My dodgeball team DESTROYED again last night. We are undefeated 4-0 and have beat, no, destroyed a few of the teams I was worried about losing to. Eric and Doug are back from tour and we were at the top of our game. Everyone from all 8 teams goes to the same bar after the games and it’s a pretty awesome social event. It’s going to be a good summer. Pool parties, BBQ’s, bike riding, and all those good things are to be indulged in constantly. I’m going to have to try to not let the new XBOX get in the way of that, oh “Phazer Blast” is my Xbox Live gamertag. Add Me.

I’m thinking about getting my bike frame powder coated and getting some new handlebars/brakes. Anybody know a cheap powder coating place in LA?

After a fantastic amount of false starts on a new blog entry I’ve decided to take this time to tell you about some things I’ve been into lately, some things I’m excited for, and make you an MP3 mix. Lets get to it shall we? Yes. We shall.

First up, I love McClure’s Pickles. Ryan brought a jar of these spicy pickles out from Brooklyn last Christmas and they are probably the most addicting thing ever. A small family operation run from Brooklyn and Detroit, they create amazing pickles with a fiery kick. Use the spicy pickle brine as a back shot to a shot of whiskey, to make an amazing pickle martini, or a kick ass sunday afternoon bloody mary (or if you are like me, use tequilla instead of vodka for a bloody maria). Their website has a place to order, as well as kick ass recipes for the pickles. Enjoy.

Another thing I’m loving right now, Noise Canceling Headphones. Do you work in an office with no doors or ceilings? I do and these baby’s are a godsend. No more having to crank up the volume to drown out all the conversations. Even with no music, when the noise canceling is on, you can’t hear shit. But noise canceling combined with some music at a decent volume, ahhh. Good if you fly on airplanes too.

One more thing I’m loving? Rick Froberg. Ever since working on the R.F.T.C. R.I.P. packaging I’ve been back to listening to healthy doses of everything John Reis has touched musically - Rocket From the Crypt, Hot Snakes, Drive Like Jehu, Sultans, Pitchfork and the Night Marchers. Along with that is all the amazing artwork (and music) that Froberg has contributed to some of those bands. I’ve been working up the nerve to ask him how much it would be to commission something. I love his black ink on paper drawings more than Pettibon.

So that brings me to things I’m excited for. First off are Dodgers games. Nothing beats a Spring day or Summer night at the ballpark with a cold beer and a hot dog. Give me a pennant this year at least guys? Please?. Second is soccer, I’m going to opening day of the LA Galaxy this year. I wish soccer games were as cheap as baseball games, I’d go a lot more. Last thing I’m excited for is movie season in the cemetery. Every year in Hollywood Cinespia puts on movies in the Hollywood Forever cemetery. You sit on a big lawn and watch movies projected on the side of the mosilium with a picnic and drinks. It’s amazing. I’ve seen Sunset Blvd, Maltese Falcon, Strangers On A Train, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Harold and Maude, Pee Wee’s Big Adventure (Introduced by Pee Wee himself!), and countless other amazing movies. This season starts in May, I can’t wait.

So I guess the last thing is your mix. Download it Here . I tried to make a mix based around a spring/summer theme, and I’m pretty happy with it. This mix is pretty much a mix I would have made in 1999, with a few exceptions. It makes me happy to listen to and I hope you like it too.

London. Ah, what to say about London? I was going to do a day to day type of blog, but when you’re drinking 12-15 pints a day.. they all kind of blend together.. so i’m going to go with a list format. If only half of these make sense to you, that’s about right. Ryan, John and I made the best of not the best trip we could have taken. Here’s what I remember
• A hazy first day walk across the Thames.
• Giggling at every mention of “Cockfosters” or “St. John’s Wood”
• The worst fish & chips ever.
• 7 AM McDonalds Breakfast
• Lots of Museums
• Television (Tele) + Trashcan (Bin) = the Telebin
• Sad drunk after only night 2.
• Awkward night without a private room
• That’s what happens when people stop being polite and start to get frank. Frank World.
• Nowhere to watch the Arsenal game
• Q: When do places open around here? A: Breakfast Time
• Camden Town with Ryan where we saw bootleg photos of Banksy pieces printed on canvas with “no photos please” sign.
• POACHED!
• Gene = John’s new nickname
• “Here’s the Rosetta Stone. Here it is. Oh no, here’s the Rosetta Stone… Here it is”
• Touristy Abbey Road photos.
• Snowcones
• Female conversion rate for Europe +2 points
• Amstel. Not Amstel Light. Amstel
• Getting lost then finding the pub we were looking for.
• I snapped and beat up John for trying to ruin my vacation photo
• Great Hold Steady show at KoKo with Dexter.
• Ryan kissed the British girl i thought was cute so I went to the dark side.
• “That’s why you make out with chicks and I call my Grandma, drunk” - Ben Goetting
• The Tube runs every 2 min, which is awesome
• Vacation ads everywhere because nobody wants to be in London.
• Our second hostel was self proclaimed “England’s premier party hostel!” and the interior decorating looked like a low budget 90’s sci-fi shows vision of the future where nobody lives past 30. Lots of purple and sheet metal.
• Babe-rhood
• New terms for drunk - “Lashed” Sad - “Gutted” and puking - “Chundering”
• “It got messy” “I had a bit of a nap” - Dexter
• Realizing you spent 100 dollars on drinks.
• Making London kids jealous I’ve seen Jawbreaker
• Ryan and I freaking those same kids out by moshing to Andrew WK song.
• Gene gets action in Parliament = Gene Parliament
• Ryan taking a massive dump in the Floor 2 showers in revenge for an asshole hostel worker. (we were on floor 5)
• Slovenian girls surprising me by singing “Happy Birthday” Karaoke style on my birthday was absolutely amazing.
• Kissing a very cute Slovenian girl in the basement of the hostel was also amazing
• Terrible Indian food, Chinese food, burgers, etc. etc etc.
• Great burger from Haché, great breakfast from a gay restaurant that we didn’t realize was gay at first but weren’t about to leave.
• Realizing Europeans have the worst music taste, it’s all bad dance music and hits you haven’t heard in years. The whole bar freaked out for “Cotton Eye Joe” and that Chumbawumba song
• “I’m doing this for YOU. BEN. FOR YOU!”
• Ryan yelling at Brits at 4AM “Please to being quiet now” which angered them and escalated into “Suck Cromwell’s dick” which lead to threats and “Arsenal’s fags” pushing them over the edge. Hysterical laughter turned to fear pretty quick.
• Seeing how much we could pile on Gene’s face to stop him from snoring = more hysterical laughter. Thinking we might have smothered him = more fear.
• Cinemas = bagged popcorn, warm soda, and screens the size of a home entertainment center. for $30 dollars.
• Couldn’t play poker because of the dress code “No white sport trainers”
• “The One Burger” is not just a clever name
• RYMAN! The Stationer!
• Fun rooftop antics = amazing. Dropping new Arsenal scarf in someone’s puke = not amazing.
• Sick and totally over London on Ryan’s birthday.
• “I blew all over this mattress. Stick it up your Bumwaz!” written in sharpie on my mattress.
• Finding out my grandpa was in brain surgery =(
• A long long trip home.

That about sums it up.

And links to our photos:
Ryan’s Photo Set
My Photo Set

If i said “Cometbus” and you didn’t know what I was talking about immediately, you probably wouldn’t fully understand the amazing night I had last night. I’m sitting there waiting in line for the bathroom at a somewhat secret, unannounced until yesterday Pinhead Gunpowder show in Long Beach, mere blocks away from the former site of the PCH club. In a venue about the size the PCH was. So, I’m standing in line for the bathroom talking to a girl and there’s a lightbulb in the wall and i put my hand near it and it starts flickering, she tries and nothing happens, I go again and it flickers. We laugh and I turn to Aaron Cometbus who is waiting behind me in line and I say “you gotta try.” He dismisses the invitation and says “I don’t want to ruin the magic.”

I’m pretty sure the only way he could have ruined the magic for me tonight was by announcing that he was not going to play drums and Pinhead Gunpowder wasn’t going to play a show I was right up front for in a room with no more than 200 people. But they played, and hearing Mahogany, Life During Wartime, Losers Of The Year, Train Station and so many others played live with Billie Joe Armstrong a mere 6 or 7 feet away could only be described as magical. I danced, I sang along until my voice was horse, I bruised a rib, and I had the best night at a show in … I can’t even remember since when. Tonight crushed my belief that I could no longer have fun at a show. It brought back every feeling of being 15 and seeing Supernova, or the Toy Dolls, or Jawbreaker. A good punk rock show makes you feel like you can do anything. All the bands were great, the people were awesome. I chatted with all kinds of random people, I hung out, I felt a good vibe. It was the complete opposite of almost everything I feel at your average show, or even night out in Hollywood. I think I’m going to go to the Troubadour show they are playing tomorrow but there’s no way it could live up to being eye level with Billie Joe Armstrong as he sang some of my favorite songs of my youth, right up front, screaming my heart out. At the end of the night I got home and washed of the smell of sweat, smoke, and beer; but there was no way you could wipe this smile of my face not even with a bat.

I thought of a fun game just now that could actually get me to go out to this friday night hipster event that looks absolutely miserable from the point of view of an introverted, claustrophobic, non-dancing, quiet-loving, un-cool type guy like myself. I call it “PYT Bingo.” Basically it goes like this, everyone fills in a bingo card randomly from a list of pre-determined things, and then you take those cards to PYT with a pen and hang out on the sidelines and check off whenever you see one of the things on your card. Things like “A couple, both wearing middle eastern style scarves”, “someone wearing a flannel and sunglasses”, “A Curly Mustache”, “A Mohawk on a girl”, “Someone wearing 3 or more American Apparel items”, “A sailor hat”, “Someone with a neck or hand tattoo but nothing tattooed on their arms”, “80’s sneakers with tight white pants”, “A straight couple that looks like a lesbian couple”… etc etc. Everyone puts in 5 bucks and the first person to get BINGO or… PYTGO wins the pot. The wildcard could be picked of something you wouldn’t expect to see there ever like “Someone wearing a Minor Threat shirt, not ironically.” and if you saw that first you’d automatically win.

This came up because Jonah and Lauren are out of town and now I have no idea what to do with my Friday night. I’m just barely ending a week of being sick so I should just take the night off anyway. Feels like such a waste. Oh well I guess that’s it. I’ll leave you with a link to this awesome cartoon series that is eventually going to be a book, different cartoon artists all depicting a “Missed Connections” ad as a comic. Amazing. I Saw You - Missed Connections Comics

Holy crap. Well first of all you may notice the new look of the site. I’ve spent a few long nights installing and setting up Wordpress, importing my posts from blogger, and tinkering with the CSS to make everything look clean and pretty. I hope you like it. Blogger is such a pile, I’m glad to finally have blogging software I can work with. If you are one of the few people who subscribed to the feed, make sure you are doing it through the feedburner address as the old feed is dead.

Moving on. It is confirmed that I will be landing in London on February 24th and spending 8 days overseas with two of my favorite dudes in the world. Two or three of those days are going to be spent outside England, I am leaning towards Italy, will consider France, and might settle for Belgium. We don’t have any solid plans yet other than going to the Arsenal game on the 1st of March, and are totally open to suggestions and totally open to sleeping on your couch, on your floor, or in your bed (wink wink nudge nudge). I will be celebrating my birthday on February 29th, and it will be the first time in 4 years that I’ll be able to do that, so let’s make it a good one eh? I can’t wait, this will be my first trip to another country (well unless you count Canada, and I don’t.)

Leave a comment with tips, suggestions, and offers for hospitality.

A lot of my favorite things are negative. I like books about outsiders and weirdos, comics about guys who never find love, standup comedians like Bill Hicks, and songs about broken hearts. I’ve been told I hate everything. I’ve been called a grouch, an old man, negative, pessimistic, mean, and everything in between for various things I’ve blogged, written, or talked about. I guess my problem is I enjoy talking about what I don’t like more than I enjoy talking about what I do. Wait. while i’m on the subject… You know what I hate? . . .
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About once a year I give up drinking for a month or so. The first time I did it was because my friends and I were getting drunk nearly every night and I just felt like taking a break, instead of slowing down I figured I should probably just stop. The next time was a bet with my roommate. This time I just felt like breaking the monotony. But every time there has been an underlying “just to make sure I can” aspect of it. When someone’s addicted to something you always hear the stereotypical “I can stop whenever I want, I just don’t want to.” So sometimes I just like to make sure I actually can stop whenever I want. Anyway I made it a month and it’s actually been pretty awesome. I celebrated the end of the month by ordering a case of Yuengling Lager and have enjoyed it.
Something was different about this month off though, this time I actually enjoyed being sober. I saved a little money (I spent it, but at least I didn’t spend it on booze), I was never hungover on a saturday or sunday morning, I didn’t get depressed at all, I met some new people playing in some poker home games around LA, I never worried about getting a ride home from a party, and I spent less time in bars. I think i’m going to concentrate on being one of those occasional drinkers rather than a regular. I feel like I’m growing up or something. Gross.

I was raised without religion. I was never told not to believe in God or anything like that. Nobody ever came out and said “God isn’t real.” It was just sorta like the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus, they let me figure things out on my own. When I was bad my mom wouldn’t say anything about God and “Honor thy mother and father,” she would just tell me she was calling 1-800-GYPSIES to come and take me away. I was a smart kid though so I called that number to find out if it was real or not. Come to think of it - maybe I was trying to get the Gypsies to come and take my little sister away, because you know without God in my life I was pretty evil ::wink::. My mom was raised basically the same way, although they went to church occasionally, I think it was more in a fitting in to the community sort of way. I don’t think we could have ever been considered a religious family.

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“Pay your rent, pay your bills, pay the doctor for your pills - So you can work another day, as life slips away” - Quasi

I’ve been working on getting rid of a lot of “stuff” that I have. Getting rid of DVD’s rather than buying more, getting music digitally rather than going down to Amoeba, giving away my PS2, etc. However I got paid for a merch design I did for Wilco and I went on a little spending spree. What’s that? You don’t care?! Well I’m going to tell you what I bought anyway! Here goes…
• First I got a Road Bike.
• Then of course I had to get it tuned up and buy new chain rings for it.
• Next I totally needed to be able to carry things while I ride so I bought a bag from Bailey Works.
• I’ve been talking about doing a podcast for a while with Jonah Ray, so I bought a USB mic.
• Jeff Soto is one of my favorite artists, I even have a tattoo of one of his paintings. He is putting out a limited edition calendar/zine so I had to pre-order it.
• A while ago I had registered BenGoetting.com but never renewed it. I’m lucky there aren’t too many other Ben Goetting’s out there (or they just aren’t computer savvy enough to own their own domain) so it was still available. I had to re-register it so I’ll always have MY domain (of course as you can see it just re-directs straight back here so don’t get too excited)

That’s it. I’m broke again. I think I made some nice purchases though. Oof.