I'll take "Things That Might Drive Joe to Crazyville" for $1000, Alex (Or, Let's Get to Know Joe)

by The Notorious J.O.E.

The Job That's Sucking The Last Bit of Lifeblood From Me

Being on Technical Support for five years, you see a lot of things that make you wonder how humans ever evolved from apes. Well there’s not enough room, but here’s a short list:

I needed to work on a woman’s computer and she wasn’t around. Should I change her password or just take a guess? I looked around and saw a wide of array of cutesy-wootsy little puppy figurines on the top of monitor. A dog calendar sits on my left. Hmmn. Let’s try "dogs" shall we? Woohoo, I’m in. Schedule me for a guest appearance on Alias pronto.

I get an emergency help desk ticket for a top executive whose computer was down. I rushed up there, nearly collapsing a lung. I examined the situation. Then, I turned the monitor on. Crisis resolved.

I have grown to hate computers and I have grown to hate people who use them. Where does this leave me you ask? I believe it leaves me with an abacus, a padded cell, and a big fat smile on my face.

Liza, Babs, Madonna, oh my!

Yes I’m a homo. I like it sometimes, but more and more I find, me no like so much. I’ve had some good relationships, but I’ve managed to screw them up somehow or they just haven’t worked out for the best. I also have some really good gay friends.

So why Joe, do you hate the heterosexually challenged? There’s not enough room, but let’s see if we can examine some of the reasons:

There’s a very attractive guy at the gym. He looks at me. I look at him. He’s got a very nice build. He dresses in normal workout attire, ergo he’s not wearing a leotard. He goes to the gym to actually workout (something that doesn’t really happen very much in the homo gyms). But then I see him out at the bars, its all "grrllllll" and sparkly jewelry and skipping through the bar and singing the Wicked soundtrack in its entirety. It’s like Paul Walker to RuPaul in no time flat.

And am I getting old, or is the fashion in the gay (and metrosexual) community getting worse? Why? I ask why?

Upturned collars on polos: it wasn’t a good idea when you drove your 83 Trans Am listening to Huey Lewis’ latest blockbuster CD and it isn’t a good idea now.

Wearing baseball caps tilted. I credit Jason Mraz with that stroke of genius. Well I have a remedy; you ain’t him, so please stop. It’s just stupid.

And lastly, this combination tail/mohawk/mullet haircut. Independently, each of them are very very hard to pull off. Together they’re just plain hideous. However, if you have any of these plus tattoos, piercings, a rockin’ body and your sense of humor measures 10 inches, then I am willing to look past the haircut. I’m very forgiving that way.

Why Joe Hates Politics

Barbara Bush, I realize you recently turned 110 years old and things aren’t running as smoothly up there anymore. But I mean, isn’t it bad enough we have to listen to your stunningly brilliant children? Sure, your comment about the refugees was a just personal observation:

"What I'm hearing, which is sort of scary, is they all want to stay in Texas. Everyone is so overwhelmed by the hospitality. And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this is working very well for them."
- Barbara Bush, during a radio interview with the American Public Media program Marketplace.

But that doesn’t make it any smarter than sayyy....

"You work three jobs? Uniquely American, isn't it? I mean, that is fantastic that you're doing that."
- George W. Bush, to a divorced mother of three, Omaha, Nebraska, Feb. 4, 2005

But it did piece together a little mystery of where the other half of the brain is.

Odds and Ends

So I hate a lot of things. I can't possibly go in to all of them...can I? No no no, there's not enough time, not enough room, not enough...oh why don't I just run through a brief list for you?

Princess Trixie and your precious little Gap-clad child in stroller, if I hold the door for you at Starbucks, a "thank you" will do. However, when you look at me like it's my duty and don't say jack, then I feel the need to accidentally spill my mocha on aforementioned child (it's cold people, relax.)

Diddy, or P Diddy, or Sean, or Puffy or...'nuff said.

Jennifer Love Hewitt. I don't dislike you. I don't hate you. I don't abhor you. I dishatabhor you. I once heard you complain that all actresses are getting jobs in the movies ahead of you. Explanation: people dishatabhor you.

Hummers. These are a great idea. If you are Arnold Schwarzenegger, living in the desert, saving Salma Hayek from alien monsters with super human strength. But if your name is Biff and you drive back and forth to the local Musicland to purchase the hot new CD by Creed/Nickelback, you most likely don’t need a Hummer.

Ok, enough about me. I hope that you feel closer to me now, because all I really want to be is loved. And if you disagree with any of my rants, I feel bad, but just for a second. Then I will jot your name down to be a subject of the inevitable sequel to this, my first blog post.

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Our guest blogger, The Notorious J.O.E. doesn’t really hate people. He just really, really, really doesn’t like you.

DJ Evil Twin is in da Haooooouse!

Paul Pellerito from Thoughts to Fill an Empty Room has graciously volunteered to host my remixes. Thanks Paul, you rock!

You can download the mixes directly here (right click, save as). Get 'em while you can!

Annie Lennox - Step by Step (DJ Evil Twin Remix)*
Everything But The Girl - Single (DJ Evil Twin Remix)
Justin Timberlake feat Clipse - Like I Love You (DJ Evil Twin Surgical Mix)
Janet vs *Nsync - That's The Way Love Goes (DJ Evil Twin Siamese Mix)

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Origins of DJ Evil Twin

* This is my remix of the original version of the song that Whitney Houston re-made in the soundtrack for The Preacher's Wife. You can hear Annie Lennox singing back-up in Whitney's version.

My Ears are Ringing

My ears are ringing.

God, is that you? You know you're not supposed to call at the dinner hour. I put my name on the National DO NOT CALL registry, but it seems to have no effect.

Oh, why won't ringing didn't stop? Somebody must be talking about me.

It turns out, Ben of the Ice Cream Sandwich Radio Show, wildly popular among its three listeners, and Ben's co-host Joe have been talking about this blog and yours truly. Ben and I go way back, when I used to read his robot comics. I think he’s very talented and I can say that because I am authorized by him to say so.

Ben likes to take pictures on his camera phone. He also likes to moon people online. He looks a little bit like Woody Allen, especially when he’s wearing glasses. Joe, his co-host, I know virtually nothing about, which is fine with me, because I like to imagine him in this little green number.

Ben is also a dork, which I think nowadays is really more of a compliment than an insult. Dork is cool. Ben is very cool. It gives me hope that one day the word "gay" will become a compliment.

"Gay" has become the new derogatory term, didn’t you know? These days, when straight kids say "you’re gay," they mean "you’re stupid" rather than "you look like you suck cock."

I think that there is a great potential for confusion. If gay equals stupid, charitable folk who support mentally-challenged kids could end up at the Gay Olympics. Coming out would be a nightmare. You marshall your courage to tell your mother you’re gay and she enrolls you in remedial classes.

But like all derogatory terms, new ones come up to take their place anyway, usually based on some marginal minority group. Here are some new ones that I propose: "you’re so Amish" or "you’re such a Scientologist" or "you’re such a Gotti."

Anyway, for a good five minutes, Ben, Joe and their occasional sidekick Erica, talk about this site and my purported lactose intolerance. Just as a clarification folks, I am not lactose intolerant. I am lactophobic, which means that I have an irrational fear and loathing of all dairy and dairy-like food products. Even the sight of an infant nuzzling its mother's breast on the bus offends me, it brings forth a desire to give its mother a shawl to cover up that regretful peasant blouse she was wearing.

In the same show, Erica also spends a few minutes lamenting about the fate of some penguins in the documentary March of the Penguins. She wondered why the filmmakers didn't lift a hand to save the little penguins. But be comforted my dear Erica, they are in a better place now—they are in J-Lo's mitten drawer.

Good luck on your show kids, and talk about me some more.

And if anybody else wants to talk about me, can you please remember to mention how well-endowed I am? I don't think enough people know.


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Penguins are sooo gay
Salon.com: "We're Here, We're Queer, We're Penguins"

I am the Evil Twin

One thing you might not know about me is that I have a DJ name. Of course, I’m not really a DJ, but that didn’t stop me from making the name up. This is pretty much how I run my life anyway, I just make shit up and then worry about actually doing it later.

It’s like I was a homosexual long before I had my first subscription to Vogue magazine. And listen, I tried to be a practicing homosexual at a very early age, but Vogue wouldn’t accept payment from my Hello Kitty checkbook. Some people think that homosexuality is an evolutionary dead end, but that’s not quite true--a homosexual without credit, that’s the dead end. A homosexual can find a surrogate to propagate his genes, but what’s the point unless his genes get to wear Calvin Klein?

So you can imagine my elation when I got my first credit card. I went on a shopping spree to end all shopping sprees and I’ve amassed clothes, accessories and bill collectors. I may be cash-poor, but my creditors are very, very rich.

Ok ok ok, here it is: my DJ name is DJ Evil Twin.

For those of you that didn’t know, I do have a real twin. And ever since we’ve been little kids, we’ve fought each other for the right to be the Evil Twin because, let’s be real, who wants to be the Good Twin? The Good Twin is the mama's boy; he climbs into her vagina and then crawls into the uterus for afternoon naps. Nobody wants to be the Good Twin. I’m sure right now Ashley Olsen is kicking herself for not having an eating disorder.

DJ Evil Twin came about during my club kid phase, which was when I was younger and the only wrinkles I had were the ones on my balls. I loved club music because it was the only kind of music where body glitter didn't look ridiculous. It was also the only kind of music where dancing alone wasn’t pathetic and didn’t require the additional humiliation of wearing a cowboy hat.

Club music and country line dancing were invented for spinster aunts and homosexuals and I, am glad for it, it saved my life, it got me laid. On a crowded dancefloor it was easier to make a connection and it was dark--dark enough to hide my neediness and low self-esteem. I think my spinster aunt would've gotten laid as well despite the smell of Vicks Vap-O-Rub.

For awhile, I tried the old skool version of DJ-ing, which was basically selling crystal meth out of my crates. But then I found that what I was really interested in was the remix. I wanted every song to be 120 beats per minute. If I heard a song, I'd imagine it with a thump-thump-thumping beat.

And then there was Charlene's "I've Never Been To Me." I wanted to hear a dance remix of this song so bad I could drink a whole bottle of milk just so I could throw it back up. I started tinkering with music using the Acid DJ software to make my own remixes.

On a lark, I sent a remix I did of Annie Lennox's "Step by Step" to Emily (Beat Commander M.L.E.), a DJ at WITR, a college radio station in Rochester, New York and a visitor to this site. And to my surprise and glee, she played it on her show Robots in the Skies. I was ecstatic. I feel validated, like a parking stub. If you download the show, you can listen to it (it's the second song). I hope she plays it again.

It feels good to have something you've created out there. Just like it feels good to have you read all the way to the very end of this post.

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If you want to hear the following mixes I've made, send me an e-mail. Warning: these are just my tinkerings, don't expect Victor Calderone or anything.

Annie Lennox - Step by Step (DJ Evil Twin Remix)
Everything But The Girl - Single (DJ Evil Twin Remix)
Justin Timberlake feat Clipse - Like I Love You (DJ Evil Twin Surgical Mix)
Janet vs *Nsync - That's The Way Love Goes (DJ Evil Twin 2005 Mix)

Get your own DJ name here and here.

I am a novice compared to these guys who remixed Bjork's Medúlla CD (download them!)

Lack of Originality

(c) 2004 Copyright by The New Yorker