You know how it is when it’s over; when something that you once counted upon, day in and day out, dries up and crumbles to ashes, then blows away, leaving nothing more than a giant hole in your stats chart?
Google, didn't we once mean something to each other? I'm even using Chrome!
Yeah, like that. So that’s how it’s been chez raincoaster lately, now that Google has dumped me (in an apparently bottomless pit). But I’m not bitter. Not me! No, I’m completely SO over that.
And you know how a situation like this, a dumping followed by a deep depression (just LOOK at it! like I spend hours a day doing…but I’m OVER it, I’m telling you!) can often lead to what is known as a rebound relationship? Well, I’ve got one, and it’s even better than Google and its millions of mindless robots. It’s got a mind of its own (to say the least, and I’ve said a great deal more on the subject from time to time).
Well, I’ve found my rebound: John Fucking Cusack. Suck it, Google. Even The Sister dm’d her congratulations; it’s like I got engaged or something!
And also because it was followed by two DMs and a Follow from @johncusack, but it’s cool. It’s no big deal. Because I’m not That Creepy Fan. Nope, not me.
It’s Wednesday. Is it ever Wednesday. It’s that Wednesday, in fact, when you’re invited to a fabulous cocktail and catering showcase in a swanky hotel and you get there and the staff says Sorry, it’s not in this hotel, it’s in that hotel, and you go to that hotel and wander around, peeping in the ballrooms and concluding (on very little evidence, it must be admitted, except the Board of Trade cards left on one of the tables) that it looks like no balls were had that day, not even those of the cute bellboy, because you were running a bit late and besides, still weren’t entirely convinced you was in the right hotel, and when you ask the staff they say you were worried for good reason because the event is not, in fact, in that hotel, but in still a third one if it’s anywhere, and now you’ve got a 15-minute walk ahead of you in your flowered sandals which are very pretty but definitely more akin to a cheese wire between your toes than one is or should ever become used to, and so you go halfway to the third hotel, decide you’re hungry and your feet hurt, and stop for a #14 with beef and a diet coke.
THAT Wednesday.
That Wednesday when your computer scan renders the system so unstable that you conclude that it, itself, is a threat, and you delete it.
That Wednesday when you’re 48 hours behind on something that isn’t even due yet and you’re already two days late with it.
That Wednesday when the office is full of people having meetings at the back and guys doing construction at the front, and, very definitely, the smell of dairy products gone bad ages ago, perhaps when Elvis was last in the building, and now lying, forgotten, in a dark corner where they are becoming progressively more expensive cheese products by the day.
That Wednesday when, if you open the door to get some fresh air, the crackies chat you up.
That Wednesday when you fantasize about winning the lottery and opening this:
The Progress Bar, loading in progress. I'll take the seat closest the whiskey
Ahhhh, that’s more like it. And so, in the name of progress, we present my inaugural link roundup at the ol’ raincoaster blog, a new tradition which is destined to continue at least until Google has seen the error of its ways and reversed The Soundtrack for Losers Situation. Yes, this is what I get paid for, three times a week.
And I’m selling this link service, so if you run a gossip blog, jump on this bandwagon now by leaving me a comment. When I have five subscribing blogs, the price will go up. That’s what you call high-pressure tactics. I read it on JohnChow.com. And now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a date with an imaginary bartender.
As someone who knows me (all too) well said, now I will be utterly impossible to live with: It will totally go to my head (or at least two or three of them will):
1 oz Gin (Hendricks, Plymouth, Broker’s, Old Raj, Beefeater)
0.5 oz Lillet Blanc
0.5 oz Cointreau
0.5 oz Fresh Lemon Juice
barspoon of Absinthe
stir, strain, add lemon zest (and Jay Jones always adds a great wide swath; none of your chintzy ribbons for him!).
Then, if you’re like me, you show it off to everyone at the bar and offer them sips of “your” cocktail and then before you or anyone who didn’t yet get a sip knows it, you’re staring into the bottom of your beautiful, vintage cocktail glass with the chipped gold rim, and there’s nothing down there but lemon zest and the dregs of regret. Ah, socialism! Perhaps I should cultivate a fondness for vodka instead?
Dorothy Parker, who really looks more Doloresy here
For today, I was awoken at about 6am after falling asleep at 4, and awoken in my least favorite way at that: by someone else’s cat galloping across my face and, specifically, over my eyelid, with its claws out, a fact which anyone nearby can determine by looking at the five long scratch marks on my face right now. They’re extra-super-visible because of the glossy antibiotic cream I’ve spread over them in a layer thick enough to double as an air bag, in case of car crash. And as yesterday I was awoken at 6am by galloping cats as well, after falling asleep again at 4 like any decent, normal, non-cat-owning person, this does not take me to my happy place. It takes me to that place where I can stare at people, listening intently to what they’re saying to me, and actually comprehend not one syllable; nay, not even so much as to be able to identify the language except after careful reverse-thought-engineering.
“Well, it was Doug who was talking to me, and Doug only speaks English, therefore it must have been English!” I think with a great deal of relief once I finally work it out. “Now, I wonder what in hell he was talking about?”
But enough about me (can you ever get enough?). It’s time to talk about Brian Atene, Superman Vodka, Trigger, Google, AOL, and me (again).
Longtime readers of the ol’ raincoaster blog will be familiar with our longtime Ateniac status, dating all the way back since 2006, when the vintage Good Day Mister Kubrick audition tape hit the internet, and hit it hard. I’ve posted his more contemporary videos on this blog and virtually any other blog I could get my hands on even so much as the comments section. So far, so what, right? You either love Atene or you identify with him so strongly you can’t stand the sight of him because all those things about yourself that you’d change if you were a better, stronger, richer, younger person? He is all about those things, three cheers and pass the Nembutal.
And, about once every two years, he signs in to YouTube, finds a camel’s-back-breaking-straw comment and deletes all his videos, leaving me with vast holes in whatever of my blogs I’ve put them into, obviously. BUT I’M SO OVER THAT. Anyway, the one with the shout-out to me is no more, and has not been re-uploaded to the new account.
Cognitive dissociative moment (been having a lot of those recently). Change of subject, slightly.
So I’m looking at the stats for my professional website, raincoaster media, and it appears the blog has suddenly gone from a respectable 100 daily hits to 350, all courtesy of this post on, yes, Brian Atene on the subjects of personal, thespianal, and alcoholic marketing, which outranks every other Brian Atene post on Earth except the one on BoingBoing, even though there are about a dozen Atene posts on THIS blog, as opposed to a simple two on that one. Referrers? I can see three clicks from an AOL search for “Brian Atene” but nothing else. No Google, no Yahoo, nothing else shows up on the referrers. Are people pulling this out of thin air, or is it a hidden link of some sort?Why this post? And why now?
Did he marry a Kardashian today? Get a tv show? Carry a full hot water bottle onto an airplane?
Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?
For now, we have this. We have, instead of The Atene Button, Atene Talks Trigger.
raincoaster 