Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Anti-Hipster Hipster Denialists

Every forward thinking American knows that hipsters are a nefarious and superstitious lot. Seething in the underbellies of every major city lies ironic mustaches and the stench of Pabst Blue Ribbon and abject failure. Their every move is governed by what the other cattle in the herd will think—which is the most brain-stabbingly ironic part of their disposition since their very existence depends on being “outside” of group thought!
How ironic.
Yes indeed, daily work commuter! These are the fucks on bicycles who weave in and out of traffic with a smug sense of misplaced pride.
Yessiree, minority urban dweller! These are the new puzzlingly unafraid white trash that have come to gentrify your neighborhood. But don’t fret. Their perceived solidarity with you makes them easy targets for mugging!
Righty-Roo, local V.A. club! Your proud war stories from Vietnam will be drowned out by pale, unshaven, androgynous 20 somethings screaming to 80’s Night karaoke. Your nightmares of surprise Gook attacks will be usurped by visions of a blasted future wasteland ruled by snarky under achievers.
            Should you find yourself in any of these unpleasant scenarios, or brush up against an entitled hipster for any reason, here are some bulletproof guidelines that will ensure that these congealed asparagus farts steer clear:
           
            Right off the bat, looks are KEY. Hipsters apply a shit test immediately to every person that enters their space (note, everything in eyesight is considered hipster space). Be prepared to see a lot of impossibly tight jeans on “men”, and multi-colored, cigarette-hole riddled nylons on women. You’re going to want to immediately repel any chance of inclusion by wearing the old standby—an Ed Hardy T-shirt. Sports Jerseys are also a plus. Make sure they aren’t simply old faded-looking sports shirts. I mean actual jerseys; the more popular the team, the better. To let them know that you’re really the wrong kind of person, a flat brimmed U.F.C./Tapout hat is highly recommended. 

            Music invariably comes up in hipster conversation. Music is the lifeblood of these cretins—shitty, unlistenable music at that. You should know by now that once something beloved by hipsters crosses into the realm of mainstream America, it is almost certainly doomed. Hipsters agonize at the thought of someone lame sharing any similarity; no matter how trivial. While discussing the latest Nickelback CD will surely get a laugh, followed by frantic eye darting to find others to revel in your lameness, you may want to tap a nerve. Something like, “Hey, I recently got into this band called Wilco. They were pretty rockin’. Caught em’ on Jay Leno after Monday Night Football.” Prepare for shunning to commence immediately.

If you couldn’t tell by the hipsters militant stance on music, the very life essence of a hipster is to be on top of a cultural trend before it catches on (followed by a brief period of reveling in cultural glory before termination from sight and memory). If you want to be the ultimate in hipster repellent, you have to appear as if you are culturally clueless. A good scenario would be showing up to a party in Allston, MA (Boston’s Hipster Promise Land) wearing a King’s of Leon tour shirt and spiky, gelled hair. Make sure you bring plenty of Mike’s Hard Lemonade and some socks with those sandals. Try breaking the ice with some lines from The Hangover. Laugh really hard like you just saw the movie before you left for the party and were also laughing the whole ride there. This not only clues them in to your cluelessness, but lets them know that up until now, you’ve never heard of Zach Gapsinfoccia.

Congratulations! You are now forever cast out of Hipster Paradise. Now please take a hot shower. Trust me on this.

-Tony Heartman-

DISCLAIMER: Side effects of aforementioned behavior may result in being shunned by all people and not just hipsters. Rules only apply to the next ten years. After which, they will become part of ironic hipster culture.

Wednesday, May 25, 2011

Fan Fun Facts!

This story was sent in from Matthew Glenside's sister, and definitely deserves honorable mention.  It's all true!

I have something to add to KWIH:
1 reason why "O.P. Harris" is an asshole:
One time, we were on vacation and the fire alarm in the hotel went off at 3 am. He woke me up, dropping crumbs on my face from the piece of pecan pie he was eating with his bare hands and screamed "HAPPY FIRE ALARM DAY!" We were forced to evacuate into the freezing cold November air. I had taken a shower a few hours before and my hair was starting to freeze. Harris told me we could go sit in his car. Just as it started to get warm in the car, he locked the doors and windows, farted his ass off and make me listen to I LOOOOVE YOU JEEEESUS CHRIIIIIST over and over! What an asshole.


-Glenna Glenside






I can confirm that all of this happened one fine night.  However, she left out the part about me bringing a handle of extremely cheap (Gold Seal) rum and all the awful things that came about as a result of that purchase.

-OPH

Tuesday, May 24, 2011

O. P. Harris: Notes From the Daxophone


5/24/11   


 It’s almost 1 PM and I’m sitting on my couch in my bathrobe with a cup of cold coffee, writing this “article” I claimed to have already assembled in my head, but the reality is I’ve been putting it off.  This may be because I don’t enjoy hurting people’s feelings, but that is demonstrably untrue.
    I’m pretty far-flung in this fucked-up quadrangle, being on the opposite coast of everyone else involved.  This means I have the benefit of 3 hours more time on deadlines, and I can play the “oh, I thought you meant PST!” card when I don’t care, which is most of the time.  It also means I can talk extra shit without fear of meaningful retribution.
    Isolation has its benefits, but it also means I’m in a kind of stasis where observation of these clowns has been impossible for near a year.  I bet they’ve become even worse than I’m about to tell you.
    It was hard to boil these guys down into such small bursts of failure-highlight, but that’s why I’m glad we were all enumerating eachothers’ faults: I neglected to capture Heartman’s general dissatisfaction with every decision made by the entire world, or Van’s reclusive basement-caveman slobbery properly, because I’ve become so far removed from these daily realities. 
    It’s been wonderful.
    Glenside has already put his stamp of bullshit at the head of this blog: general glib douchery dispensed from the depths of the fart cloud in his parents’ basement, and I’m here as the rear guard against such phoniness.  I’m not going to bullshit you like these goons; I promise that all that follows from me is the honest-to-Me truth.  Prepare for Truth Lightning Bolts, thrown from on high by O.P. Harris, Son of Dax, the Real Deal on all these herbivores I call my friends (when no one’s around).
    This may be Portland, but this ain’t Portlandia.  This is KWIH.  Buckle up, fuckers.

The Men of KWIH
MATTHEW GLENSIDE   
I remember seeing him “accidentally” light a guy’s head on fire one time.  “Accidentally” means he held an aerosol can and a lighter next to the guy’s face, lit the flame and sprayed the can, and when the fireball wiped out the kid’s eyelashes and several locks of hair, he smiled and laughed incredulously, and said “Oops!” That was it.  To this day, he doesn’t understand why the guy was “so upset.”  Fuck Matthew Glenside.
    This is the kind of shit he pulls on people, because he has no compassion or concern for fellow man.  If you're lucky, he'll just ask you to take a naked picture in a bathroom and text it to him.  That is the most regard I've ever heard of him showing a person.  One time his little sister, excited to see her brother, came out to say hi and probably give him a hug, big smile on her face.  Without batting a lash, he proceeded to kick a soccer ball RIGHT in her face, after which she ran inside crying.  Instead of apologizing and feeling like a major asshole, he belly laughed.
    I’ve been friends with him for eleven years, and you know what he got me for my birthday? Nothing.  Ever.  Not that I’d want anything from him, but one year we were hanging out in his room and at midnight, I realized it was my birthday.  You know what I got? “Happy fuckin’ birthday,” and then he turned back to his computer. 
    Now I’ve met lightweights in my life, but Matthew Glenside is the absolute pansiest drinker I’ve ever met in my life.  I mean, get two drinks in this guy, he’s loudly interrupting (more than usual), stumbling, his eyes are just rolling around in his head, and utterly embarrassing all who know him.  When he’s had enough, he makes Tony look like a fucking sober-ass genius. 
    On one particular evening, at the local bar I hung out in my neighborhood, he took the trouble to finally visit me for the second of two times I saw him that year (because oh yeah, making this guy drive anywhere is like asking him to move the world), he proceeded to alienate the entire crowd and fall on his ass over a chain barrier outside.  He was so bad the bartender gave me a free drink to take him home.  I carried his stupid hairy ass across town and got him into a friend’s apartment, and called his girlfriend to drag him away.  On the way out to her car, still holding his staggering lumpy body, he proceeded to puke in a plastic indoor plant, mostly, but also on the carpeting in the hallway.  I have photographs of this, and they will be attached if I have anything to say about it.
   Over the years I have received a lengthy, continuous series of calls from his girlfriends of various repute (you wouldn’t believe the number of girls this guy would be married to at this point, if he ever went through with it) bitching about how much of a selfish prick Matthew is.  It’s at the point that I can forecast the breakups (the first breakup with each, at least) based on a combination of similar comments he will make, things the girlfriends will say, and frequency of both.  I think that’s probably why he stopped introducing me to them, though it could also be that he’s so pigheaded he thinks that, as a matter of course, I’M interested in whatever latest scrappy pale crackhead he’s dragged into his parents’ basement (where he has lived his troll-like life as long as I’ve known him) and slobbered on. 
    Matthew Glenside looks like a hairy Muppet.  He makes a point of showing everyone he’s ever known his repulsively hairy ass.  Classic description: it looks like he sat on a black cat and it never got out. This is in the top 3 list of worst things I’ve ever had to see.  Matthew Glenside is a schnozzle, and if you don’t know what that is, fuck you too.
    We started a business once, and I never saw a dime, he just bought me some groceries one time.
    He wants to work on this blog? What the fuck does he know about blogging?  Get ready for a bunch of stupid poems with goofy line breaks, and maybe a picture of blood. Probably some shit he read somewhere else and thought sounded smart.  He’s not a writer, he’s about half as cool as Axl Rose.  Who is also a schnozzle.
    All I can say is, pretty nice to be 3,000 miles away from the prick, but he still manages to find ways to make my life miserable.  He is now also my real-life boss (not here).  Fuck you, boss.
    TONY HEARTMAN
  is a whiny bitch.  He is hard to introduce to people, because sometimes he just falls flat on his face mid-sentence after having a drink.   Yeah, he actually DID this at my house one time, on hardwood.  Mid-fucking-sentence, off his chair, onto his face.  Whole room goes silent.  “Whoa, that was weird, what happened?”  Try coming back from THAT in a room full of girls.
    Are you having a nice day? Don’t worry, Tony will come over and RUIN it with a rant about something you don’t care about, or someone you don’t even know.  Arms swinging wildly all over the place, drinking most of your booze.  What a chode.
    At this point I bet you think I have a bad attitude, that I’m just being a dick.  Meet Tony sometime, and you’ll think again.  Bad attitude? I can sum him up in onomatopoeia: “Weeaahhh.” BOOOOO! Pfffffff! 
      He also has a nasty habit of wearing clown shoes and playing with action figures, also tough to explain to people.  Other than that, his hair’s kind of stupid and his voice is SUUUUPER annoying.  He’s really good at eating Wendy’s, that’s about it. Other than that, he’s amazing at embarrassing you in all company.   His heart is also completely stupid, and I hate that, too.  I have seen him hang out at playgrounds after dark.  What a creep.
VAN DUKE (OF NEW YORK)
The last time I saw Van, he was dressed like an old man.  Surprisingly, though, he looked LESS like a creepy old man than he is wont to do: he’s the only man I’ve ever seen willingly wear a comb-over.  A never-ending parade of stupid moustaches marches across his face, complimenting his sweater-vests and tailored corduroy pants. 

    Van pisses me off because he’s soft-spoken and kind (read as: “what a fag”).  I’d say deep down he’s probably hiding the heart of a serial killer, but it’s not that deep down when you dress the way he does.  Those moustaches aren’t ironic, they’re serious.  He WILL rape you in a ’78 Oldsmobile and take you apart with garden shears in the desert.  The friendly smiles and mild-mannered jokes aren’t fooling anyone, you fucking psycho.  Nice people don’t lurk; YOU lurk.  You camouflage it well, but tip-toeing around dark theaters? You ain’t fooling anyone.

    Oh, yeah, come to think of it, I’ve actually seen him get mad before.  Yep, serial killer eyes and rage. that’s it. 

    Oh, he pukes like a wuss, too.  I will say, however, that at least, unlike Heartman and mostly Glenside, he doesn’t have his head all the way up his ass and back out his mouth, which is a nice change of pace from infectious verbal diarrhea, and in Tony’s case painful infectious verbal diarrhea.

    These aren’t even my friends. Get me the fuck out of this place.

Monday, May 23, 2011

The Duke's Decree!

    The hardest part of writing this isn't the lack of material nor is it the urge to refrain from lambasting friends, but determining how scathing I should be and where to draw the line. I've known everyone here for the better part of 10 years. In that time we've become close, grown apart, lived in different states, yet still come back to bitch about the same things. Now that we're bringing this experiment to the "blogosphere" (I fucking hate that term), what better way then to tear each other new assholes.


    Speaking of assholes, Matthew Glenside. I have seen this kids asshole too many times to count. Beginning in high school, from walking into a room with him just waiting spread, to his embrace of smart phones and sending pictures with warm wishes of a "Happy Earth Day."  Most guys can agree that butts and penises are funny, and we've all done our fair share of "bat wings" and "goats," but Matthew is a hairy dude. I might have more hair on my chest, but he's got that dark hair. Really burns the image in your mind. Its one of those things you can't unsee. Not only can I not rid that image from my head, he incessantly feels that you should see it one more time.  Matthew Glenside’s asshole is like 9/11 coverage on FOX news. No matter what you're talking about somehow you're gonna end up seeing a cloud of hair covering the canyon that is his ass.


    It doesn't end there folks. Matthew is very passionate. Now typically that wouldn't be a problem for anyone, unless you were friends with him on Facebook. I say "were" because he left, but in his time there the posts were relentless. You would talk about something with him and 4 minutes later there's a link on your wall. I remember what we were talking about and I don't think anyone else cares about how Amon Amarth is awesome.


    The opposite is true of O. P. Harris. Here's a kid who I never talk to but always have fun with when we hang out. He's the smartest dumbass I've ever met. A Boy Scout who would bring a knife to school. There's a time and place, and the school bus is not the place to whip out a knife. Recently he's been expressing his excitement for seeing Coheed and Cambria.  Might I remind readers this is 2011 and not 2003. I like Coheed but to be as excited as he is, would be like someone telling you that they can't wait to see Third Eye Blind. Sure it'll be fun, but you don't need to tell me. I've seen them. Twice. And the second time I took a nap.  Opie's musical interests have always puzzled me. You can be talking about GG Allin, or At the Drive In or whoever and then he'll say how great the Aquabats! are, leaving you just to stare.


    It seems like I'm just attacking his musical taste so I'll end on him with this. If I have to hear about him and Matthew fighting and not talking to each other one more time…I don't know. They bicker like a married couple. You're friends. Be friends. Its not hard.


    And then there's Tony Heartman.  Worst for last.  I've only seen Tony a hand full of times and I don't think I've ever had a one on one conversation with him. In the limited time I've spent with him I was able to gather that he hates everything. If you order your coffee with three packets of sugar instead of just two, he'll hope you die from diabetic shock.  On the last occasion we were talking about Hipsters, which reluctantly I will admit am one. He was arguing the point that people now watch WWE to be ironic. I will also admit that I, from time to time, will watch a Pay-Per-View. Now I could careless that he was making fun of wrestling. I make fun of wrestling. But there isn't a soul out there that would watch wrestling to be ironic. Do you think people have that much free time to sit and watch the WWE just to be ironic? What subgroup of hipsters hang out sipping their wine, listening to Peter Bjorn and John, and discuss the current rivalry between the Miz and Rey Mysterio?  (Go ahead and look it up Glenside, its correct). I'll tell you. ZERO. Heartman says some of the best things but you have to stop at some point an realize that your anger isn't even directed at something thats real.

Thursday, May 19, 2011

HEART TO HEART WITH TONY HEARTMAN


O. P. Harris resembles a shaved, faggy horse (his lip ring helps emphasize the ‘faggy” part). “Opie”, as he is unlovingly called, is a fan of music and Sticking It to the Man. His band Fugitives and Refugees pays tribute to those suffering under brutal Dracut, MA—a town that is over 97% white—to write about the plight of the forgotten man. Harris reportedly started his incredibly unsuccessful career as a musician after he was shaken over the continuing dispute between his town’s Board of Selectman and a local bark mulch company. Harris has since relocated his rebellious nature to Portland, Oregon where he helps celebrate “Diversity Day” by taking solace in the fact that all of their black people are in prison.


Van [Duke of New York] is a trendy, NYC hipster who has no biceps to speak of. He is fond of maintaining his ironic mustache in the hopes of wrangling trashy NYC broads with Daddy-hatred-complexes and cage-free neon nylons. Some of his hobbies include throwing WWE Pay-Per-View parties, taking photos of vegan meals at the local fair-trade-certified co-op, joining Facebook causes, and disappointing women.



Matthew Glenside is a miserable piece of fucking shit. His unjust anger comes from his numerous failures in life--particularly jobs, women, and hygiene. This unholy trinity of shame follows him like a shit-aura. Despite his enumerable shortcomings, he treats all others with contempt as if they are uncultured morons who leave trails oozing everywhere they go like so many slugs—yet most of his career can be surmised as cleaning up said slugs’ trails. Women tend to admire his impossibly sharp apathy, until they actually see what he does all day. But Glenside does not let setback after setback deter him. Nay, he brushes off day-old peanut butter sandwich crumbs, tucks in his soiled wife-beater and takes on the day…all while in the comfort of his chair/fart filter.

Monday, May 16, 2011

HEAR YE HEAR YE!

KWIH is now, officially, right now, LIVE!

If God is Dead Then It’s Time To Step Up
By Matthew Glenside

“Oh the honor,” I think to myself, sarcasm so thick it sticks in my beard. I reach for a bottle of Motrin. Apparently rolling ones eyes at a really ridiculous assignment repeatedly can cause a biting headache. I take two and wash it down with cold coffee before remembering that this ridiculous assignment was, in fact, handed down by my orders. I take another and stare at the white sheet of paper jammed into this Panzer tank of a typewriter that ironically sits next to not one, but two computers.
“But this is how I draft,” I say aloud to a dissenting thought in my own head. The thought then tells me not to bitch when I don’t feel like digitizing it from the original hardcopy. “But I edit on the fly when I put it in the word processor, the way I first used to when I became a writer.”

The thought keeps on blabbing. It is self-aware, self-contained, and is as big a prick as I am. I stop listening in favor of another sip of coffee and get interrupted by Harris and one of his stupid stories about some guy he met somewhere who was really cool, packaged with two accompanying links to Youtube that I’m sure have little, if any, relation to his story about his newfound friend whom he’ll never see or think of again.
“I draft on a typewriter because Facebook, email, Twitter, Youtube, and Skype don’t exist. Harris can’t carpet bomb me with links about frogs and should-be-forgotten ska bands.”
The thought has reached the end of its line, no more neural pathway for it to travel. For now, things are quiet, lest my desire for a hot cup of coffee and a better computer chair.
I begin to type.
I’m easily distracted however. I start to question why I’m tearing my friends apart on paper. To put it online so everybody else can see, is not the type of obvious explanation towards which I’m digging. I mean that I have a copy of Anthony Robbins’ Awaken The Giant Within sitting on my coffee table. I look at it sitting there with the bookmark still jammed in the midway point of the text at which I stopped reading. Steve Pavlina just posted an article not three days ago that literally changed the direction of my life. My eReader charges off of my laptop and I think about the 2nd book I ever purchased for it: Thich Nhat Hanh’s Taming The Tiger Within.
I question why, if I surround myself with, and feed myself as much positive and forward thinking and inspiration as I can with the sole intended purpose to keep pushing myself further, to be better, to be stronger, to be smarter, then why dedicate my valuable time to general malaise? Couldn’t you be helping somebody? I imagine any of the aforementioned asking me, donning the faces of parental disappointment, leaving me awash in shame.
I shake the thought and start writing about Tony Heartman first but at the end the gratification of a great word-burst comes quick and leaves too soon. Harris is bugging me again, but in the decade and change that I’ve known him, I’ve become a professional at ignoring him. The question comes back to me. Have I just been reading Jim Goad too much? I start to ask. The answer is a resounding yes, but doesn’t answer the true question about why should we do this, and why should anyone read it.
I continued on writing like any good journalist and did what I was fucking told to do. It wasn’t until after I had all my drafting finished, my editing done for the blurbs, that I started to write this piece and truly understood the Why in all of this. You see, there are people of change—Martin Luther King, Ghandi, the dad from American Chopper—and what they do is indescribably beautiful and the indelible marks they have left and still leave on the world is something to commend whole-heartedly. But unfortunately for this world, it goes so underappreciated, falls on so many deaf ears, and children grow up not even knowing about these great men and their great deeds. This type of ignorance grows, spreads like plague, atrophies and destroys entire generations.
And you know what? If nobody wants to call these fucking idiots out on it, we surely will. Having grown up in dark, greasy kitchens under the barbaric tutelage of angry chefs, the intellectually bankrupt management of restaurant overseers, and having stood shoulder-to-shoulder with felons, parolees, invalids and addicts, made me realize that the best way to get somebody to stop being a dickhead, it to tell them they’re being a dickhead… especially in front of a large group of people.
Listen my hand-holding, Kumbaya-singing, we-are-a-rainbow friends, love doesn’t cure everything. Nietzsche, when he wrote, “God is dead,” demonstrated that the well of moral principal has run dry. Look no further than the media if you need demonstration. The Jersey Shore is one of the most talked about television shows in the country. Idiocy has become glorified. Intellectualism, in a real twist of irony, has become uncouth. Worse yet, the obtuse are completely ignorant to their own folly. In fact, they revel in it.
“Oh the honor” have I to introduce my fellow writers. The honor I have, indeed, to share a singular though amongst them: that the weak, if by their own choice, will not choose to stand, to live by honor, to move forward in thought, shall be ostracized and left for death. Oh the honor bestowed upon myself to shred the shit out of these bastards before we turn on the world at large!

Van (Duke of New York)

It’s hard for a person to hate Van… unless you’re me. When I met Van freshman year of high school, he had already been shaving for 22 years. Feeling like an underdeveloped little boy, his 11 am shadow really bothered me. Oh, Mr. Vee people may make fun of me for my hairy body now, but I’m confident that the amount of hair I sport now--just shy of my 25th birthday--you were rocking in the 3rd grade. I shouldn’t hate you for that and I surely don’t. I’m just pointing it out as to make you unattractive to women, and to up your buying temperature amongst bear-loving homosexuals everywhere. Especially the ones that hang out in the public bathrooms in the city in which you live.

You once described yourself to me as someone “who has style.” The two issues I take with that statement was that you, for one, described yourself, which is asshole behavior in its highest, and second is that when people say they have style, it typically comes with positive connotations. You, my friend, have A style--a style that puts you somewhere between Weezer’s Blue Album cover, the worst parts about New York City (hipsters), and the 1930’s. I sincerely hope that one day while walking around in the buff you slip and fall on your Coney Island Mustache Competition first place trophy (he actually won that) and it lodges itself so far up your hair-carpeted ass. Why? Because only assholes enter stupid competitions. Only assholes willingly travel to Coney Island. And because cops (notorious assholes) are the only non-hipster fans of mustaches these days. What an absolutely awful way to choose to adorn yourself. I mean, I understand you possess a beard growing power equal to the might of a thousand suns, but please don’t act as if you’re required by law to use it.

Have you any idea what it’s like being seen with you in public? Me neither, because you never leave your fucking basement. The rare times you would be awake at normal hours and I could convince you to leave your rat’s nest, you’d come up to drink. Anywhere we went, the people would whisper to one another, “which of them is the top? Do you think the one with the mustache is the power bottom?”  At least when we’d go to the grocery store and buy beer, we both would choose Pabst Blue Ribbon and then the people would say, “Oh! They’re not gay, just faggy hipsters.” My most sincere thanks to you, dickhead.

Now that you’ve moved back to New York City, I’m sure you’re happy amongst the rest of your clones. Maybe some drunk chicks gave you points for your “originality” here, drunkenly confused that you looked stylish, but in NYC you’re only playing a raiment game of follow-the-leader. Here you used to drive us insane with your incessant Blackberry/iPhone usage, but in NYC, I believe that’s how everybody communicates. You’ll fit right back in. Before I fall asleep at night, sometimes I pray that someone steals your phone and forces you to live without “being connected to the network” for a week. I think watching you weep gently into your own mustache and try to readjust to life without Angry Birds and a constant flow of texts from your best friend’s sister for whom you secretly pine after would be a sufficient punishment for your aforementioned sins.

But the biggest, unforgivable reason you are just an unconceivable douche bag lies with the work in which you’ve chosen to take part. For the uninformed, Van takes videos of uncut interviews with teen pop sensations and cuts them down to 3 minute segments, because young people can’t be bothered to watch a full 10 minute interview! That takes, like, a frickin’ hour! And we can’t expect America’s future to dedicate THAT kind of time when they have to go to field hockey practice and have awkward sexual experiences in their parents‘ basement. I hope you contemplate suicide daily while you splice in wacky shots of flavor-of-the-month celebs emerging from limousines like the fecal matter they are into this toilet of a world, between the answers to questions of no consequence, all set to 45 second clips of royalty free “music” you’re forced to use. Congratulations, Van, you’re a mass-media whore. You’re part of the reason this country is ¾ the way down the shitter and I hope you know there’s a special level of hell for you and your ilk.

Tony Heartman

I started the dossier on this prick sometime back in high school. A mutual friend had introduced me to a group of his friends from a local shitpit known officially as Haverhill. To white folk/fans of not being stabbed and raped it’s pronounced “Brazil.” From what I remember of this group of go-getters is that one used to brag that he was In the top 10 players of Halo in the country. Ranked by whom? I don’t know. Did he believe that would lead him down any path that would lead to ass? I never played video games (read: winner, sexually active, of a fine complexion, south of 2 bills) so I cared very little for that idiot. Next in line at this buffoon buffet was a guy we’ll call G and his girlfriend J. G actually was into the competitive side of video games and attended tournaments in Japan for being good at a ninja game or something gay like that. I was way more impressed with his ability to look exactly like now-deceased murderer, former WWE star, Chris Benoit and/or the template for every typecast actor that gets work on Criminal Minds as a serial killer. Now Heartman is most famously an asshole for being best friends with G while coveting, and eventually stealing J away from him. That ended that friendship pretty fast. Good job, asshole.

When I first began really spending time with Heartman, it was right at the time J--who, at best, looked like Big Bird if Big Bird could ever be found slightly attractive by someone--ended up leaving him. Who knew collecting tens of thousands of dollars worth of comic books and action figures wasn’t attractive to women? But, oh well, the big baby went off the deep end because, like an asshole, he had his entire identity invested in this one girl.

Given his rough state, the loss of friends, a warm vagina, and the job that he somehow lost as a result of her leaving him, I did what I could to help him along. But what happens when you spend too much time near assholes? Eventually, they’ll fart right in your face.

The first of two incidents that exemplifies why Heartman is an asshole, was the time I was giving him a ride home, and like a little girl he began commiserating and yelling about how he should “just kill” himself, because his “life was so perfect with her and now it’s over.” Feeling more than slightly uncomfortable, I told him things would be okay. Instead of putting a smile on his face, making sure his ballbag was still attached, and just smoking a god damn cigarette, he then began crying. Worst ride home ever.

Now I tried my best to show him new experiences, meet new people, make some money at a new job up at the friggin beach for the summer, but like a true asshole, he laid a three-month-long cropduster fart and stunk the fun out of every place I brought him. Everybody always ended up looking at me as if it were my fault. Well you brought him, so it might as well be your gas. The worst stinker this asshole laid was at the job I got him working at my girlfriend’s dad’s minigolf/ice cream stand up at the beach for the summer. As he did with every opportunity provided him during that period, he drank more booze than he could handle, mixed it with his heart meds, or brain meds, or HRT, whatever it was, said a rash of way-over-the-line shit and ended up getting canned before the end of the season.

The dipshit still swears he quit though I was next to my girlfriend and heard the phone call from her father when he informed her he had just let him go. Tired of having my face farted into, I cut all contact with Heartman for a few years. Actually, I have no idea why I ever started talking to him again. Ugh. What an ass.

O. P. Harris

Only one other person has ever been closer (much closer) to O. P. Harris than I: a gay German foreign exchange student he used to hang with who tried kissing him in the parking lot of a bank before he was supposed to leave the country. Harris and I have been like a set of brothers for over a decade and with confidence I can say I know him better than whatever girlfriend he’s currently keeping around for some reason whom he doesn’t even actually like. It’s sort of like why he keeps me around as a friend when he doesn’t even actually like me either. In my mind, our friendship gives me full permission to rip him apart, bury him, start a fire on his shallow grave using his Boy Scout uniform, and then take a buttpee on it to extinguish the flame. I could write a six-volume encyclopedia of dickitude on my best friend and actually, I had to save this assignment for last based on the sheer amount of material I have on this French Canadian pansy. I’ll highlight the three main points which, to me, make O. P. Harris such a friggin douche bag.

1. Allow me to illustrate what it would look like if an actual asshole, the body part, found itself suddenly literate: first, it would buy a typewriter off of me, and second, fancy itself a writer. Outside of growing up in/next to Lowell, MA, home of notorious asshole, Jack Kerouac, Harris’ writing credits include working for a school newspaper most notable for being run entirely by editors who had never, in fact, seen a newspaper, let alone read one. One time, he was also published in the prestigious 2007 first issue of the first volume of Shakespeare’s Monkey Revue, with a piece about how he went and saw a real author go read his real work. What do you mean you’ve never heard of Shakespeare’s Monkey Revue?

So now I would ask, where do you, Mr. Harris, get off believing yourself to be an author? Were you born with some kind of arrogance gland buried deep within you--probably next to some overworked bile duct--that produces pure arrogance? I would ask that, yes, but I’m too focused on another question, one where I wonder where you get off writing your first novel as a sequel? And where do you get off writing a sequel to a book yet finished? But the most head-scratching aspect of this literary conundrum is that this novel he claims to be writing is a sequel to MY unpublished and in-the-works manuscript! I mean, really, what sort of asshole would complain that his story is being messed up because I keep making changes to my own manuscript? An O. P. Harris sort of asshole. That’s who.

Be on the lookout later this fall for his collection of heroic sonnets that serves as a prequel to his favorite movie, Pretty Woman.

2. Allow me to be blunt: this cob-knobbler is terrible at being high. Now the both of us are by no means old, but our younger, party-filled days, while not totally behind us, are toned down significantly now. In college though, we went through a fair amount of Visene and Doritos. It’s not to say that Harris was never any fun to get lifted with, but on the whole, he just sucks at being stoned. The first time I ever smoked with him was during a band practice when he decided it would be a great idea to add some Georgia Peach pipe tobacco into the mix. Having only been high enough times to count on one hand, I didn’t know enough to protest, and the pro-stoner, our drummer Rob, didn’t find anything wrong with Harris’ last minute addition either. I didn’t get high. I just got a fucking headache. Thanks.

During a different practice, we all got really ripped, sans tobacco, and to pass the time drove about the neighborhood --which at the time featured a heavy amount of construction--and laughed at the cops doing traffic detail. Rob thought it would be a great idea to jump out of the car and steal the box of dynamite the workers needed to do the blasting in the rocky Massachusetts ground. Thinking back on it, I doubt anybody would ever leave dynamite in a metal box simply chained to a telephone pole, unattended. It was a good time laughing at the thought until Harris began freaking out. Was it the thought of committing a felony that worried him, or being in possession of a highly volatile and destructive substance? Was it merely the paranoia that affects many a smoker?

No. He was curled up in the back of the SUV freaking out, whining that his girlfriend was going to be so mad at him, and so disappointed. It all came down to some crap about her ex-boyfriend (Harris’ best friend up until the point when he stole her away) used to ignore her in favor of getting high. Given her wet dishrag personality, I see where he was coming from. But the whimpers from somebody who supposedly has a set of balls saying, “she’s going to kill me. I can’t believe I’d do this to her,” is nothing but a buzz. fucking. kill.

But the time that takes the Hosstess Cupcakes and other various snack foods was during our freshmen year of college. He and I had returned from the vast woods of the campus to his dorm room with swirling heads and severe Ethiopian-level hunger. Harris attended a school most noteworthy for its spectacular food. Though the cafeteria was closed, another late-night, on-campus grubbery known as The Coffee Shop was open and serving the greatest buffalo chicken calzones known to mankind. And we wanted them. I am unaware as to why we couldn’t just walk over to it (it was less than a 60 second walk from his dorm), and whatever reason we had at that time was most likely total crap, but unable to deal in the world of logic, we were forced to call our order in. Now the number was something as simple as 555-FOOD, a free phone call from his dorm phone. Stony McFuckhead was absolutely incapable of dialing the number correctly. I mean like, he screwed it up 25 times. Our hunger started to get the better of us and I contemplated chewing on the desk, or turning on him. We needed food.

For years and years Harris refused to get a job--possibly the biggest asshole decision one can make. Without a source of income, he lived without a working cell phone. Unable to dial out from his dorm phone a simple sequence of 7 digits, in our genius state of mind, we decided to call Marcus. Marcus and I worked together at a restaurant prior to going to college and happened to run into one another earlier that day. I introduced him to Harris. By no means did that make them friends. By no means were Marcus and I anything more than work acquaintances. But we were going to give him a call and have him get us food. Yep. The fatal flaw in our plan? Harris sucks at being high. He refused to dial out long distance on his dorm phone worried that his mother would be angry with him over a $0.42 charge. But alas! He had himself a long distance calling card. Remember how those work? They require dialing about a 19 digit pin and then the 10 digit phone number. Somebody who couldn’t dial 555-FOOD then attempted keying in a sequence of 29 digits. And as the night wore on, listening to a chorus of telephonic beeping and “Shit! I fucked it up again!” I went hungry.

3. In the off-chance he has any feelings left to hurt, allow me to take a moment to discuss how truly gross an individual O. P. Harris is. First off, nice lip ring. I didn’t know pop punk bands were still around. Your “beards” are the weakest thing known to mankind. Each year you grow a playoff beard for the Boston Bruins for some unknown reason, even though you don’t spend a single minute of the regular season paying attention to them. Even more humorous on that account is that you willingly walk around looking like someone glued a few pubes to your face in the name of post-season hockey superstition and you don’t even watch THOSE games! When people aren’t looking at your ragged face, it’s a good bet they’re wincing at the site of you wearing sandals April through November and having to experience the horror of your hairy hammer toes. Buy some god damn shoes, jackass, and while you’re at it, invest in some new tee shirts. It’s not that the shirts you own now aren’t great, but stop punishing good clothing. It’s entirely unfair to expect these garments to support that extra 65 lbs you packed away after high school.

Apart from your physical appearance, what the hell is up with your decorating skills? You couldn’t hang a poster straight to save your life. Is one of your legs shorter than the other? The disarray of the dumb shit you choose to display on your walls is appropriate however, when taking into account that you store everything you own on the floor. As a host, O. P. Harris will not feed you, will not provide you with a place to sit, or stand, or even walk, will blind you with his gross body, and cause the perfectionist in us all to run for the nearest razor blade or noose when looking at his walls. It’s best, if absolutely necessary to see him, to meet in a neutral location. Don’t invite him over because in my experience, he’ll demand--in temper tantrum fashion--to be shown DVDs of the late-80’s family sitcom, ALF. He’ll probably get high, something he totally sucks at, and fall asleep without pillow or blanket, and begin to make this awful noise; a noise that I can only imagine he picked up somewhere during multiple viewings of his favorite musicals.