In the footsteps of greatness...

Michael Jackson...


Richard Pryor...


John Layman...

Guess which American Entertaining Legend burned half of his face off yesterday trying to grill chicken on a malfunctioning bar-b-que?

Spotted in Yakima, WA

Looka like a high-class joint to me!

Layman movie review: ART OF THE DEVIL (Part II: where I actually talk about the movie)

Actually, I enjoyed it quite a bit. Thanks, Dave!

I barely had to play it at double speed at all, which, as fans of my movie watching habits know, is how I get through movies, since my precious time is at such a premium.

Most of the gore came in the form of voodoo-cursed people puking outrageous amounts of blood, and there weren't really any overtly scarey or overly gorey moments (to be honest, the scariest part of the movie was the packaging.) The victimized Thai heroine looked kinda like a young Nerve Campbell, back when Nerve still had the glow of youth and potential to get more cute, not less. And what was really weird was the scary white kid they stuck in to freak everybody out. I've seen plenty of Asian horror movies and even their American rip-offs where there is some scary blank-faced, black-mouthed Asian kid used to scare the bejeezus out of you. Here, they used a little blond white girl, who was slightly cross-eyed with a pushed-in nose, who looked dangerously close to being an albino.

I'll probably netflix Art of the Devil II soon. I'm slowing a bit down on Warcraft at the moment, and watching movies again. At the behest of everybody on Earth, I'm gonna start watching The Wire, and see if it's as good as everybody has been saying.

Anyway, thanks again, David Baron. You really are the greatest. And he also co-hosts awesome parties at San Diego Con!!!

Layman movie review: ART OF THE DEVIL (Part I: David Baron edition)

David Baron used to be such a nice boy. Well groomed, with blindingly white socks, polished shoes, stylish spats and neatly pressed pants. He was always cheerful. He would come to work a half an hour early just so he could open doors for old ladies, pretty girls, fat guys and comic book editors. Sometimes he wore his Scout uniform to work. He was pure, like freshly-fallen snow on a pristine meadow, and innocent, like a baby lamb in a Disney Cartoon.

I distinctly remember him on the evening of his 21st birthday. I offered him a drink. He declined. "I don't drink alcohol," he declared. I offered again.

"C'mon, Dave, what's the worst that could happen?"


Cut to five years later, and David Baron is the creepiest person on Earth. His socks are dirty, and he only wears black. He is never without a scowl, and his clothing is accessoried with skulls and horrible gothic death imagery. He drinks like a hound. He hangs around with people of low character, and has an endless parade of emotionally-damaged, mentally-unstable, pierced, tattooed and often-underage "suicide girls" who serve at his every depraved beck and call. When he is not coloring comic books, I'm sure he is carving a pentagram on his chest with a rusty pearing knife. In short, David Baron has become a horrible person, and perhaps America's worst nightmare.


However, he remains very considerate, and often buys me presents and tokens for no particular reason. He never forgets to get me something when the holidays roll around, and often gives me stuff "just because." This year, at San Diego Comic Con, he gave me a DVD of a movie called Art of the Devil. He knows I have been enjoying various J-horror movies (never mind that Art of the Devil is actually from Thailand,) and wanted to give me this movie as a kindly gesture of friendship.

The back of the DVD boasted that the movie was particularly gruesome and shocking, part of an "Asian Extreme" video collection. Considering what a sick, twisted creep Dave has become, I could only image what "gruesome and shocking" meant by his standards. I guessed it would be six hours of people hanging from meat hooks eating live puppies.

And so it has been sitting on my DVD shelf, unwatched. The movie claims the movie is "terrifying," and without even seeing it I can attest to it. I am so afraid of the monster David Baron has become, I am nearly frightened to death to watch this movie. I get chills down my spine just seeing it in the cabinet. And so it remained, for months on end, the most horrifying, gut-wreching movie I have NEVER seen.



Last night, in a fit of foolhearty pique, I placed the DVD into my DVD player and pressed play.

to be continued

9/11/06: Are We Safer?

On the anniversary of America's tragedy, more pain and suffering, as "homegrown terrorist" Bumble Buzz poops in my sink to protest Layman's domestic ceiling fan policy.



Expect ABC to run a "docudrama" in five years where Bumble Buzz throws up on my carpet in protest of the noisy, scary vaccum.

Cat Tales of Woe II: The Seinfeld-ing of Layman

I'm not sure pictures do her justice, but Rufus is our cutest cat. She's the softest, and the noisiest, and the most personable. You can't pass by her without her squarking, and while the other cats cry and meow, you really get the sense that Rufus thinks she is communicating with you, and she always has to get the first and last word.

Oddly enough, Rufus will always be thought of as our least friendly cat, though this is not true. She likes to be petted, but it very claustrophic when she gets picked up. And she keep to herself the first couple years we had her.

Used to be we fed the cats wet food every Sunday as a treat, until we found out Batty had kidney problems and needed more liquid in her diet, so we switched over to giving them wet food every day. Well, turns out Rufus LOVES wet food, IAMs Ocean Fish, primarily, but most any IAMs, and she is totally finicky about everything else.


Her entire personality changed. Since we've been feeding her wet food daily, Rufus has become the friendliest cat. Affectoinate, loving. She still doesn't like to be picked up, but she has definitely gone from our least friendly cat to our most friendly.

A happy ending for our hero, right? Not to be.

It turns out stupid IAMs has discontinued the cat food she likes, and have switched to some mushy goo that NONE of our cats will touch. We've been buying all sorts of brands of wet food, but Rufus won't touch any of it. Just turns her head up and would rather eat dry food or go hungry.


So now, we've been taken to driving all over the place, to pick up the remaining OLD IAMs formula. Yesterday me and my girlfriend (so-to-be-EX!) both separately hit big jackpots, so we probably have enough to feed Ol' Rufus for another couple months, before she runs out of food she likes and gets pissed at us.

It is exactly like that Seinfeld where Elaine is buying up all the contraceptive spounges because a company stopped making them and she has to figure out who is "spounge-worthy." Except here we are dealing with cans of Ocean Fish cat food instead of contraceptive spounges.

Eye-yi-yi! Oh, the humanity!

An American Tragedy: Layman's Predicament Explained in Three Acts

I'm getting a lot of emails asking why I have not been blogging. I figured I owed you all an explaination.

Chapter One: Ain't No Fan of Mine:
I've wanted a ceiling fan for a long time in my bedroom. But I'm not particularly mechanically inclined. Ed Brubaker --comic's KING of ceiling fans, told me how easy it was to install one. A while ago me and the girlfriend (soon-to-be-ex!) bought one from Home Depot, and disassembled the lighting fixture where the fan was supposed to go, and then got utterly lost and gave up. We tried to get Home Depot to install it, but they don't do installation in the Seattle (though they do elsewhere, oddly enough.) Lowe's had really bad service. So we didn't get that fan I wanted... for an entire year.

Then we learned Lamps Plus did installation, and went there. They totally overcharged and they took FOREVER to get the installers to our house, but we got a really nice fan put into our master bedroom. It also took the installers all of ten minutes, and I learned this base thingie in the hole where the light fixture was was not supposed to be removed like I thought it was. THAT is what you attached the fan too. It was an expensive lesson, but sorta worth it.

So Saturday I went out and bought a fan from Home Depot, and installed it myself in the downstairs "litter box and comic book" room. It went so well that I returned the next day and bought a second fan and installed it in the spare, "soon-to-be Baby Layman's room."

A happy ending for our hero? If only!


Chapter Two: The Bumble Whisperer
Bumble Buzz has been acting very weird lately. Hanging out downstairs, which she never does, acting very needy and whiny. She hasn't been sleeping at my side and she LOVES sleeping next to me. Has been her favorite thing for about her entire 11 years. AND... she's been pooping on bathroom rugs and in my bathtub. Very strange and uncharacteristic behavior.

She doesn't seem sick, but she is definitely acting weird. Something is definitely wrong.



Chapter Three: A Mystery Explained!!!!
Last night we figured it out. I brought her into the bedroom and sat her on the bed, in her spot, and tried to pet her. She kept looking up at the ceiling fan, in pure terror, until she finally ran out of the room. She's afraid of the ceiling fans... and since we put one in every room, afraid to go into every room!

The other cats don't even notice, but every time I carry Bumble Buzz into a room with a ceiling fan she stares at it and panics. Isn't that weird? And she is totally living in fear now, because of the ceiling fans.. which are now in every bedroom of the house.

Shit!!!