Always Open The Door for an Attractive Eighties Woman

Thursday Nov. 1 is Day of the Dead Eve at the Star Bar with the bands Grinder Nova, The Barefoot Hookers and Attractive Eighties Women.

To add a live death to the night, the Star Bar's gonna let me open the show with about 20 minutes of my corpse-inducing stand-up "comedy."

Oh Mictecacihuatl, must your vultures follow me so close?

Sometimes Using Your Full Name Just Makes More Sense

I can't be the first to have noticed that convicted oral sex receiver Genarlow Wilson's attorney is named B.J. Bernstein.

I may be the first to note her other clients: Lou Sobh Hummer of Duluth, the estate of Hedy Lamarr, beloved rags to riches novelist Felatio Alger and root canal specialist Melvin "Skull Fucker" Simms D.D.S.

When the Saints Go Marching In

Is the Vatican using beatification for crassly partisan purposes?

Next they'll be giving the leaders of the Fourth Crusade the Presidential Medal of Freedom for liberating Constantinople despite a few fuck ups here and there.

Limbo To Be Reborn in East Atlanta

(Still-)Born in the USA is a touring group of four LA and NY alt comics. They're coming to Atlanta this Thursday and include former Athens comic and famous non-Canadian Andrew Wright. Despite the Pope’s recent revisions, they’ll be playing the Earl—where only the hippest unbaptised dead babies get to go.

Back when Henny Youngman died I joked: “Leave it to Henny to actually die funny. He was 92 when he died, yet his name was Youngman. That’s kinda funny. It’d be like if that actor Gary Oldman had been stillborn. That also would’ve been… well, maybe not quite as funny at the time but… after a couple weeks.”

Some other unfortunate names for the stillborn include: Constance, Methuselah, Cleo (the muse of history), Not Dead, Jr. and Madison—that one’s just too trendy.

Audience Overlap

This Tuesday at Atlanta's Civic Center Minister Louis Farrakhan will be appearing. (Is he in the new Tyler Perry play?)

Then on Wednesday it's The Shins.

The Civic Center really needs to start selling season tickets.

The Shins are famous for a contract rider insisting of bean pies.

The Largest Sqare Yardage of Hawaiian Shirts

Insurance Men

Charles Ives foreshadowed contemporary estate planning with innovative life-insurance policies offered through his successful firm Ives and Myrick. He was also the grandfather of American experimental composers mixing bitonality, tone clusters and familiar tunes in unfamiliar contexts to create music of stunning originality and inventiveness.

Wallace Stevens worked for Hartford Accident and Indemnity Company for nearly 40 years rising to the position of vice president. Yet he continued to write poetry producing his greatest works only in maturity and winning both the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award the same year as his death in 1955.

Hank “No Boll” Weevil dominated crop insurance in the Tennessee valley for two decades. He was also a beloved close-hand magician at children’s parties and charity events until a combine accident left him without a right hand. A brief comeback attempt with a quarter taped to his hook failed miserably after he nearly ripped off the birthday girl’s ear.

Alonzo Herndon became Atlanta’s wealthiest black citizen after founding the Atlanta Life Insurance Company. He also sang second tenor in a chain of three barbershop quartets.

Mutual of Omaha’s Marlin Perkins was a total prick to Jim Fowler.

Benjamin Franklin founded the Philadelphia Contributionship for the Insurance of Houses from Loss by Fire in 1752. He had a woman on the side.

Self-taught folk insurance man Stoopy Mitchell started selling burial insurance near his home in Spoon River after inheriting a shovel. In his spare time he made miniature calendars suitable for desk display with quirky, child-like renderings of fall foliage.

State Farm’s Arthur Ratliff can give you peace of mind. Auto. Life. Home. Even boat. Contact him today.

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Burma's military junta shut down the country's internet this week. Sadly, all it took was a really slow-loading Myspace slideshow.

Remember juntas? They used to be big in Latin America back in the day. Now they're plaguing Burma's long-deferred dreams for democracy. It's little consolation to the Burmese people but maybe soon they'll produce a whole crop of acclaimed magical realist writers who will infuse contemporary fiction with both a renewed sense of imaginative vigor and a deeper emotional resonance.

Burma's other exports include rubber and teak.

"Five and A Half Times"

A birthday shout-out to Jimmy Carter and a couple other bits recorded just last night. It's audio only but there's nothing like looking at a black screen for 5 minutes. One of these days I'll get a decent site going somewhere.

"Five and a Half Times"

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