Man, cutting my Internet usage down to 30-40 minutes a day has really made me a lot happier. I'm getting a lot of reading, writing, walking, drumming, cooking, music-listening, and TV judge-show watching done. Screw you, Internet. You're good, but you're not that good. Tomorrow, I'm going to eat some pig intestines at an Asian market and hopefully put a sizable dent in the first draft of a story I'm halfway through instead of making myself depressed by reading user comments underneath news stories and blog posts. If you want a sample of what I'm missing out on, it goes something like this: "Typical fruitcake libral niger fagot Jew dyke. Go back to communist Africa, you Mexican." If you want samples of stuff that aren't like that but still a giant waste of effort, read the comments at the Onion A/V Club. Life is not precious, but there are some ways I spend my lifetime that are just really fucking stupid.
By the way, if you look up "waste of time" on Google image search, the first image is Nancy Sinatra in lingerie looking at herself in the mirror. It's 1960s-era Nancy, too. I hardly call that a waste of time.
I'm not feeling very inspired by this blog lately. I just complain too much. I need to retool it. What does it need? Surprise pregnancy? Troubled nephew moving in to turn his life around? Less profanity? More profanity? Robot butlers? This place is a snooze-athon lately. Fuck blogs. Fuck the Internet. I need to spend more time away from the computer.
I was the substitute for an art class a few days ago. The assignment was to draw hands. One student turned in his assignment, then left class thirty minutes early without permission. I looked at his work. He drew a hand. It was flipping the bird, and each finger had a gold ring. Written across the middle finger was the word "Fukk." It probably deserves an A. He's going to get in a lot of trouble for leaving early.
Hey, everybody. My friends are having a Craft Night tonight, but I suck at crafts and generally have a bad attitude about creating crafts, so I'm liveblogging the festivities instead. Stay tuned for exciting, erotic, thrilling, dangerous, and sexy craft updates as they happen! Whoop!
10:10 p.m: As a secret underground government pedagogue, I must avoid any information that will reveal my secret identity, so I'm requesting that all crafters supply aliases for this evening's update. Here are the participants: Dr. Mystery as Dr. Mystery Krotpong Hoochie McGhee Chuckie Trixtina Angora Brandy Snifter Skullcrusher or Buttmuncher Wifey Earworm Jargon Three people are still deciding. Undecided #3 or Trixtina just said that it sounds like a group of drag queens. Here's what everyone is making: Krotpong - Making a figure out of resin and hardener Hoochie - doodling Chuckie - Making gas Earworm - sketching a master plan for her backyard garden Undecided #1 aka Really Boring aka Really Exciting - conversation Wifey - coloring Angora - still-lifing it Skullcrusher - beer testing and tobacco sampling Brandy Snifter - spinning some lies Grey Blue aka Undecided #2 - Drawing Angora's still life Trixtina and Jargon - making Bloppets, America's next great toy sensation. "Bloppets! Fuck yeah!"
10:29 p.m. It's really awkward interviewing your friends. Glad that part's over. Now, we're discussing post-volcano scenarios and the deliciousness of child flesh.
10:46 p.m. Old Blush has arrived. She has no craft, but may get involved in Grey Blue's plans to create a conceptual art piece before the night is over. We're talking about glasses because Old Blush has new glasses.
10:53 p.m. Bret Michaels update. He is awake and in good spirits according to the New York Post, which also describes him as the "singer with the omnipresent bandana."
10:58 p.m. Krotpong's figure is looking pretty awesome. I'm talking about crafts, everybody, not his taut, glistening body. Come on. You perverted creeps. I'm going to the bathroom for the first time since I arrived. Probably the first of many. Once I get two beers in, the urine gets plentiful. That's right, I said it. The crowd has reminded me to be mindful of my breathing. It's important to breathe correctly while blogging. Important non-sequiturs: "It really sucks to become aware of your tongue when you're at the dentist." "Stop getting a hard-on for your dentist." "A cock, and a vagina." Maybe this is a group of drag queens.
11:22 p.m. Really Exciting tells the story of unintentionally traumatizing his 7-year-old niece by taking her to How To Train Your Dragon. The 3-D flipped her out. Another argument against 3-D. It makes 7-year-old girls sad, and gives reasonable humans headaches. It reminds me of the trauma my young sister and brother felt when the family went to an Eric Clapton laser-light show while on vacation in the late 1980s. God, that would traumatize me now. Krotpong tells us how he entertained his Transformers-loving nephews by creating his own Transformer character, Gravy-tron. More little kid ephemara: My cousin took his three-year-old son to Chuck E. Cheese and on the way home, the kid said, "Thanks for taking me to Yucky Cheese, Dad." Somebody called Lars Von Trier a misogynist. If I hear that again, I will put on my boxing gloves and punch any woman who says that. The battle is on! Crafts! Fuck yeah!
11:33 p.m. I misspelled "ephemera." God dammit! Fuck! Bullshit! Damn! Shucks!
12:15 a.m. Haven't update for a while. Talking movies in the kitchen. Always realizing that I'm the only one who has my particular taste. Why is that always surprising? It shouldn't be. Wow. Is this reading like superficial, indulgent bullshit? It shouldn't. Because Skullcrusher, Trixtina, Angora, and the rest of the crew are making crafts, motherfucker. Whoo! I started using exclamation points as a joke several years ago, and it has become a habit. Fuck!
12:23 a.m. Hoochie and I are discussing exclamation points. We both want to decrease their usage in our online writing. From now on, no more exclamation points. 4 Real&*_^%$$#@+
12:31 a.m. Wifey is going to put some photos up soon, or tomorrow, or later tonight. Which one will it be? Guess now and win nothing, jerks. Keep reading^#%%%%
1:26 a.m. I'm a shitty liveblogger. And a bad drunk-typer. If you knew how many times I just hit the backspace, you'd be chortling, my imaginary friend. We're outside now, talking about aging. I forgot that I was three years older than I thought I was. Joke's on me. My drink order? I just forgot. I think two beer and two waters. I'll gie it a go. If you get the wrong stuff, nuts to you, sucker.
1:37 a.m. I've reached that point in the night where I suddenly realize I'll be dead one day and where everything is hilarious. 23 minutes earlier than usual. Good job, Craft Night.
2:34 a.m. I better wrap this up. We've been outside, discussing everything. The man-hugs were awkward, then not awkward. Ladies love man-hugs. The beer is gone. The crafts were crafty. Goodnight, everyone. Go fuck yourself.
Wow. I haven't posted anything here for a while. To rectify that situation, and in honor of Record Store Day (hello to all current and former independent record store employees, the most fun and shittiest paid job I've ever had, the only job I've had in which I cleaned toilets and met the drummer from Slayer on the same day), I want to write a post I've been meaning to write for more than a year. This is a guide to all the releases from my favorite reissue label in the world, the Chicago-based Numero Group. I read an article about this label when they had about five releases out. It sounded totally up my alley, so I purchased all five, was blown away, and have since purchased everything they've released in the six years since. I haven't been disappointed yet. I've mentioned this label to a handful of fellow music nerds, and they were unfamiliar with it. I decided to write a post to help spread the gospel. That was over a year ago, but I like to procrastinate. This post is mainly an unsolicited advertisement, so if that's not your thing, leave this page now and go look at some porno or a back issue of Reader's Digest (I recommend giganticasses.com or "Bravo for Life's Little Ironies"). Numero Group's mission is to release unfairly neglected, forgotten regional music that, for a variety of reasons, never caught on with the world at large. Most of their releases have been compilations, but they've also released a handful of single-artist records. Most of their stuff is available on CD and vinyl, and one release is even available on cassette. It might be the only new cassette printed in the last several years. In the last year, they've branched out into multimedia with a book of photography and a DVD of short films. Apropos of it being Record Store Day, the physical copies are way more satisfying than the downloads. The packaging is always gorgeous and the liner notes are full of great stories and information. Anyway, here's a little description of each release. I'm going to start with the series and move on to the one-offs.
Eccentric Soul: This series spotlights regional soul labels from the mid-1960s to the early 1980s and is up to 11 volumes. Nearly every permutation of soul is represented here, with plenty of songs holding their own comfortably alongside anything from Motown, Stax, Philly soul, or the heyday of funk. Only poor business decisions, provincialism, bad luck, death, lack of money, and/or disillusionment with the music business kept these songs from reaching a wider audience. These releases are also of historical importance. Who knew that places like Columbus, Ohio and Phoenix, Arizona had thriving soul music scenes in the 1970s? Here's a little breakdown: #1: The Capsoul Label - Columbus, Ohio (my favorite out of a ridiculously strong bunch) #2: The Bandit Label - Chicago (the boss of this label made Phil Spector look sane, but he managed to record a shitload of great stuff) #3: The Deep City Label - Miami #4: The Big Mack Label - Detroit #5: Mighty Mike Lenaburg - Phoenix (Lenaburg was a soul freak who produced and released most of the local Arizona soul groups) #6: Twinight's Lunar Rotation - Chicago #7: The Prix Label - Columbus, Ohio #8: The Outskirts of Deep City - Miami #9: The Tragar & Note Labels - Atlanta #10: The Young Disciples - East St. Louis, Illinois (The product of an after-school music program led by a high school coach, teacher, and former touring musician aimed at stopping inner-city kids from joining gangs, dropping out of school, doing drugs, and getting into crime somehow produced a shitload of unjustly neglected soul classics.) #11: Smart's Palace - Wichita, Kansas (named after the nightclub that was the soul headquarters of Wichita)
Cult Cargo: There are two volumes of this series so far, which focuses on American-influenced world music. The first, Belize City Boil Up, covers soul, funk, and rock from Belize, and the second, Grand Bahama Goombay, does the same for the Bahamas. A special treat on the latter disc is Sylvia Hall's anti-teen sex classic, "Don't Touch That Thing," featuring the inspirational lyric: "Don't touch that thing/Your mama gonna know/How she gonna know?/Your belly gonna show."
Wayfaring Strangers: This series covers underground folk music. #1: Ladies from the Canyon - 1970s female folk and folk-rock singers influenced by Joni Mitchell #2: Guitar Soli - instrumental acoustic music in the John Fahey/Davy Graham/Sandy Bull school of jazz/rock/raga/psych/folk #3: Lonesome Heroes - the male counterpart to the first volume, which features a song from a former NHL hockey player's sole LP
Good God!: This is a collection of kick-ass gospel funk that makes a heathen like me praise the Lord. There are two volumes so far, A Gospel Funk Hymnal and Born Again Funk.
Now for the one-offs: Antena - Camino Del Sol: A welcome reissue of a long out-of-print early 1980s album. Antena is a French group that combines post-punk/early indie-pop and bossa nova. I hate to make these x + y comparisons, but this really does sound like a combination of Young Marble Giants and Tom Ze.
Yellow Pills: Prefill: A rare power-pop compilation co-curated by the guy who assembled the Yellow Pills comps. This is the only Numero Group release that is out of print because one band wouldn't sign the contract for repressing it, but used copies are easy to come by for now. I'm not the biggest power-pop fan in the world, but I love it at its best, and I love at least half of this record.
Fern Jones - The Glory Road: Jones is a country-gospel singer with a voice reminiscent of Patsy Cline's. Imagine Cline singing about Jesus instead of heartbreak and you're close to the sound of this record, but Jones has her own thing going.
Catherine Howe - What A Beautiful Place: This album was recorded but never released by her then-label, CBS. Howe was a BBC actress and singer/songwriter, and her music is a very British, melancholy hybrid of jazz, folk, and orchestral pop. She would sound really good next to Nick Drake on a mix-tape.
Home Schooled: The ABCs of Kid Soul: A compilation of soul groups comprised of, or featuring, children and adolescents trying to hit it big in the wake of the Jackson 5's success. This comp is so awesome. It's not cutesy-poo at all. These kids have some serious chops, and the songs are pretty emotionally affecting should-have-been classics.
Don't Stop: Recording Tap: This is a collection of disco and old-school rap from the ill-fated Tap label, based in New York City. The label owner was a part-time character actor and businessman who was not so good at promoting his acts, but this stuff is nevertheless pretty great.
Soul Messages from Dimona: This comp has the wildest story of any of Numero Group's releases. A group of African-American Chicago musicians inspired by separatist black power movements and Judaism start their own offshoot of the Jewish faith and move to a kibbutz in Israel where they make an indescribable music combining soul, jazz, and extremely freaky psychedelic rock. Life still blows my mind sometimes.
The Final Solution - Brotherman: Original Soundtrack: The unfortunately named Chicago soul group, The Final Solution (they were unaware of the Nazi connotations of their name at the time, thanks to the shitty inner-city public school educations they received), were hired to score a blaxploitation film called Brotherman. They finished a rough draft of the soundtrack, but the film was never made, so the music just sat in the can for years, until Numero Group unearthed it. It's great stuff, with some wildly original guitar playing. The guitarist played the horn parts on his guitar, to be filled in later with the real horns, but that never happened, so his crazy-ass guitar stylings kick this up a notch from your run-of-the-mill blaxploitation music.
Titan: It's All Pop!: Titan was a studio in Kansas City, Missouri that recorded nearly every Midwestern power-pop band in the 1970s and early 1980s. This compilation picks the best stuff, and features great, lost bands from Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, and Illinois, including Lincoln, NE's Boys.
24-Carat Black - Gone: The Promises of Yesterday: 24-Carat Black was a jazz-influenced soul group on the Stax label. Their first album sold poorly, so Stax failed to release their second album. Unfortunately, the masters were improperly preserved, and about half of the music deteriorated. Numero Group were able to restore six of the songs, and the quality of this unique album makes me wish they'd been able to restore the rest of it. Like everything else they've released, it's good stuff.
Local Customs: Downriver Revival: A collection of gospel, soul, and garage rock recorded by electrician, steel guitarist, and gospel singer Felton Williams in the home studio in his basement in Ecorse, Michigan, a Detroit suburb. This release also contains a DVD with a half-hour documentary about Williams and a digital file containing hours and hours of music recorded by Williams. To beat a dead horse, it is very good stuff. This will eventually be a series focusing on regional music made in amateur home studios. The second volume, focusing on Beaumont, Texas boogie rock, will be out later this year.
Pisces - A Lovely Sight: This is a satisfying little home-recorded psych-rock album that sounds like a garage version of Sgt. Pepper's-era Beatles and Jefferson Airplane, made by a couple of guys in Rockford, Illinois, occasionally joined by runaway drifter and charismatic singer Linda Bruner. Fun fact: One of the guys in this band grew up next door to the parents of Cheap Trick guitarist Rick Nielsen.
Light: On the South Side: This is a beautiful book of photographs of blues clubs in Chicago in the 1970s by Michael Abramson. Instead of photographing the bands, he shot the crowds, and it's a compelling historical document of a black subculture in South Chicago in the 1970s. The book is accompanied by a double vinyl collection of unheralded blues artists who played the clubs documented in the photos. This isn't generic, shitty blues, either. It's blues influenced by and containing elements of the soul, funk, disco, and rock of the era.
Celestial Navigations: The Short Films of Al Jarnow: Numero's first non-music release is a DVD of short films by and a documentary about Al Jarnow. Jarnow alternated between experimental films for his own benefit and educational films for Sesame Street and 3-2-1 Contact. If you grew up in this country in the 1970s and 1980s, you've seen Jarnow's films as a child. His work is about geometry, science, space, time, movement, nature, architecture, and language.
Numero also has a couple of side labels, Asterisk and Numerophon. Asterisk's releases so far: Johnny Lunchbreak - Appetizer/Soup's On: A weird mix of Velvet Underground proto-punk and cheesy cock-rock. Of course, I like it. The Four Mints - Gently Down Your Stream: Temptations-esque classic soul. Propinquity - s/t: Fairport Convention-style folk-rock from Colorado. Boscoe - s/t: Weird, political, jazz/funk/soul. Wee - You Can Fly On My Aeroplane: '70s mellow, falsetto-ed, hippie-soul that would sound good played after Shuggie Otis. Caroline Peyton - Mock Up and Intuition: The first record is in the Tim Buckley/Bill Fay/Tim Hardin netherworld, while Intuition is mostly Linda Ronstadt-style soft rock with a couple of disco songs.
Numerophon is a vinyl-only label with one release so far, Niela Miller's Songs of Leaving. She's an acoustic, traditional folkie, who is the original composer of the song that later became "Hey, Joe." She wasn't credited for it until this record came out, though. Her original is called "Baby, Don't Go To Town." Her then-boyfriend stole it and re-worked it as "Hey, Joe" in the electric rock arrangement we all know. Hendrix had the hit with it, but it's been covered by tons of other people, many of whom claimed credit for writing it. Miller's original is on this record. Their second release, a solo covers album by Pisces' Linda Bruner, comes out this month.
And that's about it, though they have a ton of soul, disco, and hip-hop 45s, too, but I've had enough diarrhea of the keyboard for one night. I just have mad enthusiasm for this label, as the white kids of today who appropriate the slang of the black kids of yesterday say. Numero Group, I love you!
Hey, let's move away from this onslaught of deaths of talented writers, musicians, producers, songwriters, filmmakers, and actors that the last couple of years has seemed to provide in unending succession, most of these people too young, shall we? Instead, here is a ridiculous coincidence that happened to me yesterday. It was a beautiful day. I didn't have to work. The weather was perfect. I met my wife and a friend visiting from Louisville for lunch (jambalaya, fried chicken, and potato salad - oh shit hot damn hell yes) and a visit to the latest exhibit at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas, "Making Movies." I got to see a lot of great stuff in this exhibit, including Robert De Niro's costumes from Taxi Driver and Casino, Tim Burton's storyboards for Beetlejuice, notes from Ernest Lehman to Alfred Hitchcock about North by Northwest (including my favorite from a list of "wild ideas" for action setpieces, unfortunately never used in the final script, "M. Mantle -- exploding baseball"), a smart-ass note from Robert Altman to a censor board requesting overdubbing of swear words for television distribution of O.C. & Stiggs, a list of banned words from the Production Code of the 1930s (including "nerts"), a ton of stuff from Gone with the Wind, a ton of stuff from Martin Scorsese's films, Paul Schrader's scripts, rough drafts of a book on directing by David Mamet, vintage posters, a note from Francis Ford Coppola to Kenneth Branagh with the story of Coppola's falling-out with Roman Polanski, and some beautiful photographs of movie theaters in Austin, Dallas, San Antonio, and New Orleans at the beginning of the last century. After lunch, I returned home and decided to take a long walk in the neighborhood with my iPod and some earbuds. I walked around for almost two hours, and at the very end of my walk, something very bizarre happened. No significance to it, really. Just a weird coincidence. I was waiting for a car to pass so I could cross the street. The car had the right of way and no stop sign, but the driver hemmed and hawed. She slowed way down, presumably to let me cross, but she was still going too fast for me to bolt across the street. She finally came to a stop and motioned for me to go ahead. This is a giant pet peeve of mine. If she would have just driven her normal rate of speed through the intersection, she and I would have both crossed the intersection much quicker, but by waving me across, she gets to look all thoughtful and pedestrian-friendly when really she is just wasting both of our fucking times. Anyway, I looked back at her car and said "Jesus!" in frustration. At the exact same time I expressed my blasphemous frustration, the singer of the song playing on my iPod sang the word "Jesus," and a fraction of a second later, I saw the bumper sticker of the woman's car, which read "JESUS is the answer." Three Jesuses at once! What are the odds? Besides the weirdness of the triple J, I find it hilarious that all three Jesuses were expressing three different things: My Jesus - Irritation and displeasure iPod Jesus - Simulated erotic ecstasy Car Jesus - Literal expression of religious faith (or, at least, the public appearance of same)
Damn, March 17, 2010. You were a good day. I didn't even have to use my AK. Of course, Alex Chilton died yesterday, but I didn't find that out until the evening.
Jesus H. Christ, Esq.(left) Dr. Mystery (below), ate jambalaya, didn't have to use his AK, bummed about Alex Chilton
Another great Southerner felled by this big, stupid world. He shot himself in the heart at the age of 47, but he wrote a lot of great songs before he decided he needed to do that. He also wrote one of my favorite lyrics, "I woke up in a horse's stomach one foggy morning/His eyes were crazy and he smashed into the cemetery gates/All I want is to be a happy man."
Until yesterday, when he died of a heart attack at 67, Barry Hannah was my favorite living writer. Now, he's just another one of my all-time favorites. He beat cancer and alcohol and struggled with heart problems, but this isn't Oprah and everyone has to deal with this shit, or shit like it. He was a Christian like my grandmother was a Christian, which is to say a real and complex and quietly personal one, not a spewing evangelical or a self-centered bore constantly banging on about his/her "relationship with Christ." He wrote specifically about the South and generally about everyone in a style that was unlike anyone. He broke rules of grammar and sentence structure in ways that never attracted attention to themselves and served to fit his style and move his characters where they needed to go. He didn't give a damn about plot, instead relying on feeling, character, and the careful construction of words on a page. Hannah's work gives me the same feeling I get when I listen to Neil Young's 1970s albums. Two people at their best, a little rough and raw, creating their own language, ignoring the dictates of fashion and the market, coming up with something both sorrowful and hilarious. I find every sentence of every published Hannah work completely fucking thrilling, and I'm sad to see him go. Is it too late to trade him for Neal Pollack or Dave Eggers or Chuck Klosterman or Terry Gross or the entire Onion A/V Club, vengeful God? Hannah has a posthumous short story collection coming out later this year, according to some reports, an unfinished novel according to others, and a finished novella according to still other sources.
The first six paragraphs from a 2008 article about Hannah in Garden & Gun magazine:
One afternoon in July, the author Barry Hannah took to the small roads south of Oxford, Mississippi, where he lives, to visit the grave of friend and fellow writer Larry Brown. Hannah hadn’t been out this way in some months. He missed an important turn at a place called the Yocona River Inn and had to stop at a country store to ask directions.
“Excuse me,” Hannah said to the woman behind the counter. “Can you tell me which way is the Yocona Inn? We’re trying to find our friend Larry Brown’s place.”
The woman returned a vacant look.
“Larry Brown—he was a very fine writer,” Hannah pressed on. “He lived right around here. Do you read his books?”
The clerk did a weird abased shrug but didn’t answer. Hannah paid for his Coke and cigarettes and departed, vexed.
“It’s just unbelievable to me, the lack of pride and curiosity,” he said, pulling his Jeep Cherokee onto the blacktop. “If the people out here should be reading anybody, it ought to be Larry Brown. This is what he wrote about—these people, life out on these roads, and in these little stores. I guess they’re busy with their televisions. Man, it just nauseates me. It’s sick and dumb.”
Larry Brown and Barry Hannah They're both dead and it sucks
Here's a link to a pdf of one of Hannah's stories, "Testimony of Pilot." (UPDATE: There are a lot of bizarre typos in the pdf, probably from some kind of electronic transcription process, but I think enough of the story is salvaged to get a taste of his style.)
You may have seen this news story on Saturday about a man named Jeff Ondash. He broke the record for giving out the most hugs in a 24-hour period. (He also holds the record for the most hugs given in a single hour.) Ondash gave out 7,777 hugs last week in front of the Paris hotel-casino in Las Vegas. He gave out these hugs as his "costumed alter ego," Teddy McHuggin. Ondash/McHuggin has inspired me. I want to set the world record for saying "fuck you" the most in a 24-hour period under the aegis of my costumed alter ego, Jimmy McFuckyou. I want to do this in front of the Paris hotel-casino, and then I want a free buffet from this casino after I smash the fuck-you record. I'm so intent on breaking this record that I'll say "fuck you" to anybody: small children, the elderly, the disabled, sufferers of low self-esteem, dogs, birds, inanimate objects, planes flying overhead. They've all got some fuck yous coming. Get ready to get fucked, America. This record is going to get smashed. Fuck you! Fuck yeah!
(above: A stupid little baby, right after being told "fuck you" by a man in a costume. Was it Jimmy McFuckyou, smashing another world record? You bet your diapered ass it was! Fuck you! Fuck yeah!)
In the early 1980s, before any of my playground chums and I had access to VHS and before any video rental places opened anywhere near us (or anywhere near almost anybody, for that matter), before any of us had seen an R-rated movie, before we'd seen a naked woman on celluloid or the pages of a magazine (except for the Penthouse magazine that some sixth-graders brought to school and briefly waved in front of us before hiding it underneath one of their jackets), one teenage sex comedy became the pinnacle of rural playground mythology. In 1982, when I was in kindergarten, Porky's came to a theater near you. In 1983, when I was in first grade, the movie became a hot topic of playground conjecture, speculation, tall tale, legend, myth, anticipation, and obsession. My group of friends and I were working-class kids with twentysomething parents, so none of us had HBO, and even if we'd had the channel, none of our parents would have been willing to let a six-year-old watch a teen sex romp. That didn't stop the legend from growing ever larger. Most likely, the unavailability of this film in our young lives helped fuel its mythical reputation. One friendly acquaintance of mine, Phillip, spread the Porky's gospel like a fire-and-brimstone evangelical. He was still in kindergarten, but my first-grade chums and I took him seriously, for a number of reasons. His parents were divorced, and, though many of us would eventually share in this unfortunate circumstance, he was the first one, which gave him an exotic, streetwise sheen we silently but strongly admired. His oldest brother was in high school. Teenagers were golden gods to us then. I especially worshiped his older brother because he was a long-haired metal and punk fan who I would later talk music with when I was a middle school kid and he was in his twenties on breaks from college. I was a little scared of metal and punk when I was in first grade, being mostly a new wave, Michael Jackson, and John Cafferty & The Beaver Brown Band fan at the time, but, again, the exotic allure of the dark unknown world of the teenage hesher simultaneously attracted and frightened me. But I digress. Back to Phillip. Most importantly, he had a confirmed bachelor uncle who lived in an apartment in downtown Denver, and he and his brothers often visited this uncle on weekends. Oh, the tales they told. Oh, the boobs seen on pay cable. Oh, the sips of beer his uncle let them sneak. This kid had the goods on the side of life we might someday, somehow, tomorrow, tomorrow, somewhere over the rainbow, brush up against as adults, young adults, teenagers, or god help us, tweens. Many weekday mornings, in that sweet twenty minutes before the first bell rang, we lined up alongside the red brick wall of the elementary school and listened to Phillip's tales of Porky's. In those weeks before the weather grew bitterly cold and the snow piled up, when it was too cold to play basketball, kickball, king of the mountain, or merry-go-round of death but tolerable enough to stand around and talk with our hands in our pockets, our breath not yet visible in the air, we listened as Phillip gave us the latest installment of Porky's info. He often mentioned that Porky's was in regular rotation on HBO at his uncle's house, but he had yet to catch a magical glimpse. He did know one thing. The version shown on HBO was not the version shown in theaters. No, the version on HBO was many times filthier. In fact, it was the XXX version. We had not yet acquired the knowledge that would let us call bullshit on that one. Instead, we exhaled deeply, widened our eyes, and agreed that that XXX version must be really something. In the coming weeks, Phillip told us he'd sneaked a few peeks at the television screen while his uncle watched Porky's. He told us of the many scenes of unsimulated sex he'd witnessed before his uncle caught him peeking from behind the couch. He said that a man had even licked a woman's genitalia. This was the most outrageous thing we'd ever heard. He licked it? Really? This was truly a man who would do anything. This was a man, to quote a redneck Benedict Arnold of the future, "with a spine of tempered steel." Phillip promised to catch more of the film in future visits and report back. He did report back, again and again. By now, we should have been suspicious. It would seem that his uncle's television contained nothing but a permanent Porky's loop. But we were hooked. What next? He watched half of it, he said. He mentioned scenes that we would eventually learn were actually in the film, but he filled them with many unsimulated exaggerations, including more genital-licking, nipple-tweaking, penis-stroking, and full-on boning. He exaggerated the shower scene to include a 20-minute orgy, and claimed the penis-in-the-hole-in-the-wall gag was actually shown in uncensored detail. The day finally came when Phillip saw the whole XXX Porky's shebang. In a stroke of genius, he pretended to fall asleep on his uncle's living room floor. This ruse finally provided the chance to see the film in its entirety. His uncle thought he was asleep, and he watched the whole movie. This time, he saw such incredible scenes as a man who put his penis in a hot dog bun, a woman who covered her breasts with a banana split, and the most legendary scene of all, which caused the most playground hubbub I've heard before or since. He claimed that Porky's final scene featured a man with eight penises receiving oral sex from eight different women. He called this man "octopus-dick." In second grade, it became "octopus cock." By third grade, we referred to the man as "octo-cock." This was so unbelievable that we believed every word. We had to see this movie. We. Had. To. See. This. Movie. That third grade year, video rentals were widely available. While perusing the video wall at a local convenience store, I spotted it. Porky's! On VHS! For rental! In our little town! The dirtiest movie ever made! Still, none of us could figure out a way to rent that video. We were little kids. What were we going to do? But, we had to see it! There must be a way. There wasn't. Later that year, the Porky's myth ended with a whimper, not a (gang)bang. Here all week, people. The legend had trickled all the way up to the older kids, but it entered a period of stasis. With none of us able to actually see the movie and with no way to top the Octo-Cock, we moved on to other topics of discussion, such as professional wrestling and how long you could be submerged underwater without suffering brain damage. One day, while standing along the wall talking to Phillip, we watched a sixth-grader walk up to us. Here is the conversation that ensued, to the best of my recollection. Sixth-grade: Hey, Phillip. I finally watched Porky's and almost none of that stuff you said was in it. There was no Octopus Dick. There weren't any blowjobs. There was some boobs and some bush in the shower part, and some chick showed her butt, but that was it. You're so full of it. Phillip: I was talking about Porky's II, not Porky's. Sixth-grade: Yeah, right. The sixth-grader walked away. We went back to talking about being submerged underwater.
There is no such thing as Santa Claus and there is no such thing as Octo-Cock.
A teaser trailer for what's to come: Today, the cassette in the car is Dead Milkmen's Big Lizard in My Backyard. Before I get into the origin of this cassette, I want to repeat a bit of information about the good people who put this in my hands and the conditions from whence I issued forth. My hometown has a population of 1,500. At any given time, the number of people living in that pee-pee soaked heck-hole who love music can be estimated at 9. My former townsmen and townswomen were mostly into hunting, sports, and cable TV. Nothing wrong with those things. It's just hard to live there if those things don't give you twenty boners a second. When I was in grade school, junior high, and high school, I found the few kindred spirits the portal to hell I call my hometown belched forth. Three of them were siblings. For privacy's sake, I will call them the Burtreynolds. Clint Burtreynolds was my classmate, partner in crime, and future weed supplier. His older brother Jason Burtreynolds and older sister Jenny Burtreynolds became friends, too. Vince Jazzyjeff was not a Burtreynolds, but he had the chutzpah of a young extra on Cannonball Run II. He also liked music a lot, so much so that he quit the football team to listen to Ween and Sonic Youth albums at my house, an unpopular decision at the time. In all fairness, he also quit the team to spend more time with girls. These girls were not spending much time at my house listening to Ween and Sonic Youth. I believe the hours these girls spent listening to Ween and Sonic Youth at my house totaled zero. Zero hours. Yeah, that sounds right. Anyway, the Burtreynolds family was a godsend. Wonderful, interesting people who shared my sensibilities. And a whole house full of them. In the godforsaken shithole I'd accidentally been conceived, born, and raised in. (A digression: It may sound like I'm bitter about my hometown. However, I've slowly learned to be grateful for the experience of growing up in such a hostile environment. When you're raised in a town in which you have absolutely nothing in common with anyone else, you find yourself in multiple ridiculous situations that only career alcoholics, morning news show hosts, and Miami drug lords find themselves in, which builds character.) What are the odds? Anyway, Jason graduated first, moved away, and came back on holidays with all kinds of musical treats. Even before he'd escaped to the outside world, he had connections with every weirdo in the western Nebraska panhandle and had a mighty cassette collection of punk rock, classic rock, early hip-hop, metal, and what was then being called college rock, which would later splinter into what Diane Sawyer calls indie rock and alternative rock. Anyway, my first dub from Jason's cassette collection was Dead Milkmen's first album. I was in sixth grade, and it was just what I needed. I borrowed the cassette and rode it on my bike over to my grandfather's house to dub it. (More on my grandfather's sweet-at-the-time cassette and vinyl setup in a future installment.) Clint accompanied me on this excursion. On the way, my cassette case flipped open and I dumped most of my cassette collection all over the street behind the grocery store where I would later work in high school. A pickup was coming up fast behind us, and Clint jumped into the middle of the street and started doing jumping jacks to prevent my cassettes from being smushed all over the road. The old guy driving the pickup looked at us like we were out of our fucking minds, swerved around us, and continued on his way. I listened to Big Lizard in My Backyard about 800 times that year. They hated right-wingers, but also made jokes about retarded people and AIDS. That was still possible in the 1980s. And those songs are pretty good. They're not just a novelty band. One of my college roommates, who is also a friend and is married to my wife's sister, has a great story about stealing their license plates in a misguided fanboy gesture that resulted in the band being busted for drugs. The Burtreynolds also had a bunch of other kids who were younger than us. My copy of Big Lizard in My Backyard opens with Clint's younger brother Alex babbling in baby talk for a few seconds, then saying my name, "Dosh, Dosh, Dosh." Then I say in my pre-pubescent, almost pubescent voice, "Oh man, I think I hit record." Then Clint's other younger brother Doug says, apropos of nothing, "Hey dude, you're looking at one big bad football player," then "Bitchin' Camaro" starts. Rewinding cassettes is a pain in the ass, but you're not going to accidentally capture moments of your own life on mp3. I heard my long-dead grandfather breathing and coughing at the end of one of my other cassettes, which I'll write about later. Make that happen again, technological progress. Two steps forward, six steps back.
I was in line at the no-longer-the-store's-best-kept-secret express checkout lane near the produce entrance at my neighborhood monolith grocery store buying some macaroni salad and beer a few weeks ago. The line was long, and I stood there for several minutes. A woman was about three people in line ahead of me. This woman was clearly, but gently, insane. She wore ill-fitting clothes and a stocking cap that would have looked more at home on Tad Doyle or the Screaming Trees' Conner brothers circa 1991, and she was missing several teeth. She occasionally turned toward the people in line behind her, including me, and said something to nobody in particular that made no sense. "I cut in line," she said once. She hadn't cut in line. "Today is Thursday," she said. It was Wednesday. "We're going to the moon," she said. We weren't. About four minutes later and the line hadn't moved much. We were still in the same spot. Suddenly, a large man wearing several coats, though it was relatively warm outside, slowly pushed his cart by us. In addition to the multiple coats, he had a large pair of earphones on, which were affixed to his chalky, bushy hair by a shitload of packing tape. He was hunched so far over his shopping cart that he was nearly resting his head on the bottom of it. The crazy woman in line looked at him gently, and said, "Oh hey, Louis." He looked at her, said, "Hey, how's it going?" and proceeded on his way.
Welcome to Can-Smashing Robot's new feature, Cassette Corner. This continuing series will mostly focus on my current attempt to listen to every cassette in my big crate full of cassettes as I drive to and from the school where I'm student teaching. These cassettes were mostly purchased, received as gifts, or dubbed off of friends' and relatives' vinyl, cassettes, and CDs in the years 1984-1998. I can only listen to them in the car because all seven tape decks in my apartment are no longer in working order. I have downloaded some songs from these tapes onto my computer and iPod, but some of these cassettes have not been listened to in years. This cassette misadventure is digging up all kinds of nostalgic, wistful, melancholy, and silly reminiscences, so I thought I should share some of it to kick-start this mostly inactive blog. Join me on my Proustian journey through the past, cassette-style. Having said all that, this first installment has nothing to do with any of that. It has to do with the extreme metal brutality of this past Austin summer. Now that a chill is in the air, I can remember a bit of Summer 2009 with fondness. I had to drive my un-air-conditioned nightmare to and from work in the blistering heat of the second-hottest summer, and the hottest August, in recorded Austin history. It sucked. It sucked so much ass. Anyway, every summer I leave an old mix tape on the dashboard from May to September because I'm easily amused. I finally remembered to document the results tonight. Here they are:
Kicking our research up a notch, we now compare the sun-baked cassette to a normal cassette: CBS Records' 1980 release of Aerosmith's Greatest Hits
Look at that last photo. Aerosmith's Greatest Hits stands erect, alert, with the stiff posture of a veteran Marine, while our sun-baked Maxell glides jauntily down the promenade, a good-natured idler, a gentleman of leisure, slightly tipsy from a spirit or two, whistling casually as he keeps his calendar free for yet another month. Who would you rather be?
I guess I understand why the health bigwigs in America want us to blow snot on the crooks of our arms instead of in our hands, but it really is much easier to wash your hands than the crooks of your arms if you're in the middle of your normal day and not near your shower, and it's also disgusting to have snot on your clothes all day if you're wearing long sleeves, so I think the health bigwigs of America can go fuck themselves on their stupid goddamn motherfucking idiotic shitty advice.
Hey fine people of Earth, I've been posting a lot of stuff and re-designing over at my least popular blog. The one about movies. Not the one about horror movies. That's become my most popular blog. Not this one, either. I'm talking about the general movie blog. You know, the one nobody gives a fuck about. Go there for new content and bigger images for your eyeballs, including a post about my mother and brother's surprise appearance in a Criterion Collection movie. See if you can be the seventh person to visit the site this week. You may win a glazed pigeon, in a contest that may not exist.
Oh my sweet lord. Trying to register for these teacher certification tests online has made me angrier than I think I've ever been in my entire life. My blood feels like it's burning under my skin and I have a tremendous urge to break my own hand by punching concrete repeatedly until I lose all sense of identity and my hand is a worthless, misshapen bloody piece of mush. Nothing on any of the three sites (and three user logins I had to create for them) is remotely user-friendly, or in fact, coherent. None of the information and test dates I was given by my program correspond to anything on the sites, the dates don't match at all, the site is showing dates for the test that aren't even real or valid or true, and one of the tests I have to take is mysteriously absent. When I finally get to something that matches the information I was given, the link I need to click to sign up takes me back to the crazy nonsense page. I was so angry I couldn't even figure out how to write a coherent email explaining my beefs and confusions, so my wife rose to the occasion and helped me out even though I was screaming profanities for about 20 minutes straight and could not possibly have been less pleasant to be around. In conclusion, fuck this shit to hell and back, motherfuckers. GOOOOOOOOOOOOOODDAAAAAAMMMMMMMMITTTTTTTTTTT! SHIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIITTTTTT!
Man, both of my certification tests are on Halloween. That is bull to the shit. Halloween is my holy day. It's the official Dr. Mystery Day of Obligation. I mean, I usually just take a walk around the neighborhood and then drink beer while watching a horror movie, but still.
Jim Dickinson died last week at age 67 after bypass surgery. He was a Memphis native. He played on Aretha Franklin's Spirit in the Dark, The Rolling Stones' "Wild Horses," The Flamin' Groovies' Teenage Head, and Bob Dylan's Time out of Mind. He produced Big Star's Third/Sister Lovers, Alex Chilton's Like Flies on Sherbert, The Replacements' Pleased to Meet Me, and Mudhoney's Tomorrow Hit Today. He also played with and/or produced Sam & Dave, Screamin' Jay Hawkins, Los Lobos, Jerry Jeff Walker, Ry Cooder, Petula Clark, Arlo Guthrie, Primal Scream, Rocket from the Crypt, and the Texas Tornados. He made some solo albums, too, including 1972's Dixie Fried.
I'm still trying to get over being horrified at having to teach theme to my future students, because Texas standardized tests emphasize the ever living fuck out of theme. I don't understand this at all. Theme is the least important thing about the written word imaginable. It's even less important than symbolism, which, thank whatever non-existent god you stupidly and/or wisely pray to, is finally being de-emphasized in high school curriculum. Still, I'd rather teach symbolism than theme, because at least the occasional writer does something with symbolism. Emphasizing theme does a disservice to any student of reading and writing. Whether you're reading a piece of supermarket fiction for fun or reading a bill from a utility provider or translating an ancient text or trying to read a sign on the highway at night on your way to a friend's house in a city you've never visited, specificity and close reading and the words on the page and/or sign are most of what you need. You may also need life experience and an understanding of references to other works, but a cliched, generic mission statement about that text's human or television or Oprah universalities are a complete waste of time and energy and precious, ever-dwindling lifetime hours. Still, you need this "skill" to graduate, so I'm forced to shove it in adolescents' faces until the second after the test, in which case they can forget it forever because they will never need it, and if they want it they are terrible human beings. Worse than Hitler. Theme. Can I please judge salsa-eating contests for a living? I just wasn't made for these times.
I can't believe this person is paid by the Chicago Reader to write articles. I can't believe someone hasn't murdered her. I can believe that indie-rock fans have turned out to be stupider and less relevant than classic rock fans. To clarify, first two sentences = can't, third sentence = can. Here is a link to her blog. Here are some nuggets of asininity, directly from her keyboard to your toilet bowl: "It's such a gratifying thing to be able to report and write a story that is meaningful to you, and be given the space and freedom to unpack it." Unpack it?
She refers to a band as playing "garage-rage." When can we just start calling things "rock and roll" again?
"I am on Chicago Tonight tomorrow, Tuesday. I GET TO TALK WITH PHIL PONCE. FOR SIX MINUTES. Totally unreal. If you have PBS and a Tv and remember to get a receptor box, see you then. Channel 11.I think it's on at like 7? I just painted my nails reggae for the occasion." Painted her nails reggae? What the fuck?
She likes kittens. Big fucking surprise there.
"How bad do you wish you could take a happy baby sea lion 'prisoner' for a ride in your car? That is like #3 on my list of animal adventures I wish could come true. #1 is that my cats can talk #2 is to have a midget pony that I solve mysteries with. #3 is seal prisoner road trip." Legally, she's an adult, probably in her late twenties-late thirties. Remember that. Remember what your grandparents were doing when they were her age.
"Night off in NY, I had the mammothest sushi at the macro place with the so-boss Mary Manning, We were in a hurry to get to the Agnes Varda autobiography movie, Beaches of Agnes or Agnes on the Beach or something. I TAKE BACK EVERYTHING BAD I SAID ABOUT HER EVER OR HER MOVIES. I GET IT NOW AND I WANT TO BE HER WHEN I GROW UP. But, anyhow, in my hurry, I just ate the middles of the sushi, leaving the gluteny tires of rice and s'weed making a sad DOOD face... Everyone needs to see the Agnes movie. The close up of a dying Jacques Demy's grey hair and arms I just sobbed sobbed sobbed. Partners, muses, aging, the grip of death--it was heavy as hell. It's nice to be home, and be presented with the futures new meanings." So moving that she can't even bother to get the name of the movie right. And why was she in a hurry to see a movie by a person she'd said bad things about? That's alright. She gets it now, and wants to be her when she grows up. Wait. She is grown up, biologically speaking. All you fucking fucks are grown up. What do you do for anybody? What is your value? What do you do with those "new meanings" that the "futures" presented to you?
"Oh man. Not sure how today and yesterday or tonight can be topped. EPICS IN MINUTES, except the minutes were days. New York was major. I cried after I read, while at the podium in a room full of people whose work I admire, cohorts, relatives, my mom and sister, a step cousin, a dude whose grunge cover band I admired in high school, the people who work on my book at Workman, high school friends, transplanted bffs, people i did publicity for, people I work with on the radio show, the man who sold me his car, Girls Rock Camp staffers, the coolest girl a lame ex ever introduced me to, sister-authors, two young girls who called into the radio show today including the girl who wanted to know how do you know if you are talented, moms, chaperones, my oldest friend, feminist pen pals, zine people from the olden days, people I had not seen since 1995. It is just staggering to look up from reading behind this too tall podium and see a room full of people from every nook and cranny of your life. It felt so kind. I don't think I will ever get over it. My other favorite part ever, in a flash flood of favorites--a very young girl in the audience asked a technical question about a problem she was having in GarageBand and Jane answered it--but like 3 other lady hands all went up to offer solutions. What if that 10 year old girl right now is the Bjork of Brooklyn's future? What if by seeing hands of adult women fly up to help her, she grows up knowing full well that women are totally technically savvy audio engineers/etc. and it never occurs to her that that's not the case because she saw it happen. Do you know? Seeding a paradigm shift, right in the little moment--I saw it happen." When my wife told a young girl where the bathroom was, I saw her seed a paradigm shift. What if that girl was the Shakira of Austin's Christmas past of the future today?
"Not to give the plot away, but in the Reader's Pitchfork guide, I said Fucked Up is the best live band at the festival. My editor thought I meant best band that day of the festival because it's such a commonly held idea/blf that The Jesus Lizard--undead, reunited, etc.--is the best live band at the fest, surely I am not saying Fucked Up are better than the Jesus Lizard. I am. I saw the Jesus Lizard at least five times between the ages of 15-20, and my opinion (previously chronicled in Hit it or Quit it issues #3 and #4) still stands: a killer rhythm section and Yow furiously tugging on his own penis do not make for the best show I have ever seen. Not even top 50. I remember enjoying Rollins Band shows more than JL. The last time I saw JL, Tanner opened and were better. So, no, their reunion is not the highlight of my summer. I think Pitchfork, for a truly don't-look-back moment should of had them play Shot in it's entirety, so the entire audience would be forced to face the reality that Jesus Lizard made some perfectly terrible albums before they hung it up. I am starting to think that 90's indie rock nostalgia is way more boring/offensive than the epicly chronicled, documentary-ized, coffee-table booked OLD HARDCORE DUDES 'WE STARTED IT ALL' memory lane that is actually a dead end culural cul-de-sac." I know every opinion I've had between the ages of 15-20 still stands. Pulp Fiction is the greatest movie ever made. Shakespeare sucks and is boring. That one girl might go out with me. Eating Arby's, Hardee's, and Taco Bell for every meal will have no effect on my health. These opinions and more are chronicled in issues 3 and 4 of my zine, Hit it or Quit it. Also in issue 4, see my article, "That Band with the Awesome Rhythm Section Sucked So Bad that I Saw Them Play 5 Times Between the Ages of 15 and 20."
I know this silly woman's opinions are irrelevant and I am giving her more power by making fun of her, and she has published a book aimed at empowering young girls to play music (a sentiment I wholeheartedly endorse, even if those girls deserve a better writer), but I am showcasing a smattering of her nuggets of wisdom as case file #1 of 76,000 in my efforts to convince the United States to invade every other country and reinstate the draft. President Obama will be sent a copy of this woman's prose, alongside the work of 75,999 other dumb white hipsters. The President and Congress will have no choice but to send all 76,000 and as many of their Facebook friends as can be located into battle. We will either save American culture or destroy it, but at least everyone with hair like the guy on the right and clothes like the guy on the left will be dead. In the unlikely event that these pasty hipsters somehow win the war, they will be driven into the Nevada desert and blown up.
The name of my imaginary one-man funk side band comes from a discussion with my wife about our respective parent-child secret boyfriends and girlfriends: Charlotte Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin for me, Tim and Jeff Buckley for her. We have given each other permission to have a three-way with our respective SGs and SBs, should the opportunity arise (regular one-on-one contact, however, is strictly forbidden). We're guessing the opportunity will never arise, especially for my wife, because both of her SBs are dead, but double especially because most people would not want to partake in a three-way with a member of their family. Nevertheless, if I ever become an international scenester, or if my wife gets access to a time machine and infiltrates the semi-underground rock scenes of late 60s/early 70s Los Angeles and early 90s New York, look out Penthouse Forum.
Unrelated note: While I was writing this post, a bunch of skinny-jeaned, anorexic, sweaty, stupid-looking indie-rock losers who have just moved into our apartment complex tried stealing the chairs and plant we have sitting outside our window, but I looked out the window, and they all took off. I'm not bragging one iota when I say I could have beaten all 15 of them to a bloody pulp single-handedly while holding the beer I'm drinking. And I'm a lover, not a fighter. I'm the kind of person who would lose a bar fight before it even started. And I would destroy these willowy, wispy, shitty little creeps.
Related note: My sentence construction was a little fucked up, so it reads like Charlotte Gainsbourg is Jane Birkin's mother. Charlotte is the daughter, Jane is the mother. If you're reading this, ladies, I have permission. Don't get creeped out. I'm cool.
This is hilarious. Guitarist for death metal band Malevolent Creation, Phil Fasciana, claims that he stopped in at a Ft. Lauderdale convenience store to get some chocolate milk on Friday afternoon and walked into the middle of a robbery. He claims that the would-be robber, a crazed crackhead, fired four rounds directly at him but missed. He then tackled the robber and took his gun. The robber reached into his sock and pulled out another gun, so Fasciana shot the man twice in the head, killing him. Fasciana also claims that the convenience store owner is offering him free chocolate milk for his lifetime. Fasciana's own unintentionally hilarious account of the alleged robbery can be found here and here. My favorite part of his account is this gem, "It was the most fucked up thing I have ever been involved with, besides my ex-girlfriend!!" Even more hilariously, Ft. Lauderdale police are emphatically insisting that the shootout never occurred. In fact, there haven't been any convenience store robberies in the city for an entire month, and no murders for a couple of weeks. The message boards on the metal site covering this story are equally fantastic. Here are some of my favorites: Domcoccaro writes, "Glad he set the record straight. What's everyone's favorite MC record? Mine would have to be Envenomed." allihadigave writes, "Anyways, this story is going to put utter fear in the death metal listening to homeless crackhead community for sure. Now they fuckin' know, lol....." And Then There Were None provides this poignant observation, "I don't follow this band, nor do I condone killing people, but, as said above, that is metal as fuck." 'OWNN-idge lays down this truth, "THIS JUST FLAT-OUT PLAIN RULEZ ALL- EVERY THING ABOUT THIS IS MONEY! BETTER THAN ANYTHING IN THE WORLD INCLUDING CHEESE FRIES+" Wet Toilet Paper makes us all think with this comment, "Alright well Phil deserves more recognition than a life time supply of chocolate milk for his courage and bravery. It'll at least make a kick ass album cover (like Stillborn). HEAD BANG TO THAT FUCKER!!!!"
Multiple metal fans have angrily responded to those doubting Fasciana's story by claiming that thousands of convenience store shootings happen in Florida every day and the police and news media can't possibly keep track of all of them. A skeptical, proactive metal fan has done some investigating to counter these claims: "Ok, the Sun Sentinal and the Miami Hearld, both ft. Lauderdale news papers, say it did'nt happen, no record of it as a story like this. You know this would have gotten lots of coverage. The ft. lauderdale police department (954 828-5700, criminal investigations) say they have not had a death / homicide involving a robbery this month and this did not happen. The County Medical Examiners Office (954 327-6500) said the whole county has not had a fatal shooting / homicide this month.
All of these agencies have gotten together in a conspiracy to keep this quite? Sombody would be talking about it. Check for yourself, make some calls.
As a matter of fact the only person talking about bit is Phill.... WTF........"
bangyermfhead agrees: "Awesome. Thanks for actually doing the legwork. This country is fucked up in a lot of ways but it cracks me up when people act like it's Escape from NY or Mad Max out there and innocent bystanders are just getting mowed down by the dozens on an hourly basis."
13-hour drive yesterday + suppression of excess anger and confusion at the world and anyone who pressures you to aspire to a complacent middle class lifestyle and/or excessive consumer product purchasing + post-vacation depression + failure to re-acclimate to the brutal Texas heat after mild, beautiful Wisconsin weather + back to the office tomorrow + lack of quality sleep last night even though the quantity was there + no air conditioning in rock club + exhaustion + dehydration + three-fourths of the crowd leaving or playing with their phones during the show + bass drum pedal that kept falling off mid-song + drum set that partially collapsed during the penultimate song, which became the ultimate song + mild public meltdown + immediate feeling of embarrassment after mild public meltdown = Wednesday, July 8, 2009 in the life of Dr. Mystery. On the other side of the coin, I got free pizza. Suicide, you lost this round.
Brazilian musician and songwriter Jorge Ben took umbrage at Rod Stewart's 1978 disco-inspired hit, "Da Ya Think I'm Sexy?" and sued the rooster-haired Brit for plagiarizing his song "Taj Mahal." Listen to the two, and you hear a lot of similarities. Rod admitted he stole parts of the song and agreed to donate proceeds from the single to UNICEF to appease Ben. However, I accidentally stumbled upon another bit of Rod plagiarism from the same song when listening to a lot of Bob Dylan recently. A little organ vamp played by Al Kooper in the middle of "One of Us Must Know (Sooner or Later)" that is only repeated once sounds, to me, like it has been stolen outright and used as a major part of "Da Ya Think I'm Sexy?." Go to 2:59-3:08 on the Dylan video to hear it. I looked this up on the Internet and couldn't find anything. Surely someone else has noticed the similarity before.
When my paternal grandfather was in his early thirties, he was a WWII vet and owned his own farm. I spent the hour between 4 and 5 a.m. yesterday reading the comments posted under an Onion A/V Club article in which many people in their early thirties debated whether the TV sitcom The King of Queens was lowbrow or middlebrow.
Hey friends, Last night, the band I am in, The Spacenecks, played our first official non-house-party show at the Carousel Lounge. Many of our friends came and made it a good time, even though I was sick with a horrible cold and had a million pounds of snot coming out of every orifice except for my ass. Thanks for your support and kind words. I would also like to thank Rabbit Fist for playing with us, rocking, being stand-up nice people, and letting us use their super awesome set of drums. Finally, I want to thank my wife's archivist friends for buying me a beer. The lovely Spacebeer recorded a couple of our patented R&B slow jams and 16th century songs of protest. Here they are:
A student in one of the classes I'm observing/student teaching this semester told me that when he was in third grade he had an imaginary ice cream truck.
I decided some time ago to quit picking on Louis Black. After all, I'd made my point many times over. But a paragraph from his latest column made me do a triple spit-take, and I wasn't even drinking anything. Here it is, in its entirety:
"As I have walked along the everywhere boardwalk that we all stroll down, living the every day to every day of our lives, my gait has always been uneven, rarely displaying the nonchalant grace, or at least ease, of most others. Almost stumbling, I've never been terribly far from slipping off the solid wood boards into the endless sandstorms raging on all sides. Once the solid boardwalk is left, I find myself tossed around at the mercy of the tiny tornadoes of personal instability and an always-shaky grasp on reality."
Holy shit. That's a Bulwer-Lytton contest winner right there.
from an interview with David Lynch: Interviewer, about Lynch's comic strip, "The Angriest Dog in the World": "... (S)omebody said, 'The comic strip originated from a time in Lynch's life when he was filled with anger'..." Lynch: "Yeah. 'The Angriest Dog in the World' wasn't really about anger in me, it was more (pause) anger in that dog."
Two girls, from the high school senior classes I'm observing and student teaching this semester: Girl A, semi-accusatorily: "Why did you quit basketball?" Girl B: "I didn't like the way Miss __ coached, and she was making me hate basketball. Why did you quit volleyball?" Girl A: "My booty got too big for the shorts."
Speaking of high school kids, I think I'm going to love teaching them. Several of my college professors, past and present, have delivered elitist tirades about the lowliness and incompetence of high school teachers and how horribly they're doing their jobs, not to mention how unimportant those jobs are compared to the prestigious rarefied air of a tenured professorship. Most of this contempt comes from a combination of privileged upper-class snobbery and an ignorance and/or disinterest in actual good teaching. There are terrible high school teachers in the world, and a lot of them, but most college professors think that lecturing for the entire class period, and never varying their methods or getting to know their students as individual learners, is an effective way to teach. Never mind that a fucking century of research shows that this is the worst way to teach. Even bad high school teachers know this stuff -- they're just lazy and/or embittered. Higher education institutions place more value on research than teaching, and it desperately shows. I'm very glad that a handful of my friends are either professors now, or getting close, because they are curious, non-complacent, and driven people, and college kids deserve good teachers. I'm just frustrated with the badmouthing high school teachers get from professors because the latter can't engage their students, even though they haven't varied their approach in 25 years. Somehow, it's the 9th-grade teacher's fault you suck as a professor. Some of these jerks can't even conceive that a bunch of 18-year-olds aren't wetting their pants about particle physics or Chaucer or the French Revolution, despite their non-student-centered dry lecturing and regurgitation-based tests.
You know that noise Sideshow Bob makes when he steps on a rake and it smacks him in the face? I just found out that my whole body, particularly my bowels, makes that noise when subjected to "Birdland" by The Manhattan Transfer. Damn you, Absolute 70s radio!
