Thomas Mahoney

Resolutions are worthless. Anything worth doing is worth doing immediately, not waiting for some predetermined date. If you want to lose weight, eat less and exercise right now. If you want to quit smoking, don’t wait until next Monday. If you want to be a better person, smile at the next person you see — it’s free and easy. 

I don’t have a particular goal for 2009 (I don’t consider my usual “make a billion dollars” thought a goal or all that unique). However, I do have an event I’m planning for which I’d like to publicly announce once and for all. 

In early July, I’m going to Spain to run with the bulls. 

Yes, I know this doesn’t make sense for a variety of reasons. I’m not very fast (this will change), I’m not particularly enamored with the way the bulls are treated (I’m a vegetarian mostly for ethical/environmental reason), and I generally have bad luck when it comes to the safety of my own body (see various scars and stiff joints from related injuries). 

When it comes down to it, my inner Hemingway has been screaming for this for a few years, ever since a co-worker at Lionsgate told me her boyfriend and his guy friends were doing it. So that’s it. You can send me money, ask me to join you on hikes or jogs, and teach me bits and pieces of Spanish. Throughout the first half of this year, I’ll be using this platform on occasion to write about topics concerning my trip, my training, and the history of everything Pamplona. 

Oh, and just to get this started the right way, I have a message for the bulls:

Come and get some.

I’ve received the great honor of being nominated for a Shorty Award — here is the actual page.

I’m not one to campaign for such recognition, but I will openly state if you nominate me for #pwned, #goesoff, or simply #, I’ll send you a digital high five.

According to TIME Magazine and Yahoo!, the top 10 searches of the year were:

1.) Britney Spears (editor’s note: slut!)
2.) WWE (editor’s note: Ben Boudreau is pumped!)
3.) Barack Obama (editor’s note: teeth of Horus rule the divine)
4.) Miley Cyrus (editor’s note: slut!)
5.) RuneScape (editor’s note: AS IF! WoW pwns you forever!)
6.) Jessica Alba (editor’s note: slut!)
7.) Naruto (editor’s note: huh? NERD ALERT!)
8.) Lindsay Lohan (editor’s note: slut!)
9.) Angelina Jolie (editor’s note: slut!)
10.) American Idol (editor’s note: see also “teenage homoeroticism”)

I’d like to respectfully disagree with this list. Through my own research, analytics, and other covert means, I’ve discovered the top 10 alternative/hipster/fuck-up/weirdo (i.e. “real people”) searches were:

1.) Bestiality (editor’s note: term synonymous with “child pornography,” “two girls one cup,” “hot 3way sexcapades,” and other searches that blow up your parents’ computer and get the FBI watching)
2.) Come and get some (editor’s note: see also “play a riff” if at a Wolf Eyes show in the greater Los Angeles basin)
3.) Thomas Mahoney ruler of the internet and all multiverses
4.) Celtics 131 Lakers 92
5.) Psycho Matt Model Ryan Gay Homosexual Meltdown Party
6.) Crystal Meth
7.) Warcraft funeral
8.) Sasha Grey (editor’s note: unlike whores listed above, NOT a slut due to interest in existential and post-modern theory, not to mention fan of dark poetry broadcast by the likes of Joy Division, et al)
9.) Laser cats (editor’s note: see also “Dirty Dave’s cat nuking everyone and admitting via mimicry that he is indeed the drummer on Dr. Z’s epic prog album “Three Parts To My Soul”) / “Say hi to your mother for me”
10a.) Spiders on drugs (editor’s note: see also “Gary Vaynerchuk“)
10b.) Twitter ain’t shit but Obama and iPhones

If you have any doubts about the validity or impartial nature of this list, please consider there was no mention of “going off” or of getting “RickRoll’d.” Care to disagree with the list? You know how to contact me. Come and get some, turkey.

I rest my case.

1. Scrooged
The Bill Murray version of A Christmas Carol is pretty much the best Christmas movie ever. First, it’s based on the Charles Dickens’ classic, so you can kinda pretend you read a great book once in your life. Second, it has ghosts, shotguns, an ill Grim Reaper, hellfire, acrobats, and Bobcat Goldwaithe. And in between all of the comedy and violence there are plenty of moments that pull on the heart strings. Scrooged? Fuck yes, please.

2. Die Hard
True story: Bruce Willis ran into me at a bar during Christmastime on maybe one of three nights in my life I’ve ever been seen wearing an expensive Italian suit. He looks at me and looks around and mutters, “I didn’t know there was going to be a bunch of lawyers here tonight.” Just as myself and the Mexican mafia dude I’m with are about to brutalize him so terribly he wakes up thinking he is Mickey Rourke, I remember that he was in Die Hard.

Though Alan Rickman steals the show as the German terrorist (remember that brief moment in time when terrorists in films were no longer Russian but we didn’t realize how much the Middle East hated us yet?), Bruce does strap C4 around an office chair and throws it down an elevator shaft, all the time having glass in his feet and dreams of bringing his kid that giant teddy bear hanging out in the limo downstairs with a teenage driver who predicts Chris Tucker’s entire career. Nakatomi Tower gets fucking destroyed, as well as pretty much every terrorist ever and the one stereotypical LA cokehead sales dude.

Happy Birthday, Jesus.

3. A Christmas Story
Despite the fact that TBS has been trying to destroy this classic over the past several years by playing it virtually non-stop right around the time football season is starting, it’s too funny to become the victim of weak-minded programmers.

We see a goose get its neck cut off, a kid really shoot his eye out, another kid get his tongue frozen to a flag pole, and the best anti-Santa moment in Christmas film history, when the mall santa puts his boot in little Ralphie’s face a split-second after crushing his dream.

4. Home Alone
Kevin McCallister - future serial killer.

In real life, lil’ Kevin would be in juvenile detention for the assault and murder of two burglars, but in this slapstick gem — where the physical laws governing pain and death are suspended in a similar fashion to your average Tom and Jerry cartoon — he is instead vaulted somewhere above St. Peter and just under Christ in the Yuletide canon of saints and Gods.

And yes, as George Costanza knows, the old man gets you every single time.

(Inside info: this is the scariest movie Casper Adams has ever seen).

5. Gremlins
Forget that the mogwai get fed after midnight and all hell breaks loose. Just remember the scene in which the kids are talking about the father going down the Christmas chimney like Santa, then slips and breaks his neck. Fucking brutal!

Then there is Stripe, that ruthless motherfucking gremlin. That lil’ fucker goes off like an Ewok version of Johnny Rotten. Thank baby Jesus for Gizmo opening up that window blind!

6. Elf
Will Ferrell’s legacy may very well be reduced to the classic SNL skit “Dissing Your Dog” and this modern classic. Though the violence is limited to James Caan screaming a lot and the midget writer kicking ass, Elf still goes off rather hard. And the chick who plays the main love interest is a babe.

7. Bad Santa
I don’t think there is a lot of acting going on in this movie. Billy Bob is a careless drunk, that chick from the TV show is a slut, the black midget is, um, a black midget, and that kid is fat. That doesn’t prevent Bad Santa from being an anti-Christmas cinematic masterpiece. Who doesn’t love seeing Santa shot numerous times in the back by warm-weather cops?

8. Trading Places
Dan Aykroyd eating the fish he has stashed in his Santa beard vs. Eddie Murphy hearing the two old dudes drop an n-bomb in the bathroom. Which scene is more magical? That’s up for debate, but Trading Places spot on this list is not. It also references PCP, a drug a friend of mine once described as, “if Ecstasy is the Force, dust is the Death Star.” Yeah!

I’d like to give shout outs to Black Christmas (the original, not the remake), The Nightmare Before Christmas, and the scariest Christmas movie ever, The Polar Express.

Boom.

Rad flyer designed in 5 minutes by me. You should see the unicorn over LA one. Very not worthy. Matt, don’t play that psycho bullshit job music. Play a riff!

Where Silverlake Boulevard ends at Glendale Boulevard, mere minutes walking distance from my house, the city is building a library. When this library is complete, there will be a stretch no longer than a few hundred yards which contain the library, Still, an anusara-focused yoga studio, and the Cha Cha, a hipster dive bar fire-hazard decorated with all kinds of Mexican-themed bric-a-brac and velvet paintings.

I have two predictions about this area. First, twenty years from now, several of the best novels produced in the history of Los Angeles will be traced back to this section of town. Second, when I’m dead, you’ll be able to visit this little corner of the universe and within your field of vision have an accurate understanding of my life.

Good evening.

Psycho Matt, aka DJ Tom Hanks, perhaps the most unstoppable member of Poundtown, is having a little party this Friday evening at Temporary Spaces in Hollywood where he will spin, well, I’m not quite sure. Punk? Indie? Electro? Poundtown jams for his boys? Whatever. Doesn’t matter. It shall go off. You should attend. Check out the MySpace while you are it, too.