The Liam McEneaney Experience

PUTTIN' ON THE DOG
I'm currently dog-sitting for a friend of mine.

Dogs ar smarter then we give them credit for. Like, when you walk a dog, it definitely knows that you can't go back indoors until it takes a dump. Sometimes it'll hold onto that dump like a precious memory for hours.

Actually, it was really beautiful; I took a walk with the dog through Central Park last night. There's a reason people celebrate New York City in the Autumn. The air smells cleaner, the plants are giving their last, desperate bursts of scent. The air is cool, but not cold. At one point, we walked down a lane and saw the buildings of Columbus Circle, lit like the turrets of fairy castles, peeking through the trees. Okay, the "fairy castles" thing was a wee bit gay, but still.

HOUSESITTER
When you house-sit for someone, it's cool, because it's like you get to pretend that your life is under control for a couple days.

A MESSAGE FROM DONALD RUMSFELD


"Look at me! I'm right next to real-live black people!"

A MOUSSACRE
Yes, my roommate found another mouse in our stove.
Or should I say, "found."

Frankly, I'm starting to get a little suspicious. Seems like every time my back is turned, there's another mouse who somehow managed to "accidentally" shoot himself in the face and then stuff himself inside a stove for my roommate to find.

I know she promised me she would cut out her rodent protection racket after the mess with the vole that the Feds had attached a wire to.

By the way, feel free to not use this as an excuse to send me a cartoon about maggots.

SO, ANYWAY
I've noticed that every Woody Allen movie has pretty much the same story/look/characters as every other Woody Allen movie.

Now that he has to answer to Dreamworks SKG, how does he pitch his movies to the studio?
"It's Hannah & Her Sisters meets Annie Hall with a bit of Purple Rose of Cairo thrown in."

Some people say kick a man while he's down. I say, kick a man while he's up and able to destroy whatever pretense you have at a comedy "career."

SHOUT OUT
To Johanna Buccola.

THE MONEY TREE

Money is
A master who works you to the bone,
And makes you grateful that
All he is is all you'll ever own.
All the while calls you worthless,
'Till you think you don't deserve him.
Oh how I wish I could serve him!

Money is
A girlfriend who disappears for days,
And frowns and cries to pitch a fit
If you question her rambling ways.
Until you find that you apologize,
For not being worthy of her.
How I wish she'd let me love her!

Money is
The root of the mythical evil tree,
Whose barren black and bitter fruit
Doesn't always quite agree.
A plant of such malignancy,
That only Old Nick could be behind it.
Oh, how I wish I could find it!

I can't decide if this was very good or very terrible.

THE WORLD OF SCIENCE

Researchers say there is virtually no evidence of limestone formation on Mars, a finding that suggests the Red Planet never had oceans, seas, or charming Italian-style vacation homes.

A deep-sea sponge made out of silica came up with fiber optic cables before humans. Apparently the sponges got tired of waiting for their naked deep-sea sponge downloads on their 56k modems.

A study of body lice suggests that people started wearing clothes 70,000 years ago, scientists say. The scientists added that those people should probably change their underwear soon.

A comparison of human DNA to animals shows that people are more closely related to rats. However, scientists cautioned that the human samples were all taken from the US Senate, thereby skewing the results a bit.

A big galaxy is gobbling a tiny one, just as astronomers have long suspected, and for the first time there is photographic evidence of this kind of galactic cannibalism, snapped by the Hubble Space Telescope. That picture is below:

NO ONE SEEMS TO GET THIS JOKE
My roommate found a dead mouse in our broiler - cooked.

And it's really awkard because I don't want to sound racist - but our maid is a cat.

And it's just really hard to broach the subject - "Hey, uh, did you cook a mouse in the stove? Because I know your people like to eat mice. Uh, no offense. I know it could have been the canary gardener.

I guess people are just too dumb to understand intelligent humour.

POP QUIZ, HOT SHOT

Take this quiz, see if you can tell a female from a shemale.

I got 50% right, which is better than I did on Christopher Street last night. Yikes!

A MESSAGE FROM YOUR PRESIDENT


"Hey, I think I ran over a dark-colored fella.
Go back and tell me if it was Saddam or a
Mexican."

SCHWARZENEGGER TO CALIFORNIA:
"Remember when I said I kill you last? I lied."

YUM
So my roommate and I had to take care of the mouse.

Now, as the man of the house I knew that it was my responsibility to take care of this problem, so I did the manly thing and stepped back and let her take care of it.

We figured that the reason the mouse had stopped stinking after a couple days was that were both using the stove and therefore probably cooked it.

So she had to scrape it off the bottom of the broiler.

In other news, Kyria and I will be eating out every meal from now on.

MOUSECHWITZ
My roommate just discovered a dead mouse in our stove.

That's right, a mouse killed itself rather than endure the emotional agony of living with me.

I should have known there was a mouse in my apartment. There were all the tell-tale signs; A mysterious "Cheese of the Month Club" charge on my Visa bill, I got a late-night hang-up call and when I dialed *69, a phone started ringing under my sink. I think the biggest giveaway was when I got an e-mail from Squeaky@behindthestove.com inviting me to a party.

It was the Sylvia Plath of the rodent world. This point was underscored by some poems I've found behind the refrigerator:

The Arrival of the Cheese Box

I ordered this, clean hunk of cheese
As many holes as a sponge and almost too heavy to lift.
I would say it was the coffin of a cow
Or a hole-y baby
Were there not such mold in it.

The cheese is moldy, it is dangerous.
I have to live with it overnight
And I can't keep away from it.
There are such small holes, so I can't see what is inside.
There is only a little runny corner, no exit.

I put my eye to a hole.
It is dark, dark,
With the swarmy stench of Wisconsin dairy cows
Placid and shrunk for export,
White on brown, angrily camembert.

The Cheesekeeper's Daughter

A garden of mouthings. Purple, scarlet-speckled, black
The great corollas dilate, peeling back their silks.
Their musk encroaches, circle after circle,
A well of scents almost too dense to breathe in.
Hieratical in your frock coat, maestro of the cheese,
You move among the many-breasted cows,

My heart under your foot, sister of a stone.

Trumpet-throats open to the beaks of birds.
The Golden Rain Tree drips its powders down.
In these little boudoirs streaked with orange and red
The anthers nod their heads, potent as kings
To farmer dynasties. The air is rich.
Here is a queenship no mother can contest.

I'M IN A COMEDY FILM FESTIVAL
Sunday, September 7th, a short film I directed will be in the First Sundays Film Festival at the Chicago City Limits Theatre.

For more info, click here please.

CELL YOURSELF SHORT
I like game shwos where someone makes a wrong guess and a buzzer goes BZZZZ!
I've often wished that there was some sort of buzzer to warn you that a date is going badly.

Now there is. It's called "a cell phone."
If you're out with a woman and her cell phone rings and she answers it, it's over.

Especially if she says, "Hello? Oh, nothing (looks at you) No, not really. When do you want to meet?"

That's your signal to cut your losses, walk into the bathroom, and escape through the window without paying the check.

A PREVIEW OF THE CALIFORNIA GUBERNATORIAL DEBATES

MODERATOR: Our first question - California is facing the most crucial financial crisis in its history. What are your plans for fixing the economy?

SCHWARZENEGGER: (unintelligible)

MODERAOTR: I see, and Mr. Coleman?

COLEMAN: I'd go, what you talkin' 'bout, deficit?

MODERATOR: And then what would you do?

COLEMAN: What you talkin' bout Mr. Moderator?

MODERATOR: I see. Hundred year-old woman?

100 YEAR-OLD WOMAN: (dies)

MODERATOR: But won't people think you're just avoiding the issues?

100 YEAR-OLD WOMAN: (dead)

TIME TO GET THE BLACKOUT


My blackout experience was a strange mixture of fun and frustration, as was most New Yorkers'.

At 4:16, when the power went out, my roommate and I assumed it was only in our apartment. This is nt such an odd assumption to make - I have a tendency to forget to pay the Con Ed bill. Please pity my poor roommate.

Luckily, she had the presence of mind to check the hallway - all dark.

However, I had this goddamned free DYlan ticket, and I says to meself, "Self," I says, "This may just be in the building. And if its spread further, say all through Queens, then you're going to misss the concert because the trains won't be running."

Remember: I don't have a portable radio. All the radios in my apartment are hooked in through the electric circuit so I don't know what the fuck's going on. All I know is that if I want to make the concert on time without aid of the subway, I'd better hop on the Q60, which is not the most reliable mode of transport under the best of circumstances.

4:30 - I'm on Queens Boulevard. When the traffic lights are on, it's known as "The Boulevard of Death." With the lights off as far as I can see, it's a bit harrowing. Luckily, the 112th Precinct has already - in ten minutes' time - dispatched officers to direct traffic. This lets me know that my hunch that the blackout might be spread farther than my building is good one, and that my plan to hop on the Q60 is also a good one.

I cross the Boulevard of Death and get to the Manhattan-bound bus stop. There's a large crowd of folks who work in Queens waiting in the baking sun for the bus to come. I join them. We wait fifteen minutes, as even more people join us. Finally the bus comes. It is jammed, and people get off. I crowd in the back door and am lucky to get a spot on the stairwell. It's like all that news footage of the trains in India which are so overcrowded that people are hanging off the sides.

There are several old ladies aboard who complain about how they're going to have to get off at the next stop. The next stop is Queens Center mall which is sure to be a madhouse. It is - it's a swarm of angry people who are hot and tired and want to get home - let's face it, to be stuck far from home is no picnic. Now imagine that the place you're stuck is Queens.

The bus stops and the back doors open and the crowd immediately swarms the door. To ensure that no one dies I shout, "BACK! BACK! PEOPLE GETTING OFF!" This stops the crowd, but a middle-aged black woman who I guess decided she's not going to take any guff from no white kid says, "There's no need to yell!"
"I don't want anyone getting hurt," I says.
"No need to treat us like herd animals," she says back, and I let the matter drop as I'm helping old women off.

Eventually on the bus someone actually gets a cell phone call and finds out that the whole of the Eastern Seaboard's out of juice, so I decide to ride the bus on into Manhattan and see what that's like.

Two hours later, we're still on the bus in Queens and I realize what an extraordinarily bad idea this was. I get off at Queens Plaze and walk the six miles back home. It's actually a fun walk, and I have to give mad props to the McDonald's off of Queens PLaza. Their Drive-Thru window was giving away cups of ice water. Passed by several apartment complexes where ordinary citizens were giving footsore travelers cups of bottled water - although I did pass up the old fellas who were giving out tap water from emptied bottles of Caffeine Free Diet Coke.


This was the view of Manhattan from from Queens Plaza. Beauty.

As it got dark, I passed the Grand Avenue subway entrance - closed and dark. "It belongs to the rats now," I murmured.

Normally, my building has motion sensor alarms on the door to the roof, but the electricity was off so my roommate and I walked up the roof and hung out, getting a rare view of the stars over the city. It's a pleasure, believe it or not, to be on a rooftop, seeing just darkness as far as the eye can see, other than the serpentine stretch of car healdights snaking over the LIE and intersecting with the stream of lights across Queens Boulevard. An occasional flashlight would wander down the street, and every time I saw one, I would imagine that it was a teen out solving a mystery.

One of my neighbors, a tall Russian fellow named Oleg, was on the roof taking pictures, saying it was a rare opportunity to do so. And I agree - how many times do you get the chance to take a picture of pitch-blakc buildings framed against a pitch-black sky?

We complained about the normal lack of roof-access to our building, and one thing led to another and the conversation ended with Oleg and I in a stairwell, he on my shoulders putting duct-tape over the motion sensor.

I now draw the camera lens of the eye away, pulling back on my roommate and I sitting on a rooftop under the stars, drinking cheap vodka in almost perfect silence.

THE NEXT DAY


Took a walk thorugh Forest Hills in the morning. Half the stores were closed. I walked by Barnes & Noble's - there were a couple of employees inside doing inventory I guess, and some sad-luck cases outside complaining that the store shouldn't be closed and tapping on the glass doors to get the employees' attention.

This website, whose webmaster normally gives accurate info, said that Dylan's doing the makeup show for the blackout tonight, and he hopes that people with tix can get into Manhattan.

I decide that I'm going to walk into Manhattan. Eight miles, and across the 59th Street Bridge, where I have to deal with people who ride their bikes through pedestrian walkways. These bike riders are always complaining that they're not given room to ride in New York, that they're discriminated against. Well the reason they're discriminated against is that they're assholes. Zooming at 30 mph easy through crowds of people walking, screaming obscenities at people who don't get out of their way.

"I can't ride my little bicycle in this city," they whine. "They bike all the time in Amsterdam and Italy. So they should change the all the traffic and sidewalks for my bicycle." I have a cheaper plan - buy these jerks a one-way ticket to Amsterdam or Italy. New York is gassy, dirty, and unhealthy and that's how we like it. Or I should say, I am gassy dirty and unhealthy, and I like my city to reflect that.

It only took me two hours, believe it or not. Then another hour cross-town to the Hammerstein Ballroom where I find out that of course there's no show that night. My guess is that Dylan hightailed it out of town ten minutes after the power went down.

I lay panting like a dog in the sun on the steps of the Main Post Office on 34th Street.
Pondering the wisdom of walking eight miles in the baking sun when I had not a penny in my pocket to call my own.
I was caked in sweat and grime. I was sun-baked. I had a patchy beard. In short, I looked like it was my third day ashore from a shipwreck on an island where it was only me and a coconut tree.



I ended up talking to this awesome older woman (she had a son my age) who told me she'd had a whole vacation planned upstate NY to go to a dog track that week. Up in smoke. I told her I was looking for a place to get some water, and she pointed out the Red Cross Disaster Relief truck across the street in front of Madison Square Garden.
God bless the Red Cross. I got some bottled water and some fruit.

I ended up meeting my friend Bob, who bought me a Diet Coke and a plate of fries. Eventually we went to my friend Becky's birthday party at a bowling alley.

What better way to celebrate the return of electricity than to go to a place designed to waste as much electricity as possible?
But the A/C felt awesome.

And who better to show up at your birthday party then a guy who'd trekked dozens of miles through the city for eight hours straight, guaranteeing that pleasant musk ox-in-heat B/O that everyone loves being trapped near.

By 1:30 am, the trains had started running again, and by taking the N to the 7 to the G, I knew that at least I wouldn't have to tread my blisters the eight exhausted miles back home that night.

In all, a fun and exhausting and annoying blackout experience.

THE DYLAN CONCERT WAS AWESOME
OKay, so there were a couple of snags and I didn't make it to the show.

Monday, I'll write about my blackout experiences.

Hope everyone was safe. New York City was pretty much one big block party.

SOMETIMES IT PAYS TO BE NERDLY
Guess who's seeing Dylan for free tongiht?
That's right, the sound tech guy at the Hammerstein Ballroom.

And also, me.

Thanks to my obsession with Dylan, I have scored a free ticket to see The Man tonight.

That's right, I'm no longer a dateless wonder ruminating on the Internet because no one will listen to me. I am now a dateless wonder ruminating on the Internet because no one will listen to me who has a free ticket to an awesome show.

IF YOU ENJOY MARGINALLY BAD TASTE

TIME FOR YOUR POSITIVE AFFIRMATION
I am in love with life, and the world, and everyone in it. Even you - yes you!
I like your hair, your eyes, the sound of your voice in the morning when you wake up.
Every morning. Because you're always staying over at myp lace.

No, no, I'm not trying to say anything. I'm just saying, you're here a lot.

No, of course I love having you come to my blog every day. Don't get me wrong. It's just that, well, you know. It would be nice to kind of just have some time to myself -

Of course I -
No. Don't be silly.

Problems?
No. Well, I mean, my Guns n' Roses CDs are missing. No, I believe you didn't take it. Of ourse I belive you. I'm not -
I'm not trying to say anything. Just.

Look, don't be like that. I love having you -
Come on, baby.

Of course you can stay if you want. No please, that would be - great.

CONGRATULATIONS TO THE BIG WINNER OF THE "I DESERVE TO GIVE LIAM A BACKRUB CONTEST"
Wendy from Chicago.

Uh, where's my backrub?

And a big thanks to all who entered.
Remember, no one's a loser except this girl.

Seriously, where's my backrub?

NEW CONTEST:
"I DESERVE TO MAKE OUT WITH LIAM"
All you have to do is send a picture and a 50-word essay explaining why you deserve to make out with Liam McEneaney to:
McEneaneyL@aol.com
Make sure to include "I DESERVE TO MAKE OUT WITH LIAM" in the subject line!!!

I DON'T EVEN CARE ENOUGH TO APOLOGIZE ANY MORE
I was a drama teacher for little kids for a while.
It's really hard to get little kids as interested in the world of theatre as adults do.
Probably because they haven't had a chanve to get molested yet.

YOU KNOW WHO I'D LIKE TO SEE TRY TO COLLECT ROYALTIES?
The guy who wrote the "Diarrhea Cha Cha Cha" song*.

THE CALIFORNIA GOVERNOR'S RACE
Now that America's finally showing that it doesn't take democracy seriously any more, there's a ton of challengers putting their hats in the ring for the California governor's race, including Arnold Schwarzenegger, Gary Coleman, Gallagher, and a 100 year-old woman.

Here's a full list of the rest of the candidates:
* Bruce Vilanch
* Rue McClannahan
* JoJo, the Dog-Faced Boy
* A Siamese Twin, maybe the one on the left
* Gallagher II (by contract, he can only govern San Diego and parts of the Redwood National Forest)
* Bill the Cat
* Joe Millionaire
* The 2004 Graduating Class of Hollywood High School
* The late Edgar Allen Poe
* Tom Baker
* The 1997 Cast of The Real World
* "Ed Trippler," a guy in the Witness Protection Program
* The Usual Gang of Idiots
* Sandman Simms
* An Aborted Fetus
* Ol' Dirty Bastard
* Lara Croft
* That Breathy Woman Who Does Voice-Overs for Lifetime
* Tommy Tune - not the singer/dancer/choreographer but a rather unfortunately named young man with a chip on his shoulder
* Jeff the Drunk
* Napoleon Bonaparte XVIII
* Yo' Mama
* Baby Jessica, that Girl Who Was Trapped in a Well Once
* Mr. Tambourine Man
* Smelly McPoopoopants




*He later went on to play bass in Poison. True story.

I THOUGHT I WAS WHITE
And then I walked past a line of people waiting for a wrestling event. That is White America, and it scares me.

I SAW A POSTER
For a street basketball tournament, and the name of the tournament was "King of Kings."

I'm not the world's number one Biblical scholar, but I'm guessing that Jesus isn't best-known for his outer perimeter defense.

"The meek shall inherit the Earth - unless you PUSSIES get out there and show them exactly what you've got. Do you want the MEEK to take the INTERLEAGUE TILE two years in a row? You're the strong, for my sakes, get out there and show the my-father-damned Meek what you've got!"

PLUG FOR A COMIC BOOK YOU SHOULD BUY
For my birthday, my friend Robyn (see link on the right-hand menu) gave me a copy of her latest work - a comic anthology she edited with a friend called True Porn.

I definitely recommend it. Although not every single strip was to my taste - with over 25 contributors, how could they all be? - I found that it "hit" about eighty-five percent of the time.

Robyn explains in her intro that she only finds autobiographical porn hot. In the same way, I really find autobiographical comedy funny. And on that score, this collection does not disappoint. Some of the stuff I've read in there I still think about - from the funny to the sublime to the truly tragic, True Porn is an excellent read whether you like comics or you have a normal social life.

YUK IT UP!!!
Q: What did the Jew say in France?
A: Oy la la!

Q: What did the doctors rule as Vincent Van Gogh's cause of death?
A: They said he had an art attack!

Q: What did the nihilist say to Sartre as they entered the anarcho-syndicalist commune?
A: Who cares?

Q: What did the stripper do between acts?
A: Heroin!

Q: What did the manic depressive say to his psychiatrist after finding out that his pills had been switched up with sugar pills?
A: Nothing - he'd already killed himself!

Q: In this modern life, machines have made man increasingly irrelevant. Unemployment skyrockets and -
A: What's your point?

Q: Oh, nothing, I guess. I've just been thinking about stuff.
A: Look, all you all right?

Q: Of course I'm all right. I've just been depressed since Linda left me.
A: It's more than that. I mean, the reason she left you was because you'd been drinking heavily, staying up all night in a dark room staring at the walls. You were moody, bad-tempered-

Q: Look, what's your point?
A: My point is that i think you need to seriously consider some professional help.

Q: I don't need professional help, I just -
A: I'm trying to help you -

Q: You want to help me? Get off my back. Just get off my back.
A: You can't hide your pain behind jokes forever.

Q: Fuck you.
A: All right, I'm leaving.

Q: Good.
A: Look, if you want I can give yo uthe number of this guy who -

Q: Get out.
A: Okay.

Q: Cocksucker.
A:

Q: Where are my cigarettes?
A:

NEW CONTEST
Who wnats to give Liam a backrub?

Send a fifty-word essay on why you should be allowed to give a backrub to Liam McEneaney to:

mceneaneyl@aol.com

SUBJECT: "I Deserve to Give Liam a Backrub Maybe"

Include a picture. Hell, include the picture and you don't need to include the essay.

I HATE TO BRAG ABOUT MY SEXUAL PROWESS
But the other night I was - shall we say...
making love to a woman so strongly...so vigorously...
That after almost forty minutes...
I woke her up.

That was pretty sweet.

COYOTE HOTTY
If you've hung around me any time the movie Coyote Ugly has crept into the conversation, then you know that I'll always say, "Nah, that movie's bullshit. I've been to that bar, it's no fun."

The other night I stopped into the actual Coyote Ugly bar to say hi to a friend of mine who is a regular there.

In about twenty minutes, I saw this guy Eric get a body shot from the bartender. Then the bartender (a beautiful woman with a six pack that Budweiser would envy) started dancing on the bar, stripper-style. Eric's girlfriend watched, love-struck.

Then Eric's girlfriend got up and also started dancing on the bar (take that, Adolph Ghoul-iani!). The bartender then removed her bra via the under-the-shirt method and tossed it onto a bra-rack. Ten minutes later, this woman was dancing topless on the bar while the bartender tried to put a Coyote Ugly shirt on her.

In all, it was just another New York City example of life imitating the highest possible art.

YESTERDAY IT WAS MY BIRTHDAY
I hung one more year on the line. I should be depressed, my life's a mess, and I just farted.

I'M GOING TO SEE MASKED & ANONYMOUS TODAY
It's the new Bob Dylan movie. After seeing a couple of clips and reading the screenplay (thanks Internet pirates - ARRGH!), I can already qualify it an unmitigated abortion. but you gotta love that Bob!

SORRY SO LATE

I've been kind of preoccupied this week. Next we're back on our regular schedule of half-baked article ideas and not-very-well thought out jokes.

Today's my birthday. I just saw Pirates of the Caribbean.

More later.