Is this thing on?

Come check out my new digs at Hello Ninja. You'll be glad you did. It's the dog's bollocks. That's how they say something is rad in the UK. If I'd said it was bollocks, that would mean it was crap - but "dog's bollocks" is good. Go figure. Anway, come check out the new site!

All good things…

Well, I’ve decided to do it. I’m pulling the plug on The Filthy Scarecrow. We had a long talk and decided it would be best if we went our separate ways. Maybe try and just be friends for a while, we’ll see. It’s been a good ride over the last couple of years though. A lot of laughs, a lot of tears…well ok, not so many tears, but all the same – we drifted apart and I just don’t see us getting back to what we once had.

Does this mean I’m through with blogging forever? Of course not. I’m just going to take a short break and then see what I can do about setting up a fancy Movable Type blog on my own domain space. I’m still tossing about possible titles, all of which have “Ninja” in the title – so we’ll see where that takes me. If you’re interested in finding out about my new blog once its up and running, shoot me a blank e-mail here and I’ll give you a shout when the time comes. Don’t worry about your address going to spammers, I don’t have those kinds of connections.

In the meantime, if you’re not already - I hope you spend some quality time reading the hilariously delicious Shocker Khan. It’s time well spent.

And yes, I know that I stole the title of this entry from the last episode of “Star Trek: The Next Generation”... Nerd.

~FIN~

Rainbow Brite

This weekend is the big Gay Pride festival and parade. The parade route goes right past our apartment, and we plan on setting up shop right on the corner. What's better on a hot Sunday in June than to watch four hours worth of drag queens, dj's, cowboys, guys in leather chaps...and that's just going to be the people in the crowd around us.

We really want to bring something special to the parade this year. Something unique and delicious. We've concocted a recipe, which in theory, could be pretty special. We're pretty short on funds lately, so we've come up with the following idea for a recipe based mostly on things that we already have on hand. We call it Gay Juice, or Pride-gria, or Pussy Punch...whatever name really suits the moment, I suppose. It's going to be put together something like this:

1 box of Franzia white wine
1 bottle of pineapple rum
vodka to taste
pieces of fresh oranges, pineapple, apple, etc
Serve over ice

We're pretty certain that one glass of our Pride-gria will make any straight boy end up in leather chaps before the parade is over.

Who's the big winner? Mikey is!

Today Vince Vaughn started filming his new movie here in Chicago. It's called The Break Up and co-stars Jennifer Aniston. The filming began today, right in front of our building on Michigan Avenue. Vaughn plays a tour bus guide and we were able to watch him film scenes on top of the bus all day from our office window. For people that have lived in big cities for a long time, this sort of thing is old hat - but for Mike from Nowhere, Washington - this is a pretty cool deal. Will Ferrell is in town right now as well filming something called Stranger Than Fiction with Dustin Hoffman. He was even in Jo's building last week to film some office scenes or something. Forget Hollywood... we've got Sausagewood. Wait... that doesn't sound right. Nevermind.

During lunch, we wandered over to the set to see if there was anything fun to watch from close-up. The filming was on a break to change the camera set-up, but we were able to see Vaughn walking around pretty close to us. Security wasn't keeping people very far away, and at one point Vince was sitting about twenty-five feet from us. Poor guy... he looked so tired and must have felt like an animal at the zoo the way we were all gawking at him.

While watching the Vince Vaughn in his natural habitat, I told Jo that I'd let her make out with me and pretend I was Vaughn. She took me up on the offer and from what I hear, Vince is a pretty good kisser. Should I feel weird about this? Nah, not at all... I just pretended she was former Red Sox slugger, Mo Vaughn.

And for the record, not only is Mo a great kisser, but he's stacked as well.

We don’t need no water, let the motherf*cker burn!

You know, there’s nothing quite like a burning supermarket to really liven up a lazy Sunday evening.

On my way home from picking up dinner, I saw massive amounts of dark smoke blowing east to west across Halsted Avenue. I couldn’t tell how far away the fire was, smoke is tricky like that, but I asked a passerby and he told me that Dominick’s had “blown up.” Dominick’s, for those that don’t know, is a large chain of grocery stores mainly centered in the Midwest. After Jo and I finished our delish Caeser salad and toasted raviolis, we decided it would be nice to get out and go for a walk down towards wherever the fire was.

We walked about a mile down Broadway and found that indeed, it was Dominick’s that was on fire. Big time. There were fire trucks everywhere and hoses running from fire hydrants up to two blocks away. When we arrived, smoke was still billowing thick and black from the roof of the store and they had been trying to put it out for over two hours. We heard that nobody was hurt, so it made it less awkward to rubberneck. It was a little wild…there were hundreds of people crowded on the sidewalks watching eight or nine different hoses douse the blaze.


The neighborhood the fire was in, Lincoln Park, is notorious for being filled with good-looking trendy people. Apparently, these are not the people that come out to gawk at destruction because the sidewalks were full of uglies (Jo and I excluded, of course). I saw one girl that actually looked pretty hot until I worked my way up to her eyes (no, I don’t start at the eyes – sue me). Her eyebrows were out of control! It looked like she had two large furry banana slugs attached to her forehead. I also saw a girl with four identical sweatbands on one arm (and one more on the other).


Dominck’s used to be pretty involved with organized crime (alledgedly), and after watching 60+ hours of “The Sopranos” lately – I’ve deduced that someone wasn’t happy with the light envelopes they’d been receiving and decided to make a statement. A big, smokey, stinky statement.

Last cigarettes are all you can get

This blog is sick.

I don’t mean in the filthy way implied by its title, The Filthy Scarecrow is on life support, or at least in the ICU. Mainly due to the fact that I don’t update more than once or twice a week these days. I realize that this is a pretty tremendous feat compared to most blogs out there, but I owe the people that click over here better. You don’t have to look and see what I have to say, but you do – and I appreciate it. I know the feeling of surfing the blogs that I read and seeing the same posts day after day (or in some instances of boredom, minute after minute).

The main issue at hand is time. My current job doesn’t allow Internet access, which is a major blow to someone that spent a good hour a workday writing blog entries. Sure, I can write at night – but honestly, after a full day at work away from my girlfriend, I have more important things to be doing than to sit in front of the computer writing poop stories and reality TV reviews.

So what to do?

First, I think that before I improve the quantity of postings, I need to improve their quality. I should only post when I have something really worth reading, and if that comes every two or three days – than that’s ok. I should post just for the sake of posting. Also, I’m really interested in buying a domain name and running a Moveable Type blog. I’ve never been a fan of Blogger, and I think I could really class up the look of this thing. With a new fresh look, I think I’d have a new fresh attitude to go with it.

I’ve also been thinking about starting a photoblog of some sort to coincide with the arrival of our new digital camera. I love taking pictures, and I think it would be a lot of fun to share them with complete strangers searching for “Adam Brody shirtless” links.

There are a lot of sites that I’d love to emulate (The Sneeze for one), and I think that I can put together something of that quality with my own unique spin.

So all that’s on my blog plate. Any one out there an expert w/ MT that might let me bend an ear or two for help when the time arises?

So let me ask you guys, what blogs/sites do you most enjoy – and what about them bring you back day after day? Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Anyone up for a swim?