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!
