Dear Diary,

It’s been a long, hot, bearded summer for this STUNNINGLY CHISELED man. While I staved off the entreaties of dementia with my daily lifting schedule, the summer was no less long or hot or bearded even when I was BLASTING MY LATS and MAXING THE NEGATIVE and GOOD REP and SKULLCRUSHING WITH LIKE, EIGHTY.

Shit, I fucking hate this place. OK, OK, the place isn’t so bad. It’s the people. City living got this country boy hornswaggled and possibly also hogwashed ten ways to Christmas, and I can’t really be blamed for what I say or do anymore. Not the point. I had two jobs. I quit both on terms that have been accurately posited as “less than cordial.” I just stopped showing up for my job at the library. The job wasn’t especially hard, and I was paid reasonably well for it. I just got tired of having to be in the same place for five whole hours every SINGLE DAY. As for the other job, I quit after being taken aside and asked to please please not leave 45 minutes early (these were two-hour shifts in which I was leaving 45 minutes early). I don’t know what the hell my damage is. Sincere apologies to the good people of the Regenstein A-Level and the dean of the College Office. It was me.

September 11 fucked my shit up. I didn’t know anybody there, but it kind of bugged me. I was reminded that I hate tall buildings, and several of the reasons why were illustrated immaculately two Tuesdays ago, in that they are much more likely to have airliners steered into them. I kind of just sat around for a couple days. I drank some beer. I smoked dope. It was my Vietnam. Conveniently, my Vietnam only lasted about 39 hours. I roughly equate the three hot dogs I cooked but of which I only ate one and a half on that Thursday morning with that last helicopter leaving the embassy roof in Saigon. The war was over. I took a bath and left the house.

I’m clean. I’m smellin’ good. I got on the bus and went to the record store. I sold back a bunch of CDs and picked up a couple records. I also rummaged through the cheap videotape bin. I’ve found a lot of nice things in this particular cheap videotape bin, including but not limited to the animated version of The Hobbit and Young Guns II, not to mention a motherfucking gem mint 10 copy of Wrestlemania III in the original box. The point: Thar be gold in yon discount videotape bin.

So I saw a copy of The Last Boy Scout for the low low price of $2.99. Done and done. And I mean done.

I wandered around for an hour or so looking for a record store that something I was looking for was in. Then I got on the train. I saw a bunch of English girls. One of them was cute, if a little bit toothy. The others looked like English girls.

So I go home. Sit around for awhile. Practice my scales. Come 11 o’clock, I was in the mood for a movie. So I sez to myself, I sez, “PT, old sport, you done just bought The Last Boy Scout for the low low price of $2.99. Let us commence with the watching and the popcorn and the sitting down and the sleepiness and the moyvenflaven.”

And it’s funny about the movie. You’ll probably never see The Last Boy Scout on TV again, since nobody thinks violence is funny as of September 11, 8:48 a.m. EST.

So I make myself a cheese and mustard sandwich and take the tape out of my rucksack. I slide the video out of the box and put it in the tape machine. In the course of the transfer, I noticed that the tape said on it “The Last Boy Scout.” Everything in its right place.

The tape starts playing, as is the procedure.

I had been expecting to see perhaps the requisite FBI warning screen or some kind of superannuated previews, maybe one for Steve Martin in Roxanne. I did not see either of these things. I saw two naked yet heavily made-up women with big fake breasts engaged in what some would term as “going at it.” I was confused. This did not appear to be The Last Boy Scout. This, in fact, appeared to be pornography.

I hoped maybe there was just some crazy glitch and the tape was five minutes of porn, followed by The Last Boy Scout. It wasn’t, as far as I bothered to check. It’s at least 49 minutes of porn. I know because I fast-forwarded through the tape to see if the porn ever ends. It doesn’t. Eventually, the chesty women faded to black and a fresh pair of fornicators appeared. I just remember a lot of fake tits. This “bonus infant” porn, it was not only unsolicited but unoriginal, and thus NOT MY CUP OF TEA.

So I was kind of bummed. I had been REALLY looking forward to watching The Last Boy Scout. I was not looking forward to watching porn. My stance on porn is that it is more a means to an end than entertainment in and of itself. As such, I much prefer disposable computer porn, instead of you know, real porn, in the mode of Al Bundy. Videotape’s not really my bag either. One, you don’t want to be leaving that shit in the VCR, da ich meine Schuletage in einem Haus mit gerade meiner Mutter verbrachte, die sterben würde, wenn sie ein pornoband fand, und mein lieber abgereister Hund, der nie porn ausgesetzt worden sein sollte, das gnome.

The whole unholy marriage of pets and porn freaks me out, by the by and by. You can’t really watch porn, and by “watch porn” I mean defile yourself, in a house with pets. Especially cats. Especially nosy, dirty, rotten, fornicating, fallen CATS. Of all the breeds of housemammal, I think we can agree that CATS ARE THE MOST GIVEN TO FORNICATING, and, coaxially, thus most given to the consumption and dissemination of PORNOGRAPHIC MAGAZINES AND TAPES.