4Skin, Gettin Up In Ya Again....Again?

Many of you may not be aware of this, but I used to be in a boy band with three of my closest friends. Well, as close as you can be to three random people that were assembled by a fat, sleazy record producer. But as far as random guys go, they were the best.

We were called 4Skin, and our sound was Backstreet Boys meets N.K.O.T.B with a little slice of Marky Mark (mostly for the bunches of funky) and an N'Sync twist. Here we are with our primary tour care physician, Dr. Greasycheeks.If you can't tell, I'm the cute one. And yes, I realize that wearing a sock on my right arm is completely dumb. Everyone knows that the left arm is the common sock-adorning arm. I caught some major heat from our PR Ho for that one.

Other group members include Lil' Burn One (he's the floating torso), B-Rad (with the upside down, sideways visor that the ladies loved) and J-BallaDawg (the urban cowboy). Together, we collectively ushered many girls into womanhood by implanting thoughts into their heads that would make even the horniest ho blush. This was accomplished through our two biggest hits.

Our first single really got the word out about who were were. "4Skin (Gettin' Up In Ya Again)" hit the airwaves in the summer of 2000 and the public couldn't get enough of us. We toured the world on the strength of that single, but then we dropped a lyrical bomb on the world that changed the face of music forever.

The tender, yet rigid ballad "Circumcise My Love" really ushered us into the stratosphere alongside such powerhouse groups as 98 Degrees, All Saints, Youth Asylum and The Rolling Stones. Here's a sample:

I think we may be infected
And I may have to do something rash
You thought our love was unflappable
But I think we should cut it off and throw it in the trash

(Chorus)
Circumcise my love for you
Baby, you don't know how I feel
Circumcise my love for you
There's no way that I can conceal
The way I feel
Is real
So, here's the deal
Just grab that knife and start a new life
Just circumcise my love.

Then there was a sweet-ass guitar solo by Eric Clapton. He didn't want anything to do with us, but something about a contract loophole and he had to. It was pretty rad. We credited him as E-Clap in the liner notes.

But as time went on, the boy band craze faded. It was hard for us to book gigs (that's industry speak for lip-synching on a stage while we're dancing) and we went our separate ways. But we had a nice career and changed the way people think about music. It was the best two months of my life.

And now, we've been talking again and some of us actually learned to play instruments. I hear Lil' Burn One plays a killa harmonica and B-Rad's been taking triangle lessons. Even I'm up to three different chords on the guitar. Or as we in the industry call it, The Axe.

So I'm thinking of a 4Skin Reunion Tour. We'll start off small until our new single "Beatbox Briss" gets off the ground. But once it does, look out world. You may have circumcised the 4Skin once, but it's back. And it's more beautiful than ever.

Brain Matters Vol. 6 - Monday Spectacular

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There is no one more socially awkward to be around than the person who looks at you for joke approval. You know him. You've maybe even somehow managed to be friends with him for an extended period of time. But at some point, you just can't take it anymore and you have to get away from him.

He's the guy that says something that only he thinks has any semblance of humor in it, begins laughing and looks at you with his unfunny, puppy dog eyes. He needs some sort of approval or he'll just keep staring at you endlesssly, salivating at the thought of making the water you're drinking come out of your nose. But in reality, you just want to spit it in his face in a last-ditch effort to end the utterly ridiculous awkwardness of the situation.

So you smile and say, "Yeah." Or even worse, he forces you to give a fake chuckle (or as it's more humorously known, a "fuckle.") and say the one phrase that automatically means that something isn't funny. He forces you to say "That's funny." See, the thing about jokes and funny situations is that you laugh at them without being aware it. But when something isn't funny and the guy wants it to be, you have to throw him a verbal dog biscuit, pat him on the head and wait. You have to wait for the next completely uncomfortable moment when he references some ancient show or movie that no one cares about, then goes on to explain the scene and why it's hilarious.

And if you don't laugh, he has to inform you of how you just didn't "get" the joke. No, I "get" it. I "get" that you're not funny, but somewhere during your life you actually said something that made someone laugh, and now you think you're Don Frikkin' Rickles.

So, you end up having to laugh, even though you wish you could just tell him to fuckle off.

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The Grammy Award nominees were announced last week and Mary J. Blige garnered an actual butt-load of nominations. But I ask this....Why?

I didn't even know she had a new CD out. Yet all of the sudden she's all over the place. Everyone respects her and gives her standing ovations, but no one owns anything by her.

It's a musical mystery. Who's purchasing these things? I bet if you went to Ms. Blige's house and opened up her garage, millions of her own CD's would come tumbling out.

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How come a tiny-brained rat in a maze can learn to not go a certain way because it receives a small jolt of electricity when it takes a wrong turn, yet I shock the everlovin' holy hell out of myself every single time I get out of my car?


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If I were rich, I'd save most of my money, but set aside a small amount to spend on completely ludicrous shit that makes me look a little insane.

For instance, I hate the way jeans fit the first time you wear them after you wash and dry them. They don't really settle in and get comfortable again until after one wear. But I hate having to get that one day out of the way. Therefore, I would employ a guy to wear my jeans for one day after they get washed. I'd make sure he had on some longjohns and a couple of pairs of boxers for sanitary reasons and to help stretch out the denim a little bit. Then, he would follow me around whenever I had to go out in public. People would ask me who he is and I'd say "Oh, that's my Pants Man. Those are the pants I'm going to wear tomorrow, but he's wearing them today. I can do shit like that, because I'm rich, so it's not weird, it's just eccentric."

Then I'd go to get in my car, shock the crap out of myself and slap my Pants Man in the face out of frustration. Because I'd be rich and, if you can't slap your Pants Man in the face every once in awhile, then why bother having a Pants Man at all?

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Every day at work, my Spam filter sends me an update of emails it's blocked. Once every few days, one of the blocked emails is actually the Spam filter report from the previous day. It actually blocked itself. My Spam filter is trying to protect me from my Spam filter.

Now, I don't know a lot about computers (although I can snicker at some of the sexually suggestive names associated with them, like RAM, hard drive or Intel Celeron Processor) but I'm pretty sure my Spam Filter is going to try to kill me.

If you don't hear from me for a few days, check my inbox. There will probably be a ransom note. You'll know who sent it because it will look like this:

01001001 00100000 01101000 01100001 01110110 01100101 00100000 01010010 01101111 01110111 01100100 01111001 00100000 01000010 01101111 01110111 01100100 01100101 01101110 00101110 00100000 01001001 00100111 01101101 00100000 01101011 01100101 01100101 01110000 01101001 01101110 01100111 00100000 01101000 01101001 01101101 00100000 01110111 01101000 01100101 01110010 01100101 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 00100111 01101100 01101100 00100000 01101110 01100101 01110110 01100101 01110010 00100000 01100110 01101001 01101110 01100100 00100000 01101000 01101001 01101101 00101100 00100000 01110111 01101000 01101001 01100011 01101000 00100000 01101001 01110011 00100000 01100110 01100001 01110010 00100000 01100001 01110111 01100001 01111001 00100000 01100110 01110010 01101111 01101101 00100000 01101001 01101110 01110100 01100101 01110010 01101110 01100101 01110100 00100000 01110000 01101111 01110010 01101110 00101110

Translation: I have Rowdy Bowden. I'm keeping him where you'll never find him, which is far away from internet porn.

That's right. I made a binary code "joke." I'm not proud of it, but it's funny, right? I'm looking right at you and waiting for you to laugh. I'm not going to quit staring at you until you see how humorous my joke is. I could do this all day. Seriously. Come on. Give me that sweet, sweet approval. No? Nothing? Not even a fuckle?

Well, you obviously didn't get it.

Always the Guinea Pig. Never the Guinea.

Last week, I attended a focus group. I sometimes do these to earn a little extra cash and sleep soundly at night knowing I helped a business find out about its consumers. But mostly it's for the money. Actually, it's all for the money, but at least they're sometimes interesting.

I walked into the research center (i.e. - an old office building with one potted plant decorated with christmas lights from 1972) and sat down alongside 50 other schmoes just trying to make a dolla outta fifteen cents. But, as I so often do, I happened to pick the seat beside the most annoying, socially inept person in the room.

Allow me to explain a conundrum I face on a daily basis. Whenever I am in any sort of social situation alone, the dumbest, freakiest or most homelessiest person within a 5 mile radius must speak to me. I believe I emit some sort of pheromone that attracts life's lowest forms of humanity. Unfortunately, this power I possess only works one way. It doesn't seem to draw in women with no communicable diseases and all their teeth. Hell, I'd feel lucky if it attracted a girl with a dental plan. At least then I'd know there was hope for her orthodontic future.

So I sat down next to a middle-aged woman who looked harmless enough. She's grading papers. "Must be a teacher," I thought. At least her being busy means we wouldn't have to engage in the mindless chatter that so often begins in awkward social situations. But I was wrong. Oh so very wrong.

She begins coughing uncontrollably and I see her face, which looks like the female Gremlin from "Gremlins 2: The New Batch." Yep, she's weird enough. Here comes the conversation. Sure enough, she begins to inform me that I shouldn't worry about her cough. It's not contagious because it's settled far enough in her lungs that it's not going anywhere. I even snapped a picture of her with my camera phone.


Hmm. Thanks for your entire medical history, Gremlette. Here's hoping you also have some sort of strange disease that causes your mouth to stop opening and closing while spewing nonsense about the kids in your class. I don't care if little Billy is gifted unless little Billy will one day go on to create a cure for the common hangover.

Finally, the focus group begins and all 50 of us are ushered into a room. Of course, there is only one seat left, which I am forced to take it. And it just happens to be beside a woman who is so migraine-inducingly annoying, she makes Gremlette look like a fairy-tale, lollipop, bunny hopping, sunshiney day.

The point of the focus group is to have the mediator show us possible new OnDemand cable channels and then we circle on a questionnaire if we'd be interested or not. Don't talk, because it could sway other people's opinions. Don't flip ahead. Just fill out the form and listen. It's so easy, Gremlette's extremely ungifted students could muster the brainpower to complete the simple task at hand.

Yet this woman refuses to shut up. She talks under her breath about how the channel ideas are stupid. About how her kids would never watch that. About how she'd never let her kids watch that. It's actually a wonder that she has kids, because I don't know how or why any man would get her to shut up long enough to impregnate her.

She goes on to yell out things to the moderator about how he's wrong in how he's presenting things to us.

I begin to imagine her husband. He must be a blind, deaf man with no sense of touch. It's the only explanation.

She points to a pencil on the floor at mumbles something at me. I show her my pencil and say, "I've got mine. Thanks." More mumbling about the pencil. I repeat that I have one. She then reaches down and grumbles "It was my pencil. I wanted you to pick it up." Then she lets out a frustrated breath.

My blood actually begins to boil. Steam might have exploded out of my ears as if I was in a Looney Tunes cartoon, but I was so blind with rage that I can't say for sure. I have now decided there is no husband. She was artificially inseminated by Hitler's frozen Nazi-sperm.

A few minutes later, we take a short break and I decide I'll be the better man and let Hitler's baby factory apologize for being so rude. "You know, I couldn't understand what you were saying about the pencil earlier," I say, in my most cordial manner. She responds with "Well I guess if I had to say it over again, I'd talk to you like I talk to my kids so you'd understand."

Now, I would never, ever, under any circumstance even begin to think of hitting a woman, but at this point I'm wondering if strangling one is ok. You know, not enough to kill her or anything. What's a little strangulation between suddenly mortal enemies?

"That is the rudest, most condescending thing I have ever heard in my life." I reply, mostly because if I wasn't trying my damndest to be semi-polite, that whole strangulation thing might have become a reality. But she just ignored it (I presume because "condescending" was a little too polysyllabic for her) and turned around to annoy some other poor soul.

Then, as if the Stupidity Fairy had been flying around the room and sprinkled her with Moron Dust, Gremlette raises her hand and asks if the OnDemand IMAX Channel we're rating is actually going to be in IMAX if she got it at home, because things like that make her nauseous. The moderator seemed shocked that anyone could be that dumb and answered, "Ma'am. Unless you have an IMAX screen in your house, I think you'll be o.k."

At least I can laugh at stupidity. But much like a loaded up chili dog, absolute rudeness doesn't sit so well.

The moral of the story? Just be nice. And if you have to talk to someone you don't know, make sure they actually care to hear what you're talking about. Know when the conversation is over and let it end naturally.

And most importantly, stay away from Nazi-sperm.