STREET CARNAGE » Blog

ON WEDGIES

Gavin — Fri, 25 May 2012 16:12:09 +0000

When I first heard that gang initiations involve everyone getting to beat the shit out of you, I thought, “That’s high school.” In Canada we had two basic games and they often overlapped. They were

1- SAFETY SLUT

If someone farts or burps, they have to call “Safety.” If someone else calls “Slut” before you say safety, everyone gets to beat you up for as long as it takes to name five breakfast cereals. Sometimes we’d forgo the fights and just atomic wedgie each other. Sometimes the wedgie war would be a game in and of itself.

2- WEDGIE WARS

Being mostly British expats, our group of friends was about half circumcised guys and half foreskinned, so we’d square off at either sides of the party and then go screaming into battle trying to wedgie the enemy until all their waistbands were gone (atomic wedgies).

The way each group would start a battle was by hollering out the battle cry. For us foreskinned dudes our cry was “AWOOOOGA!” When circumcised guys heard this, they’d do theirs which was “Snip, snip, snip, snip” (I know, gay, right?). Then it was on. We didn’t stop until one side was completely out of waistbands. This was also around the time we’d notice all the girls had left the party. Wedgie fights are not exactly poon festivals.

If you’re ever in a situation like this, I highly recommend secretly wearing no underwear at all. It takes your opponent about 30 seconds to figure this out and by then you’ve had a full bum massage totally against his will. Funniest rape you’ll ever commit.

—GAVIN McINNES

MY SISTER, MY COUSIN

Stevie Montenegro — Fri, 25 May 2012 15:00:11 +0000

Shortly after my father was released from prison for murder (he did 6 years of 20 and got out on a prosecutor botch), he married his first cousin.

I was 9. I had little contact with dad and my cousin-mother, but they seemed like swell folks as far as I could tell at that age.

It wasn’t long after that I had a sister-cousin. We’ll call her Sabrina ‘cause that’s her name. I’m reasonably sure most of you haven’t had the sister cousin experience. As a teenager it wasn’t something I mentioned much. I just didn’t see being multi-related to someone as good conversational fodder for securing vaginas.

In my twenties, however, I found the misfortune and tragedy of others a fine source of comedy, my own included. There was no shortage of material with my stabby-murder-dad, his first cousin-wife, and their cousin-daughter—i.e., my sister-cousin.

She was a teenager during my mid- and late twenties. I still didn’t see them much but I was fascinated with it all whenever we would gather. I would always try and determine if she was some level of retarded. She certainly wasn’t bright, but not retarded. There was one thing she was, though. HOT. What the fuck?

I grew up as an only child and presented myself as such if asked until I was an adult. I never really knew what it meant to have a brother or a sister and how they identified with each other. Now here I was attracted to my cousin-sister, a product of the already confusing relationship of my life-taker-life-giver father (did I mention he killed someone?) and his cousin-wife. Logically, I dismissed it as simply being male and attracted to most anything. Emotionally, I was fucked. I couldn’t process it. Was it somehow passed genetically to be attracted to family members? I never experienced it with any of my other relations. And I had lots of cousins and even a large step-family.

After visits with them my mind swam. Did they make her specifically for me? Was there something cosmic happening here? And what were her thoughts? Could she detect my lusty thoughts? I jerked out many pearly tears wrestling with all of this.

My father later died of a heroin overdose; I saw my cousin-sibling and mother-cousin even less than before.

Over time I would hear stories about Sabrina’s descent into meth and other bad choices. I’m sure I dodged the biggest bullet of my life by keeping my otherwise stupid mouth shut about all of this.

After his death, I decided it was fortunate for all that could have been involved that I ended up in a long-term (going to this day) relationship that helped me curb these thoughts. But maybe it was only fortunate for me.

One night (I was in my late thirties) I was at a family gathering at my grandmother’s. Granny was in the early stages of what is now full-blown dementia. There we all were, maybe ten to twelve of us all gathered around a meal. My gal was on one side of me and sister-cousin on the other. I noticed granny staring our direction with a magical, starry-eyed gleam in her eye. I made the colossal mistake of asking her what she was thinking.

This is an exact quote, and it’ll never leave my brain: “You know, Sabrina always wanted you to be the one to take her virginity.”

Holy. Fucking. Shit. What was I meant to do with that? The table was silent. Had I been right years earlier, was she created just for me and I missed the cue? Was this simply a misspoken line? Better still, was it too late? She didn’t have kids, I didn’t have kids—could we still fulfill the prophecy?

HAD EVERYONE KNOWN BUT ME?

At that moment, a drunk uncle (a drunkle?) spit his wine across the table in laughter and shifted the focus away. Then an uncomfortable aunt managed to change the focus entirely with I can’t remember what.

I’ll never know what Sabrina thought of all of this, because I will never ask her.

All of this is on my mind now because I recently saw her and my former mother-cousin for the first time in five years or so. Seems they are both doing well. Mother-cousin has a girlfriend-life-partner and enjoys softball. Sabrina has finally managed to kick the meth, is on SSI, and lives in a nice but very small converted chicken coop.

—STEVIE MONTENEGRO

PROBLEM MAN: I CAN’T DECIDE BETWEEN THE 6-MONTH OR THE 12-MONTH P.O. BOX PLAN

Problem Man — Fri, 25 May 2012 13:00:21 +0000

Jay-Z is lucky. He has only 99 problems.

The reason I’m called Problem Man is because no matter how dutiful, attentive, thrifty, and conscientious I am, along comes another problem for me to solve. Like this one. Or this one. Or this one. I have yet to solve any of those problems, so what happens? Along comes another one.

One of my main problems is that I don’t trust my neighbors. About anything. But for the purposes of this article, I specifically don’t trust them not to steal the mail from my mailbox outside my house. Sure, I’ve tried various locks on it as well as various alarm systems, but that’s not going to stop some street thug with a sledgehammer and a gun from stealing my mail, now is it? I lost so much sleep worrying about such eventualities, it became a problem in itself.

One option would be a PO Box from a certified USPS office. Their fee for ~~a year~~ 12 months is exactly double what it is for 6 months, so there’s no added financial incentive to purchase it for 12 months unless you’re some sort of obsessive type and convert that into a full year in your mind just for consistency’s sake.

The problem with that option is that I have very good reason to believe I’m being tracked by the federal government and merely filling out the forms for a US Postal Box would likely enable them access to even more information about me than they currently possess, which I fear may be a lot.

So I’ve decided the safest and sanest option would be to lease a private postal drop box through a private-sector vendor. Accounting for gas mileage and relative safety of the neighborhood in question, I’ve calculated that the best private vendor lives exactly 2 miles—not an inch more or less—from my front door.

Problem is, they offer a financial incentive if you lease for ~~the whole year~~ 12 months—which isn’t a problem in itself—but it doesn’t seem substantial enough to justify taking the full ~~one-year~~ 12-month plan.

I hesitate to share with you the exact cost of the plans in question, because some wack-job with Asperger’s might be able to trace exactly which private postal service I’m talking about and then steal my mail anyway, but in rough terms, the savings would pay for ~~an entire week’s~~ 7 days’ worth of homemade lunches.

But the problem I face is an existential problem—what if I were to die during the final ~~half-year~~ 6 months? Then I’d lose my investment. I’m not sure that’s worth ~~a week’s~~ 7 days’ worth of free lunches. I guess what they say is true and there’s really no such thing as a “free lunch.”

What should I do? I implore you to help me.

—PROBLEM MAN

THE GOLDEN AGE OF DRUNKEN ROCK CLIMBING

Kennedy — Fri, 25 May 2012 05:00:43 +0000

Long ago, before I was married, I really liked to get fucked-up.

The year was 2007 and I was hosting a Crips and Bloods theme engagement party. (I stole this idea from Chris Nieratko.) The forties were cold, the cholas were appropriately lip-lined, and the guests were having a ball. My soon-to-be wife and I had just moved into a New Orleans house together. We bought a small fixer-upper a month before Hurricane Katrina hit. Thankfully, the storm only destroyed the shitty roof and fence. It took two years of work and money to finally get the place looking sharp. Against my fiancee’s wishes, I fought to build a 140-square-foot rock-climbing wall in our den. She argued that it would hurt resale value and that I would grow bored of it. She was right on both counts. The novelty of a rock wall in one’s house quickly wanes, but my own wall-climbing interest was at its peak.

As the evening progressed, I was trashed. This signaled that it was high time to participate in the adrenaline sport of the 1990s, indoor rock climbing. At the start of the video, a girl asks, “Did you take peyote or something?” Sadly, I didn’t. Peyote would have excused the jackassery that was about to occur.

0:14 I ask, “Are you, are you videotepping?”

0:27 FIRST FALL.

0:31 My future wife encourages me with, “Try it again!”

0:39 Another unidentified girl comments, “This has got YouTube written all over it.”

0:47 SECOND FALL.

1:10 After I appear to make some headway, my THIRD FALL reveals a 40-ouncer of O.E. on the coffee table.

1:25 CHEAT (foot touches the ground).

1:31 FOURTH FALL, which leads to idiotic stumbling.

1:40 First appearance of future father-in-law. (This was an engagement party, remember?)

1:52 Me mumbling, “Leggo leggo leggo leggo leggo.” My girlfriend’s dad responds, “I didn’t even touch your ass.”

1:58 Success? Made it to the top of a 10-foot wall. A real accomplishment. To celebrate, I run into the door like a grinning retard.

2:07 Aftermath. I might have won the 10-foot battle, but the malt liquor won the war.

2:22 Future wife says, “I love you.” Ah, moments like these! Even after I behaved like a fool and got bombed at the party I co-hosted, she still tended to me as I retched into a plastic bucket.

2:31 Exit puke.

In 2012, the climbing wall is no more. The wife is still around.

—KENNEDY

I AIN’T MAD AT THIS

Gavin — Thu, 24 May 2012 18:30:53 +0000

SNL recently ripped off a Monty Python sketch, but you know what? I ain’ t mad at it. The Python sketch had been buried so long ago, about 1% of the people who saw the SNL sketch would have noticed. Also, they didn’t rip it off per se, they used it as inspiration to make fun of Californians. Only a total comedy snob would have a problem with that. Right? Does this count as public domain or is it a shameless rip off?

PS: Sorry Canadians if that Hulu shit doesn’t work for you. NBC doesn’t get the Internet.

—GAVIN McINNES

WOLVES, DOLPHINS, AND INJUNS: IN DEFENSE OF INDEFENSIBLE ART

Lasse Holmberg Josephsen — Thu, 24 May 2012 15:00:30 +0000

Right now at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, there’s an exciting exhibition called Ecstatic Alphabets/Heaps of Language.

It’s a group exhibition featuring the works of 12 contemporary artists using different media, works that represent a radical updating of the possibilities inherent in the relationship between art and durr bluh booboob vum-vum prook prook VEEEEEEEEEEEH!!!

HOPATTA HOPATTA BING!

Sorry. I just bored myself into a fit there. I don’t give a shit about that exhibition. Not one jot nor tittle excites me about any of it. I’m not into art.

Sure, I like Mucha, Dix, Hiroshige, and a lot of other stuff, but I enjoy those works in a very simple way, and most art enthusiasts would probably consider me a Philistine should I ever speak loudly about the works of those artists.

Then there’s a different form of art I enjoy. You most definitely won’t find these artists in any gallery near you, at least not a respectable gallery. Even the so-called lowbrow artists look down on the art these guys make. Enthusiasts of kitsch and camp would never dare slumming this low. It’s a movement so underground, you probably haven’t heard of it. In fact, I don’t even think it has a name, at least not one I’m aware of.

So I’ll simply give it a name right now: Wolphinjun Art.

That’s an amalgamation of the names of three creatures in American wildlife that is often portrayed in these pictures: wolves, dolphins, and Injuns.

You may not know what the hell I’m talking about, but you’ve definitely seen Wolphinjun art somewhere. Probably on a cheap posters or on the T-shirt of a clueless hippie.

The motifs in these pictures are often dolphins, sea turtles, or wild stallions frolicking in a tropical landscape, apparently airbrushed with the most glaring colors the artist could find. Then there’s a slightly rougher sub-genre of Wolphinjun that has motifs of wolves, Injuns, or wolves with Injuns. Wolphinjun is the visual equivalent of really cheesy New Age music, something you’ll see if you ever search for New Age tunes on YouTube. Wolphinjun paintings go really well with the sound of a forest stream or whale song.

(Notice that I use the word “Injun,” as opposed to “Indian” or “Native-American.” That’s because the New Age view of Native-Americans and their culture that is portrayed on these pictures is so removed from any form of reality, they make James Cameron’s Avatar look like a brilliant documentary on the Sioux.)

Since the pictures are often made with airbrush and the motifs are so banal, Wolphinjun is closely related to the kind of pictures you’ll see on trucks and motorcycles. But where there’s often an element of erotica and patriotism on trucks, Wolphinjun offers only serenity (unless you’re an epileptic, in which case the colors might induce a fit.)

But let’s focus on the more tropical and marine-oriented aspects of Wolphinjun.

Like, say, Tiki, this type of art is pure escapism for the people who enjoy it. You don’t have to have studied art theory and history for years to appreciate the sight of a dolphin being really fucking happy in the Pacific. You don’t have to wonder about the artist’s motives. What you see is what you get. If there’s symbolism involved, it’s so heavy-handed and banal, even a Swede will understand it.

All you need to enjoy Wolphinjun is a wish for a tropical island, serenity, and a dolphin or two. And who hasn’t?

My fascination for Wolphinjun hasn’t yet gotten me to the point where I’ve actually bought a poster. My girlfriend would frown on that. And I’ll also admit that I’d be too embarrassed to put a poster up on my walls. There’s probably an element of irony in my enjoyment of these indefensibly stupid pictures—I won’t deny that—but there’s an escapist inside of me who also genuinely appreciates them for portraying this dull and monochrome world in colors that simply does not exist in nature.

Wolphinjun doesn’t just come on posters. This is my girlfriend’s bath towel:

Just look at that thoughtful horse in front of that moon! What do you think that horse is thinking of? Beats me, but it’s probably something profound.

Judging by my admittedly shitty research, Wolphinjun has at least four superstar artists. This weird pantheon consists of Martin Allen, Jeffrey Michael Wilkie, David Miller, and my favorite: the fair-haired elfish surfer Christian Riese Lassen, a man who probably farts little drops of hope.

You might notice that these fellas call themselves “marine artists,” but both in my mind and on Google, “marine art” conjures up a slightly different type of paintings. It’s “Wolphinjun” from now on, whether the artists want it or not.

What I’m trying to say is that there’s nothing wrong with dolphins and faux spirituality in art. Let’s have some more of it in respectable galleries.

—LASSE HOLMBERG JOSEPHSEN

SECOND-GRADE KILLA

Goat Sampson — Thu, 24 May 2012 13:00:23 +0000

When I was a kid, I was a little punk.

Old pictures of me show an angry, annoyed or violent small person looking at the camera like it stole my G.I. Joes and took a poop in my Fruit Loops.

Before I got enrolled in school I would constantly get disciplined for bad behavior in daycare, foreshadowing my future harmonious relations with authority figures. In my early years I grew up as a “working class” white kid in Tice, Florida, a majority Hispanic neighborhood. In first grade however they tested our IQs and with a score of 135 I was immediately invited to a better school near downtown Fort Myers. I didn’t like being in those special classes at first. I wanted to be with my friends but instead I was with a bunch of weird kids who were smart like me. Still, I made new friends fast and this started my school campaign of becoming friends with kids whose parents were considerably wealthier than mine.

Killing the game with the gold drapes, Beatles moptop, and gay Easter egg ring

My new friends lived in huge houses, had basketball hoops, cable TV, every toy, all the video games and were allowed to eat pizza, hot dogs, and mac and cheese whenever they wanted. In comparison, at my house if I got too hungry, I’d just go to sleep. If they got in trouble, their parents would bitch for a bit but punishment never came. If I got in trouble I’d get whipped by a belt or wooden spoon since by then I’d become immune to spanking which would just garner laughter on my part. In the fourth grade, I was the only kid who couldn’t afford to go on the class field trip to the Everglades. Normally, that wouldn’t be a huge deal (a swamp? who cares, it’s south Florida, they’re everywhere) but some kid shit his pants in front of everyone and I missed it. People still called him “Van Dookie” all the way into high school. But I missed it. I was devastated.

This new school was all about the arts. Along with smarts, I was also very good at illustration. My dad used to take me into bars and when I got bored watching grown-ups get drunk I would draw cartoons of them on napkins and bartenders would flip their shit and make a big fuss about it, some even hanging them up around the bar. I won some contests my mom made me enter and once kids found out I was good at drawing I became the kid everyone bugged when they wanted something drawn. Apparently the school also intended to teach the culinary arts. When I was in second grade they decided to have a special “Thanksgiving Lunch” for our parents and the school’s investors in our cafeteria. For some reason they entrusted us eight-year-olds to help make the food that was to be served. They assigned groups of kids with certain responsibilities for different foods. My group got the nut mix. We were supposed to mix the nuts and beans into little baggies, prepping us for our future careers in dealing drugs. This got old fast, so naturally our group started to flick the beans at one another. After getting yelled at, we found a roll of pennies instead and started flicking those at each other. One of my friends—a Haitian kid named Hipolito (yes, real name)—and I were having a little mini-war. After we flicked the pennies at each other we’d pick up the other’s penny and return fire, only this last time Hipolito didn’t. After figuring it must have gotten lost, he conceded and we stopped.

Cut to the “Thanksgiving Lunch” with parents and sponsors later that day. Everything is going normal. My mom shows up and we’re in the cafeteria at a table eating food. That’s when my second grade teacher shows up to our table—eyes on fire—finger arbitrarily extended toward me when she shrieks, “MURDERER!”

The room went limp. I was stunned. Everyone was. Remember, this is still Florida we’re talking about here. I honestly had no idea what she was talking about. About frothing from the mouth she yells, “I know you did it! Hipolito told me you were the one who put the penny in the food!” She explained that one of the sponsors was snacking on the mix and almost choked on a penny. After they reported this, the teacher questioned kids from our group and Hipolito rolled on me. That’s why he never flicked back the other penny. It landed in the nut mix and he never told anyone. That, or he didn’t know. So when approached he put two-and-two together and to avoid blame, made me as the fall guy.

My mom went DEFCON 1. She’s usually one of the quiet reserved types. When I was younger and had friends and girls over they always mentioned how quiet and “sweet” she was. That’s because they’ve never crossed her. When she feels slighted, or someone she loves is, she makes you want to crawl into a hole and drink a pint of AIDS. I can count on one hand how many times she’s blown up like this, it rarely happens (at a football game she about made a man cry after he kept banging on a sign to make noise.) She ripped into the teacher and undressed her in front of everyone for calling her kid a murderer. The momentum of spit and anger shifted. I was stuck in paralysis during the whole ordeal, blown away by the sudden explosive display in front of me. Finally—once everyone was completely uncomfortable—the teacher agreed to apologize, and then asked me to apologize to the woman who almost choked. I was still shell-shocked so I just went ahead and did even though I never intentionally left the penny in the food or even knew it was in the food in the first place. Hipolito’s reaction when the penny got lost was kind of weird, so I’m pretty sure he knew and just let it happen, in turn, setting me up.

So, Snitch-olito—if by some impossible chance you’re reading this and not setting up another poor schmuck as we speak, just know that I never forget motherfucker. Whenever I finally lose it and decide to go on a killing spree of all those who’ve betrayed me, you’re on that list, Friend-olito. Also, to that Andy kid from the after school daycare center who sucker-punted me in the balls by the big slide, I didn’t forget you, either. I’m scary good at remembering faces, so if I see you, your balls are mine, but you know, in a totally non-gay way.

—GOAT SAMPSON

MY FIRST TASTE OF CONDOM

Jesse Andrew — Thu, 24 May 2012 05:00:25 +0000

A straight man has no business knowing what a condom tastes like.

I say this because a female prostitute will make her trick wear a rubber before blowing him and I’m guessing a gay dude might make his new partner wear a condom before sucking his dick for the first time, I don’t know? I have no idea what the rules are when it comes to homosexual casual sex. All I’m saying is a straight man will never be in a situation when his tongue will touch a condom (at least I used to think that.) So what does a condom taste like?

It tastes exactly like what you would think it tastes like—rubbing alcohol. I know this because I was recently having sex with a very beautiful woman. I wore a condom and being the general weirdo that I am, I needed to piss in the middle of sex. (I drank two beers just before.) After silently cursing the walls around me, I explained of my aching bladder and left her laying there naked somewhere between regret and desperate hope that maybe I’d come riding back into the bedroom like the Trojan Army ready to slaughter what’s left of her drying coochie. Wait, wasn’t that entire army a bunch of homosexuals? I know they all sucked each other’s dicks or whatever.

Anyhoo, that’s not the point. Just because a dude takes a shot in the mouth doesn’t mean he can’t fuck some shit up on the battlefield. Greek men are weird motherfuckers, man. I’m not trying to fight them—they lick armpits and shit.

So I come waddling back down the hallway ready to devour this woman and by devour I mean just that—swallow her pussy. The only problem was that I already had sex with her wearing a condom and her pussy was now covered in lubricant. Naturally I don’t foresee the future and once having my first mouthful, all I taste is rubbing alcohol. Now this is a very, very, touchy situation. I can’t exactly yank my head out of her thighs and scream in her face, “OH, SICK!!!”

Are you kidding? Her head would explode and she’d never let my face anywhere near there again. I’m not a moron. This was my fault, not hers. She’s amazing. So instead I had to man up and power through this mini-nightmare. I figured the best thing to do is swallow as much of this lubricant as possible in the shortest amount of time and then of course I can sit back and enjoy how pleasant she tastes. So there I am tearing into her crotch like a fuckin’ possessed Cookie Monster that’s just been unleashed on a pack of double-stuffed Oreos and she’s probably thinking to herself, “WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH THIS MAN?!?”

The best way to describe this is like when you take a bite of your food and the shit is so hot it burns the living fuck out of your tongue, but like an idiot you never spit it out and instead try to chew it up and swallow in record time. It’s pure panic and this is exactly how I was going down on this woman. Completely out of control. I was trying to swallow as much of this Trojan condom bullshit as fast as possible—I just wanted her!

You’re probably laughing at what a moron I am, but fuck you—it worked. I was soon reaping the beautiful benefit of all my hard work. Later that night I wondered of what kind of side effects a person might experience after swallowing such chemicals, but if a woman’s vagina can take it so can my stomach, right? At least I can still see.

—JESSE ANDREW

Instagram: seanogden

TEN LITTLE INDIANS LOOKING TO SIOUX

Benjamin Leo — Wed, 23 May 2012 16:00:04 +0000

I know, I know: it’s a disgusting, insensitive, racist headline; and after all, JOKES are much more hurtful to society than power-drunk, lazy witch-hunters who focus all their energy on intimidating, threatening, slandering, suing, and trying to destroy any public figure who thinks there are more important things than pretending to toe the PC McCarthyist line.

Look at these fucking assholes: Hundreds of them took the day off work to march in support of a man who says the letters KKK were carved into his stomach by a surgeon at a South Dakota hospital.

Do the letters really say KKK? You be the judge:

Are you blind, sir?? Oh wait, you are blind. OK, what I mean is, are you insane? If my body looked like this after heart surgery, the first thing I’d ask is who the fuck was my cardiologist, Hellen Keller with a cheese-grater? (Most violent book she ever read.)

Secondly, seeing KKK in these scars truly takes Jesus-in-a-piece-of-toast perception.

People: stop hanging out with riffraff shit-stirrers and get to work. Playing this shit is an insult to the real crimes that were committed against your people. Work and succeed and don’t waste your time blaming ~~Israel~~ ~~America~~ The White Man.

…and if you have no job and you’re dead-set on protesting, at least fight something real, like the Cleveland Indians logo. Now that is some fucked-up 1870′s-ass BUUUULshit.

—BENJAMIN LEO
Get gypped by Indian Giver Benjamin Leo on Twitter

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NIGHT OF THE LIVING KEVINS

Jim Goad — Wed, 23 May 2012 15:00:44 +0000

On Seinfeld, Newman once told Kramer that “Tuesday has no feel.” I feel the same way about the name “Kevin.”

I know people named Kevin, and I’ve hesitated to tell them this, but that is one blank slate of a fucking name. Does it conjure any colors to you? Any sounds? Any smells? Anything? Not to me. It’s the Blank Canvas of Guys’ Names. “Mark” is kind of bland, too, but at least it could signify a stain or a smudge. But “Kevin” is the very essence of nothingness. You could throw anything at “Kevin,” and it will bounce right back at you.

Maybe it’s synesthesia from a head injury, but most words and names have a texture to me. All the way since the 80s I’ve had this odd habit of coming up with fake names merely because I like the way they sound. I stopped counting at around 700 names. Then I started using “Kevin” as a first name because it enhanced the goofiness of the second name. Even if the second name was flavorless by itself, it suddenly acquired spice just by standing next to “Kevin”:

Kevin Advent
Kevin Budget
Kevin Enema
Kevin Guppy
Kevin Jiffy
Kevin Monthly
Kevin Scripture
Kevin Seminar
Kevin Sherbet
Kevin Sitar
Kevin Spinach
Kevin Torpedo
Kevin Value
Kevin Venison
Kevin Yemen

When I saw an episode of Portlandia that featured Kevin the Cat, I didn’t feel quite so alone in my fascination with the sheer unfascinating nature of this name. I felt reassured knowing that someone else out there appreciated its magical cardboard taste.

We are all Kevin.

OK, no we’re not.

And that’s a good thing.

Unless your name is “Kevin,” in which case it sucks to be you.

—JIM GOAD