The Invincible Super-Tapes, Volume 1

One of the things I found in my grandmother's hall closet was a brand new, unopened microcasette recorder. I've wanted one of these things since I was a kid, and since I watched Twin Peaks, that desire has only deepened.

So now I find myself carrying it around like a far less surreal Agent Dale Cooper, recording quick ideas when I can't find my notebook. And today I thought it might be fun to record myself at various points in the day, and then transcribe it for the ISB. What follows are those recordings, unedited in any way, transcribed directly from my tape.

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Do you ever see somebody on the street, walking around or driving, and think, "Man, I wonder what that guy's deal is"? I get that like every day, because I pass by this corner, uh, Blossom and Huger, and every now and then there'll be this guy, with this, like, trailer? That looks like... like a circus wagon, like you'd see in an old movie, like a Gypsy circus wagon. And he's got painted on the sides, "The Funky Chicken." The words, I mean, not an actual chicken, but he's got it painted on the sides.

And this guy sets up shop in this abandoned lot on the corner, and he sells paintings, and... he, like, today's painting that he had on display was a poster-sized oil-on-canvas reproduction of an issue of YM with Usher on it. Down to the "YM" Logo. I've seen these--and they're bad, they're rough--and I've seen him do pictures of, uh, Stevie Wonder, once he had one of Will Smith and Martin Lawrence, a painting version of the Bad Boys II movie poster...

And it's like... what is that guy's deal? You know? You want to find out. But... I never have time to stop. So, maybe one day.

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ME: I'm standing here with Matt P., and it's two o'clock, and I'm just going to inform Matt that today's mission with the tape recorder is to catch Cockeye McGee in all his glory... on tape. What do you think of that, Matt?

MATT: I think that's a great idea.

ME: Let's do it.

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No Cockeye McGee voice just yet, but a guy did just come up here and look at the cover to Wizard, where they've got this article on Wonder Woman, and they say, or he says [And here I affect a gruff, rednecky voice] "Catherine Bell should play her.. From JAG! She's got the hooters for it!"

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So it's nine o'clock PM, and I just left the store, and I'm on my way to Chad's Man-Thing Party for the Sci-Fi Channel premier of the Man-Thing Movie. And I did not get, I did not fulfill today's mission of getting Cockeye McGee's melifluous voice on tape so I can transcribe it in all of its glory. But on the plus side of that is that I didn't have to talk to him at all today. So I guess if I just keep trying to get him to, waiting for him to talk to me, maybe that will keep him from talking to me. So it's just some weird, Schrodinger's Cat sort of thing. Will he talk to me today? I don't know, am I going to try to get him to talk to me? The very act of observing changes it.

On the plus side, I did, while driving out of the parking lot, see a girl who looked like Tug's girlfriend Carrie, or at least how she'd look if she weighed three hundred pounds. And that's weird, because you know, occasionally you'll see somebody, and you'll be like: "Hey, is that, is that Jim?" And then you'll be like "Well, no, Jim's got both of his eyes," or something. 'Cause you'll see somebody that looks like someone you know, with just this one weird glaring defect (in this girl's case, her morbid obesity).

So... there was that. But anyway, it's on to Man-Thing party here, Saturday Night, April 30th, 2005.

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It's 12:04 AM right now, it's officially Sunday morning, and I'm on my way home. I just left Chad's, where we watched Man-Thing and ate some Pizzas. And--yeah--Man-Thing was bad. Although it wasn't as bad as I expected it to be for it being, you know, an Australian-made, $10,000 picture about a swamp monster. Um, the weirdest thing was, you know, the whole deal with Man-Thing is that those who know fear burn at his touch. That's his deal. Um, but, that did not happen... on the Man-Thing movie.

Basically, Man-Thing was, was, as Chad said, an asshole in this movie. He killed anybody who goes out into the woods, and, uh, and that's pretty much that. But it looked better.

The, the main character, uh, who is actually not Man-Thing, he... could not act, at all? He, he... he was just terrible. He was like: [And here I affect a vaguely Keanu-esque voice] "I'm a cop! I can't believe in Indian Mysticism!"

Pretty much to be expected with the old Man-Thing movie.

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It's about 12:15 AM now, and I'm driving through Columbia on my way home... and traffic is ridiculous. It's heavier than it was, you know, twelve hours ago, when I was on my way TO work, and now I'm going home and it's even worse. So what I'm thinking is, it's Saturday night, it's... past midnight, it's, you know, exams just ended, so...

I'm thinking that if I wanted to get laid tonight, I probably should have gone out to a bar instead of watching a shitty Sci-Fi Channel original movie about a guy named Man-Thing.

But them's the breaks.