging it. And by “funny” I mean really, really cool and appealing. Did you see The Ten Commandments when Moses comes down from Mount Sinai with the tablets in the midst of this corker of an orgy, with wine being spilled on naked torsos of both sexes (calm down, Cator) and crazy, debaucherous partying going on? And Moses gets all pissy? That was Ba’al’s handiwork.

Even as a kid I remember thinking, “Man, how do I get some of that?” Not knowing, at the time, what “that” really was and what I would do with it when I did “get” it. (To be honest, I’m still a little hazy.)

Ba’al also encouraged something called “sacred prostitution,” an act that you can fill in the blanks on. He was clearly an out-of-the-box thinker, even as his acolytes were being killed by the Christians and the Jews, in a heartwarming tale of tag team religious persecution.

So I have just decided to investigate Ba’al to see if there are any living members of his church. Or maybe I will start my own chapter in time to throw a Holiday party.

The first step, obviously, is to create a logo. The second is to hold a seance to see if I could get a word with the Golden Boy himself, or at the very least, to have him convince the girls to remove their shirts.

I am so not kidding.

I’m sorry to say it and I want so badly to think otherwise, but damn, after five kids and living in that hellhole of a state (if hell were really cold in the winter), she is pretty great looking. She still isn’t qualified to manage a Dunkin’ Donuts in Cranston, R.I. but she looks sexy as hell in her naughty librarian suits.

I love it when people say that she’s qualified because she is governor of the second largest state in the country, while neglecting to mention that there are about 30 people living there. (As it turns out, she has either birthed or married a total of one-fifth of the state’s population). That’s like me saying I am much smarter than most people because I weigh a lot more than them.

Oh man, if only that were so….

Nor should you want to. It’s called “Haunting Evidence” and it follows the exploits of two psychics: a MILF and a secretly gay man, whose arrogance precludes any pity at his sad deception. Like his heterosexuality will add any gravitas to the otherwise campy proceedings. They investigate “open investigations” to try and dig up new clues. Sounds reasonable. Except that the cases they investigate are world-famous and the only thing their “third eye” sees is fact that even I know of the cases. One example and then I will leave you to your evening: These two investigated the JonBenet Ramsey case and they said things like “I see a man, with a rope” and “She is scared, she doesn’t know why this is happening.” I mean, groundbreaking stuff.

So next time you see it listed, don’t bother. You’re welcome.

…you don’t get a vote. That’s at least my opinion. And I don’t care who you vote for—well, really I do—but the contrasts couldn’t be any more stark. I mean, are folks waiting for a burning-bush moment, where God says “Vote for Obama, bro.”? They are so far apart on every issue that I cannot imagine why people are still scratching their heads. Then again, I cannot imagine anyone watching “America’s Got Talent” so I am probably  in the minority here.
It wouldn’t be the first time and it won’t be the last.

First impressions are sometimes the worst impressions. That’s one lesson I have learned over the course of my life. And also, I’m a big fucking baby, occasionally. That too. And I jump to conclusions and such. Three. Sometimes, if I am really unlucky I learn all three lessons at once; like a “perfect storm” of poor behavior.

Case in point: when I first met Jeff Carvalho, I didn’t really like him. (Are we having fun yet?) Our initial meeting came at an inopportune time for my psyche: after eight hours of shooting whatever-the-hell for Antenna magazine, my former flame. Unbenownst to me, Jeff had been in the publisher’s office for the better part of an hour, trying to walk them through the streetwear business and, also, discussing the magazine. And so when we met, he was already in mid-convo form and I was still blinking from the klieg lights. He told me what he thought: some good, some bad. But honest. And I felt defensive and salty and probably acted that way. It was not my finest hour. Not by a long shot.

And then we were on this Nike trip to China in May and we spent some time together and my impression was exactly the opposite: great guy—funny, smart, a good hang. I immediately felt the kind of guilt that only a Catholic can ever feel.

So when a few weeks ago I ran into him on the LES of NYC—I was drunker than I usually get—and he asked if I wanted to blog for this site—a big deal to me, certainly—I immediately accepted, and not because of guilt. But because I like to write and really enjoy being in the company of these other bloggers, some of whom I read regularly anyway.

And so here I am, not really sure where this is going to go, but sure that it will go somewhere entertaining. Over the coming weeks, I will begin to introduce hardcore pornographic images (mostly fetish stuff!) into my copy, which I think will help make my words that much more profound and….

Just kidding, Jeff. I wanted to make sure you were still reading this. Or if you were wondering what the hell you have gotten yourself into.

In any case, thanks for having me.

TG/08